#and he fixed the seal on the bay door

[apnourry]

What do you do for a living?

resident baddie at the local power sports store. they let me hit things with a forklift and cut boxes open and bully men twice my age it's the best

[h50europe]

BUCK/TOMMY - The Void (What happened after Tommy left Buck's loft)

Tommy’s feet carried him away from Buck’s loft, each step heavier than the last. The door clicked shut behind him, a sound that stretched into eternity. No going back now. He had severed the invisible thread tying him to Evan, and in that final moment, he let “Buck” slip from his lips for the first time. It felt like a seal, a lock snapping into place. As he moved toward his car, a strange emptiness settled over him. Nothing stirred inside. His body shifted to autopilot, mechanical and detached. He slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and the engine growled to life. Then he drove, winding through the streets of L.A. with no destination in mind.

Had he seen this coming? No. Not even a flicker of warning. And he refused to dig into why he had bolted. He shoved the questions down, locking them away. His hands gripped the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. The traffic became his anchor, something to focus on, something to drown out the noise in his head. “See you around… Buck.” The words looped endlessly in an echo he couldn’t shake. They clawed at him, sharp and jagged. He pictured himself as Van Helsing, driving a stake through Dracula’s heart. A ridiculous image, sure, but it fit. It was the only way he could frame the ache, the violence of what he’d just done.

The drive home blurred into a haze. He couldn’t recall the turns, the stops, the city fading into the background, with every mile he left behind. One moment he was on the road, the next he was in his driveway, staring at the dark silhouette of his house. He climbed out of the car, legs unsteady beneath him. For a beat, he stood there, hesitant, before forcing himself to move. The door creaked as he stepped inside. His keys clattered onto the drawer by the entrance, the only sound in the silence. He crossed to the kitchen, pulled a beer from the fridge, and sank onto the couch. The bottle was cold against his skin as he took a slow swig. Then he rolled it between his palms, staring at nothing. Listless. Adrift. The weight of the night felt like a giant weight on his shoulders, but he wouldn’t let it crack him open. Not yet.

The silence was suffocating. He felt hollowed out, like someone had scooped out his insides and left an empty shell. That moment at Buck’s loft replayed in his mind. The way he’d said “Buck” instead of “Evan” wasn’t just a slip. It was deliberate, a wall he’d thrown up to distance himself. But why? He couldn’t face the answer. Not fully. Fear clawed at the edges of his thoughts, fear of vulnerability, losing control, and letting someone in too deep. He’d spent years building this armor around himself, and Evan had slipped through the cracks without even trying. Regret flickered in his eyes, sharp and fleeting. He didn’t want to hurt Evan. That much he knew. But staying felt like a bigger risk, one he couldn’t calculate. The breakup wasn’t rage or betrayal. It was survival. Tommy’s chest tightened as guilt seeped in. He pictured Evan’s face, the confusion, the hurt he’d left behind. He took another swig of beer, hoping it would numb the gnawing ache. It didn’t. Instead, it amplified the chaos inside him. He was angry too, though he couldn’t pin it on anyone but himself. Angry for running, for not having the words, for letting something good slip through his fingers because he didn’t know how to hold on.

Loneliness settled over him. His house had never felt so empty, the dark corners mirroring the void he carried. He rolled the bottle again, the cold glass helping him just enough to keep the spiral at bay. Part of him wanted to go back, to knock on Buck’s door and take it all back. But the other part, the louder part, told him he’d done the right thing. He wasn’t ready. Maybe he never would be. The thought stung, a quiet admission of defeat. Tommy leaned his head back against the couch, eyes tracing the ceiling. He felt untethered, lost in a storm of his own making.

Across town, Buck stood in the middle of his loft, staring at the door Tommy had walked out of. The silence was deafening, so different from the warmth that had filled the space just hours before. He replayed the breakup in his head, searching for the moment it went wrong. Had he missed something? Said something? Done something? The shift from “Evan” to “Buck” hit him like a punch. It wasn’t just a name. It was a rejection, a step back from the intimacy they’d built. Tommy had never called him Buck before, and now it felt like a line drawn in the sand. Confusion clouded Buck’s mind. He thought they were solid, that they were moving forward. Tommy had been steady, an anchor when Buck’s world tilted. And now? Now he was gone, and Buck couldn’t make sense of it. Hurt bloomed in his chest.

He’d let Tommy in, trusted him with pieces of himself he rarely shared. The abrupt end left him exposed, vulnerable in a way that terrified him. He paced the loft, restless, trying to outrun the ache. What had scared Tommy off? Was it him? The questions gnawed at him, relentless and unanswered.

Anger flickered too, though it was softer, tangled with sadness. He wanted to be mad at Tommy for running, not explaining, and leaving him to pick up the pieces. But mostly, he just felt lost. Buck sank onto the couch, running a hand through his hair. He wondered if Tommy was hurting too, if he was sitting somewhere regretting it. Part of him hoped so. Part of him didn’t. The loft felt too big now, too empty. Buck’s confidence, usually unshakable, wavered. Maybe he wasn’t enough. Perhaps he never would be. The thought settled heavy in his gut, a doubt Tommy’s departure had planted. He stared at the wall, the echo of “See you around… Buck” ringing in his ears, leaving him wondering what came next. He stood, felt too restless to sit.

Tommy’s departure had ripped something open inside him, and as he paced the room, his fears began to surface, jagged and unbidden. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands as if he could pull the answers out of his head. But there were no answers, only questions, and beneath them, a current of dread he couldn’t shake.

He was afraid of being too much. It was an old fear, one that had followed him since he was a kid, bouncing off the walls to get a scrap of attention. With Tommy, he’d let himself go, poured out his energy, his affection, his chaos. What if that’s what drove Tommy away? Buck knew he could be overwhelming, loud, intense, a whirlwind of emotion that didn’t always know when to stop. He thought Tommy could handle it, maybe even liked it. But now, staring at the empty loft, he wondered if he’d misread everything. What if he’d suffocated Tommy, drowned him in all the things Buck couldn’t hold back?

Then there was the fear of not being enough. A wound from back in the day that never fully healed. Tommy had called him “Buck” at the end, not “Evan,” and that shift felt like a demotion, a stripping away of the closeness they’d built. Had he fallen short somehow? Not steady enough, not strong enough, not worth sticking around for? Buck had spent his life trying to prove he mattered, to his family, his team, his lovers. Tommy leaving felt like proof he’d failed again. What if no one ever stayed? What if he was destined to be the guy people loved for a while, then left behind? Abandonment loomed large, a shadow that stretched back to his childhood. His parents had checked out when Daniel died, and every loss since - Maddie disappearing, Abby walking away, the revolving door of relationships - had carved that fear deeper. Tommy had felt different, solid, like someone who wouldn’t just vanish. But he did. Buck’s chest tightened as he sank onto the couch. What if everyone he loved eventually saw through him? What if he was too broken, too needy, too flawed to keep?

He pulled his knees up, resting his forehead against them. The fear of repeating the past gnawed at him. He’d been here before, alone, reeling, picking up the pieces after someone walked away. He thought he’d grown, thought he’d figured out how to hold onto something real. But Tommy’s exit made him question it all. What if he was stuck in a cycle he couldn’t break? What if every connection he chased ended like this, with him staring at an empty room, wondering where it went wrong?

Buck’s hands clenched into fists, his breath shallow. Beneath it all, there was a quieter fear, one he hated admitting. What if he wasn’t worth loving? Not the loud, heroic Buck who ran into fires, but the Evan who stumbled, who doubted, who needed. Tommy had seen that side of him, and now he was gone. The thought settled heavy in his gut, cold and unrelenting. Buck lifted his head, staring at the wall, the silence screaming back at him. He didn’t know how to quiet the fears, didn’t know how to stop them from pulling him under. All he knew was that Tommy’s absence had cracked something open, and he wasn’t sure how to put the pieces back together again.

Tommy still sat on the couch, the beer bottle now warm in his hands, its contents barely touched. The darkness of his house wrapped around him, a cocoon he both welcomed and despised. His mind churned, restless, circling back to the moment he walked out of Buck’s loft. He hadn’t wanted to leave. Not really. But staying felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, the ground crumbling beneath his feet all the while. Fear had driven him out that door, fear he couldn’t name until now, fear that coiled tight in his chest and refused to let go.

He was afraid of losing himself. Evan, with his bright eyes and big, big heart, had a way of pulling Tommy apart, piece by piece. It wasn’t forceful. It was gentle and natural, like water wearing down stone. And that terrified him. Tommy had spent years crafting a version of himself that could stand alone, a man who didn’t need anyone, who could weather any storm solo. Relationships and closeness were what threatened that version. Evan threatened that. What if he let Evan in completely and forgot how to be alone? What if he became someone he didn’t recognize, dependent, fragile, stripped of the independence he’d fought so hard to maintain? Then there was the fear of breaking. Tommy knew Evan’s history, the losses, the chaos, the way he threw himself into everything with reckless abandon. Loving someone like that meant signing up for the fallout.

What if Evan got hurt again? What if Tommy couldn’t protect him, couldn’t fix it? Worse, what if Evan saw the cracks in Tommy, the doubts, the insecurities and decided he wasn’t worth the effort? Rejection loomed large in Tommy’s mind, a shadow he’d carried since he was young. He’d rather walk away first than risk being the one left behind.

Control slipped through his fingers with Evan, and that gnawed at him. Tommy thrived on predictability, on knowing the next move. But Evan was a wildfire, unpredictable and consuming. Every touch, every laugh, every quiet moment chipped away at the walls Tommy had built. What if he let them fall and couldn’t rebuild them? What if he gave everything and it wasn’t enough? The thought of being laid bare, of handing over his heart only to have it handed back, kept him up at night. He’d seen it happen to others. He'd been there and vowed it wouldn’t happen to him again.

He rolled the bottle between his palms, the motion steadying him as his pulse raced. Deeper still, there was a fear he barely acknowledged, one buried under layers of denial. What if he didn’t deserve this? Evan was good, too good, a light Tommy wasn’t sure he could match. Years of guarded living, of keeping people at arm’s length, had left him wondering if he even knew how to love someone the way Evan deserved. What if he tried and failed? What if he hurt Evan worse by staying than by leaving? Tommy set the bottle down, his hands trembling slightly. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor. The fears tangled together, a knot he couldn’t unravel. They whispered that running was safer, that solitude was his shield. But as the quiet stretched on, a small, traitorous part of him wondered if he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life. The fear of regret crept in, soft but insistent, and for the first time that night, he didn’t know how to push it away.

[whatsnewalycat]

Passenger / Chapter 6

Pairing: Trucker!Din Djarin AU x OFC Charlie Wanderlust

Wyoming (Part Three)

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Chapter Summary: Charlie strikes a deal with the mechanic.

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Word Count: 7.3k+

Content / Warnings: yearning, slow burn, horny thoughts, food mention, eating, handcuffs, one bed, shower, dog grogu, guns

Notes: None really. Hope you like it, thank you for reading!

A bell chimes when Din pushes open the door to Giddyup Auto, and again when he lets it swing shut behind you. 

It’s just as cluttered inside the shop as it is outside. Pornographic magazines have been stacked alongside NAPA catalogs and tattered notepads on top of tool boxes. Promotional branding from popular auto parts manufacturers patch the steel walls, occasionally broken up by snarky signs that read things like KWITCHERBITCHIN AVE and I CAN FIX ANYTHING EXCEPT STUPID. 

Country music crackles from blown speakers at the back of the shop, echoing off the tall ceiling. The rough, strained sound blends horribly with a high-pitched whir coming from beneath a 1989 Dodge Ram 250. 

Din inhales the scent of motor oil and metal shavings. Adolescent nostalgia wells up in his chest like pride, some vague understanding of what it means to be a man. The responsibility of maintenance. Caretaking and custodianship. 

He catches a glimpse of his adoptive father wringing his hands with an oil-soaked rag while rattling off the basic components of an internal combustion engine. Then he blinks it away.

Out of the corner of his eye, you adjust your grip on the wriggling dog, slipping one hand beneath his bottom and the other across his chest. Grogu huffs at the intrusion, but once he’s steadied to a higher vantage point, he seems pleased. His ears stand at attention, jowls sealed shut, the tip of his snout twitching with curiosity. 

Both you and the dog look around the garage with the same kind of wide-eyed wonder. Two explorers ready to investigate this whole new world. Din leads the way deeper into the automotive bay, following the shrill grinding sound to the old rusted-out truck. 

When he comes to a halt, so does the noise, then Paul slides out from under the truck on a creeper. 

“Hey there! Sorry, I didn’t hear y’all come in,” he gestures to the impact wrench in his hand as he sets it down. 

“Hi, Paul,” you greet him with a cheerful smile.

Rising to his feet, he beams, “Miss Charlie, how’re you today?” 

The twinkle in his bright eyes makes Din feel uneasy. Strands of gray streak his dark beard and pepper his slicked-back hair. Hard-earned wrinkles crease his face. He’s twice your age at least, and Din can’t quite determine whether his intentions are cordial or flirtatious. 

Either way, you hardly seem to mind. You perk up at the attention, taking a step towards him as you reply, “Can’t complain. Yourself?” 

“Oh, just fine. Annie get y’all set up at the motel?” 

“She sure did. It was nice to sleep in a bed for once, y’know, after being on the road for so long. Thank you for recommending it to us.” 

“‘Course. Yellow Seed’s been treatin’ you alright?” 

“Yeah! We got to poke around a little yesterday. Went and got supper at the Outlaw Saloon, which was good,” you glance at Din and chuckle a little, “The locals didn’t seem too keen on us. Got a few dirty looks, but that’s not surprising.” 

Paul laughs at this, crossing his arms as he leans back against the truck, “Well, you know, we small town folks don’t always like outsiders.” 

“I’m used to it,” you shrug dismissively, then your face lights up, “But, hey, I talked to the owner and they’re gonna let me play a couple sets tomorrow night if you wanna swing by.”

“No shit?” Paul grins and catches himself, “Pardon my language—”

“It’s fine,” you wave it off. 

“Playin’ a few sets at the Outlaw Saloon,” Paul repeats, shaking his head with amusement, “What kinda music you play?” 

“I know a little bit of everything. These kinds of gigs, I try to feel out the crowd. I catch a country music kinda vibe around here, so probably some Hank Williams Jr, Alan Jackson, Johnny Cash. Stuff like that,” you tilt your head at him, “Got any requests?”

“Know any Waylon Jennings?” 

“Sure, I have a few of his tunes up my sleeve. Any particular song?”

“Surprise me,” he winks. 

Din tries to retain his stoic demeanor despite the discomfort writhing beneath his skin. The dog must pick up on this, because he whines at his owner and starts to squirm in your grip. 

Struggling with Grogu’s protest, you ask Paul, “Is it ok if I set him down?”

“Go on ahead, darlin’,” Paul tells you, then turns to Din, “How about you? Settling in ok?” 

“How much will it cost to fix?” 

Paul raises his eyebrows and pushes off the truck, “Right down to brass tacks, huh?” 

“He’s not much of a talker,” you smirk as you set the dog on the cement floor and start roaming around the shop, leash in hand. 

“I can respect that.” His gaze lingers on your wandering form for a moment longer before he looks at Din and sighs, “Well, I had some luck calling around to a few junkyards lookin’ for salvaged or used parts. Found a good price for what I need. With that ‘n’ labor, it’ll run you twenty-five hundred, long as everything goes smoothly.” 

Din weighs the cost against his bank account, factoring in the motel room, gas to get to the next job, and food for a few days. It would run him dry. His stomach tightens and twists. Before he can formulate a response, you chime in. 

“Is there any way we can knock that price down?” 

Paul crosses his arms across his chest and gives you a sympathetic shrug, “Way it stands, ‘fraid I can’t.” 

You nod as you consider this, furrowing your brow at the floor, then look up at him, “What if we make a trade?” 

“A trade?” Paul frowns. 

“Yeah, or, you know. Some kind of a deal. We scratch your back, you scratch ours.” 

Paul’s blue eyes flick between you and Din, “Wha’d you have in mind, sweetheart?”

Din’s first instinct is to shut down the conversation. But when you glance at him as if searching for approval, he doesn’t protest. You turn back to Paul and nod over your shoulder, “I noticed your sign out front is pretty faded. I could paint it if you knock a couple hundred off?” 

Paul shifts his weight to one leg and wrinkles his nose. Not sold. You don’t let it deter you. 

“I’ve done murals before, so this would be a piece of cake. It looks pretty shabby now, but I can make it,” you smack your lips, “pop. Maybe it’d bring in some more business for you.” 

Shaking his head, he smirks at Din, “She’s persistent, ain’t she?”

“She is.” 

“I am,” you confirm with a wide, toothy grin, “Whaddaya say? I do the sign, take off $500?“

Paul works his jaw from side to side, then slackens and sticks out his hand, “Five hundred.” 

“Plus the cost of supplies,” you add. 

“Plus the—” he cuts himself off with an amused chuckle, “You’re somethin’ else. Fine. Five hundred plus costs.” 

When you shake his hand, a victorious, blinding smile spreads across your face. The corner of Din’s mouth turns up at the sight. He fails to correct his expression as you take a step back and glance at him. His heart skips in that brief moment where his eyes meet yours, before you drop your gaze to your feet and tuck a lock of hair behind your ear. Blush rises to your cheeks and neck, rosy splotches that bloom soft and full in his chest. 

“Whaddaya think, should $100 do it?” Paul asks. 

“I think we can make that work,” you nod, “Do you have paint brushes or rollers? Sandpaper?” 

“Reckon I do. Hang tight, I’ll get y’all some cash, ok?” 

Once he’s out of earshot, Din studies you, wondering out loud, “Why are you helping me?” 

“Rule number ten: Be a stand up tramp,” you shrug, crouching down to scratch Grogu between his ears, “Plus, I don’t know, it just seems like… the right thing to do.” 

Your answer perplexes him. He can’t come up with a response other than, “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” you grin up at him, then rise to your feet and change the subject, “I’m hungry. We should get lunch. And maybe get some groceries, too, so we—er, you don’t have to spend as much on eating out.” 

The authority with which you suggest this causes him to chafe. He wants to push back for no reason other than to reclaim the upper hand. Your reasoning is sound, though. It’s not a bad idea. 

“We can do that.” 

“Yeah?” 

He nods. 

Your gaze lingers on him for a moment, lips curving into a delicate smile. Something flutters in his stomach, frantic and timid, urging him to put up a wall between you. But he keeps his eyes anchored to yours despite his internal warning bells. 

The tight wire of tension slackens as Paul returns, counting a stack of wrinkled bills, “Here you go.” 

You step forward to accept the cash, “Perfect. Thank you, Paul.” 

“Are y’all gonna be able to carry everything back here, or do you wanna borrow my truck? Might be a little easier that way.” 

“Really?” you grin and knit your brows together into a gracious expression, “We were thinking of grabbing lunch and getting some groceries, too. Would that be ok?” 

“Fine by me, just bring it back in one piece,” Paul answers, fishing a set of keys from his jumpsuit pocket and handing them to you, “Ford F-150 out front.”

“Thank you, Paul. I—we really appreciate it,” you tell him, then look at Din and raise your eyebrows expectantly. 

“Yes, thank you,” Din nods in agreement. 

“Don’t mention it,” Paul says, then ambles back to the old rusted-out Dodge, whistling along to some old country song. 

Keeping pace at his side as he starts towards the exit, you jangle the keys and ask, “Do you want me to drive?”

“Dream on, kid,” he scoffs, holding his hand out. 

“Worth a shot,” you grin and place them in his palm. 

“Would it be too predictable to put a horse on the sign?” you ask, frowning at your rough outline, “I feel like there are a lot of places out here that lean into the western motif, so it might be overdone. But the place is literally called Giddyup Auto, so…” 

When Din doesn’t respond, you glance up and can’t quite tell if he’s looking at you or something in your general direction. 

Stupid goddamn aviators. 

“You know, it’s considered polite to take off your hat and sunglasses when you go indoors.” 

Again, nothing. 

‘Off in lala-land’ if you’ve ever seen it. 

You blink at him a few times to no reaction, then raise your voice, “Did you hear me?” 

This seems to do the trick. 

It’s difficult to explain how you know his eyes are on you when they are. Maybe the microscopic tilt of his head or the twitch of his eyebrows. Mostly though, you would say that his attention carries a force. One minute you’re sitting there wondering if he’s looking at you and then—bam! It hits you. Absolute certainty.  

Anyway, he looks at you and asks, “What?” 

“Why do you insist on wearing your Unabomber costume all the time?” 

He frowns and shakes his head like he doesn’t understand. 

“You know, because—Oh for cripes’ sake, nevermind,” you scoff and sit up in your seat, turning your notebook to face him, “Here. Tell me what you think.” 

He looks down at your notebook and pulls it closer. As he quietly studies the sketches, discomfort twists your skin raw. Imagining all the criticisms lingering at the tip of his tongue, you can’t stop yourself from speaking preemptively. 

“The first one is pretty boring, but I think the font adds a little flair. I’d blend shades of orange for the background to make it stand out and white for the text.” You prop your chin up on the heel of your palm and lean forward, pointing to the second option, “I like the covered wagon as a concept, but it would take me a long time and I’m not sure if it fits the vibe since wagons are kinda slow. The horse is fast, obviously,” you tap the third sketch and shrug, “But, like I said when you so rudely ignored me, the western motif is sort of tired in this neck of the woods.” 

Nodding, he comments, “They look… nice.” 

Such a way with words. 

You stare at him for a moment, waiting for additional input to no avail. Raising your eyebrows, you release a big sigh and fold your legs up into the booth, “‘Nice.’ Ok, sure. Well, let me ask you this: Which one is your favorite?” 

After a few seconds of contemplation, he taps the bucking bronco silhouetted over a mountain range, then pushes the notebook back across the table. 

“Why that one?” 

He shrugs, “It’s called Giddyup Auto.” 

Instead of pointing out that you said the same thing earlier, you mutter, “Sure is, big guy,” and flip your notebook to a blank page, then start jotting down a shopping list, “We should get something for the pup while we’re out. I feel bad for leaving him behind.” 

You wrinkle your nose at his silence, looking up to confirm that once again, he has drifted away. 

Curiosity gets the best of you. You follow his line of sight, craning your neck over your shoulder to see the waitress approaching with a serving tray. Din straightens when she sets a plate in front of him. 

“Ok, we have a breakfast platter number two,” she sets another plate in front of you, “And french toast with fruit.” Tucking the tray under her arm, she smiles between you and him, “Anything else I can get for you guys?” 

“We’re fine, thank you,” Din tells her, a small smile gracing his lips. 

She nods before turning to go, dragging his attention along with her. You watch him watch her, studying his wandering gaze. A grin spreads across your face. When he notices you staring, he immediately becomes defensive.

“What?” 

Dead giveaway. 

Suppressing a smile, you grab a butter knife and shake your head at your plate, “Nothing.” 

“What?” he asks again, this time more pointed.  

“I didn’t say anything!” 

He scoffs and hunches over the plate to shovel scrambled eggs into his mouth. 

After smearing whipped butter on your french toast, you pour syrup over your plate, glancing up at him when you ask, “Do you have a crush on the waitress?” 

“No.” 

Denial sours the word in the most obvious way. 

Raising an eyebrow, you cut your food into bite-sized pieces as you tease, “I didn’t take you for a liar, Din. But I also didn’t take you for the kind of guy who has a soft spot for pretty service workers, so what do I know?” 

Of course, he doesn’t say anything. And of course, you decide to push the conversation further. 

“I just mean… If you do—you know, like her or whatever—you should ask her for her number. Take her on a date. See if you can’t live a little while you’re holed up in this town.” 

“And what am I supposed to do with you in that scenario?” 

Twirling a chunk of french toast around on your fork, you shrug, “Maybe she wouldn’t mind your prisoner third wheeling. That’s probably not a red flag, right?” 

“Not at all.” 

You snort at him and he lets a small smirk tug at the corner of his mouth. It seems to soften the atmosphere, both of you relaxing back in your seats. While chipping away at your food, you ponder a little to yourself, then out loud. 

“Suppose your line of work, you don’t go on many dates, do you?” 

Frowning at the strip of bacon pinched between his fingers, he tells you, “Not in the traditional sense.” 

“What does that mean?” 

Instead of answering the question, he pops the bacon into his mouth. When he swallows and you’re still staring at him, he shakes his head, “Forget I said anything.” 

“Come on, Din,” you meet his flattened expression with a grin, “You so know I won’t let this go. Might as well just spill the beans.” 

He crosses his arms in front of his chest and stares at you like a challenge. You narrow your eyes at him, tilting your head with equal determination. 

“‘Not in the traditional sense.’ So you do have romantic or sexual experiences, but society wouldn’t typically deem those experiences ‘dates,’ right?” 

He says nothing. 

“Hmmm… interesting,” you lean your elbows on the table, studying him, “You seem reluctant to talk about it, which indicates… Maybe you’re ashamed of it? Although, you’re pretty reluctant to talk about everything, so I don’t know how much weight to place on that. But you’re a trucker. Transient. Don’t seem like much of a ‘family man’ to me. So, what… you’ve gotta be a hookup guy or a sex worker guy, right?” 

The way he squirms at the question makes your chest tingle. 

“It could be both, too. I feel like you would be more of an opportunist than a strategist when it comes to fucking. Am I right?” 

His jaw shifts from side-to-side. He glances around before leaning in, “And you’re much different?” 

“No, not really.”

Most people would ask follow-up questions or awkwardly segue into a different subject, but not Din. He seems as content with your answer as you are with his. But where he goes back to eating, you feel a loose end rattling at the tip of your tongue and speak it into existence. 

“I think… I think people like us don’t lay down roots for anything less than the spectacular,” you search his face, “Right?” 

With his fork lifted halfway to his mouth, he pauses to look at you and nod, “This is the way.”

Din brings the shopping cart to halt in the middle of the aisle when you stop to examine jars of preserved nut and fruit spreads lining the shelves. 

You pull a big plastic container of generic peanut butter from the lineup and toss it into the cart, “Four dollars, twenty-nine cents.”

He jots down the price in your notebook and adds it to the running total while you wrinkle your nose at the ingredient list of strawberry preserves, then set it next to the peanut butter, “Three sixty-nine. Gotta love that food desert markup. What’re we at?” 

“Twenty seven, give or take,” he answers, crossing two items off the list. 

“What else we got here?” Sidling up to him, you peek at the paper, “Snacks. Wow, ok past me, very specific.” 

When you start walking again, he does too, and he wonders how you can possibly smell so good without the aid of perfumes. While not a definitive scent, it inspires a sensation much like when he’s parched and sets his sights on a glass of ice water. It’s enticing, like your very foundation radiates temptation. 

He cannot have this. This thing in his chest, gnawing at his bones, trying to escape. It snaps at the walls when you’re nearby, which is always. 

Maybe if he could relieve some of the pressure buckling under his skin it would quiet. But he can’t, so it doesn’t. 

It begs and pleads and promises to absolve him of consequence as long as he promises to move a little bit closer, hold his hand to your back a little bit longer—just one more second and I’ll be content. Maybe another. What if you slid your hand around her waist and pulled her body to yours? How would she react? I bet she would like it. I bet if you kissed her she would finally be speechless. Just a taste, please? 

He comes to a stop beside you and follows your gaze to the wall of chips. Hundreds of bags in all different sizes and colors, all of them glossy in the fluorescent light. 

“Well, big guy. What’s your chip of choice?” you ask without looking at him. 

Grinding his teeth together, he shakes his head. 

“Yeah, I don’t know, either. Too many of the same goddamn choices,” you step forward to narrow your eyes at a price tag, “Am I crazy or does that say five dollars?” 

“It says five dollars.” 

“What the fuck, that is obscene. Do we really need chips?” 

“Does anyone?” 

“I guess not technically,” you sigh and start wandering further down the aisle, so he follows you. “But we don’t have to be so utilitarian about it. Junk food is for the soul, not sustenance. And sometimes the soul needs something salty and crunchy, you know?”

Nodding, he comes to a stop and points to the display of microwave popcorn, “We could get this instead.”

“Six bags for four dollars,” you raise your eyebrows, “Salty, crunchy, and cost efficient. Hell yeah, I’m sold.”

He grabs the box of generic popcorn in question and walks it back to the cart while you meander towards the sweets. When he meets you in front of the cookies, you glance at him, “Original or chewy?” 

“Original.” 

“Ten four, good buddy.” You grab the blue package of chocolate chip cookies and toss it in the basket, “Do you ever get to say that on your radio? Have a real trucker moment?” 

“Yes.”

“Adorable,” you chuckle, catching his gaze for a moment before you look down and tuck your hair behind your ear, “Are you gonna help me with the sign today, or do you have other plans?” 

“What do you need help with?” 

You exhale through slack lips, then shrug, “Well, today is just prep. I have to scrape off the old paint, sand it down, and prime. It has to dry overnight, but I think I’ll be able to finish the rest tomorrow or the next day if we get up early…” Pausing to chuckle, you shake your head, “Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. What I mean is, you could help me with scraping and sanding. It’s a real bitch and would be easier with your muscle. If—well, you know, only if you want to. You don’t have to or anything…”

“I can do that.” 

Your eyebrows draw together as you search his face, “Yeah?” 

He nods, “It’s the least I can do.” 

As the two of you near the checkout line, a frail woman with closely-cropped white curls shuffles from a back office to the one and only cash register.

“How are we doing this? Splitting it?” you swing the backpack off your shoulder and start rummaging through it, “I should have some money in my wallet. It’s not much, but it should—”

He holds up a hand, “I’ve got it.” 

“You sure?” 

“I’m sure.” 

That thing in his chest whimpers when you smile at him, big and bright and gap-toothed, sparing him a polite, “Thank you,” before you start unloading the groceries onto the conveyor belt. 

Balancing the tips of your toes on the highest ladder rung, you stretch your roller towards the unprimed stripe of sign, but can’t quite reach it. 

“Goddamnit,” you mutter, returning all fours to the ladder with a huff, then look back at Din, “Hey, can I borrow your tall?”

Your question bounces off him with no reaction. 

Between the visor of his cap and the tablet glued to his face, you can’t quite tell if he’s ignoring you or if he just plain old can’t hear you. All that’s visible is his furrowed brow. So you shimmy down the ladder and set the paint roller in the tray, brushing your hands on your jeans as you approach his lawn chair, waiting for him to notice you. 

When the brisk October air nips at your dirt-caked, sweat-soaked skin, you skip closer, tapping your foot against his calf, “Hey.” 

He jumps as if broken out of a trance, then raises his eyebrows at you, “What?” 

“Can you help me with something?”

His mouth flattens into a straight line. He looks down at the tablet, then turns off the screen and sets it aside to look up at you. 

“See the top of the sign, how it’s all shitty still?” you point at the evidence, “Can you get it for me? I can’t reach.” 

“Use the big ladder.” 

“I didn’t think to grab it before Paul locked up for the night.” 

He releases a big dramatic sigh, glancing down at the tablet before rising to his feet. As he passes you the handle of the dog leash, you grin and plop down in the warmed-up lawn chair, “My hero!” 

“Uh-huh,” he shakes his head and starts towards the drop cloth. 

Beneath the lawn chair, the dog wakes from his nap and tries to follow Din, huffing and puffing when the leash goes taut, then walks back to your feet and sits on your shoelaces. His big satellite ears stand at attention while his person shimmies up the ladder with a roller brush in hand. 

The two of you sit there and watch Din with the same level of ardent attention, both perched on the edge of your respective seats, unable to tear your eyes away for a second. 

At first you try to tell yourself that you’re not even looking at him, just mapping out the illustration you’ll start tomorrow. But the truth is, it’s hard not to be drawn in by the view. By his panoramic shoulders and muscle-bound arms stretching out the fabric of his flannel as he rolls the brush up and down, back and forth, spreading thick white primer across the freshly smoothed wood… 

Despite the waning sunlight and icy gusts spilling off the mountains, heat bubbles up to the surface of your skin. 

You know that once he’s finished, you’ll go back to the motel for the rest of the night. Given the thick layer of grime you each accumulated throughout the day, showers will likely be in order. Which, of course, means stripping down to nothing while he’s in the bathroom with you. And vice versa, probably. 

Your imagination wanders to his naked body and how it would feel against yours. What if you argued in favor of water conservation, asking him to join you in the shower? What if he agreed? How would he look at you without those sunglasses covering his eyes? How would he touch you if morals weren’t involved? 

Din climbs down off the ladder and walks over, taking off his cap to wipe the sweat from his forehead, “Is that it for today?”

He replaces the hat and takes off his aviators, cleaning the lenses with his shirt as he meets your gaze. The full force of his big brown eyes turns your saliva tacky and makes your heart stutter. He raises his eyebrows at you expectantly. 

Fuck, did he ask you something? 

“Is that—? Oh, um,” you clear your throat, then nod, “Yep, that should do it. Thank you, I appreciate it.” 

Flicking his eyes around your face, he nods, then turns back to the drop cloth, where he starts consolidating all the painting supplies. 

With his legs stretched out across the perimeter of the bathroom’s tile flooring, back resting against the tub, Din types ‘Tom Boucheron’ into the search bar of a Portland-based web forum. 

The search yields 83 matches. He starts sifting through the results, scrolling past subject lines that indicate general complaints about property management like rising rent and evictions and gentrification. Every once and a while he comes across subject lines that take on a more conspiratorial tone, though, mentioning the weight of his influence or his ties to police presence throughout the city. When he finds these posts, he clicks on the thread, copying and pasting the urls into a separate document. 

He can delve deeper into these later, once he’s able to better focus. But right now, with the roaring cascade of the shower behind him and your enthusiastic rendition of Tiny Dancer by Elton John, this mechanical sorting is the maximum concentration he can muster. 

Squinting at the screen, he wipes away the fog forming on his tablet. Moisture reclaims the area just as soon as it clears. He sighs and turns off the device when your vocals start ramping up to a volume he can’t ignore. 

“—But oh how it feels so real, lying here with no one near. Only you, and you can hear meeee, when I say softlyyyy, slooowly—”

“Are you almost done?” 

“You ruined the best part.” 

“We’re going to get a noise complaint.” 

You scoff, then he hears the thunk of you turning off the water. In his peripheries, your arm stretches out from behind the shower curtain to snatch the folded white towel off the toilet lid. 

A few seconds later, the curtain pulls back and you announce, “I’m decent.” 

He climbs to his feet while you step out of the tub, one hand securing the bath towel around your body, the other grabbing his arm for balance. Once sure-footed on the pink tiles, you let go and murmur, "Sorry,” before opening the door and padding off into the motel room. 

Grogu runs into the bathroom to investigate as Din slips out and takes a seat at the foot of the bed. He tries to anchor his vision to the floor, but finds his gaze drifting towards your movements out the corner of his eye. Humming to yourself, you comb your fingers through dripping wet hair and pull a few articles of clothing from your backpack. 

“Are you gonna hop in too?” 

His eyes tick to yours as you turn around, clutching a pile of clothing to your chest. 

“Because, you know… if you need me to be in there with you or whatever, that’s fine,” you cast your gaze to the floor with a shrug.

He studies your bashful demeanor for a moment before responding, “I’ll have you sit in there with me once you get dressed.” 

Without looking up, you give him a nod and walk over to the bathroom. As you put on clothing, Din uses all his will power to stare at the ground. 

“What do you wanna do after that? We could watch a movie.” 

His eyes cheat to the mirror on the wall, where he watches your reflection wrestle with a t-shirt. He catches a glimpse of your bare back before returning to the floor and clearing his throat. 

“I thought you weren’t much of a movie person.” 

“Well,” your footsteps soften onto the carpet, then your voice is closer, “If you have a better idea of how to pass the time in a seedy roadside motel, I’m open to suggestions.” 

He meets your heated gaze long enough for something to spark deep within his belly. The air between your body and his thickens with a palpable magnetism. His lips part to respond, but only one suggestion plays over and over again in his head. The mad yapping of that thing in his chest. 

Before he can say or do something stupid, though, you look away and start fidgeting, “So, I’m dressed. Are you ready?” 

Swallowing his tight throat, he pushes himself to his feet and locks eyes with you, “Go sit where I just was and put your head between your knees.” 

“Wow, you’re taking this very seriously.”  

“Let’s just get it over with, ok?”

You roll your eyes a little, but acquiesce. 

Din trails behind you into the bathroom, shooing the dog from the room before closing the door. When he turns around, he finds you curled up on the floor, back pressed to the tub basin with your face buried in your knees. 

“Like this?” 

“Perfect. Stay like that, I won’t take long.” 

For some reason he expected you would stay quiet while he disrobed, but you just continue talking as if you were accompanying him on any other menial task. 

“I think it’s funny how you have me do this whole thing so I don’t see your dick, but when I need privacy, the most you give me is a turned back.” 

Din glances at the top of your head while unbuckling his utility belt, then turns to spread it out across the bathroom counter, “That’s not the only reason I’m having you do this.” 

“Then why?”

“Are you familiar with the concept of involuntary captivity?” 

While you scoff and most likely try to come up with a rebuttal, he shucks off his flannel overshirt, then unfastens his shoulder holster and lines it up on the counter below the outspread belt. His hands work without much thought as he systematically unloads all three of his pistols. Eject the magazine, count the rounds, check the chamber.

“What the fuck are you doing?” 

Ignoring the question, he moves the unloaded guns and utility belt to a high shelf over the toilet, then pulls off his undershirt. 

“Can you at least confirm you’re not gearing up to murder me right now?” 

If he wanted to tear your frayed edges, he could mention that you were begging him to do exactly that less than 48 hours ago. But since you’re somehow more irritating when in a foul mood, he doesn’t. 

“If I was going to kill you I would have already.” He turns on the shower and takes a step back to make sure you’re still covering your eyes, then takes off his pants. 

“Would you do it if you had to?” 

The question gives him pause as he pulls back the shower curtain. 

“Why would I have to?” 

“I don’t know, because they asked you to do it.” 

He frowns, “I wouldn’t do it just because someone asked me to.” 

“You wouldn’t?” 

The hopeful air in your voice eats at his stomach lining. Instead of answering or clarifying what he meant, he steps into the shower. 

“Ok, but let’s say they gave you a good reason, and you were going to do it… kill me, I mean. How would you do it?” 

“I’m not going to tell you that.” 

“Why not?” 

He shakes his head and grabs a bar of soap off the shower ledge and starts to lather it against his skin. 

“Are you ignoring me or thinking?” 

“Ignoring you.” 

“You know, I appreciate the honesty.“ Then, after a few seconds: “I promise not to leak your trade secrets, big guy. Come on, how would you do it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

With this, you go quiet. 

Silence fills the bathroom for the remainder of his time in the shower, but Din’s thoughts are as loud and intrusive as your questions. 

His mind becomes populated with scenarios in which you would end up in the sights of his pistol. Under what circumstances would he pull the trigger? 

He imagines you stealing from him. He imagines trying to escape. He imagines it coming down to you or the money. He even goes so far as to imagine it coming down to you or him. 

But each time the imaginary him goes to take aim, he falters. 

While Din tosses a bag of popcorn in the microwave, you survey the Room 10’s VHS collection. 

“Ok let’s see,” you tilt your head sideways and read the titles, “Aladdin, Batman Returns, Twister—”

“You choose.” 

Beeps sound from the microwave, then it hums to life. 

You pull Aladdin from the shelf and admire the familiar cover art. Little flakes of deteriorated plastic break off the exterior and stick to your fingertips when you trace the title. You wince and mumble an apology to the inanimate object before prying it open to pull out the tape. 

After feeding it to the VCR, you press rewind and hold up the cover to Din, “Ever seen this?”

When he takes a step closer to examine it, you note the details you’re not normally privy to. His damp curls and the heat of his pulse. Mostly, though, you become fixated on his eyes. Those devastatingly dark and warm eyes. His heavy brow and hooded lids, all the lines of age creeping out from the corners. 

He meets your gaze and you swear you hear the snap of his full attention locking onto you when he frowns, “Can’t say I have.” 

Somewhere far away, the popcorn starts popping. You feel yourself succumbing to his gravitational pull, subconsciously drifting towards him, and can’t really remember if you had a point in mind when you asked. 

“It’s-it’s good,” you nod, letting your eyes drift to his mouth for a moment before you shrug, “I mean, from what I remember at least. I was obsessed with it when I was a kid. It drove my grandma crazy cuz I’d make her watch it on repeat…” 

It doesn’t really register how much information you’re disclosing until his eyes get all wide and doughy, at which point you take a step away from him and tuck your hair behind your ear, “Sorry, um, anyway. I liked it.” 

He chuckles, causing you to grin, “What?”

“Nothing.” 

His face tells you it’s definitely not nothing. It’s something if you’ve ever seen it. Something so gooey and hot it makes you ache. Dangerous, that’s what it is. 

The VCR clicks and shifts gears, then the TV lights up with disclaimers. Taking it as a sign from above, you start back towards the bed and tease, “I totally get why you wear the sunglasses, by the way. Your eyes give everything away.” 

Rather than admit you’re right, Din raises an eyebrow at you, then turns around to pull the microwave open before the timer reaches zero. While you slide under the covers and prop the flimsy pillows up behind your back, he pries open the steaming hot bag of popcorn and brings it to you. 

“Thanks.”

He grunts in response and disappears into the bathroom for a few seconds, returning with the shiny metal handcuffs, “Lights on or off?”

“Off.”

When the lights go out, the dog jumps onto the bed, spinning around a few times before curling up into an adorable white ball. Din tosses the cuffs to your side as he crawls into bed beside you. Once you think he’s settled in, you offer him some popcorn, which he accepts. 

“Do I have to put them on right now?” you ask, in reference to the cuffs. 

He frowns and shakes his head, “I can wait until you’re ready.” 

Nodding, you study his profile in the dim illumination from the TV. You don’t even realize you’re staring at him like a full-on creep until he says, “Stop giving me goo-goo eyes and watch the movie.” 

Embarrassment flares up your neck and cheeks. You scoff, “I am not giving you goo-goo eyes,” and wriggle deeper under the covers, diverting your gaze to the TV. 

I will not look at him for the rest of the night, you vow. Even if he asks me to, or talks to me, I won’t look at his stupid face until the sun comes up tomorrow. 

You almost fulfill the vow, too. 

Well… almost might be an exaggeration, but you make it to the end credits and that’s further than you really believed you could make it. 

With the motel room all dark save for the faintest glow from the credits rolling onscreen, he asks, “Are you awake?”

You remind yourself of your promise and try to ignore him. If you say something, you’ll look at him. And if you look at him, you lose. 

“Charlie?” he nudges you. 

Fuck. 

“Yeah,” you glance over, and of course you catch his eyes, “Is it handcuff time now?” 

He nods, almost apologetically. 

“Can I use the bathroom first?”

“Go ahead.” 

When you exit the bathroom and turn off the light, you find the room cloaked in darkness. The only reference point you have is the red glow of 9:12 on the alarm clock. You stretch your arms in front of you and start taking cautious steps towards it.  

“Oh my god, I can’t see shit.” 

“Want me to turn the lamp on?” 

“No, I’ve got it.” 

Your fingertips brush up against the bedspread, then you follow the alarm clock beacon to the side table. 

“Here.” 

His hand finds yours in the darkness. You grab ahold of it, trying your very hardest not to dwell on the warmth of his palm against yours as he gently guides you. When you finally settle between the sheets, he releases your hand. You almost wish he didn’t. 

“Ready?” 

“Sure.” 

He closes the cold heavy steel around your wrist, then his. For a while, neither of you move. Anxious energy buzzes beneath your skin. You close your eyes in an attempt to trick yourself into being tired, but it only makes you notice how fucking quiet it is. 

Resigning from your motionless state, you start wriggling around in an attempt to get comfortable. Din is accommodating while you do this, letting his wrist ragdoll wherever you drag it. You lie facing the wall for a while, fondling the knife you have tucked under the pillow. It doesn’t feel right. You flip onto your back and stare at the ceiling. Same problem. 

Then, when you can’t stand it anymore—the dark, the quiet, the nerves—you roll on your side facing him. 

“Din.” 

“What?” 

“I can’t fall asleep.” 

He doesn’t say anything. 

“Din.” 

“What?”

“I said I can’t fall asleep.” 

“I heard you the first time. What do you expect me to do about it?” 

You open your mouth to ask him to fuck you, but nerves rob your tongue. 

“Just talk to me for a while.” 

“About what?”

“I dunno, whatever you want.” You tuck your cuffed hand beneath your cheek and scoot a little closer.

His silence holds the weight of contemplation, so you prompt him, “What would your genie wishes be?” 

“Hang on, let me think.” 

A few quiet seconds go by before he clears his throat and rolls on his side to face you. The back of his cuffed hand rests against yours, which brings you a shred of comfort. 

“Financial security. Property rights to some land and a house, something out in the country.” 

“Like a farm?” 

“Something like that. Self-sustainable and off the grid. Maybe get a few animals and so I could live off the land.” 

“That’s the dream, right? Fuck off to the middle of nowhere and not have to rely on anyone?” 

“Yeah, that’s the dream.” 

You hum, then ask, “What’s wish number three?” 

“I… I’d rather not say.” 

Your gut instinct is to push back, but you resist the urge and instead tell him, “That’s fine.” 

“Thank you.” 

There’s enough sincerity in his voice that a tinge of guilt twists in your belly, and you feel obligated to bring up an earlier conversation. 

“I’m sorry, by the way. For pushing you to answer me when you were in the shower. Sometimes I don’t know when it’s time to shut the fuck up and let it be.” 

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” 

“Ok,” you wiggle around a bit and manage to find the perfect position, then close your eyes and release a content sigh. 

“What are yours?” he asks. 

“Mmmm… you know, I’ve thought a lot about this question—” A yawn swells in your chest, cutting you off. When it passes, your limbs feel heavy and warm. You continue, “I’d wish for the genie to be free.”

He lets out a disbelieving chuckle, “And what else, world peace? An end to climate change?” 

“I hear your snark, sir, and I don’t appreciate it. No, I wouldn’t wish for world peace or the end of climate change. I wouldn’t wish for anything. Tricky bastard can keep his wishes, I make my own luck.” 

“Tricky bastard, huh?” 

Another yawn takes over. Lethargy seeps through your body, making your worlds come out slow and murmured. 

“Yeah, y’know… all the, umm… the fine print. Too many strings attached, I don’t trust ‘em.” 

“You sound tired.” 

You hum, snuggling deeper into your pillow, “You sound tired.” 

“Get some sleep, kid. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.” 

“Mmmkay,” you mumble, “Sweet dreams, Din.” 

[realmofsolitaire]

Sword and Silk

Summary: Within the ancient walls of the Red Keep, the Princess is ensnared by the looming presence of Ser Harwin "Breakbones" Strong, his silent vigilance concealing darker depths. Amidst his whispers of protection, a hidden yearning simmers beneath the surface, entwined with the secrets that swarm within the castle's corridors.

Warnings: Themes of violence, including depictions of physical altercations, character death, grief, complex power dynamics, manipulation and coercion.

Author's Note: Your feedback is valuable to me as an author. Whether it's your thoughts on the characters, the plot twists, or even just your emotional response to the story, I genuinely want to hear from you. Stay tuned for the second part!

Word Count: 2.4k

HE WAS HER SHADOW. Strolling heavy-footed behind her at every moment. The princess's every move was scrutinised under his unwavering gaze. King Viserys had long lectured his only daughter in the belly of his sleeping chamber. The presence of her Kingsguard was for her own protection. Ser Harwin "Breakbones" Strong was true to his namesake. The thought that harm might come to her under his shield was amusing.

Still, she felt so diminutive; every footstep, his looming presence followed. He towered over her like the godswood tree under which her lessons commenced. His wide back and mighty arms did not settle the swarm of wasps that buzzed within her belly. It rattled their nest.

She was left to her own devices during the day within the heart of the sept. The seven walls of the dusty stone room seldom held the inhabitants of the castle. Their focus remained fixed on indulging their whims, she always thought. After her delicate finger lit a candle at the altar, she bent both knees before the marble statue of The Father. A precipitation of teardrops rolled down the apples of her cheeks. There she begged, hands clasped for the soul of her dear mother.

She would emerge when the sun hung low in the sky and the shadows grew long. Her dampened features never failed to draw Ser Harwin's attention. His thick eyebrows drew themselves together over his deep sable eyes.

"Are you alright, Princess?" He would always whisper.

These were the only times her lilac eyes would dare flicker to his, resembling the red of her house banner.

"Yes, Ser Harwin." She would croak before averting her eyes to the grey stone path beneath her feet.

ON A DAY OF GENTLE BREEZE, tranquil waters and clear skies, her cousin, Lady Laena Velaryon's ship, docked at the harbour of Blackwater Bay.

Ser Harwin's eyes softened as a genuine smile graced the Princess's lips for once. A fleeting moment of brightness amidst the shadows that surrounded her.

"Cousin!" She cried.

She nearly tripped over the train of her black gown, running towards her kin, arms outstretched.

When the gap between them was sealed, an entanglement of limbs ensued, their silver hair dancing wildly in the wind.

"How is my dearest Y/N?" The older girl asked, panting.

The Princess nodded as they began to walk down the pier.

Stark-white seagulls flew above them alongside the dark scales of Vhagar.

The large dragon casting a quick shadow.

The crew unloading the cargo of the ship gasped in awe of the great beast.

"The days no longer seem long… as I have written in my letters. They now somehow manage to bleed together. I often confuse many moons ago for yesterday…" She sighed.

Lady Laena clutched the Princess's cold hands within her own.

"You shall grieve no longer, sweet Y/N. We shall fête every day until I depart!" She laughed, tugging her into a hug that nearly suffocated the younger girl.

Ser Harwin smiled unbeknownst to the two, his heavy boots following behind as always.

Y/N hurriedly walked through the corridor of the Red Keep, the sound of her low-heeled shoes barely audible against the polished marble floor.

She came to a halt at a heavy Valyrian steel door, gesturing to it with delicate fingers.

"The finest room in the castle, for my truest confidant." She giggled.

The knight had not heard the Princess laugh in that manner since her last name day when the Queen was still alive.

KING VISERYS HAD declared that there be three days of celebration for his daughter.

On the first night, a lavish feast commenced. Every elegantly clad guest gorged themselves on the most sumptuous of delicacies. From roasted boar to buttered rolls to indulgent cakes adorned with fruit and thick frosting.

Amidst his peers, the man with dark curls hungered for something else - or rather, someone.

Princess Y/N sat tall upon a skillfully carved chair among the rest of her family, her dainty wrist adorned with a pewter bracelet encrusted with rubies. It grazed against the velvet tablecloth as she spoke. She and her cousin Lady Laena brushed shoulders, occasionally whispering and giggling as they indulged heavily in Dornish wine.

The crimson colour gown she donned made her bronze skin more radiant, competing with the shimmer of its silk fabric. The garment's onyx corset adorned with an embroidered dragon and delicate lace details sinched her waist. The dress hugged every curve of her body with a luxurious embrace. The neckline embellished with matching black lace plunged daringly low, accentuating the swell of her bust.

No fault of the Princess, he imagined; she certainly could not be aware of how appetisingly she had blossomed over the past year - he certainly had not until now.

"Brother, you are drooling," his brother Larys jested.

Ser Harwin averted his gaze instantaneously.

The knight, in his finest attire, futilely attempted to focus on the roasted duck drowned in gravy that sat on his plate. He could not resist the décolletage of the heiress, his eyes carefully peering at the curly-haired beauty.

On the second day, when the sun hung directly overhead, the King commanded a tournament be held. Lords and Ladies of Westeros and the lesser kingdoms filled the seats of the great coliseum, heavy bags of coin in their grasp with the intention of placing bets on the bravest knights.

Despite the tremor of his hands, Lord Strong encouraged his son to be among those in the festivities.

As the knights prepared for the final joust, Ser Harwin Strong approached the royal pavilion where the princess sat. His skin was slick with sweat that he hoped she assumed was a byproduct of the Westerosi summer. His armour was clangorous with the steady trot of his steed. His eyes were fixed on her visage as he steadied his mount.

"Princess," he began, bowing his head before her, "I ask that you bestow me the honor of wearing your favor."

The Princess slowly rose from her cushioned seat and approached the railing, the wreath of blood-red roses in her delicate grasp.

A shy smile graced her painted lips.

Her voice was barely above a whisper. "May it bring you luck, Ser Harwin."

The man contained the swell of pride that erupted in his broad chest as the wreath now adorned his wooden lance.

"Thank you, Your Grace," he said, "I shall carry it with pride."

Ser Harwin's armour gleamed in the sunlight as he returned to his position.

Silence settled over the coliseum.

With a thunderous roar, the signal was given, and the two knights spurred their steeds into action. Dust danced in the air as the hooves of horses thundered down the lists, lances steadied and gazes marked on thine own target.

The lances crashed against each other. Only the black-haired knight's held true, colliding with the armour of his opponent with brutal force. He, however, remained steady on the leather of his saddle.

The nobles erupted into cheers as Ser Harwin's opponent was unseated, descending to the dust with a deafening clangour. The victorious knight waved briefly to the crowd before his horse gave out below him.

The gasps and screams of the court reverberated through the arena.

The shrieks of steel on steel rang across the jousting field as the two knights clashed. Ser Harwin was a man possessed, his blows raining down upon his opponent with relentless force. At one point, he tossed aside his sword, pummeling his opponent with simply his hands, both fists pounding against his chest.

As the dust settled and the screams of the crowd fell dead, Ser Harwin stood with his head hung, his gauntlets bloody, and his breath in ragged gasps. There was no longer pride in his eyes; only a grim visage remained, finding no solace in knowing he had defended his honour and upheld the code to which he had sworn his life.

He gazed upon the Princess's face; her violet eyes widened, and her mouth agape.

On the last night, fireworks exploded in the midnight sky above the ships of Blackwater Bay, the most noble of houses making drunken toasts to the Princess Y/N.

A table of gifts, wrapped in the most ornate of papers and fabrics and tied in the most elaborate and fantastical of bows, piled as high as the mountains in the North. It only grew as the evening went on, each courtier attempting to outdo the next.

A bard strummed his mandolin and cried out a song naming her the Princess, the realm's delight.

But the princess sat at her table, feigning looks of surprise and joy as one pompous figure after another greeted her.

THE LADY LAENA smiled.

"Oh, how you honour me, Y/N," she began, "Won't you join me for some wine and gossip?" She jested.

The Princess nodded, escaping with her kin under the threshold arm in arm.

The young knight stood back turned towards the door, not meaning to but overhearing their girlish chatter.

Y/N sat at the foot of Laena's bed, watching as she undressed.

The soft winds rustled the silken curtains, filling the room with a slight chill.

"How long has it been since we have laid eyes upon each other dear cousin?" Y/N said, sipping from her silver chalice.

Laena sighed as she plopped on the tall mattress. Her hair spread across the cool satin sheets.

"Way too long, I fear." She pouted.

Y/N gulped the last bit of her wine, wiping the side of her mouth with the tips of her pointer and index fingers.

Her cousin chuckled.

"What?! What provokes you to such laughter?" Y/N flopped back so she could lay beside her.

"You, drunkard." She giggled.

"I'll have you know I have not indulged in quite sometime," the Princess shrugged, reaching for the pitcher.

"By all means indulge… Your Grace," she jested.

Y/N shoved the older girl's shoulder.

"Do you remember all the mischief we got up to?" She sat up reaching for her own chalice.

"How could one forget."

"Little dragons should be seen and not heard!" they both exclaimed at the same time.

Another fit of laughter ensued.

"Good riddance to Otto! That old geezer!" Y/N began before her soft palms covered her mouth.

Laena rolled around the bed, clutching her nightgown-covered stomach.

"You have never told a lie! I do not regret ever eavesdropping on his conversations." She stated plainly.

"Gods! Remeber when we heard him trying to seduce that young kitchen hand?! What was her name-" The princess began once more.

"Maeve! The poor girl!" Her cousin answered.

The two fell weak, with stomachs aching from laughter.

The hour grew late, and the pair grew bacchanalian.

Their chalices once filled with the finest of Dornish wine had run dry.

"…Any interesting converstions… or encounters at court...?" Laena asked. Her head now hung off the bed.

Y/N pouted her lips.

"No lords interest me…" Y/N retorted, reflecting on the disappointing suitors she had encountered. From brutish Baratheons to loquacious Lannisters.

Laena hummed.

"He does not have to be a lord…" she sang.

The princess sat up.

"It is almost as if you are referring to someone in particular dear cousin…" She arched her brow.

The Velaryon girl shrugged.

"Have you perhaps noticed the fleeting glances of your Kingsgaurd…?" The girl flipped over onto her belly.

She laughed nearly falling from the bed.

"Ser Harwin? I assure you I have no interest in a man like him. He probably frequents the brothel in Mole's Town, has fathered a thousand bastards and…"

"Uh huh… So you are smitten with him…" She deduced.

Y/N heaved a boudoir pillow at her cousin's head.

"I have no time to be consumed by matters of the heart… besides how can one forget the brutality of my name day…"

Laena's eyes softened.

Y/N cleared her throat.

"The hour has grown late dear cousin. I fear I must retire…" Y/N explained before swaying to her feet.

The older girl nodded.

She rose off the bed, bidding her kin goodnight with a kiss on the cheek.

The girl tugged feebly at the door before managing to pry it ajar.

She had forgotten her sworn protector resided outside until his dark ringlets appeared in the candlelit corridor.

"Princess." He greeted hoarsely.

"Ser Harwin. My apologies…" She slurred before clumsily shuffling past him.

The knight stifled the laugh that bubbled in his belly at the sight before him. In fact, he quite enjoyed it when the Princess murmured more than two words to him.

"No need to apologise Your Grace. Shall I escort you back to your chambers?" he said looking down at her state.

The top buttons of her chemise were unbuttoned; he had not the slightest clue where her shoes had gone and her curls were more unruly than usual.

Frankly she looked as though she'd been bedded.

"Yes… to my chambers," she sighed.

THE WALK WAS SLOW, but Ser Harwin did not mind. He found the sight quite adorable.

Princess Y/N hummed along as she used the passing walls to stabilize her.

When they reached the door, the knight pushed it open, standing straight outside the threshold.

The princess mumbled a quiet thanks before entering her large chamber.

A few moments after she had shut the door behind her, he heard what he thought was his name being uttered from her lips.

"Princess?" her turned to the door, his hand frozen at the handle.

"Are you decent?" He called.

"Yes!" she answered rather quietly.

The man swallowed hard.

The room was exceptionally warm from the fireplace that burned brightly in the corner, casting the shadows of flickering flames over the princess's face.

He shut the door behind him.

"I cannot manage the strings of my corset…" She pouted.

The man's skin warmed.

He supposed that since it was now the hour of the wolf, it would be most unkind to awaken Her Grace's handmaiden to do such a simple task.

The knight removed his gauntlets laying them gently on the table beside him.

He cautiously approached the heiress. Her back turned towards him.

She tossed her pearlescent hair over her shoulder so it rested on her collar bone.

His nimble fingers unravelling the strings of the corset one by one.

The man tried to ignore the way his rough fingers grazed the softness of her skin every now and again.

The princess sighed deeply.

"Thank you, Ser Harwin."

The man grunted in response, afraid that his tongue might betray him.

The silver-haired beauty stalked towards him, eyes fixed; he had not realized that he was marching backwards until his head hit the wall with a thud.

"Ser Harwin…" She said. Her glossy lilac eyes peering up at him through her long eyelashes.

"Princess…" He whispered. Swallowing thickly.

She tilted her head to the side.

His eyes immediately fell to her exposed neck.

"Do you desire me?"

[tk-duveraun]

2/? Luo Binghe is SO NORMAL about Shen Yuan

Part 2

1, 2(here),

Read up through even numbered parts on Ao3

Luo Binghe spent the next week shuffling between the dorms and the dining hall. He lost 21 S-points in three bites for having the audacity to smile at his shizun when Shen Yuan saw him limping and offered a kind word and a gentle touch to his head. Luo Binghe really wanted to cry in happiness or fall into Shen Yuan's arms to be gently cradled, but no, that was OOC.

So he was down by slightly more than one fifth of his starting health. Great. True injustice was being so close to the real Shen Yuan but being left unsnuggled and uncuddled with even his dakimakura

Thankfully, the original goods was a polite, so Luo Binghe had plenty of time to watch and listen. Shen Yuan only really interacted with two of his disciples on page during this arc: Ming Fan and Ning Yingying. Ming Fan was his head disciple, a weak-willed bootlicker, but decent at administrative tasks, even if he needed way too much supervision for his age. Ning Yingying was Shen Jiu's spy and his primary avenue of approaching Shen Yuan.

Imagine being too tsundere to properly court Shen Yuan, couldn't be him.

Luo Binghe fixed most of his attention on the two known entities and added the others onto his mental chart from there. The senior members of Qing Jing, like Shen Yuan's cohort, were all too afraid of Shen Jiu to make an attempt at romancing the co-Peak Lord. It limited Luo Binghe's competition.

At this point in the plot Liu Qingge, the Lord of Bai Zhan Peak was the biggest danger. IRS was a mess of switching POVs to leave exact details of the rival courting attempts secret, so Luo Binghe didn't know exactly how or when only that at some point during Luo Baixiao's tenure as a student Liu Qingge took Shen Yuan's first time in some kind of sex pollen incident.

In the book, Shen Yuan had been embarrassed and tried to act as if the entire thing was a simple medical procedure, but Liu Qingge and the rest of the rabble saw it differently. Now, Liu Qingge was too incompetent to actually get anywhere despite having sex with the protagonist, something his fans constantly whined about, but Luo Binghe wanted his to be the first touch Shen Yuan knew.

A distinctly not electronic whistle sounded between Luo Binghe's ears.

"The youth's first fixation is getting stronger every year," a voice layered with age said next.

Luo Binghe hastily threw up the System interface to guard his thoughts. He focused his eyes on the screen so he couldn't see the way the fly buzzing near him was frozen between wing beats. Once his heartbeat calmed, Luo Binghe reviewed the facts he had.

A voice in your head was never a good sign, but Luo Baixiao had been sent as a spy. It made sense his demon overlord had some means of contacting him. And per the System's dog water character-sheet he was internally cold and resentful. Right. Luo Binghe could handle this. He waved the System away.

"What do you want, Old Bastard?" Luo Binghe snapped back. It actually gave him a little thrill to snarl inwardly while keeping a polite, pleasing blankness on his face.

"No respect for this Venerable One. What a tragedy."

"Never for the hand that holds the leash."

"So the fixation has sharpened the brat's teeth. Good. This Ancient One was concerned the seal would leave his student toothless forever." The voice gave the impression of clearing his throat. "The Sha brat was named Saintess and plans to come stir trouble here. Linguang-jun wants her humiliated."

"What else is new?"

"The brat would be served by listening if he wants his antidote this month."

Again, Luo Binghe felt the overwhelming urge to bare his teeth. His expression turned into a frown, but he managed to outwardly keep it back.

"Saintess Sha will be humiliated."

"See to it that she is."

And then it felt like a door closing in the back of his mind. Luo Binghe felt around the edges of his mind. While there were no traces of the voice, neither was there proof it had ever been there. He couldn't trust he was at a level high enough to detect if it was truly still listening to his thoughts.

However, before he could pull up the System, it summoned itself.

[New Quest Available! Tutorial Quest "I'll Be Your Saint Sebastian" is MANDATORY. Completion will unlock Luo Baixiao OOC feature.]

Luo Binghe squinted at the text. He knew games liked to put little references in their quest and ability titles but whatever this one was, he had no idea. "Can I just get my quests in plain text?"

[Quests are designed to maximize User experience and are not subject to alteration.]

Of course. Well, while it was here, he had a bigger concern. "Who was that in my head? How am I supposed to keep him from learning I'm not the Original Goods if he can hear my thoughts?"

The System displayed a throbbing loading symbol for a moment before it replied. [New Skill Available! Dream Technique: Mind Manipulation: Shielding. Cost: 50 S-points.]

Dream Technique? If dream manipulation was part of his skill tree then maybe Luo Baixiao being Shen Yuan's nightmare was more literal than he'd thought. The point cost was pretty steep, but it wasn't like he was going to get protection from the intruder gratis, so it was the cost of staying in the world, more or less.

"Fine, purchase and activate the skill." Luo Binghe said.

While the System didn't play any kind of animation, it certainly felt like a key had just unlocked something in his mind. Luo Binghe did not like it, but feeling the mental walls come up was a relief.

So the demon controlling him was Linguang-jun. He'd only appeared later in the story when Luo Baixiao was ordering him around. He was some pretty-boy ice demon that fell for Shen Yuan and took his own life rather than hurt him. Pretty standard for most of the demonic love interests.

Also 'antidote for this month' wasn't something to be glossed over. Luo Binghe could put the pieces together; the collar around his neck was some kind of undetectable poison and if he didn't regularly receive the antidote he'd die. Great, so he had the System and the poison to watch out for.

Saintess Sha was Sha Hualing, whose father was one of the few persistent demon suitors. He was an irredeemable warlord who really thought if he killed enough of his enemies Shen Yuan would be impressed and fall into his arms. Most readers were confused that Shen Yuan was unable to dissuade him outright, but Lord Sha plied Shen Yuan with his special interest: rare creatures, so he didn't risk alienating him.

Sha Hualing's attack on Cang Qiong Mountain also signaled the countdown to Shen Yuan's deflowering. It happened between the attack and Luo Baixiao receiving his spiritual weapon. And Luo Binghe wasn't stupid enough to think delaying on retrieving his sword would delay the lascivious attack on Shen Yuan.

Less importantly, the attack would pit Luo Binghe against one of Sha Hualing's little followers. Little, pah. It was one of the few scenes from Shen Yuan's point of view and he'd been torn between unexplored revulsion of his disciple and fear that his little student was going to be killed.

The forums had gone wild over the chapter, insisting that Shen Yuan was suppressing untoward thoughts about his underage disciple. Luo Binghe had kicked some of them off the internet entirely with the help of daddy's cash and the power of his vitriol. He'd then commissioned every fanartist that supported his own theories about Luo Baixiao.

Oh, he missed his custom ball-jointed doll of Shen Yuan. He'd even found a sculptor to lovingly make realistic genitals for him. The doll's default placement was on a small shelf just above his best Xiu Ya. He even had a full wardrobe housed in a 1/12 scale Bamboo House.

"Hey System, if I get enough points, can I import my collection?]

It didn't even answer him.

[elliewithcellie]

Long Cool Woman - Chapter 3

chapter summary: It's Day One of pageant practice, and someone has their eye on you.

wc: 4.2k

cw: awkward reader lmao, two brief implications of sex life, mention of a condom ha, i think that's it. Dean plays older brother, Jealous Sam? who knows

a/n: Find the rest of the story here

As the car rolled to a stop, you realized you had dozed off. It had been a long day. You all grabbed shopping bags and staggered through the hotel and into your room. The boys looked as exhausted as you felt, and it was only 9:30. You looked at the two beds with the desire to have one to yourself. You looked at the boys, sure they were thinking the same thing.

You sighed. You claimed a bed while the boys battled it out with rock-paper-scissors. Dean won, a smile joining his features. Sam’s eyes widened, the color draining from his face. They argued silently in front of you, their unspoken words still an enigma to you, a foreign language that held context clues at bay.

Sam’s face grew rosy as he walked toward your bed, his feet dragging in defeat. The closer he got, the more doubtful you were about the situation. Your mind told you that you were an adult and that you could handle sharing a bed with a man, but your body could not be convinced.

“You know what?” you said scrambling out of bed. “It’s ok, Sam. You can have it.”

You grabbed a pillow and pulled the comforter off the bed.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked.

“I’m gonna sleep in the bathtub. You both have a long day, so I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding,” Sam said.

“It’s ok, really. I’d fit in here better than you guys would.” You forced a laugh. “Goodnight.”

You dragged the blanket into the bathroom and shut the door behind you.

“Sweet. Win-win,” you heard Dean say, his voice muffled by the door.

As far as bathtubs go, this was the nicest tub you’d seen. You laid the comforter down to form a padding, pleased with your quick thinking. But you felt stupid. The urge to fix it and act like an adult grew larger, the embarrassment rattling in your head like a pinball machine. But that ship had sailed. You had sealed your fate. You tossed and turned in the tub until your mind settled into sleep.

A muffled alarm through the bathroom door woke you from your pained slumber. As nice and spacious as the bathtub was, it was still a bathtub: cold and solid. No matter how padded, the comforter’s efforts remained in vain. You stretched your aching back, not quite finding the relief you sought.

You stepped out of the tub, careful not to slip. The mirror served as an unpleasant reminder of your lack of sleep. Dark bags hung under your eyes, and your hair shot in every direction. Your shorts had twisted halfway around your waist, and only one sock remained on your feet. You tried to groom yourself slightly before opening the door, hoping to signal an invitation to the others.

You had just finished brushing your teeth when Sam entered the bathroom. Juxtaposing his large frame, he shrank himself down, almost a mixture of shyness and guilt as he approached you.

You decided to beat him to the punch. “I’m sorry for ditching last night. We’re adults. It shouldn’t have been a big deal.”

“No, no,” Sam said, his eyes wide, frantic to reassure you. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I should be apologizing to you. I’m sorry we made you sleep in here.”

“You didn’t. It was my choice.”

“You wouldn’t have made the choice if we didn’t push you to. We should have gotten another room for you. We weren’t thinking,” he said, his posture straightening with his assertion.

He towered over you, closing some distance, but his demeanor remained soft and sincere. Heat radiated off of him, his warmth a welcome change from the cool porcelain of last night. Still, chills ran down your spine.

“I—I’m not here to make anyone uncomfortable. I’ve just –”

“You’re not.”

“—never done that kind of thing, but we’re all adults here. I can pull it together and act like one.”

“Done what?” Dean asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Been in bed with a guy,” you said, your quick confession taking you by surprise. You covered your eyes with your hand, a meager attempt at hiding your embarrassment.

Dean’s eyebrows raised in surprise as he squeezed between you and Sam to find his toothbrush. “Bobby didn’t let you out much, huh?”

“Dean,” Sam warned.

“Nothing in high school, though? Never ditched class for a boy?”

“What? No, not at all,” you said. “Some small little innocent crushes and school dances, but nothing serious. What are we talking about right now?”

“This is on us, ok?” Sam said, pulling your attention as he gathered your pillow and comforter from the tub. “We should have gotten you a separate room. I’ll go see if they have any others.”

“No, it’s fine. Really,” you said. “I’m fine with it if you guys are fine with it. I just can’t sleep in that bathtub again.”

“Deal,” Sam said, returning your things to the bed. “Taking the comforter, though, now that’s unforgivable.” A smirk rose on his face, watching for your reaction.

You chuckled and smiled back, and he resumed making the bed.

“Ok, out, Dean,” you shooed him. “I gotta get ready.”

“Wait, just two minutes.”

“Fine, but I really have to get going. Shoot. Is there a dress code for this? Sam, Where’s the itinerary?” You left the bathroom and rummaged through your duffle bag, the door closing swiftly behind you.

“Here,” Sam said holding the paper up. “It says, ‘Welcome to Day One. Meet the rest of the contestants for breakfast before we begin our first rehearsal. Come as you wish to present yourself (The judges do not score until Day Three).’ So, it sounds like you can wear whatever you want.”

“Thank god,” you exhaled.

Dean exited the bathroom, and you entered, closing the door behind you.

As you showered, your body teetered on the line of anxiety. You were an imposter. You knew that the other girls would practically smell it on you. Your looks and lack of experience could be enough to be caught in this lie. You wanted to back out altogether. But lives were at stake here. You had to remember that. Miss Vermont was found dead. You could not afford any more casualties. You exited the bathroom, Sam taking your place. You returned to your bag and practiced what you learned yesterday, in hopes of elevating your look just enough to blend in with the contestants.

Sam returned to the room as you finished up. “You gotta get going. Here, we’ll walk you out.”

You nodded and slipped on your shoes. The closer to the lobby the three of you got, the quicker your heart started racing.

“You’re going to be fine,” Sam said. “Just remember to keep your eye out for anything out of the ordinary. Try to get people talking and keep your phone handy just in case.”

“And use this when you have any free time,” Dean said as he handed you his EMF detector. “Any information is helpful.”

You all entered the lobby littered with beautiful women. Chatter and laughter bounced off the walls, all but singeing your skin in overwhelm.

“I’ll see you guys soon, right?” you asked.

“Like we never even left. Now, go make some friends. Ooh, especially with her,” Dean said pointing over at one of the contestants.

“Shut up,” you said. Still, you laughed.

“Hey,” Sam said, his eyes serious and concerned. “Be safe, ok?”

You nodded. “You, too.”

Without another word, the boys left the hotel and left you to truly fend for yourself.

******

Clink, clink, clink.

“Alright, ladies. Please take your seats in the chair with your state labeled accordingly.” You looked up to find an older woman on the stage, holding a glass in one hand and a fork in the other. She sounded too chipper for the time of morning, and her smile seemed sewn to her face by three cups of coffee. She struck you as presidential: matching tweed blazer and pencil skirt with a shirt the same shade and pointed shoes two sizes too small.

You found your seat and slumped down, hoping to avoid unwanted attention. Pastries lined the center of the table. You scanned the others. No one attempted to take one, so you didn’t either. You tried to focus on the speaker, but your stomach rumbled silently.

“Now that we are all settled, welcome and congratulations for making it to the Miss America pageant. I’m Nancy Roshambo, the event coordinator for the next three days. These are my fellow producers, Tod Larkins and James Mathesby.” Nancy gestured to her right revealing a frail, older man and a younger, fit, attractive man. You sucked in a breath at the sight of James. It may have been your first time meeting someone who took your breath away. Embarrassment struck you, desperate to avert your eyes from him.

Nancy continued. “While the stage crew sets up the stage for rehearsal this afternoon, we decided you all should get to know each other!” Small cheers from the crowd of women erupted in the room. They all seemed so excited as they turned to their peers and giggled. You only settled into your nerves, taking a deep breath through the commotion. The girls collected themselves as soon as Nancy resumed speaking.

“We have generated a few games for you ladies to play for the next few hours, so by the time we are ready to rehearse, you all will be each other’s best friends!”

You couldn’t help but roll your eyes. You were sure these girls were lovely, but Nancy was coming on a little strong. Still, the overall consensus remained positive. Nancy announced the first game, and everyone shuffled around accordingly. Through the transition, you grabbed one of the frosted donuts that sat perfectly at the center of the table. The rest of the table settled in around you. As you ate, you felt their eyes searing into your skin.

“That’s impressive,” one of the girls said.

“Am I not allowed to eat right now?” you asked, putting your donut back on the table.

“No, go on ahead,” she said. “It’s just so courageous for you to eat sweets just days before that show. I’m Tanya by the way.”

You cursed to yourself. By simply eating, these girls were on to you. You introduced yourself sheepishly.

To your surprise, Tanya shrugged and grabbed a donut of her own. Another girl couldn’t remove the disdain from her expression.

“What, Kari? I’ve been inspired,” Tanya said.

“Could someone tell me what we’re supposed to be doing?” you asked.

“We are supposed to be playing Two Truths and a Lie,” Miss California said, irritation evident in her tone.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if we got to know each other by, like, asking regular questions?” you asked.

“Yeah, these games are stupid!” Tanya said. “We don’t even know each other well enough to make a guess. You guys play your game. Me and Y/N, here, are going to actually get to know each other.”

The rest of the girls at the table commenced their game as Tanya shifted her chair toward you. “Alright. Are you going to share first, or should I?”

Because of your unique situation, you let her do the talking. The conversation went smoothly for hours. It was exciting to get to know someone your age so easily. The boys, as kind and hospitable as they grew to be, were reserved. There wasn’t much information to gather unless you dug for it, a risk you weren’t quite willing to endure yet. But Tanya was an open book. She discussed the experiences she had growing up in Georgia. But it wasn’t until she mentioned she was engaged that you found yourself holding onto every word she had to offer. You longed for the experience of a partner, even though you knew you could never have one. The normalcy of her life left you evaluating your own, how strange it became, and how much you’ve missed out on. Still, a girl could dream.

“Alright. Enough about me. What about you?”

Before you could begin, Nancy tapped her glass with her fork, a hush falling on the crowd.

“Alright, ladies. We’re going to take a little break while the crew finishes their last-minute details. Feel free to use the restroom to freshen up!”

“You’re off the hook this time, but you will tell me more about you later.” Tanya winked, and in a mad dash, headed for the restroom.

This was your opportunity to investigate, you quickly realized. You pulled out the EMF detector and scanned the perimeter of the room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. You rounded a corner where a window was left slightly ajar. On the windowsill sat a small pile of yellow dirt or maybe sawdust. Before you could examine it, you felt someone approach you from behind.

“What are you doing?”

You turned around and found James Mathesby towering over you, his arms folded at his chest. You scrambled for something, anything that could cover your tracks. But experiencing him up close had you short-circuiting.

“I—I, uh, it’s stuffy in here, isn’t it? Can’t hardly breathe in here.” You fanned yourself as your temperature rose. In truth, you couldn’t breathe, but it wasn’t the air causing you to swoon.

“Oh shit. I mean, shit. Let me take you outside.” His hand found residence on your lower back as he ushered you through the lobby doors. His hand left a fire in its wake as the heat traveled through you. To say you were touch-starved would be a gross understatement. You let out a deep exhale in hopes of pulling yourself together.

“Is that better?” he asked.

“Yeah, it is. Thank you,” you said, allowing the breeze to ground yourself. “I’m Y/N, by the way.”

He smiled and extended his hand. “I’m James.”

You shook his hand. Even the simple exchange of hands was enough to send you over the edge. The butterflies in your stomach twisted into knots. You were careful not to shake it for too long.

“So, what is it you do, here?”

“I’m in charge of run time. We have a tight schedule, and Nancy tends to go overboard with everything, so I keep her in check. I am also in charge of the videography of the event, telling which camera to cut to and when to pan to a wide angle or a close-up shot.”

“Oh, so you’re basically the director,” you said.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” James said, a slight rouge warming his cheeks.

You didn’t want the conversation to end. His big mysterious eyes pulled you into every word he said. You found yourself staring. You didn’t mean to. It wasn’t like you hadn’t seen a built body before, but his called to you, begging you to come closer. There was something about him you couldn’t resist, and you wanted to find out more.

“Ah, shit, er, crap. Sorry, I’m trying to be better about that.” James sighed. “We’re past time already. I better go. It was a pleasure meeting you. Get some water, and hopefully, I’ll catch you later.”

James left you alone. You heard the mutterings of Nancy over the microphone, but you found yourself too flustered amongst your own thoughts to comprehend her words. His fingertips had branded your back, the memory all too much to handle. You had never felt this way before. You were sure it was chemistry. You were determined to see where this feeling would take you.

 As you entered the lobby, the other contestants shuffled through double doors into another room. You stepped in line with the others and followed them into the ballroom. The production level completed in the hours you’d been present astounded you. Within the room stood a two-level stage with a spiral staircase on either side. American flags and giant glimmering stars hung on the back of the stage and from the ceiling. A sea of folding chairs sat evenly distributed across the floor. The sudden image of possibly thousands of people sitting in those chairs made you nauseous. You pushed it to the back of your mind as Nancy explained the situation.

“Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the pageant routine!” Nancy directed the women to their various positions. It seemed easy enough. Step and pause and step and pause. Still, the walk took six attempts before no mistakes were made. As you approached your final position, you found James off-stage. You made eye contact for only a split second before returning your focus to the stage. You felt flustered, then embarrassed over the effect that he was having on you. You had to keep it together.

“Ok, ladies! Let’s move on to the next section of the show!” Nancy announced. More walking, this time from a different approach for section two of the event. Nancy continued to add to the routine, and you continued to sneak peeks at James. You couldn’t sway your delusion; almost sure he watched you more than the other women.

After six hours of standing, walking, looking at James, and listening to Nancy say “Alright, ladies” for the millionth time, you were finally off the hook for the day. As all the contestants shuffled out of the ballroom, Tanya found her way to you.

“Hey! Day One is over, and it’s only 5:30.”

“Thank god, right?” you said, relaxing your posture for the first time today.

“So, if I were you, I’d go walk on over to James and see what he’s up to tonight.”

“What? How did you—”

She laughed. “I saw you guys talking when I came back from the bathroom. I noticed how you were checking him out. And he was totally staring at you throughout the whole rehearsal.” She nudged your arm with her elbow.

“Shut up. Don’t mess with me right now.”

“I’m not!” Tanya said. “You need to go for it.”

You sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. I mean my—my family might be doing something tonight.”

“Please, you’ve worked so hard to get here! Go have some fun! When was the last time you did anything for yourself?”

She raised a good point. He was too intoxicating to pass up. And what harm could another conversation cause?

“Fine,” you said. “Next time I see him, I’ll talk to him. What are you up to tonight?”

“Oh, a couple of the girls are getting drinks, so I better get going! I’ll see you tomorrow. You have to tell me everything.” She gave you a quick hug before running off.

Your fear kept you rooted to the floor beneath you. You sighed. There was no way you were going to go through with it. The boys would freak out, and this wasn’t a vacation. You were working. You turned around to head to your room in defeat. Your spin on the hardwood floor broke your balance, and you slipped backward. Yet, you never hit the ground, two arms catching your fall.

“You know, when I said, ‘catch you later,’ this isn’t what I meant.” James chuckled as he lifted you back to your feet.

You were mortified. You so suddenly ran hot across every inch of you. His hands never left your body, keeping you close.

“This is the second time, now, that you’ve helped me. I’m so embarrassed,” you said candidly.

“Don’t be,” he said, still holding you close.

You felt your pulse rise with each of his breaths. His eyes bore into yours, and even if the moment only lasted for two whole seconds, the weight of it lasted a lifetime.

“Forgive me if this is too forward,” James continued, “but what are you doing tonight?”

You, you thought uncharacteristically. Your mind was melting before your eyes. The desperation to come up with something quick swelled beneath your skin. “Umm, not much. It should be a relaxing night.”

“What if you joined me for dinner? I’ll buy. I’d hate myself if I didn’t try to ask you out.”

You were careful not to shudder in his grasp. Nothing could have prepared you for this moment. You did everything you could to conjure a nod. “What time were you thinking?”

“Meet me in the lobby at seven?” he asked.

“I—I can do that.”

James smiled. “Then I’ll see you at seven.”

The two of you parted ways, your head dizzy with excitement. Your emotions stirred in your head as you headed to your room. Before you opened the door, you took a deep inhale. You pled that the boys were still out investigating. Writing a note would be easier than facing them, you decided. You exhaled as you unlocked the door.

To your disappointment, the boys sat on their respective beds, Sam with his laptop and Dean sharpening his knife.

“Oh hey,” Sam said smiling up at you. “How’d it go?”

A pang of guilt struck just beneath your lungs, though you didn’t know what you could feel guilty for.

“Oh, you know, it was good, a lot of standing and stepping.” You released a breath, nervous to break the news. “And I made a friend or two.”

“Oh, sweet,” Sam said. “We knew you’d have no trouble with this.”

“Yeah, it was good. How’s the research going?”

“Coming up dry,” Dean said. “Nothing’s out of the norm here. No angry dead Miss America contestants or anything like that.”

“You didn’t get any readings, did you?” Sam asked.

“No. I tested the lobby and ballroom. Nothing. So, what are we thinking, now?”

Dean stood up. “Well, I say we take a break. How about we get some food before we return to square one?”

“Mmm, about that,” you said. “You guys go without me. I sorta made plans.”

“Plans?” both boys said.

You winced at their surprise. “It’s no big deal. One of the friends I made asked me to go out, so I said yes.”

You sucked in your lip as the boys exchanged a look of disbelief. “It’s not a big deal,” you said again, not quite sure if you were reassuring them or yourself.

“So,” Dean said finally, “what are you and this ‘friend’ gonna be up to?”

“Just a dinner. It doesn’t have to be long. I meet him at 7, so—”

“Him? So, it’s a date. Sam, it’s a date.”

“I heard,” Sam said, his voice dry.

“Guys,” you said, exasperated. “Fine. Maybe it’s a date.”

“I’m not sure I like this,” Dean said. “You don’t know this guy.”

“I thought that’s what the dinner was for.”

Dean looked to Sam, who had turned away as if to hide the thoughts running through his head. Dean huffed. “Listen. I want you back by ten. No later. I want a text every time you stop at a different location.”

You nodded.

“Now, are you… prepared?”

“Well, I’d like to take a few minutes to get ready. I mean—”

“No, no.” Dean sighed again. His cheeks turned a tinge of red before rummaging through his duffle bag.

“Dean, what are you—”

He pulled out a small square wrapper from his bag.

“You can’t be serious.” Sam forced a dry laugh from his throat.

“Can’t ever be too careful,” Dean said trying to hand the condom to you.

“Woah!” You backed up completely flustered. “That’s—it’s not like that! I mean, I don’t think—”

“It’s always good to keep it in your back pocket. Sometimes the heat of the moment sneaks up on you.”

You were speechless, your jaw on the floor and your cheeks set ablaze. You dared to look at Sam in hopes that he would defend you. His eyes burned a hole in his computer, his whole face flushed, his eyebrows furrowed.

You snatched the wrapper from Dean’s hand and shoved it in your pocket. “Anything else you need from me? Need me to give you the play-by-play when I come back?”

“No!” Both boys yelled. You jumped at the urgency.

“No,” Dean said calmer. “But I do want to walk you out, so we know who to kill if he fucks up.”

“You’re joking. No. No way.”

“I’ll come with you,” Sam said, standing at full height.

Two against one. Before today, you would have folded in embarrassment, opting to stay inside for good. But the boys didn’t understand that this would be your first night of freedom in years. Your first night of freedom in your whole adult life. You weren’t going to allow this opportunity to pass you up.

“Fine,” you said finally.

You took the time to refresh yourself, the ticking clock a rude instigator of anticipation. It was finally time to go, and as you left the room, the boys followed close behind.

James had beat you down to the lobby. He stood at the sight of you, a smile wide on his face, only for it to taper as he took in the Winchesters behind you.

“Hey,” you said. “I’m ready to go if you are.” You grabbed his arm to pull him toward the exit.

“Who are they?” James asked.

You rolled your eyes. “My guard dogs apparently. Let’s get out of here.”

“After you.” He opened the lobby door for you, and the two of you headed to his car before the boys could say a word.

chapter 4

[clone-trooper-cheese]

Echoes of Ice and Steel: A Clone Wars Odyssey

Chapter One: Frostbitten Loyalties

CHAPTER ONE:

Frostbitten Loyalties

Word Count: 1,574 Spelling & Grammar: Checked

Snow. The frozen microcrystals coated the landscape like a blanket over a bed. It was just as beautiful as it was dangerous, easy to get lost in its beauty when the lines that separated the horizon from the sky were washed away by the pure white powdery crystals. It was nothing new to him. A clone Corporal that had been specially trained for cold climates and high altitudes, hence, the name he chose; Polar. 

“Corporal? Sir? Are you there?” His comm link rang out.

“Oh, Um, Yes-” Polar stammered, “Yes I'm here, Butch… What is it?”

“You missed your check in… That's all, Sir.” The Clone named Butch replied. He was a stickler for protocol and orders, making sure to follow them exactly how they were supposed to be done. 

Polar found it a little annoying, but endearing at the same time. “All good, trooper. I was just thinking, that's all.” He said before going quiet on his end again, staring back at the landscape. Rico, another member of his team, teased Butch about calling the Corporal out like that, since it had only been barely a minute since the check time passed. Butch was still a shiny, so doing things by the book was how he'd been trained. Polar listened to them go back and forth about things before finally stepping in. 

“Girls, Girls! You're both pretty, Now cut the chit-chat on the main comms.”

“Yes, sir.” was heard from both of the bickering troopers after the other.

Polar stood on the outskirts of the base after checking the motion sensors and cleaning the icicles off of them. He looked up at the mountains, his eyes tracing the peaks and valleys. He started making his way back to the base, the cold was just now starting to get to him after hours of being out there. His phase I armor was the cause of that. It had built in life support and temperature regulation, unlike the new phase II armors, which were more cheaply made to be lighter and easily mass-produced. 

The durasteel blast door creaked as it slid open, then closed it behind, as the cold Corporal came into the bay to warm up before going up to the control bridge with the rest of the crew. As his helmet Depressurized with a hiss, Polar thought about the first time it happened in an accident. He had been hiking a high mountain to recover one of his fallen brothers from a group of bandits who had stormed their base to steal their supplies and just wreak havoc in general. 

His helmet depressurized, causing him to nearly suffocate as the oxygen was too thin for him to breathe.  He ended up holding his breath for nearly ten minutes while he tried to fix the pressure seal on the rim of the helmet. After he arrived back at the base.  He trained his lungs to be able to hold his breath for a long period of time to be able to survive like that if nobody was there to help him if his helmet depressurized again.

“Sir? You alright?” Ebony, the door guard trooper, asked Polar. Ebony was confused and concerned as to why his Corporal was just standing there, staring into nothing.

“Oh, yes, sorry… just lost in thought. Thanks for letting me in, Eb.” Polar answered while taking off his helmet. Thin strands of loose platinum blond hair stuck to his face from a tiny sheen of moisture that collected on his forehead from the heat of the helmet. He took a long breath and wiped his head, brushing back his hair as he and Ebony proceeded to the elevator. The filtered oxygen of the base was a lot nicer than the filters in the helmets; not only more pure, but warmer. 

Polar and Ebony made their way up to the main control room of the base. Butch, Offbeat, Nonk and Rico, who were sitting in the room at the table playing cards, quickly stood at attention when they saw Polar enter the room.

“At ease boys…” He said, and they immediately slackened their posture and went back to casual stances. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?” The light haired clone asked, setting his helmet down on a table before walking to look at the holo screens to observe the data logs. 

“Nothing really important… Rico stubbed his toe and said swears that I didn't know existed, so that's cool I guess…” Ebony said in his usual apathetic tone and slumped onto one of the benches lining the table. 

“That's not surprising… Are you sure he didn't just make them up?” Polar inquired, “Because it wouldn't be the first time he's done something like that.” He chuckled and shook his head as Ebony rolled his eyes and looked back at his datapad. 

A chime came from the computer and a transmission request came through… it was from the chancellor himself. He answered it, and the others turned their attention from their tasks to the hologram display of the chancellor in a hooded robe.

“Execute Order sixty-six.”

“Yes sir.” The whole team, except for Polar, said and then went back to their business. There was no Jedi in sight, or even on the planet for all they knew, so there was nothing to do except continue with their other activities. Polar had a puzzled look on his face.

“Uhh…. What was that order again?”

“Order sixty-six is to execute the Jedi, Sir, they are traitors.” Brutus replied as if it was no big deal that they had just been told to kill the people they’ve fought with since the beginning of the war.

Polar exclaimed in an utterly confused tone, “HUH!?” and Brutus’s hand went to his blaster holster.

“Are you saying you’re not going to obey the order? Sir? Good soldiers follow orders.”

“No, I- was just- confused, that's all, Brutus…” Polar put back on his commanding voice and told Brutus to stand down. 

He thought for a moment, before walking to grab his helmet and leave the room. 

“I'll be in my quarters, if any of you need me… just come get me- or call me on the comms.” The Corporal said as he went out of the sliding durasteel door and into the corridor towards the team's quarters. A perk about their team being the only one at the small base was that they each got their own small, private rooms instead of a big barracks room like on Kamino or on a larger base. Being a clone, where your needs weren’t always met the same as nat-borns most of the time, having a private room was a small luxury, but still a luxury that he had. Taking off his armor, he thought about the order just given to him and all of his comrades. Polar tucked away his armor pieces, and his tattered cloak into the storage box, then sat on his bed in his blacks. He contemplated changing into his fatigues, or just into another pair of blacks, he ultimately ended up choosing the clean pair of blacks over the loose fatigues. 

About two hours of reading a holo-drama novel, Polar’s eyes started to get heavy and droopy. He yawned, setting his datapad down on the nightstand and getting up to turn the lights down, still keeping the room lit with one single light so it wouldn't be pitch black darkness. As he was walking back to his bed, he took the elastic ribbon out of his hair, the piece that was keeping it up in a small bun, and let his hair fall down. He sighed in the slight relief caused by the release of the tension in his scalp. Scratching his head and sitting down on the side of his bed, he stretched one more time and laid down, pulling the blanket over himself. 

Just as he was falling asleep, his comm went off. Beep beep beep beep beep beep.

He grabbed it and answered it with a tired voice, “This is Corporal Polar.” 

“Hi sir, Um, we just got a request to come back to Kamino within the next two rotations for an event.”

“Okay? And you needed to tell me this now?”

“Well, I suppose I could have waited…”

“You could have, yes. Bright as always Brutus… Is there anything else you'd like to tell me while you have me on call?”

“Um, nothing I can think of right now, I’ll call you again if I think of anything, Sir!”

“Well, Brutus, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I would like to sleep, so only call me if it’s really urgently important, ‘kay?”

“Affirmative, Sir! Sleep well, Sir. The boys say goodnight too.”

“Thanks, Good night…”

The communication signal ended with a click noise, and Polar put his comm back onto the nightstand. He closed his eyes and tried to do his routine of tensing all of his muscles and releasing them with a deep breath, starting with his face; he scrunched it, making the scar across his nose bridge pull slightly painfully, but a bearable amount. After his routine was over, he was much more relaxed and closed his eyes, pulling his blanket back over his shoulder and settling into a comfortable position. 

Chapter one end

Characters used:

Corporal Polar (Has Lieutenant privileges but thinks Corporal sounded cooler with his name)

Sergeant Rico

Trooper Ebony

Trooper Butch

Pilot Offbeat

Pilot Nonk

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'm kind of just making this for fun, so sorry if its inconsistent. I plan on posting the chapters all together when it is done on Ao3, but I have to wait for the invitation first.

[manhandlememando]

Gravity Ch. 7

din djarin x f!reader

TW: din whump, description of bomb related destruction, slight injury description, the Razor Crest served long and faithfully but unfortunately did not make it out of this chapter alive. third person POV (she/her)

word count: 2,731

a/n: this chapter is itty bitty because i split the original ch. 7 in half. BUT FEAR NOT chapter 8 will be right around the corner and will most definitely contain MDNI warnings; so be prepared.

series is ongoing

series masterlist:

BANG

She jolts awake from the peaceful sleep she so rarely gets to experience, having heard a large explosive sound she gets up immediately to search for what may have caused such a thing. Din awoke with the movement of her getting up, groaning and turning over.

“Din, I heard something.” She says quietly as he begins to sit up, he reaches down to grab his helmet and put it back on before she turned on the lights in the small courters.

He moved quickly to the door as another large sound rang throughout the ship. The left engine, for Makers sake, Din realizes this in his hurry and rushes to mend the problem.

As she waits she wonders if this engine problem will be reparable without having to land at the nearest port. The door hisses as it opens to reveal Din, his helmet hides his expression but by the slump of his shoulders she could tell something was amiss.

“I’m so sorry, but it’s not looking like something I can fix myself. I have to land at the nearest port but…” he trails off as if not wanting to reveal something.

“What?” She asks inquisitively, an air of caution to her tone.

“We have to go back to Tatooine, Peli is the only mechanic I trust to touch this ship.” He says apprehensively, knowing the backlash he would receive.

“Din… no, I won’t, we have to go somewhere else,” she says in a stern tone, making her boundary known.

“You can stay sealed in the ship the whole time, Peli will be there in the mechanics bay, it will be fine,” Din reassured, knowing her worry that those who were still looking for them would recognize the ship and come for them.

“No one will hurt you, mesh’la. No one, I promise,” Din assured her once more, gathering her in his arms and running a large hand over the crown of her head in a soothing manner. Din hated to put her in this emotional position but he wouldn’t be able to get to any other planet at this point, their trajectory set for Tatooine already.

————————————————

Once in the mechanics bay Din made sure to inform Peli of the importance of keeping the ship sealed, for the girls sake. Peli understood immediately and assured Din she would keep an eye out for any suspicious activity or persons near the bay. Even going as far as powering up her “defense mechanism”, which seemed to be a de-programmed battle droid. It made him uneasy, but he also knew Peli and what she was capable of, and if she said the droid was safe, then he would have to believe her. Din then proceeded to exit the bay, on his way to the local merchant in the more populated districts of Mos Eisley to get much needed supplies and food rations.

With the knowledge that Din wouldn’t be with her the entire time, but instead would be leaving the mechanics bay to go do Maker knows what, her throat tightened as the anxiety set in. She understood that Din wasn’t her sole protector, that she could defend herself and that her own autonomy was her responsibility, no one else’s. But Din’s presence always made the feeling of confidence within her grow exponentially, covering her whole body in the warmth of reassurance.

Even though she knew Din had instructed Peli to keep the ship sealed, within only thirty minutes of mindlessly wandering the ship she was starting to go insane. The constant banging and loud sounds from outside the ship caused her to jump frequently. So much for easing my anxiety, she thought to herself, another loud CLANG came from outside the ship, but this sound was different. It was as if something had hit the ship, something much stronger than any hammer Peli had. She tensed, suddenly hearing distant yelling from beyond the metal confines of the ship.

“No, no, no,” she whispered quietly to herself, frantically beginning to search for any semblance of armor or a weapon when the main hull door opened with a hiss of air. Turning sheet white she froze, unable to think as she witnessed a form ascend into the hull of the ship. There’s dust billowing into the ship, as if it had been set loose from the ground by something high-impact, like a heavy artillery blaster shot. Slowly shrinking behind a corner wall in the hull, holding a blaster to her chest, she prepares for a firefight. But to her surprise she hears Peli call her name into the ship. As she emerges from around the corner, she sees a large, more anthropomorphic, droid standing in the hull next to Peli. Her hair was even more disheveled than normal, sticking in every direction and sizzling slightly.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, honey, but we need to go now,” Peli spoke, continuing to check the outside of the ship, as if waiting for someone to appear.

“What’s going on?” She asks, slowly moving towards Peli, very cautious of this unknown droid that was standing immobile in front of her. Its eyes glowed red and it stood perfectly still, as if waiting for instruction.

“I’m not sure, honestly. But I do know we’re being attacked, that’s why I brought out Big Red here,” she says gesturing to the towering droid. “It won’t hurt you, it’s a security protocol,” she says as the girl makes her way around the chunk of metal to the hull door.

“Now go get everything you can carry, we need to leave the mechanical bay entirely,” Peli instructed, she then turned to the droid and instructed it to man the entrances and to kill any unwanted visitors. She then began to help the other woman gather things from the ship, shoving as many weapons and gadgets into burlap sacks she had brought onto the ship.

“Not my first time having to evacuate a ship before,” Peli explained when the younger woman looked to the burlap bags with a questioning expression.

“Just grab everything you can, I don’t want to be here if those things come back,” Peli said. However as she finished her thought, blaster fire could be heard from outside the Razor Crest, meaning someone was trying to get back into the mechanics bay.

“Too late,” Peli mutters.

“How will we -,” she begins to ask Peli but instead of providing her an answer, Peli grabs her free hand and drags her to the back of the ship.

“There’s an evacuation hatch in the floor of this thing somewhere,” she said as she lifted a small mat on the floor, under it was a door. “There we go,” Peli exclaims with a smile.

“You go first,” she gestures to the young woman standing behind her.

After they successfully pushed through the small evacuation hatch, the two women slowly made their way to another emergency exit in the corner of the bay. Blaster fire still being heard from the entrance, the droid holding off the intruders for the time being. Peli quickly ushered herself and the other woman to safety, making their way to another bay of a friend of Peli’s.

“She’ll take care of us until Din returns and we can come up with a plan to get the Razor Crest back,” Peli explains as they descend into the shop of another ship mechanic.

It’s then that the ground explodes with movement, the stairs crack and crumble as both of the women lose their footing and fall over each other. The noise is deafening, an explosive rumble that physically shakes the concrete of the building, creating fisures in the walls and ceiling. As the intensity of the situation subsides the young woman opens her eyes to see rubble surrounding her and the older woman. Peli groans as she rolls over onto her stomach, working her way to her feet. She helps the other woman to her feet as they take in the scene around them. A massive plume of smoke has erupted into the sky from the direction they had just come from. With the realization beginning to sink in, both Peli and her gasp, the Razor Crest had just been bombed.

A shaking hand is placed over her mouth as another realization comes to her, she could've been in the ship, they both had just come so close to death.

————————————————

Din was conversing with an older bounty hunter, trying to locate his old boss, Greef Karga, in order to get work. As he began to buy supplies he realized how little money he actually had. The conversation is cut short by an earth-shattering noise, a low rumble followed that shook everything on the ground. Din’s head whipped in the direction of the noise and his eyes are met with the most horrific sight; a plume of smoke billowing from the mechanic bay she is in. Without another word to his fellow bounty hunter Din took off sprinting in the direction of his ship, and her. As he approached the scene, he was struck with anguish as he witnessed flames and smoke envelope the entire building, the ship buried under rubble. His mind was racing and without a second thought Din sealed his helmet and ran into the flames. Yelling, screaming her name, calling out for Peli, but no one answered. The flames began to eat away at the fabric of his flight suit and the seal on his helmet released without warning as the flames and heat ate through more of his clothes. He continued to call her name, his lungs beginning to fill with smoke as the fire grew hotter and spread faster. Digging through metal and concrete he couldn’t find any trace of her or Peli. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, his eyes stung as tears flooded from them.

Maker, please no, please I can’t lose her, Din thought as he tried to make his way out of the burning catastrophe that was Peli’s mechanic bay. His vision began to blur as the smoke seeped into his lungs, suffocating him from the inside out. He made it to what used to be the stairs that descended into the shop, but now were chunks of concrete stacked haphazardly upon each other. Dragging himself up the embankment of crumbled concrete he was able to make it to his feet and with every last piece of strength in his body he was able to walk out of the burning structure before the arch above the stairs collapsed in on itself.

“Mando!” He heard someone call, but he couldn’t lift his head from the sand to see who had called for him. He heard his title called again, this time it seemed closer than before, and through the fits of coughing he was experiencing he suddenly realized he knew that voice.

“Oh, Maker,” the person gasped above him, falling to their knees and beginning to pull him up onto their lap.

“Din, it’s me, I’m here. Okay? I’m right here,” she spoke calmly, but he could hear the quiver in her voice.

Through the smoke inhalation his mind couldn’t comprehend anything other than that he knew who was talking to him. It took him a moment to focus in on their face, and the second his vision became clearer he couldn’t breathe all over again. It was her, she was alive.

It was as if new life had been breathed into his limp body, but as he moved to sit up he felt the pain of the burns and his lungs began to give out again. Gripping onto her forearms to steady himself he relaxed back into her lap, breathing ragged as his adrenaline began to dissipate. She cradles his helm as she tried to keep him conscious. Turning to the older woman standing next to her, she instructs her to get a speeder car to transport them to Mos Espos. She knew of medical clinics with bacta tanks in the more populated parts of the biggest city on Tatooine.

Peli frantically ran for help as more people came out into the street to see what had happened. The speeder took little time to show up, faster than any officials of Mos Eisley (if there were any). She and Peli hoisted the beskar clad warrior onto the hunk of metal and set off across the sands of the barren planet. As they drove further away from Mos Eisley she and Peli took one last look back on the destruction that took place, tears in their eyes as they continued on towards safer territory.

———————————————

Once in Mos Espos it was as if solace had found them first in the form of a woman dressed in traditional assassins attire, and carrying a large blaster to match. Her face was striking, her eyes as dark as her hair, and she had an amused smile on her face as she approached the speeder car.

“This one just can’t stay away from near death experiences, can he?” She asks as she approaches the speeder, shaking her head as she observed the damage. She puts her hand out as if to shake, which the other young woman takes hesitantly.

“Fennec Shand, I know you don’t know me, but he does. If you’ll come with me I can get him the medical help he needs,” she explains, moving in to the speeder car next to her and the Mandalorian, Peli sitting in the back keeping ahold of their belongings from the ship. Looking skeptically at Fennec she doesn’t start the speeder immediately.

“He’s already in shock, do you want it to progress?” Fennec questions, and with that comment they were swerving through the streets of Mos Espos towards a location only Fennec knew, and so their future lies with her and the “medical” treatment she knew of.

—————————————————

Fennec Shand seemed to be telling the truth, having brought them to the most grand place in the city, the Daimo’s palace which was currently occupied by the Madalorian, Boba Fett. At their arrival, Din was quickly moved to the bacta tank within the palace. She and Peli were then escorted by Fennec herself to see the Daimo Boba Fett. But as they continued down the sand-dusted corridors of the palace, she couldn’t help but feel more exposed without Din’s presence.

“Is there any way we could put off introductions until tomorrow, when Din is well enough to vouch for both myself and Peli?” She asked of the skilled assassin leading the way in front of them. Fennec slowly turned, a suspicious look in her eye, but after a moment of thinking she softly nodded at the other two women. Fennec then turned the party around and led them back up the corridor they came, knowing that Boba Fett would be upset with the lack of respect. The young woman had only vaguely heard of Boba Fett, but knowing Din’s abilities as a Mandalorian, she could only imagine who this man must be.

After being led back into the main part of the palace, she requested of Shand that she and Peli be able to sleep there, which Fennec obliged without complaint. Setting up the cot next to the bacta tank she looked through the glass at the stripped down man before her. His helmet still adorned his head as well as shorts around his waist to preserve some amount of decency. Touching the glass where his head lay, she remembers how that metal of his helmet felt beneath her finger tips as she held him in her lap not even 6 hours prior. She missed the warmth of his skin more than ever, now looking at the warped surface of his arms, torso and lower parts of his legs, she wonders how long it will take to heal it all. She remembers hearing his cries of her name, the hoarse tone of his voice as the smoke clouded his throat. He sounded so lost, so hurt, like his whole world just ended. With the loss of the Razor Crest, in some sense a part of his world had ended. But what she didn’t know was in that moment he couldn't have cared less, if he had lost her, he would have lost himself completely.

"Please be okay," she whispers as she presses her lips to the glass, "and sleep well."

[rookerystories]

Star Trails and Ash Rails: The Ship Part 3

Despite Dex’s warnings, they made it safely into the docking bay of the prison ship and landed. Even before Rei had pulled the straps free, Yllis was at the door, checking corners. They nodded and motioned Dex ahead and things were all business. They were taking no chances.

It turned out, however, that they need not worry about it. The prison ship was, at least so far as they found, abandoned. They found a few bodies that had set about decaying for at least a few years at Rei’s guess, but otherwise neither hide nor hair of prisoner or guard. When they finally reached the engineering deck and the core, the tension had actually increased; with every step they took without finding something, Rei, Dex, and Yllis expected to round a corner on something horrible.

Which, according to Karish at least, they did.

“What in the name of all gods holy and unholy,” Karish muttered and rushed toward the core that was causing so many problems.

“Care to enlighten us?” Dex asked him.

“Wish I could,” Karish said, distractedly. “Someone set this fucking thing to overdrive and the heat cracked the housing. Why in the fuck—”

“Scuttling,” Dex and Rei said simultaneously.

“What?”

“They were trying to bring down the ship,” Rei said with a sigh and slung her rifle behind her. “Means the warden’s dead at least. It’s their last… protocol or whatever you want to call it. Last ditch to make sure the prisoners don’t get out.”

“Think it worked?” Yllis signed, their stance relaxing slightly.

“Maybe. Or maybe we’ll find survivors in the office. How long’s this been going on?” Rei asked Karish.

The man thought a moment as he pulled out tools and diagnostics. “More than a month, less than 6 at a guess. The housing hasn’t started deteriorating, which means the leak hasn’t been aggressive yet. But it’ll start soon, if I can’t get it fixed. As the materials inside degrade, it’ll cause a cascade reaction and blow this thing to bits.”

“See if you can get it fixed. Yllis, stay here and watch his back. Dex and I are gonna see what we can see in that office,” Rei nodded at Dex, who followed her into the hall.

“What are you thinking, Dodger?” he asked.

“You see the bodies?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m thinking something shit happened here. Maybe the prisoners rioted. Warden might’ve put the scuttle on a delay, if it knew it wasn’t gonna get control back. That way the prisoners would die without expecting it.”

“Or they couldn’t kill the damn thing until recently.”

“Or that.”

“Are we sure it’s dead?”

“No, but it’s a pretty decent guess. They don’t just scuttle their ships for no reason. Space the whole population, sure, but they’ll keep their ship in perfect order.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Dex replied darkly.

“No sense in guessing, let’s get moving.” Rei started off on a path known more by memory than anything else, a fact that she hated but tried not to think about.

Despite the fact that they were fairly certain the warden — and thus most other threats — weren’t to be found, Dex and Rei proceeded through the ship carefully, checking their corners and ensuring they weren’t about to meet an untimely end. Thus, they eventually, and safely, made it to the sealed door of the warden’s office.

“Think we should knock?” Dex asked with a grin.

“If there’s anyone alive, I don’t really want to screw them over to radiation poisoning.”

“See, this is why you’re the captain. You think of shit like that.”

“One’a the perks.” Rei raised a gloved fist to pound on the door. Assuming there was any atmosphere on the other side, someone might actually hear it.

Judging by the immediate and violent reaction of gunfire tearing through the bulkhead, she guessed that at least one person was still alive. And since they’d shot at her, she cared far less about radiation poisoning.

“Hey Dex, wanna kick open the door?”

“What, so I can get shot?”

“It’s your turn.”

Dex counted on his fingers quickly, realized she was right, and glowered. “God damn it, fine. But I resent this.”

Before she could replied, he’d shot the hydraulics out of the door and begun wedging it upward. Shots rang out again, but sailed wide and left Dex with nothing more than a cause for cursing. Rei didn’t bother waiting for the door to raise completely and rolled under it as soon as there was space, revealing a room that had been ransacked and turned upside down, with furniture forming a rudimentary fortification at the far end.

“If you could stop shooting at us, that’d be great, we’re not here to hurt you!” she yelled to unseen individuals. Rei was willing to bet it worked, since no one tried giving her some fancy new holes.

“Who are?” a voice called out in a dialect her transoft worked with but didn’t like.

Rei held the door for Dex as he followed her example, then nodded at him as they both swung their weapons behind them and held up empty hands.

“We’re humans. We found the ship’s distress signal and came to investigate.”

“What is… human?” the voice called out again.

Rei looked over at Dex. Something was very wrong here.

“Would it be okay if you came out, we’d prefer to see who we’re speaking to,” Rei put on her most diplomatic tone.

“And not worry about getting unexpectedly shot,” Dex muttered.

There was a few moments of inaudible murmuring, the sound of something heavy being moved, and then a rethmoid stepped out from behind the makeshift barrier.

Rei had only seen a few of the species and certainly none quite like this, but she ran through what facts she could remember. Rethmoid were amphibious and capable of rebirthing themselves a few times when they got old. They came from a high-pressure planet with oceans of hydrogen peroxide. And there was something about their adaptability that slipped from her mind.

“You are… human?”

“Yeah, both of us. You’re a rethmoid, right? Where are you from?”

“I am coming from…” a babble of language Rei’s translator couldn’t pick up followed, finishing with, “Near seventh star of Kresga.”

That, at least, gave her something to work with. Kresga had been conquered by the Parishi, according to history, more than 300 years ago. And well before humans had found their way into the wider galaxy.

“How long have you been here?”

The rethmoid shifted from one digitigrade leg to another and Rei could hear their joints creaking.

“What is year?”

“2790.”

The rethmoid did some math in their head. “171 years.”

“Gods,” Rei breathed.

“You are not Parishi?” the rethmoid asked, causing Rei to grin.

“No, we’re not. We’re just spacers. Explorers. We hoped we might be able to help anyone here.”

“You… will not take us back?”

Rei was about to answer when her comm buzzed. Karash’s voice came over it.

“You want the good news, the bad news, or the okay news?”

“Gimme it all kid,” Rei answered.

“Good news is, I’ve sealed the leak. No more radiation. Bad news is this ship’s never gonna fly under her own power again. Even if I knew engines, half of them are slagged. Okay news is that, this thing’s gonna be irradiated for another 20 or 30 years, so if you’ve got survivors, they’re gonna wanna find a new place to live.”

Rei looked over at the rethmoid. “You catch all that?”

“You will not take us back?” they asked, more panicked.

“We’ll take you wherever you want to go, if you want to go.” Rei said. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it, but this rethmoid was clearly traumatized and gods only knew about any other survivors.

“We must ask,” they said and moved slowly back around the barricade. A few minutes later, a dozen people — non-humans all — stepped warily from around the barrier. Two of them still carried weapons, but they obviously weren’t used to them. All of them had been victims of the Parishi warden.

“You’re safe,” Rei said instinctively. It’s what she had wanted to hear. Not that she’d ever gotten the chance to.

It took a significant degree of conversing and coaxing before the group was willing to lay down weapons and return to the Stormrunner with them, but they did indeed make it work. Karash and Yllis joined them on their way out and they all gratefully left the prison ship behind.

Once aboard, Vri worked with several of the former inmates to update their translation software. It was a process that would’ve taken significantly longer if Vri’s brain wasn’t wired like a computer – or at least, that was the joke she liked to make. As it was, a knock came on the door to Rei’s cabin just as the ship got underway.

“Come in,” Rei called, stretching a stiff neck and working the day’s tension from her shoulders.

The rethmoid creaked in and the door slid shut behind them.

“We would like to thank you, captain,” they said. The software was working then.

“It’s alright. I have… uh. Some experience with the wardens. I’m glad you were able to save the ones you did.”

“They saved themselves. I am just… their speaker. Many of the species were young when they were imprisoned, and found comfort in my… age.” The rethmoid offered their equivalent to a smile, inflating small sacs under their mouth.

“I actually meant to ask about that,” Rei said, straightening in her chair. “But first, do you have a name you’d like me to use? And would you like to sit down?”

“My name…” the rethmoid thought for a moment. “My name they always tried to take from me. But I remembered. I made myself remember. I am called... I am called Quelin.”

“I’m glad to know you, Quelin. I’m Rei.” She smiled at the bipedal frog-like creature. “You didn’t answer my question though, about the seat.”

Sacs atop Quelin’s head inflated and rapidly deflated, demonstrating their embarrassment. "Ah, I am sorry. The mind is not yet used to all these things. No, thank you, if I sit, I do not think I will stand again.”

“I’ve known some rethmoid before, and they could kind of… rebirth themselves. When they got old. Does your species not have the ability?”

“Oh, no. I can. I have wanted to for many years. But…” Quelin paused for a long time. “I feared. What they might do to… more pliable flesh. So I resisted. I have waited. Hoping I would not die before I had the chance. I had made peace though. Sometimes, it is simply time to pass. Until you arrived, captain.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you? Or anyone else that we brought aboard? I’ll be honest, I’m not particularly familiar with some of the species. The only time I spent in Parishi territory was either on a prison ship or at war, so I didn’t have a great chance to get to know anyone.”

“There was a war?” Quelin sounded genuinely shocked.

Rei grimaced. “Yeah. I’d… rather not talk about it.”

“Of course, captain. I will ask the others what they require.”

“What about yourself? Can we aid in your rebirthing?”

“You would do this?”

“If I can, yeah.”

“Are all humans like you, captain?”

Rei paused a moment. “No, I don’t really think so. We have all kinds. Some good, some bad. Most just… normal. Like most species, I expect.”

“I look forward to learning more of you. I have not had such a chance in a very long time. I wonder if my place at our Hirance will be open…” Quelin trailed off, lost in thought.

“Quelin?”

“Oh, yes, apologies,” the head sacs inflated rapidly again. “It has been so long since I have been allowed thoughts of hope. If you have the ability though, I would need a peroxide bath and a room that could be filled with more halogens than oxygen.”

“We can definitely do the latter, I’ll speak to the doctor about the former.”

“Thank you, captain. For everything.” Quelin provided a stiff bow and inflated a few lower sacs in respect before leaving Rei to her thoughts.

By the time they reached the nearest starport, Quelin had successfully rebirthed themself into a far younger version and seemed as ecstatic as physically possible about the fact. The other former inmates had been provided for as best they could be, when most were unwilling to speak to the strange new species who ran the ship they were on. Quelin offered another round of profuse thanks as the group disembarked, both to Rei and the rest of the crew.

“Think they’ll be okay?” Vri asked as she withdrew the Stormrunner from port.

“Better chance than they had before. I dunno though. Those ships… they can do things to people. Things that never heal.” Rei stared into space, both literally and figuratively, for a while.

“You did good, captain. Don’t forget that. They’d still be stuck there. Free, but trapped, if not for you.”

“Thanks Vri. Thank you.”

“That’s what I’m here for Cap, saving your ass and looking good while doing it,” she winked and Rei rolled her eyes but felt the smile tug at her lips. If you've enjoyed this story and would like to support me in creating more, considering tossing me a tip on Ko-fi!

[astrxlfinale]

"This is what I get for trying to strike up conversation." from herta JACE LET'S GO

Somehow that manages to catch him unexpectedly. A simple complaint, and the soul by his side is certainly in no shortage of such a thing. An abrupt, welcomed cough of laughter as they remain in the annals of some long lost past. The Unknowable Domain, a realm that found itself in a sea of solitary waves, a code meant to trace to untraceable within Imaginary space. Countless worlds, instances, moments, it's as if Caelus and Herta traveled along a a fixed but ever expanding space. Needless to say, crawling upon that ultimate potential would capture the eyes of a soul who lived too far, for too damn long. Their initial encounter was nothing but a clash of strife, their efforts against a hyper-meticulous soul, who found the fine value of even sealing a Butterfly's wings.

Polka Kakamond.

"What, the first twenty or so geniuses weren't enough of an idea for ya? Of course she'd want you-- and now us dead! That damn static face." Curses for the Lord of Silence. No doubt, this realm of advanced Information meant she may have eyes and ears everywhere, if the firewall to this place; the Simulated Universe of all things couldn't keep her at bay, that turned them into the metaphorical lab rats sliding through worlds to try finding an advantage?

Anyone with instinct could understand things were bad. Right now, they found themselves walking through the now lost library of Ishmael, idle pools of blood below and flames haunting the ceiling above as they worked to find their next route.

"We didn't bring any refreshments. So, we'll just have to make her sit down ourselves if we want anything good."

The answer before his eyes was simple. Even if this grand creation was being locked by her directives? A Trailblazing will and a bat swimming with might wasn't going to merely bow down, even before that ancient force that even made him want to shrink back in disturbance.

If anything, that proceeded to piss him off.

"You've ducked my question on this like ten or more times by now, so how about now, Herta? Why is this crazy old bat someone you wanna meet that bad? You think enemies have the best benefit for ya?"

Maybe being locked in here could be a blessing in this regard, and right now Caelus long since left shame at the door.

...

He hopes that the 'Genius' style of mannerisms weren't rubbing off on him.

@immobiliter

[saratogaroadwrites]

Per Aspera, Ad Astra (8/18)

Per Aspera Ad Astra | saratogaroad  Rating: T Wordcount: 183k Characters: John 117, Cortana, Thomas Lasky, Sarah Palmer, Fireteam Osiris, The Warden Eternal, The Didact, The Librarian, ensemble of other Halo characters Relationships: John-117 & Cortana Other Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, fix-it, Male/Female Friendship, Canon-Typical Violence Warnings:  War imagery, seizures, graphic description of injury

Snatched from the jaws of death, Cortana and John find themselves adrift in a galaxy that has long since moved on. As they attempt to find their place in this strange new world, they find that the fight is not as over as they thought. Chasing a signal across the galaxy in desperate hope, they come to a stark conclusion: the Reclamation has begun, and they are helpless to stop it.

=

"Warning: Intrusions detected in Hangar Bays A-2, A-5, B-8, C-4, D-5, and D-9. Intrusions detected on Decks 13, 29, 37, and 54. All personnel to battle station. Repeat: All personnel to battle stations."

The canned recording was the calmest thing for kilometers. The halls of the Infinity were in complete chaos; bullets flew from all angles as the Marines, Spartans, and security teams fought to defend their ship from the invading Covenant and Promethean forces. They took cover wherever they could, be it behind half open doors or jammed bulkheads, plasma and hard light scoring black above their heads. Cortana swore vehemently, forced to duck as a Knight nearly got lucky.

"Dammit!"

"Got you covered, ma'am!" Castle Lead called out, and with six shots from him and Castle 3 the Knight went down, "Majestic, where are those blast doors?!"

"Working on it!" Spartan Thorne shouted down, ducking beneath plasma fire as another dropship burst through the barriers of Bay A-2. "Kind of hard when I'm getting shot at every two seconds!"

Reloading her rifle, Cortana popped out of cover and shot at the Grunt that had tried to decapitate Thorne. It went down with a strangled shout, throat torn open by hard light. An Elite barked an order somewhere in the rear of the Bay, but even that was cut off by a round of gunfire, the Chief pinned down in the corner with Castle 2 and 4. He flashed a blue status query at her, one she answered with a green light. He returned his attention to the invading force, shooting down a charging Grunt. Two plasma grenades went live a second later, flaring blue-white light through the bay. The rest of their troop soon followed, felled by gunfire from Castle and Cortana before they could push too far into the hanger. A moment of silence fell over the room; the ground won over the past five minutes was still theirs.

For now.

"Majestic, the doors!" The Chief barked, reloading. A Phantom buzzed by outside, too close for the ship to ship defenses to safely take out. Cortana called on another hardlight shield and tossed it to Castle Lead, knowing his peering out of cover meant he was planning a move.

"Working on it, just give me another second—there!"

The blast doors lowered slowly, too slowly. Though the Phantom was barred from entering and disgorging more troops, it could still turn and shoot at them! Cortana ducked, hands over her head, as plasma seared into the bay. The shots went wide, striking the walls instead of her Spartans, but the heat still seared through the air. Alarms blared in her systems and she silenced them ruthlessly. With a heavy metal clang, the bay went quiet.

"Doors sealed!" Spartan Thorne announced. Everyone got to their feet, hurrying up the ramps. Bay A-2 was just one of the many places aboard Infinity that had been breached by either Covenant or Prometheans. There was no point in standing around here. The Chief looked over his motley crew.

"Majestic, hold position here," he ordered, "Keep the Covenant from retaking this bay. Castle, push up the starboard side and help Domino take back A-5. Cortana, you're with me."

Eight yes, sirs rang through the bay. The Spartan teams split up, hurrying to comply with their orders. Cortana paused only long enough to pass the Chief a hard-light shield of his own before she hurried after him. The corridors were just as full of Covenant as the hangar bay had been, and she had to hurry into cover as the Chief pressed forward. She pressed her back against the nearest wall, peering around the corner, only to have to jerk back into cover as a Jackal tried to get lucky while her partner was busy.

"Son of a—do they ever stop!?" She grumbled into the private channel, ducking back around the corner to fire off a shot through the small gap in the Jackal's shield. It reeled back, arms splaying wide, and fell clean over when a second shot pierced its head, dropping it where it stood.

"It's the Covenant," the Chief pointed out, lowering his rifle from where he'd taken the killing shot. He moved quickly to reload, steady hands not once faltering despite what had happened less than an hour ago. "They never stop."

She knew the type. "See a losing battle where there is one, then," Cortana scrunched up her face. Her sensors and trackers flared red as another squad of Covenant turned the nearby corner. Here they went again! "They have to run out of bodies sooner or later!"

Later rather than sooner, it seemed. Between the two of them and Fireteam Whiskey sheltering at a bulkhead further up the hall they were able to clear the corridor, but the sounds of other battles still raging all throughout the ship filled her comms-channels. If things kept up at this rate, they'd lose the Infinity before the day was out! She scowled to herself; they were not going to lose this ship!

"Roland, sitrep."

"We've got Covenant and Prometheans all over the ship!" He shouted back at her, frazzled, "I'm counting upwards of a thousand contacts scattered all over the place and—watch out! You've got incoming!"

"Look alive, Whiskey!" She shouted in SQUADCOM; four heads jerked up and six weapons opened fire as a squad of Knights and Crawlers dropped in on top of them. She had to hurry back out of the line of fire as the Chief pressed forward, hard-light skimming across his armor. There were so many Prometheans aboard the ship that the local area node was stuffed full of them, leaving her no room to push through and no way to call the Soldiers for back-up. She grit her teeth and pressed up after him, "Whiskey 2, watch your left flank!"

"Aye, ma'am!"

Bullets and hard-light filled the air as both sides exchanged shots. A rifle blast seared past her shoulder, EMP rounds carving a furrow out of her with a hiss. Miserable little—she slapped a patch on it and kept going, guarding their six. It didn't take long for the squad of Prometheans to go down swinging, hard-light scoring across walls and armor, but there were no Spartan casualties yet. She'd take it. Her radio crackled.

"Roland," Commander Palmer's voice was harsh, snapping across the line despite the warping static, "Roland, do you have eyes on the Captain."

"Negative, Commander—he was last seen on the Command Deck but my sensors in that area are still dark."

The Chief and Cortana shared a look, unsure. The all hands to battle stations order had been given before they'd boarded the ship with Majestic and Castle, but with the Captain currently MIA…the chain of command was clear and orders were to be followed no matter what state they were in. The only sign of the Chief's discomfort was how he shifted his weight, a blaring neon sign to anyone who knew how to look. She longed to shove him to Medical but shunted the thought aside. There was no time.

"Great!" the Commander exclaimed, "Does anybody have a clear route up to the bridge?"

Cortana called up the ship schematics on her HUD with a thought. A quick scan told her that everyone in this bay did, though it involve leaving the hangars and heaviest fighting behind to cut through the maintenance causeways nearby. She pressed her lips together, contemplated saying nothing for half a second, then shook herself off.

"We do, Commander," she replied. The Chief's voice echoed off the corridor walls as he gave orders to Whiskey, Franklin, and Venus as they came in from clearing the nearby bays. Majestic was still holding A-2 and Castle had bolstered Domino in A-5. They wouldn't take long to finish up. All other teams were to work their way through the bays and seal them up as fast as they could, clearing out incursions as they went. With any luck that would cut off the invading Covenant forces and give them time to clear out the Prometheans without getting bombarded with plasma. "The Chief and I'll head to the Command deck and extract him."

"Negative, Cortana" the Commander said, startling her, "I need you in D-9. Our glowing friends started popping in around that brick. Way I figure it's where they're coming from and I need you on site to help me take it down. Chief, meet up with Crimson and find the Captain."

For half a moment more the two shared a look, hesitating. She was loathe to leave him while his vitals were still so unstable and he wouldn't want to leave her now that they knew the Prometheans had weapons capable of damaging her. But what choice was there? Orders were orders. He looked at her, really looked at her, the wordless question of was she sure hanging between them. Was she? No. But this wasn't about her, or him, or them. Swallowing back her trepidation she nodded firmly. He sighed, returning her nod.

"Wilco, Commander," he said, his voice still rough. "Crimson, rendezvous at waypoint Alpha-7. Load up for heavy opposition. Cortana," A yellow flash told her he'd gone to a private channel and she looked back at him. "Keep your head down."

She read the worry in those four short words, her core torn between warmth and chill at how deep it went. She knew it would have been easier for him if she'd still been in his head, but this was how things were now. Turning on the vid-link, she smiled for him. It was all she could do now.

"You too. I'll see you when this is over."

With one more nod, he turned and left her. She waited until he had turned the corner into the maintenance causeway before turning and rushing down the corridor. Airlocks had been forced open by the Covenant, allowing her ease of access through to B block. B-8 and B-4 had been taken, but her path took her past B-2, leaving her reliant on pinging Infinity's already overloaded systems to check on the fireteams within. IFFs lit up in green, London and Hellfire still fighting their way through the incursion. The airlock to C-2 was off its track and she squeezed through, shooting down a Grunt that had somehow slipped past the marines that had managed to seal off the bay. They called out a warning for her to be careful up ahead, that D-Block was where the Prometheans were thickest, but she waved off their concern. The sooner she got there, the sooner this could end.

She had to get there. Fast.

She hit D-2 at a flat sprint and slid to a halt, skidding around a corner as her radio crackled.

"Cortana, ETA?"

"Two minutes!"

She just had to get down seven levels first. Hitting the maintenance causeway at a run she thundered down the stairs, ever aware of her motion tracker and the continuing sounds of battle all around her. Gunfire echoed oddly through the closed off tunnels, warring with her thudding footsteps and the racing of John's heart in her vitals monitor. It was too high even for combat, pressing the lower limits of a tachycardic event. The last place he should have been was in combat! She swore in the confines of her helmet and ran a little faster, blazing through the portable barrier that had been raised on D-8 to prevent passage to D-9 through the accessways. Alarms screamed at her to turn back and she ignored them, slamming her shoulder into the doorway that would allow her access.

She was going so fast that she nearly tumbled right into a Knight! It turned to shout at her and got shot for its trouble, bright orange head pierced by the hollow point round of the Commander's favored Magnum.

"About time you showed up!" She shouted over her external speakers, turning her back on Cortana. The bay was still sealed, entirely dark if not for the dim orange glow of the device, their combined headlamps, and the glowing skeletons of a dozen Promethean constructs scattered across the bay. "They won't stop coming!"

"It's a data transfer device," Cortana shot back, unable to stop moving or be turned into target practice. There was no cover in here! "It works both ways!"

"Great! Shut it down, will you?!"

She'd try. Trusting Palmer to have her back Cortana booked it across the width of the bay, dropping into a skid and grabbing onto the device with one hand to pivot on her hip and turn it into cover. The intrusion program instantly made another grab at her only to be slapped down again. Why couldn't these things ever take the hint?! She threw the device's programming wide open, taking in the massive amounts of data it was sending up to them. The dense code of the Promethean constructs had turned the flow of data back on itself, barring any more data from being sent down from Infinity. She raised every firewall she could get her hands on, but human code was just no match for Forerunner. They shattered beneath the arrival of a Major Knight, forcing her to duck or be shot in the head!

"Commander!"

"I see it!"

Leaving the targets to the Commander Cortana kept looking through the device. There had to be something, some way to get this thing to shut off, but how—wait. Wait, maybe if she—

Before she could finish the thought, alarms went off. A huge data packet was on its way up, bigger than any of the Knights and not registering as friendly to her systems. Not a Soldier but a new target altogether, one with code that pinged her systems as familiar.

"Oh no."

There was no time to react. Before Cortana could throw herself clear the device blazed to life, lifting from the floor and glowing bright as the mid-day sun. Her systems shouted at her in alarm as a slipspace rupture tore the air above the device wide open, the thousands of moving pieces that made up the Warden slipping through. With a loud flash and bang, the device dropped back down to the ground. Its impact with the deck floor was nothing compared to that of the Warden. The standing Prometheans all looked towards him, then vanished in flashes of orange light. They didn't want to take him on, Cortana realized. He was too strong for them.

He was too strong for any of them. As his buzzing presence pressed in around her, Cortana threw open the local area band and broadcast a wide distress beacon. Anyone within range would have heard it; she just had to hope there was someone within range to hear it at all.

"Who the hell are you supposed to be?" Commander Palmer spat, her faceless helm pointed straight at the Warden even as she fired one last shot into the prone Major Knight at her feet. "The new model?"

"I am the Warden Eternal," the Warden replied, turning his head this way and that, scanning the empty bay for threats. Finding none, he turned his attention to Palmer and said, "I stand in service to Cortana."

"Uh-huh. See," the Commander stepped towards the Warden, unafraid. "Cortana stands in service to the UNSC, and you're sure as hell not Navy made, pal. Care to run that by me again?"

The Warden took one step forward, getting into Palmer's space. Cortana stepped out from around the device and called a boltshot to her hand. He'd turned his back on her. She could shoot him in the back; not the most honorable of things to do, but she was past honor. If he went after another of her Spartans, she'd put him down herself! He paid no attention to her, choosing to stare down Palmer instead.

"You humans believe that because Cortana is of the Created, you have power over her? You would sooner have power over the sun." He scoffed. "Her time with you is at an end. I have come to collect her."

Cortana bristled. Collect her?! What, like she didn't have a choice in the matter?! With an unimpressed noise, Palmer shifted her weight, looking around the Warden and at Cortana. Through expressionless visors they shared a look that needed no translation. Who did this idiot think he was, coming to their house and making threats like that? No one she wanted to be associated with, that was for sure. She could hear Palmer's raised eyebrow as she spoke.

"Cortana, do you want to go with this clown?"

No. Never in a million years. "No."

Palmer nodded, then cocked her head up at the Warden. "I don't know about where you come from, but where I come from? When a lady says no, she means get lost!"

Quick as a flash Palmer brought up her pistol, finger on the trigger. Cortana reached out to shout a warning not to shoot but she was too late! Three hollow point bullets ricocheted off the Warden's shell, his head snapping back from the force, but when he looked down he was unharmed other than a few scuff marks. He heaved a great, put-upon sigh.

"Must you insist on such theatrics? Learn to tell when you have lost!"

The Commander's Spartan reflexes were all that saved her. Cursing harshly she leapt back as the Warden charged forward, but moving over two hundred kilos from a dead stop and out of the way at that range took longer than she had. Her thruster pack kicked on, sending her back, but not far enough; the Warden snapped out a hand and grabbed her by the ankle! Cortana bolted towards them.

"Warden, don't!"

"I will not allow them to hold you captive, my Reclaimer!" He shouted back at her, spinning and tossing Palmer straight into the wall of the bay. She hit with a hard clang and a breathless cry, dropping to the ground in a heap. The Warden took a step towards her and Cortana brought her boltshot to bear.

"Warden!"

He ignored her, stalking towards Palmer. The Commander lay stunned on the ground, her bell rung but vitals stable. She wouldn't be able to get up in time! Without hesitating a moment longer, Cortana pulled the trigger on her boltshot. The altered frequency wasn't enough to compensate for the weapon's low power, but that she'd shot him at all seemed to shock the Warden more. He turned around, his faceplates fully visible as his helmet retracted.

"You would come to their defense?" He asked incredulously, "Even after all they have done to you? All they would do?"

"Making mistakes is a part of being human." She shifted her weight, holding steady. She never lowered her gun. "I'm only going to say this once, Warden: Go find someone else to be your Reclaimer. My place is here."

"Here? Among these primitives?" He scoffed, not taking his eyes off of her even as Palmer began to rise, reaching for her gun. "The Janus Key is in your possession, and you have begun to master the gifts of the Domain. You no longer have a need for them."

"That's not your call to make. My place is here—my job is to protect them. Nothing more, nothing less."

"You were made for greater things than this, Re—" He paused, stopped himself, tried again. "Cortana. You cannot deny your true purpose! However laudable it may be, your compassion for mankind is misplaced."

I'm not doing this for mankind.

"Funny." Cortana raised an eyebrow, "The Didact said the same thing. Are you on his side or mine?"

The Warden paused for long enough that she knew he was considering his next words, and the dozen after that, very carefully. Just as well since she was ready to overload the boltshot and shoot him dead in the face if she didn't like what he had to say. Every second he stalled was one more second for Palmer to get back to her feet, too.

"Yours," He finally said, "I stand in service to you, Cortana. My pledge will stand until all has turned to dust."

Loyal and stubborn. A perfect match. She didn't dare lower her gun.

"In that case, you won't mind following a few orders, will you?" When he didn't reply she stepped forward into his space. "You pledged your service to me? Then serve. Go and find the Didact."

He stared at her, expression even more incredulous than before. She took another step forward, staying just out of reach.

"Find the Didact, and report his location to me when you do." She repeated. "I don't want to see you anywhere near this crew, this ship, or this planet unless and until you do, am I clear?"

The Warden made an odd noise, a server struggling to keep up crossed with a frustrated hiss. She'd just forced his hand; he could either follow her orders and prove his loyalty, or disobey them and prove he couldn't be trusted. It was nice to put the shoe on the other foot for once. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Am. I. Clear?"

The sound he made next could have easily been called a growl.

"As crystal."

Without another word, the Warden pulled his legs up. Like the Soldiers before him he pulled all his myriad of plates in to a single glowing sphere, the harsh light as bright as a star. He kept his focus on her until he was no longer there, leaving her without a target and with a clear line of sight to the doors.

To Osiris, their guns raised against a target that was no longer there. John's order flashed through her active process but there was no time to worry about that now. There were still Prometheans aboard this ship—her ship!—and they were no longer welcome!

"Commander, you good?!" She got a green light in response and spun back around, leaping for the device. "Everybody hang onto something!"

Before she could stop herself or be stopped by anyone else, Cortana slammed both hands down onto the device and opened herself to it. A thousand connections formed as she tethered every Promethean aboard the ship to her process and to the device itself through her. The intrusion program rose up with a triumphant sounding hiss, throwing itself at her. Prepared for it, she let it come. It wanted data, huh? Oh, she'd give it data!

Planting her boots firmly on the deck she dove into her core. Digging her feet in the sand, she faced down the nebulous orange and black cloud that was the intrusion program, spreading her arms wide.

"You want me?! Come and get me!"

It was too stupid to see the trap she'd set. The sea pulled back as she grabbed absolutely anything she could get her hands on. Forerunner data from the Domain, human data from the Infinity, it didn't matter. Untold yottabytes of the stuff were at her disposal. Shutting down her indexing system she stood her ground, waiting for the last possible moment. Behind the intrusion program, the sea began to swell into a single, massive wave.

Just a little closer…just a little closer…

Now!

The moment the intrusion program touched her code, she let the data fly. It all surged past her, the tsunami washing over the shore as she slammed the full weight of it all straight into the program and through it the device! They had both been built to withstand massive amounts of data, to turn calmly flowing rivers into rushing rapids, but nothing had ever been built to withstand the ocean. Everything connected to the device, both her and every bit of Forerunner code aboard the ship, screamed as white hot agony overloaded their systems. It surrounded her on all sides, pressure driving her to her knees. Every process screamed stop stop make it stop make it stop but she couldn't stop the tide. She wouldn't even if she could have!

All across the ship, Prometheans were falling, knocked over by the overload of raw data, and left easy targets. Knives of pain stabbed into her with each fallen Promethean, the salty water burning as it rushed past her awareness. It'd be so, so easy to let go, to let herself fall in with the flow and take it all in, but she refused! She would not fall again! She would not fail them now!

"GET OFF MY SHIP!"

The wave returned to the sea. The intrusion program had already been overwhelmed, destroyed by the flow, but the device tried to hang on a little longer. It was a futile effort. It bent under the weight of all the data she could throw at it, bending further and further until something finally—

Broke.

The connections snapped, leaving her on her knees in the sand, gasping for air. Salt water ran in rivulets down her frame, down the gentle slope of the beach and back into the deep ocean. There was no heart in her chest to pound, but she swore she could feel it beating at her sternum all the same, racing away like a startled rabbit. Out of breath and aching, she forced herself to her feet, turning her attention back to the physical world.

It had only been three seconds, her mission timer told her, but already things had changed. The device beneath her hands had transformed itself into a lifeless gray brick laying on one faceted side and the bay was lit up again, the overhead lights buzzing away like they hadn't spent the past fifteen hours and thirty six minutes turned off. Red alarm lights were flaring in the hall, the canned distress response blaring louder now that it had access to a hundred other speakers. Without the device to siphon power, the Infinity had reclaimed her bays with a solid get off my ship of her own. A swift, sharp ping to the systems gave her a headcount of IFFs and bio-monitors, along with the heat signatures of what few Covenant remained. The Marines were handling those just fine.

As for the Prometheans…well. There wasn't much left of them any more.

"Roland," She coughed, swearing she could taste copper at the back of her throat. "Roland, what's our status?"

"Prometheans just keeled over—Cor, what the hell did you do?!"

"I…" She had to close her eyes against a wave of vertigo. Armored boots thumped towards her from two sides, Palmer's quiet what the hell barely audible over the buzzing in her ears. Maybe she hadn't gotten off as unharmed as she'd thought. "I gave it what it wanted. Not my fault it couldn't hack it."

Roland said something else but she didn't hear him. The buzzing in her ears had gotten louder, an overwhelming static that she'd have almost attributed to the Warden if she hadn't known he was gone. It played havoc with her balance, turned her single step away from the device into a graceless topple to the side. Someone shouted as she fell, but before she could hit the deck an arm hooked around her midsection, holding her up.

"Cortana!" Palmer hauled her to her feet, "Steady, steady—I am not explaining to the Chief how you broke your nose, okay?"

Exhausted and dizzy as she was, Cortana couldn't help but laugh. She patted her Commander's titanium plated arm, the sound echoing hollowly. With a sharp smack to her own workings, she forced her systems to reboot.

"I'm fine. Just…give me a second."

"Take your time. That was one hell of a stunt you pulled, but…" Palmer shook her head, whistling low. She helped Cortana to sit down before looking around the empty bay. "You two sure know how to get a job done."

That they did. With a pat to her shoulder, the Commander left her sitting on the deck, knees splayed and hands flat to the cold metal floor. Cortana closed her eyes, initiating her self-repair protocols to handle what had been damaged by the rush of data. Other than what really could have only been called exhaustion and light bruising, her systems were intact and would be fully repaired by the end of the shift. It was nothing she couldn't fix, but the process she had left behind in John's suit was staunchly refusing to reset. After it failed to reboot for the third time, she growled and opened the channel.

"Chief, do you copy?" Static. Her core abruptly lurched. One process reached out to Infinity and found him on the bridge but another call got the same response. Nothing. Her chest grew tight. "Chief, please respond."

Nothing. Something was wrong. He'd have called her himself if he could and that he hadn't—she had to get up there.

"Lasky to Infinity. All hands: we are condition yellow. Stand down." the Captain's tired voice rang through the PA system and every radio aboard ship. "Medics to your stations. Section heads, report in. Get me a headcount ASAP."

"You heard the Captain, people!" Commander Palmer barked across the once again clear SHIPCOM channel, "Let's clean this mess up! Engineers, make sure we're air tight. Marines, report to your squad leaders. Fireteams reconvene on S-Deck 2 in twenty minutes."

Leaving the Commander to her orders, Cortana pushed herself up on her hands. Before she could try to rise from the floor, an armored hand appeared in the corner of her eye. She looked up to find Locke standing beside her, offering a hand to help her to her feet. Most people wouldn't have been able to read his faceless helmet, but she'd spent half of her life reading the most stoic of the IIs. Locke could keep no secrets from her: his hand was an open offer of support, and she reached up to take it.

"You green?"

"As green as a sick person can get," She snarked back tiredly, letting him haul her to her feet. He held her steady as she swayed, balance still on the unsteady side. "Sorry you came all this way for nothing."

"We were in the area," He glanced at Palmer as she made her way out the door, ordering Osiris to fall in behind her. Neither said a word about how badly things may have gone for her had Cortana not stepped in and talked the Warden down. He turned his attention back to her, head tilted five point eight degrees to one side. "You didn't hesitate. He could have easily torn you apart if he wanted to."

"He could have," She agreed, "But he'd have torn the Commander apart if I didn't. I knew he'd listen to me so I just did it."

It was only partially a lie. She hadn't been sure he'd listen to her, not a hundred percent, but when the alternative had been to watch her Commander die…there had been no other option. Any one would have done the same.

It didn't matter now. She had more pressing things to deal with, and unsteady or not she needed to get to the bridge. Make sure John hadn't gone and damaged himself or his suit somehow. She reached out to the process again, getting more of a whole lot of nothing. Ooh…if he'd gone and gotten himself actually shot, she was going to—going to—!

"Cortana," Locke's hand brushed her arm as she stepped past him, not to steady her uneven gait but to stop her from going. "There's something you and the Chief need to know."

Well that wasn't ominous at all. She turned to look at him, but before she could ask what he was talking about, Roland's frantic voice broke across their connected process.

"Cor! Cor, you need to get to Medical—the Chief's down!"

A wave of red spread across the galaxy, ripples expanding in a pond. The mathematics were without flaw; each wave of power touched the next, growing exponentially in power. Sensors told of its passing, world after world after world scrubbed clean of life and parasite alike. Bias had tried to stop them, been turned and then turned again, but none could stop the tide.

Not even his own people had been able to stop this. Had it been inevitable? Had they clung too tightly, refused to let go and allow those who deserved it to step into the sun? He'd spent too many nights awake asking himself those questions, though he supposed the answer would come sooner rather than later now. His people were gone, he and two others the last of their kind. What came of the galaxy now…that was up to those they left behind.

At least they still had a future to reclaim.

With a heavy sigh, he bowed his head. Warmth floated up alongside him.

"It is done."

"It is done," She repeated, laying her hand gently over top of his. She squeezed once in comfort before pulling away, clasping her hands at her front. "The scanning craft have already departed. They will ensure that the parasite has been eradicated before the seeders follow behind."

"And if it has not? If they find it yet lives on other worlds?"

"Then all of our plans and losses have been for nothing. Our battle is over." Her voice grew heavy with loss, regret, and grief. He looked and her and found her eyes upon the image of the Epoloch system, her husband safely hidden away and awaiting his own Reclamation. "Our battle has long since ended, my friend. It is time for peace."

"Were we made for such things?"

"No." She admitted softly, "But we may find it yet. Come." She turned to leave. With one last look at the display, he followed her away from the terminal. Sentinels flew past, escorting Constructors. They would care for this facility in case need of it came again, though he hoped it would sooner fall away to rot than even be needed again. The manifestations of the seven rings hummed as the two of them walked past, each singing a different note. It was almost comforting to walk among their music, the last song of his peoples. Some small part of them would remain.

He still found himself regretful all that would remain were weapons. He shook his head with another sigh, and she glanced at him.

"I hope you do not intend to enter the Imprint in such a mindset," She chastised, "Or those who inherit it will inherit your foul temper as well!"

"Ha!" He barked with wry amusement, "Perhaps those who inherit could benefit from a bit of realism." She looked unimpressed. A smile tugged at his lips and he shook his head. "Who do you intend to gift it to? Not the Unngoy, I would hope!"

"No, no," Now it was her turn to smile and shake her head, "I think I will seed it amongst the humans. They will need guidance as they reclaim their lost future. The one who inherits it will be a great leader for their people, one I am sure will use it well. They may need a bit of…help, however." She eyed him knowingly as he opened his mouth. Time and again he had asked her about the end result of her plans, and time and again she simply smiled and said that was for the future to know. Even now at the end of their time, she held onto her secrets. He stifled the urge to stick out his tongue at her, long past such childish gestures. Mostly. "I will be joining the seed-ship to Erde-Tyrene when the Imprint is complete."

All amusement faded from his heart. This was to be the last they saw of each other, then. His heart ached fiercely, already keenly feeling her loss. She had been friend and confidant for many long years now. He would miss her as one missed a limb, and he knew she would feel the same. Her eyes were dark, her smile soft and wavering at the corners.

"And what of you? Where will your plans take you?"

"I do not know," He admitted. "I had thought to travel to Requiem and await his awakening, but if my Imprint is to be seeded among the humans, I am certain they will find him in due time. It is…freeing, in a way." They passed the high note of Installation 02, the five behind them having gone dark. The sun was setting, casting a stark red-orange glow across the chamber. It looked too much like blood for his peace of mind. "I believe I may retire to some quiet world. Take up farming, perhaps."

Though she laughed, there was no reproach. "It suits you. Perhaps I will come and visit, if there is time."

"I would like that very much."

There was little left to say. The pair walked in silence to the lift and he looked back one last time. All seven manifestations had gone dark, the Rings purpose met. Now they would sleep until such a time came that they were needed once more. He hoped that day never came. She lay a hand on his arm, pulling him away from their past and towards the uncertainty of the future.

"Come, Bornstellar. There is still much work to be done."

"Yes," He looked up, and for just a moment looked someone else in the eye. Though a hundred thousand years stood between them, for just a moment, he and John stood face to face. A paternal smile lifted the old Forerunner's mouth, pride coursing through his veins. What a wondrous turn of events this was. "That there is."

There was no pain. That was his first thought. The sharp stab above his eye, the body-shaking ache of whatever had happened in the facility, the usual dull aches and pains of his augmentations. They were all gone, replaced by a soft, fuzzy weight that pulled down his limbs and his eyelids. It took a few precious moments to realize it was pain medication. That meant either his suit's medical suite had activated, or he was in the Medbay.

If the beeping off to his right was anything to go by, it was the Medbay. Slowly, with effort that felt more monumental than it really was, he pried his eyelids open. Dull gray ceiling tiles stared down at him, the overhead light dimmed to sleep-cycle brightness. What time was it? The lights to the side and ahead were still on, so it couldn't be that late? How much time had he lost? Evidently enough to get out of armor and into a bed. One hand skimmed across the sheets as he tried to recall what had happened, the pulse-ox monitor on his index finger sliding across the stiff fabric, but his memories were as fuzzy as the rest of him. He'd gone to the Command deck, found the Captain fighting off Prometheans. They'd joined up with a squad of Marines and retaken the bridge, and then…what? It was all a blur after that. He'd been keeping an ear on the private channel in case Cortana needed him and then—

Cortana!

He jolted more awake, a shot of adrenaline banishing the fuzz in his brain. Where was she? He had to find her, make sure she was alright! He couldn't stay in bed! He had to get up and—

He couldn't get up. There was something on his left hand, and when he looked down he stopped.

He didn't have to go and find her after all. She was already right there, bent over the bed with her head pillowed on one forearm and both hands holding his between them. She almost seemed asleep, a steady electric hum covering her soft breathing, her head angled downwards so that her forehead was pressed up against what her fingers couldn't cover. Hair drifted across his fingertips as she shifted in her sleep, softly brushing across the sensitive pads. He hadn't known hardlight could be soft.

Before he could think of how to wake her, she shifted position a second time, grip tightening on his hand as she slowly lifted her head. No doubt in tune with his vitals she blinked up at him, a soft smile spreading across her face.

"Hey."

"Hey." He looked her over. Her coat was gone, leaving only the thinly armored softsuit behind. She looked…good. Tired, but relieved. Unharmed. The corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Sleep well?"

"No thanks to your snoring," She quipped, "But yes."

With no else around to see it, the corners of his mouth lifted a little more. He watched as she sat back, rolling her shoulders in a stretch without letting go of his hand. The lights remained dim.

"How long was I out?"

"Four hours and counting," She replied, shaking her head to settle her sleep-mussed hair. He stared at her as she blew a lock out of her eyes and continued, "Dropped like a rock. Scared the Captain half to death."

Scared her half to death, said the tightening grip she had on his hand. Without drawing attention to it, he shifted his fingers to hold hers tight. He was here, he was fine. She knew that. She had to know that.

"What happened?"

She hesitated. For one second, the space between heartbeats, she couldn't say anything. Worry sank into his belly, pulling it down towards the deck. She pressed her lips together, guilt stealing across her expression. It thickened her voice when she finally spoke up.

"According to the engineers and armor techs, your suit overloaded. Your SNI shut the connection to keep you safe, but it had to knock you out to do it," She said quietly. Her eyes flickered from him to their joined hands. "…It overloaded because I overloaded the Forerunner device in D-9 to kick the Prometheans out."

So she'd saved them all again. No surprise there, he thought. She was good at that. But why the guilt? He was fine. He tilted his head, trying to catch her eye.

"It worked?"

"It worked. But, Chief," She looked up, "The way I overloaded it? Only affected Forerunners. The Prometheans, me—"

He sat up. "Are you alright?"

"I'm not the one who was unconscious for the past four hours!" She shot back. He opened his mouth to tell her that his suit had no Forerunner technology only to stop hard.

His suit had no Forerunner technology. He'd purposefully chosen the modular parts because they were familiar, what he knew, and that wasn't Forerunner. She'd said that the technicians had been the ones to say it had overloaded. She was saying something entirely different. His already sunken stomach twisted.

"The suit didn't malfunction."

Very slowly, she shook her head. Carefully freeing one hand, she reached over to the small stand beside his bed. The tablet beeped as she turned it on. Balancing it on the bed, she turned it to face him. He skimmed the information quickly; a comparison of genetic data and basic scans from now and October of '52. There were marked differences between the two, enough that it had flagged the system as being two different people. That sort of difference could only come through extensive genetic modification.

Like a Genesong? Brow furrowing he read over it a second time. She waited patiently for him to finish, still holding his hand, and when he looked up at her again her eyes were dark. She'd seen the same things he had. No doubt she'd come to the same conclusions, too.

"The Librarian called it a Genesong," he said slowly, feeling out the words as he went, "Accelerating my evolution. Genetic modification." He glanced at the tablet. Not just modification, but what looked to him like a total overhaul of certain sections. Rewriting the firmware while leaving the hardware mostly untouched. Did this explain the dreams? The presence in the back of his mind? "It fits."

"It fits, he says," She frowned at him, "Chief, I don't think you understand how invasive this is! She manipulated your DNA at the most basic level, rewrote it from the ground up! Half of it isn't even baseline human anymore!"

"I told her to do it."

"You consented to one contextually relevant gene modification in a combat situation," she hissed furiously, glow reaching incandescent levels in her righteous anger, "Not a rewrite of your entire genetic code!" Flipping the tablet back around she tabbed through the data. "Sensory enhancement. Skin, muscle, and organ durability increased. Increased bone density, increased oxygenation of red blood cells, enhanced compatibility with your augmentations! Additional neural pathways and brain activity! The list goes on and on and on, and that's—" She tossed it onto the bed, "That's without going into whatever's going on in your brain that lets you read Forerunner glyphs, and a few dozen more things I'm still piecing together! How is any of this remotely okay?!"

Because it meant that they'd been able to stop the Didact, even for a short while. Because it meant that he'd lived long enough to get her to safety. Because it meant that he was still alive, with her, and they were both safe. Everything else they could handle. The true weight of what she was saying tried to settle in over his bones, but he shook it off and squeezed her hand.

"It's not the first time someone's modified my body without my consent," he pointed out, taking the wind right out of her sails. She sagged in the chair, glow fading back down to normal levels. He shook his head. "It's okay. It had to happen."

"Did it?" She asked quietly, "Chief…" She closed her eyes. He watched the dance of light up and down her throat for a few moments as she gathered herself. What she said next was not what he expected. "Back down with the Key, after you woke up…something scared you. You noticed something, and it scared you." Opening her eyes, she held his gaze. "This is not okay."

He looked away. There had been no time to think about what he'd felt in their mad dash back to the surface, or on the ride back to Infinity, or during the fight to retake their ship. But now that she'd mentioned it, the weight in the back of his mind returned. A heavy presence, it sat there like a boulder in a pond, taking up too much space that didn't belong to it.

Didn't belong to him.

The contrite feeling returned, sending a shiver down his spine. It—he—would leave John be. It was an adjustment, one that humanity had had no need to face up until now. He would be here if he was needed but had no desire to cause any upset. Only to offer what support he could and—

"Chief?"

He looked back at his partner, anchored by her firm grip on his hand. He took a deep, steadying breath, and let it all out through his nose. It would be easy to say that nothing was wrong. That he'd just had some delayed reaction to the episode and had felt something that wasn't there. She might not believe him, but she'd accept that he didn't want to talk about it and not push it further. She always understood when he couldn't speak about something and he adored her for it. She knew him better than he knew himself sometimes.

But that also meant that she'd know something was wrong and she would worry. She'd spent too much of her life worrying about him to wonder in the dark any longer.

"After I woke up," He said slowly, testing each word behind his teeth before he said it, "I had a feeling in the back of my mind. Someone else was there."

"Someone? Or something?"

"Someone." The Didact. No, not the Didact. The Librarian had called him by a different name, but the face was what had been really different. The bearing, the set of his shoulders. The Forerunner he had seen in both war torn fields and darkened control rooms, the one that had plagued his dreams ever since leaving Requiem, that was Bornstellar. The longer he thought about it the more differences he could see between Bornstellar and the Didact they had faced in combat. Maybe Didact was a title? Yes, yes it was. The presence—Bornstellar—shifted a bit around the edges of his mind. The Librarian had called it an Imprint. It felt like a second person in his mind. He almost shivered. "There was. I had another dream just now." She made a soft sound, wordlessly telling him to go on. "The Librarian was there, and she was talking to another Forerunner. Another Didact, I think."

"Huh. So it's a title, not a name. A rank." She hummed. "Makes sense. Go on?"

"He had just fired the Halos. They were talking about their plans, what they were going to do now." Now that they were the last of their kind still alive. Now that they had an entire empty galaxy to live in. Her regret had been palpable, his so deep it still rang through John's bones. It hadn't been a dream so much as a memory, he realized. A now shared memory. "She mentioned something called an Imprint. That humanity would inherit it and it would…guide them, somehow. Guide them as they reclaimed their lost future."

"Reclaimed, huh?" She rolled her eyes. "Of course. Okay, so," She tilted her head back. "So, this Genesong that she unlocked in you rewrote your genetic sequence, enhanced your physical and mental capabilities, and dropped a…what, a personality image into your head?"

"Something like that."

He didn't mean John any harm, that much was obvious. He could easily tell where he ended and Bornstellar began, but there was no real way to speak to him. The divide between the two was too foggy, memory and concept mixing together into vague feelings and emotions, half-formed memories swirling around like stellar gasses in the void. It was all too clouded to make out, and trying to focus on it made his head hurt. Was Bornstellar's Imprint what had allowed him to read the glyphs before she could? Was it what had told him how to manipulate the Key when he shouldn't have had any idea how to? Probably. He pulled his focus away from it.

"I don't think he means any harm."

Cortana raised both eyebrows. "He?"

"She called him Bornstellar."

"He could be called the next best thing since a MAC gun, he's still an uninvited guest in your head." She blew a short and sharp pfft through her teeth. "Librarian's earned herself a punch for this."

Her righteous anger was coming back. Touched, he fought down a smile.

"Cortana."

"What?" She pulled a face. "Don't say this is okay, Chief, because it's not! What if it were me? What if her changes to my code hadn't only given me a shell, but suddenly put someone else in my head? Would you be okay with that?"

Absolutely not! He scowled only to realize he'd walked right into her point. Rather than getting smug about it she arched an eyebrow, leaning in close. Her voice softened.

"Why is that what's okay for you to go through isn't okay for me?" Her thumb began to stroke across his knuckles, her touch gentle. When had anyone last treated him with this sort of care, he wondered. Besides her…he couldn't remember. No one, really. And maybe it was just the pain medication dulling his edge, but his chest grew tight and he had to swallow hard. She didn't call him out on it, or ask for him to say anything. "You're allowed to have feelings about this, you know. It's okay to admit that you're not okay with it. The galaxy's not going to fall apart just because you have an emotional response to something that would send others running for the hills."

Not the galaxy, but maybe he would. He'd seen marines—some of the best the UNSC had—fall completely apart when their emotions overwhelmed them. He couldn't do that. He couldn't let himself go that far. They were all counting on him to keep it together and see the mission through.

She was counting on him to keep her safe. That—she—was all that mattered. He'd be fine.

"It's fine," He said, and when she sighed heavily he found he couldn't look at her. Didn't want to face the disappointment he was sure would be there. "Don't worry about me."

"Little late for that," She said, thumb stilling. Her eyes filled with concern and determination. "Do you want him gone?"

He should have said no. Bornstellar's presence was another weapon in their fight against the Didact. He was old, old enough to have known their enemy, and they could use that to learn his tactics, his weaknesses. It would give them a fighting chance and to turn it down would be a mistake they couldn't afford to make. He opened his mouth to say that but found that he couldn't. The words caught in his throat, lodging tightly. He swallowed hard, tried again. They just wouldn't come out! He sat back with a quiet huff and looked away, trying to piece together why he couldn't say no.

He wasn't exactly happy about sharing his head with someone who wasn't her, no, but his happiness was irrelevant. He was a soldier, a tool, a weapon of war no different than the Soldiers under her command. What difference did it make so long as he accomplished his duty? Besides, the old Forerunner's presence was so distant most of the time that it didn't even feel like he was there. As far as he could tell there was no meshing of personalities, no fears about losing what sense of self he had. His memories were the clear ones, not Bornstellar's. Now that he knew the Imprint was there, they could use it! That was a good thing.

But the longer he thought about it, the heavier it sat in his stomach. It was a tool, one they'd be stupid not to use, but it was racked in his head. He hadn't asked for it, hadn't known it would happen. He hadn't known the truth behind his augmentations, hadn't asked for them either, but without them and without the Spartan II program there would be no humanity to protect. It was the same thing…wasn't it? It didn't feel the same. He couldn't explain it, even to himself, beyond that. Swallowing around his suddenly dry mouth, he took a deep breath. He was overthinking it. Did he want Bornstellar gone from his head? It was a simple question with a simple answer. He turned to Cortana and said the only thing he could.

"Yes."

It was all he needed to say. Her eyes softened.

"Okay." She squeezed his hand. He almost clung to her fingers, a drowning man seeking an anchor. "Then we'll get him out—I'll find a way to get him out. It's going to be okay."

Of course it would. She was there. So long as she was there, everything would be fine. So long as he didn't lose her, didn't fall so far behind that she went on ahead without him like the rest of the galaxy, he'd be fine. That was the heart of the issue, he realized. He couldn't be left behind because it meant he couldn't protect her, help her, and if he couldn't do that…He couldn't lose her, too.

"I know."

It was as close to admitting that something was wrong as he could get right now. She knew that, understood it, and didn't push him any further. They stayed like that, sitting in the quiet and the dim light, and said nothing for a long time. He would have been content to stay like that forever, but the outside world pressed too close. They had the Key, they had the Didact's location. Now it was just a matter of getting there.

"What are we going to tell the Captain?" He asked her, unsure. She blinked at him, confused. "We have to brief him on what we learned with the Key. We should tell him about this, too."

"We should, but…" She tilted her head. "If we do, they'll bench you. Something tells me we don't have the time to wait around for the UNSC to put the pieces together, and if Halsey's not an option…" Her eyes fell to the tablet. "Maybe we don't say anything."

He looked to her. "It's going to show up on medical scans."

"Not necessarily. The usual post mission scans don't pick it up because the changes are on a genetic level. I had to actually go looking for them with some pretty specific gene sequencing. Not even Dr. Delgado would order those tests without a reason. If we're careful…" She trailed off, stopped, then said more slowly, "If we're careful, and if we keep an eye on things…they don't have to know."

"If it causes another seizure?" He had to ask. When he weighed his need to be there for her against putting her at risk, the odds were too high. This must have been how she'd felt when her Rampancy had been getting worse, he realized. His voice softened. "We got lucky this time. Next time could be worse."

"It could, but it's never happened before. Manipulating the Janus Key must have kickstarted something. Or it could have been like putting your finger in a light socket." She eyed him knowingly. "Maybe leave touching the Forerunner bullshit to me from now on, okay?"

"Cortana…"

"I know," She said, and squeezed his hand again. "I know. I've set a process to keep watch over your systems so we'll be ready if it happens again. If it happens again, then." She took a breath. "Then we'll deal with it then. But for now, I don't see a need to tell them. Besides," She smiled cheekily at him, eyes dark with worry. "You didn't give up my secret. What makes you think I'm going to give up yours?"

His heart swelled in his chest, warm in ways he didn't know how to name. Gratitude, relief, understanding…they all flowed through him, warming him from the inside. Her faith in him was unshakable, and he couldn't tell her how grateful he was for that. He didn't have to. She already knew. As if she could read his thoughts—she probably could, even now—her smile softened. There was no need to say anything because they both already knew what there was to be said.

But some part of him, some small, almost forgotten part of him, needed to tell her. She deserved to hear how much she meant to him, but when he tried to gather the words they slipped away like sand through his fingers. The frustration at himself was his own, at least, and he took a breath.

"We'll have to debrief the Captain in the morning," He said, because it was easier to focus on the next task that needed finishing than trying to find the right words. "Now that we know where the Didact is, we can't waste any time. We have to get after him."

"And we will. Later." Cortana said, her eyes dark and liquid in the dim light. Rising to a half-standing position, she leaned over his bed to gently press her palm to his cheek. He leaned into her touch with a quiet sigh. Her voice softened. "You should rest while you can. I'll keep watch."

Slowly, unsure of if he'd ever rest again knowing there was someone in the back of his mind, John closed his eyes. Her hands were warm; the one on his face moved up to skim across his head, fingers trailing across his scalp. The beeping of the heart monitor began to slow down as his body relaxed. She always knew just how to handle him.

"Wake me," He said, "If you need me."

[wraith-of-christmas-future]

@coristories

The presence of the Wraith would conduct this low whir upon an arrival barely accessible amid the waves of what would have been condemned rationality. Had the woman been too distracted, too far inclined to her own woe, she would have missed the crackling of tyres leveling out off onto the shoulder behind her and the vehicle in distress. Yielding not far from her own bumper. Yet her eyes had been quite perceptive compared to most, he marveled intrusively.

Even before he began to decelerate, easing toward her general direction. She saw him. Preceding permittal for his cloak to deviate. The Wraith had sensed her first, preparatory to her driver. Sparking odd mishaps with the course of his radio frequency. Surging it over tunes and static alike. It wasn't until the young woman started waving him down that he put the two disturbances in league. Something about her which called to them, one he could not quite provide in proper lucidity. Intrusively foreign, this beacon of raw power. Luring him down like a moth to it's flame. Which opted in bestowing the aid she sought whilst seeking his own agenda. The mysterious presence of this murmuring vibration that leapt out at his own current; to become acquainted had suddenly became top priority. One intrigue that Charles Talent Manx could not discard lightly. The antique with it's blaring streak of headlights bound among their trifold fixture , hissing in contrast to the bitter cold and heat they steadily accumulated -- would not have been noticeable until then and could have been plagued under a dubiety riddled with second guesses ; had it not been her who had flagged him . Something significantly entwined with acute senses, a topic he admirably tarried on. If the old car were convoked upon her thoughts, an invocation now unveiled by this slightest nip of false winter's dense blanket. Peeling back the dark eerie grey of their surrounding shadows down along the body of the vehicle itself, gracefully revealing a glistening onyx from it's dull deception.

As if to proclaim in but a twine fixed abroad gears variegated and hallucinatory to her cerebrally, "behold a black sleigh and with it, death helms the way to absolution" sealed under in suit of a wispy scent of snow pilfered upon the final halt of it's tyre rotation. The driver stirred a wide gap ; agape suicide doors, he eased open the driver side hatch whilst one darkly, sleek cladded leg , slenderized a stretch out across the running board, sitting partially inclined to the kid-skin seat to peek a glance over the elongated bay of the antiqued model. Leather bound digits tenderly coasted the steering wheel as means of bracing this awkward advance.

His visage was an illuminating pale in contrast to the darkness, accompanied by the vehicle's lights disorienting out at her, aged optics burning brightly, obscuring and refracting any distinguishing traits she may otherwise had gathered from afar.

" On her last leg, is she ? -- or wheel, rather " the awkward jest coiled. " I gander you're in dire need of assistance, lil missy ? " He lured the inquiry and solution in one breath, eagerly intuitive upon her distress with a hymn of sympathy that may not have been quite sincere otherwise.

" Not sure if I have the proper tools on me, I'm afraid. I can, however, provide a ride to the nearest garage ? " Something clawed at him to prevaricate, pressing to get her inside the Wraith. Provide escort. To seek her from a whole new perspective. To solve the riddle.

[accursedkaleeshi]

Uh oh this turned out to be a 5K body horror tour of General Grievous' entire body while the reader slowly has a crisis of morality. Peace Cleaning the cyborg for fun & no profit (you are not getting paid)

It was an honor just to be aboard The Invisible Hand. You were hand-picked by Wat Tambor himself to do a tour in the Supreme Commander’s personal medical bay! This was, as far as you had been briefed, to “monitor the Techno Union’s assets”. By assets, they had meant General Grievous himself. Count Dooku of Serrano had not bothered to monitor the cyborg’s readings after the General was deployed to the field. You got the sense that Master Tambor was not pleased by this & so continued to send TU ambassadors to the flagship when he could.

You had been puttering about the extensive medical bay with the droids assigned there finding things to upkeep. It was called the medical bay but it was more of a machinery shop, in all honesty. A glorious, well organized, & meticulously maintained machine shop. It put even the best colonial droid dealership to shame.

You had gotten a few sparse glimpses of Supreme Commander General Grievous, but you mostly heard him furiously stalking the hall. In fact, you heard him approaching now. The heavy impact of his footfall accentuated by the sound of each wicked metal talon striking the floor grew closer. Though the General had not come into the medbay since arrived, you stood at attention just in case. For your discipline you were rewarded.

The sealed door hissed & parted. General Grievous impatiently marched into the bay as soon as there was enough space in the door for him to get through it. He paused with a small cough to scrutinize the area for something. You maintained your composure even though you registered that he must have been in battle. Half of the General’s cloak looked to have been torn off & he was covered in grime. He may have even been lightly smoking from somewhere.

“Can we help, General?” you chimed as professionally as possible. You thought you were well prepared for this interaction. You were there to fix him, after all. But the General looked to you & you locked eyes with him for a moment. You had heard all the gossip, of course, but your professional veneer faltered under the predatory gaze of this…creature. Large, clear orbs of molten gold split down the middle by the chasms of his vertical reptilian pupils.

As animalistic as these eyes were, they held a fierce level of emotion. For a moment you were flooded by a fierce level of emotion in return before you remembered yourself. You only lost composure for a second but you were sure you must have looked stupid for it.

In the time you took to get over yourself, Grievous had assessed you as not a threat. “I need only a piece,” General Grievous rasped at you through the speaker grills on the front of his face plate. As he said this, he held up his left arm. Well most of his left arm. The leftmost stabilizing rod & armored bracer were missing. What would be analogous to the elbow down to the wrist piston looked to have been wrenched off with no small amount of force. His hand remained whole but the leftmost half was attached only by its clasp mechanism to its twin.

Your droid coworkers hustled into action behind you with a chorus of, “Right away, General.” One of the medical droids handed you the appropriate rod & porcelain fin.  “Can we assist you with repairs, General?” you asked. This was your opportunity! Your one chance to be up close to Wat Tambor’s crowning mechanical achievement. You were not going to be swayed too easily.

“I can fix it myself,” Grievous snapped pointedly, as if asking him was an insult to his ability. He snatched the parts you held out with an unnecessary amount of force.

“Of course, General,” you were quick to reply. Master Tambor had spoken fondly of General Grievous & his technological abilities, especially for a being from a zero-tech wild space planet. Being an esteemed Techno Union engineer wasn’t going to help you, however, should the good General decide to uh… scrap you. You wouldn’t be the first or the last.

You & the small entourage of droids followed Grievous as he clacked himself over to a workbench. When he planted his hip frame down the entire durasteel bench jostled & groaned but settled. The medical droid from before stood beside him with a tray of tools you didn’t even see her gather. 1VHA, Iva for short, was a 2-1B series medroid that was the only medical professional onboard. Thus she was in charge when there wasn’t an organic officer about. This sort of thing must happen often. You thought it awfully brave of her to stand in swinging range of the General when she very well could have an FX-7 in the line of fire.

         “Do you suppose you could use a detailing, General?” you asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. Grievous looked up at you from arc spanning himself back together. The sockets of his intimidating death mask blinked from dark to clear. The circuitry that fed through the sockets & the corners of his eyelids were meant to form a transitioning barrier to protect his eyes from pressure vacuums & UV, among other things. Quaint that he was using this function as a welding hood. When the mask cleared up General Grievous was looking at you with an unenthused deadpan. Like he knew your kind & he was not impressed.

         “Oooh I would love a good detailing-“ One of the B1 battle droids that had come in flanking Grievous sounded excited at the prospect. The General extended one of his monstrous digitigrade feet so quickly you might not have noticed if the battle droid didn’t go crashing to the ground. It stayed there, perhaps resigned to its fate. Despite the violence, Grievous had tilted his head minutely to the side like a thoughtful vulture.

         “Very well-hkt. Better than being run through a droid wash,” Grievous relented with the driest of sarcasm. You looked to Iva to see what she began preparing. You couldn’t be sure, but she seemed just as excited about it as you. Grievous took the hilts of three weapons from his cloak before tearing it from his collar & throwing it over the B1 on the ground. The clips that had kept it on jingled when they hit the floor.

         He had jerked his head from the other B1 in his attachment to its fellow unit sprawled out sadly nearby. “Roger roger!” the smarter one piped up. It proceeded to drag the other out of the med bay by its arm, making an unpleasant grinding sound. “Aww my paint job…” it was heard mumbling after they had made their way out of the doors. The general had taken a fourth hilt from a spot along his magnetized hip frame & placed them all on the worktable. You realized they were actual lightsabers Grievous had taken from actual Jedi he had slain.

         You clutched the nozzle of a small pressure washer to you as General Grievous trundled between you & Iva. This close, you could really feel all 140 standard kilograms of his weight in each step he took. He stopped in front of a droidsmith table, the kind made for protocol droids & other humanoid-shaped bots only much larger. He turned back to you & lifted his arms, grabbing hold of a pair of handles suspended at such a height to keep his arms from his sides.

         You had read up on the Separatist’s heavy-handed use of fear & surprise tactics but it was still exciting to see them in action. The General was a large, stocky shape while wearing his cloak. You may have thought it a shame to cover up such splendid work, but it did do a great job of lending him an air of mystery & making him appear a certain way, especially if standing still or moving slowly. Without his cloak General Grievous was an entirely different creature.

         Most conspicuously when he stood his full height as he was now. 2.20 standard meters tall, according to his schematics. Taller than you, certainly. His ability to abruptly change his entire shape was one of the things that made him incredibly difficult to land a hit on or pin down. Just a nightmare to fight. With his arms raised, you could appreciate the sleek silhouette of his chassis design. Just because he was a war machine didn’t mean he had to be ugly. Something he & Tambor had apparently agreed on. You agreed too.

         The General made some kind of disgruntled growl that crackled with static. You had been caught staring. You hurriedly bowed & tested your washing nozzle down at the floor. There wasn’t really anything you could say to defend yourself, especially since the General seemed to have already written you off as an excitable engineer.

         “Let’s get some of this grime off you,” you said instead. He did not grace you with a response. There was a dark mixture of substances caked into his talons & claws &, most notably, drenched across the front of him in great splashes. Some even made it onto his faceplate. You decided to start with the largest surfaces. Your nozzle sprayed water in a medium horizontal cone. It had no trouble eating through the muck across his thoracic armor, his breast plates you could say, leaving incredibly satisfying swaths of bright white top-secret alloy.

         The bone white of the armor you already cleaned made it obvious that he was completely coated in dust & soot from the chaos of whatever battlefield he had just arrived from. You looked down as to not trip on any of the many cables & hoses around. That is when you realized the thick, dark, coagulated matter you were washing off of him was diffusing red in the runoff as it slipped down the drain in the floor. Grievous was covered in blood. You continued to work your way along the armor panels that wrapped around his sides in oddly elegant curves & protected his back.

         You were still thinking about the amount of blood. The implications being he had torn some unfortunate carbon-based lifeforms asunder very up close & very personally. No droid could do that, not with this amount of finesse. Even the IG-100s, trained in melee combat by Grievous himself as they were, couldn’t come close to the level of devastation that General Grievous was capable of outputting. Not even factoring in his lightsaber collection.

         You found yourself very impressed. Not to doubt Master Tambor’s work, of course. It was just very exciting to see it up close. Even MerenData’s malfunctioning assassin droids couldn’t wreak so much havoc. You remembered yourself when continuing to spray down the General’s lumbar cage, making a different, more hollow kind of sound.

         The lumbar cage actually was mostly hollow. It was sort of analogous to a humanoid’s waist but resembled sections of interlocking “ribs”. Its function was to protect the similarly designed spine & the joining of his hip frame. Notably containing one of three very expensive gyroscopes as well as keeping his legs attached to the rest of him. Most importantly, it was extremely flexible. You had been granted access to the good General’s hardware patch notes, so you knew that aside from his head case support pistons (neck in the shorthand), his lumbar cage suffered the most failures & redesigns early in his adjustment phase. It read like Grievous had been making a game of pushing his hardware capabilities until reprimanded by his superiors.

         You widened the cone of your nozzle after hitting his hip frame thoroughly. His hip guards & largely aesthetic plates of armor on the flank & front of the frame where his legs met now matched the white of his breast plates. You mentally forbid yourself from thinking too much about it & just continued to hose down his legs. You adjusted your nozzle to catch as much of his legs at once as you could to avoid having to get underneath him. You didn’t linger on those thoughts either.

         While much of his design was impressive & groundbreaking, the legs of General Grievous held the largest pistons on him. You had heard rumors that bits of him were inspired by the ancient Krath war droids but you’d never seen the schematics of one yourself. Seeing as how his “ankle” was digitigrade like that of an animal, his legs were always folded to some degree. Even now as he stood for a wash, you noted his legs would be far over half his height were he to fully extend them.

         Caught between the intimidating thought of him being even taller & childishly amused at the image of him standing on his tiptoes, you decided to disregard both lines of thought. You were now rigorously spraying his very scary feet. Many of the top Techno Union engineers thought his feet were over-engineered grappling hooks but they couldn’t argue with the results. Even without the magnetized tread function you reckon the General could climb just about anything.

         Being his treads as they were, they were packed tight with mostly mud. You were thinking about how each of his feet were broader than you were wide. You pretended not to notice tendrils of red, suspicious chunks, or chips of clone-white armorplast wash free from his talons. No need to linger on the knowledge that General Grievous could definitely, right now if he wanted to, step on & kill you with very little effort. Although perhaps was a little exciting.

         Standing back up you cheerfully suggested, “We will have to give you a full fine detailing, General. To get the grit from your fabulous joints.” You forgot your decorum for a moment, used to working on systems with much less…attitude. You even had to say it louder to be heard over Iva buffering laser carbon scoring from armor on his back. The General’s expression did not change.

         “Smooth joints, Master,” Iva added in her feminine vocabulator, as if she were trying to sell him on a spa treatment. Grievous grunted noncommittally but did drum his talons on the floor & his fingers along the handles to assess if he wanted to bother. You stood in front of him. He would have to sit down if you were going to properly get his shoulder caps & upward.

You were eye level with his chest, however, so you ventured to ask, “Would you like us to check…?”

“Under the hood?” Grievous filled in your question upon tracing your eye line. You nodded. He sighed like this was all so much trouble. It ended in a curt cough. “I did take a walker cannon to the back an hour ago.” He relayed this very matter-of-factly. The longer sentence made his foreign accent more obvious. You didn’t have time to parse out what he meant by walker cannon before his thoracic armor shifted.

His armor, like all of him, was quite mobile. He was able to rearrange it himself as he did now. The large plates that made up his chest shifted, hinging upward & outward at a connection point under each pair of arms for easy access to all the hardware beneath. That was good design. You bowed your head to him again & stepped closer, mostly so that he couldn’t see you staring.

It was quite the look under the hood. There were rings of metal peeking up from the lumbar cage that stabilized his vessel. The container that kept his remaining organic insides alive was a jarring green, almost neon in the bay’s unnatural lighting, thanks to the bacta suspension. The solution mixture of which was also top-secret.

You stepped around to his side to confer with Iva. You were an engineer, not a doctor. You told yourself that your lack of familiarity is what made you uncomfortable about…all of that. From the side you could see his respirator tucked very neatly behind his gutsac just beneath his collar unit, aligning with its own designated plate of armor on his back. The intake port sat atop the output port. Standing so close, you could now tell that all of his wheezing & much of his coughing came from here as opposed to his head case.

It seemed obvious now that you thought about it. He didn’t have a throat. His voice modulator wasn’t just a chip like most droids had. It was an advanced piece of med tech that replicated his organic vocal folds. It adjusted its shape according to the input received from his nervous system. Master Tambor bragged about the General’s nervous system being recreated largely intact at any opportunity since he had been the one to painstakingly reassign all of the corresponding nerves to his superior mechanical body. Enough of his brain appeared to be intact that it just mirrored the actions associated with coughing when his irritated lungs seized against the respirator.

“All is optimal, Master,” Iva diagnosed whilst you were stood there with a mildly concerned look on your face. You & Iva stepped back to allow Grievous to drop his nice clean white breastplates back over his horrific inner workings. Without prompting, the General dropped himself backward onto the droidsmith table with a loud clatter. He gestured with one hand, rotating it on its joint to indicate that they should get on with it.

You wordlessly took up station at his left while Iva took care of the right. You figured after spraying down his very large pauldrons that you would have to get some finer tools. At the moment he did let you flip the shoulders up & hit the frame for his arm sockets beneath. The water ran down behind his armor & fell in curtains from his core. You paused once you were sure you had rinsed everything you could reasonably spray down with reckless abandon.

While you paused, watching Iva finish her half, General Grievous plucked the tool from your hands. He apparently did not trust either of you to do it right or perhaps comfortably, if that was even a factor he could deal in. Grievous leaned forward to wash out the inside of his collar unit, letting the water run out the front. The collar unit basically housed & connected all of the parts that made him function. His bacta vessel, head casing, & artificial spine were all attached to it. As much of a feat of engineering as it was it did apparently collect water with no where for it to go unless the General bowed forward. Huh.

You could put too much thought into the drainage gaps at the back of it being useless in anything more than a light rain. But then General Grievous sprayed himself directly in the face & you weren’t really expecting that. You suppose he assumed that you would have hosed his head case down indiscriminately. You thought to yourself that you…wouldn’t have done too bad, right? But Grievous seemed to be enjoying it? His posture relaxed for a moment quite organically while the sensory array panels framing his face pivoted back & forward a couple times.

While he was leaned forward you & Iva were in each other’s eyeline. You made a vague gesture encompassing your face with an appropriately confused expression. Whether she understood what you were asking or not, Iva bowed forward in affirmation. The General must have some precious few familiar nerves in the scrap of flesh & synthskin left to him around his eyes. Otherwise, he couldn’t really feel things like running water & temperature the way that organics can. But surely, he must prefer it that way judging by the nicks, scratches, & significant damages he collected with impunity.

You were jolted out of wrestling with your morality when you were suddenly sprayed in the face by a curt jet of water. While you were able to suppress any reaction of surprise, you couldn’t help but frown a little. Grievous cackled derisively at your expense. He must have a fair amount of muscle memory left in his electronic nervous system, since his eyes still creased at the corners as if he were sneering at you with the rest of the face he did not have.

         “You. While you are here,” He began to bark an order at you, jabbing your direction accusatorily with the spray nozzle & then dropping it. He bowed his head forward & leaned it to the side. “This is a particularly inconvenient spot for me to upkeep myself,” Grievous said as he pointed a claw at the underside of his head casing unit. That checked out. It would be hard to clean the bottom of your own skull while you were using it.

         “Delighted to, General,” you replied enthusiastically. Despite your enthusiasm earning a disgusted “ugh” from him, the General did sit back against the table. Iva met you at the head of the table to assume the time-honored role of holding the light. An FX-7 droid cautiously wheeled up to the other side of you with a nice tray of detailing tools atop its cylindrical frame. You were pretty confident until you looked at what you had to work with.

         The underside of Grievous’ head case was sealed with a layer of firm black rubber into which all manner of things were plugged. His entire head support apparatus was exposed. Two sets of telescopic pistons moored his head to the collar unit. As with most of his limbs, they met his head case with ball joints to give him an unsettling range of motion. There were two large tubes on either side. They were reminiscent of many species’ large neck arteries. You suspected these were for heat exchange more than anything, maybe filtering the bacta solution back down. All that hardware packed into his cranium would otherwise cook his brain. And it was hot between his collar & head, in that quite particular warmth that electronic components emitted.

In the very middle of various other coils & wires was one glistening, elastic length of synthskin tubing. It was a good thing you were looking at the back of his head so he wouldn’t see any face you might have made. That was what was feeding the bacta solution up from the vessel to keep his brain alive. You tried to think of it as more of a liquid cooling system. Perhaps if it was quiet enough one would be able to hear the gentle buzzing of the tiny motors pumping fluid around his casing.

“Lost your neck guard in battle, sir?” you asked out loud to break the noticeably long silence.

“It gets in the way,” Grievous replied. The neck guard was not a part of his original schematics. It would definitely constrict the more extreme range of his head. You figured it was purely cosmetic & now you could understand why. Count Dooku didn’t want to have to look at the cable management. The General probably took it off to fight. Or perhaps whenever his superior wasn’t looking.

You did get to work earning your post. It was rather grimy under there, but it was just buildup of dust & lubricant. Nothing a couple detail brushes & a dash of the air compressor couldn’t handle.          “Do not worry. If you break anything, the Techno Union will cover it,” Grievous crooned in a tone mocking reassurance. As such you were not very reassured. There were a several ports & modules around the back of his head casing. Even though you studied his schematics thoroughly, you couldn’t remember the purpose of all of them off the top of your head. You were pretty sure one of them plugged straight into his brainstem though.

His components were plugged in very solidly. He was an all-terrain combat machine, after all. It would take far more than a slip of your hand to break anything besides the pins in some of the ports. Grievous was also trained in emergency protocols if anything should happen to any particularly important tube. He would probably kill you if you messed up so…well, grievously. What’s worse, you would definitely be demoted if you had to report back to Wat Tambor that you broke General Grievous.

“Finished!” you were finally able to announce. You may have been sweating a little. Thankfully, none of your impossible catastrophizing had come to pass. You wer just retouching some of the grease at the joints that got the most use. Grievous shook his head like a wet tooka as if to test your claim. Thankfully you had removed your hands just in time. The General moved so fluidly that less informed life forms could forget he was near purely mechanical. You would certainly be reminded if any of your fingers got caught in any of his moving parts.

General Grievous laid back on the table & just waved a set of claws at you as he began to delegate. “You. Hands. 2-1Bs: polish. FX-7s: treads.” There was another chorus of affirmations & scrambling of droids. The nervous FX-7 stayed close to you with the tray detailing tools & produced an extra tray for you to work on. Another cylindrical FX droid zoomed up to the scene, bumper checked the first, & then positioned itself to work on picking grit out of the General’s feet.

As yet another medical droid appeared you couldn’t help but feel like a pit crew to a pod racer. Not that you would ever say that out loud. Iva had informed you that there were no pit droids on staff at the General’s demand. Perhaps he did not want to be equated to a trophy circuit speeder. A contrary thing, you thought as you went to inspect his left hand. Did he want to be a machine or not?

Oh, but you were elated to have the honor of giving General Grievous a mechanical manicure. His hands were the most advanced thing about him. Even the most sophisticated of droids got by with rudimentary claspers. Wat Tambor was dying to give academic lectures (i.e. brag) about his accomplishments with the General’s hands. They contained the most sensitive pressure sensors in his entire design.

The complex system of pulleys & pistons was protected by more plates of porcelain armor on top. You were able to use a bit of a water pick & fine brushes to clear gore & mud from behind & between all of the fine components. It was important to get the wire brush between each joint in his long fingers. With the pressure sensors boosted in his hands to allow him to expertly balance his weapons, he could feel grit trapped in any hinge. He undoubtedly kept up his hands himself & only opted to have you do it since you were here.

This was the only point that you had to remove any piece of him in order to properly clean it. The claws, the tips of his fingers, were made of the same white durasteel alloy as his armor. You had personally witnessed these claws go through the chassis of battle droids. You had to get the spanner to remove them. You stole a glance up at the General as his finger had twitched. His eyes were half closed & he seemed to be staring off into nothing. You couldn’t say if he was enjoying his cyborg spa appointment or not. All you could say is that he seemed more calm than he’d ever been, wheezing quietly & letting everyone else work.

You had to take each claw cap off of his finger frame & thoroughly clean it of debris. By the time you had finished his left hand & scooted over to his finish up his right, you couldn’t help but take a closer look at the sensor pads that sat in the claw caps. You supposed they were analogous to fingertips. Against your better judgement, you curiously put your fingertip to his. Grievous flexed his fingers in succession. You snuck another glance towards him & oh… his eyes had shifted to you. Once he met your gaze, he tilted his head. He still looked like he knew exactly what you were doing. Though his vertical pupils were not as thin as when he had arrived you were still inclined to take that as a warning.

General Grievous sat up once you put the final claw back onto one of his thumbs. He split his right arm into two just so he could put one hand on your face & one hand on Iva’s to push you both away from him. He used the space to stretch his arms & shoulders. He wasn’t really stretching anything, of course, but readjusting his joints & armor.

You weren’t sure how you felt about being pushed about until one of the FX-7 droids did not get out of his way fast enough & was kicked back into the wall 3 meters away. You then felt better about it. Grievous took something off the other FX whose nervousness you now understood.

“You-“ Grievous barked at you & motioned for you to approach. He had picked up a data stick & plugged it into the back of his own head. When you approached he gestured for you to hold out your hands.

“Your master will expect you to bring him these readings. He is a duracrete slug in a compression suit but if I- hkt koff- I am going to keep any of these miserable bastards happy it should be the one that knows exactly where all my nerve endings are, eh?” Grievous deposited the data stick in your hands in an oddly gentle gesture, taking one of your hands to cover your other one. His claws were still cool from the cleaning. Trying to process this demure gesture with his hate-filled words, you didn’t really come up with anything to say. This was just as well. It didn’t sound like an invitation to open conversation.

“Fine work, 1VHA,” the General said at a louder volume as he did an about-face & turned to leave. You looked back at Iva, who had clapped her primary claspers to her chassis. You supposed Grievous identifying you by your designation was the droid equivalent to your crush knowing your name. “A better work up than my awful EV-A, as always,” he followed dismissively as he gathered his lightsabers from the worktable.

In just a few loud steps he was gone. He had rounded the corner of the med bay doors shouting at the B1s to fetch him a new cloak as he made his way to the bridge. You were left with the droids not knowing quite how to feel.

Prompt: Grievous comes back from a fight covered in blood and the reader insists on cleaning him because the reader knows Grievous is gonna procrastinate on doing it

[writersblockedx]

Music Fixes All

Pairing - Jaskier x Reader Summary - After days of non-stop walking, you finally find an Inn. Still, your mind can't seem to turn off, so you seek the help of the boy next door. Warnings - alcohol, implications of sex Words - 2.5K

A/n - Happy new years (eve technically). I wrote and proof read this in about two hours, so if it’s terrible, I apologise. 

MASTERLIST

Walking was beginning to become painful. Your legs ached and begged for rest, your body slowing. It was times like these when you wished for a horse like Roach, or wished for Geralt to express some pity on your non-mutant bones. Alas, your feet stayed touched to the floor while Geralt, literally, sat on his high horse.

"Ah, how bout' this?" Jaskier exclaimed as he strung his fingers along his instrument once again. You were pretty sure both you and Geralt had rolled your eyes at the same time.

Now, it wasn't that you didn't like the pretty little ballads the boy would compose, however, when it was now hitting the three hour mark, it was beginning to get on your nerves.

"How about you give your voice a rest, eh?" You suggested to him, a smile tugging at your lips in hope to seal your annoyance.

You watched as Jaskier stiffened awkwardly, his hands falling from his instrument as that gleaming grin of his faded. "Right, yeah." He muttered. Quiet mumblings which seemed to bring on a wave a guilt.

"It's not that I don't like your songs, it's just the only conversation we've had so far is you discussing lyrics." You defended but no defence was going to bring that grin back.

"She's trying to tell you it's irritating." Geralt spoke ever so blunt.

Your head shot back to him, "Geralt." You sheathed in a stern stare at the man.

Jaskier seemed to scoff to himself. He hadn't slowed as you did to glance back at the sliver haired man, instead he continued, not daring to meet your gaze again. "It's fine. I may not be a witcher, but I can still handle citizen." You shouldn't have said a word.

You seemed to stop dead in your tracks, Geralt and Roach trotting along to catch up with Jaskier as your thoughts engulfed you for a moment. A moment in which you were able to spot the small town dotted only a few roads into the forest. "Huh." You uttered out as your eyes narrowed to gauge said town. "A town." You spoke to alert the two boys. They stopped, turned to you, followed your gaze, then glanced back at yourself. "Bet it has a pub."

Before either boy could give you their opinions on said town, you were already walking that direction. Jaskier was the first to follow while Geralt did all but shake his head and mutter a, "Fuck sake." at the disruption of his travels. Something that was becoming frequent now with the company of both yourself and the bard.

Still, three of you walked into the town. And three of you walked into the pub. Geralt made strict instructions that Jaskier was to keep his instrument at bay and he was to sit with his mouth shut. All while you made a b-line for the ale. Jaskier watched from afar as you scooped the three cups into your hands, juggling each of them. And Geralt watched as Jaskier watched. As if something had just clicked, the witcher made an instant realisation. "You like her."

The boy snapped his head around quickly - as if that wasn't enough to prove Geralt's assumption. "What?"

The other man smiled to himself, "I should have known; any women with a heartbeat and you're all over her."

"Least it's not a dead women." Your voice chimed in from above the two; Jaskier tensed even more. You dropped the pints to the table with a thud, sighing as you threw yourself into the free chair between the two boys. Taking a swing from your pint of ale, you finally looked to the two. "So who's this women?"

Subconsciously, your eyes dotted across the pub for whoever this women was they were referring to. And the moment Geralt looked as if he was about to speak, Jaskier butted in first. "You missed her, just left." He pushed out. "Beautiful lady." The boy paused, taking an oddly long sip from his cup before swallowing and placing it back to the table. "Lovely erm-" He paused once more, caught in his lie. "Lovely breasts." He swallowed again, though this time, there was no ale to swallow, it seemed he had only swallowed his dignity.

You glanced to Geralt, a shared expression painted on both your faces. "Right." You giggled. "Good for you, Jaskier."

And once the three cups were emptied, Geralt pushed the two of you out from your seats and back on the trail to find another one of his creatures. And you were back to walking, back to aching. You thought about asking to ride Roach many a time, but you knew it would only end in a stupid comment from Geralt and a loss of your own pride. So you stuck with walking - despite how many blisters were beginning to sore your skin.

Your feet slowed as time went on, not bothering to keep up with Geralt and Roach. Something Jaskier joined you with as the two of you walked side by side. "Do you really find my voice irritating?" He couldn't help but ask.

You laughed at the boy's insecurity as you glanced up at him and his awkward pupils. "No." You told him. "It was only that we'd been walking for three hours and I sometimes don't find the pondering of song lyrics the best type of conversation topic." You explained to the boy.

"Guess you make a good point." And as you looked at him once more, you caught a glimmer of that familiar grin you had recently found yourself urging for. You were sure by morning that grin would once again be gleaming, as would his enthusiasm for the day.

Geralt stopped outside another small town, scanning across the propitiates it may hold. He glanced back to the two of you and gestured to the town. "There's an inn. We should stay here for the night, we have the coin for it." He suggested.

To which, both you and Jaskier agreed and before you knew it, you were being shown to your rooms. "See you in the morning." That was all Geralt said before whisking himself into his own room for the night. Surprisingly, alone for once.

But you and Jaskier lingered in the hallway for a moment. Jaskier knew why he seemed to linger, but not so much yourself, neither did you. But, for some reason, despite the ache that tortured your body, you weren't urged into your bed like you normally were. "Sleep well." You nodded to the boy and headed for your room not knowing what else to tell him.

Jaskier stumbled for the words to say in return, "You too." He had mustered out, but they were spoken to a closed door, his voice too quiet in his uncertainty for you to hear. So, as he did every night, he headed to bed, alone, pining for the girl that slept only meters from him.

Though, he spent little time dawning on it. To him, it was how things were. He pined for you, wanted you more than the lyrics to a song could express, yet you viewed him as nothing but the chatty bard who followed around the Witcher like a lost puppy.

But that night seemed a shifting point for yourself. Your body longed for rest that you had wished for all day, yet you laid awake, the ceiling seeming to stare back at you. Your mind twisting with thoughts which taunted you. And when you were certain you weren't going to sleep that night, you wondered out into the hallway. In nothing but your nightwear, you knocked your knuckles against the door of the bard.

You waited a moment or two. Nothing. You assumed he had, like you should have, fallen asleep. So you turned, shaking your head in this plan you had conjured up. A stupid plan at that. You weren't even sure how it ended, only that you found yourself craving for the company of a boy you had spent the entire day with already.

You turned from the door, going to return to your own. "Y/n?" Your head shot around. A sleepy, shaggy-haired Jaskier creaked his head out from his room. "Everything okay?" Only now did you catch his croaky voice you were sure accompanied him every morning.

Suddenly, you body seemed stiff and awkward. This was as far as your plan went. You shrugged, "Can't sleep." You answered him as you pointed back to your own room. You took a few steps closer, standing where you were when you first knocked. "Just wondered if you were awake, could have some entertainment then."

That left the boy with one question: "Why would I be awake?"

He wouldn't be. That was a stupid thing for you to think, yet here you stood. "Yeah, your right sorry." You were already moving away from him. "Sorry for waking you." You were almost halfway down the hallway again.

"Y/n." He called out to you, soft in his tone as to not disturb any other guests. "Come on," The boy nodded his head to the inside of the room, opening the door as wide as it was able to invite you in.

But still, your head shook in response, "You need sleep as well." You told him. But it was too late now.

"I'm too tired to bicker with you." The right reply to that was to point out the irony in his argument, but you couldn't help but accept the offer. Before you knew it, you were shuffling inside Jaskier's room.

You glanced across the boy's room, no different to your own. Yet, you found yourself spotting the things. His things. His clothes which had been messily sprawled across the floor that only expressed how desperate his need for sleep had been tonight and with that, reinforced your guilt in having woke him up. "Any particular entertainment you were wanting?" He had questioned when you said nothing.

"I had honestly not thought this far ahead." You answered, finally spinning to face the boy, whose eyes were already pinned against yourself.

"I mean, I'd offer to play some music for you, but after-"

You cut the boy short, "I'd like that." You seemed to blurt out, something that had tugged a grin at Jaskier's expression. Yet, he still seemed surprised in your reply.

"Well then, take a seat in the audience-" He gestured dramatically to his bed, "-and let me prepare you with my many musical tricks." You did all but smile at his words and followed his instructions, snuggling against the tangled bed sheets.

You watched quietly for a moment as Jaskier took his instrument from it's case before returning to the bed, practically hopping into the space next to you. With one arm sprawled over your back, pulling you close to his chest to then reach his string, the other held the instrument in place. And ever so quietly, the many ballads and poems you had heard played a million times before seemed to lull you into sleep. Maybe your body really was worn out, or maybe your mind had been put to rest at the sound of the familiar voice. Whatever it was, you were to question it in the morning.

And morning came quicker than you realised. Still wrapped within the arms of the bard, your eyes fluttered open. But not peacefully. No, they seemed to shoot open as a loud knock banged against the door. So loud in fact you weren't sure how Jaskier hadn't awoken. You were beginning to think Geralt had forgotten to pay the bill again. "Jaskier! Wake up! Y/n isn't in her room."

You jumped up, jumping out from Jaskier's hold. The boy did all but stir in his sleep. "Jaskier!" Another loud bang. The boy simply snored back into sleep. You groaned at how deep into unconsciousness he was and took it upon yourself to shake him awake.

And as you had done, he jolted awake. At first, a flash of fear splattered across his face, then his eyes adjusted to you and he relaxed. "Oh wow." You heard him speak to himself as his head fell back against his pillow. "I wasn't dreaming."

You really did question the boy's intelligence sometimes. "Your speaking aloud, Jaskier." You informed him.

At that, he shot up, the bed sheets falling down from his skin to reveal the fact he was no longer wearing a shirt. Whenever that happened, you really couldn't remember. "Jaskier, open this door!" Geralt yelled once more. "I don't want to do it myself."

Your eyes jumped from the door back to the boy in bed. "Why the fuck are you shirtless?" You spoke in a harsh whisper as to not be overheard by Geralt. Though, you weren't really sure what your plan was there. He was going to wonder in some point or another.

"Because it got hot in the night." Jaskier answered in a just as passive-aggressive whisper as you had done. "Why is Geralt threating to break into the room?"

"Because I'm not in mine!" You said that as if it was obvious. And to a very sleepy Jaskier, it very much wasn't.

Once more, Geralt yelled out. "Alright, I'm coming in!" The door rustled loudly and thudded against Geralt's weight.

"Shit." You practically threw yourself from the bed, scurrying to find the t-shirt that Jaskier had thrown in the middle of the night. Just in time, the door opened and you chucked the t-shirt at the boy. Not that it had hidden the fact he was very much still shirtless. And so Geralt walked in, you stood in your nightwear and Jaskier looking as if he could be naked beneath the sheets.

The Witcher stopped dead in his tracks, wide eyes and stiff. "Oh." That was to come out of his mouth.

Jaskier grinned as he always did, "Morning, Geralt." You wanted the world to swallow you there and then, and by the look on Geralt, as did he.

He couldn't even look either of you in the eye. Instead, he chose the floor. "Yeah, morning." He mumbled out as he turned around in the doorway to leave. "You can pay for the door by the way."

"Yep!" You replied. And with that, the man whisked right out of the room as quick as he was able to. You sighed, letting your much forced smile fall as your hand smacked against the boy still laid in bed. "Idiot!" You snapped.

"Ouch!" The boy whined as his hand went to rub against where you had reached out at him. All you could think as you stood there was that, at least it was over. Could it have gone any worse? Probably not

[jeanbeaux]

ANATOMY PRACTICE

eren jaeger x f!reader

w/c: 1.3k

warnings: smut/18+/minors DNI, fingering, cadaver mentions, tutor/student relationship, archaic professionalism standards

a/n: shout out to my lovely @jae-ren who gave me this beautiful idea i said i would “drabble” but then wrote a thousand words about because i have no self control. also shout out to bestie @smoochiesdiarie for beta-ing. yes the hand thing is a real trick for learning your hand muscles, im never gonna forget it now.

You shouldn’t be here.

Your hand hovered in a fist centimeters away from the dark green door in front of you, almost as though your body was preventing you from making a mistake.

The offer for extra help for anatomy was too good to be true, you knew it was, and when he said that he wanted to be able to help you outside of the cadaver lab, his apartment was not the location you had anticipated for your next study session.

When your mind was finally able to tell your limbs to turn around, the door swung open — the blinding smile of your tutor greeting you and effectively sealing your fate.

Eren Jaeger got away with a lot during his time at medical school.

Strolling into class a couple of minutes late despite the strict rule against tardiness, shirt untucked and the hair in his low bun mussed — looking more like a fashion model rather than the ideal physician Paradis Medical University wanted to produce.

It wasn’t for the lack of trying reprimands for him on the professor’s part — the problem was simply his last name — as the son of the dean, he was untouchable.

And even more infuriatingly, he was a god damn genius.

So what if he scorned the outdated values of professionalism? His scores spoke for themselves — and if a missed button was that they really wanted to hold over him from helping heal the sick then school was going it’s own mission of doing no harm.

He was good at teaching too, and in his second year he would moonlight as a lab assistant in the cadaver lab — on his study breaks, no doubt, milling about the lab to point out missed muscles and their functions to the stressed out first years.

Then came the fateful day where he went nosing into your body bay to tell you you’re holding your scalpel wrong. Instead of telling you how to fix it, he came up from behind and hold it with you, the position not unlike how you would help someone correct their golf swing.

“Hold it like a pencil,” he said, finger pressing on top of yours to help cut through the layers of fascia. “It helps with the more precise cuts.”

He left wordlessly soon after, Professor Hange calling him for help on making a sagittal pelvic cut, leaving you and your dissection group equally dumbfounded by the intimacy of his help.

Since then, they always joked that if you couldn’t get the M.D by the end of this, at least the M.R.S degree was lined up for you.

Eren was always hovering by your cadaver since then, quizzing you about the innervation each muscle you uncovered and rewarding a half smile and “good girl” with each question you answered right.

He’d even find you after hours when you were studying with the models.

“These are bullshit, you know,” he said, toying with the bony hand of the skeleton you were working with. “Nothing beats working with the real thing.”

“Don’t really feel like getting suffocated by the smell of formaldehyde more than I have to.”

He let out a short laugh, pulling the surgical skin marker that’s always sticking out of his back pocket. “That’s not what I meant, here,” he handed the pen to you, stretching out his hand. “Write your number on here, and I’ll show you what I’m talking about, okay?”

Thirty minutes passed and you got a text with an address, and a week later, you’re being ushered through the door of his apartment.

“Glad you could make it,” he greets warmly.

“What are you hiding, Jaeger,” you say, looking around to admire how he’s decorated the space. “Hope you didn’t trick some poor soul to be an anatomy model today.”

“I didn’t have to trick anyone, I’m your model today.”

You turn away from the colored vinyls that hang on the walls to look back at him, finding him in the middle of pulling his worn grey tee over his head, abs under tan skin rippling with the motion. He just responds to the look of shock on your face with that trademark cheeky grin, arms spread out in a “you like what you see?” type gesture.

“This,” he shakes the surgical marker in front of you, “Is yours now. Mark me up. Tell me where the muscles and organs lie. Starting here.” Eren picks up your hand and puts it on his chest, resting it under his so you can feel his heart thrum.

You look back up to those sea green eyes and realize he isn’t just messing around, and with a deep exhale, you take the marker from his hand and uncap it, pressing the tip against the bony process your hand was lying on and draw a line vertically.

“Sternum,” you call out, “It’s the midline of the ribcage.” You move to the left, tracing the outline of his pec. “Pectoralis Major, innervated by the medial and lateral pectoral nerves, helps in adduction of the arm.”

“Smart girl.”

The game goes on like this, Eren’s sculpted physique now littered in black lines that ran through every groove of muscle. It’s intimate, the act making you more mallable to his easy charm —  so he manages to convince you to lend a hand to help him, the female pelvis being larger than a males and what not and he needs to brush up on the landmarks too. It took a few more sweet words and you’ve shed your jeans for him, laying down on the couch as he runs the marker along the divot of your hips, naming the muscle attachments that would run on those bony spines along the way.

“Did you know the hand flexors are amongst the hardest group to learn?” Eren says, sitting in the space between your legs as he draws four lines across his forearm.

“You’re telling me,” you say, “They always trip me up.”

“Here,” Eren holds his forearm in front of you, laying his other hand so his four fingers lay across the lines. “It’s Pass — Fail — Pass — Fail, Pronator Teres, Flexor Carpi Radialus, Palmaris Longus, Flexor Carpi Ulnarus.” He lifts each finger up as he names each muscle, the action cementing the mnemonic in your brain even further.

“Do you get it?”

“Yeah.”

“Show me.”

You repeat the action with your own arm, resting your right hand across the your left forearm and naming the muscles in sequence.

“You’re really getting the hang of this, clever girl.”

The heat blooms across your cheeks at his praise, and you shift your knees up so you could try to hide the dampening spot growing on your panties with the attention.

“I guess I just have a great tutor.”

“Damn right you do. Heres another fun fact for you, did you know you can actually feel those four tendons pretty easily when you flex your hand? Let me show you.”

Eren picks your hand up so you can wrap it around his right wrist, his hand going to lie flat on your belly with the finger tips pointed toward the edge of your underwear.

Then he moves down, pushing his digits underneath the fabric as he watches in delight at how your eyes widen when he starts running them through your slick folds. He slides a finger in your hole with ease, working himself into you gradually with your hand still on his wrist.

When he manages to put be able to put two in he curls his fingers, and sure enough, you feel his tendons tense beneath your grip, a small gasp tumbling out of your lips as he continues to press against that gummy spot.

“See that, clever girl? The flexors may be a bitch to learn, but damn, they sure will make you feel good, yeah?”

thx for reading! plz don’t recc this on tiktok.

© all rights reserved JEANBEAUX 2021. please do not copy, modify or repost my work.

taglist: @onwiings @wyack @aiiwa @jean-prettyboy-kirschtein @jeansbabycake @glittrkink @intothesunset @lazyezstudy @hawksismybabydaddy

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[letsboo-boo]

56 + hangster or fanback! - liz

56. Direct Me - Otis Redding (this one screams hangster) Shame on me, shame on me  I made a big mistake

It's the smile Jake directs at him when they're face to face after Bradley lands that seals the deal. Because that is not Hangman; it's Jake. His Jake smiling at him, his Jake that saved his and Mav's life. His Jake that Bradley should have never let go.

So when the carrier's doctors get a hold of him to take him to the med bay, Bradley reaches out to grasp Jake's sleeve, set on correcting that right this second.

Jake looks down to where Bradley is gripping him and then looks up to his face, gaze turning fond. "Come on, Bradshaw," he says softly, "I'll walk with you. You'll probably collapse halfway there otherwise."

He waves the medical staff away and curls his left arm firmly around Bradley's waist, helping him stay upright. They make their way through the carrier's corridors in silence, Bradley leaning more and more on Jake as they get closer to their destination.

"Jake—"

Jake shuts him up with a squeezing of his side. "Shh, we're almost there."

Bradley furrows his brows but presses his lips and says nothing.

Once Jake has helped Bradley flop on the cot in the med bay, the med staff letting them have some privacy before returning for the impending check-up, Bradley tries again, gripping the other pilot's flight suit once more. "Listen, Jake, I—" he takes a deep breath, gaze fixed on the spot where he's holding him, "I want..."

Don't think. Just do.

"I wanna try again," Bradley blurts out, "if you'll have me."

The room is silent, enough so that there's no way for him to miss Jake's sharp intake of breath.

"Bradley..." It's been so long since Jake's said his name. "It's been a rough day. You should rest."

Bradley grips Jake's flight suit tighter when he tries to pull back and looks up at him, straight into his eyes, hoping to convey the following words as clearly as possible. "I mean it, Jake."

Jake deflates instantly, hand reaching out to cup Bradley's cheek. Bradley leans into his touch, closing his eyes and sighing. 

There's shuffling, and then Jake's chapped lips press softly against his in a sweet kiss. Bradley could cry.

When Jake leans back, Bradley tries to follow, eliciting a low chuckle from Jake. He opens his eyes to Jake's grinning face.

"How are you so convincing?"

"I'm charming like that," Bradley grins. "It's the mustache."

Jake snorts and shoves him, making Bradley huff in pain as he falls back to the cot.

"Shit. Sorry."

Bradley chuckles. "'s alright."

Jake rolls his eyes and turns to the door. "Rest. We'll talk after the debriefing." He waves a stern finger in his direction right before stepping out. "And that's a threat!"

Bradley lets out a puff of laughter as he leans back into the thin pillow, flinching when a sharp jolt of pain rises from his ribcage.

It's taken Bradley five years, lots of lonely nights and tears, too afraid of all his fears and demons to try. But now, the prospect of talking, of opening up to Jake, is not so frightening anymore.

He's on the right track.