#and that my whole community and everything is about to crumble down to the ground with silent blockings and call out posts

[lehhoh7822]

things are so strange over here

[florasvenus]

My Sweet Little Demon

Pairing : So’Lek x Na’vi (Avatar) Female!Reader

Warnings : Smut, Sexual/ Explicit Contents, Slight Fluff, Posessive attitude, So’lek and reader in Love, p in v Slight agressive behaviour, swearing and that should be it.

A/ N : Hello Everyone! I hope you’ll like this story. I originally come from AO3. Mostly surfing on there, but I decided to take a look here and found the vibe pretty nice. I decided to write this So’lek fic because I obviously got obsessed with him and I guess not having the game contributed to it even more for some reason? Plus I am very obsessed with Neteyam too as I just watched the movie again, so it all restarted lol. I hope I'll be forming a nice community here. For now this will be it. Smooch 💕💙

Index : Tawtute = Human/ SkyPerson | Nga yawne lu oer = I love you

Nga yawne lu oer...

Nga yawne lu oer~

You pronounce together, looking profoundly in eachothers irises. Each of them a pure yellow color. Dark pupils dancing in the golden sky. So’lek kisses with lust the slight swell of your stomach, slowling traiking up to suck on one of your hardened nipples. He quits it with a small pop, the humid glaze of left on it making them more enticing than they already were. He sits up on his heels, after your long make out session. As he leans back, his erected cock bobs and twitches in anticipation. Without any shame you glide the flat of your hand over his torso, down his abs until you grab his throbbing dick showing a delightful bead of pre-cum. You slowly caress him and he lets his head fall back, locks danfling down, waving down at his round ass contracting in need. With a swallow he recovers and adjust himself, ready to enter your beautiful flower.

So’lek pierces the breach of your dripping entrance with a low growl. Gritting his teeth to the point of grinding, he lets out a jerky breath at the sight of his pretty tawtute spread out for him beneath his thick, masculine frame. He tightens his grip around your thighs, whitening his knuckles even more, and spreads your legs with surprising grace, considering everything about him radiates strength, endurance and certainly not softness. He looks at you with hooded eyes and a snarl is blown to your nose, contrasting the care he's been laying on you since you both started to make out in the lushious Pandoran greens.

You’d been such a brat. Such a fucking bitch, with your human lips, pouring endless words of nonsense. Such a tawtute manner, he thinks bitterly, though he couldn’t contain how much he loved this about you. And this was one of the reasons he fell in love with you. Your vivid mind never ceased to impress himself, as he always believed humans had a weak and poor thinking brain. But this was not true for you. You were able of so much introspection and impressive deductions that you couldn't stop yourself from talking during the whole day, yet with wisdom. You had this way of speaking every thought. As beautiful as it was, it could seriously piss him off after a long day amongst the clan warriors. And today was one of these, were the strenght of his nerves weren't enough to mirror your sense of verbal connection, but just enough to pound the attitude out of you.

Sky Demon oh so delicate and gracious, that it was able to break the stiff wall of his long lasting beliefs. Sky Demon, oh so pure hearted, made him fucking feel what love was and felt the ground crumble under his feet since the day he met you. Sky Demon, oh so sincere and kind, able to knock the most harsh feelings he always felt towards any of your kind out of his lungs. And Sky Demon, so unbelievably true to herself, made him drool at the curious idea of how such a being could ressemble to one of his kind. You truly were the person proving him wrong on the fact that it wasn't your source, your race nor your home that should make you an enemy. But it was the hearts of those rejecting Eywas truth that had to be feared and chased.

As you were learning him to see the world through a different way and less darkened eyes without changing his aspects. He himself, showed you how much you deserved to be loved, even how far down you fell and how unalive you used to feel. Originally from earth, you arrived on Pandora by the mission to seek out new ways of life. Finding a way to save humanity without any harm. You then were attributed to your own avatar. Everything was fine until, the higher people, controlling the plan, lost their mind and you decided to flee into the forest and then you met So’lek. Luckily you had found a way to transfer your soul for good in your blue grand form and said goodbye to your human form without any regret, as you never felt any glimmer living this life of human roots. This amplified by the days you had the chance to live amongst them, as the tsahik saw something true and pure in your soul.

Back on earth, the world is destroyed and getting the chance to leave for Pandora, was like the four petal clove found in the endless pain field. A gift from the universe you never awaited and in distress needed. You smile everyday at this chaotic story and at how it somehow worked and shaped into the most beautiful story to share, with quite the amusing anecdotes. Like you loved to and it was utmost crazy to see that maybe yes. The universe always had a plan for you, by the way such uncompatible puzzle pieces still locked into place together. Or by the way two completely different souls managed to pull together easely. In the end, the only language is still love. And it will be the hymn of the universe forever.

His warm calloused and soothing palms craddle the little fat of your legs, calming your racing heart as he tries to penetrate deeper and deeper into your intimate warmth. Your labias spread evenly as his dick slides in you with difficulty. You two weren't having intercourses for long so it was only normal as you in addition were very tight to begin with. You're so damn tight, he thinks. But he regrets his thoughts, feeling how good your walls kiss the skin of his member. So tight, that he could even feel the rythmic beat of his heart down there. Deep pulse gaining speed with each second passed and as the most carnal needs grow. He sighs erotically, stopping his way inside for a second and taking his time admiring you. Everything in you radiates light and Love and he now couldn't even dare to imagine living without you. When he first met you, he had this irrepressible urge to cut of off your devil hands. Five fingers, the art of destruction, but today as knowing who you were inside, he only wants them to be feeled on evey inch of his skin.

Reaching down to hold one of your hands up, he put your small finger into his hot mouth, sucking on it hard while humming unintelligible sounds. Praising this part of you today was something important. Maybe was it out of guilt, but it wasn't something to ignore at how it just fueled desire powerfully by just a small actions as simple as this. The way it delivered trust and love around the air, was a drunk dizzying feeling. But you both loved to feel succumbed under such circumstances.

You look up in awe, squirming at his bold chest glistening with sweat and at the way his pecs contract with each fast inhale. As you move you can feel the resistance in your core, jolting at the way it sends electricity to your heart and you mewl at the way his warm tongue swirls around your slender petite finger. The rough surface of his tongue momentarely stops as you clench down on him, only to fully decontract yourself and finally letting his way easely in. Exactly how he planned to. You were so putty under his touch and he loved this. Loved to feel so masculine and viril in such a tender and yet feminine moment.

You moan, body wriggling at the size of his member resuming his ascencion down your belly, slowly forming a bulge without struggle. Given his posture, it's never been strange that he'd come away with such a large, long size and length. But as always, theory surpasses reality. And right now, it's the practitioner who's got the upper hand. An expert in the art, So’lek revels in your face as it contracts in innocent pleasure, and despite your pain, the oh so delectable stretch of his greatness evokes a sensation of intense well-being.

His voice breaks the silence only punctuated by heavy breaths. Pronounced accent and long vocal chords, and so on low growl, expressing their intention.

Look at you.... My beautiful Tawtute~ So ready and wet for me... He breathes in emotion with a smile while whispering just below your ear, his hot breath fanning over your sweet spot, before lapping at it like a starving man. You shiver, cold spikes travelling down your spine in an addicting way. Mouth long release of its favorite finger, he still caresses it with his own and pins it down just over your head, vanishing into the dark chocolate hair of yours splayed into the humid ground into a captivating canvas.

He enters slowly, letting your body adjust bit by bit. The vein of his dick slides through the membrane of your throbbing hole until it is stopped by the bump of your cervix. You moan in unison, ragged breaths escaping your luscious lips, coated with a thin film of saliva. Your eyes roll back into your skull, your mouth falling open as he maintains a steady rhythm. So'lek slides out of you, then gently in, testing the waters again and again. But as soon as your walls get wetter and the desired slick accumulates at the base of his stiffness, he begins a merciless rhythm that frees never heard harsh sounds from your mouth, vibrating on your tongue rarely, with each thrusts.

He lifts your hips, embracing the bulge of your bottom, and the new angle forces a long, desperate whimper out of him. The whole scene would have been obscene, between the dry tumults of his pubic bone slapping the soft down of your pussy and the grumbles escaping So’leks throat, it’s more than a mystery. Only you can bring him to do that. Be so free of his emotional restrains and that's what makes this moment so profound. And this is exactly what makes him angry too. Fortunately, you're hidden in a rocky alcove near a river that blocks out any auditory vibrations. And the headwaters of the waterfall muffle the voluminous muses of your companion, lost in an almost animal trance.

Your arms are now limp, framing your lulling face, enamoured with an expression of aggressively delicious pleasure. Your cheeks blaze with a new colour, a bright red, growing in intensity as the knot in the pit of your stomach becomes more and more oh so fucking good tensed. Noxiously more.

So’lek rises to his knees, lifting his bottom up, this new position much more within reach of an intoxicating act. Sinking deeper into the sweet warmth that has become a necessity at this stage of your shared passions, you can feel your body bounce with each stroke. Only your bobbing shoulder blades are connected to the sacred humid soil. Only witness next to the curious lifting leaves.

This goes on for minutes until the familiar sensation of orgasm approaches. Your face contorts in shock, letting out a melodious gasp as it arrives, and in a desperate gesture you reach out your arms, searching in vain for something to cling on, your eyes closed. Your upper limbs fall back onto the sumptuous floral carpet with a flat thud, convulsing with pleasure as the overstimulated nerves finally relax with a well-placed dip. Your first orgasm is like a firework exploding on your erect bud. Your second cuts you off from all air, arriving like an uncontrolled tsunami, and the last. Oh, the last one. You see it coming, but as it shoots its first gusts into the centre, it develops into a veritable firestorm. Burns your being up to the depths of your core, embrace you to the tips of your toes.

You see white as the last exhilarating breeze fades and you whine at the overstimulation. So’lek is still chasing his climax, frustrating shouts echoing off the stone walls that clatter in the suffocating atmosphere. All his muscles tense, his cock throbs and his balls contract unbelievably close to his crotch. He gives it all until the pulsation of his member points its knowing pump and in one last stroke he glues your two pelvises flush together and empties his seed directly into your womb, staying there.

You both semi-giggle in a transe, lost in your sensations. You feel his warm seed fill you to the brim, finally able to take a complete breath, whilst he lets his head fall down, groaning at the amazing way to claim you, that his to fuck you dumb until his cum paints your leaking walls.

Missions accomplished. You are exhausted, eyes fluttering in a way to try and keep them open. Long lashes shadowing the little of sight you are able to get. Wanting to watch the beauty of this man after he'd use you and worshipped you whole. Soul to Mind, to Body, to Spirit, to every inch of Life living inside of you. This always leads him in a charming sweet way to be and there is no way you'd miss it. To bad, turns out he fucked you too good. Now you can't even open your eyes the way you should...

You awake the second he pulls out though and exhale an annnoyed complain. He chuckles as he heavily lays down next to you, wrapping his big arms around your sweating body, trailing them along your curves and enjoying the after care time. So’lek loves to relish in the smell and sensitive skin of yours. Damp and buttery from the effort, your scent is stronger making the world around him satisfyingly disappear even more.

You sigh, happy to have him near you for once. It isn't often you get the time to succumb to your wants and it feels good when you can. You nuzzle your cheek against his, shiny orbs waiting for his owns to connect with. And when they do, your heart swells with love. So’lek can be seemed as a brute and careless man for the simple by walkers, as he is very dominant looking. But in truth he's the teddiest of all Teddy Bears. He smiles, showing off his sharp fangs, and cups your jaw with attention.

He prepars to lean in and kiss you, but the movement of your lips stop him. Look at you... My beautiful Na’vi~ You reflect his previous words with playfulness, ears flicking and fluttering. So ready and wet for me... You joke by reusing his words, looking down at his blue and oh so tempting lips. With a groan, he looks up unimpressed. You just can't stop youself and talk nonsense, do you, he thinks. He smiles at the thought, though he would never admit, that it is you, with you never ending blabber, that got him out of solitude.

You let him lean in and as he devours your mouth again, holding your neck, he lingers there until both of you are out of air for a second time.

Now. If you want to be this bratty again... He pauses and grins. What if I show the consequences of it? Again~

You cup his growing naked bulge and smirk. He gasps, amazed at how you caught his words and the implying behind them so rapidly.

Oh... I would love to. My beloved Teddy Bear~

©️ FlorasVenus

[sergeantnex]

Graves x Reader: False Love (Angst)

My chest felt light, and my hands faintly trembling was the dead give away to my rising anxiety. I pressed my back more and more against the wall as I listened to Graves speak to the few Shadows he was open with. His word cutting worse than thorns that snagged and tore at the tender skin of someone’s ankles. The way he so effortlessly told his men that I meant nothing more than entertainment. It felt as though everything I had built with him was crumbling. All the good memories, tender moments, and depth ruined by mere words in matters of seconds. Everything felt unreal and off. My movements didn’t feel like my own, my voice not sounding like my own, hell even my skin felt different.

I don’t know how, but I found myself in my barracks, my legs feeling so heavy and yet so light. Had I run back to my room? How would I tell him I knew? That I had heard every word, every proud boast about him using me and my body like I were nothing. Numbly sitting on my bunk, I stared down at my trembling hands. My skin was itchy, feeling too tight and too warm for my own comfort. My hands gently grabbed a hold of the necklace Graves had bought me, it’s thin lightweight chain feeling heavy and like it was burning. I yank harshly, causing the chain to snap and fall limply in my hand. A knock sounded on my door before a voice called out, reminding me of a mission. Swallowing thickly, I get dressed into my black uniform before silently making my way to the armory.

Tugging on my 30-pound tactical vest and securing it to my body before attaching my gun holsters. Side eyeing, Graves, I could see his expression shift as he looked at me. Had everything we had been through really been a lie? Was he just trying to seem cool in front of the others? Why would he brag about it and say such nasty, degrading things about me? I gave him everything, and this is all I get in return? Cheap gifts, false words, and played by this excuse of a man. Graves gently touched my hip, offering that once cute boyish smile.

“Ready to stand with me against those Brits?” He asked softly, tilting his head. The desire to shove him away and yell profanities to him began blooming in my chest. Offering a light smile, I gently lean away from him. This needed to seem normal. There was a time and place to confront him, and now wasn’t it.

“Of course, Phil, sorry I’m not feeling too great. I’m okay. I just feel feverish, I don’t want to get you sick.” I lied while making sure he thought everything was okay. His baby blue hues seemed concerned, his expressions speaking different than his words had. Loading up with the team I pulled my black balaclava on, I settled with the rest of the team. Blending in with the rest of the team, we began traveling to the EZ. Once again, we have to face the elites of Task Force 141 in a dispute between right and wrong. The travel gave me time to think of my actions, the right and wrong, if I was on the right side of this war. Much to my delight, we would all be sent off alone to secure the area.

Splitting off from the others, I nervously placed behind me, making sure I was alone. My heart raced as I ripped off my Shadow Company patch and began pressing forward along the outside of the buildings. Dodging and weaving through abandoned cars and the buildings, I blindly pressed forward. A loud snap echoed through the sky as sharp pain made me stumble. The burning in my thigh drew my eyes down to my right leg, and blood seeping down my leg caused my breathing to pick up. Quickly grabbing gauze and pinching the once white fabric into the aching hole in my thigh, I glanced around. I packed more and more gauze into the bullet hole until I couldn’t fit anymore. With sweaty and shaking hands, I wrapped my leg, distant boots hitting the ground, driving me forward.

“Come now, sweetheart, where are you going? Did you think I didn’t notice you were off the whole way here?” Graves mocked through the communication line. My eyes scanned everything and snapped towards every sound. Panting, I quietly pleaded that I would find the members of 141 before I found myself dead by Graves’s hand. I wince with each step as the pain from being shot created a burn. Quietly climbing into a cars broken trunk, I gently hold it shut, waiting for the Shadows to pass by. I listen to the Shadows rummage around before moving on, quietly climbing out I move to find a safer location.

“So, you finally show your true colors, Phillip?” I sneer as I stick to the insides of the buildings. My heart is racing so hard I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears.

“You brought this on yourself, sweetheart. You just had to betray me like this, I was really loving what we had.” Graves said, his voice holding malice and hatred.

“No you didn’t, Phillip. I heard you earlier bragging and talking so poorly of me… I loved you, and I truly loved you!” I snap back as I dig through a few first-aid cases with hope to find something to help with pain.

“You thought this was real? There is no us, there never was. I was only using you, I never saw a future with you!” Graves snapped out, his words shattering every ounce of my heart and soul with his words. For the briefest of moments, I found myself hoping this was a nightmare and that I would wake up to his soft voice. Those soft words remind me it’s only a dream and that he would never hurt me like this. His battle worn hands gently, playing with my hair and rubbing soothing circles on my back or hips. Sadly, the burning ache from the bullet in my thigh reminded me of how real this whole situation was.

“Am I really that useless to you? Did I ever mean anything to you?” I asked, my voice trembling as I did my best to keep my emotions in check. My throat burned and felt dry as I fought off my tears, doing everything in my ability to keep myself grounded and focused on finding safety. I pressed through the house, limping as quickly as I could even as it felt like my throat was closing in on itself. I watched and waited for a moment before slipping into a worn down apartment building and began searching for a good spot to lay low. The bullet hole in my thigh throbbed and ached in ways I never thought a wound could.

“You never meant anything to me. You made for decent company and made for a good lay. That’s it.” Graves hissed as he waited to hear if his men found me. His curse coming through the earpiece as the Shadows sent to find me got ambushed by the Task Force. Praying to whatever God could hear me, I hoped the attack would create an opening for me to get further to safety. Limping through the apartment building, I could feel my eye burn as water gathered in them. Hot tears slid down my cheeks lightly, dripping to my uniform top as the energy I once had faded. With each step, I found my mind wondering what would’ve hurt more, him dying in that tank or this?

“I’m glad I got to see who you really are, Phillip Graves. Everything is temporary. This was merely one of those things. All those things people warned me about with you? They weren’t wrong, and I should have trusted them.” I seethe as I slip back outside limping towards one of the buildings. My body was beginning to feel like lead, a chill creeping into my skin. Exhaustion weighing me down enough I let my body slide down the side of a broken-down car. My eye fluttered open and shut, fighting to stay open with each waking moment. In the darkness behind my lids, a warmth touched me, lifting me up and cradling. I didn’t fight it. Instead, I let my body relax into the warmth. A gentle swaying lulling me into a comforting rest, away from the pain Graves caused me. This would be the end, I knew that. I knew I wouldn’t wake up again, and for some reason, that was okay. The darkness was comforting, and it was definitely better than constantly in pain from both the bullet or a broken heart. From within the darkness, the silence, a beeping, was heard. Steady and low. A beeping that was growing familiar with each passing moment before finally I found my eyes opening. The bright lighting made me groan and close my eyes again.

“Easy mate.” A low British accent hummed, the voice was comforting and warm. With my eyes adjusting to the light, I glance towards the voice and am greeting with the familiar face of John Price.

[coldgoldlazarus]

I finally coalesced my scattered thoughts on where I think they're going with Ruby's arc.

Because on further thought, I feel like the "Ruby is going to become Summer Rose" theory is kind of approaching this whole thing backward. (Partially because Ruby has been too.) The issue isn't really (just) about being enough, it's a matter of identity.

Because what I really think is going on, is she's already been Summer Rose, in a certain sense; modeled herself after her, carried her symbol, worn a cape and hood like her, looked to her for inspiration, and tried to do what she felt like Summer would have done.

And of course, all that is a half-remembered and distorted vision of Summer placed up on a pedestal, but regardless, the idea has been to try to live up to her mother... and look where that's put her. If she Ascended into a clone of that perfect Summer now, that would just be doubling down on everything that's left her in this sorry state, and even if she doesn't know what she wants, that most certainly isn't it.

Then there's the POV shots we've been seeing throughout the volume. Aside from the one bit of Jaune falling and seeing Crescent Rose, to establish a continuity connection with the opening of episode 1, they've all been from Ruby's perspective, seeing what she's seeing, and I think that's leading to this last chapter, where she'll see what Summer saw and finally learn the whole context of how things turned out.

See how STRQ fell apart and Summer was crushed under the weight of an impossible mission just like everyone else. And yes, it is the truth of who Summer was, not the distorted idealized version, but in the most important area where it counts, they may as well be one and the same; in seeing what truly happened to her mother, she will see the endpoint of this path she's been on trying to emulate her.

We of course don't know the full story, but I am fairly certain of one thing, and it's that the path doesn't end well.

I had remarked in an earlier post that by giving away Summer's emblem and Penny's sword, Ruby was rejecting core parts of herself, trying to distance herself from these things, but in hindsight I feel like giving away Summer's emblem may actually be one of the best things she's done for herself, regardless of the reasoning at the time.

Because what this boils down to is that the problem isn't Ruby needing to ascend and become Summer instead of herself. No, what's happening here is she has styled herself as an echo of Summer... and she needs to truly become Ruby Rose. Whether that means she literally Ascends to achieve this or gets to back out of the tree still in her present form, it's hard to say, but either way she will be changed, but in a different way than has been suggested up to this point.

She needs to let herself be her own person. To learn to approach her team as her friends and communicate with them, especially when she's been struggling. She needs to stop approaching the problem of Salem like a huntsman and a silver-eyed warrior, but instead from a completely different angle altogether, one that will meaningfully solve this war in a way that just fighting in it hasn't, and actually allow her to live a life after it's over. But that stuff can come later; first she needs to start rebuilding from the ground up. She needs to change, but not as a rejection of Ruby Rose, (because really, she hasn't let herself be that enough to reject now, when she's arguably been rejecting that all along) but as finally, finally an embracing of Ruby Rose.

"I don't want to be me" isn't really referring to herself, even if she hasn't quite realized that yet; it's referring to this echo of Summer that's been crumbling under the pressure just as much as the original real deal. And what she needs to realize is "I do want to be me", instead referring to the herself she hasn't been letting herself be.

[willowwere]

Whispers of Springtime - Chapter 3

Spring has become a fallen Court. Monsters roam the forests, greedy Lords vie for control of the land, and magic everywhere is dying. Refugees are flooding the other Courts, Night most of all. One day, Elain Archeron is kidnapped from Velaris and wakes in Spring. She is the last prayer of a desperate people- if she can find the missing Tamlin and make him fall in love with her by Calanmai, there is a chance to reverse the decay and save the Court. If she fails, Elain will die along with Spring itself.

This story holds all canon up through ACOWAR, with the alteration of Tamlin being Elain's mate.

Archive of Our Own

Chapter 3

Elain

Wandering the grounds of Roancrest Lodge, my mind struggled to reconcile Feyre’s stories with the reality of what I was seeing.

The beautiful estate she had described was long abandoned and decaying, with large swaths reduced to rubble. Haddin said that was done mainly by Hybern’s soldiers as they fled, but also the denizens of Spring in protest of Tamlin, and even the High Lord himself before vanishing. Most of the second floor windows were shattered, and whole chunks of the house were nothing but open air and crumbling stone.

I knew from the stories that there were expansive gardens- especially a grand rose garden planted by Tamlin’s father. At some point, weeds choked the life out of the flowers before they, too, succumbed to the dampness and rot. Nothing could survive in this Springtime. Nothing was budding or blooming, everything was blackened and shriveled.

Something lurked in the distant treeline, watching us. Hadden kept close beside me, occasionally stilling to stare down a shadow out of place. It would vanish with an echoing cackle that made my blood cold and my heart race, but within minutes my stomach would lurch as another shadow detached and began to track us.

“What is a dearg?” I asked him finally, for that was what Dillie had called the creature in the forest. 

“A nightmare with a physical body. Probably something leftover from Amarantha’s rule. She bred them as a hobby.”

He was forthcoming with the information. At least, if I asked certain questions he was. Ones that implied curiosity with Spring or the situation in the Court. Anything he deemed frivolous earned me a snarl. 

If his words could be trusted, Haddin was a few centuries old, close in age to Lucien Vanserra. He was indeed a Calanmai child, after a disguised Amarantha bribed the daughter of some vassal Lord in order to take her place in the Rite. 

Again delighting in how uncomfortable it made me, Haddin explained how the High Lord would be overwhelmed with the magic and directive of the Cauldron. His blood boiling and hormones surging to the point where he would be blind with aching lust. All Amarantha had to do was don the ceremonial mask representing the Mother and make sure she was the one in the cave when he came, possessed, to do the deed. 

As for Haddin himself… Tamlin had no idea. Amarantha kept her son’s identity a strategic secret, and dragged him to Prythian during her invasion. She intended to reveal him to Tamlin once the High Lord bent his knee and became her willing slave…

 Since Tamlin never knew, naturally Feyre didn’t either, and he never appeared in her stories.

During her reign, Haddin had established himself in a corner of Spring as a minor lord- after the real one was killed by an attor. It didn’t take the denizens of Spring long to realize that his manor was so remote and so inconsequential that Amarantha’s minions seemed to avoid it entirely. 

He became a respected member of the community, and watched over the fae who fled to his lands for sanctuary. In Hybern it was all military camps and the brutal lessons his mother taught him about power and domination. In Spring, he wasn’t feared. He wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t Amarantha’s son. 

And then he found his mate, and could only offer prayers to the Mother than the High Lords would find a way to shatter her control and execute her. If she knew who his mate was, she’d likely force Haddin to kill the male himself.

“If Tamlin never knows I’m his, I will be thankful,” Haddin had said to me, the request clear. “He has the same opinion of lesser-fae as Amarantha did. Daenny and I have no interest in being part of his family, nor including him in ours.”

Dillie was apparently Daenny’s younger sister, though she’d spent Amarantha’s reign as a simple gardener. She hadn’t known her brother’s fate during those 49 years, let alone how to begin looking for him after the curse was lifted. But he’d found her in the chaos after Feyre destroyed Tamlin’s hold on Spring, and brought her to Haddin for safekeeping. 

My head swam with it all. Something at the heart of me writhed at the thought that this wild male beside me was the child of my mate and another female. It was precisely why I needed to cut the fae out of my blood and bones and go back to being human. The mating bond revolted me whenever I thought about it in Night, but being in Spring…it was louder. I was aware of it in a way I’d never been before.

Was it all this talk of Tamlin? Some kind of territorial anger of Hadreddin’s very existence? The power of Spring? Or, if Tamlin were still somewhere within the boundaries of his Court, could it be that we were closer than we had been in years?

I didn’t want to know. I just wanted a way to make it stop.

Maybe there was a silver lining to all of this. I was in Spring, after all. The distance between this place and the human lands was infinitely smaller than it had been in Velaris. The only time I was closer to home was in the final battle against Hybern.

Not that it mattered.

Even if Haddin allowed me to wander off as I pleased, I’d never survive the journey to where the Wall once stood, or the days-long trek into human territory.

And even if I did, what then? My sisters or the Inner Circle would be on the lookout, and surely they’d reach out to Lucien, Jurian, and Vassa. That Band of Exiles was camped in the ruins of my estate, I’d practically be walking into their nets if I were anywhere near our village. Not to mention that I was still fae. Prythian was much more likely to have a solution to my problem than the human lands were.

I suddenly felt that I’d been wrong- I was no closer to the human lands than I’d been all the way north in Velaris.

“I want to be human again,” I said gently. I don’t know why I said it, but I’d carried the words in my soul for so long that I simply had to let them out.

It was my greatest dream, so why did it sound so hollow?

I expected Haddin to snap at me, or say something condescending in return. He sighed heavily, then caught my elbow to stop me from walking.

“As much as I hated life in Hybern- and you cannot imagine how much I hate that place- coming to Spring was another kind of hell for me. My mother spent my entire life calling me the crown prince of Prythian, and being hauled here- I hated it more than I hated Hybern. But I made a new home here. Found a single thing I loved, then more over time. Now it’s my home, and I would do anything to protect it.”

“I’ve tried,” I whispered. My chest felt too tight, and a tear slipped down my cheek. I had more that I wanted to say, but instead I pulled free of Haddin’s grip and resumed my walk, head low.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think fixing Spring will help you. Whenever Daenny’s angry or upset, I feel it too. The mating bond has a way of twisting your emotions around. I’m not empathizing with that irresponsible asshole, but if the High Lord is feeling the same disconnect as you… You both might be doing this to each other.”

All the more reason to be unhelpful, I thought.

What would it be like if my mate were someone kind and brave? If he were respected like Rhysand, beloved of his people? Would I feel less disgusted by the bond between us? Would I be more resigned to this fate? 

My mate was someone who abused my own sister- neglected her and left her to mentally decay until Rhysand saved her. He manipulated her to lure her into Prythian and then didn’t have the decency to protect her as both human and fae. He was weak, he was a coward, and in the end, he was a traitor. 

It was Hybern’s men who took me from my home. Even in my own terror, I saw the disgust and horror on Tamlin’s face as I was dragged out in Hybern’s castle. I know he didn’t play any role in what happened to me… but I still hated him for it. Hated him for standing there while it happened, for focusing on Feyre through it all. She wasn’t the one in pain. She wasn’t the one who drowned in that endless abyss.

Nesta and I had our lives wholly destroyed, and he only cared about whether or not Feyre liked him anymore. 

I whirled on Haddin, “I can’t-”

“You will,” he cut me off, his words flat and hard. “It’s eight months to Calanmai. Even if you stomp your feet and whine the whole time, you’ll do this.”

“I don’t want to.”

“DO YOU THINK ANY OF THOSE REFUGEES IN NIGHT WANT TO BE IN THAT POSITION?” Dillie had said we had to be quiet and careful of the daerg in the woods, so it terrified me when Haddin shouted at me.

My hands flew up to cover my mouth as my knees buckled. I whimpered, suddenly very small and very afraid. Nesta and Feyre were the ones who stood up to others. Not me. I felt myself swoon, but my arm was caught roughly by Haddin. A sharp squeeze sent a flair of pain up my arm and snapped me to my senses.

“Those fae gave up their homes and everything they ever knew. And they’re the lucky ones. There are plenty who died on the journey, who have died at the claws of beasts and fae alike here in Spring.” Haddin shook me slightly, forcing me to look at him, “You have a way to stop it. Spring never got the chance to recover from Amarantha. It was already on the brink before Tamlin let the whole thing collapse. All you have to do is find one male.”

“I don’t know how,” I whimpered.

Haddin had gone from empathetic to hateful in seconds. Once my feet were steady beneath me, he removed his hand. That hate though, it remained blazing in his dark eyes.

“You don’t get to give up until this Court is dead. Save the tears,” he snapped as one slipped down my cheek. “

I swatted it away hastily, my face burning. I couldn’t raise my head. Shame made me feel sick and small and weak. More tears threatened to spill from my eyes. I don’t remember the last time anyone shouted at me. People never shouted at me. I was nice .

And now this horrible male- he was a kidnapper! And the son of an equally horrible female. What did he know? How dare someone like him make me feel like this?

“I don’t care if you’re a coward,” Haddin’s voice softened somewhat. I could hear the effort it was taking for him to pretend to care about my discomfort. “I don’t care if you want to do this or not. You’re doing it. You are mate to the High Lord of Spring. This is your duty too.”

Unbidden, a murmur escaped from my lips, “No. I have nothing to do with Spring.”

“Turn around, then say that again.” Haddin snapped, stalking off.

I did turn- weary of the daerg watching from the treeline. 

A dead, ruined land. Flowers choked to death by weeds, which in turn were overrun by rot. An ever-present fog that cloaked the world in shades of gray. 

No birds, no bugs, no sign of life or light or warmth in this cold, broken world.

I looked down at my feet. The slippers were caked in mud and flecks of brown.

But my skin was flecked with green. Small slivers of bright green.

I crouched down and inspected my foot, brushing dead grass aside.

Where my fingers touched, only the barest hint of color appeared. I started, then quickly ripped up a single blade of grass to stare at the subtle change in color.

The green spot grew. Over the next few minutes, the grass dried somewhat, and grew warm and shiny. The green brighter and more verdant. 

My eyes lifted, now that I knew what to look for. Something pounded in my chest as I saw more green- not as bright, but undeniable here and there in the brush.

Anywhere my skin had touched, a hint of life crept back into Spring.

[xadoheandterra]

Series: Semblance Title: Patriciate Fandom: Jak and Daxter Chapters: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | XIII | XIV | XV | XVI Characters: Jak, Daxter, Samos, Keira, Kid!Jak, Ashelin, Torn, Tess Tags: Worldbuilding, Accidentally King of Haven!Jak, hurt/comfort, things go wrong, things get better, things get worse again, slow build, slow burn, slow to update, cross posted, fantasy racism, canon divergence, been meaning to share this here Summary: “It’s yours,” Jak said softly. “Keep it…remember where you come from. At least one of us should remember….”

If Jak knew the consequences of that one, selfish choice…well, he’d probably have made the same decision either way.

Jak takes a trip up to the power station. He is not pleased.

​“Bring him home, Jak.”

Jak breathed out heavily as he stared at the wreck that was the Industrial District. Daxter, on his shoulder, remained eerily silent as they looked out at the wreckage. Half-on-fire zoomers still littered the ground alongside metal head bodies, puddles of dark eco, and elfin corpses alike. When Ashelin and Torn flew Jak and the others back into the city nobody got a really good look at the damage except for the Stadium, Main Town, and the Waterfront. He focused on the immediate, and by the time they’d gotten back anyway most of the cleanup they already found accomplished. Now Jak couldn’t help but wonder if putting off this expedition for so long merely meant he attempted to hide from what he knew to be there.

Nobody mentioned the other districts, really, and Jak doubted they’d even want to. Not if the Industrial district looked like this. Jak fought down the urge to flinch and instead picked his way around the zoomers and corpses. Each time he passed a pool of dark eco he could feel his lungs burn as his body subconscious absorbed everything within reach.

“You gonna be okay?” Daxter asked quietly to his ear, but in the silence the words were frighteningly loud.

“Yeah,” Jak replied through gritted teeth.

“My fur itches,” Daxter complained.

“My skin burns,” Jak said back, and then they lapsed into silence. “We gotta do this.”

“Vin deserves it,” Daxter agreed, and ducked his head.

“They all deserve it,” Jak countered as he stepped around a mangled corpse pinned underneath a zoomer.

“What do you think the slums looks like?” Daxter asked, voice a bit faint. “The water slums?”

“I don’t want to think about it, Dax,” Jak whispered.

They continued the trek in silence, and Jak wondered how many people knew the state of the rest of Haven. Did Ashelin know the extent of the destruction? Did Torn? How many survivors were stuck behind walls and barricades of red, green, and yellow? Jak clenched his hands tight around his gun and girt his teeth. This was his city for better or worse, now, and nobody thought fit to tell him a thing. They were more worried about his knowledge of the political scene.

“Shit, Jak,” Daxter breathed as they inched their way up to the second level. Whole sections of the walkway appeared to have collapsed, probably from some abnormally large metal bug. Jak sucked in a sharp breath and picked his way across the crumbling path. He made sure to set each jump down as gingerly as he could, and swallowed heavily at each ruined wall and zoomer.

“Yeah,” Jak said hoarsely.

“D’you think anyone’s trapped?” Daxter questioned as they slipped around a still on-fire Hellcat—how they remained on fire Jak didn’t want to know. All of the flames by now should be burnt out, right? “D’you think the fighting’s even stopped here?”

“I don’t know, Dax,” Jak replied. “I don’t know.”

“This’ gotta change.”

“Yeah.”

Toward the last stretch before the power station, and Jak wondered how they even got the communications tower back up and running if the Industrial district still looked this bad, Jak monkeyed himself over a few construction beams that helped hold the walkway up in the first place, and slipped around yet another crashed zoomer. His ears twitched, some sort of faint sniffling sound—a gas leak, or water leak, or something—caught his attention.

“You hear that?” Jak asked lowly. He crouched down and shifted his feet so that they were a bit wider as his fingers adjusted the mod on the gun.

“Sounds like cryin’,” Daxter said back. “You think there’s a kid?”

“I was thinking more like a gas leak,” Jak muttered and carefully stepped around the zoomer. He nudged the wreck with his gun and winced at the unholy sound it unleashed, which almost drowned out the frightened scream. Daxter bolted from his shoulder and Jak jerked with a shout of, “Dax!”

“Jak there’s a kid!” Daxter hollered back from the hole he’d wiggled into. Jak cursed loudly and quickly holstered the gun.

“Alright, alright,” he breathed out sharply and tried to shove down the twist of the dark eco, the rage at this mess from overwhelming him. “Kid okay? Kid hurt? C’mon Dax, speak to me.”

“Scraped and banged up,” Daxter called back. “Broken wrist? Arm? I can’t tell. S’too dark.”

Jak scrubbed a hand down his face and closed his eyes. His breath shuddered and he tried to think of someone, anyone, that could be a calming influence. His mind kept on jumping over to Ashelin and Torn and the Council and possibly ripping people a whole new one. He grit his teeth.

“Okay,” Jak said. “Okay. Can you get the kid out?”

“Maybe?”

“Get ‘em over to a zoomer,” Jak instructed. “One of the wrecks, we’ll salvage it. Or something. I’ll check out the Power Station, find Vin. We’ll…figure something out.” Jak cursed. “Precursors!” He stomped over to the door to Vin’s Power Station a bit unneeded, but it helped burn off the twisted feeling beneath his skin.

Jak flexed his fingers and wanted to curse as the tips burned with the same intensity of his mouth. He didn’t doubted that his nails were now blackened, or that his canines elongated. He didn’t even question it, because the sparks of dark eco that leaped off of him as he reached toward the rubble that blocked the doorway told him enough already. He could feel his head throb, feel the burn of horns that itched beneath his skull. Jak let out a frightening roar as he tossed aside what blocked the doorway, eyes dark as pitch. He heaved, his arms and legs shook. Off in the distance he could hear a resounding crash and winced—he wondered if he’d hit a survivor? Perhaps killed someone again without thinking, without realizing—Jak hissed between his teeth and gripped at his ears—his scarf prevented him from actually grabbing his hair—and pushed the burn down.

Not now. Not now precursors damn it all. It felt like a thousand ants raced along his veins and muscular tissue. Each breath felt like he breathed in gravel. Jak shuddered and moved toward the door—he couldn’t lose control here. Outside, outside of Haven, away from people maybe. Maybe. The Forest no doubt—he could find metal bugs aplenty there and truly let loose, truly let everything he forced himself to seal away now free. With that silent promise Jak shouldered the rest of the way into the Power Station and had to stop.

Metal heads, metal bugs, dark eco by what felt like tankards. Jak stumbled, dizzy. The mere scent of it all so overwhelmingly painful it forced him to his knees. He let out a faint keening cry and tried to rub his hands over his face, tried to ignore the way his body felt bloated and ballooned around his skeleton. Jak bit his lip, tried to focus on the pain and past the mess—past the burnt out consoles and the sparking electronics.

Vin. He came here for Vin. Jak breathed in sharply, coughed hard enough to burst a blood vessel in his throat and spat out what little blood gathered in his mouth. He shoved aside the metal heads nearest to him and looked hard for wherever Vin could be. He had to be here somewhere—somewhere—

A boot. Jak reached blindly for it, shoved away the two metal heads that blocked his view, and unearthed pants, a leg, an arm—Jak grit his teeth. He shoved away what he could and—there, there Vin lay.

“H-Hey buddy,” Jak mumbled. “Sorry it took…so long.” He didn’t know what Vin wore on his head, but it looked tacky and the design bulky. Jak figured it for some kind of last defense Vin made, not that it did any good once the shield wall went down. “Gonna…take you back home, okay?”

Despite the ruined state of the room, electronics, and the numerous corpses Vin looked almost pristine. Even with the tears in his clothes and the obvious killing blow Jak couldn’t find anything that even suggested the metal heads got any further than just hitting him the once. He breathed out heavily and grasped at Vin’s corpse, before he hailed it up and onto his shoulder. Exhausted, dizzy, and definitely oversaturated with more dark eco than he could remember getting stuffed into his body for a long time, Jak stumbled out of the power station.

He stumbled all the way over to the zoomer Daxter hotwired, carefully arranged Vin in the backseat, behind the sniffling kid, and picked his way back toward the Palace.

Ashelin came tearing out of the Palace the minute Jak pulled up in the stolen and hotwired zoomer. She looked infuriated, but Jak ignored her in favor of the kid in the front seat, and Vin in the back. He helped Daxter get the kid out of the zoomer, and then reached over and hauled Vin up onto his shoulder.

“Where the hell have you been?!” Ashelin demanded. Jak brushed past her with Vin, one hand gently guiding the trembling child while Daxter held the kid’s uninjured arm and chatted soothingly away. “Five days Jak! I’ve been looking everywhere for you for five days and don’t you dare ignore me!”

Jak slipped through the open doors to the Palace, carefully laid Vin down on one of the couches in the open foyer that served both as a trophy room for Baron Praxis back when he had control, and a receiving room that intimidated guests. The woman behind the front counter gasped at the sight of the corpse, and at the way Jak carefully handled it. Not even a second after making sure Vin’s body lay comfortably did the elevator doors open and Zoe come tearing through them faster than anyone her age should. Jak looked up at her, still ignoring Ashelin’s continued tirade, and tiredly spoke up for the first time since he unearthed Vin’s corpse.

“I brought him home, Zoe,” Jak breathed out. Ashelin fell completely silent when he spoke. “Like I promised.”

Zoe stumbled as she slowed down, and then without heed to her clothes or how it might look to others, she threw herself over towards Vin’s corpse and let herself cry. Jak closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and breathed out sharply through his nose. When he opened his eyes he directed them right to Ashelin, and she could see the purple bleeding black that began to overtake them.

“We need to talk,” Jak said, and his voice sounded a bit rougher. “Now, Ashelin.”

Ashelin swallowed heavily, glanced to Vin and the sobbing Matriarch that named Jak King back in the council chambers almost a week ago, and without a word promptly turned on heel and headed toward the elevators. Jak nudged the boy at his side along and gestured to the receptionist calmly.

“Lyra, get a hold of Samos and bring him here,” Jak said, eyes hard as he tugged his scarf off from his head. “Have a couple of packs of green eco delivered upstairs with him.”

Lyra the receptionist nodded quickly and Jak followed Ashelin into the elevator with the kid and Daxter. Ashelin stood stiff off to the side, and she looked fit to burst but kept her mouth shut. Jak felt grateful for that; he knew he looked frightening at the moment. With forced calm Jak settled against the back rail of the elevator, watched the doors slid shut, and waited. It didn’t even take a minute before Ashelin whirled around.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me that half the city remained in ruins?” Jak said slowly. He side-eyed Ashelin who looked like she swallowed a lemon for a moment. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that half the city hadn’t been cleaned up?”

“We’ve been busy—” Ashelin started.

“Going over useless crap,” Jak spat. “How many people are trapped, Ashelin, without food, water, or supplies?” He turned fully this time, teeth ground together. “How many injured? How many dead?”

“Jak that isn’t—”

“You made me King!”

Ashelin jerked back, and the kid at Jak’s side whimpered. Jak breathed out slowly, closed his eyes, and forced the burn of eco back. He clenched one hand at his side and kept the other relaxed enough to rub soothing circles against the kid’s back.

“You made me King, Ashelin,” Jak said softer. When he opened his eyes they were barely tinged purple. “You put me in charge of this entire city. Do you think I care about learning the most prominent families when there are still people dying out there?”

“We drop supplies regularly,” Ashelin said. She kept her voice soft, almost soothing. “Shipments of food, water, anything we can spare.”

“Spare?” Jak shook his head. “Out of all the districts which ones do you think were hit the hardest? Main Town? The noble houses? The Waterfront? The Stadium? Or was it the Industrial district? The Bazaar? The slums?”

Ashelin swallowed.

“How many people are trapped in buildings half collapsed, starving and drying from disease and dark eco poisoning? How many children?” Jak questioned, lips pressed thin. “The shield wall hasn’t even been fully repaired yet, how many metal heads still roam streets? How many people die while you force me to learn useless facts about a government that sits on its laurals?”

“Jak…” Ashelin picked her words carefully. “You have…you can’t make changes so easily. There’s protocols…the council has to approve things—I have a point to this, Jak. I do.”

Jak turned away.

“Get together the Underground, their KG minders, and start cleaning up the other districts,” Jak said. He completely ignored Ashelin’s words. “Starting with the industrial sections. We need that shield up and fully functional. Move refugees to the Waterfront and Stadium, and Main Town.”

“Jak you can’t—”

“Are you in charge of the KG or not, Lady Praxis?” Jak demanded sharply and Ashelin fell silent. “Am I not your King?” She swallowed, the doors to the elevator opened, and Jak carefully ushered the kid out. “Go and start recovery efforts. We’ve wasted enough time.”

“But what will we—”

“I’ll handle it.”

Ashelin shoved herself toward the elevator doors before they could close.

“How?!” she demanded. “How will you handle it?”

Jak paused, then glanced back at her. “You have three hours to get the KG and the Underground moving. In three hours everyone from the Sage lines will meet here for an emergency session. Am I clear?”

“But—”

“Am I clear, Ashelin?” Jak demanded, tone a bit sharper, and Ashelin jerked.

“Yes,” she bit out. Jak nodded, turned back around, and led the kid toward his rooms. He kept the careful façade of calm the rest of the way. There was way too much to do, right now, and first priority was to make sure the kid was healed up and had a place to go. He’d deal with everything else—and whether they listened—after that.

Ashelin stomped into her rooms within the Palace, a veritable cloud of rage storming around her. She breezed past the couch where Torn lounged, face drawn and tired as he stared at the television without really seeing it. She practically stomped all the way to her office and slammed the door shut with a loud bang. On the couch Torn pulled his hands over his face, twisted around, and got to his feet.

“Ashe?” Torn called. He leaned his back against the office door and knocked. “Ashe?” He could hear a thump, and the door rattled a bit. Torn sighed. “Don’t throw shit at the door, Ashe.”

“Fuck off!”

Torn groaned. “Ashelin what is going on?” The door shook again, and this time Torn could hear something shatter. Within the office Ashelin cursed, and wisely Torn shifted from the path of the doorway just in time for a knife to slice through it. “Ashelin what the hell is going on?”

For a moment, silence, and then the door yanked open and Ashelin stared at Torn with fury. The red of her eyes almost twisted with the eco Torn knew resided within her very blood, and Torn wanted to grimace. Out of everyone that he or Ashelin knew only a small handful of people could get her this worked up, and given the way things recently worked out Torn could bet on at least two people who pissed Ashelin off.

“Where is he?” Torn asked, arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t even dressed for this shit right.

“In his rooms,” Ashelin ground out.

“And what did he do?” Torn asked. Besides disappear for five days. Ashelin stared at Torn for a long moment, then closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. Torn relaxed the slightest bit; if Ashelin was trying to calm herself then whatever it was definitely meant good things down the road.

That didn’t mean of course whatever got her pissed wasn’t good for the immediate situation.

“I have been commanded to move out the Underground and the KG,” Ashelin said, and her teeth were grit together.

Torn breathed out heavily and closed his eyes. “Well,” he said tiredly, “it was only a matter of time before he found out.”

“We don’t have the manpower for a rescue!” Ashelin practically shrieked. Torn jerked away from her and frowned.

“We don’t have the manpower because over half of our forces are still trapped and in need of that rescue, Ashe.” Ashelin’s mouth clicked shut. “You and I both know that we should have taken care of the other districts over a week ago.”

“But the council—” Ashelin protested.

“The council only cares for its own interests,” Torn pointed out. “Ashe, you know this.”

Ashelin looked away and scowled.

“Are you upset he gave you an order, or are you upset you couldn’t get this done yourself?” Torn quarried, one eyebrow raised.

“Shut up, Torn,” Ashelin grumbled. Torn smirked and Ashelin punched him in the arm. “Help me get the word out. I’ve got less than three hours.”

Torn blinked. Jak put a time limit on this? That the Commander hadn’t expected. Cautiously he asked, “Why?”

“Jak’s called an emergency session for the Sage lines,” Ashelin breathed out slowly. “All remaining direct descendants are required to attend.”

Torn nodded. If anything it made sense, although he wondered how Jak knew to even call for an emergency session. Ashelin hadn’t gotten around to discussing what emergency sessions entailed, or the reasons to even call on them yet as far as Torn knew. He cokced his head as he thought about that, and then as the reason for the session abruptly clicked. Torn wanted to laugh.

“Fuck, Mar, no wonder the kid doesn’t want to listen to political ramblings,” he said as he scrubbed his hand through his hair.

Ashelin, halfway back into her office, turned around. “What does that mean?!”

“Ashe, he knows Zoe,” Torn said with a snort. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. Mar.” Ashelin blinked, took a second to think it over, then cursed.

“Why didn’t you tell me this, Torn!?” she demanded, decided it wouldn’t be worth it to have the argument when she had work to do, and turned around to finish fishing out the jury-rigged communications system that’d gotten buried.

“I didn’t think of it,” Torn protested. “Mar, I didn’t even realize how much like King Damas Jak even looked until after I finished up his hair. Put him in front of Zoe, someone who knew King Damas as a kid?” In retrospect the whole thing was actually obvious, but Torn couldn’t fault himself for not knowing. King Damas had been ousted when he was a kid and he could barely remember what the last monarch looked like—almost all materials on him had been removed. Plus Torn’s duties kept growing—keep Jak safe, deal with the emergency protocols and responses for the KG and the Underground, help with rescue operations—so he couldn’t be aware of everything.

“Fine! I wasted a week then!”

Torn rolled his eyes and moved back over toward the couch. He picked up his jacket and the breathing apparatus that attached to it, and calmly began to shrug the clothing back on. “Do you want me to say sorry?”

“Torn, just get the word out!”

“Yes ma’am,” Torn replied sarcastically. He slipped out the door before Ashelin could say anything, fingers already tightening the jacket closed. He shook his head; Jak never ceased to amaze him on the amount of trouble he got into.

[sweatproof-spandex]

Social blunder/moment my psyche likes to throw at me now and then to make me cringe to the max #1:

I was in the debate club at sixth form, and the topic we were debating was whether or not the classic sexy magazines should be banned or censored on grounds of sexism.

I was given the 'Ban Those Mags' side, so, naturally I go hard on eating disorders and other mental health issues created by women being constantly compared to skinny, booby models, right?

The guy opposing me argued that hey, men get body issues too (of course) and they do get sexualised too (also yes), so this wasn't anything unique.

I said well sure, I don't disagree that there's a problem there, but I don't exactly see every guy walking around going "Must Be Muscular"

And... You know those stories you hear, where someone said something amazing and funny "and everyone clapped"? I got the nightmare version.

I was the only girl in the room. Aside from the teacher.. everyone laughed. Immediately.

My perception was altered in a way I didn't get to explain. If I'd been able to heave the giant rock out of my stomach in time, I would have said something like "Okay, alright, point taken, just because I don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. But look at the differences here. Trying to get buff is not as damaging as literally starving yourself to death."

I still think it wouldn't have been a great argument- I mean, it is objectively true in one sense, trying to gain muscle means you need exercise and protein, which are less likely to kill you than literally not eating anything, or going through plastic surgery to get a flat stomach and breast implants or something. But it does ignore everything outside of those narrow examples, and really, no-one should have to live their lives constantly in fear about how others see their bodies.

I think about how I could have spoken up before he got chance to and faced the boys head-on, asked them "So you're all damaged by it yeah?" And have them go "Well duh" or "Kinda!" And then I could have said "THEN FIGHT TO BAN THIS CRAP! Once women get to ban Playboy Bunny mags, it'll pave the way for you guys to get in there and help each other out! Ban the mags on both sides!!"

That would have been a compelling argument.

I wish though that I'd been able to explain it better in the first place. Move it away from my experience and look at the evidence. Or, perhaps more accurately, explain a woman's perspective.

Compare Our magazines to theirs. List movies where a completely mundane, middle-of-the-road guy gets to be the lead in movie after movie, but his love interest always has to be thin, sub-30, with model-level looks and flawless hair. I could have communicated that whether or not boys felt pushed towards an ideal, the world constantly showed that attractiveness is Not a make-or-break thing for men's success in life, it isn't rammed down their throats everywhere they look, it's okay to be an average-looking guy, but not girl.

I'd have brought magazines showcasing male celebs with their clothes ON and their shape less important. And dared them to find a single image in their magazines of a famous woman in "respectable", office-safe clothing, not posed to show off their body.

But no.

Instead, I only looked at the surface of the issue, said something completely ignorant, and then crumbled as the whole club laughed at my dumb-ass take.

I know better now, but I still can't hear any talk about body image/expectation equality or anything like that without reliving that moment, and it is excruciating.

[hylianengineer]

Comfortember Day 25: Lost

This one’s really long so I’m gonna stick it under a read more. Fair warning, there is SO MUCH ANXIETY in this fic, graphically described. Also minor to moderate injuries, a bit of medical stuff, the usual. And a bit of future space archaeology and soil science, but that’s not a warning. Unless you object to technobabble infodumps, in which case your might prefer to skim the first few paragraphs.

Summary: While on an archaeological field survey on Bajor, Caitlyn gets separated from the group. But getting lost in the woods isn’t the way it looks in holovids, and the biggest dangers turn out to be the ones inside her own head. As she waits for help, she battles both physical injuries and her own anxiety.

“Oh - guess what? I’m gonna head down to Bajor this week to help out with an archaeological survey!”

Julian grins. “That sounds exciting; what are you going to be surveying?”

"So Bajor has these really neat cave dwellings- they're not natural, they've been carved out, and there's this whole underground city that was inhabited from five to three thousand years ago. The architecture is incredible. But it's not very well mapped, a lot of the data was lost during the occupation, and some of the tunnels have collapsed. So we have to go through with remote sensors and figure out where everything is before it can be excavated. The other problem is that the rocks in the area block some of our more powerful sensor technologies, so we're relying on short-range techniques. It'll be a great opportunity to learn about the newest ground-penetrating radar technologies, and I'm hoping to see some of the in-progress excavations; it's fascinating stuff. There’s this new technique using muons…"

Everything is going great until I step on the wrong rock. It shifts beneath my foot, and I freeze, hardly daring to breathe. I slowly soft my weight to the other foot, and take another step onto what looks to be more stable ground. It crumbles beneath my boot, and suddenly I'm falling head over heels. Something slams into my skull,  and the world goes dark.  

When I come to,  it's with the disappointing realization that I'm still in the middle of the woods, alone.  I'm lying half-buried in loose soil and small boulders, facing an endless expanse of undergrowth and tree roots. As I sit up, my head throbs so badly that my vision grays out for a moment.  Wincing,  I run my hands gingerly over my scalp. There's a pretty large bump above my right ear, and my fingers come away with the telltale stickiness of drying blood. Well. That's definitely a bad sign. But it's when I look up that I really start to panic.

I stare up at the steep cliff, maybe 15 meters above me. 

"Well, fuck." 

I kick loose dirt out of the way and drag myself to my feet, wincing as the movement jars sore muscles and a litany of bruises. Fuck, that hurts. But now that I'm on my feet, I can see that the vegetation in front of me is actually more trees. That's to be expected in a forest, I suppose, but I have a head injury so I think I should be forgiven for being slightly out of it. 

I reach for my communicator, "Delmirev to Survey Team Gamma… Ensign Delmirev to anyone who can hear me?" Great, the minerals in the soil must be disrupting the communicator frequencies.  Not surprising,  but extremely inconvenient. Okay, what do I remember from Starfleet survival training? Don’t wander off, that would definitely make out harder for the rest of the team to find me. Although if I'm going to try to contact them, I may not have much choice.  The only chance I have of getting a signal through is to get to higher ground,  where I'm not walled in by iridium-enriched sediments. 

I wasn’t planning to return to our base camp until evening, so if I don’t find a way to contact them, they won’t even know anything’s wrong until then. Still, I have plenty of water, so waiting might be the safest plan…

Communicator may be down, but if I could create some sort of signal beacon… I’d better inventory my supplies, see what I have to work with.

Fortunately, I still have my backpack, which means a compass and a map. I spread the map out in front of me- the compass says I’m facing east, so I turn the map sideways so that east is right side up. There’s the path I was following, which means I should be about… here.  Not too far from base camp, so hopefully help will turn up sooner or later.

Let's see… I've also got three protein bars (and an empty wrapper), a half-full water bottle, a rain jacket, a flashlight, some very beat-up but miraculously still-functional scanning equipment, tricorder, a communicator with no signal, a padd with all the available site data, and a couple extra hair ties. Probably a concussion too, if this headache is any indication.

Now I'm  back to second guessing myself and waffling between two distinctly unappealing choices: waiting for someone to come looking for me, and trying to find a way back to the path by myself. Either I sit here for hours and feel incompetent, or I risk getting more lost. I'm a Starfleet officer, and here I am being defeated by a hill. But I need to be smart about this, not try to play the hero. It's safer to wait.

So I sit down in the shade of a nearby tree, and I wait. And wait. And wait. For a while, I fiddle with my communicator to try and boost the signal, but it can't overcome the dampening effect of these hills. After that, I run some diagnostics on my equipment, scan everything I can without losing sight of my impromptu camp, reorganize my bag, eat a protein bar, and start making mosaics out of grass and twigs. No one told me getting lost was so boring - holonovels make it seem very dramatic, lighting fires with sticks and being attacked by bears, but it would be peaceful if it weren't for the throbbing headache and the anxiety churning in my stomach. Most of the fear isn't that nature is going to try to kill me, it's that my team will think I handled this badly. Maybe I should have gone looking for a way back up to the trail. What if they're angry that I've inconvenienced them by getting lost? What if they don't even notice I'm gone? If only I'd been more careful I could be completing my survey right now. If I were just a bit smarter I might have been able to make the communicator work, or come up with some other solution that didn't involve sitting around like a damsel in distress and waiting for someone else to solve my problems. But that's not fair - this was the safest option, and the first piece of advice anyone with expertise in this sort of thing would give you is to stay put. So I'm staying put, trying to drown out the voice of self-doubt by humming obnoxiously catchy songs. 

Maybe I should make some kind of signal, like a fire. No, I'm surrounded by dry grass, that's a terrible idea. I do have a flashlight, but that's no use until it gets dark. If someone is nearby, I'll hear them, and then I can yell for help. No need to make it more complicated than it needs to be.

I really wish I'd done some more reading about the local fauna before I came down here. I remember the warnings about venomous snakes, and wasps, and small burrowing creatures I don't remember the name of. Those last ones aren't exactly threatening, but we were expecting to be near their tunnels, and you can sprain an ankle pretty easily by stepping in one of their entryways. Now that the sun is setting, my anxiety is providing me with images of bears, big cats, and every other creature I don't want to run into alone in the dark. I've eaten all my protein bars and my stomach has begun growling again. I think I've been here since around noon, so maybe… six, seven hours? It really was a stupid idea to split up. Still, the rest of the group must be meeting up around now, and then they'll realize I'm missing. Help will come, I've just got to wait a bit longer.

The stars have been out for quite some time when I hear shouting in the distance, though it's too far away to make out the words. My flashlight is cradled in my lap, left off to save the battery, but now I flick it on and wave it around above my head. 

"Hello? Is someone there?" I call out. There's no response at first, but I keep waving and shouting and slowly the voices get closer. 

"I think it's coming from over here - Caitlyn?" 

"Hey, I'm down here! Be careful, that ledge isn't stable!" I yell.

"Caitlyn, thank the Prophets! It's  me, Raz, we met at orientation. Are you alright down there?"

"Oh, yeah, I remember you! I'm not awesome, I think I have a concussion, but not too bad all things considered."

"Just stay put, alright? Transporters don't work here, but we're gonna figure this out. Hang in there!"

The top of the cliff gets pretty crowded once Raz contacts the rest of the search party. It makes talking to them a bit difficult, because they're all stomping around and rattling their gear and talking about how the heck to get me out of this. It's sort of touching, but also really embarrassing, that my predicament has generated so much fuss. 

"The ground isn't stable, there's already been one landslide and if we try to climb down we're likely to trigger a second."

"And there's no way a transporter will work with this interference."

“Maybe a shuttle…”

One of the medics does end up coming down to check on me- despite my protests that I'm really not that badly injured and they're likely to hurt themselves trying to get down here. She comes anyways, climbing down the cliff face with an agility one associates with mountain goats. Her name is Vera, and she rambles cheerfully about her childhood spent exploring this forest as she checks me for a concussion. 

"Yeah, you've got a pretty good bump there. I don’t have the equipment here to fix the concussion, but I'll give you some painkillers and something to keep the swelling down," she explains as she loads a hypospray. "It's a fairly mild injury, so I wouldn't worry too much, but I definitely want to keep an eye on it until we can get you to a hospital."

"Thanks. You know, it is kinda nice to have company down here."

“Don’t worry, we’ll both be out of here soon enough and you’ll have more company than you know what to do with,” she grins. “We were all pretty worried when you didn’t show up. How long have you been down here?”

“Um… most of the afternoon?” I admit reluctantly. “It wasn’t that bad, just lots of waiting. A valley made of mossanthacite sediments is basically the worst case scenario for a communicator - we might as well be surrounded by dampening fields.”

“You have had one hell of a day, haven’t you? You did the right thing, you know, staying put. It’d be a hell of a lot harder to find you if you wandered away from the path, and I’m very happy not to be treating any broken bones you might have gotten if you tried climbing this thing.”

“You do not want to know how much time today I’ve spent wondering if I made a colossally bad call on that front. So that’s a relief.”

“It’s natural when things like this happen to wonder if you could’ve done things differently, and you’ve had a lot of time to overthink it. But you did good, keep reminding yourself of that. You did exactly the right thing, and you’re gonna be fine. Can I hug you? You look like you could use a hug.” “Yeah, I really could.” 

“Come here, then.” She pulls me close and I relax into the warm embrace; her fingers trace gentle patterns along my spine. She smells like flowers and sweat and something spicy-sharp that I recognize as coming from the trees around us. It’s oddly comforting, like the forest itself is giving me a hug.

I jump at the sound of a branch cracking, my mind going immediately to large, sharp-toothed animals that want to eat us for dinner. But it’s just a person- a young man in the light brown uniform of the Bajoran militia, with a few other officers following behind him.

Vera grins at them, “Hey, you made it! Did the landing go alright?”

The man nods, “The shuttle is only about a quarter of a kilometer to the south. If you’re ready, we can get out of here.”

“Caitlyn, how’s the head injury? Are you good to walk?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. The sooner we get out of this place the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Great! Let me know if anything changes, okay?”

An hour later, I’m lying on a biobed in a small medical clinic. My injuries have been treated, but they insisted on keeping me overnight - head injuries are tricky things, Vera had explained. On the table beside me is a vase of Bajoran lilacs, a gift from my concerned colleagues. 

“Hey, Caitlyn, someone’s here to see you.”

Standing in the doorway is a familiar figure in Starfleet blue.

“Julian.” A wall I didn’t know was there crumbles, and suddenly I’m fighting a losing battle to stop myself from crying. I've never been so glad to see anyone as I am now. He folds me into a hug and I melt against his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of antiseptic that’s somehow come to mean safety. 

"Hey, it's alright," he says in that impossibly soft voice. "You're alright."

"I was so scared," I whisper into his shoulder. "I was alone and lost and my communicator wasn't working-"

"It’s alright,” he repeats, “You're safe now. Are you hurt?"

He's already getting out a tricorder to check for himself, but I try to reassure him anyways: "Not anymore, one of the Bajoran medics patched me up. Turns out a rockslide will give you a lot of bruises," I joke, trying to smile through the tears. 

"I imagine it would," he says wryly. He puts away the tricorder, apparently satisfied that my injuries have been adequately tended to. "Perhaps it would be best if you didn't pick any more fights with the local geology, hmm?"

I snort - Julian’s always been good at making me laugh, no matter how upset I am. "It's not my fault the hills here are hostile to sentient life. Unstable, sensor-jamming, downright malicious dirt," I accuse cheerfully. "Although it is possible that the soil sampling provoked it."

Julian laughs, and for a moment it seems that all is right in the world. "Well, I'm sure it will know better than to tangle with you next time. Are you ready to go home now?"

"Gosh, yes!" There's nothing I want more right now than to go back to the station and curl up in my own bed. "Let's get out of here, before the dirt can plot its revenge."

“I was really worried, you know. When they told us you went missing. We all were- too far away to help, knowing anything could happen to you by the time we got here.”

“I know. I’m sorry to have put you through that.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. Besides, that’s the price of caring about someone. Sometimes love hurts.”

“It does. It really, really does. Hey, how come Commander Sisko sent you, specifically? Don’t get me wrong, there’s no one I’d rather have come to my rescue, but you’re kind of indispensable to the entire station, being the CMO and all.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been away and it won’t be the last. Doctor Girani and the rest of my staff are more than capable of functioning without me for a while. But to answer your question, I asked the Commander to let me go. I couldn’t just sit there, waiting to see if you came home.”

That’s enough to make me choke up again. There are no words to convey how grateful I am to have Julian as my friend, to see this undeniable, solid proof of how much we mean to each other. So I hug him. I bury my face in the blue shoulder of his uniform and hang on as tightly as I can. Isn’t trying to squeeze the air out of each other’s lungs such a strange gesture of affection? But there’s no denying it’s effective; Julian’s hugs, I am convinced, are the safest place in the universe.

[sundaybee]

One More Time (Julieta x Fem!Reader) Pt 13

As always I am not a native Spanish speaker, so if I butchered a sentence or word let me know so I may correct it.

This one ended up being super long so I hope it’s something you all find worth reading.

Part 13 of 20

Pt 14

I did not make the gif.

Things to note: Julieta is a widow. Reader is 30. Talks about depression early on. 

Warning: Reader gets hit in this chapter.

Please don’t tear it apart too harshly!

You were scared. You didn’t want to get out of bed and had already resigned to keeping the store closed for the first time since your mothers funeral, but the loud knocking on your door persisted. 

You thought that maybe Julieta had come for you. It wouldn’t surprise you if she had found your address. Her family had built every house in town after all. Your nightgown clung to your body and your hair was a wild mess but you didn’t care. You’d just apologize for not being open and that you’d make her a better lunch tomorrow. 

Julieta didn’t greet you, instead a furious Luís was standing in your door frame. 

“What do you want?” You asked. You tried to act normally, but the way he towered over you was frightening. 

“How dare you go to the Madrigal’s!” He roared and forced his way into your home. 

“I did no such thing.” You said, backing away from him.

“Oh so it’s just a coincidence that Alma Madrigal came to my house this morning and said a threat against her family was something she could not ignore!” He yelled and continued to approach you. 

“While you might not be a man of your word I am a woman of mine and I already said I didn’t tell anyone! Did you forget that a member of their family can hear everything.” You hissed in a moment of bravery. 

The back of his hand was hard against your jaw and you cried out and crumbled to the ground. You had never been hit before and the act shocked you. He knelt down and roughly grabbed your chin forcing you to look at him. 

“Keep disrespecting me and see what happens.” He shoved you and stood back up. You cradled your face and watched him as he moved around your living area. He opened drawers and began digging around. 

“What are you looking for?” You asked. You hadn’t moved from the floor, fearful you’d hit it again.

“You haven’t figured it out huh.” He said, shoving the drawer shut and turning to stare at you. 

“Give me the deed.” 

“What?”

“The deed to Palabras Suaves.”

Your heart raced. What could he possibly want with your store?

“Why do you need it?”

“I’m going to sell it to pay off debt.”

The world stopped moving. He wanted your store to sell?! The store that had been in your family for generations. Your home and whole life?! He was deranged.

“I knew you were after something the first time you came back to my store. I didn’t know what you wanted but I will say I never would have expected this. You know how much that store means to me and you’re cruel to suggest what you did.” You said, rising back to your feet. Everything was making sense now and the sense of understanding gave you some of your bravery back. 

“You never wanted me back. I bet you’re still with Camila and the two of you are in so much debt this is your only way of escaping.”

His hand hit just as hard as the first time and back down to the floor you went. Your eyes were filling with tears but you refused to let him see you cry. 

“You can either get the deed to me within two days or you can suffer the consequences. The choice is yours.” 

He went to leave before pausing and looking back at your crumbled form. 

“And tell anyone about what happened here and you’ll regret it.”

With that statement he walked out and slammed the door behind him. A desperate man leaving a desperate situation. Leaving you in the silence of your house. You jumped up and raced to the door and locked it before sliding back down to the ground and crying into your knees. 

——

Dolores ran. She ran faster than she ever had and found her tía as usual feeding the community. 

“Tía!” Dolores yelled over and over as she got closer.

“Dolores? What’s wro-“ she was quickly cut off with her sobrina crashing into her. 

“You need to go find Y/N! I overheard her and Luís and she’s in trouble and I think she’s hurt!” Dolores cried out, gripping her tías arms. 

Julieta froze and her heart stopped. Did she cause this by going to her mother? Fear quickly invaded her body but she remained as calm as she could on the outside. She couldn’t let her sobrina see her worry.

Pepa was quick to arrive, out of breath as she had chased her daughter to Juleita’s stand. A dark cloud had formed over her and Felix quickly caught up.

“Did she tell you?” Pepa asked in between breaths, her hands on her knees. 

“Let’s split up. I’ll check the store. Dolores, search the market and Pepa, check more secluded areas. Farms and fields.” 

“I’ll take over here.” Felix said, noticing how long Julieta’s line was. 

She nodded and the three women took off in different directions. Julieta heard the thunder coming from Pepa and prayed you were okay.

——

You weren’t at the store. It didn’t look like you had been there at all today which was concerning. She paced outside the store and tried to recall where your family home had been built. Luisa had helped rebuild it when a tree had fallen through it years and years ago. Your parents had been so sweet to her daughter and fed her lunch every day. She shook her head, now wasn’t the time to get lost in a memory. 

Julieta didn’t know where you were but she did know where her daughter was so she ran. She was raising barn walls when Julieta reached her. 

“You okay mom?” She asked as she secured the wall.

“Do you remember when you helped Y/N’s parents rebuild their house?” Julieta asked out of breath. Luisa thought about it for a moment.

“Sí, they were so appreciative.”

“What’s the address?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Please Luisa! The address!”

Startled by her mothers reaction she was quick to direct her and she took off running. Luisa watched her until she vanished. The sound of thunder was loud and the rain began to fall.

[youryanderedaddy]

Unity

I can't believe I actually wrote this monstrosity 😩

Tw: gender - neutral reader, hinted genocide, death, slight mention of blood, mention of "communism" ( authoritarian regime actually), mention of anarchism, politics, patronizing behavior, obsessive behavior, misconceptions, stereotypes, unnironical usage of comrade, crack taken seriously

*lapochka (rus) = sweetheart

*kotenok (rus) = kitten

You couldn't believe your eyes. The world around you was sparkling, trembling, literally burning the old regime away. Your whole body was shaking as you watched the parliamentary melt down into ash, flames and smoke so thick in the air you could practically smell the fall of the hierarchy, and the rise of another one - much crueler and tyrannical. You looked down at your hands - one of them was wet with blood and your own tears, the other was tightly bound together with your friend's. Aleksei was smiling into the deadly nothingness, something sinister underneath the victorious grin of satisfaction on his lips. He sighed loudly, finally at peace, and rested his head against your left shoulder. Your bat hit the scarlet ground.

"We did it, comrade." The Russian spoke out suddenly, his voice low and smooth, almost stealthy, just like before the rebellion when he used to tell you all of his theories and plans, quiet and secretive like a church mouse. "We can finally have the perfect utopia." He paused to squeeze your wrist gently. "A place where everyone can be equal. Where the state helps the people instead of obeying the corporations mindlessly." Aleksei exhaled slowly, studying your delicate features. No reaction. "The bourgeoisie oppression ends today, with us." He added quickly, then kicked the open vodka bottle on the ground somewhere far away.

"The state..." You whispered suddenly, the hot blood pumping in your veins at full force once the realization hit you. Your heartbeat fastened and you had to hold onto the man so you wouldn't fall down all over the corpes of the people your little riot had just killed, some friends, some enemies. "You told me there will be no state." You spat out with newly found poison, the type you had reserved mostly for capitalists and conservative old men. "You promised us freedom. You promised me freedom." The tears were falling down now, your cheeks red with dissapoinment and bitterness. "All this talk about leftist unity just so you can stab me in the b-back." Your voice broke at the end, the mere thought of the betrayal sending you into miserable sobs and high - pitched whimpers. "I can't believe I trusted you, comrade." The dirty word lingered on your tongue for just a moment too long, like a curse.

You tried to push the Russian away and break free of his hold, but to no avail. The communist was far too strong to fight off, too determined to put you in your place to let you go before watching you struggle for a while like the feral cat you were. "Lapochka, did you really think that everyone could just get along without the fear of retribution?" Aleksei murmured against your ear, his warm breath tickling the hairs on the back of your neck as he embraced you tightly against his chest. What once felt like a gesture of assurance, alliance and the promise of liberty was now simply a way to show ownership and superiority. "You are nothing but a silly idealist kid with no understanding of the real world. You are lucky that I found you before your childish beliefs got you hurt." The man continued firmly, his hands wandering underneath your torn black hoodie, gripping the soft battered skin and pressing on the fresh bloody scars. "Now I can protect you forever, Y/N, with the party by my side." The Russian stated warmly, hoping that the love he felt in his heart softened the obvious authority in his tone.

"Let me go, you damn control - freak!" You shouted, squirming in the cage of arms around your body, still finding it was too hard to break free. You had managed to overthrow one oppressive government just to be met with another one, potentially worse than the first. The only difference this time was that the fucking leader of the party wanted you as their house pet. It must have been such a power trip for Aleksei to see you crumble slowly, rely on him more and more over the months as you lost your edge and driving force, opposing everything you believed in just to become his domesticated little playing. And for what? For partnership? For resources? For a better world? As if you had wanted all these people dead. As if you had wanted all your civil right stripped away to a handful the government controlled anyways.

"I will never let you go, kotenok. I love you." The Russian insisted, his face serious, his eyes deep and black like the part of his flag that had long been burnt along the other symbols of defiance. "My allies wanted me to kill you after the new order, but I could never bring myself to do it." He muttered as he kissed your cheek, licking the salty trail of tears. "I know I can bring some sense into your pretty little head, Y/N. I will be patient, I promise. Soon enough you will see all of the wonders of the new world." The man smiled against your cold skin. You were freezing, but that wasn't the reason behind your trembling. Aleksei grabbed your hand again and put it over his golden medal, right next to his bumping heart.

"Let's go home, comrade."

[heresathreebee]

Old Stomping Ground

[Ava Starr X Female Reader]

Summary: One of the good things to come out of constant alien invasions are the abandoned ruins of New York, and you’re fixing to show Ava your favorite place. Previous Masterlist Next

Tag(s): 13+ | can be reader gender and race neutral reader but is written with woc readers in mind, no-snap au, post-Ant Man and the Wasp, Ava and reader on an adventure in post Avenger's New York, homelessness, alien trees and the power of community.

AN: no-snap au, post-Ant Man and the Wasp. No beta, we die like men. Just you and Ava having a short adventure.

You took three days off of work for this one. Packed two backpacks with food, water, clothes, and other supplies. Bedrolls and bug spray and hiking poles. Ava laughed at your enthusiasm but she seemed to vibrate with excitement right along with you. 

"Can you at least tell me where we're going," she pleaded. 

You ran through the end of the checklist for the third time, trying to be extra careful now that you wouldn't be hoofing it solo. You dodged the question expertly with a "it's not far and it's not dangerous so hush! Learn to enjoy the mystery, babe." 

Ava rolled her eyes playfully but stopped asking and let you finish. After that you ate a hearty breakfast and began your journey north by northwest. In the taxi, your girlfriend's eyes darted from building to building as you turned on every street and you mentally gave up on scolding her. She was too pragmatic to allow for that level of trust yet. 

You were surprised that it took her until you passed the ruins of the daycare you once attended that she whipped her head around to whisper, "is this… Leviathan alley?" 

You shush her but can't keep the excited grin from your face. "It's a bit more than just an alley." 

Once SHIELD was finished stripping for parts and gutting the cybernetically enhanced alien creature left behind in the Battle of New York, the rest was abandoned. The city's been planning to clean up and rebuild but there are scores in the earth where the leviathan crashed and crumbling, precarious buildings that need to be brought down first in the safest way possible. While the city’s been debating how to deal with the destruction, the poor and destitute had moved in and discovered the blood of the chitauri has some very interesting properties. 

"It's like it changes the property of concrete," you explained, climbing over rubble and reaching back to pull her up, "uhg– breaks it down into some kind of hyper fertilizer. There's this copse of trees growing where we think the stomach was and I think in its natural habitat, the creature was probably an omnivore of sorts and may have swallowed thousands of seeds–" 

"That's all very fascinating dear, could you please take this?" Ava shoves a canteen into your hands and cups your hands to bring it closer to your mouth. You've climbed for what feels like miles and hey, you are pretty parched. "Think we'd better rest and eat, maybe look for a safe place to set up camp and… oh, look over there!" 

Ava's sudden whisper makes you turn. It's green in that direction, though this 'alley' is shrouded in darkness due to the dome made from the spine and ribs of the leviathan, the sprigs seem to grow just fine, becoming taller as they moved farther away from you until they began to develop woody stalks and trunks. 

"That's the forest you were talking about," Ava whispered in awe. “I wanna get a closer look.” 

You gently caught her arm. “Camp first, eat. It’ll still be here tomorrow.” 

~ 

Ava didn’t expect you to take her into an encampment. There were two dozen people in tents, an open grill going and laughter. They seemed to recognize you. It was mostly older adults, a few elderly people wrapped in thick blankets and teens walking around asking anyone needed drinks. You grabbed the blanket from your pack and wrapped Ava in it as soon as she found a seat on a slab of concrete. 

"Comfy?" 

Ava smiled up at you, taking the proffered fruit slice from you. "Very." 

She examined the strange fruit. It had a thin violet skin with a spongy white inner layer and pink juice with black seeds  dripping from it. She leabed over your shoulder get a look at the fruit as a whole, and it seemed the pink goop was loose inside the fruit similar to a coconut. 

"Are these from the trees," she asked. 

"Yeah, they're edible don't worry. No side effects we've seen," you assure. 

Ava nods but as she's licking the tangy pink juice you continue, "well except for Nadia but she's a mutant." 

Ava flicks worried green eyes at you and slowly takes the fruit from her mouth. She's already swallowed on reflex so there's no turning back now, only managing whatever weird things would come next. 

"Uh… what do you mean by that?" 

You blink at Ava. "Oh it's not, like, bad or anything. Right, Nadia?" 

A dark skinned girl in an orange beanie looked up from her phone. "What?" 

"Tauri makes you, what, gassy?" 

The man on the grill threw his head back in a laugh and Nadia kicked a rock at you. "Ha hah, you're everybody's favorite clown in the circus. It doesn't make me gassy, you jerk, it makes me smell like roses actually." 

"Oh," Ava said, "that's all?" 

You and Nadia shared a knowing look. "It's strong. Not overpowering but strong like you've got your nose buried in a whole bouquet of them." 

"And your fingers tingle and you make sparkles– " 

"Nadia I think that's just you, baby!" 

People laughed and the conversation died down. Ava let the slip of tauri fruit linger in her grasp until you gently pried it out and ate it yourself. You were side eyeing her but kept your question to yourself and eventually Ava was able to relax. She fell asleep during Nadia's uncle Rodney's story with her head on your shoulder and dreamed of violet things. Violet dresses, violet paint, violet fires, and violet sprigs. 

All you could dream of was the smell of roses so close and so thick you could touch it. 

~

The walk through the natural path as the trees got thicker finally prompted Ava to ask the question that's been plaguing her. "How do you know them? Are they family?" 

You cast a quick glance over your shoulder and slowed your pace to match hers as your fingers tapped the straps of your backpack nervously. "Sort of. They were family when I had no home to go to. Then I got a job with enough money and a stupid good deal on my apartment because I had no priors. 

"Rodney and Jules and some of the others prefer it out here with the forest. Some of them have nowhere else to go or no way to take care of themselves. Nadia's been kicked out of every home she's ever been to, but she won't go to that gifted school for mutants in Westchester county. Can't say I blame her either." 

"School for mutants, eh," Ava said as she trudged on, "interesting." 

You walked along in silence, drinking in the inviting quiet of the forest and the tiny chirps and peeps of its new inhabitants. You'd almost say it would be a shame to tear this place down knowing it's a new natural habitat, but you know New York had a hundred bigger and more pressing issues to deal with right now. As long as any capitalist moguls kept their eyes elsewhere, the new jungle should be fine. 

As the forest becomes denser, you have to pull a rechargeable flashlight out to see the ground beneath you. Black bugs crawl under and over the brush and fallen twigs, and something no bigger than a cat scuttles away out of the path of the light. Ava puts a hand on your arm and you open your mouth to assure her you'd protect her, but as you look at her you realize she's ready to protect you. Arm poised out and eyes darting around for signs of sudden movement from the brush. 

You walk in silence for what feels like an fantastic eternity but when you look at the canopy you stop yourself. Ava looks up to, gently taking a hold of your hand to keep you close and it sends tingles up your arm. She rarely reaches for you but she seems to be growing more and more confident of it. 

Light dances beyond the thicket of the leaves. Green and gold flashes as a soft breeze creates gaps beyond the chitauri rib ceiling and every time a light flashes you feel warmth on your skin like soft little kisses. 

Something wooden creaks, and that creaking quickly turns to snapping. You unconsciously squeeze Ava's fingers as you spot a black tree trunk beginning to fall towards you. Suddenly, Ava's arms are around you and she pulls you down into a duck. 

Everything happens so fast it blinds you. You can't see, can only feel as shivers of warmth and cold jitter through your entire being, drowning you into sensations you've never felt before. It makes you feel fear more than anything. Is this how you die? Cowering? 

When the sounds of falling trees stop, there is only the wind and the rush of Ava's windbreaker against yours. You test your fingers to see if they still work and dig them into her back. Nothing broken, you're still standing if gravity is correct. 

She finally lets you lift your head from her embrace and survey the scene. That tree opened a spot in the canopy for more natural light to pour in which is good because your flashlight was lost among the thick bramble bushes. 

Ava brushes your forehead. "Are you OK?" 

It must be a trick of the light but she looks like she's shimmering. Perhaps you hit your head or something but it seems like you never fell. Your standing just beside the fallen tree but you could have sworn you'd almost felt it go through you. And then…

And then there was the smell of roses. 

"I'm fine," you say at last. "Let's get back, probably shouldn't have come here by ourselves anyways…" 

Ava gives you a look, it almost looks like trepidation. You steel your resolve and press on to retrace your steps, knowing you had a lot of walking to do before you would exit the treeline. 

Ava has powers and you're ok with that. You'll just let her tell you in her own time. 

[high-supernatural]

Secrets pt.2

Kai Parker x Female Reader/Character

Word Count: 2197

Warnings: typical tvd themes, mean Kai, they kiss at the end ;);)

Summary: Kai merged with Luke and started feeling different soon after. He got sick and the reader took care of him, throwing him into a fit of confusion. She doesn’t judge him for anything and has the understanding that he’s a product of his environment and acts out of revenge and distrust of others. Kai knows this after having a conversation with her and decides to find out all of her secrets too.

***since y’all like the one shots better than the series, I’m gonna write one shots for female readers under the name V for what I would’ve/will write in the series***

V felt even more like she was losing him now. When he went to get Jo’s magic, she went into the woods, her safe space, and begged to have her old world back, no matter how terrible it was, she wasn’t alone, she had a team, a family.

She was out there for hours and went back after the sun had gone down, silently hoping Kai wasn’t in the room. He was.

She opened the door and saw him sitting on a chair he had pulled between the coffee table and the couch. She closed the door with her back facing him and walked to the bathroom while taking her sweatshirt off, wearing a tank top underneath.

Kai grabbed her wrist as she walked past trying to avoid him, “someone’s had a rough night,” he said looking at her red eyes.

“And someone’s suddenly all better,” she looked at him expressionless.

He let go and looked away, “yeah… well…” he looked at the book he had in his hands, “turned out I wasn’t really sick, I just needed Jo’s magic and had Luke’s,” he looked back at her, still expressionless.

“Well, congrats, you can go back to being an even bigger dick now,” she was about to walk to the bathroom when she saw what he was holding.

“Why are you holding my journal?” she asked.

“Well…” he completed his coined dramatic pause, “I figured since you know all my secrets I should know yours,” she just stared at him so he kept talking, “SO, I got to reading, then I thought to myself, ‘self, this is way too personal to be reading alone, you should read it with her’, and so, here we are,” he smiled.

She didn’t see any malicious energies behind what he said, but still she asked, “what kind of game is this, Kai?”

“No games,” he said childishly, “have a seat,” he motioned at the couch.

She sat with her knees to her side, staring at him, waiting for him to start attacking her with everything she has in her journal.

“Let’s begin,” he said.

He crossed one of his legs over the other and flipped the book open, clearing his throat, “2007, age 10,” he read, “the last time I went to the prison world,” he stopped to look at her, “man you’re really obsessed with me,” he said with a smirk.

“Mhm, keep reading,” she raised an eyebrow.

“2007, 11th birthday, page 12,” he gasped in sarcasm, “what’s on page 12?” he flipped to the page and read, “I was at school, I didn’t want to go to school this day, it felt different. It felt like danger. I remember begging my parents not to make me go, but they did anyways, assuming I wanted to ditch on my birthday,” he paused to say, “those assholes,” before continuing, “I convinced Audrey and Kai to ditch with me into the basement right before we heard screams. We hid behind the vents behind a tall shelf and covered our ears when we heard the first bomb. The school crumbled onto us, but we couldn’t move. I remember begging in my mind that nobody would find us, I felt like they were here for us,” he paused again, “paranoid much?” and continued, “a group of people came into the basement calling my name, but I wasn’t going to say anything,” he looked up again, “hm, maybe not so paranoid,” and went on. “They got angry when they couldn’t find me and set the basement on fire before leaving. We almost couldn’t make it out after they left, but then I heard my dad calling for me.”

Kai flipped back to the original page he came from and looked at her, “that was tragic,” she kept staring at him, saying nothing.

“aaaand not so long after, ‘2007, 1 week after the first attack,’” he read and flipped to the page numbered beside it.

“Me, Audrey, Kai, and my parents made it to the western coast of Europe to find a boat. We traveled from Lyon to the coast of the Celtic Sea,” Kai paused again to say “I didn’t know that’s where you were from,” and chuckled before returning, “learning how to hijack cars on the way. We saw nobody the whole way. When we did, they were dead, or a monster. We didn’t know what happened yet. Everything was destroyed and I felt nothing. I went into survivor mode. We stole a boat to head towards America… we made it halfway before the waters got rough. The boat started filling with water until it was fully under. Everybody got onto a lifeboat except me, I was under the water. They started going without me until Audrey jumped and saved me. That’s when we made our deal.”

Kai gasped again, “is that why you don’t like the ocean?” he smiled through his next words and chuckled, “it is, isn’t it?” flipping back to the other page.

“You having fun yet?” V asked.

He ignored her, “what was the deal with Audrey?” he asked, “maybe it’s on this page,”

“Page 24,” she told him, “The good stuff you’re looking for is on page 24.”

Kai read again, “age 15,” he stopped again, “no dates this time, weird,” he continued, “we made it to America just days before it was attacked. We had enough time to find the community of hunters we came here for, barely. Angels were taking over. The biblical apocalypse. I don’t know what to believe anymore. My dad turned into one of those murderous vamps and we had to let him go. When we were captured my mom was killed. Me and Audrey made it out of captivity, I don’t know where Kai is anymore,” he trailed his next words, “he was with us when we were caught, he was with us through captivity, but he started to change. I woke up one morning and he wasn’t in his cell next to us. I never saw him again. I want to believe he’s dead but I know he’s somewhere far worse. It’s just me and Audrey now. We have the community but it’s thinning.”

V looked at her hands and back at Kai, “there’s letters I wrote him even though I knew I’d probably never find him in the back if you want to read those too,” she said softly.

Kai closed the book slowly and put it on the table between them, “I’m good, I think I have enough to figure you out now too.”

V put her feet on the ground, “cool, can I go now,” she rolled her eyes and didn’t give him time to answer before going into the bathroom to turn on the shower.

Kai leaned against the door and heard soft sobs and couldn’t help but feel a little bad about how he went about this.

When she came out of the bathroom Kai was leaning against the wall outside of it. She took a step back and waited for him to talk, “I need to run to the gas station, come with me?” he asked.

“I don’t want to,” she responded softly. He gave her a pouty face and she ended up going anyways.

They walked to the gas station to get snacks and drinks before Kai sat at the bus stop bench, “what are you doing now?” V asked annoyed.

“I want to talk to you,”

“You talk enough, constantly,” she responded. Kai just sat smirking at her, so she sighed and sat down next him, looking in another direction.

A moment of silence went by before he spoke, “I don’t know how to talk to you, V,” he gently placed his fingers on her upper arm prompting her to snap her head and look him up and down as her reflex response.

“That’s crazy because you’re always talking,” she snapped.

He took his hand away. “I think I care about you, but I don’t know how to talk to you, and I only have a few things I want to say,” he looked into the distance, and she looked at him, “just say them,” she said.

She looked into his eyes when he spoke, “I’ve done some… really bad things. Some I won’t even admit. But they haunt me, eat at me, and I can’t get rid of them. I killed my family, kids too. And it got me locked away for 18 years. I came back and killed more of them, I didn’t learn anything from being there,” she still looked at him, listening, when he looked away to finish.

“There’s times I’m afraid I’m gonna kill you too. Or anybody, really. It’s not a revenge kick. I slept on the couch because I woke up with my hand on your throat and I thought about it for a split second. My entire life I’ve been the freak, feigning for hits of magic like a kid on drugs. I became the coven leader, and nothing really changed,” he stopped and looked at his hands before continuing.

“Except now I can feel things and I don’t know how to process. I remember everything I’ve done and I know it was wrong, but part of me still doesn’t care,” he sniffed and looked the other way to avoid tears before looking back down, “everything I’ve done in my life has been the wrong thing. I don’t know how to do the right thing. When I was in that prison world there were times I’d try to end it multiple times a day, now that I’m here I think about it a lot because I know it’d work this time. I’m not a good person, V, I never have been, someone like you shouldn’t be around me.”

“Look at me,” she spoke, “your family sucked, not you,” she moved his face to look at her with her finger, “they isolated you because you were different and they didn’t understand, that’s not on you. They beat you, didn’t let you touch or come near anybody, treated you different, and over time you turned yourself into somebody they thought you were. You tried being who you were, but everybody around you acted like you were different, so that’s who you became.”

“How do you know all this” he whispered.

“When I look at you I can see past the things not even you can see in yourself. I can see who you really are in that deep place, and I can see who your family made you out to be on the outside. You’re not evil, Kai.”

“You know what I’ve done, V—” he interrupted.

“I know what you’ve done, and I know your motives behind it. I still think what you’ve done says more about your family than it does you, because that’s who they built. I see you on the outside and see something they built in their image. Underneath that I see revenge, hatred, and an aimed vengeance. Deeper I see someone who wants to let it go but can’t because they hurt every aspect of your being. But deeper I see that you just hurt, all the time, and it doesn’t stop, and I get it, you’re confused a lot.”

There was a long pause, Kai looked away and V looked at him still.

She sighed and scooted closer to him, “you aren’t evil. Not only can I see that, but you prove it. A real psycho wouldn’t have had the conscious to sleep on the couch or talk to me about anything. If you were really a psycho with no feelings, I’d either be dead or you wouldn’t be here because you’d break the pact,” she grabbed his hand and he looked at her again.

“Get it through your head this time,” she spoke soft, “you aren’t evil. I’ve seen enough evil to see it a mile away and I wouldn’t want you that far away from me.”

She interlocked their fingers as they looked at each other. Kai had an expression on his face that told her he wanted to close the space between them but part of him didn’t believe what she was saying, he was scared and frustrated with himself.

She took her hand away to wrap her arms around his neck, bending her knees up onto the bus stop bench to her side and got closer to his face, “believe me,” she whispered before laying her lips on his.

He placed a hand on her waist and the other on her knee, giving into the kiss.

They moved their lips together for what felt like minutes but was only a few seconds before V pulled away with her arms still around him, “do you believe me then,” she asked.

“If I say no, will you kiss me again?” Kai said almost speechless.

V pulled him into another, more passionate kiss, rubbing her thumb through his hair as his hand made its way up to hers, placing the hand that was on her knee behind her, pulling her deeper.

She opened her eyes slowly, “we should head back,”

“If you promise you’ll do that again, okay,”

“Pinky swear.”

[moodymidnightkitten]

Fangs and Flowers 1

Pairing: AU Garou x Fem! Reader

W/C: 1.6K+

Genre: Fluff (mostly building the setting)

Warnings!: slight swearing but not all that much

A/N: After 3+ months after my car accident I can confidently say I'm ready to get back into the game and I'm so happy that even over these months I'm blessed with Tumblr users who come to my dash and liked and reblog things, y'all have really kept me going and I love you for that, thank you. And if anyone needs any emotional help in regards to traumatic experiences please give me a shout, I know things can get scary sometimes but I will be here always, to listen whenever you need me.

psst heres my masterlist

Why is it that when you finally have everything figured out life just switches up on you. Landing yourself in a world you’re not too familiar with. You try not even thinking about how your father is going to feel when he’s learned that you seriously couldn’t control your powers this time. How were you even going to get back?

You’re a combination of powers from your mother and father, healing and universe traveling. A mix that made no sense but blended quite well together. Or so you and everyone you thought.

You looked around, the signs on buildings decorated with flowing symbols, those must be words. You looked at them longer, waiting for them to make sense to you, as it usually happens. A little backstory, your people are considered the be all kinds of people, the people who, in combination could do anything and everything but not one person was capable of doing everything themselves, most people, like yourself in your clan had a max of three, and that really depended on your lineage. Lucky enough for you, your parents and ancestors were the strongest in the clan, every first born naturally developing three abilities. And here you were, the first born waiting on your grandfather's power to radiate to and through you.

It took what felt like forever but it finally came to you, the sign slowly making sense in your mind.

“...C-ci-ty Z?” you squinted a bit. “City Z, interesting, it’s blocked off.” ignoring the other signs littering the way claiming it wasn’t safe, not possibly feeling as though where you are could threaten you, you walked through the gates, your long black cloak swaying as you walk through the quiet streets. You came to the conclusion after walking for five minutes that where you were in a desolate area, abandoned even, whatever happened here must’ve been serious.

“Absolutely wonderful, I should assume I won’t be home for awhile so this will probably be the best place for me to be for the time being, I can settle down here,” you said talking to yourself, pondering over all of your living possibilities, you kept your thoughts to yourself for now, finally coming to a stop in front of a tall grey building. You walk in and settle for the open apartment on the fourth floor, with two bedrooms and a spacious communal area, not that you needed all of the space, it was still nice.

You rummaged through the apartment, it was almost empty of food but the electricity and running water was working, odd but okay you thought to yourself. You came to the decision that you would need to go out and grab more things, get used to your new home for now. Luckily whoever was living here before was also a female of the same size, stature and taste. You pulled out a light beige dress with black lace trimming, it hugged your hips perfectly, you twirled in the mirror and loved how it blew out around you, a bit above the knees, airy but not too short. You also found a cute pair of beige flats that had a glossy overlay to them. No you looked like you really belonged.

You waltzed out of the apartment and back outside, where it was luckily still quiet out. Looking back to make sure to remember the building. You dangled the empty bag you grabbed before leaving by your side before coming up to the least damaged grocery building and restaurants. Everything fresh was still good thanks to the power that was maintained in the area. But you still grabbed as much as you could just in case, it was certainly more weight than you should carry but it wasn’t killing you. Grabbing food and basic first aid supplies as a generic thing, just in case, you didn’t know what kind of diseases or harm this place could do but it seems as though this first aide was something universal. Even though you could heal yourself, it has its limits, like everything does.

You easily got lost in thinking within yourself, taking in your new surroundings and enjoying everything you’re seeing, until you come up to a peculiar building, one intact except one thing, a body shaped hole in the side, weirded out but so highly intrigued you walked up to the building and placed the bags you were carrying by the building. Peering into it you could see the front of the building wasn’t doing as well as the back, You averted your eyes from the tops and to the sides of the building finally looking down to notice there in front of you was a man. Naturally you were startled but grew some confidence to finally submerge yourself into the building to get a closer look. You bent down, laying a hand on his back, he was breathing. That was good you thought, at least he is alive but not conscious, his heartbeat was still going too slow for comfort though.

As you started to channel your healing ability to the palm of your hand your eyes grazed over his body, beaten badly, he was decorated in cuts, scrapes, bruises and what lies beneath you’re more than sure is a couple of broken bones and an illness, everything was more than you could handle healing in one setting. So you took your time, you’re going to wait it out until he’s healed enough to awaken again. After a few minutes more of assessing the person beneath your hands you began to notice his odd features, from his spiked up white hair to the strained and tired but well built muscular figure, he seemed as though a man not to be reckoned with.

And there it was, after sitting with him for ten minutes you felt his heart rate pick up and a small cough, it startled you, causing you to fall back from your knees, your butt now on the ground. The man took a deep breath and pulled himself up onto his elbows, rolling himself over, face up to the ceiling now. You watched in awe, finally seeing the rest of him, the jawline and color of his eyes, how much worse he looked when you saw his face. He put a hand on his chest and fell into another coughing fit. You were just sitting still, unmoving, breathing quietly, waiting for him to notice another presence within the same space as him. He began to sit himself up, legs criss crossed underneath him, taking a deep breath. You noticed how his muscles tugged at the shirt that was tattered, how they flexed so beautifully you could mistake it for water flowing in a stream.

“What are you staring at?” he said quietly, with a tinge of annoyance dancing on every vowel.

“My apologies...I noticed you were hurt badly, where I come from I heal those in need…” You were nervous in the presence of this man, a man with such delicately beautiful looks it could put all the men from your clan in shame. You could hear the man click his tongue against his teeth, trying to stand up he just grunted loudly and sat back down.

“Then heal me dammit instead of just sitting there,” he hissed to you. Your mind racing a mile a minute, even when he’s hurt he’s still as venomous and powerful, his aura eating away at the beautifully crumbled atmosphere.

“I...I can only do so much in a certain period of time, I used up everything I had to even get you awake...but I can help you over to my living establishment and I can continue to help you there, I know I’m rambling but there is a lot wrong with your current state and would also like to heal you to the point of resolving all internal and external injuries.” He sat there in silence peering at you through the corner of his eyes, concentrating on your proposal. A small grin also spreading across his face, your heart jumped, this man was more than a singular force, he was the whole beast, a predator, a blush crept along your face, as new to this world as you are this was about to become an amazing ride and you couldn’t wait.

“Help me up,” his tone shifted from annoyed to less annoyed but welcoming. You scrambled to your feet, crouching alongside him as he lightly draped his arm on your shoulders, using your right arm and put it flat against his back to offer as much support as you could, a blush lacing across your cheekbones. As you two began to stand up you noticed his build in all its glory, he towered over your small and frail frame, putting weight on you, grunting with most motions to get himself onto his feet. He also understood the size difference between you both, he’s either feeling better standing or is holding in the pain in consideration of how much of him and his weight you can handle.

“My name is Garou by the way,” he muttered out softly and in between huffs of air.

“Mine is y/n, nice to meet you Garou...even under these circumstances..” You looked to the ground smiling, even without looking at him it was as if the feeling of him grinning with just boring into you. You two have made it out of the building and you grabbed your bags and threw them over the other shoulder that was free of the damaged and in pain predator Garou and started walking to your new home, the feeling of giddiness feeling like twinkling stars against your skin.

[lucientelrunya]

Like a lonely house pt 3

Phew, I feel a little like that bird meme "the risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math" (which I really am *points to the 70 years that are actually 80 years* !!), with how I went "Huh, there is no 50.000+words slow burn of them, but I want!!!" and my brain was like "well, do it yourself. Here, have Chapter 1, 3, 6 and 9, I already prepared them. Oh and here is some Ba Ye+Wu Xie-friendship" And then I struggle with how to bridge the gap between those chapters.....

This part is me struggling really hard. Trying to bridge those gaps and trying to puzzle Mystic Nine-Canon and Book-Canon together. Like, Wu Laogou??? He wasn't even born? My perfectionism can't handle this!! But I guess I am like Hamilton, I'll never be satisfied *sigh*, so ... yeah. Feel free to point out any mistakes you spot!

I should definitely add that this is canon-divergent... ish (which canon???), I'm not sure if there is anything I should warn about in this part, maybe just more sadness? But @psychic-waffles and @gaiahenshin wanted someone to hug Zhang Rishan so ... here you go I guess ^^°°° (I see those tags and reblogs and favorites and I am beyond thrilled every single time, I don't even know how to react!)

It takes a conscious effort to make his lungs work properly again and take a deep breath. Fo Ye had entrusted him with his legacy and he will do everything he can to not disappoint him any further. He has to face the consequences of what he has done, he has to. But before he can get a grip on himself someone tips his chin up to shine a flashlight right into his eyes. He automatically flinches back from the blinding light, dislodging the hand from his face in the process and finds Huo Daofu staring at him, flashlight in his hand and one brow raised. “Back with us?” he asks, eyes scanning Zhang Rishan’s face methodically and only taking a step back once he nods slowly. How long had he stood frozen, trapped in his thoughts for Huo Daofu to come over and start to worry?

“Good. Any more insights on god-radio?” What is he talking about? "God-radio?" Zhang Rishan repeats slowly, confused, which only makes Huo Daofu raise both brows this time. He pointedly looks over at the mural where Zhang Rishan's fingers are still touching the picture of said god. Ah, they must have thought it was still somehow communicating with him.

“Time travel”, Zhang Rishan mutters, trying to ignore the way Luo Que hovers anxiously at his side and the way Ba Ye has his hands wrapped around his upper arm like he had always done when he wanted to hide behind him or was whining about something (and the possible connection between those two things). His words cause several confused “huh”’s from different directions. Taking a slow deep breath he braces himself to say the words, to confess and take the blame for this mess. “No, I didn't get any further godly insights, but I think Ba Ye is right, he never died, he was, as you phrased it so nicely, plucked from the past and put here, now”, he says, inclining his head at Wu Xie.

“But why?” Ba Ye asks and Zhang Rishan makes himself turn his head to look at him when he says his next words. “Because of me.” And there it is. “Because this god was inside my mind and it was so incredibly thankful I gave it its freedom that it wanted to give something to me in return, to grant me a wish.” Not that he had wished for Ba Ye to be ripped out of his time, exactly, his thoughts had been a jumbled mess at that moment. He had never consciously wished for anything in particular. But Ba Ye’s sudden disappearance in the middle of a war had torn a hole into Fo Ye’s heart and, by extension, into Zhang Rishan’s (not only by extension, of course, because Ba Ye had been important to Zhang Rishan, too - is important - but to Fo Ye he had practically been family). He could have said how Fo Ye had looked for Ba Ye for months, for years, with a war raging right on their doorstep, when thousands of people were dying or disappearing, when the city they had so desperately tried to protect had been burned to the ground. How Fo Ye had never truly gotten over not being able to find him - save him - or at least find out what happened. He had felt Ba Ye’s absence all his life, a regret he couldn’t let go of, not even on his deathbed. A regret Zhang Rishan had taken into his own heart, after Fo Ye’s death, added to his own regrets and moulded into a lump of regret-failure-pain-bitterness-sorrow that his trained mind still hasn’t filed away properly. He has failed Ba Ye, too, and has missed Ba Ye, too. And this is his mess, this is what his jumbled thoughts had made a god do, so he leaves it at that.

Zhang Rishan is prepared for anger, for reproaches, for being smacked again, but Ba Ye’s face is unreadable and he doesn’t say anything, his fingers around Zhang Rishan’s arm only slightly tightening their grip. He waits for something - anything - to happen, (maybe for the sky to fall down or the earth to open up and swallow him), for him to wake up and realize everything’s only just been a dream - nightmare? - or for one of them to tell him he’s crazy and there’s no way this could be possible. And someone does: “But that’s impossible, that would be a paradox”, Wu Xie says and Zhang Rishan looks at him pointedly.

“A bootstrap paradox, to be exact”, Huo Daofu remarks and really, that’s the part of all of this he wants to comment on? “A what now?” Pangzi asks, squinting at Huo Daofu and Zhang Rishan is glad he is not the only one who has no idea what Huo Daofu is talking about. “A bootstrap paradox. It basically describes phenomena with a cause-effect-loop just like this. I mean, you don’t know my gran, but she was absolutely obsessed with the famous Qi Tiezui so I don’t know how many times I heard the story of his tragic, mysterious disappearance and all the questions and the search and Zhang Da Fo Ye’s heartbreak.” He looks like he wants to roll his eyes in annoyance at the mention of his grandmother. “But that’s exactly that. He vanished and you wanted to find out why and that wish brought him here in the first place. So what came first? There is no discernable point of origin for- what, I like Sci-Fi, don’t look at me like that!”

It is somehow reassuring and disconcerting at the same time that Huo Daofu of all people manages to sum up his thoughts like this, aside from his guilt. And that he is able to put a name to this, even if that doesn’t mean it’s a real thing. Fiction is fiction after all. How can there even be such a thing? But then, how could there be a god chained to a cave or a mysterious force controlling people like that or golden coffin water that saved people from certain death? After everything else he has already seen and lived through or just heard about in his life he shouldn’t be so doubtful. It’s also quite unsettling how much Huo Daofu knows about Ba Ye’s disappearance and how casually he mentions those details. But Ba Ye doesn’t seem too upset about the mention of Fo Ye’s heartbreak, at least for the moment. Instead he perks up at Huo Daofu’s words.

“Good, good! After all you heard and all you read about that then it must be a real thing, so I think we can all agree that all of this is real and I am real!” And, curiously, Wu Xie looks at Liu Sang, who jerks his head in a small gesture of confirmation that’s not really a nod. But it is obviously enough for Wu Xie to smile at Ba Ye and nod. “Yes, I think we can. And I wanted to ask you something. You were the one who stole one of my grandpa’s dogs, right?” The question makes Ba Ye laugh awkwardly and let go of Zhang Rishan’s arm, so he can gesture at Wu Xie.

“Of course that’s what he would tell his grandchildren about me. Let me tell you, I took out that dog’s gallstones and I brought it back safe and sound! And he acted like I murdered it!” Wu Xie laughs at the face Ba Ye makes, or maybe his helpless gesturing. “He always said you kidnapped that dog just to get back at him.” Zhang Rishan isn’t sure if he imagines how the conversation tiptoes on the line of ‘friendly conversation’ and ‘fishing for information’. But he hadn’t been present for the whole Dog-stealing-thing, so he keeps listening, ignoring Pangzi who starts to tease Huo Daofu about his obvious love for science fiction and then continues to question him about his favorites.

“Aiyah! That’s just what I told Fo Ye, that Wu Laogou would never give me his dog if I asked him because he would think I wanted to get back at him. But I really wasn’t! We needed his gallstones to cure Mo Ce so Fo Ye said I had to steal it if I wouldn’t ask for it. So I stole it, but as I said, I brought it back better than new, freshly cured. And he even made me apologize to the dog!” That is actually something he hadn’t known, but Wu Xie laughing and saying “Of course he would!” is enough to finally fully convince him that all of this is real. It puts his mind at ease and shifts his focus to other things he still has questions about.

They should definitely find out more about this god and the people that imprisoned it. He takes out his phone to take some photos of the mural and finds it mostly covered in white, but just like before it just crumbles away in little flakes. Surprisingly his phone still works and there is no trace of dampness to it. For a moment he stares at the screen and then at his arm, where Ba Ye's hands had grabbed him. The dried white stuff has crumbled away where the cloth had been moved or touched, leaving no trace, no lingering wetness. Deliberately taking note of every part of his skin he realizes that actually nothing feels wet or damp, even though he practically swam in that liquid. He can only recall the feeling of the liquid clinging to him and dragging him down like water-soaked and heavy clothing would do, but it seems highly unlikely that he was unconscious long enough for his clothes to completely dry. It's like whatever was in the pool only wrapped itself around him, like a cocoon, but didn't soak through anything.

Luo Que is still beside him, silently watching him. His arms are covered in white flakes, too, so he must have helped Pangzi get him out of the pool. “Do you remember what the liquid felt like?” Luo Que looks confused for a moment, furrowing his brows until his eyes drift down to his own arms and he seems to get what Zhang Rishan is asking. “Not really like liquid, it felt cool but not wet at all”, he answers, rubbing at one of the larger stains that crumbles away under his fingertips. This only confirms his suspicions, he wants this stuff analyzed. Luo Que finds a zip-lock-bag somewhere in his backpack and together they manage to get at least some of the white flakes and dust into the bag, although it seems to disintegrate once it gets shaken off whatever surface it had clung to.

Wondering if this is even really a tomb he takes pictures of the whole mural. It seems more like a temple - no, they didn’t worship the god here, so more of a prison for a god if there is a word for such a thing. He turns only to find Ba Ye watching him, staring at his phone. Of course, the kinds of cameras Ba Ye knows were big and bulky so he hands it to Ba Ye. “It’s a camera and a phone”, he explains, which only makes Ba Ye stare harder, turning the device in his hands. “It’s so small!” His wonder makes Zhang Rishan smile and he promises to show Ba Ye what it can do later.

Which seems almost like a cue for them to decide to carefully explore the rest of the tomb for more information and to find out if it really is a tomb. They take the dagger, the only remarkable thing on the altar and maybe something that can help them find out more about the people that used it. Maybe at least how old this cave is. Zhang Rishan is still unsure if it’s a tomb or a prison, even after they find two more caves with clay jugs filled with human ashes. Cremation is not exactly a common burial tradition for this region and there are no grave goods at all. Not one single treasure, to Pangzi’s great disappointment, no more murals, no scripture, nothing. It’s mostly a disappointment in terms of exploration, but maybe they can find out some more.

Since it already got dark when they reached the tomb they decide to spend the night in the cave with the pool, which is the only one with enough room for all of them (and they don’t really want to sleep next to rows of human ashes). It’s still quite dark, even with Pangzi’s heater instead of a fire but more comfortable than outside where Liu Sang had heard rain and thunder. None of them goes to check, there is no need to hurry back, they can spend one night in the cave and hopefully the rain will have stopped the next day.

Reception in the cave is strong enough to mail the pictures to some contacts and ask them to look into it. Ba Ye watches him curiously while he types in the message and Zhang Rishan shows him all the other functions - or at least everything he frequently uses his phone for, which makes Pangzi laugh. “Ahh, President Zhang,” he scolds, using the title he had never used before. “You are all about work! Show the poor man some good things! Here, look at this game,” and he tucks on Ba Ye’s shoulder to get him to lean over his own phone.

“Pangzi, the ‘poor man’ doesn’t have a phone to send you money for your stupid game”, Wu Xie leans on Pangzi’s other shoulder, grinning and obviously finished with his phone call. “Ah, Tianzhen, pay attention. I’m already done with that one, this is a new one. Here, look!” Judging by the way all three of them look at the phone it must be something cute and Zhang Rishan finds himself smiling again, glad and thankful that they include Ba Ye so effortlessly. He will need people who can care for him and help him if he decides he won’t forgive Zhang Rishan after they get a chance to talk about everything that has happened since Ba Ye vanished.

This thought wipes the small smile off his face and he distracts himself by texting Liang Wan, asking her when she will be back from her trip because he wants her to check Ba Ye, blood tests and all. He will do everything he can to make sure Ba Ye is okay (or as okay as he can be) and has everything he needs for a life in the 21. century. Which is another reason why he offers Ba Ye his sleeping bag, who simply refuses, adamant that they can share. They end up with Zhang Rishan sitting on one half, leaning his back against the wall and Ba Ye using his leg as a pillow, curled up next to him on the other half. It’s familiar, but he represses the memories, busying himself with shrugging out of his coat without waking Ba Ye to drape it over him because he can feel him shiver against his leg. It seems to be getting colder but he doesn’t mind. Ba Ye doesn’t wake, but when he looks back up Wu Xie smiles at him from where Pangzi is halfway wrapped around him, head on Zhang Qilings lap.

When they pack up the next morning it’s still raining and it’s really noticeably colder than before. Zhang Rishan lets Ba Ye keep his coat, he will need some protection against the rain in his thin changshan, even if the thick forest they had hiked through should offer some protection against the rain. But when they leave the cave there is no more forest, only muddy ground where lush undergrowth had been and some tree stumps that look long dead.

“Well, the forest was unusual”, Liu Sang says but still seems just as perturbed as everyone else. For a moment they just stand there and look around them. “I guess they really needed that god to grow something around here”, Pangzi jokes, but he sounds uneasy about it. And how could they not be, with miles of dead land around them where hours before there had been fruit trees and berry bushes in abundance. Zhang Rishan represses a shiver of uneasiness and just wants to leave this place as soon as possible. He is not the only one. Instinctively they walk faster on their way back, or as fast as they can. The rain had made the ground slippery with mud and dead plants. None of them feels comfortable about stopping for the night but it’s safer than trying to navigate through the dark. Thankfully the rain stopped some time before that and they manage get a fire going, but still all of them are quiet and thoughtful, no trace of the easy banter of the day before.

They are packed and ready to go with the first light of the next day. Without the rain the ground dries up fast and the sun is too bright and too warm, which is actually typical for this region. At one point they cross a very visible line where the dead zone ends and there are plants and trees again, but they don’t stop to inspect it further, too glad to be out.

It’s mid afternoon when they reach the end of the road where they had left their cars and from there it’s only roughly another two hours to drive to the small village where they had spent the night before setting out on this endeavour. The villagers don’t seem to know that a whole forest has vanished and happily accommodate them again in the small inn. They had seemed to avoid the general area of said forest and hadn’t wanted to talk about it before, just whispering about local legends of a ‘man-eating wood’. Luckily the owner of the small inn doesn’t seem to remember their exact number or he simply doesn’t care that they left the allegedly cursed forest with an additional person. He gives them the same rooms (which are actually the only rooms available) and goes off to prepare dinner.

They disperse to their rooms to clean up and rest for a moment until dinner is ready. Wu Xie had made sure that Zhang Rishan shares his room with Ba Ye so they can talk, but both of them seem a bit reluctant to start. They wash in a somewhat uncomfortable silence until Zhang Rishan takes off the bandages, inspecting the two cuts on his arms and is surprised at the 2 neat rows of staples. He hadn’t realized they were that long and deep that they required stapling and is actually impressed at Huo Daofu’s level of preparation for such a small trip. He obviously knows what he is doing, the cuts are clean and already healing nicely. “Let me help you”, Ba Ye takes the fresh bandages out of his hand, and starts slowly wrapping them around Zhang Rishan’s arms.

“I understand there are a lot of things that have happened since I disappeared, so just tell me”, Ba Ye’s voice is quiet and he keeps his eyes on his hands. And, taking a deep breath to brace himself, Zhang Rishan tells him. About the second attack on Changsha, the third, and finally the fourth one when they lost and everything they had tried to protect had been destroyed. He doesn’t go into detail about all the lives that were lost in the war, while Ba Ye’s fingers work slower and slower until they stop, hovering over Fo Ye’s bracelet. Zhang Rishan pulls his arms away to tuck down his sleeves, hiding the bandages and the bracelet alike, while he only briefly mentions the destruction and despair. Ba Ye had seen enough of that after the first attack on Changsha. He tells him about the years after the war, how they slowly rebuild and how Fo Ye kept looking for Ba Ye. There are not only sad things to say - Fo Ye had been happy in his marriage with Xinyue, Er Ye had been pleased with his new apprentice, the Huo-Clan had thrived, just like the Xie-Clan - although those outweigh the good things, because one by one he recounts the deaths of everyone Ba Ye knows.

“I’m sorry”, he finishes and hates that the words don’t do justice to the depth of his feelings. “You lost them too”, Ba Ye says, his voice surprisingly steady and almost gentle, and Zhang Rishan stares at him, at a loss. Yes, he did. But little by little, parts of his world crumbling away, piece by piece, until only duty remained. He’d had time to adjust to the holes, find ways around them, new paths that had grown old and used and then been torn away, too. What he had lost in the course of 80 years Ba Ye had lost in one day, one moment, one blink of an eye.

“Yes”, he says and doesn’t know how to put into words that their pain shouldn’t be compared, because there are not enough words to even begin to describe this. Pain is something he has been trained to file away into different threat levels, into different boxes. He is not allowed to have one named ‘unbearable’, but he doesn’t know how else to label the pain of that one moment when the worst thing has happened and it feels like the world just stops, just shatters and falls to pieces, never to be whole again. But everything stays the same. It’s just his world that shattered, his heart that has been torn apart never to be whole again. He is the one who changed, not the world. And he doesn’t even fathom himself how he had to change to survive that, who he had to become. Because he had become a person that would cause that kind of pain to someone else like this. He had killed countless people in his lifetime, on purpose as a Zhang, as a soldier, in the war or by mistake, by failure, by not being able to save them but he had never thought himself capable of such cruelty.

Whatever Ba Ye reads in his face (or maybe in his heart, because Ba Ye had always been good at reading hearts), it makes him knit his brows. Not in anguish or sorrow but something more akin to chagrin and he grabs the sides of Zhang Rishan’s sweater to roughly tug him forward into a bone crushing hug. And Zhang Rishan allows himself to be moved, just like he had always allowed himself to be moved whenever Ba Ye was tugging on him.

Ba Ye presses his face into the crook of his neck, arms wrapping tightly around his sides, fingers digging into his shoulder blades and Zhang Rishan can feel the shaky inhale against the bare skin of his neck. Carefully he wraps his arms around Ba Ye’s shoulders and holds him up when he feels the other man lean most of his weight on him. He doesn’t say anything, when he feels the wetness of quiet tears against his shoulder, just closes his eyes, offering whatever comfort he can offer like this.

[let-me-write-shit]

I love your writing! Can you please write a piece where y/n has been a friend of him for years (all one d years too) and she is famous as well (kinda maggie rogers vibe) they write songs together etc. After the heartbreak from Camille she is always there for him and they realise that they have always been in love with each other, a bit of angst ofc 😂 Thank you very much!! 😍😍

A/N: Thanks so much for the request and the kind messages when I was sick, @irelilien. I loved writing this. I know it’s probably not EXACTLY what you were thinking, but I hope you like it!! <3 <3 <3 

Warning:  ANGSTY ANGST ANGST!!!

Word Count: 3,961

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Started Off As Friends

“Will you relax, Harry?” you laugh, scooting to the edge of the office chair where you sat, reaching over and grabbing Harry’s hands away from his face to reveal his scrunched up eyebrows and dramatic frown, something he always did when he was frustrated. You took hold of his forearms as he pouted and tugged on your arms, making the wheels of your chair roll closer to him, your knees touching and his forehead falling towards your stomach.

Honestly, he could be such a baby sometimes. But as your hand instinctively plopped onto his head, running your fingers through his curls and massaging his scalp, you couldn’t help but smile. For years it had been like this; you and Harry were inseparable since the day you met. Back then he was still in One Direction and you just helped them write songs. You were one of the youngest songwriters on the team and they were impressed by it. Eventually, you began to release some of your own work, and when Harry went solo he often called on you to help with some of his songs, most of which always ended up on an album or being released.

You were there when his fame kicked off. He was there for you when you lost a family member. The two of you hardly even had so much of a fight, more like little bickers here and there. You were there through all of the One Direction drama including when you and Niall had a brief but scandalous (and absolutely not true) rumor spread that you were secretly dating and eloped, something Harry would cry laugh over whenever it was brought up. After all, if there would be any rumors of secret relationships between you and a member of One Direction, it would be with Harry. You were the closest out of all of them. You two had been through a lot in your friendship. More than most. And that included heartbreak.

You’d met practically every girlfriend he’d ever had. You knew details of his relationships that you really didn’t need to know about. And you’d been the subject of many jealous fights. But he’d always have your back. Until Camille.

Everything started great. You thought things had been going so well between them and Camille seemed to really like you. Oftentimes you’d get together just the two of you and have a girl’s night. But everything changed the night of one of your concerts. You were playing in London and the couple came to support. Throughout the night they had a lot to drink and each time you looked down things seemed to get increasingly more tense between the pair. Towards the end, it looked like a full-blown argument had ensued and they both stormed out of the arena. You assumed they were just going to talk it out and would meet you backstage afterward. You assumed Harry would fill you in on all the details later. But hours had passed and everyone had already backed up to leave. It wasn’t like Harry to just leave without saying anything. You called and texted but got no response. Not until the next day.

‘So sorry for leaving like that. We’ll talk later. -H’

But you never did. He practically ghosted you, only getting brief, cryptic texts or calls at random points in the day. The emotional circle-jerk you went through was next-level. Confusion, anger, sadness, indifference, and back to confusion. It was a never-ending cycle. You had later come to find that he only talked to you when Camille wasn’t around. And if she found out you were in communication, another argument would ensue and you’d hear about it whenever Harry called to complain. That’s all it was; a few calls and texts to whine about his relationship until the texts and calls stopped altogether. You hadn’t even seen his face for nearly seven months. For the longest time, you wanted to cry. You felt betrayed.

And finally, a month ago, after seven months of waiting, you had decided you were going to let him go and stop waiting around for him. But, when your phone rang at 11 PM that same night, your toughness crumbled to the ground. You had half a mind to yell and let it all out, or to just hang up, but you couldn’t. Not to him. Not when his heart was breaking. Instead, you invited him over. You must have drunk two whole bottles of wine by yourself, listening as Harry cried about his breakup and catching you up on all the issues they had. And you helped him through it.

For weeks he stayed with you so he didn’t have to be alone. You’d distract him with movies and games, stay up all hours of the night listening and reassuring him. You’d cry with him, laugh with him, and eventually, you’d help him channel his feelings into music. The two of you had written more songs than you can count about Camille and he finally had a sense of what he wanted his new album to sound like, picking a selection of songs on a demo and bringing it over to get your thoughts.

Listening to it brought on its own type of heartache for you. You remembered writing some of those lyrics with him. You remembered how broken you felt having to act like nothing was wrong and you were just happy to have him back. But the truth was, you were still hurt. You never did find out why he left so suddenly in the first place and coming back to you after all that time felt more like a slap in the face than anything. He knew you’d welcome him back with open arms He knew he could take advantage of your friendship because he knew how much he meant to you. Or, at least, he had an idea.

By the end of the demo, Harry looked so unsure that you were almost certain he’d start to freak out and second-guess himself. He rolled his head on your lap so that his cheek was against your thigh and groaned, “It feels like it’s missing something. Maybe I should have added ‘She’s Flames’.”

You shook your head as he sat up, “No. It’s perfect.”

“But what if-”

“No,” you cut him off, looking deeply into his eyes, “I wouldn’t change a thing. Not a single word, not a single piano key, not a single song, not even a single song order. Harry, it’s perfect.”

He relaxed his shoulders, letting his lips twitch upwards into a smile, and when he finally spoke, he took her hands in his again and said, “What would I do without you?”

You shrugged your shoulders, slipping your hands back and spinning in your chair to face your computer again, clicking away at the screen and layering instrumentals on your own music you were working on before he came over. Having a little makeshift studio in your flat helped when you couldn’t get in any time at a proper studio.

“Probably sulk at your own house instead of mine,” you mumbled, trying your best to sound like you’re joking.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” he whined, switching seats to a roller chair next to you.

You ignored him and continued to work while he talked beside you about possible release dates for his album, cover art, and which songs he wanted to have as his singles. You listened, adding your input where needed, as he carried on, grabbing your phone off the desk beside you and entering in your passcode. You didn’t mind, it was something the two of you always did. There was never any malice or reason behind it, it was just out of sheer boredom. You’d often scroll through each other’s social media dashboard or pictures. You had nothing to hide. Or, so you thought.

You became so hyperfocused on what you were doing that you almost didn’t hear it. It blended in with what you were working on so much that the sound of your voice singing from the speaker of the Harry held in his hands almost went unnoticed. But by the time you realized what he was listening to and snapped your attention to him, the damage was already done.

The knife of insight tore its way in me

A brash collision without sympathy

And maybe when the sun goes down I’ll come round, I’ll come out

Maybe we could take some time,

Unwind, figure out

When the knife of insight tore its way in me

Hit me up if you’re feeling down

Give a little, oh we’ll figure this out

Keep me up, keep my mind around

After dark, after light

Let it go if you want get loud

Make a little fuss, oh its all allowed

Beautiful how it all pours out

After dark, after light

Oh the knife of insight brought me to my knees

Broke me down and taught me how to see

And I know and I know and I know

That maybe we should take some time

Get this out, make this right

Maybe when the sun goes down I’ll come round, tell you all about

When the knife of insight brought me to my knees …..

You were at a loss for words, caught off-guard by him finding that voice note of a song you had recorded late one night three months ago. You could hear the wooshing of cars passing by in the background, remembering you recorded it on a drive to meet up with friends for dinner and didn’t want to forget the wave of creativity. Funny thing was, you completely forgot all about it.

You searched his face, hoping he didn’t understand what you were singing about But Harry wasn’t stupid. He’s worked with you long enough now to know your writing style. And with one look at the time stamp of the recording, he could tell this was written in the thick of when he had stopped seeing you.

“What’s this?” he asked softly, looking up at you.

He knew, he just wanted to hear you say it. You wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of an explanation, though. For weeks you had thought about what to say or how to confront him for what he did. But confrontation was never your strong suit and all the rehearsed speech had suddenly vanished from your memory.

Quickly, you grabbed your phone out of his hand and shut the music off, “Just something I was working on. Forgot it was still on there.”

He watched as your body tensed, hastily shoving your phone in your pocket. He could see right through your nonchalant attitude and he pressed again, “Is it about me?”

“Harry,” you breathed, forcing a laugh. But your refusal to look him in the eyes was your tell.

“It is, isn’t it?” His question sounded more like an answer, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“How you felt,” he turned your chair so that you were forced to face him and you looked nervously up at him through your eyelashes, his expression sincere, “Obviously you were hurt about whatever I did.”

Your mouth fell and he seemed to realize almost instantly that he had a poor choice of words. But, before either of you could say anything, Harry’s phone began to ring on the coffee table, catching both of your attention. And by a cruel coincidence, you saw that it was Camille calling him. His eyes widened and hastily silenced his phone, but the damage was done. You let out an incredulous laugh and stood up.

“It’s getting late. I think it’s time for you to leave,” you said firmly, avoiding his gaze.

You heard him stutter. He wasn’t used to you being stern with him. “What? Why? No, please, let’s talk about this.”

“Talk?” You laughed angrily, “You want to talk? Now? That’s rich coming from you! Alright, Harry, let’s talk, then,” your words were like ice and your heart pounded, finally getting the courage to look at him as you let it all out, “Ten years you’ve been one of my best friends. I’ve done so much for you. I’ve put up with a lot being your friend. All the backlash and drama and spite from your horrible girlfriends. But you always had my back Until her,” you motioned towards his phone.

His eyes fluttered, listening to you get angry. It was a side of you that rarely showed. And when your voice began to crack, he gulped.

You continued, “I was always nice to her. Always. Until one random day, she decided to hate me for no reason. And what did you do? Nothing! You ran after her like a lost puppy and avoided me for almost a year!”

“I didn’t avoid you!” Harry shot back, defensively.

“You didn’t avoid me?” you laughed in a hiss. “Harry, you dodged all of my calls and texts! I never saw you! And when we did talk, the Queen herself couldn’t know about it or you’d have another fight!”

“Don’t call her that. That’s not fair,” he pleaded.

“You want to talk about fair? The way you treated me wasn’t fair! All I was to you in those seven months was someone to complain to, but only if I was kept a secret!”

“That’s not true. Besides, it’s not like you ever complained at the time! You should have said something!”

“I shouldn’t have had to! You’ve always had my back and ended things with other girlfriends for a lot less!”

“I can’t keep ending relationships just because you don’t like them!”

“I never asked you to!” your voices were getting louder now, almost certain that if someone was passing by your open window, they’d be able to hear every word. “Never once did I ask you to break up with anyone or even hint at disliking them. You always did that on your own!”

“Because you’re my friend!” he shot back, his eyebrows furrowing and the crinkles by his eyes more prominent. Your back and forth was quicker now. Both of you speaking even faster.

“Then why did it change with her? Friends don’t treat friends as a last resort!”

“How did I treat you like a last resort? Because of a few missed calls and canceled plans? I was busy!”

“For seven months? No, you weren’t, Harry! You were a coward!”

“And you were jealous!”

“So what?” you snapped back. You could see the shock in Harry’s eyes, but you kept going, “So what if I was? It never made me treat you like dog shit on the bottom of my shoe! You ignore me for weeks at a time and when I finally get a response it’s because you’re crying about another fight you had with her and how neither of you trusts each other. Did I complain once? No. I listened. I never turned my back on you because that’s what a good friend does.”

“That’s what a good friend does? So now I’m not a food friend?” Harry scoffed, “I can’t read fucking minds, Y/N! How am I supposed to know you’re upset if you don’t tell me?”

“How am I supposed to tell you if you never answer my calls?!”

“I came back!” Harry yelled, “I’ve seen you almost every day for a month! You’ve had plenty of time!”

“Did I?” you sneered, “Harry, you were heartbroken about your breakup! What would you suppose I do? Tack on some more reasons for you to feel sorry for yourself? Cry about how you were mean and broke my heart? You didn’t need me getting after you! I recorded an idea for a song on my phone, and now you’re mad because I expressed my feelings in a song that you were never meant to hear?”

“You don’t get to decide what I can and can’t handle, Y/N!”

“You think you could have handled the added guilt?” you should back, bordering the edge of condescension, “I helped you write two albums worth of breakup songs about her, Harry! I sat here for hours a day every single day for weeks helping you write lyric after lyric explaining your love for a woman that hated me!” you were on the verge of tears now. “And here I am, the idiot helping you through it, only to find out you’re still talking to her!”

“I’m not talking to her! I called to ask if I could put something in a song!” Harry shot back, “And she didn’t hate you!”

“How can you not see it?” you breathed, wiping a tear from your cheek, “I have to watch a man I care so much about going through shitty relationship after shitty relationship. And I’m here, like always, waiting for you to wake up and see that you deserve better! You can’t even admit what you did because you’re too busy defending a girl that broke your heart!”

“I’m not defending her, Y/N! I’m sorry that I hurt you, but it’s not her fault! She didn’t hate you, she was just jealous and untrusting and she had every reason to feel that way!”

Heat rose to your face and your voice got more fierce, “I always treated her with respect! And I never gave her a reason to feel that way!”

“You didn’t, but I did!”

“What does that even mean?! Why would she hate me for something I didn’t even do? That doesn’t even make any sense, Harry! You avoided me for months and you’d argue if she found out you were talking to me, and you’re saying that it had nothing to do with me?”

“No. I mean, yes. Kind of,” he started to get flustered and began talking faster, “It was my decision, not hers. And I’m not defending her. I wanted to talk to you, Y/N, but I couldn’t!”

You were getting angrier. It felt like you were going around in circles with Harry and you were frustrated that he wouldn’t give a direct answer. “Why? You keep beating around the bush instead of just giving me a reason! What possible reason could you have for dropping a friend of ten years out of nowhere? I didn’t do anything! So, why?”

“Because I accidentally told her that I’m in love with you!” he blurted out.

His voice was loud and perturbed. But as soon as the words left his mouth he knew he might have just made a huge mistake. Harry never meant to tell you. He was perfectly happy with keeping this a secret for as long as it took to get over you.

You froze, sitting backward and raising your eyebrows, mouth ajar, “You what?”

“I didn’t mean to,” he spoke quickly, trying to justify himself, “We were drunk at your concert and, I don’t know, it just kind of came out and we started arguing. I didn’t even realize what I had said until the next morning when she was still angry.”

The memories of the night of your concert came flooding back. Images of their slowly fading happy faces turned to anger and fighting started to make sense. But what he was saying didn’t. He was in love with you? Surely he didn’t mean that. He showed no inclination of romantic feelings towards you. There had to be a misunderstanding. What he meant to say was ‘he loved you like a sister’.

When you didn’t speak, he continued to try and explain himself, hurriedly speaking again; something you hardly ever saw from him. Usually he was calm and cool, even when faced with uncomfortable situations.

“I tried to tell her I didn’t mean it and I had no clue why I said that, but she didn’t believe me. She kept saying ,‘I see the way you look at her’ and ‘Everyone knows it. I’m not stupid!’. So I just kept telling her she was crazy and started talking to you less and less to prove her wrong. But she never trusted me after that. And whenever she found out I was talking to you, it gave her more reason.”

“I-” you tried to speak, but he just kept talking, more unsettled now, “I kept trying to tell myself it was nothing. But when we broke up, the first person I thought of was you. I knew you were probably angry with me, but you helped me anyway. You were there for me like you always are. And I knew that Camille was right. It was always you. And honestly, I hated you for it.”

You recoiled, surprised as he started to get more agitated. He continued, “You were there since the start of it and you made me set this impossibly high standard for my relationships! That’s why they all failed miserably! That’s why they all hated you! Because they knew they couldn’t live up to you!”

“You’re blaming me for this?” you argued back, “I didn’t make you compare anyone to me! I didn’t even know because you were too chicken shit to say anything to me!”

“I couldn’t say anything to you! You were my best friend! I didn’t want to lose you! Those few months we didn’t talk were hell! I thought about you every day! Besides, what difference would it have made if I did tell you? You can’t honestly tell me you felt the same!”

“Stop assuming you know how I feel!”

“Well, am I wrong?!” he shot back, seething.

“Yes! You’re wrong!”

There was silence, the two of you just staring at each other, faces filled with frustration. His eyes flickered across your face, looking for some kind of sign as both of your chests rose and fell. His tongue grazed his lips, wetting them from all the yelling. And like the flash of light, both of you lunged forward at each other.

The mess of hands wildly roaming each other’s bodies and tangling in each other’s hair was dizzying. Hungrily, your tongues circled as if you were starved and the only salvation left was his breath entwined with yours. You both stood, only to be pushed backward on your desk, your keyboard slipping out from under you and crashing to the floor. You could feel your back press against your monitor as you eagerly fidgeted with the buttons on Harry’s shirt and before you could undo the last one, he had already managed to undo yours, pulling it down your arms and tossing it somewhere to the side.

Harry became impatient, finally pulling away from your lips and tanking open his shirt, making the last button pop off and roll underneath the desk. You for your first good look at each other; panting, out of breath. Half-naked, you could see every tattoo on his chest that you had always longed to kiss under the dim light of your flat and the veins in his arms bulged as he gripped onto the desk underneath your thighs. His eyes looked fierce and almost rabid as he looked you up and down. There was a moment of pause and thought. Slowly the two of you cracked a smile. And the smile turned into light laughter.

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to do this,” Harry whispered, pressing his forehead against yours and weaving his fingers through your hair just behind your ears as the warmth of his palms lay flat against your cheek.

You smiled, closing your eyes and placing your hands over top of his, breathing in his scent as you softly spoke, “Probably just as long as I’ve waited for you to do it.” And you gently pressed your lips to his once more.

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

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when time runs out | i

⋆ summary: A young girl has fallen deeply ill with an unknown disease in her, so with all her free time spent in an empty hospital room, she spends it online playing video games. That's until she meets her cousins friends, one spiking her interest with his extremely vulgare language.

pairing: bakugou katsuki x reader

warnings: nothing much really, mentions of blood

word count: 1.3k

author’s note: Hey guys!! I just wanna let you know I made a few changes here and there in this chapter, nothing too big. Ah but seriously, I’m tired, but I’m having a lot of fun rewriting these huehuehue

No one saw it coming.

Who would have thought this could happen?

Of all the people who it could’ve been, why her?

L/N Y/N wasn't your average girl. Being related to a clutz like Kaminari Denki was no easy task. Despite them only being cousins, they had a relationship almost as tough as iron. No one would believe that the two were related, both being on different sides of the spectrum.

Quite popular at school, no one really cared much for her quirk, surprisingly, since she never had one to begin with. What made her so cool though, was her bright personality. Though she was quirkless, she had a big heart and was a strong girl. Y/N was ambitious for someone her age and had excellent grades that could rival a high school student's knowledge. In store for a very promising future, for a thirteen year old, she basically had it all. 

Well. 

Almost had it all.

It was until that unfaithful day, everything came crumbling and crashing down around her. 

Family had only assumed that her light coughing that would come out every now and then was caused by an itchy throat. But when the light coughs turned to violent gasps for air, they were more than concerned. Especially when Y/N began coughing up blood. They took her to every doctor in town only to have the same answer thrown at them. 

"I'm sorry Mrs. L/N, but we can't find any causes for her condition."

"Mr. L/N, test results show that nothing is wrong with your daughter’s health."

Of course, despite all the long trips and visits to hospitals and well known doctors, Denki and Y/N's relationship never once wavered. Having every opportunity when she was forced to stay indoors, she would spend her time playing video games with Denki. 

Of course, when she did have the chance to go outside, she'd most likely be playing with Denki or picking flowers. As they both sat on the swing set in a park near Y/N's home, they cracked jokes trying to make the other laugh. 

"Y'know what's a real good joke?"

"What? Your grades?"

"Pshhh, noooo. Me becoming a hero!" 

Y/N smiled as she let out a loud laugh, sending her to the dirt on her knees as she tried to regain her breath. Her laughing soon turned to her clutching her chest, ragged breaths escaping from her mouth.

"H-hey Y/N, it wasn't that funny."

The harsh breaths turned into coughing as her face turned paler at the second. Soon she was gasping for air to enter her lungs, clawing at her throat, hoping for all the pain to stop. Denki was long on the floor, kneeling with a horror stricken face and shaky hands hovering over Y/N’s body.

"Y-Y/N, what's happening?!"

Of course Y/N never answered, Denki wanted to kick himself for even asking such a dumb question at the moment. He quickly scooped her up from the ground only to struggle with keeping her in his arms. His arms were far too weak to be holding all her body weight, but Denki only prayed he'd make it back home. He ran as fast as he could, yelling for his aunt and uncle to help him. By the time they came out, Y/N’s mother shrieked in terror as she took the poor girl from Denki's arms. Y/N was only gasping for what little air entered her body, blood slowly dripping from the corner of her mouth. Quickly getting inside their car, her father drove at an alarming rate to the hospital. The cries of his aunt only scared Denki even more when Y/N had stopped her struggling. Doctors whisked her away as fast as possible, stabilizing her and drawing out the blood from her lungs. The married couple could only pace in anticipation while they waited for a doctor. Denki, on the other hand, stared blankly at the white wall in front of him. 

Was she going to die? Was it his fault that she was in such a devastating state? Seeing the color quickly drain from her face was the only thing Denki could really think about. It was his fault. Those thoughts plagued his mind, even after his parents raced into the waiting room, hugging his aunt. His mother bent in front of him, staring directly into his sunken eyes. Tears formed and fell down as he looked down to his hands.

"I'm s-sorry, it's m-my fault she's like t-this."

His mother embraced him, reassuring him that none of this was blamed on him. A couple hours passed and a doctor had arrived to inform the family of devastating news. 

"Though your daughter is in critical condition, we have stabilized her enough to where she will be able to survive on what medication we have given her. Even with what tests had shown us, we aren't receiving any type of diseases coming from her. This could mean that she possibly has a newly formed disease in her. There isn't any information on how it could have formed in her, but we could only guess she had formed some germ of a sort and it grew from there. And with the condition she's in now and the lack of information of what we know about this, we won't be able to determine when she will get better, or even if she will get better. So as of now, it is highly recommended that she will have to stay in the hospital for her recovery and to prevent any more events like the one that happened today."

And despite the devastating news happening inside the bleak hospital, the outside world seemed to only flourish with life.

Y/N's parents were devastated and Denki could only stare at the doctor with sadness. As weeks passed, Y/N only got worse, it was a miracle that she was still alive. While doing research, doctors and some scientists had found out that the bacteria in her room worsened her body. They were confused on how this disease worked, but they couldn't complain. They moved the weak, thin girl to a secluded part of the hospital. Spotless, almost dust free, and clean her room was, it barely looked like a normal room to be put in. (Y/N) had little consciousness during the whole situation, not being able to lift her own pinkie, even if she tried. Months passed, and Y/N's body began to strengthen itself back slowly. Though, the only thing that could possibly kill her was having other people around her. So family members would have to look through a window and talk through a microphone in order to communicate with her. 

Y/N honestly felt like a caged bird.

Denki would visit (Y/N) regularly, talking to her as she smiled and laughed. Every now and then, a doctor with a protective suit on would enter her room and quickly shut the door to check up on her. (Y/N) was silent during those times, looking at the doctor, examining the suit with an unreadable look on her face. Two years she had spent in the confined room, and during that time she had gotten her own computer, console, and tv as her form of entertainment. Playing online with strangers and getting to know them brought a smile to the girl's face. She knew she wouldn't be able to go outside anymore, not with how she was now.

Doctors have found out that overtime, her body had been slowly eating away at the medication, but it wasn't too severe at the time.

"Y/N's body has been rejecting the medication we have been giving to her. Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to prevent this and we have estimated she will have a year or so until her body doesn't take any of the medicine. We will need to ask permission to add higher doses of medication to her medicine. We will try our best to find a solution to this, but we can only apologize."

And this was how Y/N was in her position now. Despite the short time allowed for her, she didn't know how many things will happen in just one year. And who she will meet at that fact.