#Even though Lake probably would suit weapon better

[jesse-cosay]

Posting on all my socials bc I have nothing better to do during the "holidays"

These were (mostly) made with the intent of a Soul Eater au idea I never finished, I might get back to that later but it's anyone guess on when

Jesse and Nate would've been Lake's weapons, similar to Kilik's weapons (just,, giant metal fists with powers,,,,, possibly), but I obviously never made a final design

[the-firebird69]

The World’s Most Advanced Water Gun 😱🔫 #Shorts

My husband had this idea to make these water guns real powerful and to make blasts and light and I figured out how to do it and he had no idea I was doing it and he wants to sell these with armor and it's particular genre and it's destiny 2 and I'm going to do it and it really works people love it and you sell it in stores like FYE and that other store in the mall and then all sorts of toy stores have them and hobby stores but really it's better than those places and but you're probably selling department store like Walmart you can buy them online and you can get the cosplay online and boy these things are great at night and they're coming up with games that they coach you with like this chalk and even your face and stuff a little it doesn't hurt you at all it is like it was a chalk and when you get hit you can see a mark and it's just a little splash they don't care that if you get hit they know and he wants us to come up with a suit that will detect a decent hits and you'll have hit points and you'll have gear on your face for protection and it'll show it'll have a heads up on the gear on the glasses on the inside it'll have a heads up screen and I'll tell you how many points you have and when you face someone it'll tell you how many points they have I'm going to go ahead and start that too this is going to be intense it's intense just by itself and kids will play with these forever and I heard stories they already use them and they're outside at night and it's something great to see but people spray a lot these days and they pass out in the yard just from exhaustion in the training really they look and feel like blasters we've had all sorts of things happen just people scaring people people going to parties with them and they shoot alcohol into each other's mouths I mean it's crazy stuff and beer huge beer parties and huge destiny 2 parties and they fill up with beer and they shoot each other all night long they all smell like beer it's just a real trip

Hera

Zues

I like his idea it's kind of complicated he wants her to follow through cuz she made this and it's really cool already I'm going to help too and zigzag I'm going to help and the guys their cadre and nuata Ariana and Uriel and goddess wife there's more and we'll make a list but it's huge Salazar and goddess wife and he has an idea for a pirate weapon and they'll even have to load it each time that's funny though. And yeah you're going to have these six breasted pistols someone's laughing because it really and he likes to detection and he likes the idea of having toy pirate ships that are not really huge they consume around on the lake and fire at each other with these weapons and have bigger ones it's better than paintball because you get paints all over everything and it's just watercoloring but it sometimes stuff and gets all over the place and the balls are biodegradable but it takes a month and they stink so this is a better way to do it

Thor Freya

That's more fun than I thought it would be that's what he's thinking too it's really cool I think this is a great idea and for children it's awesome he can have those toy pirate ships in the yard and they can breach and you can have like a swing that swings onto the pirate ship with ropes and I've seen it and it's a lot of fun all sorts of games can be played but the water is really where you want to be playing this in a lake and it's intense

Salazar and Goddess Wife

We approved this idea to go ahead and for production and she got this out and she used the same method

And we're going to have to piggyback

Olympus

[obislittleone]

House Of Memories (48/?)

Obi-Wan Kenobi x Padawan!reader

Warnings: fluff, just fluff

Summary: Obi-Wan leaved early in the morning while you're still asleep, though he hates to part with you. Padme wakes you up in time for breakfast

A/n: GUYS I'M ASSEMBLING THE PADME LAKE DRESS IT SHOULD BE DONE IN LIKE A WEEK OR TWO! also sorry this ones so short, I didn't have enough time to write today, but I'll do better tomorrow I promise.

also y'all if you like the story, maybe consider buying me a coffee :)

Words: 1.5k

(I wish i was this dog so bad just imagine-)

You were still heavily asleep when he left, the sun rose just over the mountains, and casted beautiful shadows over the palace, he could see them through the windows. He knew that he should probably not be here when wake up calls were going around. He figured that of all the high respect the people of Naboo had for the Jedi, they were utterly confused as to why seemingly the best of them were breaking the rules.

You'd been facing his back, nose between his bare shoulder blades when he had come into consciousness, with your arms wrapped around his waist. He had come to you in his usual attire, and had not a change of clothes with him, so he simply stripped himself of it all but his trousers and slept that way instead. He could not recall sleeping beside you with such a lack of coverage before, but he presumed you did not care, as before he fell asleep, he could feel you tracing the scars of his back with a feather light trail of your finger.

He found it hard to untangle himself from your embrace, and hoped he hadn't woken you from your slumber whilst doing so, but finding that your expression was still heavy with rest, he sighed in relief, finding his things that were strewn about the floor and pulling them back onto his body. He kept watch over you while he did so, not because he typically enjoyed watching you sleep, but because your elegant form, draped over the bed in such an exquisite way held his attention so he could not look anywhere else but you. Beauty, and light, and everything that is good and pure... that is what you are, and what you always will be. Your selflessness, and courage in times of distress, they made you admirable, but your kindness, and gentle discernment among an otherwise impassive generation of Jedi made you rare.

She is the light incarnate, but not because it flows through her, it is her. She is the suns the moons and all the stars, beaming glorious light into the lives of those around her. She is a precious miracle to this galaxy, and more importantly to him. He'd give his life for you. He'd conquer a hundred planets in your name if you wished it, but of course you wouldn't, because you were too wise for that.

Your wisdom, which could bring cities to their knees, was your most well-known attribute by others, though he would assume your skills with a lightsaber would rival it. Even just watching you practice captivated him. Even before he'd grown these romantic feelings for you that attached you to his soul, he'd been entranced at how precise you were with your weapon. It oftentimes looked like some sort of dance, in which by the end, your opponent stood no chance. Your two forms were quite well meshed together, creating a lovely, almost elegant way of fighting. He taught you Soresu, his form, as well as the basics of the other six forms. You'd also grown fond of Makashi, as it suited your personality, and your need for driving an enemy before they were defeated.

You never thrived on victory, and oftentimes you were afraid to achieve it. The attention that came with victory was not what it was about to you, and you disliked the praises of everyone except for him when it was concerned. You always liked his praises, though. The small words of encouragement from the only person you cared to have the opinion of. If he thought you were doing well, that would sustain you well enough.

The sun coming over the ridges and peeking through the window hit his eyes, and he turned his head away to avoid it, his mind letting go of any thoughts that were distracting him from getting back to his room before anyone found out.

He would be glad to have that lovely villa tonight that Padme mentioned, knowing that you would be with him, in his arms until morning, and he could really give you the attention he wanted to.

He was quiet as he went back to the bed, sitting on its edge and running his fingers through the soft strands of hair that had fallen ever so slightly over your face. How he ever managed to obtain your love he'd never know, but he was grateful for it, all the days of his life he would continue to show you he was.

He leaned down and kissed your temple, letting his lips linger a moment before he leaned back and smiled.

"You are the sweetest gift I've ever been given," he whispered, taking one more moment to take in your glorious presence, even asleep as it were, and left your side to go back to his room.

-

"Good morning, rise and shine," Padme's voice rang out in the room, and you jumped up, eyes half lidded, but alert at your surprise. You felt well rested, and thanked the maker that you'd been able to sleep in, but given that Obi-Wan had been gone for probably hours now, you were worried that he didn't. You couldn't pinpoint the time you recalled his absence, but it had been long enough that his side of the bed had grown cold. "The stylists are coming soon, I told them I'd see to it that you'd had breakfast before we begin."

"Stylists? Padme," you yawned, tilting your head and chuckling as her antics. "There's no need to do all of this for me, I promise I'll be perfectly content to just throw on a dress and attend the event without all this extra hassle."

"It's too late for that, I've already told them about you, and they are excited over it. And besides, this event is to showcase you and the boys, so you must look the part. I'm sure Obi-Wan will be thrilled to see what we have in store for you."

You raised your eyebrows and nodded, accepting that maybe it would be fun to see him all flustered. You remembered that back on Kadavo, when you wore a slave disguise, he seemed rather... unsettled by it. In a good way, of course.

"I suppose I will humor you, since you were kind enough to give me a luxurious vacation," you grinned, throwing yourself back into the mattress and wriggling around in its large dimensions.

"Come with me, there is much to do."

She seemed borderline giddy as she pulled you out of the bed and towards the fresher room, which was nearly as large as the room you'd slept in.

You'd made yourself as presentable as you normally did, before entering the main room that contained large trays of breakfast for you and the senator. You were not used to such fine foods, as the cantina in the temple was rather bland, although you did enjoy it when they had a Felucian Garden Spread.

"Why must we start preparing so early? There will be several hours at least before the celebration will even begin," You commented, shoving your face full of whatever this tasty bread stuff was. It was light pink in color and fluffy as a cloud, covered in a sweet drizzle.

"Because we will need time for trial and error, along with discussion about the wardrobe."

You weren't even sure about said wardrobe, as she had yet to show you the outfit, she planned on having you wear.

"What am I even wearing, anyhow?" You looked atrocious, with food stuffing your cheeks, honey dripping down your chin for how fast you were eating.

"Well perhaps a napkin would be a good start," she laughed, handing you one from off the tray before she stood up and went to gather the dress that she had been saving all this time.

You busied yourself with wiping your face off, swallowing the rest of your food then downing a swig of that sweet and sour tasting drink she had given you. You wondered if Obi-Wan was getting the same things you were, as you would love to talk about it with him later without feeling bad.

"Remember this?" She practically waltzed back into the room, holding the beautiful dress you'd once turned down so long ago. It would probably suit you even more, now. Your body had gained more muscle, but it had also matured, filling out a bit more so you appeared more feminine rather than lanky. Your broad shoulders would do great justice to the vines that acted as straps to the gown. The beautiful green and blue fabric, that would fall down over your feet to elongate your legs was stunning, and the tulle strips, though long, could part wide enough for your feet to take steps through. You wondered what kind of shoes she had in mind, as clearly your feet would be seen.

"I hope I will do it justice," you commented, standing up to examine the dress more up close.

There were knocks heard at the door, and Padme smiled, letting you hold the dress while she went to greet the stylists.

"This is where the fun begins."

-

@spencerrxids @sawendel @fandomstanner24 @i-shall-abide @officialjellydoughnut @whatshxrname @darkened-writer @superavengerpotter @cutiepoo16 @hypnoash @softlymellow @howlerwolfmax @mephistominion @honestlywtfisgoingon @anakinskywalkerog @mandiiellen @je--a-n @guyinachair27 @avenger5-a55emble @amelia-song-pond @kaminanii @the-abyss-of-fandoms @queenofnightdreamland @world-dominating-kitty @mandowhatnow @ella-error505 @annahalo @infinity-witch @beetlejuice-stuff @liueski @solarbxby @sirianisrock @lxdyred @endless-warrior-always-fighter @iloveinej @msjb2002 @shoochi @itsilvermorny @gingerrosecosplay @sebschicken @loversjoy @argentinemango @1-800-vader @house-of-kolchek @marierg @graciexmarvel @ttzamara @truly-madly-nerdy @molieux @majahu @dyzlks @pancakefancake

[riversofmars]

That last one-shot prompt made me realize I really love the interaction of outsiders to River and the Doctor's relationship. I'd really love more of that type of thing. I've no idea if this even counts as a prompt or not but just saying.

Hi! I promise, I've not forgotten about the prompts i have yet to do, though I might be getting a bit distracted with World Enough, And Time :D Yeah I guess this wasn’t exactly a prompt but here are more reactions to their relationship as Yaz learns more about River in the next instalment of Big, Vast, Complicated and Ridiculous! :D

Chapter 7: Lake Silencio

“Blimey, you do have a mind of your own today, haven’t you.“ The Doctor huffed as the TARDIS came to a halt.

“Where are we?“ Yaz asked sounding a little worried.

“Could be anywhere.“ The Doctor sighed. “She’s been all over the place. Surprised she managed to take me to you on time when you texted…“ She skipped to the door and Yaz followed, curious to see where they had ended up. The Doctor stuck her head out the door, then pulled back and glared at the console. “Oh you silly machine, you could break time…“

“That’s your TARDIS over there?“ Yaz asked taking a step outside the door while her friend hung back. She found they had landed on a cliff face in the middle of the dessert. The sun was blazing down on them, reflecting off the azure blue lake that stretched below. The could overlook the entire valley from their vantage point and Yaz had immediately spotted the other blue box.

“Earlier model, this was some time ago.“ The Doctor answered slowly, eying the younger version of her TARDS across the ridge. There was probably a reason for why the TARDIS had taken them here.

“Well, this is nice.“ Yaz put her hands on her hips enjoying the sunshine on her face. It made a change from dreary Britain.

“Great time for a picnic…“ The Doctor mused as she looked down into the valley, to the beach by the side of the lake. There she was, so much younger, drinking wine with Amy, Rory and River. The Doctor smile a little to herself, she missed her family so much.

“Are you down there?“ Yaz asked curiously, following her gaze.

“Yeah…“ The Doctor nodded with a melancholy expression.

“And River?“ Yaz recognised her head of hair, even from a distance. It was distinctive to say the least.

“And her parents, Amy and Rory.“ The Doctor smiled wistfully pointing them out to her. She hadn’t seen them in such a long time. She missed them dearly.

“But they’re… younger than her?“ Yaz stated, bewildered. They were relatively far away but she could make out enough to pose the question.

“First thing you should know about River, I guess… she’s a time traveller.“ The Doctor chuckled. The TARDIS seemed to want her to fill Yaz in so she obliged.

“Right, that makes sense.“ Yaz sighed, shaking her head bemused. This was just like the Doctor. Of course her wife was no ordinary woman. She was intrigued to find out more.

“This was the day…“ The Doctor hummed with a bittersweet smile.

“What day?“ Yaz prompted and the Doctor chuckled:

“My wedding day.“

“Really?“ Yaz’s eyes widened in shock. She looked back down to the Doctor’s younger self.

“You did ask, didn’t you, about my history with River? Think the TARDIS is trying to fill you in.“ The Doctor smiled. She shrugged off her coat and put it down on the ground before sitting down. She always kept her cards so close to her chest, not allowing anyone, not even her friends, to really get to know or understand her. Maybe she was going about it the wrong way. Perhaps it was time to let people in again. She didn’t need to carry all these burdens by herself. And maybe, just maybe, if she let other people see, shared her past with them, maybe she would feel a little closer to being the Doctor again.

“So that’s you?“ Yaz pointed at the young Doctor again as she sat down, surprised at the inviting gesture.

“Look at how thin I was, ugh. How did River fancy me so much back then?“ The Doctor mused, looking her old self up and down.

“Look at the lake.“ Something in the distance caught Yaz’s attention and she pointed towards the shore line.

“I know, I was there, remember?“ The Doctor chuckled, amused.

“What’s happening?“ Yaz asked. It looked as thought something was emerging from the water, a figure. The others had noticed it too. The young Doctor on the picnic blanket got to his feet, as did his friends.

“Well, it’s not just the day we got married, it’s also the day she killed me.“ The Doctor answered matter-of-factly.

“What?“ Yaz’s head flung around as she looked back to her friend and the Doctor laughed a little.

“It’s complicated.“ She admitted and pointed to the figure that was walking out of the lake. It appeared to be wearing an astronaut suit. “That’s also River, in the suit, a younger version of her. The Silence, an order that was trying to kill me, are controlling her. I knew that already at the time, that’s why I asked her older self here. All of them actually, Amy and Rory too.“ She explained as they watched the Doctor below make his way towards the astronaut. “I knew I had to die - or so I thought at the time - and I didn’t want to do it by myself. And I wanted River to know that she would always be forgiven.“

“That’s so sad.“ Yaz took in her words, mulling them over.

“You wondered why she’s a wanted criminal? This is why. She got sentenced for my murder.“ The Doctor tried to create context for her.

“So she’s innocent?“ Yaz confirmed, feeling a little bad for her previous snap judgement of the Doctor’s wife.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. She did try to kill me, several times. And she’s knows her way around a weapon, I’ll tell you… and she’s not afraid to use them. So innocent? Of this particular crime, but in general?“ The Doctor shrugged, amused. She couldn’t deny, she liked a bad girl.

Far below, the astronaut shot the Doctor. The Pond family rushed towards him. River shot and missed the astronaut as it walked back into the lake…

“So how did you escape?“ Despite knowing that she would survive, Yaz felt her chest tighten as they watched.

“I was wearing a suit that saved me.“ The Doctor answered.

“Soooo…. when did the marriage happen? Did I miss it?“ Yaz asked after they sat and watched in silence for a while.

“Oh you won’t see it.“ The Doctor laughed, realising only then that she was waiting for it. “It happened in an aborted timeline. The first time around, River couldn’t bring herself to kill me and therefore create a paradox. This is a fixed point in time.“

“So you’re not actually married? If it happened in another timeline?“ Yaz exclaimed. This was getting more complicated at every turn.

“All of time was happening at once for all eternity. Every moment that ever was or ever would be. That’s how I see it, from the beginning to the end of the universe. That means we’re always married, wherever and whenever we are.“ The Doctor gave a soft smile.

“That’s very sweet.“ Yaz smiled, realising it was all a matter of perspective.

“And incredibly stupid.“ The Doctor sighed. “It hurts, Yaz…“ Yaz looked at her surprised at the uncharacteristic confession. It didn’t seem like the Doctor at all to speak so openly about her feelings so she remained quiet, allowed her time to phrase her thoughts. “It hurts when… no matter how much you love each other, no matter how much you’ve done and overcome together, you still can’t be together.“ She got to her feet. She had seen enough. She didn’t want to be a witness to the Pond family’s grief any longer. Even though she knew it would all come right in the end, it didn’t change the fact that they truly believed her former self to be dead. Their pain was real, as was her own.

“Where is she now? I mean, I get that we can travel and see her wherever but where is she really? At the end of her timeline?“ Yaz asked, getting up as well so the Doctor could shake out her coat and put it back on.

“She died…“ The Doctor answered quietly. “The first day I met her…“ She turned back towards the TARDIS.

“Doctor I… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…“ Yaz felt like she’d been punched in the gut. That was not the answer she had expected and she regretted the question. She hurried after her back to the TARDIS.

“It’s fine.“ The Doctor managed a thin smile as they stepped back inside the blue box. “I always knew it would happen, that was the deal…“ Slowly she made her way to the console while Yaz closed the door.

“If you always knew it would happened… couldn’t you do something to change it?“ Yaz asked, feeling terrible for her friend. There had to be something they could do.

“I already did everything I could, spent lifetimes thinking about it…“ The Doctor answered. “She’s not completely gone… I managed to save her mind, her consciousness to a super computer.“ She explained. “Best I could do.“

“I guess that’s something.“ Yaz felt a little better and the Doctor managed a smile:

“Better than the alternative.“

“So does that mean I could meet her?“ Yaz asked after brief consideration. “The version of her that had had all her adventures with you? I bet she knows you like no-one in this universe.“

“I guess that’s true…“ The Doctor hummed, thinking back to her visit at the Library. “Maybe some day.“

“Do you not go and see her?“ Yaz frowned, surprised by her reluctance.

“I did when I needed that bit of space to think… like you said, she knows me like no-one else.“ The Doctor revealed.

“And not before then?“ Yaz asked and the Doctor shook her head.

“It’s hard when there is so much… guilt and regret. And when you’re so close and you still can’t touch them… sometimes it’s better to just keep yourself busy and try not to think about it.“ She admitted and Yaz understood.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

I'm a sucker for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, so You have Headcannons about it?

I'll Start saying that One of My First Playthroughs Treecko was my partner, so When Grovyle shows up I Made The Crazy HC that he was my partner from The future ajdbdj

Oh my good friend, it depends on which game you’re asking about! 

But in general, I do love the wild implications and questions raised by having a Treecko on your team in Explorers. I suppose a similar idea presents itself in Rescue Team, though not involving time travel. Imagine if your partner was a Charmander, and the Charizard on Team A.C.T. was actually their biological dad? Just something to think about. Speaking of fathers, can we just take a moment to give a shoutout for how Dugtrio is depicted? (In Explorers, I can’t remember if they did the same thing in Rescue) I know it’s because they have three heads, and I know referring to oneself as multiple people isn’t really something that we see in the same context in real life...but Dugtrio being the way they are and everyone just accepting it, despite how it’s different than the norm...that’s such a great example to set? Like, I didn’t get it as a kid, but I so appreciate it now. It’s an unorthodox form of representation, but the writing of Dugtrio’s character has its heart in the right place. 

Most headcanons I have will probably be for Explorers, since while I love all of these games, that is the one that I’ve played backwards and forwards. Here’s one: The Multiverse Theory. I believe there are several timelines that have occurred and overlap each other. The Dark Future, as well as the Restored Future that the heroes create, are just two examples. I feel like Darkrai would have tried several times, creating new portals for each failure. 

Here’s a tricky question: If the Time Gears are supposed to be in Temporal Tower, and even have slots fitted for them...why weren’t they there in the first place? Why were they placed in different locations around the world? If Darkrai moved them, why did they have Guardians who seemed to have been there for generations, assuming that that was where the Gears were supposed to be? Here’s another question: The Time Gear depicted on the loading screen for Explorers of Darkness...what was that about? As of Sky, we’ve seen every Time Gear location, and there were only five...this is what I mean. Multiverse. That location looked a hell of a lot like the Dark Crater. I bet there was a timeline where Darkrai kept one of the Time Gears to ensure Temporal Tower could never be fully restored. We only know that he “sabotaged it” after all. 

Here’s another question about Darkrai’s powers: How the heck does he have the ability to transfigure a human into a pokemon? How was he able to do that? I’m pretty sure the amnesia was just a naturally occurring side-effect, that the MC bumped their head or something. So that would answer that question. Here’s another point - Darkrai was aiming for Grovyle. MC shielded him. Which of course raises the question - what the heck would that attack have done to Grovyle? I’m not sure, part of me wonders if it wouldn’t have reduced him to being a Treecko, perhaps? That could be the connection. Or maybe it was just a run of the mill nightmare attack that he’s known for, but since it was meant for a Pokemon’s mind, it responded different to a human’s? What if the MC being a pokemon is, itself, a kind of dream, come to life? 

The Dimensional Scream. This ability is so weird. In the past, it can work on anything. In the future, it’s only Time Gears. Why is that? I feel like maybe it has some connection to how the Time Gears being in different places across different timelines. How in some, they’re in Temporal Tower, yet in others, they’re around the world. I wonder where an ability like this would come from, and why only humans can have it. Why couldn’t say, a psychic type pokemon have this power? We see from the MC’s transformation that they retain the ability even in a Pokemon’s body. So again, why is it only humans who can have this power? That’s not even getting into the unanswered questions about how humans fit into this universe. It’s not like Gates to Infinity where humans are directly established to be seen as fairy tales to the Pokemon. In this game, they know what humans are, but the player is the only one they ever meet. 

Here’s a fun theory. Those Time Gears fit into Temporal Tower, into a shape that looks like one big Time Gear. Suppose in the original, true timeline....it was all  one Gear? That Darkrai’s sabotage was what broke it into pieces? Suppose the fracture of time is what caused all the divergent timelines to become possible, to overlap? Suppose the MC is psychically attuned to the fracture in time, and that connection is what creates the Dimensional Scream? It would tie in with how it’s animated, that’s for sure. It could go a ways to explaining why the ability is so random. Why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, and how it even seems to be affected by the presence of Time Gears or lack thereof. What if The Dark Future is a kind of chasm where all of the timelines are leading to unless changed, and within the Dark Future, time itself is dying? After all, everything has frozen, and Dialga has lost all sense of reason.  So the connection to other timelines is actually weaker in the Dark Future, hence only being able to use The Scream in connection to the Time Gears?

I’d imagine the MC was a coveted asset in the war. That Dusknoir would have, at one time, badly wanted to recruit them to work for Primal Dialga, because they would be the greatest weapon the Resistance could possibly have. But both the MC and Grovyle were willing to let themselves die to bring a better tomorrow (or well, “today) for the pokemon (and humans?) of their world. You know how Grovyle talks about seeing the sunrise for the first time? The morning after Darkrai’s attack? How much it blew him away and strengthened his resolve? Yeah, I think about that moment a lot. Man, the plot twists and characters in these games are so good. Even if you predicted the Grovyle/Dusknoir switcharoo, did anyone see the “My best friend...” twist coming? I know I didn’t, but it was so well foreshadowed! Speaking of that scene, the place we meet up with Celebi is absolutely the future version of Fogbound Lake. I don’t know if that was supposed to be obviously true, or if it’s just a head-canon on my part, but it seemed pretty clear. Hell if we assume that the portals can only travel through time, not space...then that means Dusknoir just brought us to the future of Treasure Town. What if...what if the Stockade was what’s left of the Guild? Oh my god. 

Let’s talk about the Partner. How they had the Relic Fragment with them, the key to powering the Rainbow Stoneship, the beacon to signal Lapras...and the Partner just “happened to pick it up somewhere.” Seriously, that’s all we get. They handwave the question of where the hell the partner got this, and I think it’s an important one to think about. The way I see it, there are two possibilities. One, that the Relic Fragment itself chose the Partner, and thus presented itself to them. Think of like, the Sword of Gryffindor presenting itself to someone from that House who is worthy. If the Relic Fragment could somehow sense within the Partner’s soul that they were worthy, a good person. The other possibility is that the Relic Fragment was somehow stolen from where it was meant to be kept, and ended up getting passed around, stolen or moved by unsuspecting pokemon until it fell into the partner’s lap by pure chance. But if I had to guess a resting place for the Relic Fragment...hmm. I don’t know why Waterfall Cave is my first guess, since it doesn’t suit the aesthetic of the gem room at all. But it does have a built in trap. What if the gems were just a decoy to distract any visitors from the seemingly less fancy Fragment? Would make sense, especially since you can’t pick them up. Hell the cave itself is supposed to be a secret in general.

[walker-journal]

Bellyflop into the Abyss (Dave, Mina, Adam- POTW)

Characters: Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir), Wilhelmina Fitzroy (Nix-Virginia), David Herring (Selkie-Immo)

Summary: Seeking ways to combat the rifts opening across White Crest, Adam and Mina meet with Dave and dive into the sea of a Demon Dimension in search of answers

Content Warnings: Head Trauma, Parental Death mention, Gun Use 

Adam’s shoes sloshed on the partially flooded floor of the empty convention center, beckoning for Mina to follow. Deluges of water expelled from the dimensional rift in the Common had begun to create pools of standing water around White Crest’s greenspace, gradually rising and spreading to the ground floors of nearby buildings. 

“So I’ve set up a meeting with another hunter who's been fighting underwater monsters for a long tide,” Adam explained as he waded through the strangely colored waters from another world towards a staircase. “Before the portal opens we’ll probably want any advice we can get y’know?”

The water was high enough that Mina had simply taken off her shoes and left them in her car before she and Adam had made it to the common. It wasn’t like there was anything in the water that could hurt her before the water itself healed her. She couldn’t afford to ruin or lose another pair of shoes, seeing as how she… kept ruining and losing her shoes. She’d been sleeping (in the loosest sense of the word) in the woods more and more, and that was more detrimental to her footwear than she’d imagined. 

“That works for me,” Mina said, nodding as she looked around in the water, watching out for creatures that might pop out. Mina agreed to this because she couldn’t not. She wanted to help people. She wanted to protect people. She wanted to feel useful. “What, exactly, are we looking for in the portal? Just a way to close it, right?”

Of course all hell had broken loose while Dave had been locked up in Rio’s scribary. If he hadn’t already been in a piss poor mood thanks to the lancing pain where his arm was healing, one of the hell dimensions looked like it might even be fun. But with a firm warning from the doctor that he could lose the rest of the functionality in his arm if he didn’t let it heal, Dave knew better than seeking out new hunts in new waters while under the weather. When Adam had approached him with ideas for a frogman mission, the best he could offer was the equipment to keep anyone else from drowning. 

Dave had set up his gear on the roof, considering the rumours of how high the tide would come in, and it kept him out of sight of wandering eyes. His pelt was carefully folded to the side, constantly in sight. Just in case it was needed, considering how much faster. It was a sign of trust that might well go right over the young hunter’s head, but Dave didn’t mind that so much. 

At the vibrations of footsteps heading up the water-soaked stairs, Dave turned to the emergency exit door he’d wedged open. He raised his less injured arm to greet Adam, but his features dropped into a frown as a second figure followed him through. Fuck. Mina. The last time he’d seen her, he’d nearly crushed the life out of her. Dave took a step away from the gear behind him, hoping that having one arm in a loose wrist sling would make him look less threatening. “Hey.” He said gruffly, his tone contrite. “Not gonna hurt you again. I was sick. I’m sorry.” Better to get that out of the way before she freaked out. 

“Yeah some clue to what caused it to open, maybe what’ll close it,” Adam continued as they walked into the room, the Hunter’s shoe’s squelching from the trip through the sudden bottom floor. 

“Yo! Professor Porpoise! This is Mina and she…” 

Adam paused midsentence, brown eyes flicking between Mina and an apparently contrition-struck Dave. 

Aw shit, bad blood with the Scuba Hunters. Adam swallowed and looked over his shoulder at Mina, wondering if he just walked her into a meeting with her mom’s sealy exboyfriend who ruined the Atlantis family through bad self-care or something. 

“Alright, good,” Mina said, structuring everything into mission objectives in her head as she followed Adam up to the roof. “Find out what’s happening, make it stop, keep the Commons from becoming the next Dark Score Lake. Sounds--” She stopped in her tracks when she saw Dave, though.

Mina’s first thought was to make sure that Adam knew the danger and then get them both out of there, as against the idea as the other hunter might be. But Dave… wasn’t attempting to hurt either of them. She let her eyes scan over the selkie, taking in his posture, his facial expressions, his arm in a sling. And his words were confirmation of what she’d thought, that something had been wrong. (She still remembered his words, how he’d thought she was a monster, how he’d broken her like it was nothing.) 

“Hi,” Mina said, her tone cautious, but there was relief there, too. She’d been right when she thought that something was wrong. And, besides, there was no one to stop her for forgiving him. He’d been sick. Something in him had seen her as a threat, as prey. Something had been wrong. She couldn’t fault him for that. He’d been kind to her, before, and she could see proof of that man standing before her. “I thought-- I thought something was wrong with you, then.” She cleared her throat. “So, ah, Professor Porpoise, was it?” She felt strange joking, still a little on edge, but she was trying. “I take it you’re our equipment expert, then?”

The air saturated with a pregnant pause as Mina weighed him up. Dave waited, quietly, for her reaction. He nodded in confirmation, gesturing to the slowly healing bite on his injured arm. Too slowly. Every bad incident was taking too long, and even with the infection cleaned out of his system and the rest he was careful to give it now, the joint of his elbow wouldn’t be the same. And then the moment passed as she repeated Walker’s newest nickname for him.

“Not sure if that’s better or worse than what I was being called before,” Dave eventually settled on gruffly, without a lick of heat to it, there was even a twitch of a smile. It was a good nickname, all things considered. He did love word play, even if he was considering finding some land mammal comparisons for the two of them.

“Something like that.” He looked over Adam and Mina’s gear with a critical eye. Mina wouldn’t need scuba gear, so her wet suit would have to do, and Adam’s scuba gear was recognisably combat oriented, with a rebreather, but limited. “Looks like you won’t be needing any knives between the pair of you. Take your pick of the rest of this. We’ll start with these,” Dave said, with small boards that could be clipped onto wetsuits, each featuring a clock, underwater compass, diver’s white board and small computer with depth sensors and tracking devices. “At the very least it should help the pair of you find each other if you get seperated, and if the portal plays nice with the comms, should help you get back here too. This,” Dave gestured to a streamlined black propellor with handles, “will let you,” Dave pointed to Adam, “keep up with you,” this to Mina, “and get away from some of the gnarly things in there. Pretty damn quiet, never had anyone have an issue with it that they wouldn’t have had without it.”

“As for what weapons you’ll need,” Dave gestured at a few options of underwater pistols, rifles, bangsticks and explosives, “it’s really gonna depend on how much time you want to spend killing things while in there. Firearms and bangsticks are a good call for merms, grindys and dievalves, but a bootstrap worm washed up here this last night. If you catch a hint of those, the better call is to swim away.” Dave rubbed his jaw. “The deeper you go, the weirder shit gets. Don’t go too deep.”

Adam knelt besides the black propeller and squinted at it. “This’ll be interesting.” It really hadn’t occurred to him yet that down in the depths he’d be the slow one. It was a weird feeling being the liability here. “Aww sweet bangsticks,” the Hunter looked at the explosives with affectionate reassurance, as if being able to blow things up made the prospect of diving into a alien world less unsure. 

“How deep are you comfortable with going Mina?” 

Taking one of the small boards Dave offered, Mina clipped it to her suit, checking to make sure that all of the components were working. Everything appeared to be in working order, though it wasn’t like she knew how to work half of the devices on it. She probably wouldn’t need to. Before, she might have been interested, might have wanted to know how all of the different parts worked so that she could explain them to Bex in a way that made this seem less like a life or death situation and more interesting, like a learning experience. Now, she just wanted to do her duty and exhaust herself and try to sleep.

Grabbing a few bangsticks, Mina looked at the firearms and decided against them. She was a terrible shot. She could only imagine that it’d be worse underwater. She looked at Adam. She was so tired but determined. “However deep it takes. We’re looking for something, right? We stay down until we find it.” She looked at his equipment.” Or until you run out of air.”

“Just keep factoring in decompression time the deeper you go. Hunter healing only accounts for so much,” Dave replied grimly. “Tide washes in through the portal for three hours and thirteen minutes each day, try not to miss getting back.” He had no doubt Adam knew the limits of the equipment he used like the back of his hand, but he also knew how hunters could get around their own bodies. He’d learned that first hand. There were a dozen more likely ways either of them could die, but the bends was a shitty way to go. 

“If you’re within three to four hundred feet of the portal, I might be able to help if something goes wrong.” Dave held out a small ziplock bag with a slime covered mother of Pearl, handing it to Adam. Best not to ask what the slime was. “Spellcaster magic. You swallow it and it’ll put a few minutes oxygen in your blood. Hurts like hell and I only have the one.” A payment for the kind of job that had left Dave feeling like it’d be better if he could peel off his human skin too. If they were deep enough, that Pearl wouldn’t matter if some monster punctured Adam’s gear. If they were far enough, his pelt wouldn’t either. He looked from one to the other, determined, young faces, and hated what had bitten him just a little more. 

“Three hours huh,” Adam repeated. It wasn't exactly a big window considering how broad their objective was here. They’d both have to economize their time in the portal, but Adam doubted splitting up would be a good idea in a Hell Dimension. The Hunter frowned at the puzzle, trying process what Mina and Dave were saying while trying to get a firm vision of what needed to be done. 

The sheer impossibility of his calling, of holding back entire universes from encroaching on Earth, was crushing in its weight. The inevitability of everything being swallowed up in the Hells,  how frail and tiny we all were in the grand scheme of things, yawned in the back of Adam’s mind. Not for the first time, Adam Walker secretly wished he’d never been shown the truth, that he could just be playing ball, blissfully unaware of how precariously Earth teetered to a vast uncaring abyss. 

So Adam did what he always did when the cosmic insignificance got a little too real: He grinned and played the fool. It felt good, comfortable. It was the only way he could stay sane sometimes. 

“Aw sweet! Sea witch jizz!” Adam guffawed and poked the bag experimentally. The fraternity boy  let his mind drift away from the fact that he was about to plunge into an alien universe full of hazards humanity had never evolved to face, away from the inevitability that he’d keep doing this again and again until one day he didn’t come back. No one would ever know how, or where he died, or that it’d been for their sakes. Just like Dad. 

It felt good to be funny, everything was fine if he made it funny. 

“We’re looking for like...something to close the rift,” Adam replied to Mina with a confident nod and smile. When others were struggling you needed to be strong for them. A lifetime of athletics, drills, and just generally being an extrovert had acquainted Adam with the self-fulfilling nature of confidence, that lie you wore outwardly until it became real inwardly. “Like I dunno ..an off switch?” He shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ll figure it out y’know? But yeah def’ no going till we run outta air, I want to make it to date night with Nell.”

It was a cheerful lie of course. Adam never scheduled anything after Hunts. Surviving was a privilege not an assumption. 

Mina couldn’t help but snort a little bit at Adam’s comment before she turned back to the task at hand. It was good. It was funny. It was nice to laugh. But they had work to do. She just wanted to do something good. Maybe this was her proving herself to herself. She wanted to prove that she could protect people. She wanted to prove that so much that it ached like a bruise. And maybe no one else would know but the three of them, but she didn’t care. She needed this.

“Okay, then we go only long enough to where we can make it back before the portal closes from no matter where we are with… at least ten minutes to spare. In case something goes wrong.” Mina set a timer on her board that she’d start as soon as she went in. She shot Adam a warning look, one laced with fondness. “And you, don’t pull out any short of heroics if things start falling apart within the last minute, alright? Of the two of us, I can survive if I get stuck in there.” Probably. “So you’re getting out first.”

She almost made him promise, but she didn’t want him to get hurt worse if he did try and pull something.

Looking back at Dave, Mina added, “Please get him out first if something goes wrong.” She shot Adam a smile. It was almost genuine. “Nell would have my head if you missed date night, after all.” But she went over the objectives: go in, find an off switch, whatever that meant, and get out. Whatever destruction was caused along the way would be dealt with as it came. 

Even Dave’s lips quirked as he rolled his eyes at Adam’s antics, good-naturedly grumpy at the way his gift was being treated. In the face of… extraordinarily fucked bullshit, what else was there other than to laugh in the face of it. Adam had done this on the catfish hunt too. Even if his confidence in finding a magical off switch was a little too much even for Dave. Learning anything from the portal would be a win, even if it was somewhere to rig explosive or steel guards to stop some of the monsters coming through. But Dave knew he was too cynical and too old, and dampening that hope was a dick move. Hell, it wasn’t even his mission. The more the two of them got ready to go, the more Dave itched to ditch the sling and the constricting human clothes, fit in his better skin and be more fucking useful than playing a discount Q in this Mission Impossible. 

The information that Adam was dating the dimension breaking spellcaster barely had a second to set in before Mina was giving Dave instructions on who to save. Enhanced healing or not, Adam was the fragile one here. And the one Dave knew better. But it wasn’t a promise he could keep. In the dark, deep water, it wasn’t a question of choosing, it was a question of who he reached first. He couldn’t distinguish between two swimming human sized forms until he was too close to change his mind. He nodded curtly. “Let’s not let it get that close,” was all he said. 

He looked out to the portal, a icy chill spilling down his spine. That was the creeping dread of being somewhere he’d been before. Dave always got older, but no hunter aged with him for long. It still felt wrong to send folks who had barely touched adulthood into those unknown depths. What he wouldn’t give right now to be diving with them rather than sending them off without him. The first splash of water bubbled over the edge, spilling a clump of algae onto the ground. “It’s time. Try not to get eaten this time around,” Dave teased wryly.

Adam hadn’t been raised with any notions of male disposability, where the loss of a woman was somehow more emotionally significant then that of a man, thus obligating him to assume Mina’s life had more gendered importance then his own. Like most Hunter families, the Walkers didn’t see the gender of their children as relevant when training humanity’s protectors, and Adam fought alongside his sisters, aunts, and fem-cousins without any assumptions that he’d need to do a square-jawed Hollywood leading man sacrifice for their sake. 

Nevertheless Mina’s insistence that he go out first and not try any heroics still bit at Adam in a way that had nothing to do with chivalry. It gnawed at him even as he smiled and nodded noncommittally at her good-natured implorement.  

Why? Did he feel inadequate being the weak one here? Maybe? How’d that make sense though? He’d asked Mina to accompany him for exactly this reason. This was her speciality and everything she’d just said made logical sense. The tactical part of Adam’s brain had accepted that and already moved on. 

Then...why had it tilted him so much? 

Dave’s gentle ribbing and announcement of the portal opening came as a relief of sorts from the unwelcome thoughts sneaking their way into Adam’s head. Adam drew in a deep breath and let out a long exhale, broad shoulders rising and falling as the athlete put himself in the zone. This was the good part, that high you got right before the game started where everything started to make a simple violent sense. Adrenaline began to transmute anxiety in a peaked awareness of his own body and surroundings, climbing in euphoric intensity as Adam looked out the window to see a churning whirlpool pour open into thin air above the Common greens. 

Adrenaline and Adam were old friends. It was the only drug he’d ever needed. 

“Fuck yeah!” The Hunter grinned. “Nah don’t worry Professor Porpoise being swallowed is actually like...way more horrible than it looks in the movies, easy one outta ten won’t repeat. C’mon Mina! Let’s get flushed by the universe!” 

Adam had begun the boot camp hustle down the stairs, laden with equipment, when he turned back to look up at his pelagic benefactor. 

“Hey Dave,  thanks man, like seriously,  I owe you man this wouldn't be possible with you.”  

“Flushed by the universe,” Mina said quietly as she followed after Adam, webbing already forming itself between her fingers. Scales formed on her arms, on her legs where the wetsuit ended on her calves. Her gills opened on her neck, ready to take in water. “Might as well be flushed by the universe, I suppose.” At this point, why not?

She followed at a more controlled pace than Adam, but Mina was practically buzzing with adrenaline, with energy. She was ready. She was so tired, but she was ready. Her body may have not been made for hunting, but it had been trained for it, and there was nothing she was more prepared for than this. For once, she would be the one with the speed, the healing, the capabilities. She was ready.

Looking back at Dave, Mina gave him a wary smile and said, “Who knows? This could go quicker than we think. We could be in and out of this within fifteen minutes.” Nevermind that neither of them knew how to close the portal, nor did they know what would happen when it closed. She was just hoping they didn’t get stuck in there. 

Don’t thank me, Dave wanted to say. The weight of their debts, in Dave’s mind, was stacked in Adam’s favour. His life had hinged on Adam’s decisions plenty of times already. But he knew it might be the last time Adam got to say. The last time Mina would stand on firm soil, maybe. His heart twinged, and Dave quieted it. “I expect anything that doesn’t get used up back at the end of this,” he said instead, his voice so hard it could have been mistaken for brittle. 

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Dave replied to Mina with a raised eyebrow, then shrugged. “I’ll be here, waiting for as long as it takes. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” The third wave spilled over the portal into  the common, and a young, small karkinoid lay in the grass on its back, wriggling as it tried to right itself again. A few days of this had left everyone evacuated from outside the flood zone with cordons keeping people away, but denial was a powerful drug, and a couple people were straying a little close. Dave sat on the roof, peering into the portal. He started his timer. Don’t die, was what he’d wanted to say.

Adam looked up at the portal churning a few feet above the green, trying to hold his ground as strangely water burst out of thin air as if reality were a dike that’d busted a whole. Doubts snuck their way into the Hunter’s brain as another water nearly knocked him off his feet. 

So Adam decided to spit in fear’s face and defdefiantlyinately turned his back on the portal and gave Mina a thumbs up.  

“See you in Atlantis Fitzroy,” he assured before jumping into the spatial tear backwards like it was a water park slide. 

Then Adam’s body was being torn apart, for hours and just moments he was shredded down to the molecules in a space between spaces. He was completely conscious yet also obliterated. 

So it took Adam a bit too realize he was now screaming and flailing like a dumbass in the deep. 

There was no up or down, no sky, shore, or trench bottom. Adam squinted through the beam of his diving lantern light at an ecosystem that was entirely marine, a universe of endless water where his own branch of evolution had never taken place. He was just thankful that whatever otherworldly rules of water pressure existed here hadn’t crushed him immediately. 

Stars didn’t exist here, but there was no shortage of light. Immense islands of bioluminescent coral drifted in the deep. Rainbows of biological light permeated through water from three-dimensional reefs ranging from glowing boulders to entire archipelagos of riotously colored polyps and anemones on the aqueous horizon. Adam glimpsed drifting forests of alien kelp, their slimy shadows hiding arboreal ecosystems of flowering growth and predation the naturalists of Earth could scarcely imagine. Currents of cold rippled through the water occasionally from submerged icebergs that had been hollowed out with caverns by the locals. Warmer currents were thick with shining heavenly cloudscapes that turned out to be bizarre forms of jellyfish on closer inspection. Some of the extraterrestrial Medusozoa shimmered with their own electrical charge, lighting arching within the colossal jellyfish flows like tentacled storm-clouds. 

At first Adam thought he was in some kind of underwater aurora from all the waves of color shimmering around him. But as the Hunter’s eyes adjusted he realized there were actually tiny plankton-like creatures all around him, their bodies fluctuating together through spectrums of bioluminescent color as if it were some kind of eusocial communication. 

“Hey...Mina,” Adam tried the coms as he looked around. “Can you hear me?” 

Unlike Adam, Mina wanted to see exactly what it was that they were flinging themselves into. Even after Adam jumped in, she stayed back and stared, her heart beating rapidly. But she steeled her resolve and gave a nod to Dave before she dove in, hoping to have some sort of control over her descent.

No such thing. The moment Mina hit the water, she was in a current that even she couldn’t fight off. She tumbled through the water, moving so fast that it took the oxygen from her lungs even when it was supposed to be filtered in. She was disoriented and confused, but she adjusted. She was back in the headspace she’d held for twenty-something years, and that meant to be prepared for less than ideal situations. That meant being able to adjust to a world that was only water, and light came in a multitude of colors that took even her eyes a bit to adjust too, and that meant an immediate catalogue of her surroundings and person.

She hadn’t lost any of her gear, though it wasn’t like she had much in the first place. Adam was nearby, looking disoriented as he adjusted himself to wherever it was that the portal spit them out. Looking around, Mina couldn’t help but be slightly in awe of how beautiful it was. A world of endless water, no sign of the surface. She wondered if this was what the bottom of the ocean looked like. She wondered if it was better. But those weren’t the kind of thoughts she needed to have. She needed to focus. They had a mission.

Hearing Adam’s voice in her ear, Mina looked over to the other hunter. There wasn’t really anyway for her to talk back to him since she wasn’t wearing a mouthpiece, and it was likely that the sound of her voice would get lost underwater, but she gave him a thumbs up. Yes, she could hear them. Hopefully, they would have no trouble communicating back and forth with gestures. 

Adam looked over the expanse of luminous plankton aurora, reef islands, and kelp forests. It was an entire universe of monster-infested haystack to search for a needle that might not even exist. 

Adam felt the constriction of despairing panic at this impossible task grip his gut. But the Hunter took deep breaths that sounded thunderous in the diving mask. 

Focus. The town is in danger. No second thoughts. Focus. 

Ironically, the gift that made Adam valuable, the ability to sense any kind of supernatural creature was useless here. Every lifeform here was supernatural and the water was absolutely saturated with alien varieties of kelp and plankton. It was just dull static in the back of his head from so many Hunter vibes.

Kay, so the lead wouldn’t come from him. That meant…

“Hey Mina,” Adam began swimming down to her, leaving a small stream of bubbles in his wave. “We are looking for something that like...vibrates or gives off vibes similar to the portal.” Adam jerked a thumb back at the churning whirlpool in the distance that’d flung them into this universe. “Any chance you might feel a pull or like some vibrations in the water,” he asked, wishing they’d had time for Dave to give a course refresher on that particular bit of Aquaman wisdom. “It doesn’t matter how small it is,” he answered, “anything that tugs at your instincts.” 

Mina’s eyes were designed to see in water, even without the aid of the luminous sea life around them. She could see the look on Adam’s face as he got closer, the look of being impossibly overwhelmed. She recognized it. She saw it in a mirror almost every time she looked. But they didn’t have time to be overwhelmed. Every minute that they were in the portal counted and had to be utilized to finding what it was that they were looking for. 

She could feel vibrations, certainly, but Mina wondered if it was vibrations that she needed to be sensing at all. This was a supernatural artifact, something similar to the portal. A portal that opened up and let monsters loose. There had to be something about it that drew creatures to it, which meant, at least to her, that the key, whatever it might be, was something similar. It drew supernaturals to it. She would prefer if it was some sort of deterrent, but she couldn’t see that being the case. So she wasn’t trying to listen, to sense the key itself. She was headed towards something big. Something major.

There was a lot going on in one direction. She looked at the compass on her board. West. There was a lot of activity to the west. She pointed in that direction, hoping that she was right. If nothing else, they were in for an interesting time. There was something big down there.

Adam nodded and twisted the knob on the black water scooter that Dave had provided. The propeller churned to life and Adam felt a kinetic lurch as he surged forward through the water. Damn this thing had kick. 

Silver light illuminated the deep growing brighter and brighter as they drew closer. Passing through another kelp forest, the Hunter pushed fronds out the way to see an incandescent sphere on the horizon. At first Adam had the crazy thought that it might be a submerged moon or even a star. Demon dimensions didn’t play by the same rules of physics as Earth after all. 

But as they drew closer that ‘moon’ turned out to be an enormous pearl the width of a football stadium. It was nestled within an even larger clam, whose open ridged shell towered higher than most Earthen skyscrapers. The great pearl shone with its own inner light, casting the surrounding seas in a brilliant argent hues as if Mina and Adam were swimming through molten silver. 

“Damn, got any vibes what we are looking for here,” Adam asked before seeing some scaffolding at the bottom of the pearl. Altars and tents made of seaweed formed a camp on the fleshy surface of the giant oyster’s interior. “Looks like the pearl has...uh ..worshippers?”

Keeping up with Adam’s water scooter was surprisingly easy; Mina never really knew how fast she swam. There was no one for her to race against, and she’d never utilized what she was for a hunt before. Being a nix and being a hunter had never correlated before. She was kind of glad to be useful for what she was, for this aspect of her life. 

The Pearl was mesmerizing. Mina almost couldn’t look away from it. She looked at her hands, at the way the silver of her scales reflected in the silver of the pearl’s light, and she thought that she probably belonged in a place like this more than she did somewhere like White Crest. She could just… stay, make sure Adam got out with the key and closed the portal for good. Wouldn’t that be better for her? Wouldn’t she belong here? 

Mina shook those thoughts away. Mission. They had a mission. And she still had a home and a life and people, even if she was distancing herself from people. More than that, she was there to do her job. That was what mattered. The job. 

The pearl was definitely an epicenter of sorts for activity. Clearly, whatever intelligent life forms loved in this world had made the surrounding areas into some sort of temple. But there was no one around them, and that worried Mina they needed to be looking for a lot of life, and this place almost seemed abandoned. 

Mina pointed again. Further. They needed to keep swimming. 

“Careful,” murmured Adam as pressure suddenly began to build in the back of the Hunter’s head. “I’m getting like ...huge vibes here.” 

The shape that first emerged from the murk appeared to be a tampa drill shell the size of an aircraft carrier, it’s ridged spire bearing spiraling designs that evoked a language Adam didn't understand. However its contours were a bit too smooth, with walkways and portholes grown into the structure of itself that no snail or oyster would ever need. It was then that Adam realized that this wasn’t the cast-off shell of a marine animal, but rather a submarine vessel that’d been grown by intelligent beings. 

More of these massive organic submarines of calcium carbonate and chiten became visible as the divers pressed forward. Some types of shells were recognizable, while other ships were crafted from strange nautiloids and even submarines that appeared to be immense plants or a few titanic demonic fish that seemed perfectly alive despite the crew of lesser demons working inside their hollowed flesh. All the marvels of demonic biotechnology were connected together by enormous pyrosome colonies that formed long luminous tubes, perhaps to allow easy passage between ships. 

“It’s like...a dockyard,” observed Adam, “for these demon shell ships.” 

Mina was also picking up vibes, but they weren’t Fae vibes, hunter vibes. She felt ill at ease, like she had back when that creature had been loose in the lake. The two of them were small and insignificant in this vast, fathomless world with life that was possibly just as intelligent as life was in the place that they came from. 

It felt like Mina’s stomach was trying to sink to the bottom of this bottomless place. Maybe Adam was onto something about Hellmouths ripping themselves open. She gave Adam a nod as he pointed out that this was some kind of dockyard. This was a horrifying place.

There was still a part of her that was aware that she could disappear here and stay.

They needed to steer clear of this area, but… the more Mina looked around, the more she felt like this was where they needed to go. Something was drawing her towards this area, something primal that she’d rather avoid. In a place like this, she believed, rather unfortunately, that places that she wanted to avoid were the very ones that they should head into. They needed to be quick about this. They needed to be careful about this. 

Adam noticed a slight thinness in his breath as they passed under one of the behemoth shell vessels. His air supply was probably at the halfway point, but Adam felt like bringing that up would be counterproductive when they had a lead. 

The each horned prong of the shell above them could’ve skewered earthly ships on its glossy spiral. Occasionally there were windows in the bio-vessel’s sides, not of glass, but made from translucent filmy slime stressed across the opening. Adam pressed a hand against one of the portholes and found the slime substance yielding and permeable. 

“I think we can get in from here.” 

Mina’s two main worries about this whole situation, as she looked at the strange ship, were knowing how much time they had left to do this and making sure she remembered the right direction to get back to the portal. That was what mattered. She needed to remember how to get them back to the portal. Or maybe Adam had some sort of gps machinery on his diving board. She wasn’t bothering with hers too much, trying instead to mesh hunter thoughts with nix thoughts in order to navigate this strange land. Find some sort of key. Get back. Insure they both survive. Close the portal. That was what mattered.

Wrinkling her nose a bit at the weird slimy material, Mina put her hand against it and pushed through. It wasn’t the weirdest thing she’d touched by far, but it still wasn’t pleasant. She was most worried about whatever sort of creatures they were going to run into. It’d been ominously quiet since they jumped in. 

Adam wiped slime off his goggles as they drifted through the portal into the demon vessel. In some superficial ways the interior resembled that of an Earthly sea shell. A central columbell pillar ran through the shell from aft to its spiked stern.  Whorls and sweeping structures expanded outward from the central columbella axis, forming great sloping charmpers with slickly smooth walls that were all linked by spiraling curvatures and twists rather than doors. 

What furniture existed was grown out straight from the central coiling axis, though Adam couldn’t really guess what ergonomic purpose most of these chitin groves and indentations served. 

Two creatures that appeared to be human sized moray eels covered in glowing pustules glided out from along a curving wall. Long sinuous strands extended eel demons’ pustules like seaweed wart hairs. These hairs caressed strange pearls and mussel clusters inset into the shell vessel’s walls, as if they were operating equipment of some kind. 

Multiple sets of yellow eyes with large black pupils swiveled in their rows of sockets down the eel demons’ body to regard Adam and Mina. Both the head and apparent tails of the eel demons opened to reveal rows of glass-like teeth as they zipped through the water towards the intruders. 

Mina would have been lying if she said that she wasn’t a little disappointed that the first creatures that they came into contact with weren’t mermaids. She really wanted to rip into a mermaid. It might be nice. It might get a lot of frustration out. But eels were fine, too. 

Ducking out of the way as the creatures headed towards them, Mina considered the best course of action in dealing with them. She didn’t want to touch anything on them that glowed, fearing some sort of electrical backlash, and she didn’t want to touch those strange hairs, either. But she didn’t have any sort of ranged weapons, nothing that would help in a situation like this. As one of the creatures approached, she moved to the side and raked her claws against its smooth hide, causing the bulbous head with its mouthful of sharp teeth to turn back in her. 

Mina jabbed the bangstick into the eel’s face and fired. Even creatures from whatever sort of Black Lagoon horror dimension this was didn’t enjoy a bullet to the face. There was the bang, and dark blood exited where the bullet went in, the creature’s body still floating even in death. Mina turned to Adam, hoping he was faring well. They needed to get moving. They had work to do.

Adam slid a still twitching demon off a long silver-tipped spear that had jutted out from what’d looked like a small baton. The human was less graceful in the water than his fey counterpart and red electrical burn marks stood out from long slices the demonic spine-hairs had seared through his diving suit. However Adam had apparently jutted the telescopic spear’s baton up against the thing grappling him and released a pressured seal that sent the silver spear straight through the demon’s innards. 

Adam tried to keep focus as they swam through the smooth twisting gyres of the shell-ship. He would occasionally warn of presences beyond the next curve or loop, holding back as school of eel-demons, Vodnik, and even stranger creatures went about doing whatever inscrutable processes maintained a bio-tech vessel like this. It was tense business, ducking patrols and trying not to lose ones’ way in dizzying chambers of chitinous spirals that didn’t resemble any human norm of architecture or even up and down. The burning lashes across his chest throbbed and the air in his tank became ever thinner, but Adam kept his head on the mission.  Surrendering to nervousness would likely be a death sentence here.  

It was on reaching a porthole leading out into one of the Pyrosomes tubes that Adam discerned something resembling a central meeting point. 

Pyrosomes were actually colony structures made from tiny organisms about a few millimeters in size. They often looked like cylindrical tubes of a gauzy texture that glowed with bioluminescence. But while Pyrosomes could get to about eighteen meters long on Earth, whatever extraterrestrial zooids these things were made of allowed the Water-Hell Pyrosomes to grow to far larger. Adam guessed they might even intentionally cultivated that way using whatever weird sciences the demons had at their disposal. 

Glowing pyrosome tubes, some many hundreds of feet in length and wide enough to drive semi-trucks through, extended from each of the behemoth shell-submarines. Many of the pyrosomes linked the ships together in pulsating networks, perhaps to exchange crew and cargo. However, Adam saw a great many pyrosome tunnels extended towards a central point, a great helical axis of coral that this vast hell armada seemed tethered around. 

“See that coral island that looks like a helix? I think whatever’s on there drew the demons here,” Adam theorized. “It might be what we’re looking for.” 

They needed to hurry. That was all Mina could think about as they moved through these strange ships, this strange world. Adam was looking worse for wear, thick marks in his suit showing burned skin, and she knew they were running out of time. His tank wouldn’t last that long. Mina needed to get him out of there. She should have just come alone. She wouldn’t have had to worry about air supply or another person. Adam was one of the few hunters in the entire world that tolerated her, liked her, too. She didn’t want to lose that, especially not here in this underwater hell. 

Eyes following where Adam pointed, Mina looked towards the helix. Even she could feel… something. A draw, a pull, a desire to head in that direction. She had no doubt that every creature near them felt that pull, too. That was the most dangerous area. That was, she was sure, where they needed to go. She hated that. She really, really hated that. 

Mina nodded to Adam and pointed towards the glowing tube that would take them down to the helix. That’s what they needed to do, right? They needed to go down there, take whatever they found, and hoped that it helped the Common stop flooding with monsters every day. Taking a bit of initiative, she headed to the tube and, before she could think twice about it, got in it and hoped for the best.

It wasn’t like Mina meant to let out the slight scream as she was rocketed down the tube. She hadn’t. She was usually more composed. But she hadn’t been prepared for the speed, and she hadn’t been prepared for the tumble she took as she came out on the other end, and she hadn’t been prepared for the glowing sight that awaited them. This was where they were supposed to be.

And it was filled with monsters.

Adam caught his bearings and took in their surroundings. The stony spirals rotated parallel to one another. One was comprised of scarlet Precious coral and the other of aquamarine Octocoral. Though separate, these colony structures orbited each other in the pattern of a helix by some quirk of gravitation Adam couldn’t comprehend. But the source became clear as Adam perceived two glowing coral keys of the same respective coral types nestled on the spiraling ridges. They filled the water with conflicting hues of red and blue, blending into livid purples in some places at the helix's’ center. Light seemed to warp around them, twisting into strange flares and halos around the keys.  Adam had a gut instinct that it was their power that was causing this helical gravity and had drawn the demonic armada here. 

Unfortunately, the stares from an aquatic school of luminous eyes, antennas, and blind tentacle feelers extended their direction gave Adam the feeling that sheer surprise was the only reason and Mina weren’t already dead. 

“Mine, grab the blue key!” Adam shot up towards the scarlet key, stabbing the silver spear through a giant brain covered in spines that’d tried to impale him against the reef. 

There were the mermaids. Mina had been wondering when she’d see them. While Adam was dealing with something that looked like a creature out of some sort of science fiction movie, Mina had something a little more understandable to deal with, and, as one of the mermaids came at her, she went straight for the lure before aiming low, ripping into the creature’s head with her knives. And another one. And another one. She could feel their teeth tearing at her wetsuit, tearing holes in it and her skin. She wasn’t safe there just because she was a water dweller as well. Food was food.

Mina wasn’t food. She was claws and blades and so much pent up aggression. She wanted to fight. She just wanted to fight. So she did, against mermaids and Vodniks and creatures that she didn’t even have names for. All the way to the blue key that Adam mentioned.

It was so bright. It’s glow filled the whole space, blending with the other key’s shades of red. It was so nice to look at, so pretty. Mina was drawn into the soft blue colors, wanting to bask in them for as long as possible. No. Focus. She needed to focus. She had to focus. She snatched up the key, washed in a blue glow. The key’s glow dimmed, and it was warm in hand. So warm. She wrapped her hand around it tighter and and started swimming to Adam. They needed to go. They needed to go soon. The creatures were turning to look at her, drawn to the glow in her hand. They needed to go.

Adam skewered an eel demon to the coral with the spear in one hand while reached towards the scarlet key with the other. He squinted past the ruby halos and flaring star-like lights in the water, hand straining towards the key resting on the opalescent curves of a hollow shell, like on idol on an altar.

Adam’s hand closed around the key, and the world exploded in pain and blood. 

A spine projectile punched through Adam’s back and out the front of his chest like a surgical bullet. The brain urchin creature had drifted dying in the water from Adam’s spear, but had sent a departing gift after its slayer in the moment of victory. 

Everything was agony as Adam’s vision was rimmed as darkness as he fumbled at the controls of the water scooter. “C’mon,” he gasped, rapidly losing blood and air as hungry demons closed in. 

Adam flicked the water scooter up to its threshold speed and held on as they tore into the deep towards the whirlpool between worlds. 

Mina screamed as she watched Adam get skewered by one of those creatures. No. No. He had to get out. He was supposed to get out. He couldn’t die here. She started swimming after him as fast as she could, easily keeping up with the water scooter as she guarded their backs. 

With each creature that got too close, Mina slashed out at them, baring sharp teeth and wielding sharper knives. Go go go. They had to go. They had to get to the portal and get out. She finally looked up at it, watching with horror as it got smaller even though they were getting closer. 

The journey to the keys had taken too long, but the journey back to the portal was an ascent. Mina knew they were going to get there before Adam ran out of air. At least, she hoped. She just didn’t know if they were going to make it before blood loss became a problem. The blood spilling into the water like an ink trail was attracting all the monsters, making them swarm.

The portal was close. In her head, Mina said, Fuck it, as she turned to Adam and grabbed him before swimming them both as fast as she could through the portal. The exit was as rough as the entry, spitting them back in White Crest. Mina was gasping as she breathed straight air instead of water, as she dragged Adam with her towards where they’d left Dave. “Still with me, Walker? Come on, come on, come on. You’ve got things to do, you know.”

Somewhere they tore past the sun-like radiance of the giant pearl temple, Adam had slipped into darkness. He drifted down into himself, everything was so peaceful and numb. Soon even the hiss of the air tank became muted in some inner distance. There was no duty. No pain. Nobody to save and suffer for. It was just Adam in the undemanding dark. 

How long he drifted like that Adam couldn’t really say. 

An exhausted part him wanted to stay, but Adam knew that other people were gave everything meaning, and they weren’t in here. 

So Adam forced his eyes open, shuddering and coughing and he coughed up blood and hell water on the Commons grass. The agony and color came rushing back like a punch to the solar plexus. He just lay there for a bit, the Earth’s grass reassuringly familiar. 

The rough coal edges of the key bit into the skin of Adam’s palm, reminded himself that it all hadn’t just been a nightmare.  

“So Mina,” Adam rasped grinning blearily up at his hunting partner. “How’d ya like Atlantis?” 

The longer Dave watched the portal, the longer he itched to jump in it. For them, and for the simple siren call of water he wasn’t acquainted with yet.Each tide brought the swirling vibrations of their bodies moving through the water until one wave he couldn’t feel them at all. Instead the waves brought monsters, some which could be deterred by firing backsticks into their heads and some that Dave couldn’t hunt so easily with one arm in a sling. He kept people away instead, all the while making sure he had skin in the water, as the minutes went by and threatened to become hours, until the tide began to ebb. 

Dave’s heart stayed in his throat until he felt the vibrations of the pair returning, racing through the water and a little closer with each wave. He turned as the next wave rushed through the portal, and spat out the pair of them with it. Alive, gasping for air. Dave couldn’t help his relieved grin. They filled the air with the stench of quickly spilling blood, freshwater algae and eel slick. His smile slid off his face as he saw the injuries that were becoming a staple of hunts with Walker, and hurried over to meet them. The first aid kit in his bag wasn’t going to cut it.

[thiswasinevitableid]

Along the same lines as my previous ask because that turned out so wonderfully! Little Monsters SternClay au? I feel like Barclay might be even worse at being a scary monster than Indrid unless he felt hurt or threatened? And Stern, the precious lil’ monster nerd, was probably a bit more than Barclay bargained for. If you decide you want to write it, NSFW is always welcome! Thank you for your beautiful writing! 😭👏🏆

Here you go! It is indeed NSFW

Barclay can totally do this. He’s seven, the same age most monsters are when they’re assigned to humans, and his teacher was very clear about what he should do. She also told him that most monsters don’t need to do much at all; the humans do the work for them, getting very scared by the smallest things. 

He emerges beneath the bed, his view mainly that of a wooden floor with a few neat piles of toys and books. Reaching up, he drags his claws along the underside of the bed. There’s a creak, the child in the bed sitting up. Barclay growls, and gets a small gasp in response. 

“There’s a monster under my bed.” 

Barclay, unsure if the child is speaking to him, replies, “Yes. There is.”

He sniffs, and while there’s a whiff of fear in the room there’s not nearly as much as his teacher said there would be.

“What kind of monster?”

Okay, this wasn’t mentioned either. Human’s weren’t supposed to be this talkative, and also he’s not sure what this one even means by his question.

“Uh, a Barclay?”

“...That sounds like a person name. Is that your name?”

“Yes.”

“I said what kind of monster are you. Are you a sasquatch?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A chupacabra?”

“I also don’t know what that is.”

“A frogman?”

“I don’t, uh, don’t think so?”

There’s an exasperated huff, “I’m just going to look.”

“No don’t!” Barclay squeaks, trying to make himself smaller. When bare feet hit the floor, he gives up and runs away.

What was that? Why was the human asking so many questions? Is Barclay not scary enough?

The next night, he starts with the growl, hoping that will scare the kid. What he gets is something shining in his eyes, and he just manages to throw up protective shadows to keep his whole head from being seen. 

“Are you going to run away again?” The kid, Joseph, sticks the nighlight further under the bed. He’s on his belly, pajamas covered in faintly glowing UFOs, and frowns when Barclay tosses a higher growl his way. 

“I won’t hurt you. I just want to see a real monster.”

“You, you can’t. It’s not allowed. I’ll get in trouble.”

That same, exasperated noise as Joseph retracts his arm, “Fine, but I still want to know what kind of monster you are. Here” he grabs a large book, opening it and shining the light so Barclay can see the pictures, “tell me when I get to one that looks like you.”

“Okay. You really aren’t scared?”

He shakes his head, face serious, “I don’t think monsters are scary. As long as you’re careful.”

Barclay feels like he should point out that sticking your arm and part of your head under a bed with a monster doesn’t seem all that careful.

“Most monsters are friendly. I think. Except lake monsters.” The boy stiffens, “you’re not a lake monster, are you?”

“No, I don’t live in a lake.”

A sigh of relief, “okay, then we can be friends.”

Barclay likes having friends, and there’s nothing in the rules that say he can’t be friends with his human “okay. We’re friends.”

Joseph smiles, begins turning pages and explaining the pictures in an animated whisper. By the end of the night, they determine Barclay looks most like something called a “bigfoot.”

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

“It’s so cute, don’t you think?” Mr. Stern steps back from the half-open door of Joe’s room, taking the stack of laundry his wife hands him, “kid’s almost nine and he still likes reading to his stuffed animals.”

“I don’t think he’s let that stuffed bigfoot you got him out of sight since you bought it. And it’s good for him to practice reading aloud.” She sets the laundry basket down on their bed, “even if he thinks he’s being stealthy by hiding on the other side of the bed.”

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

“...the end. Huh, that one was okay. What do you think?” Joseph closes the book, setting down near Barclay’s face. The boy’s sitting up on the floor,  back resting on the side of the bed, with his few stuffed animals arranged across from him, so his parents will think he’s reading to them rather than the very much alive creature behind him.

“I liked the part with the prince.”

“You liked the kissing part?” He sounds amused.

“Kinda. Didn’t you?”

“I like the mystery part more. I like guessing what’s going to happen and seeing if I’m right.”

He’s right almost every time, which Barclay thinks is so cool.

“Thanks for reading to me. Same time tomorrow?’

“Yes. Goodnight, Barclay.” Joseph stifles a laugh when Barclay leans into rub his face against the exposed skin between his pajamas, knowing full well it tickles when he does. 

“Night, Joseph.”

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

It’s not that his home, or the monster world, is perfect. Barclay’s met plenty of monsters his age who like to be mean for no good reason. But if what Joseph has been going through the last few days is any indication,  humans really like being mean to each other.

The first night he knew something was wrong was that he nearly spoke before catching on to the fact Mrs. Stern was in the room, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“...you all are starting middle school next year. Unfortunately, people tend to get cliquey around this age.”

“But why me? Why don’t they like me?”

What the heck? Who didn’t like Joseph? He’s smart and funny, he knows lots about monsters and aliens and weird events, he’s a good friend who listens when Barclay talks. 

Barclay doesn’t like being mean, but he will for sure fight whoever is making Joseph so sad. 

“I don’t know, sweetheart. I wish I did. Just...try not to let it get to you, okay? And if it gets worse, you tell me or dad and we’ll try to help.”

When she leaves, Barclay doesn’t know what to say, stomach still bubbling with anger on his friends behalf.

“I don’t really feel like talking.” Joseph whispers. 

“Okay.”

A sniffle, followed by a hand reaching towards the darkened floor, searching for something. Barclay spots the plush bigfoot wedged between the bed and nightstand, grabs it and sets it into Joseph’s hand.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” It doesn’t feel like enough. He wants to make it better somehow. 

“Will you stay until I fall asleep?”

He reaches up, touching the underside of the bed, “Yeah, sure thing.”

The trouble at school has been getting worse, not better. From what Barclay can piece together, Joseph has been labeled a “nerd,” and shunned by kids who were previously friendly for fear of being labeled the same. He doesn’t tell his parents the worst of it; that he confides only in Barclay, who is discovering all the names humans have for people they want to make outcasts.

It’s time for his secret weapon. Barclay spends the afternoon in the kitchen, careful to do all the washing up since that will decrease any scolding he gets for using the oven alone. He makes a batch of cookies big enough for his parents,cousins, aunts, uncles, and anyone else who may pass by in the next two days, all so no one will notice when he takes a few with him up to the human world. 

“Psst, Joseph, come down here a sec.”

His friend appears, mothman pajamas looking a little tear-stained. Barclay slides the plate out to him.

“Where’d these come from?”

“I made them.” He tries not to sound too proud; he did this to cheer Joseph up, not show off, “it seemed like you needed a friend.”

Joseph bites a cookie, smiles for the first time all week. 

“Seems like I’ve got one.”

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

“How do I look?”

“From the knees down? Fantastic.”

Joseph laughs, “The door is locked, and I’ll close my eyes. Okay, closed!”

Barclay crawls out from under the bed, breath catching as he gets a good look at Joseph in his prom suit. It’s black, with a blue shirt underneath and a silver tie. With his hair slicked back, he looks like a secret agent, like a movie star, like, like…

Like everything Barclay’s ever wanted.

Man, he hopes Joseph’s boyfriend knows how lucky he is. 

“You look fucking amazing.”

Joseph smiles, eyes still shut, “everything is on straight? No lint?”

“Some on your left shoulder, which I’m not touching unless you want it replaced by fur.”

“Thank you, Barclay. I wish you could come with me.”

“Me too.” Barclay reaches for his cheek, thinks better of it and lowers his arm, “tell me all about it when you get home?”

“Of course.”

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

The small white lights in the kitchen are the final touch, and Barclay brushes his hands off, satisfied. At eighteen, most monsters leave home to find or build their own, and Barclay his inherited this small A-frame house from a great-uncle. It needed some touching up before it felt like home, and it took two passes with a cleaning potion to make the mildew smell go away. Now it’s all his. And just in time, too.

His first heat starts tonight, and the general consensus is it’s much easier to deal with in the privacy of your own home than in a family one. It’s also supposed to be better with a partner, but Barclay is flying solo for the foreseeable future. 

What he’s most nervous about is seeing Joseph during it. He doesn’t want to miss a whole week of hanging out, but there's no escaping the fact that if he could have anyone with him during (or after) his heat, it would be his human. 

But he’s got it all figured out; he’ll just ask if they can watch a movie, or maybe even if Joseph will read to him. Then he’ll go home and fuck his hand until he passes out. 

Yeah, this won’t be awkward at all. It’ll all be totally, completely fine. 

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

Joseph flips to the next page of The Fortean Times, the subscription an eighteenth birthday present from his dad. A slight chill drifts up from beneath the bed, and he smiles. 

“How are you tonight?”

“Good. Uh, what’re you up to?” Barclay’s voice is soft, though ever since it changed that gentle baritone makes regular appearances in Joseph’s fantasies. There was a time, right after his top surgery, where Barclay read to him when he couldn’t sleep from the discomfort, and he had the most lurid dreams of his life from that voice (and maybe the painkillers).

“Reading about a supposed “meat shower.”

“Cool. Uh, um, do you, uh” 

He sets the magazine down, “Are you alright? You sound kind of...tense?” 

(He actually sounds squeakier than usual, but tense seemed the politer choice).

“I’m good.” Is the unconvincing reply. 

“I’m coming down there.”

On his belly, he spots the reflective glint that indicates Barclay’s eyes. They’re definitely wider than normal, and from here his breathing is labored. 

“Shit, you look sick. Do you need tea? Or, um, I have some painkillers?”

“It’s not pain. It’s, uh, it’s a, uh, look,  it’s really, really embarrassing.”

Barclay’s breathing gets louder as Joseph ponders what else it can be. 

“It’s partly your, uh, your smell.”

“Is that your way of saying I need a shower?”

“N-no, it’s my, my way of saying you smell really fucking good.” Barclay’ voice creeps upward, and a possible explanation presents itself. 

“Barclay, are you thinking about eating me?”

“Not in the traditional sense, no.”

He’s certain his own eyes go comically wide.

“Fuck. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I’m, uh, I’m kinda in heat, so I’m like uncomfortably horny and I thought I could handle it and hang out but you smell so nice and I wanna fuck you so much I think I might lose it, so I’m, I’m gonna go, I’m so sorry-”

“Barclay”

“Seriously, I thought I could be chill, it’s not your fault, I’ll come back when it’s over, should be about a week, a miserable week, oh fuck sorry I didn’t mean to say that either.”

“Barclay” Joseph says firmly enough to make the monster stop talking, “I have an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you, um, do you-” oh, right, he’s not very good at this either. He’s learning to be smooth, but it all tends to evaporate when sex comes into play. He inhales, tries again, “If I sit up on my knees with my hands on the bed and you come behind me, even with my eyes open I won’t see more than maybe your hands and arms.”

“You..you want me to fuck you?”

He sounds so hopeful, and it makes Joseph blush, “Yes, Barclay, I do.”

A low, hungry growl, “Get comfy.”

The sound turns him on so quickly that his pajama pants are wet by the time he gets them off. Toys with the bedspread to calm himself as he whispers, “I’m ready.”

The same growl as something heavy crawls from beneath the bed, growing loud enough to shake the lamp. Thank the lord his parents are gone for the weekend. 

Warm, slightly furry hands drag up the backs of his thighs, “Fuck, look at you. You always look so fucking put-together in your matching pajamas, like you think someone might be watching.”

“Someone has, for over a decade.”

“True.” There’s a zip and a scuff of fabric, then pants and long-sleeve shirt hit the floor in his periphery, “think it’s time I did something else.” He nudges Joseph's leg with his knee, “spread ‘em, babe.”

He gets his legs as wide as he can comfortably go, tenses when the head of a very large cock presses against him. 

“Um, Barclay? H-how much bigger than me are you?”

Barclay’s chin rests on the top of his head as two large hands, at least fifty percent bigger than a human’s, come to cover his own on the bedspread. 

“Oh. Um. Alright then.”

“This still okay?” Barclay noses down through his hair to kiss and nuzzle his neck, “Can stop if you want. I’ll go slow to start, I promise. I, I don’t wanna hurt you, wanna make you feel good.” It’s a borderline whine, laced with sweetness and accompanied by the monster rolling his hips, rubbing his cock along Joseph’s folds.

“Yes, very okay, I, I just need to, um, mentally prepare. I didn’t ever expect my first time doing this would be, um, with you.”

“You’ve never done this before?”

“I’ve had other kinds of sex, just not this.”

Strong, fuzzy arms encircle his waist, Barclay growling even louder as he grinds against him. 

“Mmm, do you like that, big guy? Like the idea of being the first?”

Barclay stops breathing for a moment.

“Oh lord, I’m so sorry, I, I don’t know where that came from, it sounded much better in my headOHokay, okay.” He laughs as Barclay rumbles low, mouthing at his neck, “if you bite just do it below the collar.”

“Yeah, yeah, gonna mark you up, fuck” his cock bumps Joseph’s leg, smearing pre-cum along it, “babe, please, can I fuck you now?”

“Since you asked so nicely yes, you canAHnnnnnnfuckohmyfuckinggod.” He drops forward, head on the mattress as Barclay pushes in. They don’t get far before he winces, pointing at the bedside table, “lube, need lube, please.”

He keeps his eyes on the bed as wooden bangs and a pop reach his ears, Barclay pulling out to slick himself up. 

“That’s like half the bottle, that should be good right?”

Joseph smiles, anticipation rippling up his spine, “There’s only one way to find out.”

The cock is just as overwhelming the second, Barclay building a steady, gradual rhythm of thrusts, going a little further on each one. The shaft is flared, so the deeper it gets, the more Joseph has to open his legs. When his knee slips in a stray bit of lube, Barclay’s hands drop to his thighs once more, keeping him upright.

“God” Barclay’s growls are whimpers now, his teeth tugging his ear and tongue lapping at his neck, “god, Joseph, you feel even better than I thought.”

“Been imagining this a lot big guy?’

“Uh huh.”

He reaches back, the angle awkward as he keeps his head facing forward, but finds Barclay’s cheek, stroking the soft fur, “me tooOOHh, that’s, that’s as far as it can go.”

“Fuck, a third of it is still out.”

“S-sorry”

“No it’s” A kiss to the top of his head “it’s so fucking hot, you’re so fucking perfect and you’re fucking straining to take me, I could fucking split you, gonna fill you up so much and so hard you’re gonna still be dripping when I come back tomorrow”

Now it’s his turn to whimper, the thought of a repeat performance making him dizzy with excitement. The intensity heightens every time Barclay touches him or nestles closer, every time he’s reminded of how big the monster is, how obviously strong. He’s right, he could tear Joseph to pieces if he wanted to. But instead his nose is once again at the base of his neck, praise and sweet, shy promises dripping down his back. 

“Whatever you want babe, whatever you need, it’s yours, wanna take such good care of you, wanna make you mine.”

Joseph wiggles his hips, claws digging into them in reply, “then do it. I’ll tell you to stop if it’s too much.”

The next thrust shoves his bed six inches to the right, Joseph scrambling to hold on as the monster pounds into him. A moan winds its way out of his mouth, punctuated by shouts. Whenever he makes one of those, Barclay chuckles smugly and squeezes his thighs or his ass. 

“That’s it, fuck, make noise for me babe, love hearing you feel good, want everyone to know you’re taken.”

“C-careful what you wish fofFUCK, if we get the cops called on us for this it’ll be mortifying.”

“Don't care, wanna hear you scream.” Claws scrape across his ass.

“AHGODyes, I know big guy, but if I have, have to explain that to my parents, I’m revoking your fucking privileges.”

A growl, teeth on his neck, “You wouldn’t dare”

“I would, so behaAAAAveemphh” He laughs into the palm now across his mouth, Barclay grunting with effort as he fucks him fast. A howlgrowlpurr floods the room and Joseph gasps, not anticipating the feeling of Barclay coming inside him.

The monster stays put, but loosens his grip and drops his hand in favor of roaming his fingers across the human’s body.

“Did, did that do it?” He wants to turn his had, wants to be able to see the answer on Barclays face, wants to do silly things like kiss him and gaze into his eyes as he comes down.

“Only kinda. I, uh, I wanna go again and this time I really, really, really wanna make you cum.”

He takes Barclay’s right hand, sliding it down to his dick, “Here, let me demonstrate.”

As he guides the slightly rough fingers at the correct pressure and angle, Barclay purrs louder and begins thrusting. Gradually, they’re surrounded by the twin, obscene sounds of fingers on slick skin and Barclay’s cock fucking his own cum back into the human.

Once he gets the gets the hang of the motion, Barclay nudges his hand out of the way to stroke him off alone, working his fingers in time with hips.

“I love feeling you like this, Joseph, fuck, please, wanna make you cum every day.”

“Pace yourself, big guy, f-focus on making me cum now, ohOHlord, fuck, fuck yes, like that, likethatlikethatohgod.” He slumps across the bed as the orgasm ripples through him, holds on for dear life as Barclay lets out a proud yip and proceeds to fuck him so vigorously he’s amazed he doesn’t chip a tooth. 

This time, Barclay pulls out as soon as he finishes, cum dripping down Joseph's thighs onto a spot on the floor he will definitely be cleaning before tomorrow. Warm, furry weight leaves his back, replaced by Barclay’s fingers rubbing his shoulders. 

“Um how, how did I do? Did you like it?”

“Was amazing.” He slurs into the pillows, “y’so good, Barclay.”

That rumbling purr again, a kiss on his cheek, “Close your eyes?’

He does, the thwip of the covers being turned down followed by strong arms scooping him up, setting him on the sheets and, after a short trip under the bed, cleaning off his legs before helping him back into his pajama pants. 

“Joseph I, um, I just wanted to, um, to say thank you. I never thought you’d want me to do that with you and , and I just can’t believe you like me that.”

Feeling round, he finds his hand and holds it, “I wanted it more than I was ready to admit. I want you.”

“Can I stay and talk for awhile? Under the bed?”

“Of course, big guy.”

The next week is filled with normal days and strenuous, wonderful nights. Barclay fucks him into the bed once more, and when his parents are back in the house he and his monster get creative, using blankets on the floor, a makeshift blindfold, and a white noise machine. On one occasion, Joseph lays on his back on the bed, eyes shut and legs over Barclay’s shoulders as he eats him out with muffled sounds of joy. 

When Friday night rolls around, Barclay surprises him. 

“Babe? You feel like coming under the bed?”

He does, though he only fits through whatever magic of science allows Barclay to be there without being smooshed (or tipping his bed sideways). It’s dark, but the monster takes his hand, guiding him into a warmly lit room with a large bed, a bookcase, and a floor strewn with cookbooks. The longer he looks, the more he notices the area by the bed is dotted with candles and flowers, the nearby wall hung with little heart-shaped lights. 

“I’m not supposed to be seen in the human world. But I didn’t see a rule about being seen in my own.”

Joseph turns.

Standing behind him is a figure with reddish brown fur, a humanish face, pointed ears, claws, and rather big feet. He’s dressed in a red flannel shirt and soft looking pants, deep brown eyes lit up like a supernova as he looks at the human. 

“What do you think?” He rubs his arm with a shy smile. 

“I think I’m the luckiest human in the world if you’ve been under my bed all these years.” Stepping forward, he takes the monsters hands, grinning up at him, “and you’re even hotter than I was picturing when we were, um, fucking this week.”

A blush is just visible under the fur on his cheeks, “aw, thanks babe. Both for that and for letting me spend my heat with you. That’s, uh, part of why I wanted you to come down here. After all that time in bed, I figured we should have a real date, even if it’s just a stay-in one. I meant all that stuff I said, Joseph; I wanna be so good to you, you have no idea.”

He raises an eyebrow, “I have some.”

“True. So, what do you say? Up for a first date?”

“Yes.” He tilts his head up, guides Barclay down by the chin and kisses him with the full force of years of accumulated affection, “but only after our first kiss.”

[saiilorstars]

Falling in Temptation

Previous chapters • Sequel to Stars Dance •  Fairy Tale Memoirs (Companion story)

Ch. 28: The Wedding of a Lifetime

Fandom: Doctor Who // Pairing: 11th Doctor x OFC

Chapter summary: Time is ripping apart until the Doctor dies at Lake Silencio but before he can make it happen, he has to make the Ponds understand, including one determined Avalon and her mother.

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother​ @anotherunreadblog​ @maaaaarveeeeel​​ @stareyedplanet​ @perfectlystiles​

[If you’d like to be added to this specific OC’s stories/edits, send me a message!]

The Doctor, the Reynolds sisters, the Ponds, and River had a picnic set up near a silent lake in Utah. They had toasted and ate together, spending a nice afternoon. Everything was going fine, according to plan...and then the astronaut appeared in the middle of the lake.

"Oh, my God!" River had jumped up to her feet, prompting the others to do the same.

"What's going on?" Avalon looked around, feeling like it was some sort of trap. But that couldn't be right, the Doctor was the one who sent the letters. He'd never bring them into a trap!

"You all need to stay back. Whatever happens now, you do not interfere," the Doctor instructed them all as he stood up."Clear?"

Avalon opened her mouth to refuse but she saw the same silhouette she'd seen moments ago up at the dunes again. "Woah..." she blinked, "I...remember that, now. I-I think I've seen it before..." It looked like a creature but she wasn't entirely sure. The sun kept blocking it.

The Doctor tore her gaze away from the figure, not even bothering to look at it himself. As long as he did what they wanted, Avalon would leave the lake unharmed. "Ava, you listen to me right now," he set his hands on her arms, "You have to be careful, okay? You should..." he swallowed hard, struggling to say his words, "...you should stay away from me." Because the truth was, if she hadn't gotten all tangled up with him, she would've never been taken at Demons Run. That was their sad truth.

But of course Avalon wouldn't understand that, whether she was from the past or the future she would never agree with him.

"What?" she blinked, surprised at his urgency that had come out of nowhere. "Why would I do that?"

"Because it's the best thing you could've done," he whispered with genuine regret. He'd been too weak to stay away from her. He knew the consequences and yet he'd still fallen in temptation. "If I could change one thing it's this...you..." He gave her one last look before kissing her forehead and walked for the astronaut.

The Doctor walked a bit slowly but steadily towards the lake. He literally could not be late for this. He came face to face with the astronaut and solemnly stared at its visor. "Hello. It's OK, I know it's you," he spoke quietly, watching the visor finally raise up. "I know the choices that brought you here...I figured it out."

With the visor gone he could now see the young River Song inside. He'd worked it out a long time ago. It would always either be River or Avalon in the suit but how would Kovarian choose? She wouldn't. Her choosing would take the fun out of the whole thing. Making them choose would be the better option. It was why Avalon had her memories wiped and returned to them in Berlin. Doing that secured the secret identity of the astronaut and leave River to commit the crime.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, they made me," River was in tears, completely frantic and panicked. "They had an older Avalon and...they gave me a choice." She swallowed hard, still getting flashes of the last moments she saw Avalon and Oliver. It would take a long time for her to get over it. "Either I got into the suit...or she did. They killed her father in front of her," River scrunched her face as new tears fell down her face. The Doctor's eyes widened with genuine shock. The mystery of Oliver Reynolds' death had been solved. "If I don't do this they'll kill Avalon on sight," River's voice broke as she tried to look around from her helmet, "The Silence is here, watching her and me. I've been warned not to do anything, or they'll kill her."

"It's okay," the Doctor tried to make her see he was being honest, "I love her, and if it takes me dying to keep her safe, alive and free, then so be it."

"Please, just RUN!" River begged, "I can't stop it. The suit's in control."

"You're not supposed to. This has to happen."

"Please, just listen, just run!"

"I did run," the Doctor nodded, "Sacrificed a life with a very important woman for that. And look where I am now? Here."

"I don't want to be a murder," River nearly broke down, "My own daughter is going to hate me. Run."

"It's OK, she'll forgive you," the Doctor sighed.

"No! She won't! Her father's dead because of me and now you will be too!"

"But they erased her memory, you can tell her what happened. How you took the place they were going to force upon her," the Doctor insisted, "Tell her it was inevitable: this is where I die. This is a fixed point, this must happen, this always happens. Don't worry...you won't even remember this. Look over there," he turned very slightly at the others who were staring at them.

"That's me," River said in horror, "How can I be there?"

"That's you from the future. Serving time for a murder you probably can't remember. My murder."

"Why would you do that? Make me watch?"

"So that you know this is inevitable. And you are forgiven," the Doctor looked back at her, "Always and completely forgiven."

River struggled as her arm raised on its own. "Please, just go! Take my daughter and run!"

"I can't," the Doctor shook his head.

"Time can be rewritten."

"Don't you dare. Goodbye, River," the Doctor shut his eyes to wait for the end. There were five gunshots that made him jerk but he quickly realized that no part of him had been injured. He cracked open one eye and found River smirking at him.

"No one tells me what to do," she informed the very words her daughter would one day say as well.

"What have you done!?" the Doctor asked in terror, now fearing the consequences.

"Well... I think I just drained my weapon systems," River shrugged and became urgent, "Now take Avalon and get the hell out of here!"

"But this is fixed. This is a fixed point in time!"

"Fixed points can be rewritten..."

"No, they can't, of course they can't, who told you?!" but the Doctor never received an answer as a flash of light changed the course of time.

~ 0 ~

While the Doctor had relayed the events of his death to Winston Churchill, they'd somehow moved rooms without even noticing. That would not be strange if it wasn't for the fact that the Doctor was supposed to be an imprisoned soothsayer, even completing the role with the tattered clothes and the beard and longer hair. But as he kept telling the story, he found he'd acquired a pike from somewhere while Winston had taken out his own weapon, a gun.

"Gunsmoke. That's gunsmoke!" Winston had gotten the scent and looked at his gun in horror, "I appear to have fired this."

"We seem to be defending ourselves," the Doctor realized and was now more alarmed since the room they were in seemed completely empty.

"I don't understand..."

"The creatures that lead the Silence. Remarkable beings...they're memory-proof," the Doctor started to slowly backtrack out of the room with Winston.

"But what does that mean?" the man asked with utter confusion.

"You can't remember them. The moment you look away, you forget they were ever there..." the Doctor noticed a black tally mark on his left wrist, "Don't panic. In small numbers, they're not too difficult. Of course that was before he saw his right arm covered in the tally marks. He slowly turned his head up, making Winston do the same, and saw a swarm of Silence on the ceiling like bats, all looking down at them.

The Doctor stiffened as he heard a beeping noise coming behind them, followed by the noise of something dropping to the floor. He turned and saw a small black device, "Go!" he shouted and jumped out of the way with Winston as the device spewed out smoke then exploded.

"Go! Go!" went the voice of a soldier as an entire group of them burst into the room, "Keep the Silents in sight at all times, keep your eye drives active."

A woman dressed in a black suit walked into the room, casual as ever. She seemed to be coming directly for the Doctor. He squinted through the smoke to get a better look at her but there was simply too much smoke around.

"Who are you? Identify yourself!" Winston called with his gun already aimed at the figure.

"Lena Emilia Reynolds," the brunette woman flashed a smile as she stepped in front of the two men, "Put the gun down, you can hurt someone with that."

"Baby sister!" the Doctor exclaimed and pushed the gun down, "She's on our side, it's OK."

"There we go," Lena watched the gun be put down entirely before she whipped out her own.

The Doctor had noticed she was wearing one of the Silence eye-patches over her eye, "No! Lena, why are you wearing that?"

"Hush now," Lena said then fired her gun at the Doctor, knocking him out cold next.

~ 0 ~

Upon the Orient Express train, the Doctor woke up on a couch inside an office. He looked around and only heard the sounds of a radio broadcasting, "The Government has again apologized for extensive radio interference caused by solar flare and sunspot activity."

Once he was more lucid, he noticed Amy standing at the doorway of the room, making him spring back to life. "Amy!"

"Those stun guns aren't fun, I'm sorry. I told Lena it was best to avoid a long conversation," Amy walked further into the room, "You need to get up though, we'll be in Cairo shortly."

"Amy Pond!" the Doctor said in panic, "Amelia Pond from Leadworth, please, listen to me. I know it seems impossible, but you know me. In another version of reality you and I were best friends. We traveled together, we had adventures. Amelia Pond! You grew up with a time rift in the wall of your bedroom. You can often see what others can't, you can remember things that never happened - well, most of the time!" He picked up the first thing near his hand which happened to be a crafted miniaturized TARDIS. "And if you try, if you really, really try, you'll be able to..." And then he realized what he was holding, "Oh...oh!" He started taking notice of the many drawings pinned up on the wall, as well as clearly written stories on paper, "...oh." His voice dimmed a bit as he recognized the perfect, cursive writing.

"You look rubbish," Amy knew what had stopped his excitement from coming on.

"...you look wonderful," the Doctor set down the TARDIS without looking at her.

"So do you," Amy picked up a hanger which held the Doctor's usual attire.

The Doctor smiled slightly at that and took it from her, "Geronimo," he whispered.

~ 0 ~

A couple minutes later the Doctor was fully changed and shaved, though there was still the matter of a proper haircut left, "OK, you can turn round now. How do I look?"

Amy turned from her desk and rolled her eyes, "Cool."

"Really?"

"No."

The Doctor sighed and walked around the room, "Cool office though. Why do you have an office?! Are you a special agent boss lady? Not sure about the eye patch.

"It's not an eye patch," Amy shook her head, "Time's gone wrong. Some of us noticed. There's a whole team of us working on it... You'll see."

"And you've got an office on a train, that is so cool," the Doctor beamed, "Can I have an office? Never had an office before! Or a train. Or a train slash office."

Amy laughed and went over to hug him, "God, I've missed you!"

"OK, hugging and missing now," the Doctor pulled away and glanced back at the doorway, "Where is...everyone?"

"You mean Lena, Avalon, and Rory," Amy recited like she'd memorized the names with struggle, "Baby sister," she pointed at the Time Lord, "Granddaughter, and my husband," she ran back to her desk and picked up a sketch, "This is Rory, right?" She held the sketch to him that was really more like a stick figure. "I've no idea, I can't find him. I love him very much, don't I?"

The Doctor took the sketch from her and studied it, "Apparently."

"I have to keep doing this. I have to keep writing and drawing things," Amy put a hand on her head, "I mean, Lena I see and I know who Avalon is, but Rory? I can't remember him cos I don't know him..." she leaned against her desk and sighed.

"It's not your fault, time's gone wrong," the Doctor moved over to sit beside her, "Do you remember why?"

"The lakeside."

"Lake Silencio, Utah. I died."

"But then you didn't," Amy pointed, "I remember it twice, different ways."

"Two different versions of the same event, both happening in the same moment. Time split wide open. Now look at it," the Doctor pointed out the window, "All of history happening at once."

"Does it matter?" Amy raised an eyebrow, "I mean can't we just stay like this?"

"Time isn't just frozen. It's disintegrating. It will spread and spread and all of reality will simply fall apart."

There was a knock on the door and a soldier, Rory, leaned in, "Ma'am, we're about to arrive. Eye drives need to be activated as soon as we disembark."

Lena came in behind him, "And they say there's been alterations just with his closeness," she nodded to the Doctor, a bit confused by the smiling man. He kept smiling at her even though she hadn't done anything.

"Thank you," Amy said to them both.

"Hello," the Doctor waved at them.

Rory and Lena looked at each other, both questioning why the man was so happy in a situation like this. Still, Lena didn't want to be rude and gave a response, "Hello, nice to meet you," she even smiled and headed out of the room with Rory.

"It's weird," Amy remarked when the two were gone, "I know who Lena is, Avalon knows who she is, River knows who she is...but Lena doesn't know. It kills Avalon but she doesn't want to make things worse by giving Lena this whole backstory that might freak her out." She glanced at the Doctor since he'd given no response to that. Every time she mentioned her granddaughter's name, he got silent and...quite sad. "Why are you older? If time isn't really passing, then how can you be ageing?"

"Time's still passing for me. Every explosion has an epicenter. I'm it... I'm what's wrong."

"What's wrong with you?"

"I'm still alive," the Doctor sighed in resignation. Two hundred years might just be going down the drain if he didn't get things fixed asap.

~0 ~

Rory was leading Amy and the Doctor towards a room where they apparently had trapped Silents in. However, there was a bit of reluctance to keep going from Rory due to the Doctor's eye drive still not being used. The Time Lord was studying the eye drive in his palm with disgust.

"You have to put it on, sir," Rory said for the last time as they walked down a staircase.

"An eye patch. What for?" the Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"It's not an eye patch," Amy wondered if she'd have to force the eye drive on the man at this point.

"It's an eye drive, sir," Rory went on to explain, "It communicates directly with the memory centres of the brain, acts as external storage."

"Only thing that works on them. Because no living mind can remember these things," Amy reminded, "So please, just put it on. We're about to enter."

They entered the room bathed in a blue glow to find Avalon inside, staring at the chambers that held the Silents prisoners. She didn't notice them as she was too busy studying them.

"You're looking at me, you're always looking at me," she whispered and placed a hand on the glass of one chamber, "I don't understand..."

"Avalon, get away from there!" Amy yelled as soon as they'd entered the room.

Startled, Avalon turned from the chambers to face the group, "I was only looking..." She said as her defense, a lazy thumb pointed at the chambers.

"And touching," Rory stalked up to her and pulled her away from the chambers, "There are strict orders for you—"

"Shut up," she pointed then looked past him to Amy and the Doctor, her change of attitude evident once her eyes settled on the Doctor.

The Doctor had no idea what to expect from her. Like Amy, Avalon remembered the events happening in two different ways. She was more aware than them, actually, and if she remembered what happened before Kovarian sent her to Berlin, she could be a ticking time bomb of feelings.

Avalon said nothing to him for a few seconds but suddenly she was running towards him. He barely had time to open his arms to catch her when she threw herself on him. Her arms wrapped tightly around his for fear that he would slip away from her again. "You're still here," she eventually looked up at him with a big smile on her face.

"Yes, well, you can't really plan around River Song," the Doctor muttered, but he still gave her a smile. How could he not smile at her?

"Um, ma'am," Rory called to Amy suddenly, his gaze intently watching the Silence. "They're looking at him."

At his words, the Doctor and Avalon shifted to see the creatures moving just to watch him.

"It would appear so," the Doctor agreed. His arm around Avalon gripped her waist tighter. "What are the tanks for?"

"They can draw electricity from anything, it's how they attack. The fluid insulates them," Rory explained and turned around for the other chambers to see the creatures also staring at the Doctor, "And I don't like the way they're looking at you."

"Me neither..."

"Ma'am, I'm sure it's nothing, but I should check it out. They haven't been this active in a while," Rory said to Amy then called to the soldiers by the stairs, "You two, upstairs, check all the tank seals. Then the floors above, get everyone checking."

"Sir!" the soldiers filed out of the room.

"You go ahead, Ma'am," Rory looked at Amy, "And Avalon, for the love of God, don't touch the tanks."

Avalon rolled her eyes, "Yeah, yeah," she waved him off.

"Do you remember him?" the Doctor had to ask her in a whisper as Amy spoke to Rory.

"He's my best friend but Amy doesn't know him," Avalon nodded. "I know Lena's here too...but you know who I can't find? Apart from my uncle Ryland and Gavin? The Sapling. I know that we...we gave him life…" She said awkwardly, blushing afterwards. "But he's not here."

"He might not exist, Ava," the Doctor said with a quiet sigh. "Not everyone's made it to this reality and even if they did, some of them are disappearing, disintegrating."

"We're going to fix it though," Avalon assured him. She curled an arm around his neck and played with his longer hair at the nape of his neck. "I like this new do."

"Yeah?" The Doctor tilted his head slightly. Suddenly they weren't in the middle of a disintegrating reality, they were just spending time together.

"Mhm, there's definitely more pull," Avalon's smirk widened as soon as he stammered. "C'mon," she took his hand and called for Amy to join them. However, before they could enter, the Doctor pulled back for a moment, claiming there was something he had 'check on'. Avalon could see through his lie but he kept looking back where Rory had walked through so she let it be.

Amy lifted her jacket's lapel and spoke into her comm. "We're in. He's on his way. Be on red alert."

A short moment later, the Doctor was back and they were heading into the main chamber of Area 51: a pyramid. Time was so wrong.

The room was filled with high tech machinery. It was a sophisticated laboratory with many scientists working at every post. Upon entering, they overheard one of the scientists, a woman named Kent, informing a woman whose back was to the trio, "You were right. Just his presence in the building caused the loop to extend by nearly four chronons."

The Doctor spotted the bushy, curly haired woman the scientist was speaking to. He glowered. "River Song, what a mess you have made!" He had more to say but everything stopped when River turned around and he saw how pregnant she was. The astronaut suit was big for a reason and now they knew why. "You're…"

"Pregnant?" River rested a hand on her stomach, "Yes, I've noticed. Quite frankly, I'm surprised you did too. I've heard stories." She stepped aside to reveal Kovarian bound to a chair behind.

"The death of time. The end of time. The end of us all," Kovarian swayed her head tiredly, "Oh, why couldn't you just die?"

"Did my best, dear. I showed up," the Doctor said with a deep glower marking his face. He had felt Avalon's hand flinch in his the moment they saw Kovarian. She remembered her time with the woman too.

"You're a fool," spat Kovarian. "All of you are. None of you can see that what I'm doing is for the better of the universe. I'm from the future, if you've all forgotten. I know what happens to all of you."

The Doctor scowled at the woman. "Be quiet," he ordered. He was already going to die so she didn't have to bring in any more of his friends.

"But I do," she smirked. "Your friends will die, Doctor—"

"I said quiet!" the Doctor's voice was hard enough to make Avalon flinch beside him.

"—and you'll meet the girl I tried my best to stop you from reaching—"

"STOP!" the Doctor's command made no effect.

"—and then your precious littlest Pond will die in the fields of Trenzalore—"

"What the hell is that?" Avalon tried her best to sound brave but the truth is that she was scared out of her mind. "I'm going to d—"

The Doctor let go of her hand to stalk up to Kovarian. "I SAID SHUT UP!" he yelled in her face, now utterly furious. He had no idea what she was talking about and he doubted that it was true. It was utter nonsense!

"Doctor!" Amy called to him.

He turned around to see Avalon's widened, teary eyes. Immediately, he let Kovarian slip his mind. "Ava, hey..." he hurried back to her and wrapped her up in a hug.

Meanwhile, Kovarian smirked at everyone who dared look at her. She had said her peace and now they would wallow in the truth.

"You're going to be okay," the Doctor promised Avalon and set a kiss on her head.

"You mean because you're going to die?" she looked up at him.

He didn't want to answer that and start a whole new round of arguing. Instead, he answered with a different subject in mind. ""Love what you've done with the pyramids. How did you swing all this?"

"Hallucinogenic lipstick," River shrugged and glanced at Avalon, "Apparently, it worked wonders on President Kennedy."

"Excuse me?" it was the Doctor's turn to glare at Avalon.

"Oh shut up, she said I couldn't do it so I had to do it," Avalon rolled her eyes. River stared at her with pursed lips. "Stop looking at me," Avalon snapped and avoided her mother's gaze at all costs.

"Ah, so you remember…" the Doctor looked between the two, his eyes lowering to River's stomach, Avalon doing the same.

"It's plain weird what that is," she said quietly before meeting River's gaze. "And she is not my mother."

"Avalon, I've tried explaining everything but you won't let me," River sighed. She had lost count how many times she tried having the conversation with her.

"And yet you don't seem to take the hint!" Avalon snapped. "The only reason I am working with you is because of him!" She nodded her head at the Doctor.

"Ava," he tried to calm her down but she yanked her hand out of his when she realized it.

"No! This is one thing you can't fix, Fairy Tale Man! I don't want her! Soon as I'm…" She looked at River's stomach again, "...born, she's going to abandon me."

"I would never," River found it hard not to snap. She was the mother, she had to control herself and make Avalon see the truth. "That's why I'm doing all of this."

"River, as much as I sympathize with you right now...we can't let this continue," the Doctor said. "Reality is fatally compromised. Tell me you understand that."

"I do," River nodded and moved around the room like it was a casual Friday.

"I am alive and because of that time is dying," the Doctor reiterated, annoyed his words were flying in through one of her ears and coming out the other, "Because of you, River."

"Because I refused to kill you and set in motion my daughter's history?"

"I'm sorry but it has to be done!" The Doctor glared at River and the moment Amy say it, she shouted for the soldiers.

"Get him!"

The soldiers ran through the room just as the Doctor reached out for River. They pulled him away from her.

"I'm not a fool, sweetie. I know what happens if we touch," River said. The Doctor mocked a smile then lunged at the woman, managing to grab her wrist that time, "Get off me, get him off me!" She cried.

Avalon dashed to help and tried prying the Doctor off her, "You have to let her go!"

Across the room Kent checked the monitor that held the time, "It's moving. Time's moving!" she called

"Get him off me!" River hollered.

"I'm sorry, River, it's the only way!" the Doctor held onto her tightly and for a brief moment they were back at Lake Silencio.

"Enough!" Avalon gave the final cry as the Doctor was pulled away from them by some soldiers, "We need to restrain him," she resolved and looked at River who nodded in agreement.

"Cuff him," River ordered.

"Oh, why do you always have handcuffs?" the Doctor whined as his hands were pulled behind him to be cuffed, "It's the only way. We're the opposite poles of the disruption. If we touch, we short out the differential, time can begin."

"And I'll be by a lakeside, killing you," River nodded, "While I'm pregnant with..." her eyes flickered to Avalon.

"Shut up," Avalon ordered and looked away.

"And time won't fall apart. Reality will continue," the Doctor added, "There isn't another way."

"I didn't say there was," River sadly said, "But right here, right now, you're alive and so is she. Maybe this is not that bad?"

"It's very bad," the Doctor corrected but side-glanced Avalon with a soft smile. "I would love to spend my life with you but Time will literally run out on us. It's not possible."

Avalon tilted her head at him, smiling so lovingly at him like no one else had. "Let's go then."

The Doctor laughed lightly. "Where to?"

Avalon remembered this conversation perfectly from their first date. "Neverland." Her heart even fluttered the same way it had on that day.

Avalon hummed while she thought about such an outrageous place that even he couldn't make it happen. "I got it. Can you take me to, I don't know, Neverland?" That had to be impossible for him to reach.

"I'd make it so," the Doctor gently tugged Avalon to him, smiling at her soft laughter. "I would!"

It seemed like the Doctor remembered as well because he looked at her with a softened face. "I'd make it so," he whispered. Avalon felt the tears welling in her eyes.

Amy flinched when something cold hit her face. She realized it was a drop of water. "Doctor...what's that?" She made everyone look up to the ceiling. More water was dripping down.

"The pyramid above us. How many Silents do you have trapped inside it?" The Doctor swallowed hard once he realized what was happening.

"None," Kovarian answered the question, getting everyone's attention, "They're not trapped, they never have been. They've been waiting for this, Doctor... For you."

At that moment, Rory and Lena burst in from the doors. "They're out! All of them!" Lena shouted in terror.

Quickly, Rory and some other soldiers placed a thick plank of wood across the doors to bar them from the Silence.

"Lena, over here!" Avalon immediately ushered her sister to her side.

Rory rushed to Amy. "Ma'am, my men out there, should be able to lock this down, we have them outnumbered."

"And you're wearing eye drives based on mine, I think," Kovarian once again grabbed everyone's attention. She was smirking far too widely for their taste. "Oops!"

"What do you mean?" the Doctor inquired, equally confused as the others.

As if to answer on cue, Kent started screaming as her eye drive electrified her. She soon collapsed on the floor. Amy ran towards her body and dropped beside her to check her vitals. "She's dead," Amy looked up in horror, also catching Rory having to remove a soldier's eye drive for the same reasons.

Then the Doctor started feeling his own eye drive shock him, "Eye pads off, now, remove them!"

Avalon made sure Lena had hers off then rushed to help the Doctor take his off. "No, no, yours!" He told her, flapping his bound wrists in front of her. With a groan, she ripped her eye drive off her first then his.

"The Silence would never allow an advantage, without taking one themselves. The effects will vary from person to person... either death or debilitating agony. But they will take you all, one by one..." Kovarian's laugh was short lived when her own her eye drive started buzzing with electricity. "What are you doing? No, it's me…" She flinched in her chair each time she was shocked. "Don't be stupid, you need me. Stop it, stop that!"

"We could stop this right now, you and I," the Doctor called to River, dead serious. This was getting even more dangerous and he didn't think it was possible since Time was dying.

"Get it off me!" Kovarian cried in agony.

"Amy, tell her!" the Doctor insisted since River was keeping quiet.

"We've been working on something," Avalon spoke up instead. "The only reason i'm in the same room as River is because of this. Please, just let us show you."

"That's my point. There's nothing you can do. My time is up," the Doctor said in frustration.

"Shut up and listen, will you?" Avalon snapped, "We're doing this for you!"

"Then people are dying for me. I won't thank you for that, Ava," the Doctor snapped back.

"We'll there's a lot of things I can't thank you for either," Avalon countered, "And yet here I am. So you're gonna follow River and listen, got it?"

"Just let us show you, please," River pleaded with a low voice, still hopeful everything could turn out fine.

Amy turned to Lena, "How long do we have?"

"At most I'd say a couple of minutes," the brunette breathed then jumped as the door rattled the door from the other side, "Or less, definitely less..."

"That's enough. We're going to the Receptor Room right at the top of the pyramid," River said determinedly, "I hope you're ready for a climb."

"I could say the same thing for you," the Doctor gestured to her current state.

River rolled her eyes, "I'll manage. Avalon, let's go," she ordered and startled the ginger, also prompting a confused face, "You didn't think I was gonna let you stay here. Absolutely not, let's go."

"Fine," Avalon huffed. "But only because of the circumstances. "But Lena comes with me too." There was no way in hell she would let her sister stay back with killer Silents.

"What?" Lena blinked in confusion.

"Shut up and say okay," Avalon nudged her, soon receiving the answer she'd ordered for.

And so, River led the way for them out of the room.

"I'll wait down here, Ma'am. Buy you as much time as I can," Rory's decision kept Amy from following the others.

She turned around and saw the eye drive still on him. "You have to take your eye drive off."

"Can't do that, Ma'am. Might forget what's coming."

"But it could activate any second!"

"It has activated, Ma'am!" It was then that Amy noticed he was fiercely balling his fist on his side. He was fighting off the electricity when it was so close to killing him. "But I'm of no use to you if I can't remember. You have to go now, Ma'am."

Amy looked at him with a firm nod. "Yes."

"Now!"

"Yes, thank you, Captain Williams." Amy turned around and marched out of the room.

Rory fought the electrical pain surging through his body and turned to face the incoming Silence breaking through the door. He aimed his gun at them just as they broke in.

"Rory Williams, the man who dies and dies again," the three creatures chorused together. "Die one last time and know she will never come back for you."

Amy had a thing to say about as she marched back into the room with a machine gun and fired at all of them. She let the gun drop to the ground then helped Rory stand up since he'd fallen through the chaos. "Come on, you. Up you get. You all right?" She pulled the eye drive off him before he could answer. He breathed out in relief when he felt the electricity fade away.

"Amy, help me!" Kovarian called from her chair. Her eye drive was hanging off her face but was otherwise still attached to her skin.

Amy balled her own fists when she turned to the woman. She didn't have all the memories but she knew enough to know what that woman had done to her family. "You took my baby from me and hurt her. And now she's all grown up and she's fine, but I'll never see my baby again. And then you went ahead and you stole her daughter, my granddaughter…" She stormed up to the woman and bent down in front of her. "She was traumatized because of you."

"But you'll still save me, though. Because he would, and you'd never do anything to disappoint your precious Doctor," Kovarian truly played her last card. Amy shook her head, making her last ounce of hope fade.

"The Doctor once said he'd kill any Silence he ever came across with because of what they did to us...I wholeheartedly agree," Amy put the eyedrive back on Kovarian's eye. "River Song didn't get it all from you, sweetie." She got up and left Kovarian screaming in her chair. She took Rory by the arm and glanced at him. "So, you and me, we should get a drink some time."

Rory was surprised with the switch of moments but he would be damned if he ruined it. "Okay…"

"...and married."

"Fine." He was very okay with that.

~ 0 ~

The group arrived at the top of the pyramid where the Doctor immediately was drawn to a whirring machine at the center. It was the only thing there and it was mighty alive, meaning it was doing something. "What's this?" He circled it. "Oh, it's a timey-wimey distress beacon. Who built this?"

"I'm the child of the TARDIS, I understand the physics," River explained.

"Yes, but that's all you've got — a distress beacon!"

"But that's all we need," Lena spoke up, still sounding meek as was her usual tone. "I mean...that's what they say." She looked over to Avalon, for some reason always drawn to her whenever things got challenging.

"We've been sending out a message, a distress call," River began, "Outside the bubble of our time, the universe is still turning, and I've sent a message everywhere, to the future and the past, the beginning and the end of everything. "The Doctor is dying, please, please help".

"River, River, this is ridiculous. That would mean nothing to anyone, it's insane," the Doctor shook his head, "Worse, it's stupid! You embarrass me."

"Hey!" Avalon snapped at him. "We're trying to help, trying to keep you from dying! Be thankful! Some of us don't want you to die, dammit. You know those reports of the sunspots and the solar flares?" She went around the beacon until she came face to face with him. "They're wrong, there aren't any. It's not the sun, it's you. The sky is full of a million, million voices, saying 'yes, of course we'll help'." Tears were quick to fill her eyes. She cupped his face and managed to chuckle. "My Fairy Tale Man was very busy even before he met us. You've touched so many lives, saved so many people. All you had to do was let somebody help you. You just had to ask. You're not alone. I don't know what your life was like before us but the moment you crashed in Amy's backyard you stopped being alone. We are your family and family does not let each other die."

"Avalon…" The Doctor pried her hands off his face.

"No, you need to listen to us. You've decided that the universe is better off without you, but the universe doesn't agree. I don't agree..."

"I'm sorry Ava. I'm really sorry," the Doctor sighed and looked at River, "But she and I are ground zero of an explosion that will engulf all reality. Billions on billions will suffer and die. That will include my Ava, our Ava..."

"Not hers," Avalon muttered under her breath.

"Yes, hers. And theirs," the Doctor nodded towards Amy and Rory, the latter immediately glancing at Amy for it.

"In another reality, we got married and had a kid. That's her," Amy pointed to River then moved it over to Avalon. "And that's her kid, our granddaughter. Oh—" she side glanced Lena, —and you're her sister. Well, cousin, but sister."

"Stop all this!" River exclaimed, looking directly at the Doctor. "You think I'm being selfish, and perhaps I am, but don't I have a right? They killed my daughter's father in front of me, in front of her, and if I let time start again then I will end up losing her altogether. I don't want to give up my time with my daughter. I want to see her say her first word, I want to see her take her first steps. I want to see her grow up with me," she pointed at herself, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. "I am her mother, and I deserve to see her get ready for her first day of school, her graduation. I deserve to see her dressed in white for her wedding. I don't want to get postcards in jail, no letters. Don't you see?"

Avalon brought her hands to her face when she felt water on her cheeks. When did she start crying? She didn't want to cry, she didn't want to. River reached for one of her hands and she was able to pull Avalon slightly towards her without being rejected.

"I would never abandon you. I love you, whether you're out here...or in here," she gestured to her stomach. "You think that I don't care but that's not true. Maybe I am selfish but I don't care what I have to do to make sure that you're okay, that your safe."

"River," the Doctor hated to cut into their moment, but he had to. The truth was right in front of her and she blinding herself to avoid seeing it. "She's not safe right now. None of us. You know that it's too late, don't you?"

Avalon glanced at him with a puzzled look. "What are you talking about?"

The Doctor heavily sighed. "Ava, you grew up with your uncle and aunt. You grew up with your cousins Lena and Gavin as your siblings. I'm so sorry but this has already happened. River, you've already done it. This is a fixed point."

Avalon felt River's grip on her hand loosen. When she looked at the woman, River was shaking her head. "No, no, I can fix it. I can change it."

"Don't you see? You can't," the Doctor said sadly. "If you change her past, she doesn't do half the things that will inevitably bring you to creation. Ryland would never come to live on Earth, I don't meet any Reynolds and they don't help me out in our travels. You will cease to exist, River, and so will she."

"But that's terrible!" River snapped, barely stifling her sobs. "I don't want that!"

"I know…"

"And I don't want to kill you either!"

"I know. I'm sorry," the Doctor honestly apologized to her. This was all his fault. She wouldn't have to give up her daughter if she didn't have to 'kill' him, "I've ruined Melody Pond's life with her parents and now I'll mess up Avalon's chance with her mother…"

Avalon looked between him and River. Her heart was breaking but she could honestly say that it could not be more than either of theirs. She was the middle ground they could all agree on and yet she was also making it worse for everyone. Her existence made everything more complicated and yet she continued making everything more difficult with her behavior.

"I'm sorry," she said to both of them. She withdrew her hand from River and swallowed hard when she was able to look at them again. "You're both locked in this fight because you can't decide about me."

"No, Avalon—"

"River, I'm sorry you were put into this situation in the first place. No one should have to ever go through what you have...and Doctor, I'm sorry for not listening. I did my best to help you but...there is no helping, is there?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Not this time, Ava."

"We have to fix Time," Avalon shuddered a breath when she said it. "Not for me but for everyone else. For everyone who tangled up in this...Pond mess." She cracked the tiniest of smiles that surprised River.

"Avalon, you don't—"

"I don't know what a parent does," Avalon cut River off, "And I've been ignoring what everyone's been saying. I'm sorry." Her eyes wandered to River's stomach. "It's just so weird...I'm here, but I'm also...there…"

"I want us to stay together…" River had lost her fighting voice. She was disgusted with herself for letting things happen the way they already had. She walked up to the Doctor, tears in her eyes, and looked up at him. "The choice has already been made, hasn't it?"

"A long time ago, I'm afraid," he nodded. "But I've got one thing left to say."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Look in my eyes and know that she will be safe."

"But—"

"Just do it, please."

River reluctantly agreed. The others watched them, cautious as they expected the Doctor to seize her hand and restart time again, but nothing of the sort happened.

"I'm confused," Lena whispered to Amy and Rory.

This time, Amy agreed. "Mhm."

River stepped away from the Doctor, sighing heavily. "I'm not going to see her grow up," she whispered with a quiet sniffle to follow. If that's the choice she had to keep her safe then...so be it, but there was one other thing that she could do for Avalon right now. "Show her that you won't leave her."

"What?" The Doctor didn't quite catch it the first time.

"She thought I abandoned her and she thought you left her too. I want that to stop. That is my condition. I want my daughter to know that she was loved."

"River, you can stop," Avalon called to her. "I-I get it, alright? It's hard, but...I guess I do." She would just need loads of time to process it.

"No, you listen to me," River snapped her fingers at the Doctor for him to listen, " You do this...not for me, but for her. Show her that she's not forgotten."

The epilogue. Or prologue, if he was being just a tad hopeful. He met Avalon's puzzled face and couldn't fathom being apart from her any longer. He would have to, if he wanted things to turn alright for her. "Princess," he held his hand out for her. "It's time to say goodbye."

"We've already done that. I don't want to do it again," she said and yet still took his hand, letting him bring her closer to him. "I can't take it a second time."

"I know, but can I have a dying request?"

"Anything for you."

"Marry me."

Naturally, Avalon froze. She blinked at him but he was quite serious. "You...you want me to what��?"

"It's the ending to our story, and how could I not marry my princess? My Ava?"

Avalon felt her heart beating so fast under her chest that she was sure it was close to bursting. "I-I...be your wife?" She kept asking the same thing in different ways, wasn't she?

"Well, I know the stories end with the prince getting the princess, but this daft old knight-in-shining-armor would love to take his place and marry you," the Doctor took hold of her hands, smiling at her as lovingly as she had before. "Would you marry me, Ava?"

Avalon nodded her head so fast she had to stop herself before she got dizzy. "Yes." Everything was swirling in her mind. Marry. She was going to marry him — she wanted to marry him.

There was an indescribable feeling that flourished through the Doctor at that moment. Even if it was at the very end of the Time itself, he was incredibly jubilant. His Ava had said 'yes' to marrying him. "Look at that," he glanced at River, "Looks like you won't miss something all the important moments, after all."

"This isn't what I meant," River playfully rolled her eyes, but she would take it.

"Yeah, this is crazy! Even for you two!" Amy called.

"Shut up Ponds," Avalon said without a moment's doubt, her eyes glued to the Time Lord before her, a smile growing across her face. "I'm getting married. I'm getting married to my Fairy Tale Man."

"Okay, then," the Doctor took in a breath as he practically buzzed with joy of what was actually going to happen. If he really did have to go (for a long time) then he would at least get something good out of it, and what better thing than his Ava? She would be his wife. He looked around the place. "I need a strip of cloth, about a foot long. Anything will do," he then looked at himself and beamed, "Never mind," he untied his bowtie and held it between him and Avalon, "Ava, take one end of this, wrap it around your hand, and hold it out to me."

"This isn't exactly what I thought marriage would be like," she said in amusement as she followed his instruction, "But I did always know my wedding would be the wedding of a lifetime. No divorces, even if you're dead." It was possibly the worst thing to say in a situation like this but for some reason, they both laughed with the same tears in their eyes. Neither of them ever had a clue of what being prudent meant.

"A lifetime," the Doctor touched her cheek gently. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be," Avalon nodded.

"We're in the middle of a combat zone, so we'll have to do the quick version. River, you're the mother here, so...say 'I consent and gladly give'."

"I consent and gladly give," River quickly said, her eyes glued on Avalon who seemed happier than ever. That's what she wanted to see all the time. Even if she was going to be far away from her, River wanted to know that her daughter would be happy.

"Old fashioned," Avalon chuckled and quickly wiped some tears from her face.

"Like a proper fairy tale. Now, for you, Ava, what do you say?"

"I do," Avalon said in a way that made her sound like she'd lost air, in a good way. She was intently watching him for every slight movement he made.

"...I do," the Doctor ultimately said, smiling with her. "I never did come up with a label for us and now I know why. You could have never been my 'girlfriend' because this is what you were meant to be for me: my wife."

"My husband," she whispered. "My Fairy Tale Man is my husband."

"There's just one more thing..." The Doctor leaned to her and whispered something in her ear. Almost immediately, Avalon's eyes half-widened and stared as the Doctor pulled away. "I just told you my name. There, my Ava, we're married." He caressed the side of her face and gave her a small kiss.

"The End," she said as they pulled away. To chapter 1.

They undid the bowtie from their hands but the Doctor left it tucked in Avalon's hand. "Keep it safe with my watch," he whispered to her. He drew in a breath and walked up to River. She raised her head at him, almost looking like she would defy him again...but she held her hand out.

Their hands met and Time resettled.

River, in the astronaut suit, fired and killed the Doctor.

The rest of the Ponds' and Lena watched it happen by the lake.

Everything was as it should be again.

~ 0 ~

Dorium Maldovar, inside his box, was being carried back to his resting place from where he'd been stolen from. There'd been too many movements for him to keep up with who had him now. Being just a sole head made a lot of things difficult like that.

"Who's carrying me?" He shouted from within the box, "I demand to know...I'm a head, I have rights! I want my doors open this time." The person carrying the box placed it on a pedestal and slid open its door before turning and walking away. "Is it you?!" Dorium called and watched as the figure stopped. It is, isn't it? It is you, I can sense it. But how did you do it? How could you possibly have escaped?!"

An ecstatic Doctor pulled down his hood and dropped his cloak to the floor. He was all too happy to share how he duped the entire Silence. "The Teselecta. A Doctor in a Doctor-Suit. Time said I had to be on that beach so I dressed for the occasion, barely got singed in that boat."

"So you're going to do this, let them all think you're dead?"

"It's the only way they can forget me," the Doctor said earnestly. He had thought about for 200 hundred years and this was the only way things could end up. "I got too big, Dorium, too noisy...time to step back into the shadows."

"And Dr. Song?" Dorium asked, "In prison all her days?"

"Well, I'm sure she'll be sneaking out every now and then. She's got a daughter to keep an eye on, after all."

"So many secrets, Doctor. I'll help you keep them, of course…"

The Doctor tried his best not to laugh on the spot. "Well, you're not exactly going anywhere, are you?"

"But you're a fool nonetheless. Kovarian had rumors spreading…" Dorium paused when the Doctor stopped altogether, "Dr. Song's daughter — you married her, didn't you?"

Dorium might be a head but the Doctor was not above making him suffer there and then. "How do you even know—"

"Kovarian said you would. She said you would marry the girl, your companions would die, and you would go to Trenzalore, the place you must never go to. You've changed the course of time and now it will happen."

"Sorry if I don't buy it from a head," the Doctor straightened his jacket. Kovarian had said nonsense to make things happen the way she wanted them to. Dorium had to be repeating what he heard. "Goodbye Dorium. My wife's about to be born and I can't miss that. I really can't." He gave a wave of his hand and turned to leave, but of course Dorium still called after him.

"It's all waiting for you now. You may not believe it, it may take centuries, but it's coming. The fields of Trenzalore, the fall of the Eleventh...and the question!"

"Goodbye!"

"The first question! The question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question you've been running from all your life," Dorium practically shouted, "Doctor who? Doctor who? Doc... tor... WHO?!"

Author's Note:

And there we have it folks! River was the astronaut to save her daughter's life. I twisted things around because, honestly, the canon of this show is ridiculously obscure and vague. You've probably noticed that I've placed a heavy importance on season 7 throughout this story, including Clara. I don't know if it was just me but I always wondered why the hell Kovarian went after the Ponds when it was Clara who ended up bringing 11 to Trenzalore. Maybe it's just me and my weird thought process but that's what I'm going for in this story. I'm telling you that season is my favorite and it'll definitely show when we get to that one, though I am splitting it up just like the show did (one for a comic arc story and the second for the later half of s7).

[just-dreaming-marvel]

SIXTY FIVE - PETER AND NED

LEGACY: A Tony Stark Daughter Story

MASTERLIST

< previous

Word Count: 1,875ish

Summary: Bailey is visited by Peter and his friend, Ned.

Peter and I trained almost every weekday together for months. We would go on a run, then spar, and some nights would go out on patrol in our suits. We talked almost everyday, he was my only friend, really the only person I talked to. I ignored every one of Tony’s calls that came through SARAH, eventually having her not notify me when he’s called. And Peter, for all I knew, never mentioned me to Happy. I failed to keep the promise I had made to Pepper to keep in touch. 

The nights that we didn’t go on patrol together, Peter went alone. A few weeks back he stopped some criminals from robbing an ATM, the criminals had some advanced alien weapons. So I’ve been helping him keep an eye on that. That same night, Peter’s best friend Ned found out that he’s Spider-Man. He called me freaking out but I told him that it wasn’t a big deal as long as Ned promised not to tell anyone.

Over the months while I continued living in Steve’s apartment, I had made it my own. I hacked into my savings account and transferred the money without leaving a trace for Tony to follow. I bought computers and set up SARAH in each of them. I got rid of the kitchen table and the chairs in the living room and installed a hook for punching bags in the living room. I wasn’t handling my emotions or processing Steve leaving and Tony’s outburst correctly, causing my abilities to slowly weaken. 

The nightmares that haunted me every time I closed my eyes and caused me to be running on less then six hours of sleep most weeks. The last blow up with Tony was haunting me the most. I would run around Brooklyn for hours trying to get it to stop playing in my head. Occasionally, Steve’s goodbye would haunt me, hurting me almost as bad. It had become very uncomfortable to run in long sleeves as the summer continued, so I decided that I needed to start wearing short sleeves. I was self conscious about my scars for the first few weeks and I could tell that Peter wanted to ask about them, but luckily he never said anything and I slowly began to accept them. 

One morning, while I was going at it with a punching bag, I heard a knock at the door. I looked through the peep hole to see Peter and his friend Ned standing there. I hadn’t officially met Ned yet but I had heard enough to feel like I had. I opened the door.

“Mr. Parker?” I questioned. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“Bailey,” Peter started, “You don’t have to act all professional. It’s just Ned. And yes I should but something happened last night, we need your help.”

“Come on in.” I opened the door wider, allowing them in.

“Miss Bailey,” Ned nervously greeted. 

“Ned, just call me Bailey.”

“Okay, Bailey.”

��Maybe you can get her last name out of her because I haven’t been able to.” Peter said as he started getting stuff out of his backpack and setting it on the counter. Everyday Peter comes to training with a few new last times to try out on me, trying to get me to give in what mine is.

I laughed, “Not a chance.” I looked over at the counter. “Is that one of the guns?” I walked over, picked it up and began to study it.

“Yes,” Peter said. “So last night, Ned and I went to Liz’s party and—“

“You actually went?” I cut in, surprised. “How’d it go?”

“It was awful.” Ned began talking. “Peter—“

“The party doesn’t matter!” Peter cut back in. 

“Sorry, continue Peter,” I urged.

“Ned was trying to convince me to impress Liz by coming as Spider-Man.” Peter started again.

“Peter!” I hit the counter and it cracked a little. Ned took a step back away from me. “What have I told you? What did Mr. Stark tell you?”

“Just let me finish!” Peter nervously shouted. I nodded. “Okay… Anyway, I went up to the roof to practice on how I would enter the party and impress everybody. While I was up there, I saw a large blue explosion in the distance. I fully suited up and swung off. After I arrived at the explosion site, I saw a black van and three men. Two of the men were selling guns like these.” He pointed at the gun that I had set back down on the counter. “The same ones from the ATM robbery. Ned called me and blew my cover though! And they tried to escape. I tried to fight them off and chase them. I hung on to the van by my webs. They shot at me as the dragged me. I lost my grip of the van and the actual van for a bit. I found it and was about to jump onto it when this vulture guy came up at me from behind! He flew me up into the sky.”

“As I tried to lose him,” Peter continued, “my emergency parachute activated. The parachute caught wind and I got out of the guys grip but I landed in a lake. I couldn’t get my parachute to unhook and I started to drown. But all of a sudden, Iron Man, appeared out of no where and rescued me. Apparently he has a tracker on me! I tried to convince Mr. Stark that I need to be the one to take these guys down or that the Avengers do, but he told  me not to go after them and then said that it’s below the Avengers pay grade.” I rolled my eyes at that statement. “I then apologized to Mr. Stark for him having to come and rescue me, but he wasn’t even in the suit! He was remote controlling it all the way from India! Isn’t tha—“

“India?!” I exclaimed. “Why would he be in India?” I realized that I didn’t mean to say that out loud. “Sorry Peter.” I was a little hurt that Tony wasn’t looking for me. Unless…. Unless he was looking for Steve. Some hope started to build within me but I quickly let it die. Tony doesn’t forgive easily. That’s where I get it from. There was almost no way that he was looking for Steve. At least not for me, he’d be looking for him to lock him up.

“Mr. Stark really just wants me to focus on smaller crimes. He really doesn’t want me to be doing this.” Peter finished.

I picked up the gun once again. “Whoever’s making these weapons is definitely combining alien tech with ours.”

“That is literally the coolest sentence anyone has ever said.” Ned awed. I rolled my eyes. “I just want to thank you guys for letting me be part of this journey.” I pressed a button on my bracelet and a suit gauntlet covered my hand. “Oh. My. Gosh. That looks just like Iron Mans!”

“You should see her suit.” Peter chimed in.

“Okay, nerds, stop,” I said. I blasted the gun. It broke open and a purple glowing thing, probably the power core, rolled out of it. I picked it up with my covered hand. “I’m probably going to regret saying this, but how about you boys take this all to school and study it there. It will probably be easier, I don’t have any equipment here.”

“Okay,” Peter responded. He grabbed his backpack and I carefully set the power core in his bag. He put the rest of the gun back in it, zipped it up, and threw it over his shoulder.

“Let me know what you find,” I pressed another button and the gauntlet formed back into a bracelet. 

“I’ll swing by after school,” Peter said.

“Actually,” I paused. I really needed sometime alone and I had found out that Pepper was going to be in New York and I wanted to talk to her. I needed to talk to her. “I can’t meet tonight. Plus I still want you to go to the Decathlon finals that are in Washington DC tomorrow.”

“Ugh..” Peter whined. “I’ll think about it.”

“Let me know what you decide.” I walked over and opened the door. “It was nice to meet you Ned.”

“You too, Bailey,” Ned nodded as he walked out the door. Peter started walking over and I hugged him.

“I’ll call the school and tell them that you guys were working on something for the Stark Industries Internship.” I said.

“Thanks,” Peter said. “See you soon, Miss Fisher!” 

“Not even close!” I laughed as I shut the door. 

I walked into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. The sleepless nights had been taking a toll. Because of my healing abilities, the dark bags under my eyes looked better then they should have. I took a quick shower, and got dressed. 

“SARAH, please pull up Pepper’s and Tony’s locations.”

“On it.” I walked out into the living room and looked at my main screen. “Here you go Miss,” SARAH said. “It appears that Ms. Potts is in a meeting at Avengers Tower and Mr. Stark currently has his location offline.”

“Hmm? I wonder why.” I mumbled as I put on shoes. “The possibility of him being in town right now is slim to none… Yeah, I’m going to go see Pepper.” 

I put my hair up in a pony tail, grabbed my car keys, and I walked out the door. I got in the car and took the hour drive into the city. 

 Parking right in front of the Tower, I nervously got out of the car and headed inside. I walked to the security desk. The two men looked up in surprise.

“Miss Stark?” One of them said, shock evident in his voice. “Where have you been?”

I ignored the question. “Is Ms. Potts still here?”

“Yes,” the other one answered. “She’s up in her office.”

“Thanks so much.” I smiled and quickly walked away. 

I knew that Tony had most likely been notified about my presence the moment I stepped onto the property. So I knew that I didn’t have much time until Tony would try to reach me. But I really just needed to see Pepper. I rode the elevator up to the floor that her office was located on. The doors opened and there were several people waiting to get on. The meeting she was in must have just ended. I smiled and nodded past the others trying to get onto the elevator as I exited. I could see Pepper on the phone through the glass walls that incased her office. As I opened the door, she saw me. I will never forget the look of surprise on her face and if it were under different circumstances, I would have wanted to remember it. But I knew that part of the shock on her face was because she feared that she would never see me again. Feared that she had made the wrong choice in letting me go out on my own.

next >

[snarkythewoecrow]

Silver Tipped Wings and Black Feathers

By: Snarkymuch

Part 13 of the Broken Wing Verse.

Summary: Peter sees Steve and Bucky while patrolling, and he comes back to talk to them the next day as Peter. Peter realizes they all have more in common than he originally thought.

Read on AO3

Peter’s senior year was going well, and he’d been dividing his time between studying at home and going to the lake house to hang out with Tony, Pepper, and Morgan. It hadn’t left much time for Spider-Man, so this weekend Peter planned to stay in the city and do some good, swinging around and helping the little guy. It would be nice to get back to his roots. 

Big fat snowflakes fell lazily from the overcast sky, melting on the pavement as soon as they hit. It was still early winter, not even Christmas yet, so the snow wasn’t likely to stick. It was chilly, though, and Peter had to turn on the heater in his suit, as the cold air seeped through the thin fabric. 

“Karen, is there anything else going on since I’m here?” 

He was sitting on a fire escape in Brooklyn, feet swinging back and forth, having left his usual patrol area when Karen had said police were engaged in a standoff at a bodega nearby. Thankfully, once Peter had arrived, he was able to sneak in the back and web up the criminals. It was all over in a matter of minutes, and the police even thanked him for the help. He still expected people to shy away from him since the world knew Spider-man was a raven, but it was always nice when people proved him wrong. 

“There’s nothing on the police bands, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find someone to help.”

“Thanks, Karen. I take a swing through the streets and see what I can find. Maybe I can stop a grand theft bicycle.”

“Excellent plan, Peter.” Karen’s voice almost sounded teasing. “Maybe this time you can do it without getting tangled in your webs.”

“Haha. I see Mr. Stark didn’t skimp on the sass.”

Peter grabbed the railing and pulled himself to his feet, then dove from the platform, shooting out a web just in time to swing down to the street, skimming over the tops of cars. Even with the snow, it was busy. New York always was. It wasn’t like the quiet upstate town Tony had moved to. 

Peter made his way to Brooklyn Heights, nearly falling when he saw the familiar face of Steve Rogers walking down one of the brownstones' steps. At his side was someone Peter had only met once before, during the airport battle. The Winter Soldier. His golden, metal-tipped wings and were unmistakable. Just the sight of them sent a shiver down Peter’s spine. They were dangerous. Peter knew the man could use them as a weapon, sharp metal cutting through the air when he spun, ready to slice flesh. Between his altered wings and his metal arm, the Winter Soldier was not to be underestimated. He could do a lot of damage.

But then, as Peter stopped on the edge of a building to watch the pair, he didn’t look dangerous at all. His shoulders were up, and his head ducked. His hair fell around his face like a shield. Steve kept a hand on his back, shielding him from the outside world as they walked. Peter followed on the rooftops, watching them closely. He still wasn’t sure what they were doing living in Brooklyn. For some reason, Peter thought they would be somewhere more official. It seemed strange to see them so domestic. 

Peter followed the pair all the way to Prospect Park, and in that time, he watched how people shied away from them and stared at the Winter Soldier’s deadly wings. His trial had been on the news; his crimes had been laid bare for the world to judge. His wings were recognizable, even if his face wasn’t. Due to the metal tips that had been grafted on, it was said he couldn’t hide his wings. Peter felt a pang of sympathy. That couldn’t be easy. 

Peter was a curious creature, something May always said would get him in trouble, and he found himself planning out a visit to see Steve and the Winter Soldier in his head. He could make it work. Maybe he could linger on the street and casually bump into them. Steve would remember him, wouldn’t he? 

He wasn’t even sure why he wanted to meet them. Perhaps it was how people stared at the Winter Soldier that made Peter want to reach out. He knew a thing or two about people looking at you in fear. 

Leaving them to stroll the park, Peter headed back towards Queens and thought up a plan. 

The next day, Peter still didn’t have a plan, but when did that ever stop him? He took a quick shower and threw on some clothes, going to the kitchen to grab a snack before he left. May was in the kitchen, sipping her coffee as she looked at her phone. 

Her eyes lifted from the screen when he walked in. “Hey, kiddo, you’re up and dressed early. Heading anywhere special?”

Peter opened the cupboard, grabbing the box of pop-tarts and taking a package out. He opened it with his teeth, tossing the wrapper and taking a bite. He answered about the mouthful of pastry. “Not really. Well, kinda. I’m not sure.”

“That’s very… vague, and that’s never a good thing with you. Does this have anything to do with Spider-man?”

Peter swallowed, wiping the crumbs off his mouth with the back of his hand. “Uh, no? I guess not really.”

“Peter, what’s going on? The last time I saw you dressed and willingly leaving your room before noon on a Sunday, you called me from jail later that day.”

“That’s not fair. I wasn’t arrested, not really. It was just a little light protesting anyway.”

May took a sip of her coffee, raising her brows. Setting her cup back on the table, she curled her hands around the mug and leveled her gaze on him. 

Peter sighed. “It’s nothing bad, but I guess it might not be well thought out?”

“Is that a question?”

Peter scrunched his nose. “I’m going to Brooklyn to see Captain America and the Winter Soldier.”

May’s eyes went wide. “Well, that’s something, but I got to ask Peter. You told me what Mr. Perfect said about your wings last time you met, and I can’t say I want you around him.”

“We worked it out, mostly. And it’s not really him I want to see. It’s Bucky, well, the Winter Soldier. You know, I don’t really know what to call him?”

May sighed, shaking her head. “I’m sure Mr. Barnes would be fine, It’s always nice to be polite, but I got to know why you are meeting them.  Do they know you’re coming?”

Peter frowned, nibbling on his pop tart. “Eh, not really. I just saw them yesterday when I was patrolling, and Mr. Barnes looked so sad. People avoided him, and I just… I know what that’s like. He looked like he could use a friend.”

“It’s not your job to fix everyone.”

“I know, but I can’t just pretend I didn’t see them. I want to say hi.”

“Mr. Stark might not like this plan of yours.”

Peter winced. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m not telling him.”

“Okay, Peter, but promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t want to see you hurt.” 

With a loose plan to go loiter around where Steve and Bucky were living, Peter headed to Brooklyn. Since he wasn’t in his suit, it took him a little longer, having to take the crowded subway. 

He made his way to the posh neighborhood, standing on the corner near Steve’s building, watching. He didn’t have to wait too long. Across the street, walking toward the brownstone, was Steve, canvas grocery bags in his hands. He jaywalked across the street, and Peter kicked himself into action. He jogged down the sidewalk to intercept him. 

Steve’s sharp eyes caught Peter quickly, his brow furrowing as he recognized him. Then he smiled, nodding his head to Peter. 

Peter returned the smile and waved awkwardly in his direction. He walked up to meet Steve by the steps of the building. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what to say. His reasoning for wanting to see him seemed weak. He bit his lip, trying to think of something to say.

Thankfully, Steve saved him from making things weird. 

“Hey, Peter, right?” Steve asked, adjusting his hold on the bags. 

“Yeah, um, we met at the tower. You probably remember my wings more than me.”

Steve frowned a little. “I’m sorry about how we met. I really put my foot in my mouth. It was disrespectful of me.” He shook his head. “Would you like to come in? I’m about to make some lunch unless you would rather not. I understand given how we met.”

Peter smiled. “It’s fine. I told you then. I forgive you, and yeah, I can eat. If you don’t mind feeding me. I’m not picky, so whatever you make is fine.”

Steve nodded, a crooked smile on his face. He nodded toward the steps. “Live right here, so we don’t need to go far. Follow me up. Oh, uh, I should say.” He paused, looking a little nervous. “My friend, well, he’s more than that, but um, he lives with me, and his wings.” He stopped, biting his lip. “You probably heard of him as the Winter soldier, but he goes by Bucky.”

Peter tried to look surprised, like he hadn’t stalked them the day before. “Oh, that’s fine. I’ve, uh, seen the news, but I’m not scared. I think I know more than most what it’s like to have people judge you on sight.”

Steve pressed his lips together but nodded. “Come on, he’ll be happy to meet you.”

“He doesn’t—he’s not like you were, right? Does he have problems with ravens?”

Steve’s face softened. “No, I don’t think he does. He’s not the type to judge people by their wings. I guess it’s just me who’s that stupid.”

Peter followed Steve inside, stepping aside once he was inside so Steve could lock the door. 

“Buck, I’m home, and I brought company, so you better be wearing pants.”

Peter’s eyebrows went up. “Does he usually not?”

Steve chuckled, leading the way down the hall into the kitchen. “More often than you’d think. I don’t think he even wore pants for Thanksgiving dinner. He basted the turkey wearing an apron and his boxers.”

Peter laughed. “That’s, um, really different. I would probably be the same, though, but I live with my aunt, and I don’t think she’d like it.”

Steve set the bags down on the table and started unpacking them. He loaded his arms with yogurts and walked over to the fridge. Peter ran toward it, opening the door for him. Steve smiled and thanked him. Peter went to the table and started passing things to Steve to put away. It didn’t take long for them to put everything away. 

Steve got out some lunch meat, lettuce, tomato, and mayo from the fridge, setting it all on the counter. He called over his shoulder for Peter to grab the bread from the top of the fridge. Peter grabbed it and tossed it to Steve.

“So, Peter, what brought you to the neighborhood?”

“Oh, I was out for a walk.”

“You live near here?” Steve asked.

“I’m from Queens, actually.”

Steve hummed. “How are things with you and Tony? I hear he had a little girl.”

“Yeah, her name’s Morgan. She’s pretty great. I guess you could say I’m like her brother. It’s kinda weird. I was always an only child, you know, but I wouldn’t change having her in my life for the world.”

“I was an only child, too. My mother raised me.”

Peter leaned against the counter. “I only have my aunt.”

“I bet she’s a strong woman to raise such a good kid.”

“Yeah,” Peter breathed. “She’s pretty great.”

He watched as Steve finished assembling the sandwiches, then looked to the doorway when his sharp hearing caught the sound of footsteps approaching from the hall. People couldn’t stop his eyes from going a little wide at seeing the famed Winter Soldier in red flannel pants, a tank, and fuzzy slippers. His hair was sticking up a little like he had just woken up. His eyes narrowed when he saw Peter and his head tilted to the side like a confused puppy. 

“Steve, why is there a teenager in the kitchen?”

Steve turned, mayo covered knife in his hand, threatening to drip on the floor. “Oh, this is Peter. Peter, meet Bucky, my sometimes better half.”

That only seemed to confuse Bucky more. “But why, Steve?”

“He’s a friend of Tony’s?”

Bucky’s eyes flicked between Peter and Steve. “You don’t sound sure.”

Steve sighed. “He’s not a threat, Buck. You can trust him. He’s like a son to Tony.”

That made Peter jerk back a little. He wondered if Tony had said those words? Not that they weren’t true. Tony and Peter were close, really close, but it stirred something in Peter’s chest to think of Tony referring to him that way. It made it more real somehow. 

“Yeah, right.” Bucky grabbed a stool and sat, his metal-tipped wings clinking on the tile floor. “That doesn’t really clear anything up, but okay. Did you put extra tomato on my sandwich?”

Steve just rolled his eyes and turned back to their lunch. Peter tried not to be obvious about it, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking at Bucky’s wings now that he was so close. The metal feathers that were grafted on looked razor-sharp. He made himself tear his gaze away from he got looking, turning instead to Steve and accepting his plate from him. 

“Go grab a seat, kid. Bucky doesn’t bite.”

Peter hesitated for a second, and Bucky seemed to notice, looking uncomfortable. Peter immediately felt terrible. The last thing he wanted to do was make Bucky feel bad about his wings. 

“I ain’t gonna hurt you, kid. I’d hide them, but well, that doesn’t work for me anymore.”

Peter shook his head. “I’m not scared of your wings. They’re actually really neat.”

Bucky raised a brow as he shook his head. “Neat, huh? Can’t say I’ve heard that one yet.”

Peter shrugged, taking a seat across from Bucky. “I, uh, don’t like to judge people because I don’t like it when people judge me. I know what it’s like to have people be scared of you.”

Bucky scoffed, while Steve frowned, chewing a bit of his sandwich. 

“He probably understands more than most, Buck,” Steve said after he swallowed.

“I don’t see how some kid could know a thing about what it’s like to have people rather jump into traffic than cross your path.”

Peter dropped his gaze, chewing his lip. When he looked up, Bucky was deconstructing his sandwich, mayo on his fingers. “I know because—”

“You don’t have to say, Peter. You don’t owe us anything.”

Peter frowned, considering his words. “Yeah, I know, but I don’t want to hide anymore. I’m tired of it. When Morgan was born, I knew I had to be better for her, a role model.” He glanced at Bucky and then stood, making both men look at him. Reaching into himself, he braced himself and then let his wings fall onto his back. The plumage rustled at being released. A stray black feather drifted to the floor. “So, yeah, I’m a raven.”

Bucky’s eyes widened for a second, and then his expression sobered. “I guess you do know.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” His wings twitched as he shuffled his feet. Deciding to leave his wings out, he sat back down and picked up his sandwich. He could feel Bucky’s eyes on him. Peter wondered what he was thinking. He knew Steve had said Bucky was understanding and not one to judge, but saying and doing were two different things. 

Peter flicked his gaze up from his sandwich to see Bucky and Steve in a silent conversation. Steve’s mouth twitched, and so did his eyebrow, while Bucky’s head tilted to the side like saying, “Really, Steve.”

Peter dropped his eyes back to his plate and chewed his food. His stomach felt knotted, and his hunger was gone. Setting his sandwich back on his plate, Peter cleared his throat and glanced at Steve. “I can go.”

Steve’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “What? No. It’s fine. You’re fine, Peter, really.”

“Then why the…” He waved his finger between them. “You were making faces.”

“It’s not about you, not really,” said Bucky. “I was just surprised Stevie here took it so well.”

“Oh, yeah.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “He, um, didn’t really. He saw my wings before, at the tower. That’s how we met.”

“You don’t need to beat around the bush. The way I reacted was despicable. I had no excuse, especially after seeing how people treated Bucky.”

Peter shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Bucky sighed, sitting his hands on the table, mayo clinging to his fingers from where he’d peeled the tomatoes off, even though Peter was pretty sure he had asked for extras. “Don’t be too hard on the punk. He can be a little slow, but for the record, I wouldn’t ever judge you, kid. I think your wings are pretty neat myself.”

Peter huffed a laugh. “Yeah, I’m starting to think that, too.”

Bucky smiled, picking up a piece of lettuce and popping it in his mouth. “The way I see it, kid. People like me and you, we got to stick together.”

“I think what Bucky’s saying is, if you ever need a friend, someone who understands, you know where we live.”

Bucky licked his finger. “Yeah, just maybe don’t tell, Stark.”

Peter didn’t know all the details of what happened, but he did know from the news that the Winter Soldier had killed Tony’s parents. Peter didn’t know if Tony had forgiven him or not, but he found himself agreeing with Bucky. Maybe it would be best not to mention it. 

“Can I ask you something?” Peter said, scrunching up his nose as he looked at the disaster that was Bucky’s plate. Bucky raised his brows. “Um, what did the sandwich ever do to you?”

“I’ve been asking myself that since we were kids. My ma hit him with a spoon the first time she saw him do it.”

Bucky huffed. “The shit I put up with.”

Peter laughed. Maybe he should have been a little scared, sitting at the same table as the former Winter Soldier, but Peter didn’t see a dangerous assassin, a deadly arm, or razor-sharp wings. He saw a guy who picked apart his sandwich and laughed with his friends. He saw a man that didn’t judge him for being a raven, and that meant something to him. 

Peter thought that if Tony saw this side of Bucky, maybe he would forgive him. He wasn’t scary like this. He was human. It might not be easy, but Peter decided then that he would try to mend the rift between Bucky and Tony. It was the right thing to do. 

XXX

Peter rang the doorbell and waited for Bucky or Steve to answer. It had been two weeks since he’d first come over for sandwiches with them. After lunch the first day, Peter had programmed his number into Bucky’s phone before he left. He hadn’t expected to hear from him again soon, but a few days later, he had called Peter to check on him. 

Today Peter was stopping for a purely selfish reason. He had a report due for AP History on World War Two and the Commandos, and who better than Steve and Bucky to help him write it. 

Bucky opened the door, thankfully wearing pants, and let him in. They went to the living room and sat on the couch. Setting his bag on the coffee, he pulled out his notebook. 

“Is Steve here, too?” Peter asked, digging for a pen. Once he found one, he set up his phone to record. 

Bucky turned, shouting over his shoulder. “Hey, punk, your presence is requested, and bring snacks. I’m hungry. I think there’s a box of those burnt Cheez-it things on the counter.”

“Burnt Cheez-its?” Peter asked.

“Extra toasty or some shit. They’re addicting as fuck.”

“Language, Bucky. He’s a minor,” Steve called from the kitchen. 

Bucky rolled his eyes, and Peter laughed. 

“So, where do you want to start?” Bucky asked as Steve walked in with the crackers, taking a seat in the chair.

“From the beginning, I guess. Tell me what it was really like.”

Steve passed the box to Bucky. “It was nothing like I ever imagined, but maybe I should start with how I got there. It began with a man named Abraham Erskine.”

Peter listened, recording on his phone and taking notes as Steve and Bucky recounted their time in the war. Four hours and a box of Cheez-its later, Peter had a pile of notes, and the three of them were laughing over stories of the Commandos. 

No one mentioned when Peter showed his wings as he got up to get a drink, and Peter stopped noticing the sound of Bucky’s clinking when he moved. He was starting to see that people were complex, and maybe no one ever had it easy. Tony struggled with what was left of his wings, Bucky’s had been changed into weapons, and Peter’s were considered a bad omen, but they were all marks of strength in their own way. If only the rest of the world could see it that way, too.   

[forlornmelody]

Take Your Girlfriend To Work Day

Rating: E (it’s smut with a little bit of plot thrown in)

Fandom: Mass Effect Andromeda

Ship: Sara Ryder/Suvi Anwar

Summary:   Sara Ryder has Concerns™ about taking Suvi with her on a mission. But she's always wanted to show her the badlands of Kadara. What could go wrong?

Linkage: clicky

Note: Written for FallingOverSideways over at @spectre-requisitions-exchange. Now that reveals have happened, I can finally share this all with you!

-*-*-*

Sara would give Suvi the entire galaxy right now. The way she stretches across the tangled sheets, the light of a distant sun making her hair glow like fire. How the light glistens on her sated body, and catches in her eyes like the pools on Kadara. It’s probably why Sara sticks her foot in her mouth while her breaths are still ragged.

“I wish you had been there with me.”

Suvi’s smile vanishes and Sara feels it like a pain in her gut. “Sorry?”

Shit. “I’m not mad.” Sara swallows, pushing an errant lock out of Suvi’s eyes. “It just would’ve been nice to have you on Kadara with me, before the vaults went online.”

“When the water was toxic with sulfuric acid?” Sufi’s brow wrinkles like it did when she poured over the Scourge data, looking for solutions to a big-ass problem. 

Just keep digging your grave and lie in it, Sara. “I mean. I loved the look on your face when you looked over the data I gathered.” Sara traces the line of Suvi’s swollen lips, smug knowing their romp made them that way. “It would have been even better for you to see it in person.”

Suvi’s lips twist as she bites the inside of them in thought. “I’m sure there’s still useful data for us. Maybe we could go together next time?”

“I would love that!” Sara rolls them so that her hands are braced on either side of Suvi’s pillow, and she peppers her face with kisses, imagining them swimming together in a hot spring, or a cold one, with bikinis on, or not. Drying off on a ridiculously large beach towel and licking that now potable water right off her--

“You’re going tomorrow, right? Maybe I could come with you.”

Sara’s lips freeze on the hollow where her neck meets her shoulder, and Suvi giggles at the slack-jawed expression she gives her. “Tomorrow?”

“Aren’t you going to Ditaeon to talk with Tate about trade?”

“...Yes.” Christmas Tate’s not what sets the Pathfinder's heart racing. It’s not his colony, either. It’s all the mayhem around it. Sara can all too easily imagine an eiroch crushing her girlfriend against a boulder or rylkor whipping her off a cliff with its tail. She needs to find a reason for Suvi to stay behind. Maybe she needs more arms training? Or they could wait until they fit her with some armor? Watch some training vids? 

“Why don’t I go with you?” Suvi trails her fingertips down Sara’s spine, and suddenly she’s spineless. 

“Sure!” Sara says brightly. This is a bad idea, isn’t it? 

----

Turns out Cora’s not much different in height or build than Suvi, so the human commando loans her a set of armor, and a manual on how to care for it. Suvi walks around in it stiffly, and Sara would find it comical were it not for how the components accentuate some of Suvi’s best features. As much as she shouldn’t, not right now, Sara can’t help but imagine removing it piece by piece as she kisses her senseless. 

“Worried about me, Ryder?” Suvi says as they make their landing. 

The airlock disengages, and Sara looks around for any sign of danger. “Just don’t lick any rocks,” she says wryly. 

“But--”

“No, Suvi.” Both her and Vetra say it together.

“Fiiine.”

-----

Suvi loves Kadara. Or maybe she loves being on the ground for a change. Either way, Dr. Suvi Anwar sits on her knees, scanning a small rock, and Sara Ryder can’t look away. The sun catches in Suvi’s flame-colored hair, making Ryder wish she had brought her here sooner. She aches at the soft smile on her face, the warm glow in her blue eyes. Ryder’s in the middle of pulling out her omni tool to take a picture when--

Sara. There are weapons warming up behind you. It appears they are aiming for you, Vetra Nix, and Dr. Anwar. I suggest-- 

“Got it, Sam.” Sara Ryder says nothing to Suvi, only dropping her in a tackle and ruining the picture-perfect moment. Actually, whatever exiles who were shooting at them ruined the moment, and the thought makes Sara’s blood boil. 

Suvi squeaks from underneath her, but she doesn’t protest, especially after the first rounds hit the rocks behind them, and their shields shimmer with the ricochets. “Pathfinder?” she whispers cautiously.

“Exiles,” Sara growls under her breath. This is not how she pictured pinning Suvi on Kadara. 

“I thought--”

“They’re still around. Still wanting to shoot us, apparently.” Sara shoves Suvi behind a bolder, and squats next to her, pulling out her pistol, and deploying her combat drone. It dashes over, firing beams at their assailants, the cool evening air warming in its wake. 

Vetra looks at Sara sideways. “Really, Ryder? A drone?”

“What? Peebee showed me how to use it last night.”

Suvi glances between them, her eyes widening. “Sara?”

“It’ll be fiiiine.” On cue, the drone crumbles to the ground. Peebee will kill her later. “Well, shit.”

“We’re doomed.” Vetra sighs, powering up her assault rifle. 

“Oh ye of little faith.” Sara switches to her shotgun, firing off shots while her biotics cool down. 

Suvi giggles, and Vetra groans. “At least one of us is having a good time.”

Ryder really shouldn’t have brought Suvi with them. A little skirmish like this rarely fazes her anymore--more like target practice than a fight worth worrying about. Waste of ammo, really. But her heart thuds in her chest and her neck and shoulders tighten up at the thought of a bullet hitting the scientist next to her. Suvi’s so gentle, and kind. She’s not made for violence like this. Sweat gathers beneath Sara’s hard suit and her under armor, and itches around her joints. Her arm aches and her temples start to throb. Just a little bit longer---

There.

One exile remains, a sharpshooter with a sniper rifle that tries to pick them off like drops of water torture. Ryder ducks back behind their bolder, counting the seconds between shots. One Andromeda...Two Andromeda...Three--

Sara Ryder charges full force into her enemy, smashing him with a nova that sends his innards flying every which way. Turning with an adrenaline-fueled, shit-eating grin on her face, Sara looks at the boulder, craning to see the look on Suvi’s face. “Not bad, huh?”

“RYDER!  MOVE!” 

The ground rumbles beneath Sara’s feet, throwing her off balance. Enemy Krogan. 

“Shit!” Ryder screams as the berserker hauls her up in the air. Blood rushing to her head, Sara looks down at the battered Krogan growling up at her. “I thought I put you down already.”

“RAAAAH.” 

“Shit’s right! I’m out of ammo.” Vetra glowers, letting out a litany of Turian words SAM can’t translate. 

Don’t panic. Just grab your pistol and--One problem. It must have fell from her holster when she left the ground. The Krogan swings her back like a wet towel. 

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. 

Her biotics won’t fire--still cooling down. Ryder’s neck and temples still flare with heat. 

Sorry, Suvi. I--

A shot rings out, and Ryder sucks in a breath, bracing for a bullet wound. 

The Krogan drops her, and Sara rolls out before his body falls on top of her. What the hell??

Her eyes meet “SUVI??”

Nudging the Krogan’s body with her toe, Suvi blows the steam off the barrel of her pistol, and holsters it. She glances down at Ryder, a shy smile on her face. “You alright, Sara?” Suvi reaches out with her hand to help her up. 

“Damn, Anwar. Didn’t know you had it in you.” Vetra comes out from behind the boulder, brushing herself off. 

Sara doesn’t take her hand, too busy doing the math in her head. “Who taught you how to shoot?”

“Drack. He took me out on Elaaden. Said it would help my skills as a geologist if I learned how to shoot rocks.”

“Of course he did.” Ryder groans as she stands, checking herself for injuries. Her shoulder throbs from being yanked around like a rag doll, but other than that. “Anything I should see Lexi about, SAM?”

My scans indicate nothing but some swelling and inflammation. Though a visit would--

“I’ll see her later, SAM.” Sara has an idea. “Hey, Vetra. I think the Nomad needs an oil change.” She walks over, rummaging through the storage compartment for a very conspicuous picnic basket. 

“The Nomad doesn’t even...oh. Yeah. I’ll get right on that.” Turians don’t roll their eyes, but the way her mandibles twitch, Ryder bets Vetra would be right now if she did. Swinging into the driver’s seat, she starts the engine, and Sara scrambles to get the storage compartment shut in time. 

“Catch ya later!”

-----

“Do you ever miss them?” Their picnic long over, Sara and Suvi stretch out on the blanket, watching the sun set. 

“My parents?”

“Yeah.”

“All the time.” Suvi stares out across the lake, and Sara gets the feeling she’s not watching the clouds change color. 

“How did you find the strength to leave them?”

Suvi says nothing, and Sara wonders if she went too far as she listens to birds call in her silence. When she finally does speak Sara strains to hear her over the lap of the shoreline. “I couldn’t stay behind when there was a whole galaxy out there to explore.” She looks at Ryder, sorrowful, but without regret in her eyes. “I was miserable when I considered staying behind. My parents could tell. I was making them miserable with me.” A small laugh escapes her mouth. “It was them who told me to go. Told me they’d miss me if I left, but they’d miss me even more if I stayed with them.” Her smile slips away, and Sara would give anything to bring it back.

Think, Ryder, think. “Nice shooting earlier. You saved my life.” Sara runs her fingers down Suvi’s cheek, holding her breath as she waits for her face to change.

The smile doesn’t come back. Suvi pulls away, looking off towards Kadara Port. “Sara, I don’t think violence suits me.”

Sara drops her hand. “Oh.”

Suvi immediately draws it back to her cheek. “Don’t get me wrong. I admire what you do--the risks you take, the hard decisions you make.” She closes her eyes, taking a settling breath. “But I’d rather make my hard decisions in a lab, not with a gun.”

“I understand.”

Biting her lip, Suvi dares to search her eyes. “You do?”

“Yeah. We’re different. I’m better out in the field kicking ass, and you’re better in the lab…. doing...sciency stuff.”

Suvi’s laugh spills from her mouth like a bubbling brook. “Ryder.”

“I mean it.” Sara takes her chin. “I don’t want you to change who you are just to please me.” She’s already nose to nose with her before Suvi realizes she’s being kissed. And Sara wouldn’t have it any other way. 

While Suvi’s usually slow to kiss back, when she does, she makes up for lost time, always. She presses in, already reaching for Sara’s hair tie, pulling her hair out of that perky ponytail and winding her fingers through her hair. The motion pulls Sara closer, tighter against her mouth and she can’t help but part Suvi’s lips with her tongue, grabbing the collar of her uniform in her fist, and holding her close. 

Their hands and mouths move like binary stars, so close, but never close enough. Sara groans in frustration as her fingers roam across Suvi’s lab coat, searching for that elusive zipper. Suvi giggles, taking her hand and guiding the zipper down with her, her eyes dark with want. As the uniform falls from Suvi’s shoulders, Sara traces her tongue across her now bare skin, smiling at her goosebumps and drinking in her sharp breaths. Each freckle pattern forms new constellations, and Sara writes the racy mythologies to go with them. 

In Suvi’s sighs and goose-bumped skin, Sara finds a paradise better than the Initiative could have ever hoped for. She unhooks her bra, and finds the path between her breaths, scanning the terrain with her eyes and making contact with her hands. Suvi arches into her touch, and Sara smiles against her skin. “You mean the world to me, you know that?”

Suvi opens her mouth, but her sweet nothing is lost in her moan as Sara’s lips close around her tit. She should really take her time. They have little to interrupt them here, with the Tempest far away and Sam scanning the perimeter for trouble. But it’s been days since Sara had the chance to make love to the center of her universe, and so she dives headfirst into the gravity well, pulling the rest of Suvi’s uniform down with her. 

“I’ve missed you,” Sara whispers, trailing her lips down Suvi’s stomach. 

“Ryder. You see me every day.” 

“Not the same thing, and you know it.” Sara gives her a pointed look, and she can’t help but smile at Suvi’s parted lips. She sits up, running her fingertips up and down Suvi’s thighs, outside and inside, gently nudging them apart. 

Suvi sucks in her breath, and Sara pats her skin as she leans down. “Breathe, Suvi. I swear the air here is safe.” 

“Shh, you.” Suvi chuckles. 

Sara breathes in the scent of her pubis mons, grinning wickedly. “Make me.”

Suvi’s eyes widen, and for a moment Sara wonders if she should apologize, but then Suvi’s fingers grip her by her ponytail, pressing her between her legs and it is glorious. Holy shit holy shit holy shiiiiiiit. She never took Suvi for a dominant one, but Sara definitely want to explore more of this side of her. Tasting her, Sara gives her folds those nice long licks that Suvi loves so much. Her pushup routine comes in handy as her lover writhes beneath her. Just as Suvi starts to moan louder, Sara pulls back to wet her finger.

“Is this too much?” Suvi asks breathlessly. 

Her own mouth feels dry, and Sara reaches over to gulp some water from her cannister. “Not at all. Keep going.” She blushes at her own words. 

Suvi pushes her hands away, sitting up. Sara blinks, watching her go. “Actually, I have new experiment I want to run by you.” Grabbing Sara’s shoulders, Suvi presses her onto her back. 

Laughing, Sara replies. “Oh? What’s your hypothesis?”

“That you’ll love me sitting on your face.” Suvi’s cheeks redden as much as her hair. 

“Mm, that’s hard to quantify.” Sara smudges her lips together playfully. “But we can try it.”

Suvi crawls over her, and Sara groans as her scent overwhelms her senses. She whispers her name into her folds, sliding one finger, then two into her warmth. Gasping, Suvi grinds against her, gripping the top of her head. Sara fingers faster and harder, sucking on her clit until Suvi’s nails dig into her scalp and she calls out her name. 

The sun’s far too bright when Suvi rolls off her. “Holy shit. Holy shit,” Sara swears breathlessly. 

“Mmhm.” Suvi kisses her sloppily, running her hand down Sara’s side. “And what are...mm... our findings? 

Sara laughs into the crook of her neck. “I think your hypothesis may be right. But further tests are needed.”

“Mm.” Suvi presses a finger to her lips, looking up at the clouds as if the answer might be found there. “Perhaps we should increase our sample size?”

That notion jolts Sara off her back. “You mean like a threesome?”

“No!” Suvi laughs so loudly Sara swears the whole valley can hear them. “I meant you. Sitting on mine.” 

“Oh.” Sara stretches. “Maybe next time.” She kisses the pout right off Suvi’s lips. “Right now, I want to kiss you while you…” She grasps Suvi’s hand, guiding it between her legs. “While you…. demonstrate your expertise on the subject.”

“Sara!” Suvi shakes her head in mock humility. “I’m hardly an expert.”

Sara leans over, stealing another heated kiss. “Then maybe you should…” She can’t help her laugh. “....do a more in-depth study?” Their laughs sink into moans as Suvi trace and probes between Sara’s legs, putting just the right amount of pressure to make her beg. 

Suvi grins against her mouth, teasing her long and light, until Sara’s gripping her so hard, she swears she’ll leave bruises. Thank the stars Suvi wears long sleeves. “You like it rough, Sara?”

“Yes, please. Please.” 

Suvi’s teeth graze the skin of her neck in reply, hooking her fingers inside her and beckoning her to come undone. 

Maybe it’s minutes, maybe it’s hours later, when Sara’s always pushing Suvi’s bangs out of her eyes just to watch them fall again. “Y’know. I definitely learned something today.”

“What’s that?”

“I should bring you planetside more often.”

[achilleasfury]

Sally play with me Oneshot

Revenge. She wanted revenge. She needed revenge. She couldn't help herself. He had done so much to her. He'd killed her. He'd broken her. And she had to do the same for him. The same thing settled with like. She could die no more. He couldn't hurt her anymore. But she could do something for him. Sally was standing in front of a lake. Only a few meters behind her, barrier tapes had been set up, on the ground the outline of a figure was drawn with chalk. Until a few hours ago her body had been lying there. She had not left his side, had not wanted to leave him. She had waited for ages for people to find her, people who could help her. She hadn't realized she was dead until the passerby who had found her started screaming and crying. An icy smile settled on her lips, wiping everything cute, everything lovable away from her. She had no time to be cute. She had to use her time wisely. Her gaze wandered to the ax still lying there, as evidence. She wouldn't be examined until tomorrow. She could borrow the weapon until then. The brown-haired girl raised her arm a little, pointed her finger at the ax. The ax began to tremble, rose into the air, flew towards Sally. She took the handle in her hand, weighed the weight. Her smile deepened. Revenge would be fun. Now she would play her game with her uncle. When John 'Johnny' Williams came to his apartment that day, tired and exhausted from his job, something was different. It wasn't obvious, but he could feel it. Normally he was greeted by the soft sound of his washing machine, this morning he had turned it on. He had had to wash the blood from his shirt and jacket. What was going on? John went through a shower, but he shook it off. Probably he had just set the time wrong and his laundry had been ready for hours. Still, his mistrust did not disappear so easily. He would check. He was a little uneasy about it. "God, John, what can you do? Ever since that little bitch died, you've been paranoid. No one can prove anything to you," he tried to calm himself, which he failed to do. At that moment he wished he hadn't let his ax into Sally's head. Unarmed he entered his kitchen, ran straight to his washing machine. It was open. "What the-" he started. His eyes were on the inside. His clothes were torn. At that moment he heard a giggle. "Who's there?" John drove around. That giggle was so familiar. How did he know it-- Sally. But it couldn't be. She was dead. He'd killed her with his own hands. It was impossible to survive that. He had seen her head split open. The blood had run down her face, across her beautiful brown hair. "Hello, Uncle Johnny. Did you miss me? Did you find someone else to play this game with? I brought you your ax, even though you gave it to me. I don't like it, it's not a good gift. I don't enjoy it. You've given me better ones. But, I have a present for you today," her voice slid from a childish, playful tone to a cold, emotionless one. Only the pitch of her voice suggested that the owner was a child, had been. How could Sally be here? Why did she have his ax-- no. He didn't want to die yet. "Sally Sal. Hey! You broke the rules. Every rule breaking requires a penalty," John tried to talk his way out of it. "Oh, yeah. I know, Uncle Johnny. Only now we play by my rules. I'm sure you understand that. Your game's been canceled. My game's started. And you've already broken the only rule." "Oh, yeah?" he laughed dryly, hiding his nervousness. "I don't even know the rules. How am I supposed to know when I broke them? And Sally, another one. I don't play games with naughty slut brats," he spat out. "He didn't see his victim yet, nor did he want to. At that moment she disgusted him. "The only rule was, 'John isn't allowed to kill Sally. And you didn't follow it. "For this, you will now receive your punishment," he sounded Sally giggling again. She didn't seem to care about the insult, it just seemed to roll off her. Then John saw her. Sally floated before him, they were at eye level, the ax resting in her hand, her dried blood on it. "Hello, Uncle Johnny," and again she giggled. That goddamn giggle sent shivers down his spine one by one. But he couldn't think about that now. "You know, I've thought long and hard about revenge. I didn't know how. But now I have an idea. As we all know, you settle the same thing with the same thing," she let go of the ax, but it just stayed in the air. "You'll die like me, Uncle Johnny. And you will not return," Sally ordered formally. She raised her hand, pointed at John. "Kill him," she now really ordered. Her uncle couldn't make out who she was saying that to, when his ax rushed towards him, sinking into the top of his head with incredible force. It broke as easily as if you were cutting butter. Only the noise sounded so obnoxious that Sally had to cover her ears, her eyes pinched together. When she opened them again, there was blood everywhere. It stuck to the walls, to Uncle Johanny's white shirt, to his face, which was split in two from forehead to tip of the nose. Sally couldn't help it, she was choking. If she was alive, she'd have thrown up by now. But when she looked up again, there was a smile on her lips. "I won, Uncle Johnny," her look of disgust, she looked at the body, then shook her head. "I'm going to get another friend, a playmate. A better one than you," the brown-haired girl simply floated through the ceiling, looking at the evening ahead. Then she heard the sirens. Sally's smile deepened. "I wonder if the police are clever enough to see through my game," she asked herself. Then she began to fly, no longer hovering in one spot. As Sally's mother entered Sally's room again that evening, tears obscured her vision, something caught her eye. "Where's the teddy bear?" Panic flooded through her voice. Sally had loved this teddy, they had wanted to bury him with her. "He can't be gone. No. No. NO!", the woman cried out in agony, sank to the ground. Her smile became sadder, softer. "I'm sorry, Mommy, but I need a friend. I'm getting bored," she pressed the teddy bear closer to her chest. "But I still have to make him look suitable, don't I, Mr. Death? "You still need a look that suits me."

[elizabeth-234]

The Hourglass

Previous Chapter Twenty: Home 

Hi all. Hope you're doing well. Happy New Year and Holidays. This is the penultimate chapter!

Chapter Twenty-One: Turning Back Time 

“I’m Spiderman.”

He paced back and forth in front of the couch overcome with an odd wave of déjà vu. Peter couldn’t bear to look at them once the words spilled forth from his lips. Would Tony’s eyes crinkle at the corners like when he was trying to solve a tough problem? Would Rhodey smile despite the tension in his forehead? He shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants, thankful despite the anxiety surrounding him that they had thought of getting him new clothes.

Tony spoke first and Peter’s breath held, pent up in his chest. “Kid, you’re full of surprises but a tad too late. Nice first suit though. Way better than mine.”


“Shut up, Tony.”

Peter turned to stare at them all wide eyes and gaping mouth. They chuckled but motioned for him to move closer. He settled at the end of the couch, once again touched by their thoughtfulness and speechless waited for them to talk.

“We know you, Peter. We’re family and we’re going to help.”

His throat burned under Rhodey’s concerned appraisal and at Tony’s admission. How could he have forgotten? The word family, the concept of family was just as foreign to him as the apartment was on his arrival back to 2017, but he should’ve known they wouldn’t let him forget for too long. They were a family, a team, and Ross was threatening to take it away from him. Peter couldn’t let that happen. To have something so previous torn away once he’d just gotten it back would ruin him forever.

“We need to get him.” His shaking hands mirrored the tremors in his voice. “He has to pay.”

Peter remembered the first time he saw Ross, the eerie way he entered his apartment, the disdain and hatred in his eyes piercing into him. Bile rose in his mouth as he remembered the careless way he nudged May’s side as she lay on the ground. But then his eyes turned to Tony and Rhodey who staring at him not with pity but understanding, acceptance. Peter thought of their lives what they could be and what he wanted his to be. No grand fight with Ross was included. Somewhere remote and safe with the three of them is all he wanted. More than revenge, more than his fear and hatred. Peter just wanted to live a normal life.  

“Wait,” He whispered. “I don’t care about that. We need to run or go somewhere he can’t find us. I want to be normal. I can’t even remember what that feels like now but is it too much to ask for?”

“That may not be possible,” Tony replied in slow intervals. “See, we haven’t been sitting around on our laurels for 25 years. We’ve been trying to pinpoint Ross’s motives and reasons. Why he was targeting certain people and what his next moves are.”

“He found you from the hospital because of the blood loss you had.”

“You actually got the blood of one of the Hulk progenitors. We did some digging at the hospital, thanks to a donation, and found out that only that would work with your… shall we say arachnid leaning blood. Ross, the bastard he is, found this out as well and traced you through time. He found out the connection between us and the future. So, it’s all because of you”

“It’s always about me.” Peter gripped his knees until his knuckles were coiled tense.

“No, don’t listen to him.” Rhodey said. “Your connection to us certainly added to the intrigue but it’s hard to say if he would have stopped you from going back for any other reason. We really don’t know that yet.”

“But we will.” Tony said and nodded at his friend serious and solemn until a tinge of excitement entered his eyes. He turned to face Peter fully. “But we’ve found him at long last. Of course, it was too easy to find him after all this time so we know he revealed himself on purpose. He probably knows you know everything. We hadn’t planned on coming back here so our attempts to neutralize his surveillance is mediocre at best.”

“Sorry I was hypothermic and not thinking straight.” Peter said sarcastically while his eyes roamed around the room as he could spot any hidden cameras. “Okay, so when do we turn him over to the police?”

Tony snorted before raising an eyebrow. Both of them hold similar expressions that made Peter’s neck heat up.

“What? Have you hit you head harder than we thought?” Rhodey said in a quiet tone.

“Kid, we don’t need the police and Ross probably owns them anyway.”  

Peter narrowed his eyes at them, trying to gauge how apt they would be to a fight but he couldn’t get the winkles on their faces or the small bits of grey hairs out of his mind.

“But you guys are old now and, no offense, probably couldn’t fight them the same as when you were younger.”

“Ouch Peter. That’s harsh, isn’t it Tones? I think we’ve got some fight in us left.”

“Kid, you do know who we are, right?” Tony’s eyebrows were raised so high and Peter could tell he was on the cusp of full-bellied laughs, but it do anything to jog his memory.

“Tony and Rhodey?” He said with an uncertain waver.

“Holy shit. Holy shit you will never live this down. I will never let you live this down. Rhodey remind me to remind Peter about this every day for the rest of our lives. I forgot you have this weird homeschooled vibe going.”

“I was not homeschooled!” Peter said hotly wanting to get the conversation over with.

Tony nodded at Rhodey who leaned over the arm of the couch and picked up the hamburger phone. They ignored him when he muttered a demand for them to tell him and expletive.

“We told you, Peter. We haven’t just been sitting around these years.”

Rhodey finished dialing on the phone and hung it up. Nothing happened for a moment and another curse was on the tip of his tongue when the wall moved. His jaw dropped. The wall opened up. Peter couldn’t help but wonder if he was in the bat cave or something like it because there inside the wall in fancy, gleaming glass cases was the Iron Man and War machine suits.

Maybe he had hit his head or maybe Peter was out of touch because it was like the fog had cleared in his head. How had he never connected that? How had he not seen through it?

“Holy shit. You’re…What… Really??? I’m a dumbass.”

“You said it not us.”

Peter thought back to when they first met, the ease at which Tony broke free from that place with him in tow. Their means financially and knowledge of himself. It all made sense in a strange way but Peter couldn’t help the awe he felt. The strange fate he’d seemed to have fallen into. His family was special. They were heroes, something Peter always wished he was. But they were special not because of that but in addition to that. They had found Peter, cared for him from nightmares, sleeping and waking. He’d journeyed across time for them and they had waited for him.

Peter smiled and grabbed their hands squeezing tight. He felt the stirring of sand across his skin but ignore it. He was here now and nothing could stop them.

“Let’s do this.”

-

The tension hummed between them at all hours of the day, followed them and cloaked their actions in an ineffable awareness of what was to come. Instead of eating breakfast like they used to with a full table and laughter at every course, the table was laden with plans, serious discussion, and too few waffles. They whispered about that place; painfully went through their time there although that particular conversation left them all with damp eyes and heavy hearts.

The apartment, twisted with time and now with a new unfamiliarness, left Peter at ends with himself. He wasn’t moving through time anymore but time was moving through him. Plans were made and contingencies were cemented, and all the time Peter felt like he needed to fight, to let out a scream. They were so close but the biggest hurdle was left in front of them.

It unfolded like so many things in Peter’s life. In a blink of an eye they were in the suits they spent hours fixing.  Red, gold and silver stood on the hill overlooking the lake. It was fitting, he supposed, to have the final showdown be there overlooking the icy waters holding the sand he’d fallen into.

They’d woken up to an alarm blaring through the apartment, invading the halls and the living room where they had taken to sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor and couch. With cold precision they got into their outfits hoping the suits would bolster their nerves and create an impenetrable strength.

Ross stood at the base of the hill, looking with a cool detachment at them. His white mustache stood out in the dust light along with the hordes of men on either side of him.

“You would do well to abandon any hope of success. You know you can’t win this fight. I know you can’t win.” Peter fisted his hands at his sides and took a step forward. Tony placed his in front of his chest.

“Careful now, Peter.”

“As my mother used to say,” Tony said projecting down in his confident airy manner. “You’re too damn stubborn for your own good. You won’t get away with what you’re planning.”

“Time works mysteriously, doesn’t it? Maybe I already have.” Cold pooled in his stomach. Ross knew about the time travel but did he know how? Peter didn’t even know how it happened. They all tensed at the implications. Was their fight lost before it had even begun?

Tony growled under his breath. But it was Rhodey who remained silent in his calculations, almost too still until with a burst of movement his blasters ignited and he was off toward Ross.

“Rhodes! Shit.” Tony yelled. He was down the hill following his friend. Peter was frozen where he was. Heedless of his nerves and the will to fight, fear pooled in his stomach. It didn’t matter how many times they went over plans, how many hours they spent in anticipation. Something held him back for a moment. But a second was all it took. Rhodey impacted with the first man who protected Ross and Tony was right beside him before too long. They used every weapon and trick in their arsenal including the teamwork they’d honed through the years. Person after person rose up as they fought the previous down. All the while Peter saw that Ross was smirking.  His cool, grey eyes watching with a sick glee as Tony and Rhodey fought on, tiring themselves out.

Peter realized he was playing with them. Using their battle for his pleasure. Ross’s eyes flickered up to where Peter was standing and then he pulled something out of his pocket. The metal glinted with the light of the setting sun and chaos around them. It looked familiar in its shape but Peter couldn’t quite place it until it was put into us. Ross moved like a feline, confident and strong. The men parted around him and razor fast he was in front of Rhodey. He plunged the device in his neck and Rhodey coughed, sputtering blood before falling without anytime to counter or defend himself.

Tony turned his head and let out a strangled scream. He swore at Ross and fought harder to get where Ross was standing. This time Ross let his opponent come to him with a smile on his face. Tony, emboldened by anger and despair, ran toward Ross not noticing the others were letting him through, not caring this was the plan.

Peter felt a shift of the sand around him and tugged against it harder, willing himself into movement. It was giving way against his efforts and as Tony stood in front of Ross, he was let free. Peter began running down the hill, breath stammering in his chest. He watched as Tony punched Ross, got the upper hand, and then witnessed as Ross smiled again, cold and deadly, before he spun Tony around and pressed the metal device against his neck. He whispered something to Tony before pressing it further into his neck. Blood ran down the corners of his mouth. Tony clawed the hands squeezing his neck. Ross pressed harder. Peter ran faster but he was too late. Tony’s eyes rolled back into his head. Iron Man suit and all, slipped out of Ross’s arm and fell to the ground.

Peter fell to his knees in front of his friends. Their eyes unmoving in unnatural stillness. He reached out his hands and placed them on their cold metal suits. How could they be down so easy? They were Avengers, they were fighters and they were gone.

He glared at Ross burning with anger. Ross’s smile moved not an inch. He stepped toward them and nudged Rhodey’s side causing his arm to flop over. Flashbacks of May’s apartment, f that day rose in his mind.

“Leave them alone! Leave me alone!” He screamed and tried to gather them away from Ross. Ross bent forward and plucked Peter up, too easily for any normal human. He sneered at Peter heedless of his flailing arms and dragged the metal down his side. Burning pain erupted in his stomach. His hands clutched at the wound, the blood beginning to drip down and staining his red suit dark maroon. Ross twisted the metal device in his gut before dropping Peter to the ground next to the two fallen Avengers.

“I don’t want you. I told you, Peter, death will always follow you. Time and space are no concern because of who you are and nothing will ever change what is to be. Have all your efforts ever changed anything? Look what happened,” He said motioned to them in his arms. “Your friends are dead and there is nothing you can do to stop it. I knew you were the key. We had planned for it to be done so much earlier, when Stark was going to die by suicide and James would fall and freeze in this damned lake but then something happened. You happened and nothing we did would change the outcomes. They lived despite our plans. But then we discovered you. It’s ironic you led them to their demise at the end when you worked so hard to save them earlier. I told you to remember those words, Peter Parker.”

He stared at the man’s grey eyes. The cold glint in them tinged with glory for his cause. To rid the world of two good men, two men who would do anything, including give their lives for their friends and the world. But Peter wasn’t the same boy he’d been in the apartment with May all those years ago. He had spun through time itself to get back here. He had traveled years and space to be right here. The sand spun around him and he knew it he could win. Peter believed everything had led to this moment.

Peter knew time now. Could see the hourglass in the reflection of those evil eyes. It was within his reach. Sand particles gravitated toward him like an old friend. The lake completely iced over behind them seemed to hum in Peter’s ears.

He hugged his friends closer for a moment. Staring at their empty eyes and faces devoid of a smile. Ross laughed at him, basking in his triumph and Peter took a deep breath. He held his stomach and felt the blood seep out of him. Death indeed did follow him through life, dogging his steps and shadowing him but he had to do something before it could take him as well. His time wasn’t over yet. He could save them.

Peter concentrated on the sand pieces around him, falling and settling on his person, and stilled it around him like a cloak only he could see. The sand floated there before he closed his eyes and concentrated on reversing its direction. The sand began falling upward. Peter poured everything of himself into the motion and prayed it would be enough.

He opened his eyes and could see as time reversed. Ross was laughing and walking away from him. He was standing and moving toward the bodies of Rhodey and Tony. And their bodies moved, they got up from their resting spots. The fight began again in knew. Peter watched himself run back up the hill before he walked to were Ross was, invisible to all in the cloak of the sand. He waited with a strange calmness until the sand stopped rising. He smiled when it fell down again and Peter let go of his concentration.

The urge to kill Ross grew strong. He stood behind the man who was unaware of his presence. The act would be so easy. It almost consumed him but then he remembered Ross’s words. That wasn’t the life he wanted to lead anymore. Death would follow him no longer. Peter drew back his hand and brought it forward with as much strength as he could muster.

Not even seeing who brought him down Ross crumpled on impact. Undignified and ungraceful, he fell to the ground. All the men froze where they were as their boss was suddenly not awake. Rhodey and Tony blinked as he, for a moment, was in two spaces at once. They jerked to look at the top of the hill where he was still frozen before, in a blink of an eye, he disappeared.

Tony punched the man in front of him before smirking.

“And I thought one Peter was enough.”

“The fuck is this?” Rhodey said finishing off the people around him with ease. Their confusion led to an easier fight and soon there were none left standing.

They ran toward him, each taking a side of his face in their hands. Their thumbs wiped under his eyes and Peter realized tears were running down his face.

“What happened Peter?”

“Are you okay?” They said at the same time.

“I’m okay, guys. I’m…” He gasped as his side pulled. The wound felt hallow and full at once. They all glanced down at his stomach. He peeled his hand away and felt a wave of dizziness overcome him. The blood was still there. It hadn’t been erased after all.

“You are not fine. We need to get him to a…”

Their words filtered out of his ears and something was weighing him down. Peter took a step forward. His knees crumpled but there was no impact. Arms enveloped him and the burning in his side disappeared. He smiled and sent a thankful thought to the lake behind him.

They were safe and alive, and for now it was enough. The sand cloaked him in a thin layer and Peter fell into darkness.

Thank you!

Next chapter Twenty-Two: Finale

[somegirlsnerdywords2]

Anime i’ve Watched

That begin with a D (Part 1)!

Yep this is how i’m going to bring over all the anime and manga i’ve watched and posted about on the old blog. It’s not so detailed but it will have to do. Anything new I watch or read from this point on will have their own posts.

Dance with Devils:

Genres: reverse harem, demons, supernatural, romance, vampire, shoujo

Synopsis: Ritsuka Tachibana has always been a good student, so she is completely shocked when she is suddenly summoned by the student council. Even more, they seem to think of Ritsuka as a troublemaker. Led by the handsome Rem Kaginuki, the student council—also consisting of Urie Sogami, Shiki Natsumizaka and Mage Nanashiro—tries to question her, but it soon becomes clear that they have ulterior motives.However, this is only the beginning. When her mother gets kidnapped, her life is turned upside down, and Ritsuka gets drawn into a world of vampires and devils. Both groups are searching for the "Grimoire," a forbidden item allowing its owner to rule the world. The return of her brother Lindo from overseas gives her hope, but even he appears to be hiding something. In a world filled with secrets, Ritsuka questions whom she can trust in this dark musical tale, while the handsome and dangerous members of the student council compete for her attention.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 8/10

Finished airing in 2015 with a total of 12 episodes. 

My Thoughts: One of the better animes in the reverse harem genre. Little bit of fantasy, drama, romance. This one was actually a musical... or at the very least had a notable amount of musical numbers throughout the series. I do love me a good musical. To be fair this anime had some big issues, though if you’re just looking for a bit of halfway decent reverse harem fun this should suit you just fine!

Darling in the FranXX:

Genres: action, drama, mecha, romance, sci-fi

Synopsis:  In the distant future, humanity has been driven to near-extinction by giant beasts known as Klaxosaurs, forcing the surviving humans to take refuge in massive fortress cities called Plantations. Children raised here are trained to pilot giant mechas known as FranXX—the only weapons known to be effective against the Klaxosaurs—in boy-girl pairs. Bred for the sole purpose of piloting these machines, these children know nothing of the outside world and are only able to prove their existence by defending their race.

Hiro, an aspiring FranXX pilot, has lost his motivation and self-confidence after failing an aptitude test. Skipping out on his class' graduation ceremony, Hiro retreats to a forest lake, where he encounters a mysterious girl with two horns growing out of her head. She introduces herself by her codename Zero Two, which is known to belong to an infamous FranXX pilot known as the "Partner Killer." Before Hiro can digest the encounter, the Plantation is rocked by a sudden Klaxosaur attack. Zero Two engages the creature in her FranXX, but it is heavily damaged in the skirmish and crashes near Hiro. Finding her partner dead, Zero Two invites Hiro to pilot the mecha with her, and the duo easily defeats the Klaxosaur in the ensuing fight. With a new partner by his side, Hiro has been given a chance at redemption for his past failures, but at what cost? [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 6/10

Finished airing in 2018 with a total of 24 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Ohhhh how I wanted to love this one. After Kill la Kill I have the highest of hopes for anything Trigger releases but unfortunately they tend to fall short of my expectations... such a shame. The art, animation and themes were fantastic but that’s about where the good times end in all honesty. I will never forgot just HOW they operate the mechs.... those images will forever be burned into my memories.... so thanks for that I guess?? This series had it’s moments and wasn’t a complete dumpster fire but overall it just wasn’t anywhere near the masterpiece I hoped it would be. The disappointment factor probably took a few points off in the end. 

Deadman Wonderland:

Genres: action, sci-fi, shounen, horror

Synopsis: It looked like it would be a normal day for Ganta Igarashi and his classmates—they were preparing to go on a class field trip to a certain prison amusement park called Deadman Wonderland, where the convicts perform dangerous acts for the onlookers' amusement. However, Ganta's life is quickly turned upside down when his whole class gets massacred by a mysterious man in red. Framed for the incident and sentenced to death, Ganta is sent to the very jail he was supposed to visit.But Ganta's nightmare is only just beginning.The young protagonist is thrown into a world of sadistic inmates and enigmatic powers, to live in constant fear of the lethal collar placed around his neck that is slowed only by winning in the prison's deathly games. Ganta must bet his life to survive in a ruthless place where it isn't always easy to tell friend from foe, all while trying to find the mysterious "Red Man" and clear his name, in Deadman Wonderland.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 6/10

Finished airing in 2011 with a total of 12 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Just go check out the completed manga is you’re interested in this series and watch the anime for more content. Pretty cool premise with decent art and music but is incomplete and very unlikely to receive another season.

Death Note:

Genres: mystery, police, psychological, supernatural, thriller, shounen

Synopsis: A shinigami, as a god of death, can kill any person—provided they see their victim's face and write their victim's name in a notebook called a Death Note. One day, Ryuk, bored by the shinigami lifestyle and interested in seeing how a human would use a Death Note, drops one into the human realm. High school student and prodigy Light Yagami stumbles upon the Death Note and—since he deplores the state of the world—tests the deadly notebook by writing a criminal's name in it. When the criminal dies immediately following his experiment with the Death Note, Light is greatly surprised and quickly recognizes how devastating the power that has fallen into his hands could be. With this divine capability, Light decides to extinguish all criminals in order to build a new world where crime does not exist and people worship him as a god. Police, however, quickly discover that a serial killer is targeting criminals and, consequently, try to apprehend the culprit. To do this, the Japanese investigators count on the assistance of the best detective in the world: a young and eccentric man known only by the name of L. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2007 with a total of 37 episodes. 

My Thoughts: If you’re an anime fan and haven’t at least heard of Death Note you may have been living under a rock. Or maybe the only reason you know this title is because of that dumpster fire of a live action western remake... if so I am so so sorry. Strong beginning with an alright end. A great psychological series overall though. Unique and iconic. 

Death Parade: 

Genres: game, mystery, psychological, drama, thriller

Synopsis:  After death, there is no heaven or hell, only a bar that stands between reincarnation and oblivion. There the attendant will, one after another, challenge pairs of the recently deceased to a random game in which their fate of either ascending into reincarnation or falling into the void will be wagered. Whether it's bowling, darts, air hockey, or anything in between, each person's true nature will be revealed in a ghastly parade of death and memories, dancing to the whims of the bar's master. Welcome to Quindecim, where Decim, arbiter of the afterlife, awaits! Death Parade expands upon the original one-shot intended to train young animators. It follows yet more people receiving judgment—until a strange, black-haired guest causes Decim to begin questioning his own rulings. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2015 with a total of 12 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Now this was an interesting one! Here we have the concept of death in game form. Each episode a new player is introduced and our leading pair takes them through their chosen game. Morality, mystery and a dynamic leading pair are what drive this character driven series. You’re sure to experience a wide range of emotions while watching this anime and the opening theme was pretty good as well. Why not give it a go if it sounds like your kind of thing!?

Denki-gai no Honya-san:

Genres: comedy, seinen, slice of life

Synopsis:  Umio is a shy kid who just started his part time job at a manga store smack dab in the middle of the city. But his lifestyle isn't as glamorous as the neon lights that illuminate the city. Umio's closest friends are his co-workers who are all unique characters, to say the least, and although they're nice people, they have their quirks. They are a tight knit group of friends, have nicknames for each other and spend their weekends inside, sheltered from the extravagant scene happening on the outside. (Source: MU)

My Rating: 10/10

Finished airing in 2014 with a total of 12 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Something light after this unusually heavy themed list. A lovable cast of characters drive this situational comedy and it’s an abosulte joy to watch each and every one of the antics they manage to get up to. A great series to bang out on a day when you aren’t feeling so great and need a little something to lighten your mood. You’re unlikely to find any deep life lessons here but it’s sure to tickle your funny bone. 

Devilman: Crybaby:

Genres: action, demons, horror, supernatural, ONA

Synopsis:  Devils cannot take form without a living host. However, if the will of an individual is strong enough, they can overcome the demon and make its power their own, becoming a Devilman. Weak and unassuming, Akira Fudou has always had a bleeding heart. So when his childhood friend Ryou Asuka asks for his help in uncovering devils, Akira accepts without hesitation. However, to Akira's surprise, the place they go to is Sabbath: an immoral party of debauchery and degeneracy. Amidst bloodshed and death, demons possess the partiers, turning their bodies into grotesque monsters, and begin wreaking havoc. In a reckless attempt to save his best friend, Akira unwittingly merges with the devil Amon and becomes a Devilman, gaining the power to defeat the remaining demons. Though it grants him great power, this new partnership awakens an insatiable and primeval part of Akira. Having the body of a devil but the same crybaby heart, Akira works alongside Ryou, destroying those that harm humanity and his loved ones. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 4/10

A 10 episode ONA that finished airing in 2018

My Thoughts: And we’re back at it with the dark stuff... I was not a fan. The art.animation had some real cool moments as did the music but it was just a bit much in my opinion. Rushed and nonsensical with characters I couldn’t care less about. Gratuitous violence and nudity. To be fair there are plenty who enjoyed this anime, unfortunately for all of you I was not one of them.

[philosophiums]

{god okay finally i’ve finished!!!!! i’ve got drafts of all five parts done and am starting to go through and revise, which i will post as i complete. i could revise three or four more times but like...... don’t have time for THAT. so here’s the neil-in-a-dress au that @microolli​ has been drawing. hopefully this ends up being even *close* to what you were hoping for}

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part One: Targeted

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

North Carolina’s humidity is reaching critical mass, and every breath of Andrew’s feels a little too much like warm water, like he shouldn’t be letting it into his lungs. Sundown didn’t help cool things off, and the breeze that had been blowing through the cracks in the windows has since choked off and left the three of them treading water. If he’d wanted to drown, he would have picked a better location; even he deserves something classier than a shitty black van parked on the side of some shitty two-lane road, lights off to hide better in the dark.

It’ll storm soon. Later tonight or tomorrow, but this slow buildup of airborne swamp water has to produce something destructive – there’s no other option. He just wants to be happily settled in some air conditioning before the sky splits.

Andrew sweeps his eyes up to check on Aaron beside him, noise-cancelling headphones settled over his head and eyes trained on the screens in front of him, and then he pivots to look at Nicky in the driver’s seat, whose hand is caught in his hair as he tries impossibly hard to stay alert.

Three hours have gone by. Something awful twists in the pit of his gut, instinct letting him know that whatever peace they’ve managed to hold is about to be disrupted. “Check in,” he says, returning to his original position, head down and eyes closed, his hands loose between his knees. He focuses on breathing and listening; those are his only concerns right now.

“One,” Dan’s voice scratches through his headphones, and then, “two,” as Matt follows suit. They’re in the building, the closest to the client, and no matter how much Wymack likes to go on about teamwork and making an effort to participate, this mission is on Dan and Matt’s shoulders. If something goes wrong and the client gets injured, it’s their fault. Allison and Renee count off three and four respectively, and their feedback is clearer because they’re closer – outside the building on the perimeter, sweeping circles back and forth to make sure nothing’s been planted. Andrew thinks it’s a pointless maneuver for only two people, that the gap in their patrol leaves a massive opportunity for anyone, but he doesn’t bring it up. Nicky’s five, which at least confirms that he’s still awake, and finally, from a full state away, Kevin and Wymack check in as six and seven. Aaron doesn’t get a number, both because Andrew’s eyes are on him and because he’s tasked with staying entirely focused on the cameras that they have running – so much so that Andrew’s in charge of the audio from everyone’s microphones and comms.

It’s absolutely pathetic that it takes nine people to keep one man alive when it should require only two, and take maybe four for padding on the wealthier clients. But before last year, Fox Den, Inc. couldn’t even manage with eleven people on-sight. Circumstances changed. People died. Kevin bled his way across several state borders and proclaimed he was staying, and then Andrew was convinced to stay, too. Sometimes, when Wymack bribes Andrew with just the right incentive, the whole plan runs smoothly. But usually they only barely manage to keep their clients alive, let alone unharmed. It’s as if their presence alone causes mayhem to kick up from the dust, and Andrew thinks that they would have better luck killing people for money – especially since right now they tend to get people killed and lose money – but the only time he voiced this, he got glared at and overruled. Maybe they’d manage better if they could work as a team, but Andrew’s more interested in keeping his family alive than the client, so shit tends to fall apart when anything gets serious.

Why Wymack hasn’t fired Andrew yet is really anyone’s guess. Probably because Kevin’s favorite mantra is that Andrew’s full of potential but lacking initiative.

Kevin thinks too much.

The venue they’re casing is a small but high-end party in a public building, the room reserved and vetted for by the property owners. The chatter coming through Matt’s microphone is mundane, if more muffled than normal given the dress restrictions of the event. There’s some money talk – in the way that wealthy people talk about money, which is to say there’s conversation about new business ventures and investments and how “overpriced but worthwhile” education is for their children. The conversation makes that dark lake in Andrew’s chest ripple with his anger, but none of the topics raise anything close to concern. There haven’t been any red flags all evening.

And Aaron hasn’t made any motion yet tonight to signal anything amiss on the screens, and there hasn’t been a perimeter breech that Allison and Renee have found, and there’s been no interruption of new information from Wymack or Kevin.

So, why does Andrew still feel like something’s about to go wrong?

He trusts his gut. “One, circle closer to the client,” Andrew instructs, head still down and eyes still closed. The van dips quickly towards the driver’s side and Andrew’s heart drops with it, but he doesn’t move at all. He assumes that it’s only Nicky turning around to look at him – Andrew hasn’t bothered to give orders pertinent to the mission in four… no, five jobs now.

“Something come up?” Dan asks, tone down as the chatter around her sways in and out of Andrew’s hearing, coming in from her headpiece and her suit mic as a unit of sound that only barely lines up and makes sense together.

Of course, Andrew could tell her the whole truth, which is that nothing solid has come to his attention. There’s no evidence that the job is about to go south. Matt is already close to the client. But the strangling snag of his gut has never lied to him before – so much trauma has tuned him to know exactly when it’s coming. “Yes,” he says, which is enough of the truth to assuage her, and doesn’t elaborate.

“Andrew?” God, Kevin needs to not be talking right now. Andrew’s fists clench between his knees. “Did you notice something? What did you hear?”

“I can’t hear anything with you filling up the radio waves.” And really, what a poor fucking design for this part of the plan, but Andrew stops thinking about how Nicky should be solely in charge of communication when he catches sight of Aaron moving, and that jerky motion drags all of Andrew’s attention to his twin.

His head snaps up, and he watches Aaron’s mouth move in a slow, incredulous way, though he can’t hear him at all given the chaos that suddenly erupts through Andrew’s headphones. He rips them off and drops them, welcoming the bang of silence through his head. With the way Aaron slumps in his chair, there’s no way the client is still alive.

“What the fuck just happened?” Nicky asks, and Andrew would bet it’s into the comm system as well, but he’ll just bog down the channel, since that’s what everyone else is asking, too. “Shit.” He moves like he’s about to bail from the front seat, and Andrew’s not sure if Nicky’s thinking about running inside or coming around the van to join them in the back, but he’s not taking chances.

“Stay put, Nicky. He’s dead.” Andrew says it with a sigh.

Nicky swears again, but he stops acting like he’s leaving.

Andrew’s slow to stand up, left leg braced out so that he doesn’t have to rush to find his balance. It’s been a long night, and it was all for nothing; now all that’s left is figuring out what the fuck happened. Aaron pulls off his noise-cancelling headphones and tosses them to the lip of a desk in front of him, and Andrew takes a step and a half to come up behind him.

“Rewind it,” he says. “Show me.”

Aaron doesn’t move right away, and their synced sluggish responses make Andrew wonder if the damp air has become something thicker without them noticing, or if they’re both starting to wonder what the point of them doing this is. It feels rote, so Andrew doesn’t rush Aaron into moving. Eventually, Aaron leans forward and rewinds the tape.

When the recording starts to play, all Andrew sees is boring rich white people milling about in clean-cut fashion. He finds their client in the upper corner of the main screen, and the middle of the right screen; Matt is half-visible in the main screen and gone in the left, and Dan is invisible in all three. He watches the main screen, sees Dan come in from the bottom, casually slipping through the crowd with a mellow urgency that no one picks up on. And then the client just drops.

No obvious killer.

Well. Shit.

“Again,” he says, eyes staying on the screen even when Nicky decides to scramble between the front seats and join them.

Once more, Aaron rewinds the tape. Andrew delegates them each a screen. “Watch the top left corner only,” he says, because now they need to find whoever killed their client and lost them more money and reputation. They go through until Aaron stops the tape and rewinds again, and again until Andrew stops him. “There.” He points at the figure, the one he noticed last time but this time is sure of.

“How can you tell it’s her?” Nicky asks, leaning closer to the screen as if proximity will make the pixels any more clear, as if it will make the cutting silhouette in the black dress and close-cut curly auburn hair turn around and show her face. “She’s so far away from him.”

As if that hadn’t been Andrew’s first hesitation in picking her out. “Watch her hand,” he says, and moves aside as Aaron rewinds the tape one last time to watch. A second before their client crumples, the woman raises her arm, fingers shaped like a pistol aimed at their client, and pulls it back like it’s been fired. There’s no weapon in sight, but their client dies anyway.

When they get back to Columbia, they’ll have to comb through all of the video footage to look for any other occurrence of the woman throughout the night, but for now they have authorities to deal with, and then Andrew is going to start drinking.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 224 “On The Shores Of Lake Shikoku”

So we’ve a new chapter... and a new fairy tale character to meet.

Meet the new awesome guy who joins the cast and introduces himself in his elegant tattooed birthday suit, pirate Boutarou, real name Oosawa Fusatarou finally delighting our eyes with his awesome look!

But well, let’s not run ahead.

The chapter starts with the promised Ogata colour cover.

The awesome Tsurumineko discovered the text written on it is probably a reference to the Japanese postal service Kuroneko Yamato with ‘Sā ikau! Yamaneko Ogata no hitchū-bin’ (さあ行かう！ ヤマネコ尾形の必中便! “Con on, let’s go! Wildcat Ogata sure-hit service!”) being a put on their courier service (宅急便 “Takkyūbin”). Even the small text ‘Ippotemae e!’ (一歩手前へ! “One step ahead!”) should be a reference to Yamato’s slogan ‘Ippomae e!’ (一歩前へ “One step forward!”).

Of course, twisting the reading a little and adding the chapter’s title ‘Shikotsuko no hotori de’ (支笏湖のほとりで “On the shores of Lake Shikotsu”) to the writing you can have “Come on, let’s go! On the shores of Lake Shikotsu”) which can hint this will be where our characters will converge.

The sentence is also used as a meme due to this commercial ‘Sā ikau ikka o agete Nanbei e’ (さあ行かう一家をあげて南米へ “Come on, let’s go to south America”)

Now… the visual.

The art at first made me think this cover was meant to be part of a series of ‘Golden Kamuy’ early covers presenting the characters and their equipments, then discharged because Ogata’s equipment wasn’t really as noteworthy as the others (I mean, we got from Sugimoto’s presentation the info about the rifle, the bayonet and the belt with the ammunition so the most we could get from Ogata were new info about his uniform and nothing more).

The style of the colouring, has many have noticed, reminds of old manga from ‘60/’70… and, more specifically, reminded me of ‘Cyborg 009’ (サイボーグ009) a beautiful manga series from the great Ishinomori Shōtarō (石ノ森 章太郎) transposed in various anime and movies.

The series is about 9 cyborgs whose uniform is similar to Ogata’s but commonly in a red colour with an extremely long yellow scarf (in some transpositions the uniform is white or blue but the red uniform is the most iconic). Ishinomori has also some covers in which he couloured in yellow the characters, further connecting the visual of this cover to his works.

What’s more as I said ‘Cyborg 009’ is a manga about 9 cyborgs of the ‘00’ series (001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008 and the titular character 009) who were originally people kidnapped and forcefully turned into cyborgs by the evil Black Ghost organization, led by its tyrannical leader Skull (スカール) whose name can also be translitterated as Scar,

to undergo experiments that would allow him to use them as human weapons to promote the production of cyborg warfare. The cyborgs however escaped and rebelled to the Black Ghost organization.

Next to Ogata’s image there’s his name written in a peculiar way. Ogata Hyakunosuke’s name is normally written in kanji as 尾形 百之助 but this time Noda wrote it in Roman letters except for the kanji 百 which means “100”, and in short contains ‘00’ as if to joke he’s part of the ‘00’ series of cyborgs… and from this point is easy to see the parallelism between the Shinigami Tsurumi (whose face can resemble a skull) who’s planning to produce weapons and drugs to gain from war and Skull and his evil organization.

Of course, if we’ve to assume Noda wanted to establish a parallelism between Ogata and the 00 cyborgs we would assume he compared him to the titular character, 009, real name Shimamura Jō (島村 ジョー), a half Japanese, half American boy who was shunned by his peers because he was a half-breed, became a delinquent, escaped from a juvenile detention facility before being captured by Black Ghost.

However as @raggiodilunablr suggested, it’s also possible that Noda is thinking to a parallelism not with 009 but with 001 (100 in reverse).

001, real name Ivan Whisky (イワン·ウイスキー), Russian, a baby born with a severe illness on whom his father Gamo, a famous brain surgeon, performed numerous brain enhancement processes which allowed his mental capacity to far exceed that of a normal human. The implants were inserted against the wishes of Ivan's mother, Erika (who he even kills in the manga). Later on though his father went mad and discharged him in the care of the Black Ghost as he focused on creating other cyborgs. Due to all this Ivan is a highly intelligent, genius level child, talented in scientific analysis and can telepathically converse at an adult level, often working as the other leader of the cyborgs. He has an "ends justify the means" type of nature and he is willing to sacrifice the title character 009 to save the world (though 009 is okay with it). Considering how Noda likes to parallel Ogata to a child, it can be it’s 001 he had in mind.

Anyway I recommend everyone to go read the manga or watch the Cyborg 009 anime series as it’s awesome and a great classic (never mentioning the other characters in it can vaguely parallel our cast of characters in Golden Kamuy).

But now let’s move to the plot.

Ironically Asirpa too decides, same as Ogata, they would have swans for dinner and explains to Sugimoto how they would hunt him. When she explains they use the light of a fire to draw it close Sugimoto, whose arm is still in a sling, worry they would hit the swan.

Honestly the contrast between Sugimoto not hesitating in the slightest to maim or kill people for his goals but yet being shocked by how Asirpa would do the same to animals in order to eat them to survive never fails to impress me. Asirpa first says they wouldn’t hit them but grab them geeently, to then admit they would just bash them in the neck with a piece of wood… because really, Sugimoto, how would you expect just gently grabbing them would cause them to die so that you can eat them?

There’s a minor gag about a swan and Shiraishi both being lead there by the light then noticing each other, the swan about to attack Shiraishi (swans are pretty aggressive despite their beautiful look) before Asirpa clubbed the swan. The group then eat the swan, with another recurring gag of Asirpa offering the head to Sugimoto and Sugimoto not really eating it before we’ll move to the real plot of the story.

Shiraishi had been checking the gold dust that Heita was carrying and had noticed something. Heita had kept samples of the gold dust from every river he went. It turns out gold dust from different rivers have different looks so a skilled gold panner can tell where the gold dust was found just by looking at it.

Now, credits when it’s due, for most of the Heita arc I was assuming Heita was a charlatan, using the lie he found all that gold dust and all his talks about knowing how to find gold to draw there unsuspecting victims and robs them of their money.

It turned out the guy was genuinely an expert and his aims and problems were of different nature and this chapter remarks it.

Anyway we now get a summary of the whole gold story.

A long time ago the Ainu gathered up the gold dust in a single place, feared it would cause disaster and hid it. Time went by and eventually only few men knew about it. Shiraishi assumes those men were the ones killed in what he labels as the ‘Nopperabō jiken’ (のっぺらぼう事件 “Noppera-bou incident”).

Now… originally the men murdered and chopped to the point they were reduced to lump of flesh were assumed to have been 7, one of whom should have been Asirpa’s father. We know Asirpa’s father managed to escape but Shiraishi assumes 7 men were still killed. It’s possible the men were 7… albeit it’s also possible, since those Ainu were chopped into pieces, their remains scattered, that the men murdered were 6. I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s relevant how many were killed, we only know Ariko’s father was among the deceased.

Shiraishi suggests that it’s possible though that other people (in additions to the ones who died) knew were the gold was, which is why Noppera-bou and Co wanted to move the gold, so as to better hide it.

Shiraishi points out in the end it seems Noppera-bou did all the work by himself… which is a huge assumption. They could have moved the gold together and then those men could have been killed so as to keep the secret on where the gold was.

Anyway, no matter if the moving was done by 1 people or 8, Shiraishi’s theory that it shouldn’t have been moved far is solid enough as moving all that gold would be troublesome even for 8 people.

Shiraishi suggests if there’s Ainu who knew where the gold previously was, those Ainu should have ben residing near the previous hideout for the gold. Shiraishi says if they could find out which type of gold dust was hidden there they could figure out from where the gold came.

Sugimoto points out either way they can’t do it as the gold is HIDDEN, meaning they can’t check it to figure out where it was taken from and Asirpa agrees he’s being an idiot but Shiraishi proves again he’s all but that.

Shiraishi is awesome people, please, remember about it!

In fact Shiraishi remembers that Tanigaki told them Noppera-bou ran away with part of the gold but then his boat capsized and the gold dusk sank.

Sugimoto remembers this happened in Lake Shikotsu.

Asirpa wonders if Shiraishi is suggesting to drop searching for the skins as they had always done and start searching for the sunken gold dust.

Shiraishi points out since getting the skins might be completely impossible this could be another way to approach the problem but when Sugimoto sums up their new course of action...

Sugimoto states he thinks each step is too hard and, as to make matter worse Asirpa points out the very first step is impossible for them as Lake Shikotsu is the deepest lake in Hokkaido so they can’t dive in it and recover the gold Noppera-bou lost… and here it’s were Asirpa is missing a tiny yet extremely relevant detail.

In fact a flashback starts, reporting what happened one year ago at Lake Shikoku, hinting the convicts escaped around one year ago.

Heita went on a boat on Lake Shikoku with someone else. That someone else wants to dive in the lake and is employing Heita to get some help. Said someone else is the Pirate Boutarou, mentioned by Kadokura in the previous chapter and whose real name is Ōsawa Fusatarō.

We get some explanations on how this guy is an amazing diver, who can stay underwater for 30 minutes, has giant feet and palmed hands. As a child he was employed as one of the workers who ferries lumber down the rivers refining his skill in the water then moved to just pull people into the water, drown them and strip them of valuables, which later caused Ōsawa Fusatarō to gain the nicknames of ‘Kanbō no kaizoku’ (監房の海賊 “Pirate of the prison”) and ‘Kaizoku Bōtarō’  (海賊 房太郎 “Pirate Bōtarō”), taking advantage of how the kanji 房 which in his name is read as ‘Fusa’ can also read as ‘Bō’ when meaning “prison cell”.

As Boutarou surpasses the current world record for longer immersion and deepest diving Heita considers escaping, hoping he dies as he thinks it would be impossible to accomplish such a feat, a clear hint he wasn’t with him out of his own will.

We go back to our trio and what Shiraishi knows and spurred him to make such a theory and that Asirpa was missing.

Asirpa was wrong into thinking no one could dive deep into lake Shikoku and find the lost gold as, among the samples of could dust Heita possessed, there’s one belonging to ‘Kaizoku-san’ (海賊さん “Mister Pirate) coming from Lake Shikoku.

While the images show us Boutarou finding the boat Noppera-bou used in the deep of the lake, Shiraishi explains this ‘Kaizoku-san’ is one of the escaping convicts, a particularly tough guy… and then Shiraishi shows, turning around the package containing the sample, that Heita had already identified the gold. It came from Toppu River (徳富川), Saru River (沙流川), Sorachi River (空知川) and Shiriuchi River (知内川).

Long story short, what Shiraishi is suggesting is not that they’ll change their modus operandi, but that they’ll hunt that guy by checking those rivers.

The last page is cut in two panels, one shows Sugimoto, with his eyes white the way they whiten when he thinks at murdering someone saying they could catch a pirate if they’ll go to those rivers and, in the other panel, the flashback of the face of Boutarou, smiling underwater as he had found Noppera-bou’s boat, hinting to how Sugimoto and Boutarou will likely fight.

It’s worth to note Sugimoto’s arm is still broken so there’s to wonder if we’ll have a time skip in which it’ll heal or Sugimoto will have to face Boutarou while being at disadvantage. Hijikata also might be converging on him so we’ll see.

It’s also noteworthy how, through all the chapter, Vasily was nowhere to be seen.

I don’t really get Noda’s plans for him.

I take Vasily and Ogata will have a shoot down, but so far Vasily merely seems a character forcefully added to the group just for this, his contribute to the plot too small to be noteworthy (yeah, Vasily did something useful here and there, but it could be easily removed by the plot with very minor changes without anyone noticing) so his presence seems mostly forced.

Anyway as I’m a visual person let’s analyze the situation through a map.

You can see the 4 rivers Toppu River (徳富川), Saru River (沙流川), Sorachi River (空知川) and Shiriuchi River (知内川) Heita noted down in blue. Shiriuchi river is pretty far from the others even if, notably, the gold fever in Hokkaido started there. My guess would be the hideout for the gold should have been located around one of the other three rivers as they’re closer and it would easier to bring the gold there.

Now the river closer to Tomakomai (苫小牧市) which you can see in red and where the Noppera-bou incident took place, is Saru river so maybe the previous hideout was there.

Lake Shikotsu (支笏湖), in pale blue, is not so far from Tomakomai.

Now I left always in blue Uryu river (雨竜川), where the Sugimoto’s group is, while I coloured in red the other cities/places which are relevant for us.

Otaru (小樽市), where Asirpa’s Kotan is but also where Hijikata’s group is and where Tsurumi’s headquarters are located, Barato (茨戸), the last place in which Tsurumi was seen, Noboribetsu (登別市), the place near which Ariko’s village is (Ariko’s father was one of the men who died in the Noppera-bou’s incident) and in which Toni Anji’s men were, Asahikawa (旭川市), where the 7th division headquarters are located, Kabato Prison (樺戸監獄), which is actually located in Tsukigata (月形町) and from which Pirate Boutarou’s men come, Kushiro (釧路市), near which Kirawus’ village is and, although I think by now it won’t be relevant anymore, Abashiri (網走市).

I’m not really sure if all this can turn to be useful but I think it’s a good thing to have an idea of where everything is.

Now… unless the next chapter will deal with Tsurumi, the transitional chapters might have ended and the next one could start the Boutarou’s arc. As Hijikata has just learnt he’s on the move, he might try to converge on him. Now… there’s to wonder if Heita managed to pass the info about where the gold could be to Boutarou. I’ll go and speculate he did so, which would mean Boutarou would try and inspect one of the rivers Heita mentioned. As Toppu river is the closest to Kabato prison and, conveniently to Uryu’s river (where Sugimoto is), there are chances Boutarou and Sugimoto will meet there. It’s hard to say if Hijikata’s group will manage to get there before or after Sugimoto. We don’t exactly know where they’re on Uryu river but the distance both groups have to go through to get on Toppu river could be similar and if Hijikata equips himself and his men with horses they could get there faster… though Sugimoto could try to use a boat to run down the river so… hard to say who’ll get there sooner.

Tsurumi is currently the closer to Kabato prison, so there are high chances if he was informed about Boutarou’s moves he might reach him before the other two.

We’ll see.

What’s noteworthy though is that although Boutarou seems a vicious criminal he’s also one with a working brain and with a group of them below him. I honestly doubt he can become the leader of another group chasing the gold, it’s more likely he’ll end up joining one of the pre-existent groups searching the gold… if he and his men survive the meeting with one of those over mentioned groups.

This chapter also remarks who’s the other person who has a working brain.

Shiraishi.

Although assumed to be dumb right from the start, Shiraishi is actually quite intelliget and the proof is he’s the ‘Escape King’ a guy capable to invent always new and succesfull ways to escape from prison.

The trick that caused people to think Shiraishi is dumb wasn’t Shiraishi inability to think but Shiraishi’s tendency not too worry too much about things, causing him to act in a dumb way most of the time.

When Shiraishi thinks things through he’s actually amazingly smart and Noda hinted at it in many subtle ways. In addition to the various escape plans Shiraishi came up with, we see how Shiraishi came up with the plan to locate Hijikata and how he managed to trick him by handing him a fake copy of a tattooed skin, how well he can collect info (he’s the one discovering about Nihei and Henmi), when Wakayama proposes betting with dices he’s the one wanting to check the dices, he is the one to realize the nonsense of Tsurumi’s plan (it would be better to share the gold,), how Sugimoto has a person he loves back at home, how Hijikata planned to use Asirpa to promote his war by having a newspaper write an article about her, how he understood in Abashiri Kiro might have harmed Inkarmat and Ogata might have shoot Sugimoto, how Kiro lied to them, how Asirpa grew through her travel in Karafuto and what she planned to do when she escaped and how they do need a plan if they want to take part to the gold hunt.

While Sugimoto was just ‘let’s wait for Hijikata and Tsurumi to argue and then snatch the skins from them’ Shiraishi went and thought up to a strategy they could put into action.

Although Shiraishi can still act silly and careless, he’s starting to think things more and more, and proving he has a fine brain, a brain fine enough he could be a strategist.

Really, Shiraishi is awesome! I can’t wait what he’ll do next!