#and where he goes just happens to draw him closer to mercury

[strqyr]

raaaandom thought since I haven't kept up a whole lot with your Vitalis AU and forgive me if you've already talked about this before but uh, how did Sun x Mercury come to be in that?

I know you tend not to talk about shipping a lot on this blog lol but I'm too intrigued. Sun x Mercury has really grown on me as of late and I'm 90% sure it's because of the one art you did of them along with Freezerburn for pride month so I'm curious to know the thought process 👁️👄👁️

i've gone back-n-forth with so many story ideas that at this point i'm honestly not that sure how it came to be lol but it probably was around the time i had sun travel / spend time with mercury and emerald for a while that it just kind of clicked in place?

like mercury is pretty jaded as a person, understandably looking at his childhood, and he doesn't really think there's anything else for him in this world than being an assassin. still, i think he knows, in a way, that his childhood was Fucked Up™, he knows his father hated him, but i think that's something that's like, he still had to prove himself, ya know? and that very easily leads to the kind of thinking that there's something wrong with him, that maybe if he was better, stronger, etc., his father wouldn't have hated him and the fact that he does is his fault.

and while he does occasionally drop these bombs, outright spitting them out sometimes, about his childhood that would make just about anyone to go holy shit are you okay?, he doesn't exactly keep the kind of company who would do that (bc they didn't exactly have great childhoods either).

so while he knows, it's one thing to kind of think it to yourself; it's something different to have someone else affirm that yes, it was fucked up and that he deserved better, even if his initial reaction to that would be poor bc people tend to be defensive of themselves and their life.

and i think sun could be that person to say it out loud? he's very much Friend-shaped™, he's sun "i go where i'm needed" wukong; while he's curious and definitely has plenty of questions, he's respectful enough to not prod, and if he thinks he overstepped he backs up while also making sure that he is there, ya know, whenever the other person is ready. but he's not a pushover, and he can also be very blunt and just blurt things out so him going "dude that's kind of fucked up" to something mercury says is definitely something i can see happening (without the swearing... maybe.)

he also doesn't exactly hold any moral high-ground or grudges on anyone, so mercury being one of the bad guys and an assassin wouldn't really be a problem for him lol

so, somewhere along the way i just thought sun seeing mercury and going "he seems cool" and then doing the completely opposite of reality and starting to orbit around him seemed like a good idea. and thus i sealed my fate in a rarest of rare-pair pits.

[wackapedia]

Icarus

The year is 2057. The sun is dying. Astronaut!Taehyung x Reader Wordcount: 1.2k Warnings: Fluff, Angst, astrophysics jargon or the lack thereof 🤡🤡🤡 Taehyung's eyes shine with glee as he breaks you the news of being drafted for the space program. "I made it, Y/n! I'm going out there!" He excitedly squeals as soon as he enters your shared home. "That's... Great, Tae! I'm happy for you." You lied, hugging him in the middle of the hallway of your home. You bury yourself in his broad chest, tightly holding on to him and wishing he would take the hint. "I knew you would be!" He hugs you back.

------------- "So, uh... When is the... Um..." You ask him over dinner in your humble kitchen late one night, gesturing your hands to fill in the lack of words. "The launch? Its in two months. But the training workshop would be in a few weeks." Taehyung continues for you after finishing his bowl. You hum in response, both willing to find out the details while wishing not to. "I'll be staying in the institute a week before the launch, by the way. But you'll be allowed to visit me there." Taehyung finally notices your worry. You don't want to burden him with your worries as being out in space has been his lifelong dream. But I can't visit you when you're up there. "No, but I'll be watching over you the whole time I'm there. I'll be thinking about you all the time." He answers. You don't know if you've said those words out loud or has he learned how to read minds. Taehyung reaches over the table to grasp your hand in his large one. He gives you a tight-lipped smile, convincing you that its all going to be okay. You nod along despite your doubts. ------------ Your thoughts drown out the movie playing on your screen. Taehyung's warmth wraps your figure as he focuses on the movie. "Tae..." "Hmm?" "What if something goes wrong?" You whisper. Taehyung takes a moment to think and clears his throat before answering. "Well then, Bugs Bunny will have to look for a different basketball player..." He answers, munching on the buttery popcorn. "What? Not that, silly!" You toss a popcorn on his face. You begged him for a non-space movie but Space Jam was his final compromise. ------------- "Its for a good cause, y/n." He comforts you on his last night at home. Like a dam breaking, you cry hard on his bare chest as the dim moonlight filters through your bedroom window on his last night at home. Your shoulders shake as Taehyung wraps his strong arms around them. Taehyung had explained to you the technicalities of the mission. To re-ignite the dying sun, warming up the freezing earth. "It takes 7 and a half earth minutes for sunlight to travel to the Earth's surface. When the sun brightens up again, you'll know we've made it. And we'll be coming home." "Can't we just throw a rocket from here?! Why do you have to get close?“ you question despite the hiccups racking your chest and the hoarse voice of your throat. "I'm afraid we can't..." Taehyung's lips touch your forehead, pulling you impossibly closer to him. "Why did you have to be the best aerospace engineer in the world? What the hell is Jimin for?" You question every single decision that led to Taehyung being drafted for the mission. "Why the hell do we even need to fix that star? Maybe its not worth fixing anymore!" Your trembling fingers wipe at the mess on your face as tears pool on your husband's chest. Taehyung stops himself from further upsetting you. He pulls you back to lie close to him and he kisses you to sleep. Your exhausted form leans on him, feeling cold tears on your forehead that weren't your own. ----------- You were invited to watch the launch live from the agency's mission control. The headset lies heavily against your ears as you listen in to the live audio feed of the ship taking off the launchpad right after the countdown runs out. You were grateful for the safe take-off, but this was only the beginning of your worries. You spend your days at the agency, listening in to updates despite the scientific terms flying over your head. There were times when the Icarus crew weren't busy and Taehyung would open a private line for you. A short conversation consisting 8-second delays and you trying not to choke through your tears. -------- D-day. In a few hours, Icarus would slingshot through Mercury's orbit to fling the stellar bomb into the sun, releasing enough ignition to make the star burn bright again. The camera attached to the interior of the ship shows six crew members and their commander preparing for payload launch shown in a digital countdown at the corner of your screen. As they draw closer, the signal will be cut off and there will be no means to communicate with them for the next hour. "Payload secure." Taehyung's deep voice crackles through the speakers. "Propulsion jet ready." Min Yoongi's responds. "T minus 4 minutes until comms shutdown." Commander Kim Namjoon announces. You couldn't stop your knees from bouncing against the tiled floor as the signal snaps.  As soon as the five-second countdown ends, the audio clicks silent and all that's left are the external camera visuals, and a live simulation of the payload's position. Just then, a popup rings on your phone.              [1 Video Message - Kim Taehyung💜] The video opens to Taehyung propping up his phone against the houseplant on your living room table. He then proceeds to get comfortable on your couch, deeply thinking and collecting his thoughts. "Hey, y/n. By the time you watch this, we'll be closest to the sun. No man has ever done that before, so you get some bragging rights that your husband did that." His warm chuckle makes you smile through your tears. "I never got to answer your question because I had to think about it. You asked me 'what if something goes wrong?' well, here's my answer. The worst that could happen is that we all fail. The bomb fails to reignite the sun, and earth gradually freezes as it drifts away through space." You wheeze through your tears, silencing yourself to continue to listen to the video. "You once said that maybe earth isn't worth saving. I say it is. Its our home. Its where you are, of course its worth saving." His tone is serious this time. "What if something in the ship goes wrong? It wouldn't matter as long as the payload succeeds. We end up saving humanity and that's all that counts, y/n. We may not make it back, I may not make it back. But know that when I decompress and suffocate in space, I will still be thinking of you. I love you, y/n. See you on the other side." He smiles before ending the video. You feel yourself give out as the cold tiles hit your knees. Commotion ensues inside the mission control room as the technicians scramble all over. As you breathe in through your stuffy breath, you get a glimpse of the floor to ceiling windows of the observation room. The sky gradually brightens like it used to, reminding you of your childhood when the sun was the brightest distant star. Of the days when you and Taehyung would walk outdoors, basking in the sunlight that was estimated to die out in ten thousand hours. They were wrong. But Taehyung made it right, They made it. They succeeded. And that was all that mattered.

[bobauthorman]

A Semblance of Reasoning (Part 1)

Let’s take a look at Semblances, the unique power each person in RWBY (The show) has; What is a Semblance, exactly? well, as Ren said in “Lighting the Fire”

Ren: A common philosophy is that a warrior’s semblance is a part of who they are. Some say your personality and character can define your Semblance while some claim that it is the other way around. Of course, there are still many who don’t see a connection at all.

In short, a Semblance represents their user’s personality…except when they don’t. I feel that sometimes Semblances aren’t completely shaped by the character, and are equally formed around their specific needs and experiences. Let’s take a look at some characters’ Semblances, what kind of background they had, and guess how their Semblances were shaped by the first two. We’ll also look at how those powers have evolved or changed over the course of the series and why.

 Given the large cast, we’ll be splitting this subject up among multiple posts.

Team RWBY Semblances

Ruby Rose: Ruby’s Semblance, at the beginning of the series, was just speed…and leaving rose petals behind her. Typically, characters with speed powers are characterized as impatient, and Ruby…isn’t as bad as most. Of course, she has this tendency in the beginning to just rush in, as shown when she tries to 1-v-1 a Nevermore. Luckily, she learns to outgrow this, but is still “rushed” into Beacon two years ahead of schedule. When Beacon falls, her first instinct is to head to Haven, while the rest of her team are split up and delayed by their own issues. So, moving ahead quicker than others is what her Petal Burst represents.

The first thing we know about Ruby’s combat background is that, prior to being trained by Qrow, she was “complete garbage”. In Volume 5, she admits that her Semblance kicked in while training. Possibly, Ruby was bottom-tier in a lot of ways, not just combat. It’s possible that track was also something she was garbage at. So, maybe just being tired of being the slowest, she gained the power to zip ahead of the other kids. Of course, after Volume 3, her Semblance shifts from just being “speed” to “flight and bursting into flower petals.” And what does she use this for? Getting around obstacles. What could have provoked such an evolution? Well, let’s think back on the events of Volume 3; She realizes that Emerald is going to use her Hallucination Semblance to make Pyrrha destroy Penny, but before she can stop their match, Mercury gets in her way. He delays her enough so that the evil plan goes off without a hitch. But now she has the power to bypass obstructions and move about with more freedom.

Weiss Schnee: Weiss’ Semblance is her Glyphs, which, prior to the reveal of the Maidens and Silver Eyes, the closest thing to magic the series had. But Volume 3 reveals that the Glyphs are a hereditary Semblance, passed on by bloodline. So, they don’t really represent her character in of itself. But, how she uses it is what reflects the growth of her character. When Weiss first appears in the main show, she’s your average Mean Girl- Looking down on our Main Girl Ruby and being quite vocal about it. For all her scorn for her father’s ways, she’s just as attached to her status as a member of the Schnee Family. “I have a legacy to uphold.” And as we later learn, her mastery of her Glyphs are average at best, and she’s notorious for losing fights. However, there is one aspect of her Glyphs that Winter has that she does not have; Summoning good versions of the monsters she’s crushed. Despite how hard she tries in the first three Volumes, she cannot do what Winter does.

But as she slowly starts to push herself away from the elitist mentality of the Atlas upper class, Weiss’ skill with Glyphs improve as well, mostly as a form of support for others. And in the latter half of Volume 3, she does get a hang of Summons. Where? When she saves Velvet, a Faunus who are normally looked down by the elites. However, when she fights Vernal in Volume 5, her reliance on her Summons nearly gets her killed. At the time, though, she was only fighting for herself (“I’m more than just a name”) and that tied into it. When she’s brought back into the fight by Jaune, it’s because he’s using his Semblance to heal her (Or, technically, amplifying her aura with his), and she fights much better with the Lancer summon. In short, Weiss’ evolution comes not just from helping, but from being helped. When she uses her Summons against Marrow, it has full autonomy; She has given her former enemy the trust to act on its own for her behalf.

Blake Belladonna: Shadow, that’s Blake’s power to create illusionary duplicates, a diversion to draw a foe’s attention. Blake herself describes this as a manifestation of her self-professed cowardice; “I was born with the ability to leave behind a shadow of myself; an empty copy that takes the hit while I run away!” However, it may also represent loneliness. Blake was once a member of the White Fang during its ‘peaceful protestor’ phase, and we even get a visual in “Black and White” of lil’ kid Blake waving a sign. Moving around with her parents, it’s possible that she didn’t have time to make friends growing up. When the WF became terrorists, she joined that as well, but given how uncomfortable she was with Adam’s increasingly fatal methods, it’s just as likely that she was ‘odd woman out’ and just as alone in the new WF as she was in the old. As such, her Semblance became the ability to make more of herself, which she uses to escape from danger.

Much like Weiss, the Semblance itself has not changed much, but how she uses it does, representing her change in character. Through Volumes 1-3, she used her Shadow solely as diversions, for escape. But in V4 “Of Runaways and Stowaways”, she uses  to move closer to the Grimm she’s fighting. This is perhaps to foreshadow her eventual decision to stop running from the White Fang and start fighting against them. And in Volume 7, during Team RWBY’s fight against the Ace-Ops, Blake allows herself to be briefly captured by Vine she could trick him into catching a Shadow loaded with bombs. This further demonstrates Blake’s willingness to put herself forward to win the battles. 

Yang Xiao Long: Her Semblance is Burn, which is basically a limit-break; When she takes enough hits, she’s able to use that accumulated force to increase her strength and hit back with all of it at once. Also, her hair sets on fire. But that might be a visual effect. It’s pretty easy to understand the events that caused her to develop this Semblance. With the death of her step-mother Summer, Yang was left to pick up the pieces of her broken family, effectively swallowing her pain and be the one strong enough to carry on. And as the “RWBY: World of Remnant” data book explains, she has a lot of suppressed anger from her birth mother Raven leaving, which is where the flames symbolize, I think. It reflects how a warm candle can easily become a wildfire if fed and provoked thoughtlessly.

But as her father Taiyang points out, it’s used as a temper-tantrum. Her power is, effectively, “I’ve taken all I can stand and I can’t stand no more!” If things aren’t going her way, she basically explodes in a rage that ends things. It’s a useful power, but Yang uses it so often that she becomes predictable, especially to foes that specialize in evasion, or are strong enough to take it, as proven with Neo and Adam. Once Tai instructs and dresses her down, Yang begins to control herself more and more, she starts relying on Burn to win fights with it, reflecting that self-control. So far, it hasn’t really changed, she’s just using it less, just like she’s not throwing fits so often. When she does, (use Burn though,) it’s in more tactful ways, like blocking Adam’s Moonslice in “Seeing Red” and inhibiting Elm’s root Semblance in “With Friends Like These” by destroying the floor. Brute force, yes, but with purpose beyond destruction.

And this is only up until Volume 7. Stars (And broken moons) know what will happen further down the road.

[reverseblackholeofwords]

Was JJs watch holding him back, like so he wouldnt accidently do what he just did to Anti? Also like. Is Anti okay?? JJ what did u do

In Marvin’s room, Jackie stands nervously with Anti in his arms, and Jameson is frozen--somewhat dazed--standing on a stool where Marvin is walking around him with crystals, looking at him through bits of colored glass, and drawing various little runes drawn in black marker on his hands and arms. Then he goes to Anti and does the same. Finally, he huffs and sits down in a big pile of cushions that form something like a nest in one corner of the room.

“Quicksilver.”

Jameson tilts his head to the side, and Jackie asks, “What?”

Marvin leans back. “Its more scientific name is mercury, but alchemists called it quicksilver. Emperors used to drink the stuff in an attempt to gain immortality.” Marvin huffs. “All they achieved was a slow, painful death instead.” He flicks a piece of fuzz from his silk shirt and frowns. “But it does have some magical properties if used correctly. It causes change, strange, weird, unexplainable change.”

He points to Jameson’s face. “And it’s all over him.” Marvin drops his finger. “In fact, there’s so much magic coming off him right now, it’s making me a little sick.” He presses a hand to his forehead, and asks Jameson the obvious. “What did you do?”

Jem’s hands move quickly to explain, starting from smashing the pocket watch to his tantrum to losing himself while fighting Anti, though he leaves the part out about thinking they’re all programmed to love him. Right now, he’s not sure even their programming will make them forgive him for this. All drawn out, the whole thing seems like a nightmare that Jameson can’t wake up from.

Marvin stands at the end of it. “You broke your pocket watch? The one you were born with.”

Tears start forming in Jem’s eyes again, and he nods.

Anti moans and writhes in his brother’s arms. Jackie bites his lip. “What does that have to do with anything? What about Anti?”

“I’m getting to that,” Marvin says, holding up a hand to calm his brother as he draws closer to Jameson. “And it was after you broke it that your powers went nuts.” He snaps his fingers, eyes alight. “Babysitting Protocol!”

“What?” Jackie demands, getting more and more upset.

“Like in the Spider Man movie,” Marvin explains. “Stark gives Peter a Babysitter programmed into his suit. When he disables it, he’s got no idea what he’s doing. All these new features open up that he doesn’t know how to control.” Marvin gestures to Jameson. “He broke his training wheels.”

Jem looks down at his hands. Has this been inside him all along? Held back by some sort of magic to protect the others from what he could do?

“We need to talk to Jack,” Marvin says decisively. “He can tell us more about what Jameson’s powers really are.” He puts a hand on Jackie’s shoulder. “And once we find that out, we’ll understand what happened to Anti.”

[theolddarkmachine]

Dead Space- 28 Days Later

It starts the day the hero falls. Crashing in a blaze of glory of twisted metal and burning ozone, he leaves a scar on the Earth that changes everything.

And Keith sees it all.

Chapter 2 of 11

Tags: attempted Horror Elements, Zombies, Violence and Gore, Eventual Smut, Happy Ending i swear

Also on AO3

A/N: Apologies this isn’t a longer chapter. I have to constantly remind myself that there isn’t anything wrong with bridge chapters even if they do drive me a bit crazy XD Hopefully there’s enough setup here to make it worth it. That being said, I may post another chapter next week instead of in two weeks to make up for said shortness.

*******************************

28 Days Later

The end of the world happened a lot quicker than anyone could have guessed, at least, as far as Keith could tell.

Starting that very same night that Shiro had crash landed, it took mere days to spread to the rest of the continent, and just a week’s time to have spread throughout the rest of the world. Blindsided by the sudden nightmare that had swept across the Earth’s population, scientists hadn’t even been able to give whatever it was a classification before it was already too late.

Some took it upon themselves to call it a virus.

Some called it biological warfare.

Others called it a reckoning.

Whatever it was, it had cleaved humanity at its knees, leaving the world’s nations stained with crimson and the stench of death.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

It would have been one thing if the dead had stayed that way, but they had found all too quickly that whatever this plague was that had turned the human race into an endangered species, had a second phase.

One that reanimated the corpses that outnumbered the living, and turned them into flesh hungry monsters.

Something akin to the creatures in horror movies and graphic novels, only more ferocious.

And quicker.

Hungrier.

More frightening.

Letting a tired, growling sigh slip through the cage of his teeth, Keith rolls a tight knot from his neck with deft fingers before letting his head fall back and his tired eyes close. It’s one small moment of blessed relief before he turns his attention back to the desert laid out before him.

Today marked twenty-eight days since he’d rescued Shiro from one Hell, only to find he’d dragged him into another.

Soft footfalls crunch across the broken, cracked ground, drawing close at a timid pace as if trying to not startle. As if they ever could. Even if they weren’t the last two living humans for miles, he’d still know exactly who it was.

“Hey,” Shiro’s voice hushes from just behind him as he brushed his fingertips over Keith’s shoulder before gripping it tight in greeting. Heat crackles and licks at Keith’s skin where his palm cradles the full of his shoulder.

Humming lowly as he pushes closer to the contact, Keith turns his attention away from the rust colored land ahead of them to look up at the man beside him.

The dusky light of the setting sun touchs Shiro’s eyes with an other worldly glow, turning them from stormy grey to something more alien, as he looks down at Keith. They glow with the watercolor mix of orange and pink, almost like heated steel. Swallowing around the sudden burn that tickles at the back of his throat, Keith draws his nighttime gaze down across the raised flesh over the bridge of Shiro’s nose.

It’s a darker pink now, contrasting starkly with the tan of his skin and standing as one of the few reminders of what he’d been through.

“Hey,” Keith returns, soft and quiet as the melting light of the day. “How are you feeling?”

Shrugging, Shiro draws a comforting circle into Keith’s shoulder.

“More of the same,” he hums as he tracks one last circle before letting his hand slide away. The burn of his touch leaves a lingering, blistering ache along Keith’s skin as he lets his gaze trace the rest of Shiro’s form.

Dark, worn leather of an old jacket hugs his still gaunt frame, accentuating the width of his shoulders. Black riding gloves cover his hands, hiding the way his bones had stood out beneath his pale skin.

In the fading heat of the day, Keith can’t help but wonder if the added layers are making Shiro uncomfortable, though he guesses they wouldn’t in his current state.

Those first few days after he’d brought Shiro home had been filled with his fitful sleep and almost crazed muttering. His words were always bitten out in broken statements, some nonsensical and others marking the harrowed nature of his escape, but almost always punctuated by Shiro’s claims that he was cold.

So cold.

When he’d finally awakened, he still couldn’t seem to fight back the chill that bit deep into him and left his skin feeling frigid to the touch.

It had been then that Keith had unearthed the jacket and gloves that had been tucked away, kept safe and hidden in the chest at the foot of his bed.

He had hoped that after the aches and the pains had abated, Shiro would be freed of the unnatural chill but it still remained as a constant, stubborn specter that haunted him.

“We can stay another night if we need to,” Keith assures, keeping his gaze locked on the man beside him. Lips turning down in something a shade lighter than displeasure, Shiro shakes his head.

“We both know that we can’t,” he replies, low and quiet, as he turns his silvered stare out toward the abandoned desert. With the sun fading lower into the horizon, the usual reds and browns are painted with dusky purples and shadows. It’s so mundane and almost peaceful, if only those shadows weren’t hiding monsters.

“Shiro,” Keith hushes, doing his best to ignore the way he’s turned his name into a plea.

“They’re getting closer every day, Keith,” Shiro cuts him off, eyes still trained ahead as if searching for something. Keith watches as he sees the sharp metallic glint of his stare flick back and forth over the horizon.

“So let them, I can hold them back,” he growls as he grabs at Shiro’s arm, giving it a gentle yet insistent tug to turn the older man toward him once more. The silver sheen of his eyes softens, turning from hardened steel to liquid mercury as he sees the ferocity that has pushed Keith’s mouth into a frown.

“Keith.”

It’s said low, a warning and a prayer wrapped into one as he holds Keith’s stubborn gaze. Electricity, hot and bright, crackles between them as their silent battle wages. Once upon a time the near command might have worked, but neither of them is the same person they had been before.

Moments pass, thick and slow, before Shiro’s shoulders sink forward with the weight of his sigh.

“We’ve stuck around here longer than we should have already,” he offers lowly, almost apologetic this time. As if somehow this might be his fault.

“And we can stick around longer if we need to to make sure you’re healed,” Keith returns brusquely. It pulls a dry, humorless laugh from Shiro’s cracked lips as he shakes his head. Gently brushing his fingers over Keith’s hand where it still grips at his arm, he carefully pulls it away to grasp it between his own.

“You don’t need to keep trying to save me, Keith. I’m already here,” Shiro says softly, tracing the back of Keith’s hands with his gloved thumb. Up and down the the licking fire goes, etching deep into the back of his hand. Keith watches it as it slowly moves back and forth.

A shudder rocks down his spine as he finally looks up at him, admiring the way the fading light still clings to Shiro’s gaze.

“I’ll save you as many times as I need to,” he vows, flipping his hand in Shiro’s hold to lace their fingers together. The last rays of sunlight die as the sun sinks beneath the dirt, blanketing them both in the soft hush of night.

Shiro’s grasp tightens, solid and reassuring as he replies.

“I just don’t want to see you hurt because of me.”

It’s a weighted confession, one that lands heavily at their feet as Shiro fixes his gaze on the dirt between them. Guilt twists bitterly in his gut as he pulls gently on their intertwined hands to bring him closer.

“You won’t,” Keith breathes, the words brushing across Shiro’s lips before presses forward, chasing after them. The kiss is chaste, nothing more than a soft promise brought to life between them.

He lingers, committing the dusky moment to memory before pulling away. A smile carves itself into the corner of his lips as he looks up at Shiro.

“I’ll get our stuff together.”

Turning away from him, Keith heads back towards the shack. As he pushes his way through the door, he misses the way Shiro casts a long, lingering look out over the darkness.

The pinprick of headlights dot the inky black of the desert in the distance, bright and sharp for just a moment too long before suddenly going out.

****************************

[thenightlymirror]

@artifice-ou-nature

OK, this reading is for Anna, by request, as the Sun tips into Scorpio season for the actual Queen of Cups.

One card draw is the Five of Swords. My first impression, honestly, was “Ope, this is wrong.” I don’t even know why. But sometimes fate is wrong. That’s just how she goes. Either way, we have Venus in Aquarius here. I tend to associate this card with myself, and my natal Venus in Aquarius, but I guess we all live under the same stars. This is kind of the Pyrrhic victory card. (Also the Losing My Religion card.) My story with this guy with the swords is that he was in a contest of wits with his friend, who he secretly has a scandalously gay crush on, and totally whips him. So, he’s like, heheh I fucking wasted you, secret love of my life. And his dude’s just walking away as he’s like, well at least I have all these swords to fall on for later, when I realize what a colossal ass I’ve been. When it really sinks in and I’m just utterly alone spinning my gears into lift off, hopefully propelling me into space, where I can be terminally alone, forever. hahahaha Like I said, I take this card way too personally. What it means for you, I can’t know.

Three card draw is Past, Present, Future. In the past, we have the King of Cups. Love and emotions, mastered. Now, the question that comes to my mind is, is this a man who is loved, really securely loved, or is this a man who has balanced all the needs and wants for love? He gives richly and wisely, and is richer and the wiser in love for it. But this is a person, too. The Cancer King. Our mature scribe, cleric, priest. I always think of my Dad as the King of Cups, even though he’s really none of these things haha.

In the present is the Three of Pentacles. This is one of those cards with a kind of ironic astrological meaning. When I look at this card, I think of the third commandment. No graven images. Our architect is using his Mars in Capricorn, his will magnified by material power, to build a cathedral. Leaving a legacy that honors the glory of God, because that’s what capitalists do with their power, right? That’s just me ribbing the Tarot, though. Small meaning: all your powers are aligned to build. So build a cathedral, the tarot suggests.

The future is the Queen of Pentacles. Again, mastering the materials. Sometimes the metaphysical is physical. Aesthetics and art and joy, pure experience, can be as simple as walking through a fabric shop, or the yarn aisle at an art supply shop. (Wow am I off on a tangent, as always.) Colors and textures are all the realms in the raw. Our Queen of Pentacles sews them together into something that obscures the power of this raw material and synthesizes them into a greater mystery, simple and extraordinary beauty.

I am not high. haha

I’ve gone really intense and long on all the meanings here. The cards here can also be seen as a kind of exchange. We are watching the cathedral being gifted from the Queen of Pentacles to the King of Cups, backwards through time. As though the glory created the creator.

The Moon leapt out as I was shuffling the deck just now. Moon’s about to slip into Taurus.

Like a wild distant cry from depths of Hell comes our Celtic Cross. What happened? It’s like the cards got pissed. Well, let’s take a closer look.

The Ten of Wands, crossed by the fucking Devil. Nice. If you are going to be burdened and indecisive, you might as well blame Satan, or at least have him on your side. Our Material Lord is back in the cards. In the past, our Virgo is worried about his harvest coming up short, and in the future, we are helping some friends flee in our somewhat leaky boat. Saturn (The Devil, Probably. Robert Bresson. 1977.) was slowing down production and Mercury will soon be assisting our very public shitposting meltdown. Maybe. Sort of looks like the same guy in those pictures, doesn’t it? Maybe he’s decided it was better to just quit and find more fertile fields.

What we can see, is the Three of Wands. Sun shines upon the Kingdom, eyes on the horizon. Down below is our Queen of Wands, Queen of Suns, Lord of the Lion’s Strength. That seems very positive. I’m getting the picture of turmoil, like the mirror showing you the Five of Cups, lonely Count Chocula worried about his unrequited Five of Swords, love and words failing you, BUT, you should see the Page of Pentacles in the Hopes and Fears placement, and believe him instead. Let the Devil help you. Go fucking BeAsT mOdE. hahaha I hate advice readings, but sometimes you need an intervention.

The outcome is Death. As it always is. But he’s our Scorpion Lord. Death is a cool guy. You’ve got a birthday coming up, and I hope it’s lovely, and you’ve just got to worship Death and let the Devil be your bro, and you’ll be great. Sometimes life is sad and powerfully good at the same time. Stack those cups into a cathedral.

[myssthyss]

Drawn

Sequel to (Re)Birth

The ground crunches gently beneath the tall Awoken’s feet, her newly found redwood walking staff adding a third thump to her gait. The trek to this “City” will be long and arduous, especially with limited aerospace centers in proximity to where her Ghost found her. Luckily, it seems she landed on the correct side of the mountain. 

As in, the side closer to a ship. 

Her Ghost had estimated a two to three week trek to the nearest Golden Age Aeroport and, hopefully, the Fallen hadn’t retreated there and picked it clean after the SIVA Crisis.

God, she was so clueless about all of this.

“So, what’s that ‘Traveler’ you mentioned earlier?” Myss asks her Ghost, who somehow dematerialized and is living inside her head now. 

He insists he lives in her backpack, but she’s not wearing a backpack, and she can hear him in her head. This is all so disorienting, and she’s stopped questioning her companion’s personal shenanigans to save her sanity somewhat.

[No one knows exactly what the Traveler is,] 

Really helpful, Ghost. 

[...some would refer to it and its Light as a God and a Blessing respectively, and the Ghosts and their Guardians - as children of the Traveler and its Light - as demigods.] 

Myss’ eyes widen slightly at that. Her, a demigod? No pressure, right?

[However, it’s simplest to call it a terraformer, as that is primarily what it did while it was alive.]

“It’s dead?”

[Yes. That’s why I exist. I, as well as every other Ghost, was born the moment the Traveler died, with the express purpose of finding you - our Guardian.]

“Aww, you’re gonna make me blush.”

[Let me try harder. I’d wandered the Sol System for hundreds of years, oversaw many battles - The Faction Wars, Six Fronts, The Great Disaster, Twilight Gap, the SIVA Crisis - I’d been to Luna, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, and not one fallen individual had called to me.] Her Ghost materializes in front of her. [Until yesterday.]

She feels the water-like light ripples on her face congregate on her cheeks. “--You got me. I’m blushing.”

Her Ghost laughs, and disappears again.

Over the next few days of travel, her questions are gradually answered. 

After the Traveler had blessed many a race with its Light, and subsequently abandoned them when the Darkness came for it, it decided to make its final stand to protect humanity. 

The City - The Last Safe City - is the last place on planet Earth that is truly secure for humanity, sitting in the shadow of the dead Traveler. 

The City is run by the Speaker, the Consensus, and the Vanguard. The three Vanguard leaders each represent one Guardian Order. 

Her Ghost says he knows which Order she’ll fit in with best, but he wants it to be a surprise for her. That’s no fun.

There’s a variety of enemies they’ll face, but the Fallen are the ones they’ll run into the most. They were the last species the Traveler blessed, and the last it abandoned.

Myss learns more about the Fallen in a less-than-pleasant manner. She’s sniped at by a Vandal from a hundred feet up, Marauders slice at her out of nowhere, and Dregs take aim at range. 

She’s able to fend them off successfully using her redwood walking stick and one of the Marauder’s blades, but not without taking a substantial amount of damage.

“I... I need a moment...” She says breathlessly, supporting herself against a tree.

[No rush. I’ve got you.] Her Ghost soothes. His beams run over her fresh wounds, leaving no trace they existed as they heal. Then, he freezes, and abruptly disappears into her backpack. [Actually maybe some rush. Did you hear that?]

“Hear wh--”

//E ZER ET HUS//

She turns abruptly towards the guttural voice, and meets the glowing eyes of--

[A Captain. No doubt this gang’s leader. And we just killed them all.]

“What do we do?! He’s huge!” Her stillness and chatter seems to upset the Fallen Captain because--

//SHE DA HUR ET//

[I’d grab one of the Dregs’ shock pistols. Quickly!]

Myss does so, takes aim, and fires. The Captain dodges her shot and disappears briefly, reappearing about ten feet away from where he was. 

This repeats for several minutes, firing, dodging, firing again, until she gets impatient and just runs up to punch the Captain. Unfortunately, the Captain has two feet on her, and two more arms than she does. It’s easy for him to thwart her attack, grabbing her neck as she swings, then holds her up against a tree while his blades draw dangerously close to her torso.

//RA SHA HA//

Logically, she knows this won’t matter. She knows she’ll be back in a moment’s time. Dying still sucks, though. It’s still painful. It’s still defeat. She doesn’t want to lose. She doesn’t want to die again.

And - as if her pleas had been heard - a deafening gunshot rings through the air. The next thing she knows, the Captain disintegrates into a million burning embers, and she falls to the ground.

“What?” Myss breathes a heavy sigh of relief, resting a hand on her neck. “What happened?”

“I just saved your life’s what happened!”

A female figure in a violet hooded cloak - bathed in fire and wielding a flaming pistol - jogs up to her and offers her unarmed hand. Just as Myss goes to take the offered hand, the stranger’s gun and flames vanish.

This just added like ten questions to Myss’ list.

“Thanks! What the hell was that?!” She asks incredulously of the stranger. “That was... You really saved me the trouble of dying again.”

[You mean saved me the trouble?] Her Ghost says, appearing over her shoulder.

“Hey! Dying hurts. It’s trouble for me, too.”

The stranger gasps. “You’re a Guardian, too!” Her helmet’s removed to reveal hair, lips, markings, and glowing eyes that match the flames that engulfed her just moments ago. “Lumo, you can come out, you know.”

{I know! I was just making sure the coast was clear.} The Ghost expands and reveals its sphere of Light, scanning the area. {Looks like that Captain was the last of them. Good job, you two.}

The two Awoken and the other Ghost all thank Lumo, and do a double take between each other before laughing over the confusion.

“I like you.” The orange-eyed Awoken says with a smile, offering her hand again. “Name’s Seraph Vim, and that’s Lumo.”

“Myss Thyss, and that’s...” Myss looks to her Ghost, who looks back expectantly. She hadn’t known she had to - and therefore hadn’t planned on -giving him a name. But-- “...Casper.”

Casper looks befuddled, and simultaneously delighted.

{Lovely to meet the both of you.} Lumo says, performing as much of a bow or curtsy as a Ghost could manage. {You’re on your way to The City as well?}

[That we are.]

“Well why don’t we travel together?” Myss suggests to the group. “We’ll be safer that way, having someone to watch our backs.”

“You just want me to stick around so I can save you again.” Seraph teases with a smile and a nudge. “Don’t worry, I’d be happy to save you anytime, Myss.”

That got her to blush again. “Thanks. I’ll probably need it.” She sighs, looking over to her Gh... Casper. “Which way now? That fight got me turned around.”

[That-a-way!] Casper replies, facing his shell in the requested direction. The group heads off, Ghosts disappearing to the safety of their Guardians’ backpacks.

“How long have you and Lumo been traveling?” Myss asks after a lengthy silence.

Seraph tilts her head, looking absently upwards. “About a week or so, I’d say.” She replies. “He found me in a ship halfway up the mountain range, still strapped into my seat.”

Myss blinks. “Wait... a ship?” Her hand goes to her chest, ghosting over the jewel that sat below the fabric. “What do you remember about it?”

“The glass was shattered, the seat was purple at one point, and there was some sort of large flag in there.” Seraph turns so her back faced Myss, showing off the large emblem on her cloak. It’s made up of three yellow diamonds and two white triangles. Almost looks like a crown.  “It was cold up there, so I used this to warm up and I’ve decided to keep it.”

Myss nods thoughtfully, slightly envious of how stylish Seraph’s cloak is. “Mine was similar, believe it or not. Though, I think I was on the floor of the ship, far below the seat. And I was at the top of the mountain.”

“Really?” Seraph asks, incredulous. “How’d you get down here so fast?”

“Well...”

[She fell.]

“No. You didn’t.”

[She was mere minutes old, had just figured out her name, and she slipped and fell two miles down the mountain.]

Lumo bursts into laughter, forcing his Guardian to laugh as well.

The liquid light on Myss’ cheeks flares. “Shut up! The snow was loose! I lost my footing.”

“Oh my god, Myss. That’s fantastic. Looks like you will need me to save you.” Seraph wipes her eyes as her giggles subside.  “So... did you choose your name, or...?”

Myss knows what Seraph’s getting at with how her question trailed off, and she pulls out her jewel by the chain.

Seraph immediately does the same, though hers is a much lighter shade of purple. They speak almost in unison.

“Myss Thyss. Iris Commander.”

“Seraph Vim. Orchid Commander.”

There’s a pause as the pair absorb this new information.

Myss speaks first, quietly. “No way.” 

“Were we part of the same fleet?” Seraph adds in awe.

“I wonder if we knew each other.”

Seraph smiles and tuts. “I’m sure we did. We were both Commanders! We probably sat in a war room together at least once.”

[You’d be right. There have been two conflicts that the Awoken were directly involved in.]

{And considering your ages, you were probably present for both of them.}

The two Awoken look at each other, the weight of the information fully resting on their shoulders. 

Decades of history had likely occurred between them, and it was all lost when they crashed into that mountain. Now here they were, united again, with no recollection of any of it. They both felt slightly emptier than they had previously, but also more whole.

“Maybe that’s why I felt drawn to you.” Seraph almost whispers, keeping her eyes angled forward, avoiding Myss’ gaze. “Maybe knowing each other in our past lives helped us connect in our new lives.”

“Maybe,” Myss smiles softly, laying her arm over Seraph’s shoulder. “...but now we have eternity to make new memories with each other. We’ll make up for what we lost a hundred fold.”

Now it was Seraph’s turn to blush, her ripples resembling tiny flames on her cheeks. She smiles, which only makes those little flames brighter.

“Sounds like a plan.”

[bananannabeth]

Colorblind

19k words

Amazing art by @hoalysmoaks​ and an incredible video by @proudstydiot​!! Betad by @seren-mercury​, to whom I owe a huge thank you, you have been so patient and kind and I am endlessly appreciative of your feedback. This fic was written for the Stydia Big Bang: shout out to the lovely admins @stydiamonth​, thanks so much for organising this event, and to @songof-light for creating the beautiful title card! You can also read this fic on Ao3!! Inspired by a lot of songs, but mainly Leona Lewis’s cover of Colorblind. I also need to thank @hamabee​ and @imnotsureyetactually​ for reading over the fic and helping to keep me motivated, you guys are greater than I deserve.

Stiles Stilinski is in third grade when he falls in love with Lydia Martin.

And he knows it’s love, he really does, because when she briefly meets his eye across the playground one innocuous Tuesday the world around him blossoms into color.

He sees the shade of her hair for the first time, not quite red in the way that he’d imagined from his parent’s descriptions, but definitely red-ish. Maybe it’s closer to orange, or maybe even blonde, he thinks, but he won’t know for sure until he gets to see yellow, too, and it’s super rare to get more than one color at once. Red is enough for now, though.

The new color layers over his previously grayscale world and Stiles can see Lydia’s red hair, the light pink blush of her cheeks and the deeper pink of her lips. Stiles looks at Lydia and sees color, and it is beautiful.

His best friend Scott frowns when he tells him, like he doesn’t understand. “What do you mean you see color? Aren’t we too young for that?”

Stiles waves off his concerns and goes back to rifling through the classroom crayon supply, which suddenly holds a whole new world of possibilities. Some of them are still in black and white, and most are just sort of shades of gray, but some are vibrant colors and Stiles knows that’s more than most of the other kids can see so he’s happy.

He picks out the ones that look closest to Lydia’s colors, labelled red and pink and orange (that one’s a bit of a guess, but he has a good feeling about it) and sketches a rough drawing of her. He’s not the best artist, but just seeing the colors on the page makes his heart race.

He catches her just before the end of the day. “Lydia!” he calls as she neatly tucks her pencils into their case. He can see that she’s got a red one and a pink one, and another color he can’t think of the name of, and he wonders if she sees them too.

She blinks up at him as he skids to a stop in front of her desk. “Yes?”

“I drew this for you.”

She takes the drawing and he waits with baited breath for her response. She glances over it before rolling her eyes back to Stiles’s face. “What is it?”

“It’s… uh…” Now that he’s here in front of her, admitting that he’s drawn her seems like a creepy thing to do. He can see Scott wincing sympathetically across the room. Stiles finally settles on, “It’s in color. Don’t you see?”

Lydia scowls, pink lips pressing together. “No, I don’t see.”

His heart drops, because this is not how the stories go.

In the stories, when you meet your soulmate your whole world suddenly changes, and you start to see color. Because they’re your soulmate, they see color too. You look at each other, and you see color, and it’s beautiful. That’s what happened with Stiles’s parents, that’s what happens in all the stories of true love Stiles has ever heard.

But Stiles sees color, and Lydia doesn’t.

This doesn’t make sense.

Stiles is very lost when he asks, “You don’t?”

“No, I don’t.” Lydia eyes him warily, glancing from the drawing to his face and back again. “Why, do you?”

“Uh… I… um…”

When he doesn’t give her a straight answer, she pins him under a very scrutinising stare. For a second Stiles swears that she’s seeing it too, that she knows exactly what he’s talking about, but then she silently pushes the paper back towards him.

Stiles feels like he might cry. “Keep it,” he says quietly.

He turns to head back to Scott before she can reply, and his friend offers him a consolatory pat on the back.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Stiles shrugs and tries to play it off. “Eh. At least I can see color now.”

Scott nods. “And at least she kept the drawing.”

Stiles spins so fast he almost falls over. He turns just in time to see Lydia tucking the paper into her bag behind her pencil case. Both are pink.

Stiles grins. It might take a little bit longer, but he knows that one day Lydia is going to look at him and see something more than gray.

Lydia Martin doesn’t know if she believes in the concept of color bonding.

Even though she’s only ten, she’s read all about it; about how it’s really just a hormonal reaction, when you break it down, and about how people generally only get one primary color at a time, as their bodies and minds adjust to the change. Scientists still aren’t sure why people get different colors at different times, or even exactly what it is that bonds people together in the first place, but they’ve documented it well and they’re always doing more research on it.

Lydia’s grandmother doesn’t describe it in a scientific way at all. She makes it sound like a fairytale, like another one of the storybooks she and Lydia read together. She tells Lydia about her soulmate Maddy in a soft voice that she saves just for this particular story, and when she gets to the part where they meet for the first time and she describes how it looks, her eyes sparkle.

“I saw red, first,” Lorraine explains, looking far away.

Lydia is enthralled, because even if this is just a make believe fairy tale, it’s a good one. And she’s curious, too, always hungering for new knowledge. The idea that her grandmother can see things that Lydia can’t is both fascinating and frustrating.

She whispers, “What did it look like?”

Lorraine’s eyes stay focused on something Lydia can’t see, and her words come slowly, as if she’s thinking very hard about them before saying them out loud. “Like... passion. Loud and bright and demanding. Very attention grabbing. Very exciting, but also a little dangerous. A warning as well as an invitation.”

Lydia frowns, trying to picture it, but it’s hard to imagine something that you have no context for. Her mind keeps giving her blacks and whites, gray, gray, gray. She thinks she might understand the feeling, a little bit, though, abstract as it is.

Lorraine must mistake her thoughtfulness for confusion, because she pats Lydia’s head affectionately and offers a more concrete example. “Like your hair.”

“Like Ariel’s hair,” Lydia counters, and Lorraine smiles indulgently.

Lydia likes the fairytale of The Little Mermaid the best because Ariel went after what she wanted. After spending her whole life dreaming of being on land, she color bonds with the Prince, and Ariel doesn’t wait around for someone else to make things happen for her - she chases her own dreams, she fights for what she wants, and she isn’t afraid to sacrifice things along the way. Ariel is definitely red, and Lydia would like to be red, too.

Lydia’s dad doesn’t approve of Lorraine’s stories. He scoffs and rolls his eyes and tells his mother to stop putting stupid ideas of soulmates in Lydia’s head.

Ariel and Prince Eric color bonded. Lorraine and Maddy color bonded. Lydia’s parents did not.

She thinks about this as she listens to them scream at each other downstairs later that night. She wonders if they would fight like this if they had color bonded, if they were soulmates. She wonders if they have soulmates out there somewhere, fighting with someone else because they never found each other.

That’s another thing that bothers Lydia about the whole concept. Does everyone even have a soulmate? She’s read about people finding colors on their own, about people getting one color from one person and another color from a different person, and about people who found their soulmate and then broke up anyway. There are too many variables for her liking.

She could sort of understand why her parents gave up on the concept of soulmates and married each other, instead, if they liked each other. Maybe they used to like each other, but they don’t anymore.

“I can’t believe you’re not going to come!” Lydia’s mother yells, voice ragged enough at the edges to catch Lydia’s full attention.

“I can’t just take time off work whenever I feel like it -” her dad starts to argue, but Natalie cuts him off.

Lydia imagines her mother’s expression; all shock and indignation, lips parted and perfectly sculpted eyebrows furrowed. “Whenever you feel like it? I’m not asking you to come out for lunch, Ken, I’m asking you to come to Claudia’s funeral, for Christ’s sake!”

Lydia sits up straight at the top of the stairs, rifling through memories in search of a face to put to the name Claudia as her dad offers weak excuses and her mother gets increasingly hysterical.

Natalie is clearly crying as she says, “I’ve just lost a friend, Noah’s just lost his soulmate, Stiles has just lost his mother, and you can’t even take an afternoon off work to -”

Lydia inhales. Stiles. Stiles Stilinski. The small, dorky boy who wears oversized t-shirts and bags under his eyes, always with Scott McCall. He wasn’t at school today, although Lydia didn’t notice his absence until now.

Her stomach twists uncomfortably and she chews on her thumbnail. She knew that his mom was sick, had overheard the teachers talking about it in hushed voices in the hall, had seen the worried way all the parents looked at him as he walked out of school, hunched over with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

She never thought she’d die, though.  People don’t just disappear like that, moms don’t just die like that.

Downstairs, Natalie screams, “You are an asshole!”

Lydia jumps to her feet and runs down the hall to her room. She feels unsettled, for some reason, and she wants to slam the door behind her, but she closes it quietly so that her parents don’t know she was eavesdropping.

She crawls into the middle of her bed and stares at the copy of The Little Mermaid on her bookshelf until her vision goes blurry. She wonders what happens to you when your soulmate dies - she wonders if they take the colors with them.

When Stiles returns to school a week later he looks like there’s no light left in the world, let alone any color.

Lydia wants to say something to him, but sorry sounds contrite and anything else sounds fake, because it’s not like Lydia and Stiles are friends. So instead she watches Scott pat him on the shoulder as he wipes away his tears on the sleeve of his hoodie, and she feels bad in silence.

Stiles doesn’t get another color. The red doesn’t fade, and it doesn’t get any stronger. It just stays, patches of bright red and muted pink visible amongst the rest of the world’s shades of ruddy-gray-brown.

“Red’s a good one to have,” his dad says, nodding knowingly. “Red’s a warning colour. Stay away. Might keep you safe.”

Stiles looks at the red label on the old bottle of whiskey on the shelf, the tired, red rim around his dad’s eyes. Stay away.

Noah follows his gaze and sighs, rubbing a tired hand over his face before brightening up and saying, “And, hey - Lydia, her hair is red, isn’t it?”

Stiles barks out a laugh. “So you’re saying the forces of nature have conspired to tell me to stay away from Lydia Martin?”

“Hey, no, that’s not what I -”

“Don’t worry, Dad, I get it,” he says gently.

Stiles knows that talking about colors has been tough for his dad ever since his mom died.

He asked what had happened, once, terrified that his dad had lost the colors when he lost his soulmate. He’d smiled sadly and assured him the colors were still there, just different, now. A little bit darker, a little bit duller.

It makes a sad amount of sense. Without your soulmate there to provoke or sustain the chemical reaction, of course the colors would fade a little. Stiles’s looked it up, and apparently they won’t ever go away completely, but they’ll never be the same again, either. They’ll never be quite as bright as before.

His research also reveals that sometimes people don’t get all the colours, presumably for the same reason, which is a bit disconcerting. Because Stiles still goes to school with Lydia, still sees her almost every day (how could he miss her, with her curled hair and painted lips and beautiful blush, a walking personification of red hot desire) but they never interact. And it’s probably, almost certainly, definitely, the interaction that makes all the difference. The extended time together, that’s what gives you the other colors.

As far as Stiles knows - which, to be fair, is not very far, considering that he and Lydia have barely spoken in the last seven years and he’s pretty sure she might have even forgotten his name - Lydia still hasn’t seen any colors. She’s started dating Jackson Whittemore, Captain of the lacrosse team and the worst person Stiles has ever met, but she still sees nothing but shades of gray, and Stiles counts that as a win.

All he has to do is get himself back on Lydia’s radar, give her the chance to get to know him, and it’ll happen. He knows it will.

“Hey,” his dad says, drawing him back to the present. His eyes are soft, like he knows exactly what Stiles was thinking about. “I’ve got something for you. To say congratulations for making it to Freshman year.”

“Gee, no need to sound so surprised, Dad.”

The Sheriff laughs and stands up, draping an arm over Stiles’s shoulders and guiding him into the lounge. There’s a black bag sitting on top of the coffee table, and when Stiles gives him a questioning look he nods and gestures to it with a smile. “Go on.”

Stiles scoops it up and pulls the contents out immediately, taking no time for ceremony. It’s a heavy, hardcover book, and the first thing he notices is the gradient at the top of the cover. He can see pure, bright red, and maroon like his lacrosse gear, and shades of pink and even a bit that looks like it’s verging into orange territory. After that the image is gray, the only differences he can see distinguished by shades of light and dark rather than hue.

Stiles gapes at his father, fingers moving reverentially over the cover. “Dad, is this -?”

“The Complete Guide to Spectral Color,” his dad says, like he’s announcing it for a crowd. And then, much more bashfully, “My, uh, mine and your mother’s is sort of… out of date, so I thought you might like your own. Updated.”

Stiles’s throat feels tight and he can’t stop drumming his fingers against the cover. “Dad, this is. Wow. I can’t believe you got me the Spec Guide, that’s… thank you.”

And then, still holding the book, he throws his arms around his dad in a hug.

He returns the embrace just as fiercely. “You’re welcome, kid. I’m proud of you, I hope you know that.”

Stiles pulls back and stares down at the book, feeling a little overwhelmed. Because he is holding, in his hands, a swatch of every single named color there is. Not just red and blue and yellow, or even purple and green and orange, but things like vermillion, sapphire, chartreuse, plum and mint and tangerine. Inside this book is an entirely new world, just waiting for Stiles’s brain to catch up with it.

“Do you think I’ll be able to see them all, one day?” he asks without thinking.

It takes a moment for his dad to answer, but when he does he’s smiling, small but sincere. “Your mother used to write down notes about the colors, when she was - when she was in the hospital. She got a bit confused about which shade was which, towards the...”

He cuts off, but Stiles knows exactly what he was going to say. His mom had gotten confused about a lot of things, towards the end.

“Anyway,” the Sheriff says, obviously making an effort to refocus on Stiles. “Our copy has some notes about the colors, what they reminded your mom of, what they felt like. Do you wanna get a head start by copying them into your book?”

“Hell yeah I do!” Stiles exclaims, grinning wide, pushing aside everything that this conversation has brought up except for the prospect of learning more about colors. He can deal with the rest later, when his dad’s on night shift and Stiles has the house to himself and can feel guilty without worrying about making him feel bad.

For now, he lets himself be distracted by two words written in his mom’s loopy script beneath a swatch of color that is all too familiar.

Strawberry blonde, Claudia’s written.

Stiles picks up a pen and writes beside it, Lydia.

Sometimes Lydia thinks she might love Jackson, and sometimes she thinks she can’t, because she still hasn’t gotten any colors, and sometimes she thinks soulmates are the stupidest thing in the world and what does it matter if Jackson can’t make her see colors when he can make her see stars, anyway?

Colors or no colors, as Captain of a winning lacrosse team, Jackson is the perfect boyfriend for Lydia’s plan.

Her plan involves ruling the social circles of Beacon Hills High School with a perfectly manicured fist, getting top grades in each and every one of her classes, and then getting into Stanford and asserting her dominance in the Mathematics faculty until her research wins her a Fields Medal. That is Lydia’s plan.

Having a soulmate does not factor in, so when she outgrows fairytales Lydia takes no more than a passing interest in the science of it, following the rare new developments with a detached sort of intrigue.

Until she becomes friends with Allison Argent.

The day Allison arrives at Beacon Hills High School, Lydia claims her as her own and invites her to watch lacrosse practice. Allison knows nothing about lacrosse, and she’s quite obviously a little overwhelmed, but she comes along anyway, which Lydia finds genuinely endearing.

“Who’s he?” Allison asks, nodding towards a player that Lydia doesn’t recognise.

“Him? I’m not sure who he is.” She throws her new friend a curious glance. “Why?”

“He’s in my English class,” Allison says, and that should be the end of it, but something about her tone has Lydia intrigued.

“And?” she prompts.

Allison looks surprised, all doe eyed innocence. She winces when a ball hits the guy right in the helmet, bouncing into the goal and making the rest of the team laugh. Lydia resists the urge to roll her eyes.

“And what?” Allison asks.

“And what did he do in English to catch your attention?”

The goalie catches the next shot, and Lydia’s interest is piqued.

“It’s probably nothing,” Allison says modestly.

“Probably nothing means definitely something,” Lydia replies.

Allison sighs and twists her fingers together in her lap. She’s saved from answering by the goalie catching the next shot, and the next, and the next, and Lydia momentarily lets it drop because how does she not know this boy?

“He seems like he’s pretty good,” Allison says beside her, leaning just as far forward in her seat as Lydia is, clearly impressed.

Lydia arches her eyebrows and nods. “Yeah, very good.”

Good enough to stop Jackson’s throw, which earns him an impressed cheer from a boy on the bench and Lydia herself, who gets to her feet and claps enthusiastically. On the field Jackson shoots her an unimpressed glare and she sends a sly smile back, a warning to lift his game.

“I thought maybe I saw a color when I met him,” Allison says quickly from down on the bench seat, the words all coming out so fast they sort of blur together.

Lydia blinks down at her before dropping gracefully back to the seat, eyes wide. “Excuse me?”

Allison looks extremely embarrassed, ducking her head and trying to hide behind her dark hair. “I told you it was stupid, I don’t even know his name -”

“But you thought you saw color when you met him,” Lydia repeats, trying to keep all the skepticism she’s feeling out of her tone.

She must do at least a passable job, because Allison lifts her head and meets Lydia’s eye hopefully. “Maybe, yeah.”

“Which one?” Lydia asks, glancing out to the field where the mystery boy is talking animatedly to the boy off the bench.

“Blue,” Allison mumbles. And then, a little louder. “When he let me borrow a pen.”

“How romantic,” Lydia says before she can stop herself. She immediately regrets it as Allison folds her arms and turns away, frowning. “Okay, I’m sorry, that was rude. He let you borrow a pen, that’s… sweet.”

“Yeah,” Allison says, clearly still hesitant. She looks towards the boy rather than Lydia, now, and her expression softens. “He passed it to me and it was like… like a firework went off, and there was a shower of blue, so much richer than the gray everywhere. I could see it on my scarf, on his shirt, the sky outside…”

Despite herself, Lydia feels a pang of jealousy, sharp and straight through her heart. “And then what?”

“And then he turned back around and I blinked and everything was normal again,” Allison says. How anticlimactic. “Can it happen like that? Can you get a little bit of a color but not all of it?”

It’s uncommon, but Lydia’s definitely heard of it happening - A flicker of color followed by a gradual reveal. It’s something about the way the different cones in your eyes react to the light spectrum, and something else that so far they haven’t been able to explain, one of the inexplicable, magical things about the way you connect with your soulmate.

Lydia doesn’t say any of this to Allison, though. She just shrugs and says, “I don’t know.”

Allison bites her bottom lip before declaring, “I think I should talk to him and see if it happens again.”

“Good idea,” Lydia says, because in order to call it a success every experiment must have repeatable results, and any boy who saves every single shot is worth experimenting with.

She watches the goalie and the boy from the bench head for the locker room, walking behind an extremely pissed off Jackson. For just a second, she lets herself wish that she could see the colour of their uniforms, could make out the contrast of the deep maroon against the yellow-green grass.

And then she remembers the plan, and she flips her hair over her shoulder and offers Allison a dazzling smile. “Let’s go.”

A lot of weird shit happens in very quick succession after Scott gets the bite, but one of the weirdest is when he declares that he’s met his soulmate.

Stiles doesn’t want to kill his post-makeout glow, but he doesn’t want him to get his hopes up, either. “Whoa, buddy, hang on - what if it’s an effect of the bite? You said you can see some color when you start to shift, right, what if it’s -”

“No, man, it’s definitely Allison!” Scott is beaming, his smile stretched wide and his eyes crinkled in the corners as he stands opposite Stiles in the locker room, practically buzzing with excitement. He just won the game, he just kissed his crush, and he might have just started to see color, so Stiles isn’t all that surprised by his dazed expression. “It’s Allison, it literally just happened, I can see color, I can - I kissed her, and now I can see color!”

Stiles runs a hand over his hair, mouth hanging open in shock. “Which one?”

“Yellow,” Scott says in a way that makes it sound like the happiest word in the world.

That’s one of the things written under the Yellow section in Stiles’s Spec Guide - happiness, alongside sunshine and hope and light. All of those concepts are embodied in Scott’s smile.

Stiles smiles back, because, “Holy shit, dude. You’ve found your soulmate.”

“I can’t believe you’ve had this since third grade,” Scott breathes, holding his hands out in front of himself and turning them over, blinking at the new perception.

“Well, not this, exactly, you know, because I’ve got red and you’ve got yellow, but -”

“This is amazing!” Scott crows, curling his hands into fists and punching the air.

Stiles laughs and claps him on the shoulder in congratulations, letting his best friend’s enthusiasm catch. Because Allison is Scott’s soulmate, and she’s Lydia’s friend, and things should be easy for Stiles from here on out, right?

Well, they’re not exactly easy, but it sort of works out okay, because despite all of the messed up shit that’s happening, Stiles gets to take Lydia to Prom, which is honestly something that, up until a few days ago, seemed more impossible than werewolves existing.

He wonders if it’s fate, that she wears a dress in one of the few colors he can actually see. She looks beautiful in pink and black, with her hair curling around her shoulders, her lips perfectly painted and her eyes bright, and he wants this to be a good night, he really, truly wants her to have a good time. 

It’s just a shame that she seems determined not to.

“Lydia, get off your cute little ass and dance with me, now,” he snaps.

She purses her lips and tilts her head, saying lightly, “Interesting tactic. I’m gonna stick with no.”

“Lydia, get up! Okay, you're gonna dance with me,” Stiles insists, as she slumps back in her seat and rolls her eyes. God, she’s the most infuriating person he’s ever met but he is determined to get through to her. “I don't care that you made out with my best friend for some weird power thing. I don't -”

He flails, and she stares at him, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he powers on.

“Lydia, I've had a crush on you since the third grade. And I know that somewhere inside that cold, lifeless exterior, there's an actual human soul,” he says, pointing to her for emphasis. “And I'm also pretty sure I'm the only one who knows just how smart you really are, uh-huh, and that once you're done pretending to be a nitwit, you'll eventually go off and write some insane mathematical theorem that wins you the Nobel Prize.”

She turns her head and closes her eyes, as if she’s gathering her thoughts and picking which insult to fling back at him for his impudence. There’s no going back now, though.

Her response is not what he’s expecting. “Field's Medal.”

“What?” Stiles asks, unable to hide his shock, which only grows as Lydia gets to her feet and comes to stand in front of him.

“Nobel doesn't have a prize for mathematics,” she explains. “The Field's Medal is the one I'll be winning.”

And then she takes his hand and leads him onto the dance floor, and Stiles is honestly surprised that he doesn’t get another color right then and there.

But of course things couldn’t be that easy; Of course Jackson fucking Whittemore has to screw everything up.

He interferes with Scott and Allison, just like he’s been interfering with Stiles and Lydia for years, and he stupidly tries to get involved with the werewolf stuff, and he’s the one Lydia’s looking for when she gets attacked by Peter Hale, and he’s the one who doesn’t seem to really care all that much when Lydia goes missing, while Stiles spends hours panicking and trying to help with the search and freaking out because she’s his soulmate, damn it, and he needs her to be okay.

And then, after all that, Jackson’s still the one she goes back to.

And Stiles wants to just come out and say it, thinks about it every time they’re together, just casually dropping into the conversation, “Oh, Lydia, by the way, do you remember that day I gave you a drawing in third grade and said it was in color? That’s because, surprise, we’re actually soulmates and I’ve color bonded with you! Isn’t that awesome?”

But then he thinks about the horror stories of people who color bond with someone who doesn’t color bond back with them, and he honestly doesn’t think he could take it if that was what was happening here. He’d rather live in ignorant hope.

So Stiles doesn’t bring it up, and he watches as Scott falls for Allison and gains another color (red, for passion, danger, lust and love), and he becomes tentative friends with Lydia, and he tries to convince himself that it’s enough, for now.

They’re sitting side by side on the bleachers at the ice rink, lacing up their skates, and Stiles is trying very hard to think about anything other than the fact that their legs are almost touching when Lydia shivers and complains, “Could it be any colder in here?”

And lucky day, he just so happens to have a spare shirt in his bag. He grabs it and holds it out to her. “Here.”

Lydia frowns at the shirt and then at him. “What color is it?”

“Uh…” Stiles recognises the distinctive lightness of the soft material, but he flips the tag over to double check it anyway. “Orange.”

“I’m wearing blue,” she informs him, and it sounds an awful lot like a no, but Stiles has no idea why. She reads his silence correctly and explains, complete with pointed finger for emphasis, “Orange and blue, not a good combination.”

“But it’s the colors of the Mets!” he counters, offended. “And the Spec Guide called them complementary colors -”

“That’s an outdated and misleading term. ‘Opposite colors’ is more accurate, because the whole point of it is that they don’t complement each other, they clash.” Lydia gives him an extremely unimpressed look, pink lips pressed together.

He holds his hands up in surrender, because she’s clearly not going to hear his arguments, and she turns back to her boots.

“I thought you couldn’t see colors, anyway,” Stiles says as he shoves the shirt back into his bag.

Her fingers still for just a second before she goes back to lacing up. “I can’t.”

“Then what does it matter what color the scarf is?”

“Because other people can see color, and I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of them,” Lydia snaps, as though this is the most obvious thing in the world.

Stiles gapes at her. She’s frowning, but not at him; her attention is focused on Allison and Scott, who are making disgusting heart eyes at each other and whispering together. And he gets it immediately, because it’s pretty much the only thing he and Lydia have in common - they both know how awful it feels when your best friend is with their soulmate and you’re not with yours.

He says softly, “Lydia, you could never look like an idiot, no matter what colors you were wearing.”

She tilts her head, looking at him the same way she did when he told her she was going to win a Nobel Prize for mathematics. He wants to shy away from that scrutinising look, but he forces himself to hold her gaze.

“Do you see any colors?” she asks carefully.

Shit.

“Oh, uh, I…” Stiles fumbles for something to say, anything that can distract her long enough for him to remember how to form an actual sentence.

His eyes land on something inside his bag, a shade ever so slightly closer to red than his spare shirt, and he snatches it up. A Reese’s chocolate. Without another word, he offers it to Lydia.

She eyes it warily for a second, and he panics that she’s going to call him out on the blatant change of topic. But then she shrugs and takes it from him, methodically and ruthlessly ripping the wrapper off, and Stiles allows himself a small smile.

This is going okay. Lydia’s obviously open to the idea of discussing soulmates, at least in terms of color theory, and they’ve been sitting together, alone, for multiple minutes without Stiles doing anything (majorly) embarrassing. Maybe he’s better at this than he thought.

He takes a deep breath, gathering his courage, and says, “Okay, um, maybe orange and blue’s not the best. But, you know, sometimes there’s other things you wouldn’t think would be a good combination that end up turning out to be, like, a perfect combination. You know, like… two people, together.”

This is ridiculous. Even by Stiles’s standards, this is verging into saying way too much. Beside him, Lydia’s paused her destruction of the Reese’s wrapper, and he can feel her watching him.

It takes every ounce of what little self control he has to shrug casually and keep his voice relatively level as he adds, “Who nobody ever thought would be together. Ever.”

“No, I can see that.” Lydia’s voice is surprisingly soft, and she’s nodding like she completely understands.

Stiles feels like he may spontaneously combust, right here in this ice rink. “You can?”

“Yeah.” Lydia nods seriously. “They’re cute together.”

And he takes it all back, this is a disaster.

Stiles turns his head to see Scott helping Allison to her feet, both of them grinning like they’re having the time of their lives.

“Oh,” he says flatly. “Yeah, them.”

“Cute,” Lydia repeats, popping the rest of the chocolate into her mouth and smiling coquettishly.

“Cute,” Stiles mimics, scowling and lacing his boots up with far more force than is necessary. “Adorable.”

As soon as Lydia admits that she loves Jackson, colors or no colors, kanima be damned, he leaves for London.

And Lydia is thrust into a parallel universe where werewolves and monsters are real and she is friends with Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski, and things are simultaneously the worst and best they’ve ever been.

For the first time in her life, Lydia feels like she is on par with someone, and to her unending shock (and mild horror) that someone is Stiles.

She’s so wrapped up in all the rest of it - the screaming, the sacrifices, the school work - that she doesn’t have time to consider anything new about color bonding, and she’s so distracted trying to figure out what the hell she is that she doesn’t really notice Stiles has wormed his way into every facet of her life until he’s sitting across from her at her kitchen table one innocuous Thursday.

He’s eating a handful of curly fries he picked up from a burger place on the way here, and there are a few grains of salt sticking to his top lip. He’s frowning, drumming his absurdly long fingers against the tabletop, staring at the list they’ve made of potential clues regarding who could be behind the sacrifices, and Lydia realises with a jolt that this feels natural.

Their homework may have been pushed to the side in favour of facts about murder victims and ancient myths, and Stiles’s oversized flannel and jeans may clash with the upscale furniture, but Lydia wouldn’t change it even if she could. Having him here, like this, feels right.

Her eyes are just drifting from the freckles and moles on the side of his face to the small constellation of them peeking out from under his shirt collar when it happens. Something flares in the centre of Lydia’s vision, and suddenly everything is warmer and brighter, sharper and crisper and yellow.

And then Prada barks, and Lydia reflexively looks towards the sound, and the color fades as suddenly as it had appeared. It lasted maybe a few seconds, maximum, but Lydia feels as though her entire world has been tilted on its axis.

Stiles has started talking, mouth moving at a million miles per hour as he tries to piece things together, but Lydia can’t hear what he’s saying.

It must have been a hallucination, brought on by stress. A trick of the light. Something, anything other than what Lydia thinks it was.

She’s so lost in her own head she doesn’t even notice he’s stopped babbling until he says her name for probably the third time. “Lydia. Hey, you okay?

She blinks, but Stiles doesn’t change. He’s still just sitting there, with spiked up hair and salt on his lips and shades of gray everywhere, but Lydia’s heart still won’t settle in her chest. She can’t get rid of the memory of him all lit up like that. She can’t stop thinking about the way the hue completely changed her perception of him, adding a whole new dimension that she’d never even imagined before.

His expression shifts, eyebrows knitting together and lips parting, and she knows before he even moves that he’s going to get up and come around the table. (How does she know that? Just how much time has she been spending with him, to be able to read him like that?)

“I’m -” She’s fine, so why can’t she say it?

Stiles stops in front of her chair and drops to his knees, so that he’s looking up at her, and Lydia can’t tear her gaze away from him. His lips quirk up into a crooked smile as he says, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She laughs a little breathlessly. “I’m fine. I just… thought I saw something.”

All brevity disappears from his expression. “Something supernatural?”

“No.” Lydia licks her lips, and Stiles watches the motion as though mesmerised. 

He’s so close to her now, and she can’t stop thinking about how he’d looked in that flare of color, with the rays of late afternoon light shining in through the window behind him. Her eyes flicker down to his lips and then back to his eyes, and the way he’s looking at her makes her feel warm all over.

“Stiles, I -”

Prada barks, and both of them almost jump out of their skin.

Lydia loses her courage. When Prada continues barking, she tears her eyes away from Stiles and snaps, “What, Prada?”

The dog keeps barking, and Lydia is so on edge that she just about falls out of her seat when Aiden appears at her back door. Her expression is horrified enough to compel Stiles to whip his head around to see what she’s looking at, and his shoulders sag.

“Oh,” he says quietly, slowly standing.

Aiden slides open the back door and Lydia shoots to her feet, pushing her chair back with an awful scraping sound. Prada finally stops barking.

Aiden is good looking. He treats Lydia well enough. He’s amazing in bed. But he’s not her boyfriend, and so Lydia doesn’t understand why she feels like she’s been caught doing something forbidden and intimate.

He looks between her and Stiles and says, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“We’re just going over clues. About the sacrifices,” she says, far too quickly.

Both boys look at her like they know she’s lying, but where Aiden is smug, Stiles is definitely hurt. Her heart sinks.

“Mind if I take a look?” Aiden asks, stepping inside.

Stiles replies before Lydia can even open her mouth. “Actually I have to head out,” he says, eyes darting over Lydia’s shoes, the papers spread out over the table, the empty fry packet threatening to fall off the edge - everywhere but at her.

He walks around the table and gathers his stuff, and Aiden comes to stand beside Lydia. She doesn’t move.

Stiles is halfway out the door before she says, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

His smile is small and he still doesn’t quite meet her eye, but he does glance at her over his shoulder and say, “Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

And then he leaves, and Lydia lets out a shaky breath.

Aiden gives her a look. “Enjoy your little study date?”

She rolls her eyes and scoffs, but her heart’s still racing. She only had it for a few seconds, maximum, but Lydia already misses the yellow she saw when she looked at Stiles.

She thinks back to that day with Allison at lacrosse practice, so long ago now, and she wants to ask her best friend about it. She wants Allison’s opinion on what it’s like to see a splash of color and then have it taken away, wants to know how to bear it. Because it seems cruel, to give you a taste of what the world can be, and then to take it away just as quickly.

And she can’t stop picturing it. For days and days later, it’s all she sees every time she closes her eyes. Lydia is going to go mad with images of a sun kissed Stiles burned onto the backs of her eyelids.

But she can’t put it into words, because she’s terrified, absolutely terrified, of what this might mean. And besides, she doesn’t have any proof, yet. Despite all of her instincts screaming at her that this is it, he’s the one, she’s finally figured it out - Lydia is still mistrustful.

Every experiment must have repeatable results in order to be deemed a success. So she takes Allison’s advice from all those months ago and waits for it to happen again.

God knows she’s spending enough time with Stiles lately anyway. Figuring out that Jennifer’s behind the sacrifices is just one part of the puzzle, and things get infinitely more dire when she kidnaps Melissa McCall and the Sheriff.

Lydia’s with Stiles, standing in the middle of the Beacon Hills High School hallway, when the news they’ve been dreading comes through in a text message.

“It’s from Isaac,” Stiles says, eyes flicking to hers before he looks away again. “Jennifer, she took - She has Allison’s father, she took him. She’s got all three now.”

Lydia can see the hope draining out of Stiles’s eyes as his hands begin to shake, and her chest constricts. She forces herself to remain calm, to keep her voice even as she says, “There’s still time. We still have time, right?”

That wasn’t meant to be a question, but Stiles’s breathing has gotten way too shallow and he’s turning away from her and she’s not sure what to do to fix this.

“Stiles? You okay?” When he doesn’t answer, panic pitches her voice higher. “What is it? What’s wrong? Stiles -”

Finally, he meets her eye. “I think I’m having a panic attack.”

Lydia’s gotten used to monster attacks, fugue states, and finding dead bodies. She’s not frightened of much anymore. But the look on Stiles’s face as he says that - the sheer helplessness - that frightens her.

“Come with me,” she says, grabbing his arm and steering him towards the locker room.

He follows with no complaints, no wise cracks, no smart ass comments at all, and Lydia pushes the door open with far more force than usual. He sounds like he’s about to cry, like he genuinely can’t breathe, and as she leads him to the middle of the room all Lydia can say is, “Okay, come on, come on.”

He falls to the floor and she follows him down, kneeling across from him as he struggles to catch his breath.

“Just try and think about something else, anything else,” she says, desperately trying to recall anything she’s ever read about panic attacks.

“Like what?” Stiles asks, staring straight down and sounding very unappreciative of her efforts.

She doesn’t remember ever feeling this tongue tied before in her life. “Um, happy things! Good things! Friends, family -”

Stiles lifts his head, disbelieving, and she winces.

“Urgh, I mean, not family, oh god.” Shit, she was not prepared for this.

Lydia is good at a lot of things. She is smart and brilliant, but she isn’t exactly known for being caring. Looking after others is not one of her strong suits, but here, kneeling in front of Stiles, she’d give anything to make him feel better.

Something flashes to the front of her mind, a passage she read once about panic attack symptoms, but she can’t recall any of the details when Stiles is doubled over in front of her like it’s life or death.

“Okay, just… try and slow your breathing,” she says, deciding to go on what she can see. If she can get him to slow his breathing he’ll get more oxygen and everything will calm down.

Except.

“I can’t,” Stiles says, hand coming up to his chest like he’s choking. “I can’t.”

She moves forward and cups his face in her hands, trying to sound both commanding and comforting as she says, “Shh, Stiles, look at me.”

He’s still trapped in panic, and even as she strokes his cheek and says his name he can’t break free from it. His eyes dart from hers to her lips and back again, and something settles inside Lydia. She remembers this boy sitting opposite her the other day, when just the sight of him gave her a glimpse into a whole new world, and she lets her instincts take over.

“Stiles…” she breathes.

Lydia leans forward and kisses him.

She pours everything she has into that kiss; all of the unsaid longing, all of the comfort Stiles gives her, all of the security she feels when he’s around, she tries to give it all back to him. She keeps her hands on his face, and she feels him tense and then soften at her touch. His lips are soft and pliant beneath hers, and when he kisses her back her heart soars.

She knows that it’s happened again before she even opens her eyes.

She keeps them closed as she pulls back, lips still parted and hands curling in front of her trembling heart. There’s no going back from this, she knows.

Lydia opens her eyes slowly, and she’s greeted by a Stiles she’s only glimpsed once before. She can’t take it all in; the new pallor of his skin, the multitude of new shades visible in his hair, the way that the hue seems to add so much more depth than light and shadows alone ever could. And then he looks straight at her, and Lydia’s breath catches in her throat because, oh, his eyes.

Yellow might be the only color Lydia has right now, but she thinks it might be the most beautiful of them all.

Lydia’s wearing blue. A few seconds ago, her dress looked gray, but now Stiles can see that it’s actually light blue.

It takes a moment for his brain to process what’s just happened. Quite a few moments, actually.

When he got red, all those years ago, Stiles had blinked to check that it was real. This time, he’s scared to blink at all. He keeps his eyes open and locked on Lydia, frightened that if he looks away for even a second she’s going to disappear and take the new color with her.

But Lydia is right in front of him, striking in shades of red and blue - strawberry blonde hair, pink lips, powder blue dress. She’s staring right back at him, eyes wide and intense and a slightly different shade to how he’s always seen them before.

He wonders if this changed it for her, too - if she finally got a color.

His voice shakes as he asks, “How’d you do that?”

Lydia takes longer to answer him than she ever has before, like she’s contemplating what exactly he’s asking her. She sounds slightly hoarse when she says, “I, uh… I read once that holding your breath could stop a panic attack. So, when I kissed you… you held your breath.”

Stiles still feels dizzy, overwhelmed by the lingering effects of the panic attack and his brain trying to adjust to the sudden onslaught of new color. Hearing Lydia say the words ‘I kissed you’ isn’t helping things.

“I did?” he asks, slightly dazed.

She nods, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Yeah, you did.”

And something about the way she says it - the crack in her voice, the way she won’t stop looking at him with those wide eyes which are an entirely new shade, the fact that she’s still close enough for him to kiss - sets Stiles off.

He blinks back tears and strains to say, “Thanks. That was really smart.”

Lydia makes a small noise of disbelief, and then the moment vanishes. She shifts, and Stiles follows her lead and lets himself sit back in a slightly more comfortable position. He still feels unsteady, his heart pounding wildly in his chest, but it’s for an entirely different reason now.

Lydia’s hair is still strawberry blonde, but now she’s wearing blue, and Stiles knows now more than ever that he is a lost cause.

When he gets home that night, after making sure that his dad is safe asleep and checking in with Scott and Allison, too, Stiles pulls out his Spec Guide. The words calm, peaceful and intelligent are fittingly already written in the Blue section, transferred over from the notes that his mom made in her copy.

Stiles runs his fingertips over the words and tries to recall exactly how Lydia’s lips felt against his, how she was smart enough to break through the panic attack and calm him down when he felt like his whole world was imploding.

He picks up a blue pen and writes next to the powder blue swatch, Holding your breath.

Lydia stares at her reflection in the mirror and twirls individual strands of hair around her finger, marvelling at the blonde color. Her skin looks warmer and her eyes look brighter, like she’s shining from the inside out. 

She goes through all of her old photos and takes approximately four dozen new selfies, smiling wider in each consecutive one.

Everything is yellow and gold, champagne and lemon, cream and canary and light itself given a hue.

Theoretically, she knows what this means. Stiles Stilinski is her soulmate. They have a connection, as Deaton put it.

(She replays the veterinarian's words from earlier that day over in her head; “It’s not just someone to hold you under. It needs to be someone who can pull you back. Someone who has a strong connection to you.” And then; “Lydia, you go with Stiles.”)

She wonders if it’s really that obvious; if everyone else’s perception of her has changed, too.

Lydia frowns at her reflection.

Having a soulmate was not part of her plan. It seems improbable, really, that there is someone out there so intrinsically perfect for you that they literally trigger a chemical reaction in your brain, sparking new connections to the optic nerve and changing your entire perception of reality.

It seems even more improbable that the person so intrinsically perfect for Lydia would be Stiles Stilinski.

She’s starting to understand that there is a big difference between improbable and impossible, however.

And she likes Stiles, obviously. Maybe she more than likes him. But Lydia Martin will not have the course of her life dictated by such an abstract concept as fate. And this tentative thing, this connection between them, whatever it is, she isn’t going to put the weight of ideas like soulmates and destiny on it when it’s still so fragile.

So she decides that she’s not going to tell Stiles. She’s going to approach this scientifically, rather than emotionally. She’s going to see whether they come together without any influence of color bonding.

Maybe it’s this reluctance to give in to her own feelings that causes Lydia to get blue gradually. It’s not like yellow, where it sparked only once in a furious flare and then vanished before appearing for good. Instead, blue just sort of seeps into the grays.

Sometimes she looks at Stiles and the black and white lines of his shirt will brighten, very, very slightly, to a color that’s close to gray but has more feeling to it. She’ll stare, waiting for the color to solidify, but it always remains just out of her grasp.

She thinks that it gets stronger when she holds his hand, or when he looks at her with those wide, amber eyes, but the change in her perception of him is so gradual that when blue finally solidifies itself in Lydia’s vision it takes her a few moments to notice.

Her foot is pressed to a steel trap and Stiles is the only thing standing between her and losing a limb.

“You don’t need the instructions. When is the last time you have ever used instructions, am I right?” she says, and her voice barely shakes. “You don’t need them, because you are too smart. Don’t waste your time with them, okay? You can figure it out.”

And she’d started talking to boost his confidence, to convince him that he could do this, but Lydia’s surprised to find that the more she talks the more sure she becomes. He can do this. It’s Stiles, and if she had to put her life in anyone’s hands, she’d choose him.

He glances up at her and he looks different, somehow, and everything seems to slow down.

Lydia takes a deep breath. “Stiles, you’re the one who always figures it out. So you can do it. Figure. It. Out.”

And he does. He gives her enough time to get her foot away, jumping up and catching her in his arms just as she makes the leap. Her heart’s racing at a million miles an hour, and his is too, she can feel it where his chest is pressed up against hers. They’re both breathing heavily, her arms tight around his neck and his hand rubbing her back, when she glances down at his shirt and realises that it is very distinctly no longer gray.

It’s two shades of blue, light and dark, both of them so much more vibrant than the grey-ish, livid tone she’d been able to see before she’d stepped on the trap. 

Stiles has saved her, and given her another color, and all Lydia can do is press her forehead to his cheek and thank him for pulling her back.

“What do the different colored strings mean?”

Stiles turns around to see Lydia lying on her stomach on his bed, bare feet crossed at the ankles and chin propped in her hands. She’s wearing possibly the brightest shade of red lipstick he’s ever seen and watching him intently as he pins more evidence to his board.

“Uh, they’re just different stages of the investigation,” he explains. He has a whole code system, outlined in the notes section at the back of his Spec Guide for posterity's sake. “So, like, green is solved. Yellow is to be determined. Blue’s just… pretty.”

He swallows, thinking about the first time he saw blue. Pretty, indeed.

Lydia tilts her head at him like she always does when he mentions colors. He’s long given up on hiding the fact that he can see them, and he knows that she’s figured it out, too. Neither of them explicitly mention it, though. Like the kiss in the locker room, they hedge around it with lingering glances and loaded words in their near-endless stream of back and forth banter, but never manage to just flat out say what’s on their minds.

Stiles is pretty sure that Lydia can see colors now, too; or at least a color. He doesn’t know which one. He wants to ask, but that’s sort of socially taboo.

He’d thought that getting closer to her would make talking about this type of stuff easier, but it’s actually made it more difficult, because she’s no longer Lydia Martin, untouchable and incomparable goddess who is his soulmate - she’s Lydia, a real, multifaceted person, one of his best friends, and the fact that she might be his soulmate is no longer the most important thing about her in Stiles’s eyes.

“What does red mean?” she asks, drawing him out of his thoughts.

He turns back to the board, surveying the lines of string. “Uh, unsolved.”

“You only have red on the board.”

“Yes, I’m aware, thank you,” he says drily, shaking his head at her.

He goes to turn back to the board but pauses halfway as her words register. He blinks at her and she blinks back, red lips pressed firmly together. She looks panicked, like she’s slipped up and revealed something she wasn’t ready to, which is all the confirmation Stiles needs.

He can see the red string on the board, slashes of bright color across the cool monochrome and blue background. He can also see balls of red and blue string beside Lydia on the bed, and two bundles in different shades of gray that he only knows are yellow and green because that’s how they were labelled when he bought them. He’d wanted purple, because he can actually see that color, but it was sold out.

He wonders which ones Lydia can see in color.

He wants to press it, wants to ask if it’s just the red string she can see, or if she can see all the other colors and so deduced that all the string on the board must be red. That’d mean she can see both yellow and blue, and hence green, and it’d mean that… well, it’d mean that she must know that he’s her soulmate.

Lydia looks away first, tilting her chin down and twisting the red thread around her finger. “Did you get detention for pulling the alarm?”

Stiles swallows. He debates calling her out on the blatant subject change, but she looks so sad that he can’t quite do it. Not now, not when there’s a murderer on the loose and they have so many other things to deal with. 

So he turns back to the board and says, “Yep, every day this week. It’s okay though, we were on to something.”

“Even though we couldn’t find any proof of Barrow being there?” she says flatly.

He turns, marker still in hand, to look at her. Her eyes are still downcast, her expression one of disappointment. He knows how much she hates losing composure in front of people, and his heart squeezes as he realises how much she must trust him, and how awful she must be feeling, to let her guard down like this.

“Hey, Lydia.” He kneels in front of her so they’re at eye level. “You’ve been right every time something like this has happened, okay? So don’t start doubting yourself now.”

“No scent. No bomb.” She looks down at the thread tied around her finger and lowers her voice. “And I got you in trouble.”

Stiles recognises the olive branch she’s offering, the apology just underneath those words, and he accepts it implicitly. He carefully unwinds the string from her finger, his hand brushing hers with every movement.

“Okay, look. Barrow was there, all right? You knew it. You felt it. Okay?” His gaze is steady as he looks up at her, each of them holding one end of the red string. “And look, if you wanted to, I’d go back to that school right now and search all night just to prove it.”

She smiles, but it’s not the usual blinding smile she shares with the world. It’s close lipped, small and sincere, strikingly similar to the way she’d smiled at him when he’d won the lacrosse game for Beacon Hills. It’s a smile that’s gentle and perfect, and reserved only for Stiles.

He holds her gaze and smiles back, and he thinks that this is enough, for now.

She tries to keep things scientific and logical, tries to stop herself from getting caught up in her emotions, but whatever the Nemeton is doing to Stiles breaks Lydia almost as badly as it breaks him.

Her frustration bubbles over as the Nogitsune runs rings around them, as she struggles to understand her own Banshee abilities, as her connection with Stiles leads her to make mistake after mistake. (An empty basement at Eichen House, his crumpled body in a parking lot, getting herself kidnapped.)

Lydia feels gravely out of her depth. She hasn’t felt this inadequate since Peter Hale used her to get himself resurrected, and she hates every second of it.

She cowers against a cold, stone wall as a monster wearing Stiles’s face looms over her, and she tries not to cry. The hard brick digs into her back and she can smell the disgusting scent of the Nogitsune’s breath as he brings his arms up on either side of her head and boxes her in.

“Are the voices getting louder, Lydia? Are they still telling you that Stiles is dying?” he taunts. “I think we can both feel it.”

She fights back the urge to shudder. He doesn’t look like Stiles, not really, not when he’s this close to her and she can see the darkness in his eyes. He’s all shadow, this monster crowding against her, all sharp edges and smooth movements, speaking in a low, rough voice that sounds like a permanent growl. He doesn’t have any of the real Stiles’s warmth.

His lips move in an eerie imitation of a smile. “And you, Lydia, you can see it, too, can’t you?”

Lydia forces herself to meet his gaze. His eyes are sunken, rimmed with dark gray bags. His skin is pale, making him look sickly. But his expression is victorious.

She shakes with rage. “I can see that you’re exhausted and weak. You’re the one who’s dying.”

He laughs, a horrible, sinister sound that makes her skin crawl. “You haven’t noticed yet, have you?”

She wants to ask what the hell he’s talking about, but her pride stops her. She won’t give him the satisfaction, she won’t play his mind games.

But he surprises her, then, by stepping back. She instinctively breathes in, relishing the small amount of space between them. He smirks at her and holds his arms out wide, taking up most of the small stairwell they’re crammed into.

“I can’t blame you, really. It must be so loud at the moment, all those different voices yelling at you, all that pain and suffering echoing in your head. I understand if you’ve been a little preoccupied,” the Nogitsune says, feigning reason. “But, Lydia, come on now. You’re a clever girl. That’s one of the things he likes most about you. Surely you’ve noticed.”

Her hands are shaking. She clenches them into fists at her side and tries to block out her throbbing pain, the voices in her head, the smug satisfaction on this face that isn’t Stiles’s. “Noticed what?”

“Aren’t things looking a little gray down here?”

Lydia stops breathing for a second. The voices dull, just for a moment, as she’s overwhelmed with panic. She sways on her feet. “We’re in tunnels. Of course everything looks gray.”

“Ah, but you know that’s not completely true,” he says, sounding positively joyful. “This isn’t the type of gray that comes from a lack of sunlight. This is the type of gray that seeps back in when your soulmate dies.”

She inhales sharply. Her traitorous eyes flicker around the tunnel, taking in the muted blues and grays, the black shadows looming in every corner. She tries to remember what true blue really looks like, tries to find a single speck of yellow in this scene. There is none.

“You’re wrong,” she bites out.

“Oh, you see it now, don’t you?” the monster taunts, in a voice Stiles would never use. “Look at you, you’re terrified.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Tears roll down her cheeks. “You’re wrong. He’s not dying.”

“You can feel it, Lydia. You can hear it, you can see it. Stiles is dying, and you’re going to be left without a soulmate.”

A fresh wave of fear forces Lydia to open her eyes, to see the threat. The Nogitsune has retreated back to the top of the stairs, however, and is just sitting and watching her, lips drawn into a smug smirk.

“You’re wrong,” she says again.

He doesn’t react at all.

And as night falls, the colors continue to dim. Even when Stiles is back in her arms - the real Stiles, her Stiles - the world is full of grays and blacks and the voices are still so loud.

They’re not saying Stiles’s name now though.

They lose Allison.

They lose Aiden.

They almost lose Stiles.

And Lydia almost loses herself in her grief. The pain clamps around her heart, fills her chest until it feels like her ribcage is too small, like she is too small to contain all of it. 

Every time Stiles looks at her it’s with guilt and sorrow, and she remembers him lying still and unresponsive on the hallway floor, and she thinks that she can’t do this.

Sheriff Stilinski looks mildly surprised to see her there when she knocks on his door early on a Friday morning.

“Lydia,” he says, swinging the door all the way open. “Stiles isn’t here, he’s with Scott.”

“I know,” she says, because she does. That’s specifically why she chose this time to come to the Stilinski house. I’m actually here to see you, is what she’s meant to say next. It’s what she rehearsed  in her head, over and over and over, the entire drive here. But now that she’s here, standing on the porch and actually looking at the Sheriff, she finds herself tongue tied.

He looks her up and down and sighs, but not like he’s annoyed. More like he’s sorry. “Do you wanna come in?”

Lydia nods, and he steps aside as she enters the house. She follows him to the lounge, settling on an armchair he gestures to as he takes a seat on the couch.

She wonders if he knows that she’s Stiles’s soulmate. The appraising look he gives her suggests he does.

“What can I help you with, Lydia?” he asks gently.

She holds her hands very still in her lap. “I -” Her throat constricts and she’s forced to pause.

I have to ask you something. It’s uncomfortable, and rude, and I’m extremely sorry for bringing it up, but I have to know. Did the colors change when your wife died? How did you cope with it? How did you keep on living after losing your soulmate? Because I don’t think I can do it. I’m not as strong as you, or Scott. I don’t think I can risk it.

The Sheriff leans forward, elbows on his knees and eyebrows creased with worry. “Are you okay?”

There’s a photo of Stiles and his mom on the wall behind the Sheriff. Stiles is grinning cheekily, probably around seven or eight, and Claudia is smiling brightly as she hugs him tight.

The grief in Lydia’s chest climbs higher up her throat. She swallows thickly and licks her lips. “Fine,” she says quietly, and then with more conviction. “I’m fine. I just -”

The Sheriff nods encouragingly.

She can’t do it.

She exhales. “I think that I left my biology book in Stiles’s room and I need it for a test on Monday.”

“Oh.” He nods slowly. “Well. You’re more than welcome to go and get it, I’m sure he won’t mind.”

Lydia nods and stands on autopilot. She follows the familiar path to Stiles’s room, but she isn’t greeted by a familiar sight. The walls are bare; no pictures, no news articles, no evidence connected by different colored strings.

The framed picture she drew of the Nemeton is still sitting on his desk, though. She steps towards it, hand outstretched, longing to see the note he’s attached to the back; ‘For Lydia’ written in his familiar script. But she stops short when she sees what else is on his desk.

There’s a stack of paperwork sitting right in the centre, all with the Beacon Hills High School logo and the name Malia Tate stamped on it.

Lydia turns and flees. If the Sheriff notices that she leaves empty handed, he doesn’t say anything.

Lydia pulls away. Stiles doesn’t blame her. He doesn’t completely understand, but he doesn’t blame her. He pulls back, too. After what happened with the Nogitsune, with Allison, they’re both fragile.

And they’re both busy, too. With school, with figuring out where Derek’s gone, with working out how to end the Dead Pool. Lydia’s trying to get a better grasp on her abilities, and Stiles is trying to settle back into his own skin.

Malia helps him with that. She’s not his soulmate, but he really likes her, and she really likes him, and it’s nice to be absolutely certain of the reciprocity, for once. So he helps her remember how to live like a human, and she helps him figure out how to start to forgive himself for the things his hands did without his control, and Lydia makes herself emotionally distant, and it’s fine.

Stiles still has red and blue, and all the shades in between, and he knows that Lydia still has at least one color, too. That hasn’t changed.

He’s surprised to discover that Malia already has all the colors.

“I don’t get it,” she says, staring at Stiles blankly as he debates which highlighter is yellow and which is green. They’re lying on his bed, her hands are curled over their labels, and he’s pretty sure the one on the right is green but he can’t be certain. “Can you really not see what color these are?”

“They’re slightly different shades of gray,” he repeats, frowning. “If you had, say, a red highlighter, or a blue highlighter -”

“I have a blue highlighter. And a red one.”

“I know you do, I’ve seen them.”

“How do you know you’ve seen them if you can’t see color?”

“No, I -” He sighs and rubs his hand down his face. “I can see some colors, just not all of them.”

Malia narrows her eyes. “Just not yellow and green.”

“Or orange, really… technically,” he adds.

Her eyes widen again and she thrusts the highlighters towards him. “So you’re guessing.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” He points to the left one. “That one’s yellow.”

She nods and passes it to him. “Good guess.”

“Have you always been able to see colors?” he asks as he puts the highlighter back on the bed.

She shrugs and rolls onto her back, stretching her arms out above her head and kicking one of his pillows with her feet. “Not as many, when I was a coyote. Everything’s a bit closer to gray and blue, when I shift. But yeah, as long as I’ve been human, I’ve had all the colors.”

He hesitates just a second before asking, “Even when you were little?”

He knows that this is dangerous territory. Malia tenses, bringing her arms down by her sides. She keeps her eyes locked on his ceiling as she answers, “Yeah, even when I was little.”

“Huh.” He waits for her to roll back over before saying, “So what’s with all the highlighters, anyway?”

Malia picks up each respective color as she explains, “Green is for the things I understand. Yellow is for ‘I’m working on it’. Red means I have no clue.” She shrugs. “I’m mostly using red.”

Stiles feels content in a way he hasn’t for a long time. He leans over and kisses her, smiling against her lips, because Malia may not be his soulmate, but, in some ways, she’s perfect for him.

And it’s not like dating Malia means that he loses Lydia. They’re still friends, they still work together to solve all the puzzles the rest of the pack can’t, and she’s still one of the most important people in Stiles’s life.

Scott asks him about it, once. Stiles has arrived at the McCall house just as Kira’s leaving, and she awkwardly shuffles around him on the porch.

“Oh, hi, Stiles! I was just - I came over to study, with Scott. But we’re finished, now. So you can go right on in!” she says chirpily. And then her face falls. “Not that you couldn’t have gone right on in if we weren’t finished, because we were just studying, it’s not like you couldn’t have… oh, god. Sorry, I’ll stop rambling.”

“Hi, Kira,” Stiles says with a smile.

“Right,” she says, swinging her arm across her torso and turning to the curb. “I will just be leaving now, then. Oh, do you want me to, like… knock, or something, to let Scott know -?”

“I’ve got a key,” Stiles says, holding it up.

Kira blinks. “Oh. Right. Of course you do. That’s cool. Well, I’ll leave you to it then. Bye!”

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow!” he calls after her as she dashes down the front path, blushing furiously.

Stiles lets himself in, calling out to Scott as he goes.

“Hey, man,” Scott greets from the kitchen, where he’s making himself a sandwich wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants, which is definitely not his usual studying attire.

Stiles smirks. “I heard you and Kira got some studying done tonight.”

“Oh.” Scott blushes a little, ducking his head and smiling. “Ha. Yeah.”

Stiles leans against the counter and steals a piece of bread from the loaf, tearing off the crust and eating it separately. “So…” he leads.

Scott gives him a completely innocent, clueless look. “What?”

“It’s going good then, I guess? You two?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, it’s… nice. She’s nice.” His soft smile returns. “I like her a lot.”

“Well I can see that,” Stiles says. Scott looks down at his pants, panicked, and Stiles flinches and throws a piece of crust at him. It hits his chest and bounces off onto the counter. “Oh, gross, dude! I meant because you’re walking around shirtless, not - Jesus, I don’t wanna think about that.”

It’s Scott’s turn to smirk, now. He picks up the piece Stiles threw and eats it, talking through the mouthful. “Like you can talk.”

Stiles feigns offence. “Excuse you? I have no idea what you mean, I am totally innocent -”

“I’ve seen those scratches on your back, dude.”

Stiles clamps his mouth shut and tries to think of a comeback. “I can’t help it if Malia’s got long nails,” is all he eventually says.

Scott smirks and picks up his sandwich, heading up the stairs for his room. Stiles follows, taking the time to seal up the bread bag beforehand. Scott settles himself on his bed and Stiles takes his desk chair, absentmindedly drumming his fingers against the arms.

“So things are going good with you two then, I guess?” Scott asks.

“Yeah, things are - things are good,” Stiles answers, but he’s frowning.

Scott catches it immediately. “But…?”

“I dunno, man.” Stiles swipes a hand up the back of his head, flinging his other arm out to the side. “I feel sorta bad, sometimes. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Malia’s great, I really, really like her, I do. But, like…”

He trails off, and Scott fills in, “But she’s not Lydia.”

“She’s not my soulmate,” Stiles corrects, because it’s an important distinction. “And I just feel… I feel like I’m not being fair to her, you know?”

Scott chews thoughtfully. “Have you talked to her about it?”

“Yeah, I mean, kind of.” Stiles shrugs. “She’s always been able to see colors, so it took a bit for her to get her head around the concept. I’ve told her that I have a soulmate, but I haven’t told her that it’s Lydia.”

Scott winces. “Dude. That’s rough.”

“How am I meant to say that to her, Scott? Can you imagine how awkward that’d make things? Lydia hasn’t warmed up to her at all -”

“I wonder why,” Scott mutters.

“- I don’t wanna make things even more awkward than they already are.”

There’s a long pause, where Scott finishes his sandwich and brushes the crumbs off his hands. He sounds like he’s trying very hard to sound unaffected when he says, “Kira and I haven’t really spoken about Allison.”

Stiles looks up sharply, reading his face to see whether or not they’re going to continue this conversation. He waits for Scott to talk again, not wanting to butt in.

“I mean, she knew her, obviously. And she heard what she said when she…” Scott swallows thickly.

Stiles looks down. 

He wasn’t there, he was passed out and useless in the tunnels when it actually happened, but Scott had told him, afterwards, what Allison had said with her dying breaths. (“I’m in the arms of my first love. The first person I ever loved. The person I’ll always love… My soulmate. I love you, Scott McCall.”)

Stiles blinks away tears at the thought of it. “It’s okay, man, you really don’t have to -”

“No, I’m good,” Scott insists, sniffling slightly. He wipes his face with the back of his arm. “Anyway, so Kira knows. She knows that Allison is my - was my soulmate. And she’s okay with it, I think.”

Stiles nods, because what do you say to that?

Scott takes a deep breath and says, “My mom told me that sometimes people have more than one soulmate. And that sometimes you can get in a relationship with someone and think that they’re not your soulmate, but then later on you start to get the colors. Kira doesn’t have any colors, now, and mine have… changed... but maybe…”

Stiles nods slowly. “I get it.”

When Scott looks at Stiles he smiles, and Stiles thinks that he doesn’t deserve a friend like this. 

“Things’ll work out eventually,” Scott says.

“Yeah.” Stiles nods and licks his lips. “Yeah. Thanks, man.”

“No problem.” Scott smiles wider, and Stiles is reminded of the one color he’s missing: Yellow (happiness, joy).

He forces himself to smile back, despite the guilt sitting heavy on his chest; guilt for Allison, for Scott, for Malia.

He adds guilt for Lydia when he sees her bleeding out on the floor of the Sheriff’s Station.

She’s so pale, and she looks so small, drowning in an oversized pink shirt and lying in a pool of dark red blood. Her blood.

Stiles shuts down.

He watches on, horrified, as Kira applies pressure to the wound, as Theo tries to tourniquet it with his belt, as Mrs Martin rushes in and collapses by her daughter’s side. His stomach churns. His limbs feel like they’re made of lead. He can’t look away, no matter how much he can’t stand the sight of her like this.

“Stiles,” Scott repeats his name, over and over, trying to drag him away, but he can’t, he can’t leave her like this. “Stiles, come on.”

Red and pink were the first colors he saw on Lydia, and now they might be the last, and he can’t do a thing to stop it. Stiles’s hands shake at his sides, pressure pounding in his head as he looks from Scott back to Lydia.

Hold your breath.

He wonders if she’d look any less like she was dying if he could see her in full color.

What if this is it? What if Lydia dies here, taken out by a fucking chimera-kanima and left to bleed on the floor of the Sheriff’s department, wearing the first color Stiles ever saw her in, like some sort of sick irony. What if he never gets the third color, what if he never gets to tell her that she’s his soulmate, what if -

Lydia smiles at him, but it looks more like a grimace. “Tracy,” she grits out. “Stiles, I’m fine.”

She’s not fine, she’s so far from fine that her saying so would be ridiculous if he didn’t know that she was doing it purely to get him to move. Smart as always, she’s telling him the one thing that might kick his nervous system out of freeze and into fight.

“Help Tracy. Find Tracy.” Lydia gasps. “Go.”

And because he could never say no to Lydia, he does. Stiles leaves her there and runs after Scott, and he never forgives himself for it.

He makes the same mistake when she gets locked in Eichen.

He finds her lying in a hospital bed, pale, clammy and weak but conscious, breathing and fighting. Stiles is hit by a wave of relief so strong that it nearly knocks him off his feet, that he has to close his eyes for a second just to get his bearings, because he’s found her and she’s alive.

And when he opens his eyes again, the world shimmers for a second, the sheets on the bed flashing to yellow, Lydia’s eyes brightening and her skin warming. Because of course it would be now, of course it would be when he's thinking he might lose her for real, of course he would finally be able to see the full spectrum of her skin and her eyes and her hair (god, so this is strawberry blonde) right when she’s about to be taken from him again.

“Stiles, you can’t be here,” she says desperately. “You’re going to die if you stay. All of you.”

Stiles ignores her pleas, clenching his jaw and trying to stop his hands from shaking so he can undo her restraints.

“Stiles, he’s coming,” she says, and the terror in her voice makes him want to scream.

“Lydia, I’m not leaving you here,” he insists.

“You have to,” she pleads, staring up at him with glassy eyes.

The yellow has faded back into gray, and Stiles prays that it’s just because of his own stress and anxiety and has nothing to do with Lydia’s health.

She gasps as alarms blare. “Stiles, go!”

Her restraints are still on and he hesitates, feeling like he’s back in the Sheriff Station watching her bleed out on the floor, frozen and running out of time. Logically, he knows that he should go. If he stays he’s definitely going to be attacked, and if he gets hurt - or killed - he can’t save Lydia. If he hides now, he’ll have another chance to free her later, either by taking Valack by surprise or by sneaking her out when he’s not around. But emotionally, he can’t leave her. Not again.

Lydia sounds like her life depends on it when she says, “Please.”

Stiles listens to her.

His rescue plan has gone horrifically wrong; The whole of Eichen is in lockdown, Theo and his pack of chimeras are here, and the thought of what Valack’s going to do to Lydia has Stiles so on edge he feels like he’s going out of his freaking mind.

But he’s not giving up. He’s not leaving her, he’s not going to lose her. Valack drags her away, and Stiles goes after her.

Lydia gets red all in a rush.

Stiles comes back for her, and as he runs through the door the entire world changes. Suddenly his cheeks are flushed in a way Lydia’s never seen before, and he's pulling red wires from her head, bright, bright red wires, and his lips are pink, so pink and so close and she watches him say the words, “We’re getting you out of here, okay?”

Her head is still pounding with voices yelling in her ears, her throat is raw from her last scream and every muscle in her body is aching from disuse, but Stiles’s hands are so gentle that she feels herself melting into his touch.

She remembers what her grandmother told her about red: Red is a warning. Stiles is in danger.

“You can’t,” she murmurs, too tired for anything stronger. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Lydia.” He says, voice firm and familiar and enough to break through the noise in her mind. “Shut up and let me save your life.”

If she had the energy she'd tell him, right now, that she sees it. She sees all of the colours, and it’s all because of him. But she doesn’t think she can find the words. So Lydia just smiles at him, small and sincere and gentle, and lets Stiles help her off the bed and out of the room.

The screams are still clawing their way up her throat, and the red is still there, still caked through her hair and down her temple, warning her that they’re not safe, even as Parrish carries her out of Eichen, even as Stiles holds her in the back seat of his Jeep and Scott races them to the clinic.

She tries to hold it in, tries to clamp down the screams and the panic, but she can’t hold back the shriek that forces its way out. It’s enough to crack the mirrors of the car, and she doesn’t feel any better afterwards.

“Hey, Lydia, Lydia, hey. You’re going to get through this, okay?” Stiles says, cupping her face in his hands. “Lydia, look at me, you’re going to make it.”

Even in the dark, shadowy blues of the backseat of the Jeep, she sees the red blood leaking out of his ear.

She doesn’t understand how fate could be so cruel, giving her the final color just so she can see herself and Stiles stained with it, bloodied and beaten and about to expire.

She can’t stop looking at him. “But you’re not.”

His blood stained fingertips brushing the side of her face is the last thing she registers before the pain becomes too much, and every ounce of energy Lydia has left is spent on staying alive.

The next thing she’s aware of hearing isn’t a scream.

It’s Stiles.

Just Stiles, telling her to open her eyes.

She tries, but everything’s so heavy.

“Come on, listen to me, Lydia. Show me your eyes, okay?” He sounds so close. She wishes she could see him. “Lydia, come on, just… I got a new color, Lyds. When I found you, I got yellow, for a few seconds, and I think I’ll get it back if you open your eyes. And that’s all of them, then, that’s all the colors, because blue, I got that when we - when we kissed, and red, I got that when we were just kids, and I - I drew you a picture, but you couldn’t see any colors, back then. I know you see colors now, Lydia, I know you do. I need you to open your eyes so you can see them again.”

Lydia thinks about colors.

Yellow, all warmth and joy and seeing true sunlight for the very first time when she pressed her lips against Stiles’s.

Blue, security and calm and understanding, Stiles figuring out the trap and holding her until they could both breathe normally again.

And red, the type of danger where you risk your life for someone else’s, like Lydia throwing herself at Stiles to get him away from a lit flare rolling into gasoline, or Stiles breaking her out of Eichen and almost getting himself killed in the process. Red, for the things you do for the people you love.

“Lydia,” Stiles says, “You have to open your eyes.”

She listens to him.

He should have told her sooner.

He should have told her the second she opened her eyes at the clinic and Stiles saw, really saw, for the first time, Lydia Martin in full color, every tone and shade on the spectrum, more beautiful than he ever could have imagined.

He should have said it in the mornings, when they met up at school, or in the afternoons, when they studied with Scott and Malia, or at night, when he dragged her out of bed to go hunting supernatural occurrences, or whenever she looked at him and smiled, gentle and perfect and just for him.  

But Stiles always thought that they’d have more time.

It’s been all too easy, after everything, to fall back into their old pattern of bickering and flirting around their feelings, exchanging loaded glances and lingering touches but never taking that next step. Like the kiss in the locker room, like the red string, like the way Lydia looked at him when he saved her, they dance around it with clever little hints.

(Lydia preens in the mirror of a smashed up car, delicately admiring her eyeshadow. “This is the perfect shade for me. I forget the name…”

Stiles rolls his eyes in the backseat, exasperated. “Can we please stay on topic here?”)

But neither of them have the courage to just come out and say it.

And now they’re here, trapped in the Jeep and surrounded by Ghost Riders, and Lydia is staring at him like her heart is breaking and he knows, he knows that they’re out of time.

“Lydia, I’m going to be erased, okay?” He tries to keep his voice calm and level, tries to find the exact words he needs to say, because this could be his last chance. “Just like Alex. You’re gonna forget me.”

“I won’t.” Lydia shakes her head vehemently. “No, I won’t, I won’t.”

“Lydia, you will,” he insists, because this is important, she has to accept it and she has to understand - “Just try to find some way to remember me, okay?”

She nods, and Stiles keeps his eyes locked on hers, trying to memorize every single individual shade of green in them. He reaches out to take her hand, anchoring himself to her.

“Remember how you were the first girl I ever danced with? Or how I had a crush on you freshman year, sophomore year, junior year?”

Her smile is shaky, lips pressed together and eyes watering, but it’s still the same perfect smile she saves purely for Stiles, and the sight of it, one bright spot in the darkness of the car, gives him the courage to keep going.

His voice is steady as he says, “Remember how you saved my life?”

“You saved my life, too.” There’s something gentle about the way Lydia says it, something serious and sincere in her expression that Stiles can’t find the words to describe.

He squeezes her hand. “Remember the colors, Lydia. I don’t know if you’ll still see them when I’m gone, but try to remember how you got them.”

She blinks and a single tear rolls down her cheek.

“Just remember…” He steels himself. It’s time for the truth. “Remember I love you.”

The last thing Stiles sees as he’s taken is Lydia, sitting stunned in the passenger seat of the Jeep, looking more lost than he’s ever seen her before.

Lydia can see colors, and she doesn’t know how.

When she insists that this is important, Malia and Scott share a look that quite clearly says they think she’s crazy. Their faith in the existence of Stiles is wavering, whereas Lydia’s conviction is only growing stronger.

She curls her hands into fists on the top of Scott’s dining table. “He’s real. I know he’s real, and he has something to do with why I can see colors.”

“I’ve always been able to see colors,” Malia says, shrugging.

Scott nods encouragingly. “Maybe you’re the same?”

Lydia shakes her head. “No, I’m not the same. I used to see in grayscale. And…” She trails off, struggling to remember.

“And what?” Scott asks after a moment, looking at her earnestly.

“It’s right there,” she growls, frustrated. “I know that I’m missing something, and I just can’t - I just can’t remember… Pensée civage.”

Scott and Malia frown.

“Pensive what?” Malia asks.

“It’s French,” Lydia explains, feeling strangely reminiscent. “A lingering thought you can’t reach.”

There’s a pause, and then Scott says slowly, “Lydia, the only way Stiles could have anything to do with you seeing color is if he’s your soulmate.”

Lydia focuses on Scott, trying to convey how serious she’s being. “I think he is.”

Because she can see colors, but she thinks they’re different now, somehow. She can’t remember what they were like before, but she knows they weren’t exactly like this. They’re muted now, maybe. Not quite as crisp, not quite as bright, not quite as much.

In her nightmares Lydia dreams of a shadowy figure in a tattered flannel with a face she can’t see pinning her against a wall, growling into her ear, “He’s dying, and you’re going to be left with no colors and no soulmate.”

She wakes up screaming, cradled in her mother’s arms and feeling overwhelmed with grief.

“Lydia.” Her mom runs a hand soothingly through her hair. “Lydia, honey, you’re okay. It was just another nightmare. You’re safe.”

“Stiles is gone, mom,” she sobs, clutching at her covers. “He’s not safe, we need to find him, we need to -”

“Shhh, Lydia, shh, calm down,” Natalie coos. “It was just a nightmare.”

Lydia clutches at her mom’s arm. She’s hit by a sudden memory, of the two of them sitting exactly like this, and Lydia looking up at someone whom she can’t remember now with stars in her eyes.

“Mom,” she whispers, “Do you ever think about your soulmate?”

Natalie tenses, obviously thrown by the question. It’s a long time before she answers, “Sometimes… Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different, with them.”

Lydia pulls back to look at her mom, tears tracking down her cheeks. “Do you miss them?”

Natalie smiles sadly and brushes Lydia’s hair back from her face. “You can’t miss someone you’ve never met.”

“I miss Stiles,” Lydia says, voice cracking. “And it wasn’t a nightmare - I think it was a memory.”

One of the creepiest things about this limbo/prison/train station the Ghost Riders have trapped them in is the fact that it’s so grey. Colors are still there, sort of, but they’re all muted, and when Stiles tries to focus on them for too long he gets a headache.

He wonders if this is anything like how his dad and Scott see the world, without their soulmates.

He wonders if this is how Lydia sees the world, with him trapped here.

The thought of his friends and family back in Beacon Hills makes Stiles feel anxious. Do they remember him at all? Do they have any niggling feelings at the back of their minds that they’re missing something? He remembers Lydia saying that there was a French phrase for that sensation, but he can’t recall the wording, which is ironic.

Peter elbows the door to the radio control room open and looks back over his shoulder at Stiles. “Are we doing this?”

Stiles sets his jaw and follows him in. None of the other people even glance at them as they go. “Correction, I’m doing this,” he says to Peter, “and you’re keeping watch.”

“Fine by me,” Peter snaps back, folding his arms over his chest and glancing out the door. “Just be quick.”

After spending so much time around police scanners, the radio on the table isn’t completely foreign to Stiles. He thinks he can get it working, and he hopes he can get through to someone back in Beacon Hills.

“So what makes you think they’re going to hear this?” Peter asks while Stiles rearranges some wiring.

“Because they have super hearing,” Stiles replies shortly.

Peter laughs. “Great idea. Rely on their werewolf and werecoyote hearing to break through the Ghost Rider’s defences. Because the whole werewolf thing worked so well for me.”

Stiles lifts up on his knees to glare at Peter over the top of the table. “Lydia’s a banshee.”

“Ah, yes, Lydia. How could I forget her abilities?”

“Yeah, you were so instrumental in activating them.” Stiles wrenches a wire free and almost punches himself in the face in the process. He can’t tell if Peter’s smirk is because he saw that, or if he’s just enjoying the conversation.

“Nice to see you’re as protective of her as always.”

Stiles makes a noncommittal noise and gets to his feet to lean over the radio.

Peter hums thoughtfully, and then his expression becomes much more serious. “You said her name first, when you were talking about who’d remember you.”

Stiles bites his bottom lip and counts to three. “Did I?”

“Isn’t Scott your oldest and bestest friend?” Peter sounds far too interested in the answer for this to be leading anywhere good. “Why wasn’t he the first to come to mind?”

“Drop it,” Stiles warns.

“Ah, no, this could be important, Stiles. Why did you say Lydia’s name first?” Peter presses, gaze locked on Stiles.

“Would you keep an eye out for them, please? I said her name first because she was with me when I was taken, okay.”

“She hadn’t forgotten you?” Peter asks, genuinely curious.

Stiles’s throat feels tight. He flicks a row of switches with more force than is strictly necessary. “No, she was the only person left who remembered me.”

There’s a long pause, where Peter goes back to keeping watch and Stiles continues to work on re-wiring the radio.

“That’s good, Stiles,” he says eventually, and all traces of teasing have vanished from his tone. “If she’s your soulmate, it’s good for us. She’s more likely to hear you. More likely to remember you.”

Stiles freezes with his hand on a dial. He wants to ask so many questions, but all that comes out of his mouth is, “How’d you know she was my soulmate?”

Peter’s lips twitch up in a smile, and he looks a bit more like the smug prick Stiles is used to. “I didn’t, but thanks for the confirmation.”

“Unbelievable.” Stiles rolls his eyes and goes back to work. He waits a few seconds before asking, “Is it true that could help her remember me, or help her hear me?”

Peter nods. “It actually is. Now hurry up and fix the radio, I don’t think we have much time.”

Buoyed by the thought of Lydia remembering him, Stiles gets back to work.

Lydia is sure, surer than she’s ever been of anything before, that they need to get Stiles back. To do that she needs concrete evidence, though, and when she visits the Stilinski house she finds no trace of his existence - nothing more than a small, unhelpful tear in the lime wallpaper.

But he’s her soulmate, right, so surely she must have something of his. He must have given her something, at some point, there has to be something of his left behind. Lydia collapses to her knees at the bottom of her closet and pulls out boxes of mementos, things she doesn’t remember looking at since Allison died.

Her heart squeezes painfully as she pulls out a top she borrowed from her and never got the chance to give back; a string of photobooth photos of the two of them, Allison squealing with delight as Lydia kisses her cheek; a ticket stub from some movie they went to see together, the title half smudged away.

She tells herself to focus when she comes across a stack of birthday cards, rifling through them and looking for one from Stiles. There’s one from Allison (+ Scott, signed hastily down the bottom, the only thing on the whole card in his handwriting), one from Danny, one that’s been ripped in half and then taped back together from Jackson, but there’s no card from Stiles.

Lydia keeps looking.

And, right down the very bottom of the box, tucked beneath an extremely old, extremely generic and unsentimental Christmas card from her father, she finds a drawing. It’s in crayon, featuring a stick figure person in a pink triangle dress with overlapping spirals of red and orange for hair. There’s no name, no date, nothing to give her any context.

“What is it?” Lydia asks aloud, hearing her own, much younger voice overlapping with the sound.

No one answers. Lydia glances up at the mirror on her dresser, where she can see herself reflected, and then back to the drawing. She doesn’t understand why, but this feels important.

Lydia carefully folds the drawing in half and tucks it into her bag.

And the next day, she sees the blue Jeep in the parking lot at school, and she knows that that’s important, too. (“Scott? Lydia? Is that you?” Stiles asks through the radio, and the colors flare, and Lydia feels like she’s been holding her breath for weeks.)

And after that she finds the maroon lacrosse jersey, and she convinces Sheriff Stilinski, and she’s so close to getting him back, she can feel it.

But it’s not until Scott looks at her and says, “I don’t think anyone had a connection like you guys” that Lydia realizes the full extent of it. If she wants to see Stiles again, she’s going to have to bring him back herself.

The memories don’t come back slowly. As soon as Scott hypnotizes her they flood in, so eager to be recalled that they overlap and bleed together, cutting each other off and jumping from scene to scene as Lydia skips through them, like fast-forwarding through a tv show.

(There’s a small boy handing her a piece of paper, the stick figure drawing she found in her closet. “I drew this for you... It’s in color, don’t you see?”

Lydia doesn’t see. The entire memory is in black and white, uninspired grayscale.)

And so is the next, and the next

(A boy with a buzzcut and a suit that’s too big, asking her to dance. “...pretty sure I'm the only one who knows just how smart you really are…”

“Fields Medal,” she says.)

and the next

(An ice rink, Allison and Scott smiling below her, a Reese’s wrapper crinkling between her fingers. “...turning out to be, like, a perfect combination…”)

The next one starts out the same, too.

(Lydia’s in the locker room, surrounded by gray steel and concrete, and she watches herself fall to the floor with Stiles, who’s struggling to breathe. She feels all of the panic she felt in that moment, reliving it all over again -

And then she feels the calm certainty that settles over her as she leans forward and kisses Stiles.

Light radiates out until the entire memory is washed in yellow, the first color Lydia ever got, the color of sunlight, of happiness, of Stiles’s eyes.)

“That’s when it happened,” she says out loud, feeling just as overwhelmed as the first time she lived through it.

“When what happened?” Scott asks.

(A wave of blue rolls over the next memory.

She jumps from a steel trap and presses herself against Stiles’s chest, pulled back from the brink and breathing heavily.)

(Stiles kneels in front of her in his colorful bedroom, and carefully, purposefully, unwinds a gray string from around her finger as Lydia stares, so obviously in love that she can’t believe she didn’t kiss him again right then and there.)

Scott speaks again, trying to bring her back to the present, but she’s still lost in memories. “Lydia, what do you mean? When what happened?”

(Stiles’s arm is curled protectively around her, his determination to keep her safe palpable in the air.)

“When I kissed him,” she explains to Scott and Malia.

(And finally, the memories get red.

Stiles pulls the bright red wires away from her head, and she can’t believe how pink his lips are or how dark her hair is. He’s saving her life.)

She tries to speak around the lump in her throat. “That’s when it all changed.”

(“Lydia, look at me,” he says in the backseat of his Jeep, cradling her head in his hands, and she doesn’t want to hurt him like this.

“Look at me,” he says, and the memory shifts and blends into a different one, the same Stiles and the same Jeep but a different night - )

“I saw him,” Lydia says through tears. “I was there, I was the last person to see him.”

“Where? When did you see him?” Scott asks urgently.

“The Ghost Riders, they - they took him.”

(She’s back in the Jeep, Stiles sitting across from her, and god she’s so scared, she’s missed him so much and she doesn’t want to see this again, she doesn’t -

“You’re gonna forget me.”

“I won’t. No, I won’t, I won’t.”

She doesn’t want to relive this, she doesn’t want to go through this again.

“Just remember…” Stiles is holding her hand and he looks so serious, so absolutely sure of himself. “Remember I love you.”)

“I never said it back.” Lydia’s voice doesn’t shake, even as tears fall from her eyes. “I never said it back.”

The air shifts, colors warping and changing right before her eyes. The whole room starts to shake, everything in it rattling dangerously.

There’s a bright white light outside the door.

Their plan’s working. They’re getting Stiles back.

Stiles Stilinski is in his senior year when Lydia Martin shows him that she’s in love with him.

And he knows it’s love, he really does, because when he sees her again the whole world gets brighter. The colors that had been muted in the Ghost Riders’ limbo come back full force, a technicolor storm that’s so bright he has to blink a few times every time he looks at her.

She’s standing there, breathless and beautiful and so bright, even in the shadows of the locker room, and she’s just saved his life and she’s staring at him like she’s never wanted anything quite this bad before.

“I didn’t say it back,” she says.

But Stiles already knows.

He’s known since he heard her voice calling to him through the rift, “When I kissed you!” He’s known since she came back from the brink and said, “Stiles saved me.” He’s known since she kissed him in this very locker room and looked at him like he’d handed her the sun. Maybe he’s known since before that, even, since he won the lacrosse game and she smiled just for him.

Or maybe a part of him has always known that it was going to end up like this. Since that day in third grade when he looked at her across the playground and the world blossomed into color, Stiles has known that, eventually, somehow, someway, Lydia Martin was going to look at him and see more than gray.

“You don’t have to,” he says, because he’s never been surer of anything than he is of the fact that he loves Lydia and she loves him, too.

One second he’s moving towards her and the next she’s in his arms, pressed up against him with her hands on his face, holding him to her, and he’s kissing her like his life depends on it, which at this point maybe it does.

And when they finally break apart Stiles swears that he’s never seen the colors quite so vivid before.

They’re curled up on his bed, Lydia’s strawberry blonde hair splayed out over his blue pillows and her pink lips set in the sweetest smile he’s ever seen, when she says, “I have something for you.”

He rests his hand on her hip, holding her steady as she leans back to grab something from her bag. His thumb moves in small circles over the smooth skin between her shorts and the jersey of his she’s wearing, and she kicks a foot out to keep her balance as she struggles to reach the floor.

“You got me a present? That’s sweet of you,” he says lightly.

When she swings herself back onto the bed, she’s waving a folded up piece of paper in the air triumphantly. “Actually, you got me a present.”

He raises an eyebrow at her and props himself up on one elbow. “Did I? Gee, I am just so thoughtful.”

“You are though.” Lydia’s sort of laughing, little breaths of laughter escaping with her words, like she can’t contain all of her happiness; but then she meets his gaze, and she grows suddenly serious. She sits up and holds the piece of paper out to him. “I found this, when you were gone.”

Stiles sits up and takes the paper from her, but he doesn’t unfold it. He runs his fingers over the crease reverentially and waits for her to say something, because this feels important.

“Stiles,” she says softly, ducking her head so that he’s looking at her.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Open it.”

With shaking hands, he unfolds the paper. A crudely drawn person stares up at him - a stick figure with a pink smile and a pink triangle dress, and a mess of red and orange hair.

Stiles’s throat feels tight all of a sudden. “Is this…?”

“The drawing you gave me in third grade,” Lydia says, smiling. “The day you color bonded with me.”

He’s definitely crying when he looks up at her, but it’s okay because she’s crying, too. He holds the paper to his chest, not wanting to risk having his tears make the crayon run. “You remembered that? You kept this?”

Lydia nods. “Yeah, I did.”

Stiles knows what this means. He knows exactly what she’s admitting, in handing over this old drawing, and he knows exactly what’s coming next, and he feels a fresh onslaught of tears threatening at the thought of it.

She must be able to tell, because she shuffles closer to him on the bed and splays one of her hands over his, where he’s pressing the drawing right above his heart. Her other hand comes up to cup his face, her thumb stroking his cheekbone, and when she takes a deep breath and then exhales he feels it hit his lips.

“Lydia,” he breathes, bringing his spare hand up to rest at the back of her neck. 

There are a thousand things he wants to say, a million thoughts racing through his mind. He’s dreamed about this before, spent years panicking over every possible way this conversation could go.

But he never planned for the heart wrenching way Lydia looks at him now, like she’s literally putting her life in his hands. He didn’t anticipate just how overwhelming it would be, to feel this cosmic sort of love for someone and then have it reflected right back at you.

He never imagined that her eyes would be quite so green, or her hair quite so vibrant, or her smile so gentle and perfect and reserved just for him; finally, honestly, for him. Her soulmate.

“Stiles,” Lydia whispers. “I see every color there is, all of them, because of you. I look at you, and I see color.”

. 

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [30]

Mythal is so profoundly and incredibly right. He is ill suited to be a father in so many ways, and yet here he is.

Her hand is so small - so incredibly trusting and soft - curled around his fingers. Overall she is small.

How could he claim to be a defender of rights and elven kind if he can so easily ignore one of their own in need right in front of him?

He doesn’t regret signing the adoption papers. Not at all. He just wishes he were better at this.

In Mythal’s words, he’s always been better at fighting wars and staging protests rather than healing hurts and untangling problems.

Solas looks down at her dark, bobbing head as they walk back home from daycare. Ellana’s face is scrunched up in concentration - she has an odd fascination with counting her steps, one that he attributes to some sort of child’s game: the kind where rules are made up and discarded at a whim, the reasons behind them are mercurial at best, and the rewards are nonexistent.

The best sort of game, honestly.

“Did you enjoy it?” Solas asks, “You don’t have to go, if you do not.”

He knows that he gets close to no work done with her around the offices or playing about the apartment building when he’s working from home, but if she’s unhappy in any way -

“No,” Ellana says, shaking her head. Today she has eschewed hair clips or hair ties until Solas learns to do it right. He’s not sure what that means, he’s watched the videos over and over again but she still insists he’s missing some sort of step.

“No, you didn’t enjoy it?” Solas’s chest squeezes uncomfortably. This is all so new. He’s even gone to ask Mythal for advice and she laughed at him. He could, in theory, go to one of their other siblings but he doesn’t think that they’re any better at parenting than he is. Really, they’re all awful at it, but Mythal’s children have all somehow managed to not get killed, assassinated, disappeared, or otherwise permanently injured.

Ellana’s hand squeezes two of his fingers as she braces to jump onto a crack in the sidewalk.

The walk from the daycare to the apartment is not very far, but going anywhere by foot with Ellana tends to stretch things out. Solas doesn’t mind. It’s a nice break from all the work, the eyes, the guards, the security.

In truth, that is all still present, they just tend to give him space when Ellana is near.

They are attempting to give her the best sort of life for the ward of an ambassador with strong liberal leanings belonging to a very much so traditional country.

“No, I want to go,” Ellana says, hopping up and down on the crack, “I made friends. I think I made friends.” Ellana suddenly looks up at him, “How do I know that I’ve made friends? Do I have to ask if we’re friends? I’ve never had to ask before.”

Solas carefully squeezes her hand with a curl of his fingers, “Do you feel like you are friends?”

“Yes!” She beams, “There’s a boy named Dorian and he can do magic like me, and his daddy is somebody important because these men in suits like the people in suits who pick you up for work came to pick him up from daycare and there was a big black car just like ours waiting for him.”

When Mythal suggested this daycare to him she did tell him it was a daycare for high profile children, so Solas isn’t too surprised.

“Do you remember the flags?” He asks.

“I drew a picture of them,” She immediately starts to squirm with her other arm to try and reach her backpack, not once letting go of his fingers. He had told her once never to let go of his hand while they were walking and she’s taken it to heart. Considering how she lost her parents and the rest of her family, he isn’t all too surprised by that. Solas pauses, putting his other hand on her shoulder and going to unzip her backpack for her. “It’s the yellow one with the pretty black designs, hahren.”

She called him daddy once, and Solas is completely and deeply ashamed to say he reacted quite poorly to it. She hasn’t called him that since and he’s felt guilty about it the entire time. He wishes he could undo that mistake, or that she’ll call him that again one day.

Solas grimaces, “Dorian, you said?”

“Yes! He uses big words and he reads big kid books,” Ellana says, bouncing a little. Solas zips her bag up and stands, Ellana tugging on his hand with her fingers. “And, and, and I met this girl with ears like mine, she’s an elf, and she said some mean things to me at first but then, but then she gave me some jam and it was yummy and she introduced me to this pretty girl named Evelyn and we played on the slide and we slided lots until Miss Flyssa said we have to go inside.”

“Slid,” Solas corrects absently as he examines the impressively neat and accurate drawing Ellana has done of the Tevinter coat of arms onto yellow construction paper. “This is a very good drawing, little one.”

Ellana giggles, swinging his hand back and forth.

“And I met a boy and I like him, you would like him too. He’s an older boy,” Ellana says and Solas hums.

“And why would I like him, do you think?”

“Because when we were having snack time we had celery and cara- cara - carm - “

“Caramel?”

“Caramel with pretzels and he ate all of his pretzels and caramel but he didn’t finish his celery. And I was going to tell him that his celery is all lonely now and I’d eat it if he didn’t want it but he was at a table with bigger kids and all of them were really big, hahren. They were big like three of me! Four of me! Five of me!” Ellana waves her arm out and Solas laughs under his breath. “And his Tama - “

“His mama?” Solas asks.

“No, his Tama,” Ellana says.

Solas looks down at her, stopping. Ellana stops with him and looks back up at him, brimming with energy.

“Where did you learn that word, Tama?”

“That’s what the big kids all called their Miss Flyssa,” Ellana says, oblivious to the sudden storm of conflict that’s rushed into Solas’s head, brushing away thoughts of Ellana’s drawing skills and his relief at her making friends and having a good time. Mythal had said he was doing an incredibly poor job of socializing her.

He’s beginning to it’s quite the opposite.

“This boy, did he happen to have gray skin?”

Ellana bobs her head.

Mythal neglected to mention that this daycare also hosted Qunari children - in addition to Tevinter ones.

Ellana impatiently tugs on his hand, “Listen.”

Solas nods for her to go on.

“So he didn’t eat his celery but his Tama said that he couldn’t go play until he had eaten two more things off of his plate so he pulled out two more pretzels and ate them right there and then left to go play,” Ellana laughs, “And I thought of you hahren because that’s just like you.”

Ellana drags out the word you as she laughs, suddenly bouncing closer to him and wrapping her arms around his leg, dissolving into the loud laughter only young children can have. Solas helplessly rests his hand on the back of her head.

It does sound like him, in all honesty.

“You enjoyed daycare?” He says, resigning himself to having his child close to the threat of both the Qun and Tevinter.

“Yes,” Ellana says against his leg, “Can we go back?”

“Tomorrow,” Solas says, bending down to pick her up. She goes easily enough, stretching her small arms out to grab at him as he props her up on his hip, adjusting his hold on her. “Tell me more about Sera and Evelyn.”

[amarsmellow]

Coffee

It had been a good day, one of the best between them.

Strolling along in the town of Innsmouth the Gypsy had become more and more accustomed to its people and they in turn, mostly ignored her presence. Today was no exception because she walked with the Pharaoh beside her and if they came across a crowd, they parted like the Red Seas. One brave soul or two actually knelt, their heads bowed in reverence to the Black Pharaoh, mumbling words in a strange, alien language that hurt Vera’s ears and sent her head spinning.

She found it helpful to keep all her mental guards in place, blocking out the rather strange energy the whole place seemed to be saturated in. It felt like white hot electricity riding the air currents, threatening to short circuit her neurons, making her tongue tangle in words the old mammalian brain remembered but dared not speak.

When this happened she always sought him out, her hand blinding seeking his, as if by anchoring herself to the very source of her building distress it would dissipate. The conundrum of it all is this worked! Vera would cling to him, pressed to his side, and funnel back what she unintentionally took within her own essence. The feral glow slowly disappearing from the kaleidoscope of her eyes, a spiraling mixture of brown and gold. Uneven breaths sputtered to a more even rhythm and her burgeoning descent into madness itself evaporating as though it had never happened.

But not today! Today she had her coffee and she had – whatever she had with the Pharaoh. It really helped that she didn’t examine too closely the parameters of their association. The word “relationship” was certainly forbidden to enter her mind – if it did she would then have to seek out some appropriate label and then her brain would truly fry itself out.

No, far simpler to leave it be.

And this fine morning stroll – a rarity really! – was to be savored. He indulged her questions, his smile sly and the tongues in his mouth answering her directly, sometimes. Mostly it was the same old song and dance; evasion, quips, and notable eye-rolls when she asked a particularly banal query. Vera wondered if they would ride this merry-go-round to her grave but kept the thought to herself.

Of course nothing goes perfectly in her world and tragedy had to strike.

One of the Pharaoh’s sycophants jostled into the Gypsy, eager to get closer to their literal God.

The result was a slow motion series of gross unfortunate events.

The son-of-bitch-bastard knocked Vera’s coffee cup out of her hand. Gasping she watched in shocked dismay as it tumbled down, as though in slow motion, to the ground. Her eyes flared wide in such disbelief and her hands fumbled to save the precious.

Precious could not be saved.

And those on-lookers, the ones who had yet to scuttle away to safety, watched equally as horrified.

The Pharaoh, too, was highly displeased. He knew – oh did he know – how this was going to play out.

“Don’t start.”

“MY COFFEE!”

He took a deep breath.

“We will get you-“

“OhmyGod! The coffee!”  

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

Those who knew her would not find the sight of her on her knees, in the dirt and filth, with her arms held beseechingly to the sky, strange.

“I always knew you worshiped the ground I walked on.” Maybe he could provoke her out of her tantrum.

Vera wailed and hissed in return, her head mournfully lowered.

The Pharaoh was equal parts amused and frustrated. “You are making a Fool of yourself over a nothing.” He slurred, growing bored and disenchanted.

Vera, who had descended into full blown brat-mode, “YOU’RE A NOTHING!”

The Pharaoh winked out of existence and left the Gypsy to pout, very much alone.

And she hated it.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Vera opened the door to her sea-side cottage, still in a stint over her spilled coffee. It wasn’t that she was such a mercurial creature that she had such little control of herself. The Pharaoh certainly gave her much leave-way and when any other mortal would have been snuffed out for her comment, he punished her in the best (worst) of ways.

He left her alone.

He could have crawled into every corner of her mind and left her a gibbering, jabbering wreck on the street, nails ripping furrows in her cheeks, a hollow shell of a human being.

He could have descended on her like a nightmare but instead, treated her exactly as how she acted – a spoiled child in need of a time out.

And so true to form she went stomping through her cottage, her words an unintelligible mumble of several languages, strung together haphazardly.

She was stopped cold though by the sight that met her eyes when she ventured into the kitchen.

There was the precious! ALL OVER! Coffee cups of varying sizes filled every available counter space.

Vera – who should have seen a carefully laid trap – was ecstatic!

“You do love me!” she shouted, running like a child at Christmas into her kitchen, eager for her presents.

And of course she drank. Every. Single. Blessed. Cup.  

 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He knows his Gypsy – he knows her very well.

The Pharaoh appeared gradually in her midst, coalescing in front of her, his smile stretched wide – wider than should have been right but so much about him was wrong. He was here for the show.

But the sight that greeted him, did indeed, give Chaos some … pause.

Plastered on the walls were crude drawings (did her spawn make these?) of writhing tentacles (he thinks they are supposed to be tentacles), something resembling the head of a goat, and another with curved back hind legs like a – (kangaroo)?

“YOU CAME!”  

Vera ran excited circles around him and before he could form a response, began to climb up him as though he were a tree.

Hands gripped the back of his linen tunic, fingers tangled in the black, silken waterfall of his hair, which she used like a rope to propel herself up, up, up until she was able to encircle her arms around his neck. Long legs clamped around his chest, hooking at the ankles where a normal, human breastplate should be.

Giggling like a demented three year old high on sugar the Gypsy latched herself to him like a leech. Anyone else and ragdoll physics would have been employed but the Pharaoh became still, still as death, and waited.

Rapid fire she shot her words out to him, her accent slurring vowels and dropping consonants, leaving emphasis in all the wrong places. The gist of it:

“I just want to express how thankful I am for all the coffee and OhmyGod, I did more work and research than I ever have before! Now, I know I was not supposed to look into all those old, old, old books you have but I only snagged the one and took the teeniest, tiniest of peeks! It took forever! Lifetimes! For me to decipher some of it and when I did – ooooooh wow!”

The rest was lost in a mixture of Romanian, Romani, and ….

… It was then the Pharaoh realized he had made a terrible mistake.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The truth of this occurrence was far darker than one could imagine.

While one might assume the Pharaoh hadn’t intended for this to happen, at all, it was more along the lines he hadn’t intended for this to happen now.

This was always going to happen, this was nature at its base core taking place, and unfolding beautifully before his eyes.

Vera laughed until her throat felt raw or was that from the occasional shrieking? Or the sobbing? Nothing made sense anymore and she was left dancing on a knife’s precipice, leaving her bloody and butchered. She had been warned oh – she had been warned countless of times but she didn’t listen.

Did she ever listen, truly?  

He counted on her short comings like the most studious of bankers.

It was a miasmas that filtered through her conscious thought, bringing with it visions of faceless monstrosities and a huge hulking figure buffered by a tumultuous sea. It was a glimpse of a possible future - of fallen cities and humanity exuberant in its own destruction. Visions of maggots crawling in the dirt, devouring visceral fat, and centipedes burrowing into her ears. The hysterical cries of mothers, chased by the heartbreaking silence from infants.

Vera fought and fought against it, and when she feared becoming consumed and lost – the Crawling Chaos appeared before her and in her delirium, saw him as her Savior. This is what compelled her to rush at him, to cling to him like the proverbial rock in her storm.  

There was an aurora borealis of light surrounding the Pharaoh as though this cosmic light (energy) resonated from his very essence. And as bright it appeared to Vera it was also abyssal – depthless.

She had no control, no more barriers to keep her safe, and with every mental guard down she took him in whole. Siphoning energy from him and spooling it dangerously to become her own bindings – she bounded herself to him, unwittingly!  

For several terrifying moments, where clarity dared to intrude, she realized she could no longer tell where he began or she ended.

The Pharaoh is an ouroboros – there is no beginning, there is no end.

Gasping out, choking on her own air, she clenched her hands into the endless black spill of his hair, and fought the convulsions that wrecked her body. There was no more peering through a glass darkly – for in this moment she could clearly see the Truth of what he is, and this was the price she paid.  

She is a Daughter of Eve and hungered to eat more of the Tree, to bite into the crisp flesh of fruit to better satisfy her yearning.

Her eyes had been bigger than her stomach.

She should’ve of listened to all the warnings.

Whimpering now, her hold on him becoming as unstable as her mind, Vera started to slip and would have fallen had it been for the Pharaoh grasping at her legs ‘round his chest. Left to sway Vera experienced a moment of non-gravity before he let go and the floor rushed up to meet her.

Blacking out is a mercy he doesn’t allow her to have.

[writingsubmissions]

UFC Fight Night 104 Preview

WHAT'S HAPPENING: *The Fox show from Denver pretty much delivered everything that could've been expected of it, particularly on the main card, which saw four fighters each make a name for themselves with fairly quick finishes. Leading the way was Valentina Shevchenko, who affirmed herself as bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes's top contender with a somewhat surprising second-round armbar win over Julianna Pena. It's not that Shevchenko won that was the surprise, since she was the betting favorite, but that she was able to tap out a tenacious grappler like Pena, who had actually been having a solid amount of success up to that point in the clinch and wrestling games. Shevchenko can seemingly do it all - she came into UFC with a strong muay thai background and her wrestling looked to be on point, but we hadn't seen much in terms of finishing ability, so this was a huge step. And UFC did well to have Nunes come into the cage after the fight for a pretty endearing showdown, as the two traded barbs back and forth in stilted English that was absolutely charming. That should be a hell of a fight, given how their first meeting went - Nunes had a bunch of success early, but Shevchenko took over for a one-sided third round, leading most to believe that Shevchenko would've won the fight if it went five rounds. So we'll see how it goes this time around. *Well, good on Jorge Masvidal, as his plan worked perfectly. After beating Jake Ellenberger in early December, Masvidal called out Cerrone even though he was already booked, knowing that Cerrone would want to fight as soon as possible anyway, and he did indeed get that fight. And then Masvidal did the hard part, knocking out Cerrone basically twice in a little over a round to get the biggest win of his career and suddenly make himself a welterweight contender. It was mostly an even fight until late in the first round, when Masvidal was able to drop Cerrone right before the horn - Herb Dean pretty clearly stepped in before the round was over, but then insisted the fight was still headed to the second round...at which point Masvidal finished a clearly shaken Cerrone again. I do feel bad for Cerrone, particularly since Denver is his hometown, but this is the downside of taking as many fights as he does - though, on the flip side, he'll probably fight four more times this year and could easily find himself back as a contender by the time 2018 rolls around. As for Masvidal, he does seem to finally be more aggressive, which should serve him well, and he's suddenly got a ton of interesting matchups in the top tier of welterweights to make a run at the belt. *The third big performance on the night belonged to Francis Ngannou, who more or less ran through Andrei Arlovski to establish himself as the next great hope at heavyweight. It'll be fascinating to see what the ceiling is for Ngannou - he's an athletic monster who's only been fighting for a little over three years, but he's improved rapidly from fight to fight, and while Arlovski is somewhat fragile at this point, he was a huge step up for Ngannou in terms of speed and craft, and the Cameroonian really had no problem with the challenge. I have no idea if Ngannou is ready to become a title contender, but I do know there's really nothing left for him to prove fighting guys outside of the top handful of the division, so it might as well be time to try. And the scary thing is, with him being just thirty years old (which is very young for heavyweight at the moment), he's got a few more years to keep improving and figuring things out. *And the Fox card opened with a fourth excellent performance, this one by Alan Belcher protege Jason Knight, who beat Alex Caceres in fairly one-sided fashion leading up to a second-round submission. Like Shevchenko in the main event, the result wasn't as surprising as the finish, as Knight got the better of things on the feet and was able to jump into the grappling realm without much trouble, tapping out a talented, if mercurial vet. And then Knight more or less nailed the post-fight interview, praying to his late father before calling out Doo Ho Choi for what would be a hell of a brawl. Sounds good to me. *The undercard wasn't quite as scintillating, but there was some interesting stuff on it. The biggest result was probably Raphael Assuncao winning a split decision over Aljamain Sterling to stay alive as a bantamweight contender, although it was a fairly boring fight that probably didn't get Assuncao any closer to a title shot. Sterling's extremely frustrating - a blue-chip wrestling-based prospect coming onto the scene, Sterling spent the first two rounds using a weird, low-volume range kicking game that just isn't effective, and probably lost him his previous fight against Bryan Caraway. I'd chalk it up to him not realizing what needs to be fixed, but then he went out and started mixing in some boxing in the third round, winning that frame rather easily and making one wonder exactly why he didn't do that the whole time. So that's two losses for Sterling that easily could've been wins, and I don't really see UFC matchmaking doing him much favors, since he might not be on the best terms with management after some contentious contract negotiations last year. Sigh. As far as individual performances, the best probably belonged to debuting light heavyweight Jordan Johnson, a wrestler who pretty much dominated Henrique da Silva en route to a decision win. Johnson stuck to what he was good at and looked like a top prospect in the process, though he's still fairly raw, so I'd just keep him treading water for a bit until he's ready to move up towards a title shot. In other results on the undercard, Jingliang Li knocked out newcomer Bobby Nash in a fun brawl that was the best fight on the card, Sam Alvey won the featured prelim over Nate Marquardt in yet another weird Alvey fight, and Eric Spicely tapped out Italian prospect Alessio Di Chirico in fairly short order. Spicely then called out Australian fan favorite Dan Kelly after the fight, making him a smart man - try and get that trip to Australia. And even the deeper prelims had some fun stuff, like Marcos Rogerio de Lima knocking out Jeremy Kimball in short order, and Alexandre Pantoja besting Eric Shelton in a battle of TUF 24 alums. *Conor McGregor and UFC are still going back and forth. McGregor had his pay-per-view that was just him being interviewed by Ariel Helwani, and he said some stuff. And Dana was pretty much the promotional equivalent of "come at me, bro." There's still some interesting stuff that can happen, particularly if McGregor uses his boxing license and the Ali Act to get out of his UFC contract, but we're not there yet. *So, Donald Trump's whole travel ban on Muslims. That's a thing. A pretty bad thing. MMA's always had some weirdness going on geopolitically (sup Dagestan), and this is the latest one, as nobody's sure how this is going to affect the foreign-born fighters on the UFC roster. At the only moment, the only pressing case is Gegard Mousasi, who's slated to fight Chris Weidman in Buffalo this April, but was born in Iran and may not be allowed to enter the country despite living in the Netherlands since the age of four. Wheee fun. *World Series of Fighting continues to just be a weird thing, as it's just sort of lurched on as a money pit for whatever shadowy investors are involved at the moment, putting on shows that don't really draw anyone, but still managing to pay some of their top fighters (typically the ones also managed by former matchmaker/WSOF executive/possible terrorist Ali Abdelaziz) way above market value. Anyway, WSOF got bailed out yet again by a new investor group, as they've somehow managed to raise $25 million to sell sixty percent of the company, despite most of their champions now being free agents and the fact that they don't even own their tape library, which may have some value. MMA is a weird sport. *Comings and goings! Per a tweet by UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby, it looks like Al Iaquinta is headed back to the Octagon after basically retiring due to a falling out with management. Iaquinta was a top lightweight contender and his contract was up after a controversial April 2015 win over Jorge Masvidal, where the crowd booed the decision and Iaquinta decided to respond by cursing them out. He then suffered a major knee injury in training, and by mid-2016, all rumors had Iaquinta, a Long Island native, returning against Thiago Alves on the Madison Square Garden show. But Iaquinta never signed a new contract - essentially, Iaquinta argued to UFC that his injury had cascaded from a smaller knee injury suffered in this days on The Ultimate Fighter, while UFC disagreed and basically refused to cover it. Iaquinta eventually got his way, but then felt slighted when UFC fined him for missing a mandatory fighter summit, even though Iaquinta had made it clear he couldn't attend due to some BJJ teaching obligations. After all this, Iaquinta got a new offer, basically decided the money wasn't worth the trouble, and then decided to just call it quits and work as a real estate agent. But now, about six months later, it looks like things have been patched up, and we'll finally see Iaquinta back. On the flip side, UFC may be losing three pretty solid fighters, as welterweights Lorenz Larkin and Rick Story, as well as light heavyweight Misha Cirkunov, were removed from UFC's official rankings since they're no longer considered "under contract," having turned down the chance to re-sign with the company. Basically, this doesn't mean they're free and clear and done with UFC, but rather means they're in a form of restricted free agency, where they can only negotiate with UFC for a bit, and then UFC is free to match any offer one of the three gets after that. Larkin isn't a surprise, since that was well-publicized, and even though he's finally looking like the top contender most expected him to be, it wouldn't be a shock if he left, since he reportedly has a good relationship with his former boss at Strikeforce, current Bellator president Scott Coker. Story, frankly, I could see UFC taking or leaving - he's a solid top ten-to-fifteen fighter and can ably fill a high-card slot, but he's not particularly flashy or exciting. Cirkunov is the really fascinating one, since after his win over Nikita Krylov, he might be the best rising prospect at 205 at the moment. Add in the fact that he's well-known in the Canadian scene after emigrating to Toronto from Latvia, and he's really someone UFC should want to hang on to, and it'll be interesting to see if Bellator decides to make a run at him. Oddly, Ryan Bader is still present in the rankings, although he's openly talked about how this week is when Bellator can finally give him an official offer - I wonder if this is a sign that he's already quietly re-signed with the promotion. *And as almost always nowadays, we end with a whole bunch of drug stuff. We have a race to see who becomes the first three-time drug test failure in the USADA era, as George Sullivan and Ricardo Abreu were both popped for the second time this past week. Sullivan was set to return from suspension and face Randy Brown at UFC 208, but apparently failed a test for clomiphene, a fertility drug that's often used to boost testosterone levels after someone cycles off of steroids - it's the same thing Brock Lesnar failed for, and actually, the same thing that Jon Jones's infamous "dick pills" were tainted with. Anyway, Sullivan has claimed he's trying to have kids and is applying for a retroactive exemption, but given that clomiphene isn't apparently even FDA-approved, good luck with that. As for Abreu, I'm just impressed, since the Brazilian middleweight was already under suspension until the summer of 2018 and I guess just didn't realize he could still be tested. And we got one more failure this past week, as Texan heavyweight Justin Ledet was quietly pulled from this Houston card after popping for something yet to be disclosed. And lastly, Brazilian lightweight Felipe Olivieri has been sentenced to a two-year suspension for a failed January 2016 drug test. ------ BOOKINGS: *Some really interesting fights got booked, but no really big fights, save the rumors being confirmed that the Daniel Cormier/Anthony Johnson rematch for the light heavyweight title will in fact take place at UFC 210 in Buffalo this April. In a way, it's kind of amazing how this all worked out with Jon Jones on the shelf, since, well, Cormier stayed injured long enough that we never really had to dip into the well of whatever contenders UFC would have to create in such a thin division past Johnson. They also added three solid undercard bouts, though none figure to be on the main card - light heavyweights Patrick Cummins and Jan Blachowicz squaring off (and both are ranked, if you need more proof of 205 being a thin division), local featherweight Shane Burgos taking on Boston's Charles Rosa, and an interesting fight between bantamweight prospects Katlyn Chookagian and Irene Aldana. *UFC keeps adding fights to the March card in Fortaleza, Brazil, and it's looking like by far the best TV card of the first half of 2016. There was already some interesting stuff on it, but we get two more good fights, with lightweights Francisco Trinaldo and Kevin Lee squaring off, as well as a UFC 207 rematch between Tim Means and Alex "Cowboy" Oliveira. I feel a bit bad for Trinaldo, since at 38, time is running out, and despite a seven-fight win streak, UFC hasn't really moved up the ladder, but a bout against Lee, one of the division's top young prospects, should be an excellent affair. And the Means/Oliveira fight in December was really fun while it lasted, until Means hit a controversial illegal knee that got the fight turned into a no contest. Add in two more decent undercard fights, with welterweights Sergio Moraes and Max Griffin, as well as featherweights Godofredo Pepey and Kyle Bochniak, and the card's looking like a good one. *So, UFC kind of pissed off their British fanbase, as tickets went on sale for the upcoming London card without an announced main event, and then UFC just decided to promote the already-announced light heavyweight bout between Jimi Manuwa and Corey Anderson to that spot after the fact. Reportedly, the initial plan was Alexander Gustafsson against Ryan Bader, but Gustafsson is hurt and Bader is not yet back under contract, so UFC just went with this due to a lack of other options. I also heard some stuff that Anthony Pettis against Mairbek Taisumov, a fight that Joe Rogan dropped sometime around UFC 207, was slated for this card, but it's unclear what's going on there, since Taisumov has been agitating on social media for Pettis to go ahead and sign a contract. Maybe that'll be your co-main event, as there's not really a viable one at the moment and the card still has one or two open spots for fights. *Speaking of disappointing cards, UFC 208, which was initially an exciting card on paper despite a pretty bad main event marquee-wise, is slowly continuing to get gutted. Three more fighters are off the card - flyweight Neil Seery was forced off due to the death of his mother-in-law, and heavyweight Luis Henrique wasn't cleared to fight following eye surgery for his nearsightedness, so into the fray step two UFC newcomers - Jarred Brooks steps in to fight Ian McCall, and Justin Willis steps in to fight Marcin Tybura. Alright then. And as mentioned above, welterweight George Sullivan is also off this card due to a drug test failure, but it's unclear if UFC is still seeking a replacement to face Randy Brown, who really should stay on this card as an exciting local product. *And a few odds and ends - Rashad Evans will maybe, finally, make his debut at middleweight, and it looks to be a weird one, as he'll face Australian Dan Kelly at UFC 209 this March. Kelly's near forty with bad knees, but the decorated judoka still gets it done through sheer force of will and good old-fashioned dad strength, so it's actually a pretty solid test to see exactly what Evans has left, even if it's a bit concerning that it's come to this. And while UFC has yet to officially announce their second quarter schedule, two more events have already leaked out, as they're heading to Kansas City on April 15th, and making their promotional debut in Denmark, as UFC: Copenhagen is happening on May 27th. The broadcasts for each card haven't been announced, but the Kansas City date lines up to be a Fox card, and it already has its first fight, as Kansas City native Tim Elliott is apparently not heading to bantamweight after losing to Demetrious Johnson after all, and instead will face Louis Smolka at 125. And the Denmark card means that for the first time in a while, UFC will not be running a pay-per-view or a show in Vegas over Memorial Day weekend - and that card has a fight as well, as Danish heavyweight Christian Colombo will take on Polish vet Damian Grabowski in a fight between two guys in search of their first UFC win. ----- ROSTER CUTS: 1) Ali Bagautinov (15-6 overall, 4-3 UFC, last fought 11/19/16, L vs. Kyoji Horiguchi): UFC let two ranked flyweights walk this past week, and Bagautinov's the more surprising of the two, even if you could tell by his match placement that he was a bit out of favor. Bagautinov, a popular vet in his native Dagestan, made an impact pretty much immediately upon his UFC debut, going on a three-fight win streak that included one-sided wins over Tim Elliott and John Lineker and earning himself a title shot at Demetrious Johnson. Like everyone else, Bagautinov pretty much couldn't do anything with Johnson, and even worse, he failed a drug test afterwards, and that pretty much derailed the rest of his UFC career. Outside of a weird fight against prospect Geane Herrera that Bagautinov won, UFC pretty much used the Russian as a keep-busy fight against top contenders like Joseph Benavidez and Kyoji Horiguchi, and after going 1-2 post-drug suspension, I guess UFC figured he had outlived his usefulness. A shame, though, since losing a guy like Bagautinov (and Makovsky below) really does hurt the depth of UFC's flyweight division. 2) Zach Makovsky (19-8 overall, 3-4 UFC, last fought 12/10/16, L vs. Dustin Ortiz): Makovsky being let go is a damaging cut for the flyweight division, but it wasn't a surprising once, since most figured the fight between him and Ortiz was loser leaves town. Bellator surprisingly cut Makovsky in 2013 - he was the promotion's first bantamweight champion, and they let him go after only one loss following him dropping his belt - but he cut down to flyweight and caught on with UFC pretty quickly, earning wins over Scott Jorgensen and Josh Sampo. Makovsky was a decent all-around fighter, particularly in terms of wrestling, but the middle is a hard place to be in UFC's flyweight division. Essentially, you have a few scrubs, but outside of that, there's really no easy fights once you're a relevant fighter, and like Bagautinov, just kept racking up the losses even though they were against really good competition. 3) Aisling Daly (16-6 overall, 2-1 UFC, last fought 10/24/15, W vs. Ericka Almeida): Daly suddenly announced her retirement while in the midst of recovering from injury, as a scan of her brain apparently uncovered a hemorrhage she had suffered at some point while training, forcing a premature end to her career. Daly's probably a bit underrated as a pioneer, since the Irishwoman was one of the first female fighters to really make her name in Europe, and really the first Irish fighter to make a global name for themselves period, racking up a 9-0 record wherever she could find fights before a brief stint in Bellator. It may just be my heritage showing, but I've always liked Daly because she was just so, well, Irish - she suffered a three-fight losing streak in 2012 and then proceeded to take a year off to battle her issues with depression, and, well, it really doesn't get more Irish than that. Daly had a solid showing on season 20 of TUF and a solid showing in UFC thereafter thanks to her solid grappling game, and honestly, she probably got the best sendoff you could probably ask for, as she was the big Irish favorite on UFC's October 2015 card in Dublin, and the ovation both for her entrance and her subsequent win over Ericka Almeida was one of the highlights of the show. And even her postfight interview was just so...wonderfully touched with Irish bleakness, as the big McGregor/Brandao card with all her SBG teammates took place during her time in the house, and she likened watching it to seeing a child grow up and no longer being able to talk to them. Anyway, Daly seems at peace with the decision, and she'll go on as a grappling coach for SBG, so I wish her well. ----- UPCOMING UFC SHOWS: 2/11 - UFC 208 - Brooklyn, NY - Germaine de Randamie vs. Holly Holm, Derek Brunson vs. Anderson Silva 2/19 - UFC Fight Night 105 - Halifax, NS - Travis Browne vs. Derrick Lewis, Johny Hendricks vs. Hector Lombard 3/4 - UFC 209 - Las Vegas, NV - Tyron Woodley (c) vs. Stephen Thompson, Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, Mark Hunt vs. Alistair Overeem 3/11 - UFC Fight Night 106 - Fortaleza, Brazil - Vitor Belfort vs. Kelvin Gastelum, Edson Barboza vs. Beneil Dariush, Mauricio Rua vs. Gian Villante 3/18 - UFC Fight Night 107 - London, England - Corey Anderson vs. Jimi Manuwa 4/8 - UFC 210 - Buffalo, NY - Daniel Cormier (c) vs. Anthony Johnson, Gegard Mousasi vs. Chris Weidman 4/15 - UFC TBA - Kansas City, MO - Tim Elliott vs. Louis Smolka 5/13 - UFC 211 - Dallas, TX - Stipe Miocic (c) vs. Junior dos Santos 5/27 - UFC TBA - Copenhagen, Denmark - Christian Colombo vs. Damian Grabowski ----- UFC Fight Night 104 - February 4, 2017 - Toyota Center - Houston, Texas 2017 has already seen UFC break with a few traditions - MLK weekend was in Phoenix instead of Boston, and here UFC breaks a streak of a few years, as the company is eschewing a pay-per-view over Super Bowl weekend in favor of a FS1 show in Houston, where the big game is taking place. And while this continues this year's trend of being somewhat low-wattage in terms of star power, it should be a hell of a show, as this is one of those cards where UFC has matched up a bunch of action fighters. Even past the headliner, which is the return of one of the better action fighters in recent history, "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung, there's a solid mix of prospects and just outright showcase performances that should make for a fun night of violence. Good stuff. MAIN CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 10:00 PM ET): Featherweight: (#9) Dennis Bermudez vs. Chan Sung Jung Women's Strawweight: (#12) Alexa Grasso vs. Felice Herrig Lightweight: Abel Trujillo vs. James Vick Light Heavyweight: (#6) Ovince St. Preux vs. Volkan Oezdemir Heavyweight: Marcel Fortuna vs. Anthony Hamilton Women's Strawweight: (#5) Jessica Andrade vs. Angela Hill PRELIMINARY CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 8:00 PM ET): Heavyweight: Curtis Blaydes vs. Adam Milstead Featherweight: Chris Gruetzemacher vs. Chas Skelly Bantamweight: Ricardo Ramos vs. Michinori Tanaka Women's Strawweight: (#6) Tecia Torres vs. Bec Rawlings PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 7:00 PM ET): Welterweight: Alex Morono vs. Niko Price Light Heavyweight: Daniel Jolly vs. Khalil Rountree THE RUNDOWN: Dennis Bermudez (16-5 overall, 9-3 UFC) vs. Chan Sung Jung (13-4 overall, 3-1 UFC, 0-2 WEC): It's been about three and a half years, but finally the day has come. "The Korean Zombie" is back. Chan Sung Jung became a bit of a phenomenon within the MMA bubble back in 2010 - he made his stateside debut in the featured prelim of WEC's lone pay-per-view and wound up having one of the best MMA fights of all time against Leonard Garcia, an absolute war that Jung lost in what was considered a bit of a robbery. But between the all-out action style of Jung and the fact that he has one of the best MMA nicknames of all time, the legend of "The Korean Zombie" was born, and Zuffa had a bit of a minor star on their hands. After surprisingly losing via knockout to George Roop in his only other WEC fight, Jung picked up where he left off with UFC - almost literally in fact, since UFC decided to rematch him with Garcia in a fight that wasn't quite as great as the first, but did give us the first and only twister submission in UFC history, as Jung basically tied Garcia into a pretzel. And then Jung made history a few more times, first knocking out Mark Hominick in just seven seconds to tie the fastest knockout in UFC history, and then putting on the consensus 2012 fight of the year in a war over Dustin Poirier. Despite a year-long injury layoff after that fight, Jung's notoriety still earned him a title shot at Jose Aldo, although he wasn't really able to do much with the champ, eventually losing in the fourth round after badly dislocating his shoulder. And just as Jung was ready to return, he was forced to serve his mandatory two years in the Korean military, resulting in this 42-month layoff. And UFC isn't really doing Jung any favors in his comeback, as while this should be a fun fight (hell, of course it should be, it's a Chan Sung Jung fight), Dennis Bermudez is a dangerous fringe contender. Bermudez looked to be close to a title shot by mid-2014, as he capped off a seven-fight win streak with a submission over Clay Guida, but once he got moved into the ranks of true contenders, some defensive holes became apparent. Ricardo Lamas handled Bermudez rather easily, stunning him with a jab before jumping onto a submission, and Bermudez was winning a fight with Jeremy Stephens rather handily before Stephens uncorked a beautiful flying knee from out of nowhere that gave him a sudden comeback win. It doesn't seem to be a case of Bermudez having a glass jaw so much as just defensive unawareness, but at any rate, Bermudez has since chosen to play it a bit safer, relying on his wrestling to beat Tatsuya Kawajiri and Rony Jason, though the latter did have some success with his submission game. As far as the fight goes, it's absolutely fascinating, particularly since Jung is such a question mark. Going back over his last few fights, I got reminded of exactly how dangerous Jung is a grappler - at least in my mind, the first thing that pops into my head for "The Korean Zombie" is back and forth striking wars, but particularly the Poirier fight showed that Jung is a dangerous, creative guy on the ground, and that the risky offense doesn't stop once the Zombie is on his back. So that makes it a really tricky fight for Bermudez - the two striking back and forth would probably spark into a crazy war that could go either way, but Bermudez relying on his theoretically safer wrestling game might not be all that safe, particularly since Bermudez has shown that he can be caught defensively unaware on the ground as well. Still, I kind of have to favor Bermudez to take this by decision, just because of the uncertainty around Jung - and while it does look like a lot of his game will still translate into the current landscape, there's just the fact that we haven't seen Jung fight since mid-2013, and things have changed a hell of a lot since then. But it should be a fun one - again, it's a Chan Sung Jung fight, and Bermudez has enough defensive flaws that Jung suddenly changing the momentum and getting a win wouldn't be a surprise. Alexa Grasso (9-0 overall, 1-0 UFC, 4-0 Invicta) vs. Felice Herrig (11-6 overall, 2-1 UFC, 0-1 Invicta, 3-0 Bellator): Even though it's honestly probably the third-most relevant of three strawweight fights on this card in terms of pure sport, the positioning shows that UFC is fully behind Alexa Grasso, and it's hard to blame them. Grasso has the looks, personality and skill to be one of UFC's big Mexican stars, and they're pretty much dusting off the Paige VanZant playbook in order to promote her, right down to making her second UFC fight against Felice Herrig. Grasso immediately became a prospect to watch upon her Invicta debut in 2014, and she's done nothing to dissuade that, putting on a fight of the year contender in 2015 against Mizuki Inoue and pretty much dominating all her competition. Grasso comes from a boxing family, and that's where she excels, possessing an excellent sense of distance and combinations, and after an injury layoff, she returned in 2016 and even showed off a bit of wrestling skill, shutting down Jodie Isquibel's wrestling game and imposing her own a bit. After a bit of a showcase bout in her UFC debut over Heather Jo Clark, Grasso now faces Herrig, who's strictly in the gatekeeper role, but might be Grasso's toughest test yet. Herrig's more known for her personality than anything - in the days when strawweight was still getting off the ground, Herrig made a bit of a name for herself by wearing provocative clothing and all sorts of weird outfits, and her stint on TUF 20 established her as a bit of a motor-mouth (which, having met her, I can also confirm was not editing) - but as far as in the cage, she's a solid, game wrestler-slash-grappler. That combination of skills made her a perfect stepping stone for VanZant, and essentially the same for Grasso here, but against lower-level foes like Lisa Ellis and Kailin Curran, Herrig has been able to latch on a submission without much trouble. This figures to be another Grasso showcase, so I'll pick her to win by decision, though there's the chance she gets so much momentum going on the feet that the referee steps in and stops it late, but there is the caveat that Herrig is probably the best grappler Grasso has faced, so there's a chance that if Grasso turns out to be awful on the ground, that gets exposed here. But still, I'm fairly comfortable picking the potential Mexican star. Abel Trujillo (15-6 [1] overall, 6-2 [1] UFC) vs. James Vick (9-1 overall, 5-1 UFC): This fight was thrown together after both men's original opponents got hurt, and it kind of shows, since this is a weird one. Abel Trujillo's carved out a bit of a niche as a berserker of an action fighter, but it's still hard to root for him, given that he has a fairly distressing history of domestic violence. As far as in the cage goes, Trujillo's seemingly learned to pace himself, as he initially had the rep of being strong for one round before gassing out, but he's still one of the purest examples of the "bully" mentality in MMA. Essentially, when Trujillo has the advantage, he's absolutely frightening, an explosive power puncher and takedown artist that's capable of scoring the finish at any moment. But when things don't go Trujillo's way, he has a bad tendency to cave in, and when guys like Tony Ferguson and Gleison Tibau have gotten the advantage, Trujillo has just sort of panicked and looked for a way out. So Trujillo's a fairly boom-and-bust fighter, and adding to the potential variance of this fight is that, even after almost five years in the UFC, it's still unclear how good James Vick is. The Texan came out of nowhere to make the semifinals of TUF 15 before falling to Michael Chiesa, and looked like an interesting prospect, thanks to his ridiculously long and tall frame for lightweight - Vick is 6'3", and as an example, he'll have a seven-inch height and six-inch reach advantage over Trujillo. But Vick's career settled into a weird pattern - for one thing, he'd often get hurt and have to spend a year between fights, and even though he racked up wins, UFC just never really did anything with him, just matching him against rising, unproven prospects. I forget exactly where I heard the analogy (I believe it was from Connor Reubusch, who does some good work breaking down the technical aspects of MMA), but it was like Vick wasn't moving up the ladder, but instead just sort of hiding behind the ladder and shoving other people off as they tried to move up themselves. But after derailing another prospect, in this case Glaico Franca, Vick finally got a legit fight in a late-notice bout against Beneil Dariush, and, well, he pretty much got smoked, as Dariush outboxed him and eventually knocked him out in brutal fashion. But, then again, Dariush is looking like a fringe title contender at the moment, so there's still a wide range as far as where Vick stands in the lightweight division. So, yeah, anything could happen here, but I'm picking Trujillo by decision, since I'm not exactly Vick will be able to deal with Trujillo's aggression and physicality enough to turn the tide. That said, Vick could just keep Trujillo at a distance and pick him apart, or, and this may be even more likely, I could see Vick continuing his trend of accidentally poking his opponents in the eyes, and that being enough to demoralize Trujillo and give Vick the advantage. But I'll stick with Trujillo by decision as my pick, though this is one of those bouts that is more or less a coin flip. Ovince St. Preux (19-9 overall, 7-4 UFC, 6-1 Strikeforce) vs. Volkan Oezdemir (12-1 overall, 1-1 Bellator): Well, light heavyweight needs bodies, and I guess we're going to continue to try with Ovince St. Preux, as this figured to be a bounce-back win against a late injury replacement. St. Preux was an interesting prospect for a while - a former linebacker for the University of Tennessee, St. Preux is a top-flight athlete, and Strikeforce and UFC both just let him move slowly up the ladder and rack up showcase wins. St. Preux chose to remain involved with the University of Tennessee community, continuing to train in Knoxville rather than seek out a bigger camp, and the result has been St. Preux developing a weird game, built around unorthodox striking and strange submissions where it all kind of works thanks to St. Preux's athleticism, but doesn't really fit together in any sort of cogent way. And that's gotten exploited badly as St. Preux has faced upper-level competition - outside of a quick knockout of Shogun Rua, most of St. Preux's big fights have been one-sided losses - Ryan Bader and Glover Teixeira just schooled him with grappling, Jon Jones treated him as a glorified sparring partner, and Jimi Manuwa put his lights out in October. It's probably time to move on from any thoughts of St. Preux becoming a top-flight fighter anymore, particularly since he's about to turn 34, and his athleticism-dependent style may go downhill quickly as he ages, but light heavyweight is also a thin enough division that OSP is probably going to remain a concern one way or another. Anyway, he faces Volkan Oezdemir, who becomes UFC's first Swiss fighter - Oezdemir apparently has a background in muay thai, but the fights that I've watched have seen him focus on taking his opponents down, where he's aggressive, but has trouble keeping his foes on the mat once he has them there. There's a chance Oezdemir can still do something with that - St. Preux, again, just sort of relies on his athleticism to get up after he's taken down and leaves some holes in doing so - but I just really don't see anything from Oezdemir that suggests he can compete with St. Preux's athleticism and power, unless St. Preux is hitting the decline phase even moreso than it looks like. I'll call for St. Preux to get a first-round knockout, but if he doesn't, this could be a bit of a slog. Marcel Fortuna (8-1 overall) vs. Anthony Hamilton (15-6 overall, 3-4 UFC): This is certainly happening. In a heavyweight division where everyone is pretty much either a contender by default or just hot garbage, Anthony Hamilton seems to be one of the few who's just sort of a guy. He's just a really physically big dude who can do a little bit of everything, and his UFC record places him squarely as a middle-of-the-road gatekeeper - he's had no problem with lower-level guys like Ruan Potts and Damian Grabowski who just aren't at a UFC level, but anyone decent has beaten him, including Francis Ngannou, who tapped him out in his last fight. This was a really late addition to the card, so Hamilton is facing UFC newcomer and inflated light heavyweight Marcel Fortuna, a Brazilian who trains out of California. Fortuna hasn't fought in about a year and a half, as his only MMA action of 2016 was trying out for the Jedrzejczyk/Gadelha season of The Ultimate Fighter, where he lost a close decision to Cory Hendricks before even getting into the house. I'm a little surprised UFC didn't at least wait for Fortuna to win a fight or two somewhere else before taking him on, but I can see what they liked looking at film, since Fortuna has a BJJ background and looks pretty solid as a wrestler/grappler against a middling slate of competition. But I don't really think he can do much here - Fortuna's game is extremely one-dimensional, and he had trouble even taking down Hendricks with Hendricks's size and athleticism. And while Hamilton may not be quite as athletic, he's a much, much bigger dude than the 205ers (and some converted middleweights) that Fortuna was having success against on the regional scene. I have no idea how good Fortuna's chin is, but I figure he'll be overwhelmed here, and I'll just call for Hamilton to get the first-round knockout. Jessica Andrade (15-5 overall, 6-3 UFC) vs. Angela Hill (6-2 overall, 1-2 UFC, 4-0 Invicta): From a sporting standpoint, this is probably the most important fight on the show, since Jessica Andrade is the assumed next contender for Joanna Jedrzejczyk's strawweight belt, and Angela Hill will be right there if she scores the upset in her UFC return. Andrade was somewhat mercurial during her time at bantamweight - she'd look dominant against overmatched competition and could seemingly do a bit of everything, but she'd suffer some bad losses, getting tapped out rather easily by Marion Reneau and Raquel Pennington. Strawweight didn't really seem like an option - even though Andrade was short for the division, she seemed to be too thickly muscled to cut much weight, but she took about nine months off to cut down to 115, and the results have been outstanding. Andrade has been an absolute powerhouse, overpowering Jessica Penne on the feet and just bulling Joanne Calderwood in the grappling game, looking like one of the most dangerous physical threats in the division. Meanwhile, Hill's had a weird path here, as I'm not exactly sure what the hell UFC was trying to do with her in her first stint with the promotion. Hill was part of the cast for TUF 20, which was a tournament to crown UFC's inaugural champion, even if she didn't really belong there - she was a 1-0 striker at the time, and while she showed some potential and some personality, it's hard not to see her inclusion as tokenism at worst or just TV execs wanting a marketable face on the show at best. And then, after a solid win over Emily Kagan, UFC pretty much threw her to the wolves, putting a 2-0 fighter against two of the top fighters in the division, as Tecia Torres out-wrestled her and Rose Namajunas choked her out. And then UFC cut her, which really was a bad look, since it looked like they had pretty much failed in developing what could've been a marketable, exciting prospect. But Hill landed in Invicta quickly thereafter and had a breakout 2016, going 4-0, showing greatly improved grappling defense, and taking Invicta's strawweight belt from Livia Renata Souza, who was looking like the next big thing at 115. After one title defense, Hill re-signed with UFC, and after some issues with her getting cleared to return by USADA, her fight with Andrade gets moved from UFC 207 to here. It should be an interesting one, though I favor Andrade pretty handily - the big story is going to be more how much Hill's improvements shine through rather than expecting her to win. I always think of Hill as taller and rangier than she actually is (maybe it's the hair, although she's gone with a close fade for this fight), but she'll still have that advantage on the stout Andrade, so I could see Hill having some success picking her apart at range. But I'm not really sure how Hill will handle Andrade's power if she's able to get through, and the grappling game favors Andrade hugely - while Hill's takedown and submission defense is much improved, she still had to do a lot of work against Souza, and Andrade is a complete powerhouse compared to Souza. So it may come with some difficulty, but I see Andrade eventually taking things to the ground and dominating from there, enough so that I'll call for a second-round submission. Curtis Blaydes (6-1 overall, 1-1 UFC) vs. Adam Milstead (8-1 overall, 1-0 UFC): Yes, somehow, two heavyweight prospects that are each under thirty years old are squaring off. Adam Milstead's only a few months shy, but that still counts, and the Pittsburgh native is coming off a solid UFC debut in May, outboxing Chris De La Rocha en route to a referee stoppage. He'll face Illinois's Curtis Blaydes, who came into UFC with a decent amount of hype thanks to his size and strong wrestling background, but ran into Francis Ngannou in his UFC debut before rebounding in October with a win over Cody East. Both guys are promising - Blaydes in particular is just a beast of a man, one of those guys who actually needs to cut to make heavyweight, and even his fairly one-sided loss to Ngannou looks impressive, since he had some success getting Ngannou to the ground, if not keeping him there. Honestly, this may be a weird comparison, but I see this similarly to the Andrade/Hill fight on the complete opposite side of the size spectrum - while Milstead has a wrestling background, he's primarily been a boxer in his recent MMA fights, and should be able to have some success trading with Blaydes in the pocket. But I just don't see Milstead being able to handle Blaydes's physicality, and I figure Blaydes will be able to take things to the ground a solid percentage of the time and just maul Milstead from there. Both guys are still raw and improving, so the possibilities are a bit wide here, but I'll call for Blaydes to eventually ground-and-pound out Milstead sometime in the third round. Chris Gruetzemacher (13-1 overall, 1-0 UFC, 1-0 Strikeforce) vs. Chas Skelly (16-2 overall, 5-2 UFC, 3-0 Bellator): Sure. Chas Skelly has had a somewhat underrated UFC career thus far - he's a bit older than you'd think, since he'll probably be 32 by his next fight, but he's one of the better grinders out there, and opens things up enough that he scores the occasional submission. Despite being the betting favorite for some reason, he lost pretty handily to Darren Elkins this past March, establishing that Skelly isn't king of the featherweight grinders just yet, but he rebounded in extremely unexpected fashion in a crazy fight against Maximo Blanco, as both men decided to start the fight with running, flying kicks, Skelly's hit cleaner, and Skelly subsequently locked on a choke to win in just nineteen seconds. Crazy stuff. Skelly returns to his home state of Texas to face Arizona's Chris Gruetzemacher, who's a solid wrestle-boxer. Gruetzemacher had a decent run on the McGregor/Faber season of TUF in late 2015, won a fight over castmate Abner Lloveras to stay on the roster, and returns here after missing all of 2016. Gruetzemacher is fine at everything, but it's hard to see where he stands out - he could stick around if he just gets matched with the right lower-level guys coming off losses, but he really does seem like one of those fighters who can have a ton of success on the smaller circuits, but will struggle against UFC-level fighters. At any rate, unless Gruetzemacher has improved greatly in his year off, this seems like a pretty one-sided win for Skelly, so I'll call for him to just out-wrestle "Gritz" and earn a one-sided decision, with a chance of him getting a submission at some point. Ricardo Ramos (9-1 overall) vs. Michinori Tanaka (11-2 overall, 2-2 UFC): This is an interesting first UFC fight for Ricardo Ramos, who comes into UFC with a bunch of hype, and deservedly so. Ramos is just twenty-one years old, but he's put together an excellent resume thus far, racking up win after win thanks to an exciting submission game, reminiscent of Charles Oliveira, where he just chains together techniques until he finds one his opponent isn't able to stop. That said, Ramos has already flown a little too close to the sun, as Manny Vazquez was able to reverse things on him and tap him out for his lone career loss, but between his submission skills, his long frame, and some pretty decent striking already, the sky is pretty much the limit for Ramos. He debuts against Michinori Tanaka, who's one of the better Japanese prospects of the recent wave that came into UFC. Tanaka's a strong athlete, a solid submission artist, and has some solid, movement-based striking - the type of overall package that doesn't really stick out, but should be enough to keep Tanaka around in UFC for a bit while trading wins and losses. This could really go either way - Ramos obviously has a high ceiling, and it's just a matter of if it's too much, too soon at the moment. I'll roll with the top prospect and say Ramos racks up another first round submission, but if he's not able to do much against Tanaka, that's perfectly fine, since the long-term outlook is still so good. Tecia Torres (7-1 overall, 3-1 UFC, 4-0 Invicta) vs. Bec Rawlings (7-5 overall, 2-2 UFC, 1-2 Invicta): Part of me still thinks the UFC dropped the ball a bit when it comes to Tecia Torres, even if I understand why they don't really seem to be enthralled with pushing her as a top contender. When Torres came onto the scene in Invicta back in 2012, she looked like a future star - "The Tiny Tornado" was a particularly apt nickname, as Torres would just mix in her wrestling with a vast array of spinning strikes; add in the fact that she was a cute Latina, and she really did look like someone UFC could build around whenever they introduced strawweights. But things never really clicked - Torres has always been held in high regard, but as she's gotten better as a fighter, she's also gotten much more conservative, relying on her wrestling and grinding clinchwork in a lot of fights, and replacing that exciting, but reckless, striking game with more steady kickboxing. Wins over Angela Hill and Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger were pretty unmemorable and didn't do her many favors, and a narrow loss to Rose Namajunas last April left Torres out of the title picture, and she's apparently had trouble getting a fight booked since. But she returns here after about ten months to fight Bec Rawlings, in a rematch of a Torres win on season 20 of TUF. Rawlings came into Invicta with a splash based off a solid record in her native Australia and a strong social media presence, but it soon became apparent that she wasn't really up to snuff as a title contender for the promotion. But she's eventually settled into a solid mid-card niche, as she's a decent, fun striker with just enough grappling to get by. Still, this is pretty much a keep-busy rebound win for Torres, as she's probably the better striker and should always have her wrestling to fall back on. Rawlings being big for the division while Torres is so small could be a concern, but Torres is always so undersized, and it hasn't really hampered her yet, so the call is Torres by fairly one-sided decision. Alex Morono (13-3 overall, 2-0 UFC) vs. Niko Price (9-0 overall, 1-0 UFC): This should be a pretty fun welterweight fight, as both guys have put on solid performances in their UFC careers thus far, and we're still figuring out exactly what both have to offer. Alex Morono probably didn't deserve the upset division win over Kyle Noke in his UFC debut, but he at least made good the second time around with a one-sided win over James Moontasri. Morono seems to be a solid striker and that's about it, though when he starts smelling blood, like he did in the Moontasri fight, his gameplan does tend to shift towards "start winging punches." Morono, a Houston native, is fighting on a pretty quick seven-week turnaround, though his opponent, Florida's Niko Price, is fighting on just five weeks notice himself. Price made his UFC debut on the Nunes/Rousey card, tapping out Brandon Thatch, and looked like a pretty solid, aggressive athlete - with the caveat that at this point, exploiting Thatch's ground game doesn't really seem to be clearing a high bar. Anyway, this is basically a coin flip fight, and I'll favor Price by decision, if only because Morono's wrestling game seems pretty untested itself, and Price has at least shown that much. But this could be a fun one, since both guys seem to fight quite aggressively. Daniel Jolly (5-1 overall, 0-1 UFC) vs. Khalil Rountree (4-2 overall, 0-2 UFC): Okay, so I assume this has to be the last chance for Khalil Rountree, at least in the UFC. When the cast for TUF 23 was announced, the two big favorites were Rountree and Phil Hawes, two middleweights (although the season was at 205) who were considered among the best prospects in MMA at any weight class. And while Rountree has done better than Hawes (who didn't even make it into the house, and was last seen getting tapped out in WSOF), the Las Vegas native has still been a huge disappointment. Rountree did make it to the final of the season, but Andrew Sanchez wound up making him look awful once he got there, taking Rountree down at will; things went badly enough that you could hear Rountree's mother in the crowd, telling her son to get up. After that, Rountree was matched against debuting Australian Tyson Pedro, and it was more or less the same story - Rountree rocked Pedro with his trademark striking power, but Pedro just shot for a takedown and it was pretty much all over from there, as Pedro eventually worked his way to a first-round submission. Rountree's a powerhouse of a fighter, and as TUF showed, when he's on, it's awesome, since he hits like a truck, but the lack of takedown defense and complete lack of improvement is making him look like a bust thus far in his UFC career. So, hopefully third time's the charm against "The Werewolf of Texas" Daniel Jolly, who's primarily a wrestler and a ground-and-pound artist. That made for a horrible matchup in his UFC debut against Misha Cirkunov back in August of 2015, as Cirkunov's own strength is his high level judo game, so Jolly just had no answers for the Latvian prospect. And, well, frankly, given how disadvantageous that style matchup was, he couldn't ask for a more advantageous rebound here. I'm going to go with my heart a bit and pick Rountree to finally get on track and score a first-round knockout, but I'm probably wrong in doing so, since Jolly can wrestle, and once he gets that first takedown, this might be a wrap.