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hyukascampfire · 2 days ago

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THE TERRIBLE HALF-TRUTHS OF THE UNDEAD ҜING

⠀(🍂 ) 𝓡EVENANT in folklore, a revenant is a spirit or animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living ... ( 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 )

1︎5.5k revenant!yeonjun · ƒ ! r ft. soobin ⸺ ✴︎ 𝖿𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖺𝗌𝗒 ... smut, violence, angst, death, animal death & vivid descriptions of animal death, major character death, unprotected sex, cumming inside, dry humping (because bring it back), biting, dom yeonjun sub reader, mentions of death in childbirth, reincarnation, teasing, breast worship, yj calls reader ‘my love’, def some typos

🪶 ⦂ how fun is this collab? :,) this fic was so fun to write. i personally believe that tsfawc enjoyers will love this one,, but you'll have to read it to confirm that, right? hehe. and of course, go read everybody else's if you love this one! they're all set in the same world, and everybody worked so hard on these fics. send some love their way!

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

𝒪𝑁𝐶𝐸 𝒰𝑃𝑂𝑁 𝒶 𝒯𝐼𝑀𝐸, in a land far, far away, where the treetops touched the soft clouds of the sky and the water sparkled under the glowing sun, where mountains rose high, and long, deep caves ran through them, where the sea met shore in collisions of swirling, foamy punches, where the undead walked among the living, where the winged flew above the finned, there was a land where things beyond reason and rhyme existed perfectly true. Among those strange beings and within the veils of Aethera, there was a girl loved by death.

He sits on your shoulder, a dark, boding shadow and glared at those around you with promise in his eyes.

That’s how it seems, anyway. That’s how everybody looks at you. They dodge you, whisper about you, evade your gaze as if he might reach his claws for them next if they linger for too long.

Crows with dead eyes arrive at your doorstep like some lover’s cheeky gift, other poor creatures like fat grey mice are left to rot in the wheatfields, and yarrow stocks wilt outside the wall of your room. If Death thinks that you are flattered, he misunderstands you. You are terrified of nothing more than dying. The first time, it was a sly joke. Then it happened again, and you watched their eyes change. And it happened again and again, and your people are a suspicious type. Something can only be a coincidence so many times.

When you began to sneak into a little shack with a village boy, you thought that maybe, somehow, this would all pass. He died too. There’s really no coming back from that, is there? You don’t blame them. You’re not the freak that they all believe you to be—none of them get close enough anymore to know that, though.

The wickerbasket’s handle creaks under your fist. You usually only forage along the shallow line of the forest; you pluck from bramble bushes topped with plump berries that crawl between trees during the summer, and when the crab apple tree’s branches hang heavy with the fruit, you snatch those up too. You’re more useful to your family out here, in the woods that they deem just as cursed as you. Where you won’t be their burden.

Crisp autumn leaves crunch under your boots. You scan between them—more grey and rotted this late in the season than fresh and orangey—for the edible mushrooms and roots that you usually forage at this time of year. The basket’s already pretty heavy with a variety, black morels and sorrel and burdock, as you bend down to pull a truffle from the dirt against a tree.

You drop it down with the rest of your finds. The basket smells like earth, no doubt your hands do too. You dust your palms off on your skirts and go to rise back from your squat.

A deep, billowing horn pierces the forest’s silence. It’s both far away, wiggling between the whispers of rustling leaves, and much too close. It draws out. Long. Bone-chilling. You freeze, scanning between each tree trunk and praying that you won’t find what you fear you might.

You are much deeper into the woods than you usually are. Than you ought to be. And you know what that horn means—you know that it means something far worse than what you’d been afraid of, coming into these woods. Much more primordial than the hide-behinds you were scared you might find this deep, much less avoidable than the faerie rings you stepped around.

Why would The Wild Hunt be here? A shudder runs down your spine, and you curl your fingers into your skirts and lift them as if to prepare to run, but you don’t. Your feet find root in the forest floor and all you can do is stand terribly still in catatonia. Their horn sounds again, and a procession of wicked whoops and howls follow. Wild hoofbeat rumbles under it all—the hunt and their rides. You hope that they’re just passing through, and you won’t so much as see one of those wild riders. There were plenty of folktales that the matrons of your village would bolster to terrify you as children, but you knew even then that their stories of the riders, with their flesh falling away from them and their pale or beady eyes and their gnarled maws and frightening figures as they rode on the backs of equally terrible steeds, were not fabricated. They are not a bogeyman or a wailing banshee; they are death made in the flesh, and they are here. In your forest.

Your legs won’t work. You curl your clammy fingers tighter around your basket and lean into the tree beside you. How deep had you wandered into the forest? Hopefully not too far; when you gain the courage to run, you hope that they do not send their hounds to snap their foul breath on your heels. Maybe just standing here and blending into the trees is best. The Hunt would love a chase, and you don’t want to become their next.

The next call comes and you throw that all to the wind. Your heart pounds against your ribcage as you let your basket clatter to the leaves and you take off. You fly over roots and shrubbery and between the trees, your blood roaring in your ears faster. You’d oblige if you could.

Above the loudness of your frantic mind, the harrowing whinnies and The Hunt’s ruckus dulls until it’s faraway again, and then it’s gone. Well, you don’t stop to check if they’ve really passed through the forest. You just run.

“There you are, love.”

His voice cuts through your frantic escape and stops you dead in your path. You almost go crashing down over the ground with the force that you dig your heels into it. Though the voice is non-threatening, you don’t turn to face the source.

He speaks again. You already know who it is. He, old as the earth you stand on itself, leads that band of wild riders. Is the king of the undead, collects souls for reaping.

And he’s the one who’s plagued you with his attention. Death.

“Why do you keep your back turned to me?” he says. “I frighten you. That hurts.” His voice lilts with amusement and sharpness. “I wish that you would face me.”

You’re not fond of the way that he speaks to you with a familiarity. But then again, you’re not fond of dying, either. Your legs are boneless beneath you. Turning, you slowly indulge him, though it takes a great amount of willpower to not run again like your jittering jaw and trembling hands ask you to.

The King of Death stands tall and utterly preternatural, leaned against a crooked tree in the woods behind you. His smile cracks across his face in a jagged way that suggests he finds you amusing, but none of that meets his eyes. They’re the color of the greyish, rotted leaves beneath you. The dark shadows beneath his eyes are the only thing belying the weight that his infinite life might have on him. That, and the hollowness that rings from him.

And though he sounded entirely playful, you are shaken by the sorrow that you find in him now that you’ve turned. Even more so, you’re not sure why you feel it echoed somewhere in the hollows of your bones. “I’m sorry,” you say. It trembles terribly. You want to say that you’re sorry you caught his attention, but it seems you’ve always had his attention. It’s more that you are petrified down to your marrow that the time’s come that you face this… strange infatuation. Here he stands: the one who leaves hollowed out husks of creatures at your doorstep. Should you run or thank him? Is Death as prideful a creature as the other kinds that inhabit Aethera? “I don’t mean to…”

He pushes off his tree, fixing his cape that cascades over only one of his shoulders. It’s tattered and falling apart like the rest of his clothing, though you think that the bronze stitching and swirling oakleaf patterns in the black say that they might have been immaculate at some point. Or maybe they weren’t, and they had started that way. He is Death, anyway. “You’re sorry?” he says. “Why are you apologizing to me? You’ve hardly done a thing to warrant it.”

Faltering, you wet your chapped lips. You’re not really sure. Holding back another apology for fear that you’ve offended him and he’ll now strike you down for it, you say, “I thought that, maybe the hunt was…” Wow, you sound stupid. You can see in the sly smile his lips form that it amuses him. That’s almost worse than angering him: intriguing him. What you really should be doing is boring him so that he’ll find you a waste of his time. Then, maybe, he’d give up haunting you.

“After you?” he finishes. Shaking his head, he says, “My hunters only answer to me.”

“Oh,” you say plainly. Part of you wants to ask why that should comfort you, especially when you’re the one that he sends little bits of death to, but rationality keeps those words in the back of your throat. You don’t really want to know. “Why are you passing by here?”

Something akin to old longing passes through those witty eyes, and then he eats up the distance between you with languid steps of his long legs until he’s nothing more than one last step in front of you. The closeness consumes the air in your lungs, leaving nothing for you but short and shallow drags. The forest has gone dead silent aside from the sound of it. His voice is even more magnetic now that he’s so close.

You recoil when he brings a hand up to brush the pad of his thumb over your cheek and then cup your jaw, as if afraid that he might snuff you out here and now. His fingers are softer than you thought they might be, and the lines of his face sharpen into what you think is hurt. Hurt that you flinched?

“We go here and there,” he says, “but it’s been a very long time since we came here.” There’s a certain thickness to his words; a certain tension coiled over them from something that you’re not privy to. And yet, there’s a farawayness, too. You bet he’s full of a lifetime of secrets. Lifetimes of secrets. “But I think I’ve found myself a reason to finally return.”

Breathy and still struggling to flatten out your breathing, you ask him, “Why?”

The Undead King’s smile turns wicked once more, and he doesn’t answer you. It’s awfully eerie.

“Do you have… business here?” you try again. It’s a roundabout way of asking, do you have someone to take away?

“I have business wherever the living go,” he says, letting your face go but not giving you any more room. You narrow your eyes. He’s quite good at non-answers. “Nothing is more certain than that I will greet every living thing eventually. I’ll come to take you, too, when the time comes.”

Your mouth dries up. The entirety of your home, all the people you’ve ever known, fear you for all the death you bring. Not one of them fears it more than you do. You’ve seen it enough to fear its frightening finality.

The drop of your face must’ve told him how much that scared you. “Dying is not such an awful thing, love. Living pales in comparison.” Searching your eyes, he adds, “But I’ve not come to take you.”

That’s easy for him to say: that death isn’t something to fear. His words don’t calm your thundering heart, but you offer him a, “Thank you…” It trails off toward the end when you realize that you don’t have his name. If he has one, anyway.

“Yeonjun.” He tilts his head, strands of sparrow hair brushing over his watching eyes. “Most don’t know it, but you’re not most people, are you?”

Your breathing had just begun evening out. It’s a shame, the way that it kicks back up at the way he looks at you. “What do you mean?” you say, but of course you know. Nobody else is given dead things like you. It’s not like you yourself are very strange; you like pretty dresses and sharing gossip with friends just as much as any other girl your age.

Giving you another one of those knowing smiles that he uses just like words, he steps back. “I’m sorry that I scare you how I do.”

You don’t answer him. What could you say to that? That he doesn’t? That would be a lie, and he would know it.

Yeonjun’s eyes flit over your face, over your cheeks made pink by the autumn cold, lingering on your lips for a few unexplainable beats, and then landing on your eyes where he searches and finds something that sends his throat bobbing with a thick swallow. “I don’t mean to be your monster. It’s only that…” He steps back again. “You remind me a terrible amount of someone I once knew.”

“Who?” Though your shoulders relax a bit with some distance between the two of you, you do your best to not let your guard down. All the stories that you recall being told, all those cautionary tales passed down through word of mouth around a fire, end with some stupid girl thinking that the monster could be changed or tricked. You’re willing to bet that the man in front of you, no matter how human he looks or how enchanting his words are, could be neither.

That doesn’t explain the ache in your chest when he holds your eyes for too long. But you shove that feeling way, way down. It’s nonsensical.

His voice takes on a parting tilt when he says, “It doesn’t matter anymore. Death takes us all.” Yeonjun dips his head at you. His smile wavers. You’d think that crooked smile on his mouth was indelible had you not seen it twitch down at the corners only for a moment. If you’d have blinked, you’d have missed it. “You think I’ll hurt you,” he says, “well, don’t let me stop you. Go ahead, run. I apologize for your basket.”

Death takes us all. You’re not sure what that’s supposed to mean, coming from him, but it sends a cold wind up your spine and goosebumps crawling over your skin.

He watches you go. You don’t look back when you do, but his gaze sits on your back until you’re sure you’re out of his sight. When you return to your home, your mother asks where the basket full of ingredients for supper went.

You imagine what her face might look like if you told her the truth. But that was impossible, so instead you tell her some stupid story about a wolf that startled you so bad that you ran home paying no mind to where your basket was. It’s close enough to the truth.

༺ ꘏ ༻

It doesn’t matter what you do; you can’t get his face out of your head. While you cut butter into flour and then roll out dough, simmer fruits over flame and you slice cheese off blocks, you replay that meeting in the forest. The memory spins and turns over no matter how hard you try to put it away from your thoughts.

It’s not every day that somebody meets the likes of him. You can’t blame yourself; he had such captivating eyes. Dark, playful, and endless. There they are again. You sigh and dust your hands off. Maybe you are just as strange as they all think that you are. Morbid curiosity is like that, though. Taking the most normal of us and making you wonder what you absolutely should not wonder about.

And you absolutely should not wonder about him.

The sun has begun to hang high in the sky, but the breeze that crawls through the window you pulled open before you got to work is a crisp one. Autumn’s really come, now. Outside the window, a huddle of children play around in the leaves that you’d raked up. You’ll have to rake those back up, but you hardly have the heart to tell them to take their playing elsewhere. Their giggles and small voices waft in with the breeze, and a traitorous part of you yearns for a family that you know you’ll never have. No man would risk that fate, not after what happened to the last man who paid you any attention. You grit your teeth at the memory.

Having a face for the thing that’s made your life the way it is is strange. Seeing him in the flesh, with handsome eyes and a taunting mouth, looking something near human, you think you’ve come to resent him for it. How dare he ruin your life? He, more than anybody, should know how fleeting life is. What is in it for him to deface what little time you have? You keep going back to that thought: why did he ever even appear to you in that forest? There is not one story in which you remember Yeonjun showing his face to those he hasn’t come to claim. Death makes his visits swift and purposeful.

Moreover, why on earth would he even look your way? You wish there was a plain way to ask him why, or even to plead with him to stop. Whatever it is he’d ask of you, you think you might give him. To get back to living, you would.

A deep, familiar voice from behind you gives you pause. “Want some help with that?” Soobin says. He stands in the doorway, his head nearly brushing the top of the frame. It’s made too small for him. Most things in your tiny village were made too small for Soobin. There had been a time where you’d been taller than him, that had hardly lasted long enough.

“As if,” you dismiss and gesture at his dirty hands. He’d no doubt been out working his family’s field, his tunic sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Cow shit isn’t an ingredient.”

Anybody else might’ve scoffed or taken offense, but he just laughs and invites himself in anyway. It never fazes Soobin. He doesn’t let you push him away.

It’d be better if he did. How long before he ends up dead, too? Alive one moment, and then a husk without a soul next. You don’t think you could handle seeing cold, dead eyes where the annoying, warm shine should be. Of course it would be better if he stayed away, if he had half the mind to. Even most of the children have heard enough from their mothers to stay a healthy distance. He’s not too much better than a child, though.

“Isn’t it?” he says. His cheek is smudged with whatever sort of dirt he’s got on his hands and under his nails. “I’m done with work for the day. Want to go out to the field?”

You two have always ran off and avoided your life in between willowy, flaxen wheat stocks. They were just tall enough at this time of year to hide you away. But, for some reason, your stomach does a quick flip at the thought of being outside. It’s silly; couldn’t he find you here, too? “I’m busy,” you say. You’d already kneaded this roll of dough plenty, but you dig your fingers into it and begin again.

“Busy?” he scoffs, “Since when are you too busy to get away from work?”

Gritting your teeth, you let the sounds of your kneading answer. Now, more than ever, he should keep his distance. You know one thing that you’re sure nobody else does: Death’s come to visit.

His brows shoot up in your peripherals. “I don’t get answers today?”

“I’m sorry,” you say, giving up working the over-kneaded dough only because your arms ache. “Why don’t you go talk off the ear of some other poor village girl? I’ve heard as much as I can handle today. And then when that one’s tired, you can bother the next, I’m sure.” You soften the words with a quick smile his way. No matter how many times you say something sour in hopes that it’ll send him away, as soon as you glance up at his face, you reel it in.

His company is all you’ve ever had. The least you can do for him is make sure he doesn’t end up like carrion, even if he chooses to take that risk himself. You don’t know why he does.

Voice playful, he says, “I’m glad to hear that you believe I’ve got ladies falling at my feet, but I’d rather not annoy a pretty girl, so you’re my only option.” He pokes at the sleeve of your simple cotton dress. “Should I drag you out of here? Don’t your arms hurt doing all that?”

“Oh, you are a refined man, aren’t you?” you say, shuffling out of his reach. Damn him, he makes it difficult. “Well, I am a pretty girl, so you should take yourself elsewhere.”

Soobin smiles easy. “I’m bored out of my mind. You’re just going to let me suffer?”

“That’s not my issue.”

“I’d argue that it is,” he says. “Come on. Why are you giving me a cold shoulder?” Leaning, he tries to get a look at your face. “Did I upset you? I wasn’t aware that you cared much about what I thought.” When you spare him a sharp glance, he says, “I think you are very, very beautiful. Would you stop ignoring me, now?”

You wish you could fall into the easy banter that comes with being around Soobin, but you can’t. You can’t let him be around you. “Soobin, stop it,” you say, draining your voice. You don’t look at him while you say it.

Going quiet, he seems to notice that today’s different. His gaze is heavy as he stares at you for a few long moments. Crossing his arms over his chest, he asks, “What happened?”

You swallow. “Nothing. I’m just doing something.”

“Oh, alright,” he says, tone inflicting in a way that says he doesn’t believe you one bit. He pushes off the counter. “I’ve put up with you pushing me away for years. You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

“Soobin,” you warn. If you look at him, you fear you’ll be forced to watch the only one who never cared much what a risk it was being around you leaving. So you don’t.

Your friend raises his hands in the air defensively. “Okay, then.” He makes for the doorway with languid, lingering steps. As if he doesn’t want to leave. “Tomorrow..”

That’s both a threat and a promise, knowing him. Sighing and watching the rowan tree out your window sway, you bid him a curt goodbye.

If only that jerk took offense to things. It would make things an awful lot easier for you.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Being out in the wheat fields brings you peace when you’re alone, but you find it to be terribly lonely. The earthy, sweet scent of it wraps around you, and the stalks whisper against each other in a soothing way.

When you look beside you, the patch of wheat imprinted with the shape of your bodies is empty on his side. You are quite weak; it makes you want to go knocking at his door for his company. But that would be the selfish thing to do, so you card your fingers between the golden straw instead.

A chill trickles down your spine. You feel his presence before you even see him; it’s a feeling that you used to get fleetingly, as if something far away was tugging at you. But then he became real, a living thing in front of you that can touch, and that is much different.

“Why is it that I always find you out in the wilderness?” Yeonjun says. His voice comes from behind you.

Has he been watching you? You stand and dust your bottom off, heart kicking to life. “It’s nice out here,” you say. In truth, you haven’t come outside since that day. You’ve dodged Soobin and made a million excuses as to why you won’t go anywhere past the fences of your home. “I like to… watch people go about their days. It’s interesting.” It’s true—you always watch from afar how the village folk interact. How groups of girls your age link arms and whisper to each other, how neighbors come together to fix up a shoddy fence. You watch them be a community that you are not a part of. Watching it tastes bitter sometimes, but mostly you take pleasure in imagining yourself there with them. You’re not sure why you try making small talk with him, but what else? Should you go running again? If you were to listen to your pattering heart, maybe that’s what you’d do. He’s hardly shown you any bad will, though, and he’s the one that’s come to you. Maybe it’s silly to wait until something bad happens to be cautious.

A thousand pounds in stones sit at the center of your chest, though, and his voice makes them feel lighter. Why on earth that is, you’re not sure. It’s a nice relief regardless.

He smiles. It's different from the ones he showed you before. It’s knowing; more sweet than cracking over his face like the smile you would expect from the likes of him. What use might he have in being sweet? “Could I join you?”

Blinking dumbly at him for a second, you nod. “Oh, uh… Yeah.” Settling back down into your spot, you spare him a few curious sideways glances.

The breeze billows over the gold stems, moving them like gentle waves over the ocean and blowing your hair in it too. The flattened bits rustle under his weight. He doesn’t even turn his face toward the village; instantly, his gravitational eyes are on you.

“Do you come here often?”

“I do,” you answer. Mostly when you and Soobin have too much to do and not enough will to do it. “It’s nice. The village doesn’t like me much, so it’s easier out here.” You don’t mention that mostly you don’t come here alone.

Yeonjun’s face becomes far away. It looks strikingly like somebody forced into an old, unpleasant memory. “Don’t like you?” he asks, “What reason would they have for that?”

“They fear me. Things go wrong around me, that’s all.” You pluck at the hay absentmindedly. “Things die. They’re smart to stay away.”

The hay whispers much louder for the long moment he remains quiet, digesting what you’ve said. Maybe deciding what to say, considering that it’s his fault.

“Die?” he asks, voice inflected with surprise.

Turning to him, your brow creases. Shouldn’t he know? He’s the one that’s done it to you. “Everything that gets too close ends up dead. Everything,” you say, resting your temple on your knee. “So, I guess, I just keep it all at arm’s length.” You look back at your tiny village, a collection of familiar, un-familiar thatch-roof homes.

Continuing to blink at you, his eyes narrowed in a strange grimace, Yeonjun says, “Death follows me, too.”

What? A laugh of disbelief bubbles up in your chest. Of course, death follows him. You cover your mouth with a hand to obscure your laugh, but you just giggle at him harder.

A laugh twitches at the corners of his mouth, too. “I mean it,” he says. The lines of his face become distant again, eyes both trained on your face and melancholic as if the sight reminds him of something.

It ignites a question in your mind about something he said in the forest. “You said that I reminded you of somebody,” you say, testing the waters. “Who?”

A muscle feathers in his jaw. He looks away, as if he can’t look at you while he says it. “I loved a girl from this village once. When I was human, no less than you.”

You falter, mouth falling open to ask all the questions that flurry through your thoughts. You settle on one. “You were human?”

“I was,” he says ruefully. “And I had everything. I had the love of my life. I think that even the most bitter of creatures on this island had envy for our love. She would braid dandelions into my hair, and then I’d braid them into hers.” He swallows thickly and pauses, as if the wound was still festering and fresh. “And then she died. She died starting our family. She died because of me, in my arms.”

You don’t know what to say, so you just look into his shining eyes as if that’ll help. You’re not very useful with people, much less comforting them.

“I couldn’t accept that. I wouldn’t. So I went where I shouldn’t have gone, and angered something much bigger than myself. They thought it would be a fitting punishment for me to live an eternity, the King of Death who could not bring back his dead lover.” The harrowed look that he gives you, only briefly, has your chest heavy all over again. “They have a sense of humor, the forces.”

You imagine what it would’ve been like for him to lose his lover in that way. How far he’d gone to try and have her back, but death does not give back. Where had he gone to have been turned into this? An immortal thing, forced to roam the world and scoop up the souls of the living for an eternity? To be bound in ancient bones and made to remember forever how you had lost your lover?

The grandness of what you want to say is too big, but all those words feel pitying and patronizing in a way that you don’t think will actually bring him any comfort. Rather, you doubt anything you say will be able to patch up a wound older than you could imagine. Simply, you offer him a raw, “I’m so sorry.”

Yeonjun lets a crooked smile replace the trembling at his lips. “As long as I live, so too will she,” he says, placing his palm over his heart. “Death doesn’t so much happen when we leave behind our bodies, but when we’ve left the minds of the living.” Narrowing his eyes at you, he brushes hair behind your ear with his knuckles. “I know she lives on, somewhere out there. Somewhere. I’ll find her.”

That intrigues you. “Is there some way that you could bring her back?”

The grim light in his eyes tells you his answer. “My curse is to take life,” he says, “not to give it. But the one who made me this, he is cruel in a twisted way. If I were to find her, as a human or an animal or a blade of grass in the forest, only then could I rest.”

It is cruel. “You’ve been searching, then,” you conclude. “When you find her, you’ll both be able to rest.” But how could he find her, if as he says, she could be any living thing? Where would he even begin?

Slowly, he shakes his head, throat bobbing. “Death needs a farrier.”

She would become what he is. You swallow thickly. Was it not him who caused the deaths that follow you? Or, at least, it was not on purpose?

Opening your mouth, you go to tell him that you’ll help him look. You’re sure you’ll be of no help. He’s spent an immortal lifetime searching, and he still hasn’t found his dead lover. Nobody would know better than him where to look.

The ground shakes beneath your palms with impact, and something cuts through the wheat. The noise of its bleating becomes nearer until the both of you scramble up to find out what’s in such distress.

A deer stumbles around wildly. It looks lame, but you don’t see anything wrong with its legs. Your throat tightens at the awful sound, piercing and sad. Frozen, you watch it try to stay upright before it finally collapses down, legs still kicking as though it still wants to run but its body has begun weakening on it. “Oh my god,” you say, stumbling back. The sounds; its sounds are awful, echoing in your bones and constricting your thoughts until they’re a pinched panic.

There’s an arrow lodged into its ribcage, deep and at a terrible angle. You already know that it’s pierced some vital organs, if not its heart. It continues to writhe on the ground, not ready to give up. You’re not sure if you should approach it—you don’t want to scare it, and you can tell by the look in its wet eyes that it already wants to be away from you.

Or, maybe it had come to you. How else had it found the two of you in the middle of this field?

Yeonjun’s already on it. He puts his knees into the dirt and dried wheat to kneel by it, running his hand over the beast's pelt in long strokes. The small buck flinches at first but relaxes once he learns that his touches are gentle, not the gnashing of hungry teeth ready to make him a meal.

Blood runs like lead through your veins. You say, “Can we help it?”

He shakes his head. “He’ll die.”

Whip-lashed, you swallow thickly. He says it so unphased, and you’re sure he is. You can hardly make yourself mirror that serenity that he exudes as he runs his hand over its flank, but you get on the ground beside him anyway.

The buck’s breaths slow to desperate drags for breath. For a few long minutes, the two of you sit in silence and stay with him until he no longer fights, until his breaths are ragged. You feel his side, still warm and alive, but you see the life going from his eyes. You sit here, talking to each other about nothing just so it hears gentle voices as it goes, for a while.

Eventually, he’s gone. Quiet and at peace, no longer hurting. This time, when you look over to Yeonjun who still smooths over the deer’s skin even as he goes, guiding him delicately into whatever greets us when we go, you see death as a gentle thing.

༺ ꘏ ༻

Though you never seek him out, Yeonjun always finds you. In hidden places, away from prying eyes, he appears behind you and makes himself known. Well, you have a feeling that he watches you for a while before saying anything. It’s hard not to feel the strange tingling of his gaze over your form. It’s akin to the sixth sense that’s supposed to keep you safe out in the dark hearts of forests, an innate feeling that tells you some beast with a rotten, pale maw watches you between the trees.

Yeonjun doesn’t feel rotten, though, preternatural and eerie as he is. As you shirk your duties and talk with him for hours, you stare into ancient eyes and watch his crooked mouth move around his words and you feel an odd comfort. As if he’s the only one who’s ever understood you, or maybe that your strangeness pales beside him and for once you’re nothing but who you are. So many nights, the sun fell on your talking until the night insects buzzed from the grasses and your eyes were heavy.

Sometimes, as you dozed off with your back to a hay bale or a hardwood wall of the abandoned home beside yours with its sagging thatched roof, you caught such festering longing in his his eyes that you’d let your lashes fall and pretend to sleep so that you could imagine what it was that he longed for. No doubt his lost lover. When you imagine him, bound in bones and coming back to haunt the living for an eternity as he mourns her infinitely, searching for her in impossible places, your chest aches with a gnawing intensity.

It’s a terrible, cursed existence. Even the nothingness of death becomes a paradise beside it.

“Is it scary?” you ask into the air, sat criss-crossed on the thick duvet of the bed. He sits across from you, looking perfectly lazy. Moonlight pools in like sterling mist through the shutters.

“What?” He watches you, sitting in your plain dress, as though you’re the only thing in the world.

You’ve begun to wonder. Wonder about those looks he gives you.

Shifting, you fix the shoulder of your soft chemise where it’s slipped down when you catch his eyes lingering on it. His throat bobs. “Dying,” you elaborate. “Is it really nothing? After we go, all of it was for nothing?”

A slow smile tugs his full lips, made a bit red in the middle where he likes to worry it. It’s such a human habit to see on something so far from human. “Hardly,” he says. “It’s like going home, right where your soul is supposed to be. Who do you think rides with me?”

Furrowing your brows, you tilt your head toward one shoulder and let your hair pool there. “The riders are dead?” You had thought they were undead in some way like Yeonjun, other sorts of revenants come back to life with their own purposes. Then, are their creepy horses dead, too? A chill goes down your arms. Sometimes, sitting here with him when his face is made soft by the orange glow of the fire he puts on, you forget what he is.

“They are.” He nods, leaned back onto his elbows, his eyes alight with a hunger that makes your insides feel funny. “It doesn’t stop once we’ve died. You don’t need to be scared, my love. So many things end, but then so many things begin. The earth no longer holds you down, the weight of being is gone. You don’t know anything like it; you don’t know leaving behind the pleasures of earth to know the ones that only the afterlife can show you.”

His eyes laced with something entirely else, he adds, “And it’s not the end. Not for everything. For some it’s only the beginning, and for others, those who have not yet fulfilled their purpose, they come back to the flesh. They return.”

You can’t tell if he means himself, or something else. The weight in his eyes, dark, endlessly swirling pools, makes you wonder again why it is that he’s lingering here: the place that he had not visited once since the death of his lover, for the fact that it still hurts too much. Why his shadow of death, his fault or not, was tangled in your soul enough to brush its fingers over the things around you.

“It’s scary,” you say, breathy. The thought of eternity.

Soft hairs brush over his eyes as he tilts his head at you. “Do I scare you?”

“No.”

“No?” he echos, pushing himself up so that he leans back onto his palms. “Isn’t that strange? Pretty little thing says she’s not afraid of death, but her heart races when I’m near. Her sweet heart jumps at just the brush of my leg. Are you sure you’re telling me the truth, love?”

Your blood roars in your veins, inflaming your cheeks and making your head dizzy. Nobody’s ever looked at you like that before. Hair prickles on your skin. “Yes,” you breathe.

Feral delight sparks in his eyes, black as pitch. His smile turns up all feline at the crooked corners. “Crawl to me, then.”

Like how fire licks up oxygen in any room it is in, his words steal the breath right from your lungs. What does he think you are? You blink at him wide-eyed and dumb for a moment.

How can he say that as though it were nothing? Moreover, how does the ravenous flare in his eyes, his head tilted back as he watches you down his nose expectantly, do that to your belly?

Your mind glazes over with something thick and heady, and you damn the nerves in your belly and begin to crawl from your end of the bed to his. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, making sure you feel every inch of the taunt in his eyes as he trains them on you. When you’ve gotten to him through the thickness in the air, you settle into his lap and bracket his waist with your thighs.

Yeonjun takes the soft fat of your hips in his fingers. “Fuck,” he says. It sounds like he’s barely holding the gates on something endlessly consuming. Something that might break loose on the two of you, and leave you changed forever with its hungry, gnashing teeth. His head hits your collarbone. “Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to go. Because I don’t know how.”

“Don’t,” you say. “Don’t stop. I want it, Yeonjun. I want this.”

He straightens, pupils blown and eyes as tense as his set jaw. “No, you don’t understand what you’re asking for. All I’ve ever done is ruin. All I’ll ever do is ruin. I won’t ruin you; not again.”

That rings bells somewhere outside the heavy fog that’s infiltrated your mind, but they don’t sound too alarming when he looks as though he wants to drag his teeth over your heart to taste its beating. It doesn’t touch the ground, when you want him to, so badly. So badly that you taste it on your tongue and it tinges your words as you tell him, “I do know what I’m asking for. I want you. Yeonjun. Don’t you want me too?” Voice and confidence wavering, you pull back. Maybe you’ve read this all wrong. A tickling shame crawls over your skull. “Do you not want me?”

“You think I don’t want you?” he says, straightening up and meeting your gaze. His breath is hot on your mouth. “I want you so fucking bad. You are in the marrow of my bones. Fuck, I have done nothing but want you, but I am foul. I will only hurt you.”

He takes your hand and places it over his chest, where a heart should be. Beneath your palm, you do not feel the thumping of an alive thing. Yeonjun has no heart. You knit your brows and examine the strain of his features. Does he think that you’ll be disgusted? Maybe the girl you were in that forest might’ve been, but being near Yeonjun has changed you in ways you couldn’t start to put your finger on. “I’m asking you to,” you say. “Show me what you want to do to me. What you’ve wanted to do to me.”

Searing silence burns between you as he drinks that in, and then he shoves you onto your back. Supporting himself with an arm beside your head, he curls his fingers into your hip and nudges your thighs wider. He doesn’t lift the hem of your chemise like you expect him to. No—Yeonjun begins to grind himself into your cunt through all the layers of your clothes. Though your dress is bunched up and his pants lay between any real contact, Yeonjun’s hard and that friction tastes fleetingly sweet.

“I want you to beg me for it,” he says, grinning down at you with cruel intention. “Beg me, and make it so pretty.”

You let little sounds linger in that back of your throat and become hungrier each time he grinds against you. It’s so much, mind swimming and sparks spraying up your spine, and yet each time it is not near enough. Damn that foxish smile on his face; you beg for him anyway. “Yeonjun,” you breathe, curling your fingers around the wrist of that hand with which he pins your hip. “P…lease, will you help me? It feels so good; I want more, please.”

He raises his eyebrows at you and an eager grind comes right over your throbbing clit.

You know he wants more than that, but mortification already is making your voice unsteady and your cheeks burn. “Yeonjun,” you huff, hips wiggling.

The king of the undead delights fully in your shame and rewards you with more of those pointed, dry grinds. Your legs tremble; he’s giving you so little, and yet your need takes it and magnifies it into something grand.

Though he pretends he’s on some high ground, you hear his shuddering breaths each time his fucks his hips against you. He feels that roiling, liquid need in his belly just as vehemently as you do. The room fills with your breathy pants and grinding bodies. You catch your lip in your teeth and begin to meet him half-way. Your moans are low and sweet, and each one sends his jaw tighter.

You twist and grind against each other like fumbling teens until you’re coiled up so tight that he has to pull himself away. Your throbbing cunt protests, but you know he doesn’t want you cumming like this.

“You want me to show you what I’ve wanted to do to you?” he says, working at his pants. His eyes are so drunk on you, and his cheeks betray his state. “Open your legs, my love. Let me show you a little death.”

Throat gone dry, you slowly let your thighs fall open. The dull throbbing between your thighs roars to life. He slides your skirt up your leg, stopping when he frees your knee to pepper a few hot kisses into it. Once he’s got it bunched up at your ribcage, he runs his tongue over his dry lips to wet them. “Fuck. Such a pretty pussy. I want to fucking eat you up.”

“Yeonjun,” you whine. His name is all you can muster out, anticipation sharpened to a knife point.

Flashing his teeth, he purrs, “You like that, you filthy thing. I bet you’d like for me to fuck you till your brain’s gone and all that’s left is my name. Isn’t that right? Is that what you want?”

Your thoughts stall and you nod, making your mouth into a filthy pout. God, how you want that. Maybe he’s right about you being filthy. Coming from him, it sounds like a delicious thing to be.

The pretty, leaking tip of his cock brushes your clit as he slides it up and down your slit to collect the mess there. Your thighs jump to close before your mind gets the better of it. He does this a few times—up and down, letting you feel and get used to the size and length of him all the way till his cockhead kisses your clit and you squeak.

“Are you comfortable, love?” he asks, shifting your hips with strong hands. “Do you need anything from me?”

It’s so at odds with his other, nastier words. Your head spins, the moonlight blurring. “I’m okay,” you tell him. “I… just want you. Want you to put it in, want to feel you.”

His cock catches on your hole, and he begins to push forward with promising pressure. But then he pulls back, smiling downturned. You whine; why can’t he save his capriciousness for later? You’d almost had it…

“I could give it to you, or I could not…” He hums. “Wouldn’t that be so cruel of me? To leave you wanting?”

You flutter around nothing. Every inch of your body buzzes. Alive. You are more alive now, at the promise of Death’s touch, than ever before. The irony might be something to wonder about if you weren’t dribbling down onto the bed sheets with crude need. “Stop it,” you say. Your voice is whiny. You’re glad you can hardly hear yourself past the pounding in your bloodstream.

That delights the King of Death. He wrinkles his nose at you, burning you alive with his eyes as he presses his palm to your belly and guides himself into you with his free hand. You wrap around each inch of him slowly. The air between you bows under the weight of your gazes; he holds your eyes the whole way, inch by inch until he’s seated fully into you with his groin flush to your body. He stretches you to fit, and yet it’s just right. You could ask for no more or no less; you might even think your body was made for him, were you not too busy circling your hips to feel him.

“Good?” he says, squeezing your hip. “Do you need a moment?”

Pursing your lips, you test out the shape of him with another wiggle. “Maybe… Maybe a second.” Truth be told, you need a moment to grapple with the sparks sprinkling over your mind more than you need a moment to adjust to his stretch. You let out a shuddering breath.

He traces circles into your belly, just beneath your navel. The pad of his thumb goes round and round, warm on your flesh. “As long as you need,” he says, but it’s more like a triumphant, playful coo. There’s that lopsided smirk. One day, you’d like to kiss it off him. Taking that hypnotizing finger, Yeonjun trails it up your stomach, over your ribcage. He hooks it beneath your dress and drags it higher, revealing the soft swells of your breasts to the air. You shudder, body so, so hot that your nipples peak and tighten against the cool air.

“Such pretty tits,” he says, brushing his knuckle up the underside of one. “Everything about you. Such a pretty, pretty body. God, I don’t know if I want to worship it or ruin it.” His breaths fan over your skin as he bends down and pops an eager nipple into his mouth, lavishing it before releasing it with a lewd pop and letting his mouth fall all over your breast. Lick here, nip there, until you’re squirming adequately and squeezing him like a virgin. Then he blows cool air over it and watches with eyes like a cat toying with its prey as you shudder harder, your chest jumping. “Fucking look at you,” he sneers.

“Junnie,” you say, lost for breath. You think you’ve walked yourself into the lion’s den.

His breathy laughs fall over your breast. Taking his teeth, he drags them over your skin, right over where your heart thunders a rhythm fully for him, and then he bites. Nothing more than a shallow mark, the shape of his teeth in your soft tit. He lingers there, admiring the sight before he straightens himself up again.

“Fine.” He pulls out of you slowly, but you know what comes after that, so you savor every second of it. “I suppose you’ve wanted after it long enough. Let me hear your sweet voice again, my love.”

Yeonjun fucks you just right. His cock nudges right up on your sweet spot as if he’s done this before. Like he knows where to find it. You gasp and whine—you’re just happy he’s finally giving you something.

“Oh, fuck,” you mewl. His shoulders wear the red crescent marks of your nails. “That’s—so good right there.”

Ever egotistical and cocky, he croons, “Yeah?” Rolling himself back, he makes it his mission to hit it ruthlessly.

A sharp, pitchy sound comes tumbling past your lips. You bring your hand up over your mouth, letting your eyelids dust your burning cheeks so that you can brave the flipping in your spine and deep in your belly. It’s nearly insufferable—the way pleasure licks up your spine, how it spreads out into your veins and takes control of you.

“No,” Yeonjun growls. “Don’t you dare close your eyes. Let me see that look in your eyes when you cum.”

Your eyes are heavier than they’ve ever been, but you open them. The sight that greets you is worth the effort. Yeonjun’s lip twitches and then he throws his head back, the column of his neck on display as his Adam's apple jumps around a thick swallow.

If that sight wasn’t enough to send you teetering down into whatever depths of lust and ecstasy that he crawled out from, then the angle he hits as he pushes one of your thighs to your chest is. The world frays, deep tremors starting at one small point in your cunt and then exploding up through your stomach and down the back of your thighs. Your chest arches off the bed and you mewl helplessly, fighting and embracing your orgasm in an intoxicating death.

“Oh, fuck,” Yeonjun growls, strained with something whinier as he watches you shake beneath him. “Fuck. I’m gonna—fuck, I’m gonna cum…” His voice chokes as his hips become stuttered more than pointed, the slick sounds of your own release tangling up with his grunts and pants until he shudders and stills, cumming into your puffy, fluttering cunt.

You both catch your breaths as if there’s no air in the room left for a while. His hair’s damp on his forehead, as is yours on your neck, and his eyes droop lazily. More lazy and content than you’ve ever seen him.

Collecting you to his chest, where only your heart thumps away frantically, he presses his mouth to your ear and says, “Do you think death is so scary now?”

With your limbs nothing more than boneless and liquid pleasure floating slowly through your thoughts, you smile.

A little death can be more visceral than living, you think.

༺ ꘏ ༻

The tree stump beneath you makes your tailbone ache. You sit criss-crossed, watching Soobin work away at the soil and tend to that section of the fence that’s begun to rot and sag. Your mouth moves endlessly, filling the space that would otherwise just be made up of his grunts of hard work.

“You know, you ought to help me if you’re just going to sit and watch,” he says, straightening to swipe at his forehead, sweaty despite the cold in the air.

“Totally improper,” you say, smiling at him cheekily. “Are you saying that you can’t handle yourself, strong man?”

He glares at you with the venom only somebody made to put up with hours of chatter could muster. “What’s got you so talkative?” he says.

You know he means why you’re suddenly not glaring him away. You can’t tell him that you’ve spoken with Death himself, so instead you say, “Nothing.” Letting your legs dangle down, you smile at him.

Yeonjun hadn’t done any of it. It’s a comfort, to some degrees, to know that. It’s not your fault that they died. Being around them, being around Soobin, won’t make them turn up dead. The rest of them still don’t know that—and they wouldn’t believe it, anyway—but the black shadow hanging over your shoulders dissipates.

For the first time in so, so long, you do not feel marked by death.

“Sure.” His smile tilts. “A week ago, you wouldn’t even look at me.”

Rolling your eyes, you decide to give him a hard time. “Not true. You just have a way of getting on my nerves.”

“I take pride in that.”

“Take pride in what? Being insufferable?”

Crinkling his nose, he says, “Knowing how to bother you best.”

“Get back to work, stupid.” Your heart soars. It’s good to have friends. To let yourself have friends is an ever better thing. Is this how it is? To be with others and not feel like their burden, or like they’re crossing their fingers behind their back to ward off whatever bad things you might bring onto them? He’s made it his mission to hover around you no matter what, but this feels different.

Maybe, for so long, part of it has been your own gloom that’s obscured it all. Maybe if you didn’t bare your teeth to anybody who got too close, it could’ve been like this always. You hate to think that your own isolation could be some part your own fault. But how were you not to show your teeth when someone tried to reach their hand out to you?

It doesn’t matter now. You shove that all down and let yourself feel the slight warmth of the sun’s glow on your skin where it peeks through the clouds. It’s a nice day, you shouldn’t ruin it with those thoughts.

The sun’s begun making its descent when Soobin’s done. He takes a long drink of water, hissing with relief and crumpling down to the ground with his back to your stump.

“Are you making any way with that girl you were talking to me about?” you prompt.

Giving you a long look over his shoulder, he says, “Don’t.”

“What?” You laugh a little, raising your brows down at him. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You know what you’re doing,” he says, voice flat as he picks stickers out of his fingers.

Soobin’s had a thousand different crushes. There was that daughter of the shepherd, and then the wealthy merchant’s daughter and her long pretty hair, and then the neighbor… Well, you could go on. None of them ever really came to fruition for the poor guy. He thinks that it’s because he’s a poor farmer’s son, but you always tell him that it’s because he’s got an insistent mouth, and that he should be more grateful that you deal with him. Your lips turn up at the corners a little thinking about it—he’ll find the one eventually, but you like the indignant look on his face when you say it.

“I mean it!” you say, nudging him with your leg. “Tell me. I want to know.”

“You won’t even tell me what’s happening with you. Until one of us quits keeping secrets,” he says, placing accusation heavy over the words, “I’ll keep my dealings to myself. What’s it to you, anyway?”

Feeling the weight of his head as he lets it loll lazily against your thigh, you decide that it couldn’t hurt to tell him. The itch to tell somebody crawls under your skin. Especially to tell him. “You know the other day? When I was… being awful?”

His body shakes with a vindicated laugh. “If you’re nothing else, at least you’re self-aware.”

You skirt around that with your own, more awkward, laugh. It’s nice that he thinks so, but you don’t feel it. “Stop,” you huff and nudge him again. “I was foraging out where I usually go. But I guess I wandered out farther than I thought I did. You remember when they used to tell us stories, right? Like the bogeyman. That he’d come snatch us up if we didn’t listen.” Your mom especially had loved that one, back when she cared what became of you. Would she care again, if you told her that everything was fine? “Well, I don’t know if you remember the one about The Wild Hunt, but… Anyway, I was picking some stuff, and…”

Sitting up from his exhausted slouch, Soobin looks like he’s suddenly come back to life. “What?” he interrupts. His voice is strangely serious.

“What?” you say, brow creasing. “They travel here and there… but they were here. In the woods. Like, I heard them.”

Tersely, he asks, “What were you doing that deep in the woods?”

“I mean, I just kept on finding nice stuff until I just… was deeper.” You survey him. You hadn’t thought that he’d react like this. “So I ran, and then there was this guy,” you say, watching realization fall over his face. He knew those stories as much as you do—knew where you were going with this. He is as starkly superstitious as the rest of your people, you forgot. Pushing past the grimace on his face, you say, “And I knew that he was the king. The one from the stories. It was so weird; it’s like you can feel it. And I spoke to him, and then…”

Stood up now, he cuts you off once more. “Are you kidding?”

“Why are you being like that?” you say, messing with your skirts to quell the defensive bite in your tone. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t do anything? Are you trying to get killed?” He throws up his hard-working hands. “We have rules for a reason. Don’t go out into the forest, don’t make deals with faeries, don’t follow a banshee scream. And then you go and talk to the king of death? How am I not supposed to be upset about that? You know that…” Soobin blinks a few times as if second-guessing what he’s about to say, but he says it anyway. “You know that he’s the reason that they treat you how they do. You know that he’s the one who ruined your life. Why would you ever mess with that?”

You push yourself up from the ground, eyes burning. That stings like a cut. “He didn’t do it. None of it is his fault,” you say, furrowing your brows. “What are you trying to say, Soobin? Just say what you want to say. Come on.”

“He didn’t do anything?” He scoffs, letting a heavy silence hang suspended in the air for a moment before saying, “Is that what he told you? And you just believed it? Listen to yourself, does that make any sense? He’s played with your life like it’s some fucking toy, and now he’s come to rub it in your face. Think about it: do animals just fly into anybody else’s windows and die? Do the trees that they pick from just end up dead? It’s his fault that they all treat you the way you do.”

Mouth opening and closing, you don’t know what to say.

He sees the hurt in your burning eyes and tries to reel it back in. “What I’m trying to say is—”

“I know what you’re saying,” you say, grabbing up the lunch you’ve been nibbling on. “I know exactly what you’re saying. I just never thought you’d say it out loud.”

“Say what?” Soobin says, his voice raising behind you as you storm off.

That you think it’s my fault, you want to say. That they all die because I am a plague, and you are a charity worker for being my friend. Instead, you just leave and try to choke down the tightness in your throat.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You curl your arms around yourself, the night biting cold. Yeonjun had dragged you from bed, and who knows what hour of the night it is? If the heaviness beneath your eyes is to judge it by, it’s far too deep in the dead of night to be outside with your boots half-laced and nothing but your sleep chemise on.

You might’ve just stayed wrapped up in your blankets if you weren’t so lonely as you’ve been. Soobin’s been scarce. The most you see of him is in the fields from morning to afternoons. You hope that he’ll stop by your doorstep and knock so that you can groan about it but swing the door open anyway each time, but he doesn’t. He thinks that you won’t want to see him, and so he allows you your space.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s hard to be the one to come back after a conversation like that, though. You watch him from the windows and hope he understands at some point instead. It’s an awful lot easier.

Other than preparing meals and window watching, you’ve been up to nothing much at all. You hadn’t realized how much you had, but you feel him in his absence.

“It’s cold…” you say. The fog of breath that punctuates it makes your point. Whatever he’s brought you out here for, you have no doubt it’ll be something strange. The grin on his face tells you as much.

Leading the way, he heads for the Darkwood. “Only you would come rushing out without a cloak for your shoulders.”

“Well, only you would drag me from my nice, warm bed at this time of night. For what?”

“Can’t anything be a surprise with you?” he says, shooting you a cheeky glance over his shoulder. “Surprises are fun.”

“Surprises!” you say, working your legs to catch him. “Not surprises that involve you bringing me out into the woods. You know, it’s awfully suspicious. Somebody who sees this might think that I am the type to… sneak out with men.”

“Aren’t you now?”

Your lips tug down. “You know what I mean.”

He laughs in his airy way, a twig snapping under his foot. You’re well in the woods, now. Probably somewhere near where you’d first met him.

Lifting a brow, you look at him expectantly. Maybe a will-o’-the-wisp will come floating through with its light bouncing off the trees. That would be a nice surprise, you admit.

Yeonjun circles you. His presence behind you tingles in the way it always does, but true chills erupt when his breath puffs against your ear. “Close your eyes. I have something I want to show you.”

Your mind wanders back to what Soobin had gotten so twisted up about. It might be naive and reckless and against everything you ever learned, but you let your eyes fall shut to blackness. If he was going to hurt you, you imagine he’d have had that opportunity a mind-numbing amount of times before.

“Are they shut?” he asks, waiting for your nod. His voice comes from in front of you now. “I want you to keep them shut. You can’t open your eyes, or it will all go away. Okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, mind full of a bounty of questions. You don’t even know where to begin to assume what he’s got going on, so you stand there shifting your antsy feet.

There’s a strange, rustling sound that catches you off guard with your eyes closed. It drags on for a long moment. Curiosity pries at your eyes; you want nothing more than to just crack an eye open to spy the source of the ruckus.

It’ll be gone if you do, anyway.

You let out a surprised squeak as something rises up beneath you, as if risen from nothing more than the dirt and roots of the forest floor, bringing you up from the earth. You wobble and send your hands out to find a perch.

A horse. It’s a horse, its mane so tangled and windswept, but matted and clumped with leaves that crunch under your palm when you find them. It reeks of mud—everything around you begins to smell of earth and decomposition.

You know that if you open your eyes, you’ll find yourself sat upon the pale white steed of the Undead King, its eyes white and its knobby knees almost as famous as the leader of The Hunt himself. It chuffs beneath you.

“Are you ready?” Yeonjun says over your shoulder. You can hear the feral grin in his voice. It’s the leader of The Hunt, a creature of folklore, that sits behind you now. He curls an arm around your waist and tugs you closer to him, securing you against the wall of his chest. “Hold on tight, my love.”

The call of the wild, that horn, bellows again like it had the first time you heard it. Rather than coming from nearby as you thought it would, it dances between trees far off just like it had that time, too. Your heart jumps up into your throat.

Taking off with a howl, the Wild Hunt follows it.

You dig your fingers into Yeonjun’s at your waist. Weight melts away, and you know you’re in the air. Your belly swoops in tandem with the howls and hoots of the riders, heart palpitating to the hoofbeats. How there’s hoofbeats as you ride through the air, you’re not sure. The ghostly fleet manifests around you in vivid imagery, though you squeeze your eyes shut. They are wild enough to imagine just what they might look like: with their clothes and flesh in tatters, with their eyes beady or pale, with their hounds piercing the air with their calls and running alongside them, they are a perfect personification of freedom.

Whip-lash sends you reeling, body going rigid. You grit your teeth and squeeze your eyes harder, wishing that you’ll touch ground soon and that everything would become real again.

Yeonjun feels you go stiff. Bringing his head back to your shoulder from his own delight, he says, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Let it into your bones. Do you think I would let it hurt you?”

He is their leader. If it got too much, you know Yeonjun would be there to catch you. Curling your fingers into his, you release that tension and allow their drumbeat to echo through you.

And when it does, your blood begins to sing along. The wind whips your cheeks and your hair, and you begin to laugh with them. The Hunt twists and turns and dances through the air, an apparition in the night, but nothing more than that.

It comes to a slow, eventually, until the noise and even your steed crumbles back down into the dirt it appeared from. Your eyes pop open hoping to catch at least a glimpse of them, but only the dark forest and pale moonlight answer. Your legs threaten to give out on you, veins still thrumming, but, oh, do you feel alive.

You feel more alive than you ever have, more than you ever could have hoped to have known. Mind spinning, you stumble. Yeonjun catches and steadies you before you can go scraping your knees on a rock.

“Oh my fucking god,” you say.

The laugh that Yeonjun breaks into has you sending him a glare, but you break too. Everything about him is ironic; and how ironic indeed that Death himself should show you how to be alive, rather than to just live?

༺ ꘏ ༻

The air is so fresh in your lungs when you step outside that it nearly burns. You clutch your basket of warm fig tarts. Songbirds trill and fly between tree tops that slowly become more bare the deeper you fall into the season, singing their sweet songs that sound like new beginnings.

Raising your hem from the ground churned up into mud from the afternoon’s trickle, you prance into town with a lively pep in your step. You spent all last night making these—Yeonjun had kept you company, watching you how he always does as you pored over making them just right. His cruel snicker when the jam had simmered over flame for too long and became too thick bounces off your bones in a sweet melody. You’ve come to adore his wicked delight, the way his smile cracks over his face and the facetious raise of his brows, more than you fear it.

Sending small smiles to the people that you pass, you stop by a huddle of kids digging sticks into the mud. They look up at you with curious eyes, stopping to gawk.

“Hey, guys,” you say, pulling back the cloth laid over the sweets. “I’ve made some fig tarts. Do you like fig? I bet you’ll like them; they’re sweet.”

The kids stand up, eyes big as they share a look. They don’t let out so much as a peep before they scurry off home.

You blink. Well, you’re used to weird reactions, but that was… different. Picking up your deflated shoulders and hesitant limbs, you make a shoddy attempt at not letting it dampen your good morning. You were expecting wary looks, anyway.

You head down a little further toward the far side of your home village, the side that breaks off after a fenceline into a great, grassy field. There’s a bustle, mothers washing their clothes in pails and hanging them up to dry and a few others whispering at each other lowly as they go about their days.

An old woman so old her back curves and her fingers have gone knobby makes her way to wherever the day’s duty demands her to be. Your neighbor—an eccentric old lady bound in her times. You decide on her: the elderly are forgotten by the young. She might enjoy knowing that her neighbors still know she exists.

“Hello,” you say, showing her your basket with a hopeful, excited heart. “I have some treats that I was wanting to give out. I know they might not be much, but would you like one? I’m not the best baker, but I do it often enough.” A face like that, dragged down by her years on this earth and not long to death, has no doubt spent many years making meals for her family. You imagine your goods would be nothing beside hers, but it’s the gesture, no?

“Oh, girl,” she says, voice crackling as she clutches her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I’m afraid it’s best if you found yourself missing from this place. Hurry yourself up and spare the drama.”

The incessant cawing of a crow from a clawed tree fades into the background as you furrow your brows and lower your basket to ask, “...Huh?” Your belly goes up in knots; terrible knots done up tight and fast. You haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about. Elders always did speak a bit strange, though. It could be nothing much; she’s a stern old lady.

But her eyes are not angry and glaring in the way that a harrowed old hag might turn her nose up at the youth. They drag down with a cold pity.

“Listen to me, girl.” She points at you with one of those worn, sun-spotted hands. “You had best leave. The boy’s gone, and they are already not fond of you. Who will they point their fingers to?” the woman says. “I hardly know you, but I would hate to see it.”

The rest of her words fade into the roaring in your ears, the feral drumbeat of your heart like a wardrum in the cage of your ribs as it beats against them as if to escape from you. You don’t feel the basket in your hands, don’t feel the solidity of the earth beneath your feet, and don’t feel a single one of your thoughts like tangible things. They flit as if liquidated into a rotten, sick mush.

Nothing. You can think of nothing. Nothing real; nothing holding you to the earth.

“What?” Your voice hardly reaches your ears, but what does is weak and broken and like a plea for her to tell you that it’s not really what you think it is.

And if you could see or hear anything beyond your fraying little rift in reality, you would’ve heard the man coming up to you. You would’ve heard the words coming from his angry, sneering mouth, and would’ve done something when he picked up a pail of water, and you would’ve been shaken by the nasty ice water that runs down your frozen body and plasters your hair and clothes down as he pours it over you. But none of it cuts through your stupor.

He yells some awful, stabbing things at you, and a few others join him. They tell you that you are nothing but a plague, tell you to leave and to not come back here.

But this is your home. Where else would you go?

With your sopping wet dress clutched in your shaking fists as though that might keep you grounded, you choke down the tightening of your throat and sift through their faces, searching for his face. Those brown eyes, brown and always shining with nagging playfulness, do not come up anywhere. Jaw trembling, you search harder. Out on the field where he should be at this time of day, at your doorstep demanding that you go spend the day doing nothing with him, in someone’s yard helping them fix up a broken fence, no matter where you look, neither his broad silhouette nor his cheeky, dimpled face is there. You continue to stand stricken dumb, looking for him even though you know by the churning in your belly that it’s true, and you’re just hurting yourself trying to find him right where he should be.

Fine. Alive. Untouched by your disgusting, destructive presence.

When you can no longer fight the strangling tightness in your lungs and your dress is as heavy as your heart, you take off. The hem of your dress drags in mud and sticker bushes and catches on stray twigs, and you don’t know where you’re going, but you just run. You’ll give them what they want.

You stumble, probably like some lost, undead thing, until you find yourself at the edge of the forest. Only then do you let the wall of whittle-edged tears roll down your face. And you assume you sound like a choking, dying animal with how you choke and heave on them, but he was the one you might’ve dropped your head and cried to, so what’s the use of making it pretty? No; you let it all fall as it is.

Soobin’s dead. Soobin’s dead, and it’s nobody else’s but your own fault. You clutch your chest to staunch that old ache that’s grown teeth and tears at your heart; you have and will always be the end of everything that comes near. You are just as much the plague that you began to pretend, to believe, you weren’t. It was your stupid hope that maybe you could have something and not watch it become carrion that drove that pick. It was by your hope that he’s gone.

The hair on your arms begins to raise. You pick your head up and find Yeonjun standing in front of you.

There’s a few beats of long, dreadful quiet as he takes in the state of you. He drags his eyes down and they become liquid flame—something different from the impious delight that he is made of. He becomes the King of Death.

“What happened?” he says. The chills on your arms prickle furiously at the words, furling out distant and yet furious like the center of the fire.

You shake your head, wiping your soaked cheek.

“What the fuck happened?” he growls again, taking your face into his hand. “Who did this? Who did this to you, my love? I need you to tell me who the fuck did this to you.”

Letting the venom in your mouth out, you shove his chest and say, “Get away from me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

Yeonjun’s face twists up, looking scalded. Not surprised, though. “Don’t do this,” he says. “Let me hold you while it hurts. Don’t push me away. I can’t… I won’t lose you again.”

All the pieces that you had been putting into the corners of your mind snap together at that. As many suspicions as you had, though, it feels sour hearing it confirmed from his mouth. That you are his dead past lover, reincarnated or whatever you are. That it was his presence—because even though he stayed away for centuries, a part of him still lingered with you—that now has torn down everything you ever thought you could love. He, standing there in front of you like a kicked puppy, is the ruination of your life in the flesh. The flipping of your stomach is nauseating.

“I hate you,” you spit. “I hate you so much.” You repeat it a few more times, and you sob it into his chest as he takes you into his arms. “Is this what you wanted? You’ve been waiting for this forever, haven’t you? To find me again, so that you can die and fucking leave me here. So that you can make me exactly what you are, while you get your peace. You are a liar and a thief. All you’ve ever done is steal and take. How could you do it? Huh? Tell me…” Your voice trembles and staggers off. “Tell me how you made love to me, how you made me believe that you loved me, and all you ever wanted was to save yourself? You betrayed me.”

Pulling back, Yeonjun says, “No.”

“Yes,” you say, stumbling back away from him with a shaking, accusatory finger pointed at him. “Yes you did.”

Fingers itching to reach out to you, he holds them back by curling them into fists. “No. That’s not fair. I have spent an eternity loving you. I spent the entirety of my immortal, monstrous life searching for you, just so that I might find you in any form. I would have been glad to find you as a leaf in a tree, as long as I found you. But, then, I find you alive. Alive and back, as if… it never happened.” He steps toward you, aching to be near you. His voice wavers. “Please, don’t do this to me, love. Please, just let me have you again. I’ve waited… I’ve waited and I’ve waited, and I finally have you, and now you’re looking at me like I… Like I’d ever hurt you. Finding death—finally getting to die would be worth nothing if you weren’t there with me. It was never about that.”

“I could never love you,” you say, matching his steps forward with steps away from him. “I could never love a monster that does… Does nothing but kill. Take.” You know your words are cruel, but you need them to be. You need him to hurt, you need him to go so far away from you that never again will you cause another living thing’s death.

“You did.” Yeonjun’s mouth cracks into a pained smile, sharp at the corners. “You loved me just as much as I love you, once.”

“Just leave me. Leave me, and I wish to never see you again. If you love me, then you’ll give me that.”

He looks at you, clever eyes intense and glassy, for a long time. And then he says, “Would that make you happy? Would it make it so that you could live a happy life, and find yourself something to live for?”

What’s left for you? A small village that won’t ever embrace you? No, it wouldn’t fix your life. But you open your mouth and tell him, “Yes.”

“Okay,” he says, brushing his knuckles over your cheeks reverently. He swallows in your features, running over them for what he knows is the last time he’ll be seeing you—the very last time he’ll see the face of his undying love. When he finally opens his mouth again, his voice is gentle. “I’ll leave you. If my being here hurts you, then I won’t be selfish. I love you, darling.”

Don’t go, you want to tell him. Please don’t leave. Please, hold me. But your mouth is dry, and you let the radiant hurt in your chest stop you. You let him go.

༺ ꘏ ༻

There’s only one place you can think of going to. It’s the only place your vagrant feet take you.

His spot still is held sacred by the flattened, gold wheat stalks. Your best friend, still living here on Earth in at least one way even if he’s not here to listen to your stupid rambling. And he would maybe complain, but he’d always listen.

The last thing you’d done was fight with him. What an awful thing—what an awful way to repay him for being the only one who ever dared to get close.

You sit in your spot, beside his, and rest your chin on your knees. If only the ground beneath you would open up and swallow you whole. You’d deserve it.

What’s left for you? Is there a place in the world that would keep you happily once they see what you do? No. There is not. You wish you knew what to do; you wish you had somebody to ask.

Releasing a long, tight breath, you just sit and wait for something to give you answers. A gentle breeze makes your hair dance, but it does not whisper anything to your ears. Something’s circling over head, but it doesn’t caw in the cadence of his laughter.

The day moves along without you. You’re not sure how long you sit, but it stretches somewhere between a few minutes and eternity. No matter how long you wait, there are no answers. No matter how long you mull over it.

Conceding, you begin to push yourself up from the ground. A rustle in between the foliage stops you before you stand.

A tawny hare leaps out in front of you. It sniffs around you, nose twitching. Then it stands back on its haunches. It stares straight at you, an intelligent light in its eyes that knits your brows. The wild thing stands there with a purpose that is uncharacteristic of a forest animal.

But entirely familiar in the face of your best friend. That shine in its eyes as it stands there, nose still twitching, makes your chest tighten up.

“Hey,” you say, as if it might answer you. Your eyes well up with hot tears again. Of course, it doesn’t.

Maybe you’ve gone mad, but you know that it’s him. That idiot, coming to show you that he’s okay in the afterlife—to visit one last time and to let you know that you shouldn’t worry for him or cry for him. Look at him, full of life once again, he seems to say. The hare blinks its beady eyes. It lingers there for a long time, the ease of peace found in his gaze that Soobin hadn’t had in this life, saying that there is still something waiting out there for us once we go. You reach out a hand. He does not flinch as you scratch behind its ear.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’m glad to know you’re alright. I know what I need to do, now.”

He blinks.

You laugh a hoarse, breathy laugh, familiar in only the way that Soobin could achieve. “You look stupid.”

Indignantly, the hare stops a bratty foot in a way reminiscent of one of Soobin’s huffs before it settles back down onto its forelegs and scurries off. He goes to live out this new form of life, because it’s true: life does not end in death. He’s shown you that.

Maybe, like this, he’ll find that pretty lady that loves him the way he deserves. That loser.

༺ ꘏ ༻

You spend only one night in your home and you know that what you’ve chosen is right. After spending your day out in the field, you sneak under night’s cover into your husk of a room and let yourself sleep there under the covers one last time. When morning breaks through the window, you gather your weary bones up and leave.

You run into your mother on the way out. She doesn’t yell at you to leave, but her eyes have gone cold. Colder than you’re used to. You’ve killed again, in every way that counts. So you don’t bother with bidding her or any of them any grand goodbyes. You couldn’t handle the relief you might find falling over them, should you.

Plopping down to the floor, you take a few bites of the cheese and bread lathered in sweet jam that you’d swiped from the kitchen. The grass is long and willows in the wind, bending and dancing prettily. It’s so soft; you enjoy the feeling of it beneath your fingers in your quiet serenity. The scent of it, fresh over the baseness of dirt, you breathe into your lungs.

It would be the loveliest place to spend the rest of eternity.

For the first time, Yeonjun appears in front of you rather than behind you. He materializes from nothing, his elbow on his knee as casual as if he’d been sat there the whole time. The darkness beneath his eyes seems heavier, but then again you know that exact heaviness. It sits right in the very center of you.

You both are quiet for a bit. You let the tall grass whisper, instead.

“Bread?” you say and slant your lips into a smile. Bringing it up, you offer it to him.

His smile wrinkles his nose and curls at the edges. Entirely him. Yeonjun accepts the bread, ripping a bite out before throwing it away into the sea of green. Once he’s chewed, he leans in and captures your lips in a kiss that’s utterly at odds with his sharp mouth. Your lips move over each other gently, save for an indulgent nip or bite here and there.

He pushes you back into a bed of sweetgrass, never letting your lips go. Not to breathe, not to say something that’ll pale in comparison to the sweetness of your mouths on one another. He kisses you until he’s had enough to fulfill a lifetime without it, and then some more.

“My love,” he whispers into your skin, his breath hot on your collarbone. “Mine,” he says, pressing a kiss into the column of your neck, and then he says it again with a hot kiss to the place where your dress suggests your breasts. He says it a handful more times as he pushes your skirts up your thighs. “My love forever. I waited for you so long, and I would do it again.” Lowering his voice to a honeyed whisper, he adds, “I would find you no matter what.”

Laughing softly, you run your fingers through his raven hair to better see his eyes. You know he would.

Gently giving you one more of his lingering kisses that make your skin tingle, right into your bare shoulder, he presses into you. You loose a soft breath, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. The beating in your chest slows to a content purr as he begins languid thrusts in and out of you, rolling pointedly and unhurried.

Yeonjun makes love to you in a thousand dusted kisses and sweet words, your hands holding each other’s soft edges. Yeonjun traces the lines of you, taking the pads of his thumb down your cheeks and your lips and then his hand over the swell of your breasts and down your belly and over your thighs. Clamping down on him as your belly grows tight in the way it had the first time you had done this, your thighs begin to shake.

Breathlessly, as you hurdle over the edge, all that you can say is, “I love you, ‘Junnie.”

Yeonjun smiles at you and then presses his face into your neck. He doesn’t even brace himself against the grass to chase his own peak. Neither of you want this to end; you want to hold on to this moment and let it span forever. Slowly, Yeonjun rolls up into you until his hips finally stutter and he cums into you, his cheeks pink. The weight of him above you as he shakes with your shared ecstasy, and even as you both have come down and are nothing but lazy, is the only thing in this world. He is the only thing in this world.

Once you’ve both evened your breathing out, you roll apart and face each other, still just two forms bending the grass into your shapes. Blinking slowly and digesting his features one at a time—the angle of his eyes, softened but never tamed, the line of his nose, the line of his mouth always so proud and playful, and that pretty dot below his left eye—you let them solidify fully in your mind.

“Yeonjun,” you say, finally meeting his eyes across from you. “I want to go. I’m ready.”

The gentle, knowing look that he gives you soothes over the way your heart begins to race in your chest in rebellion. “I know,” he says.

Of course he had known. Yeonjun had been called here to ferry you into the afterlife. He had known the moment he appeared in front of you that his last soul to reap would be you; an ironic circle of karma that should be cruel, but you two make it something sweet. Chewing on your lip, you will your hands to not shake as you curl toward him. You’re no longer scared of going. You know that if you’ll be with him, it will be okay. It won’t be so scary. A hot tear rolls down your temple and then drops into your hair. “Will you be with me? I won’t be there alone?”

He tucks some hair behind your ear reverently and then leaves his hand there. “I don’t know,” he answers. “But I won’t leave you. I’ll stay right here with you.”

You lay there for a long time. Chatting and giggling and just looking into each other's eyes, until your heart becomes slow and all you feel is the wind singing in your blood. Yeonjun presses one final kiss to your forehead.

Maybe, in some years, somebody might dig up your bones and find you immortalized like this in your love. Your bones bowing toward each other, as if even death were not enough to stop you from reaching for each other. Or maybe they’ll just find yours, and Yeonjun still curling into them how you know he will for an eternity more.

Either way, the going is still slow and gentle, as death always is.

🪶 ⦂ tears. omfg i cried writing this which could totally be me being a bitch baby but it DAMN. omfg.

rꫀׁׅܻblogs & asks arꫀׁׅܻ always apprꫀׁׅܻciatꫀׁׅܻd!

▸ tׁׅagᥣׁׅ֪ꪱׁׅstׁׅ @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @hyucktapes , @bewitchless , @prince-jjae , @blankliving , @yaoizee , @stormy1408 , @missychief1404 , @izzyy-stuff , @miukuui , @lunesdesire , @sunoolver , @cherricola-star , @xylatox , @filmnings , @hearteyes4hobi , @hyunj00 , @kangtaehyunfan029 , @caratcakemoa, @usuallyunlikelyfox , @zi-vian , @brrytears , @stormy1408 , @soobabby , @nshmrarki , @dontwannacry04 if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!

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evangesworld · 3 days ago

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pisces placements

pisces sun

pisces moon

pisces rising

pisces stellium

12th house stellium

pisces lilith

You have to have an emotional outlet. No. It doesn’t have to be a career, but you need it to be apart of your routine. here are some things that can turn the stress and mundane into an outlet:

Listen to music

- this is probably one of the easiest ones to do. Music is so accessible. So make a playlist for every mood or just for fun lol. but make sure it’s high frequency and good for your soul. example: i like to listen to my childhood bops to get me to maintain a positive vibe or just positive instrumentals.

Journal

- ive been a consistent journaler for about 5 years. i don’t do it everyday but i mainly journal when im in a negative state. It helps put my mind at ease. It’s also beneficial long term, to see how your mental has progressed!

Scrapbooking

- this may be a little old school. be this is a good way of getting off of your phone and creating sentimental memories. you can also add your own creativity and admire it for years to come!

Poetry

- i look at poetry as the love child between traditional journaling and song writing. poetry is a unique and creative way of expressing your feeling and experiences. so give it a try and challenge your creative word play!

Record yourself sing ( just for you)

- now not everyone is a singer. but pisces placements are know to be very artist and many can sing so if you do, do it and record yourself. keep the video/audio for yourself. make a playlist of yourself for yourself and keep it for your future self.

Paint

- painting can seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. if u want to, just throw some color on a canvas and you’ll see u don’t have to be a professional to create a masterpiece. (or just watch some bob ross videos!🤷🏽‍♀️)

Draw

- learning to draw is so cool. i can be alittle intimidating like painting but it doesn’t have to be something that’s intricate. start with something simple.

Take pictures

-take pictures of everything. romanticize your life. make it interesting and make it fun. time moves fast, you have to capture it.

Watch comedic tv

- when i’m feeling down, i like to watch light hearted tv. and more than likely i get a laugh or two out of it. laughing is good for the mind, body, and soul. and it’s a natural cure. so watch something funny!

Watch low stim tv shows

-watching low stimulation shows can help alleviate some anxiety and level your mood (especially at night!) my personal favorite is bob’s burgers but there are many other low stim shows.

don’t copy/steal any of my work @evangesworld ©️2025

#astrology #astrology observations #astro notes #astrology notes #pisces #12th house placements #pisces rising #12th house

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omorithedreamermod · 2 days ago

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FEBRUARY DEVLOG - 2

Though it'd be fun to showcase a little bit of my portrait process, even if it's not specific! Anyways, it's time for the fourth DEVLOG...and...

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

I got sick. I am still sick. This unfortunately has thrown a wrench in my productivity despite my best efforts. March release will still be possible, it just probably won't be as early as I was originally hoping, sadly. I hope I'll be back to full productivity soon. On the bright side, basically all contributions made by others are complete, so everything left to do is just on me. The list is a lot but I chose to do 85% of the mod, so it is on me to see it through!

That's why, rather than listing progress this week, I'll just list everything that still needs to be done.

THINGS LEFT TO DO:

General writing is complete, I just need to do some more flavor text and a bunch of NPC dialogue to certain locations that got completed later on.

There's a couple bits of sprite art, but barely any. Most of that is completely done.

There is only one more map to be made. A super small one! :D

Three music tracks are still pending. The full OST for the PRELUDE (including the 8 from the DEMO) is 48 tracks! I named them all recently it was very fun. Everyone worked hard!

Cutscene writing is complete up until a certain point. There's only one more section that needs writing. But, a lot of cutscenes still need to be programmed, so I really hope I can get better soon so I can do all of that. There's also other general programming to be done that I need to get around to.

BASIL real world portraits are done. SUNNY's are not. He doesn't need as many as BASIL, though.

I still have a couple NPCS to hand draw. Nothing fancy, though.

Badges all need to be made and then implemented. Wish me luck, there's quite a few!

After that, the playtest will be able to be sent off to people to bugtest while I then continue onto:

Drawing three whole cutscenes. Two on the longer side, one shorter.

(If time allows) A still image of DREAMER holding a thing! (Its a secret)

A certain separate thing needs to be completely written, then have a bunch of things drawn for it.

Credits video!!! Very important!!!!!

After everything above is implemented, I need to draw the additional art for the trailer...

CONCLUSION:

Hoping I can get back on track soon. I'm still sick and I'm frustrated about that. I'm really hoping I get better soon, as it's really set me behind on my intended schedule. Still, the goal is for full PRELUDE release in March, and I believe it's completely possible as long as I recover sooner than later. I know it might seem like a lot, but I did the DEMO all on my own. Trust me! March release is the plan! And the help I did get with sprite art (so many npcs!!!), OST(so many tracks...), some maps, and being able to ask people questions about programming when I'm lost has been absolutely wonderful. I wouldn't have been able to do everything on my own this quickly.

Though, I do hope after PRELUDE and I revamp the signups, I'll get even more help, because the plans for the future are quite hefty haha. I'll scale back if I need to, of course. Either way, I'm really excited, even if I am anxious and want it out ASAP. I'm so excited for everyone to see what THE DREAMER is truly going to be like!

#omori #omori mod #omori game #devlog #mod #omori fanart #art #omori sunny #omori basil

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miedei · 1 day ago

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plots and plans

the team's gotten to know spencer's gf very well... but now there's a new face in the bau (aka emily gets initiated into the team... by meeting mystery girl!)

a/n: this fic took an ungodly amount of time its been in my drafts for months but <333 mystery girl <333 (this is fr just a bau team fic at this point)

(look at '#mystery girl!au' on my blog to see more musings about them <3)

cw: alcohol consumption, reader referred to as a woman, reader is around spencer’s age in s1/s2 (23-24), the team plotting, use of y/n eugghhhhh

wc: 3.4k

part one | part two | mlist

(reblogs are the only way to promote fics on tumblr! please reblog if you enjoyed it :) )

SSA Emily Prentiss is perfectly wonderful. Garcia thinks so, and so does Morgan. Sure, they miss Elle, and they miss working with her, but leaving the BAU was something she’d needed. Besides, Penelope wasn’t letting Elle out of the team’s outings anyway.

So, the two of them really have nothing against Prentiss. She’s kind, good at her job, and fits into the dynamic of the team well. However, at the end of her third case with the team, something of interest happens that makes them start to plot against her. Lovingly.

Morgan’s on the phone with Garcia, letting her know that the unsub was in custody, when Emily comes up to him, tapping his shoulder. Without hanging up, he draws the phone away from his ear, turning to her questioningly.

“Morgan. Can I ask you something? About Reid?” At his sound of agreement, she plows on.

“Does he… He’s so young. Do you think he’s had the social experiences he needs?” She shakes her head slowly. “He’s so sweet that it makes me worry. I mean, a kid going to university at 14, that’s got to make you miss out on a lot of things, right?” She gestures to Spencer, and Morgan turns to see him.

Spencer is fiending off the officers mobbing him with thanks and congratulations for his breakthrough on the case. A smile creeps up on Morgan’s face, watching him fiddle with his hands and bow his head nervously, trying to find a way out of the group.

“I mean, yeah, Reid’s a little clueless in some ways, but I don’t think it really affects him too much. He’s learned to adapt quickly.”

Emily frowns, still looking at Spencer. “I feel like there are things everyone deserves to experience, you know? He hasn’t been able to do so many things because he’s achieved so much. I mean, he’s never even dated someone, has he? Did you see the way he handled that witness?”

Morgan bites back the urge to laugh uncontrollably. Earlier in the case, Spencer was interrogating a witness, Morgan, Emily and Gideon watching through the one-way mirror. He recalls the way the woman grabbed hold of Spencer’s patterned tie, twisting the fabric in her fingers with a sly smile. Spencer, the sweetheart he is, had recognised the flirting, but did his best not to mention it, pulling his tie out of her grip multiple times as he stuttered through his questions, until Gideon came in to save him.

Morgan recognised that for what it was, Spencer’s incredulity that anyone other than you, the person he’s so obsessed with, would ever try something with him.

But Emily, poor, sweet, Emily, had assumed the same thing the rest of the team had, years ago. That Spencer was nothing more than an inexperienced nervous wreck, that had never even kissed a girl. Morgan shamefully remembers the time he’d been proven wrong of this same assumption.

Emily’s face is so earnest, that Morgan almost doesn’t want to pop the bubble, disturb her impression of Reid. Instead, he just pats her shoulder with the hand not holding his phone.

“Trust me, Prentiss. Reid’s missed a few things, but he’s fine.”

Walking away from her, he remembers that he didn’t hang up the phone, bringing it up to his ear to hear Garcia speaking rapidly, clearly having heard his exchange with Emily.

“-and she doesn’t know! Oh my god, you hunk, wouldn’t that be so good? She’d experience what we did back then and-” Morgan cuts her off.

“Babygirl, what? I didn’t catch that first bit, who’s going to experience what?”

Garcia takes a deep breath, and Morgan can picture her smile. “Okay, I know you're always thinking, ‘what is the wonderful thing about having the most beautiful and brilliant woman you’ve ever seen in your life?’, and, sweetheart I’ll tell you. It’s that I have a wonderful, wonderful brain, and I have a plan we have to set in motion.”

Derek sighs, but he knows he’s all in before she even says the word. “Alright, princess. Hit me with it.”

Garcia insists that the plan must be unfolded in three stages. Three stages, in order to make sure that Emily’s introduction to you will be just as bewildering as it was to them.

Stage 1: Confirmation.

Emily’s assumption of Spencer’s inexperience had to be nurtured, demonstrated to her, to lull her into a false sense of security, the way the team had for far too long.

Morgan and Garcia begin just one week after the case, a paperwork day where the team is confined to the bullpen for hours. Emily is sat at her desk, across the aisle from Morgan’s, when Garcia walks by, a phony excuse for her presence spilling out of her mouth.

“Just got to drop these files off to Gideon!” She speaks too loudly, to no one in particular, and Morgan groans internally at her unsubtlety. Emily quirks an eyebrow at him, but he doesn’t say anything, even when Garcia taps her nose in a very exaggerated manner.

No time to cover up for her, Morgan’s got work to do, and a time limit to boot.

“So, Prentiss. You’ve had three cases here so far, you’ve gotten to know the team. I wanna know, what are your impressions of all of us?” Emily narrows her eyes at him, but swivels her chair so she’s facing him. Bingo.

He grins as she leans forward, speaking lightly. “My impressions? What, you want me to profile you guys?”

He holds up a finger. “Ah ah ah. I’m a profiler too, don’t act like you haven’t been doing that to us since the day we met. Now, tell me. Why don’t you start with, say, Reid?” He winces internally, hearing the eagerness in his voice. Despite that, Emily replies readily.

“Well, I’m probably just going to tell you things you already know. He’s brilliant, insecure, anxious about not only himself but us, worries about his mother all the time. Socially unsure of himself, especially in non-professional settings.” As she speaks, Spencer walks into the bullpen from Gideon’s office, accompanied by Garcia, whose eyes are filled with poorly-contained mischief.

“...and, my good doctor, she was flirting with you! Didn’t you see the way she tried to give you coffee for free?” An expression of puzzlement flits across Spencer’s face, looking at Garcia as he grips the file in his hand.

“Garcia, why are we talking about this again? That happened weeks ago, and I still don’t think she was doing anything more than-” She cuts him off with a palm facing him, barreling forward with her rant, eyeing Prentiss blatantly as she speaks.

“You never think they’re doing anything more until they’re the ones gripping those little ties of yours. Spencer, you don’t think anyone is ever flirting with you!” Prentiss nods at Morgan, speaking under her breath with a smirk.

“Uncomfortable in non-professional settings, especially romantic ones.” She sits back in her desk chair, swivelling away as Garcia ushers Spencer to his desk, ignoring all of his questions.

Spencer sits with a huff, confused. He pulls out his phone surreptitiously.

SPENCE <3: They’re being weird. Again.

Garcia has filled JJ in, and she is ecstatic. She still remembers the horrifying embarrassment that she hadn’t realised something so huge about her best friend. It might be a little juvenile, but it will definitely bring her a little comfort if Emily, profiler extraordinaire, makes the same mistake.

It’s five days later, and they’ve moved onto the second phase of the plan.

Step 2: Doubt.

Garcia has decided that sowing seeds of confusion, the way the team had been confronted that one time at the bar, was the way to make sure Emily has the full experience of being one-upped by that infuriating man, according to her.

JJ’s role is the whisperer, making sure that Emily witnesses suspicious activity. She’s taking this immensely seriously, Garcia having impressed upon her the responsibility of this guise.

Walking past Spencer’s desk, she shoots a glance at Emily, confirming her distraction, before speaking into the room, “Everyone had a good day off yesterday? Spence, went to that exhibit at the Living Museum?”

A dreamy smile flashes over Spencer’s face, before he makes sure to school his features, allowing only a small grin to remain. “Um, yeah. We went to go see the aviary, they’ve got some new Southeast Asian birds in.” Yes. JJ resists the urge to smirk, but her hopes are quickly dashed when Spencer moves on without a word. “I think Gideon would really enjoy it actually, I’ve been meaning to…” She groans internally, tuning out of his meandering ramble about bird migration patterns. There’s no way Emily clocked that tiny ‘we’.

JJ isn’t one to give up easily, though. Any good plan requires patience, so she waits another day before attempting again.

The team is on the jet on the way to a case, and JJ is sitting strategically at the table with Emily, Derek, Spencer, and Garcia on the grainy laptop screen. Garcia’s hands fly around animatedly as she finishes describing the state of the case.

Hotch raises his head from the case file, proceeding to assign everyone preliminary tasks, when JJ nods at Garcia subtly, and watches as she begins to rush around her office in a whirl, finally snatching up her cell phone. It’s a wonder that no one else notices the rush of movement on the screen, leaving JJ holding her breath, hoping that Emily or Spencer don’t catch wind.

Finally, two minutes later, Garcia sits back down at her desk, feigning nonchalance.

“Yep! Okay, sounds like you guys all have it under control, so— I’m going to go, do my techy things in my techy room. Okay? Garcia out!”

The image of her disappears from the screen, and JJ grips her mug tightly, fearing that Garcia gave it away. Gideon chuckles, but other than that, it seems that everyone has written it off as a regular Garcia-ism. Thank god. Hotch continues his spiel.

A few seconds later, Spencer’s cell phone rings, the ringtone different from the one everyone is used to hearing when he’s called by one of the team members, but JJ recognizes the 8-bit rendition of Vivaldi’s Summer that you helped him set up for your number.

She can see Emily tilt her head from next to her, but JJ resists the urge to look up, keeping her eyes trained on the case file in her hands, and nodding along with Hotch’s words.

The sound of Spencer rustling around for his phone meets her ears, and the subtle sigh of happiness that he lets out when he sees the caller ID. The beep of him accepting the call and standing to walk to the kitchenette float through the cabin, and the whispered ‘excuse me’ when he walks into the curtained room.

JJ can almost hear the confusion radiating from Emily, knowing that the newer agent’s utterly baffled at the sight of Spencer missing out on the discussion currently happening.

She can only pat herself on the back for having maneuvered Emily into the seat closest to the kitchenette, too, because the way she stiffens when hearing Spencer’s saccharine-sweet voice say ‘hey, angel’ is just the cherry on top.

JJ whips out her cell phone, texting Garcia discreetly that the plan was a success, receiving a flurry of emojis in return. Unseen, Gideon looks over her shoulder.

In the kitchenette, Spencer furrows his brows, confused.

“Wait, Garcia told you I needed to talk?”

Your tinny voice flows through the phone and into his ear.

“Yeah! She texted and said you asked for me but wouldn’t call for some reason? I don’t know, it was strange. You know I don’t call you when you’re on a case, but I thought it was an emergency or something.”

He sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.

“I told you, they’re being weird! I asked Morgan what was going on and he just laughed.”

Your matching sigh rings out. “If they’re not going to tell you, I think there’s nothing to do but let it happen until it comes out. They always tell in the end, anyway.”

His shoulders slump in annoyance, but he begins to nod.

“I guess you’re right. It’s still annoying.”

The case wraps up four long days later, and the team pile into a booth at O’ Keefe’s all in similar states of sleep-deprived delirium. Spencer would much rather be at home right now, but Garcia was persuasive as usual, crooning on about how ‘your ladylove gets you every day, can’t you give us one evening?’.

Despite his love for the team, their increased strangeness hasn’t abated over the days they were working.

Even now, JJ, Derek and Penelope sit across from Spencer in the booth, huddled around each other and whispering behind cupped hands. Granted, they weren’t this obvious over the last few days, but their drinks have only weakened their resolve to not let Spencer and Emily in on whatever they’re doing, not broken it.

Making up his mind to ignore them, Spencer has resorted to leaning into the other end of the booth, chatting idly with Gideon, Hotch and Emily. Hotch is smilier than usual, three beers deep and showing them a seemingly endless amount of baby pictures of Jack from his wallet.

He can’t help but smile at the grainy photos of the chubby baby, grinning to himself at the memory of the last time he saw Jack.

He’d been leaving the office to meet you, and ran into Hotch and Haley in the elevator, stroller in tow. The image of you excitedly waving at little Jack, holding out your hand and letting him grip on to your index finger is burned into his brain. He’ll probably never forget it, eidetic memory or not.

The multiple drinks he’s had allow a lovestruck look to settle on his face as he half-listens to Hotch’s tales. They also make sure that he doesn’t notice the puzzled look that Emily flashes at him, same as the ones she’s been sneaking for days now.

However, no amount of drinks can let him ignore the strange way that Gideon is acting. The stately profiler is normally rather talkative on nights like these, subtly teasing the team or devolving into long tangents about an old far-fetched story.

Tonight, however, he’s silent, merely nodding along to Hotch’s words.

Spencer can’t help but be weirded out, especially when he catches Gideon looking over at him with an expression of repressed mirth, as if he knows something Spencer doesn’t. It’s slightly infuriating, the way it feels as though everyone is keeping things from him these days.

He knows it’s not exactly the smartest thing to do, but he offers to go to the bar for another round of drinks. If they’re going to be weird, he might as well have something to help tide him over.

You’re at home when Gideon calls, informing you that Spencer’s gotten more drunk than usual, and it’s probably a good idea that you come get him.

As you pull on your coat, you can hear Spencer ranting loudly about Rachmaninoff in the background, laughing to yourself when Gideon assures you that he’s fine.

(Curiously, you hear an unfamiliar voice question Gideon, ‘Who’re you calling?’ before he hangs up.)

Arriving at the dimly lit bar, you crane your neck to try and glimpse Spencer and his coworkers, coming up blank.

You’re just about to call Gideon again when a suspiciously swaying, lanky individual catches your eye. Sure enough, Spencer is standing by a wall, gripping a glass in both hands and staring into the middle distance, seemingly alone.

Pocketing your cell phone, you make your way over to him, feeling a familiar infatuated smile start to bloom on your face.

“Hey, handsome. You here alone?” He blinks rapidly before focusing on you, eyes widening dramatically.

“You’re here! How are you here, I thought-” He hiccups, the action causing his entire body to wobble, your hand shooting out to steady him.

“I thought you were at home!” He takes the hand you have on his waist, tugging you closer until he can drape himself against your side, tall frame hunched over you.

You have to giggle, widening your stance so you can support the two of you as you look around the bar, hoping to find any of his coworkers.

Unfortunately, you come up blank, assuming they're in the booths towards the back that you can’t see. Sighing, your hand comes up to rub at the nape of his neck, causing Spencer to sigh happily, bending even further so that his face is buried in your hair.

“Spence, where’s the team? We’ve gotta say goodbye before we go,” You murmur softly, feeling him relax further and further. His voice is higher than normal, muffled due to his refusing to raise his head from yours.

“I dunno, they’re sitting… somewhere, and Emily said she’d come find me after I came here. Did you know, she listens to Eric Carmen? I was telling her about the lawsuit Rachmaninoff’s estate filed against him, and…”

He must keep talking, you can feel the vibrations against the crown of your head, but he’s shifted his face to where his mouth is pressed against your scalp, taking with it any hope of understanding his words.

You’re waiting patiently for him to finish, when a dark-haired woman catches your eye. She stands a few feet away from you, peering at you curiously, as if trying to suss something out. Her face is obscured due to the shadowy lights, but she looks vaguely familiar.

Stopping your ministrations on Spencer’s neck, you entreat him to look up.

“Hey, do you know who that is?” He raises his head with a heaving sigh, as if it’s taking all his energy. He nods once, before returning his face to your hair, snatching your hand and placing it on the back of his neck again.

“Yeah, it’s Prentiss.” He falls silent after that, but at least he gave you something.

You’ve heard a lot about Emily Prentiss from him, although you haven’t had the chance to meet her yet. Waving her over, you smile brightly.

“Hi! You’re Emily?”

She walks over to you, expression wary, until she catches a proper glimpse of Spencer’s face, at least, what’s visible of it.

“Reid? It is you…” Her face is bewildered, confused, looking at you.

“Sorry, who are you?” You stick out the hand that Spencer isn’t holding hostage, shaking hers.

“Hi, I’m Y/N, his girlfriend. It’s really nice to meet you, I’ve heard great things from Spencer and the others.” She looks more stunned, if that’s possible, but stutters out a greeting.

It reminds you of the time you met the rest of the team, the way they’d stared incredulously at you when Spencer introduced you. Thinking back to Penelope’s multiple texts confirming that you weren’t coming tonight, it seems you’ve figured out why they’ve been acting weird.

You can’t help but smile pityingly at her, knowing how she’s feeling. Gesturing at the man clinging on to you, you give her an out from the conversation.

“I think I should be taking him home. Would you mind telling the rest where we went? I don’t want them to worry.”

She nods wordlessly, watching after you as you slowly lead Spencer out of the bar and into the night.

SSA Emily Prentiss is a profiler. A spy. She’s accustomed to learning everything there is to know about an individual within a few days of knowing them. It’s for these reasons that she stands, dumbstruck, in the middle of O’ Keefe’s.

Spencer Reid has a girlfriend. And she didn’t figure it out??

She resolves to go back through the profiling notes she’d taken in her time at the academy. Maybe twice.

Shuffling back to the booth, she’s stuck in her head, eyes wide and thoughts flickering at ten times their normal speed. It’s clearly noticeable, Derek looking concerned when she slides into her seat once more.

“Prentiss? Are you okay?”

She reaches out to snag her beer, turning the glass in her hand. Her voice is low, still confused as to how she missed it.

“Spencer’s girlfriend came to take him home.”

Her words incite identically incredulous squawks from JJ, Morgan and Garcia, all of them incensed.

“You met her? She wasn’t going to come tonight, we had a plan!” Penelope exclaims in frustration, looking around the table.

Gideon merely shrugs, his amused half-smile finally emerging.

“Plan took too long. Took it into my own hands.”

Morgan has to hold Penelope back from lunging at him.

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saintvainglorious · 5 hours ago

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Fics I Enjoyed in February - DC Comics Fic Rec List Part 3

To the shock of precisely no one, I'm still in DC Comics hell. Enjoy the fruits of my labor (reading so so many fics)

Here's fic recs Part 1 and Part 2!

Individualized Education Plan by @cowboysorceror & @deadchannelradio (General Audiences, 7k, 2024) Dick goes to Damian's parent-teacher conference. Damian endures the consequences of Dick being an extraordinarily attractive man. Left me wheezing on my bus ride to work, this fic is hysterical.

“Richard,” he says, in tones of the deeply suffering, “this place is a hostile environment. I must be collected post-haste, as after this latest indignity I am dropping out. Come at once, or I may die here.”

In Service by @smilebackwards (Teen & Up, 13k, 2023) Bruce refuses to let Tim be Robin. Tim, still determined to help, asks Alfred to let him train to be Bruce's next butler. I could not stop squeeing as I read this, deeply wholesome and great worldbuilding to boot.

Tim rings the doorbell of Wayne Manor for the third time in as many days, and for the third time, Mr. Pennyworth opens the heavy oak door. He looks tired and careworn and Tim knows for certain that he’s choosing the right thing now. Mr. Wayne isn’t going to let him anywhere near the Robin suit, but maybe Tim doesn’t need it. There’s another tack he can try.

this year's love by @flybynightwing (Teen & Up, 20k, 2023) A thoughtful and tender exploration of how Dick and Kory might get back together post-Infinite Crisis, featuring Tim being a little troll, Dick & Kory having So Many Issues to work through, and Donna not getting paid enough to deal with this.

Dick and Kory get back together while on vacation. It goes beautifully. If only vacations could last forever.

descartes by @deadchannelradio (Teen & Up, 5k, 2024) Jason finds out how weird Slade acts towards Dick. Yet another fic by deadchannelradio that had me cackling out loud.

“I’m going to kill him,” Jason decides aloud. “Next time I see that man, I’m gonna kill him.” “No, Jason, do not,” Dick says in the same tone Jason uses to tell his dog not to chew on his boots.

The Threat by @jackhawksmoor (General Audiences, 2k, 2022) Damian has some pointed opinions about the way Bruce treats Dick. A gripping Damian POV fic - I love a Damian who expresses how much he cares by via emotional manipulation, and Bruce's reaction is equally tantalizing.

"What are you talking about?" His father sounded puzzled. He had that tone in his voice that Damian always hated to hear. That careless, American tone. His father had never needed to earn his place in a family, so the idea that someone could take it away from him if he wasn’t worthy of it hadn't even occurred to him. Not yet.

A Talon After My Own Heart by @wildsofmarch (Teen & Up, 13k, 2022) A surprisingly well-adjusted Talon!Dick goes on a mission for Slade. I rec the whole How to Train Your Talon series, but this one's my personal favorite. They're so damaged your honor it's great.

There’s a Talon lying on his floor, guzzling his good whisky, when Slade walks into his safe house in San Francisco. “What are you doing here?” he says as he draws his sidearm and slides the safety off. Robin — Dick, he reminds himself — showing up unannounced is never a good thing. “Relax. I’m not here to kill anyone,” says Dick.

Leap, Fall, Fly by @malcyon (Explicit, 15k, 2019) Post-Red Robin, Tim and Kon go on patrol together, and then they go home. This fic is 100% my headcanon for how Tim and Kon would get together if they didn't start dating while Tim was Robin. Gorgeous, peak, no notes.

He tries to use his voice, “You have one of my shirts?” Tim looks at him, amused. “Dude. I have, like, four.” Kon figures some stuff out. Tim helps.

Putting both hands over my mouth, I can only hope nothing's gonna come out by @hmslusitania (Teen & Up, 26k, 2024) Tim and Jon (now both in their 20s due to Jon's canon aging-up) pretend to date. Kon and Damian proceed to lose their minds. Funny, angsty, and ultimately really heartwarming.

“How unethical would it be to let him keep thinking we’re dating just to try and figure out what the hell is wrong with him?” “On a scale from ‘this is completely hinged behaviour and not weird at all’ to ‘cloning him unsuccessfully ninety-nine times’?” Tim nods. “I don’t know,” Jon says. He thinks about it. “Probably like a four.”

Shoulders by @bluegarners (General Audiences, 4k, 2024) Robin!Dick has a close call on patrol. Bruce is catastrophically bad at expressing love. I rotate Bruce's choices and dialogue from this fic around in my mind like a rotisserie chicken.

It’s as he’s assessing Goon #1’s shoulders that he hears it. Grhk. The sound of someone choking. (You are ten-years-old, and the world is wide open before you. You don't yet know how to worry for yourself. It is your father's job.)

Truth Serum is The Worst by @jackhawksmoor (General Audiences, 3k, 2022) Bruce is truth serum-ed and is very unwell about it. Nightwing!Dick is there to help. Bruce's stream-of-consciousness dialogue (and Dick's reactions) are totally engrossing; the love they have for each other looms large here.

Batman gets dosed with a truth serum and unexpectedly spends most of the time talking about how desperately he loves his children, how awesome they are, and how he wishes he was better at being a father.

i'll grab my light (and go with you) by @havenesc (General Audiences, 3k, 2024) Dick helps Robin!Jason after the kid gets into a fight at school. Sweet, spot-on-characterization for both of them.

“Come again?” “I…” Now, the tone is sullen, even in hesitation. “I got into a fight.” Dick glances at his far wall, still a little sleep-hazed as he puzzles together what exactly about a scrap requires a phone call. “With Bruce?” Dick asks tentatively. “At school,” Jason clarifies, and oh, yep, there’s the difference. That one’s a no-no.

the only people on a stranded boat by @unicorncoalition (Mature, 5k, 2023) It turns out that Dick will call Jason if he ever has to hide a body. I've reread this fic multiple times since first discovering it, it's a gem. The scenario is unhinged, the emotions are raw, and the dialogue is perfect.

When Dick contacts Jason in the early hours of the morning to ask for help, Jason is so thrown by the request that he drops everything and drives to Bludhaven. He is not expecting to find Dick dissociating next to the dead body of an unfamiliar man, nor is he ready for the revelations that follow.

i never noticed the clouds gather round (oh, how fast we fall, how slow we drown) by @this-world-of-beautiful-monsters (Teen & Up, 5k, 2022) Batman!Dick has a flashback, and Damian makes a deduction. I'm very picky with stories on Dick's family members finding out about Nightwing #93, and this one handles how Damian might react so flawlessly it hurts.

It's raining on a rooftop in Gotham and Batman isn't getting up. (Dick dissociates after a bad patrol and Damian comes up against the outline of something his mentor never wanted him to see.)

the higher fidelity by birdsofthesoul (Teen & Up, 3k, 2020) Bruce and Dick go on a road trip scavenger hunt to find a runaway Damian. Dick indirectly confronts Bruce with his questionable parenting decisions. The conversation they share in the diner lives rent free in my mind.

Bruce goes sheet-white, looking like Dick’s just cut him to the quick, and Dick can’t help but think they should have booked a flight, discretion be damned. This — this is why they don’t do road trips. Cars are like confessionals, cramped spaces built for coercing confessions, and neither of them are good with words.

O'er These Mountains I Would Fly by @lurkinglurkerwholurks (General Audiences, 2k, 2019) After saving an injured baby bird, Dick and Damian drive out to a wildlife rehabilitation center. A wonderful edition to the "Damian slowly learning to trust Dick early on in the Batman!Dick era" genre.

“Nervous?” Grayson asked. They had been driving for over half an hour, and this was only Grayson’s fifth attempt at conversation. It had been an unusually quiet ride.

and the shapes that you drew may change beneath a different light by @popsunner (Teen & Up, 5k, 2020) Post-Dick's death, Tim tries to be a brother to Damian. Featuring Tim's grieving headspace, his evolving relationship with his brothers, and his enduring status as the Emotional Support batkid.

Damian is around a lot more since Dick died, hovering like he’s looking for something that isn’t here anymore. It’s alright. Tim is used to playing the part of ghosts. Or: Dick is dead. Things change.

#fic recs #fanfiction #dc comics #batfamily #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #kon el #timkon

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newttxt · 2 days ago

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hi quip! i really like your one piece comics and i am curious how you do them! i'm not good at comics and want to be better at drawing them! how do you learn how to make comics?

thank you!

uh oh... im afraid u have caught me at the perfect crossroad of "bored at work" and "unrelated task ive been meaning to do but keep putting off."

this is long. i hope you like reading (and grayscale progress pics). and of course!!! disclaimer before we begin that this is just how I, personally draw comics. there is no "right way."

quip's comic-making process!

Switching my typing to make this more legible...

My process can kinda be broken down into 6 steps:

Brainstorming

Thumbnailing

Sketching

Panels & Text

Lines

Tones/Colors

1. Brainstorming

My brain is a leaky sieve on a good day, so I sloppily jot down ideas in my phone notes the moment I have them. This helps me when it's time to draw too, because if I feel art blocked, I can look through old concepts and see what catches my interest.

Otherwise, I love drawing for other people's writing. :) And if worst comes to worst, doing manga/comic page redraws in my style teaches me new things every time.

Once I have my idea, I'll usually make a bulletpoint list of "plot points" or "story beats" I want. Then I plan the comic with this format that I've adapted from a tutorial I read once. I'm going to use my most recent comic (original comic post) as an example.

I start in the third column, writing notes of what I'd want to see in each panel. I also include the dialogue (in this case, I didn't have to write the dialogue! it's from the fanfic linked in the original comic post!). I usually write the whole name like [Luffy:], but at this point I've drawn so much of these guys, just the first letter works.

I like to handwrite these notes to get an idea for how much text I'm putting in a single panel.

After I describe all the panels, I go back and separate them into pages. I can't tell you how to know how many panels to a page. It's whatever works for you. I just kinda know about how big each panel will be, and so I can feel when I'm probably running out of space. (Also. You can change things later. I don't in this example, but I add/drop pages/panels all the time.)

2. Thumbnailing

Thumbnailing—as the name suggests—should be done tiny. Too tiny to accidentally get sucked into details.

This is about marking down blobs where items/characters go, and figuring out the paneling. I'll draw and redraw these a bunch of times too.

This is also the most time-consuming/brain-working part for me. If I were in a zine that did progress percentage, I'd try to finish thumbnailing around the 50% mark (but I'm also a moderately fast artist, so your mileage may vary).

I think the terrible quality makes them charming, actually. I really like how silly they look. :')))

I will add, when you draw your "page" rectangle, make sure it's the same proportions as your actual canvas for the final image. You want an accurate idea of how much space each panel will take up, especially if you have a lot of text.

3. Sketching

This is my most recent change to my usual workflow, and it's saving me a lot of time. I make my thumbnails a bit bigger (each one about half the size of the final canvas), and I sketch these basic body forms right over them.

It just helps give me placement for my actual lines!

I usually draw these in a paleish color so I can lower the opacity and not get distracted by them while lining. The random darker parts are to either help keep two forms separate (like when two characters have their limbs all over) or to better define sections that were too sloppy/poorly proportioned.

I also think this helps my poses stay looser, because I have more dramatic/wriggly shapes that aren't too bogged down by proportions yet.

Sidenote: I CANNOT show this here, but sometimes this is when I take videos. Of myself. I prop my phone camera up and shoot a video of me acting each panel. :/// It looks really dumb, but it also shows me fun body language ideas like hand gestures, expressions, weight distribution, etc. Just pretend you're an overdramatic cartoon character, and try not to worry about your roommates or mother walking in on you doing odd things. (You can also use the video for anatomy reference later, but I usually just capture the vibe and don't try to copy the actual video frame.)

4. Panels & Text

Oh, boy. So, the panels are usually just straight lines (though it's fun to make creative exceptions, like a round panel to mimic looking through a spyglass), but there are some fancy rules that I don't strictly adhere to.

I believe (I have no technical training in this. Take everything I say with a grain of salt) the vertical gaps (between two side-by-side panels) should all be a consistent width and the horizontal gaps (between two panels on top of each other) should be another. The vertical ones? Should be thinner? Because you want the eye to easily glide between them, whereas the horizontal gaps should be a visual barrier to keep you from jumping ahead. Just something I've vaguely noticed.

There are lots of fun "default layouts" you can look up. Or keep it a consistent grid. I think it's fun to sometimes have characters/objects sticking out of panels and overlapping others. This is just a matter of taste, creativity, and inspiration. (Read Witch Hat Atelier... It has some of my favorite paneling...)

You may also notice I have already done the speech bubbles. This is, to me, a crucial step. This helps me catch early if I don't have enough room for all the words. It also lets me plan the art in each panel with the speech bubbles in mind. There's nothing worse than working really hard on a panel, and then you realize there's no room for the bubbles.

I also try to lay them out in a way that guides the eye! Even without art, can people tell where to go next? Better yet, if I want people to look at panels out of order (aka not left to right, in my case), can I use the speech bubble path to make them? Here's just a vague example of what I mean.

As an added bonus, doing speech bubbles early also allows me to be lazy! :) Ignore the comic; I'm not supposed to post it yet oops,, There's a whole lot of drawing to do on each comic page, and I am not wasting my time on stuff that will be covered up. So yes, if I hide my bubbles, there are a lot of unfinished lines trailing off into nothing. (As a bonus, if there's a part of a character you're struggling with—and it won't look weird to do so—you can move speech bubbles to just hide the problem area yayyy)

Making the actual bubbles could be their own whole tutorial, tbh, but there are some general guidelines I use.

Zoom out when you choose your font size. You want to know how it will look to the average reader, so it isn't super teeny tiny or way too big. You generally want to keep the same text size for all your pages/bubbles.

When I draw bubbles, I try to size them about one vertical letter height (and some change) around the words [left side]. This isn't always the case though, because humorously large or funny shaped text bubbles can convey different feelings [right side].

On Procreate, I set my bubble lines to Reference and just drag-and-drop the white fill on a separate layer below the lines. (Remember to turn Reference back off again when you're done, or your fill bucket won't work right when you're drawing.)

To get the white outlines I use to keep the bubbles from cluttering up the art, I literally just Gaussian blur an all-white copy of the lines + fills... and then I copy and merge it 5 times until it's opaque enough. This is a terrible way to do it, but it works for me. :')

5. Lines

This is the part that I can't tell you how to do. I literally just. Draw right over my wacky sketched body forms. Boom. Comic drawn.

I'll make three suggestions:

Don't focus on making every panel perfect. Give a little extra love to big ones or ones you want people to linger on. Otherwise, know that people are typically speeding through the art. It's way more important to focus on storytelling than art technique. In my opinion, a good story that's told well will always be better than a beautiful one told poorly. (Some comics are beautiful AND well-written... Alas, I am just a hobbyist who needs to get the ideas out of my head at top speed.)

Put your background lines on a different layer. Put your foreground lines on a different layer too, if you have those. Basically, I try to keep the main part of each panel (usually a character or object) on my lines layer so I can erase background/foreground/etc lines to ensure clarity/focus.

You can make background lines lighter colors too. I have too many numbers sorry. (1) Background. The stuff that's farthest away. Lightest lines. Few details; more focused on shapes and the suggestion of a background (I'm not good at backgrounds). (2) Midground. Same distance away as the characters are. Lines can be black. (3) Also midground, and also the same distance away. But they're very detailed, so I lighten them so they aren't so distracting. (4) The characters. Black lines for focus. For people who haven't seen the comic, I swear they are just hugging. This is SFW. D:

6. Tones/Colors

Do not. Do NOT ask me. I don't understand colors. I hate working with them, but I try because I want to improve. I hate doing anything beyond the simplest grayscale shading. Please go elsewhere for your coloring/tone advice. This is how my color picker looks 95% of the time. I have pre-set "percentages" of black that I got by lowering the opacity of a black layer and just color picking it. I don't even know the exact percentages I used. Good luck out there. Be better than me.

7. Sharing

This is a bonus step that I didn't mention earlier, but it's actually the most important of all of them.

You need a friend. Or maybe a groupchat or discord. A family member or coworker if you're really close like that. I don't know.

Find SOMEWHERE you can spam wips and be cheered on. Drawing comics takes a while, especially if you're trying to tell longer stories than I'd dare to attempt. If I don't force someone to praise me for every line I draw, I shrivel up and die.

Also if and when you post online, add alt text. I'll admit I'm the first person to complain and drag my feet on this, and I literally use a screenreader myself when my eyes hurt (strong prescription glasses wearer). Comics should be accessible, because stories are fun and everyone should be able to enjoy them.

***

Learning???

And I guess lastly, how do you learn to make comics? Two steps: 1) read them and 2) make them. This is the tragedy of creating things.

1) Reading them: I grew up reading comic strips, western serialized comics, and webcomics. I've always loved graphic novels too. Then in late middle school, I started reading manga (Death Note and Haikyuu were my first two), and now I'm trying to read more webtoons (sorry im so slow bree)!

I also... mass-consume doujinshi, thanks to proxy mailing services and bilingual friends/Google Translate/knowing some Korean. (I have an entire bookshelf of doujin, actually,,)

The thing is, it's not usually enough to just read comics. You also need to be thinking. :/ I notice paneling, comic devices, clever comedic timing, etc. as I go. It's just a lot of studying/learning while also enjoying the story.

2) Making them: You just have to start. :( Even if you think they're "bad." My first comics were actually just drawings placed randomly all over the page, connected by speech bubbles (yay... I was already practicing how to place bubbles to lead the eye around the page...). I was going to post a pic here, but I'm a coward. Backscroll my account and you can find some older ones though.

I also know my art in general improved dramatically when I did ten comics in ten weeks for my friend's fic. Don't do this. It hurt my hands/wrists. But do practice in moderation.

***

If you actually read all that... I hope it made even a modicum of sense. And maybe it was even helpful? Just know at the end of the day, there is literally no right way to draw a comic.

And if you aren't ready to go for it yet, you can start by just adding a couple speech bubbles to your illustrations or doodles! It's a way to add storytelling and dialogue writing to things you may already be making.

Yay. I love comics. :))))

#art tips #ask #THANK YOU FOR ASKING THIS #PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT STORYTELLING AND ART AND COMICS #i have so much more i can say but i will not because this post is already way too dense #ive been meaning to finish/post this for so long im sorry #making comics is this fun blend of THINKING REALLY HARD AND WITH PURPOSE and doing things innately and you rly dont know why #reference #art reference #i dont remember my tutorial tag #oh. was it #tutorial #I DONT REMEMBER

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citricacidprince · 3 days ago

Note

I was looking at your relativity falls au and I was thinking since Ford in the original series takes off Stan’s hat to show his hair, kinda revealing he is Ford, what if in relativity falls Ford takes the glasses off of Stan and puts them on and that is kinda of the moment

Also I really want more protective! Relativity falls Ford, I want to watch that child go feral and start biting people <3

Hiiiii!!! Sorry it took a super long time to reply to this I just,, this possessed me so much I may or may not have written, uh, 7400 words based on this lol (also a drawing but it’s hidden in the writing haha)

There sadly isn’t a lot of feral protective Ford in this, just sad wet cat baby Ford (tho you get a glimpse of it at the very end), but believe me I have many thoughts of protective Ford as they’re teens hehe!!

Like, they’re so fun to be because they’re the opposite of how they are in the show! Stan was the protector and would get into fights for Ford, but as teens Ford is extremely protective of Stan and will throw himself into a fight he know he can’t win in a moments notice because they insulted Stan, even when Stan tries to insist that it’s okay. These two make me siiiiick 💥💥💥💥💥

Anywho, this mini writing this is just a prolonged scene from Weirdmageddon part 3 but with my Relativity Falls AU paint on it lol

It’s filled with an comical amount of tears because I believe Mabel and Dipper are weepy saps and the baby boys haven’t had the ‘Boys don’t cry’ motto drilled into their heads yet, also they’re like, super traumatized atm haha

Well, have fun reading! Please please please please be nice, I know I’m not the best writer and just write when I’m possessed so please be so niceies to me or I’ll fucking cry <33💥💥💥💥

Everything is under the cut! :]

🍃🪦☁️~~~~~~~~~~~~⛈️👓🥀

Mabel and Dipper could only watch on in shock and horror as one of their beloved great nephew erased the mind of their other beloved great nephew. Dipper didn’t even know the boys still had that blasted machine, much less that they still had it on them here of all places!

Maybe it was good that the children had the memory gun hidden away. After all, they just used it to outwit and defeat Cipher.

However… at what cost?

Stanley’s round face was drenched in silent tears as he held the memory gun to the back of his brother’s head, his gaze completely focused but his trembling grip on the memory gun giving away just how much this was affecting him.

Dipper always thought he’d be ecstatic when Bill Cipher was finally defeated. Spit on his face, dance on his grave, give the worst eulogy in the world, the whole shebang. But now that the moment has finally arrived all he can feel is sick to his stomach.

They’re just kids. They shouldn’t be here. His sweet little grand-nephews shouldn’t be paying for his hubris. This should’ve stayed between him and Bill.

It should have been him.

The bright blue light faded and the memory gun hit the ground, Stanley’s hands shaking even worse now as tears fell to the floor, unable to keep his head up as little hiccups fell from his lips.

Dipper was still squeezing Mabel close to his side, the two frozen in their huddled positions on the floor, gut-wrenching guilt on his face while his sister had her hands over his mouth, only able to watch on with dread.

Dipper only faintly registered that the other members of the zodiac had been released from their tapestry prisons. That blonde woman Mabel seemed to like was rubbing her head as that young Hispanic woman who works for Mabel, Anjelita, held out a hand to help her up. That red-headed hairy lumberjack and that one oddly peppy goth teen helped young Fiddleford through his shaky breathing.

After a couple of moments Dipper heard his sister take a deep shaky breath, his voice wet as one of her hands reached out towards Stanley.

“…L-Lee? Lee, baby come here-” There was a weary and wobbly smile on her lips. She was doing that thing where she tries to be the comforting light in an awful situation, even though she is not doing any better than anyone else at the moment.

She was trying to corral her crying great-nephew into her arms, a mixture of trying to comfort him and herself.

She was swiftly cut off by gravity going wonky.

Dark bricks ripped out of the walls and shot up into the rift up in the blood red sky, Weirdmaggedon falling apart at the seams. Creatures of many shapes and sizes flew up into the rift, the older twins gripping each other close as they stared up into the multicolored light. Everyone was staring up into the sky, hope and relief in their hearts that the nightmare might finally be over.

Everyone but Stanley.

He was intensely staring at the back of his brother’s head, silent tears continuously streaming down his cheeks, unable to see the small content smile on Stanford’s face.

As the light began to envelop the town of Gravity Falls, Stanley reached out his hand to his kneeling brother to try and grab onto him but was unable to before the light reached the two, erasing most traces of Weirdmaggedon’s effects and safely displacing everyone in the Fearamid to the ground below.

The woods were quiet. Everything was much quieter than it was during Weirdmageddon.

There was barely a moment of peace before Dipper and Mabel were sprinting through the woods yelling out for their great-nephews, panic increasing with every passing second.

They finally came across the boys in a small clearing after 2 minutes of franticness. Stanley’s back to the older set of twins and Stanford kneeling in the grass.

Mabel ran much faster than Dipper did, practically throwing herself to her knees as she grabbed Stanley and pulled him tight into her arms. She buried him into the crook of her neck, tears beginning to drip down her face as she ran her fingers through his messy brown curls, trying to soothe him while she gently shushed his crying.

“Shhhh… shhh it’s okay Lee it’s okay sweepea, I’m here, Grunkle Mabel is here pumpkin.”

Dipper would’ve chuckled at the use of ‘Grunkle Mabel’, something Stanley insisted on calling her even after she revealed that she wasn’t a man because he thought Grauntie sounded strange, but he couldn’t really feel anything but heart ache right now. He stepped closer to the crying duo, kneeling down next to them as he glanced over towards Stanford.

He still seemed to be unconscious, quiet as a mouse as he kneeled on the grass. He was so still that Dipper almost wanted to check his pulse to make sure his heart was still beating, but the soft breathing coming from his chest eased his worries. Stanford was always so stressed and on edge the entire time Dipper had known him, which in all honesty, wasn't very long. However, in this moment with that small smile on his lips his nephew almost looked peaceful.

Guilt ate at his heart even more.

God he should’ve seen the warning signs that tension was building between the two boys. He’s the catalyst for causing Weirdmageddon by saying he would train Stanford in Gravity Falls while Stanley went home. He should’ve put his foot down and said Stanford was too young and needed to go home at the end of the summer with his brother. But his great nephew was just so insistent and Dipper himself was scrambling to think of an amazing gift for his twin sister for their first birthday together in 30 years, he just caved and said yes.

He’s the reason Stanley ran with that cracked rift. He was the final crack in the already strained relationship between the boys and he was too blind to notice.

He turned to his sister once more, emotions welling in his heart seeing his sister and nephew so upset and clinging to each other. He gingerly rubbed Stanley’s back and Mabel’s shoulder, softly speaking with sorrow dripping from his voice, “Stanley, I am so sorry… words can’t express how much I didn’t want this to happen. You shouldn’t have had to deal with the consequences of my mistakes..” He gingerly tucked a loose curl behind Stanley’s ear, softly adding on with a feeling of shame flooding his head, “…It should’ve been me.”

Mabel’s head immediately shot up at Dipper’s words, a glare on her wet face as she shot back with a low warning tone, “Dipper Lee Pines.” He quickly shut his mouth. Noted, she wasn’t going to take any self depreciation coming from him at the moment. Can’t say he blames her, he would’ve done the same if any self-depreciating words came from her mouth.

Stanley muffled something against Mabel’s neck instantly making the two stop what they were doing to turn to him. “What was that baby?” Mabel gently asked as Dipper continued to rub his back. The young boy pulled himself away from Mabel’s neck ever so slightly, taking in a deep shaky breath as he shakily repeated himself.

“…n-not Lee-”

The older twins' brows furrow, their hands stilling slightly as it was Dipper’s turn to softly question, “What are you talking about Stanley?”

The brunet pulls his trembling form away from Mabel to stand up, wiping his wet face with his arm, his cheeks so flushed from sobbing that his faint freckles were easily seen against the red. He stood still for a moment, trying to calm his breathing before he stepped between the sitting pair of twins and towards his kneeling brother.

He took in the sight of him for a moment, a sick feeling in his stomach as his trembling hands tentatively grab onto the glasses on his unconscious brother’s face, his touch light as a feather and careful, as if he was afraid his brother would shatter if his finger even as so much grazed him. He carefully pulled the glasses off and stared down at them in his hands, a fresh wave of silent tears falling from his cheeks and onto the cracked glass lenses.

“I-I’m… I’m n-not…” He shakily whispers, voice caught in his throat as he tries to get the words out. He gingerly lifted the glasses to his face and placed them onto his red nose, his fingers gripping the temples of the glasses as he hesitantly turned around. His wet brown eyes locked with his kneeling great-uncle and great-aunt, the kid’s gaze drowning in guilt as Stanford hesitantly continued on with his wobbling voice, “…I-I’m not S-Stanley.”

The two froze at those words, Mabel's bewildered gaze kept whipping her gaze between Stanford and Stanley, quickly growing distressed while Dipper felt a deep pit form in his stomach.

He’s so stupid, it should’ve been obvious but in all the chaos he didn’t even think to check. In the moment of peace he finally saw the differences.

The six fingers and the way his eyes squinted without his glasses should’ve been a dead giveaway, but there were also other signs as well.

Stanley had told Dipper not too long ago that his tooth was knocked out the second day the twins showed up. Apparently it was knocked loose when he fell face first into the dirt while fleeing with Stanford from a vampire, after his brother had hid the 3rd journal away from Stanley all day, taking ‘Trust No One’ Dipper had scrambled onto that in a paranoid panic to heart.

Stanford just lost his tooth not even 30 minutes ago. When the boys had begun to argue on the Zodiac Wheel Stanley couldn’t take it anymore and decked Stanford to the ground. Dipper remembers the immediate regret that flashed onto the young boy’s face when his brother spat out a bloody tooth onto the floor, opening his mouth to try and apologize but was unable to get a word out before Stanford quickly punched him back, causing the infamous fight between the two.

Stanford still had some speckles of dried blood on his chin, a reminder of that awful fight.

The two had faint freckles dusting their face but Stanley was the only one who had freckles on his shoulders.

The bandaid on Stanford’s face was falling off, as if it was peeled off and slapped onto his face.

Mabel let out a weak and breathless noise of confusion, brows furrowed and clearly overwhelmed by everything happening in such a short time. “W-Wha-? How-?”

Dipper cut his sister off. She was barely keeping it together as is, and while he was also extremely upset he had a lot of practice suppressing these kinds of emotions to survive in the multiverse. He can take over for a moment just so Mabel can take a moment to breathe.

“Stanford… what happened?” Dipper questioned, a comforting hand on his twin’s shoulder as his furrowed gaze met Stanley’s. Despite how intense he looked, there was a softness in his voice. A quiet plea for his great-nephew to tell him what the hell is going on.

Stanford’s watery eyes stayed locked with the ground, looking almost as overwhelmed and weary as Mabel did while his hands fidgeted against his stomach. “W-When you two started getting c-chased Bill I…” His breathing hitched. “…I didn’t know what to d-do, I was just so s-scared.”

One of his finger’s lifted to his lip as he unconsciously began to chew the skin off the side of it, a habit Mabel has been fighting tooth and nail for Ford to quit through the entire Summer.

Not that she can really bring herself to care at the moment.

Stanford looked increasingly distressed as he continued. “I-I was panicking, I always know w-what to do and I just I couldn’t t-think of anything! I thought my h-head was going to explode when-” He takes in a sharp breath, more tears beginning to well up in his eyes. “…w-when Stanley said he had a plan.”

Stanford was trying to wipe away the thick tears off his face, his cheeks irritated and red from how often he's been rubbing away tears. “E-Everything went so fast. He was explaining the p-plan as fast as he could while we swapped clothes. Said we were going to p-pull off our best con yet. Tricking Bill into S-Stan’s mind by convincing him it was m-mine and then erasing him for g-good.”

“I t-tried to ask why we were d-doing all of this… Stanley could've just erased my mind after I let B-Bill in and e-everything would just end, but Stanley… S-Stanley didn’t budge. He s-said it had to be him. Said I… S-Said I actually had a future.” Ford breathing hiccups, shoulders hiking up to his neck as even more even more tears run down his cheeks and to the grass below. “A-A-And I was j-just so scared I… I let him… I let h-him take my place…”

A choked sob rips from his throat, unable to take it anymore as he covers his face with his polydactyl hands, continuing to explain through the tears and shaky speech. “O-One of the last things I ever d-did was punch h-him in the face! I never t-told him I was s-sorry! He DIED thinking I h-hated him!”

Dipper immediately jumped into action, pushing himself over to Ford and pulling his hands away from his face. He rested his forehead against his great-nephew’s and held onto his smaller hands, keeping his eyes on Stanford’s as he firmly spoke. “Breathe with me Stanford. In and out.”

It took a moment but the kid’s breathing slowed ever so slightly as he tried to mimic Dipper’s breaths though he was still unable to control the hiccuping and sniffling.

“You didn’t kill Stanley.” Dipper continued to speak, his tone softening considerably as he gently squeezed Ford’s polydactyl hand with his larger one. “He’s alive and breathing right behind you.”

The kid began to look frustrated as he lowly choked out, “He might as well be.”

Dipper… couldn’t exactly retort that. By all means Stanley would be a shell of his former self, fundamentally a completely different person when he wakes up. However, he wasn’t going to let his great-nephew wallow like this. He gently squeezed his hands once more and softly questioned, “…Do you really think Stanley would hate you after all of this?”

Stanford froze at the question, only the sound of rustling leaves and birds chirping to be heard as the brunet boy’s eyes stayed locked with Dipper’s before letting it fall to the dirt below. After a couple quiet moments Stanford finally mumbled out. “He should.”

“But would he?”

“….” Ford couldn’t reply, a bittersweet and melancholic feeling flooding his heart.

As if on cue, a faint noise was suddenly made behind the three of them.

Everyone whirled their heads over to where Stanley sat kneeling on the grass. His brown eyes blearily began to open as he raised his hand up to idly rub them. The faint freckles on his cheeks and his brown curls were dusted in the warm light of the sun. A yawn fell from his lips, tiny tears pricking the corners of his eyes from the deep breath, before he finally opened his eyes completely.

His brown eyes blinked away sleep, his gaze slowly darting between the three people also kneeling on the grass in front of him, not saying a word yet, just taking them in.

Dipper and Ford waited with baited breath, words stuck in their throats as they stared back at Stan, trying to find any familiarity in his eyes.

Mabel couldn’t wait a single second longer.

“…S-Stanley? Lee?” She softly questioned, tears beginning to well up in her eyes again as she gingerly crawled closer to him. “H-Hey my little firecracker! You r-remember me right? Your lovable Grunkle Mabel!” Her hands raise up to cup Stanley’s round cheeks, her smile a little wobbly but her brown eyes filled with a ray of hope. “You remember me, d-don’t you pumpkin?”

Stanley just stared blankly at his great-aunt, completely silent for a moment before his brows furrow. He tilts his head, confusion clearly seen in his blank eyes as he bluntly asks, “Who are you?”

Mabel’s heart might as well have shattered into a million pieces. The tears welling up in her eyes freely fall but the wobbly smile refuses to fall. One hand raises to run through his messy curls as the other continues to cup his face. “W-What are you talking about sweetheart? It’s me, Stanley, It’s Mabel.”

Dipper sprung forward and gently began to pull Mabel away from Stanley, that pit in his stomach growing even more as his sister tried to weakly yank herself out of his grasp while crying out, “It’s me, Stanley! It’s me!” He squeezed her in his arms as her cries turned to sobs, burying her face against Dipper’s chest as she finally let out all the pain she’s been keeping in her chest since the moment Weirdmageddon had begun.

“It’s no use Mabel, Stanley doesn’t remember anything.” Dipper softly spoke. He hugged her close and rested his cheek on the top of her head, her silver curls brushing against his skin as his brown eyes locked with Stanley. The kid looked so confused and lost, a sight that just made his heart ache even more. “…Stanley doesn’t even realize it, but he just saved the world… Saved us… Our little hero…”

Stanley brows were furrowed, not understanding anything that was going on in the slightest. He glanced over at where Stanford was standing, lifting up his hand to cup his mouth and loudly stage whisper to the brunet, “What’s up with the old guys?”

Stanford didn’t answer, just staring at Stanley with large globs of tears dripping down his cheeks. Without warning he sprinted to his brother, engulfing Stanley in a tight hug and hiding his face in his neck. The impact of the tackle hug almost knocked the two to the floor but Stanley managed to keep himself propped up with one arm, brown eyes wide with shock as even more confusion filled his fuzzy mind. “W-Woah, okay-! We’re hugging now, I guess!”

“I’m s-sorry, I’m sorry, I’m s-so sorry-” Stanford kept repeating those words over and over against his brother’s neck, his body trembling from just how hard he was crying.

Stanley had no clue what the hell was happening. He was in a place he’s never seen before, surrounded by strangers sobbing their eyes out, and he was realizing that he couldn’t really remember what his name was again. A part of him was telling him he should just book it, get away from these weirdos, but something in him refused to let him.

Maybe it was because they all genuinely looked so sad. He didn’t know who they were but his heart sorta ached at their grief-stricken appearances, kind of wanting to comfort them in some way.

Maybe he’s a bleeding heart, he can’t really remember if he is.

Stanley shuffled a little in Stanford’s tight grasp until finally something kinda heavy was laid onto the sobbing child’s shoulders. Stanford tentatively lifted his wet face from his brother’s neck to peer behind him.

It was his leather bomber jacket. Stanley had subtlety slipped off the jacket, careful not to jostle the crying kid too much, then plopped it onto his shoulders.

“You looked like you needed it more than me.” Stanley spoke, an awkward but kind smile on his face. He then quickly shrugged it off and added on with a casual tone, “Besides, I was gettin’ warm in that thing, you can just keep it.”

Stanford sharply inhaled at those words, polydactyl hands letting go of Stanley to grip at the jacket draped over his shoulders and pull it even closer, acting as if it was a barrier that could protect him from the world around him. A choking sob ripped from Stanford’s throat, hiding his face against his brother’s neck once again.

“Okay! We’re still crying!” Stanley awkwardly sputtered out, tensing up as the brunet continued to cry against his neck, unsure of what he should be doing. Eventually he settled on tentatively patting the crying kid’s back, hoping that he was actually comforting the kid and not making whatever was happening worse.

“I s-shouldn’t have pushed you a-away because I was t-told to! You w-were never a burden! I-I don’t hate you! I n-never did!” Stanford kept crying apologizes against Stanley’s shoulder, making the already confused brunet boy even more lost with every word spoken. His hand continued to pat on Ford’s back as he softly replied, his words tentative and unsure, “…I don’t hate you either.”

“Yes you do.” Stanford thickly replied against his brother's shoulder, completely and utterly convinced in his distraught state that his brother would absolutely hate him if he could remember what Ford did to him.

Stanley couldn’t exactly reply to that because he genuinely didn’t know if he did hate this kid. He didn’t even know who he was. So instead of responding he just continued to rub the brunet’s back, hoping to ease the hyperventilation sobs buried against his skin.

It took a handful of long moments filled with silence and tears for the three to compose themselves, Dipper being the first to finally stand up.

“…We’ve been wallowing here long enough, people are going to get worried.”

Dipper gingerly pulls Mabel to her feet, tears had stopped falling from her face but her cheeks red and her famous smile no longer present. He made sure his sister was steady on her feet before holding out his hand to the twin boys huddled together on the ground, a small weary smile on his wrinkled face.

“Come on… let’s go home.”

The twins pull themselves up with Dipper’s help. Once on their feet Ford latches onto Stan’s arm, sticking to his side and refusing to let go. Stanley doesn’t seem to mind or even notice the clinging presence as his brown eyes look up at the sky and over the tall trees with curious wonder.

Dipper softly sighed and eyed over the fascinated brunet looking over the tree line with concern, “Are your muscles alright, Stanley? No issues with walking or standing?”

The kid didn’t respond for a moment, still looking around before he finally registered that he was being spoken to. His brown eyes darted around before he pointed at himself with his free hand. “Oh! Am I Stanley?”

Dipper felt a stab in his chest at the question, but still gently replied, “Yeah… you’re Stanley.”

Stanley nodded at the confirmation and softly said ‘Staaaanley’ under his breath, getting accustomed to the unfamiliar name.

“Stanley… cool name! I like it!” He cheerfully replied, a wide smile spreading across his face that showed off his missing tooth. “And my legs are fine, I think.” He used his free hand to grab onto Dipper’s hand and loudly added on, “Now lead the way, old man!”

Dipper sighed and squeezed onto Stanley’s hand, gently guiding him through the woods back to the Shack, never forgetting the route home even after all these years.

The twins were parallels of each other as they walked. Mabel was clinging onto her brother’s arm and leaning her head against his shoulder while Stanford was doing the same with his brother. The air was so tense and gloomy around the four, affecting all but Stanley.

Stanley was looking around the woods as they walked, his brown eyes full of innocent wonder as he mumbled under his breath about ‘Never seeing trees this big’.

When they made it back to the Shack Dipper could only wince at the state it was in. It was falling apart and damaged from the battle during Weirdmageddon, the damage unable to be reversed even after the apocalypse had ended.

“The Shack…” Mabel sadly lamented under her breath, the sight of the place she spent 30 years making into a home and business just adding onto her already overwhelming amount of sadness.

Dipper was about to try and comfort her when he noticed 3 figures standing in front of the shack. After a moment the three started to sprint towards the family, frames becoming clearer as they got closer.

It was Anjelita, Boyish Dan, and Fiddleford.

“Are you guys alright?!” Boyish Dan loudly asked with his booming voice before he even reached the family. Anjelita was silently but swiftly following behind him, her hand gripping her Abuelo’s cap so it wouldn't fly off her head and her eyes filled with concern. Fiddleford was tripping over his feet from how fast he was sprinting, Dipper was mildly concerned the accident prone teen was going to trip over a branch or rock and slam face first against the ground.

He didn’t trip, thankfully. The small blond teen stumbled to a stop in front of the family, specifically the younger set of twins, panting heavily. “Thank the lord y’all are alright! I thought y'all had gotten trapped under somethin’ or hurt or worse!” Fiddleford anxiously rambled on, clearly having thrown himself into a tizzy over his friend's safety.

Stanley’s brows furrowed at the new faces, especially the long nosed southern one right in front of him. He raised an eyebrow and looked over the blond with an untrusting gaze. “…You’re not going to hug me and cry too, are you?”

Fiddleford looked bewildered at the question, blinking in confusion as he asked, “Now why on’ earth would I do that?”

Before Stanley or someone else in the family could reply, Anjelita spoke up from beside Boyish Dan. “His memory was erased, correct?”

The family, minus Stanley, flinched at the question.

Anjelita was a very observant young lady, so it makes sense she would be the first to notice.

Fiddleford and Boyish Dan kinda tensed up at the question. They also saw what happened while they were trapped in the tapestries, but they had hoped that maybe…

“That really stuck? He doesn’t remember anything?” Boyish Dan questioned.

“Nothin’ at all?” Fiddleford softly added.

Dipper wordless shook his head and a solemn silence covered them all.

The three followed the family into the dilapidated Mystery Shack, everyone looking over the cracks and debris with melancholy and sadness on their faces. Well, all but Stanley.

Stanley excitedly jumped up as they all entered the run down living room. “Wow, nice place you have here!” The brunet ripped away from Stanford and Dipper’s grasp, the suddenness making Stanford weakly try and latch back onto his brother for just a moment before giving up and wrapping his arms around his stomach. The boy then ran full speed at the dusty recliner. Stan always loved that chair would steal it from Mabel whenever he had a chance.

He jumped onto the seat and laughed as he bounced a little before settling down. “Lovin’ this chair! I just sink into this thing!”

He opened his brown eyes and saw everyone standing at the edges of the room, the miserable air of sadness weighing so heavy on the room he could feel it pressing against his skull. Stanley limply leaned back in the chair, a faint look of annoyance on his face as he bluntly questioned, “Geez, am I at a funeral? Who died and turned you all into sad sacks.”

No one answered.

Fiddleford turned to the group, going to lift his finger to bite on it only to stop himself when he realized he was doing it. Instead the blond lifted up his chewlery necklace and began to bite on it instead, his nerves shot as he desperately asked, “Surely there must be ah’ way to reverse this!”

“No, there isn’t.” Stanford replied, not even bothering to look up from the floor, looking extremely tired and downright miserable as he hugged his jacket closer.

Fiddleford whips around to Stanford, exasperation and agitation clear on his face as he yells back, “There's gotta’ be!”

Dipper softly sighed, defeat dripping from his voice as he gently replied. “I’m sorry, Fiddleford. There isn’t anything we can do for Stanley. No one can come back from something like this.”

Anjelita perks up from the besides Boyish Dan, counteracting Dipper’s statement with a simple, “Miss Candy.”

“W-What?” Dipper questioned, blinking up at her in confusion.

The large red-headed teen jolted and jumped up at the reminder.

“That’s right! Kooky Candy got her memories back during that whole weird secret society adventure!”

Fiddleford looked up at Dipper with hope and desperation in his green eyes, hands trembling from the reminder of that awful day and his shot nerves. “Y-Yeah! An’ Miss Candy’s mind was cracked ‘cause of tha’ memory gun!”

The blond points to Stanley sitting on the recliner, the confused brunet just staring at the group with furrowed brows, not taking in anything that they’re saying. “Lee still gotta’ chance!”

Dipper is quiet for a moment, brain running a mile a minute. When he finally speaks up again his voice is low and unsure.

“… I’m not going to say it's going to work,”

His eyes meet his sister’s, her sad brown eyes filled with a glimmer of hope at the thought of being able to save her little firecracker.

“But I’m not going to say it’s impossible either.”

He racked his brain once more, trying to think of a solution, an answer that has a high probability of working.

“…Maybe if we had something that could jog his memory-”

Mabel suddenly gasped, eyes wide as she squeezes Dipper’s arm, her grip tight. “My scrapbook!”

She then quickly rushes to a desk near the table, glitter and shimmering pieces of paper fluttering out as her hands rummaged in one of the drawers. She let out a loud ‘Aha!’ And pulled out a pink and very sparkly scrapbook.

“It’s not going to work.” Stanford bluntly mumbled, defeat and sorrow clinging to his small frames.

“Not with that attitude!” The old woman quickly shoots back, not letting anything snuff out her freshly burning glimmer of hope in her chest.

She quickly ran back over to Stanley, the rest of the group, minus Stanford, following suit. She placed the glimmering book onto the confused child’s lap, the front labeled ‘Summer of 2012’ in sparkly glitter pen.

“I’ve been working on this book since the day you two arrived!” Mabel offhandedly explained while opening it to the first page. Pasted in the middle of that page was a cute photo of Stanley and Stanford unpacking their bags. Stan was making a silly face at the camera while Ford had not realized the photo was being taken, too busy hanging up his Nikola Tesla poster with a concentrated face. Stickers and other miscellaneous crafting objects were glued to the page. “Here’s the first day you two arrived!” She then pointed at about 4 to 6 small pieces of wood taped to the page. “And those are the splinters you got stuck in your hand when trying to unpack!”

Stanley furrowed his brow at that, very confused on why she would keep something like that but not having a chance to ask before she pointed to the next thing.

The next photo on the page was Stanford and Stanley looking a tiny bit scratched up and tired. Ford was looking away from the camera and into the inner pocket of his jacket, excitement shining in his eyes as he stared at the journal he had found in the woods that day that was poking out of his jacket ever so slightly. Stanley was also excited but for a very different reason. His eyes were wide with excitement, his equally wide smile showing off the space in his teeth where his tooth was knocked out. The missing tooth was being held very close to the camera, still covered in small flecks of blood.

“And here’s you losing your tooth the very next day!”

Next to the photo was also a small tooth taped onto the paper, assumedly Stanley’s baby tooth that was knocked out. He especially wanted to ask why she had scrapbooked that but was once again cut off, no one except him finding this old woman strange in the slightest.

Fiddleford had leaned over and flipped the page. On the page was a photo of Fiddleford, Stanley, and Stanford all huddled together on one of the boy’s beds, all of them wearing pajamas. Stanford and Stanley seemed to both be talking at the same time, talking over each other while Fiddleford looked a little nervous and overwhelmed, but a smile very clearly seen on his face as he was squished between the twins.

“Tha’s the first time I spent tha’ night after we ‘came friends! After I, uh, ya’ know, tried to kill ya’ with a giant robit-”

Boyish Dan pointed at the next page. The twins were wearing 70s themed dancing clothes, disco lights shining on the two as they stood alone on a dance floor. The boys were covered in punch but still smiling while sideways hugging. Stanford in particular looked a little tired and had a bruise or two.

“Your guy’s 13th birthday party? A bunch of power hungry Ford clones causing so much trouble we pulled the fire alarm and set off the sprinklers?

He then pointed at two carnival tickets taped onto the page next to a photo of Boyish Dan’s grappling both of the twins under his arms and lifting them high into the air, standing in front of a carnival as the warm afternoon light washed over them. Dan was laughing maniacally while Ford looked shocked, grabbing onto Dan’s large arm looking at the ground nervously, as if he was afraid of being dropped. Stanley also looked shocked but not in the same way Stanford did. Stan’s face was bright red and he looked like he was trying to laugh off being picked up so suddenly.

“How about the carnival? You tried that ‘test your strength’ game while Ford did that ‘guess how many jellybeans are in this jar’ game and both failed at them?”

Anjelita softly spoke up next to Boyish Dan as he turned the page. A picture of Stanley all dressed up was pasted onto the page. He was wearing a black suit, a red fez with the same symbol that’s on his sweater Mabel made him, an eye patch, and an 8-Ball cane. He had his eye patch flipped up and was winking at the camera, fully showing off his showman persona. Next to that photo was another one, this time depicting Stanley and Stanford sitting in a booth with Anjelita and her grandparents. Stanley and Anjelita’s Abuelo, Soos, were scarfing down a pizza slice as fast as they could, assumedly in a race to see who could eat it faster. Stanford was looking at his brother with mild disgust and concern while Anjelita’s Abuela, Melody, was excitedly cheering on her husband. Anjelita was sitting at the table leaning her chin on her hand, a soft amused smile on her lips.

“The time you were the boss of the Mystery Shack for a day? The arcade with the killer robots?”

Dipper had his hand on Mabel’s shoulder, carefully questioning, “Is any of this ringing a bell? Anything at all?”

Everyone, minus Stanford, were crowding Stanley, all in his personal space and making the dazed child even more confused. On edge and gripping the scrapbook tightly, furrowed brown eyes completely void of familiarity as he looked over the group.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Stanley began, quickly looking down as he slammed the scrapbook closed. “But none of this is making any sense to me! You keep talking to me like I know who you are, but I don’t!”

The hope in the group died at Stanley’s outburst, all of their enthusiasm fading and disappearing entirely in record time.

“Told you.” Stanford softly mumbled from the other side of the room, despondent and hugging himself tight while leaning against the wall, utter exhaustion seeping into his bones.

Stanley shifted uncomfortably in the recliner, that bubbling sense of guilt building in his stomach and his chest once again at the sight. He doesn’t even know these people but he doesn’t want to see them upset. Guess he really is a bleeding heart. He’s learning something new about himself every second.

The brunet sighed, idly rubbing his round cheeks as he quietly added on, his voice much softer than before, “Look… I’m sorry I don’t remember… I really am…”

“It’s alright Stanley, it’s not your fault.” Dipper gently replied, unaware of the way Stanford flinched at those words behind him.

There was a depressing and strained silence hanging over the group afterwards, no one really knowing what else to say after their hopeful attempt was proven to be pointless.

Then all of a sudden hot air and a snorting noise tickled Stanley’s left ear.

The kid whirled his head at the noise only to come face to face with a big old pig with a collar around its neck, along with a name tag that Stanley couldn’t read from where he was sitting. The two just stare at each other for a couple seconds, blank stare to blank stare, until it was finally broken by the pig hopping up and getting closer to Stanley, trying to chew on his brown curls.

Stanley squealed with surprise and tried to push the massive pig away, Mabel weakly laughing on her knees at the antics, her mind flashing to all the times Waddles has lovingly bothered her great-nephew the entire time he’s been here. She was about to tell her beloved pet to stop messing with Stanley when the kid beat her to the punch.

“Augh! Waddles! How many times have I told you to stop trying to eat my hair!”

Everyone froze, even Stanford’s head whirled over at Stanley’s words.

“…What did he say?” Ford asked, his voice laced in disbelief.

Stanford initially didn’t want to think there was a chance for Stanley to remember, figuring that this was going to be his punishment. Forever mourning someone who’s not even dead, someone he all but killed. But when Stanley spoke Waddles name, something he shouldn’t remember, felt that little ball of hope he’s been trying so hard to suppress in his chest reemerge.

Now Waddles was trying to lick Stanley’s cheek, making the boy squeal even more.

“I said get Waddles off me, Sixer!”

A small breathless laugh left Dipper’s throat as ran his hands through his silver curls, a hopeful disbelief in his eyes. “…It’s working.”

Stanford suddenly sprinted up to the group, grabbing onto his Great-Aunt’s arm from where she’s kneeling in front of Stanley and holding her scrapbook. “Keep reading, Grauntie Mabel.” His gaze serious, but his voice a soft plea.

Mabel had to quickly blink a couple times and bring herself back to reality, adrenaline beginning to pump in her veins at the prospect that this was working. She jumped to her feet, not even wavering as her knees creaked at the sudden movement, and called out to everyone in the room, “Story time!��

She grabbed onto Stanley, that classic Mabel smile was back on her face as she easily lifted him up and sat down where he was sitting on the recliner, pulling the frazzled boy onto her lap. She reached out and yanked Dipper to her as well, making him sit right next to her on the recliner. It was a bit of a tight squeeze but thankfully the two twins had always been on the lankier side so they made it work.

Dipper held his hand out to Stanford, helping him up and pulling him onto his lap, paralleling his sister next to him. Stanford’s immediately pressed against Stanley’s side, polydactyl hand instinctively slipping into his and squeezing like his life depended on it.

Boyish Dan and Anjelita leaned more on the farther back sides of the recliner while Fiddleford jumped up and sat on the armrest closest to Mabel, the blond pressing himself against Stanley’s other side.

Stanley was now completely surrounded once again, being hugged and squeezed and picked up by these strangers. However this time he didn’t get annoyed or uncomfortable at the attention. Instead there was this familiar warmth in his chest, like he was always meant to be held like this. He can’t really describe what caused that shift.

Maybe these guys are right, maybe he is remembering.

Stan allows himself to relax in the arms of the older woman and against the two kids pressing against either side of him, a small smile growing on his face.

“Okay okay,” Mabel began, flipping back to the first page of the scrapbook. “It all started when I got a call from my dearest older brother asking me to watch my sweet darling great-nephews for the summer, and how could I say no to having my precious little nephews all to myself for 3 months!”

Mabel began to go over every picture and every memento in the scrapbook, everyone else pitching in and adding their own commentary or laughing every once and a while, a smile on everyone’s face.

Except for Stanford.

Stanford was looking intensely at his twin, waiting anxiously for the moment Stanley finally remembered him.

A part of him was excited, the other was dreading it.

The moment his brother remembers what happened, what Ford did to him, their bond is going to completely shatter and Stanley is going to want nothing to do with him anymore. No more late night talks, no more covering for each other, no more getting into trouble. Stanford wouldn’t be surprised if Stanley wanted to cut him out of his life completely after this after what he did. Stanford wouldn’t even blame him. He deserves it after all.

Then he saw it and his heart stopped in his chest.

Stanley rapidly blinked for a second, a familiar shine in his brown eyes as he turned to look at Stanford, recognition and understanding in his stare for the first time since the end of Weirdmageddon.

The two stared silently as Mabel continued to talk, everyone’s words muffling into background noise.

Stanford wasn’t going to beg for forgiveness. His eyes weren’t filled with sorrow or guilt. They were steady, completely prepared for anything Stanley threw at him, knowing whatever it was he deserved it.

Stanley’s eyes were filled with that familiar shine but no emotion showed on his face as his stare bore into his twin, completely silent as the two eyes stayed locked.

Then Stanley did something Stanford wasn’t expecting. His brown eyes softened, a smile on his face as he got closer and leaned his head onto Stanford’s shoulder, his thumb rubbing over his twin’s polydactyl knuckles the same way their mother would do whenever she tried to calm them down when they were much smaller.

Stanford was tense, completely frozen. He was expecting yelling, punching, blaming, or even something as simple as wordlessly pulling his hand away, but he wasn’t expecting forgiveness.

He didn't deserve this. Stanley should hate his guts. Despise him and push him away just like Stanford was doing most of the summer.

Ford’s body didn’t untense, but he did slowly rest his head on top of Stan’s, squeezing his brother's hand as if it was his life line, his thoughts swirling in his mind like a hurricane.

He didn’t deserve Stanley’s forgiveness.

Or was it pity?

It must be pity.

It has to be.

Mabel was still speaking as she leaned down and rested her chin onto Stanley, Dipper doing the same with Stanford. A warm fuzzy feeling enveloped everyone in the room. Everyone but Stanford, who instead felt a sickening feeling of guilt deep in his chest.

Stanford didn’t deserve this. This kindness.

So he swore right then and there that he was going to spend the rest of his life atoning for what he did, staying by his twin’s side to make sure nothing would never, ever, hurt his brother ever again.

Or until the day Stanley wises up and realizes that Stanford wasn’t worth his pity, that he’s too good to have a coward like him for a brother.

Whatever came first.

🌻🌱🌤️~~~~~~~~~~~~🌦️🛡️🥀

Hope you liked it!! It was fun to write when my thumbs weren’t hurting from typing on my phone for 6 hours straight lmao 💥💥💥