#I'm not going to step on canon to make her 'special' - I REFUSE

[sakurarisen]

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Send εїз for an unimplemented HC!

So this one's gonna be kind of long, apologies ahead of time- XD

Despite her rough life, Sera has kind of always known there's more to her than even she can understand - And this is a feeling that only grows once she's finally able to settle down with Zack into a calmer, more peaceful life, and learns how to cope and face the things that've happened to her. The more she finds ways to cope and finally have the life she's craved and deserved, the more it feels like she's standing on a frozen lake; there's so much more under the surface, so much more to her, and yet she can't access any of it past the occasional tap on the ice and a temporary, slight bubbling up of the cold water underneath. So, so much more... Something, but she's never understood what, no matter how much she tries to find the answers to 'what makes Seraphina Fair tick?' - A question that comes up especially often in her FF7 canon, when she realizes the materia she picked up on her way to Gongaga is a summon materia for Shiva, eventually gaining the use of her aid and power, albeit at the cost of her own energy and needing serious bedrest after.

This question of what makes her 'tick' and what lies under that frozen over lake is now the same in every verse: Because Sera holds the power of one of many elemental phoenixes - In this case, the Snow Phoenix.

There's lore I wrote up a very, VERY long time ago (and need to rewrite and fine tune, now XD) for another OC of mine whose bloodline is descended from a phoenix - Essentially, the phoenix lived in in an era where gods walked the planet freely and many gained a following, with the phoenix especially enjoying a temple and a fair number of worshipers. But as humans do, war eventually broke out, and the phoenix himself was targeted for his feathers under the false claim they would give the power of rebirth and the inability to fall in battle, causing his temples to be overrun in the people's bid to get their hands on them.

The phoenix stood tall and protected his temple and the priests and priestesses within it, eventually taking human form to fight beside them, and at the end of the war, began a bloodline with his most trusted priestess that eventually, many hundreds, probably thousands of years later, to my other OC - Who, for multiple reasons, thought she was the last of the phoenixes despite being only a halfbreed.

Expanded lore I've been working on, however, adds more phoenixes; the original was a solely fire-based creature, while the others that existed among the world were of other elements - Ice, lighting, water... The original 'myth' had been passed down among the people of a pretty remote village, and the myth/legend had inevitably changed over time, like playing a game of telephone, until all mentions of other phoenixes and gods ceased to exist within it. Nobody knows there's others - But even so, Sera herself inherited the defensive, healing powers of the Snow Phoenix, while her older brother Thoma inherited some of the fire phoenix's power - Two phoenixes who were originally siblings, now echoed in Sera and her brother, linked closely together just the same as the originals.

However, despite Sera embodying the Snow Phoenix in just about every way - defensive and protective in nature, rose from her 'ashes' to keep moving forward (multiple times over her life, actually, this girl SHOULD have died several times over and managed to survive), an affinity for ice magic/abilities, ranged fighting, a healer, hiding in the form of a snow leopard/human/snow fox, etc., that's all for another post and not this one which is already longer than I intended it to be - she isn't strong enough to use it, at least not in full. The circumstances of her life/lives have made it so that while she HAS the power within her, she's too physically weak to access it, and using it in full would more than likely kill her - Though she can access incredibly tiny fractions of it when she desperately needs it, or with the aid of Zack and Thoma, her soulmate and the single blood relative/member of her birth family she has left she's super close to.

This lore also fits into just about everything I have running for her; reincarnation and rebirth is a thing across all my blogs (every verse and AU is another lifetime for the muse, with them all being connected in the end by being the same person reborn into a new life with the same soul, changed only by the timeframe and circumstances they're born into, otherwise the exact same person), and the snow phoenix follows her through all of them. In GI, it's an old power caught up in the rebirth cycle, in FF7 it was a familiar of Shiva she aided into gaining human form - Nothing like an ancient in any form, but a being connected to the goddess and the elements (who still needs materia even with her innate abilities), and so on.

This... This isn't implemented YET because I need to figure out how to rewrite the phoenix myth and organically insert it into Sera's stuff, but this is... This is just Sera. This is my girl, and it's taken me over a decade to FINALLY figure out this is what she's had lingering within her, even though I've known there's something there for a looooong time. I want to make SURE it makes sense and doesn't step on toes when I add it in, or buck anything in canon lores for any of the verses, and I really want it to work out - And since Sera is inherently fandomless/multifandom at her core, it should be easy enough to do that?

But also I've been rambling for FOREVER here so I'll cut this one here XD I'm just?? So excited to finally know what's going on with Sera in more detail, and I have SO MUCH MORE I'm working on on top of this! <3

[yanderes-galore]

Would you do a yandere Trixie Lulamoon concept?

Sure! I know Trixie has a bigger role with Starlight in later seasons but I'm not that far. However, I've seen my fair share of scenes and I think I know how to portray her :)

Yandere! Trixie Lulamoon Concept

Pairing: Romantic/Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Manipulation, Clingy behavior, Jealousy, Sabotage, Stalking, She drags Starlight into it, OOC Trixie portions, Blood mention, Implied violence/murder but never explicit, Dubious companionship/relationship.

Okay, Trixie isn't the most intimidating yandere without the Alicorn Amulet.

In fact, Trixie is someone who primarily just thrives off of attention.

Trixie would want nothing more than to be the center of your attention when she's obsessed.

She's easily jealous and rather demanding when it comes to you.

The moment you befriend her she rarely leaves your side.

She's rather dramatic and arrogant, often acting like she deserves your attention.

Although if you deprive her of it... she's begging for you to give it back.

She isn't really protective, maybe a bit possessive but she doesn't have the strongest magic.

So in terms of harming other ponies, without help she's relatively harmless if not needy.

I can see Trixie doing all sorts of tricks just to keep your gaze on her.

She's a magician, after all, so she would probably look through all sorts of tricks to impress you.

Trixie would definitely lie to impress you.

All that matters to her is your praise and attention.

Which means she plans to do anything to get that.

I wouldn't doubt Trixie would drag Starlight into helping her obtain your attention.

Starlight originally wants to refuse, but you make Trixie so happy.

So maybe she can use her magic to lend a hoof and get you two closer.

Trixie has a tendency to panic, too.

She'd quickly assume you hate her or something if you didn't speak to her for a few hours.

She has a tendency to over think and is easily starved of attention.

Trixie would probably stalk you since she can't take staying away.

You could be busy with a task only for Trixie to show up.

Afterwards she's quickly asking questions, wondering if you hate her or are ignoring her.

In reality you were just... busy?

She isn't intense and is quite harmless.

She's a pony who clings to her obsession and just likes it when you look at her.

Starlight does her best to help her friend gain your attention with new tricks or magic lessons.

Trixie wants to be a better spell user for you.

That way you can pay more attention to her.

Trixie would hate it if you hung around other ponies.

Yeah, sure, she knows you have other friends...

Yet that doesn't change the jealousy that bubbles within the unicorn's heart.

Trixie would try to sabotage your other friends.

Things like ways to humiliate themselves, pranks and small spells to make you think less of them.

She feels only she should have your attention.

If you're thinking murder or over-the-top violence, it isn't very in character with canon.

However, if you want to bend her canon personality a bit...

Trixie might do some brutal things to have your attention.

To take a step away from canon (and allow me more freedom for HCs), maybe she tracks down those you're close to.

Trixie doesn't have many friends except Starlight.

So she thinks you and her should be something special.

Maybe Trixie manages to drag Starlight into her plots, wanting to be your only friend or something more.

Trixie is normally a coward, one who runs at the sight of blood.

But for you... well... maybe she's changed a bit.

Her need for your attention changes the mare.

After all... if she was normal for you... she wouldn't have blood on her hooves, would she?

Oh, she hates the idea of your attention going to somepony else....

Surely you'll learn she's the best mare for you, right?

Poor you wonders where all your friends went.

Meanwhile Trixie comes back to you a changed mare.

You don't have to know what she's been doing, right?

Starlight won't tell a soul, Trixie made sure of that.

Eventually you'll have no other pony friends.

It'll just be you and Trixie.

She won't have to share your attention anymore.

However, you'll find out.

After all, why is only Trixie around?

Perhaps you even learn of the blood she's spilled.

No matter, Trixie's learned a lot through her obsession...

You'll love her... she won't let you neglect her any longer.

[the-unknown-void]

Murder Drones? Half-Life? More likely than you think. (MDxHL2 AU)

So I don't kill my brain trying to come up with summary to this AU. I'm just going to tell you about the characters here, note that nothing is solid yet but I am going crazy for this AU, I'll most definitely change things. So consider this a bit of a W.I.P.

A while ago I had thought, I was originally thinking about Portal/MD AUs because well funni robot go brrr. But there's about a million ways you could do that and there's likely plenty out there already.

But.. how many would realize how fitting Murder Drones is with Half-Life 2!?

I mean..

Inter-dimensional fascist alien military government that takes over worlds in order to siphon its resources and kill off all the native fauna in the process?

with all the biomechanical stuff going on, you could easily shove disassembly drones in their place!

and that's where it began.

this ended up a bit longer than expected and may still be edited many times lol.

Welcome, welcome to City 9, one of our finest urban centers on Copper 17!

~ Citizens ~

Any worker drone that is not part of the resistance, and is not conscripted into the Combine. Live openly in the city under the harsh rule of the Combine, disassembly drones watching their every step, scanning for even the slightest sign of disobedience.

~ The Combine ~

Disassembly drones, basically. Except for metropolice who are worker drones who choose to work for them.

They still have most of the canonical built-in weapons like claws, SMGs, blades, missiles, and B E A M. All drones converted into DDs have their memories wiped entirely. Special exceptions to this are J, V, and N, who still have their memories but they are suppressed.

Serial Designation J - puppet Leader - Role: Dr. Breen Taking orders from Cyn, she acts like a sergeant. But she isn't really designed for fighting as much, she mostly spends time in the Citadel unless something (such as a massive uprising) is threatening the Citadel and Combine control, in which she will come down and strike down anyone who opposes them in nearly an instant.

Weapons/Tools: - Disassembly Drone Stuff (Some listed weapons may be built-in) - Revolver - Grenades - Tau Cannon - Laser tripmines

Serial Designation N - Elite of Combine Air Defense He follows/leads hunter choppers or he can pilot hunter choppers. He is specifically designed for long flights and in-flight combat.

Weapons/Tools: - Disassembly Drone Stuff (Some listed weapons may be built-in) - Pulse Rifle - Can deploy manhacks

Serial Designation V - Soldier of Combine Land Defense She guards the borders of Combine territories, making sure no unwelcome creatures from the outlands get inside. Also sometimes deployed to guard places like Nova Prospekt. She is still able to fly but not for as long as N, as she's mainly designed for being able to traverse various terrain. She can also drive APCs, set up mounted guns and turrets.

Weapons/Tools: - Disassembly Drone Stuff (Some listed weapons may be built-in) - Shotgun - Crossbow - Grenades - Hoppers - Can deploy roller mines

~ The Resistance ~

Worker drones who have decided to rebel against the Combine, refusing to submit to their abuse. However, since the death of their previous leader, Nori Doorman, their movement has been dormant. As Khan decided that everyone should go into hiding in the bunker for the sake of their daughter(him and Nori's).

Yeva - Deceased Was almost just as important to the resistance as Nori, playing a large role in getting them out of the city. Unfortunately she was killed by V along with her husband not long after the uprising fell.

Weapons/Tools: - Absolute Solver powers - Revolver - Pulse Rifle - Can hack roller mines

Nori Doorman - Former Leader(dead?) - Role: Gordon Freeman? The initial starter of the resistance movement, which actually got pretty far. But all her ruckus alerted J to the scene, killing Nori and many of those by her side just before they could make their final push against the Combine. At least she's dead to everyone's knowledge..

Weapons/Tools: - Absolute Solver powers - SMG (an uzi lol) - Crowbar - S.L.A.Ms

Khan Doorman - Current Leader - Role: Eli Vance After Nori's death, he decided it was best to go into hiding with his daughter, fearing the Combine would begin hunting for them even more aggressively than they did before.

Weapons/Tools: - Wrench - Pistol - Shotgun

Uzi Doorman - Role: Alyx Vance + Gordon Freeman? Infuriated by her father’s cowardice for stalling the resistance movement, believing it nullifies everything her mother worked for. She decides to take it upon herself to finish the job her mother started, sneaking out of the bunker and eventually leading the next uprising. Can drive the airboat.

Weapons/Tools: - Crowbar (same one as Nori’s) - Railgun (The one from the show) - Alyx’s gun (Modified Pistol) - RPG (Rocket Launcher) - Gravity Gun - S.L.A.Ms - EMP Tool - Absolute Solver powers (acquired much later)

Thad - Metrocop - Role: Barney Calhoun He’s another metrocop but he’s not in on Doll’s scheme. He’s just a metrocop for spying and it’s useful to have rebel drones who can use Combine tech. But no one's seen him in a while..

Weapons/Tools: - Disassembly drone headband (A headband with the 5 small extra eyes that disassembly drones have. Unlike actual DDs tho, the headband is only wired into the head instead of welded) - Fingerless gloves with retractable blades (Wolverine hands basically, when the user makes a fist, 3 blades protrude from their knuckles) - Booster Boots (Increase user’s agility and jump height, also protect the user from fall-related injury) - Arm & Leg armor (To look more like the disassembly drones and protect those limbs as they will NOT regenerate) - Stun Baton - Pistol - SMG - Baseball Bat

~ Ambiguous Alliance ~

Who these drones are allied with or what they stand for isn't quite known.

Alice - Role: Father Grigori ??????

Doll - Double agent, Spy on the Resistance - Role: Dr. Mossman (Mitchell HDTF) Lives in the bunker with the resistance, has some kind of deal with J to provide information about inner rebel activity. It’s unknown what her bigger plan is. (Aka I don’t know yet)

Weapons/Tools: - Absolute Solver powers - Metal Pipe - Revolver

Lizzy - Triple agent, Metrocop Works with Doll, doesn’t know her entire scheme but she goes along with whatever Doll tells her anyways. Like joining the metropolice under the guise of being a spy on the Combine, but to the Combine she claims to be a spy on the resistance and giving them information to back it up. Can set up turrets and mounted guns.

Weapons/Tools: - Disassembly drone headband (A headband with the 5 small extra eyes that disassembly drones have. Unlike actual DDs tho, the headband is only wired into the head instead of welded) - Fingerless gloves with retractable blades (Wolverine hands basically, when the user makes a fist, 3 blades protrude from their knuckles) - Booster Boots (Increase user’s agility and jump height, also protect the user from fall-related injury) - Arm & Leg armor (To look more like the disassembly drones and protect those limbs as they will NOT regenerate) - Stun baton - Pistol - SMG

Cyn - True leader of the Combine - Role: G-Man + Overwatch No one knows there’s anyone above J since Cyn only gives orders to her. She is the one who made the Combine and put J in command. She let J, V, and N keep their memories, however.. They may be wiped if any of them begin deviating.

Weapons/Tools:

- Absolute Solver - Sword - Revolver

Tessa - ??????

~ Outland Creatures ~

Eldritchs - Disassembly drones who’ve been damaged beyond what their regeneration is capable of fixing, requiring material from outside sources. Sometimes this is viable, but usually it is advised to just destroy eldritchs immediately as they will violently massacre and destroy anything that contains the material it needs, even other disassembly drones. These beings take on many forms and can create very convincing holograms of those they kill to lure prey, so one should never approach random figures in the outlands.

Note: because of this, disassembly drones have a fail-safe trigger that disables regeneration if it detects a certain amount of weight lost. (indicating severe damage that could lead to becoming eldritch.) Of course this fail-safe can fail to trigger or trigger unnecessarily(falsely detecting significant weight loss) sometimes.

Heartcrabs - The cores of disassembly drones and solver-afflicted drones that can no longer return to their bodies(likely entirely destroyed). Similar to the eldritchs, they may start looking for a new body by attacking living drones; this doesn’t work well and creates aggressive zombie-like drones. (Might be scrapped Idk)

Anti-Drone Sentinels - Quick, aggressive robotic raptors that emit bright flashes of light to boot-loop any drone who looks at it, rendering them immobile until a reboot can be done. They move in packs in the outlands, it’s rumored a few drones have learned how to tame them.

FEEL FREE TO SEND ME ASKS ABOUT THE AU, PLEASE I WOULD LOVE TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS. IT CAN ALSO HELP ME FLESH THINGS OUT SO PLEASE 🥺🥺🙏

[findafight]

Hey! Do you have any headcanons or ideas RE Mr & Mrs Buckley? (Or Mr & Mrs Harrington?)

I like to imagine that Robin’s parents have some suspicions that Robin *maybe* isn’t straight. Melissa *desperately* wants to say something, let Robin know that they love and accept her no matter what (when she finally does come Melissa’s like “You could become a cop or join the army and I’d still love you!”). Richard is very firm that they should leave it be and let Robin come to them if she’s ready.

This doesn’t stop Melissa from dropping hints, trying to prod Robin into opening up to her, but all Robin hears is “Mom is already scared I’m gonna die a spinster”.

This is part of the reason they’re wary of Steve when he starts hanging around. Like, he’s a nice enough boy - if they were sure that Robin liked boys, he’d be a lovely little son in law.

Oooh yes I love her parents I know the companion novels are only like. Half canon but greatest gift we got was Hippie Christmas. (I like to headcanon that Richard and Melissa have a bunch of friends who go by the names they choose in the 60s. Robin's got at least an aunt Periwinkle, and an uncle Salmon [goes by Sal for short!])

Mr. Buckley is the son of Italian immigrants and spoke it at home growing up, Mrs. Buckley was the daughter of French immigrants and did the same, which is how Robin first got her love of language speaking three different ones at home! Richard Buckley loves to cook and little chicklit Robin helped him with a special kitchen foot stool 🥺 and also he is very dad-shaped I think. Melissa probably is the one between the two to decide she's going to read war and peace in one sitting (original Russian optional) and make derisive noises at parts she doesn't like but won't elaborate on what happened. Also she is probably the one to play an instrument (maybe saxophone or bassoon?) There is at least one Buddha in the Buckley house.

I think her parents are supportive to the best of their abilities. Maybe they were in a really welcoming scene before Robin was born (also. Depending on when Robin was born [I've said she's a December 67 baby in a fic but I'm really not picky] she could be a summer of love baby and when she realised this she was horrified and refused to acknowledge it ever again lmao.) And so they pick up some...vibes when Robin was young and would moon over pretty teachers or princesses, give each other Significant Looks when she did.

Robin's line about her mom reminding her she rambles I think is just natural strain between parent and child, and possibly even her mom trying in an awkward and seemingly harsh way to protect her because Robin does have some clearly neurodivergent traits, which people can find off putting and she might be picked on for.

Love what you're putting down with Mrs. Buckley saying they'd always love her to show they'll stay by her if she comes out. But I think the delivery would be more. "Robin, we will always love you. Always..." Here she paused to think of something that isnt about being gay but would still convince Robin even if they thought it was bad they'd be there. "Even if you...decided you wanted to be a c-🤢 a cop. Or maybe even...🤢 Joined the🤮 military..." While Mr. Buckley is looking at his wife trying to charade to her that this is NOT a convincing speech!!

When they meet Steve and he and Robin are just hanging all over each other and bickering, and the Buckleys have to take a step back because did they get it wrong? They like Steve and he seems delighted to meet them and spend time with Robin and is so obviously fond of her... Of course people can like both but they were pretty sure Robin didn't...but her and Steve fit together so nicely.....except when Melissa brings up that it'd be perfectly alright for her to introduce Steve as her boyfriend Robin makes a gagging sound and screeches that he is her best friend and just because she sometimes want to crawl into his brain does not mean she ever wants to crawl into his pants.

Neither Melissa or Richard Buckley actually know what to do with that.

[chloe-caulfield94]

Would Max be the one to propose marriage, or would it be Chloe?

In Season 1 Chloe expressed romantic interest in Max on multiple occasions, but she initially did it in a way that could be explained away as goofing around if Max didn't reciprocate. "Maybe you made a move on me and I don't know", "fuq that, let's elope", "I dare you to kiss me". She probably did it like that because her greatest fear is that of being rejected.

But she also made a series of declarations that were more straightforward. Your powers might not last? "That's okay, we will - forever". "I'm never leaving you". I guess those could be seen as vows of best friendship. But when she says "nobody is good enough for you - except me", straight after discussing the dating pool in Blackwell with Max, the romantic implications cannot be escaped.

In Episode 5 at the beach Chloe says that she and Max are "meant to be together". After Max refuses to sacrifice her, she says "Max, I'll always be with you". That does sound like something you would say as part of a marriage proposal.

So while Chloe was initially hesitant to voice her feelings towards Max, she quickly finds her courage. And she doesn't have any qualms about letting the world know how she feels. She tells mr Jefferson that she will be "Max's date" at the party. And when Max accepted her dare, Chloe texted Warren that he's now out of the loop.

So would she be the one to pop the question? The only arguement against that I see is the possibility of Chloe feeling unworthy or like a burden to Max following the storm, which would prevent her from taking such a momentous step unless Max clearly expressed the desire to do so first.

I adore the LiS comics and I personally consider them to be "canon" as much as the games. The comics shows that while both Max and Chloe feel the weight of what happened and Chloe misses her mother, they are moving forward in time. Chloe works as a car mechanic (turns out David, she can have the skills without losing the attitude) and she picks up scultping as a hobby. Somewhat surpisingly, she seems to be the main breadwinner in her relationship with Max, who is just starting to get her career as a freelance photographer off the ground. And in my personal favourite moment, Chloe says to Max "I'm through feeling like I wasn't worthy of your choice". When Max is struggling with guilt and "flickers" of other possible worlds, Chloe is consoling her, returning the love and care Max showed her in Season 1. Post-storm Chloe seems to be looking forward and making plans for the future. So I see no reason why she wouldn't propose making their love official.

Having said all that, I think it would be Max who would propose.

Max might be initially slow to pick up what Chloe is putting down, but when she does see the writing on the wall, she goes all in. Every time she emerges from a time jump, she exclaims Chloe's name and runs to hug her. When she's fighting to break free from the dark room and uses her selfie to go back to Jefferson's classroom on Monday, she says "It doesn't matter what happens to me. I have to save Chloe". When she's in the art gallery and learns that the storm hit Arcadia Bay, her first thought is "Chloe can't die". She throws away the "perfect" timeline without a moment's hesitation, ripping her award-winning photo: "Chloe comes first".

Max very clearly realizes her feelings and it is reflected in her internal monologue. But she's also not shy to express her love outwardly.

At the beach in Episode 5, Max says that she always wanted her life to be special, an adventure. "But not without you". At the lighthouse she adds "You are my number one priority. You are all that matters to me now". Doesn't that sound like a proposal? A beatifully put proposal I might add.

Seeing that Max quickly realizes how much Chloe means to her, that she has no problem expressing her feelings and that she's more than capable of grand gestures of love, my money is on her proposing.

The question remains: Would she get down on her knee? Given that Chloe is noticeably taller even when they are both on their feet, that would probably look funny, but very, very adorably.

[ratressofhell]

GOOD OMENS OC: Abyssinia, Duchess of Hell! Hastur's "Little rodent "

Art by @moe-machine

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( note from mum: I'm aware she's a fan character, and never ever will be Canon, she's simply made for my own fan, and I wish to share her with other open like-minded people. If you dislike canon x OC ships, then kindly please click off. Im not here for fandom Drama. Thank you💜 )

____

- HER BACKSTORY -

PLEASE ENJOY.

COMMENTS AND FEEDBACK IS GREATLY APPRECIATED.

I ALSO WANT TO SAY BEFORE HAND! THIS MAY HAVE TIGGERS! AM NOT PARTLY SURE! (If there are, I'll properly retag, after you all read through, and tell me. Am still new to the whole triggers tagging, and what qualifies a trigger so bare with me please)

BUT THIS WILL ADDRESS NSFW WORK TOPICS.

AND PLOY-SHIPPING.

ALSO I DON'T KNOW IF THAT FALLS UNDER NSFW.

JUST TRYING TO PLAY IT SAFE HERE.

(As am not waiting actual sex scenes here. Am merely mentioning ploy-shipping as one of features of this story. I'm just unsure, if that falls under nsfw, or not)

BUT THIS ISN'T A FANFIC EITHER!

THIS IS MORE FOOTNOTES, AND A SUMMARY OF MY RP, AND THEORIZED FANFIC!

-----------

LET US START FROM THE BEGINING.....

They (I have 2 female OC's) were created back when season one was launched. And I had created personal head/fan canons in my story, that soon now be revered to as retcon at this point, before we go any further.

I also admit, I have yet figure out how my OCs fit into season 2 now.

So think of my timeline, was before season one and after season one, and all that dead time between, caught in fandom limbo. And let's pretend if my main OC was a cannon, simply think she was not mention cause her scenes were just cut out. (As she is a much bigger player) I love trying to make my characters work within the current episodes or films of a series, then just having them come between fandom reset fanfics, you know? If any of you get, what am trying to explain here?

SO! What that said, let's finally talk about them.

First I have Primrose. She was just made to give Angel Hastur tragic back story. I quickly kill her off in the back story.

Prim was a healer in training ( she lost parents, when she was 8ish, Well! Times were hard back then after lol XD. At 8 she had to fend for self, and she managed to protect herself) But now 17 she manages to have her own little place, and do odd and jobs, and was a waver by trade while, working on her own remedies. Yet as I said, in this time Angels did live among humans and they were aware. So am sure Prim was aware of Hastur and other angels in her town. But mostly as acquaintances. But she never got close to any, not cause she was loner or a jerk. She other crap to do.

Yet I see it were, a younger Angel Crowley and other random unnamed one were playing to rough with a young Angel Hastur, and he told them to piss off. (was even picked even then) And Prim did step in, but the damage was already done. So, of course, she steps up to help him, and that is when she started to be friend an angel after all.

They started to get closer, and soon a bit to close, to suit the other angel elders and human elders, Of course, they did fall in love despite the warnings. Or how the angel/human elders told all, the hybrid child should never happen.. We all know how that all turned out with Lilith, when she left Eden.

But I see Hastur was younger he was dumb and drunk on love too. BUT THANKFULLY! They were nothing like Romeo and Juliette! But to show you how twisted and screwed up the head Angels are in GO universe, they blame Prim, telling her to bye-bye. Banished her out with all the other monsters to go fend in some other city. Forcing her to leave the special Angel/Human ruled lands, she always knew as her home. As a safe heaven on earth, mostly. To be now doomed to wander the lands, that Lilith now owned, hell's perversion.

But that only if she (Gab blamed her 100% alone) refuse to cease their actions. But of course she back sasses them and you know Gabe hates that. So bye-bye Prim and young Hastur goes with her. But they don't really see the harm, they think he's lashing out as a rebellious teen, he's at that stage. thinking he will be back.

But he doesn't return, he's happy with Prim, as it seems they found another town, welcoming them with open arms. It had all kinds of people who rebelled, and joined Lilith. (Though this wasn't Lilith's main town she over saw, she still kind of reminds unseen to all, she keeps to herself) And many monsters, that bible now talks about, that Lilith and other humans made and created, when she laid with so many.

The town was Sodom and Gomorrah (yet with so many retelling repaints of our bible, and changing narrative through the years a lot of was removed...so we never got the real story)

The Angels felt this city question the order and was just pure chaos, and not put of “the plan” And we all know all know what happened.

But Prim was one of their main targets,and others like her. And Prim was pregnant, and Gabe had the nerve to say how all of this happening is a joke, too. My Angels have sick sense of humor.

(And this why Has now hates jokes to this day. )

But to make matters to worst, Prim's recantation soul would always be a curse to die young, for her so called sin. (I also have it were in my version, unlike other reaction stories, where they look same..She has different faces)

And it would seems demon Hastur hasn't realize he has come across her new lifes countless of times, even being the one who ended up killing her, or tormenting her, or they simple cross paths on a street.

SHE has always be there, rather he knew it to not. And that when we come to Abyss or Abyssinia. Yes my rat demoness, is really Primrose, reincarnated. (though goes on unrealized for long time in my s tory!! yet know all you know) But she started off life as a human. With a normal name (I never really came up with) A odd, awkward girl, who had love in her heart, but become bitter quickly, and choose her security blanket was to hide behind the gothic trend. She hated her parents, but they earned the hate. She was a opss baby, so they had to wed, and hated each other so they took out on her. It wasn't long time she caught wind of London was the place!for the gothic scene back in the day, so run away to London. Wasn't long till she hooked up with a follow goth, and started going by Abyssinia, (she picked as it abyss and sin it..) but he was aj erk, always trouble with the law, abused her, got her catch up in his life of crime. He always cheated on her too. But she no other place, and she put up with it. As long she did what he said, it would all be fine. She was plotting to off him soon anyways, and steal all the wealth had stolen. She played all nice and sweet. Then it was big time he was gonna hit up bank, she had her part to play.

Yet all went horribly wrong.

When she met her untimely ended, up her Boyfriend coming after her. (As he realized what she was planning on the side) to kill her. She panicked and didn't hold her ground, as she had play in her mind she would, for days. She ended up sliding and crackling her head on some marble floor, ( bleeding to death..)

It seems universe as gotten retried of reincarnating, as with each life she lives her soul just turned dark and bitter. And she ends up the burning pits. Well guess what! She was all “F-THAT!” So she fought her way out of the pit. And in one human year climbed out. All of hell was impressed as normally, must give up. Even getting as close to very last step, but then slips, and falls all the way back. NOT HER!. So, of course, it was no question she deserved a spot. For years she managed to work herself into having her own infamous rep.

It seems she and Hastur have A FTF thing going on. Or so they claim. (though behind doors their more going on XD) Though he's unaware of the truth of Abyss and who her corrupt soul really belongs to. And of course, she has no idea, like she can remember her past lives. Yet fully remembers her human one, so in away she thinks differently then them, cause she was HUMAN! Once.

Then finally, she earned her own seat with main, as a “duchess of hell” kind of given she and Hastur are a couple now. And since she was once human, she don't understand the how she could chosen duke, but she like how she was the first duchess! So they were “ whatever..than..”

Yet was long road for her to get where she was. (And now given events of good omens season one, I say Abyss was off acting other orders being once human...it help demons with other earthly matters. Why we didn't see, in theory, if she was cannon)

I really don't know how the demon royal class work, yet when climbed out of the pit..

She was placed as a lower class demon, but she still sat higher then the others. Worked closer with them like an earn boy, or something...And unlike other lower demons...They made a new rank for her right on the spot, as Satan demanded it. (I know that has some plot hole there I cant argue that) But naturally Crowley (when he still in hell's good graces and with this rank) was interested by this little human...

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

A PART FROM AN RP: Her having a flashback, why the scenes all the over the place

Her eyes widen, at she heard her name upon his lips. Memories she tried to suppress came flooding back. Playing in her mind, of how horribly he flirted with her, pocking fun at her name. Pocking fun at on daily bases, till earned her trust. THEN BROKE IT!!!

“ Abyssina, huh loosely named after breed of feline, or the Ethiopian Empire...What an odd name...”

He did find her fascinating study, for the feat she managed to take. Clearly this little freshly demon was special... and he did find humans entertaining, here was one! Starting a new life...And he didn't have to pose as human around her, they were on even playing ground, both demons

'NO!' Abyss would reply angry. "I named my self, that I though it sounded gothy...Abyss and sin in the name..." She blushed, flustered by his taunts.

. "I never though I would have demon correcting me...Nor would have though heaven and hell was real...that I climb out of the pit and now a demon myself..'

'Yes, Well, I have to bounce...' he grabbed her hand giving a playful kiss. ' See ya Abyss...' ...he always seemed to be around very corner, during her lower demon life, or when she running earns for higher ups, being their little slave. Pulling her aside making her do bad stuff, or playing tricks on them...He was her first real friend...in hell....Then things got complicated, when he stole a kiss...and she returned it and the what was meant to be one night stand into many sexual encounters...Till one day she realized...or what she though he was, using her since he couldn't get who he really wanted...then next thing he knew she had become one of better's girl, Hastur and climbed the ranks...

He was hurt by her too, but he couldn't blame her...It was kind of true. But why did she choose to fall into that toad's arms!....but dammit he let her in, it was hard to let her go. It drove him insane, when Hell choose to send her to get infor him, as well it lead to another thing...Despite them both having their own loves, they still fell victim to old nostalgic feelings...He was her ' first' in her new demonic life how can you forget your first, as she was his first ' human'

--------

END RP POST

....When she finally ended with Crowley, blasting him across the face too. (during one of her hours, she was given off by the higher ups, as I said she was not your normal demonic servant more plot holes lol)

Hastur happened to see it happening from a far (as all hell knew he was “playing” with her whatever they though again...just as long she and him did their jobs whatever) And smirked when saw her slap him across his face, and Crowley was about to say something but just stormed away...Abyss breaks into silent tears, and Hastur stops in mid step, he stirred a memory in him...Prim's tears. Scared to admit, she had fallen in love with him..feeling she did something bad. Yet he took into his arms told her “No” And he tried to fight these feelings, but he couldn't. And he come closer behind Abyss he spoke “...Foolish girl! He is a snake, what did you expect...?” She clears her face, trying to act like she wasn't crying and turns leave, knowing he was there to retrieve her for what ever little thing they need of her..

Yet he grabs her by wrist, pulling her back all “...I know you want to see him suffer...” Grinning at her. “I do too.” She looks at him all “...what are you implying..?” Hastur was having his memory of crying prim guide him, to do something nice for his little charge...He laid it all out for her, looked stunned, but then give him one hell of a grin. “YES!!!” Making stumble back a bit, at how excited and loud she was. (even as the author I have no idea what was...but I know it last over course of time as made them get closer, till she turned into his FTF...and fall into his arms)

Being closer to her, he realized she had darker side, and loved to torment. And her darkly positive out look was a breath fresh air to him.

RANDOM AUTHOR NOTES

And OMG! I am sure crowly felt so crush !!! When he got called down for special news and annoncement...(as all demons needed to be present of this rare event in history) And how Abyss gives him dagger stares...As Buz makes the announcement, goes on long detail how born a human, a sinful one died, came here climbed out of the pits...found a spot at their court as their personal servant .till she approved, even some humans need to die before they achive greatness...And a new seat has open up...Hastur grabs a random higher court demonthe random demon all "wait what?" * and toss them into vet of holy water* So let us welcome Abyssinia, as our first duchess....and I guess...yaddaya...She belongs hastur...so none of other demons get ideas...

Crowley: wtf just happened...what...Abyss...is this is cuz your still mad me..come on its hastur! Abyss glares at him. "...as of now your not allowed, to be so familar with me Crowley.....*walks past him so coldy...then just to make point she grabs hastur force making out with him...then he realizes what is going on, and returns it...as he flips him the bird as their still kissing.. Crowley just leaves all pissed

BUT THERE IT IS....pretty much....Yet Crowley/Abyss still have random hook ups, its so confusing...as its true they do love another one too, yet their loyal to their real love......So it has me wondering...in season 2, when hes driving all heart broken, who's to say he doesn't pay her visit to ' vent' Though kind of change some things around..I hate how Gab/Buzz run off...I want to still have them..my story...so they leave out love part..still remain in their spots...or she comes back as they broke up after first fight all mad, reclaims her throne back.

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

HIDDEN TRIVA:

Then I had this twist, were Crowley breaks into the recantations files (with the help of Aziraphale, it seems they are some new secret mission), that father time guards and runs, along with some other things that Father time must do. And nosy Crowley finishing getting what he needed, starts to get a bit nosy and distracted and instead of running away (while Aziraphale is “alright come on! ), chooses to look for some humans, he kind of liked hanging with. Then remembers how some still owe him some money! From one of their past life's.(though of course mostly he did spend most of his time with Aziraphale, but also when in human form, hang with interesting humans through the eons lol) And happens to stumble upon her Abyss file somehow. And know he knows...things. Thinking

wait...so Abyss is Primrose, Hastur's rune. AH! She still is even to day..snorts to himself.

[forgottenluck]

❀ What has made you completely lose your chill?

Salty AF Meme Time!

Oh boy, a lot has done this over the many years I've been rping...but i'll pick one from my super younger years. This one has religious talk, so please note that.

I used to rp a LOT on deviantart, in the chatrooms. I was in a group rp that ended up being one of the largest of it's fandoms rp chatrooms. It was a fun time, and I really liked the people in the group.

At least...mostly.

(putting under a readmore cuz it got long)

One of the bigger names in the chat was a mun by the name of Faith (I have no idea if this was their/her real name but I have no quarrels saying what I remember due to this being a completely different platform.) She played an OC, absolutely refused to play a canon character....and she was the epitome of a Mary Sue. Honestly this didn't bother me. We were all young at that time.

What did bother me was her blatant disrespect for rules, other people's comfort, other people's boundaries, and the fact she had it out for me from the moment i stepped into the room.

I have a very outgoing personality, and tend to make friends decently well. At least, this is what I've been told. As such, when i came into the room, many people really liked me. They started paying attention to someone that wasn't her.

A few things to note; the fandom we were in was only mildly supernatural-ish (i won't state which one it is at this time), but the characters were all relatively normal. No magic powers, no special things that were too outlandish, etc. OCs were allowed as long as they made sense in the lore of the universe. The rules of the chatroom stated that if you were going to ship it had to be singleship due to the storyline of the room.

Faith's OC broke....all of these rules. Her OC had massive supernatural powers, was supposedly a pinnacle of the universe, was all powerful, and was in active relationships with every member of the opposite sex. Mary Sue to the extreme.

It got worse as attention started to wane on her character, moving to the new people in the chat. She started to berate me in ooc, had her character become severely depressed if any of the others even thought of interacting with mine, and even started spreading lies about me, telling the mods that I was doing things to her in PMs and such.

Me and her were called into the private chat channels multiple times to "talk things out" which usually just ended up in a 'she-said she-said' type deal. I took it all. I was wild when i was younger, didn't really care nearly as much as I do now. It was more frustrating than anything, because I wanted to write instead of argue and fight over interactions. Still, she managed to turn almost the whole chatroom against me.

Eventually, I broke off from the group, and left a long scathing PM to Faith, explaining my feelings and how I felt it was unfair how she was acting to me. I heard nothing for....well....years. I moved on, figured it wasn't worth the energy....

Then I logged in to Deviantart to a PM from her one day. It was a lengthy reply to my original PM, where she addressed every point I had brought up.....and ultimately tried to pin it all on me. That it was all my fault that she had felt like she was invisible and not getting attention that she deserved.

But that wasn't what made me loose my cool.

What made me loose my cool was how she ended the PM. Obviously, I'm glossing over a LOT of what happened to keep this as short as possible, but what she had done to me was massive harassment, blackmailing, bullying, etc. And I do have testimony to back this up, I still have friends from that old chatroom.

But the way she chose to end the PM was roughly as follows:

"I know you need to find God, and You need him and his love, and you should accept it. I've accepted it and you should too so that you can forgive all of what has happened and be saved."

Now, I'm not going to tell people what they should believe. But do not tell me what I should believe in. And don't tell me what to believe after telling me that everything that bad happened to someone was my fault for just existing. I was absolutely pissed, livid.

I sent back the most scathing, angry PM I've ever sent to this day. I picked her reply apart line by line, bit by bit, and pointed out every single issue and hypocrisy that came up. Followed it up with evidence that I'd been keeping for years. (i have issues deleting things so i have so much stuff from years and years past). Told her that she could believe whatever she wanted, but I never going to be a part of that, and that I would never forgive her for what she put me through during my time in that chatroom. She would never be forgiven. She would be remembered for every wrong reason, remembered as a person who was willing to put everyone else down for simple validation and attention, and that this was just proving that point home because she was seeking even more attention.

That there were very few people in the world that I choose to hate, and she was one of them.

Am I proud of what I said that day? No. But it doesn't change my feelings. I still hate her, to this day.

Again, I'm not going into details, but those years I spent on deviantart, especially in those fandoms....I was at one of my lowest points, and she had hammered home constantly that I was unliked, unwanted, and a burden. I was very harsh in my last PM to her. I had completely lost my cool....but I don't really regret what I said. I feel like it was things she needed to hear, especially if she meant her last point of "finding God."

so yeah. That's a time I lost my cool. fun story, yeah?

[demona-andariel]

Tristan's Hawk - 3 / ??

Fandom: King Arthur (2004)

Pairing: Tristan x OFC

Summary: They were enemies, fated to kill each other. Yet a curse ends up binding her to him. Hawk by day, woman by night. She needs to find a way to break the curse and return home before he realizes just how much control he really has. Unfortunately, all too quickly, things become a lot more complicated when the heart is thrown into the mix.

Warnings: Nothing to bad. Possible eventual smut, undecided. I would say canon typical violence.

Word Count: 2,392

Chapter 3 - The Gifted

"Do not lecture me." Nola's angry voice brought Myrina out of her dreamless sleep.

With a weary moan, Myrina stirred. Slowly, she sat up from the bed she'd been placed in. Her sore body protested her movements, but she knew what the fight was about and she felt the need to step in.

"You were reckless." Reghan's voice was firm but there was a hint of annoyance. "If the Romans had managed-"

"They didn't," Nola interrupted. "I will not allow my father's sacrifice to go waste by having me stay in this village forcing people to come to me." There was a brief moment of pause before she continued. "You allow Darren and Rina-"

"Enough, Nola," Reghan snapped. "Their gifts allow them to escape if they are in trouble. You will not leave this village again. We lost more when we rescued you. Both Rina and Darren suffered major injuries."

The floor was cool against Myrina's bare feet. She staggered and leaned against a wall. She really should have stayed in bed. Her muscles ached and her body demanded she go lie down, but she ignored it. At least, she tried to. She demanded her muscles to move to get herself into the room that Reghan and Nola were in, but they refused.

"Nola, you are correct. Your father's sacrifice must not be wasted. But, if the Romans capture you they will take you far from here. They will find out what you can do and use you for their own means," Merlin's voice stated.

"But-"

"This is not up for debate," Merlin's voice was firm. "You will not leave the village by yourself again."

There was a brief moment of silence.

"Nola!" Reghan said.

"I'm going to see how my brother is doing," she replied.

Rina let out a sigh as she heard her sister's heavy and annoyed footsteps as she walked out of the room.

"You should be in bed," Guinevere's whisper startled Rina, making her jump a little. "And you must be very exhausted for me to sneak up on you."

Rina gave her a half smile before nodding her head. It was probably a good thing she didn't manage to make it into the room. The argument would have gotten more intense with her siding with her sister.

"Come." Guinevere circled her arm around Rina's waist and the two walked back to her room. Guinevere helped her back onto the bed.

The siblings shared Nola's sentiment when it came towards the use of their gifts, well most of them did.

Their father's sacrifice had not been in vain. The four siblings each received a gift, unique and special to them. Nola was an exceptional healer. She could save a person who was on the edge of death if she wanted. But, as with all gifts that they had received, there was always a price. It was her own life that she used when it came to healing. But, she learned that she could channel her energy into the herbs and plants, making potent elixirs to help the sick.

Then there was Darren, Nola's twin. Where as Nola was given the gift of life, he was given the gift of death. When in battle his mind slipped into a dark void allowing his focus and attention to be purely on fighting and killing. Injuries didn't phase him. While in his void he had no friends, only enemies. Few had the ability to break him out of that darkness. He was a good fighter, but also dangerous to everyone including himself.

Rina shifted. Her muscles screamed at her movements. She could shift into an animal as long as she studied it, learned every aspect, every muscle. Shifting was easy. It was once she returned to her human form that the soreness and exhaustion would hit her. And she learned early on that shifting too much would knock her out for a few days.

Brandon- Her heart twisted ever so slightly at the thought of her oldest brother. He could see scattered images of the future when he was in the right frame of mind. A valuable gift. One that could and had helped Merlin in the past when he planned some surprise attacks on the Romans. Truly, the only cavate to his gift was they were scattered images, requiring them to piece sequences together to get a clearer picture. And yet, it was a gift he thoroughly hated.

Despite being blessed, Merlin and the other elders kept a close eye on the siblings. Not allowing them to venture very far as they trained and honed their skills. It wasn't until the last couple months had she and her brother Darren had been allowed to venture further out and test their gifts.

"How do you feel?" Guinevere asked, interrupting Rina's thoughts.

"Sore," Rina answered honestly.

Guinevere shook her head. "No, how do you feel about killing?"

Rina's eyes widened in surprise as she cocked her head to one side, then she let out a feral smile. "Not the first man I've killed," she replied.

Despite her tone, she looked away for a moment. She could still taste the copper from the Roman's blood. Hear the sounds of him gurgling and strangling as her powerful jaws clamped hard on his neck. Her skin rose and chills ran up and down her body. It was one thing to kill a man from afar with bow and arrow. But she'd done it up close and personal. It was just instinct. The man had attacked her sister. And she couldn't give him time to recover.

"Was he the man who did that?" Guinevere asked as she motioned toward Rina's shoulder wound.

Rina looked at her wound. His face, their fight as she desperately tried to protect her sister flashed through her mind.

"No," she said softly.

"I do not understand your father, Gwen," Nola muttered as she walked into the room. Her face scrunched in annoyance when she looked at Rina. "You! Do not leave this bed."

"I-"

"Don't try to lie to me. Your face is flushed and you're sweating. You will stay in bed and rest for the rest of the night. Let me see your arm."

"Of course, mother," Rina said with a slight dip of her head.

Nola grumbled as she handed Rina a mug. "Drink. All of it," she quickly emphasized.

Rina took the mug, downing the contents quickly, trying to avoid the bitter taste. She had learned long ago to do as her sister said. A quick heal was better than a slow one. As rough as Nola made her movements, she was still gentle when she grabbed Rina's arm. She slowly unwrapped the bandage to examine the wound. It was mostly healed. When it came to her siblings health, Nola took no chances.

"Shouldn't scar," Nola said. "Hope you killed that bastard."

Myrina hummed in response as she laid back down and closed her eyes for a moment.

Nola plopped down beside her letting out a loud sigh as Guinevere moved to the other side of the bed. The two women laid down beside her and stared up at the ceiling.

"I overheard Reghan and Merlin talking about getting me wed. Why is that they are interested in having me settle down, but the two of you are allowed to come and go as you please? You are gifted just as much as I am, Rina. And Gwen, I'm surprised that your father hasn't already accepted any of the several offers for you."

"They probably believe you are far easier to tame than the two of us," Guinevere said with a light chuckle.

There was a brief moment of silence before the three women laughed.

"I can picture it now. Nola, seven months pregnant and riding a horse to a village to take care of an elderly woman who had gotten sick," Rina said as she raised her hands up in the air, wincing slightly from pain.

The room stilled again. Myrina stared at the wooden beams above her head.

"Father told me that I would know the man I am to marry when I meet him," Guinevere said softly. "I think Brandon told him my destiny."

Rina looked over at Guinevere then lowered her eyes for a moment. She felt sorry for her brother and his inability to cherish his gift. A part of her understood. He was the eldest, he thought he deserved to have the best gift. He never outright stated it, but Rina knew that he coveted her or Darren's gift. Darren wasn't phased by Brandon's clear envy, but it rubbed Rina wrong. Which had put a recent strain on their relationship.

Nola let out a long dramatic sigh, then sniffled. She wiped her eyes as she fought back her tears of frustration.

"I didn't mean to get caught," she whispered. "That Roman noble." She shook her head. "He lied. He wanted me to help his soldiers and I refused. He claimed I was part of an attacking Woad group and got me arrested and those I was taking care of."

Guinevere stood up in anger. "This wouldn't have happened had father not driven him out long ago. Something must be done about him. He's been past Rome's normal borders for far too long."

Rina nodded. Guinevere ran her fingers through her hair then shook her head.

"I'm going to speak to my father. He used some of his guards to escort you to the Wall, right?"

Nola nodded her head.

"Perhaps this would be the best time to drive him out of his home. I will talk to my father." Guinevere didn't wait for a reply as she stalked out of the room.

Nola lay beside her sister and gently tugged on the bandage around Rina's right shoulder.

"I know you didn't kill him," she said softly.

Rina looked over at her sister.

Nola glanced up at her. "The Sarmatian knight. There were three of them. I wanted to warn you, when I heard your warning. I'm glad they didn't kill either of you."

Rina pulled her sister in closer, kissing her forehead. "Oh, Nola. We were bound to run into them at some point. It was good practice."

Nola shook her head. "Darren received some bad injuries. I was told he faced one of them. He won't be walking for a week," Nola whispered. Her voice cracked at her words, causing Myrina to grip her tighter.

"He'll live," Rina stated.

Nola nodded her head in agreement. "I do wish you had killed that knight. One less Sarmatian we would have had to deal with."

Rina gave her a small smile and let out a little sigh. "Nola, go get some rest. You don't have to worry about me," she said.

Nola gave her a look, but got up from the bed. "Your body needs rest, Rina. Don't overwork yourself."

"Yes, mother," Rina said with a chuckle.

Nola rolled her eyes but walked out of the room.

Rina waited for a while, staring up at the ceiling. After a little bit she rolled over, dug under her bed and pulled out the small dagger she'd hidden there. She slowly examined it.

It was beautifully made and well kept. The blade itself was very sharp. Her shoulder throbbed as it remembered the feeling of the blade piercing her skin. She didn't mean to steal his dagger. She didn't even realize she had it in her mouth until she shifted back into human form when she was safely in the village and dropped the knife.

She wanted to kill him. That had been her goal. But Fate stayed her hand. Those tattoos on his cheeks. She had committed those to memory years ago. She never thought she'd see him again. A life for a life, she thought. He had spared her once before. She swore if she ever saw him again she'd spare his life as well.

"Next time you will not be so lucky," she muttered out loud to herself.

Her sister was right. She should have killed him. One less Sarmatian knight meant a higher chance of her people surviving. The knights were brutal and well trained.

She tapped her fingers on the handle of the blade. This was what she'd been training her life for, committing to her brain. Her father sacrificed his life so that they could win back Britannia from the Romans.

A light knock brought her out of her musings.

"Reghan," she said as she sat up.

He nodded then sat down by her side. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Well enough to scout," she replied.

He gave her a guilty look as she read his hidden request correctly. "Your sister is never going to forgive me, but you are the best eyes and ears we have. With three Sarmatian knights on this side of the wall, I want to keep a close eye on them until they leave."

She sat up, ignoring the pain and ache that zapped through her body from her movement. "I can do that," she said with a nod of her head.

He glanced at the doorway. "Merlin wants to start getting more aggressive. Sending out more attack parties. It's why he wants Nola here. Far enough to protect her, yet close enough to be able to reach the injured by horse if she's needed."

"You should probably tell her of your plans. She's feeling useless. We all are," Rina pointed out.

Reghan let out a sigh, rubbing his neck. "It was something Merlin and I have recently discussed. We were still hesitant, but you're right. Your sister is correct. Your father's sacrifice shouldn't go to waste. It is difficult not wanting to shield the four of you with your gifts. Well get dressed, we leave as soon as you are ready."

She nodded her head, getting up and off the bed. She stretched her body, groaning at the ache, but a surge of energy shot up from her stomach.

"Rina? Are you sure?"

She gave her cousin a wave of her hand. "Reghan, I've been training for these kinds of situations. The kind that mean I have to shift a good amount of time. It won't kill me. I'll be alright."

Her cousin looked down then nodded his head in agreement. "I'll meet you outside."

She slowly got ready, her every movement became easier as the ache slowly left. Having a miracle worker for a sister had its perks. Rina paused picking up the knight's dagger from her bed. She slipped it into her belt before heading out of her room. Next time we meet. It would be unfortunate if she had to kill him with his own blade. But she let him go once. She wasn't going to do it again.

Chapter 4 - They Meet

[5-seconds-of-bucky]

Focus

​​A/N: So...it's been quite some time. I started writing this back in June before my life got a little crazy and I finally got some time to finish it! To anyone who's still hanging around, thanks for reading and I'm sorry it took so long to get to you!

This will be a multi-part fic! It's looking like it's going to be 3 parts at the moment, but it could be more as I write the rest of it.

A very special thanks to @buck-nialled for beta reading this for me!! Rach's ideas were the real cherry on top to this and it wouldn't be half as good without her help! Love you, bestie!! ❤️💕

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem Avenger!Reader

Summary: Fake marriage isn't easy with anyone, but with your best friend? Try almost impossible. With the lines between platonic and romantic between you and Bucky getting blurrier by the day, that exact task makes your mission of uncovering whatever your supposed Hydra neighbors are doing slightly more difficult than it needs to be. How can you focus on your job when everything you've ever wanted is right in your hands, just not quite?

Word count: 4.4k+

Warnings: swearing, canon level violence, two idiots in love who can't get it together

---

“I think that’s the last box,” Bucky sighed as he placed the cardboard box he was carrying on the living room floor. Boxes of all shapes and sizes littered the foreseeable area. The walls were bare except for a dent that likely came from the previous owners knocking a chair into one. Everything about the house signaled a fresh start.

“Alrighty then! Let us know if we can be of any more help!” your new neighbor, Bridgett, said cheerfully. With paper-white teeth, a cute dress, and subtle but perfectly done makeup, Bridgett looked like the epitome of someone who whole-heartedly embraced the ‘suburban housewife’ lifestyle. Oddly enough, she and her fiance, Adrian, didn’t have any children yet to fill out the picture.

You were surprised at first to find out that they were yet to be married--considering the types of people who tended to live in these neighborhoods--but they told you that the wedding had to be postponed for a number of reasons (to which were still unknown to you and Bucky). They had already bought the house before their original wedding date and decided that they might as well move in to it.

They happened to see you and Bucky moving boxes from a larger than normal van earlier in the day and offered to help, which you couldn’t refuse. They also just so happened to be your targets for the mission.

“Thank you so much for your help again! We would’ve been out there all night without you guys,” you chuckled. The feeling of Bucky’s arm sliding around your waist almost made you jerk away, not being used to the feeling. You instead leaned yourself into his side, remembering that you had a role to play.

“All in a day’s work.” Adrian gave you a sickeningly sweet smile, his hands on his hips. “Doesn’t hurt to be neighborly.”

“Absolutely! And let us know if you guys ever need anything too. We’d be more than happy to help.”

“Whelp, looks like we have to go,” Bridgett sighed. “Lunch with my parents and they don’t like to wait.”

“Don’t let us hold you up. Have a good time!” You and Bucky led them to the door, smiles on your faces that weren’t as genuine as they appeared to be.

“Thank you! Good luck settling in!”

Bucky closed the door once they were down the porch steps, dropping his arm from your waist quickly and making his way back to the living room. With a series of taps on his inner bicep, the camouflage technology Tony had created specifically for this mission flickered off, leaving the glinting vibranium exposed to the overhead lights. You missed the weight of it in the slightest sense, though it did feel easier to breathe without being pressed right up against your fake husband.

You and Bucky weren’t exactly the most touchy feely people. Neither of you enjoyed being on the receiving ends of hugs nor were you known for being the best cuddlers. Perhaps that’s what made you best friends, but it’s definitely what made this mission so hard.

You knew that your friendship was what made Steve decide to pair the two of you together for this specific mission. Normally, though, that exact thing was the reason you weren’t allowed to work together. The two of you had the tendency to joke around and get distracted far too often during missions and Steve eventually made the executive decision that you couldn’t be paired together anymore.

“Bucky, get your slow ass over here before I leave you behind,” you giggled into your com as you waited for your best friend to catch up. You had successfully retrieved whatever intel Fury had requested from some random Hydra base in Siberia and now had to wait for Bucky to meet you at the exit to make your escape. Steve and Sam were already out, waiting for the two of you back at the jet.

“Shut up, Y/N,” Bucky said, though you both knew he didn’t mean it. “Give me another minute. I’m almost there.”

You let out a small sigh of relief when you saw him round the corner, his eyes darting around in search of danger. A wolf whistle from you drew his attention your way, and you swear you saw some of the tension leave his body as he caught sight of you.

“There’s my favorite badass,” he said as he made his way over to you.

“Would you two stop flirting and get back already?” Sam’s voice came through the coms, causing you and Bucky to both roll your eyes.

“We’re not flirting, Sam. Just modeling what a good friendship looks like, you know, since you don’t have friends to know what that’s like,” you teased.

“Nice.” Bucky held out his hand for a high-five.

“Seriously, guys. Get back so we can get home,” Steve said seriously, though you swear you could hear a slight smile in his voice.

You and Bucky started a quick pace back to the jet, unintentionally letting your focus on your surroundings slip as you joked about whatever came to mind. You were making fun of Sam again when a Hydra agent popped out from behind a corner in front of you, throwing a knife towards your head. Had it not been for Bucky’s quick reflexes, you would’ve been good as dead. Thankfully, he managed to push you out of the way so the knife narrowly missed you and took a shot at the agent, knocking him down on the first try.

You could vaguely hear Sam and Steve’s voices shouting at you over the coms asking what happened over your heavy breathing as Bucky crouched down to make sure you were okay. You swear he’d never looked so panic stricken in his life, blue eyes wide in fear at what just happened.

“You good?”

You nodded your head, already getting up to continue on your way. Not another word was spoken as you picked up the pace back to the jet. You were met there with a distraught Sam trying to re-suit up and angry Steve yelling nonsense as he paced around with the shield in his hands.

There was a brief moment of silence when they caught sight of you before the yelling started again.

“What were you thinking, letting your guard down like that?” Steve asked angrily, latching the shield over his back. “Even worse, you didn’t tell us what happened. You seemed to have absolutely zero issues with communicating earlier. What happened?”

You quickly glanced over to Bucky, who was apparently engrossed with something on the ground. Neither of you said a word.

“Alright then, you two are done. No more working together on missions. I can’t have something like this happening again.”

You opened your mouth to protest but Steve was quick to hold his hand up to stop you. “I don’t want to hear it. I can’t trust you to stay focused around each other. This is it.”

That decision was said to be permanent, apparently. That was, until now.

It didn’t help that the definition of your relationship with Bucky had been starting to get hazy lately either. You knew your feelings were starting to become more romantic than platonic--at least more than they used to be--but as for how Bucky felt about you, you had absolutely no clue. Neither of you were the best at explaining your emotions about anything, much less your relationship.

So here you were: an undercover mission in which you had to pretend to be married to your real life best friend while trying to gain intel about whatever underground organization your next door neighbors were involved in.

“You’d think S.H.I.E.L.D would’ve mostly set up everything for us and left some stuff for us to bring in so it looked like we were just moving in,” Bucky grumbled as he stood amongst the mass of boxes in the living room. “But no, we have to unpack and set up everything for every room in this damn house.”

You walked over to join him, picking up a box labeled “plates” with a sigh. “Something to occupy our time with.”

“If they make us move this stuff out when the time comes, I’m quitting.” He grabbed a random box with no label and followed you to the kitchen, placing his box on the countertop gently.

“You’re going to quit the Avengers?” You raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe.”

“Uh huh. Sure you will.”

“My job is fighting, not moving furniture.”

“Right now, your job is to unpack that box so we can finish moving in and start the mission.” You nudged his hip with your own, opening the cabinet in front of you and putting some of the plates from your box on the bottom shelf.

With a huff, Bucky opened his box, revealing various picture frames filled with random pictures of the two of you throughout your friendship. On the top was a selfie from after one of your last missions together. You were smiling wide, Bucky’s chin resting on your shoulder. His lips were turned upwards into a slight smile, though one might miss it if they weren’t looking close enough. His eyes held a happy glint that wasn’t as obvious on the rest of his face. That same picture also happened to be the wallpaper on the homescreen of his phone (not that anyone except him knew about it, though).

“I’ll get to that later,” he muttered under his breath, already moving the box to the edge of the counter to make room for another one.

“Hmm?”

“Just some pictures of us. We can hang them up later.”

“In that case, you’re in charge of organizing the utensil drawer.” You pushed the box of silverware towards him and went back to the living room to grab another.

“There’s like six different sized spoons in here. Who needs so many spoons?” Bucky groaned, leaning his head against the cabinet.

“Married couples who have their lives together.” You gave him a knowing look and plopped a box down on the counter, the clatter of whatever was in it making you both wince.

“Sure looks like this married couple has their life together, huh?”

“Shut up.”

---

“Buck?” you yelled from the doorway of the master bedroom.

“Yeah?” He stepped out of the bathroom, his toothbrush still hanging out of his mouth.

“Is there a bed in the guest bedroom, or is this it?” You gestured through the doorway to the single king size bed sitting in the room.

He motioned for you to give him a moment, going back into the bathroom to rinse out his mouth. “You didn’t check earlier?”

“No, I wasn’t thinking about it.”

Bucky opened the door across from the bathroom, seeing that it was completely bare of any furniture. “Nothing in here.”

Uncertainty flashed across your face. “Oh . . . uh, okay.” Your eyes searched the floor, hoping that it would somehow hold an answer for your issue. “I’ll take the couch then.”

“What? No! I’ll take the couch,” he insisted.

You sent him a glare. “You’re way too big for the couch. You’ll kill your back on that thing.”

“Like it will be any better for you.”

“I’m not letting you sleep on that couch, Bucky.”

“And I’m not letting you sleep on it either, Y/N.”

“Then I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“You won’t sleep on the floor either!” He threw his hands up with an exasperated huff. “We can just share the damn bed.”

“Are you sure?” He could hear the hesitation in your voice.

“Look, doll. If you don’t want to share because of me, I get it. But if that’s the case, let me take the couch. You shouldn’t have to take the couch cause you’re scared about your safety.”

Your eyes widened at his words. “No, no, no! I didn’t mean it like that! I just didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“The bed’s big enough. I think we’ll be able to deal with it for the next few months.” A warm feeling bubbled up inside of you when he sent a reassuring smile.

You started the night with plenty of space between each other. By morning though, the gap was a little smaller.

---

“So, Y/N, how long have you been with your husband?”

The group of women in Bridgett’s living room seemed to be much more interested in your personal life than the book they were supposed to have read that month. Apparently, “book club” was just an excuse for the neighborhood ladies to get together and gossip.

“We dated for three years and have been married for almost two, so five total.” You plastered a fake smile across your face, twisting the fake diamond ring on your left hand.

“He is a catch!” one of the ladies, Charlotte, raved. “I saw him working on his motorcycle this morning and I have to say, those biceps are definitely easy on the eyes.”

“I got very lucky,” you giggled.

“What do you two do for a living?”

“I’m a freelance copy editor and Bucky works in marketing.” Your “jobs” would allow you to work from home and keep your cover.

The (only slightly invasive) questions continued and you provided all the fake answers you had curated months in advance. You quickly found that it wasn’t too hard to get a read on the ladies; they were all basically the same anyways: nosy and ready to gossip about anything.

That might be helpful later.

They seemed satisfied with what they’d figured out about you once the time came for “book club” to end. You collected your things, keeping that fake smile plastered on as you said goodbye to everyone.

After everyone left, you asked Bridgett if she needed any help cleaning up. She took a moment to think about it, decidedly telling you that you didn’t need to worry about it; she had it covered.

“Are you sure? You know I don’t mind.” If you wanted this mission to go well, you needed to build a relationship with her. The sooner the better.

“I’ll be alright,” she reassured you. “Besides, you need to go back home to that husband of yours. I think Charlotte might try to take a stab at him before you get back.”

You laughed and bid her goodbye, surprised to find that very sight when you stepped out onto Bridgett’s front porch. Bucky was sitting next to his bike, shirtless, as Charlotte was saying something from the end of the driveway. His metal arm, camouflaged by Tony’s technology, fiddled with one of the rags he used to clean the bike.

You felt a surge of jealousy course through your body for a second. Your eyes narrowed when Bucky laughed at something Charlotte said and your feet were carrying you across Bridgett’s yard to your own before you could consciously make the decision yourself.

The sound of your footsteps on the pavement brought Bucky’s attention from the conversation over to you. He smiled at your presence leaning back on his hands with a charming look on his face. “Hey, pretty girl.”

“Hey, babe.” You pressed a kiss to the top of his head once you finally reached him, a hand coming up to run through his hair. You felt him relax a bit and saw Charlotte look visibility more uncomfortable than she had a few seconds ago. “How’s the bike coming along?”

“It’s coming along good.” He grabbed your hand off the top of his head and interlaced his fingers with yours. “I was just taking a quick break to talk to Charlotte here.”

It’s all just pretend.

“Well I hate to break up the fun but we need to get ready for dinner. Sam and Nat will be here in about thirty minutes.”

“Shoot, I forgot about that! Sorry, Charlotte. I’ll have to talk to you later.” He gripped your hand tighter to pull himself up.

“Alright. You two have a good night.” Neither of you missed her obvious disappointment as she watched you.

“Bye Charlotte.” You tugged Bucky’s arm towards the house, wanting to go in so you could start dinner. Sam and Nat were actually coming over soon to go over the information gathered so far and you were sure they wouldn’t want to wait very long to eat.

“Great job playing the role of jealous wife,” Bucky chuckled once you were in the house as he closed the door behind you.

You were playing a role because it’s your job. That’s it, right?

“Haha, yeah.” He seemed to miss the lack of humor in your voice, which you were grateful for.

“You said Sam and Nat are coming over in thirty?”

“Yup.”

He nodded his head before giving your shoulder a squeeze. “Then I better go take a shower.”

Yeah, just playing the role.

---

“So what made you guys want to move here?” Adrian asked, a beer bottle in his hand and his other arm wrapped around his fianceé. He and Bridgett had invited you and Bucky over for drinks and you couldn’t think of a more perfect opportunity to get closer to your targets.

“Seemed like a cozy neighborhood,” Bucky replied. “Nice people, reasonably priced houses. It was pretty much everything we were looking for.”

“I’m glad we got stuck with you as neighbors. The people who lived there before you were the absolute worst. I think they were trying to get us to move out before they decided to sell,” Bridgett laughed.

“Really? They seemed like nice people when we were buying the house.” You suddenly became aware of just how far apart you and Bucky were sitting compared to the couple across the table. You scooted to the far side of your seat and leaned on the armrest, subtly trying to get closer to your “husband.”

Bucky glanced over at your movements, almost confused before he remembered, oh yeah, the mission. “Yeah, they were super sweet.”

“I think we talked to them like three times around when we bought the house and they were super passive aggressive,” Adrian laughed. “I think it was the fact that we aren’t married yet that upset them. Old people with outdated opinions. Who'd've thought?”

You snickered at that, quickly covering it up with a cough when Bucky sent you an annoyed glare.

“We’ll do our best to not be passive aggressive and I’m assuming our opinions aren’t outdated, but, if they are, we’ll keep them to ourselves.” You made a point to look at Bucky during the last part with a playful smirk. “And as long as you don’t piss off Bucky, I promise he wont crush you with his biceps.”

The whole table laughed at the (not so) joke. The thought of throwing his arm over the back of your chair crossed Bucky’s mind and he almost did it, but the fear that you would stiffen up at his touch scared him too much to do it.

“Well, what made you guys decide to move here?”

“Pretty much the same as you,” Adrian responded. “Cheap enough, good place to raise kids . . .”

You zoned out as he droned on, focusing instead on Bridgett, who seemed to be consumed with her phone. She didn’t even notice your stare, furrowing her eyebrows at whatever message she was reading.

“It just seemed like the right place for us,” he finished.

“And, not to mention, every other place we checked out,” she nudged Adrian and subtly tilted her phone towards him, “was either too expensive or not our style. I guess we could’ve built a house but we wanted to save for the wedding. It’s so expensive!”

“Oh tell me about it!” Bucky joined in, surprising you. “You mention the thing you’re buying is for a wedding and all of a sudden it costs three times more.”

The two of them spent 45 minutes talking about wedding planning (you had no idea Bucky had so much knowledge on the topic to begin with) with an interjection from Adrian and yourself every once and awhile.

Needless to say, you weren’t all that surprised when a wedding invitation showed up in your mailbox the next day.

---

As could be expected with two (alleged) head Hydra agents, the venue was decked out to the nines. No detail had been overlooked. From the bridesmaids’ bouquets to the music the DJ was playing, it was--as cliche as it is--perfect.

You were currently sitting down, resting your feet as you scanned your eyes over the crowd on the dancefloor. You were trying to enjoy yourself in between talking to potential accomplices and hydra agents, but after a few hours your feet were killing and your social battery was drained.

Bucky, who was also supposed to be talking to people and gathering information, stared at you from across the room. Leaned against the wall, arms crossed with his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and that frown that seemed to always take over his resting face, he was probably doing the exact opposite and keeping people away, but he couldn’t care less. He could tell you were tired--the way your usually strict posture was slowly wearing away by the hour gave it away--but he wasn’t ready to leave the party when he hadn’t had the chance to truly enjoy it with you.

“May I have this dance?” The sound of Bucky’s voice behind you made you jump, your posture snapping up when you felt his hand land on your shoulder.

You gave him a skeptical look. “Why would you want that?”

“First of all, you know why.” He knelt down to unbuckle your heels and take them off your feet. “Second, I want to dance with you and you look too gorgeous not to be taken onto the dancefloor. Is that such a crime?”

“Perhaps not.” A soft smile crossed your face.

He stood up and offered his hand, a smile mirroring yours spreading across his lips. You took it gently, allowing him to help you up and wrap an arm around your waist as he led you to the dancefloor. Even as he walked around the edge of the crowded dance floor to find a spot for the two of you, his eyes never left you for more than a second.

“I’ve felt you staring at me all night. What’s up with that?” you teased as you wrapped your arms around his neck, his other hand coming down to your waist to pull you in closer.

“You look absolutely stunning in that dress, my dear.”

Heat rushed to your cheeks at his words. “Oh stop it.”

“What? I can’t tell my best friend that she looks gorgeous?”

You didn’t respond, instead burying your face into his shoulder and pushing yourself tighter into him. The line between platonic and romantic had never been blurrier but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. All that mattered in that moment was that you were close to Bucky, and you were loving it.

Bucky himself was fighting a grin. If it had been anyone else in the world being this touchy with him, he would’ve shoved them off and stalked away way earlier. But with you, he felt himself wanting to get even closer and never let go.

He moved his gaze from you for a second to check your surroundings. You could never be too careful around Hydra, right? His gaze fell over to the bride, catching her not so subtly staring at the two of you with a strange look. His eyebrows furrowed. What could she want?

You felt Bucky tense against you. You tried to pull back, assuming your being so close was making him uncomfortable, but he kept you locked in his embrace. A glance up to his face and seeing him looking at something across the room made you realize that something else was up. A squeeze to his shoulder had him looking back at you.

“Bridgett’s staring at us,” he mumbled.

You scrunched your face in confusion. You knew better than to turn around--it would make you look suspicious. A glance to your right told you exactly what was going on, though.

“Bucky!” you hissed. “Your arm!”

He looked at you, confused.

“The camouflage is off!” The exposed black and gold plates looked very different from the regular skin tone camouflage Tony had programmed into them before the mission started. Bucky’s eyes widened, panic setting in on his face once he processed your words.

You grabbed his arm, pulling it in between your bodies to hide it from the rest of the room. Bucky kept his eyes on the crowd to make sure no one saw your position and caught suspicion. Meanwhile, you searched his arm for the plate you could pull off and mess with the coding.

“Where’s that damn plate?” you muttered to yourself. Tony showed you how to locate the plate and put in a code to bring the camouflage back in case it glitched out like this but with every plate looking the exact same, it wasn’t the easiest thing to find.

You felt Bucky’s hand slide over your hip, his fingers drumming softly on the material of your dress. “Sway with me so we look like we’re dancing.”  He pulled you slightly closer and started swaying side to side.

“You’re not making this any easier.”

“Just hurry up!”

“I’m trying!”

You finally found the plate, flipping it up and doing exactly as Tony had told you to fix the glitch and turn the camouflage back on. You let out a sigh when a flesh color started flickering over the black plates. Crisis averted.

Bucky pressed a kiss to the crown of your head. You froze. That was . . . different? New? Not completely hated?

“Thank you,” he muttered, lips still against your head.

“Uhh, yeah, yeah . . . no problem.” You were staring holes through his chest as your brain short circuited.

“Shit, Bridgett’s staring at us.”

“She’s what!?” You tried to pry yourself from Bucky, as if your position was compromising, but his arm held you close. “Why would she be staring--”

You were cut off by Bucky’s lips on yours. Your body went stiff at first, surprised by the contact. Your lips were moving against his before your brain could tell you yes or no. His other arm wrapped around your waist as yours wrapped around his neck.

He pulled away, letting his forehead rest against yours and quickly pecking your lips. His eyes left yours to glance towards Bridgett. The sigh and the smile on his face told you that your distraction was successful.

“Good job playing along,” he chuckled.

You giggled in response, though your smile didn’t quite reach your eyes. The mission. It was just for the mission.  “You can always count on me.”

---

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[thephoenixdescendant]

I knew this would happen. I accidently deleted an ask. Thank god I took a screenshot of it before deleting it...🙏🙏🙏

Whoever asked this, I'm praying that they will see this post.

WORD COUNT: 2,824

Vert x Reader x Alternative Vert

You settled in handler corners about a year ago and made friends with the people who work at spectre motors. But, one day you became awestruck for the fact that you saw them coming out of a portal. That's when you knew what they really do. You have been nagging them to bring you with them but Vert refused. The reason why is because he's afraid you might get hurt and also, you tried to ride the saber the other day. But, what happened was you drove it to the maximum speed limit. And you crashed his car on a giant rock. You hit your head on the glass real hard and ever since then, he's been treating you like a kid. So, you kept annoying Vert to the point where he gave up and said yes. But he told you to not walk around the battle zone and instead, stay with Stanford.

You were with them on the training tracks watching the solar eclipse through those special glasses that allows you to look at the sun, until Sage announced through their coms that a stormshock was detected, with a warning. Those solar flares could damage their vehicles. Vert turned to you with a serious expression. "Don't get out of the reverb. If you do, then it'll be the last time I'm taking you to a battlezone". You nodded in agreement. You hopped on the reverb and they all took off.

"Stay double frosty guys. Sage said those solar flares could do nasty stuff to our instruments." Vert warned. "Solar activity peak level coinciding with portal entry" Sage announced through the coms as Stanford kept touching a button on the touch screen of his reverb. "Might explain why my rear axle telemetry a bit dodgy." Stanford said.

"Caution. Battlezone may also be affected."

Everyone got inside the portal and arrived on a planet that looks really fimiliar. Like the ones they show on science fiction movies. "Looks like a standard alien desert to me." Spinner said. "Everybody make some dust. Find me a key!" Vert said as he went to the other direction. "As soon as I find out what's wrong my axle. Catch up with you." Stanford parked his car on an area near a mountain. You got annoyed because you couldn't see the rest of the zone for a bit.

Stanford got out of the reverb with a socket wrench that he carries with him. He crossed your arms as you watched him open the bonet. "First rule of a manual servo repair. Never need one." Stanford started to twist and turn some of the parts with the socket wrench. You grunted in annoyance. "Hey Stan. Can I get out and watch the view. I wanna walk around a bit." You asked. "No. Vert told me to make sure your inside the Reverb at all cost." Stanford replied. Not looking in your direction. "Come on! I don't wanna sit here! I just wanna walk!!!" You whined. But, he just ignored you. You looked outside and sighed. Then you got an idea. "Hey stan. I'll make a promise to you if you let me out." You said. He looked at you, a brow raised. "What promise?" He asked. "If you let me out, I'll tell Grace how amazing you are! I know you like her and I'm sure she'll listen to me. That way, she'll ask you out!" You said, with a big smile. He rubbed his chin and thought about it for a second. A smile formed on his face. "Okay! You can come out!" He said. You felt really happy and when you got out of the reverb, you gave Stanford a big hug. "Thank you!!!" You said, before going to the other side, enjoying the view.

You kept walking around until you saw something coming from the distance. It looked like a gold chariot... And it was coming towards you. You ran to Stanford and hid behind him. He gasped when he saw one of his enemies right in front of him. He dropped his socket wrench as the mutant like creature aimed his crossbow at him.

"Go on then! What are you waiting for fang face?!" Stanford said with pure hate. "Even though you humans want to destroy my world, I cannot attack an unarmed man." Kalus said. Stanford looked at him, confused. "Who are you? And what have you done with Kalus?" Stanford asked. "And you, are not acting like a member of the evil battle force 5!" Kallus exclaimed. "Evil battle force 5?" You whispered. Stanford looked at you, indicating he was confused, just as you.

"Mount your vehicle and let us battle as honour dictates." Kalus said. Stanford took a step back, almost stepping on your feet. "Uhh.... One moment..." He said before he spoke through his com. "Guys! Kalus has me in his crosshairs, but he's being... Honourable. Please advice." "On our way!" Vert replied as he and the others went to where Stanford stood.

You saw the team coming towards them from the distance. The tension was relieved.

"Huh! Typical Battle Force 5. Refusing to choose the Vandal code to settle our differences like gentleman!" Kalus spat.

"A vandal gentleman? Huh! In what world?" Sherman asked. "Maybe in this world. Sage said the battlezone could be affected. Captain Kalus! Wait! Please." Vert stopped the Saber infront of him. You and Stanford quickly got inside the Reverb and he aimed the sonic canons at Kalus. "Captain Kalus!" Vert called as he got out, without bringing his double edged sword. Kalus aimed his crossbow at him. "I'd like to speak with you! I've come unarmed." He walked towards him. "Vert! We've got him surrounded. What are you doing?!" Agura questioned. "Playing a hunch I'm about to wish I never had. Cover me but stay back." Vert said. Kalus got out of his chariot. "What kind of trickery is this?!" He questioned. Vert held out his arm, motioning Stanford to turn off the sonic canons.

"You... Ordered your team to stay back..." Kalus said. "I did. So, where is yours?" Vert asked. "Ugh! You know very well what happened to them!" Kalus said before sniffing Vert's uniform. "Or do you?" Kalus got surprised of the scent Vert had. It wasn't the same scent he was fimiliar with.

"It's not Kalus!" Vert turned around to the team. "Uhh... How many talking lions with crossbows are there riding around in gold chariots?" Agura was confused. Zoom came and stopped the chopper beside the tangler. "Just did a flyby on the battle key!" He said before turning to Vert. Surprised to see Kalus standing next to him. "Whoa! And we're not whipping lion butt why?" "Somehow those solar flares must of connected us to a dimention exactly opposite our own." Sherman explained. You gasped in surprise. "Am I gonna see the opposite version of the team?" You thought. "With good Vandals! (Idk what word he said after that... lol)" Stanford said, confused and surprised at the same time. "So where's the rest of your team?" Vert asked. "My good friends Hatch, Xever and Crocomodo were elimimated... Long ago...." Kalus said sadly. His face drooped down. You looked at him with pity. "By who?" Vert asked. "By.... Them...." Kalus pointed to the distance, as he heard a team of cars racing towards them. The whole team looked at the distance and saw their opposites. "Those look just like our rides!" Sherman exclaimed. "Normally it's between me and that battle force 5. Which exists only to conquer peacefull worlds..." Kalus said.

"Well... Look what we have here?" The alternative vert's voice was heard through the com. You gasped at how his tone was so.... Evil... "They look like us, but they're so... Clean." "Not after I'm done with them." "I wanna smash them. Into teeny tiny bits!" "Wow Sherm! That was nearly a complete sentence!" "Oh, you boys are like soooo immature!" "Shut your traps. First we get the key. Then we play...." A fit of evil laughter sent chills down your spine. Anti-Vert noticed you sitting with Stanford. He looked at you and winked. "Uhhh...." You had no words to say. "Whoa. Doppleganger dudes really got their fight on!" Spinner said. "Can't let 'em get the key. What do you need Zoom?" Vert asked. "Battle key is in the side of a mini mountain. Gonna need Agura!" Zoom replied. "Nothings out of my reach!" Agura said. "Agura go for the key. Everyone else on defense. Let's go!" The team charged towards their opposites. They looked at each other in pure hate. You gripped on your seat because of how fast the Reverb was going.

"Looks like those goodie goodies are gonna get in our way!" Anti-Spinner said. "Split up. Take 'em one on one." Anti-Vert ordered. The Saber's blades collided with each other. Anti-Vert's blade scraped past the Saber. Vert grunted in anger.

Anti-Vert's Saber got near the Reverb and he came to your side of the car. "Hey sexy! He thinks he's better than me. Let me show you what I can do." He said before charging towards Vert's Saber. Vert got really angry when his alternarive self called you "sexy". God, he wanted to punch his anti-self's perfect teeth. "If you are trying to challenge me, you're doing a terrible mistake! I'm gonna kick your butt!" Vert said. "That will be in your dreams. The woman/man is mine!" Anti-Vert said. "No, mine!" Vert muttered. "She/he is mine!"

You were watching the entire thing. Each time Vert gets pushed back by his anti self, Anti-Vert has a grin on his face. He knows you are still watching the fight. But, you suddenly can't see them because the Reverb has gone away from them. "Stanford. Follow the girl/boy and try to wreck their Reverb." Anti-Vert said. "Consider it done!" He said. You saw Anti-Stanford following the Reverb really tightly. "Ohmygosh. Please go faster!" You said. "I am!" Stanford swerved the car left and right. Trying to avoid the sonic attacks. His anti self got to your side and you gasped when he made his car push the Reverb to the side. Both Stanford and his evil self pushed each other back and forth. "Coming here was a bad idea..." You regreted annoying Vert. This is what Vert has been warning you about. Something like this always happen. Suddenly, Anti-Stanford pushed his vehicle too hard on the Reverb. Causing the mirror on your side to break. Shards of glasses fell onto your arm. It's sharp sides grazed your skin. Causing a cut on the thin layer of skin. But enough to bleed. It stinged a little. "We'll get away from.... Me..." Stanford somehow managed to turn the Reverb, making it face his anti self. They both sonic blasted each other. Stanford and his anti self took the hit, causing the Reverb to be pushed back. You hit your head really hard on the back and on the side..... The glass shards cut the side of your cheek. It started to bleed and your head hurts fr om hitting the back too hard. "(Y/N)!!! You're bleeding!!!" Stanford gasped in horror. "I'm... I'm okay... Just go!" You said. The Reverb took off, leaving Anti-Stanford alone. You started to feel nauseous and a splitting headache took place. "I... I don't feel so good..." You said, covering your mouth. Trying not to vomit because of how the Reverb's movement is. "I'll take you somewhere that'll keep you safe!" Stanford said.

Stanford parked the Reverb on a small cave. A cave where it's not clearly seen. Both you and Stanford got out. You sat on the floor, leaning onto the wall, as Stanford inspected your injuries. "I don't have an emergency kit. Sorry about that..." Stanford apologized. "N-no it's okay." You said, as you took out your handkerchief from your pocket. You placed it on your cheek, hoping the bleeding will stop. "I should be the onr who's sorry. I shouldn't have come here." You said sadly. "It's okay (Y/N)." Stanford smiled. "You stay here. The Reverb is already damaged. If you're in it, then it'll cause more injuries to you. Our opposites won't find you." Stanford said as he got inside the Reverb. He disappeared into the distance and you sighed. "I shouldn't have come here..."

Vert and his anti-self kept pushing their vehicles on each other, causing a lot of damage. He chuckled. "You already know that soon, the woman/man that you have brought with you on your mission will be mine! I already know it. You're weak!" He said. "Not gonna happen!" Vert shouted. Then Anti-Vert saw the Reverb coming out from the side of a mountain, but you weren't there with him. "Are you sure Vert?" Anti-Vert asked before violenly pushing Vert's Saber with his blades. Vert's vehicle flipped over and Anti-Vert went to where Stanford came.

You started to feel lightheaded and your head was throbbing and you placed your hand on the back of your head. You felt warm liquid covering your palm. It was blood. You sighed, praying the team will come back to get you. You laid down and curled up like a ball, trying to fall asleep. After a few minutes, you heard a vehicle coming towards you. It sounded like the Saber. You felt relieved for Vert being here and you got up... Only to see his alternative self staring at you. He chuckled. "Are you trying to rest my love?" He asked. "I'm not your love! Leave me alone!" You said, as you stood up. "You don't know what I am capable of. I'm way better than the Vert from your homeworld." He said. "Oh no no no. You are just a freak. I don't like men like you!" You shouted. He looked at you with no emotion. He took a step towards you and you took a step back. "Me? A freak? Ha! You don't know me well dear." Vert said. "And you don't know me as well. I'm capable of fighting you off. I have a black belt in karate!" You exclaimed. Suddenly, Anti-Vert just burst out into laughter. "Do you really expect me to believe that?! You don't look like the type to be violent." He said. "Oh, But I am. Don't mess with me!" You said. He took a step forward and you lunged at him, ready to punch his face. But, he grabbed both of your wrist. "Hm... A black belt in karate, huh?" He said, mockingly. "I-I just went e-easy on you!" You said, as you tried to pull yourself out of his grip. But, he was too strong. "Don't even try. You're weak!" He said. You mentally slapped yourself from doing that stupid move. The amount of energy you took to get out of his grip made you feel as if the world was spinning around you. Your legs became weak and you almost fell down, but Anti-Vert caught you. He grazed his fingers on the cut on your cheek. "Looks like Stanford got a little harsh on you...". "I'm very sorry about that..." He suddenly pinned you against a wall.

He looked at how vulnerable you are. It didn't take long to smash his lips onto yours. You couldn't protest as your body felt like jelly. He stopped kissing you as you bit his tongue harshly. "Gah!" He hissed in pain. You fell down on the floor. "D-don't do i-it a-again...." You spoke. Your voice was weak. The blood from his tongue starts to drip down from his mouth. "I would love my woman/man to be a little more compliant. I don't mind playful biting.... But, not in a way it'll stop someone from kissing you..." He said. "Go... To... Hell!" You spat. He just laughed. "You will be under my control when I take you away from them!" He said, with a wicked smile.

"STAY AWAY FROM HER YOU SACK OF SH*T!!!" Someone shouted from the distance. You both looked at who it was. It was Vert. Your Vert. He ran towards his anti-self and kicked him in the guts. Anti-Vert grunted in pain. "You will seriously gonna regret doing that!" He said. "YOU WILL SERIOUSLY GONNA REGRET TAKING MY WOMAN/MAN AWAY FROM ME!!!!" Vert shouted. Then, both Vert and his alternative self started to have a fist fight. You couldn't move or speak, and you laid down almost unconscious.

Vert somehow beaten his anti-self down. He ran to you and picked you up. "You're bleeding!!!" He gasped as he felt the warm liquid from your head. He ran out of the cave and placed you inside the Reverb. "Get her/him home! Now!" He ordered. Stanford nodded and he took you to the hub. He went back to the Saber and looked at his anti-self. "You and I are gonna have a fight. With our vehicles..." He said.

Part 2 (Coming Soon)

[imalifegen89]

A Legacy Left Behind - Chapter - 5 - The Gemmond Incident

Rating: Mature

Category: M/M

Fandoms: Stargate Atlantis, Hawaii Five-0 (2010), Stargate SG-1

Relationship: Steve McGarrett/John Sheppard

Characters: John Sheppard, Steve McGarrett, Danny "Danno" Williams, PO Higgins (OC), Kono Kalakaua, Adam Noshimuri, Alicia Vega, Laura Cadman, Bates (Stargate), Original Stargate Wraith Character(s), Original Characters, George Hammond, Jack O'Neill, Catherine Rollins, Evan Lorne

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Swearing, Character Bashing, Not Catherine Rollins Friendly, Violence, BAMF John Sheppard, BAMF Team, No DADT

Summary: Team SG-11 goes on their first off-world mission. It's supposed to be a 'walk in the park,' easing them into the hectic life at the Stargate Command. But things have a way of going off the rails when this particular team is involved. One way or another, they'll prove that they've got what it takes to fulfill their mission.

-o0o-

The first official mission of SG-11, yay!

As always, Salchat, you are the best!!! Thank you so much for all your hard work. I'm improving but I'm still a lot of work for my Beta.

If there are any mistakes, they'd be my own.

Part - 1

Officers Quarters, Pearl Harbor-Hickam Base - Hawaii

The Naval Intelligence Command Analyst, Lieutenant Catharine Rollins, was tired. The 18 hour or so trips from Hawaii to Libya and back were taking a heavy toll and all she wanted to do was go to her quarters, take a long, hot bath, and collapse on her bed for a long, uninterrupted sleep until the next day. Both she and Harrington had been dismissed by Commander Joe White with orders to take the rest of the day off and report for duty the next day when they had returned to the base. Harrington had invited her to go out but she had declined politely, citing jet lag and the need to rest. In her mind, she had been cursing at the damn idiot to stop trying to get attached to her like a freaking limpet and just leave her the hell alone.

She sighed in relief as she finally reached her quarters without having been called away for something or other, despite her being off duty. That had happened a couple of times before and that was part and parcel of her glamorous career as an Intelligence Analyst. She entered her quarters, threw her traveling bag to a corner, and started taking off her sweaty and dusty uniform while fantasizing about a nice, hot, bubble bath. But being just a lowly analyst, she only had a cramped shower in her quarters. 'Ah well, at least it's not like I have to go for a communal shower.' She shuddered at the thought.

Her much-needed long shower turned out to be only fifteen minutes as the hot water got cut off. She sighed and got out, still quite travel weary. Then she found her most comfortable and baggy sweats, an old t-shirt that was a few sizes too big, put them on, and got under the blankets in her bed. She was hoping to catch a few hours of sleep before she had to go out for dinner.

Despite the physical exhaustion, her thoughts turned to the past few hours.

'Why is it that the handsome ones are always either taken or gay?' she asked herself rhetorically.

She had tried her damndest to flirt with the navy SEAL she'd had her eyes on for a while now. But the stupid asshole had been completely oblivious. She had been sure, when they were on their way, in that transport - his loud-mouthed friend had pointed it out clearly to the Commander. But the man had seemed utterly uninterested and even annoyed at his friend. Catharine had been reeling at that response, although she had kept up the pleasant conversation with the idiot, Harrington. Then she had seen the subtle drama between her SEAL and that rather unremarkable pilot. That had given her a clue as to the lack of interest from the guy. She knew she was a very pretty woman and was not quite used to her rather demonstrated feelings going unreciprocated in that manner.

'But he’s got to be bi, hasn't he? So there is still a chance. Claire was pretty sure when she told me that McGarrett used to go out with Anna from the Enterprise during the first year after he got his trident. Pff... I'm a much better catch than that woman, certainly much better than a damn pilot...a plain guy with dumb hair-do, at that...Argh. Besides, fighter pilots don't really have that long life expectancies now, do they? Oh, Steven, you could do so much better, really..' She let her thoughts wander about the latest individual that had caught her attention and his rather ungainly love interests.

She was dragged away from her musings by a certain ringtone on her phone that had only rung twice before. She sprang up in her bed as if she had been electrocuted.

'Shit, shit, shit! I should've anticipated this,' she berated herself, especially after what had happened and where she'd been.

She hurriedly got off the bed, found her personal laptop, and plugged in the special USB/Dongle she had been given about a month ago when she was recruited. She then switched it on, disconnected her internal internet connection to the base, and connected to a different server - a server with an IP address that bounced off several satellites and countries making it impossible to track the connection. She finished running the encryption she had been given along with the USB when a window opened on her screen, indicating an incoming call. She clicked the button to accept, with trepidation.

As usual, a black screen greeted her as the call connected. She had taken steps to protect herself as much as she could and had her camera already covered. She was reasonably sure that whoever was on the other side wouldn't see her either, but she couldn't guarantee it.

"Agent CR-17, this is Zero. We have questions for you," the disembodied and distorted voice coming through the connected call informed her. She grimaced at the 'handle' she'd been given. Then she took a deep breath to clear her mind and remember the details of the past 30 hours.

"Yes, please ask your questions," she replied when she was sure her voice was even and polite.

"You have participated in a certain meeting. Give us the particulars," the voice ordered.

'Well, that's easy enough,' she thought as she mentally listed the main points of the meeting. And then she launched into an account of the meeting that happened at the base between her, Harrington, SGC, and the SEALs, the gathering at the Wheelus Air Base in Libya, the points they discussed there, and the revelations that came to light about the alliance between the Wraith and the Goa'uld agents.

The voice was quiet for a long time before it answered. "Are you quite sure of this, Agent? They have seen our involvement at the Detention facility?"

"Yes, I am. I'd advise you to take precautions if you are going to conduct further operations in this manner. I'm certain they will be able to track your transporter movements. The scientists they have at the SGC seem very competent," she answered truthfully.

"Very well." said the voice, with grim finality.

"Now, this is your next task. Send the personal files of the members of the SEAL team who were involved in this meeting. We need to deal with this before things get out of hand - well - even more out of hand. Do you understand?" the voice asked with emphasis.

Rollins felt sweat running down her spine despite the shower she had just taken only a few minutes ago. Giving them verbal reports once or twice in a while was one thing, but sending highly classified personal files was something else entirely. But she knew that refusing was not an option, not if she wanted to keep her career or her life for that matter.

"Yes, I do." She answered the only way she could.

"Make sure we receive it all by the end of the month. You do not need to send them all at once. Take steps to cover your tracks. But make sure we have what we need by the deadline." The voice cut off abruptly, just the way it always did after it finished giving orders.

She stared at her now empty laptop screen for a few moments, trying to wrap her mind around the conversation she'd just had. Not for the first time, she regretted the circumstances that led her to accept this arrangement. Having a fat retirement fund to return to when she finally took her early retirement from the navy after putting the minimum years in, was a nice feeling. But she certainly couldn't enjoy it from a military prison or an early grave.

She shook her head and switched her laptop off. It was too late to do anything now. She had to concentrate on planning how to get around various security restrictions and get her hands on the files that were requested by her beneficiaries. She needed someone from the Human Resources Administration for this, didn't she? Then she felt a small smile creeping up on her lips - She knew exactly the person she could easily persuade into letting her take a glimpse of such things! Feeling quite satisfied and making further plans for her treasonous mission, she decided she was hungry enough and started to get dressed to go out in search of a proper dinner.

Stargate Command, Cheyenne Mountain - Colorado

Embarkation Room

(Four weeks later)

"I know you said renaissance age, but what does that mean, exactly?" Danny asked as he adjusted the strap of his MP7.

Everyone in SGC was issued FN P90 Personal Defense weapons. But the SEALs were partial to their own submachine guns and other weapons. The first thing they'd done when they began the training, was to raid the armory in the SGC to make sure they had those specific weapons and ammo they needed. The Master Sergeant in charge of the armory had gleefully sent out requests for the Navy to re-supply them with the standard weapons and kits for the Special Operators. The Navy had reluctantly given in, needing to keep up their standards.

"Like you just stepped into a Rome-Egypt hybrid planet in the 14th century," Bates replied with a grimace. He was not a fan of the planet. He had been on one of the Gate teams who had visited the planet before it was reformed by the SG-1. He hadn't been impressed.

"Hey, it's a nice enough planet,” Major Evan Lorne interjected. “Well, they were a bit uptight before, but then SG-1 sorted them out. They are good people now, took on refugees from Nasya and everything. It's safe enough for first-time planet hoppers. Besides, they are having their harvest celebrations this time of the year. Food, drinks, and merry people all around. And we have a standing invitation every year for the party," Lorne had visited the planet two years ago for his first 'travel through the Gate' experience and it had been a blast. He was very much looking forward to an encore.

"So, what do we do there?" This was from Higgins.

"Nothing much. We go and say 'hi' to the leaders, go to a party or two and come back home," answered Cadman. She had heard good stuff from Lorne and was looking forward to the experience as well. It would be nice for once, just to go to a planet and join a celebration, just enjoy the visit other than fighting or running for their lives, for a change.

"Nice," Higgins agreed.

The Stargate Command's newest addition - or the newly re-arranged SG-11, was waiting to go on their first extra-planetary mission. Four weeks had passed since Colonel Sumner initiated the first-ever SGC team combined with the SEALs and the CIA agents. They had all been heavily involved in training for all sorts of scenarios they could think of since then. Their days had been full of weapons, physical, tactics training, going through all available information about galaxy's bad guys, and then a couple of weeks spent in earth's Alpha site for field training. Sheppard and Lorne had had to beam down to Antarctica in between for projects at the Outpost and then visit Peterson Base a few times to keep up their flight qualifications. Altogether, those six weeks had been hectic and they were all looking forward to this outing. Listening to Lorne and everyone else who had already been to planet Gemmond painting a merry picture of their culture, had them all eager for the visit. The Wraith and the Goa'uld had been silent and hadn't made any noteworthy moves so far. They all knew that when they finally did, SG-11 needed to be ready to move. This trip to Gemmond for their harvesting celebrations was sort of a break before they had to go to war, so to speak.

"Dialing the gate now." Sergeant Harriman's voice could be heard over the speakers. He had started the dialing sequence for the planet designated P3X-422, aka Gemmond.

"Chevron One encoded,"

"Chevron Two encoded,"

"Chevron Three encoded,"

"Chevron Four... not encoded."

That was not the usual script during a dial-out. Sheppard exchanged a glance with Steve and turned back to look up at the dialing station. They were all waiting in front of the ramp while Harriman dialed. The day's duty officer-in-charge, an Air Force Colonel called Dixon, was standing behind the station where Harriman was sitting. He was also frowning at the diversion from the norm.

"What's happening, Sergeant?" They could all hear the Colonel asking Harriman over the speakers.

"Sir, the gate is not connecting. It's almost as if someone from that side is already dialing. You know, it's like, we're getting the 'line busy' tone," Sergeant Harriman guessed.

"That doesn't make sense. They know we're visiting them today. They usually like it when we visit," said Colonel Dixon, his frown deepening as he glared at the dialer. Then he looked over the see-through window to stare at the group waiting to go off-world. He grimaced as if SG-11 personally had something to do with the Gate refusing to connect.

Colonel Garry Dixon wasn't a big fan of the newly initiated team. His personal opinion was that the lot of them were too arrogant and cocky for their own good. And he hadn't really tried very hard to keep his opinions to himself. But SG-11 didn't let it bother them. They hardly needed validation from the opinionated Colonel. The man had only earned his stripes just by spending the required years in service without a single active combat tour under his belt. He had somehow landed his position as head of Public Relations for SGC, mostly thanks to his political connections.

"Well, dial again," said Dixon after a pause. The Sergeant did as ordered.

"Nope, still not connecting," Harriman said after the third failed attempt. The fourth Chevron refused to connect and the Stargate stubbornly stayed dormant.

"I don't like this. I don't like this at all. Something's not right," Bates muttered, shaking his head.

Sheppard stared at the Gate, thoughtfully. He could feel it in his mind. The Gate was trying to establish a connection with the input destination. He knew that Walter had guessed correctly; something was blocking the connection from the other side. Moreover, he could feel the Gate trying to force the connection, but not succeeding because something was lacking from SGC's side. It gave John an uneasy, itchy feeling in the back of his mind - like a puzzle piece that's been forced to fit into a place that it didn't quite belong. It gave him an idea.

"Sir, permission to take the Puddle Jumper on this visit?" Sheppard addressed the Colonel.

They had only just found this super-cool, little spacecraft back in Antarctica a week ago, and John had felt like he had been given a gift. He had been on the Chair running a diagnostic on weapons systems when the link had guided him towards one of the storage areas that was recently uncovered to show him the ship. He had finished the routine quickly and taken off towards his prize, with the mental connection in his mind laughing softly at his eagerness. He and Rodney had spent two days going through the ship top to bottom and declared it safe for flights. He had taken the newly named 'Puddle Jumper' (Rodney had insisted on calling it ‘Gateship,’ but John had exercised his veto power as the pilot and put a firm stop to that nonsense) on a few rides and returned with it back to the Mountain at O'Neill's orders. Jack O'Neill had promptly jumped in with Jackson, Carter, and Mitchell in tow, and taken it on a tour to space. He had returned after a few hours with all of them grinning like kids on Christmas, and then given his official stamp to put the Jumper on active service.

"What can you possibly do with the Jumper, Sheppard? We can't dial. The damned line is busy," said the Colonel, starting to lose his patience.

Sheppard mentally rolled his eyes. He knew that Dixon was quite skeptical when it came to believing in Sheppard's affinity for all things Ancient.

"I know that, Sir. But I also know that the Jumper's got a DHD in it, an Alteran designed. As advanced as our dialer is, it's still primitive compared to the real thing,” he replied. “And when there's the real thing, there's a chance that I could do something with it," he put on his most innocent expression and stared expectantly at the Colonel.

John could see Danny openly rolling his eyes and Steve trying hard to hide a snort. Bates was staring stoically ahead, staying away from the officer's spats. Agents Kalakaua and Noshimuri were staring at the Gate serenely, not letting this petty nonsense bother them. Cadman and Higgins were grinning ear to ear, watching the drama unfold. Lorne and Vega were doing the same as Cadman and Higgins, but they were carefully hiding their grins behind blank masks.

"So sure of yourself, Major?" asked Dixon, not bothering to hide his disdain.

It was obvious that he didn't believe for a second that Sheppard could do anything about the situation. The Ring was busy on the other side - there was not a damn thing they could do from this side until it closed, period.

"I don't see any harm in trying," Sheppard drawled with a shrug.

The Colonel looked for a moment like he wanted to refuse. Then he seemed to realize that it would be more fun to let John try and then berate him afterward when he inevitably failed.

"Fine then, knock yourself out. Just don't break the Stargate or the Jumper, Major." Dixon gestured grandly for them to get on with it.

...........

The team reached the next level where the Jumper was parked. The floor of the level had a trap door that could be remotely opened to let the jumper fly vertically down until it came face to face with the Stargate.

They all got themselves situated comfortably inside the craft. Sheppard took the pilot seat with Major Lorne as the co-pilot at his side. Lorne hadn't had the chance to take it out for a spin yet and Sheppard wanted him to familiarize himself with the controls during the flight. Steve and Danny took seats behind them in the cockpit. The rest of the team made themselves at home in the back where there was plenty of space for them and the equipment they carried.

"So, you think you can force a dial-in?" Lorne asked while he watched Sheppard going through the pre-flight.

"I don't know yet, Lorne. It's not like I've tried it before," said Sheppard with a crooked grin, not bothering to look up from what he was doing.

"Well, you sounded awfully sure back there," said Lorne.

"Let's just say, I have a feeling." Then he turned to look at Lorne and give him an impish grin. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

"Ah, Jesus! Please tell me it's not going to be like the time when we were doing that thing in Baghdad... Please! I'm begging you," Danny implored. His eyes had gone wide with what looked like genuine fear.

"Fucking hell, Danny, you had to bring that up," said Steve, trying to hide his fear behind annoyance.

"McGarrett, tell me that is not the case now - cos man, I'm gonna climb outta this tin-can right now." Higgins was already halfway up from his seat and looking furtively at the back door of the Jumper.

"Come on guys, relax. I'm pretty sure I know what I’m doing." Sheppard had finished checking on the flight controls in front of him and was now fiddling with the switches directly above him. He looked completely at ease, in direct contrast to the mounting fear in the atmosphere inside the craft.

"What happened in Baghdad?" Bates piped up from the cargo bay, stoic demeanor forgotten as his curiosity was piqued.

"Don't ask man. Just. Don't..." Higgins was shaking his head from where he was inspecting what looked like an electronic keypad with door controls.

"Oh come on, you can't just say things like that and expect us to let it go. Now you've got us all intrigued and shit," Vega cajoled.

"She's right brah, you gotta spill," Kono seconded. They were all getting increasingly curious as to what could possibly have these badass SEALs shaking in their metaphorical boots.

"Okay, people calm down. If we make it through this mission in one piece, I'll get drunk and tell you all about it - there’s no way in hell I'm going to talk about that shit while I'm sober," Danny promised the group, visibly collecting himself and.

"Stop exaggerating, Williams, it wasn't that bad. Got you all out of there, didn't I?" Sheppard defended himself with a full-blown, mischievous grin. Whatever he'd done, John was enjoying the memory, Lorne could tell.

"I was never the same again, man - none of us were - for a long time," Danny said petulantly. Steve nodded his agreement.

Sheppard finished off his flight checks with a chuckle and gently guided the Jumper above the opening on the floor. The technician outside opened the trap door, obeying Sheppard's signal. The little craft descended smoothly and came to a stop in front of the dormant Stargate, hovering just above the ramp.

..........

Sheppard dialed the address of the planet Gemmond on the Jumper's DHD. He could feel the connection failure even as he dialed due to the disturbance from the planet. He concentrated. He could feel the Jumper in his mind, wanting to co-operate eagerly.

'The Astria Porta is open on the other side. Is it imperative that we gain entrance to this specific planet, at this time?' John knew the inquiries that appeared in his mind were unmistakably Alteran, but he had no difficulty understanding what was being asked.

'Yes,' John thought confidently.

'Please enable the emergency override.' Another smaller, Ancient equivalent of a keypad appeared from the side of the DHD where John's palm was resting. He replaced his palm on the new sub-dialer, thinking 'Override.’

The new keyboard went back inside the DHD and John removed his hand to place it back on flight controls. The DHD started dialing the Gate address by itself and then dialed another sequence at the end. The Stargate in front of them came to life and the Chevrons started locking at double their usual speed. When the seventh and the final Chevron locked, the wormhole burst into life with a swoosh and stabilized with a splat. Then it waited patiently for the Jumper to fly through the gently rippling, blue surface.

The team chuckled, hooted, laughed, and whistled their praises.

John tapped his ear and activated the comms. "Sheppard to Control. Permission to visit Gemmond, Sir." He waited for the 'Go' order from the Colonel.

"Permission granted, Major." They all clearly heard the sour note in the Colonel’s voice, but they refrained from commenting, wanting to get going without any more delays on their first mission as a team.

[emjenenla]

I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy? [a SoC Fanfic]

Modern AU. Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

Warnings: violence, panic attacks, PTSD, mentions of car accidents, near drowning, sex trafficking

Title: I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy?

Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjenenla (Tumblr)

Teaser: Modern AU. Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

Rating: PG-13/T

Canon/Timeline: Modern AU; same general time frame as SoC (Kaz is seventeen, Jordie is four years older which means he’s twenty-one)

Dominant Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Jordie Rietveld, appearances by Jesper Fahey, Nina Zenik, Alina Starkov, Per Haskell, mentions of Pekka Rollins, Jan Van Eck, Wylan Van Eck, Mal Oretsev, one OC, various others

Pairings: technically more Kaz & Inej friendship than legitimate Kanej, mentions of Wesper

Warnings: violence, panic attacks, PTSD, mentions of car accidents, near drowning, sex trafficking

Notes:

- Long story short, I became obsessed with the idea of Kaz in a hoodie riding a subway with earbuds in so no one would try to talk to him and this fic happened. I hope you all enjoy. :)

-Special thanks to wylanvanwreck on AO3 and their story The Mighty Dregs as well as a post by @crows-and-co. Both formed the basis of the thought experiment that became Kaz in this AU.

-Also, why is Jordie in the Fanfiction archive character list as Joshie R.?

Disclaimer: I don’t own Six of Crows or “Heavy” by Linkin Park (the song I got the title from)

--

Kaz knew that his day was officially a bust when he had a panic attack in third period.

Okay, technically he didn’t have a panic attack in third period. He realized it was going to happen and fled to the bathroom, where he locked himself in a stall and waited until he could breathe again. The bathroom was thankfully empty. If someone heard him, one of two horrible things would happen; he’s be pitied or mocked. He’d lost a lot of his bully shielding when he’d cleaned up his school presence during the switch to high school. That change had been necessary both for Jordie’s peace of mind and to keep Kaz Rietveld and the Dregs lieutenant Brekker separate. Of course, that meant that he’d gone from that scary kid who smoked weed behind the school to a crippled AP student who no one thought could fight back.

Even worse than bullies would be if some well-meaning student told the nurse. Marya Hendriks was one of the nicest people on earth and she meant well, but if she figured out about the panic attacks she’d tell Jordie. Kaz had been hiding his admittedly shaky mental health from Jordie basically since the accident that killed their parents. He knew that was a bad idea in the long run, but it didn’t change the fact that therapy and meds cost money which was something the tragically orphaned Rietveld brothers did not have.

So he hid alone in the bathroom until almost the end of the class period before he admitted to himself that he had to go back. He felt shaky and a little panicky, but he was standing by the sink washing his hands when Jesper came in.

“What are you doing here?” Kaz asked. “You’re supposed to be in class.”

“So are you,” Jesper said. “You’ve been gone a long time. Are you sick?”

Jesper was Kaz’s oldest friend, though they didn’t spend as much time together as they once had. If asked Kaz would blame that on Jesper starting to date Wylan, though he knew it was at least partially because of the Dregs and the ever-lengthening list of things that Jesper didn’t know about.

“I’m fine,” Kaz said drying his hands and brushing past the other boy. “Did Dryden manage to explain anything today?”

“I don’t understand it,” Jesper said. “And neither does anyone else. Can you tutor me after school?”

“Lunch or tomorrow morning,” Kaz said. “I’m busy tonight.”

“Fine, lunch then,” Jesper sighed. He liked to have his lunch periods and he hated getting up early. “I honestly don’t get how you’re the only one who doesn’t get confused by Dryden. Everyone else is struggling.”

“That’s because I’ve long since accepted that Dryden doesn’t know how to do algebra and I don’t try to understand what he’s teaching,” Kaz said. “I still get all the right answers, so there’s nothing he can do to me.”

They reached the algebra classroom. Kaz’s bad leg was killing him after all the time spent curled up in the bathroom stall. He really should have been using a cane, but when the injury had first happened he’d refused. He’d come around to it after joining the Dregs because it turned out a cane was a pretty good weapon. Unfortunately, since the cane was now connected to Brekker, Kaz Rietveld couldn’t start using one.

Kaz opened the door just as the bell rang and students began pour out. He stuffed his hands into the big pocket of his black hoodie and tried not to hunch his shoulders to obviously. Touch aversion was on the list of things he’d pretended to get over to keep from worrying Jordie, in reality it was hard to shake the horror of being trapped with his parents’ bodies in a car that was slowly filling with water. The negligent and painful treatment he’d received from the doctors afterwards hadn’t helped either.

Kaz twisted his hands around the black leather gloves hidden inside his hoodie pocket and tried not to think about how much better he’d feel if he was wearing them. He could wear the gloves as Brekker because he could explain it away as trying to avoid leaving fingerprints, but there was no explanation for Kaz Rietveld wearing gloves.

If he was completely honest, he hated being Kaz Rietveld.

He crossed the room to his desk and began gathering his books. Dryden looked up from arranging papers on his desk. “Are you alright, Kazimir?”

Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

“Yes, sir,” he said with a submissive smile that he knew Dryden’s ego liked. “Thank you for asking.”

~~~~

Kaz was feeling a little calmer by the time they got out of school. Helping Jesper with algebra during lunch had helped a lot. Kaz loved math; it was easy and straightforward and never failed to make him feel like he was at least partially in control of his life.

When the last bell rang, Kaz made his way through the halls to his locker, hands buried deep in his hoodie pocket. He unlocked his locker and pulled his ancient slide phone out of the front pocket of his backpack. The only texts he had were weird Instagram photos that Jesper had sent him during study hall. No texts from any of the Dregs which meant that things were still on for tonight.

Someone slammed into his back and Kaz almost broke the kid’s arm. He’d learned from being Brekker that nothing kept people from touching you without mockery or pity like the promise of violence to anyone who violated your personal space. Unfortunately, that was on the list of things that were frowned upon at East Ketterdam High.

He glared at the kid until he was gone, then pulled his second piece of ridiculously outdated technology out of his backpack. It was a 4th Gen iPod Nano in an absolutely revolting shade of orange. The thing had been Jordie’s first and bore his dubious taste in color as a result. Jordie had given it to Kaz shortly before their parents had died, and Kaz had been stuck using it ever since.

Still, it was better than having no music player at all. Kaz unwound the black earbuds and shoved them into his ears. He put his playlist of pirated music on shuffle and gathered up the rest of his things. Then he swung his backpack on and left the school.

He made his way to the nearest subway stop. Subways were pretty much the only type of transportation he could manage these days. He was so deathly terrified of cars that some days it was a struggle to cross the street, and buses could still be struck by other vehicles and be pushed off the road into water. Subways ran on tracks and had only limited interaction with other subways, so he could handle them.

The subway was busy enough that there were no seats. No one stood up to offer him a seat, but that was okay; Kaz didn’t want anyone’s pity. He hooked an arm around one of the poles and leaned against it, watching as the stops zoomed by. He finally gave into the urge to put the gloves on. The subtle leather covered his hands, and he felt a million times safer.

He got off the subway at a stop near West Ketterdam High. He was now on the opposite side of the Barrel from his school and the dingy apartment he and Jordie lived in. It was a long trip for what basically constituted as a commute, but when he’d joined a gang he hadn’t wanted to risk running into someone he knew from the East Barrel.

He climbed up the steps out of the subway station and set off down one of the streets. His bad leg was throbbing worse than before after the jarring it had received on the subway. He wormed a bottle of Advil out of his backpack and shook two into his hand. He chewed them so they’d kick in faster and put the bottle away. The Advil would barely help, but his prescription meds were too expensive to use most of the time.

His mouth was still full of the sour, acidic taste of medicine when he reached an old but well-kept house in a dingy side street. He climbed the front steps and knocked. A minute later Alina, Inej’s foster mother, answered the door. She was a young woman and dressed casually, her long, inexplicably white hair was hanging loose around her shoulders. “Hello, Kaz,” she said with a smile. “You know you can just come in. You don’t need to knock.”

“I know,” Kaz said stepping into the house.

The smile Alina gave him was fond and it made Kaz want to do something to wipe it off her face. “Inej isn’t home from school yet,” she said. “I made some cookies this afternoon, though. Do you want some?”

“Maybe later,” Kaz said. “I’ll wait for Inej upstairs.” He tried to avoid Inej’s foster parents as much as possible. He knew that they’d assumed he was Inej’s boyfriend though to be honest he wasn’t sure if he and Inej were even really friends.

He climbed the creaky stairs and headed into Inej’s bedroom. Her foster sister, Nina, was already there lying stretched out on her bed on the left side of the room. Kaz raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”

“I was sick today,” Nina said in an airy voice that suggested she’d just skipped out.

“Fun,” Kaz crossed to Inej’s bed on the right side of the room. He took off his backpack and lowered himself to the floor, suppressing a hiss of pain. Then he leaned over and began rummaging under the bed.

He heard Nina’s sheets rustle as she rolled over. “Is it a big job tonight?”

“You know that I can’t tell you that.”

“Oh, come on, Brekker,” Nina whined. “I thought you’d stop this when I joined up.”

“Whether or not you’re a Dreg doesn’t change the fact that this is an active job,” Kaz said without looking at her. “Only people involved can know about it right now. If you want all the details, I’m sure Inej will be happy to fill you in tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Nina grumbled and fell silent.

Kaz pulled a heavy cardboard box out from under the bed and opened it. Inside were his and Inej’s knives, lockpicks and other equipment. He began separating his favorites out and strapping them to various parts of his body underneath his clothes.

“You know if Alina and Mal find those Inej is going to get in a lot of trouble,” Nina said. “This house has a ‘strict no weapons policy.’”

“I bought all of these,” Kaz said. “That means they’re technically mine, and I don’t live here.”

Nina snorted. “You know, I’m not sure Alina and Mal would accept that loophole.”

Kaz opened his mouth to respond, but something changed, and he knew Inej was there. He turned to see her standing silently in the doorway in her leggings and boots and oversized knit sweater. He didn’t know how he always knew when she was around, but he did.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” Inej crossed the room and began taking her knives out of the box. “How are you today?”

Kaz did not let himself think about the panic attack he’d had that morning. Besides, Inej didn’t know about those so he couldn’t tell her anyway. “Ready,” he said.

“Me too,” Inej said. Settling down to strap on her weapons.

Inej had been abducted by sex traffickers at fourteen. She’d been rescued a year later and put into foster care while the system tried to find her parents. Two years later and it was blatantly obvious that no one was actually looking for Mr. and Mrs. Ghafa, and Inej would probably be stuck in the system until she turned eighteen.

Kaz finished arming himself by sliding an oyster shucking knife into one of his battered high tops. He worked himself to his feet, ignoring the worried look Inej gave him and moved his backpack into Inej’s closet. His cane—a sleek black thing with a rounded knob on top—was also there, leaning against the wall. He took it out and tried not to lean too heavily on it.

“Ready to go?” He asked Inej.

She nodded. At some point she’d changed out of her fuzzy knit sweater and put on a dark-color zip front sweatshirt with a hood that she could pull over her head later to keep her braid out of the way.

“Tell me how it goes,” Nina called after them as they left the room.

Inej called goodbye to Alina at the front door and they let themselves out into the street. At the sidewalk, they turned right and began the walk to the Slat. Kaz knew that Inej rode the bus to the Slat when he wasn’t around. When he’d first started keeping his stuff at her house, she’d suggested they ride the bus a number of times. He’d gotten around it by simply ignoring her and walking; eventually she’d stopped asking.

It took them a little over twenty minutes to walk to the Slat, which was a beaten down four-story building of an indeterminable original purpose. Even though it wasn’t even five o’clock yet, the place still had a number of seedy looking people hanging around. Those were the gang members who made their livings working for the Dregs and nothing else. That was Kaz’s legacy to the gang; before he’d joined up and started running things Per Haskell had barely been able to pay his own expenses let alone anyone else’s.

Kaz let himself and Inej in through the creaky front door, then he stalked across the big front room and knocked on Per Haskell’s door. “Come in!” the gang leader called and Kaz stepped inside leaving Inej outside.

“Just letting you know that Inej and I are here,” Kaz said.

Per Haskell looked up and snorted. “You look like a high school nerd, Brekker, that undercut doesn’t help.”

Kaz looked down his oversized hoodie, dark jeans and old high tops. “This is how I dress, sir,” he said hoping he didn’t sound like a petulant teenager, this was not the first time he and Per Haskell had had this conversation. “If you want me to wear a full suit, give me the money to buy one and I will.”

Per Haskell hacked out a sound that was half laugh half smoker’s cough. “That would be something to see,” he said. “When are you leaving for the job?”

“When it gets dark,” Kaz said. “It should only take us an hour or two”

“I’ll let you handle this,” Haskell said leaning back in his chair and reaching for the large mug of room temperature lager sitting on the desk. He spoke like there had been a chance he would come. Per Haskell hadn’t done any real work in as long as Kaz had known him; he didn’t even know exactly what the plan was, only what the goal was.

“I can handle it,” Kaz said without letting any annoyance in his voice. He reminded himself that his long-term goals relied on Haskell’s incompetence. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

~~~~

When the sun set, he and Inej rode the subway out of the Barrel and into the business part of Ketterdam. At this time of day, comparatively few people were heading into the business district because people didn’t live there, so they were both able to sit, something Kaz would never admit to being relieved about.

After they got off the subway they only had to walk a couple blocks before the headquarters of Van Eck Industries rose up before them. They stood on the corner looking up at the darkened windows. Kaz pulled off the backpack he’d brought from the Slat and pulled out a pair of ski masks. It was almost hilariously like something out of a movie, but they needed to make sure their faces didn’t end up on any of the building’s copious security cameras. They would deal with them, but only from the inside.

They both fitted their masks on and became a pair of extremely stereotypical bandits. Then they headed across the street to the employee entrance. The door was locked with a randomly generated password, but Kaz whipped out one of the laptops he’d bought for the Dregs with Per Haskell’s money and within seconds had bypassed the lock and they were in.

Once they were inside, they made their way to the security room. The guard on duty tonight was exceedingly lazy which was why they’d chosen tonight for the job. When they entered the security room, the man was sitting at his desk watching a soap opera and vacantly munching on potato chips. He obviously wasn’t watching the many security camera monitors around him, because if he had been he would have seen the two masked people slinking through the hallways.

Inej crossed the room on silent feet and punched the man a couple times with a pair of brass knuckles she always kept in one of her pockets. When he passed out, she heaved him out of his chair and began to drag him towards a closet.

Kaz sat down in the security guard’s chair, stuck a flash drive into the computer and released the most potent of his half a dozen custom computer viruses into the system. When he was finished, he glanced at Inej who stood in the center of the security room watching the security footage on the computer screens flicker out. “I’ll never get tired of that,” she said with a smile.

Kaz smiled as well and made sure he kept his face turned away until he could smooth out his expression again. “Whatever,” he stood up, and pulled his mask off. Now that the security cameras were out of commission there was no reason to keep wearing it. “Let’s move. We’ve got thirty-one minutes before the second security guard finishes her round and gets back here.”

~~~~

Jan Van Eck’s office was on the top floor of the building. With the computer virus in effect, Kaz had to open the electronic lock by opening it up and fiddling with the wires, but it still took him less than a minute. He’d started to learn to pick locks at age nine, while in the hospital after the accident and trying desperately not to think about any of the bad stuff. He’d kept practicing afterwards and now he was one of the best lockpicks in Ketterdam.

The door to Van Eck’s office opened into a borderline ridiculously expensive space that was exactly what you’d expect of man of his wealth and famous arrogance to have. A DeKappel painting hung on the wall behind the desk. Kaz and Inej lifted it down to reveal the safe.

Inej stood guard by the door while Kaz cracked the safe. Even though they were in the middle of a big job, Kaz found his nerves settling. Lockpicking was as relaxing as math.

He got the safe open in what he estimated to approximately half the time it would have taken the Dregs’ second best lockpick. He swung the safe door open and shone a flashlight inside to get a better view of the contents. There were stacks and stacks of cash inside along with some other boxes and papers. Kaz whistled softly. “Someone learns to learn that keeping copious amounts of cash in his safe is just asking for it to be stolen.”

“Is there a lot?” Inej asked.

“Yes,” Kaz began taking out the cash. It was all carefully tied up in those little paper slips you got on bills from the bank. Kaz estimated there was around twenty thousand dollars. His fingers itched to take the money for himself. Twenty thousand dollars would take care of rent and food and all that credit card debt Jordie pretended they didn’t have. He pushed the urge away; Per Haskell might be one of the most useless generals in the Barrel but stealing from him was still a bad idea.

Inej left her guard post and began loading up her backpack with money. Kaz dug deeper into the safe and pulled out some jewelry that was probably worth a couple hundred dollars apiece. Kaz stuffed them into his own backpack with part of the money and laptop he’d used on the outside door, then began going through the papers. This was not strictly part of the plan, but Kaz and Inej built their reputation on having dirt on everyone in Ketterdam so it wouldn’t be right to pass up a chance to gain some new information.

He found a couple worthy-looking papers and memorized them in a handful of seconds. When he was finished he looked around the office. His eyes fell on the DeKappel sitting in its frame against the wall. It was probably a nice painting, though all art looked the same to Kaz. Still, it was expensive and the fact that Van Eck had it so prominently displayed meant that it was important to him...

“Do we have a screwdriver?” Kaz asked Inej.

“Yeah,” Inej said still focused putting the last of the money into Kaz’s backpack. “Why?”

Kaz grinned as his heartbeat sped up. This was going to be great. “We’re taking the painting.”

Now she looked up at him, confusion on her face. “Why?”

Kaz’s smile got even bigger. “Why not?”

She stared at him for a moment then she smiled and shrugged. “Sure,” she dug around in the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out a screwdriver. “Here you go.”

It took them almost ten minutes to get the back of the frame off and the painting taken out. Once that was done they rolled the painting up and fitted it carefully into Inej’s backpack. Then they put the back of the frame back on, closed the safe and hung the empty frame on the wall again.

“Alright,” Kaz turned towards the door, pulling on his own, now significantly heavier backpack. “Let’s get out of here.”

They left Van Eck’s office and headed down the stairwell towards the outside. They were almost to the ground floor when they heard footsteps and voices. They both froze and stared at each other. “How long have we been here?” Inej asked.

Kaz checked his watch. “We should still have ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe-”

A door above them opened. Kaz looked up and his stomach clenched. A couple big, burly men Kaz recognized as members of the Dime Lions were pushing their way into the stairwell. He and Inej looked at each other in shock. Where had the Dime Lions come from? Had they just so happened to plan a break-in for the same night?

“You there!” one of the Dime Lions yelled. “Intruders! Stop right there!”

“Run!” Kaz told Inej and they took off down the stairs.

More Dime Lions entered the stairwell from the bottom. Inej slid down the railing of the last flight of stairs and slashed at them with her knives. Kaz reached the bottom a second later and took out one of the Dime Lions with a well-placed swing with the knobbed end of his cane. They shoved their way out of the stairwell. Within seconds they were out of the building through a different side entrance that opened onto a boardwalk facing the harbor.

“Split up,” Kaz ordered. “We’ll meet up later.”

Inej nodded and took off one direction. Kaz knew that within minutes she’d be up a building and well out of any danger.

He, on the other hand, had it a bit more difficult. His leg meant that he couldn’t climb as quickly as Inej could and he couldn’t run as fast either. Still, he would get away; he was way smarter than basically everyone Pekka Rollins had working for him.

Kaz pounded down the boardwalk with the Dime Lions after him. It sounded like most of them were after him. Which probably meant that they’d recognized him and Inej. They knew that he was Brekker, the most wanted man in Ketterdam, and they knew they’d never catch Inej.

He knew he’d never outrun the Dime Lions, so he just needed to find a good place to stand and fight. He turned left and ran along a narrower part of the boardwalk that jutted out into the water. When he was halfway along it he whirled around and lifted his cane, prepared for a fight.

Half a dozen Dime Lions pounded down the boardwalk after him. The front two charged him immediately. Kaz simply stepped out of the way so one ran into the boardwalk railing and beat the other over the head with his cane.

He stepped away until his back was against the railing opposite the one the Dime Lion had just hit. “So what are you all doing here tonight?” he asked with a classic Brekker smile. “Did the Dregs beat the Dime Lions to the pigeon?”

“We’re not Dime Lions,” one of the men said, eyeing Kaz like he was trying to come up with a halfway decent plan to attack him. “We work for Jakob Hertzoon.”

Kaz had never heard of Jakob Hertzoon before, but he also knew for certain that at least four of these people were definitely Dime Lions. You didn’t just switch loyalties in the Barrel, especially if you worked for Pekka Rollins. Something weird was going on here. He and Inej were going to have to look into this Jakob Hertzoon person. “Oddly enough, I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Give back the property you stole from Van Eck Industries, Brekker,” the man growled. That alone proved that he was definitely from the Barrel. Kaz’s face had never been picked up by the government, so no one outside of the Barrel gangs knew Brekker was really a kid.

“I think I’ll keep it,” Kaz said.

“Get him,” the man said and all six of them charged. Kaz swung his cane and caught the closest one in the nose. She screamed and stumbled back. Kaz got the next one too, but then the rest were on him, grasping at his clothes and backpack, shoving his up against the railing. Their touches were a million points of horror. Kaz struggled but couldn’t get free, his cane rolled out of his fingers.

They were trying to get the backpack off him. Kaz tried to twist away from their hands and felt himself fall backwards into space. He was weightless in the air for mere seconds before he splashed into the harbor.

The water of the harbor was cold, dark and dirty. Kaz couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He couldn’t tell which way was up. He couldn’t tell anything at all, because he was back in that car eight years ago, trapped with his parents’ bodies while the cold, disgusting water creeped inside.

He struggled but it was in vain. He couldn’t get out of the car, he was going to die here. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

Then hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the water. He struggled to get air into lungs that didn’t want to inhale. He was out of the water, he wasn’t going to drown, but now he was going to suffocate.

Hands grabbed at him, trying to sit up him up. They were too much like the bodies of his parents which had bounced and pushed against him as the car filled with water. He shoved the person away. “Get your hands off!” he screamed with all the air his starving lungs possessed. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Dontouchme!”

The hands vanished, and Kaz collapsed again. Gravel drug into his cheek and that was what reminded him that he wasn’t still in the car; there was no gravel in the car.

He lay there gasping for an indeterminable amount of time until his vision cleared, and he felt like he could sort of breathe again. Then he peeled his eyes open and looked around.

He was lying on his side on a gravel bank underneath the boardwalk, the water lapping a few inches from his shoes. Inej was crouching a little further up the bank, as dripping wet as he was. She must have dived in after him and pulled him out.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I thought you were drowning at first, so I tried to sit you up to see if you’d breathe easier that way. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”

Kaz realized immediately that the game was up. If Inej had been less perceptive she might not have realized what had actually happened, and he might have been able to pull the drowning card, but she knew. He could tell that she’d recognized the panic attack for what it was. He could see her rearranging every interaction they’d ever had--everything about him that had never made sense from the buses to the gloves--to accommodate this new information. He could see her bursting through the armor that was his Brekker identity to the sad, weak, pathetic Kaz Rietveld underneath. It was horrible.

He forced himself to his feet. Cold, slimy harbor water ran down his body. He tried not to think of the car. “Let’s go,” he said attempting to sound normal with dubious success.

“Kaz,” Inej said carefully, still not moving any closer to him, “the Dime Lions left after you fell in the water. We’re safe here for a couple minutes if you want to catch your breath.”

“I’m fine!” Kaz snapped. He tried to walk and stumbled, catching himself on one of the boardwalk supports. “Let’s get back to the Barrel before one of the Dime Lions manages to come up with the brilliant idea of calling the cops.”

“Kaz,” Inej said. “You know you can-”

“Inej,” Kaz spoke over her with his nastiest tone. “Let’s go.”

~~~~

Per Haskell found Kaz and Inej’s sodden appearances hilarious and spend a good five minutes laughing until he had tears in his eyes. He was decidedly less pleased about the soaked money in Kaz’s backpack and the ruined laptop. He told them he was docking part of their shares even though the money would dry out useable enough and he thought the laptops were useless anyways. At least Inej had had the foresight to ditch her backpack before jumping in the harbor, so her half the money and the DeKappel were fine.

After finishing up with Haskell, Kaz and Inej returned to Inej’s house. Kaz had a change of clothes stored there for bloody jobs (jeans, a tee-shirt and another hoodie, this one navy blue) but not a second pair of shoes so he had to settle for being completely dry aside from his feet. He tried not to think about the harbor water squelching between his toes as he gathered up his school backpack and fished his iPod out of the front pocket.

Inej watched him from her perch on her bed. “You know you don’t have to leave just yet,” she said. “There are still some cookies left over from this afternoon. We could watch a movie. I could probably convince Mal to make popcorn.”

Kaz knew what she was doing, she was trying to convince him to stay because she was worried about him, because she thought he was weak. He would not allow that. “I’m leaving,” he said without bothering to come up with an excuse. He had no idea how he was going to salvage this situation, but he was going to have to do it somehow and he needed some space to think about it.

“Kaz,” Inej said. “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, but I don’t think that just ignoring that is a good idea. You can talk about it with me; you can trust me.”

He couldn’t trust anyone. He’d learned that in the years since his parents had died. Even Jordie, who should have been his partner in this quest for revenge, could not be trusted. Kaz had something he needed to hide from absolutely everyone in his life.

“No, we’re not going to talk about that,” Kaz said as coolly and Brekker-like as he could. “As far as you’re concerned that never happened. Never bring it up again, and if I figure out that you told someone else--anyone else--I will not hesitant to kill you.”

Instead of flinching back in fear, Inej lifted her chin. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re not that cruel.”

“You should,” Kaz said even if he wasn’t totally sure if he would kill her either. “Good night,” then he turned and left the house.

~~~~

It was now after ten pm, so the subway was nearly empty. Kaz sat in one of the cars, folded over at the waist, his forehead pressing into his knees, eyes squeezed tight closed, earbuds blaring overly loud music into his ears. He couldn’t get his mind off how catastrophically badly tonight had gone. Kaz Rietveld’s weaknesses were not supposed to affect Brekker. Brekker was supposed to be strong enough to get revenge on Pekka Rollins.

One of the curses of having a memory like Kaz’s was that nothing ever faded. Pain never got duller. He could still remember the exact way his dead mother’s soaked hair had felt against his hand. He remembered the way blood had trickled out of his father’s mouth. He remembered struggling to keep his head above water when his leg was too badly shattered to kick. He remembered it all as if it had just happened, and he would for the rest of his life.

Mr. and Mrs. Rietveld had died after a multi-car pileup had forced their car and a couple others off a bridge and into the harbor. Officially, it was just a horrible accident, but the fact that the accident had been orchestrated by Pekka Rollins and the Dime Lions was an open secret among all of Ketterdam. When Pekka Rollins wanted someone dead, they died, but what Kaz had never been able to figure out was who the target that day had been. He knew it was ridiculous to get caught up that detail, but he needed to know. He needed to know who Rollins had been after. He needed to know what his parents had died for, once he knew that, he would gladly rip Pekka Rollins’ throat out and everything would be better.

Kaz wasn’t stupid, he knew that destroying everything Pekka Rollins loved and then killing him wouldn’t fix any of his problems, but he had to believe that. He needed to believe that killing Rollins would be the magical cure for everything that was wrong with his life; he didn’t know how he would keep going if it wasn’t.

The subway arrived at his stop. He got to his feet, hissing in pain. He chewed another couple Advil while he climbed out of the subway station and stuffed the bottle into the pockets of his new hoodie. He headed down the dimly lit streets to the tumbled down apartment building where he and Jordie lived.

Their apartment was a two room, one bathroom flat that they probably paid too much rent for. Still they stayed because as long as they paid the rent, the landlord would overlook anything. That had been especially helpful back when they’d both been minors and their uncle had never been around enough to constitute as their actual legal guardian.

Their uncle had been supposed to take care of them, but instead he’d fooled around and burned through their admittedly meager inheritance before Jordie reached eighteen. He also went on long trips without telling them where he was going or when he’d be back, so they’d mostly fended for themselves. They hadn’t seen him since Jordie had turned eighteen and Kaz privately hoped the man had managed to die, though he doubted they were that lucky.

Kaz struggled up the steps to the eighth floor, wishing the elevator actually worked. Still he eventually made it to the apartment and reached for the knob.

The door was unlocked.

Instantly on high alert, Kaz pulled out his earbuds and slid his backpack from his shoulders. He’d left all his knives at Inej’s, but the backpack was heavy enough to serve as a weapon in a pinch. He twisted the knob quietly and stepped into the apartment.

He made his way silently down the tiny hallway to the main room. He saw the form of someone sitting on the old, saggy couch. He hefted the backpack up and stepped closer, then stopped. “Jordie?”

Jordie jumped and whirled around, getting to his feet. It was obvious he hadn’t heard Kaz come in. His face twisted into a frown. “Kaz! It’s about time!”

“What are you doing here?” Kaz asked. “You work nights on Thursdays.” That was why he’d planned this job for tonight; he knew Jordie wouldn’t be around to notice he was gone.

“We’re not talking about me right now,” Jordie snapped. “It’s after eleven! I’ve been calling you for hours! Where were you?”

Kaz knew he was failing at completely keeping the surprise off his face, he hadn’t checked his phone picking up his backpack and apparently, he should have. “Hanging out in the university district with Jesper,” he said. He remembered that Jesper had mentioned that he and Wylan had been going on a date in the university district tonight, so perhaps if Jordie had called Mr. Fahey this story wouldn’t be instantly disproven. “We lost track of time.”

Jordie ran a hand through his shaggy dark hair. “Kaz, you can’t just wander around the city with no one knowing where you are. I should give you a curfew.”

For as long as Kaz could remember, Jordie had always been a little more. A little taller, a little heavier, a little better looking, a little more trusting, a little more tactful, a little better. It wasn’t until Kaz had created his Brekker identity that he’d truly acknowledged the ways that he was more. He was smarter, and braver, and a better fighter, and a better planner. He was more untrusting and untrustworthy, more hardworking, more reckless, more morally gray, and above all more vicious. Jordie was the better brother, but Kaz was the one who would get them their justice.

That was how he knew Jordie would never go through with the threat of a curfew. Jordie liked things to be easy; he knew that he would have to fight tooth and nail to impose something like that on Kaz and he’d rather not do the work. Kaz resented that on some level, because it was the same method of thinking that kept Jordie from truly trying to seek justice for their parents, but in this situation, it was helpful.

Suddenly Kaz was very tired. He’d had an absolutely horrible day and he really just wanted to curl up on the couch with a warm blanket. He’d make himself a mug of hot chocolate and maybe spike it with that bottle of whiskey that Jordie thought he didn’t know was hidden under the sink. He’d turn on the TV and watch whatever mindless programs were on until he fell asleep. Now his brother was here, and he had to deal with him instead.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Jordie wasn’t done, “I asked off of work tonight, did you know that? I wanted to spend some time with you. We’ve barely seen each other recently and I thought it would be nice to have a night just the two of us. Instead you spend the whole night galivanting around the city and I was stuck here watching the hours tick by and thinking of all the money I was losing!”

Kaz would not stand for that. “You know,” he snarled. “If you wanted to spend time with me, you could have asked me in advance. You could have said, ‘Hey, Kaz, I’m thinking about taking Thursday night off, so we could hang out. Do you have any plans?’ like any normal person. You can’t just expect me to never have anything going on. I’m not a little kid content to sit around practicing magic tricks and waiting for you to finally have time to notice me!”

That was a low blow, and mostly untrue because while Jordie had had increasingly less time as he picked up jobs to try to take care of both of them, he’d always tried to make time for Kaz. Kaz knew he’d feel guilty about playing that card eventually, but right now it didn’t matter.

Jordie’s mouth opened and closed in shock. “How can you say that?” he asked. “Everything I’ve ever done is to make things better for you.”

“If you really wanted to make things better then maybe you would have stopped our uncle from spending all our money,” Kaz snapped. “Maybe you would try to make Pekka Rollins pay for what happened to our parents!”

“Kaz, I can’t either of those things!” Jordie snarled. “You can’t just expect things to work out the way you want them to all the time, sometimes you have to accept what you get.”

“And sometimes you can’t just lie down and let the machine walk all over you!” Kaz said.

“I can’t bring Mom and Da back, Kaz,” Jordie said. “Getting Pekka Rollins won’t bring them back either.”

“I know that,” Kaz snarled. “I’m not a child, but that doesn’t change that he still deserves to pay.”

“Let it be, Kaz,” Jordie said quietly. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“If that’s the way you want to be,” Kaz said crossing his arms. “Then I don’t see why you’re so angry about where I was tonight. I told you that I was hanging out with Jesper and we lost track of time. I’d known that we were going to hang out for a while, if you’d asked me beforehand we could have avoided this whole situation. Now, I’m going to bed and there’s nothing more you can do about this situation.” Then he turned and stalked off into the apartment’s only other room.

His bed was on the right and Jordie’s was on the left. He peeled off his wet shoes and socks and kicked them as far under the bed as he could so Jordie wouldn’t step on them or something and start getting more suspicious. He took off the gloves too; he was lucky Jordie had been too angry to notice them. Then he threw himself face down onto his bed without bothering to change. Perhaps his eyes were a little wet, but he’d never admit that; Brekker didn’t cry.

Jordie never came into the bedroom, and when Kaz got up for school the next morning he was already gone.

--

Honestly, I think that one of the things I enjoyed most about this story was exploring the dynamic between Kaz and alive!Jordie.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed.

Emjen

[ratmor]

Fairytale Lies Along (Russian Fairytales and OUaT)

4. ANOTHER TACTICS

The raspberry cake had an extremely positive impact on the mood of a woman who initially was absolutely not happy with us. Well, I’d have said, Emma and I never pushed it and demonstrated her our lack of claims. I don’t mean we wouldn’t try it in the future if anything dangerous for the kid would come out, but we had no moral high ground to do that right now. The adoptive mother of our biological son never asked the question about why Emma abandoned the child in front of said child, but that didn’t mean she never wanted to.

In view of the late hour the boy went to bed almost immediately following the second slice of that marvellous cake with the middle layer of raspberry and the top layer of buttercream with crumbled almonds. I had no idea what gods managed to invent that recipe, but that cake was a little masterpiece. Somehow Emma is capable of networking, if she is willing to. That was her ex’s Cake Shop and they broke up without any drama, still seemed to be friends and congratulated each other with all holidays they could remember, except St Valentines.

Something subtly changed in Regina Mills as soon as Henry disappeared on the second floor. He was sure that everything would be quite calm between his adoptive and biological mothers. Personally, I thought that any mother who dared to abandon the child has no right to interfere further. Just once I hinted to Emma about my real opinion, that was right after she had already repented of her deed. Unfortunately, I cannot remember either being in prison with Emma or giving birth, or how she decided to abandon the kid. Well, I can’t say I didn’t warn her before I finally managed to leave her… The moment was awful, as I understand it now. But… Well, I warned my darling idiot a hundred times about the fact that my radar goes off, no, not just goes off, it fucking yelled like cat whose balls got pulled by someone! And that cat-radar-thing was always on when her new acquaintance, and then the guy she slept with was nearby.

I already didn’t give a shit how exactly she was ruining her life, because those days I thought that the faster her body would die, the sooner I could leave to capture some real hero. Actually, I would not be very comfortable being in her body as a full owner, with all that complications and even without fully awakened magic. Better let her die, I thought, poor fellow, because there are people who are rubbish and many more are just sluggish. Well, magic can be awakened - such a surprise really! - in the magical places of power and with the help of a trusted person. And the last one was the greatest problem in that realm. There’s one more option. There are always more options than one, but it hardly helps sometimes. The bearer of magic should be engaged in deliberate suicide attempts with the participation of complex magical enemies, which is not entirely possible here either - the world is ordinary, it seems, not magical, like, at all! And I must admit, I expressed everything I thought about Swan’s stupid teen acts almost as soon as I returned to Emma after our short separation. Not even as a consequence of said separation, but during which she managed, first, to get into an FBI investigation, secondly, get pregnant.

Anyone might ignorantly ask, how that was even possible, if Emma dates women? And, well, it’s not even a question, because she’s not exactly into girls. To be honest, Emma was not heterosexual even in her snotty youth, nor was she a lesbian, no matter how my outlook influenced her emerging character. She was very rarely interested in the sexuality and even the appearance of her intended partner, if we are talking about stable canons grafted by society. It was the pansexuality in such a manifestation that was not very good for Emma herself. That was because Emma had lots of complexes, with which I didn’t seem necessary to fight for the most part, and that shit set the bar low enough for her partners and, accordingly, downgraded Emma herself. It is logical that for me it was oh how profitable, that lack of self-esteem, but sometimes I wanted to bring up a real hero from the canon of a fairy-tale genre, like most princes from classic fairy tales were. But, I'm afraid, the reality wasn’t quite disposed to ensure that I educated Emma for real. And I never raised anyone in any of my lives, I usually had to wait until some major heroism in adulthood, staying somewhere on the sidelines, just looking at the life of the hero and arising in time, but Emma was the case that was even more interesting, than when I ended up in Naruto.

There was just a simple demon there, in the only reality in which I captured the body of the child, and that demon who was planted inside the poor child had nearly crushed my very essence with all his might. By the way, it was then that I made it a rule not to touch children and their formation as heroes, because you never know what might occur. At the same time, my, in some way, rapprochement with the ward of mine was due to the fact that my heart wasn’t hardened enough, and I never saw anything special in it - to reassure the little girl, who was paying me back with crumbs of the magic, which she periodically threw out. And that gave me the opportunity to gain mobility and dump that relationship to hell. I was hoping to wait until the child would get tired of playing oh so independent lady and fulfills certain gestures conceived by fate, as I hoped would be better than just a mere non-magical world with lack of high-tech as well. Of course, it never reached extremes, but to have something intimate with that asshole… The one I would approve only in a hospital bed, and that setting would’ve happened by combining my fist with his jaw. I told her to punch his pervert balls right after the very first meeting with him. Oh yes, it was the highest degree of the very self-deprecation inherent in Emma in her early years.

Yes, and do something in defiance - we obviously can do it, we definitely know how, so we practice it, hell yes, Emma Swan. Although, as I’ve already said, everything that my ward creates before his or her heroism is, more often than not, what brings him or her to this heroism. Information, so to speak, is time-tested and the number of repetitions is remarkable. So, the face of Regina Mills subtly changed as soon as Henry went out of sight and hearing. She rose from the table and motioned for Emma to follow her.

“Cider,” the woman lightly poured alcohol into glass cups, but I whispered to Emma that we need to defuse the situation somehow. - “You are welcome.”

“Do you want me to stay overnight?” - Emma grinned, sipping a drink.

“What do you mean?” - Regina looked at my ward with quite perceptible hostility. - “I don’t think that you will spend the night in this house.”

“Whatever.” Emma almost blew out the entire glass, oh so kindly filled by the foster mother of her long-lost son, I barely felt the taste, because I was absorbed in analyzing the woman’s reaction to Emma’s words. - “I just drank alcohol, and if you are a hospitable hostess, you are unlikely to expel a person into the night, and expect that person to drive along some dark slippery road after the rain in state Maine…”

“There is a hotel in the town,” Regina shrugged, barely holding her palms - they seemed to tremble, I think, in order not to throw all her cider out of her glass into Emma’s face. - The hotel is pretty close. And the rain has never melted people in that region of the US. My hospitality has it’s limits, so…”

The last phrase sounded so threatening that Emma flinched. She even took a half step back, but there was something for her to find out from Regina. Therefore, my ward threw away the vague sensations whispering about the imminent danger to both of us, and changed the subject, making an offer that was hard to refuse.

“Madam Mayor, may we finally finally discuss what happened to Henry?”

“Let's go to the office, Miss Swan, we'll talk there. But it seemed to me that you have no right to care…”

The woman inquisitively looked at Emma, after suddenly turning around. She was about to put my ward in a very much awkward position. Swan’s eyes found something to watch out for when such a gorgeous woman was climbing the stairs, and it was not so easy for Emma to pretend that she was looking a little higher than Regina’s loins, and not lower.

“No, of course not,” - Emma rejected any accusations, - “I just do not want that to happen again, only next time might be much worse. You know, I can imagine what’s happening in the mind of an adopted child. Unfortunately.”

“Have you been abandoned?”

“She’s not familiar with the word “tactfully”” - I stated, and Emma sighed agreeing that way with me and having no coherent thoughts on the matter.

“And I was not so lucky with my parents as Henry.” - In one breath said Emma and conciliatory shrugged before entering the office at Regina invitation gesture.

“What do you mean, Miss Swan?” - Regina said with obvious curiosity. And that was said exactly for the maintenance of the conversation, because she probably wasn’t interested in anything of the life of the person she merely despised, no matter how she tried to cover it with indifference. I felt it in my guts. - Have you been abandoned for several times instead of one?

“You …” - Emma sighed abruptly and stumbled. “You are amazingly ingenious, mayor.”

“Usually, if they took the child, they can give it away, ” - Regina shrugged her shoulders and opened the door. - “We went through the procedure of full adoption. And you did not want contact. And you have no right to demand it.”

“I demand nothing” - Emma walked into the room and sat down on the sofa near the coffee table. - It’s Henry who demands. I think that one of his whims can be fulfilled by you and me both. It’s easy to be disappointed in me in a couple of days, and I will hardly be here any longer. It’s quite a sober assessment of my qualities, you know. He has the right to believe that I just never needed him, and because of this I put him into adoption. Roughly speaking, this is exactly what happened.”

“Hmmm …” - the mayor put down her glass of cider and slightly tilted her head to the side. - “It will be easier for me if you tell me the details. And I myself will assess whether Henry should know that details. Do you agree?”

“If ...” Emma jarred, and she remembered my characterization of this controlling Madame, and then continued to speak out loud, “You really need this so much, huh? Control over his life...”

“You may not understand this, Miss Swan,” - I traced an undoubtful grin in her tone - “But this is a necessary maternal care, until he grew up. You do not have the slightest right to get into our lives. And if I'm still going to give you …”

“Uh, no,” - Emma twisted her index finger in a negative gesture, interrupting Regina. - ”It doesn't work that way. I told you that the boy himself wants it. And if he's half as good as I was at his age, and at the same time he’s so sure of himself that he found me contrary to common sense, then he’ll do what he wishes. I think with Henry, Madam Mills, just like with me, you’d need a slightly another tactic.

Mayor Mills was barely holding back the facepalm. Or maybe not a facepalm but a facefist to Emma’s face, really. My beloved ward sometimes seemed to possess a very thick bone in the area of the frontal lobe. Of course, we didn’t have the right to intervene in the life of the kid, but in order to understand at least something of what actually happened in the boy’s life, it is quite necessary not to engage in prohibited stalkering, but to agree on any terms of the real mother of our child so that the child did Not decide that the whole world is against him and did Not run off somewhere else, not to Emma, but to a much less secure environment. The result was supposed to be, like, the Mayor Mills need to have that feeling that all she had to do was just to suffer this crazy woman a little, I mean, Emma and I as I am crazy of her woman or something, and then after that little bit of suffering everything will be fine. And, of course, Swan masterfully turned the situation around, and if it were not her son’s fault, I would even be proud a bit.

“Listen, swan. Do you think that if a boy is exposed to something like domestic violence… would he have a hard time?!”

“She doesn’t look like a person who’s able to beat a beloved child for his own good,” - digging deep into the nature of relationships of this kind, but at the same time being extremely sarcastic, said Emma and added. - “I always hear when you call me a bird. There is a certain difference in the translation of your thoughts into mine, I hear something like Swan the Bird, I told you already. And warned that I did not like it!”

“Yes, of course,” - I grinned, - “there are no other problems except for discussing nicknames. In which, I note, again, my cygnet, I’m gonna call you as I wish because you can’t run away from yourself...”

“Shut up. I pray thee, I am both fuckin’ funny and want to swear. She will not understand if I don’t keep my face neutral!”

“Well, then keep it.” - I advised, and yet I fell silent, as she asked.

Next five minutes were like… In the real world, a whole epic of verbal struggle unfolded for the right to be in this glorious town. Emma was sure of what she was going to do and claimed that she was Not going to get involved either in the relationship between her son and his other mother, or in the senseless and merciless altercations about whether he could be in her company at all. She simply stopped the bickering - Regina Mills started it actually at the time of our inside dialogue, disguised as reverie in the reality. The mayor felt some detachment in Emma's behavior and decided to seize the moment.

“You have no right to tell me how to behave with my son! You recklessly abandoned Henry in the past, and whatever your reasons, you have no right ...”

“Wait, I just take care for the boy!” - Emma allowed herself to interrupt this stream of polite translation of obviously obscene thoughts and continued, under the scornful gaze of Regina Mills. - “Yes, it turned out that I had to give him up for adoption. There are times when you need to decide how it will be better. And after seeing where he is now, I still think that it was better “- aha, girl, you caress her ego, keep it up, the corners of Mills' lips just started in a smug grin, but I noticed. - “I’m not trying to re-establish a maternal connection with him, Madame Mills.” Understand me, I did not come here myself - this child brought me to your town. And I would very much like, first, to understand why that happened and, second, honestly, it frightened me that he went so easily and naturally to look for me in Boston! Damn Boston Regina! Boston is in another state since 1820 for fuck’ sake!”

“I think that I’m quite able to convince my son not to do this in the future ... And I’m quite able to make you go back to where you are from and tell my, ” - she emphasized again, as if we hadn’t said anything here before on this account, - “son, so that he no longer seeks to meet you, because you don’t want it. After all, you really do not need it, Miss Swan. What is this all for?”

“I think you don’t quite understand that he shouldn’t feel betrayed again. Yes, you are unlikely to meet me again if you do this, but ... ahem ... the child will not be easier, I assure you. Instead of driving him to therapy, you could’ve…”

“How do you know about therapy ?!” - the mayor snapped to a harsh tone, and Swan soothingly raised her palms in a sign of surrender to the mercy of the enemy.

“Oh darling, calm down! We just met Archie on the square in front of the clock tower - an evening walk with the dog, and it became clear that Henry went to the sessions for him just after a minute of observing their communication!”

“All right,” - the fists of this woman were already unclenched, but we were a little wary because of that breakdown - you never know, would these failures also extend to Henry too? - “What did you want to say?”

“You can just solve the problem, and not analyze and pick it out. This is exactly what any psychotherapist does when the patient has no desire to get rid of the problem. And Henry obviously has no such desire. He is a fighter. Does not run.”

“He does not run?” - Mayor slightly mockingly looked at Emma, waiting for clarification. - “What are you talking about?”

“Henry found me, didn’t run away from certain doubts. He may think that he may not be needed. Even if he is hiding behind these fairy tales, he simply had to change something in this life, to make sure that he was needed. That is what I understood from his speeches on the way to this town, and you know …”

“Stories?” - Mills alerted, interrupting my ward. - “What stories?”

“The boy is kinda addicted to classic fairy tales.” - Emms kinda told the truth but I really saw it differently, and well I really thought to stop her because that controlling mommy might dispose of such info the way it might hurt the boy. - “It’s no big deal” - she continued. - “Say thanks to the Universe, he’s not following the comics and the anime. You see, believing in Snow White singing songs with birds and bunnies is much better than believing in punishing villains in the name of the Moon or Dr. Strange and all that I am Batman business…”

“Hmmmm” - .discouraged by Emma’s joking attempt, the mayor decided to pay attention to the obviously familiar name - and I really don’t know if there are people who don’t know that name. - “Snow White? How is she ... I mean, how is Snow White from a fairy tale related to Henry's behavior?”

Emma let pass that slip and I didn’t really pay attention to that either, but Regina’s fists were clenched again for a few seconds.

"A strange reaction. Hates fairy tales much? Realist to the bone? Would break you on the wheel for your love of Harry Potter books? Any of these explanations is complete nonsense, but something alerted me all the same. And so far I do not know what, but I am going to find out … Although, probably it’s just boy’s fantasy. She might be just an ordinary woman, even though the mayor. And Henry can just invent a fairy-tale world for himself. After all, this world really differs little from previous worlds like it in magical content, as far as I could find out. There are places - and nothing more. But it wouldn’t hurt to go to the local cemetery and check the background; it can even turn on the absorption of magic, if there is something special we can find, Emma.”

“Hey, slow down, old man! We're not going to stay here for long, are we? Or do you think something has changed? Make sure that she is not crazy or psychic, and go home.”

“Yes, Emma, yes. I'm just thinking.”

“Make your thoughts a bit quieter!”

She didn’t hold a displeased grimace under the mask of calm that she had previously held, and therefore the mayor slightly changed her tone to a more oppressive one — it was a natural reaction.

“You know, Miss Swan, for some reason I don't care much for this other tactics of yours already. Because this is my son. And I know what he wants. Always knew.”

“And I know what teenagers are thinking about, ” - Emma objected tiredly and rolled an empty glass in her palm. The hint was understood and Regina, with a theatrical sigh, poured them one more portion of her cider. - This particular teenager is still worthy not to think that he is not needed. It’s the least I can do for you.”

“For us? “ - Regina was as surprised as I was, but I would wait for Emma to explain, but this woman was less patient. - “What does that mean “for you”? For me and Henry? Or just for me? I don't need anything from you!”

“For you,” - Emma looked into her eyes, and I suddenly realized that I feel heat, spreading in my chest and getting to my throat, and Emma cannot suppress a half smile when she realizes how her body reacted to this piercing and even evil look while she was saying such intimate words to the other mother of the child. - “Because you were the one who gave him a better life than I could ever give. I can't thank you in any other way. It seems to me that giving the boy what he wants is the least I can do to improve your relationship. He may not understand, but he began to look for me because you are probably a busy person, you probably forbid him something and definetely control him. And that's fine. And at this age, rebellion is also normal, it just forms character. And now it seems to him that I can be ... I don’t know, something better? He idealizes me, and that's okay too …”

“What are you, a shrink? - Mills wedged into the arising pause and grinned at her assumption. - “Not likely.”

“No,” - Emma did not restrain a giggle, and they again met their eyes, and I again suddenly was aware of how Emma feels, it was always when feelings just went beyond ordinary, but I felt, of course, less than Emma herself. - “I am a bounty hunter with childhood, directly related to the adoption system. Psychologists in my life were ... more than necessary.”

“And you grasped them from the inside, ” - Mills nodded, to which my ward only snorted and there was a pause until. - “Pardon me, but I’d like you to finally speak out, Miss Swan.”

“I just... It’s not normal that he will become distant from the closest person in his life. He might lose his shit when he grows up a bit and he’d always have the feeling he’s not needed. Since you are unlikely to be removed from the post of mayor, you will still solve the problems of the town, not the problems of the child. Simply feeding and clothing - never enough, you know. You can get into a bad company, accidentally commit a crime ... Or not by accident. But I believe in your prudence. And I still ask you not to put pressure on the kid, he is already having a hard time with this truth about me. Especially, when that truth he doesn’t even know, he does not know the whole story, Madam Mayor. And, I assure you, in this case, forcing him to stop communicating with me will be an achievement of only a short-term goal.”

“It won't remove the problem,” - Regina looked somewhere over the top of Emma's head, wondering - “Oh, well. You… I believe in your... Another tactics."