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hhjs · 4 years ago

Text

forget me not.

♡ based on — "During times of war. I want to say: I only love you, And I cling you, Like the peel clings to a pomegranate, Like the tear clings to the eye, Like the knife clings to the wound." and the song nightlife by daydream masi.

♡ summary — Hyunjin's unsure of the tingle in his gut, why it's happening. But he thinks, just for a second, it feels a little like hope.

wherein, putting your heart on the line for the sake of doing favours isn’t a frequent component in your schedule. But what happens when this favour is asked for by the boy you may or may not have fancied for far too long?

You accept it.

For a very embarrassing reason, really, which is — you think Hwang Hyunjin needs you.

♡ pairing— hwang hyunjin x reader

♡ word count— 8.8k whoopsies

♡ genre and alternate universe — angst, fluff + hanahaki au.

♡ author's note— this was supposed to be a drabble and then i sort of lost my fucking mind ehe...also this is easily the worst thing i have ever written im so sorry aaa but this is a lil present from my end hahaha

♡ warnings— suggestive content, vomiting, mention of blood. allusions to depression and heartbreak.

Amongst other things, you're extremely bad at saying 'no'. You don't mean the word per se...but the underlying connotation of this very monosyllable which may come at the expense of letting another person down.

It's sort of stupid, you understand, your friends have constantly voiced their worries for your extremely complacent nature more often than you'd think actually. But it all goes over your head. See — old habits really do die hard.

When you're eight, this very defect takes you to dreadful saxophone lessons your mum spoke so highly of. When you're 15, it gets you called to the principal's office for flashing Jeongin trigonometric functions in Mister Choi's pop quiz, when you're older, things are definitely no different.

The passenger seat is occupied, Hyunjin's holding a tangled muffler to his suede jacket clad chest. At 21, he's become someone you used to know. A friend of a friend, Felix's to be very specific. But the man in question, who was supposed to be his ride, passes off this duty for kegstands and you just happen to be the designated driver for the night, shuffling Jisung beside Changbin and Chan, who claims to be 'sober' even though he's half asleep.

Hyunjin is uncharacteristically quiet.

There's a polite smile on rendered your way as your eyes meet. A small curvature along his plump bottom lip, tighter around the edges. Still this simple formality is so beautiful that you feel something inside you come alive.

When Jisung starts snoring, you flip on the radio and Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here comes on.

Your fingers feel numb when they come to tap out a rhythm to the track. It's nice. Tingling guitar riffs swelling, David Gilmour's gruffy voice pours in from faulty speakers. The more the song progresses, the more you find yourself attempting to think about anything that will distract you from the boy beside you, in the flesh no less.

So late at night, the main road is eerily silent. Cobblestones reflecting the sound of tires thumping against its layout, streetlights blinking at you from their drooping heads. Across the street, a baker is tucking away leftover bread and buskers are packing up their beat up guitars, a man in his late 50's pulling his blanket to his nose as he rests a head full of gray hair on the cold pavement.

You glance at Hyunjin from the corner of your eye and find that his staggering smile has completely disappeared. Now there's a distant glaze in his eyes. It's like he's here, in this moment, with you, but at the same time, he's somewhere else.

Under the impression you've done something wrong, you immediately begin to panic. But the thing is, you don't actually know if you should ask. Would it constitute as crossing a line if you had anyway?

Hyunjin covers his mouth with a sleeve, muffled retching building beyond fabric.

The reasonable assumption is obvious. It's not abnormal to be nauseous when you've got one too many drinks in you. He motions for you to pull over, incoherent sentences practically melding together, words forming and dissipating between choking fits.

You scramble to dig out a bottle of mineral water you habitually deposit in the glove compartment, offering him the tissue first. Ears perking up in satisfaction when a garbled thanks escapes his parted lips. But then... something weird happens.

As your eyes flicker to unintentionally glance at the contents discarded on the pitch grey sidewalk, you freeze in your seat.

You were never a big believer of superstition, not someone who buys into myths only meant for the fiction genre. Sure, you can be gullible sometimes...but what's happening falls no way under the realistic category.

The lethal Hanahaki disease, only inherited by some unlucky descendants, every moment in your head prior to this one, was something that's obviously non existent.

Yet... there's so much blood, too much blood attesting to your blatant ignorance. The petals are of a white rose, smudging together in swirls of grotesque crimson in mimicry of a sheen of red sticking to the inner corners of his lips. It has happened before, you can tell, from just how unsurprised he looks.

Hyunjin's stare flits to commit every detail of your to memory, in what only seems a quick study of gauging your forthcoming reaction, though even before you can produce a coherent thought, he says,

"You can't tell anyone." His voice drops a few octaves as though he's afraid your snoring friends in the back might've noticed. "Please."

Hyunjin's face softens by the slightest, contrary to his firm demand, there lies a desperation you couldn't overlook.

In retrospect, what you're about to tell is ultimately a promise that'd come back to bite you in due time. However, see now, you're extremely bad at saying no. Somehow you're even worse when it comes to Hyunjin. So you blink, turn the radio off and say,

"Okay."

—

The pool is preheated. For that you're most thankful.

Frankly, you couldn't imagine what it'd be like being pushed into a chilly body of water mid winter. Not that it's pleasant otherwise, you can't swim.

Well at 15, you hadn't quite learned to. The other kids have scurried inside to hog freshly baked Snowman biscuits Seungmin's mum is renowned for.

Then and you think you'll never quite forget it, Hyunjin's wearing an orange power ranger t shirt, it's darker now that it's wet, his glasses are marked with uneven splatters. His face scrunches up at the sudden splash of wetness engulfing his body. He wasn't planning to get in the water.

"Hold on tight." He says, wounding your arms around his neck, your calves tighter to his sides to support your shivering body. Back then Hyunjin's hair was black, cropped short and swept to the side, he smells like fabric softener and skittles. A water donut is discarded in the middle of the pool.

Everybody you know and don't know, from the birth of superheroes stuck in comic books to valiant protagonists behind fuzzy television screens, has this inherent desire to be saved. From the world, from themselves. No, no, it doesn't have to be a grand gesture, swooping them off of their feet from the grasp of surly men in dark alleys, sometimes it's really just simple. Sometimes people save you in the most ordinary way there is.

The weight of your form on his bright pink water donut while he stood on his toes to merely rest his elbows so the item wouldn't flip, a small act, certified this very claim, had not the nimble touch of his cold fingers, brushing away wet hair from your face, to anxiously ask if you're okay met the purpose. He talks to you like the sound of his voice has the power to injure you.

You nod slowly. Like this, it feels like you're going to be.

Hyunjin pouts, looking perfectly unconvinced. He paddles the pair of you to steel stairs spiraling into the pool, so he can stand without just his nose peeking out of the water, he looks at you once again, a wrinkle between his dark, arched eyebrows and says solemnly, "Jisung's such an idiot sometimes, isn’t he?"

But isn't he your friend? You want to ask. Something stops you though —his tone tells you you aren't the only one to fall victim to Jisung's practical jokes. Not that they were offensive or anything. Han Jisung, the same person who twiddles his thumbs when he wants the last chicken nugget and cries every time you watch Howl's Moving Castle together, genuinely doesn't mean any harm. It's just that...when he's comfortable with people, who aren't many, he tends to do a lot of dumb things. Dumb, endearing things that Minho will kill him for someday.

"A little bit," You mumble under your breath. Heat rising to your face at the possibility of Hyunjin being concerned for you. He sounds almost angry. "Thanks by the way."

It's rather pitiful to remember. Because with time, Hyunjin's world becomes so big that your interaction stands to be too insignificant to not forget. Before you know it, he's the shooting guard of your school's basketball team, just a handsome face who dates better girls, makes better friends. It's superficial and a little sad.

No, no, a little sad is an understatement actually.

To see someone you understood intimately, a boy who always described details too much just to stray from the main story, a boy with too many emotions bubbling to an awfully animated surface; someone who was passionate, sensitive and so nauseatingly big hearted...change into a man who is indubitably untouchable...is tragic. At least.

Yet funnily enough — you can't quite imagine a world without Hwang Hyunjin. His ringing laughter rippling through loud ambiences, his distant humming of Christmas carols whilst he absently skimmed through spines of children's novels and his eyes glimmering in adoration whenever he spoke of something he loved — Without him, you imagine, there would be a massive deficiency in your world, in the world. Like if birthday cakes came with the biggest slice carved out.

Hyunjin grins, a big sort of candid grin that turns his eyes into upturned crescents. His previous temperament long forgotten. Suddenly, this utterly atrocious happening seems to not be so bad. Suddenly you don't mind that Jisung is an idiot sometimes.

"Of course."

—

Hyunjin is not perfect. Hyunjin is no prince charming.

People don't know this. They don't understand this.

He ends up paying for dinner when he's out with a big crowd even though they were supposed to split the bill, he ends up crying when he gets angry and he is an abysmal liar, in every sense of the phrase. Hardly ever succeeding to hide his emotions when he should. When he was a kid his parents reminded him that it's a good thing to be unapologetically himself, that being honest is a good thing.

But as your eyes meet from across an ocean of people quagmired by crunchy leaves, sticky remnants of rain and his ex girlfriend who he now claims to be okay with being friends with, on her toes to poke his cheek whilst Chan's arm wraps around her waist, the soft white roses ornamented on a bow she loves wearing all the time, he thinks it's far from an agreeable trait to have.

Actually whilst you balance a newspaper under your arm and bring your coffee to your lips, it's like you're looking through him, past his skin, his flesh, something secret inscribed on his bones, embedded into his soul. You know everything, you know everything, you know everything.

The thought itself... surprisingly enough, doesn't appal him.

Hyunjin raises his palm in the air, feeling the autumn prickling against his skin. He waves at you.

—

Working at a library can be taxing. But it sure has its perks.

You can just about turn the place upside down and put it all back together without getting in trouble. Albeit another reason, besides your profession could be that Minho owns the place. Frankly, he may or may not have been the only cause behind your employment. It's hard to tell now that your co-workers really do recognise you've a knack for arranging things.

But to you, your job is very personal. A precious thing which relieves you from various worldly tensions. Velvety spines under your roughened fingertips, the burst of minted pages hitting your face every time you walk in, your love for reading, for a world of stories is so immense that you think you wouldn't have traded it even if your life depended on it.

For a disease that's not very well known, it's ironic how an entire section of mythology is dedicated to it. Past closing hours, amongst many novels mounted on your desk, you fixate on the one that made most sense. There's a few things you've picked up in common from all of them though — the hanahaki disease is extremely rare, it doesn't affect all those who suffer from the qualms of unrequited love.

Possible remedy according to findings entail

growths can be surgically removed, if the patient consents to eradication of memories of their loved ones.

Clanking of keys alerts incoming and you pause your tapping pen to look up.

"Burning the midnight oil, are we?"

Minho leans against the doorframe, he's half yawning, half talking and fully concerned for you.

"Yeah, looks like I'm gonna be a while." Your monotonous tone provides that you are not paying a lot of attention. You blurt without looking up. "Are you leaving?"

"No, still haven't finished archiving for that Pfizer project...But I'm going to get a bite to eat..." His inky eyes remain on you as his tone falters, "You want anything?"

"I'm fine. Thanks."

"Wow you're like...really uh invested." He tilts his head in thought, "You seeing someone again?"

You know Minho long enough to know he has a teasing side to him, from diaper days to play dates ending in pillow fights because he kept offering you his last Pringle just to pop it into his stupid smirking mouth — but you have no idea where he's going with this.

So you look up, finally. Furrowing your brows.

"No. What does that have to do with anything?"

He shrugs, "I haven't seen you concentrate so hard since you dumped Jeongin."

Your right eye twitches. Because you know exactly what he's referring to, and simultaneously, for the sake of your well-being, you much prefer being in denial. "What?"

"C'mon. Remember how you always ended up doing his homework?" He reminds you. "It's like when you like someone, you go out of your way to do charitable stuff for them. But...this? Too much. Even for you."

You ignore Minho's comment. To the world, Hwang Hyunjin's place in your life is not significant. After all this is the most natural undulation in the vicissitudes of life — for someone who once was your friend to eventually drift apart, to become a has been. It's too hard to explain why you care. After all this time.

"I was just being nice." You narrow your eyes, unimpressed. "Clearly this concept is lost on some people."

"Sure you are, bud. If being 'nice' is synonymous with whipped." Of course, there's a smug grin gracing his pouted lips that tempts you to fling something at him. Not that you can though. Seeing as Minho breaks out into a full fledged sprint, his singsongy voice a thinning echo bouncing off of shelves and windows and doors.

Still somehow his footsteps manage to travel through walls, permeating into your office with such great amplitude that you could be bamboozled into thinking he hasn't left at all. Or maybe you've stopped paying attention, your eyes zoom in on any other helpful detail you can put to use in wrapping your head around what you have witnessed firsthand.

At the same time, you can't really ignore how hungry you're feeling just from the mention of a bite to eat. So when Minho's shadow forms again on the page you've been 'reading' for the last few seconds you sense a gigantic wave of relief washing over you.

"You know what I changed my—" slamming the book shut, you blink against scanty provision of light, with raise your head and a bleary vision, recognise him in an instant. Except...it isn't Minho. "mind..."

The only source of brightness is a small emerald lamp perched on the corner of your desk, light green catches onto one of the ornamented corners and speckles of golden caress his supple skin gently. You hadn't realised how cold it might've been outside until you see how heavily dressed Hyunjin was, a long overcoat worn over woollen sweater, a Santa hat and muffler pulled to his chin. It's no one other than your boss himself who has given him directions to your office, you know this, Hyunjin has never been inside before.

So when he marvels absently, you sense yourself feeling a little self conscious about not cleaning up. All around you, a comforter and love seat pushed against the window, cigarette butts discarded in ashtray and then...the books strewn before you tell him you practically live here.

For some reason, Hyunjin only seems to loosen up at the spectacle.

"Hi." He says finally.

"Hi..." you arrange the reading materials quickly to one side so you can rest your elbows. A small (successful) attempt made to hide your research. "Something up?" You say, but what you really mean is, what are you doing here?!

Did he suspect you were going to tell on him? Right that's it, that must be it, you tell yourself, believing, knowing, of all the years Hwang Hyunjin has known of you he has never been one to care about your whereabouts.

"I just...um," He starts, forwarding his mitten clad hands. It's the back of a crumpled coffee cup on which straight handwriting reads a bucket list...of sorts. You immediately understand that his coming is an act of impulse. Urgency of living every moment like it's slipping through it's fingers, that he just needed to tell the only person who knows, be it by accident.

Hyunjin clears his throat. "I wanna do all this before I die."

In lieu of giving an instant response, baffled, you gawp at him. Despite knowing, hearing Hyunjin say it out loud somehow makes everything...too real.

It's as though someone's reached inside your throat, pulled your heart out and crushed it with their bare hands. Hyunjin, the boy who smelled like fabric softener and skittles and wore power ranger shirts, the boy with the fantastic smile and cold fingers, is dying. You won't let him. You can't let him.

You thumb along the numbers scribbled in hasty penmanship, look up and blink rapidly, "Okay," you say, a small whisper, barely there words. "That's okay."

Even with the hat covering tips of ears, you could tell the same faint blush coating his cheeks had rushed to that particular area. His eyes drift off to the sight of pens discarded inside a wooden holder because he can feel your gaze on him. "and I...I need your help."

"Alright."

Hyunjin's eyes widen to a great degree, he sits straighter, as if he hadn't expected you to comply so quickly.

And honestly? Neither had you.

It's quiet. Awkward.

"You know it's not like I haven't thought about dying. I just figured I'd get to grow old first, settle down, have kids and all that," A wry laugh escapes his parted lips. "Everything's happening too fast."

You hesitate, thinking he's making a mistake. Frankly he shouldn't feel obligated to give you an explanation.

"You...you don't have to tell me."

"No—I mean...can I?" He gives you a sheepish look, disliking his own whimsical tone, somehow endearing still. You find yourself wondering how long he had to keep his burdens to himself, not just pertaining to his illness, but everything. His dreams, his hopes, his fears. Anything which requires a certain amount of depth. And you almost ask him, the question sitting at the tip of your tongue, yet the realisation rather simple, stops you. Maybe you've mistranslated 21 year old Hyunjin all along — moulding himself into someone who's convenient around people who only liked him for who he appeared to be, maybe even with all that popularity, parties and glamour, he's just...lonely.

You push your reading glasses into your hair, press your knuckles under your chin and hum in consent.

He shifts in his seat, "Have you ever... been in love?"

You release an amused huff. Let your eyes linger on him for a long minute.

"Once."

Hyunjin half expects you to laugh. Poke fun at him for his melodramatic backstory. That's the sole reason why he doesn't tell his friends (funny, for people he considers close, they seem to know not much about him or care to know, that is. ). But you... you look at him with something in your eyes that tells him the rubbish reasons he posited makes all the sense in the world. Hyunjin's unsure of the tingle in his gut, why it's happening. But he thinks, just for a second, it feels a little like hope.

—

Midnight rendezvous.

As someone who has lived a fairly extraordinary life, Hwang Hyunjin's bucket list is bafflingly ordinary. He's more of a finding joy in small things kind of a person, punctilious at best.

Things change. People notice. They hesitate, whisper about you and last night while you were out on last minute cheap wine run, the grocerer, a girl who looks around sixteen asks you if you're dating Hyunjin. Underneath the thinly veiled curiousity, there's something like anger dripping from her words.

You furrow your eyebrows in simple insinuation that it's weird for a stranger to take interest in your life. Maybe it was written on your face, the fact that you're a dying man's beck and call is for reasons far more complicated than it looks.

You go to his parties. Greet him as a friend would and not just for the sake of maintaining formalities. He comes to the library more times than he does, waits for you to get off work so you can check something off the list at least. People notice. People understand. Hyunjin's different around you. He's bright, talkative when he forgets to contain himself. You sense your heart swelling with pride just at the understanding that he can be himself around you.

You drive to the beach, sit in your trunk and drink straight out of the bottle.

Hyunjin laughs a little. Suspends his feet in the air. With time, he's gotten paler, exhausted. "Rough day?"

You hum.

"Very. Our children's collection is usually low in stock around the weekends."

Hyunjin crosses his arms over his chest. Curious.

"And?"

"And if I say I got yelled at by a toddler would you believe me?"

Hyunjin feigns contemplation, even with the realisation that his body is becoming less and less cooperative, he manages to remain perfectly cheerful.

"I can actually," he grins, "At that age, I was a real pain in the ass."

"Were?"

Your smile is just a slight curl against the bottle's mouth as he grumbles under his breath about your 'insensitive' remark.

You think of your life after Hyunjin, think of his absence like a gaping hole you'll never be able to fill out. It makes you sick to your stomach.

—

Bake something from scratch.

Hyunjin's face twists in apparent thought, eyebrows rising. A pink tongue poked against his cheek, whilst he chews carefully, trying really hard not to flash an accidental reaction whilst you clasp your butter and oat flour soiled hands together, some of the batter on your cheek, neck to anticipate his answer like your will to live depends on it.

You ask yourself how it got to this. Why you didn't care that you were awake so early on a Sunday morning with flour powdering every kitchen appliance in sight in spite of being awfully restrictive about who you let into your kitchen. But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter because it's nice like this.

Hyunjin has his hair pulled away from his bare face, a mole under his eye, a small birthmark on the back of his ear.

When you first met, you thought he was a kind of handsome that couldn't be real. Something formidable about it. Only destined to exist behind fuzzy television screens and flashy magazines.

But in retrospect, you realise, that that's not true at all.

If you look close enough, if you really pay attention, there's a softness underneath, something goofy, something warm, the sharp jut of his nose circling into a soft button, his eyes are big, black and his mouth jutted out into a natural pout, he looks innocent, like he doesn't quite realise the extent of his charms.

"It's..." His soft voice pulls you out of your reverie, and you look up to find his eyes glimmering jovially. Every time it surprises you, the lack of regret in them and the abundance of nonchalance. You wonder what it means to love someone like that, to love someone to the point of martyrdom. It shouldn't be like this. "perfect,"

"This is like, the only batch we didn't burn, right?"

You snort, "Yeah." Fully turn to him, "You know what they say, fifth time's the charm."

Hyunjin's laugh, you think, is so contagious that it makes it an imperative to smile in return. In shaky compartments the sound comes, like being 8, laying wide-eyed in a paddling pool and staring up at a crayon blue sky, raindrop rippling beyond all that noiseless water. His eyes curve to upturned crescents, an unconscious hand covering up the seams of his lips whilst he shakes his head. You don't even notice when he starts speaking again.

"Huh?"

"I said you got a little...something..."

You almost lose a fraction of your sanity when his nimble fingers come to wrap around your wrist while you hold onto the spatula employed into the whole snickerdoodle batter mixing business, a liberated hand coming up to gently wipe your cheek. It means everything to you. And nothing to him.

Later, when you're alone at night, really alone, you put your palm to your chest and feel the unsteady beat of your heart. A warning, a reminder. I can't. I can't. I can't.

—

You hold Hyunjin's hair up. His hands resting on the cold toilet seat, he's whimpering and bleeding. It happens every time he sees Haseul, or something which reminds him of her. Like the song.

This time she's drunk. And it's because she impulsively rises to her toes and presses a tender kiss to Chan's lips.

Hyunjin's just a feet away, across students and solo cups and streaks of neon falling irregularly through his line of sight.

He can never confess, not to her. The last thing Hyunjin wants is for her to feel bad for him. To say she feels the same as an act of service. He tells you. You understand. Somehow... you always understand.

They met in college, Hyunjin and she. And Chan was an upperclassman who seemed to be good at...well everything. At first, he couldn't figure out why it never occured to him before, the fact they were getting together maybe before, after or during the length of their relationship.

Though the answer is simple.

Hyunjin thinks the pillar to good relationships is trust. Call him a sappy romantic or whatever but he had seen true love manifest from it through generations before him and his parents and their parents. To think a different fate was woven for him...used to be unimaginable.

How ironic is that?

Hyunjin presses his cheek against your chest because he doesn't want you to look at him when he cries.

Then for the first time....he tells you he's scared. He's scared of what will happen to him. Of what is happening to him.

He's falling apart.

You cradle him, press him closer to your body like you're trying to put him together. People can't fix each other. Not really. But sometimes... they're worth the try.

"Hey...hey...it's alright," You shush him, run your fingers through his hair. Your voice almost breaking, faltering. Still this, this you mean it with every fibre of your being. "It's okay to be scared."

—

Self bleach hair.

It's Christmas and you're late for a late night dinner he's putting together. (As reluctant as he was about getting along with Hyunjin, he seems all too eager to make invite him whenever a get together takes effect.)

His apartment smells like floor cleaner. There's a queen sized bed pushed against an electric blue wall, a Fleetwood Mac poster taped to his door, small reading desk where Canon EOS New Kiss rests, polaroids of things checked off the list littered all its wooden surface.

You pick up the only photo he hasn't labelled, it reminds you that your friendship isn't just based off a pursuit. This is natural. Pizza box discarded between you two, on your roof top. It's a little too dark, you're holding a cigarette between your fingers, you're laughing and Hyunjin looks like he's going to complain the minute he's done taking the picture. (And he does.)

You smile, pressing your fingers against it like the touch could transport you to a simpler time.

"Ready to go?"

Hyunjin rakes a tentative hand through his newly dyed hair, grey (a suitable colour he says.). You can tell he's put a lot of effort into cleaning up, his usual hoodies and sweats alternated with a red satin shirt tucked into dark dress pants and a coat of the same colour. Hyunjin is beautiful. Perhaps even more like this. In fact, the extent of this quality is so Goliath-like that it obliges dolled up attendees to marvel up in awe. While you fully agree with their unsaid ponderings, you really do, you find yourself missing a less sophisticated version of him.

"Yeah, but first..." you fish out a wrapped squarish material from the depths of your pocket. Hyunjin's eyes widen, two bunny-like teeth showing for the extent of his grin.

"You got me a present!" He all but rips it out of your hand, shaking the material eagerly. He’s a Christmas person, a supreme holiday enthusiast if you will. The sheer excitement in him projects itself in every physical aspect possible. Slight jumping on the balls of his feet. "It's a cassette...?"

You speak too much, nervous he doesn't like it. "It’s a Christmas mix. I thought...since you like carols. I know it's a little old school, I'm sorry if that’s not what you were hoping for—"

Hyunjin pulls you into a big hug, wrapping his entire body it feels like; his arms around your waist, he squeezes you tighter against him, "Thank you." He whispers into your hair, it's not just about the cassette, you can tell.

There's a small light bulb dangling from his ceiling, he hasn't fixed it since the first time you pointed it out. You can tell with your eyes closed, you've begun to know more intimately than your own home. It's safe here. A place that deludes you into thinking that he's not running out of time, that even in his absence in the world, whenever you should walk into this room, it would be an imperative to find Hyunjin lazying about in its confines. Familiarity can be quite tricky, can't it?

His gratitude is not unknown to you. It's in the guilty smile that threatens to show every now and then, it's in this and it's in that. In many ways, it is not something you're a stranger to.

And yet the words manage to tears your heart at the seams. Just a little.

—

Make a snow angel.

From above, he imagines, he may appear to look like a chunk of cookie dough in an ice cream pint.

The snow is not as comfortable as it appears, its frigid temperature seeps into Hyunjin's clothes (and what feels like his internal organs, if that's even possible). He waves his hands and legs inward, outward.

Your head tilts towards him. Face twisted in annoyance. "You're getting on my wing!" You say. "Have you no respect for personal space?!"

Hyunjin narrows his eyes jovially. And people tell him he's the one with a penchant for theatrics. He leans closer in rebuttal, waving his leg around your design with more purpose. You give up. Sit on your knees, fumble with the snow. He’s still in the same position. Smug as ever...

"This is what happens when you disrespect your elders." He fake-warns. "Oka—"

What he doesn't anticipate, however, is the snowball you launch on his stupid grinning face. Now it's your turn to laugh. You clutch your stomach and point at him whilst he glares at you having barely managed to blow the snow off of his mouth.

"Oh, you're gonna get it now!"

You let out an animalistic screech, Hyunjin’s already trapped you under his weight, his thighs wound around your waist, hamstringing your plan to escape, now you're merely squirming. His fingers come down to attack your sides, digging into the flesh so mercilessly to the point you’re not sure if you’re laughing or crying. It's like there's a wildfire inside your lungs.

For a moment you forget, you let yourself forget what's to come.

“Alright, alright I’m sorry!” you press your palms against his chest in an attempt to push him off, Hyunjin has a dumb smile on his face that seems to give the impression of a hanger stuck inside his mouth. But... there's something behind his entertainment as the sound of his laugh dies down, chest heaving with exercise. His smile drops.

You can count each lash, each freckle and line on his face. The dark in his eyes. The pink of his lips. Your sweater's ridden to your ribs. And the warmth of his fingers shifting against your bare skin hits you with an earthshattering force.

Hyunjin kisses you. For a fleeting second, you freeze. Rigid with shock. Then it passes as soon as it comes.

You let out a noise of content,indubitably grateful that your neighbours forgot to put on their porch light for the night. See it’s like this, the act of kissing is not as special as is the person himself, you muse, you can kiss anyone, you can touch and be touched by anyone. But none of that truly compares to this. Not when they aren't him.

You’d be lying if you said you never thought about it. Just like you’ve thought about a lot of things. But just the realisation that the boy you’ve harboured in your heart for more complicated reasons than you disclose, to yourself even, touches you with so, so much care...it’s tearing you apart.

It’s too good to be real.

You suddenly push him away. The tugging and pulling at your heart too much to handle. For the fact remains — Hyunjin doesn't love you. He doesn't even like you. You never expected him to. Actually, you've never felt what you feel with that condition in mind either.

See when the feeling of having everything you could ever want is cradled between your palms...it ought to be hard to let go. (Maybe he’s just doing this because he feels bad for you, the little voice in your head says. You listen.)

Hyunjin speaks up first.

“I love Haseul.” he tells you, but it sounds more like he’s telling himself. “That’s why...that’s why, all this...I love her.” Not you.

You swallow, “I know.” Your hands come up to dust your pants. Hyunjin’s still on his knees, as if the answer to his conflicts are deposited under all the snow. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, it’s not okay. I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have done—”

Now you hear it, the hint of pity in his voice. You don’t mean to sound as bitter as you do. Seeing as you’re usually very good at keeping calm , breaking that very reputed front frustrates you even more.

“Look just forget about it, okay? We don’t have to talk about this.”

Hyunjin looks like he didn’t expect this side of you to exist. At least, you think, at least it got him to stop talking.

—

Learn to skate.

"If I fall, I'm taking you with me."

"You say it like I have a choice."

Hyunjin shoots you a warning glare even though you can't see. His choppy skidding steps supported by the vice grip he has on your arms. You haven't skated since you were in highschool. But when you're pretty good at it still, the smooth blade of your beaten skates gliding through ice with much dexterity, it's like floating, freeing, the wind hitting your faces, snow catching in your lashes. It's peaceful, you try not to think about the warmth of Hyunjin's arm circling around body, the vague rhythm of his heartbeat against your back. His laboured breaths on your neck. It's torturous. But spending so much time with him has taught you to hide your feelings better.

The park welcomes a large crowd around holiday season, children with toothless grins, tugging onto their mum's coats, small chin resting onto a parents' head, teenagers moving in together in school uniforms. It's the happiest time of the year. When you move past an elderly couple, they smile and tell you make a wonderful couple.

You're just about to make a correction. This puts you in an awkward position... doesn't it?

But then Hyunjin grins toothily and says, Thank you, like it's the most amusing thing in the world. You ignore the wrenching inside your chest.

Hyunjin leans forward, his plump lips brushing against your ear. "Where did you learn to skate so well?!" There's something like excitement in his kiddish laugh aside from admiration. It's not much of a question as it is an exclamation.

"I am pretty good, aren't I?"

He laughs, doesn't let you go. "Yes, yes...really good."

Out of breath, you slow down, move your feet steadily, careful not to lose balance.

"Oh my God! It is you!"

You raise your head, blink against flakes hindering your vision. Jeongin's voice used to be thinner before. As far as you remember. Now it has a weight to it.

You let out a nervous laugh.

"And it's you..."

Jeongin's eyes travel to the arms around your waist, to the stiffened figure behind you and you immediately liberate yourself. Moving to let Hyunjin use your arm as purchase, you don't fail to notice the pinch in his forehead, a frown on his mouth.

"This is my friend Hyunjin. Hyunjin, this is Jeongin—"

"We used to go out." Jeongin smiles, forwarding his hand, which is returned with an unenthused shake and a demure reply. Hyunjin never speaks to anyone this way, not even people he claims to hate.

The former male looks to you again, "I was, uh... wondering if you'd like to go out for a cup of coffee sometime."

Things between you and him ended amicably at the event of his departure for further studies, which deprives you of awkward tension which is expected when exes meet.

Besides, a cup of coffee never hurt anyone.

Right?

Without thinking, you nod slowly, "Yeah that sounds good,"

"Text me anytime."

"Sure."

“I'll be out of your hair then," he beams. "It was very nice meeting you too, Hyunjin."

"Right."

Hyunjin, you realise, has released your arm. He leans on barricades fencing along the skating area, smiling briefly. You know it’s wrong...yet you sense that you almost need him to be upset.

Then he tilts his head back towards you, "He seems like a really nice guy," he whispers, genuinely meaning every word. Your heart sinks. "I see the appeal." Underneath the lurid glare of fairy lights brandished overhead, Hyunjin's ash hair glints like it's threaded out of silver. You wonder what he's thinking.

—

Watch every Disney movie ever made.

You never end up texting Jeongin back. Just stalling for when you're ready, you tell yourself. Even though that's not true at all.

"This brings back so many memories. My parents used to belt out A Whole New World with me, like every time we watched Aladdin."

Hyunjin wipes his face with the back of his hand, technically you’re not very sure what he’s saying exactly because he’s mumbling into a paper napkin you've passed over for the umpteenth time. You find yourself picturing a small but happy family of three, of Hyunjin in Scooby Doo pajamas and gap between his teeth. (Contrary to your previous convictions, he hasn't changed all at much, save for the teeth bit. ) It's cute.

He looks to you expectantly. Can't be the only one telling embarrassing stories.

You shrug, "I had a thing for Simba. Let's just say my mum and dad were nice enough to indulge me."

Hyunjin reaches for the remote and pauses the ending credits of Lady and the Tramp. He turns to you fully now, gives you a judgemental stare. "Simba...?" He says, "Like the...lion?"

"What? It's normal to crush on fictional characters, okay?!"

"Okay,sure," Hyunjin snorts, putting a pillow between you and him so you can't kill him. "furry."

A part of you is tempted, obviously. But the much bigger part is more invested in how he looks happier, healthier. You want to think that means something.

—

Hyunjin invites you over for movie night. It's getting colder and you keep poking him with your cold feet. There's an extra set of blankets in his cupboard, he informs you, he isn't sharing his with you — and that's when you see it.

The deflated pink donut folded to the side, his and yours sharpie inscribed initials on one side.

"Found it yet?"

You don't even notice when he comes to stand behind you. So the question effectively makes you jump out of your skin. Hyunjin has a bowl of popcorn pressed to his chest, there's a pink hair band holding his hair away from his forehead. For the lack of a answer he takes it on himself to find the source of your silence. As if you've been caught red handed.

You think this is where he'll ask you to leave, that or he'll least scold you or something. You prepare for the worst.

Hyunjin just smiles, it's a big smile that succeeds in bringing out the small dimple indented on the side of his cheek. You've never noticed before. It's kinda weird. Because when it comes to him, your attention hardly ever falters.

"You probably don't remember. That’s from Seungmin's 15th birthday,"

You want to scoff under your breath. All this time you had told yourself that you were the only one to be affected by your estranged friendship growing up. Now...the same logic colours you every bit of ridiculous.

You blink away, swallowing. Voice solemn.

"I remember." Hyunjin's gaze is heavy on your shoulders. An emotion you can't quite put a finger on crosses his delicate features. It's something between surprise and relief... something else too. You don’t understand it.

—

It's disconcerting that he can’t remember the last time he got sick. Not the usual discomfort inside his chest, not the blood, not the thorns or petals. Hyunjin's just gotten so used to it, you know? What if he gets his hopes up for no good reason? What if it just comes back?

There's no possible explanation, he explains over a hasty 3 A.M message he had to leave on your answering machine because he's freaking out.

Then Haseul texts Hyunjin, tells him she misses him. Everything's adding up. Everything's falling into place. This is what he wanted, isn't it? She loves him, she finally loves him back. That must be it. He doesn't know what to say.

But he tells you, and when he does, it sounds a lot like an apology.

—

Kiss underneath a mistletoe.

“Chan and I broke up.” She says it like it’s something he should be happy about. So when he remains quiet, it only prompts her to speak more, fill up the big mighty silences.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Look Jinnie, I know I made a mistake, but...can’t you give a second chance? Just this once?”

Hyunjin has thought about this particular moment a lot. Kissing her instead of producing a response, pulling her off of her feet and mumbling of course, of course, of course. Back then, there were little doubts in his head pertaining to her, back then he believed that she was the only one for him. The love of his life at the wrong time, in the wrong place.

Now...something doesn’t feel right.

The thing about wounds, sometimes, of the heart in particular, is when they close up, it’s hard to make head or tails of the kind of person you become in their wake. Hard to adjust. Like when he suddenly shot up 7 inches in ninth grade, a late bloomer at that, and the weight of his new sneakers felt..odd.

He glances at her and also understands what it’s like to be lonely, the constant need to compensate for it by grasping at the last straw. He used to be in her shoes too. This isn’t any different. Albeit, he isn’t exactly taken by her presence. Just that he doesn’t know if what he’s doing is right. He looks over your table a few feet away from where he’s standing. Having gone out to take a call. You notice his absence and then from your seat, do your best to locate him. (he thinks of kissing you on a bed of snow, thinks of the sizzle of your skates against ice, thinks of his list on a coffee cup and his pink water donut and it’s okay to be scared. Why did it have to be you of all people, through everything? It’s not really a work of coincidence. Not at all actually.

Maybe he just wanted it to be you.)

When your eyes do lock...seeing him with his hands in his pockets, her standing beyond the barrier as she tries to say something, you smile, even if it’s a little sad. Hyunjin thinks to the conversation some nights before. Thinks of you reminding him that there's nothing to lose at this point, that he should do what his heart tells him. That it’ll be alright, if he just takes a leap of faith. Hyunjin smiles back. Through the glassy exterior and mini water fountains running down its slanted form. The realisation is not as dramatic as he thought. It’s just late.

He tears off the false mistletoe decoration glued along the periphery of an arch.

And like always.

He takes your advice.

—

Cohorts of guests pour into the colossal hotel, heads turning in quiet admiration for bejeweled arches breaking out against buttery white architecture, the roof is impossibly naked, translucent glass baring a starlit sky to your watchful eyes. Showing little mercy to a frail chute held over your head,costumed characters wade through oceans of gossamer, twinkling silver and swaying movements to slow jazz. You prop a heeled foot up on the bar platform, which strangely resembles a pedestal, in a futile attempt to catch your breath, with clammy digits settled atop the risky surface of a marbled counter. A soft voice speaks over the ambience, uttering your name with much care. You lift your head. And there he is.

Jisung is scouring through the Spotify playlist you’ve put together for New Year’s Eve. He’s complaining about the lack of Beyoncé while your friends go around the buffet table. When he calls you, you’re sipping your drink, laughing at something Changbin is saying, his eyes brighten just at the sound of your laugh. Hyunjin isn’t surprised to see his friend taking a liking of you even though he hardly knows you. That’s just the effect you have on people.

Excusing yourself, you allow him to walk you to a less densely populated area where a stone pillar faces expensive paintings of nameless painters. With the effect of alcohol settling in and your inhibitions effectively lowered, your steps sway a little. You lean against the massive build rising from tiled floor. “So what’s up?” you murmur, the lump in your throat thickening just at the thought of him speaking the good news into existence. “I take it went well?”

Hyunjin doesn't answer. He looks distracted for a bit. Then in an instant he snaps out of his daze. “What did you mean when you said ‘once’?”

Your brows come together in inquiry.

“What?”

"When I asked you if you have ever been in love, you said ‘once’." He persists, his fingers come up to your shoulder, grazing slightly as if they’re trying to carve out words against the skin. "You weren’t talking about Jeongin.”

He knows. He’s always known. Hyunjin can’t believe he’s been so stupid.

“Took you long enough.” You let out a sardonic laugh.“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

"It matters to me..." Hyunjin sounds offended, you gather, but he manages to quell his temper for the sake of coaxing your confession. Is he purposely embarrassing you? "I don’t think...I love Haseul anymore...I didn’t realise...I haven’t for a long time."

A big chandelier beams over withering plants pushed against the ceiling, in this poor supply of light, you can tell exactly how he looks, eyes glimmering adoringly, you've spent something-teen years of your life wondering what it's supposed to mean. And it still manages to confuse you.

"Why are you telling me this?" you ask, albeit you already know. Because funnily enough, before he got his braces removed and dyed his hair a scandalous blonde, before bucket lists and heartbreak, he was just the boy who told you he liked your stupid reindeer sweater even though it had officially made you the 7th grade laughing stock. You remember being fifteen and in love with Hyunjin. And you've never actually stopped. You need to hear it to believe it.

It drives you crazy. The way Hyunjin brushes his fingers against your cheek, shifting strands away from your eyes. But you can't help it, you've always wanted this. You lean into the caress, peering up at him as his large hand cups your jaw, thumb traversing from your tilted chin to your glossy lips like he's trying to smooth out all the creases. His voice is small, a whisper.

"Because I need you to know I think I’m falling in love with you.” he says. His palm opens and there’s a plastic mistletoe nestled between his fingers. You’re smiling and sniffling whilst his forehead comes to press against yours. Hyunjin grins. “And there’s still one last item on my list.”

“Are you seriously asking me to land one on you now?”

“Oh hell yeah.”

—

"Move."

You press your fingers against the slick, sweaty skin.

In rebuttal, Hyunjin grumbles under his breath. Only half awake, half aware that he was mumbling in his sleep. His naked chest seems to be, if it’s even possible, glued to your bare front as he sprawls out like a starfish over your body, using his gangly arms to accommodate the strange position.

Though and you know he knows it too — it’s anything but uncomfortable.

See by now, you aren't exactly a stranger to Hyunjin's sleeping habits. Or really, any habits of his.

All the windows are cracked open, moonlight percolating through a thin sheet of curtains in rendering evidence that it’s still night time. You can make out the faint sound of honking in the distance, a few stray dogs here and there, probably producing strings of complaints about the blatantly unbearable heat.

The strong stench of sweat and an aftermath of what happened before is a quick reminder of where you are, what you’re doing and that your arm’s going cold for a lack of circulation under his weight. Beads of sweat collected against his skin and trickle down the side of your face, the crook of your neck, which only prompts you to apply more force to the pads of your index and pointer — albeit it did nothing to move him, "Gross." You groan. "You're sweating like a pig!"

This comment, of all the things you've tried to get him to sleep on his side, succeeds in making Hyunjin raise his head, his grey hair matted down, a few rogue strands pushed out to fall over the unamused look in his eyes.

In an unprecedented minute of absolute clarity, something inside your stomach started to churn at the shocking sight. You’re impossibly, absolutely and nauseatingly in love with Hwang Hyunjin and the funny thing is, you don’t have to think twice to know he is too.

"Gross?" Hyunjin lowers his face to brush his pouted lips along your jaw, grinning when you let out a shaky but involuntary breath and as if he is looking to make a point with his digits traversing from your bare stomach, just along the hem of your underwear, "After all that?"

"I hate you." You say — but more like, stutter. The sound of his giggles eliciting a strange sensation in you, reverberating against your chest, knocking against his ribs and your skin, like it’s trying to reach out to you, like your bodies insist on melding into one.

"I don’t think you’re being honest, baby." He laughs, squeezing your side, coming up to plant a warm palm to your butt to repeat the action, which in turn, drew a mewl from you. “Because you looove me.” Hyunjin smirks, his finger thumbing along your throat to your chin. You think this is what all those great poets meant in endless litanies of lovers torn apart by time and war woven together in a simple caress, like a longing, like a secret. Guarded from prying eyes, greedy hands, and you keep it, you keep it. For him. With him.

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lyntonier · 3 years ago

Text

A train to Paris

Carmen Sandiego x Gray Calloway

Summary: Carmen is taking a break away from her work — helping out at the Orphanage and fighting crime — and decides to take a trip back to Paris, a location she quite enjoyed. During her journey she meets a familiar face she believed she would not see again.

A/N: This is set after season 4.

"So Carms, I hear you are off to Paris for the week huh?"

I smile into the phone, listening to Ivy's comment.

"You heard correct. Well, assuming nothing goes wrong, that is".

I had gotten a break from working at the Orphanage with my Madre, so I decided to take myself on a little trip. We had finally met about eleven months ago, and I had been helping around as much as I possibly could without a break. Well, I tell a lie, I had a couple days free from working with Madre, though I used those days to check for any crime around. I guess some habits die hard huh, this was meant to be my new start but I can't seem to leave fighting crime behind. It was my choice to work so much at the Orphanage though.

Madre had had enough and told me to take a week away and go someplace, so where better than Paris? The beauty of the city when the sun goes down and the lights come on again, the food, the art and architecture, the history, it's simply something I cannot forget. It's truly a once in a lifetime thing.

"Wow, I'm so jealous! I wish I could be there with you, it would be so much fun- Zack stop! Leave Julia alone. No- She probably does NOT appreciate that, so quit it... Yes, you, who else?!.......... Sorry Carms, it's Zach trying to flirt with Julia again".

Giggling at Ivy's scolding to her brother, I make a mental note to tease him about that when I next see him. He kept flirting with the poor woman, to which she would politely laugh and make an excuse to leave.

"No worries Ivy, it's alright. I must admit though, I do feel sorry for Julia in some respects".

"I know right! Gosh, he's so oblivious sometimes. I love him anyway though, no matter how much of a douche brain he is".

"It would be nice to be able to meet up with all of you again, it's been a while since I saw all of you properly. You'll have to let me know when you two both have some time off and I'll get hold of Shadowsan and Player, then we can all have a nice catch-up".

I hear Ivy sigh wistfully into the phone, light laughter leaving her lips.

"Honestly Carms, that seems like such a good idea right about now. I'm so tired with work, I got called out five times within the past two days, three of which were last night. I've not had a nice snooze in for ages and I could do with one right about now, haha."

"You do sound quite tired. When do you get off shift?"

"Uuuh, hold on....... Forty-five minutes, then I can go home".

"Well, you should treat yourself to a warm bubble bath and a long rest".

"I think I'll take that one and do just that. Ah- I've got to shoot, Cheif is calling for me. I'll call you tomorrow and we can talk more, yeah?"

"Yes, wouldn't miss it for the world. Tell the others I said hello for me? And I'll work on arranging a girls trip between you and me to somewhere, just let me know where you fancy going".

"Oh you're a star Carm, I'll be looking forward to that then. I'll decide tonight and let you know tomorrow, and I'll pass on your 'hellos' to the others. Talk soon Carm".

I smile into the phone, mildly disappointed that our conversation had to end so soon.

"Talk soon Ivy".

With that, I hear the beep of an ended call as Ivy hangs up the line. A sudden wave of exhaustion washes over me as I move my phone down to my lap, checking the time. It was 1:15 in the morning. Raising my eyebrows, I nod at my phone, surprised at how late it was. I should probably try to get some sleep as I'll be arriving at my stop in about seven hours from now and I would much prefer to not be falling asleep at every given moment.

Setting my phone down next to myself, I grab a blanket out of my carry bag and drape it over my lap, removing my jumper and folding it into four before placing it onto the seat to my left. Reaching up above myself, I pull a cord that turned off the lights in my little train booth, engulfing myself in darkness. The only form of light that I had at this stage was the gentle light from the moon, it would be full soon. Laying down, I place my head onto my jumper and pull my blanket up higher, closing my eyes and relaxing my body.

Right as I began to doze off, I felt a strange feeling of wariness make itself known in my gut, enticing me to sit up and evaluate my surroundings. Within a couple of seconds of having my eyes open, I heard a light tapping on my booth door. Someone was there. Averting my eyes to the glass section of the door, I keep my body motionless as I trace the figure with my eyes and their every possible movement.

If I stayed still then they would not see me and assume I was sleeping and most likely leave.

*tap, tap, tap*

"Excuse me, uh, I know you are awake.. can I come in? My booth has no heating and it's really cold out here".

Or maybe not.

Cautiously eyeing the door, I slowly raise myself from the seats and brace my hand into a fist, ready to fight off a possible threat. Standing tall, I cautiously step my way over to the door before grasping the cool metal handle with one hand and undoing a lock with the other. Twisting the handle, I edge the door open bit by bit.

"Hello... Um.. yes you may".

It was a man, not that much taller than me, and Australian. Or perhaps Kiwi. I couldn't see many of his facial features, other than the fact that he had a man bun and a couple bags with him. I wracked my brain for any vocal recognitions, however, nothing matched.

Standing aside, I made room for the strange man to come inside.

"Cheers mate, sorry 'bout how odd this is. I went to the train staff to ask about the heating and they told me that the booth I chose was meant to be closed, though the person on duty of closing it off didn't get around to it, hence me choosing the unlucky booth. They told me I would have to ask to share booths with somebody else seen as though all others are booked, and I saw your light go out, so I came here. Sorry and cheers again".

The man laughed, rubbing what I assumed was the back of his neck. His explanation seemed pretty truthful and his reasoning honest.

"That's no problem, sorry that you got a faulty booth, that must've sucked".

"Hah, tell me 'bout it" He joked.

Smiling, I close the door and return to my seat, watching as he put his bags in the overhead luggage area, leaving out a blanket of his own. Smart man.

"So, what's your name mate?"

"Carmen. And you?"

I see him whip his head around, before shaking it and laughing lightly.

"I had a friend called Carmen, though I've not seen her in a long time. My name is Grah-Grayson. Grayson".

I raise my eyebrow at his stutter, smirking lightly.

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you Grah-Grayson" I tease.

"Haha, as to you Carmen".

With that, we both fell silent, just basking in the pleasant atmosphere of the booth with the same idea of sleep on our minds.

Slipping back into my 'bed', I pull my blankets back over myself and close my eyes, listening carefully at everything around me. I hear some stuffing around, something dropping on the floor, followed by a second something, more shuffling, then a satisfied sigh. Peering over my shoulder, I see the outline of a body laying on the seat across from mine.

"Did you just take your shoes off?"

"Hm? Ah yeah mate, can't sleep with shoes on, that's just crazy".

Grah-Grayson laughs at his own statement, finding humour in my question.

I feel my lips draw into a thin line as I shuffle my feet around awkwardly, my shoes very much still on.

Am I crazy?

"G'd'night mate, thanks again for letting me in on such short notice".

"No, no, that's fine. Goodnight".

It felt strange saying goodnight to a stranger, though I had most definitely done stranger.

I feel my eyes shoot open rather rapidly, my heart pounding against my ribcage as I scramble to sit upright, taking in my surroundings eagerly before eyeing the strange man in the booth with me. I check the room once again for anything out of the ordinary, before removing the blanket from my body and standing, striding my way over the door and yanking it open silently and slipping out, closing it behind myself. I needed some fresh air.

Making my way to the end of the train, I open a door that leads to a small balcony attached to the carriage. Immediately the wind hits me, blowing my hair to the side.

Sucking in a deep breath of air, I relax my shoulders and close my eyes. I had a nightmare — rather a memory — that Coach Brunt had broken into my booth and tied me up, much like before, and decided that enough was enough and planned to end things then and there.

A pretty sad nightmare, huh.

I enjoy the breeze a little longer before turning around and opening the door, walking back into the train carriage and back to my booth. Opening the door, I am surprised to see Grah-Grayson awake and sat upright, watching out of the window at the scenery. It was early for him to be awake, it was about five in the morning and the sun had begun rising, casting a gentle glow in the booth.

"Ah, mate, there you are, are you alr-......."

The words leave his mouth as he stares at me in surprise, horror, happiness, sadness and recognition... a mix of everything. Exactly what I was feeling.

Tears fill my eyes as I gaze at the male before me. It couldn't be...

"G-Gray?"

"Black sheep..?."

Grah-Grayson stands up, tears in his own eyes as he stares at me intently.

Stepping forward, I feel my arms raising slightly and before I knew it I was lunging for him, sobs wreaking through my lips as tears flowed heavily from my eyes. Engulfing him in my arms, I feel him do the same with just as much ferocity. I hear sobs come from him too, his chest rising and falling quickly and sharply with each gasp of air.

Before anything could be said, I feel anger suddenly wash over me, leading me to remove my arms from around him and shove him away harshly, placing some distance between us.

A confused whimper leaves his mouth, clearly unintentionally, but before he could say anything I let months worth of hurt, confusion, upset and anger form into words and flow out freely.

"Gray where were you?! W-What did you mean 'don't tell her' that you woke up!! Do you know how long I waited for you to wake up in the hospital, unable to see you or hear from you, not knowing that you had long gone?! Do you- Do you know how long I WAITED fOR YOU? Three months Gray- three months that you were gone and I was waiting for you to wake up so that we could start over, so that I could know you were okay!" The words kept flowing out, no matter how much I tried to stop them. Although I didn't try. I couldn't bring myself to try. I started pacing back and forth as I rambled, making sure the emphasis on certain words came out.

"Carmen, let me explain, I-"

I cut him off, anger still clouding my better judgement.

"NO Gray, you don't get to explain until you hear me!! I searched EVERYWHERE for days, weeks, months for you, thinking that something had happened to you, only to be told by Chief that you had requested to not have your condition or whereabouts revealed to me! Why Gray, why..? If you were angry or upset at me and didn't want to see me, you could have just told me instead of making me worry like that! I spent so many nights awake trying to find out where you were with the help of Player, but nothing!! NOTHING!"

I heave out everything that has been resting on my shoulders, the feeling of relief evident on my shoulders as a weight had been lifted.

"Carmen I was never upset at you, more of I was upset at myself. It was my fault that you had been captured and lured in, I knew what was happening and I could have prevented it, but I didn't. I blamed myself for you being brainwashed and hurt, and for myself being hurt. I was such an idiot and I didn't want to do something that could hurt you again-"

"And yet you did.." I remark with a whisper, adverting my eyes as I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself and sniffling as I did so.

"I know and I'm sorry... I didn't want to interfere with your life, not after everything that had happened. VILE was caught and disbanded, you had information on your mother, everything was over and you had a fresh start ahead of you and I didn't want to get in the way of that. So, I changed my identity and lived away from the public eye, hidden away where you could not find me. It wasn't just a fresh start for you, it was one for me too... I asked for you to not be told of my departure, even though Cheif strongly suggested against it, the same with that Julia lady. I told them it was my only request, and they allowed it eventually. I now realise that wasn't a good idea and that it hurt you much more than I believed it could or would... I am so sorry Carmen.. I really am so, incredibly sorry.. I can't blame you if you are angry at me, I gue-"

"Of course I'm angry at you!! I finally realised after all of that time that I was in love with you, and I was prepared to tell you, only to find that you were gone! Those three months left in the dark were pure heaven compared to the.. the shitty, crappy, horrible feelings once I found out you were gone!"

I watch as Gray's eyes widen in surprise, as he stutters his next sentence, his face flushed from tears, much like my own.

"C-Carmen.. you- what did you just.. what did you just say?"

"That I realised after all of this time that I was in love with you, so very incredibly in love with you, and that I was prepared to tell you!" I growl.

We both stand there in silence, the cool feeling of my tears drying up on my face present. Sudden realisation dawns upon me at what I had just boldly announced. Smacking my hand over my mouth, I gasp, my eyes widening as the realisation finally sets in completely.

Nothing is said between us as we just stare one another in the eyes, waiting for the other to speak.

"Gray, I-"

I cut myself short as Gray abruptly strides towards me confidently, raising his hands to cup my cheeks as I step back, unsure of what was happening. Staring down into my eyes, Gray smiles gently.

"You always were a cheeky one, sneaking your way into my heart the way you did".

My stomach fills with butterflies at that, a small smile making its way onto my face, accompanied by little giggles. Soon enough, I was laughing uncontrollably into Gray's chest, him onto my shoulder.

The laughter died down soon after, we were just left with warm smiles on our faces.

Moving his hand across my face, his thumb stroking my cheek and his other hand caressed the back of my neck, he looks down at my lips before looking into my eyes.

"May I?"

That one sentence had my stomach doing flips as though I were a schoolgirl who just confessed her undying love to her crush and received the same feelings back, though I guess in some respects I was that schoolgirl, just a little older.

"You may".

With that, Gray leans down, pressing his lips gently against mine and pulling away. I did not feel those fireworks that people would describe a true-loves kiss as, rather I felt complete, safe, happy, joyous, excited, calm, at peace and so many more pleasant things, much better than those so described fireworks.

Leaning in for a second kiss, I met Gray halfway with just as much passion, more ferocity this time, however. Soon though, we had to depart for air, a gentle blush growing over both of our cheeks.

"Carmen, I-"

"Excuse me, are you two alright in there? I could faintly hear you arguing from next door".

Looking behind me, there was an older woman stood in the doorway, a concerned look on her face.

"Yes, we are alright madame, thank you for your concern. Sorry for the noise, everything is sorted now" I explain, turning to face the woman.

"Very well then, there is no need to apologise my dear, as long as you are both okay. Oh, and sorry for interrupting your moment"

The lady giggles cheekily, before making her way back to her booth while rambling on about young love, or something along the lines.

"We should probably close the door, no?"

"Yes, we should. You, mister, have a lot to explain to me, especially what you have been up to since we last saw one another".

I smile as I leave Grays embrace, walking to the door and closing it.

"As do you. We have a while till we reach my destination, so shall we?"

"Hmm... I say sleep and then explain at a later time, on a date perhaps?"

"Friday, 8PM at Au Vieux Paris d'Arcole?" Grey wiggles his eyebrows, a smile on his face as he does so.

Laughter bubbles in my throat as I sniffle, wiping away any tear streams on my face as I nod my head eagerly.

"Call it a date".

A/N: This is my first ever oneshot/story piece that I've done on here and I honestly do not know how good it is, or how bad it is. All I can hope is that it's decent. It was inspired by @wizardsoffthecoast who had mentioned something about this, so here we are. I hope you enjoy it!

(I do apologise for any spelling mistakes!)

#carmen sandeigo netflix #red crackle #gray calloway #carmen x gray

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msfcatlover · 4 years ago

Note

Can you give the bullet points for that Hollow Knight Ludonarrative dissonance essay so us who played the game can fill in the gaps?

Sure thing!

First and foremost, I know many people are familiar with the term “ludonarrative dissonance,” which is when the mechanics of a game run counter to the themes and sometimes the plot of the story being told. On the opposite end of the spectrum, and far more rarely talked about, is “ludonarrative harmony,” which is when the mechanics of a game support the story being told or even tell a supportive story of their own!

I am very firm in my belief that in a quarter of a century playing video games, Hollow Knight has the best ludonarrative harmony of any game I’ve played.

Here’s my primary example: the condemnation of the Pale King’s actions, and how it ties into the original possible endings of the game.

The Pale King’s failure is the great final tragedy of Hallownest. He saw the end coming, knew he could not defeat the Radiance again, and did not want his people to suffer. He determined he needed a being of pure Void to contain the Radiance, but believed that any emotion would lead to a flawed prison. So, he created the Vessels by the hundreds, letting them struggle to the top of the Abyss, and cast each one of them back down into the depths for the “flaw” of being children with actual emotions. We don’t know how he determined this, but when he finally found one that seemed properly emotionless, “truly hollow,” he took that child and sealed the gate behind them, locking the player character (henceforth referred to as “Ghost” in this first draft ramble-essay,) and who-knows-how-many-other Vessels to fend for themselves in the depths.

You already know this. And you already know that child was not given a name (though I will be referring to them by the fandom nickname “Hollow” from here on out,) was purposefully neglected, taught only training and their purpose for existing in the hopes it would keep emotions and desires from taking root. But Hollow did have desires; specifically, Hollow just wanted their dad to be proud of them. When Hollow sacrificed their mind to hold the Radiance and was imprisoned in the Black Egg, after the Dreamers gave their own minds to keep it sealed, the prison was faulty. An unspecified amount of time later, the Radiance’s influence was able to leak out in the form of the Infection, and the kingdom of Hallownest was destroyed.

(The Pale King often gets pilloried by the fandom for “letting” that happen by showing any level of caring for the child. This is the wrong conclusion.)

The game begins with us playing Ghost, having at some point escaped from the Abyss and (seemingly) having lost their memories in the wilds outside the kingdom. It is as Ghost that we track down the Dreamers and slay them, opening the Egg to face Hollow and put an end to the plague, though how exactly that happens and what the outcome is depends on your choices throughout the game.

As a fellow Vessel, you can take Hollow’s place. When Hollow is slain, Ghost absorbs the Radiance and the Egg reseals itself.

Using the power of the Dreamnail, you can enter Hollow’s mind and fight the Radiance directly, driving her back into hiding for the foreseeable future.

If you have the Voidheart charm equipped and choose to fight the Radiance, you become a “higher being” yourself and are able to slay her for good. The kingdom is free of the plague, and Hollow even survives and has another chance at life. (This one is, by the way, known as the “True Ending.”)

And here we finally reach my argument, and I can stop regurgitating old information. Because these endings and what you need to achieve them is what finally solidifies just how wrong the Pale King was. Wronger than he ever knew.

He must have thought the Vessels less than people, or he would not have been willing to kill so many. But he would not have rejected so many of them if the Vessels weren’t inherently feeling, thinking creatures like any other bug in the kingdom — none of them were “truly hollow.” Children, left to die in the dark by the hundreds. The greatest sin he ever committed.

We know he did, on some level, care about Hollow, but still chose to neglect them in hopes of stunting their emotional growth. That he believed the sacrifice of one Vessel and three of his most respected advisors (give or take Herrah, who’s whole deal with him is kinda... weird,) to eternal imprisonments was better than letting the whole kingdom fall to the Radiance’s vengeance. That the ends justify the means. It’s his last thought, still echoing in his corpse when we find him on his throne: “...No cost too great...”

But the ends don’t justify the means, and I don’t just mean because the plan failed. I mean because it was inherently flawed in its initial premise, the very assumption he built it on: that “being hollow” was the solution to the problem.

A truly hollow Vessel would not care one whit about the mission or anything else. If Ghost were hollow, there would not be a game; they would wander aimlessly, not speaking or interacting with anyone, until they finally died.

If you play Ghost as being hollow, or as close to it as you can, you’ll be ignoring all NPCs. You’ll not be buying any upgrades or equipment. You’ll not be wandering far from the central path. Why would you? A hollow Vessel should care only for their mission, find the shortest route to enter the Black Egg, slay Hollow, and be done with it. Not only does this make life much harder for you, it nets you the worst ending. The Pale King’s trap just resets, now with the Dreamers dead so none can ever try to fix the problem again, and it will fail eventually, because Ghost isn’t hollow. The very fact there is a plot to follow, a goal to achieve, means that Ghost has goals they are willing to suffer hardships to reach. Frustration, determination, and pride in success have to be assumed, complimented by the fact those are all the emotions the player will feel on this particular run.

If you want to face the Radiance, you have to upgrade the Dreamnail, and you’re not told that will be the end result when you first receive it. You have to be ambitious and stubborn, at the very least, to pursue that goal blind, or you have to really want to know what the Sage will give you as a reward. You have to experiment, going back to bosses you’ve already beaten to fight their dream versions and put them to rest, track down the hidden dream roots and clamber all over the map to solve their puzzles. For the second ending, Ghost has to have goals outside of their main mission, has to think through the concept of deaths enough to make the connection between the ghosts and the bosses, and repeatedly return to speak to the Sage for the upgrades. They have to be curious enough to even use the Dreamnail in the first place, and like it enough to want to improve it.

And how do you get the best ending? The true ending? Slay the Radiance, defeat it for good, save the kingdom of Hallownest?

You explore. You wander off the main path, root out secrets and shortcuts and answers. You need to talk to multiple NPCs, and not just speed through their dialogue to get your reward but actually think about it and remember who’s connected to whom. You meet the White Lady in the Queen’s Garden and travel down into the Abyss, both areas you never need to go to and which no one will even tell you about before you’ve been there. You throw yourself against the Path of Pain again, and again, and again, and again, with no promise of reward, just to see what’s on the other side.

To truly defeat the Radiance, you have to play Ghost as being curious, distractible, attentive, and caring. They cannot be isolated and they cannot be ignorant. And if you care enough to end up with the Voidheart, you probably talked to everyone, helped them complete their quests, tried different charm combinations and ran around the map just to see how people reacted. You probably wanted to know the secrets of Hallownest, and refused to let insurmountable odds turn you away.

In the true ending, Ghost actually has a pretty strong personality, told purely through mechanics.

Story and gameplay.

The Pale King was wrong. We’re told that, asked to look upon his actions and despair that anyone could be driven to such lengths... made worse by the fact his theory was flawed in its very foundations. Being hollow was never the answer; a hollow Vessel was always going to fail. The cost was too great, and all the awful things he did to try and stop the Radiance... it was all for nothing.

Harmony.

It’s just... it’s heartbreaking, and absolutely beautiful.

And every time I see people say Ghost can defeat the Radiance because “they’re the one who’s really hollow,” I want to rip my hair out, like how the fuck can people just IGNORE the SMOOTHEST INTEGRATION OF STORYTELLING AND GAMEPLAY I’ve ever seen in my LIFE, one of the HARDEST PARTS OF GAME DEVELOPMENT that someone probably spent months getting down to such a truly astounding finish, and somehow reach the conclusion the guy whose fuckups lead to the deaths of hundreds of children, intentional child abuse, and the downfall of his kingdom was RIGHT?!

#hollow knight #hollow knight meta #hk meta #the pale king #hallownest #games #my life #mine

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valdomarx · 4 years ago

Text

Entry, Descent and Landing

Stargate Atlantis, McKay/Sheppard, time loop, 6k, rated M

Also on AO3

“The gate’s not working,” Rodney huffs, entering the mess with a scowl on his face. He's clearly personally offended by this turn of events.

“Eh, I’m sure you’ll fix it.” John currently has more pressing issues to consider, like whether he can reasonably have fruit loops for lunch or whether he should eat some vegetables like an adult.

He picks up the fruit loops.

“I’m serious!” Rodney is all fidgety, talking and waving his hands instead of eating, and that’s never a good sign. “There’s something very wrong with it, and I have no idea why.”

John raises an eyebrow. It’s not often that McKay admits there’s something he doesn’t understand. And without the gate, they are vulnerable.

Regretfully, he puts the fruit loops back. “Alright. Why don’t you show me what the problem is?”

The gate will accept an address, and it spins and dials as normal. But when it should open a wormhole with a whoosh and a ripple of blue light, it simply stops dead. The lights fade out and it shuts itself off.

Huh.

“It’s been like this since we tried to dial New Athos for a check in.” A frown creases Rodney’s forehead. “Hand me that scanner, will you?”

They spend the day poking and prodding at the gate and the control consoles - or, more accurately, Rodney pokes and John swings his legs off the side of the console and provides unhelpful but, he thinks, amusing commentary - but there’s nothing to indicate a problem. No fried circuits, no missing components, none of the usual error warnings which appear when the gate runs into a problem. It just… doesn’t work.

They work through the afternoon, and by the time eight p.m. rolls around John is ready to call it a night and start again tomorrow. But before he can suggest they get some dinner, the gate whirs to life and begins to dial.

“Did you do that?” he asks Rodney, but he already knows the answer is no by the look of confusion on Rodney’s face.

The gate spins as if to dial but it doesn’t connect. It merely sits there, illuminated but inactive, and then -

John wakes up in his quarters.

That’s weird. He’s disoriented, and woozy, and he feels a headache creeping at the back of his skull.

He shakes it off. He probably just needs some food. He heads to the mess and is sitting down to eat when -

“The gate’s not working,” Rodney huffs.

John squints at him. “Again?”

“What do you mean, again?” Rodney waves him aside impatiently. “There’s something very wrong with it, and I have no idea why.”

A cold chill settles at the bottom of John’s stomach. “I know, Rodney. We had this conversation yesterday.”

“What are you talking about? Of course we didn’t. The gate only stopped working today.”

Rodney insists that he has no memory of the gate breaking, and neither does anyone else they talk to. It's like the previous day has simply disappeared.

The more he insists that he remembers it, the more Rodney turns from dismissive to concerned, until he marches him down to see Carson and okay, that's not the worst idea under the circumstances.

Carson checks him over, determines he's physically fine, and tells him it's probably just déjà vu. But that can't be right. It was so real.

Rodney keeps shooting him these worried looks, and that's definitely not helping. So he brushes it off and suggests they get back to fixing the gate. It is, after all, still broken.

They spend another few hours on that, opening up the consoles in the gate room and looking for any faulty hardware. Soon enough it's dinner time, and he's going to suggest heading to the mess when the gate spins up again, and oh shit -

He wakes up in his quarters. He frantically scrambles for his watch and sees that it reads two p.m.

This is definitely not déjà vu.

He heads straight to the gate room. The gate techs are antsy.

"Sheppard, you're here, good." Rodney enters, a tablet tucked under one arm. “We've got a problem. The gate’s not working."

They try to fix the gate again, with no more success than the last two attempts. John keeps checking his watch.

Maybe it's different now. Maybe he's changed enough to stop the day repeating.

At exactly right p.m., his sunny, perhaps delusional, optimism is shattered.

The gate starts dialing.

He wakes up in his quarters.

He sends Rodney off to consult with Zelenka and takes matters into his own hands.

He tries everything he can think of to dial the gate - dialing different addresses, dialing it at different times, even removing and replacing the control crystal in his famed “turn it off and turn it on again” approach to computer repair - but nothing works.

He tries taking a puddle jumper and flying out to the mainland, and into space, and as far around the planet as he can get. No matter how far he travels, at exactly eight p.m. he resets and wakes up back in his quarters.

Six hours is simply not enough time to solve whatever the hell is going on here

He tries explaining his situation to Elizabeth, to Teyla and Ronon, to Lorne, to Carson. Even when people are willing to entertain the notion of a time loop, no one knows how to address the problem, let alone suggest a solution. At best, they seem to be humoring him. At worst, they seem to think it’s his apparently inevitable slide into paranoia.

After trying everyone on the base he has even a passing relationship with, he gives up telling anyone. They can’t help him.

He overrides the city’s power usage limits and tries to dial up Earth. The gate still won’t dial, and he overloads the ZPM, and the entire city is plunged into darkness.

He wakes up in his quarters.

He used to love it here, his own little corner of the strange place that is his home. Now it feels like a prison.

He tries to make contact with the Athosians, or with the Manarians, or even with the Genii. But without the gate, his radio transmissions will take years to reach them. He sits by the radio anyway, listening to the crackling static and waiting for a reply he knows will never come.

Maybe he's trapped in a virtual reality, or his mind is being probed by aliens. It wouldn't be the first time.

Maybe none of this is real.

He stands on one of the city’s most distant piers, staring out into the ocean. It’s quiet here, now he’s turned off his radio and tweaked the lifesigns detector so it can’t track him. He watches the waves, the same today as they were yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. He considers his options.

He puts a gun to his temple and counts down from five.

He wakes up in his quarters.

He bangs on the lab door and tries one more time to convince Rodney to help him.

“A time loop is not impossible,” he grits out. “It happened at the SGC.” He knows Rodney has read the file.

“That’s because there was an Ancient artifact involved.” Rodney sounds haughty. “Have you touched any strange Ancient artifacts recently, Colonel?”

John breathes between clenched teeth and shakes his head.

“So. Time just spontaneously started resetting itself, did it?”

“How should I know? All I know is that I have woken up in my quarters a hundred times by now, and every day at eight p.m. the loop resets itself.”

“Why are you the only one this is happening to?”

“I don’t know!” he yells. “I have no idea what terrible sin I’m being punished for here! I’ve made my share of mistakes in my life, but nothing that deserves this.”

Rodney stops moving and looks at him -- really looks.

“Jesus, Sheppard.” Rodney’s brow creases. “You’re not okay, are you?”

John slumps. He can’t summon the energy to deny it. “Not even remotely.”

For some reason, this seems to be what pushes Rodney into taking him seriously. He nods, once, sharply. “What can I do to help?”

He looks at his watch. It’s ten minutes to eight.

“Tell me a secret,” he says.

Rodney gives him a disdainful look. “What is this, a tween girls’ slumber party?”

He grits his teeth. “I spent the entire day trying to convince you what’s happening to me is real. I don’t have time to do that every loop. I need you to tell me something no one else knows, so next time I can convince you I’m not crazy or playing around and we can fix this.”

He sees Rodney’s mind working. He can tell he knows John is right and he’s considering options of what to tell him: details about his childhood, his research, his time here on Atlantis, and discarding each one. For all his faults, Rodney does not dissemble. His life is an open book, and for this to work John needs to know something truly private.

“Alright,” Rodney says eventually. He tilts his chin up and straightens his shoulders like he’s bracing himself for incoming fire. “When I was fifteen, there was a boy at school a couple of years older than me. His name was Mikey Haynes.”

“Have you touched any strange Ancient artifacts recently, Colonel?” Rodney asks with the same look of superiority he always has. “Because that’s the only way-”

“McKay,” he interrupts.

“- and why would you be the only one affected, that doesn’t make sense-”

“Rodney!”

Rodney stops. Something in the tone of his voice has broken through.

“I know about Mikey Haynes,” he says.

Rodney goes very pale and John can feel the anxiety radiating off him in waves.

“How do you know that name?” his voice is barely above a whisper.

“Because you told me, Rodney. In the last loop.”

For a few seconds Rodney stares at him, eyes wild and arms wrapped protectively around his chest. Eventually he gives one, sharp nod.

“Alright. You’re stuck in a time loop. What are we going to do about it?”

He has that conversation with Rodney every single loop. It is, without exception, the worst part of each one. Even feeling himself die wasn’t this awful.

He and Rodney have run every test they can think of. He’s been subjected to medical tests and genetic tests, they’ve scanned him for nanites and viruses and alien mind control, and they’ve turned up nothing. He is, by all accounts, completely healthy -- other than the fact he’s reliving the same six hours over and over and over and over.

“Maybe the problem isn’t with me,” he says. He chews over the idea and it seems plausible. “Maybe the problem is with the city.”

“What?”

“What if I’m not the one being looped through time? What if you are, and I’m the only one who’s aware of it?”

“So you’re sane and everyone else is crazy?”

“Yes.” He folds his arms over his chest. “Maybe my ATA gene gives me some protection against the effect, I don’t know.”

“Your magic genetics strike again.”

He ignores the griping. “If I’m right, the problem is even worse than I thought. The whole city, even the whole planet could be stuck in the loop. What’s happening to our allies while we’re stuck? How far have the Wraith advanced across this galaxy without us to keep them in check.”

Rodney swallows, the gravity of the situation finally hitting him.

“There must be a clue in the city sensors,” he says, pushing bits of drone aside to access the whiteboard in his lab. “If the reset is at the same time, there might be a preceding energy burst we can detect.”

“What good will that do?” John is too tired to think straight. “I know when the loop is going to reset.”

“Because if we know what type of energy it is, we can understand what’s causing it.”

John throws up his hands. Sure, why not. It's not like he's in a hurry or anything.

Rodney pokes through the sensor data, making little hmm noises which he finds unreasonably aggravating.

“See!” Rodney has his smuggest expression on, the one that simultaneously says I told you so and I know you find me charming. “Here, just before the gate failed to connect, there’s a small anomaly in the readings. It looks like… Interesting. It looks like ionizing radiation.”

“What does that mean?”

Rodney’s brow creases. “I’m not sure. There’s a spike of gamma and X-rays as the gate tries to connect. But I have no idea what the source is.”

John barely has time to let out a frustrated breath before the loop resets.

He hurries back to Rodney’s lab and points him to the sensor data.

“Interesting,” Rodney says again. “It looks like ionizing radiation.”

John exhales. “Yeah. You said that last time.”

He doesn’t need to eat, or sleep. His body resets with every loop. And yet, his mind has frayed. He hasn’t rested in so long, his thoughts are a jumbled mess.

He takes a loop off. He goes to the gym and spars with Ronon. His muscles are fresh but his strategy is a disaster; Ronon unsurprisingly wipes the floor with him. All the same, it feels good to stretch and move; to worry about avoiding a flying elbow instead of his sorry fate for a while.

Then he has dinner with Teyla. He doesn’t know how many loops it’s been since he ate, and even though he doesn’t need the sustenance he realizes he has been missing the sensory experience of it, and the camaraderie of a shared meal.

He tells Teyla about the time loop, casually, like it’s not a big deal, and she doesn’t seem convinced he’s telling the truth but she doesn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand either, and he loves her for that.

“If that were the case,” her head tilts to one side, thoughtful, “it would be a kind of opportunity, would it not?”

He squints. Nothing about this feels opportune.

“If time were to always reset itself, you could do anything you wish, without having to consider the consequences.” She shrugs. “Many have wished for such a chance.”

Huh. He never thought about it that way before.

Next loop, he steals a jumper and takes it for a joyride, zipping away from Atlantis and out into the solar system.

He pulls a reckless slingshot maneuver around the third planet out and is sent hurtling toward the star at the heart of the system, traveling so fast the jumper shakes and rattles even with the inertial dampeners. Elizabeth screams at him over the comms and he flips them off.

He approaches the sun at breakneck speed and the temperature in the cabin begins to rise. He swoops low into the sun’s corona, arcs of plasma leaping up around him, even more wild and ferocious than he expected. The sensors scream out warnings about hull temperature and radiation levels and he ignores them, absorbed in the way the jumper dives and banks.

He plunges closer, seeing the star’s surface bubble and erupt, then pulls up in a wild loop and swings down closer still: through the corona and into the chromosphere, the space around him transformed into wild hues of pink, shot through with filaments of white hot gas which snap and twist around him.

In the moment before the jumper is destroyed, as alarms blare and the air rushes out through cracks in the hull, his vision is filled with the surface of the sun. It is entrancing, covered in cells of red and orange and yellow, molten and changing and blindingly, blindingly bright.

He records a message for his father and uploads it to the queue to be sent back to Earth. “Dad,” he begins. “I want you to tell you something, something I’ve been meaning to say for a long time. From the very bottom of my heart: Go fuck yourself.”

He knows it’ll be heard by the gate techs, if not the entire expedition. That somehow makes it even more satisfying.

He finds Cadman.

“You’re an explosives expert, right?”

“Technically it’s high temperature and energetic materials technology,” she grins, “but close enough.”

“Awesome. Where do you keep the good stuff?”

She raises an eyebrow.

“You know. The really fun explosives they don’t let the field teams use.”

“Oh, that good stuff. Right this way.”

They spend an afternoon testing the structural integrity of the city’s farthest piers (not as good as you might think), seeing what happens when you strap C4 to a naquadah generator (an extremely large explosion), and enjoying the simple pleasures of tossing prototype grenades into the ocean (the water sprays rainbows across the sky as it is thrown miles into the air, and it falls on them like rain as they laugh).

Cadman barely needs any convincing.

He tells Lorne that he��s gay. Lorne doesn’t miss a beat.

“Yes, sir,” he says, entirely unperturbed. “I figured.”

He leaves a message for Nancy.

He tells her he’s sorry, that he knows he was a bad husband, that it wasn’t fair the way he treated her. He tells her that she deserved better, that he wishes her well, that he hopes she’s happy, and he means it.

He feels lighter the moment he's finished. He wonders why he never did this before the loop.

He’s struck by a genius idea, and he busts open a few locks and drags the ascension machine out of storage. Sure, it nearly killed Rodney, but maybe he’ll get lucky. Nothing to lose at this point, right?

The moment the light envelops him, he knows he’s made a terrible mistake.

Within minutes his skin is peeling away to reveal hard, blue scales beneath. The sunlight becomes unbearable. He turns the lights out and feels his way by sound instead.

He doesn’t remember much beyond that. There are only brief flashes in his mind: cold metal beneath his claws, horrified screams reverberating in a corridor, the effortlessness of scuttling up the side of a tower, the crunch of bones cracking between his mandibles.

He locks himself in his quarters for a few loops after that.

After a while his guilt is outweighed by his boredom. He picks up the guitar that has been primarily decorative thus far and learns to play Folsom Prison Blues.

Time keeps dragging on, indeed.

Eventually, as seems to be inevitable, he ends up coming back to Rodney.

"Sheppard." Rodney gives him a quick nod. "What can I do for you?"

There are a million answers to that question, and none of them are appropriate for work.

He considers the juxtaposition: Rodney's cool greeting with the way he's bouncing on the balls of his feet, all coiled excitement and nervousness. That's how Rodney often is around him, now he thinks about it.

Is it interest or intimidation? Fondness or annoyance? He's never been good at parsing emotions, and that's been a frequent source of frustration. Now it's particularly acute.

"You want some coffee?" Rodney offers, like an olive branch. "I'm sure we've got a clean mug around here somewhere."

John does not want coffee.

How many times has he thought about this? Too many to count. And how many more chances will he have?

What the hell, he thinks. Teyla was right. He'll never get a better opportunity than this.

He steps forward and puts a tentative hand around the back of Rodney's neck. He hears his breath catch. He rubs the soft hair there between his fingers, watches the blush rise on his cheeks. It's an enticing look.

Slowly, carefully, he leans in and kisses him, uncertain even though he knows the loop will reset, because this is bigger than some silly irresponsible behavior; this is him putting his heart in Rodney's fidgety hands and hoping against hope it won't be crushed.

For a moment Rodney freezes, and John is already formulating frantic apologies when Rodney mouths, "Oh god, finally," against his lips and wraps his arms around his shoulders, yanking him closer and kissing him hot and hard.

It's easy as anything to slip his hands under Rodney's thighs and to lift him onto the workbench, even while Rodney attempts to distract him by unbuttoning his shirt and biting a line along his collar bone.

He fucks Rodney over the bench in his lab, and next time on a balcony overlooking the city, and after that on Elizabeth’s desk. He learns every inch of his body; the soft plump of his thighs, the way he likes to be jerked off nice and slow, the sensitive patch of skin behind his ear.

For loops and loops, he does nothing else. Rodney never turns him down, not once. No matter where he is or what he’s doing, he’ll drop everything to be with him, and John has no idea what to make of that.

(Yes he does, but it's too big and too terrifying to look at directly, so he puts it aside.

It can wait. He has nothing but time.)

The first time he gets Rodney to fuck him, he bursts into fat, ugly tears afterwards and Rodney wraps a blanket around him and pets his hair. They stay like that for hours, Rodney holding him and for once not speaking, letting the waves of need and desperation and loneliness ebb and flow as they will, giving the simple comfort of his presence.

Sometimes he tells him about the loop, sometimes not. It doesn’t seem to make much difference to Rodney. Even when he explains nothing, just walks up to him and kisses him, Rodney kisses him back just as hungrily as ever.

And when they’re not fucking, they’re talking. He learns that Rodney has always wanted to learn to paint. He misses his cat (no, really. It’s not funny.) The one person on the base he is most afraid of is Elizabeth, because he secretly suspects she might be smarter than he is.

John tells him about why he doesn’t talk to his family, and about how out of place he always felt in the military. That he likes turkey sandwiches because they’re what his college roommate made for him when he first left home and had to learn to get by on not much money.

Each day, he learns more about Rodney and shares more about himself. And then the loop resets, and he has to walk into the lab and see Rodney regard him coolly and say, “Sheppard,” like that’s all they are to each other.

He misses him, and that sounds insane because he's spent practically every waking hour with the man for what must have been weeks. But he is moving forward and Rodney is staying still. Every time the loop resets, they drift further apart.

He stops sleeping with Rodney.

He gets back to work.

He pulls up the city sensor data and brings it to the lab.

“Here, look. You said before there was a radiation spike.”

Rodney drums his fingers against the tablet. “Yeah, there is. And it looks,” he squints, “sort of familiar.”

“What could cause that?”

“A million things. Radioactive materials. Black holes. Coronal mass ejections. Lightning, if there’s enough of it.”

“Wait, wait wait.” Something important scratches at his mind. “Coronal mass ejections, as in, from stars?”

“Yes. The magnetic fields inside a star shift as material moves in its interior, and when a prominence is formed and collapsed, the star releases a burst of plasma.”

He snaps his fingers. “That’s it! The sun in this solar system, we know it’s periodically unstable, right? And it’s even more active than usual right now.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

He thinks of the arcs of plasma he saw as he dove the jumper into the sun’s corona and decides against trying to explain that. “It’s not important. But we know the stargate has sent Earth teams through time when the wormhole passed too close to a coronal mass ejection, right? What if our stargate had the same problem?”

“That might send whoever was traveling through the gate through time, but it wouldn’t make time loop.” A light flickers in Rodney’s eyes. “Oh! Oh! Unless that’s why the gate failed. It tried to send an outgoing wormhole at the exact moment that the sun’s activity peaked. When the wormhole hit the coronal mass ejection, it bounced back to its origin, carrying its energy with it. And that would mean…” He taps frantically at his tablet. “Right! That spike of radiation is the effect of the outgoing and incoming wormholes colliding, forming a resonance wave. All that energy is forming ripples which must be throwing us through spacetime.”

“Great! So can you fix it?”

Rodney blinks. “I’m not even sure I can model what’s happening, let alone fix it. The mathematical equations alone will be weeks of work.”

“We don’t have weeks, Rodney. We have -” he checks his watch, “- just over half an hour before the loop resets and we lose everything.”

Despair starts crawling up his spine, but he shouldn’t have underestimated the sheer stubbornness of Rodney McKay.

“Well then.” Rodney sits him down and shoves a notebook and pen into his hands. “Looks like you’re going to have to learn some math and help me to remember.”

This is his routine now: Wake up in his quarters, run to the lab, talk Rodney through the problem as fast as he can, get lectured on astrophysics and mathematical modelling until he feels like his head is going to explode, repeat.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

He gets the basics down quickly but there are still pages and pages of math for them to solve, and nowhere close to enough time to figure it out in one loop. So he learns, and remembers, and does his best to save himself.

Rodney explains it well when he’s not being a jerk, and John starts to understand why he likes this work.

He hasn’t done this much math since college, and it’s not as awful as he remembers. There’s a kind of beauty to it, actually, a balance of all the relevant variables quantified and described, their relationships mapped into symbols and equations, the logically clarity of a necessarily true fact.

“See, this variable here, this represents the duration of the outgoing wormhole.” Rodney taps the whiteboard. John stares at the way his hands dance over the numbers. “And this one here, this is the distance between Lantea and its sun...”

Each loop, he learns a little more. Eventually, he understands the equations Rodney has been scribbling for the past god knows how many loops.

Now they just need to actually figure out how to solve them.

“That equation is wrong.”

“What? No it isn’t. I worked that out myself.” Rodney is glaring at him like he insulted his mother.

“I’m telling you, Rodney. Look.” John uses the cuff of his shirt to wipe out a corner of the equations scribbled on the whiteboard. “This is assuming we’re still operating in base 10, but we know the gate operating system is partially in base 16.” He adds in the corrected figures as he goes. “So we need to convert it to polynomial here and here before we can compare the output to the data from our solar radiation readings, then we can figure out the coronal mass ejection’s effects on both the gate and our computers simultaneously and allow for the difference.”

Rodney is squinting at the whiteboard. “That’s… Huh. That might actually be right.” He steps closer, running his fingers beneath the figures John has changed. Then he wheels and rounds on John.

“You,” he says, pointing a finger at John’s chest. “You are a genius.”

And then he’s grabbing John’s shirt and hauling him close and kissing him, wild and messy and with great enthusiasm.

And John had told himself he wasn’t going to do this any more but this is different, Rodney had kissed him this time, and with the way Rodney’s hands are scrabbling at every piece of skin he can reach he doesn’t think he could stop himself anyway.

Afterwards, once they’ve wasted far too much of this loop to get any productive work done, John tells Rodney about all the times that they’ve done this before, and that this is the first time Rodney has been the one to instigate it.

Rodney shrugs. “What can I say? A man who knows his math really gets me going.”

John hides a smile. “You only want me for my brain, huh?”

“Yes,” Rodney says, like that’s obvious. He breaks into a grin and runs a hand through John’s hair. “And the hair, of course. That’s very important.”

“Mmhmm.” John stretches lazily across the sofa in the corner of the lab. “And the rest of me?”

Rodney gives him a sly look. “I guess that’s alright too.”

And then Rodney is giggling as John wrestles him to the sofa as well, and he’s all flying elbows and poking fingers until John gets him pinned beneath him, both of them sweaty and out of breath from laughter.

Oh, thinks John. So this is what happiness feels like. He’d almost forgotten.

The loop is about to end, though this one feels different.

They're lying squashed together on the too-small sofa, inelegantly draped around each other, when Rodney takes his hand. “You have to tell me,” he says. “We’re about to reset, and once we've fixed this and I've forgotten again, you have to tell me how you feel.”

His gut churns. It’s so much simpler to be together when he doesn’t have to think about the consequences.

“Promise me,” Rodney says. “It’s not fair that I should finally get what I’ve wanted for so long, and not be able to remember it.”

He thinks about how he feels each time Rodney is reset: the loss, the ache of it. He tries to imagine what it would be like to have those experiences erased entirely.

“Okay.” He squeezes Rodney’s hand. “I promise.”

“That’s it!” Rodney beams at the whiteboard, covered from top to bottom in dense equations. “I can’t believe we got that done so fast.”

John lets out a sound that might be considered a laugh.

“Ah.” Rodney looks at him sideways. “You’ve been working on this for a while, huh?”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“Well, good news. Now we’ve got the wormhole modeled, we can feed this data into the dialing device and reset the gate manually.”

“And that will stop the loop?”

“I sure as hell hope so, because it’s the only idea I’ve got.”

“Terrific.”

John makes a conscious effort to stop his leg from bouncing anxiously as Rodney loads up their data into the dialing device.

He checks his watch. It’s three minutes to eight.

This is going to work. Right? This has to work. He’s put everything he has into this fix and he honestly doesn’t know if he can cope with looping one single time more.

(He’s thought that so many times before. And yet, here he is, still, willing or not.)

“We need to get the timing just right,” Rodney informs the gate techs. He’s taken over the gate room and thankfully the entire base has learned not to get in McKay’s way when he has that steely look in his eye. “We need to engage the program at exactly the moment the incoming wormhole is set to arrive.”

Two minutes to eight. Adrenaline surges, and he wants to run or to fight, but there’s nothing he can do except watch the furrow in Rodney’s brow and the agitated tapping of his fingers against the Ancient keypad.

“Alright, Chuck, ready on my command.”

Rodney’s got this, he tells himself. They’ve got this.

One minute to eight.

“Now!” Chuck sits up straighter, focused on the instruments in front of him. Rodney taps at the keypad, attention narrowed down to the rapidly scrolling code on his screen.

The lights flicker, spluttering overhead and casting the gate room in an eerie disjointed light. The gate starts to rotate, the screeching noise louder than usual, the illuminated symbols seeming to glow more brightly.

There is a moment of absolute stillness, and then -

The whoosh of the outgoing wormhole connecting is the most beautiful sound he's ever heard. He can get out, he can be free, he can live. He doesn't have to be alone any more.

Blood rushes to his head in great waves and makes him dizzy, like this might all be an illusion, like it might disappear at any moment.

He checks his watch. It's two minutes past eight.

He lets out a hysterical peal of laughter, staggers away from the gate controls, and passes out.

He wakes up not in his quarters. The antiseptic smell of the infirmary is the sweetest breath of fresh air.

Elizabeth insists he needs medical supervision, but there's no chance of keeping a hoard of curious scientists away from an oddity like the man who looped through time. So he's in an infirmary bed being gently grilled about the experience by Zelenka, who has apparently been elected their representative.

Elizabeth does her best to project an air of calm as she asks, "Is there any way to know how long we were looping for?"

Zelenka pushes his glasses up on the bridge of nose. "It is hard to say for certain, but extrapolating the current season based on the length of the days, we must have lost around six months."

"Six months?" Elizabeth turns to him, aghast. "John, I can't even imagine."

She means well, but he can't handle pity right now. He plays it off casually, with a wink and a smile. "Trust me, you don't want to." He swings his legs off the side of the bed and calls out to Carson. "Doc, I'm good to leave, right? Pretty sure I'm healthy as a horse, and I've given the research team plenty of material to work with."

Carson looks him over, takes in the weary lines of his shoulders, and eventually nods. He always was perceptive. "Aye, alright. But stop back in tomorrow for a checkup."

"Sure thing. Now if you'll all excuse me, I'm looking forward to a well deserved night off."

He is looking forward to a night off, but the very last place he wants to wake up tomorrow is in his quarters. He'd sooner sleep on one of the piers, or in the locker room, or on a hive ship. Anywhere but there.

But there's another option. Or at least, there might be. So he finds himself fidgeting outside Rodney's door.

The door opens while he's pacing back and forth in the corridor.

"Sheppard?' Rodney blinks at him. "I was just on my way to find you. Earlier you seemed… so I thought… well, this must have been hard for you. What are you doing in the hallway?"

He doesn't have an answer for that. Instead he considers.

Rodney's hair is mussed, the way it gets when he's been deep in thought and running his hands through it. His fingertips are pinching together, a hum of low-grade anxiety that surrounds him whenever he has to confront emotional situations. He's wearing an old grey hoodie, one of his favorites because it's soft, even though he thinks it makes him look dumpy (it doesn't. Or maybe it does, but it doesn't matter, because it's comfortable and warm and it smells like Rodney. John knows because he's stolen it tens of times. It's one of his favorites as well.)

John knows him, knows every part of him, and he's so close he could reach out and touch him, but he's a million miles away as well.

"... John? Do you want to come in?" Rodney's face pinches into a concerned frown. "We don't have to talk, if you'd rather not."

He could walk away. Turn on his heel and leave, never mention any of this, let the whole incident fade into obscurity. But he's so close to having what he wants: something new, something familiar, something beautiful.

He takes a breath. Here is his chance. Now or never.

"Actually, I think we should talk." He lets himself smile at the precious memory, one perfect moment crystallized like a diamond from months of crushing pressure. "I made a promise."

#stargate atlantis #mcshep #my writing

65 notes · View notes

chaolie · 4 years ago

Text

Forgotten

With how much he's been ignored by all the people he cares about, Fundy sometimes wondered if they'd even notice if he was gone. If things would be any different if all of them just suddenly forgot him... Would they feel like something's missing, or would they go on with their lives? Would anyone miss him?

Now, he finds himself stranded at the beginning of the prime path with no memory of getting there, and soon after he starts to wander through it, he can already tell that something's wrong. Why is everyone ignoring him, as if he didn't exist?

Words: 3.9k

Characters: Fundy, 5up, Dream, Eret, others

Warnings: horror elements, very slight body horror

In the end, there are some explanations for a couple of things I really want to mention but they’d spoil the ending.

When Fundy opens his eyes, he has no idea where he is. He looks around, confused, he doesn’t remember coming here… nor does he remember what was he doing before. He finally realizes that he’s in the middle of the prime path, the end near Bad’s and Skeppy’s mansion, but the confusion doesn’t leave. He looks down at his hands, trying to remember what the hell is he doing out here, but for some reason, they feel wrong. He quickly looks away from them, and without a second thought, he starts to walk. It just feels like the right thing to do.

After a while of walking, he reaches the bench with the jukebox and hears Tommy’s laughter coming from his little house in the hill. He follows the path’s turn towards L’Manburg and looks into the small building, seeing Tommy and Tubbo inside. The two are playfighting and they both seem so peaceful… Fundy doesn’t remember the last time he’s seen the two of them so happy. Still, he hopes to get some answers from them. They’d surely know what he was doing out here, they always know what’s going on.

“Tommy? Tubbo?” he calls out. They ignore him. “Hey!” he adds louder, approaching the two. “Tommy! Tubbo! Listen to me!” he yells, standing right by them.

He still gets no reply from them. Growing slightly annoyed, he reaches out to grab one of them and get their attention. Just as he does so, Tubbo jumps away from Tommy, holding something… blurry. Fundy grows more confused, it’s clearly something and he can see everything else, but this thing is just? Impossible to perceive? Yet the younger two seem to see it quite clearly.

“Hey, get back here!” Tommy yells, running towards Tubbo.

“You wish!” the other boy screams, running outside.

Tommy follows him and runs right past Fundy. In fact, so closely that the fox was surprised that he didn’t feel Tommy pushing past him. Still, he has to get some answers, so he follows the two. They seem to run towards L’Manburg, but by the time Fundy leaves Tommy’s house, they’re barely visible in the tunnel leading towards it. Has it really been that long?

“Hey, wait up!” he calls after them, running the same way.

Instead of seeing them again, as he enters the tunnel he notices Philza and Ghostbur coming into it from the other side. Good, at least they weren’t too caught up in playing that they could answer him. No longer feeling in rush, he walks towards them and waves them a hello.

“Hey! Tommy and Tubbo seem really energetic today, don’t they? Is something special happening?” he says, trying to casually start a conversation with the older two.

“Thank you so much for the help, Phil!” Ghostbur says with a bright smile, just as if he didn’t hear his son’s voice.

“No worries, mate. In just a moment, we’ll get Friend out of there,” Philza answers him, ignoring Fundy as well. Or maybe they just didn’t hear him at first?

“What are we doing, again?” Fundy asks, stopping in the middle of the crossing so that they couldn’t miss him.

“I can’t wait to see Friend again!” Ghostbur hums instead of answering him. Growing impatient, Fundy sighs.

“Dad. I need help too, you know?” he admits. Wilbur would never ignore him after being referred to as ‘dad’, after all.

“What happened to his first lead, anyway?” Phil asks as they pass right by Fundy, just barely missing him. For a moment, he stays in his place, crossing his arms and angrily staring at the ground. What the hell is that?

“Oh, I lost it… I wanted him to run free for a moment and I put it on the floor but it just disappeared some…” Ghostbur’s voice fades as he speaks, but surely they didn’t get too far for Fundy to hear them. Yet as he turns, they’re suddenly just… gone.

“Okay, what the hell?” he mutters angrily, following their direction and expecting them to be hidden behind a corner. They aren’t.

Just as he was about to go after Tommy and Tubbo again, he notices another familiar person walking down the prime path in the same direction he was originally headed in. It was Niki this time. Brushing away the fact that he didn’t see her over there before, he rushes after her, not intending to take his eyes off of her this time. What the hell was this joke?

“Niki!” he calls after her. She doesn’t even flinch. Being ignored by a 5th person in a row was making him anxious rather than annoyed at this point. “Niki, this is not funny anymore!” he hisses, grabbing her hand.

He feels his heart drop as his hand literally passes through her. He doesn’t even feel it. Just as if she wasn’t really there, as if she was an illusion. Either that, or he was. This leaves him frozen and staring at his own hand as she walks away, cheerful as ever. When he eventually looks back up, she was already at the bottom of the wooden stairs and taking a turn towards the parking lot to the left.

“Niki?!” he calls after her, running down to follow her. He must’ve seen this wrong, there is no way he passed through her. “Niki, come back!” he yells frantically, taking the same turn as her and seeing her hugging Puffy in front of the Pizza place. “...Niki?” he asks once more, his voice growing quiet as he watches the two enter the building.

He shakes his head and steps back onto the prime path. This couldn’t be real. What happened? Was he a ghost or something? Is that why his memory seemed faulty, just like Ghostbur’s? But why were they all so happy if that was true? And why didn’t his dad see him? He was a ghost as well, wasn’t he?

Fundy covers his eyes and tries to take deep breaths. He didn’t feel dead. That couldn’t be it, right? Surely he’d know if he died… didn’t he have two lives left, too? How could he lose them at the same time? This couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be happening… Then, another idea appeared in his head. What if he was actually sitting in a boat somewhere far away, and this was just that weird astral projection thing that happens sometimes? People usually can’t see or hear him when that happens.

“Oh, of course!” he sighs in relief. And even chuckles at how panicked he felt moments ago. Of course this was it. He really needs to take a break and relax soon, how could he be so much on edge that he’d immediately assume that he’s dead? “Alright, let’s get over with this,” he mutters.

He closes his eyes and does a little bow, usually enough to break him out from the boat illusion. Still, he doesn’t feel his surroundings change. As he feels anxiety crawling up his throat anew, he tries to keep a smile and tries again. And again. And again. He opens his eyes and he’s still on the prime path right next to Targay. He shakes his head. Something must be broken, this isn’t real. He quickly turns and walks forward. When he’s a projection, he can’t die. Can’t drown. And there is some water near the prime path in that direction, he’s sure of that.

As soon as he reaches it, he jumps in without a second thought. Not even trying to hold his breath, he allows himself to float down and then relaxes at the bottom of the water. He has nothing to worry about, after all, he’s just proving what he already knows. Suddenly, there’s a burning sensation in his throat and he’s choking. His eyes open wide as he desperately tries to get to the surface. He can barely reach it before most of his life slips out from him, and once he does, he can’t help but gasp and cough. He almost tears up at the sensation of air filling his lungs once again as he crawls out from the water and gets back to the prime path.

“...What…. the… hell?!” he gasps to himself, resting his face on the wood from the path prime for a moment. He’s not a projection? This is real? Is he dead already, or did he just almost die by drowning?

Slowly, he raises himself to his feet and takes off his jacket and hat. They’re both soaking wet, as is the rest of his clothes, but he can afford to shake those two around to make them less wet. Once he puts them back on and looks around to examine his surroundings once again, he suddenly notices someone on the part of the prime path he just jumped from. Sitting on the edge of it, with their legs dangling over the ledge and above the water, is Ranboo. When the hell did he get here?

“Ranboo?” Fundy asks, taking a couple of steps forward. The half-enderman doesn’t react to his name being called. “Oh, of course,” he mutters quietly.

But then, he realizes that unlike everyone else, his friend is not headed anywhere, he’s just sitting there and looking into the water. This meant he had all the time in the world to try and get Ranboo to notice him. He approaches him and starts his attempts. He tries tapping Ranboo’s shoulder, but his finger passes right through it. He tries to wave his hand in front of Ranboo’s eyes, but it doesn’t seem to work either. He tries to punch Ranboo’s shoulder, but it just leaves him with his hand literally inside of it, a rather distressing sight. He tries to run into him at full speed in a desperate attempt to get any reaction out of him, but he once again passes through him instead.

“Ranboo!” he snaps, going back and waving his arms around in a last desperate attempt to get his attention. “What is he even looking at?” he mutters, looking down into the water himself.

He’s met with his own reflection. His, and Ranboo’s, of course. While his friend seems to be fixated on his own, the fox decides to look himself over as well. Is he really that much soaked? It’s just as if he was melting… He grabs one of his sleeves and pulls it down, trying to see how far it’d stretch when wet. His breath seems to disappear as he watches it go on and on. He lets it go and turns his gaze away from his sleeve, his eyes must be fooling him. Still, he continues to look at the reflection. He goes on to brush his soaked hair from his face, but his hand freezes in the middle of doing so. Is it just him, or is his head stretching? In panic, he grabs it from two different sides and tries to push it back to normal. Surely it’s doing that because his fur is wet, right? As he watches the part of his head his skull should be keeping sturdy be squished effortlessly by his own hands, he jumps back.

“What the hell?!” he gasps, feeling around his face… It feels normal? He slowly steps forward again, glancing down. Before he could even process what he saw down there, he’s already backed up again. It was somehow worse. “I- I’m out of here!” he mutters, turning away from Ranboo and running away. He doesn’t feel like trying to get his attention anymore.

He stops only once he’s far from the water, stops to catch his breath, and tries to shake the image of a melted and disfigured version of himself out of his mind. It’s hard to forget it, though, it was so clear and… and felt so real! He looks down at his hands again, and they still feel wrong. He’s not sure why, though, they aren’t melted or anything… And they seem normal enough. He does his best to calm his breath and rubs his eyes, hoping to forget what just happened fast.

Once he finally manages to calm himself enough to look back, Ranboo is still staring at his own reflection in the water. Fundy just shakes his head and continues his way forward. There’s nothing in the world that could make him go back there and risk seeing his twisted reflection again. After taking just a couple of steps forward, he stops once again.

“...What the hell?” he mutters, looking around. He’s suddenly standing in front of the bridge leading to the Community House. Wasn’t he, like, a couple of minutes away from it just moments ago? He turns around to see himself so far from where he just was that he can’t see Ranboo anymore. Did he blackout? Did he teleport? What was that?!

He shakes his head and continues forward. He doesn’t want to question anything anymore, it’s too distressing, too confusing, too anxiety-inducing, and just… too much. He notices his reflection in the water under the bridge for a second, but he quickly turns away. He already knows better than trying to see it again. He just looks down at the wood under his feet and rushes forward.

The door to the Community House is open. He’s hesitant to step inside, though. He can hear someone speaking inside and he can see a couple of people through the windows, and he’s not sure if he’s able to handle being invisible to them as well. When he eventually steps forward with a little hope somewhere at the bottom of his heart, it’s immediately crushed by Sapnap walking right through him. The man is pacing around while talking with George, Dream, Quackity, and Karl. He has no idea what the conversation is about, and he doesn’t feel the need to figure that out. All he knows is that they don’t see him either.

“Oh, of curse…” he mutters, disappointed. He sadly looks around the building, watching all those people he once knew… even if he wasn’t great friends with some of them, he’d give anything for them to notice him.

Suddenly, he looks at Dream and he could swear that the white mask on the man’s face is turned directly at him. They lock eyes, or at least it looks like they do, and Fundy hesitantly points at himself. Dream slowly tilts his head, keeping his eyes on him, and suddenly Fundy feels overjoyed as relief washes over him. Dream sees him.

“Dream!” he gasps, rushing forward and trying to grab the man’s shoulders. His hands go right through them. “...Dream?” he mutters. Did he just imagine this? Did Dream not notice him? Just then, the masked man chuckles quietly. It sounds far more menacing than it should.

“Guys, I’ll be right back, I need to… do something,” he says and without a further explanation turns to leave. As some of his friends try to ask questions and some just accept his statement and wave him goodbye, Fundy anxiously follows him.

“Dream! Dream! Please, Dream! You see me, right?!” he cries after him as he follows him towards Eret’s castle. His begs get louder and more desperate with each step, but Dream seems unaffected. Did he really not see him? “Dream! PLEASE! Just tell me if you SEE ME!” Fundy urges and suddenly, the man stops.

“Oh, of course I do,” he answers finally, spinning around to face the distraught fox. For a moment, Fundy freezes before relaxing.

“Oh, thank-” he starts, sighing in relief when Dream turns back around.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t ignore you,” he hums and continues forward. Immediately, Fundy follows him.

“What?! Dream, please! You have no idea how terrifying this is!” he cries, getting in his way only for the man to go through him effortlessly.

“So?” he chuckles, leaving Fundy behind. When the fox looks back at him, he’s face to face with Eret already.

“What brings you here?” the king asks, looking at Dream with confusion on their face. Immediately, Fundy joins the two and waves his arms around.

“Eret! Eret! Can you see me?!” he yells as loud as he can, but no one responds.

“I needed wood, and you always seem to have some. I’ll pay you back, of course,” the masked man answers. Eret nods and heads towards one of the front towers of the castle’s wall.

“Of course. How much do you need?” they ask. Dream shrugs.

“Just a couple of stacks. Maybe four? I can give you 10 diamonds for that,” he replies. Eret nods as she enters the tower.

“That sounds fair, I’ll bring that for you,” he agrees before disappearing behind the door. Dream once again chuckles.

“You can quit trying to get others’ attention, you know? They won’t see you anyway,” he says quietly enough for Eret to not hear.

“Dream, please, there has to be a way to fix this!” Fundy cries out in distress. There just has to be, right?

“I don't know, Fundy, some things are better left untouched…” Dream hums with amusement as he watches the fox’s panic spiral.

“Please! I'll do anything!” he begs, desperate to not be left forgotten forever.

“Is that so?” the man asks slowly. Fundy doesn't think about it too much before nodding in agreement. “Fine, fine… We can discuss the details later, but you're clearly desperate… Here, drink this and everything will be okay again,” he promises, pulling a bottle of a green liquid from behind his back. Not even questioning any of that, Fundy quickly grabs it.

“Oh, thank you so much!” he gasps, on the verge of tears as he downs the bottle.

Once he sets it down, he doesn't feel any different at first. Then there's a terrible burning sensation in his mouth, throat, and stomach. All of a sudden, his breath is knocked out of his lungs as he bends over and tries to gasp for air. And as he tries to figure out why it hurts so much, he can hear Dream recoil in laughter.

“Oh my God! I can't believe you! How gullible can you be?!” he asks through laughter. Fundy looks up at him and they lock eyes again. "You drank straight poison, Fundy. And you didn't even check!” he emphasizes, sounding proud of himself as he laughs again.

Fundy would love to answer him, to cuss him out, or ask why, or beg for help, or anything, but he can only cough and wheeze through the burning pain. His knees eventually give in and his face is suddenly just barely above the ground as he curls up, covering his mouth and tasting blood inside of it. He's growing tired and more disoriented with every moment, and the only consistent things reaching him are his pain and Dream's laughter. Then, there are footsteps.

“Fundy?!” Eret calls out, running out from the tower. Fundy feels so out of it that he barely realizes that they didn't see him before. But now they were running towards him, ready to help him and please save him from Dream.

“He's not worth it, Eret,” Dream hums, and suddenly, the footsteps stop. Why did they stop?

“...You're right, Dream,” Eret chuckles, her voice suddenly much scarier than before.

Fundy feels like he's drowning, he can barely breathe anymore when he looks up to see Dream and Eret standing above him, watching him suffer and wheeze and cough and slowly wither and die. They're both just watching. His breath hitches as he struggles for air, desperate to live, desperate to survive. His eyes close in pain as he lies on the ground beneath their feet. Still, he tries to push himself back up. Maybe if he shows them how strong he is, they'll give him mercy and let him live? He wanted to live, he didn't want to die, he was scared of death-

“Do you want to do the honors?” Dream asks. Fundy forces his eyes open to look up at them again.

“With pleasure,” Eret answers. As Fundy's vision focuses, he sees a boot flying at his face. Then, he feels pain and hears a crack in his neck. Everything goes black.

With a gasp, he sits up. The air is heavy and dry, there's probably dust in it and he can feel it scratching his throat. He can also feel tears running down his face and a pair of hands on his shoulders. With a gasp, he starts struggling against them, he doesn't want to die, he doesn't want to die, he doesn't, he doesn't-

“Fundy!” someone calls out, someone familiar. Do they want to kill him too?

“P-please, I- I-” he gasps in panic, shivering as they let go of one of his shoulders and gently take his hand. Too gently. They must be faking it.

“Fundy, it's okay! You're okay…” they hush him, rubbing his hand gently. That's clearly a lie, why does his chest hurt so much if he's okay? “Please, take deep breaths, you're okay,” they try to convince him.

“I- I-” he gasps, wanting to call them out on lying but unable to get any words out. Just then, his vision finally sharpens and he can make out their face in the darkness. “...5-5up?” he asks under his breath.

“I'm here,” the 'someone', his boyfriend, answers. “You're okay, you're safe now, okay?” he assures him. Out of all people, he’s one of the few Fundy’d consider trustworthy.

“O-okay,” he agrees quietly, nodding.

Suddenly, he's pulled into a gentle embrace and he finds himself hiding in 5up's arms. Almost immediately, he wraps his hands around him and holds onto his shirt as if he was about to disappear. Instead, his boyfriend rocks him gently to the sides and hums quietly, bringing Fundy more comfort than he'd like to admit.

“Better?” 5up asks after a moment of silence. Fundy nods slightly and mutters a quiet confirmation. “It's okay, Fundy. I promise, it was just a bad dream,” he assures. Fundy shivers at the words.

“It was a goddamn nightmare,” he mutters quietly. With a sigh, 5up pulls away to look at Fundy’s face.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asks, and Fundy hesitantly nods.

“Y-yeah, I…” he mutters, still taking a couple of sharp breaths as his lungs get used to having air again.

“Come on, let’s get you some water first, okay?” 5up suggests, slowly getting up and giving Fundy time to follow.

“...Okay…” he nods. His legs almost give in the second he tries to stand, but with 5up’s help, he manages to keep his balance somehow. Yet when 5up tries to lead the fox towards where they could find water, Fundy doesn’t budge from his place.

“...Fundy?” he asks, turning to see the man looking down at the floor, trembling slightly while still holding his hand.

“Do you… do you think you’ll ever just… forget me?” he asks hesitantly, his voice cracking slightly. He can’t help but fear the answer he’s about to get.

“Oh, Fundy…” 5up sighs, taking a step towards him and pulling him into a hug again. “I promise, I will remember you forever,” he assures him. A single sob escapes Fundy as he returns the embrace. “How could I ever forget such a smart and handsome man, after all?” he adds, and Fundy can’t help but chuckle before relaxing in his arms.

“...Thank you, Five…” he mutters quietly. They stayed like that for quite a while, the water could wait after all.

=================================

Thank you for reading and I hope the story was interesting and entertaining for you!

Also, as mentioned before, I would like to explain some things about the nightmare:

First of all, when you're dreaming and you try to count your fingers, you'll always get the wrong number. That's why Fundy felt as if something was wrong whenever he looked at his hands. I just figured that this could be a nice hint.

Second of all, reflections don't work properly in our dreams. That's why you should never look into a mirror while you're sleeping, you could "see something terrible". I wasn't sure what that meant until I recently had a dream in which I got to see my reflection and uhh. It wasn't nice, but hey, at least I know what it means and could use it here!

If you have any more questions as to why what happened/about the setting and stuff, my askbox is always open! So are my DMs, and you can always leave them in tags/replies/reblogs, too!

Oh, and lastly, this is also on AO3, so don’t worry if you find it over there, no one stole it.

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whispersafterdusk · 3 years ago

Text

Prompt #16: Crane

"It seems unusual to find you alone."

Nero stopped at the flap of the tent, peering in at the vaunted Warrior of Light; it was dim within the tent's confines and while the miqo'te didn't turn to face him he saw an ear flick toward him.

"I don't need a guard and I don't need babysitters," was her response. "What did you need?"

He raised an eyebrow at her tone - exhaustion, with a hint of pain. "Have I come at a poor time?"

She moved as though to shake her head, then stopped. "Nah, just dealing with a headache. Either come in and close the tent behind you or come back later while also closing the tent behind you."

Nero stepped inside and took several moments to allow his eyes to adjust to the light (or lack thereof, save for a single lantern in the far left corner with only one shutter open halfway). Gitawen turned her head just enough to "face" him, but didn't actually raise her gaze from the ground. ((Continued below cut))

"Thanks," she said a moment later. "Now, what did you want?"

"You're being incredibly casual about a visit from someone who was, until recently, your enemy."

"I'm not worried about you, Nero. Not in that context anyway."

That gave him pause. Her...worried about him? "Excuse me?"

"Just sit down and get to your point."

He grunted, and carefully picked his way over to sit on a half-unrolled bedroll that was along the side of the tent directly across from her. Again she turned her head to follow him but kept her eyes down, and when Nero leaned forward and craned his neck he found she actually had her eyes shut completely. "It must be some headache that plagues you, o Warrior of Light."

She waved a hand but stayed hunched over. "I'll live - it's not that bad, I'm just not wanting to accidentally trigger any visions while I'm dealing with it. Which is as much for my sanity and health as it is out of respect for your privacy."

"Coincidentally, it was your visions - your Echo - that I came to inquire about. Surely now that we're...allies, you would be willing to share how it functions?"

"Sure."

The bluntness of the answer actually surprised him and he blurted out a "truly?" before he could stop himself. He'd come expecting SOME kind of resistance to his questioning, and yet...

"There's not much I can tell you that you probably don't already know. I get visions of people's pasts that I can't control when they happen or what I see. So far I've not encountered a language I couldn't understand even if I've never heard it before or knew it existed. I can't be tempered."

"You...can't control it? At all?" Nero repeated, frowning. He could remember all his speculations and designs, to figure out how to utilize Gitawen's Echo for the Empire's use if they'd managed to capture her or sway her to their side...

"Nope. I've noticed that making direct eye contact with someone seems to trigger it more often but other than that... It's out of my hands. It does what it wants to, when it feels like it. It's a bit of a nuisance that way, and trust me, I've TRIED to find ways to control it. When it awakened in me I tried finding answers, and studied whatever magicks I could get my hands on, looking for a solution. I even studied so-called "blue" magic in the hopes I could find something that way...nothing's really worked." She paused, and then Nero could just barely see her smile. "Though it did teach me the spells I needed to toss you around like a ragdoll."

He frowned - his defeat at the Praetorium had been embarrassing; when her words had failed to change his mind she'd still refused to kill him even as he was trying to kill her, and he vividly remembered the gusts of wind and invisible forces that had seized him and sent him slamming into the walls and floor, over and over, until he could barely stand. He'd assumed she meant to take him captive and by a remarkable stroke of luck the Ultima Weapon's activation had temporarily disrupted the flow of power within the Praetorium, cutting the lights long enough for him to escape with his life (and pride).

"It's just something I have to live with," she continued, pulling Nero out of his memory. "And, as I said, I'm purposely not looking at you to try and avoid seeing anything."

"Fear what you may see?" he asked. Again he leaned forward, angling to catch a clear glimpse of her face.

"No. Do you?"

"Should I?"

"You tell me."

He had to smile at that; what an accidental battle of wills. "Very well. Answer me this then: when did this Echo awaken? Before or after you fled the Empire?"

"After," came her quick answer. "I probably wouldn't have made it out of Garlemald if I'd had it back then."

"Hmm. Perhaps. It does seem to have given you the edge in nearly every confrontation thus far."

Gitawen snorted loudly. "Your intelligence was faulty if you think it was solely THAT that's gotten me this far. Drusus was a terrible man but he taught me well."

"Yes...I know," Nero said, voice soft. "You were very nearly within my grasp, once. What prompted the man to deny Gaius, of all people?"

"He intended to somehow use me to rise further. Don't ask me how. I do know a lot of things I accomplished he claimed as his own, or made a big deal out of the fact he'd taught me. Whatever he planned went to the grave with him...assuming they even bothered burying him. Can't imagine being murdered by his student and "beloved" adopted daughter did his reputation any favors."

He snickered quietly -- no, no it would not have. Even a slight social misstep could cause someone's reputation to take a big enough hit that one would be lucky if they were only demoted. "Ah, but what an elegant solution."

"It was anything but elegant. Any other questions?"

"Mmm. I am surprised you've been so forthcoming."

"Nero. What exactly could you do with any of this information? You can't go back to Garlemald -- you could take back my head and the heads of every Eorzean leader and present them on a silver platter to the Emperor and, at best, it'd earn you a quiet execution behind closed doors. You're on your own. Or at least as on your own as you want to be. My offer to stay with me and work within Eorzea still stands -- you want recognition and admiration? You'd have it in spades over here, once you've atoned for all your crimes."

He snorted. "Please. The recognition of primitives - there's nothing of value in such accolades. A man of my intellect forced to scrape and bow in the mud with the savages..."

She lifted her head finally and opened her eyes, and upon looking to him immediately stiffened with her gaze piercing through; Nero rubbed at his chin as she reached up to dig the fingers of a hand into her hairline -- so this was an Echo vision, then. It would seem her concern about looking at him had been well-placed but he wasn't worried in the slightest over what she'd see as he had nothing to truly hide from her; half-formed plans and theories at what lay at the top of the Crystal Tower were hardly any different from what Garlond and the others spouted around their campfires as they planned their next foray inside the structure.

After several minutes Gitawen finally relaxed, shoulders slumping, and ground the heels of her palms into her eyes while swearing quietly under her breath.

"So...friend. What have you seen?"

She looked to him with bleary eyes. "You're right, you know - we could do great things together. But that's on you -- it's your decision. I can't force you to stay or expect you to, in good faith, work alongside us all. My offer will stand until either you take it, or really do force me to put you down but that would be a massive waste of a mind like yours."

For once Nero didn't know how to respond, and after a long stretch of silence he remembered something she'd said earlier. "You said you were worried about me in some unnamed context. Why?"

She lifted herself up on her hands, swinging her legs around to stretch out on the bedroll she was sitting on. "-the only thing keeping you out of prison or from being executed is my word and Cid's. I do actually worry that might not be enough."

He threw his head back and let out an explosive sigh. "WHY do you care so much?"

"Anything else?"

"You-"

"-good night, then. I need sleep."

"But-"

She rolled over to face the tent wall, her back to him; he could press the issue and, frankly, wanted to, but it was a clear sign from her that she was done.

He stormed out of the tent; for all his questions he'd gotten hardly any answers, and now had more questions than he'd started with.

"Nero!"

The shout actually made him flinch, unexpected as it was. He whipped around to see Cid striding for him. "What?"

"I've been looking for you. Believe it or not, I would...appreciate it if you would look over a few calculations. Not to check my math but to see if we've hit upon the most efficient-"

"Yes yes, whatever. Show it to me," Nero interrupted brusquely. "'tis likely I'd have it done before you finished explaining it so just give me whatever it is and I will tell you exactly how wrong you are."

He didn't miss the man's roll of the eyes even as he turned and gestured for him to follow; it was darker now - had he spent that much time in there, questioning her? It hadn't felt like it.

Blasted, inscrutable woman.

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxivwrite #nero tol scaeva #cid garlond #wol

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karimac · 3 years ago

Text

…in the details, Part 3

A/N: Warning for this series: 18+ audience (minors DNI), some cinematic level violence, some fluff and angst. Doubt that smut will be involved, but it may be implied. I’ll make sure that is noted clearly if it pops up.

All relationships, at this point anyway, are platonic.

Please do not repost or translate my work. Likes, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated.

A bit about the OC Kari

Part 1

Part 2

All mistakes are my own.

Word count: 3,556

Well, that was not exactly the best idea, was it?

Dr. Darcy Lewis, unlike her colleague, Dr. Erik Selvig, was not a big fan nor an authority on any form of mythology. And the Irish history ask was a longshot at best.

So, here you were, in the coffee shop smack dab in the middle of Westview, talking to Dr. Lewis and getting nowhere fast.

“And, that’s not happening,” the astrophysicist grumbled as she set down her phone and took another sip of her beverage. It was some weirdly sweet concoction that looked like what humans thought rainbow-colored unicorn poop looked like. This world was not ready for what real magical beasts looked like. Most authors had not gotten all of that right in their books. No surprise there. No human really needed to see such things on a daily basis, and whoever had been the muses for those authors had covered up a lot.

“I take it Dr. Selvig has no clue on the Celtic Pantheon?” you asked as you sipped your very boring, light, non-sweet hot coffee. The barista probably wanted to laugh when you ordered it, but he did his best to stifle his snicker. “It was a very long reach on my part, Dr. Lewis. I’m sorry I roped you into this.”

“You can call me Darcy because you actually acknowledge my academic status,” the brunette said as she flipped her phone over again. “So, Thor is off in space. You don’t want me calling Falcon or his pal with the metal arm. Captain Marvel isn’t on your contact list. Ant Man and The Wasp? They can be sort of science geeks, right? Wait. Banner? Is he OK to call?”

Before you could open your mouth, Darcy was texting Banner off her own phone. “You know Bruce?”

“I met him at some meet and greet at MIT before the world went poof,” Darcy replied as she set her phone back down and seemed to be praying Banner would actually return her text. “Stark was there, too, but Banner was the one I got coffee with. Sweet guy, you know, even if he gets all green sometimes.”

As you sipped your coffee, you noticed a few people giving you odd looks. It made you very nervous. “Maybe we should finish up and get back on the road?” you asked Darcy as you quietly motioned toward the other patrons getting their daily fix of caffeine.

“Yeah, bubbe isn’t answering me anyway,” Darcy said as she picked up her phone and got up from her chair. By now there were several residents blocking the exit. “What is your problem? We paid. We’re busing our table. Then we’re leaving.”

“Are The Avengers going to hunt her down?” one woman in the back of the group asked as Darcy looked back toward you and mouthed the word “Help” before turning back to the crowd. The questioner was loud, but you couldn’t see her because of the big delivery man standing in front of her with a huge pile of Amazon packages. “Why did you come back?”

It was time to vamp. With an apparently faulty memory, this was going to be interesting.

“Before you all ask about what is going to happen regarding Wanda Maximoff, I want you all to know I have no authority to speak for The Avengers. I have never been a true member of the team. I helped them at a time when things were beyond bleak for this world. It was an honor and a privilege. But I am not a spokesperson. I am not a team leader.”

“Then why did you come here?” a man with glasses, holding a briefcase, asked from the line where he was waiting for his order. “Then and now?”

“I came the first time because I was looking for my friend. I was pulled into that nightmare just like you were. I wish I had been able to help her before any of this happened.”

“But you have powers, right? Couldn’t you have shut her down, hot stuff?” the first woman added as she moved to the front. Then you recognized her. Agatha Harkness. If Wanda kept her alive, there was a reason for it, and all the pain you had rising in your core had to be tamped down fast. Harkness had hurt Wanda, and that would have to be addressed one day. You were good at playing the long game.

“Taking her out in any sort of power stunt could have jeopardized your lives. I was not sure what she did to make it all happen, and I was not going to risk your lives. I’m sorry it wasn’t put to an end sooner. Now, if you will excuse us, we need to get to a meeting regarding the incident here,” you said as you and Darcy pushed through the crowd and back out to the street.

“OK, what was all that? Spin? Or are you remembering something?” Darcy asked as you got back into her car. You had left your rental on the outskirts of town. Better to travel as a unit until your business here was concluded.

“I remember a couple of things from that mess,” you said as you tried to keep your hands from shaking. “I remember Wanda and Vision’s sons. Billy and Tommy. I remember the house where I lived. Can we drive out to where Wanda had her house? Maybe that will help?”

Darcy pulled out of the parking space and made the lefts and rights to the lot where Wanda’s house had been. The one you were living in was in a lot right next to it. It was empty now, too, but you got out of the car anyway and stood in the center of the patch of dirt. You closed your eyes and held your breath as you tried to piece together what had happened. And then you started to cry as you fell to your knees.

“Whoa, slow down,” Darcy said as she ran and knelt beside you. “What did you see?”

“It’s weird. Wanda came over one day and more or less apologized to me because she couldn’t give me my real happy ending. I can show you, if you’ll let me…”

“Go into my mind?” Darcy protested before you could wave her off the idea. “No Vulcan mind melds for me today, thanks.”

“No, I carry this mirror, and you can see memories in it. Trust me, I do not use telepathy as a first line of anything. I tried it once, to help a friend, but it just caused more problems,” you groaned as you pulled the mirror out of your backpack. You waved your hand over it, and Darcy could now see what had happened with Wanda.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find them and bring them here,” the Sokovian said quietly as she walked around the 1980s version of what was your living room. It was way too pastel for your liking, but the hints of fuchsia, orchid and teal in the overall cream and light gray design weren’t so bad. You had a couple of cats there with you. One was an orange tabby with a penchant for eating tuna at any given moment. He was warm and affectionate and just a ray of sunshine dressed in fur. The other was as white as the driven snow, but his own cuddly disposition came through. He was the one who would leave you weird gifts every morning. Rocks, feathers, and yes, the occasional dead mouse would be at the foot of your bed each sunrise. You’d find out at the end of that nightmare that the cats were only constructs of Wanda’s chaos magic.

“I know you miss the three of them,” she continued as she pointed to a framed picture of Steve, Bucky and Sam, all decked out in appropriate 1980s clothes that made them look like they ran away from some cop drama. “It’s probably better that there aren’t too many Avengers here anyway. Vis is getting concerned. And this way, well, no one needs to know which one you would have chosen. I know. You know. So you can always talk to me. Like we did before. But I gave you the wedding ring to make sure no one came on to you. Just in case I can get him here soon.”

As you showed Darcy the memory, a tiny part of you was screaming that this whole scenario seemed wrong. You watched Wanda’s crimson glow float around you as she spoke. You vaguely remembered The Morrigan trying to kick some sense back into your addled brain, but Wanda’s world was much too enticing to let your other self come to the fore. You wanted the damned happily ever after with the husband and the house and everything that meant in the modern American ethos. You had rationalized things for years in such a way that you’d never let yourself get it. That was why no one was here to hug you at night like Wanda had Vision. Maybe that fact alone was enough to crack Wanda’s hold on you a bit more than she realized?

But you also had to admit that you wanted to be there for Wanda in case things went south. That much was clear from the moment you showed up in Westview the first time.

“How come you didn’t just zap her? Fight back?” Darcy asked as you fully shifted to the present day and paused the memory.

“Because she wasn’t wrong. I did miss Bucky, Steve and Sam. I missed Banner, too, because they were, in the end, the ones still here that cared if I lived or died. And Spider-Man. Which is random and weird, but he did. And frankly, what I said in the coffee shop was true. I had no idea what my powers would do to her spell. I could have leveled the town. That was not an option.”

“So, that Agatha woman…” Darcy started to say and then stopped. “Wait. That was her? In the coffee shop? That was why you were acting so weird?”

“Yeah. Wanda could have killed her or taken Agatha away with her to imprison her. She didn’t. After what Agatha tried to do to Wanda, to try and take her powers, Wanda had every right to finish her off. But Wanda doesn’t likely know all that yet. There are rules set up from ages ago. Things witches can and can’t do to each other under specific circumstances. So Wanda left her trapped here—for now anyway. But, whatever happened with them, it affected me, too. I got hit with stray magic blasts. I’m betting it messed up my powers in ways I didn’t realize. And maybe my memories as well.”

As Darcy knelt there, her phone finally chimed. It was some weird little R2-D2 chirpy beep, and she looked elated as she showed you the message. “Seems Bruce still cares if you are OK or not. I don’t think bringing him here is such a great idea…”

“Did anyone send him data about what happened here?” you asked as you got to your feet, pocketing some of the dirt from the lot before you stood up. “Air and soil samples? Readings from the residents?”

“I can get them for him. Trust me, Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau would be more than happy to help. I’m glad that loon Hayward seems to have gone into hiding or was hauled away to The Raft,” Darcy noted as she checked her phone again. “Seems the doc is working out of a Stark lab here in Jersey. Road trip?”

You really didn’t want to go see Bruce. You had no idea how you’d explain any of what you did to him.

++++++++++

You rehearsed what you planned to tell Bruce a million times in your mind as Darcy drove along the Garden State Parkway to a place called Woodcliff Lake. Stark Industries did indeed have a lab there, and it made you want to scream as you walked into the facility. You did not need yet another reminder that you could not save Tony Stark’s life at the end of that final battle with Thanos. That was part of why you were in this mess in the first place. It was also why you had a screaming fight with Stephen Strange, but no one else knew about that yet.

“Dr. Banner? We’re here!” Darcy yelled as you walked toward what had to be the research wing. The lack of security in the place was a bit disturbing, but then again, there were probably booby traps built into every square inch of the place. You could just hear Tony now as you got closer to the lab area. It would likely have been close to the speech you got the first time he talked to you at the compound.

“Hey! Lucky Charms! Don’t touch any of the expensive stuff. I guess that means don’t touch anything. I still have no idea why you are hanging around the team except that Steve wants you here for some reason. Maybe you’re tied to…his friend…and I just don’t want to face that? Still have issues with all of that, even if the man is dead. Pepper and Morgan said I should be nice to you, but I’m not quite there yet after what happened in Berlin. They are better people than I’ll ever be.”

“Earth to Kari?” you finally heard Bruce say as he waved his massive green hand in front of your face. Then he realized why you were likely spacing out. "Dr. Lewis, can we have a minute?”

“You can call me Darcy, if I can call you Bruce?” Lewis said as Banner nodded to her. “Cool. I’ll go find the little scientist’s room and be right back,” she added as she left the lab.

“So,” Bruce started as he pointed you toward a set of chairs at one side of the lab, “Darcy filled me in via text. I have no idea what happened with Wanda, and I know none of us know where she is. I did call a friend who wants to help,” he noted as a swirling circle of yellow light formed near the window that looked out over the parking lot. “I figured you’d listen to him, and he knows more about this stuff than I do.”

“What did you do?” Wong shouted as he exited the portal. “You usually listen to reason. Why did you go after Wanda all alone?”

“I went to help Wanda. She was hurting. She watched Vision die twice. She lost Pietro. I can relate to all that very, very well. My twin Branan died in front of my eyes, too, and I’ve buried two husbands. Both died in battle. I just wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. But she…she hit all my vulnerable points. And she was under attack at the same time. From a woman named Agatha Harkness and from the director of SWORD. Some martinet named Hayward. He built another Vision. I think Hayward was using Wanda’s powers to bring him to life. Darcy is going to check in with some of the people who worked with her to get you more intel, Bruce.”

“Another version of Vision? Great,” Bruce muttered as he looked over at Wong. “As for this Harkness person…”

“The name rings very small bells, so I’ll need to do some research,” Wong noted as you bumped your left fist against your forehead. “What?”

“Harkness is a succubus. And she is old. Not as old as I am, but she is still a good 400 years old, give or take a day. She apparently survived the Salem Witch Trials. Wanda spelled her and left her in Westview. I think she is, at least in small ways, aware that her world is all wrong. I didn’t want to press it when I saw her in that coffee shop. We do not need an angry succubus flying around. Wong, they got into an aerial battle, and Wanda was using sigils, runes, whatever you want to call them, to focus her power. I think she picked that up from good old Aggie. I never showed her anything like that on purpose. I always suspected she had magic in her bones, but it wasn’t my place to start that fire. The bigger issue is that Wanda conjured up two children while she was there. She created cats for me, so anything is possible. I got knocked out by the end of the fight, so I have no idea what exactly happened in the end other than Wanda running off and Agatha being left behind for some reason.”

“And?” Wong asked as he started to look you up and down. “You did a spell? And it went bad? Your aura is all messed up.”

“I…I tried to do a spell so The Avengers would think of me less and less, and then eventually I’d just be a fleeting memory. I felt walking away in the dead of night, the thing I usually do when I am leaving town, would not be good enough. The spell got botched, and now I’m connected in some fashion to Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. Looking back at it, I spent more time with them in the days leading up to my departure. Steve and Bruce were there the day I left, and so were Sam and Bucky. And…I’m carrying a lot of guilt about Bucky after his accident in 1943.”

“All this on top of the magical circus Wanda made? Are you insane?” Wong yelled as he started to pace.

“And the fight I had with Stephen on the day of the battle. Yeah, I guess I am insane,” you replied as Wong threw up his hands. Bruce had gotten extremely quiet, and that was not a good thing.

“Before we get to dissecting your spell, Kari, was this because of what Tony said? About you not being an Avenger because you were…?”

“Unstable? Yes. And the fact I could not bring anyone back from the grave, especially during that last battle. And the fact about who killed his parents. Buck did while under Hydra control. Steve found out and never told Tony. I ran into The Winter Soldier a few times over the decades, so there was the chance I could have prevented their deaths, too. Tony really had no reason to ask me to join the band.”

“Once we get your spell problem sorted, then we will address this, too,” Bruce said as he looked toward Wong and shook his head. “I loved Tony like a brother, but he was wrong…”

You winced a few times as you tried to listen to Bruce and Wong, now joined once again by Darcy, as they tried to figure out how to fix or reverse that spell, and they hashed out what might have happened to you during that first trip to Westview. You were really trying to focus on their questions, but you felt a tug that no one else could ever have possibly felt.

“Baltimore,” you mumbled as you pulled out your cellphone and debated texting the person you felt tugging at that damned invisible string. No. That would have ended badly, especially since your original spell had gone haywire.

“Bucky Barnes was arrested?” Darcy asked as she showed you her phone alert. “I bet he punched that new fake Cap in the nose. Sorry, but that guy looks like he has no clue. I saw him on Good Morning America. Total cheese fest.”

“Wait. What?” you asked as you took her phone. “Sam didn’t keep the shield? I just hope Bucky didn’t punch Sam and wind up in jail for that!” You gave Darcy back her phone and looked at yours again. It was buzzing. “Anyone here know who the hell is Christina Raynor?” you asked the trio in front of you. No one had any clue about that. You hit the speaker button as you answered the call.

“Hello? Ms. MacOrish. I’m James Barnes’ therapist, Christina Raynor. Sam Wilson said I should give you a call and ask you to join us in Baltimore. As quickly as possible, if you can. I don’t think Mr. Barnes wants to spend the night in a holding cell.”

“Oh no, you are not going to Baltimore,” Wong said as he crossed his arms and got a stern look on his face. “Not while your head is all over the place. You could portal to Baltimore in the 1800s for all you know. You could end up eating lunch with Lord Baltimore in the 1700s. You really shouldn’t do this.”

“Wong, what better place for me to go than to see a therapist?” you said with a smirk as you opened your own portal, this one a lovely shade of emerald green, that went to where Raynor was waiting for you—outside an interrogation room at the city jail.

“Mr. Wilson said you’d be fast. He did not tell me you were one of the powered class,” Raynor said as you went through the portal, looking back to wave briefly as you heard Darcy’s last comment.

“What about your rental car?”

#avengers x oc #bucky barnes x oc #sam wilson x oc #bruce banner x oc #wong x oc #darcy lewis x oc #avengers #bucky barnes #sam wilson #bruce banner #wong mcu #darcy lewis #my mcu oc #my ocs are my babies #my oc writing

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girlmeetsliv3 · 4 years ago

Text

Lilies of the Valley V

A/B/O!BTS x Reader

Flowers can have different meanings depending on the flower shape, color, and method in which they are presented. Lilies are my favorite for such a simple flower can have so many distinct meanings.

"White is usually associated with purity and heaven. Fresh and crisp, white lilies also represent purity and modesty"

Release Date: 06/01/20 @ 8:40 pm

previous ~ next

YN felt she was floating, her mind was floating, in and out of consciousness as she fought to gain control over herself but couldn't. She parted her lips to speak, only wails and moans came out instead of words. YN tried again - harder this time - but the same thing happened. She called out for someone, anyone, to hear her but her voice was beginning to fail her. Her body was shaking. No, not her body. Her bones were shaking. YN felt cold, incredibly cold, she tried to cover herself with the comforter but that only made her more uncomfortable. She thrashed and turned trying to get the blanket off, but it wouldn't budge. That only made her cry more. Eventually, she was so exhausted, she fell asleep.

“Shh. It’s okay. We’re here.”

"Help me lift her, so we can change the sheets."

“She needs a bath too.”

No! No bath. Don’t move me. YN tried to talk to them, whoever they were, but they wouldn't listen. Her ramblings were incoherent at best, but in her mind, they made perfect sense. YN cried and complained, she was in pain, everything hurt and they were only making it worse. "Shh. Don't worry it'll be over soon." Something brushed against her cheek and for the briefest of moments, she felt calm but then the pain and discomfort only worsened. The fever was wrecking through her body and there was little anyone could do to stop it. "Hurry up!" It was too loud, it hurt her ears. When she felt the cool of the bathwater, she lost consciousness again.

There was a crash, a loud one, and a cacophony of yells. Someone was getting closer to her, she could feel it but as much as she wanted to open her eyes they wouldn’t. Her nose was beginning to itch, their scent was too strong. It hurt. YN moaned again and tried to move away, but whoever it was had her locked in their grip. That only made things worse. Cramps began to pass all over her body causing the omega to spasm uncontrollably. They didn’t notice, too busy trying to pry the alpha off her to notice the pain she was in. Only once they had him under control did they notice the fever had returned and she was in a worse state than before.

“Get him out of here!”

“All of you leave! Now!”

The warmth was gone and the room was cool again. Something cold yet soft was trailed throughout her whole body. “Don’t worry. I’m here. I’ll make it better.”

When YN awoke it was to the sweet scent of raspberries and sugar. She leaned into the scent, wanting to drink more and more of it in. Only when she heard soft giggles and a sigh, did YN finally pry her eyes open. It stung at first all the clarity in the room, but after a couple of seconds, she became adjusted to it. YN felt depleted in every sense of the word but didn't yet know why. Her body ached, the way it might after a strenuous workout and her mind felt numb. It was when her outstretched arms touched skin that YN turned to the side, surprised to see Rosé of all people in her room.

“Ro!” YN jumped up and embraced her friend. Having felt like it’d been years since they had last seen each other.

Rosé hugged her back, but her grip wasn’t as tight and her eyes were filled with concern. “I’m so glad you’re okay YN. You had everyone so worried.”

YN was taken aback, “What do you mean?” YN pulled away and looked into Rosé’s face trying to decipher what she meant.

Rosé herself looked only more puzzled by YN’s words. “YN,” she spoke carefully as if explaining to a child, “You were in heat.”

“That’s ridiculous my heat isn’t for a couple more days. I’ve been taking the suppressants.”

"YN, you were in heat. It's been almost a week and it was only this morning that you broke the fever." That didn't make any sense. How had it been a week? The last thing YN knew had been taking her suppressants and heading to bed. Had they not worked? But they'd worked fine for years. Even if it was a faulty batch, her heat wasn't supposed to occur so suddenly. YN didn't know what to say.

“I’ve never heard of heats lasting that long or being that intense. They're only supposed to last a day or two max. Is that normal for you?” Rosé was wracking her head trying to find an explanation all the while YN sat silent. If I had my heat then that means… “And your mates were so worried. They kept asking me if this was a normal thing, but I didn’t know how to answer. Everyone was so scared YN.” That caught her attention, YN vaguely recalled people around her but she assumed that was a dream. “Did you take care of me, Ro?” The girl shook her head, “I was only allowed to see you today once they were sure your heat was over.”

“What? Why?!” YN’s anxiety was beginning to rise.

"It's normal. Mates get protective during heats, plus it wouldn't have been safe for another omega to be around. Could've triggered my heat and then we'd be screwed." This had quelled her fears, if only momentarily, casting a glance around the room YN noticed it was a wreck. Her bathroom door was thrown open and YN could see wet spots on the carpet and floor. Not to mention the basket was overbrimming with dirty clothes and sheets. Her memory of the events was fuzzy, it felt like she had just woken up from a long sleep. "Why are the doors gone?"

Rosé whipped her head to see where YN was staring, then she smiled apologetically. "Um, apparently you triggered your alphas ruts. They're locked away in the mansion riding it out." So it had been the others who had taken care of her, which put her more at ease. "Where are they?" YN couldn't see anyone standing outside and her nose felt plugged, not allowing her to sense them. "They said they were going to get cleaned up. I'm sure they'll be back soon. They can't stand to be away from you for too long." YN was thankful that there were betas in the group. Though she couldn't see a pack of all alpha's getting along.

“I’m sorry Ro. Sorry for scaring you.”

"You don't have to apologize to me. I know how it is. I would talk to them about it though so that all of you can be prepared next time." Right, next time.

“Don’t worry. This won’t happen again. I probably just got a bad batch.” YN was certain this wouldn’t happen again. She wouldn’t allow it to.

"Yeah, but haven't you had them for a while. It's strange to get a reaction now. How'd your last heat go?" YN didn't know how to answer that question. Well, she did, but she knew the second Rosé found out the truth it would all be over. "What do you mean?" YN feigned innocence. Rosé tilted her head in confusion, "You know...how long was your last heat? I'm certain it wasn't this long. I don't remember you taking time off." Fuck. The longer she stayed quiet the more concerned Rosé became. “If this keeps happening you have to go see a doctor. It isn’t normal and can be a sign that something is up.”

YN waved her off, “I’m sure everything is fine. My last heat only lasted three days.”

“Okay, but when was your last heat?” Rosé had finally landed on the jackpot question. YN’s reluctance to answer only caused her friend to press her more. “I mean I don’t recall you ever getting like this.”

YN sighed, running a hand through her hair only to find it was greasy and long overdue for a wash. “I haven’t had a heat since I presented Rose.” Her friend remained frozen in shock until YN’s words finally dawned on her. “Are you insane?! Why haven’t you said anything?! That isn’t normal YN! Something is obviously very wrong.”

“I know it isn’t normal Rosé, but nothing is wrong. I’ve just been using the suppressants.”

“But they aren’t meant to be used like that. They’re only supposed to control side effects, not fully take away your heat. No wonder you were in heat for so long. Do you realize how reckless you’ve been?! You could’ve died!”

YN rolled her eyes, "You're being ridiculous Ro. I wouldn't have died." Rosé had always been an overthinker and someone of frail health so it made sense to YN that she would react like this. This is partly the reason YN had refrained from telling her friend, the other reason is it was illegal.

“Your mates told me you reached 41 degrees.” Oh. "Your body shut down and went into survival mode. They were afraid to take you to the hospital because they knew it might worsen your heat." YN had heard of intense heats causing fevers and cramps, but never to that extent. Perhaps, she had gone a bit overboard with the suppressants and her body needed a release.

"I'm sorry Ro. I really am. You're right I was being stupid, but I was scared. I didn't know how to deal with heats and the first time I experienced one I -" She had been about to tell Rosé everything. Confess the truth, but that would only shatter Rosé's perception of YN. Rosé would accuse her of lying and want to end their friendship, she couldn't risk her reputation by being associated with someone like YN. "- I was scared. That's why I did it."

“Oh YN.” Rosé pulled her into a tight hug and YN almost wept at the thought of losing her best friend. The person she truly had left. “It’s okay. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Just promise you won’t do it again.” YN nodded, burying her head into Rosé’s neck unsure of whether she was being honest or not. She hoped she was.

“I’m happy to see you’re feeling better.” True to Rosé’s words the men had returned in ten minutes exactly. Yoongi, Jimin, and Taehyung looked clean and brand new but YN noticed the weary expressions on their faces and the bags under their eyes. Yoongi smiled and went to sit on her bed, the others entered slowly too. Their movements seemed calculated as if they were careful not to scare her.

“I am, thank you. I’m sorry about the trouble I’ve caused.” She did feel bad and can’t imagine what that must’ve been like.

“It’s no problem. You’re our mate, it’s our responsibility to care for you.” Jimin stated, eyes warm as he leaned against the wall nearest where the doors used to be.

Rosé had remained quiet and by your side, but sensing something in the air she excused herself. “I’ll be going now. Sorry for any trouble I caused.” Yoongi shook his head, “You were nothing but help.” Leaning down, she pressed a kiss against your cheek and said goodbye. “Get well soon.” She waved, before leaving for good.

Once YN was sure she was gone, she turned her attention back towards the men. "Thank you for letting her come. I know it must've been difficult." Taehyung rolled his eyes, "Please if we hadn't she probably would've called protective services on us." Despite his words, his tone was light not meant to be taken seriously. YN simply nodded, unsure of what to say or where the conversation would go. It was Jimin who took the initiative, "You really scared us. Are your heats normally like that?" YN shook her head, "No. I don't know what happened this time. I think I had a faulty batch or something." It still didn't make sense to her.

"You should stop taking those things. They aren't good in the long term, plus we can always use alternatives." YN didn't know how she felt about that but figured it was better to go along with whatever they said then to start a fight. "Plus," Taehyung added, "You should let us know when your preheat rolls around. That way we can plan." At this YN did oppose, “Namjoon knew though. I thought he would tell you all.” Jimin sighed, “You can’t trust alphas with that kind of information. I’m sure he did mean to tell us, but it happened so suddenly.”

YN suddenly wondered exactly where all the alphas were and what rolled they played during their heat. "Where exactly are the others?" The betas exchanged a look. "They're in Namjoon's room. It's been so long since we all experienced a heat, so it kind of triggered their ruts." Yoongi explained, looking a bit frazzled with everything. "And the door?" They all visibly tensed, Taehyung stood up from the wall to walk towards the opposite side of the bed. "That was them. Lost a bit of control when you began to call out for us, but thankfully Yoongi managed to make them snap out of it long enough to get them out." Taehyung then laid down on the bed, causing YN to have to move for there to be enough space for the two of them.

"Don't worry. We'll install new doors by tonight." Yoongi said as he looked disapprovingly at Taehyung.

YN took a deep breath, steadying herself, and trying to prepare for what she was about to ask. "How did you take care of me?"

Her question disoriented the betas. "What do you mean?" Jimin asked, coming to rest on the bed near YN's legs. "We changed your sheets, clothes, and bathed you sometimes. We also tried fever medicine, but you puked that up." The men had taken care of her, but that wasn't what she had meant. "No, I know but I mean did you take care of me?"

The men’s expressions morphed suddenly, their faces becoming stoic. YN didn’t know whether they were upset or not. “No. We didn’t.” Yoongi spoke through clenched teeth. “You were barely conscious.” It hadn’t been what she expected. Perhaps that is why it had lasted so long, they had refrained from aiding her.

“Oh. I just thought -”

“Frankly, I don’t appreciate the accusation.” Taehyung’s voice had dropped at least two octaves lower. Even Jimin seemed to be gripping the bedding tightly.

YN shook her head, raising her hands up. “That wasn’t what I meant. I was simply asking, but thank you. For respecting me.” It was a lot more than others would do in that situation. Especially with a partial bond established.

"YN," Jimin called her name, forcing her to look at him. "You are our mate. Don't forget it and don't ever suggest something like that again."

It seems they were trying to keep their hormones under control, for her sake, but YN could feel the anger radiating off them even in her weakened state. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” Not knowing what else to do, YN reached out to touch Jimin and Taehyung’s hands while smiling at Yoongi. After a while, the tension dissipated and all of them were smiling. Each for a different reason, however. YN because she had managed to deescalate a potentially dangerous situation and the men because for the first time since knowing each other YN hadn’t denied being their mate.

New doors had been installed, though these featured a combination lock the other ones didn't. 'For privacy' YN had been told and though she suspected that was not the only reason, she was at least thankful for it. She was also grateful that her tattoo wasn't ruined because of her heat as that would result in a whole other fiasco. The others had most likely noticed it - difficult to miss it was but hadn't seemed to care. Overall, YN was feeling a lot better and though Yoongi had insisted she rest, YN found that difficult to do. She had showered and applied lotion onto her tattoo before dressing and deciding to explore the grounds. Even though YN longed to go out with everyone else locked in the house, she decided that might not be the best idea.

As beautiful as the day was it had a draft which had her skipping over the swimming pool. The patio area was pleasant but seemed typical as did the outdoor kitchen. YN walked to where both side entrances were, eyeing the cameras observing her, but found them to be locked. In the end, YN settled on dragging out the large rug in the middle of her room outside to lay near the lilies. The garden was beautiful, reminding her of a simpler time. She watched as the gentle breeze caused the flowers to sway from side to side. With the sun partly hidden behind clouds, YN was warm but not uncomfortably so. The sound of nature around her was like a sweet lullaby which caused her eyelids to hang heavy after a while.

This is so nice. Once she closed her eyes, her other senses heightened causing her nose to pick up on the soft smell of cotton. It smelled like a mix of eucalyptus and cotton, fresh and relaxing. "Mm. Smells nice." A soft chuckle reached her ears, YN opened her eyes to see Seokjin standing a few feet away from her. Though her primary reaction was to cower away, once she noticed his clean attire and the slouch in his usually straight spine YN quelled her fears away. "Sorry," Seokjin said softly. "I didn't mean to scare you." YN shook her head, she knew what she should do next: stand up, excuse herself, and walk away. But she was so comfortable on the grass and despite what she'd been warned the alpha in front of her didn't seem like he was in a rut. Didn't smell like it either. "I'm glad you're feeling better. We were all worried." Seokjin seemed awkward standing around, but YN didn't make a move to invite him nor did she dismiss him entirely.

"Thank you for taking care of me." The smile on her face was genuine even if her words weren't the entire truth. Seokjin nodded but refrained from saying anything else. After a couple of tense seconds where both of them stared at each other expectantly, YN relented. Gesturing over to the carpet before shifting over. Seokjin took the same position as her, laying down staring up at the sky. "You're peaceful when you sleep." He commented, catching YN off guard.

“As opposed to?” She joked trying to lighten the mood.

“You were restless last week. Barely slept and even then when you did sleep, we were afraid you weren’t going to wake up again.” He spoke earnestly, tone hushed yet somber.

"Oh," YN didn't know it had been that bad. She trusted Rosé but knew the omega was a worrier. Seeing the frown nestled between her brows, Seokjin reached over and smoothed the area. YN's eyes widening at his actions. "Don't worry. It wasn't that bad, we just were unprepared." Instead of removing his hand, the alpha trailed towards her cheek, cupping it gently. YN angeled her body so that she was facing him better, "The others told me about what happened. Did I really trigger your rut?" YN knew an alpha's ruts could be just as intense and painful as omegas. YN would never purposely want to inflict that loss of control on someone. No matter who they were.

Seokjin smiled gently, “Don’t worry. It was only really Namjoon and Hoseok who you triggered. Jungkook and I already had our ruts but we decided to help the others, plus we didn’t want to risk it.” YN had assumed that the younger alpha in his lust-filled rage had been the one to tear down the door, or they all did. Never could she imagine Jungkook aiding the betas. “Then what happened to the door?”

“Ah,” Seokjin laughed a bit, rubbing the back of his neck. “A fight broke out between us about whether we should take you to a hospital or not. Some of us got a bit territorial, things escalated and well… combine that with our ruts and we felt you weren’t safe so we wanted to take you into the house.”

“To nest?”

"Kinda. Jimin argued that you would feel uncomfortable if you woke up and were in a bed with all of us, so a fight broke out." A fight between mates? That YN had never heard of. She expressed said thoughts to Seokjin who only shrugged in response, "We're only human. Most of the time we agree on how to care for our mates, but each of us has different coping mechanisms and we were unprepared."

YN didn't know why but she felt at ease around Seokjin, maybe because the alpha had never not been respectable and aware of her boundaries. Perhaps because he seemed like the only one who didn't place the pack bond above all or even acted like the stereotypical alpha. She felt they could be friends. That was a lot more than she felt for most of the residents in the house. Still, as the day went on and the sun began to set, the two of them remained on the carpet. Basking in the beauty of the day and each other's presence, though none would admit to it. It wasn't until the last sliver of sunlight remained, that their eyes met once more and YN found herself inkling to know him better. Most surprisingly of all, YN wanted to kiss him.

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theres-no-protocol-for-this · 4 years ago

Text

Previous Missions

My memories are fragmented.

My client has explained that this is normal and is not impacting my ability to perform my duties, but my performance reliability rating still drops a few percent points whenever I stumble onto a missing bit.

There is something inherently wrong here, but I don't know what it is. And ART continues to reassure me that everything is going to be fine. A strange sentiment to say to a construct — if everything was, in fact, fine we would be unnecessary.

I would be interested in hearing about one of your previous missions, ART says in the feed.

It's not a direct command or a pointed question, so I doubt my governor will complain if I fail to answer. But something about ART asking specifically prompts me to try. My memories of ART are scattered and devoid of meaning, but I can feel my organic components reacting whenever it speaks with me. It's hard to explain, but when it's around, I feel a little better — even my performance climbs a few points.

I begin a memory repair and diagnostic routine in the background and focus on my client's comment.

Is there something in particular that you would like to know?

Negative. Nothing in particular. I'm just curious.

Very few of my clients have ever expressed any inclination to know about me. I think it would be unusual if they did. I'm an appliance, one that humans find disconcerting for reasons I can understand and empathize with. There is no reason for them to want more information.

Therefore, ART is unusual.

I am a Security Unit, an interactive component of a Security Subsystem. My missions typically involve the protection of human life and corporate property. Approximately 60% of my contracts have involved medium-sized mining installations across the Corporation Rim.

Have you enjoyed those contracts? ART asks.

It's a difficult question and one I must answer, so I try to phrase the complicated thought into words. There have been moments of those contracts that were of interest and importance to me, but I would not call that enjoyment.

My buffer overrides my answer. Yes, Client ART.

Just ART, says my client. It stands for Asshole Research Transport. A friend gave me that name.

From my limited understanding of humans, I am doubtful that any of them would consent to such a name. But in the same instant, I feel a sense of warmth and safety inside that I cannot explain. My performance reliability hovers at around a steady 85%, more than is reasonable given that I have several faulty internal components.

My apologies, ART. I record that this client prefers a singular name with no honorific or title. A few of my previous clients have had similar requests, so this does not deviate far from standard protocol.

The client is silent. Perhaps I have done or said something wrong, but it's hard to be certain. According to my logs, my last mission was successful, and my clients have elected to repair the broken components so that I may continue working with them. This suggests they consider my performance satisfactory.

But fuck if I know.

My governor doesn't appreciate the cursing and zaps me lightly for the transgression. It doesn't — cannot — read minds as one might imagine it. But it is aware of some of my thoughts, specifically those that trigger other internal or external systems. Like the word 'fuck' apparently. I feel like I should know this, but I have nothing about it in my archives.

It's time to go, ART tells me. Please proceed to airlock A-07. Seth will accompany you to the facility.

Yes, ART.

It's going to be all right, it tells me again. It has said this 17 times. I don't understand the importance, but there must be one. Humans are irrational, yes, but there are often patterns in their madness.

I make my way to the airlock as requested. When I pass the crew lounge, Martyn and Iris look in my general direction. They are the family of one of my clients, and I have been asked not to interact with them unless requested.

"Be careful out there, SecUnit," Iris says.

Seth and I will make sure SecUnit returns to us undamaged, ART says in the general feed.

I want to ask if I should prepare for something dangerous, but I have my armor and weapons. I am not sure what other kind of preparation would be reasonable, or permitted.

Seth is waiting at the airlock, and together we exit the Perihelion. Almost immediately, my performance reliability tanks. At 75%, ART connects to my feed and says, It's going to be all right, again. This should have no effect on me, so I'm surprised when my performance rises.

Again.

I have no fucking clue what's going on, and even the governor's unhelpful zap does nothing to clear up this situation.

#murderbot #fanfiction #governor controlled #it's not as sad

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piratesfromspace · 4 years ago

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Five Times Din and Cobb protected you - and one time they didn’t have to

Pairing: The Mandalorian x Cobb Vanth x Reader

Summary: The title says it all. Five Times Din and Cobb protected you, saved you, or just cared for you - and one time they didn’t have to. It's just self-indulgent fluff to make you feel safe and loved, enjoy!

Those small stories represent part 2 of my series “A Mandalorian, a Marshal, and some complicated feelings”. You can read part 1 here: “Two saviors and some hope”. I strongly advise you read it first!

Word Count: 7.1k

Warnings: canon-typical violence, alcohol, brief mention of past abuse, sexual harassment, depiction of PTSD

A/N: Neutral pronouns for reader. English is not my native language, please be kind. Fic also available on ao3.

Part 1 ✧ ☽ Chapter 1: The Bruises ☽✧

The first time is the day after Din and Cobb saved you from the slaver in the market of Mos Pelgo. The Marshal had already noticed the bruises left on your upper arm by the mean grip of your captor’s hand. He too was a slave once, and he knows. Worse than the pain, is the actual humiliation of seeing on one’s own body the bruises and cuts inflicted by a tormentor. In the afternoon, he comes home with some sort of ointment he bought off of an old lady that is kind of a healer. He offers to apply it for you. The swelling wraps all around your arm, making it difficult for you to reach on your own. You agree.

He’s quick and focused on the task, and you guess it’s not the first time he has to do something like this. His gentleness is almost startling, such a contrast with the faceless authoritarian figure he was just the day before, when you first encountered him. When he’s done, you can already feel the balm starting to soothe the pain. Although you’re not so sure whether it’s thanks to the actual ointment or the calming warmth of his hands against your abused flesh.

He wants to give you the small bottle containing the medication, but you explain you don’t have any credit to pay him back, cheeks hot with shame. His smile is bright and honest, and he assures you you don’t owe him anything. You thank him in a whisper. And you thank the Maker as well for sending him on your path.

✧ ☽ Chapter 2: The Cantina ☽✧

The second time happened during a weekday night. The bartender of the local cantina had an errand to run and asked you to replace him. Him being a dear friend of Cobb, you have accepted. Being a barmaid is one of the many previous jobs you have already done, and it is actually a nice distraction. It also is a nice way to earn some credits, let’s be honest.

As the evening unrolls pretty peacefully, a group of very loud male Devaronians enter the cantina, and you can smell trouble as soon they step a foot inside. You’ve already seen them around town for the past couple days, they seem to be resting here for a while before travelling further into the desert. Although their stay is temporary, they’ve managed to make themselves known to the local population as pretty annoying, searching to start a scrap more often than not.

They settle at the bar, ordering a round of spotchka, before one of them starts speaking about you like you weren’t there. “Hey what a pretty human we have here… I’ve heard humans are all soft and light, ‘wonder what they could taste like!” He follows the declaration by an obscene sound of mouth and an exaggerated lick of his giant tongue on his lips. His friends let out silly sneers at the dirty joke. You roll your eyes, when another expands: “Ugh, I don’t think it’s a good idea to eat humans, you know, I’ve heard they’re all bones and no meat.” “No, not like this Kard’ye, Kriff, you’re so stupid.” The whole group laughs loudly, while the aforementioned Kard’ye struggles to understand the innuendo of his camrade. You don’t know if it’s the alcohol or a natural lack of intelligence, but they indeed all look pretty dumb.

Lucky for you, they let you out of their next conversations, and you tend to the rare other clients, praying for the Devaronians to leave soon. The night goes on, and you’re preparing to close the bar. All the patrons quickly leave, except for the bunch of Devaronians, of course. Just before you can tell them to go somewhere else, they order a whole round of the strongest - and most expensive - alcohol you have. You consider refusing, but you don’t want to be the one explaining to your employer why you let so many credits go away.

“This is your very last round, ok?” you finally say, not even trying to hide the exasperation in your voice.

As you’re serving them, you have a short moment of absence and the heavy bottle of alcohol escapes your hands. You try to catch it back with a gasp, but the brown thick drink ends up all over the counter and on the jacket of one of the Devaronians. “I’m so sorry! Let me cl…” you don’t have the time to end your apology that the thug grabs your faulty arm and pulls it toward him, your ribs hitting violently the countertop in the movement. You freeze, the memory of a similar situation suddenly invading your mind. The cruel hand of your captor. The burning sand beneath your feet. The feeling of despair. It’s all back at the front of your mind. The world is shutting down around you, it’s like you’re floating and being stuck at the same time.

“You stupid human, look at the mess you’ve made! You need a correction, maybe Kard’ye is right, I should actually take a bite, just to try…” the creature growls with a vicious smile, revealing two sets of sharp teeth. He tugs your hand closer, like he’s really gonna bite your fingers off. You can feel his lukewarm and disgusting breath on your skin but you’re incapable to move, completely frozen.

“Actually you shouldn’t” the familiar filtered voice takes you out of your paralysis. There is the sound of a blaster getting armed. “Or you won’t have any teeth left.” Din adds while pressing his blaster’s barrel up against the jaw of your aggressor.

There is a little bit of mayhem as the group of Devaronians pull out their own weapons, stepping back and shouting in surprise. Your attacker lets go of your arm, and turns slowly to face the Mandalorian. The threat of a fight is floating in the air as the orange-skinned alien is deciding whether to take offense or not.

His smile gets bigger and he raises both his hands in a mockery of surrender. “A Mandalorian, what a surprise! Are you a Marshal as well? Or maybe you just happen to share the same closet...” his drunk friends giggle at the implication.

“I’m no Marshal. And I make my own justice. Wanna try it?” He says, his blaster sinking a little deeper into the creature’s cheek. His voice is so steady and emotionless it’s borderline scary. “And if you think you’re insulting me by implying the actual Marshal of this town, the most brave man that I know, is my partner, then you’re even stupider than what I thought.”

The tension is thick as the smile on the Devaronian’s face disappears. He snorts loudly and spits on the floor, in a pathetic attempt to regain some stature.

“Well guys, let’s go out of this rat hole, the spotchka wasn’t even good anyway.” he says aloud for the whole group to hear. His companions grumble last threats while leaving the place.

Mando’s blaster is still aiming at their back as they walk out of the cantina, and as soon as the last one of them is in the street, he walks behind the counter and seals the door behind them with the push of a button. You watch him act, but you’re still stuck in the same position, your mind blank.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt?” you can hear the worry in his voice this time. You want to answer but you can’t, you open your mouth but you’re unable to produce a sound. You’re slowly coming back to your senses, tears of fear prickling in your eyes after the fact, like your emotions are just now catching up with what happened.

You’re desperately looking at Mando’s visor, searching for something, anything that would help you ease the wave of terror that’s preventing you from speaking. “Hey, you’re safe now, I’m here, they’re gone” he whispers, closing prudently the distance between you two, before pulling you gently in his embrace.

You wince when your injured ribs bump into the beskar of his breastplate, but at least the physical pain helps you get back to the here and now. He lets go immediately, startled, taking a step back.

“I… I’m gonna be fine.” you finally find the strength to speak to reassure him. “You’re a strong one, I’m sure you will.” There is no irony in his voice. His visor tips slightly down, toward your ribs. “Let’s go home and have Cobb take a look at this, okay?” You nod in agreement.

“I’ll come back and clean this mess.” he adds finally, while looking at the drink spilled all over the counter. Then his voice gets lower, laced with threat “And after that, I think I also have a few things to clean with some Devaronians.”

✧ ☽ Chapter 3: The Language ☽✧

The third time is all about a misunderstanding.

You go on your day, out in the streets of Mos Pelgo to buy some food. You still avoid the marketplace since it has a few brutal memories attached to it that are still too fresh, but it’s okay because you usually find what you want in the small shop next to the cantina.

As you make your way out, arms full of supplies, you miss a step and accidentally bump into a Tusken. Your groceries fell on the ground as you try to catch your footing, and you apologize while picking everything up, too embarrassed to look up at the stranger you just pushed. But the language barrier is not working in your favor, and the Tusken is quite upset. You know their tribe is not always welcome in town and the tensions were already pretty high long before you arrived.

You try desperately to remember the few gestures Din taught you, but you’re panicking and afraid to sign something wrong, making the situation even worse. The angry grunts of the Tusken are not stopping, and you try to apologize again, but to no avail. The loud quarrel doesn’t go unnoticed. More and more bystanders are stopping to look at the scene, and soon, there are quite a handful of villagers and Tusken around you both. Some of them start to take sides, humans insulting the Tusken, and Tuskens raising threatening fists at the town inhabitants.

It’s all going down pretty quickly, until you catch the shining glimpse of a beskar armor, and the rumble of a deep modulated voice. Mando parts the crowd, plants himself in front of the Tusken and signs in annoyed short gestures. He seems tired of this. Playing the peace keeper and the translator for two opposing sides was an honorable mission at first, but it begins to be more troublesome and repetitive those days. You can’t really blame Mando, when the townsfolk are not making the slightest efforts to include the Tusken tribe - and the desert warriors are not really helpful either. Nonetheless, you watch as Din tries his best to avoid a fight and calm the tensions. After a few back and forth, the offended Tusken finally shakes his head, weary, and signals to his group it’s time to leave. You’re relieved, and you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

The crowd is dispersed, and Din helps you pick up the last of the food supply still on the ground. After a while, Mando finally breaks the silence between you.

“I’m sorry.

He answers your surprised look with a heavy sigh.

“Sorry you had to end up in the middle of this nonsense while you had nothing to do with it in the first place.”

“I am sorry too, I mean, I failed you. You taught me how to sign their language and I couldn’t even remember how to say sorry. I’m a bad student... Or maybe you’re a bad teacher?” you let out a half-hearted giggle, in an attempt to lighten the mood. Din’s visor drops slightly and you swear you've heard a chuckle.

At least you still remember how to make him smile.

✧ ☽ Chapter 4: The Scar ☽✧

The fourth time is a night when the pain in your back wakes you up.

Again.

You know you need to find a competent medical droid to fix what has become a chronic pain, but it’s easier said than done when you live in a small town lost in the desert on Tatooine. You turn in your bed, trying to find a more comfortable position, but after a few minutes of unsuccessful attempts you give up. With an exasperated sigh, you get up. The call from the painkillers still stored in your roommate's bedroom and the promise of an oblivious sleep is too strong. With some luck, you might even be able to sneak under Cobb’s blanket (you know he sleeps alone tonight) and cuddle against his warm chest without waking him up.

With silent steps, you sneak into his room, and quickly find what you’re looking for. It would be way convenient to have the medication stored elsewhere, but you suspect he deliberately keeps it there, so he can keep a tab of your consumption. Was he afraid of you getting addicted to the drug? And wasn’t he right to be so?

A voice interrupts your train of thoughts before you can step outside of the room.

“Leave the pills. And come here.”

You feel like a kid caught with their hands in the sweet-sand cookie jar.

“Please, sweetheart. Don’t make me get up.” you guess a smile behind the voice hoarse with sleep.

But you’re annoyed, your back hurts and he has no rights giving you order, he’s definitely not your dad or anything.

“I’m hurting, Cobb, and I can’t sleep, let me have that.” your answer is more curt than you want to.

“I’ll rub your back.” he offers. “Come here”.

He’s being really patient with you, and it’s even more annoying because now you can’t say no.

You lay on your stomach next to him and he straddles you, one leg on each side of your body, resting ever so lightly on your hips. He asks if you’d prefer to remove your top, and you fumble to push it over your head. Big hands are splayed on your back and you suddenly feel so small under the giant Marshal. It’s like he could cover your entire back with just his two palms. He gently massages your shoulders before going lower, working the knots out of your contracted muscles. The slightly callused skin of his hands feels like heaven against yours. Until he touches your spine and pain courses through your nerves like a lightning bolt. You jerk and let out a repressed whimper.

“Sorry, dear.” he whispers, worried. “should I stop?”

“Don’t you dare.”

He starts again, careful, and despite some occasional - but weaker and weaker - surges of pain, you feel your entire body relax, and your eyelids getting heavier. The grounding feeling of Cobb’s body pressing against yours, the repetitive rhythm of his massage, the soft pillow under your cheek that smells like him: it doesn’t take long for your breath to get steadier as you slowly fall asleep. Before you’re totally gone, you feel Cobb’s lips leaving a gentle kiss on the scar on your back - the one you’re glad you kept as proof of the battles you’ve won.

✧ ☽ Chapter 5: The Desert ☽✧

The fifth time involves the desert and a storm.

In retrospect you really wonder what was going through your mind when you thought this was a good idea. Leaving the safety of the town to go out in the desert.

Alone.

Just a couple hours before a sandstorm - a storm you knew where coming.

But after another sleepless night due to the pain, and somewhat of a fight with Din (for stupid reasons you can barely remember now), you were more than upset. On edge, even. And a quick trip out in the open would clear your mind, you thought. You would totally have time to come back before the announced sandstorm.

Yeah sure .

Except you hadn’t planned for the nav computer of the speeder bike you stole in Cobb’s frontyard to break.

In the middle of nowhere.

Just dunes, and dunes, and more kriffing dunes all over.

The sky was cloudy, announcing the storm, so there was no way you could use the position of the two suns to help you figure out in which direction the town was. You tried to reboot the thing, even to disassemble it. Your attempts were useless. Fixing this computer was beyond your abilities.

And here you were, sitting on a speeder bike with no idea where to go. Which would be scary enough. If a sandstorm wasn’t coming.

You’re used to joke about your poor sense of direction, but right now you’re just angry at your inaptitude and your carelessness. There is very little you can do. As far as you see, there is just sand. Not even an isolated farm, or some sort of rocky valley where you could hide. Nothing, but sand. On your right, you can see the horizon slowly darkening, the sandstorm inexorably moving towards you.

So this is how I die , you think, on my own, in the desert of some forsaken planet, because of a kriffing nav computer. I’ve survived some of the worst things this galaxy can throw at you, and THIS is it?

You don’t know if you want to laugh or scream or cry, so you just walk around the speeder bike for a few minutes to try and calm yourself before sitting down in the sand, your back against the useless vehicle. Your only chance of survival would be someone travelling through the area. But with the storm, any reasonable beings - that excludes you - would stay in their village and not go out. Cobb is probably too busy preparing the town for the tempest to notice your absence. And Din, well, with your little quarrel, he surely isn’t gonna come check on you, not realizing you were gone either. Even if they eventually notice it, it’s probably too late.

You let your head fall back against the cold metal of the bike. The wind is getting clearly stronger by the minute, already picking up some dust. Soon it will become hard to keep your eyes open. Even hard to breathe. You pull your scarf up on your mouth and nose. Silent tears briefly roll on your cheeks before getting trapped by the fabric. The last hope you had to cross someone’s path was dwindling with every second. You look at the sky, swirls of brown dust staining the clear grey canvas above you. And then you notice a star, it’s weak at first, but it shines brighter and brighter. A deep tone, something too loud to be the sound of the wind, intensifies with it.

It’s coming towards you real quick and it’s not a star. It’s the flames of a jetpack. And attached to said jetpack is the Mandalorian. You get on your feet, your heart racing, and for a moment you wonder if you’re hallucinating. But he lands gracefully on the dune’s crest, muscular figure all clad in beskar, impressive as always. You run in his embrace, the earlier fight forgotten.

You want to explain, to apologize, to thank him, but there’s no time to lose.

“You need to keep this scarf on your face, to grab me and to hang on strong. Don’t let go whatever happens, got it?” You nod, tears of relief clouding your vision. “It may be a bumpy ride.”

He takes you into his arms, clutching you against him with all his strength and you’re both going up in the sky. His jetpack is at full power, trying to outrun the sandstorm. You can feel him straining against the wind, trying to protect you as best as he can from the flying grains of sand scraping your exposed skin. Unlike him, you’re not wearing any gloves or helmet, there’s no beskar between you and the world.

Through squinting eyes, you can finally see Mos Pelgo in the distance, and as you approach the town, you’re joined by another jetpack wearer. You recognize the red and green of Cobb’s armor. They were both looking for you.

It’s a matter of minutes, seconds almost, but you all reach the safety of Cobb’s home before the sandstorm fully hits the streets of Mos Pelgo. The door is closed in a hurry, all three of you tumbling in the small hall. The Mandalorian finally let you go, and you can feel his arms slightly shaking, muscles spasming after the long and grueling effort. The heavy jetpack is discarded on the ground with little care. His chest is rising quickly, his ragged breath creating weird sounds through the modulator of his helmet, a hand on the wall for support.

You don’t really know what to say and you stand in the hallway, trying to catch your breath as well. You can hear Cobb fumbling to remove his armor and helmet, and as soon as he’s free, he hugs you, whispering reassuring words, although you’re not sure if he’s speaking to you or to himself. And when he lets go of his embrace, he turns to Din and hugs him as well, slightly lowering his head down and placing his forehead on his helmet, a sign you know of affection and love.

“Let’s get you out of your armor, cyar'ika” Cobb’s husky voice is warm but your heart stings at the word. It’s Mando’a and while you don’t know the exact translation, you’re sure it carries a lot of meaning with it. It dawns on you at that moment, your foolishness may have caused one of them to be injured or worse .

You try to hide your self-loathing behind a blank face, and you start helping Cobb. You work in silence, removing every piece of beskar armor from The Mandalorian’s body. When you’re done, Din heads toward the refresher without a word. You want to cry, he’s obviously mad at you - if it isn’t for the trivial fight from earlier in the day, it’s obviously because you almost killed yourself and put his and Cobb’s lives at risk. You can’t hide your feelings anymore. An overwhelming wave of raw emotions hits you and you rush to your bedroom. Outside, the weather matches the storm inside your head.

A deep soothing voice shakes you out of your thoughts. You can’t really say how long you’ve stayed huddled on your bed. Maybe minutes, maybe hours.

“Hey, you know he’s not mad at you, right?”

Cobb is leaning against the doorframe of your room. He knows when to leave you space, but also when to check on you. You raise red eyes and a runny nose toward him.

“Actually I think he’s mad at himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s mad because he upset you and you left, because you got lost and he almost failed to protect you.” He pauses, crosses his arms on his chest. “Actually I’m also mad at myself, for not fixing that damn speeder bike earlier.”

You gasp, you’ve almost forgotten that part. The stolen bike is likely buried in sand as you speak. And if it’s still in one piece at the end of the storm, it should not take long before some jawas find it.

“I’m so sorry about that, Cobb, I… I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

“It’s ok, it was a rusty scrap of metal anyway.”

Cobb lets out a chuckle, mischief back in his eyes.

“Although I may have to arrest you, you know, since I’m a Marshal and you’re a thief. Let me find my handcuffs!” he concludes with a wink, and you can’t help but smile at how corny he sometimes is.

“Now let’s see Din, he needs us I think.”

He grabs your hand to help you get up, and leads you to his room. The storm is still raging outside, and it’s dark, probably early in the night. He knocks on the door, opens it slowly, and in the very dim ray of light that flows into the room, you can guess Din’s back and a glimpse of his soft brown hair. He’s sitting on the bed, facing the opposite wall. Cobb shuts the door behind you both, casting the room into darkness.

“I’m sorry…”

“Please forgive me…”

Din and you both start speaking at the same time. There is a second of silence, before he resumes.

“No need to apologize. I’m just glad you’re here and safe now.”

His voice is unusually soft, a little less deep than through the modulator, more vulnerable, more human . It’s always a bit weird to hear his real voice, but at the same time you’re grateful to be able to hear it in the first place.

You climb on the bed, and you carefully reach for him, hugging him from behind. He grabs your hands and brings them to his lips, leaving kisses on your scuffed knuckles. You melt into his touch, and you both stay silent, but there is no discomfort between you. The sound of the wind outside is strangely comforting, some sort of a peculiar lullaby. The whole pressure of the day is finally released, and the only thing left is your gratitude and love for the two warriors in your life.

✧ ☽ Chapter 6: The Chiss ☽✧

And then there is the time when you can save yourself.

As the weeks pass by, you spend your days taking care of Cobb’s home, or working odd jobs here and there in Mos Pelgo, helping townsfolk with their businesses, trying to make some credits. You don’t really have a plan for your professional future right now. But regarding your freetime, you do have a plan. You’ve asked Din to train you in close combat. At first, he was reluctant, but you convinced him it was about guaranteeing your own safety and not becoming a bounty hunter or some sort of hitman like him.

His lessons were not the easiest to follow. He was patient, but he treated you with no special privileges, barely restraining his force when throwing you on the ground if you failed to escape his attack. He saw no point in playing soft or fair since a real-life aggressor would not be. You learned how to dodge and duck, how to aim for the weakest points of your opponent, and how to use your speed and lightness as a strength against what would likely be a bigger and stronger enemy. It was not about defeating an attacker. The spirit of the lessons were more about how to escape, run and hide efficiently.

You dreaded his lessons as much as you waited impatiently for them. You were pretty sure Din voluntarily over-played his toughness for the first couples of training sessions in order to test your will to really learn those techniques. But you could almost hear the proudness in his voice after each particularly grueling practice. Of course, your body was not spared, and more often than not you ended up with bruises and scratches in unexpected places. You had to reassure him quite a handful of times you were okay with this, because his guilt and fear of really hurting you was ever so present. He always took a moment after your lessons to take care of you, applying soothing balm over your bruises or bacta on your cuts, and those rare instances made you feel like you virtually were his equal, a warrior as well, not afraid of getting hurt in a fight. Of course Cobb always looked at the both of you with concern and suspicion, because he knew too well he was the one who would end up going shopping for medication and handling your healing process in the long run.

But Cobb was also an integral part of your plan. You couldn’t live with one of the best gunslingers in the area and not ask him to teach you how to use a blaster. The lessons were definitely easier to follow, and way less demanding. Cobb was a fun teacher, and while he was serious when sharing his knowledge, he made sure your training stayed enjoyable. Cracking jokes and delivering corny punchlines, calling you all sorts of outdated cute nicknames and cheering on you when you would finally shoot in the middle of the makeshift target of the day. Besides teaching you how to aim, he also showed you how to pull your gun faster than an adversary, the key to winning any fight according to him. When he was too tired after a long day of work to take you out, he would stay home and show you basic blaster maintenance. You would watch, mesmerized as he methodically disassembled his own gun before cleaning it, and re-assembling it with a speed you would not believe possible. Din would usually scoff at his little manly and self-indulgent demonstration, but you bet he was also impressed because you could clearly see the way his visor kept focusing on Cobb’s large and skillful hands. With their guidance, it took only a handful of weeks for you to feel more confident about your chances of survival in a fight.

While you suspected Din and Cobb both knew what motivated you to ask for their training, they never pushed you for any answers. It was about claiming your independence back, claiming your body back, and also a little bit about being prepared in the eventuality you’ll cross paths again with a certain Chiss slaver.

And then, one day, this eventuality becomes reality.

Din, Cobb and you, as well as a couple of other villagers have made the trip to Mos Eisley for a few days, in order to gather needed rare supplies, from mechanical parts to special medicine or new droids.

It’s your first day in the big town when you catch a glimpse of him, in the market. A flash of bright-blue in your peripheral vision. At first, you dismiss the alarm signal your brain sends you. It’s not because the alien is a Chiss, that it was this Chiss. But when he turns his face ever so slightly, you recognize him with no room for doubt. You try to stay calm and act like it’s nothing even though your mind is on a code-red alert.

You spend the rest of the day on edge, and you’re pretty sure Din and Cobb have noticed. As you all three settle in the small room you’re renting for the time of your stay, your suspicion is confirmed when Mando finally let out the question that was on his mind all day long.

“About who we saw in the market today, what do you want us to do about it?”

The tone is severe, no emotion in it, like a soldier ready to take any order. You left a moment of silence.

“I want to handle this myself.” you answer with a surprisingly determined voice.

Cobb’s brows furrow, he runs a hand on his face, and lets himself fall on one of the small beds. He lets out a sigh before adding an ominous “That’s what I feared.”.

You cut short to the discussion, because even if a Marshal and a Mandalorian want to discourage you to go on with this idea for your own safety, you’re still your own person. It’s your choice to make. They don’t push it, and you go to sleep with a very clear objective in your mind.

The next day, you see him again. He’s still in the marketplace and he’s accompanied by a couple of twi’leks in chains he seems to be trying to sell. It’s easy to forget what’s going on outside of the safe haven of Mos Pelgo, but here in Mos Eisley slavery is still a thing and the Republic isn’t in any rush to make it stop. It disgusts you, and your resolution only strengthens. You don’t have any specific plan about how you want to do it but everything falls into place when you spot him in a Cantina later that day.

The suns are already setting when your little group decides to go grab a drink. The Cantina is crowded with travelers and local inhabitants, but the tall Chiss is hard to miss. Of course, you two bodyguards have noticed him as well. As the night goes on, your eyes never cease to dart out of your booth and you have trouble focusing on what your lovers are discussing. Cobb is sipping on his third beer, relaxed. Din is playfully grazing his hand on Cobb’s knees while speaking, getting drunk in his own way. You, you barely touch your drink, too focused on your target.

Then everything happens really fast. You see the Chiss getting up from his stool and leaving, but Cobb and Din are now sitting at the very back of your booth and can’t see what’s happening. You smile at them and say you just need to use the bathroom before slowly walking out of their visual field with a calculated casualness. As soon as you reach the other side of the cantina, you slip out of the place amongst a few other clients. The night is clear, and the freshness of the air is welcome after the moist and warm atmosphere of the cantina. Your heart beats so fast in your chest it’s the only thing you can hear. Adrenaline is flowing through your veins like the most powerful drug in the galaxy, and you feel invincible.

The Chiss is walking further in the main street, and you start following him, your hand resting on the blaster on your hip, hidden under your long jacket. He’s alone, and as you silently creep behind him while he turns into smaller and smaller streets, there is no one left around you.

Suddenly, he stops in the middle of the alley. Without even turning back, he starts speaking.

“How long are you gonna follow me like this? You missed me?” you can hear the smirk in his voice. You’re a bit taken aback.

“You know who I am?”

He finally turns to face you.

“I had a doubt when I saw you earlier but then, I recognized the Mandalorian sitting at the cantina. Quite hard to hide such shiny armor.” he seems very amused by the situation. “I hope you had fun removing that chip, can’t wait to put a new one in your brain. And maybe I should have you branded. So no one will steal my property this time. I have to warn you though, it might be a bit painful.” He’s obviously getting high on his own cruelty.

“Stop it.” you growl through gritted teeth, barely recognizing your own voice.

But he goes on.

“Don’t worry, my crew will also take care of your two boyfriends. I’m sure they will greatly enjoy the little noises you’ll make when I’ll carve my mark into your skin in front of them, and then...”

“I said stop it .”

If there was any doubt left in you before this encounter, now it is clearer than ever: you need to end this. You need to end him .

Your hand reaches for your blaster but he’s quicker and he’s on you before you can do anything. He runs into you with all his strength, his right shoulder in your ribs, and you both fall on the ground. Your blood is already so full of adrenaline, the usual flashbacks don’t even have the chance to cloud your mind. The pain in your chest doesn’t register either. Your body reacts almost on its own, the long hours training with Din have you move on instinct. Your fist flies up into his nose which breaks into an awful noise, then to his eyes, while you try to kick him in the guts with your knee. He’s taken by surprise but not ressourceless and he has the time to hit your cheek before you manage to crawl from under him. He lets out a grunt of pain and tries to get back up on his feet, but it’s too late. The red lasers of the blaster blinds you. You fire once, twice, more times than you care to count. The Chiss in front of you falls flat on his face, finally silent.

You’re panting, on your knees, a steaming blaster in your hands. The cold air of the night useless to soothe your thrumming body, skin hot like flames were lapping at you, head spinning. The hurried footsteps suddenly stopping behind you take you out of your frenzy.

“Told you.” Cobb says with a shove into Mando’s side, before prudently crouching beside you, gently taking the blaster out of your hands.

“I’ve got you sweetheart.” he whispers softly while he helps you get fully up. “Are you hurt?” You shake your head, still high on adrenaline, not feeling the swelling of your cheek, your scratched palms and what is probably a cracked rib. Cobb is not convinced.

“Well, I doubt that, but we need to go now. Don’t want anyone to find us near this corpse.”

“No, wait!” you clear your throat and lower your voice “We need to take his access cylinder, and check out his ship, make sure there’s no one left chained in there.”

“Then we move now.” Din speaks at last, tone flat, and it’s hard for you to tell what he thinks of this whole mess. He sees you have a moment of hesitation, not really in a rush to search a dead body, and he spares you the gritty work, turning the corpse on his back and rummaging in the pockets and satchels of the dead Chiss to find what you’ll need.

You all leave the crime scene silently, running straight to the spaceport to find his ship. It’s empty, except for quite a few credits Din is happy to steal. The way back to your inn seems incredibly long, but you need the lengthy walk in the fresh air to let the pressure go down. You can hear Din and Cobb talk to each other behind you with low and concerned voices, but you don’t really care. Their conversation doesn’t last though, they catch up with your pace, and The Marshal slips a protective arm around your shoulder, which stays here for the rest of the way.

When you finally reach your room, dawn is only a couple of hours away, and exhaustion is hitting you like a wall. You crash on your bed, barely taking the time to kick off your shoes before rolling on your back and passing out, not even bothering to slip under the sheets.

The two suns are already pretty high in the sky when you wake up the next day. Most of your clothes are folded on the foot of your bed and there is a blanket drawn onto you. You guess Din and Cobb couldn’t let you sleep in your leather jacket and dusty cargo pants. Thinking of them , you don’t know where they are because the room is empty. You sit up, and you let out a groan of pain. Your ribs hurt like hell, your head aches from dehydration and overall you feel like you were hit by a running bantha. You manage to make it to the refresher, and you gulp long sips of water directly from the tap of the washbasin, consciously avoiding the reflection of your bruised cheek in the mirror. The water tastes like sand with an aftertaste of bleach but at least it’s potable - it is, right? You chose to believe it’s clean and settle under the thin water spray of the shower, trying to wash away the dirt of the past night.

With fresh clothes on and a clean face, you feel a little bit better, but there is still no trace of Mando and the Marshal. You don’t have to wonder where they are for very long though, because you soon hear their voices echoing in the hallway before the door slides open.

“Hello sunshine” Cobb’s grin could almost be enough to make you smile. “How are ya’ feeling? You must be hungry.” He gestures at Din and a little box full of steaming food is delivered on your knees.

“Thanks.”

The street food is not the most appetizing you ever saw, probably too greasy and too salty, but your belly rumbles in anticipation and you start eating without any further ado.

There is an awkward moment of silence between the three of you, no one really knows what to say regarding the fact you murdered someone for the first time of your life a few hours ago.

“He saw it coming and he deserved it.”

Din finally breaks the silence, voice steady through the modulator, and it’s like he’s reading your mind. Can Mandalorians even do that?

“You don’t have to feel guilty. Now the only thing that matters is you and your future.”

“And that broken rib we need to heal.” Cobb’s sounds amused “don’t try to fool me by saying you’re okay” he adds with a smirk, his own way of dealing with the situation.

You chuckle and you immediately regret it because it makes you wince.

“You got a point, Cobb.” you admit.

The couple next days are so uneventful, if it wasn’t for the pain still lingering in your chest, you could swear you dreamed what happened that egregious night. Nobody is really bothered by another random slaver missing after a party night at a cantina, especially not the local authorities. The streets are still full of busy travelers, the market full of loud merchants, the bars full of singing drunks. Mos Eisley is the same, even if you’re not anymore.

Nevertheless the trip back to Mos Pelgo still feels like relief.

You’re sitting between the Marshal and the Mandalorian in the transport, neatly tucked between a warm shoulder and cold beskar. Cobb’s fingers are absent-mindedly rubbing circles into your thigh, and you can hear the regular breathing of Din through his modulator. Combined with the soft buzzing of the ship, you feel like you could almost fall asleep.

You’re glad to be coming back to the small desert town. Glad to set foot on its dusty streets. Even glad to find again your tiny bedroom in Cobb’s house.

You realize the trip back to Mos Pelgo does not only feel like relief.

It feels like more than that.

It feels like finally coming home.

And no matter how many times the two warriors who crossed your path a few months ago had to save you, no matter how many more times they will have to, you now know you can also be your own savior.

You now know you can also be your own hope.

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