#I was thinking about sunny taking stock of herself the other night and it just -

[casualnepotism]

“You are all the colors of the world, mon kè.”

Brown, like the earth that sustains us all.

Green, like the plants that feed and delight us.

Blue, like the water that feeds the plants.

Yellow, like the sun that shows it all to us.

It was all even, Grann would point out as her fingers tickled across my freckles, in the right places. She would always end the story with her hands cupping my face, her crinkly thumbs rubbing softly under my eyes, smiling like she always did under the sun.

“The world must have cut away a part of itself when it made you.”

Her words echo in my brain as I turn, staring at myself. I don’t have a lot of time, I don’t think. But no one’s come to get me so maybe I do. I don’t know long I spent in the shower trying to get clean, letting the fucking goo slide away, trying desperately not to move, biting a hole through a sponge.

I’ve been using hot water so long that I forgot: cold water also hurts when it’s sprayed on open wounds.

My hands - wrists, forearms, biceps, traps, pecs, neck, face - flex in the mirror and my head tilts along with them. The black goo had faded into a dark purple stain. It’s darker where it’s pooled and settled into wounds though, like usual in those spots, it’s taken on a skin-like feel. I won’t know for a few days if it’s just from prolonged contact or if it’s a god thing. (It’s probably a god thing.) It would be beautiful on another canvas.

Like the skies before the storms, Grann would probably say. She was always good at making things sound positive. They warn us of the coming danger.

A bright, electric purple scar is scattered down my right calf, falling from two large punctures. They seem to pulse under the low light of the room. Only a vague memory of them comes to the surface - sitting on the grass, my family a muted roar. I said something. Cog was with me and then - a stifled breath, pain excruciating blinding ragingslicinghurtingcuttingstealingslashingbreaking and Maelo was there. It’s hard to take my eyes off them; they glow.

Like lightning in the summer, choupèt. It dances for us, but it never approaches.

I stare, hand tracing up the paint-like purple splatter on my hip (like flowers in the spring), across the faded grey-blue bullet wounds that strafe my stomach (the ice that heals summer’s wounds), up to the dark, umber-red burn scars across my chest (the earth as it prepares for new growth), landing on the just-settling ax wound against my neck. King. My breath shudders, inhaling too quickly and- “Fuck!”

A slash of pain on my back. How quickly I’d forgotten. I spin, eyes focused on my left shoulder blade. A circular scar, pinched as it has always been, now stained a bright and vibrant red. It’s spread, the red seeping outward with every beat of my heart. I squint, lean forward, curse - “se yon glas, sòt” - and squint harder.

Small veins of black and electric green cut through the red, reaching out as though to escape. Reaching down towards -

My eyes, distracted by the bright new red, drop slightly. Following the veins of black and green.

To the pain.

A line cuts across the small of my back. Black, I think. Maybe. I don’t know. It didn’t bleed, there’s no stain near it. It hasn’t scarred at all. It shouldn’t hurt, I don’t think. It’s just a line, like I’d drawn it on with a pen. But it hurts. Not always. I shift a little, twisting my spine just to see and -

All my breath leaves me in an instant. It hurts. Whatever Asmo touched me with as he died, it hurtsithurts.

I’m kneeling. I know that. My brain is moving - slowly - trying to catch up. I can see the red of Jack’s scar on my back (Like the sky over the ocean; either morning or night it is a sign of safety for the fishermen) This time, there’s a pause in her voice and it changes, deeper, smoother. Unless they are already in the water, of course.

Another deep breath. I stand, breathe out, and flex my body again to see my back. The same, excruciating pain, but I’m ready this time. I breathe. It passes.

I bend. Pain.

I stand. Pain.

I turn, spin, jump, squat, shimmy. Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain.

Each time, pain. Each time, more bearable.

I stand, straight, and look myself over once more in the mirror. My many colors. All the ones of the earth, Grann said, and she’s only gotten more right. I don’t know what she would say about this new scar because she couldn’t know what it is.

It’s the same color as the sky whenever we run into Asmodeus. Outside his dream window, in the tree, in the forest, even the spaces between his eyes.

Leaning down to scoop up spare clothes forces me to shake off another roll of pain, and I glance once more at the scar. I force a grin.

Grann would be thrilled: she always said that the earth cut a slice of itself away to make me and so, it seems, did the stars.

[cupidbedsy]

𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 ; 𝘭𝘩43 ୨୧

➪ summary: luke is all but tired when him and jack arrive home from a game, but luckily for him, y/n's there to help

➪ warnings: the one rags v. devils game where everyone decided to fight, tired luke. broken plate, luke thinking reader and jack is mad at him, hate comments, jack thinking he's a shitty big brother

➪ word count: 1.8k

➪ file type: fic - reupload

➪ sunny's notes: literally crying because i decided to edit this, negative feelings, and chicken noodle soup all in a row. i chose violence, be glad i'm not uploading them three days in a row. this was rough. but no i actually like how this fic turned out so yeah

© sunflower-lilac42 ; do not copy, repost, or translate my work and designs on any other website or here

© cupidbedsy ; do not copy, repost, or translate my work and designs on any other website or here

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She had let herself into their apartment halfway through the second period. She had been watching from her dorm and when the first fight broke out, two seconds into the game, she knew the team was in for a wild night. As the game went on and they showed the bench and the players, she knew both her boyfriend and his brother were tired. 

That’s when she made the executive decision to “break in” to their apartment and make them dinner. She was grateful that their fridge was fully stocked and she didn’t have to run back out to the grocery store. She got to work quickly, making something easy but also filling for both of them. While spaghetti and meatballs weren’t any of their favorite meals, not that she was hungry anyway, she knew they would appreciate the effort nonetheless. 

When the game was over she sighed at the final score, after what they had been through tonight, they deserved the win. Worried about Luke and being one of only four defensemen on the ice, she looked to see how much time he was actually on the ice and was appalled when it read 32:49. She knew he had been tired these past few weeks, this team felt like it was on a never-ending cycle of bad luck. 

She was setting the plates down moments before they walked in the door, but when she was in the bathroom, that’s when she heard them. She heard the clatter of keys and shoes and walked out immediately. Luke was attempting to stand upright, slightly leaning on his older brother. Jack looked equally tired, attempting to support both him and Luke. 

She frowned as she made her way over to them, lightly grabbing onto Luke to lessen the weight on Jack’s body. He sighed in relief as he kicked his shoes off and made his way to sit down on the couch. Y/n stayed with Luke in the kitchen, walking him over to one of the chairs. With one hand she reached for his head and took the beanie he had been wearing off, using her other one to run her fingers through his damp curls. 

“Why don’t you go take a shower, both of you,” Jack whined from the couch while Luke just buried his head into her shoulder.

She felt like she could cry from the exhaustion they were displaying. She knew how they got, both of them. She had been dating Luke since their freshman year of high school. She knew the ins and outs of all three Hughes brothers if she was honest, never finding it weird or alarming. His family loved her, that she knew, but when Jack came home drunk one night and threw up on her shoes, she accepted her role in the family.

“Jack you first, come on.”

She continued running a hand through her boyfriend’s curls as she gazed at the older boy on the couch. He finally sat up, giving her an annoyed look, but she only rolled her eyes and pointed to the bathroom. She could keep Luke occupied for another 20 minutes, “Hi baby.”

Luke’s eyes were closed as his head laid on her shoulder, he mumbled something incoherently and he just sighed. She untangled her fingers from his hair and started to pull off his jacket, he whined at the loss of contact but allowed her to continue her actions. She took his jacket to his room and hung it up before walking back into the kitchen and checking on the pasta. 

Luke, despite being tired and his body being worn, he got up and made his way over to her in order to wrap his arms around her waist and dig his head into the crook of her neck, inhaling her fading scent. She smiled slightly, removing her one hand from the side of the pan to place on top of Luke’s, continuing to stir with the other. 

It was silent up until Jack came back, who plopped onto the chair his brother had previously sat in. She looked over at him and smiled, “Do you guys want to eat in the kitchen or in the living room? We could put a movie on?”

The two nodded and made their way over to the living room as she finished plating the food and bringing it over to them, placing the plates into their laps. They each let out simultaneous soft thank yous before eating. They chose a random movie and watched it as y/n cleaned the kitchen and finished doing some laundry that had been pushed to the side.  

She felt bad for both of them, both for different reasons but some the same. Mostly because of how the team was performing this year, the way that they couldn’t keep everyone off injured reserve. Yet, for Luke, it felt different. She felt more or less worried about him than bad for him. He had expectations to live up to, people to live up to, and she knew his mind all too well. She knew what he was thinking, that he wasn’t good enough.

And it wasn’t just him that thought that. They both knew about the tweets that were in response to people's comments under articles, the articles themselves about how Luke wasn’t as good as his brothers, wasn’t as good as he should be, wasn’t as good as people made him out to be. It was what Luke thought about the most.

There was clanging from the living room and then a crash. She immediately made her way out of the bedroom and looked in between Jack, who was still on the couch, the shattered plate on the floor, and Luke, who was standing in the hallway. His face looked conflicted but it morphed into one of fear and sadness. 

“Hey, hey, what happened?”

“I-” Luke couldn’t bring himself to talk, both terrified and still exhausted from the game. 

On the other hand, y/n’s face was calm and Jack’s face was sad with a hint of anger in his eyes. Anger towards John and Kevin for leaving the team with four defensemen, anger towards Travis for making Luke play that long, anger towards himself for not checking in on his brother enough, and anger towards the Rangers. 

“Luke, it’s okay. No one’s mad at you for dropping the plate.” Jack’s voice was soft as he stood up, slightly wobbling from his lack of balance. 

The younger boy only shook his head, reaching a hand out to lean against the wall. Y/n moved forward and wrapped her arms around Luke who then slowly sank to the ground. Her left hand was placed against his head, keeping it against her chest as her right arm wrapped around him. Luke started crying, soft sobs escaping his mouth.

She looked at Jack who took the hint to walk back into his bedroom. As soon as he left, Luke voiced his thoughts, “I’m tired. I’m so tired, y/n.”

The way his voice broke almost made her choke on a sob. She bit her lip to keep her tears at bay, refusing to let Luke know how she was feeling right now. She tangled her fingers in his hair, Luke allowing the movement to calm him down a little. His harsh sobs turned into soft sniffles in a matter of minutes. She was the only one who could soothe him like this besides his mom.

Lifting his head, he dug it back into the crook of her neck. She kissed his head and continued to run her fingers through his curls like she had done earlier, using her other hand to rub circles on his back. Ten minutes had passed and she looked over at the shattered glass a few feet away from her. Her legs had started to cramp from being in the position for so long and the added weight of Luke on them made it a little worse.

“How about you go take a shower while I clean the plate, okay?”

He pulled away from her and nodded his head slightly. She aided him in standing up and watched as he made his way to the bathroom to shower. Once the door closed, she made quick work of cleaning up the mess. After she was done, she went over and knocked on Jack’s bedroom door, “Hey.”

Jack snapped his head up in surprise, “Hi.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” 

“Jack, I’ve known you for 7 years. What’s wrong?” She sat on the edge of his bed, her hands underneath her. 

“I feel bad. I mean I was so excited for Luke to come to play with me but for some reason, I feel guilty. I don’t know. It just feels like I should do more for him. I didn’t want to bring up the comments, I see them too, you know.”

Her heart warmed at the words, at Jack being so worried about his little brother. She smiled a little before looking at him, “He loves you, Jack. More than you know. I cannot tell you the number of times he calls me and is like ‘Jack this’ and ‘Jack that’. You and Quinn are his idols, it’s hard to not notice that. He is so appreciative of you. And he knows there is nothing you can do about the comments that people make, it’s not your fault.”

Jack teared up a little but smiled at her, “Thank you.”

“Of course. Now come on, give me a hug.”

Jack leaned over from his spot on the bed and hugged her, “Can I say I love you or is that too weird?” 

“Considering, I am betting on you becoming my sister-in-law, it’s not weird. I love you too, y/n/n.”

She heard a door close from down the hall and she pulled away and waved goodbye to Jack, making her way to her boyfriend’s room. When she walked in, Luke was lying on his bed, cuddling a pillow on his phone. She smiled at him and walked over to sit down, “Hi baby.”

He looked up at her and for the first time that night, he smiled. He reached out for her and she made herself comfortable on the bed, Luke wrapping his arms around her. In that moment, Luke was so grateful for her and all that she had done for him not only tonight but in the past seven years. She had been there for him through everything and that meant the absolute world to him. 

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Luke. And I am so so so so proud of you for tonight.”

His smile was small but genuine, “Now go to bed.” 

She kissed his forehead and the two wasted no time in falling asleep.

𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗝𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗘𝗬 𝗗𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗟𝗦 𝗧𝗔𝗚𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧 ୨୧

@blakesbearsblog @toasttt11 @chiblackhawks @prettyjoseph @nicole01-23 @auriesphantom @pucks-goals-penalties @dancerbailey3 @quinnylouhughesx43 @petite-potato4 @thehuggybearslover @absolutelyhugh3s @kei943 @dyslecticdutchman

© cupidbedsy ; do not copy, repost, or translate my work and designs on any other website or here

[eviesaurusrex]

ᴀʟᴘɪɴᴇ | ʙ. ʙᴀʀɴᴇꜱ

summary: YN walks into their kitchen, ready to start baking Bucky’s favorite cupcakes, only for a white little intruder to thwart her plan.

prompt: There was a cat sitting in my kitchen. I don’t know where it came from because no one of my neighbors owns a cat. She just sat there on my kitchen table and stared into my eyes.

word count: 1.9k

warnings: none, pure fluff, Alpine being a little home intruder, Bucky being head over heels for her, Alpine already feeling perfectly at home, not entirely proofread

author’s note: I read the prompt, and I instantly thought of Bucky and Alpine. It’s nothing good because I’m tired, but we have to deal with it for now.

* * *

A sunny day passed at the windows of their cozy Brooklyn apartment, but YN still felt more at ease inside their home, not feeling the overwhelming urge to go outside and stock up on that vitamin D for free out there, even though fall was apparently just around the corner. She needed to go outside, but today wasn’t the day. Today was a staying as long at home as possible and not even thinking about going outside-day. At some point, everyone had such a day on their plate. Maybe today was the day because Bucky finally was back home after three cruel weeks in some rural part of the planet, without a phone line and without wifi to send a mail, telling her that everything was alright.

They had spent the entire morning and early afternoon in their bed, not in the mood to leave just yet, and had bathed in each other’s company. Bucky had drawn indecipherable patterns on her naked back, constantly pushing her to the brink of sleep again while the tv was running in the background, the countless rerun of Criminal Minds flickering over the screen. They had talked about everything and anything, Bucky had read to her, she had read to him, and they had cuddled enough to satiate their indescribable need to feel one another close again—for now.

He was showering now, and while he did that, YN could take up on her promise and bake his favorite cupcakes. She had wanted to bake them last night after Tony had informed her that Bucky, Steve, and Sam would return that night or the morning at the latest. Stubbornly, she had tried to stay awake, but ultimately, YN had fallen asleep in front of the tv on the couch, Grey’s Anatomy running in the background and lulling her into slumber, only waking up when she felt Bucky’s familiar warmth and his whispering words when he had picked her up and carried her to bed. He wasn’t too sad about the unprepped cupcakes because she had promised him, between heated and longing but also tired kisses, that she would make him some for breakfast or lunch.

Going through the list of ingredients in her head, YN strolled through the living room and into the kitchen, just to open the two windows there and let the soothing warmth of the afternoon air inside. Humming to a tune that kept stuck in her mind, she waltzed into the pantry next, stacking ingredient after ingredient into her arms, adding some colorful sprinkles to spice things up a bit, before waltzing back out—more careful now because non of them needed a flour incident yet again. “Gotta quickly jump downstairs to the store to get some more butter,” YN mumbled to herself, lost in her thoughts of planning the act of proceeding here, but fell silent at the sound of a soft meow.

At first, she thought she must’ve imagined it and slowly placed her ingredients onto the small kitchen island in the middle of the room, only to hear it again, louder this time. With the unopened pack of sugar still in her hand, YN raised her gaze and stared directly into a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever seen, a pink nose almost bumping against hers. Without moving, the two stared at one another; she even stopped breathing for a few seconds, thinking the cat might disappear right in front of her eyes and all this would just be a weird dream or a wild imagination. Maybe she was hallucinating because she didn’t eat anything today, and her blood sugar was low. But even after seconds without fresh oxygen and a deep inhale after that, the white cat still stood in front of her, her tiny paws still resting on the flour pack, her tiny nose still almost touching hers.

YN knew that this cat didn’t belong in here—they didn’t own one, and she knew for a fact that neither did their neighbors. The missing collar was just another indication of her suspicion that this cat was as homeless as she had once been. No one had wanted her, so she had searched for a place to call home on her own, probably just like this little fellow in front of her.

The sound of the stopping shower pulled the agent out of her head, and without moving her body an inch, she slightly pulled her head back to shout over her shoulder: “Uhm… Bucky?” Usually, this was all it took for the super soldier to come running and looking what his girl needed, and even after tiring weeks, she heard the sounds of his heavy steps coming closer and closer. “Everything alright, doll?” He still stood in the living room, not seeing the cat now sitting in front of YN, licking her paws and starting to clean her pristine white fur as if she wanted to make the most perfect first impression. “Well… Uh… We have a cat sitting in our kitchen.” Stepping one step aside, she opened the view for him and pointed to the small kitten—she couldn’t be much older than half a year—just in case he didn’t see the little intruder right away.

Bucky stopped moving, even breathing, as his eyes fell on the little creature now meowing in anticipation, and YN knew he felt just as confused as she still did. “I don’t know where she came from—well, okay, I know where she came from because there’s only one way in. She came through the window, obviously. But I don’t know where she came from. She just stood right in front of me, basically staring into my soul, and now she’s just… sitting there. I don’t know where she came from, but I also don’t know what-what to do?” YN had faced many difficult situations as an agent, many situations no average person would ever have to face, but this, this was uncharted territory even for her.

The white kitten meowed again, louder this time, staring from one human to another, waiting on her spot on the wooden countertop patiently, her fluffy tail sweeping from one side to the other.

YN stared back at Bucky to see his reaction to this quite unusual situation and saw him… starstruck. That was the only fitting adjective she could find at that moment, and she didn’t dare to say another word, not wanting to disturb him in his thoughts. She waited just as patiently as the little intruder did, both watching the man as closely as possible until he started moving. He crept closer and closer, a worried look now creeping up into his pretty blue eyes as he scooted inch after inch.

“What are you doing, love?” It was only a whisper, a soft giggle hiding in its depths. “Tryin’ not to scare her away, doll,” he answered even more quietly, eyes never leaving the cat, who apparently was as undisturbed by them as possible. “I don’t think she’s even slightly irritated by us, baby.” The giggle fought its way out of her body now, and Bucky finally looked at her, a teasing smile appearing on his handsome features. “And why are you still holding the sugar then, sugar?” Looking down at her hands, YN realized that she indeed held the pack of sugar and slowly placed it onto the kitchen island, but not even that disturbed the cat. She just quickly glanced from Bucky to her and back to the high-towering man.

Suddenly, she started to purr when he finally reached her, a hand slightly outstretched to let her sniff at it. But she didn’t even need to be soothed because in the next second, she elegantly jumped in his direction, and only his quick reflexes helped him to catch the cat before she could claw at his skin. “Woah there,” the brunet chuckled, cradling the now heavily purring cat in his arms and dwarfing her even more. His fingers started to scratch her soft belly, mumbling sweet nothings to her, and YN could see how heavily enraptured he already was with the tiny ball of white fur.

Slowly walking over to these two unalike seeming characters—but YN knew how much of a cuddler Bucky was, so the cat was basically him—the agent peaked into his arms to see a very content cat lying there, little paws stretched towards the ceiling and meowing in her direction as if she wanted to command even more attention. And she wasn’t that strong-willed when it came to cats. “Aw, you’re such a cute little home intruder, aren’t you?” She grinned happily as the kitten tried to catch her index finger between her paws, purring even harder when she felt YN scratch her lovingly under the chin. “And she just came through the window?” She looked up at Bucky’s quiet question, could hear the uncertainty swimming in his tone, and she nodded. “Yeah. Just sitting there all of a sudden, demanding attention and love, I suppose? She doesn’t wear a collar, and I don’t think she’s chipped, either. Look at how thin she is.” Her words turned into a worried mumble, but a smile soon etched its way back onto her face. “But you’re a strong one, little one. Yes, you are. Just like him.”

Bucky stared down at his best girl, watching her fall in love with the cat just as hard and fast as he had. He felt his heart ache and beat rapidly, especially as he watched them, knowing they must turn into a family now. He couldn’t leave the little fella all by herself, kicking her out again, putting her down in some pestering alleyway to fend for herself. She didn’t deserve it—just as he hadn’t deserved to be left behind. Just as YN hadn’t deserved it.

“We can’t put her back out there,” he finally dared to say, trying his luck, and he knew it. Sometimes, Bucky was sure that finding YN was all he could’ve hoped for, that this was all the luck the universe had granted him, but then, she had loved him back, had saved him from himself, and brought him back. They had built a home together and still loved each other, maybe even more so than at the very start. The bad dreams couldn’t get him here, the haunting memories were a distant white noise for most of the time, and even when they tried to attack him out of the shadows, YN was there to save him. That’s why he knew that this cat was meant for them. They had to protect her from the cruel outside world and welcome her in their cozy little corner of this planet.

And as Bucky glanced at YN between his long lashes, watching her face and her eyes as she finally looked up at him, he knew that she thought the same thoughts. He just knew. Apparently, the cat knew it as well because she turned in his arms, jumped down to the ground, and almost pranced toward their couch. Stretching, she prepared herself and jumped onto the cushions looking over at them and picking her favorite—the dark green one YN loved to use when Bucky’s thigh wasn’t around—and plopped down, making herself comfortable.

Softly, he wrapped his arm around the woman he loved and pulled her into his side, eyes still watching how this cat already felt perfectly at home.

“I think we have a cat now,” YN grinned and looked up at Bucky in perfect timing of his bending head and his soft lips on top of hers. “Any name ideas?” He hummed lowly at the question, lips still connected in a gentle kiss, before leaning their foreheads together and gently nudging the top of her nose with his.

“How about Alpine?”

* * *

Two in two days, what’s happening??? Anyway: I hope you liked it and enjoyed reading this one. If you did: I’d love a reblog and your thoughts about it! I know I once had a taglist, but I kinda lost it on my Mac and didn’t want to look for it now. Sorry.

[shitpostsfromtheinvisiblelibrary]

From a prompt list that I posted at some point

Irene dropped her book to one side as soon as the first drop of rain hit the windows. It hadn’t been sunny but they hadnt been expecting the sudden downffall of rain that arrived with a clap of thunder shortly after noon. She peered around the curtains and watched the skies for a moment before turning her eyes to the street, waiting.

She was stood waiting for nearly twenty minutes before the cab that she was waiting for turned down the corner and pulled up outside of the house. Three people got out and her heart sank as Shan Yuan turned his face to the window and caught her eye, Kai half a step behind him before both stepped back and their father joined them.

So much for a private reunion.

Kai let his family into the house as Irene jogged down the stairs to meet them in the hallway, curtseying to the dragon king who looked down at her.

‘Miss Winters.’

‘A pleasure to see you again your majesty,’ She looked at Kai from underneath her eyelashes. He cringed. ‘I was unaware that we would be receiving yourself today, my apologies for not being better prepared,’ They did keep things on hand for when they had high profile visitors, fine china and expensive wine but Irene couldn’t think of much excpet the ladder in her stockings.

‘I wasnt planning on accompanying my son in returning here,’ He gestured for her to rise. ‘However, I was reminded that it had been some time since I had come to inspect his work.’

Fucking Shan Yuan sticking his nose in and ruining her night, She thought, rather unkindly, Kai could very well have reminded his father as part of his own duties toward his father. It was unlikely, he had been away at a family celebration for three weeks and was likely as keen for privacy with her as she had been.

‘I will leave you to it then, I would not want to be in your way,’ She said before hesitating. ‘It is the housekeepers day off, I shall bring up tea for you all.’

‘Nonesense,’ Ao Guang said, taking her by the elbow. ‘Kai, you can handle refreshments, miss Winters, I have a few questions for you about his work,’ Kai looked a little more sorry as Irene allowed herself to be guided back up the stairs and into the study.

‘You will have to forgive me for being paranoid,’ Irene said. ‘But is there an issue that I should be aware of?’ Ao Guang looked her from head to toe and she thought that he was about to laugh as she clasped her hands together behind her back to stop herself from fidgeting.

‘I noticed my son was a little distractable and less himself than usual, almost melancholy,’ Irene frowned. That didn’t sound like Kai at all. He was prone to bouts of strong emotion, but melancholy wasnt one that she had witnessed. Even when stressed and fighting for their lives, depression without reason was not something Kai was prone to.

‘Has something happened?’

‘No,’ Ao Guang shook his head. ‘He just woke up the other day and was not himself. I think he has been missing you.’

‘Me?’ Irene smiled. A part of that made him feel warm inside, knowing that she was needed in the same way that she needed Kai. ‘I don’t think he would allow a friendship to distract him from his work.’

‘May I be entirely honest with you, miss Winters?’

‘Yes?’

‘You and my son are atrocious at hiding the way that you feel about each other,’ Irene could feel her cheeks burning. ‘I do not care, and you may need to work on not blushing quite so much when people mention him to you, it is a give away.’

Irene stammered.

‘It doesn’t matter, your work speaks for yourself,’ Ao Guang said, he sat behind Kai’s desk. ‘Kai has been missing you. There was no hiding that, he can’t hide his feelings in the slightest, he never has been able to and I do doubt that he will learn eventually.’

Irene doubted that too but was unwilling to admit that she hoped that he would never learn to hide his heart, she liked that he held his heart on his sleeve. It was endearing that she always knew what he was feeling, he couldn’t hide from her. She knew exactly where she stood with him, she always had done and she always would do.

‘I-’ She swallowed. ‘Am going to see where those drinks are,’ She brushed past Shan Yuan, who had lurked in the doorway and definitely hadn't been listening.

The kitchen door clicked behind Irene and Kai startled and turned to her, it was hardly a good thing when she managed to take him by surprise. He blinked and shook himself before smiling.

‘Irene…’ She crossed the room, slid her arms around the back of his neck, wound her fingers into his hair, and pulled him down to her, kissing him. His hands settled on her hips, gentle for a moment before he gripped the fabric of her skirt and pulled her to him just as tightly as she held him.

‘I have missed you,’ Irene was breathless when she finally let herself pull away, she didn’t want to but her lungs burnt for air. ‘So much,’ Kai smiled, it was a smile that she had only seen a few times and was entirely reserved for her. It melted her heart whenever he smiled at her like that, like she was everything that he needed, like she was more important to him than oxygen was.

He touched her cheek.

‘I’m glad you are home.’

‘We should…’ Kai swallowed and looked at the kettle and then back to her. Take the tea up to his family or kiss her again… It was an incredibly hard decision to make, Irene was right there, warm and soft and incredibly easy to kiss.

‘They can wait for a few minutes longer,’ Irene stroked her fingers against the nape of his neck. ‘Your father was worried about you. Is something wrong?’ He shook his head. ‘Kai. Please, tell me if there is something wrong.’

‘I am fine,’ He said.

‘Kai.’

‘I haven’t been sleeping well,’ He said after a moment ‘That’s all,’ Irene sighed and gently kissed him again. ‘I’m sure that I will sleep well again now that I am home.’

‘I like when you say that,’ She said. ‘Home.’

[tryingmydarndest]

Thank You (Luka Couffaine x Reader)

Summary (Part 1/probably 3): The author goes on a bit of a tangent about how Y/N goes on a bit of a tangent about Viperion. Who may just have a little, big ol' crush on them?

Tags: -not enough actual relationship -fluff -but like, a weird sprinkling of angst that I didn't plan on right at the end???

Word count: 1.6k

A/N: Inspired by this fic by @seriously-sirius-black <3. Luka? OOC? Idk, probably, I don’t write fanfic. But I am actually kinda proud of how well Alya turned out. Writing this made me realize how much of a mom friend I apparently headcanon her as. I wrote this gender-and-as-everything-else-neutral as I can make it (lemme know if you see ways I can improve, tho idk how much more fanfic I'll even be writing). Also, I freakin' RAMBLE and overuse italics, but ya get what ya get and ya don't gotta fret. Ooh, important note for future parts (if i write them) - this is a kinda!au where the miraculous users keep their miraculous. also if I had a nickel for every time I get awkwardly specific about the placement of both of a character’s hands I’d have TWO nickels. Happy reading!! <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

Part I - Paris's Cutiest Heroes

The look currently on Marinette’s face as she sputtered out a response was priceless, “Cat Noir? Cat Noir!? What makes you think I’d find Cat Noir attractive at all? And- and- HIM- the cutest superhero! Ridiculous!”

“Utterly ridiculous?”

“Nice one, Alya”

“Thank you so much, Y/N,” you gave Alya a high five on your way to your seat next to Juleka and Rose on the couch facing Marinette and Alya. A sunny Friday after school was the perfect place for Kitty Section and their entourage to hang out. Unfortunately without Ivan and Mylène, seeing as their anniversary called for a private celebration. After pushing a couple couches onto the deck of The Liberty, Alya had predictably started talking about Paris's resident hero team. Today, she chose to ask everyone who they deemed the cutest, and she made sure to jump on Marinette's... interesting response, “And girl, he has the same silky golden hair and dreamy emerald eyes as Adrien Agreste. What’s utterly ridiculous is you freaking out and dodging every time we bring up superheroes!”

The designated snack-boy, Luka, walked out precariously carrying three bowls of goodies for everyone, “Alright, I got more popcorn. Sorry, but looks like we’re out of cheese flavoring, Y/N”

“Oh... that’s fine. I honestly wasn’t expecting it since I forgot to ask,” your free hand not reaching for the bowl rubbed the back of your neck, “but thanks for remembering.”

“Oh, um yeah- Always," is it creepy to remember something so specific? Someone as nice as Y/N wouldn't be interested in some creep. Ugh. Luka took a seat with his own bowl after passing Alya and Marinette theirs. He ended up next to you on the floor, leaning against the arm of the couch, dangerously close to touching your legs.

Rose reached for the popcorn as she interjected, “You know, Alya does have a point. So Marinette, why don’t you just tell us who you think the cutest superhero is, if you don’t like us guessing?”

Somehow Marinette’s face went even paler as she spoke, “What- I mean, I don’t- I haven’t thought- Wha- what about Y/N? Why aren’t you interrogating them?”

Alya crossed her arms, “Because Y/N says the same thing about the same hero every day. Just watch. Ahem, Y/N, care to weigh in on the cuteness level of our lovely Parisian superheroes?”

You looked up from the bowl you had stolen back from Rose with wide eyes, "Hey! Okay, no, that is not fair! Besides, what is our criteria for 'cute'? I mean... Are we going just by physical characteristics? Is costume a factor? What about the animal they're representing, could our opinion of that make this whole thing unfair? And cuteness is so subjective anyway... Why are we even reducing these amazing and honorable superheroes to just their looks? I mean we could be talking about skill, or their powers or power lev-"

"-And your answer would be exactly the same. Seriously, are you done trying- and might I add, failing- to talk yourself out of this one yet? Or should I just read the article you wrote for the Ladyblog?"

"You said you deleted that!"

Luka had perked his head up at your initial fumbling response and turned to you when he spoke, "You wrote an article? That's pretty cool."

You rubbed your face to try and distract yourself from the burning embarrassment, "Umm, yeah. But it was terrible and extremely not. worth. publishing." You hoped the glare you sent the girl in question was enough to scare her into deleting it on the spot, or to at least lie about it, "So Alya kindly deleted it, right?"

Sitting up with a smug look and crossed arms severely lowered your faith that she'd keep quiet. "A good journalist archives everything. Especially something as juicy as one of her besties going on for five thousand words about how dreamy the great Viperion is," dramatically fake-fainting into Marinette's lap, Alya could barely finish before bursting out in laughter. Of course, quickly followed by the others joining in to varying degrees. Juleka and Rose happily giggled to themselves, Marinette looked more relieved that the heat was off her, and Luka seemed to be shocked, or maybe just holding back to see how you were taking this.

Horribly. Horribly embarrassed would describe how you were taking this conversation. You sat there stock-still as you hoped that none of the others could hear your heart's desperate attempts to pound its way out of your chest. That's certainly all you could hear, at least until Alya's voice brought you out of it, "Hey, it's fine," she made her way over to sit next to you as she continued, "We all have our little hero crushes. That's why I bring it up all the time, to show you that it's totally normal! I mean, we all know how I could go on about Carapace for days," Alya gestured for the others to continue, and used her other hand to try and comfort you.

"Well, I find Ladybug to be just absolutely adorable and so kind.... oh it just makes me so happy knowing she's keeping all of Paris safe," Rose added softly.

Juleka brushed a strand of hair aside as she spoke, "Rena Rouge is super mysterious, pretty rad in my opinion."

Alya was rubbing your back like the mom friend she is to try and help encourage you, "See? Super normal, so go ahead and release all this pent up Viperion energy that I know you have. Maybe it'll encourage Marinette here to finally join in the fun!" Alya stuck her tongue out at her best friend, who responded promptly by smashing her face into a pillow.

You just sighed, "I mean- it’s- it can't just-'' were you supposed to just get over it all just like that? Well, at least the embarrassment was wearing off, maybe you could just entertain her for a bit, "Well- um, you see.... HisHairJustLooksReallySoftAnd- you know what. Nope. Can't do anymore of this. Yep- that's all you're getting out of me!" This time when everyone started giggling, you were able to comfortably join them. It was a nice feeling.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A nice evening chilling out with your friends was always welcome, especially with the rising number of akumatizations making that less possible. But the night had come to a close. Alya and Marinette went home, Juleka was walking Rose back herself, and Luka and you had volunteered to clean up. Luka stopped drying the cup in his hand for a minute as he looked at you, “Um, I know it might not be my place, but I want you to know that you don’t have to be embarrassed about the whole... Viperion thing.” God, how am I supposed to take the news that MY crush has a crush on.... Sort of me? Am I supposed to count it as me at all?

“Oh, um. Yeah, thanks. I think I’m over the embarrassment now that it’s out. I don’t know, it’s just that a lot of people think it’s weird since he’s kind of a new hero,” how are you supposed to explain this to him? That you kept such a non-issue secret from him, especially without getting suspiciously defensive about it. “And then people use that to try and say that I only like him for his looks..... And that’s not it! I don’t know, it’s kind of.... A lot? To explain, that is.” This was not going well.

“Oh... Well, what is it? That you like about him, I guess.”

This was so not going well. But he was waiting for a response so... “Uh, well I guess it did kinda start..... that way.... but then I started doing research. I learned about his power and saw videos of his fights. He’s really good! Especially for being so new, which kinda goes into why his power makes me like him so much.” Shit. Rambling, I’m just talking and talking and I need to stop. But how am I supposed to change the subject now? And now Luka’s sitting down, and he seems so invested. Why does this have to happen to me?

“What do you mean by that?”

Luka’s voice kindly shuts your little thought-spiral in its tracks. What were you saying? Oh, Viperion’s powers! You can talk about this, you know this. Just keep talking, at least he seems interested in it, “Well, you know how he can go back and redo the last couple of minutes?” Luka nodded, “Well, we always see the time that worked out. Us civilians get to keep going from the one time it all went right. Just imagine all the times he failed, all the times he couldn’t get it right. It could be dozens, maybe even hundreds of times! He must get so discouraged at some point, I mean I know I would.... I guess I didn’t really think about it at first, but.... but, I doubt I could keep that determination, and I’m so glad Paris has a hero who can, and does.”

Silence. Why was it so quiet? Oh no, he thinks I’m weird. He must think-

“All of this from ‘his hair looks soft’?”

“Hey! You can’t tell me not to be embarrassed, then make fun of me! That’s against the rules!”

Luka chuckled as he said, “Against what rules, exactly?”

“The Rules Of Best Friendship, duh!”

“And who exactly said you were my best friend?”

“Well... your loss, I guess. Now you won’t get an invitation when I plan Rose and Juleka’s wedding,” you brushed off his offended glare as you took the seat next to him.

“She’s my sister.”

“She’d take my side.”

I’d take your side, too. I will always take your side. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

A/N the sequel: I am super bad at finishing things, but I really wanna keep motivated to finish this (like I have a full, probably 3 part, plan for this). If you guys want to help, shoot me a message and I'll send you a link to the google doc I'm writing this on. Feel free to leave a little comment (pls be kind, obviously) and see my writing process! Idk, would any of you guys be interested in that? Would you just get annoyed at having already read the thing before I post it?

[whimsicalworldofme]

Saving Grace: Chapter Thirty-Seven

Grace & Steve share the news of their engagement with Tony and Pepper, and naturally, Tony has some concerns...

It all felt like a dream. Everything seemed hazy; the dance, the romantically lit garden, Steve’s proposal, and then the way he’d practically worshipped her once they got home. She felt goosebumps rise on her skin all over again as she replayed the images of him kneeling on the floor as she sat on the edge of the bed in her lingerie, feeling the ghost of the heat from his breath as he had kissed his way down the inner thigh of one leg and up the other as he’d slowly, delicately pulled her stockings from the garter belt and off her legs. Her breath hitched in her throat just thinking of the way he had made her come again and again for hours, leaving her out of breath and physically unable to move. The super soldier stamina definitely had its perks. She became acutely aware of the metal band around her ring finger and touched it with her thumb.

It was definitely real.

She sighed happily and blinked her eyes open, slowly adjusting to the sunny midday glow filtering in through the bedroom windows. Steve lay sprawled out across her, his head on her chest, one arm and leg flung over her. Smiling, she stroked a hand through his hair, gently kissing the top of his head, something she didn’t often get to do since he was always towering over her. He groaned sleepily and nestled closer to her, which she hadn’t thought possible but he managed it. Wrapping his arm and leg tighter around her.

“Good morning,” he murmured against her skin, eyes still shut, before taking a deep breath.

“I’m pretty sure it’s afternoon by now,” she pointed out, still stroking his hair. “I hate to move you, but I need to go to the bathroom,” she stated, unwilling to extricate herself from him, despite what she’d just said. He groaned, clutching her tighter. “We should probably get up and tell my dad and Pepper the news anyway.”

“Or,” he mumbled, head still resting on her chest, eyes still shut, “we could sleep a little longer then continue where we left off last night. Round two.”

“I think we’re up to round nine at this point,” Grace laughed. “Come on, Captain,” she felt his body respond even though he didn’t utter a word. “How about round nine in the shower? Then we promised to have lunch with my dad and Pepper. We’ll tell them we got engaged. I don’t want them finding out from anyone or anything else.”

“Shower sounds good,” he agreed, reluctantly untangling himself from her.

Getting up from the bed, he scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom. They showered, rehydrated and caffeinated before heading up to the penthouse. The timing was perfect, despite their late start to the day. When they walked in, Pepper was sitting on a barstool at the kitchen island while Tony stood across from her cutting up a cucumber to put onto a big bowl of salad.

“Oh good, my child lives,” Tony spotted them first. Pepper turned around in her seat and waved hello as Tony finished cutting up the cucumber and dumped it into the bowl. “Did you drink too much last night? Not taking a page out of your old man’s book and having a rebellious phase, are you?”

“No,” Grace shook her head, eyes scrunching up as she laughed. “I didn’t even drink last night. It was just an eventful evening.”

“What is that,” her dad, set the cutting board down and pointed at her hand.

“Oh my god,” Pepper gasped, her face lighting up with a bright smile when she spotted the ring. “Is that—?"

“So, some news,” she grinned, glancing up at Steve who nodded with a smile. “Steve proposed last night.”

“And Grace said yes,” Steve added, since they all knew if he didn’t Tony would find some way to interject something mildly inappropriate for the moment.

“That’s wonderful!” Pepper got up from her seat and came over to give them each a hug. “Oh my god, there’s so much to do! Do you have a date in mind? I’ll find you the best wedding planner in the city,” she pulled her phone out of her pocket and began scrolling through things. “Do you remember Angelica, from the museum board? She got engaged last year and hired a fantastic planner, of course the wedding never happened after she found her fiancé in bed with one of the museum curators two days beforehand, but that’s beside the point. I’ll get the planner’s name and number. He did amazing work.”

Grace hadn’t even given a thought to any sort of wedding planning yet, nor to a date, or really anything about the wedding itself. There were some women who had a dream wedding all mapped out from their early childhood, but she had never been one of them. As a little girl she’d thought maybe someday she’d get married in the gazebo at her favorite park in her tiny midwestern hometown. When she’d had a crush on Harry in med school, sometimes she’d imagined eloping at the courthouse with him.

I’ve never really thought about what a wedding with Steve would look like, she realized, feeling a little guilty that it never crossed her mind. But maybe that’s just because we already pretty much live like a married couple. The wedding isn’t the important part.

“Should we have a press release done up?” Pepper’s voice cut through her thoughts. “I think we should, the sooner the better. The press got hold of the pregnancy scare and ran with it, we want to be on top of this. Limit it to one story that we control.”

“Maybe we should let the kids sit down and have lunch with us first,” Tony chimed in, still standing on the other side of the kitchen island, though he’d fished salad bowls out of the cabinets, enough for all four of them. He was tossing the salad he’d made and began serving it.

“Dad are you ok?” Grace walked around the counter to him and wrapped her arms around him in a hug, staring up at him and forcing him to pause for a moment.

“I’d be happier if Rogers had spent the standard three months salary on a ring like you deserve,” he set down the salad tongs and took her hand in his, lifting the ring to eye level. “You know you’re marrying a billionaire’s daughter, right?” He fired a look in Steve’s direction. “I’m not saying spend more money than you can afford, but you can’t skimp out either.”

“Dad!” Grace frowned. “I happen to love this ring. I don’t want anything big or flashy.”

“I didn’t have a salary when I bought it,” Steve stated with a shrug as he came to the counter and plucked up salad bowls and carried them to the dining table. “I’d known for a while I wanted to marry Grace someday, so I took all the money I had in my savings account and bought the ring.”

“You spent all your money on the ring?” Pepper asked, clapping a hand over her heart, making an “aww” face. “That’s so romantic.”

Talk of wedding plans, well-timed and carefully crafted press releases, and questions about venues, wedding party, and seasonal themes dominated the lunch conversation. It all began to feel overwhelming so by the time Pepper headed back to her office and Tony was putting the dishes in the dishwasher, Grace wondered if maybe she should’ve had more planned for her future wedding by that point in her life.

“We don’t have to have a big wedding, you know,” Steve nudged her with his shoulder, offering her a gentle smile. “We don’t need a theme, a signature drink, any of that,” he leaned back in his seat. “All I need is you and someone to officiate.”

“We’d still need witnesses,” she pointed out.

“Well Tony and Pepper would be there, obviously.”

“Pepper really got in your head, huh?” Tony came back to the table and dropped into his seat, leaning back and looking between the two of them. “She’s probably had too much time to think about wedding stuff.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Grace teased with a giggling snort that set Steve into snickers. “You really ought to give her a wedding of her own to plan.”

“Don’t push,” he mumbled, frowning as he swirled the remainder of his drink in his glass.

Steve’s phone began to buzz in his pocket and when he pulled it out to see who it was, his brow furrowed.

“Nat?” Grace asked, since she was usually the one to text him most, other than Grace. They were still running separate missions together, on top of training the newest Avengers.

“Sam,” Steve replied. “There’s a new lead on Bucky he wants to check out. But I’d have to meet him at the compound asap to fly out.” He looked to Grace for guidance on whether or not he should go.

“Go,” she smiled and nodded. “It’s fine, I promise. I’ll come out to the compound for an extended visit when you come back.”

“Thank you,” he got up from his seat and gave her a gentle kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Stay safe.”

“No goodbye kiss for me?” Tony teased as Steve began to leave, making him laugh.

“I’ll see you later, Tony,” he waved and headed for the front door.

“I love you too!” Tony hollered after him.

Laughing and rolling her eyes, Grace got up from her seat and went to sit next to her dad on the other side of the table, scooting close and laying her head on his shoulder, wrapping her arm around his. She sighed contently and shut her eyes, enjoying the quiet of the moment after the chaos of lunch. Tony pressed a kiss to the top of her head before grabbing his drink with his free hand and taking a sip.

“Are you sure you’re ok, Dad?” She asked, opening her eyes and looking up at him.

“Why wouldn’t I be ok?” He raised a brow. Taking another sip of his drink, he set his glass down.

“You didn’t say anything about me and Steve getting engaged other than you thought my ring is too small,” she said. “You didn’t even say congratulations.”

“I didn’t?” He asked, his face screwing up in the way only his could in confusion and ponderance as he clearly replayed the events of lunch in his memory. “Could’ve sworn I did.”

“You didn’t,” she said quietly. “Which is why I’m worried.”

“You don’t have to worry, Gracie,” he slipped his arm out of hers and wrapped it around her, tugging her close to him. “I know I don’t always act like it, and I know I wasn’t on board at first, but Rogers is good to you and for you.” He scratched at his scalp with his free hand. “He’s a good guy and he’s…my friend,” he glanced down warily at his daughter with half a smile.

An impish grin spread over Grace’s face, leaving her beaming from ear to ear as she sat up straight, eyeing her father, checking for any hint of deception.

“Don’t give me that look,” Tony rolled his eyes and pulled his arm from around her. “I can admit that maybe I rushed to judge and maybe you were right, that Rogers and I have a lot in common.” He got up and headed into the kitchen to refill both their drinks. “So yes, we’re friends. And I’m glad he’s going to be family.”

“So why are you so pensive?” Grace asked, her smile fading as she turned in her seat to watch him in the kitchen.

“Uuugh,” he groaned, pressing his forehead against the refrigerator door. “Do we have to talk about it right now? Can’t we just be happy that you’re happy?”

“Dad.”

He huffed and wobbled his head from side to side, mouthing something to himself before he heaved open the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of peach iced tea. He filled their glasses and put the pitcher away before bringing the glasses back to the table. He slid back into his seat and twirled his glass in one hand.

“I’ve only had you for four years,” he murmured. “I guess—I guess, I’m not ready to not have you here. I’m never going to get those twenty-three years I missed back, but as long as I’ve got you here with me, I can try to make up for it. On your wedding day, I’m going to walk you down the aisle and give you away, literally give you away. I don’t know if I’m ready for that. You’re not going to want to stay in Rogers’ apartment downstairs forever, I know he’s been saving for a house for you two. That means we won’t see each other every day. We’ll have dinners sometimes and holidays, but it won’t be the same. And what if he wants to move you to another state? Or even another country?”

Grace had never heard her dad speak so readily and openly about his fears, and even though she felt her heart ache over how afraid he was to lose her, she also felt a twinge of pride that he had reached a point where he could communicate so plainly with her about his feelings. No sarcasm or dodging with jokes, just the truth.

“Thank you for being honest with me, Dad,” she wrapped him up in a hug. “I can’t promise that Steve and I aren’t going to move out some day. We want kids and, yeah, a penthouse in a skyscraper isn’t really the ideal place to raise kids. We want a place with a yard. But that’s going to be a long time from now, especially with the cost of real estate in New York these days. But Dad,” she gave him a squeeze, “I know this is going to sound cliché and it is, but you’re not going to lose me, you’re going to gain a son.”

A dawning moment of realization flashed across Tony’s face and a devilish grin cracked across his lips.

“I can have fun with that,” he snickered.

“The point is,” Grace rolled her eyes, “I’m the only family Steve has, literally. So, unlike other dads whose daughters get married, you’ll never have to worry about losing holidays to my husband’s parents. You get all the holidays. I don’t know that we’ll always live in the city, but then again, you don’t know if you will either. But while we’re both here, you are obligated, by law,” she poked him in the side with a finger, making him laugh, “to go on one weekly father-daughter date and have at least one family dinner per week. Think you can do that?”

“I can do that,” he nodded. “You wanna go spend an ungodly amount of money at that used bookstore you like?”

“Only if we can go to the candy store after,” she bounced a little in her seat.

“Deal.”

Chapter 36

Masterlist

Chapter 38

[wild-west-wind]

Here’s that story I wrote yesterday. Posted on AO3 which I was previously unaware of, because some folks said that’d be easier for them and I live to serve.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Major Character Death

Fandom: Original Work

Additional Tags: cw blood, cw violence, it's a messy little thing, and it is probably obvious I didn't put much thought into it

Grasshopper Pie     

In the hills above the town of Grasshopper, where once monsters roams the earth, something lies beneath the ground. Not quite dead, but not quite alive. Hungry.

(A little short story I banged out in a day. I don't like it.) (Overall there's a lot I'd like to change, but this is an exercise for me in saying "That's good enough," rather than lamenting over multiple versions of the same story.)

[ Link ]

Beneath the cut is the first ~1000 words or so.

About an hour north of Billings there’s a little town framed in a hollow by rocks as bright green as avocado flesh. Twenty people live there, give or take. Once there was a glacier nearby, full of dead grasshoppers, slowly melting, quickly rotting as they fell from their icy tomb. Free, finally, but only for a moment.

They called this town Grasshopper.

A dirty black truck rolled down Grasshopper’s main street, mostly empty, lined with forgotten storefronts. A milliner only identifiable from the painted sign on the brick side wall of a slumping building. An assay office, windows broken, stood beside the very much open general store. A diner flicked off it’s lights down the way. Much to Amaya Zigor’s dismay, they closed for lunch.

In the sagebrush speckled hills above Grasshopper, a group of students set up camp. Between open sided tents and awnings lay broad pits. In the green soil lay black fragments of bones. Long dead. Unlike the grasshoppers in the long-gone glacier, these would not rot. They already had.

Amaya pulled her truck up to the dig site, and backed it up. Fresh supplies in her back seat. Enough beer to drown a horse in her cooler. She wasn’t thinking about that, she wasn’t thinking about how her ice cream was melting in her plastic grocery bag, seeping into her upholstery. She was thinking about the fossils, the rocks. She was thinking they were wrong.

In the hills above Grasshopper, Montana, there were fossils. Bones of dinosaurs, bones of small reptiles. One damaged, but more-or-less articulated wing from an Azhdarchid that Jacob, a new student in the lab, was certain can be identified to the genus Quetzalcoatlus, which would have been cause enough to justify the night’s drinking if he hadn’t been full of shit.

Amaya sat down over the edge of one of their pits. Exposed in the upheaved earth, was a narrow bank of glassy black earth. Below it bone fragments. Above it, more bone fragments. Above that, the physical boundary marking the end of the Cretaceous, and the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. There were two impacts here, separated by centuries at least. Probably millennia. The fossils below the older impact were jumbled. Impact assemblages, she and her labmates were certain, but even those were odd. The taphonomy was strange. Bones died jet black, but in every fragment, every hollow, grew bright blue minerals, large and irregular crystal forms with no appreciable cleavage. The running guess was the mineral chalcanthite, but it was much too hard for a fingernail to scratch. In truth, no one, not even Dr.  Lee, had the slightest idea what was going on here.

Amaya Zigor was certain that, however this dig ended, she and her lab wound either be the stars of the next Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference (next year in sunny Brisbane), or complete laughing stocks for their outrageous publications. Either way, she would leave Montana with a PhD, and folks would know her name.

A jolt ran up Amaya’s back, and she nearly fell into the pit, as Dr. Lee rested a heavy hand on her shoulder. His round face framed by long sideburns and horn-rimmed glasses.

“Amaya,” he said smiling, “You’ve been sitting here for half an hour.”

Amaya took a deep breath, and forced out a pale imitation of a laugh, “I have a lot to think about.”

“Don’t we all!” he said, sitting beside her, a little too close, “Have you seen pit three today? Shayna has been finding some excellent crocodilian material over there. Mostly osteoderms and teeth, but enough to diagnose a species I’m sure.”

Amaya didn’t respond. Lee was overly fond of Shayna. The whole lab knew they were fucking. The fossils in the ground knew they were fucking. The only person who didn’t know was the other Dr. Lee, whose hydrogeology projects out in California kept them apart just long enough for Dr. Lee the paleontologist to engage with his favorite students for some intensive extracurriculars. It didn’t help that Shayna screamed like a banshee in bed.

“I might have you go over and assist her tomorrow. I know you’ve been hard at work over here, but I think her finds should are worthy of pulling you off this side.”

Amaya turned to face her advisor, and flatly said “Of course.” Lee heard what he wanted.

“Good, I’m glad you understand. Try to get these jacketed by tonight, will you,” he said, gesturing to the eroded limb bones in pit seven, “wouldn’t want them to break down any more than they have.”

Amaya agreed, and retrieved her tools.

Even in the early evening, the summer sun beat down hard through a cloudless sky. Heat poured off the green earth below, light glinting off the blue crystals pocking the dig site. With dental picks and a brush at her side, Amaya set to work, exposing the underside of the therapod femur exposed in pit seven. She labored past sunset, prepped and dug and cleaned as she heard her lab around the campfire, heard them crack open cans of beer, and pass around a bottle of Wild Turkey. Crickets sang on the warm clear earth. Their natural rhythm undulating, rising and falling and thrumming with some unseen energy.

The ground under Amaya’s knees seemed to grow only warmer as she cleared rock away. As the air grew cool above her, the pit was hot and wet. A foul, implacable odor hung inside.

Most folks don’t know that fossils smell. Some of rotten eggs, some like a fresh asphalt road on a hot summer day. Pit 7 didn’t smell like either. Pit 7 smelled like electricity, like an old TV the moment it turned off, as static danced about the dying light on the screen, whipping motes of dust into a frenzy.

Below the femur the blue crystals grew more common, filling not just cracks in bone, but every pore of the rock as well. With every scrape of her pick the reek of the pit grew stronger. Blue sand replacing the green dust at the pit floor, until the blue crystal stopped giving way. Amaya scratched at in, and pulled at it, and watched as her picks failed against it. She pulled herself out of the pit, and staggered, her legs asleep and electric, back to the truck, where she retrieved a diamond pick, and a hammer. Chills ran down her arms and legs, as she found the air outside the pit was icy cold, frost creeping up the edges of her windows.

[bougainvilea]

wait for me (part two)

a/n: hello i got excited about my hadestown au and there are a couple songs that i kept relating back to jily so I wrote more. i hope you like it! i used the live version's lyrics - sue me, i like it better lmao. also i don't know the stage direction so i made it up. HOPE U LIKE IT

part 1 here / song here

HERMES: (A deep sigh. A moment of emptiness - the world has stopped to watch the tragedy end.) (Spoken: ) Alright… Alright. (Somber silence, a moment to allow the shock to set in.) (Sung: )It’s an old song.

Lily’s eyes make contact with James’ as she sits in the wings. She can’t fault him - he’s a good actor. He has Orpheus all over him now - the self hatred of a man whose doubts led to his undoing, mixed in with the optimism of a poet who sang his way to hell.

HERMES: It’s an old tale from way back when. It’s an old song. (Pause) And we’re gonna sing it again and again.

The tragedy of the play always hits her in this moment - she always takes stock of herself, always feels a little vulnerable when this moment hits. There’s a real sadness in Orpheus’ failure - you see it coming from a mile away, it’s a sad song, it’s in the first song. But you keep coming back to it, as if… well, as if he succeeds this time. She always feels it in her lungs, taking up the space of air. She mourns for both of their loss.

HERMES: There was a railroad line on the road to hell, there was a young man down on a bended knee.

James is so right for this role. He sits there, still, looking at his mistakes, a mockery of the earlier proposal scene. His emotion shines out of him - for whatever else she can say about him, he definitely wears his heart on his sleeve, and he augments it well for Orpheus. His loneliness is reflected in the desolate set, even with the workers slowly coming onto the stage.

HERMES: And that is the ending of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s a sad song, It’s a sad tale, it’s a tragedy. It’s a sad song, but we sing it anyway.

She imagines the world the cast and crew so desperately wish to present - the possibilities of real change. She feels an ache in her belly - it feels like a gut punch, every night, the idea that maybe there is real ache that reflects this one, that continues forever in this never-ending cycle, just like their show.

HERMES: (A sigh, spoken: ) Cause here’s the thing: to know how it ends, and still begin to sing it again, as if it might turn out this time. I learned that from a friend of mine.

The chorus has come in, and James looks up, and again they make brief eye contact before he turns to the audience. It’s these moments, towards the end of the show, that she feels the most kinship with him, like maybe they’re on the same page. She feels the hope in the voices of the chorus, in his walk across the stage, his guitar slung across his back, and she thinks maybe she could like this man. He is this figure on stage, more steadfast yet uncertain than he has been in the whole play. She sees past his performance, sees the bits that he puts on and the bits that he believes. She knows he puts as much into this as she does, and there’s a level of understanding there. His Orpheus is… well, dazzling.

HERMES: (spoken: ) Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you feel it like a train?

She steps out on stage now, her mask falling into place as she once again becomes the hardened and hungry Eurydice, with a softer shell. She stays in the background, revolving around him as he takes centre stage. It feels… magnetic, being around him. She can feel a thread connecting them on stage, like they circle each other with intention and pull. As she circles, he makes eye contact with her, and there’s a moment, shared. She doesn’t know what it is yet.

HERMES: On a sunny day there was a railroad car and a lady stepping off a train. Everybody looked and everybody saw that spring had come again with a love song, with a tale of a love that never dies. With a love song for anyone who tries.

The song ends here, and she holds eye contact with James, and imagines a world where she could love him, not Orpheus. She imagines a little cottage with a fireplace, a warm lounge where they could read together. Maybe a backyard, where they can lay in the field like they do on stage, with different promises and different cares and different stars, but that same explicit, direct love that exists for Orpheus and Eurydice. Suddenly, the words of the song ring true, in a new way. Anyone who tries.

[parkers-gal]

boomerang

my infamous boomerang series... part six (my most recent: the lights and the voices) will have an altered ending if i choose to publish it, because i absolutely hated where i went with it

wc: 3.7k (detailed angst)

The dynamic is different. The feelings are still there, positively? Maybe not, but remembering the remnants of what was left of the butterflies was enough. But then again, nothing is ever enough.

Tom returned home, exhausted and merely overworked. She'd be there for him though, she always is. It's just in her nature, to care and nurture those around her, to be the healer by choice. Having Tom as her boyfriend was most definitely not different, only now she was being cared for while caring for others, something unfamiliar and quite alienated.

She was picking him up from the airport, waiting for him at the gate. The overhead announcer's voice rang through the built-in speakers, informing the building that flight 729 had just landed and passengers were making their ways off the plane and into the safety of the concrete structure.

Spotting him immediately, she walked as fast as she could without running. He had taken first class, so no doubt he was out before the rest of the crowd, giving him the upper hand and the opportunity to leave before things got busy.

"Hi," Y/N said once reaching him, standing in front of his figure, expecting him to pull her into his embrace like he always did. But he didn't. Just a kiss on the cheek, which would suffice for now. She shook it off, noticing the bags in his hands, so she walked alongside him, glancing at Harry momentarily with a tight-lipped smile, and they made their ways to baggage claim.

The car ride was much less tense than their reunion. Perhaps Tom missed his morning coffee and had just woken from a nap, which could easily be solved with some of his favorite tea, which Y/N had stocked up on in preparation for his arrival. Dropping Harry off at home, Y/N switched places and took Harry's seat: the driver's seat. After helping Harry remove his bags, the pair were off to their own flat a few blocks down. The same routine: load the suitcases into the apartment and get Tom settled as fast as possible to lighten the load that jet lag had placed on his brain and body.

"Thanks, love," Tom said, pulling Y/N into his side and kissing her head. They were in the doorway of the open front door, his bags abandoned by the coat hooks on the wall.

She hummed with a smile, wrapping her arms around him. "Of course."

Tom smiled back before they released from their momentary embrace, and he intertwined their hands and led them into the kitchen for some tea. It was noticeably at least six o'clock, so Y/N decided to dedicate an hour of the rest of today to get Tom ready for bed.

He was sitting on the counter, looking at his phone as Y/N boiled the water in the kettle, pulling out Tom's favored tea. When it was ready, she gently gave him the mug with a smile. Without looking up from his phone, he gave her a small nod and blindly grabbed for the mug still in her hand. With a playful eye roll, she made the reach and filled the distance, standing beside where he was seated.

Ten minutes later and their tea was finished. Y/N sighed and started for the kitchen door, and only then did Tom put his phone back in his pocket and hop off the counter to follow her like the lost puppy he always seemed to be. She prepared him a shower and got him a towel as well as a change of clothes. While he was showering, she closed the window curtains and readied the bedroom for Tom's early bedtime. She pondered what she'd do -- maybe read a book or watch a movie, downstairs, of course, to not disturb Tom or escalate his grumpy demeanor.

Emerging from the bathroom, he plopped on the bed, waving his arms in the air as a silent beg for her to join. She gave in, laying on his chest for the first few minutes as his breathing slowed, and when she was positive he was asleep, she pulled the duvet and the covers over his peaceful figure, and quietly closed the door on her way out.

At ten o'clock, she finally joined Tom and let dreams consume her mind, and she was thankful Tom was able to sleep through the night. In the morning, she woke first, a smile on her face as she glanced at Tom who was surprisingly still asleep.

Still in her pajamas, Y/N makes her way into the kitchen to make breakfast for the two of them. It's a sunny Saturday, winds unfortunately high but sustainable. She decides on pancakes, adding hash browns and sausage to the party as well. She set up the small breakfast table; It's round, and seated comfortably in the corner of the wide open space in the kitchen. The bay window is the opening participant that sees the first rays of sunlight for the day. Mornings by the bay window are hopeful and optimistic, and it reminds Y/N that change means opportunity.

She hears footsteps descending down the stairs and knows Tom is coming, so she sets his mug by the seat across from hers. Walking through the swing door, he makes eye contact with Y/N and she smiles in response.

"Good morning. Made you some breakfast," she smiles bashfully.

"Mornin'," Tom rumbles out, plopping into his seat.

Y/N sits back in her seat, expecting a morning peck like he always does, but after Tom sits down she just assumes he’s still a bit tired after his trip.

"So," Y/N said between bites. "I was wondering what we're going to do on Tuesday, because Sam and Elysia wanted to go carve pumpkins down at the-"

"I think I have meetings that day," Tom said, swigging down some tea.

"Oh," she spoke, disappointment obvious in her voice, but still hopeful. "Okay, we could reschedule or something."

Tom hummed in approval, drinking the last of his tea before standing up and placing his napkin next to his plate. "Gonna go get ready," he said, kissing her cheek as he left the kitchen.

Y/N watched him leave before looking down at her plate, hand still lightly gripping her fork, pancakes abandoned in the cooling syrup. Thinking to herself, she pondered the thought on what Tom has to do today. Letting go of the thought, she stands up to wash the dishes.

***

She couldn't reschedule. It was actually something pre-booked, a few weeks back. They had talked about it over Face-time, her excitement coming out and through the phone as squeaks and rants about the subject. But now Tom wasn't around despite being home. He was in and out of conversations, and he was rarely at the flat. When he was, it was brief and an unavoidable stop to pick up and drop off some things or freshen up, and then he was out again.

He was drifting, and Y/N didn't even know where he was going during the days. But then, when pictures from the paparazzi started popping up, she grew worried and a bit paranoid, but within reason. Of course, though, she didn't mention anything. She never would have, had Harrison and Harry not come over to hang out.

"Do you know who she is?" Harry asked, sipping his beer from his spot on the couch.

"Who?" Y/N asked.

"That girl Tom's always with."

"I thought you would know, you traveled with him."

Harrison hummed, brows furrowed. "I think he mentioned something about a girl he met at a bar while I was in the loo, but I think they're just friends or something."

Y/N nodded, accepting the explanation and hoping to switch subjects. To no avail, though, because Harry was always one to linger on the little details, and Y/N supposed it was a habit he picked up when scrolling through the colors of snapshots he'd taken with his eyes behind the viewfinder.

"Things are good between you two though, right?" Harry piped out. "She's just a friend?"

Y/N hummed similarly, hoping to keep her uncertainty concealed. Harry's eyebrows went up expectantly, and she spoke again. "He's never really... around."

"What do you mean?" Harrison asked.

"He's always doing work stuff. Out of the house."

Harrison nodded slowly, understanding some points, but Harry wasn't the same. "That's ridiculous. His schedule is clear until December."

Both Y/N and Harrison moved their heads in Harry's direction, disbelief and shock running through their veins.

"What? " Y/N whizzed out.

Harry nodded again. "Yeah, he's free until the Spiderman filming picks up again. They rescheduled it again, that's why it's pushed back."

Y/N sat back, hands in her lap as thoughts and ideas and concepts and worries raced through her mind like it was the Indie 500. Her palms moved to rub her eyes, and she shook her head as though to physically drop all the worries.

"Well it's probably something work-related," she reasoned. Before she could go on, the front door opened, and in emerged Tom. The three friends turned to glance at him before making wary eye contact, and then looking back to the brown-haired Brit.

"Hey, Tom," Harrison spoke. "You want a beer? Join us?"

Tom glanced around, avoiding eye contact with Y/N before breathing out and nodding his head, sitting on the other end of the couch. Away from Y/N.

***

When the boys had left, Y/N started cleaning up the living area and loading dishes into the dishwasher. Tom was taking the trash out, entering the kitchen to bring in the remaining dishes, but Y/N spoke up before he could leave.

She was just rinsing the dishes before placing them in the machine, a tip her mother had taught her. Shaking a plate gently, she glanced at Tom and started talking.

"Tom?"

"Hm?"

"Where do you go all the time?"

He stopped and turned around slowly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean why are you never home?"

"I told you already," he sighed. "Work stuff."

"But I talked to Harry and," another dish into the machine, "he said your schedule is.. clear for.. a couple months?"

Tom closed his eyes in frustration, trying not to furrow his brows in annoyance as well. "Why are you asking other people about my business? It's not even your business, so just- keep out of it."

Nodding shakily, she put another cup into the rack. "Right," she agreed. "Sorry."

"Yeah, it's okay," he said before leaving the kitchen and heading upstairs for bed.

Y/N exhaled again, her breathing unsteady and shaky. She stood in place to let the tears dry, before loading the rest of the dishes into the washer, turning it to the proper setting and going to bed.

***

It had been three weeks of this: on and off moments, small banters that could quickly turn to arguments if more effort and courage were put in place, and distant interactions despite living with each other.

In the entire month that Tom had returned to his home country of England, Y/N had had a total of seventeen conversations with him, with the exclusion of questions and requests to 'pass the salt,' or 'have you seen my sweater?'. Nine of those conversations had been banters, arguments without the intensity or tension or escalation.

Thursday night was the first time the tension had started to set thick like a creamer, except this wasn't sweet. Tom was late to dinner, again. It had been the fourth time he promised to show up and the fourth time he pulled a Peter-Parker and didn't bother coming at all. It's one thing to be stood up by a date, but another by a boyfriend you live with. Setting her napkin back on the table, Y/N paid for the time-filler wine she had drank before driving home.

The lights were on, and Tom's car was in the driveway. Setting her keys into the bowl and her jacket on its hook, she walked into the living room to find Tom, a beer fitted in his hand while he laughed at something Harrison and Sam were talking to him about, Harry and Tuwaine fussing over something on a phone.

Sam heard her footsteps on the floorboards first. "Oh, hey Y/N."

"Look at you, all dressed up," Harry teased.

"Yeah, who's that all for?" Harrison laughed.

"Tom."

The room went quiet, the speaker streaming Harry's playlist filling the silence so dreadfully set.

"Excuse me?"

Y/N looked down and chuckled softly. "Yeah, excuse you," she agreed.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he put his game cards down.

"Date night?" she suggested softly.

"What about it?"

"You've stood me up for the fourth time."

"You never tell me when these things are!" His voice rising, a frank contrast to Y/N's light tone.

"It's always written in the calendar on the fridge."

"Well I don't always go in the fridge."

"Because I'm always cooking you food," Y/N reasoned with a sigh.

"That's- " his face scrunched up, "bullshit."

"Not really," she said, moving around the room, bringing her purse and putting it on the table, stealing a chip from the arrangement of snacks the boys had brought out.

"Okay well- not everyone has time to check a fucking calendar. I mean- it's the 21st century for fuck's sake."

"Tom," Harrison put his hand out, "calm down."

"I'm just saying," Y/N went on. "I get if you didn't check the first time or maybe a second time, but after four missed dinner dates it's quite obvious what the intention is."

"Oh yeah, and what's that?" Tom challenged, voice still noticeably raised.

"Maybe you're moving on."

"Moving on?" he repeated. "From what? You?" he jokingly suggested.

"Yeah," Y/N said seriously, positively.

"What? That's fucking crazy."

"Look guys, maybe we could come over another time," Harry said, the boys starting to stand up and make their way out, but Y/N cut them short.

"No- you can stay. I think.. I think I'll leave."

"What?" Tom repeated, looking at her with a crazed expression. "What the fuck is wrong with you, right now? You're making all this shit up."

"I merely said you're moving on from me, Tom. Is that so hard to see? What, with you never home and going out with some girl all the time and missing dinner dates and barely spending time with your actual girlfriend – it's not hard to believe you've fallen out of love. You just keep pushing me away! I love you, but I can't promise I'll always rebound like a boomerang."

"Some girl?" Tom repeated, hands moving into a gesture, palms out towards the ground, his elbows close to his abdomen. "Is that what this is about? You don't trust your baby boyfriend, is that it?"

She glared into his eyes, "I have every right to be insecure about a relationship that's dying out," Y/N deadpanned.

"Dying out?" he repeated her words again. "Something is obviously wrong with your brain, lately," he was following her around the couch, the boys watching them but remaining quiet, trying to cut the tension. "Just so you know, it takes two people," he held up two fingers, "to make a relationship work. Just because I," he gestured to himself, "haven't been in-touch with you doesn't mean you have."

Y/N exhaled, grabbing her purse and then fully turning to look at him. "Who do you think makes you tea and breakfast every morning? Does your laundry? Preps the shower and your clothes for the day, and sets reminders on your phone? Hm?" she sighed. "Who do you think is still caring for you? Maybe you forgot what loving someone is about, but at least I never gave up on someone I promised to stay committed to."

"You have no-"

"And I would understand if you were under the pressure of work and press and your job and all that– but you're not even working right now," she breathed out, wiping her eyes in hopes to keep the tears from falling. "You're intentionally choosing not to spend time with me. Of course I still love you, but it would've hurt a lot less if you just told me you'd fallen out of love, instead of moving on to find a replacement."

From the couch, the boys swallowed hard, hoping they weren't about to witness what would probably be the worst breakup of the century since Ross and Rachel. Disappointed, they were, but not surprised. Harrison and Harry had seen it coming first – it had been weeks since they had hung out with the pair together, weeks since they'd seen any signs of affection, and weeks of missing love that hung in the air like fog or mistletoe.

"You can't just assume I've fallen out of love or some crazy shit like that!" Tom defended neither of the two. "What are you even saying, right now?"

Y/N patted the couch cushions, looking down at her purse. "I think I'm.. going to stay with my friend."

"What?"

"I'm breaking up with you, Tommy," she clarified.

"What?" he breathed out again, eyes watering.

She went on, "I think it's best for both of us right now."

"That's- that's-" he didn't have anything to say, though, and his stuttering was an obvious sign to Y/N that he didn't have many objections to the decision.

"I lo- I'll uh- see you around or something."

"And all your stuff here?"

"I'll come and get it all later," she said, placing a hand over his that was leaning on the couch, before glancing one last time to the boys gathered around the coffee table, whose heads were down in shame. She grabbed her purse again, and the door clicked shut after the echo of her footsteps.

Tom's mouth was open in shock at her decision to follow through with what she had said. He turned around to look at the boys, eyes watered and red. He shook his head and rubbed his face for a good few moments, before sitting back down in his spot, picking up the cards and continuing as if nothing had taken place

"Tom?" Harry said. "Aren't you going to go after her?"

Ignoring him, Tom placed a card down. "C'mon guys, let's just finish the game."

**

Eight days had passed since Y/N left. The very next morning, she came by as she said she would, and she packed up her stuff. It took about six hours, and Tom wasn't there for any of them.

When he returned home, the house felt eerily quiet, and dead empty. It was bare and lifeless, dispassionate and lacking love. He dropped his backpack by the door and made his way up the staircase, noticing the absences of items that had been moved from their rightful positions, from places they'd stayed in for so long.

One would think the bedroom would be the hardest to face, but to Tom it was actually the bathroom. Y/N's skincare products, makeup utensils and palettes, as well as her hair-care supplies and dental hygiene treatments were all gone. Out, away, dissipated. Even her body wash was gone, and when Tom checked the towel closet, an entire shelf was vacant from where her favorite blankets and sheets used to sit comfortably.

The little knick knacks she had collected throughout their time together, and the souvenirs he had gotten her had also departed. Pictures and mugs and plates and houseplants and post-it notes and pillows were gone, vanished and scattered. It was as though they had evaporated into thin air, unlike Y/N's presence, and soul and mind and body and love.

Regret coursed through his veins, pumped his heart and pounded his head. Tears flowed like a melody, deafening his eyes. Cries and sobs rang through the air like bullets, killing only the innocent. He fell to the support of the door frame, crying like no human ever should. Moments passed before he slid to the ground, weeping and wailing and whining. He must've laid there for hours, crying without limit, to no end, before sleep consumed his body and dreams called out to him, and peace set in on his body, his breaths steadying, chest no longer heaving.

The next morning, Tom awoke on the floor with a merciless headache, dehydration setting into his body nicely. His hair was greasy and hands sticky from sweat, his shirt stained from his breakdown. The house was dull and bland, the morning air no longer sweet. There was no breakfast to greet him as the lingering feelings of sleep wore off. There was no warm shower or fresh set of clothes waiting to be worn. His favorite mug was empty for the first morning in over a month, and the tea bags of his preferred brand had finally gone from low stock to nonexistent.

Tom sat up, his brain exhausted and on overdrive, and he got to work on crying again.

***

The skies grew darker, the sun shied away. The tea was bland, the showers were cold, and the bed was empty. Maybe not empty, but bigger. Tom was just now coming to his senses, realizing his mistakes as the initial anger wasted away. But as cliches go, it was most obviously too late. He laid in the dark, eyes bloodshot and breaths unsteady and rapid, with his hands clenched into fists as salty rivers overflowed the ponds that were his eyes. He was crying out to a god that didn't exist, begging for mercy and forgiveness but still going unheard. Selective listening, but now Tom was the one unheard. If hearts could break, this was an inevitable shatter, the remnants of her spirit crushing the broken pieces left on the floor, pieces he knew that would have been glued together by the love that was no longer a part of his life.

A month shy of Y/N's absence, Tom was breaking down, his acting skills coming to greater use the more he pretended to be okay. A life without his girl wasn't life at all, but a nightmare. He was lost on what move to make next; his queen would be in trouble, and moving a knight would do nothing but damage. He wanted to throw the whole board game to the wall, watch it shatter the way his heart did. He wanted to watch someone feel the same things he was feeling, but more importantly, he wanted her back.

[vannahfanfics]

The Road Behind, The Road Ahead

Category: Friendship Fluff

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Characters: Oboro Shirakumo, Hizashi Yamada, Shota Aizawa, Nemuri Kayama

Hey, everyone! Here is my piece for the @headinthecloudszine​!

The rhythmic pumping of the bass had a strangely soothing quality to it, pumping through Hizashi’s living room in tune with the flashing neon lights haphazardly slung from the ceiling in an obvious fire hazard. The aforementioned blond was at his DJ table, swaying left and right to the beat as he scratched the records and hyped up the crowd with well-timed bellows of “Yeaaaaaaaaaah!” Oboro watched him with a smirk peeking above the rim of his red plastic cup; Hizashi never failed to be the life of the party, but he was extra hype tonight considering they’d all just graduated from U.A. 

“So, do you feel like an adult yet?” crooned a sultry voice. Oboro’s smirk widened as Nemuri draped herself over his back, looping her slim arms around her neck as she pressed a friendly kiss to his cheek. “My three boys, all grown up now~ How time flies.” He had to chuckle at her doting mother-like comment, considering she wasn’t much older than them. She certainly didn’t look the part, with a sinfully short metallic-like black dress riding up her thighs and diving down to artfully display her endowments. 

“I dunno. I don’t feel all that different yet,” Oboro admitted with a chuckle. Nemuri tutted and patted his cloud-like poofs of light blue hair. 

“Fufufu, it won’t be long,” she assured with a mysterious glint in her dark eyes. Before she could elaborate, she peeled herself away from him to saunter over to Shota, who was trying to squeeze himself down between the couch cushions to teleport himself anywhere but Hizashi’s crowded living room. Shota exclaimed angrily as Nemuri launched herself— an impressive maneuver considering she was wearing six-inch stilettos— over the back of the sofa to land on her belly in his lap. Oboro couldn’t see from his angle, but Shota began screaming at her to pull her dress down. Based on the whistles and whoops from the multitude of guys in the room, Nemuri was probably wearing something as scandalous as her dress— if she was wearing anything at all. 

Oboro left the packed living room behind to meander into the kitchen, where half-emptied soda bottles and finger foods were strewn across the counters and table. As he shoved his hand into a bag of potato chips and shoved the whole fistful in his mouth, he found himself considering Nemuri’s seemingly innocent question. 

Do you feel like an adult yet? 

Honestly, Oboro thought he would have. He felt some sense of achievement upon receiving his diploma early that day, but it was more along the lines of “I didn’t flunk out!” than actually feeling like he was transitioning into adulthood. He found himself ruminating on the strange lack of emotion, frowning as he drowned the salty potato chips in cola. No matter how much he tried to summon up some sense of maturity, it just felt like any other day. 

“Huh,” he grunted under his breath. 

Suddenly, the thrumming of the bass and scent of sweat and din of conversation was too much for Oboro. He found himself wandering upstairs to climb out of a bedroom window and perch on a small section of the roof, leaving the party behind to embrace the calmness of the night. He exhaled deeply as he reclined against the siding, eyes lidded as he gazed up at the sky. The stars glimmered against the inky backdrop of space, diamonds slewn across a canvas surrounding the tilted crescent moon. He sipped at his soda, but the popping carbonation only served to dredge up a sense of disquiet within him. 

He scratched at the side of his head with a lopsided smile. Man, since when did he think so much? Nemuri was always saying crazy things, so he really ought not to put too much stock into her innocuous comment— but he found that it nagged him, all the same. 

He exhaled deeply through his nose, rolling his shoulders as he found them growing a bit stiff. Really, he didn’t have anything to worry about, did he? So what if he didn’t really feel like an adult yet? There was plenty of time for that. Oboro was a bonafide professional hero now, although as a sidekick for His Purple Highness. Still, he’d be involved in the real deal, not just uneventful patrols and fetching cats out of trees. A smile began to spread over his lips as he basked in it— the realization that he was one step closer to being the hero he always dreamed of being. 

Not only that, but he had the best damn friends in the world. They were a ragtag little group, but just today, Hizashi was broaching the topic of eventually starting an agency together. Oboro could think of nothing better than saving people alongside his best friends. Surely that had to count for something, too. The world was their oyster, and they were sitting at the dinner table with forks in hand. Now that he thought about it, he sure has come a long way since that starry-eyed boy with his head in the clouds living a life based on the whims the wind brought. 

He smiled to himself as he recalled the day he, Shota, and Hizashi first began hanging out. Now that he thought about it, he really was a hoodlum, floating in through the classroom window like he wasn’t late for class! Really, it was a wonder his teachers put up with him with all the crazy stunts he pulled. One April Fool’s Day, he even floated all the desks in the classroom above the school to try and get the teacher to cancel (which would have worked if he hadn’t left the damn desks floating on his signature clouds above the roof like a moron!). As he reveled in the memories of his halcyon days, Oboro realized how much of a kid he used to be. 

Wait. Is this what she meant? 

Oboro scratched at his head, smiling in embarrassment. Wow, he really had been thinking too hard about something so simple, huh? Now that he considered it, he really had come a long way— growing from a carefree, head-in-the-clouds kid to a slightly subdued, somewhat responsible hero. He still definitely retained his sunny personality and was a bit impulsive, but he definitely wouldn’t try half the stunts he pulled in high school, that was for sure. Grinning, he drained the dregs of his soda and released a satisfied sigh. 

“Heh… I guess I do kind of feel like an adult now.” 

“Really? That fast? I would’ve thought it would take a week or two.” 

Oboro nearly jumped out of his skin as Nemuri spoke from the windowsill. In his fright, he actually did generate a cloud underneath him and went floating up a couple of feet. Crossing his legs underneath him, he glowered down at her over the edge of the fluffy construct. She stuck out her tongue mischievously; she had totally meant to scare him, the minx. She climbed out of the window, again displaying remarkable maneuverability in those frighteningly tall heels, and put her hands on her hips as she breathed in the fresh aroma of the night. 

“It’s liberating, isn’t it? Realizing how far you’ve come,” she said, tossing a smile over her shoulder. Oboro leaned his cheek in his hand as he smirked slightly at her. 

“I wouldn’t call you very grown-up, Nem, considering the band of your thong is showing,” he chuckled with a quick point to the swathe of her thigh that was showing. She cursed loudly and tugged her skirt down before flipping him the finger, which made him laugh spiritedly. He sighed contentedly and glanced out of the corners of his eyes at the sky. “But I get what you mean now. I didn’t realize it, but I’ve changed a lot in the last three years.” 

“And you’ve still got a long road ahead of you,” Nemuri smiled as she reached up and affectionately flicked at his fluffy blue hair. 

“We still have a long road ahead of us,” Oboro corrected. Nemuri’s glossed lips curled up into a charmed smile. A slight rustling at the window got their attention, and they both turned to see Hizashi straddling the windowsill with a slight pout on his face. 

“What’s up, what’s up? Are you two not enjoying my totally awesome party?” he whined. Nemuri placated him with a motherly tut and a pinch of his cheek. 

“Of course we are, ‘Zashi! We just came up here to get some fresh air, is all. Your tunes are so radical that we were overwhelmed.” Oboro hid a snicker into his hand as Hizashi absolutely beamed, completely oblivious to the fact that Nemuri was yanking his chain. He clambered out onto the roof, slipping a little on the rooftops and steadying himself by digging his fingers into the soft plush of Oboro’s cloud. 

“All right, all right, I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down!” the blond trilled as Shota poked his head out of the window, mildly interested in why his small circle of friends was now cramming themselves on the roof instead of the living room. We really live up to our moniker “The Rooftop Gang,” Oboro thought in amusement. “Man, it’s a nice night. Can you guys believe we’re like, adults now?” 

“You’re about as far from an adult as you can get,” Shota snorted derisively. Hizashi stamped his feet with a petulant whine, crying into Oboro’s cloud about how mean Shota was— which really only kind of served to prove his point. Oboro leaned back a little, holding onto his calves as he reclined into the open air, and looked back up at the brilliant moon shining overhead. 

They all had a considerable length of the road behind them already. Together, they’d overcome trials big and small, navigating the turbulence of being a teenager and earning a number of scars and stories to show for it. Still… they still had a long road ahead of them, and Oboro was more than grateful to know they all had each other. 

The world was their oyster, and Oboro was ready to dive right in. 

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space orcs, “Revelation.”

Hey guys, I had a bunch of trouble writing last night for some reason, but I managed to get something out, so I hope you like it :) 

“So what do you think, am I more of a Han Solo type or a Captain Kirk type because you know if I am being honest it really depends. I think I would like to think of myself as a Han Solo type, you know dashing and sarcastic, the hero you want to have come in to save the day, but Captain Kirk I can also see. You see I make dumb decisions sometimes and get everyone into trouble. Oh oh oh!! wait ! How about Captain Malcom Renylds. I feel like he is just enough of an idiot and just enough of a badass to work, what do you think detective?”

The Detective groaned loudly and took a long slow breath, “Admiral, listen to m-”

“You know I was also thinking about other parallels. You know how about that old animated movie Titan EA. I think I kind of look like Cale, and Sunny acts just a bit like Stith, you know, the angry chick with big legs. I liked captain Korso of course, just for simple aesthetic reasons, than he had to go and be a bad guy, but damn that redemption arc was surprising and well timed, at least I think, others may disagree.”

“ADMIRAL VIR I-”

“You know I have seen every space related science fiction movie and TV show that ever existed, and I am totally cool to keep talking. I mean I have to pass the time somehow until my lawyer gets here. You see my mother always said I liked to talk. I talked early, in fact, my brothers don’t like the fact that I talk so much, they say I talk TOO much, can you believe that.”

With an angry yawl like a Cat who just got their tail stepped on, the detective rose to his feet, hands to his head, “That is IT, that is IT. We will continue this interrogation LATER.” He turned on his heels and stormed out of the room muttering to himself the entire way, “I need a break.”

Adam Vir watched him go with an expression of pure innocence on his face as the door closed, only to morph into an expression of devilish amusement not dissimilar to that of the grinch in his original animated form. He leaned back in his chair resting his hands behind his head. The Detective had seen fit to undue his cuffs as it might make him more cooperative. The irony being that he would totally love to cooperate if someone was willing to cooperate with him, and actually believe his story.

He cleared his throat wishing he had accepted the drink of water offered to him earlier. He had been talking for about five hours now, straight. Apparently a filibuster isn’t just something you can use in politics. It is apparently a very effective way of driving young and inexperienced detectives insane.

He smugly leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Interrogation techniques were designed to work on the guilty, or, if done wrong, on the slow, but he was neither of those things. Granted he was kind of an idiot, but he was more of an idiot in the way of his idols like captain Kirk and Malclom reynolds and less of an idiot like every disney villain’s cronies. He was smart just…. Selectively.

He cracked an eye as the door opened opposite.

At first he expected to see the detective ready to go another round already, but instead a group of Drev guards walked in. He smiled his best winning smile at them and rose from his seat, “Back to the cells boys.”

The Drev didn’t say anything.

He tried a different tactic, “Zhad chal dana tsa najastich.” May the sun watch over you: A traditional, and respectful, Drev greeting 

The two creatures pulled up in their tracks.

“Tsa Dzhal cheeych” You speak Drev

“Yid.” Yes 

His little greeting had the desired effect, and soon he had the two Drev warriors conversing like two Rundi at a political debate. They laughed together as they walked down the halls of the precinct.

Still in Drev, the three of them continued to converse, Adam talking animatedly, “So then I told him that I can’t hit kids right,  and he was all like. Then you can fight me.”

“What happened.”

“Got my ass beat. You don’t just challenge a sentinel to open combat as a rookie, and you know, at only six feet tall.”

The Drev chirped with laughter, coming around the corner to nearly run face first into the Detective who was open mouthed and staring, holding a fresh mug of coffee before him. The Drev’s laughter died down seconds to late, and the man narrowed his eyes, glowering at them.

“What are you doing?”

Adam turned to look at the other drev, “Tin Najastich.” watch this.

HE turned to look back at the Detective, “Ne’e j’ya eeneenat nehtehich.” He can’t understand us.  He didn’t do much, but he could tell by the face the detective made, he had done it right. 

It was a little trick he had learned from Sunny, a Drev dialect that tended to cause breaks in the middle of words as if adding a apostrophe, while simultaneously pronouncing all the ts and ks as clicks, the ts as a forward mouth clicks and the ks glottal clicks at the back of the throat. Either way, it was like putting on a thick southern accent to confuse an alien translator, and it seemed, it simultaneously worked for Drev.

The Drev began to laugh and babble at each other in the dialect as the detective sat there in frustrated anger, “What are they saying!” He demanded.

Adam frowned allowing his face to go straight as he deadpanned, “I wouldn’t know. I am xenopobic and would never dane to learn an alien language, you know, like Drev, or Vrul, or.” he leaned towards the Dredv, “I am currently working on learning tesraki.”

The Drev continued to laugh as they pulled him back towards his cell.:

Adam grinned and waved at the Tesraki guard as he walked past, “You know I have it on good authority that stock prices are about to go way up for holywood inc. They are working on becoming intergalactic. I would suggest getting on that bandwagon”

The Tesraki looked surprised, but grinned and waved at him as he was moved into the other room.

Behind him, the Detective was practically blowing steam out of his ears as the door slammed shut.

***

The human glanced over at Krill for the fifteenth time eyes wide in an expression of barely concealed terror.

Krill would have rolled his eyes if his eyes could roll.

Catching the look, Sunny frowned and leaned in, “You did threaten to eat him.”

Krill scoffed, “I don’t even have TEETH sunny, how was I supposed to eat him!” He turned to glance over at the man who was still giving him a bit of a side eye. He frowned, “Well, I suppose blending him up and turning him into a meat smoothie could work.”

It became pretty evident in the next few seconds that they hadn’t been speaking quietly enough, at least when it came to the comment about a meat smoothie.

Krill waved him off with a hand, “Oh just ignore us, now when is this meeting supposed to take place.”

“Ten minutes, maybe.”

Sunny tilted her head back, looking overhead at the darkened sky and approaching rain. 

It was just beginning to drizzle when the man nodded and pointed forward into the darkness, “There.”

Sunny squinted hard, just barely able to make out a shadowy shape slipping through the darkness.

Sunny nudged him forward, “Well, go on. If you do this for us, I won’t let captain cannibal hurt you.”

WIth that urging, it didn’t take long for the man to vanish off into the dark, boots slapping on the wet concrete.

Krill turned to look at her in annoyance, “Its only considered cannibalism if you eat your own species.”

“Whatever,” She muttered, moving into a low crouch and slipping into the shadows off to the side. She managed to parallel the movement of their man for a few streets by ducking behind dumpsters and concealing herself within dark alcoves. At one time in her life she might have considered such actions to be heretical against her beliefs, but her opinions on such things had changed as of recently, and she continued to inch forward through the darkness.

Besides, this was about saving Adam.

Didn’t matter what she had to do, she was going to do it.

The human was close now stopping a few feet away from the shadow. The way the rain fell, it almost concealed the two figures as they spoke. Any bystander just passing by might not have noticed them, but Sunny was not just any bystander.

As the two figures disengaged, she had eyes only for one.

The human, likely scared out of his skin went sprinting off into the darkness likely thinking about krill and his meat blender, but his escape didn’t matter to Sunny. She could find him later if she had to, they had his name after all. What they didn’t have was knowledge about this strange hooded figure in black. The one who had paid the humans to incriminate adam, and themselves by proxy. 

Sunny didn’t know much about stealth as a general rule, but She, still, somehow managed to make it up the street without being seen, tailing the small dark figure. That was her first clue, whoever it was was either a very short human, or not human at all. Now that didn’t really narrow things down as there were several species who could fit into that category, burg iotins even some rundi, or a finnari to name a few. Not that she would ever assume a finnari of doing something like this.

She watched as the figure slipping into one of the large buildings, door shutting quietly behind it. She might have worried about losing the tail if she hadn’t already considered that, and lowjacked the package.

She crouched in the darkness her hands resting on the ground before her, eyes narrowed,

A soft rustling behind her, and she turned nearly jumping out of her skin as a figure scuttled from the darkness, its movements disjointed and aggressive.

“SHHH!” Krill hissed

She snorted fuming, “What the fuck, krill you scared the shit out of me.”

“What, why.”

“Oh I dont know, maybe it has been your recent pension for violence, or the fact that you keep talking about eating people, or your uncanny ability to sneak up behind me.”

“You know, I find all of this to be very insulting. You can stab people in the face, and adam can threaten to punch people in the trachea, but the moment I do something that is even slightly off color, it bothers everyone, and then people get all uppity.”

Sunny sighed, pulling her hood up over her head to block out the deluge, “Generally Adam and I don’t threaten to eat people, Krill. That is the difference.”

“Well no one ever told me there were rules.” He said, gripping onto sunny’s cloak as they inched forward into the darkness, following the signal towards the dark building. They didn’t take the same entrance as the cloaked figure, instead going for a more discreet entrance, finding themselves in a maintenance tunnel lined with pipes and power boxes.

The only illumination they got was afforded to them by the glowing dimness of red lights above and the occasional emergency strip. Somewhere, a distant roar alerted them to the presence of some sort of generator. 

They moved up the hall in near silence as the rumbling continued, and Sunny was forced to stop a few times, listening to the distant echoes of footsteps up the hallway though none of them ever came close enough to cause a real problem.

KRill followed at her back.

Soon enough, they had made it out of the maintenance corridors, following a set of slim metal steps upward and into a nice, tiled hallway. The make was very modern for Tesraki, emulating human style which was rather popular in the galaxy these days, and signified wealth despite the fact that humans were hardly the wealthiest of species.

Fake plants, or maybe real ones --sunny didn’t know-- lined the hallways as little fountains of water trickled through artificial streams on the floor.

The aesthetic was rather pleasing, giving an almost outdoor field inside a city that hadn’t seen green in over a thousand years.

They were almost to the end of the hall when sunny went very still freezing in her tracks fast enough to cause krill to plow into her open back.

“What are you doing.” krill hissed glancing over her shoulder, pausing when a pointed finger motioned him to the target.

“No. That can’t be right.

“I am afraid it is.��� ***

Adam woke that night not knowing why.

It was almost as if he had hard a strange noise somewhere in the darkness, but when he sat up, the only thing he could see was the glowing blue/purple wall of the containment field.

He tried rolling over and going back to sleep, but something just felt wrong.

Eventually he forced himself to sit up and look around. In the galaxy, human intuition was nothing more than mere myth, but, despite what others said, he believed in it, and wasn’t about to ignore it’s prodding as it moved him up towards the edge of the containment field to peer into the darkness.

His eyes were almost immediately drawn to one of the other cells -- the one where his attackers had been staying--. Squinting past the glowing surface and into the darkness, he thought he could sense movement.

It was at that moment, that the containment field went down, and he was left blinking into the darkness backing away into his little field of light. When nothing happened, he inched forward and out into the darkness.

Had the containment field malfunctioned?

He took another step into the darkness before turning on the infrared on his mechanical eye and flipping up his eyepatch.

He immediately froze in palace gasping in shock.

“NO!”

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

Study of a Family in Contrast

A girl is born in London, England. She has pale blond hair, blue eyes and fair skin. She is a good girl, a smart girl and her parents love her dearly. She goes to church on Sundays, listens to the preacher and does not pray. She looks through stained glass windows and wonders. She looks at people on the street and wonders. She is accepted to Oxford University on scholarship and graduates with a doctoral degree in Anthropology. Her parents hug her goodbye when she gets on a plane ready to take her to the Valley of the Kings.

A boy is born in Khartoum, Sudan. He has dark black hair, brown eyes and dark skin. He is a good boy, a smart boy and his parents love him dearly. He reads books, listens to music and does not fear. He looks at the buildings around him and wonders. He looks at the people around him and wonders. His parents hug him goodbye, when he gets on a plane ready to take him to Brooklyn College in the United States. Years later, he flies back to Africa, a doctorate in Egyptology taking him to the Valley of the Kings.

Years later a dark haired boy and light haired girl live in a house in LA. Their parents met in the Valley of the Kings. Their father plays the saxophone and they dance around the living room to jazz. Their mother reads to them at night, chapters and passages from her college biology textbook, and they fall asleep curled around each other.

A mother, with blond hair and blue eyes, dies in London, England. A father, with black hair and brown eyes, walks to the hotel they're staying at, but breaks down crying before he can explain. Blue and brown eyes, look on in confusion. “Where’s mommy?”

The funeral is on a hot and sunny LA day. A father, who is no longer a husband, stares ahead and sees nothing. His eyes have run dry from crying. A dark skinned hand curls around a lighter skinned hand, brother and sister trying to find what little solace they can. The little girl sobs and tries to climb further into her brother's chair.

It’s not long after the funeral that they come for her. They had never approved of the man their daughter married, with his dark skin and dark eyes and an accent they had never heard from another mouth, stirring up feelings of wrong and different. There’s a lot of accusations: mental unrest, unsuited for parenthood, traveling too much to look after two kids. They gave many reasons to take her away and none for not also taking their grandson, except for eyes that can only look at skin, seeing dark and light. The reasons aren't good enough to break up a family. There’s lawyers and yelling and more lawyers, and eventually they find a judge who looks at the family and can’t see loving siblings, can’t see the desperation in a father’s eyes, can’t see the hate in the grandparent’s. Instead the judge only sees dark skin, and blue eyes, and other, other, other so a family is torn apart and a girl is flown away to London, England.

….

A young man and a young woman walk on a beach, shoes slowly filling with gritty sand. The young man has dark hair, dark skin and dark eyes, like his father. He wears a black pinstripe suit with a black tie, white shirt and scuffed black loafers. It’s far too hot for the early autumn day. The young woman has light hair, light skin and blue eyes, like her mother. She wears a black thigh length dress, black fishnet stockings, a black leather jacket and combat boots. It’s far too hot for the LA sun. It’s the first time either sibling has seen the other in over ten years.

The funeral let out hours ago, researchers and academics having already finished paying respects to their colleague, a titan in the field of Egyptology. It was another annoyingly sunny funeral for this family. It doesn’t get any easier to bury a parent, but ten years certainly makes a difference. A lot can happen in ten years. A brother and sister can forget how to be siblings. Now they sit on a bench overlooking a vast ocean and silently hope the other one will start talking first.

The girl was never any good at being quiet so she gives up the game first. “I kinda think I want to stay in the states for a bit.” She chances a look at her brother's profile. He hasn’t looked at her, back straight and stern eyes locked on the horizon. “I technically do have dual citizenship, and I just finished getting my degree in theatre. Maybe I should stay in LA, try to make it as a star. British accents are sexy after all.” She pauses for a response. Nothing. She fidgets and ties again. “Maybe I could head to Vegas, it always seemed like a fun place to be. I could take a road trip anywhere I liked.”  A glance is shot at her brother. “Maybe you could come with.” Still nothing “Family road trip or whatever.”

Another moment of silence before, “Stop.”

The young woman jumps, double checking that the voice came from her brother beside her. “What? Stop what?”

It’s like a flood gate had been loosened. “Stop acting like we’re family, like we always see each other over school breaks and holidays and this is just a random run in. I haven't seen you in ten years, I haven't been close to you in ten years, the only reason we’re even on the same continent now is that our father-” His hands clench the bench. He ducks his head to avoid letting the young woman beside him see his tears. He takes a steadying breath and continues, “my father is dead.” He looks up again, more in possession of his feelings. Brown eyes look into blue. “Don’t pretend this is normal or that we’re family, when you weren't there.”

Maybe in another time or place with a different family there would be tears and hugs. But not with this family and not with these people. Instead of feeling sorrow and tenderness, the girl sees red. “I wasn’t there? Do you have any idea how you sound!? I didn’t choose to be taken to London, I was a child, I didn’t have a say! You have no idea what it was like to be me, to be thrust into a new country, a new school, an entirely different culture, completely on my own! Everytime I tried to talk about you or dad I just got these blanks stares, no I got stares of disgust and confusion because everytime someone would make a stupid fucking skin tone comment like that mattered! I didn’t have a mom and my dad just didn’t care enough to keep me and it sucked!” She sucks in a breath then continues yelling. Rage is always easier than vulnerability. “So fuck you for saying I’m not part of this family, I already know that, bully me for trying!”

Neither of the siblings are particularly good at desculation. The brother shoots right back, “Oh I’m so sorry people looked at you like that when you talked about your family! Sorry if I don’t sound super sincere, because people look at me like that every minute of my life! There are some things you were just never going to go through, and being taken in by our-your grandparents has only made it so that you can’t understand what me and dad go through. You weren't there. Everything was different for you. You got to have two people to run to when you had problems, and you got to breeze through life with that chip on your shoulder without fear of being seen as a thug! So no, you don’t just get to show up and pretend everything is hunky-dory, because it’s not and we are not on the same level!”

Both siblings heave in anger, both feeling a gap, a loss of half of themself but not feeling any way to fix it. The brother calms down first, and he decides it would be better to leave than continue the fight. He can’t remember why he even wanted to try. Maybe one last shot though, even if just to absolve him of the responsibility of failure.

“Look here’s my number,” he rips out a page from a leather bound journal, jotting down the numbers. He continues, “maybe, give it a call, maybe don’t.” He hands it to her and stands up. “Have fun in Vegas. I’m flying back to Brooklyn tomorrow and frankly I hope I never see you again.”

He goes to walk away. A hand on his wrist stops him. His sister pulls out an old gum wrapper and jots down a different number. “Mine too. You don’t just get to walk away and put this on me. I’m staying at an AirBNB down on Diamond Street, if you want to swing by. Maybe talk more.” She hands it to him, then gets up herself.

A pair of siblings walk in the opposite direction on a beach, gritty sand filling their shoes. They’re both left with the lingering feeling that their parents would be very sad to look at them and see only strangers.

...

The phone rings showing a number with no contact name. Someone picks up immediately, having already memorized the number.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

There’s a pause before the young man continues, “So you decided not to fly back.” A pause. “Where you headed?”

A feminine voice sighs. “Thought I might give Vegas a try, then see what happens. Easy to make it up when it’s just you.”

“Well you see about that….actually my flight back to Brooklyn got cancelled at the last minute.” The flight in fact doesn’t leave for two hours.

The excuse is rather transparent. “Oh really. Well that's a stroke of bad luck.”

“Especially seeing as my hotel reservation expired this morning. I was thinking maybe I could just drive back to the East Coast.”

“Well I’ve always heard that road trips are an American tradition.”

“Yes, seeing as you’re headed that way….” the young man trails off.

His sister picks it up “.....Driver gets to pick the music.”

“Then I get first turn at the wheel, I have no clue what sort of abomination you listen to but smooth jazz is the best for driving.”

“Ugh, I’m going to regret this aren't I,” but the young woman is smiling brightly. Two siblings continue to talk on the phone, hoping to find common ground. After all they’re family.

[luluwquidprocrow]

i know their names, i carry their blood too

originally posted: august 13th, 2018

word count: 19,681 words

rated: teen

beatrice snicket, lemony snicket

family, angst with a happy ending, VFD, assorted original vfd characters, assorted canon characters repeatedly mentioned, one small girl going through a lot of unpleasantness, most of the time by herself, attempted kidnapping (legit vfd recruitment in action), also one small girl trying to avoid a decent amount of trauma and loss

summary: A man has come back to the city. Beatrice Baudelaire, eight years old and miles away, is trying to find him.

opening notes:

this fic relies pretty heavily on the beatrice letters, and there are a few references and one code that will make a lot more sense if you’ve read all the wrong questions and the unauthorized autobiography!

title from the crooked kind by radical face

.

Beatrice learns early on, at seven and with a bare ankle because they said they don’t require the tattoo anymore, that if she turns the doorknob slowly and lifts it up at the same time, her bedroom door doesn’t stick when it opens. At eight, she learns if she stays close to the hallway wall, avoids the places where the floor groans under her feet, especially in the spot in front of the chaperone’s room, then she can make it in absolute silence to the staircase. The stairs are trickier—most of the steps have warped over time—so she wraps her hands tight around the banister and inches along the edge until she stretches out a tentative foot and finds the smooth carpet of the ground floor rug under her socks.

At almost one in the morning, everything, every overstuffed armchair and faded green wall and well-stocked pantry, is smothered in black shadows. Beatrice doesn’t mind. She can still find her way around. She had walked around for a week with her eyes closed to prove a point a few months ago. (The point was that she could tell anyone by their footsteps, which she could. The result was that she could navigate the entirety of headquarters in the middle of the night. She knows every creak in every floorboard and what everyone’s shoes sound like now.)

A proper adult might ask her if she’d like a light on so she can see a little easier at one in the morning. A proper adult would probably think she’d be afraid of the dark, after everything that happened. Then again, a proper adult would probably not have put her in this situation to begin with. She’s not entirely sure. She’s only known a few proper adults in her life, or people older and taller than her to the point she considered them adults. She hopes she’ll know at least one more.

From the report a volunteer smuggled to her during dinner in the mashed potatoes—and from the confirmation from another volunteer during dessert, waving his spoon through the air at her—and from the further confirmation from the chaperones standing in a corner with their heads together and mumbling not very quietly at all—a man was seen. Far away, on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings in the city. A man they tell stories about, a man no one seems to know for sure, a man who might be a detective, or has had that printed on an office door at one point or another. A man who hasn’t been seen in a long, long time.

“That’s him,” Beatrice had said.

“How do you know?” a volunteer had asked. “You’ve never seen him either.”

Beatrice hasn’t, but she thinks she’s allowed to make an educated guess here. A niece should know her own uncle, even by rumors. And she knows him like she knows the back of her hand, or the floorboard underneath her bed she stashes the picture and the ring under, or the books she’s read in the middle of the night when she was supposed to be asleep, the ones they tried to hide from her so she couldn’t read his name. She knows.

(One of the older chaperones told her—or muttered disparagingly in her direction after Beatrice asked the same question for a whole hour one day, because no one would give her a straight answer—that she has the analytical eyes of her mother and the stubborn streak of her namesake and the brazen attitude of her uncle. Another one told her later, a little more kindly, that she looks like her father when she reads, quiet and studious. So, she knows.)

Her backpack is a heavy weight on her back as she creeps through the downstairs rooms, her shoes gripped in one hand and a letter almost crumpled tight in the other. She’d written it after dinner, tucked away in a corner of a room that no one ever looked in (the bathroom closet, of course), the typewriter across her lap and the news still fresh in her mind. She tapped her fingers against the keys. How should she address the letter? Because she’d have to send a letter. It was only polite, after all. But calling him uncle outright might be a little too much, a little too soon. Dear, she typed, for a start. Dear—physically distant relative? Closest living relative? The person she had to find, because he could help her find the people most important to her? This had to be perfect, and Beatrice knew it would be, but she still had to think—

Dear Sir, she settled on, with a small, pleased smile.

That was when she’d heard the voices from outside in the hall, filtering through the bathroom door.

“This can’t be good news,” said a chaperone Beatrice never liked. “He’s a wanted criminal, isn’t he? And I heard he was responsible for that other fire a few years ago, too. What if he comes here?”

“How can we trust someone like him?” said another one that Beatrice had almost respected until that moment.

“It’s probably not even him,” said a third voice. “There’s been too many people with his initials showing up over the years. With any luck, he’s dead and gone.”

Beatrice frowned, mostly in anger, because that was such an awful, rude thing to say about someone. She knew it was him. There was no way it couldn’t be. But the chaperones had a point about the initials, and it made her think of something else. In case the letter went astray, because the mail could be so unreliable, especially so far from the city, she should preface it with something, shouldn’t she?

I have no way of knowing if this letter will reach you, as the distance between us is so very far and so very troublesome, she’d written, proud at how professional she sounded. And even if this letter does reach you, I am not sure it will reach the right person. Perhaps you are not who I think you are.

But she’d learned one important thing here, and that was that you had to be certain, because you might be wrong. So at the end of the day, it was merely a pretense, a formality. There was nothing she didn’t know for sure, because she was certain.

My name is Beatrice Baudelaire, she typed, with a fierce determination and her head held high. I am searching for my family. Then she’d known that she was going to leave.

Beatrice squints up at the grandfather clock in the corner of the main room, trying to see the time through the shadows. If she cuts it too close she’ll run into the chaperones doing their middle-of-the-night check on the neophytes. She has to be out of the building before it comes to that. The ground floor of headquarters is silent as a grave right now, as dark as one too, and she steps close to the couch where the floor won’t talk back to her as she makes her way to the heavy ivory front door, washed grey in the dark.

She knows from experience—from carefully watching and listening—that the door is locked (silver, outdated, the kind from the old hardware manuals Beatrice has extensively studied in the dead of night) from the outside, the volunteer who locks it then running up the fire escape and back inside through an upstairs window. But the quickest way out is always the easiest way in. She puts on her shoes and takes off her backpack, unzips the latter as slow as she can, and feels around for the thin red ribbon.

She shifts her hair, shoulder-length and blonde with a curl at the very end, away from her face, and ties it back securely with the ribbon.

An older volunteer had given her a lock pick the previous week after Beatrice helped her solve a word game—there’s no way she would’ve been able to get one otherwise. The chaperones almost always seem to know when someone’s doing something they shouldn’t, considering how much else they miss. Beatrice takes it out and gets to work, moving quickly and quietly, listening for the barely audible tick when one of the tumblers releases. One of the chaperones laughs upstairs, a disembodied thing in the darkness, and Beatrice grips the tools harder so she doesn’t jump and drop them.

The lock clicks sharply, the door easing open with a heavy creak. Beatrice freezes in place, straining her ears, her breath still in her throat. She’s sure someone had to hear that.

Something creaks upstairs.

The floorboard outside the chaperone’s door.

Beatrice snatches up her bag, squeezes herself through the gap and outside, and pulls the door shut behind her. She runs down the stone steps two at a time and doesn’t look back.

Ten blocks away, when she’s sure no one is looking, Beatrice drops the folded letter into a public mailbox.

The only train out of town leaves at five in the morning. Beatrice gets to the station with plenty of time to spare, and easily memorizes the route she’ll have to take to get to the city. It’s a long one, so she sits down on one of the benches and counts out her change. She digs the ring out of her bag, the heirloom from the island Sunny had given her that Beatrice had hid from the chaperones, and tries it on different fingers until it stays and doesn’t slide. Then she waits, tracing the low ceiling beams with her eyes, swinging her legs back and forth.

She knows just what he’ll be like. Not too tall, keeps to himself, intelligent. Sensible, maybe a little tentative, a little worried. His books made it sound like he’d been through a lot, after all. But she’s not too concerned about that. He’ll talk to her, because she’s his niece, and she’s read everything he’s written, and they have a good deal in common. They both like big words, long books, and could take or leave the sea.

She has one picture of him, of the side of his back and a corner of his face and one hand, or the side of the back and the corner of a face and the one hand of a man Violet and Klaus didn’t know, but a man Beatrice knew couldn’t be anyone else. There were three other people in the photograph—the uncle she’ll never meet, and the Baudelaire parents.

Beatrice hadn’t meant to take the photograph. It was their photograph, Violet and Klaus and Sunny’s, the last thing they had of their parents. But she thought it might be the only glimpse she’d get of her uncle, especially when she’d only known about Jacques, so she would sneak it out of Klaus’s commonplace book when he wasn’t looking. She’d wonder who the other man was, since that was before she knew. And she’d meant to put it back, but—but there hadn’t been time.

Violet and Klaus told her her mother had blue eyes, and so did Jacques, and she has them too, so she knows she’ll see the same shade of blue in his eyes, another link between the two of them. Excitement flutters around inside of her like a million wonderful butterflies, and she can’t help but smile. Not only is she going to find the family she lost, she’s going to find the family she didn’t even know she still had until a few months before. Beatrice can’t think of anything luckier.

There’s not too many people on the train when it comes into the station, so Beatrice picks a windowseat all to herself, pressing herself close so she can see everything passing by. She doesn’t want to miss a single thing. She swings her legs again, heels kicking the seat, and waits for the train to start moving.

“Aren’t you a little young to be traveling alone?” the woman across the aisle asks. She lowers yesterday’s evening edition newspaper and gives Beatrice a pointed stare behind her thick-framed glasses.

“No,” Beatrice says.

“You seem a little young,” the woman continues.

“I’m short for my age,” Beatrice says.

The woman gives her another look, specifically at her feet, and then looks back up at Beatrice with a raised eyebrow. She ruffles her newspaper imperiously and disappears behind it again.

Beatrice swallows, her shoulders pulling in. She makes a point to stop swinging her legs and sits up straighter. She keeps at it, even when the woman gets off at the next station and she’s by herself on the train.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she jolts awake at a flash of light across her face. It flickers jagged on her hands, lighting up the seat beneath her, bright and blinding white. She looks around frantically, expecting to see rain and bending wood, to hear the roar of crashing waves, before she remembers she’s still on the train. There’s no lightning on a train. It’s just the sun streaming in from the window. She watches with wide eyes as it creates patterns on her arms and her dress, then tears her gaze away and stares hard at the faraway houses outside the window instead, clutching her bag in her lap. Beatrice thinks of big words (pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity surely counts as a word, and she spends ten minutes testing out pronunciations), long books (Anna Karenina is long, and she can probably still read it even though she already knows the central theme), and anything but the sea, until her hands loosen and her shoulders drop and the sun is high enough that she can’t see it.

Beatrice had first found his name buried in old reports, in thirteen files jammed into the back of a drawer, down in the basement at headquarters when someone had asked her to find a flashlight. She found a bat instead, clinging to the rafters, and it blinked at her with big, black eyes. Beatrice blinked back, because she knew all about all kinds of animals, especially the ones the organization trained, and she didn’t mind bats. Then it fluttered down on top of an old filing cabinet in the corner.

Beatrice wandered over and picked out faded letters that spelled Baudelaire on the front. Eager, because no one at headquarters would talk to her about Violet or Klaus or Sunny, or answer her questions about where they might be, she yanked it open and found files and files with a distinct cursive signature ending each one—Lemony Snicket. And her stomach had twisted up tight, because she could hear Klaus like he was standing right behind her, telling her the name Kit Snicket.

Kit Snicket, Beatrice had echoed.

That’s right, Klaus had said, smiling. She was your mother.

Beatrice knew all about her mother. Violet and Klaus and Sunny had told her her mother was a good person, a volunteer, someone who had helped them, and they had helped her. That was how Beatrice was born. And she knew all about Jacques, because they’d said the same thing about him. But they’d never mentioned a Lemony. She knew better than to think he was her father, because she knew her father’s name, too. Dewey Denouement. They’d said his name only once, and she’d repeated it over and over again to herself. Beatrice didn’t know who this was.

She read through them all in the dead of night so no one would bother her, because Beatrice knew they were watching her, closer than they watched the other neophytes. She tried to find the four volumes she’d found hints at in other files, although she never managed to pin them down. But the thirteen files told her enough. They confirmed that Violet and Klaus and Sunny were still out there somewhere, just like she thought. They confirmed their stories, although with other details they hadn’t said or had relayed differently—but Beatrice had never doubted what they’d told her to begin with.

And they confirmed that Lemony Snicket was her uncle, and he was alive.

All of Beatrice’s hopes became real, became fact. There was someone else out there, someone who could help her. Someone who was family. Someone who could help her find Violet and Klaus and Sunny. Someone who knew the whole story too.

So then she just had to wait. She had to wait, and learn, and sit through someone telling her how to make a meringue when she knew full well how to make a meringue, and how to pick a lock and how to define a word and the right way to escape a burning building. She had to keep waiting until the right moment came and she could leave and try to find him, try to find them all. And Beatrice would know when it was. She was Beatrice Baudelaire, after all. She knew everything now.

Beatrice spends three weeks switching trains, eating greasy sandwiches from the vendors hanging around in the old, dingy train stations. Sunny wouldn’t like any of the sandwiches at all, but Beatrice has to make do with what she can. No one talks to her, so she doesn’t get a chance to try out any of the other things she’d thought to say after she spoke to that woman. I’m visiting a relative. I’m in a special program. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers? She’s a little bummed about that, because she practiced the perfect eyebrow raise in the hand mirror she took from one of the chaperones, but it’s really for the best. She doesn’t need to be sidetracked.

Instead, she listens to how the trains sound smoother and sleeker closer to the city, watches how the stations get more impressive. She takes pamphlets from each station until she has a neat collection detailing train mechanics, local restaurants, and sometimes, if she finds one, the smallest books she’s ever seen. Beatrice sits in the hard station seats and flips through them while she waits for her train to come in. Mostly they’re books she’s read before, but she thinks they’re cute, being so tiny. She’ll show them to Violet and Klaus and Sunny, and her uncle, too. She knows they’ll enjoy them.

A voice mumbles indistinct static over the loudspeaker. Beatrice finishes her sandwich, puts the latest brochure in her bag, and gets on the next train.

The train station in the city is enormous, bigger than headquarters. It certainly looks as old as headquarters, but a little more distinguished, with a solid white floor and an endlessly high ceiling. Beatrice would be able to appreciate it more, she thinks, if there wasn’t so many people, all bustling past in a flurry of suitcases and elbows. None of them spare her a second glance, not even when she climbs up on top of one of the curved benches for a better view of the entire station.

Whenever Violet couldn’t figure out how to fix an invention, or Klaus couldn’t figure out the meaning of a sentence, or Sunny couldn’t figure out how to change a recipe, they would take it apart and look at each individual component before continuing. The same principle works for a city, Beatrice figures. A city is just a collection of streets, one right after the other, and all of them go somewhere. It’s not too hard to find out where, especially when you have the right map.

She finally spots the map display, drops back onto the floor, and goes and grabs every single map available. She squeezes her way through the crowd mobbing around the exit and emerges out on the city street into a sudden deluge of bright lights and noise. Beatrice blinks until it all evens out, all the traffic lights and towering buildings and the people, hundreds and hundreds more of them. She swallows, presses herself against the outside wall, and takes a moment to watch everything.

It’s strange. The ocean was vast, and they rarely ran into anyone out there, and headquarters, tucked away in a small town miles from the sea, had only about twenty neophytes and a handful of teachers and chaperones. But the city is full of jostling bodies and constant sound, like the whole world rushing around her, a storm that doesn’t stop. Beatrice thinks she might be scared, if she wasn’t so systematic about it. You can’t be scared if you know everything. It’s just different, is all it is. She reminds herself to breathe and thinks it’s just different.

Beatrice spreads the maps out in the park across the street, holding the edges down with rocks so they don’t blow away when the breeze kicks up. Everything is marked on the maps, every street and building and corner store, and even the best places to see certain birds. One map includes Nine Dreary Buildings to Avoid on Your Lunch Break, which is absurdly specific but exactly what she needs, and Beatrice hunts them all down with a careful eye and a black pen. All nine buildings are within a few blocks of each other, clustered in the center of the city. She’ll have to go through all of them, just to be sure. Klaus taught her it was good to be thorough. She puts the rest of the maps away and starts looking.

The first two buildings are too short to have a thirteenth floor. The third building looks like it was condemned years ago and no one bothered to do anything with it. The fourth building has so many floors that Beatrice loses track when she stands on the sidewalk and tilts her head back to try and count, and she looks through the directory inside the doors but doesn’t see any mention of her uncle’s name (or a pseudonym, or an anagram, or even just a suspicious blank space).

The walk to the fifth building takes the longest, because Beatrice has to find a path around the construction being done on seventh street, and takes ten minutes to wrestle with the map and figure out which street she’s on when she winds up in a dark alley with a lot of cigarette butts and one very noisy pigeon who tries to steal her map. The sixth building has the suspicious blank space on the directory, but it’s on the fifteenth floor. The seventh and eighth buildings, when she manages to find them, were mislabeled and wind up being two different diners, one of them even across from a completely different train station. Beatrice admits that they’re still pretty dreary-looking and uncomfortable, especially the latter one. She certainly wouldn’t want to eat at a place called The Hemlock Tearoom and Stationary Shop. That’s just tempting fate a little too much.

The ninth building proclaims itself to be the Rhetorical Building in faded but still distinct black print on an otherwise grey building, with a tattered brown awning over the glass double doors. It’s definitely tall enough to have thirteen floors—Beatrice counts twenty rows of windows going up the side. She bites her lip and scans the directory. Her heart leaps when she spots the little card for an office on the thirteenth floor. The name scribbled out, but whoever did it used a faded black pen and didn’t do that good a job, so she can still see the very clear L at the beginning and the S somewhere in the middle. She bites her lip around a smile.

This is it. This is her uncle’s office.

Beatrice pushes the doors open and takes a cursory glance around the lobby, and finds the inside lives up to the dreary reputation too. She wouldn’t have put so much sagging grey furniture and scuffed flooring and wilted potted plants in an office building. She ducks down as she hurries past the front desk so the bored receptionist doesn’t see her, vaguely wondering what it is about the building that her uncle likes so much to have an office here, and heads up the staircase. She can ask him when she sees him. She can ask him everything when she sees him, although everything is just one single question, but it’s everything to her.

The thirteen floors pass in what feels like a matter of moments, and Beatrice breaks into a run when she gets closer to his office, bursting through the doors onto the thirteenth floor. She darts from door to door, looking for the right number, wood creaking under her shoes, and almost barrels right into a panel of old, frosted glass on a door halfway down the hall. The only writing on it says DETECTIVE in peeling letters, which is exactly what she expected. Beatrice grins and knocks a few times, bouncing on the balls of her feet. When there’s no answer right away, she tries the doorknob.

The door is unlocked.

Beatrice tries with everything she has to contain her excitement, but it still comes through in her shaking hands as she turns the doorknob. “Hello?” she calls.

She comes face to face with a cloud of dust. Beatrice coughs into her fist, waving her other hand around to disperse it, and looks up to find a cluttered, but empty office.

Beatrice frowns and walks inside. The blinds are shut tight over the windows, so she eases them open carefully, letting in just enough light to see, and the office still doesn’t have anyone else in it. She checks under the desk, and out on the fire escape, and even under the papers on the walls, but there’s no reasonably tall man with her eyes waiting for her. She huffs out a sigh, her shoulders falling, but then the papers on the wall catch her attention. She looks closer.

They aren’t just papers—there are photographs mixed in, pictures of people she’s never seen before, and pictures of places, cities, hotel rooms, at least one rental car office, an all-you-can-eat buffet, and two separate theaters, and newspaper articles and pages ripped from books, all framing a humongous map of the city and surrounding areas, bigger than any she picked up at the train station. The papers are connected by a thin red string, wound around tacks and marking pins and what looks like an old bottle cap for a soda Beatrice doesn’t think sounds very pleasing. The middle of the map has more recent ones, polaroids dated a few months back of steep, rolling hills, a note paperclipped to one, neat typewriter type proclaiming it could be possible, underlined in a smooth, even blue pen. There’s a path marked beside them, curving through a wide and unlabeled space in the map.

That must be it, she thinks, nodding to herself. He’s not here, and she could be more upset about that, but she can’t be when now she knows exactly where he went. He’s pretty obvious for a detective, which makes her smile around a laugh.

She turns to the desk, which leans a little to one side, papers and a typewriter balanced precariously. A strangely-shaped paperweight sits on top of a stack of papers, and Beatrice mentally runs through every single animal she knows but can’t find a match. It looks like a snake or a worm or an eel, only with too many teeth.

Beatrice clambers up into the chair behind the desk, settles herself, and looks at the typewriter. It’s an old model, but well-cared-for, with shiny keys and a brand new ribbon, almost like it was waiting for her. Beatrice rolls in a sheet of paper, and then runs her fingers over the keys. She’s sure he won’t mind.

Dear Sir, she types. I am writing this on the typewriter in your small, dusty office, on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings of the city.

I am leaving this city, only hours after seeing it for the first time, to follow your path of yarn and pins. I am heading for the hills…

When she leaves his office and starts hunting through the bus schedules for an idea of how she’s going to get to the hills, she realizes, with an exhilarated jump of her stomach, that it’s now March 1st. She’s been nine years old for a whole day.

On her last birthday on the boat, which Violet had radically modified before leaving the island and on the journey after, Sunny made her a cake. There were no candles, because none of them ever used a candle, at least when Beatrice was looking, and Violet and Klaus read her favorite story, and everyone got icing all over their hands and faces. Beatrice can just barely hear the way they all laughed. There’s a thin fog over the rest of the memory, one that strangles the excitement out of her. She can’t quite recall what the weather was like, or what she wore, or what flavor the cake was or even what the story was and especially how close it was to the day where—

Beatrice clears her throat and looks back at the bus schedules. She doesn’t think I have to find them. She thinks I will find them.

Beatrice takes one look at the sandwich counter in the bus station and resolutely decides she’s too hungry for another sad, uncomfortably greasy sandwich, and she needs a much better option. She takes out her map and backtracks to the Rhetorical Building, because the closest diner is on that street, right across from the office, between a tailor shop and a building shaped almost like a short, squat pen. For a city that on the whole is a lot more dreary than she thought it’d be, the diner looks bright and welcoming, with soft lights in the windows and cheerful blue curtains. Klaus taught her to be aware of her surroundings, so she makes sure she looks at everything when she steps inside.

The diner isn’t very big, but it’s clean and well-kept, with tan booths against either wall, a line of square tables right down the middle, and a counter blocking most of the kitchen from view. The pictures on the walls are all framed and organized in neat rows, and Beatrice’s gaze moves quickly from the few pictures of an ocean and a group of people in front of a boat to the other ones of cityscapes, and then to a completely blank piece of paper with #47! scribbled in the lower right corner. She looks to the other side of the room and finds a tightly-packed bookshelf near the counter. She thinks Klaus would definitely approve.

She climbs up on top of one of the counter stools and smooths out her skirt, and then sees a tall man standing behind the counter, flipping an oozing sandwich on the grill. He looks at her with wide eyes, surprise clear on his face, but then he smiles, so genuine she could’ve just imagined the shock. Beatrice thinks he looks a little like a movie star, with that thick red hair and easy stance.

“What can I get you?” he asks.

“I don’t have much money,” Beatrice says, because Violet always taught her to be honest. Sunny taught her to lie, but she thinks Sunny would like this man too, if she saw that sandwich.

“Not a problem,” the man says. “It’s on the house. What do you like?”

“What are you making?”

“The best grilled cheese you’ll ever eat in your life,” he says, and he slides the sandwich onto a plate and sets it in front of her. Then he puts a napkin and a glass of water beside it and smiles expectantly.

It is the best grilled cheese she’s ever eaten in her life. It puts the millions of sandwiches she ate at all those train stations to shame. When the cheese pulls when she takes a bite out of it, she knows that Sunny would love this sandwich. It seems almost unfair to get it for free. “Are you sure it’s okay?” she asks through a mouthful of toasted bread and mozzarella and a hint of pepper.

“Tell you what,” he says, wiping his hands on his apron. “Have you read anything good lately? My friends and I are always looking for book recommendations.”

She wishes she could get everything in life with a good book recommendation, because that sounds like a great system. The last book she’d read had been back at headquarters, so that she would understand a certain code, but Beatrice liked it a lot anyway. She was told it was a classic too, and she knows lots of adults like it when you read classics. “I read a book about a girl who goes out to dinner with her family,” she says, “and cracks an egg on her forehead. Not at the dinner, in a different chapter.”

He laughs. “A friend of mine liked that one when we were kids,” he says. “She went around trying to crack an egg on her forehead too, made me go through a whole carton of eggs.”

“Did she do it?”

“She sure did. Got egg all over my aunt’s diner in the process, but she looked me right in the eye and told me it was worth it.”

Someone else sits down farther down the counter, and the man walks off in their direction, leaving Beatrice alone with the grilled cheese. But he comes back, a curious look in his eyes. “So what brings you to the city?” he asks.

She thinks this is the question where she shouldn’t be entirely honest. Beatrice sits up straighter in her seat, trying to pull the sandwich apart into smaller, more dignified bites, the cheese oozing. “I’m visiting a relative,” she says.

“A relative?”

“A relative,” she says. “That’s all.”

“Do you need any help?” he asks. “I know this city like the back of my hand, and I’d be happy to—”

“No,” Beatrice says. “I know what I’m doing.” She finishes the last of the grilled cheese and wipes her hand on the napkin. “Thank you very much.”

He frowns a little, like he wants to ask her something else, but then he settles on another smile. “If you’re ever in the area,” he says, “or you need anything, even just some good food, stop on by.”

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Jake Hix.”

“Beatrice Baudelaire.”

The only thing about the journey into the hills that Beatrice didn’t account for is all the open space.

The bus driver only takes her as far as a convenience store on the outskirts of the city, so Beatrice walks the nearby dirt roads out into the hills, stopping at the first sight of open, empty land. She grips the straps of her backpack, standing at the edge of the misty and faded earth spread out all around her, reaching on and on and on, sloping down at dangerous angles before disappearing completely in a thick haze. She swallows hard and stares even harder.

Beatrice focuses on the color. Even in late winter, it’s green, pale but distinctly green. They’re hills, not the ocean, with a horizon blurred white with fog and clouds. Nothing is a dangerous, roiling blue-black-grey, and the tall crests of the hills don’t move like waves, and nothing rushes through her ears like a scream, except the wind, which is much less thunderous than water. After all that, it’s almost silent, in the hills. It’s silent, and it’s not all that open, is it? There’s at least two scraggly little trees that she can see. Landmarks. Points of reference. She is not alone in the hills.

He’s out there, somewhere.

She starts walking.

Without the train schedules for something to keep track of, Beatrice isn’t sure how long she spends in the hills. Time passes in cool nights and cloudy days and an awful lot of grass with actually very few trees before, in a low valley in the hills, she reaches an encampment of about thirty shepherds. Beyond them, where she expects sheep, is an impressive collection of yaks. They might be the only people she runs into out here, and she’s starting to get worried, not so much that she won’t find her uncle, but that she’ll overlook him completely in all this space. The path on the map in his office was pretty vague. She’s going to have to ask them.

Beatrice approaches one of the shepherds. He looks like he’s the oldest, his wild and white beard tangling in the wind. He holds a thick, dark bell in one hand, his elbow propped against a sturdy walking stick, and watches Beatrice with startlingly cold eyes as she approaches.

“Excuse me,” Beatrice says. “Have you seen a man around here?”

“Depends,” he says. His voice rumbles like deep thunder, and it makes her flinch. “What’s he look like?”

Beatrice thinks about it. “Average height, not bald, fully clothed, answers to the initials L.S.”

“Oh,” the shepherd says, straightening up. “Him! He was here for a while. A strange one. Kept to himself most of the time. Stayed in that cave about two miles away.” He rings the bell, and the sound clunks and thunks against her ears. The yaks in the distance raise their heads and gaze in his direction. The shepherd, meanwhile, looks back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Seemed like he might have been waiting for someone, I thought.”

She feels a twinge of guilt and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She should’ve gotten here faster. “Can you take me there, please?” she asks.

“I don’t do anything for free,” he says shortly.

“I don’t have much,” she says, frowning, and it’s more true now than it was when she told it to Jake Hix. Between all the train fare and the subpar sandwiches and then the cost of the bus, Beatrice figures she has maybe seventy-five cents.

The shepherd bends down, sweeping a critical eye over Beatrice. When his gaze finds her hands, he points at the little band around one of her fingers. “That,” he says. “That would do.”

“Oh,” Beatrice says. She looks down at the ring, dull in the lack of sunlight. She’s seen it sparkle beautiful gold and red, the carving of the initial in the stone glittering brighter than anything. Something lost, something that was found again after so much time. Beatrice likes wearing it, even though she doesn’t always think about it.

But it’s not like it is a family heirloom, for her mother or her father or for Violet and Klaus and Sunny. It belonged to the Duchess of Winnipeg, and although it found its way through her family anyway, it’s certainly never really been Beatrice’s. She just thought that she’d be able to give it back to the Duchess at some point.

She slides the ring off her finger and holds it up for the shepherd. His beard parts in a smile, revealing awfully shiny teeth, and he snatches the ring up and drops it into his pocket. The yaks are closer now, and he winds his hand into the rope around one of their necks and drags it over. He climbs up onto its back and stares at Beatrice. “It’s a ride. You’d best get on.”

Beatrice pulls herself up behind him. She tracks the sun this time, over the huge shoulders of the shepherd, watching it dip through the sky as they ride.

“Did he say anything?” Beatrice asks at one point. “The man.”

The shepherd scratches at his chin. His elbow swings back as he does, jostling into Beatrice’s ear. “Something about a root beer float,” he says. “I’m in the mood for a root beer float.”

“That seems a lot to ask, in the hills,” Beatrice says, tilting her head to the side to avoid the elbow. “The closest diner is back in the city.”

“No, that’s what he said. I’m in the mood for a root beer float.”

“Oh,” Beatrice says, feeling her face flush.

“Well, there you go,” the shepherd says, some time later when he stops in front of a low but deep cave jutting awkwardly out of the earth. Beatrice thanks him, slides down off the yak, and makes her way inside.

There’s nothing much in the cave—just a few sheets of loose, stained paper, and a whole lot of bats, almost indistinguishable from the shadows. They squeak when Beatrice gets too close, so she leaves them alone in the back and focuses on the rest of the cave. A few sheets of peeling and faded flower-patterned wallpaper cling to the curved walls. A collection of wires sits near the mouth of the cave, and a lone light bulb rolls by her feet. The wind collects in the hollow at the center, making it drafty and uncomfortable. She pulls her sweater tighter around her.

From the shepherd’s words, she knew he wouldn’t be here, but it still stings to get all the way here and then find out he’s gone again, to find out she just missed him. But that just means she has to try again, try harder. That’s not a problem for her. She’s been through worse.

Beatrice rifles through the sheets of paper left behind. She picks out the least ruined one, the only mark a K by a ripped corner. She pulls out a pen and sits down.

Dear Sir, she writes. I have found you at last—but you’re not here.

She finishes her letter and folds it neatly. She didn’t bring a single envelope, and she looks around in her bag to find something else she could possibly trade for the shepherd to send her letter. She doesn’t think he’ll care for a sweater or her lock pick, and she needs them. Beatrice walks out of the cave, staring into the direction of the city. She can’t quite see it, but she’s sure it’s there, just as sure as she is that she’ll find her uncle when she gets back.

She starts to figure out how she’ll get back, because she can worry about the letter when she finds the shepherd. How long it’ll take to get out of the hills, where to catch the right bus, how she can find the diner—when one of the younger shepherds, not much older than her, trots over, tugging a yak behind him.

“The city’s a long ways away,” he says when he stops beside her, panting a little. “I think your best bet is this yak here.”

Beatrice stares at him, and then the yak. The yak yawns at her.

“He’s pretty comfortable,” the boy says, smiling. “And he’s got a good sense of direction. The best yak this side of the hills, I guarantee it.”

“What about the other side?” Beatrice asks.

The boy laughs. “No comparison at all.”

“Don’t you need him?”

He shakes his head. “I can make do without him for a while.”

He tells her he’s heard about a shortcut back to the city, through a mountain rather than the miles of rolling hills. Beatrice has never been on a mountain. When he points it out to her, an enormous shimmering outline through the fog, it’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen in her life. It looks nothing like the ocean.

The mountain is dangerously uneven, but Beatrice has never been so high up before, and that and the yak make up for all the sudden dips and drops in the path. The yak seems to know where he’s going—she never has to keep him on track or nudge him along, and he always stops around sunset and lets her curl up against his side. Sometimes he stops in front of the occasional bush, and Beatrice makes sure she can identify the berries on them with what Klaus wrote in his commonplace book, and the two of them snack to keep up their strength, Beatrice making sure not to stain the edges of the notebook with juice fingerprints.

Sometimes she flips back, back to when Klaus was a few years older than her, to the page where she’d taken the photograph. She’d replaced when both the objects became hers. She likes reading what he wrote, the little bits of her family’s story, like he’s right beside her on this mountain even as he was trying to get through the Mortmain Mountains. Recipes Sunny put together, things Violet said, pieces of codes and books and memories.

The notebook was the last thing he gave her. He’d thrown it at her during the shipwreck, and she can still see that, plain as anything. The black clouds and the thunder and the lightning, the wood splintering up in a roaring crash under her feet, everything slick with the endless rain and the thick, dark waves, including the edge of wood keeping Beatrice afloat. Then Violet’s voice, shouting we’ll find you, I promise—

Beatrice pages through the notebook, staring at Klaus’s immaculate handwriting. “How much more mountain do you think there is?” she asks the yak.

There’s a lot more mountain, days and days of mountain. Beatrice promises herself that if she ever has to do this again, she’s bringing a calendar.

When she gets to the bottom of the mountain, the ground covered in rocks and patchy grass, still a ways out from the city but definitely closer to it than the spot where the bus had dropped her off, Beatrice isn’t sure what to do with the yak. She climbs down, dusts him off, readjusts her bag, and then watches him. The yak watches her. Then he yawns, turns, and starts meandering back in the direction of the hills. She figures he probably wouldn’t be the best yak this side of the hills if he didn’t know how to get back to the shepherd.

“Bye,” Beatrice calls.

The city is uncomfortably close when she gets back, full of a heavy, simmering summer heat. She wipes the sweat off her face and thinks she could also go for a root beer float right about now. But there's probably a lot more diners than dreary office buildings in the city, ones that will be harder to eliminate than the offices were. She's not even sure if he'll be in his office now either, after he wasn’t where he was supposed to be in the hills. The thought sits in a knot inside her, twisting up the more she thinks. She of all people should know where he is. What sort of person is she, if she doesn't know the whereabouts of her own uncle?

Beatrice winds her way carefully through the masses of people still crowding the sidewalks, as if they never left, like the same people from months ago have been standing around here all this time. She could pull out the maps, but she doesn’t see a place to put them down and look at them again. Beatrice finally comes to a halt in front of a square, stocky building, old pillars framing the tinted glass doors.

Violet and Klaus and Sunny told her about libraries. She doesn’t remember the one on the island, or the island itself, although Violet told her both were massive, and they didn’t have much of one on the boat, just a collection of books Klaus brought from the island. But Beatrice knows that a library is a sanctuary, a calm place, where someone is supposed to feel safe. She knows that her uncle considers a library all of those things too. And even if she doesn’t find anything, at least it’s probably air conditioned.

Beatrice heads inside.

The first thing she notices is that everything is so quiet. But not an unnaturally still quiet, more of a gentle, unobtrusive one, interrupted only by the occasional shuffle of paper. Beatrice understands with a rush what Violet and Klaus and Sunny meant. It’s like stepping into a whole world, one she could spend hours and hours in just reading, among the bookshelves and pale cream carpet and broad windows letting in a sunlight so serene that for the first time it doesn’t make her hands clench in fear.

Beatrice takes her time going through the library, taking it all in. She makes her way through aisle after aisle, down a staircase to the lower level. A short wall separates the little lobby near the staircase and the rest of the floor, and she follows it around where it curves to look at the room.

Her breath catches in her throat. Ten feet ahead, there’s a man standing in front of a glass case, his hands deep in the pockets of his suit jacket. Beatrice walks a little closer, staying against the wall, until she can see the plaque near the case, describing something about poetry and actresses and dedication to the theater. She can see herself in the glass, a distorted short reflection in a pale pink dress, and she smooths her hair on instinct. Beatrice looks up, and up, until she can see the sharp reflection of the man, blue eyes and dark hair and a suitcase beside him that has seen better days but still clearly proclaims the owner to have the initials L.S.

Beatrice ducks back behind the wall in her surprise, her hands gripping each other. What are you doing, she thinks frantically, her heart pounding and pounding. There he is!

But when she pushes herself away from the wall, her mouth open to call out to him, he’s gone. Her heart drops, and she rushes towards the glass case. She skims through the poem for a hint about anything, as he seemed to look at it with a great deal of concentration, but she stops at the line a word which here means “person who trains bats” because who writes a second verse with such an uneven rhythm, and there’s no way baticeer is really a word—then she hears quick footsteps thudding in the hall behind her. She turns and runs towards then.

Beatrice follows him outside, barely keeping up. He runs incredibly fast for a man of his age in this heat, whatever that age is. Beatrice knows it’s certainly much older than she is. She sees the edge of his hat, the corner of his suitcase winging around another street, and she keeps running. It’s him. She’s going to catch up with him.

She follows him to a nearby park, where she finds him yards away of her, almost collapsed on a bench, leaning to the side to examine something on the seat. Beatrice slows up. And then he’s on his feet again, strolling towards the lake. There’s something forced about his casual stance, and she picks up her pace, thinking somewhere inside that this is ridiculous. They’re both looking for each other, they’re both here, and she should just—

He bolts off, this time leaping with an unexpected agility over a patch of shrubbery, which Beatrice dodges around easily when she reaches it, tearing out of the park after him. Moments later, she sees him throwing himself into a bus one street up, disappearing completely when the doors snap shut.

Beatrice lets out a disbelieving groan, staring at the retreating bus. She can’t believe how difficult he’s being, or for what reason, or why he treats the city like a place he’s desperately trying to escape. For as much as he runs, he sure still seems to wind up back here eventually.

But now that she’s seen him, she knows exactly where he’s going. Where else would he go in the city, on this particular bus route? Beatrice has looked over all the maps, and she remembers exactly where to go. She wipes the sweat off her face, takes a breath, and keeps on going.

He still makes it to his office building before her. When Beatrice stops at the corner, clutching the nearby lamppost and gasping, the bus is already far down the street and he’s nowhere in sight. She swallows and heads for the Rhetorical Building.

The lobby is dreadfully cold and still dreadfully dreary, but she barely notices it this time. Beatrice bypasses everything and sprints right for the staircase, not even trying to hide.

It could be because she’s already run so much, but taking the staircase this time seems to take an eternity. She’s so sure she can hear him, wheezing a floor above her, and that pushes her forward when her lungs burn and her legs ache. She makes it to the thirteenth floor, flings the door open, and barrels down the hallway to his office door.

Beatrice tries the doorknob first, but it doesn’t yield. She pounds on the door for five whole minutes, and it rattles and shakes but no one opens it.

One of the doors further down the hallway opens, and a man sticks his head out. “Something I can help you with?” he calls. “I’ve never seen anyone open that door at all. Can I—”

“Thank you,” Beatrice says quickly, hoping she sounds more firm than out of breath, “but I have this under control.” The man shrugs and closes the door. Beatrice continues knocking and knocking.

Maybe you were wrong, a voice in her head whispers. Maybe it’s not him.

I’m not wrong, Beatrice tells herself. I’m not wrong.

She huffs out a sigh, drops her backpack on the floor, and pulls out the lock pick. She doesn’t want to pick the lock, but this is it, she’s not waiting anymore.

The lock springs easily. Beatrice jams the picks back into her bag, grips the doorknob, and hauls the door open.

The office is empty.

Beatrice gapes around at the office, almost incredulous. It looks different than it did before—the papers, notes, and photographs on the wall are new, linked by a thick blue yarn now. The typewriter has a sheet of paper sticking out of it, like someone was just there (and he was, he was just there, she knows he was). There’s a framed picture on the wall of a lighthouse. The curtains are different, stark white and clean and fluttering in the breeze because the window is open.

She runs over to the window, climbing out onto the fire escape. It’s distressingly empty as well. When she grips the railing and leans over to look down the rest of the stairs and into the alley below, she doesn’t find anything at all. She stands there a moment longer, just in case he reappears, her whole body coiled with anticipation. Then another moment, and another, and another after that, until the moments stretch into minutes and her expectations finally die like a doused fire. She pushes herself away from the railing, slides back inside, and slams the window shut. Beatrice glowers at it, then eases it back open. He’ll have to be able to get back in later.

She takes a look at the wall. Before, it was easy to tell where he was going. Now, Beatrice can’t figure out what any of the notes mean. They’re all scattered pictures of beach sand and close-ups of waves and an unsettling collection of curling, spindly things that look like dried seaweed. She catches a few glimpses of his handwriting, mostly just question marks, and some typewritten notes signed M. No matter how hard she tries, her eyes keep finding their way back to the pictures of the ocean, pearly blue and peppered with stark-white foam. Her jaw clenches, and she turns away sharply.

The desk has more papers on it than it did before, but no paperweight. Beatrice flips through them, but she doesn’t find her letters, or letters from anyone else. What she does find are lists of places she’s never heard of, most of them crossed off. The paper in the typewriter is completely blank, but she doesn’t feel like writing anything. She stares around the office, pointedly avoiding the wall, and tries not to feel too angry or too disappointed. It doesn’t work very well.

Beatrice walks back into the hallway and shuts the door behind her, frowning down at the floor. She follows him all this way, and she has him, they’re mere feet from each other, and then he leaves?

Maybe, she thinks, and then she stops, because she’s not wrong. It was him, it was, and despite how the decor has changed, this is the office she was in before. He was here, and then he was gone, and so there has to be a reason he’s gone now, a reason to figure out so she can track him down again. Maybe something came up, business, or an enemy, or maybe he was just hungry, or—or—

sssssssssshh.

Beatrice whirls around and wrenches his office door back open, staring desperately inside. But there’s still no one there. She shuts the door again and looks up and down the hallway. “What was that noise?” she says.

The door down the hallway opens again, and the same man sticks his head out. “Someone say something?” he asks, gazing at Beatrice.

“What was that noise?” she asks.

The man shakes his head. “I didn’t hear a noise.”

“I thought I—”

“It was nothing, probably.” He raises an eyebrow. “You know, shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Shouldn’t you be working?” Beatrice shoots back. It’s uncharacteristic of her, but she’s tired all of a sudden, and she doesn’t like how this bone-deep weariness feels. The man looks affronted, and he shuts his door with a loud bang.

She traipses downstairs, all thirteen floors. Beatrice walks past the old desk and the sad grey furniture and the limp potted plants and makes her way towards the front exit. She’ll just have to wait until he comes back, and she can do that across the street in the diner, where at least she can try to wrangle another sandwich out of Jake Hix. The grilled cheese feels like years ago, after trying to survive on the mountain.

Beatrice hears it again.

It’s a scuffle, or like a slither—the drag of a shoe, a split second brush against furniture.

Beatrice stops in the middle of the lobby, looking around. She only now notices it’s completely empty, the receptionist missing from her desk. A chill ripples down her spine that has nothing to do with the air conditioner. “If it’s nothing,” she says, “then what’s that noise?”

Something curls slowly around her left ankle, something like thin, calloused fingers, and then a hand clamps tight over her mouth. Beatrice gasps, the sound muffled by the hand. Someone heaves her up, jerking her back into a set of arms, wrenching her close to something dark blue and black. She inhales fabric softener and cotton but the color makes her think of salt and brine and she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe.

“When we drive away in secret,” rasps a woman’s voice in her ear, “you’ll be a volunteer. So don’t scream when we take you—”

Beatrice grabs at the woman’s hand with both her own. She drags it away from her mouth and manages to gasp, “The world is quiet here!”

The woman freezes. Beatrice lurches forward, tumbling out of her arms and onto the warped floor with a small shriek and a horrible thud. Beatrice feels horrible, with a red mark around her ankle and her whole body shaking as she stares up at the woman. She doesn’t understand, and that scares her almost as much as the woman. She hadn’t just learned the poem at headquarters, Violet had told her about it, it was something Violet’s parents used to say, but she didn’t—she hadn’t said—Beatrice doesn’t understand.

The woman—tall, in a thin, dark blue sweater, her hair massive and unruly and black—bends down in front of her. Beatrice inches back, trying to catch her breath.

She squints at Beatrice almost suspiciously. “Well, young lady,” she says, “have you been good to your mother?”

My mother is dead, Beatrice thinks in her panic, and then she forces herself to clear her throat and stop it. “The question is,” she pants, “has she been good to me?”

“You’re a volunteer,” the woman says.

No I’m not. “Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“Beatrice Baudelaire,” Beatrice says.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Baudelaire?” she repeats, scoffing. “Beatrice Baudelaire?”

Beatrice frowns. “Yes,” she says again.

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“I do,” Beatrice says, blinking. “It’s the only name I have.” Which isn’t exactly true, but she’s never felt that Snicket suits her all that much. Beatrice Denouement, even, sounds like someone sophisticated, not a short nine-year-old girl with only a fierce determination to her name. Which is still Beatrice Baudelaire, no matter what this woman says.

The woman straightens up, her face cold, and then she seizes Beatrice’s hand and pulls her roughly to her feet. “You’re coming with me.”

Headquarters in the city is a lot different than the one Beatrice was in out in the country. The main difference is that this one is predominately underground, hidden under a two-story library on the corner of a busy street, and seems, from a cursory glance, like it’s going to be harder to sneak out of. They had to walk through a set of locked double doors in the back of the library labeled Secretarial Department, which lead to a long, tunneling hallway devoid of any typewriters, after all. It’s full of sudden dips and the occasional staircase and one long ladder that leads, when Beatrice climbs down it, to the sewers. She focuses hard on the layout, the curves of the passageways, the way the water drips, on the faded signs she can’t read hanging onto the domed walls, so that she’ll stop thinking about the churning in her stomach.

The path ends in another set of doors, framed in the darkness by flickering torches. Beatrice stumbles to a halt in front of them.

She’s sure that Violet and Klaus and Sunny, while they were on the island and on the boat, had to have used it. There were things Sunny made that could only have been made on top of something hot, even though Sunny always got that fierce, unreadable look on her face when she talked about what she could remember of fires. But Beatrice never saw it. She never saw flames jumping around each other, spitting in the darkness, smoldering orange turning into dangerous white-hot tongues.

Beatrice thinks of lightning and wet, foundering wood under her hands. She feels salt in her mouth again.

The woman shoves her through the doors.

The narrow hallways are bathed in cold, buzzing orange light, an unsettling color against the red brick walls and the hardwood floor. It’s almost claustrophobic, a maze Beatrice can’t parse even when she pays attention. They go up a set of stairs, their footsteps echoing in the silence, and then the woman steers her towards a door around the corner.

She catches a quick glimpse of the plaque on the door and its unnatural shine—vice principal—before the woman pushes her through it as well. Beatrice finds herself in a cramped, shadowy room, illuminated with one single lamp on the desk, where the outline of a tall man sits, hunched over what looks like a stack of papers.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the thin gloom hovering at the edges of the lamp. The shapes on the shelves along the walls sharpen. They look like tea sets, if tea sets were collections of just small, differently-patterned oblong jars, all topped with fragile lids, a handle on either side.

Beatrice swallows. She never saw what Esmé Squalor was so desperate to find. She wonders if one of the sugar bowls crowding the shelves around her is what she was looking for.

The man looks up and sets down his pen. “Who’s this?” he asks, his voice a low, heavy murmur.

“My name is Beatrice Baudelaire,” Beatrice says, before the woman can say anything.

The man raises an eyebrow at her, like the woman had, and then leans back in his chair. The look he gives her isn’t suspicious—it’s appraising. Beatrice shivers.

“Well,” he says.

They put her in a room down the hall and tell her firmly to stay put. It’s a windowless room with pale walls and only a few other students, all of them her age and sitting behind typewriters, and a particularly flatfooted and wrinkled old instructor, who starts sobbing when Beatrice tells him her name. He motions to a free chair with a long white handkerchief and manages to tell her that they’re writing business letters. He motions to the blackboard and tells her there’s the format. He motions to the typewriter in front of her and tells her, please, write a nice letter, and they’ll all make it through the day.

He shuffles away from her, back to the front of the room. Beatrice watches him go with a confused frown. She doesn’t have time for this—to be stuck here again, or to try and figure out what’s going on, or to try and reason what she’s supposed to say in a business letter. She drops her eyes to the typewriter. It’s not too bad, but certainly not as nice as the one in her uncle’s office. She presses a few of the keys to test them, and they stick and then stab back into the air with loud, fierce snaps, so much that she jolts back in her chair. He’d never give her a typewriter this bad.

Beatrice gets an idea.

She has to get word to him somehow. She has to survive, too, and she’s perfectly capable of doing that anywhere, although she would prefer to do it in a situation where she isn’t at risk of being accosted violently around the ankle at any given moment, among other things. It seems like her best bet to get to him is to stay here, and not wait, this time, but let them lead her to him. It won’t be too hard. This city and this organization are his. He’s here, in this room, and he’s here, in this city, and she knows she will find him if she stays here.

She gives herself a shake and rests her fingers on the keys.

Dear Sir, she types, one eye on the instructor, now leaning against the wall and wiping his face with the handkerchief. I am writing to inquire further on the matter we discussed earlier this year. I’m in my business letter writing class, which is taught by a flat-footed man so sad and unaware that I am certain he will give me an A on this assignment without reading anything but the first sentence of each paragraph. I could say anything here at all. For instance: a “baticeer” is a person who trains bats. I learned that in a poem I watched you read.

The instructor straightens up, still dabbing under his eyes, and wanders around the room, glancing periodically at the typewriters. Beatrice schools her expression into business-like thoughtfulness. When he comes by, he scans the first line of her letter, heaves an enormous sigh, and keeps walking.

After careful consideration, Beatrice continues, biting down a smile, I am pleased to enclose the following information.

The instructors confirm her identity after careful consultation with twenty different people, all of whom Beatrice has never seen before, and a series of photographs and files Beatrice isn’t allowed to see, all of them crowded in an office and staring down at her an hour and a half after Beatrice has finished her business letter.

They tell her it was very irresponsible of her to sneak out like that from the country headquarters. Beatrice does not tell them it was very irresponsible to have a lock so easy to pick and a headquarters so easy to navigate in the dark. She stares back up at them, tries to look appropriately chided, and hopes they’ll think she feels appropriately chided. What she does feel is cornered.

One of the adults standing towards the back, his face in shadows, scoffs under his breath. “Just like her uncle,” he says.

“Which one?” asks another.

“You know,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “That one.”

“The dead one?”

“Aren’t they both dead?” asks a different voice.

“No, I’m sure at least one of them is alive—didn’t you get that message?”

“You know for a fact I haven’t gotten a single olive jar in three months, since someone broke my refrigerator—”

“For the last time,” someone sighs, “I did not break your refrigerator—”

Beatrice takes the opportunity to slip unnoticed from the room and into the hallway. She takes slow steps, listening to the little click of her shoes on the tile. The adults at the country headquarters had been secretive but easy to predict. The adults here, though—

She stops. She peers down, past the hem of her dress, and lets herself look at her left ankle.

It’s not that she doesn’t like it here, with this organization. They’ve given her a place to stay, and most of the volunteers her age were kind to her at the last headquarters. Most of all, she has vague memories of Violet telling her that people who read that many books can’t be all bad, that most of them were just trying their best, that they’d been noble enough in the end. But she’d said it with a curious look on her face that Beatrice can almost picture, like there was so much more Violet wasn’t sure how to say, like she still hadn’t figured something out, and it hurt to think about it.

That silence had carved out a worry in Beatrice, a hole she feels in her stomach now. She tries to imagine a permanent mark on her ankle, a tie, an anchor, bigger than a promise to be noble enough. She knows what Violet and Klaus and Sunny told her about what happened to them, and she knows what she’s read in the thirteen files, and she knows Klaus wrote in his commonplace book that the organization was their only hope. She knows there are a good many details that maybe they hadn’t left out when they told her their story, but maybe just hadn’t gotten around to telling her at the time. Beatrice knows about the hard choices between what seems right or wrong—and she knows the iron grip that woman had on her ankle. She knows about the circumstances that killed her family, her uncle, her parents.

Because she could be wrong, she has to be certain. Beatrice doesn’t like being wrong. She looks up at the hallway, the old pictures on the walls, the lack of windows, the flickering lights casting shadows around her, and tries to feel certain that her only choice is to stay.

With the considerable amount of volunteers in the city, Beatrice figures she’ll have to share a room with someone, but one of the adults takes her to a single room, off to the side, and tells her, once again, to stay there and not make any trouble.

It’s a simple room, with a bed, a closet, a desk, two lamps, and a bookshelf (already stocked, and she stops perusing it when she finds the book about the girl and the egg and the family dinner, because her hands start to shake). No windows. The walls are all solid stone, but the floors are wood, and Beatrice turns the lights off and stands in almost total darkness—there’s still a sliver of light under the door from the hallway—and tests out the places where the floor squeaks for hours. She memorizes the room, feels with her hands for catches or knobs or secret compartments and doesn’t find a single one.

The light under the door disappears. Beatrice, standing by the bed on the opposite wall, goes completely still. She listens.

After ten seconds, the lock on the door clicks.

After a whole three minutes, the shadow under the door still hasn’t moved. Beatrice swallows and keeps watching. She knows better than to try and pick this lock. They aren’t going to make getting out easy. Finding him might not be as easy as she thought, either.

That doesn’t mean I won’t, Beatrice thinks.

She fully expects to sit through their classes again, to tell the teacher how Sunny taught her to make a meringue, to relearn the same codes she learned from Klaus’s commonplace book, to listen to someone besides Violet explain the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light.

She doesn’t. Instead, she finds herself in the vice principal’s office again, early in the morning, although it’s impossible to tell in all the shadows in his office. She takes a moment to wonder where the principal is, but then the vice principal starts talking.

“You strike me as a young woman with a lot on her mind,” he says. “Someone very intent on her goals. And we value that here, you know. Commitment, dedication, loyalty. I think you—and the organization—would benefit the most if we assigned you to a chaperone immediately. There’s a place for you in this world, Miss Baudelaire, and I am most anxious for you to find it.”

Beatrice almost thinks he’s being incredibly nice, if it isn’t for the way his eyes glitter and the way he leans back in his chair, so slowly she barely notices until he’s staring down at her, almost pinning her in place.

Violet did teach her to be polite, but she also taught her to stand her ground. She swallows. “Thank you very much,” she says. “Do I get to pick my chaperone?”

“I’m afraid not,” he says, and he doesn’t sound the least bit apologetic. “We haven’t allowed that for quite some time.” The vice principal smiles. “It lead to some unfortunate events.”

Her chaperone is a woman named Marguerite. Beatrice looks through every record available and can’t find any positive proof that Marguerite has ever had a last name. What she does find out is that Marguerite spent her own apprenticeship working with the remaining volunteer animals.

She gets a letter telling her to meet her at the aquarium on the other side of the city, with just enough for the bus fare. Beatrice checks the letter over and over again the whole way there, but she doesn’t find any other hint about what she’s supposed to do to find her chaperone.

Beatrice wanders the aquarium for a long, uneasy hour before a short woman with chin-length, curly blonde hair catches her eye by the jellyfish tank. The woman gestures at one of the jellyfish. “I always thought they looked like clouds,” she says, in a soft voice. “I like to look at them when summer is dying.”

Beatrice bites her lip. She stares at the jellyfish and tries not to see them, tries to watch the reflections in the glass instead. Summer is dying. She always thought she’d be good at codes if she had to use them, but actually hearing them out loud just makes her uncomfortable. It could just be all the water, though.

“Well,” she says carefully, “summer is over and gone. And you can see clouds any time, you just have to look for them.”

The woman smiles, a surprisingly gentle smile, the lines at the corners of her eyes crinkling. Beatrice thinks she looks too young to have lines like that. “Marguerite,” she says, extending her hand. “You must be Beatrice.”

Beatrice shakes her hand.

“What sort of animals do you like, Beatrice?”

Beatrice looks away from the eerie blue glow of the tanks around them and says the first thing that comes to mind. “I don’t think bats are all that bad.”

As it turns out, the organization’s last collection of trainable bats is in the hills. The whole trek back into the mist, Beatrice can’t help but think her timing could sure use some work.

Beatrice and Marguerite set up camp in the cave, close to the shepherds and obviously very close to the bats. They pull down the remains of the wallpaper, and between the two of them, Violet’s inventing knowledge, and another piece of wire from Marguerite’s pocket, they rig up the light bulb. It casts a dim and hollow yellow light around the cave before it sputters and flickers, drenching them in a momentary darkness before lighting back up.

Beatrice gasps out of shock. The light bulb reminds her of the lamp in the vice principal’s office, something scary and unknown in a place that’s supposed to be safe. Fear grips her chest, and she makes an excuse to Marguerite that she doesn’t even remember and gets out of the cave as quickly as possible. She sits at the mouth of the cave in the darkness with her legs stretched out in front of her, her hands in her lap. Beatrice tells herself that hugging her legs to her chest would not be very mature.

Marguerite comes over and sits down beside her, not too close but not too far away. “Some children are afraid of the dark,” she says.

“I’m not,” Beatrice says, truthfully. Klaus taught her constellations, and Sunny made up her own, and Violet made a telescope so they could see them better. Beatrice knows there are beautiful things in the darkness, and she likes the quiet.

“It’s alright if you are,” Marguerite says gently.

Beatrice knows why Marguerite says that. It’s something a lot of the chaperones think. Some of the adults themselves are probably scared of the dark, even when they haven’t lived through a storm at sea. But she’s not. She’s not scared of the dark. The afternoon was when the storm started, and the dark was when the storm stopped, when everything calmed down. She couldn’t see anything at all, not the broken wood under her fingers or how alone she was, and she could breathe. She could keep floating and imagine Violet and Klaus and Sunny were still right there, telling her she’d make it.

Too much light is what frightens her. Too much light, like a jagged streak through the sky, lightning carving the boat in two, illuminating every fractured piece and the fear on Sunny’s usually calm face. The flashlights of the volunteers who found her, combing the beach for something else, the beams cutting cold white light against the sand.

“Beatrice?”

Beatrice looks up. She uncurls her fingers, which she only now notices had clenched tight into her palms. She swallows. “I’m not afraid.”

Marguerite smiles. She reaches over and squeezes one of Beatrice’s hands, just once.

“We’re going to be training bats to deliver messages,” Marguerite says in the morning. “It’ll be useful, especially all the way out here in the hills.”

Beatrice stares at Marguerite, and she hopes her incredulity isn’t too apparent on her face. She clears her throat and tries to think about how Violet would address this. “Are bats really the best to use?” she asks. “What about telegram wires, or even just pigeons, since they could fly at any time, or—”

“Sometimes we have to send messages at night, and bats come in handy for that.” Marguerite doesn’t interrupt her, just speaks patiently, reasonably, like making a point in a casual debate. “Sometimes the easier way can be more dangerous. People expect that more than something different.”

Beatrice isn’t sure if that makes complete sense. Marguerite definitely notices her confusion, and she smiles. Marguerite smiles a lot, but it’s never condescending. “It can be a little hard to understand,” she says. “I thought it was when I was your age, too. But it’s not a volunteer’s job to question, Beatrice. It’s a volunteer’s job to know, and to trust in what they’re doing.”

Somehow, it sounds right the way Marguerite says it, with her soothing voice. It sounds right, the idea of just knowing, since Beatrice is so certain in it anyway. She has to remind herself that they started this whole conversation about the absurdity of bats being used as a messenger system to counteract that. Beatrice has seen a lot of absurd things, because Violet told her about all her inventions over the years, and Beatrice isn’t quite sure how all of them worked but she knows that they did. But training bats, especially to deliver messages, just seems to take it a little too far.

“It’ll take a bit of time before we can train them that well, though,” Marguerite says. “Have you ever held one before?”

At the very least, training bats gives Beatrice something to think about. You really have to focus, otherwise they squeak too much. It gets easy after a while, once Beatrice knows how to do it. Marguerite is impressed, but Beatrice just tells her that you can do anything as long as you know how to do it.

Marguerite isn’t very talkative, which Beatrice appreciates. What she does say doesn’t always make that much sense, but she never pushes Beatrice or pressures her. She tells Beatrice stories about her own apprenticeship, the last of the volunteer feline detectives and what Marguerite’s own chaperone told her about the eagles. It’s the kindest anyone has ever treated her since Violet and Klaus and Sunny, and that makes Beatrice feel more comfort than she has in some time.

Beatrice is hunched over a notebook while sitting at the mouth of the cave, trying to figure out how to get the bats to follow the patterns of the yaks, because she’s sure that makes at least some sense, when the young shepherd who loaned her the yak last time comes up to her. Beatrice smiles at him, but she stops when she sees how nervous he looks.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

The shepherd bites his lip, looking over his shoulder at Marguerite, who’s examining one of the yaks in the field, and then motions quickly at Beatrice. “You forgot something,” he says.

Beatrice frowns. “What?”

He reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out a small circle. The weak sunlight catches on the slim gold band and the dark diamond set in the center, and Beatrice’s heart leaps when she can see the thin initial in the stone. He puts the ring in Beatrice’s hand and presses her fingers around it.

“I think you might be able to give it back to her, one of these days,” he says.

“Do you know her?” Beatrice asks, clutching the ring with both hands. “Do you know where—”

But the shepherd shakes his head, glances again at Marguerite, goes rigid when he sees the older shepherd approaching her, and then scampers away. Beatrice watches him go, until he’s a shrinking figure among the yaks and she can hear Marguerite calling her name. She lets herself wonder, for a moment, where the Duchess of Winnipeg is now, how much the shepherd knows, why no one can ever give her a clear answer. Then she reminds herself that none of that matters. She has all the answers she needs. She just has to get through this. She just has to get through this, and find her uncle, and then find her family, and she just has to get through this.

She slips the ring in her pocket.

She turns ten while they’re in the hills, which she only knows because she packed a calendar this time. She doesn’t tell Marguerite because Beatrice doesn’t want her to make a big deal out of it, because Marguerite would, and Beatrice spends that night staring up at the stars and trying to make up her own constellations. She connects lines and dots into books, wrenches, a whisk. Then, with her eyes shut tight, she tries to remember that last birthday. It was four or five years ago now, wasn’t it? And there was cake, she knows there was.

Beatrice forces her eyes open. What she remembers is Violet, tying her hair back with a ribbon as she worked on the boat; Klaus, adjusting his glasses as he read to Beatrice from a book; Sunny, talking cheerfully into the radio Violet had built. Everything else is all in pieces, a puzzle she’s losing the parts to.

I have to find them, she thinks, blinking fast. No. I will find them.

The first time Beatrice sends out a bat and it comes back, days later, with a message from one of the shepherds they’d sent out to expect it, she feels a lot more pride than she ever thought she would about training bats to be mail carriers. Marguerite laughs and sweeps Beatrice up into a tight hug, drawing her close, and Beatrice hugs her back.

In late summer, the hills still misty and chilly, they get called back to the city. Marguerite and Beatrice make their way back to the city on foot this time, through all the hills, no mountain. Beatrice sorely wishes she still had the yak.

When they get back to the city, Beatrice actually doesn’t see much of Marguerite. Marguerite tells her only that something is happening, but not exactly what. In the meantime, she tells Beatrice it’s for the best if Beatrice stays at headquarters, where she can write up the reports on training the bats. Beatrice figures someone would’ve had to write the reports at some point, so she doesn’t mind—except that someone seems to be watching her at all times, especially when she uses a typewriter.

Beatrice spends most of her time underground and growing increasingly frustrated, because it’s been months since she’s written to him, months since he’s heard from her, and he must be wondering where she is. He must be. She’s watched mail leave the city headquarters, and they never put a return address on anything. How can he write back to her if he doesn’t know where she is?

But he has to know. He’s been here. He’s in this city, and so is she, and wouldn’t he be able to figure out what happened to her, being a detective and all, or at least a man who has that printed on his door? He went through this too, he knows where she is, why does it have to take so long?

Marguerite comes back, and they go on assignments and scope out pet stores and parks and the occasional fancy restaurant, but Marguerite also lets her look in every single diner window they pass, and lets her linger on the street with the Rhetorical Building, even when the street is wildly out of their way. Then they go on less and less assignments, and she sees less and less of Marguerite, and Beatrice spends her time in so much silence that it starts to dig under her skin, a burrowing restlessness.

At night, she sneaks into the record room again. She isn’t sure what she’s looking for. Maybe the four files she couldn’t find at the country headquarters, or anything about her family, or anything about the organization. Anything at all about anything. And it’s not to find anything new, it can’t be, it’s just—it’s just to reassure her. He’s going to find her. She’s going to find him. They’re going to find her family.

In the back of the room, in a dusty filing cabinet drawer she has to pry open with two pens, she finds a thin, dark brown folder half-stuck under the back of the cabinet. Beatrice wiggles it out, flips it open, and sees the shape of a single piece of paper. She pulls out a flashlight from her pocket, steels herself, and flicks it on, squinting against the light.

It looks like a legal document, almost like a sort of deed, yellowed with age. Beatrice scans through it, and her frown deepens when she finds out it’s for a room in an office building, a room on a fourteenth floor, an office—an office in the Rhetorical Building, right above his. Beatrice grips the edges of the paper and reads further. Her heart stops dead when she sees a bold, imposing signature in red pen across the bottom of the page.

Beatrice Baudelaire.

She’s been in the building, but she’s certainly never tried to get an office there. This must be her, she realizes, reminding herself to inhale. This must be who they named her after.

Beatrice knows about Beatrice Baudelaire. She wasn’t just engaged to Beatrice’s uncle once, she was a person, a mother. She taught Klaus how to fence and how to throw a punch, and she taught Sunny how to scream, and she taught Violet how to stand her ground and be fierce and formidable. She could bake and sing and act, and she ate strawberries in the summer and danced with her husband to old records and took her family to the beach and read long books to them and did different voices for each character. Now, years later, here she is. A whisper in Beatrice’s ear, a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Beatrice Baudelaire sounds like she was a wonderful mother.

Beatrice shakes her head quickly and slips the deed into her pocket. It’s not like she thinks about her own mother a lot. Beatrice knows all about her anyway. Kit Snicket was a good person, a volunteer, someone who helped. So was Dewey Denouement. But sometimes she wonders, just a little, just for a moment, what things would be like if her mother was alive. If her father was alive. If they would’ve liked her. If they would’ve read to her, if they would’ve taught her things, if they would’ve liked strawberries or some other fruit and if they danced and if they baked and if they could act or sing. If she’d still be here, scrambling for the remains of her family. If she’d still see flashes of lightning when she closes her eyes, and the harpoon gun and fungus she’s imagined and the sandy grave at the far edges of her memory and the Baudelaires got their parents, didn’t they, if only for a while, how come she didn’t get hers, how could Violet and Klaus and Sunny do that—

Something creaks upstairs.

Beatrice slips from the records room, shuts the door, and feels her way through the darkness. Her hands find the banister of the stairs, and she creeps up them slowly, waiting for another noise.

The upstairs floor creaks for a second, and then stops. Then another creak, a little further down the hall, like someone’s taking long strides, trying to be light and quick. Beatrice heads up the rest of the stairs and sees the hazy outline of a shape in the darkness, one with short, curly hair.

“Marguerite?”

Marguerite turns, looking over her shoulder, still poised to keep going down the hallway. “Beatrice,” she breathes.

Beatrice hasn’t seen her in what feels like ages, although she knows it’s only been about a week. She walks towards Marguerite, and even in the darkness she can feel a heavy tension in the air. “Where are you going?”

Marguerite turns around all the way and bends down in front of Beatrice. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, “but I have to leave.”

Beatrice hears every word of that sentence perfectly, and somehow she still doesn’t understand it. She blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I was going to leave this with the vice principal for you,” Marguerite says. Beatrice hears a slight rustle, Marguerite digging in a pocket. She takes Beatrice’s hand and places something in it, a curved, spiral wire with a handle at the top. A corkscrew. “Something—something came up, and it’s not safe for me to be in the city anymore. I’m starting back for the hills tonight.”

“I can go with you,” Beatrice says, “I can—”

“No,” Marguerite sighs. “I can’t take you with me. I really am—so, so sorry, Beatrice.” Her voice cracks, and her hand settles on Beatrice’s shoulder. “There was so much I was looking forward to, so many things I wanted to do with you, but sometimes things don’t work out how you want them to. But you’ll be okay, I know you will. You’re brave and resourceful, and you’ll be a wonderful volunteer.”

Beatrice frowns at the slim outline of Marguerite’s face. Her fingers curl around the corkscrew, pushing it hard into her hand. She swallows and finds a lump in her throat, one she tries to breathe around. “But I—”

“Don’t worry,” Marguerite says. Her voice is still so gentle, but it doesn’t make sense with her words. Nothing about any of this makes sense. “You’ll know what to do, Beatrice. We all do. I know you will.”

“I know now,” Beatrice says quickly, “I just—”

“I have to go,” Marguerite whispers. The weight of her hand disappears from Beatrice’s shoulder, and then her face is gone, and Beatrice stands in the hall and listens to Marguerite’s progress downstairs from the distant creak of the floorboards. The sound of footsteps vanishes not long after, and Beatrice is alone. The metal of the corkscrew sits cold against her palm.

Beatrice listens, and listens, and listens, and hears nothing else.

Beatrice hasn’t cried in a long time. She knows she has—everyone does when they’re younger, and she can remember, through that fog, Sunny making faces at her to cheer her up—but it feels such a wrong thing to do now. Hot tears spill down her cheeks, her eyes squeezing shut, her mouth pressed tight so the rising whimper in her throat doesn’t escape.

It’s not as if she didn’t expect Marguerite to leave. All the chaperones do, eventually, and even if she had liked Marguerite she knew somewhere it wouldn’t last. She just didn’t think it would happen like this, so soon, that just like that she’d be gone, swept away from her. All the thoughts Beatrice tries so hard not to think come rushing into her—how much longer will this take, how much longer will she have to do this, how much longer will this feel, because she feels ten years old for the first time and so lost, still adrift in an ocean that could tear her apart as much as it could lead her somewhere safe. She wants to go home, but the only people who were ever home to her feel further away than ever. In a second, the despair and uncertainty she’s been running from overtake her like a crashing wave.

She thinks awful, vicious things. The Baudelaires are dead or they would’ve come for her by now; her uncle hates her and never wants to see her; her mother was a horrible person to die and leave her all alone like this; she’ll grow up like they all did, abandoned.

Beatrice walks back to her room, step by step. She shuts the door, and then sinks down and starts sobbing into her knees.

The vice principal calls her to his office the next morning. Beatrice sits in the chair in front of his desk, her hands in her lap. She’s shoved the memory and the uncertainty and the guilt of last night to the back of her mind, but it still flutters in her lungs, a light panic she tries to smother with each careful breath.

He seems to have acquired even more sugar bowls since the last time she was in here, and they tower above her on those whisper-thin shelves and make the office feel even tighter. A different item sits on the shelf right behind his desk, about the size of a milk bottle, and Beatrice stares at it. It stares back at her with a dark, beady eye, the long face and snout of an impossibly cruel animal, teeth bared and black. Then she notices—it’s only half of a statue, like it’s been cut down the middle, revealing a smooth, solid wood interior.

The vice principal himself looks unbothered, impassive as always. “It seems you’re without a chaperone,” he says.

Her hands tighten together involuntarily. “I’ve been without a chaperone before,” she says, and her voice only trembles a little.

He smiles. It is a thin and humorless smile, smug, and he leans slowly, too casually, back in his chair, his elbows on the armrests and his own hands folded neatly. She wishes he would stop doing that.

“You look like you want to ask me something,” he says.

Where is my family and when will I find them?

But she knows he won’t tell her. “What do you want to ask me?” she says instead.

The vice principal almost laughs. His eyes are dark and fathomless blue. “What did Marguerite leave you?”

Beatrice does not think of the corkscrew up in her room. But she has to say something, she has to show him something. She puts her hand in her pocket and finds the folded-up deed she’d stuck there last night. A deed for an office in the Rhetorical Building. A deed signed with an identical name.

She stares at the vice principal straight on. “An office,” she says. “On the fourteenth floor of the Rhetorical Building.” Beatrice pulls the paper from her pocket, unfolds it, and sets it square on his desk.

He stares at it, and then keeps staring at it, his eyes flicking over the paper as if looking for a loophole. When he doesn’t find any, his mouth thins, his jaw clenching. She’s never seen him with so much emotion on his face before.

“I’ll need a typewriter,” Beatrice says.

The next thing Beatrice does is get business cards. They say Beatrice Baudelaire, so no one will bother her about that, and then Baticeer Extraordinaire, because that’s the closest thing to an occupation she has right now, and then The Rhetorical Building, since that is the name of the building, and finally Fourteenth Floor, which is self-explanatory.

The third thing she does is go to her office. It hasn’t been used in a long time, so it’s empty and dusty and even colder than the lobby, and full of one too many spiders. Beatrice spends an afternoon cleaning the years out of it, and even repairs the radiator, Violet’s ribbon keeping her hair back from her face.

She sets her typewriter carefully on the desk, puts Klaus’s commonplace book in one of the locked drawers, puts the corkscrew in a completely different drawer, and then realizes she has very little else to put in the room. A business card taped to the door, some paper beside the typewriter. The brochures and books she collected from the train stations lined up on the little shelf on the wall. She keeps the Duchess of Winnipeg’s ring on a long chain around her neck so she always has it with her and no one else can see it.

She uses the back entrance so she doesn’t have to go through the lobby.

She stays awake in the office the first few nights, watching the window in the dark in case they try to come back for her, but Beatrice is left alone there.

Beatrice doesn’t know how old the building is exactly, but it must be old, because the wood creaks, and it creaks specifically and consistently in his office, right below hers, muffled but very distinct.

She finishes typing her most recent letter, pulls it out of the typewriter, then takes the corkscrew from her desk and sits down in the middle of the floor.

The wood parts, splitting easily into tiny spiral shavings, and Beatrice keeps twisting and twisting the corkscrew until there’s a reasonable hole in the floor and she can hear the creaking a little more clearly. It’s a small hole, not large enough to see through but large enough to put her letter through if she rolls it into a tiny tube, like she said she would. She throws the corkscrew back on her desk, grabs the letter, and starts to roll it up.

The creaking stops. Then the wood groans low, like he’s leaning on a specific spot, and she leans close and listens.

“Snicket,” says a woman’s voice.

Beatrice startles, jumping back with a slight gasp. She didn’t account for someone else, she didn’t think he knew anyone else, she didn’t think it wouldn’t be him pacing. She doesn’t know who this is.

“Did you always have that hole in your ceiling?” the woman says.

Someone replies. Beatrice can’t hear what he says, but the voice is a low murmur. That’s him, she thinks, biting her lip. That’s him

“You want me to come in here and find you buried under your ceiling one of these days?” the woman continues. “Don’t you think I deal with enough already as your editor?”

He says something else, something Beatrice still can’t hear.

The woman sighs. “If we don’t leave soon, we’re going to be late, and Cleo might just kill you.”

Beatrice waits until she hears the door close, and then sits for a few seconds in the silence, willing her heart to stop rocketing in her chest. She re-rolls the letter, looks down at the hole, and then pushes the letter through it and presses her ear against the floor. Beatrice can just barely hear it bounce off the ceiling fan, uncurl, and land open and waiting on his desk with the tiniest crinkle of the paper.

She sits back on the floor with a long sigh. She hopes she isn’t waiting too long, and Beatrice doesn’t do a very good job of squashing down the worry that she might not know how long it’ll take.

She waits a whole week and still doesn’t get a reply. No one comes to her door, no one tries to get in through the fire escape, no one leaves any secret messages anywhere, and she doesn’t hear anyone pacing in the office below her. She doesn’t hear the woman’s voice, and she doesn’t hear any sign that he’s in there at all. Everything is eerily quiet.

Beatrice goes across the street to the diner, because she figures being miserable but not hungry is better than being miserable and hungry. When she pushes the door open, Jake Hix catches sight of her from behind the counter and grins broadly. “Hey, Beatrice!”

She means to smile, but there are four people sitting at the counter, and all of them turn and look at her with interest. Two men wearing glasses who look like brothers, a sharp-eyed blonde woman in a cloche hat, and then the man in the middle, pale and staring at her with wide eyes. Beatrice looks back at him, suddenly breathless. Not just a mysterious figure she’s never seen, or one she glimpsed in the middle of a chase, but a real, physical person in front of her.

“It’s you!” she exclaims. “You’re here!”

They keep eye contact for a single, almost terrifying second—but then he clears his throat, holds up a hand, and spins around, putting his back to her.

Beatrice stands there, torn between disbelief and irritation. The other two men say something, and the woman rolls her eyes, gets up, pulls them to their feet, and herds them past Beatrice and out of the diner.

“Give him a moment,” the woman whispers to her, winking.

She doesn’t want to, she wants to go over and sit beside him and get right to things, but she picks a corner booth by the window anyway and sits down. She still has a good view of the counter from here. She swallows and tries to quell her anticipation. She wonders how long a moment is, to her uncle.

Jake walks over and gives her a smile. “What can I get you?”

Beatrice looks over his elbow at the counter, at the glass resting in front of her uncle. It occurs to her that she’s actually never had his drink of choice. She looks back up at Jake. “A root beer float.”

Jake smiles.

“And, could you please do me a favor?” she asks, unzipping her bag and digging around inside. “If I give you a message, would you give it to him?”

“Sure thing,” Jake says.

She takes out one of her business cards and turns it over.

Cocktail Time

I am sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends. I only wanted to talk to you.

The waiter agreed to bring this card with your drink. If you don’t want to meet me, rip it in half when you are done with your root beer float, and I will leave and never try to contact you again.

Ideally, she doesn’t want to say that, to give him an out, now that they’re both here, now that she’s this close, but it’s polite. She figures he’ll appreciate that.

But if you want to meet me, she continues, biting her lip, I’m the ten-year-old girl at the corner table.

B.

Beatrice folds the card in half and hands it to Jake. She watches Jake walk back to the counter, lean in and hand her card to her uncle, watches him open it with shaking fingers. He reads it, but he doesn’t turn around and look at her yet. He takes a sip of his root beer.

Jake brings her her own root beer, and she drinks it and barely tastes it, her eyes still fixed on her uncle. She reminds herself not to swing her legs and settles for jiggling her foot against the smooth tile, a tiny little tap as she waits and waits and waits. She thinks of looking anywhere else, trying to remain sophisticated and calm, because this is it, for real, but she doesn’t want to miss a single thing. She curls her hands together in her lap, forgets about the root beer float. She counts out the seconds in her head, stops when she thinks it’s stupid, starts again when he pushes his glass away and looks at the note again.

Finally, he stands up. He refolds her business card and puts it in his pocket. Then he turns, and he faces Beatrice, coming over and stopping beside her table.

He’s just like how Beatrice imagined him, now that she can finally see him, instead of just across a crowded street or a library wing. Definitely average height, if a little bit taller, in a grey suit and tie, his hair dark, thin at the temples. He looks at her half-finished drink, and then slowly meets her eyes, and they are blue, the same blue as hers, the best color she’s ever seen, brighter than every dark and endless sea. The corners of his mouth turn up a little, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He sits down across from her and extends his hand.

“My name is Lemony Snicket,” he says, his voice deep but soft, just as she expected.

Beatrice smiles, and her face almost hurts with the force of it. She shakes his hand with both of hers. “Beatrice Baudelaire.”

Lemony Snicket takes her to the park a few streets over and buys her ice cream. She points out that they could’ve had ice cream in the diner, but he tells her that he would rather have their conversation away from where a journalist could come back at any second and faithfully record every single moment of it. Beatrice eats her vanilla with sprinkles and figures the journalist had to be the woman, with eyes like that, and then she watches her uncle. Her uncle, real and in person after all this time, after almost two long years of searching, finally beside her.

He matches her pace, which isn’t very brisk, but he looks like he could run at a moment’s notice. He keeps his hat drawn low over his eyes, his gaze lingering on shadowy trees and exits and every single discarded cigarette butt before moving away. He takes quick, economical bites of his ice cream (vanilla, caramel swirl, in a cone).

“Did you like my business card?” Beatrice asks. Her voice comes out a little louder than she intended, which probably explains why Lemony jumps.

He pulls her business card out of his pocket. “It’s very nice,” he says. “Do you like bats?”

“Well,” she says, “I think they’re cute, but that’s all. I’d rather not work with them.”

“Are you saying that you gave me a false business card?”

“You can put anything on a business card,” Beatrice says brightly, looking up at him. “Do you still have those ones that say you’re an admiral in the French navy?”

Lemony looks shocked, then embarrassed, and then takes an incriminating crunch out of his cone. He doesn’t answer.

Beatrice’s throat sticks a little when she swallows her ice cream. She ducks her head, her shoulders bunching up, and scrapes at the bottom of her cup with her spoon. He’s just a quiet person, that’s all, she tells herself, and she’d thought that before. That he doesn’t have anything else to say is just because—just because he doesn’t have anything else to say. That’s fine. They have more important things to talk about than bats and business cards.

She waits until they’ve both finished their ice cream and points out a bench for them to sit down on. She even makes sure it’s out of the way, under a tree, reasonably shady and away from prying eyes, if that’ll make him feel better. Lemony hesitates for a few seconds before he agrees, and they sit down. Beatrice’s legs dangle off the edge, and she holds her hands tight in her lap and reminds herself again not to swing her legs.

“You said you didn’t know where Violet and Klaus and Sunny were,” Beatrice says, leaning towards him, “in your research. That you didn’t know what happened to them after—” Her voice catches. “—after we, we left the island. But that was years and years ago. You have to know now.”

Lemony looks at her, and this close, Beatrice can see the lines around his eyes, etched into his face. They only seem to deepen the longer they look at each other. He folds his hands together, just like hers, and Beatrice bites down on the inside of her lip, her toes wiggling in her shoes.

“No, Beatrice,” he says. “I do not know where the Baudelaires are.”

Some of the air disappears from her lungs, and she gapes at him. “Well—then can you help me find them?”

Lemony sighs. “I have looked,” he says slowly, “but my associates and I have found very little. I do not know if—”

“But you have to know!” Beatrice exclaims. The corners of her eyes start to burn, and she can feel a sharp sting tightening her throat, because he was supposed to know, she was so certain, and he had to be too, so why? “You have to, you’re the only person I’ve got left, and I came all this way to find you, and you—you—” Everything comes tumbling out of her, everything she’s been pushing aside and burying down inside her since the shipwreck, every cruel thought and punch to the gut, every second spent waiting. She’s never talked this much in her whole life, and now she can’t stop, even with Lemony looking at her with wide, broken eyes.

“You left me all alone out there!” Beatrice shouts, her voice cracking. “I followed you for two years, all by myself, and I wrote you letters, and I followed you into the hills, and I stole office space to be close to you, and I did everything I could to find you, and you didn’t do anything!”

She wants to be angry. She wants so much to be angry, to keep yelling, to hurt him, but now she can’t stop crying. “I thought you h-hated me,” she sobs, rubbing at her eyes, tears sticking to her fingers and her cheeks. “I th-thought you never wanted to see me, ever. I thought—I thought—”

Something soft brushes against her wrist, and she lowers her hands and finds Lemony, offering her a handkerchief. “I did not, and I do not hate you,” he murmurs firmly, for a man as heartbroken as he looks. “I could never.”

Beatrice takes the handkerchief and wipes at her eyes. It doesn’t do much in the way of stopping her tears.

“This is an awful thing to say,” Lemony begins quietly, “but the horrible truth is that I did not know if it was you. I did not know if you were—someone else.”

Beatrice swallows thickly, curling her fingers around the handkerchief, clutching it in her lap. She knows what he means and it’s like a dull knife twisting inside her.

“And I know you are not her,” Lemony continues, “or my sister—although you do look remarkably like her—or an old villainess intent on exacting a stiletto-heeled revenge after all these years, or a morally grey woman for whom I still feel a great deal of sadness and guilt. I wondered, though. I think even the most rational mind will wonder in the depths of loss, even when it knows better. It is a wound that does not want to heal, or at least one that I believed could not. When I did know it was you, which I assure you was only within the last year, I—I did not know if I could help you.”

“Why not?” Beatrice asks, sniffling. She chances a look up at him, out of the corner of her eye, and catches a quick, haunted look passing over his face. He stays quiet for a little longer, as if figuring out the right words.

“I was afraid,” he whispers. “It is no excuse for what I did to you, but it is a reason. When I was a little older than you, I made a considerable amount of promises, few of which I managed to keep, and I told myself that fear didn’t matter, which was an admirable if incredibly incorrect stance to take at the time. And since then, very few things have gone right. I lost my family, my friends, the loves of my life, and everything I had, because of that fear. You can have the best of intentions, and still doubt, and still worry, and only realize much later that all you’ve ever done was wrong. I once said that people do difficult things for more or less noble reasons—but it is truly so much harder than that.”

Beatrice lets the words sink in. She thought she knew what it was like to struggle with a decision, to do something villainous to be noble. She thought she understood her uncle and her family—all of it—after everything she’d read, after Klaus saying that it took a severe lack of moral stamina to commit murder, after Sunny suggested it and the fire regardless, after Violet worried about Hal’s keys and disguising her and her siblings and all the other tricky things Beatrice remembers her worrying about.

He looks like Violet, Beatrice realizes suddenly. Not really his facial features, but his expression, just like when Violet told her the volunteers were noble enough. He looks as lost and worried about the consequences as Violet did that day. She feels that hole in her stomach again, that gaping uncertainty—that fear. Beatrice thinks of avoiding the lobby where the woman grabbed her ankle, lying to Marguerite in the hills, covering up her doubts with a vehement optimism. She thinks of every time she read about Lemony’s fear and all the things she didn’t understand until this second, all the things she still doesn’t understand, because there is still so much, so many secrets she could drown in, trying to find them all by herself.

“I put you in a great amount of danger by not stepping in,” Lemony says. He looks at her straight on, his eyes filled with tears. “I did to you the same thing for which I despised so many people, people I too was supposed to trust, because of my cowardice. I cannot apologize to you enough, and you do not have to accept it, Beatrice. I would not blame you if you didn’t.”

Beatrice sniffles again, her mouth wobbling, and watches him for a moment longer. “I don’t know,” she says carefully. She doesn’t like saying it, but it’s true and she has to say it. She takes a breath. “I don’t know.”

They sit in silence on the bench for some time. Lemony wipes his eyes at some point with the back of his hand, and Beatrice holds his handkerchief back up to him, but he shakes his head with a small, trembling smile and tells her to keep it. Beatrice runs her thumb over the handkerchief, each individual stitch along the hem, the afternoon breeze drying her face. She thinks, almost impossibly, that she feels a little less lonely. Not quite not alone, but just not as lonely.

“Although my associates and I have found very little,” Lemony says, “that isn’t to say that there is nothing to find. If you would like, I would like to help you find the Baudelaires.”

Beatrice’s head shoots up, her eyes wide. “Really?”

“Really. We can hope for the best, at least.”

“I’m good at that,” Beatrice says. “I—it can’t be impossible. Everyone thought finding you was impossible. But you’re here.” And he is, isn’t he? Despite his previous absences, here he is. It doesn’t fix everything, not immediately. But it can be enough for right now. Here he is. Here they are.

ending notes: 

i went into this fanfic with a pretty clear idea of where it was going to go, and then realized i’d need to pull out the beatrice letters so i could put them in this, and then did a lot of screaming along the lines of ‘i need to put a yak in this??????????????????????????????’ and ‘good job danhan you shot a hole through my characterization AND my timeline.’ so this vibes with maybe like, 85% of the beatrice letters. i did what i could. (and then this fic gave me so much trouble when i was trying to edit it. like, so much trouble. i only hope this all like, reads okay.)

but once i thought of ‘quiet lil child knows really so little about the world and has been through so much that she adamantly and somewhat optimistically clings to what she does know and that is challenged over time,’ i was reluctant to stop writing that. babybea is definitely her own person but she’s also definitely her mother’s daughter, so that girl is gonna be pretty tightly wound up and trying her best to hide it. i didn’t really buy her constant worry that lemony wasn’t who she wanted him to be while she was writing to him. because she does still have that bright but firm optimism of her father!! and i didn’t want babybea to be as rooted in (or as dependent on) vfd as her predecessors because she has to be the character to break that cycle. she has way more important problems than unattainable worldly nobility….and training bats.

[beyondconfessor]

Principle Decisions [10/24]

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Lilith/Zelda Spellman

Summary: Were they occasional partners who engaged in a professional relationship based on a mutual exchange? Or were they occasionally a patron and client, engaging in a relationship based on kink.

N.B.: Also posted on AO3. This is pure fantasy, please suspend your disbelief.

  By the next morning, Zelda had awoken feeling unrefreshed. Although she and Lilith did not engage in any forms of sexual activity––outside of the spanking sessions-–Zelda felt the night roll over her. I’m proud of you ringing through her ears as loud as they had the night before.

Zelda had awoken on the lounge, wrapped in blankets, feeling exhausted with weight on her chest.

She hadn’t dreamt, only moments of respite with her waking up to occasionally put more firewood into the fire, before falling asleep again, rolling through her emotions.

As Lilith quietly made her way down the stairs, Zelda closed her eyes, pretending to drift asleep as she heard the sound of the woman shuffling around her house, before she began making breakfast. Only as the movement of pans was too loud to ignore, did she decide to ‘wake up’ and join her, sitting at the table as Lilith pulled out eggs, bacon, and brought done spices from the rack hanging above the stove.

“There’s orange juice in the fridge, otherwise, feel free to make yourself tea.”

Zelda went for the latter option, boiling water in the jug, before pouring into a pot of black tea. It was enough, she felt. But by the time that she’d set out the cups, and poured the tea, Lilith had finished cooking the bacon and eggs, setting them on a plate each and sat down from across her.

“Sleep well?”

“Enough,” Zelda lied, cutting into the eggs to see that Lilith liked hers sunny-side up.

She ate them without complaint, with pepper and salt, and ate her bacon too without further conversation, feeling the tiredness carry over. More than once, she shifted on the seat, trying to ease the sting, and caught Lilith glancing up with a smirk. Knowing the reason for her shifting discomfort.

“Your clothes are dried. I set them aside from you.”

“Thank you,” Zelda said. The entire situation was as strange today as it was yesterday. By chance, she had taken the forest road, and instead of ending up on the other side, where she would come out near the Spellman home, she ended up on this side, near the Wardwell residence (so to speak). And then had engaged in kink with the woman, who opened up her home to her, before setting a place on her lounge.

Because sleeping in the same bed would have been too intimate.

If Zelda was honest, she’d considered making her way up the stairs and seeing what changes would bring. She wanted, quietly ardently, to slide between the sheets and press her lips to Lilith’s mouth and feel her sigh against her. She wanted to draw her hands over her body and feel her whimper and moan and quiver against her.

But instead, she’d lain awake, thinking about doing it and then not.

Perhaps it was a mistake as she watched Lilith stare over her plate at her, but if Zelda was honest, it was becoming difficult to work out their relationship. Were they occasional partners who engaged in a professional relationship based on a mutual exchange? Or were they occasionally a patron and client, engaging in a relationship based on kink.

Zelda wasn’t sure.

Furthermore, she didn’t know which answer she preferred. And as Lilith smirked at her and Zelda buried herself in tea, blinking tiredly at the woman as she squirmed in the kitchen seat, all she could think was how desperately she wanted to feel the other woman’s fingers buried between her thighs.

“What are you thinking about?” Lilith asked as she set her knife and fork down.

“Nothing of interest.”

“I’ve just washed a most lovely shade of red colour your face, so I highly doubt that.”

Zelda drew in a breath and looked away. “Don’t be absurd,” she commented.

It was the weekend––but her car was still bogged and the more she left it alone, the more likely that a bear (or some creature) was likely to make her way inside of it. And she had a terrible feeling that somehow she’d forgotten to lock the door.

So she shook her head, trying not to remember how it felt to be fucked by the woman, pressed against a hard surface as she felt her tongue curl around her clit and her fingers working their way inside of her.

If she didn’t know better, she would suspect that Lilith had dosed her breakfast with an aphrodisiac.

But she did know better, and knew that the arousal was entirely dependent on the fact that Lilith was giving her a look that seemed to say ‘I could have you on this table in a few seconds if I wanted it’.

Zelda cleared her throat and drunk deeper into the tea, trying to ignore how Lilith continued to look over, across their food. It was still raining outside, but a dreary rain, trickling down the window, with grey skies. It was nowhere near as bad as yesterday, but Zelda suspected it was unlikely to let up any time soon.

She would need to get her car pulled by something more powerful. She would need to call a mechanic.

She focused on staring out the window, trying not to remember how Lilith had taken her in the garden.

“Do you have any clients today?” she asked.

“I do not,” Lilith informed her. “Free day to focus on work. Did you want me to take you home?”

Zelda nodded. It’d be easier to get Hilda to take her to her car than it would be to walk there from here. She couldn’t remember how long it took her. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not at all, but it would be a favour owed.” Zelda turned and looked to the woman, watching her laugh. “that was a joke, of course.”

A pity, she thought but didn’t dare speak the words. She wouldn’t mind owning the ever so evasive Principle Wardwell a favour. The idea if being on her knees had never seemed so attractive.

I’m proud of you.

Zelda looked away and felt the pain shift through her. She wished the woman hadn’t said those words together, but it didn’t matter.

After breakfast, she dressed in her last night’s clothes, having parted ways with her stockings. Standing in the bathroom, with a spare toothbrush been provided, she brushed her teeth and tried to bring some semblance of tame to her well-tussled hair.

She spent most of the night thinking of Lilith, going as far as considering to masturbate on the woman’s lounge, before ultimately deciding against it. It felt somehow impolite and yet…expected? No, that wasn’t the word. It felt like there’d be an invitation between words stated that Zelda could have climbed the stairs and slipped into the woman's bed, but she hadn’t.

And now she was regretting it. Though it was probably the right decision, despite how achingly wet she'd been after the spanking. Even now, as she smoothed the material of the dress, she felt her hands press over the welts, leaving her to draw in a tight breath.

She could seduce her, Zelda realised. It wouldn’t be difficult to accidentally brush her fingers against the woman, and feel her respond in kind. After all, she’d done masterfully last night to get the spanking. How difficult would it be to draw the woman out of her underwear?

Setting the toothbrush down, she left the bathroom, at least feeling some semblance of clean with her washed and dried clothes.

Lilith waited for her the lounge room, slipping into her boots and pulling a coat off the hook to draw on. The rain was pattering down, and Zelda longed to feel something. But she followed the woman, watching as she opened an umbrella to step outside.

The umbrella held over them both as she walked them to her car, opening up the passenger door first, allowing Zelda passage before climbing into the driver’s seat herself. In the car, the rain continued to patter down on the windscreen as she pulled out of the driveway, and onto the highway.

It was quiet for a moment, and Zelda sat in the seat, back straight.

“I don’t think my car will survive the fire roads, so I’m afraid you’ll have to reach out to someone with a truck.”

“I will thank you.”

“But I’ll still need you to give me directions. I know you're on the other side of the forest, but I don’t know where that is.”

“Oh, it’s…if you drive into town, you take a left at the library.”

“Ah,” Lilith hummed. “Easy enough.”

Silence fell again, and Zelda propped her head against her arm on the window, feeling the tiredness drift over her. She wished she’d slept better.

Lilith was careful in how she drove in the rain, slower than Zelda would have been and yet Zelda was ultimately grateful for it. This should allow her the opportunity to learn more about the woman, and yet all she could think about was last night.

“What does the girlfriend experience involve?”

Zelda blinked, realising that the sentence had come out of her mouth. She flushed and looked away, trying to play it off with an air of indifference, but she could feel the woman’s eyes on her, a soft chuckle breaking in the space between them.

“Mm, for most clients, it usually involved dinner, drinks, and then we would return to their hotel room and negotiate from there. Are you looking to understand the girlfriend experience specifically, or are you trying to enquire as to what deluxe means in this context?”

“The latter,” Zelda said, pleased with how calm she sounded.

“Well, for you I would probably advise to book in advanced and suggest somewhere in the city for the weekend. You’d pick me up, we’d drive to the city, get a hotel there and then get drinks and dinner the first night where I would spend every opportunity to seduce you in public, and then the next day we would get breakfast together, go out and visit the art museum where I would impress you with all of my knowledge in the fine arts before I would seduce you somewhere entirely inappropriate where you weren’t allowed to make a noise. If you were especially noisy, I’d have to gag you…, and I’m sure you can imagine with what.”

Zelda squirmed in her seat, already picturing it.

“And then, we’d get a late lunch, venture around, go back to the hotel where I would ensure you’re appropriately dressed in ropes, or with a toy, before taking you out to dinner, and then, if you were so inclined, I would take you a private invitee only club where you could see other like-minded people, or we could go off and find somewhere inappropriate to have sex. There’s an old Catholic Church that I know how to get into, and I could fuck you in the confessional booth.”

Zelda blinked, feeling the flush fill her face. “Pull over,” she said.

“Pardon?” Lilith enquired innocently. They were still on the highway, five minutes outside of town.

“Pull over,” Zelda said again, turning and looking at her. Lilith grinned, obeying as she pulled over, off the side of the road. The rain still fell outside, reasonably heavy as it washed down the windows.

Zelda drew in a deep breath, unbuckling her seat belt, but Lilith was faster, and somehow, the moment the seatbelt was off from Zelda, Lilith was on her lap, kissing her like the world was ending.

Zelda drew up, pressing against Lilith. She slid her hands up her waist before she was tugging the jacket from Lilith’s shoulders and pulling up her dress as Lilith did the same with her. And then Lilith’s mouth was hot against her shoulder, nipping over the skin and Zelda was keening as her breast was palmed through the material of her dress.

This was insane, absolutely insane, and yet she couldn’t help but not care a single bit when Lilith was biting down on her shoulder as her fingers pushed up the material of her dress.

Her fingers stroked purposefully between her thighs, and Zelda could feel the effect on her already. If she wasn’t careful, this was going to be over as fast as it began.

And then Lilith was kissing her again, lips parting with a soft laugh as she slid underneath the band of the underwear and stroked Zelda with purposeful intent.

In a short, firm stroke against her sex, Zelda lifted her hips, wanting her deeper insider. She could feel the woman’s focus to tease her, and as Zelda’s nails pressed harder into her back, an urging moan pushing against her mouth, she felt Lilith submit to her need.

Her fingers slid inside, and Zelda gasped at the feeling. At how the woman filled her as she pressed her thumb against her clit, purposefully drawing over her. Zelda sighed, dropping her head to Lilith’s shoulder and drew her hands over Lilith’s thighs, clutching at them as she rocked her hips.

“You should have come to bed with me last night,” Lilith said in her ear. “I would have fucked you like you really wanted.”

Zelda bit her lip, eyes squeezing shut. “I should have,” she agreed.

“Mm. I have all sorts of lovely items to use. But I know what you really want.”

“And what’s that?” Zelda asked, pulling away to press against the seat of the car. She looked up, into the blue eyes that seemed all the more bright in the dark interior. The woman’s mouth parted to pant hot, sharp gasps.

“You want to seem me climax. I could have tied you up and made you watch.” She leant forward then until her lips were against her ear, “I spent most of the night masturbating waiting for you. I’d hoped you would interrupt me. All the things I would have done at your mercy…”

Zelda drew in a breath, nails digging into the woman’s thighs. She could feel herself on the brink of orgasm as it began to tug low inside of her. She squeezed hard against the woman’s fingers, seeing if she could…

“Don’t you wonder how your name sounds my lips? Do you wonder how I sound if you slid inside of me?”

Zelda’s fingers slid higher up the woman’s skirt. “Yes,” she admitted.

“Uh-uh. Hands still. You missed your opportunity, and now you’re mine.” Zelda drew in a breath, holding back something guttural between a whine and a growl. She wanted Lilith. She wanted to make Lilith shiver as she had, to feel her clench around her fingers and moan in her ear. “Say it, say you’re mine.”

Zelda swallowed, softening as the woman the kissed her gently against the throat. She didn’t know what would happen if she didn’t, but she found herself nodding. “I’m yours,” she agreed with a sigh.

Lilith laughed, kissing her throat again as her fingers continued to stroke inside of her, somehow pressing at just the right spots, spreading wide as she continued to draw over her clit with her thumb. “Good girl,” she purred, and Zelda whined, actually whined like a fucking animal as she almost climaxed at that moment. “You’re okay,” Lilith said, “Don’t slip away from me now.” And then Lilith was pulling back again, so her face took up the whole of Zelda’s view.

One hand still buried in Zelda’s underwear, the other stroked at Zelda’s cheek, soothing her. As if she was calming her.

And Zelda shivered at the tenderness. It was a lot if she was honest. Too much, almost. Like Lilith could love her, and that was impossible. She couldn’t love her. She couldn’t. Because if she––

“Look at me,” Lilith urged, eyes holding onto her steady. And then she pressed forward and kissed, and all the noise in Zelda’s head ceased, and there was only Lilith.

And then Lilith was kissing down her throat again, and it was so soft and tender, and Zelda hated how much she craved it, how much she needed it. Was this what people wanted from the girlfriend experience? The feeling of a person’s hands-on your as if they could hold you together.

Lilith’s mouth nipped at her throat as if summoning her thoughts, and Zelda sighed, tilting her head to kiss the bare skin under Lilith’s jaw.

She felt the orgasm coaxed from her and Zelda came clenching around the fingers, nails digging into Lilith’s thighs, but it was softer than she expected. Softer than the other times, and it left her wanting more.

But Lilith’s mouth pressed to hers sweetly, fingers sliding out and Zelda knew that she couldn’t do this. Perhaps the woman was right. Perhaps she did need to see a therapist, because sex didn’t use to leave her feeling like she might break, and yet this woman was able to shatter every defence she built.

“Are you alright?” Lilith asked, and there was a hand stroking her cheek again.

Zelda nodded because she needed to, leaning her head into the hand. After all, it felt nice. She couldn’t say what she really wanted––which was that for the first time, Lilith made her acutely aware of how lonely she was. How much she missed the affection and attention of another person.

But it was too close to saying that she actually liked her, and that, in its self, wasn’t something she could allow.

So she soothed the growing pain, pressing them deep down and brushed her own thoughts away. “Last night you said that you hadn’t barred me from your services, is that true?”

“It is. We can still negotiate; you just need to tell me what you want.”

“I want you to do what you did last night.”

“Caning or discipline?”

“All of it.”

Lilith looked at her as if she was studying her very carefully. “We’ll negotiate it,” she said. “I like playing with you Zelda, but I meant what I said, I think there’s a part of you that’s trying to sabotage yourself, I don’t want to play a part in that.”

“I don’t want to sabotage myself. I want relief. The very first time I engaged your service, you made me feel relaxed in a way I didn’t expect. I want that, I don’t care what I have to do to get that feeling again, but I want that.”

Lilith gave a genuine smile, nodding. “Well, how about next Sunday? I’ll book for two hours with you, and we can sit down and talk in further detail about what you want in a scene, and we can test some things out.”

“I would like that.”

“Of course you would, it’s me,” Lilith said as she manoeuvred in a way to draw herself over Zelda’s thigh, actually showing that she wasn’t wearing any underwear before she slid back into the driver’s seat.

Zelda swallowed, turning and looking at her. “Can I––“

“No,” Lilith said, clicking her seatbelt in place before she turned back and looked at her. “I told you, you missed your chance. Now you have to suffer the consequences.”

Zelda drew in a breath, putting her seatbelt in place before she adjusted her clothes. “I’ll have you know that I’m quite good in bed.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, but if you want to hear me moan your name in the throes of ecstasy, then you have to work for that privilege.”

Zelda crossed her arms, sitting back in the seat as she tried to ignore the growing arousal between her thighs. She didn’t know how Lilith managed to shift her moods so easily, but now she was back in the same state she’d been before they pulled over. And she was sure Lilith knew it.

Giving a small cough, she looked out of the window, watching the scenery pass her by.

Once they entered the town, she began directing her to home. The woman eventually drove her to the front of the driveway before the Spellman home, pausing to look at Zelda. “Did you want me to drop you off up at the top?”

Zelda sighed. “Perhaps not,” she said. “The last thing I need is Sabrina seeing and asking questions.”

Lilith nodded before reaching into her backseat and pulling out the umbrella. “Take this. You can give it back to me next week then.” Zelda’s fingers brushed over Lilith’s as she took it.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Zelda paused, a part of her wanting to lean in and kiss again, but she didn’t. Instead, she unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out of the car, opening the umbrella. It wasn’t raining nearly as heavy, but she made her away up the loose gravel driveway, listening as Lilith pulled out of the edge of the driveway and returned home.

It was a strange turn of events, and Zelda wasn’t sure of what story she would speak of––as certainly a story would be needed––but decided that that was a problem for later.

Now she would focus on the fact that she needed to get her car out from the forest road, with the only truck she knew belonging to one Mr Harvey Kinkle. Perhaps if she raised the issue with Sabrina, she would offer to help out, and it would be a learning experience for them all.

Zelda opened the front door of the manor, setting the umbrella aside. She could smell the faint perfume of Lilith on her and hoped that it wasn’t so prominent that her family would also smell it. But as she made her way through the house, it seemed to be that everyone was out.

She trailed through the kitchen, dining room and parlour, glancing in her own office before making her way upstairs.

On the way to her room, she noticed Ambrose seeming to sneak out of his room, which only caused her to pause, watching as he quietly pressed the door shut and turned on his heel and faced her, surprise washing over his face as he tugged his robe close.

“Auntie!” He yelped. “Hello.”

“Ambrose,” she said, looking him over. “Do you have a guest over?”

“Ah, yes,” he admitted shyly. “Luke and I…were studying last night and happened to––“

“Studying?” she echoed dubiously.

Ambrose flushed before he paused and looked to her. “And where were you, last night?”

“My car was bogged and the river flooded, I was stuck on the other side of town,” she said, lifting her eyebrows to make her point.

“And I suppose that’s why you have a hickey on your collar bone.” Zelda looked down, trying to see if she could spot the mark on her neck only for Ambrose to laugh, making his point clear. “As I suspect. I’m pleased, Auntie. It’s been a while since you looked happy.”

“Happy?” she scoffed. “I don’t know what you think is going on, but I assure you that it’s not that.”

“Mm, well. I’m going to drop downstairs and make breakfast for my study companion. You should get some sleep. It looks like something kept you up.”

Zelda drew in a breath, crossing her arms. There was no point in defending herself, Ambrose may be using incorrect evidence to draw his conclusion, but it wasn’t far off its mark and she’d rather her family suspect a relationship than being concerned about what she was truly getting up to.

Following her nephew’s advice, she went to bed to sleep for only an hour or so before she got up and showered, doing her hair and completing her make-up as she came downstairs. The rain had stopped, but the skies remained grey, and the air was cold as she came out to the veranda with a cigarette and cup of tea, coming to stand beside Ambrose who was sitting outside with a book.

“Your friend has left?”

“Had some essay to complete,” he said, before turning to eye her. Zelda didn’t miss the way he studied her, as if looking for something before he turned back to his book. “I’ve requested to speak to Prudence,” he said.

“Oh?”

“You’re right. It’s time I cleared the air. I don’t wish to pursue whatever this might be with Luke if I’m still uncertain as to where I stand with her.”

Zelda drew the cigarette to her lips thoughtfully, feeling the nicotine rush through her lungs. “Did she ever mention Professor Blackwood to you?”

“Blackwood? No. Should she have?”

Zelda drew the cigarette to her mouth again, letting her thoughts wander over what Constance had said, the frantic state she was in about Faustus’ emotions pulling away. She had noticed on a few occasions that he seemed deeper in thought than usual but had placed it down to administrative tasks weighing over him heavily. Faustus had eyes on becoming the Dean eventually, and was often taking on tasks and projects that would reflect well on him should the Dean suddenly drop dear.

“No,” she answered. “I just know that she’s trying to get the position for next year in Faustus’ study.”

“Is she? She was entirely uninterested last semester,” he commented, “even joked as far to say it was a complete waste of school fundings, but I suppose opinions can change.”

Zelda flicked the ash of the cigarette, feeling the thoughts swirl. Did it matter, was it even her concern? Whatever he was doing to destroy his own marriage was between him and Constance, and her own involvement would likely only make matters worse, or reflect poorly on her.

And yet, she couldn’t help but recall how frantic Constance had been, how certain of an affair was going on despite how she mused otherwise.

A car pulled up into the driveway, and Zelda watched as her niece jumped out of the passenger side, waving goodbye to one of her friends as she made her way into the home. She seemed to step on the porch and then look to Zelda, noticing that she was there for the first time. “Aunt Zee,” she greeted.

Zelda’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as Sabrina adjusted her bag on her shoulder, looking…guilty about something.

“Sabrina, I take it you’re safe and well.”

“I am,” she said. “Aunt Hilda said you got caught on the other side of the river. Did you have to stay the night at the office?”

Zelda drew the cigarette to her lips, considering lying, but it would only make it difficult when it came to the fact that her car was bogged. “No,” she answered, “I tried to come through on the forest roads and ended up getting bogged. I’ll need to ask one of your friends’ a favour.”

“You should ask Theo’s father. He has a thing for you, you know?” Sabrina said, with a sweet smile.

Zelda’s brows rose at the comment as she snuffed out the cigarette. “Perhaps, I shall. Could you enquire with Theo?”

Sabrina nodded and ran off inside the house. Zelda sighed, listening to her steps recede upstairs.

“Was anyone home last night?”

“Aunt Hilda was until rather late,” Ambrose advise. “Advised she needed to help out at the bookshop as apparently the roof caved in and was starting to flood the storage.”

Zelda gave a small laugh to herself. While the excuse likely had some valid merit, she suspected that whoever the owner was may have had other intentions, and given that it was lunchtime and her sister was decidedly not home, that had come to fruition.

“So if you were bogged on the forest road,” Ambrose said. “Where did you seek shelter for the night?”

Zelda picked up her coffee, putting out the cigarette in the ashtray. “And why are you so curious? For all you know, I sought shelter in my car.”

Ambrose smiled, digging his nose into the book, knowing not to push further. Nonetheless, Zelda found herself amused rather than annoyed by his enquiry as she made her way to the office. She set her coffee down on the desk and then rolled her shoulders, still feeling the effects of the lack of sleep roll over her.

The nap had helped, but not much.

Not to mention that despite the shower, she could still smell Lilith’s perfume on her. Not to mention that every movement she made ached where the cane had struck her, all of it acting as a reminder to Lilith’s words, telling her that she waited for her to come upstairs.

Clicking her computer on, she reviewed through her emails. There was nothing of interest outside of usual administrative work. Students trying to beg for extensions, staff requesting assistance in the location of missing personalised mugs, and a few status updates from Faustus, as well as the Dean about other departments.

Zelda clicked through them, organising her emails and returned to working on her lesson plans. Since her computer had been wiped, she had begun compiling new books to help with her article but had overall left it to be while she worked on her current workload. It brought an annoyance to her at the fact that she was behind on her self-made deadlines, but it would have to be something that she just let go.

“Aunt Zee?” Sabrina asked, knocking on the doorframe. “I’ve spoken to Theo, and he’s agreed to ask his dad for help. They’ll be around later this afternoon.”

“Thank you, Sabrina. Did Theo happen to mention what his father would like in thanks for helping?”

Her niece smirked. “Perhaps a date,” she enquired. “After all, you mentioned that you’re not seeing anyone lately, right?”

Zelda’s eyes flicked up, over the monitor to glance at her niece. “I’m not,” she assured. “Despite that, however, it still does not mean that I have time to be sitting around dating others.”

Sabrina shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be dating, you could just go out for a few drinks and see if you like each other.”

Zelda sighed, returning to her work. “I’ll think about it,” she advised, having no such plan even to consider it. She stood firm with her opinion that she had no interest in dating, furthermore to the point, her current needs were being met quite well.

Sabrina made a soft humming noise as if she was trying to make a point before she disappeared, laughing. Zelda wasn’t sure as to what she was up to but was concerned that it was mischief. She still had no clue as to what Sabrina did on that sleepover a few weekends back, and as of late, her niece was becoming all the more secretive.

She still didn’t think that Sabrina had moved her relationship with Harvey to the next level. Still, there was a strangeness to the way Sabrina acted, that had she been more concerned, would have to lead her to believe that perhaps Sabrina was getting involved in something she shouldn’t, such as the local gang.

But she pushed the thought aside. If Sabrina were in trouble, she’d reach out to either herself or Ambrose, and Ambrose, in turn, would reach out to her, and she would solve it.

“Sabrina?” she called.

Her niece came back, head ducking around the corner. “Yes, Auntie?”

“Did you need help building your CV?”

“No, already done. I got a job at the bookshop with Aunt Hilda.”

Zelda paused, looking up at Sabrina as she felt a strange twist in her stomach. “Oh?”

“Just for Thursdays and Saturdays,” Sabrina said. “Promise it won’t interfere with everything else.”

“Excellent, I pleased you’ll be working so hard.”

Sabrina nodded before leaving, while Zelda felt her stomach turn. If she was working with Hilda, she suspected that very little work would get done. Sabrina’s friends would likely visit, and Sabrina would spend all of her time speaking with them, only occasionally doing any of her work.

Zelda looked away, drawing in a breath. She shouldn’t think so harshly on niece, after all, it was still an opportunity for responsibility. And if she were fired fro her first job by Hilda or her boss, then all the better, Sabrina would learn that she couldn’t coast through life, hoping that her general charm would save her.

Zelda’s nail ran over the office desk before she returned to her lesson planning, building her lessons for the next few weeks.

She drafted an email to Faustus, enquiring as to Shirley, before scrapping it entirely, knowing that it came off too contrived. She drafted an email to Prudence then, setting a time to go over everything on Monday, before recalling that Monday she had a meeting booked in with Elspeth for the extension she requested.

Zelda drew back, pulling out her planner to flick through it. Her week was excessively full, from classes to meetings, to Sabrina’s school sports and Lilith (with she penned as a meeting for funding, given that she didn’t expect to do any such thing for some time).

Closing her eyes, she felt a wave of nausea roll over her from all the work she was doing. She was exhausted. Utterly exhausted and now her coffee was cold.

Draining the cup, she stood up and held her position as a rush of dizziness washed over her. Perhaps she should poke through the kitchen for something to eat as well, given that it was well past lunchtime.

She moved to the kitchen, looking through the cupboards and discovering biscuits that Hilda had made before she made her self a new pot of coffee as someone else came up the driveway of their home.

Zelda peered through the window, noticing the truck and felt a strange twist in her stomach. She didn’t know why, but seeing the Putnams here made her feel awkward like she was doing the wrong thing.

Eating the cookies, she made her way outside and watched as both Theo and Mr Putnam got out of the car.

Theo walked up, dressed like a much more petite version of his father and dug his hands into his pockets. There was still a cut healing on his cheek and lip, but he otherwise looked well, providing a bright smile on his face. “Ms Spellman,” he said.

She nodded. “How’s school?”

Theo shrugged in a similar way that Sabrina was starting to and Zelda felt her stomach clench, wondering if the bullying was getting worse. As she understood, they had a few more weeks left of their community service since the fight but had thankfully been split from the bullies.

“Sabrina mentioned your car got bogged on the forest road,” Theo said as his father came up behind him.

Looking to Joe Putnam, she raised her eyes briefly in greeting, giving a short nod, before returning to look at Theo. “I did. I tried to brave the old roads when the river flooded across the highway but ended up stuck.”

“As I recall, you used to brave those roads when you were young, too.”

Zelda laughed at the words, raising her eyes to look at Joe. That was certainly a flashback. “I did,” she agreed. “But not through a storm like last night’s, which is probably why it’s my first time being bogged on that road.”

“Do you know which road?”

“I do, I was coming up from the university and was planning to cut through the one that comes out just beyond the house, there,” she said, pointing to where there was an opening coming out onto the highway. Joe looked behind him, studying it before giving a nod. “I’ll take you if you like.”

“Can Sabrina come?” Theo asked. “We’ve never pulled out a bogged car.”

Zelda nodded, amused as she watched Theo run inside, likely to look for Sabrina upstairs, in her room.

It left her alone with Joe, allowing silence to slip between them until he grinned at her. “You look nice, Zelda.”

“Thank you, as do you,” she said, meaning it honestly. His clothes were ironed, his hair combed. He looked well, far better than in the early years of the loss of his wife. “How’s the business going?”

“As well as it can. Most of my money comes from wedding destinations these days, looking to rent out the land for their authentic view,” he sighed, digging his hands into his pockets. The town was struggling. It seemed that all the tourists had upped and left, and there were less and fewer people coming through.

Though the opposite couldn’t be said for Riverdale, which seemed to be having stranger and stranger murders, making them quite the tourist destination for a particular group of people.

Zelda turned on her heel, inviting Joe inside and pouring him a cup of coffee as Sabrina came down the stairs, dressed in her familiar red jacket and patent headband. Both she and Theo looked mischievous, and if Zelda were to place her thumb onto it, she would suspect that they were trying to set them up.

She wasn’t sure why all of a sudden they were trying to set the two of them together––and certainly she would have expected them both to be too old to do it––however there was little else that could explain their secret glances as they glance between her and Joe, holding back giggles.

After coffee, she grabbed her jacket and handbag, following Joe outside to his car and climbed inside. The interior was mud splattered on the floor, but she noticed that the seats had been cleaned, and there was otherwise nothing else to be concerned about.

She took her seat, buckling up the seatbelt and watched as Joe, Theo and Sabrina did the same before she began directing as to where her car was.

The truck bounced along the road far better than her sedan had, and Zelda noticed a great number of potholes and puddles that would have had her car bogged again, had she managed to get out of the second lot.

When they arrived, Zelda gave a brief look to her, confirming that its contents were still in place and then stepped aside to watch as Joe explained to Sabrina and Theo both what to do if they ever found themselves bogged.

He pulled out pieces of flat wood, setting them in front of the bogged tire, digging it underneath to allowing the car to drive out.

And then Zelda got into her car, turning the engine on before she slowly accelerated. The wheel did not move forward, due to not finding any traction. She paused, setting it back in park and climbed out.

“You did a good job,” he advised.

She nodded, arms folding as he dug through the mud, adjusting the plank of wood before directing her to try it again.

Zelda obeyed, getting back in the car, placing it into gear and trying to accelerate over the piece of wood slowly. Again, it didn’t work, and Mr Putnam sighed, before digging into the back of the truck. “Looks like we’re going to have to do this a bit more forcefully then.”

Pulling out chains, he tied them to the front of Zelda’s car, and then to the back of his own, before directing Zelda to put the car into neutral.

Zelda obeyed and watched as Theo and Sabrina stepped out of the way, seeming to share more than a few laughs.

If Zelda was honest with herself, there was a time where she may have considered dating Joe again. But their history was so far gone, that she doubted either one of them truly wanted to dig it up.

With ease, he pulled the car out, and Zelda felt a sigh of relief. Her car was no longer bogged. Now she just needed to be careful not to do it again as she drove along behind the Putnams.

Sabrina slid into the passenger beside her, buckling her seatbelt in place as she tossed a knowing smirk to her. “That was very helpful of Mr Putnam,” Sabrina advised. “And it was good that he became prepared.”

“Quite,” Zelda advised shortly, putting the car into the drive as she slowly drove behind them.

Sabrina fiddled with the radio before sitting back against the seat as a local station played. “You know, Jesse passed recently.”

“I am aware.”

“Mr Putnam has been quite lonely since losing Jesse.”

“Has he?” Zelda said. “Perhaps he should look at dating someone who has the time to share that emotional grief,” she turned and looked back at Sabrina with a steady look. “I don’t know why you’ve gotten into your head that he and I are a match, but I assure you, Sabrina, we are not.”

“You would be,” she insisted. “He’s a nice man, he works hard, and he likes his own company, so you two would be perfect for each other.”

“Sabrina, he and I are well acquainted. We used to know each other back when I first returned to Greendale.”

Sabrina didn’t seem surprised by this information, which made her all the more aware of Sabrina’s motives. Her dear niece likely thought herself a champion for them. Reuniting two long lost loves, but the truth was far from that.

“Why did you break-up?”

“We weren’t formally dating,” Zelda said, going over a bump. The radio cut out briefly and seemed to return, crackling as they drove around the winding path. “And we fell distant because he met someone else and I had no interest in pursuing anything serious.”

“Have you ever?”

“Pursued something seriously,” she paused, thinking back to her partners. Certainly, she’d had long term relationships. There’d been offers of marriages and her own acceptance before eventually, they ended up breaking up inevitably before the wedding for one reason or another. Once upon a time, she’d thought herself cursed.

The truth was, she knew she wasn’t someone pleasant to be around. She was cold and withdrawn, preferred her own company, placed her work over everything else and found things like romantic anniversaries enjoyable, but overall unimportant.

“No,” she said, “But things change.”

“Did you ever want your own children?”

“I have you and Ambrose.”

“But we’re not your children,” Sabrina advised. And although her niece did not intend to be unkind, the pain still struck her heart. She’d raised and provided for them both, soothed their fevers and kissed their scrapes and bruises. But Sabrina was right. She would never be their mother, no matter what she did.

“No,” she lied. “I didn’t want my own children.”

“But when Constance had us look after Leticia–“

“What is with the questions, Sabrina?” She snapped, hating the painful reminder of Leticia. “What on earth are you trying to get at it?”

“You’re not happy,” Sabrina said. “You’re not happy with me or Ambrose or Hilda, or the house. You don’t like your job. And for a while, it seemed like maybe you’d found someone, but you’re insistent that you haven’t, so…” Sabrina sighed, “I don’t know, I just want you to be happy.”

“Having someone in your life doesn’t necessarily make you happy,” Zelda advised. “Have you ever considered the fact that I’ve chosen a life outside of a partner because that’s what I want?”

“But Mr Putnam is nice, and he said––“

“He may say a many great amount of things, but it doesn’t mean I share the same sentiment. We parted a long time ago, long before you were born for reasons that have long since ceased to matter. I went to college and came back, and he was married, and I didn’t care, Sabrina. If I truly cared for him, that would have been something that would have mattered.”

Sabrina shifted in the seat, watching as they came out to the highway. “You’re both so lonely, so I thought…”

“I understand you’re intentions, but I will ask this only once of you. Do not interfere with my love life. I am happy to be where I am. I have a family, work-life. There’s little else I require.”

“What about friends?”

Zelda paused there, “I have colleagues I consider friends.”

“Constance?”

Zelda drew in a deep breath, feeling the pain wash over her. “Yes, Constance and I are friends.”

“Why don’t you want to talk about what happened? It was only six months ago.”

“Because I don’t know how I feel,” she answered honestly, turning to look at Sabrina briefly before returning her eyes to the road. “I don’t know how I should feel, except happy that Constance was able to move past that difficult part of her life.”

Sabrina went quiet and didn’t push any further, for which Zelda was relieved.

Pulling up in front of the Spellman house, she watched as the Putnam’s pulled up behind her––likely with Joe having gone through a similar insistence from his son to push them together.

As he climbed out of the truck with a tired look on his face, it softened as he looked at her. Zelda smiled despite herself before looking away. She had missed him in some ways, and seeing Theo and Sabrina grow to be best friends had felt right. A way for them to connect after losing touch for so long, though an awkwardness had always remained with them.

“Did you want to stay for dinner?” Sabrina asked Theo before turning and looking back at Zelda mischievously.

Zelda tried not to feel the frustration roll over her. Her niece intended well, she knew that, but it was nonetheless frustrating that she’d only just mentioned to her niece not to interfere and here she was, interfering because the two of them had shared eye contact.

“If we weren’t intruding,” Joe said.

“Of course not,” Zelda advised, “Theo and Sabrina can help Hilda.”

They headed inside, and she was thankful to see Joe remove his muddied boots at the door, leaving them aside. Theo and Sabrina followed doing the same, whereas Zelda shifted one pair of shoes for another, not wishing to walk through her house without appropriate shoes on.

She led them all to the dining room, directing Theo and Sabrina to wash-up before she made a pot of tea, setting aside some of Hilda’s biscuits.

She had seen Hilda’s car parked on their return and knew she was home. Likely, her sister would be coming down soon to set-up, and when she did, the children could help to prepare the meal with whatever she had planned.

Taking the tea to the parlour, she set it down, pouring herself and Joe a cup before she reclined to her seat. Mr Putnam took his tea politely, with a biscuit. And for a horrifying moment, Zelda wondered if he was going to try and dunk the biscuit into the tea before he seemed to change his mind just nibble on it.

“Did you make these?” he inquired.

“No, Hilda did.”

He seemed to smile to himself. “She could always bake,” he said. “Even when we were young, she used to bake with your grandmother.”

Zelda nodded. She didn’t remember Hilda baking much when she was younger, but she supposed she’d often been too busy either galavanting around with other local teenagers or sticking her nose in a book to notice. “Did you spend much time with Hilda?”

“When I used to wait for you, I did. You used to promise to meet me at your home and then you would turn up an hour later.”

Ah, that Zelda did recall. Joe had been a good man, even young. He’d been good and kind. And she had probably used that for her own gain more than once, flattered by his interest in her. She’d never intended to hurt him, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t selfish.

“Theo and Sabrina have been less than obvious,” he advised, breaking the silence.

“I’ve noticed,” she agreed. “Sabrina especially seems quite insistent.” Setting her cup of tea down, she smoothed the creases in her dress. “I don’t want to mislead you. I’m not interested in a relationship.”

“I know. You never were.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

He paused, coughing awkwardly as he set the cup down on its saucer and set it on the coffee table before him. “Just that you were always independent. You preferred your own company—it’s not a critique, it’s just you. You’re…” cold, she could see he was trying to avoid the word, but she’d had too many partners throw it at her. “Unbound by that desire,” he ended on.

Zelda felt a laugh rise in her throat. If only you knew. “I suppose,” she answered. There was a pang of discomfort, raw wounds she long since thought healed seemed to feel like a new skin, not unlike the very welts she could feel recovering.

And with that, her thoughts returned to Lilith.

Zelda looked away, feeling a flush creep up her throat. The last thing that she wanted was for Joe to notice her arousal flooding across her. It’d been over two decades since they were together, but her skin hardly hid the flush.

She closed her eyes, trying to move her thoughts away to something else, imaging something of more substance before she opened her eyes to find Mr Putnam staring into his cup of tea. “And what of you?” she inquired. “I haven’t noticed you dating anyone since the loss of your wife.”

He looked tired, truly tired, and for the first time, Zelda was reminded of their age. She remembered Theo’s mother. Angelina had been an out of towner. A lovely, round-faced woman who had always looked like she was on the verge of bursting into laughter.

And how Joe had looked at her like she was the whole world.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Too old for the theatrics of it all, and I know most of the town's occupants.”

She nodded, that was certainly true enough. “It’s difficult,” she agreed. “And it’s not easy to meet anyone when you stay on the farm.”

“No,” he agreed. “And Jesse was ill for so long…” he said before tiredly reclining, a look of grief crossing over his face.

A part of Zelda wanted to reach out and assure that it was okay, but they weren’t old friends. They were barely acquaintances now. Their children were friends.

“Do you remember when Jesse would chase after us when we were to the river?”

“He could never take a hint,” he said. “Always wanted to involve himself.”

“He taught me to fish better than you did.”

At that, he smiled, and Zelda felt a hum of something old and nostalgic, remembering as she pulled the fish from the line and both men had jumped around her, utterly surprised in her ability to unhook and then gut the fish.

“You give him too much credit. You were always better at those things than any of the boys. You had them lining up.”

Zelda smiled wistfully, remembering the time. Both in school and out of school, she’d occasionally date a man or woman who would look her over and make certain presumptions about her. It was always fun to pretend she had no idea how to do anything like survive in the wilderness, and then to show them that not only could she hunt, but she was a better shot than anyone with a gun.

Not that she’d needed use of one in a long time.

“I wanted to speak to you about a few weeks back,” he said, “Sabrina’s been standing up for Theo since he’s come back. Done lots of research and shared it around between not just his friends, but teachers and even family. It means a lot to see that she loves him so much.”

Zelda smiled, “She has a good heart,” she agreed. “Kinder than I ever did.”

“You have your own kindness. It might not be formative actions, but you never let anyone hurt Hilda. Remember when Blossom once tried––“

“Push her in the river?” She laughed. “Oh yes, I quite remembering enacting that particular revenge.” She hummed at the memory. It’d been a long time ago, but the redheaded bitch had it coming. “Helped that she was from Riverdale’s side too.”

“She was jealous of you. You had her boyfriend wrapped around your finger.”

“As if that was difficult,” she scoffed. “He…” and then she trailed off, remembering other things. “Well, I suppose he just wanted someone who wasn’t going to kick him when he was down.”

Putnam nodded, softly to himself before he looked away, tracing the cup before taking a sip. “Are you happy, Zelda?”

“Happy?” she scoffed. “Of course, I am. I have everything I want.”

He nodded. “I’m glad,” he said.

There was something there, and if she pressed at it, she might find out what he was digging at. But she couldn’t tell if it was for himself or her, and if it was for her, she didn’t want him getting any closer to it.

Setting her tea down, she made the excuse of checking on Hilda and toed around to the kitchen, through to the greenhouse where she could Hide softly speaking to Theo and Sabrina both.

“What are you up to?” she inquired, looking them both over suspiciously.

Theo turned on his heel, looking oddly suspicious, but Sabrina and Hilda both took no notice of it. “Just looking over the garden,” Hilda advised. “Little Theo’s got a science project coming up, and I was just suggesting––“

“That perhaps it was time to start dinner?” Zelda interrupted. “I’m sure whatever you’re up to can wait until after then?”

Sabrina’s mouth pressed into a line, but she had the decency to hold it back.

“Of course, love,” Hilda advised. “I was going to make a shepherd’s pie if that’s alright with you?”

“Sounds perfectly fine,” she advised. Though in truth, she would prefer something of more speed to cook.

As it was, she managed to be saved by Ambrose coming down and joining in the conversation with her and Hoe, having suddenly taken an interest in agriculture, he enquired at to Joe’s work, freeing Zelda’s mind from polite conversation.

If she was perfectly honest with herself, the exhaustion of last night weighed heavily on her, and the tea seemed to be doing little to keep her awake. Even when they were summoned for dinner, she poured alcohol for the adults, pointedly refusing Sabrina a glass of wine (though usually, she didn’t mind her occasionally having half a glass on the weekend with an appropriate meal, but given that Hoe was unlikely to approve the same for Theo, it wasn’t fair to place him an awkward situation).

The conversation drifted across the table, with Hilda and Ambrose both discussing classes with Theo, which was all fine and well until Zelda’s ears pricked at the mention of, “––Principle Wardwell.”

Zelda looked to Theo; her eyes hovering over the boy as she tried to trace back what the conversation had been regarding. School, no doubt, but it what context?

“She’s been putting a firm foot down towards bullying, reminding them of Baxter High’s zero tolerance,” Sabrina said in response, giving enough to provide context, “but I don’t know if it was fair about the community service. They’re bullies, big bullies, and she gave them all the same service as us when they started it.”

Sabrina’s expression turned hot.

“Principle Wardwell did?” Zelda inquired.

“Yeah. And it wasn’t like there was any point. She had them working some service for the aged cared centre, whereas we worked with the grade school. I doubt they learned anything from it.”

“It’s funny,” Joe advised. “Because when the other parents and I were speaking to her, she had negotiated them down to a week’s suspension for everyone. And then you came into the room.”

Zelda took her glass of wine in grip, taking a sip. “Quite,” she advised. “It was hardly fair that Sabrina was punished for that.”

“Well she still punished us equally,” Sabrina advised.

Zelda felt the flush warm her face, “Not true,” she advised hoarsely before clearing her voice. “As it was, I couldn’t allow a suspension on your record. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t remain on theirs, but I did my best.”

Joe gave her a strange look across the table. “So you negotiated her down?”

Zelda nodded. “I made it clear that while fighting should not be tolerated. There was some merit to what occurred. Though I understand that one of the boys was hospitalised?”

“He broke his leg,” Sabrina advised, “and that wasn’t our fault. We got into a fight, but when we did, one of his friends accidentally knocked him back down the stairs. It’s…how the fight stopped” she admitted. “We didn’t keep fighting.”

Zelda nodded, knowing already that had it been otherwise, Lilith would have advised her. “Anyway, the matter’s solved. Your service is nearly completed.”

Sabrina shrugged, as if unsatisfied by this, but didn’t say anything else to the matter. She looked at Theo with a strange look as she sipped her water. Again, Zelda found herself suspicious of the shared looks, wondering if there was a deeper meaning to it, but placed it aside. She couldn’t go around, convinced that Sabrina was up to no good because of secretive looks with friends.

There was plenty of other reasons to be suspicious.

“Well, Wardwell certainly has the PTA under wraps. Completely cut them down when they tried to raise some complaints about inappropriate outfits been worn to school,” Hilda advised, chuckling to herself. “Started enquiring if she should start measuring the same thing on the boys too, and wasn’t that an uproar.”

Zelda’s brows rose. Lilith seemed determined to make enemies everywhere it seemed, attacking the PTA and teachers in defence of the children. It would certainly make her look like a tyrant to them, and likely have their attention zero in on her, if she wasn’t careful.

She refrained from commenting as such, not wishing to ruin dinner as Theo began excitedly recounting Wardwell-telling-off-Craven story that Sabrina had previously advised.

Again, Zelda was reminded that the woman seemed unfazed by the enemies she was creating. She was still only a rather recent Principle, and Zelda doubted that her position was so written in stone that if a select group of teachers and parents complained, she would come out of it unscathed. The best scenario would be that she was requested to leave her post. Worst would be a parent or teacher digging into her personal life to find dirt on her.

And it wasn’t that difficult, given that she was actively moonlighting as a Dominatrix.

Zelda shifted on the seat, reminded (rather painfully) that if that were to occur, she would be caught in the middle as well.

Perhaps she should…

Who was she kidding, she wasn’t going to stop. She already longed to see her again. At the moment, it was one of the few things in her life that she enjoyed privately.

She looked across the table, sipping her wine to see Joe looking at her curiously before his eyes darted away.

Drawing her attention back to the conversation, Zelda tried to quell the anxiety in her stomach. Even after eating dinner, she was still feeling unwell. Perhaps she needed an early night.

[punkandsnacks]

Between Wolves & Doves, Chapter Fifteen; Anticipation.

Author: @punk-in-docs​ & @adamsnackdriver​

Also on AO3-  

Masterlist-

Trigger Warnings: No warnings in this chap- animal shapeshifting but thas about it really-

Synopsis: Vampire!Kylo x OC love story. Inspired by BBC’s Dracula. Also inspired by Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.

He’s been stalking this earth long since civilizations can possibly fathom. Before records even began. He sneers at the fact that this pitiful young world has only just begun to see his reign of it.

He’s dined with moguls, emperors, princes. He’s consorted with bloodthirsty ruthless Queens in their courts, and whispered into the ears of powerful King’s, whose names still echo through millennia.

In his myriad of centuries gifted to his immortal self he’s been many many things. He’s been a lowly pauper. A crusading knight. An assassin. A sell sword. A soldier. A wanderer. A simpering suitor and a voracious unyielding lover. Aimlessly lost in time- besieging this earth. Ripping it apart and drinking what’s left.

He was made in the hinterland between snow and dirt and pine trees. Crusted with ash and blood and gouged from battle. Born anew. Sired from the hell-mouth of war. He was made in 789 AD.

He’ll come undone, one bitter winter night, in England, in 1816.

                                                       ~ ~ 🥀  ~ ~

The very next days seemed to crawl by. As if time itself was dragging through claggy thick treacle.

 Nothing moved quickly and Iris knows it’s because she’s anticipating the weeks-end more than any other event she’s ever awaited on in her life.

 More than Yuletide morning. More than her birthday. More than buying a new book or taking an early morning walk all to herself. More than a sunny frosted morning where everything seems to glimmer as if crafted from gold, or seeing wildflowers dot the woods with their colour in spring.

 She’s waiting on that much anticipated midnight with baited breath. Every second closer to it is both torture and sweet blessed relief.

 She fulfils her remaining days with a permanent smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

 Even her acetous mother remarks upon it. She tells her daughter the fine manner of her engagement must be bringing her joy. Iris bites her lip to keep from grinning.

 She clutched her romantic secret all that tighter to her chest. Moulded it like warm clay to clasp around her glad heart.

 Mother and Maratella insist on setting a date. And getting her whole ‘bouquet’ of daughters measured for their gowns.

 Posy and Flora for they are of course to be bridesmaids, and Iris, of course, for her bridal gown. They get up a merry party to Pembleton one fine clear morning.

 The snow and frost govern the landscape once more. Ebbing back in after the recent rain. The brown frost-hardened hills and trees and fields. Governed under the fierce cyclops of a mustard sun blazing in the effortless blue of the cobalt sky. It made Iris think of robins eggs, and the golden buttery buds of spring. When the bulbs and shoots blossom up through the earth with their sickly scent and colour.

 It is a fine clear day and it indicates that the end of the long bitter winter approaches. The cold is as ferocious as ever so Maratella insists upon them not catching a chill in the vile icy winds. Shes most kind as to stop to collect the Misses Ashton’s in the Hux’s second largest coach. They are all bid to the dressmakers in the high street. Along the medieval shamble of barrel window and oak timber shops.

 The news of her engagement spread far and wide. Before her boots have even touched the cobbles, stepping out the coach, their party is virtually mobbed by matrons and ladies of their acquaintance.

 Iris had in mind a silly image of them prowling at the pavements like baying wolves, chasing after the muddy churn of the carriage wheels; anything for to first seize that newest scrap of gossip.

 Posy and Flora ladle up all the attention. As does Mama. Proudly boasting - along with Maratella - of the suitability of such a fine match. Iris wants to roll her eyes as Flora greatly exaggerated the romantic manner of Hux’s proposition. She gabbled about a room full of red roses and how Iris wept tears of delight as he swept her into his arms.

 The ravenous eyes turn toward her. “May we see the ring, Miss Ashton?” Comes out of numerous smiling mouths like a chorus of cawing seagulls. Iris feels like they’ll rip her glove off themselves if she doesn’t.

 Unused to such attention, she blushes as she slips off her grey calfskin glove. Wrenching it off her hand. There is a troupe of awed gasps as they admire the diamond set in the gold band.

 Iris feels as if she’s sticking her hand into a dangerous animals maw. Like some exhibit at a zoo. Feeding her hand to the rabid starving tiger’s. There’s so much gasping and in taking of breath it’s a wonder they don’t suck her up. And take half the street with them.

 Luckily, Maratella fusses that they’ll be late if they don’t make haste. She then proudly utters that the ladies five, their happy little bridal party, are off to Madame Larousse’s dressmaking parlour for a wedding gown. And Mrs Ashton and Mrs Hux are to see to both having new hats to mark such a happy occasion.

 The flock of ravenous ladies ceases. Satisfied with their mauling of Iris and her news and her engagement ring. The party is able to proceed along the pavement unhindered.

 They slip into Madame Larousse’s. Greeted by the lanky, heavily perfumed proprietor herself. She was a tall, ungainly woman with poky shoulders and an always over-rouged complexion. And will always, without fail, exaggerate a mildly French accent to gild her words. For she believes that all the best dressmakers and seamstresses were French.

 The tall stretch of Madame claps excitedly and demands to see Iris’ hand when she hears they are here to purchase ribbons and lace and all things fit for a bride. She is whisked away by a very efficient assistant. And stood on a pedestal for the next hour and half.

 Iris spends that time with swatches pinned to her. Flapped around her ears. Tucked under her collar. There’s so many back and forth decisions from her mother, it makes her quite dizzy. A tape drawn tight around her so many times to squeeze the stuffing out her. Eventually, they stumble to a conclusion. It was to be a saffron orange.

 Flora remarked it made her rather look like a carrot.

 Around her they lounge on the chaises provided, clutched around the mirror and the box she’s on, and they drink sweet tea. Brown sugar sprinkled and stirred into the earl grey.

 They all pose interjections and opinions and preferences on her. Iris just stands there like a tailors doll. Only half there.

 She’s caught sight of a swatch of ruby-wine velvet near her thigh and is stroking it fondly. Remembering Lord Rens exquisite bed coverlet. How it felt under her fingers, it took her ricocheting back to that moment. And it calmed her.

 That’s how she can stand all this grousing and prodding. It reminds her of her secret and she nearly faints off that box pedestal.

 They settle on a pallid frothy blue silk instead. To better bring out the excellence of her mud and twigs hair. Mama chooses the best silk madame has in stock. Says she will have to fetch more in from her supplier especially. From London.

 That causes much excitement for Flora and Posy. They’d never had a dress made from material fetched as far nor from a city as grand as London, before.

 Posy had selected a teasing slip of pink silk. Flora, for her more fiery hair, chose a delicate pastel pea green. Iris thinks they’ll look like a platter of French fancy cakes.

 Then a pang of something hits through her heart with all the intensity of an arrowhead studding there - she hopes Mama lets Posy and Flora keep their new gowns after she’s gone. She hopes very much. They are the stillest girls in existence but they do deserve nicer things than what they get.

 By Madame’s husky drawl of a smoky voice is she brought back into the room, the awful pink pink pink room. Stuffed with velvet chaises and bolster cushions and trimmed fringed oil lamps. Great big fat rosebuds sprout up the wallpaper and flourish across the fabric of the pillows on the settee.

 It’s as if the whole room is the summoning of the evil fairy in sleeping beauty. Who commanded swarms of brambles and thorns and swamping plants to take over. That was this room to the last pink thread - only it was instead summoned to contain every incarnation of pink roses as far as the eye could see.

 Her ears burn hot and pink as Madame talks of London. Relating the gossip back to someone in the village. Matter of fact, a certain Lord-

 “Apparantly, you know he sent that tall turbaned butler of his up to London just yesterday...” Madame hushes to them in her hazy terribly-affected French.

 “Sent him to Mayfair.” She grins crookedly as she measures from Iris’s hip to her hem. Barking orders at Suzy, her ever suffering assistant.

 Maratella seems most diverted. “Pray whatever for?” She leans forwards. Perching her half eaten violet macaroon on her saucer.

 “He sent him to Bond Street. You know there is an establishment there that supplies jewels to the palace. Apparantly he came back having purchased something.” Madame says.

 “Pray why would be send his butler all that way?” Flora asks.

 “Why, Miss Smith told me so this morning; she suspects Lord Ren has left his heart behind in Bavaria. He is soon to quit Hellford. She heard Clarence Pennington’s butler say that his housekeeper, Mrs Jones states that half his house is shut. And the staff vacated.” Maratella excites them all. Flora and Posy are mortified at such news.

 “The house is emptying. And Lord Ren shall soon be gone.” She adds.

 Mrs Ashton smiles gladly. “He is journeying back home to his castle I wager...” She delights. The spitting smug nature of her tone was clear. Good riddance.

 “Who must he be besotted with I wonder?” Posy asks indelicately.

 Iris tries not to be twice as smug. Thinking that she is that very woman.

 He goes back to his castle and I will gladly go with him, she thinks.

 The giddiness and joy roils in her stomach like golden champagne. Fizzes through her veins and she has to hide a smile. Biting her cheek hard.

 “Well. if he is shortly to leave our shores. I’m willing to bet he’ll break a fair few maidens hearts in this county and the next over. Such a striking gentleman. The young ladies will certainly feel his loss most keenly.” Maratella comments in sadness for all the female admirers he’d amassed. They’d all be heart sore now he’s going away.

 “You’re blushing Iris.” Flora sing-songs at her. Pointing it out. “Thoughts of your intended sweetheart?” She ribs her sister.

 “You are a colossal pest. Flora.” Iris smiles at her. Matter of fact. Her little bug of a sister is quite right. She is thinking about the man she’ll marry.

 Only another agonising hour whilst Mama and Maratella select their hats for the occasion. But Iris can atleast sit down and drink some much too sweet earl grey tea. Doesn’t have to stand on that wretched box for another hour.

 Eventually their purchases were rung up and settled. Flora and Posy love Iris very much because she buys them two new ribbons each and some velvet buttons for their bonnets. They’re singing her praises as they quit the shop. Trilling like a pair of canaries about their gowns. Iris was glad to spend some of her pin money on them before she leaves for good.

 She’s fully appraised of the weight of her actions. And the serious consequence of them. It would be ruinous for her mother and father. It would be a disaster for her sisters. But atleast she was of age and she could marry. Whatever else others might say of her - she fully believes Lord Ren’s intentions are honourable.

 They can’t scandalise her for marrying Kylo. Just censure her for running away from Hux and jilting him. She’s certain he’ll recover amicably enough. He doesn’t love her. And his mother is suitably well connected. She could snap her fingers and summon another willing bride. She’s only sorry it can’t be her.

 She’s despondent to remark upon the pain she’ll be causing hers and Hux’s family. But in time, they will recover. Posy would do well and Flora will follow in her footsteps. Mother will see to it they catch fine husbands when the time is right. Their mother is most skilled in that area.

 The party journeys along Pembleton street. Maratella stops by the haberdashers to seek after some ribbons. Mama is in the milliners seeking after a new pair of occasion gloves. Posy and Flora amble slowly along the street with their sister. Watching the carriages and coaches trundle by. Various riders on horseback too.

 A loud nickering snort behind her makes her turn. She can hardly hide the smile that quickly grows across her face when she catches sight of a lone rider on a huge stocky black stallion. Both man and his mount are furiously muscled beasts.

 His Lordly attire is its usual. All black. Save for his white shirt and red cravat. The great overcoat frames his wide shoulders and his bulky chest. His boots gleam in the meagre sun. His grin tips up when he catches sight of her.

 He looks terribly smug and Iris’s heart feels like it’s trying to ram out the cage of her ribs. This handsome lordly man who stole it away, sets it pounding freely and rampant in her chest.

 She tries not to arouse the suspicion of her sisters. They were much too curious and meddling for their own good. She wants to protect her secret and she thinks she’s a proficient enough liar to accomplish it.

 They burst into fits of giggles on seeing him. He rides Erland closer to where they are stood and dismounts. His strong boots thud into the frosty mud. His wool coat laps and swathes his body. He tethered himself to Erland. Massive gloved hand gripping the reins. The creature didn’t seem to have any care for wandering off. He just wished to see Iris - Kylo empathises with the horse. He rather feels the exact same.

 Iris, Posy and Flora all curtsey to him. He bids them all a greeting. She bows her neck and when she looks up. His eyes fondly fix on her. Warm in the sun. The contrast of him is astonishing. Milky creamy complexion, bordered by the onyx shadow of his hair and eyes. Utter opposites in the juxtaposition.

 “Miss Ashton. A pleasure to see you again. I trust you are still well recovered. You look very radiant this morning.” He comments. Walking Erland just that tiny step closer.

 The obstinate animal his stallion is, reaches his nose out and snorts into her hand. Nudges her glove for pats and scritches of affection behind his ears. She doesn’t care that she’ll get horse hair on her. She strokes him.

 “You are most kind. Your lordship. I am very well.” She smiles slightly. The pretty kiss of rose on her cheeks.

 “I need not tell you Erland is pleased to make your acquaintance once more.” He remarks starkly. Hint of irony not lost on her. Erland almost nudges her to fall over with his big strong head. She laughs.

 “Your ears must’ve been burning. Lord Ren. For we were just discussing you...” Posy flirts. Batting her lashes at the man.

 Hands crossed in front of her. Like she was a genteel little doe. Iris glares narrowed silver dagger eyes at her sister to stop displaying herself so readily. As ever, the little vexation pays no attention. Not when there was a hot blooded male around.

 Kylo tilts his head. Intrigued. “Is that so, Miss Posy?” He asks.

 “We we’re discussing how heart sore all the young ladies hereabouts will be when you quit Hampshire...” Flora tells him.

 Kylo takes her confession in his stride. “It’s true. And I am sorry more than I can exclaim to be leaving such carnage and desolation in my wake. But sadly I do return to Bavaria shortly.”

 That handsome expression barely betrays a thing. The cold wind flounces and ruffles that wild hair. A tuft of it drifts in his face and tangled in his dark eyeline.

 Iris decides in that moment he truly might be an angel sculpted by gods own hand; or a demon designed by the devil himself. She isn’t sure which of those creatures is all the more tempting.

 One thing she’s certain of; He’d win that draw of most handsome, every time.

 She quivers when those eyes gaze at her. Peels her right out her clothes and down to her goose pimpled skin. Then Posy has to go and open her foolhardy mouth some more...

 “We were just helping Iris shop for her bridal gown.” She preens. “And our bridesmaids dresses.” She comments. Speaking as if she wants Kylo to snatch her up and steal her away to Bavaria. Stuff her in his pocket and run off with her.

 “I had heard rumour of your engagement...” He lies. Iris is biting the inside of her lip and smiling genially to hide how wide her excitement wishes to make her smile grow.

 “Show Lord Ren your engagement ring, Iris!” Flora bounces excitedly. Iris glares. Reminding her of the inappropriate nature of her words.

 “Flora. Lord Ren is not interested in such matters. And I’m afraid we’ve already impressed upon too much of his time...” She insists.

 Kylo holds out his hand to her. Steps closer so she has to crane her head back just to keep sight of his eyes. “I am certainly interested. And I might add, most eager to see the bauble that decorates such a fine, pretty hand.” He teases.

 She decides he was designed by the devil. And lucifer gave him a silver tongue to boot-

 Iris slips off her grey glove and gently lays her palm in his.

 The way his fingers curl around hers is criminal. She tips her eyes up to his as he shifts closer and admires her ring. A soft smile tugs at his mouth. The gold winks at him in the sun. It’s a pretty delicate morsel. He can’t deny. But plain. Much too plain. Entirely humble as decoration went.

 -it’s certainly nothing to the one he’d had Jomar go all the way to London to fetch for her from Bentley & Skinner on Bond Street.

 “It is a fine ring. Miss Ashton. Sergeant Hux is the most fortunate man in England to have you as his intended bride. I’m quite envious of his fortuity.” He says. Bowing to lay a kiss on the back of her palm.

 His eyes electrify her. He winks at her and she flushes with heat. Blood pressing up in her face.

 “I’m sorry to hear of your leaving England. Lord Ren. Such a shame Hellford Park should be quitted before the summer.” She tells him.

 Her palm leaving his. Sliding away from the touch of his hand would have made her wretched were it not for the heat in his bronzed eyes. Made a warmer melting shade by the shimmer of the buttery sun. And their shared secret lifts her heart.

 “It is a great shame. But I’m eager to return to Ranlor. I’ve missed my homeland a great deal.”

 “The rumour in circulation is that you have a certain lady in mind to return home too.” Posy dares most outlandishly. Iris chides her for her brash rudeness.

 “Posy!” Iris calls out.

 Kylo seems amused by it. “That would he telling. Miss Posy. Not to mention betraying the confidence of the most honourable lady in question.” He smirks at her sister.

 Who giggles and blushes like it’s no ones business. His vampiric charms seeping out of his every pore, truly intoxicating to them, Iris can see it’s influence.

 “Is she a great beauty? I imagine she is most elegant indeed and very superior and titled in rank and manner. And of great fortune...” Posy digs for more details. Kylo will reveal none.

 “Pray. Don’t be impertinent twice-over.” Iris corrects. Posy pulls a vexed face. Shoves her tongue out at her sister.

 Kylo’s chuckling. They were entertaining little chits. Relentless. But he admires something about that sparky quality. Iris had the same sense about her - only more sensible and humble.

 “She is the singularly, most beautiful creature I’ve ever beheld in all my years.” He promises. “And I cannot wait to have her hand in marriage. She will make me a very blessed and lucky man.” He declares.

 “How romantic.” Posy declares in a sigh. Flora dreamily agrees. They’re both veritably Moony eyed. Gazing up at him in wonder as a consequence. A silly girls kryptonite. A handsome and dark romantic man. A Byronic figure to set all the foolish girls swooning at the knees.

 Kylo’s eyes sweep across to Iris at a passing glance. He smiles. And it almost undoes her.

 “We must be on our way. We’ve availed ourselves of too much of your time. Lord Ren.” Iris says in parting. Trying to herd her vapid sisters away before they flirt anymore.

 “We must go. For we are bid to the Hux’s tonight for a celebratory engagement supper.” Posy curtsies boasting as she’s bobbing away.

 “Give the Sergeant and his family my warmest regards.” Kylo insists. Knowing what a barb that would be to Hux’s temper.

 Iris turns and meets his eyes. Giving him a polite bowed head in parting. When Posy and Flora are otherwise looking elsewhere. She turns back and gives him such a look of longing and delight it makes him grin at her as she walks off down the cobbled pavement.

 “Very good to see you again. Your Lordship. Have a pleasant rest of your day.” She insists.

 Cajoling her sisters along the path and away before they get any notions. Erland snorts at her as she moved away. She smiles and gladly rubs the flat bone of his nose before she goes. Lord Ren stays standing until she does move away.

 Kylo pats his neck, and hauls himself up on his strong stallions back once again. Booted feet in the stirrups. He adjusts on the saddle. Scanning the tumbled windows of the high street proprietors.

 In the milliners, he sees a face like sour lemons and thunder glaring out at him. Mrs Ashton’s stony face peering outwards through the glass. Having seen his exchange with all her daughters.

 He coaxes Erland into a slow walk. A little nudge in his side. He gives the foul Caroline Ashton his most winning enigmatic smile. And nods civilly in greeting at her as he rides off.

 He sees it makes her lips purse in irritation.

 Iris can’t resist glancing back at him. She knows those eyes watch her all the way down the street. She can feel them. Two pinpricks of heat, like candles, burning into her shoulder-blades.

 It makes her too giddy for words.

 They soon catch up with the rest of their party and are whisked away in the Hux carriage. Soaring across the dirty English roads. Mud churning in their wake as cold air and sunshine bounces off the roof.

 Mama asks them what Lord Ren. Iris told them he was just politely passing the time of day. She seems satisfied with the answer. Iris fights not to squirm into shivers of desire at the merest intimation and memory of him.

 Posy and Flora sing-song his romantic praises all the way home. Mother soon shuts them up with a cross cold stare.

 The afternoon seems to fly her by. No sooner than she’s home and she’s readying herself for the dinner they’ll take at the Hux’s residence. Cavenham House.

 The not so modest estate in the border of the next county. A gorgeous house if she’s being perfectly honest. Terracotta red bricked exterior, of modern Georgian design. Huge arched white windows. Rococo interior. All gilded with cherubs frolicking on the murky painted ceilings and baroque trim on every door. Rolling scrolls. Frescoes and pastel colours. Gilding, moulding and trompe l’oeils giving the illusion of motion and drama. Raining down from every ceiling.

 A handsomely kept garden was also what it was resolutely famous for. Though it would not be pictured to its best quality in this dead winter. Spring will liven it soon. The hardy bright bulbs will crop up through the frost. But for now it remains speckled in snow with only the evergreens surviving.

 Iris can see it all as they pull up the long stretch of the torch lit drive. In the coach Maratella was kind enough to send to collect them all.

 Once again she was wedged beside Posy and Flora, and their shrill gossiping. Mother and Father opposite. Noiseless and as disagreeing as ever. Silence blazed between them as somber as a churchyard. They were about as animated with each other as two gravestones.

 Iris dressed in her navy silk gown with 3/4 sleeves and a sheer white chemisette swirled with stitched white flowers, decorating her shoulders and neck. Meg cleverly weaves that teal ribbon into her hair coiffure again. She finishes the look with pearl droplet earrings and white satin gloves up to her elbows.

 They are welcomed inside by stony faced servants in the blue Cavenham livery. Taken into the drawing room to meet their hosts. Maratella had invited some local flavour along also. Everyone’s merry and mingling. Posy offers to play a Handel piece on the Pianoforte before dinner is announced. She does so rather well. Thunks the opening notes in shocking volume but she picks up from that point onwards.

 Iris is admiring the scenery from the drawing room window. Even in the dark she can see how lovely the gardens are. It doesn’t dissolve the fact that this house would still be a prison to her. There weren’t bars on the window and she won’t exactly be stitching mailbags - but it will still be her cage.

 A handsome cage, she won’t deny. But a cage nonetheless as she mothers the children and lives for planning fine parties to boast of her and her husbands excellence. And slowly becomes a woman of high rank and no substance.

 Hux moves to stand by her side, hands folded behind his back. A tall lean column of red, black and white in his ceremonial dress. Medals shining. Hair groomed. Perfectly respectable. Infuriatingly loveless, as always.

 “You shall like the gardens in summer. I should think.” He remarks.

 “They are most handsome.” She comments. “A fine prospect indeed.” She agrees.

 They perfectly form the vision of lovers conversing by candlelight. She can hear Mama and Mrs. Hux cooing proudly behind them. It’s infuriating. Iris can’t spend the rest of her life in a manner such as this; being prodded and manoeuvred and gossiped over like a chess piece on a board.

 “I care little for being out of doors. Save for riding with my regiment.” He impresses.

 Iris nods. “I am perhaps overfond of walking. I take an excursion each day if I can.” She tells him.

 He sniffs. And coldly watches the view before them. “Well. You shall have to make allowances and sacrifices when we are wed. I can’t have you scampering around the countryside when you are with my heir.” He insists.

 Iris’s mouth turns dry. She makes little response to his words. He turns away to speak to someone else but she catches his arm to stop him.

 “Please I just want to say-“ she starts.

 She looks up into his face. The bright copper of his hair and the steel of his eyes. The surety of his rigid auburn brow. She doesn’t dislike him. He’s not an unpleasant man. Just, misguided.

 She says what she’s thinking now before she loses the chance. No doubt he’ll think very badly of her when all is done.

 “I think well of you. You know. You are a gallant man. Not lacking in honour or credibility. I admire that about you. Hux.” She says. Even if I can’t marry you for it.

 He nods. Accepting her words. Then their granite faced butler coughs dryly and announces dinner to the room.

 Maratella lets the engaged couple be seated next to each other at dinner. Wanting to encourage the tepid affection brewing between them. Iris doesn’t know what the woman expects from them. They weren’t matched for love but it’s as if that’s what she’s hoping to see blossom.

Maratella is hoping for romance to pass betwixt them.

 It could and never will be that. Iris thinks.

 Iris remarks inwardly to herself as she sips down her soup a la reine. Served alongside several large golden Bouchée à la reine’s. 

 The next course is of stewed beef and venison steaks, and a whole champagne poached salmon with slithers of white and black truffles decorating the cooked fish acting as scales.

 More seafood came served in the form of fried then boiled sole, heaped in a terrine and a whole platter of pickled crab. A haricott of vegetables and mashed turnips. There was enough food spread on this very grand table, to keep them dining for a fortnight. Mrs Hux organised a feast intended to show off.

 She gets everyone to toast to the newlyweds. The gentleman stand to raise their glasses and the ladies stay seated.

 The pudding banquet is brought out and quite rightly enough, as she suspected, the whole table is flouncing in ruched fancy french sugar concoctions.

 Silken French pies. Syllabubs of lemon and rose and brandy. Ice’s of all flavours. Custard tarts smothered with fat ripe fruit drowning steeped in syrup. Sugar plums and cinnamon and mace laced apple tartlets with baked custard. Iris indulged in some of the tarts and the fruits.

 Posy and Flora fall upon creams and dainty fancies like hungry wolves. And eat until they are stuffed.

 The ladies retire to the parlour for music and snifters of sweet ruby port wine. Iris indulges in a glass as her sisters and various other young accomplished ladies take to the pianoforte to sing and show off. Posy drags a reluctant Iris up to sing whilst she plays. She grumbles but bends to her sisters will.

 She gives a shortly sweet chorus of ‘Let no man steal your thyme’ for it was the only song she could sing comfortably well.

 She never much liked performing for amusement. Some girls were a glutton for it. Iris is no such a one. She stands with one hand on the pianoforte and the other folded behind her hip. She sings her choruses and smiles meekly at the small scattering of applause offered for her when she is done.

 She heads back to her spot on the settee. Maratella is remarking to her mother how divine it will be to have a songbird in the house once again. Iris sits back in her seat and spends the rest of her evening in silence. Though she wants to say a great deal.

 The evening slips past well enough. Night spills past her relatively quick. Another day gone. Another day closer to her happiness. She’s almost too giddy to contain it.

 Then the time comes to bid goodnight to their hosts;

 Iris watches as Hux fondly kisses her hand. Seeing her off out the rich gilded foyer out into the black black night. Sky so dark it’s a whole void studded with freckling stars. Cold shudders at the shivering trees.

 She wants to say something impactful and veiled. To speak of her regard for him. She cannot think how best to do so. She swallows down her thick tongue. Remains a coward.

 She can only hope in time, after the wake of her scandal settles. That Hux will find someone better suited than her. Maybe even find someone that he can love? She prays deeply for that little happy happenstance.

 She is not so unfeeling as to wish a joyless life on the man who just wasn’t correct for her.

 Her teeth grits with all the things unsaid. “I hope you’ll be happy.” She smiles lightly. He thinks her to be referring to the engagement that stands between them.

 “I’m sure.” He comments. “Goodnight.” Is his curt response.

 It doesn’t incense her. Tonight it vexed her. Caused a tiny crease between her brows. It seemed such fickle words to part on. But she leaves them be-

 Let’s those words spirit up into the quiet undisturb of the night. The heavens can have those words. Iris wishes it could have been more. But how appropriate is it that even his parting words are found wanting.

 She gets into the coach after curtseying a polite goodbye to Brendol and Maratella. She says something sweet to Iris about her singing. Iris cringes a smile. She won’t be thinking such good things about her shortly. She imagines she’ll curse her name for all of hell and heaven to hear. She’ll wake the sleeping dead cursing the day Iris was born.

 Iris thanks her. For her hospitality. For her kindness. Under all her airs and graves, she’s a fairly nice woman and she should find a more amicable daughter-in-law to crow over.

 She slots herself into the coach beside her sisters. Listens to the door slam shut. The rattle and crunch of it shifts on the gravel. Rumbled away up the long elegant curve of the drive.

 Iris twists to look back. She isn’t sure why she wanted too. But they weren’t a dismal family. And she’s sorry for the pain and offence she’ll cause to them all.

 She watches Hux’s stiffly-posed, regimented figure. Shadowed against the night. The scarlet of his blood coat. The ice white of his breeches stained blue, glowing in the night. The stars glimmer off his shining boots and off the pierce of his pale eyes. She wishes him well. She truly does.

 They trundle on home. Full of food and as usual with Posy and Flora spouting gossip on and on endlessly. Mother chiming in. Father and Iris retain their silence. Eyes cross firing in a glance when they all agree on something cruel and senseless.

 Westwell’s windows emerge gold out the dark. Surrounded by the bustling trees. All of the landscape is merely dark moulded shapes. Looming and shifting in the shadows. The moon casts washy film of silver to try and spill over the cover of smeared clouds.

 They are just to the drive when a small dark shape flits overhead. Iris looks upwards, and sees the definable shape of a bird landing on her windowsill. She smiles giddily.

 She exits the coach quick. Bidding them goodnight and rushing off up to her room. Her skirts picked up in her hands. Mama remarks how odd it is. Posy shrugs and supposes she’s got a secret missive to read from Hux.

 Iris absolutely flies for her door. Twists the handle and launches herself in the room. Shutting the door firmly after herself. Pressing it with both hands flat to the wood.

 The warmth of the fire hits her. She doesn’t even pay mind to the tiny crack of her open window. Or her swaying curtains that shift on the breeze.

 She can only focus on the huge frame of a dashing vampire stood fireside. One elbow resting on the mantel as he gazes into the flames.

 His big frame swallows up the whole room and strangled out all the air. The ochre of the blazing flames captured his skin. Turned that milky-cream of his complexion into pale fire.

 She smiles and he does too. “Thank goodness it’s you. I was worried I’d scare seven shades out of your maid.” He drawls softly so his voice doesn’t carry. Smirk curling at the corners.

 She crosses the distance. Her feet eat up the floorboards quick. She avails herself of an embrace. Throws herself into his arms.

 The cloak of his fire warmed clothing envelopes her as his arms do. He smells like the damp snap of frosty woodland and the acid tang of woodsmoke. The night air of wild outdoors clings to every inch and fibre of his clothes. Swirls about him like a clouding tempest.

 He chuckles as she gets herself in his hold. The deep bass of his voice rumbled through her skin and sinking to her bones. Her cheek mashed to his sternum. His arms close around her. Stroking her body through the rasping silk of her dress.

 One big warmed hand clasps the back of her neck as the other holds the back of her waist. His nose nudges into the crush of her muddy hair. Her scent teases him just as much as his had, to her. Lavender and sage. The plain spice and calm floral scent.

 “I could feel the happiness pouring off you as you alighted the stairs.” He smiles. She steps back and gazed up at him.

 “How pretty you look tonight. Dove. You’re exquisite in silk.” He remarks when she steps away. Hand toying with the loose tawny curl at her ear. The sapphire dark of her dress suits her very well. Throws her complexion into brilliance. Does something to make the tones of her hair look rich.

 She always looks ravishing to him.

 She blushes. “I missed you all day. Isn’t that mad?” She asks.

 “If missing is madness, then I’m out of my sane mind whenever you’re not in my sight.” He promises gently.

 Big hands cupping her hot silken neck as he leans down to plant a firm, slanting kiss to her lips. His mouth is cold and he tastes of frosty air and wine.

 Kissing him is like kissing someone who just stepped inside, taking shelter from a bitter cold wind.

 She’s beginning to wonder if there is some clever addiction woven into his lips. One kiss never seems to be enough. She holds his wrists as he grabs her. Makes her feel small in his arms. She’s lost in his hold. It’s powerfully thrilling.

 He breaks the kiss and his thumbs stroke at her cheeks. Her eyes glitter keenly at him. He spies the ring on her finger. The one that doesn’t belong there. It makes him smile.

 “I’d like to surmise you snuck in here just to steal a kiss. But I suspect a different motive altogether?” She asks.

 He broke into a grin that creases his eyes and bares his teeth in a smile. She was no thoughtless woman; his darling Iris.

 She’s always thinking. Always fretting. Always mulling over things in her head.

 That was one of the first things that that came to his notice about her. She tended to be introspective about all manner of things in comparison to her acetous mother who spewed vile words. And her daft sisters who spouted out their every dangerously silly thought.

 He kisses her for that clever remark- slow and paced and soft. Languid like melting warm honey. Lips curling to hers.

 “I do have some news. But kissing you will always my first priority.” He husks against her rosy lips. Her warm cheeks blaze from under his icy fingers.

 “The date is set. We must leave tomorrow eve.” He tells her with a smirk.

 Her stomach completely soars in giddiness. She doesn’t have to hide her grin here.

 “It feels as if I’ve been waiting at eternity to hear those blessed words.” She cries in happiness.

 “Slip away to me after everyone’s gone to bed.” He instructs. She agrees.

 “Mother has been pleased with my conduct of late. She’ll have let her guard down over tonight. I’ll leave once everyone is abed. Even the maids.” She tells him.

 Stroking her fingers down the finery of his waistcoat where they’re still stood close to each other. The material was so soft. The softest grain of velvet she’s ever felt.

 “You don’t have to bring too much. I can buy you everything you may ever need.” He leers. Cupping her cheek. Feeling the smooth of her skin. Right up her jaw.

 His eyes carve flinty paths down her neck as he strokes his fingers there. Her pulse quickens. He can feel and hear her blood slushing hot through her veins.

 She shrugs. “I cherish very few possessions. Posy and Flora can have the rest.” She insists. Her hand coming up to stroke over his thick crook of elbow with the hand that’s touching her neck.

 He drags the edge of the chemisette down and strokes along the flat of her collarbone. His eyes turn into a palette of bittersweet autumn. Orange and gold swirled with flecks of russet brown.

 “Is it difficult?” She asks suddenly.

 “Restraining from the need to...” Her face fixed on his. Words trailing away. Air bursting with heat and lust. His eyes snap from her neck to her face. Her cheeks bloom rose petal red. Blood red and hot.

 “To feed?” He asks her. She swallows and nods.

 His other hand catches the back of her hips reels her right in close. She gasps. Air around them thick and full of snapping sparking static. Her hands press to his cavernous chest.

 “I have got several hundred years of restraint up my sleeve.” He crooks a smirk.

 His eyes flicker to watch her jugular pulse. The thrum of her little timpani heart makes his mouth wet. He knows she’d taste like salt and sickly Turkish roses and warm bronze coins.

 He presses the chemisette aside again and nudges his nose against her pulse point. Right at the epicentre of his life’s greatest desire. He hums a kiss against her neck and she almost faints-

 “You shake all those very hard learnt lessons right down to their very foundations.” He promises.

 “Iris my love, you are the hardest thing, I’ve ever had to resist.” He tells.

 Swooping upwards to kiss at her cheek. Sighing in need against her hot warm skin. If he indulges the temptation of tasting her blood. He doesn’t even want to fathom what the raw animal in him will do to her. Such debauchery he’d surely scandalise her innocence to tipping point.

 He will have her on their wedding night and not a second before.

 Though the rogue in him does think how goddamn glorious it would be to have her on that bed of hers right now, torn out of that gown. Screeching his name for the whole house to hear. And they can listen to her rapture and whimper, and beg and writhe under the man who really does love her.

 Bite her neck as he pumps deep into her slick heat. Gather up every groan as she opens those sweet pink thighs for him and claws at his back. He’d kiss her neck until she yanks her fingers into his hair and tugs. Opens that sweet songbird mouth and calls for him in her bliss, with that ambrosial voice.

 He holds the backs of her hips and strokes the silk there with arcing curves of his thumbs. Drawing shapes on that stiff silk.

 “I must tell you-“ She starts. “I never was much good at resisting you either. Even after knowing what you are. It shocked me I won’t deny. But it somehow in its twisted way, it made all the sense in the world. It didn’t alter me for my knowledge of it. It didn’t even begin to change the severity my feelings for you.” She tells him. Reaching up and stroking along the handsome plain jaw.

 Wholly, un-confinably, remarkably handsome.

 “My love-“ He begins warmly. “If I had to, I would throw you over my shoulder to carry you up the aisle to marry me. Even if I had to tear you from your bed and steal you away in the dark of night to be mine. I would have done it. Because this, what we share, it cannot and will never be undone. Can never be ignored.” He promises her.

 “Vampires love more deeply than any mortal longing. What I feel for you, it is not fickle. It will never fade. Never wane. We love each other and that will last for as long as we exist on this earth. I thought I had better edify you with these clear facts about my nature, before we are to be bound in matrimony.” He pledges to her. Declaring his undying devotion to her.

 Iris rather wants to swoon into his chest - if she had ever been inclined to be a swooning sort of woman. Instead she just beams. A smile so glad it touches the frosty barren place his dead heart inhabited.

 “These last few hours will be such a torture.” She comments seriously. But giddy. So giddy it felt like her sides would split open. And molten happy gold would pour out.

 His eyes turn promiscuous. As does his domineering smile.

 “I can safely offer you nothing but pleasure once the torture is done.” He filthily promises.

 She blushes. He wants to lift her up and devour her in a kiss again. Taste those saccharine sweet lips in an animalistic kiss. He savours holding her instead.

 Tomorrow he can let the animal roam free over his delicate dove. Tonight is the last night it must be caged.

 “Not long to wait now. The last of my household servants left today. I sent Jomar and Jones off to London to make passage to France. Erland and Kana remain to take us to Scotland with one driver, and the coach.” He tells.

 She liked that he’s bringing Erland to their elopement. It’s quite fitting when the creature loves her almost as much as he does.

 “Then it’s just us. Riding into the wild of the Highland. Roaming over the Scottish moors, and glens and lochs, as a Lord and his Lady.” He paints a vivid picture for her.

 She sighs a smile. “Us, has never sounded so splendid.” And she beams brighter than the sun.

 He clutches her close for another kiss before he slips away.

 The appointed hour loometh. And Iris won’t sleep a wink for thinking of his sharp smile or those savage eyes.

 She eventually dreams. And thinks of kissing his soft plush lips once more. Like kissing pink rose petals.

 The next time she will, they’ll be well on their way to being man and wife.

                                                    ~ ~ 🥀  ~ ~

[kelyon]

Golden Rings Chapter 6: A Shop

The Storybrooke Sequel to Golden Cuffs

Rumpelstiltskin gathers his thoughts and his stuff

Read on AO3

As Rumpelstiltskin drove Gold’s wife in Gold’s car to Gold’s pawnshop, he got a chance to look around Storybrooke. It was a cool, sunny, Monday morning in October. The first real morning since the curse had been cast. Last night, Emma Swan had decided to stay. After twenty-eight years, time was moving forward for the people in this town.

Did they know? These people, who led as ordinary lives as this world allowed, did they have any idea of what they’d forgotten? The man walking a spotted dog, the brick-haired woman thundering toward the hardware store, the flocks of children in their school uniforms. Could they even imagine who they used to be? With the Savior’s arrival, the curse was beginning to break. Was there any sign, any hint that things were different now?

Yes.

“Well look at that.” Rumpelstiltskin said as he opened the car door for Mrs. Gold. “The old clock tower is running again.”

She squinted up at the building across the street from the pawnshop. For the past twenty-eight years, the clock in the tower on top of the library had been stuck at 8:15. Gold had walked past it every day for as long as he could remember. Now it read 8:55. It wasn’t much movement yet, but it was a damn good start. 

Mrs. Gold made a polite, vaguely interested noise and then sashayed her way over to the side door of the shop. She had been quiet for most of the morning. Breakfast had shown both of them that the things that had pleased Gold were nothing but ash to him now. 

That meal had given Rumpelstiltskin a taste of just how enormous a task he had set out for himself in living with this woman. Mrs. Gold was only happy if her husband was happy. And Gold showed his pleasure with his wife by how frequently he used her, and how closely he controlled her. If Rumpelstiltskin left the woman alone, if he allowed her to live her own life and make her own decisions, she would think that he was ignoring her. And the only reason Gold gave for ignoring his wife was to punish her. Gold always wanted her to know every time he thought she wasn’t worth the price of her upkeep. 

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t want Mrs. Gold to feel worthless. He had taken mercy on her earlier, by ordering her to write out a shopping list. It pleased Mrs. Gold to do things for her husband. Gold had trained her to believe that was all she was good for. 

She was waiting for him at the door, hands behind her back, just as she had posed in front of the door to the house last night. She didn’t have a key to the shop either. 

“Do you--” Rumpelstiltskin looked at her for a moment, but then had to shift his eyes to the key in the lock. “Do you remember the last time that clock was in working order?”

Mrs. Gold tilted her head and thought. Her nose crinkled just like Belle’s. 

“I… don’t... think so? Would it have been when there was still a library?”

“Probably.” He opened the shop door and held it for Mrs. Gold. “I don’t remember the library ever being open.”

That was true. The Storybrooke Free Public Library had come into this world an abandoned wreck. Gold had taken pride in making sure it would stay that way in perpetuity. He owned the building but didn’t allow it to be put to use. There was no benefit for him in people having free access to knowledge and services. He even objected to the thought of the library as a place for people to come in off the streets without spending any money.    

“When I was in high school, we used to break in and drink beer. Try to find dirty books.”

Rumpelstiltskin raised his eyebrows at Mrs. Gold. He hadn’t realized the memories the curse would give them would be that comprehensive. 

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Well, Hunter, of course, and he never went anywhere without Jesse. And Sean Herman--you know, Mitchell Herman’s useless prettyboy son. Oh, and that pathetic Ashley Boyd was always hanging around Sean, trying to get him to commit.” Mrs. Gold sniggered. “That didn’t really work out for her, did it?”

They were in the shop now. It was a cool, dark room, filled to the brim with merchandise. Rumpelstiltskin shut the side door and went to unlock the front. Gold always had the store open promptly at nine.

“I’m surprised you remember so much about your adolescence.”

Behind the back counter, Mrs. Gold looked down at her hands. “I… I didn’t drink that much, Mr. Gold. But I understand if you don’t want me to talk about that… trashy stuff. I know that’s not who I am anymore.” She bit her lip and twisted her wedding ring.

He turned his back on her to flip the sign in the door from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open. He pulled up the venetian blinds and let the morning sunlight in through the front windows. 

Without looking at her, he asked, “How long ago was it? When you were in high school, drinking beer with boys?”

She scoffed. “God, a million years ago.”

He nodded. Of course she would say something like that. It would have been too easy to help her realize the truth with mere facts. According to her age, it should have been less than five years ago, at most, that she had been a teen-ager getting into trouble. But there were far more than five years’ worth of memories between that time and now. She had been married to Gold for longer than she had actually been alive. But he couldn’t simply point that out and expect her to believe it. 

The curse didn’t work like that. It wasn’t a faulty theorem that could be disproven with logic. No, the curse was the axiom of this world, the basis of logic. The curse was reality. Mrs. Gold could no more resist it than she could fight her need to breathe or the pull of gravity on her body. 

The curse was the truth for almost everyone in this town.

Mrs. Gold tapped her painted fingernails against the glass counter. “When did you want me to go to the grocery store?”

Rumpelstiltskin looked out the window. He could see the library from here. Belle would have been thrilled by the idea of a public library. She would read every book, and talk to people about what they were reading. When the curse broke, he would show it to her. 

“The sooner the better,” he answered the woman who was not Belle. Might as well get her out of the way for an hour or two. There were things in this shop that he needed to find, and it would be better not to have her hovering around.   

“Oh, okay.” Mrs. Gold had taken off her scarf and set down her purse, but she immediately began to collect them again. “Then I’ll pick up the ice cream before you close the shop? That way it won’t melt before I can get it in the freezer.”

For just a moment, Rumpelstiltskin wanted to ask the obvious logistical question: Why couldn’t she go home with the ice cream and then come back? Or stay at the house for a while? Why did Mrs. Gold have to revolve her activities around her husband’s schedule? 

But he knew the answer: Because Gold didn’t want her in his house without him. Because Gold didn’t trust the woman he married. Because Gold got off on making life difficult for his wife and then giving her a pat on the head after she successfully jumped through the hoops he set up every single day. 

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. 

“That’s a good plan,” he said quietly. 

“Thank you, Mr. Gold! I’m not always as stupid as I look!” 

Gods, her smile was dazzling. Even like this, even as she insulted herself, she was so beautiful. She looked so happy. Belle’s face, Belle’s eyes, Belle’s smile... He could look at Belle forever. But he couldn’t stand the sight of Mrs. Gold.

He stood in the center of the shop, with his cane set out in front of him like a longsword. She flounced over to him, then hesitated. Her hands reached out, halfway between her body and his. But Mrs. Gold knew better than to touch her husband without permission.   

“Is there anything else I should do today, Mr. Gold?”

She was waiting for him to touch her, he realized. Her body was poised for him to pull her in for one of Gold’s signs of affection--a breathtaking kiss, a possessive squeeze, a playful swat, or something rougher. Rumpelstiltskin knew those gestures. He hated to let Belle out of his sight without some last physical expression of his love.

Mrs. Gold was used to the same thing from her husband. Only there was no love in it on Gold’s part.

With a sweep of his arm, Rumpelstiltskin backed away from Mrs. Gold to open the front door for her.  “No, there’s nothing else I need. But take your time. If there’s something you’d like to do today, feel free.”

She swallowed and looked at him dubiously. “Maybe I’ll… go to the lingerie shop. Stock up on cheap panties?”

Rumpelstiltskin tried to keep from grimacing. “Whatever makes you happy, dearie. Let me give you some money.”

Mrs. Gold took the cash and strutted down the street. The mention of tear-away underthings had put a spring in her step. He watched her from the doorway. He saw the citizens of Storybrooke stop what they were doing to stare at her. His wife. Gold’s most expensive possession, on full display. 

He went inside and shut the door behind him.

****

The store was filled with bits and pieces of other people’s lives. This was a pawn shop, after all. Everything here had once belonged to someone else. Some of the merchandise was from Storybrooke--old snowshoes, a garden windmill, a telephone in the shape of a cartoon mouse. But many more objects had the inextricable mark of the old world. There was a set of seven beer steins, an oil lamp from Agrabah that had once been the home of a genie. A pair of marionettes gave a shockingly accurate depiction of the horror of unwilling transformation. 

Some of these objects had been a part of his collection in the castle. Other things had been kept close by people who treasured them. Even in the old world, people built their identities from the things they kept around them. With the curse, material possessions had been ripped away from their owners as completely as memories and identities.

Gold prided himself on taking things of sentimental value from the people of Storybrooke. To a man who already owned everything, sentiment was the best kind of value to take. People came to him and traded their past for their future, a part of their soul for a little of his money. And Gold, a man with plenty of money but hardly any soul, made that bargain eagerly. He bought people’s lives. Bit by bit, deal by deal. 

Now Rumpelstiltskin found himself looking around the shop for the pieces of his own life. His life, and Belle’s, and the life they had shared together, all too briefly. It didn’t surprise him that the objects he valued most would be for sale in Gold’s shop. Rumpelstiltskin’s mementos meant as little to Gold as they would mean to his wife. Less than one day ago, he had been as cursed as she was. 

But now that he was awake, he could rescue her. Or try to. At the very least, he could protect her. In a world without magic, his reach was limited. But there were still tools available to him. Many of those tools were in this shop. 

He found Belle’s necklace first. It was on display, priced so cheaply that it wasn’t even locked behind the counter. Her mother’s necklace--the only heirloom Belle had been able to bring to the castle-hung from a metal stand, crowded in with plastic beads and costume jewelry. 

Rumpelstiltskin held it up to look at it. In the old world, a piece of unicorn horn had hung from a golden chain. There were no unicorns here, so the small pendant took on the sheen of mother-of-pearl. It was still beautiful. Tiny and delicate, just like Belle. It had barely taken any effort at all to snap the chain off her throat. In the darkness of a dungeon, he had stolen it from her as a way to bind her to him.

That had been the first time he had ever made Belle cry.

Sighing, Rumpelstiltskin laid the necklace in a narrow gift box and put the box in his jacket pocket, close to his heart. Being Gold was not the first time he had been a monster to Belle. Their first deal had been for his complete domination over her body and her will, the right to cause her pain whenever he wanted. 

Belle had agreed to the pain, the degradation. She had even enjoyed it, and began to ask for it. She had leveraged her ability to endure mistreatment into a way to get close to him. They made a second deal that he would give her a piece of the truth as a reward for impressing him. So she got to ask questions. Persistent, invasive, disarming questions. Soon it became that every time he pushed her body to its limits, she did the same to his heart.

And he liked the pain she gave him as much as she liked the pain he gave her. 

That was how they became equal. That was how it became unendurable for him to hold real power over her. He could not allow her to give him her whole heart without giving her his own in return.

So he had given her back this necklace. He had given Belle her freedom. And when she had come back anyway, he finally gave her himself. 

He had given her his dagger. 

For millennia, the power of Dark Ones had been harnessed to a magical dagger. Whoever owned it held the most powerful being in the world as a slave. Or the owner could stab the Dark One through the heart and take the power for themselves. Rumpelstiltskin had been rare among Dark Ones in that he had never lost control of the dagger. Magic had never forced him to do the bidding of another. 

He had given it to Belle before he had asked her to marry him, before that thought had even entered his mind. Putting himself under her power was the easiest way to pay the debt he had accrued to her. 

Gold had put the dagger in the window at the front of the store. As far as he was concerned, the thing only had value as something to catch the attention of passers-by. It was a curiosity, not an antique. Gold saw it as a knock off of a Javanese kris with a faux-European style hilt and ridiculous vanity engraving. To him, it was obviously fake, a modern creation for the sort of person who wore sparkly wings to a Renaissance Fair.  

And it was easy enough to see why. Even with Rumpelstiltskin’s well-honed sensitivity to magic, the dagger was inert and lifeless. There was no power in it, not even a trace of dark energy. In a world without magic, this was nothing but a length of steel with some fancy enamelwork. 

Still, it was better to have it near him than to have his true name boldly advertised in his shop window. There was no way of knowing who else might have awoken from the curse. This town was Regina’s triumph, so it seemed likely that she would know the truth. She would want to be aware, to enjoy her victory. Perhaps there were others. Perhaps others would emerge gradually. Now that the Savior was in Storybrooke, anything was possible. He had to be prepared. He had to keep his cards close to his chest.

He put the dagger in a cardboard box and continued his exploration of the shop. There was a spinning wheel in the back office. It wasn’t one of the wheels from the castle, on which he had spun straw into gold. This was an artefact from this world, a great wheel, used to spin flax into linen. It was hidden behind a bedframe and some paintings too large to hang on the walls.

 His fingers itched to spin. There was never a better way to gather his thoughts and calm his mind. Spinning, and listening to Belle breathing while she slept. 

But taking home a spinning wheel would be too obvious. It wasn’t the sort of thing that he could hide or explain away, especially not to Mrs. Gold. She knew very well that her husband didn’t do handicrafts from the middle ages. There was only so far Rumpelstiltskin could strain her credulity. He would have to wait until the curse broke before he could safely spin again. 

In the back of the shop, there was a box full of broken scraps. As mercenary as Gold could be, he also liked to keep things for a rainy day. Even discarded junk could be broken down for parts or sold as-is to artisans.

That was where he found the chipped cup. It was wrapped in a ragged shawl.

Baelfire’s shawl. Rumpelstiltskin had made it, when he was just a poor spinner. He had shorn the sheep and spun the wool and dyed the yarn and knitted row after row--all in secret, so Baelfire would be surprised to have a present on the winter solstice. That was the year after Millah had left. It was such a meager gift, but Bae had been so happy to get it. His boy had insisted on learning how such a thing had been made. And all through that winter, father and son had worked together on a second project--a cap that Bae had worn every day until his head grew too big for it.

Carefully, Rumpelstiltskin pulled the shawl away from the cup. He held both objects to his heart and all but collapsed on a cot in the corner. Memories threatened to drown him in tears. Belle had found the shawl and the cap, in the room in the castle where he had locked them away. Belle had dropped this cup while serving him tea for the first time. When it had chipped, it had become something special. It had become meaningful in a way few other objects ever did. 

The chipped cup used to be their signal. If Belle gave it to him when she served him tea, it was her way of asking for him to play with her. To be rough with her, at her request. He never ordered her to give him the cup, there was always a whole teacup available. Every time she offered it--every time she offered her body in this way--it had been her choice.

That was a choice Gold never really allowed his wife to make. 

Gathering himself, Rumpelstiltskin wrapped the cup back in the shawl and placed it in the box with the dagger. He filled the box with a few other things--a butter dish, a tea kettle--and left it on the countertop. 

No one came into the shop all morning. It was the day after rent day. No one had anything to trade with Gold, nor any pressing need to. The bell above the front door didn’t ring until Mrs. Gold came in with her bags of groceries and lingerie.

“Hello!” she cried with her standard bubbly cheer. She made her way to the back of the shop and put the bags down in the office. “Miss me?”

Gold would have replied Never, then pulled her in for a kiss. Rumpelstiltskin said, “Of course,” but stayed behind the counter.

Mrs. Gold’s smile dimmed a little but she soldiered on. “Grocery store was uneventful. The boy stocking the produce section seemed very aware of how I was stroking the cucumbers. I didn’t stop until I found some too thick to get my hand around.” 

She snorted, and Rumpelstiltskin made himself grin.  

“And I did get something new at Sugar ’N’ Spice. The girl there, Mara Trudine, assured me that it was very sturdy. So if you want to get it off of me, you’ll have to use scissors!”

Rumpelstiltskin swallowed. It was an excellent idea, cutting fabric off of Belle’s body. He had always used magic when he wanted to undress her quickly, but this worked just as well. There was no reason not to destroy her clothes the moment they got in the way of his desires.

Gold’s desires. Not Rumpelstiltskin’s. 

He cleared his throat. “Did they have everything on the list?”

“Yes, I’ve got the receipts right here.” She produced the long strips of paper and laid them on the counter with a flourish. 

Rumpelstiltskin’s heart ached at the sight of Mrs. Gold. She was so delighted to obey him, so proud of herself for remembering his orders. Gold had set up a structured routine to control her, and she enjoyed meeting his cruel demands. 

He made a show of looking at the receipts, but he didn’t care how she spent Gold’s money. Gold only cared because he wanted to make sure it was spent. He couldn’t allow his wife to have any money of her own, that she might spend on something he didn’t know about. This way, she couldn’t squirrel anything away for herself to save for the day when he might kick her out for good. No, Gold wanted her to depend on him, every day, for every penny, just so he could hold it over her head what a waste of money she was. 

What a twisted arsehole. 

“Very good,” he said, and handed the papers back to her. “I’ll give you more money later.”

Mrs. Gold nodded, smiled. As far as she knew, things were back to normal. “What would you like to do for lunch?”

It wasn’t until he heard the word lunch that Rumpelstiltskin realized how hungry he was. This was his first full day in a human body. He wasn’t yet back in the habit of eating. But yes, that explained the familiar ache in his stomach, the slight draining of his energy. He hadn’t been hungry in years.

“You didn’t eat breakfast.” He realized her plight at the same time as his own. “You must be starving.”

She shrugged. “You didn’t have breakfast either,” she said. “Because I was such an idiot and burnt the toast.” 

“Stop that.”

 It was all he could do not to take Belle’s hands. He wanted to look his wife in the eye and hold her. It was Gold’s fault that she said such things, that she believed them about herself. He wouldn’t touch this woman, but he did try to speak kindly to her. 

“Tell me, Mrs. Gold, how do I instruct you to make my toast and coffee?”

“As black and bitter as your soul.” She repeated the phrase like it was a sacred truth.

“Yes,” Rumpelstiltskin said wearily. “And that’s very black and bitter indeed. You performed your task correctly this morning. It’s not your fault that I didn’t tell you that what I wanted had changed.”

“I’m still a cheap, stupid slut.” 

Again, she said it with a smile. That phrase was one of Gold’s secret signals, another unspoken game they played. Every time Mrs. Gold called herself a “cheap, stupid slut”, Gold reassured her that she had actually been quite expensive. The underlying “truth”, of course, was that she was still stupid, and still a slut. 

Yet another game that Rumpelstiltskin would not play. 

“You’re not stupid,” he said sternly. “And I would appreciate not hearing anymore of that kind of talk coming out of your pretty mouth.”

“I--Yes, Mr. Gold.” She stood up straight, with her hands behind her back, and looked at the floor. “Thank you for your instruction, Mr. Gold.”

“Good girl,” Rumpelstiltskin murmured. 

Perhaps it was unfair to give her even these orders, to act in the persona of Gold even for her own benefit. But he was not so heartless as to leave this woman utterly adrift. She did depend on her husband, as a drunkard depended on wine. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t deprive her all at once. 

Reaching into his jacket pocket, Rumpelstiltskin pulled out the gift box. “I have something for you.”

Mrs. Gold’s eyes lit up. “Ooh! What is it?”

“Open it.”

She did an admirable job of hiding her disappointment at the necklace. Her smile froze, but it stayed in place as though it had been nailed to her mouth.

“You don’t have anything in that style, do you?”

“No,” she answered, as she looked down at the thin gold chain. “Most of my other jewelry is… very different from this.”

Most of the jewelry Gold gave her was large to the point of being gaudy. The fact that the stones in the various necklaces, bracelets and earrings were genuine never made them look any less tacky.

But this was Belle’s necklace. This was precious to his real wife. Rumpelstiltskin felt a faint flicker of hope in his chest. Maybe… maybe this necklace could make a difference to Mrs. Gold.

“Will you put it on?”

Nodding, Mrs. Gold handed him the box. She removed the scarf from around her neck and stood in front of him, facing away.

Well, he had walked into that.

It was the closest they had been since he had gotten into bed with her last night. As he fastened the necklace, he found himself smelling her hair. He wanted to trace the line of her neck down her shoulder and over her bare arm. He wanted to hold her hand in his own. He wanted to wrap his arms around her tiny waist and hold her. He wanted to press himself against her body, to feel the soft curves of her bottom rub up against his hardening cock. He wanted to kiss her, to nibble her ears until she squealed with laughter. He wanted to make love to his wife.

Instead, he stepped back, turned away, and pressed his hands against the glass countertop.

Mrs. Gold spun around, her skirt flaring over her bare legs. Of course she was still Mrs. Gold. Of course there would be no change. There was no magic in this world, so there would be no magical solution. At least, not yet. 

“How does it look?”

He gave her as long a glance as he could bear, then nodded. “Lovely. Do you like it?”

“Of course, Mr. Gold. I don’t take your gifts for granted.” She took one tentative step toward him. “What do I need to do to earn this?”

If you have to earn it, it isn’t a gift, dearie! His hands balled into fists as he thought the impish words. As the Dark One, Rumpelstiltskin said that he never gave and he never stole. Everything was a trade, payment one way or the other. While Gold worked by the same principle, he didn’t have the same penchant for precise terminology. 

But there was no explaining that to Mrs. Gold. Instead, he pulled a money clip out of his pocket.

“Go to Granny’s and bring back lunch,” he said as he counted out a few fifty-dollar bills. “I want to try the sandwich that’s called a ‘reuben.’ You can order whatever you like, but--” he slid a fifty over the counter to her, “--you tell Ruby Lucas to keep the change from this.”

Mrs. Gold smirked. “Are we playing nice with her now?”

“Better to play nice than to not play at all.” It was a meaningless jumble of words, but Mrs. Gold nodded and went off to do as he said. 

****

After lunch, Mrs. Gold hung around the shop. They didn’t say much to each other. Rumpelstiltskin kept his hands busy by polishing all the silver in stock. He kept his mind busy by looking around at the various objects and determining who they had belonged to. Gold had a ledger for the shop as well, with many of the same names as in his rent book at the house. This was another way Gold had power over people. He knew their histories, knew the value of their lives to the penny.

Mrs. Gold dug up an Art Deco hand mirror and spent the afternoon looking at her reflection. She kept pulling the pendant of the necklace back and forth along the chain. Belle used to do that when she was nervous. Had Mrs. Gold ever done it before? Had Belle’s necklace actually awoken something in her? 

It was possible. Magic, especially the breaking of a curse, could work very slowly. Especially in a world where it didn’t exist. But it was possible. The Savior was in Storybrooke. Things were going to start changing.

It was possible for him to have hope.

When the time came for the shop to close, Mrs. Gold went to the ice cream parlor next door. Rumpelstiltskin had never had ice cream, but he knew enough about it to be amazed that Gold worked so near a place that sold it and never bothered to indulge.  

While Mrs. Gold was out, he loaded her bags of groceries into the back of the car. It was awkward with his cane. He could only hold one paper bag at a time, and he had to leave open the doors to both the shop and the car.

But it was worth it, to see Mrs. Gold’s jaw drop when she came back. “You--I--” She stammered for a moment before settling on “Thank you, Mr. Gold!”

He gave her a smile, a real one for once. “There’s just one more thing before we go home.” He gestured into the shop, for the cardboard box on the counter. “Will you give me that box, and everything in it?”

“Yes, Mr. Gold!”

It was a cheap trick, the sort of thing a fairy would do. Normally he thought himself above that level of deception. But it worked. When Mrs. Gold placed the box into his waiting hands, she gave him the dagger he had given to Belle. By the laws of magic, his power was his own again.

Perhaps there was no need to take this precaution. But Rumpelstiltskin was not one to leave things to chance if he could avoid it. He had given Belle the dagger because he trusted her with his power and his life. But he couldn’t offer Mrs. Gold the same trust, not with this. Not with something so dangerous as the truth.