#Gossamer Fate

[fayes-fics]

Bridgerton Blue

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader

Summary: Benedict is stunned by his wife in Bridgerton blue.

Warnings: None, really. This is fluff and a teensy bit suggestive.

Word Count: 0.7k

Authors Note: Request fill for anon; see next post for details. I just had to use a GIF with him in a light blue cravat for the story. This is written from Benedict's POV. Sorry it's so short, but I hope you enjoy it! <3

The air catches in his lungs as he sees you. 

Sashaying into the bedroom from your dressing room, a vision in light blue. 

“How do I look, husband?” 

Your tone is affectionate, tinged with playful teasing but a hopeful earnestness that has a dense warmth spreading behind his ribs.

“Truly beautiful, my love,” he asserts as you swish the fabric back and forth, giving a little flourishing twirl as you draw nearer. 

He is captivated by the beauty of your look, yes, but more by you. Simply aglow. A beaming smile that seems to inhabit your whole being. He would do anything to keep you looking like that—as if the sun lives within you. Scarcely believing it is him you have chosen to spend your life with, to share the wonder of yourself with.

“And you are so very handsome,” you wink as you arrive in front of him, hands running up his sharply tailored jacket over the ruffles of his shirt. “This matches my dress perfectly,” you hum happily, him captivated by the way your eyes shine in the candlelight as your fingers toy with the tips of his cravat.

“It is by design’, he confesses. “I asked my tailor to work with your modiste,” he adds, enjoying the way your expression lights up even more at his forethought.

“You are the very best husband,” you attest ardently, and he can feel the sincerity behind your words as he cradles your face, your jaw moving delicately in his cupped palm.

Your hand encircles the back of his head and pulls him down gently but insistently. He happily obeys, smiling against your lips as you push up onto your tiptoes. Sharing a languid kiss that has a tingle running down his spine, your nails a mild scrape over his scalp.

“I wanted to wear Bridgerton blue,” you explain quietly, tilting to bury your face into his neck and inhaling heartily, the tip of your nose pressing under his ear where he dabbed his cologne, just for you, your very favourite scent. “To tell the world I could not be prouder to have your name, to be your wife.”

Your impassioned declaration stirs something profound in his soul—the magnitude of your mutual desire and love. The missing puzzle piece he had been searching for until that fateful day last year when the jumble that was his life suddenly found its shape, its order, its wholeness.

“I am the luckiest man in the world,” he murmurs into your cheek, your eyes fluttering closed as he peppers gossamer kisses over your skin.

His hands slide around you, pulling you closer, loving the slight hitch in your throat as your bodies mould to each other. 

“And I could not be prouder to be your husband,” he echoes your words, nuzzling your face until your lips ghost each other, breathing shared air. “I love you so very much.”

“I love you too,” you whisper over his cupid’s bow, arms banding tight around his neck as he lifts you from the ground. 

There is a bloom in his chest and a tug low in his gut as the kiss deepens, your tongue seeking his, a sensuous parry that always alights an intense flame within him. A burning want to be with you. Only you. Away from the world and all of its noise. To lose himself in the profundity of your connection when you are intimately entwined, hearts syncopated, bodies alive.

“Must we attend this ball, my love?” he pouts as you break apart, his tone turning mischievous, deploying that crooked smile that always has your pupils rapidly dilating. 

“I fear your mother will disown us if we do not attend her ball…” you chuckle reluctantly as he places you back onto your feet. But there is a distinct stirring in his britches as you crowd closer and offer coquettishly: “I will make it worth your while if you do, Mr Bridgerton…”

And just like that, he is putty in your hands. Cannot help but bring your knuckles to his lips to drop a lingering kiss onto the fabric there—a promissory note for what you will share later, his voice husky as he replies.

“Lead the way, Mrs Bridgerton.”

masterlist • wips • taglist (follow this blog to be tagged)

Benedict taglist pt 1: @makaylan @longingintheuniverse @iboopedyournose @colettebronte @aintnuthinbutahounddog @severewobblerlightdragon @writergirl-2001 @heeyyyou @enichole445 @enchantedbytomandhenry @ambitionspassionscoffee @chaoticcalzoneranchsports @nikaprincessofkattegat @baebee35 @crowleysqueenofhell @fiction-is-life @lilacbeesworld @broooookiecrisp @queen-of-the-misfit-toys @eleanor-bradstreet @divaanya @musicismyoxygen84 @miindfucked @sorryallonsy @cayt0123 @hottytoddyhistory @fictionalmenloversblog @zinzysstuff @malpalgalz @panhoeofmanyfandoms @kinokomoonshine @causeimissu @delehosies @m-rae23 @last-sheep @kmc1989 @ferns-fics @corpseoftrees-queen @magical-spit @bunnyweasley23 @how-many-stars-in-the-sky @hanji-emo-blog @sya-skies @urfavnoirette

[syoddeye]

Seconds. Ghost x f!Reader.

Tidal disruption events occur when a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole, and is pulled apart by the black hole's tidal force. AT2018fyk is the name of a tidal disruption event in which a supermassive black hole devoured a star, then came back for seconds.

He doesn't believe in fate, but he believes people are creatures of habit.

And what luck, she is.

She slips into the pub quietly, her arrival swiftly overshadowed by the crowd. Rainwater trickles off her jacket, puddling on the wood beneath her as she keeps her hood drawn, hiding her face until she finds her usual corner. There, at the end of the bar where it bends into the wall, she sits, peeling off the outer layer to reveal the dark, muted clothing beneath. Barely a sliver of skin exposed. A mouse, just as skittish and meek as he remembers.

The glasses are new. Thin frames, like a librarian. His fingers twitch with the thought of plucking them off her face. The thing in his chest purrs.

He could move. Let her see him, watch the fear bloom on that soft face of hers in real-time. But no. He's not in a rush. He's had days to settle, to breathe. To cram himself back into the worn shell of Simon.

No more adrenaline coursing through his veins, no caffeine pills burning his insides. Just paracetamol and ibuprofen dulling the ache in his bones. But there's an ache deeper than that, which no pill or tablet can touch.

She isn't supposed to be here. Not again. He told her that when he pulled out and rolled her over.

If I see you again, it's for keeps.

The hunger pulls. 

Rears its ugly head at the sight of her and gnashes its teeth.

Inevitable, inescapable, it tears him apart in violent tides. His ribs press too tight around what wants her, threatening to snap open like a steel trap. It pulls his reason gossamer thin, then shreds it. Patience crumbling into dust.

This mercy he's giving her? Letting her have one round in peace? It's the most of what he'll be able to give her.

He thought he'd had his fill. Thought she'd be smart enough to heed his warning. He had ripped her apart, drank down the heat of her, and left nothing but the cooling remnants of a weepy girl who could barely get the words thank you out of her mouth.

He remembers how she burned, coming undone in his hands. Whined about too much and too big. And yet, she lived.

Clever thing, piecing herself together while he rinsed off, turning tail out of the dingy motel room. Hurtled right out of his reach. 

He never had the chance to track her down, shipping out the next day. Never the chance to change his mind.

He shrugged it off. He could live with it. He'd learned to live with a lot of things he wished were different.

But his hunger is a thing with memory. And as soon as he sees her, nursing a drink with her nose in a book—he knows he's not done.

Some things circle back whether they mean to or not.

[historiaxvanserra]

In Hades I Am With You | Chapter Three

Pairing: Azriel x Hewn!city reader

Word Count: 3k

Summary: Reader is the ill-fated daughter of a cruel Lord of Night; plagued with prophetic dreams and cursed with rare, arcane gifts. Azriel is the stoic spymaster; forged from violence, lethal and honed to a fatal sharpness. The pair find themselves bound to one another through readers strange, prophetic dreams.

Tags: Forced proximity, strangers to lovers, Night Court lore, Priestess reader, discussions of SA and abuse, discussions of sex work, criticism of misogyny, sexism, and general abuse in all its forms, eventual smut, slight corruption kink, reader is incredibly romantic and horny.

I hold my hands up, as if in prayer, steam coils in feverish tendrils around the exposed curves and divots of my breasts and shoulders. The dark waters roil and spill over the lip of the turquoise pools as I surrender myself to their warmth.  From here, the world is obscured by the gossamer haze that glitters like spun spider-silk.  Like the veil between two worlds. An oppressive breeze cuts through the chamber like a shroud and the scent of wisteria and moonflowers smothers the putrid smell of the city in the wet heat of a summer storm. 

The cruel laughter of the other court ladies rings like a siren song in my ears. A symphony of high-arching sound that echoes off the moonstone pillars. I filter it out; focused instead on my own trembling hands, turning them to admire my fingers which are adorned in rings of amethyst and onyx, mined from the bowels of this wretched mountain that I call home. Then another's fingers interlock with my own, breaking my reverie.

Melinoe’s voice is lyrical and velvety as she wades through the waters before me. Steam rises in columns about her hips and waist, becoming entangled in the damp lengths of her silver hair. It curls over her sloped shoulders like a white raven’s plumage, casting her in a halo of opal light.

“Where were you last night?” 

Melinoe is one of the Lord Protector’s favorites. She is tall and graceful with beautiful smoke-kissed skin and glassy, onyx eyes that mark her as a daughter of this court. Melione was once the companion of Morrigan; The Lord Protector’s only daughter. Though she had been exiled from the Court long before I was born. She had been assigned to my household when I came of age. My eternal companion. 

Though we are bound by duty, there is still something of me that is kindred to her, a shared pain perhaps. She had grown up here, as I had, she too knew the anguish and oppression of this wretched mountain. The longing it can bring. It is why when I decline to answer her question she doesn’t feel the need to interrogate me further. 

“There are whispers amongst the Darkbringers.” Melinoe starts, a conspiratory gleam in her eyes as she looks around the room. The low cadence of her voice echoes dangerously off the mountain stone when she moves through the waters with a serpentine grace. She emerges from the bubbling pools like the image of some dark Goddess, born from the sea to lure men to their watery deaths. Her voice is laden with malice as she eyes the younger girls. How they hunger after every whispered word, circling her in merry rings like dancing water nymphs, or the coiling tendrils of some monstrous chimera.

“That the High Lord will return to court by the moon's turn.” The dancing tide turns volatile and the ladies eyes glint with something dark and predatory in the pallid light. 

Long ago, the first Princes of the Night Court had made their home here, in the cruel depths of the Mountain. The Moonstone Palace had been hewn from onyx stone of the mountain. Hence its name. The facade of the palace itself was adorned with great stalactites of opal that form a series of dark coronas that line its gothic archways, and its stained glass ceilings cast the palace in a wretched emerald light. When Rhysand had ascended the throne, after his father before him, he had abandoned his ancestral seat in the Palace in favor of his ‘Court of Dreams’. 

For millennia Velaris had been shrouded by ancient night magic; kept hidden from us here, under the mountain. Even as war ravaged these lands, and Amarantha made slaves of us all. A city shaded in veins of lavender, amethyst and violet, and saturated in perpetual starlight. 

The people of Hewn City had been afforded no such grace. Left to rot and ruin under the oppressive stone of the mountains. The forgotten vestiges of a dying regime; clinging to the archaic traditions of our forebears, coveting the dark whispers of power inherited from ancestors long dead.

Now, we cower in the cruel, emerald light of the Moonstone Palace, like shadows.

“The High Lord has no tenderness in his heart for us, why would he return if not for ill?” I ask, looking up at her through dark, curious eyes. 

“Because it pleases him to impose his wrath upon us,” Melinoe shrugs, running a fine-boned hand through the tresses of her hair, that refract like smoky quartz in the cold light. 

“And because it serves him to appease the Lord Protector.” Medea insists gently, leaning down to cradle my jaw in her slender hands. The mere mention of his name is enough to bring forth the ferrous taste of blood and hatred to my mouth, and yet, any ill I’d speak against him lives and dies upon the tip of my tongue. 

“Or to bring him to heel.” I interject, parroting the words I had heard from the Darkbringers in the Jade Pearl. 

After a few aching moments, Melinoe agrees as a smoke-skinned wraith drapes her body in a robe of fine, dark silk. The garment is held together by iridescent emerald ribbons that cinched around the curve of her waist, its lapels and cuffs are trimmed with black lace and the hems adorned in the black, floral embroidery favored by the Velarian tailors. A gift from her Lord husband, and my barbarous keeper. 

None of my own garments are nearly so beautiful. My dresses are the austere, high-necked gowns of a novitiate; dark swathes of fabric that cover me like a shroud and veils of silver and alabaster to conceal my face. 

“Perhaps the High Lord and his Illyrian dogs have already fucked their way through all of the dreamers in the so called ‘City of Starlight’ and hope to find some solace here, in the dark where they belong.” Venom laces her words, though her tone is pleasantly breathy and she smiles prettily when she speaks. 

Melinoe only ever speaks to me like this here, in the quiet of the bathing chambers, where the words we speak are our own. Her mother had told us once, a long time ago, that a woman’s first blood does not come from between her legs, but from biting her tongue. I hadn’t known what she meant then but I think I do now. The women of this infernal court are like well trained bitches; obedient, meek, and loyal. I was taught young not to bite the hand that fed me. Taught me how to beg prettily, how to crawl on my hands and knees and throw myself down upon a man’s mercy. 

And there is so little mercy in this world for women like us.

“He is afterall, his father’s son.” I hum lightly, musing on her words and I sink further into the misty wakefulness that usually speaks to a coming vision. 

A few beats of silence pass between us and then the bathhouse is a cacophony of liliting voices and girlish chatter as the other girls dress; whispering and dancing across the tiled floors of the bathhouse at the prospect of our High Lord’s return. 

“So…are you going to tell me where you were last night?” 

“I was here.” I say lowly, as I gesture to the bathing chambers. These apartments are one of the view places I am permitted to be without one of my sworn Darkbringers.

When I was a girl I wandered the Moonstone Palace at my pleasure; I knew every narrow corridor of these hallowed halls. The statue of Astarion that lay beneath the Palace itself, the desecrated temple at the foothills of the mountain, the botanical gardens which held blossoms of foxglove and dhalia’s, and arches of wild flowering jasmine and climbing ivy, the atrium with its stained glass ceilings, through which I observed thousands of constellations that painted the black tapestry of the sky like threads on a loom, and the High Lord’s personal libraries, its high paneled walls holding tomes and scrolls as ancient and arcane as the palace itself.

Over the years. Those freedoms had been stripped away from me for one infarction or another. 

“I came here - after Aelios left - you weren’t here.” Melinoe says dangerously, a thin brow arching towards me. My heart hammers traitorously against my chest. 

If Aelios had sent her it would be under the instruction of my guardian and the Lord Protector of the city. If Keir had the slightest idea of my transgression I would have been summoned by now.

“Did Aelios send you?” I ask tentatively. 

“No - when do I ever do as that barbarous fool asks?” Melinoe retorts, an air of offense on her beautiful face.

“I thought I heard you leave your apartments. I wanted to make sure you were well.” Melinoe approaches the lip of the tub and takes my hand in hers. She touches me gently then, her eyes full of care and affection. 

“The dreams have been getting worse, haven’t they?” She was right, though, that was not the reason I ventured out unseen last night. 

Melinoe runs a fine boned hand through my damp hair, and coos softly. 

“Please don’t tell Aelios.” I beg her, feeling guilt coil in my chest for the sympathy that lights her eyes. 

These visions that plague me are prophetic and dangerous, they speak of sacrifice and sacrilege, of war and ruin. I know that Keir covets the power I possess, I know what this foreknowledge could bring about, in the wrong hands. His hands are mottled with rage and cold with death. 

“I won’t,” Melinoe swears solemnly, “and where did these visions lead you this time?” 

I look up at her through dark, curious eyes from my place in the bubbling pools. Unsure if I should tell her. 

“Th-the lower city.” Melinoe’s eyes widen, sparkling like starlight in the blue light. 

“You mean…you went to the pleasure houses?” She asks aghast. She takes a deep breath and pushes away from me, pacing in circles on the tiled floor. 

“How?” 

“I-I borrowed some of Leda’s clothes - left through the servants quarters - no one saw me.” 

“How can you be so sure?” She asks her voice low. 

“If anyone recognised me I would have been dragged before the High Council and exiled before I even had the chance to tell you.” 

After a few aching moments of silence Melinoe softens, her head tipping towards me. 

“What was it like?” She begs for something tangible to cling to. Some small sliver of knowledge of what lies beyond these castle walls. So I tell her and the whole while she stares at me enraptured. 

I tell her of the whores, who swarm merchants like sirens, singing sweetly to them. I tell her of the sailors and the smell of the ale, the bawdy songs they sing and the vulgar words that color their language. I tell of of the games, coins minted with the faces of our High Lord glint in the light as it changes hands. 

“I-i can’t believe you went out there,” Melinoe sighs enthralled. “Did you see anyone from the Palace?”

“I saw a few of the Darkbringers - I didn’t speak to them though - and…” I hesitate, unsure if I should tell her about my encounter with the Shadowsinger. Who touched me with reverence, whose lips had claimed mine so devoutly. 

That night, I returned to the Moonstone Palace filled with such strange…longing. For what, I am not entirely certain but the Shadowsinger has opened something within me, some old wound, festing and aching for touch.

“And?” She asks. 

I want to tell her. I want to kneel at her altar and confess that his kiss tastes like cedar and night-blooming wisteria. That his eyes hold the darkness from which we were born, and to which we will one day return. The confession dies when she looks at me again. 

The vows I had taken were solemn ones. Last night, I had forsaken every one. If my keeper ever discovered my treason I’d be exiled as Morrigan had been. Disgraced and forced to debase myself amongst the High Lord’s court of whores and tyrants.

What’s more is that kiss, sacrilegious and sacred as it was, belonged to me. A secret contained between myself and the city.

“The soldiers were talking about the war.” I exhale slowly, swallowing the fallow lump in my throat. “An-and the High Lord’s return.” 

I cast my gaze out of the large, gothic archway that exposes the city in the wet heat of the storm. A dark mass of shadows bleeds across the vast black tapestry of the sky until the world is veiled in black. 

Was the Shadowsinger out there? 

Somewhere in the depths of this mountain with the same longing in his black heart?

Melinoe strides towards my discarded clothes, draped over the tiles as she coaxes me out of the baths. Her slender hands glide over the heavy swathes of fabric and she procures my veil from the pile. The elegant spider-silk is almost iridescent in the sapphire light of the Moonstone Palace. It is a cruel reminder of my place here. I feel its heaviness settle over me like a shroud.

Beneath my faded robes I observe the champagne silk of the slip I had worn last night. It was trimmed with lace and tailored to fit my body. It had been a Solstice gift. Imported from Velaris. I wonder if its usual scent of jasmine and bergamot had been tainted with something darker. 

Wisteria and frozen pine. 

“The City Watch said that there had been trouble on the borders,” Melinoe offers. She did this a lot; always hearing whispers of one thing or the other. “Apparently the Princes on the Continent are working with him.” 

“With who?” I ask, tucking back a loose curl.

“The Death Lord.”

“The Priestesses say that The Lord Protector is willing to join them…for a price.” Melinoe says grimly. 

“What could possibly be worth such a betrayal of our traditions?” My stomach turns, a warring and violent storm. Anxiety coils around my throat like the tendrils of some monstrous creature borne from the depths of the ocean. 

“That’s what it is to thrive in this world, sweet girl.” Her voice is softer now, a whisper of gentle night. 

“To make your black deals in the dark and decide what you will trade for power.”

I knew very little of power. 

But I know this: I had forsaken sacred vows at the mere suggestion of it. So what might desperate a desperate man desecrate to know the kiss of that dark, ancient power that bleeds from the infernal heart of this land. 

“I probably shouldn’t have brought it up.” Melinoe turns away from me.

“It- it’s just that with the High Lord’s return…” She stalks towards the open windows, taking in the view of the city from this height, “and your dreaming…does it not speak to something - a coming storm?” 

In truth it had never occurred to me that my foresight might serve as anything other than a shackle. That it might be a warning from out of time. Of things yet to come. 

“Come, sweet girl,” Melinoe coos kindly, turning from me, “it is not for the likes of us to worry about.”

“I will follow in a moment,” I acquiesce, reclining further into the water, running a cloth over the junction of my neck and collarbones and loosing a sigh as the steam envelops me once again, “I will take the waters a while longer.” 

She lingers for a moment more before taking her leave, the other court ladies following her in a daze as they trail out of the bath chamber; in a throng knotted curls and flashes of laughing violet eyes that glint in the seraphic light.

The vision comes with the quiet, fleeting images of the blue light of a bleeding star and a dark-winged angel.

“Are you quite alright, my Lady?” The voice of my handmaiden, Leda, cuts through the arid heat of the bathing chamber. The young wraith's fingertips dig into the tender flesh of my arms as she drags me upward and out of the scalding waters. Leda is a lithe creature, with yellow eyes and thin, arched brows that she furrows when she casts her amber gaze on me in the cruel light. Her features twist grimly at the alabaster film that shrouds my vision, a testament to the fleeting visions and prophetic dreaming that haunts me in my waking hours. 

“Another dream?” Her voice is accusatory and laced with concern. The wraith’s touch is careful and deliberate as she cradles my chin in her cupped palm. A reflexive hand tightens around her as she runs a hand through the loose tresses of my hair as my ragged breaths soften to a gentle exhale. 

“The worst of it has passed, I think.” I assure her, smiling lightly, though I am sure it does not reach my eyes. The wraith looks at me warily and there in the darks of her irises I find a small flicker of courage that coaxes sound from me again.

“I- I dreamt of a winged angel -- a blue star that bleeds over the mountain.” I say gravely, my voice wane and ghostly. My body feels like a conduit of someone else's pain. A vessel of nerve endings and synapses that sear white hot with the last tremors of the dark power that lives in me. 

“Dreams may yet be just that, sweet girl.” Leda embraces me thoughtfully, the crease in her brow deepens and the set of her jaw falls into something akin to sorrow. She wraps me carefully in a dark navy robe, the soft cotton against my skin working to untether me from the ether. 

“Now get dressed.” The wraith speaks gently into my unbound hair. Leda’s voice is stern but her face unserious, one brow arches high and her eyes glitter with devilment in the fireglow.

“The Lord Protector wishes to speak with you.” I falter then and Leda watches carefully as my fingers descend upon the discolored flowering bruises that mottle my skin.

TAGLIST: @bravo-delta-eccho@tiredsleepyhead@that-one-bibliophole@azzyslittleshadow@lalaluch @laramcflyyyy @teenagellamaangel

[irisfixation]

it is generally understood within the adventuring community that some sort of contract should be preemptively made in order to protect oneself from an untimely death.

[original hypnosis fic, second-person narration from perspective of the subject. gender-neutral, little to no sexual content. please read accordingly, and enjoy.]

now, the act of seeking out such a contract, let alone the fact of its normalization, would have been taboo a few decades past. "we don't negotiate with pact-entities", the old elders crow; anti-demon and anti-fae rhetoric was accepted as the norm.

it only took looking at the rate of mortality, the expenditures of the local church, and getting over themselves to at last shake up the in-culture of heroics.

of course, that didn't mean they weren't diligent with their new protocols; information on prospective patrons was inscribed down in ledgers half phone book and half grimoire, noting the terms of agreement, the trustworthiness of pact-entity after pact-entity, any bargain a little too faustian struck through in red.

you'd watch your peers peer through the book, discussing the pros and cons of each. was an unlucky fate too much to pay? were compulsions too obstructive, did the bodily changes contrast too much with one's self-identity?

of course, they all ended up choosing sooner or another. better that than dying young and alone.

it was under this sort of necessity that you went to the house.

-------

it was closer to home than you expected, really - you anticipated some kind of ominous manor on the cliffs, or secluded cabin by the forest's edge, so the three minute walk from the town square came as a welcome surprise. its residence looked the same as any other lodging - you'd no doubt walked past it on your regular commutes countless times without batting an eye.

you knocked, and the door fell open, as if it had been awaiting your arrival; afternoon sunlight bouncing off the gossamer-thin threads adorning the hallway.

make yourself at home, she says. i'll be upstairs when you're ready to talk. you nod and ask if there's any consequences for eating any food or drink. i promise you this; all food i've set out here is yours to eat and drink without consequence comes the reply; perhaps a little verbose from anyone else, but necessary caveats for a pact-entity's trust. you oblige.

with throat wet and stomach sated, you ascend the stairs. the bedroom is small, humble even; you've seen more expensive homes by far from some of your more show-off rivals. more fit for a pauper than the-

"than Her Lady of Marionettes?"

yeah.

"i never cared all too much for the trappings of nobility. i'm satisfied simply living in peace here."

then why the contracts?

"it's mutually beneficial, no? i quench my thirst for control for a time, and you don't meet any horrible, lonely fates. it's no different from any other line of work."

more reasonable than any would-be evil queen you've ever met, let alone one considered an enemy to the hero's guild not so long ago.

"please. i never cared all too much for that arrangement."

she rolls in her bed to face you. despite her role, she looks little different from your sister or partner; eyes still closed, hands still set upon her crosses.

-------

you discuss business. she will string you up, she says; and then, if she were to find yourself in an otherwise fatal scenario, she will pull your body back, mend you, even clear your mind from any hostile entities trying to take it over.

what do each of you get out of this?

"i get to observe the world through your eyes. i get the joy of commanding a body beyond my own. you cede a small, negotiated amount of control, and in return you are freed from tragedy's grasp forevermore."

it sounded like a hell of a better deal than half of the faustian bargains you saw other contract-entities propose.

"if you'd like, we can provide a demonstration here and now. no permanent alterations, and you can back out any time you wish. is that amenable?"

it does indeed sound amenable.

-------

you're sitting by her side on the bed. she's set her crosses down in place of a needle she holds deftly between thumb and forefinger, pinched together like a bee ready to sting. "hold your left arm out, please? we'll begin now."

you do so, and she passes the needle through skin. you feel it travel up across the veins in your wrist, her other hand steadying you in place with the tenderness of lily-petals. your elbow twitches as it passes through; the nerves firing once in shock, but no more. up through bicep, then shoulder; and then out, a release in pressure from within as the needle finally leaves your insides, leaving a trail of silken fibres behind it.

she plucks the taut string left in its wake, and your arm twitches with it, pulled from within. "see? no pain at all."

next is the right arm, then the legs. she flutters around you like a sprite alighting upon forest blossoms, soft fingers and steel-precise nails moving you, adjusting your wrist or shoulders or rotation with studious diligence. the intimacy of being studied and guided like this is almost palpable.

"...and, done." she declares, finishing a line of thread across the shoulders and through the nape of the neck. "well, how is it? comfortable, right?"

"yes, miss", you are made to say; and then, immediately, recall the strings through your upper and lower lip alike, a third running through the seam in your tongue. right. you move your eyes to meet hers; she's smiling brightly, but it's more the naive smile of a child than the former evil queen's smirk you expected. the effect is equal amounts unsettling and genuinely cute.

"well, let's begin." she picks up her crosses again, and with one subtle rotation of a hand's balance, she guides you.

it's easy to follow through. your right arm raises with a poise and natural nature that shocks you, outstretched to one side. she returns her hand to neutral, and your arm falls back once again, more sudden and limp than you were expecting.

("excellent", she says.)

with that first test done, she guides you down the stairs. your eyes are still your own, so some reflexive part of you fidgets as your body glides down each flight of steps; you have no control over if you fall or not. she could throw you down the stairs now, and you'd be helpless; passenger in your own tumbling body.

but she doesn't. your hand remains firmly upon the balustrade, and your every footstep is delivered with care. by the time you reach the landing, your heart may be pounding, but you're just glad to have made it through.

("well done," crows her voice.)

the near-invisible threads all throughout your body continue to urge you forward - sometimes single strings tugging suddenly, but other times shifting in a steady unison, almost imperceptible from your body's natural movements save that no thought of your own guides it. you're in the kitchen, before too long - a rack of dried dishes shows that she, too, has been here recently. your fingers and palm grasp onto each bowl and glass, one by one, filing them away in procedure through the unfamiliar house.

with your body outside of your control, you'd think your mind would wander to idle thoughts; to the birdsong from beyond the window, perhaps, or to thoughts of how your companions are faring in their own attempts to find their own contracts. but all thoughts seem to be silenced by each consequent string's plucking, a resonance within yourself that numbs your brain under its force.

before you know it, the rack of dishes is clear, and you are ascending the stairs again. it's less scary going up, and she knows it; she takes each step faster now, with a fluidity of movement that your legs accept graciously. there is no joint pain, no hesitation - each step is placed with pinpoint precision, each movement following the next.

a puppet's dance, you think; then dismiss the idea just as quickly. you're just here to obtain insurance from danger, not to humor thoughts like that.

she's lying back down on the bed when you arrive - exposing her back to you, vulnerable. but her hands are still outstretched, each one holding those crosses linked to the many strings pulled taut across, within, and around you. "welcome back", she tells you. "i trust it wasn't too uncomfortable?"

"no," you say, "it was fine."

"i'm glad to hear it!" she says, turning to smile at you. "and you took to it so well, too! good doll."

there's something about meeting her eyes as she says those last two words that feels different from everything prior. something deeper, like the strings are mycelial network growing their own nerves to entangle around yours, setting them alight in a microcosm dance, your whole body twitching just subtly as you are affixed within her gaze, burning up from the inside out-

"oh, my apologies. old habits die hard it would seem."

she doesn't gesture you to sit next to her, but your body does so, so you can assume it was her will all the same. she turns to you and explains that the demonstration has concluded; that the act of forming a pact with her is something you can now think of on your own, that you can return to her any time you need and in fact she'll completely understand if she never sees you again. she snips off the strings, one by one, with a pair of ornate scissors - the ones within will dissolve organically, she notes, metabolized by your own body. nothing to worry about.

you're not worrying. you're not thinking much at all, in the aftermath of everything that's happened. but she is patient, and you have all the time you need to recover.

-------

she walks you to the door and waves you out with a flourish. you're reminded of how mundane the house is, and now you can see that same mundanity in the Lady's face; no different from any number of passers-by through the town square.

"safe travels~!" she says, and you walk out the door; your steps faltering just a little as you once more acclimate to control over your own body.

well, for a contract patron, that wasn't so bad. and she seems well-meaning enough. maybe you'll go back there sometime again, you think to yourself, and shrug as you make your way home.

[artethyst]

~ Shadows Bathed In Moonlight ~ Pt.1

Azriel x Youngest Archeron Sister! Reader/OC

“Azriel we have been over this,” Rhysand brought a hand to his face, slim digits ghosting across his jaw in deep thought. “It is out of my hands- you are forbidden from telling her. Do you understand?”

“Even you cannot forbid me from such a thing,” he let out a dark chuckle is disbelief. “Tell me, High Lord, why is it that two of my brothers have found their mate- free to accept the bond, and it is I left alone- in the dark? As usual.” The Shadowsinger’s voice dripped with venom, an uncharacteristic snarl on his face as his primal instincts took over, having no outlet for such scathing carnal desires- having been barred from even spending time with his Mate.

“Azriel, you know it is not the same.”

“How is it not the same?”

“She is still coming to terms with what happened to her- her powers are still out of control-”

“Then let me help her!”

“That is Cassian’s job.”

The two men became silent as a soft rap on the door signified them of a presence- her presence, Azriel noted, her soothing scent of fresh lillies and the first rain of spring overwhelming him as her angelically golden head poked through the door nervously.

He felt his lips tug at the corner at the sight of her, Rhysand giving him a warning look at the almost unnoticeable gesture.

Azriel. The familiar voice was strained. Leave us.

“I…I apologise for interrupting,” came her gentle voice, twinkling blue eyes apologetic as Azriel was forced to tear his own away, the golden thread that only he could see taunting him in glittering ocean of her iris.

“You have nothing to apologise for,” came the Shadowsinger’s smooth reply, bowing in such a way Rhysand knew his infamous patience had been worn thin. “High Lord.”

~

Azriel had not ventured far, his shadows, uncharacteristically disobedient, willing him to stay close enough to her- his Mate in an onyx haze of longing he was beginning to suffocate under.

He watched Rhysand leave first, jaw ticking as the male rounded the corner, anticipating his sister-in-law to follow in tow, her gossamer gown and its iridescent scintillation billowing around her like a halo.

He heard her gasp as one of them curled itself around her pointed ear, cursing beneath his breath, only to hear her giggle- a liberating sound that might have exalted him from the depths of his own hell, an angelic noise that could have him repenting on his knees just to hear a single note of.

“Azzie…” she smiled up at him, as he remained still- as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t- he had. “Your shadows are loose again!”

Only for you- ever for you, he wanted to say, words turning to ash quicker than the breath was stolen from his lungs at the sight of her.

He wished he could ask Feyre to immortalise the moment as she stood- tendrils of him dancing across her unblemished skin, their dark illimitability neither scaring nor disgusting her as her rosy cheeks widened, their vaporous talons ardently skimming over her guiltlessness.

“S-Sorry,” was all that came out, low and stuttered, his bronzed countenance flushing at his own weakness- thanking the mother Cassian was not around to tease him for it.

“Do you think they like me?” She teased, unaware of the true weight of her words, “they never seem to latch on to anyone else…” She trailed off as he called them back, unable to stomach the sight of her- so close and yet so far from him, in such a cruel display of fate.

“It is hard for anything not to.” He mused gently, not missing the way her rosebud lips parted, the saccharine scent of her own innate longing drifting up to him in taunting waves of arousal.

“Azriel-” She had not used his name- called him that for such a long time, her fair face falling as he stormed away, wondering what she had done- had said for him to treat her so callously.

Her hand was splayed out in a fruitless attempt to stop him from abandoning her and prevent him from vanishing entirely- a frustrating habit he adopted had as of recent, baring its ugly, wilted head whenever their conversations has begun to blossom beyond anything other than formality.

In the few years she had known him he had never acted in such a way, making her slowly retreat back into the self-loathing girl he had once culled from her self inflicted cage. His own heart lurched as he felt her through the unclaimed bond- suffering, again, because of him.

He had been the one to make her feel like she was home- that he might have even been it. Yet the retreating coils of his own darkness reminded her that he could never love her.

That she would never be enough for a man such as he.

And as her soul cried for him in a manner she had yet to recognise, his own howled back in a melancholic crescendo as he cursed the Mother for always deafening his heart’s symphony.

[mirkwdmstrss]

the sun had already risen

summary: gil-galad offers words of comfort to ease your anxieties; a brief look at his softer side

genre: fluff

pairing: gil galad x reader

word count: 775

The soft white light of morning filters in through the gossamer curtains, chasing away what shadows of night remain. You watch the rise and fall of his chest, though his back is to you; turned away from the rising sun. Even in slumber, he does not seem rested. And why would he, what with the fate of your people and that of all of Middle Earth seemingly hanging in the balance?

“I can feel your eyes on me,” he rumbles, the vibrations of his deep baritone penetrating your contemplative state.

A soft smile graces your lips though you say nothing in turn.

“Hold your tongue all you want,” he quips. “Your gaze is enough to wake a man from the deepest of sleep.” Slowly, he rolls onto his back before turning to look at you. “And yours is one I feel to the depths of my being.”

“Do you, now?”

He smiles and your heart swells. Very seldom do the lips of the High King curve up as of late; the deep crease on his brow softer now, though still prominent acting as a reminder of all he carries.

“It is a good feeling,” he responds, reaching forward to tuck a stray lock of hair behind the shell of your pointed ear. His hand stills on your cheek, cradling it. You lean into its warmth, closing your eyes and savoring the stolen moment.

The mattress sinks as he shifts his weight to prop himself up on his elbow; his keen eyes regarding you fondly. As he does so, the single long, dark braid you’d woven his hair into last night falls over his shoulder. You reach for it, toying with the end of the plait before working your fingers through it unraveling the silken strands. You slip your fingers through his hair, not one tangle to be found as you gently guide them through it. He closes his eyes and murmurs a sound of approval as you do so. You stay like that for a moment, quietly combing your fingers through his hair until it falls in a curtain of black waves about his shoulders and you swear he’s never looked more beautiful than he does now.

Tears well in your eyes and Gil-Galad’s open suddenly, shining with concern.

“What is it, my love?” he whispers as he wipes away a stray tear with the pad of his thumb.

You press your lips together into a semblance of a smile as you curve your fingers around his wrist. “Nothing, do not worry about me.”

His brow furrows as he regards you. “Now what kind of king, what kind of lover, would I be,” he pauses, shifting up into a sitting position. Gently, and with very little effort, he pulls you into his lap to sit between his legs. “If I did not stop that would cause tears to fall from these beautiful eyes.”

You lay your head against his bare chest and feel him drop his chin atop your head as he wraps his arms around you.

“I just,” you hesitate, searching for the words to articulate this feeling deep in your chest. “Are you certain we’re to trust in this strange new power?” You thread your fingers through his, your thumb skirting over the newest ring in his collection; the one crafted by Celebrimbor in Eregion.

“It brought life back to Lindon, did it not?” he answers softly with a kiss against your temple. “Protected our people?”

Tilting your chin to look up at him from beneath your lashes, you search his eyes for some sort of solace as the pit in your chest grows ever deeper. “I cannot help this feeling of dread, like something terrible will come with the rising sun; catching us all ill-prepared and unaware.”

Gil-Galad gently grasps your chin in his hand, turning your face toward the pale morning light. “The sun has already risen, my love.” He drops his hand to the exposed skin of your thigh from where your leg curls around the sheets. “Look at how it shines upon your skin even now; bright and nourishing. There are no horrors to be found lurking in its rays.”

A soft smile plays at the corners of your mouth as you find it harder and harder to dwell on these feelings of sorrow in his comforting embrace. “Have you always the right words to quell a fearful heart?”

He nuzzles in the crook of your neck, his nose skirting against your skin as he presses delicate kisses along the column of your throat before pausing at your ear. “So long as yours is the heart that I protect.”

[zorosdimples]

UNDER HIS THUMB ꒰ uraume x reader x sukuna ꒱

minors and blank/ageless blogs do not interact—i will block you. cw: suggestive content. nonconsensual nudity. dubious touching. brief descriptions of cannibalism and violence. suicide mention. reader is referred to as “bride” and “wife.” reader has breasts. wc: 1053. notes: uraume ily—please ditch shitkuna for me <3 (based on this idea)

A fire blazes in the yawning hearth, bathing your bedchamber in a warm titian. The shadows of flames leap and dance across the cragged stone walls—a solar flare—a cosmic spectacle. Logs and branches resembling human bones sputter and spark, crackling in your ears. You shift in your seat. 

The diaphanous veil remains pinned to your crown as Uraume’s fingers move deftly through your locks, the sweeping gossamer that brushes your ankles now pooling on the floor. They unravel the intricate updo they crafted for the ceremony, your hair a glowing halo in the firelight, head bowed in gentle subservience. The pins that bite at your scalp are crusted in blood; the sharp pain has long-since softened into a dull throb.

“I hate him,” you announce. 

(It’s how you cope with your precarious situation: burying your fears beneath carefully woven layers of disdain.) 

Barren aside from a bed, a wardrobe, and an armchair, your threadbare accommodations are as cozy as a dungeon. No torch, tapestry, or looking glass adorns the walls. Your companion’s expression is hidden as they continue their work atop your head.

Uraume chastises you after a few beats, affectation frigid as ice. “You shouldn’t speak of your husband in such a manner.” 

You snort. This one-sided union will only further scar the ugly face of matrimony; looking upon your captor with respect or affection is as likely as you kissing the cheek of your slain mother a final time. “My ‘husband’ for all of ten minutes.”

“And still your husband, nonetheless.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” you snap. 

Uraume pushes you to your feet and fluffs the veil with a hum. They circle you, appraising your body—the flimsy, silken robe that ripples across your curves hides nothing from their piercing stare—then, for what must be the fifth time, they adjust the knot that holds the garment together. When their eyes meet yours, you find yourself falling for the ruse, plucking fresh buds from a field of fuchsia.

How you wish their gaze held more than cool indifference.

Ever perceptive, they reach out to gingerly tuck a wayward strand behind your ear; if you close your eyes and still your heaving chest, you can pretend that it’s an intimate gesture—the touch of a lover. “Rarely do we have a say in our own fates,” Uraume muses. 

Fidgeting with your fingers, you quell the urge to embrace your attendant. (It’s a disgraceful thought for a newlywed. But you can’t spool in the words that unfurl from your lips, the edges raw, frayed with longing.)

“I would have taken my life if it hadn’t been for you, Uraume. I can’t stand him.” 

“Master Sukuna would never allow you to harm yourself.” 

“Tch—that vile brute cares little for my well being.” Hatred flares within your chest, your once-blooming heart now withered with rot. Tears of anguish blur your vision and make each syllable tremble. “If he didn’t want to harm me, he wouldn’t have murdered and feasted on my family.” 

A smile tucks itself in the corners of Uraume’s lips like a secret, though you miss it—misty-eyed and waist-deep in a deluge of painful memories. “You seem to forget that I prepared their flesh at my lord’s behest.” 

“I can’t fault you for being trapped under his thumb; you’re kinder than you give yourself credit for, anyhow.” 

They chuckle darkly. “And what leads you to believe that?” 

It doesn’t occur to you until this moment that you’ve edged closer to Uraume. If you leaned forward, you would smell the frost on their porcelain skin, taste the mint on their breath. Despite yourself, you reach out, cupping their cheek. 

“You’ve been my devoted caretaker since I arrived, patient and helpful at every turn. Your presence is the only constant here—my sole comfort.”

“Oh? Is my blushing bride ready to consummate our unholy union?” A rumbling voice cracks the tense air open like a bone, marrow seeping out, juices staining the tender earth. 

Your neck snaps to the doorway. Your monster of a husband nearly blots out the frame with his inhuman physique, clothed in nothing but a simple pair of black trousers, both sets of arms crossed. Disgust pinches your brow and purses your lips; you sneer. 

“With you? Never.”

Amused by your vehemence, the King of Curses approaches you, both mouths curled into wolfish grins. Uraume bows as Sukuna invades your space, two clawed hands wrapping around your waist, the other two cradling your skull. He demands your attention, irises a wine-dark sea of skeletons and ichor. A cursed siren urges you to plunge into its depths. End your suffering.

“Uraume—has my wife been inappropriate with you in my absence?” 

Without hesitation, they answer: “Yes, my lord.” 

Several sets of eyes—one belonging to Uraume, the others to Sukuna—gorge on your discomfort. You bristle under their scrutiny, and fruitlessly attempt to rip yourself from your husband’s grasp, nails scratching angry lines across his tattooed forearms. 

He clicks his tongue. “My naughty little bride.”  

Bile burns your throat at the mock-endearment, bitterness coating your tongue. For as resolved as you’ve been, you shake with rage, the hulking beast before you stoking the embers of your wrath. He smiles something sharp and wicked before releasing you. You stumble backwards, limp as a ragdoll. 

“Uraume,” Sukuna commands. 

There’s an unspoken agreement between master and servant. When Uraume steps forward and swiftly unties your robes, you shriek, the fabric slipping open to expose your nude form. They proceed to rip the garment from your body; it falls to the floor in wispy shreds. 

Attempting to preserve your dignity, you scramble to wrap an arm around your chest and press a palm between your legs. “This hardly seems proper,” you pant. 

Sukuna snickers as he sits at the foot of your bed, spreading his legs. “How else is a ‘vile brute’ supposed to learn the intricacies of his little wife’s body if not through careful examination?” 

As much as you want to spew poison at him, you gasp when Uraume’s chilly lips graze the arch of your neck, their delicate hands slipping up to caress the swell of your breasts. Unable to stifle the moan that warbles past your lips, you make the sinister decision to revel in this pleasure—no matter how short-lived, underhanded, or wrong it may be.

[vir-bellanaris]

Veilguard Finale Drabble (Solavellan)

Because I think it's good (for my mental health) but a missed opportunity to not have a romanced Lavellan react to the bad ending for Solas.

Lavellan paced back and forth back and forth, her feet wearing down the ruined stone within the dark corridor. Her nails were already bitten down to the quick, so she chewed her lips bloody instead. She only paused to listen, the sounds of fighting in the chamber beyond had ebbed, straining she could hear angry voices muffled by the thick obsidian walls.

She paused, her mind a war of indecision, her heart pounding in her throat. She couldn't leave him. Solas needed her. She could feel it dragging through her gut like long claws of dread.

Her feet moved almost of their own accord forward, gathering pace when she saw blue light shining beyond the grand doors left ajar.

They were atop the dais, the torn Veil shimmering and gossamer behind them.

She saw him.

His visage broken and bloodied. His hands bound by the energies emanating from the Veil, twisting tighter even as he struggled.

Rook held the real lyrium dagger.

"No!" Lavellan's cry was choked in her tight throat, panic and horror paralyzing her for two crucial heartbeats.

Then she began to run.

Her legs burned as she clambered up the seemingly endless stairs, toward the one thing that mattered. Despite all the bitterness, loneliness, and heartbreak, he had always mattered.

Rook sliced the dagger across Solas' palm. "Now the Veil is once again tied to the life force of an ancient elven god."

The words were muffled, the meaning barely registering.

"No!!" Lavellan's voice broke free, her eyes wide and starting, full of hot tears as she pushed Rook aside.

Solas' angry expression alighted on her, taking her in. His features twisted, anger transforming into shock, then terror, before settling on broken grief.

Lavellan sobbed, her fingers scrabbling uselessly against the magical binds around his wrists. "No, no, no!" She grabbed desperately at him as the Veil drew him backwards, away from her.

"Vhenan." Solas' voice was so achingly familiar, trying to soothe her even now, though his low cadence was fringed with a darker emotion.

Lavellan followed after him, grasping his arms and pulling against the inexorable draw of the Veil.

"Let me go, vhenan."

"No! I won't!" The brightest burst of emotion she had felt in ten years rocked through her body, the remnants of the anchor responding, flickering sparks of green energy lighting up the veins of her shoulder and neck. "I will not allow this!" She focused her will upon the torn Veil, commanding it to close, to release her heart.

"You must." Solas was bound still, unable to move so much as an inch closer, though he tried with every fiber of his being to close the distance to her.

Lavellan's efforts slowed the pull to a stop, both of them knew it had bought them only moments. She cupped his face, tracing a shaking touch over his haggard features.

Tears fell freely from his eyes, hot upon her fingers.

Solas shook his head. "I am sorry."

"Tell me how to save you." She whispered, drawing herself up onto her toes so she could nuzzle gently against his face.

"I have been bested. You will not share this fate." Solas drew upon the remainder of his magical energies, fighting the bonds of the Veil for a moment more.

He did not heed the pain that tore at his spirit, bending forward just enough to brush his bloodied lips against her mouth.

Then he sagged, his body ripped from her grasp, landing with heavy impact against the swirling primordial lights of the Veil.

His gaze did not leave her, even as he was slowly drawn in.

She ran for him, screaming his name, reaching for him. For all her efforts even she, once so adept at manipulating the Veil, could do nothing.

In that last moment, she saw a faint and sad smile touch his lips as he locked eyes with her.

His mouth opened, the last part of him to be swallowed up. His words echoed in the now empty air like wisps on the wind.

"Ar lath ma, vhenan."

[darcydarlingdabbles]

Deepest Desires - Astarion

Drabble based on dialogue from a nymph who gives companions a brief moment of their truest ecstasy—these will break your heart. [Link]

A/N: Astarion deserves the world D: // I should write a full scene of this I did

Astarion x Gn!Reader/You - non-explicit sex, fluff, feeeeelings

MDNI

The winds of fate blow you to the warmest of hearths in the most cordial of inns.

Astarion isn't ones for plans, but, somehow, you and he always save the day. And earn plenty of coin. Tonight you are guests at an inn. The room is bathed in a golden glow as you sit together, eyeing the trophies and momentos of grand adventures that line the warm walls. Having a warm drink to further chase out the chill of night.

He tells you once again with a smirk that he's never liked being the hero, but actually he's grown rather fond of it. Astarion insists it's the admiration, and the gold, of course, but there's no hiding the fondness in his gaze when he thinks you aren't looking.

Your seething passions lead only to pleasure.

Astarion leads the way to your room for the night. It's not quite fit for a king, but more than up to his standards. Besides, the only thing more appealing to him than being wrapped up in silk, is being wrapped up in you. The vampire's hands seek the warmth of your body with the ease and confidence born of familiarity. Your eagerness for each other has never faded it, and he never will.

Though he insists he does not require reassurance, you will give it, whenever you feel he needs to hear it. But Astarion knows his darling offers more than just carnal comfort. He murmurs sweet nothings and everythings against your ear as his hips rock into yours, pressing your wrists back into the soft bedding. He tenses, but you only encourage him to come undone.

As Astarion collapses into you, his head buried in the crook of your neck—you offer him your throat. Thinking nothing more than how he likes the taste of bliss in your blood.

The touch of the sun comforts your flesh, but never burns it.

The two of you stay intertwined throughout the night. The steady rhythm of your heart against Astarion's ear always eases him into peaceful sleep. He does not stir, even as the day breaks beyond the gossamer curtains, and you will not be the one to wake him.

Astarion stretches luxuriously as the sunlight falls over the skin of his back and lights his curls. When he lifts a hand to brush your cheek, the Ring of Daylight is noticeably warmer than his touch.

"Looking for a cuddle?" Astarion greets you with a lazy smile. As he finds your hand, your fingers intertwine, your own ring matching his.

You are safe.

[dp-marvel94]

Real -Chapter 2

Summary:

While hiding from his parents in Gotham, an ill-timed encounter with his neighbor, Jason, has Danny pretending to be his own twin. Fortunately for Danny, the more he pretends the easier it gets. Until he is not pretending at all. Or: Danny names a duplicate and via ghost logic, said duplicate ends up becoming real.

Previous -> Next

Also on AO3

Danny stays duplicated as long as he can. He stays awake long into the night, talking at Jamie more than with him. Still, words do come, slow and few and unsure as they are. And greater still… somehow, impossibly, the conversation is not just Danny’s own thoughts repeated back to him.

“You can take the mattress if you want,” Danny offers, his eyes growing blurry, fighting sleep. “I’ll take the couch.”

Danny wakes some time later, alone in his apartment. Jamie is gone. Or… may his duplicate is not. 

The half ghost frowns down at his own chest, brow furrowed at a novel sensation. A tiny spot of cold, just below his core. It seems to swirl and pulse, dimming and brightening.

Danny gasped, an awed surprise. He can… feel Jamie. The other is still there.

But… for just a moment, anxiety steals his breath. The feeling almost reminds him of being overshadowed. Pointdexter pulling him from his body, contorting his face. One of Vlad’s clones forcing him to transform, electricity searing his veins. Fear stabs at his core.

And the feeling echoes back to him.

“Jamie would not.” The words are in Danny’s head but they are not his.

Despite the fear, the words also ring with sincerity. And as unsettling as the foreign thought should be, Danny is comforted, no longer afraid.

“I know you wouldn’t.” Danny tries to reassure. He rubs where the cold spark is nestled just below his sternum, as if he can comfort the… not a duplicate. 

The half ghost corrects himself. “You’re not a duplicate. You’re…” He speaks, knowing Jamie can hear. “A clone, I guess. Like Ellie. Just… not strong enough to have your own body all the time.”

A whisper of sadness, of disappointment comes at the words.

“Give me a bit of time to recover and we’ll try again.” Danny soothes.

The pattern continues. Danny duplicates again, pulling Jamie back out into reality. Each time, he feels one of the gossamer threads connecting them break. 

The two do chores and try to cook together. Jamie’s movements are slow, requiring much verbal instruction. The twins watch tv or read, though the younger’s understanding is slow and often incomplete, like a lagging computer. Danny and Jamie play card games like go fish. The clone often stares at the card with brow furrowed, as if struggling to connect the number on the card to its verbal partner.

And yet, each struggle is a joy as Danny discovers more of his brother. Jamie is growing more confident, more sure. His words and actions quicken as his personality takes shape. The clone has his own likes and dislikes, his own opinions. At first unsure, mild, emotions half-hearted. But… those too, those new found emotions, are strengthening.

About two weeks after that fateful conversation with Jason, their neighbor knocks on their door. Danny jerks his head at the noise, eyes fixed in equal surprise and panic; he hadn’t heard anything from Jason since that day, had half-thought that the man gave up on getting him to open up after that chilling conversation.

“Coming!” His voice cracked, stepping towards the door.

Frantic, Danny reached, mind and arm, to Jamie. It is easy and automatic, the impulse to put on the act, to prepare to pilot a duplicate,.

But the clone slaps his hand away, scowling. “Do not control.”

Danny blinks, realizing. He’d been meaning to puppet Jamie, like he was just an empty shell. His stomach twists with the violation. “Sorry.” He blushes, shamed.

“It’s fine.” The other just waved him off, though Danny can feel his annoyance buzzing through their connection.

And for just a moment, Danny marvels at it; earlier Jamie would have been afraid if he had tried that. But now… the response of anger, something so much stronger and solid. His twin’s ability to feel is growing. A thing of awe.

Jamie raises a brow, pointing at the door. And Danny shakes away the feeling. “Okay.” He breathes out. “Be cool. We’ve got this.”

Danny opens the door to let Jason inside and for the first time, their neighbor meets the real Jamie, though unbeknownst to him. 

Jason invites the twins back to his apartment, offering fresh tamales. And in turn, Danny and Jamie offer a version of the truth.

“What do you think of metas?” Danny starts hesitantly.

Jason raises a brow. “People are people. I don’t care as long as you aren’t using  powers to hurt other people or yourself.”

The older half ghost lets out a breath. “There was… an accident.” Danny bits his lip. “After I… we could do things we couldn’t before. We hide it from Mom and Dad.”

“They… aren’t good people.” Jamie adds. “Hate people that aren’t normal humans, alway think they’re right.” 

“They found out and did not react well.” Danny frowns, aimlessly rubbing his shoulder where his mom had shot him as he escaped.

“So we ran away. And ended up here.” His clone finishes.

For a long moment, Jason silently frowns, brow wrinkled with worry.

Danny’s eyes widen in alarm. “You’re not going to call CPS, are you? Or the police?”

“No.” The man shakes his head. “Damn kid. That all sucks.”

“Yeah.” Jamie shrugs, head falling.

“What are you going to do?” Danny swallowed.

Jason sighs. “I know someone that works at the Wayne Meta-human Support Foundation. Maybe they can get you some funds so you can quit those shitty coffee shop jobs and go back to school.”

“But it’s almost summer!” Jamie complains at the idea of going to school.

Danny tries to hide his side-eye, surprised at his clone protesting on those grounds of all things.

“You could start in the fall. Gotham schools are shitty but they’re better than not graduating at all.”

“Or they could attend Gotham Academy.” Damian’s scoffing voice cuts in.

The twins flinch at the same time, both looking towards the window where the boy’s voice came from.

“What are you doing here?” Jason’s voice carries a scowl.

Meanwhile Danny blinks, brow wrinkling in confusion. “Did you climb up the fire escape?”

Damian just tsks. “You were not answering your phone. Richard needs both of us for a project.”

The older brother sighs. “Give me a minute, Dames.” Jason turns to the half ghost and his clone. “Think about what I said.” He scribbles something on a piece of paper, handing it to Jamie. “This is Duke’s number. He’s Damian’s foster brother. B ended up fostering him through the meta-human foundation. He can tell you more about it.”

“Okay, we’ll think about it.” Jamie looks up, smile sincere through the palpable worry.

Jason gives an approving nod, then stood expression shifting. “I am glad you’re feeling better, kid.”

“What’s that mean?” The clone asks, nosing wrinkling with just a bit more plain confusion than offense.

“You were sulking the last time we talked, didn’t speak a word to me or Danny. But you look better today.” The man claps his shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak this much.”

For just a second, Jamie hazards a look at Danny, a flicker of uncertainty. His eyes return to Jason. “It’s been an interesting two weeks. But we’re doing better.”

The man apparently catches the shared look. “I’m glad you worked out whatever that was.” From the window comes another tsk. “I’m coming, Demon Brat. And maybe this time let’s use the door like a normal person.”

Jason and Damian leave. Danny and Jamie return to their apartment. And Danny’s eyes soften, studying his twin with new eyes. 

“What?” The other raises a brow.

“You do look better.” Jamie looks more solid somehow, more present in a way that Danny knows is invisible to a normal human. The clone smiles softly, the crease of his lips unquestioningly real. And the light in his eyes… “I’m so happy you’re here.” The spark is brighter than ever.

Jamie shrugs. “This was your doing.”

“Yeah, I’m the one who made a duplicate. But,” Danny chuckles. “I have no idea how you’re real.”

For a second, an expression flickers on the clone’s face. It ripples through their bond, an emotion that Danny does not quite understand. Something like self-doubt…

“Can we watch a movie?” Jamie cuts in with unusual earnestness. “The one with the clown fish?

“Yeah.” Danny blinks, his twin’s subdued feeling dismissed by surprise; Jamie actually asking for something was a pleasant first.

Another afternoon and night with his twin. Jamie manages to surprise him with a joke. To bright giggles, Danny discovers where his brother is ticklish. The clone learns to reciprocate. But the separation still only lasts until Danny falls asleep. 

“We need to try something else.” The half ghost groans into his hands in the morning. “There’s gotta be some way for you to last longer than me nodding off.”

“It lasted longer than you falling asleep.” Jamie’s voice in his head answers.

“What?” Danny blinks in surprise, head jerking up.

“You fell asleep. Half an hour alone, then gone.” The words are said almost casually, as if the clone hadn’t thought to mention this until just now. He probably hadn’t.

“Jamie, it’s on your end. The problem’s on your end.” There is no annoyance in the words, just excitement, a newly blooming hope. “That’s it! Next time, you need to pull yourself away from me.”

“But… that’s not… not possible.” Jamie stammers the words, doubt radiating.

“Sure it is!” Danny stands, motioning emphatically. “Let’s try it now.”

For half an hour, Danny stumbles through an explanation of how to duplicate. The cold spark that is Jamie churns anxiously, flailing feebly and at random.

“Can’t do it.” The clone grits out, frustrated just as Danny’s body flickers intangible.

Danny rubs his sternum comfortingly. “Dude, you just managed to turn us intangible.” A proud smile quirks his lips. “Maybe we can start with basic powers. You can overshadow me, for the lack of a better word. We’ll work up to actually duplicating.”

Jamie does not respond with words. Still Danny feels his misgivings.

“It’ll work.” The half ghost reassures. Just then his phone alarm goes off. “Actually… I guess this will have to wait until after work.”

“Good.” The clone huffs. “Tired.”

The exhaustion is almost palpable, though distinct from Danny’s own energy level; he feels quite well rested. “Go to sleep then.” He encourages. “I’ll wake you up when I get home.”

Jamie hums a sleepy good night into Danny’s mind. His cold spark seems to condense, the churn of its energy slowing into something almost solid.

The half ghost hums questioningly, for just a moment wondering. Is that Jamie’s core, trying to form? Danny prods his own, a discrete spherical ball of energy in the center of his being. It would be solid, in the same place as his heart if he was in ghost form. Now though it is phased just out of reality, in the same dimension his body slips into when he turns intangible.

Jamie’s spark is just as intangible; he can’t actually feel it if he presses down with his fingers. But the energy is diffuse, always churning faster or slower in seemingly random circuits.

Danny’s phone alarm rings again and he dismisses the thought. He does have to get to work after all.

Danny does not have to wake up Jamie when he gets home, as the clone quietly mutters into his thoughts on the bus ride home.

“Did you sleep well?” The half ghost asks silently.

“There were pictures.” Jamie muses. “Riding a dinosaur, petting a kitty. Ice cream. Brain freeze.”

Danny just manages to hold back a chuckle. “You were dreaming.” This is an exciting first. “Do you remember what dreams are?”

A hum of confirmation. “Remember Danny dreams.”

“Do you remember some of my dreams?” That’s not surprising; talking to Jamie over the past two weeks had revealed that the clone shared many of his memories.

“Yes.” A fearful shiver. “Plasmius is scary.”

And now Danny feels guilty, his stomach churning with feeling. He’s giving Jamie his nightmares, his trauma just by the nature of what the clone is. And he made the decision to pull him into the mess that is his life.

“Want to exist.” Jamie reminds him, prodding his core with a measure of comfort, despite the lingering chill of fear.

“Yeah. We already decided, didn’t we Jamie?”

Another buzz of agreement.

When they arrive back at the apartment, Danny and Jamie get started on their practice.

“Don’t be nervous.” Danny reassures, already feeling Jamie’s hesitation. “I trust you.”

The half ghost coaxes his twin into the driver’s seat. “You need to stretch. It’s like… oh man, is this gonna sound weird… my body’s a suit of clothes and you need to stretch to fill it. Just… move it like it was your own body.” He chuckles awkwardly. “It should be easier than my first time overshadowing someone. We look exactly the same.”

Danny breaths, letting himself retreat into the back of his own mind. Anxiety pours from Jamie, buzzing across their connection. But the clone does as instructed. 

Vertigo overtakes Danny as the two seem to switch places. His body gasps without his permission. The body wobbles, falling to its knees. 

Distantly, Danny feels his chest heave. A moan rises in his throat, slowly morphing into stuttering letters. But his tongue is awkward. It clips his teeth, earning a hiss of pain.

Danny soothes the clone piloting his body. “It’s okay. Just breathe.”

Jamie does so. Slowly, finally. “You’re so heavy.” The shaky words exit his mouth.

The half ghost would blink in surprise if he had use of his eyes. “Really?”

The clone has no response. Instead, he shakily pulls the body to its feet. He stumbles a few feet forward, nearly falling over the kitchen counter. The hand pricks a knife Danny really should have put away before now. With a gasp, Jamie jerks the fingers away. 

Again, the body ended up on the floor. Overwhelmed, the clone pants. But… slowly, the anxiety shifts. A shakily hand rises to the face, eyes fixed on the red blood welling from the fingertip. 

“It’s okay.” Danny tries to reassure. “We’ll wrap it up and it’ll heal.”

But that was not what had the clone captivated. “Heavy. Blood…” Shakily, the other hand rises to the chest. “Heartbeat. Hu… human. This body… is human.” Again, Jamie looks at the sluggishly bleeding finger. “Danny is.. Is human.”

So much surprise, confusion screams into Danny’s mind. But he does not understand why; what has his twin so freaked out?. “Yes, I’m human?”

“But… Jamie doesn’t…. This isn’t….” The clone pinches his eyes closed, straining for words. “Jamie is… is a ghost. Yes? A ghost, not… not human.”

“Oh.” Understanding dawns. “I guess you are. A ghost I mean.” Anytime Danny duplicates, the secondary body is made of ectoplasm, a ghost even if the appearance is human. Of course Jamie is the same. “No wonder this freaked you out.” Guilt pricked at his core. “Sorry, Jamie. I should have thought about how weird being human would be for you.”

Jamie does not respond for a long while. A tangle of emotions vibrates through the twins’ connection. Too many for Danny to parse, but the strongest… 

Finally the eyes open, head shaking. “Is… is Jamie supposed to be human too?” Something like guilt rises through the words. 

The feeling of inadequacy is enough to break Danny’s core. “Jamie. Jamie, my baby bro, little twin, clone of my own core.There is not supposed to be here. You are supposed to be exactly what you are. Full ghost or halfa, I don’t care. I just want you here, by my side.”

Jamie nods, tears rising in his eyes. “Better practice then.”

“That’s my Jamie.” 

[aheathen-conceivably]

Zelda was up late, reading the same book for what seemed to be the thousandth time. It was hard to find books out here, but she still had the collection she had brought all the way from England, and sometimes Mabel was able to lend her something through the town’s small school. But tonight of all nights, or the last few weeks really, she wanted nothing more than to read and reread the same words over and over again.

It had seemed absurd at first, hadn’t it? A tale of hidden identities and old loves, of gilded excess and fated tragedy. She remembered Antoine reading it over her shoulder, laughing at that fool Gastby who thought that anyone would buy such a charade. How didn’t they all know he was a gangster? It was plain as day. But even she could tell he found Gatsby’s tireless love and steadfast dedication endearing.

It wasn’t that absurd now that she thought about it though, was it? Not when she and Antoine used to sit on their balcony up in the sky, trying to guess who might be smuggling in that month’s shipment of liquor and who was the key holder for a speakeasy. No, it hadn’t been that absurd when she was living it, when she was the singer at one of Gatsby’s parties. Only now, in the darkness of a desert farmhouse in the midst of a depression, it seemed just as real as the book in front of her, until they started to mingle together into one glittering mirage in her mind.

Through the haze, the sounds of a guitar wafted in on the desert breeze blowing back the lace curtains. She was used to the sound by now, an ever present companion to these brief moments of peace. Usually they helped her to get lost in the sound of music that accompanied each party and every line of professed love so that she could visualize them in her mind. Like a lullaby that lulled her to sleep, it blurred the world around her so that she went into a sort of dream, one where her eyes were wide open rather than closed.

And that was often the point of this wasn’t it? To exist in a book so that a sort of hazy gossamer curtain fell around you, and the shadows of thoughts and people who never even existed infused into your reality. She needed them, what with the ticking of the clock that told her they had four months to find the money, or the gnawing sensation that she and Josephine had barely spoken for weeks.

The notes of the guitar become mournful, mingling with something she had never heard before, so much so that the gossamer curtain of Gatsby’s gilding began to fall away no matter how hard she tried to hold onto it. And beyond it was a pair of green eyes looking down at her, now only visible behind cracking paint and hazy memories.

Usually she liked reading in there with her, where she could imagine that the story was being told to her through her sister’s words and not some faceless author by the name of Fitzgerald. But the curtain had been pulled back now by the sounds of…what was it? Was it Antoine’s voice? 

She closed the cover of Nick’s confessions, so laden with the perspective of the outsider, the observer. All of it reminiscent of her own memories. As she put the book down she set her feet back into the world she was told she was supposed to inhabit; but especially under the cover of darkness, the world in her mind didn’t quite fade away as much as she thought it did, and the memories and the eyes of Dr TJ Eckleburg followed her down the stairs.

Down in the kitchen, she could hear him better. After years of practice, he had grown remarkably skilled, slowly and wordlessly transforming notes he knew on the piano onto the guitar. Under the protective guidance of the desert sky - at dawn, through dusk, and under the moonlight - the stars observed him just as she listened. She usually fell asleep to the sound of him playing wafting through her window, stretching out in their big bed with the knowledge that he was near, only to wake up in the morning to find that he had managed to place himself under her arm without awakening her. 

So she knew that this sound was different. It was personal. The way Nick’s confessions were to her or the ghost in her sister’s painting told her that she had to find a way to make Josephine forgive her, to make her trust her again. Her sister.

The creaking of the porch under her bare feet didn’t alert him; or if it did, he showed no signs of it. There was a curtain drawn around him just as there had been around her only moments before. That’s what had awakened her from her half imagined reverie. Not just the sounds of the guitar or the rawness of his voice. 

Like some sort of disturbance, she had sensed what had fallen over him from across the farmyard. Now she could see it surrounding him just like anyone else could see the firelight in front of him, flashes of shadows and emotions growing stronger with every word he sang.

Part 1/3

Previous / Next

[fairlyabookie]

Little things they like about you

Content: lighthearted | wholesome

The fae wasn’t particularly picky with whatever life threw him, as long as he gave himself time and the mental fortitude to handle such. Love, on the other hand, spoke of a different matter. He finds himself craving your presence, just the sound of your voice enough to quell his troubles for the day. 

He sneaks glances of you when he feels your presence, his ears pricking for a tease of your voice, for any sign of laughter or change in tone. Whether he had spoken to you, the fae always found your presence welcoming - your presence enough to do wonders to his heart. Your presence felt like a panacea, a welcome invitation into one’s space. He feels a familiar memory whenever he was with you, fragments of centuries flashing him by as familiar faces wash ashore in the banks of his mind. 

Lilia finds beauty in your hands, so soft and gentle, compared to his callous ones. He’d find himself playing with your fingers, tracing the imperfections, the lines all over your palms. At times, he’d coo at how delicate your hands are, so precious, an image seemingly reminiscent of hands he had held oh-so-long ago.

The quiet tranquility between you and Lilia was more than enough for him, the content smile on your lips, sunlight casting upon your features like a halo - Lilia thought he had found another embodiment of heaven at first sight. He wishes to have this moment a little longer, if he could be selfish, so he can see to your happiness. 

Just as how he was able to raise Sebek, Silver, and Malleus, he wishes to ensure your happiness is everlasting. He recalls a faint memory of long ago: a promise he had made with someone he had loved, the bittersweet sensation of a broken promise, cruel tears bordering the corner of his eyes. Alas, he wishes Fate were kind to him for a selfish wish. For now, he could cling onto your presence, a cruel gossamer existence for a fae like him.

Cater was not used to the concept of sustaining friendships. He was fine with keeping each other posted by viewing each others’ stories on social media, taking pictures together for the memories, and sometimes teasing his peers. He didn’t really mind keeping superficial airs for his peers - his cheery demeanor a usual sight for everyone around him - except for you on the other hand. 

You often reciprocate his antics with a teasing smile on your lips, always ready to quip back when you had the chance. Such reciprocation would catch him by surprise, earning a genuine smile on his lips. He wasn’t expecting anyone to return his little teasings, but a strange sensation akin to warmth would encompass his chest, this very interaction engraved in his mind. 

He would anticipate every interaction with you, anticipating every banter he can think of as a means of interacting with you. Of course, he’d ask for your social media, if you had one, so he can see your posts. Cater would find himself delving into your social media, your likes, and would look for the time to talk to you. 

At first, he’d be quite shy about it, leaving small comments on your recent posts or boosting your post on his story, sometimes DM’ing you about certain things. Of course, he’d love to take the time to get to know you from peering into your story or meeting up with you physically. Yet, in the back of his mind, the thought of you leaving his side haunts him, a bitter pill he might have to swallow if he ever loses you as a friend. 

Soon, he discovers something beyond the screen; your smile, your laughter, your vivaciousness, something he found quite endearing apart from what he normally sees from your social media. He wishes to preserve such happiness, a rarity that he had the honor to experience. For now, Cater had to keep his cool, the sign of a budding friendship a welcoming omen for his social life. 

Kalim very much indulging into you, even if it meant spending his family fortune just for a quick smile. He relishes in the way your eyes light up in delight for every trinket he brings you, his heart soaring as soon as he catches a glimpse of your smile. There was something charming about the way you smiled, the way your lips curl to the corners of your lips. 

If he can perfectly describe your smile in written form, he’d make a poem worth pages long. Such sentiments were pure, sincere, and clear as morning dew, his heart quite heavy with thoughts of you when he peers your smile. If he had a camera, he’d capture the very moment you let your lips curl, an expression he wishes for eternity on your beautiful features. 

Some say a smile indicated of a window of happiness, an embodiment of one’s satisfaction in the present moment. Kalim very much embraced that notion, wishing nothing but joyfulness in everyone’s lives. Such a naive mindset, many would say to Kalim, as life isn’t as simple as making one happy with a wave of a wand. 

Although Kalim was quick to give counters about his naivety, he simply wished for the well-being of others if not bright futures that could merit smiles. In his own words, a smile was something worth protecting, even if something small would bring a temporary smile. 

He keeps your smile close to his heart, immortalizing it in Polaroids, pictures on his phone, and little text messages exchanged between the both of you. Your smile, the sun, radiant in its beauty, fuels his motivation for the day - another reason why he keeps smiling. Your smile was his sun, as he was also the sun itself, ever bright and forever shining. 

[tragedy-of-commons]

Grrrr pops in

Hi gwennie 😈

"Ocean + blade" for your little game SgajSHSVSJHSHAGS GIGGLES

Thank u for your service giggles

blade x reader. description of drowning and peril. wc: 1.3k.

Seppod-II’s oceans teem with gossamer seafoam, a film of rainbow floating atop gray waves. If you had to compare the body of water in front of you to anything in particular, you’d start with prismatic oil smeared across drab pavement.

As always, the script comes first and foremost. You wouldn't dream of delaying the inevitable, not when you carry out the orders of Destiny, beholden to Outcome. But right now, marveling at the ocean with your co-worker, there is a gap between directives. Similarly, there is a gap between you and the untouchable Blade, who lingers just out of arm’s reach.

“Beautiful,” you sigh wistfully, twisting the heels of your boots into the beige sand. “Don’t you agree?”

Predictably, he doesn’t say anything in response; he seldom speaks at all. You imagine Blade feels like a thoughtless addendum to your whims. After all, you’d dragged him here with little regard for the furrow of his brow and slight downward curl of his lip, starry-eyed and set on exploration. Shooting a sidelong glance at the man, his gaze is fixed forward, as if trying to burn holes into the vantage point of the horizon.

He pointedly does not look at the water. This particular beach has no name, but it’s a popular tourist attraction, and for good reason. To outlanders, it looks like something out of a painting, varnished with a layer of eeriness that’s both serene and off-putting. There are no birds crying out for scraps or companionship under the overcast sky. There are no other vacationers or proponents of fate. 

There is no one around but the two of you. 

If you have to exist in a vacuum with Blade, you certainly don’t want to keep standing here on your restless legs. You’ve been doing that far too much on this assignment already. 

“I’m going for a dip,” you grunt, beginning to peel away your coat and outerwear. There’s no way you’re not submerging your body in that. You want to feel it swallow you whole, engulfing your consciousness until you’re part of it and it’s a part of you. “I take it you’re not coming?”

Blade turns to you, rotating his ancient relic of a frame, only lacking the overexaggerated creaking sound. His eyes are striking against the monochrome tint of this world, starkly contrasted by the rest of him. If it weren’t for the intensity of his stare, you’d think he belongs here - dusted by fog and muted colors that make him seem more like a wandering specter.

“I choose to accompany you.”

But he sticks out sometimes, much to your fascination.

His words make you pause, hand stilling on the festooned yet troublesome belt wrapped about your waist. Blade’s tone betrays nothing, expression perfectly neutral.

That’s… certainly something. When was the last time he chose to willingly subject himself to your presence, much less go swimming with you?

Well, you’re not entertaining that train of thought right now. Thinking has never got you where you’ve needed to be, anyway. Your boots come off next after some fussing with the laces. “Really? Color me surprised, friend. Come on then, lose the layers! Unless you plan on getting your whole, uh, ensemble wet.”

You almost laugh at the thought of commanding Blade to strip, deciding that you are above mortification today. Truly, there is something special in the air. 

You’re certain that your colleague would’ve stepped foot into the shallows with everything on if you hadn’t said anything, then proceed to walk around in public without any fucks to give. Can’t have that, not when drawing any more attention to yourselves isn’t something you want, even on smaller planets like this one.

You step over your discarded apparel, gesturing for Blade to follow you after he shucks his coat away. For a beach, it’s decidedly chilly; the breeze tickles your exposed arms and nips at your neck, propelling you over the shore.

The pads of your feet graze ghostly shells and sea glass peeking out from the sand. Dipping your toes in, you sigh and feel Blade’s presence loom behind you. Grabbing his hand without a second thought, you slot your fingers together.

“Can’t have you drowning or losing me at sea,” you joke.

“Either would be a blessing.”

You laugh loudly and tug him along until your chin is treading the waterline. Looking down, your lower body disappears into inky darkness. You know your legs are down there, you can still feel them. Just barely.

It’s exactly like you imagined. It’s absorbing you and your tangled thoughts, leaving you weightless and floating on your back, vision taken up by the stagnant blanket of clouds above. You squeeze Blade’s hand before your eyes close.

He’s serving as your solemn anchor right now. A medley of rainbow laps at your extremities, a pleasant void consuming your core. If his affliction is soothed by mind control, your affliction must be soothed by sensory deprivation.

The salinity levels of Seppod-II’s oceans are perfect. Your head (do you even have a head anymore?) is stuffed with cotton - or rather clogged with water. No more thinking.

A dreamless trance is the closest thing to death there is.

“I think you ought to try this, Blade,” you rasp aloud even though you won’t hear his reply. “It’s peaceful.”

His hand abandons yours, severing any connection to the real world. Loneliness is a heady sensation that washes over you much like the waves, but you’re barely present to care. Detached.

Is he sinking? Floating next to you? Leaving you to sunbathe? The prospect doesn’t sting too harshly, not when your heartbeat sings in your ears and you’re far, far away.

But you are beholden to Outcome, and you have things to do.

You’re reminded of this as you’re startled awake. In what feels like a fleeting second, the world goes from nothing to everything, light assaulting your retinas and a pair of hands, compressing your chest rhythmically.

In a flash, you’re coughing and sputtering up enough water to fill an aquarium. The cold, bandaged hands reel back. Blade…

How the hell did you almost drown? Typical you!

To think that the man so dead set on ending his immortal life just resuscitated you - is beyond bizarre. It’s irony of the highest order, and it’s hilarious. You can only laugh, a choked off gurgling sound coming out instead of your amusement. You feel gross and bare, and it’s funny, which is why you feel tears blur the expanse of your vision.

“Did you lead us astray intentionally?” he asks, voice flat but harboring a subtle cutting edge, “This place is rife with deception, fraught with traps you’ve walked straight into.”

“What the hell are you,” hack! “...talking about?”

He’s always cryptic at the worst times. You could be making breakfast - flipping pancakes and scrambling eggs, and Blade would probably come up behind you and whisper something about horrors untold. But this is different. Notably, the beach is much dimmer, and your colleague’s eyes flicker with volcanic severity; a beacon among the dull.

He drips with rivulets of silver as he stands to his full height, leaving you scrambling to get up by yourself. You want to run your fingers through the knots in his limp hair, rendering any brush useless compared to your touch. Regrettably, the invasive thought crumbles under the weight of his next words.

“...it pulled you under.”

“What? The waters are tranquil.”

Blade scoffs. “Exactly.”

Ah. Perhaps the sensation of nothingness was too good to be true, and the waters intended to engulf you for good. In retrospect, you had been allured; called and reeled in despite your better (questionable) judgment.

The toll fee for paradise is hefty, and though you’d pay it without hesitation, there are still actions to be taken. You have to actually be alive to carry out the script. 

“Your time has not come yet,” he drawls. “You know better than to believe otherwise.”

Blade speaks from experience often.

With that, he storms off (though he’d scowl at that description). It seems it’s time to get on with the next objective, considering he’s about to leave you behind whether you’re still evening out your labored breaths or not. You reel as you pick up your belongings resting near the shore before hurrying after him.

Earnest thanks sits on the tip of your tongue. You wisely shut your mouth.

🏷️: @mikashisus, @wystiix, @rainswept

a/n: this was just me playing around with some different stellaronhunter!reader dynamics. thank you for participating in the ask game riko!!

[starshiningao3]

It's a MoD Harry time-travel Tomarry WIP! ---

The first time Harry tried to change the course of Tom Riddle’s life, it had been too late.

He’d saved Myrtle, thank Merlin, but Riddle had known it was Professor Evans that had thwarted him. Within just a few weeks Harry had been led out of the Great Hall by an aptly-named Professor Burly, his lip turned in disgust and his grip on Harry’s arm crushing. Three fifth year girls had accused him of being far more… hands-on as a DADA professor than was appropriate. They even had the memories to prove it, apparently.

The girls were from families just influential enough to sway the school board and just unimportant enough to not make the headlines. Professor Evans would fade into obscurity, and the girls would suffer no long lasting damage to their social standing.

It was calculated. It was artful. 

It was Riddle all over.

Riddle’s face had been impassive as Harry was marched from the hall that evening, but his eyes glittered in triumph. Riddle’s mind glanced across his own, grasping carefully for surface thoughts in a way the Slytherin likely thought was undetectable.

Well played, Harry thought forcefully, and watched with satisfaction as Riddle’s brow first crinkled in confusion and then furrowed in earnest when Harry flung him from his mind. Harry had never mastered Occlumency himself, never had the knack for it, but there were some perks that came with his… position.

Death? Harry thought. An iciness bloomed in his temple and blew across his mind like a cool breeze localised entirely within his skull. It shouldn't have been comforting.

Master. Death said into his mind, an echoing whisper of infinite voices. You are done with this life?

Can I stop him from mutilating his bloody soul in this one?

Death was silent for a moment, tracing the strings of his and Riddle’s fates. He'd shown them to Harry once, gossamer webs glowing faintly gold and spanning infinitely through the white fog of limbo. He wasn't sure how Death made sense of them, and he wasn't keen to learn.

No.

Harry glanced at Professor Burly, his wand drawn as he marched Harry through the halls towards the professor's wing.

Will they think Burly killed me if I leave right now?

Death’s Yes rattled with something like amusement as he breathed it across Harry’s mind.

“Good,” Harry said out loud. Burly startled, his grip loosening a bit in surprise. Harry stopped walking and turned to face him.

“You’ve always been a bit of a prick, Burly.”

Harry wrenched himself back, his vision white as he untethered his soul from his body. He blinked the fog of the transition away and watched from the outside as his body crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Burly’s rage at Harry’s last declaration morphed into increasing horror as he first cast a diagnostic spell and then desperately tried to shake Harry back to life.

Smug in the knowledge that Burly’s life was about to get very unpleasant, Harry returned to Death’s domain to rest before he tried his hand at changing the course of Riddle’s life again.

---

Let me know what you think!

Edited to add: This story now has 3 chapters on Ao3!

[hyvyinjie]

༉‧₊˚.ׂׂૢ 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒔 𝒇𝒂𝒅𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒚𝒐𝒖 ‧₊˚.ׂׂ

ʜɪᴅᴅᴇɴ ᴀʀᴅᴇɴᴛ ꜱᴜɪᴛᴏʀ | ᴄᴀʀʀʏ ᴍᴇ ꜱʟᴏᴡʟʏ, ᴍʏ ꜱᴜɴʟɪɢʜᴛ.

ᴠᴇɴᴛɪ x ɢɴ! ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

⋆·˚ ༘ *✩‧₊˚ fluorescent store lights, you shine through the night.

𝒹𝒾𝒹 𝒾𝒸𝒶𝓇𝓊𝓈 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒽𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓎 𝑔𝓊𝒾𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝒶𝓈 𝒷𝓊𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝑔𝑜𝓁𝒹 𝒷𝑒𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑒 𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒹𝑜𝑜𝓂𝑒𝒹 𝒻𝒶𝓁𝓁?

did icarus, in the throes of his hubris-driven flight, ever truly revel in the incandescent opulence that would seal his demise? or was the molten grandeur that engulfed him naught but a cruel phantom—a transient illusion of a glory he was destined to forever grasp at, but never actually possess?

amidst the paradoxical realm of the stars, you have always been the moon; a luminous beacon amidst the celestial lights, outshining even the grandest of suns.

perching within him a rapture more dulcet than the harp of apollo himself—amid the freedom known as mondstadt, there could be spotted, a bard; a certain anemo archon concealed in a false identity named venti—never failed to lose himself in the everlasting paradise known as you. hypnotized by those irises glimmering with the touch of midas, no matter the buoyancy of the crowd during his countless performances.

time and again, whenever the moment arose—he would offer you a smile, a wave as gossamer as the flutter of a feather's edge; a fleeting, yet unencumbered manifestation of the sequestered wellspring of his adoration; excepting only the purposeful, dainty touch of the wind breezing past your skin, a liberty he granted far more freely than to any other.

for with you, he had attained a love infinitely more transcendent than the fate that doomed icarus could ever conceive—no longer the ruinous conflagration that claimed the aviator, but rather, the afterglow a fallen star imparts in its wake.

♡ ˚ · . 良い一日をお過ごしください、愛 !

[painted-flag]

Duty is the Death of Love - Benjicot Blackwood

✧.* masterlist.

✧.* pairing: benjicot blackwood x unnamed bracken!oc

✧.* summary: the fruits of passion are turned rotten from betrayal.

✧.* word count: 2.2k

✧.* note: angst, angst, and more angst stoked with forbidden love.

Her grief started as confusion. Waves of uncertainty moved through her brain. It was a mistake. All a mistake. The message had to have been wrong. There was no way her reality had morphed into this twisted hellscape. Yet, she reminded herself of the fickleness that lay in peace. Times of unity are nothing but falseness. Peacetime, another word that men used while havoc lay dormant; a sleeping beast waiting for vanity and envy to claw at their throats. 

Situations could go awry at any moment. One slip up and suddenly the price of consequence is dealt. Men fight men, such is the march of time. A result of that conflict may be measured by the severity of the interaction. The God's exact justice in the cruellest of ways. Violence - unmitigated and gratuitous - is an affront to the God's. 

That is their language to speak, not men.

Yes, situations could go wrong. So terribly wrong. But her family had appeased the gods daily. Earned their favour through rigorous prayers and offerings. She had knelt, every morning and night, in service and prayer to the seven. Her dedication enshrined her very being. 

Why must they exact their retribution by taking everything from her? 

Just that morning, she had broken her fast with her twin, Aeron. She had joked with him and planned their week together. There was nary a time when the two were not joined at the hip. All it took was one afternoon separated for her life to crumble like the many ruins laid bare through the Riverlands. 

The news came swiftly, a sign of the stranger. She had been diligently stitching a new set of gloves for Aeron when they carried his body into the great hall of Stone Hedge. She did not understand it all - could not understand it. Just hours ago he had been breathing; warm and there. The cold corpse in front of her was not her brother, it could not be true. 

His face, one she came to know dearly, would no longer look upon her with care. The sun from his eyes and the comfort from his words were no more. Death was odd to her. A complex system of contradictions came from the mark of the stranger. 

Death was a tragedy for those gifted with youth, yet a point of victory for the aged. 

It was in this sorrow of death she discovered an unwilling truth; her gods were false. How could her family carry centuries of servitude and be wronged like this? Perhaps it was a punishment from the old gods, that House Bracken had forsaken their originals and sided with the seven - sealing fates of evil vengeance. 

The Battle of the Burning Mill was what men called it. Their need for grand titles trumped the yards of bodies now either buried or burned. 

She had been locked in her chamber for an undetermined amount of time, watching the trees shake in the wind from her viewpoint. There was an unspoken question she dared not to explore. Conflicting reports were discussed regarding the exact nature of how the battle broke. However, one indisputable fact was that Aeron Bracken and Benjicot Blackwood had exchanged words. The details of those words are muddled, but the outcome is easily perceived by the field of fallen men. 

On the morning of a new day, she found herself wandering the moors like a ghost in the night. One could have mistaken her for a banshee should they have seen her the day her twin’s body arrived. Never in her years of living had she shrieked so horribly, sobbed so deeply that the salty tears burned tracts down her glass skin. Now, her throat felt torn and she could no longer muster a single noise. 

The sky hung slate and sad. Gray clouds dripped down to form fog and enshrined all around; a gossamer veil clung to the trees. The sun, like her brother, was smothered by the evil weather around - taken when needed most. Sleets of rain refused to fall. 

The gods would not weep for men. 

She remembered the gleam of his sword so clearly. A gift she had commissioned for their name day. All the coins collected throughout the year went into that gift and it was what killed him. Her gift killed her brother - pierced through his throat like a needle to cloth. She questioned ever getting it for him in the first place. 

Those thoughts clouded her mind as she strode through the thicket. There was one destination in mind - a location she had kept hidden from everyone, including Aeron. Beside a rocky cutout with a small flowing waterfall lay a tiny meadow. The coming winter had seen all the flowers gone, but her memories of this place remained warm. 

Viewing it, she could see the past flicker through her vision. Wandering hands, heated passion. The warmth of comforting strong arms wrapped around her body as she lay on a blanket in the grass with her lover. The trysts between her and Benjicot Blackwood were supposed to be nothing but meaningless bouts of built-up passion being expended. 

However, the more his breath brushed her skin between kisses that trailed over her body, her heart and soul bonded to him. Ben had also relished in it, having confessed to reciprocating those feelings after a particularly long night of coupling in the hot spring behind the waterfall. She believed - truly - that what they had stretched beyond their houses ancient grudge. 

What a silly little dream. 

Her tragic reminiscence was interrupted by nearing footfalls. She turned to see the object of all her desires and the bringer of her current ire standing at the break of trees. He was visibly injured, with several bruises and countless cuts marring his exposed arms, neck, and face. 

A whirlwind of emotions surged over her. A deep and unyielding love overpowered it all, but the feel of his touch - as he went to wrap her in his arms - pulled her free from that reverie. She shoved violently against his chest, pushing him away from her. Ben’s face, once relieved and calm, morphed into confusion. 

“Why?” Her voice cracked. Its previous use through screaming in mourning had worn down on her body. 

Ben tilted his head. His tongue moved across his chapped lips, “None of it was supposed to happen.” 

A forced laugh burst forth from her mouth, which was quickly replaced by swelling anger, “Not meant to happen? Don’t be so absurd, Blackwood.” Her omission of the use of his first name came like a slap upon his face. 

“I am telling the truth, I always will tell you the truth. It was not meant to happen.” Ben shook his head. 

She regarded his figure for a few moments. The person in front of her was a shimmering reflection of the man she had known not long ago. The body that once stood with confidence swayed with uncertainty and pain. The physical remains of the battle he endured did not come close to the marks branded on his mind from the violence witnessed; the violence that washed across him like an unyielding tidal wave. 

Ben swallowed, “Your brother…” You closed your eyes in pain, but he continued, “I’m sorry for your loss, for your house's loss… Everything happened so quickly.” 

She watched as he moved back towards her, hesitantly this time. Once only a few inches from her, he went to reach out but stopped short. There was a time when she would curse such a distance between them, no matter how short. A time when all she wished was to remain next to him until her dying days. 

Benjicot, who had pushed down the walls of their hate and built up a foundation of pure, unaltered love. 

Benjicot, who had been the man to share in all her firsts. 

Benjicot, who swore his mind, body, and soul to her for as long as he shall live. 

Benjicot, who had slain her twin brother, throwing all the previous into an abyss of disregard. 

“I fought to come back. I couldn’t lose you.” His words, while meant as a comfort, cut her deeper than any sword ever could. 

“You lost me the moment you plunged that sword into Aeron’s throat. You killed me then, as well.” Tears had begun to fall down her reddened cheeks. The aggression in her voice did not match her face. Her look was nothing but anguish. 

Ben’s brows furrowed and the accusation laid heavy on his heart. “You believe it was I who killed your brother?” 

Her heart felt like it was tied to a rope and thrown into the depths of the ocean. As it sunk beneath the waves like an anchor, pieces of it broke off. They scattered in all directions. The lower her heart sank, the more fragile it became. Down lower and lower, breaking piece by piece. 

“Can you tell me, with all that truth you swear to possess, that it was not you?” 

Ben did not answer. His eyes, once so focused on her face, cast down to the ground as he hung his head in shame. The voiceless confirmation was enough for her to know. The rest of her heart then broke up and every bit wandered to the ocean floor - away from the light’s gentle caress - until there was nothing left but the rope it was once tied to. 

“I never wish to see your face again. What we had…” She paused to swallow a sob that threatened to escape, “What we had never existed. It's nothing, like you are to me.” 

It was almost laughable how much of a lie that was. No matter the crime, the slaughter of her family and house, what she felt for Benjicot would never go away. No amount of animosity or betrayal could erase the simple fact that her body and soul longed for him. It called out for him like a siren on rocky shores. 

She moved back, for if she did not separate herself from him soon she would forsake all her previous words and fall into his arms; recreating all those previous nights they had shared. The honour of allegiance to her family and house was stronger than her personal feelings. Without so much as a goodbye, she turned to walk away. 

The sound of a thud made its way to her ears. She could not turn around, could not look into his eyes. The sound of heavy and pained breathing made her return her gaze to him. Benjicot was on his knees in the dew-laden grass. Anguished painted his beautiful face. The carved cheeks she once thought carved by the gods were sunken. Despite making it out of the battle alive, his countenance reflected that of a corpse. 

She watched as his hands reached down to the blade strapped to his hilt. He pulled the sword out of its sheath and gripped the blade. The hilt was presented to her, an offering waiting to be taken. Ben took a moment to control his breathing. 

“Take it,” His voice wobbled with each word. This was the first time she had ever seen him cry. It did not look right - like the action itself should have never even been thought of. Pain did not look good on him. 

“Take it and cut me down, my love.” He nearly sobbed out the words, “Send me to whatever Hell is waiting for what I have done to you.” 

The blade reflected the dullness of the grey sky above. He had given her the opportunity to use his own blade against him; like some sense of poetic justice. Poetic justice would not bring her brother back. Poetic justice would not right the wrong that had befallen both of their houses. 

Poetic justice could never bring her back to what they had just a few short days ago. 

She walked back to him and looked down upon his form. In his eyes was nothing but trust. He gazed upon her with a softness like never before. Her heart began to beat erratically. The palms of her hands became clammy and the once rigid stance she held began to crumble. Her hand reached out but stopped just short of the hilt. 

Ben moved it to touch her palm, “Cut me down and end your pain. I have hurt you, and for that, I must die.” 

She remembered the vow he swore to her all those moons ago. A secret marriage only they and the gods witnessed during the hour of the wolf in this very meadow. He swore everything to her and promised to protect her no matter the cost. Protect her no matter the cost. How quickly it took for men to go back on their word. 

She reached out and gripped the sword in her hand. It almost dropped to the ground, for she was not used to such a weight. Ben’s chest heaved in sync with hers. Their hearts beating together, perhaps for the last time. 

Every fibre of her being screamed to stop. To abandon this foolishness, fall to her knees and wrap him in her arms. In spite of that, the faces of all of House Bracken’s men, the ones who lay dead, flickered across her vision. In the end, Aeron’s face remained. Once again, the feeling of rage that had dissipated returned with rigorous fire. She had an obligation to all those who died, to all the ancestors that came before her to exact justice as it was supposed to be. If the gods would not do it, she would. A familiar phrase brushed her memory which she heard long ago.

Duty is the death of love. 

She raised the steel and made her choice.

____________

✧.* end note: not edited because i wrote this in a fever haze while coughing like no tomorrow. sorry for any glaring errors.

If you want to be added to any of my taglists, click here.

✧.* taglist for all works: @whodis?

✧.* taglist for any HOTD imagine: @aisselasstuff @idontlikelizards