#I see this happen if he pick up all the di fortress kid to open his own orphanage in the modern AU

[tiny-breadcrumbs]

Di feisheng as a guardian figure will be that one kind of parents that rushes to their kid school after the headmaster notice and blurt out the "BUT DID YOU WIN?" first before asking about the casualties.

[kassifieddocuments]

Ghost Eddie AU (Part 1)

Steve feels like he's been here before. The soft grass under his feet actually kind of looking like those idealised cartoons. Almost too green. An all too perfect paradise that surely has something wrong underneath it.

"Harrington! What are you doing here?" Eddie looks up at him from where he's laying in said grass. "Kidding, I know. I was supposed to bring you here to tell you something, uh..."

Steve sits up, hardly daring to believe his eyes. "What –Eddie?!" He pulls the other both into a hug–the metalhead nerd he thought had died days about. But that brings him back to reality. "Wait, I thought you died? Are you alive? Or am I–" he cuts himself off, unable to say the last word but he knows the other young man will understand what he's asking.

Eddie sits back. "You're not dead, I'm not alive. If I were alive I'd probably have picked a better place to meet you than... This." He sighs. "Anyway, I had to bring some shitty prophecy from people who have been dead way longer, so if you wanna talk we should probably do it before all that?" He pats the grass next to him. "I don't know what the visitation allowances for dead people are, so this might be it."

Steve seems to deflate. "Oh. I knew you coming back would be too good to be true." he sighs sadly and sits down. Beginning to understand, Harrington nods then falls silent, waiting to hear the prophecy. He has a bad feeling about it but he has to hear it, whatever it might be.

The older boy nods. "Sorry, big boy. At least you'll have something to look forward to either way now." He grins, only for a moment.

Eddie sets a hand on the grass, perfect green quickly turning red and bloody. "Monster, forged in death. Blood will spill before your reign shall end. Innocent blood, hero's blood, royal blood. Rivers run red with the fallen, stars unable to give more than tears." He gasps, spreading red suddenly pulled back to the centre. It grows again when Eddie starts to leave, surrounding Steve. "You're not the monster. Just so we're clear." Eddie says, glancing back at Steve. That's all I really know."

Steve grins back and nods though he does let out a sigh in the end "I know. Still it would be better if you were back..."

The younger boy frowns as he listens to the prophecy, confused. None of them have royal blood as far as he knows... Unless it’s talking about Will as king of his "Castle Byers" fortress. The thought makes his stomach roll. The kid’s been through enough already as it is. But honestly even if it’s not him that prophecy doesn't sound promising.

Before he can say anything the dream begins to fade. He barely has time to wave goodbye before everything goes black.

It's still dark outside when he opens his eyes. Despite the dark clouds intercut with red lightning, the stars seem brighter than usual. With how many people left Hawkins, it makes some sense. Less light pollution or something.

He should probably go back to sleep. He's still tired.

Steve almost doesn't have time to finish the thought before sleep pulls him under again. The next morning though before he goes to work he lets all the kids know they need to meet up after work or high school because he has something to tell them. The minute his shift is over at the video store he heads over with Robin.

They rush to get to him, all wanting to know what happened. Will stands at the back of the group with El.

With Hawkins so empty, there's nobody listening in, at least not as far as they can see. It'll still probably be safer to head to his house.

So they do. The journey takes some time but once they arrive Steve gets right to it. He begins at the beginning by telling them all about his dream. When it comes to the part with the prophecy he’s careful to speak every line verbatim. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure the "royal blood" they’re talking about is Will. I mean the Upside Down already got him once and he’s the one who built the fort. He’s the king of Castle Byers."

Robin looks at him. "There's a lot to unpack there, but first let's fully assume that it's real because I don't think you're that much of a pessimist. There's a lot that "royal blood" could mean for our group. I mean, your high school nickname was "King Steve," for one." She rambles off. "And then there's the fact that it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be one of us."

Steve nods "True. I didn’t think it could be me but I guess so. And it didn’t even occur to me that it might very well mean someone else and it’s just trying to warn us of something that’s going to happen in Hawkins," he pauses for a moment, "but it seems like that would take too much time–figuring out who in our entire town has "royal blood" we still wouldn’t know which one was right. I mean there are probably a lot more than we’d think."

He sighs.

"Well, through the same logic that got you to Will, it could be Vecna himself if we consider him king of the Upside Down or something." Dustin says, sounding hopeful for the first time since everything happened. "Now, the rest. Because it sounds like something Eddie would actually scrap because he thinks it's too cheesy or something... I think it might be worth looking into. Stars crying, maybe it's going to rain a lot or maybe he just told us that the afterlife actually is that "dead people turn into stars" thing."

Steve shrugs "I don't know but we need to figure it out somehow and I'm sure we will before any of this happens. Look, I don't think it's coming any time soon so why don't we just sleep on it and think about this for a while then come back together when we have any ideas. Or anything happens. Okay? I doubt we're going to figure it out but tonight."

[embearsilly]

Hello! Call me Anarchy Anon! Take your time with this please. Can you maybe do a c! SBI + platonic husbands that are all exploring the nether and they find "The NetherVoid" Also find the "Quartress" Then Tommy drags Tubbo and Ranboo to the "Quartress" to steal stuff, but Blaze Empress reader caches them and about to send blaze guards, but Philza (first one to realize the trio was gone) stopped reader and reader recognized Phil [because he is a old and good friend of hers] {Season 4 Lore}

Don’t Steal From The Empress

Ooooooooh, this is such a cool idea! Also, hello new anon, could I have your pronouns please! I changed it up a bit. Hope its to your liking.

Pronouns - She/her

Warnings - slight explicit language, small mention of nsfw (just saying that someone got busy and nothing else)

The sickening humid air flowed around the crimson dimension. The heat is almost unbearable unless you are used to it.

Loud footsteps rang out around the blonde as he ran through the large nether fortress, two pairs following close behind.

“Tommy! Wait up!” The ram hybrid called after the blonde haired boy. Ranboo followed after the two, close behind his husband, Tubbo.

The blonde skillfully weaved around the monsters which roamed the hall of the fortress, the other two struggling to keep up.

After around a few minutes of non-stop running the blonde boy finally came to a halt. Tubbo was the first to reach Tommy while Ranboo was huffing and puffing behind them, trying to catch his breath.

“Tommy,” Tubbo paused, letting out a huge breath of air before he continued, “where are we going.”

The blonde gave the hybrid his signature innit grin before he began to speak, “Well yesterday I was exploring the nether void and was messing around when I found something that was almost as cool as a big man here.”

Tommy began to mine away at the ground when all of a sudden he dropped down into the abyss. Ranboo let out a gasp while Tubbo looked down the hole noticing the boy falling onto a white thing down below. Tubbo glanced at Ranboo before jumping in, Ranboo following after.

When they soon were greeted with a large white fortress which they fell on top of, no it was more castle than a fortress. It’s quartz walls stood around thirty blocks tall, a tower on each corner. In the center of it stood a large castle with towers on all corners of that as well. In front of them was a beautifully crafted bridge that hung over the lava.

The two husbands looked on in awe at the castle, I mean they had seen amazing builds before but nothing like this, it was marvelous.

“What, who's is it?” Questioned the enderman. Tommy shrugged his shoulders and continued down the path leading towards the kingdom.

Tubbo noted the two guards standing at the entrance of the large doors, they were tall and looked buff.

“Tommy don’t you think this might be a tad bit dangerous,” Ranboo’s  tail flicked from side to side as he continued, “I mean what if these people aren’t friendly, we might be killed.”

Tommy let out an annoyed huff, “Has that ever stopped me before?” he questioned.

“Look, I have a plan! We sneak in there, find some shiny things, borrow them and get out of there.” Tubbo raised a brow at the ‘borrow’ part.

“Are you going to be returning what you ‘borrowed’.” Tubbo air quoted when he spoke.

“No."

“Then that’s not borrowing. It’s stealing Tommy.” Tommy rolled his eyes and glanced at the guards.

“Look, I promise nothing bad is going to happen, okay? We get I and then we get out! kapeesh?”

Ranboo and Tubbo glanced at each other, going with what the other would say.

“Okay, we're in.” Tommy pumped his fist in the air. “Let’s goooooo.”

Tommy struggled against the grip of the guard, he was much shorter than them.

“Let go of us, and we won’t tell the great Technoblade about this!” The guard only let out a small chuckle as he led Tommy to a larger room.

Behind Tommy was Ranboo and Tubbo who were being forced to go the same way as he was going.

Ranboo was panicking, his heart beat picking up to high speeds. Tubbo placed his hand on Ranboo’s shoulder, “Everything is going to be okay."

They were led into a large room, which Ranboo believed to be the throne room possibly due to the large throne which stood at the end of the room.

As they made it down the hall Ranboo began to make out the person sitting on the throne.

She stood around nine feet tall, maybe taller than that. Around her were 3 pairs of arms on either side of her, they weren’t attached to her body which made Ranboo wonder how she could move them. Around her arms were the regular blaze rods which circled around her.

Her crown looked like antlers; it was a crimson red. She was a sight to behold. Her dress.

Standing beside her throne were two guards, the one on her right had their mouth gaped open and the one on her left had a smile on their face, they stood around 9 feet.

The woman narrowed her eyes when she spotted the boys coming down the hall, standing up to her full height. She was actually thirteen feet tall, making her tower over the enderman and the others.

When they finally came to a stop the four guards kneeled in front of the empress. She glared at the three boys before drifting over to them.

Ranboo stared in awe when he made eye contact with her, she snarled, "I didn’t think that the Ender King would send one of his own kin to die, oh wait I forgot he already did that to every single one of his subjects, now the only ones left live in the overworld and here in the nether. He was too greedy, he wanted every biome and dimension in his world, he instead fucked it all up and caused a mass extinction.” her voice echoed around them.

“You talk too much, woman.” She narrowed her eyes at the blonde and growled, “You were caught stealing, and I do not-"

“We weren’t stealing, we were just borrowing.” The Empress let out a thunderous laugh.

“A thief and a liar, now what I was about to say, thieves in my kingdom are given the penalty of death.” Ranboo’s heart stopped.

“Now how would-“ she was interrupted by a loud voice, “Y/n! Stop!” The empress lifted her head trying to locate the source of the voice, when she saw it.

“Philza Minecraft,” she called out, he flew down the hall and landed in front of her, bowing his head in respect.

Phil had been brewing some potions with Techno when he noticed something was off.

“Techno. Does something seem a tad bit off to you mate?” Techno paused for a moment before shaking his head no.

“I think today has turned out to be a good day though, its been a while since we’ve had one of those.” Phil nodded before returning to brewing.

All of a sudden he let out a loud gasp making the pigeon hybrid jump slightly.

“The boys!”

“Y/n L/n, s’been a while.” he let out a small chuckle. He glanced at the boys shooting them a ‘we’ll talk when we get home’ look.

“We can talk in a few moments. I'm in the middle of something if you can’t see.” she glanced back at the boys.

Phil put his hands up in front of him, “Yeah, I noticed, but I have to interrupt you with this. I can’t let you execute them,” he let out a loud huff, “they’re mine."

The empress raised a brow, “They are your kids, I would have never known, I mean the blonde here shows no manners, and is a liar. The next one here is a ram hybrid and the other an enderman hybrid.”

“Yes, yes I know. The blonde is my son, the other two are his friends.” She let out a small chuckle, “For a moment I thought you had a way with the ladies."

“I must apologize for the three of them, if you may spare them and punish them some other way.” She raised a brow and let out a sigh.

“As long as they return what they have stolen and apologize, I will give them no punishment.” The blonde cringed slightly at the thought of apologizing to her.

The other two apologized right away while it took Tommy a bit more to get himself to apologize.

“Thank you Y/n,” Phil dipped his head for her. “We will meet again soon.” she nods a goodbye before taking her place on her throne once more.

Once they had been escorted out of the kingdom Phil had smacked all three of them on the back of the head. “What were you idiots thinking.” he placed his hand on his head, “My god you three could’ve died if I didn’t show up.”

“We had it under control.” The blonde whined, “No we didn’t.” the other two said in unison."

“You guys are supposed to have my back on these kinds of things.” Tommy let out an annoyed huff.

Let's just say that they were all grounded.

[frombeyondtheblackhole]

Hermit DSMP Swap AU: Part 9

Foolish flinched. Qackity’s shouting stopped abruptly. It was warmer (Las Nevadas was surprisingly cold). Foolish slowly opened his eyes. An open grave stood at his feet. His heart jumped into his throat and he stumbled backwards, falling on his back. He stared dumbfounded as a bee flew out from the grave and landed on his knee for a moment before flying away. Quackity was nowhere to be seen. 

His breathing slowed and he looked around. He was in a graveyard next to a church. Was he dead? Was this limbo? What had happened? He wasn’t supposed to die… but he had died before. But if he had died just now he still should have had his third life, he should have respawned… maybe he had. Maybe he was still alive… That made more sense. No, wait, he still had all of his stuff, if he had died his inventory should have been empty… Foolish held his head in his hands and stared at the ground.

“You ok there, friend?” 

Foolish’s head snapped up. A man with neon green hair stood on the other side of the stone wall surrounding the graveyard. Foolish quickly picked himself up and brushed himself off. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine… um- this may seem like an odd question, but, am I dead?”

The man laughed, “I don’t know, are you? I mean, I assume you're not dead, cause I’m not dead, unless you’re un-dead, if you know what I mean.” 

Foolish let out a deep breath he didn’t know he had been holding. “Alright, I’m alive, i'm not dead,” He muttered, staring at the sky.

“You sure you’re fine?” The man asked again, putting air quotes around the ‘fine’. “Cause, you don’t seem fine…” 

Foolish shook his head “No, really, don’t worry about me, I was just a bit disoriented, that’s all.”

The man pursed his lips and raised a brow “You asked me if you were dead… not if you had died. Which means you knew there was a chance you might get stuck in a respawn glitch. Have you been messing with server magic?” 

“You make that sound like a bad thing.” Foolish scowled and crossed his arms looking down at the man. He wasn’t in his twenty-three foot form but even in this form he stood almost a foot taller than the other man.  

The man shook his head “It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just dangerous. I mean, I would be a bit of a hypocrite if I condemned people for messing with server magic.”

Foolish didn’t look impressed. “It’s only dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.” 

“I mean, I guess.” The man said rubbing the back of his neck as he contemplated Foolish’s words “But no one is stupid enough to mess around long enough to get the practice...” He trailed off as he looked up to see Foolish looking at him with an incredulous look, “Oh.” 

Foolish finally relented and his expression softened, “Maybe you're right, I mean, my name is Foolish after all,”

The man chuckled, “Maybe we're both a bit crazy. I’m Joe, Joe Hills. Nice to meet you,” He said, climbing over the low stone wall and reaching out his hand. Foolish smiled and shook it. Joe had a firm grip.

“So you said you have experience with server magic, what can you do?” Foolish asked as the two of them walked out of the graveyard and over to the church. This church was much nicer than church prime. As a builder Foolish could appreciate the detail put into the architecture.   

Joe shrugged as he sat down on the steps and leaned back on his elbows looking up at the sky, “I can see better in the dark If I want to. Honestly, I don’t really mess with it much anymore.” 

“Why not?” Foolish asked, leaning against the wall. 

Joe shrugged but Foolish noticed his grip tighten into a ball. “It wasn’t worth it. A friend of mine got hurt and almost didn’t respawn. Actually, she should be around here somewhere, I wonder where she went?” 

---

Cleo stood on a concrete road getting yelled at by an angry man with a scar through his left eye and a blue beanie.

 “Who the fuck are you? What the fuck did you do to Foolish? Where is Foolish.” 

“Aaa, Foolish is a Zombie!” another man wearing glasses and green suspenders yelled. 

Cleo staggered backwards and summoned a sword from her inventory, “Who am I, what about who are you?”   

“You better tell me, right fucking now, what the hell you did to Foolish or I’ll-”

“You’ll do what? Don’t try me, I’ll put this sword through your skull I will,” Cleo bluffed. 

The man with the scar summoned an axe.  “Charlie, go get Purpled, tell him we have an intruder in Las Nevadas.” 

The man in green, presumably Charlie, looked at him perplexed “But, Quackity from Las Nevadas, why are we attacking Zombie Foolish?” 

“Damn it Charlie, Just get Purpl-” 

Cleo didn’t let him finish. A yell ripped from her lungs as she charged him, sword swinging. Quackity startled and blocked with the shaft of his axe. He shoved her off and she staggered back. Cleo dug her heels in swinging the sword like a club. There was a burst of pain, or more like cold (Pain felt different ever since the undeath) as his axe cut into her shoulder. But he was bleeding too. His axe returned to his inventory as he clutched his arm and staggered back. Cleo gripped her sword tighter, breathing hard, her eyes locked on him. 

She felt the impact and another burst of cold as an arrow hit her in the chest. Her head snapped up, there was a kid in purple firing arrows from a crossbow as he ran towards them. He was wearing full netheriet.

Cleo turned and ran.

“Stop her, she fucking did something to Foolish!” Quackity shouted. She didn’t stop running as arrows landed about her feet. Down the road through a tunnel and past a stone fortress. Cleo scrambled off the road, over a hill. She could hear them still behind her. Dodging through the hills she was able to shake them by looping back around behind them as they continued on. 

Once they were gone she slowed down. She touched a hand to her shoulder. It was throbbing with a dull ache and it felt cold, a deep cold like ice in her veins. She looked down. The arrow was still in her chest. She needed to do something about that. 

She was back at the fortress. Cleo slid down the hill, climbing behind the wall and slumped against the stone. She gritted her teeth and pulled the arrow from her chest with a grunt, dropping it in the grass. A golden apple appeared in her hand and she took a bite, the juice tingling in her mouth as the regen and absorption began to take effect. 

The throbbing eased a little and the wounds began to close. She looked up and froze. An enderman stared back at her with mismatched eyes. No wait, not an enderman, at least not quite. Half of his face was white. 

“Hey Tubbo, I think I found out what Quackity was shouting about.” The half-enderman kid called over his shoulder. 

Cleo staggered to her feet, her sword out. “I won't hesitate to-” 

The half-enderman backed up and raised his empty hands “Oh no, we're not with Quackity,” He explained. 

Cleo scowled but lowered her sword. “Well isn’t that lovely, someone who doesn’t want to stab me.”  

He looked alarmed, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that- I mean, I definitely don’t want to do that.” Now that she got a better look at him he looked kind of young, he was tall but in the lanky teenager kind of way. He looked to be 18 or 19, maybe 17. His suit probably made him look older.  

“Oh hey, so what was Big Q so mad about?” Another kid said as he came around the building. He stopped short when he saw Cleo. “Oh…” He was much shorter than the ender-kid. Two horns curled up out of his brown hair and almost every inch of exposed skin was covered in burn scars. Cleo let her sword return to her inventory. 

“Big man, why is there a funny looking zombie in our base?” the goat kid said 

Cleo bristled, “I’m still a person, thank you.”

The goat kid looked back at Cleo  “Ooooh- oops.”

“Now look what you’ve done, you’ve gone and insulted her.”

“I didn’t meeean to, how was I supposed to know?” The goat kid wined. 

The two bickered like a married couple. Cleo coughed “Um- would either of you two be able to explain what is going on,”

“Haven’t got a fucking clue,” The goat kid chirped, a little to cheerfully. 

Cleo pursed her lips, “Well, could you at least tell me where I am?” 

“Um… The road between Las Nevadas and Spawn. Or do you mean here-here. This is our cookie shop.”  The ender-kid explained.

Cleo blinked.

“I think she means the server big man,” The goat kid said, “This is the Dream SMP.”

Cleo blinked again. So not Hermitcraft. Shit. 

---

The goat kid introduced himself as Tubbo and the ender-kid as Ranboo. Cleo explained what had happened, which made Tubbo laugh. It turned out that the cookie outpost and Las Nevadas were in conflict and Tubbo liked the idea of doing something that would, in his words “Piss off Big Q.” 

Cleo tried to return to Hermitcraft but was met with an error message. Tubbo and Ranboo offered to let her stay in Snowchester till she figured things out. They had no idea how she got there but they didn’t seem too concerned about it.

Snowchester was surprisingly far away from what the kids were calling a cookie shop. To Cleo it looked suspiciously like a military outpost but who was she to judge? 

Snowchester was a quaint little walled in town, overlooked by a massive mansion worthy of any Hermitcraft base. There was a tower, docs, and a little wheat field mixed in with little log and stone houses.  The air was crisp and cold, light snow fell around them landing on her hair and bare arms. Untouched snow coated the steps to most of the houses and closely shuttered windows looked back at her. The ocean lapped against the shore and the sound of a boat bumping against the pier carried up through the town. A single seagull landed on a stone wall. It looked at Cleo and cawed.  

Ranboo and Tubbo lead Cleo around a strangely industrial building on a hill in the middle of the town with “Danger, keep out” signs on the doors. 

“So what’s in there,” Cleo asked, nodding towards the industrial building. 

Ranboo raised his brows and looked at Tubbo. Tubbo pursed his lips “Oh nothing much, that’s just where we do equipment testing. You’re not allowed in there,” he added. There was finality to his tone. Cleo wondered what he was hiding and if it was worth snooping around to find out, but there was a dark conviction in the way that the kid with too many scars said it. The way the ender-kid hovered at his side anxiously watching everything. Maybe she should be careful not to make more enemies.  

They lead her to a little house behind the industrial building. “This used to be Foolish’s but he moved out so you can stay here for now,” Tubbo explained opening the door and letting them inside. 

“Foolish… the guy who Quackity thinks I kidnaped? You’re giving me his house?” Cleo scoffed looking around. A square table and chairs stood off to one side, a counter with a furnace and cabinets lined the back wall and a cactus in a pot sat by the front door.    

“Well, it’s not really his house anymore, he hasn’t lived here for months,” Tubbo shrugged. 

Cleo sighed, “So long as he won’t mind. Goodness this whole situation is a mess.” 

Ranboo gave her a sympathetic smile.  

“Welp,” Tubbo clapped his hands. “We’ll let you get settled in. Just don’t go snooping around in people’s homes, we are pretty private people here.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Cleo said absently, still looking around the room.

Tubbo and Ranboo left, closing the door behind them. 

There was a silence and then Cleo jumped at the sound of someone drinking milk. She spun around summoning her sword, freezing as the invisibility melted away to reveal Etho standing in the corner. 

“Finally, I thought they were never going to leave,” Etho muttered.

“Etho! What are you doing here?” Cleo bristled. 

Etho looked sheepishly off to the side as he rubbed the back of his head. “We’ll, I might have been following you. If you mean here on this server, we don’t really know. Oh yeah, TFC’s here too. We’ve been stuck on this server for about two weeks now. Least, I’ve been, TFC showed up about a week ago.”

“So wait, You're telling me you have been stuck on this server for two weeks?”

Etho nodded “Yup. Come on let's get out of here before they come back. We can talk at my secret base.” 

Cleo pulled away “Wait, wait. Why? Why were you sneaking around? Why are we avoiding those kids? I would like a good reason before I turn down their hospitality.”

“This server isn’t what it seems to be. It’s seriously glitched out. Haven’t you noticed how many scars everyone has here, how many hybrids there are.” 

Now that Cleo thought about it, even the ender-kid, Ranboo, had scars that looked like tears running down his face. Scars only happened when there was a glitch during respawn so they were pretty rare, the fact that three of the five people she had seen so far had obvious scars was concerning, especially with how bad the scars on that Tubbo kid were. On top of that, Quackity looked like he might be some kind of bird hybrid, with small golden wings, while Tubbo was a goat and Cleo had no idea what Ranboo really was. Hybrids were the result of pretty strong server glitches, and from what Etho was saying those guys weren’t the only ones. 

“So the server is glitchy, that doesn't make them bad people,”  

“There are places on this server that have been blown up all the way down to bedrock. Those kids who seemed so nice, they have nukes in that building right outside. There is a prison that everyone here is terrified of, seemingly for good reason. The Warden that guards it almost killed me while chasing me and TFC away, and said something about hunting us down and killing us till we were completely dead.”  

Cleo blanched “Completely dead… like, they have a way of reliably preventing respawning here.” She remembered what it felt like being stuck in the void unable to respawn. For Joe it had only been a couple of minutes, for her it had felt like hours.

“I don’t know,” Etho shrugged. “I just think it would be best if we all kept a low profile till we can find a way out of here.” 

“I… I trust you, Etho. But I don’t want to leave without letting those kids know that I won’t be staying here. They seem like nice kids, I’d rather not just disappear on them.” 

Etho hesitated, then nodded “Alright, Just be careful, and take this,” He said handing her two invis pots. “You can find me in the sewers under their shopping district, there is a community center in the middle of a lake, the entrance to the tunnels is underneath it.”

Cleo took the potions and smiled reassuringly, “Don’t worry, I got this. I’ll be fiiine.”

“Ok,” Etho nodded and pulled his facemask down. He drank an invis potion before leaving the building.

Cleo sighed. Perma-death hum, would that even work on her? Seeing as she already kinda died before. She didn’t want to have to find out.

[kuningatarmirka]

Winter Wonderland

Vermish, Marlana and their kids spending quality time together in Belgrave.

This takes place in my Family Bonding alternate universe where Vera and Margot are sisters. The whole series can be found on ao3.

The house was quiet this early in the morning. The only sounds were the steady hum of the refrigerator and the distant tick of a clock somewhere in the living room. It was quiet outside, too, the snow muffling all the noise and making everything seem a little eerie. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the white snow brought some light inside through the big windows, illuminating the couple that lay together on the couch, still asleep in each other arms.

Soon the peaceful silence was broken by one exclamation.

“No sex on my couch!”

Vera heard a loud thump and then a groan from the direction of the couch as she walked through the living room to get to the kitchen.

“We weren’t having sex,” Margot mumbled, trying to pick herself up from the floor where she had fallen. “And as if you weren’t having sex yourself the whole night.”

Vera knew she was exaggerating but shrugged nonetheless. “It’s my house.”

Margot, Alana and Morgan were spending the weekend at her and Hamish’s house in Belgrave. They tried to meet every few months, the Cretian Loom making it possible, and had finally found a weekend that worked for everyone. This time it was Vera and Hamish’s turn to host the gathering, and their guests had arrived the previous day.

Margot grunted, taking the fallen blanket and using it to cover Alana, who was still trying to sleep on the couch. “Your couch is too small,” she continued to complain.

“That’s why I gave you an extra mattress,” Vera pointed out, flicking on the light in the kitchen and making Alana moan in displeasure, hiding herself under the blanket. “You just decided not to use it.”

“What happened to the guest room?” Margot asked as she walked closer to Vera in her pajamas, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Vera looked at her sister before filling a glass with water. “It got turned into a nursery.”

When she had bought the house, she had not imagined having a baby, or even a partner to share it with, so they had had to turn the one guest room they had into a nursery for Dawn.

“Why are you awake this early, anyway?” Margot questioned with a loud yawn, covering her wide mouth with her hand. “It’s barely seven in the morning.”

“I had to fulfill my duty as breakfast.”

“Right, you’re breastfeeding.”

“She’s trying some solids now, but I can’t give her anything new before I know about her allergies,” Vera explained, taking a big sip of the water. Nursing always made her thirsty.

Her sister nodded in understanding. They had already been separated when Vera’s first daughter had died, but Margot had still known about it, and now that they had reconnected, they had a lot of time to talk about their pasts. Dawn was now older than Alyssa had been, but Vera was still scared. She wanted to breastfeed her as long as she could, but she knew her daughter had to start eating solid foods as well.

“Let me guess, mashed potatoes, carrots and bananas?” Alana spoke up as she joined them at the counter.

Vera laughed. “Yeah. A huge mess every time.”

“Morgan loved to experiment with his food, too," Alana smiled at her.

Dawn was always covered in her food after each meal. Hamish sometimes got annoyed when the food he was trying to give her ended up on her cheeks, but Vera just felt happy that she had a healthy giggling baby, no matter how messy she could get.

“Speaking of Morgan, is he still sleeping?” Margot asked.

“Yes, at least he was when I went to get Dawn after she started whining in her crib.”

They already had a bed for Dawn in the nursery and Morgan had gotten the privilege to give it a trial run.

“He had to be tired after yesterday, otherwise he would have been up already,” Alana commented with a shake of her head. “He usually jumps into our bed early in the morning.”

“Well, Hamish took Dawn back to our bed and tried to get her to sleep again, which I doubt will happen.”

“You were right, it didn't,” Hamish answered as he walked into the living room area, carrying Dawn in his arms. “Our little wolf is wide awake.”

Their baby was looking around with curious eyes. At seven months old, she had gotten a lot more expressive in her behavior. Her baby talk mostly consisted of random syllables but she could get really intense if she wanted something.

Right now, she was making babbling sounds when she saw Vera and reached out with her hand.

“Ma!”

Vera knew it was just random syllable, but it still made a warm smile to spread on her lips.

“You see your Mama?” Hamish asked the baby with enthusiasm. Dawn looked at him with an expression that clearly said, “Are you stupid?” and Margot burst into laughter at seeing it.

“She’s so your baby,” she told Vera, who glared at her smirking sister.

Hamish transferred Dawn to Vera and gave his girlfriend a quick kiss. When the baby was in her arms, she immediately started eating her hair.

“Nope,” Vera tried to remove the strands of hair from her daughter’s mouth while Hamish started preparing breakfast, Margot joining him.

“Do you have anything vegan?” Alana spoke up when Hamish asked what everyone wanted to eat.

“Pancakes?”

“Sure!”

Soon Morgan woke up, too, and the house was filled with noise and chaos. While Hamish and Margot made breakfast, Vera and Alana moved to the sitting area. Morgan tried to teach Dawn how to crawl and giggled loudly when she started moving backwards instead. His joy made her smile, too, and she let out even more squeals and babbles.

The quiet of the morning had passed and even the sun was now up, making the snow outside glimmer brightly. It would be a perfect day to spend outside, playing in the snow. They could introduce Dawn to sledding and Morgan would surely love building snow castles.

But first, they would have to get through their chaotic but perfect morning. The Winter Wonderland outside could wait.

---

“Ba!”

“Is that so?”

“Ba.”

Dawn was the cutest in her pale pink overall as she shared her opinion about Hamish’s snow castle. Vera was holding her because the baby was still a little bit too young and small to sit alone on the plastic sled they had bought, and crawling around in the snow wasn't the safest option for her, either.

They had decided to spend the afternoon outside. There was a nice open area right next to the house, and because of the snowfall the previous night, it was filled with fresh snow to play in. The weather was also perfect for building snowmen and snow castles of all kind, and it had inspired Hamish to build an extempore snow fortress.

“You don’t like Dada’s castle?” Vera asked her daughter, trying to hide her amusement.

“Da da,” Dawn mimicked, pointing in Hamish’s direction.

“My castle’s great,” the man himself walked over to them with a grin, taking Dawn from Vera and adjusting the beanie on the baby’s head. “You just haven’t seen the inside yet.”

He stepped inside the little circle he had built and sat down in the snow, placing Dawn on his lap.

“To be honest, your castle is a little lacking,” Margot pointed out, walking over to Vera who now had her arms crossed over her chest. “It only has walls.”

The sisters looked identical as they stood next to each other on the snow-covered yard, only Margot was wearing a bright red winter coat whereas Vera’s was white.

Hamish gasped in mock offense. “Did you hear that, Dawn? They disrespect our mighty fortress!”

The baby squealed and he leaned down to kiss her red cheek. “Thank you.”

“I want in the castle!” Morgan suddenly exclaimed from where he had been building a snowman with Alana. He ran to the castle and crawled through the little gap in the wall. “Mommy, come, too!”

His cheeks were also red from all the cold air and he was covered in snow as he sat down next to Hamish.

“I don’t think there’s enough space for all of us,” Margot told him.

“I’ll make room. Hamish, move!”

The older man chuckled but scooted to the side.

Morgan flashed him a big smile. “Now, Mommy!”

Margot saw she had no reason to refuse the invite anymore, and when Alana sent her a knowing smirk, she stepped over the snowy wall to sit between Morgan and Hamish. The latter of the two was trying to hush Dawn who had started to whine, and they all knew it was almost her naptime. She got cranky when she was tired.

“No more energy for snow castles, huh?” Hamish pouted.

Vera shook her head and went to take the baby from him, bending down and scooping her up.

“I’ll go nurse her,” she told him, bouncing Dawn gently in her arms. “Then it’s naptime for you, miss,” she turned to her daughter, touching her tiny button nose with her finger.

“Ba.”

---

Hamish continued to sit in his snow castle with Margot after Vera had gone inside with Dawn. Alana had also taken Morgan inside, hoping he’d lie down for a nap, too, after all the running and jumping in the snow. Getting the growing boy to take a nap was harder every day as he wanted to continue playing, but they hoped Dawn would be able to convince him.

While their spouses took care of the children, Hamish had to talk to Margot.

“Do you have it?” she asked him after they were sure they were alone.

“Yes,” he nodded, fishing the little box from his pocket and handing it to her. He had been carrying it around for a couple of weeks now, too nervous to actually ask Vera.

Margot opened the lid and gasped. “It’s gorgeous!”

She turned to look at Hamish and frowned when she didn’t see the same elation on his face.

“Do you think she’ll say yes?” he asked quietly, doubt filling his face.

“Of course,” Margot assured him with a smile, giving him back the ring. “She loves you.”

Hamish looked at the ring himself and chuckled nervously. “I know. She doesn’t say it often, but I know.”

“So, you have nothing to worry about.”

He also knew Vera would not appreciate a spectacle to be made about it. That was why he was just going to ask her, maybe get Dawn to help him.

The perfect moment came in the evening after Dawn’s bath time. Hamish had just changed the baby into her pajamas and was about to exit the nursery when Margot appeared in the doorway.

“We are going to get Morgan to take a bath, too, and it’s going to take some time, which gives you the perfect opportunity to do it right now,” she told him in a whisper.

Small panic set on his face and Margot rolled her eyes, looking a lot like Vera at that moment.

“Go!” she whisper-shouted and shoved him and Dawn out of the door.

Vera was sitting on the couch in the living room, sipping a hot chocolate, when Hamish walked over to her.

“These are the moments when I wish I had a fireplace,” she commented, wiping at her lips carefully. “But I don’t think it would fit this house.”

Hamish sat down next to her and set Dawn on his lap. The baby was already fidgeting, and he knew she wouldn’t be able to stay still for long.

“It’s still cozy here without one,” he answered. The living room was littered with toys and other baby supplies, and there were even some magazines that Dawn liked to chew on lying on the floor.

“It’s a mess,” Vera chuckled, looking around the room. It clearly wasn't the same cold room she had been living in for so long, but instead had a warm ambience to it, one that made her feel at home.

She took another sip of her hot chocolate and relaxed against the cushions.

When she wasn’t looking at him, Hamish fished the box containing the ring out of his pocket and handed it to Dawn. “Can you give this to Mama?” he whispered in her ear and pointed at Vera.

The baby grabbed the box, looked at him and then at her mom before babbling, “Mamamama.”

Vera turned to look at her daughter, placing her mug on the side table, and reached over to take the baby from Hamish, setting her on her lap.

“What do you have here?” she asked Dawn, taking the box from her hand. Immediately she froze, her gaze snapping to Hamish’s.

“Wha-?”

“Open it,” he encouraged her, scooting closer.

He could see she already knew what it was – of course, she did – but seeing her open the box and gasp made a huge smile spread on his lips.

“Hamish…” she breathed, turning to look at him.

“I’d like for you to be my wife,” he smiled at her, reaching over her and taking her left hand in his, rubbing the ring finger softly. “If that is what you want, too.”

Vera’s mouth opened and closed a few times and finally she let out a small laugh.

“Yes.”

“Really?” Hamish was surprised. He hadn't expected an answer this fast.

Vera rolled her eyes. “Of course, you idiot.”

She took a hold of his neck and crashed his lips to hers. Hamish tried to pour all his love into the kiss but was interrupted by a whine coming from Dawn who was still sitting on Vera’s lap.

They pulled apart and Vera rubbed the baby’s belly. “I’m sorry, did we not pay enough attention to you?” she teased her.

Dawn made more babbling noises but seemed to settle down now that Vera was paying attention to her again.

Hamish took the ring from the box and put it on Vera’s finger. She raised her hand to her eye level and admired the clear diamond and the two red rubies around it. They matched the lipstick she was wearing perfectly, although Hamish was sure some it was smeared on his lips now.

“It’s gorgeous,” she said, smiling at him.

“That’s what I told him,” Margot suddenly commented from the other side of the room.

Vera’s eyes widened and her gaze snapped to her sister’s. “You knew?”

“Of course,” she replied, walking closer and sitting down on a chair. “Your fiancé was a nervous wreck.”

Vera turned her amused gaze to Hamish who looked bashful.

“I was not.”

“You sure were. Nice lipstick, by the way.”

Hamish touched his lips and whispered a spell to clean it all off, which made Margot chuckle. “Magic," she muttered.

She continued with congratulating the pair, and they had a small discussion about a possible wedding until Dawn started to whine again in her mother's arms. Vera realized it was time to nurse her before her bedtime and got up to go to the nursery where she could put her to bed right away as the baby had a habit of falling asleep after nursing.

Hamish asked Margot if it was okay he went to help Vera instead of keeping her company, but the woman in the chair just motioned for him to go.

“Go to your fiancée,” she smiled.

Hamish smiled, too, and started to walk away but then turned around to address her one more time.

“Thank you,” he said earnestly. The encouragement from her had helped a lot and so had the knowledge that she approved of their engagement. Margot was the only family member Vera had left so her approval meant a lot.

"Don't mention it," she answered and finally Hamish hurried to catch up with Vera.

Damn, they were engaged!

[watchtower-feed]

Death Do We Part (Part 9)

SSA Spin-off ✧ Jason Todd ✧ Physical Link ✧ 1 ✧ 2 ✧ 3 ✧ 4 ✧ 5 ✧ 6 ✧ 7 ✧ 8 ✧ 9 ✧ 10 ✧ 11 ✧ 12 ✧ 13 ✧ 14 ✧ 15 ✧ Notes: VIOLENCE WARNING. Words: 2,300+

    You try to run through all of the implications in your head and only come up with one thing. “Do you think he found a way to know when I’m tuning in? And turns off his own senses?”

    Bruce quickly turns around, eyes wide. He stares at your worried face for a second before he puts on a pensive expression. “It’s not impossible.”

     You start spending even more time in the cave. When you’re not at the university or having meals with Alfred, you’re down there trying to get a better handle on your link, trying to find a way to one-up Jason.

     But it’s a slow night. You’re laying on the medical table trying to tune in on Jason but all you hear are ocean waves. You wonder if it’s real and he’s enjoying some downtime at a tropical island somewhere. Or if it’s fake and he’s actually holed up in another fortress, playing a TV in the background.

     Familiar voices enter the cave and your sensitive hearing picks up on them immediately.

     “I’m telling you, Tim, you need to go out once in a while or you’ll forget how to talk to people.”

     Ever since Tim saw Jason’s writing on your arm, he’s been distant, immersing himself in both schoolwork and the search for Jason. Despite his feelings for you, Tim wants to bring Jason back to his family. But he’s only been helping strictly from Dick’s apartment.

     “I talk to you all the time!”

     “Not me-- not us. You know, normal people. Civilians.”

     You open your eyes and stare at the cave’s ceiling, finding it harder to tune out Dick’s voice more than usual so you decide to listen in.

     “Bruce, I’m taking Tim to this new club that just opened. Across the bridge. You know the one.”

     “You mean the one Black Mask just opened two days ago?”

     “Same one!” Dick chuckles and you can imagine him doing finger guns.

     “Wait,” you can already visualize Tim pursing his lips. “This is a recon mission, isn’t it? You said we were going out!”

     “I said my mission was to get you out of my apartment.” Before Tim could answer, Dick is already walking over to you and you see his face hover over yours, tousled hair streaming down, almost covering his eyes and touching your nose. “And to get you out of the cave.”

     You quickly shake your head but refuse to sit up. “Clubs aren’t really my scene.”

     Dick laughs, “You’ve never even been to one. How do you know it’s not your scene?”

     It’s your turn to purse your lips. The way Dick’s looking at you while waiting for an answer, you can already tell he’s prepared to fight you for this.

     “It’s obviously a mission, Dick. Are you sure you want to bring an innocent civilian into this?”

     He smirks, “Oh, Y/N. We both know you’re anything but. Just last week you beat me at sparring--”

     “It was self-defense training. Of course, I’m supposed to win!” you’re yelling now and sitting up, making his smirk is wider. This is exactly what he wants. The more aggravated you become, the more you let your guard down. He thinks he has you trapped but you’re about to pull the dirtiest trick Dick will never expect.

     “Bruce needs me here.”

     Dick looks visibly taken aback. Bruce’s brows perk up and he turns from the computer to look at the two of you. You just used the ‘Bruce’ card, which is a silent strategy you’ve picked up from Dick whenever Alfred tells him to go home.

     Under his breath, Dick hisses, “Thief.”

     “Dick, let’s go. It’s already past ten,” Tim’s already walking towards the shaft. You give Dick an innocent smile before you lie back down.

     You close your eyes when you still feel him staring at you. Then he walks up to Bruce, “She’s been spending all of her time in the cave, Bruce. We all want Jason back but she-- you-- the both of you can’t let this take over every minute of your lives.”

     Dick doesn’t wait for his reply and follows Tim. When Bruce hears the shaft’s gears stop moving, he sighs and drags his chair toward you.

     “Y/N.”

     You close your eyes even harder. You heard what Dick said to him.

     “Did something happen between you and Tim?”

     Your face flares up and you immediately sit up. “What? What makes you say that?”

     “You’ve been avoiding him.”

     Was there any point in hiding things from the greatest detective in Gotham? Of course, you’ve been avoiding Tim and he’s been avoiding you. Even if Bruce was asleep he’d notice that. You look down at your hands. “I just want to find Jason,” you whisper.

     Bruce sighs, “I know. Me too.” He lets the silence sit for a while before he speaks again. “I know you blame me for what happened--” you quickly turn to him with every intention to interrupt and he holds up his hand with a smile, “I blame myself, too. That’s why I want him back just as bad.” Bruce looks down at his own hands, holding each other and lying on his lap, “I miss my son.”

     You’re both quiet for a while. Then Bruce smiles, almost laughing, something you’ve yet to see until now. He tells you the story of how he met Jason, how the little skinny child kicked his shin, Batman’s shin, in anger because he drove over the food you left him.

     You laugh as well, making Bruce smile a little wider because he hasn’t heard you laugh in a while. Then he tells you stories of Jason living in the manor, how he would run around and open every single door to look inside. Bruce and Alfred could hear him yell out profanities as his voice echoed inside the rooms.

     Alfred would always tell Jason to mind his manners and he would, but only for a few seconds. But when he saw the cave, Alfred resorted to smiling while rolling his eyes, to not waste any more breath on berating him.

     When Jason first saw Robin’s costume on display, he stared at it in awe. It was the first time he had kept quiet for more than a minute since Bruce met him.

     “Do you want to try it on?” Bruce asked and the hair on Jason’s arms rose up. As soon as Bruce opened the case and handed him the costume, he started stripping there and then. The first thing Jason did in Robin’s costume was jump up on the medical table. With his hands on his hips and head held high, he points at an imaginary figure between Bruce and Alfred.

     “That’s far enough, ya thug!”

     You laugh aloud, filling the empty cave with your voice. “He used to--” you wheeze, “always-- say that-- when we were-- kids!”

     Bruce smiles at you as you come down slowly from your mirth. You watch him as he looks down at his hands and the smile disappears from his face.

     “If I had known about your link--”

     “I know,” you interrupt him quickly this time. You drop down from the medical table to place your hands over his. “That’s exactly why he didn’t tell you. He wanted to be Robin-- even before he met you.” You look around the cave, “this was his dream. I wouldn't have stopped him but he knew you would’ve.”

     Bruce looks over the cave until his eyes find the two cases that held Dick and Jason’s Robin costumes.

     “He never told me about any of this,” you say. Bruce turns back to you but you’re looking somewhere else, lost in thought, “But now-- Now. When I think about some things in the past, it starts to make sense. Why I would always find Robin everywhere. There was never a night when I didn’t see him near our neighborhood.”

     You take your hands away to put them on your own shoulders. Looking away, you try to recall an experience you had not long before you died.

     “One night, someone was following me. I didn’t know him but no matter what turn I took he was behind me. Then Robin showed up and asked me to take a walk with him. We took several detours before he took me to my apartment, talking to me the whole time about the most random things, trying to keep my attention away from that man until he finally disappeared.”

     You’re smiling again, “He walked me to my door. Then when I got inside my room he knocked on my window. He stared at me for a long time. I could see his eyes moving behind the mask like he was trying to memorize my face and I felt self-conscious--”

     You blush and only now remember that you’re talking to Bruce. He gives you a small smile, encouraging you to continue.

     “He smiled at me. He ruffled my hair and told me not to worry because Robin and Batman are protecting me.”

     Bruce closes his eyes as he tries to see it in his own head.

     “I’m sorry, Bruce,” you say quietly, “For how I’ve acted this past year. You’ve been so good to me.”

     “Y/N,” he interrupts, placing his own hands on your shoulders, “You’re part of this family. You have been since before you came here.”

     You and Bruce look at each other. He’s right. They’ve known everything there is to know about you-- you and Jason. You laugh suddenly as you imagine your mother telling Bruce about the things you and Jason used to get in trouble for.

     A sudden alert from the computer steals your attention away. Bruce quickly kicks his chair back to the desk and you follow behind him. It’s Dick.

     “Batman, new player’s on the move. Robin and I are in pursuit.”

     Bruce’s face quickly changes back to a stoic expression. For a few weeks now, this new player has been working the Gotham underground, slowly climbing the ranks and recruiting all sorts of small-time thugs and a few  Arkham Asylum villains. For what? You don’t know and that’s what has Bruce on edge.

     He pulls his cowl over his face and stands up, “I’m on my way.” He walks over to the batmobile but abruptly turns to you, almost forgetting you’re there. He stands there, unsure what to say.

     “Stay safe, Bruce.”

     He finally nods and leaves you. You take his seat and pull up the surveillance from Tim, Dick, and Bruce’s masks. You see Tim and Dick chasing a shadow over the rooftops in a residential area.

     “He’s well-trained,” Bruce speaks through the comms, watching the same feed.

     “Yeah, guys got some moves,” Dick tries to make light of the situation but you can hear the exhaustion in his voice. “He knows the area, too.”

     “Don’t lose him,” Bruce orders and Tim scoffs.

     “What does it look like we’re doing?”

     “Woah,” Dick quips, “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the--”

     “Nightwing, look out!” You see something thrown in the air and explodes into a bright light, cutting off both Tim and Dick’s video feeds.

     “Nightwing! Robin!” Bruce shouts and you hear the engines grow louder in the background. You’re holding your own breath until you hear their voices again.

     “We’re fine,” Tim grits through his teeth. “Flash grenade.”

     “He knows we’re watching.”

     Suddenly all electricity in the cave goes out and the darkness swallows you before the emergency lights kick in. Blackouts never happen in this part of town. The cave’s primary power source is the same one that fuels up the manor on the city’s blueprints, but no one would know about that. Unless.

     Unless the actual target is Wayne manor.

     “Alfred!” you jump up from your seat as the computer turns back on.

     “Target engaged. Are you seeing this, Batman?” Dick’s voice fills the cave as you wait for the shaft to rise up, the current mission completely forgotten. It’s just you and Alfred on the property and you’ve been wondering for a while now why he hasn’t come down to check on you and Bruce.

     “Please be safe. Please be safe.”

     The moment you open the grandfather clock, you’re hit with a foul-smelling gas that invades every single one of your senses.

     “Right on cue,” comes a distorted voice that’s blowing on your face. You see through the badly makeshift hole in his tattered burlap mask and find deep green eyes staring back at you, wild and manic. Slowly the mask shifts with the air and you see him.

     You’ve only ever seen pictures but now you’re staring straight into his eyes. Blood-curdling laughter resonates from every corner of the unfamiliar room. A darkened space that’s no longer in the manor.

     You try to ground yourself by looking at your feet. You watch concrete appear before your eyes and you look up to find yourself inside a warehouse.

     “Boo!”

     You see it before you feel the blow knock the air out of your lungs. You clutch your stomach and struggle to keep your sights on him. He’s standing tall with the crowbar in his hand, throwing it in the air and catching it. He leers at you as you slowly back away.

     “Careful there--”

     You trip over something and fall on your back. You freeze the moment you see what-- who it is. It’s Robin. It’s Jason. His costume is tattered and singed. The tips of his hair are burned. His eyes are closed. 

     You quickly crawl toward him, “Jason!” You’re relieved to find his chest moving, breathing.

     Your body stiffens when the crowbar comes hammering down and cracks several of Jason’s ribs right in front of you. You just watch with wide eyes and hands raised in the air. Jason coughs out blood onto your clothes.

     The maniac laughs, “Oh, don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you, my dear.”

     The next blow comes down against your shoulder, knocking you away from Jason. The next one comes before you can recover and it hits you on the nose. Everything is ringing. Your vision is blurry with tears.

     But the image of the crowbar and the clown comes clear as day as he strikes the top of your head. You’re knocked back onto the ground and you think you heard a fracture. You feel stunned. You can’t move your arms and your legs. Only the tips of your fingers are twitching as you lie on the ground.

     Your eyes frantically move around the room, trying to find where the next blow is going to come from. He’s walking toward you, away from Jason who’s lying still in the corner. He breaks your ribs just as he did with Jason and you cough blood into his face. The splatter seems to awaken something in him and he smiles wider, the wide grin on his face twitching with joy.

     You shudder in fear as blood fills up your throat and you can’t breathe. You keep your eyes on Jason as the Joker slams the crowbar down onto the tips of your fingers.

     Is this what Jason felt? Alone? In pain? Dying? Oh god, you thought. Why does he have to go through this again? You close your eyes and desperately try to shut off your link.

✧ 1 ✧ 2 ✧ 3 ✧ 4 ✧ 5 ✧ 6 ✧ 7 ✧ 8 ✧ 9 ✧ 10 ✧ 11 ✧ 12 ✧ 13 ✧ 14 ✧ 15 ✧

✧ Watchtower Masterlist ✧

[spacesuitsforemergency]

Weapon Hex

Chapter 1: The Runaways Run Away

Word Count: 1.7k

Originally Requested by: @amateurwriterbigdreamer

A/N: love that Onawa was requested to be in this! I’m not giving her a huge part until she turns into a villain so that it’s centered around Y/N for now! These are all gonna be short chapters since there’s not a whole ass movie to cover. Hope you like it!

“I said no!” You yelled at the STAR Labs scientist, who had been trying to hook up a machine to you, to observe your brain waves. The other kids you had escaped the Reach with were watching from across the room, waiting for instructions. They watched with their eyes wide in fear and concern as the scientist cornered you.

“Y/N, you have to calm down.” He told you calmly, despite the annoyed tone of his voice.

You crouched in a defensive stance, snarling at him to tell him to back off. Two security guards grabbed your arms, and you thrashed in their hold, warning them to let you go. Your heart rate began to pick up as they held you down, and the scientist picked up a needle. You knew the drug wouldn’t work on you, none of them did, but you had to act like it would.

Your plan was to be calm and act out of it once they “sedated” you, so that they wouldn’t see you as dangerous. Then, once their guard was down, you’d attack.

“No! Stop!” You yelled as the needle stuck into your arm, and you slowly pretended to get tired. You made your eyes droop and breathed very slowly, so that when he checked your pulse it would be at the rate it should be with sedation in your veins.

“Put her in a straight jacket.” The scientist ordered a guard.

“You can’t do that!” Virgil Hawkins stood up.

“That’s way out of line!” Tye Longshadow glared at the scientist.

“She’s far too dangerous.”

“She obviously doesn’t want your help. You can’t just force her to do stuff!” Eduardo Dorado Jr. snapped. The scientist ignored him as the guards put your arms in a straight jacket, then sat you down in the last chair. You pretended to be half asleep, but when no one was looking you winked at the other 6 kids before they were called over. You shut your eyes and your head fell back against the wall, you figured you’d might as well rest. Your thoughts wandered to your father, and the horror stories about Stryker and the Weapon X program.

Your father was James Howlett, AKA The Wolverine, and your mother was Jean Grey, another X-Man. She had died half a year ago, destroyed by the Phoenix Force. You had run away from the X-Mansion because of it. You were treated different by the other kids, and even your team, Excalibur. Nightcrawler, Gambit, Rogue, Colossus, Lockheed, even your best friend, Kitty Pryde, treated you differently than before the Phoenix killed your mother. They treated you as if you’d turn on them any second. As if you’d attack them. As if you were an animal. A monster.

Your father had become even more distant and angry than before, which was something you didn’t think was possible. You didn’t know how to comfort him, and he didn’t know how to comfort you. Nobody was there for you while you grieved for your mother, and you felt feared and unwanted. So, to make things easier for them, you left. You planned to just wander, maybe even steal a motorcycle and follow in your fathers footsteps. You had been waiting for a bus when the Reach kidnapped you. When you woke up, voices were talking in your head. You were terrified, but then you heard your mothers voice. Whether it was actually her or just your subconscious, you didn’t know, but she helped you control the other voices. You were extremely intelligent, so it didn’t take long for you to get the hang of telepathy. When you finally escaped, you were put back into more testing. It made you anxious and panicky, since you knew what happened to your father and many mutants when they were tested on. You remembered the mutants that died being experimented on by Trask, and the lifelong trauma it brought your father.

“If we let you out, do you think you can handle getting some food without throwing a fit?” A security guard asked you, mocking you as if you were a child.

You lifted your head and nodded slowly, manipulating his mind to think your pupils were dilated, a sign of sedation. Once he was satisfied he unbuckled the straight jacket and helped you up, but you convinced him you could walk on your own. You walked out to the hallway and stopped at a corner, watching the others who were listening to Eduardo Jr and Eduardo Sr arguing very loudly. They looked away when he storms out, slamming the door.

“Uh...we should get lunch while we have time.” Virgil suggested.

“This is so messed up.” Tye snapped. “STAR is as bad as the Reach and worse than home.”

“Wouldn’t go that far.” Onawa Longshadow, who you figured out was his sister, mumbled.

“But STAR wants to help us.” Neut, some other escapee said quietly.

“Whatever, Neut. I just know I can’t take much more of this.” Tye said through his teeth.

“You won’t have to. Cause we’re busting out. Tonight.” Virgil says with determination. This perks your attention, so you walks towards them.

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Eduardo asked. “This place is a fortress.”

“You’ll need me.”

They all spin around and see you, perfectly awake and not sedated at all.

“You faked it, didn’t you?” Tye asked you, grinning.

“That’s what he said.” Virgil whispered, Eduardo snickering while Tye rolled his eyes.

“Drugs and medicine don’t work on me.” You shook your head. “The doctors are idiots.”

“Is that your metahuman gene?” Eduardo asked.

“No. That’s my X-Gene.” You shake your head as you looked around to make sure there’s no guards spying on you guys.

“Wait...” Tye mumbled. “I thought you were a telepath?”

“Holy shit! You’re like Wolverine, right? With a healing factor!” Virgil exclaimed.

“What?” A guard overheard from the other hallway. You rolled your eyes and erased the last few seconds from his mind, then created a “mind link” with the others, translating for Asami at the same time. Not Neut though, you knew he wanted to stay and report you. So you erased his mind as well.

‘Don’t yell. Talk to me through this.’ You ordered as you all started walking towards the cafeteria. ‘Yes, Wolverine is my father. My X-Gene developed when I was little, but the Reach activated my meta gene as well.’

‘No fair, so you’ve got like, a hundred powers?’ Virgil asked.

‘Can you even count? She’s got two.’ Onawa rolled her eyes.

‘So you know how to get us out of here?’ Tye asked. He seemed to be the most restless and adamant about leaving, which you took note of.

‘We leave tonight. I’ll take care of everything.’

•

“Please, tell me you're not serious about running. Running, escaping, whatever you want to call it, we're gone. This is serious. I nearly blew up Central City. My powers may be gone now, but what if they come back, you know, escalate out of control all over again? What if your powers escalate? Dude, you can't control them now. Look, I know Wilcox is a pain. STAR is a pain, but they're trying to keep us safe. Or at least keep the world safe from us.” Neut tried to reason with you.

“I’m outta here..” Virgil scoffed as you led him towards the door.

“Oh yeah.” Tye nodded, his sister following behind.

“Adios.” Eduardo waved to Neut.

“Are you coming Sam?” You asked her.

“I think so?” She tilted her head.

“That might mean yes.” Tye and Eduardo both led her towards you.

You spun around when alarms suddenly blared, and you saw Neut at some control panel.

“Sorry. But I can’t let you do this.” Neut narrowed his eyes.

“Bold of you to assume you were letting us in the first place, punk!” Onawa glared at him, starting to charge at him before her brother tugged her back.

“Let’s go!” You shouted at them, rushing down the hallway. Virgil and Eduardo sprinted ahead of you, right at the door. Virgil tried to open the door, but it was locked.

“The alarms put the whole place on lockdown!” Virgil alerted you.

“Great! Now what?” Tye asked.

“No idea.” Virgil admitted.

“Well what was your escape plan?” Eduardo asked.

“Uh...I didn’t really come up with one.” Virgil rubbed the back of his neck. “Y/N, weren’t you supposed to be in charge here?”

“I am. Just wait for it.” You told them. You knew guards would be at every exit any minute, and you wanted to show them something.

“Ed? Can you teleport us out?” Virgil asked, trying to figure out why you were just standing there staring down the hall.

“Haven't you been paying attention? I can only teleport myself and only along sight lines. Which makes escaping from a windowless, locked hallway somewhat difficult!” Eduardo shouted, accent becoming thicker in his anger.

“No problem! Tye can do his thing, right?” Virgil turned to Tye.

“Wrong! I can’t control ‘my thing’! It just happens!” Tye shook his head.

“Onawa? Can you do some magic or something?”

“No way! If I try to tear apart the door I could tear you apart too! I don’t have control yet, you-“ Onawa opened her mouth to say some god awful curse.

“That’s enough.” Tye smacked her arm.

“Look out!” Asami pointed.

You grinned when some guards ran up, channeling your inner Wolverine.

“You kids need to come with us!” A guard warned.

“Don’t think so.” Eduardo said darkly.

You charged at the guards, finally sheathing your claws. You made sure to not cut any vital parts, only making flesh wounds to keep them down. You snarled at them, baring your sharp teeth. Once they were all down, you turned around and charged towards the others. They all jumped aside as you went for the door, easily tearing through the layers of metal. You retracted your claws, standing straight and feeling your shoulders and back crack loudly. You turned around, everyone staring at you in shock and fear.

“Let’s go.” You say calmly, before running off into the night.

[multifandomwriter56]

Goodbye

A/N: This is the sixth prompt from my Ten Angst Prompts. I got the prompt from this post. The words that are italicized are from the movie Avengers. They are not my words.

Request: Hi there! You know that one shot you wrote called, “Meeting your idol,”? I was wondering if you could make a part two, or a separate story, where it takes place when Phil dies and Y/N was in the vicinity when it happened and while Steve and Tony are arguing instead of Fury telling them the Phil died she does and she throws the Captain America cards and her MIT acceptance letter at them and storms out. Ends in fluff and maybe Tony adopting teen!reader? Thanks love❤️😌    (I hope it’s okay I changed some things. The fluff just did not happen)

Prompt Sentence: "I don't need, or want your help, what I want is for you to get the fuck away from me."

Characters: Phil Coulson x Daughter!Reader, Fury, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers

Summary: Y/n was there when her father died.This is a part 2 for Meeting Your Idol. You honestly don’t really have to read it to be able to read this. Just know that Tony and Y/n have met before.

Warnings: language, angst, talks about death, grieving for the death of a parent

Word Count: 1,261

"I'm just saying, pick a weekend. I'll fly you to Portland. Keep love alive." Tony glances over his shoulder. "The smartass can stay with me if need be."

"Hey! I can take care of myself!" Y/n tries to look offended but fails when the billionaire turns to face her with a cheeky grin. 

She stays where she's standing, trying to give the group of heroes space. She notices that Captain America frowns when he sees her. She waves, hoping he won't voice his disapproval of her being here. 

She smiles when he waves back, a small grin visible on his face. She may have just met him today, but he seems to be a true gentleman.

Y/n listens to the banter, not able to resist the urge to roll her eyes when Tony makes fun of Fury for having to turn to see the screens.

She sticks close to Coulson for the next few hours; but when they’re alerted about Agent Barton breaking into the Helicarrier, they split up.

She was told to wait in his office; which was not what she wanted to do. But, being the good kid she is, Y/n did as she was told. 

But as time goes by and no one comes to get her; she decides to investigate herself. She barely makes it down the hall when she sees her father running with massive weapon in his hand.

She calls out to him but he doesn't hear her so she takes off after him. When he enters a room, she slows down, waiting. She hears him and another voice. 

Deciding she needs to know what they’re saying, she enters the room; shocked to see Loki. 

“Dad!” She cries out when Loki stabs her father in the back. “No!” Y/n sprints to her father, not even caring about the god. She kneels next to him, her hands covering over the stab wound. She cranes her neck over her shoulder, just now realizing Thor is in the prison cell her father had shown her the day before. 

She turns her head away from the Norse god as he and the prison cell drop. 

“You’re gonna lose.”

Y/n tries to shush her father, telling him to save his strength. 

Loki turns to face the father/daughter duo. “Am I?”

“It’s in your nature.”

Y/n applies more pressure to the wound as the bleeding worsens with each word.

“Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falling from the sky. Where is my disadvantage?”

“Your lack of conviction.”

Y/n moves her hands when she feels the weapon laying in Coulson’s lap start to vibrate. She barely stops herself from screaming as the weapon blasts the god through the wall. 

“So that’s what it does.”

Once Y/n gains her composure from her father’s action, she places her hands back on the wound. “Stay with me, Dad. Keep your eyes open. Please Dad, don’t leave me.”

She watches as her father tries to lift his hand to her cheek, but he isn’t strong enough.

“I love you, Y/n.”

“No, no, no. No!” She screams when someone grabs her from behind. 

“Y/n, Y/n! Calm down! Let my men take care of your dad.” 

Her body goes limp at hearing Fury’s voice. She sobs into her chest, her bloody hands stretch away from her face. She barely hears Fury talking to her dad. Through her heartache, she feels anger rise in her chest when Coulson talks about the heroes needing a reason to work together.

They both stay where they as the medics try to save her dad. When one of them shakes their head, Fury turns her away from Coulson.

“W-What does tha-”

“Y/n, I’m so-”

Y/n twists her body out of Fury’s grip. “Let me go!” She runs off, back to her father’s office. She curls herself under his desk, sobbing into her arms; not caring about the blood anymore. She stills when she hears the door open. Through a small gap in the desk, she watches as Fury grabs her father’s card collection. What is he doing with those? Her eyes widen when he smears blood on them. What the fuck?!

Deciding she needs to know what Fury is doing, she follows him. Fury pretends he doesn’t see her trailing behind him.

She follows him until she sees the back of Tony’s head. She stays back, wondering what Fury is going to say. 

“I guess he never did get you to sign these.” Fury says to Steve as he tosses the cards onto the table.

She understands what he’s doing now; but she’s not sure how she feels about him using her father like this. Even if it was Coulson’s idea. 

When Tony stands and turns to leave; the two make eye contact. She’s not really in the mood to talk to the billionaire so she turns on her heel and heads in the direction where her father died. 

Tony follows the teenager; only stopping when she does. He stares at the pool of blood, his heart hurting for the loss of a friend. “I-”

“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say I’m sorry.” Y/n growls. 

“Honestly, I don’t know what to say to you.”

They both stay silent, neither one knowing where to go from there. Y/n’s the first to break the silence; digging into her pocket for a folded piece of paper. “Here.” She throws it at Tony’s feet. “I know you don’t like being handed things.” She elaborates when he sends her a questioning look. 

Tony picks up the paper, unfolding it. “I see you got the Stark Industries internship. Pepper will be pleased.” He tries to sound happy; and in any other situation, he would be.

“I don’t want it. Find someone else.”

“You do know I made this up just so you could work with Pepper, right?” When he doesn’t receive a reply, he changes the subject. “I know Coulson was your only family, and Pepper would kill me if I didn’t offer; but you could come stay with us. Live in a mansion in Cal-”

“I don’t want the internship and I don’t want to live with you! I don't need, or want your help, what I want is for you to get the fuck away from me!”

Steve heard shouting and decided to investigate; surprised when he sees that it’s Coulson’s daughter who’s doing the yelling. “What’s going on?”

“Oh now he cares” Y/n exclaims. “You all care now that he’s gone. Is that how it works?” She’s still shouting. “Here.” She moves towards Steve holding out the rest of her father’s collection. “Keep these as a reminder that a man died believing in you and your stupid boy band.” She slaps the cards in Steve’s hand. “Save the world, just like he wanted; or don’t. I don’t fucking care, because either way, I still lose my father.” She glares at Tony. “And what did you lose, huh? An acquaintance? A man to use as the butt of your jokes?” She turns to Steve. “What about you? You just met him today and now you’re all ready to come together and fulfill his last wish?” She scoffs. “It’s just all a part of being a hero, right?’

When neither man says anything, she rolls her eyes. “Screw it. There’s nothing holding me to this life anymore. I’m done with the spying, with the superheroes, with the missions, and I’m definitely done with the secrets. Good luck and goodbye!”

  Forevers: @beautycinders​ @desiredposion​

[the-silvr-speedster]

Home

Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pairings: Daisy Johnson / Daniel Sousa

The team meets on the Zephyr for the last time before going their separate ways. Daisy reflects on the past seven years with them while trying to come to terms with losing the only home she's ever known. In the meantime, she is trying to find a way to tell Daniel about their time loop kiss, which is not such an easy task with the lack of privacy on the spaceship. Daisy also has an awful nightmare and Daniel is there to pick her back up.

Sequel to ‘About Starfish and Squares’ but can be read as a stand-alone.

Also posted on AO3.

Hey guys! 

I am soooo happy you liked my previous fanfic and since you wanted more, and I had a lot of ideas, here is Part Two. I wanted to write something short, basically, just Daisy telling Daniel about their time loop conversation and the kiss. And once again it turned out as this massive thing, even longer than Part One. I had a lot on my mind since I started rewatching the whole series again before the finale which I am equally excited and scared to watch. However it ends (and I really hope Dousy gets a happy ending) I will cry like a baby. Anyhow, thanks for the lovely comments on About Starfish and Squares on AO3, your support really helped me with finishing Part Two. I hope you will like it as well. Sorry for any mistakes. OK, so enough of my rambling. Enjoy the reading!

FYI I used a small part of the song Freaking me out by Ava Max in one section. It just felt right considering Daisy's feelings. (And I keep singing the song over and over so...)

Disclaimer: All characters are a property of Marvel and Marvel television.

Home.

What is it? What does it feel like? Is it a place or people? Daisy used to ask these questions for years. She wasn’t the only one, though. All the other children at St. Agnes orphanage were plagued by the same thoughts, the same questions. The same hopes. Every one of them hoped that one day someone would come and give them what they want. A home. It didn’t matter they didn’t know what it meant, they all wanted it. Daisy craved it. Some children believed that it wouldn’t be strangers coming through those doors but their own parents. They would open the doors, nervously step through, and explain everything. Apologize. There would be tears, there would be hugs, and hearts mended. They would take them home and forget about the past. Even Daisy imagined it, oh, so many times. She used to just sit there and hypnotize the old creaking wooden doors in the common room while other kids played. She did it so often that she remembered every crack, every deformity that could be found on them. Sometimes those doors opened and her heart leaped to her throat in expectation. Strangers came in and took her to their home but it was always over sooner than she could think of it as her home. She was back at St. Agnes and the doors were closed again. Only one time she really thought ‘this could be my home’. She had hope but even that was crushed when the family sent her back within a month. St. Agnes was her only constant. Or was she a constant at St. Agnes? Children would come and go, they would be fostered or adopted. Daisy was one of the few that would always stay. Until she had enough of it, of course.

She dropped from high school and left. No more Mary Sue Poots. How could they name her that anyway? Meet Skye, a fierce hacker. No, a hacktivist. Once again, she thought she found if not a home then at least a place she belonged to. With Miles and the Rising Tide. But now she knows that she hasn’t found a home until that day when two agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., an organization she despised for years, came knocking on the door of her van. She didn’t know home until she met Phil Coulson and his team.

She kept her eyes trained on the person in question as he was busy talking with Fitz and Mack. Well, not him, really, just an LMD version of him. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. It was him and it wasn’t him. He died. She mourned him. He was like a father to her, more of a father than her own father. No, Coulson was her dad. Or is. Or whatever. She kept coming back to their conversations during the time loops. Daisy was afraid Coulson was going to do something unexpected, like turn himself off permanently, after their mission was over. She just got him back - in a way - she couldn’t lose him again. But he didn’t and he doesn’t belong in this world anymore. Just like her, Daniel, and Deke.

Well, it’s really hard to think about Deke as someone who doesn’t belong here. He is like a tardigrade, he can survive anywhere and anytime, obviously. She is reminded of his ‘80s band, the Deke squad, again. She shakes her head, smiling. He was thriving in the ‘80s just as he was in 2019. She has no doubt he will be more than okay even now. That also has her thinking about what he’s going to “borrow” this time. First it was tech and then songs. Maybe now he will finally come up with something original. Daisy moves her eyes to him. He’s sitting next to Simmons and Diana, excitedly speaking of something, nursing a beer in a glass from Deke Squad’s official merch that he somehow managed to sneak on the Zephyr before they left the ‘80s. There were at least dozen of boxes of t-shirts, glasses, headbands, keychains, and who knows what else. Daisy has found out about it only two days ago, when Deke decided to move the boxes and managed to break the main controls panel on the bridge with one from the heavier ones.

“What the hell, Deke?” She yelled, after she reached the bridge and assessed the damage.

“It broke,” he told her innocently.

“Are you kidding me? It broke? On its own, huh? You had nothing to do with it at all, right?” Daisy stood there in the middle of the bridge, hands on her hips, scolding him like a child. She sighed. “Fix it. Before Mack comes back and sees it.”

“On it!” He called and tried to hurriedly leave the bridge but tripped over one of the boxes that were lying all around.

“Why are all these boxes up here?” Daisy came towards one of them and was about to peek inside only to be abruptly stopped by Deke. “What’s in there?”

“Nothing! Just some personal belongings,” he said maybe a little too fast.

“Oh, really?” She asked him incredulously. Daisy pushed him away and opened the box. She furrowed her brows in confusion as she saw its contents. Glasses. She moved to the next box. She took out a t-shirt. “Why do you need all of this stuff, Deke?”

“It’s Deke Squad merch! I couldn’t leave it just lying there on the base!” He defended.

Daisy looked at Daniel, who was watching their interaction with an amused expression, rolled her eyes, and then shoved the t-shirt into Deke’s hands, letting out an annoyed sigh. “Get it out of here.”

He nodded and started to move the boxes around.

“I’m going to help him,” Daniel informed her with a look that said ‘just to be sure he doesn’t break anything else’ while stepping carefully around the closest box.

“Alright,” she gave him a grateful smile. “I’m going to wake up Coulson and order some pizza.”

“Pizza for breakfast? Really?” He eyed her doubtfully. “I think I can do better than that.”

“It’s lunch already,” Deke spoke up from behind a stack of boxes.

“Why not have a pizza for breakfast?” Daisy asked with a shrug, completely ignoring Deke’s remark. “Pizza is always a great idea. Plus, you have work to do here. You can’t make us a proper breakfast.”

“It won’t take forever to put these away,” Daniel assured her while stepping closer. “I’ll be in the dining area in a few minutes and trust me I’m going to make you a breakfast sooner than they would deliver pizza.”

“Wait, did you guys just wake up or something?” Deke commented still hidden behind the boxes. But for her, it was like background noise.

Daniel was now standing in front of her fixing her in place with his eyes and giving her a small smile. She felt him take her hand in his. He brought it up to his lips and softly kissed her knuckles. Daisy could feel the so long forgotten feeling of butterflies in her stomach and tried to fight the blush creeping to her cheeks.

“Okay,” she mumbled quietly.

“I’d rather have pizza,” Deke said as he emerged from behind the fortress of boxes he just put up. Daisy quickly took her hand from Daniel’s and both of them made a step back from each other. Deke eyed them suspiciously.

“Yeah, uh, I’m going to wake Coulson up,” Daisy threw over her shoulder as she hurried away from the bridge leaving the two men behind.

Daisy thinks of that pile of lemons Deke once placed in her bunk. They really had a weird way to express affection in the postapocalyptic future he’s from, that’s for sure. Somehow that feels like a long time ago. The talk they had when she tried to explain she’s not ready to let anyone in. Not then, maybe not ever. Not after Lincoln. The pain, the guilt, and the regret she felt for so long keeping her heart locked away. Hidden and safe. The ghost of her love for him lingering deep within it. Love that remained unspoken since she never got the chance to tell him ‘I love you’. She remembers how Deke’s hope was crushed by her words. The kicked puppy expression he had on his face. Daisy didn’t want to hurt him but she didn’t want him harboring hope for something that might never be. She wonders if he still has that crush on her. ‘Most likely not,’ she told herself, a smile tugging at her lips. He moved on and somehow, she did too. What looked like an impossible thing less than two years ago, now became a reality. She has no idea how or when things changed. Maybe it was around the time she and Simmons were high on those puffies on Kitson. Maybe she needed that to happen to realize what she really wanted. To be honest with herself. She told Jemma she wants her own Fitz and the realization of what she said stayed with her even days after that, never actually leaving the back of her mind. But the planet needed to be saved again so she pushed it away and forgot about it. That memory floated back up just a few days ago. The memory of her and Jemma under that gaming table in the casino.

Daisy’s eyes flicked towards Daniel and remained on him, studying him. He and Mack took shifts at preparing the food on the grill. Now it was his turn. Meanwhile, he listened to the conversation between Mack, Fitz and Coulson and often joined in. And of course, he never forgot to send her a look or a smile, to make sure she’s okay. He was just laughing at something Fitz said, judging from Fitz’s awestruck expression they were probably grilling Daniel about his past and SSR. Daisy grinned. Fitz is going to talk his ear off. She looked at the bottle of beer she was nursing in her hands and tried to collect her thoughts. While the memory from Kitson resurfaced only a while ago, her confused feelings caught her attention during the time loops. More precisely, she realized that there is something there, that wasn’t before. There’s a heart now, where there used to be a ghost. She kissed him and remained silent about it. It freaked her out, that’s why she kept it quiet until the mission was over. She often acts on impulse and then freaks out.

Daisy let out a long breath and looked at Daniel again. She still hasn’t talked to him about their kiss in the time loops, not for the lack of trying but for the lack of privacy, among other things. The last few days were crazy.

When Daisy walked into the dining area Daniel has already started making breakfast. She’s probably spent more time talking with Coulson in the LMD lab than she thought.

“That smells amazing,” she called from the doorway.

“Told you it’s going to be good,” Daniel said over his shoulder.

She can’t exactly tell when he decided to be her personal chef but it might have started after he caught her eating breakfast for dinner one evening in the ‘80s. Who says she can’t have cereals with milk whenever she wants to?

Daisy walked closer and hopped on the counter next to him. “Hmm, pancakes are the best,” she agreed while jabbing her finger in the pancake batter and tasting it.

“Oh, no. No eating the batter, young lady,” Daniel scolded her with a teasing grin while he took the bowl away from her.

“Hey, don’t be such a grandpa about it,” she said, pretending to be offended. “What’s that?” She pointed towards a bubbling dark purple mass in another pot.

“That’s a sauce made from forest fruit mix I found in the freezer with a few secret ingredients I won’t disclose,” he winked at her.

“Someone’s being secretive,” she teased. “It looks delicious.” Daisy leaned over the pot and took a deep breath. “I can smell some cinnamon, hmm…maybe few drops of vanilla extract…a drop of love…” She paused, opening one eye, spying on Daniel’s reaction. He was giving her an amused look.

“Now, why would I use a love potion?” He teased back with a smirk.

Daisy regained her sitting position and dramatically sighed while pretending to be occupied by looking at her nails. “Yeah, you are right. You don’t need one.” It took her a moment to realize what she has just said. Better yet, what underlying meaning those words held. Her breath caught in her throat and she carefully looked up at him. Daniel had that soft look on his face again. That look she always wants to kiss away. She had to look at her hands. “I mean you are so likable. Everyone here likes you,” she babbled quickly.

“I don’t make pancakes for everyone,” he told her softly and she had to look up at him again. Those warm honest eyes. Suddenly she’s back in the time loop. ‘And you…you’d like to…be that someone?’ ‘Not for everyone.’ Oh, God. She has to tell him. Right now.

Well, in the hindsight…She never should’ve distracted him while he was making pancakes.

“You guys are making a smoke grenade or something?” Coulson spoke up the same moment the both of them noticed the burning pancake batter on the pan.

Everyone came back to the Zephyr to say the last goodbye. And by everyone, she means even Andrew, whom May has dragged along after long hours of explaining to him why his wife is a different person from the one he came to know over the years. Telling him she has empathic abilities. She also mentioned that he is Inhuman and their daughter might be as well. It must’ve been an interesting conversation. Daisy would’ve liked to see it.

With all those people coming on board, the spaceship started to become more and more crowded. It’s not that she wouldn’t be happy to have all of them here again after a few days of it being just her, Daniel and Coulson, but she kind of misses the privacy it provided. Maybe that’s why she is tucked away in a corner alone, watching over all of them. Her team. No, not a team. A family. Because teams break apart, families not so much. They always stay together, even if it’s from afar. A family never gives up on you. Well, maybe some families do, some are messed up like that. ‘Like my biological family,’ she thinks. But not this family. They never gave up on her. Yes, there were some initial reservations after she got her powers, but Coulson has never given up on her. Not when she chose the Afterlife over her family in S.H.I.E.L.D.. Not when she broke more than just their hearts after being infected by Hive. Not when she walked away them to become a vigilante after Lincoln sacrificed for her, because of her mistakes. Definitely, not when she started to believe she’s the Destroyer of Worlds. They gave her a chance after chance. They let her grow. She is not the same person she was almost seven years ago. She is not that wide-eyed girl living in her van being obsessed with superheroes and revealing the truth to the world. Skye died in that Kree temple and Daisy Johnson has been born. Or did she? Daisy likes to believe that a small part of Skye is still left somewhere inside of her. She liked Skye. She may have been naïve, but she wasn’t burdened by that darkness Daisy has inside. By those demons and nightmares.

“A time loop?” Daniel asks her.

“Fun, right?” Daisy comments with a sigh, her eyes scanning through the contents of the drawer… ‘Wait, what?’ She looks up confused. They are back in the time storm. ‘No. No, no, no…no. Not again.’ “Daniel? What the hell is-” She starts to say but he cuts her off.

“This is why I wanted to stay with this team. Do you ever have a day when something crazy doesn’t happen?” Daniel asks a little too excited.

“It’s been a while.” She speaks involuntarily. “Hey! Daniel?!” She waves her hands frantically in front of him. He doesn’t notice it.

“Reminds me of my SSR days,” he tells her, nostalgic smile on his lips.

“We just need to get that implant out,” she says and decides to just take the scanner but Daniel stops her.

“Wait! It’s a trap,” he warns her.

“But we don’t know that yet.” Daisy looks at him confused. ‘Why would I say that? We know it’s a trap. This…this has already happened.’

“We do. You said somebody obviously went to the drawer and…,” he pauses. “Simmons was supposed to get the scanner, right?”

“Yeah, until I told her I was gonna do it.” Daisy looks around as the lights start to flicker. ‘Something doesn’t feel right,’ she thinks.

“Every attempt so far has been on Simmons. She’s the one they’re trying to kill,” Daniel says looking at her.

“Maybe, but we still need the scanner.” ‘Oh.’ He’s gonna take it. She can’t let him do it again. She reaches for the scanner but her hand goes right through it. ‘What?’ Fear starts to settle in her bones.

“Right, but if I die, I’ll just, you know…reset. No problem. If you die, you’ll lose your memories and waste all this time relearning everything. Time, we don’t have,” Daniel explains and reaches into the drawer without a second thought, grabbing the scanner.

“What are you doing? This is crazy!” She says trying to move from her place but to no avail.

“This is my purpose. I know that know,” he tells her a flicker of blue in the brown of his eyes. His voice is getting weird. Muffled, like by a static on a radio…

She tries to look around for something, anything to help her take at least one step closer to him so she could take that scanner from him. ‘Something is way off.’

“Why would you-”

“To make sure this worked. To make sure you didn’t try this yourself,” he cuts her off and when she looks up it’s not Daniel standing there anymore, but-

“Lincoln? What…” She pauses, looking at him in shock. He’s wearing the same S.H.I.E.L.D. jacket he had back then. Yo-Yo’s necklace is hanging from his fist. His face is bloody and his blue eyes are piercing through hers. “It was supposed to be me,” she mumbles quietly, tears running down her cheeks. “You should’ve let me die!”

Lincoln gives her a sorrowful smile. “I would never let you die.” His voice is echoing around her. She can feel its vibrations in her bones. “So, it’s fine,” he mutters, a little surprised, looking at the scanner in his hand.

“No! It’s not. Let go of it!” She screams hopelessly. “You can’t just die for me like this. This is wrong!”

Suddenly she hears a weird sound coming from the scanner and Lincoln lets out a groan. A shadow of confusion crosses his face. However, as he leans back against the table he fades in and out like the flickering light above them and finally changes back into Daniel.

“Sousa?!” Daisy calls to him. “Daniel!” He looks up at her with fear in his eyes, blood spilling from his mouth. “No!”

“Hey, hey, hey, Sousa,” her body finally lets her move close to him as he starts slipping to the ground. She tries to lower him more carefully until he sits down. “Hey, Daniel, look at me. It’s gonna be okay,” she tells him, a quiet sob breaking her voice. “It’s gonna reset. You’ll be fine.” She sits down next to him and let him lay down on her lap.

“Why is it taking so long!” She yells into the empty ship. Daisy cups his cheek with one hand and strokes his dark hair with the other one. “Please, stay with me,” she whispers almost inaudibly. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The time loop has to reset. It always does!” A stray tear drops on Daniel’s forehead. “Please,” she begs, sobbing. “Daniel!” But he doesn’t hear her anymore.

She watched hopelessly as the last light slipped away from his eyes. She could feel how his heart gave its last weak beat. He was gone. He died for her just like Lincoln did.

Suddenly she feels too much. She feels every vibration around her, but not those she needs to feel. Those of his heartbeat. It’s like her own heart is trying to beat for them both, picking up speed until everything around her shakes. But she doesn’t care anymore. Panic and pain are clawing at her chest making her breathless.

She sees her mom, lying there lifeless after Malick snapped her neck. She sees Enoch. She sees Lincoln floating in midair. Lash. Her mother again. Triplett…The room is becoming filled with bodies of those she cared about but had to die because of her.

“It has to reset,” she mumbles weakly. “It has to reset. It has to reset. It has to reset.” Daisy closes her eyes and hugs Daniel closer.

Daisy.

“Lumley said that we should stay the hell away from you.”

She looks up at the sound of that voice. It’s Coulson. The real one.

“I had a chance at healing up from this,” he points to his chest, “but I gave the serum to you.”

Daisy.

“He said that wherever you go, death follows.”

Daisy!

“He was right.”

Daisy!!

Wake up!

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

The plane was shaking. Daniel woke up in his bunk with a start. At first, he thought they are taking off somewhere but that didn’t make sense. None of the four of them knew how to pilot the Zephyr. Daisy managed to fly the quinjet on her first try back in the ‘80s, but that-

Then it hit him. “Daisy!” Those are her quakes…

He jumped out of the bed and stormed into the corridor where he almost collided with Coulson.

“Where’s Daisy?” He asked him worriedly.

“Hey, guys? What’s going on?” A very sleepy Deke looked out from the door of his bunk. “Why is everything shaking? Are we going somewhere?”

“She is in her bunk,” Coulson informed him ignoring Deke completely and Daniel didn’t waste any second standing there as he hurried towards Daisy’s bunk. “I was going through the supplies when this started. I was just about to go check on her. She’s probably having a nightmare.”

Daniel stopped before her doors and faced Coulson with a concerned look in his eyes. “Nightmares cause her to quake?”

“Only the really bad ones. Actually, she didn’t have an episode like this in forever,” he explained with a mixture of sadness and worry. “I think you should check on her.”

Daniel was about to ask him if he’s really okay with it being him but the plane was hit by another strong quake and the light started to flicker above them. He gave a nod to Coulson and opened the doors to Daisy’s bunk.

Daisy was lying mostly still, the only evidence of her discomfort being her tear-streaked cheeks, the way she was grasping at the blanket and her rapid breathing. It physically hurt Daniel to see her like that. So strong and yet so vulnerable.

“It has to reset. It has to reset,” she started mumbling from the dream and another wave of tears slipped from under her eyelids. “It has to reset. It has to reset!”

Daniel was at her side in a second, wiping the tears away from her face and caressing her hair.

“Daisy,” he tried softly.

“It’s about the time loops.” He heard Coulson comment from the doorway.

“Daisy,” Daniel tried again, carefully cupping her face in his hands.

Another, even stronger quake hit the plane. Daniel heard something clatter to the ground and another distinct sound of a breaking glass somewhere in the dining area. He looked around just in time to see Coulson leaving to assess the damage, followed closely by Deke. He turned his focus back to the still sleeping woman.

“Daisy!” He tried more loudly this time.

She whimpered.

“Daisy!! Wake up!”

Her eyes snapped open with a loud gasp. She shot up into sitting position, the unexpected movement almost making him fall from the side of her bed. She was looking around in bewilderment, gasping for air.

“It’s okay,” Daniel told her with a calming voice, his hands going to her face again, forcing her to look at him. “You are safe. It was just a dream.”

“D- Daniel?” Daisy mumbled. Her brown eyes meeting his. They held so much pain and fear.

“Yeah,” he gave her an encouraging smile, his thumb gently stroking her cheek. “I’m here. But Daisy, you have to stop quaking.”

The shaking stopped suddenly. She raised her hand from her lap and softly put it on his chest, right above his heart. He saw a flash of relief on her face before it was replaced by guilt. She looked down.

“Hey! Don’t feel guilty about this. The plane survived a time storm, this was nothing,” he spoke calmingly.

“Is everyone okay?” She asked him quietly.

‘Of course, she would worry about everyone else but herself,’ Daniel thought to himself. He gently raised her chin so she would meet his eyes again.

“Yes,” he assured her. However, the moment he looked into her eyes he saw they no longer held pain or fear or guilt. They were just…empty.

“Daisy?” He started softly. “Do you, uh… Do you want to talk about it?”

She considered it for a moment but then shook her head and let her hand fall from his chest back to her lap, her eyes following.

“Okay. You don’t have to.” Daniel let his hands drop from her face and moved further back to give her some space.

She was sitting there quietly, her long hair cascading around her face, hiding it from him. Daniel realized that the silence is even worse than her quiet sobs while she was still asleep. He wanted to help her somehow but he didn’t want to push her further away by insisting on talking about it. He considered leaving, because maybe she just needed more space but he didn’t want to leave her alone. She shouldn’t be alone not if the nightmare was so bad that it caused quakes.

Daniel thought about what Coulson has said. ‘Was it really about the time loops?’ She hasn’t told him much about what happened in there. He knew only the general stuff Coulson and Daisy told the whole team about after Enoch’s sacrifice. They’ve been in there for a long time, finding a way how to save everyone almost at the last second. Nobody else remembered but the two of them, probably because of their sleeping pods. Some members of the team died during the time loops because Enoch was programmed to kill if anyone tried to remove Simmons’s memory blocking implant. Was her nightmare about that? Possibly. It would give nightmares to anyone.

“Do you want me to leave?” He decided that at least he should give her the option even if he wanted to stay.

She quickly looked at him, a flash of panic crossing her soft features. A clear ‘No’ to him. But then she composed herself and looked away.

“Yes,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

He raised an eyebrow and sighed. She is not making this easy at all.

“I think I’ll stay anyway,” Daniel exclaimed.

“I told you to go,” she looked up at him a light annoyance on her face.

“See, you tell me to leave but you don’t actually want that,” he gave her a small smile.

“How do you know what I want, huh?” She asked him, anger seeping into her voice. “I want to be alone.” Daisy moved further away from him.

“Honestly?” He sighed looking at his hands and then back at her. “I know people like you. Focused on the greater good, even at your own expense. You want people to think you like being alone, even though you always end up back with friends,” Daniel told her and met her eyes again. The annoyance was gone. She was looking at him with a mixture of shock and…surprise? He decided to push his luck further. “You all keep running at the problem full tilt until you either solve it or slam headlong into a brick wall. But you don’t have to deal with the aftermath alone, even though you think so. You should have someone there to pick you back up. Someone to help you unload that burden or share its weight.”

Daisy closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. Few tears escaped from her eyes and she frantically wiped them away. She laughed, but it was a sad laugh.

“I am trying to be angry at you but I can’t. Not after…after you say…that,” she spoke. “You know, we had a very similar conversation in the time loops.”

Daniel raised his brows in surprise but decided to stay quiet and let her continue.

Daisy sniffled. “I asked why you are always there, whether to help me or watch over me, and you gave me the speech you just did. Again.” She looked at him in curiosity. “So, uh, you want to be that person for people like me?”

Daniel gave her a small meaningful smile. “Yes. But not for everyone.”

“You said that, too,” she smiled sadly. “You are right, you know. I…I want you to stay. But I also want you to go. My life’s a mess. I…People I care about tend to get hurt…,” she took a deep breath and added very quietly, “…or worse.”

“Daisy-” Daniel started to say but was cut off.

“I have demons. My past is…” she shrugged and wiped her tears away again.

“We all have skeletons in our closets,” Daniel told her. “I am not scared of yours.”

“You should be,” she murmured.

“Let me be the judge of that. One day. When you are ready.” He decided to risk moving a tiny bit closer and taking her hand in his. He looked into her eyes so she would see that he really means every word he says. “I am not going anywhere.”

For a brief moment, he could see the fight in her eyes. But it was there just for a few seconds. New tears ran down her cheeks but she made no move to wipe them away this time. She moved closer instead and hugged him, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

Daniel’s arms sneaked around her waist pulling her close. He could feel her tears seeping through his shirt. He sighed and when she let out a muffled sob, he comfortingly stroked her back.

“They are all leaving,” she said between sobs. “I’ve never thought it would come to this. They are the only family I’ve ever known.”

His heart ached for her. “And they will never stop being your family. Families change, grow, their members go their separate ways but always come back together.” It made him think of his own family, of his home. He couldn’t even say goodbye and will never see them again. He lost it all in a blink of an eye. But he was supposed to be dead and now he got a second chance at life. As Coulson said - a life after death.

“I know,” she mumbled. “But it won’t be the same.”

“No, it won’t,” Daniel whispered into her hair.

Daisy let out a yawn.

“Maybe you should try to rest a bit more,” he suggested.

She leaned back and he could see the uncertainty mixed with fear in her eyes. She was scared of the nightmares. “Will you hold me? I promise I won’t quake you out of the bed,” she gave him a small teasing grin.

“Whatever you want, Quake,” he teased back and she caught the collar of his shirt and pulled him down with her.

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

Daisy knows now that she can’t let her demons stand in the way of her happiness. Those demons are in the past but will always be a part of her. A part she will share with Daniel one day, as well as he will share his own demons. Yes, she is scared that she could lose him like Lincoln but a small part of her has a hope that it won’t happen this time.

‘We are going home.’ Four simple words Daniel said to her in that barn. Words that kept her fighting. Back there it was just a promise to make it back to the Zephyr, because where was home? Her only home were the people on board the Zephyr, her team and family. Where was home for Daniel? She couldn’t ask him then. They plucked him out of his time, his home.

Maybe she is losing her family in some way but maybe she will gain something else. Her own Fitz. Maybe, she already has.

‘We are going home.’ It could be a promise of something else. Now those words could mean more. She can feel that warm fuzzy feeling in her chest when she thinks about it. When she thinks about him. She smiled, her eyes fixed on Daniel as she took a sip from her beer.

“Just kiss him already,” May spoke up from beside her.

Daisy choked and slapped her hand over her mouth to prevent herself from spitting the beer out. She coughed a few times and May hit her on the back.

Privacy. She misses it.

“May! What the hell?!” She exclaimed annoyed and berated herself for not realizing that May sneaked up on her. And her feelings. ‘Shit.’ She gave her a glare.

“Just saying,” the older woman shrugged. “You know, there are bets going around on when you two finally become a couple. Officially. They refused to let me participate because of my empathic powers.”

Daisy groaned and rolled her eyes. “Mack and Yo-Yo already had one bet when we were in the ‘80s. Not sure what it was exactly about but Mack won,” she shrugged thinking that it may have been about the kiss. “You guys are the worst; one doesn’t have any privacy.”

“We are just happy to see you smiling like that. To see you happy again,” she patted her on the arm. “But please, do something about it already because this…tension is killing me.”

“I was going to, but as I said, there is no privacy on this spaceship with all of you here,” Daisy defended her lack of actions. She really wanted to tell him the morning after he stayed with her because of that awful nightmare but Mack and Yo-yo were already back and they probably heard about that nightmare from Coulson because they both wanted to go check on her which ended up in Coulson calling after them: “I strongly advise you not to go there.” She could hear their ‘Why?’ followed by a surprised ‘Oh!’ from Mack. She remembers as she quickly shot out of the bed, Daniel’s confused ‘Daisy?’ following her. She rushed into the corridor with ‘I am fine, thank you’, closing her bunk behind her and added: “No weird assumptions are needed.” The three teammates were looking at her in amusement.

“Yeah, everyone is here, as in here and not there,” May pointed at the bridge since they were all in the cargo bay with the ramp lowered down.

Daisy considered what May was proposing but quickly refused the idea by shaking her head. “Nope.” She could already see the faces of everyone after she and Daniel would be seen leaving the bridge together.

“You can’t wait to get rid of us, can you?” May teased.

“Maybe,” she snickered. “At least I’ll spare him from the if-you-ever-hurt-her threats from you guys.”

“Mack already beat us to it,” May gave her an amused smile.

“Oh God,” Daisy facepalmed.

“While you were on the way to save Simmons and Deke,” the older spy added mischievously.

“What?! But that was a week ago… Oh,” she sighed when she realized that Mack was very quick to do it after she told him about the time loop kiss. But she wasn’t even sure what to do about it back then. Or was she? Why everyone around her seems to know her better then she does? And more importantly - what else did he say to Daniel? She looked towards where both men stood, chatting over the grill.

“Uh, I should probably go check on what they are discussing now,” Daisy said and finished the rest of her beer.

“Go mingle. After all who knows when we get the chance to be together like this,” May smiled sadly and she, too, went to join the others.

Daisy watched her go for a short moment, set the empty bottle on a table, and walked over towards Daniel and Mack.

“Hey, guys. What do you have there? I’m starving.”

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

The team spent the rest of the evening and the beginning of the night by sharing their memories, laughing and teasing each other. They remembered their fallen friends and maybe even cried a little. Nobody wanted to be the first to leave. They all knew that when they do leave, it will be the end of their journey as a team. Eventually, Fitz and Simmons decided to go first since their daughter was already sleeping curled up in Jemma’s lap. Fitz said his goodbyes and took still sleeping Diana into the car.

“You know, this isn’t a goodbye,” Jemma told Daisy with shaking voice, tears running down her cheeks. “It’s see you soon.”

“I know,” Daisy sniffled and wrapped her best friend, no, her sister, in a bear hug.

“It would be lovely if we lived close to each other. Diana needs her auntie Daisy,” Jemma mumbled into her shoulder.

“Yeah. That would be great,” Daisy smiled through tears. “I am so happy for you, Simmons. You have Fitz and Diana, your little family,” she moved her hands to Jemma’s shoulders to look her in the eyes. “I know you’ll be okay and that makes this all a little less painful. You won’t be alone.”

The scientist chuckled. “You won’t be alone either,” she said and looked sideways at Daniel, who hovered nearby watching over Daisy, to make her point.

Daisy let out a soft laugh.

“It’s so good to see you this happy again. So, what are you guys planning?” Jemma asked her with a grin.

Daisy shrugged. “I thought that maybe I can take him on a small trip to show him how the world changed. After that…,” she sighed, “I honestly don’t know. I guess we both need to find out where we belong in this new timeline.”

“You’ll figure it out. Together. I’m sure of it,” Jemma told her comfortingly and hugged her again. “I love you, Daisy.”

“I love you too, Jemma.”

After Fitz-Simmons departed, the others left one or two at a time. Mack and Yo-yo were the last ones, leaving almost in the morning hours. Coulson decided to go with them, which really surprised Daisy since the possibility of him leaving too didn’t cross her mind. But as he said, every one of them needs to find a place in this new world and he is not an exception. He assured her he won’t be gone for long.

“It’s just a trip,” he said. “And take care of each other,” he added over his shoulder as he was walking down the ramp.

She stood there, looking after them until she could no longer see the lights of the car. Just like that, they were all gone.

A fresh morning breeze played with her hair. Daisy shuddered. She has heard Daniel walking down the ramp before he put a jacket around her shoulders. She didn’t even realize he went inside to grab it for her.

“Thank you.” She wiped at her tear-streaked cheeks and smiled, not yet looking at him.

“It’s nothing, but you are welcome,” he replied as he stood next to her.

He was so close she could feel the warmth of his shoulder on her own. She could feel the vibrations of his heartbeat. Her hand brushed against his and he took hold of it, their fingers intertwining. That touch grounded her in the moment and place. It assured her that she is not alone. Daisy let out a long content sigh. She knew that now was her time. They were finally alone.

“I need to tell-” she turned to face him but was cut off midsentence after Daniel crossed those few inches between them and pulled her in for a soft kiss. It was short but it caught her off guard. His right hand was still holding hers and his left cupped her cheek. She briefly opened her eyes to look into his and she thought she’s going to drown in that dark chocolate. Whatever she wanted to say was long lost with only one thought on her mind. Daisy leaned in and kissed him back, both her hands grabbing at the collar of his shirt to pull him closer, while his arms snaked around her waist. This kiss was different than the previous one. It was like finally getting a glass of water after dying of thirst in a desert. It was urgent and it left them both breathless. They remained close afterward, trying to catch their breaths. Daisy was beaming and Daniel was looking at her like she was the most precious beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“That was much nicer than our first kiss,” she told him quietly with a playful smile tugging at her lips.

Daniel frowned in confusion. “This was our first kiss.”

“Hmm, not for me,” she hummed, moving her right hand from his neck to his chest. She could see the moment when it hit him.

“The time loops. You kissed me in the time loops,” he said with a light chuckle and shook his head in disbelief.

“Why do you think it was me?” She asked with a gasp and smiled at him teasingly.

“And am I wrong?” He smirked smugly while he stroked her back.

It sent shivers down her spine and she had to force herself to concentrate. “Nope. But you, Mr. Sousa, kissed me back,” Daisy disclosed and pinched him in the chest.

“Hmm, that’s not fair. I don’t remember that,” he gave her a sad look.

“I can make you remember,” she whispered as she caught his face in her hands and brought it down to hers to kiss him again, exactly like in the time loops. Daniel responded to her kiss by pulling her even closer. One hand cupped his cheek and the other sneaked around his neck. She pulled away too soon for his liking.

“It was like this,” she whispered, her hands dropping to his chest.

“Nice,” he smiled. “But short.”

“Oh! So, that was too short for you, huh? We were plummeting towards certain death and needed to trap Enoch,” she told him exasperatedly. “You, Danny-boy are lucky I found the time even for that short kiss.”

Daniel laughed and eventually, Daisy joined in.

“You were so cute. With that soft expression on your face after the kiss. It took everything within me to stop myself from kissing you again,” she admitted while playing with a button on his shirt.

“Were you going to tell me about it?” He wondered.

“I was about to tell you before you kissed me, so…” Daisy shrugged and smiled at him sweetly.

“Hmm, I can do that again,” Daniel offered and his eyes darkened a bit.

“Yes, please,” she breathed.

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

Daisy and Daniel were sitting on the cargo bay ramp which gave them a nice view of the horizon. They weren’t really that tired and neither wanted to move from that spot after they exchanged a few more kisses. They sat down and Daisy cuddled into his side. It’s been so long that she watched a sunrise. A start of a new day. The beginning of something new.

“We can’t live on a plane,” Daniel said thoughtfully. “We need a proper place to call home.”

Daisy smiled and slowly looked at him, her eyes roaming over every small detail of his face lighted by the rising sun. His features were relaxed and peaceful. She wanted to imprint this face into her memory to keep it forever.

The words ‘we’ and ‘us’ and the meaning they held used to freak her out. But with Daniel, it’s somehow different. She is not scared of them, on the contrary, hearing them warms her heart. She sighed.

“What?” He asked her, a questioning smile playing on his lips as his eyes melted into hers.

Daisy leaned in and planted a short but sweet peck on his lips. Then she pushed herself back to look at him again, enjoying the soft almost dazed expression on his face.

“I like the sound of that,” she said in a low voice, giving him a lopsided grin.

“Sound of what?”

“Home.”

How am I gonna live my life without this TV show? Without Dousy? I guess we are all gonna meet here to scream after the finale, so see you then! I’ll have to wait until Thursday evening, though.

[des8pudels8kern]

Jaskiet and/or Geralt with T? Some non-mainstream AU?

Jaskier walks past the first visitors waiting scattered in front of the as of yet closed ticket booth through the southern entrance at his usual time and waves to Nadine behind the counter who nods back without looking up from the change she is counting. It’s fine; he knows she’s not a morning person. She’s always in a good mood come closing time, though, happy to finally get out of her booth and not talk in her customer service voice anymore.

He swipes his card and slips through the turnstile, twirling as he goes and winking at the people in line. This moment is the first highlight of his day – it’s when everybody wants to be him. The kids see that he already gets to go in while they still have to wait, and he’s wearing a stripey, candy-coloured uniform with an embroidered ice-cream cone at that, so not only does he get to go into the zoo early, he also works there and at an ice-cream stand at the same time. Yes, Jaskier is truly living the dream. The adults are probably a lot less envious of his summer job, but they do track the way he walks past the ticket booth without having to hand over any money and crosses into the zoo for free while they are about to pay enough to feed their family for three weeks for the pleasure of getting dragged from enclosure to enclosure by their sprogs for hours on end, only catching a break when they buy them appropriately zoo-priced snacks. Possibly from Jaskier, who will happily give them his best toothy grin when he announces a total for four scoops of ice-cream that makes every other parent look at him as if he just told them that the helmets from the pony riding might give their little darlings lice.  

Jaskier is enjoying this entire experience a lot more than he expected, if he is honest. But he doubts this is what his parents meant when they said the honest work would build character.

He dips into the main office, says hello to folks, picks up and signs for his keys and cash drawer, and makes his way deeper into the zoo. He passes a few enclosures, nodding at other employees here and there, but doesn’t stop until he gets to the goats.

Eskel is just finishing up cleaning the enclosure, his usual shadow at his side, and Jaskier leans against the fence and exchanges greetings with both Eskel and the goat. Bleater is all grown up now, but it took Jaskier only two mornings of walking past the adorable duo to strike up a conversation, and after than Eskel didn’t need much prompting to tell him all about how Bleater’s mother had rejected her and Eskel had raised the little kid himself. There were countless baby photos and videos of all of Bleater’s important milestones on Eskel’s phone. Jaskier just about died from the cuteness.

He dawdles a bit and makes some more idle chitchat with Eskel. He likes talking to Eskel. He’s sweet, an all-around good guy, but he’s a bit shy, and he always tries to angle his face to the side so the scar from his temple to his mouth will be turned away from Jaskier. He’s clearly self-conscious about it, so Jaskier has made it a point to not ask for this story, but rather make nice, easy, uncontroversial small-talk to get him to ease up a bit. Did you try that Indian place I told you about? Yeah, should have probably warned you about that, sorry, ask for non-spicy next time. Oh, the weather, yes, so glad it’s finally getting warmer, I was almost freezing my butt off in my little ice box last week, and what a waste of a shapely butt that would have been, wink wink. …Okay, mostly non-controversial. He’d stop if he thought Eskel minded.

It’s already a quarter past ten by the time Jaskier arrives at his pavilion, but he’s far enough from all the entrances that no visitor will be here for another ten minutes, even if they aim straight for the wolf enclosure.

He unlocks his ice castle, checks that his stocks have been replenished before opening by the magical ice-cream fairy or whoever delivers fresh ice-cream at some point in the two hours between eight, when the delivery entrance opens and the zoo keepers arrive, and ten, when his shift begins. All flavours present and accounted for, and fresh waffles. He prepares his station, opens the window, and looks out into the world, ready for whatever the day may bring.

Okay, he’s looking to the wolves.

And he knows what the day will bring.

Ah, yes, there he comes. A vision in cargo pants. Nicely muscled legs, very nicely muscled chest, arms that act as a daily stress test to every shirt Jaskier has ever seen him wear. Hair in a messy bun – properly I don’t give a fuck how I look I just want it out of my face-messy, not that artfully messy hipster look. And that face, the kind of face that, if Geralt were more willing to emote every now and then, people would love to see in a movie, in 3D, great detail, and from every angle. The man even has a chin dimple, that is how Hollywood handsome he is.

The Wolf Keeper.

Capitalized, because he has yet to tell Jaskier his name. It’s Geralt. Jaskier has asked around. But until he introduces himself to Jaskier himself, Jaskier will continue to address him as Wolf Keeper. Because, yes, Jaskier has tried to talk to this very fine specimen of a zoo keeper, in the hopes that he’d be as beautiful on the inside as he is from the outside, or has at least summer fling potential, but he might as well have been talking to a Greek statue, that’s how much he got back.

Well. They might not be working with each other, Jaskier stuck in his Fortress of Solitude and Geralt usually either in the building to the side of the wolf enclosure or out and about prepping food, talking to the vet, or doing whatever else needed doing to look after his charges. But the employee entrance into the wolf building happens to be just across the path from Jaskier’s pavilion, so every time Geralt does go in or out…

“Hello, Wolf Keeper. Beautiful morning we are having, isn’t it?”

Geralt’s steps falter when Jaskier calls out, just a bit, as if he’d hoped that maybe today, Jaskier had finally thrown in the towel.

As if. Stubborn is Jaskier’s middle name.  Well, technically it’s Alfred, after his father, but no one needs to know that. The point is, Jaskier likes people, he wants people to like him, and until Geralt gives him a change to get to know him, he’ll keep working at wearing him down. Now, if Geralt does end up talking to him and, after getting acquainted, makes an informed decision that he doesn’t like Jaskier, then so be it. But until then, well, Jaskier’s here all summer.

He plops down on the rickety little folding chair that he’ll have to put aside to move freely around the pavilion when business picks up later on, props his elbows on the counter and rests his chin in his hands.

Geralt somehow manages to square his already very, very broad shoulders even more and pointedly does not look into Jaskier’s direction as he keys open the door to the wolf building.

Yeah, Jaskier didn’t really think so. He estimates it’ll be at least another two weeks until he cracks.

“Bye, Wolf Keeper,” he chirps across the path and watches Geralt disappear in his den.

------------

Thank you for the prompt! And with this I conclude day 5 of my 500-words-a-day challenge. Today’s word count: ...1293 words. Look, as long as it’s not less than 500 it counts as a success.

Spinning this further, Yennefer is… the assistant zoo director? She comes to work in heels and meticulous make-up and works with budgets and the press rather than animals. She’s Geralt’s ex. Or girlfriend. It’s one of those on-again-off-again situations, Jaskier thinks. Or friends with benefits. Well, or she’s a dominatrix and they are like that.

Look, Jaskier has no idea, and I haven’t plotted that far, but there’s definitely something between Geralt and Yennefer, enough for there to be jealousy in the story, and then Geralt does warm up to Jaskier, yadda yadda romance, but Geralt does not know that Jaskier is ~living a lie~. You see, Yennefer looks down at Jaskier because she thinks he’s beneath her – some college kid on a summer job selling overpriced ice-cream, how very impressive. The one time they did have a conversation, when Jaskier was just getting his orientation tour, she approached him, because he was a new face and she wanted to know who was walking around in her zoo and whether he was worth talking to. She lost interest when she found out he was a seasonal worker doing untrained labor, and decided to actively disdain him when he let slip that he hadn’t even applied for the job but gotten it through a connection of his father’s. But what Yennefer does not know is that when Jaskier says family connection, what he means is that, technically, he is Pankratz Junior, his family owns half the city, his parents are some of the people Yennefer makes sure to invite to every single event, and Jaskier is working this job for the summer because he’s basically a prince on his pauper vacation to see how normal people live.

Cue angst about Geralt finding out! Deception! Judgement! Was it all a lie??? It wasn’t, obviously, but every secret identity story must have angst.

[businesstiramisu]

Finally watched Inception right before it goes off Netflix! I wrote down some thoughts as I watched to try to keep track, might as well publish them here:

leap of faith

The “how did you get here Ariadne” scene looks cool but it kinda lands flat for me b/c movies elide stuff like “how did the characters get here” all the time.

folding the city is cool but where is the sun coming from?

Totem: does Cobb know exactly how long the top should spin for?

“simplest version – his [Fischer’s] relationship with his father” – that doesn’t seem simple??

Chemist?!?!

MY CABBAGES BANANAS

Saito saw Cobb’s top in Mombasa. Did he see enough of it’s behavior to fake it?

How is Mr. Fisher’s relationship with his father? “Rumor is it’s quite complicated” – LOL

Why is Saito dreaming while they’re planning the Fisher infiltration in Paris?!?!

He thinks his father doesn’t notice him/care about him (the photograph) – so make him think that his father will want to spend time with him and ignore the business? Something like that is my guess.

Well the team went a different direction, about suggesting that he break his own path (and his father would approve of it). We shall see if they are righrt

“STUCK IN A DREAM FOR 10 YEARS!!!” – why did the first level start at a week though? ALSO TODO: does the math check out?

HAH Saito is pulling is weight. “I bought the entire airline” (although wouldn’t Fischer know about that?!?!)

Cobb’s dream elevator has 12 levels (+basement so 13 actually). I wonder if they’re all populated or only some of them? We saw at least 4 (makeout room, beach, kid’s no faces room;train tracks; basement)

The team letting Fischer see their faces on the airplane – the forger even calling attention to his! Edit: the movie didn’t follow up on that so maybe I misconstrued that scene. I thought it would make Fischer suspicious during the Mr. Charles gambit but apparently not.

His drink seems like a risky way to drug fisher? …oh nvm I guess it worked

First level – is it Yusufs I guess.

yeah real asshole move of Cobb not to tell the team about this Limbo shit

Forger impersonating uncle: emphasizing that Father didn’t respect him (“he said he’d tell you the combination”)

“You’re going to become an old man” – I guess that’s the opening scene

“At the end he pulled me close, and I couldn’t only make out one word: disappointed.” –Fischer on his dad’s last words

wait does Cobb even know how the top is supposed to work properly? If he got it on the anniversary maybe he only got the dream version.

also the framing makes it look like she’s in the building across the street?!?! Seems dream-like and unrealistic architecture

“I’m asking you to take a leap of faith” – echo Saito’s business proposal

“You’re waiting for a train” – OH that’s where the train in the taxi seen.

If she jumped how did Cobb get charged with murder?!?!

In mythology, Ariadne leads Thesues out of the maze with the ball of twine, right? Is Ariadne going to succeed in getting Cobb (or Mal?) out of this mess?

Drugging their eyes for the second level?!?! Is that a thing?!?!!

Okay we’re up to “Reality”: plane; “Level one”: car; “level two”: hotel

God this is a really Pretty movie. I love the turbulence in the drinks. An d lots of other lnice effects but that one just happened

I also like the costumes, lol

Well Mr. Browning is telling them exactly what the team wants Mr. Fischer to think

“Third level”: ice fortress

Also the time dilation seems a lot less extreme than they said?? LIke Yousuf should only have had a few seconds so far I think?

OH THE HALLWAYS SPIN SCENE!!!

SO COOL

Ariadne said “I designed it” rigth in front of Fischer – wouldn’t that make Fischer suspicious that she (or all of them) are working for Browning?

Would a van actually be drivable after that sort of roll? (honest question)

WAIT THE VAN LEVEL IS HELPING THE TEAM NOW?!?! Who put the bridge barriers up to stop the subconscious security?

OOOh I like the stairs that Arthur runs into – EDIT: I like the look of them before it turns into an Escher callback, is what I meant, lol

the avalanche also looks super cool

lol @ Fischer complaining about the cold – he picked the ice fortress, in some sense

“when the van hit’s the water” – again with the Cocteau (is that the right French guy) “breaking through the water” image

Ariadne should not have her hair loose but I appreciate that it makes her easy to tell apart from literally everyone else in the ice fortress level

why does the ice fortress still have gravity, actually?

the antigravity in the hotel room is pretty cool. I wonder how they did it – are wires and CGI enough?

WHO BLEW UP THE ICE JEEP? Did Eames just kill himself?

LOL it’s mal

No Eames did not blow up the Jeep. IDK what that was about then

“As soon as you hear the music, blow up the hospital” – what hospital?!?!

All the antigravity shenanigans in the hotel continue to be cool

Good thing the whole team is super skilled in everything – hand-to-hand combat, good aim in shooting, knows medical stuff, etc

Huh, I wonder how old James and Philippa are in the real world (if there even is a real world version of them…)

Prediction: Cobb incepted something in Ariadne’s mind to get them down there and rescue Mal, and that’s why they’re both in Limbo right now

OH NVM, the movie is saying that Cobb incepted “the world is not real” in Mal, so he is responsible for her death (if she actually died in the real world)

“I’m going to see them [his kids] up above” – in heaven?

Why would Mal down in Limbo be the real one?

they’ve shown Mal locking the spin in the safe twice – I don’t think they needed to show it twice for clarity so why the repeat?

maybe “the top spins forever in dreams” was made up in limbo too?

okay the train is death, how did I just get that

ope, guess Saito just died in the Ice Fortress (hence the scene of him old at the beginning of the film – he’s stuck in Limbo)

WAIT THEY STILL HAVENT FOUND FISCHER IN LIMBO – lol I’m a second ahead of Ariadne on bringing that up

heh, powering the elevator like a rocket ship!

wait, in the ice fortress Fischer is and moving even though he just got shot in the chest…

“I was disappointed that you tried.” Looks like the Team succeeded in incepting Fischer. Good for them I guess

what’s the windmill toy?

Now the faces we aren’t seeing are Mal & Cobb’s “growing old together”

Lol peter turned back into the Forger and Robert Fischer didn’t notice

Uh oh, now Cobb is incepting Saito, to rescue him

Okay Cobb wakes up straight in the plane? Very suspicious

Huh, he passed by and made victory eye contact with everyone on the way out of the airport – except Arthur! (Unless I just missed arthur??)

Huh, Philippa and James are still the same age? Perhaps that’s evidence that it’s still a dream? Or just that Cobb hasn’t been on the run for very long? Probably something people spent a lot of time arguing about on the internet

Okay, yeah, that’s a pretty good movie!! 8.5/10

[crowkingwrites]

The Purge

Pairing: Ramsay Bolton x Lily Bolton // Words:2416  // Ao3 Link

Summary: Written as a sequel to You Made Me. This modern day story is about Ramsay and Lily Bolton's descendant, Royce Bolton, as he spins a tale of one particular night that would change everything for the Bolton family.

Students gathered in a tight-knit group in the middle of the parking lot. Mrs. Easton’s first year of teaching history at North Hill High School was going really well. She had become a fast favorite among students with her interesting takes on history. Today, she brought them to a historical monument for Halloween for a spooky story or two.

“Royce! It’s good to see you!” Mrs. Easton said, all smiles. She tipped her red-rimmed glasses and Royce tipped his black rimmed ones. A common greeting between two history major alumni from Westeros University.

“Good to see you too, Layne!” they embraced as old friends do. “Is this your class?”

“It is!”

“They look like a good group of kids,” Royce put his hands on his hips. “Hate to scare them.”

“Not everyone has ancestry of awful, scary people,” Layne laughed. She turned her attention to her kids. “Every gather ‘round! I want you to meet a good friend of mine. This is Royce. He owns the Dreadfort.”

“Uh uh. My father owns the Dreadfort. I’m just the history nerd of this place.”

“I heard serial killers lived here!” one of the teens shouted.

“Quite a few actually,” Royce Bolton laughed. “Shall we begin? I’m sure my ancestors would love to meet you all.”

“Whoa wait, is this pace haunted?” a girl asked.

“Paige, that’s not—

“It’s alright, Layne.” Royce took over. “There are a few ghosts that haunt The Dreadfort, but before we go in let me ask you guys some questions. What do you know about the Dreadfort?” One teen raised his hand.

“A lot of people died here at the hands of one of your uh, ancestors.”

“Nah dude. He ain’t even human,” his friend cut in. “I watched a youtube video about this dude. He was an animal.”

Royce clapped his hands and laughed. “Careful, he’s my great, great, great, great grandfather. Lord Ramsay Bolton has a bloody history.”

“You’re a direct descendant?” the same girl asked. “That’s so fucked up. He had kids?”

“He had a whole family,” Royce gestured to himself. “Obviously. The seed is strong.”

“He was a vampire, right? That means you’re a vampire too.” Royce laughed even louder.

“We’re gonna put those silly rumors to rest. Let’s get inside the horror house, yeah?”

Royce took the field trip group inside the Dreadfort and started showing them historical aritifacts. How people, especially low borns, lived at the Dreadfort. Outside, everything was placed carefully as if people still lived there. Weaponry hung polished and perfect in the armory. Bedrooms still had original bedsheets and blankets mimicking what it was like to sleep there, including the temperature of the rooms.

“It’s so cold here, what the fuck?”

“Language, Tyrone,” Layne reminded him.

“Sorry, Mrs. Easton. Was it cold here all the time?”

“Yes and no. Fortresses and castles never had central heating and air. They relied on fireplaces and windows to control the temperature of the rooms.”

“Sounds awful,” a girl snapped a pic of outside the window. “Was everyone who lived here miserable?”

“No. In fact, Lady Bolton quite enjoyed the cold.”

“Lady Bolton? Ramsay’s wife? He had a wife?” Tyrone looked confused.

“Yes, again! He had a whole family. Follow me,” Royce took the group to the private dining hall in the Dreadfort. A family portrait of the Boltons stood above the grand fireplace. Roose Bolton stood over them all with Lady Walda by his side. She cradled a small bundle in her arms. Below them was Ramsay and a redheaded girl. The redhead girl’s eyes followed you throughout the room no matter where you stood.

“Is that her? She looks like Hell.”

“She was. Her name is Lilith. Lily for short. She started as a servant for the Boltons.”

“A servant marrying into a noble family? How scandalous!” a girl with glasses laughed. “How did she do it?”

“Lord Ramsay likes redheads. He was interested in her from the beginning. He had many lovers and female servants, but she stuck. She followed his orders to a T. He made her.”

“What do you mean, he made her?” the same vampire commenting teen asked. Royce gestured for all of the teens to sit. They took seats around the dining hall, taking in the wooden dining table and the plush chairs. Royce pulled at curtains, darkening the room around the teens. A smirk hid on his face. The fire was the only source of light in the room. A teen kept a tight grip on his switchblade hidden inside his hoodie.

“What’s all of this?”

“It’s storytime,” Royce sat at the head of the table. “What, are you too scared?” The teen loosened his grip and shook his head.

“Nah. I’m good.”

“Let me tell you the story of Ramsay, Lily, and the first ever recorded purge night.”

“Like the movie? The Purge? Are you serious? That happened?”

“It starts with Lady Bolton up there. Walda had that portrait made for her baby. She took her duties as mistress of the Dreadfort very seriously. Once she had the portrait made, she hung it up for all to see. She was proud to be a Bolton despite their ugly reputation. Ramsay, on the other hand, hated the beautiful painting.” Royce looked into the fire, letting imagination take over. He saw his great, great, great grandfather pace the room.

Ramsay stopped in front of the painting again. He scowled at it. Once he turned, he bumped right into Lily.

“Gods!” Ramsay stepped back. “You’re too quiet. You know that?”

Lily pointed to her ruined tongue, something of his doing.

“Right. Sometimes I regret doing that to you. But then I remember you forced me into doing it. You’ve never lied to me since. And you won’t ever again.” Ramsay caressed her cheek. Lily gave him a smile, but looked to the painting before them.

“I hate it. Her child is above me. I should be the rightful heir. I hate her. I hate him,” Ramsay’s attention turned back to Lily. “I haven’t taught you how to assassinate someone yet.” Lily smiled, picking up what he was implying. She pointed to a guard passing by the room.

“Good. Good question. Walda and the baby are guarded, but I have an idea. Follow me.”

Lily’s red hair flowed behind her, standing out against the soft snow. Their hands brushed against one another’s. Lily was aware of her feelings for her teacher and master. She had often stayed up long nights writing out how she felt, but would always throw it away in the morning. He and Myranda had killed Violet together. She had hoped for that same chance with Myranda.

Still, Myranda stood by his side when Ramsay had gathered the Bastard’s Boys and other bloodthirsty soldiers around him.

“I think it’s time that my father and his wife should be relieved of their duties a rulers of this great house. My father has forgotten his ancestral traditions. Our family used to live like kings. Now, we lived by the grace of the Starks in the North in this pile of shit.” Several guards and boys nodded their heads.

“How do we assassinate him?” someone stupidly asked.

“Don’t use that word,” Myranda scolded. “We cannot be found out before we even start.” Myranda was right. Lily knew. Lily looked out at all of the men. Anyone here would die for Ramsay, not her. She lived for him. As did Myranda.

“We will purge tonight,” Ramsay ordered. “Each one of us will purge ourselves all night long and start anew when we see dawn. After that, we all have a clean slate to carry this house into the future where it belongs, as rulers of the North.”

The idea was too delicious to pass up. Soon, word spread in the nearby villages in quiet whispers. No word had reached Roose’s ears. The Bastard’s Boys reported nothing to their lord. Dusk settled into the Dreadfort’s stones, cooling them off from the day. A single guard took his post for the night. As he sat down, an arrow shot through his ear, killing him instantly.

Another traitor guard took his place and yanked his arrow from his head. He used the bloody arrow again and shot it through a Bolton banner. After seeing the sign, the purge began.

Lily used Ramsay’s daggers at his blessing and slashed her way up to Walda’s room. Myranda followed her, giving her cover and defending her if need be.

“Don’t hold it like that,” Myranda instructed. “Always point the blade out.” Lily narrowed her eyes at the girl. She knew that. She wanted to speak poison back to her, but her stump allowed her only an angry mumbling. Myranda touched her shoulder.

“It’s alright to be nervous. I was too. You’re not alone.”

Lily opened the unguarded, locked door easily. One could claim she had a talent for locks, but no one ever saw her unlock a locked door. It only just opened. Inside the room sat a terrified mother and her infant.

“Please,” Walda begged. “Please spare him. I’ll run off. I won’t ever say anything to anyone. Please!” Lily removed her sympathy several years ago when her own mother left her behind for dead. The dagger sunk into her chest before she could beg more. As Walda took her last breath, Lily could hear screams from inside the Dreadfort. The Purge had taken full effect.

Myranda took the babe into her arms. She calmed him down and smiled down at him. Annoyed, Lily attempted to take the babe from her. Myranda stepped away.

“You don’t have to do this,” she told Lily. “Whatever Ramsay told you to do. You can say no. I know a woman in a nearby village who can take him far away from here.” Lily cocked her eyebrow. Myranda planned this.

Lily moved forward again. Myranda stepped away. “I draw the line at children. Just go and tell Ramsay he’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?” Ramsay appeared behind Myranda. Seeing the squirming infant in her arms, he turned his sights to Lily. “Kill him.”

“No,” Myranda said.

“Did you just—

Ramsay was interrupted by a cut to his face. Blood dripped down his cheek. His anger rose to his chest. “You cut me.”

“Let me take the baby.”

“As long as he breathes, I will never be Lord.”

“Do you think I care?” Myranda shot back. “I’m taking him.” As she pushed past Ramsay, something came over Lily. Seeing Ramsay hurt by his lover, him being told no, it switched something inside. Something she had been hiding this entire time.

Lily jumped on Myranda’s back, sinking her teeth into her neck. It sent all three of them down the stairs, crushing the baby. Myranda tasted so good. Lily had wondered. Myranda never drank, never smoked, and only ever had one sexual partner. Myranda was a feast waiting for the right vampire.

Lily had torn her shoulder apart, reaching some vital arteries. Myranda was already dead when Ramsay had reached the bottom of the stairs. He took in the scene around him. He heard people screaming from other rooms, but this one was quiet. The only sound was Lily’s mouth slurping and swallowing Myranda’s blood and flesh.

The baby laid face down on the stairs, blood pooling around him like a red king.

“How long?” Ramsay asked. “How long have you been this way?”

Lily lifted herself from Myranda and drew on the floor in front of her. Blood and dirt formed the number fourteen.

“You’ve been a vampire all this time you’ve been with my family? That’s why you’ve never aged. Are you a threat?”

Lily shook her head no.

Ramsay looked to the baby. “You are loyal to me. Prove it. Eat the baby.”

Lily crawled over to the infant. As she picked up the infant, blood dripped from his face to the ground. Lily turned the small body over in her hands. Her teeth sank into the baby’s chest. She ate his heart while keeping eye contact with Ramsay. Ramsay could feel gooseflesh taking over his arms.

He had a vampire who was loyal to him. He wasn’t glad or angry. He was scared. He swallowed his fear and kept his eyes on Lily.

“You are more loyal to me than anyone I know. Why? You could kill us all.” Lily dropped the infant. It made a thudding sound on the ground. She drew with her bloody fingers again.

Love.

“You love me? Has our time together given you affection towards me?” Ramsay laughed. He watched Lily’s face fall. “No, no, no. Not like that. I’m only shocked.” Ramsay kneeled down to Lily’s level. His knees cover in the baby’s blood now. He took her face and brought her close to him. “You’re my secret now. No one will know. I will keep you safe.”

“After that night, Lord Ramsay took over and married her. They had four children together and ruled together,” Royce smiled as he finished his story.

“I told you they were fucked up. Who marries a girl after she eats a baby? Like who?”

“Tyrone—

“Language. I know, but still! For real.” Royce stood up and laughed. He walked towards the door.

“Family was very important to my great, great, great grandfather.”

“You keep saying that,” spoke up the know-it-all. “Lord Ramsay Bolton ruled in like the 16th or 17th century right? It’s 2019. Wouldn’t he be like your great grandfather times infinity?” Other students snickered at the joke. Royce snickered too as he locked the door.

“No. Lord Ramsay Bolton is only my great, great, great grandfather. That’s how bloodlines work. Just as Lady Lily is my favorite grandmother.”

“That’s sweet of you to say about someone you never met.” Mrs. Easton walked towards Royce. Royce turned to her with glowing red eyes.

“What do you mean? My grandmother’s right behind you.” Mrs. Easton and her students turned to a gruesome sight. There was Lady Lily Bolton. Her sunken eyes and older bones crawled on the wall towards the family portrait. Students scrambled behind Mrs. Easton for safety.

Mrs. Easton looked to her old friend. “Royce—

“Shut up, Layne. You were always too damn perfect for this world.”

“The kids!”

A singular hiss came from Lily. Her white hair parted so the teens could see her stump salivating and pulsating in her mouth. Royce walked towards his favorite grandmother.

“I really hate kids. They always mess up everything, don’t they?”

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[inyri]

Equivalent Exchange (a SWTOR story): Chapter 38- Checkmate

Equivalent Exchange by inyri Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan Rating: E (this chapter: M) Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire/Knights of the Eternal Throne.)

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Chapter Thirty-Eight: Checkmate

There are few things more delightful than watching an old enemy fall to pieces.

It starts as it always does: a crease at the corner of one eye, a flickering pulse at the edge of a shirt collar, the tap-tap-tap of a fingernail on a polished wood desktop. Trant sits staring as the video plays, jaw clenched so tightly she can see the muscles in his cheek twitch, and she wonders whether he’s angrier at her or at Garza’s carelessness. He’d clearly known about Eclipse Squad- likely far better than she did given the look on his face when she’d first mentioned it; he didn’t strike her as the type to offer no-strings-attached favors, ex-wife or not.

Probably especially not an ex-wife. He had at least two that her own intel knew about, not to mention his charming little habit of getting up the skirts of most of his secretaries. She doesn’t fault the man a divorce or four: getting married in their line of work was a lousy idea and staying that way seemed impossible unless one didn’t mind lying about every single detail of one’s life. But fucking the support staff? That suggested quite a lot about a man, none of it good-

-and those poor fired secretaries had so very many interesting things to say after a few Starshine Surprises.

Eclipse Squad hadn’t stood a chance, not with Rakata tech in their heads and Havoc hunting them. The Republic should have known better than to play with anything the Rakata’d left behind but they always were idiots when it came to pushing the boundaries of science, even after the lessons they should have learned on Tatooine and Belsavis and now Manaan- she knows they knew, she saw their research teams prowling around even as her own crew evacuated- and Garza must have been desperate for new blood once Havoc was unmasked after Corellia. (That had been Chancellor Saresh’s fuckup, probably; the Republic did love its parades. Meanwhile the Empire’s embedded observers managed dozens of high-definition holos of every squad member, right down to the whiskers on the XO’s face.) In any case, with their best SpecForce team out in the open there must have been a lot riding on the program’s success.

Those poor stupid soldiers. It was the sort of thing she would have expected from her own masters once upon a time, though in Science Division’s hands they would have ended up in Shadow Town under a microscope instead of skar’kla food on Rishi. One learns from one’s failures.

Waste not, et cetera.

(Deep in the back of her mind there is a flicker of static, a faint pressure on the crown of her head like pats from a vaguely condescending hand, there and gone again in a moment.

She was stupid once, too. More than once.)

She has to hand it to Havoc Squad, though: even bugfuck crazy the Eclipse soldiers fought hard and Major Janasim and her team cut them down like paper targets, bodies stashed and confirmation holos of each kill in proper professional fashion. Very tidy. Almost admirable, if the woman didn’t seem like such a trigger-happy psychopath. It’s understandable, too, why she’d let Garza walk- favors make the galaxy go ‘round, after all, and it sounds like Havoc must have owed their general more than a few.

Not that it’ll keep her from using it against all of them.

If Trant wants to turn this into a shadow war with Theron as collateral, she’ll bring the SIS down around his ears and as much of the Republic as she can drag into the wreckage. That probably isn’t proper. That probably isn’t what a Commander ought to do. Then again, she never wanted to run this Alliance in the first place.

Oh, well. Waste not, et cetera.

She turns her attention back to the holo.

“-but I have some pull with the SIS director,” Garza said thoughtfully, cupping her chin with one gloved hand. “Say goodbye to the uniform, but I’d be back running ops within the year.”

The major still had blood on her face, a wide spatter across one high cheekbone and the riveted patch where her left eye should have been. They never did get footage of what exactly she’d done to Corovani- the cameras in that sector were pointed in just the wrong direction, not that it mattered much with Garza’s precious safehouse bugged to the rafters- but she can guess. “Those spies are in for a shock." Her lips curled into a smirk. “They could use a little SpecForce training.”  

Trant taps his fingertips on the desktop one last time before resting his palms flat against the surface. His shoulders rise and fall, a breath drawn in and out with a whistle on the exhale like air out of a balloon; a single sharp click registers in her right ear and for a second she thinks he’s patched someone else into the call until she sees a panel light blinking on the far wall. Second light from the top. The bridge.

Oh, Theron. She pulls her focus back to the recording as it freezes on its last frame, forces her body to relax and her face to maintain its perfect smiling mask. However long he’s been listening he won’t like what he hears, but that’s not her problem now. You never do follow orders worth a damn, do you?

“I went to her funeral, you know.” Trant leans back in his chair. “Janasim. She died on a siege attempt on some Zakuulan outpost- saved the rest of the squad before they got her. Hero to the end and all that. Elin always liked her.” He picks up a stylus and traces two circles in the air where the projection sits in front of him, one around each woman’s face. “Now I see why. Two peas in the same bitch pod.”

Charming to the end, this one. She lets it go. “Personal feelings aside, you have to admit the footage is damning. Science experiments gone wrong, a whole fort massacred and the military covering it all up? Media catnip.”

“You’re still assuming I care.” He’s going to break a tooth if he doesn’t unclench his jaw. “Ex-wife, Cipher Nine. If that’s your leverage-”

“Oh, Marcus. You’re missing the obvious connection.”

One eyebrow lifts, his eyes narrowing.

“I don’t fault you for not caring what happens to her,” she says. He cares. She can tell. But that isn’t the point. “But how much do you think she cares about what happens to you? You’ve got a war criminal running your ops division and when this gets out the reporters will come running. It’s only a matter of time before the Senate follows, and who knows what they’ll dig up?”

“I hate to break it to you, but by most definitions we’re all war criminals- you and Agent Shan included. So one op went bad? It happens. It’ll blow over.”

She laughs; his gaze flickers back to the still-paused holovid. Nearly there. Nearly. “I never said I wasn’t. And this is just an aperitif. Do you think they’d like to hear about Ardun Kothe- how a high-and-mighty Jedi let his team torture a poor little defector? Or should we go back further? I’m sure the Cathar would love to know what really happened to Prince Shange. Or Ralltiir, perhaps. Messy. Very messy.”

Trant blanches.

(A particularly nasty little mission, Ralltiir, even by wartime standards. He wasn’t even Bureau Chief back then according to the Black Codex, let alone Director, so it’s not entirely fair play. Too bad for him. He lost the right to fair play when he called in the mark.)

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?” She sits up just a little straighter. “I can keep going, if you like. But you’re a clever man. Surely you can see where this ends.”

The stylus cracks in half as his hand spasms; its tip bounces once, twice along the desktop and then lies still.

“Or we settle this like civilized people.” Deactivating the recording, she extends one hand toward him with fingers uncurled. “Everyone’s dirty little secrets stay secret, starting with these. All it takes is one message to your people, Director Trant. Call it off. Now.”

The other half of the stylus falls, resting alongside its mate. “You realize it’ll take you down too? If you do this-”

“It might. I’ll risk it.”

He sits in silence for the better part of a minute, eyes half-closed, lost to thought, and she waits. These things take time. He isn’t wrong, either- if this mess goes that deep it’ll be hard to avoid. But he doesn’t have proof, not with her dossier wiped for all those years, and she’s never pretended to be a model of virtue. All of his name-calling aside, her people know what she is- was-

Is?

She doesn’t know any more.

Let him try. Better that than Theron running, looking back over his shoulder for the rest of their lives. Better that than-

“All right. I’ll call them.” Voice hollow, he stares flatly into the camera. “I always liked Theron, you know. He was a good kid. A good agent, until you got your claws into him.”

“He still is. But you know that.”

The war’s been hard on all of them and Marcus Trant isn’t a young man; he must be seventy by now, or close to it, and in that moment he looks every single one of those years. He reaches out slowly, one fingertip hovering over the disconnect switch of his holoprojector.

“I don’t understand you,” she says quietly. “You fought the Empire at every step, even during peacetime. You fought for your Republic as hard as any frontline soldier, and now you’re content to sit and let Zakuul strangle you? Every Star Fortress barricading your planets, every new factory-”

“I know war.” He glances off to one side, out a window by the way the light slants across his face. “I know war enough to know when my side can’t win. They’re strangling all of us- but those last few breaths last longer if you don’t struggle, don’t they? You’ll figure that out soon enough. Now get off my line.”

He flips the switch; the projection cuts off.

When she’s certain the channel’s closed, she sags forward in her chair and rests her head in her shaking hands.

***

Fully five minutes pass before she settles herself and she still can’t quite push away the feeling that something isn’t right.

She needs to talk Theron.

When she rises from her chair her body’s exhausted, as though she’s been running for hours. Is she that out of practice? The idea’s absurd. She hadn’t even needed to push Trant that hard before he’d buckled, which-

No. No, he said he’d make the call. He- what if-

She needs to talk to Theron. Catching up her datapad, she unlocks the door and heads to the front of the ship.

He looks up when she crosses the threshold, seemingly startled; she knows it’s a lie, of course. In the silent ship he would have heard her coming all the way down the corridor, heavy dress boots echoing on the floor.

“That bad?”

She shrugs and reaches past him to flip the comm switch, closing the still-open link between the war room and the bridge, and Theron flinches ever so slightly. There’s no point in arguing over it- he knows she knows and that’s enough, and they were neither of them any good at keeping their noses where they didn’t belong. That was too hard a habit to break. “You tell me. You worked for Marcus Trant for years: is he telling the truth, or not?”

“I don’t- hang on.” The navicomputer’s active and he swivels his chair toward it, locking in the last set of jump calculations to Voss. “It’s hard to be sure, but I think he is. If it was just Garza on the hook he might have risked standing his ground, but he’s been fighting to keep ops reports out of the Senate’s hands for decades. If I’d known that was your bluff-”

“You think I was bluffing?” Leaning against the center console, she folds her arms across her chest. “If Trant hadn’t balked, or if he’d hung up on me, the Coruscant Sun was about to get the tip of a lifetime- and about two dozen other newsrooms after that, depending on how long it took him to come around. And I knew you weren’t going to like it, which is why you weren’t supposed to hear it.”

Theron blinks, shuts down the navicomputer, and then sits back in his chair with a deep sigh and a shake of his head. “I didn’t ask you to protect me. I definitely didn’t ask you to offer to throw yourself to the wolves to do it.”

“I’m supposed to be in charge of this mess, Theron. That’s my job, and if that’s what it takes-”

“No. Absolutely not.”

It’s her turn to blink now, head tilted, at the vehemence in his voice. “I’m sorry,” she says carefully, “but that’s not up to you. I understand that you feel you owe him and-”

He cuts her off again, sharper. “Yeah, I do, but that’s not what I meant. I meant that I don’t need you to-” wrinkling his nose, he rephrases- “I don’t want you to throw yourself in front of my problems. It made sense for you to be the one to make the call, sure, but I won’t watch you get hurt by this. I just- I won’t, okay?”

That’s-

Oh. An old wound, but still a deep one; as she looks down at him he exhales and lets go of the armrests, deep half-circles marks from his nails embedded in the padding. But who?

(Not his father, certainly not his mother. An old friend or an ops partner, maybe- he liked to work alone, but-

And then she wonders, just for a moment, how Ngani Zho died. She knows where and when it happened- during the mission that destroyed the Sun Razer in the Vesla system- from her brief glimpse at the archive file-

She thinks she might know how, too. Poor Theron.)

“I-” She sighs. Theron reaches out to wrap both hands around her forearms, pulling her away from the console; she lets herself relax and be led, takes a step forward until they’re toe to toe. “I know. I know. But I won’t, either, and I will do what I have to if this doesn’t go the way we think.”

His grip shifts, arms around her waist now, and he leans forward to rest his forehead against her stomach. “Did anyone ever tell you,” he says, half-muffled, “that you’re impossible?”

“Frequently. Not so much when I’m trying to keep them alive-” she bends, kissing the top of his head as the same time he makes an irritated noise and pinches her ass, which she’ll take; at least he knows she’s trying to lighten the mood, even if he’s still angry which- well, it’s fair, isn’t it? “In any case, it’s over. I hope. If you thought I was bluffing, he might too, and we won’t know that until the hammer falls.”

“No, you’re right. Marcus doesn’t know you like I do. You threw him completely off his game, better than anyone I’ve ever seen- he can’t predict you. He’s got no reason to doubt you’ll do exactly as you say.”

“But you do?”

Theron sighs again and pulls her in tighter. “I know you’re more than your dossier. I know you aren’t-”

He trails off, then; when she glances down he’s already looking up at her with tired eyes. She should have kept him further out of this, shouldn’t she? He’s too close to it, too tethered by his history to ever be able to pull himself completely free (and that he’d left the SIS at all was her fault, he’d said as much that first morning when they woke- he hadn’t said fault and he never would and they could blame it on the war all they wanted but they both know the truth of it, deep down). “Hm?”

“Who was Shange?” he says, apropos of nothing. “The name’s familiar, but I feel like I can’t remember why.”

“Before our time, technically speaking. He was a Cathar prince from back during the Great War who opposed their alliance with the Republic- apparently he amassed quite a following. The SIS scooped up the the lot of them and shipped them off to Belsavis.” There had been a lot of things in the Tomb that belonged there, sithspawn and their masters and worse. But not those Cathar. “Slapped them in indefinite stasis and let the rumor spread around that they’d all been killed in battle.”

“And then?”

She shrugs. “SCORPIO wasn’t the only thing I dug up on my first run through that place. His temper hadn’t improved after twenty years, and if word of his survival hasn’t spread in the Core Worlds I can only assume it’s because someone’s been working very hard to keep it quiet.”

“Probably a safe guess. And Ralltiir?”

Carefully, she pushes a stray piece of hair from where it’s falling over his implant. “You don’t want to know about Ralltiir. Trust me.”

“But you’re more than happy to publicize it?” Theron goes still for a moment, then turns his head sharply away from her hand. “That isn’t fair and you know it.”

“Fair to whom? None of this is fair!” she snaps. Even looking away he’s still holding on to her and she squirms away, takes a step back toward the console. Damn it all, why’d he have to eavesdrop and not leave well enough alone? “And of course I’m not happy about it. Believe it or not, I’m not trying to start a fight with the man- he’s been eyes-deep in war since long before either of us were born. On one level I respect that-” Theron starts to say something but she keeps going- “and if he keeps his fucking word it’s all bluster in any case. But if he doesn’t-”

“He will.” Suddenly plaintive, half-standing, he pulls her back in nearer. “He will. I’m sure of that much, I just- please, I’m sorry. Marcus just-”

Poor Theron. He’s got her wrapped up close again and she doesn’t resist, doesn’t have the heart to, not with the look on his face. Instead she tidies his hair again and this time he leans into it with a little shudder that might have been anger or grief or resignation or all of that wrapped up together.

“I would have thought he’d understand,” he finally says. “Out of everyone, I thought he’d get it. Or that all the years we worked together would count for enough to balance out how much he seems to hate you.”

“I suppose I rather deserve it, all things considered.”

Forehead scrunched, he mutters something she can’t quite hear. “You had your orders back then, just like me. Whatever you did- just do what you have to now, Nine. I know you won’t pull punches and I’m not asking you to, but I also know that you’ll take this as far as it needs to go and no further.”

“And if it has to go that far?” He always thinks the best of her and she wishes he wouldn’t. There were so many things he didn’t know, shouldn’t know, that- well. (He never saw her with Hunter, at the end. He’s heard the story, but-)

“Then I trust your judgment. It’s gotten us here, hasn’t it?”

When she laughs he moves with her; she lets her fingers tangle up in the crease of his collar. “I think you forgot the part where I ended up frozen in carbonite for five years with a ghost in my head.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Do I?”

“Force, you really are impossible.” Theron leans back once more, sharp and sudden and pulling her up and off her feet until she has to let him go to catch herself against the back of the chair. “Come here and let me say I’m sorry properly. You’re hauling my idiot ass out of the fire and there I go, questioning. You’d think I’d learn by now.”

The bridge seats really aren’t meant for two. “That isn’t necessary. Honestly.”

“I thought you liked my apologies.” He shifts his hands and- that is rather nice, actually. A little groveling never did any harm, did it?

She considers. “Hm. We really ought to go and pack, you know. For tomorrow.”

“You can pack in three minutes. I’ve watched you.”

“Might need a uniform for Voss-” and he’d better not pop the fastenings on this one; she taps his already-busy fingers as a gentle warning. Normally she doesn’t mind a lost button or three but she won’t have time to mend it before morning, not at this rate. “Leave me at least five.”

***

They’ve got hours to pack yet, even after they drag themselves back to the mess hall for dinner; her stomach’s been tied up in nervous knots all day and the little midday meal she’d forced herself to eat burned off quickly in the wake of Theron’s apologetic attentions. (They were both adrenaline junkies and she’d known that for ages, all the way back to Rishi, but it’d taken her far longer to realize as as often as he swore he didn’t want her to put herself on the front lines of things he was particularly enthusiastic when she did.

Not that she minds- she’s always had a thing for competence herself, just another of the ways they were too alike for their own good. They’ll run Odessen out of spare zippers before the war’s end at this rate.)

She leaves him in the hallway outside the mess. He hadn’t moved everything upstairs yet, only what he’d had in his gear when they came back from the last op, and he’d needed to make a stop at his own quarters to pick up a few more things before their last planning meeting with Lana- “I’ll be fine,” he’d said, nudging her shoulder as they finished up their caf. “I think I can handle a few steps down the hallway on my own.”

He’s right, of course. It’s only her paranoia getting the better of her. It does that too often nowadays, not quite as badly as it did in the old days with Hunter where every word, every action was a thing to be second-guessed but very nearly; she’s not quite sure, now, whether that gnawing doubt’s her own tendency to overthink or Valkorion’s meddling. Source notwithstanding she’s still alive, so she’ll let that question sit unconsidered for now. The less she thinks about him the quieter he stays.

As she rounds the corner toward her room she scans through her comm: half an hour until the meeting yet and a few messages from Oggurobb and Sana-Rae and one from Doctor Lokin- she’s got yet another treatment on the books, it seems, before he’ll sign off on a field mission. Damned overbearing old man; if she never sees the inside of that infirmary again it’ll be too soon-

The door to her quarters slides open in response to her code.

“Hello, Commander.” SCORPIO’s sitting in the dark, balanced almost primly on the nearer edge of the couch. Her head turns until the orange glow of her eyes illuminates that corner of the room, the sharp outlines of her chassis barely visible. “I’ve detected a security issue that requires your attention.”

“You might have sent a message.” Resisting the urge to turn and run- not that she’d really ever had reason to since that first meeting, but still, she doubts any of her protective programming made it past a few iterations- she taps the panel at her left to secure the room. “I like messages. I don’t like unexpected visitors.”

Was that an eyeroll? It’s hard to tell. “Messages can be intercepted. As you see.” One arm extended, SCORPIO gestures toward her commpad. “Given your failure to request that I transmit the data, I can only assume your negotiations went well?”

Ignoring the question as her wrist chimes, she scans the text as it loads and then looks up with one eyebrow raised. What is this? If they’ve got a contraband problem it’s the first she’s heard of it- and whoever the sender is, why’s he sending it to Theron instead of to Hylo or-

Ah.

Of course.

“It’s worth investigating. However-” clearing the screen, she folds her arms across her chest- “we agreed on limited access to the security network, if I recall correctly. I certainly don’t remember telling you to intercept personal memoranda.”

“You expressly permitted monitoring of the common area surveillance systems. If you’ve forgotten, I can replay our discussion.”

“No. I do remember that. But that doesn’t explain-”

“The version you read is the last of twelve drafts. Given that its author disabled the alarm in the sub-basement storage area and has been sequestered there for the last-” her eyes flick upward, barely perceptibly- “thirty-six minutes and eight seconds, I considered the deviation from our set parameters acceptable.”

It might be nothing. They’ve found their SIS infiltrator, almost certainly (or at least one of them, Void knows there might be more), but he might just want out of the transport lockdown and frankly if that’s all he wants they can work with that and he can fuck back off to Coruscant. It might even be legitimate. With as many new arrivals as the Alliance has had it’s not implausible that they’ve picked up a smuggler or two operating outside of Hylo’s oversight.

It might be nothing.

It’s probably something. “Theron hasn’t seen this?”

“Not yet. I will, of course, defer to your orders.” Head tilted, SCORPIO focuses on her once again. “Intercept? Or transmit?”

He ought to know about this. If this is what she thinks it is he ought to have a say in how it’s handled. But if his faith in Trant was misplaced after all, if she sends him walking straight into a trap and stars, if it’s someone he knows and he hesitates-

No. She won’t risk it. She can’t.

“Intercept.” Lifting her tactical belt from its place on the armor stand, she fastens it around her hips, slips her knife into its sheath and checks the little blaster already holstered in her waistband. “No reply, but do not let him see that message. And make sure he gets to the War Room safely- find some excuse or send an escort. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Yes, Commander.” SCORPIO rises, swift and silent. “Anything else?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve got a mole to hunt.”

***

The second sublevel ought to be deserted.

They haven’t quite finished it, the dormitory building beside the docking bay not yet at full capacity and the storage on the first floor still enough for their purposes. In another month or two that might change, but for now only the largest storeroom’s in use at all. Whoever’s down here now, he shouldn’t be. The room’s unsecured too, the keypad dark with a thin rim of space around it that shouldn’t be there either. Sloppy, then, or not afraid of being detected.

Probably the latter. She isn’t sure if that makes her more or less nervous.

One hand on her vibroknife, Nine pushes the door open slowly. Overhead, the light flickers; she looks for movement in the shadows cast by the stacks of crates. Nothing.  She takes a step into the room and then another, lets her steps be heard-

And then she sees it, too late, and as the door snaps abruptly shut she can’t quite get her hands up before the garotte bites into her throat.

***

Author's Note: Still alive. Really. Since our last update, I have: officially gotten my new job (I start in July), put our house up for sale, finished a costume despite being ever-increasingly pregnant, gone to Star Wars Celebration, fought off two weeks of con crud, and become an aunt- in no particular order. As I suspect you can guess, what was lacking in that time span was... time, really. But here we are, back in the swing of things at last.

Up next: Extinction Burst. Play bitch games, win bitch prizes.

[thereisnoyellinginfantasycostco]

“All That Lives Must Die” Part 8

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7]

Barry was on a bounty when he got his call. Flicking his wrist to answer the stone, Barry sandwiched it between his shoulder and his ear as he walked towards the fortress, “‘Yello?”

“Barry what have I said about answering the phone with that word?” Taako’s voice teased, a slight laugh echoing out, “Anyway, you busy?”

“Nah.” Barry raised his foot up and kicked down the door, sending the necromantic circle scrambling. A flick of his wrist and he severed two of their souls from their bodies to send them to the Eternal Stockade, “What’s up, Taks?” Another flick and three souls were sent to the stockade.

“Oh, I’m hosting a small shindig for the Birds, and well, we’d need all of the Birds there to really make it a party.”

“A small shindig? You’re hosting a small shindig?” Barry laughed, shaking his head as much as he could without dislodging the stone, “Anyway, I’m in. When should I be there?” He scraped his scythe across the chalk circle on the floor, breaking the spell.

“Now.” Taako’s voice was calm, weirdly calm, “Mags, Merle, and Lucy are already here. We just need you, Lulu, and Dav to get them all here.”

“Oh...I’ll be there in a few minutes. I just gotta finish up my current bounty.” He slashed with his scythe, finishing off the other three necromancers in the room. “There we go.”

“You’re on the bounty right now? Jort man you told me you weren’t busy!”

“Don’t call me Jort man, and I wasn’t! I took your call didn’t I?”

“I call you Jort man because you wear jorts and they disgust me. You digust me.”

“Yeah sure, Taks. I disgust you and that’s why you’re inviting me to your ‘small shindig’.”

“I’m only inviting you because Lup would’ve done it anyway.”

“Liar.” Barry voice was sing-song as he laughed, hand moving to tear a portal in the air, “I’ll grab some clothes and be there right away.”

“Good...I’ll be waiting.” Again, there was another weird tone in Taako’s voice, but Barry ignored it.

Getting his clothes was easy, Barry always kept a bag stocked with enough pairs of jeans and jean shirts to stay for the minimum of three weeks away. Small shindig, his ass. Picking up the duffle bag (jean of course), he slung the strap over one shoulder as he tore a portal to Taako and Kravitz’s home. Flicking his hand to at the very least appear normal, Barry stepped through.

The home looked as it always did, calm and peaceful and picturesque. Taako and Kravitz lived an hour away from Taako’s School Of Wizardry (whatever it was called, Barry couldn’t remember), and had somehow chosen the only place that was in the middle of a meadow.

When he first visited, he couldn’t believe it belonged to Taako the Wizard. It looked almost...mundane from the outside. But it was relaxing, both outside and inside, emanating waves of calmness.

He knocked on the door, rocking on his heels as he waited for the door to be answered. Barry got his answer in a few seconds.

Taako threw open the door, looping his arm around Barry’s neck and dragging him inside, “Barry! Wow, my dude, you weren’t kidding when you said you’d be right over.” Turning them around, he kicked the door shut behind him.

Barry looked around, noticing that Lucretia, Magnus, Merle, Angus, and Kravitz were here already. “Wow, this party’s gunna be around nine people, are you sure this really is a small shindig?”

“Positive, Jort man,” Taako chuckled, pushing him towards the couches, “I’ll go get you a cup of tea.”

For some reason, when he mentioned tea, Barry noticed that Magnus and Merle’s faces went pale.

As Taako moved towards the kitchen, Magnus moved towards Barry and grabbed him by the arm. He dragging him towards Angus’s bedroom and Merle hopped off of the couch to follow them.

The door shut with a click and a lock behind them and Magnus took Barry by the shoulders, “Don’t drink the tea Taako’s going to give you.”

“Wh-what?” Barry raised his eyebrow at him, “Taako- Guys what’s going on?”

“Something’s wrong with Taako, like really and truly wrong. Angus, Lucy, and Krav are all under some heavy fucking charm person. Angus was the one who called me and Merle here, but he got got when he confronted Taako about charming Lucy. We’re worried.”

Barry frowned, detaching from Magnus’s hands as he paced around the Boy Detective’s room, “Do we know what his goal in all of this?”

“No, but we think it has something to do with all of the Birds being in one place together.”

“The kid said he had some kinda hypothesis, but he never told us what it was before he got...got.”

“Okay, fuck. Knowing Taako-”

“We don’t know Taako, not like how he is right now.” Magnus scowled, crossing his arms over his chest, “The Taako we know would never charm his family, the Taako we know wouldn’t look that like.”

“Look like what?”

“Didn’t you see it? The black shit on his face?”

“Guys, what black shit?” Barry tilted his head at them.

“Shit, he must be using disguise self again.” Magnus cursed, chewing on his bottom lip.

“Okay so...what do we know right now?” Barry frowned, sitting down in Angus’s chair.

“Okay uhh, Taako recently came back from the dead, something was wrong with his soul, Krav was charmed almost immediately, he seems almost obsessed with getting all seven birds in this house at once, reapers aren’t immune to his charm person so don’t think you’re immune.”

“Damn, wait Taako died?”

“Yeah, something happened with Lup and him, we’re not sure what.”

Barry cast a look towards his stone of far speech, “Lup never told me another like that…”

“She must’ve had a reason to.”

“Well-” Whatever was going to follow up Barry’s words was interrupted by Taako opening the door (didn’t they lock it?).

“So this is where you guys ran off too!” Taako laughed, throwing his arm around Barry’s neck, “Now, how about I get you that cup of tea.”

Barry froze up and tried his best to smile at Taako, “Thanks, but no thanks, Taks.”

“Oh...well then you have to see this weird sciencey thing that showed up in my basement.”

“...Sciencey thing?” Barry asked, turning towards Taako.

“Sciencey thing.” He confirmed, using his grip on Barry’s neck to turn them both around and drag him out of Angus’s room. Casting a look over his shoulder, Taako’s grin sharpened towards his friends, before he made it much more amicable and turned back towards Barry, “I was hoping you’d do some tests on it and try to find out what exactly it is.”

“Oh I’d love to help you out, Taako.” He grinned and easily followed Taako downstairs.

As their shoes sounded against the metal stairs, and as the light from upstairs started getting further and further away, Taako’s grip turned hard and sharp on Barry’s shoulder, “What were you talking about with Merle and Magnus?”

“W-what?” Barry tried to push away from Taako, “We were just catching up.”

“Don’t lie to me, Jort man.” Slowly, Taako’s disguise fell. The dark purple tendrils were now curling around his left eye too, the ooze glowing slightly in the dim light, “What were you talking about?” He seemed to be a lot stronger than before, easily staying close and dragging him down the stairs.

“I told you, we were just catching up.”

Taako’s eyes, poisoned though they were with the purple, glittered in the low light, “Ohhh…” He drawled out, thick with sudden understanding, “They were telling you about me...weren’t they?” He drew his wand from his thigh high boot and purple smoke was cast out of the end of the wand, “What did they say?”

The smoke curled around Barry’s body, and he felt his words being tugged out of his body. “They told me about how you died and came back weird.” He tried to lift his hands up to cover his traitorous mouth, but Taako kept his hands by his sides, “Magnus and Merle told me how Angus called them here because he was worried about, and how you charmed Lucy, Krav, and Angus. How they don’t know your plan.” The words were painful as they were pulled out of him and he shuddered.

Taako’s lips curled up into a wicked grin. “Huh,” He said, “Guess the old man was right, Zone of Truth really is useful.” Another flick of his wand and the smoke dissipated. “Though, can’t have you running up and decharming them all so...sorry about this. I’ll come get you in a bit.” He pointed his wand at Barry, digging the tip under his chin, “Sleep tight, Bar.”

Barry felt his vision going back, and the last thing he heard was the sound of a doorbell and hearing Taako say something.

“Oh, she’s here too. Fantastic.”

[Part 9]

[lopithecusfanfiction]

When I Count My Blessings, I Count You Twice

Author: Lopithecus Pairing: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne Rating: Teen+ Word Count: 5540 Alternate: AO3, fanfiction.net Summary: Clark goes to the Manor to visit Bruce. Set just after Batman Beyond. Warnings: Major Character Death Author's Note: This is for the SuperBat Secret Santa and is for @boxymilk!

There seems to be some confusion on how many years pass between the end of Btas/JLU aka “now” and Batman Beyond. Some say 40 years, others say 50 years. I’ve decided to go with 45 years and then tack on 5 more years for this fic. That means this fic takes place 5 years after Batman Beyond.

Boxymilk, I hope you enjoy this! I’m sorry it’s so sad!! Hopefully the second story for your gift makes up for my cruelness. XD

Enjoy and happy holidays!! Prompt: Batman Beyond

Ages:

Bruce: 87

Clark: 86

Dick: 71

Jason: 69

Tim: 67

Damian: 60

Terry: 22

Clark is in the Fortress of Solitude when he gets the call. It's from Terry, the kid sounding distant and in shock. Clark doesn't have to ask Terry why it's so important that he get to the Manor. Clark already knows, a gut feeling that he has as Terry says the words. Clark is careful not to react, to just stand there listening to the modern-day Batman without giving away the fact that his heart is constricting in his chest. Instead he tells the young man that he will be there shortly, then hangs up.

Clark doesn't feel right as he flies towards the Manor, the house that holds so many memories, good and bad. He's made some good memories in the house himself, with Bruce's children and Bruce himself. Some of those memories he cherishes greatly, never wanting to forget them. Some memories are only for Bruce and Clark’s minds, never to be told to another living soul. Some memories Bruce and Clark will die with.

As he gets closer to the house, Clark slows his flying. Despite his decelerated aging, Clark’s powers still represent his age. He's gotten weaker with age, not as fast, doesn't have as much energy. His physicality has been changing imperceptibly, humans not having noticed. But Clark does notice and so does Diana and J’onn. Being in his eighties has not been good for Clark, at least in a Kryptonian who is exposed to yellow sun radiation perspective. He's been feeling his age as of late and dreads to see how he feels when he reaches two hundred years old.

Clark hasn't told Bruce about the effects aging has had on him. He doesn't see the point in burdening Bruce with such knowledge. Not when Bruce himself has been feeling older and older as the years pass. It didn't seem fair or courteous to complain about his own aging woes. After all, what Clark felt, Bruce felt a hundred times stronger.

But none of that matters now. It doesn't matter because Clark is landing in front of the back door that leads into the kitchen where the whole family is gathered, dreading going inside. He enters anyway. Clark has to be strong right now. He can't break down when the family needs him.

As soon as Clark enters the Manor, he is greeted by arguing between Damian and Terry. He's not surprised to see this happening. Damian didn't like Terry the moment the Wayne heir met the kid. Damian has always been mad that Bruce had given the Batman title to Terry and often times takes it out on Terry. Terry, on the other hand, didn't have a problem with Damian until Damian started picking fights with him. It had always bothered Bruce that they would fight over such a stupid thing.

“Well maybe,” Damian begins. “If you hadn't of become The Batman in the first place, Father wouldn't have been so stressed and he wouldn't be in the condition he is in now.”

“Come on, Dami,” Dick says, voice raspy with age. “You know that isn't true.”

Both Damian and Terry ignore Dick, Terry continuing on with the argument with Damian. “Without me being here, Bruce would have died long before now.”

“Tt, right,” Damian snarls but the wrinkles around his mouth make it look less intimidating than it did when Damian took over the Batman role. “Because you being so sloppy didn't give him daily aneurysms.”

“Sloppy!” Terry’s hand clenches into a fist.

A long and tired sigh escapes Tim’s old lungs. “Guys, can you stop arguing? This really isn't the time.”

“Tt.” Damian crosses his arms and turns away from the youngest member of the group. Terry glares at Damian’s back.

“You're sixty years old but I'm glad to see you haven't grown out of your childish stage, Demon Spawn,” Jason’s thick and scratchy voice says quietly from the older man’s corner.

“Shut the hell up, Todd.” Damian narrows his eyes. “Don’t you think I've outgrown that nickname?”

“Apparently not,” Tim mutters and Damian growls at him.

“I might be old, but I can still kick your ass, Drake,” Damian snarls.

Tim stands up straighter, his bones cracking and popping. “Try me.”

Dick steps in between the two, hands out to both sides to stop the two men. “Okay, enough. This isn't the time, just like you said Timmy.”

Clark has seen and heard enough so he finally clears his throat, not having been noticed yet. He realizes in that moment just how invisible he's become with age. Not that he is complaining. After so many years of being in the spotlight, it's nice to not be noticed for once.

All eyes turn to him, a mixture of shock and relief flooding old and young eyes. Terry is the first to speak, being the one with the fastest reflexes. “Superman, you made it.”

Clark steps into the room more. “Of course.” He looks around the room. “Where is he?”

Terry looks around at the others but no one offers up an answer. No one even meets Clark’s eyes. Clark recognizes the looks that each of the boys have, the demeanor of not wanting to acknowledge what is going on. Terry frowns and gestures for Clark to follow. Clark does silently, the weight in his chest getting heavier as he walks the halls and rooms he's become so familiar with. So many things he could reminisce about.

Terry sighs gloomily beside him. “All of those guys have already gone and seen him.”

Clark nods, swallowing thickly. “And you?”

The twenty-two year old shrugs. “Yeah.”

Clark eyes the kid. “Are you okay?”

Again, Terry shrugs. “I don't know why, but I thought I would be older when it happened.” Clark turns straight ahead once more, his throat closing up. “I have so much more I can learn from him.”

Clark swallows several times, trying to rid the lump in his throat. “You'll be able to learn from the League.”

Terry is eyeing him now. “Are you okay?”

They stop in front of Bruce’s bedroom. The door is shut and Clark hates to find out what awaits him on the other side. He gives the young man a soft smile. It doesn't reach his eyes. “Let me get back to you on that.”

Terry nods and turns to leave. Before the kid disappears, Terry shifts to face him. “I'm sorry.” The young man then walks away, hands in pant pockets.

Clark watches the kid go until he can no longer see Terry’s back. Turning back to the door, Clark takes a deep breath and opens it, walking in hesitantly. What greets him takes his breath away and Clark has to force down the tears, blinking them away before they can fall. He doesn't want to cry yet, for Bruce’s sake. If Clark does, it'll upset Bruce and then Bruce will tease him to cover up how the man is feeling.

Clark walks into the room and shuts the door behind him. Bruce lies there on his bed, oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose. There is a chair situated next to the bed, where Clark assumes the kids had sat earlier. The blinds are drawn closed and the light is off in the room except for the soft glow of a night light next to the bed. If Clark hadn’t of known what was happening, it would almost seem peaceful.

A cough comes from the bed and Bruce’s head slowly turns to peer at Clark. The older man is glaring at him. “You going to just stand there or are you going to come over here?”

Clark is by his side in an instant, helping Bruce to sit up. The man groans and flinches at the pain moving causes but otherwise doesn't complain. When Bruce is sat up and has pulled down the oxygen mask, Clark sits down in the chair. “How are you?” he asks.

Bruce is still glaring. “No better than I was ten years ago.” Clark gives Bruce a small smile for the man’s effort at a joke. Bruce rolls his eyes then falls into a coughing fit. Clark grabs the water that has been placed on the side table and holds it out to Bruce. Bruce waves it away and so Clark sets it back down. When the coughing stops, Bruce sighs tiredly. “Stop looking so concerned.”

“I'm not,” Clark replies and it earns him Bruce rolling his eyes. “Seriously, Bruce, how are you feeling? Can I get you anything?”

“No,” is Bruce's sharp reply. Then those icy blue eyes are on Clark. “Actually yes. You can help me onto the balcony.”

Alarmed, Clark asks, “Are you sure that's wise?”

“When do I ever do anything that isn't completely thought out and planned? I'll be fine.”

“But-”

“I'm dying, Clark, not incompetent,” Bruce interrupts. Clark frowns and it earns him another eye roll. “Stop looking so sad. We all knew this was coming. Do you think I couldn't tell when you were listening to my heart weakening these past couple weeks?” Bruce throws the covers off himself and swings his legs off the side of the bed. “I'm still Batman.”

“I think Terry would disagree,” Clark says, attempting to joke.

“Terry is a child and is stupid.” Bruce strains as he tries to stand and Clark is up and out of the chair immediately, grabbing a hold of Bruce’s arm and hauling him up. He steadies the man with one arm around Bruce’s slim waist and they both slowly make their way to the balcony. Once there, Bruce settles, leaning on the railing.

Clark watches him carefully. “You don’t mean that.” Bruce grimaces, not having a retort because Clark is right. Bruce knows it. Terry might not be Tim level of genius but the kid isn’t stupid by any means.

“He’s unskilled,” Bruce finally rasps, coughing again. When the man settles, Bruce peers out into the garden. Clark wonders what it must look like to Bruce. In the dark, Clark can see the overgrown hedges and dying flowers perfectly but he’s Kryptonian and Bruce isn’t. Plus, Bruce is old. The eighty-seven year old’s eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be. “I let the garden get away from me,” Bruce continues before Clark can comment on Terry being unskilled.

Clark places a hand on Bruce’s back, feels how small and fragile the man has become. He has to swallow around the lump again. “You did your best.”

“Alfred always took care of it. I tried after he…” Bruce trails off, clears his throat that then sends him into another coughing fit.

Clark pets Bruce’s back gently. “You did very well.”

Bruce huffs, the one he does when he thinks someone is being idiotic. “No, I didn’t. Don’t lie.”

Clark smiles at being called out. It doesn’t matter how old Bruce gets, the man is still as sharp as ever. “Sorry.”

Silence descends around them, engulfing the balcony and filling it with heavy air that makes it hard to breathe. Clark wishes he was anywhere but here, wishes that this wasn’t happening. He wishes he wasn’t a Kryptonian with the knowledge of how much longer he has to live without Bruce in his life. Clark swallows thickly, his eyes burning with the need to shed tears. He’s not sure he wants to live in a world without Bruce Wayne.

Bruce is eyeing him and Clark avoids eye contact. He’s afraid that if he looks into those blue eyes that he loves so much, he won’t be able to hold back his emotions anymore. He doesn’t want to cry in front of Bruce, show how much this whole thing is tearing him up inside. After all, all of it is happening to Bruce. Bruce is the one that is going away to an unknown place. Clark is just being left behind.

Bruce’s hand on Clark’s cheek startles Clark out of his thoughts. Finally, they both lock eyes and Clark feels his chest constrict. “I’m sorry,” Bruce murmurs.

Clark looks at the man in confusion, eyebrows furrowing and eyes searching Bruce’s. “For what?”

“For putting you through all this.”

Bruce’s statement only serves to confuse Clark more. He shakes his head, not understanding. “Bruce-”

“We had to keep our relationship a secret.” Bruce pauses to clear his throat. The sound of it is moist, as if his lungs are filling with liquid. Clark is too afraid to check with x-ray vision. “When I started getting older and you… didn’t.” Bruce frowns and caresses Clark’s cheek. “We had to kill off Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne had to hold a fake funeral for his boyfriend.”

“I aged,” Clark says softly, trying to lighten the mood but knowing he fails.

Bruce rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Clark does. He knows exactly what Bruce means. That the man in front of Clark continued to visibly get older and become weaker year after year while Clark only sprouted a few grey hairs at the sides of his head. Bruce used to joke about it, in the man’s blunt way, but eventually those jokes turned serious and then planning began. Bruce is the one that came up with the idea to have Clark die in a car accident, to hold a funeral for him. Bruce even tried to break up with Clark but Clark would have none of it. He didn’t care how old Bruce got or how they went along with continuing their relationship. As long as Clark was still with Bruce he was happy. But now Clark really is losing Bruce and there’s nothing he can do, no amount of stubbornness and determination, that will stop it.

Clark grabs Bruce’s hand, the one that was on his cheek and squeezes as carefully as possible. Bruce is so delicate now. Easily breakable. “I wouldn’t have been so insistent that we keep dating if I had a problem with it, Bruce.”

“I look like I could be your father, Clark.” Bruce yanks his hand out of Clark’s and rubs at it, the pain of arthritis surely radiating. “Maybe even your grandfather.”

Clark smiles at Bruce, loving and reassuring. “You’re beautiful, Bruce.”

Bruce huffs again, rolling his eyes. “No, I'm not. I'm old and ugly.”

Clark frowns and grabs Bruce's hand again. “Don't say that, Bruce. I still think you are the most beautiful person in the entire universe.”

Bruce scowls at him, looking out into the garden once more. Clark can still see Bruce’s blush even in the dark. “Don't lie just to flatter me, Kent.”

Clark chuckles at Bruce trying to hide his embarrassment. “It's true,” he says encouragingly. “I will always think you are beautiful.”

“Then you’re a moron,” Bruce retorts.

Clark sighs but doesn’t try to convince the man more. He knows Bruce knows he’s telling the truth. That Clark really does find Bruce beautiful even after all these years. Even with the grey, thinning hair, the wrinkles, the raspy, damaged voice, and sagging skin, Bruce is still just as beautiful as the man was the moment Clark met him. Aging doesn’t take that away for Clark. Aging only intensifies it, mystifies it, and makes Clark amazed by the whole process, by how human it is.

Clark puts a soft hand behind Bruce’s head and drags it over to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to Bruce’s temple. “I love you,” he whispers and listens as Bruce grumbles at him but doesn’t push him away.

By now Bruce’s breathing has become shallower, harder for the man to take in. Clark tries to ignore it. Bruce will let him know when he needs to have the oxygen mask back on. Clark trusts Bruce. Trusts Bruce to trust him to take care of everything, to help, even if Bruce doesn’t want the help. Bruce needs the help.

“It’s surprisingly a nice night,” Bruce mumbles so quietly, Clark almost misses it.

He pulls Bruce closer, allows the man to lean on him and rest. Bruce is so thin. Clark tightens his grip a tad bit more, desperate to not let go. “It is. I guess Gotham decided to be nice for once.”

“Hmm,” Bruce hums and leans his head on Clark’s shoulder. Clark blinks, wetness gathering at the edges of his eyes. “Terry better not be slacking just because I’m dying here.”

Clark forces a smile, looking up at the clouds in the night sky. “It’s a quiet night, don’t worry.” He’s lying. There’s currently two bank robberies happening, one woman yelling at someone trying to steal her purse, a car chase with the cops, and a man running away from a murder.

Bruce has his eyes narrowed on Clark again. “You’re still a terrible liar.” The man turns out of Clark’s grasp. “I’m going to go order Terry to get his lazy-” Bruce crumples and starts coughing.

Clark rushes to his side, alarmed. “Bruce!” He tries to get him up by grabbing his elbow. “Come on, let’s get you back in bed.”

Bruce shrugs the hand off and Clark lets him, afraid of breaking him. “Let go of me,” he chokes, bent over in half as he continues to hack. “I don’t need your damn help.”

Clark frowns but doesn't argue as he watches Bruce struggle to breathe, struggle to stand up. He swallows, feeling his stomach churn with nausea. “Bruce, maybe you should lie down.”

Bruce grumbles some more and finally gets his feet steady under him. “Why can't you all just let me die alone in peace?”

Clark smiles at the man, small and amused. “You know I can’t do that.” Clark helps to keep Bruce’s balance by grabbing the man’s elbow once more. This time he isn’t pushed away and instead leaned into. “I won’t do that.”

Bruce huffs and allows himself to be guided towards the bed. Clark pulls the covers back more and lets Bruce struggle to get into the bed himself. If Clark had tried to help the man, he would have just been pushed away again. By the time Bruce is fully in the bed and Clark is pulling the covers up to the man’s chin, Bruce is panting breaths. “I don’t need you or anyone else hovering over me, waiting for me to die.”

Clark sits down in the chair, pulling it close. He grabs onto Bruce’s hand and holds it delicately. “Don’t say that.”

“Why?” Bruce meets his eyes. “It’s what you’re doing.” Clark sees Bruce swallow several times before the man continues, whispering, “I don’t want you to watch me die, Clark.”

“I watch people die all the time.”

“Not me,” Bruce says sternly. If his voice wasn’t so ruined by age, he would have sounded so much like Batman. “Not me, Clark.”

Clark smiles at the man again, reaching over to rub at one of Bruce’s cheeks. “Well that’s not your decision to make, now is it?”

Bruce stares at him for a while before reaching up and caressing Clark’s cheek. “You’re so stubborn.”

“I learned from the best.” Clark’s statement makes Bruce huff a laugh, breathy and wet sounding. “Do you need a drink?” Bruce nods slowly and Clark reaches over for the water. He hands it to Bruce and the man drinks it gratefully, handing it back to Clark when done. Clark places it back on the nightstand. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible.”

Clark chuckles, earning himself another eye roll from Bruce. “Typical Bruce. Deadpan as ever.”

“Did you expect anything different?” Bruce wheezes.

“No, I’m just…” he pauses, taking in the sight of Bruce and those blue eyes. “I’m glad it hasn’t changed.”

They sit there in silence, Clark watching Bruce as the man lies there breathing hard. Clark doesn't ask him about the oxygen mask, whether he wants it or not. It won't do him any good and it will most likely just make Bruce mad. So instead he sits there, trying not to use his super hearing to listen to Bruce's breathing closer than humanly possible, to use his x-ray vision to look at Bruce’s lungs or heart. Being overly observant, overly concerned, won't do either of them any good.

“How are the boys doing?” Bruce struggles to ask. Clark suspects Bruce is worried about leaving them, even if the majority are in their sixties and seventies.

Clark uses his super hearing then to listen to the boys who are still down in the kitchen. Tim is crying and Dick is rubbing his back to try and sooth him. Damian is telling Tim with a wavering voice to grow up, that everyone dies and that Tim should get over it. Jason hits the refrigerator in frustrated anger.

Clark smiles at Bruce. “They're okay. The boys are strong. They'll get through this.”

Bruce stares at him for a while. They both know Bruce knows Clark just gave him another lie, that the boys aren't okay at all. But Bruce doesn't call Clark out this time. Instead he says, “Good. That's how I trained them.” Then Bruce sighs, sounding tired and weak. “And Terry?”

Clark doesn’t ask how Bruce knew Terry wasn’t included in that answer and instead listens again, but Terry isn't in the kitchen with the rest of them. Terry is in the lounge, soft sobs coming from his throat as the young man cries in front of a family portrait, one of the few that actually includes him in it. Clark smiles again. “He's the strongest out of all of them. Very mature in the way that he is trying to comfort everyone.”

Again, Bruce knows he is lying but doesn't say anything about it. “I knew he would be,” is all Bruce mumbles and Clark forces a sad smile onto his lips.

Clark rubs one of Bruce's hands, feels how boney it is. “They all love you, Bruce. Even Terry.”

Bruce nods minutely, whispering, “I didn't make it easy for any of them.” Blue, old eyes turn to him. They are starting to get unfocused and Clark tries to not let that panic him. “I didn't make it easy for you either.”

Clark chuckles, dry and sad. There's no weight behind it anymore. Clark suddenly feels like crying and he has to blink the tears away again. “I will admit, it wasn't easy for any of us, but it was worth it, Bruce. To fight for you, fight for your love, for our love. I love you and that's never going to change. It's never going to go away.”

Bruce looks away, doesn't say anything for a long time. Then, sternly, “I want you to promise me something you idiot.” Clark frowns at the insult. “After I'm gone and you're done mourning for my sorry ass, I want you to move on. Find a new woman or man to love. Someone better than me.”

Clark shakes his head, not being able to believe what he is hearing. “I'm not going to do that.”

Bruce narrows his eyes. “Yes, you are.”

Still, Clark shakes his head. “No.”

“Yes, Kal,” Bruce says intensely. “Promise me. You deserve, deserved, much better than me.”

Clark’s eyes fill with tears again and he struggles to keep them at bay. “No. You were the best. No one can ever compare.”

Bruce frowns, the wrinkles along his mouth making deep grooves in his skin. “I'm not stupid, Clark. I'm perfectly self-aware enough to know that I wasn't.”

Clark bites his bottom lip and bows his head to the bed, holding onto Bruce's hand probably tighter than he should be. He's going to damage the hand. He lets up slightly, his grip no longer so desperate. “I'm not going to promise that, Bruce.” Bruce growls and Clark looks up at the man, eyes wet with unshed tears. “Even if I wanted to, which I don't, I'm too old to date again.”

Bruce huffs, coughs, then starts speaking. “You're not too old and you know it. Not for a Kryptonian under a yellow sun.” Bruce clears his throat and wheezes before continuing. “I understand if you don't want to date another human. The age difference would be too weird. But another immortal or another being that will live just as long as you should be no problem.”

Clark once more shakes his head and blinks at the moistness teetering at the edge of his eyes. “Don't make me promise that. Please, Bruce. I can't promise that.”

Bruce sighs, defeated or maybe the man is just too tired to continue the argument. “So, stubborn,” Bruce breathes and the sides of Clark's lips pull upward. Again, silence surrounds them but this time it lasts a shorter amount of time before Bruce is speaking again. “Clark? Can I ask you to do something for me?”

Clark huffs a laugh. Bruce should know he can ask Clark anything and Clark will do it. “Of course.”

Bruce’s eyes look at Clark from the corners. “Will you lie with me?”

Clark smiles sadly, nodding his head and taking a deep breath to not cry. “Of course.” He gets up out of the chair and carefully maneuvers Bruce so there is room on the bed for himself. Clark then gently lowers himself to the mattress, next to Bruce, still holding onto the man’s hand as softly as he possibly can in his grief-stricken state of mind.

Bruce sighs next to him in contentment. “Hold me.”

Clark swallows and blinks rapidly once more. He’s on the verge of really crying now. He’s not sure how much longer he can hold out. “Of course.”

When Clark wraps his arms around Bruce gingerly, Bruce sighs again. “Tighter, Kent.”

Clark takes a staggering breath in. “Of course.” He tightens his grip and listens to Bruce’s heart. It’s slowing now. A lump lodges itself in Clark’s throat and refuses to leave no matter how many times he tries to swallow it down.

“Better,” Bruce murmurs, closing his eyes. A long, struggled breath escapes the man’s mouth. “You can cry if you want,” Bruce whispers. Clark shakes his head, burying his face in Bruce’s shoulder and tightening his grip ever so slightly. The tears can no longer be held at bay and they slip out of his eyes. He can’t talk. The lump is too big. “Why not?” Bruce asks, as if the man can’t feel the tears on his shoulder soaking through his thin shirt. “It’s okay to, Clark.” Bruce reaches a shaky hand up and pets at Clark’s hair. “I won’t judge you.”

Clark swallows several times until he can find his voice. It wavers and he has a hard time not letting it be noticed. He knows Bruce notices anyway. “I love you,” Clark struggles to say and he wants to say so much more than that but can’t. He wants to recount all the times they shared together; all the missions, the dinners, the sex, all the times they laughed and cried together. He wants to tell Bruce how much he’s going to miss him, how much his heart is breaking right now, that he doesn’t know if he can go on without Bruce. But he doesn't. He keeps his mouth shut because if he opens it again, he knows all that will come out is a sob.

Bruce's hand is slowing in his hair, weary fingers combing softly. “I love you too, Clark.”

They lie there in the silence, Clark biting his bottom lip to quiet his cries. Bruce's breathing is loud but shallow, each struggled breath sounding painful. Clark listens to it, cherishing each moment Bruce draws in air and the feel of those crafty fingers on his head. But eventually that hand stops moving and Clark counts one breath, two breaths, three breaths. The forth breath never comes.

Using his super hearing, Clark listens for Bruce's heartbeat but can't find it. He lies there for five minutes, holding Bruce close, and listening, wishing, for that thump in Bruce’s chest to start back up. It never does and Clark’s eyes fill with more tears. He finally lets them fall freely without trying to stop them, allows himself to sob out loud and place his head on Bruce’s chest. Clark doesn't want to let the man go, doesn't want to watch him go.

Grief constricts Clark's chest and he cries loudly, sniffling and hiccupping into Bruce's shirt. He fists the article of clothing, pulling Bruce as close as he can get to the man, no longer scared of breaking him. He can't break him now. Bruce is gone. The man he loves is gone and isn't coming back.

Clark doesn't know how long he lies there but he knows it's for ages and that he really should go tell the boys. But he can't bring himself to let go of Bruce yet and he ends up lying there for even longer. Slowly, Clark starts to stop crying, hiccupping every now and again. The grief he feels in his chest weighs heavily there and threatens to explode whenever the thought of the future pops into his head. He ignores it.

Clark sniffles and lifts a hand to wipe at his eyes, slowly lifting his head as well. Just as wearily, he sits up and takes a deep breath before looking over at Bruce. He’s glad to see that Bruce’s eyes are already closed and hopes that Bruce at least fell asleep before passing on. Clark’s own eyes roam Bruce’s face and if he didn’t know better, he would think Bruce was sleeping. The man looks peaceful, face no longer taut with pain and worry and anger. When Clark blinks, more tears roll down his cheeks and he leans over to kiss Bruce’s forehead.

Clark closes his eyes, says a little prayer to whoever is listening, and then kisses Bruce’s lips. The man has already started to get cold. It’s no longer Bruce but it’s still hard to pull away, to drag himself out of the bed, limbs feeling heavy, and place each foot on the floor. It’s even harder to muster up the energy to stand and to walk to the door. Harder still to reach out and open that door. Clark doesn’t want to look back but does anyway. He needs to see Bruce one last time, the man he loves with all his heart. When he does, he swallows around the lump that has yet to leave, studying Bruce’s lifeless form on the bed. “Bye Bruce,” he whispers and leaves the room

Clark dreads the walk down into the kitchen where the boys, including Terry now, are still gathered. As he enters, they fall silent and watch him. Clark stands in the doorway, not sure how to even say it. They all knew it was going to happen but words escape him. How do you tell someone’s sons that their father just passed away? Taking a deep breath, Clark steadies himself but when it comes to opening his mouth and actually producing words, nothing comes forth.

“Clark?” Dick asks, taking a hopeful step forward. Clark just shakes his head, eyes cast down to the floor and eyesight blurring again from tears. “No.” Dick stumbles back into a chair and places his face in his hands, crying loudly.

Jason punches the refrigerator again and walks out, Tim calling after the sixty-nine year old but Tim’s voice chokes and then tears are streaming down his face too. Damian glares at the counter, hands curled into white knuckled fists, jaw clenched so tight that Clark actually becomes a bit concerned for the boy’s old bones. Terry stares at nothing and Clark imagines being able to hear the young kid’s heart breaking into a million pieces.

Clark takes another deep breath and is finally able to speak with great difficulty. He doesn’t meet any eyes, not that anyone is looking at him in the first place. “I can arrange the funeral if you all want,” he offers quietly.

Dick looks up, empathy shining in those blue eyes. “You don’t have to do that, Clark. We’re his sons. We can.”

“Yeah,” Tim adds, bringing a wrinkled and liver spotted hand up to his own eyes to wipe the tears there. “We have the money to pay for it.”

Clark is glad no one makes the comment that Clark doesn’t have the money, that he doesn’t have it because he doesn’t work anymore and because Clark Kent has been legally dead long before Bruce, so Bruce was never able to leave him any. Clark doesn’t care about that though. He doesn’t care about the money or the high profile of dating a rich man. All he ever cared about was Bruce himself.

Clark nods anyway. He’ll let the boys take care of the funeral. He somehow gets the feeling they have to do it for themselves in order to start the moving on process. Clark isn’t ready to move on yet, doesn’t want to move on yet. He wants to go back to Bruce’s room and find the man breathing, moving, alive. But he knows he won’t. This isn’t a nightmare he can wake up from. It’s reality and Clark is going to have to deal with it at some point.

But today is not that day.

A/N: Thanks for reading and again, happy holidays everyone!!

[coldflashwave-baby]

@disney-dctv-week

Mysterious Fathoms Below

           It was all a mess.

           If someone were to ask Iris, she’d say it happened because no one listened to her. If they were to ask Barry, he’d say it was meant to happen because ‘true love’.

           Wally, however, would always stand by that it happened because of Captain Leonard Snart.

           He hadn’t meant to climb up on the side of the pirate ship and watch the crew dance and celebrate…whatever it was they were celebrating. He’d gotten curious, and his foster brother, Barry, had been right beside him the entire time. Iris had hung back in the water. As adventurous as she was, she never condoned Wally breaking the rules he wanted to break. Of course, he always wanted to break the biggest one—going to the world above to watch the humans.

           Something about humans entranced him. He dreamed of having two legs, of standing and walking around. His siblings were the only ones who knew about Wally’s obsession. If their father knew…Wally didn’t even want to consider the consequences.

           But there the two of them sat, peeking through at the humans dancing and skipping to the music. Barry, though he didn’t share Wally’s fascination, still enjoyed watching with him, staring in wonder at the pirates. Then, Wally saw him.

           He could tell immediately that the man was someone important—the crew all looked at him the same way the merpeople looked at his father, with respect for their leader. The man wasn’t dressed overtly grand, however, instead wearing some black, floppy top on his torso and tight, black ‘pants’, as he’d heard them called, over his legs. He wasn’t dancing with the others, but he nodded along with the music and grinned at his crew joyfully.

His grin…something told Wally it was a rare treasure in itself. He felt something flip in his stomach. His heart picked up. The conflicting urges to dive back in the water and crawl onto the deck until he was face-to-face with the man warred inside of him.

One of the crewmen, a burly, scarred man who seemed almost as important as the first man, pulled out a poster of the man.

WANTED FOR PIRATING-CAPTAIN LEONARD SNART

Leonard Snart…Len, his mind supplied. He smiled. It suited him.

They all laughed as the other man struck a small piece of wood and a flame—an actual flame—appeared on the end, ready to burn the paper.

Then, there was a crash of thunder, and the ship shook. A hurricane had overcome the boat.

“Joe must have figured out we snuck out!” Barry joked, his mirth disappearing when the ship lurched, nearly throwing them off.

“Wally! Barry!” He heard Iris shouting, but the waves had already carried her too far away for him to hear anything else. Lightning hit the mast, and Wally cursed when the entire top of ship burst into flames.

Thinking quicker than him, Barry grabbed Wally’s arm and dove into the water with him. From there, the two watched the destruction of the ship.

A rowboat lowered, filled with men, but Wally couldn’t see Len or the man with the poster on it. The flames spread, and, after a moment, he saw a figure appear, carrying another figure on his back.

           Len carrying the other man, his mind supplied. Without much of an option, Len threw the unconscious man into the water, diving in after him almost immediately.

           Wally couldn’t sit by anymore. He swam for the two men. There was an echoing splash behind him, and he knew Barry coming, too. His eyes widened when he caught sight of the two men. Len was now unconscious, too, piece of wreckage from his ship floating near a bloody mark on his forehead.

           The other man was sinking fast, and Barry sped over to pull him up. “I’ll get him to the others, you get the captain!” He called behind him. Wally hadn’t even waited to hear the words—he was already heading for Len. The second his arms wrapped around him, though, something terrifying happened.

           The ship exploded.

           Wally and Len were thrown backwards, far from Barry and the lifeboat. So, Wally did the only thing he could do—he swam to the surface, brought Len up for air, and searched for land.

                                                   0000000

           Dawn was coming when he finally pulled Len onto the beach. He thought, for a moment, that maybe he’d been too late. Maybe Len had died from his injury, or drowned before he’d made it to the surface.

           But then, the pirate captain’s chest started moving, and he blew out a breath. He’d made it. Len was alive. At that moment, he knew he needed to leave. Len would be waking up, and he couldn’t know a merman saved him. But, when he was asleep, Len’s face was so relaxed and delicate, like one of the dolls he’d added to his collection. Fragile, but beautiful.

           Before he could stop himself, he ran a hand down Len’s cheek, wondering how different things would’ve been if he’d been born human instead.

           “Wally!”

           He glanced over his shoulder to see both Barry and Iris waiting in the surf for him, Barry with a dazed, dumb-struck smile on his face and Iris with a worried, scolding purse on hers. He heard a groan, and he quickly turned back to Len, who brought his hand up slowly to rest on the one Wally still had on his cheek. When the pirate captain’s eyes started to flicker open, Wally considered, for a second, sticking around. But a whistle from Iris threw his resolve, and he reluctantly tore himself away and dove back in the water to join his siblings.

           Len stayed with him, though. In the following days, all Wally could think about was his grin, his stormy-blue eyes, the softness of his face as he relaxed. It didn’t help when Barry brought him a present he found in the wreckage—the remains of the poster of Len. It was burned around the edges, and the ink was smudged, but Len’s face was still clear on it. It was the best present Barry ever got him.

           Captain Leonard Snart…

           He swam gleefully around his grotto picturing life with a pirate captain. Having adventures, collecting treasures, breaking rules.

           He imagined having legs. Meeting Len again, only this time, standing in front of him, being able to introduce himself instead of swimming away. Len offering to take him away on his pirate ship, still close to the sea and his loved ones, but free to be who he was.

           He didn’t even hear his father come in until it was too late—he’d seen the paper and put two-and-two together.

           Barry and Iris lingered in the doorway of the grotto. They watched as the king destroyed Wally’s collection—Barry fearfully, Iris guiltily.

           When the poster in his hands burned, Wally shattered. “I hate you.” He growled at his father, who flinched, but still swam proudly away. Iris and Barry came in to comfort him, but Wally didn’t want to see them. He knew it was probably an accident, telling their father, but what was taken couldn’t be replaced. He couldn’t even look at them.

           Maybe, if he hadn’t pushed them away, he would’ve known better than to follow the eels to Valentina, the Sea Witch. Maybe if, when Iris and Barry saw them and decided to follow, he hadn’t snapped at Iris, telling her to ‘tattle, it’s what you’re good at’, one of them would’ve went to Joe, and he could’ve stopped Wally.

           But, he did.

And, they didn’t.

And, finally, Wally had everything he’d ever wanted—legs, and a chance to find love. All he needed to do was find Leonard Snart, get him to fall in love with him, and kiss him in three days.

Oh, and he’d given up his voice for the chance, but what’s reward without some risk?

                                                      0000000

           Iris and Barry pulled him towards the docks of Central, a pirate kingdom where they were sure Len must have gone after his ship sunk. Barry had been able to steal some clothes—well, an old sail—off the deck of a fishing boat and, with Iris help, they tied it around Wally, covering his new parts.

           “Hey!”

           Iris and Barry dove into the water at the shout, and Wally was amazed when he saw Len running up, looking between Wally and the fishing boat.

           “That’s my sai—” But when Len’s eyes fell on Wally’s face, he froze, a grin growing on his lips. “It’s you. You’re the one who saved me.”

           Wally nodded eagerly.

           “What’s your name?”

           He opened his mouth to reply, but then remembered—sea witch. Voice gone until kiss. Right. He motioned to his throat, and an understanding passed over Len’s face. “You’re mute.”

           Wally deflated and gave a small nod, but Len quickly shook his head. “No, no, there’s nothing wrong with that, sweetheart. There’s nothing wrong with being blind, deaf, mute, whatever. It’s something special about you.”

           His cheeks warmed. If only he knew… He tried to step towards Len, but he still wasn’t used to his legs. He nearly fell right off the dock, but an arm around his waist stopped him.

           “Whoa, there.” He helped Wally steady himself. “You must have gone through some shit, kid. Why don’t I take you back to my place, give you some food and clothes, and you can mime me all about it?”

           That treasured grin pulled at Len’s mouth, and Wally’s stomach did a flip. He let Len lead him away from the docks and towards the city, awestruck and amazed by everything he passed.

0000000

           So, Len was actually the pirate king, not just some random pirate captain. He lived in a fortress on the sea with his sister, Lisa, and his crew, all of whom watched Wally conspiratorially as Len asked Lisa to take him to one of the empty rooms and find him some clothes.

           The fortress was huge—bigger than his father’s palace! Lisa took him into a lavish room, where Wally immediately ran and jumped on the soft, silky bed.

           She gave a laugh. “I can see why my brother likes you so much. You’re adorable.” She walked over to the closet and pulled out a ‘pants’ and tunic and threw them on the bed beside him. She turned her back as he pulled off the sail and struggled with the pants, trying to figure out how they went on his new legs. Lisa eventually showed him mercy and helped him into them.

           Luckily, he knew about shirts. “So, you’re mute?” Lisa asked, smoothing out the fabric of his shirt.

           Wally nodded.

           “Do you have any family?”

           He nodded again.

           “And where are they?”

           He pointed out the window towards the ocean. Lisa frowned. “They’re across the ocean?”

           Not knowing how else to explain, Wally nodded.

           “Why did you leave them? Were they horrible to you?”

           Wally shook his head, trying to figure out a way to mime to her. He pointed back to the ocean. They. Shook his head. Didn’t. Pointed to his head. Understand. Then, finally, he touched his chest. Me.

           He hoped Lisa understood. After a second or two, she nodded. “You’re an outcast, like the rest of us. A rebel. A rogue.”

           He smiled. He liked the sound of that.

           “Well, darling, I think you’ll fit right in here.” She held out her hand for him to take. “Now, let’s get you down to dinner, where you can knock the socks off my darling brother. Lord knows he can use some excitement in his life that doesn’t involve dying.”

           If he’d known how, Wally would’ve skipped all the way to dinner.

0000000

           The first day passed, and the second came with Len offering to show Wally around the town. Iris and Barry kept up with them as best they could, swimming alongside the roads when they were near water and even swimming close by when Len decided to take him out on one of his boats, just the two of them.

           With some subtle coaxing from a hidden Barry and some whispers from Iris, a romantic atmosphere fell over them. Wally knew all it was going to take was one kiss—just one to break the spell. He could see that Len wanted it, too. All he had to do was…

           He leaned forward slowly. Len followed.

           But, before their lips could meet, the boat tilted sharply, throwing them both in the water. He could’ve kissed him then, but the moment had been ruined, and all Len was focused on was getting himself and Wally back to the castle.

           So ended the second day.

0000000

           He was woken up on the third day by the sound of a seashell hitting the window. When he pulled himself out of bed and practically crawled over, Barry was in the water underneath the window, a huge grin on his face.

           “Wally, you did it!” he exclaimed. “I overheard Mick—that’s Len’s second, the larger, nice looking one—talking to one of the deckhands about Len getting married at sea today!”

           Wally lit up with joy. Married? He and Len getting married? Sure, he’d never considered that serious of a commitment, but, now that he knew what was happening, he was so happy, his stomach was doing backflips.

           He didn’t even bother dressing out of his nightclothes. He ran out of his room and down the stairs, only to freeze when he saw Len standing with a beautiful woman. Lisa was in front of them, looking her over with distaste.

           “Lenny, are you sure about this?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “This seems really…sudden…and I thought that our guest…”

           “I’m marrying Vanessa,” Len said sternly, his face blank of any emotion. “The ceremony will be on my ship at sundown.”

           Just as suddenly as his heart had leapt with joy, it shattered at Len’s words. He’d thought…

           But, no. Wally was just a stupid kid who believed a human could love a merperson. Nothing more.

             Once dusk came, he watched the ship cast off with tears in his eyes. He was going to lose his love and his freedom on the same day. Iris floated in the water beside the dock, sadness in her eyes. He knew she’d wanted him to succeed.

           He reached down to his sister, who took his hand.

           The sun began to set.

           “Wait, Wally!” He and Iris jumped when Barry came swimming as fast as he could up to the dock. “Len…he’s under a spell! Vanessa is actually Valentina disguised as a human! She’s trying to sabotage your chance!”

           Wally looked out at the water. The ship was too far for him to swim out to in time without a tail, but maybe…maybe with the help of his siblings, he could get there in time.

                                                      0000000

           Wally sat on quietly on a rock near the shore, watching Len on the beach, still unconscious from their fight with Valentina.

           He loved him, and Len loved him back. But it was too late—his legs were gone, replaced by the tail that he’d been happily rid of. He sighed.

           And, oh, I love you so. If only you could know…

           A light glowed behind him. His tail started to itch. When he glanced behind him, his father, Iris, and Barry were all smiling back at him, the king’s trident in the water.

           He stared down at his tail, eyes wide and excited, as it split back into his legs.

           When Len woke up, his jaw dropped. Wally came out of the water, dressed in a silver tunic and black pants, and practically ran right to him.

           Len jumped to his feet and, once Wally was in reaching distance, wrapped his arms around his waist to pull him into a kiss.

           (They were married the next day and lived happily ever after-- though Joe had to pull Barry away from the ship’s first mate, who sent him a wink from the side of the ship. One kid being married to a human was enough, thank you.)