#and neither of them are human and both of them are older than language itself

[whumpitisthen]

Actually talking about dreams reminded me that i had a dream with Grim before he even had a name or was even a character of mine!! I can't believe i forgot about that the only reason i even know about it is bc i found some old text messages where i talked about it and it must have been such a defining moment i decided i must share it with someone at 03:40 am

Reporting from the future, according to past me: "the god of death visited me in my dream" and "he was very fun" and "he sang to me in latin". I also thought it was an omen but wasn't sure if it was a good or bad one. I also said "hes a trickster ofc hed love to visit you and scare you" (to friend i was messaging). Thats literally just Grim. Like all of this fits him except he looks a little different today; like his hair isn't pale blond its just white, and his eyes aren't dark but red, but i guess. They can be dark. At the same time. He visited me before he even existed and that's a little freaky tbh i hope he visits again soon

This does help answer a question thats been bothering me since the parley happened which is what language do him and his majesty speak? And auden for that matter. Bc ofc i write in English but other languages do exist still, and both grim and the lord speak most languages (so the interpreters weren't even rly needed with the humans) but that doesn't mean they just speak english bc i write in english bc that seems unfitting to me.. now ive decided they just speak latin in reality. Or some other form of lost language no one else speaks. That or if they are speaking to someone else, then they speak the language the person they are talking to speaks. Same with the Doctor actually, since it "talks" in people's thoughts, and whatever it says is interpreted in a way unique to each individual, so if its communicating with a Spanish speaking person for example then that person would hear its words in spanish bc thats what they understand and thats the filter their brain interprets things through. But it doesn't rly talk it just kinda beams its own thoughts into people, so it technically speaks all languages, but also doesn't speak any.

[omi-papus]

Concept I pulled out of my ass while trying not to pass out in the micro:

A couple of fanon interpretations of the architects have the idea that they have genetic children, (whether by insemination, something about spores I think, and literally just raw DNA depends on the creator) but they don't give birth, and they don't have partnerships between the parents, they also don't care for their children themselves. That's left to specific qualified caretakers and essentially no member of the equation knows who it is they shared genes with, neither do they care

Now. Present day. No architects save for one are left. Robin and Al-An have been traversing the home world for years and have yet to find sight of any survivors. They find records of what was apparently an evacuation effort to get as many of the children out of the planet as possible, apparently not all were able to be boarded, and they learn that one child was intentionally left behind. The file is too corrupted to get the explanation as to why. They assume said child has already dead, and Al-An is too afraid of facing any more disappointment, but Robin pushes him along, encouraging him to try and find it.

And above all odds they do. Its consciousness is stored in a faulty terminal and it luckily they can get a body for it rather quickly, but due to time and resource availability. They are forced to give it a body that's much smaller. Smaller than even Robin. Al-An claims it to be a couple of decades old, around 98, and to Robin it appears to hold the mannerisms and behavior of a twelve-year-old. It's initially scared and untrusting, and it only begins to trust them somewhat when it seems that they made it a body and that it has nowhere else to go. It can't speak any human languages, being far less apt than Al-An, but it can speak some architect. Both Al-An and it can communicate, and he senses that there'is something it's not telling him. The network is gone, so these two cant read each other's thoughts, so they are stuck as they are. This is why the brooding doesn't actually recognize Al-An in any meaningful way. It can tell he's an older architect, but nothing more. Al-An recognizes this insecurity and, after a long period of trust building, mostly between him and it, Robin being a presence he feels uncomfortable with. Al-An decides to sit it down and explain to it who he really is. Why things are the way that they are, and why he is here now. 

The broodling remains frozen for a second and without warning emediatly attacks him. Al-An has no problem stopping him. And begs for its forgiveness and in the midst of it screaming and crying, falling over its own legs, repeating itself in its rage induced misery, tells him “It is your genes that made them choose to leave me here!” Before running off.

Al-An doesn't understand. He stands there still for way too long, and it's only when Robin shakes him to get out of his stupor, that he manages to whisper.

“That is my offspring…”

He can't face it. Al-An has never even thought about this being before, and cant believe the chances of ever meeting it like this. The guilt swallows him whole as he realizes that his failure was not only known throughout the network, but that they deemed his very being so repulsive that they left an innocent child to die only in the name of culling his bloodline. He does not expect it to forgive him, and he is terrified by the very notion of being a genuen father. He was never meant to be. He doesn't even know who the mother was. It was just something all architects where instructed to do at one point. He's scared and remorseful and yet, even now more than ever before, so desperate to hold it close, to keep it safe and tell it he loves it more than anything. But he can't bring himself to follow after.

And Robin does not plan to let that stand. She's going to get those two back together if it kills her. And she isn't going to tell either of them… but she doesn't want to think about Al-An having a family with somebody else. She deep down wants the kid to accept her too.

[flowerprincesscherryblossom]

us

pairing: Min Yoonji x Kim Namjoo x Female Reader word count: 1313 warnings: angst, fem!myg, fem!knj, polyamory, sexting, explicit language, dirty talk, mommy kink, brat reader AO3 A/N: Hope you like it and that you have a wonderful day wherever you are💜

What does one get when combining two girlfriends who spend the large majority of the day at work, so much so that sometimes you go weeks without seeing them, with a girl who spends the large majority of her time at home and gets bored easily? You get a needy you.

Sure, it wasn't a first-world problem, and you were probably making it a bigger deal than it actually was, but you couldn't help feel the way you did.

In the beginning, when you first heard that both Yoonji and Namjoo had gotten the job of their dreams you had extremely excited, giving both girls long hugs and insisting that a celebration was a must. In the beginning, they would invite you into their studios for the simple reason of wanting to spend time with you, sometimes while in the studios you would even sit on their laps. In the beginning, the older women would try their damnedest to be with you, no matter how tired or overworked they were, and you were more than happy to take care of them.

But it wasn't like that anymore.

Now, they barely made an effort to see you, much less talk to you. Now, whenever you were at their studio Yoonji and Namjoo didn't acknowledge your presence. One time you had even left without warning after hours of sitting on the couch in the studio, bored out of your mind and annoyed that they had invited you only to act as if you weren't even there.

The worst part about that day was that they hadn't even checked in on you until hours later, and it was only to know if you had had dinner and were already in bed.

You also didn't want to be that person who made everything about sex, but your relationship has been like that for a couple of months now and it was leaving you incredibly frustrated.

At first, whenever you felt horny you simply took care of it yourself, not wanting to disturb the girls, but slowly you stopped doing, there was only so much usage you could get out of your hands and toys before you started to miss the human touch you so desperately needed.

At one point you even felt jealous because you started speculating that Namjoo and Yoonji actually did fuck each other when they needed a break from the frustration of producing all day, something that made sense to you since they had been together for a couple of years before you had joined them and worked together, but that didn't stop the feeling of hurt that attached itself to you.

You missed everything about them, from their kisses to the way their skin felt against your fingertips.

You took all of this but yesterday had been your breaking point, you had tried again and again for them to at the very least talk to you but nothing had worked, so you had come up with a plan that would hopefully work in your favor.

As soon as you had woken up you got out of bed and strolled around the apartment, wanting to confirm that neither of your girlfriends were around.

Afterward, you went back to the bedroom, put on a white babydoll, their favorite on you, Namjoo would sometimes even say that it was because it gave you an air of innocence, and then you grabbed your phone and lay on the bed, doing various tantalizing poses.

You waited until you were eating breakfast - read brunch - to finally sent everything through the group chat the three of you shared, choosing the best pictures, the final one being a close-up of your clothed pussy with your hand inside your panties, giving the impression that you were fingering yourself before recording yourself where you gave your best pornstar moans.

Afterward, you resumed eating, a smug smile appearing on your face with every notification ping that came out of your phone.

Once you were finished you finally decided to check your messages and the grin on your face couldn't have been wider.

After letting a couple more minutes pass you finally decided to answer them.

Namjoo's dominating voice could be heard through the words, making you feel the familiar sting between your thighs just from reading them. You took a few minutes to recompose yourself before answering, the replies coming not long after.

At the mention of work, you felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped on you, but you weren't ready to throw in the towel just yet. You still had a trick up your sleeve, a somewhat old picture that you never to them.

You almost let your phone fall out of your hands at the disappointment you felt. You knew that your girlfriends had worked hard to be where they were now but after being pushed to the side over and over again for the last couple of months, your anger and frustration spoke louder than any reasonable thought you had.

You tapped on the voice message, already knowing what to expect from Namjoo. "Listen closely little one, either you stop this shit right now or I'll make sure to spank your ass so much and so hard that you won't be able to graze it on a chair, much less sit on it. Am I clear?" You simply rolled your eyes, knowing the words were nothing but empty promises.

It was a loaded question you asked, you knew that which is why you had taken a deep breath before asking it, but as the anger you felt inside was replaced with sorrow, the tears streaming freely down on your face, you couldn't stop yourself, you wanted to know if their feelings for you had changed but they were too stubborn to admit it.

The whole polyamory thing had been entirely new to all three of you, all previous relationships had been monogamous, but after meeting them you had fallen for them very quickly, a sentiment that had been reciprocated, so, not long after, all three of you had decided unanimously to take a plunge and see where this new type of relationship would lead.

The beginning had been amazing but it wasn't like that anymore.

Yoonji and Namjoo have known each other and have been dating for far longer than either of them have been with you, that's why, in your mind, if the relationship was to fall apart, you'd be the one to leave, a thought that had been slowly growing in the back of mind that started taking over every cell in your brain once it started to feel like they were pushing you away.

You had been wallowing in misery for quite some time that you didn't have the strength to reply to any of their messages, simply staring at the screen as message bubble after message bubble kept coming.

As you read through Namjoo's words more tears streamed down on your face, almost as if it were spring water. You cried so much that you started to feel a continuous pain in your head, leaving you with barely any energy to do anything else other than wanting to sleep for as long as possible until it disappeared.

You sent a final message to them, not wanting to worry your girlfriends with more of this conversation, one that left everyone hurt in the end.

You ignored Yoonji's message and turned off your phone, leaving it in the kitchen as you moved towards the bedroom the three of you shared.

You threw yourself on top of the sheets, not bothering to get under them, you just wanted to forget this day had even happened in the first place.

As the drowsiness started taking over your bones, your last thought turned towards Namjoo and Yoonji, making you wish even more that they were with you.

[dcwnthercbbithcle]

Basics of the DBD mermaid!AU or the murmaids as I've been calling them.

You don't turn into a murmaid, at least, not in any typical sense, there is a curse at play when it come to the Entity driving the creation of the murmaids, among other horrors, in order to continue sustaining its existence beneath the sea. However, by and large, the curse of the Entity and the Entity's power has come to form less of a chokehold on Earth's Oceans over time as the human and animal fear of the ocean has lessened.

The Entity, at least per my murmaid AU, rather than feeding off the fear of people in itself, feeds off of the human and animal fear of the great ocean, its depths, its horrors and what exactly occurs in the depths where sun cannot shine. But as humans do, the more we explore, the less afraid we become, the more the absurd becomes commonplace.

People still fear the ocean, obviously, that's a given, but it's far less than in years before when information was scarcer and the world seemed like a comparatively much smaller place.

The souls that are/were/will be the murmaids are made up EXCLUSIVELY those who were in other verses were either killers or survivors in its realm. Logic on this is still out, god knows I've already put more than enough thought into this, but for the sake of argument. There ARE humans, far, far more humans than murmaids, anyone who was in the realm? Murmaid, even if they've technically been 'voided' in canon or are considered dead*

(*adding that, technically, survivors in the murmaid verse do have murmaid families that birthed them, but it's not a direct drag and drop from canon. Genes aren't working through science, they're working with magic and the fact that I'm not willing to draw out family trees with survivors. Just do know they were created, and born rather than shaped through magic itself )

Anyways! Back to the murmaids. Killer!murmaids are an entirely different, more old-god-esc species of murmaids compared to the survivors. Killer!murmaids were born from purely magic, and, if the Entity doesn't kill them, can become kaiju-esc storm causing monstrosities in time. They exist to feed into the fear of the ocean, being those horrifying creatures on maps to stir up horrific storms, drag men into the depths and all around remind people why you don't mess with the ocean. The older a killer is, at least in respect to the time they were added to DBD (and/or how much the Entity favors them), the larger and more powerful they are.

They do not inherently get along with Survivor!murmaids and often victimize and target them as a source of food, though the Killer!murmaids need to eat is purely psychological rather than physical.

Killer!murmaids are all, at least to some extent, aware of their purpose both in existing and the grand scheme of the ocean and earths foodchain. They don't always commune with the Entity, and I don't blame them, Entity can't change its nature. But there is no question that they are neither animal or man, they are magic and a force of nature and it can ABSOLUTELY get to their heads.

Likewise, Killer!murmaids tend not to be social creatures, only ever seeming to bond with each other or live a solitary and reclusive lifestyle. Though there are always exceptions to this rule.

Meanwhile the survivors, they're uhhh, they're less ENGROSSED in the magic that is going down with the Entity and just as much subject to the torment and sacrifice by the Killer!murmaids as normal humans are.

Survivor!murmaids are the poor fuckers that live in the ocean, simply put, they have no grand place in the Entity's design, at least, not in any capacity where their individual identities are of importance.

Their species, diets, etc. vary wildly based on their location, but by and large, there is one constant that all are highly-intelligent, highly-social and somewhat alien humanoids that have all the workings of a human race, down to language, but it's nothing more than similar evolution and the fact the Entity was working from a human design.

Most live in Pods or groups of between 2-50 and tend to live along the coastlines, though shun human intervention and activity as though it were the plague because of outstanding aggression from land-dwelling species (as humans and animals tend to do! no one wants to be a rich man's rug or a bear's dinner)

Some are exclusively man-eating and carnivorous while others can be exclusively herbivorous and peaceful. Depends on the group and the identity of the survivor in question.

While there is a vast spectrum of different physical needs and natures to the Survivor!murmaids, one commonly witnessed fact is that REGARDLESS of their individual needs, they seem to avoid targetting each other unless in a starvation scenario and will often adopt each other into groups despite social, cultural, etc. differences. (i.e herbivorous!Claudette is absolutely chilling with man-eater!Doe) almost as though on some level they seem to understand that there is safety in numbers especially in the face of greater threats.

Almost none of them are aware of the Entity or capable of venturing into the deep ocean where it resides, barring a couple exceptions. (Vittorio, Haddie, etc. you get the feel!)

Survivor!murmaids seem incapable of venturing onto land or 'transforming' as it were into more human forms. Killer!murmaids, depending on the individual in question, however seem adept at this so long as to fuel the Entity's goals.

Both Killer! and Survivor!murmaids only and exclusively occur in the ocean, no fresh water fishies here, I'm afraid!

[callgespenst]

I recently finished watching Space Runaway Ideon (1980) and movies, and that most certainly lived up to its reputation as one of the shows of all time. I’ve been thinking about it for the last week, and some of my thoughts follow. Spoilers, obviously, abound.

- Anyone who tells you to skip the last episode and skip to the second movie should not be trusted. The first movie’s a bit of a mess, for sure, but it re-contextualizes the first two cours in a way that leads in really well to the second movie. And the second movie, if you watch the last episode beforehand, you know when the original series ends so you can brace yourself for when shit REALLY starts going down.

- Also if you watch the last episode, you can notice how the animation gets substantially better once the TV content ends and the new movie content begins. Not that Ideon’s animation is bad, it looks great, but the movie stuff looks much more crisp.

- The rest of the second movie is fascinating for a lot of reasons but also because it’s a clip show for episodes that never actually came to fruition, and the manic pacing lends itself extremely well to how completely miserable the film is.

- The Buff Clan is the least subtle criticism of the Japanese military during WWII imaginable, down to the Emperor being just kinda there and having one line.

- Gije’s journey from just another named samurai looking to prove himself, to proto-Viral from TTGL, to being possibly the only bitch in the whole show who dies content, is really something.

- I didn’t expect to be grabbed so much by Sheryl’s arc. From “kind of a bitch” to falling for a former enemy and finally opening up only to end up so totally broken she throws a baby in the line of fire. And yet, what would be abhorrent anywhere else, is understandable and even pitiable here.

- Jordan Bes is a good dude. Went through hell several times over and still kept everyone together somehow. When did he find the time to have sex?

- Karala and Sheryl are totally hatefucking in the first cour. Also, Hatari and Joliver are totally dating, if you ask me.

- I like Cosmo and Kasha but neither of them feel quite as developed as you’d expect by the end of the series, the rest of the crew gets the lion’s share of character moments. Which isn’t a problem, just the reverse of usual since they’re the ones piloting the robot.

- This applies triple to poor Moera, who only got any development when he was on death’s door.

- I think Kasha is neat because she’s your standard early super robot show girl pilot, but actually given a machine that can do something. Like if Sayaka Yumi was given a Mazinger of her own.

- You know that bit from Toei Mazinger where Kouji and Sayaka are beating the shit out of each other, and shouting “You’re worse than Baron Ashura!” over and over? Take that, sub in Cosmo and Kasha, and “Buff Clan” instead of Baron Ashura. 100% in character.

- It’s really fucked up that they gave a squirrel a custom space suit that fits both of his tails and also that no one ever mentions this in the show.

- Ideon feels a lot like Star Trek in how there’s a lot of exploring the galaxy and finding exciting and strange new worlds, but in a perverse sort of way where instead of being about humanity’s bright future and potential, it’s about how no one can understand each other except when stockholm syndrome’d together on a ship you can’t ever really leave.

- It’s the little cultural differences that really make it. The Buff Clan and humanity looking the same, being able to understand each other’s language, but to the former, a white flag means “we’re going to kill you all without quarter”? That’s the good shit.

- The episode where Cosmo meets that nice older lady who looks after him for a bit before she bites it gruesomely might be one of the most awe-inspiring bits of media I’ve ever seen.

- The more I think about it, Ideon getting cancelled was possibly the best outcome. Managed a decent ending despite that (better than any of its contemporaries that got axed) and then had its planned conclusion on the big screen. If the show had continued for another cour, the blowback from concerned parents once everyone starts dying would have done it in anyway.

- I got genuinely upset over the big space worms.

- I like how weird and alien all the Buff Clan machines are. Definitely still recognizable as enemy mecha, but they’ve got weird numbers of arms or legs, or things shoot off in ways you wouldn’t expect.

- And last, but absolutely not least, here’s the hot take: anyone who tells you “Evangelion is garbage, watch Ideon” is the dumbest motherfucker alive. Anno is the only dude on the planet who watched Ideon and really and truly understood the assignment.

[flownintothesun]

 ⋆ ✰ ⋆ ───     "𝐈'𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐬. 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬." (𝐅𝐞𝐲!𝐌𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥 @ 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧)

                              ⋆ ✰ ⋆ ─── 𝟒𝟎𝟒 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝. ( @batteredoptimist )

       𝐋𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐒, a wisp of a fox dancing through them in a stream of light with a tail like a comet —  everywhere, and simultaneously nowhere all at once. The humans tell tales of her now, though they haven’t quite gotten it right. They’ve started to worship her — bringing their offerings to the forest’s edge. She does not exist for or by their prayers and offerings — but she accepts them — and sometimes, she’ll show them beautiful things. Occasionally, she will insert herself between a malevolent spirit and a wayward human, and guide them home. She can’t help it — she seems to have developed an affinity for them, small and mostly helpless creatures, trying to form their colonies like ants. Most of them, she’s found, are good. And it helps that he loves them, too.

       If the goddess were to be partial to anything, she supposes — it should be the forest and the animals within, which she is meant to and does protect. It should be keeping the magic here — so creatures like her beloved can thrive alongside the ones that do not harbor a more elusive kind of magic — only life. Oftentimes, people fail to realize that life is its own kind of magic — and while death is considered an ugliness, it, too, is beautiful. Everything shifts and cycles, and very little stays the same. She finds her beloved in a mess of moss and limbs, regaling stories to her. “Is that so?” she asks, in a language that is older than the human colonies encroaching upon the forest.

      Amusement punctuates her tone as fox becomes no more than a wisp of light, wiggling under his moss and branches until the goddess takes a more appealing form. Almost human — milky skin and succulent curves — eyes green save for a hint of blue, freckles across her cheeks and shoulders, plush red lips, and antlers crowning her head. She does this with his head cradled in her lap as she lovingly begins to stroke the moss on his face. She doesn’t feel time like the rest of the world does — it’s not quite so well laid out. But she does know that when he’s gone, she misses him terribly — and the forest goes quiet and more dormant. “You’ve chosen this form today, lǝᴉɹnW?” She softens at the thought. His kind are connected to nature just as much, if not more than she herself is.

        Her trickster changes shape then — into something that is not a raven, and decidedly not a man, either. She accepts the change gracefully — and oh! The games they play! — and immediately, she starts to preen his feathers, as a mate might. They are not that. That is too small for what they are. There haven’t been words invented in the human language to describe the bond between she and her Fey lover. “I like this one,” she muses. “And what about me, lǝᴉɹnW? Shall I one day become a siren so that you can fulfill yet another adventure? Shall I lure you in with my song and steal your connection to the river?”

       Her raven grins lopsidedly with an almost human mouth as she teases him. “I’ve missed you,” she offers. “With all this talk of sirens, I presume you were near the sea. I’ve never been to the sea.” He knows that. He knows most things. And she knows that with one arm not fully shifting, that he’s been hurt. Tenderly, she presses a hand to the arm in question. Since she’s met him, her magic has swirled both green like nature, and golden like his eyes, rather than the dull silver of before. She knows his role. She knows that he is the shield. She knows that neither of them are wholly invincible. Nothing is. Such is nature itself — unpredictable and sometimes peaceful, sometimes violent — but always, always beautiful. Like him. “They’ve started to speak in the human tongue, you know — my ravens. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

[ladylynse]

Dimensional Displacement [FFN | AO3]: Danny has a love-hate relationship with the Fenton Booo-merang. This time, it didn’t do him any favours. This time, it knocked him through a portal—and from what he can glean from the Water Tribe siblings he meets, odds are, there’s a reason for that.

-|-

For @geronimo-alonzi as a thank you for donating to my ko-fi. (Yes, they won my fic giveaway, but I finished this one first.) Loosely based on this three sentence fic.

-|-

Danny had been clobbered in the head by the Fenton Booo-merang more often than he’d like to admit, let alone count, but this was the first time it had knocked him through a portal.

That wouldn’t have been a particularly bad thing if the portal hadn’t immediately closed behind him.

One minute, he’d been minding his own business in the Ghost Zone, coming back from a visit with Frostbite that Jazz must have forgotten about if she’d sent the Booo-merang after him. (Sam was stuck with her parents at some fancy dinner party thing somewhere and Tucker was working on designing a computer game for his comp sci assignment, a class neither Sam nor Danny was in, so it had to have been Jazz.)

The next minute, Danny was…. He didn’t even know where he was. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He’d caught the Booo-merang before either he or it had hit the ground, but once he’d righted himself to look around, there was no familiar skyline or something equally useful to him. There were only trees and rocks and dirt roads as far as the eye could see, even from a considerable distance up in the air.

Well.

That wasn’t quite fair. He could see a silver river cutting through the trees in a path roughly parallel to the road, but in terms of helpful things, he was coming up empty.

He didn’t even know which direction he’d need to fly to get to a city. It was too light out to see any distant glow of city lights against the scattered clouds, and all he could smell when he breathed in was fresh air and pine needles and something else—moss? The general mix that was pretty much mulch on the forest floor?—that was decidedly natural, not the signs of human activity he’d been hoping for. Sure, following the road or even the river would get him somewhere sooner or later, but what was he supposed to do, pick a random direction or go eenie meenie minie moe?

Danny did another loop above the trees, looking for some sign of anything, and came up with nothing.

“Come on!” Danny yelled at the patch of blue sky where the portal had closed. He spun in a circle, the Booo-merang clutched tightly in his fist, but it didn’t pull in any direction, and he didn’t catch so much as a glimmer of the familiar green of the Ghost Zone. “Just open up again already!” It was as effective as he’d expected it to be, which was not at all, but screaming out his frustrations made him feel a bit better. “Now! Please?”

Unsurprisingly, the portal didn’t listen.

Out of appealing options, Danny threw the Booo-merang. Logically, he knew it wasn’t the Infi-Map. Logically, he knew that the universe did not often do what was convenient for him, even if he sometimes got incredibly lucky in a fight. Logically, he knew that the chances of the Booo-merang deciding to reprogram itself to find portals just because it had done it this one time (likely coincidentally) were slim to none.

Illogically, he didn’t expect the stupid thing to circle around and hit him in the back of the head again.

Danny cursed and landed to retrieve the fallen Booo-mang from the roadway, muttering under his breath about how much he’d like to just dismantle the thing and hide the pieces. He wouldn’t, of course. It worked too well to risk Sam, Tucker, and Jazz losing the ability to find him if they really needed to. It had been dicey enough the few times his parents had decided to try to ‘fix’ it, only for disaster (Vlad) to strike in the meantime.

That didn’t mean Danny couldn’t fantasize about bashing it against a rock, though. There were plenty of those around.

“That’s a weird looking boomerang,” someone said from behind him, and Danny nearly jumped into the air right there.

He didn’t, mostly because he was getting used to Sam and Tucker trying to surprise him, but it was a near thing.

He wasn’t used to people sneaking up on him. His ghost sense was reliable, Dash made more noise walking around than even Jack Fenton, and, well, most of the people who hunted him couldn’t be subtle if they tried, especially since a good chunk of them liked hearing their own voice. He’d only ever really had to worry about Jazz, and self-preservation in the face of tickle attacks had given him the ability to be extra sensitive to her presence whenever she was in a certain mood.

The two who’d caught him by surprise now must have come from the trees on the other side of the road, and he hoped that meant they hadn’t seen him do anything particularly ghostly. Granted, neither of them was screaming, so he should be safe. They didn’t look terrified, either. Wary, maybe, but not scared.

Danny guessed that they were both somewhere around his age. Siblings, by the looks of them, but probably not twins even if they’d both decided to leave the house wearing oddly styled blue clothes today, at least compared to the usual jeans and T-shirt combo Danny was used to seeing. Unless he wasn’t anywhere near the States anymore? Or unless he’d been flung through to a different time. But the boy had spoken English, and it hadn’t sounded funny to Danny’s ears, no lilt of a foreign accent or strange phrasing that he associated with Shakespeare or something.

The girl was his height, the boy a bit taller, and they were both staring at him.

They probably thought he was the one who was dressed strangely.

The boy pointed. “Your boomerang,” he repeated. “It looks weird.”

The girl elbowed him in the gut—none too gently, judging by his immediate wheeze—and hissed, “Sokka!”

Yeah, those two were definitely siblings. And even if the girl wasn’t older, she definitely had the annoying (and annoyed) sister tone down pat. Danny had heard (and been on the receiving end of) the same from similar exchanges with Jazz more than once.

“Sokka’s going to apologize, right, Sokka?”

The boy frowned and then threw up his hands. “Right. I apologize for saying your boomerang looks weird. It looks interesting.”

The girl stepped on his foot, and he yelped. “What was that for?”

“You know what that was for!”

“It’s fine,” Danny said. He still wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. Maybe the portal had dumped him out in the middle of some historical re-enactment thing. Granted, there should really be more people around if that were the case—or at least hidden cameras. He was better at spotting them now. Vlad and his creepy spy tendencies aside, Danny had gotten good at noticing (and avoiding) cameras so he didn’t let his secret get caught on tape. (There were a surprising number of places in Amity Park not under video surveillance, or at least not under real video surveillance even if they had fake cameras out; he could practically transform in the middle of the street sometimes.)

Still, nothing about this felt staged. It didn’t even feel like one of his enemy’s tricks, some giant setup that was meant to trap him or whatever. That’s not to say Danny was wholly convinced this meeting, whatever it was, was merely chance—he didn’t particularly trust Clockwork not to arrange things as he saw fit without warning anyone—but it didn’t feel overly contrived, either. There was just….

Something felt off, and he couldn’t explain what it was.

“It’s fine,” Danny repeated, since the two were looking at him dubiously, but the familiar phrase felt strange on his tongue, almost like—

Wait.

“Okay, this is going to sound like a weird question, but where are we?”

The boy, Sokka, blinked. “Did you hit your head or something? We’re in the Earth Kingdom. Or, wait, do you mean where in the Earth Kingdom? Look, if you need new supplies, there’s not much in the last few villages, but we’re about a day from—”

The girl elbowed him again, and he fell silent. Danny could see the growing suspicion on her face for what it was, could see suspicion settling on the boy’s face as well, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he’d asked the wrong question or because he’d asked something at all. He’d been paying attention this time, watching Sokka’s lips, and Danny didn’t have to be a good lip reader to know that he hadn’t been saying the words Danny had heard.

Well.

More accurately, he hadn’t been saying them in English.

And Danny, in answering, had somehow not been speaking English.

That was not, as far as Danny was aware, something Clockwork could do to him.

He didn’t know a ghost who had power over language, though, unless the Ghostwriter had something else up his sleeve and this mess was it. Nocturne would be able to pull anything in a dream, but Danny couldn’t see why he’d bother including something that would be an obvious tell like this, so it shouldn’t be him even if he had decided to come back. More likely, it was someone he hadn’t fought before, someone who had targeted him, seen an opportunity when the Booo-merang had hit him and seized upon it to throw him…here.

Wherever here was.

The Earth Kingdom, apparently.

“Um.” The girl still looked like she expected him to start fighting, and her stance…. Danny didn’t recognize it, but he did know that she looked ready to move at any moment. Her brother had taken her cue and, while Danny hadn’t been paying attention, pulled out a boomerang of his own. That couldn’t be good. “Look. I know how this sounds.” How he sounded, more like. If he had some accent he couldn’t hear because he wasn’t speaking their language properly, whatever it was, this had to be a setup after all.

Someone had sent him here to be dealt with. By this world, this dimension or construct or whatever it was, if not necessarily by these two people.

Granted, Danny wasn’t sure why someone would go to the trouble of letting him understand and be understood in the first place if that were the case, since he could get in just as much trouble without speaking the native language.

Surely he wasn’t actually supposed to help someone here, right? This wasn’t even his world. Or the Ghost Zone. Whatever was going on here was most definitely not his business.

Except now he was in the middle of it, so if there was something going on, it would be beneficial to find out what it was sooner rather than later.

This wasn’t some Jumanji kind of thing where he’d been tossed into a game and had to do whatever it was to get out again, was it? It didn’t feel like the time he’d gone into Doomed, but that had been intentional, and this….

Okay, no, he didn’t have enough information to speculate, which meant he needed to get some information out of these two in order to get somewhere. “I just…. I was kidnapped and dumped here for some reason, and I’m trying to find my way home.” That was close enough to the truth that it shouldn’t raise any red flags. Hopefully. “My name is Danny.” Introducing himself as Phantom, even in ghost mode, wasn’t something he wanted to do when he had no idea how these people felt about ghosts. Besides, it wasn’t like they’d ever see him as Fenton. He just needed to stick to the ground and pretend to be a normal human being, which he could most definitely do—at least when the sun was bright enough that his slight glow was basically nonexistent. He doubted it would be terribly noticeable even under the cover of trees.

“Danny,” the girl repeated, not relaxing her stance. “That’s an unusual name.”

Sokka just cocked his head at Danny. “Why would anyone kidnap you?”

It was spoken like it was an innocent, thoughtless question, something that could be brushed away with a laugh, but Danny could read an underlying tension in each of their faces. Sokka was waiting on his answer, and so was his sister. Danny’s response might very well determine what happened next.

Consequently, Danny didn’t miss the fact that Sokka didn’t offer up any potential explanations that he could jump on.

Another lie wasn’t going to do him any favours, not when he knew so little. “I don’t know.” He could guess, but he didn’t know. From the looks of it, though, these two wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Chances were good they wouldn’t be particularly satisfied with his suspicions, either, which was that someone wanted him out of the way for whatever they were planning—or maybe that someone had decided they wanted to have a little fun with him at his expense, if world domination wasn’t on the table. “My parents are inventors. Maybe that’s why?”

“That doesn’t explain why whoever took you would leave you here,” Sokka pointed out, and Danny wished these two weren’t so smart. “If you were taken because you were valuable, you wouldn’t have been left behind unguarded.”

“So maybe they kidnapped the wrong person and realized that I wasn’t who they wanted?”

Sokka exchanged glances with his sister before murmuring, “We can ask Toph. I mean, it’s possible they found us, but if he is really a Fire Nation plant picked solely for his eye colour, they’d have at least dyed his hair and given him some normal clothes.”

Danny decided not to ask who the heck picked people for something based on eye colour and not skill or merit or experience or something normal like that. Aside from derailing the conversation from anything potentially useful, Danny was pretty sure Sokka hadn’t realized he’d been overheard, and it wouldn’t be in Danny’s best interests to let them know how good his hearing was.

Still, he took the opportunity to tuck away the Booo-merang before they could ask any questions about it that he wasn’t up to answering. Maybe it would make him seem like less of a threat if they didn’t think he was ready to use it as a weapon—not that he knew how to use a boomerang as a weapon, but he was pretty sure Sokka hadn’t pulled his out to see which of them could throw it farther or throw it properly—and maybe then they’d trust him enough to answer his questions. Hopefully. He was perfectly willing to meet this Toph if it meant figuring out where he was and how to get home, especially since it would be easy enough for him to cut and run later.

The movement was enough to draw the attention of the siblings, though, and both pairs of eyebrows rose. Had they not expected him to make what he hoped would be taken as a gesture of trust or were they wondering how the heck he’d gotten it into his pocket? Maybe they thought he was trying to hide it, which wouldn’t help matters at all. Then again, if they thought that he thought it had been a subtle move, then maybe—

No.

He had to stop doing this. He didn’t know enough about these two to try to guess their thoughts, let alone what actions they might take against him.

Danny shifted on his feet, glad they hadn’t jumped to attacking and that they weren’t even asking questions about the Booo-merang, since practically anything about it would be difficult to answer. At least they hadn’t seen him flying. Even for people familiar with ghosts, unknown ones tended to be cause for concern until their threat level was assessed, and Danny didn’t want to invite trouble and immediately find out what this world had that messed with ghosts. Sure, he wanted to know what could hurt him here, but finding out while it wasn’t actively being used against him was infinitely preferable.

“Where did you say you were from?” the girl asked after a beat, even though they all knew he’d never said anything about that.

“Nowhere you would know,” he hedged, which was true enough.

“We travel a lot,” the girl said, and her brother snorted.

“What Katara means is, try us. If we can help you get back to your family, what do you have to lose?” Sokka offered Danny a grin, and his stance had visibly relaxed, even if he hadn’t put his boomerang away. It might be just for show, especially since he still had a weapon out, but at least the girl hadn’t drawn any knives or something like that. “Look, from one guy to another, you don’t need to make up some crazy story if you’re a runaway or something like that. We’re basically runaways.”

“We’re running towards something, not away from it.”

“We were almost runaways.” To Danny, Sokka added, “Gran caught us, but she let us go.”

Katara rolled her eyes, and Danny looked between the two of them as Sokka continued talking. It was obvious that they’d changed tack for some reason, no doubt trying to get him to trust them, but the blatant switch made him uneasy. Did they not realize how obvious that was or was this just their usual dynamic?

“I’m from Amity,” Danny eventually interrupted. He knew from the way that they were looking at him that neither of them had forgotten he had yet to answer the question. He’d already told them they wouldn’t know the place, so technically he could’ve said Amity Park, but for all he knew, these two had been sent to get information out of him, and the less he told a potential enemy, the better.

Come to think of it, maybe he shouldn’t have told them his real name, and maybe he should’ve just made up a village name rather than dropping heavy hints about his hometown.

“Which is near—?”

Danny ignored Sokka’s prompt. He didn’t even have a good enough idea of the geography of this place to make that up, especially when there was a chance they knew the area, runaways or no. “Do you know where I could get some water? I haven’t found any since I woke up.” That wasn’t true, but they wouldn’t know that unless they were getting some more intel about him from someone unseen.

The siblings looked at each other again, and then Katara faced him and said, “We’re headed to the river. Come with us. You can get your water, and we can share our catch if we get anything.”

“Wait, I didn’t agree to share my meat!” Sokka exclaimed. Katara’s only answer was a dirty look, but it was enough to have Sokka subsiding into grumbles.

“I’m not hungry yet,” Danny said, which also strictly wasn’t true, but he knew he didn’t need to eat much.

“You might be hungry by the time we’re finished,” Katara said over Sokka’s griping.

Danny hesitated, trying to figure out how weird it would be if he made up some excuse not to go with them. What were the chances that this was a trap when he’d brought up the river—or at least water—before they had? It wasn’t that he thought they’d be able to take him out if it came to that, even if Jazz had more experience fighting normally than he did, since he typically relied a lot on his powers when he could.

These two might be better fighters than him—there were almost certainly better hunters, given how silently they could walk—but he’d always have something like intangibility in his back pocket if it came to it, and they wouldn’t. Still, when it came down to it, he wasn’t used to fighting humans. What if he didn’t pull his punches enough and seriously hurt one of them?

“You can tell us about Amity,” Katara added. “We’ve never been there.”

Danny really hoped that was true and that there wasn’t a place in this world called Amity that they knew well. Still, when they started walking, spreading out so he was always in sight and they never had their backs to him, even when they hit the trees on the other side of the road, he kept pace with them. “It’s pretty much like you’d expect.” Except for the ghosts. At least his ghost sense hadn’t gone off here. Yet. “This is probably the farthest I’ve ever travelled from home.” He couldn’t get much farther away than a completely different dimension that (probably) wasn’t as connected to his world as it was to the Ghost Zone, anyway—unless he counted when he’d time travelled, but he wasn’t about to bring that up.

Katara opened her mouth to ask another question, maybe to press him for details, so Danny cut her off. “What about you two?”

They looked at each other again. How many times were they going to do that? Hadn’t they already decided how far to trust him? Danny knew it wasn’t very far, but they’d clearly decided he wasn’t going to straight up attack them at this precise moment, so even if they didn’t tell him the whole truth—

Sokka gestured at their clothes. “We’re Water Tribe.”

He said it like it was obvious, like Danny should’ve known already, but of course it explained absolutely nothing.

“Southern Water Tribe,” Katara added unhelpfully, despite Sokka’s frown. “We wanted to see the world, and now we are.”

As cover stories went, it was better than Danny’s. Barely. “Right,” he said, wondering again why he’d been dumped in the path of these two. “It’s a nice world to see.”

Somehow, that was the wrong thing to say, because they were both looking at him like they’d expected him to say anything but that. “What?”

“There’s a war on, you’re supposedly kidnapped and dropped off somewhere in occupied territory without any of the proper paperwork, and the best you can come up with is it’s a nice world to see?” Sokka turned his incredulous look from Danny to Katara. “He cannot be Fire Nation. This kid is more sheltered than Toph was supposed to be.”

Danny, who had stumbled at the word war, kept walking and hoped they hadn’t noticed. If they had, maybe they’d think he’d tripped over a tree root or fallen branch or hole or something. They weren’t following a trail, so that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, right?

“It’s all right,” Katara said as she reached out to touch his arm, and, okay, from that gentle tone, which was a complete change from anything earlier, it must mean she had noticed, knew he hadn’t tripped over anything in the terrain, and—from how she was looking at him now—thought it wasn’t surprise that had tripped Danny up, either. “Trust me, I know what it’s like to be a little naïve until you have a chance to leave home for the first time, but unless you’re got a camp around here, you’re not prepared at all.”

Sokka finally put his boomerang away and smirked at Danny. “We at least left home with supplies.”

“Did you have to run without any warning?” Katara asked, giving her brother a pointed look.

“Oh, uh, kinda.” Danny winced, knowing that had to sound like a lie. “I…I didn’t really plan on leaving when I did. This just…happened.”

Sokka raised an eyebrow, but Katara said, “You don’t have to worry. We’re the last people who would turn you in to the Fire Nation.”

Right. So the Fire Nation were the bad guys, at least according to the Water Tribe and, if he was putting things together correctly, the Earth Kingdom, where they were. Meaning the Fire Nation had invaded the Earth Kingdom if this was occupied territory. Danny thought about asking why these two had come into occupied territory themselves and then decided he didn’t want to risk getting into a discussion that would show off how little he knew. If they had decided he was a runaway who knew practically nothing about the world, well, that worked in his favour.

“Thanks.” Danny wasn’t sure what else to say. “Why are you helping me, though? Won’t that put you in danger?” That had to be a fair question in this situation.

“We can’t help everyone,” Katara said quietly, “but we can help some people, even if it’s just a tiny bit. Sometimes, that has to be enough.”

Danny really didn’t know what to say to that, because she certainly wouldn’t understand if he said he knew the feeling, so he smiled weakly in thanks and let the conversation drop.

They were still watching him, but they were more subtle about it now, and it didn’t look like they were watching him more closely than they were watching everything else.

Being downgraded from a threat was a win, though. Danny hoped he didn’t do anything to mess it up.

“There’s no shame in being a refugee,” Sokka said after a moment. “Being from a richer family might’ve bought you an isolated childhood, but it wouldn’t guarantee your safety.”

“We won’t try to hold you for ransom if you tell us where you’re really from,” added Katara.

Danny glanced at her. “I said I was from Amity.”

“I could say I have a platypus bear as a pet,” Sokka interjected. “That doesn’t make it true.”

“We know what it’s like, thinking you understand the way things are and then realizing how little you know,” Katara said quietly. “It can be overwhelming.”

“And it would explain why you’re in your nightclothes,” Sokka said. He’d come in range of Katara’s fist, but he danced out of the way as she swung in his direction. He hadn’t even needed to look at her to know it was coming. “You didn’t know enough to keep your valuables hidden and got robbed your first night on your own, didn’t you?”

“I—” Danny knew it was an excuse for his ignorance being handed to him on a silver platter, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep up with a lie like that when he knew so little. “These aren’t my pajamas,” he said instead. Let them believe what they wanted to believe; that would make his life easier. Even if it blew up in his face somehow, he could truthfully say he’d never said they were right.

They might be suspicious that he hadn’t outright denied it, but then again, he’d already told them something a lot closer to the truth.

“Uh huh.” Sokka glanced at Katara again, and she gave a slight shake her head that Danny didn’t understand.

“Let’s get you some food and water first,” Katara said. “Then we can see about finding you other supplies.”

Danny decided not to point out that they’d already told him it was slim pickings for supplies around here. Not that he had the money to pay for anything, but Sokka had already guessed that. Besides, they thought he was running around in his pjs.

Judging by the sour look on Sokka’s face, he’d evidently translated his sister’s words to mean that she wanted to give him some of their supplies, something Sokka clearly wasn’t sure he approved of.

Katara must have had similar thoughts on Sokka’s expression, since she murmured, “It’s this or bring him with us, and you know what’s safer.”

Katara might not have minded that Danny could overhear her last words, but Sokka closed the distance between them, pulling his sister farther away from Danny before hissing, “It’s not the only option, and you know it. We can’t afford to give away any of our supplies, and just because Toph can make sure he’s not coming in with the intention of stabbing us in the back, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t blab to anyone once he figures out who we’re travelling with. You know as well as I do that that wouldn’t take very long.”

“He’s just kid.”

“Technically, like Aang keeps reminding us, we’re just kids. Who very much cannot afford to so much as drop him off in the next village. Show him the river and teach him how to catch and cook his meals? Fine. Picking him up as a stray when he’s not bringing anything to the table? Not fine.”

“He’s lost.”

“So? He’s not hurt. He’s already in a better position than some refugees. He’ll survive until he can walk to the nearest settlement. Then he can try to get help from people who can actually give it.”

Katara bit her lip and slowed to a stop. “There’s something else.”

“What?”

Danny very much wanted to know the answer to that—what had Katara figured out?—but he tried not to react so they didn’t know he’d been listening in. He deliberately turned away and stared around the trees instead, a mix of deciduous and evergreen. He couldn’t pick out any specific types of trees—nothing distinctive like oak leaves that he could see—and, as far as he could tell, the woods were utterly devoid of critters. He had no idea if that was because this world wasn’t real or if it was simply because all the animals in the region had had warning of their coming and hidden accordingly.

Danny knew his disinterest wouldn’t be very convincing, but if he was lucky, they’d think he’d given up on trying to eavesdrop.

“There’s something…off about him. Not necessarily something wrong, but something different. I can’t…. When he asked about water, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t hiding any on him or nearby in case it was a trap, and— He didn’t feel the same as you or me. I can’t explain it. Toph might have a better idea than I do. Or…or Aang.” The last word was a barely audible whisper.

“You think this might be a spirit thing?” Sokka’s response was closer to a suppressed shriek than anything else, and Danny winced.

“I think he might be spirit touched,” Katara answered, and Sokka’s sharp inhalation was painfully audible. “I wasn’t good enough back then to notice anything about Yue, but—”

“Fine.” Sokka’s voice had gone flat. “I don’t want to shun someone and accidentally anger the spirits. I’ll teach him to fish. You go back and interrupt advanced earthbending practice and pick a meeting place, but make sure everyone’s packed in case this doesn’t go the way you think it’ll go.”

“I know to be careful.”

“We all know to be careful. Some of us just need more reminding than others.”

Katara didn’t say anything else, but she must have nodded or done something similar because Danny heard Sokka stalk back over to him. “Katara’s going back to talk to the rest of our group about what we might be able to spare,” he said as Danny turned back to face him, “and I’ll show you how to fish in the meantime. If you don’t catch anything, I’ll give you one of mine.”

Danny wasn’t about to admit that he’d overheard their entire conversation, so he smiled and said, “That sounds great, thanks.” It didn’t stop the uneasiness from settling in his gut, though. Sure, now he knew these people believed in ghosts, and Sokka’s response made it clear he didn’t want to get on their bad side, but Danny had no idea what being spirit touched meant. He didn’t know if that was seen as a good thing or a bad thing.

More to the point, if it was a bad thing, he didn’t know if these people had something suitable with which to attack spirit touched people, since if they did, chances were good that it would work on him.

He was not lucky enough to get a free pass here.

Still, the odds were good that he’d be able to escape if they did attack since he’d know to be on watch for something, and he wasn’t about to turn down an offer of food. He had no idea when a portal would open and he’d be able to go home. Until then, the best he could do was survive.

He’d survived this much, and his life had hardly been a walk in the park since the accident, let alone before. He wasn’t about to let some ghost fling him into an unknown world and succeed in taking him down. He needed to get out of this to kick their butt and prove to them that they couldn’t get rid of him that easily.

Assuming this wasn’t all a series of genuine coincidences and not the result of the careful manipulation of events.

Danny didn’t want to think about that, though.

He had a much better chance of getting home if there was someone he could beat, and he was going to get home.

Somehow.

(see more fics)

[rockislandadultreads]

Dark Academia: YA Books for Adults

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation. Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications. When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will. Most of them.

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Welcome to Niveus Private Academy, where money paves the hallways, and the students are never less than perfect. Until now. Because anonymous texter, Aces, is bringing two students' dark secrets to light. Talented musician Devon buries himself in rehearsals, but he can't escape the spotlight when his private photos go public. Head girl Chiamaka isn't afraid to get what she wants, but soon everyone will know the price she has paid for power. Someone is out to get them both. Someone who holds all the aces. And they're planning much more than a high-school game...

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.

The Ravens by Kass Morgan, Danielle Paige

Kappa Rho Nu isn’t your average sorority. Their parties are notorious. Their fundraisers are known for being Westerly College’s most elaborate affairs. But beneath the veil of Greek life and prestige, the sisters of Kappu Rho Nu share a secret: they’re a coven of witches. For Vivi Deveraux, being one of Kappa Rho Nu’s Ravens means getting a chance to redefine herself. For Scarlett Winters, a bonafide Raven and daughter of a legacy Raven, pledge this year means living up to her mother’s impossible expectations of becoming Kappa Rho Nu’s next president. Scarlett knows she’d be the perfect candidate—that is, if she didn’t have one human-sized skeleton in her closet…. When Vivi and Scarlett are paired as big and little for initiation, they find themselves sinking into the sinister world of blood oaths and betrayals.

[onceuponanaromantic]

Self-possessed

(written for @flashfictionfridayofficial​‘s prompt: FFF174: Monster Mash. Not related to anything I’m currently working on though if you’re interested in the concept of the Gate from A Match Made in Hell, this explores it a bit. Otherwise, enjoy!)

  In this place, time stops.

              Time stops, and starts, rises and ebbs, she’s rather lost track within it. One might think it boring, with no true sense of time since the sun rose when it willed and set when it willed, and there were neither moon nor tides.

              She herself stands at the foot of the Gate, waiting for it to shift again. And shift it does, an open courtyard in a late Qing style. She thinks she recognises it to be a place in Northern China, but she cannot say for certain. She looks down at her own clothes, noting the change to her silver jacket into one that wraps around her waist instead of lying open as is her personal preference.

              Oh well, she is not here for herself. There has not been a herself for her to be for a while.

              She smiles and inclines her head to the ghost as they walk through the courtyard, the heels of her shoes tapping against the concrete. Here, the birds sing somewhere over the concrete walls. The silver mists curl generously around them both.

              “So I just step through the gate?” The ghost asks.

            She nods, letting the air itself filter through her voice to speak in the same language. “Yes. Be back before the moon sets on the last day of the month.”

            The ghost bows to her and steps through the Gate, closing the red painted metal gently behind her. The Gate flickers again, and she is dressed in a silver T-shirt and black jeans. A younger ghost then this time. She recognises the station here, though the location name is blurred out by the mist.

              “Woah, this is cool.” The young girl says, whirling in place as she comes up from an escalator. “I thought it would look older and like, yknow… more formal?”

            “Then I suppose you know where you are?”

            The ghost bites her lip, tucking her hands in her jeans. “You don’t really look like anything, if you don’t mind me saying. No offence meant.”

            “I am not meant to.” She smiles. “None taken.”

            “Okay uh, so I just… catch the next train out?”

            “Is that how you would leave such a place?”

            “Uh, I guess I thought it would be an actual gate? Like the ones I saw in like those old books about like those pretty manors or whatever. You know the aesthetic- I’m talking to an immortal being about aesthetics what is my life… well I’m dead… never mind.”

            She laughs gently, shrugging the black jacket that appears over her shoulders. “All that’s required is unfinished business. If it’s the precise gate you’re so concerned about, there’s probably a gantry up through there if you want. Be back before midnight on the last day of the Seventh Month. If you’re confused, follow the other ghosts back here. You’ll see it.”

            “Um, cool. Okay.” The ghost rubs a hand over her eyes, looking surprised that her eyeliner transferred to her hand. “Uh. Do I thank you? Do you have a name?”

            She smiles, gesturing at the staircase that has appeared. “I am the Guardian. This is my duty. Be back before the Gate closes and do what you must.”

            “Cool. Uh. See you later? Um, yeah.” She sends the ghost ahead to let her get away. The younger ghosts, the ones who are doing this for the first time are always confused about her.

              As far as the older ghosts are concerned, she is the Guardian, always has been, always will be.

              She sends a few more on their way, the older ones recognising her and acknowledging her with a nod or a brief chat about their last visit. The Chinese ghosts, or those who follow the general idea of the Seventh Month enough to rise during it, usually recognise and bow to her. There are, of course, those who push to enter the mortal world early, or leave it late. It generally does not work.

              She remembers the one time it did work. She also remembers vaguely a time where she was human too. It is so faint that she’s not sure it’s more than her imagination, not even sure where in her memory it floats, and she remembers faintly talking to ghosts even while she was alive. She remembers it in glimpses: eyes squeezed closed, fire and ice racing along her arms as she reached directly into the Gate, her body twisting as she gripped the torn thread with her bare hands, her soul screaming in pain because a human was never meant to touch the Gate, a human body was never meant to pass through the Gate, and she remembers fixing it all the same.

              She opens her eyes. She had lived one lifetime once. But now, it’s just a mishmash of different sensations. She has no idea what her face looks like. She has vague memories of what it did. She looks down at her hand and pulls out her knife and walks to the Gate. She has a few moments before the next ghost comes through and she just presses her knife to the Gate, feeling it twist around her unhappily. The Gate and her had known each other long enough that they had come to an accord and there was a sort of respect there, but it didn’t quite like it when she pressed its inner workings.

              Truly, she marked time by the passing of ghosts through the Gate. It was always fun to see how ghosts from different cultures saw the Gate. Sometimes it turned to a river, sometimes to a station, sometimes an actual pair of gates. Truthfully, the condition to cross the Gate was very simple: some kind of attachment. Some ghosts saw it as unfinished business. Sometimes, it was just a strong feeling they could not explain. Sometimes, they thought to explain it to her, though she would not ask.

  She adjusts her jacket, feeling the soft silver of it slip over her shoulders as she knelt, the soft black cotton of her pants loose at her ankles, her feet pressed to the cold marble of the steps. She stays like that for a while.

              Then, she stands, bows to the young man in a white shirt.

  “Be back before 2359 of the last day of the Seventh Month. The Gate is that way, sir.”

[lag1995-fics]

Hii. Can I request anything with pre- cult Kai and fem reader with a reader that's really happy and bubbly? It could be a fic, headcanonns, literally anything lol. I love your writing 💙💙

Of course you can love, I hope you enjoy this ❤️

Crushing

Pairing: Pre Cult Kai/ bubbly reader

Words: 1506

Warnings: POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNINGS ⚠️⚠️⚠️ This will contain sexual harassment and assault it isn’t graphic but some may feel uncomfy, this fic also features heavy language

Summary: Kai and Reader have both had crushes on each other but have consistently brushed their feelings off they both felt the other was simply unattainable. A bad experience ends up bringing them together.

Masterlist

///::::///

You had always been a bubbly person, the type that usually had a grin spread across her face. You had the biggest crush on your friend Winter’s older brother. You were one hundred percent positive that you were not his type. He was sarcastic and a little mean at times, you were an absolute giggle box who always had a kind word and a smile for almost everyone.

What you didn’t know, was that you were not the only person with a crush. Kai had been mesmerized by the way you floated through life like you had a bubble to protect you from all the grubby thorns that were society. You never caught him but he would stare at you when you came to visit Winter. The entire family loved you actually and Kai’s father would often tease him about you when you were out of the room.

You never expected anything to come out of your silly little crush and neither did Kai for that matter. He had actually put you up on a bit of an unfounded pedestal in his own mind. You were too pure for anyone himself included. He didn’t want to see anyone crush your spirit it was something he loved about you.

Kai couldn’t control the world though, and the world was a dark miserable place that was full of dark miserable people. You were someone who was remarkable though, you seemed untouched by the dark miserable world in his mind. The darkness of the world affects everyone sometimes though and it did eventually catch up to you.

***

You had been walking home from work in the rain, face tilted to sky as the soft drops of water tickled your skin. You hadn’t noticed the strange customer who had been watching you at the coffee shop where you worked. You also hadn’t noticed him follow you out of the shop too busy watching your bright yellow converse splash happily in the puddles on the grubby side walk.

It hadn’t taken him long to act when you had turned onto a fairly deserted road. He had caught up to you and began to walk in step with you. Red flags went up immediately in your head but you as always held out hope that maybe this person was just being friendly.

“Hey baby girl,” his tone was slippery and disgusting. You couldn’t help the trill of fear that went down your spine.

“Hey, please don’t call me that,” you muttered, probably more politely than you should have.

“Oh so you’re a frigid bitch that can’t take a fuckin compliment!” His tone had shifted from slick to intimidating in the span of a few seconds. This man was everything your mother had taught you to fear. You also wished you had started carrying personal protection like Winter had suggested, weapons made you uncomfy though.

“Excuse me I need to get home people are waiting for me” you babbled picking up your pace to try and put distance between himself and you. Before you got very far his large hand reached out wrapping around your forearm with a bruising tightness. You yelped, reaching into your pocket with your free hand to hit your emergency dial.

“I wasn’t done talkin to you bitch don’t think I didn’t notice you ignoring me at the stupid little coffee shop” your fear level was almost maxed out now and you could faintly hear Winter screaming in your pocket from where you had emergency dialed her.

“Please I don’t want any trouble, I haven’t done anything to you,” you tried to reason with the mad man. Before the man could utter another word a car screeched to a halt in the middle of the street.

Kai had been driving down the road on his way back home when he saw a familiar polka dot rain jacket being assaulted by some grubby asshole. He had slammed on his breaks and jerked his old beater of a car into park. He flew out of the car dashing to your side.

“Get. Your. Fucking. Hands. Off. Of. Her.” He hissed as he stepped between you and your assailant. The man released her arm like it shocked him as Kai glared at him with angry brown eyes.

“Sorry man, I didn’t know she had a fuckin boyfriend she should have said something,” the man backpeddaled.

“It shouldn’t matter if a person has a boyfriend or not! No means no asshole!” You shouted the fear draining from you being rapidly replaced by righteous anger.

“If I ever see you again I’ll be the last person you’ll ever see fuck face” Kai spat angling himself rven further infront of you as the man ran off.

As soon as the man was gone Kai spun so that he was facing you. His eyes ran down your body looking for any possible injuries. Water dropped from his wild brown curls as he checked you over. He was careful not to touch you but you weren’t having any of that, you launched yourself into his arms your own wrapping around his surprisingly muscled middle.

“Thank you, you saved my ass,” you mumbled into his soaked t-shirt, happy that the rain was hiding your tear stained cheeks.

“You scared me to death, let’s get you home,” he brushed off your thank you. Like he could let someone try to hurt the only good thing in his world. He guided you to his car that was still parked in the middle of the road with the engine running.

Once you weee safely inside and he was driving again he turned to you. You couldn’t help the heat that filled your cheeks at his pointed gaze. You had never been alone like this with Kai before and it was frankly overwhelming.

“Why were you walking home, I know you have a car?” Kai asked his tone still full of worry. He would personally pay to have your car fixed if it was out of commission.

“I always walk when it’s raining, rain is my favorite” you blushed at how childish it sounded coming from your mouth. He let out an exasperated chuckle.

“Of course you do! Your a living breathing chick flick!” His tone was exasperated but lighthearted in a way.

“Hey! I resent that!” You shot out indignantly, “if I were a living breathing chick flick I would get the guy.”

Kai couldn’t help but look at you like you were dumb his brown eyes scanning your face to make sure you weren’t pulling his leg.

“Y/n you could literally get any dude you wanted, you’re freaking adorable” He sounded stunned that you would think such a thing. You rolled your eyes you didn’t need your best friend’s older brother blowing smoke up your rear.

“Adorable girls don’t get the guy Kai-Kai, hot girls get the guy” you rolled your eyes elbowing him gently. You didn’t know it but you were the only person in the world allowed to call him Kai-Kai. He pulled into your driveway still looking at you like you had grown three heads.

“You’re not serious y/n” Kai asked incredulously running a hand through his wet brown curls.

“Kai-Kai you don’t have to be nice to me just because I’m your sisters best friend” you rolled your eyes, moving to get out of Kai’s car.

“Give me your pinky” his voice sounded strange. Still you flashed him a goofy smile holding out a painted pinky. He linked his pinky with your own his was much larger and warmer.

“You know how a pinky swear works right?” He asked and you nodded still confused on where he was going with this.

“Yeah you can’t break a pinky swear” you replied.

“Well I pinky promise to tell you the brutally honest truth no sugar coating” he declared.

“Okay” you replied still a bit confused.

“Y/n I have wanted you from the moment you opened your mouth and that perfect giggle floated out. You ate everything I’m not. You’re a happy go lucky girl and I’m just some internet troll that enjoys getting a rise outta people,

“You’re way to good for me and I would never even bother to think that you would ever be interested in me. But you gotta stop this self deprecating bullshit. You are the most beautiful human I know inside and out” he ranted and you could only stare at him in shock, floored by his revelation.

“You like me?” You questioned your voice soft and squeaky.

“Hell yeah! How could anyone not like you y/n?” He too sounded surprised.

You unlatched your pinkies trying not to overthink what you were going to do next. You stared into Kai’s piercing brown eyes gathering your non existent courage. You leaned forward pushing forward with your hands on his console. Your lips connected in a searing kiss his lips scorched your own as he kissed you back with a fierceness, his hand burying itself in the back of your hair.

Sorry this took so long I was exhausted and time got away from me ❤️❤️❤️. Much love and thanks for reading.

[bibliocratic]

I was going to write this for the Aspec Archives week, but I got overexcited, so here we are. 

AU: Mythical creatures. OG Archive team. 

Some CWs apply, see tags. 

The sea is more than water, her elder brethren taught her, warned her, chided her. It is home and harm and hungry, and you should not face it alone. Her siblings were older, ever knowing better, boisterous and boasting braver, but even they worried, scolded and fretted when she swam out too far alone into deep waters.

It will love you, but it will not always be kind, her eldest sibling bit out, snapped to mask their anxiety. There can be no bearings, in the deep-deep down, no anchors to denote where the sky lies.

When her people sleep, they rest wedged into some secure rock or crevice, tails looped around tails so no one is lost while dreaming.

You cannot be a shoal of one, my dearest, my youngest and bravest, the oldest of their shoal had said, when she told her she was planning on taking the rising when the waters warmed. Ascending landward on the tide swell, letting the shimmering scales of her tail split into skin.

She had not used the name Sasha at that time because that was a landward name she chose with care. Her folk gather names like a garland of pearls, to be constantly strung longer through life as age advances them; names for qualities, for momentous events, for hopes and desires. Her first name, gifted by her shoal, was guttural. It starts at the back of her throat, trails off into a susurration through gills. Mer is a difficult language to learn, though not impossible.

Tim tried. There is no one singular language of those who skirt the deepwaters, so he attempts to mimic her dialect. His pronunciation stumbling, he makes tentative sentences with the butchered grammar of fry. Martin’s grammar is even worse, though he picks up the eddies and waves of the sounds easier.

Jon, like most things in life, takes it as a challenge. One day, almost stubborn with nerves, to perform his task to perfection, he pushes out a juvenile approximation of her first name. Clipped and textbook and the stress in the wrong places, but Sasha smiles, showing her sharpest teeth in delight. Instructs him where to hold the hum at the back of his throat, how to roll the third phoneme upwards like an air bubble. Jon repeats it and repeats it, quietly smug and pleased at his achievement, and the sea in her soul rocks fondly at the sight.

She broached landward in the rising two moons after her age of maturation. She was one of a handful to come to shore. A sibling in Brighton who she phones every week, another two in Holyhead. Her first shoal traverses to warmer waters when the season shifts, and she would feel the rock-hollow absence of them if it was not for Tim, inviting her to participate in a hundred-and-one inane activities that keep her from feeling swept out; Jon, with his libraries of questions and intrigues, his quick-silver tongue; Martin, who sometimes swims a little further out from them but who finds her small knick-knacks in charity shops and craft markets and leaves them on her desk for no reason other than he has thought of her.

She makes three necklaces, plain with a strong chain, a single pearl attached. And on a day where her folk traditionally string garlands of seaweed and mangrove roots and colourful plants from coral reefs in a celebration of family –  there is no one word in her language for this idea; it poorly translates into hierarchies like sibling and brethren and elders, but these are not concepts that fit it exactly – she gifts them to the shoal that will anchor her in the depths of the sea, and bestows upon them names. Most Mer names are wishes for quick fins, calm waters, safe shores, and so she wishes these for them in a language they are not quite proficient in yet.

Her landward shoal is smaller than is traditional. But she loves them as treasures of her heart, and thinks she understands what her siblings told her, about anchors.

--

His parents, both harpies from local nests, are perplexed when his wings start coming in.

Must be a colouring from your mum’s side, his dad hums thoughtfully when Tim’s primaries grow in long and shining like struck bronze. He runs a careful finger down the central line of the rachis, and the wing shudders and jumps, the feathers still sensitive, and Tim complains that it’s ticklish. His wings are too small to fly away as his dad dives in, captures him in careful arms, corkscrewing upwards a little off the ground with Tim squirming and squealing and squawking in play, but they flutter and flap nonetheless.

The wing span’s from your dad’s side, no-one from my nest ever went more than five foot, his mother says, rubbing at the dark brown of his downy secondaries. Tim stretches them out wide, eager to boast at their length, the tips of his longest feathers reaching past his arms held out wide.

Danny’s wings are smaller. Magpie like, bold lines of white broken up by blue and black, the same as his parents. Tim’s wings, broader, a colour like beaten brass that tips into gold at the ends, draws attention, but he’s never been embarrassed. His family never treated him differently, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He can fly, though he doesn’t often. After his parents died, and after… after Danny, he moved to London, where there’s tighter airspace regulations and permits involved, so he mostly doesn’t bother. This doesn’t mean never, however. He has learned, while working in the Archives, that from the ground, his wings have enough lift to pick up both Jon and Sasha by at least a foot. He thinks he could probably manage Martin as well, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that Martin is mildly allergic to a whole host of things, including feather dander, meaning he gets a bit watery eyed whenever he gets too close to Tim’s wings, and he’s a sniffing, red-eyed mess come  moulting season.

Anyway, he can always fly when he leaves the city. When it’s been too long since Sasha’s scales touched seawater, she invites him out to the coast. Jon apparently has had enough of the coast to last a lifetime, and Martin gets funny about large bodies of water, so it’s often the two of them. She swims out, the greenish scales of her tail catching the sun-struck water, and he, above, feeling the breeze brush through his cramped wings, follows her wake. When she breaches the surface in a playful arc, he swoops down, trying to catch her at the same time as she tries to splash him.

“You never thought to look into it?” Jon asks. Always brewing with questions. Tim is obligingly holding out one of his wings, and Jon, who takes everything like a project, has books out and webpages up but with no further clue as to why his colouration and span differ so from his parents.

Tim shrugs. “Doesn’t matter really, does it?”

Jon hums, clearly not agreeing, and Sasha rolls her eyes fondly,  and that is the end of that.

-

Marysia had hoped her child would not take after her husband. She’d lit candles and attended masses during her pregnancy, worn the beads of her rosary smooth. Her child had been born on land, miles from shore, and her husband had been a grounded man, who had folded up his pelt on their wedding night for her and swore to wear no other soul than his human one.

But then her husband leaves, the box where he kept his second soul empty, and Martin is eight years old, and he wakes up one morning glassy-eyed and complaining of nausea, his lip bleeding from where his sharpening teeth have ripped the skin, and she knows her prayers were not answered.

It is not unknown, for the second soul of some folk to flourish later. But it is a rough awakening, to have one’s body grow a new skin out of itself, and Martin is off school for over a week, riddled with fever and fervour, constantly parched, crying and sweating out salt-water.

She watches his skin prickle with grey and black fur, blotching with white over his stomach as he coils up under his covers, throws them off only for his limbs to reduce to shivering. His brown eyes have gone black-shot, his cries a mix of language and barks, and Marysia fears she will lose her only child to the sea.

It will be hard for him to fit in, she tells herself. It would be best to choose one, and he has his friends and family and her on land, and who knows where his father is now, and surely it would be cruel, an unnecessary agony for him to endure some other foreign pull away from all he knows.

She does what she thinks is a kindness, though that is neither excuse nor forgiveness. After nine days, his fur has come through, sleek and soft, his whiskers twitching, and she helps him peel it off as one would do clothes, revealing sweat-sheened limbs, his eyes slipped back into brown again. His gaze still distant and feverish, he tries to cuddle into her, and she soothes him while she finishes stripping off his pelt and folding it neatly.

While he sleeps, she burns it in a fire in the back yard.

When he comes back to himself, she lies and tells him that he’s been sick with a bad fever. And he trusts her, and never questions it. He doesn’t understand that she’s burnt a part of him up, scattered the ashes to the winds, but it was for the right reasons. To keep him safe, and happy, and with her.

He grows up human-limbed and cloven-souled, and she never tells him the truth.

--

Sasha floats in an ever-dark, stolen away and hidden. There is a knot, a cage-trap around her legs, which have fused into her tail although there is no water. The sea, far away, like the wail in a conch shell, throbs in her soul as she strains and shouts and snarls in the wrapping of spider’s webs.

The sea is the only thing with her in the dark.

Sound has a particular quality, underwater. She hears it first, an echo that shivers through her, like being thrummed on the backdraft of some shallow wave. And then it is a wash of insistence. A command.

The compulsion uses her names, landward and seaward and it pulls and demands her attention, and she shrieks and cries back, struggling in the depths. She is being called home, up up up to breach the surface, and she cannot help but answer.

There is a crack and the sea splits, and she is choking on cold and dusty air.

“Sasha!” someone is saying. “God, is she – she’s not – ?”

“Get that stuff off her, come on. Sasha. Sash, love, can you hear us?”

A series of thuds as she splutters. A twisting, gnarling screech, and several swear words.

“Jesus!”

“Shit – shit, get her out of the way.”

“Boss, move, give me the – ”

The screech degrades into a glitching, warping scream. There is the multi-layered sound of compressed air, and crackling fire,the woosh and stench of something burning.

In time, she cracks her eyes open to the punch of light. Her tail flaps weakly. Someone is pulling great strands of silk that has clumped like poorly soldered iron around her limbs, making visceral noises of disgust. She’s cold-stream shivering, surrounded by broken wood and chippings.

“Hey, hey, we got you. We got you. You with us, Sash?”

The faint scratch of feathers against her cheek. Furnace-warm arms are holding her.

Jon is kneeling down in front of her. Holding an axe and stinking of smoke, and she knows, she knows, that it was his voice she heard, although she doesn’t yet understand why.

Martin throws a blanket over her as she shivers, her tail shrivelling and bisecting into legs. He has silk in his hair, and his fingers are trembling, but his face is broken with a look of such relief.

“It’s you,” he says, and his hand touches at his throat, at the necklace she made for him. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

It’s Martin in the end that carries her out of the tunnels, tucking the blanket completely around her. He is talking in the scatter-gun way he does when he is anxious, babbling, and she can’t bring herself to listen. He smells of soot and saltwater, and she’s never noticed that before.

She falls asleep, curled up into his hold, drained and shaken, but feeling utterly safe.  

--

Jon is human. Completely, one hundred percent, although Sasha had joked once that way way back there must have been some Spinx in the family. Tim’s long suspected that Martin’s not quite human, no matter how he presents, but that’s Martin’s business, not his. Some folks have lineages that are rare, or mistrusted, or misunderstood, and Tim’s not one to pry.

Jon, though. Human through and through. Which is why he’s so worried.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Jon says. Martin’s with Sasha, making sure there’s no nasty side effects to her imprisonment in the table. Jon’s had a face on him for a while which means he’s Worrying with a capital W, and it’s taken hours for him to untangle himself into a blustered declaration to the rest of the class, spiked with nerves. “That place, it had her. It shouldn’t have… I don’t know what I did, but I told her to leave, a-and she could. And she shouldn’t have been able to.”

“And you think that you did that?”

“I – I know I did that, Tim, I felt it, o-or. I mean, I felt something!”

“Ok, alright. Alright. Let’s, let’s calm down and look at this logically.”

Jon goes over what he said while they struggled to rescue Sasha from the deep. It was something he said, he’s sure of it, which is why he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main archive office space with Tim, his trousers getting dusty and his temper scraping frayed, getting increasingly frustrated when he tries recreating exactly what he did with his voice, going through questions and commands and instructions and inquiries. And while Tim answers, it’s clearly not what Jon’s looking for, and he’s rubbing the hair at the back of his head in the way he does when he’s getting increasingly frustrated and is too bull-headed to walk away.

Then Jon, rolling his eyes and seething in annoyance, asks him a throwaway question, one of many he’s been trying – what’s your favourite colour? (seriously, Jon, that’s what you’re going with?!); What did you do at the weekend? (you know what I did, you and Martin were with me!).

“Why did you join the Magnus Institute?”

They both sit, frozen and horrified as Tim’s mouth opens and his words trip over his tongue in their eagerness to leave his mouth. As his eyes grow wide and water with tears as he cannot stop speaking about Danny, about the Covent Garden circus and Joseph Grimaldi. As Jon sits, ramrod-backed and cannot stop listening, a muscle jumping in his jaw.  His expression wars between frantic and panicking and hungry.

Tim feels wrung out and hollow once he’s finished. Jon’s manic with apologies. It takes both of them a long time to calm down.

“Maybe… maybe you’re a siren or something?” Tim suggests, but Jon is shaking his head.

“It’s this place, Tim. It’s those statements, when I read them. It’s … I – I think they’re doing something to me.”

Tim looks at Jon and the light strikes off his eyes in a way that it shouldn’t on a human.

He touches Jon’s arm.

“We’ll sort this,” he promises. “We got Sasha out, didn’t we? The four of us, we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?”

Jon nods, and gives a small fragile thanks, and that’s human enough for Tim.

--

Marysia told herself she was not a bad mother. That her son was simply a hard child to love, that he had all the worst trappings of his father, his brown eyes perpetually caught with a far-away look that doesn’t know where to place its longing. But even as she sickened, and he sloughed off every facet of himself in a pathetic attempt to please her, she couldn’t find anything but sorrow in her heart to look upon the man grown over familiar in face, a growth that grew deep-set and fungal into contempt.

She almost spat the truth out to him. Once or twice, with the thought that confessing might bring them closer. She wished he’d chosen the sea instead, so she wouldn’t have to look upon her amputated, half-formed child who would always be lost.

But she never did.

And Martin finds out alone, cornered in an unlocked office, his hands dropping the lighter as a thousand eyes open and watch satisfied as they pour his mother’s choices down his throat to choke him.

--

It starts when Martin starts sleeping in archive storage. When Tim watches worms burrow into Jon’s skin at the same time as they latch and gnaw and wriggle under his own. When they get Sasha back, and find Gertrude’s corpse and Jon leaves and gets hurt and hurt and hurt again, and the world around them gets smaller and meaner and there is nothing Tim can do.

He takes to storing food in their desk drawers. Nothing that will go off, or won’t keep. Tins and dried goods and non-perishables. He lines the walls of Martin’s storage room with fire extinguishers of different types, fire blankets, and spare first aid kits bulging with plasters and bandages and antiseptic wipes. He buys blankets and pillows and rope and penknives. He stress-moults constantly, and tucks his feathers out of sight, irritated and embarrassed at the sight of them,  and it occurs to him that nesting is not a healthy way to deal with this.

He wants his family safe. He used to think it was such a small thing to ask for.

He thinks about that when the bomb goes off.

He burns, and he is dying.

His rage and fear burn off into a different fury. That it has come to this, his family so threatened, that all he has to his name is his sorrow and trauma and frustration and vengeance.

Tim wants nothing more than to live. To see them safe. To rail and rage against what seeks to harm them. So he burns and he burns and burns, his wings aflame and his mouth twisted in a scream, and does not die.

They dig him out breathing from the rubble. His skin stained grey with ash and soot.

His new wings stretch out red as the sunset.

[whenisitenoughtrees]

infinity, and beyond

He remembers the first time he kissed Janus. He remembers the way they were curled up against each other, the lights dimmed and the television on low volume, neither of them paying attention to the images on the screen. It was messy and terrible, as far as kisses go, and Patton loved every moment of it, and when they pulled away from each other, they were both breathless, smiling, and he knew then that what he felt, Janus felt too.

He remembers, too, the moment he heard about Virgil.

It's not every day that your husband's long-lost kid breaks into your house. It's not every day that you find out your husband of four years is an alien.

Patton's just trying to roll with the punches.

Content Warnings: threats of violence, mild body horror, brief, non-graphic panic attack

Word Count: 7,168

Pairings: Moceit, parental Anxceit

(masterpost w/ ao3 links)

Patton’s day begins with a teenager holding a knife to his throat.

Technically, the day has already begun; it is mid-morning, the sun inching steadily toward noon. But Patton has barely been awake an hour, has been sitting at the kitchen table with his mug of coffee, staring at all the final exams he has yet to grade as he waits for his brain to start functioning. He likes Saturday mornings; he would go so far as to say that they’re usually his favorite part of the week, because usually, Saturday mornings mean sleeping in, wrapped in his husband’s arms, and later, a big brunch and a lazy day. But today, an emergency called Janus into the office, and he has a backlog of grading to finish this weekend, so here he is. Squinting, bleary-eyed, and with a sad lack of a husband to keep him company.

That is when the teenager appears.

Appears, because there is no better word for what happens. There is no break-in, no slamming of doors or shattering of windows. One minute, he is alone, and the next, there is another person in the kitchen, a young person who can’t be any older than seventeen or eighteen, and Patton barely has time to process that before they lunge for him, knocking him from his chair and to the floor, pinning him against the cool tile.

It takes a second to process the bite of cold, sharp metal against his throat, but as soon as he does, Patton wakes up very, very quickly.

“Please—” he tries, but the teenager hisses at him, actually hisses, and through the panic that is filling his mind and drowning out all logical thought, Patton realizes that something about this isn’t right. Something beyond the fact that there is a knife against his throat and oh god oh god oh god there is a knife against his throat—

The teenager opens their mouth, their face set in a harsh, threatening glare— and it’s their face, there’s something wrong about their face but he can’t quite— but the sounds that come out are gibberish, something guttural and rasping and nothing like any language that Patton has ever heard.

“Please,” he gasps, his voice thin and high and terrified, “please, I don’t know what you’re saying, I can’t—”

He breaks off, because he thinks that if he tries to say any more, it will come out as nonsensical crying, and somehow, he doesn’t particularly think that this person will be swayed by something like that.

The teenager’s lips twist into an impressive scowl, and with the hand not holding the knife, they reach for the pocket of their— hoodie? If it’s a hoodie, it doesn’t quite look like one. It’s something about the fabric, something about the way it moves as they do, but Patton can’t spend energy on figuring that out right now. He tenses as they root around in their pocket, clearly searching for something, and muttering to themself in that same garbled speech pattern. They come up holding something, and Patton can only catch a glimpse of it— what looks like a small, silver disk— before their hand is moving, clapping it against and then inside his ear and—

There is a moment of sharp, almost blinding pain, starting with his ear and shooting through his skull, and then nothing, and he struggles to regain his breath.

“I said,” the teenager growls, “where is he?”

Patton blinks. The sounds they are making are still the same, are still strange and incomprehensible, only, they’re not exactly, because they resolve into recognizable words inside his brain, and if he hadn’t been panicked before, this would definitely be enough to do the job, because what exactly did this person just shove inside his ear?

“What—” he starts, and then the words themselves catch up to him. “Where is who?”

The teenager growls— and it is truly a growl, like an animal would make— and presses the knife in closer. Patton valiantly resists the urge to whimper.

“Don’t fucking play with me,” they snap, and somewhere, back in some hysterical portion of Patton’s mind, he is tempted to chide them for their language. “His DNA signature is all over this fucking house, so where is he? What’ve you done with him?”

Patton can only stare.

Part of his mind has devoted itself to putting the pieces together, no matter the impossible picture they form. Part of his mind is taking in the pale skin that isn’t white at all, but rather a light purple, the way their facial features are just a bit too sharp, a bit too angular to be those of a typical young adult, the way that the spots under and around their eyes aren’t makeup, but instead move, twitching to and fro in unison with their gaze, and that alone is almost enough to send him spiraling, to draw him toward a conclusion that can’t possibly be true, that he can’t possibly comprehend.

The rest of his mind devotes itself to being astonished.

“Are you talking about Janus?” he asks, and he can’t keep the incredulity from his voice.

He doesn’t know which seems more unlikely to him, that this strange, violent, maybe-probably not human person has broken into his house and is threatening him with a sharp knife, or that this strange, violent, maybe-probably not human person is looking for his husband. His husband, who makes him breakfast in bed in the mornings and tea in the afternoons, when he has too many essays to look over and a headache pounding behind his eyes. His husband, who bristles and snarks at everyone around him, who works a corporate job he dislikes and comes home exhausted and irritated at the end of the day and still smiles, that soft, sweet smile that is meant only for him, that nobody else is privileged enough to see. His husband, who he has been married to for four years now, the best four years of his life, who he fell in love with in coffee shops and movie theaters and in the rain, that one day when they were caught out in the park without their umbrellas and had to run all the way home, soaking wet but giggling, grinning and knocking into each other.

His husband, who refuses to talk about his past beyond a sentence or two, here and there, brief anecdotes that never reveal much at all. But Patton has never needed to know his past to know him, and even now, when it seems that his secrets have burst into their shared life in the most violent way possible, disrupting all sense of equilibrium and turning the world on its head, he refuses to believe that there is any secret so great as to force a divide between them.

The teenager— if that is what they are, if the appearance of youth is an accurate indication at all— bares their teeth, teeth that are too sharp, too pointed, teeth that scream predator. “Who else?” they demand. “I won’t fucking ask again. Where is he?”

“He’s not— He’s not here,” he manages. “He’s at work, I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

Please, let that satisfy them. Please, let them leave. Please, let Janus come home. Please, let Janus not come home, let him stay at the office, far away and safe. Please, let him come home and tell me what’s going on, why this is happening, who this is and how they know each other. Please, please, please.

He doesn’t know what he wants. Doesn’t know that he wants to know what he wants.

“Yeah, right,” they say, and he would be insulted by their skepticism if he had room for any emotion other than fear. “That’s likely. You could have him cut up in the basement for all I know.”

He gapes, stunned by the accusation. And for a moment, his indignation is enough to override all common sense, ignore all the impossibilities of the person holding him to the floor, ignore the knife pressing up against his skin. Because, well, first of all, he has no idea where that idea came from, but the very thought that he would do something like that at all, much less to—

“Cut—” he starts, and has to try again, because he can’t wrap his head around the notion, around the idea that that could potentially be something he would want to do, that that is the first thing this person thinks to accuse him of. “Cut up? Janus is my husband.”

Their eyes widen. “Your what?”

“My husband,” he repeats, the reaction emboldening him. “We’ve been married for four years.”

They blink at him, and it’s a motion that takes up their entire face rather than just their eyes, because those moving dots… those are eyes, too. Patton can’t deny it, can’t deny that this person, whatever they are, has eight eyes. Eight eyes, just like a spider, and his outrage fizzles out in the face of that realization, fades back into terror, into a racing pulse and breaths that come too short and quick, and he is confused now too, confused at what this person wants, because their words almost seem to suggest that they don’t want to see Janus harmed at all, that they think he is the threat. That they think he is a threat to Janus.

But Patton isn’t the one with the knife.

“Please,” he says. “Please, just, you can look around the house, there’s pictures of us. We’re together, we’re happy, and I don’t know what you want, but just please, please don’t hurt him.”

“Don’t hurt him?” they repeat, and somehow, whatever strange translation system is at work in his head manages to convey their disbelieving tone. “What the hell are you talking about?”

They seem surprised that Patton is making the insinuation at all, and Patton can’t help the incredulous noise that escapes him.

“You’re holding a knife to my throat!” he all but shrieks, the words ripping out of him at a much higher volume than he intends. “What am I supposed to think you want?”

They make a strangled sound, one that his mind doesn’t resolve into words.

“You—”

And then, they stop, tilting their head. A moment later, Patton hears it too, and dread forms a heavy weight in the pit of his stomach. There is a clattering sound, a key turning in the lock, and the unmistakable creak as the front door opens. The teenager stands, suddenly, a fluid motion, but Patton is frozen in place, barely noticing the removal of the knife and the pressure holding him down, too busy trying to think of a way out of this, or to protect Janus, if worst comes to worst. He’s trembling so hard that he’s not sure how quickly he’ll be able to get up, but once he does, he’s in the kitchen. There are weapons here. All he has to do is grab one, no matter how ill it makes him feel to use his cooking instruments in such a way.

He won’t let this person hurt Janus. Not if he has any say.

“I’m home, love!” Janus’ voice drifts through the house, smooth and unconcerned. There is a familiar thump; that will be his briefcase hitting the floor, and then a rustle of clothing as he sheds his suit jacket. His footsteps draw nearer, and even as the person’s face shifts into an expression Patton has no hope of interpreting, he readies himself to leap to his feet, to fight if need be.

“I just love when idiots call me in for an issue that it would take someone with half a brain twenty minutes to solve,” Janus says, sounding terribly exasperated, and normally, this is when Patton would go to him and give him a hug, would lean his chin on his shoulder and hold him close, or at the very least call out to respond to him. But he stays still and quiet, and the footsteps pause.

“Patton?” He sounds uncertain now, but he’s coming closer again, and Patton finds himself staring fixedly at the entryway to the kitchen, raising his head from the floor to see. Oddly enough, the teenager stands stock still, making no motion to turn to where Janus will appear in mere seconds.

And then, there he is, and Patton cannot help the instantaneous flood of relief at seeing him, at seeing Janus, his husband, poised and confident and unharmed and here. He stands on the threshold, adjusting the gloves on his hands, and Patton watches as his face transitions from calm to confusion to something between anger and fear as he takes in the scene, the toppled chair and rumpled papers, the figure standing in the midst of it all, knife clutched in one hand. And then, he locks gazes with Patton himself, and his eyes blow wide with worry even as the rest of his face schools itself.

“And just who the fuck are you?” he demands of the person. To anyone else, he would sound completely collected, but Patton knows him too well to miss the tremor in his voice.

The person doesn’t move.

“I’d appreciate an answer,” Janus continues. “I’d also appreciate it if you’d step away from my husband.” Janus gives him a tight smile, one that is probably meant to be reassuring, and he returns it as best he can.

And then, slowly, the person pivots on their heel, putting their back to Patton. He can no longer see their facial expression, blank and unhelpful though it was, but he can see Janus’ perfectly well, and as such, he can see the way he holds onto his cool anger for all of five seconds, before it shifts into undiluted shock. His face pales, his lips parting slightly, and he actually takes one stumbling, hesitant step forward, and Patton’s heart begins beating triple time because he has no idea what could make him react like this.

And then, the person speaks.

“Janus,” they say, and the noises that spill from their mouth remain strange and unfamiliar, but somehow, Patton hears the wetness in the name, the fragility, the desperate hope. The knife goes clattering to the floor.

Janus makes a sound, wounded, astonished, and Patton has never heard anything like that come from his husband’s throat, and it scares him.

“Virgil?” he rasps, and evidently, that is all this person needs, because they launch themself forward, and Patton’s instincts scream at him to try to stop them, to leap at them or grab at their hoodie or do something. But Janus’ arms open wide to receive them, and then the two of them are hugging, holding each other tightly, and from here, Patton can see the way Janus’ hands fist in the odd material of the teenager’s clothing, the way he buries his face in their shoulder, and Patton has never been more lost.

Virgil. He recognizes the name, he thinks, and it only takes a moment to summon the memory from the depths of his mind, blurred with age and the faint buzz of alcohol and the heat of the summer night. But Virgil rings out in his mind as clear as a bell, somehow bringing more questions and few answers, because none of this makes any sense at all, because one night, two and a half years ago, Janus told him that he had a son, and that he loved him, and that he lost him, and that his name was Virgil, and then he refused to say any more, and Patton let it go in favor of holding him because the look of devastation on Janus’ face was like none he had ever seen before.

So, this cannot be Virgil. But surely, Janus would know the face of his own son, would never embrace a stranger, and would never embrace… whatever this person is, because Janus is sharp and Janus is observant, and he has most certainly picked up on all their unusual features, on all the ways that they cannot possibly be human. So that means that this must be Virgil after all, and Patton can only watch as they cling to each other, like they’re both afraid the other will disappear if they let go.

And Patton doesn’t know what this means.

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He remembers the first time he kissed Janus. He remembers the way they were curled up against each other, the lights dimmed and the television on low volume, neither of them paying attention to the images on the screen. They stared at each other for a long time before he leaned in, before he dared to take the initiative, and he has never felt happier than in the moment when Janus met him halfway, pressing his lips firmly against his, their noses knocking into each other, their teeth almost clacking together as they sought more, more contact, more closeness. It was messy and terrible, as far as kisses go, and Patton loved every moment of it, and when they pulled away from each other, they were both breathless, smiling, and he knew then that what he felt, Janus felt too.

He remembers, too, the moment he heard about Virgil. He remembers, because he knows only fragments of Janus’ past, a past that he is certain is dark and full of sorrow, and that is why he has never pushed for more than what Janus is willing to give, content to gather up the bits and pieces he is offered and guard them close.

Most of the surrounding conversation is hazy, blurred by one too many glasses of fine wine and a summer heat wave that permeated every inch of the apartment they rented at the time, no matter the efforts of the air conditioner to banish it. But he remembers the way Janus quieted, all of a sudden, face still and contemplative and sad in a way that made his heart clench.

“Have I ever told you,” he said, “that I have a son?”

And he could only stare and shake his head; the answer, of course, was no, the revelation so unexpected that he had no idea how to react.

Janus smiled, small and bitter, like a gash in his face, bleeding him dry. “I do,” he said. “He’s beyond my reach, now. I won’t be able to see him again.”

He remembers he made a noise, tiny and shocked, and that he stretched a hand out, placed it on his, and Janus accepted the touch readily enough.

“His name is Virgil,” Janus continued. “I think he would like you. At least, I hope he would.” He tilted his head, eyes distant. “He’s prickly, slow to trust, abrasive in general. But he’s a good kid. Was a good kid. I suppose he’s not… well. It’s been five years, now.” He closed his eyes, bowing his head. “He would like you,” he repeated, sounding more than a little broken. “He would like you.”

And he didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know what to say at all, his words failing him. So he tugged him closer with both arms, leaning him against his chest and rocking him gently, holding him close, and Janus pressed into the contact and didn’t say anything else.

He drew the conclusion that Virgil was dead, died tragically young, somehow. Looking back, he’s not sure how he arrived there, when Janus used the present tense the entire time, quite clearly speaking as though Virgil was alive and well, just somewhere he couldn’t go.

He thinks he might understand that part a bit better now, at least, though most of it refuses to sink in. But the facts are these: Virgil, if this is Virgil, cannot possibly be human. No human looks like he does. And this fact, too, leaves Patton with far more questions than answers.

-----------

“You did what?”

Janus’ voice is loud, sharp, and it brings Patton back to the present in an instant. He doesn’t know how much time has passed while he ruminated, tried to fit all the puzzle pieces together while well aware that he only has about half of them, but Janus and Virgil have drawn back from each other, Janus’ face twisted in alarm.

“We did research before I came down here!” Virgil says. “I’ve seen what humans want to do to us! For all I knew, he’d locked you up in a room and dissected you.”

Ah. So Janus isn’t pleased that his son—his son, his son, this is Janus’ son, his husband’s son— threatened Patton with a knife. Patton would feel more gratified if he weren’t stuck on us, trying desperately to ignore the voice that whispers in the back of his mind, the one that says, well, doesn’t that make sense? Virgil’s not human, that much is obvious, so doesn’t that mean that Janus is—

“You—”

And for the first time since he recognized Virgil, named him aloud, Janus looks at Patton, and Patton looks back, unsure of exactly what emotion is showing on his face. Confusion, probably; lord knows he’s feeling enough of it right now. But for whatever reason, Janus’ expression crumples, and he gently places his hand on Virgil’s shoulder, moving him to the side.

“Virgil,” he says quietly, and for the first time, Patton realizes that he isn’t speaking English at all, but rather, that same unfamiliar language that Virgil has been utilizing, the one that morphs in his head into something that makes sense. “I… need a moment.”

“But we only just—” Virgil begins, turning so that he can see both of them at once. And then, he stops, something odd passing across his face, something that Patton can’t interpret at all. “So you really are… with him.”

“Yes.”

“But he doesn’t know,” Virgil states.

Janus closes his eyes. “No,” he says.

Virgil is silent for a long moment. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll just… go in this other room, I guess. Over here.” And with that, he backs out of the kitchen and into the living room, disappearing from Patton’s line of sight.

Patton glances back to Janus, who is just standing there, still as stone, staring at him, and he opens his mouth, fully intending to chide him for talking about him, or about something tangentially related to him, at least, like he’s not sitting right here. But no sound comes out of his mouth, and suddenly, he finds himself wheezing, gasping for breath as the events of the past few minutes crash over him, and oh god, how is he supposed to process this, reconcile himself to this, because he knew his husband had secrets and he still doesn’t think he understands fully but he does understand just enough to know that everything he thought he knew is not as it seems and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with this and—

“Breathe, Patton,” Janus says, and a gloved hand appears in his vision. He grasps it thankfully, squeezing it tight, and the contact serves to ground him, allows him to calm his panic, little by little, until his mind clears enough to realize that Janus is kneeling in front of him, expression twisted into some awful combination of worry and apprehension and a hesitance that Patton has not seen in a long, long time, not since the earliest days of their relationship, when Janus seemed so uncertain that his affections were welcomed or wanted at all, and Patton had to work so hard to convince him otherwise.

But before he can do something to comfort him, Janus draws into himself, pulling his hand back and looking at the ground. “I suppose you have questions,” he says, and Patton almost laughs at the understatement, restraining himself at the last second.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and he wants to reach out, wants to take Janus’ hand again, but Janus’ body language is so closed off that he’s not sure any touch at all would be welcome. “So, uh, that’s Virgil.”

Janus nods.

“Your son, Virgil.”

Janus nods again, his eyes flickering up for a moment and then back to the floor again.

“I’m sorry he acted the way he did,” he murmurs. “He was scared for me, so he jumped to the worst possible conclusion.”

“There was no harm done,” Patton replies, matching his soft tone. “I mean, that was really scary. I was scared. I think I still am. But I’m not hurt, and everything’s turned out okay.” Even as the words leave his mouth, he has no idea whether he’s telling the truth or not. Have things turned out okay? Have they really? He feels like they’re dancing around the most important subject, the elephant in the room, and what’s more than that, they both know they’re doing it, neither of them quite willing to broach the topic.

But they need to. So Patton does.

“He’s not…” He pauses, taking a breath, marshaling all the courage he has left in him. “He’s not human.”

The statement hangs in the air between them, like a comma in a sentence, waiting for the inevitable continuation.

Janus shakes his head, just slightly, the motion so small that Patton might have missed it had he not been looking. “No,” he says, “he’s not.” And he falls silent, unwilling to elaborate, still unwilling to so much as meet Patton’s eyes, and that leaves the impetus of the conversation on him, doesn’t it? It leaves him to voice the rest, to dare to seek confirmation of a fact that half an hour ago, would have been too unbelievable to consider. Still is, to be frank.

“He’s… an alien. He’s not from earth,” he says, putting off the inevitable for as long as possible. He stares at his husband, who he loves, who he cherishes, who he treasures, who he thought he knew. And he still does, surely, because he knows what Janus is like, knows who he is if not what he is, and that has to be enough. He’s determined to make it enough. “So… are you? An alien, I mean?”

The question is out there, now. There is no taking it back. And Janus looks up at him, finally, expression pained.

“Yes,” he says simply, and Patton has to take a moment to breathe, to wrest his spiraling thoughts back under control, because what exactly is he supposed to make of this? This feels too big for him, too vast and too shocking and too incomprehensible, and nothing, nothing has ever prepared him for this possibility.

“Okay,” he says, even though he feels like it’s really not. “Okay. That’s… okay. I need a second to, um. I just need a second.”

“Of course,” Janus says, inclining his head, and then he moves as if to stand, and no, that is absolutely not what Patton wants, so he grabs at his sleeve with one hand. Janus freezes, staring at the spot where his fingers connect with his shirt.

“That doesn’t mean I want you to leave,” he says, his voice coming out somewhere between cross and petulant. “I can have a second perfectly well with you here.”

“Oh,” Janus says, settling back on the floor. He looks more than a little bit lost, as if he can’t fathom why Patton would want him to stay, and that does hurt a bit, the implication that he thinks Patton might not want him anymore, because of this. Which, he supposes it’s a rational fear; it is, after all, a rather large secret to drop on someone four years into a marriage. But Patton just needs time to process, and once he has, he thinks he’ll be alright.

So, he closes his eyes, focusing on the texture of Janus’ sleeve against his fingers, soft and silky.

What does this change, really? A lot, obviously, but how much of that actually matters? Does Janus being an alien change the fact that he always eats the last of the ice cream, or that he insists on doing the dishes by hand, or that he cried when Bambi’s mom died even though he pretended not to so that he could comfort Patton? Does it change the fact that he’s a terrible blanket hog, or that he denies loving to cuddle but instantly latches onto Patton the moment they’re both in bed together, or that he always seems to know just what to do or say when Patton is tired and sad and all the world feels gray?

Does it change that he loves him?

No. No, it can’t possibly affect any of that at all. And he’s known that all along, really, the realization lurking just under the surface, waiting for him to have it on his own time. He feels relief flood him, because alright. His husband is an alien. It’s going to take a long time for him to be used to that. But he’ll be damned before he lets that come between them.

He opens his eyes.

“I love you,” he says, and he puts all of his sincerity, all of the reassurance he can muster into those three words. And he is prepared to say more, to go on at length about all the reasons why, but Janus winces, turns his head away.

“You can’t say that,” he says. “Patton, you don’t even know what I look like.”

He frowns. Janus’ tone edges on defeat, on something uncomfortably close to despair, and he doesn’t like that at all.

“I’m looking at you right now,” he tries, but Janus just shakes his head.

“I’m a shapeshifter,” he says, cold and biting and yet, still reluctant, as if the admission is being ripped from him. “I literally hide my true appearance from you on a daily basis. I’m not human, and I don’t look like one, not when I’m not trying to.” He turns back to him then, meets his eyes, and it’s almost like a challenge, as if he’s certain in his words, certain that Patton will turn his back on him over something like appearance. And it’s true, this new admission throws him for a bit of a loop, but he thinks if he can accept the fact that he is married to an actual alien, he can accept this, too.

Janus is a very attractive man. But Patton didn’t marry him for his looks. And no matter what sort of alien he is, no matter what he’s hiding, whether it’s tentacles or feathers or extra eyes or what-have-you, Patton will love him just the same. What concerns him most is that Janus doesn’t seem to know that, seems to think that this will be the deal-breaker, will be what sends Patton running. And he is expecting Patton to run; that is becoming increasingly clear with every passing minute.

He spent a lot of time, early on in their relationship, showing Janus that he cared about him, showing Janus that he was allowed to be cared for. He didn’t expect to have to do it again, didn’t expect to have to prove his affections once more, four years into a happy marriage, but he will do whatever it takes.

“Then show me,” he says softly, and pitches his words carefully, trying to make it seem like a request and not a demand, trying to make sure Janus knows that he doesn’t have to do anything at all, not if he doesn’t want to. “Show me what you look like.”

Janus laughs, short and sharp, like a razor’s edge. He passes a hand across his face, and Patton’s fingers finally slip from his sleeve. He removes his hat, and then, to Patton’s surprise, he begins to unbutton his shirt, shrugging it from his shoulders, and then follows that with his gloves. Patton watches as the garments hit the floor, suddenly anxious, though he tries not to show it. Whatever Janus is about to show him, it is crucial that he doesn’t allow himself to have a negative knee-jerk reaction, doesn’t allow himself to recoil before his head and heart catch up to his instincts.

Even if Janus turns into… a giant spider person, or something equally scary, he’ll still love him. He knows that, knows that there is nothing that Janus could do or be to make him stop, but what is most important right now is making sure that Janus knows that.

Janus doesn’t say anything else, just settles back firmly on his haunches, bracing his hands against his thighs, shutting his eyes. And his face slides into something blank, into something impassive, but for just a moment, Patton thinks he sees a flicker of apprehension, even of fear, and he wants nothing more to reach out, to insist that everything is going to be alright. But he knows that Janus won’t believe him right now, will shrug off any touch, so he restrains himself, and watches as Janus begins to change.

It’s slow, at first, subtle. His skin almost seems to ripple in place, and then it— flips, for lack of a better word. It reminds him of Mystique from the X-Men movies, or one of those sequined pillows or shirts that has another color on the other side, revealed when you rub the sequins the other way. His skin flips, and in its place is scales, smooth and gleaming, in dappled patterns all across the left side of his face and down his chest. And as Patton stares, utterly fascinated, they move and shift across his body, curling into different designs and reflecting different colors, green and brown and yellow. And where his skin is still bare, it seems to even out, any blemishes disappearing, and it takes on a slightly yellow tint.

And Patton is so occupied by this that he almost doesn’t see the extra arms, folding out of seemingly nowhere, two extra pairs, one resting limp at his side and the other curling around his abdomen protectively. Three pairs of arms, six hands, each one now tipped with sharp claws, and Patton gapes at them, allowing himself one moment of pure surprise before turning his attention back to Janus’ face.

It looks sharper, more angular, a bit thinner, just different enough to throw him off balance a bit. But looking at Janus, his eyes screwed shut and lips pressed into a thin line, as if awaiting judgment, he can only see his husband there, not the stranger he half feared would take his place.

And the scales, well. The scales are lovely. They shimmer and shine in the light, and Patton can’t quite tell what color they’re trying to be, nor if there is any meaning to their movements across Janus’ skin, but he is captivated by them, by their twisting, shifting beauty. They almost look as if they are dancing.

So, he does the only thing he can think to do, and reaches out to caress his face.

Janus starts, eyes flying open, jerking back, but Patton pursues him, tracing his thumb across his cheekbone. The scales there are smooth and cool to the touch, just slightly bumpy, and Patton runs his fingertips across them, learning their shape and feel. Then, Janus makes a whimpering sound, and he freezes, watching him for any additional reaction.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Should I not do that? Does it hurt?”

“No,” Janus says, almost a stutter, “no. It— feels good. It’s just, I’m not used to—” He breaks off, shuddering, and he presses his face into Patton’s hand. His eyes are open wide, flitting across Patton’s face, and he realizes that his eyes have changed, too. One is the familiar, warm brown that Patton is used to, but the other is golden-yellow and slit, like a cat, or like a snake, and it’s quite possibly one of the most gorgeous things that Patton has ever seen.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says. “You’ve been so scared, haven’t you?”

At any other time, he thinks that Janus would deny it. Janus has never been one to admit to his own vulnerabilities, has always preferred to cover everything up in a layer of sarcasm and insults and misdirection, and on the worst days, even he has trouble getting him to admit that something is wrong. But now, Janus just shakes against his hand, his whole body trembling, and says nothing at all.

“I’m so sorry you felt like you needed to hide this,” he tells him. “I think you’re beautiful.”

“I have six arms,” Janus says hoarsely, as if he thinks Patton can’t see them. “Patton, I— I have scales, I have six arms, I have—”

He cuts off with a strangled gasp as Patton grasps one of his hands, one of the new ones, one of the ones hanging at his sides, and brings it up to his lips, planting a gentle kiss on his knuckles.

“They’re very nice arms,” he tells him. “And I think it’s ridiculous that I could have been having six-armed hugs this entire time. Don’t think I’m not going to have you make up for that, mister.”

Janus laughs wetly, and this time, it’s more genuine, and laced with surprise. There are tears in his eyes, Patton realizes, tears in his eyes and beginning to streak down his cheeks, and he reaches out to wipe them away on autopilot. Janus shivers every time he makes contact with a scale, but his eyes never leave his face.

“I love you,” Patton says. “I love you, all of you, no matter what you look like or what planet you’re from. I’d love you if you were a slimy tentacle alien like in the movies. I’d love you if you had an extra head, or, or a really long neck, or if you were secretly two feet tall and bright blue. And I told you on our wedding day that I would follow you to the ends of the earth, do you remember that? But I only said that because I didn’t know that going further was an option.”

He scoots a bit closer, removing his hand from Janus’ face so that he can grab two hands at once, not paying attention to which ones. Janus’ breath hitches.

“If you honestly think,” he says seriously, “that you could ever do anything to get rid of me, you’ve got another thing coming.”

And at that, Janus lets out a sob, loud and messy, and throws himself forward, colliding with Patton’s chest. It’s an awkward angle for a hug, but Patton is too preoccupied to care, is too busy bringing his arms up to hold him, rubbing circles into his back and tracing the scales he finds there. And he’s basking in the sensation, too, drinking in the fact that there are six arms hugging him right now, clutching at him tightly, holding onto the fabric of his shirt for dear life, and he has never felt so safe, never felt so warm. So he relaxes into his husband’s embrace, embraces him in turn, lets him weep and shudder against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Janus gasps out, “I’m so sorry I doubted you, I—”

“It’s okay,” Patton murmurs. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, I’ve--” He stops, his attention suddenly distracted. “Is that a tail? Do you have a tail?”

It certainly looks like one, snaking its way out of Janus’ pants, long and thin and scaled, and how he missed that, he has no idea. Janus pulls back a bit to look him in the face. His eyes are red-rimmed, his skin flushed orange rather than pink.

“Yes,” he says. “Is that… alright?”

Curious, Patton extends a hand. The tail wraps around his wrist snugly, tugging at his arm, and he giggles a bit.

“Oh goodness,” he says, in lieu of a real response, not bothering to stop the delighted grin that spreads across his face. Janus relaxes, untensing, and slumps forward again to rest his head on his chest, releasing a long, heavy sigh.

“I’m still sorry that I kept this from you,” he murmurs, and Patton glances down at him, carding his free hand through his hair.

“You don’t have to be,” he says.

“Maybe not, but I am,” Janus replies. He shifts in place, angling himself to be able to meet his eyes. And Patton once again finds himself fascinated by his heterochromia, at the contrast between the eye he knows well and the eye that is new. It’s almost a comforting sight, once that reminds him that no matter his appearance, Janus remains the man he knows and loves.

“Did you mean it?” Janus asks. “When you said that you would go further than the earth, if given the option?”

A thrill runs through him. “Are you giving me the option?”

Janus hums. “Virgil is hardly going to be content with leaving me here,” he says, and then twists around further to stare Patton full in the face. “But I won’t leave you,” he insists, voice growing vehement. “And I won’t ask you for more than you’re willing to give. If you want to stay here, then we’ll stay here. The choice is yours.”

And Patton leans forward and kisses him on the lips, soft and short and sweet. “I’ve told you,” he says. “Where you go, I’ll follow.”

And he means it. He means it more than anything else he’s said in his life. He means it with the weight of all the years they’ve spent together, all the love he has to offer. Where Janus goes, he will follow, to the ends of the earth and beyond it, and there is a whole universe out there, waiting to be explored. He will have to make arrangements, of course, will have to contact his school and figure out something to tell his parents, and perhaps he should be dreading that, but all he can feel is exhilaration. Because his husband is an alien, has surely seen so many things that are so much bigger than their little lives here on earth, and yet, he is willing to stay here, with Patton, for Patton, and all Patton would have to do is ask.

But just as Janus has chosen him, he has chosen Janus. And for Janus, he would go anywhere.

“Because you know,” he continues, “I think you’re pretty out of this world. In fact, I’d even say that you’re a real star.”

Janus snorts, messy and undignified, and Patton smiles, pleased by the reaction.

“So, how about you introduce me to your kiddo,” he says. “Without the knives, this time. And you can tell me what I should pack.”

And Janus smiles at him, sweet and joyful, one of those expressions that no one else gets to see. Despite everything, that smile is still the same.

“Okay,” he says, and stands, pulling Patton up with him. “Let’s do that.”

And Patton clasps one of his hands, and lets Janus lead him onward.

----------

End Note: There are plenty of things that I would like to explore in this ‘verse, including putting proper focus on the anxceit, having Virgil deal with suddenly having another dad, Patton continuing to adjust himself to the new circumstances, and whatever the other sides are up to. So, I’m tentatively going to label this as a series. Future installments will be under the tag ‘it’s a space opera (and oh how the arias soar)’

General Taglist: @just-perhaps @the-real-comically-insane @jerrysicle-tree @glitchybina @psodtqueer @mrbubbajones @snek-boii@severelylackinginquality @aceawkwardunicorn @gayerplease

[rubykgrant]

Grimmons babies... but they got BIGGER~

(up-dated version!)

They’re about 14 here (imagine they’re taking a picture for the first day of high school for Grandpa Sarge). Some info about them below-

Since I’ve already got Tex and Church having their own synthetic human bodies that were created with the DNA samples of Allison and the Director, it isn’t too much of stretch to figure out other potential uses for this; trying to create a “perfect” clone that is identical to the person the sample is taken from is kinda impossible (they start to break down when the reach the age of the person when the sample was originally taken). One option is to let all the information within the DNA sample sort of randomize itself. OR, introduce another DNA sample to combine. Trans Simmons is basically a fact, but I feel like when he was younger, he nver thought ahead about starting a family one day (thus, no egg cells saved). Tucker could perhaps introduce them to some space aliens, but neither Simmons nor Grif are enthusiastic about going through the whole birth process. Adoption was also a thought, but because Simmons helped with the situation regarding Church’s body, he has some insight to how this works, he decided to bring up this option to Grif. So, they decided to try it for themselves. Grif’s DNA combined with Simmons... and two sets of twins were the result! Definitely more babies than they thought they’d get, but they were more than happy to take care of them all, and love their children very much~

Because they’re both nerds, Grif and Simmons were going to pick names inspired by various sci-fi authors and fictional characters... eventually, they settled on using the letter D, since it matches with thir firts names being Dick and Dexter (their friends and family suggested a few names, too). For official purposes, the surnames are Grif-Simmons, but the kids often shorten it to GS when they write it out. They call Simmons “Dad” and Grif “Pop”~

Delilah “Del” is gender-neutral (afab, but both parents were very understanding and accepting of all their kids), prefers they/them but doesn’t mind she/her. Del’s got all of the chill without being a total slacker; they’re more like the voice of reason, and the one who can get everybody else to calm down during a crisis. Not so much in a “take-charge” kind of way, but gives great advice. They play all kinds of video games (so do the other sibs, but each has something specific; Del is into EVERYTHING), and has a special gift with language/words (Del speaks 7 languages fluently, and knows how to translate/read even more). Del is also a horror movie junkie (even as a child, they somehow didn’t get freaked out by scary movies). Auntie Kai suggested the name Delilah (because she loved watching Gargyles with her brother and Simmons; the name just really stuck with her, for whatever reason)

Davis is Del’s twin bro, and he’s the kid who always has TOO MUCH ENERGY. Even before he could walk as a baby, he was jamming around and had to be watched constantly. He’s still runs on a natural sugar-high, but thankfully his parents knew how to help him out (a good combo of meds that help him focus, plus he’s learned plenty of activities that let him put his energy to good use). All the sibs are talkative, but Davis is the most chatty. He’s also the clingiest kid. He likes working on puzzles, as well as taking things apart/putting them back together, so he’s got a big collection of various machines he can work on. He also really likes music; listening to it helps him concentrate, and he usually sings lots of little songs. Grif picked the name out... and yes, he chose it because of Digimon

Darien “Dare” is agender (amab, but again; good parents), and also mostly uses they/them but is OK with he/him. Dare was the safety-kid when it came to his sibs, and always seemed to worry about the others if they weren’t all together. As they got older, Dare settled down just a bit... and ironically, was totally OK with taking risks (if everybody wants to go swimming, Dare will jump in the water first... out of a tree, or off a cliff). Basically, the one who nags the others to wear a helmet when they ride a bike, but when a crazy stunt is siggested, they’ll say “Sure, I’ll do it!”. With Grif as a parent, all the kids were no strangers to treats, but Dare has a fondness for food (they have specific flavors and textures they like. for example, Dare will pour some steak sauce into a small dessert bowl, and eat it with a spoon like soup). Uncle Donut loves all these kids, but Lou shares his interest in fashion. Locus didn’t know Grif and Simmons were paying attention, but he mentioned liking the name Darien... they liked it too, so they used it for a baby (Locus is embarrassed to admit his first crush as a kid was on Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, and that’s why he likes the name haha)

Daisy is Lou’s twin sister, and she was always the biggest baby. As the sibs grew, she continued to be the tallest. She was motivated to be the one who could keep on being able to pick up the other kids no matter how old they were, so she became the most athletic kid too (nobody is sure how Simmons made a jock or how Grif made a kid with energy overflow, bit it happened). Most people don’t realize she and Dare are literally twins, and she gets a kick out of it when people assume she’s the oldest (she’s not; the other set are actually older by 1 hour, Del being oldest, born 4 minutes sooner than Davis). Although Daisy enjoys playing various sports, she’s just not super competitive (and it ticks off the other kids who are obsessed with winning). The only time she gets really serious is if somebody is actually in trouble. She’s the most out-doors-y kid of her sibs, often hiking and swimming, and her other hobbies include a rock collection (she can tell you their scientific properties, and also magical symbolism). I have an OC in my RVB story-line, who gets adopted into Red Team. Her name is Poppy, and she actually bonds with Simmons a lot, so he wanted one child to have a flower name, like hers~

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Aredhel and Eöl

[I’m not sure if this is the take I want to stick with on Aredhel and Eöl, but it’s an idea that popped into my head and I wanted to explore it. There are a lot of fraught topics in here, so if I have messed things up, I apologize. There are triggers for abusive/controlling relationships.]

When Aredhel arrives in Aglon, she expects that her friends will soon return to join her. As the months pass, her enjoyment of the grand forests of this new land fades into impatience, then annoyance, then anger. At times she thinks of riding further east, so seek out both her cousins and this strange people of the Naugrim she has never seen, but at first she tells herself the wait will be only a little longer, pride forbids trailing after those who once abandoned her and now purposely snub her - for after so long, and with no question that they must have heard of her presence, their absence can only be deliberate. She had wanted to boast to Celegorm of her battles against the giant spiders and other terrors of the dark valley, but the stories of her adventures have grown old with waiting.

She rides further and further afield into the expanse of Middle-earth, and one day reaching the Celon on the borders of Himlad, she impulsively fords it and dives into the wood, its trees greater than any she has yet seen, blocking out the sun. She thinks to cut directly through the forest, and so come to Estolad and see the Secondborn of whom rumours have drifted north. She did not leave Gondolin to seek her cousins only, but adventure, and newness, and all things strange to her, the wonders of this wide land.

In the pathless forest she loses her way, who has never been lost in woods since she was a young girl (and then only for the joy of it), even in the great forests of Oromë in Valinor. For a time this is exciting, but as nothing reveals itself to her eyes but the same trees endlessly repeated it griws tedipus and wearisome. The sight at last of a hall and hearthfire is a joy to her, and the stranger who welcomes her intriguing. His accounts of the Naugrim and their deeply-dolven halls in the mountains, the treasures he shows her of both their making and his own - better even that Curufin’s, she thinks disloyally - and the descriptions of their making (for, though not a craftswoman herself, she is Noldor still and delights knowing how the work is done), keep her as a delighted guest for weeks, and his tales of the fearless dark before Sun and Moon during the years of Morgoth’s chaining enthrall her for weeks more. He is as good company as she has ever had, and yet new and different and fascinating like none others she has met. He tells her the story of Thingol and Melian, meeting in this very wood, ringed about by delightful allusions, compliments, and significant looks, and a new excitement stirs that she has never felt before. She wanted Middle-earth - and here is Middle-earth, in all its wonder and history and strangeness, desirous and enraptured of her.

When he asks for her hand, she accepts with the same impetuousity that has governed all the rest of her life.

At first, she is happy in his company, wandering together under the stars or hunting alone. Eöl prefers craftwork to hunting, but she rejoices in it and is far more skilled in Oromë’s arts than the servants, chasing boar and venison. She learns the ways of the wood and it ceases to appear directionless and unform to her. One days she says she feels she has become acquainted with the trees, and Eöl laughs and takes her into a new part of the wood, where she is astonished to see the strangest being imaginable, a tree with the limbs of a man and with hands taller than Aredhel’s whole body, whom he greets in a language beyond her comprehension. Learning the being’s language is a fascinating work of years, and his history yet more delightful; he has lived in Beleriand since the days the first elves awakened.

She is bitterly disappointed that Eöl will not take her to visit the dwarves in Nogrod and Belegost, but they are careful of their secrets, he explains, and would not abide him bringing a stranger uninvited to their fortresses. Nor will he permit her to visit the humans to the south, whom he views as uncouth intruders. Yet in spite of this they are happy, and all the more so after the birth of their son. She is troubled that he will not name the boy; he says that children ahould be named for their personalities, and an infant does not have one yet. In her own tongue, she names the boy Lómion.

One day, a little after Lómion has learned to walk, she suggests to Eöl that she could pay a brief visit to her cousins, who must be worried about her after so long; her anger at their neglect has cooled, and she wishes at least to let them know she is well. Prior to her marriage, neither her partiality for the Fëanorians nor Eöl’s hatred of them had been discussed; in the later years his sentiments became clearer, but still rarely expressed, and she likewise had spoken little of them. Now he calls them Kinslayers and murderers and thieves and invaders, and forbids her to see them - her fury rises in return, asking what he must think of her if he regards her kin so - he snaps that he does not blame her for their crimes - and in an intemperate instant the fateful word “Their - ?” leaves her lips, and he stops short, frozen, as if he had never seen her before. He holds her gaze, and memories deeply buried force themselves to the surface again - of darkness and blood and the heat of battle and the burning desire for freedom and the cold shock afterwards - and they are both shaking, and his gaze snaps away like the gate of a fortress crashing shut.

He leaves the house, and does not return that night, and she sleeps alone. On his return the next day, he does not speak for hours, sometimes staring at her intensely, sometimes letting his gaze slip away, attempting to look at anything - everything - else. In the evening he sits tensely, crouched in a chair, fingernails scraping at his arms as if he wished to scour away his own flesh.

He avoids the bed that night as well. So does Aredhel.

In the morning he breaks his silence in tones hard and chill as granite. Aredhel may depart as she wishes. His son will remain with him.

She refuses this. She will not leave her child, not under any circumstance and certainly not with a father who has not yet named him. She has not deceived him: he knew of the Kinslaying long before he saw her, he knew she was a Noldo and a Finwëan, and he had never asked her anything about it. She will not deny that she was in the wrong; yet something within her, too, has frozen in seeing her husband stare at her as if he had unwittingly married an orc.

They move into separate bedrooms. He never touches her again, save out of the most mundane necessities. It is two years before he will allow her to be left alone with their son; when Eöl is not present, a sevant must be. When he sees that she makes no difficulties and does not appear to be contaminating the child with Kinslaying Noldor ideas, this gradually lightens; at the same time, the bonds around her tighten. Eöl never repeats the offer that she may depart, mistrusting her, fearing what she may say to her kin of her treatment, fearing she could say he holds her son captive.

She seeks for the Ent, feeling the need of a friend and someone to talk to, but he is gone.

Years later, when Lómion is older, and called Maeglin by his father, Eöl takes him on his journeys to the dwarf-kingdoms, teaches him metal-working, and delights in his swiftly-growing skill. For the sake of their son, Aredhel and Eöl reestablish something that is more civility than silence.

Once Lómion is old enough that she can trust him to keep silence to his father, she finds relief in speaking to him of the things she misses, things she has not spoken of in decades, the beauties of Valinor and of Gondolin that once she wearied of, but were far less prisons than this gloomy forest. One day many years later, when he has reached his full maturity, Lómion - with the boundless optimism of youth - disregards her warnings and asks his father that he and Aredhel may visit her family. Eöl goes into a cold fury and threatens to chain him up.

When her son suggests they leave together for Gondolin, she rejoices, feeling freedom quicken the air air again, her heart beat faster with the thought of it. Lómion is old enough now that he could have been wed and had children already, were they not trapped in the forest; he has a right to choose what life he wants.

Fortune betrays them.

Why does she plead for her husband’s life when he kills her? Is it for some lingering affection? For the wish that their son may not be an orphan?

She looks at her brother and thinks, I want there to still be one of us who is not a Kinslayer.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Into Dust.”

I have been working little hints into the story for a very long time, and now I am going a bit more obvious with it. Super exciting and I hope you enjoy :)

GA physicians and psychologists sat across from the human as he stared at them. Neither of them moved, and neither of them spoke. Outside the pop-up medical tent mist swirled in great undulations around them thicker than it had been yesterday.

All down the tent,, separated by curtains, other doctors were examining the other human, none of which moved, beside those that were ordered to guard the entrances and exits. The tent held its own atmosphere inside, so no one was wearing helmets, though they were resting very close by just in case.

“What is wrong with them?” Ramirez whispered from somewhere in the darkness.

Krill stood next to him from where he could see both Maverick and Adam at the same time, “Physically they are both just fine, but neural scans are showing…. Strange brain waves.”

“And that…. writing … what was that, do you think they can actually read it?”

There was a sharp hiss from behind them as the Tent’s airlock popped open.

Another Vrul stepped inside and pulled off their helmet. They gave krill a quick once over, and began to speak despite the look of destain, “I have examined the writings on the stone, we found some more of the markings and have arranged them according to their break pattern. Using what I know of this strange language from the first lines of text the humans translated, I believe…..”

The two of them stared at the Vrul pent up with questions.

“I believe that they CAN, in fact, read it.”

Ramirez blinked and stared at the little alien, “but…. That doesn’t make sense, why can some humans read it and other humans can’t” 

That is what they had learned through the course of the last few days. There were some humans that could read it and other humans that could not, but no aliens could read it. Those who could read it, didn’t exactly read it, or so they said, but understood it inherently. They looked at the word and knew it’s meaning, but they wouldn’t have been able to give you a lesson on proper grammar.

The linguist walked past them, “A few other things of interest.” Krill and Ramirez moved to walk after the Vrul, “I have done a preliminary analysis of the linguistic structure of the language itself. Though I am not entirely sure about some words, I have nailed down the structure, and have seen that it does not seem representative of any alien language yet known-”

“How is that interesting. It seems like that is just a dead end-”

The Vrul glared at him, “If you would let me finish, you might have heard me say that, while it does not match any KNOWN alien language, it DOES have structural similarities to common human languages that can be found in the Lower middle east and upper Africa.”

Ramirez blinked, “And what exactly does that mean?”

The Vrul’s antenna twitched, “I have no clue, it could be a simple coincidence of language, but that is what my analysis has found, what is done with that information, I do not know.” He glanced towards the table, “Has there been any change with the humans behavior.”

“No they are just…. Like this…. In some sort of trance or something. They haven’t spoken since putting the pieces together.”

“Don’t let them hear that we found more.” Krill ordered.

THe other vrul looked at him askance but didn’t say anything.

Krill ignored it, an exchange that Ramirez would have found curious if it wasn’t for his concern for his friends 

Ramirez huffed in frustration, he didn’t want to say that he was “jealous” the others could read the strange spooky rock language because he definitely didn’t want to be put into catatonia, but there was still a part of him that worried it had something to do with something being wrong with him. If this was supposed to work on humans, than why didn’t it work on him. Was there something inherently wrong with him?

He tried to shake off those thoughts. Thoughts like that were like….. Well they were like getting angry when the person you rejected finds someone else to date. You didn’t want them to begin with, you just wanted to be special enough for them to notice you.

And Ramirez, well he didn’t get jealous of other people.

Other people got jealous of him.

There was another slight pop from the airlock behind him, and he turned just as a couple of officers stepped into the room. They were all the way down from the UNSC, and they didn’t look particularly pleased to be there.

Admiral Kelly was at their front, and she stopped just next to them as she entered, turning to look at Ramirez.

She knew Ramirez from back in the day when he had done his first tour on the Enterprise. He had been on the Team with captain Kelly when Adam discovered the existence of alien life. It was kind of crazy to think back on those times. It seemed so strange that in his lifetime, no one had thought aliens existed, now to be surrounded by them without batting an eye.

“What do we know?”

“Not much Ma’am.” he began, “We know that there is some sort of…. Strange writing that only humans can read, and in that case, only certain humans. After reading it they sort of just locked up like this and we haven’t gotten them to talk since.”

Admiral kelly grunted, “ALright, put orders out that no one is to go near that writing, at least no one human, until we can determine what it is. Get some linguists on it, and see if we can’t identify authenticity.” She glanced over to where Admiral Vir was sitting, “I want to take a closer look.”

No one stopped her as she stepped across the room. 

Krill followed her and Ramiez hung just back from where she stood as she walked over and traded seats with the scientist who was sitting across from Adam. She sat down, and Adam did not move.

Krill stood with her and stared at him.

From the outside, nothing seemed so different about him. IT was the same skin and the same eyes and the same mouth that sat there, but there was… something off about it. He couldn’t really understand until he noted  the expression on the man’s face.

It was almost as if he was holding his jaw differently than usual, not in an abnormal way just not in a way that Adam ever did. It didn’t lend itself so much to a smile as it did to a frown of serious contemplation. His eyes, while glassy seemed intense, as if he was staring off into something they could not see.

When he stared into his eyes Krill got the…. Uncomfortable feeling that he was looking through a window staring inward….. As something tried to break it’s way out.

He shivered and threw away his strange musings.

Admiral Kelly leaned forward, “Adam…. Adam Vir.”

She reached a hand across the table and placed her hand over his.

Krill jolted in surprise as the man slowly lifted his head to look at them.

Admiral Kelly sat back.

“It was not for us to see.” he said, and when he spoke his voice…. Seemed to echo strangely in a space that shouldn't have supported that kind of acoustic  phenomena.

“What wasn’t for us?” She wondered 

He tilted his head, “The writing was not for us. We are prying into things we shouldn’t pry into, admiral kelly.”

“I see…. We couldn’t have known that it wasn’t for us. We were just doing our jobs.” Krill didn’t know where this was going, but the way Adam spoke made him nervous.

Adam tilted his head, and the way he did it was just so… wrong somehow.

“That is true.”

“Adam…. What is that language…. Do you know.”

He turned his head back to look at her, and when he did the glassiness in his eyes vanished leaving him shrewd and sharp, though there was still something about him that struck Kril as odd, the way he held his body as if…. As if it was not his…. Or perhaps the inflection of his voice making him sound much much older than he was. Or perhaps not older, but….. Timeless? No that was just ridiculous 

Admiral Kelly slid back in her seat surprised.

“Am I…. speaking with Adam?”

He had no idea what caused her to ask that question, but the human smiled, and when he smiled it was also…. Off somehow. It wasn’t an unpleasant smile or even all that sinister, it was just…. Different.

“Yes, and no.”

He wouldn’t speak more after that, and no matter what they tried to get out of him, he would not speak.

They did not get any words out of the other humans. For days and nights the humans sat there in the darkness of the tent. They did not eat and they did not sleep. Despite attempted medical intervention, it appeared as if they needed none, as if their bodies had frozen in time. Their hearts still beat, their lungs still breathed, but there was no deterioration. They simply sat there unmoving.

Despite the secret nature of the military operation, someone somewhere got hold of some information until rumors were spreading around the galaxy like wildfire. Ships landed planetside only to be turned away as nosey reporters and stubborn scientists tried to get a peek at the humans.

That was until one ship landed.

WHen the door opened a tall shape came stepping out from inside. The marines in their space suits moved forward to stop them, but were stopped in their place as the tip of a sharp metal spear was pointed towards them and their suits.

“Corporal, its good to see you again.”

***

Ramirez stared down the shaft of the spear, “Sunny, That your spear or are you just happy to see me.”

The Drev huffed humming with laughter, “I’, glad to see you haven’t changed much.”

“What are you doing here! I thought you were supposed to be back on Anin…. Bringing light and truth to the people like some sort of space Moses.”

“Again with that comparison.”

“Sorry, but seriously. How did you get here, and how did you know we were here.”

She tilted her head, “It's hardly difficult to find out where Adam Vir is. He has this habit of being the center of the universe without trying.”

“So I assume you heard.”

“I heard… something…. Something about strange writing, and humans behaving strangely. There was only one person that it could be.”

Ramirez sighed, “I suppose that is true.” he waved the other marines down and motioned her to follow him. Together they stepped onto the hovercade and drove themselves through the swirling red mist, “They haven’t eaten, and they haven’t slept for over a week, but Dr Krill says that…. Nothing seems to be medically wrong with them. There is no dehydration or deterioration. They don’t sleep, but they don’t seem to need to. Whatever is going on with them…. Well we can’t be sure.”

“Have they spoken?” Sunny wondered.

“I mean yeah, once to tell us that the writing wasn’t for us.”

“Who spoke?”

“It was Adam, but he was, weird….”

Sunny went very quiet just then, and he couldn’t get her to speak the rest of the trip over.

***

Krill stood next to Adam, who still sat in the same spot as before. He checked his pulse and his breathing which were regular and unlabored. He was worried about him remaining in one position so long afraid that he would develop blood clots in his legs. They had tried moving the humans for their safety in this matter, but they had refused to be moved. All signs should have pointed to their slow and eventual demise from dehydration. Based on the timetable, they should have been critical about two days ago, but still they sat there without being bothered to move or even die.

Their brain waves were, just odd, it wasn’t that something was wrong, but almost as if there was some sort of interference in the way.

He was just Examining Adam’s good eye, which seemed reactive when the airlock popped open.

He turned surprised to watch as Ramirez pulled off his helmet, followed by another familiar face, bright blue with yellow eyes.

“Sunny!” His exclamation was lost as she dropped her helmet into Ramirez’s arms and walked across the intervening space, her eyes locked on Adam. She ignored everyone else in the room as she pulled the seat back and sat down resting her upper elbows on the table as she leaned forward.

“Hello, Deus.”

The room stared.

And watched as Adam cracked a smile, “It's good to see you again, Sunny. I missed you.”

“What are you doing here.”

Adam shook his head and sighed, “You….. understand so little about what is going on here…”

“What do you mean?”

“Deus for one. I think you have confused that as my name.”

“Then what is your name.”

“I already told you, it's me, Adam.”

“You don’t act much like him.”

He turned his head to look up, “That's because I AM Adam but MORE or perhaps, Adam but disconnected, not the whole Adam.”

“Stop speaking cryptically, and just tell me who and what you are.”

He watched her his single eye wide and green, “I am human.”

“Bullshit.”

“I am Human.”

“Now your just being difficult.”

He laughed, and for a moment she DID see a bit of Adam in there. He reached out a hand placing it over hers, “Assume for now that I am…. Perhaps a piece of Adam, it does not accurately describe me, but it will work for now.” he looked at her, and the expression on his face was so soft….. And familiar, “We did miss you…. I suppose we can actually thank you for all this. If it wasn’t for you he would not have been able to read those words.”

“What are you talking about.”

“Nothing you will understand.” “What are you doing?”

“We are waiting.”

“For what?”

“It hardly matters now, our waiting has been in vain, and I must finish this.”

“This…. What is THIS, you aren’t making any sense.” 

Adam stood legs unbothered by days of sitting in the same spot. The other humans turned to look at him. Maverick even smiled, but did not move further. He began to walk forward, and Sunny reached out a hand to grab him, but as soon as her hand came in contact with his skin, she yelped and had to draw her hand back as his skin…. Burned.

He looked down at her, “Please…. For your own safety do not try to stop me. For the safety of this body…. Bring a medical team.”

She stared in confusion as Adam made his way towards the airlock door. 

Others tried to stop him, but their reactions were similar. Sunny raced after him as he stepped into the airlock, without a suit.

The door shut and before she could do anything, and airlock door hissed open. She expected Adam to fall to the ground as noxious fumes permeated his lungs and began to suffocate him, but he seemed to ignore it, stepping into the mist which swirled around him in great waves of red billowing and undulating at his feet.

As he walked he seemed to…. Slow slightly, as if the heat of his skin was letting off heat.

Scientists in suits stepped back in shock and horror as he walked, unprotected between them though his breathing was even and unbroken. 

Mist swallowed him, and Sunny had to run to catch up.

Noxious gas rippled against his skin.

Krill ran after, and Dr. Katie and ramirez were close behind.

“He should be on the ground by now.” She heard someone say.

Her own breath was making the inside of her suit a bit muggy.

They had reached the site now, and sunny looked down to see large blocks of metal or stone on the ground, carved with strange symbols. Scientists stood around having been examining the rocks, but when they looked up they stepped back in shock and awe, and horror as the human stepped into the middle of their work.

He turned to look at Sunny, “They are not ready?” He said 

And then he held out his hands.

As he did, the ground around them began to vibrate. It wasn’t a large vibration, like an earthquake, but a small vibration, a small vibration so powerful, Sunny found herself staggering to her knees as her very bones went numb. All around them scientists and aliens alike keeled over onto the ground.

The vibrations grew stronger until the rocks danced and wobbled with fury.

Adam raised his hands and the vibrations grew more powerful. Sunny couldn’t feel anything below her midriff.

His hands were raised high and wide, red mist swirl around him, though his skin seemed to glow white

He lifted his head underside of his chin and neck exposed, and then he clenched his hands violently.

All around them it seemed like the vibrations hyper focused, and the rocks around them crumbled to dust.

Sunny collapsed onto her chest and arms as a billowing wave of black ash roared up around them.

When the ash settled, he was still standing there.

Groggily she watched as he lowered his hands and the subtle glow faded from his skin.

He lowered his head, and as she watched, a look of confusion crossed his face, confusion that was replaced suddenly by fear. He took a step forward hand outstretched, and then collapsed to the ground body violently seizing.

Limbs still numb, barely able to walk, Sunny struggled to her feet and over to where he lay. A few others had raced forward.

An emergency shroud was deployed, similar to a vacuum sealed bag you could pull over someone and then close shut while pulling out bad air and putting good air in.

Little was she to know what back in the tent, the other humans had come out of their seeming trance.

And below her feet dust was kicked up into the air as the last remnants of the words faded into ash. 

[lhs3020b]

Axiom’s End, by Lindsay Ellis

I finished this book last night, and it’s very likely the most interesting book I’ve read so far in 2021.

This is a book that’s hard to discuss without spoilers, so please be aware that the Spoiler Light is on for all commentary below the cut...

SYNOPSIS

Cora Sabino’s life is a bit of a mess. She’s dropped out from college, is currently living with her mother Demi (a situation that neither of them like) and is working in a soul-destroying temp job at a crap company. To make it worse, her estranged father Nils is a Julian Assange-type figure whose continual leaks of classified documents have made Cora’s family a surveillance target for various three-letter agencies. The year is 2007, Bush is the President and it’s the era of peak War on Terror hysteria.

Then a meteor comes down just outside Los Angeles. In the aftermath of this event, Nils releases documents alledging that the US government has secretly held a group of aliens - the so-called “Fremda group” - prisoner for years, and that the public is being misled about the occurence of this First Contact.

Cora wants nothing to do with Nils or his schemes - the man is a toxic narcissist who abandoned his wife and children, after all, and has been a source of nothing but trouble in their lives. Then, one night, Demi’s house gets burgled.

The burgler turns out to be Ampersand, an actual literal alien, who recently arrived on Earth. The meteor that smashed windows across Los Angeles was actually his spacecraft (the fact that the descent seems to have been uncontrolled is a detail that’s never elaborated on in the story, interestingly). Ampersand is very much on Earth for his own reasons, and they may not align with any human concerns. Ampersand wants data on where the Fremda group may have been kept - as Cora’s family are relatives of Nils, he assumes they may know something, hence the burglary. Once it becomes apparent they don’t, he resorts to a Plan B. And Cora finds herself ensnared in an escalating mess of both human and alien schemes.

DISCUSSION

Ampersand is a character who is hard to work out in some ways. On the one hand, it’s arguable whether “he” is really anyone’s friend. (A small side-note on the gendering: Cora notes in-universe that assigning “him” a male gender is probably misleading - it’s doubtful that Ampersand sees himself as being either male or female in the human sense - but his translated voice sounds male, so in the end she just decided to roll with it. Ampersand him - or itself/themself - doesn’t seem to care one way or the other about this particular issue.)

Ampersand’s behaviour is quite amoral. He’s happy to deceive people, lie by omission and - as we learn later on - has some quite grim things in his backstory. His evident dislike of humans becomes particularly ironic when you learn what he did to learn how human language works. (Yes, Superorganism, we have moral flaws. But honestly? You’re not any better.) He also has no problem abducting Cora and sticking a chip in her - but, that said, he also passes on a few opportunities to Kick the Proverbial Dog. Once he makes his agreement with Cora, he actually sticks to it and keeps up his end of the bargain.

Also, his underlying motivation - trying to help a group of refugees who have fled an alien genocide - is sympathetic.

Lastly, there are the events of the ending. He could easily have abandoned Cora while she was severely injured after the final encounter with Obelus - in fact it probably would have made his escape easier, and he might even have been able to save the Genome if he had - but instead he stops the bleeding, repairs the worst of her injuries and then takes her straight to the nearest hospital. (Whether he also settled her hospital bills is never addressed...)

But on the other hand, Ampersand is frankly the architect of many of his own problems. It’s clear he’s lied to everyone about everything, including his own people in the Fremda group. As the book goes on it becomes less and less clear whose side he’s actually on - honestly it’s not entirely clear if he even knows himself. (He stops Cora from killing Obelus, when she very nearly did.) It’s also notable that had Cora actually followed Ampersand’s directions late in the book - roughly, “leave this place and never come back, no matter how you feel”  - then what remained of the Fremda group would almost certainly have been exterminated by Obelus. There are only any survivors at all basically because Cora decides to take matters into her own hands and sneaks back to the barn when Ampersand isn’t looking.

There is a definite theme in this book about narcism; Nils is the most obvious example, but I think it can also be applied to Ampersand and the Superorganism more generally. Ampersand has trouble wrapping his alien head around the idea that humans have agency or indeed any “skin in the game”. He also has a low opinion of our species as a whole - but the more you find out about the Superorganism, it cannot be argued that they’re any better than us, just older and more advanced. Lastly, the Superorganism itself seems to have the same problem - they seem to be baffled that the transients are so hostile, but it’s no surprise given that the Superorganism never misses a chance to try to kill them whenever it meets them. Meanwhile the Autocrat’s plan to solve a political problem through internal genocide has clearly backfired - whatever you think of the situation, dragging a third species (us!) into the Superorganism/transient mess has not worked out to the Autocrat’s advantage. (If nothing else, the Autocrat is now having to expend resources on a situation that does not directly-relate to containing the transients and while the Superorganism’s capabilities are clearly large, they’re also ultimately-finite.)

People think they know better, but each clever scheme just escalates the mess they’re already in. If you’re in a hole you should stop digging, but instead this lot go and fetch themselves a Channel Tunnel-style boring machine!

As for Cora, she’s in the “ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances” role. Honestly, she does pretty well, all considered. You couldn’t really blame her if she’d ended up sat in a darkened corner rocking backwards and forwards, but she doesn’t. She stays on her feet throughout, manages to react effectively to changing circumstances, and more-or-less threads the needle on a whole mess of competing factions (Obelus/Ampersand/the Fremdas/the US government). Her relationship with Ampersand also evolves over the book, from intense mutual suspicion to something a bit more nuanced. There’s also a hilariously fan-ficcy bit near the very end, though I won’t spoil it if you haven’t read the book :)

One thing I couldn’t quite work out was, when exactly did Ampersand fusion-bond Cora? It was apparently subtle - she didn’t seem to specifically-notice anything when it happened, though the aftereffects became increasingly obvious. (Apparently it also didn’t play out in quite the way Ampersand expected either, though given that Cora’s central nervous system is completely different from his, it’s a bit surprising that he thought it would behave predictably. Though, this arguably does bring us back to the point about the narcissm issue - do something without any thought to the consequences is a very narcisstic way to act.)

Lastly, the ending does leave quite a few things open. What did Luciana actually know? What are the Fremda group survivors going to do now? Who or what is the third species? Are the transients really here on Earth and if so, why? But there are going to be sequels, so I’m sure we’ll find out :)