#Found out this week the convention on the rights of the child even existed

[barin-mclegg]

Things that should be taught in school everywhere:

-Universal declaration of human rights

-Convention on the rights of the child

-Geneva conventions

Feel free to add your own if it's universally relevant and not included in worldwide standard education.

[merryfortune]

Spectre the Friendly Ghost

Written for Respectfulshipping Week 2024

Prompt: Dragon | Ghost

Title: Spectre the Friendly Ghost

Ship: Respectfulshipping | Ryoken/Spectre

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Vrains 

Word Count: 3,287

Rating: T

Tags: Alternate Universe - Casper the Friendly Ghost

   Exorcists, GhostBusters, and a construction crew.

   They all tried and… they all failed.

   All they had to do was get rid of a ghost or four. 

   Surely that had to be easy. After all, ghosts don’t exist. Or at least that’s what Ryoken believes - or believed. Right up until he moved into a certain house in a certain place with his Father who was vehement that he would do what those before him had failed to do: exorcise the ghosts of this mansion.

   He wasn’t an exorcist, however, so he didn’t speak in tongues or prayers. Nor did he have the kooky technology of a Ghostbuster and he wasn’t about to go all demolition crew on this mansion either. No. Dr. Kiyoshi Kogami was a psychotherapist to the undead. Completely and utterly one of a kind - and out of his mind if you asked Ryoken.

   Until six months ago, his Father was a normal, sane man with a normal, sane job in the world of science. Then, his wife and Ryoken’s mother, passed away in an accident and he became obsessed. He began to believe in ghosts, in life on the other side and he was going to prove it.

   So far, all he had done was tatter his reputation and his relationship with his son. They were constantly in flux, moving all over the place, a media circus typically following because they wanted to know what the crazy ex-scientist was doing next! 

   Kiyoshi claimed he’d had successful clients and helped CBT ghosts to the other side but Ryoken wasn’t convinced. He hadn’t seen anything until right now.

   “Hi, I’m Spectre, it’s good to meet you!”

   Ryoken screamed. Then fainted. Then screamed again when he came to the ghost of a child was still hovering over him. 

   The most recent client that his Father had taken on was a woman who went by the alias of Queen. She had recently inherited a mansion through some obscure relative she hadn’t even known existed until she was notified that she was in the will. The mansion was old and abandoned but she wanted it cleaned up and when conventional methods hadn’t worked because of reported poltergeist-like activity, she called in yet more guns: Dr. Kogami and his son. 

   And now, out of all the cases they had seen so far which had been more busts than not, they had finally found a house which was well and truly haunted.

  The mansion certainly looked the part. Tall and intimidating, filled with antique furniture and cobwebs, on the edge of a cliff. It looked straight out of a Stephen King novel but it wasn’t until they’d gone inside when they realised it was abandoned. It was still very much lived in. Just by no one alive.

   Ryoken encountered Spectre in his room. Well, it was Ryoken’s room now but it had been Spectre’s up until he died. Kind of, considering he was still haunting it. Then, in the foyer, Ryoken’s Father encountered Spectre’s relatives: his two uncles and an aunt.

   “It’s good to meet you.” 

   Spectre didn’t look anything like the ghosts on television. He wasn’t all that person shaped for a start, nor was he a boo ghost with a bedsheet over his head, either. He was translucent, though, and his colouration reminded Ryoken of the halo behind the moon: the silver, whites, and blues which were shifting and eerie. He had massive porcelain doll-like eyes, too, which were completely soul devouring.

   Compared to his aunt and uncles, Spectre was sweet as pie. A little kid who just wanted to make friends. 

   His aunt and uncles were raising Hell for Ryoken’s father downstairs, taunting him that they knew someone who knew his wife. He tried not to take the bait and stay on task but where was the fun in that? Not when Dr. Kogami made for such a good chew toy. So it was apparent that they weren’t going to be convinced that positive self-talk would be good for them, that they should let go of their unfinished business and cross over to the other side. Though, they did find Kiyoshi amusing for trying. Looks like he was going to be in for the long haul for these three clients.

   Ryoken didn’t know if he was terrified or thrilled. He was fully on board with ghosts now, living in a house full of them. But he could see that the actual drudgery of dealing with them was wearing his Father down, too. 

   Then there was Spectre and whatever his deal was.

   He struck Ryoken as being a little bit younger than him. Two or three years, give or take. And he was infatuated with Ryoken, too, now that he had a playmate about the same age as him - and didn’t boss him around like his aunt and uncles, either.

   They used him around the house more like a servant than a family member. Ryoken couldn’t believe that there was a personal connection between them. To him, it seemed more like a mishmash of people than not but hey. What did he know?

   The names of the aunt and uncles - Baira, Faust, and Genome - were carved into the heads of the western style beds, after all. Spectre didn’t even have that but he did seem like he had the rest of the house. He was free to float through it but he didn’t really, he preferred to keep to himself and his room.

   But he did have a special place.

   “Do you want to see it?”

   Spectre didn’t wait for an answer.

   Ryoken screamed as he was taken out through his window and up, up, and away. It was cold and windy but so beautiful, too. The ocean was a navy blue as it expanded endlessly out over the horizon and Ryoken could swear he could see over it from this turret in the corner of the mansion.

   They sat together on the edge, feet in the gutter, Ryoken’s bum on the tiling and got talking. About things, about life, and death, too.

   “Do you think she’s out there?” Ryoken asked. “My mother?”

   “Probably not… but that’s a good thing. It meant you and Dr. Kogami loved her so much, she didn’t need more time with you.”

   That was one way to look at grief. Spectre would know better than Ryoken, he was just a thirteen year old fleshie after all. Ryoken hugged his knees tighter.

   “So does that mean there was someone whom you didn’t get to love enough in life?” Ryoken asked. “Is that why you’re still here, as a ghost?”

   Spectre shrugged.

   Ryoken chewed his bottom lip. It felt gauche to ask yet appropriate at the same time. He glanced at Spectre.

   “Why are you a ghost? Like, um-”

   “How did I die?”

   Ryoken nodded.

   “I’m not sure either. I just remember that it was cold. Very cold… I don’t remember anything else aside from that. Not how old I was when I died, or if I had parents to miss me. Nothing…”

   “Oh… I’m sorry.” Ryoken replied.

   Seeing Spectre, the idea of Heaven, if that’s where his mother was at all, seemed a lot better than this post-death amnesia where he couldn’t stray too far from what tethered him materially. He couldn’t even remember why he was here. It was kind of a pity but he must have wanted to know too because the next day, Spectre invited Ryoken to explore more of the house.

  It was a big, big mansion - nigh labyrinthian - so there had to be a hint. A clue.  Somewhere he did not usually go and didn’t want to go which would elucidate more of why Spectre was a ghost at all.

   Ryoken agreed to help and it didn’t take them long to find something. They wanted to avoid Spectre’s relatives as well as Ryoken’s Father. They were all clumped together in the main rooms around the foyer for their so-called therapy sessions. So, Ryoken and Spectre went sneaking around upstairs and in the attic.

   Up there, they found a treasure trove. 

   No wonder Spectre didn’t typically hang out up there. It was full of precious memories and mementos from when she had been alive. Toys, clothes, and yes, even the newspaper article on how his untimely death drove his poor mother to madness and, allegedly, witchcraft. 

   Ryoken looked at Spectre as he absorbed what he could of the attic. The dust motes floated in the air, through musty windows with the battens hatched and boarded up. He had been dead for a long, long time and alive for just the blink of an eye really. It was a lot to take in, no wonder he had been subconsciously avoiding it.

   “I wanted to see my mother again…”

   Made sense.

   Except. She wasn’t here. Clearly, she was in that other place. Well away from the mansion and her son and their other relatives to had stayed.

   “She turned to witchcraft to… to… to find a way to bring me back to life.” 

   “But that’s impossible, right?” Ryoken asked but when Spectre turned around, he was grinning maniacally.

   Clearly, Ryoken ought to know better than to call something impossible. He changed his mind on the existence of ghosts pretty quickly upon arriving at this haunted mansion.

  “No, she found a way. I-In the basement, come with me. I remember now.”

   Just as quickly as the night before, Ryoken was taken for a ride. Spectre grabbed his hand and they raced through the house. They passed Ryoken’s Father and Spectre’s relatives on the way. Huh, weird, they were in a kind of good mood now, leaving the house, actually so they could do something together. Strange.

   Didn’t matter though. Especially since Spectre knew he was going to be up to no good, defying the conventions of life and death. With Ryoken in tow, of course. 

   Down in the basement, there were trap doors and other contraptions. It took them for a ride and then they arrived somewhere even further down than the basement.

   “Wow, what is this place?” Ryoken asked, his eyes wide as he took in the bizarre surroundings, deep in a cavern scented with salt water.

   “My mother’s laboratory.”

   Spectre raced off and Ryoken followed along. He looked over dusty tomes and cluttered desks. It was all left in such disarray, free to age over the decades, abandoned by all who had died over the years. 

   All except something at the heart of it. A set of potions embedded in wooden holders, just one and it glistened, shinier and redder than a ruby. Spectre pointed it out as though it wasn’t obvious from miles away.

   “This… This is the elixir of life my mother brewed.”

   Ryoken wolf-whistled, impressed.

   Spectre’s expression was frantic, excited, his eyes glittered then he spoke up again after hold this moment of relish which left Ryoken thunderstruck.

   “There’s enough for a one time go. One ghost to become human again. All you have to do is put it in the holder and I go into the chamber and then presto.” 

   It all sounded so simple when put like that but Ryoken glanced at the chamber that Spectre mentioned. It looked unsafe to say the least. A monstrosity of wood and metal, bolted and boarded up, like a zero gravity chamber before those were even conceived of as being a thing.

   “You can help me, right? I want to be human, again, just like you. We could go to school together and play games and-”

   Ryoken laughed. He smiled. Spectre sounded so excited, how could he possibly say no? His Mother designed it and it's not like he was going to get any deader. If it worked, it worked. If it didn’t? Spectre would be heartbroken but they could still hang out and play together, just like they had been before.

   “Alright, I’ll help.” Ryoken agreed.

   Spectre grinned and he dived into the chamber.

   Ryoken turned and he unlatched the glass potion from its wooden holder. His fingers grazed the surface and then he heard something. It made him jump out of his skin, it made him look up.

   “Father?” Ryoken exclaimed.

   His heart stopped.

   He knew it had been weird to see his Father in a good mood around his clients. They were so good at dragging him down, through the mud and draining the life out of him. Not to mention, he was nothing if not professional.

   “There was a little accident, kiddo.” 

   “It wasn’t our fault.” 

   “He did it to himself.”

   One by one, they all spoke up. Genome. Then Baira. And then Faust last.

   Ryoken watched. He stared in anguish as his Father joined them. No longer alive, no longer flesh and blood like he but a ghost. Like the others. Strange, spectral figures who twisted and contorted what it meant to be human-like, in eerie shades of green, pink, and brown.

   “We were going to do it quick.”

   “Harpoon through the heart.”

   “He chose to break every bone instead.”

  Again, that same choir going down the line: Genome, Baira, and then Faust last. Then, together, in unison.

   “He fell to his death in a pit!”

   Ryoken flinched.

   He didn’t even so much as wince when Spectre had revealed the snippets of his own death but this? This felt just like when he heard his Mother had been in an accident. 

   “And I have never felt more alive!”

   Ryoken watched as his Father floated, looped and swirled through the air.

   “What are you even doing down here?”

   “I didn’t even know we had a down here!”

   “Where’s Spectre?”

   Sure enough, at Faust and company’s beck and call, Spectre was prompted. He drew himself out of the chamber and was just as slack jawed to see the new ghost in the mansion’s fold.

  “Dr. Kogami!”

   Spectre joined Ryoken at his side. Ryoken’s lower lip quivered but he was in such denial, he couldn’t shed any of the tears in the corner of his eye.

   Ryoken couldn’t bring himself to ask. Spectre didn’t want to say it. But they were both thinking it.

   “Are you sure it works?” Ryoken asked, his voice cracking.

   He knew that Spectre wanted to be his friend in life and living again but.

   He needed his Father.

   Spectre swallowed thickly. A bluish colour swished through him.

   “I’ll help. Anything for you, Ryoken.”

   Spectre jetted off and glared at his aunt and uncles. They tried to stop him but this was the first time he had ever glared daggers at them. Not so much as a word as he ripped Dr. Kogami from their sides, grabbing him and dragging him down, down, down into the chamber.

   Dr. Kogami rambled drunkenly. Ryoken put his hands over his ears. He ignored the cries and demands that he was being a partypooper from Baira, Faust, and Genome. He grit his teeth together and hoped that Spectre was right. That the magic potion his mother had made all those years ago did work.

   “Ready?”

   Ryoken wasn’t much use though. Spectre did most of the hard work as he surrendered the elixir to Dr. Kogami. Ryoken pushed aimlessly at a ship captain’s wheel and the machine came to life. It whirred and roared and when it finished, it made a ding like a laundry machine.

   Steam poured out of it and the door to it opened.

   A ghost had gone in but a ghost did not come out.

   “Huh? Where am I?” Dr. Kogami asked. “Ryoken?”

   Ryoken ran to his Father’s side and wrapped his arms around him tightly. Spectre hovered like, well, a ghost and disappeared just as quickly. His relatives booed and heckled but it had worked.

   That’s all that mattered.

   Ryoken, with his Father, staggered back up into the main part of the house. Dr. Kogami rambled about how… how… he still didn’t see his wife again. Ryoken was just glad to have his father still but poor Spectre.

   There was only enough to save one and Ryoken had seen how that cherry red elixir evaporated into the mechanism of the machine. No recipe to be seen amongst the dusty tomes.

   For the rest of the day, Spectre made himself sparse. He ignored his aunt and uncles’ demands to be “fed” so they could enjoy the farce of dinner and he ignored Ryoken’s plea to see him again.

   Ryoken felt awful but it was the right thing. For that, Spectre ought to be proud of his selflessness. His Father certainly appreciated it after his maligned fall. He didn’t say much about it. The same could not be said for either Baira, Faust, nor Genome, however.

   “Where is the brat?”

   “He’s never late.”

   “Wait, what’s that?”

   The dining room was conjoined to the main foyer which ws, typically, the dimmest part of the house as it was covered by the storeys above, surrounded by doors rather windows which was why it was mighty peculiar that any light would come through it. Especially one as bright and angelic as this one.

   Everyone ran inside, only to stop in their tracks.

   “Sorry for being late…” Spectre said. “I, um, I’m out of practise putting clothes on.” He sheepishly admitted.

   Ryoken couldn’t believe his eyes.

   He had always imagined Spectre as being a dorky little kid but he actually looked older than expected, with silver-grey hair and of course those big blue eyes which looked dollike. Especially from afar and he was all dolled up in a flowy villager shirt and neat, black trousers. 

   He descended down the stairs slowly. He wasn’t used to walking, either. Too used to zipping and floating about as a ghost.

   “How the hell-?”

   “Uh-uh, not hell. Heaven.” an Angel interjected.

   The voice came from further afar the stairwell’s main flight and Dr. Kogami couldn’t believe his ears, nor his eyes. He would know that voice and that appearance from anywhere.

   “My love.” he gasped.

   He raced up as he let Ryoken and Spectre congregate in the foyer, in the middle of the aged orange and brain tiles. Spectre made the excess fabric on his shirt’s sleeves twirl as he stopped Ryoken from following hot on his Father’s footsteps.

   “Not yet.” Spectre said. “I… I want your attention first, please, Ryoken.”

   “Oh, um, right, sorry, but - but that’s my Mother…?” Ryoken said, looking over and past Spectre’s shoulder impatiently before returning his attention to the human boy in front of him.

   Spectre nodded, “It is. She, um, helped me out. Like a fairy godmother.” Spectre said. “Turns out my aunt and uncles do know someone who knows someone who, um, knows her and she wanted to thank me for preventing your Father from well. Becoming a full-time ghost.”

   “Wow, really?” Ryoken’s eyes went wide.

   “Mmhm.” Spectre mumbled. “But only for one day.”

   “Like Cinderella.” Ryoken said. “Well, we’re going to have to make it worth it then.”

   “Yeah.” Spectre smiled.

   Ryoken quietened down and realised he had something he wanted to ask of Spectre, “So, um, what about your mother?” He asked in a tiny voice.

   Spectre laughed, “In heaven. I asked your mother that too. It, um, turns out they’re friends.”

   “No way.” Ryoken couldn’t believe the odds.

   “So, let’s enjoy our time together though? Please? I’m so… so…” Spectre’s eyes began to fill up with tears of gratitude, his whole body trembled. “I’m so excited to have any time at all with you because um… I have a crush on you!”

   Ryoken blushed. He couldn’t say he was surprised by the confession but he nodded. He wasn’t sure how, if it could work, but for now. Ryoken took Spectre’s hand and that was enough to feel like they were flying on cloud nine.

[generallypo]

in all sincerity, kim dokja makes me happy and he deserves to be so too :^(

incoherent yelling and sobbing under the cut. these fEELINGS will not be contained aaauuunnghhh. 

------

anyway i binge-read all 500+ chapters of ORV this week and i honest to god feel bad for this -- completely! fictional! aghhhh -- guy. in case you haven’t figured it out, the following is some spoilerly shit

i went in expecting a fun, brainless power trip fantasy for dudes with an isekai addiction. instead, it turns out ORV is actually a gigantic, self-deprecating prank on the entire genre itself. kdj plays more into the sad -- if high-functioning-- clown trope than the sexy, edgy, chuuni bastard type i was prepared to laugh at. there were -- gasp! -- female characters with personalities! parents (aka ADULTS who act like ADULTS) who actually survive and feature prominently! adorable children! a real sexy, edgy bastard! a power trio with amazing fashion! sexual tension and bickering! friendship! life and death bonding! 

*breathes in deeply* fouND FAMILYYYYYYY.

like, yeah, the plot around the first few arcs seems a little aimless, but the buildup is worth. the world-building is pretty decent. there’s discernible effort put into the fight scenes, and i can appreciate that. but -- but! what i stayed for were the characters -- namely, the fantastic OT3 of KDJ, HSY, and YJH -- who come together despite their initial rivalries and end up saving each other’s asses, like, every other day. granted, the other characters don’t get as much focus, and they do fall into certain character tropes.. 

but a trope done well is nothing i would gripe about. every significant character in ORV has a coherent, and more importantly, respectful take on their respective trope. maybe it’s because sing-shong is actually a married couple, but all the interactions between even minor characters are a convincing blend of awkward rambling, suggestive humor, sharp remarks, and casual banter. in other words, this cast of mostly working adults (plus a teen and two kids) talks like working adults. the relationships built throughout the story are, frankly, some of most realistic of its genre. sing-shong has managed to craft a dynamic that undoubtedly brims with fluffy fondness all around, but also drips with sarcastic tension, with unspoken urgency, with a wariness that softens into sincerity over the course of many, many chapters. it’s the kind of progression that makes even stock characters read like more than just the 2-bit villain or comrade or love interest. here, we have relationships both straightforward and not, strained or otherwise, romantically-oriented as well as decidedly the opposite -- and then numerous others scattered along the spectrum with the freedom to shift either way. 

it’s also an interesting point of note that our MC kdj actually does not end up with a stated romantic partner, much less a conventional heteroromantic harem. he gets teased about that fact from time to time, but it’s with less of the sleazy shonen locker room humor one would expect and more of the good-natured ribbing you’d find among friends or that one especially nosy auntie at the yearly family reunion. kdj is a grown ass man. in the background, i applaud his maturity, and he handles all the prodding like a champ. 

so instead of finding and fulfilling his horny, he builds himself a wealth of loving family. yeah, there are beautiful men and women around him. yeah, they unequivocally adore him. but they’re also adults, and they have priorities, too -- which are not so much finding a way to bang kdj’s brains out and more so simply keeping the damn guy alive. this is truly not ‘oblivious mc with his thirsty, sex kitten harem’. it just so happens that a guy proves himself to be unflinchingly gentle and capable in an apocalyptic setting despite his broken self-esteem, and lots of people find that attractive, romantically and platonically. 

it.. kinda makes sense? he’s a hard worker, thoughtful, and good with kids. kdj is the kind of guy you know would make a reliable partner, and anybody with eyes can plainly see and appreciate that. 

and it’s not that our MC’s a total brick wall. in fact, it’s likely the opposite, and he’s just too darned repressed to admit it. from what has been implied, kdj does indeed recognize and accept love, or at least a primitive concept of it. i like to imagine that the kind of love that he ends up seeking out simply manifests itself more easily as acceptance and safety, as warmth and a home of people to return to every day. even better, the people who surround him know this, and they give him exactly that. it’s refreshing, and honestly, really sweet.

(as a side note, i really, really do appreciate the cosmic bi energy radiating off of kdj, who canonically earns the title of being loved by all and is all but in name married to yjh and hsy. he also respects women and small children and honestly anyone who isn’t total scum to him or his family. i respect that.)

but the happy stuff aside, you know it it just ain’t ORV without the generous screaming dollop of angst. admittedly, there’s self-sacrifice, injury, lonesome wandering, more sacrifice, some epic fighting, reunion and confrontation. all of it is a lot to digest, sure, but never does it feel entirely hopeless, or truly, truly heart-clenching. ORV, up until the final act, is a mostly light read. you relax in your chair, thinking that nothing beyond this point can disturb you. 

yeah fucking right.

------

and then the beginning of the end arrives. when the squad finally break through to their ‘ending’, the scene that kind of breaks me is the reveal of the Most Ancient Dream. it ties so much thematically into the little tidbits that we get of kdj’s past, and it though it feels like almost a joke that the source of the goddamn apocalypse is a kid with bruises smeared across his skinny ass body -- it’s such a pathetic picture that it’s kinda poetic, actually. you’re left mystified but somewhat convinced, like a math problem explained halfway through. this.. child.. is a villain somehow, isn’t he?

and then 999th turn uriel speaks up, and she. just. hugs him. 

[[You are this universe’s most powerless existence, aren’t you.]] 

that. that gets me. kdj’s reaction immediately upon this revelation? absolute murder. seeing him essentially self-destruct upon realizing that all these people he’s surrounded himself with -- some who continuously proclaim their loyalty and affection for him throughout their journey, some who suffered eons of war and loss and trauma because of his existence -- not only forgive his younger self but smother him with unconditional acceptance and love is stifling, is too vulnerable and exposed and he simply can’t cope -- it’s so telling of his true mentality, of his crippling insecurity and crumpled sense of self-worth. kim dokja is a liar, through and through, so much that he fails, or perhaps refuses, to comprehend the veracity of others’ kindness and love towards himself. 

by some miracle, the events at the end of the world somehow resolve.. or so it seems. there is a departing train, a liberated team of ex-gods, and a child rousing from his slumber. in the aftermath, i am left shaking. somehow, despite the ending having been (happily?) reached, there’s still another chapter ahead. what is this witchcraft?

------

and then ah, yes -- the epilogue arc. i teetered on the edge of being critical for a little bit there -- is that display of deus ex machina, of sad, self-sacrificing nobility a bit too egregious to be acceptable? is this some wild last let-me-yank-this-outta-my-ass plot twist to drag out the chapter count? i sincerely thought that the arc before it would have been the finale. i was wrong. thank god.

anyways, as an answer to the above: no, and no. i stake my firm claim on the belief that the epilogue arc was meticulously planned out well in advance of its release, confusing and time-warpy as it is. i liked it. tremendously. even if it entirely invalidates all of kdj’s supposed development (”haha lol yeah sure i won’t sacrifice myself or anything anymore guys don’t worry about me” -- KDJ, at some point because he’s a lying rat bastard). actually, our beloved MC disappears for a large chunk of this arc, and i think it’s great. in his absence, the other characters not only go absolutely fucking nuts, but they have to figure out this new problem on their own, even if the lure of peaceful complacency in the newly saved Korea might convince them otherwise. 

and then the whole time paradox thing comes around. yjh goes to space, hsy saves the only life she can, and kdj grows up. the crew waits, holding onto their hope even if it bleeds them dry. sing-shong does a damn good job of illustrating their fraying calm, their lurking madness, the unseen but pervasive depression that seeps in from kdj’s absence. the kids lose their father, lhs and jhw lose their reliable leader figure, ysa loses a best friend and confidant, lsk -- as distant as she pretends to be from her son -- loses her only child. and then there’s hsy and yjh , who are essentially bereft of the other half of their existences. their pain is palpable, is grounded in the hopeless, gnawing frustration of an utterly meaningless victory. emotionally, ORV hits all the right -- if agonizing -- beats.

however, a story can’t sustain itself just through its pathos. i’m happy to say that ORV doesn’t drop the ball after the first milestone, and after all the hurt, the characters do leap straight back into action. even better, the plot holes actually do get patches, and the poetic cycle of writer, protagonist, and reader comes full circle by making use of all those supposedly throwaway characters from the myriad world lines. 

at the end of the road, there is a distinct sense of unity, of a delicate but undeniable cohesion to the world lines and their origins. sing-shong lets us guess a little here at the finish, but there’s just enough information to feel hopeful. maybe there never had been a definite start -- or finish -- to the story of kdj company, and... that’s okay. everybody ends up where they were meant to be, where they fought and struggled to reach. it’s.. almost like a happily ever after, if we’re allowed to dream of that.

------

now, i realize, this was all an orchestrated maneuver.

i’ll take it.

to me, all of this work sounds like someone put some serious thought into this behemoth of a plot. it cements the entire original premise of the story. it suggests -- but never explicitly confirms! -- the possibility that breaking free of the cycle is possible through the exact same system that sustains it. it’s terribly interesting -- and inspirational! with all the dramatic revelations and life-threatening scenarios  and the cast’s resigned acceptance of them that essentially make up ORV’s entire mood, there’s still that last hint of rebellious and righteous anger that lights up the whole damn nebula. it’s like the kdj company blasting away at the heavens just to yell into the nether: we’re not looking for the happy end, but the free one. stay alive.

it’s subtle, and yet it’s such an emotional gut punch. i came away with the most ruinous, frustrating, bittersweet sense of longing in ages. i pined. for these fictional darlings. god, i am weak.

so. yeah. ORV is pretty good. flawed, but ambitious and impressively thought out.  i’m stoked that the webtoon is making pretty good progress, even if it’ll take an eternity and a half to meet that monstrous chapter count. i’m still gonna follow it. hell yeah. 

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(by the way the idea that secretive plotter and co are literally gonna take care of and raise baby kdj and spoil him and be the best friggin family a kid could ever want does things to me. protect him. he’s suffered too much. let at least one worldline’s version of him know happiness. and actually, aLL OF THEM DESERVE DOMESTIC BLISS TOGETHER IN A BIG OL MANSION WITH SUN AND FRESH AIR AND TENDER FAMILY MOMENTS UGH)

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and there you have it, folks. you made it to the end. in the far, far distance, i’m cheering you on and crying my eyes out in gratitude. thanks for tuning in!

[walviemort]

Fairy Godfather, part 1

Summary: The fairies have asked a monumental favor of Killian: be the surrogate for their babies—all nine of them. He's been pregnant before, but this? This is a whole other level. What has he gotten himself into? And just how big will he get?

A/N: As usual, the muse has gone off and done whatever it wants to do, rather than, y'know, work on a WIP. Alas. The idea for this came about when I sent @sancocnutclub​ this picture of a woman who was supposedly pregnant with 10 babies; it has since come out as a hoax, but dang—her BUMP. Subsequent doodling and headcanoning brought about this story (also partly inspired by a conversation with SherlockianWhovian a while back), and here we are! I should note that this also takes place after a couple of past one-shots, which can be found here and here. Hope you like it!

rated T / 3k words / AO3

Of all the requests put in front of Killian in his long life, this was by far the oddest.

“You want me...to carry babies...for how many of you?” he asked, trying to wrap his head around the query.

“Nine,” Blue answered matter-of-factly. “Normally, it wouldn’t be so many, but we’re past due for a brood. There was just no one around who we thought could handle it.”

“And he can?” Emma was at his side in the booth at Granny’s, where Blue and Tink had requested to meet with them. Their daughter, Hope, was sitting in the high chair at the end of the table, making a mess of some oatmeal. 

“It helps if they’ve given birth before,” Tink replied. Well, he had done that—not intentionally, but he had been the one to carry and birth Hope, who was 10 months old now.

And while it had ended up being a beautiful experience, he obviously had reservations. “Yes, but that was only one baby—and you genuinely think I can handle nine?”

“We do,” Blue confirmed. “And we’d obviously provide as much help as we can.”

“It also wouldn’t be like a normal human pregnancy,” Tink added. “No morning sickness or cravings, or anything like that.”

“No, I’d just be massive,” he sighed; memories of his own perceived whale-like proportions toward the end of his pregnancy with Hope were still fresh; this had potential to put that to shame.

“Well, fairy newborns are smaller than the average human infant—less than 4 pounds. But yes, you would go full term.” Blue was awfully clinical in her statements.

Killian glanced down at his midsection, which had yet to fully regain its previous flatness, and he doubted it ever would. Especially not if he agreed to this. “I’m really your only option?” he asked again. “What about David?”

“It’s too soon,” Blue answered. David gave birth a couple months prior to their daughter Ruth, and as promised, Killian was at his side. However, he’d had to have a C-section, which slowed his recovery a bit compared to Killian’s. “And it must be done at the upcoming winter solstice, or we’ll have to wait another few years.”

Killian was about to suggest that until Tink jumped in. “Plus, you kind of still owe us for the whole hat thing.”

“That was the Dark One and you know it,” Emma snapped back, but they both knew Killian still harbored a fair amount of guilt over that. It was a low blow on their part, but not undeserved. 

She most likely saw the acceptance in his eyes when they exchanged a glance, but he also saw she wasn’t quite there. “Does it really have to be a guy?” she enquired, turning back to the fairies. “I mean, there are lots of women here who meet your criteria, too.”

“It does,” they said simultaneously, though Tink at least looked somewhat apologetic. 

Emma was ready to protest again, but he put his hand over hers on the table and told her with a look that it was okay. She reclined in her seat while he turned back to the pair. “I’ll agree, but with one condition: you’ll have to help pick up my slack—around town and at home,” he said evenly. He was sure he’d get to a point when it wasn’t feasible for him to continue as deputy, or at the library, or even keep up with Hope, who was dangerously close to walking. 

“Actually, one more,” Emma added. “He’s not on the hook for any, like, actual fatherhood, right? You won’t be coming after him for child support or anything?”

“No, he's simply the surrogate,” Blue confirmed. 

“And we’ll definitely help out—whatever you need,” Tink added. 

Emma gave him a tentative but supportive look. “Then I’ll do it,” he told them. 

“Excellent,” Blue stated with less enthusiasm than he expected. “We’ll send you more information soon, but the most important thing is to be at the convent next Saturday. Green,” she then turned to Tink, “come; we have much to do to prepare.” (Which was a polite way of asking her to slide out of the booth first.)

Tink rolled her eyes and stood up. “I’ll text you,” she said, and the two flitted out of the diner.

Killian and Emma were silent for a long moment after they left, other than making sure some oatmeal actually ended up in Hope’s mouth. 

Emma started to clean up the baby and then said, “I know it’s too late now, but are you sure about this?”

“Not entirely,” he confessed, “but they were right—I do owe them.”

“You don’t,” Emma said matter-of-factly, “even though I know you think you do.” She wiped the mess off Hope’s face. “But if this will finally relieve some of that guilt, then I get it, and I’ll support you.”

“Thank you, love,” he sighed, and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’m going to need it, I think.”

“Oh, you are,” she said wryly. “And you should probably start planning how you’ll tell my dad.”

“Bloody hell,” he cursed, then dragged a hand down his face. “He’s going to be relentless.” What had been playful ribbing during their respective pregnancies was likely about to be amplified. 

“Maybe you can talk to Belle? See if she knows anything on what to expect? Pun not intended.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” he agreed, then followed Emma as she slipped out of the booth. He pulled Hope from the high chair and settled her in his left arm, then grabbed her diaper bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Guess we’ll pick her brain now. See you later.” They kissed farewell and headed off to their respective jobs that day—Emma at the station, Killian at the library, where he’d taken something of an assistant librarian position (and could keep an eye on Hope and her “cousin” Gideon in between reshelving and assisting patrons).

Belle was surprised when he told him about the morning’s turn of events, but then got an almost academic excitement. “I can’t say I know much about their physiology, and I didn’t know this about their reproduction, but let’s see if we have anything.”

She dove into research while he took care of normal library functions, but by midday, didn’t have much to show for it. 

“They’re so secretive! Obviously their existence is documented, and there’s mention of someone other than Blue being in charge at some point in the past, and that their young mature faster than average, but that’s it. What did they tell you?”

“Not much,” he answered, relaying what little he’d been told. “But they did call it a ‘brood’, so it sounds like multiples are common. Just not quite so many.”

“Do you think they’d let me take notes?” she wondered. “It’s not like there's any research journals on magical beings I could submit a paper to, but more for my own study.” 

“If they don’t let you, I won’t do it,” he commented. “Do you still have everything from last time?” She’d done quite a bit of documentation on his first pregnancy, considering it was the product of a misunderstood spell.

“Of course; David’s, too.” Then she laughed. “Of all the things I imagined becoming an expert in, magical male pregnancy was not one of them.”

“Someone had to,” he countered.

“That’s true!”

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The rest of the week was fairly uneventful, save for a text from Tink telling them when to arrive at the convent, and to make sure he ate lots of greens and wore something comfortable (which he took to mean stretchy). And they assented to Belle’s presence, too, which didn’t change anything but did make him feel more at ease.

David was something between amused and horrified about what Killian had agreed to, but ultimately glad they hadn’t asked him.

The afternoon of the solstice, before they headed to the convent, Belle took some notes and measurements of Killian as a baseline for her study—and honestly, he was kind of glad, if the proportions on this were going to be as overlarge as he expected. “How big do they make those maternity pants?” he asked Emma as Belle was making note of his waist size (not significantly larger than it used to be, he was at least proud to say). 

Emma’s eyes grew large. “I don’t know; I think the fairies are gonna have to help with that one.”

“Let’s hope that’s a ways off, then,” he settled. 

They dropped Hope off at Snow and David’s on their way to the convent, where they were greeted by Blue herself. She ushered them in without a word, and a couple other fairies were there to gather their belongings, before Blue guided them further into the building. Killian was both surprised and not to see that they were all in their traditional attire, though he was a bit shocked that they were all still large and not the miniscule size they were known for. Belle had had a similar question a few days ago; they’d ask at some point. 

They were led into a large, candlelit room, where Tink suddenly appeared in front of him. “Drink this,” she commanded, holding a mug of steaming liquid, “and take off your shirt.”

“Is that necessary?” he asked as he took the mug.

“I mean, I already know what’s under there, so I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t,” she countered with a wink.

He complied with a sigh. The drink was a potion of some sort, he gathered almost immediately; a warm, tingly feeling took over his body as he drank it, eventually settling in his stomach, which made sense. Weirdly, though, when he removed his tshirt, there was a slight glow under the skin of his abdomen. (Belle was off to the side, furiously taking notes; Emma was next to her, trying to keep a straight face and surreptitiously taking pictures.)

Blue was watching a clock, and when it struck a seemingly random time—the peak of the solstice—she began chanting in a tongue he didn’t quite recognize, with others gradually joining in and forming a circle around him. The glow under his skin got brighter, especially in his midsection, although he didn’t feel any different—yet.

“Human,” Blue finally addressed him. “You have agreed to be the vessel for our young. Do you promise to protect them with your life, and care for them until they are ready to join our world?”

“I...yes,” he answered, as confidently as he could manage. “I will.”

Blue continued briefly in the foreign tongue, as did the others. “Now, let the gravidation commence.”

One of the fairies approached him with her hands cupped as the rest continued to chant; she was dressed all in pink, and he thought he’d seen her spending time with Grumpy on occasion. As she got closer, he saw a small ball of pink light pulsing her palm that she was murmuring to, until she was close enough to touch him. 

And she did, guiding the ball of light toward his navel and then—it disappeared inside him as she pressed her hands against his stomach. He felt a small twinge inside as it settled within, but no pain—just a spark. The glow from his midsection briefly took on a pinkish hue, but then returned to the white color it had been emanating.

Each of the nine fairies did the same thing, one by one. He did wonder how it was decided who would be reproducing, given that there were far more than nine fairies present, but that was another question for a later date. They appeared before him in all colors of the spectrum—purple, seafoam, navy, yellow, fuschia—and then Tiger Lily’s deep orange joined the array of hues, followed by Tink’s bright green.

Blue was the last to approach, and her orb seemed to be the biggest of them all, which he supposed was no surprise. However, her hands lingered on his abdomen and she continued to chant, the intensity and volume increasing as everyone’s voices joined in.

He suddenly felt a slight cramp within—still nothing painful, but like his insides were being gently rearranged, which they probably were. Then his stomach glowed brighter, casting all the colors of the fairies whose offspring he was now carrying around the room.

“Gods above, watch over this man; let he be exalted among the fairies, and let no harm befall him nor our bairns,” Blue called out with a sense of finality.

The glow grew brighter, until it was too bright for him to look at, but then was gone in a flash. The fairies gave a collective hum that seemed to resolve the ceremony, and then began to file out of the room, although Tink approached and wrapped him in a soft robe.

He felt...he wasn’t sure. Content, at the very least, but also like he might float away were it not for the sensation of a weight within him holding him down. His hand drifted to his midsection, and if he wasn’t mistaken, it was ever so slightly rounder than it was before he arrived; with nine babies in there, he supposed that made sense. He couldn’t feel any sensations of kicking yet, but it was probably too early—and honestly, he still kind of tingled all over. The analytical side of him wondered where they would be considered in their development relative to a human fetus—and if they’d even show up on an ultrasound.

“How are you doing, Captain?” Blue was still in front of him, but in the afterglow (literally) of the spell, he’d lost sense of anything else around him.

“I’m good,” he answered. “Possibly too good.”

Blue gave a small, knowing smile. “That tends to happen. Come, let’s sit; you must have more questions.” She gestured toward the door the fairies had exited out of and then moved toward it herself, expecting him to follow.

Emma was suddenly at his side, and Belle not far behind. “You okay?” she asked, brow furrowed in concern.

“I seem to be,” he replied. “Have I ever told you how bloody beautiful you are?”

She grinned, amused. “Many times. What was in that cup?”

“Potion of some sort,” he shrugged as she started pushing him in the direction of the door. “Why?”

“Seemed like some really potent potables,” she quipped. Yeah, he did feel a little drunk.

He somehow ended up on a very plush couch, with Emma on one side and Belle on the other, sitting across from Blue, Tink, and Tiger Lily. Someone gave him a glass of water, and there was food on a coffee table, but he wasn’t much hungry. 

Honestly, he was mostly fascinated with the stained glass windows in the room, and with inspecting whatever was going on in his stomach, until he did hear Belle ask a pertinent question:

“So why men?”

“Well, we’re all women,” Blue answered. “It does take two.”

“But I thought you said he was just a surrogate,” Emma countered. “Are these actually his babies? Because we didn’t agree to that.”

“No, they’re not; I suppose in modern terms, you’d say that we reproduce asexually. But nature still seems to demand the involvement of a man and a woman. So that’s why a willing male carries the brood.”

“Are there always so many?” Belle asked.

“No; usually only 4 or 5. But no one was available at the last solstice.”

Killian didn’t really pay attention to the next several questions regarding fairy reproduction—he’d read Belle’s notes later when he was a bit more focused—but he did eventually get to interject one of his own: “Why are you big right now, though? And why aren’t the babies going to be tiny?”

The fairies chuckled—he supposed his statement wasn’t as coherent as it sounded in his head—but still replied. “Shrinking is an acquired skill,” Tink said. “That’s why we weren’t small when we didn’t have our powers,” she explained, nodding at Tiger Lily. 

“But once we learn, it’s our preferred size,” Blue added. “It’s easier to do our job then.”

That made sense. 

“So, what else can he expect,” Emma asked. “I know you said it’d be different, but how much?”

“Well, the size, obviously—and you will still gain weight to support that,” Blue explained. “Increased appetite is to be expected, but no cravings or anything like that.”

“Your hormones will be altered, similar to a normal pregnancy,” Tiger Lily added. “But that just helps the body prepare for birth.”

“Bloody hell, what will that be like?” he wondered aloud. 

“Nowhere near as difficult,” Blue laughed. 

“Wait—if my hormones are affected…” He trailed off, remembering how much those threw him for a loop last time—particularly, certain desires. “I can still have sex, right?”

Emma covered her face with her hands at his blunt question, but it was important. 

“Of course,” Blue said plainly. “Do whatever you need to—within reason, of course.”

“Although, don’t forget—you’ll be at least twice as big as last time,” Tink reminded. “At least. That might make it harder.”

More difficult, maybe, but it hadn’t altered either person’s desires the last time around. He turned to give Emma (what he thought was) a salacious look, but she just burst into giggles. 

“Just—listen to your body,” Blue finally said. “For everything: rest, food, activity. The spell you drank will last the whole pregnancy and keep things going. We trust you, though.”

“I’ll guard them with my life,” he said, suddenly emotional, covering his stomach with his hand. 

“Aaaand there’s the hormones,” Emma commented. “Come on; let’s get you home.”

He was suddenly very sleepy. “Aye; that’s a good idea.”

“Yes, he’s going to be tired the next couple of days,” Blue added. “But otherwise—see you in 40 weeks.”

Emma wrapped her arm around him, said goodbye, and poofed them straight back to their bedroom. He was nearly asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but had one last thing to ask Emma.

“You’ll still find me sexy when I’ve got a big, huge belly, right?”

She kissed his forehead. “Incredibly so. Sleep tight.”

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thanks for reading! tagging @wyntereyez​​​​​​​ @jennjenn615​​​​​​​ @superadam54​​​​​​​ @ashley-knightingale​​​​​​​ @justsomewhump​​​​ @teamhook​​ (let me know if you want a tag!)

[yandere-society]

A Christmas Catastrophe

Pairing: Yandere Collector Yoongi x Collector YN

Synopsis: YN’s always been a collector. She’s always had the desire to possess any and everything she’s set her heart on. So when she finds an item she’s been wanting for over a year, she jumps at the chance to finally have it, unaware of the trap that’s been set just for her . . . 

Word Count: 2422

Warnings: Yandere themes, Blood, Murder

Admin: @chimchimsauce​

Request:

AN: This turned out way different than I was expecting it to, but I hope you enjoy it! It’s also pretty fucked up so . . .

Collecting is in YN’s blood, she’s sure. Ever since she was a small child, she was drawn to items she found interesting - rocks, bouncy balls, figurines, etc. But as she got older and her pockets began to fill with money of her own, YN’s collecting habits skyrocketed. Common items that anyone could obtain just wouldn’t cut it for her anymore. She set her eyes on things that were rare - things most collectors could only hope to set their eyes upon in real life. It’s caused her to get quite the following online in niche collectors communities. People message her to try and buy items from her collection but she never accepts, not even when the amount of money they offer is astronomical.

Half the appeal of having something is the fact that other people want it.

But collecting rare and expensive items is not easy. YN spends countless hours every week scouring online marketplaces and thrift shops to find the items that she has on her wish list. Her constant hunt for things has taken her to a variety of places - she’s driven hundreds of miles to go to estate sales, taken flights to attend conventions, and once even dated a guy who was related to the original artist of a piece she wanted.

She was successful every time. There is no feeling as satisfying as the first time holding an item she’s been searching relentlessly for. But it always fades quickly and she’s on to the next thing, the desire to possess and collect overtaking her once more.

YN has done some pretty crazy things in pursuit of her collection, but non as crazy as this. It had taken YN over a year to find this one item she was looking for - a misprint of a novel written by an author who died two hundred years ago. Based on what people think, there are only about a thousand of them in existence. YN read the re-edited version of the book and found it rather dull, but there are people who are willing to pay over ten grand just to have it.

When she finally found one for sale, YN was quick to buy a plane ticket to fly halfway across the world to pick the tome up. She’s never been this far away from home, but the thought of getting the book pushes any anxiety she may have out of mind. YN has no idea why or how this book ended up in South Korea of all places. But she’s even more surprised by the fact that it somehow landed in a small second-hand shop in a back alley of Seoul.

Thankfully, when she called last week to have the book pout on hold for her, she found out that the owner speaks English very well, so she won’t have a problem communicating with him.

YN looks at her phone, following the map through a labyrinth of abandoned alleys. Snow is falling gently, reminding YN that today is Christmas. Usually, she’d be at home celebrating with her family, but she was more than happy to drop them for a chance to get this book.

A bell rings when YN pushes open the door to the small shop, the warm air hitting her face and knocking away some of her chill. The shop is crowded with tall bookshelves stuffed to the brim with a variety of random items - most of which are covered in a thick layer of dust. It’s clear that no one really comes here and YN absently wonders how it’s still in business.

“Hello?” she calls out.

No response. 

YN huffs. She hopes this Yoongi guy she’s supposed to be meeting hasn’t blown her off, especially since she had to take the longest flight known to man to get here.

She makes her way through the shop, feeling like a bull in a china shop with how carefully she has to avoid random piles of merchandise and the occasional broken item crushed into the worn floorboards. 

YN makes it to the back of the store where a small desk is pushed against a wall, a thin, somewhat ghostly looking man sitting behind it. His eyes are unfocused and earbuds are plugged into his ears. He doesn’t even register her presence originally. YN has to tap the desk right in front of his face to get him to focus.

“Oh,” the man says, pulling his earbuds out, “You’re that girl here for the book, right? YN?”

YN nods, trying not to let her annoyance show.

“Yeah, that’s me,” she says.

“It’s in the back,” he says, “Follow me.”

He rises and YN is shocked by how . . . pale he is. He nearly looks sick and YN thinks she can see his veins even under the terrible light.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asks him as he steps out from behind the desk.

“What?” he asks her.

“Nothing,” she says, retracting her statement.

It really isn’t her business. As soon as she gets the book, she’s going to leave anyway so it doesn’t matter.

The man looks her over and something about his gaze makes her stiffen. It’s uncomfortable. His eyes are almost lifeless, brown but dead like frozen mud.

He’s so creepy. 

He turns without another word and behinds to walk to the other edge of the store where YN assumes the storage room is. Even the way he walks is weird. His footsteps are too heavy, loud in a way that’s unnatural. He barely lifts his feet, but she can almost feel each step in his ribs.

As soon as YN has the book and pays, she’s leaving, never to return.

Yoongi pulls a set of skeleton keys out of his pocket, taking one and inserting it into the ancient lock on the door. The mechanisms groan, nearly refusing to open. The door does unlock when Yoongi applies a bit more pressure to the key and he steps inside, becoming YN to follow her.

It’s pitch black inside, making YN’s heartbeat speed up astronomically. An icky feeling wells up inside of her, the same one that appeared whenever she had to visit her great aunt and go down into her creepy basement. 

YN’s senses are hyper-aware. The air is stale in here, laced with a scent she’s never experienced before. It almost makes her gag but she forces herself to hold it in, not wanting to be seen as rude. A yellow light turns on overhead, flickering before finally staying lit. Yoongi is closer to her than she’s like him to be, but his back is turned, looking at the shelves built into the room. Even these are stuffed to the brim, absolutely filthy and covered in grime.

“The book is in good condition like you said, right?” YN asks him.

She’s going to be pissed if he pulls out a book covered in rat droppings and cobwebs.

“Of course,” he says, like it’s obvious. 

YN doesn’t quite believe him. Yoongi moves deeper into the storage room, YN following him. There are a variety of things in here that pique her interest - small items that float in murky water, a collection of old stained knives, and a snow globe bigger than her hand. She reaches out to touch it, curious about the scene inside of it, but Yoongi smacks her hand away before she can touch it.

YN brings it to her chest protectively, startled.

“Don’t touch that,” he hisses out.

“Sorry,” YN says.

“It’s in the very back,” Yoongi says.

YN swallows, following after him as he gets even deeper inside of the storage room. She looks at the snow globe over her shoulders, looking at the fake snow that’s swirling around even though she never got to shake it. 

This whole experience has been really unsettling, so when Yoongi stops and pulls a perfectly preserved book off the shelf, YN nearly sags in relief.

She reaches her hand out for it and Yoongi places it in her palm.

“You’re quite the collector, huh?” he asks her, his fingers still wrapped around the book.

“Yeah,” YN says, gently trying to pull it away from him.

His grip tightens. 

“So am I,” he says, smiling at her.

His teeth are incredibly straight and perfect, a complete contrast to the rest of his sickly and generally unkempt appearance. 

“That’s nice,” YN says, “Can I have the book now?”

“You know, I think the rarer an item is, the better it is for collecting.”

YN nods, agreeing and trying to decide if she should just cut her losses and run. But she’s looked for this book for over a year now and she finally has it in her grasp. She can’t give up yet.

“What do you collect?” YN asks, hoping that indulging him in conversation will get this experience to fly by faster. 

“Figurines, mostly,” he says, “Though everything else in this shop is mine as well, none of it holds my attention for very long. My figures, though. I adore them.”

“I like figures too,” YN says, all of the hairs on her body sticking straight up.

“Really? Would you like to see my collection?”

“No thank -”

“It won’t take long at all!” Yoongi says, suddenly insistent, “I’ll show you and then we can get you checked out, okay?”

Yoongi pulls the book away from YN entirely, practically dangling it in front of her. All the warning bells in her head are going off, but her desire to have this book has her internally soothing herself. Plenty of collectors are weird or just bad at speaking to people. He’s probably just the same as them.

“Okay,” YN says after a moment.

Yoongi gives her that perfect smile again and then turns to walk back the way they came, stopping in front of that snow globe. He picks it up and the entire shelf groans, sinking inwards and to the side to reveal a hidden pathway. A draft wafts up and tousles YN’s hair.

To hell with it. This is too far. Just as YN turns on her heel, preparing to run, Yoongi’s hand grasps her wrist, his skin cold as ice.

“You wanted to see right?” he asks her.

YN’s never seen a man so creepy. Everything about him is off.

“I changed my mind actually,” she says, wetting her lips and trying not to panic as those dead eyes follow the movement of her tongue, “I don’t really need the book.”

“Nonsense,” Yoongi says, dragging her inside, “You simply must see it.”

He’s surprisingly strong to look so sick. YN digs her heels into the floor but Yoongi has no problem dragging her inside. The door shuts behind them and Yoongi pulls her crying and screaming through another maze of pitch-black hallways until he steps foot into a showroom. 

Everything in here is impeccable. The floors shine and the lights overhead are bright. Her attention is immediately brought to the dozens of life-sized figures he has, each of them different. There are men and women, figures of all shapes, sizes, and ages. It looks like a creepily realistic wax museum.

YN doesn’t want to know why Yoongi has these figures. All she wants to do is go home.

“Please let me go,” YN says, tears streaming down her face.

“Let you go?” Yoongi asks her as if he’s genuinely confused, “Why would I let you go? You’re the final piece before my collection is complete.”

YN’s blood turns to ice. She turns her head to look at the figure closest to her, noticing the way its skin is too lifeline to be made of wax.

“Please no,” she begs him, trying her best to fight him off.

Just as she swings her free hand at his skull, he drops her and pushes her harshly, sending her straight to the ground, her skull smacking into the floor. 

Her ears ring and the bright lights overhead blur her vision. She feels nauseous as she raises her hand to touch the blood seeping from her scalp.

“Damn. I’ll have to make sure that gets cleaned up,” Yoongi mutters to himself, annoyed.

YN is terrified on the ground, but the blood on the ground makes her look like an angel, one surrounded by a halo. Yes, she really will be perfect, the very last piece of his collection.

He’s been following her for years, countlessly one step behind her as she snatched up several of the items he wanted for his own collection. It pissed him off to no end until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Even the thought of that smug smiles she always wears in her YouTube videos sent him into an outrage, one that landed him his first figure.

It was an accident, of course. The woman in his store had been there and accidentally knocked over one of his shelves, crushing her underneath it. 

She could have been saved, probably, but he’d never seen someone with a face like hers, so completely one of a kind, something he knew that YN would never be able to possess. 

And so a new obsession started. He would lure people he thought were interesting into his shop and lock them deep inside of it, propping them up on giant doll stands when they submitted to him.

It made him feel so powerful.

But YN was still out there, still always one step ahead of him. And so he laid this trap, ecstatic to finally have her in his possession. 

Yoongi leans over YN, watching as the light slowly starts to fade from her eyes. It’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, a true Christmas miracle. He can’t resist sinking to his knees, watching as confusion and fear swirl in her eyes. For once, his own gaze isn’t clouded, clear as a night sky, dark and absent of stars. 

Her blood smears on his fingers but he doesn’t mind, taking YN’s face in his hands tenderly and painting her lips crimson. He kisses her then, sucking her final breath into him, stealing it and her life away.

For an hour he just sits there and looks at her, completely mesmerized. She looks so beautiful in red that he decides to dress her in it, carefully pulling a red dress over her forms. She’s heavy in his arms when he picks her up and takes her to the spot he’s saved just for her, a plush red couch where she looks like she’s lounging peacefully, her lips smudged with her own lifeline.

And finally, his collection is complete. 

[delicioussshame]

This was written with time I 100% did not have and I’m so going to regret wasting it later.

Luo Binghe had always planned to come back for Shen-laoshi.

It’s why he’d chosen to study business in the first place. If he wanted to steal Shen-laoshi away from the job that was stretching so thin he was already close to breaking when Luo Binghe was only a high school student, he needed to make so much money that Shen-laoshi could not say no. If Shen-laoshi were to think, even for a second, that supporting him would weight Luo Binghe down, he would remain a teacher for the rest of his life, Luo Binghe knew it.

Luo Binghe had expected this would take at least a few years, even with the prestigious university degree he only got because Shen-laoshi personally tutored him for so long.

He hadn’t expected the shortcut life had sent his way, but he was not going to ignore it.

“…Binghe? Is that Luo Binghe?”

Luo Binghe feels his stomach drop. Shen-laoshi could never be anything less than stunning, but even his visible joy at seeing Luo Binghe again cannot mask the dull, almost sickly pallor of his skin, or the deep bags under his eyes. As Luo Binghe feared, the terrible school he had attended had eaten Shen-laoshi alive. He’d always known that good intentions wouldn’t be enough to permanently counter chronic lack of funding and colleagues so apathetic they could only be matched by the students, but witnessing it this obviously tears at his heart.

Luo Binghe had never planned a conventional courtship. He’d known since he was fifteen that Shen-laoshi was his soulmate. He didn’t want to wait. If Shen-laoshi were to ask, Luo Binghe would marry him right here and now. The ring he’d gotten for him had been the first major purchase he’d made, once he’d understood he’d never have to restrain himself again.

Saving Shen-laoshi is more important that Luo Binghe’s romantic intentions. He has to take him away from here, as fast as possible. He hadn’t planned on moving this fast, but since summer break is fast approaching… “Does Laoshi knows who Tianlang-Jun was?”

Shen-laoshi blinks at the non-sequitur. They’d been catching up moments ago, and now this? “…Yes?”

“After I graduated from college, I found out I was his only biological son. His only family still alive. He left me everything.”

Shen-laoshi lefts out a polite, unbelieving laugh. “Really? How lucky for you.”

Luo Binghe hands him his phone. Does Shen-laoshi even have a decent phone? The older model he’d used when Luo Binghe was still a student here cannot possibly still work, can it? “You can look it up, if you want to. There were a couple articles about it.”

Luo Binghe stays silent at Shen-laoshi’s face turns astonished, before he gives the phone back. “Wow. Binghe, congratulations! Or should I be offering you my sympathies? You’ve never met him, have you?”

Luo Binghe shakes his head. “That’s not why I told Shen-laoshi this. Laoshi should know that I’m very, very wealthy. I’ve taken over my father’s affairs, and I fully intend on keeping things that way.”

Shen-laoshi blinks, confused. “I’m very happy for you, of course. Binghe deserves it more than anyone, after all the hard work he did to get ahead. But why are you telling me? You must have many friends now. Maybe a lover? You don’t have to hang you with your old teacher anymore.”

“Come home with me.”

Shen-laoshi tilts his head just a little, before gesturing to the mountains of tests he’d surrounded with. “As Binghe knows, the semester is almost over. I have tests to grade.”

Too many to only be his class’. Luo Binghe bets older teachers have left Shen-laoshi their share. Again. Still.

He grits his teeth. He’d chosen to approach Shen-laoshi in July exactly because of this. He’d thought they could get closer during the summer months, and with luck he’d convince Shen-laoshi not to return in September.

September is too far away. “Shen-laoshi shouldn’t waste his valuable time on this! Look at him, so exhausted, so pale, so thin! Has he been eating at all after I stopped bringing him food? Laoshi, your student cannot let this stand! Shen-laoshi needs to stop working. Instead, he can stay with me. I make more than enough to support him!”

He can see Shen-laoshi fluster. “Binghe, what nonsense are you spouting? You can’t just take people in like they’re stray dogs! And I’m perfectly fine! I can take care of myself without having my former student worry about me like I’m a child! Really, Binghe, are you the one working too much? It’s the first time we see each other in years, is this really what you want to say?”

Luo Binghe has never heard more blatant lies. Shen-laoshi couldn’t even meet his eyes as he spoke. He’s on the verge of a breakdown, anyone could see it.

He won’t let this stand. “Shen-laoshi isn’t a child, but I’m not one anymore either. I’ve thought this through. Why do you think I came to visit Laoshi here, at school? I wanted to see if he was doing better, or if he’d moved on from this place, but since it isn’t the case, it’s clear he needs help. Help I’m more than willing to offer, in exchange for all those years he spent tutoring me.”

Shen-laoshi’s voice softens. “Binghe, no. You don’t owe me just because I was doing my job.”

Shen-laoshi wasn’t just doing his job. Even when he met with Luo Binghe at his desk, Luo Binghe had been aware that he sometimes intruded; that Shen-laoshi had pushed back grading or his second job aside to give Luo Binghe, the one interested student he had, the attention he needed to blossom.

No matter what Shen-laoshi says, Luo Binghe owes him the world, and he’ll give it to him. “I want to. Shen-laoshi would stay inside, reading the books he doesn’t have time to read right now and resting until he’s well again. Wouldn’t that be nice? I assure him my home is equipped with any luxury he might need, and if something is missing, I’ll get it for him. All he would have to do is be there for me when I return. That’s not much to ask for, is it?” The work day would be never-ending if it were keeping him away from Shen-laoshi, but it would also be so much more worthwhile. Working to keep his beloved safe and happy would fuel him through each day.

“If Binghe is lonely, he can get a girlfriend! They must be fighting to get at you! Keep your teacher out of it!”

Luo Binghe shakes his head. “I don’t want women. Laoshi is the only one I want in my home and in my bed. As I said, I’m a man now, and I know what I want. Living with me would be so much better for him than,” he gestures to the decrepit teachers’ room, “this. Laoshi has to accept that much.”

Shen-laoshi’s skin is now white as a sheet. He probably finally figured out that Luo Binghe was serious.

Good.

“Binghe really… Do you realise what you just said? Binghe wants… You’re not well. If you prefer… men, that’s perfectly fine. Get a boyfriend who’ll be your equal. Don’t offer to… pay older men to…” The rest of the sentence dies out, Shen-laoshi obviously too distraught to continue.

Distraught, but not disgusted. “I said I wanted Laoshi, not anyone else. I wouldn’t offer such a deal to a stranger. I just want to give back to Shen-laoshi for all he did for me.”

“Binghe has a strange definition of giving back.”

To be honest, Luo Binghe would wire an obscene amount of money in Shen-laoshi’s account each month if he thought for a minute that his former teacher would accept it. He just knows he won’t.

But if he’s his… Shen-laoshi has a reason to accept his generosity, and Luo Binghe has a golden opportunity to demonstrate his devotion. “I have no plans to trap Laoshi in something he doesn’t want. I came to see him because the semester is almost over. How about he comes spend a week at mine, see how he likes it? If it doesn’t suit him, he can go at anytime. I won’t ever restrain his movements. I just think it would be a better deal for both of us. Or does Laoshi doubt me? Have I ever given him a reason to distrust me? I was always a good student, wasn’t I? I can tell Laoshi needs some time to recharge. Some time away from all of this, for him to be taken cared of properly. I would love to provide that time for him.” Luo Binghe advances a bit, and takes Shen-laoshi’s frail, trembling hand in his, closing his own, much warmer, fingers over his gently. “Please?”

Shen-laoshi stares at their joined hands, apparently mystified at the fact that he’s not taking his back.

Luo Binghe is content to wait.

“…This is crazy. I can’t possibly be considering… Binghe, are you certain?”

Luo Binghe has never been more certain of anything. “Yes.”

“…You said just one week?”

To begin with. Luo Binghe has no intention of having him leave after said week. Shen-laoshi will be so thoroughly wooed, he won’t even realise seven days have passed until a month has. “One week.”

Shen-laoshi rubs his temples in a gesture that reveals how much his own existence weights on him. “I must be insane. Who does that? Binghe, who does that? Who do you think I am?”

“My teacher, and the only person I want.” He lets his hold on Shen-laoshi’s hand turn inviting, rubbing with a touch so light Shen-laoshi shivers under its caress. “Think of it as a vacation. Laoshi deserves one. That’s not so strange, is it? A vacation away from everyone and everything, where you only have to think about yourself, for once.”

“And you.”

“And me.” Luo Binghe won’t let Shen-laoshi forget about him, not even when he’s at work.

“Why me?”

“Why not you? Shen-laoshi is beautiful.”

He laughs. It’s a bitter, ugly sound that Luo Binghe instantly hates. “I am not. You said it yourself; I’m tired. I’ve exhausted myself. I look twice my age.”

Luo Binghe rolls his eyes. He’s never heard anything more ridiculous. “You do not. Laoshi barely looks older than I.”

Luo Binghe thought Shen-laoshi would keep on arguing. He could go on for hours, when Luo Binghe got him in the right move. His anger had been captivating, as a child. Luo Binghe had dreamed of creating such passion in him.

He might have a chance to, now.

Instead, Shen-laoshi is vanquished by the years of overwork. Luo Binghe can tell. It’s not his proposal that seems rational, or Luo Binghe himself that’s too appealing; it’s, as he expected, this revolting environment that Shen-laoshi wants to escape from for a moment, even if the only way to do so is by running in Luo Binghe’s arms. “Fine. If Binghe wants to do something as stupid as taking his old teacher as a charge, he can do it, as long as he doesn’t expect much. I don’t have anything left to offer.”

More nonsense. Shen-laoshi, tired to the core and depleted as he is, has more to offer than the prettiest of the heiresses who tried their hands at him.

Luo Binghe gives him a card, folding his fingers over the thick paper. “My address. Shen-laoshi should come on the first Sunday after the term has ended. I’ll be here to welcome him properly. And I won’t let him forget. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll come pick him up. He can pack, or he can bring nothing; either way, I’ll provide anything he needs.”

Shen-laoshi’s fingers twitch over the paper before he pockets it. “I see. I’ll do as Binghe says, then, and come visit him on Sunday, unless he gets his senses back and takes back his offer, in which case, he should call to say so.”

As if. “Shen-laoshi shouldn’t count on it.”

Shen-laoshi sighs. “I’m starting to understand that.”

By the end of the week, Luo Binghe will make sure Shen-laoshi knows down to his bones that when it comes to his teacher, Luo Binghe’s senses have left him long ago. “I’ll be waiting, then.”

[misslilli]

Thank you guys, for going on this adventure with me 🥰 I'm having such a blast reading your comments!

Felix Felicis

MSR. AU. PG-13. | tagging @today-in-fic | AO3

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 - Fantastic Mulders And Where To Find Them

[ DS ]

“Well, little lady, you’re pretty young and inexperienced, you’ll learn to distinguish when it’s appropriate to call in parents and when it’s clearly not necessary.” Stunned, I stare at the father of a girl in my class sitting across from me, trying to control my flaring temper. ‘What a misogynistic, condescending asshole!’

“I can assure you, sir, when a child comes to me with a concerning story from home, I will always want to clear it up with the parents. Now that we’ve cleared it up, I think we’re done here. Thank you for coming.” I get up and hold out my hand, hoping to end this nightmare of a conversation on a positive note.

Once he left, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding, anger boiling in the pit of my stomach. There’s not much that I hate more than being belittled and I yank my book bag off my table angrily, spilling the cup of pencils in the process, scattering them everywhere. I want to scream. Okay, now I’m Pissed. Royally.

I pick up the pencils and shove them back into the cup before turning off the lights and leaving for today. As I head outside, I notice a small gathering of women down the front steps and they’re giggling and laughing at something Fox Mulder had said. At the sight of him, my heart skips a few beats. ‘Oh that’s just great. I’ll keep my head down and walk by quickly, I’m in no mood to be dragged into a conversation with the PTA brigade.’

I try to pass them by inconspicuously, walking briskly down the stairs and keeping my head down, but I’m stopped with a hand on my arm and a “Miss Scully, do you have a moment?” I turn to him trying to hide my exasperation. ‘Ugh, why do you have to be so damn handsome. And please, get your hand off my arm before I burst into flames. Victim: Dana Scully, cause of death: Spontaneous human combustion from being touched by Fox Freakin’ Mulder. Try and put that on a headstone.’

My mask of professionalism only slips for a brief moment, though, and I smooth out the frown on my face. “Yes, Mr. Mulder?” ‘Why is your hand still there? And why is it so hot all of a sudden, it’s freakin’ September.’

“I was hoping you could give me another opinion on something.” He leans into my personal space conspiratorially and I raise my eyebrow in a silent question. ‘Mmmh he smells really good too. Why, God, why? Ugh, that low tone of voice is driving me insane.’

“Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?” The women around me giggle and I blink at him slowly. ‘What the fuck kind of question is that?’ I draw myself up to full height - don’t you dare laugh - thankful that I wore my heels today and gather the few braincells I have left that are not occupied with wondering how that broad chest would feel under my fingers.

“Logically, I would have to say No. Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft’s capabilities.” I can tell that my answer somewhat surprises him but he’s not done yet.

“But there are obviously unexplained phenomena out there, now when convention and science offer us no answers might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?”

‘What I find fantastic is your ass in those jeans…’. “What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there, you just have to know where to look!” The other moms watch our argument as if they’re watching a tennis game.

He flashes me a wry grin. “That’s why they put the ‘I’ in FBI.” ‘Huh, so he’s with the Feds? I wonder where he keeps his gun. Well, I know where I’d check first but… Okay that’s enough. I wonder how many Hail Mary’s Father George will make me say for what’s going on inside my head.

Felix comes running down the stairs at this moment and wraps his arms around his dad’s legs. “Well thank you for this fantastic point of view, I’ll see you tomorrow ladies. Miss Scully.” He tips his imaginary hat to us and walks Felix back to the car. The little boy turns and waves at me, briefly. I smile and wave back.

My mood has miraculously improved during this odd bit of conversation and I bid the PTA moms goodbye as well, walking over to my bike to head home.

----------

[Felix]

“Hey dad, what did you and Miss Scully talk about back there?” I need to know. Please don’t let it be something embarrassing. Dad smiles at me in the rear view mirror.

“I asked her if she believed in aliens!”

“Noooo DAD, please tell me you didn’t!” ‘This is even worse than I thought. Can I give him up for adoption?’Dad shrugs his shoulders.

“She was having a pretty bad day, I just wanted to cheer her up. I think I did a pretty good job, too, she did smile at the end didn’t she?” Okay that is kind of sweet and yes she did, maybe I’ll keep him after all. I decide to change the subject.

“Dad, can we go to a soccer game sometime?” I just found out at recess today that our school has a soccer team and I really want to see that game. There’s another reason, too, but I keep this bit of information to myself.

“Sure, just tell me when!”

----------

[ FM ]

During the week, I’m treated to various stories from Felix’s school day on the car ride home, but his favorite daily segment of the Felix Show is “Dad, Do You Know What Miss Scully Did Or Said Today?” I’m bat-shit crazy about her too, so I get where he’s coming from, but he’s downright obsessed and I worry that this kind of attachment is not healthy for a kid.

I talk this over with our therapist on Thursday, in a one-on-one session and she thinks that maybe because he lacks an emotionally available mother, he looked for a suitable substitute and found it in his teacher. I shouldn’t worry too much about it, she’s sure when it’s too much, that the teacher is capable of handling the situation. She also promised to talk to Felix next time, to maybe tone it down just a little.

Our time is up before I can tell her about my own concerns about this situation. How I’d like to ask her out on a date but I don’t know if I should because I don’t want my son to get hurt in the process. I’m too inexperienced in dating to know the proper ways to handle this and frankly, the thought of getting back into dating terrifies me a little too. Okay maybe a lot. Felix is not the only one who has been scarred by the divorce.

----------

[ Felix ]

“Dad! Do we have any glitter glue in the house?”

It’s Thursday night and I’ve been working on my project for hours, wanting to get it just right. I had asked dad to write out a text for an invitation for me and I copied it onto the paper carefully. Pleased, I look at the two invitations I made, I can’t wait to hand them out. I really really hope they’ll accept the invite. My dad’s voice is getting louder while he talks, he’s coming upstairs. He enters my room and looks over my shoulder.

“Yeah, it’s in one of the drawers in the office. Tell me again why you’re making extra invitations when we had official ones made this week?” For someone who spends the whole day at work getting into other people’s heads, he’s not very good at understanding people.

“Because I reallywant them to come, dad! They’re my special guests!”

“Well, if there’s glitter glue, they won’t be able to say no! You did a really good job, Felix.”

“I hope so, dad. I’m pretty sad that mom’s out of the country and grandma can’t make it either.” He strokes a hand over my head.

“I know, son. I’m sorry!”

Chapter 14 - Last Chance For Spotting A Rainbow

Notes:

I stole some lines from the pilot. Please don’t sue. They’re just too good. Asdldlgdf

Also, the scene in the beginning is not entirely made up, a version of it happened to me last year.

[tanadrin]

Notes on some Rare Economic Systems (That Do Not Work)

1.

A little more than two hundred years ago, the state of Kezaria was rapidly changing, but straining against a patchwork of antiquated laws supported by a corrupt government. The Kezarian parliament was filled with representatives of rotten boroughs, its aristocracy refused to endorse any kind of political reform, and its population was moving from the countryside to the cities as enclosures on the one hand and the growth of the urban economy on the other conspired to convert the country from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. Eventually, protests broke out which threatened to become a real revolution. Terrified of the consequences of such a revolution, the State Council of Kezaria forced through a series of reforms that included, among its provisions, a regular cash disbursement for the relief of the poor. As all this happened before Speenhamland, a prejudice against such a program had not yet been established in Kezaria, and the State Council was desperate for anything that would keep the government from being overthrown.

Incidentally, it worked, and though initially considered a minor provision, direct poverty relief became a cornerstone of Kezarian government. As the country moved further in a socialist direction–now through gradual reform aided by democracy, rather than revolution or the threat of revolution–this provision was expanded, and eventually enshrined in the Kezarian constitution. But some thinkers still considered the economic system fundamentally unjust; redistribution, they said, was not enough. It was still possible that wealth should be unequally amassed, that the resources of each citizen should be too different in magnitude, and therefore some would have unelected power over their fellows; and a state that was a democracy worthy of the name should make all its citizens equal in matters of money as well as law. And so in due course, all income *outside of* the Kezarian basic income was banned.

This is the Kezarian system as it stands today: each month, an account in every citizen’s name is reset to 2,000 Kezarian lions–although the lion no longer functions as a true currency, the name is retained for the sake of historical continuity. The lion may be spent, but not accumulated: an excess of lions, as well as a dearth, is wiped out at the end of each calendar month. As accounts may be held only by natural persons, no business has a single swan (the Kezarian cent) to its name, except what its managers and executives might pool of their common monthly resources. Transaction taxes are very high–as much as 20 or 30 percent of any purchase–in order to keep the lion in circulation, but nobody much minds, as they are not really losing any money in the long run.

The inconvertibility of the lion means that, naturally, tourism is nearly nonexistent in Kezaria, and all imports must be purchased by the state and imported using its foreign currency reserves. But the Kezarians seem content with their system, for they can look around at their neighbors and friends and politicians–all the people who *really* matter, after all–and be confident that no one is doing much better, or much worse, than them.

2.

Miskando is perhaps unique in the world for being a modern, industrialized, and prosperous gift economy.

Miskando has few laws, not because its people are of an especially libertarian bent, but because informal rules in Miskandese culture to an unusual degree. Whereas the British have no need of a written constitution, because convention governs their parliament so strictly, the Miskandese have little need of written laws, because contravening the rules of polite society is unthinkable. Such behavior puts one in the same category as a child, imbecile, or foreigner; and if you truly do not know how to behave in a given situation, well, Miskandese bookshops do a brisk trade in manuals of etiquette, and the most popular section of the newspapers is invariably the one given over entirely to advice columns.

The commercial storefront in Miskando is in fact an evolution of the private home; as such, there isn’t a strict distinction between “house” and “shop,” and one observes the niceties of calling on a friend or acquaintance when one enters a shop, even if the proprietor is totally unknown to them. If you need something–a new hat, perhaps, or a week’s worth of groceries–the custom is that you wander into a shop and look about for a little while. The shopkeeper or the clerk will ask you if they can help; you must refuse at least once. When they insist (as they invariably will), you will begrudingly admit that there are one or two things you might want, and after a little back-and-forth and some polite chit-chat about the weather, you will gather the items on your list, enquire after your interlocutor’s health and the health of their children, and then depart.

The provision of services, even complex ongoing services, is furnished in much the same way. A bilateral relationship must be carefully cultivated between members of two different firms; as a rule, favors are exchanged, rather than contracts being made, and are never quite repaid fully: to do so would be to formally disobligate someone, and thus to end your relationship with them. This is seen as a terrible snub when it occurs between individuals, and when it occurs between businesses is usually due to one party incurring the other’s greatest displeasure

.Outsiders attempting to do business in Miskando have generally found the process bewildering, even those from politeness-heavy societies. The Miskandese, for their part, have adapted fairly well to commerce with other nations; after all, if they have need of hard currency, they usually have a friend who owes them a favor that they can ask.

3.

In Gharat, all money is in the form of immense bronze pillars.

Long ago, it is said, the people of Gharat exchanged certain standardized, useful goods, like knives or wool cloth, whose value was widely agreed upon. These eventually gave way to the ancient Gharat knife-currency, a chunk of bronze of a fixed weight whose resemblance to the older medium of exchange was only passing. The real value was in the metal itself; and because of its weight, large amounts of these heavy pieces were often bound together to prevent theft.

One day, a thoughtful merchant had the bright idea of simply melting all his bronze into one enormous mass, which he could simply leave outside his house–after all, it was impossible to steal. Many others began to follow suit, and some began to craft the displays of their wealth into more elaborate shapes, and eventually, the tradition of the bronze pillar currency was enshrined. It didn’t matter that it couldn’t be transported; after all, the metal wasn’t *used* for anything anymore–the Gharati had by this time moved on to iron tools. And (so the Gharati held) assiduous recordkeeping meant that it was always widely known who owned what pillar, even if the pillar in question happened to be three provinces over.

The centralization of the Gharati nation in the 18th and 19th century and the codification of Gharati customary law necessitated the establishment of a centralized record of ownership of the pillars; and it was eventually discovered, to the horror of the nation’s leaders, that the records of ownership were, in fact, a contradictory mess. They *could*, perhaps, be sorted out, and the spurious claims distinguished from the genuine ones, but to do so would be to devastate the wealth of the nation: multiple ownership of the same pillars more than quintupled the country’s GDP, with some particularly contested pillars being owned by as many as fifty people. Perhaps they could keep the situation a secret; but if word ever got out, they feared, there would be chaos and riots as a result.

The solution came from Gharati religious law, which had always been rather more concerned with metaphysical matters over practical ones. One object, the scriptures said, might really be two, depending on how you look at it; so the Gharati lawmakers simply proclaimed all claims of ownership that had existed on a certain date, a few years previous, to be valid; and any *appearance* that one pillar might be owned by more than one person was, in fact, an illusion of the material world. Really, these were multiple pillars that happened to be superimposed on one another. They might *literally* be made of the same particles of metal, but they were *conceptually* distinct. There was some grumbling when this was announced–but no one wanted to risk losing the lion’s share of their net worth overnight, so it was quickly accepted.

Yet despite proposals, the Gharati have never made the shift entirely to a pillar-backed paper currency, or to a fiat currency entirely. After all, they say, money ought to be something *real.* A bronze pillar has mass and heft; and thus, it is possible to imagine, it had real value. To abolish the system entirely would simply turn the idea of money into a farce.

4.

Clasimarion is, its inhabitants say, the most perfect place of liberty to have ever existed–even if they are all slaves.

The island of Usvasaari was settled by Tiravec peoples from the south, who founded the city; Clasimarion was a prosperous trade republic in its middle years, but declined as the mercantile empires around it grew, and its once-vaunted navy was unable to secure its trading rights by force. When the Third Bull Government was overthrown, a new order was proclaimed. The constitution consisted of a single line: “The forceful interference with an individual or their property may be met with force.” The state was abolished; henceforth the Clasmain common law of property was supreme.

Despite the cynicism of foreign observes, Clasimarion did *not* immediately collapse into anarchy. No warlord rose to power, no neighboring state invaded, and, for a little while, life continued much as it had before, without the burden of taxes or unnecessary bureaucracy. The former merchant-lords of the city managed their holdings without outside interference now, and any petty squabbles that might result in violence between their private mercenary corps did not interfere with life in the rest of the city.

This state lasted about thirty years. One day, a certain Orsil San, the last of an old Clasmain family now living abroad, discovered that according to ancient Clasmain law, his quintuple-great-grandmother had at one time owned all of the northern peninsula of Usvasaari, the very land on which Clasimarion was built. What had been thought freehold title, converted to allodial title at the time of the revolution, was in fact only on an indefinite lease to the government; and, the deed said, should the institutions of that government be dissolved, “all land, chattels, movable and immovable goods, and any other right of property within that domain, not held by persons outside it, shall revert to the San family."

This meant that all Clasimarion was the property of one man. And worse: because Clasmain common law had never abolished the condition of slavery (though it had been centuries since it had been practiced), and that slaves could not own property, all of the *inhabitants* of Clasimarion were his property as well, to dispose of, with absolute rights, as he wished.

And Orsil San did wish. He sold the deed to an overseas company, a fortune-cookie company called Voystaykan & Son, and retired to a dissolute life that ended when he fell off his yacht and drowned. Voystaykan sent a delegation to Clasimarion, contracts in hand, and all of the most eminent jurists of the city agreed with doleful solemnity: Orsil San had the right, and the contracts were valid. To rebel, to attempt to rescind the contract, to appoint a parliament or king to change the law, would be an intolerable violation of the constitution, an affront to the most deeply held principles of liberty. The entire city submitted without a fight, and became the property of the newly-rebranded Voystaykan Company.

The Company is not cruel. It knows that morale is important to get the most out of its property. The people labor by day, singing their work-songs and shanties, and they retire in the evening to adequate meals within their barracks. They have their games and celebrations. Life in Clasimarion is well-ordered, and peaceful. But the will of the city’s managers is an iron law. The CEO of the Company, like a distant god. The company’s property may supplicate before it; they may beg and plead and weep, but the law of that country is clear: they are objects of another’s rights, not agents of their own. They may hope, and they may dream; but their labor does not cease, and their fate is not their own to determine. And they may gaze out over the cold waters that surround Usvasaari, but they cannot leave. For what would they be then, but thieves stealing themselves away? To do so would mean that they despise that most important right of all, the right to property. It would mean that they hate justice and law and liberty above all. And whatever else it may be, Clasimarion is free.

[jojo-reader-hell]

Jonathan with a girlfriend who is absolutely spoiled, stuck up, always completely dressed up, and a daddies girl? She tries to spoil him all the time with expensive items and throws a fit and starts bawling because she doesn’t know how else to show her affection?

MY BABY 😭🥺 I needed to write something hopeful and sweet for my hubby ❤️❤️ GIVE JONATHAN LOVE.

“What say you to this color?”

Jonathan blanched, seeing that familiar dark scowl cross your face as you approached from the other side of the room. Your father was sitting placidly across the way from where you had been playing inspector, draped on a couch and smoking his pipe away from where the tailor displayed the many suits of clothing you’d commissioned for your future husband. No less than twenty full ensembles, including his wedding attire with more on the way to be delivered tomorrow. As if Jonathan didn’t already feel like a burden accepting your father’s kindness to stay at your home until the wedding, now he felt as though you were trying to dress him up like a show poodle.

“Now love…” Jonathan murmured meekly, but you didn’t hear him.

You slowly looked towards the tailor, the fabric of Jonathan’s wedding clothes between your fingers. It looked sharp and attentive on the mannequin, and from the greedy eyes of the man you hired he was already calculating in his mind how much he could swindle out of your purse.

“This is a joke to you, tailor?” You said, so lowly it was almost a whisper.

“Madam?!”

“Pray tell me sir, if you think this…” with one quick motion you ripped the sleeve of the new suit clean off and held it out, “… is a joke? A spectacle, a farce. I told you it was of the upmost importance that you use the fabrics and the stitches I recommended. Are you perhaps under the assumption that we are performing a production of ‘Twelfth Night’?! You were told this was a wedding, were you not?! SO I AM VERY PERPLEXED AS TO WHY YOU INSIST ON DRESSING MY FUTURE HUSBAND IN THIS INSULT OF A MONKEY SUIT-…!”

Oh great… There you went… When you got like this, not even Jonathan in his most commanding tone could get you to calm down.

“THE NERVE… NO, THE AUDACITY OF INSULTING HIM AFTER HE HAS GONE THROUGH SUCH A PAINFUL ORDEAL!”

He felt as though you would be so busy going over your individual trousseaus that you’d miss both the wedding and the honeymoon abroad you and your father had planned right from under him.

You hadn’t even waited for his wounds to heal or for the embers to be extinguished in what remained of the Joestar estate, no sooner had you invaded his sick room that you began to take over every aspect of Jonathan’s life. It was you that decided what he ate, what clothes he wore, what time he went to bed, he’d never felt as weak and helpless as he sank into his chair while you continued to run off at the mouth. You’d be married in a week (thanks to a bit of your prodding and encouraging he finally worked up plenty of nerve to ask you to be Mrs. Jonathan Joestar), and despite the general excitement of your household and the exorbitant costs, Jonathan was starting to feel the tiniest tinge of regret in his heart.

“Well, all I can offer you is luck for your wedding old boy.” Speedwagon had clapped him on the back, “Seems your lady wants it her way, and I hope she means well taking control.”

For some reason Robert Speedwagon’s usual talent for judging character had gone muddled. He didn’t quite know what to make of you. You tended to Jonathan like he was a child by spoiling him with gifts and trinkets, and tempting him with sweet things, all the while scolding your servants and your father with a sharp tongue, despite the fact that they all seemed eager to bend to your will. You’d been rather abrupt with Robert, turning your back to him and catering to your beloved Jojo as though the other man didn’t exist.

How many times had Jonathan scolded you about your selfishness over the course of your short courtship? Too many to count. He insisted gently at first that he didn’t need anything, your love was more than enough... Only to be blatantly ignored as you chided him for foolishness and delved for hours into the places you’d both go, and the clothes and toiletries you’d need for honeymoon in France and Italy. As of late he’d been rather curt with his tender feelings, trying to quell the resentment that had been building up.

What had he gotten himself into with you? The love you shared was hurried, as though fleeting, like a thief in the night you charmed Jonathan and easily stole your way into his heart because it was where you wanted to be. He knew it. Everyone knew your intentions for the charming specimen, and it was only a matter of time before he found himself inexplicably tied to you with a red string of fate, a chord binding the two of you for better or for worse. Call it the desire of the young to sow his wild oats, call it boys will be boys, call it the beguiling seductions of a temptress, call it whatever you please, all he knew was that this was to be his future if he cared one iota about reputation.

“For the price your crooked practice has tried to extract from me, I expect you to get it right the first time.” You growled to the tailor. “Make sure you do not make the same mistake twice.”

“Yes madam! Anything...! My apologies to your fiancé as well, I beg a thousand pardons sir.” The shriveled old man bowed out, and as you smoothed your skirts and pretended nothing had happened Jonathan stood to make his exit.

“Oh dearest! Please stay seated, if you need something presently I shall send Benson to fetch it!” Your voice rose a few octaves, and you darted towards him like a sparrow when you saw he was preparing to take his leave.

“I am quite alright, thank you.” Jonathan replied, his voice tight and low as he played off dodging your grasp as him trying to grip the arm of the chair to center himself.

He had to insist that he was fine. It would be alright. He just had to take care of some personal things before he could come back. But he instead hid away in the one place in the entire manor you wouldn’t think to look for him.

Surrounded in your own miniature museum, Jonathan sequestered himself in a bay window behind heavy drapes, and dropped his face into his hands as he began to cry his frustrated tears. This helplessness was consuming him. He could do nothing except submit to your will, and in his delusion of masculinity it hurt him and made him feel helpless and lonely. Despite his resolve to never let anyone push him around again, it only applied when his tormentor was a man apparently. What could he do? He couldn’t do anything to you except bow to your whims, already in debt in over his head and trembling at the trap laid out for him; it was a deadly combination of convention and Christian morals that dictated of a man to rise up and be counted responsible for his actions. Where could he go now? His choices of shelter were nonexistent. There was no Joestar estate to return to, at least not until you both returned from your bridal tour abroad when the workers your father hired projected its completion. Heaven help him, he even found himself pining for his lost love, feeling a heaping dose of Christian guilt whenever those thoughts crossed his mind. But there was no comfort even in emotional infidelity. Erina Pendleton refused to hurt you. During the nights she nursed him she rebuffed his reaches towards her, and only told him to treat you tenderly, to make an honest woman of you considering the nature of your close relationship, and to accept the kindness you had extended to him in the form of a place to recover. And there was no way, no chance in hell that a gentleman would betray the expectations of a lady. Even if you drove Jonathan crazy and made him wish that he had never agreed so rashly to marry you, he couldn’t go back on his word. Hadn’t he made a big to do about your engagement? Something he promised his late father pertained to you, a promise just before he went to school he assured his father the same thing he did for you: He would not force you to suffer shame or subject you to the horror of your father’s desire to marry you off to one of his rich friends to save face. If he made the choice to know you, he would take the responsibility of taking care of you as his wife.

They that dance must pay the fiddler after all. His father informed him that his late mother quoted this often. And what a shame it would be to her, if she were alive today and knew that her own son didn’t maintain the morals she wanted for him.

Surrounded by your “curios” and decorations from the Orient, Jonathan tried for many hours to steel his nerves. It took him until it was time to eat with you and your father, the hunger and promise of a feast coaxing him from his corner and to the dining hall where he sat distantly at the overly large table. He supped quietly, refusing to answer your questions as to why he was so late, and simply pretending as though nothing was happening in his mind. Sometimes he made polite conversations with your father, but any time you or the wedding were brought up he avoided the subject like the plague. Hard to do when all your father talked about was you, with the slight possibility he might throw in a morsel or two about his horses. Once in a lull where your father was prying lobster meat from the shell, Jonathan looked up from his plate that he had cleaned nearly five times to see that you barely touched anything, your shoulders withdrawn and your lips pressed tightly together. For a minute his heart twinged with anger, only to soften when he wondered if you’d even eaten anything at all. You looked so pale, and did you always have that green tint to your cheeks? Jonathan watched quietly as you told one of the many servants at your side that you just didn’t want anything right now, but in his heart he knew you weren’t starving yourself for the sake of fashion, nor was it because you were upset.

Jonathan couldn’t let the facade of his anger alienate you… It wasn’t right. Especially not in this condition where the slightest misstep could only make the situation worse. Even if you were with fault and not at all the perfect image of a lady, hadn’t he learned to see passed that to see the beautiful qualities you possessed? Hadn’t he been able to see passed the glitz and glamours you hid your true self behind? As was expected, you were favored by men for your wealth and quick wit, among the women you were hated for the ease with which you could capture a beaux with a simple beckon of your fingers.

It was odd really, among the other ladies of your pedigree you stood out, a bluejay among robins with the temperament to match; none of the ladies were safe from your sharp beak. A beautiful blonde daughter of a marquis would pale in comparison to you, even though you possessed no traditional qualities of beauty that they did. Your face was far too severe, brow perpetually pulled into a look far too sly, and your smile seemed to come at a price as well. Anyone who spent more than a few hours couldn’t fail to notice your short temperament and disdain for the delicate flowers of England. And yet when asked there was never any shortage of complements: your jewelry always sparkled the brightest against your clean skin, your hand was never empty, always clasped by a dancing partner or in fervent confessions of love, and your clothes were always of the finest French silks, fitted in ways to emphasize the assets you did have. Yet the compliments were more superficial, whereas most romantics like Jonathan wanted a Jane Eyre, you were more Blanche Ingram, all French lace and jewelry and coveting any little trinket you could get your hands on.

Yet there were hidden qualities you possessed that you only allowed Jonathan to catch a glimpse of. As much as you threw money towards your curios and your dresses and jewels, you were just as obliged to give it all away to charitable causes. He never forgot the blue coat school you showed him one day when he was itching to go outside for a bit of fresh air. The building bearing your family name was only a few hours ride away from your home, the halls as spotlessly clean and well equipped as your manor, and all the chubby cheeked little orphan girls knew you by name and ran up to kiss you and put bluebells in your hair when you told them you wouldn’t be visiting for some time. They cried at first, thinking you were abandoning them, only to squeal in delight when you told them you were getting married to the handsome man that had accompanied you. He remembered the parties he attended where he’d started to show interest. Your quick with and sharp intellect endeared you to the men, each one pushing Jonathan in your direction when they noticed your demeanor changed for the better whenever he was around. He would always remember the times you purposefully snubbed the advances of one Dio Brando, much to Jonathan’s secret delight, merely because you “did not like the look of his eyes” and that you would not forget the injustices committed against your sweet Jojo.

There were many other things… The times you’d prattle on and on about your fossil collection and all the things you learned whilst collecting them, bonding over a mutual love of history and listening to his own prattling about the stone mask, asking about his hopes and dreams, mourning his father with him on nights where his injuries were too painful to ignore… Even appreciating the friendship and love of Erina Pendleton, because she made him happy during a time where you did not know him. That had to be when he’d truly fallen in love with you. Your heart was wholly good, you only wanted his happiness, whereas any other woman would have flown into a rage because he had never stopped loving another.

Jonathan was so lost in thought about you, he rose from the table without speaking once the meal was concluded, and went automatically towards his sanctuary of your own miniature museum, he didn’t hear your footsteps following eagerly after him.

“Jojo??”

Your voice sounded so innocent, so tiny and sad, that Jonathan paused his journey and allowed you to catch up to him, your jewelry and the knickknacks lining the halls in curio cabinets rattling with your steps as you ran towards him. For every one step he took, you needed to run very far, and it took a while for you to catch up. Yet you did eventually catch up to him winded and looking more pale than before. Gently, like a little girl beseeching her father, you tugged his waistcoat in the hopes that he’d turn to look at you.

“Jojo...” your voice was the tiniest whimper. “Jojo... Are you going to leave me?”

“What?!”

Hours ago before he ate he might have considered breaking the engagement out of anger, but now that he had remembered his love for you (and been fed) he couldn’t dare think of destroying you like that.

“Why would you ever think-…”

“You have that look about you Jojo. I’ve seen it so many times, the first night I saw it, you were making our engagement known to Erina. Now... I... Jojo, please... Forgive me.”

Your hands were shaking. He could see you tottering in your heels and knew immediately when he grabbed your waist to balance you that your mood had only been dictated to anger because you were poorly. Dressed like a doll and smothering in your clothes because your father demanded it of you, and here Jonathan was only making it worse.

“Why... no, I should not pretend as if I do not know the cause of your pain.” He murmured as he pulled you close into his chest. “While I will not deny your tempers vex me, I must beg your forgiveness too... my love, I’ve told you over and over so many times: I have no need for earthly possessions. Your love is all I need. I don’t want to leave you, I only beg of you to let me take care of myself. I wish you wouldn’t spoil me so.”

“B-but Jojo...”

“Shhh... my love, you’re ashen.” He murmured softly into your neck. “You need to have something my love. I can send for a meal to be brought to your room.”

He tried to lead you to your room, but you refused to budge and only tugged on his clothes again, begging him to look at you.

“But Jojo... I... my only wish is that you should want for nothing.”

“I don’t need gifts and trinkets my love.” Jonathan murmured gently. “I just need your love and understanding, and for you to always be happy with me.”

You couldn’t help but melt into tears by his words, explaining through your hiccoughing that you never wanted him to feel unloved or unwanted, citing the many wrongs done to him and the burden it left on your heart to know that while you were blissfully unaware of your future husband’s suffering, you had merely been collecting and hoarding your obsessions and waiting for a man to come and take you away. It frustrated you, you went on, because Jonathan had lost everything, and for once in your life you had the means to give him back what he lost.

“I... I know I cannot turn back the hands of time and return those you have lost...” you whimpered, your tears wetting his cravat and making his own burst forth onto your hair. “However the least I can do is give you clothes, a home, a good meal...-“

“Oh my love... I only. Need. Your. Affections. Nothing else.”

Each word he spoke was punctuated with fervent kisses to your lips, his good arm pressing you tightly against his chest as you lost yourselves to passion. He very nearly lost control there in the hall, not caring that anyone including your father might walk in and scold you both for acting in perversion. But eventually he pulled away from your enticing lips, his heart swelling and beating out the things he thought in anger, your sweetest kisses reminding him of why he asked you to be Mrs. Jonathan Joestar in the first place.

“I had wanted to show you after we took care of your clothes,” you gasped, breathless from his canoodling, “Plenty of other things came today as well, come, before you take me to my room.”

You took him gently by the good arm, directing him into a room he knew to be your nursery in childhood. It wasn’t far from the area you assured him would be your own shared chambers (your father insisted you’d remain with him for the time it took to completely restore Jonathan’s home), and when you opened the door you assured him the setup within was only for a little while.

“Just until the little creature is strong enough to make the journey back home with us Jojo.” You told him with a smile as you lead him into the room.

Seeing the bright pretty colors, as well as the miniature items and clothes, Jonathan couldn’t hold back his happiness. He glanced at you, his lips open in a smile and tears dribbling down his cheeks, and gasped in pure delight to see the items you were squirreling away inside.

“You... you did all this?” He grinned widely.

You nodded eagerly, smiling as he picked up soft swaddling clothes, ran his fingers along the supple wood of a cradle, and looked around with wide, lovesick eyes.

It was as though finally he could see the promise of happier times in these possessions, and realized that you were only trying to give him happiness in the one way that you could. In truth, he still preferred you, and the gift you would give him in a few months time.

[eldestnightwingsyndrome]

ROTD Analysis

revolution of the daleks was a real mixed bag. overall, it was really fun to watch and i enjoyed, but my media analysis brain is going into overdrive, so here are my Thoughts.

quick disclaimer, these are just my opinions and it’s okay if you disagree! feel free to let me know what you disagree with as long as you do it kindly.

Prison Break

the scene where jack breaks the doctor out of prison was fun, however i feel like it was a huge missed opportunity.

yaz spent ten months looking for the doctor, what if in all her research she found torchwood? she could’ve actually teamed up with jack and gotten the doctor out of prison, she and the rest of the fam. why would this have been a better idea (in my opinion) than jack committing a bunch of crimes and somehow hiding a bunch of alien tech and breaking them out?

it allows the fam to have a real impact on the plot of the episode. the only things they really did this episode were:

bring the daleks to the doctor’s attention, which she could and would have found out on her own eventually

yaz noticed the light changing in osaka, which again, the doctor would have figured out on her own.

and ryan had an Honest conversation with the doctor. kudos to him for getting her to actually talk about her feelings.

i’m so incredibly disappointed at how these characters are being used. they almost have no agency. if they had actively contributed to the prison break, it would have fundamentally changed the course of the episode in a way that didn’t happen in the canon.

three of your main characters barely had an affect on the plot.

Nitpicking About Companion Interactions

another thing, no one asked the doctor anything about stormcage? they didn’t even consider how long she may have been there? or what she could have endured?

i understand that they were upset, they were left for ten months unsure if she was alive. they had a right to be upset! but the doctor was in prison for decades, that’s got to have a negative effect on her psyche.

it just doesn’t seem right to me that none of the fam would ask what happened to her. i’m chalking this one up to bad writing, honestly.

Rose Mention

thank god we got a rose mention

however.

correct me if i’m wrong, but when jack brought her up, there was absolutely no reaction from the doctor? not a word, not a facial expression?

my guy. i wanted an acknowledgment of her existence from 13, is that too much to ask?

i’m so so glad she was mentioned at all, but i feel like it could been better? that’s so nitpicky, i know.

The New Companion

i don’t think we need another companion.

i’m not even going to touch on the fact that he’s a middle-aged white dude, so many people have already made posts about that and they’re great, go read them.

i’m going to talk about yaz and the doctor. not about thasmin at all, but about character development and the progression of their friendship (and possibly relationship, although i personally don’t think it will happen).

yaz is such a great character. she has ambitions, a career, a personality, she’s got family! she has clear motivations and drive. she is capable of carrying a season on her own, being the only companion.

it would give a great chance to explore her character further, she would have more screen time and more interactions with the doctor.

as someone who is ambivalent to thasmin, as in, i’d like it if it happened but i wouldn’t say i ship it, they need to further their relationship.

they need more interactions bro. they make such a good team. if it wasn’t currently 12:14 am, i’d list examples. i can’t wait to go more in depth on all this shit. but you know exactly what i’m talking about, yaz is intelligent and clever and it’s clear that the two get along well.

furthermore, this show really can’t handle multiple companions right now. character development has really suffered throughout seasons 11 and 12 because they’re trying to split screen time between three companions and their storylines, the doctor and her storyline, and the monster of the week.

it’s just too much. if yaz was the sole companion for a little while, it would give the show a chance to explore her, explore the doctor’s feelings about being the timeless child and coping with what happened on gallifrey and in stormcage, and again, give the two a chance to develop a complex relationship (platonic or not).

A Bit Of Positivity

here’s a few things i enjoyed from the episode!! obviously not everything, just off the top of my head.

i love that gwen cooper was mentioned. just the little details, guys.

jack’s interaction with graham? god the little things really make this show good.

i like that hotel guy (i can’t be bothered to learn his name) was literally going to betray the human race for what? capitalism? that was funny and sad, a bit too real.

the new dalek design was really cool. it’ll be good to return to something more conventional, but it was nice to see something new! it was sleek and modern, nice to look at.

this episode, and the previous episode featuring daleks in season 12, has been great at making daleks scary again. daleks are still a force to be reckoned with even outside of their casing! they can use people as their puppets! that’s terrifying!! i love it!!!

i enjoyed the weeping angel cameo and the silence cameo.

i know everyone’s said it before but the greasy hair. disgusting, please take a shower, but w o w. it looks good.

if you actually read this far, i’m in love with you. i owe you my firstborn. please give me your thoughts, tear me shreds, agree with me, idc. i’m hoping to go more in depth on this stuff and make a video essay on it, so i’d definitely appreciate hearing from other people. i hope everything i said in this made sense, i’m so tired and i’m not proofreading, so if it’s disjointed i apologize.

[dirthavarens]

The Beginning (Dragatha)

Fandom: Dracula (2020) Characters: Count Dracula, Agatha Van Helsing Relationship: Dracula/Agatha Rating: Explicit Warnings: None Word Count: 8,298 Summary: She hadn’t seen him in fifty years, not since the ship exploded and left everything aboard scattered on the seafloor; a relic of a two person war. He was one of those relics, a deadly artifact she had sought out first and foremost upon her awakening;;

Agatha Van Helsing awakes at the bottom of the seafloor in a state of undead. As always, her curiosity leads her to more than she bargained for but no less than she can handle.

[READ ON AO3] {pt2} {pt3}

or read below:::

She hadn’t seen him in fifty years, not since the ship exploded and left everything aboard scattered on the seafloor; a relic of a two person war. He was one of those relics, a deadly artifact she had sought out first and foremost upon her awakening;;

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Much like Jonathan Harker, Agatha Van Helsing had been swept into the churning waters below her, sinking into the frigid sea around her. Her last breaths had been painful lungfuls of briny water and assumed it would kill her faster than if she had fought against it. She had awoken very nearly after, her body writhing on the seafloor as she snapped back to reality in an instant. It didn’t take her long to figure out what had happened to her. 

Sister Agatha Van Helsing was stripped of mortality and entered a betwixt state of semi-existence. All she had to do was feed and she would become what she had set out to destroy. Curiosity ravaged her mind as she breathed the water from her lungs, letting them compress to nothing. She observed the sensation before she walked along the seafloor as she would a sidewalk.

Hunger was in the back of her mind and she wondered if a fish would suffice or if she would have to ingest human blood. Could she even catch a fish? Where was Dracula? Surely if she survived he had as well. 

Questions piled in her brain, one lapping over the other, as she searched the floor for something. It was difficult to see through the debris and waves, but once she found her bearings and settled her mind, Agatha was able to focus on the task at hand. Surely if Dracula was able to track down Harker with such efficiency, she would be able to feel his pull on her as his… 

‘Victim,’ she scrutinized her own thoughts, her brow scrunching together reflexively. The word didn’t sit well with her, for she did not see herself as a victim. Rather, she was a byproduct of  her own hubris and his repulsive instinctive nature.

Agatha felt her ears perk and she turned her head towards what had unexpectedly caught her body’s attention. It was a fleeting feeling, but it was enough to motivate her pace. She followed the sensation and found what she had been looking for. 

His box of dirt. 

She wanted to reach out, to know that he was in fact in there, but she knew better. The compulsion was stronger than any natural urge she had felt as a human. It was hard to resist the need to see him, to give herself one more chance to end his life. Yet, she refrained. 

She needed time to gain strength and insight. And now she had all the time that God could offer her. Or rather, that Dracula offered her, she guessed. He was no god, he was hardly a man, yet she could not stop thinking of him, of how he looked in his crate, if the water had seeped into the soil. Harker’s “account” of his stay at Castle Dracula was starting to make intimate sense to her as she forced herself away from the crate. 

Agatha shifted her gaze to the seafloor, looking for any sign of an incline, and upon finding it, followed it until she could feel the ripple of waves above her. She emerged from the water as if walking up stairs and noticed it was nearing morning, the dew settling on the vegetation in the distance. A little early to be conducting experiments, in her mind, but she would conquer all of them with time. 

On the breeze, she caught the scent of food, of civilization, of… whatever possessing nectar flooded her senses. It was closer than the other scents and she scoured the beach to find what it was. Weeks prior she claimed to not see the appeal of blood, but this new smell, this input, drove her to near infuriating madness. 

Then she saw the body. And she ran to it, her desire to help overriding her desire to feed. As she came upon the man, she realized the severity of his injuries. He appeared to be a watchman of sorts based on his attire, but that struck her as an unimportant detail in comparison to the way his femur protruded from his leg and the abnormal twist of his neck. It was clear he had fallen from the cliff and would not last much longer. She could hear his pulse as it slowed and watched as the liquid spilled from his wounds like a fountain. Never before had blood been so inviting or so black in the moon’s light. 

“P-please…end my pain…Ma’am, I beg of you,” lamented the man when he saw her approaching. She knelt beside him, recited prayers in Latin as she brought her hand to rest on his forehead. “You’re a Catholic?”

“A nun. Or I suppose I used to be,” she explained upon finishing her prayers. “I’m sorry cannot save you.”

The man’s expression grew cross, simultaneously frustrated and faded as his life continued to leave him. “I don’t want to be saved, I want mercy. I can’t suffer like this. Please, Sister. Whoever you are, do this for me.” 

The urgency in his voice, it reminded her of the screams at the convent. Pleading, desperate, final. However, the blood pouring from him muffled the shrill cries of the month’s past. Agatha leaned down to an intimately close level and felt her body change, felt the hunger build in her. She could see the reflection of a beast in his dying eyes. 

“Are you an angel of death? Is that why you came to me?” The man interjected, fear lost to his voice, resigned to his fate. 

“Perhaps fate has a hand in all things. Please do not fret now. I can take the pain away until you are sleeping.” She felt wrong. Everything felt wrong as she lowered her mouth to his. Her first kiss in years and it was with a stranger she was about to murder.

‘A mercy killing is not murder. It’s hardly killing at all,’ rang a damnably condescending voice in her mind that sent a delicious chill down her spine. She had not anticipated the reaction to hearing him speak. The man before her groaned and she turned to his neck, focusing on what little life he had left. His pulse was almost gone now, his heart struggling to function. ‘Drink, Agatha. You know you want to, and look at him. That’s very much how the second mate looked right before I devoured him. No chance of recovery, might as well enjoy yourself while you can. He certainly will if you can control him. Though, I’ve never seen a fledgling do it before.’

She felt her stomach twist painfully as she pieced together what was happening within her mind. Dracula was in her head, speaking to her through some sort of mental connection. He was with her even as he sat in the bottom of the sea, pestering her as a man continued to suffer before her. 

Fate toyed with her or perhaps God tested her, but Agatha had a decision to make. She could allow the man to suffer, to die naturally as humans are supposed to when accidents happened. Or she could claim his life and become the slouching monstrosity she found so horrific and fascinating. 

‘Hardly a choice, you know. This is what you’ve always wanted, Agatha. To study the beast you must become one. Morality and God have no place in survival or in science. He is your sustenance and your ticket to a life of increasing, limitless knowledge.’

She ignored him as she sank her teeth into the man’s jugular, focusing entirely on finding his thoughts, his dreams, his aspirations. Agatha wanted to know the man from whom she drank. Information could bring him comfort and she saw a flash of a memory.

Shepherd’s Pie, warm and inviting, a woman behind it. The eyes she looked out were those of a child… His mother? 

‘Will you ever fail to impress me?’

The memory was a place to start and she tried to make a connection with him, but the taste of his blood kept interfering as she drank him deeper. Her teeth locked into place as her jaw clamped down, securing the artery in her hold. She felt like she had broken a fast, indulging on pastries and delicacies she did not have names for. Only when another memory, much different from the first, played through her mind did she realize what was happening. Her eyes grew wide and she loosened her grip, pulling away enough to encourage his peaceful departure. His mother was waiting for him, or at least he hoped she was. 

“You must cling to love as you fall from this world, to courage and to strength. Do not fear death, James. There is nothing to fear in happy reunions,” she whispered tenderly in his ear as his lungs slowed in his chest. The hot prickling at her eyes brought forth tears as she returned to his neck, devouring the last shred of life from his body. She pulled away, tears hot at her cheeks as she looked down at the lifeless corpse, drained to a ghastly white.

The blood that remained at her lips took a sour smell and she used her sleeve to rid herself of the scent. She felt stronger than ever within a matter of moments and was able to rationalize a man’s death to herself. He was going to die and she hastened his departure to spare his suffering. 

‘One should always speed the parting guest. You remembered,’ his proud and most unwelcome words trespassed onto her thoughts once more. She could nearly see him behind her eyelids when she closed them. ‘This is the last night you’ll have my company for a long while, Agatha. Be sure to survive until I wake.’

“What’s to keep me from going into the water and staking you my first chance? I could do it now, all I would need is a piece of driftwood,” she called toward the open water as she stood from the body of James the Night Watchman. He was startled by the explosion out at sea and fell from the cliff to the rocks below. The poor man had been twisted among the rocks for nearly two hours before Agatha came along. 

His death was not enough to distract her from the shift in her speech. She had absorbed his native tongue very much the same way as Dracula had learned it from Jonathan Harker. Wonder sparked in her eyes and she understood her initial hypothesis to be true. Stories, memories, secrets, lives, were all in the blood. That is what Dracula had meant by blood is lives. 

‘Your curious spirit. Your intelligence, your hunger for information, your desire to know every dark corner of this world. Need I remind you, you bargained your life to me in order to save that shrilling child. You’re a part of me now.’ His breathy chuckle echoed between her ears as she lifted the deceased man from the rocks and walked him into the water. She could feel her abdomen clench at the sound of his voice. It was a despicable response and she shoved the thought down as she swam out far enough for the tide to take the corpse away from shore. Her easy strength and energy came from the exsanguinated body that drifted away from her arms. 

‘See? One must keep a tidy slaughterhouse. The fastest pupil I’ve ever had, and to think all your learning is going to be turned against me. You’ve been given a gift, Agatha. If anything you shouldn’t be planning to kill me. No, my dear Sister, I think you should explore the range of your capabilities.’

“You are narcissistic even in your obscenity. If you are so confident, then perhaps you should step from your box and meet me on shore in little over an hour.” Agatha sounded like she was talking to herself as she began to make her way back to shore, unaware of what lurked in the water as she swam. “I have a theory I want to t--”

She gasped as she felt a firm grip at her ankle and her body was suddenly jerked underwater. Agatha’s first instinct was to fight against him, knowing full-well that it was Count Dracula who had his grips on her ankle, on her hips, on her waist. In the disturbed water, she let out a snarl, entirely vampiric in nature and lost in the liquid around them. He smiled at her through the water and she kicked at his shin, but he dodged her easily in a smooth movement.

‘I’m sure you do,’ he purred in her mind and his tone suddenly changed as he was able to look at her. ‘I have a different idea. Mind, you are allowed to say no.’

‘Good. Then I don’t have to say it. Let me go. Return to your box, Count. This is the last night I’ll have your company, yes? I’d rather begin seeing as little of you as possible. Thanks,’ she retorted defiantly and shook one arm loose then the other. Agatha returned to the surface with the Count emerging right after. 

“Oh for Heaven’s sake. Has no one ever told you no? Is your ego truly that fragile?” She rolled her eyes but remained for a moment longer. “Speak to me on shore if you wish, I don’t want to be waterlogged by the time the next living person sees me.”

How easily she accepted her undeath. Merely rationalization and she was going to make the best of the situation.

“Under one condition.” 

“And what would that be?” She was almost afraid to ask. Entertaining him was an easy way to get information from him. If she could twist whatever his terms were to her benefit, then perhaps she would indulge him further. 

“I don’t want to just talk when we get there.”

She blinked incredulously at him. The implications alone were laughable and she couldn’t help the breath of disbelief she expelled from her nostrils. At first, she thought he was trying to throw her off-balance. 

Upon further inspection, however, it was clear to her what he wanted. 

“Did the explosion scramble your brains, Count? Why would you think I’d want to lay with you after you slaughtered the Sisters and so many innocents while you fed off me for weeks?” Her words were scathing as she started to swim back to shore, not caring if he followed or not. 

“Because, you’d be lying to both of us if you said you didn’t and lying is beneath you, Agatha,” he stated plainly as he kept pace beside her, his black hair silk in what was left of the moonlight. “And because I’ve been in your head. I know your dreams, I know your desires. As we played chess, I could smell it on you.”

Her cheeks flushed as the compartmentalized memory came back to the forefront of her mind. How could he discern personal and professional fascination? A beast is only aware he’s getting attention; he doesn’t care what kind. He was no better, but he was right.

“I’m a nun, not a saint.” 

“A vampire, not a nun,” he corrected as they stepped out of the water. “You’re not constrained to all those silly little rules anymore. You can live as you like, do as you like, experiment as you like. Now, let me speak my piece while I play by your rules for a moment.”

She crossed her arms over her chest as the wind blew through her tangled, wet mess of hair. He was right in saying she was no longer a nun. In truth, Agatha hadn’t felt like a nun in a very long time. Still, that did not mean she was going to simply give her body to the man who just hours earlier had tried to kill her. Even if he was dripping wet in front of her, his hair mussed, and clearly exhausted. And admittedly, very handsome. “I’m waiting.”

“I don’t know how long I’m going to be asleep. You did a number on me, even if you can’t tell, and I need time to recuperate. I’ll need to be back in my box before the sun rises. By your count, that’s in an hour.”

“So that’s why you want to bed me? Because I injured you?”

Dracula shook his head and laughed before stepping closer to her, his chest heaving from exertion. She examined him closer and noticed odd protrusions from under his shirt. “No, Agatha. I want you because the next time I see you, it will be too long to have waited. It might actually kill me in my sleep if I’m not the first to have you as you are now. It is my handiwork, after all.” 

Broken ribs. 

“Good, it will save me the trouble,” she snorted indignantly, raising a brow at him. Agatha made note of the way his gaze kept wandering from her eyes to her lips. She did her best to ignore the stir in the pit of her stomach. “You have my life, Count. Which, if I’m careful, will continue long enough to kill you.” 

Something in him changed then, his smile disappearing as his eyes grew dark. A new strategy perhaps?

“Why wait?  Kill me, if you truly want me dead now. Here,” he pressed, voice low, as he slipped his suspenders from his shoulders and pulled his shirt over his head. The fabric fell to the gravel beneath him and he took another step towards her. His eyes were on hers, demanding, testing. When he spoke, his voice was low and thick. “Go find your piece of driftwood, pierce my heart, and watch as we both crumble to dust.”

She swallowed the thick feeling in her throat as she trained her gaze on his, unflinching as the wind picked up around them. He was too close and she was still feeling the power from her first feed. An effective tactic indeed. 

She could not step back lest she show weakness, so she squared her shoulders and raised her head. There were many things Agatha still wanted to do, alive or undead. Now, she had a better and more willing test subject: herself.

“Not until I know the reason behind your fears, Count Dracula.” She had to steady herself  when she spoke. Any closer and she feared she would fall into his natural gravity. Even at the short distance she was away, her head swam, but she had to keep herself in check. 

“Excuses are unnecessary,” he imparted and closed the space between them. She gave a breath of protest against his mouth, her hands coming to his chest. When it came time to push him away, she couldn’t. Instead, Agatha moved her hands to nestle in his hair and hold steady at his neck, bringing him closer to her.

He flicked his tongue at her lip, noticing that it had already healed over nicely from when she ripped a chunk out of it when she was mortal. She opened her mouth in response, drinking in the taste of him as he sampled her. His breath still carried the flavors of Sokolov and even in her repulsion, she found herself giving into him. The captain had been a good man, undeserving of the fate bestowed upon him, but Dracula made her forget about him, about everything, simply by kissing her, no opiate involved. 

The hand at the back of his neck held him steady in her hold as the other moved against his chest. There should have been a heartbeat under her fingertips. There should have been warmth in the fervent ministrations of their mouths, there should have been many things...but Agatha still sank into him. She wanted more and she damned herself for it. Her natural curiosity and blood-high crashed over her at once as her would-be murderer put a hand at the small of her back and drew her closer.

“That’s better,” he hummed as he broke the kiss, a glib smirk dancing at his lips. Agatha pulled back from him, her hands returning to her sides as she put space between them. Her innards tumbled wretchedly within her, caught between pleasure and disgust. 

“Deplorable,” she interjected, mostly at herself. Never had she planned on breaking so many vows in one night, but Dracula stood shirtless, bruised, and battered before her. And he wanted her, more than anything she had seen. More than her blood, more than standing upon English soil, more than each and every nun and crew member he had torn apart. She could feel his natural allure pulling at her, coaxing her to him like a beacon in the dead of night.

“So what say you? Your body’s response is clear, certainly. But what does that rigid logic say, mm? Does it tell you no? To run? To escape me?” He knew better than to think that her mind would ever tell her to run. Her fear of him was no more than justified caution. Dracula returned his hands to her as he closed the gap. “Or is it silent now? All those silly little reservations you’ve had for weeks… You can’t tell me you haven’t been curious, even for a nun of your standing.” 

“A vampire, now, remember?” She forced a steady breath and worked her jaw, ignoring the stir in her core when he spoke. “Thanks to you.”

“Ah, as much as I would love to take full credit for corrupting you, I’m afraid you drained that man of your own volition,” he pointed out, dark eyes trained on her. In them, she could see more than she ever could before. His pride, his yearning, his pain. “Agatha Van Helsing, the first Queen of vampires. A merciful murderess, an angel of death.”

“Hardly,” she insisted, steadying herself to the point of shedding herself of her humanities as his thumbs massaged her clothed skin. Her chest stilled and her eyes were unblinking as he moved a hand to her chin, drawing her face closer. 

“You’re avoiding the question.”

Her eyes flitted beyond him to the deep grey casting upon the horizon, the water turning a strange obsidian, before refocusing on him. She could not deny that she wanted to feel him inside of her or that she hadn’t thought of how or if a vampire could in fact have sex to completion. Beyond her curiosity, need burned within her as though she carried Hell itself inside of her. “Count Dr--”

The look in her eyes must have been enough to give him permission. His mouth crashed upon hers in a punishing kiss and she parted her lips for him, his name lost as a groan against him. Dracula’s fingers trailed down her habit, bunching it in his hold until she could feel the wind against her thighs. He withdrew from her lips and watched as he pulled the fabric up, revealing her skin to him. It occurred to her then that he had not taken advantage of his position when she was unconscious aboard the ship. 

‘Ah, you think so lowly of me as to take to rape?’ he inquired within her mind, clearly injured by her silent implication.

‘You did with Harker, did you not? And your brides? The second mate, even,’ she returned as she stepped out of his hold. Even as a monster, she would not bed a rapist. Harker had not given a solid answer, but it was to be assumed. 

“Is that what he told you?” Dracula pulled back for a moment and laughed with disbelief. “The kiss of the vampire is an opiate, Agatha. I made them dream, but I did not dishonor them. Why would I need to play with my food in such a way? It would spoil the flavor. As for my brides, I won’t sleep with an unwilling participant.”

He was on her again, his kiss much gentler as his fingers threaded through her knotted and soaked hair. Agatha found truth in his words, knowing too well that his narcissism would not take kindly to such an act and eased into the kiss. His lead was easy to follow and they moved as a single unit closer inland. The gravelly sand underfoot should have hurt more than it did, but the sensation only stimulated her more as his hands returned to her habit.

“Stay out of my head,” she breathed between his lips and he drank in the words with delight. A smile twitched at the edges of his mouth. 

“No promises,” he murmured in return, drawing the habit up her torso. “Now, be a lamb and lift your arms so I can take you properly. We haven’t much time to waste.”

She shot him a glare but obeyed, lifting her arms and exposing herself before Dracula. The moment that followed had been spent in deliberation. She wanted to cover herself but the way he was looking at her with obvious depraved sin made her smirk and shake her head. “Even now you act as a beast.”

“Don’t feed me that line, Agatha. Not when you’re standing so beautifully exposed for me,” he cautioned before dipping his head and hand to her breast. Her nipple perked under the exploratory flick of his tongue and she drew in a quick breath. He brought his head up, leaving his fingers to idly play at her raised flesh. “How long has it been for you? Not by your own hand, but from another. I know you weren’t pure when you took your vows. How long?”

“Twenty-five years. I was seventeen and unwed. Why does that interest you?” Agatha hooked her index finger into his slacks and guided his hips closer so she could work at his belt. “Did you think I would say sooner?” 

“I was asleep for a week, I wasn’t sure if the dear captain had tried and succeeded. The way he looked at you, obeyed you like he was your slave. I should have bled him worse than I had.” 

The quiet snarl in his throat grew nearly imperceptible as he took possession of her mouth, claiming her with every impertinent motion. Below, his fingers rested on hers, guiding her in the undoing of his belt, the button of his slacks, and then released her as she worked at his zipper. He took her face in one hand while he stepped out of his slacks in an easy motion. Agatha wanted to protest, to defend the captain, but he had her in a hold from which there was no exit. 

She heard his shoes clatter against the rocks behind them as he left her mouth sore and panting for breath. She realized then that it was a human habit that would be lost to her in the coming years. Still, she could not pass the opportunity to probe him, provoke him, draw out the beast until it roared in her face. 

“Jealous of a man who can do as he’s told?”

Dracula’s nostril twitched impatiently, but he did not reply. The sky around them turned a dark grey as clouds rolled in from the sea. Perhaps, they would have more than the time the Earth granted them. 

“Well?”

“I could never be jealous of such a man. Too weak to act on desire, too soft to take risks. Hardly a captain if you ask me. Martyrs are a pestilence upon this Earth. So eager to die without truly knowing how it feels to live.” 

“Then why want to bleed him?” Her insistence earned her a hand on her hip that spun her in his hold and pulled her flush against him. She could feel his cock throbbing against her rear as he reflexively swayed his hips forward. The hand at her hip crept towards her center while the other took her throat. 

He entreated a hum of unbridled delight in her ear as he dipped his finger between her folds and found himself instantly coated. “Because he wanted you. He wanted to have you, Agatha. How could I let another man have the life promised to me? By your own words, I have you.”  

She shuddered against him as the heat within her unfurled and spilled into her abdomen. He prodded experimentally against her entrance, earning a frustrated groan from the woman in his arms. “You seek to own me, then?” 

“I could and will spend an eternity trying. For now, I will take you as I know I can have you,” he purred shamelessly as he ran the pad of his finger against her clit, wetting it with her own juices. He released her neck, cupped her left breast, and kissed the side of her head. His other hand was preoccupied circling her nub. Agatha arched her back against him as a trembling whimper spilled from her lips. “Do you think you would be this ready for me if you weren’t undead?” 

He should know the answer by now. Her body had been willing from the start, her mind took a moment to catch up. Dracula had her where he wanted her, but was taking his time. Why? As he said earlier, they hadn’t much time to waste. Why was he dawdling now? 

She turned once again in his hold and took his cock in her hand, gently rubbing his cockhead with her thumb. “Temptation is nothing more than curiosity. I follow peculiarities which interest me and you happen to be one of them. But I’m learning you quicker than I thought. Now, cease this tedious small talk.” 

He palmed her ass with both hands then clamped down on the flesh in his hold. The shock of pain rocked through her and she tightened her grip on him, his shaft pulsating in her grasp. She released his cock and held to the back of his neck, a silent command. Dracula lifted her into the air and she instinctively wrapped her legs around him, staring him down as he beamed up at her. 

“And I thought I’d have you in a proper bed,” he chuckled as he walked them up the hill and lowered her down in the first patch of dew covered grass he could find. The cold beneath her came as shock and she arched her back, nipples rubbing against his torso. “But I suppose there is always next time.”

He shifted down in the grass and spread her legs wider, separating her folds with two fingers and marveling at the glistening wetness that awaited him. “I always loved a lively one, but a wicked one… So willing and so open for me. Agatha, you’re amazing.” 

“Spare me your self-praise, Count,” she shot as her eyes darkened and her cheeks burned. Like a thief caught in the act, Agatha could not deny how his words melted her and sent a wave of heat crashing over her. She squirmed under him and dug her heels into his flanks. “Why are you stalling?” 

A rumble above them pulled her attention away from him. Her gaze moved to the sky and noticed the way the clouds churned above them. There was a storm on the horizon. He would be safe in its darkness until he had his way with her and she knew it. Almost too convenient. 

Her gaze snapped back to him and glared up at him with her accusation clear on her expression.

“I swear this wasn’t me,” he admitted with a grin, flashing his teeth to her as he sat back and turned his head toward the sky. She studied how the muscles in his neck stretched, the way his lips parted as he looked up, and found herself wandering into dangerous territory. 

“How fate favors the bold.” His words brought her back to reality, away from forbidden thoughts, and more importantly, back to him. She shivered and dropped her head against the ground as he pushed a finger into her and curled it, instantly finding her sweet spot. Agatha’s mouth teetered between open and shut as a hitched breath slipped into the late night air. 

He withdrew from her delicious heat and plunged back in, another finger added. She wanted to curse him for watching her pant beneath him without giving her more, undoing her with nothing more than his hand. Twenty-five years without sex had left her starved for contact, a hunger long forgotten until he stood before her, naked and unabashed at the convent. 

“I’m surprised you’re responding so well to my hand alone. Did you not take care of yourself in the nunnery, Agatha?” The count shifted so he was looming over her, face close as he thrust and twisted his fingers. He curled the digits inside of her over and over, lapping at that one spot that was causing her to shake uncontrollably. “Shall I make you come for me? Do you want me to give you your release?”

He had her lost and rocking against him, her walls clenching around his unrelenting fingers. Agatha forced her head up, bruising his lips in a kiss that was more of a bite. A chance to cling to reality. 

“Darling, your teeth are rather sharp now. Be mindful not to rip my lip off,” he laughed quietly against her mouth, kissing her back and pried his way into her mouth. She felt the slick of his tongue against her own as though every nerve was on high alert. His fingers stilled inside of her. “Answer me. Do you want to come?” 

“Bastard,” she whined and dropped her head against the grass. Her chest heaved as she glared up at him. He removed a digit from her and raised his brow. God, he was going to torment her. Dracula was going to make her beg for her release. She swallowed what shred of her decency remained and closed her eyes. “Please.”

Another crack of thunder.

“I’m sorry? What was that? You’re going to have to speak up. I’m afraid the weather is a bit tumultuous in these parts.” His amusement was palpable as he curled the lone finger inside of her. She was caught between a groan and a growl as she began to tighten around him again. 

Another stroke, then another, then another, each slower, deeper, more deliberate. He played with her, giving her just enough stimulation to want more, but not enough to grant her satisfaction. “I’m waiting.” 

She could have punched him--should have punched him. He was self-righteous in every sense, but the way his simper played as his lips as his second middle finger rejoined his index inside of her threw those--and all--thoughts to the wayside. His slow, scorching kiss was an added bonus.

“La petite mort,” she whispered hoarsely against his lips before capturing them again. The kiss was fast and hard as Dracula drew his head back and smiled down at her.

“The only you’ll ever have.” A promise.

The rain began to fall around them as he trailed down her body, his fingers working idly inside of her. She arched her back in whatever direction his lips went. Down her sternum, to her breasts, pecked every rib with care, he traveled down to her core.

“I wonder how you taste.” His breath was hot against her before reaching his tongue out to graze against her nub. Once, twice, three times over before he looked up at her. “Exquisite.” 

She pushed herself up to watch as he worked her over. The sight of him fucking her with his mouth and hand enough make her cry out; the sensation enough to make it lost in thick, incomprehensible Dutch. When he brought his eyes to hers, Agatha’s abdomen clenched. He looked near feral with lust but focused entirely on her pleasure. She could not deny the ravenous beauty between her thighs. 

 Her hips bucked against his mouth, but he held her down with his free hand, pinning her in place as he drank her in. Agatha felt her walls constricting around him, her mind going numb as her world crashed beautifully around her. Dracula removed his fingers from her body and moved to swipe away every last decadent drop of her release with his tongue. 

“Brute,” she panted when he finally separated his mouth from her, licking his lips to clean up the remainder of her orgasm. 

“I’ve been called worse,” he returned as he trailed kisses back up her body. 

“Mm,” was all she managed to get out before he kissed her with a muted fervor. If she hadn’t known better, Agatha would almost mistake it for tenderness. 

“Now.” He glanced between them, observing every part of her, as though memorizing her features. Another rumble of thunder sounded as lightning veined through the sky. Through the shadows the brief instant of light caused, Agatha could have sworn she saw something bittersweet in his expression. “Shall we begin?” 

Whatever she thought she saw…it was gone, replaced by a wolfish grin and eyes as dark as pits. She glanced down in time to watch Dracula align his cock at her entrance. Her nerves buzzed endlessly as he rubbed his hardened length between her folds, coating himself in her juices. 

“Fute,” came his moan as his cockhead dipped inside of her. She had two options. Fute in French, meaning something that’s cute. Or her second choice, Fute in Romanian, meaning fuck. Agatha had many vices in life, gambling being one of them. The higher the stakes, the greater the reward. 

“You will mind your tongue while inside of me.”

“Oh, that’s right. You speak Romanian, don’t you?” His uttered inquiry was painted in obvious amusement. He clearly missed the other obvious truth to her statement. Like it or not, she was what Dracula would call his bride. All languages were the same.

“There is a certain level of study and exploration that requires the knowledge of many languages,” she explained as he stilled his head inside of her. There was genuine interest in his eyes, but he pushed deeper into her with a slow thrust of his hips. A groan escaped her and echoed against the rocks as he filled her, his cock pulsing against her tight walls. Her arms wrapped tightly around his back, nails hooking into his skin, as he pushed a bit further, hitting her limit as he bottomed out.

She cried out his name into the last of the fading night as he pulled his hips back slowly, nearly exiting her entirely, before thrusting back into her. The storm raged around them, but they ignored it entirely. Agatha could only focus on the way his cock felt buried inside of her and the small grunts and moans he made with each movement. 

“I misspoke earlier when I called you wicked,” he uttered, his breath hitching as her nails split open the skin upon his back. “Wicked is fun. Lively is dangerous. Feral is useless. But you, Agatha…” 

Her name was a groan on his lips as he shifted to meet her gaze. Dracula withdrew from her completely, paused for a moment to take in the sight of her, and thrust mercilessly back into her. His pace felt like a prayer and a punishment inside of her. “You are perfect.” 

Pressure built within her as he continued to angle himself perfectly, pushing deep inside of her to hit every possible spot he could. “Perfect.” 

Her lips met his halfway as he lost his rhythm, his ministrations erratic as he started to chase his high. With the rain crashing down around them, their bodies slid easily together, and Dracula did not have to wait long for his release. A stuttered moan tore through his throat as he buried himself deep within her and spilled inside of her once, another thrust, twice. He pushed inside of her one final time and Agatha lost herself to him. “Perfect.”

She clung to him as she came, one hand buried in his hair, the other clutching his shoulder as her legs wrapped around his waist, securing him tightly inside of her. A silent, shaking breath that turned into a cry of reverence. Hot tears pricked at the corners of her tightly closed eyes as her orgasm overtook her, her head dropping back. Her legs trembled as she slowly released her hold of him. Liquid beads rolled down her temples from sheer pleasure.

Dracula’s jaw slacked as he looked upon her, exhausted and appeased. He did that to her, to the nun who swore his death, and she had wanted every second of it. As a nun, no, as a human, she could not allow herself such sin; as a vampire, however, she knew herself to be damned and could sin without consequence to her mortal soul.

She gasped as he pulled out of her, her body still crackling with excitement. If her heart could beat it would be throbbing, her lungs would burn, and she doubted that her pelvis would still be in one piece. 

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then to her cheek, and at last her lips before he fell to the earth next to her. The storm continued to rage around them and only when the thunder crashed in the sky did she notice that she was in Dracula’s hold. Her head was on the undamaged part of his chest, arm wrapped comfortably around him while he held her to him. 

“I need to give you something before I go,” announced the Count without preamble.

Agatha propped herself up to look at him and took note of the severity of his tone.

“The estate and some funds to return to Holland. You’re going to need to rest at some point. The less a vampire rests, the weaker they become, the stronger their impulses become. While you have extraordinary self-control, I don’t think you’ll last through the week without needing to feed again, especially with how low that poor fellow was.” 

Reality seeped back into the forefront of Agatha’s mind as he sat them both up. She was going to need to feed and who she fed on decided how she was to live her life. 

“I’ll try to stay awake for as long as I can to help you through the first few ni--”

“Why would you offer your help now?” she interjected, perplexed.

“Because I enjoy you, Agatha Van Helsing, more than I’ve enjoyed anyone in hundreds of years,” he started curtly. “You deserve a fighting chance if you really are set on staking me.”

“Let me guess, under the condition that I do not do so while you sleep?” 

Always an ultimatum. 

“Precisely.”

“Then I have a condition of my own.” 

“Name it.” He moved closer to her as he spoke, fingers moving strands of soaking hair behind her ear with a grin on his face. She hated him for the warmth that unfurled in her stomach at the touch. 

“If I figure out, with certainty, what it is you fear, I get to wake you early.” 

His smile grew as a breath of laughter left him. “Is that all?” 

She nodded her head as he moved in to take her lips. A kiss of excitement, of challenge. Another game for them to play. Another hunt. This time, he was the prey. She returned it with equal but opposite emotion. There was devastation in her kiss, a promise to him that she would be back before he would wake. 

“Agatha, while I’m certain of your ability of discovery, I don’t think our reunion will go as you are currently anticipating. Here,” he beckoned as he reached for the ring upon his finger. “Proof enough that you are a member of my house to get you into Carfax Abbey. From there, contact my law firm, the paperwork should be there. Johnny made sure of it before he traveled to Transylvania. You should be able to access some of my banking information, if not, you can always talk your way onto a ship, I’m sure.” 

Even when emerging from the wolf, Dracula had not taken the ring off. The significance of it was not lost to her as he set it in her palm. There was something about the situation that disturbed her. She should be refusing him. Killing him then and there, taking out him and any vampire he may have ever created. Hold him to the sunlight, something. 

But she only listened. Perhaps, she wanted the fair fight he was offering her. Or maybe he had a stronger influence over her than she thought. Or perhaps it was something else entirely that gave her pause. Regardless, as the Count continued to instruct her, she committed every word to memory. 

She followed him to the water after they were done talking. The gravel underfoot was much softer with the rainfall. As they reached nearer to the shore, he surrendered his clothes to her as hers were covered with blood and unfit to wear into town. She was going to have to claim her status as his wife, no doubt an amusing part of the plan for him.

“I’m going to miss you. Find somewhere safe, will you? I’d hate to find out you burned to dust on your first day.” He smirked at her, admiration aglow in his dark eyes as the sky lightened behind the clouds. 

“I’m sure you’ll manage. Goodbye, Count Dracula,” she stated and extended her hand. 

Dracula scoffed at her formality and took her hand in his. He turned it so her knuckles were bent and placed a kiss upon their ridges. Before she could have time to protest, he pulled her against him, his lips crashing down on hers. A low growl sounded deep in his chest as she met his kiss with matched passion. 

“Easy, boy.” She was going to miss him.

“One last thing,” he muttered as he pressed his forehead to hers. 

“You’re really playing with fire, aren’t you?” She was going to miss him.

“Not the first time,” chuckled Dracula as he raised his wrist to her. “Drink.”

“What? Why?” Agatha shot him a confused look.

He sliced at the flesh with his thumb, the blood running down his forearm within seconds. “Over four-hundred years of knowledge is why. You need to know things that I don’t have time to explain. Drink.”

She nodded, took his forearm in her hold, her fangs extending, and sank her teeth into him. Thousands of memories burst into color. Wars, trades, murders, usurpations, lovers, lives, deaths… Everything played out in her mind as she drank. Her world expanded tenfold and she moaned as he held her steady to him. 

She tightened her hold on him and pressed her weight into him until he fell back against the sand under him. Agatha broke from his arm as she felt emotion sweep over her that was not her own. She moved to straddle him, undoing the too long pants around her waist and kicked them off. 

The whites of her eyes darkened into crimson as she looked down at him, her hand reaching behind her and grabbing at his already half-hard shaft. She moved forward, glanced at his jugular, and descended upon the expanse.

“We don’t have time to--” His speech was lost as she sank her teeth into him. She released her hold of his erection and focused on the way his blood ran through his artery, but did not drink from him. “Agatha…”

Before she had time to act, Dracula sat up, his hand moving between them to guide him to her entrance once more. He sank into her without hesitation and began thrusting his hips with what all that he had left. Agatha cried out, involuntarily parting from his neck, and brought her lips to his. She held him in a breathless kiss as he moved into her, relentless and final, clinging to whatever she picked up in his blood. 

He came first, thrusting up into her and groaning something in Romanian as he filled her yet again. Dracula shifted to make her more comfortable, continued his pace, remaining hard as his thumb snaked between them to find her nub. Once found, he teased it out of time with the roll of his hips, sending her over the top. She curled against him as she came, fingers balling into fists against his shoulders. 

“How did it taste?” he asked as she lifted herself off of him. Agatha looked to the slacks beside her but decided to not put them on. Not while she was dripping from both of them. 

“Like blood,” she lied as she stood and headed for the water. She knew he wouldn’t settle for that answer. His ego wouldn’t allow him.

“I could find out for myself you know. One little listen to your thoughts and I can know the truth,” he reminded as he followed her. 

“Do as you must,” instructed Agatha unfazed by his threat, the water pooling around her waist. He turned his gaze to the sky and noticed the light growing, his nostrils twitching impatiently. She looked to her side and noticed him standing beside her, staring down at her. “Return to your box, Dracula, before we both turn to ash.” 

He took a few steps forward then paused. She watched as he turned in the water just enough for his eyes to meet hers. “Stay alive, Agatha. It would be an awfully boring future without you.”

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[kmclaude]

An AU thought, unfinished: Annemarie as a nun. Not a sexy nun, but someone found out about the whole “preggers with her brother’s baby and sent to a convent as punishment” type nun, who may or may not wind up teaching a bunch on unruly kids and has her fellow sisters breathing down her neck to make sure she doesn’t sin again. But hey, guess who’s the priest/confessor for the order? And considering nuns “have” to obey Fr. Tiefer’s authority…! Not smutty but it’s all I’ve got 🤷🏼‍♀️

oh how decadent! oops my hand slipped!!!

Émile is probably the one who gets mad when he finds out she’s pregnant and who’s kid it is because sure he’s white trash and has been bending his daughter over for years but he draws the line somewhere (and part of it is because he knows Emilein is a freak, he knows he wouldn’t want her so it’s obvious she’s the whole reason for being knocked up – and she’s been using the stupid baby in her fat gut as a shield to mouth off to him and run the joint – why not punish her? Besides, no one in that family can afford another mouth to feed…)

So he pulls Emilein aside, says, “hey, you’re good with that priest, yeah?” and Emilein shrugs, says, “maybe I am,” and braces for a nasty shot about how of course he is, he loves being on his knees, but it never comes, just, “so he knows about like…them wayward girl schools, yeah?” and Emilein plays dumb until his daddy plays his hand: send Annemarie off to a convent or wayward school or hell an asylum – she wants to use a baby to get her way, well then she can get out of the way. Forever.

Emilein, for once, is more than happy to help his daddy out.

He talks to the priest, Fr. Michaud, who has offered him chance and again ways out, one in particular though it would mean the priesthood, and reveals his sister is pregnant (not that it was terribly secret: the whole town was waiting for the day she slipped up at this point) and she is…troubled. And is there a place. The Church. Anything.

Of course Fr. Michaud hesitates because yes there is one nearby but it’s practically an asylum, run by an order on their grounds – cloistered – “And, to be frank, we all know your sister is…not exactly saving herself for anyone…but unless she’s a-a maniac it would be almost cruel–”

And Emilein puts his hand lightly on Fr. Michaud’s, smiles in a way that doesn’t meet his eyes, and says, “You know how she hasn’t named the father? You’d think someone like her’d be going up and down the street, demanding a wedding or at least support, wouldn’t you? But she ain’t. ‘Cause she can’t. Now, remember the first time we actually talked, you an’ me, an’ I told you I’d suck your cock in a heartbeat ‘cause that’s usually how things went with me an’ older men an’ not always by force?”

“Difficult to forget,” says Fr. Michaud, neglecting to mention that most fourteen year olds don’t say that.

“So we both agree I’m…funny.”

“What are you getting at, Emilein?”

“I’m sayin’, the reason she ain’t beatin’ down no po’ bastard’s door to help with her own bastard is ‘cause she doesn’t want anyone to know that the daddy’s her own brother.”

Michaud goes pale and Emilein isn’t smiling any more.

“We both know she don’t interest me much. So, Father, please: help me.”

–

Of course, being a good man, Fr. Michaud helps him, and Annemarie is sent away to have her child (and then work off the debt she’ll have accrued – after all, not like her father and brother can afford to pay.)

Her choice is very simple: go as willingly as she can pretend and nobody has to know about who the father is or fight and Emilein tells (with Fr. Michaud as a witness – Émile, of course, is more than willing to rat her out but really, every other word from his mouth is a lie.)

And life is peaceful – until Émile decides he can fully boss around his son like he did his daughter in a house he doesn’t own.

Emilein is having none of it but Emilein is terribly small and Émile has friends too, friends just as nasty as Annemarie’s boyfriends, and Émile ties him to a bed and starves him and lets all sorts of men use him for days and brags about the money he’s made from him – “shit, cher, we should’ve been whorin’ you out years ago! Guess yer cunt sister was just too jealous to share.”

He lets him go, eventually, after a week that feels like forever and Emilein runs to Fr. Michaud, banging on the church door, and when Fr. Michaud answers his request is much the same as it was before: “please, help me.”

Of course, being a good man, Fr. Michaud helps Emilein Tiefer and gets him connected to the seminary.

–

At twenty-five and with the title of ‘Father’ himself, Tiefer is assigned to a convent in Fuckoff Nowhere, Louisiana to be the priest and confessor on the grounds. Segregated from the opposite sex and the real world for so long only to be thrown headfirst into the wide world, some were realizing, was not the greatest idea: so, the younger were sent off to serve their religious siblings first, particularly their sisters.

The Mother Superior is kind when she greets him on his arrival, a stark contrast to all the rumors of the convent here: it was a convent, yes, that made its daily bread with something of a home for wayward girls – part home, part school (for the younger ones whose unfortunate choices and circumstances left them behind their peers as well as their children, for those who had or expected them), part workhouse so the former two could survive – but for years its nickname had been the asylum because, regardless of how long one worked, much like the TB asylums, the only way out was in a casket.

Which is where, Tiefer always figured, his sister was at this point. 

Until, during a tour of the small school on the grounds (as the children would be needing sacraments as well) he sees one of the nuns with the children – though she’s not a nun, not exactly, as she only wears a veil and simple dress and the bangs of her blonde hair peak out and frame her face – and she, in turn, sees him and freezes.

“Mother Superior,” he asks, voice steady as possible, once they’ve passed, once he’s calmed down, “who was that woman?”

“With the children? That’s Sister Anne, one of our success stories – quite a tough one too. She came here, pregnant, no idea who the father was and ready to dare I say fight every one of us sisters who came near. But the Lord works in mysterious ways and eventually He brought her ‘round. She should be taking her vows in a few years.”

“Ah. Do many of your girls usually wind up joinin’ the order?”

The mother superior sighs, sort of pointed in a way that hints that the topic is better put to rest. “Unfortunately, it’s not always part of God’s plan,” she says and then adds, “You sound a lot like she does – how far down South did you come?”

“Very.”

“Hm. She also.”

–

“Sister Anne. A word?”

After all the introductions and required niceties are made, Tiefer doubles back to the classroom of children, led by the novitiate.

“Of course, Father,” she says, the shock from earlier long gone from her face, a little more lined than he’d remembered it, her eyes a little less bright.

“In private?”

He lets her lead the way to a small, unused classroom and locks the door behind them.

“Well. Never thought I’d see you here, Sister.”

She scoffs, the plain novitiate from earlier twisting, like a monster under flesh, into his sister, the way he knew her, cocky attitude and all. “Why not? You put me here.”

“You know what I mean. ‘Sides, he put you here.”

“You helped.”

“Just told the truth is all. You want me to tell the truth again?”

“Can’t send me away again, sugar. Anyway, I’m a changed woman. The success story of these sisters.”

“Ain’t you special, huh?”

“Had to be. Play along or die like the rest.” She looks him over, sixteen years on his twenty-five, sizing him up. “You obviously understand, don’tcha Emi?”

“Father, now, actually.”

“Father, right, Father, now, huh? So Father – what was it? Not enough dicks to suck back home, you had to join the biggest boy’s club around? Or you just get sick of Daddy – bet he was a real sonuvabitch once he didn’t have me ‘round to take his shit out on.”

He cuts her off: “Annemarie. You like it here?”

“You like it where you are?”

He doesn’t answer, simply pulls out a cigarette and his lighter. He watches her reach out, then freeze.

“I’ll share if you tell me what the fuck you’re doin’ playin’ nunnery.”

“I told you. Play along or die. Same as you.”

“You don’t know shit about me or what I been through.”

“An’ you know ‘bout me?”

Tiefer shrugs, lights up. Refuses her one.

“I heard the girls who come here only leave one way.”

“Do I look like I left?”

“Mm.” He offers her a cigarette and a light. Her fingers brush his. He tries not to grab her wrist and crush it. “So this is better? Bein’ a mother to a slew of bastards an’ prayin’ to God who put you here?”

“I dunno, Emi–”

“Do not–”

“Father Emi, you tell me: would you like being worked like a dog to pay off your own existence your fuckin’ family sold off, gettin’ beat ‘cause no one gives a damn about you, and not knowin’ if the priest they brought in to hear confessions this ‘round would rather you suck him off than say you’re sorry. I’m fuckin’ forty-one years old: I wanted something close to freedom, even if it’s from behind a wall an’ veil. ”

Tiefer makes a sound like mock pity. “Sounds like every damn day of my childhood, Annemarie. In fact,” – he grabs her by the jaw, pulls her close, tugs the cigarette from her lips and puts it out against the back of her neck, hidden by her veil – “looks to me like you’re getting off easy, little miss success story.”

“Em–”

“That’s Father to you, now.  An’ come to think of it, I’m sure Mother Superior would love to hear what you really did.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Would they put you back in the work house? Or just turn you loose on the streets like a dog. Where you gonna go, Sister? Y’all take vows of poverty last I heard – gonna finally be a real whore and suck dick in the gutter?”

“Please…”

“Please what, pity you?”

Tiefer lets her go, takes a drag from his own cigarette, blocking the door. He grins, more a snarl than anything else. 

“Oh Annemarie… You’re right: I wouldn’t dare as long as you don’t give me a reason to. I’m your superior now…let’s start treatin’ me as such, hm?”

He unlocks the door. “An’ Sister Anne? If you thought those other priests who put your ol’ ass on your knees were bad, you’re gonna really regret all your earlier sins against me.”

[kumeko]

A/N: For the Eos Compendium zine! I’ve been dying to write Nyx/Luna since I’ve seen the movie, and took this as an excuse to just do it.

Summary: Nyx wasn’t sure if the past kings had something else in mind for him or if he was still clinging to life out of sheer stubbornness (sheer stupidity, Crowe would have called it). Either way, Luna was here and he was alive and this time, he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight.

…

…

…

…

i.

 “Nyx.”

 A voice flowed over him like water, soothing the burns and lacerations that crossed his body. Every part of him felt like it was on fire, as though he was lying on a bed of coals. No, that wasn’t right—it was more like he was burning on the inside, a flame simmering just beneath his skin.

 “Nyx, wake up.”

 A heaven-sent balm, the voice continued to call his name. His eyes fluttered open, the bright light of the sun searing into his retinas before he squeezed them shut again. Fuck, he swore, but his throat was parched and the only sound that escaped his lips was a dusty cough. There was a tingle in his fingers and toes as he tried to wiggle them.

“You are alive.” A soft sigh of relief. Something warm and wet hit his skin. Cracking his eyes open an inch, Nyx slowly took in his surroundings. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out smouldering fires, jagged rubble. Hell, now that his body was awake, he could feel the cracked rocks beneath his back. The sharp points poked into his skin everywhere except for his head. A hand brushed his forehead, soft fingers hesitantly pressing into his skin. “Though I am not sure how.”

 “Your Highness,” he managed, opening his eyes now fully to make out the bent figure of Lunafreya Nox Fleuret. His charge. She shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here. Dozens of questions ran through his mind and Nyx closed his eyes once more. Taking a deep breath, he started with the basic steps. Was anything broken? Not his ribs, at the very least. Nothing felt cracked, just bruised.

 And his skin, his skin felt like fire, like ash, like it would burn into nothing and flake apart at the slightest breeze. It was a strange feeling. An imprint of the ring was permanently scorched onto his finger and even though it wasn’t on, he could still feel the weight of it all. He breathed in. As he exhaled, Nyx opened his eyes and shakily started to rise.

 Luna quickly grabbed his shoulders, helping him up. Closer now, he could make out the dirt on her skin, the tear streaks on her face. “Be careful, I do not think you have recovered yet.”

 “As much…” His voice cracked. Nyx swallowed, his mouth still too dry.  “As much as I can be, your highness.”

 Not the response she was expecting, he was sure. Luna stared at him for long ten seconds, her eyes blinking owlishly, before she cracked a smile. “I suppose if you can talk like that, you are better than I expected.” Her slim fingers ran down his arm, leaving a trail of ice in their wake, before curling around his hand. Inspecting his fingers, she murmured, “Truly, it is strange. The ring has left barely a mark on you.”

 “No, it definitely left something.” Nyx winced—his body still felt like it was on fire, ever smouldering. What had the kings said? He’d have their powers until the dawn had risen? He had taken it to mean the next day, but here he was. Maybe there was some other dawn they wanted him to live to. Or maybe he was alive purely by willpower, his body kept together by the shear strength of his stubbornness. Crowe would have called it idiocy.

 She was probably right. He was too stupid to know when to die.

    ii.

There were certain aspects of life that Luna had resigned herself to accept: her death, the fate of the world, the fact that her struggle would be a long and lonely one. The second she had summoned the trident, had connected with the gods, she had known all of these things to be true, whether she willed them or not.

 The man following her like a loyal dog was not one of those things. Stopping in the middle of a muddy path, Luna turned around to face him. “You do not have to follow me.”

 “What else am I gonna do?” Nyx’s lips quirked into a smirk and she didn’t know if his expression or his tone was more infuriating. A mix of both, most likely. “I’m a dead man walking.”

 “Live your life, however much left of it there is,” Luna entreated, focusing on his scarred hand. Even now, she did not know how he bore the pain. His right arm was a mass of burns, thin flakes of skin chipping off here and there. The price of the ring was a steep one indeed, though not as high as she had feared. He had lived, at least. He should not be throwing his life away like this. “Meet your friend.”

 At that, Nyx flinched. His eyes lowered and he shook his head. “Liberatus would understand. It’s dangerous out here and I don’t think your trident will cut it.”

 “What I am doing is dangerous,” Luna corrected. “Whether you are here or not, my path is a difficult one.”

 “I can make it slightly less difficult.” Looking more serious now, Nyx pulled out his Glaive knife. A knife that was now useless to everyone but him. He balanced it in his hand before slowing wrapping his fingers around the hilt. “I promised King Regis to keep you safe.” Gripping the knife tightly now, he tossed it behind her and burst into a million refracted lights as he warped to the wild beast behind her. “It’s the only reason I’m still standing.”

 Luna spun around, watching as he killed monster after monster, his knife hurtling from one direction to another. It was a futile task. Even if they injured her, they wouldn’t kill her. Not yet. It wasn’t her fate to end here.

 It was her fate to die across the sea, in a watery grave. You can’t save me, her lips refused to form.

 Some part of her knew that he would try anyways.

    iii.

 The modest campfire flickered, just barely strong enough to survive the slight night breeze. Nyx quickly scanned the moonlit sky; with the bright full moon, anyone could spot them if they were looking hard enough. All it took was one magitech engine and while Nyx could take down a group, even he would have difficulties against that many.

 “Is something wrong?” Luna asked quietly. On the other side of the fire, she hugged her knees to her chest, her eyes half-closed, and she looked more like a lost child than a fierce, stubborn princess.

 “Nothing yet.” One last check and Nyx tore his eyes away from the sky. The embers flickered in and out of existence, the fire on the verge of dying, and he added another log to the pile. At least the smoke wasn’t too visible. “You should sleep.”

 “As should you.” Luna eyed him now, looking slightly more awake. “I do not understand how you are still standing. When was the last time you slept?”

 “…properly? Weeks ago.” Nyx shrugged, leaning back. “Maybe it’s the ring.”

 “Perhaps so.” Luna pulled out the chain from under her dress, holding it up in the dim light. The fire flickered on the dull silver, casting reflections that looked like omens of the future. “Though I do not know of any such properties. Moreover, only the king should be able to draw out the ring’s power.”

 “Prince Noctis,” Nyx mumbled, resisting the urge to spit out the name. Even now, he felt a surge of bitterness over all that was lost so the royal heir could survive. Over all who had died so a single boy and his entourage could make it to the next day. “When’s he getting the ring?”

 The wrong question. As soon as he asked, Luna’s expression darkened and she let go of the chain. With a guarded look, she answered, “Not yet—there are still some tasks before he is ready. He must connect with his ancestors and gain powers of old. He must form convents with the gods.”

 “And you won’t meet him till then?” Nyx clarified, though he already knew the answer to that before she nodded. This was a woman who had jumped out of a flying vehicle to help her king, a woman who kept pushing and pushing forward for a duty that wrapped around her thicker than any chain.

 “Yes. There is much to be done.” Luna paused before softly adding, “And not much time to do it.”

    iv.

 “Your highness,” Nyx softly started, watching her from the corner of his eyes as she slowly picked her way down steep mountain path. It had been hard to find an opening where the empire had no eyes, a path that only the wild animals knew.

 Before he could continue, Luna shook her head and cut him off. Firmly, she corrected him, “Luna.”

 “That isn’t—”

 “Insomnia is no more. Tennebrae was annexed.” Luna’s eyes lowered as though she was remembering some place, some time long ago, when neither of those were true. Her hand grabbed onto the nearby wall, keeping her steady as she found her footing forward. “All that I have left now is the trident and my name. There are not many who can still call me by it.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Have we not travelled together long enough to drop such formalities?”

 Despite her light tone, her eyes were just as determined as they had been when they’d raced through Insomnia. Rubbing the back of his neck, he nodded. “Fine. Luna.” In his head, Nyx could already hear Crowe and Liberatus laughing. Quickly, he amended. “Princess Luna.”

 “Not quite what I was hoping for, but it is sufficient.” Luna smiled.

 “Anyways, about your brother...” Nyx trailed off. There was no easy way to say this. Biting the bullet, he forged on, “He’s alive.”

 “Ravus?” Luna almost stumbled over a rock, shock colouring her expression. Grabbing his arm, she stared up at him. “Are you certain?”

 “Yeah.” If there was one thing that remained true even after all that they’d been through, it was that news travelled fast and gossip even faster. The small towns that they had carefully bypassed were full of stories about a one-armed general and the rag-tag team that Noctis had managed to scrounge up. “He lost his arm, but he’s still there.”

 For once, Luna was like an open book. Joy and sorrow warred in her expression, her hand slipping off his to clasp her other one. “He is truly alive.” Her pace slowed, her foot scuffing the earth as she digested the information. “The old kings were very generous then, allowing both you and him to survive. Though, perhaps it would have been better if he had not. He will only obstruct us in the future.”

 “You don’t have to say that, you know.” Nyx looked away when she turned to him, staring instead at the center of the large crater they were heading down. “You can be happy about it.”

 “Can I truly?” Luna murmured, her hands squeezing tighter together. Her nails dug into her skin. “Even now, he is still with the empire, is he not?”

 “I was hoping he’d died.” Nyx shrugged. “It’s fine if you’re happy about it—no one else will be.”

 “Is that so?” Luna squeezed her hands one last time before finally dropping them to her sides. “I am happy, but also a little sad. I do not think he is my brother anymore.” She smiled ruefully. “I think my brother died long ago, I had just hoped otherwise.”

    v.

The Archaean roared. It took all of Nyx’s strength not to fall backwards at the sight of this god towering over them, at this angry being who looked ready to smite at a moment’s provocation. As it was, the heat was terrible enough without this added fear. Wiping his brow with his free hand, Nyx tightened his grip on his dagger.

 In the middle of a stone ledge, Luna regally stood with her trident. He was never sure where this courage came from, where all that strength fit inside of that tiny, frail body. Even as the Archaean glared her down, Luna didn’t back away. Determined, she held up her trident once more and beseeched, “Remember the covenant. The chosen king shall arrive soon to claim it.”

 A massive hand took a powerful swipe, his fingers just barely missing the young woman. Even then, she didn’t flinch, and Nyx raised his dagger. A god. He could take it on. Maybe. At least, it would give Luna enough time to flee. “Princess, I think it’s time to go.”

 “Stay back.” She didn’t turn around as she ordered him, her gaze steady on the god’s.

 “He’s—”

 “This is my duty.” Those words again. Her duty. Her sacrifice. What visions of the future did the gods send her that she had completely forgotten self-preservation? “I will see it through.”

 Nyx gritted his teeth. “Fine.” Crouching slightly, he kept his hand steady in case he needed to quickly drag her away. He could be stubborn too.

    vi.

 Luna pulled her jacket around her tighter. It was raining now, Ramuh sparking lightning and thunder across the sky, and they still had miles to go before they reached his location. In front of her, the meager fire Nyx had managed to make sputtered and died.

 “Shit.” Nyx leaned forward, shielding the weak embers. Using the dry kindle he had saved, he tried to coax the fire back to life. It was too late; despite the small alcove they were hiding in, the rain was determined to get in everywhere. With a sigh, he sat back. “Sorry, princess. Looks like we’re in the cold again.”

 Princess. She hadn’t liked the change in titles at first, but rolling off his lips, it sounded almost like a nickname. Curling up into a tighter ball, she sighed. “You tried your utmost. It is all I can ask for.”

 “Still. Would have been nice to be warm for once.” Nyx leaned back against the wall. This close, she could make out the profile of his face, the rough scars that told stories she would never know. His usually neat braids were for once a little messy, unable to keep together in the constant rain. “I guess he got it?”

 “Got what?” Luna asked, startled back into the conversation. “Who?”

 “The Archaean. Noctis.” Concerned, he looked down at her. “You sick, princess?”

 “No, I am fine.” Luna rubbed her cold arms. “Noctis did achieve the covenant, the Archaean was appeased. There is a reason all that heat vanished.”

 “And then Ramuh had to sweep in and make everything wet,” Nyx commented blithely, a bitter expression on his face. “I guess it won’t go away till he gets here?”

 “Not until the covenant is forged,” Luna confirmed regretfully.

 “Then wouldn’t it be quicker if we just travelled with him?”

 “Not entirely.” Luna buried her head in her arms, listening to the rain as it fell. The large droplets were comforting. “I had considered it. Unfortunately, the gods require ample preparation time and it would be too dangerous for both of us to travel together.”

 Nyx said nothing. They sat in silence, listening as the thunder rumbled in the distance. Lightning flashed, crashing to the earth on a lone tree in the mountains. Luna could hear Nyx breath shallowly, his body tense and ready for a fight. He was always ready to jump into battle, to defend, to protect. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be with someone else and share a burden.

 “Do you want to see him?” Nyx asked, his voice softer now. She didn’t look up to see his expression.

 “Him?” She didn’t need the clarification, not really.

 “The prince.”

 “I do not know,” Luna answered truthfully to her knees. It was a little easier like this, when all she could see was darkness. She thought of the wedding dress she would never wear. “I have not seen him since we were children. I am not sure what difference it would make now.”

 There was a small intake of air. Surprised, Nyx pressed on. “Then your engagement—”

 “A ruse to ensure he left the city. To ensure I entered the city.” Luna closed her eyes, remembering the little boy who read stories with her. Who had left her notes in her exchange diary, the one small thing she had allowed herself to have. “At one time though, I think there could have been love.”

 There was a long pause. She listened to the sound of him breathing. “And now?”

 “Now there is no time for love, just duty.” Just a single duty. She had seen the images many times by now: Leviathan, a bloody dagger, a ring. A chance to save the world, to change its destiny in exchange for her own. “I am the Oracle, I must finish what I set out to do.”

 “You know, it’s okay to do something for yourself. For once.” His voice was awkward, fumbling. His kindness more so. “If you want to see him…”

 Did she? It was a question she both wanted and didn’t want answered. She feared what the result would bring. “Nyx? Thank you.”

    vii.

 A black dog darted out of the woods and Nyx resisted the urge to skewer the mutt. “It’s you again.”

 “Who?” Luna broke into a smile at the sight of Umbra and kneeled down to pet him. “I take it he received the message?”

 Umbra barked, his tail wagging proudly, and Nyx tried not to snort. A messenger to the gods? More like a magical dog.

 Unwrapping the package on Umbra’s back revealed an envelope overly stuffed with pictures. The snapshots spilled out, revealing its contents, and Luna lit up as she started to flip through them. “So it was Prompto this time, I take it.”

 Umbra yipped, laying down on his paws as he watched her.

 Curious, Nyx picked one up. Two men were smiling at the camera, a woman in black standing just behind them. “They look like they’re on a road trip.”

 “I am sure they did not want to send me sad photos.” Luna glanced at the one in his hand. “Oh my.” She raised a brow. “I did not know Gentiana could be seen like that.”

 Gentiana. Nyx blinked. The other messenger to the gods. He’d seen Luna talk to her when she thought he wasn’t listening, her voice low and calm as she discussed their plans. Or rather, he’d seen Luna talk to the empty air, since apparently Gentiana was invisible to all. The only thing he noticed was the waves of sadness that saturated the air during each meeting.

 “Maybe I should get a camera.” She was invisible to all but the lens, it seemed. He stared at her placid expression, her neatly clasped hands. She looked just as unhappy as he’d expected.

    viii.

 I’ll keep you safe, Nyx had sworn.

 On a boat to Altissia, Luna stared into the waves, the Glaive’s words echoing in her head. Part of her wanted to believe him.

 A part of her knew better.

   viii.

 There was a part of him that had expected this. Well, not all of this—it would take a prophet to anticipate the destruction of a city, the massive body of the leviathan, the endless troopers. And it had. And that prophet was now sitting in a pool of her blood, leaning on her trident as she struggled to stand.

 It had taken him a second to warp to her side, his hands carefully cradling her to his chest. “I’ll find a doctor, it’ll be okay.” The words rushed out of him, an unfamiliar sense of panic rising within him. His fingers shook slightly as he held her. “You’ll be okay.”

 “It’s fine,” Luna coughed, her voice already faint. A bloody hand rose up to cup his cheek, a soft smile on her face. “I knew this would happen.”

 And so had he, no matter how much he had wanted to deny it. Her words had been laced with goodbye since the moment he’d met her. “A doctor,” he repeated, getting up. Maybe he could find an evacuation team. Or go to where all of the residents were taken to. His mind was a mess, thoughts tumbling out of him, and he froze indecisively.

 “Nyx.” Weakly, she pushed his jaw toward her to grab his attention once more. “Noctis must be saved. The ring must be delivered. It is too late for me, but the world still has a chance. You know this as well as I do.”

 And he did, and he did, but there was a difference between knowing and accepting. Red blossomed all over her white dress, her skin growing cooler with every second that passed.

 “Nyx,” she murmured.

 “I know,” he answered, leaning down till their foreheads touched. His hand reached for his dagger.

    x.

 It ended as it started, with fire and water. The ring slipped onto Noctis’s finger and Nyx closed his eyes as the coals simmering underneath his skin erupted into flames once more. The kings had come to claim their pound of flesh. His body started to flake apart, like ash, like dust, like petals in the wind.

 Nyx, a voice called out to him, a voice like a soothing balm on his frayed nerves.

 Luna, he thought, and he reached into the void.

[kaichan24]

Mari Katsuki is an amazing sister fics.

1. Smoke & Stones. Mari is five years old and she is watching her little sister grow inside her mother’s stomach. Mari is eighteen years old and she is watching her little brother’s obsession decorate his room in more merchandise than any one person should own. Mari is twenty-four years old and she is watching her little brother leave his family behind to chase his dreams. Mari is thirty years old and she is watching her little brother fall in love.

or snapshots from the Katsuki siblings' lives wherein Mari attempts to be the best sister that's ever existed

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11329485

2. (Don't) Give A Damn.  Mari, through the years.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10809846

3. Take Care. "Mari is seven the first time she sets eyes on the wriggling, chubby, pale mutant alien of a baby her parents have dubbed her “brother.” He cries incessantly for weeks straight and leaves her mom so exhausted that she forgets to pack Mari’s bento three times in the first month after his birth.

Mari hates him immediately."

A look at Yuuri's life and love from the perspective of his worst enemy and biggest supporter: his sister.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11591028

4. Ride on a Shooting Star.  Katsuki Yuuri would one day grow up to be a world champion figure skater with an Olympic gold medal. Before that he’d been Minako’s prize student.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11607819

5. true worth.  真利 - Mari - True Worth. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11024229

6. mari's first day of high school.  winners get katsudon.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10386603

7. make a fist.  Thirteen-year old Mari teaches her six-year old brother how to throw a punch.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15164300

8. Em nome da flor.  Parte da coletânea "O Significado das Flores"!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/14119278

9. Storge.  Mari, and the sacrifices she's made for her life and love.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18479827

10. Mari's Life and Love. Even when she has college essays to write, Mari still has time to be with Yuuri.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12089781

11. Living in the Maybe.  Mari picks Viktor up at the airport when he returns from Moscow. Without Yuuri there to play his usual role of interpreter, they learn to communicate around their linguistic, cultural, and personal barriers.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383343

12. sandcastles by the sea.  Yuuri builds sandcastles on Hasetsu’s beach throughout his life. As a child, fierce competitions with Mari to prove which one of them was better. As an adult, with Viktor to do something fun and new.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18686482

13. Mari.  A short Story from Mari's point-of-view after Viktor and Yuuri come home from the Grand Prix

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11527674

14. 4 Pounds of Fluff and Joy.  Ever since Yuuri learned that Victor Nikiforov owns a poodle, he'd wanted one too. For a while his parents weren't sure if they could grant him that wish, but when Mari found a dog village relatively close to them with connections to several respectable breeders they saw a chance. Just after Yuuri's first Junior competition, they surprise him with a family outing to the dog village.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284549

15. Into the Mist || This is Not the End. She’s not sure if she should be surprised or not, seeing the familiar sight of a tall, pale haired man standing right at the spot she’s headed to.

(or: it'll always be the Katsuki family to the rescue. Always. Always. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12110376

16. let's consider the relativity of convention. Mari thinks, if she had been a more conventional sister, it would have been expected of her to pass judgment onto the man looking to steal her brother away.

Giving the “shovel talk”, as her brother calls i

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12658893

17. But the more I cannot wish you. When declaring his theme of "love" for the season, Yuuri Katsuki mentions all of the love he had from friends, family members, and his hometown that he's only now begun to recognize. One of these people who was always at his side, was his sister, Mari.

Part of a series that explores different relationships around Yuuri and Viktor before and after they get together, this will cover the growth of Viktor and Yuuri, and their relationship, from short vignettes in Mari's perspective.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12801375

18. Drying Brother's Tears.  Mari was used to Yuuri’s tears. She’d been there when he was just a tiny baby and wouldn’t stop crying unless someone picked him up. She’d been there through the scraped knees and bumps on the head and dropped ice creams. Yuuri crying was nothing new.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797125

19. Always Looking Out for You. Mari walks over to the closet to start getting things out. She reaches for a box up on a shelf and she begins to pull it toward her. Once it slides off the edge, some sheets of paper slip off the shelf from underneath the box and drift to the floor. Mari laughs as she sees the familiar Viktor posters land on the floor. “I was wondering where those went.” Or Mari helps Yuuri pack up his room as he gets ready to move to St. Petersburg to be with Viktor.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11533914

20. Sunbeams. Mari Katsuki watches her brother leave home for the second time. It's not the same as before.

She thinks that's a good thing.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15051899

21. my better self.  Yuuri and some of the women in his life, through the years.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11599164

22. Puppy Dog Kisses.  Vicchan whines as Mari walks past, scratching softly at the edge of Yuuri’s bedroom door, and she pauses just long enough to be caught by that pleading puppy-dog gaze.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22109002

23. the sister act - i. Mari adopts yet another little brother: the story of Mari and Yurio bonding over being kindred prickly spirits. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11888679 

24. Through the Years.  A look at Katsuki Yuuri's life through the years, as told by those who love him.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12803166/chapters/29223522

25. Never Left This Town.  Katsuki Mari tries so hard not to resent her little brother.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/9873221

26. If Wishes were Fishes. Mari learns that sometimes wishes do come true.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552108

[adrenaline-roulette]

Hallow-Queen (Ben)

I wrote three Hallow themed one shots back in October for the Boh Rhap cast (There was supposed to be a fourth, but unfortunately some things came up, and I was unable to write it. Maybe this Halloween I’ll finally get it done!?)

Anyways, there is a fic for Joe, Ben and Gwil

This time it’s the man with the most amazing lower lip biting technique, Ben!

@not-the-cleavers​  (I know how much you love Ben ATM boo!) Pairing: Ben Hardy x Reader

The BohRhap cast Halloween parties had become a tradition, well perhaps not a tradition quite yet, seeing as this was only the second time the event was occurring, but it was a tradition none the less! This year, Ben had put his hand up for organising the party , and to quote, “This year, Halloween will be the biggest, best party you will ever attend!” Of course, when you had asked your fiancé what he had meant by that, he would shrug and change the subject. To say you were concerned would be an understatement, the party invitations had gone out four weeks ago, and in that time you hadn’t seen Ben do anything remotely resembling party planning! All you knew, was that the party was to be held at his parents house. It was an odd location choice, though you knew his family was out of town currently, and their house was far bigger than the apartment you two currently shared. So perhaps it was the ideal location? “Good morning love. I’m going to get things set up for tonight, I’ll see you at eight yeah?” Ben whispers, as you feel the bed dip opposite you, as he lays down to face you.

Opening your eyes slowly, you yawn as the morning light catches you off guard, clearly Ben had opened the bedroom curtains, the sun now flooding the room. “Hm? Ben what time is it?”

“It’s ten, hey shh, don’t get up.” Ben smiles softly, resting his hand over your shoulder and gently pressing you back against the bed. “There’s tea on the nightstand, careful it’s still hot. Have a quiet day to yourself, and I’ll see you at the party.”

You smile, closing your eyes once again as you breathe in the scent that is so uniquely Ben. The smell of black coffee and cigarettes invading your sinuses. “Are you sure you don’t need help with anything?”

You had offered to help multiple times this past week, and each time Bed had declined, informing you that he had everything under control. “Thank you, but I’m all good Y/N, I promise that by eight o’clock tonight everything will be set up for the party!”

Snuggling deeper under the covers, you peer over at the blonde across from you, your eyes up only visible beneath the cacoon you had created. “Have fun, love you Benji.” Ben leans over, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead, before rolling off of the bed and heading out of the apartment.

Just as Ben had promised, when you roll over onto your other side, there on the nightstand, is a piping hot teacup filled with earl grey tea, made just the way you like it. You wriggle up in the bed, until you’re sat with your back pressed against a mountain of pillows against the headboard. You sip the tea carefully, holding the delicate cup with gentle hands. It was a teacup Ben had gifted you as part of your Christmas present a few years ago, and you used it every chance you got.

                                                                  *****************

It was your first Christmas as a couple, and the first Christmas you had experienced with snow, it was perfect to say the least! The morning had started with soft, lazy kisses, that was until Frankie had decided she felt rather left out, and had jumped up on the bed and began giving you her own kisses. “No, bad girl. Off the bed!” Ben laughed, as he watched her attack you with slobbery kisses. You could hardly complain, you would always give Frankie attention if she wanted it.

  “She’s right you know; we really do need to get up.” You grin, sitting up fully causing Frankie to slide down onto your lap, before she jumped off the bed, and trotted back into the hall where she had appeared from.

Ben groaned, rolling onto his stomach and burying his face against the pile of pillows he slept on, a habit which you had adopted not long after you began dating. “But I don’t wanna get up.” He whined like a petulant child, all that was missing was him to begin stomping his feet.

You reach your hand out, carding your fingers through his golden curls, tugging gently at the roots. “If you don’t get up, then you won’t get your presents…”

That was enough to get his attention, and you watched as Ben shot up out of bed, his boxer shorts riding low on his hips. You bite your lip, trailing your eyes over his toned physique, maybe you could spare another few minutes just staring at him? “Well, are you coming?” Ben smirked, catching your wondering gaze and sending a wink your way.

With a roll of your eyes, and a sigh you drag yourself from the bed, slipping on a pair of bunny slippers. They were a gimmick gift from your best friend, and despite starting as a tacky piece of footwear, you now wore them all the time. Making your way around the bed, you meet Ben in the doorway, taking his hand in yours and leading you into the sitting room. In one of the corners of the room sat a short, plump Christmas tree, decorated in baubles, tinsel and fairy lights. The lights had been left on overnight. “So Santa knew where to leave the presents.” You had insisted with a childlike grin.

Frankie sat eagerly beneath the tree, having already found her present, it was a new doggy bed, wrapped in jolly red and green wrapping paper, with a large gold bow around the square package. You knew she would enjoy it more if the wrapping was no longer on it, but to remove said wrapping that would require her moving, and it didn’t look like she would be doing so for quite some time.   You and Ben sat cross legged on the floor around the tree, both of you having snuck out during the night to place your presents around the base of the tree. Ben hands you a box to start with, the design on the paper was an ombre effect starting in navy blue, moving into mauve, and ending in peach, with flecks of silver scattered within, and a matching bow on top. “Whatever you do, please don’t shake the box!” Ben warns quickly, holding his hand out before you.

You nod slowly, making sure to handle the box with a great deal of care. You remove the ribbon, leaning forward and wrapping it around Ben’s forehead with a triumphant grin, before slowly peeling back the paper, finally you lift the lid of the box and gasp. Your hands are shaking as you lift the porcelain cup from the bubble wrap which surrounded it. Inside the careful wrapping lay a petite teacup, it was cream coloured, with a gold handle. Around the cup, there were tiny painted flowers, of purple, pink and blue, delicate leaves and vines surrounding the bunches. “Oh Ben, this is too much…” You grin, as you take out the matching saucer, holding them between shaking hands. You place them on the ground beside you, crawling forwards, and kissing Ben fiercely, all thoughts of the other presents forgotten for the time being.

                                                                  *****************

  Ben had it all planned, all he had to do now was get everything set up, which was why he had allowed himself over nine hours to do so. There was an awful lot that he had to get done for the party, and seeing as he had declined offers of help at every turn, he now had to task of preparing everything alone.

The plan seemed simple enough, but the execution was where the difficulties began. He somehow had to turn the normal looking family home, into a haunted house, he had spared no expense in buying the necessary props, but he wanted it to look good, and he knew it would take a fair bit of work, to get fake plastic gravestones to look realistic.

                                                                  *****************

As the afternoon progressed, you began getting yourself ready for tonight’s fiesta. You had spent the day watching old movies, with Frankie curled up beside you on the bed. In fact, the only time you had left the bed for any extended period of time, was when you had gone to get your uber eats order when it had arrived, that had marked the longest conversation you had had all day, something that was sure to change as the night progressed.

You had been planning your costume for a few weeks now, and had kept it hidden from everyone, not that anyone had really discussed what they were dressing as. Though you had a feeling Rami and Lucy would once again come up with both the cutest, and most epic couples costume in existence. Your hair was the part that would take the longest, you had to get it prepared for the wig you had spent hours styling just the other day. You had worn wigs before, you were well known in the cosplay community for your quirky costumes, though it didn’t matter how many times you combed, braided, twisted and pinned your hair back, it was never a pleasant experience. You had considered shaving your head again, at least then you wouldn’t have to worry about the tedious part of applying a wig, but with Winter well on its way, you figured now was not the best time to do so. Only a few years ago, you had done just that however, you were at a convention with a few friends, and had just gone to put on your wig for your costume. At the time, you had exceptionally long hair, which meant you absolutely needed a wig cap before even considering applying said wig. Of course, you being you, meant you forgot to bring any wig caps, and no one had a spare one for you to use. It was suggested you forgo the wig, but to you that was never an option, so instead, you shaved your head! And just like that, voila, instant wig cap! It had taken years for your hair to grow back out, but when you look back on the event, you wouldn’t change a thing.

With the towering white wig in place, and the finishing touches applied to your makeup, all that was left now was to apply the multi piece costume, which would be a task and a half. Somehow you had to tie up a corset by yourself, when normally you would ask someone to help! “What are you looking at?” You laughed, as you turn on the spot, trying to get a better view of the back of the corset, in an effort to tie it up securely. Frankie sat beside you, nudging one of her toys in your direction. “Sweetie, I can’t play right now, I can’t bend down that far!” You can’t help but chuckle at that, realising only now that your movements were extremely limited in this costume. “How on Earth am I going to bend enough to sit in a car?”

                                                                  *****************

 Ben clapped his hands together as he looked over his handy work, a grin slipping onto his lips, everything looked pretty damned good! The fake gravestones littered the front lawn, with zombie and skeleton hands sticking out around them. Jack o lanterns lined the footpath up to the house, and sat around the balcony by the front door, all sporting different expression, some shocked, happy, scared, and a few who were either dead or asleep. Inside, he had set up a large table with all types of haunting snacks, sausages cut to look like fingers, strawberries dipped in white chocolate that resembled ghosts, a giant platter of spaghetti and meatballs, the meatballs had a dollop of sour cream in the centre and a ring of black olive in the middle, serving as eyeballs in gore, and of course, because no adult party would be complete without them, jelly shots in syringes!

Around the house, fake cobwebs were scattered around the ceiling, and covering some of the furniture, there was a giant ghost hung up just above the fireplace which seemed to float with the breeze in the house. “Perfectly cheesy.” Ben grinned as he gazed around, there were other surprises for his guests to find during the night, but for what he could see, everything looked perfect.

He made his way up to what used to be his bedroom, but had long ago been transformed into a study, using the familiar space to get into his costume. People would be arriving shortly, and it simply wouldn’t do if the host wasn’t dressed! The blue bellbottom jeans felt all too familiar, after spending months dressing in 70’s regalia for the part of Roger Taylor, he had become so used to wearing them, that it was almost a struggle to go back to wearing skinny jeans.  He tucked a blue button down into the waist of his jeans, and slipped on a white jumper, popping the collar out of the neck so to tie around the bright red ascot. Finally, he toed on a pair of brown loafers, before gelling his hair back, and combing it into the best rendition of a pompadour he could achieve. “Let’s split up gang!” He chuckled as he looked himself over in the mirror, before remembering he was currently alone in the house, and you were nowhere around to laugh at his stupidity.

The sound of a car door slamming shut brought him back to attention, darting out of his old room, and towards the front door. As he went out to the front yard to greet his guests, he grinned as it became apparent that Lucy and Rami were the first to arrive, ever punctual. “Fuck, you guys look great!” Ben grinned, as he wrapped them both in a tight hug, one in each arm. Lucy looked flawless in a long-sleeved mermaid style black dress, with what would likely be the deepest cut neckline he had ever seen, her lips were coated in red that matched her fingernails, and she wore a pin straight black wig. Rami had his hair slicked back, and had pencilled on a thin moustache, he had donned a black suit with white stripes, and a black tie. “Please tell me Joe is dressed as Wednesday.” Ben howled with laughter, trying to picture his crazy friend as the sullen child. He couldn’t imagine anyone would pull of Mr and Mrs Addams the way Lucy and Rami did.

“Sadly no, he claims he had a better costume in mind! But we did try!” Rami laughs, as other people begin to arrive, cars parking all along the suburban street.

“Is Y/N here too?” Lucy asked excitedly, looking around the garden for your familiar face, only to come away looking disappointed.

  “Not yet, she’ll be here soon though. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise of how everything looked.” Ben smiled, as he caught a glimpse of what could only be descried as the oddest couples costume he had ever seen. “Gwil, Joe… Nice to see you both!” The two men in question walked past the mock graveyard, and grinned at the small group, Joe waving, while Gwil went in for the hug just as Ben had. “I’m just gonna cut to the chase right now, guys what the fuck are you wearing?” Ben couldn’t conceal his laughter, and Gwil turned to Joe, and simply sighed.

“Well to be clear, I just want you all to know, that this was always going to be my costume, I came up with this idea!” Gwilym grumbles, while Joe nods along eagerly.

“That is true, I won’t steal the credit for this phenomenal idea!” Joe chimes in, only to earn a glare from the Welshmen.

The men in question, were currently dressed as two characters from Peter Pan, but two rather unlikely characters. Gwil was dressed as a rather wonderful Captain hook, complete with black curled wig, grease moustache, red coat, and buckled shoes. Of course, he had a hook to really finish off the look. He really did look wonderful. Whereas Joe, had somehow squeezed himself into a Tinkerbell dress, which was at least two sizes too small. The green dress barely zipped up past his ass and was far too short to be considered decent. There were two pompoms glued to the end of a pair of flip flops, and the wings he sported on his back, were clearly designed for a child. “He was complaining that he didn’t know what to wear tonight, and I stupidly told him I was going as Captain Hook. I didn’t think he would do anything with that information! Or if he did, I thought maybe, he would go as Mr Smee! Not fucking Tinkerbell!”

Gwil was obviously frustrated, but at the same time, it appeared as if he were fighting off a grin, Joe looked ridiculous and with him stood beside Gwil, it only helped to boost how good the Captain’s outfit looked. “As if I would dress as Mister Smee! I look terrible in striped shirts!” Joe laughed, shimmying his shoulders just enough to wriggle the wings. “Besides, I look fabulous!”

“I absolutely do not believe in fairies.” Gwil muttered, causing Joe to press a hand against his chest in shock.

“Well, if there was ever any question, its sure as hell been answered now.  This is not a children’s party.” You grin, walking up to the group, your extravagant costume drawing the attention of the gang. Your white wig had been teased within an inch of its life, now standing on end adding a great deal of height to your appearance. Your face, neck, arms and chest had been covered in pale lilac face paint, blue eyeshadow reached up to over drawn, arched eyebrows, and a shockingly vibrant shade of red lined your lips. A golden shell necklace rest over your chest, and triangular purple earrings hung low from your ears. The dress had taken a while to create, but looked stunning in your opinion, The top was a sleeveless inky black fitted dress, which contoured to the shape of your body, all the way down to your ankles, where it fanned out into eight stuffed tentacles, with the underside a deep purple with cut out foam disks of light purple, glued on to form suckers. Finally, you had a pair of black silky opera gloves, which really completed the look.

“Did I miss the part where this was supposed to be Disney themed?” Rami laughed, as you gravitated to Lucy’s side, attacking her cheeks in kisses as she did the same to you, both grinning madly at each other.

“Um, Y/N love, what are you wearing?” Ben asks shyly, as he steps up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist securely.

You tilt your head back and gaze up at him, lifting an exceptionally tall eyebrow up at him. “I thought that was rather obvious love, I’m Ursula, you know, the sea witch…”

Ben’s eyebrows pull together in the middle as he gazes over you, he wouldn’t lie, he liked what he saw, but it was not what he had been expecting. “I thought we were going to do a couple costume remember? You were going to be Daphne to my Fred.”

You turn in his arms, cocking your head to the left as you regard him with a sceptical look. “Benji, we didn’t agree to a couples costume…”

“Yes, we did!” Ben nods eagerly.

                                                                  *****************

You lay on the sofa, more like collapsed, with your had resting in Ben’s lap, occasionally he would massage his fingers against your scalp, but mostly he was there just to keep you company. You either had the cold from hell, or the bubonic plague, you were undecided which just yet, but either way you felt like absolute death. Ben was off from filming for a few weeks, and had decided to spend that time with you, sick or no, he had no intentions of leaving your side. “Babe, what if you get sick?”  You whined for the millionth time this week, only to be met with a groan from Ben beneath you.

“If I get sick, then I get sick. Now will you be quiet and watch the movie.” Ben chuckled, passing you the box of tissues as you went searching for it with grabby hands. You had no fight left in you, especially now that the cold medicine you had taken was beginning to kick in. If Ben wanted to stay with you, you would let him, besides, you rather liked the company. And with the fever you had been running recently, having your own personal space heater cuddle up to you, was exactly what the Doctor ordered!

The television went by relatively unnoticed on your end, though Ben seemed mildly invested in the film that had appeared on Netflix’s autoplay. You were vaguely aware of the film being that of the early 2000’s scooby doo remake, a movie you had loved as a child, but now tried to avoid. You were just beginning to drift off to sleep, the medication you had taken making you incredibly drowsy, when Ben’s voice woke you. “We should do this for Halloween.” He suggested, petting your head softly, as his breathing lulled you back to sleep.

“Do what Benny?”

“Dress as Fred and Daphne, we could….” That was the last thing you heard, before you drifted back into the land of nod.

                                                                  *****************

“Benjamin! I was doped up on so many different medications that week! You could’ve been talking about anything I would’ve been none the wiser!” You burst out, slapping his shoulder playfully. Ben pouts down at you, but you quickly wipe the look away with a gentle kiss.   “I promise we can do a couple costume next year, alright? Though, maybe let me pick the costumes, I have a few ideas.”

Ben grins softly, pulling you against his side with a strong arm, keeping it locked around your waist securely. “Depends, have you got any ideas that will beat Rami and Lucy?”

The couple in question grin, as Rami takes Lucy’s hand and kissed from her knuckles, up to her shoulder. “Come now, we all know who the real competition is when it comes to couple costumes.” Rami ceases his kisses, as he looks up at his Morticia, grinning wickedly at her. “Joe and Gwil are clearly the cutest couple here tonight!”

The howling of laughter from you group can surely be heard across the whole street, not that any of you could possibly care. “Honestly, you guys are absolute couple goals.” You tease, as you retrieve your phone from the slit you had created in the side of your dress. The one good thing about making your own costume, meant you could add pockets wherever and whenever you wanted! “Smile you two.” You grin, as you aim the camera towards the so called couple, Joe leans against Gwil’s side, pretending to aim a kiss against his cheek, while Gwil raises his hook ready to strike the fairy.

“Oh boy, Instagram is going to have a field day with this.” Ben grins, as he looks at the photo over your shoulder, picking a filter before you upload it, with the caption #couplegoals.

“What will your fiancé think when she see’s that?” You turn towards Joe, who simply shrugs, his wings rising with the gesture.

“Need I remind you, that said fiancé dressed as a dinosaur last year for my Halloween party, which you so rudely did not attend!”

“Hey, I’ve said I’m sorry! I already had Luce giving me a hard time over that, I don’t need you doing the same!” You defend, looking up at Ben as if to ask for him to provide some kind of backup.

“You left Ben all alone, dressed as he was!” Gwil chimes in, grinning at the disappointed look you shoot his way.

“Whoa now, that costume was all Ben’s idea! I simply made it; I didn’t come up with it!”

This causes a collective gasp from the group, all eyes now on the blushing blonde. “Excuse me Benjamin, that is not what you told me last year!” Gwil declares.

Ben hangs his head low, and all you can do is laugh at his obvious discomfort. “Alright fine, sexy Patrick Star was 100% my idea. But after Y/N said she couldn’t come to the party anymore, I decided to say that it had been her costume I was wearing.”

You slide your arm down to your side, slipping your fingers around Ben’s gently, and giving them a soft squeeze. “Well I think you looked damn sexy. Have you still got those boots?” You wink, the blush fading from his cheeks.

“Ugh, y’all need to keep it PG!” Joe groans, covering his ears before he can hear anymore that you have to say.

“Joe has a point, besides, I believe I was promised jelly shots was I not?” You grin, taking a few steps towards the house, tugging Ben’s arm with you, keeping your hands firmly locked together.

“Aye, I did. They’re just on the table inside.”

“Lucy come on, it’s been a hot minute since we did any kind of shots!” You call over your shoulder, as Lucy begins to drag Rami inside in a similar manner to you and Ben.

“That’s because the last time we did shots together, you called Ben, who came and picked you up, while you left me in the club!”

“I forgot you were there!”

“We fucking arrived together!” Lucy cries, though the laughter is clear in her voice. You make your way over to the food table, grinning at the sight of gore themed snacks.

“Fuck Ben, this looks amazing! You did this all by yourself?”

Ben grins from ear to ear, feet shuffling against the floor gently. “Yeah, I did.”

“You’ve done an amazing job mate, Gwil grins patting Ben’s shoulder, as Joe shoots him a set of very outdated finger guns.

“I’m really proud of you, even if I am slightly jealous that you did this all without me.” You giggle, before pressing another kiss to his plump lips, the taste of his last cigarette lingering on his breathe.

“Hey Y/N, are we doing this or not?” Lucy calls, pulling you away from the moment you and Ben had been sharing. You turn on the spot, and look over the table at Lucy, who was holding two syringes in her hands, one for you and one for herself. “Did you make them very strong Ben?” She grins, waving the shots above her head excitedly.

“They are pretty strong, so maybe be careful?”

“I hear your suggestion, and I shall promptly ignore it!” You laugh, as you join Lucy on the opposite side of the table, taking your phone out once again to snap a photo. You wanted to get as many pictures in before you all got too tipsy, and started taking photos of things that should never see the light of day. You hold one of the syringes up to Lucy’s neck, who pretends to faint in your arms, her hand held to her forehead. The take the photo and grin at it, taking a mental note to post it in the morning.

You raise the syringe before you, as the others of your group either to the same with one of the shots, or a drink of some other kind. “I’d like to propose a toast, to Ben, for planning the spookiest Halloween party we have ever had!”

“To Ben!” A chorus echoes throughout the home, as various other guests take part in thanking the host. You grin at Lucy, tilting your head back, and dispense the shot down your throat, the slight burn of a rather large amount of vodka stinging the back of your throat.

You grin across at your fiancé, who held an icy cold beer in his hand, as he spoke with Rami, Joe and Gwil, all four of them talking over one another, it was a wonder any of them could understand each other. Ben catches your eyes, and winks at you, you laugh softly, before blowing a kiss his way, taking another syringe shot for yourself and Lucy. “Damn, could you two be any more adorable?” She smirks, taking the shot from you happily.

“Oh we will be peak adorable at the wedding next year. Frankie is going to be my flower girl.” You giggle, causing Lucy to squeal in absolute delight. “Don’t tell anyone!”

My Masterlist

[flutteringphalanges]

                                             Mirabile Visue

Summary: Sister Agatha Van Helsing discovers she’s in over her head when a competitive game of chess ultimately results in her becoming pregnant with the child of her worst enemy, Count Dracula. Now tied by a bond deeper than blood, the two must learn to coexist and adapt in a world that could be potentially hostile towards their offspring. Parenthood has never looked so batty.

Characters: Dracula/Sister Agatha Van Helsing

Chapters: 1/7

Read on FFN and AO3

A/N:  So this is my first Dracula story and I hope I do the show some justice. It will be broken into three chapters just as the show, or first season, was broken into three episodes. Without further ado, let’s begin. (Oh, Mirabile Visu is Latin for “Wonderful to See”).                      

                                                Transylvania, 1897

                                             Count Dracula’s Castle

“You’re pregnant.”

Agatha could almost visualize the vampire’s wide grin as he spoke, her head turned towards the wooden bucket she’d taken to vomiting in. She hated him at that moment. More than usual. But she knew he was right. No matter how hard she didn’t want to believe it, she knew.

“I’m dying,” she inhaled, not moving to meet his gaze. “Just like all of your other victims. I thought you of all people would recognize the signs.”

“And I thought you of all people wouldn’t agree to sex after losing a game of chess, but I suppose we are all full of surprises.” Dracula watched with amusement as the nun turned to glower at him. He raised his hands in playful defense. “Now I am no man nor creature of God, but I must ask, exactly how many rules did we break with your sisterhood-”

“Shut up,” the woman groaned. “Just…how? I didn’t think this was even possible. In all of my research…stupid, stupid…”

She was mumbling to herself now, cursing her mind that had been so hellbent on knowing everything there was to know about Count Dracula that somewhere along the way she had been seduced by the beast himself. How could she have been so inattentive?

“While I am flattered you find me so seductive,” the Count’s voice pulled her from her thoughts. “You are equally to blame Sister Agatha Van Helsing of St. Mary’s Convent, Budapest. Pointing fingers now is, well, how would one put it in Romanian? Frecție la picior de lemn? A rub on a wooden leg.” His smile was gentler now. “Useless, Agatha. Now, how’s about you get cleaned up and I’ll fix you something to settle your stomach? No blood, you have my word, and we can discuss things.”

The nun seemed hesitant as she watched the vampire from her spot in the room. She’d been at the castle for weeks now. First it had been against her will, seeing first hand what Jonathan Harker had. But it was this knowledge that had changed the castle from a prison into an exploration that she so desperately sought. Dracula and his companionship was a bonus in its own way. If he had yet to extinguish her life then, he most certainly wasn’t planning to now. Especially if she were carrying his child.

“Fine,” she agreed. “But if you think I’m going to incubate your spawn-”

“I was thinking peppermint tea,” Dracula interrupted. “But your sour attitude is saying…lemon?” When she didn’t respond, he nodded thoughtfully. “Lemon it is.” And with that he closed the door.

Agatha eyed the entrance way to the room for a few seconds before collapsing onto her bed. The bitterness from her stomach bile still lingered on her tongue as she looked over to a nearby night stand where a dress sat neatly folded. Whose it once was, she wasn’t sure, nor cared to dwell upon, but it appeared clean and warm. Her own religious habit had become dirty overtime, particularly because she chose to wear it in Dracula’s presence to spite him. But now graced with the sensitive nose of an expecting mother, she could hardly stand the smell. Body odor, mildew, and earth. Not that it mattered now having broken her vows with the Church. She was as good as excommunicated.

I’ll add it onto my ever growing list of confessions. The woman thought to herself as she began to change into the fresh clothes. I do hope God accepts memoirs.

Her fingers brushed carefully across the stone walls as Agatha made her way down the staircase and into the dining room. Halting in the archway, she found herself slightly taken aback by the display before her. Fat logs of oak lay aflame in the fireplace, the heat beckoning her closer from where she stood. The table was set for one, an ornate glass filled with some sort of fruit juice and a plate thickly sliced toast with scrambled eggs.

“See? No blood, as promised.” The unexpected voice caused her to jump slightly as Agatha turned to see Dracula watching her intently. “At least for now. We don’t know what they crave. You see, Agatha, in all my four hundred years of life, this has never happened to me.” He gave a small smirk that made the former nun’s skin crawl. “If I believed in God the way you mortals do, I’d say this is why fate brought us together. A blessing in disguise.”

“A curse,” she retorted. “A lapse in judgement. And now I am to pay for my sins apparently.”

“Again, it takes more than one to make the beast with two backs,” he smiled. “William Shakespeare’s Othello, have you read it?” Dracula waved his hand dismissively. “Never mind that or the arguing, sit and eat. Your food is getting cold.”

Though she wanted to fight it, Agatha couldn’t help but feel tempted by the meal before her. One moment she was nauseated like a sailor sick at sea and the next, the feeling was almost ravenous. With great reluctance, she walked over to the table and sat down. The woman tried her best to ignore the Count’s eyes as he watched her begin to consume her meal. Even more so when it tasted so delicious she could feel the corners of her mouth attempting to twitch into a smile.

“Good?” He inquired curiously, moving to sit across from her.

“Edible,” she replied, placing down the nearly empty cup. “So, Count Dracula has achieved something that no information speaks of. Reproduction of the sexual nature. You must be very proud of yourself.”

“Can’t I be for the both of us?” He shrugged, straightening up in his chair. “I mean, I’m not alone in this. You are its mother. Whether you like it or not, Agatha Van Helsing, my offspring is yours. And before you go threatening to throw yourself out a window or do something silly and stab impale yourself with a stake, we both know you wouldn’t do that.”

“End my own life?” Agatha snorted, eyeing him with slight amusement. “Why would I have any qualms about my own demise?”

“Because you aren’t just dealing with your own existence,” the vampire answered. “You have a weakness, Agatha, and it’s both charming and utterly annoying depending on the circumstance. You are a protector. A guardian. Someone who is willing to throw away themselves for the benefit of the rest. And that is why you won’t harm the baby.”

The baby. The baby. Her intestines seemed to writhe and knot at the very thought of it. She was pregnant, carrying the child of the one person on Earth she despised the most. A disgust that took her on a journey after him in the hopes of learning all of his secrets. Secrets they ended up sharing. Whispers and fingers intertwined, bare skin against fabric sheet, the copper taste lingering on his tongue. A Vampire’s Kiss without the bite. The forbidden act between Beast and Daughter of God. And now, growing in her very womb a product of that.

Agatha stood up so suddenly it caught Dracula by surprise. Mouth pressed into a firm line, she tossed her napkin onto the table and turned away. She was out of the room and halfway up the steps by the time the man had reached the bottom.

“Agatha,” he called after her, his voice mildly concerned. “What on Earth are you doing?”

“Getting some peace and quiet,” she called back, swallowing thickly. He wasn’t to see her cry. No weakness. “I suggest you leave me be and go…go slaughter an old maid. I don’t care!”

Dracula was still attempting to hold some form of conversation when Agatha slammed the bedroom door in his face. For a brief moment, she half expected him to come barging in, proclaiming something that would surely upset her more. She listened carefully as if the vampire would even bother to make himself known if he was spying. Finally, confident that she was alone, the former nun retreated to her bedside and sat down. Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair.

“I don’t understand why this is happening to me, nor am I sure if there even is an answer.” Her eyes fell down to her stomach as she spoke. “But for some reason you decided to come to life-if you are alive.” Tentatively, Agatha moved her hand so it rested just under her belly button. “I don’t know what you are, or who you are, but you made a mistake. You chose the wrong people to be your mother and father.” She paused before inhaling sharply. “Especially your mother. I left my family, you know. I left to be a nun. Gave up marriage and motherhood.”

Her eyes flickered down to the corner of her bed. Tucked just slightly from view, Agatha’s eyes set upon her old crucifix. She reached down and grasped it, studying the metal. Hungary. Mother Superior and her Sisters. So many people she cared about, loved, all dead. At least, she hoped they weren’t anything more than that. In that moment, Agatha Van Helsing, former Sister of St. Mary’s Convent, Budapest, made her decision. Setting the necklace down, she returned her hand to her stomach.

“Alright,” she exclaimed. “I suppose we can explore things. But if you are under the impression that I will kill and feed on human blood for you, you are highly mistaken.” The corners of her mouth twitched into a small smile. “I am a fan of meat though if that’s any consolation.”

Agatha stared peacefully down at her stomach, feeling a new sense of purpose she had yet to truly understand.

                                                              XXX

Two evenings had passed before Agatha finally chose to face the Count again. One would’ve suspected avoiding another in such an enormous palace would’ve been an easy feat. But no matter where she turned, the former nun could feel the eyes of the vampire following her. Silent, but ever present. A shadow of sorts. But unlike hers, it required no light.

She ignored Dracula’s inquisitive expression as she walked over to the embellished table he occupied. Steam seeped from a porcelain bowl filled with a soup that caused her stomach to rumble lowly. For someone who only consumed blood, the vampire was well versed in cooking. But having a meal was not the top priority matter on the woman’s mind, no matter how lovely its fragrance was. Instead she remained standing, now mere feet from him.

“There will be rules,” Agatha stated emphatically. “Many if this is to occur.”

“Rules? Like a contract?” Dracula met the woman’s gaze with a mixed expression of amusement and slight shock. “You want to settle upon a guideline…over a baby?” When she remained unmoved, the vampire merely shrugged. “Alright,” he breathed, settling back in his chair. “Enlighten me.”

“No one dies for the baby. Or for me, if you’d even consider that. You survive as you normally would, feed as repulsively as you like, but no doctor is to be touched with the intent on gathering information on the child.” She inhaled, folding her arms over her chest. “Which means no outside medical help. We can learn from what is in books. No one else is to be involved.”

“I’m a count and a vampire, Agatha, not a doctor.” Dracula replied, the grin fading from his face. “Just because I love science doesn’t mean I am well versed in it enough to deliver a baby.”

“Then it’s quite a fortunate thing we have, at least I hope, months to educate ourselves before then.” Her lips parted into a sardonic grin, Agatha enjoying the man’s realization of the leverage she currently held over him. “Are we in agreement then?”

For a long moment, the vampire said nothing. It was only when Agatha opened her mouth once more, about to voice her conditions, that Dracula shook his head and clicked his tongue quietly.

“Even when I thought it no longer possible, you never cease to amaze me, Agatha Van Helsing.” He quietly snorted and met her stare. “You have my word. My, how intrigued I am to see how the roots of motherhood will snare you.”

“If you are even capable of feeling the emotions of a parent yourself,” countered the former nun. “I suppose we will see how our true faults form together.” She turned on her heels and began to walk away.

“Yes,” the vampire agreed, smiling once more as he looked on. “I suppose we shall.”

                                                                   XXX

“You’re reading that book again?”

Dracula peered up from his copy of, Tokology: A Book For Every Woman, looking almost slightly insulted as Agatha watched him from where she stood in the doorway. Her stomach had started to swell, and from both their rough calculations, she was three months, give or take a week.

“Well, you aren’t exactly allowing me to consume the blood of any physicians, so my grasp of understanding pregnancy is limited.” He waved the book in her general direction. “Just one man, that’s all I need and then I wouldn’t have to read about any of this. Or,” he lifted a finger in suggestion. “A woman? A midwife perhaps?”

“No,” Agatha said firmly. “I know I cannot stop you feeding, but we did agree that no one would die because of this pregnancy. No draining doctors, just books.”

“But what if something were to happen to you,” the vampire ventured, eyes following the woman as she moved to a seat nearest to him. “Do you really want to risk your life, Agatha?”

“Then forget about me and save the baby,” the former nun snorted, shaking her head. “Honestly, Dracula, when did book knowledge become less of a value to you?”

“You do realize you’re pregnant with a child who is half vampire, yes?” The man countered. “And yet, despite knowing everything I’m capable of, you show no sign of fear about what it could do?”

“Like violently tearing my vagina?” She grinned when she noticed the surprise on his face. “You’re not the only one who’s read that book.” Sighing, Agatha rested her hands on her stomach. “Women give birth every day and I will be joining their ranks soon enough.”

“I won’t let it hurt you.”

The words were so quiet that Agatha almost missed them. The former nun’s eyes flickered to meet the dark irises of the Count. For the first time since she entered the room did she pick up the severity of his mood. He seemed off, not that he wasn’t always pouring over medical texts and journals now. He, like she had, had taken to this idea of a child from such a scientific approach. Continuous research, needing to know more. And it was that that had been bringing them together. But now he seemed concerned, genuinely so, for her safety.

“You’re reading too much,” she finally responded, breaking the silence. Rising to her feet, Agatha walked over and gingerly took the book away from Dracula. “I’m a lot stronger than you think. I’ve survived you, yes?”

The two exchanged small smiles, a rarity that was growing more shared as time went on. Agatha glanced towards the stairs, arms folded over her chest. It was getting late and she was getting tired.

“I’m going to go turn in now,” she sighed, turning to Dracula. “If you must go out and-”

“No doctors, you have my word.”

“Then I’ll see you in a few hours?” Agatha inquired. “Unless you meet the sun or end up staked?”

“It’s a Tuesday,” he replied smirking. “It’s unpredictable.”

Without much thought, he reached forward and placed a hand on Agatha’s shoulder. Much to his surprise, instead of pulling away, the former nun let her fingers brush against his. They stood there for a moment, both equally silent. Agatha smiled softly and turned away.

“Good night, Count Dracula.”

The vampire watched as the woman went up the staircase and disappeared. The ancient vampire sighed before moving to smother the fire in the fireplace.

“Sleep well, Agatha.”

                                                               XXX

Agatha watched Dracula expectantly as the vampire moved around her. While she was curious about what the man was doing, her true wonder fell on the brown object in his hands. It was oddly shaped, sort of like an instrument. A horn. He hadn’t said much when he called her into the parlor, just to recline as best and as comfortably as she could in one of the seats.

“It’s called a Pinard horn,” the vampire answered before Agatha could ask. “It’s for listening to the fetus’s heartbeat and no,” he held his hand up in defense when he saw her express. “I didn’t kill or steal for it, you’re welcome. I bought it because I wanted to confirm that the thing I’ve been hearing is the baby’s heart.”

“You’ve been hearing its heart?!” Agatha’s tone was mixed with shock and aggravation. “I’ve been pregnant for six months and you are just now telling me that the baby has a beating heart! That it’s living, living?!”

“To be fair, you didn’t tell me immediately when you felt it kick for the first time.”

“Because it was the middle of the day and you were sleeping!” She exasperated, propping herself up on her elbows. “Do you realize how often I’ve sat on this exact spot and worried about if I was giving birth to an undead baby?”

“My apologies,” the vampire expressed, tone lacking actual sympathy. “But what’s done is done and now we can both be assured that the baby does have a beating heart.”

He reached to lift up her dress, but was immediately stopped when Agatha grasped his hand. Their eyes met and Dracula let out a long, irritable sigh. Releasing his hold on the fabric, he motioned to the horn with his free hand.

“It works best on bare skin,” he exclaimed.

“Perhaps you should put down the medicine books and pick up one on manners, Count Dracula,” Agatha expressed. “It isn’t very polite to lift a lady’s dress without her consent.”

“I’m perfectly fine not confirming my heart beat theory…”

“Just let me help,” Agatha grumbled, rolling her eyes as she hiked up her gown. “There, now do what you must.”

Choosing not to bicker further, the vampire eyed the woman’s distended stomach carefully. Her pale skin stretched to reveal roads of thin blue veins that had previously been hidden. Though he knew what flowed through them, he was surprisingly not tempted. Tenderly, he brought his fingers down to rest upon her flesh pausing only when he felt her shiver.

“Sorry,” he gave a half smile. “I suppose you could say I have low circulation in my hands.”

“Your humor died a long time ago,” Agatha smirked.

“And yet you still laugh,” Dracula replied, resting the horn right under her belly button. “Now give me a moment.”

The vampire carefully leaned an ear to the opening of the device. He didn’t need to look up to know that Agatha was holding her breath. Of course, that was unnecessary as the thrumming resounded almost instantly from within. There was no denying it. A heartbeat. A living, beating heart that had no reserves for making itself well known.

“You’re smiling,” Agatha’s voice pulling him from his concentration. “Is that a good or a bad thing? I can’t ever tell with you, especially if you’re being quiet.”

“I believe it is safe to say it physically inherited its mother’s heart.” When the former nun didn’t seem to put two and two together, he added, “…it has a beating heart.”

“There is a God,” she breathed in relief.

“Let’s keep religion out of this,” Dracula replied. “We can deal with opposing views when it’s actually born.”

Agatha’s arms unceremoniously wrapped around Dracula, the horn falling from her stomach and to the floor. Bewildered at first, he remained motionless. The woman wasn’t exactly one to show affection. Especially when it came to him, despite them learning to coexist with each other. But he too allowed his guard to slide and embraced her back.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Well it’s no gem encrusted necklace, but it proved its worth,” Dracula chuckled, looking down at the horn. “You’re welcome.”

They remained in each others’ arms for a few long moments before Agatha broke away. She was smiling, a genuine grin that held no form of hostility. But when she opened her mouth to say something to Dracula, she decided against it, leaving the vampire to wonder what else she had to offer.

“Agatha,” he ventured. “I was planning on taking a stroll through the castle. If you aren’t too busy being bothered by mortal things, I would like to offer you the invitation to join me.” He gave her a grin. “You can bombard me with all of your usual vampire inquiries.”

“I’d like that,” the former nun smiled.

“Then it’s settled,” the vampire said. “A walk around the inside grounds.”

Where there once would have been refusal, when Dracula offered Agatha his hand, she took it. Without a second thought, the pair began to walk down the stone hallway. For now, they would just enjoy each other’s company.

                                                           XXX

It was late into the night and she was already well into her seventh month of pregnancy when the craving first hit. Well, the craving had long been building up, she’d just had been ignoring it. It was midnight when Agatha was hit with an episode of sorts brought on by fighting the urge to consume blood.

Dracula had found her thrashing in her bed sheets, fingers digging into the mattress as she pressed her face into the pillow and howled. The thirst burned in her throat and twisted in her stomach. She was frustrated, miserable, and the idea of death seemed more and more welcoming.

“Please,” she whimpered, a hand falling to grip her stomach. “Stop, stop, stop!”

She could feel the baby more than ever as if it too was suffering from her infliction. That her ignoring her craving for blood was upsetting it. It jabbed, poked, and prodded. At this point, blood wasn’t needed for survival-if they had made it seven months in without it and were still present, then it wasn’t a necessity. Nevertheless, that didn’t make how it felt any better. Like detoxing from a severe addiction.

“Agatha?” Dracula asked worriedly, moving to her bed. “What-”

“Get out!” She screamed, biting down hard on her lip. The copper last of blood melted on her tongue, but hers wasn’t what her body wanted. “Get out! I can smell it on you! Get out!”

Of all the nights for him to have fed. He silently cursed himself as he moved towards Agatha. It frightened him really, seeing her like this. He knew something was off by the way she had been acting lately. Now he realized why.

“Agatha,” he said gently. “You need to drink.”

“No!” She spat back almost immediately. “No blood! We…we had a rule…no one dies���” Their eyes met and Dracula saw how red they were from tears. “I can fight this,” she whispered. “I can fight this…I can fight this…”

“You don’t have to,” Dracula insisted. “Agatha, one doesn’t even need to be killed for blood, there are-”

“I will not have my baby become a monster!”

The anger and fear that laced her words struck out at the vampire like whip’s rope soaked in venom. They hurt. It was such an odd sensation that he found himself staring absently at the former nun. Agatha had said things, proclaimed that he was the reincarnation of the Devil himself, and yet it was a single outburst about a baby no less that tightened the long dead muscle in his chest.

“So what if it is?” He asked coolly. “What if the baby is a monster? A full fledged vampire? Then what? You wish to kill it?”

“No,” Agatha swallowed thickly, still visibly trembling. “You don’t understand…”

“I don’t?” Dracula nearly hissed. “Because from where I stand, Agatha, your hatred for vampires has manifested even more so since we first became acquainted in Hungary! So due forgive me for becoming offended that your motherly concern is that our child will-”

“I just want to protect it!” The former nun screamed.

“From what?!” Dracula snapped. “Me?!”

“EVERYTHING!”

Once more the vampire found himself at a momentary loss for words. Agatha had now shifted into an upright position, her expression one of false stoicism. The way her arms wound around her middle, Dracula no longer saw a nun seeking to slay that of which was unholy, but a mother desiring nothing more than to protect her child.

“Crosses. Holy water. The sun…” She shook her head, a sorrowful smile crossing her features. “What is said to hurt you, to kill you, has it not occurred to you that this baby could be equally if not more vulnerable?” Agatha sighed and peered down at her swollen stomach. “I got so far, I hadn’t craved blood up until this point and now…” Her eyes flickered to meet his gaze. “If I’ve experienced one vampire characteristic, who knows…”

“Then we experiment with me,” Dracula said. “Tomorrow we’ll open the curtains-”

“No!” Agatha said sharply. “I don’t want…” The former nun seemed to struggle with the next words that left her lips. “I can’t lose you either.” Her eyes narrowed at Dracula’s silence. “Well, go on then. Make a mockery of me. Agatha Van Helsing who has spent most of her life trying to stop Count Dracula actually cares for him. The irony.”

Dracula was quiet for a moment. “Well, I suppose it’s true what they say. Lubirea trece prin apa, nu-i e frica ca se-neaca.” He smiled softly. “Love will go through stone walls.”

“What does that-”

Her words were captured by a kiss as the Count joined Agatha at her bedside. She didn’t fight back, nor attempt to protest in the slightest. Instead, she let his cool hands rest on either side of her face. Her mouth moved hungrily against his, the scent of blood still lingering off him. The last time either had shown this level of romance was the night their child had been conceived. Just as the nun let her hand trail down the vampire’s chest, he stopped.

“There is something we can try.” Dracula said suddenly, pulling away. “But you aren’t going to like it.”

“Then why even suggest it?” Agatha inquired irritably, secretly annoyed that the affection ended so quickly. “I told you, no humans.”

“It’s a good thing pigs are beast then.” He stated quite proudly. “Their blood is closest to humans-not that I can drink it. But perhaps the baby won’t require human blood. Maybe animals will suffice.”

“You want me to drink a glass of pig’s blood?” She asked skeptically.

“You’ve made it clear the alternative is a no,” he shrugged. “There’s a farm not too far out that breeds the loveliest hogs.” At Agatha’s frown, he merely smiled and gently touched the side of her face. “I’ll make sure to use a cup that isn’t transparent. Now try to get some rest. I’ll take care of everything.”

Dracula kissed her forehead and lovingly patted her stomach. Even after he vanished from the room, Agatha found herself wide awake with her thoughts. Nun vampire hunter to vampire, dare she venture, lover, who also was pregnant with his child. Just in a seven month span. If there was a God who accepted her for, well, her, she hoped he’d have a large allotted time slot set out for her to explain everything when she died.

                                                          XXX

“I think my water just broke.”

At first, Dracula wondered if he heard the woman right. They had been sitting by the fireplace together, Agatha on her second glass of hog’s blood, when the declaration was made so calmly. She was heavily nine months pregnant so it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it took the former nun nearly doubling over in pain from a contraction to snap the vampire from his trance.

“You’re water broke?!” He asked, sounding unnervingly panicked.

“Smell the amniotic fluid for blood and tell me,” she said through clenched teeth. “Now help me get to the bedroom. You’re going to need to get…” Agatha inhaled sharply and closed her eyes. “…You’ll need to get the supplies, I’m afraid I won’t be much use going up and down the stairs.”

Dracula had felt many things in his centuries of existence, but never had he felt such overwhelming worry and raw excitement. Diligently, he moved to sweep Agatha up-who protested that she could still walk-and brought her up the steps. She winced as he set her down, but the initial contraction seemed to have run its course.

“You should’ve let me drink a physician,” the vampire said, unable to pull his gaze away from the laboring woman. “Or even bring one here!”

“No,” sighed Agatha. “No, we’re fine. We’ve prepared. Stop being so nervous, you’re making me nervous and I’m the one who’s going to be pushing it out.” She sucked in a breath, trying to remain collected. “Go find some towels and fill a pot with water. It’ll need to be boiled, so maybe start with that. And a watch to time the contractions.”

“Perhaps you chose the wrong profession,” the Count responded. “Maybe the role of a midwife would’ve been better suited.”

“And you a librarian,” Agatha retorted. “You could replace the stones in your castle’s walls with books from how you collect them.” Her lips twitched briefly into a teasing smile before another grunt of pain abruptly severed the mood. “If you would be so kind and hurry back, I would…highly appreciate it.”

The more time he spent with her, the more Dracula found himself learning about humans. Especially when it came to women and their reproductive cycles. After getting everything Agatha had requested, he returned to find the former nun pacing around the room. Every so often, she’d stop and lean against a wall, her breathing heavy as she anchored herself in place riding out each contraction that hit.

“No,” she hissed, eyes squeezed shut as she waved him away. “Don’t touch me! Let it pass!”

As the hours wore on, it became clear that her contractions were not only getting worse, but growing closer together. And while Dracula did love the smell of fear, he was far from enjoying Agatha’s. No longer did she object to his closeness as he moved to where she knelt on the ground by the bed. She could feel the pressure from within her, the weight of it telling her body that it was time. And yet, Agatha felt very unready. She was scared. Terrified. Powerless.

“Breathe,” the vampire instructed softly. “I’m going to move you to the bed.”

“I’m perfectly fine right here,” but the weakness in her voice betrayed her. “I don’t think moving is such a good idea right now.”

“You and I both know that you don’t want to deliver this child on the floor.” Dracula tilted Agatha’s chin so that her wide, fearful eyes met his reassured stare. “So let’s get you comfortable.”

A pang of guilt hit the vampire as the woman let out a moan when he lifted her from the floor. Already strands of her hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, exhaust looming over like a storm. With his aid, Agatha sat propped up against the headboard, a pillow cushioning her back. Towels were laid at the end of the bed towards her feet, her gown pulled up to her hips. She already knew before Dracula checked her what was happening. The pressure. The urge.

“The head,” he sounded so mystified. “You’re beginning to crown!”

Agatha was too exhausted to think of a snide remark in response. Instead, she tensed as another contraction hit, crying out as it reverberated throughout her abdominal region. Nine months she had planned, prepared for this, and now in the midst of bringing life into the world, confidence turned into dust.

“I can’t do this,” she whimpered, shaking her head. “This was a mistake!”

“You need to push,” Dracula instructed gently. “You can do this, Agatha. Let go, I’m right here.”

She didn’t want to. But the civil war she fought with her body to ignore the urge, the more intense they came. The baby was coming and there was nothing she could do about it. When the next contraction hit, she sucked in a sharp breath and bore down as hard as she could. No longer was there just pressure, there was burning. An extreme, inextinguishable fire. She screamed.

“Good girl,” the vampire coached. “Keep going, Agatha, you’re doing marvelously. Focus your energy, that’s it.”

Nothing sounded better than a stake through the vampire’s chest each time pushed. The agony. The burning. She felt the tearing. This had all been his doing. So she focused her energy on anger. An emotion that was suddenly forgotten the moment she felt something small slip out from her body. In seconds, an infant’s wail sounded in the room. It was the most beautiful sound Agatha had ever heard.

“A girl,” Dracula beamed, holding the squirming baby gingerly for her mother to see. “A perfect daughter.”

“Let me see her,” Agatha whispered, holding out her arms as he placed their baby into them. “Is she healthy?”

The two marveled at the tiny being before them. She looked exactly as any normal human newborn would look. Ten fingers and ten toes. A small crop of dark hair. Agatha gingerly opened the baby’s mouth with her finger to reveal two sets of toothless gums. Suddenly, every single thing that had ever gone wrong in her life was meaningless. Nothing mattered except the good that had led up to that moment.

“You were incredible.” Dracula grinned.

“I suppose you could say that I had some help,” she smiled, leaning into him when he sat on the edge of the bed. “She needs a name.”

The vampire seemed to ponder for a moment. “Someone so beautiful deserves a name that is just as equal. In my four hundred years of life, up until this point, the most beautiful thing I know of is something I cannot see.” He looked down and tenderly touched the baby’s face. “Sorina. In Romanian, it means Sun.”

“You want to name our daughter after something that could kill you?” Agatha asked, sounding slightly amused. “You don’t find that a little silly?”

“Or fitting,” the vampire mused. “Unless you have another idea?”

“Hm,” Agatha hummed, nodding her head thoughtfully. “Sorina…” With a smile, she gazed lovingly down at her new daughter. “Welcome to the world, little one. There is oh so much to tell you…”

A/N: So as I was writing this, I kind of realized that in this first part, if I ever wanted to make separate one shots based on events throughout Agatha’s pregnancy, I could. That’s why there were “snap shots” rather than make the whole story about her being pregnant. Not sure if anyone would be interested in that. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Part two shall have more romance. Reviews are greatly loved and appreciated! Until next time! -Jen