#Not technically but every HABIT post I ever see has him tagged so sure whatever

[harpoonsnotspoons]

Fucking freak...

[ask-purpled-and-blued]

Blued

This was not how he expected his afternoon to go.

It started out normal enough. With him making sure the caves around Area 51 were mob-proofed so he could start planning out some expansions.

He didn’t have a lot planned and wasn’t aware of any ongoing conflicts. So it came as a total surprise when he looked down at chat as saw the string of death messages.

(—This one’s got some heavy injuries and claustrophobic stuff. It’s got some L’Manberg war events. Mind the post’s tags and reply if it needs more.—)

Poor Tubbo. He was getting wrecked by like half the people on-world.

Purpled knew that conflicts on the SMP got a little too heated at times, to the point where items despawned because they’d been ripped from inventories and left ungathered.

So he shot Tubbo a whisper asking if there was anything Tubbo was missing. He’d check his chests and give Tubbo some armor and tools, least he can do.

Tubbo_: YES PLEASE FOOD AND HARMING

He could do that. He respected Tubbo’s apparent need to avenge himself.

He had plenty of stacks of baked potatoes and he’d done a few fortress runs for blaze rods. He brewed two sets of splash Harming II before he whispered again.

Purpled: just harm II?

Tubbo_: whatever you can spare us big man.

Us? Purpled checked the tab list again and sure enough, four people had crossed back into the SMP.

He felt like he was starting to piece things together.

Purpled: is something going down today?

Tubbo_: yeah! Eret, Tommy, Fundy, Wilbur and I are fighting for our independance

Tubbo_: :D

Purpled: ...

Alright he knew for a fact that everyone in that group except Eret was broke as hell. His friends were about to get fucking obliterated.

...

Fuck it.

Purpled: I‘ll throw in some heal II and gapples if you can wait for them.

Tubbo_: I’ll come by through the sewers when they’re ready

—

If Purpled was being honest, he didn’t know if helping his friends oppose Dream was the best idea.

That being said, he did not move from where he sat perched on a chest in his section of the sewers.

Said chest was filled with food, healing II and harming II pots, blocks, enderpearls, clean bows and every other thing that Tubbo texted him frantically that they were running low on.

At the moment they were apparently being fired on and were taking cover in Tommy’s- in the Embassy.

When Purpled saw that message he offered to take the sewers to the Embassy and do a drop-off. Tubbo agreed.

So now Purpled’s running through the sewers with a bunch of items and clad in full enchanted netherite. Having left his pets sealed in Area 51 with his valuables and nonessential tools.

He’s climbing up the ladder and pulling the chest up behind him, only to almost get shot in the face by Eret.

“No no no no no! Purpled’s with us and he’s got us stuff!”

Tubbo’s pulls Eret back and helps Purpled pull the chest up.

“What a way to welcome an ally.”

“You’re helping us?” Wilbur asks with a reasonable amount of suspicion.

“Won’t pretend that I believe in whatever you’re fighting for but at least trust that I’m here for Tubbo.”

“I’m vouching for him. He’s trustworthy!”

There’s still mistrust but he didn’t expect them to clap him on the back and ask for his input. The nod he gets from Wilbur and the acceptance from Tommy are better than nothing.

—

He’s with Tommy and Tubbo as they try to snipe Dream’s forces from Punz’s tower. He’d been hesitant to follow Tommy’s lead but it was the right call. They were untouchable at this height.

Seeing Dream, George, Punz, and Sapnap all retreat was a hell of a boost to moral.

—

He wanted to ask why the fuck Eret hadn’t just given them the gear up front instead of equipping it mid-war, but benefit of the doubt. Maybe he thought they’d be better equipped.

Though if they had then Purpled might not be here crouching down these stairs behind Tommy.

It was a bit of a squeeze to get down there and the room itself a was bit crowded.

Purpled took a couple steps back when he didn’t see his name on a chest to give everyone else some room-

“What’s this button do?”

And was slammed between a block and the wall as a piston extended

There’s a moment where it’s just pain, his friends shouting, and his communicator ringing out what can only be death messages.

Then the piston retracts, Purpled splashes himself with Heal II, and he slams his netherite pick through the blocks behind him.

Eret’s speaking, everyone’s shouting through an open VC. He can hear Tommy’s words over the whoops of victory.

And as he splashes down a second Heal II and a Speed II, he hears the exact moment of silence when they realize he survived.

He doesn’t stick around to let them be five for five.

He tears up the stairs and drops a water bucket behind him.

He needs to get to the surface. He needs to stop tripping on the steps. He needs to stop shaking.

He needs fresh air he needs space he needs to breathe.

And he manages to claw his way out of the staircase, slams blocks down behind him even if he can’t tell if they’re following.

He lays there with his back on the grass and his aching chest to the sky. The healing has mended him enough to function but he takes out a third bottle. Rolls over onto his stomach so that he can try and sit up enough to drink this one and heal his insides some more.

Then there’s someone standing over him pointing a stone axe in his face.

“Did you know?”

He knows it’s Tommy before he even sees it’s Tommy.

“Are you another fucking traitor?”

Purpled doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he ignores the axe in his face and starts swallowing as much of the potion as he can.

“Tommy, Tommy for Christ’s sake look at him and tell me you think he’s a traitor. He looks like he got ran over by the camarvan.”

He’s well enough to actually sit up and look at himself.

His armor’s majorly cracked all over, some bits he can feel poking against his skin. His hands are all sorts of fucked up from how he pulled himself along.

His potions are top notch though, because he feels almost good as new.

“You shoulda seen the wall, it ended up worse off than I did after that.” Is the best he can come up with at the moment.

Tubbo helps him up and Tommy goes to shout at Eret and Dream who rang a VC.

—

It’s all so quick after that.

An ultimatum, explosions, confusion.

Purpled trying not to stumble as Tubbo pulls him along a narrow hallway to Tommy’s bunker.

Purpled trying to breathe normally as Tommy plays a music disk in the tiny bunker and Wilbur talks about surrender. He’s not sure if he’s winded or if there really just isn’t enough air in the room.

Negotiations, a duel, Tommy’s loss.

Being led back to the walls as Wilbur mourned and Eret got insulted. Fundy reading poetry.

—

His heart’s not in it when Tommy reveals what he did. When they’re scrambling for a book and quill and Wilbur’s elects himself.

But he laughs with the rest as Wilbur dunks on Dream in an official document.

As he gets promised a medal and a title of honor for his efforts during the war and is passed the book to sign.

It doesn’t feel like a victory, both because it technically isn’t and because he’s not sure what he’s won.

He has a heart to heart with Tommy before he walks off with Tubbo. Picks himself up, salutes his president and goes to bring DogChamp back up to the UFO and seal it so he can sleep for twelve hours.

—

Life is good, after that.

He works on his base, hangs out with the other L’Manberg people, starts a potion stockpile.

Oh, there’s that.

He makes it a habit to keep himself armed and prepared even if he doesn’t look it. People are constantly provoking each other even if it’s technically a time of peace, and he’d prefer not to be caught off guard ever again.

And he also ended up getting that medal Wilbur promised him. A “Purpled Heart” given for his material contributions to the war efforts and for being heavily wounded in battle.

He’d rather be able to strip mine again, but he accepted the medal anyways.

—

There’s no way he could’ve known what this country would do to itself in the coming months.

A couple acts of kindness and a show of loyalty did not sign him up for that, and yet he’d face it anyways.

They all would.

He doesn’t know if it was meant to be, but some nights he sure as fuck wishes it never was.

He doesn’t dramatically declare that in a room with a button, though. At least he’s got that on them.

[be-ready-when-i-say-go]

A Little Bit Like Home

You moving to school has been tougher than Calum would like to admit but there are some moments that make it easier to bear, there are small moments where it’s not so bad. 

A continuation of these two blurbs (Blurb 1 and Blurb 2) Again it’s hella self indulgent. Inspired what really happened to me in my DnD campaign, see this post.  

**Contains spoilers for the Waterdeep Heist from Dungeons & Dragons if you are currently playing that module!!!**

Enjoy my masterlist!

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___________

“Can I make a perception check on the walls? See if there’s anything else funky in this room?” you ask, clicking over in your browser tab to the dice roller. The DM allows you to make that call and you click on the d20. 

“Your the only one rolling well on those things tonight,” one member of your party, playing an Orc sent out to learn magic and getting packed in with your ragtag group, notes after their failed attempt to pick the lock. You managed to pick that that too, but you chalk it up to you being a Drow Rogue and lock picking being one of your skills. 

“18,” you call out, looking back at your character sheet to make sure you’ve done the math correctly. 

“18?” The DM asks, just to be sure. You nod. “Okay, so you look around the room and there’s not really anything worth noting besides some dirt and blood. But no traps, no buttons in this room.”

“This room,” the entire party echoes laughing. The six of you have just survived barely a lightning trap. Which you still refuse to admit to setting up, but it was definitely you since as the marching order had you in front. 

“We’re going to have to go back to that mimic room,” the paladin of your group declares. Your party was warned that the room at the start of your adventure in this hell of a magic maze could be a trap and a mimic could be in the depths of it. But there was a chest still yet to be opened. However, you took the advice of your Orc and backed out of that room to avoid a fight just yet. 

Your previous encounters in other rooms leaving some of your party is better shape than others. This early in your adventure together the five of you didn’t really want to risk loosing anyone just yet. Lightening and your pirates love of ale seemed to be your only foe at the moment. 

“We should maybe just see what’s in here first,” Calum, playing as a Druid, counters. “Though it seems like if we find yet another key to a door that’s already been picked, it’s might be useless.” 

You know the tease is directed at you. “Hey, look here buddy, I will not hesitate to shoot a quiver into your ass. I see a lock I’m going to pick it,” you defend. 

“Besides,” your party’s pirate starts, “we’ve ducked a lot of rooms afraid of getting into another fight. If they pick a lock or two and we find the key later, at least we can add to the Bard’s collection.”

“Thank you,” you laugh. 

Soon your party’s able to direct their attention back on the adventure and magic maze you’ve found yourself in. You and Calum end up smashing mirrors in a room to avoid any sort of magic in them that would cause your party to fight your soul doubles. This leads to a five minute debate of how to leave said room that didn’t involve shoving the unicorn that your party was tasked with finding up someone’s ass due to a riddle unveiled, Everything you see is mine.

“Wait,” you say, laughing at the argument about who can fit the unicorn into their mouth. It was deemed to be more dignified. Your pirate waits outside the room, still naked thanks to the magic that rips all the clothes, weapons, and armor off of anyone that attempts to leave the room. “Everything you see is mine. If the mirrors are smashed, then nothing can be seen right?”

“No, shards can be face up, so technically things can be seen,” the party’s Bard counters. 

“No, no, you’re onto to something,” the pirate starts. 

“Oh my god, we’re so fucking dumb,” the orc hollers. “Someone cover their eyes. You means us. Anything we can see can’t leave the room.”

Thankfully, you’re still dressed having only attempted to leave the room and letting others continue with their naked escapades. “Holy shit,” you shriek as you direct to your DM how you cover your face with your hood and hold it tight around your eyes so you can’t see anything and step through the door. You’re able to cross completely clothed, swords, crossbow, and pack still in tact. 

“We’re so fucking STUPID,” you laugh. 

Calum’s giggle cuts through the speakers of your laptop. “How were we so prepared to just be fucking naked through the rest of this maze?” He directs to the DM that he redresses, having also attempted several times to brute force the magic door with no success. 

“We never speak of that,” the orc demands through their own laughter. “Never.”

The party comes to a stopping point about another hour later, saying goodbyes before leaving the Zoom meeting. Not even thirty seconds later after ending that call, an incoming FaceTime call comes from Calum. You answer it, wiping at the corner of your eyes. He’s grinning as the call finally connects. The weekend that Calum came up to visit, a friend in the cohort asked you if you’d be willing to going a beginner’s campaign. You had wanted to give the game a whirl but you knew it would be a time suck and asked if it was okay to bring someone else along too. 

After getting a yes from the DM you know you had to convince Calum to join in. It took less effort than you thought for him to join in and the two of you spent a couple hours the night before picking out your characters before you emailed the information back to the DM. Now every Saturday night you and Calum spend about three hours in a Zoom getting into all sorts of trouble. He settled easily on the Druid but spent forever trying to find an artist rendering of his character, Okolian, that felt right. Long black hair with streaks of white was a must along with a single braid as well, which he stole from your character’s look though your hair is all white. 

Slowly, it was decided that Okolian would have blue skin muscular, but not overly buff and refused to wear sleeves in order to wear leather arm bands around his biceps which could easily be mistaken for tattoos or markings of his people. Okolian prefers his staff but is also armed with a sickle and mace. The Calum touch of course was to add ferns rather than feathers. 

“I can’t believe you were going to let me be the one to have to figure out the unicorn,” Calum teases. 

“Hey, it was only six inches. Not that bad.”

He sputters his laughter. “Is that payback for calling you out for picking all the locks?”

“I would never do such a thing but maybe.” 

“Anything else on the agenda for tonight?”

“No not really. Whatever work there is out in the world, I’ll get to it tomorrow. What about you? The night’s still young.”  

Calum shrugs. “A friend was supposed to get back to me about drinks tonight,  but I haven’t heard anything yet. If he gets back within the hour or so, I’ll probably tag along but if not, it’s not a big deal. But you never did tell me about last night. How’d that go?”

You cover your face for a second, remember how many drinks were consumed the night previously. Calum laughs at the slightly panicked look that crosses your face. “There was two drinks too many past my usual limit and I felt it. Big time,” you answer. 

He’s glad to hear you getting out more. It’s in turned made him feel a bit better about getting back to his normal routine, getting dinner more with the guys or other friends. Missing you doesn’t hurt so bad anymore for Calum. He feels most often right before he’s going to bed, when he’d normally curl up into your side and open his arms wide for you to curl up into him. But it hurts less during the day. 

Getting used to the cohort and getting out a couple Friday’s in the month has helped you as well. You don’t feel so chained to your phone, don’t feel so beholden to being there for every text right away. It’s still hard when you start to cook dinner and almost reach out for a second plate still by habit. And in the morning when you’re fixing your cup of coffee your brain still wants to pull down a second cup. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you just give in because you need it. Need to let yourself sit with those feelings. 

“I’ll be sticking with cider after last night,” you tease. “Wine makes me myself too much. Never doing that again.”

Calum’s been privileged to see you wine drunk a couple of times and he can already imagine the type of trouble you nearly got yourself in. “Is your picture on the wall at the bar?”

“Not that bad, but close,” you giggle. 

“What am I going to do with you?” 

It’s just a joke but for a moment it makes you pause--what’s going to happen when you go back for break? Are things going to be different? Most of your clothes and things are still there though slowly more and more has been shipped to you. Is Duke going to remember you? Miss you too?

“Promise me the house isn’t too different?”

Calum furrows his brows, head titling just a little to the side. “What do you mean, baby?”

“Like without me, is it all going to be different when I come back?”

“It’s all pretty much the same here. Duke’s the king of the castle. Still have plenty of hoodies for you to steal and your side of the bed still misses you. I still miss you.”

“No, I--I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like I don’t want you to find ways to cope but I don’t know. What if it never feels right? Like so much has been missed that I just won’t ever fit in again?”

Calum shakes his head. “Babe, no. You still belong. Your shoes still have space in the closet. Your mugs still sit in the cabinets. There is so much of you still here--it’s how I get through the days.”

Maybe that’s what’s rough for you. There’s not much of Calum at your place. There’s none of his dirty laundry that’s halfway hanging of laundry baskets and there’s no bass rumbling and there’s snoring next to you at night. It’s all you, which is nice. But you wish you had a little bit of Calum too. 

“There’s none of you here,” you say softly. 

“I can fix that.” It’s a steady confidence, a nod of his head at statement. “Don’t you worry.”

You two steer the conversation to something lighter before you call it a night. And it’s harder to get up the next morning, to peel yourself out of the sheets. But you do it, you push up with a grunt and get your day started. Coffee, a quick bowl of cereal and fruit. You call Calum right before lunch to check in and then get back to work. 

As the days pass, the conversation the ache gets buried in some stress. However, you get a text about a package to get from the lockers at the front of your complex so shuffle down the path thinking it’s the new mattress pad you ordered. It shipped late last week but you hadn’t expected it to arrive this soon. 

As the door swings open to the locker you spy Calum’s handwritten on the label of the package. What the hell had be gone and done? You pick up the box and kick the door close with your foot before taking it back up to your apartment. Setting the box down on the kitchen counter, you find the scissors and cut into it. Right on top is a small envelope with your name scribbled across it. 

You said you didn’t have anything of me. So I knew I had to correct that. I hope they help. And a little thing from the old man, well not from him. But you’ll understand when you get to that. 

Love you. 

Digging into the box, you notice a few guitar pics, a couple extra t-shirt and then a long thin box. You pick it up, noticing it looks like a necklace. But with Calum you never can be sure. As you crack it open, you laugh, finding a gold chain staring up at you, attach to it is a tiny locket that as a paw print on it. You crack it open though and find a tiny picture of Calum and you inside of it and your eyes well with tears. It’s from your last vacation before you left for school, just two of you reclined on the beach and Calum kissing your temple. 

You draft a text to Calum. Tell Duke it feels like home now. 

[sheliesshattered]

Fic meme

I was tagged by @primarybufferpanel​ -- thank you darling, this was a ton of fun to do!

This got a bit long, so I’ll put the people I’m tagging here at the top:  @claraaoswald​, @ambitious-witch​, @someillplanetreigns​, and @junoinferno​, if you feel like playing!

My AO3, my old non-updating fanfiction.net

Fandoms I’ve made fanworks for: Oh lord. I’m only going to count fanfiction that has actually been posted, but if I tried to count up every fandom that I’d started writing for and left unfinished fragments languishing on various harddrives and googledocs over the years, it’d be at least double this list. I have two pseuds on AO3, with the fics roughly organized by fandoms that I post about on this Tumblr account (sheliesshattered) and fandoms that pre-date my time on Tumblr that I don’t post about very much (glasscannon). Putting all the fandoms together in one alphabetized list:

Black Sails - 5 Doctor Who - 8 Firefly/Serenity - 1 Game of Thrones - 1 The Hobbit - 1 The Hunger Games - 1 Iron Man - 2 Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 1 Mad Max - 2 Once Upon A Time - 1 Poldark - 3 Star Wars - 3 Twilight - 7 The West Wing - 1

Number of fics: 38, including a big unfinished epic that I never moved over from ff.n, and don’t plan to unless I finish it someday.

Fics I spent more time on: I’m not even quite sure how to measure this. I’m a slow writer, and a single story can easily hold my attention for years at a time, or be something I return to when there isn’t a newer fandom temporarily consuming me. I don’t tend to keep track of how many hours I put into a fanfic, though. The unfinished epic I mentioned is probably near the top of that list, and was a huge part of my life from 2009 to 2013. Other contenders would be the All Hands series (written with PBP!), and Truth Universally Acknowledged, particularly if you include all the massive world-building that went into that one. 

But really probably the one I’ve poured the most hours into, between research and writing, is a Doctor Who epic that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, called Home The Long Way ‘Round. Because I have such a habit of starting long stories and then not finishing them, I’m making myself get that one completely done before I post any of it to AO3, so I don’t have anything to show for it yet, but I’ve put a ton of time into it over the last five years or so. Hopefully someday I’ll actually get to share it. :)

Fics I spent less time on: Like I said, I’m a very slow writer, so any time I can turn out a story in a matter of days I’m just absolutely shocked. I wrote The Message over the course of about 24 hours, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever finished anything in my life ever, lol.

Longest fic: The All Hands series is sitting at 126,800 words, and PBP and I have more finished for it that we’re hoping to post soon-ish. The unfinished epic made it to almost 119,000 words before I ran out of steam. Truth Universally Acknowledged racked up about 54,000 words before my co-writer and I took a break from it, and probably triple that in world-building bibles and timelines, etc. On the works-in-progress side of things, Home The Long Way ‘Round is sitting at about 40,000 words currently and only about a third of the way done, and the For As Long As We Get series is at 21,000 words between what I’ve posted and what I’m still working on, and will definitely continue to grow.

Shortest story: 10 Seconds, at 208 words. Also one of the very first fanfics I ever finished and posted online.

Most hits: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by like a factor of 20 vs anything else I have on AO3. It’s the only time I’ve written for the main pairing in an active fandom (tho my purview in the co-writing was more on the secondary pairing), and that translated to a stupidly large number of hits. Fanfiction.net doesn’t count hits the same way, but the unfinished epic is sitting at about 3500 favs.

Most kudos: Setting The Stuns’ls, the first in the All Hands series -- which is SHOCKING considering that’s a tiny rowboat of a fandom, for a non-canon background pairing that has literally about 30 seconds of shared screentime, and the two romantic leads don’t so much as kiss over the course of 94,000 words (longing looks, significant hand-touches, mutual pining, definitely, but kissing, not so much).

Most bookmarks: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by a long shot.

Fic you want to rewrite or expand: I don’t tend to edit a story once it’s been posted, beyond correcting a typo or adding a missed word. Once it’s published, it’s finished and I don’t change it significantly. I do have quite a few (so, so many) unfinished stories that I would love to finish up at some point.

Total words combined: Counting only published fics, including the unfinished epic (and a companion piece for it) that lives only on ff.n, I’m currently at 376,542 words total.

Fav fic you wrote: How can you make me choose between my children like this, honestly?? Siiiigh. I’m with PBP, whatever I’m working on currently is usually my favorite. I’m having a ton of fun with For As Long As We Get, and can’t wait to publish the next part of that, hopefully sometime this month. I’m incredibly proud of All Hands, and that occupied such a specific time in my life that I’ll always think of it fondly. I’m exceptionally happy with the character voices and use of language in both Breathe Again and Upon This Rock Will I Break Myself, Until It Shows Me Your Beloved Face, and tend to feel like they don’t get enough love vs how much I love them. But my one true favorite is and will always be Home The Long Way ‘Round, and hopefully I’ll actually be able to finish it and post it someday.

Share a bit of your WIP or idea if you have anything planned: Again, how can I possibly choose just one?? Even just within the Doctor Who fandom, I currently have more than half a dozen stories actively in progress. But since I’ve talked it up so much without being able to link to it at all, and just declared it my all-time fav, I’m going to break one of my own rules and post the whole first chapter (eek!) of Home The Long Way ‘Round behind a read more:

Chapter 1: Orange Dreams

The sound of the wind is whispering in your head Can you feel it coming back? Through the warmth, through the cold, keep running ‘til we’re there. We're coming home now, we’re coming home now. —Home, Dotan

 The winds shrieked and howled around her. Clara had never been in a tornado, but she imagined it would feel like this to stand in the eye of one. She could see gusts lifting the tops off the sand dunes in shimmering ribbons, gold against the orange sky. The waves of airborne sand dissipated a few feet from her, leaving only a jagged grittiness in the air.

A woman with long blonde hair was yelling at her, her words ripped away by the wind.

“Tell me again!” Clara called back to her. “Tell me how to find home!”

“It’s just physics!” the other woman shouted, taking a step closer; they were nearly the same height. “No information can ever be lost! Start from zero, and run the math! We’ll be waiting on the other end of that equation!”

There was something Clara desperately wanted to tell this woman who looked at her with kindness behind the steel of her eyes, but in that moment, the words wouldn’t come.

“Look!” someone yelled behind Clara, and though she didn’t want to take her eyes off her, she instinctively looked up, following the line of the other person’s arm up into the gathering storm-whipped dusk. There, silhouetted against the last of the light, was the unmistakable blue boxy shape of the Doctor’s TARDIS, spinning quickly as it flew away—

Clara jerked awake, her heart hammering against her ribs, already sitting up and pulling off her sleep mask before she realised what had woken her was the sound of the TARDIS materialising in the sitting room of her flat. She took a moment to catch her breath, trying to hold onto the details of the dream. In the other room, the TARDIS’s familiar wheezing and groaning came to a stop with a soft thud, followed by the squeak of the door.

“Doctor?” Clara called, not bothering to hide the sleep nor the annoyance in her voice.

He poked his head around her bedroom doorframe, grey hair awry and his most innocent expression plastered on — which meant he knew he was waking her and felt at least marginally bad about it. “Hello, Clara. It’s Wednesday,” he said pleasantly, by way of explanation.

“Is it?” she asked, deadpan.

“Technically.”

“You do know that I have to work today, don’t you?”

“Not for another six hours. So come on, up-and-at-‘em, plenty of time to go out and save the universe and still be back in time for your morning coffee. I’ve an adventure that simply won’t keep, so come on!”

His excitement was infectious, as he must have known it would be, but Clara clung to her annoyance a little longer, mostly for show. “You have a time machine: everything can keep,” she replied, but waved him off before he could launch into a lecture on all the ways that statement was false, at least from a temporal physics standpoint. He lectured anyway, hovering outside her bedroom door as she dressed, though Clara expected it was mostly to keep himself from pacing in anticipation. She followed more than half of it, and worried a bit over how often she let him babble on about the minutiae of time travel these days.

By the time the universe had been set to rights — or at least one small blue world, home to a race of sentient seahorses, that had been facing imminent extinction in the form of a rogue exoplanet — she had nearly forgotten her unsettling, vivid dream.

--

Given the recent events on Skaro, Clara was unsurprised when bits of her experiences there began to filter into her dreams. Truthfully, she had expected to dream of it more often than she did, but in the weeks that followed, more nights than not her sleeping mind instead conjured up the strange orange landscape. She revisited that screaming sandstorm so often it became almost comforting, and before long, other dreams joined it. 

Clara was leaned against a railing on a high balcony, overlooking a large city coming alight as dusk crept on, a rusty sunset that stretched the width of the horizon bathing the world in amber. The woman with the serious eyes and long, straight blonde hair stood beside her, in the middle of a conversation, as happened so frequently in dreams.

“Alright, but what about the last stage?” Clara asked, elbows resting next to hers on the railing. “That bit depends on us actively doing something, and you know we can’t rely on my knowledge. I can’t take any of the engineering or navigation with me, so it’ll be down to him.”

“And he loves a good puzzle,” the other woman said confidently, flicking her hair over her shoulder with a twitch of her head. “He’ll want to find us. He’ll figure it out.”

“Before I die of old age? Are you sure? My mother was one of his professors at the Academy, I’ve seen his test scores. I think we need a fail-safe.”

“He did graduate,” she pointed out reasonably.

“He passed his exams with a fifty-one percent on his second attempt! No, we can’t assume he’ll have all the baseline information to even consider such a solution, much less actually accomplish the maths. We have to find some way to hide it with me,” Clara said. “Or in his TARDIS.”

The woman was silent for a long moment, her mouth set in a thoughtful line. On the distant horizon, the sun had finished its slow descent, but below them the city was coming to life, the light not so much fading as changing sources, becoming ever so slightly more golden.

“By that point in the timeline,” the blonde woman said, speaking slowly, still thinking it through, “you’ll have been exposed to his timestream and to the crack in the universe, so some of your memories will probably start leaking through. If we structure the extraction the right way, we might be able to embed a particular thought or moment into your consciousness before you go into the Schism.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Clara asked, turning her head to look at her.

“This conversation?” she suggested, laughing, her broad smile transforming her face. “No, a phrase would be cleaner, I think.”

“‘Run the math, you idiot boy’?” Clara suggested, also giggling.

“Oh yes, that’d go over well! No, if you want him to do something, call him clever. Works every time!” she laughed, leaning her shoulder into Clara’s.

“The horrid thing is that I know the temporal physics for this is part of my mother’s coursework,” Clara groaned. “If he hadn’t slept through so many of her classes, this would be a non-issue!”

“Ah, but a Doctor who was always responsible? What a boring universe that would be!”

Above them, the stars were beginning to come out, though the glare of the city obscured them. Through the haze of the dream, Clara couldn’t find any constellations she recognised. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I was the one who helped him steal that box in the first place.”

“And if he could take half a moment to remember that,” the blonde woman said seriously, “he might realise the role of his TARDIS in all of this, and start to think of the solution that way.”

“‘Run the math, you—”

“Clever.”

“—boy, and remember when you met me’?”

The other woman nodded, considering. “That could do it. Your chronodeterminate conjugation won’t work until you come into contact with at least a little regeneration energy. Assuming you choose regeneration on Trenzalore, it might start kicking in then, in plenty of time for the last stage.”

“Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me,” Clara whispered up to the distant stars, cradling her chin on her arms against the railing.

The woman mimicked her position, the golden light of the city and the silver light of the stars catching in her long pale hair. “It’s just physics,” she murmured back. “Start from zero and run the math. I’ll be waiting at the other end of that equation. We’ll all be waiting.”

--

As unsettling as they were, at least the orange-tinged dreams were better than nightmares of Daleks, of being locked in the Dalek casing, unable to convince the Doctor that it was her, it was her, she wasn’t a Dalek, she wasn’t a Dalek! Dreams of the Doctor peering at her down an eyestock, this face or the last, or any of the others buried deep in her subconscious, hearing her but not knowing her, seeing her but not saving her.

Clara grasped for that orange sky, let it carry her away in bronze sandstorms, golden cities slowly coming to life, and starlight caught in tawny hair.

--

Monday morning third period found her Year 10 students taking an essay exam while Clara doodled on a scrap piece of paper, trying to pull images and phrases out of the orange haze that had taken up residence in her slumbering hours since Skaro. There were bits that tugged at her memory, like a song she couldn’t quite place but whose tune was intensely familiar.

She’d written Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me across the top of the page, and her eyes strayed to it every few seconds. The phrase had stayed with her after she woke, and had been on the tip of her tongue ever since, as though it was a message she was meant to deliver. Below it she’d rewritten the phrase, but crossed out six words: Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me.

It was too close for comfort to the phrase that had, in retrospect, changed her life, sent her on her current course. The Maitlands’ mnemonic for their wifi password, which she’d said out loud during that first phone conversation with the Doctor, had caught his attention somehow, and it wasn’t until she jumped into his timestream that she understood. It was the last thing she’d said to him before sacrificing herself to save him. Every fragment of her scattered through his timestream had said it to him at some point as well, the words reverberating endlessly up and down his timeline.

Why her dreams would dredge it up now, and in such a strange context, Clara had no idea. They didn’t feel like random images, but more like memory-dreams, like the bits of echo lives that filtered through to her sleeping mind from time to time. It had to mean something.

Half way down the scrap paper she’d written: It’s just physics. Start from zero and run the math. Below this was the very helpful ??? and Clara idly traced over the question marks again. Physics was still a foreign language to her, despite how much the Doctor prattled on about it at times. She could bring this to him, she mused, but what was it, really? Her subconscious doing backflips in the wake of Skaro, that was all. No grand mystery to solve, no universe-altering secret code, just her. She wouldn’t bother the Doctor with this quite yet.

Besides, she was certain she could tease this apart on her own, follow the clues to their logical conclusion without his assistance. The dreams were insistent, and felt familiar, but Clara was sure she’d never dreamed of the blonde woman and the orange sky prior to Skaro. That was the next clue, then, and she jotted it down on her scrap paper. Something had changed after Skaro, something that caused her subconscious mind to dredge up these particular buried memories. 

She needed more information. Dreams about her echo lives were always stronger when she was aboard the TARDIS travelling in the Vortex, sharper and easier to remember. Maybe these orange dreams would be, too. And maybe the TARDIS itself would have some answers for her.

--

Of course, she didn’t sleep aboard the TARDIS very often, with her insistence on returning home for a week of Real Life in between their Wednesday trips. But the Doctor was never adverse to her sticking around longer than she’d planned, and in the end it didn’t take much to convince him: 

“I’ve a staff meeting at work that I’m dreading,” Clara told him on that next Wednesday, when they returned to the TARDIS after their latest outing. “So what do you say I have a little kip and then we squeeze in another adventure before you take me back to face my workday?”

She thought for a moment that the Doctor might question the change in their routine, but he seemed thrilled about the idea. When he announced that he had some tinkering with the engines he’d been putting off that should keep him occupied while she slept, Clara made an excuse to linger in the console room — “just going to finish reading this chapter, then off to bed” — until after he’d gone. Once he’d disappeared down the corridor and around a corner, she quietly set aside her book, then slipped out of her armchair and down the stairs towards the console. The rotors hummed overhead, and somehow Clara knew the TARDIS was aware of her, and was curious to see what she would do.

Carefully clearing her thoughts, she made her way over to the telepathic circuits, pushed up her sleeves, and slid her hands into the strange interface. Focus was the key, she knew, and she was nothing if not focused. She closed her eyes and held two very specific thoughts in her mind: the sand-whipped orange sky in her dreams, and the clear question, Where, please?

She hoped the please would help.

It was a long quiet moment with the circuits warmly cradling Clara’s fingers, and then something on the console beeped. Her eyes flew open and she carefully extracted her hands from the telepathic interface before pulling the monitor down to eye level.

Gallifrey the screen read in English, below an image of a startlingly red-orange planet. Immediately prior to the Time Lock.

Clara felt her heart thud painfully against her ribs as she read the brief text again. She’d been dreaming of Gallifrey? She knew she’d had an echo life on Gallifrey, but she remembered that interaction with the Doctor, and it happened indoors. She had never before dreamt of the Gallifreyan sky. Had it been buried somewhere in her subconscious with the rest of her memories of that life? Why surface now?

More confused than ever, she clicked the screen back to the desktop, unreadable Circular Gallifreyan floating idly across the display. Perhaps she should bring this up with the Doctor — it was his home world, after all. But the whole point of this had been to dream while they were in the Vortex, and if she didn’t get a move on, he’d be ready for their next adventure before she’d even managed to fall asleep. She could talk with him about it later. 

And if things worked tonight as she hoped they would, maybe she would even have a bit more information to bring to him when she did.

--

“Fire suppressant in Pod Four!” 

The frantic call was quickly overwhelmed by the sound of the requested suppressant dispensing from the ceiling. When it ended, the speaker, dressed in the dark red uniform of a technician, brushed soot and foam off his shirt. 

“It hates me, that one,” he said, nodding at the unassuming gray cylinder in the open pod in front of him. It was devoid of features, even its doors invisible now in the wake of the fire, two meters tall and one meter in diameter, just like all the other patients in the workshop. But somehow it did seem to be glowering at him.

“And it always will, stop wasting your time,” his coworker said flippantly. He was perched in front of a console on the other side of the room, deep in his own repairs. “Just get the Impossible Girl to do it, she’ll have it eating out of her hand by lunchtime.”

Their conversation occurred in the time it took Clara to enter the large oblong workshop and make her way to the far end where the two were working. “I heard that,” she said seriously, earning a guilty-looking jump from the man who had spoken most recently. She continued over to Pod Four and leaned against the outer casing, arms folded over her uniformed chest, one booted ankle crossed over the other. “What did you do now?” she demanded of the first technician.

He looked at her with wide eyes, more out of genuine fear than mock innocence, in her estimation. “I just told it—”

“You what?” she snapped, in a tone she usually reserved for misbehaving students.

He wilted a little but started again “…I told it to—”

“Told it?”

“…to give me access to the logs,” he mumbled, dropping her gaze.

“Told it to give you access to the logs?” she asked, voice harsh. “Well first off, Number Four here prefers male pronouns, respecting that might put you on better footing. And secondly, as with all TARDISes, you’ll get a lot further if you ask rather than tell.”

Behind her, the other tech scoffed. “They’re machines, we shouldn’t have to baby them like that. An access request is an access request.”

Clara turned her head to pin him with an icy glare. “Some days I cannot believe I let you work here,” she told him bluntly. “They aren’t just machines, as you very well know. Yes, there’s hardware we need to be able to work with, but that’s nothing more than a radio, at some level — only instead of radio waves, we’re using oswin waves to talk to pan-dimensional beings so large, they can’t have a physical form in this dimension. Who, with a little extra energy, can take us and an infinite amount of folded space to nearly any point in spacetime. Just think about the massive intelligences that speak to us through each of those machines!

“But more to the point,” she said, turning back to the tech still covered in soot, “you have to understand their viewpoint of the universe, and their understanding of time. A Time Lord telling a TARDIS what to do is akin to creating a fixed point in spacetime. It’s in their nature to want to avoid fixed points. Ask instead, let him find his own way ‘round to it.”

Before the beleaguered technician could reply, there came a polite knocking from the far end of the room, and Clara turned to see a soldier standing in the doorway of the workshop, looking a little out of his depth. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have a message for—” he paused to glance down at the datapad in his hand, “for the Oswin. From the Lady President. Top priority.”

Clara was moving towards him before he’d finished speaking, curious and concerned, her attention focused on the message in his hands. But the dream faded out before she reached him, her mind moving on to something more abstract, more difficult to hold on to.

When she woke in her bed aboard the TARDIS, she stared at the ceiling with fond frustration. “If that was your attempt at help,” she whispered to the ship, “then I do not understand the message.”

--

It still wasn’t enough to bring to the Doctor, she decided later that day, watching him spin around the console room in the afterglow of a successful adventure, people saved, the universe bettered. So she was dreaming of Gallifrey, what of it? Many of the details in that last dream matched up with what she remembered of her interaction with the Doctor in that life. And while he occasionally enjoyed comparing memories of all the times her echoes had met him, she’d found he wasn’t especially keen on discussing the one in which she’d helped him steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey. Susan continued to be a point of pain for the Doctor, all these centuries later, and Clara understood him well enough to know better than to pick at that particular scab.

Still. That phrase was on a loop in her head: run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me. The emphasis on their meeting hadn’t been part of the original phrase, and now she was dreaming of the life in which they’d met face to face for the first time, from the Doctor’s perspective. Clearly they would have to discuss it at some point. 

Eventually, but not yet.

[luckyspike]

The Trouble with Nocturnal Ambush Predators - A Good Omens Fanfiction

when I went to post this on AO3 (found here), turns out Crowley’s weird statue has its own tag

shit’s wild guys

anyway crowley and aziraphale make a bet about how shitty crowley’s vision is

nobody but also everybody wins, in a way

count the parks and rec references. also of course i had to make someone a doctor because i live at work i guess idk

-

Everyone was rather surprised when Brian announced that he would be going to school with plans to become a doctor. Brian, who reveled in dirt and grime, Brian that even at twenty would wear clothes more than once if he thought he could get away with it, Brian that ate food out of takeaway boxes and still left them in the sink. It was startling, the image of Brian, that Brian, standing in a sterile operating theater, scrubbed and gowned and as anti-septic as possible. And yet, this was also Brian that was always there for the Them, who would come the moment he was called if help was needed, who swallowed his pride and rebuked his filthy habits if only for a few minutes, to help his friends and save the world.

It was surprising but, the Them and friends reflected, not entirely shocking. It did make sense, in a sort of way. “I’d really like to study infectious diseases,” he said one night over dinner at the Pulsifer’s, while everyone was still gathered around the table for drinks. It was late, and Anathema had gone an hour or so ago to put her little daughter to bed, even over the child’s protests and desperate clinging to Crowley, who objected much less firmly than any self-respecting demon should have. Well enough then, he told Aziraphale, when the angel had pointed it out, that he was only still a demon in technicalities only.

Pepper looked amused. “You should see him in classes,” she said, for she was in the same class as Brian, with her sights set on psychiatry as a specialty once she’d graduated. “He sits right up front, a real gunner, and every time they ask about some weird bacteria, boom! He’s right there with the answer.” She rolled her eyes, but she was laughing, too. “I think it was all the dirt he always had on him when we were kids - he communed with the germs and they accepted him as one of their own.”

Brian flushed. “I don’t talk to germs. I just think they’re jolly interesting, is all.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Adam Young said, leaned back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head. “Someone ought to, right? Otherwise we’d all die of cholera or something.”

Aziraphale frowned into his wineglass. “Nasty illness, cholera. I remember the pump outbreak …” He shook his head, putting an end to that reverie, and smiled at Brian instead. “It is fortunate you have such an interest, Brian - the world needs doctors, certainly.”

“So what’s medical school like these days?” Crowley asked, a mirror of Adam, leaned back in his chair with his feet on the table, idly swirling the scotch in his glass. “Last time I tried was, oh, the sixteenth century I think. Thereabouts.” He winced. “Pretty sure it’s got on since then. Hopefully.”

“Oh, yes,” Brian nodded. “Yes, I’d imagine it is. Very structured now, and there’s labs and independent study and practicing skills and all kinds of things, not to mention all the lectures and exams.”

“So many,” Pepper agreed mournfully. “Endless exams.”

“D’you practice on mannequins then?” Crowley looked thoughtful. “I’d imagine they do a good bit with mannequins.”

“Some yeah. And then some - the safer stuff - we practice on each other. Y’know …” Brian thought, waving his hands vaguely. “Listening to lungs and hearts, eye tests, that kind of stuff.”

Aziraphale looked up at that. “Eye tests, you say?” He looked across the table to Crowley, a grin slowly spreading over his lips. “Crowley, dear, we could finally settle the debate -”

“No. No, we can’t.”

Newt, who had been washing up in the kitchen, returned, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Debate? What are we debating, then?”

“Nothing,” Crowley griped. “Angel has been insisting for the past decade or whatever - since you kids were eleven, however long ago that was -”

“A decade,” Wensley confirmed.

“Right, so that long, I’ve had to hear about how I really shouldn’t be driving because snakes don’t have good visual acuity.” Crowley spread his hands. “To which I make my point: if I really couldn’t see, you think I would’ve gone this long with the Bentley without crashing it? Armageddon notwithstanding, that was extenuating circumstances.”

Aziraphale muttered into his wine, “Only thanks to occasionally-gratuitous use of miracles.”

“Occasionally, angel! Occasionally doesn’t count. Not like it’s a daily occurrence.

“And anyway, my vision’s better than a human’s at a distance and in the dark,” Crowley said authoritatively. “Horizontal planes an’ light refraction and all that. Saw a film about it.”

“Listened to a film about it,” Aziraphale mumbled. Adam snorted.

“Wasn’t very nice,” the boy said, although he was grinning.

Pepper laughed a little too, while Crowley presumably glared at Aziraphale - the sunglasses, as ever, made it difficult to tell for sure. “It’d be easy enough to test, if you really wanted to.”

“I don’t.”

“Not even for a wager?” Crowley looked at Aziraphale at that, and a long silence stretched out. The Them and Newt watched, rapt, because they’d only ever seen the two supernatural entities bet on something once before, and that was whether or not either of them could, after two bottles of wine, climb to the top of the biggest tree in Hogback wood without using miracles, wings, or shapeshifting*. They had, if memory served, wagered an entire years’ worth of song-selection privileges. It was, perhaps, fortunate that neither had won the bet, because in retrospect Adam considered it a distinct possibility that an ultimatum like that could only have ended in some kind of argument**.

[* They couldn’t, but no one had paid attention to that, because the entire spectacle was so hilarious that the end result was fairly irrelevant, and Crowley turned into a snake when he thought no one was watching and cheated anyway. ]

[** Crowley and Aziraphale, after the Nahpocalypse, argued very seldom, but being that neither liked to do anything by halves, arguments were usually intensely dramatic, if short-lived. The last argument had resulted in Crowley living in the garden at Jasmine Cottage as a snake for a weekend, and only ended because Newt threatened to call animal control on him if the two didn’t reach some kind of agreement about whether or not Tom or John Barnaby was the better detective .]

The demon was tempted. “What are the stakes?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Something.” Aziraphale shrugged. “Let’s say … oh, alright. You win, and I turn a blind eye to whatever you want to do to your plants for a month before the flower show next year.”

The Them and Newt, like spectators at a chess match, breathed out. “Oh, that’s a good one,” Brian mumbled.

“But if I win, which I will, of course, then …” Aziraphale considered it. “Then …” He thought harder, and then beamed. “Then next time the neighbors want to take a week holiday, you have to take care of their smallholding by yourself .” There were assorted gasps from around the table.

Crowley barked a laugh. “Absolutely not.”

“Because you know you’d lose.”

“No, because I always end up taking care of the smallholding by myself anyway, bloody goats.” Crowley leaned his elbows onto the table and tapped his chin with steepled fingers. “Right, when I win, I’ll … or you …” He brightened. “I get to yell at my plants, and you have to let me move the statue into the living room for an entire year.”

Aziraphale groaned. “Not the statue. No, just the plants.”

“No, the statue is a part of this.”

“When I win,” Aziraphale soldiered on, pretending they were not arguing about Crowley’s infamous Angel Statue that served as a crucial part of every argument and poorly-concealed threat in their relationship, “you have to put the blasted statue in a storage unit somewhere, and you take the speakers off that abhorrent vacuum cleaner."

Crowley looked appalled. “You’d cut out DJ Roomba’s tongue for a bet?”

“I’m hardly -” He looked to Crowley, and then relented, with a sigh. “Alright. No speaker on DJ Roomba for three months. Then you can put the speakers back on.” He seized Crowley’s hand the moment the other extended it, and they shook on it, both with equal enthusiasm and smugness. “I look forward to my three months of peace.”

“Can’t wait to put my statue in the living room and kill those bloody fittonias at last.”

Pepper and Brian exchanged a look, while Adam, Newt, and Wensley were trying to hide their laughter behind their hands. “We should print a Snellen chart,” Pepper said solemnly.

“Definitely need a Snellen chart.”

Newt nodded and stood from the table. “The printer is has bluetooth. Wait for me to be outside before you connect to it.”

Once Newt had vacated the building briefly, it was easy enough to print the eye chart. Adam found a measuring tape in a cookie tin full of sewing supplies***, and they solemnly marked out the ascribed distance. “Never done one of these before,” Crowley said, sobered-up for the endeavor. “What, you’re just supposed to read it?” Aziraphale was standing over his shoulder, arms crossed, looking so smug he might as well have already won. Perhaps he had.

[*** “ Why do you need it?” Anathema had asked him as she rocked Millie to sleep on her shoulder. Adam had explained, and she had nodded. “Oh, definitely,” she’d said. “The sewing kit is still in the linen closet in the bathroom - there should be a tape measure in there. Wait until I put Millie down to bed. I want to be there.” ]

“Yeah, you cover one eye,” Pepper instructed. “Right, and then you read the smallest line you can see. Ready?”

“Easiest bet I’ve ever won,” Crowley said, motioning to Brian to flip the corkboard he’d pinned the chart to. “Right, go for it.” The board flipped, and Crowley blinked. “Well, there’s the big ‘E’ at the top.”

“Everyone knows the big E,” Anathema said, dismissive. “He said read the smallest line you can.”

“Right. Ah …” There was an uncomfortable pause. “Can I try the other eye?”

“I knew it,” Aziraphale hissed triumphantly.

Brian swallowed. “Uh. In a minute. Um. Which … which direction is the ‘E’ pointing, then?”

Crowley frowned. “Whatever way ‘E’s usually point. What kind of stupid question is that?”

The assembled humans and one angel looked at the ‘E’ which was, very clearly, printed backwards. Aziraphale raised his hands to his mouth. “Crowley, you drove us here.”

“So? Didn’t crash, did I?” He switched eyes. “Oh, yeah, the other one’s better.”

“You’re serious?” Brian asked, craning his neck around to stare at the chart. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, so what’s that mean, then?” Crowley stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked back onto his heels.

Pepper grimaced. “You’re legally blind?”

“No, that can’t be right.” He shrugged. “I drove us here, didn’t I?”

“He drove us here at 100 miles per hour,” Aziraphale added, in a mix of astonishment and terror.

“Right, and didn’t hit anything -”

“This time,” Anathema muttered under her breath.

“And made great time, all here, safe as houses.” He smirked. “Could a legally blind guy do that?”

“Maybe Daredevil,” said Newt, unhelpfully.

“Anyway,” Crowley went on, turning away to stalk across the room, past his horrified angel, and flick off the light switch, instantly plunging the room into darkness, “you’re not looking at this the right way. Move the chart around a bit, med student,” he instructed, the last part said with some disdain.

“You’re not at the line,” Brian protested.

“Just move it.” There was a whisper in the dark as the corkboard started moving in irregular figure-of-eights, Brian waving it around. Had it been light enough to see, his confusion would have been plainly evident on his face. “Right, so you got the ‘E’, which is backwards, then F, P, ah … T, O, Z, er … right, faster, okay, L, P, E, D, and then … Hm. Yeah, not sure after that.” The lights flipped back on, and Crowley put his sunglasses on. “So there.”

All the others looked from Crowley, to the eye chart, and back. “How?” Adam demanded. “You didn’t mess around -”

“Nocturnal ambush predator,” Crowley replied, as if it were obvious. “Plus, the ink’s still a bit warm from the printer. So even easier, really - I’ve got a whole extra sense, even, unless humans can see infra-red.”

“We can’t,” Wensley assured him.

“Right, so what’s that make me, then? I win, obviously.”

Aziraphale jumped in then. “Oh, no, no you don’t. Under human standards -”

“That was never specified.” Crowley grinned, and showed his teeth. Nocturnal ambush predator indeed. “Don’t try that with me, angel, remember which one of us is the demon, here.”

“It was inferred.”

“No such thing in a bet. Has to be expressly specified.” Crowley made a fist. “The fittonias die tonight.”

Since the lights had come back on, Anathema had been frowning, her lips moving occasionally as she clearly puzzled something over. She spoke, finally, slowly, and said, “But … but when you hit me with your car … it was night. And I was moving. And you were moving.” She looked at him, frowning. “You should have seen me, then.”

Crowley shrugged. “Wasn’t paying attention. No harm done, anyway.”

“Not after Aziraphale fixed me!”

Crowley scoffed. “Right. Like I said.” He pointed to Aziraphale. “I’m making an entire pop playlist for DJ Roomba just for this, angel.” He grinned even wider. “And I’m moving the statue as soon as we get home.”

“Really, dear boy, I don’t think this is as clear-cut as you say.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” Crowley pointed to Brian and Pepper. “Med students, stop me if I’m wrong -” they wouldn’t “- but the definition of visual acuity does allow for corrective devices, yes?”

“Yes,” said Pepper, while Aziraphale groused, “A moving chart and total darkness do not count as corrective devices, you know they mean glasses -”

“So there you go.” Crowley crossed the room and tore the chart from the board. “With corrective devices I’m … 20/50. So there. Not perfect but I still win.”

Aziraphale’s eyes were narrowed. “That’s cheating.”

“Again, if it’s not specified in the terms then technically it is not cheating. I’ve got books about this somewhere^, Aziraphale.” He spread his hands. “I’ve made a few bets and bargains in my life, believe it or not.”

[^ Books that were, he would not add, written in blood and bound in human skin.]

Aziraphale scowled. “You’re not putting that statue out.”

“Oh, but I am. I won the privilege.”

“You didn’t win anything.”

“Oh, but I did.” Crowley rubbed his hands together. “I definitely did. By the laws of betting.” He clapped Brian on the shoulder. “Thanks for moving the chart, kid.”

“And not letting the ink dry all the way,” Adam added under his breath with a poorly-stifled laugh.

Aziraphale was still scowling at Crowley, arms crossed over his chest. “We’ll discuss this further in the car.”

Crowley made a noise that might have been a chuckle, if there wasn’t just so much infernal glee instilled in it. “You sure you want me to drive home?” The angel’s wine glass miraculously filled itself. “Oh, so you’re going to be like that?"

“That statue is going out over my discorporated body.”

“It’s a very expensive statue.” He wilted a little under the blue fire in Aziraphale’s eyes. “Alright, we can talk about it in the car.”

The angel swallowed the wine in one gulp. “Capital.”

[haledamage]

In-Character Interview Part 2

Continuing from here, but with (post Inquisition) Cait because I couldn’t choose a favorite. Not tagging anyone new, tags are on the first post.

1. What is your name?

“Cathain Cousland Howe. You can call me Cait.”

2. Do you know why are you named that?

“Father read too many adventure stories as a kid,” she said wryly. “I was named after some ancient Avvar warrior.”

3. Are you single or taken?

“Married.” She smiled to herself, something fond and private. “Childhood sweethearts, if you can believe it.”

4. Have any abilities or powers?

“I’m good at stabbing things,” she said with a sharp smile. “Pretty good with locks and words, too, I suppose. No magic or anything like that. Just knives.”

5. Stop being a Mary Sue.

“Did you know that Mary Sue is just the way misogynists say ‘protagonist’?” she said, saccharine sweet, her smile more a snarl than anything resembling friendly.

6. What’s your eye color?

“Grey. Not much to say about it, I’m afraid.”

7. How about your hair color?

“Also grey,” she said sourly. “Well, mostly grey. It was brown once. I’m barely in my 30s, believe it or not, but life and ancestry can be a potent combination.”

8. Have any family members?

“An older brother. My husband. A sister-in-law, her husband and daughter. A lot of others that aren’t with us anymore.” A look of grief passed quickly over her face, but was replaced by a smile that looked just a little forced. “And my Wardens, of course. Family doesn’t have to just mean blood. I’m told I have a habit of picking up strays.”

9. Oh? How about pets?

“I have a mabari war dog. His name is Byron! He was named after a hero from the Rebellion, Arl Byron Howe. I, uh… I didn’t expect to marry into the family when I named him. He’s been with me a long time.”

10. That’s cool, I guess. Now, tell me something you don’t like?

“Politics. Dishonesty. When people put me in charge and then second-guess my decisions. Giant spiders. Fine with the regular ones, could do with less of the big ones.”

11. Do you have any activities/hobbies that you like to do?

“I’m too busy to have hobbies. I like to travel, though. And climbing trees or hiking.”

12. Have you ever hurt anyone in any way before?

“Sure. Lies, betrayal, violence. Mostly violence, if I’m honest.”

13. Ever… killed anyone before?

“Yes. Good at stabbing things, remember?” She shrugged. “If it helps, I only kill things that try to kill me first. Or that really had it coming.”

14. What kind of animal are you?

“A wolf. They’re pack animals, like I am, and good hunters. Related to dogs, and I’m Ferelden so I’m a bit related to dogs too. Plus, you know,” she pointed at her hair, then her eyes, then the silver griffon on her armor, “grey. Get it?”

15. Name your worst habits?

“I get angry easily. I let violence do the talking more than I should. I’m stubborn, and arrogant, and pushy. But at least I’m aware of it, right?”

16. Do you look up to anyone at all?

“My mother. She was a remarkable woman. Poised and noble and kind, but she was also a raider captain once upon a time. I can’t maintain the balance between the two quite as well as she did, but I’m trying.” She grinned and leaned forward as it sharing a secret. “Also Loghain, but don’t tell him I said that. He was my hero when I was a child, and while the man and the myth are very, very different, I still look up to him. He may not have always made the right choices, but he understands that someone has to make a choice and is willing to be the one to do it. I wish I had even half his conviction.”

17. Are you gay, straight or bisexual?

“I’ve never really thought about it.” She paused to think about it. “Bisexual, I suppose. Pretty people come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and races and I’ve never really noticed a preference one way or the other.”

18. Did you attend school?

“I had a tutor as a child. I didn’t pay attention as much as I should have, probably.”

19. Ever want to marry and have kids one day?

“Well, I am married. I’d love to have kids, but it’s… complicated. There are factors that make it difficult. It’s a work in progress.”

20. Do you have any fangirls/fanboys?

“Comes with the territory, I’m afraid. Hero of Ferelden and all that.” She rolled her eyes. “You learn to ignore them after a while.”

21. What are you most afraid of?

“Abandonment. Being locked in a cage and left to rot. Dying in the Deep Roads, alone and forgotten.”

22. What do you usually wear?

“Armor. Shirts and breeches, comfortable boots, clothes for travel and that are easy to move in. Once upon a time, I mostly wore dresses and slippers and pretty things, but those days are behind me. I still own a few.”

23. What’s one food that tempts you?

“I have a bit of a sweet tooth, so cakes and candies and such are always a hit with me.”

24. Am I annoying you?

“Nah, it’s fine. I like talking about me, it’s one of my favorite subjects.”

25. Well, it’s still not over!

“Great. I’m sure there’s no other work in my very important job that needs doing or anything.”

26. What class are you (low/middle/high)?

“As a Grey Warden, I am technically stripped of all titles and holdings. But as a friend of the king and queen of Ferelden, I was granted a title and holdings. So… high? My parents were the teryn and teryna of Highever and my husband is the arl of Amaranthine and I’m whatever politics decides I’m allowed to be on any given day.”

27. How many friends do you have?

“Lots. I love to surround myself with people. Only a few really close ones, though, but I wouldn’t trade them for all the jewels in Orlais.”

28. What are your thoughts on pie?

“I have nothing against it, in theory. Food is food.”

29. Favorite drink?

“Coffee. I’ve developed a taste for Antivan brandy as well.”

30. What’s your favorite place?

“My tree. There’s this huge, old tree in the courtyard in Vigil’s Keep. I’ve been climbing it for as long as I can remember. I also like to go up on the roof of the Vigil sometimes. The only others that ever come up there are Nate and Justice, so it’s a good place to get away from work for a little while.”

31. Are you interested in anyone?

“I mean, I’m married. I’m pretty blighted interested in my husband. But if you asked me the same question ten or twenty years ago, the answer would have been the same. It’s always been Nate. I’m lucky in that way.”

32. That was a stupid question…

“Was it? I’ve been asked stupider questions.”

33. Would you rather swim in a lake or the ocean?

“The ocean. I grew up by the sea and I love it.”

34. What’s your type?

“Dark haired and grumpy, if you believe my friends.” She grinned like it was an old joke. “In truth… I like someone who challenges me. Who stands up to me and is willing to call me on my bullshit. Someone I can let my guard down with. There haven’t been many people like that in my life. Also, archers. Every one of them I’ve ever met has been really blighted sexy. All of them. It’s like magic, I swear.”

35. Any fetishes?

“Ah, see. I knew you could ask a stupider question if you really wanted to. Congratulations.”

36. Camping or outdoors?

“Yes. Always. I’d live in the woods if I could. The less walls the better.”

[vantaba]

INTERVIEW MEME.

Tagged by: Stole it days ago I’m just super slow at this (thANKS @monsterbane ) Tagging: take it! and tag me because I like reading about everyone’s muses

——— character question sheet

▌real name: Richard Vantaba. ▌real name:  On a very technical level, if he wanted to take his grandfather’s inheritance into account in his daily life, his name would be something along the lines of Richard Vantaba Stratos of the Deep Hell. He doesn’t care all too much for it though. ▌single or taken: Single. Never really cared much about getting into a relationship-- he’s very comfortable with the idea and had flings before when just moving in, but for the time being, he focuses on his job too much to think about taking a partner.  ▌abilities or powers: ... this warrants its own post, let’s be real. Base level descriptions include accelerated recovery rate, increased strength, energy influence, Devil Trigger, and a few others. ▌eye colour: Gold. ▌hair colour: Dusty blond. ▌family members:  Mother, Scythia, renowned demon assassin, daughter of a Draconic Count of the Deep Hell-- missing. Father, Ryan, a Romanian half-demon-- deceased in an anti-demon rally. Grandfather, Stratos, Count of the Deep Hell-- asleep, but alive.  ▌pets: None-- looking for one though. ▌something they don’t like: Corrupt hunters on just about any job. This transcends the ‘demons vs monsters’ argument that plagues him internally, as if you’re not being a good sport about your mission, you might as well just purchase pieces from the underground market and sell them yourself. It was more prominent during his monster period, before opening up to going after demons-- too many people would sign wavers and leave enough for others to take from the corpse, but overall, ended up taking much more than their share. This is still true on some demon-hunting jobs Vanta’s been on, but not as common as with monsters. 

▌hobbies/activities: He does consider reading a hobby, although it’s often job-related-- he’ll go the extra mile to research his quarry and document everything he can in a handmade bestiary. Book binding is another, although he doesn’t talk much about it. And despite the product being goods he can sell, he enjoys fabrication using the parts he gets.  ▌ever hurt anyone before: Once, late one night his first month in the city. Promised never to do it again, because humans aren’t his target, despite being more demon. ▌ever killed anyone before: No, and wouldn’t dream of it.  ▌animal that represents them: Power-wise, komodo dragons-- his gold ichor in Devil Trigger has many of the same properties as a dragon’s venom, but through pure, demonic heat instead. Personality-wise though, he’s more of a beardie; chill with just about anything, but Spiky.  ▌worst habits: He’s very closed off and withdrawn emotionally from everything. It’s unknown if it was his time at the church teaching him to repress emotional outbursts or his actual genetic makeup keeping him from it, but he bottles everything he feels that isn’t positive or ‘publicly acceptable’ from him. These outbursts got to the point of actually destroying his room back at the church because he couldn’t get mad at the kids there for taunting him, he kept telling himself it was the influence of the environment they were raised in, where they couldn’t wait to dogpile on an outsider. He also has a habit of physically separating himself from groups when he wants to be alone, often using his job as an excuse. There’s been days where he goes right from a mission to bed instead of phoning his client, and exists in this limbo until the swing passes. He’s already been passive with his depression in the first place, but these spirals are some of the worst days of his life because he can’t be social with the small network he’s built. ▌role models: A lot of his friends would qualify. As bad of a choice as it would be, he still thinks very highly of Dante, possibly only outstripped by his respect of Lady. As people who excel in their job and with different methods, the fact he’s gone on missions with them is enough to feel he’s been validated by the universe. ▌sexual orientation: Pan on everything for sure. He’s not one to care about the orientation of his partner, as long as he can genuinely enjoy their company and feel comfortable getting in a relationship with them.  ▌thoughts on marriage/kids: Truthfully, the idea of fathering children scares him. He doesn’t want to give them a life like his, where they have to hide their heritage just to live a normal, day-to-day life. There’s a part of him that feels he could never be as kind as his parents were when raising him, and the responsibility is something he wouldn’t want to feel become a burden. As for marriage though, he’s alright with it. If he ever meets a partner he’s happy enough with, he’ll even genuinely consider it, although more for the human ritual of it and what it would symbolize. His demon mind still has its views on how partnership works. ▌fears: While he can survive just about anything relatively unscathed (human-wise with threats anyhow; he’s used to fighting demons to the point of not minding much), his own durability lies at the heart of what he fears the most. He’s scared of the idea of going berserk, and losing the last shreds of humanity he clings to. If he rampages, there’s no stopping him by conventional means; at least, in the case of his friends who aren’t hunters or versed in dealing with demon threats. Even worse, going after innocents he doesn’t even know and becoming as rogue as some of the demons he hunts. The worst part is, this day will come no matter what he does to try to stop it, only coming short of being killed.  ▌style preferences: Whatever he manages to pull out of the closet before going somewhere, which usually involves a lot of dark grays, ranging from his oversized leather coat to dark jeans that button right below the point where his legs transition to scales. For fancier nights, you can find him wearing his button-down with black dress pants, all signs he’s a demon hidden for as long as he can stay comfortable-- and even then, he’ll likely keep his legs human to fit in the tighter pants. Sleepwear style is just boxers with SSSmokin’ patterned across them ▌someone they love: He’s never considered the idea of romantic love before, but he very much platonicly loves the bookstore owner a few blocks from his place. She saved him from a few binds in the past and he’s kept her shop selling by advertising it at his place. There’s a few others that kept him out of bad situations before, though, but she comes to mind first.  ▌approach to friendships: There’s those that he considers acquaintances, and those he considers his inner circle. His occupation leads him to keep closed off but approachable-- he’ll get along with people, but only keep a handful as contacts he’d call outside of work and have a drink with, maybe see a movie or go to the beach or even downtown. If he considers someone a good friend, he invites them to be part of his life outside of his job, which is one of the most open things he could do.  ▌thoughts on pie: mmmmmm yes give him all the sweet potato pie. ▌favourite drink: ... fruity stuff. He’d still take a Shirley Temple over fine wines and alcohols.  ▌favourite place to spend time at: His shop. He’s met some really interesting people and a few regular browsers. If anything, it’s a great time to draw attention to himself, which he enjoys every now and then. A close second is the tavern up the street, where hunters of both creatures tend to gather, so he picks up side jobs there when he can.  ▌swim in the lake or in the ocean: Lakes. They’re more frequent in his line of work anyways, and he’s more comfortable in the confined space of a pond or lake. Plus, he doesn’t have to work hard at getting salt out of his scales-- it irritates him something fierce.  ▌their type: Vanta doesn’t really have one, per say. He’s all about being mushy, but more behind closed doors at first. When it really starts to sink in, he’ll become more open about it, but generally he doesn’t mind whoever wants to woo him.  ▌camping or indoors: Camping. He’d rather take camping over taking a motel for the night. 

[ephemelody]

your color is etched inside my heart

Commission for @raiyakun who requested a fic based off their amazing soulmate AU!! You can read about the details that their AU from this post and also view the comic they drew, which one of the scenes in this fic is based on. Thank you for commissioning me! ❤

Rated G | Soulmate AU | Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Humor | Read Under Cut.

The first time Keith saw the color blue, it was in the eyes of another boy.

At the time, he hadn’t known what it meant. Didn’t know the name of the color, only that it was bright and it was beautiful. A beautiful shade to match a beautiful boy.

In the wreckage of an earthquake, trapped beneath a slab of torn concrete, Keith saw color in the dust beneath his feet and the filter of sun through severed wires. It was vibrant in the blood seeping down his arm. It was warm in the other boy’s skin, equally scarred.

“Hey, does the world look different to you?” the boy asked. His face was tear-stained, voice throaty with snot. He rubbed his nose with his arm before shuffling closer, knees tucked under chin, hand reaching out to hold Keith’s in his. His touch was warm, just like his color. Keith didn’t mind when he squeezed too tight. “Do you think it means we’re dead?”

“We’re not dead,” Keith answered, though he didn’t know that for sure. All he knew was that the color in the boy’s eyes was dimming, shadowed by the crumple of his brow, and that at that moment, Keith wanted nothing more than to see it shine again. “They’ll find us. We just have to stay put.”

The boy seemed soothed by his words, and he shuffled closer still, as if being physically closer to Keith would provide comfort. Keith didn’t move away. The scuffed front of their shoes touched, one dark, one light.

“We’re seeing color, aren’t we?” It was more a statement than a question. A note of wonder murmured through. “It’s really pretty.”

Keith nodded in agreement. All children knew about color, but none of them knew when and where they would see it. Their parents hadn’t told them, and their schools didn’t teach it until the sixth grade. All they knew was that it meant something special. That it would be worth waiting for.

“Tell me what you see,” Keith said, hoping it would take their minds off the situation. Hoping it would make the boy’s eyes shimmer.

They passed the time that way, pointing out patches of color and trying to describe them to each other. When their descriptions didn’t match up, they would argue and laugh. And when their descriptions matched perfectly, they would argue still and share a smile.

When the earth shook again and the plate of concrete above slipped dangerously low, the boy clung to Keith, burying his face into his chest. Keith hugged him back, fierce and sure, despite the terrified thrash of his own heart.

It wasn’t until hours later that the concrete finally lifted, light pouring through the widened gap along with several helping hands. They pulled Keith and the boy out from the wreckage, passed them down shattered buildings and ruptured streets. Keith thought he would go blind from the sudden burst of colors all around. The boundless sky knocked the breath out of him, so clear and so bright, just like the boy’s eyes.

Those eyes stayed with him even as they separated, carried away by a throng of relief workers and their respective families. Those eyes stayed even as they never saw each other again, years and years brushing past, rubbing away at Keith’s memories until they were worn and faded.  

It wasn’t until later that Keith learned what it meant to see color.

It wasn’t until he lost his soulmate that he knew who he was.

.

.

.

“See, this is how I know we’re not soulmates.”

Lance dunks his pepperoni pizza into his cup of ranch and inhales half the slice, Keith watching on in disgust.

“If your soulmate dips his pizza in ranch, then you deserve each other,” says Keith, eating his own slice of cheese that’s perfectly greasy and ranch-less.

They’re sitting in a pizzeria, a block away from the house they’re about to visit. It’s near the site of the Arus Earthquake, a 6.3 seismic disaster that happened almost eight years ago. For some reason, the area feels familiar to Keith, a gnawing sense of déjà vu that doesn’t mix well with the grease in his stomach.

“You sure you got the place right? We always get lost whenever you lead.”

“It’s not my fault Siri gets confused sometimes!”

Keith rolls his eyes. “More like all the time. I’ve told you a dozen times to use Google Maps.”

“That would mean cheating to Siri! I can’t do her dirty like that.” Lance pops his pizza crust into his mouth, dusting his fingers off, end of discussion. There’s crumbs on the corner of his lips and a fleck of ranch on top of his dimple. Keith shoves a napkin into his face but swipes at his mouth gently, making sure his face is pushed away so that he can’t see the fondness that Keith feels.

“You brute!” Lance cries, waving his arms dramatically. He sticks his tongue out at Keith with an emphatic bleeeh when he’s done. “I can’t wait to meet my soulmate so that he can protect me from you!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you big baby.”  

Lance has said those words a hundred times, but today it hurts more than usual. Keith busies himself with cleaning up their food so that Lance won’t notice, especially not when they’re in the middle of searching for Lance’s soulmate.  After a whole year of digging through archived newspapers and phone records, it seems Lance has finally found him in this small town by the sea, a train ride away from the hospital Lance had stayed in after the earthquake.

Keith’s never believed in soulmates, or at least, he’s never counted on finding his. Even though he can see color -- which means he’s technically encountered his soulmate in passing before -- he doesn’t remember how he came to see it. He refuses to put his heart into it either. His parents had been soulmates, and both had left him, so what good was a soulmate?

Lance, though, has always dreamed of reuniting with his. Ever since Keith met him when they were fifteen, Lance babbled about how he and his soulmate found each other in the middle of an earthquake when they were young. How safe and protected he felt being held in the other boy’s arms. He couldn’t remember his soulmate’s face, but he could remember the red of his t-shirt and the ink of his hair.  

“His colors were beautiful!” Lance had said, blue eyes sparkling. So clear and so bright, just like the sky. Keith fell in love with him softly and surely, even though Keith knew Lance would never look his way.

“Ready to go?” Keith asks, jostling Lance’s shoulder. Instead of standing up though, Lance groans, hunched over the table.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” he says. Keith snorts.

“What did you expect drowning your pizza in salad dressing?”

“No, Keith, I think I’m gonna sick.”

Keith sits back down in the booth and places a hand on Lance’s back, rubbing slow, soothing circles. Lance slumps into him, head tucked into the hollow of Keith’s throat and arms slung around his waist. Keith presses his lips against Lance’s hair as his chest tightens.

“He’ll remember you. Don’t worry.” Keith hopes his voice sounds calm and confident. Not like the riot in his heart, throbbing painfully.

Lance hugs him tight, and Keith doesn’t let go.

“I’m glad you’re here with me.”

&

While Lance knocks on the door, Keith waits across the street, out of sight. Even though Lance had said he wouldn’t mind Keith tagging along, Keith didn’t want to intrude. And he didn’t want to see the boy who would be Lance’s long lost love. He didn’t know how he would react.

He’s known Lance for almost three years now. With each year, each day, Keith found something to love about him even more. Whether it was his smile, his selflessness, his vanity or his questionable eating habits, Keith would shelter them all inside his heart, keeping them safe.

Today, it’s the color of Lance’s eyes, matching the ocean on the horizon, shimmering beneath the sunlight.

Keith leans against a tree planted near the sidewalk, gaze resolutely directed toward the pebbles on the ground. His mind is a mess, his heart messier still. Even though he and Lance would obviously still be best friends regardless of a soulmate, Keith can’t help but feel the overwhelming sense of loss as he waits alone outside.

He’s in love with Lance, and Lance is in love with someone else.

Keith’s thought of telling Lance his true feelings several times now, but each time he lost his nerve. Some days he would argue with Lance instead, call him childish for believing so firmly in the idea of a soulmate, and it would always end with Lance fuming at him and refusing to speak with him for the next few days. Keith always felt terrible afterwards, apologizing with a tub of Lance’s favorite banana split ice cream and a Shrek movie marathon.

Lance always forgave him instantly.

Keith may not believe in soulmates, but every part of him desperately wishes that Lance could be his. As he helped Lance trace the whereabouts of his soulmate through the months, traveling to different towns and cities every weekend, his heart broke a little each time. Though not everyone falls in love with their soulmate, Lance was ever the romantic optimist that firmly trusted in its fated magic. And since Lance’s happiness was ultimately Keith’s happiness, Keith decided to shelter his love for Lance along with everything else, so that Lance could be happy with his loved one.

Finding his soulmate was important to Lance, so Keith would support him unconditionally, no matter how much pain it brought onto himself.

Across the street, there’s the sound of a door slamming open. Keith’s about to turn around and look when someone thuds into his back, arms wrapping around his waist.

“Lance…?” Keith reaches up to touch Lance’s hands, noticing with alarm how badly he’s shaking.

“Don’t look!” Lance says, and the broken edge of his voice cuts through Keith’s heart. He wants nothing more than to turn around and hug Lance properly, but he nods and waits for Lance to speak.

“Keith… He said he doesn’t remember me. At all.” Lance’s words fracture around a sob, tears wetting the back of Keith’s jacket between his shoulder blades. “He said I… I couldn’t possibly be his soulmate because it’s someone else.”

A watery laugh falls from his lips, dissolved of humor and Lance’s usual spirit. “I guess you were right all along, it really was a childish dream…”

Keith can’t bear how defeated -- how heartbroken -- Lance sounds. Despite the traitorous relief in his own heart, Keith shuts his eyes and makes a decision, pulling out of Lance’s hold to press him tightly into his chest.

“K-Keith? What--? I told you, don’t loo--”

“I’m not looking!” Keith says, resting his head over Lance’s shoulders so that he can’t see anything but the ocean in the distance. Can’t feel anything but Lance’s warmth in his hands and Lance’s tears against his cheek. “And… Until you say so, I won’t look, I swear.”

That’s all it takes for Lance to let go.

In Keith’s arms, Lance sobs his heart out. Cries and cries until the sun sets behind the ocean, casting everything in a longing, golden glow.

&

Keith doesn’t believe in soulmates, but he wishes he could be one for Lance. 

The next day, on their way back home, they stop by the hospital again. Lance wanted to thank the hospital staff for their help, talk to the nurse who went the extra mile to help him find the address of the boy trapped in the earthquake with him.

In the pale morning light, Lance’s eyes are tinged red. His throat is hoarse, too, but nonetheless he chatters with Keith cheerfully, putting on a brave face.

“You don’t have to force yourself,” Keith tells him, squeezing his hand gently. Lance shakes his head.

“I need to. I’ll get over it faster that way.”

In the hospital lounge, Keith sits in one of the green, cushioned armchairs and waits for Lance to finish up. It’s an old but well-kept hospital, with pastel yellow walls and a calming scent, layered above the tinge of antiseptics. Keith picks up a magazine on the coffee table and flips through it idly, checking the clock to make sure they’re on time for their afternoon train back into the city.

“Oh, young man, don’t you look awfully familiar.”

Keith lifts his head up to see a nurse gazing down at him, eyes crinkled thoughtfully on a soft, heart-shaped face. A sense of déjà vu washes over him again, but Keith still can’t place it.

“Sorry, I don’t remember you,” he says, feeling awkward and unsure. The nurse merely smiles kindly, straightening as Keith stands up.  

“That’s quite all right, it’s unlikely that you would. What you went through was quite a traumatic experience. It’s not unusual that you would forget.”

Keith only feels more and more confused. “What... I went through?”

“Your name is Keith, correct?” At Keith’s dumbfounded nod, the old nurse continues. “You were only ten when you were brought to this hospital. They found you with another boy under a collapsed building in Arus, after that horrible earthquake destroyed most of the city. It was a miracle the two of you were alive!”

Keith’s head starts spinning, pieces falling into place. That constant feeling he’s been here before, gnawing at the pit of his stomach since they arrived. Why the nurse feels like someone familiar. Why the history of Arus resonated so much with him when he first read about it, how it caught his eye when he helped Lance search for his soulmate.

The way Lance’s eyes always make him think of the sky.

The way Lance’s eyes always make him think: a beautiful shade to match a beautiful boy.

“I’m not certain what happened to the other boy, but I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

“M’am, what was that boy’s name? The one who was with me.”

Down the hallway, Keith sees Lance wave at him, his eyes that impossible, magical shade of blue. 

The first time Keith saw that color, it was in the eyes of another boy. 

The second time he saw that same color, it was in the eyes of a boy he grew to love.  

“His name was Lance.”  

.

.

.

“So you’re telling me that even though we’re soulmates, you won’t dip your pizza in ranch?”

“Nope.”

“Can I trade soulmates? I think the universe messed up.”

Keith frowns, pulling Lance back onto the couch and into his arms, Lance giggling all the while. He pushes his pizza away before resting his head against Keith’s chest, settling into the space between Keith’s legs. He traces patterns over Keith’s red shirt as Keith grumbles sullenly: “Hey, you said so yourself. The universe wouldn’t mess this up.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Lance agrees, kissing the corner of Keith’s mouth to soothe his frown. Keith relaxes, nuzzling Lance’s neck and humming contently when Lance threads his fingers through his hair. “I can’t believe it was you this whole time. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it from your colors.”

He gently lifts Keith’s head to stare into his eyes, smile apologetic. “Part of me just couldn’t believe I could be that lucky, I guess, having a soulmate who’s also my best friend. I’m sorry.” 

Keith kisses the inside of his palm with a shake of his head. “Don’t be. We found each other in the end, didn’t we?”

The tilt of Lance’s smile turns bright. Keith loves it so much more. Loves all of Lance, more and more.

“Thought you didn’t believe in soulmates?” Lance teases, and Keith kisses him quiet, colors blooming behind his eyelids. 

The world is always so much more beautiful when they’re together.  

“If it’s with you, I’ll believe in anything.”

[ilosttrackofthings]

I was tagged by @gettothestabbing

Tag up to 10 people

1. What are the pettiest things you do on the internet?

Thanks to my shipping habits I’ve been blocked by a fair number of people and every so often I’ll like a post only to stop and wonder if the OP’s name seems familiar because they’re one of those. I’ll then check my likes in another tab and if the post isn’t there, I’ll unlike it on my dash. Even though technically the liking never went through in the first place.

2. Do you watch reality TV?

Amazing Race and Survivor are our family night shows, but I can’t handle much else, too much second-hand embarrassment.

3. Do you think it’s fair to not hire people with tattoos or body mods or who dress differently?

It honestly depends. That’s definitely a topic that would have to be brought up at an interview if it was something dramatic; a big arm or neck tattoo might be balanced out by professional clothing, for example. At the same time it isn’t up to the company to accommodate what was ultimately a decision that this person made. That’s on the (potential) employee. They’re the one who wants a job and, while on the job, it will be their responsibility to represent the company in whatever way the company expects. If that means covering up or, sadly, that whatever they’ve done to their body takes them out of the running, them’s the breaks. 

As for dressing “differently” there are employee dress codes for a reason. As long as you abide by them, HR’s not gonna have a problem with you.

4. Would you ever tell stories about famous people you know to the tabloids for money?

If there was some story they wanted out there, I might help them by ~leaking it, but I also might pass the buck to another friend. The pressure of being friends with a famous person would be bad enough but I imagine once you slip up and spill to the reporters once, they’ll be constantly coming back.

5. Do you think modern-day royal families that have a limited or nonexistent role in actual government should keep existing?

I don’t really see any harm in it, at this point aren’t they basically just born celebrities? But I’ve never lived in a country with any sort of monarchy, so I really couldn’t say what damage that might do. (But also how are you gonna get rid of them? These are actual people. Are we gonna forcibly castrate them to put an end to the line or something?)

6. Do you think music keeps getting worse as years go by?

As an art form I think music hit its peak a good while ago, but that doesn’t mean what there is now isn’t worthwhile. In every generation you’re gonna find completely empty songs - I mean I’ve got “lollipop” by the Chordettes open in another tab, there’s really not much to that song, but there were plenty of good, meaningful songs written in the 50s. 

7. What caused the worst physical pain you’ve ever felt?

A few weeks after we got Rover, it was raining and I let him out into the back yard. He started sniffing around the pool gate and he was still small enough then to fit through the bars, and also we hadn’t had him in summertime yet so I didn’t know there was no force on this earth that would compel that dog into a giant pool of water, so I was worried he’d go out there. He hadn’t learned to come when called so I went out to get him. Two steps down, the water from the rain plus my worn down crocs saw me sitting hard on the brick steps. 

I cried for hours. I kept telling my family it didn’t hurt that bad anymore, I just couldn’t stop crying. Also it did still hurt, just not nearly as much as that initial pain had been. It was very likely a broken tail bone and the weeks of recovery were not fun.

8. Do you give money or food to homeless people?

No. Maybe it’s because I’m terrified of social interactions that don’t come with a script. Maybe it’s because of that time my grandma was volunteering feeding the homeless and left me at a table with the expectation that I, a very small child, would somehow entertain a bunch of homeless men through their meal. Who’s to say?

9. Who do you think should run against Trump in 2020?

I honestly have no idea. Nothing makes sense anymore, predictions are meaningless.

10. Do you think humanity will survive to explore the universe?

Maybe? I think humanity will survive, surely, but I don’t know how far we’ll go. All that beauty isn’t there for us. If we’re meant to enjoy it that’ll be amazing.

11. What do you think of society’s attitude towards animals?

Well that’s ... a question. There’s honestly too many possible attitudes to tackle them all. But l do think it’s important we remember that animals are not people. A human is more important than an animal, full stop.

12. Do you think a person can truly be happy without close relationships?

No. We were made for relationship. A life without that is empty.

13. What do you think are the ideal times to go to sleep and to wake up?

I’d love to go to bed at ten and wake up at six but wow that does not work for me. Here’s hoping tonight I can pull off nine and six doesn’t come too early.

14. Top three worst “classic” or very popular songs?

“Happy” by Pharrell Williams; “Let It Go” - it’s not the song’s fault but Frozen is the worst so there you go; aaaaaand “Do You Hear What I Hear” which makes NO SENSE in any context (suggestion: let’s stop singing dyhwih in church and start singing “God Bless America” on appropriate holiday-adjacent Sundays again. Much better. Everyone is happier.)

15. Do you think “follow your dreams” is good advice?

Yes, but I think the problem is in the idea that a dream has to be outlandish in some way. When we tell people to follow their dreams it’s always something big, even something reckless. Small dreams are good too.

I tag...

@safelycapricious, @shineyma, @sapphireglyphs, @batsonthebrain, @daisyfitz, @meghan84, @duxbelisarius, and ... and ... I DON’T KNOW DO IT IF YOU WANT TO I’M ALREADY FAILING AT NUMBER 13

[jetandthebennies]

Into You (3/?)

Summary- Finally time to face the red carpet again, you weren’t expecting it to quite so well.

AN- ok so that summary sucks but whatever! send in requests guys I love getting them, or just message me idc

Part Two

REQUESTS   PROMPTS

PART THREE - LEAVE ME LONELY

The past month had been insufferable. Tom seemed to be everywhere. Not giving you a chance to even breathe without another headline coming up about a project he was working on, or a instagram post going viral. But wherever you went, he wasn't far behind so it seemed.

It had gotten to the point of you being so suffocated by him, that you'd actually find out if he was going to an event you were invited to before you decided to walk down the red carpet.

Though there was really no getting out of this event. You knew he was going, you knew from the second you received the invite. But you couldn't turn this down, you'd been nominated for Best Actress at the MTV Movie Awards, and being there would draw more attention to your career, and you needed that.

Plus Sean had threatened you with a comb when you told him you might not be going.

So that’s how you ended up here, anxiously tapping your heel on the carpeted floor of the uber driving you to the red carpet. The stone grey, that Sean was sure would knock sense into Tom finally, draped over your body. Sean has been assuring you the whole time you were getting ready that you looked amazing, but you couldn’t help feeling vulnerable with your arms exposed, and the fact it was sleeveless made you more self-conscious than ever. But the show must go on.

You could see the flashes from the cameras, and screams from fans at another celebrity arriving, even though they had no idea who it was yet. 

“You can do this, it’s just an award show.”

You muttered under your breath, praying the driver didn’t hear, and stat spreading stories around that you were insane, that wouldn’t really help you get jobs now would it?

Pulling on an award-winning smile, you forced yourself to climb out of the car when it was opened for you. Stepping out slowly, making sure that the dress wasn’t caught on anything, and you didn’t buckle from the height of your heels, which you were starting to hate Sean for.

Now wasn’t the time to be thinking negatively though, any slight change in your facial expression would be broadcasted on the, too big for your liking, screens and on worldwide television. No pressure. 

All you thoughts needed to be on not making a fool of yourself right now, not when you were being watched over like a hawk by the entire world. But there was a pair of brown eyes you couldn’t help but notice were watching your every move.

Tom thought he was going insane when he heard your name being shouted, all attention that was on him suddenly being directed to someone else. A normal attention would feel pissed off that the limelight no longer belonged to them, but he hadn’t seen you in weeks, and he was just happy to see you smiling. 

Deep down he knew it wasn’t your smile though. The smile didn’t reach and light up your eyes, like it used to when he would tell a bad joke. Your dimples didn’t show, unlike when you used to smile just staring at him, thinking he never noticed. He noticed though. Tom knew you inside out, he knew every dark secret and bad habit, he knew things about you, you didn’t even notice.

He that, he loved that nobody would ever quite know you like he would.

Though that wasn’t technically true now, was it? 

He had let you slip right through his fingers like grains of sand, he let you walk out of his life because he turned his back on you and let his fears rule his life.

“Tom, time to move on.”

Just when the woman dressed in all black, and a microphone and ear comm in her ear, tried to direct him onto another set of photographers, you finally looked at him.

It lasted a mere second, but it felt so much longer. In that single connection, Tom could see the pain he caused you, the small amount of water gathering in your eyes telling him everything you didn’t want him to know. 

“Tom.”

Harrison pulled Tom away, even though all he wanted to do was run over to you and hold you in his arms. You could kick, punch and slap him all you wanted, he just wanted you in his arms again. 

He looked at Harrison, almost pleading for his help, even though he knew he got himself into this situation. He caused this pain, and he was about to cause so much more.

“Okay, Y/N, you have about fifteen minutes for interviews before you got to your makeup artist for touch ups, then into the arena.”

“Thank you.”

The same woman who you saw trying to pull Tom in the right direction, walked away, though it looked more like a jog to try and get to the next person. You shook your head, eliminating pointless thoughts from your head, knowing you didn’t have much time to get through all the interviewers that wanted to talk to you.

Tucking some baby hairs behind your ear, you walked onwards towards the journalists, that you knew would do anything to get a good story. 

“Y/N.”

The voice stopped you in your tracks, and the hand that came around your wrist made sparks run through your veins, and butterflies erupt in your stomach. You hated that. How even with a month apart, he could still have that effect on you.

Taking a deep breath, taking your wrist from his hand and spinning around you faced him. His facial features full of guilt and desperation, making you want to close the gap between you two and hug him, tell him you forgave him. 

But you stayed strong.

“What do you want this time?”

“I want to explain-” “Tom, babe, I’ve been looking for you for ages!”

It was the same girl from the event only a month ago, and she was looking even more radiant than ever. You couldn’t really blame Tom for taking his chance with her. She was obviously quite attached to him, trying to entangle her fingers with his own, and the smile on her face said it all. Because it was the exact same one you used to wear around him as well.

Scoffing, you rolled your eyes, walking away. Unfortunately not making it far enough for Tom to detangle himself and run after you, offering a small explanation to the poor girl who seemed to eat up every word.

“Y/N please, just give me another chance, I love you.”

“You’re unbelievable. Did you honestly think you could say those three little words, I would run back into your arms and tell you I was an idiot for ever breaking it off?”

Tom was clearly very shocked at both what you had said and your tone, not expecting that from you at all.

“I just thought-” “Well you thought wrong.”

Just when you were about to walk away, again, Tom asked you a question you never could’ve thought he would.

“Does this mean you don’t love me.”

“Oh no, Tom I do, so so much. But I wish I didn’t.”

Part Four

PERMANENT TAGS

@bucky-with-the-metal-arm

INTO YOU TAGS

@buckys-baby @afangirlssoul @marveldirewolf @intheheartoftomholland @monsis-world @flawlesslybeautiful14 @mrsbatman-robin