#Look all im saying last time light and snow set on helping the same person the world nearly ended | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

soulwillower · 4 years ago

Text

heather • richie tozier

(richie tozier x reader)

[based off the song heather by conan gray]

requested: OMG I HAVE AN IDEA IDK IF ITS GOOD AND IDK WHY IM TYPING IN ALL CAPS BUT CAN U DO A FIC WHERE LIKE ITS BASED OF YHE SONG HEATHER BY CONAN GRAY WHERE THE READER AND RICH HAVE BEEN BEST FRIENDS FOR SO MANY YEARS AND HAVE FEELINGS FOR EACHOTHER BUT THERE BOTH SO OBLIVIOUS- SO WHEN RICHIE LIKE GETS A GF ONE DAY THE READER JUST WHSKWHDIWHWIW IDK HOW TO EXPLAIN IT BUT LIKE AT THE END THEY REALIZE THEYRE IN LOVE. SORRY IF ITS TOK SPECIFIC. LOVE U. IM RUNNING OUTTA CHARACTERS

warnings: swearing, mentions of underage drinking, themes of cheating but no actual cheating, angst, fluff at the end, unedited.

thank u guys so much for being so patient with this fic <3 love u all so much!

[losers + reader are 18+ in this.]

4.4k words

(also, this fic starts with a flashback and idk if i like this style, but lmk if it works)

♡

the persistent beat thudding in your ears seems to do nothing more than dim your already low mood as you sip on lemonade by yourself in someone's basement bar, sitting on an uncomfortable metal barstool and leaning your head heavy against your chin.

these days, it seemed as though the world was painted in gray.

you look around almost lazily; bev and ben went outside in the snow a couple minutes ago, stan just took a girl upstairs - you're left alone now, because mike and eddie had to study for their exam and bill was feeling under the weather. and richie, as usual, was late.

there's almost twenty other people in the room right now, but you have no desire to speak to any of them. you've been trying to have fun tonight, but you're just having a hard time, feeling distracted and unable to stop thinking about wire framed glasses and a certain bright smile.

your wandering eyes halt your thoughts as a girl in your class - heather perez - catches your eye from across the room, her hair falling in natural curls that makes you sigh in envy. she smiles and waves at you warmly, gesturing for you to come and sit with her. you swallow and look down into your cup of dreary, graying lemonade as you try not to think about how you look in comparison. she's so fucking pretty. you look back up and shake your head with a friendly smile, faker than a plastic flower, and nod to the bathroom. she shrugs and smiles, turning back around.

she was too sweet, it hurt.

her naturally dark hair, long and wavy, her smooth dark skin, her laugh.... but suddenly, your head snaps back up after recognizing a familiar sight on heather's figure.

-is that richie's sweater?

your heart thumps and churns in the most unsavory way as all the breath leaves your lungs in one swift exhale. you feel sick to your stomach and your hand falls to hit the counter to stabilize yourself, the lemonade sloshing out of the cup slightly. but you pay no mind. heather's wearing richie's sweater...

you know that sweater really well. it's definitely his, and for some reason that makes you want to cry.

you blink and force yourself to suck air into your lungs as you look around quickly, anywhere but at heather perez wearing richie tozier's sweater, with all the stripes and patterns and the rough polyester material. you're not sure why you're so caught off-guard, you knew that heather perez was maybe-kinda-sorta seeing your trashmouth. he'd mentioned it in passing a few times and you've not been able to keep it off your mind as bev and bill whisper to richie about it in the halls or during hangouts when you were laying in stan's lap pretending not to hear it.

it hurts, though. holy hell, does it hurt when richie turns the corner and the typical, 'hey, richie!' choruses through most of the people in the basement - and yet his eyes are just set on her.

it hurts even worse when you make eye contact with him and he smiles at you, nodding in greeting and calling a "hey there, toots!" over the thumping of the noise before turning back towards heather.

your heart thumps erradically as you eye him sliding an arm around her shoulders easily, pulling her into his tall lanky frame, crushing your chest and deflating your trembling heart. heather's head falls onto richie's shoulder and you shiver, feeling colder than you've felt in so long. the lemonade you force to your lips tasting like stale water as the sight of richie pinching heather's shoulder and thumbing his own sweater on her frame make you feel empty.

even now, weeks later, you remember how it felt. you sip on the boiling tea and immediately burn your tongue, making you swear as you stare out your window, the snow falling around your house in the dark making you feel an odd, empty kind of peace. that fucking sweater.

you haven't talked to richie in almost a week and a half - he got in trouble the night after the party and his parents took his phone away - at eighteen years old, his parents took his phone - so that he could 'spend time with family' (a task that made you chuckle to yourself when bill had explained it to you about twelve days ago).

it's winter break, though, and you've been missing the last piece of your eight-person puzzle the last few times you've hung out with your friends. it feels empty without richie's boisterous shenanigans, snarky looks and goofy comebacks... you feel really embarrassed for missing him so deeply.

tears well up in your eyes as you think again about his damn sweater, the one that heather was wearing, the same one he'd given you not even three weeks prior.

"well look at you." richie says with amusement trickling through his voice like melting icewater through a calm creek. you spin towards him with a grin eclipsing your face as you shrug around his sweater, pretending not to smell his strong scent and pretending not to feel the immediate comfort it gives you.

"you know, for as dumb as it looks, i kind of like it." you tease, brushing some hair back from your eyes as the sweater sleeves fall back down past your hands. he laughs, eyes not leaving you for a second.

"shit, doll. keep it." he says, sounding serious. it makes you pull a face at him, starting to lift it slightly over your head to return it to its rightful owner.

but he shakes his head, hands gently gripping your arms and halting your motions, subsequently setting your heart on fire. his lips are set in a gentle grin as he shakes his head again. "it looks so much better on you."

it's spoken simply, in such honestly that it makes you blush nearly immediately. in fact, you're so flustered that all you can do is shove him a bit, stuttering out a quiet, "shut up, richie, you- i - okay, whatever."

it makes him chuckle as he takes the soft blow of your hands against his shoulders, deftly running his hands through his curly locks as he shakes his head. "you're adorable, kid."

you're lucky he'd turned around to gripe around on his messy bed for his laptop, because the stupid grin you're sure is painting your face is enough to make you dig your own grave and then hand him the shovel. if only he knew how much you liked him.

you didn't keep the sweater after that night, though. at the time, you'd told him it was because it was putrid; that the colors and patterns were a sin to man and that you'd never be caught dead wearing it out. he laughed the whole time because you had literally worn it to the store with him it with him that same day. but now, you'd give anything for richie to give you that sweater again, to feel that polyester inseam fall against your stomach and your arms and chest, like a huge richie hug (without all the bones and the cologne and the caffeine-pulsing heartbeat - so not a real richie hug, but as close as you could get to the real thing without actually just having it).

god, you like him too much. you rub your face with your palm, the moisture from the tears that had accidentally escaped your eyes smudging against your face. you're tired, almost - it's like an empty, heartbroken exhaustion that sags your shoulders and chokes your throat and makes you zone out for minutes at a time. one thought overwhelms you right now, so as you see a car's headlights shine out your window through the falling snow, you don't even notice it.

you just wish you were heather.

you've tried to hate her. really, you have - you figured maybe, just maybe, if you were able to rant to bev or eddie about how much of a bitch heather is, how she's terrible to richie and how boring she was, maybe you could justify the heartbreak in your chest.

but god, she's so perfect. heather, with her shiny hair, bright smile, her flawless mind and caring heart. she's, as far as you're concerned, an angel. of course richie would choose heather, who wouldn't?

the other day at that party, you'd tried your hardest to ignore your intrusive thoughts, but you can't help feeling like it would all be better if heather didn't exist. and even that thought alone hurts your heart, because you remember the smile on richie's face when he looked at her, swathed in his sweater and floating around the room like a beacon of light.

and you could never, ever in good conscience take that from richie.

you almost laugh at how absurd it is - now you're talking to yourself while you stare out the window, half asleep, dreaming of freckles placed just like constellations and crooked noses, of jawlines that jut out and long, lanky fingers; of loud, chipping laughter and beat up high-tops with cuffed corduroy pants.

"y/n?" a voice behind your door makes you jump a bit, unsettling your already disconcerted bones. you’re imagining him, now? you laugh into your scalding mug for a second, but after a double-take at the doorway you find the angel himself to be standing there with a perplexed look.

"richie, what're you doing here?" you ask, rubbing your eye to make sure no tears are left. he looks troubled. "i knocked, but nobody answered. so..." he says with a shrug, and you ned, tucking a leg under yourself and nodding.

"what are you doing, toots?" he asks, backlit by the hallway light. and then you finally can see what he's wearing, and you almost laugh at your own misery.

but you don’t laugh, your brain short-circuiting as you feel the knife twist further into your abdomen. the stupid fucking sweater.

“-um, nothing. y- did you get that back from heather?” you try to deliver the line as smoothly as possible, but by the look on his face, you did a real shit job at that.

“what?” he asks in an exhale as he shakes snowflakes from his hair and shoulders, closing your door as he walks towards you and falls to sit next to you on your windowsill seat.

“i thought you gave her that sweater.” you say and he raises a brow, “yeah, like two weeks ago.” he says slowly, eyeing you. he adds, “she obviously didn’t need it after that.”

you frown, “did she need it then?” you didnt try to sound bitter at all, but your voice comes with more of a sting than you’d anticipated.

as always, richie meets fire with fire. “it was twenty fuckin’ degrees out, she was wearing a tank top.”

you don’t know what to say so you just stare out the window with a quick huff, crossing your arms. "why does it matter? it's a sweatshirt." he mutters. "i was just being nice to her."

you nod, pain twisting around in your stomach. he's right, it's just a sweater. but he gave it to her, because he likes heather better.

“what’s up with you, kid?” he asks, gentler this time.

“don’t call me kid, richie.” you say sharply, not meeting his eyes. “and there’s nothing up with me.” you know you’re being difficult, but you really don't have the energy to argue with him right now.

it’s quiet again, and the silence is even more awkward. you take another scalding sip of your tea.

“um, y/n... is this because of heather?” he says after a bit. you feel the tension that the acknowledgment brings as it hits you in the thick, cold air. richie’s tapping a rhythm on his thigh, so you can tell he feels it too.

"richie." you say weakly, your voice coming out too quiet, too obviously broken and exhausted. "i cannot do this. please don't do this right now"

he blinks at you, eyebrows furrowed. "sugar, i'm so lost right now."

you decide to change the subject. "-why'd you come over?" you ask, actually looking at him then immediately regretting it. he looks hurt and confused, like a lost puppy.

"oh. um, i just need to tell you something.it's about heather, too." he sounds anxious, and you roll your eyes, looking down at the tree outside your room as wind blows powdery white mounds off its branches.

“can this just wait until tomorrow?” you whisper. doesn't he get it?

it's quiet and for a moment you believe that he's going to leave it, to not bring up the obvious jealousy brewing in your chest. but he breaks the silence too soon.

"i tried to kiss her." he says and you immediately look towards the door, the most immediate escape possible.

your breathing gets heavy; if you have to hear this, you know you'll admit your feeling to richie, and you don't want to do that to him. but you have a suspicion that he already knows.

"richie, i'm so, so glad to see you. and that you like heather. really, i am. but- it's not a good time. i'm not- i'm not okay." you say, voice thick as tears well behind your eyes.

richie’s eyes widen almost comically as you make eye contact and his hands immediately find purchase on your arms, his thumbs rubbing in the way that he has done ever since that one foggy summer you spent in the sewers. "y/n/n, what's wrong, sweetheart?" he asks, watching sadly as a tear slips from your cheek. it breaks your heart when he calls you sweetheart, and you shake your head.

you can't tell him the truth - that you love him, so instead, you mumble, "i've missed you. there's a lot going on, and i just really need you."

he looks guilty as he pulls you into a warm hug, one that takes you off guard but that you return gratefully. "you've been too busy spending time with heather and with your parents, and i understand that, i just - you know, i miss you." you say, voice muffled as your cheek is squished into his shoulder. he sighs shakily, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. “i know i’ve been with her a lot, i’m sorry sugar.” he mutters.

it feels like you’re both holding something back from the other.

"i wish i were heather." you say against his shoulder, knowing richie’s completely unaware of the depth of your statement. but he pulls back and stares at you, an unknown look on his face. you open your mouth to say something, but you're cut off before you can get anything out.

and his lips fall against yours lightly, almost as if they’re ghosts against yours. his presence feels fleeting.

you barely close your eyes and press closer to him before you snap out of it, jerking backwards with wide eyes.

richie’s eyes fall open too as he looks at you questioningly. your heart is thumping heavy as you shake your head, more shocked than you thought ever possible. “what?” he asks, as if he’s surprised you’re not kissing back.

you give him a sad, broken look. you think you’ll cry as you mutter, "why would you ever kiss me? i'm not - i'm not nearly as pretty as her, i'm just-"richie suddenly looks like he might get sick, his face paler than usual as the steam from your tea dwindles idly between you. he cuts you off. "-why are you - why are you saying all these things y/n/n-”

��heather. you like heather.” you say frantically, trying to remind him so you dont have to live through this fresh faced heartbreak twice as painful if he kisses you again.

but richie shakes his head, and your confusion skyrockets just as much as your heartbeat."no. a-amy asked her out." he says breathlessly. "-she said yes."

you blink, pulling even further away as it dawns on you. "wait. so... so you only want to see me after the girl you wanted finds someone else?" you ask, watching as the smile gets smacked off of richie's face so quickly you think it may give him whiplash. "wait, no-" he starts, but you shake your head.

“richie, do you understand how hurtful that is?” you say, voice heavy as you try not to let tears fall.

he shakes his head, eyes glossing with tears as he gapes at you, “n-no, y/n-“

“fuck, richie. i know you know about my feelings for you. how could you do this? i’m not heather, i’m reminded that every time i’m in the same room as the two of you. she’s had you completely mesmerized for the last month, you can’t just use me to distract yourself.” you say, your tea completely forgotten as a tear escapes your eye.

he shakes his head, looking at you with an emotion you don’t have the energy to decipher. “leave, richie.” your voice is broken and it shakes as you look away from him.

you’re not sure what you were expecting, but when richie stands up silently you dont even look away from the window. you see him wipe his cheek in your peripheral before he sighs quietly and walks out of your room, shutting the door quietly.

you cry openly as you hear your door shut downstairs, your hands shaking as you cover your face, your shoulders shaking with sobs. you make it under your covers just as you hear a car engine sputter outside, your heart empty and lips still tingling as the feeling of richie’s lips linger on yours. you groan into your pillow and let out another sob, your eyes squeezing in agony as your heart feels like it’s ripping in two.

because even if they’re not together, richie still likes her.

why couldn’t you be heather?

you cry until you’re asleep, your now cold mug of tea resting on the windowsill as your phone charges next to you and snow swirls in the dark sky.

when you wake up the next morning, your headache is nearly blinding. you feel like crying more as you remember last night. you roll over and rub your eyes, unlocking your phone groggily.

but you check your notifications and your heart immediately stops as you see a missed call from richie at 3:49 in the morning last night, and a voicemail left a minute later.

well, you guess he got his phone back.

your fingers tremble as they hover above the play button, feeling like you may vomit from anxiety - the message he left is two minutes long.

closing your eyes, ready for even more heartbreak, you press play and hold the speaker to your ear.

“um, y/n.” the voicemail starts off, and you’re already tearing up because richie’s voice is full to the brim with anxiety and he’s not using his usual nicknames for you.

“uh... okay, i- i know it’s four in the morning, and you’re probably asleep - god, i hope you are, and that you’re not ignoring me. not that i dont deserve it, but i just want you to get good rest. uh, a-anyways. fuck,” there’s an awkward pause and you’re holding your breath.

“you know i’m not good with phone calls or voicemails-“ his rambling just adds to your anxious feeling, but you think if you don’t listen to this, your anxiety would eat you alive.

“- fuck, i don’t know how to say this. kind of ironic, i guess, since i’ve been thinking about saying it like every day for probably more than a year- okay, i’m... god, spit it out, trashmouth.” his voice gets thicker and you can hear the emotion as he takes a shallow breath.

“y/n/n, you make my hands shake. i swear, my heart feels like it’s going to backfire and explode when we touch... and it scares me so fucking bad.” you feel your heart halt in your chest, the air leaving your lungs.

you keep the phone pressed tightly to your ear as richie’s recorded voice goes on.

“-fuck, y/n. i’m terrified. sometimes i think.... like, whoever created me... they designed me just to be yours. and... it’s not in the same way i feel about bev, or bill, or eddie-“ his voice breaks as he sniffs on the other end and it dawns on you that he’s crying. “-you’re you. you’re y/n. i tried to like heather as more than just a friend. but...” it’s silent for a second.

“i just kept comparing her to you. i do that with everybody. i think i’m broken. i love you so much that it hurts.” he’s crying enough by now that it’s leaking into his speech; he’s hiccuping, stuttering slightly, his inflection changing as you can almost picture the tears rolling off his thick eyelashes and onto his rosy cheeks.

“-and i can’t sleep right now knowing that i hurt you like this. i can’t believe that i let you think of yourself as lesser than heather in any way-“ he sobs quietly in the recording and takes a stuttering breath. "i can’t believe i put myself before you. i’m such a shitty friend. i should’ve been giving you my stupid fucking sweaters the whole time.”

tears are pouring out of your eyes as you sit up, ripping the comforter off your legs. you’re pulling on socks and your shoes as you continue to listen to richie’s voicemail.

“i’m sorry that i kissed you, and i’m sorry that i dragged you into this m-mess, that i used heather as an excuse to ignore my feelings for you. i-i love you so fucking much, and i’m just so scared of hurting you. i’m so sorry that i hurt you, y/n.”

you have to see him.

“-and, um, i’m sorry i left this voice message. this is probably the worst way to find this out but i figured that it would be easier for us to ignore if it wasn’t in person- y’know, because you don’t have to respond. just- now you know. that i’m sorry, and that i don’t expect you to forgive me or want to speak to me for a while. i just- i need you to know that you’re so loved, y/n. and that you deserve so much better than me.

“so, um, okay. i’ll let you sleep now. b-bye.” he whispers the end and then the line cuts dead.

you’re left with shaking breath and tears in your eyes as his voice rings in your head. you try to take in what he’s just said, but you think you’re about to pass out.

how can richie love you back?

you brush your teeth almost aggressively as your heart beats erratically in your chest and then you’re suddenly flying down the snowy road towards the tozier’s house.

you realize too late that you look completely awry, hair unbrushed, eyes puffy and swollen, shoes untied as you knock on the front door of richie's house.

went opens the door, richie’s younger sister sat on his hip as he smiles at you, "y/n! long time no see. richie's upstairs in his room."

you smile at him in thanks, too rushed to say anything to him or munch. then you’re all but sprinting up the stairs, only feeling the anxiety as you throw open the door to his bedroom.

you're relieved that he's laying in his bed, surrounded by pillows and fluffy comforters as he jumps from the noise of your arrival.

when he sits up, neither of you say anything. his eyes are red and rimmed with tears, a heartbreaking sight as his lower lip trembles slightly. you're sure you look the same as you take a step towards his bed, your eyes not leaving each other's for a second.

he looks incredible, still.

"y/n..." he whispers finally, his eyes wide. "did you get my message?" he says, lips tilting in a stupid, forced smile. his voice holds no humor in it's sad thickness, though, and you sigh as you look down to the carpet.

you shake your head, "can you not joke for a minute, rich?"

he laughs wetly, standing up fully and although he towers at 6'0, he looks so small. "i can try, doll, but then i'll start to cry a lot, and that's just not what anybody wants-"

"richie." you say, effectively ceasing his rambling. it's cold in his room, bright white from the snow outside, and silent. he looks at you with huge eyes and a red nose.

but you don't know what to say. you’ve spent so long wanting to be heather, but now you've found out that richie's loved you this whole time. it hurts, but you can't wait another second being away from richie.

you launch yourself towards him, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him down to your mouth.

this time, the kiss is warm, unexpected again but much more loving. it's a kiss that tastes like tears and love and trust, and all you can feel is richie as his hands find purchase on your cheek and back, pulling you so close to him that you can feel is rapid heartbeat.

he pulls back to mumble against your lips, "i'm so sorry." you shake your head, pressing another kiss to his and loving the feeling of richie against you finally. "i love you." you say, feeling his grin against your mouth.

"i love you so much." he says, pulling you lightly to fall onto his bed with him and tickling your sides.

you laugh lightly, swatting at his prodding fingers. "please stop crying." he whispers, laying above you with a small smile. you roll your eyes, "you stop crying rich." you retort, and he shakes his head, one of his tears falling onto your cheek. you jump from the feeling and wipe it away, sniffling a gasp and pulling him into a tight hug, his legs tangling with yours.

“i’m sorry.” he mumbles. you cup his cheeks so his lips pucker out and you smile at him, whispering, “i forgive you, rich. i love you.” and then you place a soft kiss to his lips and he kisses you back enthusiastically. he pulls back and hugs you again, burrowing himself in your neck.

"i didn't think i'd ever get you." he says, muffled by his face in your shoulder. "thank you for trusting me. i love you so much." he kisses your collarbone lightly and your fingers play through his curls lightly as you smile, eyes closing. you're so tired.

"i love you more, richie."

you fall asleep with richie curled up beside you, his breath light on your chest and arms clutching you against him. you fall asleep with richie’s lips on your neck, his legs entangled with yours.

you fall asleep contently, knowing that you no longer have to wish you were heather.

tag list: @gabiatthedisco @blisshemmings @stenbrozier @simplesammyx @brxken-heartsclub @clownsloveyou @moon-shine-baby @daughter-of-the-stars11 @trashedfortozier @oceandog13 @finnskindofwoman @kait-tozier @upamongthestarss @fiantomartell @beverlyparkerr @beauregard-s @diorbubs @leighjaenikhowell @cowbellies @deepestofwaters <33

#richie tozier x reader #losers x reader #losers club x reader #jewish richie tozier #bill denbrough x reader #stanley uris x reader #beverly marsh x reader #eddie kaspbrak x reader #ben hanscom x reader #mike hanlon x reader

292 notes · View notes

heywardsarchive · 4 years ago

Text

Lie to me

Summary: Draco pushed away his love and watched her move on as his heart broke more and more.

Warnings: angst , fem reader

word count: 2.9k +

Listen to lie to me by 5 seconds of summer to feel the story more. Memories are in italics

thanks to the amazing @pregnant-piggy for proofreading this!

this is for @iliveiloveiwrite‘s writing challenge! im sorry it took so long prompt is in bold.

**** Draco regretted that day more than anything in his life. He pushed away the only light in his dark life. He remembered the day as if it was yesterday although it happened more than 6 months ago.

"Draco! Stop." Y/n told him as he walked away from her. He ignored her and continued walking. He had a mission to fullfil. Nothing could stop him. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't hear y/n run toward him. "Draco Lucius Malfoy you listen to me right now." "What y/n! I have places to be." "Yeah. Of course you do. Never have time for me. YOUR GIRLFRIEND!" "You are not the only person in my life y/n." Draco said rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Alright then. I'm not going to be in your life anymore." She told him, eyes watering slightly. "We're done." She turned around, her hair slapping Draco in the face.

6 months ago Draco was still a dumb fifth year. Now as a sixteen year old who had been given a deadly task, he was drowning in his own head even more. He walked into the great hall and sat down on his seat at the Slytherin table. His eyes unconsciously drifted to the gryffindor table where y/n sat with him. Him being Dean Thomas. They started dating about a month ago and she looked happy. Happier then she was with him.

Draco sat at his table poking at his food, not really eating. His eyes couldn't help but keep flitting back to her. He watched as y/n rested her head on Dean's shoulder and giggled at something he said. She never smiled that big when she was with him. She did infact. In the beginning of their relationship was quite sweet. When Draco asked her out her face lit up and her smile was so bright, it could rival the sun.

"Hey y/n!" Draco came up behind y/n while they both left their shared transfiguration class. "Hi Draco, what's up?" He looked a bit flustered and rubbed the back of his neck. "I uh had to ask you something." "Ask away." She smiled at him and Draco swore he almost got blown away by the beauty of the girl in front of him. "Will you uh go out with me?" She were slightly shocked to see the Draco Malfoy nervous. But at the same time y/n was delighted! She had been crushing on him for a few months after all. "Yes ofcourse I will!"

Draco almost did a happy dance on the spot. (He actually did) Y/n laughed at him and leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek, but Draco turned his head and she accidentally kissed his lips. She pulled away immediately looked completely red and flustered. "Sorry that didn't mean to happen, I'm so sorry i-" Draco cut her off with another kiss. A proper one this time. She ran her fingers through his hair as his cupped her cheeks. "See you in hogsmeade." She smiled and left. Draco was never happier in his life.

Today Draco decided to stay back, not going to hogsmeade in order to try and find a way to complete the task given to him, for if he failed he would suffer. Very badly. He sat in the courtyard watching happy couples and students walk toward the carriages. He held in his hand a paper with everything he had thought of. They weren't very good plans. Draco didn't want to actually kill Dumbledore, but he had to pretend to do so.

Y/n walked past him clinging on to Dean's arm, Seamus walking beside them. Draco had never hated anyone more than he hated Dean Thomas at that very moment. He wanted nothing more than to strangle him and pull y/n into his arms and kiss her again. But he knew he couldn't. She didn't love him anymore. He wished she did. He wanted to ask her. He wanted to hear the words leave her lips, even if it was a lie.

He stood up quickly, dropping his things in the process. She looked toward him looking for the source of the noise. Their eyes met for a split second before she looked away. He had never wanted to see such hurt and malice in her eyes, especially when looking at him. But he did what he did and nothing could change it now.

Draco decided to walk to the astronomy tower where it would be silent. He sat down looking out of the window. His first date with y/n was here in the tower...

"Draco! Where we going?" Y/n asked him, giggling slightly. "Shh love, you'll get to know soon enough." He held on to her hand tighter and brought her to the astronomy tower. He had set up an elaborate dinner on a picnic mat with the help of the house elves. "Wow, Draco I, this is amazing!" She turned around and kissed him passionately. "Anything for you lovely." She giggled.

They sat down on the mat and enjoyed each other's presence. "You remembered my favourite food!" She said, holding draco's cheek. "Ofcourse I did." He kissed her palm and they continued eating the excellent meal. After they were done, they lay on the mat and looked at the stars. " Thankyou Draco. The date was amazing. But next time, let me spoil you instead." He smiled. "Oh darling, that won't be possible when you're with me." She simply tightened her grip on his hand.

Draco shook his head, pushing away the memory. It hurt too much. He had to get out of the tower. Everything reminded him of her. He ran out of the door, tears slowly falling down his cheek. He didn't know where he was going, he just went where his feet took him. He ended up on the seventh floor. There wasn't much there. He saw a door and opened it. The room was large, filled with chairs and tables. In the centre there was a cupboard. The vanishing cabinet. He finally had a good plan but he didn't know if he wanted to execute it.

He sat in the room for a while pondering his choices and decisions. He shed a few tears and as he sat, his gaze on the cupboard, he wondered if he could ever get over y/n. He could never hate her, no. It was not her fault and he still loved her. Love, it's a strong word. He remembered the first time they said it to each other and felt his heart break a tiny bit.

It was the last hogsmeade weekend before break and Draco and y/n walked hand in hand in the snow. Christmas was coming soon and they were yet to buy gifts. "Alright dray, you go your way and I'll go mine, we'll meet near the three broomsticks after one hour alright?" "Ok." He pulled y/n against him and kissed her cold lips. "Bye." She giggled pushing him away.

That evening, the two of them sat togetherness and wrapped all of their gifts. Draco's looked very neat and had no creases. "How is yours so neat?" Y/n said, her eyes wide. "Mother made sure I had the skill of wrapping gifts and unwrapping them with class since I was about 6." She nodded and looked at her own gifts. They weren't that bad, they were just a bit messy at the edges. "It's ok love, what matters is the sentiment." He smiled lovingly at the girl in front of him.

The next morning, they were leaving for the home. At the breakfast table, y/n had brought down draco's gift for him. "I wanted to see your reaction when you opened it." He felt so loved by the small gesture. He opened the wrapping paper and in it was a small ring, shaped like a snake. "I charmed it so that you could come to know if I was happy or sad or whatever. And with my ring I can come to know about you." She smiled triumphantly showing Draco her ring that was shaped like a flower vine. "It will turn pink for in love, red for angry, blue for sad, yellow for happy and you get the picture." Draco's heart swelled with happiness. He knew she was the one for him, or atleast he thought at that point of time. "I love you." He blurted out. Y/n's face turned red and Draco thought he messed up. "I'm so sorry, you don't need to say it back. I-" she cut him off and kissed him. "I love you too silly." Draco sighed in relief and kissed her once again. "Come on let's go now, or we'll miss the train." The ring glew pink.

Draco remembered that old memory that occured around a year or more ago. He pulled out the ring from the chain around his neck. It was silver, there was no glow coming from it, mostly because there was no connection to it anymore. He put the ring away, wiped his tears and walked away.

*****

Draco spent most of his time in sixth year locked in myrtles bathroom. He had finally fixed the vanishing cabinet. He didn't know if he was happy or sad about it. Today was the day the death eaters would break into Hogwarts and watch him kill Dumbledore. He wanted to warn y/n to stay away from the astronomy tower, but he'd have to confess in that case. He knew she didn't love him anymore, why was he afraid of disappointing her? He knew she fell out of love way before they broke up.

They were constantly fighting and blowing each other off a few months before y/n broke things off with him. "Not now y/n." It was mostly Draco. She did try mend things but there are things that cannot be fixed. Their relationship was one of them. Draco watched her fall out if love with him, though he didn't pay much attention to it. He was far too caught up in his own head. Yes, he loved her, but that wasn't enough. His ring rarely glew pink they way it used to. He knew their breakup was inevitable but nothing could have prepared him for it.

He stood with his wand in his trembling hand. He disarmed Dumbledore, but could not bring it in him to kill the old headmaster. He closed his eyes and pictured her face. She would hate him even more if he went through with his task. He started lowering his wand when Snape walked in front of him killing Dumbledore instead. Everything that happened after was a blur. He was being dragged by the arm with Snape as they left Hogwarts grounds. He was apparated home where the dark lord.

He spent a large portion of the year alone in his room. The rest of the house was far too gloomy for him. He had no company and no privacy. He fiddled with the trinkets lying around his room, not paying attention to the screams from below. They were a regular occurrence and Draco had learned to tune them out.

That was until one day, he heard a familiar sound. He knew he had heard that voice before. It was screaming obscene words and cries. He ran out of his room and looked at the living room below. There in the mercy of his wretched aunt Bellatrix, lay the only girl he had truly ever loved. He wanted to call out her name, but that would only bring her more pain.

So he waited. They threw her in the dungeon after a few hours of torture. Draco wanted to go see her but he was probably the last person she wanted to see. It was a few days later when he was given the task of bringing meals to the prisoners that he faced her after nearly two years. He silently went about his task. He placed the plate in front of her. He wanted to say sometimes, anything but no sound came.

He was about to get up and leave when she stopped him. "Draco, wait." He looked at y/n and took in her appears. Her face was scarred and thin. She looked pale and weak. But she was anything but in his eyes. "You don't look too happy." She said. "I'm not. But there's nothing anyone can do to help me." He croaked out. They sat in silence for a few minutes. "I feel like you want to tell me something." She said suddenly. "Why?Why did you leave ?" He said. "Oh Draco." Y/n shook her head. "Didn't you see we were bad for each other? I loved you and so I let you go. I didn't know what was going on in your head because you didn't let me in. I thought we lost that spark, which indeed we had. I know it hurt at first but look, here we are now. Sitting in a dungeon. Draco, I loved you. But that's in the past now. We have to hope for new beginnings and a better life. Maybe one day, if I survive this, I'll start my own bakery." She sighed wistfully. Draco took it as his cue to leave. "Take care.' he said patting her hand.

About a month later, Harry Potter was caught and brought to Malfoy manor. He and Ron and Hermione managed to break out the prisoners and escape to a safe place. Draco only hoped that y/n were safe and alive.

The next time Draco saw y/n was at the battle of Hogwarts. She was fighting a death Eater when another three a curse at her from behind. "No!" Draco cried he threw y/n out of the way and saved her from possible death. "You're ok." She said softly. "I'm ok." Draco nodded. He grabbed her hand. "For what its worth, I'm truly sorry." She sighed and shook her head. "It's alright now."

******

The war was over. Harry Potter had won. Everyone could finally breathe a sigh of relief, not him though. Due to draco's families affiliation with the dark lord, he would most probably be shunned the rest of his life. He walked into the great hall and looked as all the happy couples reunited, siblings and parents found each other. Everyone had someone to be with after the war.

Draco watched y/n as she burst through the door and ran straight into Dean's arms. He couldn't but wish it were him instead. He shed a few tears and left. He didn't know where he was going but he had to leave.

****** 6 years later

Draco did leave, he travelled to France, Spain, Greece and Ireland. He stayed in small cottages that he rented in every small town he stayed in. He tried dating occassionally but he never really felt anything like he felt for y/n. He worked in a bakery in one of the towns he lived in (I used to work in a bakery hehe) he learned many skills in his travels He enjoyed the change in scenery but he knew he had to return at some point.

The first place he went to once he returned was a small coffee shop which he loved since he was a child. To his surprise, he saw y/n and Dean over there. He wanted to run, but that would be rude and he did want to talk to them. "Hey." He tapped y/n's shoulder. "Oh Draco, hi!" She gave him a short hug and then he shook Dean's hand. "It's been a long time mate, we thought you disappeared." Dean told Draco jokingly. Draco smiled sheepishly. "I needed to get away for a while." "Yeah we totally get it. The war took a toll on everyone." Y/n said seriously. Draco looked at her hand. It had a shining ring on it. He felt his heart break a bit. All those years and he still wasn't able to move on. "Alright, we'll talk soon. I have to go now." Draco said. "Wait!" Y/n called out. She shared a look with Dean. He nodded. "We want you to come to our wedding. It's next week, it will be great if you came." He said. "I'll think about it and let you know." Draco said with a small smile.

Eventually, Draco did go to the wedding. It was a small one, but it was beautiful. There were purple and white flowers everywhere and the centrepiece of the table was a small elephant with a candle in its back. As Draco sat at the back, watching the ceremony, the bride and groom saying their vows. When they were about to kiss, Draco glanced at his hand, at the snake ring he still wore. It glew yellow. He didn't know why y/n wore her side of the ring but she had and Draco could see she was happy. Maybe it was finally time to move on and be happy himself.

*****

taglist: @kashishwrites (send an ask to be added to my taglist!)

#draco imagine #draco malfoy x you #draco malfoy x female reader #draco malfoy #harry potter x reader #draco x reader #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy x reader

129 notes · View notes

kaori-flowers · 4 years ago

Text

Hello! I know I said I was gonna take a break from writing Techno and Tommy. This has them in it a little. I got this idea and had to write it down before I forgot it. Hopefully you enjoy :)

♡

After stuffing his bed to make it look like he was sleeping, he slid out the back window. He landed on the path quietly, and then pulled out an invis potion. He chugged it and kept his watch timmer on so he knew when to take another one. He slid down off the path into the cold water as quietly as he could. He pulled out hit trident and took a deep breath before diving under. With the Trident's help he zoomed through the water effortlessly. After a few minutes he stopped to come up for air, and look around slowly. He was in the middle of the ocean and let himself float as he pulled out his compass. The compass spun around for a few seconds before pointing north and stopping. He put the compass back and dove back under. It only took him 5 minutes to actually reach the island where Techno's house was. He pulled himself out of the water and put his trident away carefully. He stood on the frozen bank for a few minutes, letting himself drip.

"Okay im just gonna check on them, and I will go back. I swear."

Phil was reassuring himself and urging himself not to stay, because then there would be another war. Literally. Even though Phil knew Techno would win he still didn't want to be the cause of the next war. Phil trudged through the snow as quick as he could, making his legs extremely cold. The pressure hurt a little, but he seen the bright lights of the house in the distance. He sighed in relief as he moved closer at a slow pace. The first thing he noticed was Carl tied up in the barn with a bunch of lanters on. Carl nickered and paced around, seeing Phil. Phil quickly tried to shush him as he entered the barn with Carl. The warmth of the barn wrapped around him quickly and Phil gently held his hand out. Carl sniffed him before shaking his head up and down, making his harness gingle.

"Shhhhh, it's okay. Just be quiet."

Phil softly rubbed Carl's head, kissing his nose a few times. He gave him an apple and stood directly under a lamp, in hopes to warm up quicker. Carl watched him as he chomped on the apple he recieved. After the apple was gone he nodded his head again, nickering at Phil. Phil shushed him as he rubbed his hands together. He didn't want to waste too much time so he gave up and walked back over to Carl. Phil kissed his head and nose before rubbing it gently again. Then he left the barn and headed up the porch to the front door. Phil listened but didn't hear anyone talking. He slowly opened the door more, and entered quietly. He shut the door behind him and quickly noticed reflective armour standing without insides. Which meant the person in front of him was invis.

"I-"

"Dad?!"

It was Tommy's voice, and Tommy wasted no time in hugging Phil tightly. Phil tensed up at the sound of Tommy calling him dad, since he has never heard it before. Phil hesitated a second but hugged Tommy back tightly, relived he was still alive. He was very relived that he was okay for the most part. It's not like he could actually see if he was or not. Tommy was invisible for christ sakes!

"Tommy who are y-"

"Phil?! What are you doing here?!"

Tommy let go of Phil as Phil did to Tommy. Technoblade and Ranboo came up from the basement to find an invisible Tommy hugging a very visible Phil. Phil tensed up at the sight of Ranboo and looked at Techno for a second. Then he looked back at Ranboo.

"Im sorry! I just wanted to make sure my kids were okay!"

Phil blurted out quickly, unsure of what else to actually tell him. I mean why else would Phil be there? He only really cared about if his son's were alive and well. Before anyone else can say anything Technoblade yanks Phil into his arms. He hugs Phil tightly and Phil hugs him back almost instantly. Technoblade was relieved his father made it to him safely. He also checked Phil over, making sure he was okay as well.

"Wait did you call him dad?"

Everyone turned to look at Tommy as soon as Technoblade asked the question. As Tommy's invis faded out he just looked a little confused. He looked at Phil and then Techno, realizing what he had done. But since Tommy had been staying with Techno he had been growing into himself. Tommy has embracing who he actually is and was accepting his actual family.

"Y-yeah. He is dad."

"Well yeah but-"

"Phil how do you plan to get back in your house without being noticed? How did you even get out?!"

Technoblade looked at Phil and then turned his attention to Ranboo. Tommy looked at Phil, and hugged him once more. After being all alone in exile he was happy to start seeing actual people. Especially the ones that are his actual family.

"What do you mean?"

"He-"

"You will take him back."

"What?!"

Phil and Tommy looked at Ranboo and Techno quickly. Despite the fact that Ranboo was the same height, if not taller than Techno, he was still intimidated by him. Technoblade pulled his sword out of it's shealth, making Ranboo gulp hard and Phil cover Tommy's eyes. Technoblade held it tightly as he grabbed Ranboo's shirt. He yanked him closer, and raised his sword.

"You will sneak him back in safely. Understand?"

"Y-yes!"

"Good."

Technoblade let go of him and put his sword back. Ranboo fixed his suit, smoothing out where Techno grabbed him. Phil removed his hands from Tommy's eyes, and Tommy was relieved to see Ranboo was still alive.

"You could have just asked. Ranboo is my friend! He wouldn't hurt our dad. Right Ranboo?"

"Of course not Tommy. I would never hurt your dad."

Ranboo replied in a soft tone, feeling a small pain of sorrow for him. Ranboo knew what Tommy has been through these last few weeks. He figured he did in fact owe Tommy for all the pain and suffering he's been through. Especially when he managed to get away scott free, and Tommy got the worst of it.

"Okay well, I came to make sure you two were alright. I should head back. It's bad if I stay out for too long. They'll notice."

"Ranb-"

"I'll make sure he gets in safely. I promise."

Phil said his goodbyes to both his son's, hugging them tightly since he didnt know when he'd see them again. Then he followed Ranboo out of the house, and down the porch steps.

"Wait."

Ranboo stopped and turned around to look at Phil. Phil entered the small barn to say goodbye to Carl, not knowing when he'd see him again either. Ranboo waited patiently, understanding how hard it must be for Phil. When Phil was done, he left and joined Ranboo's side. They began walking without any conversation for a while, only the sound of snow crunching underneath their feet. It made both of them feel a little awkward and uncomfortable in the silence.

"So...."

"Sorry about Techno threatening you. He's just really protective and-"

"Oh yeah no worried. I get it. You're his dad, and im sure you are very important to him. It's understandable."

"Yeah....."

They fell back into silence, other than the snow crunching of course. They were covering good ground though, and were at the bank of the water before they knew it. Ranboo set up a boat and gently put it in the water, getting in first. Phil got in behind him and Ranboo began rowing. Phil broke the silence again, because of his own curiosity.

"So.... What were you doing out here at Techno's house?"

"Oh I was uh following Ghostbur."

"Right. You're uh... you're not gonna tell anyone Tommy is alive and here.... right?"

"Um... No. I don't think I will."

"Think?"

Ranboo fell silent and stopped rowing, he just let the boat drift on the soft waves. Phil gave him time to answer, not really worried since they were just drifting. Ranboo thought it over slowly and realized whose side he should be on. With everything Ranboo was a witness to and heard, it was clear what was right and what was wrong.

"I'm not gonna tell them Phil. I promise."

"Okay."

The boat ride was silent again, and it stayed silent as they returned. Ranboo kept glancing around to make sure no one was in sight. Ranboo docked the boat, and tied it up before he got out first. Then he helped Phil out and Ranboo looked around to make sure no one was around.

"Alright let's go before someone comes."

Ranboo walked first with Phil following him closely. Phil was extremely suspicious of Ranboo, unsure if he could actually trust him. Sure he seemed trustworthy, but was he actually? Phil was unsure.

"Ranboo what the hell are you doing?!"

Phil and Ranboo turned around quickly to see Tubbo and Quackity standing there. Phil looked at Ranboo as Ranboo looked at him. Ranboo looked back at Tubbo, and moved slightly forward.

"I didn't want to go alone, and I couldn't find any of you. Im sorry."

"Wha- you could have just messaged us?!"

"You're right I'm sorry, but I was in a rush. It won't happen again I promise!"

Tubbo looked at Quackity slowly and then back at Ranboo. Ranboo's heart was pounding, unsure if this excuse was working or not. He knew this could end really bad or really well. Tubbo had no reason not to believe Ranboo right now, because so far he's done nothing but help him. So Tubbo gave him the benefit of the doubt and accepted this statement as the truth from him.

"Okay. Do not do it again."

"Yes sir."

Ranboo walked Phil up his porch and to his front door. Phil opened it, and entered, surprised that Ranboo held up his end of the deal. Not that there was any deal really, it was more of a threat. Phil was still a little grateful that Ranboo didn't throw him under the bus. Ranboo entered after Phil and sat on his chair, taking a breathe. His heart was still pounding a little, and he felt slightly on edge.

"Here."

Ranboo looked up to see Phil holding out a plate. On the plate was a sandwich and a sticky note that said thank you. Ranboo looked up at Phil to see he had a soft smile on his face. Ranboo gently took the place and nodded slightly. He still felt stressed and a little nervous now, but was a little calmed knowing he got Phil's approval. Or at least he thought and hoped he did.

#mcyt fandom #mcyt #dream mcyt #dream smp #mcyt fanfiction #dream team #tommyinit #tommy and wilbur #tommyinnit #tommy mcyt #wilbur soot #ghostbur #philza minecraft #philza #technoblade #kaori writes

83 notes · View notes

dreamljve · 4 years ago

Text

A Family Visit (Neville Longbottom)

A/N: hey yall! ive never wrote fanfic before so please go easy on me. suggestions/criticisms are encouraged as i literally wrote this for a class & want a decent grade. no warnings, just a sad neville but its a nice ending. also, i should note that im reading the series for the first time rn and i just started book 5 and this was inspired by the scene where dumbledore tells harry about neville’s parents in gof. im like 99% sure that you cant get to the hospital via floo powder but it was just easier to write it that way and i was already way over page limit. so... yeah. floo powder. just accept it.

Summary: Neville visits his parents the day of the Yule Ball.

word count: 2745 :)

With the end of the term nearing and the snow covering the ground, Neville once again was met with the bittersweet feeling of Christmas break. In the back of his Potion’s class with Professor Snape, Neville was counting the minutes down. Snape’s lesson was boring as usual, he was saying something about a Pepperup Potion but Neville couldn’t care less. This was his last class of the term. He planned to stay at Hogwarts over Christmas break for the Yule Ball, albeit his date was a third year, Ginny Weasley. Almost as if he could read his mind, Snape interrupted his daydreaming.

“Mr. Longbottom, can you repeat what I just told the class?” Snape squinted at him.

“Er-” Neville pursed his lips together and scratched the back of his head.

“I figured,” Snape rolled his eyes and his lips curled into a smirk. “I said that 12 inches of parchment will be due when you return from break. But that’ll be 18 inches for you, Longbottom. And 10 points from Gryffindor.”

The Slytherins in the front of the class snickered. Neville merely nodded. There was no use in arguing Snape, it’ll only end in more homework.

“Don’t worry, you could use the extra practice.” Malfoy spit at him. Snape glanced at the blonde boy with a disapproving look but said nothing.

“Why don’t you bug off, Malfoy?” Harry shot at him, standing up.

“Are you going to stop me, Potter?” Crabbe and Goyle laughed with Draco. Harry felt his face heating up. He was sick of Snape playing favorites. He allows the Slytherins to do whatever they please since he’s head of the Slytherin house.

“Sit down, Mr. Potter. Unless you want extra work.”

As if on cue, the bell rang. Harry grabbed his bag and walked over to Neville.

“Hey, you alright? Don’t mind them. The lousy gits don’t have anything better to do.”

“Hey, yeah, I’m okay. At least we’re free for the next two weeks.” Neville says half-heartedly as he stands up and walks out of the classroom with Harry. The two boys walked through the corridor towards the Gryffindor common room.

“Hey, I’ve got to talk to Dumbledore quickly. I’ll see you later though, yeah?” Harry says with a small smile.

“Right then, see you later.” Neville replies.

Neville watched as Harry jogged away. He wondered what he was going to talk to Dumbledore about. Neville turned and was met with the fat lady painting.

“Password?” She asks with her arms crossed.

“Oh, er-” Neville always struggled with passwords.

“Fortuna Major.” Ron says from behind him.

Neville mutters a small “thanks” and steps in through the portrait. He had planned to hang out in the common room, but soon realizes that his roommates were all in there. Neville hasn’t had a moment to himself since Summer so he decided to go upstairs to his room. He says a quick hello to Seamus and Dean as he walks past them. He went up the stairs and found the door to his dormitory. He enters and shuts it quickly, breathing a sigh of relief. He walks over to his bed and falls backwards, staring up at the ceiling. He started thinking about the holidays and how much he hated Professor Snape and his greasy hair. What kind of teacher just bullies students? Frustrated, Neville turns to lay on his side. He started thinking about how he was meeting his Gran the next day to go visit his parents. Neville doesn’t think about his parents often. How could he? He doesn’t remember them, thinking about them wouldn’t help anything.

But he still allows himself to think about them, from time to time. Neville’s Gran is a stern lady. Growing up, she worried that Neville was a squib, as he didn’t show early signs of magic very often. She often berated him, telling him he didn’t live up to his father’s honor. Neville couldn’t help but believe her.

Neville was proud of his parents, though. They were Aurors, their job was to fight against the Dark Arts He smiled at the thought of them being praised for their noble work. They were well respected amongst their peers, Neville wondered what it felt like. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out his wand. It was his father’s. Neville runs his fingers along the wood and the not-so-intricate designs of it. Even though it doesn’t look like much, he knows it's powerful. Neville’s father had fought in the first Wizarding War and was an Auror with that very wand. He holds the wand a little tighter and brings it to his chest. Neville fought back the urge to cry. It was unfair. He never got to know his parents, they were good people who only wanted the best for everyone, wizards and muggles alike. Neville bit his lip to stop it from quivering and he sat up. He set his wand next to him on the quilt his grandmother gave him a few Christmases ago. He smooths the banket and stands up. It was getting late and none of his roommates were showing up, so Neville changed into his pajamas and turned on some music. He wanted to practice his dancing skills for the Yule Ball, so he started to pretend to hold a girl and danced to the music. He furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to get the footwork correct. After a few minutes, he heard a knock at the door. Startled, he quickly gathers himself and says “come in,” and Harry walks through the door.

Harry was quiet, he merely smiled and nodded at Nevile before grabbing his nightwear. His eyes had an apologetic look, as if he had just found out something sad about Neville. Harry is the only one who gets it, really. Both of their parents were taken down by the same cause, the only difference being that Harry’s are actually dead. Neville felt a shameful relief wash over him with that thought, he bowed his head and scratched his neck. He was getting tired, and decided to lie in bed. He turned off the lamp next to his bed and closed his eyes. He finally started drifting away as he heard Seamus and Dean enter their room.

The next morning, Neville is woken up by the sun and sound of birds outside their dorm. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, sat up, and stretched. Seamus, Ron, Dean, and Harry were all sleeping yet. Neville gets dressed and goes to the Great Hall, where he is met with Christmas and winter decorations. There are silver and blue streamers hanging about the Hall, as well as snowflakes covering the walls and hanging from the ceiling. The Christmas tree by the teacher’s table was decorated with white lights, fake snow, and a shiny snowflake on the top. There were presents under the tree wrapped in white and blue wrapping paper. “Bet they’re empty,” Neville thinks to himself, slightly chuckling. He finds his seat at the Gryffindor table and begins to eat his breakfast alone. There was a group of second years at the end of the table, laughing amongst themselves. Neville is already finished with his food when his roommates find their way to the Hall. It was 8:00 and he had to meet his grandmother in an hour. He was meeting his Gran in Hogsmeade to go to St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries in London. Neville and his grandmother had to have a special meeting with Dumbledore his first year about his parents. Of course, Dumbledore knew his parents and their tragic fate. He made a special exception for him this year, allowing him to leave to visit his parents for the day and come back for the Yule Ball this evening.

Neville ventured back to his dorm, muttering a quick “Fortuna Major” to the portrait of the fat lady guarding the Gryffindor common room. He stepped through and was met with Fred and George Weasley in the common room, sitting by the fireplace talking about something secretly. As soon as he enters his room, he grabs a coat and wand and lays them on his bed. Every time Neville visits his parents, he secretly hopes they’ll remember him, even though it isn’t possible. Neville felt his hand involuntarily tighten into a fist, his nails digging into his palm. He patiently sat for what felt like hours but was realistically 20 minutes or so when he finally decided to head down to meet Dumbledore. He grabs his things and puts his wand in his pocket with his right fist still clenched. He felt his nails break the skin of palm as he got more anxious with every step. When he finally meets Dumbledore at the stairs by the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Neville wondered why he was standing so close to the one-eyed witch statue.

“Good morning, Neville.” Dumbledore greets him with a soft smile.

“Good morning, Professor.” He returns the smile, but quickly lets it fade.

“I hope you keep this between you and me,” Dumbledore says cooly, “Dissendium.” Dumbledore says seemingly at the witch as he taps the hump of the statue with his wand. The hump opens just wide enough for a small person to get through.

“This will take you to the cellar of Honeydukes. Be back by 6:30 so you have enough time to get ready for the Ball. Have a good time, Neville.” Dumbledore smiles at him. Neville thanks him and wonders how many other people knew about this secret. He quickly snaps out of it and enters the passage, giving a final smile and nod towards his headmaster. The passage was cold and rather gross, so he just walked forward until he got to the entrance of the cellar. He opens the latch and enters Honeydukes, trying to be quiet as he enters the door of the store. He quickly exits Honeydukes. He walks to meet his grandmother at The Leaky Cauldron. He gives his father’s mother a faint smile and a quick hello.

“Glad to see you made it here safely, Neville,” she brushes off some dirt on his shoulder, “Are you ready to go?” His grandmother asks him.

Neville merely nods, he was never ready to go. He wonders how she is ready. Neville never knew his parents, so there weren’t many memories to miss, but his grandmother raised his father. Every year she takes Neville to visit but never says anything about how she is feeling about it. Neville furrows his eyebrows and looks at his only parental figure. For a second, he feels remorse for her. Losing your parents is difficult, but losing your child has to be the worst. Neville says a silent prayer to Merlin that he’ll never have to go through that pain himself.

Neville’s grandmother finds a floo system and pulls out floo powder. She hands him a handful of it.

“Do you want to go first?” She asks him.

“No, that’s alright. Have at it.” He just wanted a second without her to compose himself.

She nods and says “St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries”, throwing the powder down at her feet and vanishing.

Neville takes a deep breath and repeats her actions. He feels his stomach twist and turn as he travels. He tries to not focus on it by remembering it’ll end within seconds. And with that, Neville feels his feet fall flat on the floor and he opens his eyes. Letting his eyes adjust to the lighting, Neville subtle forwards a bit.

“Can you manage to stay on your feet, please?” His grandmother remarks.

“Er- yeah. Sorry.” He says lightly.

His grandmother shakes her head as they find the reception desk.

“Who are you here to see?” The receptionist asks. She had long blonde hair and enticing eyes. Neville stares at her for a second and thinks about how she reminds him of Fleur Delacour, the champion from Beauxbatons.

“Frank and Alice Longbottom.” Neville’s grandmother says with a slight smile.

“Right, just down that hall to the left.” His grandmother’s smile is returned as she points to a corridor to the right of the desk.

Neville thanks the woman and thinks about how she probably has her parents. She properly grew up with parents who knew who she was, with a grandmother who doesn't resent her. Brushing that thought aside, Neville and his Gran walk down the hallway that seems to be getting longer with every step. Eventually they find the door labeled “Visitation Room”. Neville exchanges looks with his grandmother as she reluctantly grabs the door knob, turning it. She pushes the door open and gestures for Neville to enter first, closing the door behind them. Neville felt his heart beat faster as his eyes found his parents. They’re sitting at a round table whispering to one another. Neville and his grandmother find their seats, sitting across from them. The boy’s parents stare at them with empty eyes.

“Hi Frank,” His grandmother smiles lightly, “Hi Alice.”

“Hi mom and dad.” Neville looks at them with gentle eyes with a small smile.

“Hello.” Frank replies with wide eyes.

“Hello.” Alice says, turning her attention to Frank.

“How are you guys?” Neville’s grandmother asks.

“We’re good. Although it is cold in here.” Alice says, hugging herself.

Neville’s parents usually complained about the cold when he visited during Christmas. The hospital does get significantly colder as the weather starts to turn. Do they think crazy people don’t need heat?

“Do you want to wear my jacket?” Neville starts to take his arms out of his sleeves, maintaining eyes on his mother.

She nods and smiles at him, and Neville returns the smile. He stands up and walks to his mom, wrapping his jacket around her and kissing the top of her head. She looks up at him and smiles wider, and intertwines her fingers together. Neville’s dad thanks him and places an arm around her. Neville finds his seat again, earning a pat on the back from his Gran. Moments like this are few and far in between, making it all the more special. Neville doesn’t have many happy memories with his family, so making both of his parents and Gran happy was an accomplishment in his eyes.

After almost two hours of mindless small talk, Neville looks at his Gran and realizes it’s time to go. His parents can only handle so much per visit, so when they start getting antsy and irritable they know it’s time to leave them be. Neville stands up and brushes himself off, holding an arm out to help his Gran stand up. Frank and Alice stand up as well, mirroring his moves. Neville smiles as he makes his way over to his mother, removing the coat from her back and embracing her. She reluctantly hugged him back. He didn’t blame her, he was a stranger hugging her. Neville squeezed her a little tighter, resting his head on top of hers. When he finally pulled away, his eyes were full of tears. He looks over at his dad releasing his hug from his own mother, who is also teary-eyed. Neville switches places with his Gran, looking at his dad for a second before he hugs him. Frank lightly wraps his arms around his son giving him a friendly pat on the back. Neville holds onto him until his Gran interrupts,

“It’s time to leave, Nev.” He is taken aback for a moment at the nickname, but then smiles. He releases his father and looks up at him again.

“I love you, dad,” Neville turns to his mother, “and I love you, mom.” He gently grabs their hands for a second before letting go. His Gran puts a hand on his back, rubbing it slightly. Neville feels his lower lip quiver as they walk to exit the door. His Gran opens it and gestures for him to leave first. He turns around to look at his parents, they look at each other and then at Neville, smiling and waving at him. Neville leaves the room and is greeted with the hallway of the hospital. He looks at his Gran as she closes the door with a final click. Her hand lingers on the doorknob for a second before turning to Neville with a tear spilling on her cheek and the slightest smile,

“How about we stop at Honeydukes for some candy?”

#harry potter #neville longbottom #neville longbottom fic #harry potter fic #fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #neville longbottom fanfiction #longbottom family #fluff #hp fluff #frank longbottom #alice longbottom #draco malfoy #hp fic #neville longbottom imagine #harry potter imagine

37 notes · View notes

classicdaisycalico · 3 years ago

Note

Im here for the most recent ask prompt. I didn't understand if we have to tell you a pair, but I will say #1 and #15 with shadouge

Short fic challenge

Anon I will do ANYTHING to liven up the Shadouge tag so HERE WE GO.

1. "A conversation you wish had happened in canon"

***

With the sheer brawn of Iblis and the devilish cunning of Mephiles, Solaris was the biggest challenge anyone on the side of good had yet to face. Without a doubt, the Emeralds were needed here. Sonic was needed here.

But he was dead...or so it seemed.

Elise mentioned something about sensing his presence in the wind, a sort of wishful justification that somehow the blue hedgehog was only mostly dead. Admittedly, Shadow would have been lying if he hadn't thought the same. That faker had a fighting spirit that could last as long as the ultimate life form himself could exist. Without that kind of motivation, any fight against Solaris would be for naught. Gathering the seven Chaos Emeralds, then, was the only right thing to do.

Somehow everyone had managed to pull through on this feat, and in record time, apparently. Granted, the destruction of time and space itself may have been a factor, but the speed at which the gems had been obtained was astounding, nevertheless. How ironic, Shadow thought to himself, that this process had been slower while the blue blur had been alive. Perhaps a well-timed nod to the idea after Sonic was brought back could give him the motivation to stay focused on the matter a little better.

Still, that would only happen if the revival was a success.

"Think it'll work?"

A voice next to him interrupted his train of thought. He turned and found Rouge standing at his side. "I don't see why not," he said. "The Chaos Emeralds had a hand in giving me life. They should have no issue in giving Sonic his back."

The black hedgehog couldn't help but feel his muzzle heat up when he realized how close the two of them were standing. It hadn't even been the first time the distance between them was this small. It was since that fateful day by the sea that he became more cognizant of the idea.

He remembered that day like it was yesterday. It was the same day he had been told of what was to come for him and Omega, their faithful E-series robot companion, in the future. It was that same member of Team Dark, in fact, who would betray him and seal him into stasis forever, after everyone else in the world turned against him.

Everyone except Rouge, who rescued him from stasis in Eggman's base, who saved his life on several other occasions, who had worked with him to defeat his own biological father and his alien offspring permanently. Through all the light and dark he had suffered, she had been by his side the whole time.

She would make that same point again that very day. The words echoed in his mind, over and over again, like a broken record:

"Shadow...even if you believe everyone in the world will be against you...know that I'll always be by your side. Remember that..."

He wasn't wrong when he said "I will". Until now, no one else in recent memory would stand by someone whose past was so painful, someone whose memory had been tampered with one time too many, someone who was abused to the point of distrusting everyone around him, someone whose path to recovery was like navigating a minefield. Anyone else who said this to him would have him wonder if they meant such a promise.

And yet, he believed her every word. At least, with her, he never had to doubt anything. He never had to second-guess himself. Recovering from his past never scared her away.

Shadow respected that. He respected her, and he trusted her. For him to hold anyone in such a high regard was not something that was given freely.

Still, "respect" and "trust" didn't feel like enough to describe what he felt.

He recalled a conversation long ago with Maria on the ARK, where she once explained to him the concept of love. For a 12-year old girl, her response was surprisingly mature. According to her, she knew someone loved another if they prioritized that person's else's needs before their own in times of trouble.

She was absolutely correct. Between her, Shadow, and Gerald, her definition checked off all the right boxes. Maria was family, after all; of course he and Gerald loved her.

He had also come to learn that Rouge checked off all those boxes, too. Of course, the only context Shadow knew of this kind of love was family. This bat was not family, not in the way he was used to.

But he still loved her.

He looked over at Amy, wringing her hands together while trying to hold back tears as Elise lay the Emeralds in a circle around Sonic. As much as Shadow couldn't seem to believe it, maybe the pink hedgehog was onto something. Perhaps whatever she felt for her blue hero, he felt for the spy next to him. The idea held water very well; there was probably no other way to describe it.

Elise was now lying next to Sonic in the middle of the Emeralds, which began to glow. All the while, the ultimate life form let his fingers brush against those of his ally. As it turned out, these newfound feelings had given way to something else on his mind. "Rouge."

The partner in question turned and faced him. "Yes?"

"He can't fight this alone."

She blinked, feeling his hand grasp hers. "What are you saying?"

"Solaris may well be the biggest threat we've ever seen. Sonic cannot face it alone."

Rouge's eyes widened. "So you're joining him?"

"Silver, too," Shadow replied. "And even among the three of us, our efforts may not be enough."

The Emeralds were floating now, revolving around Sonic's body. Only one scenario involved the gems acting this way. If he was to help the faker, this was the way to do it, but before he could join him, there was one last thing left to do.

He turned to face Rouge. "People may die tonight," he answered. "And if I should be one of them–"

"Shadow, we know that's impossible–"

"If I should be one of them..." he resumed, harshly, before taking a calmer breath to compose himself. "You said you would stay by my side no matter what. Is that right?"

She nodded slowly. "Absolutely."

He took another slow breath, reaching for the limiters on his wrists. "If I should live after this battle...find me."

He removed them, while Rouge could only watch in dismay. "Shadow–"

He urgently placed the limiters in her hands. "Find me," he repeated, and sighed, shaking his head. "If only I told you sooner..."

There was a sternness in her voice now as she heard the serious tone in his. "Tell me what?"

Looking at her, Shadow could see up close just how many small features of her he never paid attention to, like how her snow-white hair curled slightly at the ends. Like how her eyes were a perfect mixture of blue and green. Like how her skin somehow miraculously remained untouched by battle scars no matter how many fights she found herself in.

He chose to set himself up for this. There was no turning back now. Taking one last look at his ally, the hedgehog shut his eyes and pressed his lips to hers.

He could feel her gasp in surprise, but that was irrelevant. What mattered was that she needed to know how he felt about her before it was too late.

Before he knew it, the spy was kissing him back. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer, reassured that her feelings were mutual. After all, her promise was as good as binding. Was that not a declaration of love by itself?

On any other occasion, he would have gladly taken his time with this kiss. He could have deepened it, ran his fingers through her hair, lightly stroked her velvety wings, let his hands venture down her back and along her hips and up again, mold the sharp edges of his own figure into the softer curves of hers until there was no space between them at all. Call it the territorial instincts of his Black Arms DNA, perhaps.

Take that, Knuckles.

But there was still a war going on, and he still had a role in it.

They pulled away as slowly as time would allow, their eyes only half open and gazing longingly into the other's. Their foreheads were still touching, along with the tips of their noses. One of his hands still clung to hers, fingers laced together. He could hear her taking slow, steady breaths, stark contrast to the rapid pulse of her heart. Who could blame her? She was caught horrendously off-guard. "What did you want to tell me, Shadow?"

He wanted to tell her. Badly. But all he could do was gently nuzzle the side of her face. "There's no time."

"You can't just–"

Rouge found herself holding Shadow's limiters against her chest, but there was no Shadow standing in front of her. Instead, she looked up and saw him slowly backing away, the ghost of regret clouding his eyes. "What are you doing?"

He shook his head, feeling a part of his heart ache as the distance between them increased. "I'm sorry."

The ultimate life form turned on his heel and ran towards the Chaos Emeralds, now rapidly rotating around Sonic. His only focus now was joining the blue blur and destroying Solaris for good.

He had to survive. Only then, could he find his ally and let her know the three words that echoed through his mind, but never found the right time and place to say out loud:

"I love you."

***

OKAY NOW FOR THE OTHER ONE LET'S DO THIS

***

15. "The scene that will give you, personally, the most joy."

***

The sun was going down, illuminating the sky with brilliant shades of orange and gold fading into red. Dusk would soon be near, which meant nightfall was not far behind.

Being a bat, a night creature, Rouge thrived during this time of day. Still, that didn't mean she couldn't slow down and appreciate the beauty that this sunset had to offer. It almost made her forget the rest of her surroundings, like the tree attached to the thick branch on which she stood.

Upon suddenly seeing Shadow pop up next to her, she yelped in shock. "Don't do that! You scared me half to death!"

"Rouge, I have a question."

There it was, the perfect opportunity to ask her about what was on his mind, about how it was always around Rouge that he found himself trying to keep a cool head a little more than needed. It was her that made his face flush a deeper red than the streaks in his quills. It was her who made his heart beat faster than he could run. It was her that caught every man's eye in a way so tantalizing that he felt a need to tell them all to back off.

Tantalizing...like the many gems she chased after. Her eyes were like turquoise, her lips like amethyst, her black catsuit like onyx, her hair like pearls. Who was she to talk about the mysterious brilliance of a Chaos Emerald when she herself was right there before his eyes? And just like a diamond, her personality was just as multifaceted. On one hand, she appeared cold and cruel, calculating and cunning. On the other, she showed a caring and compassionate side, a side she showed to no one else but him. She was everything a jewel could ever be: hard to find and even harder to obtain, but so beautiful one couldn't help but get drawn in.

In fact, he'd been drawn in for so long, he nearly forgot he had a question to ask. "...When was the last time you ever really got to see the world?"

The bat was slightly taken aback by this question. "I–"

"And not because of some jewel heist, either. I mean...REALLY seeing the world."

She sat down on the tree branch, now much deeper in thought. "I...don't know. Probably...never? Why?"

The hedgehog sat down next to her. "Because it's come to my attention that I never have, either." He smoothed some stray quills back, a tell-tale sign of the nervousness he harbored around her. "To be honest...I was wondering–"

"Of course I'll come with you."

He froze. "How did you know?"

She shrugged. "Lucky guess. Besides," she added, reaching for his hand. "It's what she would have wanted for you. Besides, with Eggy out of commission for good, you've got nothing but time to do it."

He knew immediately which "she" the spy referred to: Maria, his surrogate sister from long ago, whose wish to see the world had never been realized. He also knew Rouge wasn't wrong about Eggman, either. He was gone. Completely. Nothing could restrain Shadow, limit him, make him doubt himself and his decisions.

He was, for all intents and purposes...free. And Rouge wanted to fly in that freedom with him. She helped him find it, after all.

A smile slowly spread across his face. "Then why wait?"

He grabbed her wrist, ready to venture forth, until he realized what was under her hand was not her wrist. It felt loose. Round. Like a piece of jewelry, no doubt. "Rouge...what is that?"

The ultimate life form could see her pause, her muzzle turning bright pink as she searched for words. "...It was from a long time ago," she answered. "I meant to tell you earlier today, but I forgot."

He tilted his head to the side. "Care to show me?"

She took a deep breath, and slowly slid down part of her glove from her elbow down to her wrist. He gasped as he realized what it was he felt: on her wrist was one of his inhibitor rings. "Is that–"

"Yeah," she answered, sheepishly, trying to avoid his eyes.

"How...?" was all he could ask. "When did you–"

"Since the ARK. When you fell from space back down to Mobius. Sonic found it...he gave it to me when I asked you where you went."

The bat looked back up. "Everyone thought you were dead, but something told me I would find you again...and I did. But you lost your memory, and between all those androids, and the Black Arms, and Gemerl, and even beyond that..."

Her voice trailed off. She almost sounded shameful when she explained it, but Shadow didn't care. He could only stare back at her in wonder. "You wore it this whole time?"

She nodded. "I'd say it's more important than any jewel I've ever found. I value it."

The bat looked up at the hedgehog, the uncertainty in her eyes dissipating. "And I value the hedgehog that came with it just as much, if not more."

He was speechless. Even if she didn't say the exact words he expected her to, her intent was clear: she loved him.

And his feelings were certainly more than mutual. "Rouge...I–"

He was cut off when she reached up to kiss him. This wasn't just a flirty little peck on the cheek, however. This was a real kiss, one that represented all the pent-up passion and emotion finally coming out.

It was here that Shadow realized Rouge was not completely jewel-like. Jewels were hard, but her lips were soft against his. Jewels were angular and severe, nothing like the gentle curve of her waist. Jewels were sharp, unlike the smoothness of her skin and her hair.

No. There was not a single gem on the planet that could replicate this.

They broke apart almost reluctantly, but nothing could stop them from smiling. It was an unusual feeling for Shadow to experience, but it made sense that it was Rouge alone who could make it feel less strange.

He felt the spy nuzzle against his shoulder. "Where to now, ally?"

The hedgehog couldn't help chuckling. He called her "ally" as far back as when they found Emerl. It was the closest thing to a nickname he was comfortable calling her. "You're more familiar with this world than I am. You tell me."

She looked back up at him. "I hear Spagonia is nice this time of year. Might take us a while to get there, though..."

"Are you sure?" He reached from behind his quills and brought out a Chaos Emerald. "Just in time to watch the sunrise."

His hold around her waist secured itself further. "Ready when you are."

She was grinning from ear to ear. "Let's get moving."

He held up the Emerald in the air, effortlessly uttering the words, "Chaos Control!"

Together, in a brilliant flash of light, they disappeared as the sun sank down over the horizon, awaiting a new day in Spagonia, a new day that would usher in a new era in their lives, one full of adventure, freedom, and most importantly, one where they finally found peace.

#melissa writes #shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #shadouge #my sonic series otp #Anon i'm so sorry for taking so long #writing these prompts down and getting ideas and whatnot took longer than i wanted #but i hope you like these!#also HI I'M STILL TAKING WRITING PROMPTS!!!!!#ask away!#now back to my regularly scheduled blogging

7 notes · View notes

captainjimothycarter · 4 years ago

Note

I heard you were looking for prompts, what do you think it would look like if Steve were around during Agent Carter (s1), like maybe by the Iron Ceiling episode

So, it’s been a loooong while since I’ve seen the Iron Ceiling or any Agent Carter and I don’t have the spoons to watch the show, so we’re gonna improv. So not historically accurate because I am not researching stuff.

This is a full-fledged fic And probably not what you wanted either because this is so rushed out. Rip me

“You sound exhausted.”

Despite that Steve was over the phone and given the sound of it, somewhere where there wasn’t much insulation due to the wind in the background, she could tell he was giving that sappy smile. It was combined with a small laugh and the shift of the phone line as it crackled when he held it closer.

“What’s new?” He sighed instead of commenting on Peggy’s statement. It only made her worry more. When she remained silent, he sighed louder. “Pegs, I’m fine. Okay, yes I’m a little exhausted, but so are you on your end given everything. We’re both strained and I...miss you.”

His voice dropped down to the last two words, how desperate it sounded, made her heart drop. She wanted to crawl from this warm bed and wrap her arms around Steve and tuck his cold face into her neck to let him warm up. She wanted to protect him from not just the elements but the aftermath of a war that the public had no idea was about.

He whispered the last two words because he was forced to - not because he had anything to hide, so Peggy told herself this despite it tugged on her in almost a jealous means. They were both professionals, they could remain professional over the phone and in the rare times they got in person. It was the only few times they got to be in private did those veils drops.

Steve being rescued had been nothing short of a miracle, an act of God or whatever deity was out there that was looking out for them. She had been the one to pull him from the ice, one of the first faces he’d seen when he woke up in one of Howard’s private hospitals. She’d been by his side his entire recovery, from learning to walk again and to have some cognitive function. The fact she refused to leave his side [see here: Philips had ordered her under the SSR’s watchful eye to keep an eye on their prized specimen] had resulted in them getting much closer in their relationship.

Not only that, but it had caused her to start the American Branch of the SSR later than she had intended. While the boys in the office had no idea Captain America was alive [as they would all see to it], they knew of her history with Steve and used it against her as much as they could.

Steve’s existence, his being founded was kept under wrap and key. The only few people who had known about it were her, Phillips, and Howard. And of course, by now a recently rescued James Barnes and the Howling Commandos. As soon as Steve was stable enough, they sent him straight back to work, and given his contract with the SSR, they figured him pretty much property of the government.

It sickened Peggy to her core.

She was used to hiding her relationship and being professional in other’s eyes, but keeping Steve at arm’s length so he could be the government puppet in a whole new meaning was not what she wanted for her beloved.

“Peggy?”

“Hm?” The woman blinked, aware Steve had been on the other end, breathing noisily against the cold climate he was in to stay warm. “I apologize, darling, I was lost in my mind. As I was saying, I think our earlier appointment of meeting up to compare notes will be scheduled earlier.”

Underneath it, she was by all legal terms, still his liaison. Not only that, but she had been tasked with collecting information from both the Commandos, and that included at least monthly meetings with Steve. They might’ve been professional where they could share longing looks behind professional’s backs, but at least it was something to look forward to.

Steve knew everything going on with Howard and the SSR and her recent suspicions that there was a mole within their sights. Not just that, but Peggy was suspecting her phone lines had been bugged due to her involvement and friendship with Howard.

“Is it now?” Steve asked, turning his head to give a strained cough. It tugged on her heart. That didn’t sound too good. “Should I tell the boys?”

“Please do. I’ll wire in the details you’ll need. Anything you boys need on your end?”

“Dugan would kiss you if you brought him his usual stash. Pinky needs more fuses if you could snag a few. Oh, Bucky needs another set of binoculars and some more gloves.”

Despite he wasn’t here, she was nodding. Her hand worked without watching what she wrote on the paper. Steve knew of her suspicion of being bugged and had agreed code talking would keep the guys on edge and keep their conversations safe.

“I’ll see what I can do, no promises, darling. Please get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Peggy sighed as she got off of the phone, looking down at the pad of paper on her bedside table. Someone has been trailing us, be on the lookout and keep your weapon on hand.

And Dugan? Dugan just wanted his alcohol.

“Peggy, Dugan forgot the password again.”

Knowing that voice anywhere, she smiled despite her reserve as the familiar faces of the boys she had called family appeared out of the bushes. If she was concerned about a missing familiar face, then it didn’t show. Instead, Peggy found herself suddenly staring at the gray sky above them. The ground was cold and hard beneath her, but the body colliding with hers to knock her off of her feet was not.

There was a split second of silence before the Howling Commandos erupted into a field of laughter much to the rest of the stoic men’s confusion. Well, not so stoic now that the shock had runoff. Including the face tinted pink above her.

“Hello to you too, James,” Peggy laughed, Bucky slowly getting off of her chest and smiling in that boyish way that made her both jealous and loving.

“I didn’t believe ‘im when he said it, but I’m glad to be wrong.” Bucky was still as Brooklyn Boy as ever despite not having been home in months. He climbed to his feet and pulled her to hers, brushing the snow off of them. He pulled her into a proper hug, finding the Howling Commandos hugging her.

“You served with Captain America.”

Her heart clenched at the awe in their tone, looking at Jack who looked at her still with disbelief, as if she had lied this entire time about her connection to the Howlies. She shared a look with Bucky who looked as if he’d swallowed a lemon, standing near her left side. Dugan looked down at her too and he nodded in her direction.

“Not as long as she has. You good, Carter? Ready?”

Jack’s mouth opened, perhaps to dismiss Dugan treating her of all people like she’s the leader of this mismatched band of guys, but it was well ignored when they started to march through the snow. She watched as Jack hesitated as if debating on not following them before he scrambled not to be left behind.

“Pegs, you’re with me. Barnes, you too because I won’t have you pouting again.”

Peggy laughed, despite herself as she pulled herself up into the jeeps with Bucky’s arm thrown around her waist to help assist her. Bucky, for all his childish needs, stuck his tongue out at Dugan before the vehicle rumbled to life and they started to roll out. The quiet didn’t stretch on long, just enough for the loud engine to cover up any whisper talking.

“How is everything?” Bucky asked, his silver eyes wide with worry. “Steve has told us...everything that he could.”

“Same as ever,” Peggy sighed, shaking her head slightly. She glanced back to watch Pinky distract the SSR boys with a quick history chat. Good. “Howard’s still in deep shit and every step forward feels like one back. How’s Steve?”

Bucky frowned because they both knew that’s not what he was asking. “Exhausted. He never knows when to admit defeat. He was denied again to be stateside. He was told again his presence is needed out here.” The man rolled his eyes with a huff. “He’s one more bad night away from going AWOL, not that any of us blame him, poor guy is doing the job for all of us, plus whatever shit ya’ll send him to do.”

His tone told Peggy that he didn’t blame her, he was as frustrated as she was. “Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. I’m sure some sense will be knocked into him sooner or later.” Her mouth opened to ask a question but a look from the jeep across from them caused her to close it.

Jack was watching her and closely.

“Carter!”

Peggy heaved a heavy sigh as she repositioned her grip on the logs for their fire tonight. They were well enough hidden in the trees to ensure that no one should see the smoke with the light dusting of snow and gray skies around them. Stopping their conversation, she gave Jones a friendly smile and passed the logs off to him. She didn’t miss the annoyed look Jones shot Jack as he marched their way.

She wanted to snicker at how he was forced to walk, almost waddling like a toddler in this new environment. A comment was on her tongue, but to play fair, she bit it back and raised her chin. “Yes, Jack?”

“I don’t remember Dooley giving you command of our mission. You may disrespect his orders in the office but you will not disrespect me here.” He towered over her, a twitch in his jaw telling her that he’s been thinking about this far too long. She wanted to laugh, honestly because it almost sounded like he was jealous of her and her involvement with the Howling Commandos.

“He didn’t,” she replied in an equally cool tongue, shrugging her shoulders. “If you’ve been paying attention, Agent Thompson, I’ve been pulling my equal weight around here just as everyone else has.”

“Your involvement is this is only because of your pestering Dooley and your connection with the Commandos. Remember your place, Carter. You spent far too much time under Cap-”

A gloved hand clasping Peggy’s shoulder and making her knees buckle caused Jack to turn almost white as the environment around him. Despite knowing the situation, she had almost hoped the gloved hand belonged to Steve, but given how tightly it gripped her shoulder and the freehand that pulling on the strap of the rifle, she knew it was Bucky.

His lips were pressed into a thin line, eyes boring into Jack’s. He stood a little taller due to the boots, but it was enough for him to use his height over the agent.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Bucky mused, raising an eyebrow. “Peggy spent too much time where? Pegs, you wanna head back to camp, Pinky and Morita have a trick they wanna show you.”

Jack huffed, giving a roll of his eyes as Bucky’s arm pulled her closer to his chest. “Nothing, Sergeant. Carter and I were having a private conversation that you butted in.”

“If it’s nothing, then you won’t mind if I pull her away to help start the fire. You know us Howlies, too busy spending time worshipping the ground Steve walks on to know any survival skills. Only way we survived was cause of her.” He dug into his pocket and tossed Jack a small flashlight, nodding his head. “Go find us some more firewood, will you? It’s gonna be a long one.”

The look in Jack’s eyes told her that this conversation wasn’t over yet and honestly Peggy was looking forward to that.

“You know he’s going to think that you’re only protecting me because of Steve,” she sighed, shrugging his arm off as they walked back towards the distant camp. “Thank you, Bucky, but I can handle myself against Agent Thompson. It’s not the first time he’s been a right ass to me.”

“I know,” he grumbled, satisfyingly stomping on a branch to break it in half. “Steve has told us some things. He almost seems jealous of your connection to us - like you spend a whole war keeping our asses alive and you wouldn’t want to befriend us. Jackass. I think he’s waiting for us or you to slip up. They still think Steve’s a frozen capcicle?”

Snorting, Peggy gently smacked the sniper’s chest. “Yes but don’t let him hear you say that. Where is he?” She was used to being professional, keeping Steve at arm’s length in company but the fact he wasn’t around for her to assess with her eyes made her wary. If something had happened, they would’ve said something by now, especially Big Brother Barnes.

Bucky’s tongue clicked on the roof of his mouth, shrugging his shoulders. “He’s close by. He wanted to keep an eye tag tailing us, be sure we’re not being followed.”

That did sound like Steve, alright. He wanted to defend all of them, keep an eye on the stragglers, and be sure no one was planning an attack. Peggy got the feeling he kept distance because neither of them was sure this charade of professionalism could be kept up if he was here. Then there were the SSR boys and their belief Steve was dead.

“So how are you here?” Li asks, breaking the soft chatter that had been happening around the fire.

Peggy swallowed the rest of the bourbon down, passing the canister back to Dugan. She didn’t need to see who Li was directing the question to, she could feel Bucky tensing up beside her. He’d been a little tense since Jack stomped back into camp, dumping the mood uncermonsely and sitting far back away from them.

“Yeah, Buck, how are you here?” Juniper snickered, nudging his friend with his elbow. “You kinda just showed up one day.”

“And you adopted me like the straggly, little pup that I am,” Bucky huffed, rolling his eyes. “Thanks for the scrap, Carter.”

He nudged her slightly but behind the bright silver eyes and the need to make jokes and defuse the situation, he saw the curiosity in Li’s eyes.

“It’s just...we all read the reports. You died. You fell off the train,” Li pressed, not reading the situation. “So, how are you here?”

Sharing a look with Peggy, Bucky shrugged again. He opened his mouth but Dugan spoke up before any of them could. He knew of Bucky’s time in HYDRA, they all did, they had pulled him out of HYDRA, but he didn’t need to relive the past because of some curious agent who couldn’t tell his left from his right. Certainly not one who didn’t bother to spend two seconds respecting Peggy.

“We found him,” Dugan grunted. “What those files didn’t tell you was Phillip’s, Captain Rogers’, and Agent Carter’s insistence on finding Barnes’ body. No one can survive a fall like that, but God above decided Barnes was too annoying to let die. And the fact he still owes me ten bucks.”

They all laughed because it wasn’t far from the truth. She watched Bucky sigh in relief and Dugan clasping his arm in solitude as he passed by them to dig through the bags.

“He only fell because Captain Rogers couldn’t hold on. Bet that guy rather polish his shield and shiny belt buckle -”

“You want to say something?!” Bucky snapped, the almost relaxed atmosphere had turned tense as he turned to glare at Thompson who had been sulking on the edge of the camp. “If you got something to say about Captain Rogers, then say it.”

“James,” Peggy breathed, squeezing his arm. “Let Jack be if he wishes to express his dislike of Captain Rogers, that is on him. Not for you to fight everyone who sees’s fit to voice their negative opinion.”

Not that she didn’t want to sock Jack in the jaw for that comment. Bucky’s death had torn through Steve, it ripped out any part of him that remained human, that clung to humanity. He was a changed man from that day on. He was reckless, rash, and only survived because she interveined and made him see that he was human, serum, or not.

Bucky grunted as he sat back on the log and shoved his half-eaten bowl of stew at Peggy’s feet. “Eat. I ain’t hungry. I’m gonna go take a piss and set up for the first watch.”

There was no point in arguing. Jack had sullied what had almost promised to be a relaxing night [as relaxing as they could get in this environment]. She laid out her bedroll after being sure the surrounding area was clear. She almost hoped she could see Steve. Almost.

“If Barnes is alive, any chance of Rogers being alive?” She heard Rameriz whisper to Li as her head laid on the pillow.

“A crash like that? There’s no tellin’. Barnes was extremely lucky but I dunno...fall from that height? You’ve seen the tracks…”

Their voices faded as Peggy listened to the sound of footsteps near her. She opened her eyes to see Bucky above her, thanking him as he laid an extra blanket over her before silently nodding and dawning his rifle. She would argue with him over him getting rest later, right now, she was exhausted and selfishly wanted to sleep.

In the morning, a fresh wave of snow had covered any tracks that surrounded the camp. It blanketed around them and put out their fire in the middle of the night. Despite the fresh snow, Peggy could see faint outlines of thick boots that stood near her bedroll and as she sat up, waking up before anyone else in the dark forest, she felt something heavier fall off of her than just the extra blanket.

A thick jacket that was too big for Bucky and even Dugan.

Steve had been by.

Unfortunately, the new jacket didn’t bypass anyone, not even a blurry-eyed Thompson.

“Whose coat is that?” He grumbled to her as they packed their bags for the mission ahead. “I didn’t see anyone wearin’ that last night.”

“It’s mine,” Jones grunted, passing Peggy to take the extra layer from her shoulders with a small nod from her. “Does it matter, Agent?”

“No,” the man grunted, a frown still on his lips. She knew what he was thinking - she was far too comfortable with the Commandos. When they got back to the office, this would bite her in the ass, she was sure of it, not that it stops her. “Just curious, is all. Not like Carter to wear a man’s coat. Thought it might’ve been her sweetheart.”

Peggy made a face, throwing her bag harder than necessary over Thompson’s shoulder and towards the pile they made for the jeeps. “The only sweetheart I have is my gun, Agent. Now if you’re done worrying about my lack of love life, we need to get moving if we want to use the snow to cover our tracks.”

“Don’t blame me, you’re the topic of gossip when it comes to office blabber,” he snickered, raising his hands in mock defeat even when Peggy rolled her eyes.

“If you must know,” Montgomery spoke up as Peggy stalked away to join Dugan and Bucky pouring over a map. “She’s all our sweethearts. Try having that for Valentine’s Day.” His wink didn’t go unnoticed nor did Peggy slapping his hand away and arguing with Bucky over an advantage point.

Jack huffed out in annoyance. This was his lead and Commandos or not, he was taking back control.

Peggy could feel the tension building up in her jaw, resisting the urge to rub at it. She could feel it twitching out of tension from clenching her jaw so tightly her teeth might snap in half. It was the only way she could distract herself from not wanting to yell at Jack who ‘stepped up to the captain’s plate’ and started to give orders.

Any argument had been instantly shut down with the argument that he was in charge, reminding Peggy of an older kid in charge of his little siblings. Any argument was useless when Jack was determined that he was right and they were wasting precious time.

“Barnes, keep a distance with that gun. Carter, you’re in the rear. Keep a lookout.”

The order made her roll her eyes at the back of Jack’s head. No matter how much he tried to take control of the situation, to put on his best I’m in charge voice, he was no Steve and had very little regard for people’s safety. Just the end task ahead of getting them in and out with the Doctor in tow.

It was a bad idea, but fine, if he wanted to stick her in the back to keep out of his hair, then she’d easily take this opportunity to keep away from him. Dugan and Jack lead them and despite Bucky was somewhere in the trees pretending to be a spider monkey, Jones fell into step beside her. Despite his larger size than her, he was quiet. He was the more reserved out of all of them.

“You could stay,” he mused softly, nodding his head to Dugan’s bowler cap. “We could always do with you back in our lead. Especially that one. God knows Steve misses you, Pegs. You’re much better off here than with these jackasses.”

A small smile twitched on Peggy’s pale lips, adjusting her hold on the gun. “I know, Gabe, thank you. I do miss you guys. It’s not against you or even Steve, I am needed back on stateside. Maybe I’ll consider the offer another time.”

He laughed, the laugh rumbling in his chest like promised thunder. “Perhaps that is best, hm? Steve needs to rest anyhow and if you were with us, he’d be far too worried about you, no matter how much he denies it.”

Peggy’s reply was lost to the sound of something falling in the forest. Something heavy. James. “Bucky!”

There’s no way Bucky could miss these branches, they practically made a sturdy bridge. He had sure enough footing but the sound of a bullet whizzing past her was enough to tell her he’d been shot at. “Gabe, disperse the others. Spread out. They’re-” She looked up when another flew past her, seeing movement in the trees. “They’re spread out. Treetops. Below. Take cover. I’m going after James.”

There was no point in arguing with her, the Commandos knew that well. She slid in the snow to avoid the flying bullets, using the shelter of the thick trunks to get to where the figure laid. He was breathing, grunting in that manner that told her he was in pain but he was alive.

“James,” she breathed, dropping to her knees. “Hey, hey, look at me. Can you walk? We need to get out of here.”

The man’s eyes were glazed over, most likely a concussion but he was no stranger to those. He nodded his head and moved to sit up, moving his left arm to grab at the gun. They both watched as it just twitched, the arm not responding to his movements. In the limited light of the rising sun, she saw the nasty break in his arm and his green complexion.

“If you vomit on me, James, I will be very cross with you. I’m going to splint this best I can with what we have, then we need to move. You can curse me out on the way, deal?”

She’d take that grunting as a yes.

Using the strap from both her gun and Bucky’s, cut with a knife, she placed his broken arm between two sturdy pieces of branches. It wouldn’t do for a permanent fix but it was better than nothing. Bucky did his best not to curse or shout in pain, hearing him whimper and gag. By the time she was done, he looked like he was about to vomit up their cold breakfast. Throwing his good arm over her shoulder, she steadied his weight to lead them into the denser forest.

“Carter! Where the hell have you been?!”

Jack almost seemed worried, but Peggy didn’t have time to consider it, dropping Bucky down on an overturned log. She was sweaty and pissed, worried. The bullets had stopped coming. That never stopped unless ordered to. They’d been found. This was going to make it all the more difficult.

“Getting Barnes before we let him die from your carelessness. His arm is broken. Dugan, any casualties?” She breathed a sigh of relief when the man shook his head. “Good. They’re still out there. How long have they been quiet?”

Jack’s jaw gritted as he looked down at his watch. “Three, four minutes now. Why?”

“I’m going to handle them before they expose us any more. We’ll be lucky if we’re not met with retaliation at the door.” Snatching her gun back, Peggy stood up, taking Bucky’s and laying it in his lap. “You’re still a decent shot even without your arm.”

She got maybe two yards away, returning to the trail before Jack ran up to her.

Jack’s hand snatched her rifle from her, his temple throbbing now. “You will not! That’s exposing yourself and us to danger, letting them know we’re holed up here. We don’t even know where we are, we ran off the trail because of them. We need to spread back out, find the trail. We’re sitting ducks.”

“All the more reason for me to go into the trees, Agent.”

Peggy tried to snatch her gun back, a bullet striking the trunk next to her head. Her breath lingered in the air for a split second, jerking her head back out of shock. She pushed Jack out of the way when she heard the next one, preparing to feel another bullet tear through her body. Her eyes closed, body tensed, but no pain came.

Her eyes opened when she heard the gasps, seeing a familiar figure dressed in a dark blue suit and holding up the end of a shield. He towered over her, using his larger body to shield her from the spray of bullets.

“Everyone out!” Steve snapped, waving his hand. “Agent Thompson, get your ass off of the ground and help Pinky with those explosives. One stray bullet and we don’t have to worry about who’s in charge. Dugan, Jones, get Bucky and get him on his feet. Dugan, give him a splash of your liquid courage. Buck, three, six, and nine o’clock, are the worst of our fire. I’ve taken most of what I could out. Morita, Montgomery, and Juniper, you get these SSR boys further in the woods. Thanks to your little leadership, Agent Thompson we will now have to wait for nightfall and pray we’re not found.”

If anyone had any questions about his skills, to what Steve wanted, no one questioned it. Everyone instantly charged into action.

Steve’s arm wrapped around Peggy’s waist, holding her close for a fraction of a second too long as he set her back on her feet. “You were hit,” he murmured, baby blue eyes that she’s forgotten how soft they were looking down at her shoulder. “Grazed.” He touched the wound and she flinched, having been unaware a bullet had been that close to her torso. “I’m fine, Steve. I can handle it once we can breathe.” She paused, watching Dugan pick Bucky up and raise the rifle in his direction before firing. They made a good team, odd, but good.

“We need to get going too, can’t be on Thompson’s bad side, now can I?” Steve mused, raising his brow in a way that told Peggy he didn’t care regardless. “I got my bike. We can lead them on a wild goose chase while they escape. You ready?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“He’s alive?”

The words were spat at her when she’d later arrived at their makeshift camp miles and miles into the dense forest. Peggy calmly dismounted from the bike with Steve’s help even if she didn’t need it. She wanted the excuse to feel his hand in hers while she ignored Jack’s bulging look.

“Thank you, Captain Rogers, for the assistance and ride,” Peggy hummed giving Steve a polite nod and a firm smile. She turned back to Jack while he started to unpack the bike, rolling her eyes. “Unless we are suffering from the same hallucination, then I will dare say that yes, he is alive. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get this wound looked at.”

At least the man had enough sense to let her brush by him, still standing and looking after her and Steve in shock.

Steve was ever the gentleman as he rolled Peggy’s sleeve down, enough for her to pull her arm out of the sleeve. It was cold in their little spot in the dense woods, not wanting to risk lighting a fire. Bucky was already asleep despite the rough ground beneath them, his head in Pinky’s lap. His arm was set in a better-made splint, but still rough for their situation.

“This is going to burn,” Steve murmured, pouring a little alcohol on her wound. She hissed in pain and ignored the looks she and Steven were getting. This was strictly professional despite how she was straining to not jump his bones right then and there. “I warned you.”

“Seconds before pouring,” she huffed. “Though, I suppose a little pain is needed to be kept in my senses.”

If Steve had anything to say, it was lost to Jack coming back into camp and sitting beside Li. He rubbed his hands together, blowing hot air between them. “It’s going to be a cold one,” he grunted. “We’ll need to watch in shifts, two per shift, we-”

“We’ve already planned that,” Dugan grunted, his mustache ruffled as he tossed his bowler hat on their bags. Or what was left of them. “Pinky and Li are taking the first shift while we all rest. Yes, that includes you, Steve.” He pointed his thick finger threateningly at Steve’s chest who just pouted at him. “You need to sleep. Pegs, tell him.”

“Yeah, Carter,” Ramirez snickered, “tell him.”

Rolling her sleeve back up and adjusting the gauze, she thanked Steve in a small voice. “Captain Rogers isn’t a child. He doesn’t need to be told what to do but if you’d like my advice, Captain, sleep while you can.” Her eyes told him the rest before I make you.

She wanted to comment on his appearance, the rugged stubble from his lack of shaving, the longer hair that was starting to sweep off of his forehead. His eyes looked almost hallow, black bags underneath causing the blue to stand out. He looked like complete shit, a hallow version of himself and it ached at Peggy’s heart.

“This stays between us,” Steve grunted to the SSR boys while their bedrolls were rolled out. “No one else needs to know I’m alive.”

“Did you rescue him?” Li asked, in awe, if not astonished whisper as he turned to look at Peggy. “Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“That’s above your pay grade,” she snapped back, watching Steve kneel by Bucky’s passed out form and tenderly hold his face in hands that seemed almost far too big. She wanted to say more, the more pity part of her that wanted to dig her elbow into the man’s chest and tell him she shouldn’t have to be involved with his hero to have some decent respect.

“Hm,” Jack grunted from where he slouched against an overturned log, “I can see who was on top in this relationship.”

It was clear Jack wore a chip on his shoulder. He had some resentment out for Steve and maybe that’s because he favored her, despite how he tried not to show it. He turned to look at Peggy for advice, not Jack who was once again trying to say he was in charge. He asked Peggy about the situation or would ask Dugan or Li, literally anyone but Jack unless he had to.

This little petty game kept up for two days where they traveled under the cover of night.

Steve had kept his distance as they planned, but they couldn’t help it when the Howlies left just enough room in their camps to sit side by side or when it was Peggy’s turn to take a watch, Steve would find himself awake even if it wasn’t his turn to watch with her. Or his bedroll would be close to hers. They’d find small ways to touch one another and even that got under Jack’s skin.

Due to Bucky being out of commission thanks to the broken arm, it was left up to Peggy. No one objected but Jack’s temple throbbed as Peggy easily took the rifle and lined herself up with a perfect shot of their guard. She silently laid on a few sharp and frozen rocks that were set above them, stomach pressed to the ground and breathing slowly.

One snide comment from Li or Jack had gotten to her, but not her aim. The bullet flew from the rifle and the man guarding the roof fell into a heap. Steve’s hand closed around hers as she was guided off of the icy rocks, the snow crunching underneath her feet.

“Nice!” Bucky breathed, shrugging the left shoulder. “Though, you still twitch your foot when you’re about to pull the trigger.”

“I’ll show you where I twitch my foot if you start that,” Peggy snapped, much to Bucky’s grinning face. “Satisfied?”

The last words were said to Jack, his nose wrinkled just ever so slightly as if to say let’s see.

“Everyone has their plan then?” Steve grunted, looking down at the map. “Three teams. Li, Jones, Montgomery, and Bucky to the west end. Double-check the boiler rooms, any nooks, and cranny. Juniper, Peggy, Pinky, Morita, and Ramirez to the east. Spread out. The rooms look to be larger and some have hidden doorways. Jack, Dugan, and I will take the top floors. We’ll meet in the middle in an hour. Jones, Peggy, and I have our radios, use it only if in trouble.”

“Yeah, Dugan, only if in trouble,” Morita laughed, elbowing the broad man. “Not when we think we’re hearing screaming.”

At Li’s confusing look, Dugan rolled his eyes. His cheeks flushed a soft pink. “It was a frog that I heard. Cap, can we go?”

Peggy caught Steve’s eyes as he rolled up the map. There was no bother hiding the fact that he did this on purpose, separating them to just get alone time with Jack. She raised an eyebrow at him and he sheepishly shrugged his shoulders.

“Steve, let’s go,” Bucky grunted, smacking Steve on the side with the splint and regretting it with a whimper.

Pinky’s arm threw around Peggy’s shoulder as their groups dispersed, leaning far too much into her frame. Not that she minded. Pinky always had a lingering smell of gunpowder on his fingers. “How much you wanna bet he’s gonna make Jack’s death look like an accident?”

“If Steve isn’t rash? He won’t. But then again...I’m afraid he’s never made a not-so-rashed decision in his life.”

Watching the love of your life fall to the floor in front of you seconds after he’s sacrificed himself yet another time to save you changes a person. There’s no radio this time. No radio, no signal blocking them, no interference, no cut-off, and left wondering. She’s staring down at Steve, her heart in her throat. It all happened in a split second, but the second he hits the floor, she’s in action.

A hand is tearing off the bottom of her uniform, pressing it over the bleeding wound where the bullet has embedded itself into Steve’s thigh

He groans at the contact and grits his teeth. “Is this revenge from the alcohol?”

“You wish,” Peggy grunts, keeping her eyes focused on the bleeding wound. She steadied her breathing despite the anxiety welling up inside of her. She wanted a second chance at keeping Steve safe and god damnit, she was going to take it.

The forces of God would not take Steve from her. She’d be damned if they did.

“Dugan,” she snapped into the radio. “We need to extract. Now.”

Her head snapped up at the sound of thundering steps, snatching Steve’s discarded shield to block his body, still pressing on the wound with all her might. She’d never thought she’d be so relieved to see Jack’s pale face. The man looked sick.

“You-you-shit.” His eyes nearly bulged out of his head at the sight of the bloodied rags in Peggy’s hand. “Carter, you’re hurt.”

“No,” she huffed. “But Steve is.”

“Fuck.” As if that was somehow worst and yeah, she had to agree it was, even if Steve wasn’t agreeing with it. He was still gritting his teeth and trying to sit up, trying to catch his breath.

“Come here, alright? I need you to put pressure on his wounds.” The guy was in shock and any amount of distraction to keep his hands busy was better than him standing in shock.

With Jack putting pressure on Steve’s wound and the Captain finally stopping his fight, Peggy got back on the radio. She was starting to become frantic, watching Steve’s face pale and Jack was starting to fluster. “Dum-Dum if you don’t answer me right this instant - Steve is hurt. We need extra-”

Her answer came in typical Howling Commando fashion - an explosion on the far wall. The ground shook beneath her, the ceiling threatened to cave in right in that instance. Everyone was piled into the back of the jeep, a crowd of people rushing forward to help her get Steve up to his good foot and rush him back towards the jeep.

“Get Jack,” she snapped at Pinky. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. He’s in shock - have Montgomery give him those tabs.”

Getting a groaning Steve laid out on the floor of the jeep, Peggy laid Steve’s head in her lap. She didn’t give a damn who saw. She was tired, grungey, sick to her stomach with worry for the shivering Captain.

The fact he wasn’t speaking, arguing with her told her the amount of pain he was in.

Bucky and Jones were already on the wound, Steve’s face pinching as his pants were ripped open.

“Steve,” Peggy whispered, stroking her hand through her hair with a soft smile. “Look at me.” Her hand cupped his jawline, the pad of her thumb stroking a scar he’d earned from a shaving incident a few years ago. His blue eyes fell on hers, gritting his teeth and holding her hand when Jones started to dig the bullet out.

“This is r-revenge for...for something,” he grunted, gripping the floor of the jeep tightly. “Fuck, you coulda just talked to me, Pegs.”

Peggy chuckled, only to keep herself from crying. Stress. The strain on them. She was thankful when the jeep emptied once they’d reached their pickup point. An abandoned airport where a plane waited for them.

“Sometimes it’s easier to let others talk for me.” She bent her head down, pressing a soft kiss to Steve’s lips. His felt so cold against hers.

Hearing a clearing of a throat, she looked beyond the pair at Steve’s feet, to Jack. He was still pale and shaken, but there was life back to his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I didn’t see anything,” he mumbled. “I was just warning you that wheels up in ten.” He hesitated around the jeep, frowning before he was gone.

“Want me to go hunt him down?” Bucky grunted, pulling back from Steve’s bloodied thigh with alcohol in hand. “For sport?”

A fond smile tugged on Peggy’s lips. There was that Big Brother Barnes quality. “As much as that would solve many of my problems, darling, I can handle myself. Jones, you heard the man, what’s the verdict on Steve’s leg?”

Gabe’s small smile tugged on his lips as he pulled back, wrapping the gauze tighter around the wound. “You’re...rather lucky, Steve. There’s no permanent damage, but given your exhaustion and our lack of supplies, you will be slow to heal. You should head back stateside to get some proper R&R, have the wound properly treated. We did what we could, but no promises.” He clicked his tongue, his fingers pointing to Bucky’s chest. “And you are going with him. You got a broken arm.”

Bucky’s full lips pulled into a pout but underneath it, Peggy could see him vibrating. “What a shame that I broke my arm from a jackass’s decision.”

“Are you sure you guys can afford to lose them?” Peggy asked, gently laying Steve back down as she climbed out of the back. “We can send extra men to make up for them.”

“If you staid we wouldn’t need to worry about it,” Dugan mused, tapping on the side of the jeep. “But you’re needed elsewhere to keep those jerks in line. And make sure this one doesn’t try to run a marathon through Brooklyn on that leg.”

“Not much of a runner,” Steve grunted, letting himself be pulled up. He set his weight on his good leg, letting Jones and Dugan pull him to his feet.

As Steve was being put onto the plane, Peggy heaved a soft sigh as she turned back to Dugan. The hug from him was everything she missed - the bear hug that reminded her some things were worth savoring. Pulling away, he patted her cheek and grinned under that thick mustache.

“You keep our boys in line, won’t you? We can’t lose ‘em again,” he grumbled, shrugging his shoulders slightly. “And keep yourself safe. We’ll get to the bottom of this. We’re just one call away, Pegs.”

“Of course I will,” she mused. “Someone needs to. And thank you, Dugan. You’re a life savior. Literally. I’ll miss you.”

Sitting back between Steve and Bucky, Peggy could feel like she could breathe for the first time in a while. Steve was going to be okay. He might need longer rest than others, but he’d be okay. Dugan was wiring the information to Phillips as they spoke. Her head rested against the wall, feeling Steve’s hand tighten in hers in his light slumber. Against her shoulder, Bucky was snoring.

“Marge.” Her name made her eyes open to see Jack in front of her. Her body tensed, coiled, and posed, ready to fight because her boys were in her lap and exhausted, hurt. What more could he want?

“Yes, Agent Thompson? I was hoping we could get some shut-eye before we touched land.”

“I won’t keep you long. You’re...busy.” His eyes fell to Steve, watching the man’s face twitch in her lap. “I wanted to thank you for...assisting me back there. Any other person would’ve left me to my own devices, especially after the decisions I’ve made. You didn’t, you were the bigger person and I’m...thankful.”

Well, that’s the last thing Peggy expected to hear from Jack’s lips. An apology and him expressing how thankful he was for her? Well, that was rare. “It wouldn’t be fair for you to die because you were in shock. I’m glad you’re okay.”

His head bobbed, Steve grunting making him flinch slightly. He still wasn’t 100% okay. “I’ll leave you to it. What I saw...I won’t tell anyone.”

“Good,” Peggy huffed, letting her head rest on the wall and close her eyes. “Because I’d hate to have to kill you because you decided to be stupid.”

#Steggy #StevePeggy #Agent Carter #Iron Ceiling #This is rushed out #And horrible #And I am so sorry #But its done #7k!!!#Steggy Prompt #gardenroses1

25 notes · View notes

qtyanan · 5 years ago

Text

Flashback

Summary: “You and Mark hadn’t seen each other in years. Now he’s famous, and you didn’t think he’d recognize you.”

Pairing&Rating: NCT Mark Lee + female reader ; FLUFF, slight angst

a/n: this is longer than expected, and super sappy, and it took me forever to finish it... but wow, soft mark hours are REAL and im gonna cry over him gn

“Where do you think we’ll be in five years?”

“Mark, it’s like 3am, I thought you were asleep.”

“Well, you’re not asleep.”

You blindly reach towards Mark in the darkness, trying to hit him with a stuffed animal, causing him to snicker. Weekend sleepovers together were pretty normal, sleeping in the same bed wasn’t a worry from your parents since you’ve known each other for so long. Mark randomly saying things and asking questions about the past or future in the middle of the night was more common than sleeping

“Really, though. Do you think we’ll still be friends in five years?”

“I don’t know, probably,” you weren’t really sure on the answer, but you didn’t really have doubts. You two had been friends are as long as you can remember - classes, clubs, and sports were taken on as an unstoppable duo. Now you’re in eighth grade, half a year away from high school, and you’re closer than ever. It seems like nothing could tear you apart - and you liked it that way.

“I bet we will. I hope so, at least,” his voice sounds so sincere, it seems as if he had been thinking deeply on it for a while before he spoke of it.

“Yeah, me too.” With that, he let out a delighted chuckle, and you both fell asleep.

It had been six years. Six years and that conversation still plays in your mind late at night when you can’t sleep, painfully missing your favorite childhood friend.

Not even a month after that sleepover, he moved away, seemingly never to be heard from again. All of your friends in class pestered you about where he went, and it only upset you more - because he didn’t tell you he was leaving.

Him becoming a kpop star was probably the last thing you thought would happen to him; it was quite a slap in the face. BTS got you into kpop, then EXO, GOT7, now you’re into many different groups, including NCT. When you found them, and saw your prepubescent best friend, all grown up, dancing and rapping, you thought it was a dream.

Now they’re on a world tour, and Canada is one of the stops. You could never pay for a fansign ticket, but finally, you managed to save the money to be able to attend.

There were so many people around you. Many had some kind of merch, a lightstick or a sign. You could even count maybe 5 girls crying about meeting NCT.

Your hand was in your pocket, nervously sweating and gripping your ticket - second row, 5th seat. In your other hand, was a baby pink gift bag with a little stuffed animal in it. Years ago, Mark had left the little bear at your house, and it seemed like a nice time to give it back to him. The wait in line outside seemed to take forever, and it added to your anxiety.

You couldn’t understand why you were so anxious. He was your best friend, shouldn’t you be happy to see him? But you were so scared - what if he didn’t remember you? What if you went up to meet him, and he doesn’t even look twice? If you told someone, would they believe you? Of course not. The negatives in this situation made it hard for you to breathe.

The girls sitting next to you on either side both shifted excitedly. One had a mask on and didn’t turn your way, but the other smiled at you.

“Who’s your bias?” She asks, and you couldn’t control your smile. “Mark,” you say, and she smiles and nods. It was hard not to bias him, since you knew how he was off camera.

“Aw, he’s so cute. He’s my bias too, he seems like such a sweetheart!” She squealed in delight, causing you to blush a little bit.

This is it. As your row stood up and walked towards the fansign table, you felt like you could pass out. Yes, you were so excited to say hello to the other members, but it was almost the moment of truth - and you could only think of the bad.

As you took the seat in front of Mark, he didn’t look up at you at first. For that half second, you really admired him. He looked so grown up, you realized just how long it’s been. You suddenly felt a wave of so many emotions wash over you.

“Hi! What’s your name?”

“Y/N”

He had his sharpie in his hand, your album in the other, ready to sign it like everyone else - but he obviously froze. Your stomach dropped, gulping hard. He slowly looked up at you, his eyes wide and mouth open. You almost really did cry, but then,

“Y/n... [your full name]..?” He went quiet, and you smile, nodding at him, trying to hold back your tears.

“Hey, Mark, long time no see,” You chuckle, trying to joke so you don’t actually cry.

“Wow, yeah, oh my gosh, how have you been!?” He said quickly then started scribbling something on the inside of the album cover. You laugh at his awkwardness, shrugging at the question with a little “eh.”

“Here, I brought this for you.” You put the gift bag on the table, causing him to raise a brow at you. “It’s actually yours, from forever ago..” He looked inside the bag, and you noticed him take a big breath. He looked at you with big, glassy eyes - he felt this emotion too, he never thought he would see you again, or if you would even know where he was.

“Y/n... I’m sorry I didn’t tell you-” He spoke quietly, but you were being pushed along to the next member by the manager and the girl next to you. You gave Mark a small smile, then shifted over to Johnny.

“Y/n, huh? Mark talks a lot about you.” Johnny gives you a little smile, causing you to blush madly. You glance over at Mark, who’s blushing as well, and he gave you a quick glance with a happy smile.

When you finally arrive home, the day seemed like a dream. It was late at night, the drive home was only an hour, but you were tired. You kept playing the day in your head - he recognized you. Right away. That alone made you happy, but what you wouldn’t give to spend more time with him.

Oh yeah, he signed your album, but you didn’t look at it yet. When you opened it, you knew his writing - his signature, and then... a number? He wrote ‘Whatsapp’ in messy letters. Of course, you message him right away, hoping at this hour, he’d answer.

And he did. All you said was ‘hey.’

‘you still live in the same house, right?’

‘yeah, why??’

‘go to the park, i want to see you’

Your heart was beating in your ears. You didn’t think it would lead to that, but at the same time you expected it. It was late, yes, but you hurriedly slip your sneakers back on and go back out to your car.

You remember the park of course. It was mostly fields and trees, but you two would sneak out and play on the swings when you were younger. The last time you two went, Mark fell off his bike and hurt his ankle, so you had to call your mom and you two got in trouble. As you were driving, you snickered thinking about it.

But... You couldn’t help but to feel nervous. It had been years, you didn’t think at all that you were ever on his mind.

There wasn’t a single car on the road. The air was a bitter cold, it had snowed when you were on your way home, but none of it stayed on the ground. Every time you stopped at a red light, your stomach would turn again. You tried to calm yourself, but for some reason, it was just hard. You didn’t realize that you missed him this much. Now he had asked you to meet up at your childhood hangout place, and none of it seemed real.

The gates to the park were closed, and a padlock kept them shut. You knew it would be like that, so you parked down the street and cut through the trees to the lonely swing set. You looked around, you didn’t see anyone. But, sitting alone on a swing, was a single person. In the bright moonlight, you could just barely make out that it was Mark. His back was turned to you, and you could see that his head was hung low, and he was holding himself from the cold.

“Hey, Mark Lee,” Your voice startled him, but he stood and turned to face you. You couldn’t read his expression in the dim light. Neither of you walked closer for a moment, and the tension in the air made your shoulders go rigid. He didn’t say anything for a bit, he just stared at you.

“You look exactly the same.” He finally said, taking slow steps towards you. You look away, afraid to see the look in his eyes now that he’s close enough to see it. His words oddly made you feel warmer, but you still shivered when the wind blew.

“That’s surprising, it’s been six years.” You didn’t mean for your words to sound bitter, but they did. You hear him take in a heavy breath, and when he says nothing, you finally look up at him. His brown eyes glistened in the moonlight, and the shadows on his face made him look mature and defined. “You look different, though.” You say, a dry laugh following. “Older.”

“Well, it’s been six years.” He mocks you in the joking way, and you couldn’t hide your smile. This makes him smile as well, and while you looked away again, he couldn’t take his eyes off of you.

“It’s been... six years...” He sounds breathless this time, like it finally settled on him how long it’s been. This forces you to look back up, and he now has a sad smile. His eyes are apologetic, same as when he tried to speak to you at the event. In a way it hurt you. His face holds pain in the situation, but in a way, this was his doing. He was the one that left to be an idol. You didn’t hold that against him, but you were still upset that he left without telling you. You didn’t think that you two were ever going to part, and you still can’t believe that now his life has gone so differently from yours. He seems to be having an amazing life, but you’re lonely without him, and for some reason... mad.

But the way he looked at you, you didn’t show your anger - it melted away when he put his hand on your arm.

“I’ve missed you, Y/n. You don’t have to believe me, but I think about you all the time.” You wouldn’t believe him normally, but even Johnny said it. “Y/n, huh? Mark talks a lot about you.”

You chew on your lip nervously, you have no idea what to say to him. What does a person do in a situation like this? You just stare at him for a moment. He’s closer to you now, and you see just how tired he is. His blonde hair is messy, different from how you saw him earlier.

“Are you okay, Mark? You look... so tired.”

“Mark, please, calm down.” Johnny tries to make Mark sit down, but the younger is pacing across the hotel room, almost pulling out his own hair. “I am so stupid!! How could I not have said more?! It’s been years and I barely said anything!! She probably hates me for leaving...” Mark’s almost on the verge of tears as he speaks frantically, and all he wants to do is scream.

“She came today, so she doesn’t hate you. Just talk to her some more-”

There’s a ding from Mark’s phone. He quickly picks it up, then looks at Johnny.

“It’s Y/n. Oh god, what do I say?!”

“Maybe you should go and see her. You said we’re pretty close to your hometown right?”

“Yeah...yeah! But how will I meet her anywhere?”

“I’ll drive you, just tell her to meet you somewhere.”

The moments that happened before he came here played in his head, but he said nothing to you about it. He just gave you a small smile and shrugged his shoulders.

“I just haven’t been sleeping well. Surprise, surprise, right?” You just give him an awkward smile. This made you chuckle. He’s always had trouble sleeping, he used to tell you how his mind was moving too fast for him to fall asleep. He always wanted to listen to soft songs to sleep, or he would ask you to sing along to a song you knew well.

“I guess things like that will never change.” You say, and for some reason, your words lingered in the cold air for a moment. Without any thought, you put your hand over Mark’s, feeling how cold his fingers are. You took both of his hands into your jacket sleeves, something you used to do as you two waited for the school bus during winter.

He feels another wave of emotion flood over him, and this time, he can’t seem to keep the tears away. He sucks in a shaky breath, looking down at your hands.

“Mark...” You feel this aching pain in your chest at seeing him like this.

“I-I’m sorry, Y/n...” His voice cracks, and he can’t bring himself to look up at you.

“Mark, look at me.” Your voice is soft but stern enough for him to obey, his body relaxing slightly at the sweet look in your eyes. “I’m not mad at you. I never was.” You tell him, holding on tightly to his hands now.

“R-really?”

You can see his tears glistening in the moonlight, and you release one of your hands to wipe his cheeks. He flutters his eyes closed, resting his face against your hand.

“Really, Mark. I’m so proud of you. I just want you to be happy.”

His lip quivers at your words, and he closes his eyes tightly. “I’m not happy. Not without you being my best friend.”

The feeling his words gave you made you want to burst into tears, but instead, you threw yourself into his chest, wrapping your arms around his neck. He doesn’t hesitate to hold you, gripping your jacket with a death grip, as if he knows you’ll disappear any second. You stand in silence for what feels like forever. His embrace doesn’t loosen at all, and you’re okay with it. You miss his hugs, his smell and his warmth. He’s taller and more muscular now, making the way he holds you make you feel even warmer.

“Please... keep contact with me, okay? Please...” You say into his shoulder, feeling a little ridiculous that you begged him like that. He takes a deep breath into your hair as if imprinting your smell into his soul.

“I promise, Y/n. I don’t want to leave you again. God, I’ve missed you so much...” He loosens his arms around you just enough to be able to look you in the eye, watching how the moon and stars seemed to be held in your eyes.

The thought of being able to see and talk to him more made a weight lift off your shoulders. A happy smile forms on your face as you nod at him, and he nods back.

“So, uh... I had to sneak out to see you... I should probably get back before my manager kills me.” He awkwardly chuckles, but even with saying that, he doesn’t let you go - God please, not yet, just a little longer.

“Yeah... My mom might kill me if she finds out I’ve stayed out so late.” You giggle, making his chest warm up. You wouldn’t believe how much he has missed your laugh.

“I’ll text you, okay?” He finally lets go of you, and you shiver from the cold air once again. He nod at him, waving goodbye to him as he runs to Johnny’s car. You stand there for a moment, watching as they pull away. It takes a moment for you to actually comprehend what just happened, and you ended up standing there for almost 5 minutes. Your phone chimes, and you look down to see another message from Mark.

‘get home safe. I love you, dork.’

bitch im so fkin soft

#mark lee #mark lee scenarios #mark lee fluff #nct #superm #nct scenarios #nct imagines #nct one shot #kpop #mark lee au #nct dream #nct u #nct 127 #kpop writing

412 notes · View notes

whetstonefires · 4 years ago

Note

"the top three of its forty floors are filled with brass telescopes of every size, pointing in every possible direction, including several that do not exist within the normal three dimensions of space." thats SUCH a cool image / "If any harvest will come." ooh i wonder whats going on / "The roofs are of red tile, the stucco of the houses painted in shades of blue. It stands empty, but has not had time to fall into disrepair." the little bits of detail getting added to the picture im LOVE (1/?)

I’m gonna do these all as one post but broken up for ease of reference, I think.

Thank you! 🥰 Deciding the theme for the Tower and giving it that visual anchor really helped to pull things together. If you consider the whole setup, it seems unlikely the Tower was originally built as an observatory, since those tend to benefit from height (especially if you’re looking around you rather than up, but for the up ones also) and the builders could easily have put it on top of a mountain or at least some hills, but instead put it by the river. It’s above sea level, and it’s away from light pollution, but there were better locations. Nearby.

So either it wasn’t an observatory, and it’s been refitted as one, or they had so many observatories they didn’t care about locating them optimally, there was some other factor making having the tower there important even if it was suboptimal in terms of observation capacity. Or, potentially, it’s been moved since it was built!

:} Yay thank for being interested by the foreshadowing. I tried to put just enough in without actively overshadowing the actual place-setting-up and making the reader impatient with the description.

"If you look through an enchanted telescope you may see trees without needles fail halfway up the nearest of the great peaks, and even these fail before the top, though there is a span of nearly barren stone past that line, before the snow begins." you: mentions different plants living in different climates me: :0 / there's so much good description!! its all so pretty!! (2/?)

sflka;l;jlk i mean yeah, that’s pretty straightforward isn’t it. But! It establishes How Much Mountain it is visually rather than by saying ‘it was a big fucking mountain’ or ‘it was tall enough for the thinness of atmosphere near the top to create a small tundra region.’

o(*￣▽￣*)ブ

<3 Thank you! I kinda cut loose lmao.

"blocks veined with every color, pale blues and purples, reds and greens and golden-duns all mottling toward white and grey and black" god i want to live there so badly!! this tower is meeting all my standards!! cool pretty magic tower with rad telescopes!!! / "make a remark no one present understands about a Doctor named Seuss. His guide, the dousing tracker Amnaphi, will assume this person to be a famous astronomer from his homeland." im love!! misunderstandings about references!! (?/?)

💗💖✨ Yay! That’s an important feeling to create in fantasy, imo. The wanting.

I really enjoyed playing with the standard forms for ‘thing made of marble’ here, because all these marbles really exist, but in spite of the existence of the word ‘marbled’ our narrative uses of it tend to be tied up with Neoclassical aesthetics. So very white and smooth, yeah?

Also idk if it’s obvious to the reader but this Tower is to some degree in dialogue with Orthanc, which made a great impression on my mind as a child as the iconic wizardly tower, and while I don’t disagree with any of Tolkien’s use of symbolism for the purposes he was deploying it, there’s so much potential in Isengard as a setting that LotR had no space to explore, even if Tolkien would have noticed those angles at all.

Like...the parkland around the Tower is shown being despoiled for the orcish war machine and then reconquered by the forest, but of course it wasn’t forest to begin with. What was it for before Saruman lost his shit? Ordered gardens, for peaceful contemplation? Who dedicated the space that way? Who maintained it?

Did Saruman employ a gardener? Did he design his own gardens, or did they come with the keep, which we’re informed was built not by him but by the Numenoreans?

(“I liked white better” is still one of the greatest lines in a fantasy novel, Tolkien does not get enough credit for his contextually hilarious one-liners that rely on pointed code-switching, but Saruman’s evil rainbow oil-slick robes also sounded really baller and it’s kind of a shame they were not attempted for the movie lol.)

The fact that this is a world designed around a kid getting portal-fantasied into it and staying for 30 years really gives me some options which are fun to deploy but also like. Risky lmao. Because it encourages the reader to surface from the setting-logic and apply their own perspective, which can really break up the magic.

Being able to zoom out on the Tower after all that detail and be like ‘it’s awesome but also it looks like something Doctor Seuss would draw’ was fun though.

"Within the even hexagon of its outer wall, the Tower encloses a great parkland, enough that if it was all put under cultivation it could easily feed as many people as could live in the Tower itself." the tower has PLANTS i love it so much / "Ten Years’ Winter" god PLEASE tell me this is going to get into the agriculture and society stuff game of thrones didn't about long winters that would be SO cool / "Watchers of the Stars" AND they have a cool name holy shit (?/?)

Plants are important! As is food supply. As everyone who’s been reading this blog for a while already knows I think lol.

I mean, it’s not about that, really? The Ten Years’ Winter is a historical event--the most recent meteor impact severe enough to have global climate fallout. The dust it kicked up took a while to settle, and the famines were pretty severe.

But the cultural consequences of something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago exist, and are important, including the relationship between governance and disaster preparedness, which varies a lot regionally as you may imagine.

Astronomy has a long history as a wizardly sort of activity in the real world, both because it’s had continual overlap with astrology and just because the process has always been mystical and abstruse. In this setting, with a history of both devastating meteor impacts and being invaded from the Moon, but also actual magic, it’s got more obvious practical importance. Although since neither of these are remotely everyday occurrences, the average person on the street might not agree lol.

So it’s on the one hand a purely descriptive title, and on the other hand a serious boast, suggesting as it does that they are primarily responsible for Watching The Sky For Stuff. While also having broader philosophical implications and just sounding nice lol.

You gotta have good marketing if you want to persist as a wizardly order, because if talented students aren’t motivated to come to you how will you gain new members? Natural replacement is not an ideal strategy to say the least. That’s how you turn into a cult instead of an intellectual powerhouse.

"The northern third of the Tower’s park contains neatly regimented orchards, apples, pears, plums, and a few rows of carefully tended peaches and apricots, all clipped flat against low brick walls angled south and slightly west." hhh t r e e s / "wizards, while enthusiastic about innovation in the abstract, hate change." me too, wizards. me too / "The Tower grounds are filled with refugees." ooh now we get to why everything was empty earlier (?/?)

Trees! Which are also food!

And technology lol. Greenhouses built against fruit walls with good insulation are so much more sensible than ones heated from inside. Obviously as a passive solar-powered technology these only work when the sun is available and not, for example, cut off by a giant dust cloud.

These people are fairly acutely aware of their dependence on the sun and it figures prominently in a majority of their religions and their magical theory, even more than in ours.

There seems to be a mild consensus that the wizards are relatable. In truth: we are all wizards. :D

Yup! At long last lol.

"This division corresponds imperfectly to the usual split of the town by the course of the Meroda." because people!! take comfort!! in what normalcy they can find!! / "Makeshift pallets line the spaces between every fruit wall—the injured are being laid out here, now that the Tower is full, to get the benefit at night of the warmth meant to mature fruit." the awesome magic tower people trying to do everything they can for the injured who come to them for help in case i thought i couldn't be (?)

more in love / "Half of them are making ready to turn south along the Meroda." oh nooooo / "but the Moon People are the successors of the ancient magics, and just because they could not break the walls the last time they came, according to legend, does not mean they have not worked out a method now." im so worried for the people oh no (?)

Yeah! It really seemed natural. But of course they also aren’t recreating it obsessively; lots of people are grouping up with relatives who normally live across the river, or with people in the same line of work on the river, because people also adapt to circumstances.

No institution is ever perfect, of course, but I’m glad the Watchers have come across this way so far. They’re broadly well-intentioned and mostly well-organized.

And they were not ready for this.

A significant fraction of the reason for the order of the Watchers to exist at all, particularly in this observatory with its great eye fixed ever on the face of the green moon, is to be able to warn the world if this ever happens again. But the Moon People knew they were being watched, this time, and they kept all the build-up to mobilization that might have given them away on the far side of the moon until the last minute.

What the Magister is doing, as I hope was made clear or at least successfully indicated--I wish your commentary on the ending had come through!--is summoning what turns out to be an actual child from another world to do hero stuff.

Even if he’d gotten an adult that would be kidnapping someone to help with your problems, a routine element of the portal fantasy whose ethics have been addressed in a variety of ways, most famously ‘is Lion Jesus and always right.’

The reason they need a hero from another world is that the Moon People build a lot of their wards and their offensive and disabling magical attacks around a targeting system based on what planet people are from, because even though they’re originally from the same stock--they’re the descendants of ancient moon colonists who evacuated ahead of a major meteor impact somewhere approaching four thousand years ago--on a magical level having been born and raised on the planet or the moon makes a pretty huge difference.

So no one can get into the place their magic space elevator is anchored and fuck it up so they can’t keep bringing troops and supply in and loot out. Their single supply line is their only strategic weakness, and they’ve taken appropriate precautions.

Getting someone in from a third location is the best idea anyone’s been able to come up with in the very limited time available. Since no one can figure out how to turn one of the Moon People against the cause they came here for, on short notice, when they aren’t even stopping to talk to anyone so far. Like, that’s clearly not going to happen.

Heron Yl Fanult isn’t unaware that it’s ethically questionable, but he’s doing it anyway.

So I’m glad the ominous imminent oncoming of the Moon People can really be felt, because that atmosphere is fairly essential context for the decisionmaking going on at the top of the Tower.

"Young wizards sit in their bunks, six each to rooms that were previously individual, and hold lighting cupped dancing in their palms." a quick break from being worried to point out that this is rad as hell / "some with their heads decorously covered..." cultural differences!! especially with regional purposes like the Hedro!!

Thank you! 😆💖 I thought so too lol.

It also establishes the parameters of the magic system a little more. Throwing lightning bolts is pretty iconicly high-powered, right? And here it’s what most of the student wizards are practicing in anticipation of a battle, because most of them aren’t specced into combat and this is actually one of the easier lethal spells to master, especially if you have an academic background.

‘Electrocute’ isn’t a very flexible spell and it’s easy to lose control of, but it’s actually easier than, say, ‘set on fire to a significant degree in a non-electrical manner’ because concentrating a lot of heat in a certain location takes a lot more brute force than encouraging ionization.

You can pull most of the actual destructive force for the palm lightning spell out of the physical air and/or earth if you grasp the principles, which is much easier than channeling a comparable amount of magic directly because it doesn’t have to go through you.

The limiting factors on magic in this setting are how much power you can tap into and how much of it you can actually use without hurting or killing yourself. It’s not usually a lot, though the amount can be increased by things like choosing your workspace, prepping your workspace, and a whole lot of practice and meditation and things like that.

Magical traditions that get bundled under the heading of wizardry tend to focus on force multiplication, obtaining enough contextual understanding of a subject to make whatever power is applied go further. This means a lot of studying theory and using magic to make observations (such as the existence of microorganisms and their connection to disease) and often results in making clever devices based on what you’ve learned that may not actually wind up being magical at all.

Which is why the solar greenhouse proposal is considered ‘more wizardly’ than the fruit walls, which are wizardly in the first place even though the technology is pretty widespread at this point--it’s carried the principle of minimizing the energy you have to invest to get the result you want to the logical conclusion, where you don’t have to do any magic at all, you just set up the situation and get out of the way and the sun will do the work for you.

Other schools of magic, particularly religious ones, are more likely to emphasize just getting better at handling energy for yourself, which tends to yield a lot more in the way of immediate practical dividends and in a lot of quarters wizards who don’t do something obviously practical like physic or smithcraft with their theoretical background are considered crackpots or dilettantes

An impression helped along by the fact that being taken on as a student of wizardry at a basic level tends to focus more on your reading comprehension than your ability to actually do any magic, so in places where religious and wizardly institutions coexist the most talented students have a tendency to gravitate toward the religious life. This is particularly marked in areas religiously dominated by the Compact of the Golden Circle, wherein full ordination is contingent on being able to pull off certain fairly hefty rituals, so if you aren’t physically or mentally up to that kind of magical heavy lifting your religious career will stall out in one of the lay fraternities. In some of the cities on Sutouchel, the landmass to the southeast where the Compact is based, a slang term for wizard is ‘sanctum washout.’

But of course force multiplication is something that can scale up pretty far, and studying theory doesn’t stop you from also putting work into your practical skills, and not having talent isn’t the only reason someone would choose not to seek out a clerical career, if it’s even an option. Religion along the Meroda is pretty localized; communities tend to have local deities who correspond to a natural feature like the nearest mountain or the river or something, and if that deity rates a fulltime shrine the keeper also tends to be the major local medical provider, and since the wizards got settled in at the Tower it’s become pretty popular for shrinekeeping families to send their kids there for a year or two to get some educational polish in addition to what their parent already emphasized.

So depending on where you live and what your personal experience has been you’re going to have very different ideas about what wizards are good for.

Hrm. I’ve gone on a tangent. But that wound up taking so long you came back! :D I love it when being turtle works out in my favor.

Or was this actually the meta I was supposed to be doing in the first place? Aaaaa who knows.

im fairly confident you said eight asks survived so this is number nine? anyways onwards! "The hale survivors of the First Battle of the Second Descent sit waiting in their leathers, jack-chains and helmets laughably inadequate armor against the coming danger, and yet the best hope now just as they were on Carun Tol once the wizard fell" i have a lot of emotions about how their best bet is also a terrible bet but its all they have (9/?)

Yes 8.

Woo, thank you! ^^ & I love that you described it that way because that also describes the ‘summon alien’ spell Yl Fanult is casting and echoing the same emotional theme throughout the scene was very much the goal here.

"Threads have escaped from the braids pinned across the top of her skull: she has not had the chance to take them down for two days." god just the continuation of how desperate everything is / "He leans forward to peer through the narrow glass that has been turned on its articulated base to face the middle of the room, and relaxes very slightly. At least there has been no catastrophic alteration there, either." what does that one do id assume theres no approching army in the middle of the room -

:D Yeah, the fact that one of the chief medics available is already overworked to the point of neglecting nonessential personal hygiene and the enemy isn’t even here yet I hoped would resonate.

Well, remember how some of the telescopes at the beginning point in directions not included in the normal three dimensions of space? :}

- "trained as it long has been upon the face of the moon" also forgot to mention their enemies being from the moon is Rad As Hell / "He snaps his fingers for a spark that falls into the deep circular groove full of distilled spirits, and steps through that as well. He is not burned." ooooh whats he doing / "At his feet lie a glittering piece of gold ore, a moonstone, and a carefully sanded round of pumice." i see the connection to the moonstone bc moon army but i wonder about the others -

Thank you! It took a fair amount of poking before I decided it was a solid approach; it provides just enough physical alienation that there’s no direct cultural relationship and you can have that ‘everyone in the entire world Disliked That’ vibe, without needing to create any complicated magical and cultural explanation for such a long run of isolationism. They were out of contact because they were On The Moon.

Also I really get a kick out of putting space invaders in a fantasy setting in a way that stops just short of turning into sci-fi.

I’m glad the ritual lead-up is exciting! Even if the foreshadowing wasn’t as obvious as I thought it was lol. That’s fixable.

Gold is for the sun, moonstone is yeah for the moon lol (although in other circumstances people also use jade, because it’s been a long time since the moon was uniformly silver on account of it having been terraformed a few thousand years ago) and pumice is for the world--it’s a stone full of air that floats on water, so it’s popular as an anchoring device for rituals that call on all three local celestial bodies.

"He cannot take much time. He has only until the ring of fire dies." whats he doingggggg / anyways i love this so much!! the descriptions are gorgeous and im so invested in all of everything!! i hope you write more im so curious about it all!!

XD Ok I covered this already, I would have saved it for down here or Been Mysterious if tumblr hadn’t eaten the last few asks the first time lol. Thank you so much again! For encouragement! Before and now! I’ll try! To keep it going!

Here’s hoping this successfully posts, tumblr just kicked me onto New Dashboard again and disabled the turn-it-off button, so now my alternate posting strategy is borked up too. 🤞😅😘

#hoc est meum #ask #worldbuilding #a nonny mouse #the tower of sight #people say nice things #long post #<3

4 notes · View notes

wwounu · 5 years ago

Text

short svt!au based off mikrokosmos

note: extra credits go to this gorgeous edit

seungcheol’s your everyday guy — his life not exciting nor boring

the only thing that makes his life worth living is his friends who he can call his family of course

however one day he gets into an argument which begins a big fight between all of them

it wasnt pretty

eventually seungcheol ends up being the last to leave after his failed attempt to convince chan to stay

he gets into his car in the dark weather to drive home, his sadness turning to anger

“forget it. i dont need them,” he says in between sobbing, “im not going to find them”

and those were his last words before heading straight into a car crash and tumbling off the road

though he wakes up at an empty train station of snow, wondering why he’s there and why he isnt cold

walking to the tracks to see if theres any train, he finds a book on the ground at the tracks, curious of why it might be there

stood on the train track, he opens a random page that reads do you want another chance

seungcheol goes “chance? what chance?” before he hears a clatter of people talking from afar

he leaves the book and ventures off to where the sound is coming from, beholding twelve males stood at the side of the road

seungcheol couldnt believe his eyes. had he been in a coma? because everyone looks so grown up and he feels the same

he runs up to the group, wanting to say hello

but as he yells, no one looks at him

when he comes to touch them, nothing happens, except a coldness passing through seungcheol

and he doesnt realise that he just walked through joshua

he goes “huh?”, not able to process whats going on, voice trembling

slowly, very slowly, he turns

and he sees his friends place flowers and seungcheol’s favourite items on the snow

“hey ‘cheol, how are you doing?” jeonghan says, not turning to seungcheol but staring at the ground

the rest follow and touch a tree, and seungcheol’s slowly connecting dots which he doesnt want to connect

jeonghan speaks up again and is stood closer to the trees than everyone else

“sorry its been years,” years? “everyone’s been busy. but we’re finally here”

here? why?

“we’re finally together again. like what you wanted that night you... where you... you—”

seungcheol is now stood in front of the twelve boys, knowing he cant be seen

but his heart breaks watching jeonghan struggle to get his words across, rubbing his eyes before turning to the rest of the 11 boys

“any words, anyone?” jeonghan tries to smile but cant really hold it up

and chan walks up first, slowly standing beside jeonghan as he hiccups a little

“long time no see, right hyung?”

it’s definitely long time no see as chan looks like he’s grown up so much

“sorry i haven’t been able to attend, i couldnt... bring myself to come. im the only one who’s come twice — twice, how pathetic... do you remember what you said that night? that you needed me to stay, and i didnt? maybe if i did that, you wouldnt have... you wouldnt have died — because of me, me—“

then mingyu pulls chan away as he spills into cries, apologising to cheol even though he can’t anymore

wonwoo comes up next, ready to say his words, but from his expression seungcheol can tell he’s holding it in because he keeps biting his lip

seungcheol would’ve expected jihoon to be the least emotional as he was the one that started this whole disagreement

but before jihoon utters a word, his eyes stream with so many tears as he drops to the snow, wishing seungcheol back and murmuring things while his hands are buried in his face

honestly, seungcheol cant take it anymore

so he runs back to the train track and picks up the book, no tears touching the item even though he’s sobbing

and opening the random page again, it says do you want another chance and seungcheol “yes yes yes, please—“

then new words reveal itself on the page, which seungcheol reads aloud

in every lifetime, i will find you again

seungcheol is wondering that those words mean with its ambiguity before the sound of a train whistle registers in his mind, a train approaching him

but seungcheol doesnt move despite knowing the train is coming to him, suddenly going “hold on, wait—“

it’s black again.

“hyung? hyung, wake up!”

and seungcheol jolts, hand hitting something as the voice goes “ow what the heck!”

that voice. he knows that voice

he sees an orange-haired, youthful chan holding his arms tightly

“chan? what- where are we?”

“we’re somewhere we should be because you overslept and i have to pick you up! now c’mon, lets go!”

and cheol is in shock before he follows chan, question why he looks so different and that chan can actually touch him

he‘s taken to a warehouse and sees some silver graffiti on the wall, some people already inside

there’s two people in the boxing ring, practicing their punches

“wonwoo? mingyu?”

with the realisation, the two boys turn their heads to seungcheol, looking too young as well

“oh, ‘cheol!”

“why did you have to say their names!” complains chan, “i was gonna scare them...”

right on cue, a boy in a janitor suit topples out of the closet with chairs toppling over him

the boxers rush out of the ring to help the person who seems to be vernon, lifting up the chairs

and vernon apologises for messing up the place, but the others dismiss it and help with setting up the chairs

chan: where did you get the janitor suit?

vernon: it looked cool so i wore it. a bit smelly though

and then a blonde soonyoung, silver-haired minghao and questionable-fashion-sense junhui come in with questionable shades as minghao enters in with a bass and junhui with the drums

they play loudly as soonyoung enters by dancing, yelling out “guess who!”

no one replies, all complaining, and soonyoung then goes “guysss!” with a big pout

but junhui announces that the other five will come soon

seungcheol is like “other five?” and chan hits him on the head saying “are you playing dumb with us today? or you’re just super tired?”

in reply cheol shrugs but a car horn beeps and welcome in seokmin wearing DIY angel wings, seungkwan, pink-haired jihoon, joshua and long haired jeonghan(?)

((they surprised seungcheol the most))

he’s happy, but it makes him shocked as well as confused

they’re all here but they’re so different, this isnt them even though it is, same personality and everything

the five that just have joined go “what are you all waiting for? lets get this party started!”

and everyone gets to work, and cheol is like “what?” before joshua directs him to spray paint the walls

and after a lot of work and chattering with loud, bubbly music playing from the car, the boys are done and everything looks like a mess that they’re proud of

jihoon brings out a cake and lights it, carrying it to a bunch of tables put together

soonyoung and vernon (now out of the stolen janitor clothes) follow the shorter and soonyoung even playfully threatens to blow out the candles before vernon is like “woah no!!” and jihoon goes “i ran out of matches lighting these candles so if you dare blow them out i’ll bash your face with this cake” and soonyoung shut up, joining in with minghao, chan and junhui dancing along to the music

everyone is called up to the table once the cake is set and seungcheol, being the last one to go to the table, asks

“so what are we celebrating?”

and seungkwan looks at him with this sort of crazed look, going “its for various things! to celebrate wonwoo and mingyu getting into the semi-finals of the boxing competition, our two years of friendship as a group,” two? seungcheol sworn it was more, but by the looks and change of things, he guesses not, “also to wish luck for jihoon hyung‘s exam for the university he wants to go to”

all seungcheol could say was “oh” but seungkwan sighs and hits him on the arm

“its your birthday too doofus!”

“what?!”

seungkwan rubs the bridge of his nose, saying “what am i gonna do with this guy...” and then speaks up “i dont know if youre acting or not, but yes, its your birthday today if you didnt notice”

again, cheol goes “oh” before jihoon is like “we’re blowing the cake hurry up!”

then jeonghan does a small speech, letting seungcheol speak for a bit (but he was fumbling over words while doing so) before blowing the cake altogether

and after taking pictures, seungcheol suddenly has a cake smear on his cheek, looking toward seokmin who is chuckling nervously

seokmin: ,,,, happy birthday,, hyung?????

which results with soonyoung yelling CAKE FIGHT! and everyone begins chasing each other

and to be honest, seungcheol feels happy

thats when he remembers

‘in every lifetime, i will find you again’

does this mean he has to find his friends and unite them together?

even if so

let the adventure begin.

#this was a lot to write but i rly like this concept #took me an hour and a half lol #the different lifetimes as the different eras :>#and cheol needing them to be united because thats his goal #though he always dies in each lifetime #or does he?#wwounu thoughts #seventeen #kpop #seventeen imagines #seventeen scenarios #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #ode

32 notes · View notes

angrylizardjacket · 6 years ago

Text

of comfort and joy {Ben Hardy}

Anons asked: can you write Ben as a dad / imagine staying up late to wrap presents for yours and Ben’s kids (the original prompts have been lost i’m sorry, but this goes out to you guys)

A/N: 1562 words. So this is my second attempt at this. I lost both the prompts but they weren’t super complicated, and this fills both very nicely.

Ben’s so careful as he slides the door shut to the kids’ bedroom, the hour just edging past eleven. He winces at the sound of the door latching closed, and he waits for a few moments, listening for the telltale sounds of laughter or the thump of little feet, but all was quiet on the other side of the door, and he let out a sigh of relief, coming to join you where you’d surrounded yourself with gifts that needed to be wrapped at the last minute.

“They’re asleep.” His voice was soft as he rested his head on your shoulder, sitting beside you on the floor with the sofa at your back, legs kicked out in front of him and resting on a stack of assorted labels and gift tags.

“My hero; how’d you manage that?” You asked wryly, concentrating on where you’re writing ‘To Abby, From Santa’ on a soft package that contained a Harry Potter robe and wand for your eldest daughter; Ben had been reading them the series as a bedtime story for the past few weeks, and Abby, who was always in awe of her dad, was adamant that she was a Slytherin, just like him.

“Bribery.” Ben yawned, looping one of his arms through yours, tucking himself closer to you. “The boys were okay, I mean, they’re too young to really know what’s going on, but I had to tell Abs that Santa would only write her a letter if she goes to bed on time.” And you laughed softly at that, putting the finishing touches on the label before putting the present onto the pile of wrapped gifts sitting neatly beside you.

“So how many chapters did you end up reading?” You asked, letting yourself relax for the moment, leaning against him, your head resting against his. The light from the Christmas tree showered the whole room in a warm, multi-coloured light, shining off of ornaments and the screen of the TV which was muted, playing an old black and white Christmas movie.

“Only two; we got up to the Death Day party and she was out.” He sounds so fond when he says it, warm and kind, and he yawns again, letting out a low hum of contentment. He relaxes further against you.

“Honey, there’s still so much wrapping to do, you can’t fall asleep yet.” You say, gently shaking him, and he groans, before he moves to actually turn his head and look at you.

“You’ve been working so hard to get all this ready, can we just relax for a little bit?” He asked, so wide and bright you can see the lights from the tree reflect off of them.

“Just for a bit.” You could never say no to him.

He wraps an arm around you, pulling you close to him, and you rest your head on his shoulder, letting yourself relax in his arms. You turn up the volume on the TV enough to be able to hear the end of the movie, but not enough to wake the kids. The heater in the corner of the room has you feeling warm and blissful, even as you watch snow flutter down onto the town outside through the window behind the television. It’s hard to find in the holiday season, but you’re going to hold onto this moment of peace and love with everything you’ve got.

When the movie ends, Ben gently untangles himself from you, standing, stretched, and turning the TV off.

“I’m gonna make us some hot chocolate, give us a boost to wrap the last of these presents before we head to bed, okay?” He says, and you reach out, taking his hand and squeezing it in wordless thanks. When he squeezes your hand back, smiling fondly, you can feel your heart flutter like it did when you’d first started dating all those years ago.

“You’re so good to me.” You murmur over the lip of your mug, eyes falling closed as you bring the warm drink close to your chest, inhaling the aroma of chocolate that rose from it. Ben pets your knee softly, and when you open your eyes, he’s sitting across from you, legs crossed, one hand on your knee and the other holding his own mug. He’s looking at you like you’re the only thing that matters in the world, haloed by the tree, expression so full of unbridled love and affection it’s almost overwhelming.

“’cos I know how lucky I am to have you.” He says, and it’s moments like this that remind you why you married him in the first place. Gently, you take his hand and press a kiss to his knuckles.

By the light of the Christmas tree, the two of you go about wrapping presents for your friends and family. The majority, of course, are for your kids; wrapping them at the last minute was easier than worrying that they’d tear into them before Christmas, or try and sneak a peak. Abby, the oldest, almost seven and forever a daddy’s girl, loved anything Ben did, also Frozen; Micha was four and has never met a robot he didn’t want to marry, though he didn’t understand what the word meant when he announced it on a daily basis while holding hands with a transformer action figure; Roan had just turned two and liked the colour red.

“Do you think Abs is old enough for a present hunt?” Ben asks where he’s sorting stocking stuffers. Looking up, you’re confused, and he looks a little shocked, “you’ve never had a present hunt?” When you shook your head, his mouth split into a nostalgic grin. “We had them when I was a kid; you hide a series of clues around the house and the kids follow the clues to find a hidden present.” His laugh was fond, which turned to a thoughtful hum as he reminisced, “I rode my bike all around the neighbourhood one year, dad really went all out.”

“Maybe not around the neighbourhood.” You grinned, and his whole face lit up when he met your gaze. He’s up after that, so giddy he’s practically bouncing as he swans around the house with the sticky tape, writing and hiding clues as he went, ending up with Abby’s gift stashed in the back of the pots and pans cupboard next to the oven. When he comes back, he tapes one last clue to a bauble, hanging it at the back of the Christmas tree, proclaiming it to be the starting point. After that, he settles back in, filling the stockings that hung over the mantle, and helping you wrap the last of the presents.

When everything’s done, you feel the exhaustion settling into your bones, and you take a long moment to stretch. All the presents are wrapped, sitting neatly beneath the tree, and the heater’s been turned off, and all that’s left to do is put all the wrapping paper, tape, and labels that you’d commandeered for the occasion.

“You head on to bed, I’m just writing this letter for Abby.” He said, looking up from where he was leaning over a notebook, to see you waiting for him in the door. With a soft smile, you nod, and head to your bedroom, quickly getting changed into your pyjamas and sliding into bed. He follows not long after, but instead of getting changed, he sits onto the bed beside you, grinning and holding out a neatly wrapped box with your name on it.

“Merry Christmas, love.” He says gently, and you look from the box to where he’s smiling at you, nervous and excited. You’re lost for words, heart overwhelmed with love as you start to unwrap the present.

It’s a photo frame, silver, with metal vines decorating the outside, and space enough for two photos. The photo on the left is from when you first visited him on the set of X-Men Apocalypse, probably taken by a crew member. You’d never seen the photo before, but you know it’s the two of you; he’s got his arms around you, the two of you all but nose to nose and so blindingly happy. He’s in costume, wearing a leather jacket with his hair long, curled and teased, and you’re pushing a small strand behind his ear. The two of you are so wrapped up in each other, and he’s grinning at you like there’s literally nowhere in the world he’d rather be than in your arms.

The photo on the right is from your wedding day, in the same position as the other photo, his arm around you, you with a hand holding his cheek. It’s as if you’re not even aware of the photographer, blissful and elated and in love.

“This was so long ago.” Voice soft and awed, you look up from the wedding photo to see him looking at you with that exact same smile you remember so clearly from when the two photos were taken; the smile that made you feel like the only person in the world. “I love you, Ben.”

“I love you too; there’s no-one else I’d rather by my side to raise our family with.” He says, and you think you’re about to cry, so overwhelmed at the sincerity and sweetness that it’s all you can do to lean forward and kiss him.

#ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy x reader #bohemian rhapsody #borhap #bo rhap #borhap cast #borhap cast imagine #family fic #kid fic #the angry lizard writes

495 notes · View notes

takerfoxx · 5 years ago

Text

IM Swiftly Descending Darkness, Chapter 5

Mokou already felt that something was wrong, and the moment she came into view of the Aoki Yume’s Children’s Home all but confirmed it.

The house was quiet. The lights were on, all of the outside lanterns were lit, but there was no one in sight. The surrounding fields and the garden were all empty.

If there was something that could be counted on at the orphanage, it was that it was never quiet. Even in the evening after the kids had been brought it one could count on seeing someone about, such as Joshua up on a ladder along the side of the house, repairing a loose window, or Haruna relaxing on the porch.

But there was nobody in sight, and while it was late afternoon, it was still before the time when the kids would be brought in.

Mokou felt a rare flash of fear, a very rare sensation for her. She tightened her fists and threw everything into a final burst of speed.

The house rushed up to her. She spun around, directed her feet toward the front path, and hit the ground running. From there, she sped up the path, her bare feet kicking up clouds of dust, and leapt up the stairs toward the-

Front path.

Mokou skidded to a stop and looked around in bewilderment. Now she was facing away from the house, as if she had been running away from it instead of toward.

Also, she was pretty sure she had heard someone yell “Ow!” from inside.

Mokou turned back toward the house. For the most part it looked the same, but there did seem to be something off about it, something she hadn’t noticed coming in.

Tilting her head to one side, Mokou squinted her eyes. Sure enough, all around the front porch were strange refractions of light, rippling out like the surface of a pond disturbed by a pebble.

Huh.

Mokou took a slow, deliberate step forward into the field of disorientation. Her vision quickly spun around, and she found herself facing away from the porch again. At the same time, someone yelped, “Damn it!”

It Mokou a moment to realize what was going on. That had to be Haruna. Haruna’s particular gift was the ability to essentially flip reality, to turn it back around on people. Which sounded like something that would be immensely useful, but unfortunately she was unable to maintain it over a large area for very long, and if anyone or anything actually got flipped by it, it gave her a massive headache.

Rather than subject her friend to a skull-splitting migraine, Mokou cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “Hey! It’s me! Let me in!”

Immediately a clamor of voices sounded within. “It’s Miss Mokou!” she heard Tomohiro say. “Let her in! Quick!”

“How do we know it’s actually her?” Shinji retorted. “Maybe it’s another youkai, one that just sounds like her!”

Melissa said something very quick and frantic-sounding in Spanish.

Rolling her eyes, Mokou called out again. “Look, either you guys let me in, or I’m gonna start walking toward the porch over and over again until Haruna’s head splits like an egg, okay? It’s me!”

“That’s her,” Satoko’s voice said. “Let her in, Haruna.”

The shimmers dropped, and Mokou heard the sound of the front door’s heavy lock being unbolted.

She rushed inside. There, she saw the most of the kids huddled into a tight group while some of the other adults stood protectively over them. Mokou hastily shut the door behind her and relocked it.

“What happened?” she demanded.

Haruna was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase with her aching head clutched with one hand, with Haruhi standing over her, holding onto her other hand. Sniffing, Haruhi glowered at Mokou with wet and puffy eyes. “Where were you?” she said.

“What? I was getting information like I said I would!”

“Well, you should have been here! You could’ve stopped this, stopped them from…from…”

“Enough!” Satoko said. She was standing with Akito crying in her arms, her normally stern features now a mix of anger and fear. “This isn’t the time to tear into one another! I know we’re all scared and upset, but I’m the one who asked Mokou to go look for answers. If you have to be mad at someone, be mad at me.”

Haruhi just shook her head and ran off.

Mokou took a deep breath and hissed it out through her teeth. “What. Happened?”

“It was youkai,” Satoko said. Her eyes were wet with tears, her face shimmering with sweat. “Wild spider youkai apparently. Five of the kids accidentally wound up outside of the charms during flying lessons. The spiders just…just showed up and took them.”

Mokou looked over the group and took a quick headcount. Noba was sitting in a nearby chair, his head in his hands, with his friends Shinji, Tomohiro, and Kazuchika with him. Check. The younger boys, specifically Yoshi, Hiro, Keiichi, Dai, and Yuuki, were in another group, whispering amongst themselves. Check. Melissa, the only girl present, was pacing back and forth, wringing her hands together as she muttered under her breath in her native language. Check, And Akito was in Satoko’s arms. Check.

However, more than five children were gone. Both of the terrible trios were absent, as was Melissa’s fellow oddball Kana.

“Who?” she said.

Satoko sighed. “Hayate, Haruko, Eiko, Kana, and Keine.”

Each name felt like a hammer-blow to her heart, but when she got to Keine Mokou felt something hot and powerful unlock deep within her. Because while she was fond and protective of all the children, Keine was kind of her favorite. Keine had been part of the trio that had rescued her from the snow in the first place. Keine had been the first to reach out to her after she had been brought in, the first to form any kind of relationship with her when all the other children had been too scared to talk to the mysterious and dangerous stranger now in their midst.

“What about the rest?” Mokou said. “Where’s Kohta and Rumia?”

“Upstairs,” Satoko said. “They, uh, understandably wanted to be alone.”

Right, that made sense. After all, it was their friend that had been taken.

Five kids. Five little girls, taken by spider youkai.

Mokou knew the habits of wild spider youkai, she knew them very well. Some spiders were nice. Some were quite friendly people, in fact. But others were not. Others were the sort that did terrible things to other people, that did terrible, horrible, absolutely monstrous things to children. And she felt quite certain that these were of that latter category.

Mokou closed her eyes and mentally counted down from ten. “And you just let them?” she snapped before she had even gotten to four.

Haruna quickly cut in. “We did everything he could, kid,” the rough-looking woman said. “Joshua tried to stop them, we both did. But they were ready for us. Hit us with some kind of web. Then they just flew off.”

Joshua. He was missing too. And so was Shion.

“Where is Joshua?” Mokou said. “And where’s Shion?”

“Shion flew to go get help,” Satoko told her. “Old Pine Village still supports us, and it’s the closest, so she went there.”

Old Pine Village. Right. That also made sense, but Satoko had only answered one of her questions. “And Joshua?”

Satoko bit her lower lip. “He went after them.”

The air around Mokou was starting to grow hazy. She heard several of the children whispering to one another, saw them draw away from her. “After them,” Mokou repeated. “After whom? To where?”

“The youkai. He went after the youkai. He said that he couldn’t let them take…take them to…”

Of course he did. Mokou closed her eyes. “And where did the youkai come from?” she said, her eyes still shut. “Where did they take the kids?”

“We don’t really-”

Mokou’s eyes snapped open. The haze around her vision was now a film of red.

Satoko gasped and backed away. Akito stopped crying, and just stared.

“I know,” Mokou growled. “I know where they came from. I know where they took them. The Youkai Forest. Of course it is.”

“Mokou, your eyes,” Satoko said as she covered Akito’s with her hand. “They’re glowing!”

Mokou knew this. Mokou didn’t care. “They took them to the Youkai Forest, and Joshua went after them! That’s where they are now, that’s where he is now, isn’t it?”

Satoko’s mouth wordlessly opened and closed like a fish’s, then she stuttered. “Y-Y-Yes, th-that does seem to be the most likely-”

“Most likely my ass! Look, I’ve spent the last few days hunting down whatever news I could, and what I found out is that some weird shit is going on in that damn forest, and someone from outside the forest is causing it!”

“Wait, say that again?” Haruna said. “You mean to tell me-”

“I said what I said, now get out of my way!” Mokou roared.

Haruna backed up. She hadn’t backed away from anyone in years, but she did so now, though not quick enough. Mokou shoved her aside and made for the stairs.

Children parted like ants from a flood, and Haruna hastily made herself scarce. Mokou stomped her way up, leaving blackened footprints sizzling on every step.

She was coming close to losing it. She was coming close to losing all control and just letting the raging fires that burned within her at all times just burst free. That didn’t happen often. Even at her most violent, when her life had been an unceasing cycle of pain and death, she had been careful to restrict it to a single person, someone who both deserved it and could take it.

But there had been a small handful of times, oh so very few, in which she had been pushed too far, when all other options had failed, when she had been confronted by an evil so sickening that her own monstrous soul paled in comparison and the only option was to cleanse everything with fire.

Mokou was not at the point yet. But she was getting close.

She threw open the door to her room and went straight for her dresser. She yanked the bottom drawer straight out and hurled it aside. Then she reached into the empty cavity and pulled out a small oak box.

It was this box that she set on the bed and opened up. Inside were two stacks of aging, yellow paper rectangles, all covered with a series of characters. In between them was a pile of old red-and-white ribbons. The characters on the left-hand stack were all the same, indicating them to be charms that protected against fire. Similar characters were written on the ribbons.

Mokou took those charms and stuck them all over her pants. Then she picked up one of the ribbons and muttered a word. In response, the entire pile fluttered up into the air. They surrounded her like a swarm of butterflies, and then dove in, tying themselves into bows through her long locks of hair. Mokou anticipated violence where she was going, and that meant a great deal of fire was probably going to be slung around. If that happened, then she’d rather not come home naked.

The second stack was smaller, and the runes and glyphs inscribed on each card was different. They were spellcards, each one containing an easily unleashed burst of offensive magic. Along with the glowing magical bullets known as danmaku, Spellcards were the preferred weapon of Gensokyians, and having a few on hand could be the difference between life and death.

Mokou picked up her stack of spellcards. She flourished them like a magician playing a trick to impress children, folded them back up again, and stuck them into her pocket. All right. Now she was ready to go.

Then, before she went through the door, she paused. Wait a minute.

Mokou took the cards out of her pocket and inspected them. It was as she had thought. She was supposed to have twelve cards, but there were only nine. Three of them were missing.

“Satoko!” she yelled.

“What?” Satoko was already at the door, sans Akito. “What is it?”

“My spellcards!” Mokou thrust the nine she had at her. “Who took them?”

Satoko blinked in confusion. “What do you mean? You’re holding them.”

“Only some! Three are missing! Did Joshua take them?”

“Uh, no? H-He took one of the usual anti-youkai packs we have in storage. I don’t think he even knew you had those.” Satoko frowned. “Actually, I didn’t know you had those. Did you have a stash of spellcards this whole time?”

Mokou barely heard the question. Her mind was racing, filtering through the list of likely culprits.

She ruled out Satoko, Haruna, and Haruhi immediately. Of the three, only Satoko had ever even been in her room, and if she had taken her spellcards she would have told her without apology. Besides, she probably would have taken the whole deck if it meant protecting the kids.

Shion, maybe? To give her some extra protection on her trip? Incredibly unlikely. Shion also had never been in her room and had no way of knowing of her stash. So it had to be one of the kids. But which one would-

“Wait,” she said. “Wait, wait, wait. You said Rumia and Kohta are up here, right?”

“Well, yes,” Satoko said. “They had locked themselves in the playroom. But-”

Then realization washed over her face, draining it of color. Her hand went to her mouth, and she turned and ran.

“Kohta!” Mokou heard her calling. “Rumia? Answer me!”

Mokou didn’t follow. She didn’t need to. She already had pieced together what had happened.

Those little idiots. Those brave, loyal, infuriating idiots!

The spiders had five of their kids. There was one adult looking for them, and he was just as helpless as they were in his own way. And apparently two more kids had gone in on their own.

That was eight people she needed to find in a large and dense forest, eight people that were in very mortal danger and weren’t even all in the same place.

When Satoko returned to Mokou’s room after having confirmed that Rumia and Kohta were nowhere in the house, she found it empty with the window shattered outward and a trail of smoke still rising in the open air beyond, one that led all the way to the Youkai Forest.

…

Rumia and Kohta’s decision to sneak out and go after the spiders that had taken their friends had been easy enough. After that display in the market, they could not trust anyone to come to their aid, and while Mr. Joshua was a good guy, he wasn’t exactly the first person that they would have selected to mount a successful rescue operation, especially by himself.

Getting out of the house had been easy. Mr. Joshua and Miss Shion were both gone, Miss Haruna had her hands full with shielding the house, Miss Haruhi was a flustered wreck, and all of Miss Satoko’s attention was given to trying to keep things in order. So the second no eyes were on them, they had broken into the emergency defense closet, already left conveniently unlocked by Mister Joshua, and took a pair of anti-youkai knives and some charms. Then Kohta had snuck up into Miss Mokou’s room to raid her own stash of weapons, coming away with three of her spellcards.

Once they had been appropriately armed, the two of them had crept into the basement, stole through the larders to the outside door so as to bypass Miss Haruna’s shield, and off they went.

It had been so easy, but when the two of them were actually away from the fields and taking their first steps into the forest, Rumia found herself kind of wishing that there had been more resistance. After all, the Youkai Forest was not quite as notorious as its larger and darker cousin, the Forest of Magic, but its reputation was plenty dark enough.

As it was in the middle of autumn, most of the trees had shed their needles, with left the pair with plenty of moonlight to see by. It was a small comfort. The naked branches reminded Rumia far too much of gnarled skeletons grasping at the sky with bony fingers. The ground was painfully uneven and covered with a thick layer of rotting needles and bark, which made moving forward slow and tedious. Though morning was still hours away, a wispy mist lay around the trees’ base, further slowing their progress.

And of course, there were the noises.

Every hoot of an owl, every snap of a twig sent shivers down the two children’s spines. Rumia had heard plenty of stories of children who wandered into woods such as this and were never seen again, at least not in one piece. Normally she loved those stories, with their macabre tones and gory endings. But it was one thing to recount such ghastly tales to her trembling friends while using her scary voice and laughing at how much it made them shake. It was something else entirely to be willingly stepping foot into one of those tales herself.

Then there were the other stories, the ones with similar set-ups but different endings, the ones in which the lost children would also never come home, but not because they were killed, but because the forest ended up changing them, turning them into something other than human, dooming them to forever wander the forest’s dark paths, looking to become the monster in someone else’s story.

Though she would never admit it, those were the stories that scared Rumia the most. Her own family had been killed by marauding youkai. Had any of them been lost children themselves? What if the same happened to her? What if she were doomed to become some red-eyed, sharp-toothed thing that devoured the families of other children? The first time she had heard one of those stories, she had been unable to sleep for most of the night. Every creak of the old house had sounded like the soft footsteps of some dark thing, every whisper of wind at the window seeming to call her name, while the moonlight made even the smallest of shadows elongate across the floor, stretching out and reaching for her.

Rumia’s hand was clasped tightly to Kohta’s, and for once neither of them had a joke.

They moved forward as quietly as they could, taking care not to disturb the forest debris beneath their feet. In this they were doing…poorly. It felt like something crunched with every footstep, and by the time they had gone out of side of the forest’s edge Rumia was convinced that every animal and youkai for kilometers had been alerted.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

“Maybe-” she started to say.

Kohta flinched. “Ah! Gods, you scared the crap out of me!”

“Sorry. But maybe we’d better go back.”

Kohta stared at her like she had grown two heads. “And let Keine get eaten?”

“No! But we don’t know where she is. We can’t help her if we get eaten too!”

Kohta sneered at her in disgust. “No. I’m not abandoning her. Go back if you’re too scared.”

“I’m not scared,” Rumia said stubbornly. “I just don’t, you know, I just don’t think-”

“Shhh!” Kohta clamped a hand over her mouth. “Look!”

There was a light up ahead, bobbing through the trees. The two children looked at each other. Rumia gulped. If there was one universal truth in all the stories they had heard, it was that mysterious lights floating through creepy old forests at night were bad news!

The two crouched behind a tree and peeked out. The light hadn’t been their imagination. It was slowly moving through the woods about twenty meters from where they were. What was more, there seemed to a dark, shadowy figure following it. Rumia couldn’t make out their features, but it didn’t seem very tall.

“Is that a ghost?” Rumia whispered.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Kohta whispered back.

Despite the severity of their situation, the stupidity of that comment made Rumia just stop worrying about the light and stare at her friend in shock. “Kohta, that might be the dumbest thing I have ever heard you-”

“Keeeeeiiiiiiinnnnnneeeeee!” the dark figure suddenly called out, its warbling voice echoing through the night.

Rumia and Kohta both ducked out of sight.

“Kaaaaaaannnnnnnnaaaaaaaaa!” the voice called. “Eeeeeiiiiiiiiikoooooo!”

Rumia was shaking all over. It was a ghost, a dark phantom mournfully crying out the names of their probably dead friends, doomed to forever wail the names of the deceased like an eternal eulogy for the-

“Oh,” Kohta said. “It’s him! Mr. Joshua!”

Rumia slowly breathed out. He was right. “Great. I thought we were in a different part of the forest than him.”

“I guess not. Let’s go before he sees us.”

Kohta started to leave, but Rumia tugged sharply on his hand. “Wait,” she said. “Maybe we’d better go to him.”

“No way!”

“But-”

Kohta wrenched his hand from hers. “Look, if you’re too scared, then you go talk to him! He’ll probably just have to take you back, and he’ll just stop them from searching! Keine and the others could die while he’s doing that! We came out here to help find them, not make the rescue take longer!”

Rumia winced. That was a very good point. Sighing, Rumia just nodded and got up to follow.

The pair stealthily moved away from the other search searcher. It felt like it took forever, but eventually the light disappeared, as did the sound of Mr. Joshua’s voice. The only sound was that of their footsteps crushing leaves and sticks.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

When she was absolutely certain that they were alone, Rumia said, “There’s no such thing as ghosts? Really?”

“Well, I’ve never seen one,” Kohta said, somewhat defensively.

“Wow,” Rumia said. “Wow.”

“Look, everyone knows that when you die, your soul gets taken across the River Suzune by the Shinigami! That’s just the rules! You don’t get to stick around haunting your old house and-”

“Shhh!” Now it was Rumia’s turn to slap a hand over her friend’s mouth.

Kohta shut up, though he was obviously bursting with questions.

Rumia pointed a finger. When Kohta saw what she did, he made a low whimpering sound.

There was a clearing up ahead, a circle clear of trees and bathed in moonlight. There wasn’t much in it other than patches of wild grass and some small stones. However, sitting directly in the center was a…something, something that Rumia could only see the basic shape of. It was large, hulking, and had a pair of great elk antlers protruding from the top.

Rumia shied back. It was one of the great monsters of the forest, it had to be! How many stories of had she grown up hearing of the dark spirits that wandered these woods, of their bloodthirsty dispositions and their taste for the flesh of children?

She tugged on Kohta’s hand and tilted her head back the way they came. Maybe if they crept away as slowly and quietly as they could, they could get away without attracting its attention.

“Wait,” Kohta whispered, his eyes somehow narrowing even further as he studied the towering silhouette.

Rumia gawked at him in disbelief. Wait? Why should they wait? They needed to get away from that thing right the hell now!

However, Kohta didn’t seem to share her rational fear of whatever the thing in the clearing was. “I don’t think it’s alive,” he whispered again.

Rumia quite frankly didn’t care. Lots of things weren’t alive. That didn’t make them any less likely to kill the two of them!

However, Kohta was not to be deterred. He began to slowly creep around the clearing, keeping his eye on the thing. And since she couldn’t pull him away without making a racket, Rumia was forced to go with him.

The silhouette didn’t move as they circled around it. Rumia bit her lower lip to keep from whimpering in fear as she watched its horned head, just waiting for it to suddenly turn toward them.

It didn’t.

“I think-” Kohta started to say, right before Rumia slapped a hand over his mouth. She gawked at him for being so stupid as to talk with that thing so close.

Kohta rolled his eyes. He pulled Rumia’s hand off and inclined his head toward the silhouette.

Rumia looked again. Come to think of it, it didn’t look like any kind of creature. Instead, it seemed kind of rough and misshapen. However, it did have a definite shape, one with a high and wide back and-

“It’s a chair,” Kohta sniggered. “That’s all it is. A chair.”

Rumia shot him a dirty look, but he was right. It was a chair, a great big chair made of stone and covered with moss, sticks, and even a few mushrooms.

“A chair. You were scared of a chair!”

Rumia flicked him in the ear. “That still doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous and evil! It’s probably like some kind of cursed throne!”

Kohta shrugged. “Well, okay, but it’s not doing anything.”

Rumia ignored him. She wanted to see what the horns were all about.

She continued to circle around the clearing, bringing the front of the chair into view. It was still hard to make out the details, but her eyes had adjusted pretty well to the darkness, and there was plenty of moonlight to see by. Just a little further, just a little further…

Then Kohta inhaled sharply. Rumia swallowed.

There, seated in the chair, was an amalgamation of bones, seemingly collected from a dozen different creatures. Big bear bones, slender bird bones, and even Human bones, all carefully pieced together in a massive humanoid shape swathed in ragged clothes that swirled in the night breeze.

And seated on the top of its shoulders was a grinning bear’s skull affixed with a pair of elk antlers.

“What the hell?” Rumia said.

“I…” Kohta took a step backward.

Rumia shot him a look. “Still think it’s not scary?”

“I…” Kohta’s face had gone pale. “Maybe we’d better, you know, leave it alone.”

Then the horned bear skull turned to fix its empty eye sockets right at them.

Rumia gasped and Kohta made a sound like he had gotten kicked in the gut. The two spun around and ran from the clearing as fast as their feet would take them.

…

“Eeeeeiiiiikoooooo!” Joshua called.

There was no response. He had been tramping through the forest for the better part of an hour now, and still had found nothing. No response, no tracks, no any sign of the kids or the monster that had taken them.

He was starting to get frantic. The youkai had flown through the air during their retreat. What if they simply had dropped down into the forest right at their lair? If so, then there was probably no trail to be found. He was just going to wander around aimlessly until something ended up picking him off as well.

Pushing those dark thoughts from his mind, Joshua muttered a short, terrified prayer under his breath. Those had been coming with greater regularity the longer his search went on, and they were becoming increasingly desperate.

Then something cracked under his feet.

Joshua paused, and then stepped back. He knelt down.

It was another pile of bones, those of some kind of big cat. From the look of things it had been dead and picked clean of meat for weeks, and now all sorts of things were growing all over its ribs and vertebrae.

Joshua closed his eyes. Actually, he hadn’t found nothing. He had been finding plenty of bones. No Human bones yet, thank God, but that might have already changed.

In his mind’s eye, he saw the ravaged and defiled remains of the children, their flesh and meat ripped from their bones and gobbled down, their bloody skeletons left for the scavengers and the remains of their clothing left to rot, until exposure to the elements erased all trace of their existence, leaving no evidence that their had ever been a Haruko, a Kana, a Hayate, an Eiko, or a Keine.

It was a horrific fate, and it happened all the time. There were probably bones from a few hundred children scattered all over the forest.

Joshua refused to let it happen to his.

He rose up and set off again. “Haaaaaaruuuuuuuuukooooooooo!” he called. ��Can you hear-”

Something seized him by the back of his collar. Before he could react, he was swung around and slammed backfirst into a nearby tree trunk, with a forearm thrust across his windpipe.

Gasping like a fish, Joshua looked up to see two blazing red eyes in a coldly beautiful face, one framed by locks of shimmering silver hair with bared teeth.

“Quiet, you idiot!” Mokou hissed. “Do you want to get yourself eaten? Because this is how you get yourself eaten!”

…

“Stop,” Kohta panted. “Stop. It’s not chasing us.”

Rumia might have argued the point, but to tell the truth she was willing to take any excuse to stop running. She was young and active, but hadn’t had to run that fast for that long before. Even footraces back home had only lasted a few seconds.

The two children collapsed in the shelter of a gnarled tree as they tried to catch their breath. Despite being completely out of breath and nursing aching legs, Rumia still made a point of checking to see if Kohta was correct.

Sure enough, there was no sign of a bony amalgamation pursuing them, though honestly it was so dark that simply not being visible didn’t count for much.

“What was that?” Kohta said.

“How the hell should I know?” Rumia said. “Seems like no matter how many stories we hear about this place, someone always has a new one.”

“Well, I guess now there’s one more.”

“I guess.” Then, despite the direness of their situation, Rumia couldn’t resist sneering at him. “So, still don’t believe in ghosts?”

Kohta sighed. “Oh, shut up, Rumia.”

“Seriously, that is easily the dumbest thing I have ever heard you say.”

“I said, shut up, Rumia!”

Rumia did so, though she didn’t stop smirking.

After a while Kohta said, “Hey. Do you hear that?”

Rumia did, actually. In fact she had been about to ask Kohta the same question.

There was a low buzzing sound, like hundreds of insects beating their wings, barely perceptible over the sound of their own breathing, but now that it had been pointed out it was clearly not her imagination.

“Yeah.” Rumia’s face twisted up in confusion. “What the hell is that?”

Kohta shrugged.

Now there was a second sound, a deep, bass pulsing, like a sluggish heartbeat.

Something rustled the leaves nearby, beyond a tall tree. The two children tiptoed toward the tree. As they did, the buzzing grew shriller and shriller, until Rumia could feel it in her teeth. As for the thumping pulse, that only grew deeper and deeper, until Rumia could feel it in her gut.

They pressed their backs to the tree and peeked out around it.

Beyond the tree was a short but steep incline into a leaf-covered depression. And standing in those leaves with its back to them was a…a thing.

It was humanoid, with two legs to stand upon, a torso were a torso ought to be, two arms dangling from its shoulders, and an oval-shaped head on those shoulders, but that was where the similarities ended. Its was just so horribly long and thin, with sticklike legs taller than either one of the children were, an emaciated body twice the length of a normal Human man at less than half the thickness, and arms that hung down to its knees. Its head was completely hairless, with beams of moonlight shining off of its pale dome. It wore a form-fitting outfit of black, and its flesh was as white as bleached bones.

The pulsing grew louder, or maybe that was just Rumia’s heartbeat. There was no question about it now, no “maybe it’s evil and maybe it’s just a pile of rocks and bones.” This was an actual youkai monster, one of the evil wanderers of the Youkai Forest.

The slender creature didn’t seem to have noticed them. It was calmly loping forward, taking long and slow strides, its footsteps barely disturbing the leaves. Rumia looked over to Kohta and tilted her head in the opposite direction. Kohta nodded.

Then the creature paused, and everything fell silent. The buzzing stop, as did the pulse.

Rumia and Kohta went stiff.

The creature raised its head, as if sniffing the air. It reached up with one disturbingly long arm to touch the branches up above.

Then the buzzing returned, and Rumia swore she heard voices in it. The pounding returned as well, staring off slow but building to a thundering percussion, as the slender creature slowly turned around to look over its shoulder directly at them.

It had no face. From its pointed chin to the round dome of its head was nothing but a blank expanse of skin.

Oh, screw this!

With nothing left to gain from hiding, Rumia and Kohta again spun around and fled.

…

“Mokou, wait!” Joshua said, holding up a hand. “Just calm down, okay?”

“Calm down? You want me to calm down?” Mokou shook her head in disgust. “Damn it, Josh! The hell are you even thinking? Walking about in the open like this, hollering away like a crazy person, it’s a miracle that every youkai in a hundred kilometers hasn’t zeroed in on you! Hell, maybe they have! Maybe you’re just lucky I got to you first!”

Joshua had to admit that she had a point. Certainly his way of searching hadn’t exactly been wise. But damn it, what was he supposed to do?

“I was just-”

“I know! You wanted to go save the kids! I heard the whole thing. But by the gods, Josh! How the hell are you supposed to help anyone if you get eaten before you even find them? Or for that matter, even if they do hear you hollering, how are they supposed to answer? They got taken by spiders! Spiders always at the very least gag their prey, and you’ll just let those crawly fucks know you’re coming!”

To this, Joshua had no answer.

“And if your God decides to blow all of your accumulated good will in getting you there unnoticed and undevoured, the hell where you planning to do then? Fight them? Sneak the kids out without any of them noticing? They’re spiders! They probably got them all webbed up, and you don’t even know how to fight to begin with!”

Joshua slowly breathed out. “Yes, I do.”

“What?”

“I do know how to fight. I’ve done it before. A lot, actually.”

Mokou stared at him. “Oh, yeah? You mean back where you came from? In the Outside World?”

“Yes,” Joshua admitted.

“Well, that’s great and all, but that won’t help you here! The rules of fighting are totally different, and you don’t have any of your fancy Outside World weapons to help you!”

“I know how to use danmaku,” Joshua said. He pointed a finger at a nearby bush, and a spray of glowing blue orbs shot out to pulverize its leaves. “I can shoot bullets just fine.”

“Well, goody golly-licious for you,” Mokou said as she sarcastically clapped her hands. “So do they! And they’ve been using it a long longer than you, and definitely more regularly! Have you ever even gotten into a danmaku battle before? Ever had to shoot your bullets at someone outside of fun or practice?”

Joshua bowed his head. “No.”

“Well, I guarantee that they have! Probably pretty regularly at that! You’ll be lucky if you even managed to nick one of them before they riddle you full of holes! And then they’ll eat you!”

“I brought this though,” Joshua said as he slid the anti-youkai knife from its sheathe. He held it up so Mokou could see the runes on its handle. “This will-”

Mokou’s hand suddenly came up, smacking the bottom of the knife. Taken by surprise, Joshua’s hand reflexively popped open and the knife sailed up and away.

Mokou snatched it out of the air. “You see how easily I did that?” she said, pointing the blade at the dumbstruck man. “You are completely out of your depth here. So go home, Joshua. Go home and let me handle this.”

As flustered as he was, and as embarrassed as he was, Joshua still managed to keep his shaking legs planted on the ground beneath him. “No,” he said.

“No?”

“No. I’m not going back.” Joshua said. “Don’t you understand? I was the ones watching those kids. They got taken under my watch! I can’t just stand aside and do nothing!”

Mokou’s face twisted up in annoyance. “Oh, spare me from kind-hearted fools!” she groaned as she slapped a hand across her own face. “Josh, I have exactly zero time for your guilty conscience, so back off and leave this to the professionals! Specifically, me!”

Joshua was a fair bit shorter than Mokou and thus had to incline his head to look her in the face. As such, he was in the perfect position to take notice of something moving in the branches behind her. Something with gleaming orange eyes. “Mokou…” he said.

“Because if any of those kids got hurt because you held me up, then I swear-”

“Mokou, watch out!”

The shadow had leapt from its branch right at Mokou’s back. Joshua reached up to grab Mokou by the arm in hopes of pulling her out of the way.

Several things then happened, either at the same time or in such quick succession that it might as well have been at the same time.

First, the moment that Joshua’s hands closed around Mokou’s arm, it abruptly swung to the side, lifting him right off his feet and hurling him to the ground.

The second was the sound of something whistling through the air right over his head, something fast enough for him to feel the wind of its passing.

The third was a feminine voice grunting in pain and surprise.

Joshua rolled onto her back and sat up. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting to see, but what he found waiting for him surely wasn’t it.

Mokou was standing balanced on one leg, the other held straight out, her foot shoved up against the throat of another woman. The woman was of medium height and slender in build, with grey-ish blue skin, softly glowing orange eyes, and bright orange hair tied into a pair of pigtails. She was wearing a sleeveless black-and-blue striped blouse, a tattered purple skirt, and black-and-orange stripped leggings. On her hand she wore a sort of cap that had a pair of floppy horns made of felt.

Mokou had her pinned up against a tree, and she was clawing at the foot pressing at her larynx.

“Juniper Spice,” Mokou said. “Well, as I live and breathe.”

Joshua gawked at her. “Wait, you know this person?”

“We’ve met,” Mokou said. “We’re not friends.”

The youkai woman identified as Juniper choked and coughed. “I…I didn’t know…it was you,” she said. “I didn’t!”

“Yeah, well, tough.” Her foot still keeping Juniper trapped, Mokou flicked Joshua’s knife up between her fingers.

A second later Joshua realized what she intended. “No! Mokou, wait!”

It was too late. Mokou hurled the knife. It sailed straight and true to embed itself right in Juniper’s forehead, neatly between her eyes.

Juniper’s whole body jerked and she let out a small squeak. Then, as bright red blood ran down her nose, her whole body started to convulse.

As Joshua stared in horror, Mokou lowered her foot. Juniper stayed where she was, shaking and writhing as black steam rose up from where the knife was stuck. Foamy spittle bubbled up from her mouth to drip down her chin.

Then she slumped lifelessly, and her body began to dissolve.

Orangish vapor billowed into the air to disappear, and when it had all dissipated, nothing was left of Juniper Spice, no evidence of what had happened to her save for the knife itself, which was still partially embedded in the trunk of the tree.

“You killed her,” Joshua said in disbelief.

Mokou calmly grabbed the knife’s handle and yanked it out. “Uh, yeah? She was trying to kill us. Hell, she probably had been stalking you for some time. If I hadn’t come along she would’ve gotten you.”

“But…”

“Relax, Josh. She’s a youkai. Getting smoked like that is part of their everyday life. Give it a few minutes, and she’ll come right back with a bad mood and a healthy amount of respect.”

“You…Wait, are you sure?”

Sighing, Mokou tossed the knife into the dirt in front of Joshua. “Yes, Josh. I’m sure. I’ve killed her before. For fuck’s sake, you’ve been in Gensokyo how long? This is basic youkai stuff.”

“Oh.” Despite having lived in Gensokyo for many years, there were still some aspects of it that he had trouble wrapping his head around. He picked up the knife and stood up.

Mokou looked around and sighed. “You’re really set on saving the kids, aren’t you?”

Joshua slid the knife back into its sheath. Then he looked up into Mokou’s eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

“Fuck,” Mokou muttered. “If I send you back you’ll just get snapped up. Gods only know how you made it this far.” She shook her head and sighed. “Fine, fine. Tag along if you must, but stay out of my way, don’t slow me down, don’t do anything stupid, and as much as I like you, if it comes down to either saving you or saving the kids, I’ll be sure to say something nice at your funeral. Got it?”

Harsh, but completely fair. “I understand.”

“Fine.” Mokou turned and headed off. “Keep up, then. Rumia and Kohta went off on their own to search as well, so we have to find them too.”

Joshua stumbled. “Wait, they did what?”

“You heard me! Now shut up and keep up!”

…

“Okay,” Kohta panted as he leaned up against a tree. “I think…I think we lost him.”

The effort of trying to catch her breath had bent Rumia down over her knees. “You think?” she got out between gasps.

“Well…he hasn’t…caught us…has he?”

“Maybe…maybe he’s…in the trees…and…” Something tickled Rumia’s ear. “Stop touching me!”

“I’m not.”

“Then…what was…”

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

The two children froze.

Crunch. Crunch. Rip. Snap.

“Is that it?” Rumia whispered. “Is it coming?”

“I don’t…it doesn’t really sound like footsteps.” Kohta tried to straighten up, but then suddenly jerked back. “Hey!”

“Huh?”

“I’m stuck! Something’s sticking to me!”

Something tickled Rumia’s ear again. She slapped it away.

Her hand was suddenly filled with several silky, sticky strands.

“Uh…” She pulled it away from her head. In her hand was something thinner than paper and glistening white.

She then slowly looked up to where Kohta was still trying to free himself from the trunk of the tree. The tree was covered with the stuff, like a paper sheathe.

“Kohta, stop,” Rumia whispered.

“What?”

“Look…up.”

Catching her tone, Kohta swallowed and obeyed.

The entire forest around them was draped with what looked like a silk net. It covered the tree trunks, it was laid across the tree branches, it was even laid across the forest floor in places. Here and there things that looked like giant moth cocoons hung from the branches. One or two of them were twitching. Most of them were not.

Rumia felt the blood drain from her face. Those were no cocoons.

“Webs,” Kohta said hoarsely. “Spiderwebs.”

Crunch. Munch. Slurp.

The two children exchanged one brief look. Then Rumia hastily ripped the web from her fingers and seized Kohta’s arm with both hands and yanked with all her might, ripping him free from the trunk.

“We need to-” Kohta started to say.

Crunch.

Something had broken under Rumia’s feet. The two of them looked down.

A half-buried Human skull grinned up at them, webs draped over it like a burial shroud. Rumia’s foot had landed right onto its right eye socket, caving it in.

“Ah!” Rumia was about to run again, but then Kohta’s hands clamped down on her bicep.

“No!” he hissed. “Get a grip! You start running and screaming again, and the spiders will hear us!”

Every instinct in Rumia was screaming for her to completely disregard Kohta’s point and run as fast as she could while screaming as loud as possible.

But she had done that twice already. And each time it had just sent her into an even scarier situation. So she bit back on the screams she felt rising and slowly removed her foot from within the skull.

Then they turned in the direction of the sounds. Up ahead was a ring of web-covered trees, and within seemed to be a small clearing.

The sounds were coming from the clearing, and between the web-covered trees she could see movement.

Rumia and Kohta exchanged a glance. Then, gripping tightly to each other’s hands, they crept toward the clearing, careful to avoid the webbing on the ground and anything that might be another pile of remains.

The clearing was playing host to a ghastly scene. The whole place was draped with webs, and weirdly enough there was furniture scattered about. Rumia saw a bookshelf filled with what looked like odd trinkets and weird bones; a hat stand holding a top hat, a bonnet, a straw hat, and a weird thing that looked like a stripy inverted funnel; a grandfather clock; a few easy chairs; a cabinet holding chipped tea cups; and four beds. Strapped to four of the trees along the perimeter was a child, each of their bodies partially wrapped up like decaying mummies. Rumia’s heart skipped a beat. Keine was among them, her face pale and her body limp. Rumia couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.

Fastened to another tree was Kana, who for once was silent. And next to her was Haruko, and next to Haruko was Hayate.

Unlike the others, Haruko was wide awake and staring. Her mouth was gagged with webs to keep her from screaming, but judging by the look in her eyes she would if she could. She was staring at what was happening in the center of the clearing.

There, the four spider-youkai that had attacked the Children’s Home were gathered. Now that Rumia saw them up close, they seemed even more monstrous than they had when viewed at a distance in the bright sunlight. They seemed to be the kin of that slender thing in the woods, with limbs that were twisted, elongated, and malformed, with twice as many joints than they ought to have. Their necks were longer than they had any right to be, and their grey hair almost looked like spiderwebs themselves. Two of them were wearing torn and filthy dresses, one that once had been white with blue stripes and the other a color that might have been orange once. Another had on a long, red coat over a shredded black shirt and a black skirt. The one male had on the remains of what had once been tailored black slacks, a black vest hanging unbuttoned over a filthy white shirt, and a grey tie hanging loosely around his neck like a noose.

All four of them were paying little attention to their ensnared captives. They were crouching on their haunches around a dinner table, tearing at something with their hands and mouths. Rumia couldn’t make out what it was, but she caught glimpses of something red. One of the spider-youkai raised its head. Blood was running down its gaunt face, and there was something white and stringy hanging from its mouth. It gulped it down and ducked its head back down again.

Then a human arm flopped out of the cluster. It was wearing a black sleeve, and a pale hand hung limply at its end. Blood ran down the fingers to drip to the ground.

Rumia’s hand went to her mouth. By process of elimination there really was only one person that could be.

Eiko.

“Oh my gods,” Kohta whispered, so low that even Rumia barely heard him. “Oh my gods, oh my gods, oh my gods.”

As for Rumia, she didn’t have the stomach even for whispered curses. Sour nausea twisted up her gut, and she was able to keep from retching by constantly reminding herself that the spiders would hear the noise and eat them as well.

The two of them had never liked Eiko. She had been whiny and nosy and pretty mean most of the time, always doing whatever Haruko had told her to do, always butting into their business and helping push around the smaller kids.

But sweet spirits, nobody had ever, even in their darkest, most private fantasies, wished something like that upon her!

If there was one blessing that could be gleaned by the whole terrible scene, it was that the four spider-youkai were so absorbed with feasting on poor Eiko’s remains that they were paying no attention to either their remaining captives or the two invaders that had trespassed on their nest.

It was time.

Rumia knelt down to spit out the wad of saliva her nausea had produced and swallowed back as much of the sick feeling as she could. Then she tugged on Kohta’s sleeve and angled her head toward where the other kids were being held.

Kohta’s eyes went wide and he emphatically shook his head.

Baring her teeth, Rumia pointed to where Keine was hanging. Then she pointed at the gruesome feast.

Kohta’s face twisted up as the impulse to flee joined forces with the sheer terror surging through him and waged war on his desire to save his friends. In the end the latter won out, and he let out a small sigh through his nostrils and nodded.

The two of them crept around the clearing, careful not to step on anything too loud, especially careful not to keep glancing over at what the spiders were doing, but it was difficult.

Fortunately, the other kids weren’t fully cocooned like the other bodies they had seen. They only had a couple silk restraints splattered onto their wrists and calves, pinning them to the tree trunks. Webs were also smeared over their mouths as gags, though the spiders had left their eyes free, probably to make them watch.

The first that they reached was Hayate, unfortunately. Rumia and Kohta produced the knives they had brought along and went to work. The webs were strong enough to keep her from tearing away on her own strength, but they parted like grass beneath the steel blades. The enchantments were working.

Hayate seemed to have passed out, but after they managed to free one leg and one hand she began to stir. She didn’t look at all well though. Even with the tremendous scare of what she had been through, her skin felt cold and clammy. Even in the pale moonlight Rumia could see dark veins on her arms and around her neck.

As they worked to bring her down, Rumia glanced at the other kids. Haruko, the only one still awake, had noticed them. She was staring with wide eyes, her hands twitching beneath the webs. She glanced quickly at what the spiders were doing to her friend and then back at them, silently begging them to hurry.

As Rumia and Kohta lowered Hayate to the ground, she started to come around. Rumia started to cut away the gag, but then Kohta covered her hand and shook his head. For a moment Rumia was confused, but then she understood. Hayate was going to be confused and scared when she woke up, and if she screamed, that was it for all of them.

Sure enough, Hayate opened her eyes moments later. She blinked groggily and squinted up at them. She frowned in bewilderment, as if she had no memory of where she was or why she was there.

But then enough pieces apparently pieced themselves together in her mind and her eyes suddenly bulged out.

“Shhh!” Rumia slapped a hand over Hayate’s gagged mouth to prevent any sound from escaping. “Quiet!” she hissed into the terrified girl’s ear. “We’re here to save you, but you have to be quiet!”

Hayate was trembling violently, but she managed a slight nod.

Hoping that she would keep her word, Rumia and Kohta then turned their attention to the next bound captive, which thankfully was Keine.

Keine also had weird veiny blotches on her skin, but she started stirring more quickly when Rumia and Kohta touched her. They hastily cut the sticky strands away and brought her down to the ground.

“Keine!” Kohta whispered. “Can you hear me?”

Keine sleepily blinked her eyes. She moaned beneath her gag.

“Shhh!” Kohta put his face right in front of hers so that she would be able to read his lips. Don’t say anything. Youkai are near. Stay still and quiet.

Keine blinked. Then she stiffened as the memories caught up with her. She glanced at him and Rumia and nodded as well. However, she did sit up and throw her arms around the two of them, and they did the same. Though she was still tense with fear and revulsion, Rumia finally felt a small bit of hope. They had gotten Keine back. They weren’t out of the woods yet, but they at least had her.

Keine, at least, could be trusted. She angled her head to one side and let her friends cut away her gag. Once it was out of the way she started clawing at her mouth and silently gagged as she tried to get rid of any remaining strands. One particularly large wad made her shiver with disgust.

Rumia caught sight of Hayate staring at them. Once she had Rumia’s eye, the other girl pointed at the wad of silk covering her mouth. Rumia shook her head. Hayate blinked, then she scowled and let out an angry snort.

Two down, two to go. And the next was the one that they wanted to save the least. Still, there were some things that even blood feuds were suspended for.

Haruko had been watching the whole time. As they approached, the only two fingers she had free started to rapidly beat against the tree trunk.

“Stop it!” Rumia hissed. “Do you want them to-”

“Oi!”

One of the spiders suddenly turned toward Haruko, his neck curving around like a snake. Rumi and Kohta ducked out of sight.

“Stop makin’ dat noise!” the spider growled, his voice thick and gummy. “If yer so impatient, den it’ll be yer turn once we’re done wit’ yer itty-bitty friend ‘ere!”

The other spiders laughed, and they all went back to their meal.

Rumia forced herself to release the breath she had been holding. Her heart was still pounding away like a war drum though.

Baring her teeth, she set back to work, cutting away at Haruko’s left hand and leg while Kohta worked on her right side.

Once she was free, Haruko had no problem with being led behind the tree and out of sight. She immediately threw both arms around Kohta’s shoulders and squeezed him tight while she hyperventilated.

Rumia’s right eye twitched, but she did nothing.

Kohta winced but tolerated it, though Rumia suspected that was more due to no wanting to risk attracting attention than respecting Haruko’s feelings.

“Okay, okay,” Kohta muttered with an awkward pat on the bat. “Um, you gotta let go. Seriously. I need to go help Kana. Let go, please.”

Rumia rolled her eyes. Then she saw that Hayate was up on her knees and was slowly crawling toward Haruko, her hands outstretched and tears pouring from her eyes.

That should work. Rumia took her by the elbow and helped her come in closer. Then she jostled Haruko’s shoulder to get her attention. Once Haruko saw that Hayate was near, she immediately abandoned Kohta to seize her remaining friend in another squeezing embrace, and unlike Kohta, Hayate was more than happy to reciprocate.

Kohta shook his head and sighed. Then he caught the look Rumia was shooting him.

What? he mouthed.

Rolling her eyes, Rumia just went over to where Kana was hanging.

The weird girl looked like she was the worst off. The dark veins were more pronounced on her skin, and she was sweating profusely. What was more, she didn’t stir at all when Rumia and Kohta started working to free her.

Rumia swallowed. She prayed to whatever meager gods that would hear her that Kana was still alive and kept cutting.

The girl barely seemed to weigh a thing as they took her to the others and laid her down. Keine, who seemed to have shaken off whatever the spiders had done to her quicker than the still tearfully embracing Haruko and Hayate, knelt down at Kana’s side. She leaned over to place her ear against Kana’s chest while holding a finger under her nose. Rumia held her breath as she waited for the diagnosis.

Keine sat back and nodded. She held up a hand with her index finger and her thumb only a few centimeters apart. Rumia and Kohta understood. Kana was breathing, but only just. They needed to get her back as quickly as possible.

Kohta crouched down and lifted Kana onto his back. He nodded to the others and tilted his head back the way he and Rumia had come. They started to creep away, but then Hayate seized Rumia by the arm. She jabbed a finger at the web still covering her mouth.

Oh, fine. Rumia pulled out her knife and went to work cutting it away. Like the others, Hayate gagged as she spat out all the gunk in her mouth.

“All right,” Rumia whispered. “Now let’s go!”

Hayate looked at her like she had lost her mind. “No!” she whispered back. “What about Eiko? We can’t leave Eiko!”

Rumia felt like she had been kicked in the gut. Oh gods, Hayate had passed out before Eiko had been eaten. She didn’t know!

Seeing the way everyone was looking at her, Hayate just stared back in confusion. “What? Why are you guys-”

“Welp, dis one’s ‘bout done,” one of the spiders said suddenly. “Onta da second course!”

“All right, all right, keep yer pants on. Which one?”

“Betta make it da ‘ickle blonde bit. She dun’t look like she got much left in ‘er, so we’d bedda get ‘er on da table while she’s still fresh.”

Oh shit.

“Go, go, go!” Kohta whispered.

The hurried away, with Haruko practically dragging the still-confused Hayate along.

“Hey, da fook?” a spider called out. “Where’d da ‘ickle morsels go?”

“Are ya fookin’ serious? Dey was jus’ dere!”

“Well, dey ain’t now!”

“Damn it all. Spread out and search! Dey couldn’t ‘ave gone far!”

The horrible sound of scrabbling filled the air. The children increased their gait.

Then a horribly long arm snaked out of the trees in front of them. It ended in a slender hand with fingers that looked as long as Rumia’s forearms, each topped by a pointed nail caked with dirt and drying blood.

The hand planted itself on the ground, the elbow bending at an unnatural angle. Another such arm came into view, the hand grabbing onto a tree trunk.

A gaunt face followed, one with hollow cheeks, a pointed chin, and dark hair that hung around the face like a funeral shroud. The face’s eyes were sunken and dark, each with four tiny white pupils that glimmered like candles in the dark. Dark blood still was smeared around its pale lips.

The face swung around on its elongated neck to leer at the children. “Well, well, well, what have we ‘ere?” the spider said as she ambled out of the clearing. “A wee ‘ickle rescue attempt? ‘ey, chaps! C’mere!”

The other spiders ambled their way toward her, one loping his way on the ground while the other two crawled across the trees. “You ‘ave got ta’ be fookin’ kiddin’ me,” growled the male spider.

“Nah, see? Dey missed deir friends so much dat dey come ‘ere ta’ try ta’ save ‘em! Ain’t dey precious?”

“Precious ‘ickle dumplin’s,” growled another. “So kind dey are. Now we ‘ave enough for breakfast an’ dinner tummarah!”

Rumia couldn’t move. Fear had frozen her feet in place. She couldn’t even blink. All she could do was stand stiff and still and stare as the four malformed monsters crawled ever closer.

This is it, she found herself thinking. This is how I die. Ripped apart like my family. And I still couldn’t save anyone. What a stupid way to go.

Then some blue and glowing shot through the air to splash against the lead spider’s cheek.

The one that had been hit flinched back. She held a claw to the point of impact. “Da fook was…”

Then everyone, spider and child alike, turned to stare at the culprit.

Haruko was standing with one hand outstretched, index and middle fingers pointing out, while she held onto her wrist with the other hand. Every centimeter of her was shaking with fear, but it was clear that she had been the one responsible.

“You can shoot bullets?” Kohta said in disbelief.

Haruko glanced at him and nodded. Then she inhaled sharply and fired another blue projectile.

This one glanced off the spider’s shoulder. This time, she looked more annoyed than anything. “Really?” she growled. “Fookin’ danmaku. Sorry, chitlins. But youz is playin’ a grown-up’s game.” She lifted a hand, which then began glowing purple. “But if it’s a danmaku battle yah be wantin’, den Auntie Edna is more than ‘appy to play!”

Before Edna could fire off her first round, Kohta let go of one of Kana’s legs to thrust his hand into his pocket. When he drew it back out, it was holding onto a small piece of paper.

“Uh, hit the deck!” he screamed as he tossed the paper forward. Then he threw both himself and Kana to the ground and covered his eyes. Everyone else did the same. Even the spiders flinched back in anticipation of the spellcard attack.

Nothing happened.

Rumia looked up. The spellcard was lying on the ground, obviously not activated. The spiders, who had all retreated back and covered their faces, were now lowering their arms and glancing at one another.

“Huh,” the male said. Then the four of them leered back down at the children. “Well den.”

“You idiot!” Hayate screamed. “You have to say the spellcard’s name!”

“Huh? Oh, right!” Kohta snatched the card back up and thrust it forward again as the spiders resumed their advance. “Phoenix Sign: Magnificent Inferno!”

And then the forest erupted with light.

…

I have a new policy. If I get an idea that would certainly have upset and disturbed kid me, I do it.

Until next time, everyone.

#the touhou project #touhou #imperfect metamorphosis #fanfic #rumia #mokou #Fujiwara no Mokou

4 notes · View notes

saturnmyg · 6 years ago

Text

The devil wears givenchy (1) | Min Yoongi

❝ You’re a therapist who one day gets a call from someone who claims to be satan asking for an appointment. On the day of the appointment you expect to see a teenager or someone in their mid twenties instead you’re met with a man in a screaming red suit whose hair and eyes are as dark as the night but with an attitude of a spoiled brat, he surely cant be satan. ❞

➵ paring: Satan! Yoongi x Therapist reader

➵ author’s note: im excited for this series to start so i hope yall like it, also the question yn asks are question therapist have asked me on the first counselling session this is all based on experience.

➵ requested by : no one

| warnings in this chapter : cursing, mention of death

Masterlist

@minyoonjiswifey

➵ ➵ ➵ ➵ ➵ ➵

‘’Miss Y/n’’

A deep voice followed by a knock rips you out of your thoughts and you look over to the door. The office's secretary Mr Kim stands there holding a planner in his hand

‘’There was a request or should i say a demand for a counseling session’’ Kim continues brows furrowing together telling you that he's mildly annoyed ‘’by someone claiming to be satan’’

‘’Excuse me what?’’ you fully turn towards secretary Kim with raised eyebrows.

‘’As i said he claimed to-’’

‘’No i understood that’’ you interrupt waving your hand dismissively ‘’did you ask what his real name is?’’

‘’I did-’’ Kim answers monotone ‘’- he said mortals shall call him Min Yoongi. i set an appointment this friday five o'clock’’

‘’Alright thank you for notifying me’’ you smile at the stoic man who just nods in reply, bows slightly and walks out of your office.

Mr Kim is.. a peculiar person. He's a man of a few words with an expressionless yet handsome face and mouse grey dyed hair thats most of the times slicked back. Though when finally does decide to talk, he tells the wildest stories that often gives you a whiplash.He's also an undefeated champion when it comes to giving backhanded compliments or at least they seem to be.

You'd think working together for almost nine years you'd be used to him.

Thats right, its been nine years since you started working as a therapist. You've always had an affinity to listening to other peoples concerns and to look at the problem objectively without it affecting you. Its funny though that you ended up in this profession. The past you was.. wild, especially during college. Don't get it wrong it wasn't that you were out partying all time but you and your group of friends were up to no good.

Your family was very poor when your mother was still alive. She loved gambling and spending her money on alcohol to the point where you had no food left at home. Which meant that fourteen years old you had to work, at a strip club as waitress. Not the best place for a minor to be considering the leeching looks the people sometimes threw at you but fortunately one of the security guys always looked out for you. until one day a sleazy looking man gave you his business card saying that he was looking for someone who'd be able to deliver stuff for him. Of course you were weary but the promise of a paycheck that was three times higher than the one you were already earning was too good of an opportunity to let it slip past you.

And thats basically how you became a drug dealer and how you met your friends who were either also working for your ex boss or working for his friend who often had his folks deliver drugs to your boss. Of course that slowed down the moment you became a senior. You started studying and participating in class more, the pressure of finding a socially accepted job after college weighing on your shoulder like a huge rock. You and some of your friends completely stopped dealing when graduation was nearing and your boss thankfully let you go but offered that the there would be always a spot open for you if you ever needed it.

Shaking your head you chuckle slightly and turn back to the computer. You've met countless types of people but no one ever has introduced themselves as satan. You're intrigued in finding out what type of person your client is going to be.

Shutting off the laptop you stand up from the table, take your jacket and put it on. Flickering off the lights you turn around and give your office a last glance before you exit out of the room. Walking down the pristine hallway towards where the reception you fumble with your car keys lost in your thoughts. Arriving at the entrance you see Secretary Kim sitting behind the computer typing something at a fast speed. Walking up to the reception table you knock on the dark hard wood a few times ‘’I'm clocking off’’

Secretary Kim looks up from the computer and nods curtly, the glasses sitting low on his nose bridge, before immersing himself in whatever he was doing before and you let out a small sigh

‘’don’t stay too long’’ you warn him and leave the office.

Standing in front of the elevator you hum a quiet tune waiting for the doors to open. A few seconds later a quiet ping indicates that the elevator has arrived at your level and the doors open. Surprised you see a tall man wearing a black coat with a book in his hand

‘’Ah good evening Y/n’’ The man greets you as you walk into the elevator, dimples poking out of his cheeks.

‘’Its already night Namjoon’’ you greet back with a small chuckle.

Namjoon works at the dental praxis that is one floor above you so you constantly run into each other. He's playful man who most of the times has a mischievous glint in his eyes yet from what you've seen is very serious about his job. Another thing is he's quite popular, even amongst your own coworker alongside with secretary Kim. But with those looks who wouldn't be, tan skin with deep dimples and voice, beautiful thick hair and legs so long they belong on a runway. Plus he got the brains too, he's what you call a total package, anyone would be drooling for him.

Namjoon reaches over and presses the button ‘’since its only 07:55pm its still evening’’

‘’Semantics’’ you reply with an eye roll and namjoon just chuckles. A comfortable hush falls over the both of you and you take out your phone. Your'e so immersed in looking at your schedule that you dont notice that the doors have opened. Namjoon nudges you and you snap out of it, bashfully you tuck your phone back into your pocket and walks towards the building's entrance.

‘’See you Y/n’’ Namjoon turns around smiles, his eyes turn into crescents.

‘’Bye’’ you wave and you both part ways. Taking your scarf out of the purse, you wrap it around your neck before tugging the jacket closer to your body. Winter has finally settled and you're overjoyed. You love November, you love how the city smells of cinnamon and mulled wine. How around every corner you can hear people already singing Christmas carols and how everyone just looks so happy.

Besides Christmas you love winter nights, specifically nights where you wake up at three in the morning to pee and you look outside to find freshly fallen snow. The snow making the environment look brighter and slightly alienating, kind of as if you live in a picture. Yet for whatever reasons that sight makes your bed seem more comfortable and warm.

Scurrying across the parking lot you take out your keys and unlock the vehicle. Quickly you get into it and slam the door behind you. Throwing your purse on the passenger seat you plug your phone in, scroll through Spotify till you find your playlist and press play. A smooth melody with a deep bass vibrates through the car as you're backing out of the parking spot and you quietly hum along.

The only thing about winter you don’t really like is driving on the iced street. Along with the lingering paranoia that any car could lose control and crash into yours.

Thats a bad habit of yours, imagining the worst possible outcomes of any situation. You could be walking down the stairs and suddenly you'll think about how you could fall down, hit your head and die instantly cause your neck snapped. So most of your rides are filled with anxiety and extreme caution.

Sighing slightly you shake your head before focusing back on the road.

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

Unlocking the door you enter you home, take off your shoes off. Walking down the hallway into the living room you throw your jacket onto the gray couch and grab the remote control. Turning on the tv you continue to walk into the kitchen.

Your kitchen is pretty nice though, black tiles decorating the wall along with white and gray cabinets. As a matter of fact you decorated your place only with monochrome colors, to the point where even your dishes match the look you're going for. The plants that are widespread throughout the apartment finishes the look with a splash of green color.

To be honest, you've been meaning to change the color scheme but you're either are too lazy or too busy to do so. Maybe its cause you've gotten older but often times the colors make you feel alienating, kind of the same feeling you get when you enter an apple store. Future-esque but not homely or welcoming.

Opening the refrigerator you groan at the sight, slamming the fridge shut you notice the post on note. ''buy groceries!'' it says in bright red cursive letters. Great, whats the point of using post on notes when you don't even see them cause apparently now you're blind.

Grimacing your reach over to the house phone hanging on the wall corner that separates the kitchen and living room, and dial the pizzeria's number. The phone rings a few times until it clicks

‘’Dio's pizzeria how can i help you?’’ asks a lazy voice.

You give them your order and address and they tell you that the pizza should arrive in thirty minutes. Hanging up the phone you walk out of the kitchen, down the hallway into your room.

Your bedroom just like the rest of the apartment is decked out in the same monochromic colors , even your sheets and pillows match. Hanging on your wall are cute pictures of your college friends that you try to meet up at least once a week. Overall the room has a nice feeling to it but if the pictures weren't there no one could tell that this room belongs to you.

Putting the light on you stop in your tracks. Something is off, you cant really pin point what but it feels like someone was in your bedroom when you weren't home. Looking at the pictures on the wall you see that they're all intact and untouched. Walking towards the desk you carefully look at the papers and other items, wondering if you truly left your desk this disorganized.

With quiet steps you walk to the closet and take out your pajamas and scurry out of the room. ''What is this , final destination?' you mutter under your breath and enter the bathroom. Feeling like someone is watching you quickly undress and jump into the shower.

After serenading several songs you remember that the pizza should be arriving any minute you jump out of the shower and dry yourself with a fluffy towel you bought a few months ago. As you're wrapping the towel around your head you hear the doorbell ring so you walk out of the bathroom, take your purse out of the bag that you left in the hallway and open the door.

In front of you stands a boy that looks like he's in his early twenties. Tall, with honey dipped tan skin and Dark hair that reaches the tip of his chin. A face that's so flawless you're sure he was sculpted by god himself. Yet the longer you stare at him the more its off putting. Kind of like how the longer you look into the mirror the more grotesque you think the reflection has become. His eyes is what makes the alarm bells ring in your head. They're big and dark but soulless to the point where for a second you think a other worldly being stands in front of you.

‘’One prosciutto e funghi pizza for Y/n?’’ He asks his voice deep and you notice that his canines are unusually pointy.

‘’Thats me’’ you answer , take the pizza. As you're handing him the money, your finger tips graze the palm of his cold hand a electric shock goes through your body.

‘’Always be careful to not touch supernatural beings’’ a vague memory of an old woman flashes through your head and you quickly retract your hand, clutching it against your chest.

The delivery boy who stiffed up at the skin contact, hastily takes a step back, runs his fingers through his hair , acting nonchalant but his eyes are still wide. ''Have a nice day'' he says, his smile even more menacing than before and it sends a shiver up your spine.

You nod slowly, and he turns around and leaves. Your eyes following his back until he walks down the stairs and you cant see him anymore , before you walk back into your home and close the door. Walking into the living room you put the pizza on the small table by the couch and you sit down.

‘’Its just paranoia’’ you mutter, reach over and take a piece out of the carton. ''Is it though? you ask yourself while biting into the food. You're not sure why you even had such a flashback earlier and why your grandma was in it. As much as you know she's was an ordinary old sweet lady who loved spoiling her grandchild, though there is a big junk of your memory missing due to an incident that happened when you were a child.

Shaking your head you decide to worry about it when the time comes and try to enjoy the rest of the night.

‘’How could you do this to me?’’ the woman on tv cries and you scrunch your nose. The acting is horrible, similar to how the late eighties movie were, over dramatic with a lousy plot and weird sense of humor. Taking the remote control, you take a bite off the pizza and switch the channel.

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

Annoyed Yoongi sits in the waiting room, tapping his fingers against his thigh rhythmically. He's only here because his advisor- Jimin basically blackmailed him to go to therapy, which in yoongi's eyes is ridiculous. As a matter of fact , Yoongi had rolled his eyes when jimin came up with the proposition. He doesn't need therapy he's perfectly fine but according to Jimin ,yoongi is brash, pompous and needs a ''reality'' check. Yoongi thinks jimin is only saying that because of the way he treats his employees. Sure he's a hard-to- please- boss and likes to nitpick at everything, he is satan after all but he has seen human's who were in his position treat their employees way worse than he does.

Yet here he is, sitting in the waiting room in a uncomfortable chair while starring at the white eggshell wall that's decorated with various framed pop art posters. The atmosphere heavy reminding yoongi of the dread of lost souls and he wants to smack his head against the wall. The tapping on his thigh speeds up , making the small thumping sound echo through the room and the man sitting opposite of yoongi shoots hime a glare. Before yoongi can retaliate the door opens and you step into the room.

‘’Min Yoongi?’’

Yoongi stand up and fixes his blazer and walks towards you.

The first thing you notice about the Yoongi is the suit he's wearing. The red is so bright it makes you want to gauge your eyes out, you cant fathom for the life of you why someone would wear that color but then again secretary Kim did tell you that the person on the phone was strange. The suit though fits his form quite and goes well with the white turtleneck that he's wearing underneath the blazer.

‘’That's me’’Yoongi replies, stretching out his hand.

‘’Y/n’’ you take his hand into yours and shake it briefly. The second thing you notice is how deep yet slightly nasal his voice is, which matches his image impeccably.

‘’Please follow me’’ you say and turn around to walk down the hallway with yoongi on your heel. Opening your office door you step aside and let him enter the room first. ‘’Would you like something to drink?’’ you ask walking over to the coffee machine standing on top of the gray table thats by the wall.

‘’Coffee, black’’ Yoongi curtly answers, while looking around the room before sitting down on the arm chair.

Yoongi feels uncomfortable. Theres this weird feeling in his gut that started the moment his skin touched yours and that feeling only got stronger when he walked into your office. Your office looks like any normal office would look, white walls also decorated with the same overrated pop art posters that every college student that majors in art surely has hanging in their room. Gray armchairs and a plant by your desk that looks like its five minutes away from dying. Yoongi isn't sure if the plant is supposed to be like that or if you're really just careless and if the latter is the case, does that mean you care about your clients the same way as that plant?

‘’Here’’ you speak up ripping yoongi out of his thoughts, putting the mug on the small table in front of him before taking a seat opposite of yoongi.

Yoongi was surprised earlier when you greeted him. He expected his therapist to be an older woman in her fifties who had a kind grandmother face and a soft voice. Instead he was met with you, who stood as if you were being pulled up by the roots of your hair, wearing black from head to toe with your hair pulled into a tight ponytail and oval glasses sitting on top of your nose. Which made you look more like the grim reaper instead of a professional who listens and helps people coping being alive. Even know as you're sitting in front of him, you're posture is straight as a wooden board which adds an air of elegance to your being but in yoongi's eyes you look prudish and stern.

‘’Tell me why you're here’’ you say looking up from your notebook where you wrote down todays date and his name.

Picking the cup up Yoongi takes a sip before sighing deeply ''i was forced to be here''

That doesn't surprise you, his whole body language and vibe screams that he doesn't want to be here at all and you're sure he's doing that on purpose. ‘’Forced? by who?’’

‘’By my advisor’’ Yoongi answers ‘’he thinks i have behavioral issues’’, he makes air quotes. ‘’Which is complete bullshit considering we work in hell and compared to the human bosses who are way more corrupted that we demons are i'm actually quite lenient’’

You stop writing on your notebook and blink at him multiples times. The fact that he even said that whole speech with a straight face makes you think you dissociated for a second. Raising your eyebrows slightly you continue to write.

calls workplace hell and refers to coworkers as demons. advisor sent him to counseling.

‘’I assume then that you haven't seen a therapist or counselor before?’’ you ask and cross your legs.

‘’correct’’ Yoongi sighs ‘’i'm going to be honest i'm not exactly expecting much from this i'm only here cause of my advisor who otherwise would get angry it wouldn't surprise me if he ratted me out to the angels’’

That the action of someone nonchalantly shrugging their shoulders could look so arrogantly never occurred to you until you met him. Nodding your head you continue to ask

‘’What do you see as being the biggest problem?’’

‘’Work’’ Yoongi answers so fast the words practically fly out of his mouth. ‘’Some would say its me but its the workers. We're not understaffed but the workers love lazying around and gossip. And hiring new people would take up too much time considering that they'd need training and honestly i don’t have the patience cause they're more likely to make mistakes and i hate mistakes. he stresses the word hate.

likes consistency ,seems very particular about surroundings.

‘’What exactly is your occupation?’’

‘’I thought you humans knew what we demons do’’ Yoongi states taking another sip of the coffee. ‘’Considering that mankind worship god and its ways, though the holy scriptures aren't accurate at all i mean they were written by humans , which by the way half of those people didn't even exist, and then translated into other languages over decades which means most of what was originally written is lost in translation.’’

If this were The Office this would be the scene where you'd blankly stare into the camera for a few seconds but it isn't so you just choose to stay quiet.

‘’But you know what's ridiculous?’’ Yoongi continues ‘’i got casted out , told that i will never return to heaven, which yeah was shitty but the real trauma is how when i fell i was immense pain cause my wings started to burn off and my wings were my pride you know. Just cause i didn't agree with their vision, and now i constantly have gods followers on my ass, acting like I'm the bad one when in actuality I'm just doing my job and its those unemployed demons that wreck havoc in the human world.’’

Refers to parental figure as god, meaning that person is the authorial person in the household. overall cites and talks about the bible, could mean the household is extremely religious.. Says angels are after him and the coworkers, possibly trying to tarnish the company's name. Has implied that he is satan, possible the black sheep of the family.

‘’I thought satan is responsible for all demons’’ you decide to humor him.

‘’Don't be silly human' Yoongi waves dismissively his hand ‘’that would make me a god, which i'm not. To be a god i'd need to have a lot more followers and willing sacrifices which i honestly don't have the time for cause you humans are dying at an alarming rate and we have to overwork ourselves.’’ He sends you a nasty glare you decide to ignore.

‘’What would be the solution?’’ you look up from your notes

‘’if they stop fucking misplacing the documents, pens and everything else. Theres a manual where it specifically states that if you put documents on my table it has to be on the right side four centimeters away from the left and three centimeters from the part of the desk thats the closest to you .’’ he rubs his temples with furrowed brows.

‘’Why those numbers specifically?’’

‘’because thats the most efficient way’’ Yoongi answers with a tone that makes you think you asked the world's dumbest question.

‘’They stress me out so much to the point where i feel like screaming every time i see their faces, sometimes i feel like they're doing this on purpose cause when my advisor orders them to do something they'll happily comply. im sure its because of his looks’’ he mutters the last part.

gets stressed out to the point of exhaustion if he doesn't have full control of his environment.

‘’What positive changes would you like to see happen in your life?’’

‘’this is going to sound crazy since i'm satan’’ Yoongi sighs deeply and stares at the dying plant behind you ''but i want things to be more peaceful and right now hell is in utter chaos, as i mentioned earlier a lot of demons are not working, not due that there aren't any jobs but because they still have that old mindset that their only mission in life is to kill humans. Don't get me wrong i could care less about you guys but its my company that has to overwork itself cause of it’’

You raise your eyebrows ‘’don't souls go to hell cause they used to be a sinner?’’

Yoongi scoffs and rolls his eyes ‘’ hell is just another word for the underworld. Souls come down to us to get judgment of their previous life and if they were a goodie two shoes they get sent to heaven by following the holy light that shines down when the gates open up. Though i am glad my advisor was able to negotiate with the angels to let them into heaven cause it was getting overcrowded down there and all the demons we sent up to bring the souls were brutally attacked by them’’

For someone who claims to hate humankind yoongi sure likes and takes his time to explain to you how hell really works. As if you're going to correct anyones assumptions about hell , which by the way you don’t believe that he's satan, there is no actual evidence that demons exist. So you decided a long time ago that you wont believe in such folklore.

You stare at the paper in your lap for a few seconds, raking your brain on what to write down of what he just told you, since you cant compare it to anything logical. The only explanation on why the ''angel's '' would attack yoongi's worker would be that he works in the shady field, you know, like being a drug lord or anything else that isn't accepted in society.

‘’you know’’ you speak up, deciding to document that last part later when you have time to think everything through. ‘’although you are not a god, you're still the most powerful demon in the underworld no?’’

‘’Not exactly, after i fell i became one of the ten kings of hell, mostly because i was the one who contributed the most when it came to establish the underworld. Though i am the one who makes the final decision hence why i get the most workload.’’

‘’hm’’ you hum ‘’it sounds like the reason why you're not being listened to is because you haven't clearly established the hierarchy in your environment’’

‘’I clearly have but they don't-’’

‘’Being the boss does not mean you scream or fuss at your subordinates, but that you reward them for their good work and fire them if it needs to be done’’ you give him an intense look. ‘’With you lashing out shows that you have time to be emotional which means theres time to dilly dally’’

‘’Their reward is a good paycheck’’ Yoongi counters clasping his hands ‘’there are no holidays for us because you humans die whenever its convenient and theres a special regiment that needs to be followed for the souls to either get reincarnated or go to heaven. And firing my workers is out of question’’

‘’Then what about proposing the idea to the others ,of making a trainee department where you recruit people who want or are desperate for money since you said the paycheck is hefty. It would benefit you in the way that , the trainee's can see what working in your department would be like and then decide if they want to stay or not, and if they stay your workload will sink significantly’’

Yoongi touches his lips for a few times, lost in his thoughts trying to process what you said before he snaps his fingers and points it at you. ‘’Human that is actually a very good idea, do you want to work for me?’’

A feeling similar to disgust washes over you with the way he said human, as if you're lower than him, lower than an insect even and your first instinct is to grimace. Instead you smile, squinting your eyes ever so slightly to give the illusion that the expression is real. ‘’No thank you i'm quite content with my job’’ you politely refuse.

‘’Thats a shame’’ Yoongi shrugs his shoulders ‘’you would fit into the underworld quite well’’

You're not sure if that is a compliment of it he's telling you that you're demonic. Either way you decide to ignore his statement and close the file in your lap. ‘’The session will end in five minutes , but before that i want to ask you, how do you feel now?’’

''Better'' Yoongi answers ‘’less stressed as when i walked in which surprises me , you're quite good i wouldn't mind the weekly sessions.’’

‘’Thank you’’ you answer ‘’do you have any questions?’’

‘’everything i tell you is confidential right?’’

‘’Yes, unless you've killed someone or are threatening general public i would have to report you but otherwise no one knows anything, even your advisor wont get told what happened in here’’ you reply.

‘’i wouldn't say that’’ Yoongi hums ‘’he has quite a way with words and is able to persuade anyone’’

‘’we'll have to see’’ you retort and take your planner from the small table ‘’is next week on thursday at four o'clock in the afternoon good for you?’’

‘’Yes’’ Yoongi answers as he's looking at the schedule on his phone.

‘’Good’’ you close the planner ‘’before you go i want you do this every time you feel like your anger and stress is getting to you, take deep breaths and slowly count to ten, that should help you calm down a little and think rationally, well talk on how effective it was next week then’’

Yoongi nods and you stand up, walks towards the door and open it. As you turn around to face him you see him standing just a few feet away from the couch starring out of the window, his brows furrowed and his lips tight. He turns around and walks towards you in long strides an hint of annoyance on his face.

‘’I'll see you next week then’’ you stretch out your hand ‘’if something should come up and you’re not able to come please do call and cancel a day before the appointment’’

''Alright '' Yoongi replies and takes your outstretched hand into his

When Yoongi's hand touch your skin your earlier suspicions are confirmed. His hand are icy cold to the point that it feels like your skin is burning at the mere contact. Which is worrying because the only time a human ever has a temperature that low is when they're dying of hypothermia yet the man in front of you looks like he has drank out of the fountain of youth.

He grips your hand tighter and says in a low voice ‘’be careful in the next few days’’

Not sure if he's warning or threatening you, you blankly stare at him before nodding silently and Yoongi lets go of your hand. Gives you one last glance before he walks out of the room and you close the door. Walking over to your desk you plump into the chair and sigh deeply, you have no idea what that so called warning is about, yet another part of your brain instantly goes to how you thought your apartment was broken in a few days ago. But how can Yoongi even know about that, considering the fact that you've just met an hour ago unless the whole thing about him being satan is actually true.

You shake your head, there is no way Yoongi is satan, sure he looks devilishly good despite the ugly red highlighter colored type of suit he was wearing and the black hair compliments his skin color impeccably. But you're also pretty sure the overlord would have more blood thirst and wouldn't be so merciful like yoongi ,who took his sweet time to explain details about hell to you. Almost coming off like that one kid at a slumber party who corrects the other kids when they state they had fun today , saying since its past twelve it technically ''tomorrow'' hence why they had ''fun yesterday''

Basically a kill joy.

Tapping the pen against the desk for a few times you snort out loud before putting the utensil down. Its out of question that demons and otherworldly beings are real, so for now in your eyes yoongi's using religion as metaphor for his own life.

Opening the laptop you wait for it to start up so that you can write about the session. After around twenty minutes of you trying to find the right words for the report without making it seem like you made the whole thing up ,you notice the time and shut off your laptop. Looking out of the window you notice that the sky is already dark and snowflakes are falling from the sky.

‘’I hope Christmas comes soon’’ you murmur with a small smile before turning around and taking your jacket from the chair. After wrapping the scarf around your neck and picking up your bag you walk towards the door, shut the light off and exit the room.

Christmas has a special place in your heart. Until you were fourteen you had never experienced Christmas, it was something you'd only see on tv and thats was rarely cause your mom almost never paid the electricity bill. And the only time you did was when you were seven, because your grandmother came and took you away from your delirious mother. Though you cant remember it because you had an accident that was severe enough to wipe out your memories of that entire winter.

After you started working as a waitress and the girls who worked there found out that you never celebrated the holiday they made it a tradition to throw a party after work. Everyone would bring food , cake and gifts and would just have a jolly time. And till to this day you continue on with that tradition.

‘’Im clocking out’’ You say as you arrive at the reception to just to find it empty. Confused you look around until you see secretary Kim coming out of the break room with a cup of coffee.

‘’See you on monday’’ he says in his soothing deep voice and holds the cup higher in salutations. You give him a bright smile and walk out of the praxis.

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

The reason why you're standing in the middle of the grocery store is because you still haven't bought food. You don't even have an excuse for it, sure technically your'e now seen as an adult but your mind is still that of an nineteen year old college student who doesn't know what budgeting is. Its pure laziness, the mere thought of having to cook and then wash the pots and pans has you groaning for eternity. Hence why your basket is filled with food that can be cooked under fifteen minutes, such as ramen, bread ,cheese, all types of sweets and of course beer.

The convenient store is relatively empty, besides you there are two other people in it one which is the cashier. Mariya takeuchi's song plays in the background but its not the same melody as you remember it. Its funkier than usual which gives the whole store a weird vibe to it. Stores at night are generally a place where it seems like reality is altered. you know the same way how when you're at your friends house and wake up in the middle of the night and everything just seems like its from another dimension? exactly that.

Putting the last chocolate bar into your basket you walk towards where the cashier is located. The cashier is a tall girl who has turquoise blue hair and a mole underneath her left eye. Her whole demeanor is screaming that she's bored but she doesn't attempt to make small talk with you which is something you appreciate. After paying you bid her goodbye and walk out of the store only to bump into someone.

‘’oh shit sorry’’ you aplogize and take a step back. The person you notice, is a male with a black hoodie on, his eyes weirdly soulless as he glances at you not even bothering to give you a reply yet for unknown reasons the hairs on your neck raise and you get goosebumps. Scurrying across the parking lot you open your car door and put the bags into the passengers seat. A feeling of paranoia washes over you and you quickly get into the car.

‘’be careful- '' yoongi's voice rings in your ear and you shake your head.

‘’Im starting to loose my damn marbles’’ you murmur, set the gear into reverse and back out of your spot before driving out of the parking lot , towards home. no music is playing because you feel like if it was on you'd miss clues on if someone is following you, also you can concentrate better that way. Thankfully it doesn't take too long for you to arrive home and you park your car into the spot that was given to you by the landlord of the housing complex.

You tighten the scarf around your neck because the cold wind picks up. Heave your purse over your shoulder as you take the two bags full of food, close the door and lock it before walking up to the building your apartment is in. As you climb up the stairs you notice how the closer you get to your apartment the louder the thumping sound is.

Its your neighbors. Two boys who love to party constantly, which is really annoying even though they're always very polite to you and sometimes when the partying gets too much, they leave you a token of gratitude for not calling the police on them. Its not all that bad though a pair of ear plugs can solve the problem pretty quick and once you're asleep its like you're dead anyways, well unless someone enters your room thats when you wake up in 0000.3 seconds.

You unlock your apartment door and get inside, take off your shoes and walk into the kitchen. You set the bags on the counter, rip the post it note from the fridge and throw it into the garbage can. You leave one ramen on the counter while you put the food into the cupboard, take a small pot and fill it with water before turning on the stove and walk out the kitchen towards your bedroom.

Putting on the light you notice that your room actually looks untouched and your sigh relieved. You get out of your clothes, carelessly throwing the on the floor and put your pajama on, which of course are black. You tie your hair into a bun, take your phone and walk back into the living room. Put on the television and realize that the water should be boiling by now.

you smile slightly when you see the water is indeed boiling, kind of proud at how accurate your timing is but thats no feat for someone who cooks ramen constantly. Literally after ten minutes the food is cooked and you put water into the pan to ‘’let it soak’’ knowing well that you’re using that an excuse to just not have to wash it now. Taking the bowl you walk over to the living room where you sit on the couch and watch the variety show thats playing on tv.

Chuckling at the funny reactions of the idols you put the now empty bowl on the small table in front of you and lay down on the couch, your hand underneath the pillow. This position , combined with your full stomach and the temperature of the living room has you growing tired and its just takes a few seconds before you fall asleep.

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

The loud banging on the door wakes you up and alarmed you jump up from the couch. Looking at the clock you see that its eight in the morning and grumble ‘’Who the hell has the nerve to disturb me at ass o clock on a saturday morning somebody better be dying’’

You walk up to the door , open it and see two police officers , whose annoyed expression disappears , in front of you.

‘’ yes?’’ you ask

‘’ma’am we’d like to question you on where you were yesterday when the murder happened next door‘’

#bts x reader #kkreationsnet #kpopwritingnet #bangtanbuds #prettyboysnetwork #kpop x reader #bts scenario #bts scenarios #min yoongi x reader #kim namjoon x reader #kim taehyung x reader #kim seokjin x reader #jungkook x reader #jung hoseok x reader #park jimin x reader #demon au

554 notes · View notes