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antihero-writings · 4 years ago

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If These Walls Could Talk (Ch7)

(^^ Art commissioned from Junki Sakuraba on instagram and deviantart!!)

Fandom: Castlevania Netflix

Summary: Vampires do not have reflections, and castles do not have hearts. But Dracula is no ordinary vampire, and Castlevania is no ordinary castle. If castles can fight, maybe they can think too. The series, and Adrian’s childhood, told from the perspective of the castle.

Notes: Hey all! I am SO sorry this chapter took so long to come out. My perfectionism really got the best of me with this chapter. But I saw that S4 was on its way and that really lit a fire under my butt because I really do want to post my season 3 chapter before s4 comes out. I’m highly doubt I’ll accomplish it as it almost always takes me longer than I have to get a chapter out, let alone two, but I'll try, at least.

I really really hope you enjoy it!! If you enjoy this chapter, please please consider commenting. I assure you it’ll be more likely I’ll post the next chapter faster the more people comment on this showing you still enjoy this fic. Each comment is a little shot of energy and motivation for me.

Important! This chapter is meant to have aesthetic indentation in some places. So if you want to read it as-intended, please look it at on Archiveofourown at I_prefer_the_term_antihero on your computer or tablet!!

If you get here and are thinking “Wait, what was this fic about? What were the main themes?” then this would be a good time to reread/skim back through the earlier chapters. This is the climax of the fic and will (hopefully) be more impactful the more you remember about the rest of the fic and its many themes.

Chapter Summary:

"Go back whence you came! Trouble the soul of my Mother no more!" "How? How—How is it that I've been so defeated?" "You have been doomed ever since you lost the ability to love." "Ha—Ah... Sarcasm. 'For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?' Matthew 16:26, I believe. "Tell me. What—What were Lisa's last words?" "She said 'Do not hate humans. If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm. For theirs is already a hard lot'. She also said to tell you that she would love you for all of eternity." "Lisa, forgive me. Farewell my son."

Chapter 7: “Heart”

Hey there, Sunshine, the Room adds with a smile.

The Room forgot the sweet tang of breath. How gentle, how vicious. Like honey, like relief, like a cozy blanket and a fireplace. It came in great, gulping gasps, and living was painful after such long breathlessness, but hurt far less than being half dead.

The Room rushes to Castlevania, shaking it, saying, Open your eyes! Open your eyes! It’s Adrian. It’s our boy. My master. My sunlight. And Castlevania limply flickers open its eyes, for it cannot help but obey.

Obey to see the golden man standing in its doorway.

And it feels a jolt of warmth in its broken chest.

Alucard has returned home. He arrives at the doorstep with resolve in his closed fists and a sword on his tongue. The threat to the war they all knew he would be, and the Room promised it would rear him to be.

But he isn’t alone this time.

There are two humans by his side. One with fire in her fists—quite literally—the other with a barbed tongue at his hip.

Castlevania recognizes a crest on the clothing of one of them, gold and proud: The Belmonts. The ones who came with whips and scourges to defeat its master long ago. The ones whom Dracula and his Castle were bound together against in their undead war. The ones whom Dracula trusted his Castle to protect him from. The owner of the hold now beneath Castlevania. He has come to defeat its master like the rest…but this time the boy is by his side, and for that reason, the Castlevania is unsure how this will end.

“I terrify them,” the Belmont explains the plan, “Sypha disorients them, Alucard goes over the top and we support him.”

“Yes.” The Speaker confirms.

Alucard holds his sword out horizontally in front of him, unsheathes it, and speaks:

“Begin.”

Alucard is with the Belmont.

And Castlevania knows when it sees them, the fire in their eyes, that they are the intent that brought it here. That they have indeed come to kill its master once and for all. It had wished when the boy returned, it would be with the promise of hope. But there is no promise of life and the sparing of it this time.

They bring death inside with them; the war room is filled with war, blood and burns on its floors, but it is different this time, because this is not an ambiance, a continuation, a fact of life, it is a swift and fatal kiss—the end they said he would bring, once. The blood is rotten on the floors, but it doesn’t itch or burn. And the boy uses those techniques his father taught him on brighter nights about turning into things with teeth, and the ones his mother once taught him on sunnier days about how to make metal listen.

They did not bring life inside this time, not life of the same kind at least. The war, the death, has followed and swallowed them too, but not in the same way it has its master. They are not bloodthirsty. The cold the dark and the death are merely clothes they wear, they have not reached the deepest parts of them; there are still light-starved Rooms in their hearts waiting to breathe.

There is a song at their heels as they dance in rings of fire, with the wind and the moon, upon the blood and water Castlevania isn’t sure will come out of the carpet. It is a song that is all too familiar. It has been played here before, when other, more, less, holy Belmonts barged in long ago. A song of blood and tears.

Bloody tears its master cried once, for his wife when he realized they had taken something that could not be borrowed, bartered, or souled.

They’re bringing an end to the strife, and all the undead lives that facilitated it, and vice versa. They are cutting the puppet strings, and not all puppets can live without them.

Isaac fights the nameless soldiers on the staircase for its master…until he sees someone who is far from nameless.

Isaac’s reddened eyes meet Alucard’s golden ones. Alucard’s sword aims at him, but it hits the deadened flesh of the nameless instead.

Isaac runs to tell its master—Dracula, busy ripping out the heart of a nameless—who’s here; that his sun has returned, and at his side is magic and might.

Dracula knows the prophecy.

He’s willing to die—Issac. He stands before Dracula, his form barely able to shield three-quarters of Dracula’s, willing to give his feeble human life for Dracula’s indefinite undead one. He believes knowledge and will are more important than the blood of a good man. He believes in love, and loyalty is love of a sort. And it is Castlevania’s understanding that when someone is willing to live for something, they are also willing to die for it. This is the noblest of causes.

“You are the greatest of your people, Isaac. You have a soul, I think.” As Dracula says the words, he raises his hand, and the mirror shards behind them begin to rise. “Perhaps that is more valuable to the world to come than a dusty collection of books and apparatus.”

Lisa looks on from the portrait, and Castlevania thinks it is a look of pride. She always did stand for saving human lives rather than destroying them. Isn’t it funny that in what will perhaps be the deciding battle of this war, the one where his goals should possess him stronger than ever, it is the human who he values more than himself?

“Or perhaps you simply deserve a better fate than to die instead of me.”

“I choose my death, as I chose my life.” The words are stronger than iron.

“Then I regret only that I have taken a choice for you.” A hand at his shoulder.

Dracula throws him halfway across the world, to the kind of place Isaac was born in, and the kind of place Isaac least wants to die in.

Isaac believes in love. And it is for this reason, this belief, that Vlad saves his life, Castlevania knows. Saves his life, by denying the choice he so desperately wanted to make—perhaps his whole life—and had no regrets or apprehensions about making, rather a lot more in being kept alive.

And when the mirror shatters and falls, his son is standing there, like he did a year ago, though this time he is not backed by sunlight. The only light in the room is the fire glinting in his eyes.

A pause. To remember the dead.

“Father.”

A word. To remember the living.

“Son.”

This should be a reunion, perhaps. Better people would think they should happily hug each other, and say they missed each other, and that they love each other all the same. Better people would say that the sunlight should plead with the dark to come back into its embrace. All the sinners know there was no chance of that the moment Dracula scrawled fate on his son’s skin with his own claws.

Instead, there is nothing but bitter, fighting words:

“Your war is over.”

Dracula tilts his head to the side. “Because you say so?”

“It ends.” Alucard looks at his sword, the one she taught him how to use. “In the name of my mother.”

Dracula looks at his son, the one she gave him. “It endures in the name of your mother.”

“I told you before I won’t let you do it.” Alucard’s voice is so soft, yet solid and unwavering. There is no anger, but he will not step aside. Not this time. Even when the claws come. “I grieve with you…but I won’t let you commit genocide.”

“You couldn’t stop me before.” Dark assurance in soft words.

Footsteps. A cue to the magic and the hunt behind the curtain, who step out on either side of him.

“I was alone before.”

And Castlevania understands. Understands that they are not here to talk things out. Understands that they are not here to save Dracula, to appeal to the good in him, as Lisa once had, and the Room once thought. Castlevania itself even hoped, when the boy returned, the song would be a bit more inspirational. But, beaten and broken and bloody, Castlevania understands now, if Alucard stands with the intent, if Alucard brought a Belmont—

Then they do not believe there is a chance. They are not here then, to talk him out of it. They are here to halt this war in its tracks, make it rear up, lose its balance, and fall.

—(And Castlevania knows, deep down, that to do this… they must end something else)—

Alucard is bringing back the sunlight. But there is only one way he can do that, and goodnight is not quiet.

And make no mistake he does intend to bring the full, the warm, the life, and the light back, just like Castlevania and the Room wanted. But there is too much cold, dark, death, and emptiness here to do this quietly. They are here to kill Dracula—the master now puppeteered by Death’s strings rather than his own soul.

The Speaker raises her fingers to her lips as if to say a prayer, or perhaps take a heavenly name in vain for the sake of a little silence. The Belmont’s whip clinks in his hand. Alucard’s sword sings as he raises it.

Alucard drives it towards his father: a bolt of golden lightning through the room, pinning him against the fireplace as books fall to the floor. Castlevania, wincing at the pain, knows that will bruise in the morning.

The picture of his mother cracks and falls, as if she has to close her eyes for this.

Alucard, growling with fierce resolve, pushing the sword into him with all his might. But Dracula has the sword in his hand, rather than his heart. He steps calmly forward, barely having to use any of his strength to combat so much of his son’s, as if he’s about to tell him to put the toy away.

A glint of golden eyes. Alucard pulls back the sword. A slash. Two. Three.

Dracula raises his arm as if to knock the sword from his shoulder.

Instead he bashes his son’s head into the fireplace—and Castlevania cries out at the feeling, feeling its stomach burn.

The Speaker and the Belmont ready for a fight. The floor splinters—(Castlevania grimaces, tasting blood)—as Dracula flashes through the room, and pins the Belmont into the hall, against the wall, sending his sword out of his hand. He keels over onto his hands to cough up blood, the puddle crawling on Castlevania’s skin.

Castlevania never had any qualms with the blood of Belmonts on its floors before, so this hurts less, but this is different, and Castlevania still wonders if Dracula could be a little gentler with his Castle.

A flash of light at his side. He raises his cloak as the Speaker sends tongues and teeth of fire at him.

“Speaker magician!” Its master realizes.

He rushes at her, knocking her hand out of position. She creates an ice shard before her with the other.

He scratches up with a claw, sending her flying with the broken pieces towards the ceiling, and angry gashes appear on her arm as she rolls along the floor.

“Sypha!” The Belmont calls.

He must love her in some way, because in a fit of some sort of emotion—instead of picking up his sword—the Belmont uses his fists. They probably haven’t failed him before. But this is Dracula, and his punches don’t cause the king to so much as flinch.

“You must be the Belmont.”

Castlevania laughs a little at the words; it too thought the method was rather common of his line.

It’s Dracula’s turn, and his punch doesn’t just cause the Belmont to flinch, the sound is as if he hit rock, sending him into the air with the force. He doesn’t give him a second to breathe, rather reaches his claw is around the human’s neck, holding him there.

He raises his other claw level—a blade, more trustworthy than any.

“The end of your line.”

Before he can make these words true, another blade stops him: his son’s, driving itself through both his arms.

While he is pinned the Speaker, knowing this is an opportunity she will not get again, rushes forward—still bleeding, mind—a bead of fire between her fingers. Dracula cannot move to protect himself, and the magician, knowing this, lets the fire loose to lick his face raw.

Dracula drops the Belmont, attempting to get away, deciding his own life takes precedence, but it is hard to get away when your hands are tied together with metal.

The Speaker, seeing that her fire is about to hit Alucard, falters. And in that moment Dracula wrenches his arm off of the blade and uses it to knock her down, before sending his other fist into his son, who goes flying along with his sword hitting the wall. This one may not be so hard as to bruise, but, with everything aching and breaking, the smallest tap hurts Castlevania.

The Belmont pulls a blade of bone from his back-belt, and as Dracula turns he drives it into his chest.

It’s not close enough to his heart, but red distaste fills Dracula’s eyes. He thought this was a game, but they have some amount of ability, and he may have underestimated them. As Alucard and the magician get up he attempts to grab at the Belmont in quick motions, but he has some skill in dodging.

The Speaker rips off her shirt and cauterizes her wound as the Belmont and Dracula dance in the hallway, neither weapon hitting flesh.

Dracula sees the Speaker’s intent over his shoulder, and as the Belmont lunges at him grabs his arm and throws him into her, stopping both their attacks. An effective move, if Castlevania does say so itself.

Alucard sees his opening and rushes forward, pinning his father to the wall, which shatters behind them with a painful lurch.

Dracula puts his hands together and brings them down over his son’s head with such force the floor cracks.

And Castlevania coughs blood.

Alucard pushes his arms away and slaps both sides of his face, getting a grunt this time. Dracula sends him back with such force it almost seems like a shockwave, creating wind and smoke curling around them all.

The Speaker roots him in place by sending ice spears into his leg. The Belmont clears the smoke by spinning his whip, before creating more by sending that whip—the one he fed the vampires that didn’t agree with their compositions—sizzling into Dracula’s chest. There’s an explosion to be sure—a rather big one—but after the smoke dissipates, and a wait with bated breath, Dracula is still standing just as he was before—as Castlevania knew he would—like all he threw at him were words.

…At least at first, to show he isn’t taken down so easily. He does fall to his hands thereafter.

“The Morningstar whip.” The words are scratches in the carpet. “Well played, Belmont. But I am no ordinary vampire to be killed by your human magics.” The words sizzle on his tongue. “I am Vlad Dracula Tepes,” he crosses his arms with purpose. “and I have had ENOUGH!”

His voice is a shockwave of its own across the sea of stone and bone. He sweeps his hands to the sides, his cloak rising like wings as he floats into the air, and creates a ball of magma: the cheat that will end the game. He was going easy on them until now.

It rumbles towards them, eating the carpet as it goes—and Castlevania can feel the burning in its chest. The Belmont’s eyes widen with fear at last. The Speaker rises to the occasion without hesitation, and holds out her hands to stop it with the force of her magic. It’s a force to be reckoned with, for sure: at first she succeeds, but, though it may be slowing, it isn’t stopping, and her feet are slipping. The Belmont puts his back to hers, as any good friend and comrade would. Alucard phases in front of them, the burning wind rushing against his face. He calls his sword, which sings as it reaches his hand, poises it, and drives the point into the magma ball.

They each fight with all their might, the Belmont and the speaker begins to grunt with the weight of it. The ball gives a falter their way, and Castlevania is sure even three cannot match Dracula’s strength, but the Speaker gives a final push, which gives Alucard just the right amount of momentum to drive it back toward his father, who is as caught off guard by the display as Castlevania is. He needs no sword or magic to stop it, however, and puts his hands out to hold it. Gold and red push against each other, until Alucard gives a deciding motion, then another, another, each chipping away at the ball until the sword goes flying and it’s just Alucard’s arm against Dracula’s throat, and their momentum creates a sizzling tunnel in the wall.

Castlevania may not know what guns are, but it knows what it feels like to be shot.

The two burst into the library, shattering the already shattered mirror.

It was so quiet in here. Must they sully the silence with the sound of strife? They read here, once. Sometimes alone, sometimes to each other. Whispered to each other of history and mystery.

Dracula lands on the floor and Alucard floats above him in the room in which he once stood on his level and told his father calmly he wouldn’t stand for genocide.

There’s anger in his eyes now.

Dracula hisses, then gives a war cry, and the two allow their hungry fists to attempt to devour each other as best they can in the air, red and gold flashing.

The Belmont picks up a sword in the other room and, deciding it’d be best not to follow them through the tunnel—(Castlevania is glad for that decision. The wound is still raw and would more than likely sting tremendously if they walked on it)—he and the Speaker run up the stairs to follow them.

They’re on the floor now and their punches fly like starlings—their duel reflected in the shards of mirror fluttering, jittering about, ever awaiting their command, as if attempting to tap their shoulders and ask what they should do, and why they are hurting each other—until they are hitting the bookshelves they once were gentle with—lest the pages rip and the silence tear—the ones they once smiled and discussed philosophy beside.

Castlevania’s head aches, nausea in the back of its throat.

A smiling boy and his father handing him another book, saying if he liked the first he’d like the second too, are all but gone now.

Dracula throws Alucard into the ceiling, and enters the room above with an unearthly sound, in an unearthly way: only his cloak is visible, moving like slime. As his hungry footsteps lick the floor behind him, Alucard is heaving on his side that same floor, his hair falling across his face. He turns around, fear coating the sound he makes as he, without his sword, grabs the nearest block of wood that happens to have a point on the end.

Dracula laughs, like they’re playing a game—(they did once, do they remember? Humans and monsters. Sometimes there were princes, and knights, or pirates. Even a princess or two. And the wolves and the bats were free in the night wind)—and stops.

“You mean to stake me?”

“You want me to.” Alucard murmurs, turning around with some difficulty.

“What?” Dracula chuckles, still with that put-the-toys-away intonation.

“You didn’t kill me before.” Alucard breathes. “You’re not going to kill me now. You want this to end as much as I do.” The look in his eyes is almost crazed.

“DO I?!” The tone is almost crazed in response, the nonchalant edge gone, the words resounding with power and grief.

Alucard scrambles away like an animal, causing Dracula to punch the floor instead of his head—Castlevania’s body lurches. It feels a gentle touch at its chin, someone trying to wipe the blood off perhaps.

“You died when my mother died. You know you did.” He reasons as Dracula’s breathing gains weight. “This entire catastrophe has been nothing but history’s longest suicide note.”

Castlevania jerks its head up, eyes wide at these words.

And Castlevania understands.

The cold, the dark, the empty, the death. They all make sense now.

Alucard rushes at him, Dracula knocks the stake out of Alucard’s hand with ease, but, in a moment of extreme dexterity, Alucard manages to grab it from the air and drive it into his chest still. The look in his eyes is almost pleading, like he’s going to ask “Daddy did I do a good job? Did I do it right? I’ve gotten better at fighting haven’t I?”

“Not quite close enough.” There is a gurgling quality to Dracula’s enunciation.

No more playing.

He shoves Alucard so hard its into the next room.

Castlevania keels over onto the floor, it’s stomach aching and prickling.

Dracula pulls the stake out and heaves before rushing after.

Floors below the magician and the Belmont can hear them, and are trying their best to catch up, to have a say in this fight.

But Castlevania isn’t sure they have much chance of that, as they are flashing through the halls now, Alucard, a foot off the ground, zig-zagging between the walls in the narrow hall as Dracula keeps punching bloodless stone—

—(The stone may be bloodless, but god this hurts)—

Until Alucard punches him back, sending them into a room, a bedroom—(but not that one)—and the room is a pile of rubble with just that. And Castlevania can feel the splinters. That furniture was nice.

Dracula grabs Alucard’s face and shoves him into the dining room, pinning him to the table like he’ll eat him too if they’re not careful, and those chairs were perfectly nice too—

And Castlevania sees a little boy waiting at the table for his birthday surprise, and his father pulling out a burned cake, and his mother laughing. There was no fear then. Though its master was a creature of blood it never thirsted for theirs, and they knew this full well. Can they see it too? Why would they destroy this room if they did? Why would they destroy each other if they did? Are they even the same creatures as those in the memory?

At this point Castlevania is pretty sure they broke a few of its ribs.

Alucard kicks his face and gets on the table on all fours, rushing him into the next room still.

Castlevania’s bleeding, broken heart skips a beat. Surely they must have broken a few ribs, for how else could they get into Castlevania’s heart? The control room, where its gears still lie dripping, glowing as orange as a brand, once beating organs now blazing stalactites.

They punch each other along the platform, Dracula’s cloak whipping about, like a cat’s fur trying to make him look bigger and scarier.

They are framed in the paneless window—those bones have been all but broken too now. The frame where the picture—that is to say, the die—no longer sits. For Castlevania’s heart didn’t just break, it was destroyed when they brought it to this place, the place where its enemies once lived, and still stand today.

—(So why can Castlevania still feel it beat?)—

In the frame now is moon drunk on blood, a night soaked in tears—and the wind whispers to their cloaks, bidding them to whip around them.

Dracula draws in a hissing breath.

Alucard stands tall, his eyes aglow, gold melting into something new in this forge, his hair whipping about him as he raises his fist yet again.

They are getting tired. Their snarls have a weakened quality to them now.

—Can they see the father and son in this room, the father teaching his son that his Castle is special?—

But instead of just punching him, Alucard teleports beside his father, hitting his shoulder, sending a gust of wind to his face, then teleports around the room to send his fist into him over and over, from every possible angle, and some of his kick-offs create cracks in the already breaking bindings of the room.

It feels like pins and needles, but it’s okay. It’s okay.

Why?

Dracula’s grits his teeth, sharp as ever, his eyes alight with bloody determination, his hair playing about this gaze. To end it, on the next hit he grabs his face, shoving him by it onto the stone platform. He shoves him once, twice, a third, the metal cracking, the metal creaking—

Castlevania’s gut lurches, and it can taste bile and iron at the back of its throat, and it’s hard to breathe.

Then its master raises Alucard back up, holds him by the face in the air a moment, and punches him with such force he is blown across the length of the platform and through the thick stone wall into the next room—

And Castlevania vomits blood.

Dracula bolts after him, the dust creating patterns in his wake—and Castlevania could gaze in the clouds if it weren’t for whoever’s trying to slap it awake.

Alucard coughs, and it sounded deep.

Its master is nothing human now. There’s a growl in his throat as he marches towards him, and another cough in Alucard’s as he struggles to stand.

Another punch, but this one is not fast like the rest, nor is it blocked. Alucard tries to stand up, to rush towards him, but he is getting tired, and Dracula hits him again. Another growl. Alucard takes a single step back, soft against the floors. An exhale. Another of both, and as Dracula raises his fist the murmur—plea?—on his son’s lips sounds a lot like “Father,” as if he’s reached his limit, and has to stop the game.

It’s too late to hit quit now.

The vampire king doesn’t grant the plea—or perhaps even hear it; with a belabored punch he sends him into the next Room, rolling this time, instead of flying, the contents of the Room staying in tact…all except the bed, which catches the boy.

The next Room. But this one is not like the rest. It is not just a room.

This one breathes.

A gasp, another growl, a scratch against the wall, and—

Castlevania burned today in this bloody fight, on this bloody night. Its skin, its legs. Even its heart broke.

Castlevania. The thing that Vlad Tepes brought to life with a little bit of lightning, several gears, and a few words. No magic words, just words: the ones he spoke on lonely nights to the walls about how he’d like to be something more than ruthless.

Castlevania did everything it could. It lies burned and broken and unable to fight now because of it.

But none of that burned half as much as those scratches on its walls.

There have been many stories told about Dracula, and there will one day be more stories told about Dracula, books written, enough that one could fill libraries with just the retellings of his story. And Castlevania has no doubt that one day these scratches will be on their covers. This growl, these scratches are the signet of a vampire, of a monster: the disfigurement of his Castle, bloody intent directed at his son. The dark, the death, and the emptiness have overtaken completely. That is all a monster is, really. That is all he is now.

He marches into the Room, his cloak flowing, dipping and twirling in the broken wind. The sound of Alucard’s breathing fills the Room as he heaves against the bed.

Or maybe the breath is the Room’s own.

The Room has seen all that happened, it has been watching Castlevania beaten bloody till it could barely breathe, or see through the blood dripping down its face, let alone move. Castlevania could barely feel the comforting hands on it, the attempts to bandage the wounds, or at least stop the bleeding that it knew could only belong to the Room. Castlevania could barely hear the Room’s frantic, desperate calls to action, to get up, or just ask if it was okay. And now the Room stands, fists clenched at its sides. The Room wants to fight back. It will fight back.

The Room is not violent. From the very beginning it stood against all the violence, the dark, the empty, and the death. That was what it was made for, after all. As much as it would like to, it does not wrap its hand around Dracula’s throat, claws digging until it draws blood, and demand “How does it feel?! How does it feel to be on the receiving end?!”

The Room’s footsteps are soft as it comes up beside Dracula. It puts its hands over the king’s eyes and whispers in his ear, gently as it can:

“Remember me?”

Then, quietly as it came, it removes them, as if playing peekaboo, revealing that it was there the whole time, his eyes were just covered for a while.

It may as well have been removing scales, because Dracula freezes, his eyes wide, as if he’s seeing, not just the Room, but the whole world for the first in a long time—And he is. The first time with living eyes. And one sees things very differently with living eyes. And Castlevania was his world and it hopes he sees the world differently, for Castlevania is not a thing for him to beat and break. Just when Castlevania thought there was nothing left…there is something more than anger in his eyes now.

Dracula’s angry cloak quiets, falling docile at his feet: a sign of reverence towards the Room, and all it stands for.

Alucard, after allowing his breath to regain itself, looks up, his eyes widening too at his father. His father. No anger, no fear, not even determination now. Not in this Room. This Room is different. He remembers now: in the hush that has fallen across the world like freshly fallen snow, this is his father.

The Room kneels at it’s boy’s side, putting a hand on his shoulder feeling nothing but life and love, so much so it extends to the creature that created the scars on its throat, and on its boy’s chest.

“It’s okay. You can go to him now.” The Room says.

And it knows what that means.

It knows that sometimes peace comes at the price of war.

Dracula curls his hand, the one with the claw that just made marks on the walls that are written in stone, and will never be undone. Within the glow of the window, his reddened eyes too are no longer angry. For so long those eyes sat dormant, empty, and glazed in his skull and at last they contain something. The Room’s words have gotten through the glaze, shattered the glass.

“It’s your Room.”

It’s more than just a statement. He made a promise when he made this Room. This Room was to be his son’s Room. There would be no violence, not in this Room. Not ever. Not today in as much as not ten years ago. He will not hurt this Room. He will not dare touch it, for fear those claws will mark more than just the walls; that all the memories will come crashing down.

The words are not angry. They are not dark. They are not empty. They are not dead. They may seem dry, and stated, but they are dripping with such longing and loss it might fill the whole Castle.

The desk where Vlad taught Adrian of letters, and of numbers, and of the borders of the world. The wardrobe where Lisa dressed him up in fine clothes, and casual ones depending on the occasion—Dracula had so few special occasions to celebrate alone, they were a lovely thing. The bookshelf full of all the knowledge of immortals, and the stories of mortals. The carpet where the boy sat and played with his toys. The nightstand, still with a potion bottle upon it, and the cards of a game they’ve no doubt forgotten how to play, right where they left it long ago. The shelf above it with another bottle, and a tiny satchel of even tinier precious things, and a little toy lamb. The bed upon which Vlad and Lisa once sat and told stories, and sang lullabies, or else lay curled up next to him when the nightmares got too vicious to bear alone.

—(How many did he have to face alone?)—

And Castlevania can see them all. The father teaching his son to count, and to write. The mother running after her naked toddler, trying to convince him clothes really aren’t so bad. The careful pouring of the potions so they change color, or explode just right, the father smiling proudly when he gets the questions correct. The pride of the mother when her son won the game, and the way her husband said “again” like if they just played another round he would win this time. The boy playing with the lamb and the wolf; they they got along in his stories.

The control room never was Castlevania’s heart…was it?

Alucard stands—the motion fluid now—blue light caressing his face as he raises his eyes. Vlad too looks up. But they’re not looking at each other, or the Room, rather into the stars. Not the ones outside, the ones they painted—brushing paint upon each other’s noses, so long ago, and Castlevania can see that too—as if those stars hold all the bottled wishes of childhood. It always was crowning jewel of this Room.

Adrian’s eyes oscillate like perturbed waters, because he knows, he knows he’s about to lose it all. And yes, there’s a sort of childlike yearning in Adrian’s eyes, as if he’s wishing upon those stars that he didn’t have to do this, because he’d really rather find another way to spend this night.

The stars wipe the bloodstains off of Dracula’s eyes. The blood drains off the moon too, as if he is so powerful he can bid the sky to bleed.

His lips shake with long-forgotten words—(or maybe they were just buried, and not everything buried in a grave stays there)—and he holds his hands to his chest, if nothing else to stop them from hurting innocent boys and castles, and shuts his eyes.

“My boy.” The words are said like everything in him is breaking

And it is.

—(The control room never was Castlevania’s heart. Does that mean it never broke?)—

“I’m—I…” The word falls to the floor, so soft, like it’s the only apology he has to shed. “I’m… I’m killing my boy.” And the truth is so gentle and broken its almost more painful than all those punches to the walls.

He steps across the Room, and this time his footsteps are not foreboding, not marching nor stalking. They are soft. He is only walking. This boy is not his prey. Not in this Room.

He walks to the picture on the wall, the one called “Happy.”

Castlevania remembers the day they took it home. The painter really did do a good job, Lisa had said, and Castlevania agreed. Castlevania soon learned that even when they were not here, even when the boy was not small, even when they were not happy, that moment would still be captured upon the wall to return to any time they missed it. Long ago Dracula had no need of pictures and paintings. But those pictures have been everything to him, and everything left him, now that Lisa is gone. They are all the traces left of what they once were in this Castle. That picture—the one Dracula buried and tried to forget existed—that picture bottled happiness, and it gives Vlad back his happiness now. And it makes him so very sad.

“Lisa. I’m killing our boy.” Vlad says to the memory. “We painted this Room. We…made these toys.”

His eyes as they dart around the Room—to the books, to the basket with the wolf and the blocks—are glazed, but not in the same way as before, this time it is with memory, and that makes them more alive than ever, as are his words. And in that moment she is alive too, and he is Vlad, Lisa’s husband, and Adrian’s father.

“It’s our boy, Lisa.”

And then as he looks down his eyes are not glazed at all, rather they hold understanding. He understands what must be done.

Alucard’s foot pushes off the ground, bends the knee, stands, and, no, he is not Adrian, for there is a cracking, a cracking like lightning, a cracking like the world breaking.

And it is the most horrible sound either the Room or Castlevania have ever heard. More horrible than the squelching any heart Dracula ever ripped out. More horrible than the desperate pleas of his victims. More horrible than the cackles of his friends. More horrible than the crying of the child that Castlevania can still hear echoing through the Room.

—(The sound Castlevania hated so so long ago, and now longs for far more than anything else in the world, longs for that painting to swallow the universe and bring it to life again)—

Castlevania and the Room can both feel that sound like a thousand splinters and spider bites, like both of them shattering as if they were made of glass after all. Even the furniture here bleeds.

Vlad backs up, putting his hands over his face—Don’t hurt them, they don’t know what they’re doing—

—(Yet…he hurt them all. So much so he didn’t just disgrace her words, he tried to kill her gift, their son, her blood)—

“Your greatest gift to me. And I’m killing him.”

He lifts his hands from his face and looks into his son’s eyes, his own so alive, despite their glass, tilting his head to the side. Everything slow and gentle now. He is Vlad. He is Adrian’s father. Not the vampire king who put innocents on stakes. But they all know something happened to Vlad on the night Lisa died.

“I must already be dead.”

And Castlevania, burned and bleeding, understands. The final piece of the puzzle has been put into place. It has been dead too. It’s life, bound in red to its master, will break to the call of a stake. Because a reflection cannot exist without the thing it reflects.

Because…they are mortal.

That was the trade, all those years ago: immortality for mortality. Lisa would gain an immortal mind, and Dracula a mortal soul. He would teach Lisa the knowledge of immortals, the methods of healing that must be kept secret to live with a vampire like time held no grip on them. And she would teach him how to live as a man, how to travel as a man, how to care for his son, as a man, as a father. And in that moment his soul was bound to hers.

She brought the undeath in him to life, and Castlevania understands; only things that are alive can die.

It learned through Lisa, through Adrian, what it was to be alive. And it knew that undeath, while not death, is not life. Dracula was undead and his body could not die. But now that she brought him to life, he could die. His soul already died with her. He’s been rotting in an empty shell—no wonder Death could tie those puppet strings to him. That’s why the emptiness in him was so active; cold and dark and empty were only adjectives before, now they are nouns; he was emptiness, death, walking around. And that, too, is what Castlevania has become. It too is mortal. It didn’t die with her, but something in it ceased to tick when Dracula came back without a soul in his chest, and it knows, bruised and burned, broken, and bleeding that that stake in his son’s hand is calling them both.

You knew all along, didn’t you? Castlevania asks the Room, and there is no malice, no blame, there.

The Room jerks its head up to look at Castlevania, then its eyes soften and it grimaces. I hoped I was wrong. The Room replies softly. I…I hoped there was another way.

Alucard’s eyes hold some sympathy, some semblance of the boy they once knew, in fact rather too much, for both threaten to pour out of those eyes and stop all this. He doesn’t want to. But it’s too late for anything else.

Vlad eyes hold some semblance of the man they once knew, so much so they threaten to make him something more than ruthless, something that doesn’t deserve to die. He closes them tilting his head. He knows what must be done.

There is no anger in either of their eyes, no determination, not even resolve. Not anymore. Adrian wants to free his father in the only way he can.

A step forward, and this step has purpose, that stake is silently growling, drooling at his side as he stalks his prey. Another. Another. Like the beating of all their hearts, and the atmosphere is so silent that everything can only break.

And Dracula will not stop him, will not fight back. Not this time. Like all those times he let his son win, because even though he was more skilled at at the game, it was more satisfying to see Adrian smile.

He is not here to talk things out.

Alucard barely raises that stake—

A second horrible cracking, this one in flesh.

This time he aimed higher.

Dracula’s mouth fills with blood, it seeps through the cracks in his teeth. The blood from his chest drains down the stake—the broken piece of childhood—down his son’s arm, collecting on his elbow, and when it hits the carpet a burn begins to appear on the Room’s chest.

A grunt as Vlad leans forward, the blood dripping from his mouth to the floor—another angry gash upon the Room’s skin, and the Room is trying to pretend it’s okay, but it can’t hide the hurt in its eyes.

It knew what had to be done…but the violence goes against its nature.

His eyes fill with blood, but not from undead purpose. The moon is still clean. These are those bloody tears, the ones from the song earlier today. He is free, relieved…and he will never see his son again.

“Son.”

To remember the living, and those who will live on without him.

And the word is spoken very differently than it was earlier today. Then it was solid and hollow. Now it is ghostly, and so full it could hold all the world. Their world, at least.

This Room, this Castle, that word. They are their whole world.

And it is an honor to have been a world to such terrible, wonderful creatures.

“Father.”

To honor the dying, and what they once were while alive.

The word on Adrian’s tongue is the same, though more solid, more alive, and thus able to hold more pain. A faltering breath, a cracking forgiveness.

The word means something now, at the end, where before they were nothing more than titles. They are pleading with each other. They are bleeding with each other.

They don’t want to do this. They shouldn’t have to. It is far too cruel.

Mothers shouldn’t have to bury their daughters, and sons shouldn’t have to kill their fathers. It’s an unspoken rule of life.

But Alucard can’t stop there. He must finish this. The fire, the resolve regurgitates in his eyes, and he pushes harder, like with the magma ball, and, no, this cracking is worse, because Castlevania can feel it in its own chest now.

Castlevania can hear its master’s heartbeat, can feel it with the drops of blood dripping and sizzling on the floor, and it thinks it might just be its own heartbeat.

Alucard does not hate his father: there is pain on his face. But he cannot stop there.

He must end this war. And unlike those given with kisses to his forehead once, this goodnight is not gentle. Not this time.

He inhales,

closes his eyes,

and breaks his father’s chest.

That stake goes right through Castlevania, and something in it involuntary breaks.

The control room never was Castlevania’s heart. The destruction of the die was merely the amputation of both its legs, still bleeding out. This is a breaking, not of skin or bone, but of something deeper. It thinks this might just be what it feels like to cry.

And something happens in the breaking. A change of some sort. Castlevania isn’t quite sure what—pain and disorientation are the best of friends—all it knows is that the world is smaller now, and hurts less.

And as Castlevania’s heart breaks, the reflection in the painting shatters, the reflection of the bond between father and son severing with a stake.

The world is so much smaller now.

Dracula’s head jerks back and, eyes now seeing something other than this world.

Dracula is no ordinary vampire, so he does not die like an ordinary vampire. Rather than catching on fire, there’s just smoke and ash; his face drains, turning from ghostly pale to a charcoal, black without flame, before it really is ash, sliding off his face, his cloak like sludge.

There’s no orange, just the red stain, and the grey his life was marred of. Ash and smoke. The true undeath.

Alucard turns his face away, still holding the stake in place.

Dracula lifts up a hand, a skeleton hand, and Alucard turns to see the skin sloughing off around his ring. Though his spirit may have left, it seems his body won’t quite let go of this world; with mere bones Dracula reaches out, takes a step forward, as if to touch his face, to hold his son one last time, to catch the last embrace he was not afforded.

Adrian has shed that resolve, now he can do nothing but take slow and careful steps back away from the monster he has no sword or shield to fight. He the child again, the one who belonged in this Room, shying away. He is Adrian, the one who didn’t like the stories that were bloody. And in all the years the boy spent in this Room, the sheer fear in Adrian’s eyes as he looks up to see his father’s rotted face, with mouth agape, leaning bloodlessly towards him—an image that Castlevania fears will haunt him the rest of his days—is matchless.

Hurried footsteps at the door. The Speaker and the Belmont, at last, have made it to the show, though it seems they paid for only the final song. They step upon the threshold to see the rotting corpse of the king stepping towards his fearful, tearful price.

The Belmont draws his sword, and Dracula’s deflated head—the one that seemed so alive moments earlier—lies in a bloody pool on the floor. And as the neck bleeds and the Belmont watches the body fall to the floor, he isn’t sure if that was enough.

And Castlevania can’t feel its heartbeat anymore.

“Alucard. Step back.” Sypha’s voice is tempered. “Let me finish this.”

He does, the steps cautious and small, sorrow in his gaze. He holds the unbroken bedpost till his hand shakes.

Castlevania never liked children, the crying, the leaving, the guests, or being controlled.

But it did like Lisa. It did like Adrian. And—be it a sting—it did like the sunlight. And always and forever, it loved its master. A reflection cannot help but adore the thing it reflects. A creation cannot help but be a worshipper of its creator. A dream cannot help but revere its dreamer.

“You want me to.”

Smiling a little at how true the words were, in the end, Castlevania found it quite liked the relief.

Castlevania puts a hand on the Room’s cheek, smiling, and its mouth tastes less like blood now. It looks at the moon—bleeding no longer—and blue calm fills every part of it.

“What a wonderful night to have a curse.”

The Room stares at the castle, a little horrified by the sentiment.

“What…What should I do?” The Room stutters, fear and realization coating its words, for it knows what’s happening.

Castlevania smiles wider than ever, and its voice sounds softer; “The children.”

“What?”

“You should let them in. Any child who needs refuge. Along with as many guests as your master wants to welcome. And you should cry. Cry when you need to—and let your master cry too. Stay, but let him leave, if he must, knowing he will always come back. Let yourself be controlled at times, because sometimes that which feels the least right is the most right.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“Be warm. Let the light in every window. Be full, and most of all, live. Can you do that for me?”

The Room holds onto the Castle to keep it from falling, tears already descending its cheeks.

“I—I will try.”

The Speaker lets the flame loose to eat the pieces, to engulf its master’s body in the fire he stared at all along, as if yearning for its embrace, creating a spiral of flame upon the circle in the carpet.

They were right to assume it wasn’t over, at least, because there are shapes in the flames; from the smoke and ashes rises a tower of skulls, a legion of spirits, more than a one king’s soul should hold. They’re all crying havoc, war, blood and pain from a yesterday long forgotten. Their smoke snuffs out the flame, blight covering the Room, blocking out the stars that so enraptured them earlier. Sypha and the Belmont cover their faces, but Alucard is unsurprised and undaunted by the darkness lurking in his father’s chest, and faces it without looking away. This darkness bursts out the window like a flower bloom, flows like a river out into the hall—the one cracked and bruising—flying over the war Room where the war resides no longer, and escapes into the night, fluttering, spiraling around Castlevania’s parapets like butterflies.

On the charred floor, the only thing left of the king is his wedding ring.

Castlevania sees the vampire king as he once was; young and restless. The skeletons eating stakes. Castlevania remembers what it once was: lightning, books, gears, and a few lonely words. It sees the woman with the knife at the door. It watches them build the Room. It watches the boy grow up into this beautiful thing.

Castlevania always wondered if it could breathe. It was never quite sure. The Room always seemed to possess a kind of life it never had; a life that hid in the breath.

“Take good care of him for me,” Castlevania murmurs to the Room.

“Have I ever failed you before?” The Room tries to smile, wiping its eyes.

As the sun rises over the hills, a single ray filters in through Castlevania’s window, touching it, filling every part of it, and for once it doesn’t sting.

And with the last sigh of the last ghost circling the parapets, Castlevania exhales its last breath.

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whump-town · 3 years ago

Text

Minimal Loss AU

This is for @hotchley because I've been saying I was going to do this since just about forever and now I finally did it. Is it really that different? No but I like this version more than the original

Warnings: death.

Pairings: no but like if you want it to be Mortch it can be and you don't really have to squint to see it either way

Summary: Minimal Loss (S4, E3) but I made it so much worse because I like misery

In less than five years Derek Morgan has watched the BAU rebuild from nearly the start twice. Watched it dwindle down to just a few creeping agents but this time… Derek’s not sure the resiliency is there. After Boston, the shift had been fairly clear. Gideon lost it. Hotch stepped up. Now Derek can feel the weight of the BAU settling on his shoulders, wonders if this is the panic that Hotch felt. The pressure of the future looming over him, weighing him down. His chest is trapped between hefty boulders waiting for the impending doom of when his bones can no longer sustain the pressure. Is this how it was for Hotch? Holding his breath and waiting for the snap of release? For the weight to settle and find out if this time it would be too much?

The bull pen’s door swings open and Derek looks up, he’s expecting the gloomy presence of Hotch. His slow, anxious movements drawn out in each of his steps. Before he’d just been gloomy but now he seems to drag the weight of the dead behind him. The groaning of chains shackled to his feet-- he’s got the key to unlock the burden but there’s something too familiar in suffering for him to let go. But these steps are too light. Too unburdened to be Hotch.

With a snapping halt, Dave stops at Derek’s desk. They give one another a look they’ve been sharing a little too much as of late. One of them always carrying the next bought of bad news. This time it’s Dave, next it will be Derek. “He failed his gun qualification.” It may not carry the same weight as the other things they’ve had to speak of but it’s no good, it’s still bad.

Derek supposes he should have known this was coming. He’s a profiler but even emotional intelligence doesn’t negate childish hope. Blind faith in one another has gotten them a long way, it’s the foundation of what makes them a unit. Derek assumed it would get them through this too. “Dave,” Derek calls to the other man’s receding back. “How bad is it?” he asks the floor. Unable to look Dave in the eyes and let the older man see just how crushed he is.

Dave pauses, stands with his back to Derek and his feet still attempting to move him forward. He wishes he knew what he could say to make this better. The tension between the team and, even worse so, that which remains Derek and Hotch is thick enough to choke on, makes the air unbearable to breathe and be in. But he doesn’t know what to do. He’s run out of things to say. All he can do is shrug, offer Derek a simple shake of his head.

There’s no going back. For any of them.

------------

Hotch loses his ability to speak clearly, punctually when Benjamin Cyrus targets Emily. His hands start to shake and take a constant flight of motion when he speaks. He’s conscious of their jitters, of the way his own nerves are comprising the mission, but he can’t walk away. A power shift this late into the operation will be disastrous and he won’t put Prentiss and Reid’s lives on the line.

He feels it in his chest before he sees it. His hoarse, powerless scream is swallowed by the crack that shakes the world. By the bomb that upsets his entire life.

He surges forward, guided by cloudy adrenaline. Years of field training have taught him plenty about these scenarios, logically he knows it’s a lost cause. Instinct screams for him to back away from the smoke thrown up in dark, rolling plumes. To get away from where the fire licks out of the building. Yet he moves forward regardless because Reid has overcome too much for all of it to end here. For this to be his final stand.

Arms snag his waist, an instant sharp jerk as he’s pulled backward with more might than which he pushes forward. “No!” he doesn’t recognize the desperate sounds coming out of his mouth. The way he screams Reid’s name into the flames and cries out for Prentiss. “No, let go!” He pushes down against the arms around his belt. “Get the fuck off me, Derek! Get off me!” He manages to throw them both into the dirt and he lands with a breathless thud to the ground, pausing only to his own desperation like a mirror in Derek’s eyes.

This time Derek isn’t fast enough and he’s left panting on the ground, his voice cracking as he yells at his boss’ receding back. All he can do is follow after him.

Dave yells for both of them to stop, italian curses tangled into his frustrated orders.

Derek Morgan hadn’t been there when Adrian Bale bested Gideon and killed their team. Hotch had been preparing the next wave of officers and agents just outside the building. When the bomb went off Gideon thought he was dead. Phoned Derek at the hospital and told him he hadn’t seen Aaron, didn’t know what to expect officers would find. A body, he supposed. But Hotch was alive by some slim miracle. Spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from the shrapnel wounds embedded in his upper torso, from the beating his heart took keeping him alive. Smoke inhalation from laying under burning bits of the building and too many broken bones to be worth remembering. The fact that he had only nearly died set him apart from the others. Nearly wasn’t the same as dead. It could have been worse.

So much worse.

------------

Derek never learned or even worked his way up to forgiving Gideon for what happened that day. He’d lost friends within a blink of an eye and then his best friend slowly over the course of the next year. Ripped to shreds by shrapnel and stitched back together only for Jason Gideon to let the job take and take from Hotch until there was nothing left. Until he could no longer smile. Incapable of joy. Carrying on like a robot.

“Hey,” Derek is stepping into the hall when Hotch gets off the elevator. “You okay, man?” He steps forward to place his hand on Hotch’s elbow but the other man moves too quickly, too fixated on his goal. The material of his suit just passes right by Morgan’s fingers. Hotch just keeps ghosting alone. Not so much as blinking in response.

He wants to be pissed. Derek wants nothing more than to feel something so irrational and so consuming that he can lash out and scream and curse and make a scene like a child so much as these feelings are burned through. But those stones keep adding upon his chest. His body just keeps taking the weight and no release comes.

Hotch is a sharp-shooter.

He’s had tactical training and awards all over his office that demonstrate just how good of a shot he is. Give him a gun and he won’t miss his target. So how does a man like that fail his gun qualifications?

Them. Because of them.

Derek moves his eyes down to the floor the second he sees the outlines of the frames. He’d known where they were headed, Hotch always ends up right back here in this one spot. Staring at their pictures like he can will them back to life. Maybe Derek really is no better than Hotch. Unable to bring himself to look at his best friend’s faces memorialized behind glass picture frames. Smiling for the rest of eternity.

Emily had been in the hall. She’d gone back, from what they could tell, and dragged an injured woman with her down the hall. The other woman was already dead before the explosion took place but Emily never knew when to give up. From the diagram drawn up after the explosion, she was three feet from the door that would have lead her to freedom when Cyrus blew up the compound. Three fucking feet.

Spencer had died immediately. Blood dribbling down his chin and a proud smirk on his lips. Gideon had assured him over the years they worked together that he was just enough like Hotch to be a little too resilient. Said they both had that same sort of strange curiosity mixed with unyielding oddness that made them so unapproachable to other people. Reid’s death had looked like defiance, what he thought was at least one more second of distraction to save his friend. As the hammer of the gun struck Reid knew Hotch would be proud, that Gideon was right. It took balls to argue with Cyrus. To back the leader into a biblical corner but his words had struck a new rebellion: doubt.

Cyrus had leveled his Glock to Ried’s temples and torn his genius brain to shreds.

But Reid had never known strength as he did in that moment.

The bomb didn’t even leave them a body to bury.

Derek looks up at Hotch, keeps his eyes trained on the man’s tear-stained eyes. Lethargically swollen with the tears he never sheds. “Cyrus killed them,” he whispers. “They wouldn’t want this Hotch.”

------------

Emily had never seemed so small. She was several inches shorter than both Hotch and Derek but he’d never noticed just how small she really was. Not until she was still, limply laid in Hotch’s arms as he gently moved her from fallen debris. His tears splashing the soot off of her pale face. A broken doll he holds so carefully.

Derek steps around debris, working around the largest pieces slowly. Lowering his head in defeat at the way the emergency personal look at him, their sympathy burning the lining of his stomach. He’s standing in the middle of it all, a sea of black body bags measuring out each individual failure committed today. Hotch is crouched on the edge of it, uselessly cleaning soot off Emily’s face.

“Hotch..,” Derek sinks down to his knees. Opens his mouth but no words come out, he just looks at his boss. His oldest friend. “She’s gone,” he manages, thickly. “Emily’s dead, Hotch. You have to let her go.”

“We have to go,” Morgan says and he’s not sure he can do much more than repeating the words that other people have been repeating to him. He’s incapable of thinking past just how broken Emily is. He’d just spoken to her. The flashing light and her boot in the window.

Hotch tears his eyes away and up to Morgan. There are tear streaks on his dirty face, “I can’t.” He looks back down at Emily and holds her closer. Daring Morgan to take her away. “She--” the words get caught in his throat. “She didn’t think I trusted her.”

Morgan shakes his head but… he can’t find the words to form condolence. They’d grown to trust one another. Become friends. Surely Hotch knows that. She loved them all, even him.

“I do,” Hotch says. His chest heaves as he pulls in a broken sob. “I trust her.”

Morgan nods his understanding and places a hand on Hotch’s shoulder. “She knows,” he promises. “She knows, man.”

------------

“Dave told me you failed your gun qualification this morning.” Derek isn’t even sure why he leaves the pause in their conversations anymore. Hotch hardly ever speaks. Never reacts to things anymore. Just sort of floats by. He’s not the only ghost in the BAU but he’s the only living one. “It’s not a big deal,” Derek mumbles. Not much is anymore. “You don’t need to go out in the field.” Hotch shouldn’t be anywhere near the field. Not for a long time. Morgan can’t take another Gideon. He can’t watch another friend unravel. He’s tired of losing people.

But that is exactly what’s happening.

Derek looks up and locks eyes with Reid and Prentiss, their unseeing, unmoving eyes. Both funerals had their share of drama. The Ambassador hadn’t come to Emily’s. She’d sent back a letter about being in Moscow, couldn’t get a flight, and informed them not to bother making arrangements for another date. Reid’s mother had slapped Hotch, cursed, and screamed until she was taken away. He’d found this fair punishment, he deserved worse. He couldn’t even act as a pallbearer. He wasn’t even hurt. His hands just haven’t stopped shaking, like the adrenaline never faded out of his system.

“Come on,” Derek mumbles. He turns on his heel and makes for the bullpen, knows from the rustle of fabric Hotch is following closely. His hands tucked deep in his pockets to hide their tremble, his head bowed so no one sees the tears he hasn’t let go. “We’ll be okay,” Morgan tells him, as he holds the bullpens door open. Morgan just needs to work on convincing himself that as much as Hotch.

They’re not but some lies are worth the attempt at making them truths.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #emily prentiss #spencer reid #david rossi

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blackhakumen · 3 years ago

Text

Mini Fanfic #877: Twilight Movie Night (Super Smash Bros Ultimate)

4:21 p.m. at the Streets of Smash Town......

Wolf: (Walking in the Sidewalk Along with Izzy and his Crew) You know.... I've been thinking.....Since Halloween is almost across the corner, how about we watched a few movies for the rest of the night.

Panther: That would be lovely.

Leon: Can't see why not.

Isabelle: What kind of movies you wanna watch, Wolfie?

Wolf: Twilight.

'Record Scratch'

Isabelle and Panther suddenly begins to stop walking as they both give Wolf a shocked look on each of their faces, leaving the rebellious leader confused.

Wolf: What?

Panther: Y-You.....said you want to watch Twilight?

Wolf: Yep. One....two... maybe three of them exactly. Especially the one with wolf boy in it. What's his name again?

Leon: I believe it's Jacob.

Wolf: Huh. Seems like a generic for a werewolf to have, but....(Shrugs) It's whatever.

Isabelle: (Gently Grab Both of Wolf's Paws) Wolf, honey, sweetheart. Are you.... ABSOLUTELY SURE you want to watch them? Like, really, REALLY, sure?

Wolf: Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I know it might not gonna be a masterpiece or anything, but I'm sure it'll be a decent enough experie-

Few Hours Later at the Smash Mansion's Living Room.......

Tv Screen: (Rolling Credits)

Wolf: ....................What the fuck did we just watched?

Panther: (Slumping his Head Down onto the Palm of his Hand in a Bored Expression) One of the most overrated line up of films in the last decade or two......

Isabelle: We did warned you guys that they were all pretty bad.....

Leon: (Simply Shrugs) Eh. They weren't really anything to write home about, but I've seen a lot worse in comparison.

Wolf: Easy for you to say. (Angrily Points his Hands and Arms at the Screen) I can't believe I wasted hours on these heaps of garbage! I mean, seriously, after all the shit she been through, why the hell did Bella decided to get married to that pompous asshole with fangs!?

Panther: (Starts Rolling his Eye in Annoyance) Edward will always be charming in her eyes no matter how terrible he treated her......

Wolf: ('Tch') Please. He's not even above average in the looks department.

Isabelle: Tell that to his million of fans....

Wolf: (Eyes Wiidened in Shock) Wait. He had THAT many fans!?

Isabelle: Yep. Him and Jacob were pretty popular at the time each of the movies first came out. So much so that everyone kept pinning them against each other and having heated debate on which is better.

Panther: ('Sigh') Ah....The Team Edward vs Team Jacob days....They were practically everywhere at the time.

Isabelle: I knoooow! It's so annoying! And kind of pointless in hindsight!

Wolf: (Starts Crossing his Arms) I dunno what any of them saw in those two pansies to begin with. Neither of them are anything to write home about.

Leon: I take it you didn't like that Jacob fellow either?

Wolf: Yep. He might not be as bad as that sparkling vampire twerp, but I still couldn't care less about him. His performance as werewolf was subpar at best.

Panther: (Starts Snickering) Since when did you became a werewolf connoisseur, captain?

Wolf: Hey, when you grew up in an actual wolf pack throughout your entire childhood like I have, you tend to get critical with it comes to newcomers.

Isabelle: You know in all honesty, I'm kind of glad Jacob didn't end up being with Bella in the end. He can do a lot better.

Leon: I can agree to that.

Panther: He is the leader of his own pack. Sobmaybe he'll find someone who's right for him, from there.

Wolf: Whatever wolf boy does is his business. All I know is that tonight's Movie Night sucks and I'm already bored as shit right now.

Panther: You have any suggestions of what we could do now, captain?

Wolf slowly turns his head towards his girlfriend beside him while she does the same thing.

Wolf: (Starts Putting a Smirk on his Face) Doom Eternal?

Isabelle: (Smiles Brightly) Doom Eternal.

Leon: You two still play that game? I figured you would've already finished it by now.

Wolf: Leon, please. There's never an end to chaos and monster genocide.

Isabelle: (Suddenly Puts on a Dark, Serious Look on her Face) Ever...........(Went Back to Smiling Again) Also, we heard the new DLC that they add was really good. So we wanna check it out for ourselves!~

Wolf: (Smirks Confidently While Giving his Teammates a Thumbs Up) Ye.

Leon: (Sighs While Rolling his Eyes) Figures.....

Panther: (Shrugs) It's better than doing nothing I suppose.

@keyenuta

@caleb13frede

@cyber-wildcat

@26shann

@ma-lemons

@albion-93

@italian-love-cake

#super smash ultimate #wolf o'donnell #ac isabelle #leon powalski #panther caroso #star wolf #twilight #doom eternal #humor #wolf x isabelle #halloween month #you guys remember twilight right?

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sirrriusblack · 4 years ago

Note

34 with wolfstar (or honestly any ship) just. fuck me up

34. “Please don’t do this.”

Remus couldn’t remember a time before he was in love with Sirius Black. He knew it existed, he knew he’d fancied other people before but… it seemed eternal. Never quite beginning, never quite ending. He remembered a time, though, when Sirius was young, his mind still riddled with the words of his family, and Sirius had said something to him. To all of them.

Love is for the weak.

The three of them, Peter, James and Remus had objected to the idea, had stayed up all night convincing him it wasn’t true. And in their eleven-year-old minds, that was all it took. The thought, the poisoned truth to that statement had disappeared, just like that. Except, there was a sense of truth to it, wasn’t there?

Love is a weakness. Just because your heart is open to love, that doesn’t discount the fact that your heart is still open, vulnerable, there for the taking. Remus had fallen in love with Sirius breathlessly, desperately, hungrily. He’d spent all his life alone because no matter how much people tried, they weren’t like Remus. Like a monster. Sirius, well, he’d spent his whole life looking monsters in the eye and refusing to back down. Sirius had refused to back down from Remus since day one, and fuck, how could Remus not fall in love with the defiance in his eyes?

Remus sighed, running a hand through his tangled curls. He’d stopped counting the days now. Something he’d forgotten, was the lulling sense of security that familiarity provided. Remus had fallen in love because he’d seen something familiar in Sirius’ eyes, something he could call home. He’d forgotten to realise that Sirius saw home in Remus, too. But to Sirius, home had always been a terrible place. They had an inevitable ending, those two boys. They were doomed eternally, their love never quite beginning, never quite ending. Remus scoffed at the thought, though bitterness was his only companion as he made his way over to Sirius.

Remus hadn’t spoken to him in over a month. Every look he cast Sirius’ way initiated a progression of memories, of soft hands on warm skin, of hot breaths and glinting eyes, of pale hands in dark hair. Remus couldn’t stand it. Every touch was inked in his mind, a never-ending novel and the pages were always turning, front to back and to the front again. It made Remus mad. With every memory of Sirius’ lips brushing against his skin, Remus saw red. Remus saw the look on Snape’s face when the wolf had caught his scent. Remus saw the steel eyes of the boy he loved, breaking, shattering, reforming into something cold and unrecognisable. Remus saw himself, standing in front of the mirror, scarred and tired and… angry. Sirius had betrayed his trust. It was about time Remus stopped being silent.

“Sirius,” he choked out when he managed to get within five feet of the armchair Sirius was seated at. He looked up at Remus and his eyes widened, clearly surprised that he was talking to him. “We need to talk.” He didn’t want to do this. Honestly, Remus would rather spend the rest of forever ignoring the problem.

“Oh—hey, Remus,” Sirius said, trying not to convey the confusion in his eyes. He closed the textbook in his hands, placing it down on his lap and waiting for him. He was always so patient. Remus sighed and sat across from Sirius. “Are you okay?” Sirius winced at the glare Remus shot his way involuntarily. “Sorry.” Remus didn’t say anything. He was racking his brain for the words he needed but all he could see was the stray hair falling from Sirius’ bun, the white knuckles clenched against the red of the armchair, the steel of Sirius’ eyes boring into him. Remus couldn’t remember a time before he was in love with Sirius Black and he couldn’t see a future where he wasn’t. But he needed to do this. It was best, no matter how much it hurt Remus.

“We need to talk,” he said again. Sirius only nodded. Remus couldn’t do this, he couldn’t look Sirius in the eye and lie. He couldn’t tell him that this was what he wanted when he so desperately wanted anything but that. But he had to. He had to want those things because even if he loved Sirius, he didn’t trust him. He couldn’t. And Remus knew that one day when he forgave Sirius, he’d never be able to truly move past it. And that was too much to put on Sirius. So he was taking himself away, subtracting the responsibility and the work. Sirius didn’t have to be shackled to him any longer. Remus cleared his throat. “Um. I know, um, I know I’ve been avoiding you,” Remus was slowly folding in on himself, “which was, well, a bit of a dick move if I’m being honest—“ Sirius opened his mouth to object but Remus shook his head. “No, it was unfair of me. You deserved the right to explain yourself and I didn’t let you and...fuck, I feel sick.” He muttered the last part to himself, but Sirius heard.

“Moony—“ Remus flinched at the nickname. “Uh, Remus,” he said, “you don’t have to… we don’t have to have this conversation, now, if you’re not ready. I’d understand.” Sirius’ voice was gentle and he was leaning forward like he wanted to reach for Remus. He didn’t. Remus pulled his knees up to his chest.

Sirius. Lovely, patient, smart, beautiful, kind Sirius. His Sirius. Remus wasn’t ready to give that all up. He looked over to the arched windows of the common room, the desk in front of it where Lily was seated. She’d been ignoring Remus almost as ruthlessly as Remus had been Sirius. Now, she glanced over to him, only for a second, to take in the scene in front of her. Both boys, metres apart and eyes turned from each other, trying so desperately not to think of all the places where their skin touched, where their breaths mingled, where they promised to love and never leave. Lily looked away again. Remus was procrastinating.

“It’s not… it’s not the conversation you think it is,” Remus told Sirius because he knew Sirius thought that Remus was here to rekindle...whatever it was that they had. To forgive and possibly even eventually forget. Maybe Remus could do that. Forget the prank ever happened, keep his hands on Sirius’ skin, his gaze tangled in Sirius’ and forget the world around them. But he couldn’t do that.

“Okay,” Sirius said. “Whenever you’re ready,” he added. Remus loosed a breath and nodded.

“Despite...everything,” Remus gestured around him, referring to Sirius’ actions. “You still deserved a chance, and I didn’t give you one, which was unfair on my part.” Sirius nodded, but more in permission to continue than in agreeance. Remus chewed at his lip. He may as well say it. Spit it out. “We need to break up.” Sirius blinked. Or was that a flinch? Remus wasn’t sure because almost immediately he clenched his eyes shut like that might make his words go away.

“What?” Sirius breathed.

“I…” Remus trailed off, picking at the hem of his sweater instead of looking Sirius in the eye. “We never actually...did it.” Broke up. They’d never officially made a decision. It sounded pathetic, Remus thought.

“Remus, what are you—”

“No, Sirius…” Remus looked back up. Lily was watching them now, but he tried his best to ignore her and looked at Sirius instead. He was half out of his seat, his pale cheeks flushed pink. “I treated you horribly after… and yes you did the wrong thing but I can’t hold that against you forever. And it hurts too much to forgive you, so I know that if we...I’m not going to be able to forget. And you don’t deserve that.” Remus curled into himself more, if that was even possible, but kept his eyes locked on Sirius. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just sat back on his armchair. Remus could see his hands shaking.

“Please, Remus” Sirius finally whispered. A cord struck in Remus’ chest. “Please don’t do this.” Remus had spent hours at a time having his skin and bones torn open and apart and yet nothing hurt quite like those four words coming from Sirius.

“Padfoot—”

“No, Remus, you can’t. I know—I know I screwed up but Remus, I promise you,” he said, his voice strained. “I promise you that I will make it up to you, I will give you all the time in the world Remus, I won’t give up. Please, don’t give up.” Sirius was leaning forward in his seat, his eyes wide with panic. Fuck. This was Remus’ fault. All Remus’ fault. Why couldn’t he just get over it?”

“Sirius, I don’t—”

“Moony!” Sirius half-shouted. “It’s us! Me and you. You can’t...I...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Remus cough past the lump in his throat. He wasn’t going to cry in the middle of the common room. Lily was facing her work again, acting like she wasn’t listening.

“No, Sirius I...I know,” Remus settled on. Because this had to happen. “I love you, Sirius.” It was all he could think to say. Sirius’ eyes were red, building up with tears. He seemed to realise that this was happening. Hopefully one day he would see that it was for the better. He stood up and Remus slumped back in his chair.

“Yeah, okay,” Sirius said, gathering his things. He levelled his eyes on Remus’ and said with whatever attempt at calmness he could manage, “I love you too, Moony.”

Lily stood and walked over once Sirius had made it up the stairs.

“You did the right thing, Rem,” she said. “For both of you.” Remus nodded and watched after her as she made her way up the boy’s dormitory stairs, no doubt to check on Sirius. Remus loosed his breath and let his head fall back against the armchair.

#hello yes i hope i hurt you sufficiently enough?#thank youuuuuu :)#marauders era #sirius black #remus lupin #wolfstar #wolfstar angst #marauders era fanfiction #wolfstar fanfiction #my writing #:)#also i low key feel like i made sirius seem like the victim here #which was more because it was from Remus’ pov #and he’s a little anxious wreck who puts others before him #so like #I’m sorry for kind of making Sirius seem like he’s gaslighting Remus a bit?#not the intention #yeah #break up tw

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puckinghell · 4 years ago

Text

The Plus One Pact | William Nylander | Part 2

Summary: Your ex is getting married, and you don’t have a date, which means the unavoidable “why don’t you have a boyfriend” question is about to haunt you for the rest of eternity. But then there’s Will, who could be the answer to all your problems. A simple business pact, no feelings involved: that won’t be hard for you, because you really don’t like him anyways. Except pacts were made to be broken… or something. Right?

Note: This is part 2. Click here for part 1.

“I’m sorry I bailed.” Zach is sitting on the couch, his leg up on a pillow. Lady is laying on the floor, and both of them are looking equally guilty.

You think maybe Lady puked in Zach’s shoes somewhere again, and maybe he kinda deserved it.

“I hate you,” you tell him, but there’s no heat behind it. Alannah comes out the bedroom holding a pair of shoes.

“See if these fit you,” she orders, giving them to you.

“I like your wife more than you,” you say to Zach, who just laughs. He knows that’s not true: you love them equally.

You may love Lady a little more than both of them combined, however.

“I think it’s good that you’re going with Willy,” Zach says. “You can practice looking like you don’t hate him.” He holds out your cup of coffee, and you take a sip before handing it back to him.

If he’s not going to this wedding with you, he might as well hold your drink.

“I don’t hate him,” you mumble. “I just don’t adore him like you do. You worship the ground he walks on.”

“I think you’d get along great, if you tried,” Alannah says, although you can’t remember asking for her opinion – fine, maybe you’re a little grumpy about it all. “He’s very funny, and he’s easy to chat to. Your family will love that.” She grins. “Besides, he’s hot.”

“Very hot,” Zach nods in agreement, and it would be weird if it wasn’t how everyone responded to William Nylander.

It’s exhausting, to be honest.

Zach, being the great friend that he often is, must notice your reluctance, because he smiles, and his voice is gentle when he says: “Hey, you look beautiful, Y/N. Honestly, nobody is gonna believe that you brought Willy, you’re way outta his league.”

You’re about to tell him to stop lying – you’re not stupid, thank you very much, and William Nylander is still very much not in your league, maybe not even in the same sport - when there’s a knock on the door.

“Must be him.” Alannah fixes your hair and your dress, and Zach gets up and hobbles towards the door, Lady on his heels.

“It’s gonna go great,” she whispers with a wink, and you wonder if you look that nervous, or if your friends just know you very well.

It’s just…

Fine, normally you don’t like Will, but you can stand him for an hour or two. Especially because you’re never alone with him, so you just plaster yourself to Zach’s side, or Mitchy’s, or Dermie’s, or…

Well, anyone, really.

But now you are alone with him, and for multiple hours at that, and you’re going to have to convince your boss and your colleagues that he’s your plus one.

How on earth are they ever going to believe you? Worse, what if someone recognizes him?

“Wow, you look great.”

You turn around to see Will staring at you, a genuine smile tugging at his lips. He’s cleaned up nice, to be fair; his grey suit fits just right, hugging his muscles in all the right places, and you can tell he’s actually put effort in his hair today.

“Already told her she’s out of your league, buddy,” Zach jokes, slapping Will on the shoulder the way bro’s do, sometimes, and then there’s some pleasantries exchanged and Alannah fixes your lipstick and then suddenly you’re in Will’s car.

It’s a nice car, but it’s not overly posh or flashy, and it surprised you a little. With Will’s ridiculous clothing choices something – Balenciaga socks, really? – you’d expected him to have some sorta matched car to Mitchy’s stupid sports car.

“You look like I’m putting you in a tractor,” Will laughs, as he starts the car. You must’ve been looking around a little dazed, and you feel your cheeks heat up at the notion that you’ve been caught.

“Sorry,” you say. Then, because you wanna start this day off on the right note: “It’s a nice car, just not what I expected from you.”

Will hums. “Usually when people say that, it’s not a compliment.”

But he doesn’t say it in a malicious way, just very matter of factly, so you don’t bother to defend yourself – he’s kinda right, after all – and just listen to the music that he puts on.

“Country?” you feel yourself smile. “Where’s the ABBA?”

“I was born in Calgary,” Will rolls his eyes in a playful way, then turns up the music.

It’s not until you’re almost there that Will speaks.

“So, how do you wanna do this?”

For a second, you wonder what he’s talking about; you were lost in the music and staring out the window at the beautiful scenery surrounding you. Your boss is getting married in an old, beautiful mansion somewhere in the countryside, and you’re surrounded by green fields and scenic streams.

“Oh, I thought we’d just go in and like, see what happens. We’re only gonna go to the reception, not the ceremony, so it should be good. Drinks and food and music, and stuff.”

“I meant more in regards to the fake dating stuff.”

“Oh.” Now your cheeks are truly flaming. “I mean, I guess I could just introduce you as my plus one and they’ll assume we’re dating?”

Then, - and you have no idea where this came from - you add: “We could try to look flirty, so it makes more sense.”

Willy nods in agreement. “You’re a smart one.” When you snort in response, he raises an eyebrow. “What, I can’t say that?”

“No, you can.” You decide to tell him the truth. “It’s just funny cause the one thing I never liked about Noah was that he would always compliment me on my appearance when I was dressed up or whatever, but he would never compliment me on any accomplishments or my characteristics or just, anything other than my body, basically.” You look out of the window. “I’ve been thinking a lot about him because of this wedding stuff, and I guess it’s just one of those things that tells me it was never meant to be.”

It stays quiet in the driver’s seat, and when you glance up at Will he’s frowning.

“Literally everything you’ve said about this guy makes me want to punch him in the nose,” he finally says, and there’s an edge to his voice. “You deserve so much better, Y/N, and…” He cuts himself off, settles on; “He just sounds like a dick.”

You must be staring at Will like he grew a second head, because that’s not what your… acquintanceship, has ever been like. You’re not even really friends, and Will has never said anything to you that wasn’t a mere observation – “nice restaurant” – a question about logistics – “did you wanna hop in this Uber or are you going to ride with Matts?” – or, well, a chirp.

But he seems genuinely offended on your behalf and you have to admit it warms your heart a little.

Maybe, just maybe, you kinda see why Zach likes him. This type of loyal, fierce protectiveness reminds you of your best friend a lot. Maybe Will isn’t so bad.

“We’re there,” Will says then, and the mansion that dooms up in front of you is big enough to be classified as a castle, you think. Will parks the car, but doesn’t get out. “So,” he asks, eyeing you carefully, “you ready?”

Not really.

But you nod anyway.

As soon as you walk into the building, which is massive and beautiful, one of your colleagues comes running up to you.

“Ellie,” you greet her with a smile, and she kisses your cheek quickly.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she beams. “It’s just no fun without you.”

Ellie is one of your favorite colleagues, always down to go on coffee breaks with you and talk about whatever is on your mind. If anyone would know that you were going to take Will to the wedding, it would’ve been her, except she hadn’t known, so you’re not surprised by her wide eyes as she takes Will in.

“Hello?” she asks, an obvious question mark at the end of her sentence.

“Hi, nice to meet you.” Will’s smile is bright and polite. “I’m Will, Y/N’s plus one for the night.”

“Oh, how lovely!” Ellie smiles, then turns to you and hisses: “You didn’t tell me you were gonna bring a hot guy!”

Except she’s not being quiet or subtle at all, and a smug smirk appears on Willy’s face.

Just when you thought his head couldn’t get any bigger.

It turns out to be way easier than you thought it would be, to go around and introduce people to Will.

Nobody mentions that they recognize him and you’re glad for it, because the one time someone stared at him a bit too long Willy started shuffling on his feet and staring at the floor, as if the attention made him uncomfortable.

You know it doesn’t, because you’ve seen him with fans before, but you can’t help but be glad that he doesn’t have to be William Nylander from the Toronto Maple Leafs, tonight.

It’s not like you would really know how to handle that.

Apart from that moment, Will fits in like he was always supposed to be there. He charms your coworkers, your boss, and it doesn’t surprise you because you don’t think you’ve ever met anyone who’s not been charmed by him, but it still lifts a weight off your chest.

At first, Will follows you around the room while you talk to people. He stays close enough that his shoulder keeps brushing yours, and every now and then his hand lays heavy on your lower back.

You suppose it’s better that way, to make people think that you actually like each other.

Somehow, though, and you really don’t remember the exact time you lost him, Will ends up talking to some people you’ve not even ever met before, while you’re standing by the bar with Ellie.

“So,” Ellie says, and the knowing tone in her voice puts you on edge. “You forgot to mention you have a smoking hot boyfriend.”

Immediately, you go into defense. “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s a friend of Zach’s, and he’s come as my plus one as a favor.”

Ellie knows Zach from your birthday dinners, and she nods knowingly.

“I figured. He plays hockey, too, right?”

How the hell does she know that?

The question must show on your face because she laughs. “It’s not rocket science. Have you looked at his ass?”

You can’t say you’ve never looked at it, but you haven’t looked at it today. However, now that she’s mentioned it, you can’t stop yourself from letting your gaze travel.

His ass looks really good in that suit, you have to admit.

“If you thought he was my boyfriend, why were you looking at his ass anyway?” It’s mostly teasing, but Ellie hears the underlying edge under it and rolls her eyes.

“I don’t have to drive the car to admire the engine.”

It such a ridiculous comparison that you burst out laughing. You’re still giggling when Ellie adds: “However, if you’re not dating, maybe I’ll go shoot my shot.”

Something twists in your stomach, but there’s absolutely no reason for it. Why would you care if she flirts with Will? He’s not actually dating you.

“You do that,” you tell her, and you ignore the heavy feeling in your stomach as she winks at you and saunters over at Will.

The thing is, Ellie is exactly the kinda girl you’d expect Will to be interested in. She’s beautiful, with long legs and long hair, and she’s witty and funny and smart. She’s also actually good at flirting – you’ve seen her in enough bars to know that.

You watch as Will turns to her, welcoming her with a sly smirk and a hand on her elbow. She throws her head back when she laughs, and suddenly your wine doesn’t taste so good anymore.

You don’t really see Will – or Ellie, for that matter – the rest of the evening. You go around and mingle with people you don’t really care about, congratulate the happy couple and drink a little too much wine.

It’s a lot later when suddenly, a familiar hand lands on your lower back.

“Don’t kill me,” Will’s voice sounds low in your ear. “But I did something kinda dumb.”

Oh no.

You put on your fakest smile as you excuse yourself from your conversation and let Willy pull you with him through the crowd, until you’re in an empty hallway that you think leads to the kitchen.

“What did you do?” you hiss, and Willy’s hand drops away from you as he stares to the floor.

“First, you need to promise not to get mad,” he says.

You really can’t promise that, but Will has crossed his arms and is stubbornly staring at you, and you know Will is used to getting what he wants and won’t tell you unless you agree with him. So you do.

“Fine.”

“So your friend Ellie was flirting with me,” he starts. Instantly, your blood runs cold; if he did something to upset her… “Fucking hell, Y/N, I didn’t hurt her.” Will rolls his eyes. “What kinda jerk do you think I am?”

He seems genuinely offended and you chide yourself for rushing to conclusions like that, when you’ve never known Will to be that kinda guy.

Sure, he’s annoying, cocky and loud and flippant, sometimes, but he’s not evil. He’s one of Zach’s best friends, after all.

“I was nice to her,” Will continues, “and she was nice, too. Super hot.” His eyes twinkle, and you have to shove back the flash of annoyance that tears through your body. You don’t need Will to see that.

“Anyway, I’m here supposed to be dating you, so obviously I didn’t flirt back, but she wasn’t giving up and it was getting a bit much, so I thought, if I just talk with someone else she’ll get the hint. And I was just being nice to that other girl, but I guess it looked like I was flirting.”

The most horrible thought crosses your mind.

“You didn’t flirt with the bride!”

The sigh Will lets out is heavy. “No, obviously not. You have a really low opinion on me, huh?”

You kinda do, but you just stare at him blankly.

“It was just some girl who maybe kinda has a boyfriend, and now that boyfriend maybe kinda wants to break my face.” His eyes widen comically. “I have a very nice face, I don’t want to break it.”

You can’t help it; immediately, you’re snorting out laughter.

“Willy,” you giggle, “are you telling me you’re about to get beat up at a wedding?”

Will huffs. “It’s not funny. He was massive.”

Suddenly, you think of something. “Oh my God, please tell me it’s not Rick from finance.”

“What does Rick from finance look like?” Willy’s eyes are wide and a little wild.

With every detail you describe, he gets paler, until he nods. “Yep, I’m pretty sure it was Rick from finance.”

“Rick from finance does MMA fighting in his spare time,” you tell him, finally feeling a little sorry for him. “He could destroy you.”

Will reaches out and grabs your hand, squeezes it tight as if that will somehow keep him safe. “We have to get out of here.”

Maybe, if you were a lesser person, you would’ve stayed, just to see Willy sweat. But you do feel bad for him and to be honest, you’re tired and kinda done with the wedding, anyway.

“Okay, let’s go home,” you promise him, softly patting his hand with yours. “But when we get home, I’m so gonna tell Zach you nearly got beat up by some guy in finance.”

“Don’t you dare,” Will threatens, but he’s smiling again and you won’t admit to yourself that you’re glad for it.

“Hey, Y/N?”

“Yes?”

“I really wasn’t flirting with that girl, or the other girl. I wouldn’t do that when I came here with you.”

And it shouldn’t matter, it really shouldn’t.

It kinda does, anyway.

#william nylander #william nylander fic #nhl fic #toronto maple leafs fic

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sevlgi · 4 years ago

Text

can I hold on?

requested: yes

group: blackpink

pairing: jisoo x fem!reader

genre: angst, questionable fluff

contents: idol!au, conflicted jisoo. based on this reaction.

warnings: infedelity

synopsis: Jisoo doesn’t know what to do when you tell her you’re cheating on someone with her, but she can't help but hold on to whatever sliver of love you have for her.

a/n: none

word count: 2.4k

When you ask to take her out to a nice dinner place to talk about something important, Jisoo isn’t quite sure what to expect.

She isn’t paranoid enough to think you’re breaking up with her, not in the slightest-- you aren’t the type to fight at all, never mind in the past couple of weeks, so breaking up wouldn’t make any sense. And of course, it isn’t abnormal to go on fancier dates in nice restaurants, especially not when you’re nearing your 6th month anniversary together, but it’s the texts flashing across her phone screen that worry her.

Jisoo’s fingers tighten on the sides of the device as she stares at the messages, foot tapping impatiently on the floor of the taxi. The car ride should be relaxing with the green of well-groomed trees and shiny glass buildings outside the window, but her heart thuds in her chest with a heavy rhythm that betrays her nerves.

Y/N [6:11] hey, jagi, what do you think about going to a restaurant tomorrow?

Y/N [6:11] there’s something important to talk about.

In her experience, ‘needing to talk’ never bodes well. While dating you, she’s also discovered that you’re a straightforward person who never phrases things so vaguely. With all the factors combined, Jisoo is nothing short of frightened about what could possibly merit you bribing her with an expensive lunch.

The sounds of her heels clacking against marble floors rings too loud in her head as she walks into the restaurant. No one pays any mind to her, even with the black mask and sunglasses she wears to protect her identity. “Um, reservation for Y/L/N?” she tells the receptionist. When he picks up a menu and beckons for Jisoo to follow, she does; she doesn’t hear a single thing that he says, though, still focusing on what you could possibly need to tell her.

Did something happen with her family? Is she in legal trouble? What about money? No, Y/N hasn’t asked for money before, that’s a dumb thought-

“Hey, Jisoo!” you call out, standing with a smile and breaking her fixation. Jisoo can’t help the grin that takes over her face and the warm, fluttery feeling in her stomach. “It’s really nice to see you.”

“Good to see you too,” she sighs and accepts the hug you offer. As always, you pull a chair out for her before sitting down yourself. “Soda at a fancy restaurant? You’re out of your mind, Y/N Y/L/N,” Jisoo jokes when she sees the glasses of bubbly liquid.

You look just as beautiful as always, a little done-up to match the atmosphere of the restaurant. When the idol sitting across from you takes off her disguises, you grin at the sight of her face. “Since when are you a high-class lady who’s too good for soda? I’m disappointed, jagi.”

Laughter escapes the both of you; this is nice, the familiar light banter that Jisoo’s used to. She wants to stay like this, not descend into the awkward, heavy silence that she knows is coming. In an effort to delay it, she asks, “So, what do you want to eat?”

“Uh, how about the pasta? Carbonara, maybe?” you suggest, scanning the menu with your lips pursed. When she doesn’t respond to you, you look up with a small smile. “Hey, Jichu-yah, did you hear what I said?”

“What? Oh, yeah, spaghetti sounds good,” she answers distractedly, scanning the menu again. “I’ll get some salad and soup, and we can share the pasta.”

“Carbonara, not spaghetti,” you snicker, dodging the napkin she tosses at you. “You’re distracted today. Something going on at work?” You raise a hand to order, completely at ease. Honestly, Jisoo hates that she’s suspecting ulterior motives; you could easily have meant that you needed to talk to her about another nice date you’ve planned, or an event you want her to attend with you. Yeah. That’s probably it.

Right after the waiter bows and leaves with your order, though, you sigh and lean forward a little bit, forearms against the table and your voice lowered. “While our food gets here, we should probably talk.”

“About what?” She tries to sound nonchalant, but probably fails miserably. Jisoo’s never been the best liar, at least not with you.

You’re silent for a second, probably trying to find a gentle way to break the news (Jisoo still doesn’t know what it is). Every second that passes only prolongs the doom settling like a cloud above the two of you; after what seems like an eternity, you settle with something that’s horrifying to hear nonetheless. “I… I’ve been lying to you.”

When the brunette doesn’t say anything, focused on schooling her expression, you’re forced to continue, “It’s really hard to explain, but I’ve been dating someone else.”

“You’re cheating on me,” Jisoo rephrases, her voice already hollow. It’s the worst possible scenario, one that she didn’t even bother to evaluate in all her anxiety, and she doesn’t know what to do.

Shaking your head vehemently, you protest, “No, that’s... that isn’t it. I haven’t been cheating on you, but I’ve been cheating on her. With you.”

Her mind racing a mile a minute to try and understand what the hell’s going on, she stammers, “Wait, what? What do you mean you’ve been cheating on her with me? Who?”

You bite down on your bottom lip, probably hard enough to bleed, but you answer, “Her name’s Sumin. We’ve been dating for almost 2 years, but we were having problems when I met you. And I knew you wouldn’t approve, so that’s why I didn’t--”

“Of course I wouldn’t! You… you’re a cheater!”

Her words seem to hit you like a physical slap; Jisoo almost expects to see a red hand mark across your face when you flinch. You then sink into your hands, fingers tangled in your hair. “I guess I am. But I love you, Jisoo, and that part’s real. The problem is that I also love Sumin.”

Jisoo can barely believe what she’s hearing. All this time, you’ve managed to fool her into believing that you’re honest, that you’re a good person and that you truly love her. According to your words, maybe you do, but she can’t believe a single word out of your mouth when you’ve been lying all along.

The guilt hits her like a train. She’s been helping you break the heart of your other girlfriend, even while she doesn’t realize it. It’s easy to put all the blame on you and claim ignorance, but how would she feel, if someone did this to her?

Shitty, obviously.

The logical answer, Jisoo concludes as she leans back in her chair, is to break up with you right then and there. You’re cheating on someone else with her, which is terrible enough, but how does she know you won’t do it again, to her the next time?

Still, the brunette wants to believe that you have something real together. There’s no way that everything she feels for you, the things you’ve made her feel, are all a lie. Her heart might be misguided, but it can’t be completely blind… right?

“I understand if you’re going to break up with me.” Jisoo startles as you speak again; trapped in her own thoughts, she almost forgot that you’re sitting across from her, never mind that the two of you are at a restaurant at all. You look admittedly remorseful, fiddling with your hands like Jisoo knows you do when you’re nervous. “I’m sorry about all of it, lying to you-”

“Stop,” your girlfriend sighs, holding up a hand. “I… I’m not breaking up with you.”

“You’re not?” you look as shocked as Jisoo herself feels, even as the words keep pouring out of her mouth.

“No, I’m not. I want to believe we have something, Y/N, something that’s worth fighting for. I want to believe that you love me just as much as I love you.”

You reach for her hand, nodding quickly. Hurt etches in your brow when she moves away, but you promise, “Of course I do! I swear I do love you, Jisoo.”

“Okay,” she exhales, running her hands through her hair. “I mean, that’s something. But you do realize, I can’t continue with you like this. I’m not going to help you eventually break Sumin’s heart.”

A sigh escapes you, deep and wearisome, when you realize the implication behind her words. “Oh. You want me to choose.”

Jisoo finally reaches over to squeeze your hands, shaking her head. “Not choose. I want you to realize what you need to do on your own, and hold yourself accountable for all the hurt you’re inflicting on Sumin. I want you to fix this before you can earn my trust back as well.”

She watches you scrunch your eyes up and press your palms to your forehead. “If you don’t want to be with me after this, I won’t blame you. I’ll respect any decision you make, but you can’t be with the both of us.”

You open your mouth to say something, but the waiter arrives with your food, and Jisoo thanks him with a smile before turning back to you. “Let’s just enjoy our food, okay? And then I’ll give you time to make things right.”

As soon as she’s back in the dorm with no one around to watch her, Jisoo slumps to the floor of her bedroom, her back against the door and her face in her hands. She tried her best to be strong for you, to not show how shaken up she was by the whole situation, but it’s inevitable that she breaks down.

How could you lie to her like that, and use her to hurt someone else? How could you make her fall for you while you had someone else the whole time, someone you had history with and loved for years?

Jisoo never wants to hurt people. She’s not that kind of person to wish pain on anyone, no matter what they’ve done to her; when she thinks of Sumin, all she can think of is someone innocent. Someone who doesn’t deserve the mess that you’ve created, a mess that Jisoo herself has also been dragged into.

It isn’t her fault, not in any way, but she can’t help but think that it is. It’s her fault for not seeing the signs and not recognizing that you weren’t being honest with her.

In the end, it’s her fault for helping you destroy the heart of someone else and refusing to see the signs. It’s her fault for being selfish and wanting to hold on to whatever small sliver of love you feel for her, and it’s her fault that you need to make a choice that you shouldn’t have to.

Dammit, Jisoo. Tears slide down her cheeks, and she wipes them away as she collapses onto her bed. It’s wrong that she wants to be the one you choose, that she wants you to give up something that’s such a huge part of your life. You’ve been with Sumin for years, but if you really loved her, would you have gone for Jisoo at all?

And more importantly, can she hold on to you any longer? If you choose her, how can she trust you again?

You don’t reach out for weeks, and while that should mean you’re fixing your mistakes, Jisoo’s incredibly worried about you. Some dark corner of her brain whispers that something’s happened to you, or that you’ve run away to avoid making a choice.

Needless to say, she’s thinking too much.

When she finally receives that long-awaited text in the middle of practice, Jisoo wants to drop everything to run back to you, even if it’s foolish. Instead, she calms herself down enough to read your message impassively, the beat of AAIYL thrumming under her feet.

Y/N [11:43] Jisoo, are you in practice?

She’s almost disappointed by the message as she scans it over. None of her questions have been answered, and none of her stress has been relieved, either.

“Jisoo unnie, we need to practice,” Lisa calls out, sounding apologetic but also understandably impatient. Their members watch while talking quietly, nodding when Jisoo raises a hand in response. As quick as she can, the brunette fires a response back before stuffing her phone back in her bag and standing:

Jichuu [11:45] yes, I’ll call you when I’m out.

Despite her efforts, practice is too difficult to focus on, and her members can easily tell. Jennie’s the one who calls for an end to it. “Okay, I think we’re all a bit distracted, let’s just stop for today,” the second-oldest smiles, clapping her hands together.

Immediately, Jisoo grabs her phone, the only thing she needs, and bolts out of the practice room. Your number is still #1 on speed dial, and she presses call when she’s out of earshot. Before anyone picks up, though, she sees you, standing in the building’s lobby, and only gets to see your surprised expression for a second before she wraps her arms around you.

You hug back quickly, nose tucked into the crook of your girlfriend’s neck like always. The position’s familiar, and it’s so, so comforting.

“Hey, Y/N,” Jisoo breathes when she pulls away. She searches your eyes, trying to see if you’ve made a decision. “Have you…”

“Yes,” you answer, a smile on your face. There’s a smudge of eyeliner under your eyes that tells the brunette that you didn’t make the decision lightly. “I… broke up with Sumin. I explained everything to her, and I want to be with you. If you’ll take me back.”

Even after waiting for you this long, Jisoo hesitates to say yes, and you can see her apprehension in her eyes. After weeks, she still doesn’t know what to do, but she bites her lip and answers, “I will. But you need to know that I don’t trust you, at least not completely.”

You nod, hands resting on your girlfriend’s waist. “I know. I know, Jisoo, but you’re giving me a chance, and that’s enough. I’ll win your trust back again, I promise.”

“Okay. I’m rooting for you, Y/N,” the brunette exhales, resting her head on your shoulder. “Don’t let me down.”

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rpmemesbyarat · 4 years ago

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RP Meme from "Chapter One: Caliah (Lore)" in the Bastet breedbook from "Werewolf: The Apocalypse"

Once there was a cat who dreamed he was a man.

Like the morning mist, she appeared from nowhere, or so it seemed.

The winds have spoken of your dilemma and I have come to show you the way home.

Why do you call me brother?

We are family.

We have different parents but share the same blood.

You need to meet your people

You are my sister

I have no other family. Don’t leave me!

We all have family

What are the dreams of a cat?

Let us welcome each other and speak of hidden things.

If they come in peace, we welcome them.

I’m just a mutt.

Listen up and listen close, ‘cause this isn’t stuff you’ll hear from any old place.

I’ve got friends with friends, if y’know what I mean, and this is good stuff.

They don’t get along, y’know.

A good lorespeaker tells different stories every time, and she makes ‘em as cool as possible.

Sound like anyone we know? Nah! Couldn’t be!

So how do you trade secrets, anyway? After all, isn’t a secret shared a secret lost?

If you don’t play the game, you don’t learn a thing.

Each element of the message becomes a metaphor, and the message becomes a story.

Florid? Hell yeah! But ya gotta admit it’s more graceful — and exposes a hell of a lot less — than blurting out the truth.

You might say, “I heard a story about so-and-so” but you’d never say “I did so-and-so.” If your audience has a clue, they’ll catch on.

Everything’s told in metaphors.

A good obtuse metaphor makes you look imaginative if someone gets it, really stupid otherwise.

Everything is larger than life. People don’t just cry, they “explode in showers like the sea.” Folks don’t just get mad, they “turn into coals that burn through the floor.”

If what you’re saying is important, bigger is better.

Simple? Not if you don’t get the lingo.

A wounded cat can surrender without disgrace.

Not enough to go around.

Hey, don’t let on you know what I told you, huh?

It was a time before life, a longing when the dream of birth was yet to be.

This marked the end of peace and the beginning of struggle.

Such promises are soon broken.

Why does even the skin of my daughter flee from my hands?

Why must I always be alone?

Master, what would you have of us?

Nothing exists for him but annihilation.

Go across the world

Let that which is pure stand whole, but erode that which is impure from within.

He tells many tales, but all of them are lies. He is rage made manifest, and he coils within us all.

There was no want, no war, no anguish, and all living things gave of themselves to help others exist.

Until some cataclysm happened, everything lived in peace and plenty.

Life has ever been a struggle, my brothers and sisters. Life has always meant that some may die for others’ pleasure.

That pleasure may be as necessary as hunger or as frivolous as sport, but it has always been fatal and always will be.

Only through struggle can we progress.

Only through sacrifice can we succeed.

We were born from conflict and we grow through adversity. Our ancestors are predators, great cats and human hunters who rose above their surroundings and mastered them.

We know our place in the Great Order, and it is not passive.

Like the moon, our world waxes and wanes.

Each era glows brightly, then fades into night before rising again as some new age.

As creatures of light, dark and twilight all, we are not moved much by the vagaries of fortune.

Each tribe has its creation story, and they differ in many ways.

I have my own ideas.

We are a breed eternally apart, and we are rare.

Water runs silent, yet crushes with the power of an elephant.

Its depths hold secrets that only the brave can find.

The first of our kind were nearly the last.

Those it caught were devoured.

Let this be your legacy

My tears, shed for you, will boil in your veins.

All people will fear you, and all animals, too.

Begone and tend the flocks that need killing.

I banish you from sight!

They still live on in us, and we carry their curse to this day.

As the humans prospered, they grew quickly out of hand.

It was a bloody, useless time, and we fractured as a people.

Secrets became the only thing to bind us.

It’s hard to forgive these raging bastards.

Very territorial, and I know how that feels.

There are enough horrors in the night already.

Corruption has a million voices; sometimes they drown out the song of the moon and lead us over cliffs.

That song wails from nightclubs, boom boxes and televisions every day.

Stop up your ears, my friend and listen to the wind.

Those secrets led the wolves to our door — literally.

Gods damn the dogs for that!

Their misbegotten crusade killed hundreds of our Kind and Kin.

She mated with serpents, wolves and great cats in an effort to become like them, but gave birth to monsters instead.

Some legends portray her as one of our kind, but we know this isn’t so.

If the tales I’ve heard are any measure, they have no pity for us at all.

We are where we are born.

I think our unique insights show us that humanity is a mixed blessing — especially where the earth and the wild are concerned.

Men are the cleverest monkeys, no doubt, but they don’t have much sense of self-preservation.

Our forebears fought to let humanity prosper.

We have an amazing world at our fingertips, but it’s filled with poisons and lies.

Honor seems to be a fading dream in lands where the rich starve their people and the poor kill each other.

We hold magic within ourselves, within our hearts and minds and spirits. To dishonor ourselves is to disperse that magic and scatter our souls.

It’s acceptable to lie to other creatures; they’re not of our blood and not bound by our laws.

We will flee to survive a fight, but will not run when others depend on our strength.

We must make restitution to those we deceive, in deeds, trade or money.

We may be exiled or branded.

Our weapons are many — secrets, claws, teeth and allies — and we will not hesitate to employ them for our world’s

survival.

Our people have walked too close to extinction for us to take such matters lightly.

We will not ally ourselves with shadow powers or drink corrupted wisdom.

We do not fail our Earth and mother. That path leads to death.

We are the keepers of secrets, and our fates depend on silence.

Each of us bears the hidden doom of our own people, and we know the cost of betraying that trust.

We also know that we have what others want — or what they think they want — and it amuses us to make them squirm.

Our knowledge is our concern.

We will not share it unless we wish to.

We will hide ourselves from outsiders; they will think they know us, but we will delude them.

We will wrap our lore in riddles and tales; let the clever ones puzzle out their meaning.

We will act as if we know even more than we do, for it keeps outsiders guessing.

Let them wonder at our insight; they value us more highly when they do.

We will cover our tracks with misdirection, pretend to be other than what we are, fill the air with idle rumors and hide messages in code.

There is no forgiveness for this crime.

Well, let’s just say I know what I’ve seen. And I’ve seen a lot.

His eyes were so filled with pain that I decided to help out.

I’d swear he was grinning as the semi ran him down.

That felt good.

Guess they’ve gotta live here, too.

I say they’re not as smart as they might think.

Maybe I’m the one who’s being fooled.

I could tell you stories all night, all week, all month and more.

As the temples rose and the hordes crossed through, our parents sat on the sidelines of history and observed the passing of kings.

The cultures we witnessed shaped our own ways.

Cities rose, each with secrets too tempting to ignore.

For a long time — 4,000 years — there was all the room in the world for us, and no lack of secrets to keep us entertained.

We should have seen the signs in the Classical Age, when armies swept across the land in the names of gods, kings and conquerors.

We should have met en masse when trade and crusades brought East and West together.

I will not belabor the point. We know what happened.

Explorers, slavers and great white hunters bounded into the wilderness and cast a chain around our kind.

Suddenly, we went from having all space to having little.

I can’t say I don’t share the sentiment just a bit.

We didn’t stop until a greater evil forced us to align, but that’s another story.

It’s a wonder anyone survived.

We studied their secrets, but could learn nothing from them.

We have no one to blame but ourselves.

For all our vaunted sight, we’re blind. For all our gathered lore, we’re stupid.

The world is falling apart.

I don’t know whether to believe it or not, but we are living in interesting times!

We must pool our secrets, combine our efforts, and bring the world’s secrets to light.

We must act on what we discover and disperse what we learn.

Do I lose my cool?

The modern age is the greatest puzzle we could want endless streams of secrets, enigmas, wonders and dazzles, wrapped up in an explosive package that could blow us all to hell.

Anywhere, at any time, the whole ride could fly off the rails.

Those who ignore the warning feed the vultures the next morning.

I’ll simply say the tigers are not where you’d expect.

People have begun to open their eyes, but they still need your counsel to see the cliff’s edge before falling off

Those stories are true — violently true — and they add up to an appalling picture if you string them all together.

They get an idea, work on it a bit, and try to rule the world. Typical. We’ve seen their kind before.

Look around you if you doubt it.

Surely the secrets you’ve uncovered have given you the idea that maybe, just maybe, something’s going on, something bigger than another plunder, another invasion, another city that falls to ruin in a century.

Discover what you can, but bury your tracks well.

We’re strangers to each other for most of our lives, and we like it that way — a few careful gatherings are all we

can stand.

The moon is our patron, but the shadows are our father too, and they call to us at our weaker moments.

Most of us dance on the edge, though, and that’s where we like to be!

Despite our pains, we’re spirited and wild, inquisitive yet careful, sensual yet refined.

Our beauty is our greatest pride, and our wits are second to none.

We know what we are.

To hell with them all!

Still, we cannot let pride blind us to the facts.

The morning it foretells is up to us.

We must come together, yet retain our pride.

We are the keepers of secrets.

Perhaps it’s time those secrets were revealed.

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay meme #roleplay memes #roleplay starters #bastet #werecats #werewolf the apocalypse #world of darkness #owod

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meterokinesis · 4 years ago

Text

No Grave Can Hold My Body Down

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 12,032

Fandom: Batfamily, DC Comics

Characters: Tim Drake, Ra’s al Ghul, Tam Fox, OFC, Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne, Fasir Nasser

Pairings: Tim Drake & Ra’s al Ghul, Tim Drake & Tam Fox

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, Chose not to use archive warnings

Tags: Canon divergence, Lazarus Pit, Lazarus Pit Madness, Evil!Tim Drake, Blood and Gore, Psychological Trauma, Survivor’s guilt, Unreliable narrator, Tim Drake is Red Robin, Post-Battle of the Cowl, Bruce is dead, Tim is not having a good time right now

Summary: When Tim Drake leaves to find Bruce, he doesn’t expect to get stabbed. He doesn’t expect to die. And he certainly doesn’t expect to be resurrected. However, the Tim who goes into the Lazarus Pit is not the same Tim who comes out. This Tim is ruthless and unguarded in a way he never was before. And when Ra's starts to take him under his wing... well, what's a disgraced Robin to do?

Author’s Note: This work is part of the Batfam Big Bang! (@batfam-big-bang) I couldn't have done this without my lovely betas, @bisexualoftheblade, @crystalinastar, and @houser-of-stories. There's also some amazing art for this fic that I’ll be posting soon!

Read it on AO3

The desert night was cool, with a breeze that shifted the sand beneath Tim’s feet like waves. The stars gleamed overhead, and for a second he was caught up in how clear the sky was. It had been years since he’d seen stars without a haze of light pollution around them.

Owens and Z were in front of him, his babysitters for the night. Pru was off to his left, fiddling with the safety on her gun. The ride here had been as light-hearted as was possible, given the circumstances, but that jovial tone had ended quickly. Their off-roader had died on them maybe half an hour before, and the small group was still huddled around the machine, waiting as Z checked the engine. Every few seconds, Pru glared at Tim, as if blaming him for the hold up. Though the others had made it very clear that this was a fool’s errand, Tim knew that Bruce was here, somewhere. He had to be, or Tim had thrown everything away for nothing.

That was the issue, wasn’t it? Tim might be the world’s greatest detective, now that Bruce was… out of commission. But his hunches could still be wrong. What if- no. He couldn’t afford to think like that. He would bring Bruce back, he had to.

“Hey, Drake, are you done brooding yet?” Pru’s voice echoed over the empty land. Tim huffed noncommittally and looked up to see the bald assassin twirling her gun on her finger.

“I’m a Bat. We’re never done brooding,” he quipped, before fiddling with the little radio receiver he had brought along. It didn’t do more than give off static when it was on, but having something to do with his hands helped.

Rolling her eyes, Pru gestured over to a precariously balanced pile of rocks. “Wanna see if I can hit the top one off without knocking over the others?”

Tim sighed heavily and dragged himself over to her, Owens trailing behind. Out of the corner of his eye, he even saw Z peek out from behind the hood to watch.

Squaring off, Pru brought up her gun and fired off a shot. To no one’s surprise, the top rock went flying and the others remained still, albeit with a slight wobble.

“Fuck yeah! Z, did you see…” She trailed off, her face blanching. Tim followed suit, only to be greeted with Z on the ground, chest bleeding in a way his medical training told him was too much. His brown eyes were already glassy, and his chest wasn’t moving anymore. It was then that the rest of the image came into focus, and Tim’s eyes finally latched onto the cloaked man holding two bloody swords.

“I am the Widower,” the man said, his voice low and bone-chilling. “And here I was, thinking you’d put up a fight.”

Tim drew his bo staff, eyes tracking Pru and Owens as they rushed toward the Widower, guns at the ready. He had barely taken a step, but they were already on the ground, Pru bleeding from a large gash in her neck and Owens trying in vain to keep pressure on the wound in between his ribs.

Quick--what were his weaknesses? No visible limps or injuries, no issues handling the weapons. He moved like a snake through grass, smooth and precise. The Widower’s blades gleamed in the moonlight, and Pru’s blood dripped onto the sand. Tim lashed out with his staff, catching one of the swords right as it flew toward his throat.

“I guess dead birdies tell no tales,” Widower whispered as he drove the second sword, the one Tim had forgotten about, into Tim’s stomach.

The vigilante staggered back, and fell to his knees, clutching his abdomen. The blade slid out and even through the gloves of his suit, Tim could feel his blood, warm and sticky. Was this how he was going to die? Mission incomplete, estranged from his family, bleeding out into the desert sand? He had never assumed he would survive in this job, but he’d at least thought he’d die as Robin. Oh god, he was never going to be Robin again.

The ground rushed up to greet him, sand in his mouth and eyes and hair. He supposed that it didn’t matter--it’s not like corpses care anyway. With his last ounces of strength, he rolled onto his back. Somewhere, some last shred of knowledge told him that this would keep him from bleeding out, but deep down he knew it was too late. Tim just wanted the stars to be the last thing he saw.

As darkness encroached on the corners of his vision, his mind drifted back to Bruce. This was it. The only father figure he’d ever had, or at least the only one who liked him as he was, would be doomed to never return. And it was all Tim’s fault.

The afterlife was dark. And cold. Tim had never been religious, aside from that year of Hebrew school his parents insisted he take in middle school, but even he knew that this wasn’t right. It took a second, but the cold and dark sharpened into something Tim knew well, his kitchen at home. Well, at Drake Manor.

The marble countertops gleamed, as did the floors, and Tim recalled tiptoeing around in his early childhood, so not to dirty them. The kitchen--really, the whole house--had always felt like a mausoleum. Cold, impersonable. Lonely. In some ways, a lot like Tim.

He drifted through the house, looking pointedly away from the family portrait that hung above the fireplace. It had been painted a few months before his mom was killed, right after he became Robin. They all looked so stiff, like actors playing a family in a movie. Actually, actors would probably do a better job than they did. That portrait had been the first thing Tim had put in storage when his dad died.

The curtains were drawn, letting in the gray sunlight Gotham was so well-known for. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his lawn, except… not. Gravestones dotted the otherwise pristine lawn, some new and some old and worn. He hesitated at the door, fingertips just brushing the doorknob. He was dead, it wasn’t like he could get hurt. Maybe this was some kind of purgatory that he had to deal with before he could move on. He pushed against the door, anticipating the old hitch in the hinges that had been around for years.

The air held the same chill as the house, pulling at Tim’s breath. Front and center, practically in the doorway, was Bruce’s grave, the one they’d buried him in just over a month ago. But now the death date was scratched out, in its place a sticker like the ones Tim used to put on his skateboard. It read: Eternally Damned To Disappointment. It’d sound like the name of a band Tim might’ve listened to, if he didn’t know that the disappointment was in him.

The next grave was older, cracked and crumbly. The ground in front of it was disturbed, and dried blood streaks marked the bottom of the headstone. Here lies Jason Todd. Well, that didn’t last long. And unlike Jason, Tim knew he wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t that lucky.

Next was Steph, or at least the grave she pretended to fill. It was covered in flowers, some of them bouquets Tim had left himself. Tim had spent hours in front of it, telling her how much he missed her and loved her, praying for the first and last times. When she came back… well, they were more distant than he would’ve liked. That wasn’t Steph’s fault, at least not entirely, but it did make him wonder. What if he never took back the mantle? Would this have been easier? He could’ve been a semi-normal teenager, living with his dad and stepmom, mourning his girlfriend and being blissfully unaware of the shitshow that was heroism. But he wouldn’t have been happy.

And speak of the devil, there’s his parents’ graves, right next to each other. It was almost funny how they were closer in death than in life. A boomerang was lodged in his father’s gravestone, with an old flip phone opened at the base. It listed Tim’s number as the last call. His mother’s had a sticky substance that a voice deep inside Tim told him not to touch. He lingered at these graves for a moment, breath caught in his throat. It’s not that he didn’t miss his parents--he did. But he had only known a piece of them, only just deeper than surface level. They weren’t parents as much as guardians with high expectations. And for the most part, he had met or exceeded every goal they gave him. But it never was enough. There was always another class to ace or language to learn or party to schmooze at. Worst of all, they were cold. If Tim was the chill night air, his parents were Antarctica.

The next grave stopped him in his tracks. Bart. One of his best friends, his ally in all things. Gone, but not in the way Bruce or Steph were. Bart wasn’t coming back. There would be no more Hawaiian pizza and donuts shared over a comic book, or sleepovers on the floor of Mount Justice. No more Wendy the Werewolf Stalker Marathons. There was no more Bart, and it stung in a way that Tim didn’t have a name for.

He turned around, expecting that to be the end of it, but there it was. Conner. All at once, the weight of the world fell on Tim’s shoulders, like his own personal Kryptonite. His best friend, someone he had been more than a little in love with once upon a time. He knew Conner was safe now, alive and saving people once again. Without Tim. Conner’s death had been the one that broke him, more than any of the others. Because if Conner Kent, Superboy and heartbreaker extraordinaire, hadn’t made it, what chance did Tim have? Well, obviously not much. How was Conner going to take this? He wasn’t like Tim, this was the first time he’d be alone.

Aren’t you tired of losing the ones you love? Aren’t you tired of being the one left behind? A quiet voice murmured in the back of his skull.

Yes. No. Yes. A sob tore from Tim’s chest, and his hand flew to his mouth. This was so stupid. He had dealt with loss before. Hell, the past year had been one unending funeral. Of course he was tired, who wouldn’t be?

This had to be Hell, but that felt like even more of a betrayal. Even Jason had made it to Heaven. Was this his punishment for toeing the line? Had he not suffered enough? Biting back another sob, Tim ran blindly toward the door, slamming it shut behind him in a way that would’ve made his mother shriek. When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t in his living room anymore, but the Batcave. Even with his eyes full of tears, he would know it anywhere. And there was Dick in the Batsuit. And the demon in his Robin gear. Tim opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Dick looked up, expression weary.

“Tim, I already told you. Bruce isn’t coming back. I’m Batman now, and that means I get to choose the Robin. It’s about time you accept that.” It sure sounded like Dick. “Besides, it’s not like you were doing a great job anyway. You let Batman be killed on the job.” Damian sneered, leaning against Dick’s chair like a bully in a high school rom com.

“That-That’s not my fault!” Tim cried, heart pounding in his ears.

“Look, there’s an heir and a spare. There’s a new Robin now, you can be whatever you’re calling yourself now. Go do whatever you have to on this suicide mission, but leave Gotham out of it.”

Damian smiled like a demonic cherub. “Yes, Drake. Not even Grayson wants you anymore, if he ever did.”

Tim stood in shocked silence, unable to find words. Sure, Dick was focused on Damian, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t care anymore. After all, they were brothers, right?

He’s taken the only thing you had left. Don’t you want revenge? He took your mantle, you should take it back. The voice sounded like Tim, but contorted--like it would on a recording.

Tim--no, not Tim, something else--reached back for the bo staff. As his hand gripped the metal, something flew toward him, hitting him directly in the stomach where he had been stabbed. It clattered to the floor, and through his pain, Tim realized it was a Batarang.

Don’t you want more, Timothy Drake-Wayne? It coaxed.

Yes.

The new Timothy Drake-Wayne took his first breaths in a cave deep in the Iraqi desert, hundreds of miles away from the house and the graves that had haunted his dream. It was cold here, nearly as cold as that dream had been. If he was in Hell, it would be hotter, wouldn’t it?

Tim swallowed hard and pushed himself up. His stomach, where he was pretty sure he had just been stabbed, was free of wounds or scarring. If anything, he felt stronger than he had before. As his feet touched the stone cold floor, he took note of the ninjas scattered around the room. Okay, so he was back at the League. They must have… The prior strength he had felt disappeared as his legs gave out. Normally he would have rolled or caught himself or something, but his gaze was fixed on the other side of the room, where a glowing green pit resided.

Oh, no.

No weapons, outnumbered, barely able to stand. The disadvantages stacked up before his eyes, screaming that there was no hope of him getting out of this one. Not to mention that he was probably already on his way to insanity. Fuck, the last time he’d seen Jason, the former Robin had almost killed him. Would Tim end up like that, homicidal and cruel?

He struggled to his feet, clutching the stone table for support. He could take out two, maybe three, if he just stopped thinking. He was trained for this, he could--

“Hello there, Detective,” a cold voice purred, quiet but deafening in the silent room. A chill hovered under Tim’s skin. It had been a long time since he’d last heard that voice. Detective? Isn’t that what he calls your mentor? There was the voice again, the only remaining fragment of the dream.

Ra’s al Ghul was one of those people who intimidated you just by existing in the same space. He reminded Tim of every strict teacher and cruel board member and snotty dinner party guest all rolled up into one. Oh, and he was the leader of the world’s largest assassin guild. That was important too.

“Did you find what you were looking for, Timothy?” Ra’s said in the same tone.

The teenager opened his mouth, then closed it again, searching for words. “No,” he managed to force out. “No, I didn’t.”

Are you sure?

Ra’s smiled, like a predator that had just gone for the killing blow. “Well, I suppose that you will have more than enough time to complete your quest during your stay with us.” And just like that, he turned, a group of ninjas peeling off to escort him back to whatever pit of Hell he’d crawled from. “If you need anything, ask for the White Ghost. Welcome to the Cradle, Detective.” And just like that, he was gone.

Tim was only alone with his thoughts for a minute before a tall man with alabaster skin and medieval-style chainmail entered the cavern.

Okay, so this was the White Ghost impersonator. The League wouldn’t kill someone they’d just resurrected, so maybe once he was alone he could escape? Go back to Gotham and see Dick and Sebastian and Zoanne one last time before he truly went insane, then start going to that therapist Dick recommended. He could make it through this, he wouldn’t end up like Jason--

And then in walked Tam Fox, looking terrified but for the most part unharmed. And all of Tim’s plans came crashing down.

Tam was a civilian, and a Wayne Enterprises employee to boot. Her life, and his identity, were in danger now. He was both her only savior and her greatest danger. New plan: listen to this knockoff White Ghost, do whatever it takes to gain their trust, then make it out with Tam at the first possible chance. And do it all without going off the deep end.

Easy. Not.

“I am the White Ghost,” the shitty cosplayer said, his chainmail clinking as he moved.

“Isn’t he dead?” Tim murmured under his breath. He’d definitely seen Dusan die. But if Tim was still alive, then maybe…

“There has always been a White Ghost,” the older man responded, as if that answered anything. “Now, it is time you and your guest retired to your quarters.”

Tam looked over at Tim, big brown eyes wide with fear. He nodded once, tried to conjure a press conference smile, and allowed them to be led to lavish bedchambers. They looked like beautiful, windowless prisons.

The next few weeks blended into their own lethal monotony. Tam stayed in her room all day and Tim went to meetings with various members of the League’s regime. It was a little like working at Drake Industries or Wayne Enterprises, just with more murder. A lot more murder. But the meetings were easy enough, and Tim soon found himself getting to know the people he once despised. He didn’t like them by any means, but he wasn’t terrified anymore.

He kept looking for Bruce. The desert gave no answers.

Tam didn’t ask questions. She didn’t push too hard. She had to know everyone’s identities by now, didn’t she? Tim was just one Robin-shaped piece of the puzzle. Here he was, in the desert, yet another failed Robin. His whole tenure, he’d been trying to live up to Jason Todd, and now in a sick way he had. Wearing Jason’s uniform, having been resurrected the same way, he now dreaded catching up to the boy who had once been his hero.

On nights when he cried silently into the silk sheets, trying to forget the way Jason had looked when he first came back to Gotham, the voice soothed: You can be greater than he ever was. You can outshine all of the others. You will be remembered when they are dust.

The desert was cold. There was no comfort here.

His bedchamber was nice enough. There was a large bed with silk sheets and gold accents and an ensuite bathroom. A large mirror took up the space where a window might have once been, like some sort of philosophical conundrum that Tim was too tired to try to unpack. There was a small passageway between his room and Tam’s, and if Tim was just a little more naive he would have believed that the League forgot about it when they placed him in this room. But he knew better. The League never forgot a thing.

Sometimes Tim caught himself in the mirror and for a second he swore his blue eyes looked green. Tam came in the next morning to glass littering the floor and cuts covering Tim’s hands. She said nothing while she helped him wrap up his knuckles.

Tim had always been adaptable. It’s easier than the constant push and shove of rebellion. When his parents told him to take those classes and join these clubs, he did. When he was instructed to give impromptu speeches at galas, he did. He put in the effort, he always had. He was never the best fighter and never would be, but he was smart and quick and brave. That had to mean something, right?

Maybe that’s why Ra’s al Ghul liked him so much.

The first time Ra’s al Ghul asked for a private meeting with Tim, the ground seemed to tilt under him. The well-trained vigilante tried not to show the fear in his eyes as his vision blurred and his heart thundered in his chest. But he went, because one did not say no to the Demon’s Head.

“Detective,” Ra’s began as he sat down at a large, stately desk that seemed out of place in the rest of the Cradle. The voices--he had taken to calling them whispers--that had been clogging Tim’s thoughts preened at the nickname, ignoring its former bearer.

“Tell me what you know about my grandson,” the assassin drawled, his fingers tapping on the desk rhythmically.

“Don’t you have spies for that?” Tim responded, not quite a retort but not an innocent question either. He’d seen enough of the League’s intel that it was clear how much they truly knew about the world outside the Cradle.

“Yes, but I’d prefer to hear it from someone… familiar with him. My eyes can only do so much from afar.”

Tim had no doubt that Ra’s knew everything about Damian: from the route he took to school to the cereal he ate for breakfast to how many times he pet Titus when he got home from school.

“He’s a brat.” Tim’s chagrin even took him by surprise, like it wasn’t really him talking. “He’s rude and inconsistent and incredibly immature. He’s aggressive and undisciplined. A sorry excuse for a Robin.”

And there it was, the green monster of jealousy rearing its head again. Yes, Damian had taken Robin from him unfairly, and yes, he was all of those things. But why did Ra’s care?

“I see. Would you describe him as a leader?”

“No. If anything, he’s a bully and a mama’s boy. Leaders need to be able to listen to others.” Where was he getting this? Damian was a kid, he could learn. He still had time.

“Interesting.” Ra’s rose from his chair and paced the edge of the room. Tim refused to look back and follow his movements. That would be a show of weakness, a drop of blood in a shark tank. “Detective, what do you have in Gotham? What do you have there that keeps you from dedicating yourself to your cause?”

Nothing.

Tim stifled a gasp as he thought of the instant response. Dick and Damian didn’t need him. Stephanie hadn’t called in months, even before Bruce died. Jason had tried to kill him, last they’d spoken. The Teen Titans were getting along just fine without him. Truthfully, the whispers were right. There was nothing left for him in Gotham. If there was, he would have stayed.

“Nothing.” The anymore went unsaid.

“Then I may have a proposal for you.” Ra’s eyes glowed a dangerous green. A pit formed in Tim’s stomach, as the last few vestiges of him that hadn’t sided with the voices screamed at him to just escape.

“Oh?” Tim responded, mouth bone-dry.

“Stay.”

And Tim’s world crumpled.

“Learn under my agents. Train to become better than you are. Continue your quest with my resources behind you. All you have to do is stay and work for me,” Ra’s smiled like a hunter who had just shot big game.

This was a terrible idea. Tim didn’t kill people, he refused. He was supposed to help people, not hurt them. But he couldn’t deny that feeling like he belonged again was incredibly enticing.

Tim opened his mouth, but Ra’s cut him off. “Your friend will not be harmed. I won’t even think about putting you on an assignment until you’re up to par with my best ninjas. I will not make this offer again.”

The voice that responded was not Tim’s own.

“Yes.”

Tim thought that six months of training with Bruce was brutal. Ha hadn’t known brutal until now.

His first day of training, he showed up in his Red Robin suit, now patched and reinforced where he had been stabbed.

The tall ninja that seemed to be in charge scoffed, then sent him away. Not fifteen minutes later, a tailor descended on Tim’s quarters with a tape measure and a face made of solid stone.

“Can’t have you looking like a target, all in red. What was Batman thinking?”

Maybe he wants them to be targets, Tim and the whispers thought in tandem. He balked at the thought, but the tailor’s firm hands kept him in place. What was he doing? Bruce had loved him, did love him. He had taken care of Tim when no one else would. Bile crawled through the back of Tim’s throat, but he swallowed it down.

The tailor finished her measurements and scanned Tim up and down.

“It will have to be black, of course. Reinforced joints, kevlar, the whole nine yards,” she stated in a lilting accent. “Maybe some green accents, dark ones. Classy. Half-mask, no more cowls or dominos.”

Red, yellow, and black were his colors and had been for years. A tribute to a boy he loved and lost then loved some more. But Conner was back now. And Tim was tired of mourning, especially when no one was dead. Well, except him.

“Green,” he agreed, swallowing thickly. He wasn’t Red Robin anymore, not really. And he could always wear the suit again. This wasn’t a finale, just a hiatus.

She nodded once and then swept away, leaving a teenager clutching the last thing he had of his old life. Tim folded the suit, the way Alfred had always chastised him for, and gingerly placed it in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe. He wouldn’t need it anytime soon.

The next day, a precisely wrapped package sat outside Tim’s door bearing no signature. He knew exactly what it was.

Upon peeling back the paper, he saw the full glory of the new suit. It was midnight black, with dark green stitches that were beautiful up close, but would be near-invisible from far away. It looked like a cross between the ninjas’ garb and body armor--sleek and sure of itself. A hood was attached to the back of the neck, with the green stitching spelling out something Tim couldn’t discern. A half-mask with built in air filters covered the rest of the face. As he patted the suit down, he felt where all the separate compartments were for weapons and utilities. It reminded him a little of the costumes from high-tech spy movies.

Sitting on the floor with his new suit in his lap, Tim added another item to the long lists of debts he owed Ra’s al Ghul.

His first real day of training, Tim was beaten so badly he could hardly drag himself to his room.

It wasn’t that they had intended to hurt him, but he had gone almost a month without training. Bruises laced up his cheekbone like their own little domino mask, a little memento of times gone by. His joints screamed out in pain as he collapsed onto his bed. At least he hadn’t broken any bones. Or been stabbed. Or died.

Tim only had a few minutes to contemplate the stuntman funniest fails video that was his life when a gentle knock came from the door.

“Come in,” he groaned, flopping over onto his side so he could see his company. His mother would have scolded him for not standing up to greet a guest, but she didn’t have much sway from six feet under.

A girl with olive-tan skin and a brunette bun stepped into the threshold, her smile the gentlest thing he’d seen in a long time.

“Hello, my name is Aminta. I figured you could use some help with your wounds.” Her voice was lower than he expected, but pretty nonetheless. A dark, untraceable accent threaded through her words.

He peered up at her, frowning.

“Is this a hazing thing? Am I being hazed?”

She chuckled, then sat on the ottoman at the edge of his bed.

“Not hazing. The new recruits tend to help each other through the first few months. Safety in numbers and all that. I thought you might want some assistance.”

“So, you’re all friends?” That didn’t sound right.

“No,” she hesitated for a moment, “not exactly. Friends is too... common. We are assassins, but we have honor. When we need to, we take care of our own.”

Ah, so he was one of them now. For some indescribable reason, that didn’t fill him with as much dread as he thought it would.

You have no friends. You never did. Just those who you will rule and those who you will crush, the whispers added.

Tim smiled, the shy grin he used when he wanted teachers and Wayne Enterprises board members to underestimate him.

“Thank you, Aminta. I’d appreciate that. My name is Tim.”

She winked at him, clearly a joke.

“Believe me, I know.”

The League had a mole.

Or at least, they were going to. Tim had known enough corrupt businessmen in his time in Gotham’s upper echelon that he was well versed in the signs of someone double-dipping. At first it was little things: missing pieces of inventory, strange new guard shifts, incorrect mission intel. By the time it escalated to money being skimmed off the top of jobs, Ra’s was furious.

When he called Tim in for a meeting, something that was becoming increasingly normal these days, Tim was expecting fiery rage. Instead, there was steel-sharp cunning. It was a little like looking in a funhouse mirror.

“Detective, it appears that we have a liability in our ranks,” Ra’s began, his fingertips caressing a blade. “I assume you’ve read the data I sent to your quarters, and I’d like your thoughts.”

Tim cleared his throat. He had spent the night before reading the reports, putting together the pieces. If this was a test, it was a wicked one.

“The incidents began shortly after the attacks by the Widower. It’s a piece of misdirection intended to frame either Pru or I as a mole. However, neither of us has any reason for betrayal. Pru is, and has always been, loyal to the League. And you are well aware that I have nothing left for me in Gotham, nor would I be stupid enough to allow myself to get caught.” His voice was smooth, the prince of Gotham giving yet another speech.

“There is someone who has means, motive, and opportunity. After reading your files, it is incredibly clear. He has a family of his own that he is loyal to, and during my resurrection, he was not in the Cradle. His computer prowess would allow him to mess with the system in a way few others could. It would have been a very clean job, if he had spread it out over months or years instead of a few weeks.”

Ra’s stroked his goatee.

“You mean the Expediter.”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” Ra’s rose from the desk and clasped his hands behind his back. “Now that we’ve established the perpetrator, it is time to establish the punishment.”

Ah, so here was the test. Ra’s wanted to see how ruthless Tim could be. It was a very good thing that Tim never failed an exam.

“Kill him. It will send a message to our other agents and whoever he worked for that we are not to be trifled with.” Tim’s hands shook, but his voice was full of conviction. He had always been a good actor, but it wasn’t clear how much was truth now.

“And his daughters?”

“Bring them to the Cradle. They’re young enough that they likely won’t remember him, and we’ll be able to shape their childhood. Perhaps one will become just as intelligent as her father, and wiser as well.” The whispers hissed wordlessly in disappointment, but it was worth it. Tim refused to order the execution of a child, no matter how loud the shrieking in his skull became.

There was a beat of dead silence, then Ra’s nodded sagely.

“Wise choice, Detective. I’ll put those orders into effect at once.” He smiled, his teeth gleaming as his dagger had. “I’m looking forward to the rest of our partnership.”

Oh, how the whispers laughed.

Life in the Cradle was, well, nice. Tim was training harder than he ever had, under much more strenuous conditions, yet he felt better than he ever had. He was stronger, for one thing, but for the first time since he’d discovered Batman and Robin’s identities, he was able to rest. He didn’t need to be up until dawn chasing people across rooftops or finishing reports or writing an essay for English class because he’d been too busy on patrol. Even in a den of killers, Tim felt almost safe.

That said, he refused to let his guard down. He’d sat in on meetings with the inner circle of the Cradle for months now, trying to use his famous brain for something important. Which for his purposes, meant destroying the League as best as possible.

That was the only reason he’d stayed, or at least that’s what he told himself during nights where he twisted and turned trying to justify his choices. He’d exploit the League’s generosity to train himself and find Bruce, then take it down. Bruce would have to be proud of him after that, they all would. Maybe he’d even be Robin again.

He’d already taken out the Expediter, Ra’s’ guy in the chair. The guy confessed to the mistake of having a family and trying to work for the League at the same time. Good thing Tim didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

This is good, but it is not enough. You crave more. Do not be a coward, take it.

Now Tim was the techie for an international assassin guild, which would look moderately impressive on a college resume. Maybe it could count as an internship. Ra’s seemed like the guy who would make a relatively okay reference when Harvard came calling.

It always felt strange when he had lunch with Ra’s. It was eerily similar to the fancy lunches his mom used to drag him to, or the etiquette classes he was forced to take where he learned how to properly use a melon baller. Of course, it wasn’t like he was going to be killed for using a melon baller wrong then. Now, he knew that any wrong move could result in death.

Not his own death, of course. There was no point in Ra’s bringing back Tim, just to kill him again. Tam, however, was expendable. And that made the marrow in Tim’s bones shiver.

This particular lunch was more focused on memory lane than shop talk.

“So, Detective, tell me: what did you want to be when you grew up?”

Tim swallowed hard around his tea sandwich, his throat suddenly painfully dry.

“When I was little, I wanted to be a clown. Not a great career path in Gotham,” he began, attempting to keep his voice light. Ra’s looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

“Then, I wanted to be a photographer. Then, my father said I would be a CEO or I’d be disowned, so I wanted to be a CEO. I could always do photography on the side, you know?

“And then I became Robin.” He let the weight of that sentence sink over the pair.

“So? What happened after that?”

Tim resisted the urge to stare at his sandwich, instead choosing to meet Ra’s’ bright green eyes.

“Then, I stopped thinking I would grow up.” There it was, the thing everyone had been trying to pry out of him for years.

“I mean, Dick barely made it out. Jason died, came back, went crazy, and now murders people for shits and giggles. Stephanie died, but only kinda. Damian’s got a stubborn streak a mile wide. In the wild, robins live for a year, maybe two if they’re lucky. I don’t think anyone realized how similar we all are to those stupid birds.” Tears pricked at the backs of his eyes, but he didn’t need to cry. All that pain was gone now, replaced by something else. He couldn’t name it, but it kept all the sadness away.

Tim had been sad for his whole life. It was a relief when the roiling ocean inside him froze over. Numbness was an improvement.

Ra’s leaned across the table, his face barely a foot from Tim’s.

“You know, Detective, you remind me of myself. Not when I was young, of course, but when I had just begun to build my empire. All your life you have been told to quiet down and listen instead of speaking. You’re a fine leader because of it. You adapt when others are stubborn. You make plans while they push through without a second thought. You are a snake lying in wait, anticipating the right time to strike. I admire that.”

The air hung in silence as Ra’s stared directly into Tim’s soul.

“You know,” Ra’s finally said, “I think you could be truly great one day.”

Tim barely breathed as he nodded his thanks. When Ra’s finally leaned away, his first breath felt like the first gasp of air from a drowning victim.

“Before our lunch concludes, and I do so enjoy our lunches, I have a query for you.” This wasn’t out of the ordinary, Ra’s liked to give him riddles to keep him on his toes. “Some of our ninjas, though I will not say who, have gone rogue. A year or so ago, they got themselves caught up in some nasty business. My current intel places them here, in this compound, where they’re using innocents as collateral, should they not get what they request.”

“What do they want?”

“My head on a platter.” Ra’s’ smile was bloodchilling. “Oh, Detective? I feel it’s important to note: international news stations are currently reporting you and Ms. Fox as having been kidnapped by these rogues. Any advice on how to fix that?”

So this was the second test. Another chance to prove his loyalty. Let Ra’s’ enemies go free, or kill them and forfeit his old life for good in return.

“I assume extraction is not possible?”

“I’m afraid that those deserters are incredibly well trained. The special units from any nation’s army wouldn’t even make it into the compound. My ninjas could make it in, but there’s no way they could take out the traitors and save the civilians.”

Tim nodded, pretending to contemplate. He already knew his answer.

“Bomb the compound, kill everyone inside. It’s better to cut off the rot now than give it the chance to spread.”

Ra’s did not smile, but his eyes glimmered with pride.

“My thoughts exactly, Detective.”

And just like that, the death warrant was signed.

Tam was waiting in his chambers when Tim got home from a long day of training, his body littered in bruises and cuts that would sting tomorrow. Her crossed arms functioned as a hug, like she was the only thing keeping herself together.

“Tim,” she whispered when he came into view, the word like a prayer.

He glided across the room wordlessly, and she wrapped him in a tight embrace.

“I managed to get someone to sneak me a newspaper. Th-They think we’re dead, Tim,” she said into his shoulder, words slightly muffled by the fabric.

His hand came up to stroke her hair, the way he used to comfort Cass after a particularly long day. Tim didn’t respond, and instead let her tears soak into his shirt.

Good. Now you have the element of surprise.

The Council of Spiders had a worthy namesake, as they were just as quick and deadly as any arachnid. Somehow they had crept past the League’s defenses, disabling the ninjas that got in their way. True to form, the assassins’ deaths were just as silent as they were--shadows fading out as dusk began to form.

Tim was preparing for another day of strategy and mind games when Aminta burst into the room.

“The Spiders are here. They managed to sneak in--no one knows how. You’re needed,” she gasped, as if she’d ran a marathon to deliver this message. Judging from her state of disarray, maybe she had.

“Tam?”

“I’ll protect her. Go!”

Tim didn’t have time to question these motives or worry about much more than tugging on his cowl and pulling out his bo staff. He sprinted out the door and into the madness, moving in a dangerous dance with the assassins he had trained alongside for the past few months. The League was good, great even. But with the element of surprise, the Spiders were better.

He couldn’t afford to think about what could happen if they lost. Failure was not an option, not anymore.

A shadow glided toward one of the empty hallways and away from the rest of the frenzy, a sword glinting in its hand. Something that had dug its claws deep in Tim’s bones pulled him toward the figure, urging him to follow. To finish the job.

If others saw red when enraged, Tim saw green.

The figure purposefully stalked toward the large office Tim had started to spend increasing amounts of time in. The footsteps were near-silent, but in his mind they echoed almost deafeningly loud.

The shadow had to know he was there. It had to. Tim was good, but a few months of training could never rival lifetimes.

The shadow glanced over its shoulder, a feline-esque smile on its face. It said something, probably a witty yet scathing remark, but it was drowned out by the cacophony of whispers in Tim’s mind.

Do it.

Finish the job.

Show them who you are, who you can be.

Prove yourself.

You are not a bird, you are not a bat.

You are a demon, and you do not know weakness.

Not a Robin, not Red.

You are Green, Green, Green.

Become who you were always destined to be, Detective.

Tim struck out with his bo staff, right into the shadow’s skull. It faltered, just for a millisecond, and that creature that was both Tim and not lashed out, quicker than it had any right to be. A dagger in his hand, sharpened to a razor-thin edge. He did not remember doing that. That same dagger, buried into deep tan flesh.

Then he was across the room, bones aching from being thrown into the stone wall. If he was still human, still able to rein in whatever was drowning out his senses, he would know to expect pain tomorrow. But he didn’t, and all he felt was the adrenaline rushing through his veins.

And he was up again, throwing himself at the shadow with the conviction of a greek hero who knew that this fight would be his last. A fist full of rings connected with his cheek, and he could feel the skin tear beneath the metal. Maybe it would even scar.

The shadow leaned heavily to one side, though whether it was from the stab placed between its ribs or a prior injury, Tim didn’t know. It lurched toward him, and he stabbed it again, this time twisting the dagger until he felt the give of a lung. The shadow was down now, and deep down Tim knew that he never should have beaten it, never should have landed a single blow. In a logical world, Tim would have lost ten times over. But in a logical world, Tim would have been dead for the past six months.

As if time was in slow motion but he was at normal speed, Tim glided through the seconds, pushing pressure points with the tip of his blade. The shadow’s sword lay across the hall, too far out of reach for retaliation. This wasn’t torture, but it was revenge--for pain and sacrifice and nights spent clawing at his own skin, wishing it still felt like his. Payback for months of sins he never would have committed, for the green that clouded his vision. But most of all, it was a promise.

After minutes that held years of heartwrenching pain, Tim delivered the killing blow, straight under the shadow’s chin and into its brain. He was covered in blood, tacky and rust-toned, but where a past Tim--a lesser Tim--would have balked or vomited at the sight, this Tim stood, cleaned off his blade, and hefted the cooling corpse onto his shoulder.

They can try to revive it with the Lazarus Pit. You cannot allow that to happen. You cannot fail, the whispers urged, but he no longer needed them. They were him and he was them. Green in every breath and thought.

Tim escaped into the desert and finished the job, just as he had always been taught to do. Ra’s would have been proud. Bruce would have been proud.

That night, after the Spiders had been exterminated and the mess cleaned up, Tim sat at the foot of his bed, staring at his hands. The ninjas had looked at him with what could be called pride when he staggered back into the fray, his face bruised and bloody and sporting a wound on his thigh. His silky clothes brushed past the injuries every few seconds, but he couldn’t muster the energy to wince, even though he knew he should.

Tam had managed to hide during the clash, and Aminta had kept her promise. Tim liked people who followed through.

After being given the all clear, he stumbled back to his room to wash out his wounds and scrub the smell of smoke off his skin.

He had only just changed into his silky clothes when a knock came at the door. Without waiting for a response, the White Ghost was in Tim’s room, staring down at the teenager with an unnameable expression on his face.

“Timothy Drake,” the man said by way of greeting.

Tim glanced at him and blinked owlishly, but did not respond.

“Ra’s al Ghul is dead.”

This gripped Tim’s attention, and he finally made eye contact with the assassin, his brow creasing in concern.

“You’re going to revive him, right? He told me that you have more Lazarus Pits near here, he can use one of those. How did he die?” A million scenarios raced through Tim’s head, films of the death of the Demon.

“They burned him on a pyre and left him in his study. No trace of cause of death, and we can’t revive him. Any DNA has been destroyed.”

Tim stared blankly, processing. The Demon’s Head, the invincible Ra’s al Ghul, was dead. Gone forever.

“Ra’s made plans, should he die,” the White Ghost continued. “Those plans include a new leader of the League of Shadows. And that leader is you.”

Tim sputtered, “What? You can’t be serious. I’m seventeen years old. Why not you? Or Talia or Nyssa? Or Damian?”

“I do not make light of these things. He said you, so it is you. I am the White ghost. He had not contacted his daughters in years, and his grandson is too unpredictable to be suited to the position. You are the Demon’s Head, Timothy Drake.”

Tim stared back numbly. He was the Demon’s Head. The Cradle was his, these assassins were his, the world was his. He wanted power, and now it had fallen into his lap. The White Ghost kneeled before him and bowed his head. “I will serve you, Timothy Drake, in whatever way you see fit. I will be your eyes and ears and hands. I will obey you and carry out your orders. I pledge my allegiance to you, and only to you.” Satisfied with his vow, he rose to his full height.

Tim swallowed hard, then looked back up. “I accept your vow and thank you for your loyalty.” Then, “When… When will the rest know?”

“Tomorrow, at noon. I thought it might be best for everyone to rest, and for you to know first. We can discuss further details tomorrow morning, but for now, know who you are.”

Tim nodded stiffly and pushed himself to his feet, straightening his spine the way his mother had taught him to. He had been raised to become a prince of Gotham, one of the pretty boys that graced magazine covers and made headlines at charity events. Now, he was a king of assassins, an emperor of the underworld. If only she could see him now. Maybe she’d even be proud of him, for once.

“Thank you, White Ghost. We will speak again tomorrow. Should there be any issues during the night, I would like for you to inform me immediately.” He may be clad in silk pyjamas, but there was leadership in every fiber of his being. The whispers hissed in agreement.

“Fadir Nasser. My name is Fadir Nasser. Long live the Demon’s Head,” the White Ghost--Fadir--said as he left the room, the last remark stinging with a hint of a joke.

The door locked shut behind him, and Tim flopped backward onto the bed, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. His gaze fell to the closet, where his suit was stuffed in the corner, smelling of smoke and burning flesh and the irony tang of blood. The whispers quickly supplied a description of the events, but Tim could picture them clear as day--carrying Ra’s to the desert, building and lighting a pyre, then bringing the body back and placing it in Ra’s’ study for someone to find. It was incredibly simple, almost too simple for no one to have done before. But Tim was Green, Greener than anyone had ever been before. And no one would ever know.

He’d need to invest in a new suit befitting his new role, maybe bring back some green accents. He no longer needed to mourn Conner. He no longer needed to mourn at all. He was the Demon’s Head, and he would never die.

The whispers laughed cruelly, like the audience of a poorly-written tragedy.

The transition of power wasn’t smooth, but it was quick. Assassins weren’t particularly known for their loyalty, and Fadir made it clear that any dissenters wouldn’t even make it to the door. They only had to clean blood off the stone floors once before that lesson sunk in.

As far as coups go, it was pretty successful. The whispers had quieted, just a little. Tim could sometimes make it hours without the hissing in the back of his mind, reminding him that he couldn’t rest. With power comes paranoia, and Tim was intimately familiar with both.

Now to rid himself of liabilities.

It had been a particularly lucid day, and Tim’s near-silent footsteps were the only hint of noise in the hallway. Tam had been given the option to move her room closer to his, but had refused. He didn’t blame her, it was hard being the civilian favorite of the assassin king. Tim knew this well.

Tim knocked on the wooden door, two quick raps. Somewhere deep in his memory, he wondered if this would have been his life, had everything been different; maybe he’d be knocking on Tam’s door before picking her up for a date. Instead, he straightened his shoulders, put on the shy smile Tam thought was his true one, and waited for her. Shuffling on the other side of the door, then a creak as it swung open. Tim glided in, and Tam looked at him with those big brown eyes, her expression tainted with a touch of fear. He didn’t remember her ever being afraid of him before.

“Do you want to go home?” Tim asked. No preamble, just his soft question in the quiet room.

Tam didn’t even think about it first.

“Yes.”

Tim nodded, then drew out a one-way ticket to Archie Goodwin International Airport, leaving tomorrow night. He held it out to her, that soft smile on his face and a promise in his eyes.

Tam tentatively took it, but kept looking at him. “Are you serious?”

“You’re not a prisoner. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you leave earlier, I just wanted to make sure the League was stable first. My intention was always to get you home.”

“Thank you, Tim.”

Tim slipped his hands in his pockets. “You’re my friend. I just want you to be happy.”

Tam pulled him into a hug, and for a second it felt so nice it almost hurt. Then it was over, and he could be comfortably numb again.

“Aminta will be coming with you, just to make sure you get home safe. Once you’re with your family, you won’t have to see any of my… agents ever again.”

Tam nodded, her face screwed up in an effort to keep from crying. He turned to leave and give her privacy, then paused.

“Tam? Thank you. For being my friend.”

Then the king of shadows disappeared into the night, yet again.

Tim frowned at the wall, a small comms unit tucked in his ear. He hadn’t moved from this room in a day, not since Tam and Aminta left.

“Okay, Aminta, I need you to keep close. You said that it’s just Batman and Robin? No Batgirl?”

“Just Batman and Robin. They haven’t spotted me yet. Robin’s really fallen behind since leaving us.”

Tim growled under his breath and carded a hand through his hair. It was getting long again. Who did Ra’s go to for haircuts? Did he just do it himself?

Focus.

The facts were these: Tam had been contacted by Batman and Robin immediately after Lucius Fox gave word that she was home safe. Tim had been expecting this, and Aminta was sent to follow Tam and ensure that the interaction went favorably. Which is to say that no one killed Tam because of what she knew. Aminta was currently hidden on the same rooftop as Gotham’s favorite heroes, listening in on their rendez-vous.

“What’s happening? Report.”

“She’s telling them--why don’t I just play their conversation? I have the capability.”

“Do it.”

A crackling came over Tim’s comm unit for a few brief seconds before it shifted to three familiar voices.

“It’s okay, Tam. Just tell us everything. From the beginning.” That was Dick. He sounded the exact same way he had when Tim left, tired and a little pained. Serves him right. “Yeah, okay,” there was Tam’s voice, slightly higher pitched than normal. “So my dad sent me to find out where Tim Drake was. And I managed to track him down to Iraq. So I’m in my hotel room one night, and I wake up to someone putting a cloth on my nose. Then everything went black, and the next thing I knew I was in this cold stone room. Then this albino guy tells me to stand up and we walk into this big hallway and there’s Tim. And he’s all sweaty and looks super freaked out. Then they brought us to these bedrooms and told us that we’d be staying a while.”

“Why would they take you?” A third voice asked, the snobby tone immediately registering as Damian. The brat.

“I’m not sure. Maybe my search for Tim sent up some flags? No one ever told me.” Her voice cracked a little, and maybe once upon a time, Tim would have felt sorry for her. Not anymore.

“It’s okay, Tam. After you moved into the Cradle, what happened?”

“Tim spent a lot of time training or with Ra’s. He couldn’t tell me much, but apparently Ra’s took a liking to him. One of the inner circle guys turned out to be a traitor, so Tim took his job. I didn’t see him a lot.”

“Who was the traitor?” Damian again, with a hint of anger in his voice. Or was that fear?

“Some computer guy. The Executioner or something.”

“The Expeditor?” It was definitely fear in Damian’s voice. He sounded like a child when he was scared.

“Yeah, him. I just hung around for the most part. They had books. They gave me makeup and nail polish when I asked for it. I was bored, but never threatened.” Tim snorted. Tam knew more than anyone that just because she didn’t have a knife to her neck didn’t mean she wasn’t in danger every moment of the day.

Dick cleared his throat, then spoke again, “Why did Ra’s let you leave?”

Tam went quiet, just for a second.

“Ra’s al Ghul is dead.”

A beat of silence. Tim would have paid millions to watch them right now.

“How?” Damian, his voice filled with fear, and maybe a little pain.

“I-I don’t know. There was an attack by the Council of Spiders. Tim had them lock me in my room with a guard. Some of the girls I talked to said that Ra’s was burned afterward so they couldn’t revive him. No one knew until the day after.” Tam’s voice was shaking now.

“Then where’s Tim?” Dick asked, finally caring about his younger brother after all this time. What a joke.

Tam stuttered a few times, but eventually got the words out. “Tim… Tim’s the new leader. Ra’s named him his heir before he died.”

A hiss sounded over the comms. That had to be Damian.

“Thank you, Tam. I appreciate you answering our questions. You know where to find us if you remember anything else.”

Some shuffling obscured any new words, then Aminta’s voice appeared. “They’re leaving, do you want me to follow them?”

“Yes,” Tim responded, massaging his temples. The whispers were getting louder now, to a point where it was impossible to understand any one message. It was hard when they got like this, harder than when they teamed up. At least then he didn’t feel like a helpless teacher in a rowdy classroom.

Maybe a minute ticked by before Aminta was back. “They just went a few rooftops away. Robin’s clutching Batman’s cape and crying, but it’s like angry crying. He’s mumbling something, but I can’t understand it. Batman’s rubbing his back, but he looks miserable too. Less angry, more sad.”

“That’ll be all, Aminta, thank you. You can return home tomorrow,” Tim sighed. “Our dear friend Tam has done us a favor, so we should be ready for the consequences.”

“What favor? Telling them everything?”

“Not everything. We still have an ace up our sleeve.”

“What advantage could we possibly have, other than knowing that they know?”

“Tam didn’t tell them about my little swim.”

Somewhere, there was a universe where Timothy Drake-Wayne woke up on the morning of his 18th birthday and put on a suit, ready for a day of meetings at whatever company he was interning for before he started college. Maybe he had a party with his family or a date that night. This is what Tim thought about as he busied himself getting ready. He had never been one for birthdays. Jack and Janet were rarely home, and even when they were in Gotham, they had better things to do than celebrate a child. He didn’t blame them. Before he came to the Cradle, he wasn’t worth celebrating.

The ornate mirror in his bathroom showcased his attire: a loose-fitting white shirt, tailored brown silk pants, and a dark green cape that almost resembled snakeskin. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, but he left them. They made the blue stand out. Here was the heir Ra’s had craved so badly. The old Tim would have made a joke about how he looked like a dark prince from a young adult novel, but not anymore. He was the Demon’s Head now. No, not just its head. He was its hands and heart as well. Tim Drake was a demon through and through.

His guests had landed in Iraq the day before, and he had it on good authority that he could expect them that evening.

Tim drifted around the room, preparing for the meeting as one would prepare for battle. His fingertips lingered on the rings he had inherited from his predecessor, and with a deliberate movement he chose the signet ring Ra’s used to wear. He slipped it on and smiled to himself, a snake poised to strike.

Carefully, he patted his wrists, hips, and ankles to ensure his knives were still there. He had always favored batarangs, but he was no longer a bat or a bird. He had left them behind, just as they had left him.

The White Ghost was waiting at his door, ready to escort him to his study. As they walked, Tim absentmindedly ran his thumb over his knuckles. The whispers hissed inaudibly in his ear, wailing for attention.

“Has the room been secured?” He asked, face neutral.

“Yes. I have placed ninjas along the walls and at every access point. Any familiar with the al Ghul child have been sent on missions abroad, though they remain loyal to you.”

“They leave here alive. If they attempt to attack, I want them subdued but not killed.”

“That’s not wise. It will be seen as a show of weakne-”

“Do you think I am weak?” Tim’s voice was as ice cold as he felt.

“No, of course not,” Fadir backpedaled. “But how can you justify it?”

“By the time I’m done, there will be no need to kill them. This is just a courtesy call, a reminder that my prior allegiances are no longer viable.”

Tim swept into the study, his back straight and his jaw square just the way he had always been taught. From birth, he had been raised to be a prince of Gotham, one of the many pretty boys in suits who graced Forbes covers before they could legally drink. He had been bred for greatness, and he achieved it in his own way. Here, no one would ever best him. He was finally free.

Soon you will have everything. All you have to do is make one order.

Tim’s hands shook slightly, but he tightened his grip on his fountain pen as he sat down. The day was full of reports, requests for missions, and invoices. He had been doing most of this paperwork anyway when he was just a lackey, so it wasn’t an inconvenience. It was methodical in its ruthlessness. $750k for a political assassination in France, 40% taken for the League, the rest wired to a private bank account in the Cayman Islands. $25k to kill a cheating spouse in South Africa, the same 40%, and this time headed for a Swiss bank account. A request for a league member to “take care of” an abuser, which Tim set aside. An invoice for new training blades, as the older ones had been dulled. A new Lazarus Pit that was discovered in Iceland.

The sun began to sink outside of his window, and Tim collected himself, drawing the last shards of who he used to be away from the surface. That Tim was dead and gone, and in his place was someone who was finally worthy. If the old Tim was a bleeding heart, this Tim was the knife that stabbed it.

Fadir knocked on the large oak door to signal that their guests had arrived. Tim pushed himself out from behind the desk, pulled back his shoulders, and stalked out of the room, refusing to look back. It wasn’t that he couldn’t show any weakness--it was that he wasn’t weak at all. Not anymore.

Tim walked down the now-familiar hallways, the whispers humming in happiness as others averted their eyes respectfully as he passed by. Aminta stood at the left hand of the large stone throne in the formal hall, and dipped her head in greeting when he approached. Tim took his place on the throne, relaxing into the smooth stone. Fadir took the right-hand side, his hand on his sword’s pommel at all times.

Ninjas lined the walls, all ready for battle at a moment’s notice. Most had been training for decades, long before Tim was even a thought. And now they served him. One lone ninja entered the room, first bowing to Tim and then scurrying up to the throne.

“They have arrived, sir.”

Tim grinned darkly.

“Bring them in.”

Dick looked older than he had eight months ago. His cowl was pulled up to hide his face, but Tim could see it in the set of his jaw. For a man in his late twenties, Dick looked positively weary.

Serves him right.

Damian was stiff, both an heir and a stranger in a child’s body. He glanced at the ninjas placed around the edge of the room, as if searching for a familiar face. He wouldn’t find one.

Tim did not smile when the man he had once considered his brother approached.

“Hello Dick. Damian.” His voice was colder than he ever thought it could be. “You can remove your masks, everyone here knows who you are.” Or they did now.

Dick hesitated for a fraction of a second, then pulled off the cowl. Damian followed suit with a grumble, peeling off his domino.

Satisfied, Tim smoothed a neutral expression onto his face.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” He asked, the words pleasant but the tone as sharp as a blade.

“Is this where you’ve been all this time?” Dick burst out without preamble. It was a shame that he couldn’t exchange pleasantries, even after all of Alfred’s lessons.

“Not exactly. I was in Paris for a bit, caught up with some old friends.” An old friend, one who probably hadn’t even noticed he was gone. None of them had.

You are powerful because you are alone. Others would betray you. You can trust no one. The whispers chimed in, though they were merely repeating what he already knew to be true.

Damian hissed his displeasure, which earned him an evil look from Dick. Look, he’d already been replaced.

“Tim,” Dick began in a gentle voice, the one he used for scared kids. “Come home. We can figure this out. We’ll get you help, maybe even try that therapist I told you about. Or we can shop around, it doesn’t matter. I miss you. I miss my little brother.”

How pathetic.

“Oh, I believe you misunderstood. This is a business meeting, not an intervention,” Tim hummed, examining his fingernails. The cold steel of the knives tucked in his sleeves was a delicious reminder of who he was, who he had always been destined to become.

“In that case, I believe some clarification is in order. Following the death of Ra’s al Ghul, I became the head of the League of Shadows, a position I am very proud of. I will not be returning to Gotham, unless it is for League business, and I will certainly never fight at your side again.

“In truth, Dick, I have not thought about you or your brat once since coming to stay at the League. I understand that our previous relationship may have led you to believe that I would be a naive fool forever, but that is not the case. I have found meaning now more than you could ever dream of achieving.

“Here is my proposition: I will cease training of any assassins younger than age sixteen immediately. I am also currently updating how the League accepts jobs to minimize the amount of innocent casualties. I will waive all rights to Wayne Enterprises, though anything Bruce willed to me will remain mine. In exchange, you leave me and my assassins alone. You will not contact me unless seeking my services. You can keep your Robin, but he lost his birthright a year ago. These are my conditions, and they are non-negotiable.”

The chatty Dick Grayson was speechless. Instead, it was Damian who spoke.

“You stole my birthright.” For a child, he sounded downright murderous.

Tim smiled. “And you stole mine. I believe that makes us even.”

The child nodded, then drew his sword. Along the walls, ninjas drew theirs as well.

“Damian, no!” Dick hissed, glaring at his brother-ward. “Tim, you can’t be serious. We’re family. This is insane!”

Tim’s expression did not display the glee that bubbled in his chest.

“We were family. But you know what they say, the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” He dismissed Dick’s other accusations with a wave of his hand. “I have given you my terms. You have forty-eight hours to make your decision. Until then, I believe you have overstayed your welcome. You should leave.”

Green pulled at the corners of his vision as the whispers shrieked, begging him to go ahead and kill them. He couldn’t, of course, that would just invite more prying eyes to the League. But he could think about it, and that was enough.

Dick and Damian were almost at the doors when Dick stopped and turned to face Tim, his posture teenagerishly defiant.

“I don’t know who you are anymore,” he spat, as if Dick Grayson had ever truly known Timothy Drake.

Instead, Tim smiled. “I’m the Demon. And you should leave before I make you see Hell.”

A second later, they were gone. Watching them go felt like getting an injection--the pinch lasted for a second, but afterward there was no pain at all.

Demon Demon Demon Demon Demon Demon Demon, the whispers howled as Tim’s blood sang, welcome to your kingdom come.

His hands had always been cold. Ariana used to comment on it all the time--how his touch was borderline freezing. At the time, it had been a running joke: Tim Drake, the boy made of snow, with eyes made of ice and snow-pale skin. It seemed now that even in the heat of the desert, his heart had frozen too.

Nighttime was comfortable in the desert, at least for someone accustomed to Gotham’s climate. Still, the breeze that danced across Tim’s skin left goosebumps in its wake. He couldn’t remember when he’d come out here, let alone what for. He barely even noticed how he gripped the banister of the balcony until his knuckles went stark white.

A little prickle of emotion prodded at his subconscious, but he couldn’t identify it even if he wanted to. There was no room for feelings anymore, if there had ever been. If anything, feelings had gotten him into more messes than out of them.

He had become a vigilante because he felt that Batman needed a Robin. He worshiped the ground Bruce walked on because he felt like Bruce saw him as a son. He broke the rules for Stephanie because he felt as if she could love him. He wanted to be with Conner because he felt that someone finally saw him for who he was. He rejected power time and time again because he felt that it was the right thing to do.

But feelings meant nothing. All that truly mattered was knowledge and wanting. And Tim knew more than ever. And he wanted it all.

Once, he had considered them his family. They had loved him, maybe, but they had never known him. He used to believe in a future spent fighting by their side, but he knew that was a child’s dream now--the same child who believed that he wouldn’t live to see twenty-one. Tim had no such concerns now.

He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that the League was his new family, nor did he need one. But they would not underestimate him or take him for granted. Here, he had respect and power, and that was enough.

The lights of the nearest city glimmered far on the horizon, promising happiness and gaiety somewhere in the night. He smiled, a secret only for him.

One day, you will rule it all, the whispers promised. One day, you will be king. And you will destroy any who stand in your way.

Long live the Demon.

#batfam #dc fanfic #batfam fanfic #batfam big bang 2020 #bbb 2020 #tim drake fanfic #tim drake #ra's al ghul #tam fox #no grave can hold my body down #ngchmbd #my writing #read the warnings

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rwbyremnants · 4 years ago

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NOTE: Working on more fics, I promise! For now I'm gonna try to not sleep on this one so much.

=Chapter 32

Fortunately, they only had to wait inside with Mrs. Nikos for about half an hour. She was quite accommodating and understanding, having heard from her husband how unreasonable Jacques had been when they confronted their daughters together - and hearing first-hand his shouting after them as they walked up the street scant minutes before. Most of the small town knew about the incident by now, and while a man might have sided with Jacques, few women would do the same. She had no problem providing Willow with tea and sympathy, and a handkerchief to bawl into.

The minute Pyrrha walked in the door, she knew something was wrong without even having to ask. But she did.

“What's wrong? What happened?”

Mrs. Nikos attempted to field the question herself, adjusting her spectacles. “The Schnees are having… a disagreement. Would you mind driving them to a motel or wherever they need to go, sweetie?”

“A disagreement?” Her friend swallowed hard. “Oh no… oh no, he got out.”

“What?”

“He did,” Mrs. Schnee answered for her, looking wearier by the moment. “And as much as I hate the idea of causing a scene, I can't put my daughter in danger. Not knowingly. If he could drug another poor girl once, send her after Weiss with a knife…”

Mrs. Nikos shook her head, red bob bouncing to and fro. Pyrrha definitely favored her father a bit more in terms of features and size, but the hair was unmistakable. “To think he could treat his own family that way! Absolutely disgraceful - and right here in Atlas Heights!”

“I know, Mom,” Pyrrha said calmly, even though Weiss could tell that she was extremely upset beneath the facade. “But he's hurt them more times in the past. I hate to see any family fall apart, but…”

“Mia zoí malákas!” She spat downward three times; Weiss and her mother were a little surprised, but Pyrrha merely nodded solemnly. “Not that I could believe that of my Nick, of course… but one can never be too careful.”

At their continued confusion, Pyrrha explained, “Old superstition - she's warding off the same evil happening to our family.”

“A-ah,” Willow stammered, not having been prepared for what a high society woman such as she would consider to be a display of extremely unladylike behavior. Weiss knew it probably wasn't unladylike in Mrs. Nikos' culture, of course, but her mother was even less worldly.

“Where will you go?" Pyrrha asked. "I mean… I'm sorry, I don't mean to ask too many questions, but…”

Mrs. Schnee waved that away. “It’s alright, dear. I think… well, maybe I'm presuming too much, but Kali once told me to come to her for anything I might need. And we were talking about my marriage, all the financials. So…”

“Oh! Oh, that's fine - I can definitely drive you there. What about your clothes and things? Do you want me to see if Mr. Schnee will let me in to collect-”

“NO!” When everyone else was surprised by Weiss’s outburst, she hurried to follow up with, “Pyrrha, this isn't your job. Besides, I'm worried he would take out his frustrations with us on you.”

Before she could protest, Pyrrha’s mother said, “Listen to her, kóri. Best to only go in there with more than one of you. It's safer. My God, I never thought I would have to say that about someone in this neighborhood…”

They bade Mrs. Nikos goodnight and piled into Pyrrha's car. The minute they had pulled away down the street, Weiss turned to look at the driver.

“Don't go to Kali's house.”

“What?” they both said.

“Not straight there. I don't want Father having you followed and leading him straight to us, or putting you in danger, like your mom said. You’ve already had to protect me once and that’s more than you ever should have.” She thought frantically. “Let's go to the Branwen's. Then Yang and her mother can take us to the Belladonna's. Just an… an extra, um…”

“A precaution,” her mother finished for her, nodding. She had to crane her neck to see her. “My smart daughter. It might not be necessary, but you're right; better safe than sorry.”

Pyrrha reached over and took up Weiss's hand, drawing her gaze as they came to a stop sign and paused there. “But I would gladly protect you again. I know you would do the same for me! But… oh, you're right. We shouldn't invite trouble when it can be avoided.”

So they did exactly as they planned. Weiss could see that her mother was growing more and more uncomfortable as they got deeper into the poorer part of town, but she was trying to pretend otherwise, maintaining light conversation about the weather and asking after Pyrrha's studies. The other two women were much better at small talk than Weiss was.

Her nerves spiked as they got closer to the Branwen house. Yang’s mother was decidedly no fan of hers, but she had been marginally more civil the last couple of times she visited, so maybe there was some hope.

“Both of you wait here,” she commanded them, reaching for the door handle. “This shouldn't take long. Either she'll help us, or she won't. Simple as that.”

“Be careful, sweetie,” her mother bade her as she slipped out of the car and walked up to the house.

Raven answered after the first knock. She rolled her eyes when she saw the young cheerleader on her doorstep, but made no other derisive comment or gesture - only stood back to let her into the house.

“Actually, we can't stay, Mrs. Branwen. I wondered if I could ask you or Yang for a favor?”

Her bottomless eyes narrowed further. “Like what? And who's ‘we’?”

“Well… it's a long story. The short version is, my father is out of jail and we'd like a ride to Kali's house because we don't want him to strangle us in our sleep.”

She had been expecting some kind of snarky comment, or at the very least a demand for further explanation. Instead, Raven nodded for a moment, then held up a finger before retreating into the house. Weiss was just beginning to worry that she had been ignored when the woman returned, jacket on and keys in hand. It wasn't the kind of coat the Dragons normally sported, but one of a red leather with black fur around the collar. Sunglasses were clipped to the breast pocket, almost as an afterthought.

“Mrs. Branwen? What- I mean, um, what about Yang?”

“This is a grown-up problem, girl. The grown-ups should handle it.” She headed straight for her rusty old car, barely pausing to call over her shoulder, “Whoever's coming had better hurry up. I ain't got all day.”

Pyrrha followed them back to Atlas Heights in her vehicle. Even though she privately thought her mother would be just as comfortable staying with her friend as riding with Raven, if not moreso, she came along, anyway. It was a fairly tense trip.

“He knocked you around?” she asked Willow without preamble.

“What? Oh… yes, I'm… I'm afraid so.”

“Both of you? And you just took it?”

“Raven!” Weiss hissed, unable to help herself. The glare of doom she saw in the rearview mirror made her rethink the action, but she stood her ground.

“Don't you sass me, girl. Grown women are talking.”

Before Weiss could reply, her mother held up a hand to signal that she could field the question herself. “It's fine. She's right; I should have done something about this situation long ago. But I… well, I convinced myself that keeping the peace within our family was more important than my own safety. I was wrong.”

“Damn right you were wrong. If my Taiyang had ever so much as tweaked my girl's nose wrong, I would have slit his throat. That goes for most mothers, I'd wager - and if I'm actually a better parent than you are, that's pretty sad.”

Again, Weiss wanted to argue with her, but this time she stopped herself. That was the most solid proof thus far that Raven wasn't quite the negligent parent that she seemed to be. Maybe this wasn't the time to shout her down. Though she certainly resolved to comfort her mother later, and assure her that she didn't think of her as a bad parent.

Not when they had her father to compare her to.

“Must we do this?” Willow asked in a shaking voice as they pulled into her own driveway. “Shouldn't we leave well enough alone for a while?”

Raven spared her a dark little smirk as she turned off the engine. “A highfalutin’ woman like you? Probably wouldn't last two days without her collection of lipsticks and pantyhose. No, we’d better do this now.”

The walk up to the front door seemed to last an eternity. Both Weiss and her mother were trembling, and she could feel her own palms were moist, stomach clenching in anticipation of another fight, or a shouting match… or worse.

It was Whitley who answered the door. He looked shocked enough to see his own family members, and yet more when he noticed the strange woman glaring down at him as if he had been spawned from a swamp.

“What-?”

“Excuse us.” Raven pushed her way past him without even waiting for him to finish a sentence. After only a second or two spent getting her bearings, she headed for the stairs. Weiss and her mother hurried to follow, the flustered boy tagging along at their heels.

“Your room?” When Weiss nodded, she stormed in and looked around. “Suitcase?”

“Up here, in the closet.” She went to get it herself, hoping that if she wasn’t completely useless she might earn some tiny shred of Raven’s respect. The woman started yanking open drawers, shoving her hands into piles of panties. “H-hey! Don’t touch those!”

Her lip curled as she tossed them unceremoniously into her bag. “Please. You have to be this tall to ride this roller coaster.” She held her hand out at the height that just happened to match that of her mother, and she snorted when she noticed. “Huh. Look at that.”

“Excuse me?” Willow breathed.

“Nothin'. Hurry up, Weiss.” Then she steered the older woman out of her room.

It took another few seconds for Weiss to snap out of her dazed state and begin to pack. They wouldn’t have much time; so far, they had been lucky that her father wasn’t around to interrupt their desperate grab for their personal effects. She focused on clothes first, then began to grab for school supplies, makeup, other things that could be easily picked up and moved. Lastly, she made sure to pluck from the bottom of her closet the single slipper that had lost its mate to her love, tucking it in the corner before she shut the case.

“Do you really think you two will get away with this?”

When she glanced up, it was to see her brother looking quite livid, fists clenched at his side. Sighing as she pulled the suitcase down from the bed to rest on the floor, she finally snapped, “Get away with what?”

“Abandoning Father when he needs us most!” he half-shouted, pasty little face livid. “You already got him thrown in prison, and he’s finally shown that he is willing to reason with you and Mother after all of this… and still you throw that back in his face?”

“Reason with- Whitley, he attacked us! There's nothing for us to feel sorry about - we had to protect ourselves!”

“Of course there is! If you hadn't been… well, you know! Hanging around those bad girls! Why would you keep doing that when you could simply do as Father says and… and ensure your future with the company, with this family? You're even crazier than I thought!”

Weiss had been prepared to hate Whitley for siding with their father. To lash out, to try and make him see reason. Instead, the most prominent emotion she felt… was pity.

“Oh, you poor little idiot.”

“I am not poor and I am not an idiot!” he snarled with a stomp of his foot.

“You are. You just don't know it yet.” As she began to haul the suitcase toward her doorway, she grunted, “You're still welcome to come with us instead of staying here with a dangerous lunatic. But I have a feeling you won't.”

Rolling his eyes, he folded his arms over his chest. “Don't be absurd.” When she kept going, he jogged a bit to catch up and asked, “Where will you be staying?”

“The Starlight Motel.” The lie felt disgusting in her mouth, but it was for their own safety. “Don't bother calling; we are staying under assumed names and asking not to be disturbed.”

“You would rather stay in a fleabag motel than with your own family?”

Narrowing her eyes at him, she hissed, “That man is not my family anymore.”

Then she walked into the hallway. Hers and Yang's mothers had yet to return; that was no surprise. Her mother always took forever to pack. It was one of the many and varied topics she and her husband argued about, nearly every time they took a vacation. Before her mother had stopped arguing and started drinking, of course.

“Thinking about raiding our good silver?”

“Shut up, Whitley.”

“This isn't over, you know,” he sighed in a would-be causal voice. The trembling gave away that he was much more frustrated than that, of course. “Father will make you come back. Or at least return these things you're stealing.”

Taken aback, she snapped, “They're my things! My clothes and books! And do you really expect me to believe you think this is Father's pantyhose in my suitcase?”

“Yes. Oh - well, not in that way!” he burst out in annoyance. “I meant that he paid for all these things and you know that!”

Weiss was about to argue about that, take him down a peg, when the older women emerged from the master bedroom. Two bags were packed - Weiss now wished she had done the same, but she had been trying to pack light and take only the bare necessities. Her mother obviously didn't agree with the same definition of “necessities”.

“...quite a shock at first,” Willow was saying as they approached. Were they actually talking? Raven and her mother?! “But, well… I don't have much room to throw stones in my glass house.”

“I keep telling you, that's not what I care about.” But the instant she saw Weiss standing there, she buttoned her lip. “Hmm.”

“Yes?” Weiss gently prompted.

“Nothing. You ready?”

“I am. Is… everything alright?”

Raven spared her mother a glance. They looked a little more at ease around each other now, which she found as confusing as encouraging. “Think so. Let's go before Willow tries to pack a tea set or something.”

As they descended the stairs, Weiss goggling at Yang's mother calling hers by name, the woman in question whispered, “Oh… the tea set…”

They had just put the second bag into Raven's trunk when another car pulled into the driveway. They were blocked in. Even worse was the man getting out of said car.

“Ah,” he said, face aglow with a self-satisfied smirk that Weiss found infuriating. “Already crawling back with your tail between your legs, eh, Willow? I might have known it wouldn't take long.”

“Jacques,” she said in a dignified voice, which did nothing to hide her obvious fear.

“Wait…” His eyes finally took in the way Raven was stashing the last suitcase and slamming the trunk door closed. “Who is this? What are- did you come back to burgle me? Can you really be that pathetic?”

Raising a hand as if already warding off an attack, his wife backed up until the car pressed into her rear. “We came for what is rightfully ours. Please just… don't cause a fuss.”

“This is absurd!” Weiss almost wanted to laugh at him using the same word choice his son had scant minutes ago. “You really mean to do this! To abandon everything we've built together over some petty squabble! Where will you even stay? With this, this… bitter hag?”

Though Raven’s jaw tightened, she made no other move and offered no word. Weiss had a feeling that was a lot clearer sign of danger than if she had replied.

“At the Starlight Motel,” Weiss repeated loudly, cutting off whatever her mother had been about to say. “And don't bother asking for us; we're using assumed names and… and told them…”

Her voice faded as he turned the withering glare upon her. A few quick steps took him into her personal space, and she felt her flesh crawling in disgust for a man she had once trusted to provide for her, to protect and guide her into adulthood.

“This is all your doing,” he growled into her face, sounding more like a beast than a man. “Poisoning my own wife against me, dividing our home in two. You and those people you fraternize with now, skulking around and doing God knows what! And we both know what you're doing with that Chinese girl!”

She wasn't sure where the moment of boldness came from. Straightening up to her full height, despite it still being half a foot shorter than that of her father, she hissed as sharply as possible, “We do know that, Father. I'm in love with her and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!”

All the color drained from his face as he stared, open mouth, at his youngest daughter. If nothing else, at least she had accomplished shutting the man up for once.

“You…” He ground back to life like a toy having just been wound up again. One of his hands clamped hard on her bicep. “Disgusting… ungrateful… degenerate! Going against God’s laws - the laws of nature! We'll see about that! You're going up to your room, and you're going to stay there until I come up to teach you some-”

His words suddenly cut off. At first, Weiss thought he simply ran out of things to say in his frustration with her. Then he took a step back, and she saw a hand clamped on his shoulder at least as hard as the one on her own bicep.

“Careful, Papa Schnee,” Raven told him in a low, rattling voice. “Don't forget that you aren't alone in your house anymore. People are watching.”

His eyes raised, glancing wildly around the neighborhood. No one was looking out of their windows, or staring from the sidewalk. “Who is ‘people’? You? Please. Some barren old maid who looks like Evil Kineval? I'll thank you to stay out of things that are none of your concern.”

“Look again.”

Even Weiss had to do a double-take to notice what Raven was talking about. Two cars were parked on the other side of the street, their drivers staring intently at the Schnee household. Pyrrha and Kali - her personal knights in shining armor. Though Pyrrha looked a little bit more scared, Kali was filled with grim determination. Even as they stared, the latter's door opened and one of her high heels extended to rest on the pavement, ready to sprint toward the house at a moment's notice.

“You really think I'm scared of a bunch of women?” he scoffed, turning back to look at Weiss as if there had been no interruption. “I've seen the inside of a prison. Nothing you can do can compare with the atrocities I saw there.”

“Really?”

A loud click filled the air between them. When both Weiss and her father looked around, it was to see a prominent bulge in Raven's jacket pocket. Only a truly innocent lamb could mistake it for anything other than…

“A gun?!” she hissed at her. “Again?!”

“Why does everybody act so surprised that I have this and am ready to use it?”

Jacques flicked his beady eyes between the pocket and Raven's passively determined expression. He licked his lips, finally lowering his hand from Weiss's bicep to clench at his side. “It's a bluff. You're bluffing; I've never heard of a woman carrying around a pistol in all my life.”

“Keep threatening my daughter's girlfriend and you'll call my bluff,” she growled in a purely murderous tone, despite the cold smile on her lips. “Nobody gets to do that but me.”

Weiss wanted to sigh but decided she shouldn't.

“Jacques,” Willow set in a firmer tone than Weiss remembered hearing from her. “Please be reasonable. We just want to leave in one piece. Don't be stubborn and get someone hurt. Please?”

To drive home the point, Raven added, “I haven't even decided for sure that I won't shoot you if you do back off. Men like you make me sick. Really not smart to push me right now.”

“I'll have the police haul you in,” he growled angrily, his cheeks beginning to flush with redness due to the sheer levels of anger he was reaching. “You won't get away with threatening me! Do you have any idea who I am? How much power I have in this city?”

“Do you have any idea how little I care? Stop trying to impress me with the size of your piece and go away. I guarantee mine is bigger.”

Never before in her life had Weiss seen her father look so flustered and - to echo Raven's sentiments - impotent before. He glanced toward the front door, where Whitley was watching with an open mouth and an anxious expression, and again at the two women watching from their cars. By now, Kali had exited her vehicle and had one arm resting on the open door. Weiss cautiously retreated to stand next to her mother, silently reaching down to clasp her hand in solidarity. She felt the fingers flex and latch onto her own hard.

“Yes, I see, I see,” he muttered. “Battle of the sexes, is it? Well… we'll see about this. Yes, we will.” Glaring down at Weiss, he hissed in a venomous tone, “You have no idea how much worse I can make your life, ungrateful child.”

“Yes, we do. And we've had enough.” She pointed at the house with a shaking limb and said, “Go, Father. Just go.”

He went. Even though he looked like he had a million more things to shout at them, he seemed to realize that they no longer wanted to listen. His steps toward the front door were sure and swift - Whitley had to jump out of the way to avoid being mowed down in his determination.

Their mother hesitated for a moment, watching Whitley's worried expression. Then she took a step toward the house. “Come with us, son. I don't want to leave you in his care. I really don't! But I won’t force you.”

“Mother…” He sighed, lowering his eyes. Though he looked as if he regretted it, he turned and went back inside the house, pulling the door closed behind him. Weiss had a sneaking suspicion that at least some of what she had said to him sank in, but he wasn't ready to fully believe it yet.

“Glad that's over,” Raven snorted. There was a distant clicking in her pocket again; uncocking her pistol, most likely. “Some men have heads full of sawdust, I swear to-”

The rest of her sentence was cut off by Willow throwing her arms around her, squeezing with all of her might. Weiss took a step backward in shock. The next emotion that flared up in her was pure worry; Raven wasn't exactly a touchy-feely kind of person. How would she react?

“Oh, thank you so much!” Willow breathed urgently against her shoulder. “That was terrifying, and you were so… calm, and made him listen, and you… I've never seen such a strong woman before! Standing up to a man like him!”

The only thing that could have been more surprising would be if Raven embraced her back. Which was exactly what she did - only patting her in the middle of her back with one hand, but it was still more than Weiss expected. She looked mostly wide-eyed and confused. “No big deal.”

“But it is!” She drew back and kissed Raven on either cheek. Privately, Weiss knew that she was just being sociable in the same way she would have with the ladies at the Country Club, but was amused when she realized how it might come across to Raven instead. “How can I ever repay you?”

Sure enough, for just a moment, there was a slight bashfulness in Yang's mother's expression. The shy grin spoke volumes. “Honestly, don't mention it. Ever again.”

“Well, well, you two look cozy.” They had been so wrapped up in the various events that they didn't even hear Kali approach. Her own features were a curious mixture of bemusement and irritation.

“Kali!” Raven gasped - proving that she had completely forgotten she was even there. “This isn't- I mean, I only came to help them get their stuff from the creep in there. That's it, I promise.”

Smirking as she folded her arms over her chest, the Belladonna matriarch needled her, “Never could resist a blonde in distress, could you? But it's all right. You handled that really well and I'm proud of you.”

Her smile was obviously pleased, despite her response being, “Like I care if you're proud or not. But thanks for the backup.”

“Wait,” Willow asked, “you know each other?”

“Boy, does she know me,” Raven half-purred, and Kali rolled her eyes.

“I hate to interrupt this… whatever this is,” Pyrrha announced in a nervous voice, even though none of them had noticed her approach, either, “but I think we should go to Mrs. Belladonna's house before we continue this conversation. I don't like knowing he's in there, watching us like this.”

Their eyes turned as one to the house just in time to see one of the upstairs curtains be wrenched shut. Raven grunted under her breath, “Good idea. Don't want the cops to arrive and find me with this piece in my pocket.”

As they went to their separate cars, Willow asked her, “So you weren't kidding? That's really a gun in your pocket, not just a bluff? I didn't even know women could buy guns!”

“Of course we can. Not that I bought it through strictly legal channels…” She started the car and glanced at the two platinum-haired women in her passenger seats. “You did good. Maybe… I was wrong about you, Little Schnee.”

That was about the most glowing praise Weiss could ever hope to receive from Raven, and she couldn't help the huge grin that broke out across her face. It made the older woman grimace and turn back around.

“How are we going to get out?” Willow asked. “Jacques boxed us in.”

“Did he?”

The next several seconds were like something out of a movie. Raven threw her car into gear, nearly plowed into the fence, then cut the steering wheel hard so she would reverse into the front yard around her father's car. Deep gouges were left into the grass and earth that would take a groundskeeper many hours to fix. As if an intentional finishing touch, she backed over the mailbox before winding up on the road again, shifting into drive and taking off at top speed.

That was fine with Weiss. She hated being boxed in.

“Oh, our mailbox…” After a brief second, Willow turned to nervously say, “But it's fine! I… we can buy another!”

“Who is ‘we’? Thought you were done living with that walking pile of dog shit.”

Simple as that statement was, it shattered the excitement for the two Schnee women and left them with nothing but melancholy and regrets. A chapter in their life had ended forever, leaving only an uncertain future looming on the horizon through the cracked windshield of Raven Branwen’s old rusty Dodge.

#princess and the dragons #freezerburn fanfic #1950s au #rwby fanfiction #rwbyremnants

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anxiousmoodlet · 5 years ago

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𝕎𝕪𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕟 𝔹𝕦𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕤 for @eeriesims‘ The Many Suitors of One Clary Wiggins

The world isn’t kind to demons. Wyvern grew up being called all sorts of names: Devil-spawn, son of Hell, Infernal fiend, the fruit of Lilith’s rotten womb... you know, the usual stuff. Only his mother possessed horns and leathery wings however, his father was perfectly human. A Daughter of Torment wandered free from the bowels of Hell, so that little Wyvern might be born upon the shores of Glimmerbrook. Though his mother now frequents Eternal Damnation more than she does the Living Realm, and his father is nowhere to be seen, Wyvern has done all he can to build and maintain a life in the only place he’s ever known.

Read more for Wyvern’s full biography!

ℕ𝕒𝕞𝕖: Wyvern Burroughs 𝔹𝕚𝕣𝕥𝕙𝕕𝕒𝕪/𝔸𝕘𝕖: 18/10/1991 — 28 years old 𝕊𝕡𝕖𝕔𝕚𝕖𝕤: Demonspawn (he’s essentially a tiefling ok) ℍ𝕖𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥: 6′1 𝕊𝕖𝕩𝕦𝕒𝕝 𝕆𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟: Pansexual 𝔾𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣/ℙ𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕤: Male — He/him 𝕆𝕔𝕔𝕦𝕡𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕚𝕟 𝔾𝕝𝕚𝕞𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕓𝕣𝕠𝕠𝕜: GBPD Detective

ℕ𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕟𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤:

𝕎𝕪𝕝𝕚𝕖 — A shortened version of Wyvern he adopted very early on, introduces himself as this.

𝕃𝕚𝕥𝕥𝕝𝕖 𝕎𝕪𝕣𝕞 — His mother’s pet name for him.

𝔻𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝔻. — Stands for “Devil Detective”, his GBPD partner calls him this.

𝔽𝕦𝕟 𝕃𝕚𝕥𝕥𝕝𝕖 𝕋𝕚𝕕𝕓𝕚𝕥𝕤:

1. “No one can ever know I play the violin, all right?” — Wyvern plays the violin. In fact, he plays the violin quite well. His mother always had a fondness for human music, it was one of the only aspects of their culture she could appreciate. After trialling piano, guitar, and a brief stint with the harp, Wyvern stuck with the violin and took lessons at his mother’s behest well in to his late teens. He still plays sometimes, it’s very melancholy when he does.

2. “I promise, I’m not as scary as I look.” — Wyvern starts almost every conversation with the “Demon Disclaimer,” a spiel about how he isn’t going to devour your soul or curse you for eternity. Even in Glimmerbrook, where supernatural creatures are abundant, he likes to make sure. It’s also one of the reasons he decided to join the police force, so that he could be seen to be doing good. It took a long time to earn that trust and the badge that came with it though, he had the longest officer internship of anyone in GBPD’s history.

3. “There’s no way I’m missing the midnight viewing.” — Wyvern is a bit of a huge movie nerd. He’ll watch any genre so long as it’s well-written and creatively shot, but his favourites lie with 80′s horror classics and cheesy 90′s car chase scenes. He’s also been known to enjoy the odd romantic-comedy when the mood strikes him, but will boast that he can predict them scene-for-scene. That being said, the ending of La La Land made him cry like a little bitch. Didn’t see that one coming, huh Wylie?

4. “There’s a line where the sea meets the sky, it calls me— I’m joking.” — Cheesy Moana reference aside, Wyvern has a bad case of wanderlust. He’s been in Glimmerbrook all his life, and he’s always wanted to see more of the world... but why leave the place you’ve worked so hard to make your home? He's terrified of being met with rejection if he were to so much as dip his toes in adventure. A demonspawn can’t just stroll down any old street, or so he believes. His self-doubt is quiet, but boy oh boy, it’s real.

5. “Just five more minutes, okay?” — Wyvern loves nothing more than his bed. He has to set at least five alarms to get up in the morning, just so he can snooze them all and then leap out of bed with ten minutes to spare. He’s been known to doze at his desk in the precinct on quiet days, and sleep well in to the late afternoon on his days off. Attempts to instil healthier habits with morning jogs, fridge planners and social outings have all done little to help him.

6. “No, no. It’s not me that you want.”— Wyvern has had very limited romantic interactions throughout his life. Well, he’s had very limited meaningful romantic interactions. Though the man’s not shy of the old Netflix and chill by any stretch of the imagination, he more-often-than-not never lets anything progress past that point. That fear of rejection kicks in every single time: who could love a demonspawn? He’s had one serious relationship in the past, and it ended with him breaking it off when things were getting too real.

7. “Hey, I got us a round of tequila!”— Maybe it’s the demonic genes, but Wyvern can drink. As much as he enjoys a cold pint with his partner after work, he also enjoys slamming back Sambuca shots and ending the night asleep on the beach. He’s an incredibly volatile drunk. Fiercely protective of his social group, but also quick to misunderstand the conversation and take offence. Any issues are usually remedied with hugs and drawling “I love you guys.”

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕀𝕞𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕥 ℚ𝕦𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕤

➊ ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕕𝕚𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕞𝕖𝕖𝕥 ℂ𝕝𝕒𝕣𝕪? “Oh, it was really lame. We were in the general store, and she did that thing, you know. She was in front of me in the queue, but I only had a coffee to pay for, and she had a whole bunch of stuff... so, she let me go first. Real sweet of her. We talked about the weather a little, she said my coffee smelt good. I remember, she said it was a little too late in the day for her to be having coffee, but she really fancied one now. I've never wanted to give up my coffee to someone more than I did then.”

➋ 𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝕚𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕠𝕗 ℂ𝕝𝕒𝕣𝕪? “She was like a breeze, you know? I forgot I had horns and yellow eyes for a second. Her hair was kind of messy like she’d had a busy afternoon, and there were loads of fresh fruit in her shopping cart, she was like this slice of wholesome. Normally new people in Glimmerbrook terrify me, but not her.”

➌ 𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕚𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕝 𝕕𝕒𝕥𝕖? “I like doing something a little silly, because I think if you can’t be silly with someone, then you’re doomed. Karaoke is my favourite first date — we don’t even have to go up and sing! But just in that easy-going environment, having a laugh, shouting over the tone-deaf performers because we'd rather fight the music than not have a conversation, you know?”

➍ 𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥'𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕝 𝕣𝕖𝕝𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕡? “Effortlessness. I know that sounds daft, because all good things need to be worked for, and all that jazz... but I think my ideal relationship would be something so natural and easy, that we forget we have to work at it even when times get tough. Just having someone to reach— equilibrium with, you know? I know it takes time to get to that point, but I just want to know that it’s possible. It would be so worth waiting for.”

“Bonus points for someone who doesn’t mind kicking my ass out of bed in the morning.”

➎ 𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥'𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖? “Oh boy, all right. I have some serious trust issues, but not for lack of trying to resolve them. I can’t help but view everybody around me with a sort of air of uncertainty, and I suppose that makes me come off a little standoffish. It’s just that I so badly want people to have a positive opinion of me, that I spend the majority of my time being terrified that they don’t. I swear, I’m going to drive myself mad with it one day.”

“I’ve been told I use humour as a defence mechanism. Whenever the conversation is stilted, or I sense any kind of awkwardness: I’ll crack a joke. If someone asks me a serious question, or how I am: I’ll crack a joke. It’s second-nature at this point, and I swear it’s stemmed from wanting to make people smile. It also helps with the whole detective shtick, but that’s besides the point.”

“I loosen up around friends though, it’s not all so dreary! I still like to think I’m the sharp-witted, funny one, but it becomes less deflective. I’m also really protective of the people I love, foaming-at-the-mouth-crazy sort of protective. I know, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea... but there aren’t very many people who are willing to let me be that close to them, and there’s no way I’m going to let anything hurt those people.”

#themanysuitors #eeriesims

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9ofspades · 5 years ago

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The biggest problem in the Hole Problem Discourse TM is the paradigm of moral absolutism on tumblr. Anyone trying to label or pigeonhole Simone as a “good” or “bad” person is missing the point of the entire show.

We’ve seen in the past few episodes that no character on this entire show is fully incapable of changing. Eleanor changed to be a better person. Jason grew as a person and learned restraint. Michael had been torturing people for thousands of years and got to the point where he was willing to sacrifice himself to save the four humans. Hell, even Eleanor’s mom changed and became a decent parent.

The Judge’s tests showed that Chidi was still indecisive, Tahani was still focused on what people thought of her, and Jason was still way too impulsive towards the end of season 2. Michael’s argument, which the Judge and the entire show support, was that a one-time test to see how good a person any given human is at the time, based on the choices they made, was a terrible way of evaluating a human’s moral worth given how complicated and ever-evolving humans are.

Deciding to abandon Brent in the hole is one decision, much like the Judge’s tests. The show has established time and time again that humans are not “good” or “bad” based on one decision they make in their lives, no matter how important.

Admittedly, some people in the Discourse aren’t arguing that Simone is a good or bad person, but rather that she didn’t actually change or confront her character flaws during the experiment, which would absolutely negatively affect her point total based on The Good Place’s moral system. That’s a fair point.

There is a lot of blue sky, to use Marc Evan Jackson’s phrase, between being a “good” person and a “bad” person. Eleanor spends the entire first season arguing this: The idea that you have to be one-in-a-million levels of good or else you spend eternity being tortured is fundamentally flawed. (Even though pre-redemption Eleanor was kind of an objectively bad person, the point stands) In the Hole Problem, Chidi’s choice sets him apart by making him one of the one-in-a-million people who would actually have risked his soul to help a... toilet full of broccoli. That doesn’t mean that anyone who didn’t choose the same thing is automatically a bad person. The world isn’t divided into “saints” and “bad people”; there is absolutely a universe of grey in-between. If you wouldn’t run into a burning building to save a child, you aren’t necessarily a “bad person”; you are just a person who didn’t make the most selfless moral choice in that particular moment. It’s what you choose to do or become throughout your entire life that might maybe come close to determining where you fall on the good/bad spectrum.

Simone is operating by a different moral system than Chidi and the people who are saying she’s a “bad person”, and while Chidi is mature enough as a philosopher to recognize and respect that, most of the naysayers on tumblr are not.

By his own particular moral standards, Chidi was absolutely doing the right thing in that particular moment.

However, from a utilitarian perspective, all Chidi actually accomplished was to hurt both Simone and himself, a negative net effect. He made a good choice with the absolute best of intentions. I would personally argue that this is a reason why Chidi deserves to be in the Real Good Place. But the perspective that Chidi made the wrong decision is also valid: While the sentiment was nice, Chidi didn’t actually help Brent out of the hole. He accomplished nothing on that front. Moreover, he landed himself in the hole and inconvenienced Michael & Co, who then had to save him; and his rigid moral philosophy caused him to break up with Simone, who likely thought she would never see him again and that he would end up being tortured for eternity. The net impact of his actions could easily have done more harm than good, even if most of us adopt him as a sweet being too good and pure for this world. (Luckily this was all an experiment, Simone’s probably going to see Chidi again at some point, and Chidi might have actually saved all of humanity from being tortured.)

Simone, by contrast, was running with the high probability of saving both herself and John, as opposed to the mere possibility of saving Brent, which, even if it had been successful, might have doomed all four of them in the process. From a rational choice perspective, if they had actually been in hell, her choice might have led to more net good -- Brent was probably doomed anyway, so the main difference was just whether she was tortured along with him. This might not have been her actual rationale, but from that perspective she was making the only rational choice available to her.

It can easily be argued based on what we saw of the accounting office in Season 3 that Simone’s actions ended in net good, since they directly resulted in Chidi being able to speak to Brent alone about what a terrible person he was, and Brent finally having the time and space to process that and feel remorse. So from that perspective, Simone technically did a good deed as well by leaving Brent in the hole.

(There are numerous possibilities for what Simone was thinking, and there are multiple systems under which she could have been making an ethical decision. The point is not to argue for which one, or to try to ascribe motives to her, but rather to point out that Chidi’s and Michael’s brands of ethics are not the only brands of ethics in this world, even if they are in the world of The Good Place, so it’s entirely premature to try to classify even just Simone’s decision as objectively, inarguably “good” or “bad” based on those ethical frameworks, let alone Simone herself as a person.)

Another possible key distinction here is between preventative and retributive justice.

Some people are arguing that the only possible moral decision would have been to save Brent, because he couldn’t have actually harmed any of them without systematic privilege on his side; the worst he could do was to try to fight them or say terrible things to them. That’s coming from the perspective that the only valid form of justice is to prevent bad things from happening in the future. Which kind of goes against the whole premise of a Bad Place. But regardless of whether that’s wrong or right according to the show, that is only one possible perspective on morality, justice, and punishment.

An alternative perspective is that it is one’s moral duty to leave Brent in the hole so that he can be punished for his actions. We’ve seen throughout the season that Brent has not done a single good deed either on earth or during his year in the afterlife, with some exceptions (picking up a fork for a waiter, holding a door for someone, both of which were for the purpose of getting into the “Best Place”). He didn’t have Eleanor’s excuse of having to fend for himself his entire childhood, having grown up in a place of wealth and privilege, and he also actively hurt people through gross negligence and apathy and a fundamental lack of self-awareness. If you’re coming at it from a retributive perspective, he absolutely deserves to be punished for the life - and year-long experimental afterlife - that he lived, and trying to save him from that violates principles of justice and is the wrong thing to do.

Admittedly, John has also done terrible things in his life, and it’s possible that Simone feels she has a few skeletons in her closet; the moral duty in those cases might be for both of them to stay so they can be punished as well. In this case, they’re still choosing to make the selfish decision to save themselves even if it goes against principles of justice, but, hey, pobody’s nerfect. No absolute philosophical framework can be followed exactly, which is why they’re more like guiding principles you strive for than actual laws you have to follow 24/7. Simone might be making a mistake here even according to that philosophical framework, but it isn’t an irredeemable one.

While Chidi disagrees as much as humanly possible with Simone’s decision, he ultimately doesn’t tell her off, try to explain ethics to her, or tell her that she’s a bad person. Instead, he just says, “I respect your position”. This isn’t him being passive or polite. He genuinely recognizes that Simone holds a different philosophical position from him, and that while his particular brand of ethics would say that Simone is being wrong and bad, his ethical viewpoint is not universal and it isn’t his place to judge all other people in the world by it. He recognizes that different brands of ethics exist, that it’s possible to lead a good or ethical life doing something a Kantian would morally forbid, and that he is not the sole judge of morality. Simone isn’t a “bad person” because she did something that Chidi and the Soul Squad disagreed with. She’s simply operating under a different moral perspective.

It’s fairly safe to say that people saying Simone is a bad person for abandoning Brent would believe Chidi is doing the right thing and being a good person. And that most of us want to be more like Chidi in that particular instance. To do that, though, we all have to have the humility and philosophical understanding that ours is not the only valid viewpoint, and that things that oppose our tenets of morality are not objectively “good” or “bad”. This nuance is the entire point of The Good Place, after all. Let’s do what the show wanted us to do all along, and come at these messy philosophical quandaries from a place of questioning and empathy instead of knee-jerk judgment and condemnation.

#the good place #season four #the good place spoilers #season four spoilers #The Hole problem #simone #discourse #Chidi #absolutism #categorical imperative #kant #Brent #the Simone discourse #philosophy #moral philosophy #ethics

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lov3nerdstuff · 5 years ago

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Echo {Part 2}

*Tom Hiddleston x OFC*

~ Part 1 ~

Part: 2/2

Words: 3..9k

Warnings: metaphors, many of them…

Request: Could you do a story of a woman who is in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have their relationship as a priority and when they are at a cafe or bar, Tom notices her and how beautiful she is and strikes up a conversation while her boyfriend went outside to answer his call from work. Not sure how you want to end it but I’ll leave that up to you! :) By @fkmaldonado

Summary: Tom rescues a young woman from an abusive relationship by doing nothing more and nothing less than falling in love with her.

A.N.: This is the second part 💗✨ there’s some more really deep thoughts and a lot of allegorical talk in here… If anyone wants to have a chat with me about it, I’d be very happy to hear your thoughts 😊💚

______________________________

As Tom sat back down in the armchair with neither grace nor effort, his mind was going faster than light, than sound, than matter. How was it possible that he missed her already? Echo… she certainly had left within him just what her name promised. An inevitable spark, an echo of herself. He couldn’t stop thinking about her even if he tried. However the biggest riddle was, to him, how someone like her could EVER end up with someone like that man… Why she didn’t just tell him off, didn’t just leave… How someone like her didn’t remotely get what she deserved. And in Tom’s eyes, she deserved so much more… He would devoutly sacrifice the universe at her feet, and that realization left him speechless in its intensity.

He, Thomas William Hiddleston, had fallen in love with a stranger. A girl loyal to another man. Over one single conversation. And that thought was way scarier than the people around him, the indifference, the intensity of the world.

He let out a long breath, closing his eyes for a moment. He might quite possibly never see her again, and maybe that was for the better. Tom considered himself to be a decent man, and a decent man did not long for something he couldn’t have. The thought left a painful sting in his chest, and a deep frown on his face. How was it that every emotion seemed to he more intense, every sensation more raw and every second longer when one was experiencing sadness? Or pain? The depth of his emotions scared him, but he also wouldn’t want to miss them now. Echo had been right, people were repelled by depth. And for her sake, Tom wouldn’t allow himself to be.

A few minutes passed as he just stared at the fire to his right. The gentle licking and the graceful dance of the flames calmed his mind back down to a rather manageable pace, yet he still felt deeply shook by his own being. Humanity was ineffable indeed, and this was a prime example of it. He didn’t know why he felt what he felt, he didn’t know if it was right or wrong or if there was even such a thing. The world wasn’t black and white after all, and there were seldomly things universally good or bad. Only societal norms and expectations.

With a sigh he picked up the newspaper once more, looking at the drawing with a sad smile. It really was breathtakingly intricate. The missing faces made it all the more interesting, really, and… Tom frowned. There was a single person with a face, now… His own face. Echo really had gotten all his features on point, both in detail and in expression.

The smile that came onto his lips was a cooling relief to his sadness infused mind, as his eyes scanned the drawing for even more newly added details. If he had learned anything about Echo at all in their little moment together, it was that she was clever. Brilliant even, a mind like no other.

And he found what he was looking for fairly quickly, but really only because he’d been looking for it in the first place. Very subtly hidden sets of numbers, always together in a pair at one place, hidden in the drawing. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he fetched the pen from the other end of the table and wrote the numbers down on a napkin in their right order.

Echo had given him her phone number, in the knowledge that the newspaper would stay behind, and in the certainty that he would find it. Oh, she was beyond brilliant indeed.

_______________

Tom took both the napkin and the newspaper home with him when he left the coffee shop in the evening. To his great luck, his venture home was a dry one and he didn’t have to concern himself with the problems of drenched paper. What he did concern himself with however, even after he had long arrived home and gone to bed, was the inevitable WHY… Why had Echo given him her number? Obviously she deemed him intriguing, she had expressed that subtly enough for him and only him to notice after all.

And that exactly is what kept Tom awake that night, the torn feeling, the war within himself. He wouldn’t fool himself in attempting to pretend that he wasn’t completely drawn in by Echo, fascinated and enchanted by her very being. But he also knew what he would be getting himself into if he contacted her, what he would be getting HER into…

If it had only stayed at this privilege of their one conversation, and she would have left for good tonight, Tom would be fine with suppressing this horrendously strong inclination until it would fade with time… if it would at all.

But she WANTED him to contact her… to mess up his perfectly calm and harmonious life, and to drag them both into an eternal spiral of which he didn’t know yet if it would lead them up or down indeed. So he was stuck with the WHY… and the deep down knowledge that there was no right or wrong thing. Only a thing worth fighting for.

_______________

The following three days, Tom was a mess. On the inside at least, he couldn’t allow himself to be anything other than a friendly calm on the outside after all. A life in the spotlight required for him to keep his thoughts to himself, his emotions and troubles, and to sort through them on his own in the occasional solitude he was granted. It was all the more ironic, he realized now, that neither Echo nor her boyfriend had seemed to recognize him from anywhere, and honestly he was grateful for that on both ends. Fame was, like indifference, an inherent enemy of meaningful conversation. When people asked him what he was scared of, they wanted to hear ‘spiders’ rather than 'my own imagination’. Few understood such thoughts, and even fewer could relate.

Echo had not once left his waking and dreaming thought, not once had her eyes ceased to haunt him or her voice to enchant him. That was the thing about being alive in his reality, really… One unlearned to forget, to look away, to be indifferent. So he was doomed to relive their conversation in every detail, in his mind, at all times. And he wanted more.

Yet, in utter contradiction of his own own being, he still hadn’t made his mind up if he would contact her. So he found himself sitting on his couch on Friday night, yet again, staring at the napkin with her phone number on his coffee table. He’d been here before, and been scared before. Of the things this would mean for him and his understanding of his own person. Would a good man do this? There wasn’t such a thing as good. Moral, maybe? Was it a selfish or a selfless motivation that made him want to free her from her so obviously abusive relationship? She wouldn’t have given him her number if she didn’t want him to call indeed… but what else would she want from him? What would he be able to give her?

Echo… The question it came down to for Tom, the question it always comes down to, was which would be the bigger torture in the end: possibly regretting the life he will have led, or regretting not having lived at all. Oh, and Tom wanted to live, and to be alive. No 'what if…?’.

He typed Echo’s number into his phone before he would allow himself to change his mind. The silence between the ringing was more deafening than the sounds, it even drowned out the silence of his own home and the frantic beating of his heart.

“Hello?” Echo’s soft voice brought his heartbeat back to his ears with a start.

“Hello Echo… Uh, this is Tom.” He started, running a hand through his hair in a vain attempt to calm his nerves down. There was so much he wanted to say at once, and yet nothing that he should be saying.

“Meet me at Waterloo in thirty minutes. Can you do that, Tom?” She asked as calmly as if it wasn’t odd at all, as if they hadn’t spent mere fifteen minutes talking, followed by a week of not talking at all.

“Yeah, sure.” He replied without even having to think. He wanted to see her, and there was no reason that could prevent him from allowing himself to do so.

“Alright.” She replied with a smile in her voice that made Tom smile in return, then she hung up.

Tom hung up as well, and his phone told him that it was precisely a quarter after eleven at night. He would definitely need those thirty minutes to get to Waterloo, and to make his heart stop its race with his mind. Yet, with its strong beating, the tingles of his entire body, the cold night air hitting his skin as he stepped outside a minute later… He felt intensely and passionately alive.

_______________

Tom spotted Echo before he even had to make an effort to find her, really. As usual for London, not even the night time could really prevent the crowds, especially not on a Friday. But Echo was fairly easy to spot, and Tom wondered if it was her looks or her belonging to his level of world that made her stand out to him so much.

“Hey.” He said as calmly as his heart allowed him once he approached her with a small smile. “Here I am.”

“Hello Tom. Thank you, for coming.” She returned his smile, eyes sparkling and bright and Tom’s heart sighed. Seeing her happy was WAY better than this version of her that had dominated their parting.

“You summon me and I comply. Seems to be a reappearing theme.” He chuckled, watching her slow smirk with the greatest joy. They started walking towards jubilee gardens, sauntering really, aimless in their destination.

“I didn’t think you would call.” Echo said with a sigh after a while of silence. She had dug her hands deep into the pockets of her leather jacket, and Tom wondered if she would be cold wearing only that thin thing and a fluffy scarf. It was below freezing point, after all…

“I didn’t think I would either.” He replied honestly, shrugging a little as he watched her face with curiosity as he talked. “I wasn’t sure if it would be the right thing to do, and I’m still not sure about it.”

“Why would it be wrong, in conclusion?” She frowned with a smile.

“Because your boyfriend… husband?… boyfriend, didn’t seem too fond of me spending time with you. And I would hate being a cause of trouble for you.”

“Oh… that.” She sighed, the smile falling from her face in accordance with Tom’s heart. “Boyfriend, luckily.”

“You don’t seem particularly happy about it, if I may say that…” Tom tried, ignoring the whole bucket of emotions he was dipping his fingertips into. “Doesn’t he mind that you meet up with a strange man in the middle of the night?”

“Oh, he only ever minded when he needed me himself, really.” She laughed sadly, causing Tom to frown. They made their way down to Westminster Bridge, and the wind picked up both speed and force, making Echo shiver and Tom’s frown deepen.

“Is that why he left you alone in the coffee shop for so long?” He asked carefully, somewhat trying not to snoop too much.

“Yeah… He can be nice, I guess, asked me out and the sorts. But somehow there just always ended up being something more important than me. It’s usually his work, or his friends… or anything, really.” She sighed, shrugging a little as she looked over the city lights reflecting on the unruly surface of the river below them.

“What’s he working as?” Tom asked, feeling like this was the least painful question.

“He’s a jobber. A rather bad one though.” She laughed almost lightly and Tom had to smile as well, as he watched her watching the city lights. “What’s your work, Tom?”

He had to suppress a laugh, and a too broad smirk. It’s been a while since someone had seriously asked him that. “Uh, I’m an actor.”

“Oh, I love movies, and especially adore plays!” She sighed again, smiling to herself. “Unfortunately I haven’t been able to see much of either in the last years… He doesn’t like that kind of entertainment, really… and I stopped going to the theater alone after a while of hearing him complain.”

“That’s too bad… There have been some lovely productions lately. Maybe we could try to catch up, together. Sometime.” He gave her a soft smile, probably looking like a lovesick puppy. But what was he to do about it, really?

“I’d love that.” She smiled back, and they walked on over the bridge towards St. James’ Park.

“What are you doing for a living?” He asked curiously.

“I’m an illustrator.” She smiled, then smirked at Tom. “Could’ve guessed, after watching me draw…”

“I could have indeed.” He laughed, scratching his eyebrow with a slightly flustered expression. “Your drawing was remarkable, really. Absolutely beautiful. I kept it. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Don’t make me sign it for you.” She winked at Tom and he had to laugh even more. “I was just doodling, really. I’m gonna give you a nicer one some time.”

“I was proud of this one nonetheless. I was the only one with a face after all!”

“You’re the only person who has intrigued me.” She smiled to herself, watching how she kicked some wet, wilting leaves out of her way.

“I do feel very flattered, but I believe that wasn’t a real accomplishment, not in that coffee shop. Most people weren’t even part of our world.” He chuckled, probably walking a little too close to her to be considered appropriate. But Echo was like a natural force he found himself unable to resist. He wondered how anyone could.

“I haven’t ever before met anyone who is part of my world, Tom. Some people may peek inside, stand in the door frame so to speak, but they will inevitably turn around and bang that door shut, lock it and throw the key into the abyss of oblivion.” She stopped walking and looked straight at Tom, her eyes locked with his. “And yet you didn’t even come near that door. Because you came in through your own, maybe even long before me. And now we stand here, together alone in our own world.”

Tom didn’t know what to say, a million words on his mind and yet an aching emptiness on his lips. So he reached out slowly, carefully, taking Echo’s hand in his and intertwining their fingers very gently. She didn’t pull away, only holding onto his hand tightly in return. And in that moment, in this one touch, Tom knew what coming alive felt like.

_______________

They walked in silence for a while, crossing over into Green Park, while still holding hands. Maybe this was inappropriate, maybe it was wrong… but there was no one to judge the rightness of his actions but Tom himself. And to him, being with Echo was the most right thing he had ever done.

“I adore how you talk in metaphors…” He finally said, with a small smile.

“You do it too.” Echo chuckled. “Words are our greatest tool to express our own complexity, our thoughts and emotions… I think writers and poets are so good at it because they learned to use language in a way that makes people feel what they need to feel. They paint a clear picture for the audience that makes them understand. And metaphors are a great way to do that, I think.”

“So you think we all should be a little more like the poets back in the day?” His smile broadened at the thought that he had dwelled on ever so often.

“I think we should learn to use language like they did. Might make the world a better place if people actually talked to each other, and listened in return.” She shrugged a little, brushing her thumb over Tom’s knuckles and thereby causing a pleasant shiver to run down his spine.

“I couldn’t agree more.” He sighed, then stayed quiet for a moment. “I wonder, where does HE lay in your metaphorical map of multitudes?”

Echo sighed softly, tightening her hold on his hand a little, which yet again caused a wave of inappropriate pride in Tom’s emotional well. “Can’t you just let him be? He’s really not worth your thought.”

“I’m afraid I cannot.” He replied quietly, looking down to the small pebbles on the path they were following. Maybe the well of his emotions was an ocean indeed. “I’m sorry.”

“What would you be sorry for?” She inquired with the same quiet voice, yet also with a passionate curiosity that might just drive Tom insane.

“For falling in love with you.” He replied honestly, easily, as if it was a natural thing to say. “Too soon, too quickly and definitely too intensely.” Maybe it was, with her.

“Are you sorry for loving me, really? Or sorry for yourself because you think you cannot have me?” She asked with a small smile, again brushing her thumb over his knuckles. This was a great question.

“I could never be sorry for loving you, Echo. There is no one who deserves it more, and nothing anyone could do to change that. But neither am I sorry for myself, not really.” He explained easily, minorly surprised by how easy it was to express to her what he felt, what he thought. “I’m sorry for putting you in a situation where you need to make a choice.”

“Don’t be sorry, Thomas.” Echo smiled at him softly for a moment, not saying anything more until they had crossed Piccadilly and made their way into Hyde Park.

“I believe I need to make something right.” She finally mused, looking at Tom almost apologetically. “Would you mind if we sat down for a moment?”

“Of course not.” He returned with a small smile, letting Echo lead him towards a bench close to the water. It was terribly cold, really, but he wouldn’t complain for a single second he got to spend with this enchanting creature.

“You asked where HE was situated in my map of multitudes… Would you really like to hear the entire story?” She asked as she sat down on the bench with her legs crossed beneath her, body facing Tom.

“If you are willing to tell me.” He replied quietly, with a half smile. “I have spent quite a few hours wondering what he has done to deserve your company, your love even, I must admit.”

Echo smiled to herself, almost flustered as she looked down to her lap for a moment and then back at Tom with a serious expression. “He never had my love. But I only see that now, unfortunately.”

Upon Tom’s frown, she continued. “Remember how I said people lock the door between my world, our world, and theirs? Well, it has always been like that for me. People never came in, never found interest in the world that was such a big part of me. And eventually I started standing in front of this door, waiting for someone to open it up, to let me peek into their world. I was so alone in mine, desperate for someone, anyone, to end my isolation. Then he came along and opened the door… and he was the first to not lock it right back up. He left it open for me to cross into his world, their world.”

“So you left your own world behind in an attempt to find happiness in his?”

“Yeah…” She sighed sadly. “I did, in the desperate hope to be loved. But I wasn’t. It was a trap; one I was stupid enough to run into with open arms. He didn’t leave the door open because of me, you know… He opened every fucking door he could find and waited for someone, anyone, as stupid as me to walk through it. It’s easy to fall in love with the idea of being loved. Even more so when no one has ever loved you before.”

“I’m sorry.” Tom replied quietly, well aware that he might just be the first person Echo ever told this to. “Why didn’t you leave once you realized that his world was harmful to you? That he didn’t love you?”

“I tried to get back into my own world a few times, but the door was always locked.” She shrugged, giving him a sad half smile that just broke Tom’s heart. “I spent years peaking through the keyhole and dreaming of returning one day… Until you came along, opening the door and holding it open for me.”

“I’m very glad I did.” He smiled back adoringly, letting Echo take his hand once more with a small leap of his heart. “Are you back in your world now?”

“In our world. Yeah.” She grinned, so full of happiness that it made Tom feel happy in return.

“What about the door? And about him?”

“Gone for good. Since the day I met you. A shadow on the wall that will fade with time. I’m sorry, I really should have told you before.”

“Don’t be sorry, Echo.” He mirrored her words from before. “Why did you feel like you couldn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to feel like you had hurt anyone.” She shrugged, gently playing with his fingers on her knee. “Or like you had done something 'bad’… I needed you to hear the metaphor before hearing that I left him.”

“Because you don’t want me to know that it’s my fault?”

“It is not your fault, Tom.” She frowned at him, her gaze bearing an intensity that reached the depth of his being. “You showed me that I’m not alone in my world, and that our world’s love burns so much brighter than theirs. And that I don’t have to be loved despite the way I am, but need to be loved for the way I am. It’s not a fault that you saved me.”

“And you got all of that out of one conversation?” He asked with a small smile, positively overwhelmed by the new perspective. Instinctively he pulled her a little closer, holding tightly onto her without any intention to ever let go again. Echo, to him, was the peak of what it meant to be truly alive. And oh, they would be SO alive together…

“You fell in love with me over one conversation.” She smirked, her face so close to his that he felt the gentle heat of her skin on his own. “Can’t I do the same?”

“Fall in love with me, or yourself?” Tom smiled, chilled lips almost touching Echo’s.

“Exactly.”

______________________________

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devil-kindred · 4 years ago

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death stranding adventures- final

I finished Death Stranding!

A recap on the events through the end of the game + my thoughts as they occurred below the cut! Beware spoilers if you haven’t played the game!

- left port knot with the order for fragile and found myself looking at a sea of the blob BTs- not exactly a joyous moment. I finally figured out why they look familiar though! They resemble the Portuguese man o’war! Which makes sense in keeping with the beached/aquatic creature theme given: the fish that show up after you defeat the catchers, the catchers themselves, THE WHALE, the little floating crabs, etc. The lions don’t fit the theme obviously, but I chalk that up to them being more of a Higgs thing? Since he’s the reason you encounter one in the first place.

- I got Sam through the floating BT minefield without too much trouble by hugging the moutainside and using the rifle to take out the ones that were closest to make a path. After that, there was a brief reprieve and then I had to fight a catcher BT. Did that then the normal BTs appeared once I progressed a little further. Made it past that, then rushed through mule territory and then, more BTs. This time 4-5 lion BTs (i don’t remember which but I know it was more than 3 because I thought I was done and then about got Sam stomped on by the one that I missed). Finally finished that and got a TON of chiral crystals for my trouble which was admittedly kinda nice, though my thoughts were mostly “please just let me finish this delivery T_T” by that point.

- Continued the trek to the Capitol Knot City and noticed the sky had changed from a color I refer to as “tornado green” to this very ominous red shade. Not a good sign, followed by rumbling noises that made a even worse sign. Nearly to the city gate (as in maybe the length of one of the bridges you can build level close) and then. A whale. Falls. Out of the sky. ._. Guessed it was time for round whatever number I was on at this point and once again, Sam with the standard reaction to weird BTs goes “what the fuck”. My thoughts exactly at this point.

- Climbed onto whatever thing that emerged from the tar was closest and then clambered onto a building that appeared. Was helped once again (as I was with the previous fights) by a ghostly Sam that lobbed all sorts of neat useful things my way, most importantly two grenade launchers and a multi rocket launcher. Thank you ghostly Sam! I would’ve been doomed without your help. Defeated the whale, collected more chiral crystals, then FINALLY made it to capitol knot.

- Delivered the items to Fragile who looked... really not well. I was concerned there was going to be another loss, but Sam waved a cryptobiote in front of her face and she woke up. Prior to Sam walking up to he, Mama/Lockne ran over and tried to hug him which Sam was (understandably) having absolutely none of but at least he was kinda gentle when he stopped her.

- They explained the whole thing that happened and how Fragile was essentially bounced back from Amelie’s beach and that she wanted Sam to go to her. So they have a long convo about how Sam needs to go and has to find a way to stop her, but also understand that he might not be able to come back. Pretty sobering, but ok. He and Fragile do the forehead touch (which I know helps but it’s so cute, I can’t) and she tells him to picture Amelie’s beach and feel the connection to her. Fragile does the same “I know you love her” thing as the first time and Sam gets sent over to the beach. Fragile looked very sad, chiral allergy tears aside. Which, given that she probably considered him a friend by this point, fits since there’s no guarantee he’ll come back let alone be able to stop Amelie.

- Elsewhere, on Amelie’s beach things are... not looking good. There’s dead sea creatures everywhere, the water’s red, and the sun thing looks like it’s going to turn everything on the beach into smoldering ashes any second. Sam finally finds Amelie after running around for a while and she reveals she’s an EE, which he already technically knew thanks to Higgs. Amelie explains a bunch of stuff and tells Sam to make a choice: stay with her and watch the world end (no thanks) or stop her. Sam pulls the gun which does no good and upon following her, gets a prompt to hug her. He does and they both get super emotional (which is in turn making ME get emotional) and then Amelie shoves him away.

- Sam plummets into the ocean and somehow gets bounced back to his own beach. Where he’s blue? For some reason. I don’t think it’s a tint because everything else on the beach looked the same colors it always was in prior sequences. He’s the only thing that’s not. Which, there is a reason for I’m sure. Anyways.

- Cue running along the beach for eternity a good while with Sam stopping every so often to sit down and catch his breath as well as reflect on what Amelie told him. Which was a lot. She explained that she and Bridget are one and the same, a separation of Ka and Ha that managed to coexist. She also says she got bored of waiting for the end and decided to bring about the extinction early and, while I can understand that’s her purpose as an EE, way to say fuck humanity I guess.

- In between more running and resting, it’s revealed that Sam is the BB Cliff (aka Mr. Combat Veteran) was looking for. His son. (Which you find out kinda after fighting him for the third? time.) Sam was apparently an experiement and a potential sacrifice (man this game gets dark fast) for something. Die-Hardman- aka John- told Cliff as much in less words and instructed him to take his son and run. Cliff does and bad things ensue when he gets cornered. John/Die-Hardman was given the order to shoot Cliff and when he refused to Bridget/Amelie made him, quite literally, by grabbing his hand and making him pull the trigger. My thought process during these has bacially centered around “wow Bridget is awful” but add the swearing of your choice to that sentence. Basically, I do not feel charitable towards Ms. Extinction Entity.

- Cliff took BB Sam out of the pod at some point and when Bridget shot him via using John/Die-Hardman as a puppet, she also shot BB Sam. Upon realizing this, she freaks out. Which is understandable given that she just killed a man and a baby. But what did she think was going to happen? That Cliff would throw his teeny baby son across the room when she pulled the trigger? What exactly was her expectation here?

- So BB Sam died and went to the beach. Or was it his own beach? They all start to blur together a little after a while. Amelie finds the BB, which is blue because it’s not breathing (ooh hey maybe that’s why adult Sam is blue? ... but my understanding is when Fragile jumped him to Amelie’s beach, all of him went— not just his soul. So maybe not? Is it symbolic? Am I just looking too hard into this?) and does infant cpr (I think?) and lo and behold, BB Sam is brought back to life! She tells him she knows the way home and puts him in the ocean. & in upsetting the balance of life and death, she made him a repatriate

- Once again back on the beach, Sam decides he’s had enough of being stuck there and remembers the gun and Amelie’s words that “a gun won’t help you here but it still has a role to play” and decides to use it as a way to end the beach cycle. There’s a click and then the title “Death Stranding”. I was very confused at first and just kind of stared at the tv like “that’s it? All that for—“ and then a little button prompt showed up on the bottom with the words “reconnect with the living”. Push the button and oh look, Sam’s still alive (Which is very much a joyous moment for me as a concerned player)! He tries again a few times and realizes it doesn’t work, then hears a very familiar song. Following the sound he finds little BB handprints in the sand and following those leads him to some familiar voices.

- Amelie/Bridget shows up again, this time in white as opposed to her signature red (i know there’s symbolism in that change, maybe rebirth? or just signifying that she’s trying to be on humanity’s side of things this time around?) and tells him that he still has ties to the living and then points at the five figures floating in the sky⏤ presumably meant to represent Deadman, Mama, Lockne, Heartman, and Lou. Or is it Deadman, Mama/Lockne, Heartman, Lou, and Die-Hardman? Following that, various voices belonging to those mentioned above remark that they can see him and just need to bring him back. Sam winds up in the ocean again (i’m finishing up this post almost a week after beating the game so my memory is tad iffy on the exact way things happened) and is greeted with the sight of Deadman holding Lou in her little pod while he’s got his hand around Sam’s ankle.

- They manage to bring him back to the land of the living and what follows is a fair amount of cutscenes. In the absence of Bridget/Amelie/Samantha ‘America’ Strand (the woman who never existed), Die-Hardman takes up the mantle of president (good for him!). He reveals his face to the crowd (and presumably everyone watching from... wherever they may be) and starts talking about the unsung hero none of this would’ve been possible without... which is about the time Sam, who’s been hanging out in the very back of the room (mood), decides to bail (also a mood). He slows a little when Die-Hardman says the hero doesn’t need to be named, they all know who it is and they’re all for grateful for their efforts. He keeps walking and exits into the hall and wow, BRIDGES buildings are a lot bigger than you’d think from looking at the outside which is large in general but inside is... a lot.

- Deadman catches up with him and drops some information about Die-Hardman aka John. Which I think Sam already knew due to the sequence while trapped on the beach but oh well. Sam continues down the hall and tries to pass Die-Hardman who appeared from somewhere? I’m going to guess parts of the facility loop or there was a change in scenery and I just wasn’t paying enough attention. He confesses information about his past, including how he got his name, and kinda has an emotional breakdown which made me very sad for him and increased the number of times i cried while playing this game. Sam gives Die-Hardman/John back his gun and repeats Amelie/Bridget’s words and leaves.

- Sam goes to leave the building and runs into Deadman again who hands over Lou’s pod and... Lou’s dead. Which was very depressing and the knowledge of which hurt. A lot. Deadman tells him to take Lou to the incinerator and takes Sam’s cuffs offline while giving some useful information: his location is undetectable by BRIDGES while his cuffs are offline and they will automatically reconnect to the network when he uses the incinerator. Sam nods, gives Deadman a hug and tells him “thanks for everything”. Which is more than a thank you, it’s a good-bye and kojima has now broken my heart into five billion pieces. Sam departs, gets out the big door, and... oh hey, Fragile!

- They chat briefly, during which she reveals that she’s carrying on her father’s legacy and that Fragile Express now has a private contract with BRIDGES and they’re the first independent company to have it. Good for them! She comments on Lou (I think) and remarks that he at least shouldn’t need an umbrella. Then asks him if he’d work for her. Sam says no and explains how he felt when he first began his journey and reveals he still feels that way (and now i’m even more sad! let’s take the five billion pieces that are my heart and just shove them in blender at this point, why not!). Fragile is upset and I think she tried to stop him again but he left anyways.

- Thus begins the trek to the incinerator with BB’s Theme playing on the way there (it’s a wonder i could even see the tv at this point as the ending just keeps hammering the sad nail home). Finally made it to the incinerator taking the same path I did on the first visit (thanks Igor for the tools!) and Sam enters the building, takes off his cuffs and sets both those and Lou’s pod down on the incinerator before he remembers Deadman’s words. He snatches Lou’s pod back just in time and the slab descends into the floor, the doors seal shut, and turn his cuffs into ashes. It’s revealed that Sam took Lou out of the pod and not much has changed. He tries infant cpr and hearing his words the entire time literally had me sobbing. Sam says “come on baby’ and he’s crying (i’m crying and now the blended pieces of my heart are being run over by a steam-roller) until he finally gives up... and then... Lou lives! There are a bunch of baby BT’s floating nearby in the incinerator which is a little concerning, but hey Lou’s alive! Sam cradles little Lou to his chest and she’s so tiny⏤ her little skull is barely the size of his palm! Anyways, Sam and Lou walk outside and it starts to rain... but the sun is shining, the rain causes no harm to him or Lou (or Sam’s clothing) and a rainbow appears. The first normal rainbow in the entire game. Which is a good sign, I think? The title screen appears once more and woo! I beat the game!

This was a very unique and fun game, and I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it. Between the music, the environment, the characters, and all the lore you can uncover by reading Sam’s mail... it was an amazing experience. I still have some trophies I’m missing and I think I only need 10 more to platinum the game so I’ll be playing chapter 15 for a little while longer. Plus I want to rebuild all the roads + find all the memory chips. I do want to replay the game in it’s entirety sometime just to see what i pick up on ahead of time the second go-around. And, while I may have beat the game, this is going to be another one of my forever fandoms. I don’t have much contributed right now, but I hope to have more things posted soon now that I know the whole story. if anyone ever wants to chat about the game, fic, or anything, feel free to send me a message!

#ds adventures #death stranding spoilers #siren yells into the void #death stranding

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