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tanoraqui · 9 months ago

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In Which Space Orcs are Men

[AO3] A "what if humans are space orcs" take on Dagor Dagorath. (Aka the prophecied apocalypse of Middle Earth. Scifi story accessible to non-LotR nerds!)

Elves weren't really supposed to leave Earth. That's what they told us—the Elves, that is, told people thousands of years ago, when Elves could still be found here and there. When I was born, elves were nearly as much a fairy tale as they’d been on Ancient Earth.

Elves weren't supposed to leave Earth, the Elves said in the fairy tales, and in a few old scraps of records scattered around known space. They literally weren't made for it. They could only do it if they brought Earth with them—Arda they called it, leaves or dirt, water or a rare bubble of air, perfectly preserved in a white crystal. There are tons of tales about Elves losing their lifeline jewels—their hearts, their silimirs—and roping people into epic quests to get them back before they—the Elf—faded to nothingness.

Even the jewels weren't enough, though. That's why there are also stories about Elves who fell in love with a person or a place and stayed there until they faded, or Elves who charmed someone into following them back to Fairyland on Earth...because whatever they said, Elves didn't really live on Earth. Humans have maintained their home planet as a monitored nature reserve since like the 40th century, open only to vetted research teams and serious Human religious pilgrimages. The most confirmed accounts of Elves that exist are of their ships appearing out of nowhere, with no trace of any tech that would enable it, at random, always-changing points within 100 miles or so of Earth.

Nobody ever came back from trying to follow Elves home. Mostly Elves tried to dissuade people from trying. But there are always crazy and curious people—and Elves usually attracted those, because any Elf who left the home they were "made" for was usually crazy and curious themselves.

Those were the stories I grew up with. There was a cave near the orphans' creche which was supposed to be haunted by a faded Elf. I didn't really believe it—like I said, the last confirmed Elf was last seen like 5,000 years ago, and not even on my planet. People have met two dozen new sentient races since then. We've discovered that reincarnation is probably real (just functionally untrackable), prompting the Pan-Religious Reform Wars. The last person to see a live Elf was still traveling via natural wormholes—they literally didn't know that you could loop pi.

When the Human natal sun started to turn really red, it wasn’t that big a deal at first. It’s a very important, very sad event for any species, but it happens to everyone eventually. It happened to the Hectort just after we invented interstellar flight. There were some unusual gravatic waves around Earth’s Sol, but nothing worth noting to anyone who didn’t already care for personal reasons.

Then the Elves sent us a message.

The local Parks Service picked it up, of course. I bet the Humans meant to hush it up at first—though the Centaurian government still won’t admit anything—but someone leaked it immediately on the intergalactic net. It should’ve only been famous as a joke of a hoax, but…

It was basically just a metal box with rudimentary fire-thrusters soldered on the sides. It contained two things. The first was a recording/replaying device so antiquated that the only way they got it working is that it was already playing on loop, and didn’t stop until someone disconnected it from its power source.

The message was in Ancient Bouban, which some folklorist soon announced is the latest language an Elf could know, since the last known Elf went back to “Arda.” The voice somehow sounded melodic to every species with a concept of music, from the screeching Vesarians to the deep-sea sub-sonic Thinkers, even when translated through cheap, staticky speakers. And to most species, the speaker was audibly distraught.

They said,

This is the final message from the Firstborn of Eru to the Secondborn, and everyone else. The Battle of Battles has come, and we…are losing. If there are any who remember the ancient love and loyalty which bound our peoples, if there are any heirs remaining of Thargalax the Magnificent, of Nine-Fingered Frodo, of the noble Houses of Haleth, Hador and Beor—

The speaker drew a sharp breath, there.

—by great oaths and greater friendship I bid you now to raise your swords and ride to our aid. Ride as swiftly as you can!

We will hold for another year. We will, they said determinedly. After that, it is unlikely that…

Another, shakier breath. A smile forced into a voice which would rather weep.

Fëanáro and Nienna believe there is a way to destroy the Straight Road. If we must, if it comes to it, we will do so, and trap the First Enemy here in this dying world with us. Though I don’t know about—

Hair-aristocrat! a more distant, slightly less perfectly melodious voice called, in a language so dead that they needed computers to decode it. The walls are falling, we need to go!

If you never hear from us again, and no sudden discord arises among you, you will know we succeeded, the first speaker said quickly. If otherwise…I am sorry. Either way, I bid you all only, remember us! Oh beautiful flames, remember us, as we have ever remembered y—

There was a sudden screech of tearing metal, a defiant, musical battle-cry, and a jarring silence. Then the message restarted.

And that wasn’t even the strangest thing in the box. The strangest thing was the recorder’s power source, which was powering the whole tiny rocket mechanism as well. It was an Elf-jewel right out of a fairy tale, a fist-sized, translucent not-quite-diamond—but instead of rock or water or a much-loved scrap of plant, the only thing it held was light.

...Kind of. It isn’t normal light. It arguably isn’t light at all, as we know it—scientists now think it’s technically some sort of plasmoid aether, except it only acts like a plasmoid aether about half the time.

It has no detectable source within the jewel. It fully illuminates whatever space it’s in, no matter how big. Its visible radiation is a frequency, the scientists say, that matches a hyper-accelerated version of what the universe must’ve sounded like in the split second after the Big Bang.

It makes people remember things, when they see it in person or sometimes even across a holo. Some remember a similar light in a strange traveler’s eyes. Others, dreamily enchanted valleys where spring never faded, or tall castles, bright swords, and stern and glorious lords and ladies. And some of us got hit with a whole lifetime of memories in one go: an identical gem on the brow of a sober forest king, friends who slipped through trees like shadows save for their merry laughter, an impossibly beautiful gold-haired maiden dancing in a glittering cavern...

(And all the pain and loss that came with them.)

And some people just remember the sight of a distant star—in another world, in another lifetime.

Reincarnation was provable but untraceable…until now.

The Thinker ambassador on Astrolax Station 5 was the first to kick up a fuss. Most Thinkers never leave their home planet, they're too huge and aquatic. But like I said, there's always crazy and curious people. The ambassador started bellowing the second che heard the message, without even seeing the light, because, "I know him! My Wisdom! We must send aid!" That made some news, and random other people shared their own, less dramatic revelations, and soon a compilation swept the net with timestamps showing that most of them were organically independent, not just jumping on the bandwagon….

Even that might've gotten written off intergalactically. The Thinkers are big in reincarnationist circles, on account of how they claim that deep in their planetary ocean they can hear echoes of their past lives. But being mostly planet-bound means they're not really influential on a big political level. Or it would've sparked another surge of the Reform Wars, and everybody would've remembered the rock, but not the recording. Or there would’ve been a fight over this potentially infinite energy source (though that is so last giga-annum)….

But first it was shown in person to the current Director of the Admiralty of the Astral Alliance, President of the X-ee Empire and Matron of the House of S,sh, Ch’ees/i’i S,sh. I was actually there—I was Captain of her ceremonial Alliance guards, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage my career after Zanzibus. Very ceremonial, considering the X-eee have laser-proof shells and pincers and I have, what, opposable thumbs? Vestigial tusks?

I wasn’t paying attention at first, too busy being suddenly assaulted by all my own memories. So I missed the President freezing mid-step and gasping (in X-eee), “Mother.” I also missed her rising alarm call of an attempt to speak Ancient Elvish without an Elvish tongue or lips.

I sure didn’t miss her snap back to X-eee for a sharp call to attention, and everything that followed: the call to arms! The rousing of the Alliance! A tour of the galaxy, to find anyone and everyone else in whom the Light could awaken ancient memories! And for the love of X'eeh, why had nobody figured out how to get back to Fairyland with this thing yet, and every warship in the quadrant?!

If I believed in the One Behind, or in any other creator god or gods—I'm not saying I do, but if I did, if there really is something out there all-powerful and all-kind—then it'd be because out of every soul in the entire universe, the probably one in the best position to act on the Elves' message turned out to have, from a past life, two parents and a much-loved twin still in Fairyland. Like, that's insane, right?

I stayed with the Director's ceremonial guards for the whole tour, actually more than ceremonial for once—it was the weirdest mission of my life, and I've been on a lot of weird missions. Or supposedly routine missions that got weird (and usually disastrous). My friends joke that I'm cursed. S,sh requisitioned an Inquiry-class ship, so the science boffins could study the Light and jewel along the way, and we started wormholing at weft speed, hitting a new planet every week. Sometimes every day. In each major spaceport and ground-city, S,sh stood with the jewel on the highest available point and gave a recruitment speech for going to save the Elves and fight the oldest enemy of all reality.

Honestly, it seemed a little redundant? The Astral Alliance was made for this sort of rescue mission (and for escorting trade convoys). But I was...if not happy, then sure as hell more self-certain with my ancient memories restored, and most people who joined up seemed to agree. It was mostly people who remembered, when exposed to the Light, who joined—so before long, we had a whole tag-along trail of mostly civilian ships, trying to get up to Alliance Fleet standard on the road in less than a year.

Three different religious sects tried to kill S,sh for "profaning the mysteries." Five others tried to steal the jewel because we were apparently appropriating a holy object. The boffins announced that, bar the can't-prove-a-negative possibility, the evidently sourceless Light should be counted as an infinite energy source, and at least seven different groups, ruthless financiers and sustainability idealists, immediately tried to steal it for that. And I still don't know what the rival thief-queens of Likkiliani were about, except that I got tied up upside-down from a palmdar tree for two hours trying to stop one, the other paid me 700 cron then threw me off a cliff, and in the end they recognized each other from past lives and just made out on worldwide live-holo before joining our growing fleet.

It turned out they were the Director's past life's great-grandparents, and a Canid pop princess was her niece. The Thinker ambassador was some sort of ancestor, too. Crazy extended family.

Most people who remember just remember the sight of a star in the sky. A buddy of mine from Fleet Academy remembered looking up at it as a Human sailor. The historians—and you’d better bet we picked up some Earther historians on this mission as well!—say this jewel or one like it was probably astrologically conflated with the planet Venus by early Humans.

(The more time I spent around the jewel, the Silmaril, the more I remembered, of my first life and more. Lifetime after lifetime with bad luck dogging my steps, killing loved ones in my arms, destroying cities I was supposed to save… One restless, haunted night, I met a Rigilic in the cafeteria who’d been awake with some of the same nightmares, who’d been my dead older sister once.)

The tour was cut short when word came from the Earth system that there was a black hole growing in the center of their reddening sun.

No, the sun wasn’t compressing into a black hole millennia ahead of schedule—one had just spontaneously manifested within it, like it’d teleported in. No, not literally—that was impossible. We were pretty sure. No, the sun wasn’t falling into it…somehow. Yet. The black hole was only 17 quectometers wide, but it was growing at an erratic but unceasing rate. If their best estimation of the pattern held, it would consume the sun 2 months before the Elves’ deadline, and the Earth 4 to 950 minutes later.

We pulled back to Earth—well, to the dwarf planet Eros, on the edges of Earth’s star system. That’s where the nearest shipyard of any note was, and we were gathering the whole Astral Alliance. This is exactly the sort of thing the Alliance is for.

I was released back to ship duty. Zanzibus was still a black mark on my record, as was Jorab, and really everything on the AAS Endeavor…and that thing in third year of Fleet Academy… But no matter how bad my curse, I was an experienced captain and one of the best pilots in the Alliance. For this, we needed all the best.

The boffins had pretty quickly mastered limited manipulation of the Light, using modified aetheric resonators, and every day they came up with something new for us to test. They focused the Light into a laser cannon like no one has seen before. They laced it through plasma shields until a fully shielded ship glowed like a distant star. They managed to nearly replicate the Silmaril’s crystalline structure, so they could make “copies” that shone like the original for first a few hours; then, with refinement, a full week…

The one thing they couldn’t pin down with any real confidence was how to get to Fairyland. The frequency of the Light resonated with large bodies of Earther saltwater in a particular way, and models suggested that if the Light source moved horizontally along the water within a certain range of distance and velocity, the resonance would create a wormhole-like ripple in space—but wormhole-like, was the key word, and models suggested. The closest anyone had seen to that spatial distortion was in a logbook of dubious veracity from the Delta Quadrant, four hundred years ago. Alteia, my Academy buddy who’d been a Human sailor, took the Silmaril in an M-wing on a series of highly monitored test flights above the Atlantic Ocean, and space did repeatedly start to hollow in front of bom—so bo had to stop every time, rather than risk vanishing with our single, maybe-one-way ticket.

Then Earth’s moon stopped shining in the sky. Its albedo just dropped nearly to zero, from one night to the next. There was nothing wrong that anyone could figure out—nothing with the orbit, nothing with the surface rock, nothing with the artificial atmosphere. Inhabitants reported feeling colder by several degrees, but no measuring equipment recorded anything.

The black hole slightly off-center in the middle of Sol was now 844.9 zeptometers, and growing more steadily.

We didn’t have time to keep testing. We needed to raise our swords and make our ride, even if we only got one shot at it.

I was given command, for seniority, skill, and because I was the one who managed to talk S,sh out of leading the fleet herself. (If my lives had taught me anything, it was the importance of having someone, anyone, ready to be emergency backup.) Ironically, I was back on the Endeavor, with most of my old crew—though we got permission to rename the ship, in honor of the mission. A lot of people did. Alteia was now commanding the AAS Elendil on my right flank, star-friend in Ancient Elvish. That Canid pop princess had taken over a hospital ship and renamed it Rivendell. An Earth Park Ranger, of all things, remembered being my dad—briefly—and he was leading the Rangers plus my Rigilic drinking buddy on the EPSS Elfsheen.

We weren’t sure if any ship but the one with the Silmaril would get through. The fleet numbered in the hundreds in battleships alone, not counting scouts and scuttlers. Twelve races had sent ships on top of their typical Alliance Fleet tithe, and S,sh had brought about half the full force of the X-ee Empire. We all just locked tractor beams and hoped.

I was piloting as well as captaining, with the Silmaril between my forehorns. It was held in place by about a dozen wires and other connectors to the ship, like an old-timey pilot’s headset. We took off in orbit around Earth, as close as possible to the surface—not very close, in warships of Class S and higher, but within range of the oceanic resonance. A Likkilianian thief-queen stood at my shoulder, ready to advise if anything “Musical” started to happen.

Think about what you’re trying to get to, and why, the boffins had advised, so I did—bright-eyed kings and dancing maidens; lost friends, families, cities, planets and all. The jewel got warmer against my skin and shone brighter with every pulse of the engine, brighter than we should’ve been able to see through.

The silver-gold Light twisted and diffused as space did around us. But there was no familiar rippling wormhole boundary—instead, spacetime thinned to a curtain like driving rain, like Vesarian silver-glass.

A ghost appeared next to me. She looked like the oldest, grumpiest writing teacher at the crèche, though I knew that was only in my head.

“There you are,” she said, impatient and relieved like I’d been hiding in the sandbox again, rather than coming to class on time. Her sewing scissors went snip snip snip as she darted them around my body—and a chain on my soul faded into guiding threads.

Before she’d even disappeared again, I punched the engine and blasted through the silver-glass curtain.

Fairy tales said there’d be a peerlessly beautiful land on the other side, green with eternal spring, full of endless light and laughter. They said there’d be sunlit shores and shimmering waves, with welcoming docks for sea-ships, sky-ships and space-ships all…

We flew into the worst battlefield I’d ever seen, in any lifetime. It was more desperately vicious than Jerusalem V at the height of the Reform Wars, more ruined than Glaurung’s wake, more desolate than Zanzibus after the nuclears fell.

Either a massive supercontinent or a small moon had been shattered, leaving nothing but a roiling debris field. The brand-new meteoroids ranged from pebbles to rocks the size of a small space station, and included space-frozen corpses, forests, and what might have once been city blocks.

I gave the helm back to my Pilot Officer—zer had, I can admit, slightly better reflexes for dodging debris—and focused on captaining.

Most of the life signs were clinging to the larger rocks. There shouldn’t have been atmosphere for them, but walls of thunderstorm wrapped around every shard with even a single life sign—wind and water desperately hand in hand to safeguard the last of the Elves. The only thing visible through the impossible storms was the Light of a second Silmaril, on a meteoroid shaped like half a broken eggshell.

A corpse lay at the epicenter of the explosion—what might’ve been a corpse, if it wasn��t also shattered. The broken pieces of a massive stone humanoid, taller than my ship if it’d stood beside her, still bleeding lava so hot that it burned even in frozen space. Another titan knelt at the shards of its head, a figure of towering bark and leaves, wailing with grief even worse than the end of the world.

A slimmer tree-woman stood with one hand on her shoulder, comforting, and the other wielding a skyscraper-sized club spiked with incandescent wildflowers. Guarding her sister’s heartbreak, she fended off a swarm of bat-sized monsters with wings of darkness and whips of flame.

Bat-sized relative to the gods of Elves and ancient Humans. About the size of an M-wing, in flight.

Countless more of the bat-things flung themselves at the storm-bubbles, like carnivores chasing the prey hidden inside. They were fended off by an equal army of creatures with wings of light and swords of lightning, led by a towering figure who seemed to dance from one bloody battle to the next.

The biggest battle by far was the farthest away, over where the sun had been. In this dimension of stories over science, Sol was another woman-shape, smaller than the others but burning just as brightly as her star. Also just as blood-red. The light was centered on a fist she kept clenched at her chest, and instead of containing the black hole, the unseeable thing that it was here surrounded her, striking at her with a thousand hungry jaws and grasping legs, and she had only a one-handed whip of a solar flare to fend it off—

But she didn’t fight alone. A warrior tore at the Darkness’s spidery limbs with his fists, image on the cameras flickering impossibly between every hero I’d ever heard of. A snarling figure bit at it with jagged teeth, gored it with horns, shredded it with claws and talons, and generally made every ancient prey-instinct in me scream. And a queen with a crown of stars, a shield like the night sky and a sword like a streaking comet, stood dauntlessly at the sun-holder’s side.

With all that, and with the speed of even her most exhausted strikes, I thought the sun-holder could probably have gotten away if she’d tried. But I knew how a person fought when they weren’t willing to leave a friend, and a smaller, silver figure lay at her feet, unmoving and drained of light.

But even the battle for the sun wasn’t what grabbed my eye. No—all my attention, all my guiding threads of fate and the quick temper that always used to get me in trouble, before (and sometimes after) I learned to leash it in an Alliance uniform— All of that took me straight to the fight happening orthogonal to the stone giant’s corpse.

It was another one-versus-many. Morgoth, the First Enemy of Elves and Men— Master of Lies, Maker of Chains, Sonofabitch Curser of Bloodlines—towered over even his fellow gods. His shape changed constantly, sickeningly, but it was always black-armored with eyes like dying stars that hated you personally. His maul dripped with lava and every other kind of blood.

He fought against three great gray figures who moved as one. The tallest wielded a star-studded scythe with swift, efficient strokes, and wore the dark gray of corpse-shrouds. The shortest shimmered with more colors than even a Stamotapadon could dream of, and his weapon shifted likewise. The third was the clear, clean gray of skies after rain or tears run dry, and fought with only a shield—and hit harder with it than either of her brothers.

Around their heads darted the only Elves on the battlefield, in small fliers more like sea-ships than aircraft. But they moved fluidly, pestering the Dark Lord like flies, pricking his skin and threatening his burning eyes.

Until Morgoth swung his maul with a roar of fury that traveled even though soundless space. My ship and heart both shuddered. The gray gods all staggered back, and the Elves fell from the no-longer-sky—all but their leader, more fire than flesh, who wore the third Silmaril. Morgoth caught him in one massive black hand and with sharp claws plucked the jewel away, as easily as a ripe berry from a tree—

“All power to fore-cannon and fire,” I ordered—and the jewel on my brow shone bright again as several stored months’ worth of infinite Silmaril-Light slammed into Morgoth’s chest with all the force that the best scientists in the Astral Alliance could engineer.

He stumbled. He dropped both the jewel and the elf-king (who’d been trying to bite him). The Lady of Mercy tossed her shield to catch them, staying low and out of sight—though she needn’t have bothered. The so-called “Lord of All” had already found his next enemy.

“All ships, move forward and join shields,” I ordered, and met his burning stare though the viewscreen. “Then broadcast me on all external frequencies.”

The wires on my forehead shimmered as we shifted Light-flow to the shields—and to my right, so did the Elendil, and to my left, the Cosmian Blade, and all around us the Minas Tirith, the Elfsheen, the Muse, the Rivendell, the Heart of Zanzi, the Longbottom Leaf… They were still soaring out of the silvery distortion behind me, tractor- and Silmaril-towed: sleek Rigilic eels-of-prey and Centaurian cruisers full of Humans eager to fight for their homeworld, Betan mine-ships and Canid X-M-wings and my own Hectoan starlighters, a full third of the X-ee navy with their X-eee–shaped six-engine dreadnoughts, and hundreds more.

“This is Captain Pel Cinia, once Túrin Turambar, of the Astral Alliance ship Gurthang,” I said. My words were broadcast from every ship on every frequency in every language that the people of Arda might know, as the Fleet assembled from forty-plus different worlds flew into position. Our Light-infused shields blazed and locked together, until we formed a seamless wall right in the Enemy’s face, with the Elves and their other allies safely behind us.

I’ve never felt more proud to recite the most cliché line in the Fleet:

“We got your distress call. We’re here to help.”

#the silmarillion #science fiction #humans are space orcs #fanfiction #my fic #dagor dagorath #not tagging characters bc spoilers (they're listed at the end of the ao3 though)

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simply-wlw-kpopstan · 5 months ago

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Part 2 you can find part 1 here

Finding you wasn't hard for yujin since she knew you like the back of her hand, the problem was introducing herself. She's watched you for years, she knew where you would be at this hour if your friends didn't drag you out but even then she'd know where to find you. Your friends always dragged you to the same club once in a while and today was no different.

"come on y/n! Let's go out and find you a girlfriend" said lily aka your best friend.

"Oh come on, don't you want to meet your special person? They're not just going to show up you know!" Haewon called from the kitchen.

"they might!"

"you mean that girl you bumped into last month?" lily gave you a look, "have you seen her again since then?"

"no" you sighed, "i'm starting to think I made her up or something"

"maybe that wasn't meant to be." lily shrugged, "come on, please go out with us?" She pouted and haewon joined in with her big brown eyes.

"fine"

And just like before you show up at the club, dance and drink with your friends and just let loose for the night. Well that was until you saw her again, it almost felt like time stood still but in reality it was you who just stopped everything you were doing. Yujin had already spotted you when she entered and when you looked at her she smiled. Neither of you payed any attention to your surroundings as you gravated towards eachother, "hi" she smiles down at you

"hi," you smiled, "i'm y/n"

"yujin" she bit her bottomlip as she couldn't contain her giddiness any longer, "nice to see you again"

"Yeah, it is. I've never seen you here before?"

"I recently moved here" she had to pretend you were a stranger to her, "what about you? Are you from around here?"

"I am, I live close-by with two of my closest friends." you didn't hide your wandering eyes as you take her in. She really was beautiful but she had this magnetic pull towards her, you couldn't lay your finger on it but you swear you know her from some where else other than the falling Into her arms," This is going to sound crazy but I feel like I know you from somewhere? Outside of our first meeting ofcours"

"I've been around here a few times before. Used to come her with my father during his business trips when I was younger." she let her eyes trail over your body, " Are you here with someone?"

"with friends but we've been here for a few hours already." you couldn't help but wanting her for yourself. Lily and haewon wouldn't mind if you'd leave with her, in fact they'd probably push you out the door and scream you kids have fun after you.

"want to get out of here?" as you raised an eyebrow she realized how that sounded, "sorry, I didn't mean it like that you know. I meant to just get out of here and get some fresh air and stuff."

"do you always ramble out words like this?" you grinned, thinking you had the upper hand.

"never, I guess you just make me nervous." you both laughed and made your way to the exit. As you walked Into the street, the cold night air hits your face and woke you up. You quickly sent haewon and lily a text saying you met the girl again and were now leaving, haewon just send a fire emoji and a winky smiley face with their tongue out. "so... Would you like to go get milkshakes?"

"where do you get milkshakes at this hour?"

"you have a point, what if we make them ourselves?" She suggested with a smile, convenience store's are open right now and they sell everything we need. "

" why not" you shrugged and made your way to the closest store. Yujin grabbed 2 cups and milk while you went to grab the agreed flavor of ice cream. She quickly payed for everything and you both sat down at the window.

"alright, behold the best milkshake you will ever have" she grinned as she scooped ice cream out of the tub and Into your cups.

"I doubt it'll be the best i'v ever had." you watch her as she added milk to the slowely melting scoops.

"these will be the best because... ," she took a pair of chopsticks from the counter and began stirring it, "I made them with love."

You chuckled at the cheesy line but still accepted the drink when she slipped it closer to you. "is this how you pick up girls? Make them milkshakes?"

"honestly I've never done this before." she looks down at her shake as she stirs her straw, "I've always been on the outside. Watching people fall in love."

"Oh," you were a bit surprised at the honest answer. How was that possible? She was so attractive, it was hard to imagine her being single for her whole life but then again you weren't any better, "I know how that feels. I've met some people but never really connected with them on that level. My friends were all finding their lover's while I stood at the sideline."

"Do you believe in a soulmate?" you slightly choked on your drink as the words came out of her mouth.

"Uhm, I don't know. Like romantic or..."

"No specific thing just a soulmate. What do you think it means?"

"I guess for me," you stopped and thought about it, "maybe a person that you just connect with instantly? Friends can be soulmates too so I don't think it's supposed to be romantic. Just a person who you can talk to, unfiltered and you don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing."

"do you have one?" She carefully sips her drink as she looked at you.

"no, I don't think I do. I love my friends but I feel like you would know when they're you soulmate. What about you?"

"To me a soulmate is that person you can't forget about. No matter what happens they're constantly on your mind and you want the best for them even if that isn't you."

"do you have one then?"

"I think I might" she smiled slightly as she nibbled on her straw.

"what happened? If I may ask ofcours"

"promise you won't think I'm weird?" She asked and you looked at her confused but still nodded your head nonetheless. " There was this girl I saw years ago. I was with my dad and as he was working I saw the most beautiful girl I've ever seen but I couldn't go and talk to her. I kept thinking about her and I still do 'till this day. so I moved here in the hopes of seeing her again. "

" you saw her here? "

" Yeah, she was with 2 of her friends. " yujin wanted to tell you everything but knew she couldn' t so she opted for the other choice, rewrite the story in a normal way.

"have you seen her again then?"

"I think I have, she grew up though but then again so have I" should she admit it was you or would that be too bold? what if she scared you away?

"This might sound weird but the girl you saw back then, did she by any chance ride an awfully bright pink bike?" you hated that bike but it was a hand me down from your older sister. A few months after you got it you and your friends painted over it with a cheap spray can. You remember that day cristal clear as you had biked from you house to the main part of town but something always bugged you about that day but you couldn't remember what.

"not that u know of," yujin shook her head, "I think I was around 15? When I saw her she was hanging out with some friends at the waterfountain. One of her friends fell in and they took the other one with them and the girl I saw stood their laughing at them."

Realization dawned on you that you were the girl. You remember that day because you keep teasing jimin about it, she had fallen over her own two feet and tugged minjeong into the water with her. That was the moment you knew they liked eachother, they layed in the fountain as they kept looking at each other without saying a word but with shy smiles on their faces. "what did you mean with you think you have?"

Yujin didn't know how to answer, she really screwed that one up for herself. "I just..." she looked down at your hand as you placed it on top of hers.

"tell me, what were you doing at the club tonight? You were there on your own right?"

"Yeah, I just arrived when I saw you."

"you just arrived and then immediately leave with me the minute you see me?" you gently pulled her hands closer to you, "when did you realize I was the girl?"

"I always knew." she closed her eyes at the mistake she just made, "I mean, when you bumped Into me."

"I see." you smiled at her cute flustered demeanor, "so, in your eyes I'm your soulmate?" you leaned in a little and yujin's eyes drift towards your lips as she gulped.

"w-what?" She couldn't focus on anything but your lips, they looked so soft and she just wanted to kiss you.

"Do you think I'm your soulmate?" you grinned as you kept leaning in. Yujin just kept staring at your lips as she licked her own. "yujin?"

"Yeah ?" her eyes never wavered from your lips.

"what are you waiting for?" you catch her breath hitching, "kiss me already" She didn't need you to tell her twice and leaned in. After all the years craving for your kiss she finally had it, she was kissing the girl she fell in love with all those years ago and if it weren't for your soft lips against hers she would scold herself for waiting this long. You pulled away slightly and ran a hand through her hair, " If this happens everytime you make me a milkshake they really are the best."

Yujin smiled, "that can easily be arranged, all you need to do is ask." and sealed your lips with another kiss. She wondered if her dad was doing a happy dance when he read you had your first kiss with your soulmate and then pulled away as the second thought ruined everything for her. Her parents would know Everything, Includding when you would sleep together for the first time.

"are you okay?" you got worried as she looked uncomfortable, "did I do something wrong?"

"NO!" She was very quick to reassure you, "no I just... I remembered something my dad said and then him being in my head kind of ruined the moment for me?"

You laughed at the confession, "that's a very valid reason." she smiled and linked her hand with yours as you kept talking to one another. After all these years she finally found you and she couldn't be happier than she was. She finally had the girl and that without her father's help. She wondered if he would shoot you with an arrow or if that wouldn't be necessary. Her mother fell for her father without the help of an arrow so did that mean when mortals fall in love with an immortal being they wouldn't need the arrow? She put that thought to the side and enjoyed your presence for now, she'd visit her parents soon enough and then she would be able to ask them everything and perhaps ask her mother to hide your paper from her father.

#ahn yujin x reader #an yujin x reader #ahn yujin x fem reader #An yujin x fem reader #Ive yujin x reader

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