#I’m not in any shape to do commissions but I think I could design and sell adopts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bountyhaunter · 4 months

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TIMING: A day or two after ‘What If…’ LOCATION: Ball & Chain Forge PARTIES: Rhett @ironcladrhett & Daiyu @bountyhaunter SUMMARY: Daiyu goes to see Rhett at the forge to talk about a custom knife order. CONTENT WARNINGS: None!

It was important for her to buy her own weapons. This wasn’t something Daiyu examined closely — she just knew that the need was there and that she answered it. She did understand her desire for financial freedom, however, and that this probably tied into it. The Volkovs were the rich type, after all. Upper class. Made rich through the exploitation of beasts and shifters and any other shady thing alike, fingers stained with blood money. Family money was a collar and leash, though, a way to yank and keep people close.

Because money bought happiness. Money bought knives, handmade and silver. Money bought independence, autonomy. And so Daiyu was determined, if not gleeful, when she set foot into the forge. When she met the warden called Rhett who looked like he’d known better days. Regardless, they shook hand and exchanged pleasantries (not many, neither of them the type) and got to the meat of the meeting. Daiyu tried hard to not get distracted by all that surrounded her. It was a cool place. It almost made her drool. She was already thinking about what other things she’d like to commission.

Daiyu got bored easily, after all. New weapons were a good way to keep the hunt (and with that life) exciting. “Alright, alright,” she grinned, “I’m curious to see this prototype.” She held up a hand, that soon disappeared into her jacket where her favored knife was sheathed. Custom-made, too, both the knife and sheath. “This is the one I prefer to work with now. But I want something smaller — preferable ones I can double wield, ya know?” Her eyes flicked around. “This place fucking rocks, by the way.”

—

Rhett lacked the usual spring in his step when it came to weapon design, and that wasn’t just on account of the iron leg. This was going to be his last one, and that understanding tasted bitter on his tongue. He’d have to give the young hunter a good reference for one of the other blacksmiths so she could keep patronizing this place in his absence, but he’d make sure this piece was one she truly loved before kicking off. He was a man of his word, after all.

Taking the knife she’d brought from her, unsheathing it and turning it over in his hands to give it a careful inspection, he nodded thoughtfully. “Aye, can do that.” He ran his fingers along the blade, his gaze raking over the weapon. It was quality, a nice piece. He could do better, of course, but it was very excellent besides. Passing it back as ideas started to form in his mind, he leaned back on his stool and reached for a leather pouch on the work table beside him, flipping it open and pulling out a hunk of silver that was dagger-shaped, but lacked any detailing or a grip.

“Can work this down into somethin’ smaller, like ya want. Here, I got some hilt options…” He started pulling out other finished knives that all had different styles to them. “Pick ‘em up, give ‘em a few swings, aye? See what feels good for weight n’ the grip. Can work out the details to make it unique to ya after that.” He sniffed, nodding his head over toward the corner of the room. “There’s a dummy back that way, if ya wanna see how it feels in action. Take yer time.”

—

Maybe she should try to get into weapon making. It was the other hunter who’d told her, even if it was indirectly, that perhaps she needed to add another skill to her arsenal. Besides, Daiyu liked custom weapons. She had turned a regular shotgun into a sawed off one before she’d turned eighteen, so who knew — maybe there was something to gain there. But for now, she was just antsy to try a few knives. Her eyes kept passing to the Warden who did have quite the reputation, it turned out. Daiyu preferred to go off what she was given at face value rather than whispers at a hunter bar, though.

She eyed the options with wide eyes, lips curling up, “These are awesome, did you make all of ‘em?” Greedy fingers reached for two knives, both hands wrapped around their hilts, testing their weight. “Nice.” She put them to the left, tried two more. One was discarded immediately, the other joined the other two. Daiyu knew what she was looking for, though she was making a mental wishlist in her mind at the same time. She’d have to ask Rhett if he had any references for bows.

After a quick selection, she moved over to the dummy, turning the knives in her hands and launching them into the dummy’s neck. It wasn’t often she fought humanoid creatures, admittedly — she preferred to hunt shifters when they were shifted and besides, she was most often on the tail of various beasts. Daiyu released the knives, mimed the gushing of blood and grinned at the warden over her shoulder. She spent a short while retrieving the knives and slashing a few times, but it didn’t take her long. She was made for impulse decisions and purchases. Returning to the table, she extended one of them, hilt towards the warden. “This might be a good one to go off. I dig the look of it. Slips nice and easy in the palm, but also offers enough of a grip, y’know?”

—

“Aye, over the years… decided if I was gonna start takin’ custom orders, oughtta have a few things fer the ol’ portfolio.” Rhett watched her pick them up and test how they felt in her hands, making note of which ones she seemed to prefer and parsing out why that was based on how she held them. His gaze followed the young hunter when she went over to the dummy, and watching her mimic a few attacks and subsequent blood spurts actually brought a slight smile to his face. He couldn't help but remember when he'd been as young and full of vim and vigor as she was now, and it was comforting, in a way. He was a relic, but there'd always be more hunters to pick up the mantle.

Still wearing the smirk, the old warden accepted the blade of choice back from her, nodding in agreement. “Thought ya might prefer this one.” From there, he reached for his sketchbook and flipped it open, starting with a rough drawing of the hilt of choice. “What kinda blade shape you want? Hawksbill, tanto, guthook…? Here's a few, in case ya ain't familiar with the names.” He flipped back to the beginning of the book and produced two pages full of different knife blade styles, pushing it toward her.

—

The concept of a retired hunter was a rare one, but Daiyu found it a comforting thought. It wasn’t quite like she wanted to leave this life behind, but the concept of perhaps retiring towards something else after years of fight was something she might like. Maybe not even for herself, but at the very least for her uncle who always seemed so weighed down. (She didn’t expect to live to an age of retirement, anyhow.) “That makes sense, yeah. So you’ve been doing this a long time, then?”

She had never been the best at retaining knowledge and learning, but when it came to these things Daiyu had been quite good at remembering. She knew the fight, the grit, the violence and the tools it took. Sometimes it seemed it was all she was good for. And so she didn’t have to look at the book of blades to answer the question, “Hawksbill would be perfect,” she said. “Might have to step by for another set or something soon. Got some nice shit here. And this town, well… Crawling with stuff.”

—

Her question was answered with a slow nod, and after a moment of thought, a few words. “Grew up on it. Trainin’ under masters’ah the craft while I hopped from town to town. Huntin’ didn’t always pay well, ya see… needed a skill I could use anyplace.” Chuckling approvingly at the swift decision, Rhett flipped back to his concept drawing and started to sketch. “That it is, that it is… won’t never run outta quarry, it seems. Good to have folks like you in places like this.” He sucked in a sharp breath, pressing harder on the pencil as he made the stroke for the edge of the blade. “Afraid I won’t be around after I finish this for ya… but the folks what own this place, the twins, they’re damn good smiths. Can make ya anythin’ ya like, won’t balk at no kinda requests. I’ll let ‘em know to give ya a discount.” He lifted his head, cocking it to the side as he looked at the drawing so far. Next was the hilt style, which he started in on as he spoke. “Which, speakin’ of… this order’s on the house.” It wasn’t like he needed her money—any that he already had had been left in a place in Emilio’s apartment where he might find it someday, or maybe whoever moved into that shithole after him. Didn’t matter, so long as someone had it.

—

Hunting had always paid her family quite well, but then they’d had ties in all kinds of murky corners. Daiyu didn’t want to know how her father and the men before him had acquired their riches. It’d make her feel too much like them. She did wish she’d learned a practical skill like this, though. “So you moved around a lot? Cool. We didn’t stray very far, mostly stuck around in Washington. Lotsa woods to protect there.” They’d flown to other corners of the world where family lived, but her world had mostly been those pines and mountains.

She watched the other at his work, a little envious. She supposed she could try and pick something like this up, but Daiyu hated learning things she wasn’t immediately good at which was why her skillset remained limited. “Ah, hopping town again? Can’t blame ya, this place is a little bonkers.” She liked the chaos though, so far. “I get it, I don’t stick around long places either. And hey, I’ll take those discount tips.” Her lips curled into a grin and it almost faltered when he said it was on the house. A kindness. Those always got lodged in her throat. “Whoa, man. You don’t have to. Are you sure?”

—

“Aye. Was born on the water, didn’t have much of a home fer a while that weren’t the inside’ah that boat. Instilled me with the need to migrate, I guess. Weren’t a bad life.”

The finished product was coming together on the page, and Rhett’s gaze lifted from the drawing to meet hers. “Don’t need money where I’m goin’, kid. Got no use fer it. You might as well keep it.” He cleared his throat and pushed the drawing her way, tapping the pencil on the paper. “Pick a material for the hilt, n’ if there’s any personal flares ya want—engravin’, a replaceable scale, whatever, lemme know now so I can work it into the design. All said, she’ll take ‘bout… mm, twelve more hours or so to make. Can do it all in one.” Wasn’t like he was sleeping, anyway. “Have the order ready for ya by tomorrow.”

—

“What?” The word was drawn out as she was genuinely intrigued, not having met many hunters who were based at sea. “That’s cool. Way more original than being born on regular schmegular land, that’s for sure.”

She was looking at the drawing with an eager, growing interest. Daiyu had tried drawing but as she lacked natural talent (if that even existed), she’d given up in frustration. She didn’t like failure, but she could appreciate another person’s skill. Most of the time. “Alright, cool. Thanks.” She hit her head, then pointed. “Am only saying that ‘cus I know you’re not fae.” She gave a shit-eating grin. “Wood handle, something dark. Don’t need any special things beside it, ‘tis the blade that matters most.” She doodled on her weapons when she was younger, which had been considered a personal affront to her neat father and not just because she was a shit drawer. “Tomorrow, cool! I’ll be here.”

—

The thanks and subsequent joke earned her a good-natured scoff, and the man leaned back on his stool. “Perish the thought,” he muttered with a smirk, marking down her request for a dark wood for the handle.

Reaching out a hand to shake, Rhett cleared his throat. “You ever get a hankerin’ for somethin’ else’ah mine, I do got a few pieces put up in Chet’s shop, Fable Blades. He buys products from this forge pretty often, can just ask him to show ya ol’ Rhett’s work n’ he’ll set ya up. He’s a retired warden too, so, y’know. Good people.” Rising to his feet, the man showed Daiyu back toward the exit, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the doorframe. “Seeya tomorrow, kid. N’ be careful out there, aye? Don’t fly too close to the sun.”

—

She decided she liked this Rhett. He looked like the very image of a withered, alive against all odds hunter and yet he still humored her yapping. Daiyu liked her hunters with a bit of humor. “Awesome, I’m gonna do that. If your piece satisfies, you know.” She missed the innuendo for a beat, then let out a ha as if to make it seem like it had always been her intention to make a dirty joke. Bravado came easy these days. “Got no doubt about that, though.”

She grinned at him as she moved out of the shop, giving him a salute. And people dared say she didn’t respect her elders! “See you tomorrow. I’ll try my very best not to. You too, aye?”

#threads.#last orders.#rhett.

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mathcat7 · 1 year

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Morgana’s 2022 Year in Review

So, another year comes to a close. Lots of interesting developments, as always, and I like looking back and seeing what's changed and what I've succeeded with, and what I want to do over the next year.

The Successes

So for starters, I think the biggest boon has been me getting to spend shy of a month with my girlfriend over the course of the year. I love her so much, and I'm so glad we got to spend so much time together, and that we reached our first anniversary together.

Secondly, I closed the year off getting promoted to a full time position, a big step towards achieving self-sufficiency down the line. This was a big goal of mine for this year, and I'm very glad I was both able to achieve it, and that I've been able to use that for pushing forwards other things I enjoy.

The Surprises

This summer kicked off an FGC arc for me, where I used P4U2's rollback announcement and implementation to finally learn how to play fighting games. I didn't become impressive, by any means, but I had a lot of fun, and I was honestly satisfied with how quickly I was able to catch on. As a bonus, this also resurged my interest in making and editing videos, which eventually culminated in my clip compilation, A Very S'okay Persona.

youtube

Unfortunately, this was cut short by my going full-time, but I still cherish what I learned and how it's shaped my creative process going forward.

I commissioned quite a bunch of art pieces this year. Most of them were Fire Emblem fanart, especially for beloved best girl Mozu, but I also some original pieces for my recently designed online persona. Writing design docs for sending to commission artists was a nice process for clearing the rust from some of my writing skills, especially where descriptions are concerned.

My transition is still going smoothly. Medicine-wise I switched to needle monotherapy earlier this year and it's been generally better for me, at least from my perspective. (A lot less awkward planning to take pills around mealtime, a lot less in the way of unwanted side effects.) I got really into my voice training, to the point where I was consistently passing over phone calls!

I’ve been bouncing around a few of the modding sub-communities and ended up becoming a server blorbo. Okay I jest, but in all seriousness I’m glad I’ve been able to make some new friends online without it being predicated upon someone else’s preexisting dynamics. I’m glad to not be a friend of a friend this time! (Now if only that could extend to irl)

Of course, it's not all sunny. I've still been struggling with the transition not being properly acknowledged by the family, with those feelings being further exacerbated by attempts of doing an official coming out seemingly falling on deaf ears. I still have hangups about this iust becoming my cross to bear, but it's clear that there isn't much else I can do/say at this point. It sucks, but it's whatever, and at least now I can put my energy elsewhere.

The Plans

As for my goals for 2023, I'm still sticking to not making full on resolutions and instead keeping on general directions I want to work towards, as such:

- I wanna continue making videos. Maybe not FGC related, but I do wanna pivot my focus back to FE. I like Excelblem's format of video style, but I'm not someone with challenge run smarts. I think I'd rather do summations that would appeal more to casual players, and talk about the little parts of the games that I love. I'm hoping that Engage's release in 3 weeks is a good catalyst for this idea, although I'll have an uphill battle with my job.

- I want to devote more time to writing Royals of the Tempest. My writer's block has finally broken again, and I want to use the time I'm not actively working (or making videos) towards trying to get as much done with RotT as possible. There's a lot to get done, so I'm unsure if a manuscript would be ready in one year, but I'm hopeful about having most of it done down the line.

- I don't think moving out is something that'll happen soon, especially since I'm waiting on my girlfriend to finish up college, so my hope is to keep building up my nest egg so when that time comes, we can be prepared. I know I'm not in the best living space mentally speaking, but I think I can bide my time until then.

- Of course, I will make an exception towards commissions. I love commissioning art, and I do want to keep that up. I'm hoping to get to do some bigger ideas this time around, especially now that I have better integrated myself with some artist schedules.

- And lastly, I want to be bolder about myself. I've joked with some of my friends about the start of the slut arc, and while I'm not so inclined to cross the en-ess-eff-double-u line just yet, I am feeling more and more confident that I could try doing saucier stuff, or at the very least stop tip-toeing around stuff I've been holding back on. What that looks like remains to be seen, but I will let my friends now when and if that happens.

So, that’s all I had to ponder on. Hope you all have a wonderful 2023 and I hope to see you all again.

(Enjoy this pic of me trying to clear out the twists in my hair lmaoooooo)

#long post

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sweeterthanmydreams · 11 months

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I can never tell which platform I have more visibility on, but I have rambling power here so I’ll put my rant here.

tl;dr I’m trying to open commissions so I can buy glasses & get my hair dyed but can’t decide what to offer/how to best advertise myself.

My first thought was a Barbie themed YCH but that was on like, Wendsday & the hype is likely to be gone by the time I get everything set up. On the other hand, cute little chibis in doll packaging is just universally appealing so I could do bases for a variety of doll brands like Monster High or Rainbow High as well. It’s not a bad idea (I think) since I like drawing packaging & could recycle the doll bases across the packaging options but I’m not sure I could pull in enough customers to justify the effort; There’s a minimum amount of commissions you need to sell before creating a base becomes worth the effort.

Second thought was OC design update commissions, which is something I’ve wanted to try for awhile. I love doing it for my own characters, and think it’d be fun to do for others. Really tough to make an info graphic for that & tough to break it down into price categories.

Last thought is just the standard custom commissions but more catered to what I find easier to draw i.e. pretty much anything but human/humanoid anime characters. So mushrooms, objects from games, graphical elements, character symbols, that sort of thing. Even like, Object Head or Cookie Run or what Art Fight refers to as “simple shaped” characters would be good; Sanrio type little guys. Just any characters that don’t require me drawing a human/anthro head shape. =.= Really REALLY hard to quantify & describe that though. :/

My current approach is just to sort my references into categories, slap a price on the category, and just label it “Stuff Like That: 25$” or whatever. (Don’t get me started on pricing.) I just want my first glasses to be cute & useful but I don’t want to have to draw character* commissions to get there. I also totally want to splurge and get multiple glasses frames since they’re relatively cheap (>30$ each with default Rx lenses).

*Disclaimer: YCH get a pass because I only have to draw the head right ONCE.

#taffy rambles #a lot #I think I'll try to make an infographic for each on Canva at the least #putting your ideas down visually (like a thumbnail) is always a good start #to making dreams not simply be meme.#I should be posting a certain Art Fight Attack that illustrates what I mean by doll packaging YCH though.

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fumpkins · 2 years

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Webb telescope wows with first images | Science

At long last, eager astronomers—and the public—get to view snapshots of the universe provided by the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest, most complex, and most expensive space telescope ever built. Yesterday, in a sneak preview, the White House released one picture, a deep image bristling with thousands of distant galaxies. Today, NASA released four more that demonstrate Webb’s ability to scrutinize gas clouds and planetary systems closer to home.

The images—a product of Webb’s giant, majestic, gold-plated mirror—are not only sharper than those of the Hubble Space Telescope, but are also essentially different, capturing the longer, infrared wavelengths that are important for many branches of astronomy. For Webb’s engineers and designers, who have endured years of delay and a nerve-wracking 6 months of launch, deployment, and commissioning, the relief is palpable. “I’m feeling a mix of excitement and emotion. [Webb] has really delivered, and there will be a rush of new discoveries,” says Brant Robertson of the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz, who helped develop Webb’s near-infrared camera.

For most astronomers, the wait isn’t quite over yet, as their scheduled observations may not happen for weeks or months. Exoplanet researcher Laura Kreidberg of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) is one of the lucky ones. As part of a large collaboration doing “early release science” with Webb, she’ll get to see their first tranche of data in 2 days. Nevertheless, “It’s a long wait from Tuesday to Thursday,” she says. But come Thursday afternoon when the data start to pour in, “I’ll make a big pot of coffee, put out some snacks, and we’ll sit and look at it.”

Originally conceived in the 1990s and built with European and Canadian contributions, Webb at times seemed like a cursed mission, buffeted by cost overruns, schedule slips, and technical hitches. Beset by criticism, “It was hard to keep the team at the edge of excellence,” NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen said at a recent briefing. But after a flawless launch on 25 December 2021, those trials are almost forgotten. “I don’t think any of us expected how well it went,” Zurbuchen says.

The accuracy of the launch, on a European Ariane 5 rocket, meant Webb didn’t have to use much fuel for course corrections and now has more to keep itself in a gravitational pocket on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun, about 1.5 million kilometers away. Planned as a 10-year mission, Webb is now expected to last at least twice as long.

The launch of the $10 billion instrument did not end the tension. To unfurl its giant sunshield, swing six of the 18 segments in the 6.5-meter-wide mirror into position, and extend the secondary mirror on its booms, engineers had to navigate some 300 steps, any one of which could have doomed the mission. “Every day the risk level has gone down and my ability to sleep has increased,” says Charlie Atkinson, the project’s chief engineer at Northrop Grumman, NASA’s prime contractor for the mission.

Tiny motors adjusted the position, tilt, and curvature of the mirror segments by fractions of a hair’s breadth until they could together focus on targets as a single mirror. Operators then had to check out Webb’s four instruments, a mix of cameras and spectrographs, which split incoming light into its component wavelengths. “We have an observatory in excellent shape, that meets or exceeds expectations,” Bill Ochs, Webb’s project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, announced today.

Not everything went according to plan. Some computer glitches required a few hours’ pause. The mirror has been dinged by a handful of micrometeorites—that was expected but one was larger than models predicted and operators are working to mitigate its impact. “There have been some issues,” Ochs says. “But when you have a good team, you can get through it.”

By 21 June, Webb was taking data for the 286 teams of scientists who had been allotted time on the telescope in its first year, known as cycle one. “We’ve got some amazing science in the can,” Zurbuchen says. Researchers have reported seeing that some of their scheduled observations have taken place, but NASA sat on the data until this week, when commissioning officially ends. Now, Atkinson says, “We hand over the keys. It’s ready. Go do science.”

The pictures and spectra released today are the result of a yearlong selection process that Zurbuchen calls “bottom-up.” NASA wanted to show off the telescope’s capabilities and offer a taste of the different fields of astronomy it will transform. So managers asked the instrument and science teams for a range of targets that would show “the best of this thing,” Zurbuchen says. Some 70 were suggested and these were whittled down by a committee to the five released so far.

Stephan’s Quintet is a compact group of four galaxies with another in the foreground. Filaments of glowing gas are signs of shock waves as the galaxies interact. One day the four will likely merge.NASA; ESA; CSA; STScI

The Southern Ring nebula is a glowing shell of ionized gas blown off by a giant star at the end of its life. A white dwarf at its center—the stellar cinder of the giant—emits ultraviolet light that causes the nebula to fluoresce.NASA; ESA; CSA; STScI

SMACS 0723 is a deep field containing thousands of galaxies. The gravity of galaxies in the foreground acts as a lens to magnify and distort more distant galaxies.NASA; ESA; CSA; STScI

One picture, of the galaxy cluster SMAC 0723, showcases Webb’s ability to peer into the most distant corners of the universe and hence the furthest back in time. It shows a field crowded with thousands of galaxies, some with shapes distorted by the intense gravitational field of a galaxy cluster in the foreground. A spectrum from a 13.1-billion-year-old galaxy in the image showed it contained oxygen, hydrogen, and neon—the most distant galaxy for which we know the constituents. Dominika Wylezalek of Heidelberg University calls the image “mind-blowing.” “The level of detail is really breathtaking.”

Hubble saw much further back than its designers ever imagined, spying a galaxy that existed just 400 million years after the big bang—3% of the universe’s current age. But Webb will see many more galaxies that are even younger, not just because of its larger mirror, but also because of its sensitivity to infrared light. Photons emitted by the earliest stars are stretched in their journey by the expansion of the universe, pushing them into infrared wavelengths that Hubble cannot see. Previously, says Sarah Bosman of MPIA, “We could only see the very bright galaxies, and the biggest. With Webb, we’ll see the whole array.”

Galaxy surveys will help astronomers understand the early history of these agglomerations: when they started to form stars and how quickly they organized into the disklike spirals such as the Milky Way. “Webb is capable of filling in the gaps,” Robertson says. Webb will also help figure out what ionized the neutral hydrogen gas that filled the universe before the stars turned on. By the time of the universe’s billionth birthday, that hydrogen was ionized. Astronomers think this was mostly the work of high-energy ultraviolet photons from the first generation of stars, which were huge and bright and made solely of this primordial hydrogen. But Hubble hasn’t seen enough early galaxies to account for the needed photons. “Webb is the only facility that can see” this early era, Robertson says.

Another one of the released pictures is of the well-known Stephan’s Quintet, a cluster of four interacting galaxies 290 million light-years away that sits behind a fifth galaxy in the foreground. Seen with Webb, it is possible to discern glowing gas and dust heated by two of the merging galaxies and areas of active star formation generated by that turmoil. “It is this sort of interaction that drives the evolution of galaxies,” says Giovanna Giardino of the European Space Agency.

Alice Shapley of UC Los Angeles will use Webb’s near-infrared spectrograph (NIRSpec) to tease apart the light from galaxies to find out how hot they are, how they’re moving, and what they’re made of. She’s interested in faint emission lines from interstellar oxygen gas, which show up as spikes in spectra. The oxygen is created in massive stars and scattered when they die. “It tells you how many stars are made,” she says, and is a good marker for the flows of gas in and out of a galaxy.

The information will help researchers understand why some galaxies are prolific creators of stars, whereas others are subdued or even dead. Earth’s atmosphere clouds the view of these oxygen lines for most ground-based spectrographs. NIRSpec uses a mask covered with tiny shutters to gather light and generate spectra from dozens of galaxies simultaneously, which should increase the number of galaxies with known oxygen lines by an order of magnitude. “Webb allows us to go so much further,” Shapley says. “It’s going to be amazing.”

Misty Bentz of Georgia State University will test a different NIRSpec capability: taking a spectroscopic “image” in which every pixel has its own separate spectrum. Her project involves staring for 9 hours at a single galaxy, the nearby NGC 4151—dubbed the Eye of Sauron because of the eerie glow of the supermassive black hole at its heart, which shines brightly as it heats up gas being drawn into its maw. Bentz will look for subtle changes to the spectrum of the swirling gas that reveal the black hole’s mass, showcasing NIRSpec’s ability to take faint spectra of the gas while blocking the bright area around the black hole itself.

Webb will also study targets within the Milky Way—objects like the Carina nebula, one of today’s released pictures. Webb’s image of the vast stellar nursery, 7600 light-years from Earth, contains hundreds of newly born stars that have never been seen before, as well as swirling dust and gas buffeted by stellar wind. Hubble also imaged this local landmark, but Webb’s image has “so much more detail,” says NASA deputy project scientist Amber Straughn.

Within such stellar nurseries, dense clumps of gas gradually collapse to form stars. Melissa McClure of the Leiden Observatory will use Webb to peer into such clouds to see whether they are factories for complex molecules that could give life a head start even before star and planet formation begins. Hundreds of different molecules have been detected as gases, but gases don’t react efficiently unless frozen onto solid interstellar grains of dust. The grains are like singles bars, McClure jokes, where atoms and simple molecules go to join up. So far, only methanol ice has been detected in space, but McClure expects Webb will routinely find ices for molecules such as methane and ammonia. The real prize would be finding complex carbon-based molecules with more than six atoms, such as ethanol or acetaldehyde. “A conclusive detection would be really awesome,” McClure says.

Among NASA’s offerings this week, the most tantalizing taste of what’s to come is the spectrum of an exoplanet. It’s from a giant planet known as WASP-96b orbiting close to a star 1150 light-years from Earth. During regular passes in front of its home star, some starlight is absorbed by gases in WASP-96b’s atmosphere, leaving telltale dips in the star’s spectrum. Theoretical models suggest carbon monoxide and dioxide, as well as methane, may be present, but Hubble and ground-based telescopes couldn’t see them. The first spectrum of WASP-96b shows clear signatures of water vapor in the planet’s atmosphere, and features that indicate the presence of clouds and vapor haze. Astronomers will have to wait for future transits to see what else is there. “I’m really excited to see if the predictions bear out,” Kreidberg says.

Using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, researchers have only been able to spy water and sodium in exoplanet atmospheres. “It’s been like reading a poem and only seeing every third word,” Kreidberg says. Webb is expected to find a wealth of molecules, some of which can hint at a planet’s potential habitability: carbon monoxide and dioxide, methane, ammonia, phosphine, and more. They will be able to probe the atmospheres of every kind of planet from hot Jupiters, through mini-Neptunes, to rocky planets like Earth. “Webb can do everything,” Kreidberg says. Hundreds of exoplanet researchers are preparing feverishly for the expected data deluge from other transiting exoplanets, organizing hackathons and data challenges, and devising data processing pipelines. “We’ve done a huge amount of work to make sure we’re ready,” Kreidberg says. “There’s no calm before the storm.”

A small fraction of Webb’s time will go to objects in the Solar System, but for targets so close and so large—from Webb’s point of view—saturating the instruments is a real problem, says Imke de Pater of UC Berkeley. She will study Jupiter’s thin ring, which may still be rippling in the wake of the 1994 impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Imaging the faint ring next to the much brighter planet will be a challenge, but she hopes to discover more ripples, which could signal more recent, unseen comet impacts. De Pater’s fondest wish would be detecting new moonlets of just a few hundred meters diameter or less. “That would be a dream,” she says.

For many more, the dream has already come true—an effort that took 30 years and some 20,000 people around the world to bear fruit. “Beyond the science, [Webb] is rekindling a sense of beauty and wonder about the universe that inspired me to become an astronomer,” Robertson says. “I couldn’t be happier.”

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2022/07/12/webb-telescope-wows-with-first-images-science/

#images #science #telescope #Webb #wows

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anonbeadraws · 3 years

Text

Reference sheet for your commission references!

So, It can be stressful not knowing exactly what the artist wants from you as a commissioner, especially first timers, so I’ve whipped up a lil something! (gotta say, this is what I want as an commissions artist, can’t speak for anyone else!)

REFERENCE GUIDE 💖

- So first thing, I personally prefer having a PDF/word/page doc or a google doc for references, rather than loose images on an email. It’s much easier for me to find the information I need and not have to go from tab to tab! If that’s something you can’t do, let me know when you email me and we can work something out! - In that Document, written description and visual references are key, both are preferable! I’m happy to charge a little extra to work from written description only but Visuals (sketches, previous commissions, photos) give me something to base off, so I don’t spend the whole time researching for your piece! Colours, patterns, face claims are all helpful!

the following info is generally what I need (you’re welcome to copy paste this into your doc!) :

VISUALS

Age/Race/height/body type:

skin colour/ scars/ freckles/ skin conditions etc:

eye colour/shape:

hair colour/style/decorations:

Any additional details (prosthetics limbs/no limbs!/tattoos/piercings/wings):

CLOTHING

brief description of any clothing, their colours/pattern :

ITEMS: (items such as weaponry, jewellery, bags, accessories and or animal companions!)

PERSONALITY

Brief personality description (are they suspicious, happy go lucky? What's the general vibe?):

Background information that could be important in the design (their ancestry, where they come from, any inspirations?:

any preferences on posing/expressions:

EXTRAS

If there is more than one character on your ref sheet, please separate your descriptions/images out by character for ease. I’d also want to know the character’s relationship to each other; family, friends? enemies to lovers? are they physically affectionate to each other? How would they interact in this scene?

if your commission has a background/scene, visual and written references are brilliant along with the vibe you want for the scene and time of day! Below is a badly sketched Ref of what all this could look like!:

Keep in mind, the sketch is only a guide, if you have more than one page of visual refs, that’s cool! As long as you can get the info above (and anything you think i’ll need) into a single pdf/google doc format, you are good! This is just very helpful for me too, since i struggle with too much info at once while i work. Any questions are welcome, hope this helps! Going to link this to my commission sheet too! Thanks and i appreciate you all! 💖💖💖

#anonbeadraws #reference sheet for commissioners #reference reference #help #thank you and i hope it's helpful!#ref #ref sheet

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favoniuscodex · 4 years

Text

you get kidnapped by the fatui headcanons (diluc & kaeya)

prompt: Diluc and Kaeya headcanons for reader getting kidnapped by the Fatui before they have a chance to confess that they’re in love with her, as requested by @lohai-of-favonius word count: 2.1k (lol “headcanons”) characters featured: diluc, kaeya reader: gender-neutral/female/male (can be read any way, it’s in second-person pov) style: headcanons w/ angst then fluff warnings: possible spoilers for diluc & kaeya related info, light descriptions of injuries, kidnapping, light descriptions of violence

a/n: i made these into headcanons, i hope that’s okay! i was getting a little longwinded on the both of them and i feel like the scenarios would’ve turned into full length fics otherwise haha. i definitely need to learn to write less. i hope i interpreted the prompt well!

“I have a commission awaiting me,” You stated, refusing to make eye contact with the man in front of you as you absentmindedly fiddled with the sleeves of your shirt. “In Liyue. Looking for a missing person. Should be routine stuff, I’ll be back in a week, max.”

You glanced at the man in front of you. If you could notice the concern he wore on his expression, you failed to verbally acknowledge it and instead took one of their hands in yours, squeezing it lightly.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. You don’t have to ring the alarm bells just yet!” You joked, plastering a small smile. As the man in front of you realized his expression was morphing into one of worry, he smoothed over his expression and composed himself.

He knew he couldn’t control your actions, nor had any room in stating which course of action you should take when it came to accepting your commissions. Missing person cases, while a valiant cause, often led to bad news. But, you were a hero at heart and here he stood, merely a friend of yours. Now wasn’t the time for a heartfelt confession of love that he desired to send your way. Doing so would only unfairly manipulate you into staying and he knew you were strong enough to make it back on your own.

But, a week later, as he awaited your arrival at the gates of Mondstadt, worry plagued the man who had fallen in love with your heroic, dutiful spirit over the last few months. As the hours ticked by, he realized he needed to have a new course of action...

KAEYA

Upon you going missing with little to no information, Kaeya would notify the Knights of Favonius, first and foremost. In fact, he speaks to Amber first, as he believes her to be trustworthy and her status as an Outrider makes her most likely to encounter you first.

However, despite his growing concern, he remains optimistic. You’re a strong fighter who has helped him clear countless hilichurl camps. He knows you can handle yourself well. You’re likely just taking longer than expected or picked up extra work in Liyue before returning.

A few days later, Fischl, one of the Adventurer’s Guild’s investigators, approaches him with information on your whereabouts. However, after lots of back and forth between the two, he finally understands (with the help of Oz’s translations) that you’ve been kidnapped by the Fatui.

Kaeya immediately panics, but manages to keep his cool, charming facade up until Fischl leaves his presence. Now left alone in his office in the Knights of Favonius headquarters, Kaeya paces around, trying to think of a plan.

Kaeya wants nothing more than to ride a horse straight into Liyue and search for you, taking down anyone that gets in his way. However, there’s one thing that limits him: Diplomacy.

Kaeya’s a part of the Mondstadtian government, meaning that any action he takes in Liyue directly reflects on the nation of Mondstadt as a whole. It wouldn’t look good to dirty his hands with Fatui blood in a land that isn’t his own. Not only would it be detrimental to his well-being, it would also put the freedom of Mondstadt at risk, which goes directly against the promise he made when being sworn in as a Knight.

Therefore, he has to use the next best thing: Connections. The Adventurer’s Guild has been extremely helpful on intel, he has friends in the Liyue Millileth, and he’s even willing to swallow his pride and reach out to Diluc if it means your safe return.

Diluc, despite his tense relationship with his brother, has always had a soft spot for your presence, so he’s more than willing to help by spreading word around the tavern.

As days go by, Kaeya gets antsy and right when he’s about to say fuck it and mess up the entirety of Sneznhayan-Liyuean-Mondstadtian geopolitical relations by murdering some Fatui to get you back, Amber bursts into his office and doubles over, trying to catch her breath after sprinting to the Knights of Favonius headquarters.

“We found her. With Barbara,” She manages to wheeze out. Without caring for the state of the Outrider’s lungs, Kaeya shoves past her and immediately sprints to the cathedral.

He rushes to the back where he’s met with your figure lying in a hospital bed. As he enters your room, your eyes flutter open to give him a bleary-eyed smile, despite all of your injuries.

He opts for sitting next to you and taking your uninjured hand in his, hesitant to move you a lot in fear that it would only hurt you. However, he wants nothing more than to wrap you in his embrace and never let you go. But instead, he simply brings your hand to his lips and kisses your knuckles lightly, whispering a thank you to Barbatos for your safe return as his lips ghost along your skin.

The two of you sit in silence for a few minutes as Kaeya plays with your fingers, trying to think of the words to say. You, on the other hand, are content with sitting in silence, far too tired to explain everything that had happened to you over the course of your adventure.

“Who rescued you?” The first words out of Kaeya’s mouth are not a love confession, but rather embittered words, laced with jealousy. He wants nothing more than have to been the knight to bust down the door of wherever you were held captive and whisk you away to safety, solidifying the image of him in your eyes as a protector.

“I rescued myself,” You speak softly, a smirk spreading across your lips. “I beat up those Fatui jerks and escaped myself.”

Kaeya looks up from gazing absentmindedly at your hand and makes eye contact with you. Before he can stop it, a proud laugh escapes from his lips and you begin to laugh with him too. Despite all his worries, you had come back alive and in one piece, just scraped up. You didn’t need him to play protector -- you had yourself. He was just designed to be your cheerleader. As this thought settled into his head, his laughter subsided and a content smile graced his lips.

“I’m in love with you,” He confesses in the comfortable silence between the two of you. Kaeya was normally the type for bald-faced lies, but tonight, he felt as if he wanted nothing more than to peel back his layers of mystery and be honest with you.

You beam at him, rotating your hand in his grip and squeezing back. “I know. Aren’t you lucky that I feel the same way?”

DILUC

When you go missing, Diluc immediately expects foul play. He’s definitely more worrisome than Kaeya, but Diluc is more fearful of losing the one he loves. He’s experienced loss before and has built up walls around himself to avoid losing that again and, while Kaeya does the same, Diluc is far less charming and suave with his words.

Diluc has let you in as both a friend and has fallen in love with you. He doesn’t want to lose you before he can tell you how you’ve broken down his walls.

He trusts you to be able to take care of yourself, but even the mightiest of warriors can be kept off guard. Therefore, Diluc begins using his wealth to find information out about your location and what happened to you. While it might not result in the most reliable information, Diluc knows money can get people to talk more than anything.

Diluc quickly learns that the Fatui are holding you hostage and finds out where. The location is in Liyue, so Diluc does what Diluc does best: He sets out to rescue you himself.

He doesn’t take much with him besides a horse, his claymore, some food and medical supplies, and your weapon of choice. He doesn’t know what shape you’ll be in, but he knows that if you’re even remotely conscious, you’ll want to help him fight.

When he infiltrates where the Fatui are holding you, he’s filled with rage upon seeing your bruised and beaten form in the corner, chained to the wall, as if the Fatui had tried to get information out of you but failed.

Determined to rescue you safely, Diluc realizes that he’d have to fight the multiple Fatui that were now alert to his presence as well. The four Fatui members in the vicinity look like they had already had a rough time capturing you and are less than thrilled at the prospect of fighting Mondstadt’s Darknight Hero.

However, Diluc will be damned if he lets them run. He makes quick work of the Fatui members, thanks to your assistance in fighting as hard as you could before being captured.

Once the Fatui are defeated, Diluc immediately crouches by your figure, breaking the shackles holding you with his claymore.

“My hero,” You sigh in a dreamy voice as a mischievous grin forms on your face, causing Diluc to both sigh in exasperation and flush red at the same time. However, your voice becomes sincere as you utter your next words. “Thank you.”

“You would do the same for me,” Diluc responds, his words filled with truth. Diluc trusts you more than anyone else in Teyvat. He scoops you up bridal-style and carries you over to his horse. The two of you ride back to Dawn Winery in silence, with you sitting in front of him as he holds the reins. His arms around your waist prevent you from falling and the rhythmic motions of the horse lull you into sleep.

You awake in one of Dawn Winery’s beds with fresh bandages. At your bedside, fresh water and fruit had been placed for your consumption upon waking, but you’re not too concerned with either at the moment. You decide to eat some before going to find Diluc, realizing that he’d probably chew you out for not taking care of yourself if he found out.

As soon as you’re finished, you hobble out of bed, determined to find Diluc. You spot him on the balcony and as you creak open the door, Diluc whips his head around and frowns at you.

“You should be in bed,” He chastises, immediately rushing over to you. He notices the fact that you have to lean against the doorframe for support and sighs. “Why would you ever get out of bed with your injuries?”

You let out a small giggle. “I wanted to see my charming hero, who is just as excited to see me too,” You croon, enjoying the way the tips of his ears flush red at your teasing. You reach out your arms to him. “Carry me back?”

Diluc sighs and picks you up once again. “You have me wrapped around your finger,” He murmurs into your hair as he carries you back. You’ve latched onto him like a koala, with his hands supporting your thighs and your arms around his shoulders. You bury your face into his neck and sigh with content, causing him to flush an even deeper shade of red.

Despite his embarrassment about the current situation coloring his face, Diluc realizes that he doesn’t mind if everyone else in the winery sees him carrying you like this. It would showcase that you were clearly his.

As the two of you return to your room, Diluc gently lays you down on the bed and turns to leave, but you grab his wrist before he can make his escape. His face is still flushed a deep scarlet when he turns around to face you, causing you to let out another laugh.

As the morning sun filters in through the window, your eyes twinkle with delight as you stare up at Diluc, happy to be in his presence. Diluc looks down at you, entranced by how carefree you look, despite the hell of what you had just gone through. Despite all the bandages that cover your face, arms, legs, and torso, Diluc views you as a sculpture crafted with the finest materials by the gods themselves.

As he brushes the hair out of your face, Diluc realizes that he would rescue you a thousand times over if he could relive this moment of you being happy, without any of life’s typical worries etched into your face. That’s when he fully realizes how he feels about you, embracing the feelings he had long sought to push away.

“I’m in love with you,” He states, gently cupping your face in his hand. You reach up and cover his hand with yours, smiling softly at him.

“I’m in love with you too, Diluc,” You murmur as he closes the distance between the two of you and presses a sweet, chaste kiss to your lips.

#genshin impact x reader #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact scenarios #diluc x reader #kaeya x reader #diluc headcanons #kaeya headcanons #diluc #kaeya #genshin impact #*headcanons #*writing #*diluc #*kaeya

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some-kindofgnome · 3 years

Text

for auld lang syne

“And then I woke up in the hospital alone, and I saw the doctor alone and took a taxi home alone. I went to physical therapy alone and saw my counsellor alone. Whatever you thought, Katsuki, whatever you believed made me spend six months staring at my phone and thinking I’d ruined everything.”

It’s time for your agency’s extravagant New Years’ Eve party. But after a little sabbatical, there are some things you’re not ready to come back to.

characters: katsuki bakugou x f!reader

wc: 7.2k

warnings: smut (18+ please!) aged-up characters, pro hero!bakugou and pro hero!reader, mentions of injury, near-death experiences and gunshots, smoking, drinking, angst with a (filthy) happy ending, me being a whore for glamorous new years’ parties

notes: This fic has been dragging me across the coals since Christmas- I could not get it out of my head, despite how much work I knew it would be to get it out on time. Still, it feels supremely worth it. I have a metric ton of love to give to @hoe-doroki for beta-ing this mammoth on such short notice (I dumped it in her lap at 4am) because she really helped me whip it into shape. As always. 💖

Happy New Year, everyone.

(MASTERLIST)

“Won’t be long now.”

Anxiety bleeds into the already-nervous voice of your driver, muffled by the plexiglass divider that separates you. You’ve been sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for the past four red lights, barely inching toward the intersection with every green.

You’re well past fashionably late at this point. You’re sure that the commissioned driver’s fearing for his job at this point, knowing exactly how long ago you were supposed to have arrived at your own party.

But you couldn’t care less. The longer it takes you to get there, the better. The vodka you’d downed neat, standing over the bar cart in your polished apartment, sours in the pit of your stomach. And the fact that your outfit barely allows a spare breath isn’t exactly cooling your nerves, either.

You’re draped over the door, resting one elbow on its edge to cushion your jaw as you lay your forehead against the chilly glass. Outside, the crowded traffic casts a golden warmth over the bluish urban night, betraying the slow swirl of fluffy snowflakes that drift lazily into the street.

Tonight has all the makings for an ideal, albeit bitterly cold, New Year’s Eve. But if it were up to you, you’d be watching all the wonder unfold from the comfort of your own bed.

You’ve been away long enough, though, says your agent. It’s time, says your manager. You stay away from the spotlight for too long and we’re going to forget about you, says the Internet.

The glittering gold fabric your stylist presented you with would’ve swelled your heart on any other occasion. He knows your taste to the button. And after breaking into exhausted sobs at your first fitting together, you’d been able to tell him that the outfit was perfect.

At long last, the glossy windows of your agency loom outside. You push the backseat door open before your driver can even kill the engine, stepping out as gracefully as you can muster and pulling the folds of your designer coat demurely closed around your glamorous party clothes. You’re greeted by swaths of flashbulbs and determined shouts of your hero name, and suddenly the practiced gracious smile that you’ve always saved for the cameras is stretching your lips one more time.

You used to love something about this. But you’ve almost never had to face it alone.

Inside, the party’s taken off without you. Your coat’s taken before you can even see who’s hands are slipping it deftly off your shoulders, but by the time you’re ushered into the elevator and sent all the way to the top floor, you’re already sweating with the anticipation of all that’s waiting for you.

The doors open to a rush of guests, each noticing you simultaneously and pushing in to greet you.

Arriving late does absolutely nothing to dissolve the grandness of your entrance. Your attention is immediately pulled in a handful of different directions as celebrities and dignitaries and politicians shake your hands and congratulate you. People you’ve never met are telling you how good it is to see you on your feet again and, despite the overwhelming distractions, you can’t stop searching the crowd.

You don’t want to let yourself search for somebody in particular, but you spot him long before your shame catches up with you.

It’s not a glimpse of his mussed hair you catch, bobbing through the crowd. Nor is it a slip of the edge of his suit, the most devastating shade of midnight blue you could have possibly imagined.

Your eyes, like magnets, are drawn right to his crimson gaze. Lightning shoots through your chest, and you look away so fast you nearly pull a muscle in your neck. You cast your gaze immediately to the red-faced MP in front of you and let yourself stare. Still, from the corner of your eye, you can see the way he lingers, still facing you.

You haven’t seen Katsuki in months. Luckily, your ability to multitask has not faded, and you make easy small talk with the mayor and his wife while you sense him, in all his midnight splendor, disappearing into the crowd again.

A close call. Too close, in fact, not to warrant a drink. You excuse yourself kindly from the mayor’s attention, cutting through the glamorous partygoers until you reach the bar at the center of the room. It’s crowded, but you grab the bartender’s attention quick enough and order the first of many glasses of Dom Perignon.

The agency knows how to spend, for a special occasion.

It’s while you’re trapped at the bar, waiting for that imperative first drink, that he corners you. You spot him an instant too late, sidling between two dancing couples and crossing the short distance between you. There’s no way to skirt subtly away from him now. Instead, you lean more fervently across the bar and immerse yourself in an intense examination of the liquor, shelved decoratively behind the working bartenders.

He hesitates—possibly for the first time ever—but you’re determined not to watch as he searches for the right way to bridge the silence. You spot the way he stuffs his hands into his pockets, and when he finally speaks it’s low and sharp and bitter.

“That’s a nice dress.”

He has to lean too close to make his voice heard, speaking low and gruff to you in a way he never used to. You’re too anxious to care whether he sees the way you close your eyes to dull the fervent ache that flares in your chest.

He’s not allowed to say things like that to you. Not now.

“Listen.” He doesn’t wait for you to answer, pushing ahead.

In the throes of closeness, it’s easy to pick up the tremor in his voice. That kind of shake used to scare you. It’s the way he’s always spoken to you when he’s keeping his temper at bay in public.

He’s opening his mouth to say something else, something deeper and far more expository perhaps, but your champagne arrives with no moment to spare. You pluck it eagerly from the bartender’s fingers with an exceedingly gracious smile and turn quickly in the direction you swear Katsuki’s not blocking.

“Watch it.” He grabs your wrist to keep you from sloshing half your fresh champagne down your front. His touch sears hotter than you’d dreaded, and you can’t stop yourself from flinching at the rough brush of his calloused fingers over your tender inner wrist.

Fuck.

“Don’t run off,” he insists, squeezing your wrist just a little tighter. Your entire body is drawn tight like a bow, but you’re not actively searching for an escape route at this point. Sensing this, he slowly unwraps his fingers, dropping your hand and letting you down half your drink in a couple of parched gulps.

“You look…” you start to say, letting your eyes wander his immaculate form one more time. Whoever cut that suit for him knew his shape well. It fits perfectly. Contrasts his golden hair like the night behind a harvest moon.

Absence has not culled your feelings for him. Especially not when he comes back to you like this.

You take another long, slow sip, ignoring the way Katsuki’s brows shoot toward his hairline when you nearly empty the glass. His gaze darts to the narrow flute in your hand, the prints of peachy lipstick that mar it.

With your heart beating a touch slower, you try again.

“You look good.”

Katsuki rolls his eyes.

“I can’t—” he starts, shaking his head as his eyes swim the crowd. “I’m not doing this.”

“What?” Your stomach drops. When he looks at you again it’s dead straight, burgundy and blazing in that way that used to make you molten.

Now it makes you want to cut and run.

“I’m not gonna fuckin’ play nice, like this,” he pushes. He takes a step toward you, letting your name—your real name—fall from his lips as tender and soft as a prayer. “Explain to me why my agent had to tell me you were gonna be here tonight.”

“Katsuki,” you plead quietly, backing away from him a touch. “I don’t want to—I can’t. Here. Please.”

For a million other people he might press on. He might get angry and demand an answer, threaten anything it takes to solve the puzzles in his brain. For you, his strong jaw ticks and he shoves clenched fists back into his ironed pockets.

“Let’s just,” you begin, “make it through to midnight, okay?”

“Fine,” he bites, but he doesn’t like folding to you. He gets you back by clearing his throat and extending you a palm, drawing the attention of the people around you. They turn, charmed by the agency’s finest reappearing as the duo they’ve always adored.

There’s a glint of something in his eyes as he gives his chin a little jut toward the dance floor.

“Dance with me, then.”

You’ve been to hundreds of opulent agency spectacles together. Charity benefits, galas, holiday parties and the like have always been studded by your presence. But no matter how many times you’ve entered the party together, you never managed to get him onto the dance floor. Despite your whining and pleading and fussing, he’s never ever let you drag him out there.

So this feels like a particularly low blow. But the orchestra’s struck up a dreamy rendition of The Way You Look Tonight and there are too many people watching for you to turn him down.

Instead, you down the rest of your champagne, set it on the bar behind you, and slip your hand defiantly into his.

“Fine.”

His fingers close gently around your palm and he gives it a lingering squeeze that turns your blood to venom.

You’re already racing through a complex plan to survive this attention as he walks you onto the dance floor. Some of the other couples pause in their swaying to send a smattering of applause over the crowd. You can feel the winning smile tugging at your mouth, forcing you to swallow the panicked ache in your chest.

Katsuki pauses at the center of the dance floor and pulls you slowly closer. The low dip of your gown places his warm hand on bare skin when he settles it in the small of your back, and you’re sure he doesn’t miss the sharp little suck of breath that you’re not prepared to hide.

He does not try to speak, so you’re silent as you settle a shaky hand on the shoulder of his perfect suit. He’s as perfect a dancer as you’ve always known he’d be, and he leads you into a smooth little sway that’s easy enough to navigate in your precarious gold heels but sweeps you into the music like a scene from years gone by.

“Hey,” he grunts a few bars in, ducking a little closer as his fingers press into the bare skin of your spine. He pulls you against him, forcing your tense body against his. The gentle dip of his hairstyle brushes your temple as he leans forward to murmur in your ear. “You’re holding your breath.”

You deflate against him, letting your eyes fall shut. When you take your next careful inhale, your head is filled by the heady, smoky scent of him. Your heart pounds so forcefully it’s practically blinding you. But above all else you hate yourself for still feeling all of this, after so many months of promising to force it away.

Katsuki knows you well enough not to try and trap you in conversation in public. But he doesn’t pull back any further, continuing to hold you flush against him, letting your soft cheek brush his with every couple of steps.

Despite your best efforts, you’re drowning in him: the strength of his touch, the fluidity in his movements. His thumb strokes the base of your spine with an easy rhythm that you’re trying hard not to notice. It’s becoming too much. He’s holding you closer than a colleague should, tucking his nose too attentively against the side of your head for a courtesy dance. You’re overthinking too many of the signs. You’re letting yourself believe what should have been thoroughly dashed to pieces so many months ago.

It’s when tears well behind your glittery eyelids that you put a stop to it.

“Katsuki, I—” You can’t finish, pushing yourself sharply away from his chest. Whatever expression of dreamlike peace that had touched his eyes fades quickly as he sees the telltale wet sparkle in yours, and he reaches for you an instant too late.

He calls your name softly, fingertips brushing the edge of your upper arm. But your tears are spilling over and you’re backing away and you cannot be here anymore, not when people are starting to see.

“I can’t do this,” you plead. “I can’t pre—I’m sorry.”

With a final shake of your head, you turn and hurry clumsily from the dance floor, pulling up the beaded skirt of your heavy gown and sweeping, as quickly as possible, to the glass doors shut tightly against the imposing snow on the terrace.

It’s bitterly cold, nearly fifty storeys up, and the wind whips mercilessly past your bare arms with biting chill. You can’t stay out here long, but it still feels better than the alternative.

With shaking fingers, you dip into the tiny bag you’ve been wearing over one shoulder. You’ve stashed exactly one emergency cigarette in its silky depths. You haven’t smoked in weeks, but something told you that tonight would beg one.

You have to back away from the railing to even light it in the wind, but you’re barely two puffs in before the door behind you opens carefully.

It’s the last person in the world you hoped for. And the only one you can imagine finding you out here. He’s got a glass of something neat in each hand—amber in one, clear in the other. He spies the cigarette in your fingers and his soft, concerned expression melts into a scowl.

“You’re still smoking?��

You take a defiant drag, blowing the smoke in his direction. The wind catches it, carrying it in a sharp curve back over your head. Katsuki licks his lower lip, but you can tell by the way his nose twitches that he’s trying not to chuckle.

You nod toward the whiskey in his right hand. “How many of those have you had tonight?”

“Not enough,” he quips. He nods toward the cigarette. “Put it out.”

“You don’t get to order me around anymore.”

“I said put it out.”

Your livid soul wants to defy him. You’re craving the conflict that inevitably comes when you both dig in your heels. But you’ve got no energy left to fight, so you flick the smoke dejectedly onto the wet pavement and crush it under one delicate pump.

“Better?” The attitude cuts cruelly through your voice. Katsuki just pushes the other glass into your hand and you know that it’s gin before you even have to smell it. You roll your eyes.

“The healthier alternative,” you snarl, but he’s finished with your games.

“Come inside,” he prompts. “You’re gonna lose your nose out here.”

“I’m not sure that’s your problem any longer.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you? Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what? Katsuki, I wanna hear you say it.”

He’s throwing back an irritated slug of his drink, but he bristles, gesturing wildly with the cup.

“Like we’re not gonna be partners anymore.”

His voice is punctuated by a horrible, involuntary sob that breaks from your lips. He’s always been able to read you so well, picking up on things that you’re not even ready to acknowledge. But he’s right. That is how you’ve been speaking, because you can’t even imagine standing next to him in a photo right now, let alone letting him take your life into his hands.

Katsuki moves forward, shocked by your tears, but you hold your empty palm out straight and, like he would only for you, he relents.

“Because I don’t think we can be anymore.”

“Shut up. Look at you. You’re fine. You look…” his eyes cast briefly over your form, “fine.”

You clap a hand protectively to your abdomen, remembering the painful tug and knowing that he’s missing the point.

“That’s not why,” you snap through your tears. “That’s not even…close to why. Katsuki, don’t be dense.” Your voice is breaking because you’re about to say it, the thing you couldn’t even bring yourself to feel as you were zipped into your gown earlier tonight. And if you’re going to say it, there’s no point in doing it with gusto.

Might as well go out like the whimpering fool you are.

“I can’t do this anymore,” you whine, “because somehow, despite my best efforts, Katsuki, I fell fucking in love with you, so hard, and you knew I did, and so you…you don’t. You don’t, and I’ve ruined everything, and that’s fine, but I—”

He pulls your name from the very depths of his chest. If you were expecting fire and brimstone, you’re met with an even more harrowing sight—soft, somber, remorseful Katsuki, looking at you like he’d stop the world on its axis if it would make things better.

The memories are too easy to reconjure, and the sunshine of that sticky summer afternoon that changed everything lights up behind his gaze.

There was a crime syndicate you’d been uprooting for months. An underground hideout tucked well away from the prying eyes of hero society. A stray spray of bullets—bullets, of all things, finding the gaps in your shattered armour and nearly taking you from him.

You’d been sure. Both of you. There were too many shots. There was too much blood. The hideout was too well-hidden for anybody to find you in time. Your vision was bleeding out around the edges, and you saw Katsuki cry real tears for the first time.

In a slurred heap of breathless prose, you’d unloaded everything. The most important secret you’d ever kept from him came spilling from your blood-tinged lips.

You were glad to go, if it meant you never had to lose him. Glad to be the one to selfishly leave him behind. You were going to be okay if you never had to face a world without him in it. Because—and you’d choked this on a fresh wave of blood and ungraceful spittle—you’d loved him as long as you’d ever known him.

Six days later, you woke up alone in the ICU. And that was the last you’d seen or heard or known of the man who’d once promised to have your back, always.

Katsuki silently finishes his drink. His cheeks and nose have flushed deeply from the ruthless chill, and he turns to give the city one last glance before moving toward the door.

“Come inside,” he gruffs. Deep shivers have broken out along the column of your spine, but you wrap your frigid arms around yourself in protest.

“I’m not going back in there.” Not like this.

“Idiot,” he snaps softly. “Look at you. You’re gonna die for real if you stay out here.” He tightens his jaw and slams the empty glass down on the windowsill. Then he looks at you with all the lights of the night blazing in his crimson stare.

“Let me take you somewhere quiet. No one’s gonna see.” His chest rises and falls with a deep breath and he reaches carefully for your arm. “I promise.”

Even with a breaking heart, you’re a fucking sucker for him. Your voice is teary and pathetic but pinched by cold.

“Fine.”

He slips an arm around your shoulders—making your chest lurch—and you duck back inside. Immediately he takes you to the wall, putting himself between you and the rest of the party. With the breadth of his chest he shields you from prying eyes that grow drunker by the minute.

You skirt the edge of the party, making it to the stairwell door on the opposite wall. Somebody by the bar looks up just in time to see Bakugou tugging fiercely down on the handle, but you slip onto the fluorescent-lit landing and the silver door falls shut behind you without consequence.

You’re turning around to grab for the door that isn’t closing fast enough as he slips through it, colliding gently with his chest. Bakugou grabs your wrists to stop you, and for an instant you’re nose-to-nose, smelling him and the whiskey on his breath and the faint odour of paint that never quite faded from the concrete walls.

If not for the tears leaving streaks in your makeup, you might let yourself believe he’s lingering in front of you on purpose.

You pull from his grip and turn back toward the stairs before either of you have the chance to imagine more.

Your office is at the end of the hall on the next floor down. It’s a corner office studded with windows, far too lovely for someone who spends as much time in the field as you do. But you’d worked hard to make it a personable space, with plants and artwork and a couple of very comfortable guest chairs in emerald velvet.

Katsuki rolls his eyes every time he has to wave off the odour of your favourite scented candle, but you’ve caught him admiring what you’ve done with his office, too.

Now, the space is too tidy for either of your tastes, a little dusty from so many months of neglect. You’ve been out of commission for six months, and nursing a heartbreak far too immense to allow any casual visits to the agency.

He closes the door behind the both of you. Locks it, just in case. You’re already pacing across the rug and perching on the edge of the desk, gratefully taking some of the weight off your aching feet.

He keeps his back to you for a long moment, fingers lingering on the brass doorknob. His shoulders bob with a deep, harrowing sigh.

“You were dying.”

He turns around, and in the quiet dark of your office his eyes are lit up with a deeper fear than you’ve ever seen in him. He comes toward you and sits in one of your squishy little chairs, steepling his fingers and settling his elbows on his knees.

“You don’t–” he shakes his head and lowers it, pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead. “You don’t understand. You weren’t making any sense.”

“I was,” you bite back, gripping at the edge of your desk. “I meant everything I said to you, Katsuki; I remember every word.”

He flinches. He looks so sorry it’s starting to genuinely scare you.

“That’s not it,” he demands, straightening. “You didn’t. I did.” He slapped a hand against his chest, the dull thud reverberating through your own heart.

“You said those things and I didn’t believe you. They couldn’t have been true. Not when I’d spent so much fucking time wishing they could be. I couldn’t tell myself you felt that way about me. I couldn’t hope. Not when I’d come so fucking close to losing you so easily, I—”

His voice breaks and he looks away, and you might be crazy but his chin gives a telltale little shake like he’s holding back tears.

“So you thought it would be easier to what? Fucking ghost me like a bad Tinder date?”

That hurts more than it should. You’ve seen Bakugou at his very worst, bleeding and soot-streaked and showing you feelings he never means to. For a very brief period in your lives, you believed yourself to be special.

“Don’t play the innocent,” he snarls. “You never talked to me, either. I had to find out from my fucking manager that you were outta the hospital.”

“So you never thought to drop by? Bring some fucking… flowers?” You can feel the venom filling your mouth and you’re not altogether certain you’re strong enough to swallow it this time.

“And tell you what? That I was in love with you and, maybe I heard you wrong, but you said something while you were dying in my fuckin’ arms and I was hoping for some goddamned clarification?”

“Yes!” You sob, the word ripping itself from your chest and landing wet and heavy on the floor between you. “That! Anything would have been better than radio fucking silence. Katsuki, I was sure you hated me.”

“Well I fucking love you, okay?” He rises from his chair, taking one step forward. It lands him almost right between your thighs and you hate how close he is, but you have no power to pull away. He cups your jaw in strong, gentle fingers, forcing your eyes to his.

“I fucked up,” he presses. He leans down and presses his forehead to yours and this time his proximity is on purpose. You drink it down in eager gulps.

“I missed you,” he murmurs. Despite your tears and the ache in your heart, you give a wet little laugh and nuzzle your nose against his.

“I missed you, too.”

He takes your hands and pulls them both to his chest. And for a long moment you just sit there, curled over one another in the dark and growing accustomed to the idea of being okay again.

“Did you just…” you start after a long moment of silence. His eyelashes flutter against your cheek as he tucks his cheek against yours, but the grin that pulls your mouth is enough for him to stand back and look at you.

“Did you just admit to making a mistake?”

You’re laughing at your own joke before Katsuki can even roll his eyes. But he’s scowling good-naturedly and tugging himself against you by the hips.

“C’mere, you brat.”

He’s leaning in to close the distance between you when muffled chanting from upstairs makes you pause. You tilt an ear toward the window and light up, easily recognizing the five, four, three, two, one as the magnitude builds.

Bright flashes of gold and red light up the sky outside your window in a brilliant display. And all at once the lingering ache drains from your chest and you shoot Katsuki a fond little smile.

“I guess it’s midnight.”

“We missed the fireworks,” he notes, nodding toward the window as he edges back toward you.

“Not really,” you confess, and the first real big smile breaks through the pain when he steps up between your knees again, nice and tight and deliberate.

He cups your jaw in one hand again, settling the other palm on your knee, where it peeks through the golden slip of your dress.

“Happy New Year,” you whisper, eyes falling shut. You hear the way he smiles, that bare little chuckle that used to make your heart light up like stars.

He leans in and kisses you without another word. It’s soft but firm and so loving, so much better than any brush of the hand or lingering glance. Better, even, than the way he danced you into a stupor upstairs. This is yours and nobody else’s.

And you’re not letting him go anytime soon.

You let the kiss deepen as naturally as you can, dropping your jaw and letting the bare press of his tongue roll against your teeth. You reach up and grab his jacket by its lapels, hitching him even closer as the fireworks die out behind you.

He’s not backing down, either. Katsuki draws his hands from your body to unbutton his jacket, shrugging it away easily without breaking the kiss. He’s pressing his mouth to yours in long, lingering spells, tasting you eagerly while his hands have to stay busy. But as soon as he can he’s touching you again, teasing his fingers under the slit of your dress and brushing them over your bare thighs.

“Katsuki…” you whine into his mouth, turning your head to gasp and fill your empty lungs. He finds the next bare patch of skin, kissing down the side of your jaw. He finds your earring where it lays against your tender neck, sucking the crystal into his mouth and giving it a gentle tug.

“Fuck,” you gasp, and he grins into your skin.

“Don’t tell me you’ve had enough already.”

“Not a chance,” you growl. There are millions of questions flooding your subconscious. But years of tension and desire spiral more fiercely between you. It’s energy that demands release. And you don’t want to wait another second.

“God,” he groans hard, collapsing gently into you. As he presses forward against you, the twitching swell of his erection pushes into your bare thigh. You slide your palms down the meat of his chest and find his mouth again, kissing him with searing intent.

“Look at you,” he rasps into your mouth, gripping hard at the weighty skirt of your beaded gown. “You’re a goddamned vision in this, you know that?”

You pull back to look at him, raw sexual energy briefly dispersed by his tender confession. For a long moment you sit there, panting at each other, remembering how much this is about to mean.

Fuck it. If he’s in, so are you.

“Help me get it off.”

You slide to your feet, pushing him back a couple of steps to accommodate you. As soon as you turn around he’s sliding a palm up your side, thumbing at the fabric to find its zipper.

“God damn,” he growls, leaning in to kiss a path down the column of your spine. He drops to one knee as he works the zipper down the back of the dress—sitting low, thanks to its open back—letting his mouth trail all the way to the waistband of your underwear. All the while, you brace a palm on the edge of your desk, trying your best not to implode.

This is more attention than you ever could have prayed for.

He peels the thin straps down your arms and shoves the whole mess to your feet. You’re bending down to unbuckle the straps on your heels, but he stops you with a hand on the back of your thigh.

“Leave ‘em on.”

His voice sends a sharp pang of arousal through your entire body. When he stands, trailing his fingers all the way up the back of your naked thigh and over the swell of your ass, the arousal disperses into a dull ache that settles in the pit of your stomach and throbs incessantly.

He digs his fingers into the flesh of your hip and turns you to face him. Your nipples are already peaking in the chill of your office, and he sucks a deep breath through his teeth as he slides his palms up your tummy.

There’s puckered scar tissue and new ridges on your abdomen, but there’s no pain when he traces brushes over them.

He pauses, looking down with dull shock tugging his brow. You’re holding your breath again, watching him circle the roughest part of your new scars with one tender thumb.

“It’s okay,” you plead, cupping his cheeks and forcing his eyes back to yours. There’s pain littering his gaze that you’re determined to dissolve, and you lean in to kiss him until he’s groaning into your mouth and drawing his hands toward your chest.

“God,” you breathe, goosebumps betraying you as they race beneath his fingers. Katsuki watches your face as he dips his head, pushing your breasts together and laying kisses between them.

“Please,” you whimper, reaching forward and settling a hand over the front of his pants. You palm the shape of his cock through the pressed wool and he flinches, biting gently into your tender flesh.

“Katsuki,” you pant, squeezing and rubbing the hard swell in a gentle, heady rhythm as you set your ass on the edge of your desk again. “I need you.”

“Jesus,” he curses, dropping his hands and reaching desperately for his tie. “You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me before I even get my cock out, sweetness.”

It’s the dirtiest thing he’s ever said to you. And it shows. You’re a shivering, lustblown mess already, but the petname that falls from his lips is enough to make you whimper.

He shrugs out of his shirt and pushes you further onto the desk, dropping to his knees in front of you and pushing your thighs apart with strong fingers.

“Always kinda wanted to do this in here,” he confesses with that cocky smirk that’s always made a hummingbird out of your heart.

But Katsuki doesn’t give you too much time to swoon over his pretty words, kissing a path up the inside of one plush thigh and nipping at your sensitive flesh. He helps you brace your heels against the rug and lift your hips, peeling your underwear off and rucking it down your knees. There’s something very naughty about the way it feels to settle your bare ass on your polished desk.

But there’s something even naughtier about the way it feels to have Katsuki on his knees in front of you.

He pushes your thighs apart again, harsher this time, and settles your knees over his shoulders. You’d like to ride the wave of self-consciousness that threatens to crest when his breath ghosts over the folds of your heated sex.

He pushes higher for a moment, taking your sides in his hands and drawing lovely little kisses down the rough length of your scar. You push self-consciously at his head, making him pull pack and settle a hand over the flesh instead. He tilts his chin up, shooting you a look so filled with guilt and sorrow it nearly shatters the moment.

He wasn’t there for the pain. And as he kisses back down to your hips and thighs, you let yourself hope that this will be enough to make up for it on both sides.

But then he leans in and licks a long stripe up your cunt and the groan that echoes from his chest makes it hard to do anything but cum on the spot.

“Fuck,” you sigh wantonly, letting your head fall back as you brace your palms on the wood behind you. Your fingertips dig into the surface and he settles into an easy rhythm, slipping his arms under your thighs and tugging you tight to his face.

He’s not shy with his voice, either, grunting and sighing into your pussy with every stroke of his tongue. The noises double your pleasure almost immediately, coupled with the obscene slurps that vibrate all the way up your spine.

It doesn’t take long at all for him to find that tender little spot, the perfect direction from which to swirl his tongue against your clit. It’s obvious in the way your legs go tight around the sides of his head, the way you shiver and cry and clap a hand to the back of his head.

He grunts hard into your body when your fingers rake through his hair, harder still when your tense thighs press the narrow points of your heels into the flesh of his back.

“Katsu,” you whimper, already fucked out and tender like you’ve never been for him, “I’m gonna cum. Fucking shit, I-I’m gonna…”

He takes your warning like a hit, leaning more fiercely into you, keeping his rhythm with intense precision. Later, you’ll try not to think about why he’s so good at this. But right now, all you can think about is the way your pleasure rears up and crashes over you, sending loud gasps and breathy mewls of ecstasy from your chest as you squeeze his head and pull his hair and roll your hips shakily into his persistent mouth.

“Jesus Christ,” he snarls, sitting back on his haunches and swiping a palm over his flushed lips. He looks up at you, rubbing your thigh with one free hand as you come down panting from your ecstatic high. Between his legs, his cock juts obscenely down one thigh of his suit pants, and he palms himself shamelessly as he gets to his feet, taking in every inch of your pleasure-soaked self.

“You’re gonna make me cream my fuckin’ pants someday,” he chides, fumbling with his belt and impatiently shucking his pants. His undershorts follow closely, and you’re barely on your feet again before he takes you by the shoulders and turns your back to him.

“C’mere.” He slides a hand under one of your thighs, hitching it gently onto the edge of your desk and coming up tightly behind you. The brush of his knuckle against your ass proves that he’s stroking himself, and the tip of his stiff cock leaves a little print of wet precum on the back of your leg.

“Please,” you moan, still hazy and shaken from your first orgasm. Still endlessly needy, though, when Katsuki’s involved. “God, baby, just fuck me already.”

“Fuckin’ hell, you can’t say shit like that,” he groans, twitching behind you. “It’s like you don’t know how fuckin’ sexy you are.”

He braces a hand on your bare hip and then you feel it, the tip of his drooling cock pressing up between your slippery folds. It’s enough to make you whine and arch your back, wiggling your hips impatiently against his.

It’s enough to make Katsuki lose it.

“Shit,” he growls, gripping the fat of your hip and pushing forward, sliding home with one smooth thrust. He bottoms out inside you right away, buried perfectly in your belly and making you feel every inch.

“Baby—” you start to breathe, but he doesn’t waste time. Katsuki reaches around and lays his palm flat on your sternum, pulling you back against him. He keeps his other hand braced on your hip for leverage, dropping his mouth to the crook of your shoulder while he starts to thrust.

All you can do is keep your knee planted on the edge of your desk and try not to scream as he fucks you in steady, long thrusts, lapping and sucking all along the side of your neck while his hand roams over your chest and thumbs your nipple. Whatever hairstyle you’d left the house with has come long undone by now and you’re sure that if your makeup wasn’t smudged before, it’s certainly not going to survive the drool and sweat and heat that he’s forcing through you with every push of his hips.

The slap of his body against yours fills the space, punctuated only by your harsh pants and quiet whines of pleasure. Katsuki’s fingers dig harshly into your hip, gripping you tighter each time he anchors himself back into your fluttering cunt. Your walls are clamping ruthlessly around him, but he doesn’t miss a beat, slipping that free palm away from your nipples and down your belly to strum rhythmically at the swell of your stiff clit.

“I love you,” he grunts breathlessly behind you, and the raw truth behind it brings a rush of warmth to your chest you can’t ignore. You turn your head sharply towards him, pushing your forehead to his and feeling every beat as his breathing becomes laboured.

His body’s growing tight behind yours, his thrusts losing some of their impeccable rhythm as his brow knits against yours. He’s concentrating hard—holding back, you realize—and you reach down to cover his hand that braces your hip, giving it a relenting squeeze.

“Baby,” you plead. “Let go for me, baby, I can feel it.”

“God,” he mutters. “No—fuck, gonna make you—with me, sweetness.” Your body is clenching in preparation for your own climax already, and the fact that he can even pick up on it shouldn’t surprise you.

“I’m there,” you promise. “I’m there, Katsuki, fuck, just cum for me. Please.”

His arms tighten around you, seizing you hard against his heaving chest. You lean forward and seal your mouth against his, kissing him as he loses control and cums with a shout that echoes at the back of your throat.

He grabs your ass in one hand and fucks madly into you, spurting warm handfuls of cum into your belly and biting down hard on your lower lip. The erratic twitch of his fingers on your still-aching clit and the warm release inside you is enough to bring you to another tight, simpering little peak—not as powerful as the first one, but just as significant.

He stays behind you for a long moment, pinning you to the desk while he goes soft inside you. Finally he peppers kisses down the back of one shoulder and steps away from you, already smoothing his hair and taking in the image of you, in nothing but your heels, dripping with his cum.

The first of many, you let yourself hope, as you turn to carefully face him.

“I guess we missed the countdown,” you quip, reaching for your discarded panties. Navigating the strappy thing seems a great deal more complicated now that it’s not Katsuki tearing them off you.

He smirks at you in a way that does not make it easier to concentrate on the task at hand. Especially since he’s watching you struggle, easily buttoning himself into his now-creased shirt.

“I didn’t miss a thing.”

He’s already half-clothed by the time you get your underwear on again, stooping to collect your delicate dress from the floor and thumbing the sequins that pepper its surface. His smirk has dissolved into another pensive look as he examines the cloth.

“If I’d known,” he tells you, pressing the scratchy fabric into your hands, “I never would’ve—”

You lean up and push your mouth to his, soft and loving and just enough to silence him.

“I know.”

Once Katsuki’s got the rest of his clothes on, he helps you carefully into your dress and gets behind you one more time to help you zip it. He can’t stop kissing you even for a minute, peppering his lips over your back, neck, arms. He turns you around and takes your hands, kissing the backs of each palm with devotion that, if you stop and think about it, you’ve seen in his eyes a thousand times before.

“You’ll make it up to me,” you promise good naturedly, letting him slide his arms around your waist. He looks at you again, diligent and honest.

“I will.”

“Good.”

You slide your hands up his sleeves of heart-stealing midnight blue, smiling so big it ought to hurt. You tilt your head toward the door, giving your chin a little jerk as you squeeze his biceps through the pressed wool.

“For a start,” you say, daring to lean a little closer while he’s still feeling tender, “how about another dance?”

#bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugou katsuki #bnha x reader #bakugo katsuki #bakugo #my hero academia #bakugou #bnha #bnha bakugou #bnha bakugo #it's new years eeeeeeve and i am not #spending it with him #sigh #;.;

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scapegrace74-blog · 3 years

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New Ways of Turning Into Stone, Chapter 7

A/N For anyone waiting patiently for this chapter, I apologize. Somewhere in the midst of writing this story, I fell out of love with it, making it very hard to find the inspiration to finish. I’m too stubborn to abandon it, though, so here is the final chapter. The good news is the angst fest is over, for the most part. Slight reference to child trafficking in the past. Thanks to everyone who read and interacted with this story! This final chapter is entitled A Dragonfly in Amber.

The whole story can be found on my A03 page.

Eighteen Months Later

The breeze off the firth was picking up, and Claire wished she’d grabbed a jumper before leaving her flat. She spent a lot of time these days looking back at the million decisions that made up a life, aware of their path as though they were footprints visible to the eye. Where once missteps would have inspired judgement or shame, she could now chart their passage with a certain measure of peace.

A rare free Thursday brought her to a seasonal market in what was otherwise a car park overlooking Edinburgh Castle. With no specific objective in mind, she wandered the stalls of fresh produce and locally made crafts, meandering but purposeful. A jar of raw honey and a half-dozen blueberry scones made their way into her tote bag before she stopped at a store selling beautifully woven woolen goods, thinking that she could perhaps invest in a shawl.

Lifting the various offerings from where they were displayed, something caught her eye. Beneath the many-patterned pile of wool stood a beautiful wooden chest, its heft and patina speaking of its craftsmanship. It had been painted in a rusted umber, the shape of a dragonfly elegantly carved into its solid lid.

“Tis lovely, is it no’?” a soft lilt startled her from her trance.

“Yes, very. Is it for sale?” She had no idea why she’d asked. Her flat was crowded enough as it was and frivolous purchases no longer within her budget.

“Alas, no. Twas an anniversary gift from my man.” Perhaps seeing the disappointment register on her face, the woman added, “I can give ye the card o’ the man who made it, at least. Ye’re no’ the first tae have admired his work.”

Claire’s hands shook slightly as the shopkeeper sought out the card, an eerie sense of premonition settling over her. Sure enough, the familiar names leapt into relief as she accepted the woman’s offering:

Lallybroch Furniture Design

James Fraser, Proprietor

***

The afternoon and evening passed in a blur of obligations and routine. It was only as she settled into the peace of her own bedroom that Claire allowed her thoughts to return to the business card tucked safely into her wallet.

She’d known Jamie was still in the city. While she’d resisted the urge to seek him out a thousand times, she couldn’t stop herself from searching his name on the Internet. A harmless indulgence, she rationalized, and one that assured her that he was well, his business going from strength to strength. Despite the capitol’s tight-knit community, however, their paths had never crossed. Until now.

Was it a sign? Long Ago Claire paid no heed to such foolishness, but that was before a chance encounter spun her life one hundred and eighty degrees, sending her down a brand new path. Now she accepted these memos from the universe with humility. Tomorrow, she would go looking for Jamie Fraser.

***

Jamie heard the jingle of the bells above the door, even over the mechanical whirr of his sander. Unbending and blowing a sweaty curl off his forehead, he admired the intricate scrollwork of the custom hutch that was his latest commission. It still amazed him to watch his visions take shape before his eyes. If life hadn’t slapped him hard across the face, knocking him far off course, he might have spent the rest of his days unaware of the gift that resided between his hands.

“Took ye long enough, Geordie,” he called out to the footsteps approaching from the door. “Where’d ye go fer the varnish, Glasgow?”

There was a pause, and an eerie sense of premonition settled over him. Today was going to be the day.

“It’s not Geordie, it’s me. Claire.” He’d thought of her voice each day for the past eighteen months, and yet he hadn’t been able to summon its exact timbre: sonorous, precise, with a smoky finish like well-aged whisky.

“Claire,” he replied to the universe, summoning her by name before he even turned around.

Sawdust motes danced in a sunbeam descending from a clerestory window, illuminating the mahogany in her curls. She was everything he remembered, and so much more. The nacre of her skin, now dusted with cinnamon freckles. The topaz of her eyes less fierce, more open, and overwhelmingly anxious. The tight line of her jaw was less defined, her once whippet-thin figure filled out into plush curves. Overall the impression was one of softness, of willing vulnerability.

“The door was open,” she explained needlessly, her eyes drinking him in hungrily. He wondered what changes she read on his surface.

“It’s... uhhh...” his voice wobbled painfully, “it’s good tae see ye, Sassenach. How have ye been?”

He hadn’t trusted himself to seek her out since Maggie’s death, understanding that they both needed time to heal. It didn’t stop him from zeroing in on every glimpse of brown curls, nor from reading wedding announcements with an invisible fist gripping his throat. If it was meant to be, he counselled himself, they would find one another when the time was right. And now she was here, standing in his workshop and more lovely than his zealous imaginings.

“Good,” she replied, eyes meeting and then sheering away from his gaze. “Really good. Busy.” She was gripping the strap of her handbag like a parachute cord, and he couldn’t help glancing at her left hand, selfishly relieved to note it was still bare.

“I, ummm, I saw one of your pieces. At the market yesterday. Not for sale, of course. The woman offered me your card, so I thought, you know, that I might... You’re really very talented, Jamie,” she prattled nervously.

He blushed, delighted by her praise. “I thank ye, Claire.” To taste her name in his mouth, so long forbidden, was intoxicating. He would never tire of saying it.

“And yer work? Tis Friday. Are ye taking a well-deserved day off?”

“Oh, no. I’m not practicing anymore, Jamie.”

He froze, horrified. Of all the scenarios he’d played out in his mind, he’d never imagined her anything but a doctor. It was too much a part of who she was. A familiar sense of oppressive responsibility crept over him. If he’d somehow caused this to happen...

“Sassenach, no...” he whispered.

To his utter confusion, she laughed, merry and bright as the bells that had announced her return to his life.

“It’s alright, truly. I, well, a lot has changed since last year,” she explained, a glimmer of something coy transforming her face. His wame sunk into his feet.

“Ye’ve met someone.” A statement of fact. Punishment for wishing for something that wasn’t meant to be.

Her spritely laugh rang out again, increasing his pain. He felt the old, habitual hardening around his heart, and fought to keep his breath steady. No matter how much it hurt, he owed it to Claire to listen to her joy.

“In a manner of speaking. His name is Fergus, and he’s eight years old.”

Startled, he stared into her upturned face, trying to read the truth in her features. A hand, delicate but strong, took his own. He held onto it like a lifeline as she told her unlikely tale.

Shortly after their last meeting, Claire had been walking through Grassmarket when she’d been jostled by a running figure. It was only upon righting herself that she realized she was without her phone. Giving chase, she eventually cornered the thief down a blind alley, only to realize that it was a young boy, unkempt and malnourished.

Rather than turn the pickpocket in, Claire had negotiated an exchange: her phone for a four-course meal and the story of how a boy of his age, with a heavy French accent no less, had come to live on the streets of Edinburgh.

“He was trafficked, Jamie. A group in Paris were keeping him and other orphans in a brothel. When they came to transport them, Fergus escaped. He hid in a lorry, and this is where it brought him. He had no coat, no money, hardly any English, but he’d been surviving on his wits for six weeks before I found him. I can’t bear to think what might have happened to him had we not crossed paths that winter’s day.”

“Christ,” he swore, thinking of his own nephew, and what he wouldn’t give to protect the lad’s innocence.

Claire went on to describe the painstaking process of reporting Fergus, whose real name was Claudel, to the authorities without allowing him to be deported back to France and into the waiting hands of the very people he had escaped.

“There was no formal steps to follow, no real resources I could rely on. I ended up filing for adoption, because it was the only way to keep him safe. In the beginning, he needed all my attention. He had no formal schooling and had to learn English in a hurry. He suffered from terrible nightmares. I transferred all my patients, shut down the office, but I assumed it was only temporary, until he felt more secure and could go to school with other kids his age. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Fergus isn’t the only trafficked child in Scotland. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do whatever I could to protect every one of them. So I quit. I’d made some contacts at ECPAT in London, trying to sort out the mess with Fergus’ immigration paperwork. I called them up and offered my services on a part-time basis. A former pediatrician with experience in grief counselling. They couldn’t accept fast enough. So now, when I’m not busy being Fergus’ mom, I’m the executive director of ECPAT here in Scotland.”

“Christ,” he repeated. “Sassenach, I’m... God, ye’re an amazing woman.”

It was her turn to blush, glancing down to notice that their hands were still clasped, fingers woven together like thirsty roots. They were standing toe to toe, breathing in harmony. Jamie smelled of pine, a sharp sweetness that seemed to cling to his body. She dared a look upwards and found his gaze locked on her mouth. Oceans stormed in the depths of his eyes.

“You’ve got a little...” she reached for his jaw, “...a little something, right here...” Before she could dislodge the fleck of sawdust trapped in his auburn stubble, Jamie’s whole body surged forward, their noses practically bumping.

“Sassenach...” he beseeched.

“Yes?” Wispy, fluttering wings of hope surrounded her.

“I’ve bided as long as I can. May I please, for the love of all tha’s holy, finally kiss ye?”

A tiny nod, a murmured assent, then their lips took up the conversation that had begun so many months before. There, in a dusty workshop at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning, the last obstacle that stood between them came crashing to the ground. In its place came warmth and certainty, a candleflame of cherished possibility.

#my writing #outlander

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goggles-mcgee · 3 years

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Too Late: Nadja & Alec (Commission for miner249er)

Second chapter of @miner249er ‘s commission!

Chapter Summary: The TVi News Special with hosts Nadja Chamack and Alec Cataldi

Previous Work

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“Don’t be bemused, it's just the news! I’m Nadja Chamack and I am joined today with Alec Cataldi. Today’s hour special brought to you by this studio is ‘The Protector Really Paris’s Protector?’ This has been a hot debate amongst blogs, forums, and many more platforms. We bring you not only the public opinion but never before seen footage of the Protector.” Nadja gave her standard intro and she tried to put as much energy in it as she could but as soon as the words left her mouth she felt sick. If the words had tastes they would have been ash. She knew her studio wasn’t the best, her akumatization was a shining example of that, but her studio teaming up with Alec Cataldi? That was bad news waiting to happen. They sprung this whole ‘special’ on her only hours before so Nadja hadn’t even been able to warn Sabine and Tom about it.

Ever since she was a little girl Nadja knew she wanted to be on TV. At first she thought she wanted to be an actor, she never thought she would become a reporter but when she did she fell in love with it. Following a story and being the one to let everyone know about it, it was a rush she sought for years. Then she had Manon, she still chased stories but she liked to think she had toned down the recklessness people told her she had before, but then Ladybug and Chat Noir showed up and her bosses demanded more of her. More shots of their fights, more close-ups of akumas, interviews with akumas, interviews with the victims, interviews with the heroes, the workload just got steeper and steeper. Of course Nadja was grateful for her city’s heroes, more than anything, Hawkmoth wasn’t just some silly villain like many thought, like her studio thought, he was a terrorist plain and simple and he had covered Paris in a blanket of fear.

Then one day he was gone, along with his accomplice Mayura, but with them was the disappearance of a girl that Nadja cared for deeply. Marinette Dupain-Cheng, she had met the girl when she was a tiny little thing, a little younger than Manon when Nadja had first visited Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie Patisserie. Nadja had been just starting out at her studio at that time and she had just gotten through her first broadcast so she thought why not buy herself a little reward? A producer at the studio had actually been the one to suggest Tom & Sabine’s, she had been raving about their cakes and tarts so Nadja decided to see if they really were worth all the hype. No surprise here that they really were. What really made that day memorable besides the tasty treats was the little girl who came up to her and held out a hand to her shyly, she had never been great with kids but she did the only thing she could think of and put her hand out.

That was when she had gotten her first ‘Marinette Original’ as her parents had taken to calling her creations. It was a little hair clip with a bow on it, the bow was clearly taped onto the clip but it was precious all the same. She fondly remembered Sabine lightheartedly scolding her daughter for just making someone take something from her instead of asking if they wanted it but it was obvious the little girl didn’t fully understand. Nadja had laughed and laughed and had thanked the girl, she still had that clip, but now she had to keep it in a safe due to thieves who called themselves “modest collectors.” It pained her to see people forget the name Marinette Dupain-Cheng and only remember her as Paris’s last akuma, the Protector. It was hard enough trying to explain to Manon why mommy had to talk about Marinette on the news so much, it was harder to lie to her about when or if Marinette would come back.

Manon had taken to writing letters for Marinette to ask her to come back because she missed her. Nadja had to call into work that day, in the early hours of the morning, Manon had awoken from a nightmare and had been crying. Nadja had gone into her daughter’s room to console her when Manon caught her off guard by asking if the reason Marinette wasn’t coming back was because Manon had been bad the last time Marinette had babysat her. It had taken a long time to convince Manon that that wasn’t the case, and when Nadja got a moment alone she let herself cry and pray to anyone listening to bring Marinette back home to them.

“What do you think Nadja?” Alec’s voice ripped Nadja from her memories abruptly.

“Well-,” She started keeping her face calm though inside she was stressing, she hadn’t been paying attention to what Alec had been discussing.

“If you ask me those kids are as bad as Hawkmoth was! The talk about what happened in that classroom is all the evidence I need.” Oh so he was talking about Marinette’s classroom, or as they have been dubbed, The Akuma Class.

“That’s not evidence Alec, and you should know since you host one of the most watched shows on television, Alternative Truth.”

“That’s right Nadja! Where everything isn’t always true, but nothing is really false! But really, what is your opinion on the akuma class being the reason behind the akuma The Protector?” Alec asked as he turned to face Nadja, though not fully so the cameras would still get a good shot of him. “Many have said they were at school that day and the Protector was there to speak her truth!”

“I...I know I don’t speak for every akumatized person out there Alec, but I do know someone can be akumatized for anything. If the rumors of what went on in that class, in that school are true, then it’s no wonder Mlle Dupain-Cheng was akumatized. I don’t know if anyone would have been able to withstand that treatment.” That was the answer she settled on, she didn’t want to feed any fires and she certainly didn’t want her studio to know she knew what happened in the classroom since Sabine told her everything. Nadja swore she would do her best to keep it off-air, this was her best she reasoned to herself even if she didn’t believe it.

“Too true Nadja! I mean we’ve all seen how many times M Pidgeon got akumatized, or even Gigantitan. A literal baby. One has to wonder how sane Hawkmoth really was, which leads me to a juicy rumor! That our own resident hermit fashion designer Gabriel Agreste was the one and only Hawkmoth.” Alec announced with his usual flair and Nadja, not for the first time by any means, had to wonder how he didn’t get sued, or if he did how he never was scared of the possibility.

“That is quite the rumor Alec. Is there any legs for it to stand on?” She asked per her vague instructions given by the studio's director.

“Glad you asked Nadja! We have a video of The Protector going into the Agreste Mansion and after a period of time, leaving. Now we don’t know what happened inside but hours later we had you and your team there at the mansion along with other news stations when M Agreste and his assistant Mlle Nathalie Sancoeur were brought out of the mansion on stretchers. Then not long after, in your words,’ a dazed Mme Agreste was spotted coming out of the house.’ That was after the police search!” Nadja had to hand it to Alec, he sure knew how to run his mouth.

“I do remember that day. But how is that connected to Hawkmoth?” Now she was genuinely curious about what he was insinuating.

“Think about it Nadja, why would the Protector, an akuma who proclaimed to protect the innocent, go into the Agreste Mansion. Then later it is found that M Agreste and his assistant just so happened to be “attacked.” From the footage we have of the two on stretchers, they were in bad shape and the only one who visited them was the Protector! After that we haven’t heard from Hawkmoth or Mayura. Plus the Protector promised she would get rid of Hawkmoth for the people of Paris.”

“So you don’t believe it was just a random attack that happened at the same time that an akuma was loose in Paris?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that there are a lot of big coincidences. And I’m not saying definitively that Gabriel Agreste was Hawkmoth, but the rumors do make a compelling case! He had the time to himself to akumatize anyone he pleased, he had a partner, if we are inferring that Mlle Sancoeur was Mayura, and he had a motive. But again this is all speculation.”

“Speculation. Right.” Nadja could feel a familiar sense of dread in her stomach, in her chest, in her throat as she got ready to segway into her part of the special. Her and Alec would continue to go back and forth on their subjects but Nadja had been wary since they started. “Speaking of possible secret identities, recent evidence has shown us that...that may just confirm the popular rumor and theory that Marinette Dupain-Cheng, The Protector, was actually our one and only Ladybug.”

Nadja hadn’t wanted to believe it, that Marinette was Ladybug, not because she couldn’t see the girl as their hero, but because it made too much sense and that scared her. It scared her because it meant they had all placed their lives in the hands of a teenager, they had placed a responsibility that only adults should have to handle, on a child. They took a normal childhood away from her, or as normal as it could be with a villain who preyed upon emotions but the point still stood. It was weird, before Marinette had disappeared, if Nadja had seen a picture of her and Ladybug next to each other she would have said they were obviously different people, but now it was like a slap to the face because of how obviously Marinette was Ladybug and vice versa.

“Now, I know that it is a lot to process,” I’m still processing it, “but let’s go over the evidence and as promised viewers video footage of The Protector in action. This footage was donated to us by an anonymous source who had happened upon The Protector out in the open when she was akumatized. I want to warn everybody, the footage may be shocking to some viewers. Roll the clip please.” Nadja felt like the words shot out of her mouth before she could even think about them but she knew she was supposed to say them so why did they leave such a foul taste in her mouth? She couldn’t even force herself to watch the video a second time, her and Alec had to review every video or post they were going to show on the broadcast and she had barely kept it together then. Now? She felt like she was being held together by cheap scotch tape.

Even if she wasn’t watching the video she could still hear Marinette’s cries, her sobs, she lost the fight as she had a tear fall. She did her best to be discrete as she brought her handkerchief up to blot the tear away but that was a mistake. There on the edge of the handkerchief was Marinette’s signature, she forgot that she had been given it when Manon was born. It was a present from Marinette, the girl had joked it would be a help for all the tears she was crying because she had actually given birth and actually made a tiny human being. The same tiny human being who was distraught that not only was her favorite babysitter gone but Ladybug who she adored. That only caused more tears.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding Nadja...Nadja are you okay?” Alec asked, it was actually the first time she had ever heard or seen him care about anyone else other than himself and she didn’t even know if it was genuine or just for the cameras but it still got to her.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She stammered as she wiped her tears before giving the camera a practiced smile. “Now before we discuss everything in that video I will say we do have many more to share so stay tuned Paris!”

As soon as she was given the sign that they were on commercial Nadja couldn’t hold it in anymore, she let herself cry. She had tried to be so strong for Manon, for Sabine and Tom, but it was too much. She was vaguely aware of someone talking to her and pressing a box of tissues into her hands but what snapped her out was her boss’s voice. “Snap out of it Mlle Chamack we have a show to do.”

“Snap out of it?” She asked hollowly, out of her peripheral vision she could see Alec glancing between her and her boss before wiping his hands on his legs and pulling out his phone. “You sprung this on me. You knew I had connections to Marinette and her parents. That’s her name you know? Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She’s not just another akuma, hell she’s not Paris’s last akuma like you have named her! She is a teenager, a little girl! A little girl with a mother and a father who are probably sitting at home watching this wondering why their baby has to be seen like this!”

“The Protector is a public figure, Nadja.” Her boss lamely responded back.

“And what? That makes it right? I have worked here for a long time, I had been pressured to work harder, get the stories, get the results and I did. Never have I felt such shame. I love my job but you make me hate it. She’s a child for crying out loud! Do you not realize that? Ladybug was a child! And all you’re worried about is the story!” Nadja knew she must have sounded hysterical but it was so hard to reign in her emotions once she got started. She knew it wasn’t a rare occurrence nowadays but she hated feeling out of control. “She babysat my daughter, my daughter has been asking me everyday when Marinette, when Ladybug, will come back and I don’t have an answer. But she thinks I do because of how much I report on everything!”

“Nadja...I’m sorry. I didn’t think,” her boss began.

“No you didn’t. And you haven’t. But for once in your life think now. I can’t get through this the way you want me to. I know her, I know her parents and this is probably breaking them. So if you want me to continue reporting, let me do it my way. Or I swear I will take those job offers I have been getting recently and I won’t look back.” Nadja’s voice felt a little hoarse but she didn’t care.

No one spoke for awhile until an intern shakily told them that they would be back on-air soon. Then everything was back in motion. Alec hastily took a drink of his water while Nadja’s makeup artist came out to do touchups, she was very gentle, almost hesitant. Even though everyone was doing their best to relieve the tension in the room, Nadja’s gaze from her boss did not waver, not even for a second, even as he ran a hand over his face. There were murmurs going on, probably about the spectacle she created but she really couldn’t care less.

“...Okay Nadja...You do this how you want to. For what it’s worth, I am sorry.” He finally said.

“I appreciate that.” She breathed out. “When we report on her, please just...say her name. She isn’t the Protector, she isn’t just Ladybug, she’s Marinette Dupain-Cheng and she is still missing. Yes, she was Paris’s last akuma but that’s not all she was. Yes she was Ladybug. Our hero who did everything to keep us safe, even when she was akumatized. She is also a daughter, a granddaughter, a friend. Not an icon. Not a celebrity. So for the love of God have some empathy. Yes we are reporters but we are more than that as well.”

Again it was quite but then there was a chorus of murmured agreements, even from her boss and Alec. She gave a firm nod at everyone as she took a deep breath to steady herself for when the cameras would be turned back to them once more. This time though she would get to talk about Marinette as more than what every other news station, magazine, newspaper, and blog had been painting her out to be. Her and Alec would still do their parts, they would still talk about what they were assigned but Nadja was determined to put more humanity into the special.

“I’m sorry Nadja. I have never thought about it the way you have. I guess I was always in the mindset of the akuma being separate? If that makes any sense?” Alec admitted.

Nadja gave him a sad smile and patted his hand. “It’s okay Alec. I understand...when I was Prime Queen...I didn’t want to believe it was me. For a long time I refused to believe it was me, but it was. The akumas are people and I think it’s time we start acting like it.”

“Yeah...yeah I think you’re right.” Alec mumbled. Nadja wasn’t sure if her words truly did anything, everyone in the TVi studio knew how Alec was, but maybe now that Hawkmoth was gone, maybe everyone could move on and grow.

Nadja turned to face the cameras when the cameraman waved to get their attention and started his countdown, when she knew the cameras were on Nadja gave them the most sincere smile she could. “Welcome back everyone, Nadja Chamack here with Alec Cataldi as we continue our special, ‘The Protector Really Paris’s Protector?’ Before we continue on I would like to start off with I lied before when I said I was fine before the commercial break. I knew Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the one you all like to refer as her akuma name, before I continue on with the rest of my report I would like to tell you about her.”

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diamaker-moon · 3 years

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Moving Forward - Chapter 5

Chapter Five

First stake-out...

—————

She observes the young boy and hummed. She instructed Adrien to try and look around thinking that it might've been misplaced.

'I have a bad feeling about this. It's already bad that it's missing, but if my theory is right that it is in Ladybug's possession, we might be at a disadvantage.'

— previous chapter... —

Marinette was nervous. She doesn't know if she can pull it off.

She was currently crouching on a roof near the Agreste Mansion, waiting for any signal from the kwamis. She was already feeling a strain in her body due to wearing multiple miraculouses at once.

She was wearing the ladybug earrings, black cat ring, fox necklace, horse glasses, mouse pendant necklace. There was a slight change in the plan. She decided to do a stakeout in the middle of the night, that is why she also had a flashlight in hand.

If there are no open windows or any entrance to the atelier straight from the outside, she'll just create a portal. She was currently transformed as Multimouse. While the four kwamis searched around the mansion. After waiting a few minutes the four kwamis came back.

"Sorry bug, but all the windows are closed. And it can't be opened." Plagg said.

"But, the atelier is empty, Natalie is already sleeping and Gabriel as well. Their bedrooms are a bit far from the room." Tikki said.

Marinette thought about it. "Hey, Trixx. You think your illusions, can affect the security cameras inside the room if there is any?"

"Sure Kit. My powers are meant to be useful to you!" Trixx said.

Marinette nodded. She will need to divide into two, one to unify with Trixx for the illusion and another for Kaalki's teleportations.

"I hope this can work..." She mumbled before preparing to activate the mouse's special power.

"Multitude!" She activated the power and waited. She felt a slight change in her when she opened her eyes a copy of her is staring at her. She handed her the glasses.

"Mullo, Kaalki, unify!"

The gray, pink and black bodysuit was changed. The pink accents of her bodysuit were changed into a dark brown colour, while her mask was removed and the glasses act as her mask. Her ribbons in her Odango-style twin buns were changed from pink to dark brown. A horseshoe attached to the back.

"Mullo, Trixx, unify!"

He bodysuit turned into Multifox's look, all the pink accents on Multimouse become orange, and she has a white section on her chest similar as a result of the Fox miraculous influence. The pink section of her mask also becomes orange.

Multifox looked in the direction of the mansion, before grabbing the flute from her back and playing a song to activate the power. As short 'Mirage' and the illusions are up. The cameras will only see an empty room, and if the doors are opened they will see a dark empty room.

Multifox nodded to Multimare to open a portal.

"Voyage!"

She activated the power then a portal opened. They went through it to appear in the middle of the dark empty room.

"Mullo, Kaalki, divide." Multimare mumbled, releasing the Horse kwami. Multifox handed a small pouch that has food for the kwamis.

Multimouse is on guard duty, she needs to be on alert, while Multifox, Plagg and Tikki walk up to Mme Agreste's painting. Multifox pulls the painting to reveal a safe behind. She looked at Tikki who nodded before phasing through. Multifox flicked her flashlight 'on' once the safe's door opened.

She saw a picture of Mme Agreste, a book about Tibet, a ticket to Tibet, rolled-up pieces of old paper, and a shiny brooch, that is shaped like a peacock. The brooch has five segments. Its main colour is pale, light grayish blue-violet, while the crystals on the top of each segment are pink. The lower part has a silhouette body of a peacock as a single teardrop.

She had her jaw opened. Hawkmoth just leaves it here?! Wow... What a great keeper. She grabbed the brooch and clutched it in her left hand. Before grabbing the book about Tibet which only has words about their trip and nothing important.

She placed the book back, closed the safe then returned the painting back to normal. She then nodded to Multimouse, who immediately transformed back to Multimare, and opened a portal straight to her bedroom inside the dorm.

Kaalki was divided and handed a sugar cube to eat, before Multimouse and Multifox fused, leaving only Multifox.

"Mullo, divide."

Leaving her in a fox suit. She removed the illusion in M. Agreste's atelier before finally detransforming.

"Trixx, let's rest."

Finally leaving her in her pink athletic leggings and a cropped black shirt. She was still clutching the peacock miraculous in her left hand. She made sure she didn't leave anything. She had the pouch and the flashlight on the floor after getting dropped when Multimouse and Multifox fused back together.

She sat down on her desk chair with the disguised miracle box opened on the side of the table. The other kwamis flew towards her, while She was inspecting the miraculous.

"Tikki, I thought the Peacock Miraculous was broken?" Marinette asked while still inspecting the miraculous.

"Maybe Hawkmoth fixed it? He did have the Master Fu's tablet for a while..." Tikki reasoned out.

Since she basically stole the miraculous from Hawkmoth. She couldn't believe what was happening. One moment, she was alone fighting a magical terrorist that has two miraculouses that transforms themselves as Shadowmoth. Then suddenly, here she was, it was supposedly a stake-out only! Not a stealing stake-out! But... finders keeper, losers weepers!

Marinette sighed before attaching the brooch to her shirt and hoped for the best. the brooch changed into its new camouflage design, it was now rose gold in colour, from the five feather segments when it is charged to eight with pale pink crystals on the top of each segment, there was no design in the middle, leaving the brooch in a simple yet elegant look.

A dark blue ball of light popped out and swirled around her, after the light vanished a peacock-looking kwami appeared.

"Oooh! Hello! Huh?! Why do you have the other kwamis?! Who are you?!"

Some of the kwamis laughed at the new kwami's energetic personality, while Tikki and especially Plagg grumbled about how to keep the kwami in one place.

"Hello, Duusu," Marinette said then smiled at the confused kwami.

"I'm your Guardian, I have retrieved you from Shadowmoth's possession. I am sorry that I didn't get to retrieve Nooroo as well..." Marinette continued.

The peacock kwami gasped before nuzzling on the Guardian's cheek.

"Thank you! Oh if you could've seen him, his outfit was hideous! Poor, Nooroo! Please Guardian, save him as well!" Duusu exclaimed.

Marinette smiled, she removed the brooch to put it back in the Miracle Box. Duusu didn't get sucked into it since she had no intention to relinquish him, after placing it inside the designated area of the peacock miraculously, she opened the middle circle for the kwami once they want to return in the parallel universe inside the miracle box. She let the other kwamis talk to him, while she handles civilian duties.

She opened her website on her computer and replied to a few emails before responding to requested commissions.

Clara Nightingale is commissioning her for a set of four dresses that will be used for her brand new music video, that had a theme of stars, constellations, space etc.

It was a weird concept for her but decided to accept it, thinking it could be a challenge for her. She wrote a reply email then sent it to Clara before closing her computer and climbing up to her bed.

"I'm going to sleep, be careful okay? There's food in the other mini fridge for everyone, since someone's food is influencing the other's food." She said while giving a pointed stare at Plagg who had the audacity to look innocently at the young guardian.

"Goodnight, guys!" Marinette said in between her yawns.

A series of 'goodnights' was heard before Marinette finally drifted to sleep.

—————

"Is she asleep?"

"Yes, it's quite rare for her to catch sleep lately, I'm glad that this new change is giving her quite a good impact." Tikki said.

It was currently hard for Tikki's chosen. A Ladybug Miraculous holders are usually the leaders. Those personalities are needed to become a ladybug since they are the only ones who can purify an Akuma, cast a purifying spell, and with Tikki's creations of Lucky Charms, they needed to be a tactician and are aware of responsibilities.

She was proud of Marinette. Such a young child has a strong devotion to protecting the city while risking her life, but now the stakes are high for her. Hawkmoth is aware that the Ladybug heroine is the current Guardian of the Chinese Miracle Box.

If he manages to overthrow Ladybug he can gain access to the box, and the fact that her bug needed to repress her negative emotions down into the deepest voids of her soul after being targeted by countless akumas.

Tikki knew it was taking a toll on the young aspiring designer.

Being a superheroine that needs to battle akumas whenever and wherever is already hard enough. She needed excuses for her various disappearance every time there's an Akuma.

Having an emotional battle of trust and faiths between her and her former classmates, ever since the Liar appeared. It took everything in Tikki to not pop out of the designer's purse and chew the vixen herself.

Her series of achievements through various commissions by famous peoples in society.

And finally, this Guardianship that was handed to her during an unfortunate event. She lost her temporary heroes since their identities were exposed to Hawkmoth, the loss of her Mentor— Master Fu, and now the loss of her partner.

Tikki and even the other kwamis are curious about how she was still standing straight even though she was carrying a lot of responsibilities on her shoulders. The fate of Paris, France, the fate of the world, and the fate of everyone's reality by preventing Hawkmoth from achieving his goal, that can have a massive impact on reality due to how powerful miraculouses are.

"I am proud of your chosen, Tikki."

Wayzz said in a calm voice. "She took in the responsibility of being a heroine exchange for her time in her civilian life, and now, she chose to carry the heavy responsibility of a Guardian even though she can refuse it and pass it to someone else, leaving everything behind."

The other kwamis nodded at the wise turtle kwami's words. Tikki looked at them and smiled.

"I'm proud of my bug. She's a worthy ladybug and had shown how worthy she is despite her flaws. She made mistakes, but she chose to fix them. And now she's healing from the toxicity she had received in that place. Sleep well, Marinette..."

Chapter 4 — Moving Forward: Masterlist — Chapter 6

#miraculousladybug #marinette dupain-cheng #movingforward #AO3

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shewhowillnotbenamed1 · 3 years

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I wanted to get this ‘Valentine’s Day’ piece out, even though it’s massively, supremely late. 😭It’s part of a longer piece (because I couldn’t stop writing it😶) and I’m still not sure whether or not it’s not terrible.😖

prompt list

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This couldn't be right.

Damian almost did a double take, his cool smirk withering when he glanced up, transfixed by the sleek storefront at the cross streets where he stood. Why on earth would Raven be in a place like this?

The building towered above the tottering sea of gray, black and blue below. And the mannequins in the display lorded over their dominion, propped loftily on their perches, arms and legs of impractical proportions, stilted at absurd angles.

And why would she summon him here?

His trousers began to buzz audibly and the shifting crowd of passersby jostled him closer to the glass. Damian delivered the faceless caricatures of the female form a final foreboding glare, before he reached down to free the device vibrating in his pocket. New Message. Raven. Apparently, it was urgent. He tapped the speech bubble icon with a fingertip and his jaw went slack.

I Need You.

The three words seemed etched into the surface of the screen. And they were more than enough to get him to take a deep breath and grasp the curved door handle, his jaw set, and wingtips marching determinedly onward.

The atmosphere inside the store was even more unexpected than the outside. When translated, the pounding music and low lighting read as more nightclub than boutique. It was completely impractical in Damian's view—how could anyone locate a price tag, let alone see the item they were intending to purchase? Although, after a few minutes of skulking around in the dark, he could see how the implementation of such a design was advantageous. With stealthiness like his, he wasn't in danger of being accosted by overly helpful employees hungry for commissions, before he located the heading of a dramatic script that read Dressing Rooms, and turned underneath it.

Down the row each stall had a flood light stationed above it, but only one appeared to be presently occupied: the corner room at the farthest end of the hall. And as he got closer he noticed it also appeared to be the largest. Damian glanced behind him and rapped on the door with a knuckle. And just as he began to wonder if he'd needed some sort of special knock or password prepared, the lock glowed black and unlatched itself.

"I'm here." The door creaked open and the floor groaned under his solid weight. Damian turned swiftly to shut it, growing steadily concerned.

"So what is it? What's the—big emergency..." He started, but his tongue began to feel heavy and leaden inside his rapidly drying mouth. And his eardrums began to beat violently until they matched the thumping of his maddened heart.

Red.

Blood red.

Burning. Blinding. Blazing.

In the carpet, the walls, the curtains, the chandelier.

It was everywhere—even in the deafening pounding hammering away at his head.

Thundering images suspended before him, going in and out of focus. They were searing his eyes, blearing his vision. In sinful shapes marred over pale flesh, it was red repeating over and over. Criss-crossing crimson. Damian had to dig his fingernails into his palms to ground himself with the tangibility of a familiar sensation.

And suddenly he realized that all the times before were incomparable, this was what it meant to be blindsided by a breath-taking blow. This was what it meant to receive a rush of blood to the head…

…or a rush of blood to the—

"I'm glad you came so quickly."

And the silhouette of Raven turned where she sat on a velvet ottoman, leaning forward in a way that was guaranteed to diffuse away the rest of his brain's processing ability. It was all he could do not to goggle at her like some cartoon character. Tawdry and tactless. Damian inwardly cursed the merciless Goddess above as he took in the cleavage created by cups, a series of straps and bows and elastic and he didn't know what. Only that he shouldn't have been so disarmed by it—by Raven's breasts pushed up to high-heaven. Like they weren't perky enough or distracting enough in their usual sheath of simple black cotton.

His wide emerald eyes strayed downward in spite of themselves and onto shapely, stocking clad legs folded one over the other, with a lace-up heel tapping out the bass of the synth pop bleeding into the background. Raven slid to her feet seamlessly, swaying slightly to the song. She took a single step, allowing the shadows to part for her as she did so.

There was a muted click, clack, click of her heels on the carpet as she drew near. He'd never seen her in stilettos, and he stared at them through slits.

Gods, they had to be four inches at least. Their impressive height only seemed to serve to make her look even more powerful. Just about as powerful as the force rooting him to the spot.

The deep panging in Damian's chest carried on, a racehorse charging from the starting gate, galloping faster and faster, as she grew closer and closer.

Suddenly he'd become aware of the fact that it was far too warm in here for the dead of winter. Or was it simply that Raven radiated such an intense heat?

Most definitely the latter.

The garnet colored lace gracing Raven's skin was a perfect match to her chakra stone. The semi-sheer fabric of her bra offered up a playful glimpse of the darker skin of her nipples beneath. When his gaze wound down her tapering waist, it appeared that the lack of opaqueness carried over to the front of her panties. He could just make out a little shadow—a promise laying underneath a tempting, well-kept diamond shape in plum wine. And last, but certainly not least were the thigh highs trimmed by garnet lacings and affixed to a red and black garter.

Damian's throat had somehow gone even drier. He tried to swallow with great difficulty, then tugged at his turtleneck for a reprieve.

However, there would be no such alleviation for his trousers.

"There's no emergency, Damian..." Raven assured him with a tilt of her head, lilac tendrils skating across a valley between pale peaks. "You'll have to forgive me, but I had to get you here. I had to know..." She paused, folding her arms as she prepared to pose a question to him. "Tell me... what do you think...of my outfit?"

Damian froze, fingers mid-tug and blinked several times as if he'd been struck dumb.

What?

That wasn't...

There was no way...

Was that a serious request?

She was being facetious—she had to be. It was the only explanation, unless Raven was somehow messing with his mind and Damian sincerely doubted that. But how could she ask him this with such bold-faced sincerity? Even if the wooden arch behind her housed a funhouse mirror and had been reflecting distorted proportions back at her. Or was there actually some warped reality in which they weren't looking at the same picture?

Although...

If he could muster up a voice to speak he would have asked, what outfit?

Lackadaisically, she trailed a hand down her body, tugging at the cups spilled over with supple skin. "The bra—do you like the pattern?" Raven traced the gorge between the swell of her breasts. "It's tulle and...French lace," she confirmed, squeezing the scant, semi-sheer embroidery molded to her chest. And Damian grimaced as though in physical pain.

"No?" she assessed, seemingly marking off boxes on a mental checklist. Raven smoothed her hands over her hips for a moment, appearing to be lost in thought. She paced slowly, revolving a full three-hundred and sixty degrees to pause with her back to him.

"And what about..." She swept a purple curtain over the nape of her neck to glance over her shoulder and he saw—of all things—a bow below the dimples on her back, nestled into the heart-shaped curve of her ass. "My panties...?"

Damian gritted his teeth, though not before letting a sound escape, like a hiss coupled with a wince.

"Are these okay?" The soft profile of her lips pressed.

Gods, it was almost as if she were seeking to offer all of this up to him. And who needed to clarify anything when she was all wrapped up and presented? Covered in the finest cardstock wrappings in gold-flecked marble, then laced up with champagne silk ribbon to await her unravelling.

Though his own would be more likely.

Right now, he'd forsake all his names, both Wayne and Al Ghul to get her to stop. Stop slinking closer, stop speaking in that sweet, scratchy undertone, and stop directing his focus to her various attributes, more than it already was.

It would only make his growing pain more pronounced.

A pale hand dangled down and spread across a smooth, silken thigh. "My stockings, then?" Raven hummed.

Though, Damian didn't speak. He wasn't entirely certain he was still breathing. Somehow, he'd managed to remain motionless and drag his unwilling eyes toward the floor. All his carefully constructed control was necessary to keep himself calm and centered in this moment. He could do this—he had to do this. Otherwise, what was the point of all those long years of training he'd endured?

Shiny purple strands bobbed; she'd started to shake her head slowly at the stony silence from the stoic cashmere wall standing before her, as if she expected as much.

"I bet you're still wondering why I called you here." Damian heard her voice go up in the middle, which it did whenever she was apprehensive or unsure. "I wanted you here to find out what you like—exactly what you like." When he arrived, Raven was blushing a delicious pink, so by now it had to be a violent red. "I wanted to get it right because...you're the first person, or only person I've ever been intimate with in any world, dimension, or universe..." She lingered.

And once again, Damian said nothing, and she resumed speaking.

"I do know that this is something that one does traditionally." Raven paused to worry her already cherry-red bottom lip. "That couples do... Buying underwear for your significant other is supposed to be something special, particularly for this holiday."

He was a mountain, immobile, unwavering...

"Oh, I see..." Her mouth set into a line. "Perhaps, it's the fit—or is it the color...?" Raven's large amethyst eyes swept over the room and landed on her reflection. "I thought dark red was classic. I knew I shouldn't have listened to Donna. I should have gotten something in black." She dragged a distraught hand through dark purple. "It's too much...or maybe it's not enough..."

"Don't," Damian growled low. His inflection was level and gave nothing away. If Raven was surprised by the outburst, she didn't let on, instead she continued.

"I bet the old string of socialites shuffling in and out of the manor were never caught dead in skivvies that weren't Kiki de Montparnasse or at least Agent Provocateur. But this..." Raven lifted her chin toward the mirror. "It's not your taste though, is it?"

That was far more than enough.

Far more than he could stand to hear and far more than he could stand to bear.

When his eyes flew back to hers at last, they weren't steely anymore, they burned—whittling her retinas down like they were wicks on candlesticks. As if he were all but telling her he dared her to do that again, to say that again.

"It's okay. I'm glad I found out before I bought—"

"I said...don't." Damian placed his hands on her wrists and whisked her right up to his chest. And he closed his eyes. He skimmed his lips along the length of hers like it was something sacred, his mouth trembling as Raven muffled out a note denoting her surprise.

He murmured to her, "you're brilliant, deadly beautiful—an empath...and for some reason unbeknownst to me, I'm your blindspot." Damian sighed resolutely. "But Raven, can't you take pity on me? I'm still a man." One that had been barely keeping it together since he arrived, but... "And you're you, so..."

There was no way in any world, dimension, or universe that he could ever resist.

Purple eyes grew wider as he told her and lifted a finger to her chin. Then it was Damian turning the tables and tipping her mouth towards his own. And though he hungered for her, he took slow and sweet and gentle grazes. It was tortuous, but he should only have a little at a time. This was an excess of an impossibly decadent dessert, an indulgence he was undeserving of. It was like the power in his sub zero freezer had short-circuited and he had no choice but to guzzle down that buried pint of vanilla caramel gelato.

Though who could blame him for being greedy when he had all of this spread out before him? And when her ass in those panties even resembled two round, creamy spoonfuls.

To hell with it then.

Damian lunged, face forward, longing for more of her. In an instant, he was inhaling her pulse, intaking the scent of leather-bound books with aged pages and the nectar from plums she'd probably narrowly avoided dripping on them. He dipped his tongue along the hollow of her collarbone as if he sought to test this.

"Mmm, that's nice."

"Nice?" Damian scoffed, his eyes on hers. "That's not what I was going for. Surely you didn't wear this because you wanted me to be nice." At the present, he wanted nothing more than to rip the tiny pieces of lace into twos, but Raven had selected them specifically for him. So he would continue to be patient and continue to savor this.

Let the pieces of fabric hold up for as long as he could hold out.

"Wait a moment," Raven gasped, quickly clutching his arm. "So your present...?"

"Present? Tch..." Damian's lip curled under his front teeth and he let out a piercing click. "If you're seriously considering getting me a present..." His palms glided down her chest and he gathered a scoop of softness in either hand. "Then these are perfect," he whispered in her ear.

And then Damian's mouth pushed back into hers and he was kissing her in ways that would make it impossible to return this lingerie after trying it on. He nipped urgently to gain entrance to her castle, then trapped her lip between his teeth like it was a drawbridge, at last releasing her tongue to collide with his own. All the while, his thumbs were sliding over her nipples, which puckered and pointed at his touch. He pushed up the cups of her bra for better access, head inclined towards his goal, soon to be met by a full mouth.

Each brush of his lips on Raven's chest made her fingers clench further and further into his shirt like it was a life preserver, and she was in danger of losing herself to the depths.

And after all, wasn't this the answer that she'd wanted from this—that she needed from him?

A chance to lose herself.

To stand in a dressing room in his arms, moaning his name like a breathy spell, her body bending until her back was arched under the avid swipes of tongue. He tugged her nipples between his teeth and they reddened, their response a glowing rave.

Yes.

Raven's eyelids squeezed, her pink face contorting in pleasure while Damian enjoyed the full weight of her breasts in his hands. He continued polishing the plush, pink rings. Left then right—until they were glistening.

"Gods, Damian..." Raven groaned. "Just—"

Just as sudden, there was a wet noise, a slip of suction. Damian had released a rosy nipple, taking note of Raven's expression. Hungry and dazed, and all his doing. Whether unconsciously or not, she pressed her legs together, clenching them as she watched Damian slip off the left sleeve of his coat and let it crumple to the ground in a heap.

The glaze of her gaze, her diaphragm's continuous rise and fall, her fingers digging into his arm, she needed this.

So why deny her?

"Yes, these are beautiful..." He whispered as he admired his handiwork under the chandelier light. The way the red nips and bites were like Damian Wayne watermarks upon the pale flesh. "But perhaps..." Damian's hands glided freely down the small of her back, just over the hill of her ass and stroked the burgundy bow, like an X marking the spot. "This."

When Damian glanced down at Raven, she was barely biting back another mewl, and moving restlessly in his arms. "I wonder what would happen if I were to pull this bow... Raven what do you think?"

"Damian... We shouldn't..." Raven murmured, sounding somewhat apprehensive and holding the fabric at his back tightly.

"Yes, we should Raven," he rasped darkly. "Right now, I can't seem to think of a reason why not..."

"Well, there's the fact that we're in public—"

"Public," Damian repeated flatly. "What of it? The outside world ceased to exist the second I entered the door of my own little version of Narnia."

Raven's jaw had unhinged in unmasked shock and Damian supposed this was an instance to take her remaining breath away by kissing her. Yes, he'd walked through a door and suddenly he was laying eyes on his half-naked demoness dangerous in dark red. So clearly nothing else in creation mattered.

When he pulled away her lips opened and closed, while her eyes remained shut, like a thirsty traveler prematurely cut off from a longer drink. And even though it seemed her body knew the truth, a darker part of him wanted her to beg for it.

"But, that's not what I asked," he said with a hard smile that wasn't. Damian drummed a divot on her lower back. "I fear I've gotten ahead of myself again. Tell me about the bow, Raven. What happens if I pull it?" His hand jutted out, he made a motion with his fingers, in mimicry of it.

"Why ask when you know the answer?" Raven asked him, her brow rising shakily.

"I could have asked you the same earlier. But..."

"But?"

Raven bit her lip but made no motion to stop his hands from climbing onto the curve of her ass. He taunted her twice, by tugging lightly on the tulle, until at last... The bow in the back came loose, and her panties slid down her legs with ease. She secured one pale thigh tightly over the other to hide herself.

No bottoms and bra half-undone, she was nothing short of delicious.

Though that scrap of fabric had barely covered much of anything, so why bother to tease? Or hadn't that been the sole purpose of this outfit?

A devious smirk sidled onto Damian's face as he realized something: these were the exact kind of underwear that one put on simply to take off.

"I pulled the bow, Raven," he murmured almost mockingly. "Don't I at least get to see the rest of my present?"

She stared up at him through her soot colored lashes and slowly opened her thighs.

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jasontoddiefor · 3 years

Text

Title: would you be so kind Ship: obikin Second: Ten years ago, Obi-Wan Kenobi met Anakin Skywalker, a charming young mage from Naboo, but as fate willed, they could not be together. A decade and thousands dead later, Alderaan’s High Court Sorcerer meets a Forger and his excited apprentice. AN: I forgot to post this on tumblr apparently, but here’s the first chapter of my second long WIP I am working on!

Then

The ship was crammed, filled to the brim with people clinging to one another, staring either at the home they’d lost or the home they hoped to be sailing to. Hundreds of ships had left Dromund Kaas already, carrying refugees across the ocean to safer harbors. The tension was high and sharp enough to cut as they sailed away from the doomed country and only relaxed when the pressure of the country’s shields finally left their shoulders.

“An awful sight, isn’t it?”

Anakin startled, instinctually pulled his coat around himself. Were he in a better shape, he would have lashed out immediately, winds, bindings, blood—

But the power flowing through his veins was too constricted, caged like a wild beast. Instead, Anakin just turned to look at the person who’d addressed him. An old woman with snow-white markings and long lekku stared at the dying country just as he had moments before, grief and resignation painting a sorrowful picture. “I never thought I’d leave this place. Did you?”

Wordlessly, Anakin shook his head. No, he certainly hadn’t thought he’d ever leave this place again. He’d been ready to be buried under the ashes of marble altars, not see this new dawn.

“I was born here, married too. All my children were born within the boundaries of this country and perhaps that is the reason they all left,” the woman continued. “I am glad that they weren’t here. If I think about what could have happened to them were they anywhere near the capital… I apologize; I hope you don’t mind my rambling. You looked like you needed company. Are you traveling to Naboo?”

He opened his mouth to reply, to give an affirmation, but stopped. He hadn’t quite thought where he’d go, except as far away from this place as he could. Naboo was certainly an option; Padmé would be glad to see him, he was sure. She’d take him in without asking a single question and defend him against the storms that were sure to come.

But Padmé was his friend and Anakin couldn’t allow her to shoulder his burden.

“No,” Anakin heard himself saying. “I’m not traveling to Naboo.”

“They are quite defenseless right now, yes, you are right. The fact that it’s the first stop of this ship is tempting enough for most to disregard what troubles might find them there.” The woman nodded in understanding. “I’ll be going to Alderaan myself. My eldest lives there, and in a country as strong as that, a tragedy like this can’t strike.”

She turned to look at the remains of Dromund Kaas again. The coastline used to be covered by beautiful large trees; his Master used to tell him how vital they were for its defense.

Now there was nothing but ash and darkness. Even here on the outskirts, where it had taken the longest for the remains of the catastrophe to reach, nobody was safe from it. Dromund Kaas had been in a pitiful state after the last war, which had made it an easy place to hideaway in. Alderaan might be stronger, the blooming center of magical education, but Anakin doubted they’d be able to defend against an attack like this. Nothing could save them from an attack such as this.

But Alderaan’s distance to this cesspit of disease was enough to provide a different kind of security.

Thousands of refugees would search for safety there, and Queen Breha was as cunning as she was kind. No one would be turned away and Anakin could slip in just right with them.

“I’m going to Alderaan as well,” Anakin replied.

The woman looked him over, then she beamed as if she were a young child and not already among the older members of her species.

Her smile was the first Anakin had seen in weeks. “Looks like we’ll be traveling companions then! You must tell me your name, young friend. I’m Raya Tano.”

She held out her hand and Anakin awkwardly shook it with his own left.

“My name is—”

Now

“Anakin Skywalker! Your automaton is ruining my kitchen!”

Sighing, Anakin let the spell sink back into the metal and settle into it. So much for working on his commissions today. A quick glance around the workshop told him that it was not one of his automatons running wild. Artoo was currently charging up and Threepio was keeping himself busy cleaning up. All the other small automatons Anakin crafted when he was bored were either asleep and charging or hurrying around the workshop, washing up the floors and putting away the tools Anakin had been using.

Anakin tugged off his gloves and threw them to a tiny and eager little automaton before picking up his softer everyday gloves. The leather was still quite resistant and had more runes stitched into it than most people dared to weave into one cloth, but they were nowhere near as excellently crafted as his work gloves. The dragonhide gloves were worth a fortune and so they never left his workshop unless Anakin had to. Anakin watched the little automaton put the gloves in their usual compartment until he could hear the click reassuring that the lock was in place. At first, that had only been a measure against thieves as he hadn’t had much to his name, but by now, it was a habit.

And it discouraged Ahsoka from stealing them for her own projects.

Anakin walked out of his workshop and crossed the courtyard to the small cottage he called his home, finding a kitchen in disarray, Raya standing on a chair with a small red automaton attempting to clean the floors.

“Look what a mess it’s making!” Raya said accusingly. “Instead of polishing my floors, it’s dirtying them!”

“I can see that,” Anakin hummed. He waited until the small automaton had reached his feet, then he bent down and pressed his hand flat on its small back, stopping it. Ahsoka’s handiwork was getting better; this little guy had kept moving for a while despite her absence. Anakin had no idea what the formal apprenticeship for forgers entailed, when they ought to hit what milestone, but he was willing to bet that Ahsoka was years ahead of her peers. Her spells were strong, her rune work fantastic, and very few actual weaknesses were left to explore in her automatons.

But Anakin was still a Master and Ahsoka only an Apprentice. Her work was not yet good enough to keep out foreign interference. Without much thought, he deactivated the automaton completely.

“This was your granddaughter’s handiwork,” Anakin commented. “She’s improving in leaps and bounds.”

Raya huffed and stepped from her chair. “I’m glad to hear that, but weren’t you meant to teach her control?”

“I am,” Anakin said, the argument an old and fond one. They returned to it frequently, mostly to annoy the young Apprentice. “And were she still as much of a mess as three years ago, she hardly would be able to craft such a fine automaton. Can’t do anything about her manners.”

Especially since she’d become a teenager. Anakin didn’t remember being as much of a pain as Ahsoka could be.

“And here I was thinking Masters were supposed to teach their Apprentices a medium of decorum.”

Anakin snorted. “Yeah, well, that’s what she has you for, doesn’t she?”

Raya’s expression softened. “That she does.”

Anakin sometimes wondered how Raya managed to stay so kind and calm when the world had taken so much from her. Her husband, country, her children— and yet she still stood straight, caring for the fellow traveler she’d never allowed to leave and the granddaughter that had been dumped on her with just a warning for Ahsoka’s generally explosive tendencies.

“Where is Ahsoka anyway?” Anakin asked, looking around the kitchen as if she would jump out in the open any moment. “I sent her on an errand earlier this morning, but she hasn’t returned yet.”

Unfortunately, Raya couldn’t tell him either. “I have no idea where that girl is running around—”

“Anakin!”

Speak of the dark and it shall appear. The door was thrown open and Ahsoka rushed inside, tracking even more dirt all over the floor, causing Raya to throw up her arms in defeat in a way Anakin knew meant Ahsoka would be left with all her favorite chores for the next week.

“Welcome back, Ahsoka,” Anakin said. “You’re late.”

“Yes, yes,” Ahsoka replied and rolled her eyes, obviously disinterested in what he had to say. “I got all you asked for and ordered the new metals, but look at this!”

Ahsoka raised her hand, revealing a ripped-off poster. It was tasteful in design, fine cursive writing on light blues, gold ornaments in the corners and, of course, the royal crest right in the middle of it.

Her Majesty the Queen of the Kingdom of Alderaan, Breha Organa, invites all Alderaani Practitioners of the Mythic Arts to attend the festivities in the capital of Aldera—

“Absolutely not,” Anakin said before he could even read the rest of the text. “We’re not going to Aldera to some festival.”

“Why not?” Ahsoka shot back. “It’s no summit, but it would at least be something.”

Her bitterness did not go unnoticed. Ahsoka had begged for months to attend this year’s summit. Every five, all magic practitioners gathered on Tython to exchange notes on their craft and pretend they were not also discussing the politics of their respective countries, forging alliances and the like. Anakin hadn’t been to the last summit, it having been just after Dromund Kaas, and the one before were tainted by the memories that followed, no matter how sweet the time had been. Ahsoka, of course, had begged to attend this year’s one, but it would only be foolish and reckless. He couldn’t just walk into the biggest gathering of mages in the whole continent and expect to get out of it without anyone realizing who he was, asking questions, concluding what he’d done.

Anakin had too much to hide, too much to lose, and he wasn’t going to risk his little Apprentice for it.

Not that Ahsoka knew any of that and wasn’t in the least satisfied with Anakin’s reply and immediately made her displeasure known.

“What would you even want to see there?” Anakin asked, trying to downplay how entertaining such an event was. “It’ll just be all the posh court sorcerers showing off with their fancy focusing crystals. It’s utterly boring and uncreative.”

“Like you wouldn’t use a focusing crystal if you had one,” Ahsoka muttered, arms crossed. “It’s just— there’s nobody else around here who can do magic. And all you ever do is work on machines.”

“Which requires a lot of concentration as it’s not just the manipulation of one aspect, but—”

“—but many, yes, yes, I know the speech,” Ahsoka said and dutifully listed all elements that went into their craft. There was a reason why not many forgers existed. Most mages lacked the talent, patience, and education to learn this craft, or were just plain afraid that they’d permanently damage their ability to use magic at all.

And with the speed technology was evolving and magic weaponized to terrifying new heights, not too many people still had use for forgers. Where two-hundred-years ago, you wouldn’t have gone out to hunt a dragon with a simple sword, but only with one crafted by a Master forger, nowadays you didn’t necessarily need one. Battle magic was on the rise again, especially with more and more countries growing uneasy, peace treaties falling apart. Combined with the threats from the northern continents, it was no wonder people cared less and less about expensive forgers when they could mass-produce and enchant simpler items.

“I just hoped you’d allow at least this,” Ahsoka finished. Her shoulders dropped. “Should have known better. I’ll go finish my readings.”

Ahsoka turned around, her shoulders still hanging, her head low.

Damn it.

Anakin knew that she was doing it on purpose. His Apprentice was cunning and had learned how to play into his every weakness. Slowly she marched into the direction of the door, dragging her feet behind her for effect and dramatics.

Raya raised a brow at him. She usually stayed out of Ahsoka’s tutelage, knowing next to nothing about magic herself, but even with his past being little more than a mystery to her, she could read him better than anyone else.

“Urgh, fine,” Anakin heard himself say. “Fine, we can go to the festival.”

Ahsoka turned around quicker than light and jumped up. “Yes!”

“But that means you��re not going to bring up the summit again!”

“Yes! Of course!” A moment later, Anakin had an armful of an apprentice. “Thank you so much, Master, you’re the best!”

Once she let go of him, she went to hug Raya and hug even her dirty automaton to her chest, still radiating happiness. “I need to go pack my bags immediately!”

“The festival is not for another week—”

Ahsoka obviously didn’t care. So caught up in her joy, she rushed upstairs, heading to her room to start packing. It shouldn’t surprise Anakin that she was so motivated. Ahsoka was a person who thrived on interaction, being surrounded by other people. While the people of their village were friendly, none of them were mages or even just sensitive to magic. It was one of the reasons Anakin had decided to stay without too much fight. But growing up so far removed from other mages had made Ahsoka twice as curious to meet others.

The thought made his stomach churn. He’d have to give Ahsoka formal lessons about their trade now, just if somebody asked questions that were too pointed. She’d also need a bit of the know-how on how you usually interacted with other mages and which pretentious bastards to call sorcerers before they threw a hissy fit. All these capital folks were much too sensitive about terminology after all. Anakin had never bothered to tell her the differences before, but Ahsoka would kill him if she accidentally embarrassed herself because he hadn’t seen it fit to instruct her properly. Forget teaching Ahsoka how to improve her automaton, the next week would be full of etiquette lessons. Skies, there’d be people trying to steal their spellwork too. Had he even mentioned that kind of theft before? Anakin honestly couldn’t recall.

“Already regretting it?” Raya asked, her voice just a touch amused.

“Just a bit,” Anakin replied.

“It’ll be good for her,” Raya said, convinced and confident enough for the both of them. “And good for you as well. I’ve known you for years now and you’ve never even brought a friend over. I’m not going to be young forever, you know. I do expect to be introduced to your future spouse at some point.”

“And this is my cue to go packing as well,” Anakin announced and followed Ahsoka up the stairs with Raya’s laughter following him.

He had no intention of being with anyone, ever, unless he could find glamours that held up even when majorly distracted. On his way up the stairs, Anakin caught a look of himself in the window, saw black vines curling around his neck, inviting someone to take a closer look.

It was better this way.

#obikin #star wars #anakin skywalker #obi wan kenobi #ahsoka tano #fanfic

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