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captain-emmajones · 4 years ago

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Love, Emma (7/7)

(Art by the wonderful @carpedzem <33)

Loosely based on Love, Rosie (2014).

Killian and Emma are best friends and neighbors. They’ve always been – until he leaves for the Navy when his brother dies. When he comes back, nine months later, summer has begun and childhood is ending. Emma can tell something is changed in him, but she doesn’t know what. Until she does. He’s fallen in love with someone else.

And then, suddenly, they’re kissing on her nineteenth birthday. When she asks him to forget their night out, and never talk about it again, Killian thinks she means to tell him she regrets the kiss they exchanged. Except she has no memory of it.

Big thank you to @profdanglaisstuff for being a wonderful beta and having my back all through this work!

Friends to Lovers - Mutual Pining - Angst - Fluff - 7000 words - ao3

Part 1 - MIRRORBALL, Part 2 - AUGUST , Part 3 - HOAX, Part 4 - PEACE, Part 5 - THIS IS ME TRYING, Part 6 - CARDIGAN

Note: This is it, the great, the terrible last chapter. I hope you guys will like this as much as I tortured myself writing it, making sure it is the perfect ending to this story :’) It’s been a pleasure writing this story, I loved every second of it and yeah...Thank you for sticking with me through this. It’s been really lovely having you as my readers.

PART 7 - INVISIBLE STRING

Present Day -- August, Storybrooke, Maine.

That night, Granny’s dinner is fuller than usual. Fuller with people, fuller with life.

It’s an agreeable summer night, the air a cool breeze against Killian and Emma’s bare arms as Mary Margaret and David argue over the color choice of the napkins for their upcoming wedding. Crickets chirp all around them, seeming to mock them.

Their plates of food are now empty, and Ruby expertely piles them up on her left arm as Mary Margaret shoots a death glare at her boyfriend.

“White is simply perfect, David.”

“So you play Snow White once in High School and now it’s your favorite color? That’s ridiculous, Mary Margaret.”

“Is it now? And what kind of color would you go for? Orange?”

“Well, orange would be a statement for one!”

“Over my dead body, David. It’s white or nothing.”

If Emma weren’t so distracted by the warmth of Killian’s fingers around hers, she would have probably choked on her beer and mumbled “Mary Margaret - 1, David - 0.”

Thankfully for everyone, the palm that curled around hers a few minutes ago metaphorically threw her straight into a pink cloud kind of paradise.

Looking up from their intertwined fingers, Emma is greeted by the very real purple pink clouds in the night sky, behind Killian and Mary Margaret’s back. They are sitting opposite Emma and David, while Ingrid sits in the middle, a small contented smile on her lips, as she eats her onion rings in silence.

Fairy lights hang above their heads. Emma loves fairy lights, she always has.

“Why not settle for another color, mates?” tries Killian in a calm, soothing voice, and Emma is surprised he is talking at all.

He should know better. Grave, stupid mistake it is to get between Mary Margaret, David and their napkins.

“NEVER,” the couple answer as one voice, and Emma watches with a chuckle caught in her throat as Killian backs away, hands in front of his face.

“Wohoho, mates. Calm down. The only people you’re allowed to kill are each other.”

And as Emma swallows another grin, she thinks Killian and she haven’t talked about it, but that’s fine. Emma’s brain doesn’t seem able to come up with words, anyway.

A few hours ago, the walk back to Ingrid’s was achieved in near complete silence, and it was weird -- considering with whom she was walking. Actually, cross that -- it was weird to be walking back to her childhood house with Killian Jones, period.

But Emma was able to find comfort in Killian’s lack of words as well, and god knows how talkative Killian can be, she found comfort in his breathy tone when he handed her the box back and the flush on his cheeks, knowing if she could barely hear anything if not for her own heartbeats, surely he wasn’t pulling this any better than she was.

“Earth to Emma, would you like a desert?”

Emma blinks. Two green eyes are staring at her.

Right. Dinner. Granny’s. Damnit, focus Emma. Ruby’s voice sends a shameful loop down Emma’s belly.

“...Mmm, no, actually. I’m fine, for now.”

Ruby’s raising an eyebrow. Everyone is staring at her. Why are they staring?

“Are you sure, Ems?”

“I am. Why do you ask?”

“...It’s just, it doesn’t sound a lot like you.”

And then Emma’s pretty sure her hair stands on end.

“Really.” And each word is meant to sound more threatening than the last. “I. Am. Fine. Ruby.”

She’s not looking at him, but Emma catches Killian’s small chuckle all the same. It’s hard to ignore how easily her rage melts away, and she hides the beginning of a smile behind a napkin.

“Fine.” And Ruby nearly sounds like she is the one who got attacked. (Perhaps she was. But she deserved it.)

As the waitress disappears in a clatter of heels, Ingrid is tapping a napkin against her mouth, delicately, and Emma knows very well what this means.

“Well, it’s already 10pm. I think I’ll leave you youngsters to it.”

Emma watches as Ingrid folds the napkin in front of her, just like she always does, and gracefully stands up.

“Goodnight, kids.” Ingrid grins, and everyone replies with a lively “Goodnight, Ingrid!”

A kiss is dropped onto Emma’s forehead, and Emma doesn’t miss the subtle pat on the back Killian receives on Ingrid’s way out. Emma thinks Ingrid’s always liked Killian, but then she stops thinking about it because David and Mary Margaret are coughing, and it is the least natural piece of acting Emma’s had the chance to witness in a while.

They both exchange a sly glance, nod and stand up at their turn, and Emma stares at them -- cheeks burning.

“Yeah, we’ll go, too. It’s getting pretty late, and we flew in very early this morning.”

Traitor, shout Emma’s eyes at Mary Margaret, but the small brunette is smiling with all of her teeth out and doesn’t seem concerned by Emma’s impending murder threat.

“Enjoy your night, guys,” David looks far too delighted. “Byye.”

“Aha, bye guys.”

Away from Granny’s dinner and up Main Street towards Granny’s B&B, the couple vanishes into the night.

And just like that, Emma and Killian are alone under the fairy lights.

Chirp, chirp.

This time, Emma cannot ignore the childish panic that strangles her throat, as his touch begins to burn her skin and her hand slowly slides out of his palm. She looks down at the green plastic table.

What to do now? Jesus, she is not nineteen anymore, she needs to take initiative, and—

“Fancy a walk along the beach, Emma?”asks Killian, and Emma is so thankful for the distraction she nearly knocks the table down as she springs to her feet.

“Excellent idea!” Why do her legs feel so wobbly?

And Killian smirks, and she wonders if he knows just how badly she is afraid, of him, of her, of risking her heart.

“Perfect then, let’s sail away.”

But she wants this to work, she wants them to work. She spent a good part of her life agonizing over this relationship, daydreaming about it, and then cursing it, and it better be as good as she thought it would be.

As things turn out, this walk along the beach feels like brutally falling down a rabbit hole. It knocks the wind out of Emma and it is wonderfully terrifying.

The wind blows that night. Salt air dances with Emma’s light dress and Killian’s hair.

Emma’s shoes dangle from her fingers, but she is still shaking like a leaf.

Awful, isn’t it, to finally get all you’ve ever dreamed of?

She knows it’s not entirely hers yet, she knows she still has to dash forward and grab it with her two hands, and not let it go – on any account. (Do you want it?)

It’s terrifying.

She did not reach out to Killian, this past month, although she knew about his letter...and she probably wouldn’t have reached out first, had he not appeared on her porch.

There is still this stupid fear, down her stomach, this stupid fear that he never cared, he never will, and this is all a sick joke.

(She wants it.)

“Should we sit?”

“Aye.”

He complies as she sprawls into the sand she feels moist under her toes, sitting down a few inches from him.

Somehow, staring at him still feels illegal.

When he gets a flask of rum out of his leather jacket, she rolls her eyes, and her bracelet glints under the moonlight. For the first time in ages, it is not a painful sight. She does not twist the little charms.

“Really? Is rum your solution to everything?”

“It’s not rum, Swan. It’s merely water.”

“Is it now?”

“Nah, it’s definitely rum. But it never hurts to have a drink between friends.”

And at that wicked, wicked word, they both stare at one another and gape slightly.

It should be funny. Except it still itches.

Aren’t they friends?

There are stars reflected in his eyes. There is still this ache inside her chest.

Emma is urged by a desire to look down then, but she doesn’t cave in. Instead, her mouth curves into a smile.

“…Friends or other types of acquaintances,” he adds after a while, and Emma’s smile widens.

The flask of rum is handed to her, and she drinks a few mouthfuls that diffuse a sweet heat and courage down her throat. Lord does she need it.

“Acquaintances, you say, um?”

She licks the small drop of rum that rolls down her lower lip, notices with satisfaction as Killian’s eyes follow the movement of her tongue and widen when he realizes she has caught him red-handed.

“Aye. I believe we’ve been acquainted.” There is a delicious twirl, down in her stomach, that could drown her fears, she knows it, if only she allowed herself to let go.

“Right.”

Idiot. Her cheeks burn. It is ridiculous, they are ridiculous and she doesn’t mind.

Woosh, woosh, the waves giggle.

As Emma inhales deeply, she figures she has to give him back his flask and that this -- whatever the hell this really is -- is probably going to be more difficult than she initially thought.

Her fingers brush against his as his hand closes over the flask -- of course they do -- and Emma couldn’t honestly say who’s to blame.

“Thanks, Swan.”

Oh, how many scenarios she made up in her mind, about him showing up. They all ended with their lips locked together. What she had a very hard time figuring out was the in-between. The talking. The confession. Because there has to be one, right?

She hears him gulp a few mouthfuls of rum down next to her and she refocuses her gaze on him. He clears his throat.

“So, erm, any plans for the foreseeable future?” he inquires.

The flask is buried in the sand between them.

“I don’t know, to be honest. For now, I think I’ll stay in Storybrooke. It’s my home.”

And then a pause, she glances at him through her eyelashes. A mischievous wave comes crashing at their feet, bites their toes.

“What about you, Killian? Still in Portsmouth?”

She watches him tilt his head next to her as he carefully sieves a handful of sand between his fingers, brows furrowed.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about moving back to Storybrooke. Joining the Navy again would not be easy, and I’m not sure it’s entirely what I desire. I mostly did it to honour Liam but it’s never been a dream of mine…”

A pause, a breath, for him, Emma has stopped breathing somewhere after “Storybrooke”. And her mouth refuses to shut.

“Plus, there’s the fact that Graham did mention the need for another deputy,” he casually adds, shoots a swift glance at her.

Oh. Breathe, Emma, breathe.

It’s very hard, then, for Emma to swallow the smile that tingles her lips.

“You are?” she asks, curses silently her quivering tone. Clears her throat. Dammit, why did it come out like this?

If he notices it, Killian doesn’t show it. Instead, he goes on, the ghost of a smile over his lips.

“Aye. I don’t think there’s anywhere else for me to be. It is high time I came home.”

Home. The word echoes between them, much like the gentle rustling of the waves.

And Emma nods and she has no idea where to put herself, what to say. She settles for telling the truth.

“That’s great. I could really use you around.” A pause. “I’ve missed you.”

Twinkle, twinkle the stars in the night sky, and the constellations in her heart as her eyes meet his. They put to shame the sea of stars in front of them.

Emma’s heart is bursting out as he slowly glances down at her lips, and then even more slowly looks up, a dangerous grin overtaking his features.

“Aye. I’ve missed you too, Swan. I don’t want to be apart from you anymore.”

Hearing him repeat her words is positively the worst thing that could have happened to her heart rate. That one nearly rips her heart out of her chest and sends it ricocheting on the waves.

She nods, laughs a bit, crinkles her nose mostly to hide how flustered she truly is.

“How…How did this happen?”

And he sighs next to her, a very dramatic sigh that she recognizes as a poor attempt to hide a deeper kind of pain. She watches as he stretches his legs, digs a shape into the sand with his fingers.

“How did you end up marrying Neal Cassidy, you mean? Poor judgement, if I do say so myself.”

The bastard.

She elbows him in the ribs, of course, he deserves it.

And he only chuckles, feigns a moan of pain, and… and grabs the arm she threw at him to bring her closer to him. There are grains of sand stuck to his skin as his hand closes over her fisted palm. As he stares at her, all air has definitely been knocked out of Emma’s lungs.

His nose gently brushes hers. Little pulses of magic seem to climb up her hand, her arm, to gently tickle her heart.

And she gazes into his eyes, mortified. Swallows hard.

“To be fair, he did hide that letter from you. A shame really, it was truly a pearl of literature.”

His breath tingles Emma’s lips, and it isn’t fair.

She snorts, she tries to at least, because it is hard to do anything when he is this close to her.

“David told you,” she mumbles, rolls her eyes dramatically, blushes furiously.

He isn’t denying the letter. He isn’t denying anything.

“Aye that he did. You can’t trust the guy with a secret, love.”

She doesn’t know what David told him over the phone, but Emma thinks it is safe to assume that it is somewhere near absolutely everything. And it should bother her, it should bother that secret and private part of herself, but Emma’s tired of fighting against herself, and she lets it go. All of it.

Her hand is still in his, twisted against his chest, right above his heart. She doesn’t mind. They could remain like this, forever, for all she minds. But that wouldn’t be very practical, now, would it?

“And it’s not like I didn’t know…” he continues, and Emma’s mouth drops even more, if it is possible. “I think I’ve known from the moment I met you. Haven’t you?”

A nervous chuckle shakes her shoulders.

“What exactly have you always known?”

“You can’t answer my question with another question, Swan. That’s just not how the English language works.”

“Well, if you could drop the metaphors and double entendre, then perhaps, perhaps I…” A breath. There’s no need to hide anymore, although something ludicrous seems about to explode inside her chest. “Y-yes, I think I knew...But I --”

“-- Good, because in that case, there’s no use for me to hold back from doing this…”

And as she opens her mouth to complain about metaphors and double entendre, again, he leans into her, tilts his face and, as Emma’s heart does a weird leaping thing in her chest, delicately presses his lips to hers.

While Emma does think it is definitely very rude of him to interrupt her like that, she cannot bring herself to complain too much.

Neither can she ignore the sudden explosion in her chest, thousands of strawberry bubbles of happiness that taste of childhood and dreams bursting out.

Oh god. She muffles a moan against his mouth, snatches her hand from his grip to tug at his hair, brings him closer to her, as close as humanly possible, presses her mouth harder against his, as hard she can, and she quite literally feels like a house set on fire.

Thump, thump, cries her heart, as their lips dance together, as his hand gets lost in her hair, and no air reaches her lungs and this goddamn flower keeps blooming inside her chest and there isn’t any space between them, and she’s pretty sure she’s combusting into flames, but it’s fine, it’s really fine when his mouth opens and gives her access to his tongue.

It’s a gentle kiss, in spite of the passion. It’s such a gentle kiss, in the way with which his hand tenderly lingers in her curls, as if he were afraid she’d shatter under his touch, or in the way his other arm curls around her waist, holds her tightly, but not too tightly, so as not to break her it seems.

Years of yearning will do that to you, make you afraid of shattering the glittering and fragile object of your affection.

And when they let go, burning forehead against burning forehead, because they really, really need to breathe, Emma doesn’t want to run. In fact, she doesn’t want this to ever end. And she doesn’t know it, but she smiles.

“Then why –” he begins, his lips lightly, delicately brushing against hers as he speaks.

And how dare he be talking! She can barely breathe.

“—why the wedding?” she lazily answers against his lips. “Because I didn’t think you cared…” A pause. “You never told me you did... You didn’t even call, after the k-kiss.”

Damnit, that was harder to spit out than anticipated. And it probably sounded more accusing than she wanted it to, but she forgives herself.

The painful memory allows her to step back a little, to gaze into his blue eyes and discover his cheeks crimson and an awestruck look on his face, as well as a lot of guilt and tenderness.

A sigh. “Of course I didn’t. I was waiting for you to do it. You were bloody engaged, may I remind you.”

Her brows furrow.

“And I did! But you didn’t answer.” Silence. “Tink did.”

She watches his features with weariness. She watches as he frowns. Backs away slightly, to gaze into her eyes, seems to seek the truth. And then, sighs.

“Of bloody course. Tink.” Emma watches as he rolls his eyes dramatically, hisses a few insults between his teeth.

She thinks he is still infuriatingly handsome.

Another nervous laughter begins rattling her body, because this is ridiculous, they are ridiculous, they just had to talk it out and it would have been fine but --

“Seems like our lack of communication isn’t only on us.”

Emma smirks. “Well, it’s mostly on us.”

“Point taken.” And it’s unfair because he smiles a bright smile then and her heart jumps once more.

And he looks down, again, at her lips, and Emma feels frozen only she is burning. She needs to kiss him again, and forever, probably.

“But if you cared--” Why is he talking again? She opens eyes she didn’t know she had shut to dart a murderous gaze on him. He doesn’t see it, the fool, keeps talking instead. “--why did you ask me to forget our kiss?”

That nearly knocks her out. “Our kiss? Which kiss?”

She doesn’t know just how right she is to ask this question.

He raises an eyebrow. His cheeks are flushed and his hair dishevelled, and Emma has to focus to look into his eyes and not stare at his swollen lips.

“You mean to tell me you don’t remember?”

And his eyes do a weird twitching thing. He doesn’t seem alright. And he sounds a little bit as if a part of himself has just died.

“I mean… I sure as hell think I would remember this.” Oh, she totally would.

“Your nineteenth birthday,” he exhales, and if he could raise his eyebrows any harder, they’d get stuck up his hairline, “we kissed on the rooftop right before you fell to the ground.”

Well, she does remember the wicked headache she got that day, but she thought it was caused by the alcohol and…

“No…Yes?” A pause. She frowns. Realization sinks in. Well that would explain a lot, indeed. “We did?”

That would explain his crumpled face as she asked him to forget their night, it would explain why he avoided her all through summer, and why he stayed with Milah, and why she started dating Neal in the first place, and oh -- they are two idiots, aren’t they?

“Aye. And you specifically asked me to forget that night.”

If she keeps frowning her eyebrows will remain stuck forever. She frowns harder.

“But I had no memory of that kiss.”

“Bloody hell.” And Killian lets go of a very dramatic sigh, shakes his head.

Emma’s mouth forms an “O” as she watches Killian glance further away, to the sea, and she begins to understand years of struggle could have been avoided, had they, had they…well, talked about it, it seems.

An angel passes.

“Damnit,” she whispers.

And Emma is surprised to find a chuckle tickling her throat. Why is she laughing? This isn’t funny.

He still isn’t looking at her. Impish waves keep nibbling their toes. She hates how heavy everything suddenly feels.

Emma thinks that all this time he thought-- he thought she didn’t care, but she did, oh she cared, and...

Emma breathes in, fingers pressed to her temples. Shrugs a bit, breathes out and casts an eye on Killian. He doesn’t seem alright. But she knows how to distract him.

“Since I don’t remember, allow me to ask: did you kiss me?”

His blue eyes flash in the dimness as she smirks.

She doesn’t think she has seen him look this offended before.

“I beg your pardon? You bloody kissed me, Emma!”

His high pitch does make her chuckle.

“Don’t give me that offended look. That does sound like something you’d do.”

Oh, the wrath sparkling in his gaze then, it’s a sight for sore eyes, and she cannot stop smiling.

“Nah, you were the one who melted onto my lips and sucked the bloody life out of me, perched on your high heels.”

“They weren’t that high. And, at least I did something about my feelings.”

“Well, you forgot so it was pretty useless in the end, anyway.”

“Hey!”

And her fist punches his chest, and he captures it again, traitor, and time stands still for a moment, as they glance at each other.

Everything still feels very fragile and terrifying. But that’s quite alright.

And then with a swing of his hip, he shifts her under his weight, onto the sand, and her body meets the ground softly.

His face surrounded by dark, tousled hair hides the moon from her sight, but as her breath catches in her chest, she doesn’t mind.

“You were saying?”

“Mmm…”

Emma thinks sand will get stuck in her hair. And it’s going to be a pain to wash it out. But that’s okay.

They’re only twenty-three, murmurs her inner voice, they’re allowed to be young and stupid and messy and –

“Well, I’m glad it didn’t take us another ten years to figure our shit out. Wouldn’t be nearly as sexy.”

“Speak for yourself, Swan.”

“Idiot.”

And without a second thought, or a first, she raises her face to capture his lips, drink his breath, because she is allowed to, and this is right and all she’s ever wanted.

Up the beach, down Main street, Killian and Emma walk along the roads of their childhood.

Emma doesn’t know where they are going, but it doesn’t seem to matter, not just yet.

Fear is of course lurking in one deep corner of her mind, but it is easy to ignore it while her hand is safely tucked in his.

“Where are you staying?” she asks as they shift to stare at one another.

Granny’s green B&B sign flashes behind Killian’s back.

Amusement sparkles in his eyes. “Granny’s.”

Emma remembers New York’s cold street lights, and the snow melting onto her lips, and Killian’s damp hair, and the sad glimmer in his blue eyes and her cold, shaking hand in his.

It was the night she decided to give him up, not knowing, not knowing he cared too.

It was the night she would have burned in hell to hear him invite her into his hotel room.

(Was it worth it, all the pain, in the end?)

“Fancy a last drink, Swan?”

Streetlights dabble gold beams into his blue eyes.

She nods, a little out of breath. Something soft and awful swallows her from inside.

“Yeah.”

And down the road, up the stairs, they go, hands clasped together. Her bracelet jingles up the stairs.

Emma remembers standing on his porch before her eighteenth birthday party, forehead pressed to the door, eyes locked on her phone screen, heart beating fast, fast.

“Come in whenever you want, I’m ready!” And her stomach twisting at his reply.

Things were so easy while she was still convinced that she was in love with him and she would never love anyone else and they had all the time in the world.

She was wrong, but that’s also fine.

(Isn’t pain just pain?)

Click, he’s unlocked the door, and Emma steps forward to gaze inside. Beyond Granny’s questionable decoration choices, everything is clean and proper and Navy and Killian. What a relief.

It is quite late now, and exhaustion burns Emma’s eyes, circles her throat and crudely brings to light her fears and insecurities. She feels bare, exposed, vulnerable under the dark green chandelier.

For a short moment, she fears there will be too much to mend between them, too many scars over their chest for them to offer their hearts again.

“Make yourself at home, Swan.”

The red leather jacket is dropped onto the bed just as he neatly folds his own on a chair by the wall.

And she keeps staring at those four walls, at this cramped room, and she thinks a month ago she was marrying someone else.

She’s still scared. Is she supposed to be scared?

“You okay, love?” he nudges her.

His hand softly grabs her shoulder.

She shrugs. If she is honest with herself, she does feel a little bit overwhelmed. This room is too silent. She can almost hear past echoes of their hearts breaking.

“Yes, I’m just…”

“Reminiscing?”

A smile. “That’s not the word I would have gone for, but yeah.”

His hand hurtles down her arm and slides into hers. His touch still shoots electric trails all over her skin.

“Want to sit down, Swan?” A nod, and he’s tucking her down with him.

When Killian switches on the small outdated TV on the wooden table in front of them, Emma sighs in relief.

And when still no words echo between them, Emma feels his eyes burn the skin of her cheek.

New York again. A cold bench. The snow falling onto his hair. This pain, in her chest, as he utters her name. Milah.

(Pain is just pain.)

“What are you thinking about, Swan?”

She blinks, licks her lips. Breathes in.

Will not look at him.

Augusta airport this time. His back, his image printed in blood over her retinas, this dark shape she cannot forget, forever turned on her.

“The past.”

The pain.

Storybrooke’s town hall. Her weary eyes twitching back and forth from Neal towards the door. Begging Killian to appear. And he doesn’t. (Or he does, but he’s too late.)

“Listen, Emma,” and his fingers have found hers again, and they are soft, and she looks up to discover his eyes even gentler, and his lips spread in a tender smile, “The past is behind us and we cannot change it.”

“But there’s been so much pain…”

She sounds like she is twelve again, she can almost touch Ingrid’s wooden fence under her fingers, can almost feel the tingling fear that a splinter might get stuck in the tender skin, and she can almost smell the yellow irises, and it almost brings her to tears.

“I know. But we can do better now.”

She nods. Can they do better? What if all of this is just a chimera and they’ve both idealized their love and what if … What if none of this is real?

She should sleep. Her eyelids are heavy and her eyes burn.

But then his hand cups her cheek, and its warmth brings her back to reality, tethers her. Her own palm settles above his as she leans into his touch. Closes her eyes, for just one bit.

She is so tired. Morpheus is luring her into his arms.

“As long as I am alive--” Oh, but then he is talking, and his voice is velvet against her skin, and she opens her eyes to stare at him. She’s pretty sure he can hear the thump of her heart. “--you can live with the conviction, Swan, that I will always be by your side.” A pause. “Always.” Another silence, his words sinking into her skin, as his fingers trace butterflies along her neck. A smile. “I’ve always been in love with you. From the moment I met you.”

Oh. Her eyes widen. Thump, thump.

She is swallowed by a gigantic wave of confused feelings. She thinks an earthquake is shattering the windows and shaking the walls. She thinks a tear rolls down her cheek, but she is not crying.

And it’s not like she didn’t know, she knew, but, but also she didn’t, for so long, and this is all very confusing and unexpected but very much expected, and he keeps staring at her and she doesn’t know what to say, for fuck’s sake.

And the only answer she can come up with is her trembling hands caressing his cheeks and then slowly grabbing the lapel of his t-shirt, and then, finally -- the pressure of her lips against his. Tender, at first, and then furious, desperate, hungry.

She wants to tell him, I loved you when you walked away from me, the first time, and the times after that, as well. I loved you although you never looked back at me, and I couldn’t look forward. I loved you when you were avoiding me, and I loved you when I didn’t think I loved you anymore. But mostly, I loved you from the moment I met you.

Instead, she presses her mouth into his, fiercely, for all of those times she wishes she had been brave enough to kiss him and she didn’t.

And Emma forgives them both. Forgives their past mistakes and heartaches.

They will do better. (They want to, and that’s already half of the journey, isn’t it?)

A number. Nineteen. Emma’s nineteen tonight. He’s been for a while now. (He feels a hundred years old since Liam left. Feels like he’s been holding his breath for centuries. Only the pain doesn’t flatter.)

They’re on a rooftop. Emma’s pink dress floats in the wind, much like a pirate flag. Her smile, that night, is bright, vivid, infuriatingly confident as she glances down at his lips.

The waves crash against the sand, back and forth, back and forth.

Her body is warm against his chest. Both of his hands hold her waist.

Time stands still, as she stands up on her tip toes and kisses him.

It’s an explosion, then, in his chest. A mercurial bliss.

And this time, he catches her before the fall. He doesn’t let her go. This time, his grip is secure around her waist, his fingers firm around her hips as she stumbles forward and they chuckle together.

This time, she doesn’t forget their kiss.

No.

Instead, she stares deeply into his eyes and she says: “I’ve been meaning to do that for a while, now.”

And he says: “I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”

And if everything is easy, it’s only because it is a dream.

A ray of sunshine tickles Killian’s eyelids. His face crinkles, he groans, opens one hesitant eye.

Bloody hell. What a dream. Or a nightmare, he cannot really tell.

There is a weight against his chest, bitterness at the back of his mouth.

He glances down. Emma. She fell asleep in his arms last night while he was slowly rocking her, and they forgot to close the shutters and now Killian will never fall back to sleep again.

His eyes still burn.

He gazes at her face buried in the hollow of his neck, blonde hair across his chest. He smiles.

A hospital room, eight months ago. A blinding, golden light. Her sleepy smile. “Oh, you’re awake?”

He would pinch himself if he had a hand to spare.

Those six months, without her, thinking she didn’t want him, were some of the bleakest of his life.

It was like losing a limb, only he lost two. And he had to keep on learning how to walk without an anchor, how to live without a hand and without hers to hold.

And then, David’s call, one morning.

“They broke up, Killian. Neal found your letter. I think you should do something about that, or I will personally come to murder you in your pitiful apartment, do you hear me?”

Emma snores lightly against his skin. He traces the shape of her jawline with gentle fingers.

He is terrified. Perhaps it is the only way to be, for now.

Perhaps it is good. It means they’re trying. They’re evolving, together, for the first time in ages.

A grunt, her small hand spread across her face, she’s starting to wake up, he can tell.

There is still a lot of sadness in his chest, for the boy who loved a girl and suffered deeply for it. For the boy who lost everything and still managed to lose more through the years, until there wasn’t anything left to lose.

Liam’s smile from his car window. A wave. And then void, nothing.

Killian clenches his jaw.

“Hey,” a small voice groans, “if you keep staring at me while I sleep, it’s going to get creepy.”

A grin.

“Sorry love, couldn’t sleep.”

Emma lifts her chin, green eyes shimmering in this golden morning light, and she tries a sleepy smile.

“Morning, Killian.”

“Morning, Emma.”

“Am I crushing you under my weight?”

“I think I’ll survive, love.”

She still hesitates to kiss him, he sees it in the small start of her head backwards, so he bends forward to kiss her.

It’s a sloppy morning kiss, but he wants all of them.

Last night, they absolutely did not take time to undress. Emma fell asleep like a rock, and he was too afraid he’d wake her up to try and remove his clothes.

But she seems very much awake as her legs curl around his hips, and it is very hard for Killian to ignore the way her dress climbs back up her thighs and gives away the beginning of her red panties.

He can feel his cheeks become hot and red, and suddenly Emma’s smirking at him.

“Like what you see?”

He swallows down.

“It’s quite alright, aye.”

A squeeze of her thighs around his torso, he is trapped, and his heart leaps.

“Alright?” she repeats. “That’s definitely a disappointing answer.”

As for Killian’s heart, it’s practically bursting out in his chest by now. He gulps.

He cannot say he hasn’t thought a lot about it, what it would feel like to go beyond a simple kiss with Emma. How her skin would taste under his tongue.

He may have started to think about it at around age fifteen, when he saw her come back from summer vacation all tan legs out, and he can still hear Liam’s mocking tone “If you open your mouth any wider, little brother, you’re going to swallow flies.”

The thoughts worsened after their kiss. There were some lonely, desperate moments as well during which he imagined tracing the shape of her body, much like his fingers flutter against the side of her leg right now.

His eyes don’t leave hers, scrutinizing her to know if he is allowed to go further.

“We don’t have to, if you don’t want to, Emma,” he whispers.

The wicked smile she shoots him is a sufficient answer. “Oh don’t worry, I want to.”

And then her lips find his again and his fingers are gripping her thigh now, clutching her skin, leaving marks, climbing back up some more and feel the soft skin right under the fabric of her dress.

She moans against his mouth, and it’s a wonderful sound, and suddenly they are both wearing far too many clothes and they have to hurry or they’ll combust into flames.

Emma straddles him just as her nimble fingers pull her dress up and throw it over her head.

“Couldn’t have done it better myself,” he mumbles and it’s very hard to look anywhere else but at her naked body.

But she’s already getting impatient with his t-shirt, and she groans. “Come on Killian, help me. Raise your arms up.”

“Didn’t think you’d become such a morning person, Swan.”

She laughs a bit as his t-shirt hits the floor in its turn in a muffled sound, and she does this thing where she stops to gaze into his eyes and he will die for a lack of oxygen.

He watches as she swallows, ogling him.

“Some things are worth waking up for.”

And then she’s melting into the skin of his neck as her fingers sift through his hair, and Killian ceases completely to think.

A month later -- Augusta Airport.

Emma clutches Ingrid’s yellow irises against her chest. Her hold is gentle but her lips form a firm line.

As she stares at the Arrivals Board in front of her, the beat of her heart is drumming in her ears, and she is pretty certain oxygen is having a very hard time reaching her lungs.

He’s only been gone a week, mumbles her inner voice, but Emma’s too happy to pay attention to her pride.

She glances up, and a breath of relief escapes Emma’s throat as the light next to Portsmouth changes color.

“He’s landed,” she whispers to herself, flowers still pressed to her chest.

She glances down, careful not to damage the beautiful bouquet Ingrid offered last night, over the dinner table.

“I know how much he loves them,” Ingrid smiled.

Another look at the clock. He should be here any time now.

Her heart skips a blissful beat.

A part of her still cannot believe this is real. That he is coming home, for good, that Emma found them a cute apartment near the beach and they’re going to get everything they’ve ever dreamed of.

“Are you sure you want to do this...I mean, we could wait, and I could go back to Ingrid’s for a while…”

A butterfly in the dark, a kiss in the night.

“I’ve never been so sure of anything…”

Gazing all around her, Emma spots the familiar large window in front of her. It still shows a blurry reflection of her body. Emma frowns. Well, that will never change. One hand reluctantly gives up on the flowers to comb her hair.

It is now mid September in Storybrooke, Maine, and Emma has to admit she’s missed him.

It wasn’t the kind of missing him she was far too familiar with only two months ago. It wasn’t a burning ache in her chest. It was just like losing your glasses and finding them again on your bed table, where you left them. It’s a kind of missing she knew to end. And it made a great difference.

As she remains very still, feet stuck to the ground, she remembers shaking, bouncing up and down on her feet, waiting for him to come back the first time, four years ago.

Nothing’s really changed. She is still Emma and he is still Killian. Except everything’s changed.

It feels like another lifetime. Emma smiles down at the flowers in her hands. A very peaceful sunflower blooms in her chest.

The crowd of people around her brings Emma back to the present. More people gather together, and Emma understands they are all just as eager to see their loved ones as she is.

And she waits, knowing her love is about to arrive.

Another few minutes go by, and time seems to slow down. She clenches her jaw. Unclenches it. Come on, relax, Emma.

And then… And then, there he is.

“Killian.” The blissful whisper escapes her throat as a brutal wave of bliss sweeps her off her feet. She doesn’t hold it back. It isn’t scary anymore.

She’s somehow thankful to notice he hasn’t changed one bit, but it’s only been a week, what was she expecting? A tender hue of blue meets her eyes and smiles in recognition.

“Emma, my love,” he mirrors her happy sigh.

Her heart beams as they walk towards each other, their pace sure and quick and knowing, and in a few steps he lets go of a thousand suitcases to pick her up from the ground.

“Careful, Killian, your flowers,” she complains even as her feet quit the floor.

And she tries to hold the bouquet away from his face, but he doesn’t seem to care and presses a long kiss to her mouth instead.

She sighs happily into his embrace, wraps her arms around his neck, and her senses are filled by him – his smell, a strong cologne she is only too familiar with, his skin under her fingers, his tousled black hair.

“I missed you,” he exhales against her cheek, and drops another kiss to her cheek.

She slowly backs away, smiling. “It’s only been a week…”

He raises an eyebrow that challenges her to lie some more. She chuckles, crinkles her nose, mumbles: “Okay, I might have missed you too…”

He sighs a dramatic sigh, rolls his eyes.

“Now, you nearly gave me a heart attack, Swan. I was this close from flying back to Portsmouth.”

Idiot, her inner voice snorts, unimpressed. But her heart isn’t very concerned, and a giggle jolts out of her throat. Even her cheeks give her away, flush furiously, and she hates them for it - come on, it’s been a month now.

Her hand lingers on his face, tracing the little scar on his cheek.

“Are you going to take those flowers, or should I keep them for myself?” She attacks in a coy, sharp tone.

He flutters his eyelashes. The fucker.

“If the lady insists.”

A roll of the eye, a bright smile, and Emma’s heart sighs -- defeated. And the flowers carefully slip into his hand.

He drops another kiss to her lips. “Thank you, love.”

“Of course, Killian.”

And then there is this very dramatic moment during which they both stare at his three enormous suitcases and wonder how the hell they are going to make this work.

“Damnit. Did you have to take your whole life with you?”

“Well, a blonde lass did ask me to move in with her.”

Her fist punches his shoulder, playfully. Another sigh echoes all through the airport’s hall.

“Well, let’s go, I guess.”

She’s quick to grab the bag he let go of to hold her and seizes two red suitcases. And he watches her, the fucker, flowers in the crook of his arm and the third suitcase secure his hand. He seems infinitely entertained.

“Don’t you dare laugh in my face, Killian Jones.”

“Well, if it weren’t for the flowers, I could maybe hel-”

“-- NO. You keep the damn flowers! For once Ingrid offered them.”

And as they are walking down the airport like old times, Emma knows they’ll do better. They already are doing better.

(Emma thinks pain is just pain, and they should have known sooner, they should have known better but she also thinks that doesn’t matter because surely there is no kind of pain that cannot be absolved by a lot of love.)

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

@yasbio2015 @bubblegum1425 @daenerysmyhsa @dancingnancyy @elizabeethan @farewell-courgette @beca0912 @stina-g @tenaciouskittynightmare @noensnaringnet @klynn-stormz @sekretny13 @tiganasummertree @vvbooklady1256 @brustudyblog @peggyyswan @thisonesatellite @ohmightydevviepuu @courtorderedcake @snowbellewells @kingofmyheart14 @teamhook @mariakov81 @folkloreismylullaby @officerrogers

(Might write some missing scenes, and add a few bonuses to this story, so if you’ve got anything in mind you’d like to read, hit me up ;) (actually hit me up for anything and let’s be friends.)

#cs fanfics #cs ff #captain swan #my stuff #amy writes #i need to find a new source of serotonin guys #my brain doesn't want to let this go #thank you all for your comments #and likes #and just for reading this story #it means the world to me #and i'm so glad i got to talk to some of you through this <3 #i hope you'll this #and now i'll shut up

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punfit · 3 years ago

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31/7/21

Breakfast - serving of plain yoghurt with granola, sultanas, 1 pink lady apple, and honey; sweetened black coffee.

Dinner - serving of white rice with beef and vegetable stew, salad with ranch dressing, and fried chillies.

Dessert - 4 meringue kisses, black tea.

Water - 2L, excellent.

Exercise - 21 mins on the treadmill at 4km/h and incline of 10%; Chloe Ting flat abs in 30 days (10 mins); 25 x (donkey kicks, butt bridges, double leg raises, crunches, half push-ups)

A good day. :)

1/8/21

Breakfast - 0.5 serving of smoothie (sweet potato, canned jackfruit + syrup, carrot, pine-mango juice, plain cashews), sweetened black coffee.

Dinner - serving of white rice with beef curry, potato curry, salad with French dressing.

Dessert - 4 meringue kisses, green tea.

Water - 2L, excellent.

Exercise - 20 mins on the treadmill at 4.5km/h and incline of 10%; 30 x (donkey kicks, butt bridges, double leg raises, crunches, half push-ups, walnut-crushers (back))

Had a smaller breakfast today because I woke up late, and the batch of smoothies filled slightly more than 4 glasses, so I just had the half a glass of excess. Pretty bland in terms of flavour, mildly sweet, but didn't have much else going on. Oh well.

The walk was nice and intense today, I'll think I'll stick to these settings until they get easier.

One thing that has me concerned is the fact that my right leg gets more tired than my left, probably due to the way my right leg has a slight outward twist to it.

2/8/21

Breakfast - serving of smoothie (sweet potato, canned jackfruit + syrup, carrot, pine-mango juice, plain cashews), sweetened black coffee.

Dinner - serving of beef and vegetable stew, 1 hotdog bun with peri peri dip.

Dessert - 1 vanilla sponge cupcake with frosting and 100s&1000s, 0.5 candy cane, green tea.

Snack - 1.3 servings buttered microwave popcorn.

Water - 2L, excellent.

Exercise - 20 mins on the treadmill at 4.5km/h and incline of 10%; Blogilates 5 Tricep Toning Exercises and Boob Sculpt Workout.

I'm going to try and get back into a weekly routine. I'm separating the days into specific muscle group focused workouts, with Wednesdays off because I have no time to work out. I want to see my muscles again, dangit.

Didn't get much from the chest-focused video, but BOY did the tricep one hurt. Especially the second move. I took so many breaks during the timer 😂 I can't believe there was ever I time I took only one or two breaks throughout.

I don't even know if I got any gains from it. Either I didn't try hard enough, or I stretched out the pain well enough afterwards.

3/8/21

Breakfast - serving of smoothie (sweet potato, canned jackfruit + syrup, carrot, pine-mango juice, plain cashews), sweetened black coffee.

Dinner - medium fries with spicy sauce, serving of salad with French dressing, lamb chop burger in white bread roll with peri peri dip, 1 steamed dim sim.

Dessert - 4 meringue kisses, black tea.

Water - 2L, excellent.

Exercise - 20 mins on the treadmill at 4.5km/h and incline of 10%; Chloe Ting Summer Shred (2020) HIIT (15 mins).

Oh lord my legs were jelly after the Chloe Ting video xD every other step was threatened by looming cramps. That's what I get for a 10% incline walk I guess. 😅 The fatigue faded through the rest of the night, which was nice.

4/8/21

Breakfast - serving of plain yoghurt with granola and sultanas, sweetened black coffee.

Lunch - 1 mandarin, 1 chocolate caramel muesli bar, 2 servings beef jerky, 1 serving fruit gummies, 1 Freddo chocolate + popping candy frog, 1 Ribena juicebox.

Dinner - servinf of white rice with beef curry, dhal, bacon, and leeks theldala.

Dessert - 0.5 serving of cake with buttercream frosting, 1 orange cream cookie, green tea.

Water - 1.7L, alright.

Exercise - none (rest day).

Long day of on-campus classes, with little time in the break, so I wasn't as strict to my routine as normal. Drank less water to reduce the number of bathroom trips, ate more snacks to keep my energy up though the afternoon and early evening. I think I managed pretty well.

Still got some mild soreness in my legs from yesterday's Chloe Ting. 😅

5/8/21

Breakfast - 0.5 serving of smoothie (sweet potato, canned jackfruit + syrup, carrot, pine-mango juice, plain cashews), sweetened black coffee.

Dinner - serving of beef and vegetable stew with lamb chop, 1 steamed dim sim, 1 large white bread roll with peri peri dip.

Dessert - 1 custard filled donut with chocolate icing, black tea.

Snacks - 1.5 servings salted cashews and sultanas.

Water - 2L, excellent.

Exercise - 21 mins on the treadmill at 5.0km/h and incline of 0%; 30 Day Fit (beginner and intermediate legs, 11 mins).

During breakfast, I realised I was feeling full and so saved the rest of the smoothie for tomorrow. That's new for me.

I suppose I'm still full from all of the food yesterday. Besides this batch is predominately root vegetable-based, so I was bound to feel full sooner in comparison to other mixtures.

Barely broke a sweat on today's workout, which was a nice change of pace. Wasn't dead tired by the end of it. Felt good to ease into the first full week of a new routine.

6/8/21 Weight

SW: 80KG

CW: 63.5KG

GW: 60KG

0.5KG up from last week. 🙄 I suppose that's all the desserts showing their face. Still, I know I've been working my muscles quite a bit. Despite my face looking slightly rounder, and my back being a little flabbier, and my belly being chubbier, I'm willing to bet that a fraction of that gain is my muscle tone getting revived.

Honestly though, I thought I'd lost some weight from last week, so today's weigh in isn't super encouraging.

Gotta stick to it.

Breakfast - 0.5 serving of smoothie (sweet potato, canned jackfruit + syrup, carrot, pine-mango juice, plain cashews), 1 banana, sweetened black coffee.

Dinner - serving of roast chicken with potatoes and carrots, 1.5 servings Hawaiian bread.

Dessert - 4 meringue kisses, 0.5 candy cane, 1.5 servings salted cashews and sultanas, 1 Freddo frog with 100s and 1000s, black tea.

Water - 2L, excellent.

Exercise - 21 mins on the treadmill at 4.0km/h and incline of 10%; Blogilates side- and under-butt workouts (20 mins).

Too many desserts.

#food log #fitblr #31/7/21 #1/8/21 #2/8/21 #3/8/21 #4/8/21 #5/8/21 #6/8/21 #weigh in

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mrfog6 · 5 years ago

Link

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rosesisupposes · 6 years ago

Text

To Dust or To Gold

Part 8 of Another Goddamn Hero Story

read on ao3

Chapter Pairings: established Royality, Analogical, pre-romantic LAMP (emphasis on Moxiety and Logince)

Chapter Warnings: Hospitals, death threats, background character deaths, some gore, hallucinations, self-hatred, bipolar cycling (both depressive and manic), cliffhanger ending :D

Word Count: 9,395 [it’s a doozy]

Taglist: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @bewarethegrammarpolice @jemthebookworm @arandompasserby @sparkly-rainbow-salt @astral-eclipse @thelowlysatsuma @monsterinatophat @turtally-pawsome @um-yes-hi-hello @idkaurl @potestessemagishomosexualitatis @hawthornshadow

~~~~~~~~~~

“So,” Logan began.

“So,” Roman responded, reclining in an ornate ruby chair.

“Sew buttons!” Patton interrupted, draping himself across Roman’s lap.

Virgil growled in frustration. “Can you please focus for a single second?”

The heroes had relocated to the supers’ gym, still anxious to keep the untested villains away from the mayor.

“We don’t take orders, Reflex,” the Marauder replied evenly. “We’re only here because you two don’t seem as incompetent as the rest of the super assholes.”

“You don’t need to take orders,” Logan said, shooting Virgil a reassuring look even as he spoke. “We just need to know what exactly you can do, and plan how we’ll stay in contact.”

“Asking for my number already? I couldn’t possibly, not so soon,” Roman responded, fluttering his eyelashes.

“We’re not joining your ‘hatchet’ or whatever you call it,” Patton added. “We’re here to take down a murderer, not get sucked into the system.”

“We’re not asking you to join H.A.T.C.H.,” Logan said patiently. “But if we don’t know where you are or how to contact you, that just makes you a liability.”

“Actually it’s just an air ability,” Patton quipped back. His lips didn’t twitch. He didn’t grin. But the smugness was palpable from across the gym. Logan lost his train of thought at the overwhelmingly familiar feeling of a punster at work. He could practically see his dad’s irritatingly-pleased grin shining through Patton’s smooth mask.

Virgil, a true hero, came to Logan’s rescue. “So, air ability. Air manipulation, no matter where the air is, yeah? Inside or outside of a person?”

Gale Force paused, then nodded.

“And you, Shiny Red Boy, any limitations we need to know about?”

The Crimson Marauder gasped. “Shiny red boy? That’s the best you can do? I am appalled, I am disgusted, I spend my life dedicated to being chaotic neutral and this is the thanks I get??”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Okay, Drama Red Queen, shall I paint the roses for you or are you going to answer the question?”

“Joke’s on you, I like that nickname,” Roman said with a sniff. “I just need to keep focused. And my constructs can only be autonomous if they’re tiny. And I can’t do more overall mass at once than something about the size of this entire room.”

Logan looked around the echoing room, designed for whole teams of heroes to practice in at once. “That’s some power,” he said softly. “And limited only by strength of mind. Fascinating.”

“And what about you two?” Patton asked in a saccharine-sweet voice. “You wouldn’t get us to divulge details without returning the favor, would you?”

“I have, as you’ve seen, a super speed ability. I can also speed read or manipulate just a hand or limb to go at enhanced speeds. I can go from 0 to 60 in .0001 seconds, and my top recorded speed is 1,700 miles per hour, or approximately 2,700 kilometers per hour.” Logan responded matter-of-factly.

“And what about you, Tall, Dark, and Muscly?” Roman asked.

“I picked my super name as Reflex for a reason. I’ve got fight, flight, and freeze. Super strength, superflight that can rival the Doc here for speed, and the shockwave you both saw the other day. I send out a burst of energy that stuns or knocks out anyone in a given radius.”

“Can you control who it affects?” Patton asked curiously. “Or is it just anyone?”

Virgil’s mouth twisted. “I can sometimes control it, yes. If I’m focused, and I’m not too upset at the time. It’s not guaranteed.”

“How upset were you the other day then?”

“You’d just attacked my partner. I was pissed, but in control. If you’d more seriously injured L- the Doctor, you might have needed more than one day to wake up from the coma I put you both in.”

“Partners are important,” Patton said softly, running a hand through Roman’s dark, wavy hair. He turned and made eye contact with the heroes. “If you hurt him, I will end you.” It wasn’t a threat, but a statement of fact.

Virgil locked eyes with the villain, jerking his head at Logan. “And if you hurt him, you’ll wish I’d only killed you.”

Roman chuckled, flashing a smile at Logan over Patton’s curly head. “Aww, look at then, they’re bonding!”

Logan looked up at his partner and back to Gale Force. “They’re bonding over death threats. I don’t think this is how I expected a hero-villain team-up to go.”

“It’s okay, Doc, you and me are clearly the pretty faces of our respective teams next to the brawn of our boys here.”

“Excuse you, I did not get three degrees in the time it takes most people to get one to be called just a pretty face,“ Logan said with an frown.

“Doesn’t make it any less true, though,” the Marauder replied with a wink. “Your face is pretty, you gotta accept it.”

Logan stared at the villain. “Is this flirting?”

“Do you want it to be?”

“No, I’m legitimately asking, I’m apparently unable to identify it on my own.”

Virgil and Patton stopped staring one another down in time to hear the last comment. Virgil snorted. “Doc, you have understatement down to an art.”

“Shush, you,” Logan said, blushing faintly.

“Do you have, like, a crush on him?” Roman gushed.

“Please, no-”

“Oooohhhh, he totally has a crush on him!!” Patton chimed in, bouncing in Roman’s lap.

“Reflex, I take all of this back, this was a terrible idea, I’m leaving…”

Virgil gently nudged Logan with a shoulder. “No you won’t. This is too important. And you and I are good, no matter what.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Darling, I think they might be gay,” Roman stage-whispered to Patton.

“And I think you might be annoying,” Virgil shot back. “Enough fucking around. We know your powers, you know ours. What we don’t know is anything about the bastard out here killing our city.”

Logan adjusted the goggles on top of his head. “We can tell you what we know from the Mayor. It’s not much. They clearly can cause some sort of nightmare or hallucination in others. The survivor mentioned the outline of a smile in the dust clouds.”

“Like the Cheshire Cat,” Roman murmured. “How very Carollian.” Logan started, a curious expression on his face as he looked at the taller villain.

Winds gusted around Gale Force as he lifted himself up off of his partner’s lap. “A survivor? Who saw what happened?”

“Yes, a teenage girl. She’s in the hospital.”

“Could we ask her for more detail?” Virgil mused aloud. “Get a full description of events, see if there are any little details she may have missed?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

~~~~~~~~~~

To say that the hospital staff reacted oddly to seeing the until-recently most prominent villains strolling in the front door, accompanied but not restrained by some of the best-loved heroes would be putting it mildly. Reflex had to undergo a brief concussion test administered by a well-meaning emergency tech, and Doctor Vectorious had to calmly talk a doctor into putting the defibrillator back on the wall and stop brandishing it as a weapon.

Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, Virgil politely asked after their patient.

“Ah, yes. She’s conscious and stable, if still very shaken. Her family is in with her right now.”

“Can we see her?”

“Not all of you! Pick just one, and her mom stays no matter who it is.”

Virgil nodded. “We should ask who she wants in there. Who she’d be most comfortable with. She’s just a kid, after all.”

The doctor nodded. “I’ll ask. You may wait here.” She paused, looking around the waiting room with many sets of staring eyes. “On second thought, follow me.”

Patton seemed completely oblivious to their observers. Roman stared at his surroundings as they walked, sniffing the air frequently. Virgil walked closer than normal to Logan, accidentally bumping him several times as he fought the urge to shrink into the hoodie he wasn’t wearing.

The doctor showed them to a smaller, empty waiting room and left them there with a brisk nod.

“Why’s it smell so weird here?” Roman finally asked.

“Weird?”

“Like, sharp. Stinging in smell form. Kinda acrid, I guess. But also a bit like soap?”

“That’s the antiseptic,” Logan said. “Have you not been in a hospital before?”

Roman went quiet, then finally said, “I haven’t been to a doctor’s office before. Not that I remember, anyway.”

Logan pursed his lips and Virgil was about to speak when the doctor returned.

“The patient has made her request,” she began.

“Yes?”

“...she asked for him,” the woman replied, pointing at the Crimson Marauder.

The group looked to Roman, then back at the doctor as one.

“I confirmed it with her. She specifically requested ‘the red one.’”

Roman nervously adjusted his cape and mask. “Can she speak to me now?”

“Yes, follow me.”

He stepped into the indicated door to see a middle-aged woman with plenty of silver threads in her plump braid helping the young woman on the cot drink from a pink plastic cup. “Um, hi, Ms. and Miss Rodrigeuz. I’m the Crimson Marauder,” he began.

The young woman sat up without her mother’s help, leaning forward eagerly.

“Are you really, though?”

“...would anyone try to impersonate me?”

“I mean… I saw the group. You’re with the heroes again. Are you still the Marauder if you’re back?” she asked with a bruised smile.

“Back…?”

“You don’t remember me, do you. I was probably one of many people who thanked you, back in your Prince days.”

Roman’s eyes went wide. “Sofia? That Sofia?” he asked, voice cracking. “The little princess?”

“You do remember,” her mom commented softly, brushing a gentle hand through Sofia’s hair. “She kept that crown for years. Even when she insisted that princesses were ‘only for los niños’, she would keep pulling it out when she thought we couldn’t see.”

Roman swallowed a lump in his throat. “I could never forget. You were the first person ever to thank me. The first civilian to treat me like a real hero.”

“Only the first civilian?”

“I- another hero did, too. Many years ago.”

Sofia tilted her head. Her bruises were shockingly colorful, and she spoke carefully around a tender jaw, but she seemed otherwise in one piece. “Why did you stop?”

“What?”

“You were ours. The Prince of Sycamore Heights. Why did you become a villain?”

Roman looked down. “It’s… complicated. But I thought I could do a better job for our home this way.”

“Things did get better,” her mom said. “For years, it was so much better. After you got rid of the Patrol.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Roman responded automatically.

“You and Copper Eye. I remember,” Sofia said. “I loved watching her work.”

“So did I,” Roman said quietly, swiping at the tear wriggling out of his eye. He swallowed and settled his shoulders, trying to compose himself. “Sofia, can I ask you about what you remember about this attack?”

“It’s not much,” she warned.

“Anything helps. We’re going to get whoever did this. I promise.”

Sofia looked up, meeting his eyes directly. “Don’t promise unless you mean it.”

Roman looked back steadily, and placed a hand over his heart. “I, the Crimson Marauder, formerly the Scarlet Prince, promise you, Sofia Rodriguez: we’ll get the one who hurt you and all those people, or die in the attempt.”

Sofia nodded fiercely. “Here’s what I remember.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The Crimson Marauder sat on a red swing floating from nothing as Gale Force reclined on air beside him. They faced the heroes, who were more sensibly sitting on the edge of the roof of an office building near the middle of the city. All four contemplated the details Roman had shared in their own ways. A tiny tornado ran up and down Patton’s fingers, Roman created and vanished mini constructs, Logan’s fingers tapped so quickly they left erosion trails on the concrete, and Virgil hummed tunelessly under his breath.

“You know what seems weird to me?” Reflex said at length. “I don’t know if this means anything, but your friend seems like an extremely level-headed teenager. And yet...”

“...you gonna finish that or do you just think teenagers are dumb.”

“Oh, I don’t think they’re dumb, they just scare the living shit out of me,” Virgil said with a quirk in his smile. “No, she seems really collected, really rational, and yet she didn’t think twice before leaving safety to get to her family.”

“It’s family,” Patton said curtly. “Of course she didn’t.”

“Believe me, I understand protecting family,” Virgil replied. “But not even trying to confirm? Not even when she saw others running? It seems like she was just operating off panic.”

“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Brendon Urie Wannabe,” Roman snarked. But he had also reached out and grabbed Patton’s hand, squeezing reassurance to his partner to counteract the dark cloud spread across his face.

“Do you think that tells us something about how the villain operates?” Doctor Vectorious asked Reflex, pushing them back on track.

“Maybe it’s more than just visual hallucinations?”

“Hm, interesting theory, but-” Logan began, when their watches began to blare with a new H.A.T.C.H. alert.

“Fuck, the harbor!” Virgil said.

“Southeast,” Logan said at the same time. He looked up at both villains. “Meet us there.”

Reflex was already soaring away, a streak of black and purple stretching through the city. A second blur joined him, black and white and blue paralleling his trajectory from the ground.

Roman squeezed Patton’s hand once more, tightly. “We’re doing this, yeah?”

“We are. We have to.”

“Okay then. Time for some thrilling heroics.”

As one, they went from sitting to moving, both riding a red hang glider that sped as quickly as the ripping wind that sprang up to carry it.

They soared over the city towards the water, following the heroes. Roman nudged Patton as they approached.

“What is that?”

“Looks like a dust cloud. Someone’s being naughty.”

“Should we land?”

Patton nodded, letting go of the frame to point to roof where the heroes were braced, trying to see into the obscured area. He floated down to land softly, Roman a breath behind him. They stared at the enormous cloud of dust and debris, trying to make out what was happening underneath.

Reflex frowned. “It’s not moving.”

Doctor Vectorious nodded. “If it were a true debris cloud, it should be dissipating or growing, not just staying static. It’s obscuring something, and I can’t tell what.”

“Maybe I can help clear things up,” Gale Force offered, sending winds towards the very center of the obstruction. Dust and rocks and debris blew up and away, out of the three-block radius and into the harbor.

The Crimson Marauder gasped aloud as the cloud faded. “Whatever I was expecting, that wasn’t it.”

The dust cloud had been pushed away. But a dark mass remained. It oozed through the streets, a bulbous form that dragged on corners and sidewalks but left no residue. It was mesmerizing, in an off-putting way. Colors shifted and played over its dark surface like far-off nebulas brought to earth, now an orange veil, now pink, now a green or blue haze. It absorbed light rather than giving any off, but besides the flicker of changing colors, no movement was seen.

“...I know I’m gonna regret this, but I think we should go straight into it,” Reflex offered, stepping out into the open air. “We need to know if it’s solid, and this is where the alert said the disturbance was.”

“Are all heroes dumb enough to wander into Definitely-Murderous-Glow-Clouds or is it just you?” Gale Force asked mildly.

“All hail the Glow Cloud,” Logan and Roman said at the same time, then scowled at the other for having the same thought.

“What else do you suggest then?”

Patton huffed, and paced on the edge of the roof. “...I don’t know.”

“We’ll send the strongest two first, then,” Doctor Vectorious mused. “‘Flex, you fly in with Gale Force to blow off any more debris, and to see if you can wind-funnel your way in. We’ll back you up, ready to pull you out if needed, or Marauder here can add a construct tunnel if you’re able to open it up. Is that acceptable?”

Patton frowned at what felt like condescension, at this hero trying to tell them what to do. But, with resignation, he realized he didn’t have a better plan, and Valerie’s murderer could be getting away right now for all they knew. Stiffly, he nodded his assent.

Roman cupped his neck, fingers tangled in the curls at his nape. “Be careful, gingerpie,” he whispered. “If you die, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Don’t worry, honeygold, I’ll be your boo no matter what,” Patton murmured back with a grin. He kissed Roman firmly on the mouth, right under his mask.

“I’m too pretty to date a ghost,” Roman complained, but he was smiling all the same.

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Okay, Hurricane Gay-trina, let’s not waste any more time. Can you make a wind tunnel I can fly through without getting hurt?”

Without a word, air raced past them into a clear cone that hollowed out, a tube of rushing wind that stretched from their spot towards the mass. Virgil acknowledged his villain partner with a two-fingered salute and sped down it, rocketing towards the form that continued to shift colors. He extended a clenched fist, bracing himself to collide with the edge, ready to use all his strength to bust through if possible.

Instead of hitting a hard edge, though, he just passed into it as the sun disappeared. Darkness surrounded him, the pitch black of an overcast midnight. He could suddenly hear impacts, crunching rock and shouts and screams, and froze. He couldn’t move suddenly, not without seeing around him. He might hurt those near him worse with too fast a movement or a misplaced step.

Virgil had never expected to experience relief at seeing Gale Force, but the tunnel of wind opened up the mass and brought in Patton and the setting sunlight in a joint beam. “It worked!” Virgil said. “Quick, blow away as much of this as you can. I can try to stun everyone if I need to.”

The villain didn’t pause or argue, but multiplied the cyclone until copies branched out in all directions. They punched through the dark haze in dozens of places, bringing in the scant evening light and blessedly fresh air. Some of the screams faded, and Virgil could finally see the faces of surrounding civilians as their terror faded into confusion.

Both hero and villain could see what had caused the screams. A young villain, a H.E.A.R.T.S. dropout Virgil remembered, had paused in the center of the chaos. They blinked, slowly shrinking their hands back from huge, car-sized fists to normal limbs. The villain looked around them, and down at their torn costume. It was as bloody and ripped as their hands, the bold gold and red of a ringmaster’s coat turned into something out of a horror film. The Contortionist fell heavily to their knees, still shaken.

A burst of blue fire brought attention to the other active combatant. This was a current H.E.A.R.T.S. student, not yet a full hero, and even through her mask it was clear she was terrified. Another flash of light and she popped into being closer to the newcomers.

“V- I mean, Reflex?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“It’s really me, Blynk,” he reassured her, crouching slightly to shrink the almost-foot difference in their heights.

“I- where did they go? The ones attacking me? They were… everywhere.” She balled one hand in the loose blue dress that made up her costume as the other pulled up the attached hood nervously.

“It was an illusion,” Patton explained. “This new villain, Agent Whisper. They make you see things that aren’t there.”

“I couldn’t get away,” she whispered. “No matter how many times I teleported, they were still there to catch me.”

“They’re gone,” Virgil assured her. “You’re safe.” He offered his arms, and the young hero dove into his embrace. Speaking over her head, he looked up at his villain partner. “Can you fully break this up?”

“Here comes Mister Blue Sky,” Patton said with incongruous cheer, expanding the existing funnels. Light filled more and more of their view until the full sky returned and the last of the strange substance melted into air.

A zip and a thud heralded the arrival of the missing hero-villain pair.

“Good work,” Logan told them both. “A small bit seemed to split off, but you cleared the area and appear to have fully disrupted any illusions.”

“They got away?” Patton asked sharply. “Which direction?” He was already started to drift into the air.

Virgil grabbed the loose tunic and tugged him down. “We can’t just chase after them!”

“Why the fuck not?”

The angry question was spat into Virgil’s face, but it was Logan and Roman who answered simultaneously, “We need to help the people here.”

The fading sunlight showed just how right they were. Craters littered the landscape around them. So did bodies. Every visible face was bruised or bloody, but luckily, most were moving as civilians picked themselves up out of the wreckage.

Logan was already confirming that emergency care was on the way as he zipped around the battlefield, assisting where he could. Roman took one look at the injured and started to conjure glowing splints and crutches.

Patton was still staring angrily at the direction Logan had indicated was that of Agent Whisper’s escape, straining at Virgil’s hold. “Let me the fuck go,” he snapped. “I’m not here to be your goddamn hero, I’m here for revenge.”

“You think I don’t get that?” Virgil snapped back. “I want the bastard dead as much as you do, so don’t think for a second that you have a monopoly on rage here.”

“Then what are we waiting for? We’re the strongest and those two both know it. Let’s follow this piece of shit, grind them into dust, and be fucking done with this ‘partnership.’”

Virgil’s grip slackened for a second as he looked around them, a cloud of anger on his face. But it passed, and he pulled Gale Force all the way back to earth. “We can’t just rush in. This isn’t just for revenge: it’s to stop more people getting hurt. And it’s because we’re the strongest that we can’t risk blazing through, because we’ll be the reason more are hurt.”

Patton crossed his arms, glaring at the taller man. “What makes you think I care about a couple of casualties if it means I get revenge?”

“Because you’re still human,” Reflex responded. His gaze was level, understanding. “If all you wanted was their death at any cost, you wouldn’t have come to us. I’m not asking you to admit anything, but I have a feeling you know more about collateral damage than you ever wanted to know.” A nerve in Patton’s cheek jumped at that and Virgil nodded. “Like I said. Not asking you to admit anything. But I get it. I never wanted to be a hero. But then my partner convinced me that it’s not about getting recognition, it’s not about the fights. It’s about doing the best you can for as many people as you can. It’s about using these powers I never asked for to do what others can’t.”

Patton grumbled, but assented. “Fine. What can I do here, then?”

“Help me with the rubble? Drop it in the harbor if you need to.”

Reflex and Gale Force joined their partners in cleaning up the disaster zone. ‘Flex lifted enormous chunks of rock and concrete gently to free trapped limbs or to uncover more bodies. He tossed them into the air, where the wind-manipulator caught them and floated them safely to the water.

The Crimson Marauder flew into the air to check for more injured civilians, held aloft by his glowing hands. He was aware of Doctor Vectorious moving quickly somewhere below him, running up buildings and around the square to find civilians who’d been outside as well as in the surrounding apartments and offices. Was anyone limping? Anyone who needed a temporary bandage? Where was the emergency services van, shouldn’t they be here?

A huge crack of of rubble and rock shifting distracted him, and he whirled to see where the noise was coming from. By the time he registered that it was just Reflex working with Patton (aww, his love was working with one of his crushes!), he’d lost focus and his glow went out. He fell, stomach dropping as he tried to conjure something, anything, even just a mattress or a trampoline to break his fall.

A warm impact hit him as a blur originating from a nearby roof crashed into him and carried them both to a fire escape on the other side of the narrow street. The blur resolved back into Doctor Vectorious, and he found himself being held in the shorter man’s arms.

The speedster stared for a moment, then looked away with a slight pink tinge to his pale cheeks. “You’re, um,” he said, jerking his head towards him without looking back. “Uncovered.”

Roman started, feeling his face. The impact had knocked off his mask, and the hero was pointedly looking away to preserve his identity.

Or, perhaps, Logan was looking away because his internal monologue had been hijacked by the phrase, “Oh fuck, he’s hot.”

Roman quickly conjured a replacement mask and slid out of Logan’s hold to stand on his own again. The hero remained with his gaze averted until a siren’s blare drew close, announcing the arrival of the emergency crew.

“Thank fuck,” Roman sighed, and flew himself down to greet them. He explained quickly that his constructs needed to be replaced now so that they wouldn’t fade if they got too far away. He was already grateful that they’d be detached from him long enough that they hadn’t faded when he momentarily lost focus, and was eager to be able to draw back his energies further.

Virgil, Logan, and Patton ferried the injured from ruins of the street to the vans, including both the young hero and villain to the separate supers truck. Finally, they were able to move out. The heroes had acquired a better-functioning scanner for the villains, one that could call them specifically when they were needed, and allowed the villains to call them securely if they should so choose. About to part, Reflex paused, and offered Gale Force a handshake. Warily, the villain accepted, and the Marauder did too, in turn. Doctor Vectorious was more hesitant, but copied his partner.

Back in Logan’s apartment, the shorter man washed his face thoroughly, still shivering slightly at the remembrance of so many hurt. “How many casualties was it, all told?”

“Ten. All civilians. Both The Contortionist and Blynk are on bed rest, but they’ll recover. Total injuries are at about 25 people, but the techs said at least ten additional civilians avoided worse injuries that could have lead to critical conditions thanks to our timing as a group.”

Logan sighed. “I know I should be grateful that we were able to help so many, proportionally, but…��

“I know.”

“This villain is no joke, Virge. 35 deaths and it hasn’t yet been two days.”

“We’ll get them, Lo. I promise.”

Logan looked up. Virgil was back in civilian clothes that he left here in his partner’s apartment, one of his trusty black hoodies unzipped over a plain tee and sweatpants. Logan had changed back into his version of casual: a button-up not fully buttoned, no tie, and jeans.

“Speaking of promises…” he began. He ran a hand through already-mussed hair. “I was cut off, yesterday. I know that there are bigger, more pressing issues now but I still want to finish the thought I was trying to express.”

“Lo, it’s okay if you don’t return the sentiment, you know that, right? I’ll still love you as a friend no matter what.”

Logan sat next to Virgil on the couch. “I appreciate that, Vee, but that’s not where I was going.”

“Oh?” Virgil asked, smiling hopefully.

“I apologize for my obliviousness, Virgil, and for how long it took me to put this together, but I believe I feel the same type of romantic sentiment towards you as you’ve expressed that you feel towards me.” Logan reached out a tentative hand to take Virgil’s in his.

“You’re sounding like a textbook again, Lo,” Virgil teased, squeezing Logan’s hand.

“Sorry, I just-”

“I’m not complaining, not in the slightest. It’s part of you, ya know? It’s part of the charm.” He shifted over on the couch until their thighs were touching, and, receiving a nod of approval, draped an arm around his partner’s shoulders. “I love you, Logan.”

Logan blushed deep. “I love you as well, Virgil.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Please do.”

Lips met in tentative sweetness and softness, neither pushing or needing to. This was them, comfort and companionship that felt as natural as breathing. And at this particular moment, breathing was the more difficult option of the two.

At long last, Logan broke off and looked up into Virgil’s dark eyes. “Are we… dating? It seems like an odd term, or at the very least an odd distinction.”

“I mean. We’re already partners,” Virgil said with a shrug and a grin.

“Oh no, don’t you start on puns too, now. There’s already Dad and Gale Force, I refuse to take any more of this.”

“Okay, okay,” Virgil said, laughing. “I’ll have mercy. Because I love you.” He most definitely did not add in the phrase because it was a relief to say it out loud after so many years of thinking it. He would definitely not continue to sprinkle it in liberally after seeing Logan’s pink-cheeked reaction to hearing it.

“I must say, I was quite impressed by the Marauder today. I thought he’d entirely turned his back on heroing when he realigned, but it appears he really is a hero at heart. Or, at the very least, a super who cares about the well-being of civilians over his personal gain.”

“Almost like people can have a change of heart without a change of personality,” Virgil commented mildly.

“He’s still a villain, though,” Logan added sharply. “And don’t think I didn’t see Gale Force trying to run off before you talked him down.”

Virgil sighed, letting his arm fall off Logan’s shoulders. “He’s not all bad, Lo. He’s just an angry human with far too many scars that haven’t come close to healing yet.”

“So are you. And yet you’re still a hero.”

“But I’ve had you, for nine years. He only has whats-his-name. Roman. Princey. Who’s just as burned, if not quite so angry.” Virgil’s voice was soft.

Logan frowned. “Why make excuses for them?”

“Because it’s not hard for me to picture a different world where I went that direction instead, Lo. I… I could picture myself neutral, hiding from my powers. Or a villain, angry at the city for not finding me sooner. Gale Force understands that. The fury. And besides that… I like them. For all that they’re frustrating and have evil tendencies and all the public displays of affection.”

An eyebrow raised above glasses frames. “You like them?”

“I mean, you know I’ve been flirting with Princey during fights. It’s not just because I’m a walking stereotype of a snarky hero. And the other one, Patton, he’s not bad-looking either.”

“Ah, I see,” Logan said quietly.

"This doesn’t affect how I feel about you, Lo, not in any way,” Virgil rushed to clarify. “It could never. It’ll always be you, no matter if I pursue these other feelings or not.”

Logan relaxed slightly. “I don’t know that I feel similarly, or even could, not when I only realized how I felt about you through a strong platonic bond over literal years.”

“That’s more than okay. You mean the most to me. If you’d rather I keep quiet about these feelings, just let them fade…”

“No, that’s unnecessary. I am not opposed to you, ah, pursuing them, just keep me informed. I do understand the… attraction.” Logan blushed lightly, but coughed and continued. “And as long as you’re safe. They’re still villains, Vee. We can’t trust them, not past taking down Agent Whisper.”

“You may be right. You usually are. But, I don’t know, man. I feel like maybe we can, this time.”

Logan raised an eyebrow again. “Virgil the cynic, wanting to trust people?”

“Oh look, it’s the pot, calling the kettle black,” Virgil replied, shoving Logan lightly in the shoulder.

“Guilty as charged.”

“By the way, can I borrow your phone charger, I wanna call Mom and Mama today, and the sibs if they’re home.”

“Why do you think I bought an extra-long purple cord?”

~~~~~~~~~~

D.R.E.A.M. Index #337475 Classification: A.3.i [Tertiary Tier Hero, Legacy] Name: Blynk Status: INACTIVE /////////Reason: Injury Civilian Name: [CLEARANCE: TOP SECRET] McKenzie Bleu Affiliation: Hero /////////H.A.T.C.H. Status: Temporarily Inactive Partners/Sidekicks: N/A Primary Foes: N/A Powers: Short-Range Teleportation; Enhanced Durability; /////////Range approximately 100 yds; does not need to see destination, but does need to focus on it Costume: Black leggings with lace up ballet slippers; blue dress with white stripe on the skirt with attached hood Age: 17 Height: 5’4 Pronouns: She/Her H.E.A.R.T.S. Class: Enrolled, anticipated ‘19 Note: Daughter of DI#265353; Not yet cleared for independent hero missions - involvement in IR 18-Z-0015 unintentional and due to proximity alone

D.R.E.A.M. Index #337432 Classification: Z.3.iv [Tertiary Tier Villain, Unknown] Name: The Contortionist Status: INACTIVE /////////Reason: Incarceration, Injury Civilian Name: [CLEARANCE: CONFIDENTIAL] Tai Kim Affiliation: Villain Partners/Sidekicks: N/A Primary Foes: N/A Powers: Body Plasticity - Medium Spectrum; /////////Can alter density and length of body parts; cannot fully transform into other shapes Costume: Bodysuit in black, red, and gold; designed to look like a tailcoat with gold braiding; /////////Strongly reminiscent of a ringmaster outfit, but able to stretch with them Age: 19 Height: 5’10 Pronouns: They/Them H.E.A.R.T.S. Class: Dropout Note: Believed to have left the city until involvement in IR 18-Z-0015

~~~~~~~~~~

They were woken early the next morning by yet another H.A.T.C.H. alert. Virgil gave a single breath to regret his poor, poor sleep schedule before changing into his costume.

Mayor and S.E.A.M. Stokes weren’t sure of the exact nature of the disturbance, but they knew it involved supers. In this uncertain climate, that meant sending their best, just to be prepared. At Virgil’s urging, Logan had conceded to alert their villain partners as well.

“What’s the harm in being ready, L?”

“They’re collectively responsible for over fifteen felonies.”

“...yeah, but they’re on our side now.”

Logan fixed his partner with a look.

“I know, I know. We can’t trust them entirely. But you trust me, right?”

Logan softened. “Of course I do. I trust you with my life.”

Virgil paused, blushing slightly. “I… god, I love you, Lo.”

“I love you as well.”

Standing by the window, in full costume, seconds before rushing to whatever crime scene had alerted them today, Virgil stole a moment to pull his partner in close and kiss him softly.

They parted, both pink-faced. “I’ve just got a hunch, Lo. I think we’ll need them, or at least not regret bringing them along. And I swear, I’ll protect you if they try anything.”

And thus, as they surveyed the scene from the top of a nearby building, the villains arrived as well.

“I don’t see Agent Piss-per anywhere,” Gale Force said with a frown.

“We haven’t either,” Logan replied evenly. “But they’ve been targeting super fights so far. It’s only logical to conclude that any fight between persons with enhanced abilities will continue to be targets for them.”

“I’m not participating in your self-righteous state-sanctioned vigilantism,” the Marauder said, lounging against the wall. “Who’s even fighting?”

“They’re a recurring duo. They either partner up or are on opposite sides, it depends on which muse is controlling her,” Virgil explained, gesturing to the dark-clad figure visible from above. Many brilliant lights surrounded her, with more seeming to sprout from the galaxy print on her suit. Tiny constellations flew towards her opponent and swirled around the other’s massive, cascading skirts. With Gale Force’s help, they could all hear the conversation on the wind - a steady stream of chat and compliments, even as star constructs disrupted the princess-figure’s attempts to infiltrate the nearby museum.

“Who’s this?”

“Today? Nebula. You may also know her as Ghost. But she’s not nearly as active as some I could name,” Logan explained, glancing side-eyed at where Gale Force seemed to be taking notes.

“Yes, but what about the aesthetic one,” the Marauder asked with a tone bordering on reverence.

Virgil smirked. “She’s known as Lovely Darling. A mesmerizer with a strong affinity for princesses. So you know, pretty familiar, except more people are infatuated with her than just herself.”

Roman pouted at the tall hero and opened his mouth to object when the air suddenly shifted and four sets of eyes snapped to the scene below.

A dark dust cloud was rising, despite the complete lack of debris or destruction from the existing fight. Looking for the details, Virgil saw how the ‘dust’ cloud dragged and stuck on corners as it neared both supers.

“Heads up!” Gale Force shouted, and the air itself carried his voice, surprising them both as they noticed the impending danger. Logan was there a breath later, grabbing them both and pulling them away before rejoining the group in a blur.

“Go in all at once?” Virgil asked.

“On y va,” Roman said firmly, and they moved forward as one. The minute they passed into the cloudlike mass, Roman had the strangest sense of someone muttering, Oh, this should be fun.

And then the world went grey. His limbs went heavy and his heart turned to lead. A sluggishness settled over his entire body as he crumpled to his knees. He couldn’t muster the energy to do anything but struggle to stay upright, and he watched his constructs melt away in a blink of an eye. Of course he couldn’t create anything. He was useless. Everyone knew he was the weakest of their group. No raw power like Reflex, no elemental power like Patton, no brilliant strategy like the Doctor. He just had his little red toys. And now, he didn’t even have those.

It was fitting, wasn’t it? Let everyone see how worthless he was, whether a hero or a villain. He could die here, in this cloud, and the world would not note his passing nor feel his loss. A tear coursed down his cheek and fell onto his hands as he struggle to just barely brace himself. All he was good for was tears. How had anyone been fooled enough to believe anything else? Had they even been fooled? Or had they just been humoring him, pretending that he had something to offer. Seeing his obvious fragility and flattering him the way you compliment a child’s terrible scribbles. Who could ever truly believe in him? His arms trembled, and he collapsed fully, prone upon the ground, awash in despair and listlessness.

Logan was running as he passed into the cloud. He was surprised to see it was only a hair’s width as he passed through, coming into practically the same daylit scene on the other side. He kept running as he looked for the villain. Ro- the Marauder was flying on his right, with Virgil and Gale Force on his left. Was that Agent Whisper up there? The dark, humanoid shape was further back than he’d guessed. He pushed himself to speed up, to get there faster before the villain could escape again. He was reaching a rate of one hundred miles per hour - why weren’t they getting closer? His muscles felt odd, not the normal level of burn for this speed, but the wind was rushing through his hair and he could see the world flashing by through his goggles. Perhaps his workout routine was finally helping him reach new speeds. He pushed harder, blurring into five hundred miles per hour, fighting to reach the villain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his villain partners had fallen behind him, but Virgil was still there on his left. But Agent Whisper was still so far away. He ran faster, nearing his top speed. He was a blur, a bullet streaking towards its target, but he could still see and feel his whole body. Finally, the dark antagonist was near, and he went to slow down to grab them, incapacitate them, bring them to justice.

But he couldn’t stop. His legs wouldn’t slow, his arms still pumping in rhythm to keep running. He was still moving, still in the nimbus of speed that almost no one could see. He looked frantically around only to see that he’d left Virgil far behind. He tried to turn, but couldn’t. He was just running, running, through the city, past the city, over hills and mountains and water and more mountains and he couldn’t stop. How would he get home? How would he live? How would he see Mom and Dad again, how would he be there for Jem and Bea? How would he be with Virgil, now that they finally were? He’d left him back there, surrounded by villains. He’d left him all alone, the one thing he’d promised would never happen back when they’d first met. How would time pass while he was stuck in this endless speed? Would he even feel it? Would he just run until his body gave out from the stress or exhaustion?

“Please!” he tried to yell. “Please, get me out!”

But his words were whipped away by the rush of air and movement all around him. He was trapped.

Virgil was prepared for his first step into the cloud, for the light to cut out and the fog to surround him. He felt slightly more of the texture this time, a weird film that clung to his skin. He strode in, scanning for the villain, trusting his hearing more than his sight, which extended only about three feet in any direction. He turned almost instinctively to look for Logan at his right, to check if the speedster had dashed in. He saw his partner but… Logan was frozen, eyes jumping and flitting around. His muscles twitched, but he seemed glued to the spot. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Past him, a red-and-black form lay curled in a fetal position, unmoving.

Virgil reached his partner and love in a single step, reaching out for his shoulder. The impact caused Logan’s eyes to snap open as he cried out in pain. Virgil immediately pulled his hand back, only to see bones protruding from Logan’s arm from how strong his touch had been.

“Fuck, Lo, I didn’t mean to, I’m so sorry-”

“You always are,” Logan snapped back, blood seeping down his shoulder. “Sorry will mean nothing when you kill someone. They won’t care that you didn’t mean it!”

Tears sprang from Virgil’s eyes. He looked down to see the concrete was crumbling where his foot had touched the ground. “Please, Lo, let me help-”

“Don’t touch me!” his friend screamed, terror in his eyes. “Stay back!”

Virgil swallowed hard and obeyed, stepping back, but craters formed with each step. He backed into something and whirled to see a huge wall sway and fall, crushing those who’d been unlucky enough to be sitting behind it.

“Stop it!” Logan yelled, and his terror had shifted to hatred. “You ruin everything you touch!”

“I don’t-”

“Just hide away, Virgil. Just leave this city, leave your family, hide away where you won’t hurt anyone anymore. You’re a threat to everyone around you, so just go!”

Tears coursed down Virgil’s cheeks. “Lo, please-”

“You are and always have been nothing more than a ticking time bomb, Virgil. Didn’t Sandry teach you that?”

The tall hero froze. Logan no longer sounded like himself. Virgil knew his dearest friend would never mention that, no matter his anger. No one would - except Virgil himself. Logan’s words were Virgil’s own, the ones he directed against himself on all the dark days. The world crumbling at his touch, inadvertent pain against the one he loved? This was his own private nightmare made real. He took a deep breath, in for four counts. Hold for seven. Out for eight.

“I am not a monster,” he whispered to himself. “I have enhanced abilities. I use them to do the best I can to help others. I pull my punches, I take care to not use too much force. I don’t hurt my loved ones. I am a hero because I try to be one, and I succeed at an above-average rate.”

Slowly, the craters fixed themselves, and the wall re-erected itself. The blood and bones vanished off Logan’s arm, and he was now as he had been, frozen, looking with distress off into nothing as his eyes shifted rapidly. Virgil reached out slowly, gently, to brush his shoulder with a feather-light touch. His partner didn’t respond, but neither did he bruise.

Virgil turned, hearing footsteps. He kept breathing evenly, repeating his mantras to himself, and stepped towards the sound of movement. It was Gale Force, Patton, walking evenly through the mist without hesitation.

Patton stepped through the border of light to dark as easy as breathing. It took him almost ten steps before he realized he no longer heard the heroes and his partner on his right. He turned to see them all paralyzed. Roman’s beautiful, radiant red fire had faded. Patton had been around for enough dark days to recognize the despair etched into his love’s face. He almost ran to him when he saw that the Doctor was frozen too, not on his knees but standing. Doctor Vectorious, who was intriguing and infuriating and condescending and so very pretty seemed to shiver and jerk with some internal movement. Even Reflex had paused, looking confused and distressed. His love and his... partners. Not friends. They were coworkers, if that. Nothing more. What had put them in such a state?

He felt a slight weight on his chest. An impression of tears, of bricks and water and twisted metal. He turned, and walked towards the center of the cloud, seeking Agent Whisper. He was sure he was getting closer, he could feel it. And with every step he saw flashes of the past. A dusty courtyard, the Hundredth-of-an-Acre Wood. A lanky child carrying two giggling girls on his back. Phantom hands smacked his and ran away laughing in a game of tag. Two women smiled down at him, hands linked.

Now they shifted. Bruises and blood appeared, torsos were covered in brick. Limbs became maimed and mangled beyond recognition. And voices drifted out of mouths that couldn’t possibly be producing them.

“You should have saved us.”

“Why were you the only one to survive?”

“You let me die.”

Patton lifted a hand casually to push back the clouds and give himself more visibility. Finally, a form in the mist. It seemed to eat the light around it, a human-shaped hole cut out against reality, a black pit that had no eyes to stare at him.

“How?” a voice asked, shrieking in impossibly high and low octaves at once. It was an eagle’s cry and an earthquake’s rumble, unnatural and natural at once. Patton turned to it, and smiled brightly.

“Oh, kiddo, were you trying to make us feel bad? Here’s a fun little factoid for you!” He grunted with effort as he conjured a cone of air, tightly wound and pointed away from his team. His face fell into a dark mask as he sent the tornado hurtling towards the dark form opposing them. “I’ve felt worse.”

The form dodged easily, but backed up. Reflex appeared at Patton’s side, scowling and tensed to attack. The mist started to lift, helped along by Patton’s winds.

Both hero and villain heard a sound that might have been the crack of rock and might have been a swear. Clouds suddenly rushed past them, flowing from their backs towards Agent Whisper. They swirled around them and starting to soar into the air, a column of dark clouds even as the last traces faded from the square. Reflex shot off from the ground, ready to give chase, but in a breath the clouds were gone and out of sight.

“Fuck,” he said, coming back to land. “That was rough. How were you so unaffected?”

“It’s just ghosts,” Patton replied with a shrug. “I’m always surrounded by ghosts. I’m more worried about our partners.”

Reflex nodded, and they both flew over to where Roman and the Doctor were recovering. Patton was immediately kneeling at Roman’s side, rubbing a warm, grounding hand on his lower back.

“I’m here, love,” he whispered. “The dark is gone, you’re safe, and wonderful, and deserving of all the love I could possibly give you and at least twice as much on top of that.”

Roman stirred, slowly uncurling out of the fetal position. “Sunshine?” he asked raspily. “That’s really you?”

“It’s me, my ruby. I’m here. I love you. You deserve that love.”

Roman moved slowly to sitting up, shuddering. Patton continued to rub small, comforting circles on his lower back, the other hand coming up to run through Roman’s silky, dark hair.

“How did it come on so suddenly, Pat?”

“Agent Whisper, sweetness. I guess that’s what the illusions are - a blast of bad emotions, and our brains fill in the rest.”

Roman shivered and nodded. “Makes sense. And I’m already starting to feel better. Thank you, honeybunch. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Virgil half-listened to the villains’ conversation but his main focus was on Logan. He gently touched his arm, still flinching at the idea of accidentally hurting him. But the speedster’s eyes had finally gone back to normal, focusing on Virgil’s face instead of cycling rapidly.

“Vee?” he asked, voice barely audible. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Is this real?”

“Yes, L, it’s real,” Virgil murmured back.

“Can I-” words seemed to fail him, but he lifted his arms enough for Virgil to understand him.

“Of course,” he said, smiling as he wrapped his arms around his friend and partner. Logan hugged back tightly, burying his face in Virgil’s muscled shoulders to avoid knowing if there were tears on his face or not. Virgil hugged tighter, lifting Logan fully into the air and surprising a laugh out of the shorter man.

“Hey! I’m not a child!” he complained, grinning.

“But you are my babe,” Virgil responded, teasing. “My tiny boyfriend.”

Logan blushed a deep red at that. “Oh, yes, I suppose I am.”

“That’s gay,” Roman drawled, standing with Patton’s help. “Dear, look at the heroes, they’re gay.”

“Heroes? More like queeroes!”

Logan’s blush didn’t fade as he glared over. “That was terrible.”

“Is that why you’re laughing internally?” Virgil asked blandly, to Logan’s indignation.

“Hey, don’t out me in front of them!”

“Oh horror of horrors, the nerd might actually have a sense of humor,” Roman said, draping a hand dramatically over his forehead. Color had returned to his golden cheeks, and his eyes were practically crackling with rich hazel energy.

“I’m glad you’re both feeling better,” Virgil said, putting Logan back on his feet. “Even if this Whisper fuck got away again.”

“We know what they’re capable of, now,” Logan said. “We can prepare for next time. Or at least brace ourselves for it.”

Patton nodded. “‘Flex and I are proof it can be overcome. So there’s hope for you two as well.”

“Go home and get some rest, gather your emotional strength,” Virgil advised, slipping his hands into Logan’s grip. “I’ve got a feeling we’ll be called again much sooner than we’d like.”

The villains nodded and flew off together, Roman rocketing ahead of Patton.

“Ladybug, slow down,” Patton complained. “You’re going too fast for me!”

“You’re going too slow!” Roman cried happily, looping in circles high and low. “God, I can’t believe how much better I feel now that we’re away from that creep!” He laughed and created a glowing red surfboard. He stood on it and balanced with exaggerated outspread hands, conjuring a huge red wave that crashed over Patton as he flew through the air still. He giggled, and the wave crashed into an explosion of butterflies and ruby wings sprouted from his back.

“Ro, come on, let’s go home,” Patton pleaded. “We can bring the butterflies if you want.”

“Butterflies are old news,” Roman replied, snapping his fingers. The forms around him melted into a huge dragon that carried him on its back as it blew sparkling fire.

“Roro, please!”

“No, not a dragon. A witch!” Roman cried, unhearing. “No, both!” Crackles of energy sparked as the dragon shifted and twisted into a dragon-witch complete with crystalline hat.

Patton sighed. The emotional manipulation had triggered a manic phase, and there was no reasoning with Ro when he was in mania’s throes. He turned in mid-air and flew to their home alone, trusting that his love would come find him when he’d calmed.

Roman flew, creating and destroying and creating anew until the sun started to fade. When the light in the sky began to match the red light of his constructs, he looked up at the clouds and thought of Patton. His love, his salvation, his partner in crime. Literally. Not that they’d been caught more than the one time.

He flew lower, just above the rooftops, finally traveling at normal speeds once more. Just as the forced low had been brief, his uncontrollable high was resolving faster than normal, too. He sheepishly contemplated the apologies he would need to make to his partner for worrying him and leaving him behind when he’d soared into the sky.

He floated down to earth to walk the last few blocks home. He stepped off into a dark alley to change back into civilian clothes.

If only he’d looked a bit harder at the shadows.

~~~~~~~~~~

D.R.E.A.M. Index #337403 Classification: M.1.ii [Primary Tier Neutral, Acquired Powers] Name: Ghost/Nebula Status: ACTIVE Civilian Name: [CLEARANCE: CONFIDENTIAL] Lulu Ador Affiliation: Neutral /////////H.A.T.C.H. Status: Blackout Only Partners/Sidekicks: #337471; #337402 Primary Foes: #337402 Powers: Shadow Teleportation; Psionic Construction [Star Sprites] /////////As Ghost, can travel through any shadow to any other; As Nebula, can summon star-sprites who are directed by her thoughts Costume: Tailored suit in a galaxy print and bow tie with a matching mask Age: 27 Height: 5’7 Pronouns: She/Her H.E.A.R.T.S. Class ‘10 Note: Valedictorian of her class, on similar caliber to DI#337255 - Doctor Vectorious. Ghost appears to be almost like possession, while Nebula is the 'true' form. When as Nebula, she is a hero, albeit one frustrated with the overly-physical nature of typical heroing due to her fibro. Classified as neutral because any given day she may be one or the other

D.R.E.A.M. Index #337402 Classification: Z.2.i [Secondary Tier Villain, Legacy] Name: Lovely Darling Status: ACTIVE Civilian Name: [CLEARANCE: CONFIDENTIAL] Danielle Disney Affiliation: Villain Partners/Sidekicks: #337403 Primary Foes: #337403 Powers: Mesmerizing; Power of Suggestion; Forced Infatuation /////////Anyone within a radius of approximately 10 yards is susceptible; focus on a particular person makes it more compelling and longer-lasting Costume: Purple and pink ballgown with a hoop skirt; heart-shaped mask Age: 26 Height: 5’7 Pronouns: She/Her H.E.A.R.T.S. Class ‘11 Note: Teams up with DI#337403 - Ghost/Nebula and feuds with her in equal measure, depending on how much her current scheme might affect others

~~~~~~~~~~

a/n: Spot the Steven Universe reference! There's also a Firefly quote in there. Partly an homage to one of the other possible names for this fic as a whole, ‘Big Damn Heroes’

(Fanfic writing, aka, finding ways to sneak in references to other fandoms and also inserting your friends in as background characters <3)

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castellankurze · 6 years ago

Note

Fanservice Friday: Ume picks out an outfit to wear to ask Hal on a date.

Ume struggled not to chew on the inside of her lips as she wrung her fingers.In the technical sense, her wardrobe had expanded since the flight from Doma - as a librarian and museum custodian, most of her clothing had been fairly drab - but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was now that most of her clothing fell into one of three categories: 1. old clothing snatched up here and there by the refugees, mostly in an atrocious state, 2. drab Ul’dan peasant garb that wouldn’t get her a second glance on the street, raen though she was, and 3. military gear from the Flames. She was not going to ask Halcyon Ritter to dinner wearing a private’s coat and boots.

She had a jacket of her own, along with loose-fitting pants, both dyed in shades of violet that complimented her hair. The problem was that both were cut and designed in the style of southern Ilsabard, and wearing anything that smelled even faintly of Garlean fashion to meet an Ala Mhigan would be the most terrible gaff since...since...well, it would be bad, she didn’t have the concentration to rack her brain about this or that historical faux pas.

She had the clothing they’d sold at the summer faire...but that would be...a little on the skimpy side. She blushed just to think of it. That was clothing for a trip to the beach, otherwise she’d look like she’d been paid to accompany the gladiator.

She had her purple tunic which looked fairly fetching, but she’d worn it the first time she’d met Hal face to face, she couldn’t wear it again or it would look as if she had nothing else to wear...which, in fairness, she didn’t.

The raen groaned and fell back on her bed with the heels of her hands pressed to her temples. Her tail twisted and curled into knots. What to do?

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

She pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger, looking intently at the dresses on the racks. This was the third shop she’d visited, and she was getting increasingly dirty looks from the staff who assumed - not wrongly - that the raen was perusing wares out of her price range. The problem was that anything from the far east - Doman, Hingan, Nagxian, all alike - had become foreign and therefore precious.

Despite herself, she pointed at a dress dyed in a rich shade of purple, embroidered with flowers that crept up to the right breast. An ao dai. Nagxian rather than Doman, but the color was too apropos to pass up. “That one,” she said, struggling to project confidence. It fit almost perfectly, though with the way a narrow keyhole opened into the chest Ume couldn’t help a blush at the thought of the way the much taller Halcyon...well.

She braced herself and asked for the price. Not surprisingly, it was not something she could afford, even with the winnings she’d been quietly racking up at the coliseum. So she closed her eyes, took a breath...and made a down payment for half. She was Ul’dahn nowadays after all, she might as well start living in debt like one. But like any Ul’dahn, Ume Mizuhiki already had a plan to pay that debt off before it had a chance to make itself a load around her neck.

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

She had to splash water on her face and breathe into her cupped hands for several minutes before she finally gathered up the confidence to seat herself at the table, and she couldn’t quell a tremor in her fingers as she held her cards up in front of her. The other players noticed almost instantly, of course, but fortunately her first-round opponents were so hot to take her out of the game that they made the mistake of assuming her nerves were due to inexperience, rather than the stakes. Ume managed to hold her concentration together and defeated her first opponent in a 4-2 set and, with a small pot of winnings to fortify herself, crushed her second-round series in a 4-0 sweep. The next rounds went almost as well, and the numbers began to add up.

She could taste the look on the clerk’s face when she walked back into the shop tomorrow and paid off the remainder of the ao dai.

Then they sat her down in front of her fifth opponent.

They looked almost too young to be gambling in such a place, but the elaborate braids of salt-white hair and ridiculously ostentatious garb they wore with every sign of comfort spoke to long experience. And then there were the horns - Ume had heard of the Gridanian padjali - didn’t one run the country? - but she’d not expected to meet one in such a place as this.

Unfortunately, he - his appearance was androgynous but his voice was distinctly masculine - was entirely at ease, and before long she was losing 2-3. She clenched her teeth as the tremor came back into her fingers.“First time in a place like this?” he asked, and she looked up from her cards to see him smiling across the table at her, leaning casually on one hand. Her heart skipped a beat at the thought that was mocking her, but something in his smile seemed a bit too gentle for the comment to be a barb. She nodded. “You must have something important on the line,” he observed.She swallowed and looked back down at her cards. “A dress,” she admitted, quietly enough that the observers wouldn’t hear.

His eyebrows shot upwards. “Trying to impress a special someone, hm?” he asked, and she nodded again. “Did you remember to leave yourself a cushion?”

“One-fourth from every round,” she replied.

“Is that enough to cover it?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head, anxiety building.

He set down a card and she felt ice form in her stomach as two of her own changed color. “Meet me by the fountain in thirty minutes before you leave,” he said as he sat back.

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

“Rule one if you’re going to make money gambling - never gamble with money you don’t have,” he said, his tone admonishing even as he gently deposited a roll of coins into her hand. “Rule two, never gamble to recover losses. Rule three, never gamble without limits. You gave yourself a cushion, so you’re already on the tail of rule three, but no matter how strategically you can think or how well you count cards, if you start off in the hole it’s only a matter of time before the odds bite you in the a...tail.” With that speech delivered, he stepped back and folded his arms.“...you have been doing this awhile,” she observed, closing her fingers around the roll and clutching it to her chest with both hands.

“Longer than you’ve been alive,” he said with a wink of one albino-pink eye. “Gridanian, Lominsan, Ul’dahn alike, I’ve seen too many people walk into a place like this thinking they’re smart enough to beat the odds, or hoping for a good run of luck, only to crash on the street outside. Go buy your dress, and next time, make sure to be as smart as you think you are.” He smiled and waved diffidently as he started back inside. “And thank your lucky stars I like your color scheme.”

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

The ao dai felt as if it had been made for it - well, at least it had been adjusted for her. Ume dispensed with her usual doubled tails and pulled her hair back into a single braid, tying it with a bow. She had never pierced her horns, but instead tied a narrow ribbon around the right one, a little splash of crimson to contrast all the violet.

She smoothed the dress one final time, looking at herself in the mirror, and what looked back was no Flame functionary or dreary librarian, but a sharply-dressed woman of the far east. Ume would have dared say she’d never looked better in her life. And so she took a breath, adjusted her spectacles one more time, and went out the door to catch the White Lynx after she finished cleaning up from her practice.

#FFXIV #Ume Mizuhiki #kurze writes #fanservice friday #starcunning

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alystayr · 6 years ago

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Playlist musicale 2019 (1/2)

Liste des chansons (playlist 2019 - part. 1)

Mise à jour : 30 juin 2019

playlist 2019 (part. 1)

playlist 2018 (part. 2), playlist 2018 (part. 1)

playlist 2017 (part. 2), playlist 2017 (part. 1)

playlist 2016 (part. 2), playlist 2016 (part. 1)

playlist 2015

0-9 #

A Perfect Circle - So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish (2018)

AC/DC - For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) (1981)

Air - La Femme d'Argent (1998)

Alice In Chains - Angry Chair (1992)

Alt-J (feat. GoldLink) - Last Year (Terrace Martin Version) (2018)

Arcade Fire - We Exist (2013)

Archive (feat. Band Of Skulls) - Remains Of Nothing (2019)

Asaf Avidan - Over You Blues (2010)

Joan Baez - Diamonds and Rust (1975)

Balthazar - Bunker (2015)

Band of Horses - Wicked Gil (2006)

The Beatles - Helter Skelter (1968)

Beirut - The Rip Tide (2011)

Björk - Army Of Me (1995)

Frank Black - Los Angeles (1993)

The Black Keys - Lo/Hi (2019)

The Blaze - Queens (2018)

Bon Iver - Holocene (2011)

David Bowie - The Stars (Are Out Tonight) (2013)

Dave Brubeck - Take Five (1959)

Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye (1994)

Kate Bush - The Man I Love (1994/1927)

Francis Cabrel - Samedi Soir Sur La Terre (1994)

Cage The Elephant - Ready To Let Go (2019)

Bertrand Cantat - Les pluies diluviennes (2017)

Lewis Capaldi - Bruises (2017)

The Cardigans - Erase / Rewind (1998)

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - O'Children (2004)

Chubby Checker - Let's Twist Again (1961)

Cigarettes After Sex - Crush (2018)

Gary Clark Jr - This Land (2019)

Leonard Cohen - Avalanche (1971)

Vladimir Cosma - Les compères (1983)

The Cramps - Human Fly (1983)

The Cranberries - All Over Now (2019)

The Crystals - Da Doo Ron Ron (1963)

Dick Dale & The Del-Tones - Pumpkin and Honey Bunny / Misirlou (from Pulp Fiction) (1994/1962)

The Dead Weather - Hang You From The Heavens (2009)

Depeche Mode - It’s No Good (1997)

Détroit - Sa majesté (2013)

Dido - Take You Home (2019)

Dire Straits - Private Investigations (1982)

The Dø - Anita No! (2014)

Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres - Who's Been Having You Over (2019)

Lou Doillon (feat. Cat Power) - It's You (2019)

Dolly - Fin d'époque (1997)

Bob Dylan - Knockin' On Heaven's Door (1973-1995)

Eels - Tremendous Dynamite (2009)

Eiffel - N’aie rien à craindre (2019)

Eiffel - Ne respire pas (2002)

Eminem - Lose Yourself (2002)

Mylène Farmer - Sentimentale (2018)

Florence + The Machine - Hunger (2018)

Foals - Exits (2019)

Foo Fighters - All My Life (2002)

Peter Gabriel - Growing Up (2002)

Serge Gainsbourg - La Javanaise (1963)

Garbage - Stupid Girl (1995)

Genesis - Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (1973)

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Merrie Land (2018)

Macy Gray - Sugar Daddy (2018)

Greta Van Fleet - Highway Tune (2017)

Françoise Hardy - Tous les garçons et les filles (1962)

Ben Harper - Diamonds on the Inside (2003)

PJ Harvey - This Is Love (2000)

Hole - Awful (1998)

Buddy Holly - Peggy Sue (1957)

David Holmes - Rodney Yates (1997)

IAM - La fin de leur monde (2007)

Imagine Dragons - Natural (2018)

Indochine - J'ai demandé à la lune (2002)

Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself (1981)

Les Innocents - Jodie (1987)

Interpol - If You Really Love Nothing (2018)

Iron Maiden - Fear of The Dark (1992)

Jean Michel Jarre - Robot’s Don’t Cry (movement 3) (2018)

Elton John - I'm Still Standing (1983)

Joy Division - Transmission (1979)

The Kills - Black Balloon (2008)

The Knife - Heartbeats (2003)

Cecilia Krull - My Life Is Going On (from La Casa de Papel) (2017)

Lake Street Dive - Mistakes (2016)

Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell (cover The Gun Club) - The Breaking Hands (2012)

Led Zeppelin - Dazed And Confused (1969)

LP - One Night In The Sun (2018)

M - Lettre infinie (2019)

Madness - One Step Beyond... (1979)

Ibrahim Maalouf - Beirut (2011)

Madrugada - Hold on to you (2005)

Manu Chao - Me llaman calle (2007)

Massive Attack - Angel (1998)

Mercury Rev (Feat. Norah Jones) - Okolona River Bottom Band (2019)

Metallica - Fade to Black (1984)

Miossec - Nous sommes (2018)

Moby - Extreme Ways (from Jason Bourne) (2002)

Tom Morello (feat. Gary Clark Jr. & Gramatik) - Can't Stop The Bleeding (2019)

MorMor- Heaven's Only Wishful (2018)

Giorgio Moroder - Midnight Express Theme - The Chase (1978)

Mudhoney - Touch Me I'm Sick (1988/2013)

Muse - Madness (2012)

The National - Hairpin Turns (2019)

New Order - Blue Monday (1983)

Nine Inch Nails - March Of The Pigs (1994)

Nirvana - Aneurysm (1991)

No One Is Innocent - Charlie (2015)

Claude Nougaro - Paris Mai (1968)

Agnes Obel - Riverside (2010)

Les Ogres de Barback - P'tit coeur (2019)

J.S. Ondara - American Dream (2019)

OrelSan (feat. Stromae) - La pluie (2017)

Pink Floyd - On The Turning Away (1987)

Placebo - Protège Moi (2003)

Planes Mistaken For Stars - Fucking Tenderness (2016)

The Platters - The Great Pretender (1955)

The Police - Every Breath You Take (1983)

Portishead - Sour Times (1994)

Elvis Presley - All Shook up (1957)

The Prodigy - Firestarter (1997)

Queen - Love Of My Life (1975)

Queens Of The Stone Age - The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret (2000)

The Raconteurs - Sunday Driver (2018)

Radiohead - Paranoid Android (1997)

Rag'n'Bone Man - Human (2017)

Rage Against The Machine - Take The Power Back (1991)

Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated (1978)

R.E.M. - Bad Day (2003)

Chris Rea - Cry for Home (2005)

Lou Reed - Satellite of Love (1972)

Rival Sons - Feral Roots (2019)

Dick Rivers - Pas de vainqueur (2014)

Cock Robin - The Promise You Made (1985)

The Ronettes - Be My Baby (1963)

Saez - Rue d'la soif (2017)

Nitin Sawhney - Sunset (2001)

The Score - Stronger (2019)

Eric Serra - My Lady Blue (from Le Grand Bleu) (1988)

Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen (1977)

Shaka Ponk - Killing Hallelujah (2018)

Sigur Rós - Brennisteinn (2013)

Emilie Simon - Fleur De Saison (2006)

Simple Minds - Alive And Kicking (1985)

Siouxsie And The Banshees - Israel (1983)

Skunk Anansie - Charlie Big Potato (1999)

The Smashing Pumpkins - Zero (1995)

Patti Smith - Summer Cannibals (1996)

Sonic Youth - Mildred Pierce (1990)

Soundgarden - Fell On Black Days (1994)

Regina Spektor - All The Rowboats (2012)

Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars (2019)

Still Corners - The Trip (2003)

Alain Souchon - Quand j'serais KO (1988)

Angus & Julia Stone - Heart Beats Slow (2014)

The Stooges - Ann (1969)

Supertramp - Cannonball (1985)

Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger (1982)

System Of A Down - Toxicity (2001)

Talk Talk - Such A Shame (1984)

Sébastien Tellier - La Ritournelle (2004)

Téléphone - Argent trop cher (1980)

Kate Tempest - Perfect Coffee (2016)

These New Puritans - Into The Fire (2019)

Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine - Confessions d'un Never Been (2005)

Yann Tiersen - Tempelhof (2019)

Thievery Corporation - Shadows of Ourselves (2000)

Tina Turner - What's Love Got To Do With It (1984)

U2 - New Year’s Day (1983)

Frankie Valli - Can't Take My Eyes off You (1967)

Suzanne Vega - 12 Mortal Men (2016)

The Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale (1967)

Veruca Salt - Volcano Girls (1997)

The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work (1997)

Le Villejuif Underground - Villejuif Underground (2017)

Weezer - Zombie Bastards (2019)

The Who - My Generation (1965)

John Williams - Hedwig's Theme (From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) (2001)

Amy Winehouse - Love Is A Losing Game (2006)

Wolf Alice - Don't Delete the Kisses (2017)

Woodkid - Run Boy Run (2013)

Shannon Wright - The Caustic Light (2013)

XTC - Making Plans For Nigel (1979)

Neil Young - Southern Man (1970)

Hindi Zahra - Stand Up (2009)

Zazie - Nos âmes sont (2018)

#Playlist #2019 #Listes #Musique #Rock #Pop

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fleetbound · 6 years ago

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BIRDS AND LIONS [SIPARA POV] - 20k

This got deleted off of tumblr ages and ages ago, so reposting. |D

You can’t picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. “So he doesn’t need our hivestem. He’s got his own, and it’s lovely,” he says for you, when you don’t answer. He’s been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. “And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to.”

It’s rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won’t come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, ‘except instead of draining out thoughts, it’s not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, ‘til the only thing that’s left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he’s watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

“.. but you aren’t,” is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. “Right?”

0. COIN | 7 years old / 3.27 sweeps

"Catch!"

The caegar is dusty and green with age and rust, but it still cuts a nice figure as it twirls in the air high above. The green light catches on each rivet and groove, pink shadows deepening each curve, every place it bows out until it looks like something special: some kind of a gem, maybe, sparkling in the night air.

It isn't! It's just something you found in one of the journals and spit and polished until all the dirt had come off. Too old for the Imperial symbol to have been carved onto it! Too old for it to be of any more use than the wooden coins in the boxed games. But as far as you're concerned, that just makes it all the better.

After all, wood rots! And you'd never get away with playing river games with a real coin.

The moons are in your eyes at this angle. Everything's green and pink moonspots and the purple sky above, and between those three, the caegar blends right in. You catch a glint of it. You snatch for it! And you miss.

Instead of landing neatly in your palm, the coin smacks into the water with an audible pop near your face, and you jolt back, spluttering with outrage.

From the shore, Sipara whoops.

It’s the start of the wet season, and even though the moons are high on the sky, the air is still heavy with a heat crisp enough to taste. It won’t stay hot and humid like this for very long. Soon enough, the rains will come proper, and you won’t be coming outdoors for a dozen caegars, never mind this silly little half-penny. But that’s nearly a perigee away, practically forever, and until then, you and Sipa are determined to take advantage of the heat.

“Way to go!” she jeers. No matter how much you beg, she refuses to ever get so much as her walkstubs wet. You even tried bribing her once, but she'd just stolen the apple you’d offered and eaten it anyway. And the only time you actually hauled her in, she’d bit you so hard that you’d had to get bandages from Whydah.

(They'd sucked their fangs at you when they'd seen the bloody weals, and then wrapped the bandages so tight you couldn't feel your fronds for nights.)

But every time you head off to the river, Sipara’s always a step behind, trailing you like the world’s most dreadful shadow. She claims it’s ‘cause she’s waiting for you to drown, so she can take all your stuff and pawn it at the market, but she hangs around even when the river’s way too low for you to do much more than wade. You think she’s jealous!

Which is silly, because you keep offering to teach her to swim. She's the one that always refuses. But then again, Sipara is silly. “You’re supposed to catch it, doofus!” she yodels at you now, hands on her hip. She’s leaning in close to the river, near enough that you can see her reflection on the water below. “Not let it fall!”

You puff out your cheeks at her, pressing your palms to your face and wiping away the water. As much as you can manage, at least: staying in place like this is hard! Your head keeps bobbing down, trying to dunk you in the water 'til even your top half's completely submerged. If you stop thinking for half a moment, you'll be pulled under.

Sipara’d scream if you were. She looks stressed enough just standing by the shore, like she thinks the water’s going to reach up and drag her under. You're not sure what she's so afraid of.

“Hard to catch it when you’re awful at throwing,” you call back. "Where did it go, Sisi? Did it even land in here?"

Tilting your head down, you make a show of squinting down into the briny water, but you're really watching her through your lashes. She leans down, big hands tight on her bendsockets. Her mouth is thin. "'course it landed," she snaps. You can't see her eyes like this, but you know they must be all thin and unhappy. You can't see her face, either, with all her hair falling down around her like a curtain, not anywhere but in the water, where it's too blurry to see what look she's making.

Too blurry to tell her feelings, maybe, but just clear enough to aim. You let the silence sit just long enough for her to stew in it. She can't stand quiet, not really. And then, right when she's opening her mouth to say something else, you slap both hands into the water.

All that happens is she catches a mouthful of water, but the way she jolts, you'd think you hit her.

Sipara jerks back so quickly that her feet slip in the mud, and no amount of arm-flailing can keep her upright. She hits the clay soil with an audible plop, hair poofing up around her, her eyes saucer-wide in her face. Almost as big as her mouth, which's already twisting open as she sucks in a breath.

You dive just as she lets off the first ear-piercing shriek of rage.

Underwater, you can't hear it. (Underwater, she can't hear you, which's good, 'cause you're laughing.) The water is high and the river's murky with silt and dirt, but ducking under's comfotable, even when the current's jerking you every which way. That's alright. You just have to go with it, and you let it tug you along a few feet, staring down at the bottom.

The water would've tugged the coin a long a little farther than it ought. But luckily, just along, and not out. This close to the shore, the ground's near enough that you can feel it, brushing along the bottom of your psionics. And it's close enough that the light of your aura cuts through the gloom as easy as clay. There's still black on either side of you, tugging at the corners of your vision where the light doesn't shine, but that's alright. You can see straight ahead, and that's all you need.

Because right below you is the gleam of the coin, hiding in the silt on the bottom.

When you grab it, it's heads.

1. RMEROS | 4.15 SWEEPS / 8 YEARS OLD

Pheres's moirail's got the biggest head you've ever seen. He's the biggest troll you've ever seen, really, if you count in his horns. And you sorta have to: they're huge and curly and ridiculous, curling all the way over his head and past his back, like he's some sort of wooly hairbeast.

"Rack like that," you'd heard Khirba murmur to Whydah that first night, after the sun'd gone down and everyone had come streaming out into the courtyard, jostling past and floating up over each other to try and see: "- rack like that it, doesn't really matter his personality, does it?"

It's no wonder he's got a big head, when everyone won't stop talking about him.

Especially Pheres.

"Sto~oppit," you wail, clapping your mitts over your soundflaps. He just laughs at you, showing off his teeth in that dumb grin that always makes you want to smack him silly. "I don't care!"

"Don't be such a brat, Sipa!" He's bustling around your hiveblock, rattling the dishes, hopping up on his toes to reach the shelves where you keep the sugar so bugs won't get in. The tea's on the hotplate, just barely starting up the whine that means it's about ready. "If you'd stop being such a runny-faced wiggler, you'd like him, I promise! He's so smart."

"Almost as smart as you," he adds, peeking back at you with a quick smile, and you let go of your ears.

"Almost as smart?"

"Almost!" The kettle whistles. He drops the mugs on the counter, sloshing the tea haphazardly in. Usually, your lusus would complain about how much's slopping everywhere, but your pops is up in the rafters, sleeping again. He's been doing that a lot ever since you got big enough to feed yourself. "I mean, he doesn't make stuff like you, but he knows all sorts of things!"

"What good's about knowing things?" You nudge him away from the kettle, taking over before it all ends up on the floor. Pheres's got tiny bird hands, barely big enough to fit your pop in 'em. Yours are bigger, and if you're careful, you can just about keep the kettle steady.

"Rmeros says all the goods in knowing things. You can't get nothing done if you don't," he says, shovelling sugar into your cup. When he sees you looking, he dimples at you. "Sugar to make you sweeter!"

You make a gesture that is not very sweet at all, and he laughs, passing you the mug. It's warm in your hands. You blow on it, but he's already sipping at his like the heat doesn't bug him any. (It's not fair! He can drink it straight outta the pot without complaining, but your mouth starts peeling just at the smell of it.) "You're going to meet him tomorrow," Pheres says, and it's not a question. "You'll like him!"

Gingerly, you take a sip of your tea, and you get a mouthful of salt.

He stops laughing when you dump the cup on his lap.

***

"This is Sipa," Pheres says a few hours later, his voice only a little muzzy.

Points to him! If he wasn't all ruddy, you'd barely knew you broke his nose at all.

"You met her before." He's watching the two of you, bright-eyed but wary, like you're stray meowbeasts about to scrap. Maybe he isn't wrong! Rmeros is big, sure, but it's one thing to know that and a whole 'nother to see it up close and personal. He's as big as a lusus, towering over you. Big enough to be someone's dad, and the fact he's got his van behind him doesn't make him seem any smaller.

It makes you feel small. It makes you want to rip him apart until he feels the same.

"I remember her," he says, eyeing you, and maybe he doesn't see you're two seconds from scratching off his face, 'cause he bends knee to you 'til his face's even with yours. Your fronds curl into fists. He doesn't notice that, either. "Hello there. You're Sipara, aren't you?"

You nod, stilted. His lips curl up, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

Rmeros doesn't have much to say after that. He leans back on the steps of his van, his back to the door, and he plays around on his fancy husktop. It's got to be nicer than anything any of you lot have: as the older kids pass by, you can see them eyeing it, but he doesn't pay them any mind.

You wouldn't think he was paying you and Pheres any mind, either, but you can feel him watching. It's weird. You don't know why, but then again, you've never met anyone from outside of the hivestem. Maybe they all sit there and watch like the slitherbeasts in the foliage, waiting to try and snatch your pops right outta the air.

He's not looking at you, but it's still like you can feel his attention. You manage to forget Rmeros is there anyway. It's easy when he's so quiet, and what starts off as a discussion with Pheres turns into a lecture turns into a discussion of everyone else. And just like it always does, it turns into an argument.

The two of you fight, even when you're agreeing. It's been this way since you were itsy bitsy and you first got stuck in the hole between your walls. (The both of you were perfectly agreed on how much you wanted to get out of the wall. The trouble came in that neither of you could stop hissing long enough to manage it.) "Simoom's terrible," Pheres says, in that hushed, rapid-fire way of his, "but you can't cull him, Sipa, that's silly. You're being silly. Again!"

"He's not that big!"

"It doesn't matter when he can lift you up with his brain!" He frowns at you. "You're going to start something and get hit, and you'll deserve it." He's always on about that. It's just a matter of consequences, he says, like that's anything but an excuse for the bigger kids to rough you up. "Even if you smacked him on the pan with a rock, he's still bigger --"

You whirl on your heel, flinging your hands out. "Pheres! You nerd!" He doesn't jolt back quick enough to avoid you grabbing his face. Your palms squish into his cheeks. "That's brilliant," you crow. "If I hit his horns enough times, he won't be able to do nothing at all! Walk, spark, nothin'!"

A white-hot spark lands on your skin. You let go with a yowl, and as soon as you do, he's dancing back. "Yeah," he says, confused but pleased despite the side-eye he's giving you. White's still dancing across his horns and shoulders like a brazen warning. You stick your hand in your mouth, sucking on the warm spot. "Ah. I.. am brilliant?"

Rmeros laughs.

Pheres jumps in a crackle of psi. When you stumble back, blinking againsnt the light, Pheres's right behind you, and the both of you end up sprawled out on the ground. "Get off," Pheres yelps, shoving at you. "You're smothering me!" Both of you forgot Rmeros was there: he's quiet as a fucking meowbeast, that's what he is, leaning forward with his chin on his hand and his elbow braced on his husktop. His eyes are twinkling over the top of his glasses.

Not like Pheres when he gets pleased, all sparks and a light that makes your eyes water. But like he's amused.

Like he thinks the two of you are a joke.

"You two really are pupas, aren't you?"

When you give Alsike this look, she threatens to backhand you. Rmeros just laughs again, eyes squinching shut in a way that doesn't happen when he smiles.

Pheres bats away your hand as soon as you offer it, scrambling to his feet and sidling away. You huff, squaring your shoulders. It's not that your feelings are hurt! It's just that he's dumb."Well, if you're so smart," you burst out, "what would you do?"

"Befriend him," Rmeros says promptly, and it's your turn to laugh. His smile shifts a little at that, turns to a shape you can't quite identify.

"What's your name, again?" he asks.

"Nzinga," you say, and his smile fades.

2. ADVICE | 4.58 SWEEPS / 9 YEARS OLD

Everyone calls you Nzi, except for Pheres.

It's always been Sipara with him. He says that's how you introduced yourself, back when you first met, but you have your doubts: the only thing you remember from back then is knowing he was there, right on the other side of the thin plaster wall, and knowing that you hated it.

It was your hive! It was your hive and your home and it was bad enough there were trolls on every end of you, breathing through the walls, breathing above and below you. But then you realised there wasn't even a proper wall between the two of your hives, just something you could punch right through, and it'd been terrible. If it wasn't a wall, then it was your space. If it was your space, then he shouldn't have been there.

You bit him, the first time you'd met, just for the fact he was there and you didn't want him to be. You don't think you introduced yourself at all! Least, not before he'd wrestled you into the coon and half drowned you in it. Your lusus had shrieked and shrieked 'til you'd given in, and that'd been the first and last time those two had ever agreed on nothing.

But it doesn't matter, 'cause when someone calls your name, you always know it's Pheres. No matter how funny it sounds.

"Sipara!"

He's doing his silly skip-hop again. Some of the floaters do a little skip-kick to launch themselves into the air, and he's copied - except instead of floating up at the tip of his jump, he flickers and crackles, and when his feet hit the ground, he's two, three feet ahead. He might've been the way back at the hivestem starting off, but it only takes him a minute to reach you like this.

His face's still red and his breath all funny like he's been running. "Sipa," he says again, unsteadily. "Oh my god, why are you in a tree?"

You kick your legs down off of your branch. "'cause I'm getting apples, duh!"

He's on the other side of the fence, but Pheres is a brat: he doesn't even have to scramble, he just makes that little noise that means you ought to close your ganderbulbs, and then jumps right over it.

When you open your eyes, he's right below the tree, staring up. "Khirba said Simoom'll dock our horns if we get caught stealing." But he's already unwrapping the scarf around his torso, and holding it up like a basket.

There's a game to finding apples worth stealing. This early in the season, half of 'em are still green and barely worth the picking. The other half are all ripe, but the orchardkeepers like to tuck those branches away, keep em hidden. They're little flashes of yellow in all the green, and you have to dig to find them.

"Simoom's a stupid fart and I'll bite him if he tries." The apples you're throwing down are mealy and small, but it's food. Pheres doesn't care, past that.

But he didn't just turn up for food. "'Sides, why're you worrying? He's not gonna do anything to you," you call, sour, "since he's, like, over the moon for your dumb moirail."

"Why're you even here? Thought you'd be reading your dumb books."

"I'm allowed to go out," he says, taking a bite of one of the apples. "I'm not stuck learning all the time."

"Just whenever I'm supposed to see you," you complain.

He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it.

".. I wanted to say you should be nicer to him," he finally says, all stiff and prim. "He thinks you're a brat. And you are!"

"Says the boy stealing all my apples!"

"I've only eaten one! And I'm holding them, so it's not stealing." He spits out an appleseed on the ground, then crunches through the core. "It's just a tax."

"That's dumb, and so's you." You shift. "I'm not gonna be nicer to him. He's awful."

"Well, you're awful, so the two of you should get along just fine."

You throw an apple right at his face for that.

There aren't that many apples. The grafters are too clever for that: they know people like to steal, and they don't like to make it profitable. So you have to climb all over the tree, stretching out your legs and arms far as they'll go as you pull and tug the branches. It's tiring!

But it's fun, too, and it's worth it for the way that Pheres is all but bouncing with excitement as his scarf starts to sag with the weight of it. Pheres has been hiding away in Rmeros's van for most of the hours of each night, coming in to visit you in breaks and right before he goes to sleep, like you're just something to keep him busy when his moirail isn't around. Like you're an afterthought.

But out here, you're his only thought. His big white eyes are watching your every move, and even if he's all salty over it, he's hanging off your every word. It's just like the way things used to be, when it was just you and him and your lusus and no one else in the world who gave the slightest damn about either of you.

"The guards, " he says, and goes still.

'cause no matter how it feels, of course there's still other folks here. Simoom assigns people to walk the orchards just to crack filchers like you. Last time Majlis had caught you, she'd given you four lashes, while your pops practically burned Pheres for holding him back.

It's been perigees, but your back still aches at the thought. You hush.

It seems as if they might pass you right by. The orchards are big, and there aren't that many kids that wanna do field duty, not when they could be having fun out playing at guards or making things. There's only four kids at it any one night, and they like to split into two, the better to patrol. These two could be on their way home. They could be wrapping up for the night.

They're lingering at a tree three rows down, though, writing down where a fruit got bit straight in half by some echoing squeakbeast, and they're gonna be heading your way soon.

You're motioning for Pheres to scatter before you even look up. "You gotta go," you murmur, but he's taking, too: "- no, no, you have to go!"

"If you get switched again, then your lusus is gonna burn them, and Majlis'll have her mum eat him!" Now that they're studying the next tree, you can see the three pronged points of Majlis's horns. Ugh.

"If they catch you, Simoom's gonna kick your butt!"

"What's that matter? He does it anyway." Pheres huffs, looks away. His shoulders are up, but when he peeks back at the duo and catches a glimpse of your face, he blanches.

"No, no, I'll be fine," he says, quick as anything. "He won't do anything! Like you said, ah, he likes Rmeros, and Rmeros already got onto Khirba for smacking me, so he isn't going to do anything but bark. I'll be fine, so just - oh, just hurry up!"

You slide more than climb down the tree, the jagged bark dragging at your palms and feet. But your skin's rougher than some dumb tree, and you don't feel nothing, not even when you finally slip to the ground.

Pheres's tying the scarf around your neck before your feet hit the dirt, the edges tucked so the apples are nestled close. He looks ridiculous without his wraps, all skin and bones and stubby little slashes of gray that barely count as grub scars. He must've been the tubbiest pupa.

He gives your ear a sharp tug. "You're thinking something awful," he informs you. "Stop! And go!"

"If she tries to smack you -"

"Sipa! "

"If she tries to smack you," you say, insistent, "tell her I'll snatch her horns off!"

"You're not even half her size," Pheres says. "You will not. Shoo! Go!"

He's smiling, so you go.

3. SMILE | 4.66 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

The worst thing about Rmeros, you decide, is that he's always smiling. When he's coming back from hunting, or teaching Pheres, or even talking to Simoom, he always looks amused, with his eyes all squinted and his seedflap curled up, like he's getting some joke no one else is hearing.

He even smiles at you. You hate it.

Pheres's not big on touching you unless the two of you're fighting: he's always leaning and sidling and shoving you, complaining that you're gonna knock him down until you get fed up and actually do. But he's sitting all prim and neat by Rmeros's feet, head leaned back so his horns are braced against his knee, and you hate that too.

Pheres wants you to be friends, though, and so it doesn't matter how much the sight of Rmeros makes your belly churn, or makes your mouth go dry and flinty. You've gotta play nice. That's the only reason why you're standing in his van, breathing in this stuffy-ass air that smells like mold and dust, and the only reason why you don't growl when he smiles at you, all flap and no bulbs.

He's got a wreath of herbs hanging from his hand, and a lizard in the other. It's dead, but it's not burned: your dad hasn't hunted for you for the last three perigees, so it's still all red, fresh, not bad in the slightest. There's even still blood dripping from it, the cherry red of the sorta critters that're okay to kill.

"It's very nice," Rmeros says, the skin of his nose all scrunched.

He's holding the lizard out like he's afraid of it. With each little plip-plop of the blood hitting the ground, his eyes go thinner.

"Congratulations on your.. hunt." If he got any more careful, his voice'd be wearing gloves.

"You couldn't have bled it first?" Pheres asks. A splash of blood had landed on his foot first thing, and he's been curled up tight ever since, face wrinkled like he bit into mold.

"Why would I do that? Dummy. I'm gonna make pudding out of it."

"For you guys," you add, fluttering your eyelashes, and Pheres perks right up.

You knew that'd win him over. He's always hungry, for all that he pretends he's not: your pops doesn't bring back enough food for the both of you, and he throws a fit if he thinks you're sharing too much. And you've always been able to get more from the communal pot, on account of the fact your lusus'll burn anyone that tries to stop you, but Pheres --

-- well, he just eats when people give him things, for the most part.

"Well." Rmeros gives the lizard a perfunctory shake, and then jerks his chin at you. It's a sharp little jerk! It's something that'd be more at home on Simoom's knife-edge of a face than his plump one. "Thank you for showing us before you began. Pheres. Take it back to her, will you?"

Pheres unfurls in a tangle of limbs, his head tilting up even as he pushes himself off the ground. He's in such a hurry he even forgets the desk behind him. The thwack of his horns hitting the wood's loud enough that you flinch, your noisechutes pinning back, but though his face goes red, he doesn't pause.

And he only just barely makes a face when he takes the lizard. "Here, Sipa," he says. He isn't nearly as good as hiding his voice. It's gone all sour and terse, and you can practically hear him vibrating with the urge to drop it every time the blood drips.

When he holds the lizard out to you, you shake your head. "Put it on the table," you demand, and he's eager enough to let go that he doesn't even question you. Eager enough for that, and, well -- he always likes free food.

You push past Rmeros, your soundflaps up high. He's just staring. Good! If Pheres wants you to be nice, you'll do it -- but you'll do it your way, so that everyone can see. If Rmeros wants to gawk at how nice you're being, well, good.

"Go wash your hands, dude, you're being gross." The trick to bullying Pheres, you've found out, is just ordering him to do what he wants to do 'til he thinks everything you say's gotta be like that. Alsike says it's on account of the fact he's a creature of habit.

Whydah says he's just biddable, and they don't say it even half as fond. "And get me a pot," you add. "A pot, and a - a -"

"A knife! I don't think we have cardamom, Sipa." He steps daintily around the blood you're tracking, reaches under the counter to pull out a drawer you didn't even know was there. "Good! Cardamom's gross," you say, wrinkling your nose.

He places the pot on the stove, then starts rummaging through a different drawer that's filled with little vials. (What does anyone even need that many vials for?) "Well, it doesn't matter if you like it. We have to have cardamom." He's so confident, like he's ever cooked a single thing in his whole life. "And the ginger! Rmeros, do you have any ginger? Well, I guess we'll find it later. Ah, you've never made pudding, right? First, we start with the flour --"

"We," Rmeros says flatly, "aren't doing anything. Pheres, what in heaven's sake are you doing? Put that down."

You'd found a knife all hidden away in a block of wood. Pheres's stilled in the corner of your eye, too far to see his expression, but near enough you can see his face go even brickier.

Whydah's right. He is biddable.

Well, you aren't! The first swoop of the knife takes off the head, easy as anything for all that the blade skids on the counter. (It leaves a scratch in the wood. Who makes counters out of wood?) Pheres jumps at the clang as it strikes the counter. Worse yet, he trills at you, with a quick, furtive step forward. You don't pay him any mind.

You aren't a wriggler to be minded. And you're not doing anything wrong.

You're lifting your arm for the second swing when something closes around your wrist.

Rmeros's hand is hot, hot, hot, hotter than Pheres's skin, hotter than even the stuffy air in the van. And his grip is tight. When you try to wrench free, you can't get so much as a wriggle off. "Hey," you protest, twisting. "Let go!"

He takes the knife with his other hand and places it gingerly on the counter. He isn't even half as gentle with you. His grip on your wrist is starting to hurt! You can practically feel your bones creaking, and shifting, like they might just up and break, and all he's doing is holding still.

"That's enough of this," he says. It'd be better if he was flat, or annoyed, or anything, but he's just.. talking, bland and brisk, like Pheres isn't wide-eyed and terrorstruck behind him. "If you want to make a mess of a kitchen, do it in your own damn hive. I'm told you have one? Somewhere?"

"And no, Pheres, I do not have ginger. Or cardamom. Honestly."

"Leggo! I'm not making a mess!" You're going shrill. Your wrist hurts, and he's not letting go, no matter how much you thrash. "I'm making pudding, so let GO of me, that's, like, like, what people do --"

"It's true," Pheres interjects, so quiet you can barely hear him. "It's.. she's trying to be nice."

"Bringing dead vermin into my hive and tracking blood across my floor is nice? You people have such unusual standards." Now he's gone flat. "If the two of you want to create a mess, then you can do it in her space, on your own time."

"Not in mine." He pauses, glances at Pheres. "Ours," he amends, and oh! His voice is so, soflat, flatter than the racks they stretch the skins out on, but Pheres brightens like that little aside's a kindness.

Like Rmeros doesn't have you by the fucking wrist.

That's fine. If Rmeros won't let go, and Pheres's turned traitor, you'll just help yourself. So you pin your noiseflaps, tensing your entire body, and then you lunge up, sinking your teeth into his arm.

The scream is gratifying. You've wanted to do this since the first time his rotten ping woke you up in the middle of the day. It's been a long time coming! The scream is gratifying, but the way the world goes white when his free hand slams into your central struts is not. He lets go of your wrist and you let go of his arm at the same time, and momentum sends you skidding over into the desk. The edge digs into your side, hard as any knife, an unfortunate match to the way your poor struts are throbbing.

Your mouth is full of iron. When you spit on the ground, it's brick red.

Pheres's looking between the two of you, wide-eyed, like he can't figure out which one he wants to help. Rmeros's arm is bleeding and his face is pale like a mask, his hands curled in tight. And you're hissing like your broken teakettle, horns down in case he decides to try and hit you again.

(Try. Let him try! You'll rip him apart.)

"I told you to let go," you snap, soundchutes still down, your chest a white-hot pain. "I told you --"

"Pheres," Rmeros says. There's a shake to his voice, just the barest hint of a quaver. It takes you a moment to realise it's a warning rasp. "Get her the fuck out of here."

He doesn't need to be told twice. Pheres's grabbing hold of your arm before you can even process it, tugging you along, careful to keep him between you and Rmeros. It's only when you're nearly at the door that he stops, looks back. You can't see his face, with him blocking you like this. (Like he could stop you, if you wanted to take another bite out of his dumb moirail.)

You don't need to see his face, though, when you can hear his voice.

"Ah. Rmeros! Are you sure -- do you want me to get you a bandage? Some wraps? Alsike has lots," he says, worried. "They're free!"

"What I want," his moirail says, flat, "is the both of you out of here before I cull you."

4. MOVING ON OUT | 4.68 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

"Ghosts aren't real, Sipa," Pheres says, like you're simple. "When a troll dies, they're dead."

The smile he's got plastered on is as fake as the yellow of Myljis's symbol - everyone knows she's practically orange, no matter how much lemon she slathers on her skin.

Tonight, you managed to catch him just as he was leaving the river. That's all he ever is anymore: he crawls in the 'coon after you go to sleep and he wakes up before you do, and if he's not at Rmeros's hive, he's off in the damn water. His braids are still wet. He stinks of salt.

"They are! Whydah says --" you protest, but he cuts you off with a laugh.

"Since when have you believed what Whydah says?"

Since he stopped being around, you're tempted to say. But then he'll just get mad, and it's not nearly as fun as it used to be to wind him up now. Used to be that you could say the right thing, he'd take a swing at you, and that'd be it. You'd be on the ground, practically scrapping for your life!

Or at least, so he wouldn't ground your face in the ground and lecture you on being civilized.

Now-a-days, he just skips straight to the lecture, and if you pop him, he just gets mad. He shouted at you last time 'til you cried, and he's never done that, not even when you cracked his horn once when you were both little.

So you don't say anything. You just curl your lip at him, and he huffs right back at you, almost like he used to. "Whydah's superstitious and silly," he says, with a quick, nervous glance around to make sure they can't hear. They like to pop out of all the dark corners when you're least expecting it. "There aren't any ghosts in the river! I've been all over it, and I've never seen anything down there, except bones and kelp and clutter."

"There aren't even any fish! How's a ghost going to survive down there, if there're no fish?"

"It's a ghost, stupid. Why's it need fish?"

"Well -"

"Rmeros says," you drone with him, but while he goes red, he doesn't stop talking. "Ghosts are a silly thing for a person to believe in. Once you're dead, you're dead, and that's that."

There's something hesitant in that, though. It takes you a moment, then you whistle, impressed. "He'd better not let Alsike hear that."

Ancestor worship is big in your hivestem. All the older kids do it, even Simoom, though he grumbles something fierce about wasting good woolbeasts by burning it all up. "'cause he can't be a part of the stem if he doesn't believe." You don't, but that's just because ancestors are silly. Who cares what a couple of dead fogeys think? It's not 'cause you think they're not real, like some of the trolls.

Whydah doesn't think they're real, and that's why they spend most of their time out hunting. Everyone gets nasty mean when you don't fit into the flock.

Maybe Pheres's remembering that, because he's quiet even longer this time, like he's turning over the words in his head. "Alsike already knows," he finally says, careful like each sound's glass.

"And she didn't kick 'em out?" You let your flaps pin down in disbelief, and his face goes bricky. "I don't believe it," you announce. "You're fibbing!"

"I'm not," he protests.

"If she knew, she wouldn't let him be a part of the hivestem."

"Maybe he doesn't want to be a part of the hivestem, Sipara."

It's your turn to go quiet.

Pheres lifts his chin. "It's not like this is a big hivestem," he says, and if each word's glass, now he's talkin' like he's afraid he'll break them. "His is better! He's from Dimašqa, did you know? He said his hivestem is bigger than our entire plot, and it's one of the smaller ones. And no one even has to work there, not unless they want to."

"Can you imagine that?"

You try to picture a hivestem bigger than yours. How tall would that be? A dozen stories, reaching up into the sky - it'd be like the orchard, maybe, but with hives on every end, trolls blocks on each spreading branch.

You can't picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. "So he doesn't need our hivestem. He's got his own, and it's lovely," he says for you, when you don't answer. He's been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. "And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to."

It's rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won't come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, 'except instead of draining out thoughts, it's not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, 'til the only thing that's left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he's watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

".. but you aren't," is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. "Right?"

"Ah." He lets go of his hair. It's still dripping on the sand behind him as he folds his arms, wrapping them around himself. "Not right now!" He starts to laugh, then stops, wrinkles his nose. "Ah. That'd be silly. The rains are about to come, and then we won't be able to drive very much at all. But.. in a few perigees, maybe."

"When it's dry."

Everything about you right now is treacherous. If you could fight your body, you would! But your soundchutes are pinned flat and your bulbs are wide and the air's going wavy like the sun's about to come up. It isn't. It's just tears, staining everything a rheumy red, and that's even worse.

Pheres's gone pale and wide-eyed. He isn't smiling anymore.

"Oh," he says, distressed: "- oh, oh no, don't get upset! Why are you upset?"

If you say anything, you'll cry. So you clamp your fangs shut tight, but Pheres keeps talking. "Do you want to come?" His eyes are getting wet. He always gets upset when you get upset, and sometimes it's fun to use that, but right now, you don't want to cry. You just want to shut up and wait to calm down, but --

"You can come, too! I promise, I promise, Sisi, don't cry --"

-- he's going to make you talk.

"No, I can't!" You are blubbering. There's thick orange drops rolling down your face and clouding your vision and even swiping at your bulbs with your hands doesn't stop the tears. And Pheres's just staring. "You're going to go and leave me and I can't come, because -- because he hates me!"

"I won't leave you!" Pheres steps forward, but he stops when you hiss. You don't want him near you, not when his hands are twitching like he wants to touch you. Pheres doesn't like being touched, not 'less you're fighting, and you don't want to fight him right now. "I won't leave you, and - and you're being silly. He doesn't hate you at all," he says, soft, like you both know it's a lie.

5. KNIVES | 4.70 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Everyone in the hivestem colony hates Rmeros, and that's just the truth.

Alsike thinks he’s weird. “You don’t get pale for a pupa,” she said to you one night when you’d been helping her cook one of the big kills. “Everything’s supposed to be even, Nzi-fizzy. Can’t be even if one of you’s about to get on a ship and the other’s barely out of the caverns.”Hamsin agrees with whatever Alsike says. Whydah doesn’t like him, though they’ve never said why, on account of the fact they barely say anything.

The only people that like him are Simoom, who’s a rotten old ponce with a rotten old crush, and Pheres. And Pheres doesn’t count. Pheres would like a daywalker, if it paid attention to him!

But even though everyone hates Rmeros, you’re the only one willing to do anything about it. Which is fine, ‘cause if Pheres ditching you’s taught you anything, it’s that you’re pretty great at working alone.

("I won't leave you," he'd said all prettily, and then he'd packed up his things and moved into Rmeros's van. You hope he gets to that stupid city and the hivestem's are all dead.)

Maybe you always had Pheres at your back before, trailing you like a dumb, gangly shadow whenever you needed to teach someone a lesson. (For stealing his shit, for making fun of your dad, for trying to sass you - there's always a reason to rough someone up.) But it wasn't like he was ever much help in a fight, 'cept for getting in your way if he felt you were getting too rough. He never really helped.

So it's not like you're working alone at all, really, 'cause what's changed?

Except that usually, you use this knife on animals, not tires.

Who knew that rubber was so thick? You're having to saw through it, and even that's barely scratching the surface. All it's doing is making your arms ache. And your soundchute's ache, too. The noise's so loud, you don't even notice when the van door pops open.

".. what're you doing?" Pheres's scrubbing at his face like he's trying not to fall asleep, eyes half-lidded, but you can hear the sound of snoring drifting out of the lookout, clear as anything. No way that big of a sound could have ever come from your reedy little hivemate: it's gotta be Rmeros. And if he's asleep, why isn't Pheres?

Because his hands are wrapped tight around a steaming mug, and it smells like the stuff the older kids drink. The stuff Khirba smacks you, when you try to steal a sip.

"Is that coffee?" you demand, but he's canting his head to the side, eyes narrowed to slits.

"Is that a knife?"

"I asked you first!" You shove it behind your back, putting on your most quarrelsome face. "You're not supposed to be drinking that!"

"I've got a lot of work to do. And no, you're not supposed to drink it. Your custodian doesn't care what I do." He's oozing along the side of the cart, forcing you to take a step back, pivot to keep him facing your front. And then he sparks, just the once, and he's behind you, grasping your wrist.

"You do have a knife!" he hisses, outraged.

He doesn't keep your wrist. He's all bones, and while he's fast, he's never had the weight or strength or will to keep you: you twist free in a second, snarling loud enough to make him startle back.

There's fury churning in your gut, eating away at your tongue. You're doing this for him! You're doing this for him, and all he's doing is looking like you've messed up. His hands are clenched at his sides, and he's gone all sour and pinched. "Sipara, what is wrong with you-"

"Pheres." The snoring hasn't broken, but that's Rmeros's voice, not sleepy in the slightest. Pheres startles again, and your ears pin back. When you look at each other, it's hard to remember that you were just angry. You don't want Rmeros to come outside, you with a knife in your hand and rips in his tires.

Your wrist aches.

".. nothing," Pheres calls back. He's wide-eyed, but his voice barely squeaks at all. Maybe he doesn't want him to come out, either. "It was just a squeakbeast! I'll get rid of it."

He takes hold of your arm, tugs. You let your feet drag, but you let him pull you along when he hisses, "Come on!"

He leads you away from the van in quick, hurried steps. The coffee keeps sloshing into your hands, but neither of you says a word until the van is behind you, and you're safely in the shadow of the walls. There's holes in it where the stones have fallen out, and he curls up in one, knees drawn up right against the curve of the bedrock.

"Where's your custodian?" he asks. When you just stare, he fixes it, peevish: "- your pops! Your bird! Where's he at?"

"Sleeping, duh. Same as always." He's been trying to stay awake more again, ever since Rmeros came, but he's no good for it. "Why?"

"'cause he's supposed to be stopping you! That's his job."

"What d'you know about his job? You don't have a lusus," you say, baffled, and you're gonna say more, but Pheres wilts.

It's baffling. That's the sort of thing that's never bothered him before. You're not being cruel: it's just a fact, like how you haven't any horns to speak of. He's not supposed to get thin-lipped and unhappy over it.

"I do have a lusus," he says, curling up tighter. He's so put off he doesn't even complain when you settle down near him, back againsnt the wall. "It's not my fault he's dead!"

He takes a sip of the coffee. "It's not my fault he's dead," he repeats, quieter this time and peevish.

He's never ever been salty about this.

You've seen his weird, dead dad. You live with him! It's impossible not to have seen him: Pheres used to keep it sitting on the edge of the coon til your thrashing tipped it in one night, and now he just keeps it around the nutritionblock. He moves it, sometimes, but it's the same way he likes to shuffle around everything. It's not like he actually ever cared about it.

"Um." You don't know how to deal with him when he's like this. A few perigees ago, you'd have started a fight, 'cause after that first slap, he doesn't have room for anything other than getting mad. But he won't fight back if you hit him anymore, and you don't think you could say anything mean enough to get him spitting right now.

The way he's acting right now, he'd just cry.

Or he'd leave.

You scoot down and lean in against him. Normally, he'd bolt away at this point, or kick up a fuss, or smack you 'til you moved. But he just exhales, loud and heavy like he's pushing all the air outta his lungs. Emboldened, you butt your head against his arms til he lets you rest your cheek againsnt his knee. "You're gonna get hair in my coffee," he grumps, but it's halfhearted. ".. and I'm still mad at you."

There's a hundred things you could say! But you swallow 'em all, because fighting right now seems like an awful idea. Saying anything at all seems dumb, so you just curl in tighter against him, shouldering your way closer 'til he's dropped his knees enough you can slide an arm around them.

Alsike will cuddle with you sometimes. Khirba, if he's in a good mood. But Pheres never, everlets you touch him like this.

"If you want a lusus," you say, meek, "you can have mine."

That gets a laugh from him. Everything feels soft and strange right now, but the sound warms you. Pheres might be being strange, but his laugh's still the same, all sharp and mean. "I don't want yours!" he huffs. "Yours is horrid."

"Yeah, well.. why not just carry yours, then?"

".. what, under my arm?"

"In a bag!" He's dropped his knees. It's a tight fit, but you climb all the way into his lap, writhing around until your face is looking at his, and your hair is getting caught on the stones. "Like, Alsike's got lots and lots with broken bits, and all she ever does is make stuff, and she likes you, so - so you could ask her! I bet she'd make one just for you!"

It's a brilliant idea. All of your ideas are, of course, but this one is especially perfect, because Pheres's brightening, one watt at a time.

"It'd look silly," he protests, but it's half-hearted.

"You look silly! With those big dumb horns -"

"Rmeros says they're dignified!"

"That's only 'cause his are worse." You grab one curly horn and give it a yank. He's not moving. He's not smacking you. He's letting you sit on him and you don't even have to hit him and it feels like your entire body's full of butterflies and bubbles all frothing to get out. "I bet if you went and hid with Simoom's fluffbeasts, he wouldn't even notice you were there, that's how silly these are! And - and - and if you made your hair all big, instead of lank, he wouldn't be able to tell the difference, even if you went up and bit him -"

"I'm not going to do that!" He jerks his head hard, twisting his horn free with a huff, and the bubbles pop all at once.

"I'd rather go gargle in the river," he complains. But he doesn't push you out of his lap. He doesn't push you off at all.

6. THICKER THAN WATER | 4.74 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Pheres is at the river. He’s never at your hivestem anymore, or at the hiveblock - he doesn’t even come home to get his share of the rations you collect every week, because Rmeros thinks the food here is disgusting. He likes his coffee that he gets all the way from Dimasqa, and food that he bought in a different district entirely.

“A more civilized district,” Pheres had whispered to you in Rmeros’s snooty voice, back when making fun of him was a thing your hivemate would still do. Now he gets mad and pinched if you talk bad about him at all, and the last time you made a joke about lamwas, he didn’t speak to you for a week.

But even though he never comes home, you always know where he is, because Pheres is always at the river.

Every time you see him on the shore, it makes you want to snatch him up. Make him move! He’s so little, and the river’s so big, full of ghosts and the bones of dead kids ready to pull him in. When you were a pupa, you’d stand right here and holler and fuss until he got away from it, and you’d cry every time his head bobbed under the water. You knew he’d pop back out.

Pheres is one of the only kids that goes down to the river, him and Whydah, and it’s practically a part of 'em. If you bled Pheres, sometimes you think all that’d pour out is water and the red-pink mud. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.

He isn’t in the river tonight.

“Sipara,” he says, prim and strict, like he’s the voice from the schoolfeed. His feet are dangling in the water, kicking up silt and dust. If it was any other river, there’d be crocs nibbling at his walkstubs right now, but nothing in this water’s alive anymore. Sweeps and sweeps ago, some wader dumped salt in the water until everything shrivelled up and died, and it’s been that way ever since. Pheres told you that, and Whydah told him, so you know it’s gotta be true: Whydah never lies, not ever, not even when they should.

(It’s why they don’t go down to the river anymore. No point in it, they’d told you, the one time you’d asked: they’d dredged out all the stuff worth taking back when they were your age, all the trinkets left on the bones that could be sold and the horns hanging loose on their beds that could be carved into arrowheads or jewelry or caps.)

But dead or not, though, you don’t like to get near the water. You dawdle a good few feet behind him instead, feet scuffing at the dirt, like you’re just bored and not spooked at all. “What’re you doing?” you demand, petulant. “You haven’t been hive in, like, days.”

“Bennui misses you,” you add, and he laughs.

“You’re not supposed to fib. That’s rude.” He pats the ground next to him, soft at first, then insistent.

You don’t move. He’s been ignoring you! He doesn’t get to play at this now, like everything’s fine. His hands still, and then he folds them in his lap, prim as if he’d never done that in the first place.

For a second, you almost think he slouches in on himself, but nah. Pheres sits like he’s got a tree growing up his spine, just like his dumb moirail.

“I’ve been busy. Rmeros’s teaching me how to copy.” The mud squelches between your toes as you slink closer. “It takes forever,” he adds, glancing back at you. “He wants it all by hand. He says that’s the proper way of doing it.”

“Copy what?” You've only been in Rmeros's hive a handful of times, and never after you brought in the lizard. This is the first time you kinda regret it. You hate not knowing things. It's a personal affront, which's one of Pheres's stodgy words.

“Books! You saw them the first time, remember? He gets them and he writes them down and then he sells them. It's prestigious," he says, preening, probably as much over the word as Rmeros's silly books.

(Selling books. Who'd even buy them?)

"You don’t need to sleep over there for that."

“I can’t work around you,” he objects, squinching his face up at you. “You’d dump something on the books!”

You wrinkle your nose. “Would not!”

“You would too! Even if it wasn’t on purpose. I’ve seen your manuals.” There isn’t nothing you can say to that. You dug out all the tech books from the hive ibrary, soon as you cracked open your first grub and realised you didn’t know anything of what you were looking at. They’d been nice enough when you started, but. Well.

If you’re not spilling tea, or dropping food, then Bennui’s fighting the pages in protest to the pictures. That’s not your fault, though, but you know Pheres figures it is, so you pooch out your lip, for all he can’t see it.

But maybe he knows you’re doing it anyhow, because he laughs. “And, ah, he’s been teaching me other stuff, too! Like..”

He bites his lip, turns his head just enough to peer back at you. It’s tilted to the side, so his braids are trying their best to slip out of the twine he’s wrapped 'em in. It’s the look he uses on Alsike when he’s trying to get her to braid some of her bright yarn into his hair. “Come here, and I’ll show you!”

Reluctantly, you tromp over, stopping a breath behind him.

He makes a show of it, to lure you in closer: he lifts up his hand, shoulders angled so you just barely can’t see, and when you shuffle a little closer, he wraps his fronds in closed. He doesn’t move 'em until you’re at his side.

And then he turns to face you, each frond curling open one at a time, slow as the water in the riverbed. He's chewing on his lip, and he keeps peeking up at you, furtive little glances like he's tryin' to figure out what you're thinking. Then he opens it all the way, all at once.

There’s a light in the center of his palm, dim but flickering. For a moment, it brightens as he breathes in, steadies himself - and then you make a noise, delighted, and it dissolves.

“He’s teaching you to make lights,” you say, awed. Your eyes are stinging a little. It made your scalp crawl, the sight of it: white as bone, as bright and garish as if he’d held the sun in his hand. The sort of thing you’re only supposed to see if you’re dead.

It wasn’t pretty, not precisely, but there’s something tight in your chest that makes you want to see it again.

When you look up from his hand, he’s bleeding.

Only for a moment, then he takes in your wide eyes and starts scrubbing at his snout. His eyes are bright, almost as bright as the globe in his hand, and it’s a stark difference to the ruddy stain on his face. “So I don’t need a torch when I'm working,” he says, proud, like he ain’t bothered at all. “I’m not very good at it yet - or, ah, holding it, haha - but Rmeros is amazing at it.”

“Rmeros can do lights! Dozen of them! Practically millions.” He’s got to be fibbing, but he sounds as proud as a fang-billed abirdination right now. (Used to be that he sounded that way talking about you. The tightness in your cavity's got a different source, now.) “And he says I’ll be able to do it like that, too, if I just keep practicing –”

“I don’t think anyone else starts bleeding over practice,” you say, flat, and his eyes dim.

“Well! Maybe nobody else is practicing the right way.” He lifts his chin, daring you to challenge him, but you don’t take it. Maybe once, it would’ve been an invitation to a real argument! A real scuffle! But nowadays, you argue too much, Pheres just leaves. “Rmeros says it happens to everyone, when they work hard. You just have to -” He waves his hand. “- push through it, 'til it sorts itself out.”

That’s dumb, you want to say. But you swallow the words, and you just flop down right next to him instead, shoving him with your shoulder. He goes tense, but all you do next is drop your head onto his shoulder, nestling it againsnt the curve of his horn.

(Once, you could’ve just slid your head right up againsnt his neck if he'd ever held still long enough to let you, but all his horns have been doing is growing, growing, growing, the past few sweeps. Like all the inches that ought’ve gone to his legs are going straight to his rack instead.)

“I’m tired of talking about your dumb moirail,” you announce. “What’re you even doing out here?”

You can feel the rise and fall of his chest. You can feel the way he’s staying stiff as a board, like he expects you to haul off and smack him. You think he might shrug you off, he’s staying so tightly wound, but all he does is sigh. “I’m thinking. Or trying.”

“About what?” you persist.

He doesn’t answer for the longest time. It’s just your breath, his and the sound of the river lapping at the shore, with the occasional splash of his feet kicking in it.

“.. Rmeros believes in ancestors,” is what he finally says, grumpily. “If you laugh, I’ll push you in the river.”

“I’ll drag you with me!” You bury your face in his shoulder, and then in your hands on top of it.

“You’re laughing!”

“I’m not,” you squeak, finally breaking for air. Your shoulders are still hitching. “I’m not, I promise! Don’t you shove me in there! Holy smokes. Like - like -”

Your voice is still hitching. He takes pity on you. “In all of them,” he says, pained. “In old ones. In new ones. In his own personal one. I didn’t know those were a thing. Did you?”

“No! How come you know they’re real?”

There’s another long pause, but this time, you think he’s doing it on purpose, 'cause he’s watching you side-long, and there’s something a little sly in his voice when he speaks up next. “'cause he told me,” he says, lowering his voice like it’s a secret. “I asked, and he told me all about them.”

“D'you know, he thinks everyone’s got their own personal ancestor? Not like the shared ones. Ones just for us. All of us! Even me.” There’s pride there, begrudging but still clear. You’ve seen the way Pheres looks at Rmeros, like his signmate’s a promise of something he’ll grow into. It makes sense he’d like the idea of his own personal ghost.

“So, what, why doesn’t he burn stuff for 'em?” Alsike had been sour on Rmeros right from the start, but him refusing to join in the burning had set her feathers all up. All the older kids participate! It’s a part of what makes you all a hive, and not just a cluster of kids all jostling for space.

“He said that’s just superstitious nonsense.” Pheres rattles off the word with ease, like it ain’t longer than any good word should be, and he pays no mind to the way you grimace. “He thinks it’s just a thing that shows how you’re gonna be.”

“It’s all in the blood. He's got it, and I've got it, and our ancestors had it, too, and that's why we're all the same.” And he doesn’t sound shamed about the pride in that, not at all. “Or, ah. That’s what he says!”

“So what about me? Do I have one?"

He’s slouched forward, gradually, unbending like he ain’t even noticed. Relaxed against you like the two of you are friends, and like you’re not just another person he’s been ignoring. (Another person he thinks he needs to fight.)

But now he stiffens. “What about you?”

“What about my ancestor, you danderfluff?” you demand, nudging him. You don’t know why he’s gone all uncomfotrable on you again, but it’s frustrating, after you just spent all this time getting him to loosen up. “You got one! Do I got one?”

“Um.”

He’s so bad at lying. “Well? Did you ask him? You asked him, right?”

“.. yes?” He exhales slowly. He isn’t looking at you: he’s staring at the water, and his feet have gone still. “I asked him about yours. Because if I have one, and he has one, then you ought to have one, too. It.. ah, it wouldn’t be right, otherwise.”

“So what he’d say?” You shouldn’t be pushing, maybe. Every bit of him’s screaming you ought to not ask, but if he won’t come out and say it, you won’t pay it any mind. If it’s your ancestor, then it’s yours to know.

“.. he said blood’s like water,” Pheres says, miserable, “and that means sometimes, it’s just bad.”

7. GUIDANCE | 4.78 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

“He thinks I’m dirty,” you wail, burrowing your face in Alsike’s lusus. “And so does Pheres!”

Simoom’s lusus might be the prettiest, but Alsike’s hoofed hopbeastmom is basically just perfect: she lets you scoop her up with no more protest than a sleepy blink.

“I hate him,” you tell her, burrowing your face in her headfluff. All around you, the tanning pits stinks of acid and burnt flesh, but Alsike takes good care of her mum, brushes her out and washes her every day. She smells like the same oil Alsike uses when she braids hair, familiar enough to make you ache. “But if I cull him, Pheres’ll cull me. I don’t know what to do!”

She bleats at you. You shake her. “I can’t do that!”

"Can’t do what, sugargrub?”

Alsike is stripping off her leather gloves and shrugging off her apron. She’s not the head tanner, but she’s in line for it: everyone knows that when Cendol gets conscripted, she’ll take over the tanning pits and be in charge of everyone that works in 'em.

Right now, though, she’s just another tanner, and that means she can take the time to talk to you and Pheres, when you dare to come near. The pits stink. You’re going to smell like this for whole nights.

“I need to talk to you,” you blurt out, spinning to face her. Alsike’s lusus snuggles closer to you, rumbling away in that weird way that means she’s happy.

It’s a good thing your pops is asleep at the hive, or else he’d get jealous.

“You do, Nzi? You sure? 'cause I thought for certain you were here to talk to Simoom.” Alsike’s smiling, fond as a lusus, and this is why you don’t like her. Pheres is over the moon for the way she dotes on him, but that’s just him being Pheres: he’s perfectly content being someone’s pet, if they give him a pretty enough bow.

“No!” You don’t hiss at her, because Alsike isn’t like Whydah. To be fair, she isn’t like Majlis, either. She won’t switch you, but a smack isn’t much better. “I don’t wanna joke! This is important!”

“Oh, well, if it’s important…” But she’s eyeing you like she’s taking you seriously, at least, even if it does take her forever to put away her things.

Alsike’s a flatscan like you, and the hivestem isn’t built for the likes of either of you. Soon as he got big enough to realise what yellow meant, Simoom offered her a hiveblock down in the basement, where it’s cooler, and easier to get down to. But she'd said no. Her hiveblock’s all the way up on the third floor, halfway up the stem, and she liked it just fine, for all that getting up there’s a matter of climbing up ropes, down the ladders, jogging across the roofs and across the hand-holds. Alsike takes her mum after the first climb, but you’re still sticky with sweat by the time you make it up to her hiveblock.

Alsike’s hiveblock’s like you and Pheres’s, save there’s no hole in the wall to your little closet of a block. She’s got the same hammocks near the window, the same sliver of counter and cupboards, a 'coon in one corner and a door to an ablution in the other. If it weren’t for the fact her roof’s so much lower, and there’s so much junk on the ground, you might’ve thought she’d taken you back to your hive.

But there’s so much junk. You step on a bag of chips, and it crinkles. “You’re gonna get bugs,” you announce unhappily, dragging yourself into the hammock.

“You wanna clean, Nzi?” She’s bringing over two glasses of water, and she sets it carefully in your hands. “'cause in that case, I’ll get you a bag. But I thought you wanted to talk.”

Pheres is Alsike's troll. When he was little, she offered to take charge of 'em, make sure his hair didn’t end up full of nits and he wasn’t hauling disease back to the hive. She even used to bring him food, 'fore you got old enough to hunt for you and him and he got clever enough to filch without getting caught.

He adores her. But you don’t like her, not at all, and the stickiness of your distaste is making your speechfrond feel like stone.

But you gotta talk. Alsike’s piling with Simoom, and Simoom’s in charge of everything. When he hollers, folks listen - and if anyone can knock Rmeros out of your hivestem, it’s him.

So you talk.

“- and he wants to put me in a bag, and drown me in the river!”

At some point, you put down your glass all carefully in the hammock, and then you’d started pacing. It makes it easier to talk, somehow, get out all of this frustration and anger, 'cause you certainly can’t take it out on Alsike. Still, you wish you could! Your chin’s tucked down and your horns are up, and if you thought she wouldn’t smack you silly for it, you’d be scratching them on the wall just to get the itch out of them.

“He’s not going to drown you, pupa,” Alsike says, soothing, and you whirl on your heel to hiss at her.

“Duh! I’d, like, rip him in half if he tried!”

Alsike’s mouth goes pinched like she’s trying not to laugh. Slap or no, you give her the nastiest look you can muster. “And I don’t care if he wants to,” you snap. “He’s awful and I hate him and I wish he’d try! But he keeps telling Dys things, and - and -”

You don’t cry. You fell head-first out of one of the orchard-trees once when Alsike had passed under and startled you, and you’d gashed your forehead right open in the process. You’d bled and bled, and Pheres had screamed like you were going to die, and it’d felt like it. But you didn’t cry!

You aren’t going to cry now, no matter how much your eyes are stinging. “He’s gonna make him hate me,” you say, or you try. It comes out as a wail, and you grab hold of your hair, pulling it hard in front of your face.

You’re not going to cry. If you say it enough times, you won’t.

“Oh, pupa.” Alsike’s being gentle, and if you hate Rmeros, right now, you hate her too. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“No! It’s -” She thinks you’re being a wriggler. She thinks you’re being a dumb, jealous pupa, and maybe you are, but that isn’t what’s important right now, is it? So you take a breath, scrubbing at your face with your headfluff, and if the world’s a little orange when you open your eyes, you’re just gonna ignore it.

“He’s telling Dys things! And they’re all wrong. And he keeps getting different, in - in a really bad way. He’s unhappy.” She isn’t looking anything but sympathetic. Alsike helped him when he was little and small and alone, and you thought she’d help him now, but he’s not any of that anymore, is he?

He’s not even her pet anymore. He's Rmeros’s, and his dumb moirail hasn’t even brought out a bow.

“His face bleeds whenever he uses his sparks,” you say, desperate, and finally, she looks concerned.

“Every time?”

“Every time! And he thinks it’s normal!”

She goes quiet at that. It’s suddenly hard to breathe, because her brow’s gone all furrowed, and she’s biting her lip like she’s thinking. Simoom’s the only one who can tell Rmeros to get out, but he loves Rmeros, and he hates Pheres. If he thought Rmeros would strip him down and sell him for parts, he'd probably give him an entire hivestem suite.

But if Alsike asks - if Alsike says something to him -

“Nzi, dear,” she says, “have you tried speaking to him? They’re signmates. Maybe it is normal for their psionics. I’ve seen stranger things…”

Your face must fall. “They’re moirails. They know best. But don’t worry, sugargrub,” she says, gentle as anything. “I’ll speak to Dys for you.”

8. KNOWLEDGE | 4.98 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

If the sun doesn’t kill you, Rmeros’s stupid lusus will.

Every time she exhales, moisture beads on your throatstem, and her head bobs, making her feelstrands skitter across her skin.

Every time you inhale, you get the stench of rotting meat, heavy enough that you can taste it.

You’ve seen the smaller lusii before play with the mice and birds in the court. They’ll pin them and bite them and break their wings, and when they start to get bored, they’ll let them go free.

And then they’ll eat them.

Well, she’s got you on the ground, her mitts digging into the meat of your rotationropes, and you think she’s past the point of playing.

When the door of the motorcart creaks open, you don’t even bother looking. It’s probably just Rmeros again, back to gloat or whatever the fuck he does. He’d seen you outside the van, with his mum’s teeth on your shoulder like a warning and the rock on the ground, and he’d fucking laughed - and then just went inside, like that’s okay.

You’re part of a hivestem! No one lets their lusii attack each other, because that’s the rules.

No eating the lusii: no eating their fucking kids.

(But Rmeros isn’t a part of the hivestem, is he? He’s always made sure of that.)

But the footsteps are all wrong for Rmeros: he’s big and he walks like it, with galloping steps that send dirt flying, but this is all pitter-patter in comparison. And maybe the roarbeast notices, because she pauses from where she’s nuzzling at your throat, her lip curled enough that you can feel the press of her fangs.

(You’d just wanted to put a rock through his window. His mum wasn’t supposed to be here! His mum is never here.)

Her ears flick once, twice - then they snap back as a dark hand cracks her straight across the head.

“What,” Pheres hisses, “do you think you're doing? Get off of her!”

You can see dusty feet out of the corner of your eye, but you can’t see him proper. You don’t need to: you can hear the impact of him hitting her again, the sharp crack of a hand hitting fur.

When she growls - a deep, rumbling sound that makes her entire body shake, and her claws sink into your skin - he snarls right back. If you tilt your head, you can just barely see him, throwing one twiggy shoulder into hers like it’ll do anything but give her an ache.

“Move, you stupid cat!”

It takes you a moment to realise she actually is. There’s pain shooting up your legs as her tail lashes against them, but more important is the way she sinks into your shoulders - and then the weight evaporates all at once as she bounds over and off of you.

You’re scrambling up and backwards as soon as you can. Your body is screaming like someone’s driving iron into their poor hoofbeasts heels, but you can breathe, and Pheres is right there, fussing.

Rmeros’s mum is sitting only a few feet off, watching both of you with slit eyes and a curled lip, but he isn’t paying her any mind. “Sipa! Sipa sipa sisi - are you okay? Did she hurt you?” he’s saying instead, hands flitting across your face, tilting it up and to the side, checking your neck -

- brushing against the browning skin of your shoulders -

There’s snarling. It only when Pheres jerks back, his eyes bright with alarm, that you realise it’s coming from you.

You’ve bit him before. There’s ragged white lines on his arms where you’ve sunk your teeth in and held, scrabbled and scratched until there was red in your mouth or until a fist hit your horns, or a foot landed in your gut. You see him remembering that in the wideness of his bulbs, in the way that they flick down towards your teeth, but you can’t stop growling, because everything hurts.

Then he hisses at you. “Stop it,” he snaps, sliding in close, knocking one bony shoulder under your arm. He’s emanating that familiar warmth, and it’s painful and soothing all at once. “I know it hurts, Sisi, but you’re not going to bite me, so just calm down.”

There’s needles in your shoulders, sparks of pain climbing down your arms like bugs under your skin. Pheres is moving, and you can’t seem to remember to walk with him, so he’s mostly just dragging you, his mouth a thin slash.

You’re still growling.

But you don’t bite him.

The sky is purple by the time the two of you finally make it back to the hivestem.

“I didn’t think you were gonna come,” you say later. There’s bandages around your shoulders, wrapped triple tight and slathered in all the sterilisation fluid that Pheres could find. You’re lying in the recuperacoon, your chin resting on the edge, and sopor and exhaustion’s making you sleepy: it’s hard to talk, but you make yourself form the words anyway.

Pheres is curled up by your coon, his knees all tucked in and wrapped up in that way that means he’s thinking. When you speak, though, he jerks like you hit him, all hurt and indignation. “Of course I’d come!”

He’s barely spoken to you in nights. You let the silence sit, watching him drowsily, and you can see when that thought hits him: his face reddens and his shoulders go up.

Your tastefrond’s heavy with the words that could turn that embarrassment into his familiar, spitting rage. It’d be so easy! And you’ve always liked Pheres best when he’s forgotten to be all stiff and proper, and he’s just being him.

(You always thought he liked himself best when he was like that, too, until Rmeros came.)

But right now, the thought of him being upset just seems dumb and boring, like some wriggler’s game you’ve outgrown. It hasn't been fun for perigees.

“You’re usually, like, sleepin’ by now,” you say, when the silence gets too much. “Like, you’re always sleeping.”

“Rmeros says -” He pauses, unhappy. If he had normal soundflaps, instead of the round little nubs you can barely even see, they’d be flat. “I decided sleep is a waste of time,” he settles on instead, and that’s so stupid.

Pheres is so stupid. The rush of warmth that thought brings is weird, too.

You laugh, and for a moment, he looks indignant, then it smoothes out. “Don’t be a brat,” he sniffs. “Think about all the stuff you could do if you weren’t sleeping all the time.” He’s scrubbing at his arm, and then he abruptly adds: “.. Rmeros needs to control his mother.”

He unfurls, kicking his legs out in front of them, and then he stands up, gingerly as if the name alone’s brought his stupid moirail into the room. He dusts off the front of his shirt like there’s dirt there, but there isn’t: there isn’t anything, except the oil streaks left from his braids. He’d already tied them in a day-knot.

So much for not sleeping. Pfff.

“Yeah, well, your moirail sucks.” It’s hard to feel het up when you’re in the sopor: it feels like the attack was perigees ago, not just, like, two hours. “If she’d eaten me –”

“She wouldn’t have eaten you!”

You blink at him, and the angry red of his blush deepens to something bricky. He folds his arms, like he’s trying to reign back in the outburst. “I wouldn’t have let her,” he says thinly.

“But if she had -”

“- if she had eaten you, then I - I would have told Alsike,” he says, lifting his chin. “And she would’ve taken care of it.” You both know what that means, for all that no one’s ever broke the rules while you’ve lived here. Simoom's the overseer, and Alsike's his moirail, and that means certain duties fall to her.

And Rmeros isn't a part of the hivestem. He can't be exiled. Which only leaves..

"Liar," you say drowsily. All you want to do is duck down low in the sopor and go to sleep. The warmth's getting to you.

Pheres’s voice has gone from thin to out-and-out reedy. “I don’t care about him as much I care about you, because - because I know you.”

You’re not feeling so drowsy now.

He looks at you sidelong through his eyelashes, like he does whenever he’s nervous. For a moment, there’s eye contact - then he breaks it, his gaze skittering up to your hair.

“I know you,” he repeats, and your breath catches.

“I know you better than anyone else, and you know me, and.. that means something, doesn’t it?”

It feels like there’s flutterbugs in your digestionsack. You tilt your head to the side, letting your cheek squish flat against the recuperacoon’s edge, but it doesn’t take the feeling away: it just intensifies, like all the bugs are dancing a jig. And maybe he’s feeling that way, too, because he’s still talking, the words getting faster and faster, until he’s bubbling away like that river he likes so much.

(You do know him.)

"And even if we haven’t talked all perigee - even if I never, ever saw you again, or if I leave, or even if you go off and get ruddy with some highblood and leave –”

You stick out your tongue, gagging, and he grimaces right back at you, laughing a little despite himself. “Even then,” he says doggedly, “I’ll still know you, and you know me, better than anyone else ever, and that’s more important than moirails, or quadrants, or - or -” He flounders, and his little bubbling ends weak. “He’s got to control his mother. It’s not right.”

“C'mere,” you say.

He shuffles in closer to the recuperacoon, and you kick in the sopor until you’re straight again on the edge. Leaning forward, you press your forehead against his, and he doesn’t move, even though this’s usually the point you’d bite him. It's hitting you he's kind of sad-looking, all gaunt cheeks and sad eyes.

How come you’ve never noticed that before?

“You’re mine,” you say, testing it out, and he doesn’t object: he just breathes out. “And I’m yours. And we’re both okay. So, like, chillax. Okay?”

Pheres doesn’t say anything: he just he huffs, pulling back. And then: “Stop hogging the ‘coon,” he says, wrinkling his nose, and scrambles in.

9. KISS | 5.08 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

Pheres spends the next week back in the hivestem, and it's just like old times. Except nicer, in a way, 'cause the two of you aren't always scrapping. Used to be you'd never even thought that was a problem. If anyone'd ever say the sight of Pheres wouldn't make you want to bite him, you'd have laughed 'til you were sick.

But you haven't wanted to smack him in ages, and before you went to sleep last night, you'd reached over and pressed your lips to his cheek.

He'd blinked at you, already half-asleep, almost all the glow gone from his eyes. He always looks moon-eyed when you catch 'em like this: all big gray blotches around little black dots, 'cause his eyes are so used to the light, they never go properly big. "'sat for?" he'd said, sleepy.

But pleased.

"Iunno. just 'cause," you'd said back, nuzzling your head into the curve of his neck. The two of you've always shared a 'coon. When he curls his arm around you sleepily, it feels like the past few months never happened at all.

You fall asleep like that.

When you wake up, Pheres is gone.

He's not in the respiteblock, he's not in the kitchen, and by the time you notice the floor's all sleek and shiny, yours are the only green tracks on it. He must've got up early to mop it, but it's weird. Usually, he waits until you're up.

The only time he didn't was when he'd left to stay with Rmeros, and he didn't come back.

You're in a frothing fury by the time you make it down the ropes and to the ground-floor of the hivestem. It's still early enough in the evening that the sky's bright and no one's really out yet: there's the sound of voices coming over from the fields, where they like to start early, 'fore the ground gets too hard from the chill, but that's all.

You know he isn't down there, so you don't even bother to stop. You do stop by the tanning pits, just in case he's waiting for Alsike. You could forgive that! But he isn't. He's not even in the courtyard, though you even go as far as to check under the stairs. He used to slip under there, back before his horns grew in and he started getting stuck.

He isn't there either, stuck or otherwise.

Majlis waves down at you as you slip out the gates, just to be a prat, but you don't have time to fight with her right now. Or anyone else! If Pheres is off with Rmeros again, then that's - you'll have to -

("- that's more important than moirails, or quadrants -")

- he's not, you decide, so it doesn't matter.

You check anyway.

The van's empty when you get near it, but you don't get too close: your ears are up and pricked for any sound, and you're tense as a wire. The bruises from his rotten lusus haven't faded yet. They're still aching as you try your best to see if the vans lights are on. It's hard to tell through the tinted solar windows, but there's no light shining out of the look-out.

And Rmeros's lusus is nowhere to be seen.

"Pheres," you call out, but there's no answer.

You move on.

***

That first night after he'd met Rmeros, Pheres had been so pleased. He'd barely been able to sleep, even after you'd dragged him into the 'coon.

"He's so dignified," he'd said, delighted and fit to burst from pride. Rmeros spoke Standard like a troll from the vids, smooth and rolling and deep, like he was talking straight from his digestion sack. "D'you think I'll sound like that? When I'm his age?"

It'd taken dunking him head-first to make him finally calm down.

With all the fuss Pheres paid him, you'd recognise Rmeros's voice in a crowd. But you don't have to: the only sound is the rushing of the water nearby, and the awful, gargled-rocks sound of Standard.

And the buzz of psionics.

It's just a bother at first, but by the time you get close enough to see the figures by the shoreline, it hurts. It's like being right next to a rumblecart when it starts, or like when the bees got loose from Khirba's apiaries: you can feel the vibration of power going all the way from your horns to the rest of you, buzzing through your nails, setting your teeth to edge.

When you crest the hill and can finally see down the shoreline, Pheres is there. And so is Rmeros.

Every time you see Rmeros, you're reminded how big he is. It's never been quite as clear as right now. The hand holding up Pheres's chin is the size of his head. The thumb keeping him in place's as big as his nose. Rmeros himself's like a bird in the sky, and Pheres's his shadow: so much smaller than anything ever ought to be.

For the first time, maybe, you don't think you can fight him. You're big, sure, but there's big and then there's massive, and Rmeros is huge. He wouldn't have to grab you to hurt you. He could just swing. You can't fight him, but there's no way you can leave the two of them, because you've never seen Pheres's eyes this bright. It hurts to look at him: it makes your horns buzz and your eyes water, like you're staring at a lightbulb. Like you're staring at the sun.

That's not right. Most of the kids in the 'stem are sparkplugs, but there's only one time they ever get like this, where the air's so thick with psi, you could reach out and bite it. And that's when they're scrapping. Not the little kid shows, either, but the shit like the time Simoom'd caught his kismesis making time with Cendol.

But all they're doing is sitting there.

"Pheres," you call, and he doesn't look up. If he and Rmeros were normal trolls, maybe one of 'em'd have flicked an flap, or tilted it. You don't even get so much as a wiggle from their flat, round noisechutes. It's like they can't hear you at all.

Rmeros's eyes are bright, too, and as you creep closer, the buzzing only gets worse.

You can feel it in your claws. You can feel it in your fangs, practically taste the vibrations on your tongue. It's like holding tar in your seedflap, heavy and thick and sticky. Like something that'll suffocate you if you stay near for too long.

Maybe this is how they practice.

(Maybe this is why Pheres keeps bleeding, because you know plenty of psionics, and none of 'em have ever shed so much as a drop of blood.)

So much of your pan's saying you ought to go, go, go. Just leave! If you interrupt, Pheres'll be furious. (If you interrupt, Rmeros will cull you this time, and save his mum the trouble.) Alsike said that moirail's know best.

... but Pheres said you know him, better than a moirail, better than any quadrant, and the thought sticks more than any tar.

You know him, and you know this can't be good.

Only a meter away, the roar of the water's near deafening. You approach it slowly, carefully, weighing out each step as you creep around them and towards the shore. You had the first big rain of the season a few nights ago, water enough that the river poured up the bank. The water's gone down. The debris it left behind hasn't.

There's rocks the size of your fist, rounded and tumbled smooth by their journey through the water. You pick one that fits neatly into the palm of your hand. When you curl your fingers, they fit neatly over the top.

Then you whirl around and you throw it.

You're scamping away even before the rock leaves your hand, chin tucked, horns down defensively. Your hair is falling in your face. You can't see between the black waves and the white glare of their psionics, but you don't need to: you hear the thunk of impact, a crack that makes your stomach heave with sympathy. And then you hear Rmeros snarl.

You grab up another rock. When you look up, the light's have dimmed. It isn't pleasant, not precisely, but it's not painful to look towards them. And Rmeros's standing up. There's a crack in his top horn, sluggishly leaking red down his forehead. He's sluggish, like he isn't quite there.

It doesn't stop him from noticing you. The fact your rumblereeds are rattling so hard you're shaking makes you hard to ignore.

"Nzinga's," he says, slow and displeased, like it's the worst kinda marvel. "Why is it always a fucking Nzinga?"

Perigees and perigees ago, Pheres said you ought to hit Simoom so he couldn't use his psionics. And so you threw so that Rmeros can't, either.

You're not expecting that he doesn't even try.

He's bigger than you, and he's got a longer reach. Two steps closes the distance between you, before you even have a chance to respond. Then he hits you. Rmeros's hand's nearly as big as your head. It catches you right across the face, nails tearing. If you'd stayed stiff, it would've taken your head clean off.

You go limp instead, and it sends you flying.

The ground's hard when you hit it. It's hard and it hurts, but you're still alive, so you scramble to your feet, pumpbiscuit racing. (The world feels kind of lopsided. He hits like a goddamn tree.) Rmeros's gaining again, quick as anything, looking properly peeved for the first time you've known him.

You throw the second rock.

When you were a baby, Bennui had brought you a knife from the hivestem's stores. It'd been dull and old and rusty, and hunting had been horrible. He'd go out, find you something, and burn it. Then he'd leave it for you to finish off.

Killing something with a blunt blade is torture.

By the time you were old enough to be allowed into the stores yourself, you'd learned about the power of a stone. Every bodies nothing but skin and giblets and the pieces holding them together. Throw a rock just right, hit those spots, and things just fall apart.

It works well on rabbits and deer, and it turns out it's true for trolls, too.

Rmeros doesn't crumple so much as he staggers. One knee hits the ground with a thunk. Then the next. Then his palms, but you're not paying attention to that. There's more rocks near you.

Once, you'd figured you'd rip him apart. But right now, you just want him down. And once he is, you'll -- you'll --

-- you'll figure it out, because behind him, Pheres is wailing.

You sprint over, veering wide around Rmeros. (He's making sounds, too, gross keening pity noises. The second rock was much pointier than the first.)

When you see Pheres, your pumpbiscuit nearly stops. He's all curled up just like his signmate, knees tucked in, hands cradling his face. He's wailing high and throaty like he's the one hurt.

"Pheres," you say. Your knees hit the ground. You turn him over, prying his fingers away from his face, but there's no blood from his forehead: just some steadily dripping from his snout, but that's no reason for him to be wailing. His eyes are still bright. Too bright, and it hurts to look at them. So you don't. You reach down instead, mopping away the blood on his face and scrubbing it off on your breeches. "Pher, Pher, why - shh. Shoosh!"

He doesn't shoosh. And you don't know what else to do, so you pap him.

"You're fine. Shoooosh. You're fine. I promise!" You keep sneaking glances over your shoulder, but Rmeros isn't moving. He's gone still, though he's still making those noises. (This is the point you'd cull a rabbit, but you left your knife at home, and your pan's still scrambling for a different solution.) Pheres, on the other hand, is finally quieting.

His eyes are dimming, so you keep petting his face. The skin of your fronds is catching on his skin, and you're leaving trails of mud, but you don't care. Maybe he doesn't either, because his breath hitches, and then he stops wailing, the sound dying off with a sickly little sob.

"Pher --?"

"He was in my brain," he says, hitching over the words, and you make a decision.

***

You make Pheres help. You don't regret that.

Rmeros's not dead, when you push him into the water.

You don't regret that, either.

What you do regret is that Pheres keeps crying.

And what you do regret is that neither of you thinks to check the van, and see where Rmeros's mother is, before it's too late.

10. SCRATCH | 5.3 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

She doesn't kill you, but you don't realise it for weeks.

The first few nights, it's just pain, pain, pain, and Pheres's worried eyes above you. He cries on you once, sad and squelchy and making all sorts of horrible noises, like his airsacs are straight up gonna fall out and burst, but you can't keep your eyes open to tell him to calm down. You can't even get words out of your soundchute: your wordmuscle is thick and heavy in your seedflap, and it feels like there's wool on your face, keeping all your sounds in.

But you try anyway. The hours blur together. The van's hot, too hot, and you can't seem to sleep, but all you do is sleep: you take a breath and blink, and the sun's shining down from the look-out in murky rays, where it was all gloom a moment afore.

One day, you blink, and when you open your eyes, you're feeling better.

Pheres is asleep right up against you, his face buried in the crook of your neck, arms wrapped tight around you like you're his lusus. Compared to the heat you've been feeling, had crawling under your skin like the worst kinda worm, he's been cold - but now, he's sweat-hot, fever-hot, and the sticky damp of his skin's too much to deal with. "Move," you whine, and you try to shove him. You're not in the 'coon, for some reason.

Your arm is all numb, like you slept wrong, so you use the other.

The instant your palm touches 'em, he's on his feet and skittering away, even before his eyes are all the way open. He's too tired to even spark at you: he just curls his lip, shoulders up and eyes slit, afore he realises it's you.

And then his eyes pop open all at once.

He does cry on you, this time, and it's gross, but you let him.

Pheres wants to curl up right against you, bony points digging into all of your fleshy ones, but you whine and whine 'til he settles on the ground below the platform instead. He rests his chin on the edge of the soft bit, and peering up at you with that big ol' scentnozzle, he looks like a barkbeast from the vids, all sad-eyed and hopeful.

"How are you feeling?"

"Good," you say, 'cause what else can you say, when he's looking at you like that? You hurt all over, like you've been in a fight. (And you were: with the lusus, then with the fever. You've seen the ways kid thrashed back at the hivestem, like sommat was beating 'em black and blue.)

He brightens. "Oh, good," he says, fervent, like someone's taken a weight off of his back. His eyes are red, red, red, rimmed with his blood along the bottoms and with the little blotches of burst veins in 'em. If he's been sleeping much, then you're mad as a tower of bees. "I'm so glad! I'm so, so, so glad - I tried all the medicine in his cabinets, but I couldn't find none - any, I couldn't find any that'd work right, all the labels were saying things that weren't right at all, so I had to go get a mediculler, and d'you know, d'you know these hivestems are too small for a mediculler?"

"Too small! They just -" He's straightened up, and his hands are flitting in the nervous little gestures he does. But now he clasps them together, wringing them in a way that's gotta hurt. "They don't take care of people if they get hurt," he says unhappily. "If they think they're unsalvagable. So I had to drive all day to get to one that did."

"But she fixed me," you say, reaching out. Your arm's still asleep! No matter how much you jerk it, it doesn't want to move, or do nothin' but tingle, so you harrumph, shift your whole body over so you can swat his hands apart. "So, like, it's cool."

He's not wringing his hands. He ought to look calmer. But he's going pale, pale as the tile under him at your words. "She.. mostly fixed you," he says, hesitant, and something in your gut drops. "She got the fever down! And she pulled the infection out. She had psionics, you know, the healing sort, so she could just -" He spins his hand in a quick, jerking motion, that you have no idea what it could even mean. "She said there ain't nothing else - there wasn't anything else she could do, past that. I'm sorry."

"What're you sorry for?" The room's spinning all around you, but you're still struggling to sit up, because something's wrong. Pheres's gone from looking nearly calm to on the verge of tears again, his lips pinched tight like that might stop him from bawling. "What's - oh, goddamnit. Why's it still asleep?"

You can shrug your shoulder. That's not asleep, and awkwardly, trying your best to keep your arm out of the way, you sit up. "You let me lie on it all day, or what?" you grump at him. "I can't feel a damn thing in this stupid hunk of meat --"

"She tried to fix it. She did her best," he says, unhappily, and tells you the truth.

You don't break anything.

Later, you'll be very proud of that.

***

"It's a good thing we left, huh? 'cause I wouldn't have been able to climb shit. I might've fallen and breaken my damn neck."

"Language," Pheres murmurs.

It's been a whole perigee since your fever died down, and you learned about your arm. Pheres hasn't let you leave the cart since then.

He hasn't let you drive, either, so all you do is sit righ tyour nose pressed up againsnt the viewing panes, watching the desert pass you by. You've been driving for days and days now Not on the main road, where people are always looking askance at your big ol' rattle-truck, but on the smaller ones that wind through the plains and the trees and skirt right along the shadow of Kuikiro's treeline. Pheres figures it's safer, farther away from anyone else.

The two of you don't talk about your hivestem, or Rmeros, or anything much at all. Pheres is too flip: he snaps at you, then jokes, and all of his jokes fall flat. He gets uncomfortable when you get too energetic, and he cries when you're tired, like you're only half a second from dying on him again.

It's a miserable ride, and worse is the fact he's keeping you penned in like a brooding cluckbeast.

He drops the basket on the table. There's eggs, the crisp, transluscent white that probably means they came from someone's lusus. The end of a bread loaf. Fruit, and...

There's blood on Pheres's lip. "It's nothing," he says when he sees you looking. "Don't worry. I got some food, didn't I?"

"I told you to get meat," you huff, looking away. If you ask how he got banged up, he'll just play it off. If he'd let you out of the cart, you wouldn't let anyone rough him up, 'cause if you're not allowed to, why the hell's anyone else?

And you're his moirail. You told him you were his moirail, all the way back, when his face was ruddy and before Rmeros's mum came out, and you hadn't lied. Keeping him from getting roughed up is supposed to be your job.

But he won't let you do it. He won't let you out, and you've run your voice raspy with the asking.

"Meat's expensive, Sipa." The two of you've shoved as many as the books as could fit down in the storage hutch, but there's still trays of 'em on the counters, on the table. He has to push them to the side to start unpacking the food. "We don't need it. I got nuts, see?"

"You don't need it, because you're not broken." You can't see his face, but his ears go red, and he droops a little againsnt the table.

You're not being kind, but you know by now he won't say nothing. And you're not being fair, but by now, you just don't care. (Fair isn't a thing, not when you're the one who got ruint.) "But whatevs," you say, bouncing to your feet. Bennui stirs on top of the recuperacoon, where he's been sleeping. Because there's no time for sulking, not when an opportunity just struck you.

"Me and Pops can hunt us up something, and it won't cost nothing at all!"

"You can't do that." Pheres looks back at you, frowning.

"Why? We're out in the woods! I'm not gonna trot off into the jungle, you big baby," you say, grabbing hold of one of the long-sleeved shirts. You'd long cut off the legs on your pants, on account of the fact it's so hot, but sleeves'll give you some protection, if something goes after your arms. "Don't worry! I'll get something good, too."

"You like hopbeast, yeah? Can't, like, make it fancy like Alsike did, but I bet I can find one out there --"

When you turn, Pheres is standing in the doorway, his face pale. "You can't go outside, Sipa," he says again, sharp and slow like you're simple. "It's not safe."

You stare at him. His face's going more ruddy, and he looks down and away. "Why wouldn't it be safe?" you ask, squinting at him. He's skirted around the question, when you threw it at him in the past. Danced and played with it, like not sayin' it changes anything at all.

He opens his mouth.

("Because it's dangerous," he said last time, like you didn't get mauled in this damn cart.)

"Because you're injured," he says now, waspish, spitting it out all at once. "You're injured and people'll take advantage of that. Look, if you want meat so badly, why don't you have Bennui get it? He's already getting up!"

Your pops is. You hear the rustle of feathers behind you, the slinking-shuffling move that means he's getting up, and then the flap of wings. Pheres's got one of the windows cracked, just wide enough for your pops to slip out, but not big enough for anything to get in. It creaks now. If you looked, you'd probably see your lusus slinking his feathery butt out.

You don't look.

"I'm perfectly fine," you snap, scowling at Pheres. Your arm aches, but no, it doesn't: it's just your pan, saying it ought to ache, 'cause you can't really feel nothing in it.

"You are not." He lifts his chin. "Don't be silly. Here, I got you something, too." He digs around in the basket. You hadn't taken a good look inside. There's just food, and what d'you care about food?

But he shifts the eggs and the loaf, the fruit, and he pulls out a larva, small and fat and glistening with something wet. It blinks its many eyes at you and yawns, showing off a tooth-lined seedflap. "It's old tech," he says doubtfully, "but she said you might be able to program it to do something interesting --"

He's holding it out to you, and you slap it out of his hands.

Pheres jerks back, eyes wide, his horns hitting the cabinet with a thump hard enough to shake the books. He drops the grub. There's a snap as it hits the ground, a high-pitched squeal, and then it races off -- somewhere.

You're not looking at it. You're watching Pheres, who's got his horns down like he wants to fight, but who's damn near cowering. It's stupid. He's stupid, and awful, and --

"Well!" He looks down at the piles of things where it might've hidden, and his voice's brittle. "There just went twenty caegars."

"I don't want your stupid grub," you snap. "What's that supposed to mean? People'll take advantage?"

He doesn't say anything. There's something hot and unpleasant churning in your gut. He's right, something in the back of your pan keens, he's right and you're cullbait and if you leave, someone'll knock your head clean off just for the audacity of existing --

-- but the rest of your pan's just frothing, furious at the indignity of this, because he might be right, but he's wrong, too. "I can defend myself! And I'd defend you too, bulgemunch, if you'd let me! I never got knocked around afore, and I won't get knocked around now, and - and - if someone tries to take a go, then I'll cull 'em! Like I culled him!"

Pheres's not saying anything at all.

"Say something," you demand, but he's just watching you, horns down, mouth set. The skin under his eyes is bunching, the tension in his shoulders is growing. If it was anyone else, you'd say he was going to take a swing at you. But this is Pheres.

He doesn't hit with his hands anymore.

"Because you did such a fine job defending yourself," he says thinly.

"What would you do if someone went after you? Throw a rock at them, Sipara? Bite them?" The words are spilling out like rocks, like he can't keep them in, and each stings. The way he's saying them stings. "We're not in the desert anymore! And - and what we did wasn't culling. You can't cull your -"

"- your quadrants," he spits out, his eyes bright. "It's called murder. And that's what people'll do to you, if you go outside! You're not big! You're not tough, you're not - not anything, except worthless cullbait."

You can't breathe.

You take a step forward, and he flinches, starts to step back before he realises the cabinet's right behind him. But then he recovers: squares his shoulders, sticks out his chin. "Take it back," you demand, your voice quavering, and just as quick, he says: "No."

"I'm not worthless!"

"Saying that doesn't make it true. We're rust, and we're pupas, and we're worthless," he says, stretching out the word. "The only thing we're good for is feeding to people's lusus. And I can run, if someone tries to nab me. What about you?"

"What're you going to do, if you can't even lift your arm?"

"You're wrong." He thinks he knows you, but every words proving that he's wrong, wrong, wrong. He doesn't know you at all, not a thing, because you're not -- you killed someone for him. For both of you. You didn't do that for nothing.

But just because he doesn't know you doesn't mean you don't know him. Your pumpbiscuit's racing. Your mouth's dry. Each exhale feels like it hurts, like you're pushing all the air out of your lungs and it ain't never going to come back, but your words come out clear. "You're being stupid," you snap, because he might know how to hurt you with his words, but you know how to make him bleed. "That's all you are: do you even think anything in there? Or is it all fluff? 'cause I can't tell if it's you or Rmeros talkin' right now."

The name drops like a stone in the water. Pheres flinches like you just hit him, his eyes wide, and for a second you think he's going to cry about it. What he does instead is hiss at you, his face twisted, sparks cracking off of his horns. "Everything I do doesn't go back to him! I'm not - I'm -"

"Dunno why I culled him," you say, "if you ain't even gonna try to be your own person."

He tackles you.

You hit the ground with an oomph, but he's skinny, and only getting skinnier since the two of you bolted. "I have thoughts," he reeds, "thoughts and opinions and they're mine!"

"You don't know that!"

He goes for your face. You grab his wrists, one in each hand, and he hisses at you, trying to wrench them free. His eyes brighten. There's a spray of sparks, but they're dim, and he's cringing, shaking his head like he's trying to dislodge them before they're even half-formed. "I do!"

"You don't! You don't even know how to think! Alsike says, Rmeros says - you didn't even know how to think before he came, and now you're just some shitty copy --"

There's a blinding pain in your eye. You yowl, jerking away, but you don't get free. He's got those skinny knob knees dugging into your side, locked in as tight as a door, and no matter how much you kick, he hangs on.

He doesn't pop you again. "You were going to die. If I hadn't gotten someone, you would've died. You were so close," he rasps. "I had to stay up all day to make sure you stayed cold! And - did you know, the mediculler wanted to cull you. She said it wasn't worth the money to save you."

"Shut up --"

He leans in. "She said it'd be a mercy," he says, soft, his knees digging in, and for all that he's smaller, you can't knock him off. "- and if I gave the slightest fig, I'd let her."

"I told her I'd fry her if she tried! She had a knife and she was yellow and I told her that anyway, but - but if you think I'm so awful - if everything I say is just terrible - then I should've let her!"

You slap him, hard. When your claws drag at his skin, you hook them in. You rip.

Pheres screams.

It's the worst sound you've ever heard, and there's warmth on your fingers, and an elbow to your face - your gut - everywhere he can hit, tiny hands flailing. (But you don't stop. You grit your teeth and you curl your fingers in tighter, because he hurt you and that's not fair, it's not fair at all--)

You can't see anything at all, he's sparking so hard, and you feel that more than see it, each pinprick of pain as they hit your skin. He's kicking back and you're kicking back, and - and -

- suddenly he's off of you, and your back is hitting the wall, hard.

The room is spinning. There's lights in your eyes, and you hear more than see Pheres bolt for the door.

When you look down, there's blood on your hands.

***

A few hours later, your eye is a mottled, ugly brown, and it's swollen tight as a door. You can’t see shit. You don’t want to, either, not when it’s still throbbing like.. well, like someone popped you in the face.

When Bennui got back in, hauling a pair of burnt-black mice, he'd taken one look at you and puffed up, furious. You’d almost felt better, ‘til he’d dived down at you and taken a whack.

There's blood in your mouth from where he caught you with his wings, but there's no more painpills in the counter. When you’d went for the fridge, Bennui'd had a go at you again, pecking and smacking until you’d retreated back to the front. 'Tough it out,' he'd said, with his birdy little eyes and angry mantling: '- you deserve a little discomfort!'

When the door creaks open, you're feeling rotten. Your face hurts. Bennui’s hiding on top of the fridge, guarding his mice like they’re the world’s greatest prize and giving you the cold shoulder. (Least he’s stopped lecturing you. But being ignored, as it turns out, isn’t much better.) And you don’t want to see Pheres. You don’t want to see anyone else in the whole, entire world.

But you can’t exactly lock him out of his own hive, no matter how rotten you feel.

‘specially because when he comes into the back, he doesn't look like he's feeling much better.

He's fixed up his face as best as he could, but there's no fixing the bloody furrows you left. You can see the path of your claws, where some hit his snout and stopped, where the rest curved under and up towards the rest of him. The skin's peeled back where it's the deepest, but the entire thing is angry and red and weeping.

He looks like he's been, too.

For a moment, both of you just stare.

“.. I wasn’t expecting you to still be here,” he says, brittle.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," you blurt out, stepping forward.

Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say, because his face goes tight. But he doesn’t leave, and you take that as encouragement. His eye on that side's half squinched shut, like it hurts to keep it open, but you didn't think you knicked it. Did you? You're leaning forward to see, pusher in your mouth -

- and he's skittering back, hissing loud enough that it makes you flinch.

"I'm sorry!"

"You don't get to hit me," he says all at once, stumbling over the words. "I hit you, but I didn't hurt you. And - and it's not right for you to hit me, when all I've been trying to do is help you. I didn't have to! I didn't, I didn't, I'm already a horrible moirail and no one would've said anythingif I hadn't, but I did, because you deserve to be helped, and - and -"

"I don't deserve to be hit!"

"I'm sorry," you squeak. His back is to the door. You take a step back, putting more distance between the two of you. Your arm feels like a dead-weight, dragging you down. There's red rolling down Pheres's face, either blood or tears or both, and your vision's going cloudy with orange.

"I'm an ass. I'm awful, I'm sorry, I'm really, really, really sorry, and -- Bennui bit me over it." Laughing from nerves is Pheres's thing, but maybe it's catchin', because you're laughing and hiccuping all at once. "He bit me 'cause I hit you and I know that means I fucked up! I'm really, really sorry, dude. You didn't deserve it. I'm just awful."

He's supposed to say you aren't. The two of you've seen moirails in the hivestem before. You both know how the script goes.

He squares his shoulders instead, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. ".. you are," he says, petulant. His face is all runny still, the sealed scratches re-opened by all his hissing, but he’s not cringing quite as much anymore. That’s something, right?

“You are awful. But –“ He takes a breath. “I guess we both are. We’ll just have to – have to –“

“Work on it,” you say, hopeful. (Working means he won’t go. Working on it means he won’t leave.)

“No more hitting,” he says, and you’re nodding, before the words are even all the way out of his mouth.

11. COIN | 5.8 SWEEPS / 12 YEARS OLD

"Betcha five dollars I can beat you up!"

You're up on top of the bannister of the staircase. The moons are high in the sky, and this is the only place in Temasek you can probably see 'em: everywhere else, it's all skyscrapers and hivestems and the terraces between 'em, but you're in the central court. Far enough from the docks that there's no finny faces, but near enough that everything's nice and wide and spaced out. Lowbloods don't mind the clusters, but you're learning highbloods act like they've got a stitch in their britches if they so much as have to see another fellow walking nearby.

But it works out! There's no building for twenty, thirty feet in any which way, just stone tiles and the raised patio of the courtyard proper, and there's plenty of folks milling around in every direction. Folks who keep lookin' at you.

A mossblood makes eye contact. You beam, showing off all of your teeth. "Hey, lady," you sing, "wanna take a bet?"

She looks at your bandaged arm, at your scruffed up clothes. At your pops, sitting on the bannister next to you like he ain't got a care in the world. She's not much older than you! A sweep, maybe, which's just about perfect. That means five caegars is enough for her to consider it, and not enough to be salty if she loses.

(You lost a tooth, last bloke who tried to get pissy with you after he lost. A clout to his horns dealt with that.)

Her friend laughs, nudges her. "Do it," she urges. "Or are you scared about some one-armed pupa, lah?"

That's all greenie needs.

Fighting's easy, even one-armed. You're a big kid! A tumble sends her flailing to the ground, and then you grab her by the wrists, twist 'em up above her head. She tries to bite you. You headbutt her right in the nose, then you do it again 'til she yowls empress.

Her friend's laughing still as she gets up. Greenie's face is all green and nasty, like she wants to hit you proper. But she flips you a coin all the same.

A dark hand snatches it out of the air before you can.

Pheres's balancing on the slanted arm of the staircase, stepping down as carelessly as a meowbeast. (He won't fall. He never, ever falls. His psionics are good for that, at least!) "Five dollars?" he asks, clicking his tongue.

The mossblood's out of hearing, but that doesn't stop him from checking, glancing after her with a quick, furtive smile. "What a cheapskate," he says, once she’s certain she’s gone. “She’s bigger. She ought’ve bet ten.”

"Well, why don't you tell her that?'

Pheres doesn't bother with rude words. He just makes a gesture with his fronds that shows you what he thinks of that idea. And when you laugh, he rocks back on his heels, flashing his teeth like he did something clever.

"Maybe five dollars isn’t much to you, mister fancy pants," you announce: "- but some o' us are poor as fuck. Five dollars is like, a fortune.” You bounce forward. He shimmies back. One step for every step. “Five dollars is like, like --"

Pheres beams at you, clasping his hands behind him. "Two plates of tau huay?" he offers, fronds wrapped tight. He can't think you've forgotten he's got your caegar.

(Both of your caegar, technically: everything the two of you bring in is split. His book money, your fight money. Ain't no point in keeping it separate when everything you've got is shared.)

"Two plates of tau huay and an entire mug of tea. That I earned, so give it!” You sidle around him, but he turns with you, laughing. Pheres's still tinier than you, all bird bones and pointy limbs, but age is doing weird things to the angles of his face. Before, he was pointy and moon-eyed, with cheeks you could put your palms in, and a nose that a lusus wouldn't love. But now he's growing into both of 'em, and there's flesh to the curves of his face, and he's almost pretty. Especially when he's pleased.

Not that you'll ever tell 'em that. He'll get a big head, and between that and his horns, his neck'd snap right in half.

“You're thinking something dreadful again, aren't you? No, don't argue, I can tell. It's all, you know --" He presses his palms to the sides of his face, angling his fingers down in a crude imitation of your soundflaps. "Well, think about this. I could stand to eat an entire two plates,” he says, thoughtful. "Everyone says I'm too skinny. In fact, I really think I need to! D'you think they'll trade the tea for coffee, if I ask nicely?"

“You can’t even eat half a plate, dude, don’t play. If you tried to eat two, you’d – you’d explode!" You fling out your hand to demonstrate, sidling another step in closer. His eyes are so busy tracking your fronds, he doesn't even notice. "It’d be gross. There’d be guts, and organs, and, like, folks crying every which way, on account of the fact they’re all smothered in nasty giblets --”

“That’s not scientifically plausible,” he mocks. “That doesn’t even happen in films!”

“Sure it does! I’ve seen zeds blow up all the time in your silly daywalker kissing flicks --"

"I'll give you the caegar if you'll shut up," he says, and he flips the coin right over your head.

You whirl around, lunging after it with your good hand.

When you grab it, it's heads.

#brightest shade of sun #I remain inordinately fond of these two #sipara nzinga #pheres dysseu #drabbles

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