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flowerandblood · 1 year ago

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The Taste of Shame (2)

[ dom!modern • Aemond x friend sister • female ]

[ warnings: doubts related to sex work, panic attack, remorse and depression, fluff, sexual tension ]

[ description: Aemond works as a professional dom, fulfilling the various fantasies of his female clients - however, he guards his privacy and does not enter into any relationships with them, recognizing that he does not want or need it. It turns out that what he wants and what he doesn’t no longer matter when he meets his friend’s younger sister for the first time. Slow burn, sexual tension, doubts related to sex work. ]

Series & Characters Moodboard Aemond NSFW Alphabet

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Next chapters: Masterlist

_____

Walking to the lecture they talked about everything and nothing; for the most part, she was the one speaking, telling stories or asking questions, guiding her bike beside her by the handlebars, while he just added his thought or simply remained silent, listening to her.

They arrived at the Community Centre true to her word very quickly and indeed he immediately saw posters announcing that there would be free lectures by philosophers in the fields of contemporary ethics.

Robert's sister padlocked her bike in the designated area and they both went inside, following the signs. They entered a large, neo-classical hall with beautiful pillars and rich ornamentation on the ceiling, reminding him of a theatre or opera house.

They sat side by side on seats in one of the first rows − she explained to him that the presenter would be asking questions and, among others, her professor would be answering.

Indeed, the discussion was remarkably interesting and he caught himself drawn in; the men were talking among themselves about capital punishment, attitudes to the treatment of other humans and animals, warfare and human-wide conflicts.

However, he felt a cold sweat on his back and a tightness in his throat, his heart starting to pound like mad when the presenter asked the next question.

"As we know, a lot of young people start, as they say in modern times, sexworking − whether they show up on webcams or have sex for money. How do you, Professor, view this, do you think it's good for the psyche of such people? Is it morally right?"

The professor grunted and corrected his glasses with a slight hand gesture; he was a grey-haired, elderly man with a kindly, calm face.

"It depends on a number of factors. Firstly − what that young person's goal is. When we choose our job, we usually want more than just to earn money, most people's dream is to do things that fascinate them, that they are fulfilled in. Of course, people are also fulfilled in the sexual sphere with their partners, however, what happens when sexuality becomes a profession?

Well, in a way, two things are then combined that can be very destructive to the psyche − materliness and one's own body. At the same time, we make the decision ourselves, so it is not morally wrong if it involves two adults who agree to it, but there is an internal objectification, a selling of some part of our intimacy.

Of course, one can feel good about it. One may even like it. One should not tell such people that they are denying something, or say that they are selling themselves, that they are pricing their value. You see, it is not for us to judge. Everyone can do what they want with their body, it is their unquestionable right.

However, the danger arises when, underneath this materialistic approach, there is a desire for self-destruction, a desire to simultaneously dominate, to be in charge − I decide what happens to my body − and, at the same time, I desire to humiliate myself in my own eyes − I sell myself and I'm nothing, I don't want affection because I don't deserve it.

This issue is very complex and delicate, judging too quickly, especially by outsiders, will be even more hurtful to such people, a confirmation that they will never be loved and accepted, so they will be afraid to make sexuality emotional, which will lead to the opposite effect that we would all like."

The presenter nodded with understanding.

"If the professor were to state what it should look like in an ideal world, what would the professor say?"

The man laughed good-naturedly, stroking his white beard.

"I don't have an answer to that. I think that in an ideal world, the person who is made for us would be highlighted to us in green and those who hurt us in red. But we don't have that option. I think the fundamental mistake of every human being is to make judgements prematurely, instead of being willing to understand, to offer conversation, to support.

Calling someone a whore or a slut has never helped anyone, what's more, it only makes such people even more likely to have suicidal thoughts and be afraid to seek help when they feel they need it, because they are scared of revealing themselves to their parents or loved ones."

The presenter moved on to the next topic, but he heard nothing more, staring blankly at the floor, leaning forward so that his elbows were on his knees − he felt himself trembling all over, his eyes burning from the moisture that had gathered under his eyelids, his throat all clenched.

He felt her hand on his back and he shuddered, glancing over his shoulder at her with wide eyes − she was leaning over him worriedly, he could smell her pleasant scent again.

"Are you all right? Do you want to go out for some fresh air?" She asked frightened, clearly seeing how pale he was, and he nodded in embarrassment.

By the time they got outside it was completely dark; he reached with his shaking hand into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, taking out a cigarette and a lighter, firing it quickly and putting it into his mouth.

He felt her looking at him − they were standing in the square in front of the main entrance where there was no one but them, all around them was the loud hum of moving cars.

For some reason he felt desperate and miserable, weak, small; he clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head, trying to pull himself together. He sat down on the cold stone steps and she immediately sat down next to him, far too close.

He sighed when he felt her hand on his shoulder, stroking him gently, her warm breath on his cheek cool from the crisp evening air. He let out a loud puff of smoke with his lips, thinking only of how he had never let any woman touch him.

He placed his hand on hers, wanting to feel her for once, her skin soft as silk, exactly as he had imagined; he looked at her in pain, her eyebrows arched in worry, in incomprehension of what had actually happened.

"I'm selling myself." He said finally, desperate, and she blinked as if she didn't understand what she had just heard.

He took a drag again, not taking his eyes off her, and let the smoke out through his nose.

"I do all sorts of fucked up things to women for money and get satisfaction out of it, you know?" He asked in a low, trembling voice, feeling devastated how tears of shame one by one began to run down his face.

He felt himself shaking all over and thought he was an idiot, wondering how he could have said that to her. For some reason, he felt something inside him break.

He wanted her to know, to tell him she was disgusted with him, to look at him with that look full of reserve, to tell him it was nothing and just go away simply to let him finally stop thinking about her.

He saw her tighten her lips, her eyes turning red, her eyebrows arching in sorrow as if she was in pain as he was. He felt a pleasant shudder when her hand stroked gently through his hair as if he were a small child, and then she hugged her face to his cheek and simply remained silent.

She didn't say anything.

She stayed.

She wanted to comfort him.

Delighted at this revelation, he burst out into a quiet, mournful sob, leaned over and snuggled his face into her neck, wanting to hide from his own shame and remorse, from what she might think of him, from what he feared and could not forgive himself for.

Why did he have to be like this?

Why exactly did this give him fulfilment?

He sighed quietly as she put her arms around him and hugged him, her soft hand stroking his cheek with gentle, slow movements, her face nestled against his hair and placing a gentle kiss on it.

"You didn't do anything wrong." She whispered finally; he swallowed hard, rubbing the tip of his nose against her neck, brushing his lips gently against her bare skin, again, and then again.

He felt her tremble and tighten her hands on his leather jacket, his manhood in his trousers completely hard.

He had no idea what had just happened between them, but he didn't want to stop.

After a moment, as his emotions left him he realised what he had done.

That he had told a complete stranger about who he was, revealed to her his darkest secret.

This thought made him panic − he got up abruptly and mumbled through his tears that he would go home already, that he apologised to her for everything, not listening to her pleas to wait for her, running quickly down the stone stairs, walking ahead.

He looked over his shoulder as he turned into the corner of the next street and noticed with some kind of disappointment that she was not following him.

He burst out into uncontrollable sobs for the second time once he had locked himself in his car having complete chaos in his head, feeling that he was going through some kind of panic attack.

He thought that until he'd met her he hadn't felt this way, that the idea that he couldn't date her because of what he'd done made him start to regret it all.

What was he supposed to do now?

He reached for his phone hearing it vibrate and unlocked it quickly seeing as many as three new messages from her.

He clenched his eyelids, dropping his phone on the other seat, hiding his face in his hands.

He needed to calm down.

He sat like that for a few minutes in silence, not thinking about anything, just breathing, and then he drove home as if nothing had happened.

He entered his flat, took a shower, ate something and then turned on the TV, all mechanical, completely empty; he shuddered when he got a new message, reaching uncertainly for his phone and felt an unpleasant twinge in his stomach when he saw it was one of his clients.

She wanted to meet the next day.

No, he thought.

I don't want to.

He wrote her back that he was taking a break from it all for a while.

He was infuriated when she started texting him to tell him not to do it, that she needed him, that meeting him made her want to go on living.

He slammed his phone furiously into the wall.

What about what he fucking needed?

When he picked it up after several minutes he found that it worked despite the cracked screen.

He accessed the last messages he'd received from Robert's sister and began typing quickly to her on his phone's keypad.

He pressed his lips together when he saw that she immediately displayed his message, a bubble popped up in his app window indicating that she had just written back to him.

He swallowed loudly, writing her back without thinking, without controlling himself, allowing himself to shamelessly write her exactly what was in his head.

He stared at the screen with a pounding heart, wondering whether to do it or not, walking restlessly around his living room with his phone in his hands − he typed out the answer slowly, feeling that he was hot.

She didn't reply for a long time even though he could see that she had displayed his message.

He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head, laughing despairingly under his breath, not believing how desperate he was.

He'd known it from the moment he'd seen her, when she'd gotten off that fucking bike and looked at him with those big, innocent eyes of hers.

He stood looking at her message as if stupefied, reading it again and again, unable to believe it, feeling like he was about to die from the arousal and heat he felt in his chest, his fingers trembling as he tapped out his reply to her.

And so she did.

He didn't dare propose to meet her alone, knowing how that would have gone down on his part.

He didn't want to scare her off.

However, they wrote with each other for days, even during his classes; Criston and Robert laughed at him for having a girlfriend and not even wanting to introduce her to them.

He didn't care.

She was the first person he told about how it all started, what he felt when he did it, what aroused him and what repulsed him about it all.

She listened to him and answered him with sincere concern and worry, without judging him, without pretending it was a simple and obvious subject, giving him a sense of comfort and understanding.

He made it clear to her that he had refrained from any contact with strange women for the time being.

He licked his lower lip as he lay back in his bed, writing her off quickly.

He swallowed hard when she wrote him back after a moment.

He felt a squeeze in his heart at her words, some kind of pain that she thought of herself that way, that she saw herself as just another person he wanted to take out on.

He chuckled involuntarily, typing back a quick response to her question.

He blinked, looking at his screen with a pounding heart, not believing what he read.

______

Aemond Taglist:

(bold means I couldn't tag you)

@its-actually-minicika @notnormalthings-blog @nikstrange @zenka69 @bellaisasleep @k-y-r-a-1 @g-cf2020 @melsunshine @opheliaas-stuff @chainsawsangel @iiamthehybrid @tinykryptonitewerewolf @namoreno @malfoytargaryen @qyburnsghost @aemondsdelight @persephonerinyes @fan-goddess @sweethoneyblossom1 @watercolorskyy @randomdragonfires @apollonshootafar @padfooteyes

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frightfully-doll · 9 months ago

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I am SO fucking tired of the ER not listening to me.

I’ve been there twice. TWICE. They are refusing to see that there’s an issue, only because of my anxiety. They’ve treated me like complete shit. I don’t have anyone for support, I am all on my own. Being disabled, chronically ill, currently VERY sick with a bad infection that even the strongest pain killer won’t help and in the middle of a panic attack because your dentist completely screwed you over and gave you cellulitis is so fucking stressful.

Darlings, we have to come together and fight to be seen, heard, and taken care of. This is absolutely unacceptable. My insurance is taking CENTURIES to approval a 2nd CT scan. And again, the ER was a complete joke. I can’t afford this. I make $0.00 a year, because even though I have a spinal disability, a leaking heart valve, very weakened immune system, a deformed left hip that has greatly affected my ability to walk, POTS, & severe GI issues, I do not qualify for disability. I spend every single day bawling in pain with no sleep. The stress of being ill and contracting cellulitis , which is SEVERELY painful , has greatly taken a toll on my body. I’ve been on several different medications, nothing and I mean nothing is helping me. And the fun part - one of my meds gave me a stomach ulcer. So now my stomach, which already has extreme issues, is in severe pain too.

I am begging for this world to start recognizing young adult disabled people who are struggling to get treatment, and who are constantly manipulated by people who are supposed to help. I cannot stop crying. Please help us.

#I am so scared to lose my life.#chronically ill #disabled #spoonie #spoonie rant #disability #medical trauma #Tw trauma #tw medical #vent #spinal fusion #being disabled #chronic illness #chronic pain #health #healthcare

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forasecondtherewedwon · 1 year ago

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remember it once - epilogue

Fandom: The Artful Dodger Pairing: Jack x Belle Rating: E Chapter: 8 / 8 Word Count: 2816

read on tumblr: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Will it be the same? Belle wonders this, not in her mind, but in her limbs. She drags her heavy tread up the steps, her tired body aching to be swept from the ground by Jack’s arms. She tugs at the fingers of the tough leather gloves that cover all the way to her elbows, rubbing her chafed skin once they’re off, yearning for fingers that will slip gently between her own. Will either of us be the same?

Belle leaves it in her body’s hands—that if there’s any back to get back to, her body will find the way when the time comes, will walk the old paths again, will find the high hills with the clear views and feel what it is to be home.

In the meantime, her mind bends to science, to medicine. She works from the morgue long enough to discover a method for stabilizing the wounds, burning away necrotic skin and halting the symptoms’ progression, though not reversing it. Thankfully, it neutralizes the aggression, drastically reducing the risk of patient attacks. The military maintain their perimeter, but slowly, slowly, Prof, wielding his rusty authority, is able to convince them to let in new patients as their others calm.

While in the hospital, she wears the long gloves, cutting up and sewing more pairs for Sneed and the nursing staff, all made from fine, barely-worn boots and hunting attire her father scavenged from Government House. They are protection from the patients’ nails and teeth; Belle deduces, by the comparatively generous development of her own symptoms, that she could only have been scratched. Small mercies. Used to reading her body as another would a book, she learns and records her limitations. She rests as often as it feels right and necessary to, applying herself to her study of the disease at all other times, at the odd hours they have all adopted at the hospital that feels like an island surrounded by the hazy waters of a dream.

Belle conducted her preliminary experimental treatments on Sneed. She would’ve done them on herself, but he stopped her, reminding her of her condition. As though she did not feel the weight of her belly, bearing it with her feet, back, and hips—another process she leaves her body to manage, trusting it to see her through. But she conceded, and so he exhibits the most breath-stealing scars. He was off his feet and wearing a single boot while he recovered, adapting readily to making his rounds of the wards in a wheelchair as he had done after Fagin shot him.

Because she has been able to help, because the disease is no longer spreading within the hospital walls, because, after treating Sneed, she treated herself, Belle recognizes when it is time to leave the morgue. She’s many months into her pregnancy, and her fathers—she’s found she has two—insist that she carry on with her experiments from the home laboratory Jack set up, always planning for it to be something they shared.

In the transfer, Fagin and the Governor driving the carriage with Belle stowed inside, they are beset. The Governor is yanked from the carriage and bitten. The teeth marks are close to his heart, as Belle has been, he tells her softly, since the day she was born. Since even before. She tends to him in the parlour of her home with what supplies Jack has not taken with him onto the ship, feeling Fagin’s watchful presence at her back. They were going to return to the hospital, to bring the rest of what she needs. Fagin is reluctant to go back alone—not out of fear of what’s out there, but that Belle will be in danger from her own father in here. Eventually, she forces him out, the weeping that threatens to break from her body like water from a dam too clear in her voice. He goes. He returns. She tries and tries, but her father worsens. She did not start soon enough, he is not a young man, he has had a fondness for drink.

There is no violence, no confusion of mind. There is no time.

Quietly, Belle’s quantity of fathers drops back down to one.

She can’t always trust her mind, which sometimes forgets. If she thinks, if she makes herself remember too clearly after a hazy waking, it seems so daunting to just… go on. The dread grips her and pins her to the bed. So she doesn’t think; she works, and her body wonders. Her lips and her wrists and her hips miss the one who would comfort her most, because she forbids it of her mind. She puts her ring away.

Following the death of the Governor, Belle dismisses Fagin. Well, she tries. She dismisses him several times a day: when he comes poking around the second-storey laboratory, when he nudges plates of plain crumpets along the table at which she labours. Infuriatingly, he stays. Weeks become months and she quits trying to convince him not to. Thank god for it, because he cautions her against testing solutions on her skin before they’re truly ready, keeping her whole as she inches towards a cure. He’s there to hear her, just down the hall, when she cries out twice in succession. The first time, it is in pure joy. The second, in shock at the sudden gush of fluid over her slippers.

—

Jack is aware of his flaws. The quick thinking and even quicker hands demanded by his profession have not made him a patient man. His history has meant he is kind by effort, not by nature. Both his patience and his kindness are tested continually onboard the ship. Some days feel endless. He has the people he’s brought, and those who brought him. Hetty’s presence steadies him; Fanny’s reminds him of Belle in the oddest ways, at the strangest moments. Mostly, it is tense, but they are living, and so it’s difficult to complain.

They make port with great wariness, taking on supplies but never new passengers or crew. Jack often goes ashore; it breaks up the tedium. He always takes his sword. What he observes is that some towns appear unaffected by the disease, others have discovered methods of containment, and still others are so spookily empty that they are underway again without bothering to disembark. He doesn’t know what’s happened in those places, whether they’re empty because the people were smart and fled, or…

Due to their extreme care and the sharp orders of Lady Fox, who doesn’t allow anyone’s guard to lower, all onboard remain healthy. Except for the seasickness. But that is manageable and endurable, and bringing water to the green-faced passengers gives Jack a feeling of usefulness when he stalls in his research. He and Hetty have been at work in the captain’s quarters, transfigured into their floating laboratory. They have their meticulousness in common. He conducts thorough (if slow) experiments, and she notes everything down to ensure they do not repeat their mistakes. They work so seamlessly together that the only thing Jack ever gets cross with Hetty about is the fact that she’s not doing something as Belle would, that she’s not reading that case in the medical text in Belle’s voice, that she’s not Belle.

But they form a community. They sew and read and play cards to pass the time. Children cavort on the deck in clear weather. Of course, beneath it all, as surely as the hull of the ship, is the grief. The fear and anxiousness. There are no complete families here, only siblings without parents, mothers without daughters, men without their wives. For the most fortunate, it’s temporary; there is the hope of reunion upon their return to Port Victory. If Jack ventures from the lab, drowsy and stretching his arms high over his head to crack his stiffened back, someone will inevitably inquire about his progress. Charlie has taken to attempting to shield Jack from these questions, but whacking the members of a closed community in the shins with his crutch is an untenable solution. Occasionally, Jack must try to come up with answers to How’s it coming? Anything new? When might we see home again? and How do you think they’re getting on without us?

The trouble is that it’s all wrong. Until they met, Belle was very much the expert on the theoretical side of things, Jack the hands-on experimenter. Now, Belle is back home, confronting the disease every day in the flesh while Jack drifts with the tides on a ship full of people who are perfectly well. He can’t advance by active testing; he must puzzle things out with his mind alone. At some point, Fanny joins him and Hetty. She’s been privy to her sister’s methods, though she didn’t pay them the strictest attention at the time, and if there’s anything she can do that will lead to her sister being helped, then she’s prepared to do it. Especially as the theoretical process rather appeals to her for its distinct lack of blood and guts.

So it is just their minds, their three minds, until. Until. They are finally close enough that Jack and Hetty both go ashore at the next docking (Jack won’t, can’t, risk Fanny). They’ve never done so before, afraid to send the two people with the greatest medical expertise, but they’ve traveled as far as they can—almost literally, upon the waves for many long months—and they need a human subject. They’re in search of someone who isn’t too far advanced, someone who can still give conscious permission, someone who understands that this isn’t a guaranteed cure, though they do promise to return with one when they can.

After their first small triumph, they change the ship’s heading. With each successive bit of progress, they advance towards home. All along the coast, they apply measured treatments, docking longer so they might observe their patients. This makes their passage back to Port Victory a crawl. They hunker down rather than attempting to beat bad weather, they hug the shore and avoid the faster currents farther out. They watch symptoms halt. They watch people get better. One man, a tradesman turned doctor by the circumstances, improves so quickly that they decide to invite him aboard. Apparently, the man has delivered five babies since the current state of affairs began—three to the same woman without losing a single soul. Jack tells the man there will be a place for him at the hospital (if the hospital still stands—it is horrifying to let his thoughts linger too long), that he has hoped to hire more talented doctors, no matter that he didn’t go to Oxford like Sneed (Jack even misses Sneed). Jack also sees how Hetty is with this man, how he is with Hetty. He longs for Belle more than ever. The nearer their journey comes to its end, the more he fights the urge to dive overboard and swim to her.

It's been years since Jack last saw Port Victory from the sea—and then, he never saw it and thought, Home. Nor did he feel it deserved its name, but he feels differently now. He’d survived so much when first he reached that port. He’s done so once again. It is a victory to have protected these people, to have worked alongside Hetty and Fanny to devise a treatment, a cure. Really, it’s a victory to be alive. He stands on the deck as the blue sky blanches, giving way to the orange and gold that will accompany the sun to its rest. For the second time, he is filled with joy and dread, doubly flooded, too much emotion for one person to hold. Will she be waiting for him as he once waited for her? Will either of them be the same?

—

Belle stirs, waking. Even with Fagin living downstairs, she’s become a fearfully light sleeper, her fragile oblivion shredding like a cobweb at the slightest sound. Groggy, she sits up to find there is still some light seeping through the bedroom curtains. What was it this time? Fagin banging around in the kitchen? A soldier at the door wishing to issue the report she demanded on the state of the hospital? The baby?

In case it is the latter, Belle makes herself get up. Her memory is still a project for her, improved through effort, but at the moment, it will not yield the location of the robe she removed before climbing into bed. No matter. It isn’t as though Fagin has never seen her in her nightgown. Her slippers are next to the bed, so she dons them. She pads across the hall.

What would this room have been, had the house belonged to another man? For Belle, it is a sanctuary. Because of the hour, she doesn’t bring a candle; even in darkness, she would know her way, having fallen asleep here many nights over the past several weeks since giving birth. There are no surprises in the weight of the door she now eases open, in the welcoming creak of the boards beneath her feet as she steps inside. What startles her is herself: an involuntary sound leaves her as she takes in the shape of a figure standing over the crib. He sees her at the door and turns.

“I hoped this might become the nursery,” he says.

Belle stumbles across the floor and into Jack’s arms, blinded by tears of love and relief, heedless of the baby’s confused cry at the sound of her mother’s distress.

For several minutes, she has less to say to him than she has since they first made each other’s acquaintance. The sun slips peacefully away as they hold each other harder than they ever have. Jack is scarcely more composed than she is, and promises that everyone who boarded the ship is fine, that her sister and mother are fine. Hiccupping her words, she tries to tell him about her father. He hushes her and holds on all the tighter; Fagin explained when he let Jack into the house. She doesn’t need to say. Jack is here now.

“I should probably keep going, see the hospital,” he says before sighing his regret into her hair.

Belle draws back a little.

“But—”

“We found a cure,” they say together.

The baby’s cries are rising into a blaring, ripping wail, obscuring her parents’ words. They look at each other with confusion, unsure of what they heard.

“You didn’t.”

“We did.”

“So did we.”

After the attack that introduced the disease into her body, they have been careful about their contact. Even through affection, rather than violence, there was a risk of Belle infecting Jack. She has yearned for so many months to be kissed as he kisses her now. Her fingers delve into his hair, his grip into her waist through her nightgown. She has made herself think of nothing but what was necessary to find a cure, then, once that was accomplished, what was necessary to preserve the life of their daughter. Now, the kiss is thought as well as feeling, every memory of his touch reinstated in her mind. Every look, every brush, every closing of his hand over hers as he guided her scalpel on an incision.

They separate and a high laugh leaves Belle. She bends over the side of the crib, collecting their child, easing her body into the bouncing sway the baby prefers. Jack begins and begins again, trying to tell her of their methods for combatting the disease. She hears enough to understand that they’ve found two different cures, arrived at two different solutions, both sound.

“Incredible,” she breathes.

“Yes,” he agrees, but he’s looking at the small, soft creature in her arms.

“Oh, yes,” Belle says. “Your daughter.”

Jack does not appear ready, but neither was she; she offers the baby and helps him correct his hold until he has her tucked against his chest.

“Daughter,” he chokes out. And this makes him cry like nothing else has.

“Norma,” she provides.

Jack nods, sniffling. She wipes the tears from his cheeks.

“Like the opera,” he says. “The music you had Fanny play.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Belle releases a heavy sigh, pressing a hand to her heart. “I didn’t realize how worried I was that you might think it was some derivative of ‘Norbert.’”

“A PERFECTLY GOOD NAME!” Fagin calls up the stairs.

Jack cranes his head away from the baby before shouting back, “QUIT LISTENING IN!”

“I’LL JUST MAKE US SOME TEA THEN!”

Jack looks at Belle with an expression of exasperation and he is here, and they are whole, and it is just as it was before.

Norma shrieks as though tacking on instructions for how she takes her tea.

It is, inarguably, even better.

#my writing #dodgerfox #The Artful Dodger #Dr. Jack Dawkins #Lady Belle Fox

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carinavet · 8 months ago

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I'm finally reading Masked Empire and, uh ... yeah I really should know by now to temper any expectations given by fandom reactions to things online.

All I knew about it going in was what people talked about in regards to in-game choices about who to put on the Orlesian throne: "Celene is a MONSTER she BURNED the elven slums!" The impression I got from that is that, like, one or two elves acted up so she locked them all into the alienage and burned them alive.

Which is very much not what happened. The elves were in the beginning stages of a full-on rebellion. They were manufacturing weapons and armour (shitty weapons and armour, because supplies were limited, but weapons and armour nonetheless), erecting barricades, forcing humans out of sections of the city, attacking guards, and talking about taking back the Dales. Like, what do you EXPECT an empress to do when that happens in the heart of her empire? Especially when she's already got someone else scheming hard for the throne -- someone who has already proven he's willing to kill her to get it. For an empire to survive, rebellions have to be put down, and put down hard, so that nobody thinks of trying again. Honestly I'm surprised she even let Briala try to mollify the elves in the first place.

And even Briala isn't that upset about it! Like, yeah, she's a bit miffed, but she also fully recognizes the necessity of it. When she first realizes what's happening, even before she finds out what spurred Celene to it, her reaction is mostly "Ah, darn. Too late." Right now she's still helping Celene get back to Val Royeaux. She's upset but she still supports Celene.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that any of this is right. The very existence of the empire isn't right, the general treatment of the elves isn't right, the Exalted March that conquered the Dales in the first place wasn't right.

But if you're already in an empire and your race is considered less than human and the empress is doing her best to make that situation slightly less shitty but has to go against the biases and subsequent anger of the nobles while defending her throne from her extremely militaristic cousin who would slaughter your whole race as soon as look at you and you start a fucking rebellion, then yeah, retaliation against that rebellion is absolutely to be expected.

#dragon age #masked empire #empress celene

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randomfandomlov3 · 2 years ago

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Price of love (Epilogue)

Warnings: Panic attack. Let me know if I missed any.

Note: Thank you so much for taking the time to read! <3

Word Count~ 595

“Ah, white wolf, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Shuri said greeting the super soldier at the entrance to her lab. She noticed you standing nervously tucked behind him. “And who is this?”

“She’s the reason we’ve come by to see you, we were wondering if you would be able to remove her HYDRA programming, as you removed mine?” Bucky put his arm around you to bring you forward. You bowed your head in respect for Shuri, but you were also nervous, what if she couldn’t help you?

“Ah, I’ve been expecting you. She is not quite what I pictured when Nat described her to me, but yes, the same process should work for her too.” Shuri started to explain that they first had to go see her brother to inform him of your arrival, then she would start the procedure.

King T’challa was extremely welcoming and pleased to help. Upon seeing how Bucky looked at you, he smiled. “White wolf, will you be staying here while she is in cryo? Not that she will take as long as you did.” Bucky nodded as your face paled.

Shuri explained how to get to the cryo chamber in case Bucky forgot, before giving you two some time alone. “Moonlight, you look really pale. Are you okay?” You shook your head as you stared at the ground. “What’s wrong can you talk to me?” He pleaded hoping he could help you.

You felt like you couldn’t breathe like your chest was on fire and you were drowning at the same time. this hadn’t happened in forever, but you would recognize the feeling of a panic attack anywhere. Bucky noticed and helped ground you and calm you down. “Whenever you were put in cryo, that was when my torture would ensue, or at least be strongest. I don’t know if I can be in the same room as a cryo machine again.” You panted out in a whisper.

Bucky’s heart ached for you, knowing the effects of trauma like that. “I will be with you every step of the way. I will be there right as you go in, and right as you come out. And I promise Shuri will take excellent care of you.” He wrapped you tightly up in his arms to convey his sincerity, before pressing his lips to yours, but not in a way of saying goodbye, but rather, I will be with you forever.

You let him lead you into the room and panic filled your chest again, but that time you pushed through it, repeating Bucky’s words over and over. I will be with you. Those were the last words you thought before you are frozen. Bucky returned to the place he spent a fair amount of time at during his own time in treatment.

A few weeks later, Bucky got a phone call from Shuri, telling him it was time for you to awaken, and that he should be there when you did. As he entered the room with you in your cryo sleep, Bucky wondered what you were thinking about when you were put under, because for him that was always what he woke up thinking. He just hoped that it wasn’t panic. He hated to see you in such a state.

The happy tears that streamed down both of your faces upon hearing that you were finally free, further strengthened the bond that the two of you had built over the few months since the incident. That day was the first day of the rest of your lives together.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #james bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader

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cosmiccrushes · 4 months ago

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Not Part Of The Crew

Law x OC || 2.1k word ch || 26.3k total

full fic on ao3 :)

CH 12: Rue

The consequences of Rue’s actions settle around her like a blanket of dense, painful fog in the coming days. It’s hard to think of anything but how much she aches. Attacking Trafalgar Law, while viciously satisfying, had truly been a vastly stupid move. Without Law’s medical treatment, she’s forced to admit she would have died. Twice. She loathes the thought of owing him her life, especially when she never asked him for it. But he continues to treat her wounds with a genteel manner that continues to baffle her. With nothing else to do but lay there and attempt to ignore his presence, she mulls over his offer. There was no way he genuinely meant to provide her aid, with no conditions or ulterior motives. That wasn’t how pirates worked. More likely, he recognized his serious miscalculation earlier when trying to bend her to his will and was seeking to course correct.

Still, even factoring in whatever schemes for domination he might have, it was hard to feel like that wasn’t a future problem for Rue to deal with. Hard not to consider him as a real option– and maybe her only option– to defeat the Fang Pirates. Law doesn't seem cruel. Dangerous and lethal, definitely- he’d just offered to help her kill a bunch of people after all. And she didn’t understand why, what was in it for him. But even if he did plan to take over the Fang Pirates territory, it was difficult to see how things could get worse for people. It would just be more of the same. And at least this time, it’d be an evil she knew.

She could accept Law’s offer for help. Use this time to learn everything about him she could. And when he inevitably tried to subjugate her and the people of Ashita Island, she’d be prepared to do something about it. She knew the villagers expected nothing from her. But maybe she could offer up her life for the one Fangle had taken. It wouldn’t bring Carlo back, but it was the only way she knew to honor his memory. Rue would fight like hell to survive this. If she had to use Trafalgar Law to do it, she would. And if, in the end, she had to sacrifice her life to stop him, she’d do that too.

She’d spoken the truth to Law earlier. It was time for a new approach to living. Survival had exhausted her, worn her down into a point that she wanted to turn towards the danger, not away. Whatever happened with the Fang Pirates, whatever came next with the Heart Pirates- she wanted her revenge and she’d pay any price to get. Including clawing her way out of the clutches of another crew that she didn’t want to be a part of.

It was the wisp of a plan. But it was all she had.

***

She waits for Law to finish rewrapping the bandage on her head before speaking.

“Look,” she starts. “If this offer of yours is real and going to work, then you’ll need to know my story.” She pauses here, letting the words hang. Law turns from the tray he's tidying up to look at her. “I'll have conditions for our arrangement. And then you’ll need to answer one simple question. Got it?”

Law nods, giving her his full attention.

She motions for him to sit on the stool beside her bed, then inhales deeply, breathing out a slow, steadying breath. “A year ago, I stopped on Ashita Island, routine business. I make a point of passing through there every few months, staying for a time.” She looks away from his piercing eyes. “It’s a busy trade port, lots of berry to be earned. I came in late at night, went straight to the inn with the tavern I usually perform at, slept until it was time for my performance the next night. That night, I began my set, everything was normal. Until this group of pirates shoved in. Rude, demanding people clear tables closest to the stage. All things considered, not the worst behavior I’ve ever seen from pirates.”

She shakes her head. “But their captain…the moment he set his eyes on me I’m pretty sure he decided that I was just a songbird he could lock away in a cage.” Her voice hardens. “He approached me at intermission. Said he’d like it if I joined his crew, performed under his banner. Would I be interested? I politely declined. He said he understood of course. I thought all was well. He called a server over, to order a drink as a show of appreciation for my performance.” Rue swallows past the lump in her throat. “And then he slit the server's throat. I watched her bleed out on the tavern floor. His crew’s swords raised at anyone who dared to help. He said that would happen to one patron a night until I agreed to join his crew.” She looks back at Law. He says nothing.

“You can probably fill in the rest. They called themselves the Fang Pirates, led by Captain Malax Fangle. And within the span of a day they’d sunk their teeth into Ashita Island. The townspeople were terrified. Any business owner who refused to pay a tithe to them, they killed.” They eventually came to collect dues from every villager who wished to remain alive.

“I wasn’t going to refuse him again, not if it meant people would die. The tavern owner where I performed, Carlo, was the closest thing to a friend I had in that town.” Rue bites her lip, shaking her head, shaking away the grief pressing behind her eyes. “In the entire ocean, actually. I wanted to protect him. And I thought,” her voice falters anyway. “Surely this will be temporary. Surely the marines will come eventually. We’ll find a way out of this. You can probably fill in how that went too.”

“So a year later, why did you finally run?” Law asks quietly. “What changed?”

“Because he killed Carlo.” She refuses to let tears fall. Her story she might need to share, but her tears belong to her, not Trafalgar Law. “Carlo did everything they asked of him. I did everything they asked of me. And Malax killed him, simply because he had tried to protect me.” The memory of his blood dripping off the bar plays in her mind. At night, when she can't sleep, she's haunted by that drip drip drip.

“Protect you?” Law asks.

Rue levels a glare at him. “Malax normally didn’t try anything with me. I sang, gave him the berry. That was that. But that night…” A coldness seeps into Rue’s bones. “He’d had an exorbitant amount of liquor. Wanted me serving all of his drinks myself. He got…handsy. I got angry. Cracked an ale flask over his head.” Rue’s teeth bite down on the mistake, as if she can devour it out of her memory. But she doesn't deserve to forget.

“I think it would’ve ended there. Or well, with me getting the shit kicked out of me. Except Carlo,” Rue’s voice cracks over his name. “Carlo, who I’d told so many times, don’t get involved, no matter what. I can handle it. Malax raised his hand at me and Carlo stopped him.” She can feel tears pooling in her eyes and blinks long and hard to will them away.

“Malax put a blade in his chest. He died on the floor of his own tavern and there was nothing I could do to stop it.” Rue could still hear his voice answering her when she’d asked him why, why would he do that? Because that’s what you do for family, Cerulean. He died looking up at her with a smile on his face.

“That’s when I realized, I wasn’t protecting anyone. None of us were. We were just trapped in a perpetual state of misery and fear. So, I plotted my escape. I knew it would be short-lived,” she shrugs. “But I thought it was the only chance I had of trying to find a way to stop Malax. To make him pay. And here you are.” She waves her hand up and down Law.

“Why would your escape be short-lived?” Law asks, brow wrinkled.

“Because,” a grim smile shades her face. “Malax Fangle is a devil fruit user. He ate the Sagasu Sagasu no Mi. The Find Find fruit.” Law’s brow smooths out in understanding. “No matter where you go, how far you run. Malax can find you, he only needs to have touched you once.”

“Why does he want you back so bad? No offense, but why is one bard worth all of that trouble?”

“Offense taken, you've never even heard me sing,” she replies, before plastering her most sultry smile across her lips. She wishes she could see the tops of Law's ears under that hat to learn if it makes him blush at all. “I am very good at what I do. But, it's about more than that.” Her smile drops away. “I insulted him by escaping. Tarnished his infallible reputation. No one leaves the Fang Pirates. He won't let that go unpunished.”

“Most power hungry men wouldn't.” Law appears lost in thought…or perhaps a memory of his own. “What are your conditions?”

“I won't be a prisoner. I want free rein to come and go as I please around the ship.”

“Done.” The hint of a smile tugs up one side of his mouth. “Just, don’t try to flood the ship, please. I really will have to intervene.”

“Fine.” She rolls her eyes, then continues with her demands. “I want to ask you questions and get answers. I need to understand who you are. I gave you my story, now you give me yours.”

A muscle in Law's jaw twitches and she thinks he might refuse. “I doubt that was your whole story.”

“No. But it's as much as you're going to get. You might have noticed the significant power imbalance in this proposed alliance.” Law's expression is unreadable– or maybe just devoid of any emotional significance. “Information about you is to…balance the scales a bit. Do we have an agreement?” She sticks close to the truth behind her intentions. In the game of manipulating him, she figured it hardly mattered that he knew the rules. It’s no secret that he holds the upper hand, that the deck is stacked in his favor. She needed him to at least agree to deal her in.

“We do.”

“Good.” She's surprised by his cooperation, but endeavors not to show it. “Now. The one question I need you to answer first.” She doesn't expect it to be honest, but she hopes it reveals something about him nonetheless. “Why?”

Trafalgar Law doesn't look away, his voice doesn't waver as he says, “You feel familiar. I guess that made me want to help.”

Rue's heart races but it doesn't feel like fear. Not the kind of fear she's used to anyway. It feels too adjacent to the feeling that sparked through her the first time she'd caught him without his hat, hair messy from sleep. It made her feel scraped raw. Like someone had taken a dry bristle brush to her skin and rubbed until her bare nerves were exposed. It made her want to stab him again.

“I'll accept your answer, Trafalgar Law. But let's get one thing straight. We are not friends. You do not know me. I'm accepting your help because you're offering it and I need it. This doesn't end with me willingly joining your crew.”

Law watches her for a beat, then nods his head once. “Understood.”

“Then,” she holds out her uninjured hand to him. “We have a deal.”

He places his palm in hers. His hand is warm and soft. She supposed you didn’t necessarily earn calluses when you could cut out a man’s beating heart without laying a finger on him- or so the stories say. She shakes his hand once. His grip lingers on hers for a millisecond longer when she lets go.

Then he walks away. She has no idea what he means by her feeling familiar to him. What ghost from his past she might remind him of. The last time she’d been familiar to someone, it had ended with her own personal haunting, a ghost she’d never exorcise. She held no illusions that

Trafalgar Law would die for her. But perhaps whoever she reminded him of was information she could use against him. So that when she needed to, she could get close enough to cut his heart out first, before he wrapped chains around hers and gave her the false choice and empty hope of ever earning the key to her freedom.

#law x oc #trafalgar d water law #trafalgar law #trafalgar law fanfiction #trafalgar law fic #trafalgar law x oc #trafalgardwaterlaw #law fanfiction #law one piece #one piece #op law #op trafalgar law #one piece fanfic #one piece law #one piece fic #one piece fanfiction #heart pirates #law x cerulean blake

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rabbitcruiser · 1 year ago

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National Serpent Day

National Serpent Day is observed annually on February 1. It’s a tradition that has been in practice for at least five years, as a way to encourage everyone to widen their understanding of snakes to overcome their fear of serpents.

History of National Serpent Day

National Serpent Day is observed every year to appreciate snakes. They have been known to humans for centuries and have evolved over an even greater period in history.

Snakes are perceived as the symbol of medicine, good, evil, fertility and have been seen as sacred since ancient times because of their venom. The venom is said to have healing properties that modern studies have proven can produce painkillers, drugs for hypertension, and even treatments for strokes, heart disease, and possibly even cancer.

The precise origin and history of National Serpent Day are not clear; however, the day has been set aside for at least five years as a way to encourage everyone to widen their understanding of snakes and to overcome their fear of serpents.

Historically, the origin of snakes being ‘evil’ as it is today is seen from the rhetoric of Adam and Eve and the role snakes played throughout biblical literature. It is as such for cunning Eve to consume from a tree forbidden by God. Eve’s act of obeying the snake instead of God’s instruction is assumed to be linked with the beginning of the bad things that happen presently according to Christianity. National Serpent Day is to rewrite the negative stories around snakes and inspire humans to reflect and come to grips with their fears for it. Most snakes are known to animal scientists as shy and retreating. None will attack a person unmolested.

Studies show snakes go as far as to coil up and rattle to warn approaching humans of their intention to be left alone and striking only as a last resort when they feel trapped or cornered.

National Serpent Day timeline

1869 — 1897 Edward Drinker Cope’s Findings

His contributions include extinct reptile fossils leading to an understanding of snakes.

1969 “Biology of the Reptilia” is First Published

It serves as a reference to topics on the evolution of amphibians and reptiles.

2001 Modern Research on Snakes Starts

The University of Texas publishes a survey on the ossification in neonatal squamates.

2015 The Oldest Snake Fossil Ever Is Found

A 113 million-year-old fossil of a four-legged snake is discovered in Brazil.

National Serpent Day FAQs

What do serpents symbolize?

Snakes are believed to represent power, good, evil, fertility and have healing powers. They can shed their skins and emerge reborn, thus they are also identified with the symbol of regeneration or rebirth and immortality.

What do snakes represent in tattoos?

Snakes are an ancient symbol of rebirth, temptation, fertility, and power that is often depicted in tattoo arts with those things in mind.

Can a snake love you?

Snakes may become tolerant toward their owners but in general, they aren’t affectionate toward humans.

How to Observe National Serpent Day

Visit a nearby zoo

Learn about them

Celebrate on social media

Spend the day at a nearby zoo seeing the different snakes learning their distinct characteristics to observe National Serpent Day. Go as far as understanding how and why they react to a human invasion. You might even invite friends on your trip to uncover which one has the greater fear for the serpent and conquer your herpetophobia together!

Take National Serpent Day as a time to research snakes native to your area. Understand which ones are deadly and ways to recognize them. You might also read about ancient stories of how they are used in medicine or dive into modern literature to see the role they portray in them: Like Kaa in “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling, or Nagini in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series.

If you’re a snake lover, there’s no better way to observe National Serpent Day than posting selfies of yourself and your snake friend on social media to help everyone else overcome their fear of it. You can use #SerpentDay or #NationalSerpentDay to track discussion.

5 Things You Should Know About Snakes

Snakes have remedial properties

There are thousands of snake species

Snakes eat their prey whole

They are mostly non-venomous

They sometimes give live birth

Snakes have been sacred since ancient times because their venom is thought to have healing properties and studies show it's used to produce painkillers and drugs for hypertension and might even help with treatments for strokes, heart disease, and maybe even cancer.

Researchers have identified roughly 3,000 species of snakes existing around the world.

Snakes are known for their ability to swallow as a whole, prey up to three times larger than the diameter of their head due to their upper and lower jaws being separate.

According to scientists, only one out of eight of the known snake species are venomous.

Snakes are mostly known to lay eggs; others give live birth too.

Why National Serpent Day is Important

It encourages overcoming our fear of serpents

It helps us appreciate their existence

It promotes our understanding of snakes

National Serpent Day’s purpose is to help us overcome our fears of snakes. It serves as a day to especially help us to form a friendly bond with the ancient animal.

Snakes are a symbol of power, good, evil, fertility, and have been known to have remedial properties useful to humans for ages. National Serpent Day serves as a day to appreciate their existence on earth for these reasons.

The reason for National Serpent Day is to help give awareness of snakes with the hope that it would lead us to conquer our fears. On this day everyone is encouraged to take their time to research and learn about snakes native to their area.

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deadlifts-and-deadlines · 1 year ago

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I spent 7 hours in the ER with chest pain yesterday, and they still have no idea what is going on 🫠 I had an EKG, two blood heart tests, a clotting test; two-x rays and a breathing treatment. All came back normal. They actually gave me a choice as if I wanted to be admitted overnight for a stress test or go home with an inhaler to take every four hours and to follow up with a cardiologist for an echocardiogram. I chose to go home, and in hindsight that may have been a poor choice because I didn’t sleep last night because of the pain - I maybe got four hours of sleep. For what it’s worth, I knew I wasn’t having a heart attack or a cardiac episode - I just get this pain sometimes. It feels like someone has put a blood pressure cuff on my chest - usually the left side, but the pain travels to the center and sometimes right side - and the cuff is just going rogue, squeezing and tightening with no rhyme or reason. It is very uncomfortable - like I feel like I need to apply pressure to my chest or lie on the floor when it happens.

Five of those hours at the ER were spent just waiting for a room to open up. And the waiting room was crazy. Like batshit wild. Two of the people I had interactions with got kicked out as a result of them! The first was someone impersonating medical staff who came and took my info when I walked in. I was doubled over in pain and don’t realize she didn’t work there at first because she marched right up to me and asked me my name and what brought me in today. I finally realized she didn’t work there when she laughed and said “wow that is awesome!” when I said my rheumatologist sent me here for chest pain. I looked her in the eyes and said no the fuck it is not and tried to walk away from her but she kept stepping around/in front of me and finally security kicked her out.

Then! When they finally called my name for a room, after five hours of waiting, and after the pain had gotten so bad again that I had to tell them about it, I got up to go meet my nurse and a guy, who had already had several outbursts related to how long the wait time was, ran up to my nurse, screamed NO IT IS MY TURN THEY TOLD ME I WAS NEXT and swung at her! I was behind him and had to jump out of the way! She started yelling at him and told him not to touch her and that he could leave and security jumped over the counter real quick to take him away. I was terrified and looked like this the whole time👀👄👀

Also, there was a guy that I recognized as the Taco Bell employee who ALWAYS forgets my sauce 🤣

There was also a guy who got his leg stuck in a stump grinder and a guy who hacked his finger off with a chainsaw. Oddly enough, those two were the only ones in there who were not clearly miserable, lol. There was also an older man who LEFT with a face that was actively bleeding! Half of it was ripped open and the other side had about 7 open sores and he had a horizontal cut across the length of his forehead. He looked like he was in a horror movie, poor guy.

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youwouldntbelievehowigothere · 2 years ago

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@zelinkcommunity

second chapter of unnamed oot child timeline arranged marriage story.

<-Previous Chapter | First Chapter | Next Chapter->

CH 2: FORBIDDEN

Zelda awoke to the sensation of someone holding her hand. She glanced up to see Link squeezing her hand while asking “Navi?”

The fairy, she realized. She knew that, he’d spoken of her before. How could she have forgotten...

Link roused slowly. Noticing her, finally, he asked in a sleep-thick voice, “Princess?”

“You’re awake!” she marveled. The fact that he recognized her felt like a positive sign.

“What are you…” he looked around slowly, a controlled grimace the only indication of the pain he was probably suffering. “What am I doing here? And why can’t I open my eye?”

At that, Zelda smiled sadly.

“Oh Link, you’ve met with a terrible fate…” she started, unsure how to describe all that had happened. How she had found him, how they had gotten there.

Her words were perhaps too vague, as he went white as a sheet. He opened his mouth to speak, but already his eye started rolling back in his head. She dove to slow his collapse as he passed out. With her hands around his shoulders and now partially resting on his chest, she studied his face closer, searching for any clues as to why he had loss consciousness.

He came to before she could compose herself, and the groggy, “Princess?” jolted her to sit back up.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I– I shouldn’t have–” She took a breath. She was the princess of Hyrule, she couldn’t show her fear, even at a time like this. “We’re in the Kokiri village where you are receiving medical treatment after being ambushed by a team of Gerudo.”

He nodded, trying to furrow his brows, but wincing when his injured eye moved.

“Can you remember anything?” she asked.

“I remember riding back from slaying a… whatever your father had asked me to slay. I can’t recall… a Gohma of some sort? Maybe? It had a lot of legs…” He laughed and it held a nervous quality. “My arm had been broken, so I was a bit slower coming back and then…” he trailed off in thought before asking, “So the Gerudo attacked me?”

“I think it was just a rogue faction, but…” Zelda started, not wanting to admit the one thing that was still eating at her. Most of the Gerudo had been thankful when Ganondorf had been tried and executed. He had been a cruel leader, fierce with dark magic and with no love for his people. Some, however, saw his cruelty as strength, and his plan to conquer Hyrule as good, even if he used monsters to accomplish it. Nabooroo had informed them of such a group, but only in that she was dealing with it.

A dark thought came to Zelda. What if that had been a lie? What if the Gerudo all loved their king, and hated the Princess and Hero that had foiled his plans for desolation?

She pushed those ideas away. There was nothing to suggest the group that had attacked Link were anything other than the radicals Nabooroo had warned them of.

Link made a noise of acknowledgement. “How did you…?”

“How did I know?” she asked, “I had a dream…” she started, the dream and her memories painting a clear picture. Unbidden, tears welled in her eyes and she willed them away. Why was it only her nightmares became true? “I’m sorry Link, I should’ve done more.”

A rough hand came up to wipe away a tear and her eyes snapped open to the expression of longing that Link had. Just as quickly as the sentimental emotion started to come through, did something shift in him, and he dropped his hand.

Zelda couldn’t help but feel disappointed. This is why she could never tell if she was misreading him or not. It had started after his return from Termina the hot-cold she would feel. But there were more important matters than her maiden’s heart.

He cleared his throat. “I would’ve been dead if not for you.”

One of the Kokiri came in with breakfast. “Oh, he’s awake!” he said, his fairy flying in happy circles.

Link studied the Kokiri and said, “Mido?”

“How do you know my name?”

“Do you not…?” Link shook his head. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

Zelda looked between the two of them.

“Saria!” Mido yelled, leaving the house.

Saria rushed in, and Zelda stood up to give her room. Though the room was so small she had to stoop.

“Saria?” Link asked, “how…?”

“Oh Link, I’m so glad to see you, though I wish the circumstances were better.”

“As do I…”

Zelda, feeling the reunion ought to have some privacy, left the room. She waited out of immediate ear range, and waited to be done. The other Kokiri kept their distance from her, and she was not tempted to push their boundaries. She wanted to stay close to Link, just in case–

Just in case what? The Gerudo attacked again?

She knew she would not fare so well this time around. Her magic needed time to recuperate, as she had used quite a few powerful spells on not so much sleep. She yawned, the little sleep she had not enough.

Up in the trees a blue light flittered around, and Zelda glanced up.

“Are you Navi?” she asked the blue orb. The orb hurried its circles, but came down to be closer to Zelda’s eye level.

She didn’t say anything, but Zelda took that as an affirmative. “Why did you help us?” the princess asked, “You disappeared, but I wasn’t sure where… Link left to go looking for you. It took a long time for him to come back.”

Navi didn’t say anything for a long while. Just as Zelda thought she wouldn’t get an answer, the fairy said, “I… I can’t be his fairy anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only Kokiri can have fairies. He was raised by the Kokiri, but… when we returned from that future he… he was grown. Kokiri never grow up, so an adult could never have a fairy.”

“Who made that rule?” Zelda asked, scrunching her nose. It seemed unfair. Navi was obviously as torn up about it as Link was.

“It’s just the way it is.”

Navi was clearly more upset by this rule of nature than Zelda was, so she dropped it. “Thank you for helping us,” she said instead, “if you hadn’t guided us who knows what would’ve become of Link.”

Navi didn’t say more, and flew away.

Zelda sat there for a few minutes more, her sluggish brain trying to make sense of all of it. If Navi could talk to her, why couldn’t she talk to Link?

Longingly, she glanced over to the small hut where he covelessed. This was his home, and from the sounds of it, he hadn’t been back since he’d left the first time. That would be dreadful, to have to leave home and never being able to return. An odd pang lit in her chest. Just dreadful.

The shade of the tree was pleasant and Zelda leaned against it, thinking to rest her eyes for a second. There was still a crick in her back from sleeping next to Link’s bed, but the excitement of the days had caught up with her.

Before she could nod off completely, another fairy buzzed around her head. Great, more eternal children to entertain.

“Hello,” she greeted, wondering why now they would approach her, when before they had all been rather shy.

“Are you a princess?” the girl asked.

Zelda nodded. “I am.”

“Where’s your tiara?” she asked.

“It’s in my castle.”

“You have a castle!” the girl exclaimed, “I want a castle!”

Zelda couldn’t help but smile. “I think this forest is very nice. We don’t have fairies at the castle.”

“You don’t?” she asked, “There was this boy who used to live here, who for the longest time didn’t have a fairy. He finally got one and went to the castle. He never returned though. Did you ever meet him?”

“I did.”

“Why hasn’t he returned?”

Zelda pursed her lips. Would the girl even understand who Link was? That he was a Hylian, not a Kokiri? That he had returned and she couldn’t recognize him? “Well, outside of the forest, children grow up.”

“Grow up?” she asked, “like get bigger?” reassessing Zelda, her eyes grew large. “Did you grow up?”

At that Zelda smiled. “Yes, I did.”

“Is that guy you brought a grown-up too?”

Zelda nodded.

“Saria said he’s your husband.”

At that Zelda flushed scarlet. Was that what Saria had meant? Suddenly the odd things she’d said made sense. She was aware of the propriety of a princess spending unchaperoned time with a young man. Zelda had been so caught up in everything else, she hadn’t even thought about all the unchaperoned time spent with the Hero.

Not that anyone had anything to worry about. Link would never treat her in an untoward way. And she could never beguile him, even if she wanted to. And maybe she did want to. Either way, nothing would happen with him just having returned from the gates of death.

The Kokiri continued as if Zelda didn’t understand the concept. “Saria says the only time boys and girls can have sleepovers is if they’re married. But I don’t get why anyone would want a sleepover with boys. They’re so icky.”

Before Zelda could formulate a response, another Kokiri ran up to them. “Hey Princess,” he said, “Saria needs you.”

Zelda stood up, almost pleased to get out of that awkward situation. Granted it was to go to the object of her affection with someone who came to the false conclusion they were married.

When she saw Link sitting up in the bed, all thoughts of embarrassment were pushed aside in favor of concern. Even with healing potions, medical care, and now some rest and food, he still looked entirely too weak. Too fragile. Too mortal.

Still, he tried to smile through the pain he was probably still experiencing as she entered the room. She couldn’t help but smile back.

“You called?” Zelda asked.

“Saria says I should be good to move,” Link said, “we probably need to get you back to the castle.”

She hadn’t even thought about what would happen when she returned! In her haste and worry she hadn’t even left a note. Impa could probably piece together what had happened, but her father would definitely assume she was kidnapped.

“That’s odd for you to be the brash one,” he quipped, noting the surprise and worry on her face.

If he was well enough to tease her, he was probably well enough to travel.

“It would be best if he could see a healer,” Saria explained, “I think I did all that can be done, but I would be more than pleased to be wrong in this case.”

Saria gave Link a hug, one he reciprocated with a soft smile.

“I’m glad to have seen you once more,” the Kokiri said. Something was left unsaid. Zelda couldn’t know for sure, but she suspected Saria did not expect to see Link again.

Zelda helped Link to stand, he limped slightly, and whistled for Epona. Sheepishly, he glanced at Zelda, and she knew he’d be shying away from her touch if he could. It was odd to be aided by a princess. Once on the horse, he led the way, Zelda walking by his side, and they said their last goodbyes. The Kokiri were still rather shy, but a few brave ones shouted after, and soon the whole lot of them were.

Zelda couldn’t help but smile.

Once into the forest, Link said, “It feels wrong to make you walk.”

At that she giggled. “You would feel that way with a sprained ankle. No, I can walk just fine, Hero.”

A melancholy passed over him at her address. “Who is Saria to you?” she asked, not liking the silence that was trying to settle.

The melancholy didn’t release its hold, but he smiled through it. “She took care of me the most of any Kokiri. She’s their leader and I think either a bit older, or just naturally a bit wiser than the rest of them. I don’t really know.”

“Thank the Goddesses for her,” Zelda said, “I did my best, but it was all so…” she trailed off, not wanting to relieve the terror that had gripped her.

“Clearly it was enough,” Link said, “I’m still here. Most of me at least.” The joke fell flat to her. He carried on, “How did you know I would be in danger?”

“I had a dream,” she answered, “though I wasn’t able to avoid that fate completely as I have in the past.”

“You did enough,” he said intensely, his sole eye almost burning through the mists of the forest, “You always do.”

The praise warmed her.

Zelda desperately wished to interpret it favorably, but she knew it would be foolish. Clearly Link considered such a thing forbidden. For what reason? She wasn’t sure.

~~~~~~~~

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#zelink week 2023 #day 2 forbidden #@oot Zelink #Zelink #Zelink week

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alteon77 · 2 years ago

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*IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm copying everything over from AO3 to here because this series has a sequel coming out in the Fall, and I'd rather be prepared just in case AO3 goes down again. This is an old, complete story. So if you recognize it, you're not imagining things. 😂

Chapter Publication Date: 10/21/22 | Word Count: 5,291

All the Precious and Fragile Things (so easily do they break): Chapter 1

Part I: All of This Past

After banishing his lover to the waking world for her deception, Morpheus learns she’s been captured by a revenge-seeking Alexander Burgess.

And that she’s also very pregnant with his child.

Unknown to the both of them, this will set in motion a cascade of events that threatens the whole of existence itself.

AO3 here, Masterlist here

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE YEARS PAST...

Time, like many things in the Dreaming, is only a fluid concept. As opposed to the Waking, in which its beat is as steady as the constant tick of a metronome to a song, time in the Dreaming has a wholly wilder nature. With no rhyme or reason, it will settle down and rush forward only to stagnate flat for a while before it seemingly tires of the resting and rises up in a great swell of movement.

It is for this reason that Lucienne is unsure of precisely how many years Lord Morpheus has been absent from the Dreaming when she is taken.

Outside the gates of the realm earlier, there had been a spike of energy (pulsing starlight bright) that she had thought was the Dream Lord returned at last to his home. Worried for him and what could have kept him away for so long, she'd rushed out to reach the Endless, to assist him in whatever way she could.

When she gets to where the light was, though, he’s not there. Nothing is, and she barely has a moment to confusedly consider the emptiness before something is grabbing her tightly from behind. So surreal is the occurrence that she cannot process the cold jut of armor against her back, cannot brace herself for the blow as she's hit across the head with something hard, cannot make sense of her attack even as her vision blurs and then goes dark.

When she awakens, she's no longer near her home, instead confined to the darkness of a dungeon where her tormentors try and wring information from her through pain and hurt and atrocity that she doesn't think she will ever heal from. Not really. She'd grown used to the gentle peace of the Dreaming, where none of its denizens within knew injury or hunger or need under the meticulous care of Lord Morpheus, and so the razor sharp survival of her imprisonment here is like nothing she's known. It makes her miss home with a sorrow that pits inside of her belly like the hunger from the starvation she endures regularly now.

Time in this realm, wherever hell this is, has a much more steady cadence. Its beat is reliable, fast for all that her captors and the pain they inflict makes it feel as if it thrums agonizingly slowly here.

And then one day, everything abruptly changes.That they've dragged her out of her small cell is strange, a variance to the pattern of their usual violent treatment that puts her on instant alert. Trepidation curls viciously in her stomach as her captors start their long journey with her, forcing her to stumble along beside them despite that her legs seem ill suited to carrying her. While they make their bawdy, threatening jokes at her expense, the time around them crawls, going far more slowly than the furious staccato of her heart. She is a creature of the Dreaming, and yet she feels as if she is being carried further and further into a hellish horror that makes the nightmares of her own realm seem but child's play.

The room she ends up in has tall, gold columns, light filtering through the high windows on either side of it, and a dangerous looking male sitting on a throne of iron. Lucienne can only catch a furtive glance, but she sees a crown atop his head of crackling power, crimson and snapping violently where it hums with energy. He's glaring at the figure on the bottom of the steps as they fling Lucienne down before them, and Lucienne chances the minute to lift her gaze and sneak a longer look at this newcomer, only to be caught off guard by the strange blue she can see shining from this woman's eyes, something in them glowing as if it should not exist, a cerulean manifestation of great magic shimmering amongst the dreariness of this reality. There's a gentle power that emanates from her as well that's peculiar to feel here of all places, but it strangely soothes some part of the librarian that she didn't even know needed soothing.

The woman seems to notice her inquisitive stare but she does not smile at Lucienne. Instead, she simply tilts her head in a nod that speaks of acknowledgement.

"I thank you, Hadrius of the Adirae." Her voice is like the sweetest song despite the words twisting Lucienne's gut in apprehension. She doesn't know this female, can't fathom what she might want of Lucienne, but she's suddenly very worried that it's not for anything good. She knows well enough how the beauty of immortals tends to mask the darkness festering inside of them. And for a moment, she balances the dichotomy of relief at being away from this place and its torture against the very real fear of the raw power she senses coming from this unknown entity. What will this woman do to her? What could she want from her? Is Lucienne exchanging one nightmarish existence for another? Possibly one even worse? Though, in truth she doesn’t believe she can imagine anything more horrible than what she's already been subjected to, anything that might... damage her as this ordeal surely has.

"Follow me," she tells Lucienne, and the librarian scrambles to her feet to do just that. The woman does not say anything else to her then, but she does walk a little slower as if to allow Lucienne to catch up, and that sliver of possible consideration sparks something like hope within her. Perhaps this new terror of Lucienne's is simply panic, a completely understandable malady to be suffering from in her opinion. This could all be fine, she thinks, despite that there's a voice in her head telling her otherwise. When they're outside the castle and settled squarely in the desolate, eerily empty town that Lucienne is quite certain must be deserted, the woman lightly rests a hand on the librarian's arm, seemingly taking care to avoid the worst of the bruises there, before she summons her magic to shift them from the realm.

When they arrive, Lucienne expects a grand entrance, a palace, a fantastical place the likes that magic wielders tend to keep, but they absurdly enough land before a rather ordinary looking house. It strikes her as something that might appear the Waking, with its white siding and large front porch. Trees sprawl around it lazily, leafed limbs drooping to the ground, colorful flowers blooming vibrant on the bushes around the perimeter of the house and fence. Lucienne glances around confusedly as the woman leads her up the stairs, inside the home, and to a kitchen. An exceedingly normal kitchen, she thinks. Light here filters in through the windows where shelves of herbs and plants soak up the sun. Another whole wall of the space is crammed with books, their leather spines carefully organized and obviously kept free of dust. Mouth-watering soup boils on the stove, and the scent of fresh bread pleasantly permeates the air, making her stomach twist in want for food.

"You can call me May," the woman supplies while she carefully helps Lucienne to a chair to sit, and even in the whirl of thoughts and emotions rushing through her mind, Lucienne has the distinct impression that May isn't this entity's true name. She recognizes, however, that she's really in no position to argue anyone over lying about such a thing at the moment, especially not this creature of power before her. "You're safe now."

Safe. That word. She wonders if she'll ever feel safe again, if she's even capable of doing so anymore. Having information might help her, given that there's a sort of protection in understanding the details of what exactly is happening around her, a protection that she sorely needs in this present situation to anchor her amidst the roiling storm of her own fear. Lucienne has a million questions on the tip of her tongue, waiting for her to voice them, and yet she doesn't speak. She's honestly not even sure if she can right now.

"Apologies it took so long. I didn't realize that they had you at first. When I was finally made aware, I had to wait overly long for an audience with that broveshne ."

Lucienne, despite all her knowledge, doesn't know what that word broveshne means, but May says it as if she would like to stab Hadrius with it, and it makes the librarian irrationally pleased.

The woman- May- goes on, "I thought we could change into something more comfortable, maybe wash up, and then eat? It's been a while since I was held captive, but I definitely recall the starving as being one of the worst parts."

Lucienne still doesn't speak, and her silence seems to trouble May, who crouches before her as one might a skittish animal, like she’s trying to make herself look as non threatening as possible. "You're really safe, sweetling. This isn’t a trick. We'll get you healed up, and then we'll go and fix the Dreaming until we can find the Dream King."

"The Dreaming?" Lucienne finally croaks a response out as if she's repeating a deity's name, reverent despite that her throat burns with the words, and May frowns at this.

May stands at once to pour a glass of water and then stoops before Lucienne again to offer it as she cautions, "Drink it slowly."

The coolness of the water in her mouth feels like the best comfort in the universe. It reminds her of her library, the smell of paper and ink, the creak of leather when she first opens a new tome, the crackle of the library fireplaces on colder days, the light shining in through thick-paned windows, and the plushness of the chairs dotted throughout its sections for reading. She gulps greedily of it until May tilts the glass away from her.

"I'm sorry," she says with a wince, "but you really will get sick if you drink it too quickly."

"I…. understand." Lucienne's voice is still rough, but it feels easier to speak, less painful, and for that she's grateful. How long had it been since she'd had water? Since she'd had anything on her raw throat save for screams? May hands her the glass back, and Lucienne focuses on taking small sips, not wanting this magnificent gift to be taken from her anew.

"I hope you like vegetable soup." May smiles at her and gets back to her feet from where she'd been sitting on her haunches in front of Lucienne. "I didn't know what you'd prefer, but most everyone will eat that, so I thought it the better choice."

"Vegetable soup is... fine."

"I know you have more questions, but lets get the filth of that place off of us, and then we'll eat and talk. I'll answer anything you ask then."

But Lucienne doesn't believe her. Not really. She wishes she could, despite that she's sure there has to be a catch in this exchange. What does this woman want of her? Why is she being so polite? So kind? It makes no sense, and to someone as logic oriented as Lucienne, that is horribly unsettling.

Nonetheless, she does as her rescuer suggests, and an hour later, they're both sitting at this odd woman's simple wood table, steaming bowls of soup and fresh bread and butter before them. Lucienne has to admit, she does feel better to have the stink of that place off of her. May had given her a pair of pants and a loose night shirt that feels as if it's made of the softest cotton lawn, and she smells of the lavender from the soap in her bath, with which she'd scrubbed the blood off of herself until she'd worried she might accidentally remove skin as she did so.

"Eat slowly," May warns, her voice threaded through with what Lucienne thinks is more kindness, a puzzling thing to hear even if May has been nothing but considerate to her so far. "The food will make you sicker than the water if you go too quickly."

The woman sounds not unlike she's giving advice from experience. She had said "since I was held captive" earlier, hadn't she? Lucienne stores that particular curiosity away for later, saving the question since it's not important, and she's expecting to have to wheedle and bargain for what she actually needs to know. When dealing with immortal creatures of magic, it's not unusual to have to barter a bit for answers.

"You know of the Dreaming?" Lucienne asks, preparing herself for a roundabout, useless reply the likes of which the Fates might provide.

May nods, surprisingly direct in her response as she blows at a spoonful of her soup to cool it off. "We came across a group of nightmares that were preying on humans. I couldn't figure out why your ruler was allowing them to roam free. He's usually much stricter with his creations, as I'm sure you're aware."

Ah, yes. Lucienne is aware of that. The Corinthian. Lord Morpheus had left to bring him back from the Waking, and he had not returned. As far as Lucienne knows, he still hasn't done so. "There were stray nightmares? And you... thought to inform him of this?"

"Not... quite. I honestly thought only to tell him to get them back in line, to curb their bloodlust or something." May, rather nonchalantly for an entity that's just admitted she'd wanted to chastise Dream of the Endless like he was no more than an errant, misbehaving child however long ago, takes a bite of her soup and gestures towards Lucienne's own as if she should do the same. "I went to the Dreaming to request an audience, but he wasn't there. It felt... strange, abandoned, as if he hadn't been there for a while. I even tried to summon him in all the old ways, but I couldn't get an answer." She huffs out a sigh. "I went to Destiny of the Endless after that and basically harassed him until he very begrudgingly told me that Dream was imprisoned by mortals and there I discovered your plight."

"How did you secure my release?" Memories flood Lucienne's mind then, recollections of pain, of torture and torment. Hadrius and his interrogation, his joy at seeing her cry, at hearing her scream, runs through her thoughts with all the force of a physical blow. Her fingers unconsciously brush over the branding mark that they'd burned into the back of her other hand, tracing the raised edges of it as she's done for years since being abducted from her home. It had been a soothing gesture then, one of the only things she'd been able to do in her efforts to ground herself in that hell.

Now, however, May narrows her eyes on the injury as if she's only now noticing it, and Lucienne is bewildered to see an expression of pity cross her features.

"I have compromising information on him," May supplies. "I very politely informed him that I was an emissary from the Dreaming, and that if he didn't hand you over I'd tell everyone what I knew." A faint smile turns her lips up. "Believe me, he doesn't want that to happen."

And May says it as if it was the easiest thing in all the worlds, as if decades of torture and pain and fear were as easy to end as a bit of blackmail and the word please.

"I had planned to get you healthy again, and once you're mended, I'll take you back to the Dreaming," she goes on. "I've already got my brother and his contacts looking into where your lord might be."

"He's been imprisoned?" Lucienne queries, her mind working more slowly than it should to parse out all that May is telling her freely, no persuasion or manipulation or cleverness needed. It's a drastic but welcome change from the usual immortals she deals with, and she is oddly grateful for it.

May nods again as she pushes Lucienne's bowl closer to her in what the librarian thinks is a more insistent gesture that she should eat. "By humans at that. I'm sure that's going to put him in a most charming mood when we finally get him out," she adds dryly, and Lucienne can't help the tiny smile she gives in return.

"And then?"

The woman huffs out a faint laugh, like she's amused. "Well, I suppose then he can finally take care of that nightmare problem, can't he? Goodness knows I'm getting tired of listening to my brother complain about having to do it."

Lucienne can't help her relief at this answer, at the effortless trust she seems to have for this entity. It might make her foolish, but for the first time in a long time, she feels hope swell in her heart for some reason, hope for the future, hope that maybe, just maybe, things might eventually be fine after all.

PRESENT DAY...

"My lord…." Lucienne's voice is hesitant, an oddity in and of itself.

Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, glances up at her from the leather-bound register he'd been going through and frowns. The dappled light filtering in from the windows behind him does little to mitigate the gloominess of his throne room, but he can easily see that his librarian is standing rigid in her usual place, her spine stiffened in a way that he thinks reminds him all too much of fear. As he studies her from where he sits, he takes note of her creased forehead, of her furrowed brow, of the vein in her neck that thumps furiously, far faster than it should. It is a strange thing to see her so clearly shaken, and he decides immediately that he does not care for it.

"We must… speak." Her words are halting, as if it takes some great feat of strength to force them from her mouth, and she looks so unsure of herself that he knows she must have something either important or catastrophic to tell him. Perhaps both. Carefully, he closes his book and places it on the pile he had been reading from, gathering from his librarian's apparent apprehension that she might require his full attention for whatever has happened. With an unusual feeling of alarm, he walks slowly down the steps of the tall dais until he's but a few paces from her.

"Very well," he grants, still regarding her curiously.

"Viego has been trying to contact you," is her reply, and he thinks he now understands why exactly she had seemed so reticent to begin this conversation.

Morpheus feels his face darken in warning, his whole body going taut with anger at the mention of this. That Viego, May's brother, has been trying to contact him is not unknown to the Endless. He's felt the pull from the summoning several times and resolutely ignored it. "Do not concern yourself with the makers," he growls out, and what he means is do not speak to me of anything to do with her, with my once betrothed.

Lucienne, however, only draws in a sharp breath, regret written plainly on her face. "I fear I must, my lord."

He's surprised, which seems a paltry descriptor for the magnitude of sheer shock that wells up within him. His librarian has always been unfailingly loyal, even in her early days when she was a wild raven that grappled with leaving her mortal life behind. To see her now disobeying him for that deceiver of a female sets his teeth on edge. Had his betrayer truly infected everything in his realm so thoroughly? Would the damage she wrought ever be completely purged from this place? He knows that Lucienne had been overly attached to her for some reason that he never did and still does not understand, but her first duty remains to him and the Dreaming.

Without waiting for a word from him, she continues on. "When you were first taken and bound by Roderick Burgess, I was captured by Hadrius of the Adirae," Lucienne admits with the slightest tremble in her tone, her eyes downcast as she relays this to him.

Morpheus stiffens in confusion, the words so unexpected that he's momentarily unable to parse what she's just said. How has he never heard of this? That his own librarian was taken by that monster and he had not known is wholly startling.

"Hadrius?" he repeats, almost hoping that perhaps he's misunderstood her. Morpheus will confess that he does not know much of that malevolent being, save that which he imagines everyone else does. Hadrius currently resides in a realm utterly destroyed by his own violent brutality, and he has existed for eons, possibly even longer than the Endless themselves have. But beyond that and the rumors which circulate every now and then, he is an enigma lost to time, a puzzle on the outskirts of reality that few have been brave enough to try and solve.

Lucienne nods and finally looks back up at him, a latent terror present in her expression that Morpheus has never seen from her before. "Some of his men abducted me outside the gates during your absence. They…. questioned me on various aspects of the Dreaming and details regarding its function, seeking secrets and information that I could not give them."

They had sought details of the Dreaming? Whatever for? Surely they could not be fool enough to step foot in his realm? Not with his power returned to him in full as it is now. He decides that he will mull over that later, however, believing it irrelevant to what Lucienne seems to be trying to tell him. He turns his attention to her anew, thinking over her words as he does.

The way she had said questioned tightens his chest in both pity and concern. He's heard gossip of the savagery displayed by that mysterious entity called Hadrius, heard the tales of him torturing his wife to death and burning his own children alive after a cruel imprisonment in the dungeons. He doesn't need her to tell him that her interrogation was likely painful, likely horrendous.

"You were hurt," he breathes out instead of voicing this, a fury rising in him at the thought of one of his own being treated thusly. He has a responsibility to them, he knows, and he fights the sudden urge to seek her captors out and violently rend them with his shadows for their trespass.

Lucienne nods again, and he thinks he sees a shine in her eyes, an uncharacteristic sheen of tears that threaten to collect and fall. "I was treated…. harshly. Over a decade into my captivity, she..."

Decade? While he had languished in Roderick Burgess' binding circle, she had been held and suffered likely unspeakable torment for over a decade? He thinks he should comfort her, should console her in some way. His hand twitches with the unfamiliar, nearly absurd impulse to rest on her shoulder, but she seems as if she's holding herself together by sheer willpower, and he fears that such a gesture, especially coming from him, might shatter the brittleness of her in this moment. "Yes? Go on."

"May... came and rescued me. She helped to heal me."

That name. Her name. It cuts through him with all the bite of a serrated blade.

"Why was I not told?" he demands sharply, fury coursing through him at both the mention of her and the audacity of that rat Hadrius for daring to abscond with, to hurt, his librarian.

"She wanted to, but I was…. uncomfortable with sharing such knowledge. She agreed that she would stay silent, and I could speak about it in my own time, when I was…. ready."

And while he is loathe to admit it, that seems something May would do if he's entirely honest, offering her unassuming help to Lucienne as she'd done for him. In a bittersweet way, he remembers how she had pestered him with her presence after he'd retrieved his tools from their scattered places in the Waking (likely knowing that he had to hate being alone after so much time spent in the complete isolation of that glass sphere). He remembers how she had taken to laying gentle hands on his arm (as if to give him the touch that he craved but didn't have the words to ask for). He remembers how she'd dragged him to the Waking to show him the kindness and goodness of the humans (to remind him not to narrow the entire world of their kind down to the hurt of his imprisonment and the evil of Roderick Burgess). He remembers her listening quietly as he'd told her everything he could one night while she'd pressed naked against him in the afterglow of their lovemaking, her hands stroking his chest, reaching for his hand, pressing kisses against the knuckles as she'd sought to calm him, to let him know that she was there for him. He remembers the way that he'd felt her love and had real hope for the first time in millennia that perhaps there was something more for him outside an existence merely lived for the sake of his function.

How utterly foolish he had been then. To believe he could ever be allowed to keep such happiness for his own when so often his history had demonstrated the exact opposite. Even now, the sting of his past idiocy burns his pride.

"And are you ready?" he questions, gentling his voice as he wills the memories of her away, unwilling to think overly about the taint of her deception on them at present. He focuses instead on Lucienne, his advisor, though he has never called her that to her face, never acknowledged her role in any formal capacity.

Her eyes burn at him, an odd intensity in them. "No, sir, but…. I must."

"You need not, Lucienne. I am quite willing to wait as long as you require until you are comfortable discussing this," he offers, still mindful to keep his tone low and soothing.

"Sir…. when we finally arrived back here, after she had nursed me back to health, the realm was already in decay. She…. put her magic into the Dreaming to keep it alive for the subjects. And then she threw herself into finding you, and finally…. into bringing you back here."

In an instant, his compassionate calm is no more. His jaw clenches so hard he'd break teeth were he a human. He hates being reminded of her rescue of him, no doubt an elaborate plot of one of his siblings. Desire, most likely. "I'm aware of both her efforts in the Dreaming and that she freed me, Lucienne. What point are you trying to make? That I owe her?"

"To remind you of all she has done for this realm. Her brother has been trying to contact you because she is in trouble. It's-"

"None of my concern," Morpheus bites out, finishing for her.

His librarian is clearly taken aback by his refusal. "But we… we have located her, and-" she tries again.

"You have been working with him? Against my express wishes to avoid involvement?" His interruption is one of shock. He had known that she was friendly with May, but to risk his wrath is uncharacteristically reckless of her.

"She is bound, sir, in a perfect copy of the binding circle that you were trapped in," Lucienne finally tells him, the admission spilling from her in a rush.

For a few moments, he's silent as he processes this.

"She is bound with her own spell?" he asks at last, intending the words to come out cruel, but instead his heart twists at the reality of her being bound as he had been, captive to the same nightmare she had saved him from, no matter her actual motives for freeing him.

"I remain convinced that this has little to do with me," he decides, something in him tugging unpleasantly at the thought of her in such danger, "but I will contact her brother immediately and assist however I am able."

He assumes this will assuage Lucienne, but the librarian only seems to grow tenser at his offer of help.

"Sir… she's held in the same binding circle that held you. The binding circle of an Endless," she repeats more slowly, as if there's something that she's trying to relay to him, but she can't quite muster up the words to speak it.

He frowns at her, not understanding what she could possibly be getting at, but the idea of that specific spell holding her is passing strange now that he thinks on it. His once betrothed is many things, but an Endless is assuredly not one of them.

"She's held by it because she carries a part of you inside of her, a part that is subject to the binding of an Endless."

It takes him several long moments to comprehend what she's conceivably telling him, and even then he's sure that he's misunderstood. He has to have misunderstood, because the alternative is nothing less than appalling. "You cannot mean that she is…" he trails off in something like horror.

"With child," Lucienne finishes for him, her words short and simple despite the enormity of their meaning and all the many ramifications inherent in them. "Yes."

Morpheus sits heavily on a step, feeling strangely as if his legs might give out from beneath him. Doubt, shock, dread, rage, and disbelief are but a few of the many emotions roiling through his mind. How could this have came to be? Neither his kind nor hers are given to accidental procreation, and they had taken steps to avoid such a thing. Now, however, he's learning that he'd likely left her with child, that he'd nearly...

His eyes squeeze shut for a moment, unwilling as he is to think on that. They had certainly not parted well, their relationship set aflame by her misdeeds and left as naught but ashes in the end. His love for her had been absolute, fierce, and with it his heart had been thoroughly broken. He’d thought that he had suffered all the pain he could from their fallout, but to know that she is currently trapped, his child growing inside of her, cuts at him in an all new way, something unfamiliar but gut-wrenching all the same.

Outside the palace it darkens. Thunder rolls loudly, and a bolt of lightning splits the sky of the Dreaming before a torrential downpour starts, all of this a sudden manifestation of his turmoil.

"How… long....?" He's unable to organize his thoughts, but his librarian's face softens as she seems to take mercy on him and starts answering the questions he cannot form or give voice to in the wake of this news.

"She's been held for six months at least, and…. we feared her dead for some of that time. Only recently Matthew was able to find her while he searched the Waking, and it... became very clear what had happened to her."

Feared her dead? They had thought her dead and never bothered to tell him? He is unsure as to why the possibility of that twists inside of him so sharply, why the possibility of her lifeless makes him feel almost ill.

"Is he... with her now?"

Lucienne nods in response, hesitation clear in the way she falteringly informs him, "Sir… it is…. You might not wish to witness what... what he is in this... exact moment."

"Matthew," Morpheus calls, never taking his eyes off of Lucienne, something like betrayal churning in his gut alongside his newfound fear for the female he had once offered to make his wife, his queen. Fear for her and... fear for the child she carries. His... His child.

"Hiya boss," the raven greets, his tone sounding unnaturally nervous and the reply delivered far too quickly for Morpheus to think he had not been waiting for this very summons.

"Show me," he commands tersely before he enters Matthew's mind, and he finds that he is wholly unprepared for the image that awaits him there.

(May is in the circle, completely stripped and nude as he had been when he was imprisoned, and he's... alarmed... by her state. She's a gaunt thing, all of her unnaturally bone thin in what he believes to be... starvation? Despite the large swell of her stomach where a child obviously rests, her ribs are plainly visible, the knots of her spine protruding far more than they should where she's curled on her side, and he knows with a sickening dread that withholding sustenance must have indeed been one of the tools of torture that her tormentors used on her. She appears ill, near death he'd even say, and Morpheus feels as if he could tear a world apart from the sheer wrathful anger that rises up in him with this horrific understanding.

Beside her, drawn in that same haunting gold that he'd looked upon for decades, is a duplicate of the binding spell that holds her.

"Call him." Her human captor snarls out his order, but May simply ignores him, staring off into the distance as if she's finally given up, her hopelessness a heartbreaking thing to see. Even through the thin slit of the window where the thick, black covering on it has peeled back very slightly, he thinks he can almost feel her despair as if it is his own. At Morpheus' bidding, his raven moves closer, and he observes with Matthew's eyes the presence of six long, ugly gashes that travel from her neck to the base of her back, all of them still sluggishly weeping blood. Rage, vengeful and all-consuming, takes hold of him then. What had been done to her? What terror had this monster dared to inflict on a woman weakened with child?

"Call him, and we'll let you go." The mortal tries to bargain, but May seems... suddenly animated at this. Sitting up slowly, tentatively as if she's in a great deal of pain, she flicks angry eyes up at him, a fury swirling in their depths that he's never seen from her before, that he didn't even know she was capable of. Her expression almost distracts him from the dark bruising on her cheek, the jagged cut above her left eye.

"It's not happening. No matter how many times you ask," she answers, glaring at her jailer.

"Then you'll die." May flinches when he says this. "You're not as sturdy as he is, are you? He lasted for thirty years and seemed like he could have gone on longer, but you….you're dying now." He grins sadistically at that, leaning closer to her after he brandishes a knife, a very familiar, very cursed knife. Morpheus remembers it being brutally pulled out of her back once, remembers the look on Roderick Burgess' face when he'd yanked it from her flesh while May had been in the process of rescuing Morpheus several decades ago. "I wonder if Dream of the Endless would come for his bastard sooner than you? If I were to cut it out, would that summon him here? If I were to make it cry? Make it scream?"

She draws in a trembling breath at the sight of the cursed blade before seemingly forcing herself steady again.

"He won't come for either of us," she tells him, her voice almost desolate in its quiet. "You've picked very poor bait, Alexander Burgess, and the stain of what you're doing will see you in Hell when Death arrives for you."

Alexander Burgess chuckles, a depraved sound that has her tensing as if waiting for a blow, as if she has received many blows from this mortal and can't help but to instinctively fear more. Instead, her captor brings the knife down hard right outside the circle, plunging it deep into something that Morpheus cannot quite make out, though May jerks away from the threatening gesture. She moves as far away from her abductor as she's seemingly able to, her body near enough to the golden sigils of the binding that she hisses when her hand gets to close. "Very well. I think next time I'll put it in your stomach. That thing's death might not make him come, but it might make you cooperate."

After he's left, the gate of the basement creaking and then slamming loudly behind him, May stares as if she's on alert for him to return and... and hurt her anew. Several minutes pass before shakily, she cradles the swell of her belly where the child grows, brushing trembling fingers there as if she's trying to soothe the baby, as if she's trying to reassure herself that its still there and safe. Her eyes well with tears, and she gives a small, almost silent sob that rends his heart to hear.)

Morpheus breaks off the connection, breathing raggedly. The ground outside trembles turbulently, the shudders of it stretching through the entirety of the realm. His stomach lurches, his panic an unfamiliar beast snapping violently inside of his very being while his shadows, the most nightmarish aspect of his power, chitter excitedly, ready to exact retribution for Alexander Burgess' offense, ready to savagely assist him in the undertaking he is soon to begin. Around him, a tense silence hangs heavy over the throne room as he forcibly gathers himself.

"Where is Viego Westin?" he demands of Lucienne when he finally calms the impossible, too-fast beat of his manifested heart. "I must speak with her brother immediately."

As a general rule, Viego Westin doesn't like to get involved with the Endless.

That's a completely fair stance, he thinks, given that him and his sister have survived for a hell of a long time on Earth by avoiding unnecessary attention, and those Endless bastards always seem to draw tons of that. Not that they can help it, really. They're concepts made flesh, the massive power of that jarring even to those who can't sense the magic behind it as he can.

When it had came to the Dreaming and its ruler, Viego had very much wanted to avoid getting mixed up in that too. After all, what did it have to do with him if some Endless was trapped in a binding circle? It's not like any of them would actually lift so much as an eyebrow to help him or May if the situation were reversed, but his sister, stubborn to a frustrating fault, had overruled him. In the countless millennia they've lived and coexisted and survived together, he's learned well the valuable lesson of choosing what battles to pick with her, and at the time it had honestly seemed harmless enough. Their checklist went: keep realm alive, rescue Emo Endless, and celebrate with something alcoholic.

Of course, now, in hindsight he wishes he had chosen to pick that particular battle.

Because the aftermath of it has… well, gone to absolute shit doesn't seem a strong enough way to describe how sideways it's all gone.

He'd known after her first decade in the Dreaming that May had went and fallen in love with that mopey bastard Dream. Granted, she hadn't actually told him that, not then and not for about seventy years after that, but Viego isn't an idiot. And he'd have to have been not to notice the tender, loving glances that Dream and May would share (okay… fine), or the way that Dream would sneak her away to somewhere hidden just so he could brush a kiss against her hand (which… sickly sweet enough to be nauseating but mostly tolerable), or the fact that Viego could smell the Endless on May sometimes (uncomfortably disgusting at the absolute least) in probably the clearest sign possible that the two of them had been doing the old devil's tango. Viego isn't a prude, not by any stretch of any imagination, but knowing that Dream had been defiling his sister had required a great deal of effort on his part to keep his mouth shut and his magic calmed and his temper firmly suppressed. Honestly, his first thought when May had at last told him they were to bond had been fucking finally.

Then she showed up eight months ago, and he felt all that restraint disappear, gone as an urge grew within him to march straight into the Dreaming and beat Dream bloody, Endless or no. His sister, worn and pale as a corpse at his front door, was hurt and exiled and terribly, terribly broken.

Oh, and pregnant. She was that too. Pregnant and unbonded , a death sentence for their kind, the very death sentence that had ended up destroying their own mother.

("You didn't even bond with him?" Viego breathed out incredulously when she revealed her pregnancy, stunned disbelief in his eyes at her uncharacteristic stupidity. She knew better. "May…. what in the hell were you thinking?"

"I was an idiot," May answered him, self-loathing clear in her tone, her eyes shining with tears as Viego led her to their kitchen table and ushered her into a seat there. "I thought…. I thought he actually loved me."

Fear twisting in his gut, Viego considered this. He'd had his fair share of arguments with sexual partners over the centuries, and May had never really done the serious thing with anyone before. He entertained the idea that perhaps she just didn't understand how such fights worked. "Maybe he does still. Maybe this is just a lover's spat-"

"He's banished me. I can't even get in touch with him to tell him about the baby," she informed him as she ran a shaking hand over the swell of her belly. "He wouldn't even listen… didn't even give me a chance to… I don't even... don't even know if I could have told him, if I could have explained it..."

Viego studied her then, and worry crept over him at how very off she sounded in her distress, how very... fragile she appeared in her grief. "Explain what, sis?"

She was silent for several minutes, her jaw clenching, her eyes watering even more as she stared over at a row of cabinets along the farthest wall, seemingly scrutinizing the knots and divots in the glossy wood grain of them.

And then as if a spell was broken, May snapped. "About the stupid book," she bit out as she got to her feet and began pacing. "About that stupid grimoire and that stupid spell."

Viego frowned in confusion and felt utterly unable to make sense of what exactly she was telling him. "He's mad about that? You were a child. Did you tell him that you were a child?"

"Are you listening? He didn't even let me try. He just banished me because I had lied, because... I couldn't admit to him what I had done, what had been done to me. He didn't even let me say goodbye… to.... oh... Lucienne." At that name, May seemed to realize the totality of her loss, seemed to realize that she would not see her friends again. She sunk to the ground, stricken anew while she held herself tightly, and Viego knew that she was mourning those that she had been forever cut off from. His sister had always gotten too attached, after all, and he was under no delusions that she hadn't went and done the same thing this time as well.

But Viego was a hundred percent sure then that he would do anything, give or take or kill whatever the universe required, to never hear that broken, desperate sobbing come from his sister again. She was a hollowed out thing, her heart fractured before his very eyes, and Viego did not hesitate to wrap his arms around her.

"Shh," he soothed as best he could, keeping silent on her trauma. Comfort wasn't really his thing. In truth, Viego had always been more hard edges than anything else, even before he had been shaped and molded as a killer, as a being who enjoyed the destruction at the end of everything. With his sister in his hold, he struggled to remember real genuine softness, the kind she needed as she broke apart in his arms. The solace of it was the least she deserved from him.

He remembered the innocent, smiling girl she once was, when they were but children and the stain of power (or what some beings would do for said power) hadn't yet caused them any harm. She'd told him then that kindness wasn't weakness, and even as a youth he'd thought her foolish for it. It would be such a short time for him to be proven right, for the both of them to discover that kindness might not be a weakness, but it was definitely a luxury. One that was best left to happy moments and situations where they weren't being beaten and tortured and slowly starved to death in a dank dungeon.

Too much like their mother, May had still tried to be kind anyway even there in that hellhole, even as a mere child suffering brutally under the order of those who should have seen to her safety. There had been other magic users in that place, chained up and drained, hurt severely, and his sister- willful and loving and stubborn to a fault- had tried to keep them as comfortable as she could, whispering stories and humming little tunes and asking about their lives. She'd tried to give them hope enough to make the inevitable dying as peaceful as it could be.

May had comforted him too, more than even she could ever know. She'd treated his wounds as best she was able and held his hands (the only part of him he could bear to have touched) while he almost bled out in the aftermath of one of the guards deciding he had liked the look of an attractive boy, which Viego very much had been. He had found out the next time it happened (guards chatting idly by while that sadistic fuck tore him apart from the inside out again) that they'd been hurting her like that too, that she hadn't said a thing to him about it, and he had wondered why. Had she been protecting him? Sparing him? When they'd finally thrown him back in his cell, bleeding and burning in shame, he had let his little sister hold him and sob against his broken body, giving him all the solace she had left to give because he'd finally understood then that giving peace helped her find her own in some way.

The damage of that time, Viego knew as he held his sobbing sister in the circle of his arms, was carved deep into their very souls, impossible to ever completely ignore. Even sweet, loving May had ended up changed before they'd gotten free of that place, but Viego tried not to think of that for the moment. Instead, he focused on her clinging to him all those thousands of years ago in their mutual pain and fear, used the memory as a guidepost of sorts to remember kindness when all of him thrummed with the need to find Dream of the Endless and unmake him for this offense.

On the tiled floor of his kitchen, he tautened his hold around her, the hard swell of her belly between them as he brought his hand up to the back of her head, stroking her hair carefully as if she were frail enough that he might accidentally turn her to dust with just his embrace.

"Shh, sis. We'll muddle through. We always have," he offered soothingly, "and you'll be a mother. Imagine that. You've always wanted children."

The truth, though he found himself unable to speak it aloud, was that she might not live long enough for that. Makers like her needed a bond to survive bearing. The lack of one had been the very thing that killed their own mother in the end, so Viego knew that May was probably aware of just how much danger she was in, of just how much danger Dream had left her in. His anger rose inside of him, and he quickly squashed it back down, choosing to focus instead on that dim, barely-there love inside of him as he wielded it clumsily to give her… well, hope.

The Endless, he knew, could be handled later. Or so he thought.)

His sister was with him for almost a month, and he'd known her so well before, the countless millennia making every beat of her heart as familiar to him as his own, that the new changes had been… difficult for him, for them both. May had been many things in their many long years of sharing a home but never… pregnant . She slept a ton and vomited almost constantly and cried sometimes for no real reason that he could actually understand. They fussed and bickered as siblings of any age tend to do, worked together to come up with a solution to her bond dilemma, and then with that finished and behind them, they thought to settle in for the little one to arrive.

Until May woke one morning, put off by the lack of decent food in his house. The baby growing inside of her made her equally nauseous and hungry in sporadic turns like a light flickering on and off after a toddler has figured out how fun it can be to flip the wall switch, and Viego learned very quickly that he should keep his mouth shut no matter what horrendous concoction she consumed in an attempt to appease the baby she was busy growing. She told him around lunch time that she was going on a supply run, gave him a quick hug, grabbed her keys, and then….

And then never returned.

Frantically, he searched. Despite his disdain of the Endless fucker who'd shattered his little sister's heart, Viego wasn't too proud to beg. And beg he certainly had. As soon as the pulse of May's life disappeared from the edge of his awareness (an occurrence that hadn't even happened once during her near century in the Dreaming), Viego swallowed whatever pride he might have had left and started summoning the King of Dreams. He tried with blood and fire and burning his damn name in the old ways, but the bastard refused to answer. It was the librarian who finally reached out to him, none other than the Lucienne that May had been so heartbroken over losing, and he wasted no time in telling her what had happened, relieved when she seemed appropriately anxious about the news. She sent him rarer magical texts from the Dreaming library with a multitude of locating rituals that he cast to no avail, and eventually Lucienne, more worried than Viego would have expected given who her boss was, made the call to send a raven out to search for May.

Weeks later, when the raven shows up at his window, Viego feels as if he might weep with relief at the prospect of news. He rushes to undo the latch and let the little guy in, but he doesn’t get the chance before something... changes. A heaviness filters through the air as his senses start to alarmingly burn. The magic of his house seems to swell and twist uncomfortably, bursting with a loud pop in his magic sense that only recedes with the arrival of none other than the Endless he most wants to punch in the face.

"Fucking finally," he bites out at Dream, hiding his astonishment at his appearance. With how callously he had discarded May, Viego hadn't thought the Dream King cared enough to actually get involved in this. "You took your time showing up, didn't you?"

"I know where she is being held," Dream tells him stiffly, an expression of cold impassivity on his pasty face as he blatantly ignores the crude barbs in Viegos' words.

Rage drains from Viego, and determined resolution takes its place. If the brooding bastard is going to provide him information, Viego can stow his own shit until later.

"Where?" Viego demands roughly, grabbing a dirty duffel off of his table as he starts to rummage around and pack it with things they might need. He's never been a boy scout (since they were after his time by thousand upon thousand of years and all), but he knows the value in being prepared, especially given that May could be hurt. Two knives, a regular first aid kit, a magical first aid kit, three waters, and a couple of protein bars all make their way into the bag.

"Fawney Rig."

That damn place? Viego stops from his packing, a blanket still clutched in his hand, and stares at Dream. His gut contorts in apprehension as he asks, "What the hell is she doing there?"

He just knows that he's not going to like any answer that comes out of Dream's mouth.

"Her captors," the Endless supplies tonelessly, "are attempting to lure me into another binding circle."

"Of course," Viego scoffs derisively. "You ever notice that a lot of her suffering these days has to do with you?" There's a caustic spite that's painfully clear in his tone as he finally shoves the blanket into the bag and roughly zips it shut.

Those words get a reaction. Dream's marble countenance tightens as he glares at Viego, but he does not meet the scorn with an actual answer. Viego thinks that him not defending himself is a tell in and of itself. "Will we require subterfuge to enter as you and she did last time?" the Endless questions, his voice even enough despite that Viego can sense he's anything but truly calm.

Viego's own fury, always a carefully tended magical fire, expands and rises to the surface. The heat of it blazes just under his skin, ready and willing to destroy, to kill, to see all of May's captors in flame. His darkness chitters in glee, in anticipation. "No," he growls. "We'll blast our way in."

The Dream King nods in concurrence, his sand already rippling through the reality of where they're at, and there's a low thrum of violence from the Endless. Which is... good, in Viego's humble opinion. They don't really know what they're walking into, either of them, and there's no telling how much rending they'll have to do to secure May's freedom. A pissed off anthropomorphic personification might be just the thing to sway any fight in their favor. Viego slings the bag over his shoulder and grits his teeth before the power swells and bursts, chucking them out before the nightmare that is Fawney Rig.

NEXT CHAPTER

#sandman fic #morpheus x oc #sandman fanfiction #morpheus fanfiction #dream of the endless #morpheus fic #sandman oc #PreciousFragileThings #morpheus x pregnant oc #morpheus as a father #dad!morpheus #morpheus x reader

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rosedragonblast · 2 years ago

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Zag and Melinoë fanfiction

Some people related somehow to my previous post so, inspired by this, here ya go. My interpretation of Melinoë meeting Cerberus.

I feel like Mel has to, at some point, meet her brother's favourite boi. Also, if you consider how much she cares about saving her father, making it her life goal, Mel will definitely like something that calms her father and loves Hades in general.

***

— Are you sure he is NOT going to eat me?

— Being completely honest, — Zag turns to his sister, calming the giant three-headed hound of hell. — I am not.

— And you could not have said it sooner?

Mel signs in distress, preparing herself for yet another death. She cautiously approaches the beast, holding sickle in her right hand.

Cerberus, seeing a new face, growls at first. His fur faces upwards, turn into protective expressions. He sniffes the air, trying to identify the stranger. His heads suddenly turn silent, as he starts to recognize a familiar feeling to someone who stands before him.

Unlike many souls devoured previously by the infamous hellhound, Melinoë gets an unexpected treatment.

Cerberus leans in, reassuring himself. Catching glimpses of pomegranate, dead stench and a pleasant energy of River Styx, he calms himself, turning Melinoë's hair into a giant mess of a hairstyle with one single lick of his fiery tongue.

— Hey! That's disgusting!

Until Mel can even think about cleaning herself, she finds her own body at the mercy of a red fluffy guardian of the hellgates, getting licks from all sides at ones.

— Cerberus, stop!

Melinoë tries to sound serious, but her voice quickly turns to laughter. She surrenders to the tingling sensation.

— That tickles!

Looking at his sister under attack of the pet of the Underworld, Zagreus starts laughing as well, falling to the ground near the giant paw of the dog. Mel follows shortly, trying to catch her breath.

Cerberus pays close attention, asking for more pets with his giant puppy eyes.

— You are one needy old dog, boy.

Zag reaches out and pets the left head. Guard dog finally leaves siblings alone, for the time being, letting them rest at his feet.

— See? I told you he is great! By the way, he never lets me touch his other heads. You must be the chosen one, Mel.

— Shut up Zag.

Melinoë pushes her brother with her leg, trying to get more comfortable. They fight a little, until Zagreus finally lets his sister go, when she rests her head on his chest, listening to the breaf sound of his and Cerberus' hearts.

#hades game #melinoë #hades ii #zagreus #hades supergiant #fanfic #hades #big brother zag #cerberus

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yuriko-mukami · 2 years ago

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His Possession Dark 03

After tossing and turning for a couple of hours in her bed Yuriko sat up and sighed. It was a night between Saturday and Sunday, and she had no idea what time it was, but sleeping was impossible. The first weeks of school had been nothing but a nightmare ever since Ruki had taken an interest in her. The vampire took her blood whenever he wanted and if Yuriko’s father had spent time at home, he would have seen the results of that treatment.

But once again, Tsukino Keisuke was away from home even on a weekend. Once again, he was busy with his work. It was nothing new, yet the emptiness was deeper year by year.

Yuriko brushed the thoughts aside and rolled out from the bed. She changed into her training clothes and wandered to the entrance hall. Soon she was out and jogging towards the nearby park. In the middle of the night. Never had she done such a thing, but it seemed that entering the night school had changed her shaky sleeping schedule even worse than before.

As her feet beat the ground Yuriko ran through the park. The path continued to the forest she hadn’t visited earlier, and she let her legs carry her there. No matter how fast she ran, the squeezing feeling didn’t leave her heart and the thoughts of cold steel-blue eyes refused to depart from her mind.

I don’t want to think about Ruki. Weekends are my freedom he can’t ruin… This is my time, and I should enjoy this. Haah, but it feels like I’m not in as good shape as earlier… Why am I this tired?

Yuriko slowed down a little, her breathing dragging. Back in her former home, she used to go jogging three to five times a week but ever since she had started in this new school her last good habits had been distilled into the sewer. And now Yuriko felt lightheaded just from a little running.

Maybe it is because of blood loss…

Yuriko sighed as she continued jogging at a slower pace. A few drops of sweat slithered down her nape and assimilated in her hoodie. The night was silent and surprisingly pleasant. While the city was busy all around the clock this forest was different, as if Yuriko had entered another realm. Even the air felt distinct as she bounced further. She realized that the path had changed narrower and the trees around were taller than the ones closer to the park. Maybe it should have bothered her, but the strange tranquility was rooted within her.

The air felt peculiarly crisp for spring, but Yuriko kept going. This was better than lying on the bed unable to sleep. At least now her muscles had something to do, so maybe she would be tired enough when she would get back home.

Suddenly a metallic smell lingered on Yuriko��s nose. She stopped and sniffed around, her stomach curling. There had been a time she wouldn’t have recognized this smell instantly, but those days were far behind. Someone was bleeding, and not far from her. Yuriko looked around and tried to see behind the bushes. She left the path and wandered between trees, following her nose.

When Yuriko stepped further, she gasped. Someone was lying on the ground, his clothes stained with blood. Yuriko hurried towards him even though shivers went through her body. First the vampires, now this… or was this because of the vampires? Maybe one of them had attacked the young man who looked almost dead.

“Umh… are you… are you alright?” The words slipped from Yuriko’s lips, yet instantly she realized how stupid they were. Of course, the young man wasn’t alright; he must have been badly injured and barely breathing by the look of him. His jacket was full of bloodstains that were still growing.

Not caring what was on the ground, Yuriko crouched down and touched the sleeve of the young man’s jacket carefully. He had light spiky hair but the most peculiar thing about him was that he wore glasses and an eye pad. His only visible eye had a warm golden color, yet now it was glass-like and hazy, perhaps because of the pain.

Yuriko pushed her rising quivering aside and stroked his arm, asking: “Can… can I help you?”

“I - I don’t usually ask this but he-help me…” the young man muttered, and Yuriko couldn’t help noticing that even his lips were bloody.

“Oh my gosh! This looks really bad!” Yuriko blurted, instantly regretting her words. “Umh… I’ll help you. Please, talk to me. Where do you hurt the most?”

Yuriko raised her hand slowly and touched the young man’s forehead. It radiated cold against her palm.

He must have lost a lot of blood! Maybe he is even in shock! I… I don’t know anything about first aid, but I must do something!

“I should call an ambulance!” Yuriko said and fumbled in the pocket of her hoodie for her phone.

“H-hospital won’t help me... I am a Founder…” the young man muttered. “I know you know about vampires, just find a wolf, and bring him to me... I am too weak to call them.”

A founder? The term was unfamiliar to Yuriko, but a cold lump dropped into her stomach when the young man mentioned the vampires. Yet she pushed the feeling away and tried to understand what was expected from her. She blinked as she realized that the young man had asked for a wolf.

How am I supposed to ask a wolf to come with me… or even find one? Are there even wolves in this part of the country? she pondered. But the young man was serious. He had no reason to joke around, not in the state he was in.

“Take… this. Let the wolf smell it,” the founder said. A tearing sound reached Yuriko’s ear as he ripped a shred off his already torn shirt and held it out for her with a shaky hand.

“I… I’ll do my best,” Yuriko replied, taking the piece of fabric, as she stood up and looked around her before running back to the forest.

While running around, Yuriko's thoughts jumped wildly. Ruki was a vampire and this young man… a founder. A founder of what? And how come he knew that Yuriko knew about the vampires? She couldn’t recall ever seeing the male before, but he had looked young enough to be a student. Maybe he knew Ruki.

Yuriko almost tripped as she ran through the forest, her heart jumping at the pace of her busy legs. A wolf! She needed a wolf, and the mere thought was enough to raise goosebumps on her skin. It would have been easier to turn around and run back home, but Yuriko knew that she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she left someone bleeding in the forest. So, she ran, ran, and ran, looking around her hoping to see any kind of sign of wolves… though she didn’t have a clue what that sign could even be.

Suddenly Yuriko stepped into a small clearing. Her eyes were glued to the animal that stood in the middle of it, majestic and noble with its fur that danced slightly in the night wind. The eyes of the beast met hers as if they were penetrating her mind, seeing every thought that had ever crossed there.

"Umh… hello… wolf?" Yuriko whispered with a quailing voice between shallow breaths. I must do this; it is the right thing. "Eh… Please, come with me. There is a person… who needs you."

Yuriko stepped a little closer, pushing the fabric towards the wolf, her whole body shaking. Never had she approached a wild animal like this, and every nerve in her body told her to run. If only she could have but an image of a bleeding young man returned to her mind. She had no other option than try to make the wolf come with her.

I must be crazy… A normal person would have called for that ambulance, not gone looking for a wolf. What is wrong with me these days?

There was a slight movement in the golden eyes of the beast, almost an unnoticeable change. As the wind's direction shifted it pushed a musky, animalistic scent toward Yuriko’s face, raising the hair of her arms. Wolf threaded closer, sniffing the fabric. Yuriko started to back off slowly, now keeping her gaze down, not wanting to give a reason for the wolf to attack.

Walking backward, Yuriko left the clearing. It took a long time until she was brave enough to turn around and walk normally, and soon she heard the paws following her. Tickling went up and down her spine, yet she didn’t stop nor turn around but continued trailing her way back to the bleeding young man.

To Yuriko’s surprise, the wolf soon took the lead, and she didn’t need to do anything but follow it back to the young man, the founder. As the wolf reached him it howled. Yuriko froze in place, almost forgetting how to breathe as wolves started to gather everywhere, circling the founder and her.

"Thanks… I will never forget this," the founder said.

Yuriko was unable to even mutter any words out loud. Instead, she started to take tiny steps backward until she was so far away that she couldn’t see the founder or the wolves anymore. Only then did she turn around and begin to run again and she didn’t stop until she reached the front door of her home on the fourth floor of an apartment building.

This isn't a normal city. Vampires and founders… Is there something else too? And how am I supposed to survive in the middle of all this?

After getting back to bed Yuriko stared at the ceiling, mind still whirling from what had gone through in the forest. Has the founder survived? Should she have stayed? Now she had no way of knowing, and she hadn’t even asked his name.

Sighing, Yuriko turned to her side and grabbed the plush fox she kept on her bed. The founder had known her connection to the vampires, so he was probably from the school.

I should search him out and check if he is alright. But he was in such bad shape that he probably won’t be in school on Monday… at least I wouldn’t if that happened to me…

Turning again, Yuriko finally closed her eyes. She had so many questions and so few answers. In this short time, her life had taken a turnaround she hadn’t expected at all. Yet she didn’t want to go back to her earlier life. Was this better? Yuriko couldn’t tell but at least everything kept her mind busy, and her only bully was a vampire who craved her blood. It wasn’t something she had asked for herself but, to be honest, it beat being hated by everyone.

Maybe I can make sense of this eventually…

Yuriko started slowly to drift off, her eyelids finally closing and her muscles relaxing.

And soon Yuriko was back in the forest. A familiar scent of undergrowth hit her nose instantly; she sniffed the ground and smelled something else. The white one had been here. Even though Yuriko had gotten scared the last time she started to run, her paws hit the leaves on the forest floor at a fast pace.

Being so many times in this same forest, it didn’t take long for Yuriko to find her way to the cliff. The white one was sitting on the edge of it, gazing at the moonless sky but they turned around and stared straight at Yuriko with their golden eyes.

"So, you finally came back," they said. "I tried to draw here a couple of times but you… resisted. What's different now?"

"I… I guess… I got curious,” Yuriko replied, wondering why she had indeed found herself here now. Maybe she had gotten tired of avoiding her comfort place even though it had changed a bit now. Everything was shifting around her, it seemed.

"I could say the same. It's getting easier to talk with you. After all these years it's a bit odd."

Yuriko nodded. It was weird to be able to talk with a fox… even though she also was one in this dream.

"But you've been having other dreams lately. Do they have anything to do with reality?" the white one asked.

Yuriko stared down at the dark forest and at the river that curled behind the trees. She did not answer… but she couldn't push her thoughts away. Ruki seemed to be everywhere. She couldn't avoid him at school, and she couldn't avoid him in her dreams. It was either Ruki or this forest. And now that founder… but Yuriko couldn’t quite put her experience into words. It wasn’t something she was comfortable sharing with anyone.

"He's been sucking your blood, isn't he? The vampire."

The question made Yuriko jump. She looked at the white one who was glaring at her with piercing eyes.

"You have to get rid of him," the white one continued when Yuriko didn’t answer. "He will become addicted soon and then it's even harder to avoid him."

"Addicted?"

"To your blood. It’s addictive and intoxicating for vampires."

Yuriko stayed quiet. Ruki had told her that her blood was sweet. They hadn’t been talking much and mostly Yuriko had tried to keep her distance, not that it helped, especially now when she needed to do the literature project with him.

"I'm doing my best," she said. “But how do you know?”

“The right question is how you don’t know,” the white one said. “It’s important to know what you are up against. Be careful and avoid the vampires… and while you are at it, I would avoid any other kind of demons too. You don’t want them to notice you since you are living your comfortable life in the world of humans.”

Demons? Yuriko shifted and finally sat down next to the white one, curling her tail around her paws as if she wanted to keep them warm. Was this dream only her imagination? It had been so comforting but now the white one didn’t offer comfort but scary images.

“Who are you exactly?” Yuriko asked.

The white one looked at Yuriko sideways. It was impossible to read their face, impossible to know if they were being honest or not. But on the other hand, they were a fox that had kept her company for years now. Until recently they hadn’t been able to talk but now was Yuriko’s chance to get answers.

“That’s right,” the white one said. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell my name last time. I’m Yuuto.”

Yuriko nodded. So, the white one was a boy… or a man. It was impossible to tell his age only by looking at him. Yuriko sighed, wondering if she should only tell her first name or the last name too. Maybe foxes only had given names but with humans that was different.

“I know your name, Yuriko,” Yuuto said. He wagged his both tails as a smirk rose on his foxy face. “Don’t look at me like that. I can hear your every thought when we are here in the In-between. This is my dream realm I created just for us years ago.”

“But why?”

“Because I wanted to spend time with my little sister,” Yuuto replied.

Yuriko’s heart skipped a beat, and she darted to her paws, mouth hanging open for a moment.

“I… I don’t have a brother!”

Now it was Yuuto’s turn to sigh as he lay down on the ground. “Of course, they didn’t tell you… our parents. Ask Father. See if he lies to you or if he tells the truth.”

“He isn’t around that much. I barely see him…” Yuriko mumbled, staring at Yuuto. Was that a lie? “I’m sorry… This is… too much. I can’t take this right now. There have been so many things going on… I just… I can’t!”

Yuriko turned her tail and ran. Again, she left Yuuto alone on the edge of the cliff.

Beta read by @ruki-mukami-dl

#yuriko tsukino #yuriko's story

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