#Sid is no longer alone in this world

[blue-iced-tea]

OK FORGET DEPRESSION—

MY CRUSTY TRI-COLORED CALCITE CAR!!!!!

(call her Callie for short)

Aww my baby girl (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

She got attacked by Sid help—

My mom tried her best to clean her up but the eye boogers are hard to remove huhu poor bb (⁠｡⁠•́⁠︿⁠•̀⁠｡⁠)

[taexual]

sleepwalking ● 14 | jjk

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader

summary: due to unfortunate circumstances, you ended up managing your ex-boyfriend’s band. you thought you’ve both made peace with it, but suddenly he’s very eager to prove to you that first love never dies.

genre: rockstar!jungkook / exes to lovers

warnings: explicit language, risky motorcycle ride? (idk nothing bad happens but always wear helmets, friends), some fun flirting & jokes, but mostly ANGST AND PAIN (including explicit descriptions of very intense anxiety at the very end)

words: 12.3k

read from the beginning ○ masterlist

chapter 14 ► this isn't over 'til we talk in the light, said i was sober, but you knew that i lied

In the lounge area outside the changing rooms of “013” in Tilburg, Jungkook was engaged in a very intense game of table tennis against Seokjin—and winning, even though Seokjin would have disagreed—when you entered to inform the band that they were going on stage in twenty minutes.

The game wrapped up as the members began to stretch while simultaneously accosting Jimin about their in-ears. There were never any serious issues – Jimin made sure he was the Sound Technician of the Year –  but they enjoyed seeing him panic when everyone started moaning, “could you turn the backtrack up a bit?” or “I literally can’t hear myself.” This last one was Taehyung’s favourite, until Jimin started retorting with, “well, maybe you’re deaf,” and then continuing with his day.

The pre-show ritual was always chaotic, but it was endearing chaos, full of nervous laughter and sparkling eyes as the members of Rated Riot prepared for their performance.

Then, just as Jungkook left the dressing room, putting his own in-ears back in, he turned the corner and almost collided with Sid, who looked more than pleased when Jungkook took a surprised step back.

What an absolute eye-sore, Jungkook thought. As the tour went on, he began to understand your aversion to his friends better.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and it sounded like he wasn’t just asking about Sid being in this room. He was questioning Sid’s constant presence on this tour. Surely, with Jungkook no longer participating in his little games, he had to get bored and go back home.

The past few weeks have taught Jungkook that some friendships had an expiration date, and sometimes stupid bets accelerated that process. He was okay with that now—he realised that holding onto Sid would be much worse than being left alone.

“Just came to wish you luck before the show,” said Sid, who had never genuinely wished anyone luck before. “We’re here if you want to talk.”

Jungkook frowned and glanced at Minjun—who stood further away from the rest of their friends, and rolled his eyes—then he looked back at Sid.

“I’m good,” he said slowly and cautiously as if Sid was a snake that attacked when it sensed defiance.

Just when Jungkook thought he was safe and tried to walk away, Sid’s saccharine voice—the venomous kind—called out, “don’t forget we’re going out racing tonight!”

Jungkook stopped and turned to him again. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Don’t be like that,” Sid taunted. “This could be your chance to practise riding a rental since it seems like you’re going to lose your bike in five—”

“You really don’t have anything better to do, do you?” Jungkook interrupted. Maybe it was the pre-show adrenaline or maybe he had finally grown tired of Sid’s bullshit, but he added, “I feel sorry for you.”

Sneering because people felt many things for him – mostly contempt – but pity wasn’t one of them, Sid leaned in closer. It was a tactic that Jungkook had already grown immune to, but Sid was a creature of habit.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he hissed, not bothered by the emptiness in Jungkook’s stare. “See you later.”

“You won’t,” Jungkook asserted. “I’m not going out with you. This is all over, including the bet.”

Sid raised his eyebrows. With a very specific sense of justice that no one else in this hallway—or in this world—possessed, he declared, “I get the Katana, then.”

There was something questioning about his tone, however. As if he needed Jungkook’s confirmation that he did indeed lose this bet to Sid.

But Jungkook was firm: “You don’t.”

Sid threw his head back and scoffed with an exasperation that could have put a two-year-old to shame. “Well, then neither do you!”

“That’s fine,” Jungkook said. “Minjun can keep it.”

As Sid huffed and growled in frustration, Jungkook looked at his friend again. Minjun seemed about ready to interject—he was the one person here who did not want the bike and, in fact, wished it did not exist at all—but Sid finally found his words.

“You think Minjun can—the bike is mine,” he insisted. “I won—”

“Sid, you don’t give two shits about the fucking bike,” Jungkook cut him off, very tired of the repetitive argument. “Get over it.”

The conversation with Taehyung at Hoseok’s party weighed heavily on Jungkook’s mind. He knew he had bigger things to worry about right now—forget losing the bike. He might lose you.

In his usual dignified manner—so, not dignified at all—Sid rolled his eyes and snarled, “I agreed to bet on it, didn’t I? Obviously, I do give a shit.”

“No,” Jungkook said. “You give a shit about winning. But it’s over. We’re not doing this anymore. Deal with it.”

There was a redness on Sid’s face that hadn’t been there before. A week ago, Jungkook would have been excited to see it—it would have certainly meant a point in his favour. Now, he didn’t want to see Sid’s face at all.

“It’s not over,” Sid argued, persistent like a fly that keeps hitting the glass of a window. “There’s still five days left.”

“Five days until what?”

Four heads whipped around to see you standing at the end of the hallway, confused by the snippet of conversation that you’d overheard. You had returned to find Jungkook because the rest of the band was already pacing – or, in Hoseok’s case, doing restless sit-ups – by the side of the stage.

Jungkook, Sid, Jude, and Minjun stared at you with eyes so bright and wide that they could have guided ships off the coast.

You’ve never met four boys who looked more stunned to see you. It was as if you had accidentally stumbled into the latest concert of the Masculine Ritual, Absolutely No Femininity Allowed, God Forbid Someone Who Identifies as Female Enters The Room tour, and they could not believe this was happening.

“Uh,” Jungkook was the first to react as he immediately approached you. “I’ll tell you later. They’re just excited about, uh, London.”

You did the mental calculations while Jungkook gently squeezed your shoulder to turn you around and steer you away from his friends and towards the stage.

The London show really was more or less in five days, so you decided not to question that part. But the quick pace at which Jungkook was pulling you away from the others still unsettled you.

As you turned a corner, you looked back and saw Sid frowning at you, while Minjun—as usual lately—looked like he regretted being born, and Jude—as usual always—was picking his fingernails.

“Is Sid in one of his chaotic moods again?” you asked as you walked—nearly ran, actually, with the way Jungkook was pulling you. “Should I be concerned?”

“No, no. Everything’s fine,” he assured with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He’s just… doing Sid things. You know. Nothing to worry about as long as—well, as long as you don’t get in his way. I have everything under control.”

Your primary goal on this tour was to stay out of Sid’s way as long as he stayed out of yours. But now was not the time to discuss it, because Rated Riot had three minutes until their performance.

“Alright, then,” you said. “Leave me out of it and we’re good.”

Jungkook coughed in response and stopped once you reached the other members of the band. You thought you saw Taehyung raise his eyebrows when Jungkook took his hand off your shoulders, but maybe you were just imagining it.

You turned to the rest of the band, all of whom looked pale and fidgety and unsure.

The speakers had malfunctioned during the soundcheck earlier, so Jimin and Seokjin had to cut it short to fix the problem. Naturally, the disruption of their usual routine made the band anxious. The table tennis match between Seokjin and Jungkook—arguably the most unhinged members of the team when it came to games—had distracted everyone, but now they returned to the unpleasant arms of anxiety.

“Come on,” you said, trying to sound more energetic than you were feeling. “Stop looking like you’re going to get hanged. You’ll do fantastic out there. Go and have fun. And don’t bother coming backstage until you’re drenched and the crowd won’t stop changing your names. I mean it.”

Finally, a small smile appeared on Yoongi’s face as he rolled up one of his pant legs—for no reason other than he thought it looked cool. Honestly, it worked for him.

“Why did that last part sound like a threat?” he quipped, standing up straight.

“Because it is,” you replied. When you turned to Jungkook, he had his eyebrows furrowed as if he was still worried about something, but he started to smile as soon as he felt your gaze. You added, “I’ll be out there watching you. Kick some ass.”

You high-fived all four of them and pulled back as the boys erupted battle cries and huddled together before taking the stage.

They were still nervous, but they had you and each other, and there was a room full of people excited to see them perform. This was supposed to be just another day at the office.

Smiling, you headed back to your usual spot by the stage where Luna was chatting with a few girls at the barricade, and Maggie was snapping pictures of the audience nearby.

It occurred to you while standing there, that you were thousands of kilometres away from your house, away from everything familiar. But with Rated Riot on stage, and Luna and Maggie by your side, you felt right at home.

There was nothing you wished more than to stay like this forever.

It was an unwritten law that touring with a rock band was fun, but quickly turned very hectic. Insomnia often became an unwelcome friend—especially for the members of the band who had fashionable bags under their eyes almost every day. But when they were on stage or meeting their fans after the show, they looked alive. They looked happy.

And the more drinks they had after the concert, the more that happiness seemed to grow.

“You know what I think?” Yoongi said on the couch in the dressing room where everyone had gathered after the show. He was tipsy as he swung the green Heineken bottle around, nearly splashing you and Namjoon as you sat on either side of him. “I think next time we’re in Europe, we’ll be performing at Wembley. Stade de France. The fucking Coliseum.”

“And Camp Nou?” you teased.

Yoongi and Namjoon—both avid Barcelona fans—nodded in eager agreement.

“And not as guests at festivals, either,” Yoongi continued. “Headliners.”

You smiled. “I can see that.”

“Yeah?” Yoongi’s own smile widened. “When we announced our tour, Kerrang! called us ‘The Next Reconnaissance’ on their Instagram.”

You felt an uncomfortable twinge in your stomach at the mention of the other band and turned away from the two boys. You remembered the alternative culture magazine running rampant with the moniker—always “The Next Reconnaissance,” never just Rated Riot.

“I… don’t think you’re the next anything,” you said. “I think you’re you. And being Rated Riot is already amazing.”

Yoongi needed a moment to process your words. For some reason, he had expected you to agree with the nickname. Part of him wanted to be “the next Reconnaissance,” considering how much they had achieved. But you were right.

“I like that,” he said. “That’s good. Yes. We’re Rated Riot. We’ll get Wembley. And Camp Nou.”

“I second that,” Namjoon said, pointing his beer bottle at the other boy. “But, oh, we saw Reconnaissance at Rose Bowl last year, remember? Might be the best concert I’ve ever been to. I know they were in town again before we left for Europe, but I didn’t get to go. It was at a smaller venue anyway, I think. Rose Bowl, though... Stadium shows are something else.”

You raised an eyebrow as you looked at Namjoon over Yoongi’s head. The producer didn’t normally say this much in one breath. He was clearly getting drunk.

Yoongi, on the other hand, didn’t notice anything wrong. He was likely equally as buzzed. He hummed as he threw his head back and took a large swig of his beer. Then he turned to face you.

“We’ve never opened for a band their size before,” he said. “Do you think we even could? I mean, they’re not The Rolling Stones, but they’re… well…”

He let the sentence falter because he couldn’t find a fitting word, but both you and Namjoon understood.

“Uh, well, who says you can never work with them in the future? I know their manager,” you said, trying to sound uplifting, but quickly catching yourself. You could have made your point without mentioning this. But because the two boys suddenly looked at you as if you’d just said you were Kurt Cobain in your past life, you had to explain, “he’s, uh—he’s Nick Zhou. I worked under him after university.”

“No shit?” Yoongi raised his eyebrows even higher. “Are you still in touch?”

“Not really,” you mumbled, finding yourself in a tough spot. Avoiding the subject now, when you were the one who mentioned Nick, would essentially mean lying to them. You didn’t want to do that. Awkwardly, you admitted, “although, he did, um—he called me a few days ago. Back in Oslo.”

“What?” Namjoon leaned forward to look at you over Yoongi, who stopped drinking his beer, distracted by the conversation. “Why didn’t you say anything? What did he want?”

Suddenly, you regretted finishing your beer before you joined them on the couch.

“Well, see, that’s the thing. He, uh—he wasn’t calling about the band. Or, well, he was, but it wasn’t—okay.” You closed your eyes and took a breath. This was a very long detour to get to the most important sentence. “He said he’s looking for an assistant manager.”

The two boys next to you exchanged a look.

“And… he wants you?” Namjoon asked.

“Yeah,” you said. “But only because he needs someone quickly and he’s already worked with me before, so—”

“Well, fuck,” Yoongi concluded, cutting off your humble explanation, while Namjoon offered an equally insightful, “wow, shit.”

You nodded – both observations accurate – and quickly added, “I didn’t—I’m not going to do it, though.”

“No?” Yoongi asked. “Why not?”

The hint of surprise in his voice made you uncomfortable. It sounded like the reasonable decision would have been to accept Nick’s offer and leave Rated Riot to work with this much bigger, much more intimidating band.

“I-I guess I don’t want to be anyone’s assistant anymore,” you stammered. “I like running the ship myself.”

The guitarist’s expression softened. But before he could speak, Namjoon slapped his palm on his thigh and cheered so uncharacteristically loudly that you and Yoongi both pulled back from him in surprise.

“I know that’s fucking right!” Namjoon cried out. “Steer us all right and Rated Riot will surpass them. You’ll be calling that guy to get him to be your assistant.”

You laughed at the unexpected proposition, and Yoongi gave your knee a friendly pat.

“We won’t let you down,” he said, much more collected than the boy next to him. “You know?”

“I know.” You were smiling with all the warmth in your chest. “I believe you, that’s why I don’t want to leave. But, uh—would you mind not telling anyone else about this? I don’t want it to, you know, blow out of proportion. It wasn’t even an official offer, really, he just mentioned that there was an opening. But I just… I thought it would be unfair if I didn’t eventually tell any of you.”

Yoongi nodded knowingly. Rated Riot didn’t have a designated leader, since Namjoon—as their main producer—and Seokjin—as their stage manager—called most of the shots, but as the oldest member of the band, Yoongi was typically the one to talk to you about the heavier topics.

“It’s cool,” he said. “As long as you’re staying with us, no one else really needs to know about this, right?”

What he’d just said—paired with the way he looked at you for a few seconds longer than necessary—seemed to imply something else. Your eyes automatically drifted to Jungkook, who was talking to Seokjin and Jimin on the other side of the room.

You lowered your eyes. “Yeah.”

Yoongi finished his beer in one swift gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then, he looked at you again.

“Thanks for that, by the way,” he said.

You met his gaze. “For what?”

“For believing in us enough to stay.”

Namjoon felt himself smile as he quietly finished his beer. He knew he was tipsy, but he wasn’t drunk enough to interrupt the moment between you two.

“You don’t have to thank me for that,” you said. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Here, you turned to Namjoon. “Right?”

Looking at you in surprise after you addressed him, the producer scrambled to nod.

“Oh, hell yeah!” he said, leaning forward to reach Yoongi’s completely empty bottle with his own. “Here’s to Wembley next year.”

You smiled as the older boy clinked his empty bottle against Namjoon’s, then tipped his head back to get the last stubborn drops.

“Oh, by the way,” Yoongi spoke as he swallowed and immediately coughed. “D-did you find out what was going on with Jungkook and his lyrics?”

It took you a minute to recall your last conversation with Yoongi—the one that had led you to Jungkook, where he had dodged your questions and later snuck into your bunk on the tour bus and kissed you.

“Uh, well.” You tugged at the sleeve of your leather jacket. “He said that the song he played you was just a demo. He’s still working on the melody. And he said that he just has someone who reviews his lyrics for him, nothing more.”

Yoongi nodded to the rhythm of an unusually slow Asking Alexandria song that played from the speakers of the dressing room.

“So, we shouldn’t worry?” he asked, clearly hopeful.

“Apparently, no,” you said with an uneasy smile.

“Alright,” he decided. “Then let’s not worry.”

He looked at Namjoon who nodded in support of this decision.

And so, not worrying was exactly what they did. Instead, Namjoon brought three more bottles of Heineken and you all decided to just feel happy tonight.

As you scanned the room with a new bottle in your hand—while the boys finished their beer in under a minute and Namjoon got up again to bring more—it seemed to you that everyone had made the exact same decision.

Except Taehyung for some reason.

For a good minute, you watched him walk in circles in the very centre of the room. Then, just when you thought he’d stopped, he started another lap around the carpet.

“Excuse me for a minute,” you said to the two boys on the couch—they both nodded—and stood up.

A brief, unexpected fight broke out over the bottle of beer that you’d handed them—Namjoon won—and you hesitated for a moment as you realised you had a new problem and weighed it against the previous one.

The new problem was that Yoongi and Namjoon were getting very drunk. It was almost ridiculous, but probably harmless. Taehyung, on the other hand, seemed to be waiting to perform at four more gigs as soon as he left this room. You had to go to him first.

He had noticed the commotion by the couch, but he did not acknowledge your approach.

“Is everything okay?” You had to stop right in front of him to ask as he continued his frenzied pacing. “You’re kind of walking in circles here.”

Taehyung stopped as if in a daze and looked at you. “Hm? Ah. Lots on my mind, I guess.”

You nodded slowly. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Uh…” He looked around. The movement seemed thoughtful, but without a clear purpose—it seemed like he was just avoiding your eyes. Then you saw his gaze land on Jungkook. Taehyung looked at him for a moment, then turned back to you and scratched the back of his neck in a telltale sign of universal discomfort. He said, “honestly, maybe it’s not me that you should be talking to.”

You glanced at Jungkook, too—he was explaining something to Jimin with very wild hand gestures. He still appeared to be on a high from the concert.

“You mean Jungkook?” you asked, shifting your attention back to Taehyung. “Is he the reason why you’re pacing?”

“Sort of,” the bassist replied, blinking at the carpet.

You didn’t like the trepidation in your stomach. And you definitely didn’t like the unexpected memory of the alarm that you had seen on Jungkook’s face in your hotel room in Amsterdam.

“Why?” you asked because, despite the ominous dread that you were feeling, it was still your responsibility to know what was going on with the band.

“Just talk to him,” Taehyung advised. “But don’t tell him I said so.”

You hesitated, wanting a bit more information before you dived off this cliff headfirst. You asked, “at least tell me if something happened, so I can be prepared.”

He glanced at Jungkook again. This time, the younger member seemed to sense his gaze as he turned around. Taehyung looked away immediately.

He muttered quickly, “ask about his friends,” and then retreated to the very back of the room until he was fully concealed by Hoseok and Maggie.

A reluctant “oh,” passed your lips, but knowing that Jungkook’s friends were involved meant that there was nothing else that Taehyung could have said to you anyway.

You had to go straight to the source.

You couldn’t say this surprised you. You already got an odd feeling when you walked in on Sid and his Asshole Alliance before the concert tonight, but Jungkook had assured you that everything was fine.

However, if this was something that made Taehyung stomp around the room—which never happened unless the situation was extremely stressful, like the time Luna was getting surgery and he almost rubbed off the soles of his shoes, walking back and forth in the waiting room of the clinic—then it most certainly wasn’t fine.

Your original plan was to wait until everyone was back on the tour bus, since you’d be spending the night in Tilburg anyway. But then you remembered all the times you’d asked Jungkook if everything was okay—and all the times he said it was—and you decided that waiting would not cut it this time.

“Hey,” you said right in the middle of his conversation with Jimin. You added an apologetic, “could you excuse us, please?” but Jimin could tell as soon as he looked at you that he’d better leave.

As quickly as it was humanly possible, he nodded and jogged to join Yoongi and Namjoon by the door of the room. The two of them were loudly discussing their plan to go out and find a bar, but they paused after noticing Jimin.

You watched them for a moment, wondering if you should have stopped them from leaving when they were already so drunk, but they noticed you, waved, and left before you could open your mouth.

Sighing, you turned to Jungkook just as he asked, “what’s up?”

He didn’t appear unusual when you looked at him. But he rarely ever did.

“Are you okay?” you asked in return.

You were both tired of the question, but Jungkook disliked the sound of it particularly much this time. He’d seen you—out of the corner of his eye—take six steps in his direction right after you finished talking to Taehyung.

What if he’d told you?

“Uh, of course,” Jungkook said, looking at you with just as much confusion—and a sprinkle of suspicion—as you were looking at him with. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” you said. Your heart rate increased as if you’d already heard the bad news you were expecting to hear. “How are, um—how’s Sid and everyone else?”

Jungkook disliked this question even more.

“Oh,” he said in a relaxed tone that sounded forced even to him. He cleared his throat and scanned the room for the older member, but didn’t find him. Even more nervous now, he turned to you and tried again. “You mean Sid and the others? They—they’re okay. Sid’s just being annoying, but what else is new? But I’m—we’re all okay. Thanks for, uh, for checking in.”

“Of course,” you said. You waited for him to elaborate so you could discover the reason for Taehyung’s anxiety which resulted in two more members of the band that you needed to worry about.

Honestly, Hoseok was the only one who wasn’t playing with your nerves tonight. You saw him peacefully tapping his foot to the music in the room as he chatted with Maggie and a few other staff members.

Jungkook did not pursue the topic further.

“What did you talk about with, uh—with Taehyung?” he asked instead with all the subtlety of a frightened elephant in a porcelain shop.

“Oh, this and that,” you lied. Then, feeling uncomfortable about lying, you scattered a bit of truth in there, “Luna’s face-timing her mum on the bus, so he was—he’s bored.”

“Ah.” Jungkook nodded. “Makes sense.”

He didn’t think—or didn’t want to think—that Taehyung would tell you about the bet after he asked him not to.

And, really, he tried to be reasonable. If Taehyung had told you, would you be here, peacefully asking him if he was okay?

No. You’d use fists, he presumed. Possibly knees.

“So, there’s nothing you want to tell me?” you asked suddenly, interrupting his masochistic fantasy.

Jungkook swallowed. Whatever it was that you talked about with Taehyung, it was clearly neither this, nor that.

“There is, uh, one thing,” he admitted slowly.

You inhaled. “What is it?”

“What are you plans for the rest of the night?”

This was not what you had braced yourself for. Annoyed by his stalling, you pulled your phone out of your back pocket.

“Well, depending on what you tell me, either I’m arguing with you or going to sleep,” you said. Glancing at the phone in your hand, you added, “it’s two in the morning.”

“We have tomorrow off,” he reminded you. “Well, today, I guess.”

“I know, but we’re going to Cologne—”

“That’s only in the evening.”

“Okay.” You looked around to see if anyone was close enough to hear the two of you. Not that you were doing anything forbidden—just merely bordering on it. “What are you getting at?”

“You’ve finished all your work for the night, right?” he asked and you nodded apprehensively. He said, “come do something with me.”

Once again, the dilemma that plagued your mind whenever you were with him returned.

The responsible thing to do here would be to, of course, gently suggest going to sleep. There was a long day of travel ahead of you, after all.

However, this could be your chance to determine if there was truly something alarming happening between him and his friends. Not to mention, he clearly still had something to tell you, despite appearing to have lost courage after the strange moment in your hotel room.

And, alright – the truth was, you wanted to do something with him.

“That’s very vague,” you finally said. “What do you have in mind?”

“Come with me,” Jungkook said, gesturing towards the door of the dressing room.

You agreed to follow him to the door but paused before leaving the room.

“I’d like more information,” you said, leaning against the doorframe with your arms crossed over your chest.

You tried to convince yourself that there was no logical reason for the entire room to be watching you and Jungkook right now, but you still felt phantom eyes all over yourself.

This wasn’t Hoseok’s party. You were still at the concert venue where Jungkook was the performer, and you were the manager.

He noticed your unease. First, he sighed. Then, as if he was compromising, he extended his hand.

“Take my hand,” he said. “And come with me.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant—”

“Come on,” he cut in, waving his hand in front of you. “Less talking, more holding my hand.”

Because your back obstructed the view of his outstretched hand for everyone else in the room, you knew you didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing this. Still, you let out a slow, anxious breath.

“Fine,” you said with exaggerated irritation to emphasise your displeasure about being kept in the dark. Then you took his hand.

As the two of you exited the room, there were ulterior motives firmly set in both of your minds.

You had to find out what was going on.

He had to tell you what was going on.

And Jungkook had a plan here somewhere. He knew he needed to tell you about the bet tonight, especially since you almost found out about it accidentally right before the show. And also because Taehyung looked about ready to start climbing walls.

He had a rough idea of how he’d like to tell you: it had to happen in a beautiful spot that would make up for the awful revelation he was about to make. If not make up for it, then at least make it worth your while.

And he’d done his research—as always. This was the one lesson from your relationship that he hadn’t learned as he continued to strenuously plan everything in the hopes of making it memorable and unique.

“There’s this spot. The Wandelbos,” he said as the two of you walked hand-in-hand down the corridor of the venue.

He pronounced the word with relative ease, making you wonder how many times he’d heard it. Then he showed pictures on his phone.

“This looks like a forest,” you commented, stopping to scroll through several photographs of squirrels and autumn trees—which wasn’t easy because he refused to let go of your hand as you held his phone.

“It’s a baroque park,” he clarified. “It’s beautiful, supposedly.”

You handed his phone back to him. “I’m sure it is. But not at two in the morning.”

“The path is star-shaped,” he continued, ignoring your interjection as the two of you kept walking. “And there’s a clearing in the middle with a pond and a bridge and—oh, and it’s only about six kilometres away.”

He held the exit door open, allowing you to walk out into the brisk night air.

Crossing the threshold, you looked at him with your eyebrows raised. “You want to walk over there?”

Actually, he did. But your question made him pause. “Uh... no?”

You stopped and waited until he walked out into the parking lot, but his attention was suddenly drawn to something behind you.

You ignored that and said, “well, we can’t rent bicycles at this time and—”

“Sorry—hold on for one second,” he stopped you abruptly.

You turned around and followed his gaze until you spotted Minjun by the restaurant across the street. Your lips parted in involuntary surprise, but it wasn’t Minjun’s presence that really startled you. It was the fact that he was leaning against a motorcycle, of all things, and there were two more bikes parked right next to him.

When you looked back at Jungkook, he looked almost relieved.

How wonderful it was, he thought, that Sid was such an insufferable idiot that he would decide to have a drag race in the middle of the Netherlands.

From across the street, the bike Minjun had rented out appeared to be a Kawasaki. Despite Jungkook’s previous bad experiences with the brand—involving a mild concussion and a dented metal fence, which, in his defence, appeared out of nowhere—this gave him an idea immediately.

“Could we go over there? Or maybe you could wait here for a minute?” he asked you while already walking away—and pulling on your hand until you had to let go because you were absolutely not going over there. He promised, “one minute!”

You could tell right away that he’d just found a potential means of transportation.

“Jungkook, that’s probably not a good idea!” you called out as he neared the street.

“I’ll be right back!” he shouted, forming the shape of a heart with both of his hands as he went.

You cringed as he crossed the street without looking both ways, but fortunately, there weren’t a lot of cars around. Unfortunately, however, you couldn’t hear what he and Minjun talked about due to the distance and the heavy gusts of wind.

You waited alone, with only your confusion for company.

If Jungkook stayed with the band while his friends went out, and now he went over there to borrow some devil-sent motorcycle, then clearly, that had to mean that he finally started to make smart(er) decisions while still being on good terms with his friends.

So, what was it that worried Taehyung so much?

“Dude!” Jungkook exclaimed across the street from you when he finally reached Minjun and scared the hell out of him with his shout—he flinched so vehemently that he nearly knocked the bike over. “Whose is this?”

“Uh—mine. We rented bikes for the race,” Minjun explained and glanced at you standing by the exit of the venue. “Sid was about to call you and force you to come with us—”

“I need it,” Jungkook interrupted, choosing to ignore the fact that there wouldn’t have been enough bikes if he had come along.

Minjun turned to him with raised eyebrows. “Huh?”

“I need to borrow it.”

“Borrow—it’s a rental.” Minjun turned his head to look at the neon green motorcycle. He knew that riding down the city streets with Sid and Jude on rented bikes was already reckless. Subletting the motorcycle to someone else, however, might be equally as stupid. “It’s in my name.”

“It’s the least you can do for me,” Jungkook said right away as if he had planned this in advance instead of only noticing Minjun and the motorcycle a mere two minutes ago.

His words weren’t entirely true, considering that Minjun wasn’t the one who had manipulated him into this mess. But Jungkook was appealing to his conscience—and that thing was eating Minjun alive. You could see it from across the street, even without knowing the reason for it.

Minjun bit his lip, fighting a very unpleasant battle with his own self.

“Okay. Fine,” he conceded, even though he knew very well what Sid would say about his impartiality and about the fact that he’d now have to ride as someone’s passenger—likely Jude’s, because Sid would rather cut his own head off than allow someone else on his bike, even if it was a rental. Hurriedly, Minjun added, “you have to return the bike back by midday tomorrow.”

“Perfect,” Jungkook replied brightly. “That’s more than enough time.”

“I’ll text you the address of the rental place,” Minjun continued, getting his phone out.

Jungkook kept on nodding. “That’s great. You do that.”

His friend typed a text message and pulled out the keys to the bike from his jacket pocket. He tossed them to Jungkook just as his phone vibrated.

“Don’t wreck it,” Minjun warned. “Or yourself.”

Jungkook grinned, swinging his right leg over the motorcycle and putting the key in the ignition. “I won’t. Thanks again!”

His friend glanced back at the restaurant, suddenly grateful that the take-out was taking so long to prepare. This meant that Sid and Jude wouldn’t notice Minjun giving the bike away—even though they would notice it gone and would probably realise where it went.

Meanwhile, Jungkook revved the engine and turned towards the parking lot of the venue.

The Kawasaki felt unusual underneath him and it made him miss his Katana, but he swallowed the disconcert. Beggars couldn’t be choosers—this was better than nothing in any case.

He stopped right in front of you in the parking lot, switched the engine off, and leaned back from the handlebar to give you a smile.

“So?” He patted the side of the bike. “Ready for a ride?”

You shook your head, disapproving of the cheesy grin on his face, and sunk your teeth into your tongue to resist a smile.

There were numerous—numerous—reasons why you weren’t ready to climb on this bright green monstrosity that must have been visible from any space station above. If not visible, then certainly audible.

“There’s only one helmet,” was the one concern that you chose to voice.

Jungkook hadn’t considered that as he glanced at the helmet, attached to the tail of the bike. He leaned over to unhook it and offered it to you.

“No,” you said before he started to speak. “If anything, you should be the one wearing it. You’re the driver. And the vocalist of a band that’s literally on tour right now. You can’t perform if you get your head snapped off.”

“Can’t perform if I get yours snapped off, either,” he argued. “Put it on. I’ll go slow.”

This was still a safety hazard, and at first, you debated arguing. Then you tried to rationalise.

Jungkook hadn’t had any alcohol after the show—which was very unusual, now that you thought about it. He must have been planning something all along.

Additionally, the streets were mostly empty, except for one car whose driver gaped suspiciously at the many motorcycles on the street, narrowing his eyes at each and every one of them as he drove past.

There was also Minjun across the street, looking as though he was praying that you and Jungkook would drive off quickly.

“Come on,” Jungkook encouraged. You understood his impatience—if Minjun was here, the rest of the Insolent Idiots couldn’t be far behind.

You looked back at the helmet in his hands.

This wouldn’t be the first time you’d gotten on a motorcycle with Jungkook, but it had been a while.

He had always been a huge fan of anything that could reach over a hundred in under five seconds, so he’d been riding bikes since before he was legally allowed to. However, the two of you had already broken up when he purchased and restored the Katana that he never stopped talking about—so you’d never ridden with him when he actually owned the vehicle.

It occurred to you suddenly that Jungkook had probably never mentioned his motorcycle since the tour started. You made a mental note to ask him about that later.

Now, you finally took the helmet from him and pushed it over your head. Maybe the most important justification for your decision was this: you’d missed the excited twirling of your heart when he took you for a ride.

The joy that Jungkook felt as he watched you put the helmet on surprised him.

He remembered the first time you struggled to fasten the straps under your chin and managed to graze your skin. Now, listening to you sigh as you squeezed the helmet over your head and tightened the straps without his help, he realised that you hadn’t forgotten. That you were still used to this.

Excited shivers ran across his skin as you climbed on the bike behind him. But he could sense your apprehension—your initial instinct was to hold onto the back of the bike.

“Come on, now. This isn’t your first time,” he said, looking at you over his shoulder. “You know I won’t go unless I know you’re holding on tight.”

“I assure you,” you said. Your voice was muffled by the helmet. “I’m holding on tight.”

He clicked his tongue as he turned to face forward again. “I happen to not believe you.”

“Tough.”

“We’ll be here a while, it seems.” He released the handles and leaned back. “Maybe we should see if Sid wants to join us, I’m sure he would love to—”

“My God!” you groaned. “Fine.”

You wrapped your hands around his waist but kept your touch light, almost nervous. Grinning, Jungkook reached for your hands and pulled them closer to make sure you had a strong hold.

When he squeezed the clutch, he felt you tighten your arms around him even more. Satisfied that he could feel more of your weight against his back, he finally pressed the starter and pulled the bike off.

He raced down the street—much to Minjun’s relief—at a speed that definitely would have been dangerous for someone without a helmet if there had been other cars around. But the road was empty and there were hardly any turns to make.

And as he sped down these empty streets, you had to admit to yourself that this was, simply, thrilling.

The rapid pace seemed to elevate your insides, forcing you to hold onto Jungkook more tightly as you rested your head against his back and watched the streetlights blur together. The deafening sound of the engine, the dark visor of your helmet, the intoxicating speed, the rough metal underneath your thighs, and the soft leather of the jacket that he was wearing—all of it was absolutely exhilarating.

Jungkook knew—he’d always known—that you would have enjoyed the thrill of a late-night ride far more than a simple walk down the Tilburg streets.

And he was excited to see your silly grin and dilated pupils after you took off the helmet outside of the park. He was almost flustered by your glow—and by the fact that he was the reason why you looked so happy and so overwhelmingly full of life.

He nearly forgot to lock the bike as he looked at you.

But then the sudden memory of why he’d brought you here caught up to him like a painful crash.

“Uh, so,” he turned away, “should we go explore?”

“Might as well,” you joked weakly. Your legs were still a little shaky from the ride. “Since we’re already here anyway.”

“Right. Well, I wouldn’t mind taking another drive,” he said with a more confident smirk—that only grew in size and arrogance when he saw you smile at the suggestion. Then, he looked down and added, “but I also wouldn’t mind just walking and… talking.”

The two of you had done a lot of that—just walking and talking—since the tour started, so agreeing to this felt natural and harmless.

The park was beautiful indeed, just as the pictures on Jungkook’s phone had promised. Granted, walking through it at night when the streetlights were so sparse, provided a layer of eerie uncertainty—but even now, you were mesmerised.

In addition to the bold squirrels, peeking at you through the tree branches—their fur barely noticeable among the dark foliage, but their little beady eyes glistening—you could also see the sky above. You could see all of it, it seemed. And the patterns of the stars were so bright that you found yourself stopping several times, utterly captivated by them.

You regretted not learning the names of constellations—or how to differentiate them—but looking at the night sky was a breathtaking experience regardless.

The sky looked different here. And it felt closer, too. It was something you didn’t believe you could ever get used to, no matter how much you stayed here.

After a short while, you and Jungkook arrived at a pond, and he informed you that this was the very centre of the park.

It reminded you of home in an odd way, even though there weren’t many ponds back home—and none of them looked quite as charming as this one. Yet there was something familiar here, something homely. Even at night, in a park that resembled a forest more than a cosy picnic spot, there was something heartwarming here.

You could have been feeling this way, you supposed, because Jungkook was holding your hand as he guided you down a narrow plank over a dark creek. Without him, the eeriness of spending the night in an old park alone would have been much more noticeable. But with him here, it just felt comfortable. As if you both knew that you were destined to be safe from all harm here.

The stream ran deeper into the forest, and there were several benches scattered in the clearing on either side of the creek. The two of you sat down on one of them and listened to the silence of the trees and the gentle flow of the water.

Remembering suddenly, you spoke up—quietly, mindful not to disrupt the peace of all living things around you. “Did you know that my parents actually had their first date by a creek?”

Jungkook turned to you. He was more comfortable being loud, because he didn’t feel like a guest here. With you there, he sort of felt like the night—and everything that it touched—belonged to him.

“That’s a… very specific location,” he commented.

“Yeah.” You snickered. “There were no creeks in our town, dad took mum to the city where he grew up.”

“Oh, that’s actually nice,” he said, a little surprised. He’d never met your dad, but he knew that ‘nice’ wasn’t the adjective that was usually used in the same sentence as his name. “Was the creek special to him?”

“Not really,” you replied, shattering the romantic image that had already formed in his head. “It was the only pretty place that he could think of at the time. At least that’s what my mum thought.”

Careful, because this was a delicate topic and he didn’t want to come off like he was defending your dad, Jungkook asked, “she never found out if there was, maybe, more to it?”

“She never asked,” you said. “Either way, that date didn’t exactly end well. In the long-term, I mean.”

Jungkook looked down at the dark ground beneath his boots. A few blades of grass poked through the dirt on the shore of the creek.

“I know what you mean,” he said slowly. “But can you really say that with such certainty? She has two kids. And you’re both pretty great.”

You smiled at this, and it gave him the courage to smile, too.

“Thanks,” you said. “And yeah. I guess you’re right. Some good did come out of it.”

The two of you were quiet for a minute. It was a comfortable minute, too, but only as long as you managed to keep your mind empty.

You succeeded—the memories of the stories that your mum had told you were slowly fading, overtaken by the calming whispers of the trees around you—but he didn’t.

“I never asked—and I don’t want to intrude now, but, uh,” Jungkook started, “from what you’ve told me before, I assumed that your parents got back together at some point, right?”

You nodded with an exhale from somewhere deeper than just your chest.

“Several points, actually,” you said.

Happy that you seemed willing to share this, he encouraged, “yeah?”

“Yeah. She kept taking him back when I was young, and my brother was—well, a baby, essentially,” you said. “Everyone told her not to do it, not even for the kids. They told her to move on, maybe find someone better. My uncle—mum’s brother—protested against this especially much. He had been against their marriage from the very beginning. But my mum loved the guy.”

The smile on your face when you said that last part made Jungkook tense—it contradicted so much with the sadness in your eyes.

“Did he love her back?” he asked.

You were about to respond with a reflexive answer that had been ingrained in you by years and years of your mother screaming about how your father was a good-for-nothing loser, how he could never love anyone other than himself, and plenty of other colourful descriptions that you probably shouldn’t have known at your age at the time. And yet, despite the intensity of her emotions after every break-up, she still took him back. Until one day she didn’t.

And now you had to pause.

“That’s probably a million-dollar question,” you said with a sad chuckle. “I don’t know. Is that awful of me to say? She doesn’t think he did, but she still got back together with him so many times. So maybe he did love her in his own fucked up way. But I-I don’t think someone who loves you is supposed to hurt you like that.”

Jungkook had leaned back as he listened to you and he nearly toppled over backwards at your words.

You were right, of course.

Someone who loved you should have never hurt you.

He swallowed the lump in his throat before speaking. “That’s, uh—that’s not awful. That’s sad, I think. Your mum deserves better.”

“She does,” you agreed. “But I understand now that—well, in a way, she is who she is because of all that happened to her. She’s very strong and she cares so much. And the fact that her only flaw is loving people too much, it’s—I don’t know. Lately, that just makes me admire her more. Because she sees the best in people. No one does that these days, everyone’s always afraid to get hurt. But my mum, she’s like—she’s fearless. You know? I genuinely respect that.”

“Even if she really does end up getting hurt?” Jungkook asked.

“Yeah. Even then. And maybe that’s the thing,” you said, looking up at the sky again. “I mean, in general. The people we love are the only ones who can hurt us like that. Or, rather, it’s precisely because we love them that it hurts so much.”

“Hmm.”

He wasn’t sure if you were still talking about your parents by the time you reached the last few sentences, but he was too afraid to ask. He couldn’t even look at you as he stayed frozen in the same spot.

“I’m probably not making much sense,” you added with a small, uncertain laugh. “I just meant that it took me a while to understand my mum. Actually, I don’t know if I even fully understand her to this day, but um… I watched her give second chances to people who held the most against her and could hurt her the most. I thought they didn’t deserve it. But she... She knew the risk, she was familiar with heartbreak, and still, she stayed hopeful. For a long time, I resented that. I thought that was a—a weakness. It sounds cruel. But I thought I could never do that.”

You paused again. The memories—of more than just your parents—flashed in your mind a little too quickly for you to collect your thoughts. You looked down to compose yourself and felt Jungkook’s hesitant glance.

Finally, you finished, “all these years of watching the back-and-forth between my parents… It made me think that I could never give someone a second chance.”

Digging into the dirt with the heel of his boot, Jungkook asked, “you, uh… you don’t think so anymore?”

He glanced at you once more and then looked away again, even though you weren’t looking at him. Your gaze was fixed on the creek in front of you.

“I don’t know,” you said after a moment. “I think I’m less decided about it now. I admire my mum for having the courage for it, even though it rarely ever works out. And now I guess I think that it is more of a case-by-case kind of thing. It depends on the person.”

Feeling as if his chest had absorbed the water from the pond and everything inside of him was being flooded, Jungkook didn’t dare to inhale.

Breathlessly, he asked, “what about me?”

“You?” you echoed awkwardly. He gave the smallest of nods in response.

You realised quickly that you hadn’t said this to him in over four years, and it felt terrifying to admit it now with the solemn trees, a hurried creek, and curious squirrels for an audience.

“Well, fuck.” You swallowed. “I mean, I love you. You know?” You chuckled to hide your unease and leaned down to touch the blades of grass growing under the bench. “Too much for my own good, probably.”

Jungkook suddenly forgot how to breathe. He looked up instead, but only caught a glimpse of the stars in the sky before he closed his eyes. The view behind his eyelids felt more special to him than the shimmering sky above—it was all darkness and dim echoes of you saying you loved him.

He couldn’t tell you now. How could he? You loved him.

And a second chance with you was all he’d ever wanted.

When he opened his eyes again, you were watching him. There was a haziness in your eyes—from the starry night, from the motorcycle drive, from the long overdue confession—and a small smile on your lips.

The moment that his eyes drifted to your lips, he felt himself inhale—more than once and he would have floated away—before he leaned in, responding to everything you’d said with a kiss.

He’d tell you about the bet, he would—but not now. Not when he felt your breath hitch as his lips touched yours. Not when you kissed him back, replacing all air in his lungs with your taste.

Right now, neither of you needed to say any other word as the forest around you settled. The leaves were frozen as if the wind didn’t dare to rustle them for fear of interrupting you.

The thought made you smile into the kiss—what a self-centred way to interpret your surroundings—and Jungkook pulled you closer.

For a minute, he made it feel like the world really did stop turning for the two of you. Like the forces of the universe had interfered to—

He pulled away all of a sudden, breathing so heavily that he was nearly hyperventilating.

He couldn’t do this. He’d already done too much.

The time that he’d borrowed—that he’d stolen—to be with you in peace had run out. Not even the universe could give it back to him.

“I’m sorry. There’s just, um,” he began, looking down and bringing a hesitant finger over his lower lip. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

You felt your heart skip over a beat.

Immediately, you found yourself returning to the hotel room in Amsterdam. It felt vastly different now and the difference sobered you up—you had been in your hotel room then, but you were alone in an empty park tonight. And you realised that discussing it here would be a mistake.

Whatever he was about to tell you might make it difficult for you to stay here and you would have no way to leave.

“Wait,” you said. The word caught him off guard. “Tell me when we get back.”

He blinked. The very reason why he’d brought you here was to tell you the truth in a place that was yours for the night.

“W-why?” he asked.

“It’s not fair to me otherwise,” you said. Your heart had shifted from pleasant pounding to near-panicked banging, and you were starting to feel nauseous. “I’d be very inconvenienced if I was left here alone.”

Jungkook appeared even more perplexed. “Why would you be—I’m not leaving. I’m staying with you.”

“That’s assuming I don’t kill you after you tell me what you’re about to tell me,” you tried to joke. There was a small—almost desperate—smirk on the corner of your lips.

Jungkook looked away.

“Oh.” Nervously, he licked his lips. He hadn’t considered you being so uncomfortable after he told you that you wouldn’t want him around. And now that he thought about it, he felt a little dizzy. “Well, that’s, uh… that’s fair enough. Should we—do you want to go back?”

The dread in your stomach seemed to grow at this question.

You knew that you had to be aware of what was happening with him, but the ceremony of it—the trip to this beautiful spot and the kiss that unintentionally coaxed him into the truth—scared you.

You wanted to resist the rational parts of your mind and stay here, where you had just forbidden him from speaking about this.

“Not really,” you admitted.

Jungkook nodded, relieved by your honesty. “Me neither.”

So, you stayed still for another minute. Then another minute. And another one. Until all the additional time you’d given yourselves had run out, too.

You peeked at Jungkook out of the corner of your eye, afraid suddenly that he would look back at you and then you’d have to talk, after all.

He seemed very far away. Much further than that first night in Amsterdam, when he came to your hotel room to talk.

Now there were sirens blaring in his head and a relentless pounding in his chest. You could almost hear it when you looked at him.

At last, you said, “but we can’t stay here forever.”

Despite looking like he had drifted into another realm deep inside of his mind, Jungkook sighed. He’d been listening to you breathe, listening to the way the wind played with your hair. He was here.

But he really wished he wasn’t.

“I know,” he said.

Still, the two of you remained on the bench for another five minutes, surrounded by the quiet rustling of the weary trees. Even they seemed anxious for you.

This might be the last silence the two of you would share, Jungkook thought grimly.

He felt terrified.

Finally, he took a breath and turned to you. “Let’s—”

A faint buzzing from the back pocket of your jeans startled you both. The sound seemed so foreign here, like something that had travelled across time and space, and accidentally ended up here—in your universe, where it didn’t belong.

You pulled out your phone and saw, first of all, that it was four in the morning, and then that Namjoon was calling you.

“I should take this,” you whispered, overwhelmed by the tension that had left your hands very cold.

“Go ahead,” Jungkook mumbled.

This was fine, he tried to tell himself while you stepped away from him to answer the call. He would take you back to the truck stop where the tour buses should have been parked by now. And then he would tell you.

And whatever happened next would—

“So, that was Namjoon,” you said, returning to him with your phone in hand. The call had lasted for less than a minute. “Apparently, someone stole Yoongi’s laptop.”

Nearly thrown off balance at the news that sounded somehow disrespectful, considering the many things you already had to process, Jungkook frowned.

“Someone stole Yoongi’s laptop?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” you said, sliding the phone back into your pocket. You knew something like this would eventually happen. “Namjoon said that he and Yoongi went out for more drinks, and when they got back to the bus, the laptop was gone. They’re not sure when was the last time they saw it.”

Jungkook stood up from the bench. “Well, why do they think someone stole it? Maybe he just lost it.”

“Yoongi’s not the kind who loses things,” you pointed out.

“Well, Namjoon could have lent a hand with that.”

You shook your head to conceal your small, involuntary smile and shrugged, acknowledging that there was a chance that this really was a false alarm. Especially if Namjoon was involved. You all loved him very much, but he had a talent like no one else to consistently misplace his own—and others—belongings.

“They were already quite drunk when I talked to them backstage before leaving,” you said. “So it’s possible they got even more wasted and just lost track of it. Either way, I need to go back and find out what happened.”

You returned to being the band’s manager, and Jungkook wasn’t sure how to handle the sudden switch. He wasn’t sure how to handle anything that was happening. This whole park was spinning around him.

He felt a little bit like the creek behind him as he watched you—flowing somewhere on pure instinct, with no clear destination in sight.

“Yeah. Okay,” he said. Hesitantly, he extended his hand for you to take—to help you over the loose wooden plank again. And to ground himself with your touch. “Let’s go, then. We’ll talk later?”

You took his hand. “Yeah. We’ll talk later.”

The truth was, you did not want to talk later.

You had a terrible feeling about it, and however irresponsible it may have been, you wanted to delay it as much as possible.

When you and Jungkook returned to the truck stop, Yoongi and Namjoon had already figured out where the laptop was. They looked very pleased to have remembered the Locate My Device app, never mind that you were the one who had kindly reminded them about it over the phone.

The laptop was, as it turned out, at a McDonald’s across the city. Neither boy could recall ever going there, so they remained convinced the device had been stolen.

You listened to their hypothesis with a serious face. But, unlike them, you were sober—the few beers you’d had after the concert were long forgotten—and you knew that the “thief” would probably be smart enough not to stop for a McFlurry after stealing someone’s computer.

The logical explanation was that your usually lovable and dependable boys had gotten so drunk that they’d forgotten about the fast food trip and left the laptop there themselves.

Regardless, you had to investigate. Because Yoongi and Namjoon were both pale with terror—and still buzzing from the spontaneous beer-tasting adventure that they’d gone on—it was up to you to find the computer.

You didn’t mind. This was your job, anyway. And you were eager to do something that did not involve talking about whatever it was that Jungkook wanted to talk to you about.

Jungkook, on the other hand, did mind. And it was evident when you exited the bus and saw him standing by the doors, pouting.

“I have to pick up the laptop,” you said, “and maybe report it to the police if it was really stolen.”

“Should I come with you?” he offered, not meaning to give you the option to refuse—which you took, of course.

“No,” you said, “you need to rest.”

“And you don’t?” he countered. “You’re the one who’s so overworked that—”

“Don’t start with that again,” you said, raising a stern hand to cut him off before someone overheard. You caught the flash of surprise in his eyes and the expression on your face softened a little.

You hadn’t meant to sound harsh, but you’ve had an impossibly long day.

“Don't worry about me,” you said. “This is my job. I have things to do. Laptops to save.”

“If I come, then—”

“Stay here,” you interrupted. “You had a show tonight. Now you have to get some sleep. I’ll be back soon.”

Biting his lip as mixed feelings of guilt and regret bubbled in his stomach, he asked, “we’ll, uh—we’ll talk, though. Right?”

“We’ll talk,” you promised. “Tomorrow.”

He fought with himself for another moment and then ended up saying, “okay. You never take me with you anyway.”

You didn’t have time to argue, so you kissed him before you went—quickly, softly, and with a nervous smile as you pulled away—and his heart seemed to leave with you as empty echoes of his racing pulse reverberated through his chest.

Tomorrow was very far away.

That would have been good if Jungkook still felt the paralysing panic from a few days ago. But even though he still felt scared now, he had already braced himself for the emotional consequences of telling you about the bet. Delaying it—against his will, this time—felt excruciating.

He knew he was the one to blame – he kissed you in the park instead of telling you about it right away, and then he agreed to wait until tomorrow.

And maybe this was what he deserved. He should have told you. But he hesitated and tried to convince himself of all sorts of irrational thoughts—and now here he was.

Alone.

And he was so frightened of being alone that he climbed right back on the motorcycle and headed to the address of the rental shop that Minjun had given him. He needed to do something, because he couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t scream at the top of his lungs, either.

Easily enough, Jungkook found himself in the bar of a hotel across the street from the rental shop. The shop didn’t open until eight, so he had a little over two hours before he could return the bike. A little over two hours before the night ended and he had to figure out what to do next.

He finished his first glass before a single thought could occur to him. By the second one, he felt his body start to relax, but chaos continued to reign in his mind.

What will I do, what will I do, what will I do?

As Jungkook lost track of how many drinks he had, he pondered every which way to reveal this to you and all the questions that you might ask.

What was the trip to Paris for? And the persistent way he followed you around? The conversation on the bridge in Stockholm? On the rooftop in Oslo? The bicycles in Amsterdam? The nights in your hotel room?

None of that was truly for the bet. But would it matter?

You said you loved him tonight. But you’d hate him tomorrow.

Maybe he could wait for five days until he formally lost the bet. Maybe he should tell you then. Maybe the fact that he lost something important to him would make up for—no.

Jungkook shook his head, nearly spilling the bourbon in his glass. He paused then, not even sure if he was still drinking bourbon. It all just tasted wet to him at that point.

Regardless, he couldn’t tell you after losing the bike. Even losing it didn’t seem like such a tragedy right now, compared to losing you.

While he agonised over it, the bartender continued bringing him drinks—always on the rocks, even though he couldn’t feel the cold anymore. The bartender was a kind elderly man, who probably should have known better than to keep serving alcohol to someone at six in the morning, but his experience told him that Jungkook was someone who needed it tonight.

Soon, however, Jungkook’s pride—his high tolerance for alcohol—became his biggest foe. He didn’t even realise how intoxicated he had become.

For all intents and purposes, he believed he was still fairly sober, considering how easily he spilt everything that was bothering him to the bartender. He even understood the advice he received in return—not that there was much to it.

“You have to tell her, son.”

He did have to tell you. He knew that.

And he was going to, he decided. Right now.

Jungkook found his way out of the bar with relative ease. Sure, he forgot that he had driven Minjun’s bike there, but he was able to walk without stumbling much, and that surely had to be an achievement.

Swaying only slightly, he stopped in the lot where the bus was parked and found your contact in his phone. Of course, the many emojis he’d used ensured that your name was the first one on the list, but he still found it easily enough.

Now, he had to admit this: he wasn’t sure if you actually answered his call. But he asked you to please, come outside, and within three minutes, you were standing in front of him.

If he had been aware of how drunk he was, he would have realised that he was screaming, so it didn’t matter if you’d picked up his call or not. You would have heard him anyway.

“What’s going on?” you asked, too confused to feel worried. You’d just returned with Yoongi’s laptop about half an hour ago. You weren’t sure if you’d even fallen asleep before coming outside again. “Are you drunk?”

There was exhaustion in your posture that Jungkook was too drunk to identify. You were very tired of dealing with the problems of drunk people tonight.

When Jungkook spoke, words poured out before he could properly think them through.

“Listen,” he said. His tongue felt oversized in his mouth. “I have to tell you something. I can’t—I should’ve told you this a long time ago. Maybe on the same day. Actually,” he hiccupped, “I never should’ve done this at all, then there would be nothing to tell.”

He hesitated for a moment, because in his mind—which was positively swimming in whiskey—he worried that his words may have caused a misunderstanding. He saw the frown on your face and cut in before you started to speak.

“Actually, no,” he said. “There would be things to tell. Because I like—I really—I like to talk to you. I want to tell you all kinds of things...” he paused here. Shook his head. “But not this. I don’t want to tell you this. But I must.”

He thought he came off very determined here, very confident. Really, he just sounded tired and drunk.

“Jungkook,” you said. “When I said we’ll talk tomorrow, I meant in the morning.”

“It’s—” He hiccupped again. “It’s morning.”

He wasn’t wrong, of course.

“After we got some sleep,” you clarified.

“Well, I can’t wait that long,” he insisted, stomping his foot and throwing himself off-balance. He had to lean against the side of the bus to stay upright.

You could tell that whatever he wanted to tell you was far worse than you expected. He was so drunk that he could barely stand, yet he was as determined as ever to get it all out right now.

You sighed and crossed your arms over your chest. The anxiety that you’d evaded was quick to resurface, and even you felt a little unsteady on your feet.

“Okay,” you said. “Well, what is it?”

Jungkook straightened as much as he could.

A deep inhale, followed by a sharp, rushed exhale.

“I made a bet with Sid that I’d get back together with you.”

Silence came next.

You felt a sinking sensation deep within you as if something—an invisible current—was pulling you under the surface of the water. The ground beneath you swirled in uncertain whirlpools.

“Sid said I couldn’t do it,” Jungkook continued after a moment, his eyes cast low. “And I was—I wanted to prove him wrong. He is wrong. He’s always wrong, he’s such a—anyday. I mean, anyway. T-that’s not—I didn’t—this isn’t making any sense.” He slapped himself on the forehead in newfound frustration and you flinched at the abrupt motion. The slap only made the truck stop start to spin around him. Pressing his hands to his hips, he tried to explain, “I didn’t win or anything. Which you obviously know, since we aren’t back together.”

He laughed sadly here. You narrowed your eyes and felt one of them twitch.

The night was cold, and you clutched your arms tighter around yourself. Your posture was not aggressive—you gazed somewhere past him and you appeared frightened. You looked as if the wind might snatch you and carry you off to a place that he could not reach.

But then your eyes met his and there was a frigid emptiness there that he didn’t recognise. He shrunk into himself when he noticed it.

“I-I bet my bike, so I lost that,” he continued. “Well, not yet, but I’m going to lose it soon. Not on purpose, but Sid won’t fucking let me end the bet—” he cut himself off by inhaling again.

It seemed like there was so much oxygen in his lungs—he kept breathing in as he spoke, but never breathing out.

“That’s not the point,” he finished his thought. “What I wanted to do—to say, I mean—is that I’m sorry. I wasn’t—I shouldn’t have done that. It was stupid. Sid got in my head.”

“Sid,” you repeated suddenly. The sharp sound of your voice startled him into looking up. “Got in your head.”

He looked at you for half a heartbeat. Somewhere in the whiskey haze, he could recall his conversation with Taehyung—or someone who resembled Taehyung. Jungkook remembered something about this being his own responsibility.

But then, he wasn’t sure if he remembered who Taehyung even was. Because, to be honest, he wasn’t sure if he remembered who he was.

“That’s an—that’s… that’s an excuse,” he managed to say. The letter S tasted wrong in his mouth. He clicked his tongue and continued, “he’s always in my head. I should’ve known better. I—I’m so sorry.”

You were breathing heavily, but you weren’t speaking.

He blinked his heavy eyes, each one of his eyelashes like lead.

“I just… I want you to know that everything that happened—it wasn’t because of the bet,” he said, swallowing after a great struggle. All these drinks tonight, and his throat still felt dry. “It was because I am—I really have been in love with you the whole time, and I—but I couldn’t—I can’t ask you to get back together while there’s this bet going on. Not that you’d agree—I just hope that you would—but I... i-it wouldn’t feel fair. It’s so—it’s all so fucking stupid.”

He groaned again and covered his face with his hands for a moment while he tried to collect his thoughts. There was so much he wanted to tell you and all of it was coming out so quickly that he wasn’t sure he told you anything at all.

“I had to—I should’ve told you sooner,” he said. Then, biting his lip harder than he’d meant to—the metal piercing dug into it painfully—he added, more softly, “I’m really sorry.”

You remained firm in your position and really started to resemble a statue. Contrary to what he expected, you didn’t ask him a single question. You just stared at him without any distinct emotion in your eyes.

He didn’t know what to do.

“Aren’t you,” he said shakily, “going to say anything?”

You finally moved—to inhale, then exhale. All through it, your chin was turned up as you looked at the line of trees in the distance.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” you finally said.

It was a sharp knife to his chest, this hollow voice that was supposed to belong to you.

He hung his head and took a deep breath.

None of this mattered.

It was over.

“You’re drunk,” you added then. “Go to sleep.”

He thought he caught a glimpse of sympathy in your words and he grasped at this flimsy straw and held onto it with all his might.

“Y-you heard me, though, right?” he tried, his voice desperate, eyes watery. “None of it was for the bet, I really—”

“Go to sleep, Jungkook.”

He couldn’t go to sleep, not if it meant he’d have no one to wake up to.

“Can I—” He coughed, the words catching on the sandpaper in his throat. “Can I talk to you in the morning?”

You stayed silent for a long, almost never-ending minute. Jungkook counted each second in his head, and he knew he might have messed up the numbers at least three times, but it still felt like you’d never speak again.

“I don’t think,” you finally said, “we have anything left to talk about.”

You turned around, but stopped for less than a moment, seemingly hesitating when you heard him call your name. Then you took another step and opened the door of the bus, climbing inside and leaving him here alone.

This wasn’t the first time you walked away from him, but this time, he knew it was his fault.

And there was another element to the suffocating grip around his neck—ever since you began to manage Rated Riot, you’d never left him alone when he was drunk.

But you left him tonight.

And even drunk, he knew what it meant.

He thought he’d prepared himself for this. But the sight of your back as you walked away from him, the sound of the bus door as it clicked shut behind you, and the feeling of complete silence around him at the truck stop—it all finally knocked all the oxygen out of his lungs. It made his heart beat faster, ridding his bloodstream of alcohol until all that he felt was pain.

He was not prepared for this. He doubted he ever could have prepared for it.

But he should have known this would happen.

He really fucked up. He ruined everything. It was over.

Hunching over as he tried to inhale but couldn’t, Jungkook pressed his hand to his chest. He felt something pulsating under his fingers, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Someone had emptied out the cavity inside of him where his organs had once been and filled it with rocks.

His vision was white and blurred. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t stand.

He didn’t know what was happening to him.

He felt himself slide over the side of the bus until he hit the floor and smacked his head into the bus wall as violent tremors took over his body. He tried to breathe as he counted the beats of his heart until he couldn’t listen to his pulse whispering the same conclusion to him over and over again.

It was over.

It was over.

It was over.

It was—

His hand dug into the gravel on the ground, then grabbed the front of his shirt and held it in a tight fist. He didn’t know what to do with himself. Nothing worked to stop the relentless judgment from breaching his resistant mind.

He ruined everything. It was over.

Jungkook didn’t know how long he struggled to fill his lungs with something other than the heavy, opaque pain of losing you again.

He didn’t know why he struggled, nothing even mattered anymore.

When he eventually realised that he was still here and you still weren’t, there was an early morning redness in his eyes and on the edges of the sky above him.

Most unusually, the only clear thought in his head was about the bike that he’d told Minjun he would return. Another promise that he had failed to keep as he suddenly remembered abandoning the motorcycle by the bar.

Then he remembered the bar.

He had already drunk half of it.

He struggled to his feet, rubbed his eyes with the balls of his palms, and went back to finish the other half.

chapter title credits: bad omens, “what do you want from me?”

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[slutforspungen]

Sid Vicious’s Letters to Deborah Spungen following the death of Nancy Spungen (his girlfriend).

(TW MENTIONS OF SUICIDE)

(FIRST LETTER)

Dear Debbie, thank you for phoning me the other night. It was so comforting to hear your voice. You are the only person who really understands how much Nancy and I love each other. Every day without Nancy gets worse and worse. I just hope that when I die I go the same place as her. Otherwise I will never find peace.

Frank said in the paper that Nancy was born in pain and lived in pain all her life. When I first met her, and for about six months after that, I spent practically the whole time in tears. Her pain was just too much to bear. Because, you see, I felt Nancy’s pain as though it were my own, worse even. But she said that I must be strong for her or otherwise she would have to leave me. So I became strong for her, and she began to stop having asthma attacks and seemed to be going through a lot less pain.

I realized that she had never known love and was desperately searching for someone to love her. It was the only thing she really needed. I gave her the love that she needed so badly and it comforts me to know that I made her very happy during the time we were together, where she had only known unhappiness before.

Oh Debbie, I love her with such passion. Every day is agony without her. I know now that it is possible to die from a broken heart. Because when you love someone as much as we love each other, they become fundamental to your existence. So I will die soon, even if I don’t kill myself. I guess you could say that I’m pining for her. I could live without food or water longer than I’m going to survive with out Nancy.

Thank you so much for understanding us, Debbie. It means so much to me, and I know it meant alot to Nancy. She really loves you, and so do I. How did she know when she was going to die? I always prayed that she was wrong, but deep inside I knew she was right.

Nancy was a very special person, too beautiful for this world. I feel so privileged to have loved her, and been loved by her. Oh Debbie, it was such a beautiful love. I can’t go on without it. When we first met, we knew we were made for each other, and fell in love with each other immediately. We were totally inseparable and were never apart. We had certain telepathic abilities, too. I remember about nine months after we met, I left Nancy for awhile. After a couple of weeks of being apart, I had a strange feeling that Nancy was dying. I went straight to the place she was staying and when I saw her, I knew it was true. I took her home with me and nursed her back to health, but I knew that if I hadn’t bothered she would have died.

Nancy was just a poor baby, desperate for love. It made me so happy to give her love, and believe me, no man ever loved a woman with such burning passion as I love Nancy. I never even looked at others. No one was as beautiful as my Nancy. Enclosed is a poem I wrote for her. It kind of sums up how much I love her.

If possible, I would love to see you before I die. You are the only one who understood.

Love, Sid XXX

P.S. Thank you, Debbie, for understanding that I have to die. Everyone else just thinks I am being weak. All I can say is that they never loved anyone as passionately as I love Nancy. I always felt unworthy to be loved by someone so beautiful as her. Everything we did was beautiful. At the climax of our lovemaking, I just used to break down and cry. It was so beautiful it was almost unbearable. It makes me mad when people say “you must have really loved her.” So they think I don’t still love her? At least when I die, we will be together.I feel like a lost child, so alone.

The nights are the worst. I used to hold Nancy close to me all night so that she wouldn’t have nightmares and I just can’t sleep without my beautiful baby in my arms. So warm and gentle and vulnerable. No one should expect me to live without her. She was a part of me. My heart.

Debbie, please come and see me. You are the only person who knows what I am going through. If you don’t want to, could you please phone me again, and write.

I love you.

NANCY

You were my little baby girl

And I shared all your fears.

Such joy to hold you in my arms

And kiss away your tears.

But now you’re gone there’s only pain

And nothing I can do.

And I don’t want to live this life

If I can’t live for you.

To my beautiful baby girl.

Our love will never die.

(SECOND LETTER)

Dear Debbie, I’m dying. Slowly, and in great pain. My baby is gone, without her I have no will to live. I love her so desperately. I know I can never make it without her. Nancy became my whole life. She was the only thing that mattered to me.

I’m glad I could make her happy. I gave her everything she ever wanted, just for the asking. When we only had enough money for one of us to get straight, I always gave it to Nancy. It was less painful to be sick myself than it was to see her sick.

When you love someone that much you cannot lose them and still be able to go on. I know that if I lived to be a thousand years old I would never find anyone like Nancy. No one can ever take her place. I love Nancy and Nancy only. I will always love her. Even after I am dead.

I have only eaten a few mouthfuls of food since she died. I may die of starvation in this place. I just hope it comes soon, so that I can be with Nancy again.

We always knew that we would go to the same place when we died. We so much wanted to die together in each other’s arms. I cry every time I think about that. I promised my baby that I would kill myself if anything ever happened to her, and she promised me the same. This is my final commitment to the one I love.

I worshipped Nancy. It was far more than just love. To me she was a goddess. She used to make me kiss her feet before we made love. No one ever loved the way we did, and to spend even a day away from her, let alone a whole lifetime, is too painful to even think about. Oh Debbie, I never knew what pain was until this happened. Nancy was my whole life. I lived for her. Now I must die for her.

It gave me such pleasure to give her anything she wanted. She was just like a child. She used to call me “daddy” when she was upset, and I used to call her “mamma” and she used to nurse me at her breast and call me her “baby boy”.

I tried to kill myself but they got me to hospital before I died. Nancy knows that I will soon be with her. Please pray that we will be together. I can never find peace until we are together again.

Oh Debbie, she was the most beautiful person I ever knew. I would have done anything for her.

Nancy once asked if I would pour petrol over myself and set it on fire if she told me to. I said I would, and I meant it. If you would happily die for someone, then how can you live without them. I can’t go on without her. She always said she would die before she was twenty-one, and I never doubted it.

Goodbye, Debbie. I love you.

Sid XXX

[girly-interrupted]

when he says i love you but sid vicious said:

“every day without nancy gets worse and worse. I just hope that when I die I go the same place as her. Otherwise I will never find peace. Frank said in the paper that Nancy was born in pain and lived in pain all her life. When I first met her, and for about six months after that, I spent practically the whole time in tears. Her pain was just too much to bear. Because, you see, I felt Nancy’s pain as though it were my own, worse even. But she said that I must be strong for her or otherwise she would have to leave me. So I became strong for her, and she began to stop having asthma attacks and seemed to be going through a lot less pain. I realized that she had never known love and was desperately searching for someone to love her. It was the only thing she really needed. I gave her the love that she needed so badly and it comforts me to know that I made her very happy during the time we were together, where she had only known unhappiness before. Oh Debbie, I love her with such passion. Every day is agony without her. I know now that it is possible to die from a broken heart. Because when you love someone as much as we love each other, they become fundamental to your existence. So I will die soon, even if I don’t kill myself. I guess you could say that I’m pining for her. I could live without food or water longer than I’m going to survive with out Nancy. Thank you so much for understanding us, Debbie. It means so much to me, and I know it meant alot to Nancy. She really loves you, and so do I. How did she know when she was going to die? I always prayed that she was wrong, but deep inside I knew she was right. Nancy was a very special person, too beautiful for this world. I feel so privileged to have loved her, and been loved by her. Oh Debbie, it was such a beautiful love. I can’t go on without it. When we first met, we knew we were made for each other, and fell in love with each other immediately. We were totally inseparable and were never apart. We had certain telepathic abilities, too. I remember about nine months after we met, I left Nancy for awhile. After a couple of weeks of being apart, I had a strange feeling that Nancy was dying. I went straight to the place she was staying and when I saw her, I knew it was true. I took her home with me and nursed her back to health, but I knew that if I hadn’t bothered she would have died. Nancy was just a poor baby, desperate for love. It made me so happy to give her love, and believe me, no man ever loved a woman with such burning passion as I love Nancy. I never even looked at others. No one was as beautiful as my Nancy. Enclosed is a poem I wrote for her. It kind of sums up how much I love her. If possible, I would love to see you before I die. You are the only one who understood. […] all I can say is that they never loved anyone as passionately as I love Nancy. I always felt unworthy to be loved by someone so beautiful as her. Everything we did was beautiful. At the climax of our lovemaking, I just used to break down and cry. It was so beautiful it was almost unbearable. It makes me mad when people say “you must have really loved her.” So they think I don’t still love her? At least when I die, we will be together.I feel like a lost child, so alone. The nights are the worst. I used to hold Nancy close to me all night so that she wouldn’t have nightmares and I just can’t sleep without my beautiful baby in my arms. So warm and gentle and vulnerable. No one should expect me to live without her. She was a part of me.

Nancy, you were my little baby girl and I shared all your fears. such joy to hold you in my arms and kiss away your tears. But now you’re gone there’s only pain and nothing I can do. and I don’t want to live this life if I can’t live for you. to my beautiful baby girl our love will never die.”

[asa-do-your-thing]

Alone and Alive

18+ MINORS DNI Theon Greyjoy x F!Reader 4.3 k Warnings: DARK, self harm, mentions suicide, grief, smut, commitment issues mentioned, Dead dove, no proofreading this one goes out to whoever requested Theon smut, @legitalicat and @zaldritzosrose <3

Slowly dipping your screaming hand back into the stream, you savoured the sting as you saw your skin paling considerably. The snow fell thickly - it was one of the first proper ones, you noted and sighed, trying your hardest to stop yourself from thinking about him.

No, you scolded yourself, now you’ve thought of him again, just by trying not to…

You pulled your hand out of the water and placed it onto your thick woolen skirts, looking out into the distance, letting the heat of your blood rush back in. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he told you with his stupid, grey eyes looking down at you in pity as the whole of Winterfell seemed to watch you, ‘there is just no way you can come with me. This arrangement could have never worked, my Lady. I shall serve the realm at the Wall, where I belong. I wish you all the best and hope that you will find happiness with your future Lord Husband,’ he said so coldly, his eyes not even on you.

He’d never called you ‘my Lady’. He had always just called you by your name, but no, he was ‘a bastard, and bastards cannot call Ladies by their names’.

The pain in your hand was not enough. The cold wasn’t enough.

You had come out here in just your dress, your simplest one - was this penance? or a sort of pain you wished to inflict upon yourself? - without a cloak or gloves. Shivering, you glanced around, trying to ascertain if anyone could see you, but you were well hidden between some dense pine trees.

Slowly slipping out of your dress, you took some measured deep breaths, took off your boots and stockings and stepped into the small river. You couldn’t stop the yelp escaping from your throat as you sat down, but the cold immediately soothed you. Stopped you from thinking of him. Well no, not truly - but it didn’t hurt anymore.

The pebbles hurt. The water hurt. But thinking of Jon Snow didn’t hurt anymore.

You behaved like a child back then, in the courtyard. You should’ve given him a token. Something for him to remember you by. But all you did was freeze like a stupid little girl and pushed him. Jon didn’t expect it but stepped back, still staring at the wall behind you with no emotion, after which you ran away in disgrace, tears streaming down your face as you wept disgustingly, like a slaughtered sow, for all to see.

You leaned back, slowly lowering yourself into the frigid stream. The shock of the cold water against your bare skin made you gasp, but you forced yourself to remain still. Your long, dark hair fanned out around you, floating on the surface like tendrils of night. The water lapped at your ears, muffling the sounds of the forest. At first, every nerve in your body screamed in protest. But as the minutes passed, a strange warmth began to spread through your limbs. Your breathing slowed, and your eyelids grew heavy. The gentle current tugged at your hair, and you imagined it was Jon's fingers, running through the dark strands as he used to do.

The falling snow melted as it touched the water, creating tiny ripples that danced across your vision. You watched them, mesmerized, as a creeping lethargy settled over you. Your thoughts began to blur, memories of Jon's smile and the sound of his laugh mixing with the gurgle of the stream.

The urge to close your eyes grew stronger with each passing moment. You told yourself you'd rest for just a minute, then get up and return to the castle. But the water cradled you like a mother's arms, and the cold no longer bothered you. In fact, you felt warmer than you had in days.

Your eyelids fluttered closed, and you sighed contentedly. The world faded away, leaving only the sensation of floating. You barely noticed the sound of approaching footsteps as your body sank deeper into the water, rising up the side of your cheeks and slowly crept over your forehead.

Freedom. Warmth. Love. Hands.

Hands?

A pair of smooth, long-fingered hands were touching your face. Warmth. Why were they warm? You frowned and tried turning your head away from them. You wanted to sleep, why was someone disturbing you? You were so tired…

Your eyelids fluttered open, heavy as lead. The world swam before you, a blur of white and grey. Slowly, shapes began to form - the dark silhouettes of pine trees, the glittering surface of the stream, and a face hovering above you, eyes wide with shock and fear.

Theon Greyjoy.

His usually smirking face was pale with concern, his lips moving rapidly as he spoke words you couldn't quite hear. The ringing in your ears slowly subsided, and his voice came into focus.

"...mad? You could have died! Fucking hells, what were you thinking?"

You blinked, trying to make sense of your surroundings. The cold hit you then, a bone-deep chill that set your teeth chattering. Theon's arms were around you, his body heat a stark contrast to the icy stream. He was dragging you out, his boots slipping on the smooth stones of the riverbed.

With a grunt of effort, he pulled you onto the snowy bank. The shock of the frigid air against your wet skin jolted you further into consciousness. You gasped, your lungs burning as they filled with the crisp winter air. Theon quickly shed his fur-lined cloak, wrapping it around your shivering form.

"T-Theon?" you managed to stammer, your voice barely above a whisper.

His eyes met yours, a mixture of relief, curiousity and anger swirling in them. “Yes, who else could I be? Fuck, have you lost your senses? Why would you do this? Don’t tell me this is because of the bastard,” he said with a sneer, but you know that was meant for Jon, not for you.

The shame of hearing this - Theon was right, you truly were a pathetic creature to do something like this because of Jon Snow - made you start crying again, yet this time no sound came out. Small, hot tears ran down your freezing cheeks, your toes burning in the cold snow as you slowly inched towards Theon.

Warmth. Theon was warm. He radiated warmth.

“I’m s-sorr-sorry,” you stammered out and looked up at him, trying to see if he was angry with you or if he would mock you. You wouldn’t be able to deal with this, not here, not now. “It… It hurts. I’m… I should… sorry that you… had to see th-this…”

Theon's expression softened, the anger melting away as he looked at your tear-stained face. He sighed, running a hand through his tousled hair. "Hells," he muttered, then pulled you closer, wrapping his arms around you. "You're freezing. We need to get you back to the castle before you catch your death."

You nodded weakly, your teeth still chattering. Theon glanced around, spotting your discarded dress and boots. "Can you stand?" he asked, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.

You tried to rise, but your legs were numb and unresponsive. Theon cursed under his breath, then scooped you up in his arms, cradling you against his chest. The warmth of his body seeped through the cloak, and you instinctively pressed closer. The embroidered squid stared back at oyu with taunting eyes.

"Hold on," he murmured, then began trudging through the snow towards your abandoned clothes. He bent awkwardly, managing to snatch them up without dropping you. "We'll have to sneak you in through the godswood," he said, his breath forming small clouds in the cold air. "Can't have the whole castle seeing you like this."

As Theon carried you through the woods, you found yourself studying his face. You'd known him for years, but you'd never really looked at him before. His sharp features were softened by the falling snow, and there was a determined set to his jaw that you'd never noticed.

Features that weren’t Jon’s. A small sob shook through you and you sniffled. “I’m p-pathetic. Theon, I’m so pa… pathetic.”

It was clear that Theon was highly uncomfortable with this situation as he glanced down at you and cursed as he stumbled over a root. As Winterfell’s keep came closer, the lights cast shadows on his sharp features, making his earring glint softly.

“The bastard’s pathetic, not you. He… He shouldn’t have done this in front of everyone,” he muttered quietly and then put up an anxious grin.

"At least his cock’ll freeze off at the Wall, eh?”, he japed, obviously trying to lift your mood in any way he could.

Despite yourself, you felt a small smile tug at the corners of your mouth. Theon's crude humor, usually so grating, was oddly comforting in its familiarity. You let out a weak chuckle, which quickly turned into a cough as the cold air irritated your throat.

"There's a hint of a smile," Theon said, his voice a mixture of relief and triumph. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten how."

As you approached the castle, Theon's steps became more cautious. He ducked behind outbuildings and slipped through shadows, avoiding the night guards with practiced ease. You realized, with a start, that this wasn't the first time he'd snuck someone into the castle after hours.

The godswood loomed behind you, ancient and imposing. The heart tree's face seemed to watch your departure, its red leaves rustling in the night breeze. Theon paused for a moment, as if steeling himself, before entering the exiting grove. The snow fell more softly here, caught by the canopy of leaves overhead.

You expected Theon to turn towards the guest wing, where your chambers were located. Instead, he headed in the opposite direction, towards the guest quarters where he resided. Curiosity overrode your exhaustion, but you found you didn't have the energy to protest.

Theon managed to open his chamber door while still holding you, kicking it shut behind him. The room was warm, a fire already crackling in the hearth. The sudden heat made you shiver even more.

“Th-theon, I… you saved m-my… l-life…,” you stuttered out as he laid you on his messy bed, trying your hardest to calm your spasming muscles.

He halted and looked at the ground, before slowly, wordlessly, pulling back from you. He went towards his wardrobe and pulled a long shirt out, handing it to you, not quite knowing what to say. “Take your shift off and then lie under the furs,” he said, and took his boots off, his eyes fixed on you.

You’d forgotten all about your propriety in the moment and gently wiggled out of the cold, drenched shift, your pale skin immediately raising itself into goosebumps. Theon’s eyes widened at the sight of your chest and only then, slowly, turned his head away. His shirt was warm and very big, but it covered you nonetheless. Bunching up your shift, you slowly tried standing up, shakily handing him your undergarment.

“Y-you don’t happen t-to have smallclothes?” you asked shyly. They were wet and cold too and you knew you had to get them off as soon as you could.

Theon's cheeks flushed slightly, but he nodded, turning back to his wardrobe. He rummaged for a moment before producing a pair of linen smallclothes. "They might be a bit big," he said, handing them to you without meeting your eyes.

You took them gratefully, your fingers brushing against his. "Thank you," you murmured, clutching the garment to your chest. "Could you... turn around?"

Theon nodded, spinning on his heel to face the wall. You quickly shed your wet smallclothes, replacing them with Theon's dry ones. They were indeed too large, but they were warm and soft against your skin.

"You can look now," you said softly, climbing under the furs on Theon's bed. The warmth enveloped you, and you felt your muscles begin to relax.

Theon turned, his eyes searching your face. "Are you... alright?" he asked, uncertainty clear in his voice. It was strange to see him like this, stripped of his usual cocky demeanor.

You nodded, pulling the furs up to your chin. "I think so. Thanks to you."

Theon ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture you'd never seen him make before. "What were you thinking?" he asked, his voice low. "If I hadn't found you..."

"I wasn't thinking," you admitted, shame coloring your cheeks. "I just... I… needed to distract myself. From the pain. From him.” Another wave of tears threatened to spill and you bit your lip and looked away, ashamed of the way you were acting. Ashamed of how you felt. Ashamed of how you acted.

“Shh, fuck him,” Theon tried to say soothingly and sat down next to you, awkwardly patting your cold, wet head. “No need to think of that droopy idiot. He was right, you are too good for him.”

Somehow, shamefully, this made you cry again. Your body moved against its own will as you turned towards him and hugged his thigh, crying into it.

Theon froze for a moment, clearly unsure how to respond to your sudden display of vulnerability. Then, hesitantly, he placed a hand on your back, rubbing small circles as you sobbed into his leg. "Hey now," he said softly, his usual bravado absent from his voice. "It's alright. You're safe now."

Your tears gradually subsided, leaving you feeling drained and empty. You loosened your grip on Theon's thigh, embarrassment creeping in as you realized how you must look - a highborn lady, clinging to him like a child. "I'm sorry," you whispered, your voice hoarse. "I don't know what came over me."

Theon's hand stilled on your back, but he didn't remove it. "You don't need to apologize," he said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. "We all have our moments of weakness."

You looked up at him, surprised by his words. His eyes met yours, and for a moment, you saw a flicker of something - understanding, perhaps, or shared pain.

"Even you?" you asked, barely above a whisper.

A sad smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Not really," he said, his pained expression suddenly changing to something akin to fake cockiness, yet his eyes were just as sorrowful as yours. Theon's hand tightened around you as he pulled you closer, giving you a small smirk. “Enough sadness now, hm? Jon’s gone and you, Lady Icicle, need warmth.”

You wanted to push him away until it hit you that what coldness was to you, warmth was for him. And, in your sad, weepy state, you decided to indulge him. What harm could it do? This way no one froze and it didn’t hurt. No, that was a lie - it hurt so badly, to be held by him. To know that Jon could’ve held you thusly. To know that Theon probably didn’t care for you, but needed you to quell his own pain. You gave him a sad little smile and snuggled closer to him. “I think that’s a splendid idea. Thank you…”

Theon's arms tightened around you, pulling you closer to his warmth. You felt his chest rise and fall with each breath, steady and reassuring. For a moment, you allowed yourself to forget everything - Jon, your impending marriage, the expectations of your family. Here, in Theon's arms, you were just a girl seeking comfort.

"You know," Theon murmured, his breath tickling your ear, "I always thought Snow was a fool. But I never realized just how big of an idiot he truly was until now."

You tilted your head to look at him, confusion furrowing your brow. "What do you mean?"

Theon's eyes met yours, and there was an intensity in them that made your breath catch. "To have you here with him and to give it all up? For the Night's Watch?" He shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. "Only a complete lackwit would make that choice."

Your heart stuttered in your chest, a mix of pain and something else - something warmer - flooding through you. "Theon, I-"

But before you could finish your thought, Theon's lips were on yours. The kiss was gentle at first, almost hesitant, so unlike the brash Greyjoy you thought you knew. Then, as you responded, it deepened, becoming more urgent, more desperate.

You found yourself clinging to him, your fingers tangling in his hair as you pulled him down on top of you, your kisses becoming faster and messier, your freezing thighs wrapping around his hips. You were mad - this was madness. But you knew this was what dulled the pain, at least Theon’s, whatever pain he carried with him. And just as he saved you, you wished to save him, to grant him respite between your thighs.

Nothing mattered - any thoughts of marriage, your maidenhead or whatever else would have come into your life after Jon’s departure had disappeared into the icy stream in the Godswood.

“Take what you need,” you whispered and looked up at him and saw the pain flashing over his features. He nodded gently and gently pulled off your clothes he had only just given you before he took his own off. Leaning gently back down over your cold form, he shook his head and kissed your neck, his hand brushing down your body. It was as if he wanted to say something - to thank you, to curse you, or whatever the Gods knew went through his head - but decided not to say it anyways.

You gasped at the warmth of his fingers between your thighs, gingerly opening you up to him. Biting your lip, you watched quietly as he brought them up again to wet them, before he spread his spit over your cunny. A small moan escaped your lips as you closed your lips, savouring his touch, his scent, his warmth.

Theon's touch was gentle but insistent, his fingers exploring your most intimate places with a tenderness you hadn't expected. You arched into his hand, seeking more contact, more warmth, more of anything to drive away the lingering chill in your bones and the ache in your heart.

His lips found yours again, swallowing your soft moans as he worked you towards pleasure. You clung to him, your nails digging into his shoulders, anchoring yourself to this moment, to this feeling. For now, there was no Jon, no Wall, no expectations - just you and Theon and the heat building between you.

When he finally entered you, the initial pain was a welcome distraction from your emotional turmoil. Theon paused, his forehead resting against yours, his breath coming in short pants. "Are you alright?" he murmured, his voice thinner and shakier than you’d expected it to be.

You nodded, unable to form words. You rolled your hips experimentally, drawing a groan from Theon. He began to move then, slowly at first, then with increasing urgency. “Theon, I… Oh gods, please…,” you moaned and clung to him like a shipwrecked sailor would to a cliff. “You… this… yes…”

Theon's pace quickened, his hips driving into yours with increasing fervor. The bed creaked beneath you, the sound mingling with your shared gasps and moans. The fire in the hearth cast flickering shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp planes of his cheekbones and the intensity in his eyes.

As you gazed up at him, you noticed something glistening on his cheeks. At first, you thought it might be sweat, but as he thrust into you again, you realized with a start that they were tears. They fell silently, dropping onto your chest like warm rain.

Your heart clenched at the sight. Without thinking, you reached up, gently wiping away a tear with your thumb. Theon's rhythm faltered for a moment, his eyes widening in surprise. You cupped his face in your hands, pulling him down to you. Your lips found his cheeks, kissing away the salty trails left by his tears.

The tenderness of the gesture seemed to break something in Theon. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his body shuddering with silent sobs as he continued to move within you. You ran your fingers through his hair, whispering soothing words you didn't even understand.

The pleasure building within you was almost unbearable, a tightening coil of heat and tension. But you fought against it, focusing instead on Theon's pain, on the way his tears felt against your skin, on the trembling of his body against yours. You held him tightly, your legs wrapped around his waist, drawing him deeper into you with each thrust.

"It's alright," you whispered into his ear, your voice breaking. "I'm here. I've got you."

Theon's movements became erratic, his breathing ragged against your neck. You felt him tense, a low, broken moan escaping his lips as he found his release. The sensation pushed you over the edge, and you cried out, your body arching beneath him as waves of pleasure washed over you.

For a long moment, you lay there, tangled together, both of you trembling from the intensity of what had just transpired. Theon's weight on top of you was comforting, grounding you in the present. You stroked his back gently, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he caught his breath.

Finally, Theon lifted his head, meeting your gaze. His eyes were red-rimmed, vulnerable in a way you'd never seen before. You reached up, brushing a strand of hair from his forehead. "Thank you," you murmured, though you weren't entirely sure what you were thanking him for - saving your life, comforting you, or sharing this moment of vulnerability.

Theon's lips quirked into a small, sad smile. "I should be thanking you," he said softly, his voice hoarse. He rolled off you, settling beside you on the bed. You immediately missed his warmth, and without thinking, you curled into his side. He stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, draping an arm over you.

You lay there in silence, listening to the crackling of the fire and the steady beat of Theon's heart. The room was warm now, but you still felt a chill deep in your bones - a remnant of the icy stream, or perhaps something else entirely.

"What happens now?" you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

Theon's arm tightened around you. "I don't know," he admitted. "But we can't stay here forever. Someone will notice you're missing."

Reality began to seep back in, cold and unwelcome. You thought of your family, of the betrothal your father was no doubt arranging even now. Of Jon, riding towards the Wall, perhaps thinking of you. Of the life you were expected to lead.

"I don't want to go back," you said, surprising yourself with the vehemence in your voice.

Theon shifted, propping himself up on one elbow to look at you. His eyes searched your face, a mix of emotions playing across his features. "What are you saying?"

You sat up, latching yourself onto him with such an intensity that shame flooded you. “I don’t want to marry a rich, dim witted, old fool. Please, Theon, I… You know of my pain, I know of yours. You took my maidenhead and… well, filled me. I… don’t want to go back and I cannot go back.”

He stiffened beneath your touch and clenched his jaw, staring off into the distance. “You… You don’t know me. You don’t want me. I can’t offer you anything. And… Lord Stark wouldn’t let me go.”

You felt a pang in your chest at Theon's words, but you refused to let go of him. "I may not know everything about you, Theon, but I know enough. I know you're kind, even when you try to hide it. I know you're brave. And I know you understand pain, just as I do."

Theon's eyes met yours, a storm of emotions swirling in their depths. "You don't understand what you're asking," he said, his voice low and strained. "I'm not... I can't be what you need. What you deserve."

"And what do I deserve?" you challenged, your voice rising slightly. "To be married off to some lord I've never met? To live a life of quiet desperation, always wondering what could have been?"

Theon flinched at your words, but you pressed on. "You saved my life tonight, Theon. And not just from the stream. You saved me from myself." You took a deep breath, steeling yourself. "I'm not asking for forever. I'm asking for a chance. A chance to choose my own path, even if it's not the one everyone expects of me."

Theon's expression softened, a mix of longing and fear in his eyes. "And what of your family? Your duty? You would throw it all away for... for me?"

You cupped his face in your hands, forcing him to meet your gaze. "I'm not throwing anything away. I'm choosing you.”

He scoffed and drew you closer, pressing a small kiss on your head. “I… whatever you say. Sleep now. You’ve had a long day behind you.”

You felt a pang of disappointment at Theon's dismissive response, but exhaustion was quickly overtaking you. The events of the day - your near-death experience, the emotional turmoil, and the unexpected intimacy with Theon - had left you drained.

"Promise me you'll still be here when I wake up," you murmured, your eyelids growing heavy.

Theon's arms tightened around you, and you felt him nod against your hair. "I promise," he whispered, his voice thick with an emotion you couldn't quite place.

As you drifted off to sleep, you thought you heard him say something else, but the words were lost to the encroaching darkness of slumber.

At least, you thought tiredly, you were warm.

[thegreatcaptainusopp]

The Separation

Ao3 link

The Seer, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6

Chapter 7: Nami

As soon as Nami draws her first breath upon landing, she knows exactly where she is.

She snaps up with a gasp, clutching at her chest. She struggles into a breath, and then another, the another…

Calm down. She tells herself sternly, gasping her way into another breath. Calmdowncalmdowncalmdown

She clutches at the white wisps of ground beneath her, drawing another shallow breath. She’ll be okay, she has to be, any moment now…

She doesn’t know how much time goes by before she notices something in her chest start to loosen, and the breaths don’t feel like as much work anymore.

She tips her head towards the sky, slowly recovering. Sudden changes in elevation, she thinks to herself. Can mess you up bad. So…

Nami looks around, at the somehow familiar sight of buildings spread out amongst a white and springy surface, at the noticeably thinner air and a breeze in the air that feels very different.

How did I end up here? Of all places, why here?

She can still feel the phantom fear at the corners of her mind, the image of Kuma’s looming hand sending waves of latent panic through her body. It had been scary, so scary, and yet…

Yet. Why did he send her here? To a sky island, of all places?

Because this is undeniably a sky island. It looks like one, it feels like one. It’s not Skypeia, she doesn’t think, it’s too small, less grand, but still. How is she going to get down from here? It had taken so much to come back from Skypeia, and that had been with a ship and a crew and the help of all the citizens they had just saved…

Well, Nami thinks, making her way shakily to her feet. All I can do now is try to figure out a way back, right?

Maybe she can find other citizens around here to help her? She doesn’t have any money, and they didn’t have any sky island currency anyway, so if there’s an entrance fee here as well she’s not going to be able to pay it…

Nami sighs, waving away at her concerns. She’s just gonna have to figure it out when she gets there. But first…she’s going to have to move.

She had landed near the white sky-sea, so she heads away from the shore and further into the island, looking around nervously for any signs of life. This island…she is very much not in Skypeia any longer, because this place is hilly where Skypeia was not, and Nami follows the trail down towards the bottom. How does it work like this? She thinks. The atmospheric pressure alone…

Well, nothing had ever come to applying logic to the Grand Line. All she can do is roll with it.

She looks around again, taking in the views and the quiet. The crew would’ve really liked it here, although they would’ve made sure it wouldn’t have stayed quiet for long—

A gasped breath escapes her without notice, and she feels her legs give out as she sinks back onto the cloudy floor. The crew. The crew.

They’re fine, right? They have to be, there’s nothing in the world that could take down Luffy and Zoro and Sanji. And Robin and Brook have been on their own so long, they’ll know how to handle it. And Franky, well, he’s been kicking ass and taking names before she was even born. And Chopper…well, he’s been through a lot and he’s always come out the other side so he’ll be fine, right? He has to be. And Usopp…

Nami feels her chest constrict. She doesn’t think she can blame it on the atmosphere this time.

She tries to get her breathing under control again. Freaking out here isn’t going to help everyone, she has to get her act together and go find them because god knows they’re going to need her help to get out of there, and…

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

Nami looks up, hand still squeezing the area above her heart. “What?” She asks, more out of surprise than an actual answer.

Her surprise only doubles when the figure in front of her sharpens and clears into a tall old man wearing wizards garb and a puzzled look. “What are you doing here, young lady?” He asks, cocking his head to the side. “How did you even get here?”

Nami shrugs reflexively. “I’m not sure,” She says, pushing her way back up to her feet. It feels too vulnerable to stay on the ground. “I was sent here…it’s a long story. Anyway. I’ll be ready to leave if you show me the way back down. And…I’ll need a ship too.”

“Back down?” The man-wizard stares at her, puzzled. “So…I assume you didn’t get here from another sky island. You’re from the blue sea, then? That is odd indeed, because we aren’t over a sector that has an upstream jet…”

“Ah,” Nami says, waving her hands quickly. “Yes, I know. We’ve been to Skypeia befo—anyway. I didn’t get here through conventional means, nor by choice. So I’ll be on my way, if you’ll let me out.”

The wizard scratches his head. “Well…” He says, hesitatingly. “You see, we’re not over anywhere we could drop you off right now…right above open sea, you know. You’ll have to wait a bit until we reach the right area. I suppose you’ll want to use your Vivre card to guide you?”

Nami blinks. “My what?”

“Your…” The old man points at her hip. “It’s sticking out of your pocket. That’s a Vivre card, right?”

Nami grabs at her pocket, pulling out a piece of paper she knows for a fact she didn’t put there. “What?” She says, staring at what is very clearly a Vivre card. “What?”

“Regardless,” the old man says. “We’re on a course that’ll take us over quite an interesting port soon. That should take you where you need to go, although it may take some time to get there.”

Nami sighs, putting the Vivre card back in her pocket. “Well, if we can’t—” the words suddenly register. “Huh? What do you mean? Is this island moving?”

The man crosses his arms. “I…yes,” He says, still hesitant. “This is Weatheria, you see. An artificial sky island. My colleagues and I constructed it long ago to observe, record, and influence weather patterns, both here and in the blue sea.”

Nami just about chokes. “Weather?” She asks disbelieving. “You’re telling me that I ended up on weather island? Really?”

“Um, yes?” The man responds meekly, but Nami can barely hear him. Instead, she puts a shaking hand over her mouth, thinking hard.

This can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be, sending her of all people to a moving island that specializes in weather is way too specific to be accidental. And if that is the case, then…

“Hey,” Nami says suddenly, snapping her gaze back at the old man. “Do you know a Bartholomew Kuma, by any chance?”

The man’s eyes light up. “Kuma!” He says. “Why, yes, of course! He’s visited us up here a few times. Good man, rather silent but polite and interested in our research.”

Nami’s frown deepens, and she moves her hand up to her forehead instead. “What is this?” She asks herself. “How…he helped us, right? Why would he do that?”

The Vivre card, the island location…the pieces are there but they don’t make sense. Did the rest of her crew also get sent to islands that almost seem to be made for them? Did they all also get cards? But why?

“You’re thinking quite hard there, young lady,” the old man says, breaking into her thoughts. “How about I get you situated here, and you can explain your situation further?”

Nami takes a deep breath. She needs to hold it together. “Yes,” She says, casting a critical, yet interested eye to her surroundings. “Hey…what’s your name, by the way?”

“Harades,” The man says, taking off his hat into a little nervous bow. “My name is Harades.”

-

This island is nothing like Nami has ever seen before. And she has seen some doozies in her time.

But this? This is a different level entirely. Not only is the island artificial (which…what? How?) but it is also filled with things that feel so…alien to her.

Granted, it is a sky island, and all these residents are from various islands from around the sky which might be way it feels so foreign, but…

But it’s more than that. This place is chock full of old men just like Harades, who spend their days peering at instruments and screens and in labs running tests over and over and over again. It’s less a society and more a campus, if anything, and the whole thing is so bizarre it makes Nami feel uneasy.

Most importantly, though…there are maps. Maps of places and things that she didn’t know existed, that extend beyond here and into the new world…

Something in her stomach prickles at the sight. Could they…could they have already mapped the whole world, like she had wanted to do all her life? It had seemed like such a daunting task, but this island had been up and running for years apparently, with the distinct advantage of not having to fight through all the obstacles of the sea below, so…Maybe everything she had wanted to do had already been done long ago.

At some point, Nami feels it start to waver in her chest, and the question starts growing louder in her head. She wants to ask Harades if he had one, if they had created the map she had spent her life dreaming up, if she could just look at it for a moment and see…

Luffy’s face pops into her head at the thought and stays there. He doesn’t look angry, or happy, but just…there, just waiting. Just watching. Just reminding her of why she’s here at all, that he wouldn’t take any shortcuts and if that’s the case, then why would she?

So she sighs, and tries her very best to let it go.

Instead, she tries to turn her brain off for now and follows Harades around the small island, greeting the other inhabitants and listening to him rattle on about the equipment and their various projects. It sounds like a dream, almost, and she can’t quite believe something like this actually exists. Something in her keeps waiting for her to wake up, because this can only be a world that she has created in her own head.

Nami succeeds at keeping herself separated from the tour until they reach the final stop.

“And these,” Harades says, waving his hands with a flourish. “Are our pride and joy. These are our weather balls!”

He points to what looks like rows and rows of farmed soil, covered by small and bulbous objects. Nami takes a step closer, and sees that the objects look like small transparent spheres, but she can’t quite make out what’s within them.

Nami gives them a critical glance. “Weather balls?”

“Indeed!” Harades says, lifting a finger into the air. “They are our secret to success, you know. Within these balls are weather types of all kinds. We harvest them, and use them in our experiments. But,” He makes sure to add hastily. “They’re also a reality we take seriously! We use them to help others too, you know…if places are in need of weather, we can provide it.”

Nami thinks of Alabasta, of the weather that led to war. “Not everywhere,” She says, feeling something tighten in her chest. “You didn’t reach everywhere.”

Something…odd crossed Harades’ face for a moment, but it disappears before Nami can really react. “Well,” He says awkwardly. “We can only go as far as we can go. Sometimes, we don’t get the news that places need our help until it’s too late.”

Nami shakes the thoughts away from her head, turning back to the weather balls. “These things,” She says, eyeing them again. “You ever tried to make weapons out of them?”

She can picture it perfectly in her head: anything here paired with her clima-tact would give her a crazy good advantage if she needed to use it. Not to mention how useful it would be if she needed an extra boost when trying to navigate through difficult weather…

“Oh no!” Harades says, shaking his head viciously. “Not at all! In the wrong hands, this technology could be dangerous. Catastrophic, even.”

Nami stares at the weather balls, feeling a very familiar feeling start to grow in her head. Her longstanding impulse returns with a vengeance, the impulse that runs most of her thoughts and actions, that controlled her before she truly found her purpose.

The impulse to take.

Maybe…if she can grab a couple of them and book it, make her way back down and away, she’ll be able to…

She casts a contemplative glance at Harades. “Hey,” She says, pointing behind him. “What’s that?”

Harades turns, and Nami uses the second to dart out, grabbing the closest few weather balls and tucking them under her arm. She tries to be as careful as possible, wouldn’t want to risk breaking it…

Harades turns back around. “What is it?” He asks. “I didn���t see any—”

His eyes dart down to the balls that peek from below her arms, then widen.

“See ya!” Nami says, before turning on her heel into a run.

-

They catch her quickly. Very quickly. It’s a little embarrassing, really.

“Hey!” Nami says, banging on the glass. “Let me out of here!”

She squints out of the transparent bubble. It’s definitely more solid than it looks and hasn’t even been scratched at all after she’d been at it. Honestly, it kind of hurts her pride a little. Just a little.

Nami groans, letting her legs buckle as she sinks down to the floor of her prison. She can’t help but feel a little suffocated: the room is completely closed off even to the outside breeze, and it’s making her nervous. Even worse, she’s stupidly stuck in here while everyone else is god knows where, probably stumbling around lost like a bunch of idiots…

Okay, except maybe Robin. Everyone else is an idiot, though.

She groans again, leaning her head against the glass. Plan. She needs a plan. How…how can she get out of here? There’s a lock on the prison door, maybe she can—

“Excuse me, Nami?”

She lifts her head up, startled. A sea of old mean with beards stare back at her, uncertain and hesitant, clearly unsure of how to proceed.

Nami almost scoffs. Not a single strong personality here. Too easy.

She scans their expressions, trying to figure out how to proceed. Maybe I should—

She takes a deep breath, summoning the image of Bellemere into her mind and allowing it to float over to her eyes, which start to itch as tears form at the ducts. She gives a loud, exaggerated sniff, feeling the tears wobble right before they let go. Blinking, she directs her gaze at the old men, who look at her in horror, and grins internally.

“I can’t do this,” She weeps, leaning hard on the wobble in her voice. “I need to get back to my friends. I’m so worried and scared for them, I’ll do anything to find them again. Please, I’m so sorry, please I need to—”

She stops in her tracks so fast shes shocked right back out of her tears.

Because…because in the hands of one of the wizards is a newspaper, and…and there’s a very familiar face peeking out the edge…

Nami gasps, vaguely surprised at the feeling of more tears building up in her eyes. “That’s him!” She says, pointing at the paper. “That’s my captain. Please, can you show me that article?”

The wizard jolts like he’s been hit by lightning. He casts a sideways glance at Harades.

Harades’ eyes dart to the side, then back. His forehead crumples up in indecision. “Well…”

“Please,” Nami begs, shaking herself back into the act. She can use this, she can use this. “I need to see…I need to see what happened to him. You don’t even need to let me out, just…just show me the article. Please.”

All lies, of course. Usopp would be proud. (Or, would he? Because all along, turns out he’d never…)

Harades’ eyes close in defeat. “Fine,” He says, then. “Lay out the article on the glass for her to read.”

The wizard nods, unfurling the paper against her prison dome. Nami scurries over to that side, instantly pouring through the article. She doesn’t want Luffy to be in danger but if there’s anything here she can use to convince them to let her go, she’ll take it.

Her eyes land on the photo and stay there.

Luffy, She thinks, clenching her hands to keep them from shaking. You’re okay. You’re okay!

Then, Goddamit, Luffy. Two years?

This…this is no way helps her plan. She can’t use Luffy as an excuse to leave, because she can’t even go.

Because, well…she’s going to need somewhere to stay for a couple years. And to be honest, this place might be the perfect solution. It’s out of the way, so she won’t be able to be found. Even if someone starts chasing her, the island moves, so she won’t be stuck in one space, just waiting out in the open.

The question remains: what is she going to do now?

Nami sighs, slumping back in defeat. “I’ve read the article,” She says. “Thank you. That is my captain. I need to help him still, but…”

She trails off. She needs to convince them to release her, but also to keep her here. How…how is she going to do that?

Nami’s fists clench again. “Please, let me go,” She says. “I…I need to grow stronger. I need to help my captain, and I can only do it with your help. Your expertise. So…please. Help me.”

Her head’s bowed, so she doesn’t get a look at anyone’s face. Her heart starts racing as Harades begins to speak, at the uncertainty in his voice. “That may be the case, Nami, but you’ve…you’ve committed a crime, you see. You attempted to steal the weather balls, and weaponize them. This defeats every purpose of our existence here. I don’t know if we can trust you enough to release you.”

The space feels too small all of a sudden, too tight. She snaps her head back up, trying to convince them when her eyes. “I know,” She says, and, damn, when did the line start to blur between an act and reality? “I know that doesn’t help my case, but…but you need to let me out of here. Please. I can make up for it, I can be useful for you.”

Something itches away at her, saying those words. The sphere she’s in seems to be closing in around her, and it doesn’t really look like a sphere anymore, it looks like a small, damp room in a tower, smelling like old parchment and metal and blood…

A sharp pain at Nami’s lip breaks her concentration. She wipes away a trickle of blood.

“Nami,” Harades says, but that’s not defeat in his voice. It’s sympathy. “Please understand. We cannot—”

Bullshit. They can, they just don’t want to. Well…that’s not going to work this time. She’s not going to let it. She’s not going to let anyone else keep her anywhere she doesn’t want to be at. She may have been defeated by Kuma, easily, but she will be damned before she allows anyone else to do anything like that to her ever again.

Nobody is coming to save her this time. This time, she is going to have to be the one to do the saving.

Nami feels herself get to her feet. She’s strangely present in her mind, but feels a little bit stretched from her body, a little distant. “Let me out,” she says, firmly. She puts a hand on the dome. “Let me out.”

She sees a confused look cross Harades’ face. “Nami, we already told you that—”

She puts her other hand on the glass. “Let me out,” She repeats. Something builds inside her head, something new. “Let me out.”

She tugs at the feeling. This time, they’re going to hear her. They’re going to listen.

Nami takes a deep breath. “Let me out!” She demands, and her voice is suddenly tinged with…something, the something that she sometimes gets when she’s angry enough to throw a punch, when she knows deep down in her bones that she can hit through anything if her will to do it is strong enough.

It’s familiar now, too, in a different way. It feels a little like Luffy, and maybe Zoro. And maybe…maybe like their time on the Vance ship.

She comes back to herself suddenly. She blinks, and the wizards are gone, and she she feels a sudden panic rise in her chest at the idea of being left alone, stuck in this place with nowhere to go.

Nami blinks again, darting her gaze below and realizes that they haven’t done after all. Instead, all the wizards seem to have landed on the ground in various positions, winded and confused and terrified. She locks eyes with Harades, who responds in kind with a growing horror in his gaze.

Nami stares down at her hands. Despite what she’s feeling, they aren’t shaking.

“What…” she whispers, breathing hitching. “What?”

-

After that…

Well. After that, the weather wizards had let her out without any further fanfare. It had been odd, to see them tiptoe around her so cautiously. The look in all their eyes when they would spot her had unquestionably been fear, and it had been an unfamiliar experience to say the least.

All Nami can do at this point is sit in a daze, trying to battle the fear in her chest. That would be familiar except this time, it’s herself that she scared of. Because…because out of everything she’d been through, everything that could possibly have happened to her, she had not expected this. She had not expected for…for her thing, that strength she’s had for most of her life, to have had some sort of legitimate power to it.

She had not expected to have had Haki.

Conqueror’s Haki, at that. The one that Rayleigh had said was rare. The one that Vance had. The one that could knock people down without touching them.

If she’d had this all this time…how couldn’t she have known? If she’d just known, then maybe things could’ve been different, and maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess right now. Maybe she could’ve done more at Sabaody, at Thriller Bark, at Enies Lobby. Or assisted against Enel, or Crocodile. Or…or escaped Arlong, even.

And maybe. Maybe Bellemere would still be…

No.

Nami shakes her head, trying to pull herself together. Regret does nothing, and she’s not going to change anything by thinking like this. Instead, she needs to concentrate on the future. From now on, she’ll be able to help Luffy and the rest of her crew in ways she never had before.

She thinks of Marineford, and how she had dragged Usopp onto the battlefield. You and I are both long range fighters. Let’s do what we do.

This? This is another weapon in her arsenal. And she’s going to use it.

She looks around her, and the cloudy wisps of the sky island and all that it offers. Since she’s talking about things she can use…

She stands up suddenly, watching the wizards flinch back in response. “Hey, Harades?”

The wizard scurries up to her, head hanging. “Yes?”

Nami cracks her knuckles. “Can you show me your setup around here? I have some stuff I need to test out.”

-

Nami has known, intellectually, that constant travel around the world meant that she may run into a familiar face now and then.

This, however…this had not been what she had had in mind.

“Injury! We have an injury!”

Nami looks up from her clima-tact. “What? Who?”

She doesn’t get a response, so she gathers herself up and books it, following the crowd. They take her out of the main building and down the island, near the bottom at the very edge of the island.

Her thoughts race as she runs. What happened? I told them not to mess with that lighting storm…

She shakes her head. The wizards, despite functioning on their own for over many years they’d been here, are shockingly bad at anything that’s not weather climate research. This includes basics like cooking, organization, societal order, and moderate to advanced medical care.

Nami turns a corner and finally sees them gathered in a huddle, muttering amongst themselves as they stare down at what seems to be a prone figure on the ground.

She sighs in exasperation, then picks up the pace, skidding to a stop in front of the crowd, shoving then out of the way.

“Back up!” She barks, pushing her way forward. “We need to give him some air! I’ll try to see what’s—”

She pauses, the sentence dying in her mouth before it makes it out.

There’s a man on the ground, covered in blood and barely conscious. His blond hair is streaked with red, and his sunglasses are half-hanging off his face. His hands are pressed to a wound in his side, and his face is contorted in pain.

Nami backs up a couple steps. She feels her hands trembling minutely. “Bellamy?”

-

“Who are you?”

The gravelly voice interrupts her thoughts. She looks up from the medkit, snapping it back closed. “What?”

Bellamy blinks up at her from the barely-maintained medical cot. “What am I—” His eyes widen, and that’s when she knows he’s recognized her. “Oh. It’s you. You were with…you were with Straw Hat, weren’t you.”

Memories of their first encounter flash through her mind. Her jaw tightens, and she tries to keep her emotions under control. “Yes,” She says stiffly, lowering herself onto the chair across the cot. “That’s me.”

Bellamy doesn’t respond. Instead, he sits there in silence, eying her wearily. He looks…not angry, not violent, more…defeated?

Nami takes a deep breath, emboldened by the expression. “Hey,” She says coldly, gathering up the meager strains of Conqueror’s Haki that she’s been able to build so far. “If you try anything…”

Bellamy gives a minute flinch, expression cracking in shock. “No,” He says, giving the tiniest hint of a stutter. “I won’t. I…I won’t.”

His face drifts towards its previous blankness, and Nami can’t help but wonder. He’s a terrible person, she knows that. But she can’t help but wonder what happened to him to make him this way

She clears her throat, but before she can ask anything, Bellamy chokes out a coarse whisper of “They’re dead. My whole crew. Dead.”

Nami freezes up. “Excuse me?”

“After our encounter,” The shadows across Bellamy’s face grow deeper. “Well. Some things happened. So we decided…we decided to go up to the sky islands ourselves. And we did. But we couldn’t hack it. I couldn’t hack it. Everyone died except for me.”

A chill runs down Nami’s back at the words. “How?”

“It wasn’t just one thing,” Bellamy says. He moves, bandages crinkling as he curls his knees up to his chest. “Some of them fell out during the ascent. Some of them drowned in the White Sea. Some of them got eaten by wild animals. And it went on and on and on, until I ended up…here, wherever this is. Alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Nami says, because she can’t think of anything else she can say. He’s not a good person but his story just dredges up all her familiar anxieties, and all she can do is be very grateful for the luck that follows her crew and all the hard work they put in in keeping everyone alive.

She also feels so, so relieved that she at least knows that the rest of them should be okay. That she will probably see them all again. Bellamy has no such reassurance.

“What do I do?” He says, a note of desperation entering his voice. “They’re all gone, and what’s waiting for me is…”

He trails off again. Nami eyes him critically. “Is what?”

“Hell,” He breathes out. “What’s waiting for me is Hell. And there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it but face it.”

Nami raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

Bellamy gives her a confused glance. “Huh?”

“You said you have to go back and face it,” Nami says, sitting back in the chair, arms crossed. “Look, I don’t know your story, and I don’t particularly care to know. But…is whatever it is that’s waiting for you something you have to face? Can’t you just choose not to go there?”

“No,” Bellamy says, teeth gritted. “I have to go.”

Nami shrugs. “Suit yourself,” She says, then rises to her feet. “We’re dropping you off near Jaya soon. Go back to where you need to go, or don’t. Whatever. The choice is yours.”

Bellamy gives her a blank stare, but doesn’t reply.

Shrugging to herself, she turns around and walks towards the door. She pauses once she reaches it, then turns back around to him. “Because it is, you know. The choice is yours.”

Bellamy just stares at her without replying, and she slips out the door and closes it with a satisfying thud.

-

“Nami, this is—”

“Hm?” Nami looks up from the screen, adjusting her glasses. “What is it?”

“I know you’re giving this a try,” Harades says gingerly, hands fluttering. “But you must be careful! If you overdo it, there could be terrible consequences.”

“Oh, I know!” Nami says. She stands up, stretching. “There’s just something I want to try. Because, you see, if you adjust the precipitation level here, you could just about…”

Harades squints at her monitor. “Yes,” He begins. “Well. But haven’t you considered—”

Nami waves him off. “I know,” She repeats irritably, feeling the pull of Conqueror’s Haki at the edges of her mind. “I know the risks. But look. We decided to test this in the middle of nowhere, right? Away from established sea routes? We need to know how powerful this can get.”

Harades shakes his head. “Nami,” He repeats. “I’m a scientist. I understand the value of experimentation. However, testing the limits of the weather balls is…it’s risky. It’s very risky. There may be nobody below, but you know that the surrounding areas may be affected.”

Nami turns to him, giving him the full weight of her attention. “I know where you’re coming from,” She says. “And there may be risks, I know that. But I’ve made sure the risks will be minimal. We’re far enough away that any storm movement will have lessened if it hits land. And anyway…we need to know. We need to know what these weather balls too. And…”

She pauses, then sighs.

“What?” Harades says, eyes nervously darting around. “What else?”

“The New World,” Nami finally says, crossing her arms. “It’s going to have the most intense, most insane weather patterns to exist. We need—I need—to know how bad it can get. If we…if we can create the worst of it, we can figure out how to deal with it later.”

Of course, it doesn’t hurt either to really get to know what the weather balls can do, from a weapons standpoint. But she’s not going to tell them about that.

“You’ve done a lot of research,” Nami says, trying to feel out the best way to convince him. “I know that. And I know that you’ve been doing it for much longer than I’ve been alive. But…I’ve read what you’ve tried. And you haven’t done this yet. Don’t you think you need to know? Wouldn’t it be helpful for you?”

She pushes some confidence into her voice, reaching for the willpower to make it happen. She isn’t going to use Haki for something like this, but maybe hovering on the edge of it is good enough.

Harades stays silent, eyes dropping to the floor. Nami waits, fingers tapping her elbow nervously.

“Fine,” Harades finally says, and Nami feels a triumphant grin spread across her face. “But…be careful, all right? We’ll need to keep a careful eye on everything.”

Nami tosses him a thumbs up. “Will do, boss! This going to go great, trust me!”

-

“This is going terribly!”

Nami clutches onto her hat, trying to keep it from flying off into the storm. “It’s fine!” She yells, trying to be heard over the wind. “We’re safe up here! Just…let’s keep an eye out on the equipment, okay? Get the readings!”

“Roger!” Sonny, one of the members of the analysis team, runs back towards the building.

“Nami!” And that’s Harades, struggling closer to her, battling the wind. “We should start to head back further up! It may be dangerous to—”

“Ship ahead!”

Nami’s practically feels her heart drop to her stomach. “What?” She gasp-yells, whirling around to find the source. “What did you say?”

Sonny runs back towards her, eyes wild. “There’s a ship out there! In the water! It’s…well, it’s barely a ship, and more of a raft, which is insane, like I can’t believe that something like that is seaworthy, much less this far out—”

“Never mind that!” Nami yells, stumbling back towards the edge, trying to get a better view. “We need to…can we jump in? Pull them out or something?”

She feels a hand grab her arm, tugging her back. “No!” Harades shouts. “We get any closer, and we’ll be caught up in the storm proper!”

“We can’t do nothing!” Nami yells again, voice cracking from the strain. She turns around, ready to make her way back to the data center, needing to do something.

In desperation, she tries to reach for the place where her Haki resides. She hasn’t really been able to control it, not really, but she has to try it, she has to.

The connection sparks, then fizzles out completely. Nami’s knees buckle, and she slides to her knees as another strong gust of wind hits her from behind.

She hears another cry of “Ship down!” and her chest tightens up all over again.

This time, it’s not from the elevation.

-

“Nami?”

Nami doesn’t look up. Instead, she presses her face harder into her arms, laying across the desk.

“Nami,” Harades’ voice sounds…not angry. Not judgement. He sounds kind. “Nami, please look at me.”

She keeps her head firmly down. “What happened?” She asks, voice muffled by her arm. “Do we know what happened to that ship?”

“No idea,” Harades says somberly. “Could’ve sailed away, could’ve…well. We couldn’t really tell, storm was too strong. And by the time it lightened up, the ship was nowhere to be seen.”

Nami tightens her arms. “Oh.”

Silence covers the room in an uncomfortable tension. Nami squeezes her eyes shut tight. Why isn’t he leaving?

“Nami, you need to look up.” The voice is a little more insistent now. “Please.”

Well. Time to face up. She had done wrong, made a mistake…now, she has to look the consequences right in the eye.

She takes a moment to psych herself up, then lifts her head, reading to pin Harades with a steady gaze. “Yes? I’m…”

She trails off. Because Harades isn’t standing there, ready to repudiate her. He isn’t even looking at her. Instead, he’s glancing at a long, knotted rope that he’s carrying, both fists clenched over the knots.

“Nami!” Harades says, vaguely cheerful. He lifts the rope. “I need to show you this.”

Nami blinks, completely caught off guard. “What is it?” She asks, so surprised she can’t think. “Is it a rope?”

“Well, yes,” Harades says. He lifts it up, twisting it to the side a bit. “It’s not just any rope, though. It’s special. Want to see why?”

“Um,” Nami says, still baffled. “Sure?”

Harades grins at her, then twists the rope completely, undoing the knot.

The effect is instantaneous. A strong just of wind hits Nami in the face and she gasps, knocked back a few steps more from the surprise than anything else. “What…?”

Harades twists his arms again, closing the knot, and the wind vanishes just like that. “See?” He says, still pleasantly calm. “That was a wind knot. Cool, right?”

A strong, unidentifiable emotion suddenly rises up in her chest. “What was that?” She demands, marching up towards him. “Why did you do that? Was that a punishment or something? Because I get it okay, I know I pushed too hard to get what I want, I know there are going to be consequences, but I’m ready! I’m ready to face them! So stop this little game, I’m going to go out right now and—”

Harades shifts the rope to one hand, face twisted in alarm. “Nami!” He cries out, lifting his free hand up in surrender. “No…no, that’s not what this is! If you will give me a moment to explain…”

Nami stops in place, breathing hard. “Okay,” she says stiffly. “Yes?”

Harades lifts the rope back up. “The wind knot,” He says. “Stores weather. Wind works the best, but you can also out other things. Storms, dust…it keeps everything in there, and we can let it out whenever we need it. It’s a useful tool, but as you can tell, it can be quite dangerous.”

Nami grits her teeth. “Yes,” She says. “I can see how.”

“There you go, then,” Harades says. “But…but we didn’t know that, you see. So, we had to use trial and error. Sometimes, things didn’t store correctly. Sometimes, we lost data. Sometimes, we got injuries, and once, it was quite serious. But that’s the way it goes in our line of work. We find something, and we test it. Testing can lead to mistakes. So, we do what we can in the aftermath. And we never let it happen again.”

Nami blinks to take care of her watery eyes. “You managed, though?” She asks, valiantly making the effort not to rub her eyes with her hands. “You managed to figure out the wind knot?”

“We did indeed,” Harades says. He extends the hand carrying the wind knot to her. “Please, go ahead. We only ever thought to store weather in this, but it might not be the limits of its use. I have a feeling you may be our best shot of finding out.”

Nami hesitates before reaching out her hand to carefully grasp the wind knot. “Right,” She says, a warm feeling filling her whole body. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

Harades smiles at her. His eye contact is steady. “Excellent,” He says. “Now, then, let us go back out there. We have work to do.”

“Yes,” Nami says. She takes a step forward, then hesitates. “And…thank you.”

Harades nods softly, then gestures at her to go forward. “You’re welcome,” He says.

-

She starts sticking with Harades more, after that.

It doesn’t take long for her to fall into a comfortable rhythm, and she spends a lot of time with Harades and his research. And it’s only partly because he seems to be the key to using the weather balls.

Harades turns out to have been very receptive to allowing her to experiment with the weather balls in her clima-tact. In fact, he seems to like the clima-tact more than she does, always examining it and oohing and aahing at the features. It seems that Usopp has created something particularly notable, and he hadn’t even known it.

Nami knows, though. She’s always known. (Well. Almost always known). He might not be able to do it again, but he had, and she will always be grateful to him for that.

Before she knows it, though, months and months and months go by, until she’s staring at a familiar screen with the realization that she’s been here almost a complete two years, and the realization kind of blows her away.

It’s the first time in her life, since Bellemere’s death, where just existing hasn’t felt stressful to her. As much as she loved, and belongs in, Luffy’s crew, it’s undeniable that it comes with its price, which for her is a constant state of action. And that’s who she is, and she’s fine with it, but still…getting this again, no matter how briefly, is really something wonderful.

Nami sits back in her chair, staring at the chrome ceiling. She can’t really concentrate on her work anymore: she just has so many thought swirling around in her head, all these plans that are calling to her to be completed. She still has to finalize her route back to Sabaody, and what she’s going to do once she arrives…

She sighs, rubbing a hand through her hair. If she’s not going to get anything done now, she might as well work on her Conqueror’s Haki. The progress on that has been frustratingly limited: she remembers Usopp talking about his own Haki like he can just reach out in his mind and grab it. His “stories” seem to communicate with him easily, but whatever is going on with her…it’s almost like her Haki is actively resisting her.

Maybe it’s because it’s Conqueror’s Haki, and not Observation like Usopp?

She thinks back on the times she knows now that it must have activated. All those times…she hadn’t been reaching for something, not really. Instead…it’s more like she’d been telling something. Willing it. Maybe instead of working with it, she’s going to have to force it to work for her. That feels more in line with what it means, after all.

“Taking a break?”

Nami almost falls out of her chair. “Harades!” She snaps, finding her balance again. “Don’t do that!”

Harades just chuckles. Even a few months ago, he would’ve been a little more scared. He isn’t anymore. “Sorry, sorry.”

He glances at her screen. “Ah. Testing the weather balls again?”

“Of course,” Nami says. She stretches her arms, trying to get her circulation back to normal. “I wasn’t born with easy access to this info like you Skypeians, you know.”

Herades gives her a knowing grin. “That may be the case, but I’m not a Skypeian.”

Nami blinks, surprised. “You’re not?” She asks, feeling a little embarrassed. “Oh, sorry for assuming. I just thought, since, you know, all of you have been living up here, that you’re all from the sky islands…”

“Oh, we are,” Harades says. He settles himself in the seat next to her. “But we’re not Skypeians. I’m a Birkan, actually.”

Nami practically feels the whizz of lost context fly over her head. “Can you explain the difference?”

“Well,” Harades says, clearly delighted at getting a chance to teach her something. “We differ slightly from the Skypeians through our appearance. We don’t have antennae, and those with wings have them face downward, not up. Our home, Birka, is also quite a ways away. Well. Was.”

“Was?” Nami asks, an ominous feeling rising in her chest.

“Was,” Harades confirms, and his smile turns sad. “It’s gone now. Destroyed. I’m not sure what occurred, as I’d been away for a while when it happened, but it’s gone. We Birkans now exist without an ancestral home.”

Nami remembers their time in Skypeia, and how very dearly the Shandians held their home in their hearts. “I’m sorry,” She says quietly. “That must be difficult.”

“It was 6 years ago now,” Harades says, expression softening. “But, we persist. Anyway, there are many legends, many whispers that we had all originated from elsewhere, somewhere further away, up into the sky…but those stories were never proven.”

Nami smiles to herself. “Stories can have a grain of truth to them, you know.”

“They most certainly do,” Harades says. “That’s where civilizations are born, after all.”

She’s about to reply when a sudden, terrible realization strikes her. “Harades,” She says slowly. “Would…have you ever heard of Enel, by any chance?”

Harades frowns in thought. “Enel? Why, yes. He operated in Skypeia for a while, I believe. Never saw him, though. Why?”

Nami thinks of Enel, of his ambitions of godhood, of his bizarre need to go up to the moon. We had all originated from elsewhere, somewhere further away, up into the sky…

Had he…had Enel had wings? No, he hadn’t, but…he had no antennae either. And…he’d arrived recently to Skypeia, hadn’t he? Certainly within the last six years.

She feels a shiver run down her spine. She can’t reveal this yet, not when she has no proof. “When you say up into the sky,” She says. “Could you mean…out of this planet?”

If Harades is perturbed by the change in subject, he doesn’t show it. “Perhaps. If we go back to the stories, they claim many different things: the planets, the stars, even the moon. But we cannot be sure until we go. The stories also say that if we were to go back, we would find power behind our wildest dreams.”

Nami’s hand clench on her chair’s arm rests. I hope not. I really, really hope not.

Regardless…she’s going to have to do something with this information. If Enel does find something…

“Well,” Harades’ voice interrupts her thoughts. “If you don’t have any more questions, we should get back to work. Lots more to do, you know.”

Nami nods, resolute. “You’re right,” She says, brain automatically switching back to her plans, to her Haki. “We have work to do.”

-

“Are we there yet?” Nami asks, feeling her smile tick in mischief as the familiar words emerge from her mouth in the other direction for once.

Harades doesn’t seem to have caught on to the nature of the question. “Just about,” He says, giving a distracted smile as he peers closer at this monitors. “A few more minutes and we should be good for landfall. Your instincts were correct, as always.”

Nami nods to herself. “Sabaody?” She asks, leaning over to examine their flight path.

“Exactly,” Harades responds. He makes a note in the chart he’s been holding. “We can stick around for a bit, as promised. We’ll help make sure you get out of there.”

Nami’s smile turns more genuine. “Thanks,” She says, a funny bittersweet feeling rising in her chest. “Guess it’s almost time then, huh?”

“Just about,” Harades says. He finally leans away from the monitors, and pins her with a clear gaze. “You’ll have the hard part from here. You know what to do, right?”

Nami nods sternly. “Of course,” She says. “How could I not? Some of the best minds in the world came up with it”

Harades’ chest puffs out. “Well, I certainly have been called—”

“Because,” Nami interrupts, leaning back in her chair. “My ideas are always top notch, you know. Genius level. I’ve been called that before.”

Harades visibly deflates. “Yes, well, you see—”

Nami can’t help it anymore, a burst of laughter emerging from her. “Got you!” She says. “Of course I know what to do, Harades. I learned from you, didn’t I? How could I not succeed after that?”

The tip of Harades’ nose turns red. “Oh,” He fumbles out. “Well. We’ll miss you here, of course. We’ll keep an eye out for you too, and let us know whenever the time comes.”

“I will,” Nami says. Her finger slightly trace the pile of maps spread out on the table. Almost there. She’s almost there. “I will.”

[sidgeno-ficrecs]

pictures of success by @dadvans

sidgeno (2018, explicit, 7.9k)

Bears are solitary creatures.

Zhenya decides what he’s really feeling toward the end of the summer isn’t loneliness, or heartbreak, or other several other intangible feelings he’s heard in passing but never known; it’s disappointment.

It’s disappointment.

god, do i ever love shifter fics. i think i've read every single one in this pairing, and i'm still absolutely greedy for more (and yes this is a hint to all you authors out there). just like a/b/o, shifter fics give us the ability to take these two people that we know in our current world and move them into a society that's just a bit to one side, just a little different, and see how things play out with those small differences.

this fic stands alone, though, with how it deals with the changes.

a lot of times, the focus is on the physical—heat cycles and hormones, pregnancies, and the social differences that arise from anatomical ones. this fic, though, gives us a close-up look at something else: the mental differences, the way a shifter might have been raised to be more like an animal in their mindset and world view, and how that might clash with the more human world they interact with.

and the results are a lovely, aching, restless fic that ends so satisfactorily that you'll feel just as full-up as sid after his BIG cheat day in italy.

the close POV we get of zhenya's off-season is perfectly melancholy, and i got a lump in my throat reading more of his solitary summer, and how it's been fine—until something changes, something's different, and suddenly it's not. it's so clear to the reader that this isn't a new change, it's something that zhenya could have wanted sooner, but he didn't let himself until he couldn't avoid it any longer. the conflict between what a proper bear shifter would be feeling and doing vs what he wants for himself and sid is excellently portrayed.

@dadvans has a real gift for writing the physical, too. the real, gritty, sometimes gross reality of human bodies and how they intersect and interlock are in full display here, and it's amazing. the description of sid during his heat, sid's body once he and zhenya are back in pittsburgh—it all feels real in a way that can be very challenging to pull off.

and the ending? oh gosh. tender and sweet and the perfect ending for zhenya, and sid, and their family. you'll want to go back and immediately re-read this fic as soon as you're done, it's that good and that satisfying of an ending.

read it here on ao3!

and don't forget to kudos and comment!

[twilightown]

Kairi is through with her training. It's time for her to take charge and to go on her own journey. Journey with her as she visits various worlds inhabited by characters familiar to all of us as she searches for answers.You never know who she'll run into next.

Chapter 1/?

Humble beginnings for me as an author. :)

“You’d only get in my way.”

                                “You’re not ready yet.”

���You require motivation.”

                                “Will you continue your training as you were before?”

“What difference does one little light make?” 

                                “I need to become stronger.”

“If you have a dream, don’t wait. Act.”

                               “You’re the fire that feeds Sora’s anger.”

—

Enough.

Her intention was to sneak in, drop off the crumpled letter, and go. There wouldn’t be a better opportunity. Riku was searching for Sora, Donald and Goofy were still sharing the group’s findings among the different worlds, and she felt ready. Aqua had trained her exceptionally well. The master had understood the intensity, the eagerness, her haste and hunger.

Kairi had felt ready for a while if she was being honest with herself. It was time. She’d checked in with Yen Sid at his dusty tower often, to see if any news of her friends had come to light. She wanted to be the first to know. Often, he’d be conferring with Merlin, with the good fairies, with Fairy Godmother, someone. She’d reached her limit on ancient magical beings discussing more ancient, more magical beings as well as their mystique. She couldn’t sit around any longer, couldn’t spar any longer, couldn’t wait around. At her core, she’d felt at fault for Sora’s destiny. Theirs were intertwined, afterall. If only I’d been quicker.

If only I’d been stronger.

If only I had stayed back.

If only…

She had to do something. Leaving by myself with no plan is something… Isn’t it?

“My dear, whatever are you doing here alone?” A sweet voice spoke.

Kairi whipped around, not expecting to be caught. The surprise held her tongue. The Fairy Godmother’s dark eyes spotted her letter, left on Yen Sid’s empty desk. “Ah. Your journey’s beginning then?”

After hesitating a second too long, Kairi nodded. Maybe it was the embarrassment of being caught, the guilt in leaving at such a moment but she couldn’t bring herself to look at the older woman.

“Well, I suppose you can’t go in that.” Fairy Godmother caught Kairi by surprise for the second time. Kairi looked up finally. Fairy Godmother. wore a grin from ear to ear. “I can’t?” Her first words of the night, finally opening up her chest as they were voiced.

Fairy Godmother shook her head, her hood following behind her. “I’d like to give you a gift. You’ll need… Hm…” She then was suddenly by Kairi’s side, using her wand this way and that, lifting Kairi’s small arms. Kairi watched in anticipation. “Let’s see, your size… and the shade of your eyes… mhm. Something bold, but powerful. Oh, just leave it to me!”

The small smile that spread across Kairi’s face was powerful, indeed.

Her heart felt light as Fairy Godmother said the words.She closed her eyes in anticipation. “Bippity Boppity Boo!”

Light engulfed Kairi for not the first time. When her eyes finally opened, she scanned her new outfit. 

She’d been given a beautiful, long pink coat that stopped at her knees. Underneath the coat, she saw a pearl-white blouse which reminded her of Namine. A short, black skirt had been accented with pinks and purples in the seams that popped. Finally, a set of black boots reached halfway up her legs. It made her feel grown, respected, and finally seen as the wielder she was. She couldn’t stop admiring the new look. The clothes gave her a confidence she hadn’t felt in recent memory. 

A new voice entered. “Well well, already?”

Stroking his long beard, Merlin stepped up to the women. He eyed Kairi up and down and turned his gaze to Fairy Godmother. He nodded in approvement at the new set of clothes, and focused back on the wielder. 

“And what is the plan?” He demanded.

Kairi stammered, biting her lip finally. 

Merlin understood her impulsivity immediately. “I see, I see. Not fully formed yet. Powerful word there - yet. May I assist? I have just the thing!”

Joy entered Kairi’s chest at the kindness these magical beings had shown her. She nodded. “Yes, please.”

Merlin waved his own wand, and a faint light partnered with a weight sat on Kairi’s shoulder. As the light faded, a familiar piece of machinery was nestled in the space.

“For me? Armor?” Kairi questioned.

“Not just armor! A glider! It’ll help you find your way and guide you from world to world as you travel. It’ll also allow you to return to us. Safe and unharmed, one can hope.” Merlin said.

“I… Thank you. Both of you.” Kairi beamed, grateful for the gifts they’d bestowed. Especially the gift of freedom; that they were allowing her to go. “How can I repay your kindness?”

“You can get home safe.” Fairy Godmother demanded.

“It’d be nice if you could bring back our wayward boys also. This had better be the last time Sora gets himself lost.” Merlin chimed in.

Kairi nodded. “I’ll try my best to bring them back. With all I have in me.” She hugged the both of the older magicians, stretching on her tiptoes for Merlin, and took a deep breath.

“I’m ready. But I think… I think I’m scared, too.” 

“Important things wouldn’t be so important without a little fear.” Merlin stated, matter-of-fact. 

She appreciated the wisdom. “I guess you’re right. This feels too important though. I can’t come back empty handed.”

“No one expects you to come back without them. We’re all ready to look also.” With one sentence, Fairy Godmother made Kairi feel calmer.

“We must have you going off, then!” Merlin smirked.

She nodded. “Thank you. Thank you both, again.” 

“Safe travels!” “We will be seeing you soon, dear.”

With that, Kairi tapped the space on her shoulder. As the light faded, she was surrounded by metallic armor on a glider. 

Now all she had to do was go.

[freebooter4ever]

Alone♾️🎻😔

lol i think this is supposed to be insulting me??? but thats a really cute way to write 4ever, and you probably didnt know this but i consider the infinity symbol to be lucky. im not as insane about it as sid but my birth year is 88 and my favorite book deals with a multiverse shaped like an infinity loop, and its a visual concept that ive been obsessed with drawing since i first read the book in middle school. i have an entire blog about it that i no longer update anymore @ayewardsbound. there is something comforting to me about imagining a world where different choices can spin off entire separate universes - and that certain magical beings can easily traverse between them.

this is absolutely my first time living alone - usually i have bunches of housemates so being alone for one or two days was never such a big deal. but yes i have spent christmas eve/day alone from 2011 on (except for grandpa's last christmas in 2017). i have never made much money - i have always flown back to see my grandparents twice a year every year during cheaper months. and i found out the friday i drove out of ohio a few weeks ago that my dad stopped considering me part of his family sometime in 2010. so yeah, im alone! but i still love christmas ^_^ as crazy as it makes me feel

[ofengineers]

MUSE SPECIFIC INNER THOUGHTS → @lastingsparks

I'm glad I'm with him...

"Daddy and her left Waloed today. I don't know where we're going, but we'll be together. I wonder why Benna is not coming with us. I thought we were a family, the three of us. I tried to ask him about it, but he doesn't seem to want to think much about it. At least, I'm at his side. Daddy is the person I love the most in the entire world. He told me he has an important mission to give me a bright future. I wish I could do something to help him, though. Maybe once I get older. But I want to help him now!"

We have a new home now...

"The Hideaway is our home now. Daddy is working so hard these days, but he brought me a new friend. A huge dog, or maybe a wolf, but his name is Sid! I know that's not a very original name, of course, but Daddy insisted, and that's fine! I'm sooooo happy he agreed to keep him! When we found him, he was alone, and he seemed scared. Daddy and I talked to him and he decided to follow us. I hope we can keep him forever! Thanks to Daddy and Uncle Otto, I'm also learning more about engineering. Maybe I could contribute to Daddy's mission with my knowledge!"

He's worrying so much...

"I've been in Kanver for a few months already. I really like it, I'm learning so much! Since I've been studying here, I got the confirmation that I really want to be an engineer. Daddy and Otto showed me a few things before, but here, I'm having an actual formation. I know Daddy keeps worrying about me, though. I think he would prefer to be at my side, but he's working so hard to make this world a better place, for everyone, no matter where they come from or what they have been through. I admire him so much for that. And soon, I will play my part in this, too. I just have to."

He needs to take a break...

"Daddy almost died. And I wasn't even at his side. He was with Clive, Jill and Sid Torgal. I still need to get used to this new name! I know how important his mission is for him, but I just can't lose him. We lost Benna already, only a few weeks ago. I know it must have been so hard on him, to never succeed in bringing her back to us. But now, I really want him to take care of himself. I'm sure he will find a way to still be useful without risking his life anymore. He has to. Clive and Jill will be on the battlefield. I plan to keep my father with me for much longer than that!"

This mess is finally behind us...

"I know Daddy will want to help with the rebuilding, but we can all finally start living again. Ultima is behind us. I can start working on inventions to make all of Valisthea a better place! I know Daddy will keep supporting me for this. He seemed so happy when Joshua, Clive and Dion came back. I know he was happy for me because I didn't want to lose my lover and my friends, and he always puts my happiness before his, but I also know he was relieved, too. He cares so deeply, always, even if he doesn't like showing it. We're very similar on that point, actually. We both want to look strong all the time, but it's not always possible. We shouldn't face such huge threats anymore, at least. A bright future is awaiting us, just like he has always wanted!"

[anabsolutenightmare]

You Say Sorry.

…Whatever. I'm sick of saying sorry. I love you. You say sorry.”

Inspired by Skins (UK) more on that below the cut. Here is the original text https://www.quotes.net/show-quote/71751

Well, here goes. The "You say sorry" confession. Good omens edition.

Crowley [acidly] What do you want, Aziraphale?

Aziraphale: I want you to stop what you're doing, okay? You know: fucking around, tempting anything that moves. Just stop it!

His heart sinks. He despises the desperate sound of his voice, the lack of confidence that echoes through the air

Crowley: You ssstarted it!

Aziraphale: I don't care, I don't care! You're cruel! I hate you!

Crowley: I hate you right back. Why don't you pop up to heaven and make a difference? [mock surprise] Oh, excuse me, another one!

Aziraphale: [exasperated] Just give it a fucking rest, okay? You know, it's you and me. You know that, and you're being stupid!

Crowley: My turn!

Aziraphale: You went away! Why did you go away? You know, I needed you, and y-you just pissed off! I thought.... I thought we already were an us, but we’re not! You're just messing around like a spoilt demon! Tempting humans and sending out ridiculous orders to earth. You’re lashing out to punish me for fighting for the greater good!!

Crowley [singsong] Heaven, Angel, Heaven!

He brandishes the endearment as a weapon

Aziraphale: “I didn’t choose heaven! I never chose heaven, I love you, but you-” Aziraphale turns away, unable to bear the intensity of Crowley’s gaze any longer. He has to choke back a sob. “God, where were you? The Metatron fucking cornered me. Threatened me. You were just… gone.” [Crowley's guilt begins to show] “I needed you. I mean, Heaven!... I tried to make a difference for all of three days and only made guilty suggestions for the rest. So what? I don't care! I did it. I hate you.”. [turns to leave] “Fine, fuck off to Hell. Whatever. I'm sick of saying sorry. I love you. You say sorry.”

Crowley: [Realising he's talking his new title as the Grand Duke of Hell] “I didn't stay in Hell, Angel. There was a vacancy, and, well, I had to blow off some steam. And my plants wilted with the low light and humidity, even my fern called Azi, ssso I came back to earth.” [Crowley blushes].

Aziraphale and Crowley Kiss

Nina: [Nina walks in] Look, if he's still bothering you, Crow- [seeing them kiss] Oh... okay. Smokin'!

I am in my Tumblr infancy. I mostly only lurk, like, and reblog. I read fanfic on Ao3, but have never considered writing anything. Until I had an idea that rattled around in my head until, after copious amounts of wine, I had to write it down. It's silly.

Do you remember Skins? Were you an angsty adolescent obsessed with the crude humor of the show? Did you sob when Sid confessed his love to Cassie in a way that changed your view of love?

The fic I am writing is more of a narrative style than a script. This just fit better with my original idea, and it's short enough for this post.

I am not sure if it's better to let it stand-alone as just dialogue, or if I should post my full 2.5k fic. Is everyone this nervous the first time they share something with the world? Even shrouded in the anonymity of a username it feels deeply personal.

[taexual]

Ara you're actually trying to kill me, I'm sure (also this is a long one, I'm sorryyy)

he collapsed back onto the pillows and buried his face in his hands, a ridiculous smile spreading beneath his fingers as his heart continued to race in his chest.

Pls we're twinninnng, this is me reading your series btw, the definition of giggling and kicking my feet at its finest

Also, me thinks that Joon and Maggie deserve their own altar each, I love them, with him casually saving their asses and talking some sense into oc as he should, and Mags representing each of my thoughts, like

“That fucking loser,” she said. “That massive fucking piece of shit. Fucking good-for-nothing rat. Motherf—”. “Yeah, Mags,” you interjected, knowing she might not stop for a while.

Let’s kill him”. “Or, you know,” she added in response to your and Luna’s expressions, “let’s beat him up. That’ll work, too.”

I have never felt this represented in any form of media, let her continue please, Sid just keeps pissing me off and she deserves to take her frustrations out, preferably on him in a very violent way, maybe even with a brick or a chair, idk

You ended up watching each of the boys leap over the threshold of the door for no reason whatsoever, just to see who could jump the farthest—until Jungkook smacked his head right into the top of the door frame.

This has happened irl, I have no doubt about it. And I have to say, I absolutely love the way you portray the guys in the series, obviously we don't know them personally and never will, but as far as the persona each of them maintain for the public and what is shown in the media, this feels accurate and warm somehow, without engaging too much in the stereotypes, or forgetting that they're humans despite our (and the world's) expectations. I'm always glad to find writers like you to keep this thoughtful and respectful approach, even when it comes to fiction <3

Pouting, he walked over to you after everyone else had finished laughing and left. You fixed his hair, trying to bite back your laughter, and he pulled you into a hug.

Jungkook was about to object—you couldn’t remove your hands from his skin so abruptly, there was a certain procedure you had to follow to ensure he could still breathe when you were no longer touching him.

Stop it right now, this section made my heart EXPLODE, they're so mf cute, I'm so aloneeee jfc, like if you look up the word 'simp' his photo is showing up, there's no discussion

Still, he paused again by the door, giving you one last overly dramatic nod over his shoulder as if he were in a spy film. Then he left with a triumphant fist in the air after finally earning a chuckle from you.

Their banter has me squealing again, but who's surprised, honestly, this is like the 92828 time I say this, but their. dynamic. is. everything. to. me. I cannot stress enough how heartwarming it has been to see them allow themselves to express those feelings with time, so proud of my children :c

Stopping, you looked around warily until you finally spotted Minjun’s head peeking out from behind the corridor wall.

OH HEY BOO, I'm glad we're seeing more of his role here, and the entire interaction with Jude was uncomfy yes, but it brought us answers, some pity for him ngl, aswell as excitement for their plan, and it reenforced my admiration for oc, bc what a good person she is. I'm not surprised in the slightest about Sid letting his closest friend(pet) die, and I hope he rots in hell, alone and bitter while my babies live and love freely :D

Luna noticed the slight commotion and approached you. As soon as you finished telling the girls what happened to your handbag, she broke into a surprisingly graceful, but very, very drunken performance of flailing her limbs and singing, “I knew it! I fucking knew it!” while Taehyung watched her from the doorway with unmistakable fondness. He had genuinely never looked more in love.

Him and Jungkook go head to head over who is the most whipped, and I need me a partner like this, tyvm

“I am learning to be okay with others knowing, though. And I want you despite that. Despite others. Despite everything. I want to be with you.

No because I would die immediately, what do you mean oc, you cannot just say stuff like that and expect people not to propose on the spot, jk get the ring, I'll be the officiant idc

And know presenting a compilation of more tender moments from this chapter we have:

“And it’s okay,” he continued. “I can’t make decisions for you, but you’re—you have us. We’ll always have your back. We won’t sit idly if we find out the label made you resign.”

You’ve found your family when you met Rated Riot. They made bets about your relationship, they teased each other at nearly every possible moment, they complained and argued, but they supported each other with unwavering loyalty. And you were prepared to fight, if it came to it, to stay with them.

Then Maggie caught you off guard by wrapping her arms around you—as if you’d crossed Middle Earth and battled Smeagol for her phone—and you realised how safe, happy, and comfortable you felt here.

He could hear Taehyung singing along to “Do I Wanna Know?” by the drinks table while Luna and Maggie waved the flashlights on their phones dreamily for extra ambience in the dimly lit room. He could also see, most unusually, the way Hoseok and Jimin seemed to be exchanging money right behind the two girls.

All these to say that I'm a SUCKER for the platonic affection, the found-family trope, the comfort, support, silliness, honesty, and love that comes with it, and specially the way you always manage to include those fragments of their interactions, personalities and memories in the story; bc yeah oc and jk will always be the main focus, but the fact that you make the effort of showing us the characters' (both main and secondary) struggles and development really ties everything together, and makes this au one of my favorite series of all time, I genuinely have enjoyed it more than some published books, you have so much talent Ara c:

I'm sure this ask is lengthy enough, sorry about that, but I loved this part (one of my favorites for sure), and I hope you take care of yourself, see you in the next one!! 💜

babe, you are a dream come true, please don't ever apologise, you're perfect 🥺 thank you so much for sharing your beautiful thoughts and for hitting probably every single mark i was the most excited for you to read 😭🙏🏻

i love all of these characters so much, so hearing that you've enjoyed their little moments too is the biggest gift for me, thank you so much 🥺🤍🤍🤍

you are heaven-sent, i don't know what to say. your messages are absolutely, without any doubt, every writer's dream, and i seriously can't thank you enough for this!!!!!! i love you 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

[starryserenade]

Faith & Trust Pt. 2/3

Fic Description: In light of the events of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Yen Sid finds his once eager and curious apprentice to be overcome by a crippling fear. To reinvigorate his student's fire, he takes him to a world whose very lifeblood is the imagination of a certain "boy who never grows up." But things have changed since the sorcerer's last visit, and the place meant to prove the joys of imagination, might be the thing to reveal its darkest possibilities.

Commentary: A very different story than the one I've been working on. This tale is a bit of a Disney crossover between Fantasia and Peter Pan, and serves as a bridge between the timelines of the Disney Fairies movies to that of Gail Carson Levine's Never Fairies trilogy. Feel free to check out the wiki link below to get a glimpse at the world this story is based on.

Vocabulary

-Clumsies: Humans -"Fly with you!": Nice to meet you! -Queen Ree = Queen Clarion

Links:

AO3

Part 1

Finale Coming Soon

Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg (wiki page)

~~~

The thing about worlds built on imagination is that they tend to follow the imaginer. The whim and ideas that flood a dreamer’s mind are what these places are built on. This is all well and good while their dreams are filled with wonder and magic, when curiosity fills them with hope, and when ‘happily ever after’ falls just in line with what they believed it would be. However, one cruel curse poses the greatest threat to the world of the dreamer. 

Reality.

It is possible to fall so deeply into a dream that one forgets their world does not define another. So when the story deviates, when another player steps outside their role and whispers the unthinkable “no”, the dreamer’s world is shaken to its core. Oftentimes, it begins to crumble.

Peter Pan was never one to believe in other worlds outside his own. This was his dream, after all. His laugh alone could turn night to day, or steer a hurricane from its course. His frown could bring thunder rolling into the sky, or send a pirate reeling into the depths of the sea. When he spoke, no one could disagree. If his words fell outside possibility, possibility would hike up its skirt and move. For as long as he could remember, this had been the way of the world. 

It took one girl to change all that. 

He had been drawn to Wendy Darling in the most peculiar of ways. She’d seemed like most other souls at first. When he smiled, she crumpled. When he invited her towards adventure, she couldn’t say no. She was another wonderful addition to his story and, to be sure, Peter was certain he’d been the one to write her in. 

The problem with Wendy Darling was that she began to change. This was new to Peter. Pirates were pirates, and always would be.  Lost boys were lost boys, and were certain to never grow up. But Wendy? Wendy could do whatever she pleased. When a certain pixie, too caught up in Peter’s spell to control herself, tried to rid Wendy from the world to keep him for her own, Wendy Darling chose to be kind.  When Peter took his attention from Wendy to another, certain she’d be too wonderstruck to care, the girl saw through his childish games and refused to play along. When he’d most wanted her to stay…

She had chosen to leave.  

And slowly, little by little, the rest of Peter’s world became tainted with this idea that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t all his to command. Pirates became more cunning, and Peter found he could no longer predict their every move. The lost boys got smarter, and it seemed to Peter that Slightly was becoming a bit too big for his britches.  

Then there was Tink. If anyone had been most changed by Wendy’s coming and going, it was, ironically, the one who’d most wished she’d never come. Tinker Bell had been bound to Peter since the moment they met, drawn to him with such force that it never even occurred to her that she could exist again without him. Then that Wendy-Bird came along, and Tink learned quite quickly that Peter was perhaps not so drawn to herself as she’d been led to believe. That didn’t matter. The enchantment of his presence, his laughter, and his smile still bound her and she knew if he called for her again, she would come. She had to. After all, no one could say no to Peter Pan.

No one but Wendy, apparently, which had put quite a bit of a new perspective on things for Tink. So when the girl left and suddenly, Tinker Bell had Peter Pan all to herself all over again, she found she wasn’t quite sure she wanted him anymore. Of course she still loved him–she couldn’t help that–-but she realized then and there that she was, perhaps, something of a great fairy even without him. So Tink had left too, and Peter felt something he had not ever felt before. He felt lonely.  

And with that, the magic of Neverland began to slip. 

Yen Sid had not known this when he stepped inside the world, the young Mickey clinging to his robe as he trailed behind him. But such is the way of magic. For though, he thought, it had led him here to solve a problem of his own–the fading hope of his once-curious apprentice–it had also found the perfect opportunity to bring a bit of aid to the world itself. Whether the little mouse was up to the task, however, was another situation entirely. But the magic was unconcerned with that. Its job was to grant opportunity–what the individual chose to do with that was up to them.

When Mickey took his first step on Neverland, the island shuddered. For all his fear and uncertainty, the child still possessed a great deal of imagination, and this was a power the world had begun to desperately crave. In Pixie Hollow, Tinker Bell suddenly found herself overcome with a glowing new idea for an invention, and raced off in search of Lost Things to build it with. The Second Star glowed twice as bright and, seeing this, Peter thought that maybe he could manage to pick himself off the floor of the hideout to search for some treasure. Maybe. But deep in the heart of Neverland’s lone volcano, a different sort of creature stirred.  For in the shadow of Peter’s melancholy heartbreak, something dark and treacherous had formed. Mickey’s presence gave it the power it needed to wake.

Imagination goes both ways, after all. 

Mickey followed behind his teacher with tentative steps and a wide-eyed wonder.  He felt as Yen Sid tensed, and knew at once that something wasn’t quite right. 

“Stay close, Mickey,” the sorcerer commanded, with a voice Mickey recognized as one meant to scare him, but not Scare him. His curiosity only grew, but he dared not race off to satiate it. Not after what happened last time. So he settled with looking about him, wondering how any world could have ever become so endlessly green. 

Meanwhile, Yen Sid trudged along with a wary eye. The world seemed its usual self to anyone not well versed in the art of magics. But the sorcerer could sense the mischievous nature of the island was in a frenzy, and it clustered around the mouse with which he traveled. With his usual frown, he silently urged it to depart from them—he wanted to reinspire his apprentice, not frighten him all over again.  By heavens, where was that Peter Pan?

“Stay here,” he urged the mouse at last as they encountered a particularly thick patch of jungle.  While the ferns and foliage parted seamlessly around the sorcerer as he walked through them, Mickey was not nearly so fortunate, and his robe was becoming tangled in all manner of vines and twigs. So silently, the child obliged, and found a place atop a fallen log where he sat swinging his legs as his teacher continued on through the wood in search of someone Mickey didn’t know.

There was quite a lot to take in, even in this little patch of the world. The insects alone were more vibrant than any Mickey had seen, and he wondered as he saw a butterfly passing by if it was here that Yen Sid had found inspiration for some of his most colorful spells. He shuddered a bit as he thought of that, and the memory of his watery escapade flooded his mind all over again. A sick feeling settled in his stomach. No more magic. No more imagination. He’d proven he wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing. 

Still, it was hard not to entertain a little bit of creative thought as he sat staring about him. The sunlight filtered through the canopy in golden streams, and Mickey thought it fun to imagine these to be little rivers of pixie dust, carrying with them dancing fairies (which were, really, little bugs and falling leaves) in a winding parade to the forest floor. Yen Sid had mentioned fairies before, hadn’t he? There was one Mickey had always thought particularly interesting, but he couldn’t seem to remember their nam-

No sooner had he begun to think this than something raced by him, too quick to clearly see. With it came the sound of light jingling, and the leaves about Mickey were swept up in such a way that he couldn’t help but sneeze as they brushed across his nose. He swiveled his head to follow the sound, and watched as thousands of sparkling lights settled on the forest floor before swiftly fading away. 

His fur stood up and his tail straightened, the very curiosity he’d tried so hard to resist tingling across his entire being.  Yen Sid’s instructions still hung over his head, but they were quickly losing their hold.  He slid off the log and peered into the shadows, a tentative grin making its way onto his face. It wasn’t really mischief if he only went a little ways away, right? He’d be back before the sorcerer ever knew the better. 

Before he knew it, his feet were carrying him through the foliage towards where he’d seen the creature fly. Mickey couldn’t help himself. His excitement had gotten the better of him and for the first time in weeks, it was enough to drown out the fear.

The jungle foliage soon grew sparse, dirt and leaves replaced instead by soft sand beneath his slippers.  Mickey kicked off his shoes when it became too difficult to walk on the shore, and laughed as the sand dusted his fur. The ocean rolled in gentle waves, brushing up the shoreline, and its sound nearly disguised the jingling that came from nearby. Nearly. 

Mickey drew in a breath when the sound tickled his ears and grinned widely, turning to face it. A faint glow emanated from a small clump of reeds. He tiptoed towards it and gently parted the grass, but the being within was too focused on their own task to notice the comparatively giant creature peering its way.

To be fair, Tinker Bell had a lot to occupy her. There was a pair of Clumsy spectacles lodged deep in the sand that she was having a grand, ol’ time trying to dig out. She hadn’t quite decided what she was going to use them for yet, but she figured the glass might be good for conducting sunlight, and she was sure Fira or Iridessa would be happy for some help. The frames she would keep–she’d gotten a neat little idea out of the blue this morning, and though she wasn’t quite sure how or why she was going to execute it, something told her these would come in handy. 

If she could get them out, that was. She’d been yanking on one of the bars for quite some time already, and it refused to budge. Face red with both effort and frustration, she gave it a little kick before grabbing hold with an even tighter grip and yanking with all her might.  Something moved this time, only it wasn’t the spectacles. Tink went flying backwards in a flurry of pixie dust, landing straight in a soft bunch of scarlet something or other.

She sat up and shook her head dizzily, wondering just what had broken her fall. Something like crushed velvet surrounded her, and she tilted her head curiously. If there had been another Lost Thing so close to the spectacles, she was certain she would have noticed it. So what…?

No, not what. Who.

She jumped up in a burst of pixie dust, and flew as fast as she could to the other side of the reeds. It wasn’t Peter, and certainly not one of the lost boys–none of them would touch the color red aside from a feather or two (red was a Pirate color, they had long since decided). But if it was a pirate, she had an inkling she’d have been a bit too late to escape their clutches.  

Cautiously, she peeked out from one of the reeds to see if she could spot the culprit.  She could spot him, all right, considering he wasn’t exactly hiding now, but she’d never seen anyone quite like him before. He was about Tootles’ height, if not a bit smaller, and Tink briefly wondered if maybe he was a Lost Boy after all, judging by the ears atop his head. But no, no…those were his.  As was the little tail that wound behind him. She supposed he was a mouse of sorts, though he looked like none Tink could recall, and there was an air of the Clumsies about him too.

When he caught her looking his way he froze, then gave a shy little wave. Tinker Bell wasn’t sure what to think about that. So she reacted as she usually did when someone had minorly inconvenienced her plans for the day, and flew right up to him with a cherry-red face and a load full of colorful tinkling that gave Mickey quite a few new choice words to ask Yen Sid about later on. 

That was the strange part, really. Because Tink noticed after a few minutes of ranting that the mouse did seem ashamed, which would have only made sense if he actually understood what she was saying (about how he had interrupted her very important work, and nearly scared her half to blinking out).  Tink stopped her rambling and, slowly, her fiery cheeks cooled. Now she was Curious. And if she was Curious, there was hardly room for being Angry. 

With a flutter of her wings, she alighted onto the intruder’s nose and peered at him with scrutinizing eyes. Queen Ree had mentioned “The Gift” before–a phenomenon in which a Clumsy could understand the fairies’ distinct tinkling voices–but few of Neverland’s visitors possessed its talent. Peter was one of those few, of course, as was Hook (unfortunately). But just who was this strange newcomer who seemed to wield it, too?

She started when he spoke, and just barely caught enough to actually hear his name. Mickey, apparently. She didn’t know why, but the sound of it made her want to smile. Her wings flitted ever so slightly as she dipped in a tiny curtsy and introduced herself. 

Tinker Bell. Er…Tink! Fly with you!

Mickey’s eyes sparkled, and he couldn’t keep from laughing at the sheer excitement running through his veins. A real life fairy! How lucky was he?

Tinker Bell laughed a bit too, having simmered down from her tirade. This new friend of hers was really something. But, as with most tinkers, it was difficult to keep her mind in one place for very long. Before she knew it, she found herself drawn back to the Lost Thing she’d been so unsuccessful in retrieving. 

Mickey watched as Tinker Bell fluttered off his muzzle and darted instead to the rusty pair of glasses still buried in the sand. She looked lost in thought, and he realized she was still trying to figure out a way to retrieve the item. He couldn’t imagine why she’d want such a dirty, broken old thing, but figured he might as well help. 

It took Mickey considerably less effort to pull the spectacles out of the sand and, when he did, Tinker Bell twirled around with such excitement that pixie dust landed all about his fur and robe. He let out a little yelp, scrambling for something to grip onto as he felt himself lifted off the ground. Tink, on the other hand, seemed less than concerned. She had been a bit distracted while inspecting the spectacles but upon seeing Mickey’s skybound state, she smiled widely and flew up beside him. After all, it had been a while since she’d had a partner to search for Lost Things with–it would be fun to teach someone else how to fly alongside her. Someone who wasn’t Peter Pan.

Meanwhile, the boy in question was having his own sort of adventure, though it wasn’t nearly as easygoing as usual. You see, when Tink had gone back to Pixie Hollow, her pixie dust had, clearly, gone with her. So Peter was left to journey about as anyone else might have, and now was faced with an arduous climb up Torth Mountain in search of treasure. It was the first real adventure he’d embarked on since Wendy had left, and the work might have done him some good had his mind not been set on such sour thoughts.

Who did that Wendy think she was, anyway, leaving adventures and fun behind to…ergh…grow up? Why, Neverland was ten times better than the world outside the Second Star. If she wanted to leave and become a boring, ol’ grown up then fine. His world was better off without her. 

Of course, Peter didn’t really think that. But he was so unaccustomed to having someone he cared about do something he didn’t like, that he wasn’t actually sure what to think. It was much easier to assume that Wendy herself was the problem, rather than to admit that maybe his perfect world wasn’t so perfect to everyone. 

At long last, Peter reached a ledge near the mountain’s peak and hauled himself over the last bit of rock to climb up on it. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and frowned. Flying would have been a whole lot easier but Tink was still being temperamental for some weird reason, and he wasn’t going to be the one to apologize. He’d done nothing wrong, after all. 

Besides, here he was all by himself at the top of the mountain. The mouth of an enormous cave loomed before him and he cracked a mischievous smile. There was treasure in there for sure, and he didn’t need anyone else to help him find it. With a haughty sniff, Peter strolled inside the cavern. 

Torth mountain was an interesting part of Neverland. It was one of the few places that never seemed to have much, if any, color, and this cave was no exception. Peter was not one to think things through but even he had to wonder why he’d never noticed the cavern before when he had explored Neverland countless times over. As the darkness surrounded him, a feeling of unease that he wasn’t used to settled in his stomach, and he found himself wishing very much that Tink was there to light the way. 

All that vanished when, just ahead, a distinct orange glow came into view. 

Treasure. Only not the kind Peter had thought.  

The disappearance of all Peter’s qualms, and the rising temptation to approach this strange glow, was anything but chance. A deep, dark magic was at work, pulsating from the object to which Peter now made his way. Light fell across his face in an eerie streak as he studied it, and a strange grin crept across his lips. The object’s shape was like that of an egg, though dark and slick as obsidian. Fiery cracks made their way out from the surface it rested on, the source of its glow. Strangest of all, the closer Peter got, the bitterer his thoughts became. 

If Wendy had been there, she would have certainly been the one to talk sense into him. But she was not, and that alone was enough to drive Peter’s selfish ignorance to dangerous levels.

With a thought of deliberate defiance, he reached out and grabbed the egg. 

Outside, in the space just outside the Lost Boys’ hideout, Yen Sid stood straight up. He felt the change before anyone in Neverland noticed anything at all, but he knew at once that something terrible was about to happen. Slightly, Nibs, and Tootles, all of who seemed clueless as to Peter’s whereabouts, were arguing about something inconsequential when the sorcerer lifted his hands in a rush of magic to silence them. They looked at him with both frustration and confusion, wondering why they were suddenly unable to produce any sound. But in the wake of their own quiet, a distinct silence fell over all of Neverland. 

Mickey had been clumsily making his way through Tink's flight lesson when a deafening noise thundered across the island. It was enough to frighten away all his happy thoughts, if only momentarily, and he plummeted to the sand with a yelp. Tink remained hovering in the air, hardly moving as she stared up at one distinct part of the island where a plume of smoke and fire exploded into the air.

Torth Mountain was on fire.

[braveheartstoryteller]

"Do ya have to go?" "Well...l I did doze off...I just have some stuff to take care of." "Are you gonna to be okay?" "Yeah. I won't be long." "Be careful." "Very careful." "Right. See you soon." -closing lines of KH3D

In that moment, there seems to be a shift to me. Perhaps it is my perception, but not all is as it seems. What was, no longer is. Unlike Data-Sora which sort of gets a happy ending, KH3D is sort of bittersweet, with unanswered questions lingering. In the words of Sora's friends, they are worried about him. Sora instead sort of brushes them off, or assures them that he's fine. But I wonder...could anyone be truly fine after what he experienced? Or would Sora, just like he'd done before, just move on. Keep swimming, keep fighting, keep going. It feels like that is the choice he makes. Instead of trying to process what he just went through, he choses to ignore it, and continues his journey. Perhaps in hope of finding more answers. I suppose that is the thing. Yeah, something has shifted, something is now truly wrong, in a sense. But he has no idea how to deal with any of it. What he knows, is to fix it. Just like Kairi and Riku, he'll go on and try to rescue Roxas, and others from their sleep. It's not a wrong answer, for the is what needs to happen. But...what about him and his own heart? This, he ignores. In fact we have a scene that sort of brings everything together, as it is scene that deals with Data-Sora and Re:coded. It all revolves around a line, a line that is in both games: "A little hurt can't be all that bad."  However, as pointed out by others, the context of the words are different. For Data-Sora, he says it with the understanding that hurt can connect us to others. His words before the lines in question reflect this:

"If it [the hurt he felt in Data-Roxas' heart] brings me closer to people like that, then..."

However, Sora seems to go with the negative:

"Having no one to turn to was the worst kind of hurt. But that just shows how much you mean to me. Carrying around a little hurt can't be all that bad. Hurting is part of caring."

For Sora, hurt is a burden, one that he, himself, shoulders for another, not a shared burden. There is a subtle but crucial distinction. In my view, Sora seems to carry a weight on his shoulders, a pressure to fix what is broken, something that is made worse by what the others tell him. And seemingly he struggles under the weight, but he never once tries to share it, and truly rely on someone else. This is seemingly highlighted when the seven guardians are finally gathered, and they meet with Yen Sid. As the scene goes on, Sora becomes upset. "But...I do wish that Roxas, and Naminé, and Terra could be here with us too." This causes Riku to comment saying "since when do you mope, Sora?" Sora, despite all that has been accomplished, can only see what hadn't been. All he can feel is that burden, a burden he feels he alone has. The whole scene seems to be a nod to both Sora's feelings of isolation, as well as the assurance the others try to give him. It seems to perhaps have assured him at least somewhat by the end, but it still shows us just how much a struggle this had been for Sora. And perhaps, just a little too late. And that is what is sad about all of this. Sora doesn't have the tools to deal with all that had been given to him. It was too much, too fast. But, perhaps that makes him all the more relatable. I don't like heroes being truly tainted. However, broken heroes, I love. They are very relatable to me, and I've never quite seen a hero like Sora. A childlike spirit, one full of light, wanting to make the world better than he found it. And then, without warning, the darkness threatens still. He's not perfect. In a way the story of Re:coded, while important (and a fun game to play) is too perfect. Data-Sora had the gentle path, one that when all came to shove he's able to deal with what he's given, and with joy. It is the ideal path. But that doesn't make for much of a story. Nor does one learn as much, both in our own lives and in stories. It's why I love Sora's story better. It is broken, yes. It is also painful. But it resonates. I know what he means when he says "alone, I'm worthless." How many of us, in our hearts of hearts, feel the same. It highlights our need for connection, our need for others in our lives. Both human, and what might be much beyond that. I know without a doubt with out the Light in my own heart, I wouldn't be who I am today. It is why I love KH. The focus on connection, and even finding one's Light. Simple themes, but ones so utterly important to our ever increasingly broken world. And here, we finally find an ending. If you've followed through it all, I thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed, and perhaps learned something too. May the Light illuminate your path, and your heart be your guiding key.

[pangolinheart]

Does your OC have a Best Friend? If they do then how long have they known each other and how did they meet? If they don't then do they have a close group of friends they love equally? Or are they more of a loner?

Also asked by the ever-lovely @mornandil!

I wouldn't say that Rhiki necessarily has a single best friend. She has a handful of different friends that she's very close to, but her relationships to them are all very different.

She's very close to both Alphinaud and Alisaie. She and Alphinaud have been through a lot together and have had a lot of time to come to understand each other. Their relationship was a little rocky through ARR - Rhiki felt that he was maybe a little bit pompous, and that he probably wouldn't want to associate with her at all if she wasn't the Warrior of Light - but through Heavensward they had time to talk talk to each other and they both grew a little bit as people. Now they're great friends, even if there's only one braincell between them.

Rhiki feels a lot of kinship with Alisaie. They have a lot of similar struggles and doubts. They both prefer rushing into action to spending a long time planning and deliberating. Neither of them are very good in formal, diplomatic settings (Alisaie because she just doesn't have the patience for them and Rhiki because she's incapable of maintaining an air of dignity for longer than a few minutes). They both have struggled to find their place in the world, and both are terrified of being left alone. Rhiki feels like she really understands Alisaie, and wants to be there for her as much as she can. Besides that, she also finds Alisaie to be charming and funny, so they get along famously. Rhiki's very ride-or-die with both of the twins.

Tataru is another of Rhiki's closer friends. After all, who doesn't like Tataru? Rhiki likes that Tataru is so positive and cheerful, and she seems like she'd be a lot of fun to hang out with. They both are interested in fashion, so Rhiki's always excited to see the new outfit designs she comes up with for the Scions. Tataru also seems like she'd be down for more fun and frivolous activities than a lot of the Scions. Things like shopping, sightseeing, going out for coffee, going dancing, going to the beach. And she has her finger on the pulse of wherever they end up settling, so she's fun to gossip with. When they spend time together Rhiki feels a little more like a normal person and less like the single pillar propping up all of Eorzea.

All that being said, there are still parts of herself Rhiki hides from the twins and Tataru. She'll selectively reveal some of her struggles sometimes, if she feels like they're something her friends would understand or might also be grappling with, but she's hesitant to confide all of her troubles in them. With the twins it's partially because they're younger. She wants to be a good role model and doesn't think it would be right to burden them with her own troubles. With Tataru it's more that she doesn't want to stress her out. She knows that Tataru would be worried about her even if there was nothing she could do, and she doesn't want to be the source of that anxiety. For all three of them Rhiki wants to be the kind of person that they can rely upon and who they can turn to for support when they need it. And sometimes that means trying to hide when she's a total mess.

For this reason, though it would be a stretch to say they really "get along," Rhiki considers Sidurgu to be one of her closer friends. They tend to bicker and get on each other's nerves, intentionally or unintentionally, but Rhiki finds herself feeling very safe around Sid. She feels like he understands a lot of the emotions she struggles with, and like she doesn't have to maintain an image of undaunting heroism for him. It helps that he doesn't seem particularly interested one way or the other about her gig as the Warrior of Light. She doesn't feel like he judges her for being a total disaster, and he's really not in a position to. He's just as much of a mess as she is, after all. (There may also be a level of "Who cares what he thinks, anyway?" lol.) So when she's really been through it and feels the need to unburden herself she makes her way to Ishgard and, after Rielle goes to bed, gets drunk with Sid and lets herself process some of her emotions. It's... probably not that healthiest coping mechanism, but it does seem to help.

((OC Questions on the Seven Forms of Love by @mimble-sparklepudding))

[blacknovelist]

Words and Things

okay listen i love sidurgu and rielle SO freaking much and the drk story is so hecking good yall oh my god

so obviously nothing can or will stop me from my personal sid-and-feri-are-friendscomradesbrothers agenda. I know what i’m after here. They just spark so much joy, I’m so excited to hit stormblood so i can see the next round of job quests.

[AO3]

Memories can be found in the most unexpected of places. Not all of them are good- not all of them are bad.

(In a fit of homesickness, Feri' asks Sid a question. They both get a little more than they expect.)

After their journey to and subsequent return from the Twelveswood together, Feri'um lingers. It's a welcome diversion from the usual— and after Rielle's quiet but frantic concerns over their safety on the road alone, it's admittedly nice to confirm merely by presence that they are, indeed, still breathing. The tavernkeep has brought them a round of drinks (non alcoholic, thankfully), and its... well. Sid would hesitate to use the word nice, but it certainly beat Temple Knights waving foolishly about, even if he would never begrudge a chance to cut them down to size.

But there's a nervous twitch in Feri'um's tail, a hesitant and considering gleam when they glance up to him every so often, and, well. They're a good— if entirely too soft— person, but Sidurgu can only bring to bear so much patience at once.

"Is something bothering you?"

The other au ra blinks at him, caught out. "Ah, well..."

"Either ask or relax, Feri'um," he sighs. "I might not have an answer, but you get nowhere looking at me like that."

"Sorry." They take a long drink, eyes lingering on the tankard and the table. "I'm not sure how to phrase what I want to... give me a moment." He nods and allows some of his attention to wander once more.

To see an auri person within the walls of the city had been a surprise, at first— but not a bad one. It means something to know their kind is no longer so mindlessly vilified, even if it's some twenty years late now, and through the ashy bed of bitter grief he's glad. No one else should have to go through what he had. Is that not why he has taken up his blade?

Rielle takes another sip of her own drink, more content than he's seen her since... since Fray. It's better than the worry and fear, and hopefully it'll stay that way.

"Sid," Feri'um starts again. They're watching him intently, eyes flicking across his face as though searching for something he isn't sure about, and this time he waits for his fellow dark knight to give voice to thought.

But the words that come from Feri'um's mouth do not fall in common, or any language from the city, or even one from Eorzea at all. They speak in a tongue that brings him back to rocking ships and small feet first meeting new land, to hopeful faces and a world of possibility before them and the memory of gunfire behind. Of someone pleading for him to look away.

"Do you know the old tongue?"

"What?" Sid answers in kind, more from habit than conscious acknowledgement. Rielle glances between the two of them, confusion in her eyes at the unfamiliar language, but Feri'um lights up at his response— both ground him away from memories he'd rather not dwell in right now, though they do little for the shock.

"I didn't want to assume," they say, "because I know there are those who grew up elsewhere, or forget the words after many years away— but I wanted to ask because you're the first fellow xaela I've met since I came to Eorzea."

"I— yes, it's been years and there's... no doubt words I don't know or remember, but... Like a crack in a dam, the longer be speaks the easier the language flows from his lips. "How do you—"

Rielle pipes up, quiet and tentative. "What are you two saying?" She blinks up at them both with wide eyes. "I don't recognize the words or sounds at all..."

"Ah, it's..." How did he explain? He shoots Feri'um a look, and the other thankfully picks up the thread.

"It's a different language," they explain. "Where people like us come from— well, mostly people who look like Sidurgu, with his black scales— instead of speaking the common tongue, we have our own."

"I see!" She tilts her head at them. "Do... do those with light scales like yours not also speak it?"

"Many of them... well, maybe— they've spread out on their own and don't come by often, so I don't know for sure. Some live in other countries too and use local languages." A smile tugs their lips. "Most raen have paler scales than I, too."

"Really?"

"Yes. See how mine go especially dark at the edges sometimes? It's because I'm part xaela."

"You are?" Sid and Rielle speak at once in varying degrees of surprise and curiosity, and they glance at each other. He coughs and takes a long drink, and Rielle turns her attention back to Feri'um, who is visibly trying not to laugh.

"My mom is half and half," they say, once the dark knight has managed to regain his composure. "I grew up part of a tribe that wanders outside of the Azim Steppe, though we try to go back around the time of the Naadam even if we don't often participate."

"That explains a number of things, I suppose." Sidurgu sits back and shakes his head. "Your tribe... they stay east?"

"They wander, but usually. I'm the first to come to Eorzea since Dalamud."

He grunts. "For the best. You see how these lands are to too much new and unfamiliar."

Feri'um dips their head in agreement."But it has a capacity to learn, despite everything." They sigh, equal parts melancholic and content. "Things are difficult, here— but it's worth it to be alive, no matter how much it hurts."

An old anger stirs, hissing and spitting hateful rebuttal, but for once Sidurgu can't bring himself to give it voice. What would there be to say? To a fellow dark knight and au ra who knows the sting of mercy scorned, before the child he's taken under oath and guard...

Is he not here because he chose in the first place to live?

Finally, he gives a noncommittal grunt and focuses on finishing his drink. It seems good enough for everyone as they turn back to their own cups.

And then Feri'um tilts their head, as though a new thought has come to them. "Sid, how do you sleep at night?"

"In chairs, often, so Rielle can take the bed."

They rub a hand across their face. "Please tell me you have a neck rest or something."

"I don't need one."

"SID."

Though she doesn't know what they're talking about, Rielle giggles as Feri'um launches into a flurry of angrily concerned words about quality of rest and upper body muscles. Silent, Sidurgu wonders if it's too late to regret asking their company and hides a faint smile behind his tankard.