#I remembered this post and fought tooth and nail to find it

[cowboymeemaw]

My calf scramble post got more interactions than I thought It would, but It just reminded me of him.

Now I am a fourth generational farmer, I've seen dozens of steers come and go. But Rugz, he was different. I fought tooth and nail for him, and took him from feral and afraid to the sweetest bundle of beef.

I sold him August 2023, and to this day I still think about it. I remember breaking down in the sale ring and crying Infront of dozens of people. I remember being handed the empty halter as he was trailered. I remember when I composed myself and walked back in, but broke down because the barn was empty.

I'm a strong guy, I pride myself in it. But there's still some grief knawing inside of me. I'm mad about it, I've always said and say it's the industry. It's what you do. I can't comprehend why I am upset over him still, I find it embarrassing to talk about. I personally raised another steer again this year and I was sad over him but nothing like this.

But there was something about Rugz, that stupid blonde calf. The only calf I had that ever made me consider backing away from my passions and dreams. If I would've kept him I would have been set back so many years, but if you ask me now. I would be fine waiting if it meant he was there.

I love farming, I am a hog farmer and cattle farmer and years from now I'll grow my operations. I'll have hundreds of livestock pass through my hands, and I'll still think of him.

The steer that built me.

[fire-lizard-ro]

Aventurine angst/comfort

CW: spoilers for 2.1, Aventurine’s real name, talk of death/genocide, deep seated trauma, trying to heal from trauma, Aventurine's past, talk of slavery (his time as a slave), self loathing, esteem issues, talk of ego and sense of self, identity crisis???, a bit of a character study I think, meandering around because I cannot structure my thoughts whoopsie, there was a single Projecting Moment oops my b

Long post, so buckle up. I might add more later ehe-

No mentioned gender for reader.

Writing under the cut (SFW):

I had the sudden realization that Aven probably doesn’t know as much about the culture he lost as he’d like. Or at least as he’d secretly like to know. For years he was preoccupied with surviving and putting on a mask seared so deep into his ego that he might have forgotten those wishes were even there. But when the dust has settled, and his job is done? Once he’s “slipped the collar” and found his freedom? There’s… a lot less external noise to distract him from the noise inside.

It's just like he said. You must first fool yourself in order to fool everyone else. Aventurine must have tried his damnedest to forget the silly little wishes of Kakavasha. Those wishes needed to be buried in the dirt along with his name. They could never come true, so what was the use of having them in the first place? But that doesn’t stop the heart from yearning for the things it lost.

The longer he’s away from the stage, that place full of dazzling lights where it was always all eyes on him and he was always the circus act of balancing on a tight rope- always gambling on the knife’s edge between life and death… The more Kakavasha seems to remember what he used to dream of. It’s like the slow trickle of water from a crack in the tank.

Once he’s with you and he’s comfortable enough to tell you about his story… Once he’s given time to really trust you. The tank breaks and it’s like he’s a fish out of water, all of his “self” exposed under your gaze. It’s terrifying. But at the same time… healing. You’re his safe space. He’s never needed anyone to save him- that’s not what you are. You’re not some savior swooping in to save their damsel in distress. Sure, maybe it would have been nice had there been someone there for him back when he was just a scared child who had just lost everything he’d ever loved. But he fought, tooth and nail, for what he has now. Clawed his way out of the bodies that littered his past and wiped the blood from his mouth in order to finally gain his freedom. He doesn’t need someone to save him. Doesn’t need someone to fix him. But he loves you because you’re there to hold his hand while he finds his way to the end of the tunnel.

Nowadays he feels more Kakavasha and less like Aventurine. It's a struggle, because he doesn’t know if he should be Kakavasha.

Kakavasha was the name of the coward scared boy who could only run when his sister told him to run. Kakavasha was the name of a boy who lost everything and it was his fault. Kakavasha was the name of a boy made slave who was only seen as a pretty face and a tool it was all he was good for. Kakavasha was the name of a boy who could do nothing to save anyone all because of this damned blessing curse favor. Kakavasha was the name of a failure.

But he also didn't know if he was allowed to be Kakavasha.

Kakavasha was also a child who was untainted by the greed of life.

Kakavasha was an innocent child who knew how to trust people.

Kakavasha was allowed to want and to have. Kakavasha was loved.

Could he ever be loved? Having done what he'd done? Been what he'd been? Been who he'd been?

Was he Aventurine? Or was he Kakavasha?

Who was he, really?

Back then it was so noisy. He just wanted to cover his ears to shut out the screams and the voices of the people who wanted to use him and the chants of those who wanted to kill him-

But now all the noise was inside and he couldn't just cover his ears. It wouldn't help. It wouldn't stop these thoughts from running rampant in his head.

Sometimes it felt like Kavasha was a lifetime ago, detached from Aventurine when his mask he always wore took hold of him again. Both a helper and a jailer. He couldn't stop himself from falling into old habits.

But sometimes Kakavasha was all he could be. Remembering what his sister's smile looked like and how his mother's lullabies sounded and how his father's hugs felt.

Remembering how those last hugs felt and those last goodbyes weren't supposed to come so soon.

Remembering what it felt like to be chained up like some unruly pet dog and what it felt like to kill a man.

Remembering what how it felt to bury his past and his name and his family and everything else he ever loved and become a new person.

Remembering what it felt like and what it took to become Aventurine.

With time, your encouragement and support, and some self reflection (and likely some therapy)... He slowly allows himself these things.

But it gets worse before it gets better.

He learned how to hate himself long before he had the notion that he could love himself.

He learned to love others before he learned to love himself.

He gives away all the love he cannot give himself. To you

(There's the projection help- THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE FUCKING HOUSE-)

With time he learns that he is not the sum of his actions. He can be loved. He IS loved.

You help him find what things researchers have managed to scrounge up from the remains of his people's home- from Sigonia. What they recorded even while they were still around. He sifts through painful memories to find the good ones. Remembers the once forgotten feeling of his people's language in his mouth. Teaches you all the curse words first just for fun but doesn't tell you what they actually mean. Gives you a nickname in that pretty mother tongue of his. Murmurs stories and sweet nothings in your ears while you fall asleep on his chest, the rumble of his voice and the beating of his heart lulling you to sleep.

You help him regain some of what he lost. You stayed and weathered the storm with him. You didn't leave and you made him realize with eyes wide open that you love him. That he's worthy of being loved by you. That being worthy was never even a question in the first place.

And he can never thank you enough for it.

His shoulder to lean on, his hand to hold, his ear to listen.

He is Kakavasha and he loves you.

[ginxyy]

Hate you + Love you

Hate you, love you the rest of my life

The dim light of your studio casts a soft glow on the walls adorned with posters of your favorite artists, the air thick with the scent of fresh paint and lingering notes of melody. You cradle your guitar in your arms, the instrument a comforting weight that has known the secrets of your heart for years. Tonight, however, there’s an electric pulse in the air an energy that feels both thrilling and dangerously intoxicating. You can still taste the remnants of that hot and steamy night with Vernon, the intimacy sizzling at the corners of your mind like the last rays of a setting sun.

You had always shared a peculiar kind of connection with Vernon. It was a mix of passion, chaos, and undeniable attraction a toxic situationship that seemed to thrive on uncertainty. You fought tooth and nail, often over the smallest things, only to find yourselves wrapped up in each other again, tangled in sheets and whispers in the early hours of the morning. And yet, neither of you could bring yourselves to admit how you truly felt. Each argument left scars, deep enough to etch doubt in the back of your mind, but the pull between you was stronger than any hurt.

As you strum the strings, the melancholic chords of your cover of "hate you + love you” fill the space, encapsulating the tumultuous emotions brewing inside you. The lyrics echo your heart a testament to your struggles, your desires, and that yearning for belonging. You post the video online, almost as if sending a message into the universe. Perhaps with these raw notes, you could finally release the feelings that had been trapped inside your chest for too long.

Hours pass, and the room settles into a comfortable silence, illuminated only by the glow of your phone screen. Then, a familiar notification pings a message from Vernon. Your heart races, adrenaline surging through you. He loves interacting with your music posts, but this time feels different. Underneath his casual demeanor lies a tremor of unease, an uncertainty that matches your own.

Shortly after, you see his figure silhouetted against the late-night glow as he strides into the studio, a comforting yet chaotic presence that feels like both home and a storm. “You posted,” he says, his voice low, a hint of something deeper contained within his words. You can see the flicker in his eyes a recognition of the atmosphere between you.

“I did,” you reply, barely above a whisper. As your gaze locks onto his, you can’t shake the memories of the moments that led you here. The laughter, the fights, the nights filled with whispers and stolen kisses. The weight of unspoken words lingers, heavy yet enticing, both of you in a dance filled with uncertainty.

He approaches you slowly, his hands gently resting on the guitar as he leans in closer to hear the notes that linger in the air. “It’s beautiful,” he breathes, his voice barely audible over the thrumming of your heart. “You know, you have this way of turning pain into something profound.”

You can’t help but smile, a mix of pride and vulnerability washing over you. “It’s all I know,” you admit, feeling exposed under his gaze. “It’s the only way I can make sense of… us.”

There it is, the weight of those unspoken feelings that both frightens and exhilarates you. Both of you are poets in a sense, weaving stories through passion and raw emotion, but here you stand, locked in a moment where words seem inadequate. He leans closer, your breath hitching as he closes the gap, the warmth radiating between you almost unbearable. Your body remembers his every brush of skin, every electric kiss, and every heated argument that threw you against the wall only to have him pull you back in.

“For what it’s worth,” he begins, his voice low and husky, “I���ve been thinking… maybe we’ve danced around our feelings long enough.” The earnestness in his eyes ignites something within you a flicker of hope against the backdrop of doubt. Perhaps this time would be different.

You nod slowly, the silence thickening as both of you finally allow vulnerability to seep in through the cracks. “I want to tell you how I really feel, Vernon,” you confess, the weight of those words freeing and terrifying all at once.

But before you can elaborate, he closes the distance, kissing you with a tenderness that melts away the anxieties that had tethered you for so long. It’s a kiss that speaks of confession, of longing, and of the battles that both of you had fought along the way. You melt into him familiar, warm, and electrifying all at once.

When he pulls back, there’s a softness in his expression, his earnestness almost palpable. “I love you,” he breathes, the words hanging in the air like a cherished secret finally let free. Those three powerful words strike against your heart, resonating within you, echoing the truth you had both withheld from one another.

A rush of emotions floods through you a mix of relief, joy, and undeniable affection. At that moment, the chaos and toxicity fade away into a distant memory. You take a breath, allowing yourself to embrace this confession, the weight lifting from your chest as you meet his gaze. “I love you too, Vernon. I have for a while now.”

As the shadows of uncertainty dissolve into the warmth of shared confessions, you realize that this moment marks a turning point he first chapter of a new narrative woven from love instead of confusion. In the echo of your heartbeat, you sense that this love, though imperfect, is worth the fight, worthy of the melodies and stories that await you both.

In the glow of your studio, transformed from a space of pain to one of possibilities, you and Vernon stand united in the song of your hearts, ready to compose the future together. It’s no longer just about you or him, but about the symphony that you’ll create, spinning tales of love infused with passion a duet that has finally found its voice.

[seancekitsch]

Wow, I can get sexual, too: An Adrian Chase x reader fic- Chapter 1

series masterlist here

warnings: eventual smut, masturbation, twitter nude culture, the very slightest dub con but not really just saying this to be safe, mutual pining, idiots in love, perv!reader but also perv!adrian

If someone asked what your vice was, you'd have to say it was something normal, something reasonable. You could be like any middle aged man in Evergreen and say darts and draft beers. You could be like any of the girls you graduated with back in Gotham and say shopping or accidental dates with the Joker’s henchmen that all of your friends had coincidentally gone on- multiple times. But no, you couldn't be that easy or simple. You had to lie and pick one of those options instead of being truthful. You went for something in between, you would say cheap beer and extremely choice but expensive makeup. It's not like you could tell them you were almost addicted to  @mattvtweets tributes and videos. To the point where you made a dummy account with your most racy lewd picture as the profile picture and a Fargo reference as a fake name and you had his account notifications turned on. It's also not like you could mention that it's your favorite coworker under an equally fake identity. 

It's not like you were looking, you werent. You were twitter mutuals with your team, and you were already a bit of a purveyor of twitter nude culture. You’d memorized a few of your favorites and donated to a few of their onlyfans links, but one stuck out to you in a big way. @mattvtweets had a body to die for, slight abs with the cutest tiniest bit of chub, chiseled arms, a nice girthy… clean apartment. 

It took three videos for you to recognize the apartment. The large mirror he stood in front of in every video showed off a lot more than what you think he might have wanted to show, but you saw it all. Specifically, you saw all you needed to see to connect all of the dots. 

It started with a coffee mug. There was one video he posted late on a Tuesday night, one that already had you splayed out on the bed and ready, but you almost closed your legs on your hand in shock at the sight of it. You knew that cup, the one you bought for his birthday, the one you’d fought tooth and nail to find after he said he was a Josh Groban fan and you found out he wasn’t touring anymore for some broadway show. It looked you in the eye and taunted you, so much you could barely focus on the way his lovely chin just barely dipped into frame.

You knew that chin well, sharp and triangular and perfect. It looks the same as when he lifts up his mask just so when you're on a mission. You'd dreamed of kissing that chin when you saw a black and teal bit of fabric pull up to reveal pink lips that would occasionally sip a boba tea or a slurpee from the local bodega as he walked in late to headquarters. Those lips attached to that chin, those lips that you wanted all over you with or without the mask. 

To say you were shocked was an understatement, and to say you were so turned on by your own guilt at continuing to look would be putting it lightly. You came harder than you ever have before that night. It was like an addiction now, watching Adrian Chase wrap the same hand that holds open doors for you, wrap around his hard cock and stroke himself until he comes, sometimes his release even splashing onto the mirror and absolutely driving you wild.

Now that you recognize that chin, you start to recognize the rest of him. How could you not? You'd personally patched up that toned chest before, remembering how Adrian just smiled and blushed while you nervously put your hands on him. Being up close to him without all of his gear was daunting, your nerves in overdrive, even if you kinda have a thing for the uniform too. Ever time you patch up Adrian you find yourself walking away from the encounter flushed and giddy like some school girl with a crush.

It started with that video, where you relaxed again after your initial shock at the revelation. You slipped your hand back in between your thighs, middle finger coming to circle around your clit every once in a while dipping a finger inside yourself before going back to your clit, watching the video on a loop. You tried your best to time your movements to match the movement of his hand on himself, almost like you were doing this together. It was tributed to another user, someone who had posted a nude for this specific response, but you're creative, you can imagine that it's dedicated to you, the three minute video that you can pretend and say he is doing this thinking of you.

You imagine yourself kneeling in front of him, mouth open and ready as you watch him, touching yourself and just waiting for the finale, wanting to taste him on your tongue. Would he be just as vocal in person? Or is this all an act for the internet? You hope he's vocal, you think, as you lose rhythm and speed up your own pace. You press your fingers down a little harder as you speed up, letting his moans be the soundtrack to your own imagination kicking into high gear. 

 Just as you're about to bring yourself over the edge with your fingers, your pinky and thumb precariously holding your phone slip, and that little heart under the tweet turns red. 

Shit, shit shit shit. Fuck. You quickly pull your hand up and unlike the tweet as quickly as you'd liked it, and now your orgasm is ruined.

You panic. You hope it was quick enough that he didn't see the notification from your account. That's how the dummy account was created. Now, with a picture of your cleavage and a fake name, you can like any of these videos you want, and even comment under them if you're tipsy or feeling brave. 

You think nothing of it anymore. That was three weeks ago.

“Hey, Y/n, take a look at this!” 

You don't even have a moment of clarity to understand what's happening before Adrian’s phone is being shoved in front of your face a little too closely. 

“I got Eagly to hug me! And Harcourt got it on camera!”

He’s practically bouncing on the soles of his boots as your hands brush his gloved ones to grab the phone from him. 

Sure enough, the eagle’s wings are draped around Adrian’s shoulders, his face turned away from the predators beak, but beaming. 

“Don’t scroll,” Adrian says, in a tone that makes you think he doesn’t actually care but he knows it’s what people say when they’re presented with someone’s camera roll. You don’t need to, though. The bottom of the screen shows those tiny little previews of what else is previously taken, and you can see a thumbnail that looks identical to the video he posted last night that had you moaning into your pillow and gasping for breath. If he notices your eyes flicker down the the little previews, he doesn’t say anything.

“How long did that take?” you ask, carefully handing the phone back to him so that there are no accidental swipes. 

“Only about two hours, and three bags of doritos,” he responds, clearly bubbling with pride. 

He sits down next to you on the piano bench like everything is normal. You've all but convinced yourself he didn't see a notification from your account on his secret twitter and everything is fine.

But it's not for you, those videos are not for you, and neither is Adrian's presence. Ever since you spotted the coffee mug and his chin, it's like when Neo took the pill in the Matrix. You now know the truth, you know everything that lies underneath that uniform and it's like you can't turn it off. You find yourself little sweatier, a little more on edge now when he invades your personal space; Something you once craved, and now you dread, imagining he can see “I GET OFF ON YOU” written on your forehead in sharpie or something. 

You notice he closes out of his camera roll quickly, and as he plays one of those matching games with those horrible ads, you can’t help but be distracted by the constant banner notifications going wild that he keeps having to swipe away. He focuses on his screen while Harcourt and Adebayo explain how things will proceed, not missing a beat answering questions when they’re lobbed his way, but you can’t focus on anything but the notifications you saw that couldn’t be from anything but his other twitter.

“Dude, what if she’s possessed?” you hear Chris say, and your realize they’re talking about you. 

“If I was possessed I’d attack you first,” you shoot back at Chris, hoping and praying you’d draw the attention anywhere but where your mind was.

Luckily, Adrian starts cracking up.

“She totally would dude, she says you aggravate her! Not that she would win even if she was possessed, I mean, your biceps alone…”

You tune out again now that the attention is off of you. Saved by the Vigilante. 

After a while things die down again, and you all agree to where and when you'll meet up tomorrow for reconnaissance. 

Before you leave you stop by John’s desk.

“Hey, how's my watch coming?” You ask, kicking one of your boots against the steel leg of the table.

“Finished it this morning, actually,” he says, rooting in his drawer until he finds it, “I actually tweaked it so that it can call each of us quicker. Its jailbroken so you wont get a warranty or anything but… it works for what we need. Thanks for being a guinea pig.”

He hands you your apple watch, with your shitty fake Burberry watch strap, a much missed accessory on your left wrist.

You strap it back onto your wrist, making sure it’s just the right amount of tightness and back in its normal place before you push your sweatshirt sleeve back down over it. 

“No, thank you! Really, I’ve been looking to make this thing more useful than closing my rings back in Gotham,” You shoot him a grateful smile, tapping the screen until it flashes back to life, the picture of all of you after the bottling factory incident permanently set as your background now. 

“Yeah no problem,” he says, and then adds, “By the way, you have a lot of twitter notifications.” 

Oh shit.

You thank him three more times before you finally say goodbye to everyone and leave, and its not until you get into your car that you check the notifications on your watch. Luckily, it was just a bunch of notifications that said ‘notifications’ and then just the twitter symbol. Economos didn't see anything.

You didn't have to open any of the notifications to know that they were alerts that the @mattvtweets account had made yet another post. It was basically your kryptonite at this point, the way that you had his alerts on and would save every video in your likes. Your dummy account isn't private, which means that if you were to respond to his videos, he could see it. Which, you've definitely debated doing before. It wouldn't be weird for that account for you to tweet something thirsty at him that would then result in him posting a video specifically for you. Not that he would know it was you, but it was you. Maybe if you were lucky he’d moan your fake twitter name and you'd know it was all for you.

But time and time again, you'd typed out a thirsty ass message, stared at it for a few seconds, and then promptly deleted it. For some reason, you couldn't stand to be just another girl in his replies begging for attention. Beyond that, you’d have an even harder time looking him in the eye than you already do. It’s bad enough the liked tweets of this dummy account are literally every video he’s posted and absolutely nothing else. Maybe one day you'll be brave- or desperate- enough to ask for a tribute, or to send him a nude. You'd thought of subscribing to his onlyfans, but it was no different content, and your google email popped up as the first one to join which freaked you out. You know Adrian knows your email address, and that was just a little too risky. Well, it felt a little riskier than what you were already doing. That's bold, maybe stupid, but you've never considered yourself the most creative.

Your drive home is usually taken in relative peace, eight stop lights and exactly three turns between headquarters and your apartment, and you can usually get about two or three songs in depending on how many red lights you hit. 

You reach the fifth stoplight nodding your head along to the radio when another notification pops up on your watch. Refusing to touch your watch, you drive home with a little bit more fire under your ass.

You’d never had a team back in Gotham, never had people who you could count on or people you would consider close. Associates, yes, but never people you'd meet up with after a job or text or send memes back and forth to, even if some of them have an incomprehensible concept of what a meme is. Adrian has to be your favorite of them, which makes this whole situation just a little more fucked up. You'd hate to break this trust; you know this is a boundary crossed, but this is something he’s never going to find out about. There's nothing that could actually trace the account back to you, you constantly reassure yourself. He can be your best friend and your secret fantasy and no one ever has to know. 

You convince yourself of this in the rest of the time it takes to get from that stoplight to the living room of your home. A condo that was once temporary housing now turned much more permanent, the decor miss matched and weird, but all little memories of your jobs with your new friends and new life here. 

You love your condo, and the life you're building here, and even the shitty frozen dinners you make here every night.

It’s not until you get to change into pajamas and finally lay down for the evening that you get to check those notifications. 

Your stomach drops when you see the newest notification, the one that was posted a few hours ago when you were in the car.

@mattvtweets: Thinking of a certain coworker, should I tell her this one’s for her? 

This video is not like the others, with his hand running over his chest, his abs, the scar on his side where you weren’t careful enough with your stitching one time before finally grasping himself. He’s got his bare leg propped up on the edge of his coffee table and his muscular pale thighs on display with his curly brunette leg hair covering them. Adrian’s really putting himself on display for this coworker, whoever she is. 

God, I hope it’s me, you think as you shimmy yourself into the pile of blankets you threw on top of your bed this morning. You don't miss the way the motion pushes your shorts even farther up your thighs, your free hand running up and down your soft skin, similar to the way Adrian is touching himself in the video.

Adrian in the video keeps running his hands up and down his body, almost teasing himself, almost like he's doing what he wants someone to do to him.

God, what you wouldn't give to be the one running your hands along his body, getting to feel his muscles flex under your finger tips and getting to brush along the soft hair on his thighs and lower abdomen. 

You start to copy his motions, warming your own body as you follow his movement, pushing your shirt up to run across your chest and grab at yourself the same way he’s doing to himself.

You scroll down slightly to like the video, saving this one so that you could keep coming back to it, specifically for that caption.

All of the comments below don't help your little fantasy, either

@user03114: She's so lucky!

@daynaxx: get her to make a vid with u luv xx 

@angelbby28x: can i work with you?

It's the comment about making a video with you that fuels your fire. Shit, you think, the things you'd do with him. You've never really been the type to take or send nudes, but if Adrian ever asked you to make one of these videos with you, you'd practically jump at the chance. To be sent these videos directly, to send videos to him.

You slip your free hand below the waistband at the thought of touching yourself on camera for Adrian, of letting him bare you to the masses. Maybe he’d even talk a little dirty; fuck, you’re sure you’d even get hot and bothered by his rambling if he just looked at you the right way. Your middle finger slips through your folds at the thought of him touching you on camera. Would he tease you? Would he keep going until you passed out? Would he be gentle? Rough?

I’ll take anything he’d give me, you think, pressing your fingers farther until you brush over your clit and finally making yourself gasp. 

You scroll back up to the video and start to move, circular motions with your middle and ring finger over your clit, your legs spread wide and hips slightly tilted just to hit that perfect angle.

When Adrian in the video finally wraps his hand around his cock, you finally dip your fingers inside yourself, slowly thrusting in time with how he strokes himself. He strokes his length, a good seven inches and curved slightly upward from what you can tell on the phone screen, from base to tip painfully slowly; this is a real performance he’s putting on, really showing off himself and giving you so much to work with. Its not like you need much though, fingers fucking yourself with barely any resistance. It's almost embarrassing how wet you can get over a twitter video, but it's more the little hints of the man behind them. Even before you found the account he’d left you flustered by simple gestures.

You're able to work yourself up to that peak quickly, only having to loop the five minute video twice before your breath is hitching and you're moaning his name quietly into the cold air of your bedroom. It's the way you can see the smallest bit of his jawline at the top of the screen, you can see the way it clenches and bites back his own moans.

You move your fingers faster as you imagine Adrian above you, clenching his jaw just like that, as he fucks into you, filling you and making you all his. Adrian’s rough hands manhandling you, grabbing and groping you, holding you down as he-

Your phone vibrating from a phone call shocks you out of your near-bliss. Fuck fuck shit fuck shit, you think as you drop the phone onto the bed next to you, the video of Adrian still playing on the screen. Your hand practically tears itself away from you and recoils back out of your shorts so quickly it's as if you'd been burned. As you gasp for air to regain your composure you look at the screen.

Adrian’s calling. 

Before you can really think about it, you're picking up his call and throwing it on speaker out of habit. 

“Uh, Hello?”

“Hey, favorite coworker!" He greets you, not best friend, but favorite coworker works. Favorite coworker could be the subject of that tweet, "I was just- Wait, did I interrupt a workout?”

You pause.

“No?”

Adrian sighs on the other end.

“Well why didn't you tell me you had asthma, silly? I would carry an inhaler with me if you had just told me, not to mention how out of breath you sound and-”

“Adrian, no,” you interrupt him, “What's up? What did you want to call me about?”

He stops, and you can practically hear him pondering on the other end. 

“Oh! Right, I just got done patrols on your side of town. I was wondering if I could come over since Fargo is on tonight and we always debrief after the episode.”

Suddenly you become all too aware of your situation. You're sprawled out on your bed, fingers still soaked in yourself because of the man on the other end of the call, your tiny bedroom feeling all too spacious. And Adrian is asking to enter this space and be alone with you.

“Uhhh, maybe that's not the best idea, Adrian,” you say, knowing you wont be able to keep your cool. 

But then guilt starts to creep in like a tingle along your scalp, because Adrian doesn't answer that.

“My house is really messy!” you offer, hoping that’ll smooth things over. 

Adrian stays quiet again for a moment, and then starts laughing a little too hard. 

“You could have just said that, silly!” he scoffs, and you can picture his face a little too close to the speaker, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah?” you ask.

“Yeah, you can clean tomorrow,” he suggests, before adding, “I’ll bring you back to my place! I’m parked outside of your house anyway, you can just get in the Vigilante-Mobile.”

He punctuates his offer by honking his horn, confirming he is indeed right outside of your condo, and he’s not going to back down on Fargo night. 

“O-Okay, sure,” you stutter out, “just let me make myself decent.”

“Of course, because if we got pulled over you could get an indecent exposure charge. Not that I would mind about indecency.”

“Thank you. Adrian.” you grit out, head spinning for a reason caught somewhere between your ruined orgasm and the way he so plainly flirts without boundaries.

He hangs up then, and honks his horn again once. Groaning, you pull yourself from your position on the bed to get up and splash some cold water on your face.

You're going to need it.

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

So like, mini disclaimer before the post. I was not and am not a believer in the "Sonic is going to be forced to choose between his original friends and the shatterspace variants" theory, nor the companion to it "all the variants are just gonna essentially live with their memories inside the og friends' hearts"

However, I do have brainrot over the idea of Nine meeting Tails in his dreams, and some of these ideas require a prerequisite of "in which Nine exists within Tails' heart but does not currently have a body.

ㅤ

Imagine, if you will, a setting post canon in which the variants exist within the hearts of the original and (kingdom hearts style) they would just need a body/vessel of their own to exist again. Tails is sleeping, and after dreams upon dreams of meeting the variants, experiencing their fleeting memories and their hurt (their feelings about everything), he comes across Nine.

Nine... Tails has had a hard time remembering much of his dreams while awake, but when he's dreaming, he remembers that Nine has been perhaps the angriest and most conflicted of all the variants. All of them want to be alive, of course. Tails wouldn't be surprised if *all* of them have been parsing through his own memories in exchange for sharing theirs.

But none have been so volatile as Nine, harder to reason with. The others at least face him more often than not, but Nine has directly done so few times.

But...Tails can't blame him for that, especially not after what he knows. He understands how Nine likely feels (abandoned, lonely, forgotten). Perhaps he wouldn't be so agreeable either if he fought tooth and nail for a better future, and the universe denied him that (nay, punished him to watch but to never have).

But tonight...

Nine is standing under a palm tree, facing the vast ocean past the beaches of Green Hill. Tails takes a few steps down the hill he's on, and soon enough he's standing off to the side (dream logic, he understands)—where he can see Nine from the front, but isn't standing directly in front of him or obstructing his view.

It's at this moment that Tails realizes he's never seen Nine so clearly before. The tips of his ears, to his permafrown, to his 7 mechanical tails, and down to his shoes. He's fought the fox before in his dreams, seen glimpses of him, but this is the first time he's had a chance to really see him.

Nine turns his head away from the sea, and suddenly Tails is beside him, mere feet away.

Tails opens his mouth, a dozen questions and sentence starters flying through his head. What eventually comes out is just a simple, "Nine?"

Nine smiles at that, and yet...Tails can tell almost instantly that it's not because he's happy or excited to see him. No, the smile is almost...accepting, if not a little bit sad.

Then, Nine sighs. "This could have been the other way around, but...it has to be you."

Tails hesitates for a moment before pointing at himself. "...Me? Why?"

"There are so many people connected to you—all of you, if my hypothesis is correct. It often is. You're me, so...you can feel what I felt. You could...feel how I feel."

And maybe it's true that Tails can feel what Mangey, Sails, and Nine are feeling, but all that proves is that one is affected by the presence of others residing within their own consciousness.

Tails shakes his head. "No. You're you, not me."

There's a moment of silence before Nine chuckles, and Tails continues, "I want you to know that you deserve to live as your own person, just as much as I do."

"Every time we've fought—here—I've asked you the same question. Do you remember it?"

Well, of course, Tails finds multiple questions as he tries to think back, but by keeping the terms of Nine's question in mind and employing process of elimination–

Nine turns back to the sea, squeezing both gloved hands into fists at his sides. "I was angry—among other things. I just couldn't understand why I was here. After everything I'd fought for, everything we'd been through together, I couldn't understand why he chose you. And every time I asked, you never gave me an answer."

Nine's right. Tails has never given him an answer to that question.

But to Tails...that question was never his to answer, at least in his opinion. Unless Sonic told him, Tails would never know why he put in for him, Amy, Knuckles, and Rouge over worlds of new friends. All he does know (straight from Sonic's own testimony) is that Sonic would have never made the choice he did had he known it would lead to all this. Sonic had wanted home, Tails, and all his friends back, but he never meant to erase the other worlds. Even as he tries to pretend otherwise, Tails knows Sonic has been beating himself up for the choice he made ever since.

Shouldn't Nine know that—that Sonic didn't mean to hurt him, that Sonic feels regret, that Sonic wasn't intending to choose between one or the other?

"Nine–"

"Save it," Nine says, cutting him off. "It doesn't matter anymore. Sonic made his choice, but you still have that chance."

Nine turns back to Tails and holds out a hand.

Tails looks down, then back up at Nine. He hesitates for a second, but ultimately takes Nine's hand.

Tails is an observer, a spectator without form, as memories begin to play out before him in quick succession. Despite the lack of form, somehow his head begins to ache in pain that only grows over the moments.

And then, he begins to notice a pattern in the memories shown to him. Despite the pain, he recognizes the clear shift since a certain blue hedgehog—Sonic, of course—saves Nine from being hit by a train.

Each and every memory, if Sonic wasn't centered or mentioned in it, then his palpable absense was the focal point. Nine fought him, he worked with him, he almost lost him, he thought he lost him, and then he fought him again.

Nine had spent most of his life lonely, though he hadn't realized that until his life was almost over.

A waterfall of emotions hit him then, just before the highlight reel crackles into black.

And then, Tails is standing beside Nine again, head pulsing and heart pounding. He can hardly remember what he's just seen, and that waterfall of emotions seeps through his fingers as he tries to catch them, to study them.

All he knows is that he understands. Somehow, he understands why Nine feels the way he does. Now, more than before, he understands why Nine is hung up on Sonic the way he is.

Perhaps, Tails thinks, he understands how it feels for Nine to be with Sonic (and without him) far more than anyone else.

Tails musters up a look of determination as he stares into Nine's eyes, and he squeezes his hand. "I'll figure it out. No matter how long it takes, I'll make sure you—you, and Sails, and Mangey, and the rest—can walk along the beach. You don't deserve to sit here and watch like this. None of you deserved to have your lives taken."

And Nine... Nine smiles, like he just can't help it. "Don't you see? That's why it has to be you."

There's a feeling, an almost indescribable feeling, that strikes Tails' heart at that.

"I promise," Tails says.

And then, he’s sitting up in his bed, breathing deeply.

As he makes himself get up, get ready, and rush into his lab, there's little he remembers from his dream as always.

But he knows what he has to do.

I'll make sure of it, Nine.

[peace-fantasia]

Saw a post on fridging and like it’s use in TVtropes language has slowly made it drift from its original use into bad writing/or woman dies.

Which erases the actual maliciousness of a fridging. And that’s it’s inherent lack of agency towards the woman in question. They exist for male pain and stop existing as characters to remain a eternal victim too pure for this world. Whatever previous characterization they had erased.

For example.

Black widow made a choice. It’s badly written. But it was her decisions that led to her death. This was not a fridging.

Compare to Gwen Stacy who was thrown off the bridge by the green goblin. Not because of any active choice she made. But because Norman wanted to hurt Spiderman. Her personality erased. And she just became a eternal victim in the narrative of Spiderman. Nobody remembered Gwen the character anymore. They remembered Gwen, the sad victim that Norman killed. Her death overshadowed everything about her character.

I find the idea of Pyrrha being fridged a disservice to her character. She died. But she had agency in her death. She chose to protect Jaune. She chose to fight Cinder. She wasn’t slain by Cinder to make Jaune sad while completely powerless like Gwen. She fought tooth and nail to survive the battle and lost. She was a hero and that’s how everyone honors her. She wasn’t a a victim at the wrong place at the right time. She was a champion slain who was honored as such.

[hvwks]

𝐅𝐀𝐄𝐖: 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟓: 𝐈 𝐁𝐄𝐓 𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐎𝐆𝐒

tag list: @joongshong @phontao @mynam3wastaken @moethequeerwitch. please like my pinned post to be added to the tag list for future chapters.

103 Years Ago.

“Do you remember the day we met?”

The question is posed idly, uttered with such nonchalance that Oda can’t help the way a brow lifts in curiosity. His gaze lifts from where he had been studying the dip of the ice cubes under the thick, dark-colored ale poured in his glass. When his eyes skim over Dazai’s sharp profile, he can’t help but think to himself–has he always looked like a boy ruined by centuries of sadness?

“How could I forget?” Oda finally ventures. He taps a finger against the rim of his glass with idle interest, turning his gaze away in favor of returning to his examination of the drink that had been so graciously served to him on Dazai’s behest. “It’s not very often that a vampire comes to the doorstep of a hunter with a suicidal request, now is it?” It should have been humorous, spoken with the sarcasm of an old friend reminiscing upon a fond memory–and yet, as the words leave his lips, they feel almost pensive, as if the moment had replayed timelessly through Oda’s mind since the day the two had crossed paths.

This time, Dazai exhales a breath of a chuckle. The sound isn’t surprising in itself–Dazai, after all, had a rather strange habit of finding humor in the strangest places–but as Oda listens to the shuffling at his side, he’s certain that the other finds their twisted, intertwined fates all too ironic. 

“No, I suppose it isn’t,” the mafioso offers with a hum, the sound of a glass clinking against the smooth, varnished bar counter decisively ringing through the air. “But it makes for one hell of a story, now doesn’t it?”

This time, Oda turns his full attention to the other with a look of mild interest, expression neutral in spite of the understanding look glittering in the depths of his gaze. “That’s certainly one way to put it,” he offers thoughtfully, head tilting to the side as he watches the other. 

Dazai doesn’t bother meeting his gaze–but he doesn’t need to. Oda had long since learned to read the feared death dealer with an accuracy that startled many of their peers. Each inhale, each twitch of his fingers, each lilting melody to his disarming charisma–it all had intention. Meaning. While others saw Dazai, the unpredictable Grim Reaper of the Port Mafia’s coven, all Oda could see was the boy who fought tooth and nail to find meaning in the senselessness of violence. A reason for immortal life scavenged in the deaths committed by his own hands.

As Dazai shakes his head, dark locks falling over his face to obscure those dark, unyielding depths that Oda is certain were a gateway to the hell that dwelled within him, he can’t help the joyless smile that tugs at his lips. “It’s been decades,” he finally starts again, his voice little more than a drawn-out exhale, “but no matter how many times I ask, you never tell me why.”

“Why what, exactly?”

Oda’s deadpan question is enough to earn a quiet sigh of thinly-veiled exasperation. “Now you’re just playing hard to get,” he laments with a hint of a whine.

“Is it really hard to get if I don’t have an answer?”

This time, Dazai finally shoots him a look of annoyance–though as their gazes lock, Oda can’t help but feel as if the mafioso’s expression borders on petulant more than anything else. “There you go again,” the mafioso quips, lips pursing ever so slightly, “avoiding the damn question.”  Long fingers curl protectively around his glass, ignoring the condensation that works its way into a shallow pool against the surface of the counter. 

Oda considers his point, gaze lifting to study the ceiling overhead as he mulls it over. The truth is that he didn’t really understand the why behind his actions; his life had once been a violent blur of bloodshed and carnage, leaving him with a mountain of corpses that could put even the Port Mafia to shame. He tilts his head, considering the series of events that landed him in the Bar Lupin after a long night of running errands for mafia executives and henchmen alike. Oda exhales a breath of a chuckle, shaking his head all the while.

“I guess,” he starts carefully, “if I had to pick a single answer…” Oda’s words trail off, head turning to catch Dazai’s dark gaze. “I wanted to see if this kid I met could keep his promise.”

~ * ~

Once Yokohama’s most feared supernatural hunter, Oda Sakunosuke had traversed the city with mechanical rage. Hired by the city’s common folk to relieve their villages of the corpses that waited on their haunches in the dead of night, he had learned how to eliminate vampires with impunity. Word of the famed hunter’s success in Yokohama had reached even the Vatican through his short life–and though Paladins had appeared at his doorstep time after time in hopes of recruiting someone with his skill in combat into their ranks, he had turned them down with a polite dip of his head and a courteous bow. He had no interest or investment in allying himself with a conglomerate dedicated to cleansing the world of the undead.

After all, his sworn duty had stemmed from a place of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of those who could not yet protect themselves. He had learned how to slit a vampire’s throat with a dagger blessed with Holy Water without flinching, learned how to hunt and find those that had cheated Death with pinpoint accuracy. 

And yet, all his years of gutting and disposing of those who threatened the safety of the families that pleaded with Oda for his protection, he had never once expected to have a vampire approach him with a request before–a request to be slain.

He still remembers the night he opened his door to find a boy standing before him, bandages fashioned from the pelts of dead animals wrapped tightly around the right half of his face, obscuring his features so that only a single dark, unyielding eye could gaze at him. His clothes looked expensive for the time, sewn from the finest of fabrics and tailored to fit his lithe frame–and yet, the dark clothing weighed heavily upon his body, wet with blood that Oda could taste in the air. 

He froze, one hand resting on the handle of his door and the reflex to reach for his dagger kickstarting–but as their gazes locked, Oda couldn’t help but feel as if he was looking at a boy that had long since lost his way. Like he was looking at a child that had stumbled upon him with tears in his eyes, looking for guidance. Hope. Anything at all. And yet, there was not a single tear clinging to the boy’s lashes. In fact, the single eye that gazed back at him looked empty, like he wasn’t human at all–and never was, to begin with. Like he had always been a monster forced to bare his teeth, never given a choice. Never, never, never.

And so, Oda refused to move. He stood there, his gaze focused silently on this stranger of the night without fetching his dagger. He couldn’t fathom the gut reaction that left him rooted to the spot, forced into uncomfortable silence until the boy had finally decided to speak.

“Kill me, hunter.”

It should have been simple. All it would have taken was a single knife to slice through the jugular of the creature before him to silence him altogether–and yet, as Oda studied him, he felt his body move at its own leisure. At first, he took a single step back, then one more–and before he could help it, the hunter had tucked his tall frame to the side, leaving the vampire with enough space to wedge his way into his home. The boy looked surprised–the first inflection of emotion Oda had observed at all from him–but as the beat passed, he took a ginger step past the threshold. 

Oda had led him inside, seated the boy at his table, and fetched fresh linens. He had dropped them unceremoniously onto the table before the vampire, watching with guarded eyes as he eyed the clothing suspiciously–but before he could protest, Oda cut him off with a sharp murmur. 

“I only kill what deserves to be killed.”

He wasn’t sure what possessed him to say such nonsense–and yet, it had felt organic, like a truth he had unearthed from the darkest crevice of his own humanity. The boy looked at him with that singular eye, an expression caught somewhere between wanting to burst into tears and a silent fury that could have scorched the earth into nothing but ash etched into his features–but he didn’t protest. Not at first.

The days that followed had been strange, to say the least; Oda had left the boy to his own devices after ensuring that he wouldn’t attack at a moment’s notice. In fact, the boy had donned the fresh linens without further protest, sulking silently through the narrow corridors of his humble abode. He would drag his fingers listlessly against the walls as he wandered, sticking to the shadows like a ghost. Occasionally, he would pause and study the various knicknacks Oda had collected over the years. 

The boy had taken a rather strong liking to a wooden cat that Oda had received as a gift from a village child a number of months ago. It was worn and weathered, the crude edges of the whittled creature rough to the touch. It wasn’t particularly interesting in Oda’s opinion; it didn’t have any intricate mechanisms nor did it even have a face etched into its barren, wooden facade. It was simple, plain. And yet, the boy had spent many a moment picking it up, noting its weight in the palm of his hand, turning it over and over until he had memorized each unrefined edge sculpted into it. After his thorough examination, he would set the wooden cat aside and return to haunting the halls with his melancholy gaze and downturned mouth.

Oda wasn’t sure why he had permitted the boy to stay–much less why the boy, himself, had chosen to stay within the confines of his home, at all. After that fateful night, they had hardly spoken save for Oda turning down the boy’s request for death. It was an irony that was hardly lost on him; the silent hunter, housing a strange vampire boy that seemed to beg for death. 

After two days of their silent understanding, the boy finally spoke once again. He had been on his way to fetch the clothes he had left outside to dry when the thin, shadowy figure appeared before Oda in the darkness. Oda paused, a single brow lifting in curiosity, as their gazes met once more. The boy’s mouth was pressed into a thin line, as if he had been chewing on his words until they had lost all of its meaning–and yet, when his lips parted to speak, Oda listened with intent.

“I could kill you, hunter.”

“I know.” Oda’s words were murmured with a sense of earnest honesty that the boy–vampire–couldn’t help the way his brows twitched ever so slightly. The hunter had known from the moment they first met that the creature before him had seen death one-thousand times over, watched life bleed out in ways that so few mortals could fathom. There was an edge of danger that followed closely at his heels–and yet, Oda found that he didn’t feel fear in his presence. Perhaps it was the sadness, the way the boy’s self-hatred seemed to leak from his dark eyes like tears anytime their gazes met. He looked like a boy donning a monster’s flesh–and though it was a gamble, Oda had wagered his bets with confidence.

“Then why don’t you kill me first?”

There was an edge of desperation creeping into his voice now, one that the hunter could feel like a knife twisting in his own chest. Oh, how lonesome he must be. It’s a thought that crossed his mind without hesitation, causing Oda to blink curiously at the boy as he considered his response. A long stretch of silence followed before the hunter tilted his head and gazed up at the ceiling. It took him some time to find the words, but when Oda was finally satisfied, he offered a thoughtful hum.

“I do not kill children.”

It must have struck a nerve; the boy’s lip curled and he spat out a sneer unprompted. “Children? Is that what I look like to you? A child?” His voice suddenly sounded bitter, like he had tasted his own bile as he swallowed back the growl threatening to bubble up his throat. He held his head high, dark, haphazard locks falling against his forehead to obscure the burning glare he shot in Oda’s direction. 

And yet, the hunter merely raised a brow, hardly fazed by the prickling rage radiating off of the boy. “Yes,” he concluded. “That is exactly what you look like to me.”

There was a long moment of silence as they looked at one another–and as the beats passed one after another, the look of petulant anger slowly dissolved until the boy’s shoulders sagged and his expression softened. A defeated sigh escaped him–and before Oda could make sense of it, the boy laughed. It was a quiet sound, little more than a sharp, amused exhale–but there was no mistaking it. He was pleasantly surprised and as Oda studied him, he felt his own lips curl into a muted half-smile.

“You’re a strange one, hunter,” the boy started after a moment, a glint lighting up the depth of his dark eye as he gazed at him. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who spoke to me like I’m… a child. Not in a very, very long time.”

“Well, I suppose there is a first for everything, now isn’t there?”

Another week passed and Oda learned soon after that night that the boy had a name–Osamu Dazai. He was not just a vampire, but a high-ranking death dealer of the most feared coven skulking through Yokohama’s underbelly. He was the coven leader’s right hand, known within the underworld for his methods–though the boy, Dazai, failed to elaborate on what those methods were. Oda also learned he quite liked cats, hence his rapt fascination with the wooden trinket he had taken such a strong liking to days prior. He also had trained himself to survive without blood for weeks at a time–though Oda had taken pity on him after a certain point and fetched a stray squirrel from his garden as a peace offering. Dazai had taken it gratefully, enthusiastically unhinging his maw to expose long, tapered fangs throbbing in his gums.

He must have been starving, Oda thought to himself, as he watched with morbid fascination. Dazai had eagerly snapped the small creature’s neck before sliding his fangs into the tender underbelly of the animal. Razor-sharp points slid into place like a knife through warm butter, a pleased rumble catching in the vampire’s chest all the while. He had taken what he could from the squirrel in earnest–and when his mouth pulled back with a wet smack, thick rivulets of crimson stained his mouth and trailed down his chin. Oda had remarked idly–mostly to himself–that Dazai looked “like a little boy who had been offered a cherry tart, fresh from the oven.”

It had earned a rather irritated look from the vampire, lips curled and fangs bared, but his conviction was short-lived. After tossing the drained carcass aside, Dazai returned to his back-and-forth conversation with the hunter. In return, Oda explained that he was once nothing more than an average courier, carting hand-written letters from home to home in a small village outside of Yokohama. He was in good favor with the citizens of said village for his kind and earnest demeanor–and as the months wore on, he found himself faced with one dilemma after another.

He even confessed to a life he had long since forsaken–a life of an assassin, working for hire to keep bread on his table and clothes on his back. It was a lifestyle he had walked away from what felt like a lifetime ago–but when his newfound village companions fretted to him about missing livestock and children disappearing in the dead of night, Oda fetched his sword and walked down the dark, narrow, and twisted road of hunting. Oda paid little mind to the reputation he built for himself in the meantime, explaining to Dazai that he did what he did not for the guts or the glory, but because if there was one thing he wanted to do, it was to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.

Dazai looked at him curiously after Oda recalled stories of his past, head tilted to the side before exhaling a breathy hum. “So how does an assassin decide on a whim to become a protector instead?”

It was a great question, really, but it was one that left Oda silent for a long stretch of time. He turned his back to Dazai, occupying his hands with straightening trinkets upon a lone shelf. He could feel Dazai’s gaze burning into his back, watching every jump of his muscle and every twist of his body–and though the vampire didn’t break the quiet that had settled over them, Oda couldn’t help but exhale a low, tired-sounding sigh.

“I once killed a writer.”

Dazai looked perplexed, his brows coming together and lips twisting into an unconvinced frown. “A writer?” he echoed dubiously.

Oda dipped his head in a nod, glancing over his shoulder to cast Dazai an unreadable look. “It’s my biggest regret,” he continued, “and I decided after that, I couldn’t continue to kill the way that I did.” He fell quiet, turning his attention back to a small glass tiger. It was a gift from an elderly woman whose teenaged son had been mauled by a gaggle of rogue lycans on the night of a full moon. He had slaughtered the wolves with his own hands. The elderly woman had wept–but she told Oda he had the strength of one-hundred tigers and soon after, she had brought him the glass figure as a thank you. He turned it over in his palm, studying the way the thin, silver light of the moon refracted through the sturdy figure, sending a kaleidoscope of shallow colors against his fingers.

He set the figure aside with a muted clink, turning on his heel to fix Dazai with a stern expression. “The writer hadn’t done anything particularly wrong. He used to write his novels peacefully in his cottage–but he had crossed the wrong folks.” He heaved a tired sigh, one hand lifting to card through deep copper locks. 

“He had penned a love-letter to a young man that lived in a neighboring village. But his lover never received it. It was intercepted–and little did the writer realize that his love confession was to the son of a prominent gang member. Suffice to say,” Oda offered, his tone low and earnest, “his love was disparaged. Not everyone is kind and open-minded. At the time, I collected my coin and carried out my responsibilities without much thought…” Oda trailed off and as Dazai lifted his head to study him with intent, even the vampire could sense that the hunter remained troubled. Like the guilt still weighed upon him.

“I killed the writer with my own hands. He wept with my hands around his throat.” He turned away again, gazing off somewhere far, far away. “With his final breaths, he asked me one thing–was his lover okay?” Oda’s lips pressed together, jaw clenching tightly together. “I didn’t answer. But after I disposed of his body, I took his manuscript and left it for the man he loved. And from that day on, I decided that I couldn’t be the kind of man I was soon to become.”

“So you chose to kill those that hurt others, hm?” Dazai posed the question idly, but the gravity of his words weighed heavily upon Oda’s shoulders.

The hunter nodded slowly. “Yes. Exactly.”

Dazai stretched his arms high over his head, offering a long-winded yawn–as if Oda’s story had bored him altogether. But when he spoke again, it was with a certain level of care Oda hadn’t expected.

“That’s rather noble of you. Not very many people can admit that they’re in the wrong, now can they?”

Oda sighed deeply, shoulders going boneless as Dazai’s words slowly sank their way into his pores and burrowed into his bones. For a moment, it felt as if someone else had taken time to relieve him of the guilt that had weighed itself down on his chest. “I suppose,” he offered after a brief moment, unsure of how else to respond.

In the days that followed, the hunter and the vampire forged a strange understanding. Dazai confessed that the Port Mafia would certainly notice his disappearance by now, that there would be a search party on his tail at any given moment. Oda had asked why he continued to stay here, considering he hadn’t confined Dazai in any capacity.

The vampire looked thoughtful for the better part of five minutes before turning his head to cast Oda a knowing look. In that moment when their gazes met, the hunter was reminded that this was not a boy at all. This was a creature, a horror beyond comprehension, and though those sad, childish eyes were deceiving, they had seen atrocities far beyond even his own comprehension. 

“I like you, hunter.”

He pressed his lips together in thought. “Oda Sakunosuke,” he finally corrected.

“Oda Sakunosuke.”

Dazai echoed his name with a tilted head, trying out each syllable on his tongue with care and foresight before peering over at him once more. “It’s a very long name.”

Oda frowned. “Oda is quite short.”

“Well, yes, but it’s so plain. It doesn’t fit you.”

Another beat passed before Dazai snapped his fingers with a bright grin. “Odasaku!”

Oda’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Odasaku?” he repeated hesitantly.

“Yes, I will call you Odasaku.” Dazai bobbed his head in a nod, as if to solidify the fact. “It suits you more than Oda or Sakunosuke alone.”

Oda snorted, eyes rolling in spite of himself–but he didn’t protest. Instead, he shrugged. “If you must, Dazai Osamu of the Port Mafia coven.”

Dazai flashed him a wry smile, tapered fangs catching the dim moonlight. “I think I will, Odasaku of mysterious origins.”

The two studied each other for a long moment–and before they could help it, they laughed. 

It was the first time Oda found himself succumbing to the feeling of joy in what felt like an eternity. And Dazai–Dazai’s hands clutched at his stomach and his ribcage, doubling over with delight. They stayed that way for a long while, belts of laughter tapering off into sharp exhales until they were finally able to look at one another again.

Oda realized soon enough–he had made a friend. The hunter and the vampire, an unlikely pair. 

Their friendship had been bound in blood and understanding–so when the Port Mafia coven appeared at his doorstep only a handful of nights later, Oda had prepared himself to die at their hands. After all, for all the coven was concerned, the famed hunter had held one of its own captive for an inordinate amount of time. Though Oda had come to terms with his own demise, as the door swung open to reveal three creatures of the night poised with their weapons, the hunter couldn’t help the apprehension that twisted in the pit of his stomach.

He braced himself for the final blow, hoping that Death would be kind to him despite the sin that soiled his hand–and as Oda closed his eyes, ready for his life to be snatched away as easily as it had started, the sound of Dazai’s voice cut through the suffocating silence.

“Gin, Tachihara, Higuchi!” Names rattled off of his tongue with practiced ease, his silken cadence lilting with an off-beat melody. Dazai appeared from the shadows in an instant, aligning himself directly between Oda and the three vampires on his doorstep. One of them–a woman with blonde hair pulled up into a tight, high ponytail–frowned, her expression tight and full of concern. 

“Mr. Dazai, we’ve been searching everywhere for you!” Her tone was exasperated, as if the better part of the last few weeks had been spent laboring behind Dazai’s trail. The vampire in question, however, seems unfazed. In fact, his lips lifted with a mirthful smile, as if she had told him a rather curious joke. 

He held both his hands up in a show of mock-defeat. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you have. There’s no need to worry, I’m fine, you see?” He made a show of gesturing to his fully in-tact form, down to his fresh, clean linens and lack of wounds. Oda raised a brow from where he stood behind him, unsure if he should slowly retreat into the safety of his own home. 

He took a single backwards step–but the sound of his footfall against the creaky wood underneath was enough to alert the attention of one of the other vampires. It was the thin, tall one wearing a mask that obscured the better part of their face, dark locks piled high up atop their head. Dark eyes narrowed–and in one swift movement, they had a knife drawn and pointed over Dazai’s shoulder. The blade caught the moonlight, glittering off of its razor-sharp facade–but most alarming of all, its point had found its mark. It didn’t slice into his flesh, but Oda was painfully aware of its tapered point kissing against his neck. One wrong move this way or that and it would surely slice his jugular open.

Wonderful.

Oda grimaced once more, drawing in a slow breath through his nose. He had half a mind to reach for his own weapon–but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the minute shift in Dazai’s expression that signified something sinister, something far beyond the childlike charisma he was displaying up until now. 

He cleared his throat once–and the sound was enough to drag the gazes of all three vampires with rapt attention. 

“Gin, please drop your knife. Don’t you know it’s rude to threaten new friends?”

Gin–the masked vampire with the knife–looked startled. As did the blonde–Higuchi–and the young man between them. Tachihara, Oda deduced to himself.

The three exchanged apprehensive glances between themselves–but as Dazai’s steady gaze leveled them with that same blank impunity, Gin slowly relented and lowered their knife. Oda was able to exhale a quiet sigh of relief, the tension in his own muscles slowly beginning to dissolve. 

This time, it was the boy who snapped to attention. He had a mop of russet hair, wild amber eyes, and a dusting of freckles against the bridge of his nose. He looked young–though not quite as young as Dazai, himself–and when he spoke, his boisterous tone felt crass against Oda’s ears.

“Friend? Mr. Dazai, have ya lost yer damn mind?”

Dazai offered a pleasant smile–and though Oda was staring squarely at the back of his head, even he could sense that the curl of his mouth was far from joyous. It was a sign to remain silent in his presence. A warning.

Sure enough. Tachihara inhaled a breath and passed his tongue over his teeth to quell what he had initially wanted to say. He bowed his head out of respect–and not for the first time since these visitors had appeared, Oda couldn’t help but wonder with exactly whom he had grown so close to. Oda watched as the young man took an instinctive step back–and as if that was all the cue the others needed, the remaining pair bowed their heads and parted to form a narrow path for Dazai to take as his own.

Sure enough, the dark depths of the vampire’s eyes glittered in the dim moonlight as he took a step forward, bare feet sinking into the reedy grass that had long since grown too tall as it fringed Oda’s cottage. The hunter watched in pensive silence, reserved gaze following each step the other took–and as Dazai came to a steady halt, Oda couldn’t help the way his heart lurched with apprehension.

He stood that way for a long moment, unease prickling in the very air that surrounded him, before finally turning to catch Oda’s gaze. Dark eyes met a deep, navy blue pair. 

“Odasaku.”

“Dazai?”

“Come with me. If you do, I can make you a promise.”

Oda paused, his lips pressing together ever so slightly. He hesitated. “And what promise is that?”

When Dazai smiles, it feels despondent. Somehow, Oda can’t tell if it is mercy that was gazing back at him… or the endless melancholy that lurked in the shadows of Dazai’s presence.

“I promise you’ll have no need to kill again.”

From that day forward, Oda Sakunosuke defected his loyalty into the Port Mafia’s hands.

~ * ~

The breathy laughter that drips from Dazai’s lips lilts through the air, mingling with the subtle scratch of the jazz record playing over the phonograph. It’s a familiar sound, one that can’t help but pull a smile upon Oda’s lips as he studies the mafioso’s jagged outline once again. How Dazai could look like a small child hunched over his desk and a pointed monster of the night all at once remains an enigma even now–but no matter how much the death dealer puzzles him, no matter how strange his antics and demeanor may be, he would always remain the one and only Dazai Osamu.

“I suppose we’ll just have to see if that promise holds, hm?” The mafioso’s words are accompanied by a subtle smirk, the smallest curl of mirth pulling at the corners of his mouth. He lifts his glass against the candlelight, examining the rivulets of crimson that web their way through the amber of his ale of choice. “Though,” Dazai continues, “I think he’s been doing a fairly decent job at it, if I do say so myself.”

This time, it’s Oda’s turn to laugh. “I suppose I can’t argue with that.” His musing is little more than a soft rumble murmured under his breath. He lifts his glass to his lips, taking a slow sip.

Another beat of comfortable silence settles over them; it’s a familiar sensation. With Dazai, Oda had found that their conversation moved like the steady babble of a timeless brook. It would ebb and flow, coming to natural pauses of organic, easy silence before picking back up into a pleased chatter when the mood would strike. 

It’s a natural rhythm that comes as instinctively as the rise and fall of his chest–and though the hunter had long since forsaken his humanity in favor of an immortal life among the Port Mafia underlings, the action brings a sense of comfort to him. Though his undead body no longer required the act of breathing, it stands as a reminder of what he once was–what he had been when he and Dazai first crossed paths.

They sit that way for a handful of minutes, their easy silence interrupted only by the quiet jazz filtering through the air and the clink of ice against their glasses. 

Only when the last of his ale had been polished from the depth of his glass does Oda finally lift himself up to a proper stand. He leafs through his wallet, thumbing out enough bills to cover both his and Dazai’s tab. He doesn’t bother looking over at the mafioso, sensing his sharp eyes behind each of his movements. 

He folds the bills neatly, tucking them under the coaster beneath his glass. 

“Thanks for the drinks, Dazai.”

Dazai exhales a chuckle. “I should be thanking you, Odasaku. You picked up my tab, after all.”

“Consider it a deposit for next time.”

Oda’s words cause Dazai to go still, smiling quietly to himself. “For next time,” he echoes into his glass. 

He doesn’t bother looking up as Oda’s footsteps drift into the distance.

~ * ~

Two weeks later, Dazai held Oda Sakunosuke’s body as the last drop of his immortal life bled out against his palms.

—-

His head is pounding.

The world around him feels far away, his muscles growing numb and a heavy, unyielding sense of doom slowly sinking into his chest.

Fuck, I’m going to die.

Dazai feels the last shred of his consciousness cling desperately to that single thought. He tries to flex his jaw, tries to open his mouth, scream, anything–but the emptiness that greets him in his chest leaves him choking and sputtering. 

Is this how it felt, Odasaku? Is this what you were going through back then?

The thoughts feel bitter against his tongue, tainted by the metallic tang of his own ichor as it floods his mouth. This, Dazai decides, is what true suffering feels like–and to imagine that Oda had been forced to endure this in the last moments of his life is enough to make his stomach twist. Now, there was no one that would care to see whether he fulfilled his final promise to his old friend.

Not one person to give a damn about the Dazai Osamu that could have been.

Not one, except–

“Dazai!”

Chuuya’s voice cuts through the haze, a shrill sneer broken by what could only be a snarl of rage. If Dazai had the ability, he would have laughed to himself. Silly dhampir, he wants to say, run while you have the chance.

And yet, he hears that familiar snarl more clearly than anything else, a trill that drowns out the thick, murky sounds of the world slipping past his fingertips.

“Who the hell are you assholes? And what the fuck have you done!”

The muffled sound of unfamiliar voices blur together in the background, the blood roaring in his ears leaving him numb and unable to decipher the words being spoken. Dazai groans, a labored sound catching in the vampire’s chest. Ch–

The world beneath his body buckles, an influx of gravity rushing forward, pulling the shrapnel lodged into his skull with sudden force. Dazai bites back the urge to choke out a tortured scream.

“Get the fuck away from us!”

[eliothochberg]

I don't think we take things seriously as much as we should

I was struck (no pun intended) by a post on Twitter publicizing which WGA strike locations have the best food trucks. Now, I'm not saying that this isn't worth knowing.

But I'm reading a book that goes over how the labor movement was going between WWI and WWII. Here are some things that happened:

Labor advocates stripped, whipped with leather straps with steel balls in them, then covered in tar and feathered, and forced to climb a wire fence and run out of town with no shoes through a field

Black workers lynched and burned alive and more/worse (if you can imagine) for either trying to unionize, or crossing picket lines

Labor advocates jailed for speaking for the cause of labor, some for more than 10 years, others tortured by the US federal and state governments

All to say that it was never a guarantee that unions would be a thing, have any respect. Many Americans in power fought tooth and nail agains unions and strikes; the media was largely against unions; they were seen as subversive and damaging; and even workers resisted them for fear of losing jobs, or out of a particular kind of patriotism common at the time.

For their part, union organizers and members were no less committed. They would destroy equipment, beat scabs (folks who cross picket lines), and where possible, fight back against the private armies that owners employed to "keep workers in line."

There is no excuse for any of the violence, however there were good reasons on the union side for the eventual violence they committed. Mostly in answer to all of the horrible things done to them. But then as violence escalated, people who weren't in the thick of it had reason to want the government to do something, especially when most newspapers at the time portrayed the actions of business and government as necessary and heroic (when they did report on what happened), while portraying union supporters as subversive and treacherous.

I think it's worth remembering all of that as workers today strike or try and unionize. This is serious business. People's livelihoods are at stake, and not just that. There are still working conditions in the US that lead to serious injury and death, and often in industries where you wouldn't expect it. For example, Amazon workers are pushed to their limits, and many just get all used up, can't do the work anymore, and find their bodies broken in such a way that it's hard for them to find any other work they can do without being in constant pain.

Thus, when the WGA strikers start talking about where the best food trucks are (food trucks are typically expensive, how can they afford it?), or which location has the best entertainment, it probably rings hollow with other unions in less creative fields.

Make no mistake: the WGA demands are reasonable, and every white collar worker, and even a lot of blue collar workers, should be paying attention. The main demand they have that can affect all workers is what happens with AI. They are demanding that AI not be given equal status to a human writer, and that any produced production must have at least one full time writer (my interpretation, apologies if that's not perfectly accurate). If they can get this concession, or something similar, this will have a HUGE impact on other union contracts, which will then pass into non-union agreements as well. If they fail, then anyone who uses words and their brain for a living will be more vulnerable than they could have been. And for those who use their bodies instead, there will be one less example to point to for how workers' rights can be protected.

Still, the WGA strike already appears to a lot of folks who don't work in the industry to be a lot of clean handed dilettantes asking for more money. Being compared to basketball players and such. It's mostly nowhere close to that, but deciding where you strike by the type of cuisine available isn't the best way to dispel that idea.

And one last thing: the whole point of a strike is to stop companies from being able to make money until a deal is reached. But not every worker is in the WGA, and not every worker is unionized. If successful, the strike will make it so that no money can be made for production studios. This means they won't be able to pay other workers. Which means that assistants, drivers, security guards, janitors, caterers, and any other non-union workers could be furloughed without pay without getting any direct benefit from the strike.

That's the cost of a strike, no doubt. But it wouldn't be surprising if those folks are upset that they have to be out of work just because the WGA wants a better deal. Their anger should be aimed at the producers and studios, since they are the ones who refused the very reasonable terms.

But...

It's a bad look when you're having a good time, and searching for the best food and entertainment while striking, while they are now facing possibly not making rent while not getting any direct benefit from the strike. Have a thought for them as you exercise your rights.

[sweetgoblinhaze]

I have some drider OCs I would like to share, but I'm miffed that I don't have good art of them yet because WHY SPIDERS?? Why do your legs do that???

That out of the way, their story is a tragedy of the highest degree. I will put a cut here and under it is summary of their lives.

I did not reread it before posting, so if things may be raw.

Formerly a drow and a sun elf, their names have been lost to them, and so I will use the names they were given after their transformations. Imfryn'yath and Quevelki. Fryn and Elki for short.

Fryn escaped Menzobarrenzen by making a run for it while going up for a raid on the surface. Caught up in house politics, he knew he had a large target on his back, and just enough gall to leave. He made his way ahead of the raiding party to the small village of elves that they were tasked to slaughter and warned them of the incoming attack... with charades and trying not to be stabbed mostly. He helped defend the village to endear himself to them and, as he had hoped, they allowed him to stay afterwards.

Adjusting was difficult at first, but it didn't take as long as he thought it might to settle in and see things in a more "surface" way. He fell in love with the flora around him and the arts that the elves seemed to always be crafting. It took years before he was sure that no one would stab him in the back.

By that time, he had caught the attention of a sun elf, Elki, and they began courting. They were a match made in the heavens. A decade later, they were married- a whirlwind romance if an elf had ever seen one.

Then, in the dead of night and with none of the usual barbarity that comes with a raid, they were both whisked off back to the Underdark. Back to Fryn's house. Lolth demanded punishment suddenly after all those years, and it hadn't taken a spy more than one trip to find his weakness.

Elki and Fryn were separated by a stone wall between their two cells. Fryn wasn't tortured, questioned, or even spoken to. He was kept fed and healthy. Elki was not so lucky. The priestesses broke him down bit by bit, demanding that he forsake any surface god and give himself fully to Lolth.

Eventually, the torture worked. Elki and Fryn were brought before a cadre of priestesses and the matron of Fryn's house. First, Elki was brought before the alter and made to kneel. The Matron demanded then that he repeat what he had claimed under the priestess's whips, and he repeated in slurred and hardly formed drow that he would forsake all gods but Lolth. He was hers.

Typically, Lolth can only make a drow into a drider. However, with Elki on his knees declaring his loyalty, that was close enough for Lolth to pull the strings and bring into being a slight against Elvin kind itself.

Elki was destroyed and remade in front of Fryn, and he could do nothing to stop it. Then, it was his turn. He fought tooth and nail the entire way, and he had to be held down as the rites were recited and his body broke and warped into the half-spider abomination that was a drider.

He expected for his mind to go fuzzy, then crazed with the want of blood and flesh. He knew all drivers to be nothing more than killing machines, aimless until reigned in by one of Lolth's own. However, when he staggered to his now many legs and tried to find a sense of balance, his world was as clear as ever, save for a seed of violence that he could feel growing.

When he went to Elki's side, no one stopped him. He helped his husband off the floor and looked into his eyes and found nothing there. No violence, no anger, no sorrow or haunting. Elki made a chittering noise and threw his now unnaturally long arms around Fryn's shoulders. The noise Elki made was one of happiness, and Fryn only had a growing horror.

Fryn was left with the violent urges of a drider while still maintaining his self and his mind. There was plenty that he could not remember, but he could think and be gentle as he pulled Elki along. Elki still did not have a mean bone in his body or plate in his carapace, but had lost himself to Lolth's curse. The Matron Mother mocked him as he told Elki how much he still loved him, and the hideous smile he got back was more than enough for Fryn to know that it really was Elki under there somewhere.

They were removed from the house, and from Menzobarrenzen, left to die in the tunnels and caverns of the Underdark. As he guided his love away from the city, the Matron Mother's last words to him wouldn't leave his mind.

"How long can you love it now, I wonder?"

[10holmes]

~ Currently caught by some Xue Yang angsty unrequited love for Xiao Xingchen feels ~

(Which have actually resulted in me starting another WIP, I so didn't see coming... And is already 3,000 words long^^)

So...

Imagine a post-canon reincarnation AU, after XY has clawed his way out of Diyu, tooth and nail, going through immeasurable pain and uncountable hardships (hellish punishment to repent and all), all in order to finally reincarnate and reunite with XXC

He manages to be reborn, memories intact, and eventually finds XXC again.

Maybe it's canon-like and XXC finds him injured and saves him or - to make it more emotionally torturous yet - the two of them somehow end up meeting as children and actually grow up together as family friends, neighbors or school buddies.

And XY, of course, now is the bestest of bois in this new life, just wanting to finally do right by XXC and be with him and love and cherish him as he never could in their previous life. And having XXC (as he doesn't remember the past any longer) now love the real him just as much in turn.

... But then XXC meets SL and falls for him hard (or if XueXiao haven't grown up together, it turns out XXC is already happily married to SL) and, thus, merely considers XY a friend...

So now XY has to deal with such deep heartbreak and painful longing and the hurt of his unrequited love and pining, watching SongXiao be happy and SL get everything XY ever wanted and fought so hard for to obtain...

And maybe this takes such a turn for the worse that XY decides that he really can't and won't be selfish with XXC and, thus, won't force himself in between SL and XXC, or he simply recognizes and accepts that XXC would never be as happy with him as he is with SL, and ultimately XY just wants what's best for XXC after all...

So, in order for XXC to remain happy, XY accepts that he can never be with XXC, but at the same time he can also not get rid of his feelings for him nor continue to live and just be friends with XXC, while having to watch SongXiao having a loving realitionship.

So then, ultimately, with no other reason to go on - because it's only ever been XXC he fought to be reborn and live for, he chooses to kill himself.

He leaves behind a letter for XXC that he does and does not intend for the latter to find, seeing that it might make XXC unhappy to know the truth, but also just having to write it all down once and reveal his true feelings and thoughts after bottling them up for so long...

And then XXC reads it and has a breakdown, maybe finally recalls their past life, and to make it extra angsty, maybe he has actually been toying with the thought of opening up his relationship with SL, to be together with XY as well, because, before that, he had thought polyamory wasn't something he could pursue or that it would hurt his relationship with SL, (who would have actually been on board with it), but now XY will never know... XXC will not get to ask him... to confess his love as well... (to confess that he'd always loved him too, despite everything).

[draconicrider]

In Relation to Canon - Paldea

Just like I did for Lorenz, here is a list of canon characters Ignacio has a common history with. It is far from complete , and a lot is subject to change as the DLCs are revealed and released.

Like I said when I made similar posts for other muses, this of course only concerns myself and I will never force any of these pre-established relationships on others without asking.

Director Harrington: Harrington was the director when Ignacio was a student at the Academy. As one of the top students of his year, he often got to meet the guy directly, and it played in his favor when he was offered a position as battling instructor in his early twenties. He has enough respect for the dude, although he finds him a bit too soft.  

Team Star: A lot of students tried to report the Academy's various harassment and bullying incidents to him back when he was a teacher. His reaction was usually to call the victims paranoid little shit-stirrers and side with the bullies. He called it "weeding out the weak", and he probably isn't fondly remembered by most members of Team Star because of this...  

Cassiopea: Unlike most of the other teachers who fully acknowledged their failings and resigned, Ignacio fought tooth and nail to keep his position, after all he was a great battling instructor. He only changed his mind when he received an email containing oddly specific and highly personal information... He might want to make the person behind that anonymous blackmailing attempt regret ever revealing her true identity to the world someday.  

Hassel: Ignacio doesn't quite consider him his friend but he holds him in high regards, on account of their similar backgrounds and affinity with Dragon Pokémon. He fully agrees on his decision to keep his family estranged, although he doesn't exactly share his fascination with the fine arts...  

Geeta: As a Champion-ranked trainer, Ignacio has met Geeta on many occasions. Many believe the reason behind his year-long disappearance to be a humiliating loss against her, as he challenged her for the position of Top Champion. Their match was utterly one-sided, she wiped the floor with the rest of his team. He still has trouble accepting his loss, and suspects foul play on her part.

[theseerasures]

While you're doing reactions, if you're up for it, how are you feeling about all the finale predictions you made on March 23? By my count, you scored pretty well!

hooooooo boy (the alluded post, for those just catching up)

how i feel about my predictions is that...you’re right and i scored pretty well, but much like the characters doing right in the episode itself, it didn’t matter. part of the reason why the finale made me feel so much--why i loved it, despite still being emotionally hungover from ugly affect--is because i WAS right, but i was so often right but wrong on a smaller scale, or right but wrong because i completely misunderstood the overall thematic stakes, or in one case right but in such a phenomenally cruel and roundabout way that i’m still reeling from it.

more detailed breakdown under the cut (as in “let’s unpack this,” and as in “i have an emotional breakdown”):

WHERE I WAS MOSTLY RIGHT

Team Green, Yang, the non-Robyn Happy Huntresses, Klein and the non-combatant Schnees were gimmes from the beginning, even the ones of whom we didn’t have visual confirmation by the end of Worthy.

Pietro and Maria are still MIA so i’m putting them here, but...Winter’s gonna have to tell Pietro, when he shows up again.

Cinder and the Relics i was correct about, but even though i knew going in that she would win i didn’t imagine the scale of her victory. mostly because i thought she might have learned some self-discipline and just skedaddled with the Relics in an attempt to trap as many people as possible in superhell, but a) she didn’t, and b) she won without needing to.

Salem, Watts, and Ironwood are where i predicted, but i think part of me really bought into the fan theory that maybe Salem would want to keep Atlas around. both Watts and Ironwood lasted much longer through the episode than i expected because i was working from that assumption, but with the direction the episode actually took it makes perfect sense that they exited the stage as Atlas fell--they are, after all, twin architect-destroyers of Atlas. brains and brawn.

Nora ended up in Vacuo, but she’s...uh, not happy about it. not that i expected her to be happy, but this is much much worse. og JNPR is now JUST Renora, and much as i love freewheeling modular megazord JNPR, that’s gonna hit like a truck. last time they lost someone Renora were consciously trying to play supportive teammate to Jaune, who’d just lost his partner, and Nora especially also had to talk Ren off the edge with the Kuroyuri stuff. i expect they’ll swap the dynamic this time, especially since Nora was already planning to go all independent woman before this.

Qrow, Robyn, and the AceOps are stranded, but in transit and not in Mantle, because Mantle the place is no more. and Vine is dead. the reason i posited that the AceOps might be split up was so they could find their team dynamic after it’s been unsettled, and...well. having one of them do a heroic sacrifice should do a similar trick. because i didn’t think Atlas would fall on Mantle i thought Qrow and Robyn (particularly Robyn) would get more to do, but both of them are pretty much exactly in the same place they were in at the beginning of the season: trapped in a cramped environment, cut off from the people they love and uncertain what happened to them, and unable to contribute in a way that they would consider meaningful. i’m guessing we won’t check back in with this crew for a while, but if we do it’ll be interesting to see if the Qrow and Robyn dynamic changes--like, if he has to be the one to talk her down from cabin fever and despair. (before he finds out that he was the one who should have been despairing all along.)

WHERE I WAS MOSTLY WRONG

Neo is in superhell. i had put her in Atlas because i’d overestimated Cinder’s ability to play the long game, but what the show ultimately doubled down on was that Cinder remains at heart a petty and impatient opportunist, and that’s where she’s most effective. which i dig! i dig that she has not so much improved (in means or ends) so much as learned to hold the beneficial and detrimental parts of herself farther and farther apart, because in the end they’re all the same parts, and because presumably she’ll end up starfishing out so much (who knew the way she took care of Winter’s death pigeons was foreshadowing?) that she breaks in two. and i dig Neo in superhell without Cinder, because it’ll be our first chance to see Neo not working for anyone outside of that one time she fought Cinder. if superhell does end up being part afterlife, she might also get some closure with the Torchwick stuff.

Jaune being in superhell points to it being part afterlife, because the chance for HIM to get some closure is also right there. that was always the case, but the reason i made the prediction i did was because i assumed that Jaune would remain the person he has been this whole season--this stolid, clueless but incredibly effective supporting leader. having a Jaune who is at the top of his game meet up with Pyrrha again is obviously appealing, especially to me, a person who scribbles misshapen hearts labeled “Arkos = 5evr” on all my notebooks, but at the time i didn’t think it was necessary to his story...and then the story dramatically shifted his character and threw all my carefully hedged bets off (which is something we’ll also get to with...later).

having a Jaune who has just effectively EUTHANIZED someone meet up with Pyrrha again isn’t just appealing--it’s vital. and it’s vital because the exact parameters of how and why Jaune ended up having to kill Penny is a point-for-point echo and escalation of the way the Amber to Pyrrha transfer was supposed to go. last time Jaune Arc was party to a Maiden transfer process he had no idea what was going on, and he tried to intervene when he worked out that whatever Oz was doing was going to hurt Pyrrha, and that however minute thing contributed to Pyrrha’s death and the Fall of Beacon. this time it’s not just that he knows what’s going on and the stakes of it. it’s not even just that he is the Ozpin operating the Aura Transfer machine. it is that there is no machine--there is just him, holding the knife. he knows the Amber better than the Pyrrha this time, and this time the Amber is his friend, and still whole, and choosing. not just consenting, but asking him. trusting him. so he carries it out. the old Maiden dies, and like Ozpin he dies shortly after, but not before he watches the new Maiden fail.

but he does prevent history from repeating, because a new Maiden is created, and she gets to live. and Cinder Fall has made him a murderer on top of everything else, but she WILL remember him, now.

there are other people i was wrong about, but that’s...for later.

WHERE I WAS RIGHT AND IT DIDN’T MATTER

Ruby, Blake and Weiss are all in superhell, so on paper i was right, but...well. sing it if you know the words. the reason i’m putting them in their own section is because it’s not just that they fell and didn’t jump like i thought; it’s that they would not have jumped, and that changes everything. you know how i realized that we would lose everyone, and not by choice? it was Weiss. it was when Weiss said we have to do this for Yang. Jaune had reminded Nora of what was priority one minutes before, but the implications of that didn’t sink in for me until Weiss confirmed it. they PLANNED for this. not just the eventuality where they would have to die, but the one where they’d have to watch everyone else die and do nothing except keep going.

which...has implications. the best way to read this--and i think we’re all dying for some good news--is that even if it certainly does not feel that way, RWBY was able to snatch a partial victory from Salem’s claws. they lost the Relics, but they got the Maiden powers away, and most importantly: they saved Atlas and Mantle. by the time Jaune intervened Grand Central was empty. there was no one left to evacuate. they didn’t get everyone, but they got a lot. even before Cinder intervened so catastrophically they knew how many things could go wrong, so they made a plan, and largely stuck to it. on a purely material level they only lost one thing vital to the war effort--the Staff. but they got everyone else out, which was priority one. the show in general and this arc in particular has emphasized that our heroes don’t think they should be exceptionalized, that they’ll fight tooth and nail to make sure everyone is given the treatment and respect they deserve, and they’ve made good on that. they’re Huntresses, and Huntresses be thou for the people. they chose, and they won what mattered to THEM.

but on the flip side: they chose, and there’s no way to read this choice as anything but a compromise...and a very Atlesian one at that. when confronted with calculus similar to the one JYR faced after they lost Oscar in War, our heroes chose...the opposite. one, then three, then four, then five, then six for the many. what was that number compared to two entire cities’ worth of people, especially when they’re the ones who signed up for this? i’m not trying to take this down the slippery slope where our heroes are no better than the dictator they just dethroned, because when the time came for sacrifice they chose themselves first. but it remains a sacrifice, which means that when the time came to test the hard moral limit they set for themselves, they...moved. they decided ahead of time that some risks aren’t worth taking. that this is not a situation where everyone wins, so they had to go for the next best thing, then the next best thing after that, and so on. i’m honestly not sure where it points to yet, except my usual refrain that this show is a lot less didactic than it seems, but...yeah. this is going to lead to some invigorating discussions in-universe.

and maybe it’ll start with this: that Jaune and Weiss--the two who had to verbally advocate for leaving the fallen behind--fell last of all, which means they had to watch everyone else go first. and the last person they saw was the same person. Weiss, who executed the plan to brilliant perfection, saw the past--the first family she ever had--streaking after her in an endless void, forsaking the priorities they all agreed upon, for her. Jaune, who followed the plan to execution and broke a part of himself, saw the new Maiden he crowned, backlit and pulled away by the bright future that he ensured was possible, but can no longer access.

QUEENMAKER

i’m starting with Penny, because Penny came first. there has already been a ton of discussion on the ways that she’ll come back, and while i absolutely agree that she will, for now i am not so much interested in that as i am in eulogizing this Penny. the Penny we had just now, not identical but continuous with the Penny we had before that, in the same way that everyone is not identical but continuous with who they were in the past. the Penny who IS dead, her eventual resurrection notwithstanding.

because she DID die, and her death matters. that’s the thing about the deaths in this season, and it furthers my point re: RWBY’s presumed didacticism--the show’s treatment of death has changed as our heroes have changed. it is no longer (and never was) as simple as “death and sacrifice are always senseless waste,” and more something like...”death has to matter, and we will give it meaning.” Hazel and Vine sacrificed themselves, and the fact both resulted in a “positive” outcome (more lives saved) does not make the deaths any less tragic. but neither should the tragedy of it take away from the fact that they saved lives. what separates our heroes from a Salem or a James Ironwood even now is that they recognize the importance of grievable life even as they accept inevitable death, that what is worth it all about preserving life is not to make sure that lives go on forever, but that lives have meaning and are remembered, that when you’re gone the people who are still here respect you enough to carry that meaning with them. it’s a tenuous balance to walk, but all the more important for that reason.

Penny--though her death can and will be reversed--is much the same. in every arc there has been a Game of Three Maidens (which i guess would make shogi the better metaphor and not chess because--what AM i on about), and in every Game there has been sacrifice. and i thought that would encompass Winter, here. we’d get away with it not being literal death, since Fria already took care of that, but she would be trapped on the other side of the gate--in pretty much the exact same position James Ironwood ended up in the episode itself, actually. it just seemed obvious: she’s the decoy, the one who missed the call by inches, the last revealed defector when there still was an Atlas from which to defect. all of it pointed to Winter’s story ending with one last delay barring her from salvation, of her finally being too late...

and well. i WASN’T wrong in the broad strokes, but first there was Penny Polendina. Penny could have let Jaune try to save her and Weiss die for her, but she knew she had to make a different choice to save as many lives as possible. so she offered herself up as the sacrifice instead. last week i waxed prolonged poetic about how Winter defected so recently, how it has been just IronwoodandWinter for so long, how Winter doesn’t have a team and only the healing shreds of a family, how no one would think to look for her...and then Penny did. you were my friend. (given Winter’s rough age and the hazy creation dates for the PENNY Project, it’s possible that Winter is Penny’s OLDEST friend.) Penny thought of Winter as she was dying, thought about the good Winter could do if Winter had her powers, believed in Winter, and in doing so, saved Winter’s life before anyone else’s.

she ceded the spotlight to Winter in this last episode, but this season as a whole belongs to Penny Polendina--the myriad ways she creates herself, the ways she defends her self-creation, ultimately culminating in her new body, created by no one but herself. but for her final act the Maiden of Creation did something different and no less miraculous: i thought of you. a thought was all it took.

she created someone else.

KINGSLAYER | THE MAIDEN THAT WAS PROMISED

the thing about Winter is that she came first.

no, i’m serious. i checked the fairy tale and everything--Winter came first. as the Wizard’s first visitor she encouraged him to reflect and meditate, and when probed about why she was here at all, she answered: i am waiting for my sisters. Spring and Summer have to wait, too, of course, but. Winter was the first.

Jacques and Willow named their firstborn Winter. it is not the way this story begins, but it is certainly is one of them, because the story begins with Winter, and Winter begins the story--a new retelling, a new cycle of heroism. we’ve since been introduced to other characters in that indeterminate age group between RWBY and STRQ, but Winter--by virtue of being Weiss’ older sister--anchors herself to the new generation in a way those others (even Cinder, who comes closest) do not. she started things, in the mythical emblematic way that this show likes to move, and the way she started things--the way she MADE herself start things, thanks to the house she grew up in--was with love, and protection. she took care of Weiss and laid the groundwork for the person Weiss is today, and conversely: she took care of Weiss, and through Weiss, laid the groundwork for herself and how to take care of everyone. so eventually the steel thread she tied to Weiss she also linked to Whitley, to Penny, to Marrow, to all the people they love, and on and on it goes. Winter loved Weiss, so she made herself learn how to love Weiss, and so when i say she started things what i mean is she started family. a new home, for a new generation of the orphaned.

Winter came first. but as the show demonstrates time and again, especially with Winter: first does not mean best. because being first also means you’re the prototype, a volatile thing that must be tested and tempered and then discarded to make way for what comes after, what gets improved. and it is THIS part of being first that Winter has internalized most of all. Winter, the first Maiden, taught the Wizard peace and prepared the earth so that her sisters could grow and foster and harvest the life within it; Winter, the first Schnee, laid the groundwork in her siblings, but did not wait for them. and let herself fallow in the process. she left, and every time they tried to follow or stay with her she sent them away. (she keeps sending them away; even after defecting and taking down Ironwood, the first thing she says to JNPER is go.) Winter laid the first stone in the foundation, but she cannot take credit for the home her family turned it into, for all the ways it has flourished, because she willfully absented herself of that (birth)right.

and the reason she did this was very simple: she was afraid. she could not bear the thought that while she had to learn how to love she made mistakes, the idea that instead of preparing the earth she might have poisoned the well. so she ran. she turned her face away so she would not have to look, so they would not look to her. she left, and every time one of her siblings superseded her after that, every time she was made to be their Esau--passed over--it just seemed to confirm that she was right to leave. look how well they’ve all done without her.

in the stories, eldest siblings aren’t here to win. they’re here to be made an example of, and Winter...had resigned herself to that. she was prepared to be left behind for good by all the people who have outpaced her.

but then there was Penny Polendina. Penny didn’t follow her, or try to stay; Penny came back for her. Penny remembered Winter when all Winter wanted was to be forgotten, because she’d gotten it in her head that it was what she deserved for all the things she’d done or enabled or failed to do. why did Penny remember Winter? because you were my friend. there is no divine complexity to it, nothing for Winter to fall hopeless short of. there is only the fact that Winter gave Penny something, made something together with Penny, even as she was trying her hardest not to, for fear that she would create something terrible. and this does not take away from all the ways Winter did fall short, but it is still SOMETHING. and it is enough.

it was your power, after all. Penny means the Maiden powers, but she also means THIS Maiden’s power: the power to create. you made this home, Penny is saying to Winter, you should get to reap its fruit, even if you weren’t around for the labor. all you have to do is say yes.

this was a gift. she says yes. she accepts, because in the end Winter Schnee loves her family more than she hates herself.

but then--

(a gift for what? Winter will ask herself wretchedly later, after she has failed in the two tasks she thinks Penny set for her.)

the thing about Winter is that she came first. she taught Weiss everything she knows, and she was so busy doing that she never had the time to show Weiss everything she feels. so in the end what Weiss never predicted was that for all of her team’s painful planning, for all of her own pained enforcement of that plan...none of it was a match for her sister. that when the time came it was would be WINTER who defaults to the absolute ideal of “no one gets left behind,” of “every life” meaning every life, priority one be damned.

or that Winter, in trying to choose both, in finally and fiercely trying, with surely enough power to make a difference, would fail.

what are you doing? Winter heard as she watched Weiss fall into nothingness. my life doesn’t matter.

so here, then, is the story of Winter in The Final Word: a girl returns home after having left it, but in this version it is the home who has changed and the girl who has not. and from this both are unmade. but she gets to live, because she was invited back home. and she gets to go through the portal as its last passenger, into the Promised Land.

and she is still the Maiden of Creation. even after all this, THAT is still her task. to build a refuge for her people, to collect the broken strands of the family she began and her siblings continued and expanded and reinforced, and gather them up again into a new home. it will be impossible, but at the same time: she has done this before.

and this time, she will wait for her sisters.

(a gift for what? for nothing, would be the answer. gifts aren’t FOR anything. they’re gifts.)

[anime-alyssa]

purple scars. (d ragnvindr x reader)

i posted this on ao3 and forgot to move it here - so you get it super long and not 2 in parts. i’m thinking of continuing this, maybe?

thanks for reading and the support! i’m working on a xiao rn hopefully i can get my shit together 

warning: contains some emotional trauma, implied r*pe but nothing is overly graphic. the second half is smut, separated by stars if thats what you want to skip to. 

The bitter cold of Dragonspire finally started to fade away as you crossed over the bridge back into Mondstat for the first time in 10 years. You were bundled up to the extreme, having prepared for the cold, your sword on your back and jacket heavy on your shoulders. Your sword and your jacket were all you managed to steal away before you were able to escape your homeland, Inazuma. You were still dressed in the encampment clothes, your ID number splayed across the chest of the shirt and the boots too big for your feet.

You hadn’t wanted to be gone for 10 years - you wanted to only be gone for a few, to get your Electro under control. But when Baal placed borders around the country and started hunting down anyone with a Vision, life had become a living hell. You were placed in a prison camp and locked away from society shortly after, tortured beyond anything imaginable just for being born with a Vision. The only thing that kept you alive was the hope that one day, if you had gotten strong enough, you would be able to escape Inazuma to head back to Diluc, and Mondstat - were you really felt at home. 

Diluc Ragnvindr was a mystery to everybody, except for you. You found yourself more often than not sneaking onto Dawn Winery’s premises when his father was not around and exploring each other’s bodies, like the horny teens that you had been. Sometimes you thought you could still feel the ghost of his fingertips on your skin at night - and tried to imagine that it was him when the Bakufu would do unspeakable things to you and the other prisoners. It was painful, and left you scarred - would Diluc even want you?

It had been 10 years - you had last seen him when you were merely 16 and he was entering the Knights of Favonius. The two of you fell in love as teenagers - no one expected it to be anything beyond that, but the two of you were convinced otherwise at the time. For you, it was still the same - you thought of Diluc every single day while you were in Inazuma. You could remember the day like it was yesterday - his heartbroken eyes, the cries you let out as you told him that you would be leaving, the way he held onto you. 

“I’ll be back - I promise - I just - I need help that I can’t get here.” you sobbed into his chest. The Pyro users warmth was all around you as he held you in his room at Dawn Winery, his father out for the night, leaving the two of you bare in his bed.

“You better come back, or else I’ll go to Inazuma myself to get you.” his eyes looked down at you and your heart broke at the sight of him - Diluc was never a vulnerable person, but right now he was. One of his thumbs stroked your tears away on your cheeks as his lips peppered kisses up your neck. “I will never forget you. Ever.” 

“Neither will I.” you said with a gasp, as Diluc had given you a night to never forget. 

You had officially reached the other side of the bridge - the cold gone away and the warmth coming back to you. You thought about taking the jacket off, now way too hot with it on, but you didn’t want people to know where you had come from. You didn’t want their pity. There was a small camp with other adventurers and travelers around, the chef offering you food for free before you went on your way. It didn’t do much for you to quell the aching hunger you had and the shaky legs - you weren’t really the best fed and had been surviving off of fruit from trees. In short, you were in no condition to be traveling, clearly sickly and unwell. But you were not stopping now - you couldn’t. Not after all that you had overcome. You hadn’t forgotten about him. 

A series of snarls from the side of you caused you to jump as you saw about four hilichurls coming right for you. You shrugged the jacket off and grabbed your sword, standing your guard as the monsters attacked. You fought them tooth and nail until your vision all but blacked out - you had hit the ground and heard someone calling for you. 

“Hello? Wake up - Lumine - she needs help! Hey, wait - that’s an Inazuma camp uniform!” a high-pitched voice said to you. Your vision slowly came back as you saw a floating - fairy? You didn’t know what she was - but she was floating above you looking concerned next to a young blonde teenager. “Are you okay?” 

“I - I don’t know. Need food - water - Di -” you managed to weakly say, feeling your world spin around you. The blonde teenager ran to the water source across from you - a lake? - to get you a drink of water as the fairy thing fished out something for you to eat. You felt like you were going to die - you were starving, dehydrated, but Diluc, you needed to get to Diluc.

“Here’s some water! Drink this, please.” she said to you kindly. You took the cup and quickly chugged the water, then taking the offered food. “My name is Lumine, and this is Paimon.” You gave them your name back, as they seemed trustworthy, as they sat down next to you and watched you. Paimon looked at you with sad eyes, seeing your uniform.

“Thank you very much. It’s been…. a while since I ate anything. All I have is this.” you said to them, continuing to eat. You were already feeling better, but by the way they were looking at you, you could tell that you were still quite a sight.

“You’re welcome - did you escape Inazuma? Paimon and Lumine were actually trying to find a way to sneak in.” Paimon had announced to you. You froze on the spot and looked up to them.

“What - no. Don’t go there. It’s dangerous - the camps - ” You felt panic start to bubble in your chest, your heart-rate increasing and breathing becoming staggered at the flashes of memories that flooded your mind. Paimon started calling out to you again, trying to calm you. She and Lumine had started to talk amongst themselves, looking at you trying to calm yourself as they made attempts to as well. You tried to remember Diluc - what you could of him, and slowly you were able to calm down. “I’m sorry - it’s just - it’s awful. I was there for 10 years, I was a prisoner.” You sat in an awkward silence before Paimon spoke up again. 

“Hey - Paimon remembers that when you were talking earlier, you almost sounded like you were saying someone’s name.” she said to you. 

“I’m - I’m looking for Diluc Ragnvindr of Mondstat - the Knights - or Dawn Winery - I don’t know where he is, actually. When I left, he was joining the Knights.” you said to them with a sudden hope that you hadn’t felt in years. Even in your journey, you hadn’t felt hopeful. There was always the chance of the Bakufu finding you and bringing you back or dying. But suddenly, you felt some hope. 

“Oh - Master Diluc! Paimon didn’t know he used to be with the Knights of Favonius - that explains why he dislikes them so much now - but he does run Dawn Winery now!” Paimon said, floating happily. She paused for a moment - then looked like some gears had clicked in her head. “Wait a minute - you’re Master Diluc’s lost love!!”

“His what?” You asked. Lost love? Was that what the rumor was? But wait - if there was even a rumor, that meant there was potential that he still cared about you - still thought of you. 

“What Paimon means to say is that Kaeya told us stories about when Diluc was… not like he is now. That he used to be much happier - and it was because of you.” the blonde traveler said to you. 

“What - what do you mean? He’s changed?” You wanted to slap yourself - obviously he changed, it’s been years. But they made it seem like he was completely different - and he left the Knights? When Diluc was younger it was all he wanted to do, so he could protect people and help them. What had changed? You assumed you would find out. 

“Paimon thinks we should take you to him to find out - Kaeya made it seem like you knew him better than anyone, so you would know more. Let’s go check Dawn Winery to see if he is there!” she said happily. You gave her a nod as you shakily stood up, feeling like you had a little bit more energy and walked with the traveler and her companion. 

You learned about her on the way there. She woke up on the beach with no memory, but knew she was not from Tevyat. Her twin brother was missing and she was in search of The Seven to see if maybe that would be a way for her to find him, which explained why she wanted to go to Inazuma despite your warnings. But, she was Vision-less - a fact that shocked you as you could have sworn you vaguely remember her using Anemo during the fight. That little factoid made you feel a little better. 

As you approached Dawn Winery, your stomach started twisting into knots. All of your anxieties came flooding back - would Diluc even want you still? Would he be appalled at the state of you? Would he be able to handle the extra baggage you came with now? Your mind reeled at Paimon babbled on about how maybe you would be good for Diluc to be happy, and how she was looking forward to the food the winery always had for them. You felt yourself fidgeting with the jacket, having put it back on to cover your uniform. 

You saw his red hair from a mile away and froze in your steps. He had gotten taller, but god he looked the same. He pulled his hair back like he always had, muscles built out over the years. He couldn’t see you yet, talking to someone else across from him at the entrance of the winery. Lumine stayed by your side, the teenager having a big heart and concerned. However, Paimon floated on over to him. 

“Master Diluc! Master Diluc! Paimon and Lumine have someone who was looking for you!” she said excitedly. You couldn’t help but admire the creature’s happiness, despite your nerves. You and Lumine walked forward as Diluc turned around - eyes going wide seeing you. Your breath hitched in your throat as you two made eye contact. It felt like all air in your lungs had just disappeared and you were unable to breathe. 

Diluc slowly stepped towards you at first, not being able to believe his eyes. You could tell he was taking you in, observing your features and you to make sure that it really was you. You didn’t blame him for taking his time - you were unrecognizable from before. Your features had thinned out due to the years of neglect from the Bakufu, eyes sunken slightly inward and skin paled. You saw a flash of doubt flash in his eyes - or at least that’s what your brain wanted you to think - and you let out a sob. That seemed to do it for him as Diluc ran over to you in a flash, pushing anybody out of his way to wrap his arms around you. 

It finally felt like you were home, in Diluc’s arms as he held you. More sobs wrecked your now trembling body, overcome with emotion as tears spilled onto his clothing. His grip on you was snug, but not too tight, treating you like you were glass and frail. He was warm, as he always was, while he held onto you like you’d disappear into thin air if he let go. You felt your knees give out, exhaustion starting to hit you, Diluc picking you up to support you. You tried to say something - to say anything to him, but the shaking and the exhaustion was becoming to much and eventually, you blacked out in his arms. 

——

You woke up on a comfortable bed - so comfortable it almost didn’t feel right. You were sunk into one side with the blankets over you, body bare underneath. Had Diluc been the one to take your clothes off - did he see your scars? Your body suddenly felt good - there was no aching, you suddenly felt healthy? If that was the word for it. You shuffled in the bed, making an attempt to sit up, before you were promptly pushed back down. 

“Lay down - please.” Diluc spoke to you. You turned your gaze over to him, laying next to you, half asleep and half dressed. You covered yourself underneath the blankets as he threw an arm over you, pulling you close to him despite trying to hide. “Don’t do that. Stop trying to hide from me.”

“Diluc - I���m - I’m not the same.” you stammered out. You felt his fingers dance over your bare skin and you gasped, instinctively jumping back. He retreated his touch upon seeing this, examining you again. “I’m sorry.”

“What did they do to you?” he asked. Panic bubbled inside of you once more as you tried to find the words to speak. You wanted to tell him everything. He deserved to know everything if he was still going to be with you. But for some reason, you couldn’t find the words. “Did the Bafuku do this - give you these?” His fingers grazed over the discolored scars on your body, purple marks from Electro attacks embedded into your skin forever. 

“Yes - they would - they punished us when we fought back. All of us - but the females - they would - they’d come at night - ” Diluc let out a low snarl, understanding what you were implying without actually having to say it. “I tried to imagine it was you. Thinking of you is the only thing that kept me alive most days. It was awful - once Baal placed the orders to capture everyone with Visions, they found me in days. The painful part was that I was right at Liyue’s border - I was so close to getting out. That’s when I got this one.” You lifted your left arm, pointing to a series of purple numbers on your wrist. 

“I don’t want to hear where they came from. It only makes me angrier that the damn Knights of Favonius didn’t even try to do anything to help.” Diluc said, cautiously wrapping a bare arm around you, testing the waters. You allowed him the contact - knowing that you were safe. You were safe with Diluc. You just needed to convince your brain the same thing, which would take time that he didn’t seem to mind. “It’s the middle of the night, let’s go back to bed. You need rest.” he said to you. 

You gave Diluc a quick nod as you found yourself inching closer to his chest, resting your head on him. He was warm, as always, wrapping his arms completely around you and pulling you onto him. He never used to be one who liked someone on top of him, even you, and you had respected that - but now it seems like he wasn’t going to ever let you go again. 

You didn’t mind as you attempted to fall into a dreamless sleep - but you were unlucky. Diluc was out in five minutes flat, but every time you tried to close your eyes flashes of the past would come back to haunt you. You weren’t sure if you got a wink of rest at all, until you found Diluc looking down at you, the sun out behind him. Your throat was dry and your face was wet. Had you had a nightmare? You weren’t sure if you had, since you weren’t even sure if you had fallen asleep at all.

“It’s just me - you’re okay. You were having a nightmare, I think.” he said, trying to say it in his calmest voice he could possibly muster. You blinked up at him confused. 

“I - I don’t remember.” you said sadly, racking your brain to see if you could remotely remember, but having no such luck. Your brain was telling you that it didn't want you to remember, you think.

“You were screaming in your sleep. Almost shocked me, actually.” he said, throwing a light-hearted chuckle in at the end. You were not amused though, staring at him with wide eyes as you sat up slowly.

“I did? Are you okay?” you asked him. He looked at you like you had ten heads, confusing you until he spoke next.

“What - are you okay?”

“I think that answer is obvious enough.” You replied plainly. Diluc’s hand went to your chin, bringing your gaze to match his. His thumb lovingly and gently ran across your jawline, and you instinctively leaned into his touch. Slowly, you climbed up onto his lap, and he allowed you the comfort. “I think - I think I’ll be okay now, though. It’s just going to take some time.” You nuzzled yourself back into his chest as he hugged you snuggly, a hum leaving his lips. 

“I’ll be here with you until it is, I swear it.” Diluc pressed a soft kiss on your forehead and you knew then that he meant it just like he did 10 years before.

*********************************************************************************

Slowly but surely, you started to heal, and it was all thanks to Diluc. The nightmares started to slowly fade away and with time, you were feeling happy again. You lived with him at Dawn Winery and took on some responsibilities to earn your keep (though Diluc always insisted that you didn’t need to do so), like helping the staff keep the place running and making sure that Diluc was on time to everything he needed to be. Which was a challenge, especially once you started to feel like your old self again (or what you could of your old self). 

“One of these days, Charles is going to quit and then you’ll be stuck!” you said to him from on top of his desk, his lips on your neck as you let out a sigh. You weren’t quite mentally ready for much more intimacy, and he was okay with that, but you slowly had become re-accustomed to more touches. Diluc was letting you take the reins for what you were ready for and what you weren’t. 

“He threatens to quit every day. He never does.” Diluc spoke against your skin, grunting as you finally pushed him away - and just in time, as Charles walked in to look for him. You hopped off and ran to find Adeline to see if she needed any help. Later on that day, you saw Charles again and he said that Diluc had been in a particularly angry mood for the past few hours. With a sigh, you had hunted him down, finding him in your bedroom. 

“What’s wrong? Charles is going around saying you’re angry.” you said to him. Your partner let out a scoff as he turned back around to you, your eyes immediately going to his middle. You bit back a laugh. 

“Don’t.” he hissed through gritted teeth, face burning as you stepped closer to him. 

“It’s like you’re sixteen again.” you said with a small giggle. Before he could protest, you had him backed against the wall and his pants shoved down, solving the problem yourself. Charles saw you before he left for the night and had said Diluc was in a much better mood the rest of the day. 

You had found out about Diluc’s night-time hero work as The Darknight Hero a week or two after you had returned. Originally, you fought him tooth and nail against it, for selfish reasons - but once he explained what had happened to him over the past 10 years, you gave it a rest and let him go on. With the death of his father and everything that had happened with the Knights and his brother afterward, you almost couldn’t blame him. 

He had put a pause on it when you came back, but people started to talk and worry, and the Abyss Order picked up on it. He had to begin it again, and you worried every single night. Tonight in particular, he had been gone almost all night, and you were starting to worry. It was an hour or two more than what he was usually out, and you were alone in the Winery with your thoughts. To make things worse, it was storming outside so you couldn’t go out to look for him even if you wanted to. 

A crack of thunder caused panic to rush through your chest - it sounded too much like Bakufu punishment for your comfort. You were snuggled under blankets, bringing your knees to your chest as you tried to push the memories away - another crack making an involuntary whimper leave your lips as the shakes came on. You hadn’t panicked like this in months - but the conditions of the storm and Diluc being gone for longer than he said brought it on, and you were nearly unable to control it. 

The door opened and you jumped, not paying any mind to whoever it was that walked through the door as you fought to keep the memories at bay - flashes of them coming through in segments. You heard a curse and then running as you steadied some of your breathing, a hand coming to your face and forcing you to look at your lover. He wrapped his arm around you and brought you close to him, letting you soak up his warmth. 

“You’re okay - you’re okay.” Diluc chanted to you softly. You nodded against his chest as you wrapped yourself around him back, his hand gently rubbing your back. He was right - you were okay. “I tried to get back as soon as I could after the weather rolled in, I’m sorry it took so long.” he apologized from above you. 

“It’s okay.” you mumbled into him.

“No it’s not. I know how it gets - I should have known better.” he pressed a kiss to your hair after he spoke, guilt starting to rise up. Diluc had been overly cautious when it came to you since your return - within days he had memorized anything that sent you into a panic and was there to prevent it from happening. Until today, that is, hence the guilt. You let out a sigh as you relaxed into him. 

“I know you want to protect me, but you can’t always do it, on top of everything else. I’ll be okay.” you said to him, taking your head out of his chest and bringing your lips to his. 

He slowly reciprocated once his mind caught up to his body - realizing that you were initiating, something that hadn’t happened yet since you came back. His arms around you tightened as the kiss became deeper and more passionate, from a tiny little peck to open mouthed pants. Diluc was almost struggling to keep up with you, mind telling him to slow down for you but body betraying him, his need for you coming to the surface. 

Diluc almost lost his mind when he had dragged you closer to him and heard a soft moan leave your lips as you landed on top of the tent in his pants. The moan seemed to be the signal that flipped the switch in Diluc’s head, as he flipped the two of you over, placing your back on the mattress as he towered above you. 

“Are - are you sure?” Diluc asked, needing your complete consent before he went any further. A selfish part of him was hoping you’d say yes, but if you were to say no, he’d have no problem getting off you right now and going on with his night. It was all about if you were ready. 

“Yes. Please Diluc.” you said back quietly. It was his turn to let out a moan at your begging for him as his lips went to your neck, softly leaving pecks up and down both sides. 

“You tell me if anything - anything - is too much.” he spoke against your skin, coming back up to make sure that you understood. Diluc felt his cock twitch in his pants seeing your blissed out face, lust clouded over you from him. You let out a weak nod before he went back down with more vigor, sucking marks into your neck for all to see.

Fighting back wasn’t a thought in your mind as your body grew hot, clothes suddenly feeling restricting and your core in need of some friction. You hadn’t needed anybody in years, but right now, you needed him. Everything felt so right as his gloved fingertips pushed your shirt off your body, exposing your chest to him. The cool air made you shiver, but was soon replaced with the warmth of Diluc’s mouth pressing open-mouthed kisses to all the skin he could reach. 

You managed to get Diluc to shrug his jacket off once you started to push it over his shoulders, pulling at his gloves next and discarding those. His mouth went back to its attack on your chest, finding one of your breasts and gently beginning to tug. A moan left your mouth as you tried to remember that your next mission was to get his shirt off. Your body was giving into him more and more as sparks of pleasure started to zoom through your veins and down to your core, slick starting to pool. 

“Diluc…” you moaned out his name lustfully, spurring him on more. He pulled away from your nipple with a pop, panting as he almost ripped the rest of his shirt off his arms before going back down to pay attention to the other nipple. You continued to cry out, twisting underneath him as you filled with more and more need. 

You felt his hands moving down your stomach, one resting on your hip while the other tucked under the waistband of your pants. For a moment, your mind started to reel and your heart raced - flashes of the past coming in. You were able to remember that you were with Diluc - you were safe, and you wanted him. Diluc noticed, immediately popping off you and gazing up at you. 

“Should I - ”

“Don’t you dare stop.” you said, cutting him off. Throwing your arms around his neck, you brought his lips down to meet yours as he quickly continued what he was doing. Fingers dipped between your folds slowly, toying with your sensitive bud and making you moan against his mouth. With a small grunt back, Diluc slid two of his fingers into you slowly, beginning to pump. You sighed out his name as your hips ground into him, his lips moving back towards your neck as he panted against you. 

“You’re so fucking perfect, baby.” he breathed against you, hips rutting against your thigh. You used your free hands to push your pants off, kicking them down your legs and leaving you completely exposed. The purple scars on your body reflected with the lightning outside the window and the candle light on the bedside while your body twitched with desire. Another moan left your lips as his fingers curled up into you, his thumb circling your bud making your walls tremble. “I need you. I need you.” he chanted into your neck, trying to use his freehand to fumble with his pants to push them down. 

“Diluc…” you moaned as you started to meet his pumps, fucking yourself on his fingers trying to chase a high that you felt coming. 

“I need to be inside you. Let me - I need it.” he stammered, continuing to finger fuck you until you said yes. You let out a cry as you felt yourself nearing the edge, body hot and sweat collecting on your skin. “Please baby - let me - ”

“Diluc, yes - fuck - ” As soon as the words left your mouth, he pulled his fingers out of you and finished pulling his pants down, kicking them off and letting them fall to the floor. You let out a whine at the loss before Diluc leaned down to kiss you again, gently using his knees to spread your legs wider and his hand that was in you to line his cock up with you. Nerves started to kick in ever so slightly, surpassing the need as you spoke out. “Be - slow - please.” you managed to say. 

“Of course.” he said back, putting his lips back on yours as Diluc pushed the head of his cock into your hole. He let out a moan into your mouth, checking your face for any signs of discomfort before pushing in more. A whine left your lips at the feeling of being split open - it had been so long since you had someone inside of you that it almost felt like the first time again. Diluc pressed kisses to you, as some form of a distraction, as he continued to seethe himself inside until eventually, he was all the way in. “Okay?” he asked, bringing his gaze back up to yours. Diluc looked like he was absolutely holding back, restraining himself because you had asked. His face was red and he was panting above you already, heart racing with desire. 

“Ye - yeah.” you said back to him. He let out a groan before he kissed you again, not moving inside just yet. His lips were warm against yours, swollen from all of the other kisses he had given you so far. Diluc wrapped his arms around you and brought you close to him, pressing your bodies together as you felt your need re-awaken. Your body was on edge, having him inside you but not moving - and you needed him yet again. “Diluc - you can move - please.” you begged. 

“Fuck, yes.” he groaned into your mouth as slowly he started to rock his hips into yours, cock sliding in and out of you with ease. When he started moving, everything from before fully woke up again and you felt your muscles start to tense up, gripping onto his shoulders desperately as your moans started to fill the air. He took that as signal to start going faster and eventually, he started thrusting harder, with more purpose. A cry left your lips at the change of pace, feeling your body react by trying to move your hips to meet his. 

“Faster Diluc - please faster.” you cried out. Your lover let out a loud moan at your plea, hiking your legs over his shoulders as he fucked into you harder, cock curving up inside you and hitting the spot that had you crying out his name. You started to shake under him, a warmth pooling in you that felt like it was about to bubble over. Diluc took your lips in his again, drinking up your moans as he pounded himself into you, the bed creaking and the sound of his hips meeting yours filling the room. You felt his cock growing harder inside of you with every thrust, your resolve close to breaking. “D - Diluc - Diluc!” you cried, tears streaming down your cheeks as pleasure started to overcome you. 

“So good - you’re so good to me - so - perfect - fuck!” he said to you in a haze, a wanton moan leaving his lips as he felt your walls start to flutter around his cock. You let out a cry as you felt yourself nearly there - the pressure was bubbling and you were about to snap as the length of Diluc’s cock hit you right every time, his moans music to your ears and making your insides shutter. “Ah - ah - come for me, baby - come for me!” Diluc begged, now chasing a release by making you get to yours. You let out a whine - feeling yourself getting towards that edge - then a scream, feeling Diluc bring his hand down between your bodies to start rubbing at your clit. “Fuck you’re gonna - come - come!” he moaned. 

“Diluc - Diluc - I’m - fuck!” you screamed out his name as white hot pleasure took over your body, feeling your walls finally clench down on him inside of you. Your eyes rolled into the back of your heard as you kept moaning, body arching against his and core still convulsing as Dilic continued to fuck you, now with a pace near brutal that had your orgasm being wrung out, overstimulation nearing. “Di - Diluc - ” you stammered as his fingers rubbed harder on your spent nub. 

“Fuck - I’m - I’m gonna cum - so hard - inside - baby - ” Diluc let out one last loud moan as his hips slapped against yours, his cock twitching inside of you as his seed buried itself deep. He let out moans as he bucked his hips up into you, your twitching core milking his cock as he all but collapsed on top of you. “Fuck -” he breathed out into your neck, dragging your hips close again so he could keep pumping his high in your body. 

You felt spent - exhausted. Eventually, you felt his cock stop twitching inside of you and Diluc pulled out, collapsing next to you. He brought the blankets over your bodies and pulled you close to him, pressing kisses to your temple. 

“Are you okay?” he asked you. You turned to look at him, eyes wide with concern. You gave him a smile and pressed a kiss to his lips. Even after all that, he was still worried about you. You could argue that's what you loved most about him - that under the facade of not caring, he cared a lot - he was an emotional guy. 

“More than okay.” you said back to him. He let out a hum as his hand trailed down to your abdomen - the area where you had the most scars from the Bakufu. Suddenly, you got what he was saying. 

“I - well - I came inside. Are you sure?” he asked again. You didn’t really think about that in the moment, honestly. You weren’t sure how you felt about that one hundred percent - but you knew that you didn’t entirely mind it. You had gone through hell to get back with him because you wanted to be with him - you wanted to be with him completely. 

“Yeah. I’m sure - I want to be with you, Diluc. That means… everything.” you said back. He nodded back down to you as he kissed you again, keeping his hand on you down below. When he stopped, he pressed your forehead to his lovingly.

“To everything.”

[softykooky]

Sanctuary: Four

summary: your favorite color is yellow. taehyung’s favorite color is red. your favorite flowers are peonies. you still haven’t asked taehyung what his are. 6.8k words.

genre: mafia au, angst, ot7 x reader

warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, verbal/physical abuse (not from members), blood

author’s note: i love seeing all your messages so much!! even if i don’t post a reply, please know that it does not go unseen or unappreciated. it makes me smile every time :) i hope you guys enjoy! 

one   two   three 

       It had become a lonely routine for you to wait until everyone in the house was asleep to roam the vast halls and pretend that it was only you. It was relieving. To not be in constant fear of your father lurking around the corner or the pretense you had to keep with Soyeon, as much as you loved your sister. It was nice to pretend for a while. Until the sun inevitably came up and you retreated back into your room. 

       You padded to the kitchen quickly, keeping an eye out for any spare family members or butlers that hadn’t gone to bed yet. It was moments like these that needed to be romanticized. So every night, you pretended it would be the last night you get to feel cool marble tile under your feet. The last night you could dance in the quiet of the kitchen with no one watching. The last night you could make a grilled cheese while everyone was asleep and eat it all by yourself. The last night you could just be, with no regard to space and time. No thoughts, and no pain. No mom and dad and Soyeon. That was how you found your happiness in this home. 

       You flipped the spatula gingerly, bursting into a rare smile at the sight of a perfectly golden brown slice of bread. Nothing calms a soul quite like grilled cheeses do. Your mind drifts to Jin’s face when he came to retrieve your plate one day, only to find that the grilled cheese he had made was devoured and the plate was licked clean. Your’s wasn’t even half as good as his was. Maybe it was the type of cheese or the butter. Or maybe the smile that came with it every time he appeared outside your door. 

       You snapped out of your reverie at the sound of uneven footsteps thudded from outside the kitchen. Your blood ran cold as your father, clutching a bottle of vodka to his chest, stumbled into the room and locked eyes on your figure. He smirked smugly and took another swig. 

       “Well if it isn’t my pet. What are you doing out of your cage so late?” His words slurred together and you almost wouldn’t have understood if it hadn’t been for the years of practice you’ve gone through in deciphering your father’s intoxicated words. 

       “I’m...nothing. I’m not doing anything.” It had been a feat for you to even speak up in his presence.

       You’re weak, Y/N. Weak and scared.

       He chuckled darkly. “Yes, that’s right. You always do nothing. You are nothing.” Something inside of you stretched thinly, so close to snapping but not quite as it fought to hold on. Your body shook with the anger and frustration you were not allowed to feel all those times before. All those times he belittled you and made you feel like you were not worth the air that you breathe. 

       “You know sometimes I wonder about just shipping you off somewhere and giving Soyeon the company instead.” He drawls, still nursing the bottle as if it were his baby.

       “But god knows that nitwit would spend the entire fortune on new shoes.” Your hands still clutched the spatula as they shook with anger, yet you stayed silent. 

       “You never did tell me what you did to land in the hands of Bangtan, dearest daughter. Enlighten me. Why would they take you, worthless as you are, in?” He leaned against the table on two elbows, face coming to rest on his hands as he glared at you coldly, smiling even wider at the sight of your teary eyes and quivering stature. 

       “You must’ve made a good whore for them then.” 

       Snap.

       “Do you enjoy looking in the mirror when you see the despicable monster staring back at you?” Your words almost rolled off your tongue uncontrollably. You hadn’t the heart to feel regret for them yet, just staring at your father as his eyes sharpened and he sat up straighter. He wasn’t used to your defiance. 

       “No wonder Mom fucking despises your presence and leaves whenever she gets the chance. You’re repulsive.” In the back of your head, something was screaming at you to stop talking. To shut up and take the brunt of it like you always do, until he fell asleep and you could retreat to your room. But you had been holding in anger for far too long to feel sorry.

       Your father stood up slowly, hands still glued to the glass bottle as his smirk widened in realization of what you had just done. Rarely had you ever talked back to him, much less insult him like you did. Your heart dropped as his chuckles morphed into a full sadistic laugh that bounced off the walls of the kitchen. He looked at you with an intensity you had never seen before and spoke. Deathly calm.

       “Oh, Y/N”, he stalked closer to you, still separated by the marble kitchen island but you still instinctively took a step back. 

       “I’m going to enjoy beating that attitude out of you.” 

       It was a game of moves and countermoves. Each step he took towards you, you took one back. And in the vast kitchen of your family home, it was easy to put distance between you. Easier when he was completely off his rocker after drinking an unholy amount of vodka. 

       “I-I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean it. You don’t have to do this.” Your voice shook as you tried to placate your father, who had rage swirling in his eyes at the sight of you. He said nothing. Only laughing in response. 

       “You’re drunk. Please.” God, Y/N. You and your big mouth. You knew this would happen. 

       With alcohol impairing his senses, it was easier for you to predict his moves and get out of the way more quickly. As he lunged at you with a shout, you dodged out of the way and ran to the other side of the kitchen, heart thundering in your chest. You hadn’t expected him to chuck the heavy vodka bottle at you, clocking you in the temple with a painful thud as you crumpled to the floor. The glass shattered in half at your feet. The familiar warmth of blood trickled down your forehead. Slow footsteps made their way towards your weak form.

      Your father knelt down and gripped the collar of your sweater, pulling your head up from the floor. Your vision was blurred from the pain. 

       “You. I do so much for you.” He slaps you across the face, one hand still clutching your collar. You almost hadn’t noticed the hit in your dazed state. 

       “I give you a roof to live under. Food, clothes, money.” He emphasizes each word as he says it, correspondingly slamming your frail body to the hard floor. You couldn’t breathe as he knocked the air out of your lungs, only helplessly staring up at him through teary eyes. 

       “And this is how you thank me? You ungrateful brat.” 

       Your face contorted to an expression of fury. Damn the consequences, you wanted to fight back. And if he hits you twice as hard for it, then you would pay that price. You reached up and swiped your nails across the plane of his face, relishing in the thin strips of blood that immediately appeared afterwards. His shock gave you time to get out from underneath him. 

       Your father touched his cheek and pulled back to find the palm of his hand smeared in red. It seemed as if that sobered him up completely, expression turning calm and dark. You watched him in half-satisfaction and horror, anticipating his next move.

       He slowly bent down and picked up the half broken vodka bottle that laid haphazardly at his feet, clutching the neck with a white-knuckled fist, face completely devoid of any human emotion. The shattered bottle was jagged at the end he was currently pointing at you, its edges spliced dangerously and glinting under the harsh light overhead. You had two hands raised in front of you, like a zookeeper attempting to pacify an overzealous animal. 

       It only took a slight distraction of his roaring laughter and the shock of his approaching speed towards you for you to let your guard down. You reacted just a millisecond to slow, and the sharp end of the broken battle was swiped across your abdomen, so quickly you almost hadn’t felt the searing pain that made you want to faint right there and then. Like flames licking on your skin. Your hands came up to clutch the bleeding wound that had already drenched through your clothes. Your knees buckled as you collapsed once again on the floor, leaning on the wall for support. Just keep pressure. Keep pressure and you won’t bleed out. Your breaths came out in pained gasps.

       The bottle met the floor with a shattering sound that was far too delicate after what it had done to you in the hands of your father. Like a predator to its already injured prey, your father approached you to come in for the kill. To finish the hunt. His shaking hands gripped onto your neck, so small and thin in his grasp that you were scared it would just break with the slightest pressure. If this was to be the way you left this world, you would make sure he remembered every second. You spat out the blood in your mouth onto his face, grinning in delight as droplets stung his eyes and splattered over his face. He squeezed your neck tighter.

      “You know, I could always make it look like an accident if I killed you here.” His eyes maniacally stared into your’s as the air was suddenly stolen from your lungs, both from his hands and his words. You clawed at the arms that held you to the wall, desperate for some relief.

      “Could leak to the press that your car crashed somewhere. No one would even question it.” 

       Stay awake, Y/N. Fight back. You wanted to. You wanted to fight tooth and nail but all you could focus on was the blood that was seeping out of your stomach and the burn in your lungs as you worked to keep your consciousness. But his grip was so tight and so painful. His bark as stinging as his bite.

       Your father’s hands left your throat abruptly and you gulped in air. Who knew oxygen could taste sweet? You keeled over on the floor, coughing out the pain in your throat and trying to ground yourself. There’s a warm hand on the small of your back, though. Impossibly warm and spanning the entire length of your midsection. It caresses you so softly you almost hadn’t noticed it was there. It pulls you closer across the cold floor into a wide chest and you wonder if you had really died and this was an angel to take you away from such a cruel world. An angel to take you to sanctuary. 

       The angel has such a familiar face when you turn around to meet his eyes though. He looks eerily identical to a certain boy named Taehyung, and his face is creased in worry as your words are stolen from your tongue. The pain reverberating through your body makes it hard to speak, and even harder to stay awake. 

       “Y/N? Don’t go to sleep, just stay for a second longer.” Taehyung didn’t know what to do. Jin was the one who had medical training, not him. He could only stare flabbergasted as your face went impossibly pale and your whole body shook. He looked down at where you still held your midsection, where your hand was completely drenched in red and blood began to pool around where you lay.

       “Hyung! S-She’s bleeding out!” Tears welled in his eyes in sheer panic and desperation, enveloping his own hand over yours to apply more pressure, sorry’s tumbling from his lips when you winced at the pain. 

      Namjoon looked over to the two of you as the rest of the boys dealt with restraining your father. With more force than necessary. Jungkook made sure bruises would be left behind, his anger communicated in the way he held your father down. 

       “Taehyung”, you whispered so lightly as your body objected to the pain of talking. His eyes snapped to your’s, a hand coming up to cradle your face gently. Namjoon appeared at your other side, examining your wounds and frantically yelling at someone over the phone that he shakily held to his ear. 

       “Don’t kill him. Don’t kill my father.” Your voice cracked and you cried both in relief and worry about what was to happen next. Even after this, you didn’t want your father to die. At least not yet. Not before you got the chance to talk to him. 

       “We won’t,Y/N.” Taehyung smiled down at you in his arms to distract your sadness. “Once you’re all better, you can do that yourself, yeah?” You tried your best to return his smile, managing a slight curve of your lips as a shaky breath left your lungs. Taehyung’s eyes widened as your’s began to droop and your breathing had become shallow.

      “Y/N, please stay awake. What’s….What’s your favorite color?” He stammered, slightly nudging you so you wouldn’t drift off. You wanted to laugh at the question, but couldn’t bear to. 

       “Yellow.” 

       “Good, good. Mine is red. What’s your favorite flower?” Taehyung would look back on this later and want to slap himself for asking you such mundane questions while you were oozing blood on your kitchen floor. But it was all he could think of to make sure you stayed awake for as long as you could. 

       You groaned in pain, deepening the furrow in Taehyung’s brow. “Peonies”, you whispered lightly, your voice slowly fading away. You couldn’t find the energy to talk anymore. Or breathe without feeling sharp pain. 

       For once, you felt safe to leave behind your consciousness and fall into the sleep you tried to fight. Safe and warm. Was it his arms that had made you feel that way? Or knowing that they were all there and that your father couldn’t hurt you anymore at that moment. You closed your eyes, the last thought on your mind being regret. You hadn’t stayed long enough to find out what his favorite flower was as well. 

       With the pained sounds of your father in the background as the others threw hit after hit, the two boys at your side could only stare at each other with your limp body in between them, praying to whatever power was up there that they could get you back to the manor quickly enough. That their mistake wouldn’t have cost you your life. 

      “Where’s Y/N-ie? Where is she? There she is!” You erupted into contagious giggles as your father pried the peekaboo hands off your chubby face. 

       “I almost lost you! Where did you go?” An airplane in the form of a spoon piled high with mashed peas made its way to your mouth, your father making whooshing sounds as he expertly slotted it between your lips. You never liked peas, even as a toddler, face twisting sourly and spitting up the majority of the food you just had been fed. 

       He smiled at you fondly, caressing your palm-sized head in his hand. You smeared the spit up food over your bib and table, somehow managing to get it in your hair as well. A warm chuckle bubbled from his chest.

       “Come on, love. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

       You woke up on a cold bed with a sharp inhale, wanting to scream but somehow not able to make a sound. There were so many people. So many voices talking at once that it sounded like no one was talking at all. You tried your best to enhance your wavering focus. 

“Jungkook, grab the bandages.”

“She’s opening her eyes. Grab me another morphine syringe.”

“Y/N? You need to calm down. Everything is going to be alright.” 

       You couldn’t make out the other voices but the last one was familiar. It belonged to Jungkook, and you blindly reached a hand out for anyone that would be willing to hold it. He gripped back with a fervent intensity, squeezing your fingers as if to let you know:

       I’m right here. You’re safe with me. 

       You groaned at the searing pain in your stomach, and the thundering ache that throbbed in your head. It was as if you could feel every cut on your skin, every drop of blood that spilled, and every nerve cell that screamed in agitation. God, you hoped that the morphine someone was talking about would kick in soon. You opened your eyes wider at Jungkook’s face that had appeared above you, like an angel shrouded in white light, and exhaled at the sight. He looked so beautiful, you couldn’t imagine how beat up you looked right then. You were always damaged goods. Bruised and imperfect. You let yourself fade away once again. 

       “I don’t have time for you right now, Y/N. I’m busy.” Your younger self deflated at your father’s rejection, hanging your head in disappointment and trodding to the door of his office. You never objected or cried anymore in front of him. He always said how he hated it, and you wanted to do your best to not upset your father. 

       “Actually, Y/N?” You turned around as the smile grew on your cheeks, ready to excitedly tell him about your day and the test that you aced.

       “Make sure you rehearse your piano piece for tonight, it’s going to be televised. And tell the maid to set out your dress early. We don’t want to be late.” 

       Your father had spared you a tight-lipped smile and eye contact before he resumed his incessant typing on his computer, stressed-out expression permanently etched on his face. The hope that had sprouted in your chest withered away as soon as it came, and you could only nod back to him, not trusting your voice to respond without cracking. You couldn’t pinpoint when he had gotten so cold, but his old self would come back soon, you were sure of it. He would love you again like he did before and you all could be one big happy family. 

       You realized later that night, that perhaps the version of your father you were desperately hanging on had ceased to exist. You practiced your solo like he had said, perfecting each glissando and enunciating each arpeggio until your fingers ached. But there had been so many people and so many cameras. It was your father’s critical stare from across the concert hall that had caused your misstep, and the discordant notes as your hands tripped over themselves. 

      You were punished for it by the wrath of a folded up belt in the palm of his hand. He made you change from your concert gown into a thinner camisole, so that your skin could feel each thwack of leather. So that you could feel how angry he was at you through each strike. You wanted to tell him that you were sorry. That you loved him. You wanted to ask him why he was doing this when you already knew you messed up. But you wouldn’t cry and you wouldn’t object or scream. He always said how much he hated it. 

      “Hyung, she’s awake.” 

      Your eyes shot open, shaking in panic as you tried to adjust to the harsh fluorescent overhead and looked around the room. It hurt to breathe and to move. In fact, you couldn’t even do the latter. 

       “It’s okay. You’re safe.” Jin looked into your scared eyes and slipped his hand into yours, squeezing as tightly as he could to ground you from your oncoming panic attack. Your heartbeats slowed down as he continued to hush you and held onto your hand as if it was a lifeline. Or maybe that was you that was holding on so tightly, you couldn’t tell. 

       You were in a white room. Not the same one that they had thrown you in when you arrived the first time. Not as cold and bleak….and that of course had nothing to do with the boy that was besides you gripping your hand as if he was afraid you would disappear otherwise. There was a strong scent of antiseptic permeating through the air, so heavy you wanted to choke on it. You always hated it. It brought up too many memories you wished to forget. Your eyes darted across the space. 

      Hoseok had been sitting on the chair in the far corner, running a hand through his messy hair and looking like he hadn’t slept in a couple days. You were surprised he was even here to begin with. Last time you talked, he called you many not so nice things before they shipped you back to your father. Jin sighed sadly and your gaze met his again, clearly distressed and welling with unshed tears. 

      “Your windpipe was almost crushed. That’s probably why you have some trouble trying to talk, too.” The scene flashed through your eyes again. You were on the floor and he had been choking the life out of you. Before they came to save you. You passed out and now you were here. 

       “I expect you to make a full recovery, Y/N”, Jin smiled gently. He flipped through a patient clipboard, scribbling down notes you couldn’t see from where you were laying. You pushed through the pain to speak. 

       “Where’s my father?” You recoiled in shock at the sound of your own voice, reminiscent of someone who had been smoking since they came out of the womb. Hoseok eagerly stood up from his seat and handed you a glass of water, which you thankfully took and drained the entire thing. The boys seemed downtrodden after your question, glancing at each other and looking far too uncomfortable. 

       “I’ll let Namjoon explain later, love. You should rest now.” You tried to look away to hide your blush at the pet name he had unconsciously used. It was odd. They had been so cold when you came here the first time, and now he was calling you love and looking after you.

       Don’t get your hopes up Y/N, it’s just guilt. 

       Jin left the room after checking on the white bandages wrapped around your stomach, which you had completely forgotten was even injured among the chaos. You could already see the ugly scar that the bottle was going to leave behind, internally groaning at a new mark you could use to remember your father by. You shut your eyes to attempt to get some more sleep, but felt a presence in the room. You hadn’t noticed that Hoseok never left, and was still sitting there on a chair that did not look comfortable. He caught your gaze and blushed.

       “I’m uh….I’m staying here. Just to make sure you need anything.” If it weren’t for your messed up throat, you would have giggled at his stammering cuteness. The way he nervously played with his fingers and avoided eye contact with you. It was hard to believe this was the same man that wanted to kick you out of the house the second they brought you back. 

       It felt safe, though. To have him there, watching over you so that nothing bad would happen. Hoseok didn’t make any noise or attempt to start any conversation, even if you couldn’t say anything back to him. He just sat there with you, albeit too far away for your liking, watching over you like a guardian angel. It didn’t feel awkward. Just warm. But surely all of this was only temporary, because warm and comforting things never lasted for a person like you. Perhaps they had done nothing to your father. Perhaps he would come after you and Bangtan would be forced to let you go. 

       However, as you sat in the peaceful silence of each other’s presence, admiring Hoseok in the sunlight coming through the window, you would feel alright if this was only temporary. 

      It had felt like you were their prisoner again. Except the door wasn’t locked, it’s always wide open. Jin would periodically come and go to give you food and water and fresh clothes, and you were just there. Sitting passively and staring into space most of the time. The other boys hadn’t made any active attempt to talk to you, and you wondered if it was because of the overwhelming guilt or if it was just because they didn’t care. Even though there was a familiar poetry book on your meal tray yesterday, you couldn’t bring yourself to open and read. You wouldn’t allow yourself to indulge in such things, because the boys were not your friends. They would kick you out once you’ve healed. You wouldn’t let yourself get attached again. 

       Jin tried to hide his wince as he unraveled the bandages around your middle, eyeing the nasty wound and mutilated skin with guilt swimming in his eyes. Times like these, you just stayed quiet and looked away at the window, refusing to see the marks that your father has left on you. You didn’t notice the tears that made their way down your cheeks until you felt Jin’s soft hands wiping them away. 

       It was easy. Too easy to fall into his chest and sob a part of the pain out. As for the rest of it, you reckon it’ll stay with you for the rest of your life. It felt good, though. To have someone hold you with no questions asked and no hollow statements of sympathy. Jin had wrapped you in his arms so tightly and tucked your head under his chin, like a shield from the rest of the world that has tried to hurt you so many times. 

       “I’m so sorry, Y/N.” 

       You couldn’t count how many times he had repeated it to you. Nor had you noticed the quivering in each word as he whispered them in your ear. But you could feel their sincerity, through each breath and pause and the way his hands pressed you against the wide expanse of his chest. You couldn’t find it in yourself to tell him that it was okay, or that everything was forgiven, because that wouldn’t be true. Nothing was okay and the sky seemed to be falling. You didn’t know what your father would do now or what had happened after you passed out at the house. You didn’t know if Soyeon knew where you were or if she even noticed. You didn’t know where you would go after the dust settles down. But right then, at that moment, Jin had held you. And even if everything you were facing felt uncertain...

He hadn’t. 

       “Aren’t you gonna go in, Y/N?” Jungkook and Yoongi stood next to you, switching glances between your figure and the door of your assigned bedroom/ex-holding cell. You could only stare at the wood, tracing your eyes over and and the padlock that remained drilled on to the oak pane. Jungkook exhaled in realization, turning you gently by the shoulders to face him. 

       “You’re not our hostage anymore. I promise.” 

       You hesitantly looked up at him, nodding and turning back to the entrance. You weren’t their prisoner anymore. There was no need to worry. You took a deep breath in and turned the doorknob, swinging the door open and revealing the room exactly as you had remembered it. The bed was neatly made. There was a stack of clothes neatly piled on top of the mattress. And on the nightstand, a tall glass vase filled with pink and white peonies. Your favorite. 

       Yoongi noticed your gaze stuck on the flowers, and gingerly walked to your side. “Taehyung uhh...said they were your favorite. We thought you would like them.” 

       You remained quiet, only staring at the bouquet and running your fingers through a soft petal, so delicate you were scared it would fall into pieces at the slightest touch. 

       “I mean they’re stupid anyway. It was a stupid idea, I should have-” 

       “I love them. Thank you so much.” You cut off Yoongi’s rambling, looking back at both of the boys with a warm smile on your cheeks, skin gaining color again after the incident. You turned around to admire the flowers some more. 

       Jungkook fixed his gaze on Yoongi, noting the pink tint on his cheeks that wasn’t there before. He would have teased him for it had it not been for the same blush that was painted on his own. The boys looked at each other as you held a peony up to your nose, oblivious of the turmoil you had caused behind you with just a smile and a few words. If words could be communicated through a look shared between two smitten people, Jungkook and Yoongi’s conversation would have sounded something like:

       Oh fuck. We’re in trouble.

       “We’re needed in the meeting room, Y/N. Are you ready?” Jungkook coughed awkwardly as the comfortable silence was broken between the three of you. You looked at him confusedly.

       “Namjoon wants to update you. On everything.” Your eyes widened in realization. You set the single bloomed peony down on the nightstand, glancing back to the two boys who could sense your tension from across the room. 

       “What do you mean you left him there?” You practically yelled, your throat objecting to every strain and voice coming out raspy even after the days of recovery, which felt like years with the way all seven of the boys avoided answering any of your questions as if it was the plague. A plague called: Seokjin would have skinned them alive if they caused you more distress when you hadn’t mostly healed yet. 

      Namjoon sighed, disappointment at himself reflected in his gaze towards you from across the wide briefing table. Since you had been cleared to get out of bed, Bangtan had thought it proper to give you a seat at their meeting room, with your very own spinning chair. 

       “We couldn’t do anything after we beat him up. We put a tail on him, though, to track his every move. As much as we wanted to bring him back, your father is a powerful man, Y/N. We are too, but he’s a high government official.” You slumped in defeat, not as confident as you were before. You thought he was in custody somewhere, not still free to do whatever he wanted. He was still in a position to get you back, which would mean imminent death. Yoongi seemed to read your expression perfectly. 

       “Don’t worry, Y/N. We won’t let him have you again.” Again. That had been an awkward sore spot with you and the boys. You all had unspokenly decided to completely ignore it. How easily they had betrayed you and handed you over the first time, writing you off as an ignorant brat. Even after all your assurances that you were not angry at them, they were still convinced they needed to do more to redeem themselves. You smiled at Yoongi warmly, and he tried to quell the thudding heartbeat that annoyingly pounds at the mere sight of you. 

       “So what do we do now?” The boys made eye contact with each other at your question, seemingly as clueless as you were.

       “I strategize that we just wait. Our headquarters are stationed here, this is where we are safest and strongest. Let’s wait for his move and prepare ourselves as best we can.” Hoseok speaks up from two seats away from you.

       “But it’s your call Y/N. Whatever you think is best.” You nodded, staying quiet and looking at the mahogany table in front of you, analyzing your own reflection in the shiny and polished wood. 

       “I think”, you started, catching the attention of the crew as they awaited your executive decision. “We all need a very good night’s sleep. Don’t you?” You stood up from your chair slowly, body still sore and rickety. You reached out for Jimin to help you waddle to your room, which he gladly obliged. 

       “Come on, boys, I can practically see you dozing off in your chairs.” 

      Maybe it was the way you laughed when you said it, looking back at them with expectant eyes and a kind smile on your lips. The way they had someone to care for them in such a mundane way as wanting to make sure they got enough sleep. The sound of your voice fluttering around the cold house that felt cozier with just the power of your presence. The feeling of having someone to protect. As they stared at you, damaged and hurt as you were, something collectively bloomed in their chests. With just a glance towards one another, the seven of them knew. They would keep you safe. For as long as you would let them. 

       “Are you sure you don’t need anything else, Y/N?” Jimin fussed over you smotheringly, tucking and retucking the thick blanket around your frail figure as if one loose thread in the fabric would put you at risk. You rolled your eyes affectionately. 

       “Jimin. You’re going to give yourself a hernia if you keep this up. I’m fine. See?”

       Yes, he had seen. You were still bandaged across your waist, the wounds from the glass bottle taking exceptionally long to heal, even after the stitches. You hadn’t needed stitches on your temple, just an obnoxious bandage. The neck cast had come off, but Jimin could still see the rings of purple and black bruises that lined your skin, stoking the fire of his anger each time he caught sight of it and remembered the scene of your father’s hands squeezing the life out of you. 

       “Don’t look at me like that, Jimin. It’s just a little injury. I’ll be back to shape in no time.” You grinned cheekily, shooing his hands away from trying to fluff up your pillow that in no way needed any more fluffing. 

       He was confused at that. How you pretended to be fine even after everything. They could all see the pain in your eyes and hear it in your words each time you talked about your family. 

       “Okay, fine. Just yell if you need anything.” You nodded.

       “Wait don’t yell, your vocal chords are still healing, just knock on the wall very obnoxiously.” You nodded again.

       “Wait don’t knock you could hurt yourself, just-”

       “Jimin.”

       “Yeah, okay, goodnight Y/N.” He let himself out the door, glancing back at you one last time with something fond in his eyes. He left the door ajar by a centimeter, so that a little light could flood in through the crack. You had expected the familiar clicking sound of a lock to keep you from escaping. But there was none. No lock and no keys assigned to each boy to open your bedroom. You drifted off to sleep with the help of Jin’s prescribed pain medicine. You thought of Soyeon. Your mother. Your father. And the face of seven boys who you had grown unreasonably close to in the short amount of time. 

       Namjoon had been treading sleepily to his bedroom when he had heard you. At first, he shrugged it off, thinking it was just the house settling or a distant breeze. But as he approached closer to your door, he could hear it more clearly. Your distressed whimpers and slurred mumbles. Namjoon quietly opened the door and peeked inside.

       You were tossing and turning on the bed, hands fisting the sheets so tightly your knuckles turned white. Your expression was pained, eyebrows scrunching in discomfort as you dreamed. Namjoon’s heart twisted in his chest. He hadn’t even thought of the fact that you would get bad nightmares, and how they must be even heightened after this. You had seemed strangely fine after they brought you back to their home, never showing more weakness than you had to. You hadn’t even mentioned the injuries. Now you were probably reliving everything while you were supposed to be peacefully sleeping.

       Namjoon leaned down over you, careful not to invade your space. “Y/N, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.” You hadn’t budged, still drifting off in your unpleasant dream. 

       “Y/N?” You had stilled, expression still creased in a frown but no longer rustling. He hadn’t noticed that your hand was gripping tightly onto his until he moved to walk away. For a moment, he thought you had woken up, but the even rise and fall of your chest and light snores that escaped your lips indicated you were still deep in sleep. He sighed, opting to sit down on the rug besides your bed, still keeping your hand encased in his own. 

       It was comforting. To feel the warmth of your skin. To run his thumb over your pulsepoint and feel the rhythmic beating. To hear each breath as it made its way through your chest. Namjoon felt his eyelids getting heavier and heavier by the second. He hadn’t even noticed himself falling asleep, only focused on the weight of your hand in his.

       You woke up feeling still as tired as you were when you went to bed. Your skin was sticky with sweat, uncomfortably rubbing against you and making you far too hot. You flicked the thick blanket Jimin had insisted on trapping you under and relished in the cold air that rushed in to lick at your skin. A snoring sound reverberated impossibly loud in the once quiet room. You froze with fear, snapping your head so quickly to the source of the sound you were surprised you didn’t get whiplash.

       It was Namjoon. Curled up in the fetal position on your rug with a decorative couch pillow under his head, snoring away without a care in the world. The sight made you coo, heart melting at the sight of a grown man sleeping so innocently. He was always so focused on his work. So caught up in the stress of running his gang. You wondered how often he actually got good sleep. It was as if he could feel your stare, and opened his eyes to meet your’s.

       “What are you doing down there, Namjoon?” 

       Wow, he could get used to the sight of you after he woke up every morning, bedhead and all. Even if his view was from an uncomfortable floor. Namjoon coughed in embarrassment, promptly standing up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

       “You, uh...You had a nightmare last night. I came to check on you and then you wouldn’t let go of my hand.” You blushed meekly at his words, a smile growing on your lips as you looked at him fondly. 

       “So, you stayed with me?” You gazed up at Namjoon in wonder, heart threatening to burst at his unexpected act of care towards you. He nodded shyly, scratching the back of his neck as he always does when he’s nervous and awkward. You could feel your eyes tearing up again, wanting to laugh at yourself for being so pathetic and crying over the smallest things. But he had been so ready to stay by your side, even when you were asleep and out of it. You couldn’t remember a time when someone cared enough to do that for you. 

       You stood up out of bed and stood in front of Namjoon. His mouth slightly dropped in shock as he felt your arms weakly wrap around his shoulders, his arms still hanging by his side. 

       “Thank you.” 

       He felt your breath fan over his ear, so soft and delicate. You sniffled, trying to hide your tears from him. Namjoon held you closer to him, pressing you against his chest with the least amount of pressure so as to not aggravate your injury any more. You had felt so small and snug in his arms, he wanted you to stay there forever. He felt a single tear drop drip onto his clothed shoulder, seeping through the fabric of his shirt, and he held you even closer. 

       The door to your room opened with a smack, revealing a huffing Hoseok, and the two of you jumped away from each other, respectively blushes dusting your cheeks and putting on an inconspicuous facade. Hoseok graciously decided to ignore what he had seen. He would tease Namjoon for it later, there was  something more pressing at hand. 

       “What’s wrong?” Namjoon waited for Hoseok to catch his breath, but noted the ways his eyes flickered worriedly to you and the sounds of his men clambering downstairs. Your heart thudded in anticipation at the solemn look Hoseok had on his face, suddenly wanting to empty the contents of your stomach and faint all in one go. You had a feeling you knew what his next words were going to be about.

       “It’s your father Y/N. He’s on his way here.” 

Taglist: @pinkyhim​, @deolly​ , @drunkzseok​, @hope122598​, @uwunamjoon​, @nomimits7​, @bubblebunnylia​, @aquaalanah, @juliie-ocha, @daydreambrliever​, @btsbabby​, @blank-et-noir, @myheartstaysinkorea, @rosiethefairy​, @tiredjedi, @lovemyself-persona​, @jeoncookie-bts​, @annoyingpessimist​, @beach-bitch-bitch-beach​, @fangirling-all-the-way-tbh , @btstxtgenre​, @taesugaar​, @hxsxxk-180294​, @bubbletae7​, @uglyratlmao​, @hopetookmysoul​, @supertweetycherry​, @loveyoongles​

[art-dump-for-avery]

If It Means A Lot To You

AU info/chapter index || Next

Chapter 1: Put your blood on ice

Warnings for this chapter: unintentional deadnaming and misgendering, let me know if I need to add more

Summary: After the final concert of his tour, Roman finds himself reflecting on his past and present, and makes the decision to do something about it.

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Roman could remember clear as day the dreams if his childhood. Years of watching Disney had told him he could be anything. At first, he wanted to be a prince - a hero who saved the day and was adored by all. He later realized that wasn't a very likely future, so he chose something he knew he had a shot at: stardom.

For as long as he could remember, he'd had a talent for the performing arts. Singing, dancing, acting, even songwriting - it all came as naturally to him as breathing.

Roman's heart had long ached for the spotlight, The adoring fans, the fame, the freedom. He fought tooth and nail for every chance to make himself known, even leaving behind everything he'd ever known, and now, after so many years, he had what he wanted.

Except...no. This wasn't what he wanted. Not at all.

When you're a kid, your view of fame is skewed. Rose-tinted glasses only let you see the money, praise, opportunity, and everything good that comes with being a celebrity.

But it isn't the truth. The truth is that once you become someone everyone knows, you have to make sure you're always known. Little by little, the things that make you who you are can end up being chipped away. The songs you write may mean nothing to you, the characters you play can feed into a loss of self, and each time you dance you may feel more and more like a puppet on strings.

Life among the stars is so deceptively beautiful that you can become oblivious to the fact that your own starlight is flickering out. Coldly, slowly, and lonely, the limelight kills the dreams of those who seek it. Roman had learned that the hard way.

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“Thank you all for coming, and have a wonderful night!” Roman waved to the crowd of screaming fans as he walked offstage, gratefully accepting the water bottle offered to him. Finally, the tour was over. Just a few public appearances and he could go home.

He cringed. He really wouldn't say the mansion he lived in was his home. It was really just his place of residence. He hadn't had a real home in years.

“Hey! Earth to Roman!” The singer was literally snapped out of his thoughts by his bodyguard, Remy, who looked equal parts annoyed and concerned. “Were you even listening?”

Roman huffed a nervous laugh. “Sorry. You know I space out after shows sometimes.”

“This is the seventh performance in a row that's happened.” Remy raised his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Are you sure you're not subconsciously starving or losing sleep?”

“I'm fine Rem,” Roman sighed. “This tour has just been..a lot. I just wanna curl up in my bed for a decade, that’s all.”

His friend’s only response was a muttered “Mood” before walking with Roman back to his dressing room. The tech crew backstage rushed past the two, offering quick words of praise before continuing on with their post-show responsibilities. Everyone seemed so much more eager to do their jobs this time. After all, the sooner everything was done, the sooner they could finally rest. Many had been hired to help with the entire tour and had been on the road for months. But now, they could finally go home and sleep in their own beds, and Roman could practically feel their relief.

Remy held open the dressing room door, the performer thanking him as he stepped inside. The moment he heard it click shut behind him, though, he let his shoulders drop. Finally, for the first time in months, he was able to stop for a breath.

Don’t get the wrong idea, he loved this. Loved being able to perform for thousands of people, loved getting to travel the world and sharing his creations. It was all he ever wanted when he was younger — and it still is! The letters he keeps stored safely at home, from fans who have found comfort and meaning in life and are still alive thanks to his older music, they make all of the mental and physical exhaustion worth it.

That doesn’t make it any easier to ignore the ache buried deep into his very soul. The pain of trying to pour his heart out into a song that has no room for his heart at all. The interviews that slowly feel more and more scripted. The clothes that scream “rich guy with more money than he knows what to do with” but never scream “Roman”.

God, he can’t even remember the last time he truly felt like himself.

He collapses into the chair in front of his vanity with a heavy sigh, and lets his head fall back to stare up at the ceiling. Whatever remaining tension is left in his body, he lets it melt away with a few deep breaths.

“Almost over,” he mutters to himself. He says it over and over, like a reassurance and almost like a prayer. Maybe once this was over, he’d try to go visit Janus. The last time he got to see her was very briefly at one of her concerts almost a year ago.

A quiet 'ping' rings out from his phone, drawing him from his musing. He looks at the notification and sees that it's from one of his private social media accounts, ones he uses to share his personal life without being bombarded by fans or corporations looking for exposure.

It's one of those time-line memory notifications, (you know the ones) with the memory dated back to when he first made the account in high school. With his curiosity piqued, he tapped on the screen to open the post.

A picture appeared on the screen. Three teenagers, two in the background dancing around in the rain, and one taking the picture in selfie mode, rolling his eyes with a fond smile. It made the ache in Roman’s chest grow painful one again.

The person taking the photo was him, he knew it was, but he still felt as though he were looking at a stranger. He had changed so much, a quick glance in the mirror in front of him was confirmation enough.

But it was the people in the background who hurt the most to see. His twin sister, Rebecca, and his ex, Virgil. They were the only two people in the world who had cared about him back then.

But that was ages ago. Roman lost their care when he decided to run away, his last words to Virgil being cruel accusations, and he didn't even leave a note for Rebecca, let alone say goodbye.

That was what he regretted most. Not that he left them behind (though sometimes he wished he hadn't), but how he had left. After all they'd done for him, they deserved better.

Rebecca was his first best friend. From the moment they were born, they were inseparable. As they grew, they fought more and more, as siblings do, but they were always there for each other. Even when their home and school lives were hell, they always knew that their twin would have their back. He should have brought her along, or at least said goodbye somehow. She probably hates him now, if she doesn't think he's dead in a ditch somewhere. He wouldn't blame her.

And Virgil — God, Virgil was the love of his life, had been nothing but supportive of Roman's dreams, and what did he get in return? An ungrateful (now ex-)boyfriend and a broken promise of forever among the stars. Worst of all, Roman never moved on. He had a few dates here and there, sure, but none of them stuck. Not like Virgil had. The guilt of it ate at him, because really, he had no right wanting to cross a bridge long burned when he was the one who lit the fire.

They both deserved better, or an apology at least. And an explanation for why he left in the first place.

The thought had him sitting up straight in his chair. That was it, wasn't it — part of the weight on his conscience. He needed — no, wanted to make amends with the people he hurt in his desperate climb to the top. Apologize to Virgil, for lashing out after all that Virgil had given him. And to Rebecca, for leaving during the years when it was most important for them to be at each other's sides.

And seeing as the tour was coming to an end with no plans for afterwards, he had all the time in the world.

He could finally say sorry.

With his mind made up, he stood and got ready to head back out for a few final fan meet-n-greets before turning in for the night. He'd make it through the interviews over the next week, then immediately hit the road. The sooner he was back home, the better.

He had much more important things to get to.

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(Hope I actually finish this one so it'll stop bouncing in my brain. Enjoy)

[sanktnikolais]

lost in the echo

A/N: this was supposed to be posted some time later before the actual release of Rule of Wolves, but it’s been released early so :>

or me just finding an excuse to write demon Nik going feral after seeing Zoya hurt :>

Word count: 3591

The King continues to fight his battle with his own demon. After seeing his General hurt in the war that they had fought tooth and nail for, Nikolai is one step closer to letting the darkness consume him.

Pain. 

          It was something that Nikolai knew so well and yet he could never get used to it. Whether it was entirely physical or emotional, it was always there, lurking and lingering like his own shadow. 

          Why? 

          The question came to his mind as another shout tore from his throat. It sounded almost like a wail, a desperate call for help. For himself? For his people? For everyone else that died in every war the country had been under for centuries? 

          For Ravka? 

          A head-splitting ache hit him, and he doubled over. He held onto the feeling, that one fleeting moment he felt the ground under his hands, before he was back to trying to regain control again. But despite the war for control in his mind, he realized that for once, there was one thing he and the demon shared the same sentiment—revenge. 

          For what? 

          Images flashed in his eyes. A shade of blue rushing towards him. A crack of gunshot. Blood. The excruciating pain in his chest. 

          Then nothing. 

          You cannot even protect and save her, young king. 

          There was another piercing pain in his chest, and this time, it felt like his heart was being torn out from his chest as he remembered looking at Zoya’s frail, bleeding form in his arms—

          Zoya? Did something happen to her?

          At that, the demon pushed back for control. The urge—the need—to destroy everything in his path was suddenly stronger than his will to get back to himself. Fury was the only thing driving him forward. Nothing else mattered.

          Yield, demon king, there's nothing else you can do for her, the monster said. Let the darkness come and take over.

          Nikolai closed his eyes and calmed.

          Let go. 

          He felt the monster’s claws on his shoulders, its grip tightening as the shadows slowly shrouded him in a veil of hushed whispers and angry voices. It felt almost natural, like welcoming a long lost friend after being apart for so long. Because in reality, he never really got free from the darkness the Darkling inflicted upon him; it chose the right time to let itself show again, when he was backed in a corner without any means of escape aside from accepting the demon that lurked within his heart. 

          Perhaps it was the main reason why it never left him, so he would have a last resort to turn to when things left him with no other choice. 

          All else faded to a blur, and then to darkness, his thoughts flitting away as if they were mere leaves easily carried by the winds until there was nothing left other than rage. 

          Talons extended from his scarred hands again, followed by the sound of an inhuman growl coming out from his lips. His wings burst from his back, and he braced his feet on the ground to launch himself in the air—

          Giving up so easily, King Wretch? 

          He froze. That voice—it sounded so familiar. Where had he heard it? He was sure he knew it. 

          A heavy feeling stirred in his chest, the nagging sensation of something begging to be released, to be free. He held on to that, a small speck of light amidst the endless darkness. For a moment, his mind quieted. Even the demon stayed silent, lurking. Listening. 

          It came again shortly after. This is not who you are. 

          But who was he? The nagging feeling became heavier and stronger as if something was forcing its way out and trying to escape whatever confines caged it down. 

          An irritated hiss escaped his mouth. It had come from the demon, the sound coming out like it was in pain. The question still lingered in his mind. Who was he? 

          The claws around his shoulders loosened, the shadows started to dissipate. He could still feel the monster reach out for them, but this time, he himself was holding back. 

          Who was he? 

          Come back to me, Nikolai. 

          Then there was like the sound of a glass shattering, and everything came rushing back to him. 

          Nikolai opened his eyes and fought back. 

          As he had expected, the monster tried to pull him back, its grip on him becoming much stronger than before. Still fighting the losing battle, young king? 

          He gritted his teeth. He knew the monster was goading him, throwing him off by telling him he was already losing. But he also knew it was starting to get weaker fighting against his sudden, newfound strength that allowed him to resurface again. 

          And it definitely didn't know how many times he had been backed to a corner and yet still found a way out. 

          Yield, the demon demanded again. 

          "I am the King of Ravka," he said, his voice hoarse from the demon's control but it was nevertheless his. "I do not yield to anyone." 

          But then the monster decided to show him his failure: Zoya taking the bullet that was meant for him. 

          For a moment, his will faltered, and the demon grabbed the chance to push the knife deeper into his resolve—into his heart. 

          You cannot do anything for her.  

          A shout of pure anguish tore from his throat as his mind focused on the person that mattered the world to him. 

          Zoya saving him from falling in the Fold. Zoya staying up with him most nights to grudgingly help him with the ton of correspondence. Zoya defending them from the dukes that dared to insult them during political gatherings. Zoya staying in his chambers and holding his hand tightly when his fears got the better of him. 

          Zoya, always Zoya.

          And yet you failed her. 

          The shadows overwhelmed him again, suffocating him. He knew he must fight them back but his resolve started crumbling again. 

          It was no use. He failed her. He failed her like he had failed Dominik, and then Alina. 

          Now everyone else. 

          And yet a small part of him still pushed back and never believed Zoya was gone. Because he would know. She was the other half of his soul, the other end of the red string tied around his wrist. There wasn't a single thing that she wasn't to him. 

          She was all and everything more.

          "She's still alive," Nikolai growled, and he felt the demon flinch like it had been burned. "I have not failed her. Only at the untimely end of my short life will I ever stop protecting her, then I will continue doing so in the next one I’ll live." 

          The monster cackled, and it could only do so much as its grip on him loosened again. He pushed back, feeling its clutches around him go weaker and weaker. 

          Come back, her voice from the day he took the thornwood to his heart echoed in his mind again, and he held onto it like his lifeline. Promise you'll come back to us. 

          Come back to me, Nikolai. 

          "I will." 

          The demon let out an angry hiss, the last threads of its ties around him snapping, and it grudgingly shrunk back to whatever darkness it hid. 

          Then there was nothing. 

***

There was still pain when Nikolai finally opened his eyes. But it was more of the physical rather than the one inside his heart. 

          His vision swirled as it slowly adjusted to the surroundings. The sky was bathed in a bright orange glow, the first signs of the approaching nightfall. It was when he realized that he was lying on the ground somewhere in the middle of the woods. 

          He sat up, but immediately regretted it when pain shot up to his side, making him stop his movements. Where was he? And how did he get here? 

          As if to answer his question, his head throbbed, and it hurt enough for him to double over to his side. Everything tilted sideways again. 

          "Saints," Nikolai groaned. He blinked several times to clear his vision, and when it adjusted again, he stopped. 

          Amidst the dimming light from the sky and the dark scars on his hands, he saw a single thread of a blue ribbon clutched in his palm. 

          The memory flashed back in his mind. Zoya fighting beside him. Zoya pushing him out of harm's way. Zoya bleeding in his arms. Zoya's hand falling from where she touched his face. 

          Zoyazoyazoyazoya—

          "Zoya." Nikolai's voice trembled when he called her name. "Zoya!" He looked around wildly, as if she would appear in front of him, alive and well, scowling at him and demanding him where he had been. But she didn't. 

          Tears fell from his eyes. Find her. He pushed up to his feet, forcing himself to stay upright, though his surroundings were swaying. 

          Find her. 

          Tying the blue ribbon around his wrist, he limped forward. And even when his body screamed in pain, he continued on. There was no assurance that he was going in the right direction, but it was better than staying put and not doing anything. Nikolai would trust his instincts. 

          Find her. 

          The woods seemed to be endless, the cluster of trees becoming thicker as he walked deeper into the forest. He didn’t know how long he had been walking—minutes? Hours? Days? He didn’t know. His foot found an uneven surface on the ground, and Nikolai stumbled forward. "She's alright," he hissed through the pain that shot up to his hands when he fell. With another growl of frustration, he repeated, "She's alright."

          She had to be. He didn’t know what he would do if she wasn’t. 

          “I’m coming back to you, Zoya,” he said, his voice breaking as he tried not to think of the worst case scenario that made another wave of tears fall from his eyes. He tried to push back up to his feet, but the images of Zoya looking so small and so frail in his arms kept appearing in his mind, and it made him feel weaker than he already was. “I’m coming back to you.”

          Get up, then, he chastised through his lamenting. Get up and find her. 

          Whatever strength he had before was slowly fading, dissipating into the thin air. The thought of seeing Zoya again was the only thing driving him forward. He wasn’t going to let go of that smallest sliver of hope he had in his heart, but its spark that continued to light his path was dwindling the more he tried to stay optimistic.

          Optimism was his strong suit, but it could also be the one to bring down the axe and shatter his heart for being too hopeful. 

          “She’s alright,” Nikolai repeated, but the saints knew how it was getting harder for him to convince himself that she was. His next words came out in a desperate, begging sob. “Zoya, please.”

          The blue ribbon around his wrist caught his gaze, the sight of it causing another sob from his throat. He clutched it to his chest as the sobs continued to rack out from his body. The helplessness he was feeling overpowered his logic. This wasn’t the time to grieve over things that he wasn’t sure of yet. But for someone who had always used his heart over his head, he could only do so much not letting his emotions take over. 

          It’s not you to let your guard down and quit, Lantsov, her voice came again, steady and strong like her will to set things right, the personality that Nikolai had grown to love dearly. Oh, how he wished to hear her voice again. Up on your feet, Your Highness. 

          A huffed laugh escaped his lips through his tears. Even in his imagination, she lingered. He really was a goner for her. 

          With the last ounce of strength he had, he willed his tears to stop and forced himself back up to his feet. He would come back to her. He would always come back to her, even if it meant fighting another thousand lifetimes and wars. Anything for her. 

          Nikolai took the path forward again. He hadn't gone that far when there was a rustle of leaves somewhere nearby. There wasn't a time for him to find a place to hide when there were suddenly people coming out from the bushes in front. 

          One moment he was standing upright, then the next second he was doubling over, gasping for breath. He fell down to his knees with his hand braced on the ground and the other on his chest. 

          "What—" He stopped. Grisha. 

          There was a series of clicks that followed, and the feel of the barrel of a rifle being trained at his temple. 

          "Identify yourself." 

          If Nikolai wasn't being deprived of his ability to breathe, he knew he still would stop breathing when he heard the voice. Tears stung his eyes, and it wasn't because of being suffocated to death. 

          Could it be—

          He lifted his head up. His current state made it very difficult, but he forced his way through the restrain. 

          And when his eyes met with the familiar blue ones that always appeared in his dreams, Nikolai felt as if he could breathe freely again. 

          Her grip on her powers faltered, and he drew in a breath when his airway cleared. 

          She's alive.

          The soldier holding the gun to his head sprung back, going down on his knees instantly with his rifle to the ground. His other First Army companions followed suit, but Nikolai couldn't acknowledge them, not when his mind had tunneled to focusing on her, and only her. 

          Tamar and Tolya stood their ground, relief obvious on their expressions, though there was still a lingering suspicion in their eyes. 

          His legs trembled as he slowly stood up. She's alive. Tears stung his eyes again, and he didn't bother to hold them back. He didn't care if the King of Ravka was crying openly. He didn't care if it was in front of his soldiers that expected him to be the tough figurehead he was supposed to be. 

          There was only one thing that mattered to him right now. 

          Nikolai took a step forward, his heart in his throat. His voice trembled when he called her name. "Zoya—"

          Tamar held out an axe and pointed it at him, making him stop abruptly. Confusion clouded his mind when he stared back at the woman, and then at Zoya. 

          Her eyes were bright, the longing in them not unnoticeable by him, who had been too blind to see the same looks being sent his way ever since he announced his engagement. What an utter fool, he was. 

          Zoya lifted her chin, the stoic face of the General of Ravka returning, and her voice was shaking when she said, "How do we know it's you?" 

          Nikolai huffed a laugh. Of course, precautions first before anything. He gave her a grin through his tear-stained face. "Is there any other king this handsome and idiotic and also afraid of spiders in suit?" he said. It was nonsense and he didn't know what else he could say. He just desperately wanted to run to her and pull her in his arms. "Should I retell the time I once tried to butcher geese?" 

          There was a short silence, and then he heard Zoya let out a disbelieving breath, but there was only an obvious relief on her expression. She looked tired; her bloodshot eyes gave away the worry she’d seemed to have since he disappeared, and her slightly pale skin and strained only meant she was still reeling from her injury. 

          And yet when he looked at her, he couldn’t think of anything else to describe her other than beautiful.

          Tamar let out a light laugh and lowered her axe. Her face softened when she gave him a smile and a nod, mouthing, "Good to see you, Your Highness."

          He mirrored her smile with his own before he turned his attention back to Zoya, his heart reaching out to her, the missing piece he had been finding for a long time. But she was already running towards him, her steps rushed as if the world would crumble down under her feet if she didn't reach him fast enough. 

          Nikolai met her halfway, his arms wide open as their bodies collided in a tight embrace, and finally, his heart was whole again. 

          She’s alright. She’s breathing. She’s alive. 

          “You’re alright,” he said, burying his face to her hair. He felt her arms tighten around his neck, and the feel of her warmth against him only made it clear that this was real. Another sob racked his body when he said, “Oh, saints. You’re alive.”

          Zoya let out a tired laugh. “You’re a mess,” she said against his neck as her hand came to clutch at his back. “You were gone for most of the day so I guess it’s only fair.”

          Nikolai pulled away just enough to look down in her eyes, seeing the old fire that never stopped burning even at their worst times, the same one that he thought was extinguished when she saved his life. She had always been the light to his darkness, the healing to his pain, and he vowed he would keep it that way even if he had to give his life over and over again.

          He reached a hand to her cheek as his eyes searched her face. “I thought I lost you,” he breathed, his voice coming out broken when another wave of tears hit him. His vision blurred. “I can’t believe I almost lost you.” 

          She closed her eyes and turned her face to his palm, her fingers coming around his wrist to rub soothing circles to his pulsepoint. “You worry too much,” she said. There was a smirk on her lips that she usually had, and it washed away the worry off her face. But the moment was short-lived, because she was suddenly heaving, her eyebrows knitting tightly together as if she were in pain. Her hand tightened on his wrist as a tear fell from her closed eyes. And then in a broken whisper, she said, “I thought I lost you too.”

          “I guess we both worried for each other so much today,” Nikolai murmured, resting his forehead against hers. He brought his other hand to her face and closed his eyes as well. “I’m here now.” 

          “You weren’t there when I woke, Nikolai,” said Zoya. Tears he never thought he would see her shed again fell freely from her eyes. “They said you were gone and I couldn’t do anything—”

          “Zoya, Zoya, my love,” he said, tilting her face up to his, and she opened her eyes. There was both fear and desperation in them, the same one she had when her amplifiers broke in the Fold. He gave her reassuring smile. "You saved me. Just like always." He gently wiped her tears with the pads of his thumbs. "You did everything you can, and it gave me another chance to live. Never forget that." 

          Zoya searched his eyes frantically, possibly to see if there were some underlying lies in his words. But if there was something Nikolai didn't want to do, it was to lie to her. They had faced enough problems to fill up for their next lives, shed blood and tears fighting for their forsaken country, for them just to let lies hang between them as their thread to keep them together. 

          They were the King and the General. The Too-Clever Fox and the Stormwitch. Nikolai and Zoya. 

          They were two halves of a whole, the one wouldn't function well without the other. 

          Together, they completed each other. 

          Without any more hesitation in her eyes, Zoya pulled him down to her level and pressed her mouth to his. 

          It was like coming home, the warm and light feeling in your chest when encountering something so familiar, and it was all Nikolai could have dreamed how kissing Zoya Nazyalensky would be like. 

          Years of longing stares and stolen glances and conversations that had hid their true feelings flowed through their kiss, the love they had been trying to hide burning brighter than any light that shone in the night. 

          Nikolai was aware of the people around them, of what they could have been thinking as they witnessed the king and his general crossing the line they had set for themselves, and yet he didn't care. Neither of them did. He buried his hand to her hair as his other arm snaked around her waist to pull her even closer to him, and Zoya responded by kissing him deeper, her lips opening under his. 

          The war was still ongoing but they could have this one stolen moment for just the two of them. 

          A moment that had been long overdue.

          When the need for air became stronger than the taste of each other's lips, Nikolai reluctantly pulled away, resting his forehead back to hers. She still had her eyes closed and he could feel her breaths ghosting on his lips.

          "I love you," Zoya said, and it left him floored in euphoria after hearing those sweetest words from her mouth. She opened her eyes to look back at him. "I love you so much." 

          He huffed a laugh, feeling as if his heart would burst with all his love for her any second. This was more than he could have asked for. With a contented sigh, he said, "I love you too, General."

          And when he met her halfway as she pulled him down to kiss him again, Nikolai finally felt the one thing he had always longed for. 

          Peace.