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hxzbinwrites · 8 months

Note

Hey!! Saw that u were taking request <3 I was thinking that an Alestor x wife!reader being a power (but absolutely terrifying) couple would be soooo cool, like maybe they already knew each other from when they were humans, and Alestor is just 10000% a simp for his wifey lol. Hope u like it!

Alastor x Wife! Overlord! Reader | Forgiveness |

Warnings ⚠️: Cussing, Death, Killing, Mentions of Alastor being a Cannibal, Reader makes STUPID DECISIONS

In the Pride Ring is where all of the sinners and Overlords alike mingle. The uppermost ring of Hell and the closest to Heaven. That’s where some of the most feared and powerful beings live. Two of those entities being Alastor, the Radio Demon, and (Y/n), the Jazz Demon.

Together, they rule their districts with an iron grip. While some Overlords team up, like the Vees, Alastor and (Y/n) were the first to do it. Well, it makes sense really, especially because they were close during their respective times alive on Earth.

——————

Three gunshots were heard that fateful night. One ending a mans life by his hand, one ending the witness’s life by his hand, and one ending his by justice’s hand. No more Bayou Killer, but he took two more lives before he went. Awful, sick man. Good thing he’s in Hell now…

Alastor hissed as his back hit the pavement. His squinted eyes took in his surroundings, he was in Hell. Hmm, no shocker there. What was a shock was seeing the body next to his.

“Ugghh” They groaned, sitting upright on the pavement next to him. They locked eyes. It was (Y/n). Before Alastor could even speak, she pounced on him, pushing him back into the pavement.

“You sick son of a BITCH!! YOU KILLED ME!! SHOT ME LIKE I WAS AN ANIMAL FOR YA NEXT MEAL!!” She yelled, shaking him back and forth by gripping his collar. His collar looked identical to hers, and he tuned out her yelling, he noticed her attire. She was now wearing a black suit with red and white accents, one that looked like a reverse image of his. Except a few details weren’t the same, hers looked more feminine, but also had less harsh edges to it. She looked more elegant while he looked more harsh.

He then looked up to her face, she had red eyes and long, silky black hair, with red underneath. He looked to the top of her head and noticed two fluffy, black ears. They were currently pressed to her scalp, a clear indicator of her unhappiness at the current moment.

“AND TO THINK, AFTER ALL OF THAT BEGGIN, YOU WAS JUST DYING TO GET ME ON YOUR RADIO SHOW!! WELL LOOK AT US NOW, MR. ALASTOR. LOOK. AT. US. NOW. WHAT EVEN ARE YOU, YOU SICK FREAK. EVERYONE KNEW THE BAYOU KILLER ATE FOLKS. IF YOU WERENT SHOT, WERE YOU GONNA EAT ME?? WAS I GONNA NOT EVEN BE ABLE TO HAVE A BURIAL NEXT TO MY PA, CAUSE YOU ATE ME!? OH LORD HELP ME!!”

Alastor rolled his eyes, feeling no remorse for the doe that whined above him. (Y/n) was a famous musician in Louisiana, particularly in Jazz. Alastor had begged her to come onto his radio show, play some tunes for his devoted fans. She agreed, but that night Alastor didn’t show to the studio. She heard shouting in the woods across the street from the building, stupidly she went to investigate. She saw the oh so famous radio host, and with a bang of a shotgun the other man was dead. Probably in Heaven now. Trying to stay silent, (Y/n) tried to back away before a branch snapped, like a doe her eyes widened before she darted away, only to be shot right in the heart and drop down to the ground. She heard another shot faintly in the distance before she felt the wind brush past her as she fell.

“My dear, I apologize.” Alastor said, gently grabbing (Y/n)‘s hand. “It was never my intention to make you my target. I knew that if word got out about my….hobbies….that my reputation would be ruined. No more radio show.”

“You can apologize for the rest of eternity” She scowled, smacking his hand away before standing up,” You’re a MONSTER. Leave me ALONE. Hopefully someone down here will be nice, but I’m not taking no help from you”. (Y/n) finally walked away, leaving a very annoyed Alastor sitting there.

———————

About 20 years later

Alastor was a feared Overlord now, rising the ranks out of seemingly nowhere. Even with this newfound power and respect, (Y/n) still wanted nothing to do with him. She was famous in her own way. Music was not very abundant in Hell, and she profited off of that. She had little to no competition in the music industry. Becoming an icon of Hell, her name was in everyone’s mouth, making Alastor yesterday’s news, which irked him to no end.

‘I need her.’ Alastor initially thought,’ with someone as influential as her now, having her on my side will make my power increase tenfold.’ But after many times of asking over the years, he just yearned for her admiration. Not only to be on his side, but by his side. He didn’t know where the newfound obsession came from, but Alastor knew he wouldn’t stop until he brought her to him.

Alastor made his way to her huge studio, basically a small turf at this point. Without ever fighting, she’d managed to become a little bit of an Overlord, just not to the extent she could be called one. He made his way up to her penthouse, knowing the way by heart since this is not the first time he’s made a visit for an alliance.

“What Alastor.” (Y/n) asked, not even looking up from her sheet music she was writing.

“Hello my dear!” Alastor said,”lovely to see you again! I just miss you so much darling!”

“Miss me from what?” She said, turning around to meet his eyes,” we were aquatinted when we were alive, and then you killed me. What exactly do you miss me from?”

“I just miss seeing you.” He said in a softer tone,”Please (Y/n), you must realize that your death was an accident. I was never planning to hurt you. I was never planning to do anything to you.”

(Y/n)’s head tipped down, her ears pressed to her scalp,”but you did, Alastor. You killed me.”

“My dear….” He said, getting closer slowly, like she’d dart off at any given moment, just for him to not see her ever again. “My dear, I cannot imagine the pain you’ve gone through. I know it’s been a few years now, but that’s a few years you could’ve still been alive. Found a husband, had a better music career, just lived. I took that from you, and I’m…..I’m sorry.”

“I know Alastor.” She said, hugging him. Even though he hated when people touched him, she did not know this, so he internally decided to let this one time be the exception. “You know I can never fully forgive you….but after all of these years, I think I can at least try to have you in my life….but if you screw up ANY, I’m gonna kill you. I don’t care if you’re an Overlord or whatever the hell you’re doing, I will kill you like you killed me.”

“Hmm, fair enough” He shrugged, breaking off the hug as he sat down in the chair across from hers.

———————

Present Day

“So hold up” Angel said, looking at the two powerful Overlords,”He literally killed you and you were like, ‘oh well, I forgive you’. What the hell (Y/n)?”

(Y/n) was a true Overlord know. Once she let Alastor back into her life, he taught her the ways of toppling Overlords. She didn’t posses near the amount of power that he had, so he did the gruesome part for her. Building her musical empire (and later on having to shoo of Vox who begged her to join his up and coming ‘Television’ idea after Alastor shot him down).

“Oh I’d hardly call it forgiving.” Alastor said,”I get constantly reminded about it every day, multiple times a day. You wonder why it took us 60 years to even get engaged.”

(Y/n) just rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. Alastor smirked, looking over at his wife.

“Well, what else was I supposed to do? The man kept coming by begging me every week for TWENTY YEARS!! Lovesick puppy if you ask me.”

Charlie squealed, hugging onto Vaggie. “Look Vaggie! That could be us one day!!”

“I hope not” Vaggie said,” A freaky cannibalistic overlord and his delusional companion. I’m fine with staying as us.”

“No Vaggie! I meant married! Wouldn’t that be fun!! Married for a long time!! Forever!!”

While Charlie was helping Vaggie stop short circuiting, (Y/n) and Alastor just looked at one another with a knowing glance. Alastor took her hand and kissed her knuckles, smiling up at her.

“Thank you again my dear, for letting me back into your life. I’m eternally sorry for what I did.”

“I know you are Alastor, plus I’d be dead already now regardless.” (Y/n) giggled,”I still don’t know what overcame me that day. I mean, who lets someone back into their life after doing that!! I am glad I did though. It’s like you said in that apology, I have a husband, I have a huge music career, but I’m not living, technically, but it feels like it!!”

Alastor chuckled,”that’s right, my precious doe. Now, I am off to go grab lunch for the both of us! If you excuse me, I shall make a trip down to the Cannibal District, and then over to the grocery store for your food!”

———————

Word Count: 1,560

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five-rivers · 4 months

Text

Funeral

“I’m sorry,” said Danny, speaking to the headstone in lieu of anything else to talk to. He certainly wasn’t going to speak to the empty and expectant grave a few feet away. “I wanted to wait. I want to wait. It’s just–” He cut himself off, curling his hands into fists. “There are so many things I haven’t seen, haven’t done. Jazz got married, you know? She’s pregnant. If I was– I could have–”

He fell silent and adjusted the collar of his overcoat, trying to keep the frigid Ghost Zone wind away from his currently human neck.

“Sam and Tucker are thinking about getting married, now that we’ve all graduated,” he said softly. “I would have liked to see that, too. And have a career. Travel. I know you wanted to do that, too. But–”

He broke off as his voice pitched weirdly, too high, too loud. Sparks jumped off his fists as his emotions rose. He flickered in and out of sight and tangibility, and his skin started to–

With an effort, he wrenched himself back together.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “This is why I have to go. I’m too unstable, and it isn’t like you. I’m not just a danger to myself.”

(A premonition: Disturbed soil, a hand reaching out, a solid body… but there was nothing there now. The ground was troubled only by slowly growing grass.)

He turned away from Dani’s grave and walked back to the mortuary shrine.

The wind kicked up again. There was ice in it.

A motto was carved above the threshold of the shrine. It read, LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR OWN DEAD. Appropriate. No one fully living would be here tonight. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz had all wanted to be, just like they had all wanted to be there for Dani, but there were rules about this kind of thing, old rules, and–

Ice feathered out from under his feet. And it wouldn’t be safe for them.

The mortuary shrine was cozy on the inside, not at all like a morgue, or an embalmer’s studio. There were some similarities, overlaps in function, but the shrine was not organized with decaying fleshy bodies in mind. The central altar, for example, was high off the ground, for ease of access by the celebrants, but it was soft, bed-like, for the sake of the one who’d lie there. The other altars were filled with other things, like candles, foods, oils and wines, salt, cloth, books, and strange implements Danny couldn’t name. All things needed for a burial.

There was other furniture, too, and the associated accouterments. Elegant ghost lanterns and a fireplace, burning with cold fire. Lovely chairs and small tables carved from bright wood. Plush footstools. Tapestries and curtains, softening the stone walls.

Three ghosts waited for him there, the proper number for a rite like this. Frostbite, his horns only inches from the ceiling. Pandora, who had taken a smaller form for the occasion. Clockwork, who looked much the same as he always did, except that he wasn’t changing forms, instead wearing a guise of solid middle age.

(Danny still had to look up at all of them. He'd managed to catch up to Jazz, but he'd never reached his father's height.)

“You are ready,” said Clockwork.

It wasn’t really a question, didn't necessarily call for a response, but Danny understood. This was his last chance to back out without any more consequences than the ones he was currently experiencing.

But those consequences were bad enough. He shuddered as intangibility and invisibility rippled through him again, and he just barely kept a grip on his more destructive powers.

“Yes,” said Danny. He looked around the shrine, nervous. He hadn't been here when Dani did this. He didn't know what came next. Not in any detail. “Should I change?”

“No,” said Pandora. “Not unless you feel the need to. The ritual will be a guide, as it was for your younger sister.”

“Then we shall begin,” said Clockwork.

Danny nodded.

Frostbite came forward fist, and leaned all the way down to kiss Danny’s forehead. “You are dead, Great One, and we will remember you.”

He stepped back, and Pandora took his place. “You are dead, little warrior, and we will send you on with honor.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead as well.

Then, Clockwork came up. He looked down at Danny for longer than the other two. “You are dead, Daniel, and the time comes for all the dead to be laid to rest.”

When Clockwork’s lips brushed against Danny’s forehead, he felt the first strands of the ritual wrap around him like silk. Still thin and tenuous enough that he could break free, but not without damage to both the weaving and himself.

Frostbite, meanwhile, had turned to one of the lesser altars. There was a small teapot chilling there, above a braiser of cold fire. Frostbite poured its contents into a large mug, then added three scoops of shimmery white powder, each from a different small pot, before stirring three times.

He held the mug out to Danny. “For your nerves.”

“Is this drugged?” asked Danny, taking the mug. He kept his tone light. Considering the parts of this Danny knew were going to happen, that was really the least of his worries.

“Drugged and poisoned,” said Frostbite. “We did research into the best way to ritually account for your continued life. This is it.”

If Danny was younger, he’d ask if it was going to kill him. He knew better, now, about how durable half-ghosts were. Memories of long-ago history lessons, of trivia, of drugged drinks and gentle, honored deaths on cold mountains ghosted through Danny’s mind. But those were children.

He raised the mug to his lips and took a drink. It tasted of chocolate, cream, and a bewildering array of spices and herbs, from capsaicin to vanilla to rosemary. There was also a bitter undertaste, and Danny would have pulled away instinctively, but as soon as he’d started the reflexive motion, Frostbite put a friendly but firm hand on the back of his head, and another on the bottom of the mug, keeping it tilted back.

(A premonition: Other hands hovered nearby, ready to assist if Danny resisted. He could feel them. One over his nose, another stroking his throat, taking advantage of the remaining reflexes of his human body. But they weren’t there. Not yet.)

The rites, now started, would not be so easily refused.

Danny drank deeply, finding a strange sort of enjoyment in the extended physical contact. He’d been avoiding touch ever since a nasty scare with his ice powers and Sam’s skin. There had been close calls before that, too, with his newer, more esoteric powers, but until then…

Frostbite tilted Danny’s head all the way back, ensuring the last few drops of the drink fell past Danny’s lips, then pulled the mug away. Danny licked his teeth and lips, and swallowed one more time. He didn’t feel anything yet.

“What next?” he asked, wincing at the edge of power behind the question. He should probably just. Not talk. Especially not with drugs in his system.

“After a death, the first step is to clean and prepare the body,” said Pandora.

Of course. Danny nodded. The mortuary shrine… wobbled.

Frostbite swept Danny up into his arms - which would have been more embarrassing if Frostbite wasn’t huge - and carried him to one of the lesser altars. It was smooth-surfaced and the neighboring, even smaller altars had bars, bottles, jars, basins of water, and washcloths, all arranged to stand at precise angles from one another. He was laid down on the altar, and Frostbite and Clockwork started to undress him.

At first, Danny tried to help, peeling out of his overcoat and sweater quickly. But then, his movements seemed to… blur. His mind was still sharp, as far as he could tell, but his limbs were becoming clumsy, slow.

It was Clockwork who untied his boots, and Frostbite who unbuttoned Danny’s shirt. By the time they got to his underthings, it felt like there was a barrier between him and his body. Not anything solid, he could still move, still react, but something muffling, slowing. Frostbite laid him down so that he was flat on his back on the lesser altar. Clockwork started going through Danny’s hand with a wet, lightly perfumed, comb. Frostbite, meanwhile, took out a set of dentists tools and eased Danny’s jaw open with one claw.

Across the room, at the main altar, Pandora laid layer after layer of cloth. Some of them were patterned, others plain. Some were thick with embroidery, others were gossamer thin. Some were edged with beads or woven with gold, others looked tattered, as if they’d been previously used for something else, the scrupulously cleaned.

Clockwork, done with Danny’s hair for the moment, moved on to his feet. It was hard to describe the intimacy of being cleaned like this by someone else. By someone he knew. He wasn’t a patient, Clockwork wasn’t a nurse. He wasn’t an infant, and Clockwork wasn’t his parent. But this was an act of care and love, offered without judgment. It was also embarrassingly efficient and thorough. When a body was cleaned, prepared for internment, it wasn't just the normal surfaces that were cleaned, but areas generally considered private.

As Clockwork moved upwards, the powers that churned along the surface of Danny’s skin quieted. They did not go silent - they never did, these days - but they were no longer so maddeningly active.

Finished with Danny's mouth (which now felt much more clean than it ever did after the dentist's) Frostbite moved on to his nails, clipping and cleaning them, smoothing rough edges and cuticles. Danny tried to be helpful with this, to at least hold his hands in the right way, but the effects of the drugs were progressing. His movements were slowing, growing smaller.

He should be panicking. The loss of control, at least, should bother him, given the constant vigilance his rapidly growing powerset required. But, as a human, his emotions were still principally dependent on physical systems and chemical reactions. His heartbeat was slow, and growing slower.

They turned him over to work on his back, and Danny half-dozed, eyes barely open, as they diligently scrubbed him clean.

Then, he was on his back again, anointed with oils and perfumes, smokes and incense wafted over him. Something wet drew a line from his lips to his groin.

Danny's heart twitched to a stop.

Blue-white rings flared from his core in an instant, painfully arresting the moment of death, then swept out to Danny's extremities. He flinched, twisting on the table, onto his side, suddenly able to move again. Everything was too bright, too loud, too close, too present. He covered his face with his arms.

The panic he’d missed earlier was in full force now, shining bright and pure and crystalline in the way only ghostly emotions could. He was in danger. He was dangerous. He could feel his powers coiling, ready to strike, whether it be his will or against it. He fought them, and paid the price, bones and skin going soft, their fine, detailed structures destabilizing, running like wax, like the flesh of a caterpillar in a cocoon.

A hand scooped through his sticky, melting flesh and pressed a cool, hard, surface to his lips. He drank. It was the same thing Frostbite had given him before, but without the bitterness. With every gulp, the ritual spun onwards, strands thickening, multiplying. By the time he was finished drinking, his skin was sticky and damp, but solid again underneath that.

“No poison this time?” he asked.

“Just because you cannot taste it does not mean it isn’t there,” said Frostbite. “Do you know what separates a medicine from a poison?”

“Dosage?” hazarded Danny. Jazz was an MD. He’d picked up a few things.

All three of the older ghosts chuckled. Frostbite went as far as to ruffle his hair.

“He does learn,” said Clockwork, unzipping Danny’s jumpsuit (it had grown with him) and gently pushing aside Danny’s hands when he moved to help.

Whatever was in the second drink, if there was anything at all, it didn’t act nearly as quickly as the first. He could feel so much more, his sense of touch unblunted. It made the process of Frostbite, Clockwork, and Pandora undressing him all that much more, especially when they chided him (ever so gently) for trying to help them, for doing anything but lying there like a corpse.

(Deja vu: Rituals as old as humanity, reaching back, reaching forward. The preparation of the dead, laying them to rest. The duty of the family, to clean and prepare, to stand watch, sit vigil, to March the wake, to mourn, to celebrate. The dead did not move to help. They did not move at all.)

They washed the spaces between his toes and fingers, his teeth, the backs of his eyelids, the insides of his ears, every nook and cranny they had cleaned when he was in human form was cleaned again. The stickiness from his earlier destabilization was wiped away, replaced with a dry, fresh feeling. Invisibility and intangibility stopped wisping across his skin, too tightly bound by the ritual to be used even by accident.

The perfumes they used now were different, they tickled at his brain and core both, summoning feelings of nostalgia, regret, longing, grief, quiet, peace. They traced symbols in them, in languages Danny didn’t know but could feel the meanings of, of linear past and spreading future, of the pinpoint present, of decay and rot, of the loosening of muscles, of the blurring of boundaries, of reconstruction, of change, of stability, of things remade, of things caught in time forever.

Frostbite picked him up and brought him to the main altar. It was soft, piled high with cloth. They felt cool and silky on Danny’s bare skin and there was a pillow under his head. Absently, he ran his palm back and forth across the top cloth. Or, no, not quite the top one. The main one he was touching was large, large enough to hang off the altar and pool on the ground, but there was a smaller strip of embroidered cloth, almost like a long belt or ribbon, at the height of his biceps.

There was, he noted, another such ribbon under his ankles, and another under his knees. He wondered what they were for.

He didn’t have to wonder for long. Clockwork picked up the long ends of the ribbon and wound it around his ankles in a complicated fashion. The twists and turns showed off the intricacy of the abstract embroidery. He finished it off with a knot that disappeared under the rest of the ribbon.

The strings of the ritual gathered faster, wound thicker, tighter, with a physical anchor.

Clockwork moved on to the ribbon at Danny’s ankles. The weaving was slightly different, but had the same effect.

He expected the one under his arms to go the same way. But instead Pandora, Frostbite, and Clockwork gathered flowers from another altar. They were all black and white, so it took Danny a moment to recognize them. Lilies, roses, marigolds, carnations, asphodel, nettle, nightshade, poppies, lycoris. Flowers for death, for funerals, for mourning.

Clockwork wrapped Danny’s hands around the bouquet, and pressed the ring finger of his left hand against a rose thorn. A drop of blood welled up. Blood, not ectoplasm. Danny stared, surprised. But he didn’t get to stare long. Clockwork produced another ribbon, and wrapped it around the flowers and Danny’s wrists.

Then, he picked up the other ribbon under Danny and tied it around his upper arms and elbows before tucking the ends into the ribbon around Danny’s wrists.

It all felt very secure.

Under normal circumstances, Danny would have been able to escape such flimsy restraints in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. But it wasn’t just the ribbons that held him. He could still escape, yes, but it would take a great deal of effort.

He twitched his shoulder, just to check that he could. The motion was slow, heavy, and smaller than he expected.

Pandora put a stilling hand on his shoulder and held a coin up in front of his face. It was large and silver, inscribed with symbols from languages both long dead and never alive. Danny wondered if they had made it just for this occasion.

“A last chance,” said Pandora.

His last chance to back out, is what she meant. To say something. He could do it. He could stop the ritual and suffer the consequences. He could be a danger to everyone around him for the rest of his existence, however long or short that was.

He gave Pandora the tiniest shake of his head. She smiled and pressed the coin against his lips. He opened his mouth, just enough to take the coin. It fit comfortably on his tongue, in between his teeth but not jostling against them. If it wasn’t custom made and sized, it might as well have been. It tasted metallic and sweet, as if, given enough time, it would dissolve on his tongue.

Pandora took out one more embroidered ribbon and wrapped it around his jaw and the top of his head, holding his mouth closed. There was enough tension in the ribbon to press, but not enough for its edges to dig into tender flesh. Taken together, the coin and ribbon made an effective gag.

His wail was now bound just as effectively as his intangibility and invisibility, as effectively as his tongue and voice. For the first time since the incompatibility between his powers and his body became clear, the stress of keeping his wail under control was lifted away.

(A possibility, unraveled: Danny standing at the center of a crater made with his own voice. No, kneeling. No, weeping, curled on the ground, head touching dirt and fractured concrete. He knew those buildings, teetering on the edges of new cliffs. He knew them.)

This was the right decision.

The three older ghosts busied themselves at the other, smaller altars briefly, allowing Danny to collect himself and sink deeper into that sense of relaxation. The wail wasn’t the only thing that had been taken off his shoulder. All his other voice-based powers were similarly locked away, and he hadn’t even noticed losing his shapeshifting, but he couldn’t touch that, either.

When Pandora stepped back into his field of view, she was holding a mask. A death mask, more specifically, styled after Danny’s own face. Frostbite, next to her, held a small, square cloth, like a handkerchief and a small bottle.

Clockwork reached out and touched Danny’s face, briefly tracing each of his features. His lips, his nose, his eyebrows. He slid his fingers down, pressing Danny’s eyelids closed. The motion was gentle, but held a strange sort of finality.

Danny found that he could not open his eyes.

Fabric, soft and smooth, whisper thin, covered his face and was adjusted, straightened. Something fragrant dampened it from above, near his nose. More perfume. He inhaled. Exhaled. Stopped.

Stopped.

Before he could have any more thoughts about not being able to breathe, the death mask was pressed into place. The weight of it pressed the thin shroud over his face snugly into his skin. It made his other limitations - his eyes, his breath, his general immobility - more acceptable, somehow.

Other talismans were placed on his skin or tucked into the ribbons. Some, he could identify by touch. The ticklish barbs of a feather. The cold roundness of another, smaller coin. The familiarity of his childhood stuffed bear. Others, his powers identified for him. The sparkling wonder of a lunar meteorite. The shiver of a carved piece of ghost ice. The thrumming power and glory of a vial of ectoplasm shed by a god Danny had fought and defeated. He hadn’t known they’d kept that.

But other things were too strange to identify by touch alone. He could make guesses. Maybe that was a flower petal, maybe this other thing was a coil of string, and while he was sure that last was paper, he couldn’t say what was on it.

With every token placed, another one of his powers was called up and locked away, like bound by like. His awareness of the stars winking out as the meteorite was placed was sad. The powers he’d ‘earned’ from that god being placed firmly out of his reach, however, was only a relief.

He was verging on helplessness, now. Helpless, but unburdened.

Clockwork started to speak. None of the words were recognizable, but Danny knew the feeling of a prayer. This one was old. Old old. Old even by the standards of ancient ghosts. They hummed briefly in his bones before settling in them like lead weights. Or golden ones.

The edges of the sheet he was lying on were lifted up and folded over him, then tucked under him. Wound around him. It was a winding sheet. Of course. Of course. The next cloth, too, was pulled up and over him, the motion a little more brisk now that the tokens were held in place by the first sheet. Then, the next. Cerecloth and cerements.

Danny twitched a little, at first, at certain unexpected touches, but when the third wrapping added its comforting, soothing pressure he was reduced (or, perhaps, elevated) to a state of perfect limpness.

They added more tokens between the third layer and the fourth, but Danny couldn’t even begin to guess what they were. They were too muffled by layers of silk - those layers being both the literal layers of cloth and the figurative layers of the ritual.

Clockwork’s prayers were getting harder to hear, but Danny felt like he could recognize some of them, now. Snippets of Akkadian, Egyptian, Greek, Latin, a word or two off the Oracle Bones. Prayers for the dead, for their revenge and their remembrance, for their reverence and their reward, for their repose and their return.

He was wrapped again and again, until the pressure, the gentle rocking motion necessary to wrap him, and the nearly unintelligible rhythm of Clockwork’s prayers threatened to lull him to sleep.

He could hear snatches of Esperanto, now, and English.

“... rest, and rest in peace… until waking… to hope… blessing in memory…”

Some parts of it felt familiar. Others were strange, so strange, but he was bound so securely, now, that he almost felt as if he was floating.

“... iron and wood, we entrust this most precious… an embrace… the hallowed graves… deliver and defend…”

No, he was floating, sort of. He’d been lifted up, sheets and all, and now he was being moved sideways. Sideways, and now down, down, into a snug cavity. Was he bordered by flowers? Pillows? Both? He couldn’t tell.

“... into silk… like dust by sunlight into gold… changed… after a long day, to sleep…”

A faint weight draped over him, a final sheet covering him. He felt, with a strange sense that lay deeper than instinct, further down and closer to his heart and soul, that Pandora, Frostbite, and Clockwork had drawn closer, that they were kneeling beside his casket or coffin, heads bowed.

“Now we lay thee down to sleep,” whispered Clockwork, words startlingly clear despite his voice being harder to hear than ever, “we pray thy grave thy soul to keep, until thou choose the form thou take, and the hour thou shall wake.”

“And should thou never wake,” whispered - someone. It was getting harder to tell the muffled voices apart. “We shall mourn for thy sake.”

Very slowly, the force pushing in and down on Danny increased, deliciously. It was almost enough.

(Danny didn’t know where that thought had come from.)

A loud thump shuddered through Danny. Another. They were nailing him in. Another restraint. Another limitation. Another step towards the cumulation of the ritual. Almost. Almost.

Thirteen nails sealed Danny into the coffin.

(He had been snug before. Now, he wasn’t sure he could have moved even if the ritual hadn’t removed the ability from him.)

(All his powers were bound. There was no more sense of responsibility keeping him awake. His body was cocooned in every way possible. There was no more fear about destabilizing and melting. None of his choices would change what would happen to him next. Only a curiosity about what it would feel like to be buried kept him from succumbing to his soul-deep exhaustion then and there.)

Vaguely, ever-so-vaguely, Danny could feel his coffin lifted, moved. He knew where he was going. Out of the mortuary shrine, across the lawn, down the rows and rows of graves, and to one grave in particular. He’d wanted to be buried next to family, and Dani was his only family available.

They stopped. He was lowered. Down. Down. Stopped again.

A chill stole over Danny, like the cool side of a pillow, but all over his body, as if it meant to draw out the last of the warmth of life from his ectoplasm. Restful.

The dirt came down in sifted shovelfuls, like rain on a roof, like distant thunder. And– he did have more powers, either so subtle he didn’t notice them as such or as of yet undiscovered. These were buried as thoroughly as the others.

Up and up the dirt piled, until he could barely feel it as it came down. Until all that was left was the weighty, solid thump of a headstone coming down.

Then there was nothing. Nothing but silence, stillness, silk… and sleep.

Danny woke with the comfortable confusion of someone who had gotten their blanket wrapped around them unevenly while they slept. Slow, unhurried, well-rested, but just slightly less cozy than expected.

He shifted, mumbling and rolling over. No, that wasn’t any good. He made a face. There was something on his face. He reached up to wipe it off, and the sheets wrapped around him tore like cobwebs.

That roused him further. This… he did not think this was his bed. It was his, but not his bed.

He wiped something thin and crackly off his face and inhaled deeply. Dust. Salt. Dust, salt, and something like decay, but sharper, fresher, cleaner.

He breathed, remembering. His mouth tasted like silver and sugar. His hands quested outward, seeking, seeking, until he found the edges of the space he was in.

This was his grave. His coffin.

It was bigger than he’d imagined.

His eyes opened to a darkness relieved only by his own faint glow. The many sheets he had been wrapped in had been reduced to fragile scraps, except a very few that remained stubbornly wrapped around his shoulders. His mask was a thin shell. The flowers were desiccated, colorless strands and flakes. The pillows were flat and torn, showing the wooden sides of the coffin in places. The only token he could see and identify was the plush and pristine form of Neil Bearstrong. He gathered the toy close, pressing him against his chest.

He’d made it. He was awake, aware, and apparently stable, when before he’d been bracing himself for death. He breathed out, breathed in. His breath caught in his throat, and he giggled.

Did that mean Dani had made it, too?

He rolled onto his back and put a hand against the lid of the coffin. It looked strange there. Disproportionate. But of course it did. His body had just finished reformatting itself into a stable form. Frostbite had told him that he’d probably look different, maybe even radically different. Clockwork had even confirmed that medical opinion, from a temporal perspective.

Positives: his hand was a recognizably human hand. He was awake.

He didn’t dare turn human - if he even could - until he had Frostbite and the others look him over. He wouldn’t be able to phase through the Ghost Zone’s soil. Teleportation was inadvisable while he was this disoriented. So were portals. And most powers, really.

He’d have to dig his way out.

Bracing himself, making sure his limbs were free of restraint, he drew back his fist to punch the lid. The dirt would come in fast, and he wasn’t sure how deep he was. Six feet was traditional, of course, but it was also traditional for the dead to stay that way. So.

The lid flew upward under the force of his strike, all the dirt overhead bending away. He grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled down, widening it enough for him to claw his way out without warping his body. He… wasn’t quite ready for that, after the whole melting thing.

He burrowed upward, feeling like something between a worm and a badger, batting away dirt, crawling, squirming, reaching upward. Despite his best efforts, some of the winding sheets came with him, clinging, slowing his passage. Still, his hand hit free air. Grass tickled at his fingers. He set his palm down on the ground, and pulled.

The dirt did not want to let him go. It pulled back, its embrace offering an eternal peace, but Danny was firm, eager to go, to see, to live. He pushed himself up, and out, then lay, panting, on the ground.

That had been… more tiring than expected, actually.

Someone propped him up, large hands bringing him into a sitting position. “Daniel,” said Clockwork. A loose and oddly cut robe was wrapped around him.

“Mm,” said Danny, his voice cracking.

A cup was raised to his lips. He drank greedily, the sweet, floral liquid soothing his dry throat.

“Shall we get you cleaned up?” asked Pandora, another hand, laid on the center of his back.

“Can you walk?” asked Frostbite. “Or fly?”

“Yes,” said Danny, hoarsely. He reached up to put his hand on Clockwork’s shoulder. It took some to get it there. It was further away than he’d thought.

He was smaller than he had been. Not entirely unexpected. Returning to one’s appearance at death was, apparently, one of the more common ways for this to go. But had he really been this small at fourteen?

They did not go to the mortuary shrine, but made their uncertain way to the other shrine in the graveyard: the revival shrine. The structure was much the same inside and outside, but it had only one altar. The rest of the space was reserved for a bath, bed, and mirrors.

Pandora guided him to a chair in front of one of the mirrors. Danny stared. He wasn’t much to look at right now, but what he could see of his body…

It hadn’t been a winding sheet dragging at him as he’d crawled through the dirt. It had been wings. He shrugged the loose robe off his shoulders to see them better. They were patterned with white and black, star and moon shapes on a dark background. He had antennae. Long, soft, feathery looking things curving up and back from his temples.

Clockwork brought a damp cloth to his face and, slowly, began to clean away the dirt.

“Surprised?” asked Clockwork.

“Are you?”

Clockwork chuckled.

“Did Dani– Is Dani–?”

“She woke seventeen years ago,” said Clockwork. “She is quite smug about technically being older than you in terms of lived experience.”

“She would be,” said Danny.

He pulled away from Clockwork’s ministrations to get another look at the mirror. He had about the same proportions he did when he was a teenager, and his hair was as white as it ever was in ghost form, but it sparkled, as if someone had dusted it with silver glitter. His antennae matched the color pretty well, too. Star-shaped freckles littered his cheeks, and when he tilted his head this way and that… There was an effect like a hologram, depending on the light, of a dark or glimmering domino mask around his eyes.

And, beneath that, his basic features, the structures of his bones… They looked about the same as they had when he was young. Except… softer, somehow. More neutral. The change, as subtle as it was, gave him a genderless mien.

(The idea of that trend continuing elsewhere on his body didn’t bother him nearly as much as he would have expected before this.)

He wondered what he would look like in human form. But… later. Later.

For now, Pandora was running a tiny brush though the delicate hairs of his antennae, removing irritating bits of soil and grass.

“In fact,” said Pandora, “I would wager that she will be smug about physically appearing older than you.”

“She looks older than me, too?” asked Danny. “That’s hardly fair.”

“That is the way of things, I’m afraid. She hadn’t truly died until she was buried.”

“But she’s okay?”

“She’s doing very well, last I saw her,” said Frostbite.

“And Jazz? Sam and Tucker?”

“All fine,” said Clockwork. “They visit you frequently.”

Pandora did something complicated with telekinesis that pulled most of the dirt from Danny’s skin and left him feeling distinctly fluffed. The fuzz along the bases and upper edges of his wings stood on end. He shook himself all over, then plucked the washcloth from Clockwork’s hands so he could clean behind his ears and in-between his toes.

“Clothes?” asked Clockwork.

“Cut for wings?” challenged Danny.

“Of course.”

#danny phantom #dannymay #dannymay 2024 #dannymay 2024 day 21: funeral

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s-4pphics · 5 months

Text

moth. teaser. (e.w.)

SYNOPSIS: knights of the devil, you all are to be conquered.

WORD COUNT: 881

WARNINGS: vampire!ellie, vampirekiller!oc, a lot to come FUCK, violence… so blood(drinking), death, murder, gore, religion briefly,

A/N: yasss yaaas taglist?

prolouge

1809

“Oh, my precious darling…”

Red, similar to her hair; palms painted from the tips of a finger to the points of elbows; knees sunk into begrimed pili drenched with fresh maroon. Panicked breaths are accompanied by prayers, wishes of denial. Desires for death.

“… What I would give to protect you…”

“F-F—“

Tortured hollers are directed towards the pouring skies. Bodies. Bodies everywhere; surrounded by decay.

She sobs, deep from the pits of her stomach, “Father, for-forgive them! For they do not—“

Thunder claps. Lightning is being used as weapons from the Lord above, all meant to discover her and strike. The beams in the sky are intended to punish her discernment. It was a mistake. It was a mistake! Her eyes refuse to meet the battered corpse of the young babe, no more than three. Her crime was committed in a haze, blinded by starvation, all at the cost of the family before her. Villagers would deem the view a savage attack. A mutilation only made possible by the ravenous wolves after dark. The bears that protect the trees at dusk.

All on horseback, the strangers paused their ventures to inquire guidance. She swiftly became an aid for navigating the path, instructing them with a trembling finger and a blistering throat. Follow that trail to the end of the woods. Unbeknownst to their gracious eyes, she followed. Stalked after their mount for miles like the thoroughbred they ride, carried by the wind. Urged by bloodlust.

Her vision blurred when they tied their horse’s lariats to a nearby post that barely passed the trees. Her vision was shrouded in darkness, a substance so thick that her limbs felt trapped, even in frantic movement. They’d reached the end, just like she’d promised.

Their screams satiated her hunger, but never hindered her guilt.

Demons, I tell you! All of them, demons! Witches destined to be set aflame for the masses!

And now she crouches over them with remorse in her chest. Remorse that will wash away her like the rainfall that pounds on her shoulders. Much like it had in the past when her purity was stolen. Another fatality.

1919

“Hunting requires bouts of unwavering dedication. If the entirety of your being doesn’t relish in the suffering of the demons walking, then you are to be shunned.”

Being the youngest hunter-to-be amongst legends, historical monuments that leave trails of prosperous victories wherever they advance, is humbling. Your mother pestered you for as long as you could remember: never, never become a hunter, being her only protest for you, her only child. She used to pray beside your bed at night when she assumed you to be asleep, praising the Creator for forbidding you sickness or poverty. You were her only treasure, a gift from the frosted heavens.

And the demons took her.

Hunters searched the unoccupied lands that surrounded your home relentlessly, but no traces of the Devils’ were ever discovered. They attended your mother’s burial for your protection, and prepared to assist your transition into the orphanage, but you denied. You were permanently vexed. Forever vengeful.

I wish to become a hunter!

Your recruitment was immediate due to the shortage of volunteers, and that same day, you witnessed all of the treasures and memories of your childhood home — of your mother — get burned to the ground by the Hunters. No trails for the demons should go untouched by fire.

“If you hesitate for even a second, you’re dead. Either by their hand…”

Something unsettled you that morning as you prepared for school. Something in the air, something underground. A heaviness in your home that you couldn’t trace. Your mother ironed your skirt and pinned your hair up, brushed down the small curls around your hairline, and she eased you. The weather is changing, dear, she’d said before wishing you well. You studied relentlessly, all while she was shredded by teeth sharp as knives. You want the Devil’s lifeless heart in the palm of your hand, risks be damned.

“Or mine. And I will not hesitate.”

The overseer of your battalion, who slowly paces before his future prodigies, aura menacing, pauses in front of you. With your gaze locked forward and a lump in your throat, you gawk right on the crescent on his belt — the hunter’s insignia — your feet shuffle, shoes slightly squeaking above the wood.

“Are you prepared, child?”

His tone is disparaging, and you swallow. Your head bobs and your breathing stutters.

“Yes, sir.”

He crouches before you and your cells stiffen, elbows perched on his knees, eyes finally level with yours. You appear stoic due to the grinding of your teeth, inspecting the stitched scar that sprouts at his right brow and crosses his eye.

“You are nothing,” He hisses, and your heart clenches, “You are not a child, and I am not your elder. Any identity you held prior to your arrival is worthless, now. We are vessels for the greatest power above. Hunter is your only name, do you understand?”

No verbiage escapes you. It couldn’t with how your breath trembles, so you nod once; Quite mechanic.

“Stand straight.”

His conviction forces your shoulders into alignment, and snickers from the older prodigies erupt from behind you. Your cheeks warm and your palms drip. The overseer rises to his feet once more.

“That goes for all of you!” He shouts, and the room is quiet.

The crescent sparkles under the yellow candlelight. Your palms grow clammy at his viperous swear.

“I will not hesitate.”

#vampire!ellie #ellie williams #ellie williams smut #ellie williams angst #ellie williams au #ellie williams x reader #ellie the last of us #ellie x reader #ellie tlou #works 𖧧࣪#lesbian

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whoopsyeahokay · 4 months

Text

October Sun

summary: Wally had needed a moment alone since you two had parted ways earlier that morning. it had given him a chance to lay out the facts and finally see what trainwrecks of ghosts he and the others had been.

pairing: Wally Clark x fem!reader

warnings: eventual smutty smut smut. and mad spoilers. and obvious Canon divergence. very involved, very dense plot.

bon reading, frens

___________________________💀

OCTOBER SUN pt.15

Wally skulked into the teacher's lounge, bypassing the gathering in the main space where Mr. Hartman held court. The words 'footprints' and 'service road' filtered above a firing squad of sharp questions as Wally made his way to the back, into the kitchenette, where he grabbed an empty mug off the rack.

Obviously, the police had been in touch. He wondered vaguely if Maddie had heard the news. He hoped so. It would be tremendously weird if he knew something about what had happened to her before she did, the feeling like sludge in his throat.

Wandering back out, he kept an ear open to Mr. Hartman's speech and set himself up at the coffee machine. Filled the mug almost to the brim, added two sachets of brown sugar, and stirred. Placed the dirty spoon in an abandoned, half-empty glass of water and then tucked himself quietly away back in the kitchenette.

Mr. Anderson wasn't amongst the faces Wally recognized as the teachers who held senior classes. A good thing since Wally was still pissed. Never mind that the guy might be solely responsible for Maddie's ghost; how he'd behaved toward you last night left a nasty taste in Wally's mouth. Made his knuckles itch to punch until Mr. Anderson swallowed his own teeth. Until his eyes pulped and his nose caved in. Until Mr. Anderson was one of them.

Although, Wally thought with bemusement, he didn't want to be stuck with Mr. Anderson. If what you'd said was true—that Wally and the others were trapped—Jesus, imagine having to exist for the rest of eternity in proximity to a monster capable of abusing women.

And that was the crux of his somber mood right there, wasn't it?

Trapped.

They were trapped.

He was trapped.

Wally sagged in his chair, staring at nothing. Steam wafted over his chin and cheeks as he took an absentminded sip of his coffee, the heat and bitterness burning when he swallowed. He set the mug down, held it, and continued to stare blankly ahead.

In the absence of your closeness, a chimera of pain-hurt-betrayal sunk its teeth into his heart and spread under his skin like poison, coming to erupt out of him in an uncharacteristically violent display.

The mug crashed against the wall. Ceramic tinkled to the floor. Wally dropped his head into his hands and heaved a dry, noiseless sob that ended as soon as it began.

He was supposed to have had the chance to say goodbye. To his friends, his girlfriend, his parents—fuck. Even though they wouldn't have been able to hear him, those moments were meant to be HIS.

His choice, his freedom, his right.

But, he'd been denied. Locked in with no escape because he'd had the bad luck to die in a place infected by, what, malevolent devil-cult energy? A witch's final hex on the land? Disrespected ancient fucking burial grounds?

According to the notes you'd written him, even crossed-over, Wally would've been able to reach out and reassure his mamma that he was fine. That he missed her and loved her and everything was going to be alright—

The dull sound of ceramic being set down in front of him interrupted the barrage of hate, rage, grief storming through Wally. Head shooting up, he saw Ajay stepping around the small table to take the seat beside him, sad smile and sad eyes mirroring the pain Wally felt.

When he glanced across the table at the wall, the broken mug and splattered coffee were gone. Reset and then remade and delivered to Wally in an unspoken offering of support.

Eventually, "Are you okay?" Ajay asked in even syllables.

Wally didn't look at him, couldn't find it within himself to fake a smile and pretend. Ajay was a divine kind of perceptive and would see through it in an instant, anyway.

So, Wally opted to avoid giving Ajay an answer by asking a question of his own, "Have you ever thought about why we're having such a hard time crossing over?"

The weight of Ajay's gaze spoke for itself. He didn't say anything for several moments, watching Wally watch the wall—acute, analytical. What Ajay said, when he finally responded, made Wally jump to attention.

"You're talking to her, aren't you?" A statement disguised as a question. Ajay's features conveyed mild amusement.

Wally hesitated and then squeaked out, "Who?" though he could tell that Ajay knew. Had clearly known about you for a while. But, just to be safe, "Maddie? Dawn? Dude, we know a few chicks, you'll have to be more specific."

"Bro," Ajay deadpanned.

"Bro!"

Ajay leveled Wally with a flat look, mouth a slash of disappointment, "Bro..."

Wally's knee began to bounce under the table, sweat beading at his hairline. "Bro?"

"Bro."

Ajay folded his hands on the table and leaned in, as if about to divulge classified information—heavily redacted and for Wally's eyes only, the introduction to which was a kick to the gut.

"My parents," Ajay began, "Were deported the day before my funeral."

Wally released a puff of air from his cheeks, gaze dropping to his lap. His problems suddenly felt minuscule in comparison. "I'm sorry, man, I had no idea."

While it had seemed completely off-topic, Wally considered Ajay a close friend and was familiar with how he operated. Every word he shared had meaning, and, sure enough:

"Neither did I." Ajay said, matter-of-fact. "Her sister was the one who told me almost a decade after they were forced to leave."

Stunned, "Her sister went here?"

"Graduated the year before Katelynn died."

Wally did the math, "Damn, that's an age gap." That put her in her early thirties. Your mama had either been very young when she'd had your sister, or you'd been an unexpected surprise...Or both. "She can see ghosts, too?"

"Naw, but she can feel us."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"She's an empath." Ajay explained, "She used her senses to feel me out. Apparently, when I'm happy, I smell like my mother's biriyani." He chuckled lightly, gaze distant, fond, tinged in the creases by the hurt of missing someone important.

Wally sipped his coffee and gave Ajay a minute to reminisce. Once Ajay's eyes were focused again, Wally asked, "Was it different for her? Because she couldn't see you, I mean. 'Cause the way my girl put it, she'd get into some serious shit if she spoke to me."

Ajay snorted, shook his head, and waved a hand, "Absolutely not. Ora had to follow the same rule. 'Don't interfere' or whatever." He slouched sideways over the table, head in one hand, fingers of the other tracing nonsense patterns into the vinyl surface.

"But she did it anyway?"

"She didn't see how the rule applied to her. How could she interfere when she couldn't even tell if anything was going on." Ajay rolled his eyes the way people did when they talked about their siblings' antics. "I cared more about it than she did. That's why I never told you." His voice sobered, "I never told anyone."

He got up and fetched himself a drink. Took a glass from the cupboard and moved to the sink to fill it from the tap. One sip. Two. Three.

Back still turned to Wally, Ajay further professed, "I knew she was Ora's sister as soon as I saw her. They could be twins," He shuffled back to the table, sat down, "The resemblance is uncanny, I'm telling you. She looks so much like how I remember Ora." A tender smile, "As soon as I confirmed it, I kept an eye on her. Doing what I can to keep the others from discovering her abilities."

"But not me?"

"Oh, believe me, I tried. But it was like herding fucking cats, man. Something greater than all this," Ajay motioned to encompass beyond the room they were in, "Kept working against me. You two found each other no matter what I did." Aggrieved, "Her sophomore year was a bitch."

A laugh burst out of Wally unbidden as memories of that fateful year rolled across his mind like old film, only now the scenes played from Ajay's perspective.

Yeah. It'd probably been a bitch.

As confident as he was that Ajay wouldn't betray him—or you—Wally needed to be doubly sure: "I guess I don't have to ask you to keep our secret then, huh?"

Ajay mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key, punctuating the promise with a friendly wink. "I'll never utter a word."

Wally breathed a sigh of relief, wrapping both hands around his coffee and relaxing into his seat.

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes as Wally collected his thoughts. He returned to the conversation he'd had with you that morning, and then to how Ajay had responded to the question of crossing over. As if he'd been guided to the same truth you'd revealed to Wally. Had your sister—Ora?—figured it out when she'd been a student?

"Why us?" Wally voiced the thought aloud. "Why the school?" He glanced at Ajay who was studying him closely, like a professor watching their pupil solve an unsolvable riddle. "Why can't we cross over?"

"And why did Janet get to?" Ajay granted with a sour line under her name.

On paper, Janet had been as polite as had been expected for a young woman raised in post-war America. All quaint mannerisms and Christian smiles. Voice always set to a reasonable decibel. However, there'd always been a current of disdain underscoring every interaction Janet had had with Mr. Martin.

Of their ragtag ensemble, Janet had been the most hostile toward Mr. Martin's brand of gentle parenting. Unlike Rhonda, who was openly resistant, Janet had playacted through the Group sessions she'd deigned to attend and had giddily punched holes in Mr. Martin's logic whenever she'd had the chance.

It didn't make sense, then, that she had been the first one of them to move on.

"Did you know we're supposed to be able to leave?" Wally said apropos of nothing. "We should be going to movies and bars and, fuck man, I should be able to go to the mall and get a pair of goddamn jeans."

Ajay laughed, adding, "And I could get some real food," with a demonstrative look of yearning.

"Whatever's trapping us here, in the school...what if that's why it's taken so long for one of us to cross over?"

"It makes sense." Ajay shrugged. "Ora never said that it was weird that we couldn't leave the school, but she said enough that I figured it out, and—" He stopped himself abruptly, mouth snapping shut with a clack that made Wally flinch.

Ajay seemed reluctant to continue, eyes zipping left and right as he weighed the pros and cons in his head.

Just when Wally thought that was it, Ajay cleared his throat and scuffed his chair as close to Wally as he could get it without sliding into Wally's lap.

"There's something I think you need to see." He whispered, eyes on the doorway, as if afraid of being overheard.

"Yeah, alright." Wally dragged his chair back and was on his feet in a flash.

Pressing his lips in a regretful line, Ajay nodded toward the clock in the main space of the teacher's lounge. It was empty now, save for a few teachers whose classes didn't start until later.

"Mr. Martin wanted to get started soon." He pointed out, "But after that, I'll show you."

"Does anyone else know?"

"No. It's just me and you, buddy." Ajay rose and clapped Wally on the back before leading them out of the teacher's lounge and into the hallway. After about a minute, Ajay broke their amiable silence and said, "So, you and the baby Paranormal Activist, huh?"

"I'm telling her you called her that." Wally groused without bite. "And I don't kiss and tell."

"Oh, you don't need to." Ajay assured, "I heard enough about that already."

Wally choked on a swallow. Eyes watering and tongue stuck in his throat, he coughed, "How!?"

"Mina saw you two last night," Ajay revealed, deceptively nonchalant. Before Wally could protest, Ajay signaled that there was nothing to worry about. "She won't say anything. My baby's a vault."

Wally choked again on the endearment, missing a step and staggering forward for two. "Your what!?"

Passive, teasing, "Bro, it's like you don't know anything about me at all," Ajay heaved an enormous, theatrical sigh.

"How does it even work!?" Wally demanded once he recovered. "How long have you two been together??"

With a sly, cheeky look, Ajay simply responded, "Come on, buddy, I'm a gentleman, I don't kiss and tell."

Wally halted on the spot. Sputtered indignantly for a few seconds before he put his hands on his hips and glared at Ajay's retreating back, "Oh, you are such a dick."

💀___________________________

PART FOURTEEN - PART SIXTEEN

also available on AO3!

MASTERLIST

#Milo Manheim #Wally Clark #Wally Clark x Reader #fem!reader #Wally Clark smut #Wally Clark fanfiction #Milo Manheim fanfiction #School Spirits #zed necrodopolis #Disney Zombies #October Sun

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mxtxfanatic · 6 months

Text

Fandom Gripe #22: I wish the novel fandom would stop ascribing to Jiang Cheng things that he did not do (at least not alone) to make his character seem like some outstanding model citizen who pulled himself up by his bootstraps instead of the rotten product of wealth and nepotism that he is.

No, Jiang Cheng did not rebuild Lotus Pier on his own. In fact, Lotus Pier didn't need to be rebuilt at all because it was never destroyed. Wen Chao was using it as his supervision office, which is why Wang Lingjiao showed up in the first place:

Wang LingJiao spoke in a tender voice, “Young Master Wen, congratulations for moving into Lotus Pier.” Wen Chao, “What Lotus Pier? Change the name. Bring down any door carved with the nine-petaled lotus crest and replace them with those with the QishanWen Sect’s sun crest! JiaoJiao, come dance for me your best song!”

—Chapt. 59: Poisons, exr

If anything, any "rebuilding" that was done happened after Wei Wuxian defected, as Jiang Cheng remade Lotus Pier to be more extravagant than it originally was:

It was perhaps because too many places had been renewed. The training field was two times larger. Each new building seemed to be taller than the previous, adorned with curving roof decor. It seemed grander than before and had more splendor. But, compared to the Lotus Pier of his memories, it had changed too much. Wei WuXian felt a sense of loss from deep within. He didn’t know whether the old buildings from the past were blocked behind these impressive new buildings or if they were torn down already.

—Chapt. 85: Loyalty, exr

No, Jiang Cheng did not recruit new disciples on his own. He was recruiting on his own during the war for the 3 months that Wei Wuxian had been trapped in the Burial Mounds, as per Wang Lingjiao's musings:

...leaving only Jiang Cheng, who was younger than even Lan XiChen and was still a child born yesterday, who had nobody in his hands but still dared call himself sect leader, holding up the banner of rebellion as he recruited new disciples.

—Chapt. 60: Poisons, exr

But after Wei Wuxian returned, Wei Wuxian had a large hand in disciple recruitment, specifically because of the interest his ghost path garnered amongst cultivators at banquets where they were recruiting, such as the Phoenix Mountain Hunt:

One of the sect leaders spoke in a sour tone, “This time, Lotus Pier is really the center of the show. Almost all of the spirits and corpses were summoned to the YunmengJiang Sect’s grounds. There’d definitely be a number of cultivators interested in them.” ... Someone sneered, “Huh? Interested in them? I don’t think so. To put it simply, they’re interested in Wei WuXian, aren’t they? Didn’t the YunmengJiang Sect grow in fame during the Sunshot Campaign only because of Wei WuXian?”

—Chapt. 70: Departure, exr

Despite the above quote being gossip from jealous cultivators, we know this to be true because after Wei Wuxian defects, cultivators begin to flock to the Burial Mounds to ask to be his disciples, still:

After he found himself in the limelight during a few night-hunts, there really were quite a few people who came for him, hoping that they could be accepted by the ‘patriarch’ and become one of his disciples. The mountains that used to be so deserted suddenly became crowded. None of the fierce corpses Wei WuXian set up on patrol down the mountain would attack on their own. At most, they’d send the person flying and roar their throats out. Nobody got hurt, and so more and more people gathered down Burial Mound.

—Chapt. 75: Distance, exr

No, Jiang Cheng did not raise Jin Ling on his own. First off, Jin Ling is the heir to the Jin Clan, so him being raised wholly by Jiang Cheng would make absolutely no sense. Which is why nowhere does the novel say this happens; Jin Ling spends his time split between Lanling and Lotus Pier:

When Jin Ling was young, he was brought up by two sects. He lived at the LanlingJin Sect’s Jinlin Tower half the time, and the YunmengJiang Sect’s Lotus Pier the other half, so he should be carrying belongings from both sects.

—Chapt. 38: Grasses, exr

(However—and this is just my conjecture—I doubt the overtly homophobic and sexist Jiang Cheng would personally go about changing the diapers of a child who only knew him to be merciless and cold:

From the beginning of his memory until now, Jin Ling had never seen such a look on Jiang Cheng’s face before. This uncle of his who led the prominent YunmengJiang Sect ever since a young age had always been cold and dark. When he spoke, he was willing to neither show mercy nor do good.

—Chapt. 23: Malice, exr

Rich people have servants for a reason.)

No, Jiang Cheng does not spend his time helping the people of Yunmeng. He really does spend a good deal of his time fobbing off his duty to the people (not unusual for a large sect) in favor of hunting down and torturing people (very unusual, the reason why his citizens prefer to pray to gods) who either had the surname Wen or that he suspected of either being possessed by Wei Wuxian because they remind him of the latter, which extends to people who use his inventions:

Jiang Cheng spoke grimly, “Break his legs? Haven’t I told you? If you see this sort of evil and crooked practice, kill the cultivator and feed him to your dogs!”

—Chapt. 7: Arrogance, exr

Zidian definitely wouldn’t deceive [Jiang Cheng] or make a mistake, so he quickly calmed himself and thought, this doesn’t mean anything. I should first find an excuse to take him back and use every possible method to get information out of him. It’s impossible for him to not confess anything or give himself away. I’ve done things like this in the past anyways. After thinking it through, he made a gesture. The disciples understood his intention and came over.

—Chapt. 10: Arrogance, exr

The owner, “Young Masters, you’re not from Yunping City so you don’t know. The Jiang Sect is responsible for all of us along the Yunmeng area. The Sect Leader’s got quite a bad temper. It’s almost frightening. His subordinate’s said so a long time ago. Only one sect is in charge of such a large area. Each day, there are almost a hundred cases of small ghosts or other creatures pulling pranks on the living and all that. If every single small thing had to be dealt with immediately, would there be enough time and energy? Those that don’t kill anyone aren’t malign spirits, and we’re not supposed to disturb them with trivial matters that aren’t malign spirits.” She complained, “What is this supposed to mean? Wouldn’t it be too late if we waited until somebody’s died to find them?!” ... The owner continued, “On top of that, Lotus Pier is truly a scary place. How would anyone dare go there again?” Wei WuXian moved his gaze from Lan WangJi’s calm face with a short pause of surprise, “Lotus Pier is scary? How could Lotus Pier be scary? You’ve been there?” The owner, “I haven’t been there myself, but I know someone who went because his house was being badly haunted. But it was all bad luck. That Sect Leader Jiang was cracking a glowing whip right on the training field. The victim’s flesh and blood flew as high as his screams! A servant secretly informed him that the sect leader caught the wrong person again, that he hadn’t been in a great mood, and that he definitely shouldn’t be irritated in any way. He was so scared that he dropped off the gifts he brought and fled at once. He never dared visit again.” Wei WuXian had long since heard of how Jiang Cheng had been searching for cultivators of the ghost path who seemed like they seized another’s body, taking all of them into Lotus Pier to be tortured and questioned. The owner’s friend probably just happened to have ran into him when he was letting off steam. It wasn’t hard to imagine how hideous Jiang Cheng would’ve looked, so no wonder a normal person would make a run for it. ... The owner, “No, no. It was his misfortune. The person’s surname was Wen, and that Sect Leader Jiang’s archenemy happened to have the surname of Wen as well. He’s hating on everyone in this world whose surname is Wen. Whenever he sees one, he’d grind his teeth in hatred, wanting to skin them alive. How could he give a single friendly look to...”

—Chapt. 92: Longing, exr

The time he isn't spending hunting down people to torture, he uses to trail after Jin Ling on nighthunts to make sure nothing happens to him.

Wei WuXian, “Huh? Jiang Cheng? How did you run into him while night-hunting?” Lan SiZhui, “We invited Young Master Jin to join our night- hunt last time, so...” Wei WuXian immediately understood. One could even guess that while Lan SiZhui led the group in the night-hunt, Wen Ning naturally wouldn’t be idle either. He must’ve followed them in the dark to protect them, so that he could provide assistance when they encounter danger during the night-hunt. Jiang Cheng must’ve been sneaking behind Jin Ling as well, scared something would happen to him again.

—Chapt. 116: Banquet Extra, exr

Any other "single jiujiu!jc who don't need no man!" fanon I'm missing?

#human gripes at fandom #mdzs #feel free to add any quotes i forgot #but quite honestly some things are said too often #for it to make sense to add every quote #i'm not adding every 'jc tortures people' quote #i also gave up on every 'jc trails after jin ling' quote #because in the entire story the only time jin ling is not with jc #is when they get into an argument and jin ling runs away #for someone who is incapable of showing any sort of affection to his own nephew #jc is surprisingly a helicopter parent #canon jiang cheng

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bloopitynoot · 1 month

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17 Novel Canon Cultivation WangXian Fics

This is rec list two for @yiling-laozu-is-loml

Here are some of the parameters of the list:

Cultivators in ancient China based WangXian fics

Long form fics only (I tried to stick to 50K plus - most are longer- and all are completed fics).

Canon based on novel only! No yin iron plot CQL plotlines (though some of these do include some donghua but minimal)

BottomXian if applicable only

can include: canon divergent, fix-its, and time travel (I included all of the above)

I'm not going to lie I had to cut out so many of my favs because of the Yin Iron plot BUT I still think I put together a stellar list.

A lot of them are fix-its some are totally unique in their plots and I have a few Yilling-Wei sect fics that I adore and hope you do too!

Enjoy the list!

1 no one ever said the single-plank bridge had to be walked alone (174009 words) by rosemu

Chapters: 24/24 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Jiāng Yànlí/Jīn Zixuān (background), Mò Xuányǔ/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi (Background), Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén (background), One-Sided Xiǎo Xīngchén/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi - Relationship Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Yílíng Wèi Sect, Fix-It, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji Stays at the Burial Mounds, Fluff, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, Slow Burn, not the slowest burn but they do take their sweet time, LWJ and WWX get to be Dads together, the healing power of homoerotic flute/guqin duets, EXTREMELY self-indulgent, Happy Ending Summary: “Have you heard? The esteemed Second Jade of Lan, Hanguang-jun, has defected from the Lan sect! He’s living at the Burial Mounds now apparently.” “What?! That scourge, the Yiling Patriarch, has managed to corrupt even the most ideal, upstanding cultivator. How truly terrifying!” Lan Wangji learns to follow his heart over the rules just a little earlier and it changes some things.

NOTES: A fix-itish but also Yilling-Wei sect fic in which Lan Wangji just never leaves the burial mounds after his visit? So many things are fixed with the second jade just kind of always being by Wei Wuxian. This fic has wholesome energy and found family vibes.

2 Cultivating immortality (230949 words) by KizuKatana

Chapters: 44/44 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Rogue Cultivator Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Pining, Mutual Pining, Wei WuXian low self-esteem, BAMF Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, BAMF Lan Wangji, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, not sure if this qualifies as fix-it but that was my emotional need/intent, Hurt/Comfort, unreliable narrator (wwx's self image is…), sect wars happening, Canon typical darkness, demonic cultivation descriptions in detail, self-indulgent exploration of the creation of demonic cultivation and how it changed wwx, JC and lwj are reluctant (VERY RELUCTANT) allies, Madam Yu and Lan Qiren are made to face up to their faults, Jiang YanLi is badass (fight me) though not in terms of cultivation strenght, JC gets a chance to redeem himself, Found Family, Top Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Bottom Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, First Time, novel canon relationship dynamics, Please do not post to GoodReads or any other site Series: Part 1 of Cultivation partners universe Summary: “A weapon is not the same as a spouse, even if that weapon is powerful.” The words had barely left Wei Wuxian’s lips when he found himself slammed against the trunk of the nearest tree, Lan Wangji’s hands gripping painfully tight around his shoulders, practically lifting him from the ground. “Wei Ying is not a weapon!” Lan Wangji bit out. Wei Wuxian had said many things that had angered the illustrious Second Jade in the past. When he had been in Cloud Recesses as a youth, it had been Wei Wuxian’s favorite hobby. But he realized had never managed to truly enrage Lan Wangji with anything he had said until this moment. - - - - The Lan sect has been putting pressure on Lan Wangji to find a cultivation partner. They don't like the one he chooses.

NOTES: Baby WY has a journey to discover his self worth in this fic. The canon divergence happens after he's kicked out of cloud recesses and the subsequently kicked out of the Jiang sect via Madam Yu. There is a rogue cultivator WY plotline paired with Sect pressure for Lan Zhan to get a cultivation partner and the stubborn man vs oblivious man 230k is fantastic.

3 like speaking to my heart (613672 words) by SnowshadowAO3

Chapters: 42/42 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Some people live!, And some people still die in this fic it's just a matter of who STAYS dead and who is really dead ;), additional warnings in specific chapters, if you don't know what daemons are that's ok because I explain it in the author's note, also by slow burn I VERY much mean slow burn Summary: Wei Wuxian is staring up at the sky, thinking idly about the taste of Emperor’s Smile on his tongue, when Suibian jumps full force onto his stomach and cries, “A-Xian, don’t be mad!” The sheer force of her pounce knocks the breath out of him. The resulting pause is just long enough for Jiang Cheng, who up to this point has been laying rather peacefully next to him, to shoot up and demand, “Oh great, what did you do now?” To be fair, the question isn’t exactly unwarranted. Suibian looks an absolute mess: twigs stuck in her fur, dirt smeared across the white fluff of her underbelly. She’s panting up a storm, little heh heh heh gasps that haven’t edged into her normal high-pitched laughter. When her ears press back against her head, she could almost pass for pitiful. “Bichen hates me.” Wei Wuxian’s first thought is Why would Lan Zhan’s daemon hate you?, but it’s followed quickly by remembering exactly where he is, how little trouble he’s caused today, and the fact that he hasn’t seen Suibian for a few minutes. A grin spreads across his face. (Or: The most important name a cultivator will ever pick isn’t for their sword. It’s for their daemon.)

NOTES: This is still ancient china cultivators but has a little bit of au due to cultivators having daemons. It loosely follows the book plotline as well but is canon divergent. I honestly did not expect to love this 600k fic so much but it had my HEART. I fell for the plot as well as the sentient daemons and the role they play in helping these two sort out their feelings.

4 From Whence You Came (79393 words) by kanzaki19

Chapters: 12/12 Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Jiang Yanli/Jin Zixuan, Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin/Wen Qing Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Night Hunts (Modao Zushi), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Fix-It, Canon-Typical Violence, Time Travel, Happy Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending Series: Part 1 of Second Chances Summary: Do not take those you love for granted, tell them you love them. You may never see them again. After being torn from the life he has lovingly settled in, Wei Wuxian finds himself back in Qiongi Path. Faced with immediate threats he grabs hold of every opportunity to better the lives of his family.

NOTES: A solid fix-it from Qiongi Path. WY dies and wakes up mid battle with enough time to save Zixuan. This changes the timeline for the best but at the expense of their established relationship in the alternate timeline. A little bit of mourning there, but still a happy ending though!

5 my life's journey is far from over (148672 words) by thelastdboy

Chapters: 40/40 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Madam Lan Lives (Modao Zushi), Jiang Yanli Lives, Wen Qing Lives (Modao Zushi), Post-Sunshot Campaign (Modao Zushi), POV Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Slow Burn, Yiling Laozu Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Recovery, Hurt/Comfort, Healing Is a Slow Process, therapy is good actually, All women deserve better, Modern AU but not too modern™, mlm/wlw solidarity, the mortifying ordeal of discovering you're into bdsm while you're caught up in political intrigue, Kink Negotiation, Kink Exploration, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian Lives, Mental Health Issues, References to Depression, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Burial Mounds Ensemble as Family (Modao Zushi), Single Parent Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Selectively Mute Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Eventual Smut, Light Dom/sub, Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian Get a Happy Ending Series: Part 2 of the journey is far from over Summary: No one knew that Wei Ying survived the Burial Mounds. No one knew that it was his music that flooded the battlefields of the Sunshot Campaign with corpses. No one knew just how much he had given for his family. Now the war was over and Wei Ying found himself in Yiling once again and after spending years surrounded by nothing but death, he had to learn what it feels like to be alive again. He was dead to the world and for the first time wondered what it would be like to live for his own sake. Or: Wei Ying meets Lan Zhan after the war, both broken and searching for purpose. Wen Qing will do everything to save her little brother. Jiang Yanli learns that not every problem can be solved by soup alone.

NOTES: The story of what happens the war if no one knew that Wei Ying survived AND won the war for them. This has such a beautiful relationship between Lan Zhan and Wei Ying and features a jailbreak of (alive!) Madam Lan. It's healing and wonderful, but also expect the angst. Fear not though, it has a happy ending! BONUS: it does have a prequel which is part 1 in the series. Also very good but Lan Wangji POV and Wei Wuxian is presumed dead.

6 Vow (216627 words) by draechaeli

Chapters: 47/47 Rating: Explicit Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Mainly Novel with a few CQL and Donghua bits, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Temporary Character Death, WWXs dead for a lot of this, but he’s having fun, BeliefGod!WWX, Original Children Characters – Freeform, Adoption, Adoption but WWX birthed them all, Pregnancy Kink, Mpreg, minor male lactation, Consensual Non-Consent, Light Bondage, easy to skip nsfw chapters, brief crossdressing, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, because JGS, Mentions Canon Typical Incest, Canon Typical Violence Summary: “If you’re not good the Yiling Patriarch will steal you in the night!” It was never true, in fact the first child stole herself, the second was gifted, the third begged. By the time people realised that all the homeless children of Yiling, and all the daughters about to be sold had disappeared, it became, “If you’re unloved the Yiling Patriarch will save you.” Sometimes when you make a vow not even death can release you; as Xian-Gege the Eliminator of Evil, the Protector of the Weak, and the Saviour of Children finds out.

NOTES: A fun God!WWX fic in which the vow that WY made and the belief in the Yilling Patriarch brings him back. Such a solid fic, I love the way that WY goes from hated demon to loving deity of children, women, and those in need. He does die in this and is mostly dead for a good portion of it but it is worth it for the reunion and wholesome hoard of children he collects.

7Propagate Understanding (175626 words) by draechaeli

Chapters: 34/34 Rating: Explicit Additional Tags: Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Pregnancy Kink, Consensual Non-Consent, Light Bondage, Adoption, Adoption but WWX birthed them all, Mo Xuanyu Lives, Mò Xuányǔ has an arc, Original Children Characters - Freeform, Babies for Everyone, Crossdressing, Temporary Character Death, easy to skip nsfw chapters, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence Summary: A-Yuan was birthed by Wei WuXian, A-Yuan called Lan WangJi ‘Father’, A-Yuan had Lan WangJi’s nose! Was it the time that Wei WuXian took his forehead ribbon at the Wen Discussion Conference Archery Competition?—he’d have to ask Brother. As a physician, Wen Qing has to suffer fools constantly; if Lan WangJi is determined to be Wei WuXian’s baby daddy, she wasn’t going to stop him, especially if it could save them all. And if it leads to some misunderstandings on the topic of marriage and propagation—well, it is not Wen Qing’s fault if Lan WangJi became the world’s best and worst matchmaker, making sure that children everywhere had parents.

NOTES: This fic premise is absolute crack! and is one of my favourite niche crack! fic themes. In which the joke "I birthed him myself" is taken literally and the cultivation world truly believes the Yilling Patriarch and Hanguang-jun had a child together. So good, bless Wen Qing in this fic honestly.

8 Bring Your Wonder (Lose Your Faith) (75406 words) by kianspo

Chapters: 12/12 Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Different Sunshot Campaign, straight boy wei ying, Feelings Realization, everyone is slightly darkner here, hints of xiyao if you squint, but not yet, meng yao has a plan, Protective Lan Huan | Lan Xichen, Protective Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, by which i mean they set the world on fire, BAMF Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, it's not all tragedy i promise, Angst with a Happy Ending, Twin Jades of Lan Feels, duh - Freeform, POV Multiple, Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji Whump Summary: Canon divergence starting from after the Xuanwu Cave. What if it wasn't Wang Lingjiao who came to Lotus Pier? What if Wen Ruohan had sent Wen Zhuliu instead? The respectful, sensible Wen Zhuliu, who knows how to work the room… In which Wei Wuxian loses his hand (he gets one better), Lotus Pier is saved, the Lan Clan is said to be dead to the last man, there's a horrible banquet in Nightless City, someone accidentally plays Sleeping Beauty, and there's that awkward moment when you realize Meng Yao is the sane one (except not really). It's a dark, dark night, but the sun will rise eventually.

NOTES: This is one of my favourite BAMF WWX fics. It is VERY dark, and Lan Zhan is not okay in the majority of this fic but my goodness is it fantastic. WWX does get his hand cut off and then proceeds to be tossed into the burial mounds but his new hand and demonic cultivation are so rad. Worth it for the pain!

9 if you can't beat them, recruit them (228416 words) by moeblobmegane

Chapters: 48/48 Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Conspiracy, Spies & Secret Agents, Team as Family, Found Family, Burial Mounds, Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Pining, Morally Ambiguous Character, Rumors, Politics, Background JZX/JYL, Developing Friendships, Good Uncle Lan Qiren, Demonic Cultivation (Modao Zushi), YilingWei Sect Series: Part 1 of wwx time travels and accidentally creates a platonic harem Summary: Rather than mourning a future that had not happened yet, he would rather work with all his might to prevent it from happening. […] His aim was to fortify his home and his family so that they would never again be left vulnerable to greedy cultivators aiming for his genius. For that, he needed help. He may be a genius, but he was not the cunning manipulative man they thought him to be. No, that was not him. He knew who was, though. (Or: Wei Wuxian uses a powerful array to go back in time and builds a secret squad to prevent the misfortunes of the future.)

NOTES: Another fantastic time-travel fix it in which WWX post the tragic loss of his husband and son builds an array to go back. In it he befriends and recruits the antagonists of the main timeline and fixes things. This was so good- especially if you like morally grey characters and want a bit of Meng Yao and Xue Yang redemption.

10 Song Unwritten (94846 words) by ShotsOfSunshine, Kytrin

Chapters: 20/20 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian Characters: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Cangse Sanren, Wei Changze Additional Tags: Temporary Character Death, Angst with a Happy Ending, Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian Get a Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts, Alternate Universe, cql meets mdzs, Transmigration, Parallel Universes, Yiling Laozu Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Alternate Universe - Yílíng Wèi Sect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, References to Depression Summary: Lan Wangji knew what miracles were. He'd been given one second chance for happiness already, only to have it snatched away by an enemy he could not fight -- time. Now among his husband's research, he had a chance at another one, but to seize it he would have to take matters into his own hands and fight for it. Even if that meant the fight would take him to another world. After all, Hanguang-Jun followed chaos. And when was Wei Wuxian not at the center of chaos?

NOTES: This is a transmigration fic with a morally grey Lan Zhan. After losing WY he decides not to ascend and instead uses an array for another timeline. I will say head the warnings, Lan Zhan's father is vile and there is child abuse here so pleas ehead the tags it is very awful, it does have a happy ending though. Bonus for Wei Wuxians parents being alive!

11 Time Kept Flowing (201383 words) by notoneforreality

Chapters: 35/35 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Additional Tags: Timeline? What Timeline?, Grief/Mourning, major character death is wwx, who comes back, Family, Canon Era, Autistic Character, Autistic Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Kid Fic, Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji raise the kids, Co-parenting is hard, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, POV Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin, POV Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, POV Alternating, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, just realised 'major character death' is like most of the cast, but it all happened before the story opens, Canon-Typical Violence, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, at the top of each chapter, Golden Core Reveal (Modao Zushi) Summary: Jiang Cheng goes back to the Burial Mounds after the siege. He finds a ruined settlement and a feverish child. Then Lan Wangji turns up, half dead himself, and Jiang Cheng is not prepared for any of this. He takes them both back to Lotus Pier, because he's not leaving anyone to die on his watch, and they both need medical care. Then they just end up…staying. At least Lan Wangji is as unimpressed with the situation as Jiang Cheng is. (Jiang Cheng and Lan Zhan accidentally become co-parents and have to deal with the repercussions)

NOTES: This is the Jiang Cheng & Lan Zhan platonic coparenting fic I didn't know I needed. It was so healing and while WWX is dead for a good chunk of this he does come back. This is a fantastic fic if you want some hurt/comfort, mourning, and healing energy. I will warn it does have a lot of hurt and the Lans come under scrutiny (justifiably). But happy ending!

12 the past drifts away with the waves (58025 words) by thelastdboy

Chapters: 15/15 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fall of Lotus Pier (Modao Zushi), Major Character Undeath, Yu Ziyuan Being an Asshole, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Character Death, Major Character Injury, Amputation, Loss of Limbs, Transformation, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Fierce Corpse Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Kinda, Merperson Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Heavy Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, No Sunshot Campaign (Modao Zushi), Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cultivation Sect Politics (Modao Zushi), Not Cultivation World Friendly, Resentful Creature Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Undead Merperson Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Fanart, Slow Burn, Getting Together, Revenge, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Resentment, Demonic Cultivation (Modao Zushi), POV Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, River Spirit Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Non-Human Genitalia, Dark Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Depending on who you ask, Monsterfucker Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Wen Remnants Deserve Better (Modao Zushi), Wen Remnants Live (Modao Zushi), Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian Get a Happy Ending, Sect Leader Wen Qing (Modao Zushi) Summary: The next time Wei Wuxian became aware of his surroundings and was able to form semi-coherent thoughts, Wen Zhuliu had just finished tying weights to his feet. Both his arm and his back were still bleeding and he felt as if he had been flayed. “Should I make it quick?” Wen Zhuliu asked him, offering a small mercy. But Wei Wuxian shook his head. “Give me your worst,” he snarled, his teeth coated in blood from where he had bitten his tongue at some point. “I will come back to end you all,” he promised darkly. “Very well,” Wen Zhuliu merely said and drowned him. Or: Yu Ziyuan cuts off Wei Wuxian's hand to appease the Wens. He gets drowned in the lake behind Lotus Pier and resentful energy transforms him into a river spirit. After avenging his own death, he finds his way to Yiling.

NOTES: Very cool fic in which WY dies by Wen Zhuliu's hand and becomes a creature of resentment. He turns into a very cool undead water spirit with incredible power. He saves the wens, has a child, and gets the boy in the end. This story is for the monsterfuckers but don't let it fool you, it is kind of tragic. I swear there is a happy ending but the pain is rough.

13 Bitter Plants Bearing Sweet Fruit (83099 words) by Kryal

Chapters: 8/8 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Additional Tags: canon-typical horror elements, Worldbuilding, Desert, Misuse of Historic Setting, Original Character Death(s), Case Fic, aftermath of canon, ridiculously long author notes, Because I Have Nowhere Else to Talk Headcanons, Established Relationship, Nothing Explicit But Shameless Innuendo Summary: Patience is a bitter plant that bears sweet fruit. Lan Wangji doesn't know why Wei Wuxian is so interested in traveling to a city at the very edge of the civilized world. After Yunping, what secrets could possibly be left? But the desert remembers many things.

NOTES: Not going to lie this was a really cool casefic. The husbands go on a journey to the desert and solve a mystery. The coolest part was the difference in cultivation and belief systems outside of the sects territories. This is a healing fic- fantastic vibes.

14 We Meet at the Thousandth Step (315914 words) by Rynne, Admiranda

Chapters: 44/44 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Cangse Sanren/Wei Changze Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, No Sunshot Campaign (Modao Zushi), Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze Live, Rogue Cultivator Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Night Hunts (Modao Zushi), Genius Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Inventor Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Plot, Romance, Drama, Fluff, Strangers to married, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Developing Relationship, Minor Violence, Case Fic, Mystery, Flirting, Wei Wuxian's Canon-Typical Flower Flirting, Arson, There Was Only One Bed, Getting Together, First Kiss, Meeting the Parents, Resolved Sexual Tension, Resolved Romantic Tension, Wei Wuxian Is a Good Big Brother, New Relationship Bliss, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Blood and Injury, Yiling siblings, Married Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Honeymoon, Wangxian's Baby Fever Series: Part 1 of The Different Paths We Tread Summary: As they both go wherever the chaos might be, Lan Wangji and rogue cultivator Wei Wuxian, eldest child of the famous Cangse-sanren, find their paths converging. Soon they'll discover in each other the perfect partner for night hunting…and beyond.

NOTES: A canon divergence in which Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze both live and raise WWX as a rogue cultivator (also he has a sister and it is wonderful). Lan Zhan and Wei Ying meet during a night hunt and then keep making excused to hunt together. Such a beautiful and wholesome slowburn with lots of the Wei family teasing. A healing fic for sure.

15 Dispersing Clouds (283284 words) by dreamingofcake

Chapters: 54/54 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Genius Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Inventor Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Not Jiang Family Friendly, Abusive Yu Ziyuan, Canonical Child Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Eventual Sex, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm (Background Character), Background Character Deaths, child deaths, Good Uncle Lan Qiren, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Cultivation Sect Politics (Modao Zushi), Homophobia, Heteronormativity, Feelings Realization, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian is Not Oblivious, Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin Bashing, Jiang Yanli is Not Angelic, Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan Bashing Summary: While the Wen Clan is embroiled in subduing internal conflicts within Qishan, the Jiang Clan hosts the annual discussion conference. It has been one year since the disastrous archery competition where Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji last met but Wei Wuxian remains as optimistic as ever. An unlikely friendship begins to blossom and without the looming spectres of conquest and war to strengthen his ties to the Jiang family, the trajectory of Wei Wuxian’s life changes.

NOTES: Definitely a fic if you're feeling completely angry at the Jiangs- it is definitely not in their favour. Terrible Madam yu and equally appalling Jiang family (In that they do nothing and normalize abuse). This fic does feature an absolute brilliant Wei Ying and a smitten WangXian with a bonus of the Lans actually not being terrible.

16 A Heart Undying (114855 words) by NonsensicalRambling

Chapters: 26/26 Rating: Mature Additional Tags: Undead Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Canon-Typical Violence, canon-typical dead things, the burial mounds, Fix-It of Sorts, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Wei Wuxian probably needs a hug, the horrors of the sunshot campaign, Eventual WangXian, these boys will use their words!, No Yīn Tiger Seal, no beta - deal with it, Morally Gray Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Animals Eating People, Wei Wuxian's questionable choices, Morally conflicted Lan Wangji, Oblivious Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian Creates a Sect | Yiling Wei Sect, Yiling Laozu Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Sect Leader Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji & Wen Qing have an Understanding, if Wen Qing were being paid she'd deserve a raise Summary: No one escapes from the Burial Mounds alive. No one. Just because Wei Wuxian made it out doesn't make him an exception. He knows he's surviving on borrowed time until someone finds out, but until then he's going to make that a problem for the Wen. And if no one does find out, well, he'll figure that out later. If only he could stop being so hungry.

NOTES: Okay this fic is actually rad as hell. The premise is so cool- WWX landing in the burial mounds and DYING but transformed. If you like vampiric energy but also God!WWX vibes this is the fic for you. It moves fast but the plot is so cool.

17 Practical Considerations (96963 words) by teawater, the_anthropologist

Chapters: 20/20 Rating: Explicit Additional Tags: Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Found Family, Spouses to Lovers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Politics, Scheming, Lán Elders are assholes, BAMF Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, BAMF Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, eventually BAMF Lan Xichen, learning to make decisions, Learning Self-worth, Self-Esteem Issues, Sweet Wangxian, Domestic Fluff, Fix-It, JC is a big asshole, he improves somewhat but it's open-ended, WWX learns to stand up for himself, Quote: Come Back to Gusu With Me (Modao Zushi), POV wwx, POV LWJ, POV JC, Golden Core Reveal (Modao Zushi), Teacher wwx, Golden Core Transfer Fix-It (Modao Zushi), Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism, Past Suicidal Thoughts Summary: After the Sunshot Campaign Wei Wuxian is fooling around in Lotus Pier, and Jiang Cheng decides that he'd be more useful to the sect if he was to enter a diplomatic marriage. Especially since Lan Wangji seems so keen on dragging him away to Gusu. Only Wei Wuxian doesn't expect any good to come from it…

NOTES: An arranged marriage canon divergence fic in which "Come Back to gusu" is a term of endearment (but WWX does not know this). This fic goes form WWX being married and thinking he's being punished to married and absolutely THRIVING. This is one heck of a healing fic- great ending!

#wangxian #wangxian fics #mdzs #mdzs recs #lan zhan #lan wangji #wei wuxian #wei ying #all of these are stellar to be honest #I would read any of them again #also if you want recs dm me and i will make you a list!#I hope you like this set!#bloopitynoots wangxian recs

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matan4il · 7 months

Text

Today is international Women's Day, but Israeli women are still in captivity, for 5 months now.

Kidnapped, torn from their families, their kids, their parents, their partners, their friends, not getting enough food, most likely held underground where they're not getting enough air, none of their basic hygiene or female hygiene needs are being met, that's if they're even getting enough food to get their periods, some have been repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted, they're being denied proper medical care in general, and in particular that and the right to choose are denied to them in case their rapists have impregnated them, some have been murdered (their pics are in grey in the above image) and Hamas won't even grant them the basic decency of their bodies returned to their families and to the ground from which we all came, as Jewish traditional burial dictates.

And please don't forget all of the women who were brutally murdered on Oct 7, all the seemingly free women, who will never be the same again because of Hamas, the ones who were raped, and the ones who had to fight for their survival, the ones who lost their loved ones, the ones who have lost their mothers, and the ones who weren't supposed to be single parents raising orphans, the ones who continue to die because of anti-Israeli terrorist activity that has been a continuous part of this war, all of us Israeli and Jewish women, who have learned the ease with which our lives and our dignity, as women and human beings, can be taken away, and how the world would doubt our word if we'd testify about it, the women who survived the Holocaust and vowed to "Never again" let it happen, only to see a smaller scale version of it play out, with some of them who survived the Nazis, not surviving the terrorists, all of us who have discovered that there is a pain and a psychological scar we now carry, which will never fully heal.

Never again IS now.

Don't be silent about these women's fate, torment and denial of basic rights on this International Women's Day.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

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ghostsvacuumcleaner · 1 year

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Shades of Red

art in the cover by @ave661 and @shkretart !

chapter one | chapter two | ao3 | masterlist ✦ Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x civilian f! reader ✦ Summary: The sole survivor of a terrorist attack that killed over a hundred. The soldier responsible for saving her. He wants to help you, but his own trauma make him withdraw when he wants to get closer and intoxicate when he wants to remedy. He kisses your scars and hopes you'll runaway. He wants you to run away. But you won't. ✦ TW: NSFW, explicit, f!reader, little to none f! physical appearence descriptions, canon typical violence, mentions of abuse and trauma/PTSD, bit of gore, mental illness mentions, slowburn;

A/N: Hello girlies! This is the very first time I get the courage to actually post something I wrote. I've been reading y'all fics behind my screen for so much time now I figured I could start postingggg; so please be gentle with the feedbacks, but be also sincere ♥ also, English is not my first language and although I'm fluent, there might be a mistake or two along the way. Don't feel shy in pointing it out if you see any! Moreover, this will be a long ass one I'm pretty sure, but I might get myself some more courage to post my smut oneshots in some near future. Hope you enjoy! x

Chapter 1 - The Incident | 3.3k

There was ash in the air everywhere. That scenario didn’t frighten him – in fact, Ghost was absolutely sure that at that point in his life, almost nothing could fright him. He had seen much worse things before, he thought silently as he walked towards the building completely destroyed. There was debris everywhere – the building had not collapsed completely, but some parts did not survive the flames and now there seemed to be not even a little bit of life in that place. There were still small portions of flames spread through a few heaps of debris, a terrible smell of wood and burnt concrete; but nothing of that could be worse than the smells of dead, flattered human flesh that once or again invaded his nostrils.

His eyes rolled around in search of any record of life. In vain, he knew: there was no chance that any civilian had survived that. A cruel, dark bombing, a violent and destructive terrorist act. The only goal was to destroy any form of life that could inhabit there, and possibly it had been obtained without any further circumstances. When Price sent the radio search order to all members of the 141, he made it very clear that those efforts were in vain. They would find nothing. We lost today, he said. We could not foresee this, nor can we remedy it. It was a burden they had to cope with on a daily basis - the often inability to do something, to act, was a burden that a soldier should carry. It was part of the job.

Ghost pressed the point button in his ear. “Is anyone listening?” He asked, his eyes checking the entire perimeter of the building behind the skull mask that covered his face. “Have you found something, LT?” Soap answered, his voice hushed by the efforts. “No. I’m making an entrance, there’s nothing out here.” the lieutenant stated, kicking off a few remaining pieces of concrete from the front of his feet and laying the rifle in his hands. Ghost stood in front of the main entrance to the building – that place that should have looked like a reception at some point in the near past - and the movement of his boots against the ground caused the roof above his head to shake a little, and some ash particles fell onto his helmet. He observed the movement, standing still for a few seconds, only for warranty; he did not want to end up becoming one more of those burial victims.

When the concrete whisper finally stopped stirring his ears, he entered. The lamp of his helmet lit up, and he looked around. His eagle eyes did not lose an inch of that entire perimeter, his ears attentive as those of a bat. He was looking for a sign, whatever it was: a presence, a scream, voices, calls for help. Anything. Anyone.

All he could hear were the sounds of the structure of the building, apparently ready to give in. Ghost tried to enter one of the apartments; his boots sole hit the semi-destroyed grinded surface of the door, and he broke in. He looked around. An enormous smashed chandelier rested violently against the bloody body of a child.

Many people said Simon was the type of man to have no feelings anymore. That time, scars and trauma had taken from him all and every kind of humanity. He had become a soldier—one of the good, one of the invincible, but nothing aside from that. Nothing but a soldier.

Perhaps that sentence became so repetitive that at some point, he, himself began to believe it. His face remained motionless. The sound of the blood drops hanging on the floor filled his ears, and he snorted for a moment, pressing the point into his ear. “First floor, apartment 102,” he said, coordinating other operators to head to start collecting the bodies.

His eyes went up to the ceiling, facing the huge blunt in the structure that caused the luster to fall. Maybe the parents' bodies were still there somewhere to be found, he thought. But that wasn’t his job, and unfortunately he didn’t have all the time in the world. He then traced his steps out of the apartment, looking around. As he kept going upstairs, the lantern lit up one hand or another thrown out of a pile of debris. Broken legs, the kinds of horrors that haunt the dreams of ordinary people.

As Price had said and as he imagined to be fact, there were no survivors. Even when he reached the last floor, without any hope that he would find any movement that were not spasms of lifeless bodies, he tried. He tried to find someone, to do his job with all the mastery he could. His voice echoed through the entire floor, looking for anyone who could answer, but as expected, there was no response.

All that was left was the subsoil, the garage. When he came down the lobby again and found a portion of the staff dragging out some bodies, placing them in black bags, one of the doctors caught his attention. “Lieutenant. Have you finished checking around? Nothing up there?” The man asked, pulling his glasses from the tip of his nose. Ghost is negative. “No, nothing,” he said bluntly.

The doctor seemed to bite his own jaw with some strength, in disappointment. He has baffled. “You don’t even have to check down there. If those above didn’t survive...” he said, giving on his shoulders. Ghost watched him in silence for a few seconds, before finally answering, “Focus on your work, doc. I’ll finish my own.” He said in a nod before starting to push with his crude hands the stones that covered the entrance to the stairs that led to the garage.

His steps echoed. Ghost walked through the parking lot, passed pillar by pillar, checked every car. There were bursting pipes releasing hot steam, a gas leak as well he could tell – and he didn’t want to be there to see what would happen if some kind of ignition occurred. He hastened his steps. He took a deep breath; he was about to press his point and give up, claiming that there were no survivors, but a stifling sound interrupted his action. He looked around, looking for the source of the heavy breath and the little grumbling of pain he heard. His eyebrows cracked almost instantly and he turned around himself, looking around. All his senses were activated at that moment – he began to walk through among the few cars there, following the sound he had heard and then, a hand hitting the air dropped debris to the side of what seemed to be a body. He approached cautiously, throwing the light from his helmet’s lantern in the direction of the sound, and to his surprise, although not perceptible, there was the only survivor of the bombing: you.

A small, female frame shrunk from a pile of debris. Your hair was covered in ashes, your face - the dirty cheeks with the blackness of the material, your arms painted in the scarlet of your blood flowing freely to the ground, glass blades attached painfully to your soft skin. There was a cut down from the top of your forehead until the beginning of your left eyebrow. The completely messy strands of your hair fell against your face, opaque, bright. The expression of fear on your eyes turned into pure terror the moment they met his own, those small cold orbs inside the mask. You instinctively tried to move away from him, push your body away from those debris, away from that huge and frightening man.

When you threw your body to the side, all you could feel was your back against the cold floor, your left leg refused to work. You felt nauseous, stupid, your head turned. Your mouth trembled in a failed attempt to say something, the silence already lasted for seconds enough for you to fear his frame standing ever so tall and quiet. “Please don’t hurt me.” You managed to say, your voice engulfed in a cry that refused to go out. It wasn’t as if it was going to work; if he was one of the terrorists who caused this incident and really wanted to hurt you, then you were at his mercy and there was little you could do about it.

Maybe, if you were in a better mental and physical condition, you’d be able to identify that the rifle in the hands of the man in front of yourself was of a military model. That all his gear pointed out that he was an operator, someone willing to help. Your mind could not process all the necessary information about him at the given moment, although.

“I will not hurt you, lass.” He explained, and for a moment you felt your chest swell in air and it was hard to contain the immense desire to cry. The heavy steps of the man were made against your small, wounded body. He lowered himself, letting the rifle rest next to him quietly. You gulped in dry, still nervous with your eyes raised to his, now a little closer to you. He wasn’t looking at you — he was looking down, seeming to assess how hurt you were. “I’ll tell you what’s happening now. Okay?” He asked, slowly and calmly, his cold eyes now facing your own, visualizing your soul behind the cover of this hurt shell of yours. You stumbled, and he continued. “I’ll take that away from you, and I need you to help me helping you. Alright? You will be well. I just need you to hold your leg and when I push it over, you roll. Understood?” The man asked, his firm and deep voice being the first source of human contact you had since the lightning caused you to wipe out unconscious hours before. You came in for confirmation.

Ghost nodded back and raised his fingers, counting to three. Contrary to what you might have imagined, he didn’t need to do much to lift the huge concrete block that blocked his left leg from moving — he even had some ease in doing so. He held the concrete above his body, his arms backed over you, he sat down. “Roll.” he commanded, and you obeyed as you could. You leaned her hands on the ground and gave a boost; one of your hands instinctively went to the wounded leg, in an attempt to warm up the pain now felt by finally having released it from the rubble. You couldn’t hold a moan of pain, but he was quickly stifled by the sound of concrete hitting the ground when Ghost let it fall back.

You mentally begged that you could endure that. Your eyes were filled with tears, and a certain despair arose through your throat, your mouth. The anguish of finally feeling the unpleasant smell of the environment, the nervousness of realizing that very possibly, few other people survived that disaster, it was overwhelming your already troubled mind.

Ghost didn’t lose a second in time; he finished positioning the rifle around his body and you felt his arms wrapping you by the waist and the folds of your knees, and he lifted it up with immense ease – it was as if you were featherweight. The gloves in his hands were rough against the sensitivity of your skin, but his touch was as cautious as possible. You could say without a doubt that this soldier of at least twice your height was doing his best not to hurt you any more than you’re already wounded.

“What is your name?” He finally asked, his rifle resting on his back, and you resting over his arms. He wasn’t looking at you – his eyes were fixed ahead, in the direction he was carrying you to, the exit. You answered, and he nodded in acknowledgement. “You can call me Ghost. I am a soldier, yes? We will take care of you.” He said in a clear tactical attempt to calm your nervousness down.

You sat down with your head. “Amelie Miller... Did you find her? My friend, she... did you find her?” You asked, your body trembled as you came to realize his eyes were now boring into yours.

He seemed to look for words that would not hurt you as much as the ones he had to say, but he for one, was not good with words or comforting.

“I’m sorry, girl,” he whispered, in a sigh. “there are no more survivors. You were the only one.”

~ x ~

Your head hurt. Everything hurt; body, arms. There was a blanket around your shoulders and a bottle of water still sealed in your hands. The look in your eyes was empty, blurred; there were a lot of people there. Many doctors, many operators - soldiers like Ghost. One of them wore a mohican, the other had thick eyebrows. The captain was talking to them in an isolated corner, the doctors were talking to each other about your condition, about what should be done from now on. There were agents from the British intelligence surrounding the site, and there were about hundreds of black bags stretched on the floor, closed. You still felt pain, although the healings now prevented blood from flowing freely through your forehead as before. The glass pieces had been removed from your arms, your face was clean now and even so, you never felt so dirty in your entire life.

Every time you dare to blink, you could swear that you would faint. Your hands were getting weaker, loosening around the bottle. The sudden sound of the bottle falling to the ground caught the attention of one of the men there – the captain. As far as you could realize, he called himself something Price.

“Miss.” He said, coming closer to you. Suddenly, there were eyes on you from every angle possible; all of the other soldiers turned to the ambulance where you were sitting now. You slowly raised your face to look back at Price, and he continued. “I’m not going to ask if it’s okay, this question is rhetorical. You need to be hydrated.” He was bowing down in front of you, taking the bottle he dropped and opening it, offering it to you. Your eyes checked at the bottle for a few seconds and your trembling hand finally grabbed it, drinking until the last drop you could - all at once. You could feel your throat burning, your skin seemed to be in living flesh. The appearance of your wounds was not as unpleasant as the feeling of having them, but you knew that all that would leave you some ugly scars.

You could not care about it now – in fact, couldn’t care about anything at all. Your mind was empty and you never felt so apathetic in such a distressful situation.

“What am I going to do now?” You asked, in a whisper, your eyes completely lost. “I—what am I going to do...?,” you repeated, and there was nothing but an absolute feeling of raw pain and loss in your voice right at that moment, for as much as you tried to hide it.

Price swelled his chest, and his lips compressed into a line. “You don’t have to worry about anything now. We’ll take care of everything,” he assured. “The government has a great defense program for disasters like this, you won’t be without a roof,” he finished, trying to calm you down. You closed your eyes and shaken your head, but you did not respond. There was nothing to say, nothing to do; what could be done besides trusting that everything would go well? Trust that they would have a plan for you, a shelter, doctors, a chance of living after you were supposed to die in such a horrific way?

You didn’t even know if you wanted all that. Didn’t even knew if you wanted to be the only survivor. Surely not: at that time, you would rather have died among the other more than a hundred people who were now in black bags scattered on the floor in front of you. You felt so much - you felt gratitude for their work, for saving you, but at the same time you couldn’t help but to feel like a fraud for surviving while other died. Others that, somewhat, deserved more than you to live. There was so much in your mind now, but little that you could really synthesize and make sense of.

You drowned your face between your hands, unable to cry, but wanting so deeply to hide from them, from those men, from doctors, from the press, from everything. Wanting to be away from everything, wanting to be dead for once.

A little further away, Ghost observed you. His broad arms crossed, his posture relentlessly perfect as always. His eyes looked at your gestures, scanned your body —all those wounds, poor girl, he thought. Although he was sure there was no more of a heart in his chest, he felt comprehensive towards your emotions. The horrors you had lived in such a short space of time, the unbearable consequences that that meant for your poor mind. The trauma. The pain.

He could not help but think that he saw a bit of himself in you. Not a bit of Ghost – a little bit of Simon. A little bit of the little Simon who felt an immeasurable strain in his chest, a void that could not be filled.

When the doctors finally helped you to get up in the ambulance and sit on one of the available chairs, your face turned over your own shoulder and you found his eyes stuck to yours. It felt intimidating in some way; perhaps the way his confidence didn’t allow him to look away while you stared at him, or something in the way he seemed capable of reading right through you like a good book of his. He was a savior to you, and somehow it still seemed his persona was conflicting with the one of a savior. He was something else, perhaps still a benefactor, but somehow, a very dangerous man.

There was not a single feeling in his eyes, quite the opposite. There was pure coldness, and yours on the other hand carried some gratitude and ingratitude at the same time. You felt grateful that he had saved you, but at the same time, felt angry at him for not having let you die. You entered the ambulance, and your eyes continued to lock a gaze against his until the moment someone closed the car door from outside.

Ghost turned his eyes at last, and saw Price approaching.

“Fuck.” The captain whispered, laying his hands on his waist, looking at all the misfortune that the incident had caused to that place. “How many bodies?” He asked, looking at Simon with the corner of his eyes.

“A hundred and two so far.” Ghost answered quietly.

“And have you found the bodies of the sons of bitches who did this?” Price said with some disgust and hatred attached to his voice. Ghost assented positively, which made Price crack the dust almost instantly into a distressed expression.

“Motherfuckers.” He grunted, turning to the rest of the team. Soap, who had been remaining in silence for thorough all the search, dared to finally speak.

“We have a lot to report, hm?” He raised his eyebrows, and received a Price assent in response.

“To the headquarters." The captain ordered, making his way to the helicopter that awaited for them, and they left.

#simon ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley #ghost cod #ghost mw2 #simon ghost riley #cod ghost

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storiesoflilies · 9 months

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Of Angels and Curses

Synopsis - In a world where Angels and Curses are locked in a never ending war, an unsuspecting seraph becomes entangled with the very thing she is fated to eradicate.

Pairing - Curse!Toji Fushiguro x f!Angel!Reader. Curse!Ryomen Sukuna x Reader. Angel!Satoru Gojo x Reader.

Warnings - General descriptions of violence and injuries, eventual smut.

A/N: Aaaaand here we go!! I’m posting this earlier than I was supposed to in honor of Toji’s birthday. Fun fact - Toji and I share the same birthday :) Ko-Fi.

Next part — Chapter 2

-•-

Chapter 1

The sky was falling ever so softly.

She’d spent so long staring upwards at it, utterly astounded, because it never occurred that way when she imagined it in her head. There was supposed to be an all-consuming deafening rumbling, chunks of blue tumbling down from above, and fiery meteors the size of moons hurling themselves into the chaos of a dying Earth.

But no, it was more like a hundred million and one glowing embers fluttering down like beautiful dying butterflies.

Is this what it’s like when Angels fall?

Y/N thought it was a more peaceful way to go; instead of a violent plummet into the dirt to trade their lives for another one as a Curse. It was a nice thought, naive even, because seraphim were not kind nor merciful to those who they deemed had turned against them. Stupid, wishful thinking, a selfish desire for the world to be anything but exactly what it is; sin was as inevitable as the sun, rising and falling with time in a terrible terrible cycle. She’d seen the streets run crimson like glimmering rubies as Angel’s wings were torn from their bones and flesh, heard their screams from afar as they begged and pleaded not to be cast out. It was always the same; Heaven is, and always would remain, divinely perfect, and it would forever be ruthless in its pursuit of maintaining it. Free will is a beautiful thing, certainly, so long as one made only the right choices.

She shook her head, cool ash flaking off her hair, and picked up her katana from where it lay beside a Curse’s corpse. Satoru Gojo had trusted her with hunting down this particularly erratic Second Layer Curse that had been capturing and torturing wounded Angels. Indeed, she could see the remnants of its latest mangled victim underneath its grotesque blubbery body; a once living soul now just an unrecognizable face beaten into a bloody feathery mess. Maybe they had once sinned, perhaps not, but what did it matter? They were just another tally to be scratched on a plaque, a life reduced to a single scratch on a stone already marred by millions of markings.

Y/N briefly considered attempting to retrieve the body for a proper burial, but it was already far too late in the day. The last rays of the sun threw a brilliant shade of red across the sky, a low hum of anticipation in the air that whispered of all the fury and violence of thunder and lightening; night would soon fall to unleash the lethal Curses that dwelled in the deepest layers of Hell. If she didn’t hurry and ascend to Heaven, then she would bear witness to the unholiest of rituals, as the Earth would crack open beneath her and the molten fire of Sukuna’s wrath would burst forth and consume her body and soul.

She kneeled in front of the Curse; its forked tongue rolling out of a toothless mouth, lidless eyes tipped backwards into its head, and blackened blood dripping from the fatal wound right through its brain. Y/N’s thumb squelched uncomfortably as she pressed it firmly into the rubbery skin of its forehead, and murmured a quick prayer for the deceased seraph, and a blaze of golden light engulfed both corpses. Gojo had taught her how to use her divine energy to smite dead Curses, just to make sure they won’t try again in his own words, and this power could also be extended to cremate their own.

The ground groaned and rumbled, as if protesting against its part to play in the cycle of violence, serving as a sinister warning for her to hurry. A wave of panic washed over her, and Y/N closed her eyes; grasping to control her lackluster wisps of divine energy, and cried out into the seemingly empty plane of the Unlimited Void.

But empty it was not, for Satoru Gojo sees and hears all within his domain.

Within an instant, she felt herself floating into and across the Void as Gojo’s essence consumed and caressed her soul; still as exhilarating and frightening as the first time she had tepidly stepped through this plane of existence. And Y/N could feel all of him, but could do nothing but helplessly travel through the cosmos of his own making. Gojo was like a turbulent ocean, ever-changing and impatient, but perplexingly beautiful; a ticking clock waiting to chime a tune of misery to signal his arrival against his enemies. Not many Angels were privy to ascending into Heaven this way, because Gojo simply didn’t want to do it for just anybody. He was like a fussy child picking only the best things to play with; his trust the ultimate game to win, and many had tried. Y/N didn’t think it was so complex, because she understood fear in a way Gojo could never, and ordinary Angels couldn’t face the fact that their souls would be bared so openly and judged by the Six Eyes himself.

Y/N blinked, and found herself in front of him.

“Cutting it a little close, eh?”

Satoru Gojo stood with his corded forearms crossed over each other, tall and broad form leaning back against an iridescent golden pole of the Gates of Heaven; a marble statue carved directly from God’s hands that demanded complete attention, a perfect vision of beauty that Y/N could never tire of looking at it. He wore a bemused smirk on his face, clearly relishing in her reliance of his power to save her from certain doom, but Y/N liked to think he didn’t completely look down on her. Perhaps she could give him the benefit of the doubt; he had been waiting for her outside the city, and maybe expected her to ascend to Heaven normally, which required an Angel to fly upwards from the Earth and pass through each of the seven layers of Heaven. Each of these layers were well defended by legions of seraphim ready to lay their lives against imminent attacks, bolstered by colossal golden gates similar to the one guarding the main city.

“But you’ve done it, right?” He continued, his eyes completely focused on her as she approached.

Gojo often asked questions he already knew the answers to, something he did with her and his other favorites; a way of settling nerves and putting them at ease around him, as if he hadn’t rooted through every crack and crevice of their minds, pretending he didn’t know them more intimately than they probably did themselves.

“It’s done.”

He hummed appreciatively, the hundreds of eyes decorating his wings blinking intermittently to give an illusion of twinkling cerulean lights, and extended his hand for her to take. Y/N accepted, refusal simply not an option, her fingers intertwining with his as he dropped the infinite barrier coating his body, and let him lead her through the Golden Gates and into the city; their kingdom far above the Earth – where no Curse had ever managed to breach.

Heaven was a seemingly never-ending city; a labyrinth of buildings and twisting pathways built from white marble, with pearlescent towers of varying heights dotted throughout. – a perfect pristine canvas of glittering white diamonds. Many Angels would live together in each of these towers, forming extended families to be born and raised together for generations. Cool air washed through every twist and turn of the city, flowing between trees with silver leaves bearing the sweetest figs; which grew intermittently between any sliver of space between the rock, and some were even as tall as the towers themselves.

“Gojo, couldn’t you see the sky below?”

“Hmm?”

“The sky was burning before I left, it was falling.”

“Ah yes, well… that’s no surprise. Geto has become a Curse, and he is past my sight now. It makes sense the first thing he did was kill the Sky Sentries, so I suppose it’s a good thing you called for me through the Void.”

She froze, and he stopped with her.

Geto is, was, Gojo’s second in command; his most trusted confidant and closest ally. If he had fallen, then there would be many other Angels who would have willingly fallen with him. The Sky Sentries guarded the sky of the Earth, the first layer of Heaven; they stood at the frontline of the war, warriors that couldn’t afford to rest, for come nightfall it was a bloodbath of Curses attempting to breach the first barrier.

So many of us are dead. More lines on the wall.

“Gojo, I-,” Y/N paused, unsure of what to say. “I’m sorry.”

At this, he released her hand and turned to face her. “Why? He made his choice.”

Gojo turned away again, staring down at the ground beneath his feet like he was seeing right through it to the Earth and scorched skies, and scoffed loudly. It was a seething sound of a betrayal that had cut him deeply, and it was a promise of violence and vengeance. Nobody escaped punishment, especially not from the Six Eyes, and Geto was certainly not above consequences.

“You know, we were all given free will. It shouldn’t surprise you, when an Angel - any Angel - falls into darkness and becomes a Curse,” he stated with finality, a sharp edge of a steel knife in his voice.

“But, Geto was our family,” Y/N breathed out shakily, her sadness starting to bubble out uncontrollably. “I didn’t know he was changing, I never noticed anything was wrong.”

“Neither did I,” Gojo whispered defeatedly, a complete change in his tone, letting slip just a sliver of his hurt for someone else to see.

Geto and Gojo were born three centuries before Y/N, and became nigh inseparable; a perfect example of how strong the bond of comradery should be between Angels. She had first met Geto when he had started training her to fight, he’d still hadn’t risen to power back then, and they quickly became close. Of course, naturally Gojo took an interest in her as Geto’s pupil, and over the next two hundred years, Y/N had witnessed them rise through the ranks of the Angels; until they reached the pinnacle of power, their combined strength looming over them all like the omnipresent presence of God in Heaven – and yet, they still kept her within their circle. But Geto was different to Gojo, because he understood that strength wasn’t a gift distributed to everyone, and Y/N had seen him fight a fraction harder just to stand on par beside Gojo on the podium of divinity. He had become her brother; a pillar of strength in her life in a way that the Six Eyes could never be, someone who she could truly say would fight to the death for her if he thought her time had come too early.

Gojo was silent for a moment before continuing, “But the sky will heal, Shoku and her followers can do it. There’s always more of us ready to take each other’s place, you don’t need to worry about it anymore.”

He tenderly stroked her cheek smeared with dried Curse blood, watching as a stray tear escaped and ran down her face like a petulant child, and let out a great sigh as if it was the greatest inconvenience for him to witness her sadness. Y/N felt sheepish; how could she be so upset over a betrayer, a snake that had bitten the hand of someone who had thought it graceful and beautiful. Gojo’s great wings unfurled around them, his feathers tickling her exposed neck softly like a lover would, and his arms pulled her into an embrace.

“Im alright Satoru,” she sniffled after some time. “I just need to be alone, to clean myself and pray for him.”

“His soul is gone, you know that Y/N,” Gojo said softly, like she was a precious crystal he held in his palms, threatening to shatter at any moment.

“I don’t care, I need to put him to rest in some way, for my own peace.”

“Let me come with you then, when I return in the morning. You’re too exhausted to go and pray now.”

“Gojo, please. I need this.”

At this he let her go, his wings snapping back in place like they had been stung, and placed his hand on her head in a blessing. A soothing cool sensation spread all the way down from his palms, healing her weary bones and muscles; bathing her in the rarely tranquil ocean of his divine power, and she shuddered in both fear and relief. Some of his followers had gathered around them, eagerly awaiting their commander to follow into the ensuing battle at the First Gate; curiously glancing at the sight of the two of them, like they were forbidden art that nobody could look at for too long. She knew that he had to go; Gojo always went to battle when the last light left the Earth, even if he had already been fighting during the day. But such was the duty of the Six Eyes — always in the heat of battle, never tiring and never resting.

“Go and sleep,” he said, an order; daring her to refuse again. “I’ll see you in the morning. We can pray together then.”

“Be safe,” she whispered.

He nodded, and then vanished instantaneously, leaving Y/N alone surrounded by the watchful eyes of the other seraphim.

-•-

From light we are born, and to ashes we return.

The beginning of a prayer uttered for those who had passed.

Who once was mighty and now fallen.

Y/N had recited these words many times over, but never once had she done so for a Curse.

Heavenly Father, may you guide our souls to peace in Paradise.

She bathed in starlight and galaxies, and sank backwards into the bathing pool; sending her further into space, to a time and place where her brother hadn’t left her. Caked Curse blood swirled away in the holy water as she sank deeper, her eyes never closing as she stared up at the stars in the night sky.

Where we may all meet again.

Y/N whimpered pitifully as she thought again of Geto in the depths of Hell, wondering if he was suffering as his once holy power was warped into something wicked and corrupt. Would he even look the same, would she recognize him if he materialized in front of her at this very moment; a snarling animalistic Curse like the one she had killed today. Or would he remain as he was like a blip in time, a frozen facade of happiness, but with only malice and sin left underneath it all?

To remain in your eternal light forever.

She emerged, water running down her face as her heart constricted painfully, and clasped her hands together and whispered, “Forgive him, oh please forgive him.”

What was else she supposed to do? Oh how she wished she could go back; maybe then she might have noticed if his eyes had tears of darkness in them, if he had laid there alone as the night full of terrors ushered and coaxed his soul to their side. Then she could have told herself what she was meant to do, instead of grieving for Geto like he was already dead like a ghost she would forever clutch on to; stuck reliving a trail of memories she once thought she knew most of, and now none at all. But if she looked into Gojo’s blue eyes, would she find a glimpse of the brother who lifted her on to his shoulders and raised her with dignity and kindness?

Enough, enough .

Y/N climbed up the steps of the pool as droplets of stars cascaded down her hair, down between her thighs, and down to her feet. She wondered what sort of horrors were unfolding hundreds of thousands of leagues beneath her; if Gojo was striking down Curses with all the fury and might of a scorned lightning storm. She murmured silent prayers for the creatures who stood in his way, and for the seraphim whose lives would be lost as a consequence of Geto’s betrayal. Her feet tapped against the cool marble pathway leading from the pool to the back entrance of Gojo’s tower, and Y/N shook her wings free of any remaining water droplets that flung to her feathers. Her body was bare for all to see as she passed through the empty hallways, but she wasn’t concerned; all those who followed the Six Eyes had followed him into the night, into war. Gojo hadn’t deemed Y/N strong enough to fight during the night, and he never would; for his own selfish reasons, he was keeping her safe.

Her thoughts strayed to when he had openly embraced her in public, and knew that it would have added some truth to the rumor that they were more than just comrades. It was common for Angels that hadn’t found their soulmates to marry each other, as it unfortunately wasn’t always a guaranteed event during one’s lifetime; and of course new seraphim must be born to fight in the war. Since neither of them had found theirs as of yet, so many believed that they would eventually marry. Gojo had made numerous advances to court her over the past few decades, namely allowing her to stay within his tower, as well as hints during various conversations that he expected her to marry him when he finally did ask. Y/N knew that he was aware of her hope for her own soulmate, and that was the only reason he had graced her with his patience, but hope was dangerous in war – it was only a matter of time before he saved her from her own misery.

It would be the most practical thing to do, and Y/N truly did care for him, but was that really enough?

Satoru Gojo was an enigma. On the one hand, he was adored for his effortless displays of power as he could single-handedly decimate armies. On the other, what made him loved was also what made him feared; all he had to do was drag a seraph charged of sin into his Unlimited Void, and they would be helpless as he brutally tore through their minds in search of the truth. If found guilty, he would rip their wings from their backs himself, and then hurtle them towards Hell. Satoru Gojo was as revered as he was terrifying; like he had attained a status close to godliness. Why he had chosen her to be his, Y/N would never know; she could only accept him when he finally came calling for her.

Y/N shook her head, trying to banish all thoughts from her head, and slipped into her bed as her wet hair soaked through the pillow.

What if Geto shows himself tonight?

Perhaps she was right to mourn him, Gojo would strike him down for what he had done. Would Geto give reasons as to why he had sinned if he could speak properly? Y/N hoped so; whatever his answer, it could steel her resolve for the hard fight ahead. But for now, she attempted to empty her head of dark thoughts in an effort to sleep. She would have to be well rested to deal with the fallout of Geto’s betrayal; many new Curses would have been born from all the anguish he had caused.

Can I really hunt those who were my allies just this morning?

Y/N squeezed her eyes shut, hands clamped over her ears, and prayed the negativity and heartache away from her dreams.

-•-

A purple aura permeated Y/N’s room when she awakened, spilling in feverishly from outside the window, and an eerie silence from the previous night lingered and settled like dust. The battle for the sky must still be ongoing if no one was home yet, which meant it was as brutal as she dreaded it to be; for Gojo must have used his Hollow Purple for forcing the sky to change color. She felt fresh fear being thrown over her like a bucket of ice, as the possibility of more of her family dying hit her instantaneously. Y/N quickly donned a fresh set of armor; it was morning now, Gojo couldnt forbid her from descending to Earth since the moon and stars had vanished from sight – she was permitted to go and fight.

Wait.

Y/N froze.

It was Gojo’s voice in her head, his authority reverberating within her mind like a great ringing bell. A strange feeling gathered in the pit of her stomach; he never communicated telepathically with her. Was he trying to keep her from harm? Why wasn’t he allowing her to descend?

I’m coming to you.

Butterflies furiously erupted in her chest, and Y/N hurried outside the tower; the purple glow of the sky growing stronger the closer she got to the entrance of the tower, like a warning nobody could possibly ignore.

The streets outside were in chaos.

Wounded seraphim were being carried by other Angels from a large swirling blue portal at the farthest end of the street from her, and were immediately being tended to by Shoko’s followers. There was an acrid smell in the air; of anguish and death, the scent of suffering from Hell itself. Y/N spied Nanami Kento holding his blunted sword close to his chest, eyes closed as if he was deep in pain but keeping it hidden, as Shoko wrapped his bloodied arms with fresh bandages.

Before Y/N could push her way towards them, the crowd imploded with feverish excitement and shouting as the portal zapped shut, and she jumped back in fright. An unmistakable white head of hair was moving through the crowd, and the seraphim were singing with glee as they parted for their champion; a god splitting the sea, and holding back the oncoming tsunami of adoration. And then, Gojo finally came into view from where she stood, an indecipherable look upon his face as his eyes roamed over every seraphim in the crowd. His gaze inevitably locked onto her, and Y/N noted a crazed spark in his eyes that made her feel uneasy. But she was frozen in place, like prey helplessly watching a predator rushing towards it, as Gojo strode towards her; broad build dripping with Curse blood as he climbed the stairs, stopping just a step below her.

And then he kneeled in front of her, and the universe went quiet.

Y/N’s eyes widened, “Gojo, what are-”

He reached behind his back, procuring two katanas in his palms to her like they were an offering, but she knew exactly where they had come from. The blades were made of pure holy silver, diamonds and pearls encrusted on the hilt — unmistakably Geto’s weapons.

“Geto lost the right to these holy weapons when he betrayed us,” Gojo said as he turned the blades over in his hands, examining them with that same indecipherable look.

“He’s dead then?” Y/N breathed out shakily.

Gojo shook his head, “No, he escaped, but all his followers have been punished.”

She sucked in a breath.

So many more dead.

“These are yours now,” he continued. “If you’ll have them.”

The Six Eyes had never once kneeled for anyone. Y/N knew what was coming, what he was about to ask of her; but how and why had he decided so suddenly that now was the time? He stared up at her with those all knowing eyes, like he was privy to her thoughts whirling in her head, and maybe he was.

Let him go.

How could she? Her heart ached for a part of her soul she had never even met — and might never. Even if she did meet her soulmate, marrying Gojo would forever bind her to him, lest she would be cast out of Heaven for the sin of forsaking her marriage vows. Would he ever be able to make her move on and forget? Did he really know just how much he was asking her for? Her heart hammered in her chest; she wasn’t ready for this, not now, and maybe not ever.

He is Satoru Gojo. If he isn’t enough for you, then who else is?

“I promise to protect you from anything that would hurt you,” Gojo vowed, his voice low for words only meant for her. “I will uphold your virtue and strength, and I promise to stand by your side no matter what happens. I promise to end the Curse of Sukuna, and create a paradise for us and our children, even if it kills me.”

Never once had Satoru Gojo ever mentioned the possibility of his death; it was unnerving, unspeakable, unnatural. His usual saccharine tone was nowhere to be found, and it was deathly quiet all around them – every soul hanging on every word they spoke with bated breath.

“I promise to love you, but please… all I ask is for you to love me and accept me for all that I am, for who I’m going to become,” Gojo whispered, and for the first time in their centuries of friendship, Y/N could see desperation deep within his irises.

She breathed out, steeling herself from the heartache and loss settling deep inside her; her defeat was imminent, but she would rise again to take her seat on the throne beside him as his equal. The world jittered in anticipation as Y/N took both of Geto’s katanas in each of her hands, her knuckles turning white as she gripped their hilts. Gojo stared at her, pupils blown wide; from adoration for her or the heat of battle, she didn’t know.

“I accept you, Satoru Gojo.”

Nothing would ever be the same again.

-•-

#toji fushiguro #toji fushigro x reader #toji x reader #jujutsu kaisen #female reader #gojo satoru #soulmate au #ryomen sukuna #sukuna x reader #sukuna x you #ryomen sukuna x reader #toji smut #sukuna smut #toji fushiguro x reader #gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #jjk smut #jjk x you #smut

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blueiscoool · 11 months

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The Tomb of a Royal Scribe Discovered in Egypt

Czech experts have made another important discovery in the Egyptian archaeological site in Abusir. They found the hitherto unexplored tomb of the royal scribe Dzhehutiemhat, which is richly decorated in the form of many hieroglyphic texts and images. They mainly consist of ritual and religious texts, which were supposed to ensure the soul of the deceased an eternal life in the next world.

In April and May of this year, another part of field research by Czech Egyptologists regarding shaft tombs from the middle of the first millennium BC took place in Abusir, Egypt. It was here that the archaeological team of the Czech Institute of Egyptology of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University discovered the tomb of a hitherto unknown dignitary from the time of the Persian invasion of Egypt.

“It is a richly decorated shaft tomb of medium size, whose owner, a certain Džehutiemhat, held the office of royal scribe,” explains Ladislav Bareš, who has been coordinating the research of Abusir shaft tombs for a long time.

From the tomb, the above-ground part of which was destroyed already in ancient times, only the main shaft was preserved, at the bottom of which lay a burial chamber made of limestone blocks at a depth of 14 meters. Access to it was provided by a small, more northerly shaft and a narrow corridor approximately three meters long connecting the access shaft with the burial chamber.

For reasons still unknown, this access shaft was largely filled with several dozen decorated limestone blocks, originating from the dismantled above-ground part of the nearby majestic tomb of General Menechibnekon.

A tomb with rich decoration

The burial chamber is richly decorated with texts and other scenes. A long sequence of incantations against snakebite from the Pyramid Texts covers the north entrance wall. Interestingly, the snakes mentioned in these magical texts represented a potential danger, but could also serve as powerful protectors of the deceased and his mummy.

“While the entrance to the nearby Menechibnekon’s burial chamber was protected by the guardians of the gates of the 144th chapter of the Book of the Dead, in the case of Džehutiemhat, snakes from the Pyramid Texts play this role,” adds Renata Landgráfová, director of the Institute of Egyptology and an expert on the ancient Egyptian language and texts.

The south and west walls are covered with a sacrificial ritual and an extensive sacrificial list. On the ceiling of the burial chamber are depictions of the journey of the sun god Reo through the sky, first in the morning and then in the evening celestial bar. The depictions are accompanied by hymns to the rising and setting sun. Inside the burial chamber covered with relief decoration is a large stone sarcophagus, which also bears hieroglyphic inscriptions and depictions of gods, both outside and inside. The lid is decorated with texts taken from the Book of the Dead, but also excerpts from the much older Pyramid Texts, which partially repeat sayings that also appear on the walls of the burial chamber.

Ritual texts for eternal life

On the bottom of the inner wall of the sarcophagus bath, the goddess of the west, Imentet, is depicted, and its inner sides bear the so-called canopic sayings, spoken by this goddess and the earth god Geb. “The goddess of the west inside the sarcophagus represents the protector, guide and symbolic mother of the deceased,” explains Jiří Janák, who analyzes and interprets religious and magical texts as part of field research.

All the mentioned spiritual-ritual texts were supposed to ensure the deceased a smooth entry into a blissful and well-secured eternal life in the afterlife.

The tomb of the scribe Dzhehutiemhat was discovered almost empty, as it was robbed probably already in the 5th century AD, similar to other tombs in this burial ground.

The deceased suffered from sedentary work

From the anthropological analysis of the skeletal remains, which was carried out by leading Egyptian experts, it was found that Dzhehutiemhat died at a relatively early age of around 25 years, he bore the signs of a kind of occupational disease (wear and tear of the spine during sedentary work) and suffered from severe osteoporosis, i.e. thinning of the bones.

The latter fact could place him in the family of other inhabitants of the Abusir shaft tomb burial, in whom the disease was also confirmed, such as the famous Iufaa, the owner of a nearby much larger tomb, whose unlooted burial chamber was discovered in 1996.

It is therefore possible that most of the owners of the tombs buried in this part of the Abusir necropolis belonged to one extended family, firmly anchored in the military elite of late Saiyan Egypt. However, Dzhehutiemhat’s mother probably came from completely different circles and a different part of Egypt at that time. Her two names can be translated as “Nubian” and “Fox”, while the latter is written in an unusual, most likely Berber form.

They also found a collection of pottery in the tomb. “The discovery of a large fragment of a Chian amphora with a perfectly smoothed edge is also very interesting, because the ancient looters probably used it as a shovel,” says Květa Smoláriková, who is an expert on Egyptian ceramics and Greek imports in the Czech team.

“The recently discovered tomb of the dignitary Džehutiemhat on the Abusír archaeological concession is the latest piece of knowledge in the mosaic of the history of ancient Egypt at the end of its glory in the late period, in the 6th century BC,” says Miroslav Bárta, director of Czech archaeological research in Abusír, about the discovery.

“The shaft tombs represent a special type of tombs of this time. They were created as a specific attempt by the ancient Egyptian elites for a renaissance and are based on the form of the tomb of King Djoser, the founder of the famous Old Kingdom, the time of the pyramid builders in the 3rd millennium BC,” he adds.

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stinkysam · 2 months

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Serge “Frenchie” - Millions pieces.

Warning : nsfw, blood loss, slight gore (?), long ass intro, blowjob (receiving), come eating.

Genre : smut

Synopsis : “could you write Frenchie x male supe in, like, a body worship nsfw scenario where Frenchie is comforting him? Preferable related to his powers but could be dysphoria, self-esteem, whatever (I support creative liberties tbh).” - anon

Reader : male (he/you)

A/N : for a better visibility of reader’s powers, see Buggy the Clown from One Piece (tho it's a bit different)

You didn't know what were your powers apart from your super strength until the day you fought against Homelander with Butcher and Soldier Boy at Herogasm, your fists doing barely anything against his laser eyes who slit your throat from left to right, separing your head from the rest of your body. You fell to your knees slowly before falling on your front, head rolling on the ground, blood gushing everywhere.

When you reopened your eyes, Homelander was gone, Annie and M.M by your… side ? Standing next to your body ? You blinked a few times trying to make sense of it and get rid of the hazy feeling.

“Fuck.” M.M whispered. Blood continued spilling from where your head was supposed to be. He was at a loss for words.

“What should we do ?” Asked Annie, feeling nauseous from seeing you in such a state.

“Grab his head.” M.M said. They weren't going to leave you here. They'd take you to the base and give you a proper burial. Somewhere.

Annie grabbed your head cautiously, unsure on how to hold you.

As M.M moved closer to you to grab your body, your arm moved suddenly, as if to rub your head, making them jump in surprise.

“What the…” You said quietly, almost inaudibly, feeling foggy from the extreme blood loss, looking at your body by M.M’s feet, while your hand is groggily patting the air in hope to find your throbbing head. “Why can I see… my body like that ?”

Annie turns with horror your head around to look at your face.

“How… are you still… alive ?” She asked shakily, words slowly coming out of her mouth as if she struggled to find them due to the shock.

“What ?” You replied tiredly, confused, barely remembering what happened. “Why is my body…” You started again, slowly losing your words, ready to pass out again.

M.M checked your pulse as if to make sure you were really alive and nodded to Annie. After a beat she moved closer to your body, unsure and awkwardly, and placed your head where it should be.

In a few seconds it was re-attaching itself together, leaving a big scar all around your neck where you had been lasered.

Since that day, you always found yourself in situations where you get heavily cut. Arms ripped, hands torn off, fingers cut, thighs slit, ankles deeply severed. But you always glued yourself back together, leaving big scars where you got cut.

You quickly found out that once a part of you had been severed, you could detach it at will, sending your hands flying to strangle someone while your legs kicked another person in the nuts, your head flying above them to yell where the others were hiding, and this, without major blood loss or having to saw through your skin, flesh and bones. You could be cut in a million pieces and re-attach yourself afterwards.

Still, as much as you liked your powers, each scar left you with a sour taste in your mouth.

They were big and everything but neat, and you could often physically remember the pain it caused you. Sometimes it was just your fingers hurting, sometimes it was everywhere at once, feeling like you were being ripped apart again.

Frenchie knew you had trouble with them, it was obvious and you weren't particularly silent about it. You hid them with bandages as much as you could or wore clothes that would hide your neck, arms and hands, only taking them off to sleep or when you knew you'd be alone all day.

He knew all too well how you could feel about your scars, he himself had a multitude of them on his body, often reminding him how he got them, with the pain it brought him.

So he tried to help make you feel better about them.

You were currently laying on your bed, the sheets thrown aside, no bandages or clothes to hide your scars apart from your boxers hiding the cuts around your thighs. Frenchie was resting next to you, kissing your shoulder as he fought the urge to take a nap, one of his hands absentmindedly caressing your side.

He hummed, feeling comfortable, and you smiled.

He moved to place another kiss on the side of your neck this time, feeling the irregularities of your scar against his lips.

“I think that you're a handsome man.” He stated out of the blue after a minute with a small smile and shining eyes.

You opened your eyes and frowned, slightly taken aback.

“Okay ?” You replied, laughing quietly.

“Non mais je suis sérieux.” He moved so he could look you in the eyes, grabbing your face with one hand to make you look at him. “Not once I could think the opposite.”

“First of all, you're biased.” You nodded half joking, half serious, enjoying the warmth of his hand on your cheek as you turned yourself to fully face him, the hand that caressed your side now on your back.

“How ?”

“We're dating ?” You frowned, as if it was the most logical of all things.

“Oh, because I'm dating you, I can't find you handsome, huh ?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, fuck that. J'emmerde ta logique.” He said with a frown, making you laugh.

“Okay, okay.” You caressed his cheek, trying to wave it off so he would change the topic. He didn't. He kissed your neck again.

“Head to toes, there is not a thing that I don't like.” He smiled against your lips before pecking them, his fingers tapping against your spine absentmindedly.

“I could find you a few things.” You laughed, kissing him back.

“Non. I love everything.” He grabbed your hands, planting his lips on your scarred wrists.

“Stop.” You said, trying not to show embarrassment. But instead of stopping he continued, kissing your palms, fingers and wrists once more.

“Non.”

When he let go of your hands it was to attack your face, kissing whatever he could reach as quickly as possible as you laughed. Eventually he landed on your lips, savoring the kiss a bit more, then moved to your chin then under it, until he reached the scar around your neck.

Quickly, he pushed you on your back as he climbed on top of you and kissed your scar again. One of his thumbs caressed it slowly as if to memorize each bump and irregularities.

“Serge.” You warned quietly, nervousness evident in your voice, not feeling the greatest about him studying your scar like this despite enjoying the attention and affection.

“I love them.” He started, looking at you. “Because each time you survived.”

You stared at him as if you were debating whether to believe him or not.

He kissed the scar you had at the joint of your left arm and shoulder.

“As horrible as it had been, you survived.” He smiled, grabbing your hands to kiss your fingers.

One of his hands moved to touch your body, fingers lightly caressing you, giving you goosebumps as he focused on kissing your collarbones and moving lower, slowly, as if to not let an inch of your skin feel unloved or untouched.

When he was low enough, he pulled your boxers out of the way, throwing them aside, before caressing your thighs, feeling the rather new scars on your soft skin. He planted a few kisses there, his hand caressing your other thigh as you watched his every move.

“Avec ou sans.” He stroked your dick before giving it a peck. “You're still handsome. You’re still you.” He looked at your eyes, making sure you were listening to him as he jerked it slowly as it began to harden in his hand.

Frenchie squirmed a bit, changing to a better position, allowing both of his hands to caress you, thumbs tracing your scars gently.

“Malgré mes cicatrices, tu m’aimes, right ?” He asked, though he already knew your answer.

“Bien sûr.”

“C'est pareil pour moi. Pourquoi mon amour devrait changer à la vue de tes cicatrices ? Mh ?”

At your lack of answer he nipped your inner thigh, away from the scar, making you yelp and close your legs in surprise, squishing his head for a second before reopening them.

“It shouldn't.” You said and he kissed where he bit you. Correct.

“Carrément it shouldn't !” He replied, frowning before focusing back on your dick, thumb tracing the veins, lips kissing the side by the base, slowly going up to the tip. “Je t'aime. And no scars will change that, understood ?”

You nodded, watching his hand move up and down your dick slowly, teasing you. You sighed, letting the pleasure get to your head as Frenchie began to lick you before wrapping his lips around you.

“Fuck…” You quietly said as he started to bob his head, his other hand massaging your inner thigh cautiously, not wanting to irritate the scars, always gentle.

It felt so warm and wet inside his mouth, you refused to close your eyes to not miss a thing, feeling his tongue press against your cock and move, making you squirm.

Your right hand landed in his hair, at first just to touch him and to keep him there, but rapidly it was to control the pace. You closed your legs a bit and he wrapped his arms around them, taking you deeper in his mouth.

You knew Frenchie had no gag reflex but each time it blew your mind, though you remained cautious, not wanting to wake a remnant of it while your tip was in his throat.

His grip around your legs tightened, making sure you wouldn't move.

As if you'd want to get away from this.

You moved his head up and down on your dick, cursing quietly as his mouth swallowed you whole. It was a sight to behold. A bit of drool pooling at the base of your cock.

Your hips bucked into him, making him hum and swallow around you, close to sending you over the edge. You could feel his thumbs caress your thighs, fingers tracing your scars delicately.

“Fuck, I'm close.” You warned, sighing and panting loudly. Your hips stuttering upward, bucking into his mouth to get more, his eyes flickered to yours before pulling away to jerk you off quickly. His lips were by your wet tip, tongue out, ready for you to come.

And that's what you did, you came on his tongue, shooting ropes of cum in his mouth with a loud moan, and when you were done, he swallowed it all, licking your dick clean and smiling cheekily at you before crawling to kiss you.

“I love you.” He whispered, booping your nose, making you chuckle.

“I love you too.” You kissed his cheek. “I'm not saying I love them now, but maybe I'll try to not bother myself with bandages. Maybe.”

“I knew I gave awesome blowjobs.” He said proudly with a large smile. You frowned, rolling on your side as he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you closer.

“Le melon du gars...” You whispered, smiling, and he laughed before kissing your forehead.

Traduction - Translation :

Non mais je suis sérieux. - No but I'm serious.

J’emmerde ta logique. - Fuck your logic.

Avec ou sans. - With or without.

Malgré mes cicatrices, tu m’aimes ? - Despite my scars, you love me ?

Bien sûr. - Of course.

C'est pareil pour moi. Pourquoi mon amour devrait changer à la vue de tes cicatrices ? - It's the same for me. Why would my love change at the sight of your scars ?

Carrément. - Damn right.

Je t'aime. - I love you.

Le melon du gars… - The melon (to have a big ego) of this guy.

#male reader #m!reader #the boys #the boys imagine #the boys x male reader #the boys tv #frenchie #frenchie imagine #frenchie x male reader #frenchie the boys

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perlelune · 8 months

Note

I love literally everything you’ve ever written! Could we get an update on the reader in hunger? Maybe on the day of or after poor Henry’s execution

“I want you to see exactly what happens when you don’t do as I say,” Coriolanus whispers, warm breath fanning over your temple as his fingers painfully squeeze your chin, guaranteeing you don’t miss a second of your husband’s execution.

The noose is tied around Henry’s neck, a look of utter confusion and helplessness painting his features as he’s being dragged over the stage.

Adrenaline pumps through your veins, your pulse thrumming beneath the president’s palm.

The peacekeepers tug on the other side of the rope and a void opens under Henry’s feet.

It’s quick. Horrifyingly so. One second Henry’s quivering on the stage, claiming his innocence once more. And the next, he’s hanging lifelessly from the rope, his body limp as his feet dangle in the air.

A shaky breath slips from your mouth.

As you try to look away, Coriolanus’ grip on your face tightens. His body encases yours from behind, his other hand resting on the swell of your waist. He made sure you got the clearest view, on a balcony high above the crowd.

“Watch, dove,” Coriolanus urges softly. Your lips shudder, a hole ripping inside your heart as he forces you to gaze upon Henry’s corpse for long, tortuous minutes. His calm, low whisper against your ear raises goosebumps on your flesh. “I want this image burnt into your memory. So that each time you think of crossing me, deceiving me or leaving me…” His knuckles drag over your tear-stained cheek as he articulates, “You always remember dear, poor Henry.”

Following the execution, the crowd scatters and he nudges your reluctant frame inside the presidential car.

Your tearful gaze lifts to meet his face.

“Can I give him a proper burial at least?” you mumble, still in denial of what you just witnessed. Henry’s dead. Your husband is now a corpse lying on the ground.

You feel as if a sinkhole opened under your feet and swallowed you. None of this can be real.

Coriolanus’ icy stare strays from the tinted window to settle on you.

“Traitors do not deserve one.”

His frosty reply summons chills across your back.

“But he isn’t…Henry’s not a traitor.”

A wicked glint dances in his sea orbs.

“He was to the world, dove.”

“You’re a monster,” you hiss, all the hate you harbor for President Snow bleeding through your tone.

A lopsided smile blooms on his lips.

“Perhaps. But I’m alive, he’s not.” He bends over you, pushing his mouth against yours in a bruising, possessive kiss while holding your chin. “I can do this,” he mutters against your lips. Your breath catches when his other hand creeps under your skirt to tease your folds through your panties. Your appalled expression expands his smile.”…And this. He cannot.”

“Can I please go home?” you beseech.

Coriolanus snickers. “You’re not returning to this shabby place. In fact, I think all of it should burn.” You gasp. “There’s nothing of value there. The only valuable thing, I already have…right here. You will be staying with me, dove, in my house and in my bed.” His thumb sweeps over your parted lips. “Tonight and every other night.”

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3d-wifey · 1 year

Text

And They'd Find Us In A Week - Chapter 1

Pairing: Finnick Odair x Reader Word Count: 5.3k Synopsis: Here! Playlist: Listen up! A/N: Don't be scared to click the embedded links, you might get an auditory surprise (Ai voice cloning works wonders)

Past (i) - You

[15 & 16] - THE CAPITOL

Pine is a simple wood. It grows in abundance, representing purity and innocence. In Eleven, it’s saved for children. Children like Cane. Only thirteen years old, but at the end of his life. He died in the initial bloodbath from a knife in the heart, you saw it yourself as you were running away. You had made eye contact with him for a split second and had contemplated waiting for him behind one of the many buildings encased by overgrown greenery. But, within the next second, those eyes had clouded over and cannon fire rang in your ears.

He looks so small in his pine casket, you note. The pale shade of his little brown face is the only giveaway that he isn’t sleeping.

His parents come to stand before him, withdrawn in their grief for their youngest child. They each place a fruit in his hand: a pear in his left, and an apple in his right. One for himself and another to share with whoever comes to take his soul.

Neem, his brother, holds up his sister Venus, the youngest girl. She is distraught, wails bouncing through the clearing. Their oldest sibling, Vera, hadn’t been permitted to leave the fields to come to the burial.

Chrysanthemums represent death, mourning, life, and goodbyes. Roses represent life, grief, and sadness. You watch as the adults of the town move in to help his family cover him head to toe in the petals. A few of these flowers are shipped to the Capitol to be used aesthetically, you’re sure. Such an odd thought knowing the rest are used here only for funerals.

You can’t help but think about how close you came to being the one under all those flowers. You imagine your mom having to place the fruits in your hands by herself. The hand on your shoulder keeps you pinned in place as Venus’s knees buckle. Your mom squeezes you to her side and you look at her tightened face. You aren't the only one imagining it.

The grave has already been dug and above it sits his headstone, a rock bigger than both of your hands combined with his initials and his age carved into it.

C.B.

You stare at that rock long after they put him in the ground and cover him in dirt. At the end of the ceremony, all of the children in attendance get in line to hug the family. This one is no different. You’re only fifteen, but you’ve been to many funerals. Only one stands out: your dad’s.

You remember being ten and getting irritated at how sticky the pomegranate juice made your hands, but you preferred it to the painful lump in your throat. You had to be lifted so you could place the fruit in his cold hands and you don’t think your mom put you down after, holding you close to her chest as the town’s children hugged you.

You’re at the back of the line nervously picking at your nail beds. There’s a certain amount of guilt tied to being the one who survived, especially in the face of the grieving family. You haven’t spoken to them since you got back a month ago—it took a while for the Capitol to return his body—but you know they don’t blame you. That’s just not the way people think in Eleven. You don’t turn against your own.

You’re nervous because you have a bigger part to play other than offering condolences and you promised Cane you’d complete it.

Before you go in to hug his father, you speak.

“I, uh, have something for you.” You pull a small bear figurine out of your pocket, crudely carved from wood. “Cane, he gave it to me to give to his family the night before we went into the arena. Just in case I managed to come back.” Something neither of you had any real hope of happening, but you understood the gesture for what it was. He wanted you to bring him back to his family. So you protected it with your life, literally.

And now he’s home.

And that’s what cracks them, you think. His mom’s lips quiver and his dad makes a pained noise when you place it in his shaking grip. And Neem, who has tried to stay strong for his family, gasps around a sob. Venus pulls you into a hug, tears dripping onto your neck.

A breeze comes through, shaking the leaves in the tree and cooling you from the humid heat. You like to think that it’s Cane’s way of thanking you for not forgetting him.

“Your accent is just darling. Say something else, say something else!” The woman in front of you exclaims. You can’t remember her name, but you’re pretty sure she never introduced herself to you anyway. In fact, you don’t think anyone has introduced themselves to you.

"Like what?"

"Like what?" They mock your voice, clapping like you’re a dog that did a trick. You smile around the embarrassment. Maybe for your next act, you’ll play dead. "Oh, that is just a treat."

You've officially been the winner of the sixty-seventh Hunger Games for six months and thirteen days. It's the end of your Victory Tour and all you have to do is tolerate the Capitols poking and prodding at you until the night is over. Though, that's easier said than done.

You remind yourself to make a conscious effort to bury the accent, sound a little more like them. The old you wouldn’t give a damn about how a Capitol perceives you, but the old you didn’t get pawed at nearly as much as you have tonight.

Your dress cinches at your waist uncomfortably. The heels you were forced into press painfully into the calluses on your feet, and you've eaten so many pastries that your jaw aches. Foreign hands pat at your hair, stroking and pulling at the curls as you recount for the fifth time how you escaped the tributes from District Five.

"I climbed to the top of a building and jumped between rooftops while they looked for me on the ground—"

“Skip to the part where you get your scythe!” Someone yells from the crowd, cutting you off. You purse your lips and bite your tongue so hard that you taste metal.

"Alright. Two days in, I was… gifted a scythe from a sponsor—"

"And you used it beautifully!" Another person calls from your left.

"Yes, that move you pulled off against that poor boy from Nine was simply marvelous!" A voice shouts from behind you. You remember him. How could you forget? The "move" you pulled off wasn't intentional. As a warning, you swung your scythe in wide arches, but he ran at you and the blade slit his stomach open. You think he did it on purpose, knowing how it would end for him. You put him out of his misery with his own knife.

He was the first person you killed in the arena. The first thing you had ever killed.

You bite into a muffin, and it tastes like ash on your tongue.

You try to ignore the multiple hands on your shoulders, arms, and neck; all moving to touch any bare skin they can reach. But it's hard to ignore soft hands that have never known a day of work. Much different from your own calloused palms, made rough from your days of harvesting crops and climbing high in trees to pick fruit.

You keep quiet as they talk at you, never actually trying to engage you in the conversation. You grimace as a hand touches your face.

"God, you are stunning—isn't she stunning?" A taller man smiles down at you with golden teeth, moving your face this way and that with his sharp nails.

"Oh, just gorgeous! Who knew they were hiding such a diamond in the Agriculture district, of all places?" The group breaks out in howling laughter, as if the very notion of something worthwhile coming out of District Eleven is outlandish. Somehow, both a joke at your expense and one they expect you to join in on.

You're willing to bet all of your earnings that none of these people have the slightest idea about life in Eleven, what it's like to be truly hungry. Children are being hung for stealing food and here they are, gorging themselves just to throw it all up. You're shaken by the thought that you are completely alone here. Forced to endure the abrasive attention of the Capitol residents until they grow bored with you. You contemplate how easy it would be to escape. You aren't sure how much longer you can go with people petting you like a domesticated animal. Maybe, if you make yourself sick from drinking those vomit-inducing drinks, you could make a strategic retreat with minimal fuss. "Excuse me, ladies, gentlemen," a smooth voice breaks through the crowd before a lithe body follows. The man—or boy, rather—is tall, all tan skin and sun-bleached-hair. Every eye falls on him as soon as he steps up, and you can understand why. Finnick Odair. He's objectively attractive; beautiful, even. You can tell from the brazen way he holds himself that he already knows that. Pink lips are settled in a smug smirk, but they don't take away from his eyes. If you were a writer, you could have authored a thousand and one poems about those eyes alone. "You wouldn't mind me stealing tonight's guest of honor for a dance, would you?" It's quiet, and the crowd looks at each other. They clearly don't want to give you up—their brand-new toy. But who can say no to Finnick Odair? Exclaims of oh, certainly and of course are called out before he comes to stand in front of you. Someone pulls the saucer of miniature cakes and cookies from your death grip and you feel bare before him. You had seen him two years ago during his games. Then, six months after that he came to Eleven for his Victory Tour, apologizing to the families of people he didn't know nor care about. He was just another pretty Career laughing and being gushed over on Caesar Flickerman's couch, pretty low on your list of priorities. But now—well, it was one thing to see him on screen, it was another to be in front of him. It's a lot like standing in front of the ocean, you imagine. You had seen it secondhand, through train windows and simulated in arenas, but nothing could prepare you to see it in person. He doesn't push you to take his hand, just holds it out in front of him like he has all the time in the world. Like he knows you'll take it, eventually. The temptation to reject him is strong. You’d pay money to see the look on his and everyone else's faces if you said no and walked away.

You reach forward and a callused palm meets your own. You trust him as much as you do everyone else vying for your attention here, but he's the lesser of two evils. You tense up as you follow him, mentally preparing yourself to be surrounded. But he doesn't lead you to the center of the dancing mass like you thought he would. Instead, you both linger on the edge, barely close enough to be a part of the crowd. He faces you and asks, "May I have this dance?" Overly formal in a way that nobody else here has been with you.

"We're already here, aren't we?" You say as if you weren’t just contemplating leaving him behind. You step closer to him as the band starts a new song, your right hand holding his left and the other on his shoulder. His free hand lays on your waist, a fraction above the slit on the side of your dress.

“Have you been having fun?” He picks, certainly nonexistent, lint off the shoulder of your dress. Is your eye twitching? It has to be. You want to place a hand on it to tamp down the spasms, but, instead, your nails dig into his shoulder through his suit jacket.

“What? Are you not enjoying your time in our great nation's capitol?” He deadpans. Your mouth tries to twitch into a smirk and you smother it down.

You narrow your eyes. “What’re your thoughts on lying?”

He inhales slowly, head tilting side to side contemplatively. “Depends. Am I the one lying?” You shake your head. He shrugs. “Then, I hate it.”

“Then, I won’t answer,” you shrug back. He lets out a puff of air from his nose, a laugh?

"I'm surprised Seeder isn't here with you. She talked you up a big game, you know. Very confident that you'd win." His eyes sweep over the crowd of dancing couples before settling on you. “Guess, I should have bet on you too, huh?”

You don’t know how you feel about that. Why would Seeder be that confident in a semi-malnourished fifteen-year-old with no combat skills?

You definitely wouldn’t have bet on yourself. If you were in his shoes, you would’ve put money into one of the Careers. Maybe that one girl from Two—perhaps the most muscular person you’ve ever seen. She was benching at least twice her body weight in the Training Center, but you think it was just an intimidation tactic. Though, a pointless one, since she didn’t even make it out of the Cornucopia. You suppose no amount of muscle can combat an axe to the back of the spine. “I wouldn’t have if I were you. But now that you've actually seen me, do I meet all the expectations she set?” You partially joke. Partially because as much as you hate to admit it, you are curious. Why you’re curious about what he thinks of you will remain a mystery. “Now that I've actually seen you? No,” you look up at him in shock before he grins like a shark, teeth on display. "You exceed them. Don't get me wrong. You were beautiful on screen, but the TV doesn't do you justice." He does little to hide the once-over he gives you. It was meant to be caught. You don't know what to say. You've been excessively complimented and fawned over since you were reaped, but somehow, it felt different coming from him. His gaze felt different. Like he actually saw you. You throw that thought away. Finnick is a known flirt—a playboy. He means nothing by it and neither does the look in his eyes. "She's pregnant. Seeder," you clarify, abruptly changing the topic. “About seven months along. She's resting at the hotel.” Traveling for so long had taken its toll. Not to mention the stress of just being in the Capitol. Snow, the bastard, wouldn't let her stay behind, even though Chaff was willing to take her place as your mentor on the tour. "Ah, congratulations are in order then."

"Please,” you scoff. “I'm sure you didn't come up to me just to talk about Seeder." Your gaze bounces around his face as you do everything in your power to avoid eye contact with him.

“Why not? I can’t ask about a good friend?”

“If you’re such “good friends” shouldn’t you have already known she was pregnant?”

“Touché.” He concedes with a nod, his smile still in place. Or at least you think he does. You aren’t entirely sure what touché means. “I came up to you because you looked like you were one more scone away from using it as a weapon." The laugh you let out is a surprise to you both and you have to bite your cheek to stifle it. You haven’t been doing a whole lot of laughing over the past six months.

"Was I that obvious?" He's quiet for a moment as he stares at you and you don't dwell on it. Instead, you focus on the freckles dotting the bridge of his nose.

You're only a year younger than him and, yet, there's something about him that feels far older than any other sixteen-year-old you've met. The way he carries himself—something sharp-edged hidden under indifference, an alertness in his eyes that you're sure mirrors your own. "To anyone who cared to look," his voice deepens as he hums. It really is smooth. "Definitely." "Am I supposed to believe that the Capitol's darling cares about little ol' me?" "So, you do know who I am." His lips shift into a shit-eating grin, preening as if he caught you in a lie. He’s probably used to people fawning over him, and that’s something you’d never do. Be that as it may, you can acknowledge that there might be something worth fawning over. “Who doesn't?” It’s been two years and people are still talking about his games. And for good reason, you have to admit.

"Touché...again.” He tilts his head with contemplatively narrowed eyes. You narrow your eyes right back simply based on the fact that he did it first. “You know, that’s the second time you’ve—” "Seriously, what're you hoping to achieve here? You've gotta have a motive. Everyone does.” You push, cutting to the chase and sounding more accusatory than you meant to. But, he’s a victor too, right? Maybe you can toe the line here without repercussions waiting on the other side.

"Hmm, blunt. Even you?" He questions, continuing when you nod. "What's your motive for dancing with me, then?"

You could have said no to this dance, but that would’ve meant staying surrounded by them. This, being with Finnick, is a breath of fresh air in comparison. He may not be Eleven or from any other district that’s similar to yours, but he is District. That’s gotta be worth something—some kind of kinship.

"I'd do just about anything to escape those vultures," you pause. Then, feeling emboldened, add, "And I guess you're not terrible to look at." If you were going to be forced to stay here, you might as well find your fun where you can. And talking to Finnick is fun. Undoubtedly, the only fun you've had all night.

"Oh, thank you," he laughs, mirth coloring his cheeks a pretty shade of pink. "You know, I was worried about that."

"Is that so?" You smile, trying, and failing, to not step on his feet.

"Definitely," he pauses for a second, seemingly deciding on something before answering your question, "It’s just that—you remind me of someone. They got wrapped up in the Capitol; thought they could handle the…” he makes a wide sweeping gesture to the gluttonous pageantry around you and you get it: the extravagance, the theatrics, the Capitol of it all. “But the Capitol asked for more than they were willing to give. And, well...I couldn't save them." His eyes look glazed as he trails off. His face is grim, his smile gone so fast it's almost like it was never there to begin with. You find that you want it back. "And you want to save me?" You guess, heart in your throat.

"Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. The people here? Every single one of them wants us. They want to talk to us, touch us, sleep with us," you swallow at the look in his eye. "But they don't see us as people." He leans towards you and you freeze. For a split second, you think he's going to kiss you. That doesn’t scare you. Instead, he hovers by your ear. What would you have done if he had kissed you? You don't think you would've moved away. That scares you. "Me and you," he hums, lips against your ear, "Well, we might as well be a completely different species to them. We're lesser than. Beloved pets at most, tamed beasts at least."

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” You live in Eleven, after all. There’s a reason no one goes looking for the kids that go missing from the fields. According to the people in charge, there’ll always be another to take their place. You sigh through your nose and turn away, but immediately turn back to Finnick when you make eye contact with the smiling man with gold teeth.

He shakes his head, lips curled into a frown of disgust, "Look at them, the way they linger at the edge of the crowd." The hand on your waist moves to the small of your back as he spins you. "You see how desperate they are to get in your good graces?" You peek over his shoulder at the people watching you, teeming with anticipation.

"Is that not what you're doing?" You ask, your cheek pressed to his. "Trust me, sweetheart. If I was trying to gain your favor, it'd be somewhere a little more private with a lot less talking." He doesn't give you enough time to reply, not that you know how, before continuing. "I'm doing the same thing I've done since I was reaped," he lowers his voice, almost like he's imparting some kind of secret. To the right person, maybe he is. "Surviving. I'd suggest finding your allies now if you wanna do the same. " And then he turns to place a chaste kiss against your cheek. To anyone watching the two of you, it would look like he's just flirting with you. You shiver as he pulls away from you, taking all the warmth with him. He looks down at you for a moment longer, locking you in his gaze. You had never really seen the ocean, you remind yourself, but, through him, you're staring at it now. Vast and limitless. All-consuming. He brings your knuckles to his smooth lips, and he smirks. The urge to shiver again is alarmingly strong as his mouth moves delicately against the skin of your knuckles as he begins to speak. "Until next time." You catch the shimmer in his sea-green eyes. It has to mean something, something worth pursuing. You've never known the ocean, but as you watch Finnick walk away into the crowd of adoring Capitols, you think you could grow to like it. There's a drive in him that's rare to see outside of Eleven, let alone in the Capitol, and it further proves your assumption right. There’s a kinship between the districts that only the victors are privy to—you and Finnick might be cut from the same cloth, and that’s made even more apparent by the way the masses move in to surround you both. You jump as trumpets sound around you and a spotlight shines on the balcony. You missed your chance to escape. It's time for Snow's speech.

Present (I) - You

[23 & 24 ] - DISTRICT ELEVEN

It’s winter in Eleven. There’s little worse than winter in Eleven. You must have forgotten to close your window when you left in a rush because the air in your room is practically crystallized, and you mull over the idea of igniting your fireplace but decide against it.

Normally, you would go to the Capitol after being invited to a party, your prep team would scrub and shave you from top to bottom, and Snow would introduce you to your client for the night. Then, you would stay in your hotel room and have time to recoup before you left. But, this time, there was no party. Only a very important partner of Snow’s who is not a patient man. So you left in the early morning and made the trip back the next day as the sun was rising. Seven hours there, seven hours back. You’re dead on your feet and your bed has never looked more tempting. You stand before your vanity and grab a makeup wipe, dragging it over your face and revealing the bags under your eyes. You're tired, bone tired. You kick your heels off. You unzip the back of your dress and let it fall to the ground. Staring at yourself in the mirror, you press on one of the bruises littering your neck. You follow the trail to the top of your chest, breast, stomach, and hips. You frown at yourself. What a pitiful painting you make. "It's starting!" Your mom calls from down the hall and you sigh, looking at your bed mournfully. You'd usually avoid Snow's announcements like the plague, you don't want to look at him more than you already have to, but it's different this time. It's the Quarter Quell. The last Quarter Quell had double the amount of tributes, and Haymitch told you how he only won by the skin of his teeth. So, despite yourself, you're curious to see what kind of nightmare Snow comes up with. There's also something else driving you. A man you met in passing at the party. Plutarch Heavensbee. He was strange, but a different kind than you were used to from the Capitols. He's taking the place of Head Gamemaker after Seneca Crane's untimely death. He spoke in riddles, always hinting at things of importance without saying anything at all. And there's a nagging feeling in the back of your mind surrounding something he said. "I understand that there’s a certain kind of…job that President Snow has employed you for. If I told you there was a chance to put an end to it, what would you say?" "I'd say you should cut back on the Morphling." "I assure you, I'm sober," he laughed, "I can't go into detail right now. I just need to know, when the time comes, that I can trust you to fight." Fight. It’s an interesting term, but you wonder if it has the same definition for him as it does for you. You doubt it. Very rarely is there ever any overlap between the way of thinking for Eleven and the Capitol. The people of Eleven fight every day and you’ve heard the other districts have finally picked up on the habit. Riots upon riots upon riots and it’s all thanks to the kids from Twelve. You still can't decipher what he was telling you and you’d usually chalk it up to the regular Capitol jargon. But there was something, something different that you couldn’t put your finger on.

You throw pajamas on, something soft that won't irritate you, and walk to the living room. "Here: sugar, berries, and licorice root, just the way you like it." Your mom hands you the cup and pretends she doesn't see the marks on your body. You're thankful. She looks tired too, older. "Thank you, Ma." You say, for more than just the tea. "Of, course. Now, sit, sit. He's walking out." You settle gingerly on the couch beside her, sorer than you thought, and pull your legs under you as Snow stands behind a podium. He lets the audience quiet down before beginning. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the seventy-fifth year of The Hunger Games. And it was written in the charter of The Games that every twenty-five years, there would be a Quarter Quell to keep fresh for each new generation the memory of those who died in the uprising against The Capitol." You drink carefully from your cup as he continues, steaming liquid burning the roof of your mouth. "Each Quarter Quell is distinguished by Games of a special significance. And now on this, the seventy-fifth anniversary of our defeat of the rebellion, we celebrate the third Quarter Quell," you place your cup on the table and fidget with your bracelet as Snow pulls a letter from an envelope, "as a reminder that even the strongest cannot overcome the power of The Capitol. On this, the third Quarter Quell Games the male and female Tributes are to be reaped—" The hairs on your arms stand on end. You brace for the blow. "—from the existing pool of victors in each district." "No. No, no, no, that's not, that's not right." You shake your head. It doesn't take long for your mom to start sobbing beside you and you…you can't breathe.

You suck a breath in and it feels like it's being funneled through a filter. Not enough, not nearly enough. Your heart's beating fast, faster, the fastest it’s ever beat and you're getting lightheaded. You stand up on shaking legs and stumble to the door, glass shatters as you knock a vase over in your pursuit. You need more air, you need, you need—you step out onto the snow-covered porch, submerging your bare feet in the white powder. It’s odd, it rarely snows here.

You kneel down and grab fistfuls of snow, smearing the ice on your face and grounding yourself. You breathe and you rationalize. You can breathe. You're taking in frigid lungfuls of air and you are breathing. You stare down the long walkway leading to your home, covered in both ice and snow. Across from that walkway is a cow pasture and past that pasture are woods. Vast and open and if you will it, no one would be able to find you. You wouldn’t be able to leave, not with the giant electric fence surrounding the district, but they wouldn’t find you.

But Snow could find your mom.

You stay out there until your feet and hands go numb. And then you stay until it hurts to move your fingers and toes, the skin of your shins and knees prickling with the temperature drop. You stay until your mom drags you in herself. "Let's warm you up." She says, but she's mostly talking to herself. She wraps you in a blanket and sits you on the couch. She goes to the kitchen and comes back with a fresh cup of tea. Saliva gathers in your mouth at the thought of drinking anything, so you use it to warm your hands instead.

“Oh, look what you’ve done to yourself.” You look to where she’s hovering over the carpet. Red footprints lead from the door to where you are now. You must have stepped on the broken pieces of the vase. You wait for the sting of pain to come now that you’re aware of the wound, but there’s nothing.

“I’ll go get something to clean you up with—”

“Can you just…can you just sit with me?” You ask and look away when you catch her frenzied gaze.

“Yeah, of course, baby. Of course.” The couch dips with her weight as she sits beside you.

By now, Caesar Flickerman is recapping the announcement to the audience with his cheery co-star. You can never remember his name. You're as still as a statue as Caesar goes over a list of remaining victors. You don't move when your mom holds onto you. She holds you and she holds you and she cries for you. You don’t think you have any more tears left in you.

“Now, it always hurts to say goodbye, Claudius, but I can admit there are a few lovely victors I’m particularly attached to.” Oh, you think, that’s his name. Doubtful that you’ll remember it.

“Yes, Caesar, I completely agree. Here’s one of mine now. From District Four: Finnick Odair!” Your eye starts to twitch, lower lid spasming. They play clips of him. Finnick waving to the audience as he walks on stage, Finnick posing for the camera at a photo shoot, Finnick walking down the red carpet at a movie premiere.

You imagine footage of him being reaped for the Quell and saliva is gathering in your mouth again, stomach flexing as you gag. You double over, nausea washing over you as you try to keep what little is in your stomach down. Absently, you feel a hand rubbing your back in wide, soothing circles that aren’t doing a lot to soothe you.

You were wrong. You do have tears left in you.

A/N: 1.) your arena is inspired by Valle dei Mulin in Italy 2.) The people of 11 all have farm and gardening-related names. (Neem tree, venus flytrap, aloe vera, Mass Cane) 3.) Cane had a crush on the reader similar to Peeta's initial crush on Katniss 4.) Each district has a different accent depending on their geography

#the hunger games #hunger games fanfiction #catching fire #hunger games catching fire #finnick odair #finnick x reader #finnick odair x reader #finnick odair fanfic #and they'd find us in a week

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