#So if their mouth guard or mask gets ruined guess who's having nightmares that night!

[phoenixcatch7]

The Wayne doll house

Have some haunted doll au, since it's been bubbling away in my mind.

The bat cave is large and sprawling, many layers and tunnels and hollowed out cracks in the walls. It takes many years to fully reinforce to prevent stray kids from tripping into stagnant waters or fall down crags as he once did. The doll cave, as it becomes known, is in one of the deepest, darkest corners, one where the lights of the furnished caverns above don't reach.

It's one late night sitting at the computer when it suddenly occurs to Bruce that his first encounter with a doll was at the well entrance, many levels above.

There was nothing there when he went back.

-

The justice league stared at the subaru. The subaru, having no eyes, did not stare back.

The seven of them had just finished a very long, arduous mission, and narrowly escaped government censure after the base they'd been raiding had turned out to belong to some corrupt official. With the alert up, they couldn't escape through city airspace, or even in their hero suits.

So civilian it was.

Batman had hotwired some bloke's car while the rest of them ducked into alleys and shop bathrooms, but the problem remained. There was seven of them. And five seats.

"I can shift into something more suitable for being carried," suggested j'onn, "but I believe one of us might have to hide."

"Foot well?" Hal tried, and everyone looked around at the tall, bulky, broad heroes.

"Think they'd have to go in the boot," Barry finally said. Everyone immediately turned to him. "No."

Batman spoke up before the discussion could devolve.

"I think.... I would be best for that."

The team stared.

"Batsy?"

Having no lungs meant he could not drag in the tired sigh he wished, but whatever force allowed this body to talk was capable of approximating something suitably resigned.

"As I am, I am... incapable of fully passing as human. It would be best if I remained out of sight."

"So just? Go change? I swear we won't be weird about whoever you are under the mask. Even if you're like, bald."

"Thank you, Wally, but I'm afraid I'm being serious." Reaching for the mask in broad daylight was unpleasant, but the glue and wires held as he gave it a few thorough tugs. "It doesn't detach."

Everyone stared. Clark reached out as if he wanted to check, but withdrew.

"Do you even have a civilian identity??" Oliver eventually asked. "Because at this point I'm genuinely not sure."

Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries had a meeting that same evening. "Hn."

"Can we go back to the 'incapable of passing as human' part?!"

"We can discuss it in the car," he snapped, stalking past Barry and popping the boot. "In case you haven't forgotten, we're on a time limit."

For once, that seemed to encourage them, and batman, with great dignity, folded his joints and cape into the small space, ignoring Hal's mutter of 'what kind of contortionist -' as he slammed the lid. With a little shuffling he managed to activate his comms.

"I will inform the watchtower of our delay."

"Batman, they're tapping all outgoing signals, you can't -"

"It won't trigger," he interrupted, before he twisted his consciousness and sent it spiralling across the country.

Bruce awoke with a groan, stretching his limbs and taking a moment to marinate in his annoyance before he reached for the comm and voice modulator on the beside table.

"Batman to watchtower, we've encountered delays. If the Texan state government calls we haven't entered the state in six weeks. Batman out."

-

"Alien?"

"No."

"Reanimated corpse?"

"No."

"Uh... Demon?"

"Hm. No."

"You're not just a meta human, are you?"

"No."

"Vampire?"

"No."

"Robot??"

"No."

"Batsy, please, someone's got to win the bet eventually. How do we even know you're not lying?!"

"You don't," Batman said, not looking up from his paperwork and Flash groaned, letting his sticky notes fall to the floor as he buried his head in his arms.

"One day," he bemoaned to the keyboard, "one day we'll figure it out."

"Until then please keep your eyes on the monitors."

Flash groaned again.

-

Robin ducked under superman's arm as he scuttled down the corridor, laden with the night's haul of snacks. The real problem wasn't getting them - stopping league members from raiding the kitchen would be extremely counterproductive - but keeping them until he could return home to his human body to eat them. Batman had started searching him each time they left and it was really cutting into his daily sugar intake. Unfair! Just because he didn't actually use energy to stay up my night to fight crime, it felt like he did!!

'Oh, you're broken, Robin, oh, don't go out until the glue has fully set, Robin' his arm was fine! It wasn't like there was much crime to be fought on the watchtower anyway! At least not physically.

So he was pretty pleased with himself until he went to set the snacks down and found that the tar like glue they used had soaked through the sleeve and gotten all over his chocolates.

With his other hand, he tried to pry them off, wincing as the wrappers tore and stuck. He tried to shake it, ignoring the way his elbow rattled in the joint.

"Come on, come on - aw, cheezits."

The arm fell off. Robin stared despondently at the limb, surrounded by torn wrappers and dripping black glue where it connected to the elbow. The sour stink of formaldehyde filled the air.

He was going to be in such trouble with Bruce.

The click of the door jerked his head up.

Flash stood in the doorway, wide eyed. Robin stared back.

Flash screamed.

Oh yeah @dehydratedmockingbird have a thing

[aliceinreverselondon]

Inside Your Mind (Kakashi Hatake x reader)

This wasn’t the first time you entered someone’s mind so by now you knew these places usually looked quite similar. Even ruthless criminals had at least a few rooms that looked brighter than the rest, ones that were filled with good memories. But Kakashi’s mind was different: it was dark, depressing and you could barely shake off the suffocating feeling of anxiety that filled the air. It wasn’t Rin’s death alone that made it look this way, though. It was… everything he had gone through in his life so far.

It took a while until you finally found a door that was different. “So he does have at least one happy memory after all,�� you thought as you breathed a sigh of relief. Although you were there to take care of something else, you still felt the urge to peek inside and see what this certain memory was. He probably wouldn’t even notice if you took a quick look inside the room, but the information you would get this way could be really valuable later.

But before you could reach the handle of the door, someone grabbed your wrist to stop you. “Please, don't go in there.”

“I was wondering when you'd show up,” you told Kakashi once you turned to look at him. “Why shouldn't I, though? Everything looks so... dark and lonely here. This seems to be the only happy room.”

He let out a long, thoughtful hum as his hand rubbed his chin over the mask. “Maybe it is,” he admitted eventually with a small nod. “Either way, I'd like you to focus on why you came here.”

“But you look so depressed all the time, and you tend to shut everyone out. If this room can help me figure out how to make you feel better—”

“No need.”

Why did he have to be so damn stubborn all the time? There were nights when he couldn’t sleep because of his nightmares, and whenever this happened, he visited you to try to get them out of his head and at least have some company so he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts. But no matter how many times you asked him about them or what you should do to help, he always ignored it. “Please, don’t do this again. Don’t shut me out and let me help!”

This time it seemed to work. But maybe it only worked because you weren’t talking to the real Kakashi, only the version that guarded his mind. Letting out a sigh, he nodded. “Fine.”

When you opened the door, you found yourself in a completely different environment. In fact, it all looked very familiar. Was it a place you’d visited before? But then you caught a glimpse of a young girl running out of a room, followed by a boy who looked really annoyed for some reason. Then you noticed a forehead protector in the girl’s hand and realized why it was so familiar. “Are they–”

“Yes, they’re us, but a long time ago,” Kakashi replied without missing a beat. He leaned against the doorframe with his arms folded over his chest and it didn’t seem like he was about to follow you any further. “After that... incident with my father, your parents tried to help him, although it didn't work. But whenever we were there, you tried to cheer me up. Sometimes I think you were my only real friend at the time.”

Then suddenly the scene changed and you found yourself in a memory from not long ago. He was in your room in the middle of the night, reading a book with a flashlight in his mouth while you slept with your head in his lap. Did he really have a separate room for these memories alone? “I know we've been talking quite a lot lately, but considering we hadn't been very close for long years, I didn't think you valued our friendship this much,” you muttered quietly while the scene changed once again.

Behind you Kakashi awkwardly cleared his throat. “Uhm, yeah, right, our friendship.” You couldn’t recall ever seeing him be awkward around you so this unusual reaction immediately made you turn around with a questioning look on your face. “I'm just not sure if what I truly value can be called that.”

“Why?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Hey, don't be so cryptic. You know I can find the answer here whether you like it or not,” you warned him.

But when you tried to leave the room, he simply extended his arm to grab the other side of the doorframe in order to block your way out. For long seconds he didn’t say anything, only watched you with a seemingly neutral expression. “You're more than a friend to me. But... it just doesn't feel like I'm ready for anything else. Maybe in a few years. I don't really know to be honest.”

You didn’t know what to say. This was uncharted territory not only for you, but for him as well apparently. And you knew he was right about not being ready for something like this. So you nodded then walked out of the room under his arm, determined to find the room you came to look for in the first place. Soon you heard his footsteps from behind you but you didn’t turn around because you assumed it would be the best if you just avoided the topic for now.

“I ruined everything, didn't I?” he suddenly asked, surprising you with this question.

“What? No. I can see you're uncomfortable and I don't want to push you,” you explained with a kind smile before you came to a halt in front of a room. You could hear the crackling sound of his Chidori from inside and the air was heavy from the feeling of anxiety you’d felt before at other parts of this place. “This is the room I'm looking for, right?”

Note: The reader in this story has an ability that’s pretty useful in the Torture and Interrogation Force... Anyway, there will be future chapters, I guess. And other one-shots. Also I'm sorry for typos, mistakes, etc.

[eury--dice]

history, huh?

chapter one: principium

(or: the Red, White, and Royal Blue TRC AU, but no knowledge of the book is needed to read this! ao3 link in the rb)

Adam knew he was in trouble when he found himself covered in cake, champagne, and shattered glass while clutching onto someone’s sleeve.

Admittedly, the memory of the night as a whole is a bit fuzzy around the edges, softened by jet lag and overwhelming anger and a few flutes of champagne worth more than the house Adam grew up in. But he remembered enough to recall some key details: one, it was no ordinary reception, it was the royal wedding; two, the cake covering him was the 75,000-dollar royal wedding cake; and three, that he clutched onto His Royal Highness, Prince Ronan Lynch-Mountchristen-Windsor, while covered in the remnants of his champagne flute.

It was an international relations nightmare that a rational Adam Parrish, the first son of the United States, would pay to avoid at all costs. Even the slightly-inebriated Adam could feel a distant spark of fear over what Maura and Calla were going to say to him once he was not covered in frosting and brawling with a treasured member of the English monarchy. (Well, “treasured” was a relative term. Prince Ronan was more of a recently-reformed scandal than a treasure.)

But as he caught a glimpse of Blue’s expression, a carefully constructed mask of surprise for the cameras that only those who knew her personally could read the amusement behind, Gansey’s hand wrapped around his wrist and yanked Adam off of the ground. 

He must have abandoned his conversation with Roger Malory to come and bail Adam out; deep down, beyond the adrenaline and anger and alcohol pumping through his veins, Adam was touched at the gesture. Guilt also hit him with the knowledge that Gansey hadn’t had a chance to talk to Malory since he left England as a teenager and now Adam had ruined that, but he tucked it away to examine at a later moment.

Adam thought he might have heard Ronan mutter “Oh my fucking Christ” from somewhere behind him in his stupid posh accent. Slinging an arm around Adam’s frosting-coated shoulders to steer him towards the Secret Service Agents already surging forward, Gansey leaned his head towards Adam’s and whispered around a smile, “What the fresh hell did you do?”

And, well. It was a good question. He glanced back at Ronan where he lay on the ground, already brushing off the help of the royal guards and climbing gracefully to his feet, the bead of blood on his cheek sparkling in the majestic royal lighting. Just a few minutes before, the Prince had stood by himself, a dark contrast to the pristine tiered cake and tiny buttercream flowers and gleaming champagne fountain behind him. And Adam, who was rarely angry over anything but could easily go too far when provoked, decided to engage.

“If it isn’t His Royal Highness,” Adam had said, drawing Ronan’s eyes to him. He could see the moment Ronan realized he wasn’t himself, taking in the curled hand and slightly flushed cheeks. Adam was a convincingly sober drunk, and something about Ronan being able to see through it pissed him off. And the fact that Ronan had spent more than half the night hiding away from the cameras and drinking himself didn’t help. Adam would’ve expected to find him dead on his feet and barely standing, but clearly Ronan was less of a lightweight than he was.

Ronan’s lips curled in what might have passed as a smile but looked a little too much like a predator baring its teeth. “Mr. Parrish,” he said, all clipped vowels and stiff politeness that made Adam want to scream. His lips lingered on the ‘h’ shape for a moment too long. “I’m surprised you’re speaking to me.”

Honesty was the last thing Adam had expected. “Why, because you monopolized Blue and treated her like some kind of...toy to ignore?”

His nostrils flared suddenly. “No, I do not... use people. But you have been avoiding me all evening when I’ve done my best to be civil.”

Adam laughed too loudly at that. “Civil? Yeah, okay,” he said, his mouth curved into a smile. “Most civil member of your family, I’m sure. Declan and Ashley would agree.”

Ronan went silent, swirling his champagne around in his hand and raising an uncoordinated hand to run over his shaved head. When he spoke, he grit his jaw as though holding back some impulse like the good repressed English boy he was. “I’d suggest you to go drink some water and find your way out before you do something you regret.”

“Or what?”

Ronan stepped closer to Adam so that they were nearly chest-to-chest, his two-inch height advantage only pissing Adam off more. “I said I’d advise you to stop.”

And Ronan, so subtly that he doubted any camera could pick it up, pushed Adam away with one hand. It would have worked splendidly had Adam not back-tracked and grabbed Ronan’s sleeve, sending them both falling.

And now they were both covered in frosted roses and shame, Adam stuck with Gansey’s voice on the plane saying please table your rivalry for one night reverberating in his head.

What the fresh hell, indeed.

***

Silence hung over the West Wing briefing room like a wet blanket. Maura Sargent stared unblinkingly into Adam’s eyes from where she perched on the edge of the table. Adam, from his seat at the head, stared back with every ounce of courage his mother’s PR campaigns taught him. Maura seemed to be studying him, and Adam simply didn’t know how to look away.

“Blue,” Maura said finally. On Maura’s other side, Blue wordlessly handed over a stack of newspapers, her gaze shifting from Maura to Adam as though watching a ping pong tournament. Adam knew of Maura’s “no restrictions” policy at home with Blue, but everyone knew this policy in no way related to her work life. Still, Blue watched attentively with knitted brows as though trying to guess the outcome or will a better one into existence.

“Gansey?” Maura asked, all without removing her eyes from Adam’s. The touch of anxiety in Blue’s expression didn’t even begin to reach the anxiety in Gansey’s face, as he stared at Adam like he was a lost puppy. Still, Gansey had more poise than most politicians did, and he managed to smoothly relinquish a stack of magazines into Maura’s free hand. Maura combined the stacks into one in her right hand before dropping them into Adam’s lap with a dull thwap.

“These are just the ones being sold outside this morning, not to mention what’s circulating in the British tabloids,” she said, finally turning away and reaching for a mug of coffee. “Read them.” She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like Jesus, but Adam didn’t try to discern it. He went for the stack instead, glossy pages almost slipping through his thin fingers.

    THE $75,000 STUMBLE greeted him on the front page of The Washington Post.

    BATTLE ROYAL: Prince Ronan and FSOTUS Come To Blows at Royal Wedding

    CAKEGATE: Adam Parrish Sparks Second English-American War

Everywhere he flipped, images of he and Ronan covered in sparkling broken glass and frosting assaulted his eyes. The images and headlines blurred together, and he flicked his gaze back up to Maura. All he could see for a moment was Ronan’s rumpled suit and the sliver of red on his cheek. He blinked three times in rapid succession and Maura returned, her brown eyes cool and calculating over the rim of her travel mug.

“Isn’t this a topic for the Situation Room, Ms. Sargent?” He asked. His mother, seated across from him, and Blue both pursed their lips, although for entirely different reasons; Blue appeared to be holding back laughter while his mother must have been holding back something else. Maura narrowed her eyes, oblivious to Gansey’s tightening expression behind her.

“Don’t Ms. Sargent me,” she replied, her tone cool. “I knew all your secrets, kid. I’ve been watching you since you were five. The sass will get you nowhere.” She snatched the Sun article from out of his hands, flipping it open to the correct page and hiding Ronan’s buttercream-smeared frown behind her fingers. “‘Sources inside the royal reception report the two were seen arguing minutes before the cake-tastrophe. But royal family insiders claim the First Son’s feud with Ronan has raged for years. A source tells The Sun that Ronan and the First Son have been at odds ever since their first meeting at the Rio Olympics--’” here Adam made an odd, strangled noise -- “‘and the animosity has only grown—these days, they can’t even be in the same room with each other. It seems it was only a matter of time before Adam took the American approach: a violent altercation.’”

Adam locked eyes with Gansey at the last line, watching Gansey’s lips thin just as he felt the blood drain from his own face. His eyes slid over to Blue, who yielded much of the same reaction. His mother, surprisingly, didn’t change her posture. If she was thinking of Robert Parrish like the rest of them, she had a better poker face.

“They’re blaming this on Ana’s administration,” Maura continued, pushing on through the stony silence. “Please, explain the joke to me.”

“He started it,” is all Adam was able to say, which was probably one of the worst ways to defend himself. Sounding like a petulant toddler helped nobody, but he had made his bed and so he would lie in it, too. “He shoved me and I grabbed his sleeve to-”

“Adam,” his mother said, raising one hand to cut him off with the smooth, brown skin of her palm. He quieted at once, recognizing her demeanor as half-presidential and half motherly. Ana’s voice was caught somewhere between the sugary drawl that lulled him to sleep as a child and the All-American southern twang that helped win her an election. “You know I trust you, sweetheart, but the press sure as hell doesn’t give a fuck about the nitty-gritty of who started what.”

“Ronan definitely touched him first,” Gansey said, his voice unhurried but his face clearly eager to shift some of the blame off of Adam. Maura shot a cool look in his direction.

“He-said, she-said, that doesn’t matter. The press thinks and we can’t change their mind, we can only prove them wrong.” She held out a hand again, and with a sigh Blue acquiesced a new, thick file. Maura dropped it in front of Adam like a hot potato. “Here’s damage control. This rivalry with the prince of England ends now.”

“It’s not a-”

“Rivalry, we know,” his mother interrupted wryly. The tone was odd from her president-mode self, her wayward curls tamed into a perfect ponytail and her face made up instead of the more casual expression she normally had when joking. “But, sugar, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. You can call it whatever you like, but it’s always gonna be seen as a rivalry.”

Adam sat silently, flipping through a section entitled TERMS OF AGREEMENT. Maura continued. “You’re flying to England on Saturday and spending the weekend with Ronan.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in, but once they did he couldn’t stop thinking of them. Dread settled just below the surface of Adam’s skin. He looked at his mother. “I’d prefer to fake my death, actually. Or just really die. I know Calla would be willing to help with either, and Persephone is good with that stuff, right? Death of a son should boost your polling. The voters love a sympathetic case.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she warned. She looked to her watch with a heavy sigh and leaned over to kiss him on the head. “I’m too overscheduled for this. Adam, listen to Maura and don’t ignore her plan. You two,” she gestured vaguely at Blue and Gansey, “Make sure he doesn’t do anything irrational while we’re wrapped up.”

Blue lazily saluted while Gansey nodded reassuringly. With one last glance at Adam, Ana was gone, her heels clicking away from the heavy doors. She slipped away from being Ana Parrish, Adam’s mother punishing him for stupid behavior, to become President Parrish, leader of the country. Adam envied her compartmentalization.

Maura leaned over the table, flipping pages in the file. “We’re releasing this statement in conjunction with the Crown as soon as they approve. It was an accident, no harm was intended, all that jazz-”

Adam lifted one eyebrow. “So the truth?”

“Call it what you’d like. And we’re clarifying that you and Prince Ronan have been close personal friendships for several years despite conflicts in schedule making it difficult to appear publicly.”

Blue laughed out loud at that, clamping one hand over her mouth. Maura didn’t even look over to her, but Adam’s expression must have been similarly dumbfounded because she sighed resignedly, taking another sip of coffee. “Look, it’s better for all sides if your tussle just looks like some...frat boy joshing.” Blue’s laughs crescendoed louder, and Maura shot her a cool look. “If you need to step out, please feel free to, Blue. I’m sure Gansey will fill you in later.” Adam looked to Blue and her wave of dismissal, gripping onto the wrist of Gansey’s blazer to steady herself. Maura turned back to Adam.

“I know he’s difficult. You can hate him for all I care. In privacy, feel free to construct intricate arguments for his removal from this earth. Fantasize about dumping yogurt on his head. Compose songs to drive him insane. But, for the love of God, you will act like he hung the moon with nothing but yarn and a sewing needle whenever there’s the slimmest possibility of a camera or another living being witnessing it. Kapeesh?”

It wasn’t like he was allowed any true reaction, but he nodded all the same. His powerlessness was because of his own actions, not Maura. It was his own fault, and he would own up to the consequences. Even if the thought of willingly spending time with Ronan made his stomach turn.

“Your job is to not piss anyone off and to gush about Ronan. You’ll memorize this fact sheet-” she slid another page from the file and tapped it, “-and be prepared to answer any question with these as an answer. Your deal includes a minimum of two social media posts a day about Ronan and your visit. On Sunday, you have an on-air interview with ITV This Morning, and you’ll be fresh as a daisy with nothing but sunshine to say about Ronan’s competitive yachting hobby. There are only two photo ops, one in private where you can bitch and one charity appearance. That’s it, you’re free.”

Adam opened his mouth.

“Don’t care,” Maura said before Adam could make a noise. “You ruined the Royal Wedding and a cake that’s worth a year of college tuition. He’ll attend a state dinner in a few months for his part, and you will pay your penance now.”

Adam nodded slowly. He gathered the file in his hands along with all the decorum Gansey taught him over the years. He smiled a small smile at Maura. “Well, it will be an experience, won’t it?”

“I’d expect it, yes.”

“Thank you, Maura. And I’m sorry.”

She waved her hand. “Don’t apologize. Your apology will be not screwing this up even more.”

“I’ll try.”

Adam rose, Blue and Gansey following his lead. As he turned to walk away, Maura spoke again. “Oh, and Adam?”

“Yes?”

The corners of her eyes crinkled, and she looked younger, somehow. Almost amused. Guilt panged in his chest at the thought that he’d caused the tiredness on her face before. “Try to have a little fun. It’s a trip to Europe and you’re not even missing class.”

He paused, thinking of Ronan and his shaved head and cruel smile in front of the wedding cake. He tried to imagine what fun might be for him - whether to trust the fact sheet proclaiming fencing and yachting as Ronan’s pastimes or the tabloids that traded stories of illegal drag racing and getting black-out drunk. He wasn’t sure which version of Ronan sounded worse. “Sure,” he agreed quietly. “I will.”

***

Those who work in the White House know a few things about the First Family’s habits, but they never know the full truth.

They can observe things the average citizen would die to know; they see staffers pacing the halls and tearing their hair out over Instagram captions, overhear expletive-laden and fond familial conversations, and occasionally see the pristine members of the executive branch with dark crescents burning under their eyes and old high-school sweatshirts adorned like the newest fashion. But none were more elusive and two-sided than the White House Trio.

In their case, two-sided didn’t necessarily mean something bad, only something drastic. Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey, and Adam Parrish presented the perfect dynamic for the press to eat up: three attractive early twenty-somethings inside the White House who were notoriously open to the public about their lives. There were veneers crafted and stories concocted every day, all designed to get the perfect media response without sharing too much. There was Blue, the Indigenous American daughter of a single mother and prominent staffer, barely five feet tall but laser-sharp with any numbers you threw at her; there was Richard Campbell Gansey III, better known as the single-named Gansey who came from the billions that funded the Vice-Presidency but wanted nothing more than to give it all away, always ready with his winning charm and a new polo shirt to distract the press from his scathing op-eds; and there was Adam Parrish, a true American Dream born from a father from the Heartland and a mother from Mexican immigrants, a single First Son set to graduate valedictorian from Georgetown amid a political campaign with an ease most of the country only wished to possess.

Together, they hit every demographic that they could without even trying too hard. Their progressive politics were helped along by their identities, and so they aided their parents by nature of existing within the White House walls. White House staff saw these versions of them, but only glimpses of what lay beneath - Blue wandering the halls in self-created shirts and dresses with stacks of newspapers clutched in her arms, the scent of mint clinging to Gansey everywhere he went at all hours of the day, Adam’s frequent requests for coffee at midnight and propensity to wear coca-cola tee shirts.

They all knew very well that no one really saw the full picture of them, but that was how the White House Trio liked it.

The three of them spread out in the music room, one of their only haunts where they could be truly alone. For once, they weren’t a marketing ploy of their own creation or a group of kids on a pedestal; they were just Blue, Gansey, and Adam. After that meeting, they had to be.

Adam sprawled on the couch, laying exactly horizontal, flipping over the HRH fact sheet.

“You’re on the cover of Us Weekly, Blue,” Gansey called across the room, undoubtedly fulfilling his guilty-pleasure hobby of obsessively tracking their tabloids. “Full portrait of your Royal Wedding outfit.”

“It’s about time,” she responded from her perch on the windowsill, a bottle of red wine and a bottle opener in her hands. “I wore that lace to catch attention, thank you very much. It’s been at least four months since a solo cover.”

“Well, they do mention the cake-tastrophe in the corner.”

Blue waved her hand dismissively. “That was bound to happen. Scandal sells, but so do I.”

“Okay, ew,” Adam said flatly.

“They’re speculating about you two again, you know.” Gansey scrolled to a new part of the magazine, lifting a thumb to rub against his lower lip. “‘Tryst with a mystery brunette: Heartthrob First Son Adam Parrish caught sneaking back to the W hotel for an amorous rendezvous in the Presidential Suite. Sources say the brunette is none other than Blue Sargent, the twenty-two-year-old member of the White House Trio.’”

“Less than a month!” Blue exclaimed, popping the wine open. “You owe me, Gansey. Pay up.”

He ignored her, dropping the hand from his face. “You didn’t really…”

Neither Adam nor Blue responded. Gansey knew very well that their short-lived relationship on the campaign trail was due to die a quick death, but something - perhaps the lingering stares he seemed to throw Blue more and more often - was making him touchier to the subject of their former relationship. Of course, Adam and Blue did nothing of the sort, only watched the West Wing and made sex noises at young Rob Lowe with a bottle of champagne passed between them. Confusing the tabloids was an added bonus to their game. Blue took a swig directly from the bottle of red.

“You’d think they’d be talking more about your spat with Ronan than your possible sex life,” Gansey said, returning his focus to Adam. Adam finally looked away from the HRH fact sheet and towards Gansey’s squinting eyes. He really needed to put his glasses on, but far be it from Adam to mother Gansey. It had to be the other way around.

“No one cares about what happens over the pond.”

“Don’t they?” Blue said, scrunching her nose in a similar fashion to Gansey. “They seem to follow the royals pretty well. Tabloids were in a tizzy over the Prince’s lack of date.”

“In a tizzy,” Adam mocked. From where she sat on the floor, Blue stretched her short frame as far as possible to nudge Adam’s leg with the toe of her socked foot. “Why does anyone care? It’s not like he’s, you know, interesting.”

Blue and Gansey were staring again, he could tell. “Adam, honey,” Blue started, her southern accent heavy and thick. Gansey reached for the bottle and she relinquished it easily. “I know you hate him, but he’s probably the most interesting royal out there.”

“Wasn’t he caught in a club with his underage brother right after their father died?” Gansey asked, taking a prim sip from the bottle of wine.

“Apparently has a huge sucker of a tattoo on his back, too.”

“Isn’t that against royal etiquette or some shit?”

“Probably.”

Adam waved the fact sheet around, spinning himself so that his head hung off the edge of the couch. “Explain this, then. He’s more wonder-bread than Gansey, and that’s saying something.” Blue spluttered out a laugh, and Adam slung an upside-down apologetic glance at Gansey. “Sorry, man. No offense.”

“None taken,” Gansey said, reaching for the fact sheet and plucking it from Adam’s grasp. “What’s wrong with these? Charles Dickens as a favorite author? What do you have against Charles Dickens?”

Adam and Blue exchanged a glance. “Nothing in theory. It’s just a bunch of garbage I don’t need in my brain.”

Blue snorted. “No thoughts, brain full of GDP calculations.”

“You know I just finished my macroeconomics midterm.”

“That’s the point,” Blue said, snatching the bottle back from Gansey and peeking at the sheet. Her nose scrunched again, squinting her eyes as she always did when drinking. “Mutton pie? Who loves mutton pie?”

“It’s a very versatile meal,” Gansey defended.

“I mean, sure, these are boring as hell,” Blue conceded, ignoring Gansey’s scandalized look. “But this is clearly slapped together by his PR team to make him look like the perfect prince.”

“So?” Adam said, unimpressed.

“It’s not a reason to hate him.”

“Oh, I know. I hate him anyway. But I have better use for my brain space than facts about His Royal Dick.”

“That just sounds like you’re talking about Gansey.”

“To be fair, Adam,” Gansey said, “it’s your fault. You fought him.”

“What happened anyway?” Blue asked. He knew the question was coming, but all the same, he didn’t want to answer. “He was fine when I danced with him.”

“Fine,” Adam said curtly. “Cold and severe sounds more like it.”

Blue’s eyes scanned over him with an uncanny feeling she could see into his thoughts. “So you were...defending me? God, please don’t blame me for this.”

“That’s actually kind of nice, Parrish.”

“No,” Blue interrupted, a hard edge to her voice.. “Not if he does stupid shit because of it. I’m perfectly fine on my own.”

“I know!” Adam rushed to say. “Believe me, I know. It was…” he withered under her look. “...An excuse?”

“Look at me,” Blue said, voice firm. He did. Her lips were thinned with seriousness. “Don’t protect my honor again, please. It’s a weird-ass fishbowl world we live in, but if you do, I will leak to the press that your favorite song is Africa by Toto.”

“Please do,” Adam said, scoffing. “It’s a bop.”

“And do you want it dogging your every step?”

“Maybe I do.”

Blue shrugged. “Your funeral.”

“This is quite Shakespearean,” Gansey said, most likely in hopes of interrupting their budding argument. He gestured grandly to the gaudy tapestry-ridden walls and golden tassels on the furniture, although Adam imagined that Gansey thought it would look more impressive in his head. “Two sworn enemies forced into friendship for the sake of tension between their countries.”

“We’re not enemies,” Adam said. “That implies we’re...on the same level. Have actually spoken.”

“Exactly. Shakespearean.”

“Then let’s hope I get stabbed at the end of this. Blue, will you do the honors? I know you’ll do it mercifully.”

“Oh, cheer up now,” Blue said in a false British coo. “You’ll be the darling of England before Sunday even rolls around.”

“What does it matter?” Adam said, not lifting his gaze from the fact sheet. “They just think I’m another violent American over there.”

He could feel the weight of Blue and Gansey’s stares above his head. No one needed to say the words themselves to invoke the double-wide of Adam’s earliest years, where blood covered most of the carpet. “They don’t mean it like that, Adam,” Gansey said finally, breaking some of the tension with his reverberating voice. “They mean it like… UFC fighters, or rioting after the Patriots lose the Super bowl. Or win.” Gansey’s frown deepened. “I can never figure out how they’re doing.”

“Yeah, I know,” Adam said, lips twisted downwards. He regretted bringing it up. “I know.”

Blue nudged him again with her foot. “Want to watch Parks and Rec and make fun of the Prince’s fact cheat-sheet?”

“God, yes.”

She snatched the sheet from Gansey, reading it over again. “Drinking game: drink whenever Prince Ronan’s interests are laughably terrible.”

“Counter-offer: drink whenever Adam overreacts to his interests.” Gansey offered. Blue passed him the bottle to reach for her laptop instead.

“Either way, we’re getting alcohol poisoning.”

“Oh, definitely.”

“We’ll quiz you,” Gansey offered Adam, just as Blue pulled up an episode of Parks and Rec. “Not season seven, Sargent, what the hell are you thinking?”

“Season seven can be great!” Off of Gansey’s glare, Blue complied, clearly not wanting the fight. “Fine. Season three?”

“Now you’re talking.”

Blue balanced her laptop on an old piano bench and joined their huddle near the couch, beckoning the bottle back.

“Alright,” Gansey began, eyes settled on the top of the sheet. “You better be ready to learn something, Parrish.”

***

None of them succumbed to alcohol poisoning, but they did learn several facts about Prince Ronan.

There was the basic information, things Adam knew already: his mother, Queen Aurora, took the throne with a dreamy demeanor and high hopes at the age of 19 after her parent’s untimely death and her twin sister’s abdication. The year before, she married Niall Lynch, an Irish actor, and practically upset the whole place. Niall died in 2015, not too long before the Rio Olympics, and Aurora’s public appearances had dwindled ever since, leaving the press to have a field day with rumors of illness and mental breakdowns. Ronan had a raven (why, Adam could not fathom) named, of all things, Chainsaw. His best friend, Henry Cheng, was heir to Cheng Industries and managed their charity branch.

Gansey actually knew both Cheng and Ronan, having spent a year at Eton in high school, and Adam just rolled his eyes at Ganey’s relentless knowledge of every human person.

His music tastes were listed as baroque, death metal, and Irish jigs, a combination that left Blue wheezing. “His Royal Highness may be my new favorite person,” she insisted, leaving Adam scowling.

The week came and went, and Adam found himself on a private tarmac following a trans-Atlantic flight with a man in an impeccably pressed suit and a cup of tea nestled into his hands. Calla, one of Blue’s pseudo-aunts and a secret service agent accompanying him, pressed forward to shake his hand and exchange a few words under her breath with him. He almost pitied the man. Calla, with her high bun of perfectly-contained curls and steely gaze, oozed intimidation out of her very being. But to his surprise, Calla actually smiled at the mystery man. She wasn’t quite warm, but he received considerably kinder treatment than everyone else subject to Calla’s jurisdiction. When she stepped back, the man turned his gray eyes on Adam. He smiled without any mirth.

“Mr. Parrish,” the man said, reaching out his free hand. Adam shook it, trying to keep it short and firm as his mother taught him. “It’s a pleasure to have you with us in England. I’m Mr. Gray, Prince Ronan’s equerry.”

“It’s very nice to meet you. I apologize for the turn of events that led to this weekend.”

“Well,” Mr. Gray said, turning and beckoning Adam to an Aston Martin with blacked-out windows, “once you reach my age, Mr. Parrish, you’ll find that these matters are quite simple to see coming.” Adam barely had a chance to blink in response before he was sliding into the back seat of the car, the rumbling of the tarmac shut out succinctly with the door’s closure. A lull in conversation settled around them; Adam, after clicking his seatbelt in, favored looking out the window to London’s scenery over making conversation. The blur of grey and white passed for a few minutes before Mr. Gray finally informed him of his role.

“There are a few matters of paperwork to go over before entering Kensington Palace. They’re currently next to you, and signing them is of highest priority before we begin this weekend.” Adam was no stranger to non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality paperwork; he’d expected the practically novel-length stack. By the time he’d finished signing on all the correct lines, the car slowed to a crawl. “Prince Ronan has just finished his tennis practice, and we’re here to escort him to our first activity.”

“Splendid,” Adam whispered under his breath, unconsciously mimicking Mr. Gray's crisp voice.

The English countryside hit Adam full in the face as soon as he stepped from the car; fresh air, the kind you never find in DC, welcomed him like an old friend, and though the English air was nothing like the air he remembered growing up with in Virginia, it felt nostalgic all the same. He suddenly wanted to be back there, in the home he remembered so well. He wanted to be anywhere but England with the goddamn Prince of Wales loping his way towards him in an all-white outfit, a racket swinging in his hand.

Jesus, how pretentious could he be?

Annoyingly, Ronan was not sweating and not fatigued looking in the slightest. He actually looked incredibly refreshed, the harsh lines of his face softened and a flush under his cheeks, his blue eyes charged and alight. Looking into them, Adam felt startlingly as though he was staring out at the horizon on a cloudless day.

“Parrish,” Ronan called, jogging the remaining distance quickly and closing the gap between them. “You've found the directions, I can see.”

“It’s difficult to miss,” Adam replied tightly, holding out a hand for Ronan to shake. “Extensive wealth tends to smell for miles around.”

Ronan took his hand, and his smoothed palm slid uncomfortably against Adam’s calloused hand. An unpleasant jolt started in his stomach. Ronan affixed his same unkind but not terrifying smile to his face, looking ridiculously like Declan for a moment, before continuing their conversation. Both knew to disconnect their words from their faces, conscious of the photographer unsubtly circling them. “It’s a rather pleasant odor, yes? I prefer it to fried food and pollution.”

“London, known for its fresh air, right?” Adam laughed, the charming laugh that beguiled TV hosts and entranced his mother’s constituents. “Excited for the days ahead?”

“I’d rather lie on the NASCAR racetrack, or even concede an argument.”

Adam slipped his palm from Ronan’s, choosing instead to slap him jovially on the arm. “I never thought I’d see the day where we agree on something, Your Highness.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan said, the words slipping through his unkind but certainly camera-friendly smile with practiced ease, and oh, there was the difference between this weekend and all their other interactions: Adam couldn’t speak of their interactions at all, locked behind an NDA. Ronan could swear as much as he pleased and not face retribution from his family.

“Gladly,” he replied through gritted teeth.

“The car is ready if you’re ready, then,” Mr. Gray said from behind Adam.

“Perfect,” Ronan said, any hint of his bleached teeth disappearing. “The sooner this is over with, the better.”

And they set off, side by side, for the car.

[evalinkatrineberg]

Practice Side RP

I could hardly sit still in the ballroom. Ever since my makeover had concluded and I had been told that we had to wait for more girls to finish up before we could be shown to our rooms, I had been turning my head from left to right. Every now and then, I would try to make small talk with the other girls who had finished, but for the most part, I sat in silence. I was just utterly exhausted.

At the same time, I was attempting to acquaint myself with my new, shorter haircut. I couldn’t say I disliked it, but it was just another change, alongside the many others that had occurred the past few weeks. The novelty of the moment was starting to wear off.

I need a quick break, I decided. I searched the room, trying to catch the attention of one of the palace officials. When one finally saw me, I asked if it might be permissible for me to leave to use the restroom. After receiving an affirming nod, I made my way to the door. Some fresh air, some time alone to think, even if only for a few moments, would likely do me some good.

I nearly barreled into the girl standing on the other side of the door as I entered the hallway. She crossed her arms, looking me up and down, and then raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow in my direction. “Are you lost or something, discount Barbie?”

Barbie? Well, that was a new nickname.

“Kind of, actually,” I admitted, shaking my head a little, feeling the ends of my hair brush against my collarbones. It was at that moment that I realized just who I was talking to.

Oh, shit. Not even twenty-four hours into my time in the palace, and I had already fucked up.

“Your Highness,” I added immediately, my words rushed as they poured out of my mouth. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks, and wondered if I should curtsy. “I was just looking for the restroom!”

“You forgot your curtsy, but I’ll let it slide.” Oh, thank God! The princess jerked her head towards the length of hallway behind her, and added, “It’s this way, follow me.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.” It was kind of difficult to keep up with Princess Ayesha in these heels, but I was grateful for her help nonetheless. Maybe adjusting to life at the palace would be easier than I had initially thought. Not wanting to leave anything on a sour note, I continued, “And sorry for forgetting the curtsy. These past few days have been a whirlwind, and I can’t say I was expecting to bump into a member of the royal family so soon.” I almost cringed at the nervous laugh that escaped my lips then. The princess was being so kind and helpful, and here I was, a babbling fool. It was almost comical.

“And I was expecting Ari would send you all home today. Guess life screws with all of our expectations,” Ayesha responded, her tone flat.

Okay, maybe not so kind then. Had I done something to offend her already? Why was she expecting her brother to send us all home so soon? I kept these thoughts to myself as we weaved through the hallways, finally coming to a stop in front of a big wooden door. I held back a frown as I looked at it. It was an odd door for a bathroom, but, maybe it was some kind of new architecture style that was trendy on the west coast. The princess looked at me expectantly, so I opened the door, and stepped right into something soft and slimy.

I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply through my nose before looking down and opening them again. Yep. I was shin-deep in horseshit. After the way the week had been going up until this point, I didn’t even know why I was surprised.

“Never said I’d take you to  human restroom!” I could hear the laughter in the princess’s voice.

I breathed deeply, taking a moment to compose myself. Reacting on impulse and emotion alone would get me nowhere. That’s what I had done with Proctor the day before, and look where that had gotten me. No, it was time to find the silver lining, as difficult as that might be, given the princess’s comments, her flat tone, and the literal horseshit I now found myself standing in. Things were definitely not going my way.

The princess’s laughter echoed behind me, cracking something inside my chest that I didn’t know could break. Before I could even think about it, I was laughing as well. It started as a soft giggle, bubbling up in my throat as I took in the ridiculousness of the whole situation. As dreadful as this might be, it was somehow the closest I had felt to being at home since I had arrived at the palace this morning.

By the time I had composed my thoughts and reigned in my emotions enough to form a coherent sentence, I was full-on laughing. “You’re right,” I conceded in between fits of laughter. “You didn’t.”

I turned around to face Ayesha now, sighing, but still smiling. The princess had stopped laughing, and was looking at me quizzically. “You’d think that growing up with four siblings, I’d have seen this coming,” I began to explain. “This is exactly the kind of prank my sister Lydia would pull.” I chuckled a bit, shaking my head and pulling up the hem of my dress, so as not to get it dirtier than it already was. A shame that it was already ruined. I had liked this one. Though, I was sure with all the staff available at the palace, I could probably get it remade, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have any other nice dresses at my disposal.

“My brothers, too,” I continued. “They covered the entire floor of my bedroom with slices of bread the night they announced the names of the Selected girls on the Report.” I shook my head at the memory, remembering when stepping on sliced bread had been my biggest problem. What a simple time that was.

Ayesha stopped laughing, clearly taken aback. Her face softened slightly as she commented, “Your siblings sound like my kind of people.”

“I think you’d get along very well with them,” I agreed, chuckling slightly as I slipped my feet out of the heels I had been wearing, stepping on to the floor of the palace. It was probably - no, definitely - highly improper of me to be barefoot in the palace, but I figured being barefoot was preferable to tracking horse dung all over the floor. Besides, there were other shoes available in the wardrobe I had just received during my makeover, anyway, even though I would definitely have some explaining to do about just where the shoes I had initially chosen had gone. At least I had already completed my post-makeover photos and interview. Taking them like this would be a nightmare.

“They’re never going to let me live this down when I get the chance to tell them about this.” I could already picture the howls of laughter that would peal through the dining room as they read the letter. Shaking my head at the image, I brought my eyes upwards to meet the princess’s gaze. “They’d probably say this is revenge for Lydia and I releasing ants in their room the day before I left for the airport.” I offered the princess a conspirators grin, a small part of me wondering if this might actually be a rough beginning to a nice friendship. “Though, I bet they’d wish they were here to see it themselves.”

The princess frowned as her eyes moved downwards, towards my feet. “Okay,” she conceded finally, “now I’m really going to bring you to an actual washroom.” Wrinkling her nose, she added. “You stink.”

I could tell the princess was trying to sound mean, but there was a flicker of a grin that mirrored my own on her face. Her change in demeanor surprised me a bit, but I held my tongue as I followed her to what I hoped would truly be a restroom this time. I was in no way opposed to her actual kindness, should she offer it. I really couldn’t blame her for being cold at first. I could only imagine how I would feel if one of my own brothers invited thirty-five girls into our home in an attempt to date all of them and marry one of them.

“Fireants would have been better,” Ayesha commented, holding open a door for me. A quick peek inside confirmed that it was, indeed, an actual washroom this time. Turning away from me, she waved towards a woman who appeared to be a maid. “Hi, Mila, would you be a dear and fetch some tomato juice for Miss…” the princess trailed off. “I wasn’t planning on learning names, but I guess I’ll make an exception.”

A feeling of satisfaction washed over me. Had I managed to get on the princess’s good side? I didn’t get my hopes up, though, as I supplied her with my name. “Evalin.”

“Miss Evalin,” the princess finished. “Also, please see to it that someone helps clean up her shoes in the stables, and whatever residual horse sh-” she caught herself before she cursed, “manure she might have tracked in. Thank you, Mila.”

The maid - Mila - simply nodded and scurried off, likely to find the tomato juice the princess had just requested. When she was gone, I decided to reply to the princess’s previous comment to me, lowering my voice so that it was barely louder than a whisper. “Lydia - my sister - wanted to do fireants, but I talked her out of it. The risk of us getting bit up in the process was too high. Plus, if we did get bit, the bites would be to noticeable, and give away that something was up. The best part of the prank is the surprise, right?”

“Gloves would have helped.” The princess shrugged nonchalantly, making no move to leave. Her face turned a bit colder then, reminiscent of the expression she had worn when I had first bumped into her in the hallway. It was a mask, I realized. I felt a pang of sadness for her then. Always having to be so guarded had to take a toll on her. “And of course everyone knows the surprise is the best part.”

She stayed where she was, looking down the hallway in the direction that Mila had ran off in, even as I began to step into the washroom. I wondered how much of the muck I’d be able to scrub off of the dress, or if it would be wiser to just admit defeat on this one. Before I began, though, I looked over my shoulder at the princess and said again, “Thank you.”

She furrowed her brows. “You’re welcome.” She paused for a moment, before continuing, “For letting you step in horse manure?”

“Well, maybe not for that part,” I admitted, laughing a little to myself, “but for not leaving me to my own devices afterwards, and also for reminding me that all of this -” I gestured to the surroundings, hoping the princess would understand that I meant the Selection as a whole, “-isn’t something that has to happen without any fun, whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be here - ecstatic, even - but,” I sighed, unsure of how to phrase the rest of my sentence without sounding ungrateful. “It’s a bigger change than I thought it would be, and I think I was starting to psych myself out. Though I can’t help but laugh that it took stepping in horse manure to make me realize that maybe things aren’t as drastically different as I thought they were.”

Ayesha made a face, but let me finish. When I was done, she mumbled, “Damn, you sure talk a lot.” Her face lit up, though, as Mila began to make her way back down the hallway towards us. “I was just making sure Mila does her amazing job, like she always does. And, now that you’ve mentioned it, I should take my leave.”

I took the tomato juice from Mila, whom Ayesha instructed to get me a fresh dress to change into. As the princess walked away, still looking ahead, she called out, “Word of advice, don’t get too comfortable.”

Good point. Regardless, I just smiled. “Thank you again, Your Highness,” I called back at Ayesha’s retreating figure.

I began to scrub down my legs and feet, finishing just as Mila returned with a fresh dress and shoes. I ducked into a stall to change, exchanging the blue dress for a shorter dress of a similar color. It was a smart move on Mila’s part, grabbing a dress in nearly the same shade of blue. With any luck, the other Selected girls wouldn’t even notice that I had had to change dresses.

When I emerged from the stall a few moments, later, Mila immediately took the soiled dress from my hands. “I’ll bring this down to the laundry. It’ll be returned to your room when it’s clean again.”

I didn’t envy the poor soul who was fixed with that task. “Thank you.”

Mila only nodded. “You should probably get back to the other girls. It’s just down this hallway, and then make a right, It should be the third door on your left.”

I thanked her again before taking my leave. When I had successfully found the ballroom, it appeared that the girls I was sitting with were getting ready to be shown to their rooms. Had all of this really happened so quickly? I shook the thought out of my head. I couldn’t wait to get to my room, already planning on immediately setting to writing my family a letter. Only one day here, and already so much had happened! I could only wonder what might be in store in the coming days.

[marvelhead17]

Miracle (Original Female Character x Cable Fic)

Chapter 8

Summary: “How did you fix it?” he asked. “Ask Ellen the Teenage Warhead,” Wade shrugged as he stood up, “As for baby Hitler he ended up having a diaper change, funny story I was actually going to call Cable since he was so keen on killing Russel, I thought this would be like taking candy from a baby, if that means replacing it with a bullet that is,”

 Warnings to cover the whole fic: Graphic depictions of violence, use of weapons, mild to strong language, mentions of rape, mentions of pregnancy and miscarriage, referenced torture and psychological abuse/manipulation, nightmares and night terrors, sexual humour, sexual content.

Word Count: 1.9k

Over Two Months Later

“Oh no, you don’t!” Deadpool stabbed another one of the soldiers in his lower spine, he screamed out in pain before he crumbled to the ground, paralysed.

There were too many to count, it was like an infestation in the more densely populated outer dwellings of the city, the more they killed the more they seemed to be replaced.

“Okay seriously where the fuck, are all these assholes coming from?” Deadpool yelled as he shot three soldiers down without missing a beat.

“I don’t know Wade, but right now we need to make sure they don’t get away with anyone,” Hades spoke as she easily threw a soldier into a group that had come running in.

“I think we have bigger problems than that right now,” Cable said as he nodded in the direction of the tank that was wheeling itself through the tight spaces between the buildings and leaving serious damage.

“They brought a motherfucking tank? Are they serious?” Deadpool sounded hysterical. “Who do they think they are?”

“A tank?” Hades turned to see the machine just as it stopped in the main area where all the chaos was happening; families were running in all different directions to evade being captured by the soldiers, now the panic had risen with the appearance of this display of weaponry.

  The tank aimed its barrel to its target, Hade’s eyes followed the direction and widened as she saw the tiny girl clutching at her stuffed toy at the end of it, the hatch of the tank opened and a man holding a megaphone stood up.

“ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS, THOSE WHO DO NOT WISH TO COMPLY AND COME WITH US, WILL FACE THE CONSEQUENCES THAT ARE ABOUT TO BE DISPLAYED FOR YOU AS A WARNING. FIRE!”

The missile launched in what felt like slow motion and Hade’s eyes flashed to violet, Deadpool and Cable turned their heads to the ongoing scene unable to do anything as they were too far away, she ran forward and leaped into the air as the missile was nearing its target.

“HAYDEN!” Deadpool yelled with wide masked eyes and he began to run toward the scene as well, Cable couldn’t feel his feet in that moment and was frozen in place.

The missile exploded with so much force that it caused the parked cars nearby to topple over and left a fairly deep dent in the surrounding ground. Deadpool coughed and waved his hand in front of his face to clear away the smoke so that he could see clearer, Cable shook his head back to reality and ran over. They both breathed a sigh of relief.

  They recognised Hade’s figure hunched over something much smaller, she moved her arms away slightly and examined the girl’s face with heavy concern in her glowing eyes, the little girl looked at her in awe.

“What are you?” she asked staring at Hade’s eyes before looking at the glowing scars on her arms.

Suddenly the girl was grabbed away by a pair of hands which made Hades jerk up and stand to attention.

“You get away from her you freak,” the woman spoke shakily as she picked the child up into her arms and clutched her to her chest. “Honey, don’t ever go near people like that, do you understand?” the woman spoke to her child, the girl nodded but kept her gaze to Hades and mouthed the words ‘thank you’.

“You people are the reason they came here!” the woman yelled.

Hades looked to the ground, her eyes faded from violet to their usual blue; she looked back up at them with a hurt look in her features.

“Bethany she just saved your little girl, how could you even say that?” a man stepped forward from the small crowd that had gathered. “We don’t even know what those monsters were after,”

“Yeah, these mutants didn’t even have to come in and save us, save the district, but they did,”

  Cable’s hand reached to Hade’s shoulder and pulled her back gently, tears were forming in her eyes and she looked back at him, before looking at the woman and her daughter.

“We might be the real monsters, but at least we have some humanity,” Deadpool said as he joined the two, he placed a hand on her free shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“HEY, LOOK OUT!” someone yelled.

  Click.

  The men stepped back with wide eyes as they looked at each other, each had a collar around their necks, Deadpool felt around his neck and sighed.

“Fuck not again,”

“C’mon let’s go you three,” the soldiers led them away from the crowd that had run away in fear. Hades wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings as her eyes were stinging from trying to hold back her tears and made no attempts at resisting their force.

“They’ll do perfectly,”

They put them into three separate military vehicles and drove them out of the city; Deadpool was compliant being in such a feeble state with the collar on, cancer does that. Cable was weakened slightly but had had his hands cuffed behind his back so that he wouldn’t fight back.

                                                            * * *

  A good half an hour into their drive and Hayden finally snapped out of her unaware state, she shook her head and realised she had something around her neck, she turned to look out the window and saw an endless stretch of barren sandy land swirling passed.

Oh crap what the hell happened? I completely zoned out.

She touched the collar around her neck and looked carefully at the reflection in the window.

Damn it’s one of those power dampening collars. Wade told me about these.

She shuffled in her seat and focused her attention beyond the separation between the guard and herself to see another vehicle just ahead of them, she focused harder to make her vision clearer.

I can’t tell if that’s Wade or Nathan. They better not have done anything to them.

She reclined in her seat as she realised her eyes were glowing violet in the reflection, she quickly looked to the ground in case the guard noticed her, she clenched her hand in a fist and realised her strength was still present.

‘I gotta stop ya there buddy, I’m not a mutant,’ I said it myself, I’m not a mutant. I can escape and save the guys.

  She placed her hands around the collar and gripped tightly, the metal began creaking and she could feel something tickling the nerves on her skin before she yanked it off completely and it snapped in two.

“Hey what’s going on back there?” the guard asked, he glanced back but she was not in his line of sight.

Her hand punched through the thick glass separating them with ease and she grabbed him around the neck, it snapped weakly like a twig and the vehicle swerved as it was no longer being controlled, she quickly reached into the driver’s section and grabbed the handgun that was tucked in its holster on the guard before she pushed at the ceiling of the vehicle and it popped open like a can.

She hauled herself out and climbed to the roof, somehow steadying herself for long enough to jump forward from the roof and tumble onto the ground behind the next vehicle. The one she had been in swerved off course and came to a stop. She was already on her feet and running after the next one with great speed.

She leaped and grabbed onto a metal handle that was built into the back of the vehicle and then she pulled herself onto the roof of the vehicle, she crawled carefully to the left and grabbed onto the side of the roof before she swung herself through the window and into the vehicle.

                          “What the fuck?” Wade gasped before he smiled, “You super strong daughter of a bastard- how’d you get out?”

“Not a mutant, remember?” she smiled before she grabbed for his collar, as it buckled it sent out that tickling feeling she had felt earlier, but Wade squirmed and pushed her off.

“You’re going to kill me if you do that,” he wheezed, “It’s sending out electrical currents and shocking me.”

“It is?” she looked at her hands, “So that’s what’s tickling me, um…” she opened the passcode box on the collar and pressed the number seven, the collar beeped and shocked Wade again making him groan.

“I guess that you tried Domino’s code huh?” he asked irritably. “I told you that was lazy writing,” she rolled her eyes.

“We have a breach, repeat we have a breach.” The guard spoke on the other side of the glass.

Hayden shattered the dividing glass and grabbed the handgun she had placed in her pocket, she leaned herself halfway through the dividing and yelled at the panicked guard.

  “You’re going to tell me the passcode for his collar before I shoot you in the dick!”

“It’s five-nine-four-two,”

“No, no, no don’t believe the asshole-” Wade whined as she started pressing the numbers in, the collar beeped and shocked Wade, “OW! FUCK. I TOLD YOU. WHAT DID I TELL YOU?”

“Okay, we’re going to try that again,” she clicked the gun and shot the man in the crotch, it bled profusely and the man screamed and almost swerved the vehicle completely off course, “And the next time I’m going to shoot you in the fucking head, alright?” she said through gritted teeth.

She gently touched Wade’s cheek and smiled, “Sorry Wade,”

“You’re really hot when you’re angry like this,”

“And way to ruin the moment.” She sighed, “PASSCODE, NOW.” She yelled at the guard.

“Eight-seven-five-four! Please don’t kill me!”

  She typed in the passcode and the collar deactivated, she smirked and tossed it to the side, she waved the gun carelessly around, “Hmm, how about, no?”

“Wait Hades-”

She pulled the trigger behind his head and the guard’s blood splattered on the windows, the vehicle swerved out of control and rolled into a nearby ditch, the pair rolled in the car and collided into each other.

“Ugh, I said wait woman,” Wade groaned, “We could have made him stop and then shot the fucker in the head,”

He climbed out of the now sideways vehicle and brushed the sand off of himself and removed his mask to pour out the sand that had gotten in, and then he extended his hand for her to grab, she took it and he pulled her up, she brushed herself off.

“Thanks,”

“What are brothers for?” he smiled before putting his mask back on. “Now where in the fuck are we?”

“That’s an excellent question,” she looked around.

“Great we’re in the middle of butt fuck nowhere,” he gestured to the third vehicle that was already far ahead of them, “And the only fucking clue we have to where we’re going has fucked off,”

“They have Cable,” Hayden said looking rather agitated, Wade could barely contain his laugh.

“Oh they’re so screwed to have his company; he’s a pain in the ass,”

“Wade I’m serious, what the hell do they have planned for an actual mutant? We know they wanted normal people to experiment on like Ajax-”

“We agreed to never talk about Francis.”

“-Fine, but I have a bad feeling about this.” They watched at the car dipped over the far away horizon.

________________________________________________________________

>> Chapter 9 <<

[seperhim]

THANK YOU SO MUCH OP FOR TAGGING ME!!!

The Wayne doll house

Have some haunted doll au, since it's been bubbling away in my mind.

The bat cave is large and sprawling, many layers and tunnels and hollowed out cracks in the walls. It takes many years to fully reinforce to prevent stray kids from tripping into stagnant waters or fall down crags as he once did. The doll cave, as it becomes known, is in one of the deepest, darkest corners, one where the lights of the furnished caverns above don't reach.

It's one late night sitting at the computer when it suddenly occurs to Bruce that his first encounter with a doll was at the well entrance, many levels above.

There was nothing there when he went back.

-

The justice league stared at the subaru. The subaru, having no eyes, did not stare back.

The seven of them had just finished a very long, arduous mission, and narrowly escaped government censure after the base they'd been raiding had turned out to belong to some corrupt official. With the alert up, they couldn't escape through city airspace, or even in their hero suits.

So civilian it was.

Batman had hotwired some bloke's car while the rest of them ducked into alleys and shop bathrooms, but the problem remained. There was seven of them. And five seats.

"I can shift into something more suitable for being carried," suggested j'onn, "but I believe one of us might have to hide."

"Foot well?" Hal tried, and everyone looked around at the tall, bulky, broad heroes.

"Think they'd have to go in the boot," Barry finally said. Everyone immediately turned to him. "No."

Batman spoke up before the discussion could devolve.

"I think.... I would be best for that."

The team stared.

"Batsy?"

Having no lungs meant he could not drag in the tired sigh he wished, but whatever force allowed this body to talk was capable of approximating something suitably resigned.

"As I am, I am... incapable of fully passing as human. It would be best if I remained out of sight."

"So just? Go change? I swear we won't be weird about whoever you are under the mask. Even if you're like, bald."

"Thank you, Wally, but I'm afraid I'm being serious." Reaching for the mask in broad daylight was unpleasant, but the glue and wires held as he gave it a few thorough tugs. "It doesn't detach."

Everyone stared. Clark reached out as if he wanted to check, but withdrew.

"Do you even have a civilian identity??" Oliver eventually asked. "Because at this point I'm genuinely not sure."

Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries had a meeting that same evening. "Hn."

"Can we go back to the 'incapable of passing as human' part?!"

"We can discuss it in the car," he snapped, stalking past Barry and popping the boot. "In case you haven't forgotten, we're on a time limit."

For once, that seemed to encourage them, and batman, with great dignity, folded his joints and cape into the small space, ignoring Hal's mutter of 'what kind of contortionist -' as he slammed the lid. With a little shuffling he managed to activate his comms.

"I will inform the watchtower of our delay."

"Batman, they're tapping all outgoing signals, you can't -"

"It won't trigger," he interrupted, before he twisted his consciousness and sent it spiralling across the country.

Bruce awoke with a groan, stretching his limbs and taking a moment to marinate in his annoyance before he reached for the comm and voice modulator on the beside table.

"Batman to watchtower, we've encountered delays. If the Texan state government calls we haven't entered the state in six weeks. Batman out."

-

"Alien?"

"No."

"Reanimated corpse?"

"No."

"Uh... Demon?"

"Hm. No."

"You're not just a meta human, are you?"

"No."

"Vampire?"

"No."

"Robot??"

"No."

"Batsy, please, someone's got to win the bet eventually. How do we even know you're not lying?!"

"You don't," Batman said, not looking up from his paperwork and Flash groaned, letting his sticky notes fall to the floor as he buried his head in his arms.

"One day," he bemoaned to the keyboard, "one day we'll figure it out."

"Until then please keep your eyes on the monitors."

Flash groaned again.

-

Robin ducked under superman's arm as he scuttled down the corridor, laden with the night's haul of snacks. The real problem wasn't getting them - stopping league members from raiding the kitchen would be extremely counterproductive - but keeping them until he could return home to his human body to eat them. Batman had started searching him each time they left and it was really cutting into his daily sugar intake. Unfair! Just because he didn't actually use energy to stay up my night to fight crime, it felt like he did!!

'Oh, you're broken, Robin, oh, don't go out until the glue has fully set, Robin' his arm was fine! It wasn't like there was much crime to be fought on the watchtower anyway! At least not physically.

So he was pretty pleased with himself until he went to set the snacks down and found that the tar like glue they used had soaked through the sleeve and gotten all over his chocolates.

With his other hand, he tried to pry them off, wincing as the wrappers tore and stuck. He tried to shake it, ignoring the way his elbow rattled in the joint.

"Come on, come on - aw, cheezits."

The arm fell off. Robin stared despondently at the limb, surrounded by torn wrappers and dripping black glue where it connected to the elbow. The sour stink of formaldehyde filled the air.

He was going to be in such trouble with Bruce.

The click of the door jerked his head up.

Flash stood in the doorway, wide eyed. Robin stared back.

Flash screamed.

Oh yeah @dehydratedmockingbird have a thing