#and every expansion I’m going to be so scared for my boys now good grief

[little-shiny-sharpies]

God I wish I could latch onto better media instead of sinking my teeth into Blizz-“absolute scumbag company”-ard for my 2 dragons who are absolutely going to get thrown behind the curtain the second the expansion is over until the writers need their props again. I don’t know how long they’ll be in there, but I don’t know what’s worse, them collecting dust of wasted potential in writers room storage or them being bent into roles they don’t fit into again.

[sdottkrames]

@comfortember Prompt 15: campfire

Summary: Tony takes Peter camping to watch a meteor shower

Notes: I adore space. Stars and constellations are so fascinating to me!!

Fun fact: The Leonids is actually happening in two days, and I thought that was really cool, so I incorporated that into this fic.

Also: the song is Jupiter by Sleeping at Last. I've recently become OBSESSED and their album Atlas 1 (especially the space songs) have become my Irondad muse. So enjoy!

Read on AO3: Here

While collecting the stars, I connected the dots

I don't know who I am, but now I know who I'm not

I'm just a curious speck that got caught up in orbit

***

Make my messes matter

Make this chaos count

_________________________________

 Tony’s concentration on the book he was reading was interrupted by a scream from his wife. Even though he was retired, he always kept the nanosuit close by (old habits die hard), and he had his gauntlet up in an instant, ready to fight. Then he looked to the window and saw what had made her scream.

 He rolled his eyes. “Let him in, Friday.”

 “Sorry, Pepper,” Peter said as he climbed through the window, but his laughter made it hard to believe his apology.

 “Don’t do that, Peter! I might not have the heart condition Tony’s always griping about,” she shot a grin to Tony, who pretended to be offended, “but I would rather stay away from one.”

 “Duly noted.” Peter shed his coat and sauntered over to the couch, cuddling up to Tony with no embarrassment. There had been a time that the easy affection between the two seemed impossible, and Tony was forever grateful those times were long past them. He put his arm around the boy, pulling him closer and picking up his book again. 

 “What’re you reading?” Peter murmured.

 Tony showed him the cover, a book on astronomy and the physics of stars, and was surprised to see Peter’s face light up. 

 “I love astronomy!” he said.

 “Really? I used to, but I started to hate it. For obvious reasons. I was hoping that reading about it more might make me hate it less.”

 Peter hummed. “I probably should hate space, too, but it was always my thing with Ben. I guess I just refused to let it go.”

 Tony could understand that. He’d never had any particular connection to space, just an idle interest in it as a kid. He’d started looking down whenever he was out at night, unable to look at the black expanse above him without seeing destruction and death. His experiences in the wormhole were soon joined by red dust and grey ash that seared his skin with grief and guilt. He had even started hating the moon. 

 But Peter was back, and Tony was trying to work through his hatred of and anxiety from space. Hence the book.

 “You know, there’s a meteor shower tomorrow night. The Leonids. I’ve never seen one.” Peter sighed wistfully.

 They continued their night as usual, but the gears in Tony’s head had started turning. He had an idea.

 “What are you planning?” Pepper asked him skeptically that night as she got into her pajamas. “You have that look in your eye you get when you have an idea.”

 “I was thi-in abou ta-in Peer sta-azing.” Tony was brushing his teeth, so it came out garbled and unintelligible, but Pepper spoke fluent Tony nonsense, so she understood.

 “I think that’s a great idea. There’s that campsite close by that we took Morgan to that one summer. The stars were pretty spectacular there.”

 Tony smiled at the memory around his toothbrush, and retreated to the bathroom to spit so he could talk normally.

 “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Just for tomorrow night. You can handle things here, right?” He teased.

 Pepper rolled her eyes. “As if I don’t handle things all day every day.”

 Tony kissed the corner of her smile. “You’re not wrong.”

 ***

 Peter sleepily shuffled into the kitchen the next morning, grunting a greeting unceremoniously at Tony, who chuckled and put a plate with a pile of pancakes and some bacon in front of him. Peter perked up instantly at the prospect of food, and dug in with gusto.

 “I will never understand how you can eat that much.”

 Peter grinned around a mouthful of pancake, his cheeks sticking out like a chipmunk’s and forcing Tony to use every ounce of self control to keep from pinching them. He was sure Peter wouldn’t appreciate that. 

 “What can I say? I’m a growing boy!” Peter took a moment to swallow. “Thanks for the breakfast, by the way.”

 Tony's amazing self control apparently didn't extend to ruffling Peter’s hair. “Anytime, kiddo,” he said. rubbing the kid's curly locks. “So, I was thinking, Pete. You want to go see the meteor shower tonight?”

 Peter paused in his chewing, eyes wide with excitement and disbelief. “What?!”

 “Well, I just figured since you said you’d never seen a meteor shower, and I happen to know of a really good camping spot, that you might want to go.”

 Peter nodded, jumping up and crushing Tony into a hug, squeaking a thank you. The older hero squeezed him gently. “You’re welcome, bud.”  

 After finishing his food and putting his plate in the sink, Peter excitedly ran to his room to pack a bag for camping. It was a quick drive to the site, so they lounged around, watching a movie with Morgan and enjoying lunch as a family before they decided to leave.

 Once everything was packed in the car, they were off. They stopped quickly at a grocery store because Peter insisted on hot dogs. Tony was more inclined to order takeout and eat it by the fire, but Peter had insisted on roasting hot dogs over the flames, and of course s'mores because “what camping trip is complete without s’mores, Tony?” Tony was quickly learning he had no self control when it came to Peter, so he ended up agreeing.

 It was a quick drive, and Tony reveled in the easy conversation and camaraderie between him and his kid. He never got tired of just talking and spending time with Peter, and it definitely helped distract from the slight worry in his chest about spending a night staring at space.

 They pulled into the campsite and Peter stretched as he got out. Tony let him pull out the tent. Being Tony Stark’s, it was no ordinary tent. It was huge, for one; Tony was pretty sure at least six of the Avengers had stayed in it one mission. It also had the comfiest blow up mattresses, and a built in speaker system that connected to Friday.

 Peter took one look as they laid it out, rolled his eyes, and mumbled something about glamping.

 “Yeah, I know, Underoos, this isn’t the typical camping tent. But I saved the world, lost an arm, all that jazz. I think I deserve a little comfort.”

 Peter let out a laugh. “Mmmmhmmmm. Sure. Are you sure it’s not just cause you’re old?”

 Tony gasped in mock offense. “Insubordination. I’m eating all your marshmallows.”

 Peter didn’t look concerned as he hammered the stakes into place. “Uh huh, okay,” he grinned.

 They made quick work of the tent, and even quicker work making the fire. Peter made it a competition gathering firewood, and Tony called him a cheater for climbing up a tree to get some bigger limbs. 

 “Show off,” he muttered as Peter flipped from the top of a tree, landing perfectly. “You’re like a cat, kid.”

 Peter grinned, and they got to work making the fire. It blazed, warm and bright, and they roasted hot dogs and marshmallows as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. 

 “Oh, Tony, look!” 

 Tony glanced up just in time to see a star streak across the sky, and he couldn’t help but notice it’s beauty despite how his heart started thumping in his ears. 

 A hand slipped into his, stemming the panic. 

 “You’re here. You’re okay,” Peter whispered, and Tony took a shaky breath. “Did you know that shooting stars are little bits of debris from outer space? They enter the atmosphere and burn up. Sometimes they end up falling to the ground, but usually they just burn and disappear.”

 Tony nodded. He had read that somewhere as a kid. Peter pointed to a group of stars.

 “That’s the constellation Andromeda. See that blurry spot in the middle?” Tony nodded again. “That’s an entire galaxy. It’s amazing how we can see it so well this far away.”

 Peter continued to talk quietly, spouting off facts that Ben had taught him or that he’d learned from class. A strange sort of peace filled Tony as Peter's voice swirled with the crackling of the fire, replacing the panic in his heart.

 “Tell me about Ben,” he whispered eventually.

 Peter let out a little sigh. It wasn’t sad, more wistful than anything. “He was the best. You know this already, but he was the reason I became Spider-Man. He was kind, he cared about everybody he met, and he always made time for me. He was my hero.” Peter paused, and his voice went quiet. “He would have liked you.”

 Tony sniffed back unexpected tears. When Peter first came into his life, he hadn’t known what he meant to Peter for a long time, but he’d known he wasn’t the kid’s dad and uncle, and he had been so worried Peter felt like he was trying to replace them or something. 

 “I’d’ve been honored, and know I would have liked him too,” he finally answered.

 “You know, you remind me a lot of him. There was always a huge hole when he died, and you obviously didn’t fill the hole completely. Only he could. But you filled a different hole. You made it easier." Peter squeezed Tony's hand. "You still do. I’m glad I have you.”

 All the fear, the sorrow, the worry, every mess he made and every bit of chaos that came with raising a child was worth it in that moment. He squeezed Peter’s hand, telling his kid thank you without saying it.

 The fire crackled, the warmth washing over them and creating such a sense of peace that, combined with Peter’s hand in his, made it impossible for Tony to feel scared anymore.

 And above them, the stars rained down.

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Promises Not Kept Part 11

Summary: Tommy Shelby made a promise to Jonah Ward while in the war. A promise he didn't keep. But it comes to haunt him when he tries to drown out his sorrows with a young woman.

Part 11: Tommy picks up the pieces of Father Hughes’ destruction. 

        The hours passed by, each one feeling like another day. Leah did her best to keep Charlie calm. She occupied him with a few trinkets that had been left in the room. He whined for Tommy but didn’t have a complete tantrum. Leah was afraid that if he cried, it would anger their kidnappers. The quieter they were, the safer she felt. The priest’s threat continued to haunt her. She flinched at every noise, afraid he was coming back to take her away from Charlie.

           But they were left alone. Father Hughes brought them food and tried to make her more and more uneasy. All she could do was try to keep her head down and block him out.

           The sun was starting to set. The light from the thin window was fading. Leah found some matches and a small candle to try and keep the room a bit brighter. The closer it got to nighttime, the more scared she became. What sort of timeframe had Tommy been given? What did he have to do? She was terrified he had to do something that would bring him harm or have him locked up.

           With nothing else to do, Leah couldn’t help but ruminate on the panicked thoughts. As Charlie napped, she sat on the edge of the cot, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her breathing got shallower and anxiety crept up on her like the growing night.

           Another hour passed and the room was completely dark save from the dwindling candle. Charlie slept but Leah couldn’t close her eyes.

           A loud noise startled her already frayed nerves. She stood and waited for the door to open. Instead, there was a sound of a confrontation outside. Scuffling could be heard on the other side of the wall. Charlie stirred and began to whine. His forehead wrinkled in concern and he reached for Leah.

           “Sh, it’s okay.” She soothed as she picked him up and found a spot in the corner far from the door. Trying to keep him calm amidst the chaos outside was tough. The little boy clung to her, crying for Tommy and Grace. Leah felt tears rise up in her throat and dread sink low in her stomach.        

           Finally, after a long minute, the people outside went deathly silent. Leah closed her eyes and prayed under her breath. The clanging of keys met the door and it slowly opened.

           Still cowering in the corner, Leah did her best to shield Charlie with her body. Could she possibly fight them off? Would that make the situation worse? Could she have Charlie spared?

           “Leah?” The voice was soft and filled with concern, unlike the priest.

           She lifted her head and saw a young man, no more than twenty standing in the doorway. He was soaked in blood; both his well-tailored clothes and face were splattered in it. Leah’s mouth opened in shock. She didn’t know what to make of the man.

           “It's okay, you're safe. I'm not going to hurt you. I’m Tommy’s cousin, Michael.” He explained and approached her cautiously. His whole body was shaking just like Leah was.

           “O-oh, yes, he’s spoken about you.” She replied, her voice trembling. Carefully, she set Charlie down and retrieved a blanket off the cot. She handed it to Michael. “Are you hurt?”

           He shook his head, his eyes glazed over and an absent-minded stare stuck on his face. “No.” He whispered and raised the blanket to carefully wipe away the blood on his face. “I’m not hurt.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

           After the harrowing run-in with Father Hughes, Michael was nearly catatonic. He sat in the back of the car, almost motionless, his eyes staring forward. Residual blood streaked the side of his face but he didn't seem to notice or care. Beside him, Leah held Charlie in her lap, the toddler happy to be outside again. Pointing out the window when he saw a pasture of horses and cows. They drove to the office where Polly and Ada were waiting anxiously.

           Leah wasn’t sure whether or not she should cry. She hung back as Polly and Ada embraced Charlie, comforting the crying child. It was as if she could feel her heartbeat in every inch of her body. The ground suddenly didn’t feel stable at all, as if she could fall through the floorboards at any moment.

           Ada saw the damage on Leah’s face. She’d seen it when Tommy had brought her from Midland. The uneasiness in her eyes, the nature of a wild animal, ready to skitter away at any moment. She kept everything compacted in her chest, holding it to her heart and refusing to let the world bear her pain. It was a woman who had learned what grief was at far too young of an age. The roots she once had were ripped out. Now, as she tried growing them back with Tommy, they’d simply been torn out again. It was any wonder why she would try again. The Shelby woman walked over and embraced Leah. That's all she could do to assure her she was safe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           Leah returned to Warwickshire with Charlie. She considered going back to Birmingham, but she didn’t want to leave the little boy. Deep down, she knew it wasn't just for his sake though. He had Mary and the other help who could take care of him. But Leah had no one if she returned to Birmingham. Charlie was a good distraction and a comfort too.

            It was nearly midnight when they returned to Arrow House. The stars sparkled above when they walked in through the door. The quiet countryside around them was a bit unnerving. Leah was afraid someone would be hiding in the large house or outside in the expansive grounds. There were so many places to hide, so many shadows to conceal evil.

           “Let’s get you to bed, love. You must be tired.” Leah scooped up Charlie to bring him upstairs. She kept her eyes sharp and listened for any sound that would indicate danger.

           Mary came out of the study when they walked into the front room. “Leah, Tommy’s on the phone for you.” She explained.

           Her heart beat painfully against her chest. She nodded and took Charlie into the study. “Want to speak to daddy?” She sat at Tommy’s large desk, pulling the telephone close. She picked up the receiver and held it to Charlie’s ear. “Say hello.”

           Charlie grinned when he heard his voice on the other end. He began babbling cheerfully as if nothing had happened. “Daddy! Sleepy!” He giggled.

           Leah chewed on her lip, her leg shaking anxiously. She had no idea what to say to the man.

           Eventually, Charlie twisted out of her lap and he rushed over to Mary who was lingering by the door. “I’ll put him to bed.” The older woman assured her and shut the study door to give her privacy.

           She hesitated before lifting the phone to her ear. “Tommy?”

           The sound of relief in Tommy’s voice was like a warm ocean wave crashing onto the shore. “Leah.” He breathed out and took a moment to compose himself. “You alright? You’re not hurt are you?”

           “No, no, I’m okay.” She said quietly.

           “I’m so sorry if I had known…” His voice cut out and he took a moment. It felt like he’d been holding his breath ever since he heard Father Hughes and kidnapped her and Charlie. “I should’ve had more people protecting you.”

           Leah pursed her lips and dropped her head low. She was too exhausted to even attempt to cry. Her body ached like she'd been walking miles all day. “You don’t have to apologize.”

           “This is my fault. This wouldn’t have happened if I had been more careful. I never meant for you to get involved.”

           What could she say to the man she loved? The man who was so deep in the underworld that he had started to drag everyone else around him down too. Charlie couldn’t choose his father and the rest of the Shelbys couldn’t choose who their family was. But Leah had a choice. She could choose to leave that very moment.

           “I understand if you’re scared. This isn’t what I meant to happen.” Tommy continued when the other line remained silent. “I can’t tell you to stay. If you wanted, I could give you a new life somewhere else, somewhere as far away as you want. But just know that if you stayed, I would give anything for you.”

           Leah covered her eyes with a hand. “Tommy, I wouldn’t be able to get too far.” She broke the quiet of the study. “I love you, I meant that when I said it to you. I love Charlie and I wouldn’t be able to leave either of you. I am scared.” She admitted. “But I’m scared for you. I’m scared what you’re getting yourself into. Do you realize how much it would damage me and Charlie if something happened to you?”

           Tommy closed his eyes. The telephone booth was starting to become too small to breathe. The grime and dirt he was covered in was itching at his skin. The day had been so emotionally overwhelming for him. He began to cry, hunched over the phone.

           “Tommy? Love, are you still there?”

           “I’ll see you in the morning.” He choked out and hung up before she could ask again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           The next morning, Leah tried to return to a normal day. She figured that Charlie would be happiest if they restarted the routine they’d had before. It might even make him completely forget the ordeal. Eventually, he would forget. He was too young to remember it for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for Leah.

           A few hours after breakfast, Tommy came home and wasted no time lingering around. He rushed upstairs, sprinting down the hall and into Charlie’s room. The toddler squealed happily when his father dropped to his knees and scooped him up. Tommy reached out an arm and drew Leah into the hug as well. He held them both tight, burying his face in her shoulder and he didn’t let go for a long while.

~~~~~~~~~~~

           Leah sat in the bathtub for a long time that same night Tommy returned. She wanted to wash the day away and she was afraid to go to sleep. The fear of going to bed and finding out it was all just a dream was too frightening to even attempt. She didn’t want to wake up to find herself still trapped in that dim room.

           Tommy couldn’t sleep either. After putting Charlie to sleep, he sat up in the bedroom chain-smoking. Every so often he heard movement from the bathroom. Leah moving her hand or adjusting her legs in the tub. After a good hour of soaking, he decided to check in with her. He stood up with a groan. His body was aching from the time he spent in the tunnel. Walking stiffly, he knocked on the doorjamb of the open door before entering the bathroom.

           Leah had her knees tucked up to her chest. Her eyes were fixed on the gold plated faucets of the tub. She heard Tommy walk in but didn’t acknowledge him. She was too deep in her thoughts.

           Tommy sighed and sat on the edge of the tub. “Water must be freezing by now.” He commented.

           She lifted her chin slightly but didn’t look at him. “I hadn’t noticed.” Once he mentioned it, she did begin to feel how much time must’ve passed without her realizing.

           “Maybe you should come and get some sleep,” Tommy suggested gently.

           Her lips parted but she hesitated. Clutching her knees closer, she shook her head. “I’ve had dreams before…really vivid dreams.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper. “I’m waiting for Jonah at the train station. He gets off the train and he’s smiling like he used to whenever he saw me.” A tear slipped down her cheek and fell into the bathwater, creating a small ripple. “He takes me into his arms and says we should go back home. I bring him back home and everything’s exactly like I left it last. Then he says how happy he’s home and how much he missed me. He says he can’t wait to spend the rest of his life with me.”

           Tommy bowed his head. He knew how heartbreakingly real dreams like that could feel. Whether it be nightmares of losing Grace or having dreams of her sitting there and holding Charlie. The first moment Tommy met his son. Grace smiled and introduced him to Charles Shelby. 'He looks like you already.' She always said in the voice he missed so much.

           “It’s so real, Tommy.” Her voice broke and more tears spilled out of her brown eyes. “Then I wake up and have to remember all over again. Remember the letter I got, remember that I'll never be able to bring him home."

           He reached over and gently wiped the tears from her cheek. “I’m sorry. I wish I knew how to stop dreams like that.”

           “I’m afraid that this is one of those dreams. I’ll wake up back there in that room with Charlie. I’ll wake up and I’ll remember that you’ve been killed. I’ll have to remind myself that you’re gone and no one is left. No one to even remember I still exist.”

           Tommy stood and grabbed a towel that was sitting nearby. “C’mere, love.” He held out a hand to help her stand and step out of the tub. Her legs shook as she found steady footing on the tiled floor. He wrapped her up in the towel and held her close. “This isn’t a dream. You’ll go to sleep and you’ll wake up here, I promise.”

           “That’s what Jonah says.” She choked out a whisper. “He always tells me this time its real. He’s really home. It isn’t a dream.” Her damp hair pressed to his dress shirt. "It's always a dream but he lies and tells me it isn't." She sobbed. "He lies, Tommy."

~~~~~~~~~~

           Leah wasn’t in the mood to talk after that. She stayed up late in Tommy’s arms. She fought back against the exhaustion in her eyes. Her grip was tight around him, nearly convinced that this was their last time together. She would wake up and find out he’d been killed. So if this was a dream and if this was their last time together, she didn’t want to let go.

           But the night wore on and she couldn’t hold on for much longer. Her hands loosened on him and he noticed her eyes start to slide shut. Tommy stayed still so he wouldn’t accidentally wake her.

           Luckily, Leah was so exhausted she didn’t wake up for the rest of the night. In fact, she slept through most of the morning as well. She barely even stirred when Tommy carefully unwrapped her from his body and got dressed. He went out to have tea on the lawn. Mary was outside with Charlie, letting him run around like a mad man.

           Tommy sighed and turned his face to the sun, basking in the rays. It was always a blessing to inhale the clean air. He remained in that peaceful moment until he heard Charlie call.

           “Lee!” The little boy rushed over to her.

           Looking much better rested; Leah smiled and scooped him up, resting him on her hip. She said something to him but Tommy couldn’t hear. She came closer to the table and set Charlie down to go back to Mary.

           “Did you sleep well?” Tommy asked as she took a seat next to him.

           She nodded. “Thank you for staying up with me.” Her eyes held his. “And listening to me.”

           Tommy stubbed out his cigarette and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I know what it’s like to have dreams that are so real like that.” He reached up to brush a curl away from her face, gently tucking it behind her ear. “I tried everything to stop them. And if I had the solution, I would give it to you.”

           Leah swallowed and tried to force a smile no matter how painful it was to handle sometimes. “I know they’re just a fact of life for me now. I’m just glad I’ll have you there when I wake up.”

           He smiled and nodded. “So have you thought about what you’re going to do?” It seemed like a natural way to bring up the conversation. She wanted him close enough that she’ll see him when she wakes.

           Leah looked out over the expansive lawns of Arrow House. It truly was something of English paradise. But she still couldn’t see herself staying there. It was as if she were just a guest, not able to fit anywhere. She would never be a portrait on the walls or in the picture frames in the parlor. That was something she just couldn’t expect. “I don’t know, Tommy. I really don't know what to think anymore.” She said quietly. Her voice carried away by the gentle breeze.

           His eyes didn’t leave her face. In stark contrast to her beliefs, Tommy couldn’t imagine Arrow House without Leah. The months she’d spent with him made her such a concrete installation. He wanted to be guaranteed that she would always be there when he arrived home from Birmingham or London. Wanted her to be waiting for him reading in the parlor, tucking Charlie into bed, making herself tea in the kitchen, or dozing off in bed clutching his pillow close to her. He felt she was safer in Warwickshire, or at least he held onto that excuse just to have her near.

           “Lee!” Charlie yelled from across the lawn as he ran over to them. “Ponies!” He pointed in the direction of the stables.

           Tommy smiled. “Charlie, she’s just woken up. Why don’t you just go see the horses with Mary?”

           “It’s alright.” Leah smiled and kissed Tommy’s forehead before standing. “Let’s go see the horses.” She took Charlie’s already outstretched hand.

           They crossed over to the path leading around the house to the stables. Tommy watched them before they turned the corner. Charlie babbled on to Leah who walked slowly to accommodate his little stride.

           A little bit after Leah and Charlie went for a walk, Polly came outside to speak with Tommy. The entire had begun to arrive at Arrow House upon Tommy’s request for a meeting.

           “Is Leah still sleeping?” She asked and sat.

           Tommy offered her a cigarette. “No, she’s gone with Charlie to visit the horses.”

           “He adores her.” His aunt nodded and lit the cigarette. “Thank God she was there to keep him safe from that fucking monster.” She was still reeling now that she knew her son had killed the priest. Michael would never be the same, she knew that.

           Tommy fiddled with his lighter, his eyes moving across the yard, over the well-manicured gardens and the blue-gray sky. “Pol, I want her to stay.” He told her honestly.

           “Stay here? She isn’t already?” Polly furrowed her brow. Leah had been in Warwickshire so long; perhaps she’d just assumed she was going to stay. The older woman had seen how protective Tommy was over her and how they seemed to just click. There was obviously something between them not to mention how much she cared about Charlie. Practically taking responsibility for him even if she hadn’t been asked to.

           “I think she’s thinking of returning to Birmingham,” Tommy informed her. “But, I was thinking of asking her to marry me.”

           It was a shock to Polly. Arthur had tentatively told her how Tommy and Leah met. She knew she was a Midland girl but was once married to a man in the same unit as her nephew. At first, Polly was hesitant to trust a working girl, especially when Tommy was so broken after Grace’s death. But over time, it was clear she wasn’t after him for status, money, or revenge. Polly had seen her tending to Tommy after he returned from the hospital, patiently dealing with his irritated state. She’d seen her tenderly caring for Charlie as if he was her own.

           But marriage. It seemed so sudden and out of the blue. “Oh God, you’ve gotten her pregnant.” Polly raised a hand to her forehead. God help her and her nephews who reproduced like rabbits.

           “No.” Tommy shook his head. Of course, that wasn’t the worse thing that could possibly happen to him. There were far worse scenarios that he knew were about to take place. But Leah pregnant would be a welcome distraction from what he was about to do.

           “Then you’re rushing into things.”

           He frowned in disapproval. “Why? She’s lived her for months. I love her, what does it matter how long it’s been?”          

           “Have you asked her if she would truly want to stay and be the woman of a house like this? If she wants to marry into the Shelby family?” Polly inquired.

           He was quiet for a moment because of course, he hadn’t. Questions like that would only give away his intention.

           “I would think about it a bit more before you decide something so serious like marriage.” His aunt suggested gently. “I know you love her. But you need to remember where she comes from. Not from Midland, but from a very damaged past, just like you.”

           Tommy simply stood and buttoned his coat, checking his pocket watch. “I have to take a drive somewhere.” He said vaguely. “Will you tell her I’ll be back soon?”

           Polly nodded. “Nearly everyone is here, John and Esme will be on their way.” She told him before he could walk away.

           “Have them wait in the big room for me.”

           “What about Leah?”

           He paused. “She can be there too.”

Permanent Tag: @papa-geralt-of-cirilla​ @giftofdreams​ @biba3434​ @kimmietea​ @karmezii​ @enrapturedbythemoon​ @vampgirl1997​

Tag list: @shelbyblinded​

Masterpost

Masterlist

[knifeshoeoreofight]

He keeps dreaming of snow. 

It’s July. The weather is warm and sticky, and the sun has been blazing hot for weeks. And he dreams about snow.

It’s the same every time. A lake fringed with dark trees, the ice covered in a flawless expanse of white. Blank and perfect. In the dream, he has a pair of skates slung over his shoulder by the laces. When he swings them down to untie the knots and get them on his feet, they’re always a different pair he recognizes.

The first pair of good skates he’d received as a child, still able to fit him in the boundless logic of dreaming. He’d fallen asleep clutching them to his chest when he’d gotten them that Christmas. Stuffed dog under one arm, skates under the other. 

The beat up pair he hid in Rimouski, so that he could practice even after they took away his regular skates. The same ones he’d take to play shinny in the park, just to feel a little normal. Free.

The pair he wore to win gold in Vancouver, gleaming and perfect. 

In the dream he sits on a snowbank and pulls the skates on, and then he’s on the ice. You can’t skate on snow-covered ice, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Dream logic again.

The dark trees around the lake never grow closer, no matter how hard he skates for the opposite shore. Always, he ends up standing in the middle of that blank, unsettling expanse of white, frustrated. When he looks behind him, there’s never a mark in the featureless snow to show where he’s been. Nothing.

And he wakes up then, usually, disturbed and wondering why the fuck he’s dreaming that dream again. 

***

He’s busy enough.The flurry of early summer weddings has petered out, finally. He loves his friends’ happiness, but the annual glut gets…old. Exhausting.

He has a few media obligations, some pre-planned get togethers with Nate and any of the boys who happen to be in town. He’s ramping up the training. But he still has too much damn time to brood in between it all. You’d think he’d be able to get the bad taste of last season out of his mouth by now, but it lingers, their ignominious playoff exit following him like a shadow.

He fishes, he paddleboards. He golfs. He trains some more. He tries going to the farmer’s market and has to leave after fifteen minutes because of the commotion his appearance causes. He teaches himself how to make gluten free parmesan chicken from the Internet.

He checks social media, liking pictures of babies and dogs and summertime shenanigans on Instagram. He uploads a photo of his dock at sunrise to his private one, to a flurry of likes and chirping about being a boring old man, fishing all day. 

It’s a little funny but it stings a bit too. He doesn’t like to think of himself as old. He’s not, by ordinary standards. But he is in hockey years, and it terrifies him sometimes. 

He should post more often, then maybe he’d get less shit from the guys. He’d only made his account in the first place so that he could follow the people that mattered to him. 

He wakes up early to find that Geno commented a string of parentheses and a couple incomprehensible emojis. 

He’s given up trying to interpret what Geno means by them; he’s 90% sure he just picks the weirdest ones possible just to fuck with people. 

Sid ponders what to respond, and finally settles on turtle, Brazillian flag, paperclip. There, let him have a taste of his own medicine. 

i dont get it, jake posts underneath. Probably sex stuff, replies Flower. better not to ask. 

Asshole, Sid replies, and feels his face flush. It’s all meant as a joke, but thinking of sex and Geno too close together is always a problem, and he buries the well-worn thing he doesn’t acknowledge like he always does. 

***

The next time he has the dream, there’s someone else there. He doesn’t see them, but their presence behind him lies on him like a weight.

He stops in the middle of the lake like he always does. The presence behind him stops too.

“Hey,” Sid says, more as an inquiry than a greeting.

Some small bit of dream-awareness slots into place, and he knows that it’s Geno, behind him.

“Three years Superleague, huh?” Sid says. It’s good, and right, Geno standing behind him.

***

More training. A podcast recording with Biz and Whit that actually ends up being a lot of fun. Just shooting the shit and swapping stories. 

They ask him about Geno, of course, angling for some dirt, some “ha ha he’s so Russian” and “what a bully” kind of shit. Sid doesn’t give them anything.

Geno, Sid has always thought, is more just like an enormous cat. A little moody and opinionated, liking things to be just so. Affectionate and friendly only on his own terms. He’s always wondered if that was mostly due to the language barrier, or if it’s just how Geno is. He used to watch whenever Geno spoke to Gonch, or his friends on other teams. Listen to the faster cadence of his voice, the expansive movements of his hands, the expressiveness of his face. Trying to figure out who Geno really was when he was comfortable and at ease.

He used to watch Geno way too much in those days.

It’s still a problem sometimes.

Geno always treated Sid a little differently. All of his brash pushiness is tempered a little. He always looks into Sid’s eyes when Sid is trying to tell him something, leaning in and listening with his whole body. Sid has never taken that deference and respect for granted, treating Geno’s fierce loyalty as the precious honor it is.Geno gives zero consequence to people he’s decided he doesn’t like or respect. He isn’t like Sid, he doesn’t bother to reign in his colossal emotions or attempt a veneer of politeness or charm. If he’s done with you he’s done with you. 

Geno is Geno, and Sid, god help him, has always loved him for it.

***

He has the dream again, and it’s accompanied by a creeping sense of dread. He and the Geno-presence take to the ice. In the middle of the lake, instead of smooth white, the snow is broken by a series of jagged cracks, dark water sloshing malevolently inches from Sid’s skates. 

“Fuck, look out–” he tells Dream-Geno, but Dream-Geno steps past him, for the first time.

“Geno!” Sid tries to scream, but he doesn’t have the air. In the disjointed way of dreams, Sid just knows that Dream-Geno is in the water now, even if he didn’t see anything happen. 

He drops to his knees, and reaches out. The water looks liquid, but his fingers scrabble along it like it’s ice. He claws at it, horror and desperation cresting over him. He’s trying to scream Geno’s name, but he can’t- he just can’t- 

When he wakes up, he’s gasping, heart trying to pound its way out of his chest. He’s disoriented for a split second, grief crushing, until he wakes up further and realizes he was dreaming. 

He sits up with a groan, shreds of the dream and its dread slowly fading around him. Fuck. He hasn’t had a nightmare like that in years. 

He checks the time on his phone, curses to see that it’s three thirty in the morning. He drags himself up, flinching as he flips the bathroom light on. He takes a piss, and splashes water on his face as if he can wash away the lingering awfulness of the dream.

So weird. He hadn’t really seen anything, but the emotions themselves had felt so real. 

Back in bed, he almost doesn’t want to go back to sleep. He feels wide awake anyway. What he wants to do, is. 

Incredibly stupid.

Good for a lifetime of shit-talking if Geno tells anyone.

He does it anyway. 

You up? He texts Geno. It’s nine-something am in Moscow, so who knows. Geno’s not exactly a morning person.

There’s no answer, for long enough that he starts to feel even more colossally lame than he already did. 

Then his phone rings, making him jump. Fuck.

“Sid?” Geno says when he picks up. “What’s happen? It’s night for you.”

God, his voice. Deep and rumbling right in his ear. Accent thick like it always gets over the summer when he doesn’t use his English for months. Sid feels something in him let go, soothed by a living, breathing Geno at the other end of the line. But, then, he realizes that he now has to come up with an explanation that isn’t just, “hey bud, just had a real bad dream, wish you were here to fucking tuck me in, eh?” 

“Uh. I’m okay it’s just… I was thinking.”

There’s a judgmental silence on the other end of the line. Sid pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

“You’re gonna chirp me forever, man. I, uh. I’ve been having this dream.” 

“Whaat?” Geno draws the word out, somehow conveying both amusement and disbelief. 

“I know, I know. But I’ve been having this stupid dream about skating on a lake, yeah? Just over and over. It’s fucking weird. And you were there? I think. The last few times, anyway. And this time there were these cracks in the ice, and you fell in. You know how even if it doesn’t make sense, for a second in a dream your brain doesn’t know the difference? Well. You, you were dead.” 

He pauses, realizing he’s babbling, how stupid this is. Shame washes over him. 

“Okay…” Geno says, clearly trying to take all of that in. “Sorry for dream?”

“Not your fault,” Sid says automatically. “So, yeah. Pretty much I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Geno huffs out a laugh. “Okay. I’m doing good, so.” There’s a pause, like he’s considering something. 

“It’s little bit cute, you know? Call me for scared.” His tone is amused but not as teasing as Sid would expect.

Still. Cute.

“Oh my god,” Sid groans, and flops back into his pillows.

“So stupid,” he says, more to himself then to Geno.

“No, no,” Geno says, and he’s definitely laughing now. “It’s fine, most cute. Can call me, I can give you some story, for sleep. Maybe some song.”

“Fuck off,” Sidney gripes, but he’s kind of smiling at the ceiling now, like a dweeb. 

Geno yawns, then audibly settles back into the bed or couch he’s probably lounging on. “So, keep having dream?”

“Yeah, over and over. No idea why.”

“Stress?”

Sid is quiet for a moment, wondering how to answer. “Maybe. My birthday, the season coming up. You know.”

“You captain,” Geno says. “Lots things for worry.” The matter of fact way he says it is comforting, somehow. “You need come here. Have fun in Russia.”

“Naw. The visa would take too long to get,” Sid says, wondering if Geno means it, if he’d really like to show Sid around Moscow.

“You know how long it’s take?” Geno sounds amused again, like he’s smiling. “You think about?” 

“Oh, off and on,” Sid answers. “Over the years, you know.”

“Should do, Russia best.”

Sid laughs. “Oh, for sure.”

“You do, you come. We go to banya, we eat Russian food. You can go to some museum, so boring.”

It sounds… really good. It makes an old ache start up behind Sid’s ribcage to think about it, but it sounds good. Especially if…

There’s always been an expiration date on Geno’s time in the US. And if this season is as bad as the last–

Sid tamps down the urge to surrender to the loss he can sense hovering on the horizon. 

“That sounds amazing, G. I want to, I really do. What about next summer? I can make sure the paperwork is all set up ahead of time.” Something to look forward to in that summer, no matter what. A way to delay Geno from slipping through his fingers if Geno decides he’s finally had it.

He’s being irrational, he knows. Geno has a contract. And yet.

“Yes, we do,” Geno says, with finality. “You come.”

They’re both quiet for a moment. Then there’s a bit of rustling on Geno’s end, like he’s sitting up. He sounds more awake when he speaks again.

“I can come early, now. Go to Canada first.”

Sid blinks, his lips parting in surprise. “Come here? To Nova Scotia? You’d want to?”

“No more bad dream,” Geno coos mockingly, and Sid has to laugh.

“You gonna tuck me in at night, eh?” Fuck, no, what is he doing. That sounds like he’s trying to flirt, or something. He needs to backpedal. 

“For real though. I’d always love to have you visit, you know that. I just thought, it’s a little quiet, maybe. Boring.” His voice, damn it, is a lot softer than he meant it to sound. Maybe revealing a little too much. He hopes Geno isn’t paying attention.

“Mooost boring,” Geno drawls. Then, firmly: “I come. You can show me fishing. No golf.” 

Something stupid and anticipatory flutters in Sidney’s gut. “Sure, okay. Let’s uh, work out the details.” Fuck.

***

Geno plans to go to Miami for a week, then to Sid’s, then to fly together down to Pittsburgh for training camp. He grouses a little at needing to be early because Sid is the captain and always shows up in town first. 

He grumbles but then he’s there in a week and a half, tanned and insolent with a backwards SnapBack on his head, rolling a lollipop stick between his teeth and disturbing Sid’s whole universe.

He pulls Sid in for a one armed hug and a backslap, right there in the terminal. He smells like airplane and very nice cologne, and Sid wonders why the hell he allowed this to happen.

He’s exhausted but looks around avidly as they take the 102 down to Dartmouth.

“Flat,” he says thoughtfully. “Big sky. Like Russia.”

Sid feels disproportionately pleased about that. 

It’s so strange, looking at home through Geno’s eyes, or trying to. He wants him to like it. 

“Halifax is across the harbor from where we are now,” Sid explains. “We can take a look around tomorrow.”

“I’m look Google Earth,” Geno says. “Little bit. Pretty.”

“It is,” Sid agrees. 

There’s a strange little smile playing around Geno’s lips as he takes in his surroundings. Sid isn’t quite sure what it means.

When they get to Sid’s place, Geno unfolds his long legs from the car and shoves his sunglasses up on his head. He just stands there for a minute, looking at the house, the sliver of lake visible through the trees. 

Then he looks at Sid, like he’s fitting Sid into this place in his mind. That wry little smile is back.

“Looks like you,” he says, and Sid isn’t quite sure what he means. 

***

Sid takes Geno out on the lake to fish. He takes him to the rink for training, where Geno imperiously nods once at Nate and then proceeds to ignore him for the rest of the drills. He stands in the lobby for a long time, looking at the display of Sid’s jerseys and photos. He takes a picture of one of Sid’s Timbits photos with his phone. 

Sid takes him around Halifax, as promised, then to his parent’s house, where Geno is all charm and bashful politeness, helping Sid’s mom in the kitchen and talking hockey with Sid’s dad. 

In every place, it’s a strange collision of worlds. Sid has to stop himself from just, staring all the time. Geno, here in his life. Lying on the floor of his parents’ living room to fuss over Sam. Rifling through Sid’s cabinets to judge his lack of acceptable tea. Strapping on his pads in the locker room of the rink where Sid learned to skate. 

He fits easier than Sid had imagined, and that ache seems to sit in his chest all the time now.

***

Geno’s been there nearly a week when Sid has the dream again. Same thing, with Geno disappearing into the dark water. 

Sid wakes up drenched in sweat, and swears before stumbling as quietly as he can to his kitchen for cold water from the Brita in the fridge. 

“Sid?”

Sid yelps, sloshing water all over the counter. “Fuck!” 

Geno’s lying on the couch in the living room, awash in the blue light of the muted television. 

“What are you doing up? Did I wake you?” 

“Still little bit jet lag. What’s happen? Dream, again?” 

Sid takes his glass of water and stands pointedly by the couch until Geno pulls up his knees and frees a space for Sid to sit. 

“Yeah.” Sid sighs. “So stupid.” He rubs at his eyes. 

“I’m die?” 

Sid stares ahead at the silent TV. It’s showing an ad for Canadian Tire. He’s not sure how he feels about talking about this, least of all talking about it with Geno. “Uh huh.” 

Geno scoots partially upright, and regards Sid with a surprising amount of gravity. 

“What you worry about, Sid?” he says, and it’s quiet, his voice low. 

Sid can’t look at him. He takes a long swallow of water and sets his glass carefully on the coffee table, trying to decide how honest to be. 

He’s too tired, on too many levels, to say anything other than the truth. 

“That if we have another season like we did, you’ll decide you’re done.” 

Geno whole face seems to go soft, his mouth dropping open a little. 

“I know,” Sid says quickly. “I know, this is so stupid, but I just—” 

Geno swings his feet to the floor, and suddenly he’s right there next to him, so close their thighs are almost touching. 

“Sid,” Geno says, and waits to continue until Sid looks over at him. 

“Until I’m hurt or you leave, I’m not leave Penguins.” 

His voice is softer and more reassuring than Sid has ever heard it before. What is happening. 

He can’t speak for a moment. 

“I, uh. Fuck, G.” 

Geno is just. Sitting there so close Sid can feel the heat of his body, looking at Sid with dark, serious eyes. 

Sid wants to kiss him. Wants to push him back onto the couch and mark him up. Something must have shown in his face because Geno tilts his head, brows drawing together in puzzlement. 

“Sid?”

Sid shakes his head. He has to get It together, in so many ways. 

“No, yeah, sorry I just.” He sighs. “Thank you, G. I can’t tell you how much that means.” 

Geno makes a hum of agreement, and stands, extending a hand to Sid. Sid shouldn’t take it but he does, let’s Geno haul him to his feet, and lets Geno…pull him in for a hug apparently. Oh no. 

This time Geno smells like the body wash Sid keeps in the guest bedroom, and his worn t shirt is soft against Sid’s cheek. 

It’s a curiously long embrace, and when Geno’s arms tighten Sid allows himself the indulgence of relaxing, letting himself melt into it. 

Geno raises one hand and lays it heavily on the nape of Sid’s neck. He eases back so he can look into Sid’s face. 

Sid can’t tell what he’s thinking. And he himself can’t think at all, not with Geno’s hand pressing onto his neck and his everything so, so close. 

He realizes, slowly, that Geno’s hands are shaking. 

“G?”

“Sid,” Geno says, husky and so low. 

Sid feels outside of his body, incredulous that this is really, actually happening as Geno, very slowly, leans in, pausing just a hairsbreadth from Sid’s lips. 

“Sid?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, and tilts his head up to cross that final bit of separation. 

Geno’s kiss is soft lips and hot mouth, gasped breaths and possessive sweeps of those huge hands. 

Sid shudders in his arms as Geno moves to his neck, trailing kisses across his jaw and down to the skin bared by the vee of his sleep shirt. 

Sid tugs them backwards, folding when the couch hits the back of his legs and pulling Geno down over him. 

He’s greedy, he’s starving. He can’t touch enough skin, he can’t get Geno close enough. He sets his teeth where Geno’s neck meets his shoulder and nearly keens when Geno moans and responds with a slow, devastating roll of his hips. 

“Geno, is this— are you—“

Geno pushes himself upright enough to look Sid in the eyes. 

“Won’t leave, Sid. Can’t.”

“I’ve wanted this,” Sid confesses. “I’ve wanted this for a really long time.”

“Good,” Geno says, and rolls his hips again. 

“I can’t just do a, a one time fuck or—“ 

“No,” Geno says sharply. “No.” He leans on one elbow so that he can lay a hand on Sid’s cheek. “We’re like this, you know? Mine.” 

Sid feels too bright and expansive for his skin. He fists a hand in Geno’s t-shirt and tugs him closer. 

“Mine,” he echoes, and Geno groans, responding to another tug and taking Sid’s mouth in a deep, demanding kiss. 

Hands and mouths and the greedy rocking of their bodies bring them to completion within moments of each other. 

Sid lies there after, stroking his hand over Geno’s head where he’s laid it on Sid’s chest. He’s sprawled over Sid like a gigantic, clingy octopus, and Sid is feeling the kind of incredulous elation he normally associates with Cups and Olympic gold. 

“Thanks for coming, G,” he says, and although he meant “coming to Canada,” 

Geno snorts. 

“You know what I mean, dickhead,” Sid says, laughing. 

“I mean it,” he says a few minutes later. “I’m just, yeah.” 

Geno smiles at him like that made perfect sense, and doesn’t protest when Sid prods him upright and tugs him along into Sid’s bedroom. 

***

Jet lag or not, Geno falls asleep with Sid spooned up behind him, and is still asleep when Sid wakes up to the mid-morning sun streaming in the windows. Heart impossibly full, the old ache released and gone, Sid presses a kiss to the sun-gilded skin of Geno’s shoulder. 

He had dreamt of the lake again, but this time, as happened for him only rarely, he’d lucid-dreamed. 

“No,” he’d told Dream-Geno, and turned his back on the lake. Which suddenly was a completely frozen Monongahela River. 

He points up the bank, towards the arena. “We’ve got a game to get to.” 

Dream-Geno put his hand in Sid’s, and leaned down to kiss his hair. 

“Let’s go,” he tells Sid, and they walk up the bank together.

[starswornoaths]

Top 5 favourite MSQ events.

@lightsmercy I sat on this one for a while, in part because I sort of had to mentally sift through them for the ones that I really liked/liked the way they surprised me, but mostly because I had to track down their quest names (and lemme tell you how hard it is to just look up “that one quest where that thing happened” and get what I need ;_; but thank you so much for your patience!!!) I’m going to stick to ARR quests for the sake of my own sanity (otherwise this list would be impossible to make. There’s too many, dammit) and I’ll be listing them from 5 to 1, with 1 being the one I liked the most (or in this case, “like” is more “it shocked me in a way I wasn’t prepared for but made sense in the narrative so I liked it, even if it destroyed me”) (also under the cut bc I got real rambly about it. I just like talking about literary themes/foreshadowing/symbolism in game stories, sorry ;_; HERE WE GO!!!)

5. “Escape from Castrum Centri” This one…hoo boy. The entire quest arc leading up to this is amazing, for the record (I’m also a sucker for rescue missions and the planning thereof, but I always have been,) so I was hyped as we were led up to this quest. The whole breakout of the scions was fun, but man the whole while the Scions and myself were just going around like, “but Thancred??? Where is Thancred???” and it solidified that though they give him endless amounts of shit, the second the chips are down they’re all there for each other- you know, like a family or something, and then when we saw he was possessed by Lahabrea, and that that was what had led to them being captured, even! MY HEART!!! (Also I would like to submit a formal complain to SE for making Minfilia sad enough to cry out to her possessed father figure. Why would you do that to her. How dare you, SE. She didn’t deserve that.) Thancred’s possession didn’t feel like it came out of left field, either, something that I loved: there was a lot of foreshadowing that he was going to burn himself out in a very dangerous way even as far back as our fight with Ifrit, and even his optional dialogue if you speak to him was just him not coping with anything. It still surprised me, but not in a way that made me feel like the rug was pulled out from under me in a bad way, and I love those kinds of surprises in stories. 

4. “Yugiri’s Game” This one caught me off guard (and solidified that these kids were unofficially adopted by the Scions, too and were adored and doted on at every turn,) because Yugiri had managed to teach these little kids, who had only just recently escaped their war-torn home, the basics of being a shinobi while masking it as just a game of hide-and-seek. She was teaching them how to keep silent and hidden in the event of the Garleans finding them. Having such an innocent children’s game turned into a method of teaching survival was as clever as it was heart breaking, knowing that it was a necessity, that the kids knew why they were taught this way, and that the kids were still optimistic and cheerful in spite of that knowledge. The Doman Adventurer’s Guild is run by some wonderful kiddos, and this was a wonderful way to show that.

3. “Blood for Blood” helped cement that though Haurchefant, while the staunchest ally for building relations between Ishgardians and the outside world, he was not the only one that was willing to accept the aid of an outsider when they know their own people are failing them. Really, much of the Ishgardian quests within ARR did a beautiful job of leading up to Heavensward in that it showed that thought the government was rigidly against working with the outside world, its citizens- especially the working ones who just wanted to get by and not get into the political bullshit- were more than eager to work with those outside of Ishgard, though it also did an equally amazing job of showing how scared the population was of the Holy See and its Inquisitors- with their unilateral (and as is exposed with this questline, frighteningly unchecked validity of its own) authority, they can accuse anyone who disagrees of heresy, and their trial is literally a fucking witch trial. There’s no winning in such a trial: either you die and you’re proven innocent, or you refuse, in which case they kill you. These quests really solidified for me that going into Heavensward, we were going to have to save the Ishgardian people from it’s own government just as much as we would have to save them from the dragons. 

2. “Recruiting the Realm” was…eye opening. It did a wonderful job of really cementing the world’s view of the Scions, the Leveilleur name, and what everyone really thought of Alphinaud’s altruistic but ultimately doomed endeavor. The moment it was revealed that not only did Alphinaud obtain funding from the Syndicate, but that he was utterly disinterested in neither disclosing that to us, nor entertaining our concerns about it, it confirmed two things for me: 1) that though he (and really, at that point everyone that was a major NPC in a political position) genuinely cared for us and considered us a friend, we were, before anything else, the Weapon of Light (yes, Weapon, but I’d be here all day dissecting my thoughts on that and why I come to that conclusion) and weapons aren’t exactly asked for their opinions on the wars in which they are used, and 2) that A Realm Reborn was only going to end in betrayal and tragedy because all of the players involved thought they knew better when they didn’t.

1. “All Good Things”

Look. I’ve rambled at this point for several paragraphs more than anyone likely ever wanted me to, but holy shit I can’t articulate how much this gutted me- and how I liked the way in which it gutted me without writing a thesis on it so I’m sorry again in advance but from a writing perspective I love this quest so goddamn much.

Because it could have been easier for them to just have us ring up Minfilia following our success and have the attack on the Waking Sands already happening. It would have been easier to instill a sense of urgency and “Holy fucking shit we need to go now” to get us to the Waking Sands quicker, only to find the scene that we did. That would have been the expected trope: I mean, really, how many times has that sort of thing happened in video game stories before?

But they completely subvert that by having you report in to Minfilia as usual, and she’s always so bright and cheery and relieved that you’re okay, and her dialogue was just…in hindsight, it was fucking artful.

“Pray return to the Waking Sands, where you shall receive a hero’s welcome!”

And you have a moment, where you first get to the Waking Sands, where you realize that Tataru isn’t in her usual spot on the stool at the table by the door. And you think, “oh, that’s to be expected, she’s probably with the others downstairs waiting for me!” So you go down the steps and through the door like every other time before. You expect it to be warmly lit and densely populated. You expect everyone there cheering and glad that you’re alright.

You load in, and then your stomach drops. 

The lights are off, the vases that were otherwise just background pieces to fill space are knocked over and askew, and there are dead bodies in front of you- one of which is in a Garlean uniform.

I can’t properly articulate the way I felt cold when my brain caught up with what I was looking at. And I saw that the quest marker was pointing to Minfilia’s chamber, but I didn’t go down that way. I turned left first.

More bodies. Bodies of many of the NPCs that had always been there. Characters that had dialogue that updated with your quests, characters that were working on their own accomplishments and goals alongside you, characters that cheered you on as you went about your duties. Dead.

I couldn’t remember any of their names. I couldn’t remember any of their dialogue that stood out to me at the time. I even cried over the lalafell mender that usually stood on top of the boxes in there, because I couldn’t find him, either. 

Then I went to the Antecedent’s chambers and…hoo boy that Echo. That Echo. There’s a whole new type of helplessness when you’re watching a recording of a tragedy, personal or not, where you just wish you could reach out and just make it stop, but you can’t. You just watch in horror as people are gunned down, or stabbed, or taken away. You watch as Minfilia, at the ripe old age of fucking nineteen, doesn’t flinch when Livia fires a shot near her face, tries to negotiate sparing the lives of those she’s responsible for. You watch as Livia shows the levels of cruelty to which she will sink in the way that she not only denies that negotiation, but just kills a few more people- one of her own included- just because they annoyed her.

And then you watch poor little Noraxia, who had only ever done their best, die because you couldn’t save them, either. 

The quests that follow are ones of grief, ones of mourning. Ones of a lost person meant to carry the weight of all the hopes and dreams of the dead with them as they tried to rescue those that were not yet lost, but this quest…this quest continues to hit in that specific wound for the Warrior of Light: the further into the game and expansions that you go, even and especially recent content, you’re reminded that though woe betide those who stand against the Warrior of Light, those who stand with them are no safer.

[chiseler]

GERALDINE PAGE: Octopus Lust

In her first lead film role in the John Wayne western Hondo (1953), Geraldine Page takes the space around her physically in a very definite way, but her squinting face and high, persnickety, slightly whiny voice don’t quite have the same authority as her body does yet. She was 29 years old here and already known as a promising theater actress, and she gets a special “introducing” credit for Hondo, for which she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar even though she is Wayne’s unconventional leading lady.

“I am fully aware that I am a homely woman,” Page tells Wayne in Hondo, almost boastfully, or at least in a way that seems proud of her own self-awareness. Hers was not a face or even sometimes a sensibility made for the camera, but as a middle-aged and then older woman she made the movies respect her talent. At the Actors Studio in the 1950s, she worked and worked on her thin voice until it became a notably flexible instrument that she could use for practically any effect she wanted.

In a somewhat sparing feature film career, Page would rack up eight Oscar nominations in all, four in the supporting category and four for lead actress, and at least three of her supporting nominations don’t make too much sense. There isn’t much for her to do in Hondo, and she has even less to work with during her jokey short appearances in You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), where she is a cartoon smother mother in an oversized black wig, and Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972), where she is a society matron in an oversized blonde wig that gets pulled off by Carol Burnett during a low comedy catfight. (Page does have one genuinely funny moment in Pete ‘n’ Tillie where an official asks her age and she gets stuck behind the sounds “For” and “Fi” until she finally collapses, the sort of comic routine that lands precisely because of how overdone it is.)

Page was known for her love of acting, her zeal for it, her lack of shame, and sometimes her lack of control. Critics occasionally chided her mannerisms, the way she strangled words when she was angry or broke them up into separate syllables for hammy emphasis, and as she got older she couldn’t seem to keep her hands off of her face: cupping her cheek, rubbing her eyes, fluttering her hands up and away, almost disconnectedly, from her own deep feelings. She sometimes crosses her eyes slightly when she’s mad but pops them in moments of extreme stress, and she tends to sink into her knees as she walks, as if bright spirits were always being weighed down by worry. Page often falls into physical and vocal grooves and can’t seem to get out of them, and at her worst (and even sometimes at her best) she wallows in peculiarity and freakishness.

She liked food a lot (she called herself “Greedy Gut”), and she made many meals of scenery, too. In the performance that won her a fourth and richly deserved supporting actress Oscar nomination for The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Page has only two scenes as former cleaning lady and racing enthusiast Mrs. Ritter, the first of which is a brief interaction with her son. In the second scene, which lasts a show-stopping three minutes and 42 seconds, the police are interrogating Mrs. Ritter about the death of her son. She does not want them to go through his room, and so Mrs. Ritter uses every intimidation and distraction tactic she can think of to keep them out. Page smokes a cigarette here and blows the smoke out of her mouth with a steam engine puff for emphasis, and this isn’t her only prop; she also fingers and kisses a rosary to show her piety and sips from a glass of whisky to show her Irish toughness. Page pours a very broad Noo Yawk accent all over her dialogue and enjoys the outlandish sounds she can make with it, particularly when she says “yoose.”

Page’s Mrs. Ritter looks over and away from the cops but then stares straight at them when she wants to scare them. “My Walter was as tough as a bar of iron…and he didn’t get that from his father,” she warns. In the last 20 seconds of the scene, violins on the soundtrack alert us that she will drop her mask once the police leave, and for about 16 seconds Page shows us Mrs. Ritter’s grief, which is still fairly tough, for this is a woman who exerts control over everything, even her own feelings. Page’s Mrs. Ritter is virtuoso work, like the performance that finally won her a lead Oscar the following year, The Trip to Bountiful, and it is simultaneously absurd and riveting, campy yet also deeply real and imagined.

There is a similar reality to another brief performance she gave at this time that did not get Page an Oscar nomination, her dying poet Jean Scott Martin in I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982), a Jill Clayburgh vehicle about Valium addiction. Page has about twice the time for her Big Scene here as she got for Mrs. Ritter’s Big Scene, and so she really shoots the works and practically shuts the whole movie down with it. A hole seems to open up in the film during this scene and everything else that happens later falls right into it.

Page’s Jean has just watched a documentary Clayburgh’s Barbara has made about her life, and at first she is quietly livid at its sentimentality. But then she begins to tell Barbara off in very profane language, and her anger starts to build and expand, and Page makes the shock of this expansion truly scathing and harrowing, and inescapable. Jean (and Page) can do a lot with words, sticking them like knives and then twisting them, or making them land, explode, and destroy until Clayburgh nearly seems to swoon in response. We see Jean later in the film and she makes up with Barbara, but this doesn’t diminish the intensity of Page’s tirade, or the rage this woman feels about the prospect of dying and then disappearing.

Page had a wide range, but she was typecast when she was young as neurotic spinsters, a trend that began with her performance on stage as Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke in a 1952 production credited with spurring the whole Off-Broadway movement in New York. In the 1950s, Page played on stage with James Dean in The Immoralist and played lovelorn spinster Lizzie Curry in The Rainmaker while making occasional appearances on TV. At 37, she was allowed to play Alma on screen in a 1961 movie version of Summer and Smoke that suffers from the casting of Laurence Harvey as her unappealing leading man and love object.

Page doesn’t let Harvey get in her way in Summer and Smoke, and this is a good case of what might be meant by the word “technique” when it comes to acting. Harvey doesn’t give Page anything at all to work against as a scene partner, but she stays focused and listens and hears what she is supposed to be hearing from him, somehow. She delivers her Alma to the screen with care and tact and occasional sensual detail, helped along by a sensitive score from Elmer Bernstein and the pale blue colors of her clothes, the frozen ground that her Alma retreats across in the penultimate scene, and the florid writing itself.

When she played the faded movie star Alexandra Del Lago on stage in Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth, Page penciled lines on her face and seems to have emphasized the grotesque and solemn side of the play. But in the 1962 movie version, Page made a crucial adjustment for the screen, steering her part into imperious comedy and doing lots of nutty things with her eyes and with her vocal delivery. The redheaded, egoistic Alexandra is supposed to have been “the sex symbol of America,” and Page almost makes you believe that she was that, but not quite. Daring you to think she is miscast, Page laughs and howls full-throatedly here, always staying highly conscious of her outré effects because Alexandra is conscious of them too, even when (or especially when) she’s drunk or stoned. “The camera doesn’t know how to lie!” Page’s Alexandra cries, but she herself puts the lie to that statement, for this is a risky performance dedicated to tricking the camera, routing it, leading it on a wild goose chase with sinuous poses and emphatic declarations. Everything Page does in the film of Sweet Bird of Youth is primed to make you ask, “Who is that?” or even “What is that?”

This is one of the campiest performances in film history, every word underlined three and sometimes four times in purple ink. Speaking to Paul Newman’s gigolo Chance Wayne, Page’s Alexandra purrs, “Make me almost believe that we are a pair of young lovers…without any shame.” He smiles at that, and it’s easy to smile along with him. Chance in turn amuses her Alexandra, and she is even modestly touched by him, but only modestly, and Page is scrupulous about showing the smallness of that feeling, even when Alexandra is drunkenly calling his name outside their hotel room, each “Chance!” more plummy and piss elegant than the last. Page gives this role an opulent sort of size, festooning it with cheerfully unaccountable and facetious vocal pyrotechnics, but she also somehow grounds it in a recognizable psychological reality, and this balancing act is no small feat.

In her last big scene on the phone in Sweet Bird of Youth, when Alexandra finds out from the columnist Walter Winchell that her latest movie comeback was a success after all, Page overflows with vulnerable yet blissful “I knew it all the time!” nervous relief, and this phone monologue is a real star turn that again is grounded in emotional truthfulness. Page shows that you can go as high, wide, and handsome with over-embroidered acting as you want as long as you have done the work beforehand to make the character real and specific underneath. “Page beautifully intertwines inner steel and insecurity, cannily conceived as two sides of the same coin,” wrote John DiLeo in his 2010 book Tennessee Williams and Company. “Beneath Page’s flourishes of self-centered bravado is the more fragile Alexandra, the woman mired in the indulgences of self-pity and self-gratification.”

Page turned down the role of Martha in the original 1962 theater production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a large mistake on her part. On screen, she played a high-strung spinster with incestuous longings for her brother in a film of Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic (1963), giving the kind of overbearing, headlong performance that doesn’t work well for the camera, though it might have had some power on stage. She was a spinster again in a much softer key for the modest romance Dear Heart (1964), and then she went back to TV to deliver what might be her finest performance of all, the kind and loving Sook in adaptations of the Truman Capote stories A Christmas Memory (1966) and The Thanksgiving Visitor (1967). She won Emmy awards for both.

The remarkable thing about her work in those Capote TV movies is that Page never emphasizes the fact that Sook has the mind of a child, which Capote himself tells us in his narration. She makes Sook mischievous and sly, a good-hearted hedonist like Page herself was, a lover of pretty things and movie stories, and there is never any pathos in her interpretation; she doesn’t underline or show us Sook’s childlikeness but embodies it, a much more difficult thing to achieve than her colorfully overstated yet grounded work as Alexandra Del Lago. In the last scene of A Christmas Memory, when Sook is flying a kite and talking about life and death, Page breathes quietly and totally opens her face up to the camera until a purely soulful expression steals across it, like the sun slowly moving behind clouds, and she lets this happen rather than making it happen, as she does in some of her lesser work.

The Beguiled

On stage she played Olga in the disastrous Actors Studio production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and the recording of it shows that she is the only member of the cast who gives an even remotely acceptable performance amid much reckless self-indulgence from the others. She took a rewarding, even daring lead on film in Don Siegel’s The Beguiled (1971), a psychosexual western where she presided over a band of lusty young ladies after the manhood of Clint Eastwood as if she were running her own school for neurotics. Her character is horny for Eastwood but she also has a thing for one of her charges, played by Elizabeth Hartman (at one point she kisses Hartman full on the mouth). After that Page’s career deteriorated for a while to guest shots on TV shows like Night Gallery, The Snoop Sisters and Kojak, where she could be relied on to act up a storm while wearing caftans and frowzy wigs.

But in 1978 Page picked up another lead Oscar nomination for her subversively funny performance as another neurotic in Woody Allen’s Interiors, where she plays Eve, a perfectionist in the domestic sphere who finds herself abandoned by husband and children. In the back of a cab, with her hair pulled back tightly and heavy make-up on her face, Page’s Eve resembles a weary female impersonator. A micro-managing tyrant, Eve descends to grotesque twitches and facial collapse shortly after her husband of many years, Arthur (E.G. Marshall), tells her he is leaving her, but her self-pity and self-destructiveness often retain a kind of physical elegance even in the midst of breakdown.

When Eve attempts suicide after taping up her windows and turning on a gas oven, Page spreads herself out on a divan to await death in an amusingly sulky, almost sexy way. “I have an inner tranquility!” she insists at one point, and the comedy here comes from someone vehemently denying the most obvious reality. When Eve is watching TV by herself and drinking some wine, Page allows her the open face that she gave Sook at the end of A Christmas Memory, because this woman is only free to be like that when she is alone. And Page memorably rises to the grandstanding moment when Eve smashes candles in a church after Arthur squashes her notion of reconciliation for good.

There were small film and TV roles after that, often as exuberantly frumpy women, and these were sometimes little more than bits, but then came the movie she knew would win her that elusive Oscar, The Trip to Bountiful, a 1985 adaptation of a Horton Foote TV play originally done with Lillian Gish, expanded with all the trimmings for Page’s swan song. Her Carrie Watts is a stubborn old woman who runs away to her hometown of Bountiful after living in bickering discontent in a two-room Houston, Texas, apartment with her weak son Ludie (John Heard) and catty daughter-in-law Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn). Page’s hand-to-face mannerism is out of control here sometimes, but such surface idiosyncrasies do not distract from her inventiveness, her heightened emotions of elation and relief, and the specificity of her performance, the way she can make you see and hear a person from Carrie’s past, as if Page has done extensive back story work for every name Carrie mentions.

Page had a stormy marriage with bad boy actor Rip Torn (the card on the door of their Manhattan townhouse read “Torn Page”) that produced two talented actors, Tony Torn and Angelica Page. In Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfield Story (1986) for TV, Page clearly looks ill and tired, and she died of a heart attack the following year at the age of 62 while playing Madame Arcati on Broadway in Blithe Spirit. At a tribute shortly after her death, Anne Jackson said that Page “used a stage like no one else I’d ever seen. It was like playing tennis with someone who had 26 arms.” And in her best movie work, Page finally made the camera bow to her octopus talent, her greedy, gutsy ardor for acting.

by Dan Callahan

[possibilistfanfiction]

i just wanna find a god (& i hope she loves me too)

[five SEVEN times kat doesn’t say i love you & one time she does. on ao3 babies]

//

 i just want to find a god (& i hope she loves me too)

 //

  love demands expression. it will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. it will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.

—jeanette winterson, written on the body

 //

 1

 you have never prayed before.

 you were raised on science, on cognition and recognition and you remember from when you were small, your parents talking quietly in the kitchen over a bottle of wine while you pretended to read your independent chapter book for school: to love someone else is to recognize yourself; to know yourself in another, over and over again.

 you weren’t looking for that—you have never prayed before. you slept with boys and let them kiss you and when you touched yourself you didn’t think of them; you closed your eyes and imagined someone else’s hands on your body, someone tasting a path straight up the center of you, and maybe it has taken this long because you were raised to categorize your desire, to think about it and know it and never feel it.

 adena is praying in the morning light and you are in your underwear and you’ve only kissed, fell asleep kissing, fell asleep in her bed, smelling her shampoo, tucking her body against yours: a hand pressed against a hip, the small bones of her spine, the softness of her stomach.

 the words itch under your skin, so unexpected because you’ve never felt them before, you don’t know what they’re supposed to feel like. you’ve been in a church four times in your life, a synagogue twice, once in college you visited a mosque for your world religions class; you are not sure you’ve ever seen anyone pray with this kind of quiet reverence. you’re surprised, the way you want to say them so quickly, so powerfully, you can’t even think them.

 you stand quietly, transfixed and happy, your heart skittering all around your chest.

 adena smiles up at you and you realize, for a brief, brief moment, what worship is; you are almost able to see yourself again in her dark eyes.

 //

 2

 you cannot tell her why you can’t go with her. you love your friends and you love your job, those things you are absolutely sure about. you feel a tug toward her, like the physicists are wrong, have been wrong all this time, and you think this is a different power.

 but you can’t go. you can’t say anything to explain how terrified you are, how you want more than anything in the entire world to get on that plane with her. maybe that’s what stops you, maybe that’s what makes you so difficult and terrified.

 you had touched her last night with more confidence than you felt; the hours were waning and the sun was rising and her body was everything you wanted to know. the heat of her, the softness, the way she grew tighter around your fingers, your lips pressed to the space between her neck and shoulder, the remnants of her perfume. maybe you’re starting to understand worship because your shaking hands came close, the way she sucked in a breath.

 you’ve seen so many boys come, felt them inside of you, and it was easy. it didn’t mean anything, or sometimes it meant something—but it didn’t mean this : adena speaks in a language you don’t know and maybe it’s a command, maybe it’s a blessing, but she presses into you and you think only of the rich color of her skin, your fingers gripping her shoulder blades like wings.

 you’re mortified that you almost cry because you don’t do this, you don’t feel these things, you never have. you chalked it up to your parents and how you can explain anything away and how you’re the fun one, the one with no weights, no tragic backstory, nothing to tie you to anyone.

 ‘it’s okay,’ she says.

 you don’t understand, because it’s not okay, because you have never wanted this much. in college, you paid attention to boys who told you that you were beautiful and let you rant about injustices and laugh about cat memes; you liked pretty libraries in buildings that looked like castles, and parties where the music boomed into your marrow, and usually your communications classes, but your junior year one of your friends had convinced you to take some seminar on myth and feminism. you learned about origins all over the world, beginnings and becomings, the starts and ends of things, tied up in each other; trips to the underworld and trips to heaven and all of the terrible, fantastic earth between. the pomegranate was the fruit eve ate, maybe, and there was a woman before her, maybe, that loved herself too much for adam, and this fucking airport isn’t eden because you cannot go to a holy land with her. persephone ate a pomegranate too, you think you remember, and now there is hell ruled by a queen and spring and winter and celebrations and mournings and grief , you think, in how she opened up to you in the middle of the night like fruit in the dim light.

 you want to tell her, because it wouldn’t be enough but it would be something. but the words get stuck in your throat because they’re true, and they’re holy, and they’re a beginning and an ending; it’s too much and too soon and you hope she understands why you can’t go with her, why you can’t say them, why you would mean them too much for you to bear.

 adena walks onto the plane and you clutch your passport to your chest, stand still and will yourself not to cry; you watch the gate long after her plane has taken off.

 //

 3

 adena is topless, stretched in your shared, big bed, complaining mildly about how sore she is from hiking along the colca canyon all day, when your parents call. you’d been expecting it but you still curse your fucking perfect phone plan with its worldwide coverage that sutton and jane had demanded you get so they could be updated at all times on your trip.

 you roll your eyes and kiss your girlfriend and motion to your phone before you walk onto the balcony attached to your room and shut the door behind you.

 ‘hey.’

 your mother waits a few seconds before clearing her throat. ‘hello, kat,’ she says. ‘where are you?’

 you’re sure you’re on speaker and you’re sure your mother is taking the reins on this one because your father is more anxious, more judgemental, always caring but sterner.

 ‘peru,’ you say, a little thrill shooting through you when you glance inside and adena smiles lazily at you. ‘outside of arequipa.’

 it’s quiet again and then your father asks, ‘why?’

 ‘well,’ you say, and you grab the rail for support. you’re not worried, not really; your parents have always been lgbtq allies and you’re also completely independent; your friends love you, your boss has gotten you into every restaurant adena has ever wanted to try with the full knowledge that you’re dating—your hands are shaking because this girl in your bed has you rattled, has you 3,876 miles away from everything you’ve ever known, has you feeling things you’ve never understood about yourself.

 you take a deep breath and try again. ‘i met someone,’ you tell them. ‘and i needed time off, to just—’ to feel things , you want to say, but that’s confusing and they would psychoanalyze you— ‘to take a break from the city, and work, and to spend time together.’

 ‘that sounds,’ your father clears his throat, ‘relaxing. good for you to get away.’

 ‘i’m here with my girlfriend,’ you say, and it comes out of your mouth just like that: shaky, unsure, more certain than anything you’ve said to them in your whole life.

 a pause, and then your mother says, ‘that’s wonderful, kat.’

 it’s soft, softer than you expected, and you almost sniffle. the adoration you feel for adena has scared the shit out of you but you do know it’s very tender, and special, and it’s changed your identity, how you move through the world, in ways you don’t really know yet. but you know it’s different, because you’ve felt the shift.

 ‘we’re very happy for you. and,’ your dad says, ‘very proud of you.’

 you allow yourself a single tear and then wipe your eyes quickly, because this is a fun vacation and you’re having fun , holding adena’s hand and kissing her in front of the prettiest view you have ever seen, and this is heavier, bigger, more important than all of that.

 ‘thanks,’ you say, small and young and quiet.

 ‘kat,’ your mom says. ‘we love you so much.’

 ‘yeah,’ you say. you bite the inside of your cheek so you don’t start to really cry, because you want to tell them all about her, the set of her shoulders and how she makes you laugh and the remarkable way she sees the world. ‘i have to go. i’ll talk to you when we get back.’

 ‘safe travels,’ your dad says.

 you hang up and breathe a huge breath and let it out, look up at the expanse of stars you can’t see from the city.

 you put your phone down and a few minutes later you hear the door slide open and adena hugs you from behind.

 she’s quiet and she doesn’t press you to say anything, to explain. she kisses your shoulder after a while and says, ‘come back to bed.’

 you turn and smile and kiss her. ‘okay.’

 she lays you down and spreads your legs and takes you in, completely and with so much fullness you don’t know at all what to do other than let her lap at your center until you close your eyes and remember all the stars outside, until you don’t know your own name.

 //

 4

 she’s so beautiful. she’s so beautiful. you take a deep breath because you’re terrified of so, so many things, honestly, but you know that jane was right and that nothing has to be perfect and it’s okay because you—

 you can’t think the words yet but you know they’re true because you relax the moment you taste her. it’s different, and a little odd, but her body responds and you find her clit easily and you know what drives you over the edge—she’s a fucking pro at it, holy shit—and when she twists her hands in the sheets you pause and tug them to your hair.

 she swallows. ‘you sure?’

 it’s ragged and quite possibly the sexiest question you have ever been asked, in all its care and consent, and you feel heat pool between your legs and wow, you never knew pleasuring someone could be this rewarding.

 ‘yes,’ you say, and her pupils are blown and her smile is lazy. ‘are you?’

  ‘kat, ’ she says, tugs you down right where she wants you, and you laugh. ‘i have never been more sure of anything in my life.’

 you kiss down her body and run your tongue along her, inside her, and she guides you gently until she’s close. her fingers twist in your hair and tug and her whole body stills, tenses and tightens and you’ve felt her orgasm before but never quite like this, never with this much power. her hips start to shake and you bring her down gently before she tugs you up and you remember watching people take communion once: the body as offering, drinking the wine as sacred. perdition, benediction.

 ‘holy shit,’ you whisper, mostly to yourself when you sit up and wipe your mouth, but she hears and lets out a very weak, very sated laugh.

 she pulls you toward her and you’re so turned on you sort of want to get yourself off grinding down on her thigh, but you kiss her for now. it’s hard, to not say the words, to not offer them with her like this, boneless and lingering in your mouth.

 ‘you,’ she says, kisses you, ‘are a very fast learner.’

 it makes you laugh, and your kiss is messy and terrible because you can’t stop smiling. her hand snakes down your body, though, and she looks at you very tenderly, and you nod and breathe out a yes and you’re lost in her, thoroughly and genuinely, her body something unknown, familiar, the way she touches you is new every time, practiced and familiar and she whispers words along your skin as she coaxes another orgasm out of you.

 you have begun to pray, you think, like this; it is very hard not to say the words.

 //

 5

 you’re putting your underwear back on so you can actually go to work when she leans forward and touches your hip, traces down your thigh.

 ‘i love these,’ she says, and your heart is suddenly stuck in your throat.

 you know all about body positivity, have been tweeting about it for two weeks now, have been reading extensive articles about women of color and self care—but this is different. ‘my stretch marks?’

 she nods, presses the softest kiss against them. ‘your body made room for you to become,’ she says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. ‘i enjoyed photographing your friends, but it meant everything to photograph you.’ she sits up further and kisses your cheek. ‘how i see you.’

 it’s too sweet and too honest and too much; no one has ever cared for you like this.

 you kiss the top of her head, linger there for a moment and think the words, hope so much she can feel them.

 ‘i’m late,’ you say, get off the bed.

 her smile is small and she grants you this; you hop into your pants to make her laugh and you think she knows.

 //

 6

 she has a lot of very beautiful, very handsome, very queer friends and suddenly you’re uncomfortable because you don’t know where you belong in this world; you’re unsure and unsteady and very, very worried.

 your chest feels too tight and your stomach knots and the base of your skull prickles when another girl, with gorgeous tattoos and a shaved head and a perfect leather jacket, touches adena’s hand, and it’s a kind of physical reaction you have never felt before, ever .

 you don’t know what it is and you feel stupid, because adena is beautiful and talented and brilliant and queer , and why wouldn’t she have friends who share the same interests, are in the same world?

 you take out your phone and text jane and sutton: sos

 jane texts back first, right away: What’s going on?

  adena has a million friends who might not have been just “friends” and idk , you type.

 sutton’s bubble pops up and you wait a few moments before: kat. are you jealous??

 you take a moment to take stock of all of your physical sensations and then roll your eyes at yourself because that is so your parents that it’s ridiculous, but, yeah, you type, i guess?

 jane responds first: Babe, Adena is crazy about you

 you nod to yourself and text back the a-okay emoji because you can’t do anything other than that, and you order yourself two shots. you wait a few minutes for them to kick in, making distracted and honestly mediocre conversation with a few of adena’s friends and then you walk over to her, smile and ask her to come with you. she furrows her brow but she does, climbs over like four people and they all laugh and you take her hand and lead her to the bathroom and you shove her, rougher than you ever really want to, against the door once you’re inside, and kiss her once.

 ‘kat,’ she says, admonishing and still gentle and you want to cry. she pushes back on your shoulders. you feel like you’re spinning and you’re so angry, so sad and insecure and you hate it; hate that you feel inadequate because adena cares for you so steadfastly and you have a million friends and you have jane and sutton who you’re incredibly tactile with, and adena is with you every day and every night but right now all you want to do is sink to your knees in this dirty bathroom in brooklyn and make sure.

 she cups your cheek and looks at your face closely and says, ‘i’ll see you at home.’ she doesn’t sound gentle but she doesn’t sound too pissed off either, mostly a warning.

 you’re even angrier then, but it’s mostly panic, you think, and you swallow and nod and say, ‘fine,’ sharply. you recognize you’re being immature but it doesn’t feel like you can control it, like you can control anything, and your hands are tingling and you text jane and sutton to meet you at the bar near your apartment.

 they do and you tell them what happened—what you did—and they wait a minute before sutton says, ‘yikes.’

 you sigh and nod because she’s not wrong.

 jane slings an arm over your shoulders and orders you another drink. ‘just talk to her,’ she tells you, firm and gentle. ‘she cares about you, you’re living together, you give her tons of attention. there’s no reason she would cheat.’

 ‘also no reason you should shove her against a bathroom door because you’re jealous,’ sutton says, and you throw a handful of peanuts at her.

 ‘it was not my finest moment.’

 you want to tell them, but you have to tell adena first, she has to be the first to know, because sutton and jane already know everything and from the way they look at you softly you’re sure they know exactly what you so desperately want to say. so you have another drink and you’re truly on your way to very drunk but you feel better, albeit guilty. jane kisses your cheek and sutton slaps your ass and they make you plan brunch, adena included, for the next morning.

 when you get back to your apartment adena is on your couch, reading something in persian, and when you put your things down on the table she looks up. she’s angry and her eyes are red-rimmed and fuck .

 ‘that was not okay,’ she tells you.

 ‘i know,’ you say. ‘i know and i’m sorry, i just—’

 ‘no,’ she says, standing. she’s shorter than you but you feel small. you’ve never had a fight of any sort of romantic consequence before because you’ve never cared about anyone enough to even get close to this kind of anger. ‘you don’t get to make me feel like that.’

 you look down and clench your jaw and you wish you could tell her. you’re drunk and tired and all you want is to get into bed with her and hold her and feel her body pressed into yours, solid and heavy and sure. ‘i’m sorry,’ you say again.

 ‘honestly, kat,’ she says, thinks better of what she’s going to say, shuts her mouth and then shakes her head. ‘they are my friends. you have your friends, and i am not jealous of them.’

 ‘yeah,’ you say, ‘i know.’

 she sighs. ‘you cannot do that again.’

 you nod, a bit of the tension easing in your chest. ‘i just, i—’ you want to, so badly, the words tugging at you like the beginning of the world, the big bang, all the star stuff jane likes to go on about when she’s drunk and emotional. ‘i care about you, so much, adena.’

 her face softens, just a little. you sit at the table, heavy and drunk and exhausted.

 ‘you have to trust me,’ she says, but she walks toward you and squeezes your shoulder. you turn and kiss her wrist.

 ‘i do trust you,’ you tell her. you don’t know how to explain anything else.

 ‘i’ll take the couch tonight,’ she says, and you nod, swallow back tears because she deserves her space, and she deserves full consent, and she deserves gentleness.

 ‘take the bed,’ you tell her. you’re guilty and you don’t want to sleep in it without her.

 she’s already curled up on the couch though, stubborn and you really don’t think you should pick a stupid fight right now, so you walk over to your bed and clumsily take off your shoes, throw your clothes in a pile to be dealt with tomorrow.

 your bed is too big and you can’t fall asleep and maybe an hour later you feel the mattress dip and a slight, strong arm wrap around you, feel warm, sweet breath on the back of your neck.

 ‘i couldn’t sleep without you,’ she admits, very softly, and it makes you start to cry. you want to be embarrassed but you’re too drunk and too tired and the residual anger and jealousy has worn off into sadness—you hurt her.

 you turn over. she wipes your tears in the moonlight, leans forward and kisses you, very softly.

 the words are on your lips and you kiss her with them in your mouth but you have never said them to anyone before and you think, maybe just a little, they would end you. she backs up and kisses your cheek and you can’t say anything, because it seems like they’re the only words you know right now; all that is left of you.

 ‘you taste like tequila,’ she says, and you laugh and she’s your whole world, heaven and hell and pomegranates and shaky hands and this bed, in this room, in this city where you can’t see any of the stars unless you look for them. she’s so beautiful.

 ‘it’s my slutty, try to feel better shot.’ she laughs. ‘i did… a lot of them.’

 ‘i’m still mad at you,’ she says, ‘but i am flattered as well.’

 you roll your eyes and she sighs and burrows into your chest and you tangle your legs.

  she’s mine, your heart says fiercely. she’s mine.

 //

 1

 you’re on the fucking long island rail road because jane had some writer friend from college with a house on the beach and it’s summer and hot and you would complain but your parents are using your hamptons house and they had invited you all but honestly you would much rather not , and this is better than the beaches close to the city, and driving, at any rate, even if it is long island.

 the train goes to a city named babylon, which is apparently a gold mine for jane and adena, who together know more facts about the original babylon than you truly thought was possible.

 ‘ and ,’ jane says, ‘in the judeo-christian old testament, babylon, or babel, was the place where it’s said people tried to build a tower to heaven.’

 sutton smiles at you with fond annoyance and you roll your eyes.

 adena grins. ‘in the book of revelation, the whore of babylon ruled over an evil, apocalyptic kingdom.’

 jane nods eagerly. ‘mystery,’ she says, in a grand voice, ‘babylon the great, the mother of all harlots and abominations of the earth.’

 sutton snorts and you squeeze adena’s hand and she laughs.

 ‘i have been there,’ adena says. ‘to photograph the remains of the old city.’

 jane gets a dreamy look in her eyes, and you know she’s about to ask a billion questions, but sutton interrupts. ‘this is fascinating, but let’s discuss our opinion on edibles at the beach.’

 you laugh and jane scowls and adena kisses your shoulder. your friends bicker about whether jane should eat any, because last time she had gotten so paranoid on your fire escape she started crying about how far it was from the ground.

 you watch adena smile, watch the way she sits, slouched, practiced, worldly in her seat, think about how you had kissed her for ages in your bed this morning, and then on the couch, and then how you had kneeled before her like she was an altar, like the part of her body you wanted to taste the most was sacred.

 your prayers aren’t the same as hers; you say them into her center when she comes and you trace them into her skin when she’s asleep. she has taught you how to want , how to desire and respect and how to worship.

 you have been praying for months now.

 her hijab is pale blue today and it matches the sky, and your friends are making her laugh with some sort of familiarity, some fondness, and you know what really brings them together is you .

 ‘i love you,’ you say, turned toward her, and softly.

 jane and sutton stop talking and you can see their eyes grow wide and adena looks at you with the gravity of every myth, every beginning, every prayer. it’s heavy and peaceful and you think, distantly but in a very concrete way, that you want her for your whole life, that you’re so goddamn lucky.

 ‘uh,’ sutton says, ‘we are going to visit the bathroom.’

 jane nods and gets up and drags sutton with her, but not before she can give you a big thumbs up and grin with a wink.

 you shake your head and turn back to adena, open up your shoulders so you can face her fully.

 ‘sorry,’ you say, ‘i’ve been wanting to tell you for months and i didn’t mean to say it in front of my friends, on this fucking train, but, i just—’

 ‘i love you too,’ she says.

 you can’t help but smile and you wish you could tell her that she’s some sort of god and you think she’s all you’ve ever wanted. but you don’t know the words for that, the way your heart has bloomed in your chest and whenever you’re with her rooms are brighter, are gold, even this train is a kind of sanctuary—how you have mapped the cathedrals of her ribcage and the tattoos like tiles, like patterns, that sprinkle her skin. you’ve mapped her body, all the indentations and little scars and hurts and triumphs; she has done the same to yours: you recognize yourself through her; she is what you know.

 you lean toward her and you’re smiling too hard so you kiss her forehead and her nose and her cheeks and her chin. ‘i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you.’

 she’s laughing and delighted and you said them; you meant them with all your heart.

 she laces your fingers together and nods and sutton and jane come back.

 ‘we ate edibles in the bathroom,’ jane announces. ‘to celebrate.’

 ‘oh god,’ you groan, and sutton grins.

 adena motions toward you.

 ‘you sure you wanna take care of all of us?’

 she shrugs. ‘how hard could it be?’

 ‘i love her too,’ sutton says, and you take a bite of the brownie.

 adena ends up having to spread sunscreen all over jane and sutton because you’re all too stoned to care by the time you actually get to the beach, but she insists. you lie with your head in her lap and she’s the only person in the world who you let touch your hair and she knows that so she runs her fingers through it, scratches at your scalp.

 you squint up at her. ‘you’re so beautiful, adena.’

 ‘you’re high.’

 you shrug. ‘still, very beautiful.’

 she lets supervises you as you all splash around in the ocean even though objectively it’s fucking freezing, and you tug her in to her knees amidst shrieks of protest. she laughs though and you eventually all traipse back to your towels and collect your stuff.

 jane throws up in a trash can on the way to the train and adena makes sure she drinks plenty of water and your feet are kind of numb and tingly so she wraps her arm around your waist.

 she gets you all back to the city and orders jane and sutton a lyft to their apartment and then takes you home, undresses you.

 you’re definitely much less stoned but she feeds you cheese and bread and grapes in bed, getting crumbs everywhere until you’re smiling and sated.

 ‘you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,’ you say.

 ‘i am very glad you are in my life, kat edison.’

 you smile and tug her down, kiss her skin without any pretense, among the remnants of offerings.

 you have said the words and you’re relieved, peaceful, and you fall asleep.

 you wake up first, have to get ready for work. nothing is different, not really.

 she is yours, to cherish and to fight with and to worship. you dip down to kiss her forehead before you go.

 she smiles and snakes the sleepiest hand out from beneath the covers to cup your cheek, doesn’t open her eyes. she runs her knuckles along your skin and you kiss them and she says something in persian; you don’t know the language but you do know what her prayers sound like.

 ‘i love you down to the small bones,’ you tell her. you kiss her once more and head out into the blistering heat, get ready to shoot off a tweet. the sun is warm and when you get home in the evening you will eat her out for two orgasms, long enough that the food in your stove burns and you order pizza, and you will love her then too: you have learned how to pray.

[regardstosoulandromance]

chapter ten: i thought that love was a kind of emptiness // in which Quinn reflects, Rachel makes a phone call, and Mike gets into (another) fight

read here on ao3 or below

Quinn loved it when girls cried during elimination, the messier the better. Waterproof mascara had been permanently banned from set, so every black streaked tear that ran down Maggie’s face showed up on camera as Vanessa cut her, Tanner, and Joseph.

But Quinn didn’t like tears that were her own, leaving wet tracks across her face as she tried to angrily swipe away any evidence. Unfortunately that didn’t change the fact that crying left her nose and eyes rimmed red.

Rachel had produced the group date and the elimination ceremony beautifully. She’d channeled her anger into pushing the contestants to their limits and now they had two cat fights, one breakdown, and so many perfect shots to edit though. Then, as soon as they’d cut for the evening, Rachel left, without even a backward glance as she stormed off set. She hadn’t even looked at Quinn for the rest of the day and then she had taken her Jeep and driven off into the night.

Quinn finished her four glass of whiskey. She was torn on whether or not to head home for the night. On one hand, her bed would still smell like Rachel, but on the other, she knew that for the first time in a long time the large expanse of down and warmth would feel far too empty.

She turned on the security camera feed, scrolling through each one. Chet was walking alone near the crew trucks. Quinn considered this. It would be easy to find him, to casually run into him. Then one thing would lead to another, as it usually did. She knew that if she went to find Chet she wouldn’t be spending the night alone.

But that wasn’t what she wanted, not really. Going back to Chet, again, would just complicate things. Quinn closed her eyes. Her feelings for Rachel left her heart pounding, and fear raced through her bloodstream whenever she thought about what she’d almost said last night in the heat of the moment. And then she’d fucked it up.

She had to fix it. For all the times they’d fallen apart, they’d always had time to fix things again. But now it felt like the walls were closing in, like their stalker circled as a wolf would before striking, like time was running out. Quinn was not going to lose Rachel to this monster making their lives miserable.

Opening her eyes, Quinn clicked through a couple more feeds when something caught her eyes. The footage was dark and grainy, but, yes that was definitely Leo knocking on the door to the Suitress suite. She switched the view to inside the suite, and was surprised to find the camera uncovered.

Quinn watched as Vanessa let Leo in, her body language seductive and flirty the entire time.

“It looks like an old dog can learn new tricks,” Quinn murmured to herself as she watched Leo kiss Vanessa, and Vanessa begin to inviting his shirt.

It was voyeuristic, but Quinn couldn’t look away and instead poured herself another whiskey. It was information gathering to better produce both Leo and Vanessa, or so she told herself.

As Vanessa leaned back on the bed, and Leo crawled on top of

…

As she started on the long drive back up to her cabin, Rachel fumbled one-handedly with her phone, searching for a number she should have deleted a year ago.

Setting it to speaker, she listened to it ring as she drove through the darkness.

“Rachel?” The familiar voice made her skin crawl, “I didn’t expect to ever hear from you again. Is something wrong?”

“Where are you?” She asked, trying to keep everything but cold questioning out of her voice.

“I’m really glad you called,” he said, “Are you still working at Everlasting?”

After a pause, Rachel said “Yeah, yeah I am.”

“It’s going to kill you Rachel,”

That’s exactly what she was worried about. She left that ominous statement hang in the air as she turned a corner, driving farther and farther away from the city lights.

“Where are you?” She asked again.

“I’m in Oregon, I got a place up here, a nice job. I think you’d like it.”

“How long have you been there?”

“About six months.”

“And you haven’t come to California at all? Can you prove it?” Rachel pressed.

“No I really can’t, Why are you really calling? What’s this about?”

“I-“ I think you’re planning on killing me and Quinn, “I thought I saw you. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you.”

“Did you want it to be me?” Her phone was so clear that for a moment it sounded like she wasn’t alone in her car.

“No. I don’t want to ever see you again,”

“How’s Quinn?”

Rachel’s heart leapt to her throat. It was him. It had to be him. She could feel all her fear and anxiety bundled in her chest, it was like an enormous weight was holding her down.

“She’s fine.”

“From you’re tone of voice it doesn’t sound like it. I know you don’t want to hear this-“

“Then don’t say it.”

“- but she really doesn’t care about you. I know she probably makes you think she does, but you’re just a tool to her, Rachel.”

She thought about the night before, in Quinn’s office when she began to cry. She thought about Quinn holding her so tight, the feeling of Quinn’s lips moving against her temple, Tell me what’s wrong, tell me how I can fix it, Rachel, you’re scaring me sweetheart.

“You’re wrong, Quinn cares about me a lot!” Her words came out sharp, but raw, with a edge of emotion. She hadn’t realized she was crying until her tears hit the tops of legs and blurred her vision. Rachel gripped the steering wheel.

“Maybe, in her own twisted way, she does think she cares about you, but it’s not real Rachel,” the connection was beginning to cut in and out.

“Just leave us alone!” Rachel cried, “Stop sending the letters and photos and just leave us alone!”

There was silence, then her phone makes a fast beeping sound. When Rachel reached to check her phone, she realized she’d driven so far out that she’d lost the signal.

The call was over.

…

Vanessa sighed with pleasure, and Quinn knew a real orgasm when she heard one. She knew she shouldn’t be watching, not real time at least, but Vanessa’s fucked up life was an easy distraction from her own.

Leo rolled over, pulling the blankets up around them. Vanessa smiled, kissing him softly, before getting up and slipping on a robe. Leo, much like most men Quinn had known, fell asleep almost immediately.

She disappeared off camera for a moment, and Quinn was going to turn off the feed, but then Vanessa reappeared, throwing a towel over the camera.

Quinn sat back, surprised. Vanessa wasn’t the idiot she’d assumed. She knew exactly what she was doing.

…

She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. It had been hours since the phone call, and hours since she’d showered and gotten into bed, but sleep still eluded her. Every time she closed her eyes it was just Quinn, Quinn, Quinn behind her eyelids.

Last night had been grief sex, or something akin to it. Grief sex’s cousin, the thing that happened when you were terrified for your life and needed to feel something, even if it was just for a little while.

But of course it was Rachel, and it was Quinn, and they couldn’t just be okay. It was as if the universe wouldn’t allow it. Instead Quinn had hidden the danger they were in from her, she decided not to tell her that a crazy stalker was taking photos of them, and now her mother knew.

Rachel groaned. Olive Goldberg knew. Someone had sent her photos of Rachel on top of Quinn, Quinn with her shirt off, Rachel kissing the soft skin between Quinn’s breasts. It was modifying.

Pushing all thoughts of her mother from her mind, Rachel let her hand slip beneath the waistband of her underwear. She thought about how Quinn had asked, voice gentler than normal, permission to touch her. Rachel pretended her hand was Quinn’s, that Quinn was lying beside her again, getting her off. She was still angry at being kept in the dark, but she ached, oh how she ached, for Quinn’s touch again.

With the thought of Quinn, she got herself off, but it wasn’t as satisfying as she wanted it to be. But it did tire her enough that soon Rachel’s eyes were fluttering shut of their own accord, and she was slipping into a sleep where her dreams would only be of Quinn, and whatever horrors awaited them.

…

“Camera C pushing in on Leo,” Quinn said into her walkie as Leo approached the breakfast table.

“Good morning gentlemen,” Leo said on screen with a smile, “How did everyone sleep?”

Rachel slipped in the back, Quinn didn’t need to turn to see and simply snapped, “Over here Goldberg.”

She also didn’t need to look to know that Rachel rolled her eyes as she dropped down into the chair beside where Quinn stood. Nevertheless, Quinn pushed a coffee towards her. It was a peace offering that was met with suspicious eyes.

“Don’t think you can gift your way out of this-” Rachel whispered as Quinn turned her laptop to face her and hit play.

“What you missed last night,” she said, cutting Rachel off.

Rachel leaned forward to watch, taking a sip of the coffee. It was muted but the screen was replayed the feed from Vanessa’s room.

“She had this covered…” Rachel murmured in confusion. Quinn waited a few moments for Rachel to see what they were doing, then reached over and fast forwarded to the part where Vanessa recovered the camera.

“She knew exactly what she was doing,” Quinn said, hand resting on the back of Rachel’s chair, “I want you to talk to her today, figure out what she’s planning because there is a plan there. Okay?”

Rachel nodded, then seemed to remember she was mad at Quinn and glanced up at her, tight lipped and through narrowed eyes, “Whatever you say boss.”

Quinn sighed and rolled her eyes back to the monitors where Mike had turned beat red. Leo was leaning back in his chair, arms behind his head.

“Take that back,” Mike all but snarled.

Leo continued to grin, “Just because you’re too much of a little boy to make a move doesn’t mean we all can’t. Vee was screaming my name all night, on her back, just how I like ‘em.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Mike said.

“Camera A, zoom in on Mike. Camera B, Leo,” Quinn said.

“Cmon Mikey, it’s all just fun, I’m sure you’ve said your share about Vee after a day of feeling her up on the ice,” Leo jeered and that’s when Mike’s fist connected with his jaw.

And with that, Quinn cheered.

[shadow-passes]

Experiment

It was a bleak February morning when Sachiko Yagami arrived at the resting place of her son. She was dressed as all mourning women should be. A black dress with the only off setting color being a string of ivory pearls draped around her slender throat. She had come early today for it was the last day she would ever get to see him. He was to be cremated this afternoon. The idea still made her sick with grief. A mother was never supposed to do this. Never to see their child pass before them. It was unacceptable and Sachiko couldn’t help the way her face twisted. The morgue was cold, minimalistic in decor, it was not meant to hold life. “ Ms. Yagami..”   The voice was low, sympathetic even. “I’m fine. I’m ready.” She lied. She would never be ready. She had seen one body before and that had been more than enough. The portly young man only nodded, almond eyes downcast. It was always hard when the family got involved.   Inhaling, Sachiko stepped into the large tiled room.   Chrome tables lined one wall, all holding various tools, others holding stacks of papers. The other was lined with what looked like lockers. All locked with numbers adorning the metal surfaces in bold black lettering. Locker number 8 was opened well before she had arrived. It’s contents laid bare against a smooth silvered table. Mist still trickled from the now vacant chamber, proving just how cold that tiny dark space was. There he was; her only son dressed in soft blues and vibrant reds. He looked beautiful as a porcelain doll. Lips a pallid blue, never to utter a good morning nor bid a good night. If she didn’t know any  better Sachiko would have thought him asleep.   Oh her boy, her sweet boy had been taken from her. Sachiko moved without thought; closer and closer until her hands were wrapped around lifeless fingers. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying. Only when warm tears clouded her vision did she scrub them uselessly away. She held onto that freezing, stiff hand for all her worth. This was no longer her child, just an empty cold shell and yet….she did not lessen her grip.   “Oh Light…” Sachiko’s voice cracked, bearing her sorrow. “ My sweet boy…” Something was calling him. Disturbed, warped, frightening even as it called again and again into the freezing expanse. It was his mother’s voice that woke him. Her warm hands tightly wrapped around his limp, freezing palm to the point it burned. Low, shallow, thin breathes began to roll down a throat that should be still. To fill up lungs that had long since ceased and to pump a heart that had been still for nearly a week. Thoughts flooded his mind, images, shards of memory, everything rushing in all at once. He would have screamed until his throat collapsed but as it was Light could only breathe in somber stillness. He couldn’t move…..at all. No matter how hard he tried nothing happened.   The scorching of his hand had long since ceased. The voice of his mother disappeared leaving only hollow silence in its place. /W-Wait!/ He wanted to cry, shout, something, anything but lay in freezing darkness. For the second time in his life Light felt an overwhelming, suffocating terror sink deep into his bones.He remembered everything clearly now. He had died, suffocating on his own blood in a filthy puddle. Every ounce of pride he once had shattered the moment that bullet sank into his flesh.  He had died as he lived; a coward. If he had died…why was…? / Wait….Whats../ The thoughts were slow, sluggish and made his head begin to throb.His lungs wound unto themselves like split-ended threads coiling into a spool.They weighed heavy in his chest, smothering his heartbeat. A dull aching throb begins to pound in between his temples.  His headache paints spirals in his skull, swirling and swirling and his mouth goes dry. /I’m alive? How? No, why…I had died…/ The questions burned his mind and slithered into his heart. Light had never been one to feverishly cling to baseless belief but.. / I am God.Why else would i have been brought back?/ The question went unanswered for some time. / There is no other reason. This world is still rotting, still brimming with such filth./ The thoughts made him seethe. His body shook both out of the cold and the righteous rage that pulsed through him. / Those who are making it rot are truly evil. They deserve to die not me. I am Justice, I am God and I WILL create a better world./ He was given a purpose and he would fulfill this purpose to his dying breathe. He had sacrificed his mind, body, his very soul and he had been rewarded. Struck down by impure, squalid individuals only fueled his belief. He had been unjustly dethroned. He would reclaim that mantel and crush any and all who dared to oppose him. He was the one true God. He was brought back to continue his work.There could be no other reason. That was the only thing that kept him from falling into a pit of frenzied panic. Humans feared the unknown, basic fact, so Light simply gave it a face. Light tried hard to open his eyes. It was painful just breathing to even attempt to move made him quiver. The noise around him was back, this time much deeper then before, two sets of sounds mumbling here and there. Light could not make out words only the guttural sounds that bounced off his ear drums. The frigid darkness was split by a thin layer of blinding light, one followed by another until finally both eyes were open. They couldn’t focus, everything was too bright, too loud and Light closed them once again. Something particularly loud grated against his ears and bounced around the room.   Takahiro Sugimoto didn’t believe in ghosts. Doing what he did, seeing as many bodies as he did, the belief long vanished. Well….until today.  A dead man was staring up at him, eyes bloodshot, irises a pitch black and unwavering as they watched. Takahiro did what any normal man would in this situation. He screamed, tumbled and knocked a tray of surgical equipment to the floor. The tools all slapped against the tile with an array of sounds, none pleasant to hear. The body did not move. It did not lunge for him nor did it crawl from the place it lay. Takahiro rose from his place on the floor. His limbs were trembling, his heart was pounding and he suddenly felt nauseous. “H-Hello?” This person was….alive? The Cremation Operator looked hesitant, fearful even to approach but he did so out of better judgment. Surely this must be a prank! He was a transfer from out of state. His colleagues were simply pulling him around for shits and giggles. It had to be. The closer he grew, the more he searched for hoses or mechanics the more that comfort died. The body was breathing, labored but still breathing. The eyes again opened this time they tried to look around. Red blotched eyes rolling from one end to another. They did not rest on him merely passing over to peek at the walls. Did it…..not see him? Takahiro took solace in that. So far it did nothing but breathe and peer about. So far anyway. What if it tried to move? To get off the table? The young man hurriedly moved across the room eyes never leaving the body. His fingers were slick with sweat and they trembled so hard he barely managed to dial the phone at all.The slow rolling monotone beeped in rhythm with his heart. Sweat had already begun to bead down his forehead to collect in the lapels of his shirt dampening the fabric at an alarming rate. Several minutes ticked by before the phone finally clicked alive and a voice greeted him. “Chief of Police this is Aizawa.” The phone was silent, the only sound being a strange wheezing. They sounded sick or in pain by the way the noise labored. “ Hello? “ Aizawa looked down to the receiver and indeed the phone was connected. “I-Its alive! I-It’s..I-Its..” the voice screeched loudly into the phone. Aizawa tilted his ear away as the sound grew louder. “Sir, your going to need to calm down.” The voice on the line continued on with its frantic tone. “ You need to send somebody! I didn’t….I didn’t know who to call….” “ Sir- “ The police chief was briefly cut off by a jarring clatter from the other line and then gasping. “ It woke up! Please just send somebody here..” “ What woke up? Where are you calling from? “ “THE BODY! It just woke up! Please send somebody!! I-I’m….” Another heavy pause. Aizawa’s face scrunched and his eyebrows pinched together. Something was very strange. Were they high? Drunk? Their voice didn’t sound slurred, perhaps heavy drugs? “Please sir, calm down and tell me your name, exactly where you are and your emergency.” The poor fool on the other line sounded scared witless. “M-My name?” They sounded breathless, confused. “O-Oh my name is Takahiro Sugimoto.” Decent enough start. “ Take a deep breathe Takahiro and please explain to me the situation.” Matsuda had finally looked up from his desk. Bending forward in his office chair to tap a finger against the grained wood. “We got a call?” The young cop had been bored stiff lately. Aizawa waved him off with an exasperated look. The plastic phone creaked and sounded as if it was to snap. “Who?” Aizawa suddenly sounded angry. Rage clipping the edges of his voice easily as a knife would slid through paper. “Light Yagami sir.”  Takahiro repeated, his once erratic breathing finally returning to normalcy. The Police Chief looked about to toss the phone across the room. Just the very name set him in a tizzy. He did not want to ever hear that name. He wanted to forget and  purge himself of that /monster/. Light Yagami was not a man. He was a demon, a wolf hiding amongst a flock of sheep. He had died and Aizawa had witnessed it. Witnessed the dying pathetic pleas of a frightened little boy up until his voice stilled and his body sank into a red puddle. So why was somebody calling about him? About him waking up? It must be some sick prank. “A-And..” A breathe.” And what is he doing currently?” “ He is…..He is just..just looking around. He hasn’t moved onl-” “Where exactly are you?” Even if it was some terrible joke he couldn’t simply ignore it. Aizawa dug through his desk, produced a note pad and pen and began scribbling down an address. The phone was hung up with more force then needed. The desk chair sputtered out behind him slapping into the adjacent wall. Matsuda hurriedly rose from his seat and snagged  his coat without even a word. “You might just get the money you spent on that suit back.” It was a grim, ill-tempered excuse of a joke but it was the only thing keeping Aizawa from breaking out into a rage. If this was some sick fucks excuse of a joke heads were going to roll. Both men left the building in a hurry, bracing as the wind had picked up pace. A nasty storm was beginning to roll in from the North.

@ywlir

[ohmytheon]

93 Percent Stardust (Rogue One Daemon AU, 2)

Here’s the second part to my Rogue One Daemons AU. I should’ve taken a nap while my daughter was sleeping, but I’ve really been itching to write. I’m sure I’ll regret it later when she’s waking up every hour to eat. As of right now though, I’m really glad I did this. I had a lot of fun. This is my “me time” and it’s necessary for any parent. She’s waking up now though!

Summary: Cassian’s daemon settles when he is six years-old, almost completely unheard of, and Jyn’s when she is eight. They’re light years apart from one another, souls born of the same loss, but in time, they will come together to do the most extraordinary things in the name of rebellion. (Or, Rogue One with daemons, plus extra backstory scenes.)

Or might the soul clone itself, create a perfect imitation of something yet to be defined? In this way, can a reflection be altered? ― Ellen Hopkins, Identical

When Cassian killed his first man, the explosion of dust that had been the man’s daemon startled him so badly that he actually yelped. One second, they had been in a tense standoff, the man sneering over the idea that a boy thought he had the guts to pull the trigger, and the next Cassian squeezed his index finger and a blaster bolt struck the man right in the chest.

His daemon shattered into the same glittering dust that had been left of his family’s daemons, coating Cassian and floating in the air. Cassian stumbled backwards, coughing and waving a hand in the air to clear his face of dust, and nearly fell on his ass after tripping over a rock. Instead, he fell back against a wall, panting heavily, and opened his eyes to stare forward.

There was the man lying on his belly, a look of surprise on his half-turned face. His daemon was nowhere to be seen. Cassian’s eyes were locked on the golden particles as they gracefully fell to the ground like snow. It reminded him painfully of Fest. He hadn’t been on a planet that had snow in years. He’d started to wonder if maybe Fest was one of the few that did, though that hardly seemed possible in a galaxy so vast. He had never seen jungles before leaving his home planet either, but they certainly existed.

Amaya peeked out from her hiding spot in between a cluster of rocks. “You killed him.”

“He was taunting me,” Cassian pointed out, like that mattered. He grimaced at the words and turned away from her. He hated it when he sounded like the thirteen year-old that he was and tried very hard to be more like the adults that he was surrounded by. Sure, he was the youngest member in the Intelligence unit, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good at his job.

Still, he’d never killed anyone before. Shot someone, yes, when he was being shot at, but killed…

“His daemon--” Cassian paused and pressed his lips together. Amaya walked over to him and cocked her head to the side, the look that said she was listening carefully. “That’s what happened to my parents’ daemons. They didn’t just die; they turned into...nothing.”

It felt worse than death. It felt like a complete erasure of their person, just as his memories of them were slowly beginning to fade over time. Seven years had passed since their deaths, longer than he’d known them alive. There were nights when his memories didn’t feel real, as if his mother and father had only existed in a dream and he had only ever known the Rebellion and Amaya.

“Does that scare you?” Amaya asked.

Cassian dropped his eyes and tucked the blaster gun away. “It doesn’t really make me feel anything.” It felt strange to admit that, like there was something wrong with him, but once the shock had worn away, there had been nothing to take its place. He glanced down at her. “Does it scare you?”

“It’s hard to be scared of nothing,” Amaya replied.

He frowned, feeling a hint of resentfulness at her own evasive nature even with him, but then the warmth of her comfort poured over him through their bond and it went away. They were both secretive due to the environment that they had grown up in. Sighing, he let an arm fall to his side so that she could leap onto the sleeve of his jacket and crawl onto his shoulders. She nuzzled the side of his face with her head.

After taking one last look at the man, Cassian slipped through the alleyways in order to link up with the rest of his squad. There were some parts of the mission that he was better equipped to take on than grown men. But that Imperial soldier had been wrong. Cassian wasn’t a mere boy. He hadn’t been a boy for a very long time. His soul had been settled for too long to still be considered one.

*

The words, “Wait here,” came out of Blair’s mouth, and so Jyn trusted them.

Saw might’ve kept things close to the vest, especially when it came to her, but his Blair had never lied to her. She was reticent except when she was angry, which was getting more and more with the passing days, so Jyn had come to listen carefully whenever the lynx daemon did speak. She let Saw do almost all of the talking, even keeping her distance from the other Partisans’ daemons, not as if she was above them but more like she could not afford to open up to them.

A leader had to be one step apart from the rest. She and Saw could not be on the same levels as the other Partisans and still be considered their leader. Even Jyn, who had been with him since she was eight, could not stand on the same pedestal as him.

But Blair indulged Felix in a way that she did not other daemons. She let Felix curl up around her, greeted him almost warmly whenever they arrived back at base camp, and even licked him on the head when they came back covered in dirt and blood. While many of the other Partisans and their daemons were wary of Felix, only because of what he was capable of, she was not. She didn’t see something dangerous or broken. She saw him for his clever mind and usefulness. She liked his fangs.

It was easy to look into the lynx daemon’s eyes and believe her.

“Wait here,” she said, as Saw handed her a blaster.

Jyn nodded her head, but it was Felix that asked the question, “When will you be back?”

“When we can,” Blair replied. It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was enough.

Saw and Blair had both taken them in after her mother’s death and father’s disappearance. They hadn’t had to, but they had. Growing up under them and their tutelage had been rough and painful more often than not. Saw wasn’t one for comforting and Blair was aloof. But bits of warmth bled through every now and then and it was hard to begrudge someone that had taught her how to fend for herself. She was stronger than most, fiercer than many, and a force to be reckoned with -- and that was without the threat of Felix’s deadly bite.

It had been eight long years since her family had been ripped apart by the man in white, the same amount of time she had lived with them. She’d forgotten her promise to Felix and herself.

Later, when the bitterness didn’t burn so hotly through their bond, when Felix opened his mouth to speak to another daemon instead of just hissing, Jyn would think about the look on Blair’s face. Had there been any pity? Any sorrow? Any longing? Saw was a cold man. A decent man, she had thought, but cold and unaccustomed to being anything else. Cutting her off like a dying limb had been the logical choice for him concerning the Partisans, even if it hadn’t been an easy one. But Blair? How had she felt? Did she see other snake daemons and think of Felix’s red, yellow, and black bands?

I don’t miss her, Felix would viciously think, but Jyn always knew that it wasn’t true. Felix held onto the memories that she couldn’t bare to take. She locked them away and he took them for her, carried their weight, cradled their grief. Through flashes of hurt and betrayal, he did miss Blair, just as he missed her mother’s Leopold and father’s Evangeline. He missed not being shunned by everyone else but her.

But back in that bunker, Jyn looking up at them, Felix wrapped loosely around her neck, she made the stupid mistake of trusting them. She had sworn that she wouldn’t -- she had promised Felix that she would allow no one else in -- and yet she had. It had been foolish and the days she spent in that bunker would turn her heart cold. Felix alone burned hot while she did everything she could to lock her thoughts and emotions away.

Never again, she promised and Felix agreed. Never again.

*

It started when they were young, as a game, to pass the time and to make life on base more bearable. Whenever people would ask him what his daemon was, he usually told them the truth, but sometimes, he would say something else. To the unsuspecting person, he could pass her off as a binturong or a falanouc, but more often than not, he would list a different type of mongoose. There were so many kinds. No one questioned him.

After all, why would someone lie about what their daemon was? What kind of person would do that?

What a daemon settled as represented who the person was on the inside, or so everyone said. Cassian wasn’t sure why this specific type of mongoose fit him when he had never heard of it before and so it was easy to tell people that she was something else. Amaya reveled in it. She loved the trickery. It was fun when very little was fun on base. She was so straight-faced whenever he lied about what she was, only grinning and snickering after the person had walked away.

Neither one of them expected it to become a part of them.

Cassian was walking through the hanger as he flicked through the pages of the datapad detailing their upcoming mission, his nose buried so deep that it was a wonder he didn’t bump into anyone or anything. He kept a slower pace than normal without thinking as Amaya scampered at his side in a playful, energetic manner. They weaved their way through the expansive room as one despite their extreme different in size.

Slinging his pack further over his shoulder, Cassian finally paused when he found what he was looking for. “You’re going to be a ruddy mongoose this time.” He spun around and sat down on a crate, giving Amaya time to climb her way on top and step on his thigh before showing her the picture on the screen. “Not much of a difference.”

“A bit bigger,” Amaya noted as she peered at the datapad curiously.

“Well, you’ve always been small for your size,” Cassian pointed out with a grin on his face as he slid a hand down her slender back.

Amaya wiggled out from underneath his hand and shot him a glare. “That’s because you’re so scrawny. You haven’t been eating well.”

Cassian shrugged his shoulders. “Rations have been shorter than normal recently.”

“No, you gave some of your ration cards away,” Amaya countered. “I saw you.”

He rolled his eyes, but he didn’t look back at her. It was easy to lie to everyone else -- it just came as second nature to him by now at only eighteen -- but it was downright impossible to lie to his daemon. Not just because she was a part of him, his soul, but because it was her. She had a way of drawing the truth out of people.

“I wasn’t hungry,” Cassian grumbled, thinking of the hollow look in those children’s eyes. He remembered that look well from his time as an orphan on Fest and his first few months with the Alliance. Not many of his memories from that time had lasted throughout the years, but that feeling had. It was overwhelming even now. He hadn’t been able to stomach seeing it on other children’s faces. He wasn’t cold enough yet. “They needed it more.”

“You need to keep up your strength,” Amaya told him, pulling up on her hind legs and pressing a little paw softly against his chest. “It’s important that you look after yourself as well.”

Cassian said nothing in response because there was nothing he could say. Amaya knew how he was. He fought and fought and fought until there was nothing left in him. Old enough to no longer be a child, but still too young to be considered a man, he was still fighting for his place in the Rebellion, even though he’d already established himself very well in the Intelligence division.

He could no longer be considered innocent. That was for sure. Innocence had been burned out of him a long time ago; he’d put the torch to it himself.

When he finally glanced back down at her, Amaya was giving him a sad look, but she kept quiet as well. She knew when to speak and when not to speak. Besides, more often than not, she didn’t have to say anything. Their bond was strong. When she wanted him to know, he could feel everything she was thinking and more through it. Right now, it was as open as could be and he soaked it in.

Sometimes, he forgot what comfort felt like. The Rebellion was not good at it and the two of them had learned to always be as hard and jagged as they had become the moment she had settled when he was six. Every now and then though, he felt it with her and he gathered that warmth in his heart. It was the only thing that could settle him some nights after certain missions.

But sometimes, it was like Amaya didn’t even know what to do with it. Cassian couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before she too forgot what comfort was.

*

The first time Jyn’s bond with Felix was truly strained, it hadn’t been of her own doing. Most prisons kept them together, as the taboo surrounding daemons was strong throughout the entire galaxy. Guards didn’t touch any daemon that didn’t belong to them, instead using their daemons to corral the unruly ones. Most of them had large, burly daemons anyways, and troopers almost always had dog daemons large enough to take control.

Wobani was different though. Harsher, colder, much less thoughtful. The first thing they did upon bringing her to the prison planet was tear Felix away from her. It was only then that she knew that she was going to die here.

The shock of having Felix ripped off of her arm by metal claw caused Jyn to stumble backwards into her cell. The door was shut before she could even regain her balance. She landed hard against the wall and bounced forward, throwing herself at the metal bars and reaching out as far as she could. It took her a solid few seconds to realize that the screaming she was hearing was coming from her mouth.

“Give him back, you bastards!” Jyn howled. “Give him back!”

Felix fought hard, his body thrashing wildly in the air, but the metal clamp was tight around his head and neck. It must’ve been built specifically for snake daemons. He couldn’t even open his jaws to scream in return, but she heard him in her mind. His shrieks ricocheted throughout her skull, making her feel dizzy, and she waved her hand frantically through the bars as if she could reach him.

Instead of giving him back to her though, the troopers took him farther and farther away from her, until it felt as if her very being was being ripped apart. Jyn panted heavily, gasping for air, as the stitches that made up her body were torn piece by piece. Her legs buckled underneath her and she slid down to the ground, unable to remain standing. It felt as if someone was physically ripping her heart out of her chest.

“Give him back!” Jyn cried out desperately. “Please!”

Only then did the troopers stop. They looked at one another and then down at Felix, who had gone limp, his body swaying in the air. Jyn was still clawing for him, but her fingers were digging into the metal floor. Sweat covered her entire face. She was surprised that blood hadn’t started pouring out of nose or eyes.

Finally, they brought Felix back to her and she almost cried in relief. Instead she bit her lip hard enough to make it bleed, her eyes focused only on him. They released the metal contraption and he dropped to the ground. In a sluggish, almost drugged manner, Felix slithered back into her hand, but didn’t seem to have the strength to wrap himself around her arm like normal. She jerked him back into the jail cell like they might try to snatch him again and held him tightly against her chest, her heart beat hard and loud enough to cause him to stir.

“Don’t cause anymore problems again, Halik,” the stormtrooper warned her, “or we’ll really see how far your bond can stretch.”

Next to them, their daemons watched silently, their dark eyes equally dull and emotionless. They never seemed to move at the same speed as their humans, like there was some sort of delay. Severed, she couldn’t help but think with a shudder and she smoothed a hand down Felix’s shaking body. Stormtroopers weren’t connected with their daemons like everyone else. Some were surprised that they even had them. To become like them was one of Jyn’s greatest fears.

I’d rather die, Felix said, his voice strong despite the weariness in it.

We will die, Jyn thought and tried hard to squash the feeling before it flittered over to Felix, turning it into rage as quickly as she could.

It was too late though. The moment she had thought it, he had heard it. Nothing escaped either one of them. Their bond was always open, a constant flow of emotion and thoughts. Felix slithered up her neck and pressed his head against her pulse point and she closed his eyes. Already, his heart was steadier than hers. She wished, if only for a moment, that she was as strong as him.

You are though, Felix told her. You always have been.

She couldn’t help but be afraid that, if they were separated in any way, that he would be able to handle it while she would break. She couldn’t let that happen. For once, she couldn’t fight their prison and she hated it. Anger burned brightly in her, but there was nowhere to put it, not in this cage. She longed to lash out again, but the idea of Felix being taken away from her again was too horrifying and stilled her when nothing had before.

*

K-2 was different. Amaya could touch him, but not really touch him.

The droid seemed at a loss with her for many years, flickering between curious, irritated, unconcerned, and even a hint protective at times. Cassian could still remember Amaya’s laugh when Kay had touched her nose and nothing had happened. It was strange -- feeling nothing when the anticipation had caused his heart to race -- but the absence of a reaction was still felt.

She liked to perch himself on his shoulders so that she could see farther, looking as alert as a hawk. He could hear the scrape and click of her claws as she scampered up the metal and then Kay’s long-suffering robotic sigh -- or at least Cassian assumed it was a sigh. Like many droids, Kay had something of a personality of his own, but it did seem stronger than most. He spoke whatever came into his circuits, even if it upset people.

Cassian’s reprogramming of the Imperial security droid had not been his best work, but he had done it quick and under a lot of pressure. He’d been grounded for nearly a month following his reckless behavior, but he knew that it had been worth it, if only because of the delight it caused Amaya. She had always been curious of droids, prodding and sniffing them, much to most of their detriment. Apparently most daemons ignored droids, though no one really knew why. Maybe it was because of their almost-but-not-quite sentient behavior.

However, Kay was unique in his own way. His surly behavior caused Amaya to cackle, every grim statistic making her even worse. Cassian loved it, though he never said anything aloud. It had been a long time since he had seen Amaya like this, so long in fact that he wasn’t sure that his mind had made up the memories. Fest was another lifetime ago. Gone was the boy and unsettled daemon that found their family dead and dust. The Rebellion had carved him into a man and a cold one at that. Seeing Amaya like that with Kay though brought something back to him that he’d nearly lost.

“Don’t you think it strange?” Kay asked him one day while they were flying back to Yavin IV.

Cassian kept his focus on the panel in front of him as he flew the ship. “Think what strange?”

“Daemons,” Kay replied matter-of-factly. “You keep your weaknesses on the outside for everyone to see and yet no one goes for them. It would be easier to take a person out by hurting their daemon.”

“You don’t do that,” Cassian told him, pulling his concentration away from the panel and focusing it on Kay. There was the same neural, robotic expression on the droid’s face and yet somehow it was as if Cassian could pull some sort of emotion out of it. Curiosity today, he thought. “You don’t mess with someone’s daemon.”

“Why? Because of some arbitrary rule?” Kay questioned, like it was the most logical thing in the world.

“You just don’t,” Cassian said in a harder tone. “It’s a taboo, one of the most horrific things a person can do.”

Kay shook his head and went back to checking their flight route. “You’ve done a lot of things that one might consider horrific, Cassian, though they were for the good of the Rebellion.”

They weren’t meant to be harsh or even a bad reflection of him, but Kay’s words cut Cassian right to the bone. He glanced down at Amaya, who was curled in a ball at his feet. She was pretending to be asleep, but he knew that she was awake and listening to the conversation. Daemons slept with their partner’s slept, although Amaya had had him convinced when he was a child that she could do otherwise. He clenched his fist tightly, his blunt nails digging into his palm, and then released it.

However much that Kay’s words had struck him, they weren’t wrong. The droid spoke the truth. Cassian had done a lot of bad things for the Rebellion. The only line he refused to cross was that taboo. A spike of fear that it would one day be asked of him shot through his mind, only to be replaced by Amaya’s soothing touch.

You’re a good man, Cassian, she told him without looking up at him.

He closed his eyes. It had to be enough. She had to be enough.

When Cassian opened his eyes, he turned to face the droid again. “Promise me you’ll never hurt another person’s daemon, Kay.”

“If you insist on civilities,” Kay said in a manner that was as close to huffing in irritation as a droid could get. “But if anyone or anything tries to hurt your daemon, my hand will be forced. Your safety and health is more of a concern than a taboo.”

Cassian smiled very faintly and he heard Amaya chuckle low under her breath. But the fear was still there, hiding in the back of his mind, like a ticking time bomb. Some things were impossible to bury. As a man who had been forced to bury a lot over the years, he knew this all too well unfortunately.

JYN ERSO: coral snake -- Felix, means “lucky” CASSIAN ANDOR: indian grey mongoose -- Amaya, means “the end” GALEN ERSO: spotted salamander -- Evangeline, means “good news” LYRA ERSO: honey badger -- Leopold, means “people, bold, lion” ORSON KRENNIC: barn owl -- Valda, means “power, rule” SAW GERRERA: eurasian lynx -- Blair, means “plain, field, battlefield”

[jbankai89]

Never Let Me Go [14/37]

Chapter Thirteen – New Beginnings

Mist.

Yuri could not see or hear anything; the world was lost in a haze.

He could feel a dull, distant bodily ache. He hurt—why did he hurt? Yuri couldn't remember.

Yuri moaned, and tried to sit up, but his movements were slow and sluggish, hindered by his bone-deep exhaustion, like he was a dinosaur trapped in tar. Around him, the white mist did not fade. It fogged his sight as thoroughly as it did the contents of his own mind. The last thing he remembered acutely was leaving Otabek's house. What could have happened to cause such a great lapse of memory?

“Where am I?”

He spoke the words without expecting a response, and when a voice responded to him, the low timbre of an elderly man, and not a younger one, Yuri found himself caught completely by surprise.

“Yuratchka, you are home,” it said gently. “You are safe; no one here will hurt you.”

I know that voice...

It was genuine struggle to step from his dreams and into the waking world. The dreams were warm, comforting, and to return to harsh reality meant dealing with whatever it was that had brought him to this pain.

Unwillingly, Yuri cracked his eyes open.

The light made them sting, and his vision swam. Memory upon memory assaulted his mind as everything came rushing back all at once.

The escape—the attack—Otabek.

Otabek had saved his life.

Yuri blinked hard, and slowly the room came into focus. As it did, he felt his heart sink. He was back in the manor. He recognized the infirmary well enough from his explorations of the expansive house, though he could not recall ever being in the room before this. It smelled sharply of antiseptic, and felt unnervingly clean, almost too pristine to be real.

In his peripheral vision, Yuri could see someone sitting next to him. He turned to him, and blinked again in quiet shock. He blinked a second time to be certain, but the vision did not fade.

“Welcome back, Yuratchka,” Nikolai Plisetsky said warmly, and Yuri felt tears sting his eyes.

“G-Grandpa?” Yuri asked, uncaring how his voice cracked weakly. “Is—is it really you?”

Nikolai reached forward and rested a hand over one of Yuri's.

“It's me, Yuri. I am here, and you're lucky to be here too. Mr Altin fetched for me the moment they returned and you were tended to,” Nikolai explained. “From the lavish gifts his helper all but threw at me, it seemed as  though he was determined I come to see you at any cost.”

Yuri's expression soured at this, but he kept his mouth shut. His grandfather still stood as the only person Yuri was ever polite to, and kept his rude retort to himself. Even so, he chortled at Yuri's expression.

“I got the impression that he cares for you a great deal, with how he spent hours and hours sitting at your bedside with me,” Nikolai said gently, “do you not like him?”

“He and I...we have a complicated relationship,” Yuri muttered awkwardly, while he gazed down at his knees and fiddled with the thin blanket. Despite the fact that he was overjoyed to see his grandfather, he couldn't help but wonder, too. Why was he here? What was Otabek planning? And most importantly, what was his punishment going to be this time? He'd run away again, after all, there was a way these things are done.

The memory of his last punishment floated to the surface of his mind, and he shivered.

“Most alpha and omega pairs do,” Nikolai replied gently, drawing Yuri from his thoughts. “You are very lucky, he went to great lengths to get me here, and as you know, that is not very common.”

“I'm just not sure what his motives are for bringing you here,” Yuri mumbled, and glanced back up at his grandfather. His warm smile did not change as he looked down at his grandson, and once again Yuri averted his gaze.

“I did overhear him ranting and raving about how his happiness no longer mattered, and all he wanted was for you to be happy,” Nikolai said at last, “perhaps it has something to do with that.”

“Well, I guess that—wait, what?” Yuri's gaze snapped up to his grandfather, who was still smiling at him warmly.

“Based on the theatrics that came with his rages, it seemed as though that particular personality quirk was new,” Nikolai said, his tone almost teasing, “was he ever...did he hurt you, Yuratchka?”

“Depends on your meaning of hurt,” Yuri mumbled as everything that had happened over the last few months flooded into his mind. He clenched his eyes shut, but before he could even get a handle on his anguish, he felt tears sting his eyes and streak his cheeks.

A warm, withered hand closed over Yuri's, and between pathetic sniffles, he looked up at the older man, who was regarding him with a familiar, comforting smile.

“It is over, Yuri,” he said gently as he patted Yuri's hand. “Tell me everything, and let it go.”

And he did.

Yuri held back nothing, and told his grandfather everything that had happened since he was first taken to his first Omega House. He told of his determination to escape, his multiple beatings for his insolence, all the way to his recapture a few months ago, and Otabek's claim on him. He detailed everything Otabek said, his beating following his first escape attempt, the lonely isolation, the way he often felt like a child, how Otabek never saw him as a person, merely an object. He talked of how terrified he always felt, and not just for himself, but for Yuuri, Minami, and the others as well.

Yuri talked for close to an hour, and his throat ached, his face was wet with tears, but he did not allow himself to stop. He could rest when the whole story had been told, and his grandfather knew every single detail of his harrowing ordeal.

Yuri ended his tale with the detail of his second escape attempt and his altercation with the tiger that led him back to the manor—his prison.

“I don't know what will happen now,” Yuri said in a hoarse mumble while he directed his words to his knees, “I don't know what Otabek will do, or what my p-punishment will be, or even why he brought you here—the real reason, I mean.” Yuri glanced up at his grandfather as he finished, and he saw a startling display of tears upon the older man's face to match his own.

Nikolai abandoned all polite pretenses, and he pulled his grandson into a tight hug. He was careful to not jar him too badly or upset his injuries, and Yuri clung to him as he broke down completely and wept into his grandfather's old brown work shirt. The garment was oil-stained and it smelled of fried fish. The odour, far from unpleasant, made Yuri feel as though at last—at last he was finally home.

“Oh, Yuratchka, I do not think you know Mr Altin as well as you think you do,” he said gently, and rubbed the sobbing omega's back consolingly. “He did not bring you back here to imprison you, that much is obvious. He was scared for you—he was terrified that you would never wake up. He blamed himself for everything that had happened to you. Never in my life have I seen someone so overwhelmed with grief and regret.”

Yuri bit the inside of his cheek, hiccoughing sobs petering out as anguish was replaced by frustration. How could his grandfather know Otabek? He'd only met him within the last few days—he was certain he couldn't've been asleep for longer than that, given that his hair hadn't grown at all—a small sign that the passage of time between his attack and regaining of consciousness was fairly short.

Maybe he's just saying that to make me feel better, Yuri thought bitterly, Grandpa can't be bought, I know that for sure. The only thing I can come up with is that he's just trying to keep me calm. Maybe he'll tell me what he really thinks once I can walk normally again.

Nikolai moved back to the chair he'd been sitting in after he helped Yuri to get back into a comfortable position upon the hospital bed. Without being asked, and knowing that Yuri would want to know anyway, he filled Yuri in on all he'd missed since being taken away. There wasn't much; in most ways his grandfather's life hadn't really changed, though he did admit to donating the extra money he made from his carvings to the OLF, instead of using it for food or upkeep of the house, which was a surprise.

“I was a foolish old man,” Nikolai said, and reached out to pat Yuri's hand again. “I did not realize just how painful losing you would be, and when I started to hear stories about what actually happened in those Houses...well, I am just too old to stand on the front lines with those young protesters, but I do what I can to help them, in the hopes that I could get you back one day.” Nikolai's expression fell a little. “I am sorry, Yuri—I am sorry that you had to endure this.”

“It's not your fault, Grandpa,” Yuri replied, though he directed his answer to his knees as he spoke. “I...I know that you had no choice, I don't blame you for any of this.”

“Ah, but perhaps you should,” he said with a small, humourless smile. “Perhaps if I had fought harder for you, none of this would have happened.”

“No.” Yuri shook his head, and finally glanced back up to his grandfather. “Grandpa, I don't blame you for this. You didn't choose to let me go, and they might have hurt you if you'd tried to do something. I'd feel even worse if something bad happened to you.”

Nikolai's guilty look began to dissolve, and he reached over for Yuri's hand again. Smiling, Yuri reached out at the same time, and offered the limb a small squeeze.

“You're a good boy, Yuratchka.”

A soft tapping on the bedroom door drew Yuri and Nikolai from their bubble of conversation, and they both looked up to see Otabek peering in the door with a look of uncertainty upon his face. Yuri's stomach turned over uneasily at the sight of the alpha, but Nikolai, in contrast, offered him a nod and small smile in greeting. Yuri's stomach roiled with jealousy at the sight of the expression, but he tried to keep his face blank.

“Yuri, Mr Plisetsky,” Otabek said as he addressed Yuri and Nikolai politely. “Yuri, I need to speak to you in private, then I need to speak to both of you. Would you be comfortable speaking with me without Nikolai present?”

Yuri bit his lip as he glanced from his grandfather to Otabek and back again. In truth, he did not want his grandfather to leave his side. What if he didn't come back? At the same time however, Yuri could assume that Otabek was going to detail his punishment, and he did not want his grandfather to hear that.

Reluctantly, he nodded.

Nikolai did not protest, but merely nodded as he stood up, offered Yuri's shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze, and ambled out of the room.

Otabek waited until Nikolai had slipped outside before he shut the infirmary door behind him and refocused his attention on Yuri. The omega instinctively shrunk back against the pillows, and he felt his heart jump into his throat as Otabek crossed the room and took the chair that his grandfather had occupied not a full minute before.

As usual, Otabek's face was completely unreadable, but blank and calm. Yuri felt his fear amplify when Otabek steepled his fingers and regarded the omega with his full attention.

“So what's it going to be this time?” Yuri asked nervously, unable to keep his voice from quivering, and Otabek raised his eyebrows in question.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My punishment,” Yuri clarified, “what's it going to be this time?”

Otabek's eyebrows seemed to raise even higher, and it was a long moment of awkward silence before the alpha spoke again.

“I believe nearly getting eaten by a tiger is punishment enough,” Otabek said dryly. “So let that be a lesson to you or whatever.”

Yuri smiled weakly, and Otabek lurched forward slightly, as though he intended to touch him, but at the last moment seemed to think better of it, and eased back in his seat.

“As you recall,” Otabek began, his voice trembling a little, which came as something as a shock to Yuri—he couldn't recall ever heard his voice shake before. At least, not out of nervousness. “At the party, Leo de la Iglasia's omega, Guang-Hong, made a remark about your...erm, devices being barbaric. Cruel.”

“I remember,” Yuri replied with a stiff nod. He said no more, and tried to conceal his uncertainty as to where the conversation was headed. He didn't like not knowing.

“At first, I was horrified with myself,” Otabek continued. “I just wanted you so much, I wanted to keep you safe, and I was just...I was very scared of leaving you alone only to have you run away. I didn't quite see it as I should have—like an invasion of privacy.

“In the week after the party, I tried to justify my actions to myself,” Otabek continued. “I was just protecting you, it was for your own good...but they were feeble excuses, I knew that. During that time, Viktor called me over, and it seemed as though Leo had remarked something similar to him in regards to how quickly Viktor had bedded Yuuri. He was very much like me—he didn't really think about what he was doing. It was the way these things have been done in this country since the seventeen-hundreds, why would it change?

“We decided that we needed an outsider's opinion, and Viktor called Leo on behalf of both of us and arranged a meeting. It was...hard. You have met him, you know that he has a cheerful personality, but he held nothing back with us. He did not allow us to hide behind our excuses, and was very blunt about all the damage that we have done to the both of you. It was difficult to hear, but I knew that he was right. That was two days before I removed your tracking implements, and then...”

Otabek trailed off, but he did not need to say it.

Then you ran away.

Despite Otabek's heartfelt explanation, Yuri still did not feel sorry for having bolted. He wanted out, and now Otabek knew how deeply that determination to flee ran. Certainly, he knew what would happen when Yuri got full use of his legs again. Yuri opened his mouth to speak, but Otabek got there first.

“I want to apologize to you now, Yuri,” Otabek said as he focused his gaze intently on the omega, his fingers twisting together in a surprising display of nervousness. “I want to apologize for my selfishness, my jealousy, and my possessiveness—if I had treated you decently from the start, if I had had enough common sense to treat you like a person, not an object, maybe none of this would have happened. I'm sorry, Yuri, I'm sorry for everything.”

Otabek's voice caught, and he looked away from Yuri. If he wasn't mistaken, Yuri was almost certain that he could see a gleam of tears in the alpha's eyes.

“I am sorry for collaring and microchipping you like an animal, I am sorry for touching you without your consent, I am sorry for forcing you to share a bed with me when it was clear that you didn't want to be there, I am sorry for beating you when you tried to escape, I am sorry for threatening you with rape, I am sorry for spying on you through implements in your collar and in your bedroom,” Otabek said, taking the time to speak each sin slowly, and not rush through them like he was composing a list of some kind. Yuri felt himself go a little cold as Otabek voiced the last one, and the alpha hung his head, not bothering to attempt to defend himself. “I do not expect forgiveness, now or in the future. In point of fact, I don't think I deserve it, either—not after all that I've done.”

Yuri appreciated the sentiment. To expect immediate forgiveness would have shown that Otabek was apologizing to make himself feel better, and not because he felt genuine remorse for what he had done. To not ask for it was telling that Otabek may not have completely learnt his lesson, not yet—but he was learning.  

However, there was one thing Yuri knew that he needed to address first, before he could contemplate the grand scheme of all that had happened.

I am sorry for spying on you through implements in your collar and in your bedroom.

What did Otabek put in my bedroom?

“You...spied on me?” Yuri asked, his voice just barely above a horrified whisper, and Otabek flinched as though Yuri had struck him. “Why? What the hell did you have to gain from spying on me?”

“I had a microphone in your collar, cameras and more microphones in your room, and sensors around your door,” Otabek said hollowly, his gaze focused on his knees again as he dug into his pocket and dropped a number of tiny items across Yuri's blanket-covered thighs.

At first, Yuri had thought that they were tiny false diamonds, but as he picked them up one by one to inspect them, he realized that they were the crushed remains of tiny hidden cameras and microphones. Handling them made him feel cold and uneasy, and as he studied the pieces, Otabek resumed speaking.

“They're all gone now, I didn't think you'd believe just my words. I can show you the house surveillance room where all the footage streams to, so that you can see that everything connected to your bedroom is disconnected—permanently. I also had all the wires cut for the sensors around your doors to make sure that it would be next to impossible to start up again without rewiring practically the whole house. I—that was what my father always told me to do with a new omega—put him under surveillance, I mean,” Otabek explained, his voice riddled with shame. “It was for his safety, he always said. But...after you escaped, I realized that it did no good whatsoever, except invade your privacy and make you hate me more when you finally found out.”

“We wouldn't want that...” Yuri mumbled sarcastically, and Otabek's mouth quirked into a small smile.

“I just want...” Otabek trailed off and shook his head. “I don't want you to hurt yourself, so I just want to ask you to please not try any more escape attempts until you've healed, please? You will probably still be recovering through your heat, so I'll have your drugs made available to you, as usual.”

Yuri opened his mouth angrily, immediately intending to contradict him, when the particular word Otabek had used flooded into his mind, closely followed by his tone, and it gave Yuri pause.

Please.

It was not an order that Otabek was issuing him, but a simple request.

He was asking Yuri to temporarily halt his escape attempts, in order to keep him from hurting himself further.

“I can do that,” Yuri confirmed, though the words still grated on him—he didn't like the implication that he was bowing to a command, even as he reminded himself that it wasn't a command—not really, anyway. “Um, since you mentioned the party...have you gotten anywhere with Minami?”

At this, Otabek's entire expression seemed to close off. It all fell behind a blank, featureless curtain, and Yuri felt his stomach turn over uneasily.

“I think I'm close,” Otabek replied after a moment, “if all goes well, we'll have another omega running around the manor inside a month. He is well-protected though, so it may take some time. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Yuri said as he nodded his head once. “Just...” Yuri trailed off and shook his head. He felt like it was a bit of a waste to tell him to hurry, when it was obvious that getting to Minami wasn't as simple as strolling up to the house and stealing him away. “I understand.”

Otabek offered him a smile—a warm, grateful smile that he had never seen before. On another, it may have looked soft and reserved, but on Otabek, it was as good as if he was beaming at Yuri, his mouth stretched in a wide grin. The sight of it made Yuri feel strangely light, and his skin seemed to tingle the longer it went on.

The interview seemed to be over, and Yuri watched in curious silence as the alpha stood up and moved back over to the door. Otabek opened it a crack, and Yuri heard him say, “please join us, we're finished.”

Nikolai stepped back in and offered Yuri a small smile as he took the seat that Otabek had just vacated, and the alpha dragged over a second chair to sit alongside the older man.

“Mr Altin, you said that you wanted to talk with the both of us?” Nikolai prompted when Otabek did not immediately speak, and the alpha nodded.

“Yes, sir,” Otabek replied, and bowed his head in a clear display of gathering his thoughts, then refocused his gaze on Yuri and his grandfather.

“I have made many of mistakes in these last months,” Otabek began, his tone far from nervous and uncertain this time, but strong and self-assured. “I have done far too much damage to completely rectify it, as far as I'm concerned, but, Yuri, now I am going to fulfill your greatest wish.”

“My greatest wish?” Yuri asked, blinking owlishly as he stared at the alpha. Otabek smiled a little, as though he was about to bestow Yuri with a gift of some kind. After a pause, he spoke, and indeed if words were a gift, this certainly was one of the highest order.

“Yuri,” Otabek said gently, “I am letting you leave.”

A/N: Next update will be November 7th. 

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