#as if he could submerse himself into your laugh just one more time

[dfortrafalgar]

Watching You In The Morning

Inspired by “Watching You In The Morning” by Waltzin

Law x Fem Reader

Warnings: fluff, kinda poetic? more narrative study than plot, more fluff

Also posted on AO3

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

The rise and fall of your chest was a perfect metronome, as if you were dancing along to the patter of raindrops as they fell against the submersible’s porthole.  In your deep, whimsical slumber, you would never even know of the romantic waltz your very presence exuded upon the man in the bed next to you.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Slow, methodical.  His tattooed fingers dusted fleetingly across the skin of your neck, reaching out to you with reserve, with apprehension, with want.  He felt himself smile, chapped lips tugging ever so slightly at his cheeks at the sight of your serenity, lost in the haze of your dreams.  You were truly beautiful.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

He could watch your breathing forever.  He could die at the crevice of your chest, just to know that you were still inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling.  To know that you were alive, that your flesh was warm with your blood, that your nerves could feel his hands against your skin, was plenty for him.  He forever worshiped the ground you walked on, relishing in your every moment.  Every word you spoke, every blink of your eyes, curve of your smile, every time your perfect hand fit snugly into his like a statue carved from the finest marble.

His calloused fingers traced invisible lines up your neck, towards your jaw, barely touching you enough to feel the slight fuzz of your natural facial hair.  He ghosted across your dimpled skin, absorbing the heat you radiated, memorizing every cell he could touch.  His eyes darted toward your lips, parted ever so slightly to breathe.

In.

Out.

When his slate-gray eyes looked back up toward yours, you were also looking back at him.  You blinked in slow motion, eyes heavy with the waning of your slumber.  You grinned at him, a sight that made the cold man’s heart do pierrouets, fluttering below his ribcage.  Any more unbridled affection towards him would make his chest rip open in a flood of snow-white doves.

With exhaustion on your tongue, voice crackling without being used, you spoke.  “Were you watching me?”

His fingers retraced their steps along your skin, landing at your collarbones where he mimicked the line of your bone.  “How could I not?”

You laughed.  A sound so bright, so warm, almost too warm.  A sound that made his body lighter, his hair stand on end.  A sound that filled his senses with yellow and violet hues, that smelled like peaches and lavender, that engulfed him in a sweet embrace of a hearth’s heat.  Your laugh made the walls he had spent a decade building up crumble with vigor, chips of glass falling to the ground and shattering into irreparable pieces.

Pieces that he was starting to think did not need to be repaired.

He adjusted his body with the motion of you shuffling closer to him, nestling yourself perfectly in the crevice of his shoulder, his arms around your body, secure and safe.  He smelled of cedar and ethanol, a faint tinge of gasoline and the essence of sugar.  You melted like butter in his hold, paralyzed in his arms, a willing prisoner of his presence.  You felt his chest rise and fall with his shallow breaths.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Your own air tickled the skin of his breast, tiny, gentle feathers in a spring breeze.  Your fingers crawled along his side before looping your arm under his and pulling your body ever closer.  Oh how you wished you could break the universe for just one moment, to part his atoms and truly become one with him.  Even just a zeptosecond would be enough.

“If you keep thinking this hard, you might blow a fuse.”  His low voice rumbled against your head.

“How did you know?” you responded, voice light and airy, lovestruck and dumb.

He released a chuckle from his throat.  “I just had a feeling.”

Silence once again fell over the two of you.  Save for the continuous rain that fell, a faded noise in the backdrop of the aura he surrounded you with.  Washing away all worries, all fears.

“Can we stay like this forever?”

The question surprised you.  It wasn’t like him to ask such silly, menial queries.  Ever the pessimist, ever the analytical scientist.  He lived for the truth of the world and the facts of life.  He had you for the optimism and the joy for life that he lacked, a perfect balance.  The Yang to his Yin.

You simply hummed.  Tilting your head up to meet his eyes, you felt your blood rush to your face like a flame.  “Forever.”

His arms squeezed you once, then twice.  He sighed, melancholy.  The rain continued to fall, the vessel continued to sway monotonously on the surface of the vast, open ocean, but you stayed anchored to his bed, to his sheets, in his unmoving arms.

He smiled again.  “Thank you.”

No response was followed, and no response was needed.  Your breaths fanning against his skin were more than enough.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

[willowser]

i have this like one hc that pro-hero work involves a lot of traveling, especially in the beginning. they move here for six months and then there for four and then here for 14 and so on, just to get experience out in the field.

so it only makes sense you and bakugou end things, right at the start of his career.

and it's okay. it is. bc you both love each other and you know that, know that it's not ending bc of any huge, terrible fight that makes you enemies of one another. all the memories you'll carry can stay gold, not tarnished by anything other than the bittersweet distance.

getting used to it takes a little time, that's all; before he was your boyfriend, he was your friend, first and foremost. someone you had inside jokes with and had similar interests you could talk to about for hours, things that you only did with him and no one else. things only he knew. and not getting to tell him exciting news about college or ask if he saw the limited edition, golden age all might nendoroid they're releasing at the end of the year...sucks. it feels wrong, like these are things he's supposed to know, no matter what. things you're supposed to talk about.

you call him five months into his eight month nagoya contract and he doesn't answer. you think maybe he changed his number and didn't tell you, bc he doesn't actually have to anymore. bakugou has always been good about self control, keeping to himself, and it wouldn't surprise you if he's written you off without a second thought—bc this is how it's supposed to be when you break up with someone.

it's not until the next day that you get a text, late in the evening.

[9:26 PM] did you mean to call me

of course you did, but maybe you shouldn't have. hearing the line ring over and over again—it's cemented the realization that he's not thinking about you anymore. that he's moved on and you should too and he probably doesn't want to hear whatever if is you want to talk about. he'll probably just think you're weird. clingy.

yeah, but it's nothing important [9:32 PM]

he reads it immediately and—nothing happens. and you think that's it. hopefully you didn't come off too passive aggressive and now he thinks you're mad that he didn't answer. maybe you should have put an emoji, the little smiling one with the hands to show no biggie ! maybe you should have just said that, or that you couldn't remember the name of that hiking trail you did together two summers ago, but then you googled it and didn't need him anymore. or something.

he calls at 10:03.

your heart is in your throat when you pick up, beating like crazy bc you haven't heard his voice in a while. "uh, hello?"

and he hesitates too; his drawn out inhale doesn’t go unnoticed. "hey."

there's a brief period of silence on the line, some light shuffling on his end. sounds of cars passing, the rare honk of what traffic lingers this late at night. the wind scratches by, audible, and you shiver despite being in your own bed. you imagine him under a dim streetlight, fully outfitted.

bakugou huffs, "you called me?"

"yeah," you blink and sit up, though you don't know why. maybe because this needs your full attention, or because you don't want your voice to get muffled by your pillow. "i was just, uh—my roommate. she asked me if i've ever been to gekikara gourmet festival—"

"oh my god."

it's the exasperation in his voice that makes you laugh, so vivid, exactly as you remember it, and you can picture the face he must be making. "i know, i was like 'oh boy, have i'."

"d'you tell her you puked—"

"—with my head between my knees while sitting on that kiddie slide, yes i did."

he snorts, just the way he did as he patted the back of your head that night, awkwardly, standing beside you with a fist at his side. "told you not to try those fucking noodles."

you agree. "they were making even you sweat, i don't know what i was thinking."

it had been one of your first official dates, and you think all the spicy food didn't help with your restless nerves. it always felt stupid, looking back on it, to be so afraid; you'd known bakugou forever, and the only difference between that night and the many you'd spent before as friends was that he'd kissed your temple, lips red from spice and all. it was just bakugou, you thought. what was there to be anxious about?

and now the silence is making your stomach turn.

"yeah," you continue lamely, "nothing important, it just—made me think of you."

he doesn't say anything. if it weren't for the distant slam of something—a trash can lid or car door—you would think he hung up. he's always had a hard time with his words and you don't really even understand why he called instead of texting. if there was something he wanted to say to you, you aren't sure he could.

"so, i guess i'll let you—"

"y'got a roommate now?"

"uh, yeah." something ugly in your stomach wants there to be jealousy in his tone, and you shake your head to be rid of the thought. because it shouldn't matter. "she's in a couple of my classes. big fan of, like, kpop and stuff."

he snorts again and you can imagine the roll of his eyes, bright with amusement despite the frown on his lips. you love that look on him; so content that it felt out of his character, something he wanted to hide. being the cause of it has always been so sweet. "different apartment?"

"yeah, in a little dorm on campus." he didn't live with you long, just in the time between graduating and when his applications to agencies began returning acceptions. "couldn't afford that place by myself."

bakugou hums, and your eyes swim so suddenly that you have to take the phone away from your head. you wonder if he misses those days as much as you do. the simple life, doing the mundane together; washing clothes in the laundry room downstairs, having to clean the dishes by hand or the dishwasher would flood the tiny kitchen, taking quick showers together so that you'd both get hot water.

it was terrible. it was perfect. the kind of life you could never have, with dynamight.

his voice buzzes distantly and you sniff, wiping at your eyes with the sleeve of your sweater before putting the phone back up to your ear.

"what'd you say?"

"that—" he huffs, "nothin'." you sniff again, unthinking, and he goes completely silent again. no inhale, no exhale.

he's not stupid. he probably knew this would happen and that's why he didn't want to answer. it was hard enough for him to get the words out the first time ("just gonna be shit, for you to be waitin'. eraser told me not to—won't be able to keep any fucking—and i don't wanna be some jackass that just lets you down all the fuckin' time.")

"sorry," you laugh because you feel awkward, because you didn't mean to force what you've been suffocating on him all at once. "i don't know what just happened."

bakugou mumbles, "s'fine."

you think that even if there was something he wanted to say, he wouldn't know how.

"but yeah," you sigh and scrub a hand over your face again. "no biggie, just thought it was funny when she asked and wanted to tell you. it's actually kind of late and i need to head to bed, but i'll—" talk to him later, is what you want to say, but your stomach drops and you know that it's not that easy. not anymore.

maybe it will be one day in the future, but this is the life you have to live, for now. all you can do is hold onto that hope, as your throat tries to tighten again.

"fuck, i—" he breathes, so frustrated that it nearly becomes a grunt, "y'don't know how—just, goddammit, in three months i'll—"

"i know," you tell him, and you smile like he can see it. in three months, he'll come back, to accept another contract, and then he'll be gone again. if there was a way to make it work, bakugou would have found it. of all people, bakugou would have found it. "it's okay," you tell him.

and it is. it is.

[komoreangel]

𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬

pairing: kazuha x reader

scenario: kazuha takes you to the lake for a romantic getaway, and he finds himself reminiscing of days long gone…ah, but you’re here with him, and that’s the only blessing he really needs, isn’t it?

genre: fluff, kazuha misses his friend but he loves u a lot !! + kazuha with messy hair hdbnd

request: KAZUHA AND HIS S/O SWIMMIGN TOGTHER IN A LAKE <\\3 SO ROMANTIC

a/n: SO TRUE ANON!! man,,,no ones doing it like kazuha,,,sexy and romantic? 🏃‍♀️

he woke you up that morning with a soft grin, telling you he had great plans for the day ahead. you had only just woken up, and already the words that fell upon your ears were nothing short of adoration, along with him trying his best to convince you to agree.

his efforts were in vain, because you would’ve followed him anywhere without hesitation. after getting dressed and grabbing your things, he took you by the hand and the two of you made your way out of the harbor. the crux was temporarily docked there while beidou visited ningguang (which the crew knew could take days, as it was painfully obvious they were more than just business partners).

“kazuha, where are you taking me?” you asked him after a while. you had thought he was planning on going to guyun stone forest again, as the shores of his homeland, inazuma, we’re faintly visible from there. he loved telling you stories about the land of his birth, and always said he’d take you there someday.

“don’t fret, y/n, it’s just a different route this time,” he assured you. however, the farther you got from the coast, the more you realized he had a different location in mind. before you could joke about how he’d tricked you, the two of you stood on a cliff overlooking luhua pool.

he offered to carry your bag and set it down in the sand. “darling, come here,” he called. you went over to him, leaning your head on his shoulder as you gazed at the crystal blue waters in front of you. the weather was rather nice that day, and he was ecstatic to have you here with him.

after enjoying the scenery for a while, he once more took you by the hand, with his eyes only on you and nowhere else. “you want to go in?” you have to admit, the water was gorgeous, and it had been getting a bit hot, as if the sun itself would concede to his wishes. “but i’m just in my clothes, i don’t..” he pulled you closer to the water, slightly chuckling at your protests.

“relax, dearest. there’s no harm in getting your clothes wet, is there? it’s hot enough outside that just setting them on the deck will dry them by tomorrow.” you can’t help but agree with him, especially when he looks at you like that. “alright, but if my clothes get ruined, it’s on you.” you tell him. his eyes light up at your words, and the two of you head closer to the water.

“of course, i’ll take full responsibility.” he replies, and as he steps further into the lake, you follow after him. you move your foot forwards, not realizing how deep the water is, and before you can stop yourself, are falling headfirst into the lake. your hair, along with all of your clothes, are now soaked. to your surprise (and slight annoyance), kazuha lifts you up with one hand, his hands steadying you.

“be careful, y/n. we don’t want you drowning, now do we?” you are slightly miffed that he didn’t help you earlier (because from past experience you know he was fully capable of stopping you from falling) and in retaliation you lean down into the water, as if to look for something. he notices, and turns towards you. “is something the matter?”

“yeah, i’m looking for my bracelet, it fell off in the water.” at this, he also leans down beside you, unaware that the bracelet you speak of is actually in your bag, which he was carrying earlier. as soon as his face nears the water, you push him down, his surprise evident as he lets out a yelp of surprise. you laugh at his struggle, as for once, the man who is always ever so eloquent and full of nothing but the most elegant of words is startled.

his head rises above the water with a tired smile on his face. “i suppose i should’ve expected that, hm?” his hair is wet, and has gotten messy from the sudden submersion into the lake. despite it being a prank of yours, you can’t help but think he looks even prettier this way. you help him up, continuing to laugh as you do so.

"sorry," you say between giggles. he continues to grin, pausing to add, "you didn't actually lose the bracelet, did you?" the bracelet was a gift from him to you for one of your anniversaries. "of course not, kaz. i'd never lose it."

he smiles at you and turns his gaze to the water. it wasn't long ago he was standing here with tomo... hoping to himself that things would forever stay that way. moments like these are when he truly understands the shogun's desire for 'eternity'. for the time we spend with our loved ones to last forever, and for the emotions and feelings we hold dearly to never end.

"kazuha, are you okay?" you've moved towards him, your hand on his shoulder. he falters a bit. "ah...yes, darling, don't worry. just lost in a thought, that's all." the smile you give at his words is everything to him, even if you don't know it. "thank you for bringing me here, kazuha. i know it's an important place to you."

so you'd known what he was feeling the whole time? he'd always said you understood him like no one else did, but apparently even he didn't know to what extent. he feels so comforted in your presence, like he doesn't have to say anything to convey his feelings. you just know, and vice versa.

he's never felt more grateful to have someone like you by his side. maybe, even though tomo is long gone, his friend had done him one final favor and pushed you in his direction. because to be in love with a person as amazing as you, kazuha believes there's got to be some other force of nature at work.

a/n: IM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG ANON </3 I MEANT TO RELEASE IT EARLIER I SWEAR. there goes kit again with her wack post schedule. BUT 2.1 IS OUT!! AND SCARAMOUCHE APPEARED!! FOR FIVE MINUTES!!!! all jokes aside IM SO HAPPY HE FINALLY SHOWED UP. LIKE....GENUINELY WHEN I WAS PLAYING THE UPDATE AND I SAW HIM I WAS VERY VERY SATISFIED 10/10 !! i also learned the way i portray him might be completely ooc...which is fine its fine im fine- but i think i will be posting more scara content (whos surprised) just to celebrate plus i also wanted to get this one out before another day goes by where i forget, thank u for reading !! <33

[petalsmooth]

Ok.

Let’s talk Lili.

First off we only know what stars put out about themselves or other people say about them. We are not friends with these people. We are not in their homes. We don’t usually hear what they say in unguarded conversation. What we know is what is out on social media with some highly distorted soundbites from chats or DM’s with her mother that were exposed.

We were initially presented a portrait pushed by her and her family no less of a middle class family with the standard girl next door hit it big narrative. Down to earth, relatable, somewhat quirky. Strong two parent supportive household. All that was missing were the apron and pearls.

This girl came out of the gates talking about a modernized Riverdale with two girls who would be actually close and not vying for the same redhead. Feel free to add/or correct along the way of course...especially early on when not following as closely.

We got very little in the way of insight into Cole and Lili because they were trying to keep it quiet even if there were hints together. Mostly during this period what fans were fed was that she was slightly awkward socially, maybe not the most intellectual but nice and harmless. She spoke of empowering women, independence, she constantly shut down the idea of Barchie and praised Bughead. Along through the year’s she would speak to social bullying or bullying in general. She would openly talk about struggles with mental health. She’d talk and show her cystic acne and share photos not all airbrushed in ode to body positivity. She’d talk about not having an hourglass figure, and cellulite and often go out in ratty shorts and a bun sans makeup. You see she’d talk about it then follow through by showing lived the walk or calling out photoshops done of her.

Again this is “relatable girl next door quirky Lili” we told was the REAL Lili.

She would frequently talk and post about her family and dogs at home and how much she loved and missed them...though oddly not so much her older sister.

At a certain point it became undeniable Cole and Lili were together to even the hardest deniers. Of course also the Met gala eventually made official for media.

We get have her liking posts such as Miley’s about how lucky she was to have a man who checked off all the boxes. But at times there were glimpses all wasn’t kosher. People have mentioned various cons where she’d be caught flirting somewhere else, or she’d be in a bad mood giving Cole a cold shoulder. We recently saw an old video of them walking and her basically demanding he drop the fans and attend her. We have the con were Camilla is sexually harassing Cole everywhere and Lili doesn’t shut it down until Camilla tries to grind on him. It was so bad even Mads intervened. We have the interview where she is talking over him or rolling her eyes and basically being the unprofessional brat her fans claim she is not. Even though it’s ON CAMERA. Snapping at your co worker/boyfriend and rolling your eyes during a professional interview is not deniable.

Flashforward to the trip to Italy because for me there was always something off about that. That trip was obviously planned far in advance. Clearly Lili was supposed to be there. Her fans quickly blamed Cole because Lili was working. Lili didn’t have to work. It wasn’t a career changing move to do that film. It did not do well. I’m not entirely sure what was happening around that time but I have the sense Cole was disappointed/a  little angry she prioritized it over him accepting very likely the offer AFTER the trip was planned.

Lili spirals during this time. Cole comes back to clean up mess. They are quiet on social media for a long time then slowly emerge again and eventually get the photo booth shots, the wedding and her mingling with NY friends for once. Turns out close to the end for them.

I don’t want to make this a Sprousehart post though although some relevance to bring part of it up. The point is Lili put her career over her relationship. It was a calculated decision. It was also the wrong decision. Her fans talk about her being this warm giving person but that was a cynical call and a pretty lousy thing to do to your boyfriend of several year’s. I’m all for supportive partners but there are time’s where you make sacrifices if you really care for someone and this was a special trip planned long in advance. She blew it off. If I’m the partner she does this too, I question why I’m putting in the effort if it doesn’t mean to them what it means to me. 

TBH I think the bad choices she made there is why tried to make it up by meeting with his friends, the wedding etc...

Something than clearly happened because by January they were done. Not sure we’ll ever know but it looked like they were trying to fix things given the happiness hadn’t seen on Cole’s faces in a long time in those booth pics and then...it was done. We didn’t know at the time, but this is timeline Cole gave. There was a brief attempt at reconciliation where she babysits him at a photo shoot and posts a photo of them in bed and then shortly after...Cole calls it off. 

He heads to LA, she follows him there but not without making sure to shove Casey’s face into her chest to post and rent a place close to where he is staying. She posts weepy messages about the world ending etc....and weird new photos mimicking old shoots with him so naturally people think this means whatever happened they worked through. Around same time she and hers manipulated her fans to try to cancel him earlier because she misunderstood a picture of Kaia....although flat out if he had been with Kaia he was SINGLE and it was no longer her business.

She tries to walk back the firestorm she unleashed on him by “defending” him from a lesser twitter trend after realizing misconstrued the Kaia picture, All summer she weirdly seems to be trying to avoid the topic if they are together or not despite saying once if they weren’t she’d tell people. She finally puts her foot in her mouth one two many times' and Cole confirms they broke up which she doesn’t acknowledge. Because she doesn’t want to be broken up.

As we know know it wasn’t all rainbows on the set even before all this happened as in the musical she’d launched an object at him hard enough to have the crew concerned. Lili fans keep saying Cole is abusive but the only evidence we have of abuse is her towards him. We also had her suddenly doing a 180 from past 4 year’s and excusing cheating with Archie and promoting everyone in her live recaps except Cole/Jughead.

Back to the events following Cole’s post....then we get a sudden string of interviews taking shots at Cole, doxxing him, implying he could have strayed (just to resurrect hate against him) but can’t say he actually did because she has no proof. We know this because in those chats admit it was just suspicion and paranoia and never did have any names.

We learn that Lili has been funneling news and gossip and photos to keep her mother’s hold on the fandom in check and her mother in turn has been bullying people who would stand on Cole’s side. They sought to ruin him. This is not debatable.

For year’s people had made fun and called Bree out for being an obsessive stalker unable to let a relationship go, then Lili starts doing the same. We know she has tried to copy Ari’s style, her mother made a snide comment about breast size, Lili tried to taunt Ari from on set and Ari shut her down. A girl who almost never was in the line of sight of paps suddenly is snapped everyday following break up even before the public new. That doesn’t just happen. She wanted the attention.

I’m not going to go into all of it, you all know it. Suffice to say revealing she has a bitter vindictive attitude she has submersed herself in ever since Cole made it clear no reunion. She won’t even broach the topic of Bughead/Jughead unless forced. You can spin all you like but the split screens was not an artistic choice by RD. It was spurred by need to keep them apart.

Lili last summer was doing precious little other than a post or two of Black Lives matter and then when Cole gets arrested suddenly she jumps on the me too and sets up impulsive lives. Maybe she meant well but a part of me thinks she did it to attract his attention. Notice once she got praise for it and the initial protests faded she more or less doesn’t bring it up anymore. Cole never intended to get attention, it just happened because he’s a star and got taken in to a jail cell. He never put himself on camera for notice. 

Lili also co-opts the murder of a girl to flaunt she thinks she looks good naked. Completely tone deaf. 

Lili very rarely is seen in fan photos, only usually when she’s getting flack for it online. She, a girl who talks about bullying, went on a  midnight tirade against a guy who dares to critique or poetry setting her fans on him. Then deleted it probably because publicist in her ear.

She first said poems not about Cole, than said you could read into what you wanted to sell them. Now she doesn’t want to talk poetry or sequels because it flopped and was critically panned.

There are constant rumors about Lili on sets of productions to point they even had someone on her newer movie try to downplay. Yet we see in a video the cast barely talking and looking tense on a boat. 

The girl who used to talk about body positivity now lets them airbrush abs onto her.

The girl who used to talk of therapy and mental illness now promotes OTC supplements for $ and cults.

If she mentions cellulite she uses other tik toks of people showing not her own. 

She said she would never be on tik tok, yet now has her own and post old videos that aren’t funny.

Lili once tired to attack Cole by talking about losing yourself in drugs or alcohol or sex yet we’ve seen her drug paraphernalia because she advertises. Her friends post and laugh over her being drunk. She was in an off and on relationship with Wallis that doesn’t seem to be about anything but sex.

We were told Coles friends are bad influences but Taylor is out there solicitating questionable clients and making videos slamming LILI’S COWORKER as a bad actor and his brother,

The majority of Lili’s posts no longer feature Sunny or her family/Addy. 

She insulted Vancouver, compared to a prison, and made it clear her creature comforts were of more importance than a pandemic. Not quite the attitude of an empath. Which she claims she is with intention to be a master which require sucking more gullible people into the cult.

She brags about being a “rich man” without understand the context. She went from artistic photos to modeling pinups to fuel her lack of self esteem.

She’s in her mid 20′s, claims she had grown and matured in the last year but there is no evidence of it. Still can’t work with her ex without buffers which still influences show direction though her fans deny.. Still lives off junk food and hangovers. Those glasses aren’t just for sun. Her timeline is mostly an ode to her vanity with pictures of herself and then her dog. She doesn’t seem to have any causes she’s deeply involved in on the side apart from her cult. She’s still stalking Cole as her impulsive makeup tutorial showed. She said she cut out of her life anyone who doesn’t service her. I highly doubt she is receiving quality therapy on the regular right now. She still does not seem to possess the ability to own her mistakes and apologize when warranted, rather deflects or erases when heat becomes too hot.

The content she puts out about herself post break up is very different than the bill of goods fans were sold before. She is a far cry from that quirky girl next door that stood FOR something more than vanity and shallow affirmation. So no, I don’t see what you see in her stans. Everything that once seemed to distinguish her from other spoilt princesses has long faded. 

[doomstypewriter]

The submersion | Intrulogical Mermaid AU

Future intrulogical.

Follow up on this animatic. | AO3

Words: 1728.

Summary: Remus has fun in his submarine. A giant barracuda disagrees.

CW: Dark humour, skeletal remains of a rat, drowning, deep ocean (if there's anything else do tell), death, sexual innuendo.

The submersion

It was cloudy.

And cold.

But that was to be expected when one’s in the middle of the Atlantic.

��Remus Prince, you dunce, how are you dressed like that?”

Remus turned around to see Ella Da Villa, the captain of the ship he was on, and an old friend. Her short afro was stuffed inside of a beanie, she held onto her sides through her huge puffer coat.

“I know you’d just rather I take it all off, but, honey, I need to at least wear something”.

She laughed.

“What you need is to make sure you don’t get drenched or--”

“First of all, I look amazing all wet. But if that’s what you’re so worried about, hey, I took care of that” he answered pointing at his green rain boots.

The crew looked at them in amusement as they moved the equipment, preparing everything for the submersion.

Ella took off one of her gloves and smacked Remus’ head with it.

“Ow! I thought you were against violence!”

“I never said that. But I am against animal abuse, that’s why I didn’t hit you hard. Now go and put on a coat, you dumbass”.

“Sure thing mommy, you know how to be commanding” he winked.

“It’s captain for you, now go!”

His boots squeaked against the flooring of the deck as he ran to get into the guts of the ship. He managed to hear Ella swearing under her breath.

“How did he even graduate? Going out in short sleeves…”

Ella was a funny one, Remus thought. It was easy to get under her skin, she also liked to play along which made it even better.

One of the people going up the metal stairs almost tripped against him, there wasn’t that much room, after all. Remus jumped over the railing and fell onto the lower level without a scratch.

“Oh my god! Are you okay?!” said someone.

A younger guy with spectacular hair held onto his forearm to check on him. Oh, this was the newbie.

“Don’t worry, I don’t have any lungs”.

“Wha…” he looked half perplexed and half horrified.

“You know, we all get it done since we’re going to end up sleeping with the fish anyway”.

He stood up quickly and mutely apologised. Remus enjoyed the view of his ass going upstairs as fast as possible. New meat was always hilarious.

When he entered the room his cupboard was already open. He liked to leave the sliding doors that way so he could see what was inside, otherwise, he’d forget about it. In a ship, that meant ending up with all of one’s clothes on the floor, but as long as Remus could see where they were he wouldn’t misplace anything. Object permanence was a bitch.

Messy floors did have an advantage, the coat on top of the pile was good enough to satisfy Ella and easy enough to grab quickly.

The backswing of the glove against his shoulder caught him off-guard.

“Ow! What did I do now?! This coat is fine!”

“The coat is fine, yes, but the new guy is shaking like a leaf. What did you tell him? He keeps saying stuff about drowning”.

“Hey, I’d never mention drowning when I’m about to get into a submarine”.

“Yes, that’d be very poor taste, sadly, you have it worse so you must have said something terrible. I expect you to fix this, or we’ll have to arrange you drowning”.

“You know I love choking on wet things”.

“Then your last moments will be pleasant. Consider me the best friend one could have”.

The new guy was holding onto the railing of the ship, staring at the water in concentration. Probably about to throw up or something.

“Hey!”

“Ah!” he screamed.

“Do you have a name?”

“Uh… yes… um…”

“Great! I have one too, it’s Remus” he introduced himself with half a bow.

“I’m Nathan… sorry… I’m just anxious… it’s the first time I go on one of those” he gestured at the submersible held by the crane of the ship.

“First times are always awkward, don’t worry”.

Finally, Nathan let out a laugh, it was a nervous one but it would suffice.

“You know what I said earlier was a joke, right?”

“Oh, yeah, it just caught me by surprise. You’re the head biologist here, right?”

“Yup. Guess you could say I’m the dom of this study”.

“Darn it, here I was expecting to be more active”.

Remus smiled in surprise. It was always nice when people had similar humour to his.

“Oh, you’ll have to be. I expect it”.

“You wouldn’t expect we could go for some coffee after we get into…” the date proposition vanished into a look of fear at the submersible.

Remus put a hand over his shoulders. The drowning jokes would have to wait until they were emerging.

“Don’t worry, my thicc ass has been there tons of times! It’s just a lot of water”.

“While it’s true he’s been there more than you, he’s overplaying his own ass. It’s kind of droopy” a heavily accented voice said

“Who are you calling droopy?”

They turned to see a tall blond woman smiling smugly. Erika Engström, oceanographer and the operator of the submersible.

“You, obviously, do you have water in your ears?”

“Not yet, but we’ll see if…”

Nathan held his breath.

“Nah, I don’t”.

“He either thinks you’re cute or he’s afraid the captain will throw him off-board if he keeps bullying you”, Erika told Nathan.

“I wasn’t bullying anyone”.

“Sorry to break it to you, but you’re always bullying people, you don’t know how else to flirt”.

“Then I would be flirting with everyone”.

“Aren’t you?”

“Okay, yeah”.

“Come on, I have to set up things. Give me a hand, rat skull”.

“At least give me a knife or something”.

“You can chew it through”.

One last look at Nathan before following her.

“Well, I’ll leave you to stress out, if I don’t help her we’ll dro…” oh right, no drowning jokes. “We’ll…”

“Flirt with me when we’re back at the surface”.

Remus smiled.

“Will do!”

-----

The light was beginning to fade out. The flickering of the few rays coming through a swirl of silvery fish would be their last glimpses at natural lighting for a while.

It was wonderful.

How the underwater landscape changed, morphing into something out of a nightmare. Never ceases to amaze him. People would say it was all just blue getting darker and darker, and it was! But it was also a thick fog from which anything could come out. He always looked forward to seeing the weirdest fish appear.

There wasn’t much room behind the giant acrylic viewport. Despite being stuck so closely together, Remus could feel a chill as the air within got cooled by the deep water. His coat lay forgotten at the back of his chair still.

Once the lights of the submersible switched on, a delicate dance of white dust shined just like it would on a sunny day. This was no room dust. But there was just as much beauty in seeing the marine snow surrounding them. Teensy tiny pieces of dead fish falling all around, making the nicest shapes.

“It’s so quiet” Nathan observed.

“Wait until you hear a whale. The first time I did I thought my skull would pop”.

“Which one?” Erika kept her eyes on the water, but he could see the reflection of a smile curving onto the surface of the acrylic.

“Well, the small one. I know you’d hate to have to scrape my brains off your console”.

“If you had any I would”.

“There would still be plenty of blood”.

The ship carried on with the descend, soon, they’d be at twenty thousand feet. Nathan leaned in.

“Hey, what did she mean by which one?” he said in a hushed voice.

“Oh! Right”

He pulled on the string of his necklace to get it from under his shirt. Remus held it in front of Nathan’s face.

It turned, revealing the empty sockets and the front of what used to be a snout.

“I have this rat skull as a necklace! Erika teases me because that’s how she copes with the fact that she hates it!”

“Anyone would hate it. You wear that thing everywhere. It’s creepy” Erika pointed out.

“Where did you get it?” Nathan asked.

In the dim light, Remus’s smile cast shadows, giving him a grim vibe.

“I used to have a pet rat. When it died it sucked, my brother and I buried it in the backyard. It was there until three years later when we got a heavy storm. The bones peeked through the mud. So I just yanked a bit on the spine and got it. The skull was already defleshed anyway, so, aside from cleaning it a bit, I didn’t have to do any of the work. I really like this necklace. I got into marine biology because I began looking at fish skulls and I wanted to see more”.

“That’s…” Nathan began to say.

Suddenly, the submersible turned violently.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t take a good look”, said Erika.

Her frown told Remus something was seriously wrong.

“Guys, we’re picking up really weird signals from here. Are you all okay?” the sound of Ella’s voice through the radio distracted him from his train of thought.

“It’s all under control, but I am going to begin ascending” Erika replied.

“We haven’t taken all the samples”, Nathan said.

“We’ll have another chance. Right now I’m worried that---”

Erika did not have time to finish talking.

Its needle-like teeth loomed over the viewport. This creature was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Part of him felt excited at how terrifying it all was. Sadly, he had the feeling they were all about to die. This fish looked like a giant barracuda and an angry one.

The creature snapped its jaw closed, cracking the viewport.

Seemingly, it didn’t find it tasty enough and it swam away even moodier than before. The very least it could have done was eat them.

If you’re going to kill them might as well finish the job.

Remus’ body floated into the dark abyss as he struggled to breathe. Covering his ears tightly, he screamed in pain. The pressure was unlike anything.

Well, it had been fun.

<< Previous | Next >>

The continuation will feature Logan and another animatic!

Taglist: @lemonyscented , @emsiemaefander , @sunflower-avo-tea , @nadiestar , @amber-da-toon , @gabseliblack , @everythingisstardust

@trash-bastard , @under-the-blue-moonlight , @willowaudreykeyes

@queerly-a-hisssstory-momster​

@theyluna-womoon , @subterfugespecialist

[dragonrajafanfiction]

The Trieste Venture (Part 2 - Mourning the Lenin)

GAME CANON VERSION: The second part of the rewritten Trieste Story Quest. I wish they had added more of the emotional stuff for the MC. I don’t think it would have been hard. They had like, some nice elements. They just didn’t use them well or not at all. Below the Cut!

You watched those lung snails slowly swallow Caesar and Chu Zihang like a mudslide, while you sat with this bloodless coward in the cockpit. 

The lung snail attached to the Lenin's outer wall probably weighed several hundred tons, and could kill a man if it hit him. Chu Zihang was trying to climb towards Caesar, but he was further away from the nuclear power module than Caesar was. He was carried askew by the currents when he fell into the lung snail pile, and his landing point was not as good as Caesar's. According to the instructions for use, the suit can only support five minutes and is used to repair the shell of the deep submersible if necessary, but now Caesar's suit has been outside for seven minutes, and Chu's has been out for two minutes. Caesar is unconscious, and Chu Zihang's vitals are getting worse and worse. He is relying on blood rage to support himself, but the effect of blood rage in this extreme environment is also unknown.

The chances are getting smaller and smaller. The Chu Zihang in his spherical submersible is still paddling his arms in the pile of lung snails. He understands that he is doing his best. He’s obviously the kind of person who is not too concerned about anything, but as long as he has any strength left, if there is even a glimmer of hope, he will not let it go. 

Chu Zihang finally broke through the lung snails in front of him and grabbed the handrail behind Caesar's suit. He tried to use a strap to tether the Caesar’s submersible to his suit, but how the two suits are joined side by side and this is a big problem.

Your rage has gone and left you feeling empty inside as you watched. It wasn’t like the heart-pounding explosions, the gunshots and the desperate screams of the dying at Black Swan Bay. This seemed cold, clinical and distant. The cabin was completely silent while you watched them struggle.

There was no need for you to be here. Caesar and Zihang were absolutely wrong. There was something you could do.

You slip off the headset and take off the seatbelt. 

“Not you too! What am I supposed to do?” Lu Mingfei cried.

Because Caesar and Zihang would live, they would be able to provide him with instructions. That was a fact. So there was no need to say anything to Lu Mingfei or answer his questions.

“There are only two suits. You’ll die if you go out there!” He protested.

“That’s the point.” Because Lu Mingfei meant nothing to you, and his feelings didn’t matter, it was easy enough to say what was in your heart.

“Really? Suicide?!” He whimpered. But, just as you expected, he was too weak and cowardly to stop you. He didn’t even move to unbuckle his seatbelt.

“You’ll understand later. I’ll be back with them.” You stepped into the cockpit hatch and shut it. Inside, you could hear the rushing of the ocean over the vessel. It reminded you of the time you fell into the ocean after being pushed there by your dear friend. You’d survived extreme ocean conditions before.

You close your eyes to focus. In your mind, swirling serpents appear in a vision. They part to reveal flaming golden eyes. 

“Wait!” Lu Mingfei’s fists are pounding on the hatch. Your eyes are golden, your pupils have turned to vertical slits, and large blue-black veins are crawling up your neck and face followed by bright golden scales. Because you were going to die, it didn’t matter if you died like a monster. With this strength, with Blood Rage, you could live, just like the mermaids lived. From within the hatch, your heart beat loud like a drum. In a single inhale, you sucked the air. When you opened the hatch, the water rushed in, pressed in on you and forced that breath out of you. The water was pitch black, but you could see just fine.

More and more mermaids crawl out of the ground, creeping and swimming, reminiscent of millions of earthworms crawling from the mud in spring. A huge crack appeared, cutting lengthwise into the long river of lava. Hundreds and thousands of tons of lava gushed into the crack. Something huge struggled in the lava, its scales black, its dorsal crest bearing barbed bone spikes, black metal hooks piercing its muscles, locking it firmly under the rubble. But the metal hooks were just barely able to restrain it, and it lashed the ground furiously with its thick tail. The buildings that still stood collapsed in pieces, with metal fragments floating up with the gravel, forming a blinding fog in the sea.

But that wasn't the worst of it. What looked like swarms of fireflies were flying out of that chasm!

It was those ghost-toothed dragon vipers! They had first appeared further up from the trench, but no one had expected the ruins to be their nest. The dragon vipers poured out like silvery bands of light in the sea water. They were not interested in small things like lung snails or corpse guards, but gradually closed in on the struggling Caesar and Chu Zihang. Your mind explodes in a rage. You remembered what Chu Zihang and Caesar said: the ghost tooth dragon viper gathered in groups and chewed the bronze pillar to eat. They can secrete strong acidic mucus, and chewed metal with their horrible teeth. Can the titanium-magnesium alloy used to make men’s equipment stand up to the dragon viper's teeth?

You weren’t about to let them find out. The Dragonblood in your body was surging and you let out an inhuman cry, a cross being a baby’s cry when it is first born and a wildcat’s scream. Your body powers forward, undulating like a dolphin, knowing how to swim like this even though you weren’t built like a mermaid. The dragon vipers didn’t know you, but your fierce charge marked you as an opponent and, for a moment, they instinctively changed course as one school, spinning away from you.

Caesar and Chu Zihang couldn't run, they were completely trapped in a pile of lung snails. Chu let go of Caesar, plucked the lung snails in front of him, and headed for the nuclear power module. Apparently, he had heard your scream and understood the situation at hand. He was trying to see if he could fire up the nuclear pods before the dragon vipers pounced and tore into them, but all he knew was that the code had something to do with Nono's birthday. 

The swarm has come back around, this time in even greater numbers. The urge to survive is pushing your blood rage to higher levels and now you don’t even think twice about focusing on the group and lashing out with claws, slicing the fish open neatly, blood and entrails filling the water. 

The viperfish are not above cannibalism and this throws the swarm into a frenzy, biting into their wounded brethren and occasionally taking chunks out of healthy fish who are then rendered skeletons in an instant. The feeding frenzy doesn’t go unnoticed and more viperfish are coming. You cry out from the sharp pain of one latching onto your foot. You dislodge it, but the numbers of fish are starting to over take your ability to fight and those on the outer edges of the school suddenly turn their attention back to Chu Zihang and Caesar.

Fortunately, the toughness of titanium-magnesium alloy is far more than bronze, so these small things they have to bite very hard.. Chu Zihang is exhausted, he is still less than 5 meters away from the nuclear power module, but his metal prosthetic limbs have broken, he can not enter the passcode. You want to save them, but the moment you turn away from the school of viperfish, they pounce on you, biting at you like gigantic mosquitos! You start to realize that you might not rescue Caesar and Zihang after all, that maybe… just maybe you wouldn’t be enough… 

Again.

The spherical figure suddenly stood up. It was Caesar, who had been unconscious! His pupils burned brightly, and he used metal prosthetics to crush the dragon viper attached to his body. With the power of a rock driller, he plucked away layer after layer of lung snails. He passed Chu Zihang step by step, approaching the nuclear power module. You’re stunned for a moment and then you feel a sudden thrill, like the sudden excitement of descending the first hill on a rollercoaster!

Your body really is moving on its own. You slice through the fish like a blender, claws ripping, teeth tearing. Scales floated through the water like it was glittering confetti for New Years Day at Times Square! They turn to bite back but you’re too fast, zipping through the school with such power they were forced to part ways or get bludgeoned to the side by your own body. You’re lost in the amazing power of it. Was this you? Was this happening? You’re laughing, but you don’t feel breathless! How was this happening? What was happening? Your mind was screaming with giddy joy, but you’re not sure where this is coming from. It was as if you were on some sort of high from a powerful drug and your conscious mind was taking a back seat.

Caesar was a little drowsy, slowly entering the code. A confirmation of success! The nuclear power module reignited, the cadmium rod recovered neutron density and rose. This time it wouldn't go into safe mode. It really became a nuclear bomb. Caesar turned around and grabbed Chu Zihang who was struggling in the pile of lung snails, and removed the lead dive weights from their suits. The weight was reduced and they immediately surfaced, taking with them the ghost-toothed dragon vipers that were biting at them. 

You follow them into the pressurized cabin as door began to fill with water, followed by drainage, when the pressure in the pressurized cabin returned to the same as in the cockpit, Lu Mingfei could not wait to pull open the pressure door.

You were a mess of half human, half servitor and bitten a thousand times. As the strange power left you, you found yourself unable to stand any more and slipped to the floor. The pain was unbearable as your muscles and bones reminded you that even though you couldn’t feel it in your moment rapture, they were working beyond their limits. The strains, sprains, bites and bruises crashed into your mind all at once. It hurt so much you couldn’t even cry, only gape wordlessly.

“Get Caesar! I’ll take care of her!” Chu Zihang had already shed his spherical suit. He drew his blade and brought it down hard against the dragon fish that were still clinging to it, beheading them as neat as a sushi master. He then left for a few seconds and returned with the injection that was supposed to save you. Still, he held that bright blade against your throat just in case. You didn’t even feel the needle only the serum’s burning course through your veins. 

“It’s okay…” You tell him. He didn’t have to try to save you. In fact, you don’t know why you even came back to the submersible. You were just following the natural order of events and you felt fine. Why did you bother coming back? You were supposed to die out there. That was the plan, right?

Chu Zihang held your hand up and examined it. Little by little, the scales and black veins were starting to retreat, albeit, slower than he would have liked. “Stay in here, I’ll bring a first aid kit.”

"What the hell kind of fucking fish is this!" Lu Mingfei was screaming. You watch as he takes the fire extinguisher and sprays the fish still clinging to Caesar’s suit with it. Even though they were powered by Dragonblood, they still needed oxygen to live. The foam sapped them of that oxygen and they dropped off Caesar’s suit. Turned out that Raccoon Boy as good for something after all.

A bump attracts your attention. Through the inches thick glass, you see that the gold scaled mermaids are flying past you in a swifter river than before, streaming upwards. Chu Zihang returns, carrying a blanket and pulling on a roll of bandages with his teeth.

“Hey is she alright? Do you need help?” Lu Mingfei asks, with approaching footsteps.

“Stay out there! Tell me what’s going on outside!”

You finally look down and see that your clothes have been near completely shredded save a bit around your waist and neck.. Chu Zihang was kneeling in front of you to obscure you from Mingfei’s view.

A wall of flames rose slowly from the side of the Trieste, and the sound of thunder resounded in the depths of the trench. Rivers of magma erupted! Millions of tons of magma spurted out of the chasm! The magma was golden red when it was newly ejected, before gradually solidifying and turning black, rising to about half a kilometer before it completely solidified, forming a giant black wall, and the seawater next to it instantly vaporized, as if a million thunderstorms had exploded continuously at the bottom of the sea. The Treiste and the mermaid hybrids were only a few hundred meters away from the wall of lava, and there were still streams of lava spewing from below. The newly solidified volcanic rocks above had begun to fall. So the mermaids gave up the attack and started to flee again. Even these things can't help but be afraid in front of a huge disaster, and it's obvious that when the lava wall collapses, everything will be destroyed. 

From the beginning, they fled not because they were afraid of the nuclear power module, but because they sensed the eruption of the volcano under the sea.

Chu Zihang finished bandaging your wounds and covered you with the blanket. He then picked you up and carried you to your seat to strap you in. "It’s already too late to call the Sumeru. We have to accelerate away. Mingfei, you control the rudder and stabilizing wing. In a few moments the nuclear power module will explode. We must reach beyond a safe distance!"

"But we have no power! We've already lost the nuclear power module! Just the lithium batteries aren't fast enough!" Lu Mingfei was dumbfounded.

"I'm an engine too." Chu Zihang strapped himself firmly into the seat.

His golden pupils burned up, and the four walls of the cockpit were illuminated in gold as heat waves reverberated through the air.

Royal Fire erupted! Swirls of black flame appeared in the seawater below the submersible. It was the most concentrated state of the Royal Flame, with internal temperatures of several thousand degrees, yet not a trace of heat was escaping. The black vortex slowly rotated in the seawater for a second and then collapsed. The heat leaked out. The huge amount of seawater was instantly vaporized. The swirling white steam stream roared in the deep sea. The water vapor and the flame were entangled and swirled together to create a flaming vortex! 

You were all starting to rise! Even though the rock wall was collapsing around you, the Trieste brushed past the falling debris. You’re holding your breath hoping that you wouldn’t end up buried anyway.

You stared at the screen. The screen is an external camera shot of the Takamagahara. The scene was solemn and magnificent. The ruins are slowly sliding along the tilted sea bed into the lava river, the last buildings gradually tilting and crumbling, high towers snapped off, thousands of bells rolling in the streets of the city. You feel that at the moment they play sad music like the song sung by desperate birds. A small mountain of volcanic rocks fell from above, spewing out lava as they splashed in the ruins. Lava was converging into small rivers along the streets, as if cleaning the city with flames. Tides of magma from the fissures swallowed up more and more of the ground. Certain shattered pieces of land disappeared forever into the rivers of lava, and soon with the sun-bright explosion of the nuclear powerhouse, Takamagahara was lost to the world forever.

　　The Lenin slid along the tilted foundations, its huge hull collapsing countless buildings along the way and rolling into the magma. The embryo inside did not struggle, and the Lenin floated in the lava for a few moments before gradually sinking. The fractured metal tower rolled over and smashed into its middle, destroying its bridge. The high temperature burned the fleshy layer covering the Lenin, exposing the carbide red five-star of Soviet Russia on the bow, which was the last to sink. By now the Trieste was far from the depths of the trench, and the bright river of lava in view was fading.

It was just a ship, but it was one of the last remaining memories of your past. You remembered anticipating the visit of this ship every Christmas with its gifts of chocolate for Vera and vodka for Herzog, new clothes and shoes for you. Up until now, when you thought of your past, you thought of a terrible end. The blood and the fire and the smoke. You shed no tears then. 

But watching the ship and the city sink irretrievably, it finally hits you that everything happy is gone. Gone is the ship and its presents, burned forever and it was never going to arrive again.

You hold the blanket against your reddening face and stain it with your tears, all your sorrow bursting out an a flood.

[gumnut-logic]

“Virgil?”

He sighed, slammed the wrench down on Two’s hull and grabbed another one. “Yes, Gordon, what do you want now?”

“No need to be snappy there, bro.”

“Gordon, my ‘bird is currently floating in the Pacific with her engines full of water. In what way do you think this would put me in a good mood?”

“You have Penny on board.”

“What?”

“What is she doing right now?”

“Uh, helping Scott clean sand out of the intakes. Why?”

“Oh, just interested.”

Can you be interested silently? But he didn’t say it. A calming breath and he dove back into the hatch. The sun near the equator was expectedly hot, and in a breach of protocol, he had removed his baldric, stashed it nearby for the comm signal, and unzipped the top half of his uniform. He would have loved to throw the whole thing off, but safety concerns, a frowning Scott and, of course, the Penny presence vetoed that.

But man, it would be nice to be cool.

His girl was swamped with water and she wasn’t going to fly until that water was flushed out and all her engines checked and double checked. As it was it was likely they would have to airlift her back to the Island using the heavy-duty pods that had dragged her space-damaged carcass out of the ocean last time. It had taken a week to clean her out.

Thunderbird Two was not a submarine.

“So, she was a good co-pilot?”

“Yes, Gordon.”

“Reckon she might come out of rescues?”

“Why?”

“Maybe she wants to become a more active member of International Rescue?”

“Say that to her face and you are likely to lose yours. In no way is Lady Penelope inactive.”

“Uh, you might have a point.” A sigh. “So, what do you think of Penny?”

“Gordon, I’m not going to gossip about your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

“But you wouldn’t mind if she was.”

“Um...”

“Obvious, Gordo, obvious.”

“You have a point.”

“Ask her out and put us out of our misery.”

“Hey, timing, Virg. It isn’t like I can escort her anywhere at the moment.”

“You don’t have to, Gordon, or haven’t you noticed that, she has been on Tracy Island more since you were injured than she has in the past ten years?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Ask her out, Gordon. Use one of the hoverbikes and take her down to your favourite beach for a picnic. I’ll even tie up Alan for you.” He swapped wrenches again. Damn, this vent was being stubborn. He whacked it and narrowly missed his thumb, but the housing shifted and he was finally able to open the access.

“Ugh, crap.”

“What?”

“Mulched sea life in the aft dorsal vent.”

“Mulched?”

“Well, if you went through the forward intake, you’d come out mulched too. Two is not a submersible.”

“You keep saying that, yet you didn’t hesitate to take her under.”

“I had good reason.”

“Yes, an older brother who wouldn’t listen to his resident aquanaut.” Gordon’s voice took on a frustrated tone. “If he had just waited, we wouldn’t have had the problem.”

“Scott was just anxious.”

“Virgil, if I had done that you would be ripping me a new one.”

A swallow. Gordon was right. There was a stern discussion to be had in the future. But the hope regarding their father was like a light at the end of the tunnel and it shone everything else into insignificance.

“We need to focus on Dad right now.”

“I will be as happy as you to find Dad, Virgil, but I don’t want to lose the brothers I have in the process.”

He put the wrench down and it clattered against Two’s hull. Gordon was right. Scott had been in some serious danger of never getting out of that sludge. Alan and Kayo were lucky to be alive. They had almost lost a Thunderbird to the Chaos Crew. And Thunderbird Two...both he and Penny had been at risk.

All for just the chance of more information.

“You have a point.”

“I know I do.”

Perhaps they had been a bit obsessed. But the chance, Dad needing their help, stranded so far away. Could he still be alive? This could be the rescue of their lives. But at what risk? Gordon had been stuck at home watching all of them cheat death on a simple hope.

That capsule still sat snug in the module and had yet to reveal whether it was all worth it.

Virgil bit his lip. “Dad might be still alive.”

“I really hope so. I really do, Virg. Just don’t do anything stupid and keep that eldest brother of ours from killing himself in the process.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will.” A pause. “Just sucks to be me at the moment.”

“Should I leave Penny with you next time?”

“You’d need to tie her to the chair, Virg. As you said, she’s not one to sit and watch.”

“Neither are you.”

Silence from the comms for the first time in a long time. Virgil sighed. “Ask her out, Gords. If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll say yes.”

“Yeah, maybe.” But his brother’s tone said the absolute opposite.

Looks like he would be pulling out some kind of motivational speech for his little brother in the near future. Who thought Gordon would ever need motivation of any kind? The aquanaut was usually a power source for the rest of them.

“Think about it, bro. She’d be the luckiest woman on the planet.”

“Heh.” A pause. “So, what wildlife did you puree? Got enough for identification?” That was an obvious subject change if he’d ever heard one. Okay, if that is how he wanted to play it.

“I’m thinking squid.” He reached in and grabbed a pile of jellied mush in his fortunately gloved hand and held it up so his holoreceiver could grab it. “What do you think? Look like something for dinner?”

“You took out a squid? You keep that killing green behemoth out of my ocean, Virgil.”

“Hey, it’s not like she did it on purpose.”

“Can you bring it closer?” There was a frown in his brother’s voice.

Virgil complied. Pieces of the slush slid down his arm and splashed on his undershirt. “Gross.”

“Uh, Virgil, put it down now.”

“What?”

“That’s not squid. That’s jellyfish.”

The sludge landed with a splat on Two’s hull. It left residue all over his glove and arm and shirt. “Shit!”

“Tell me you didn’t get it on your skin, Virgil. Stinger cells don’t puree.”

“Damnit!”

“Virgil!”

The gloves were tossed, the uniform followed in the most awkward undressing he had ever managed. His boots were stumbled off even more awkwardly. But nothing could hide the sudden tingling on his chest. Goddamnit, so stupid!

“Virgil, talk to me! I’m sending Scott up.”

“I’m okay. Just stupid.”

“TB4’s packs have some sting neutralising spray. I’m notifying Scott.”

His undershirt was flung onto the hull. He was never going to live this down. The tingling was fast becoming painful. A lovely array of welts outlining where the sludge had soaked through his shirt was appearing on his chest. “Unbelievable!”

“Virgil?” Scott appeared up through the forward hatch. “What the hell?”

“It was an accident.”

Of course, Penelope just had to follow his brother. So here he was standing in his undershorts on top of his bird in the middle of the ocean for all nearby female aristocrats to see.

Neither his brother or their London agent appeared to care in the slightest as they clambered across Two’s hull to reach him. “What happened? Gordon said you came in contact with a jellyfish?” Scott dumped a medkit on the hull and, opening it, pulled out a bottle of the sting spray. “Do we know what kind?”

Virgil grit his teeth. Yes, it was definitely hurting now. “Scan the slush. Just don’t touch it.”

“Send the readings to me and I’ll do the identification.” Gordon voice had lost any and all joviality.

Penny fished the scanner from Scott’s kit and did as the aquanaut asked.

“Virg?” Scott approached him with care. “Where and how bad?”

“Chest and bad enough.”

The spray was heaven on earth. Scott drenched him liberally in the chemical foam. “Anywhere else?”

“No, that little bit was enough.” Virgil let a breath out.

“Any sign of additional symptoms? C’mon, sit down, just in case.”

With a frustrated sigh, Virgil parked himself crosslegged on Two’s warm hull a decent distance from the slush scattered around the vent hatch. He glared at it. “Revenge from beyond the grave.”

“Got it.” Gordon’s voice held relief even before he spouted the needed information. “You’ve been Cannonballed, Virg.”

“What?”

“Cannonball Jellyfish. Stomolophus meleagris. You must have hit a swarm because that pile of slush makes up more than one. And don’t worry, not deadly. Usually a mild sting, but can get nasty in your eyes. I suspect that you’re really feeling it, because you’re playing with the pureed version.”

“Great.” Well, at least he wasn’t dying.

“Source says a few hours of ouch and the next day lots of itch.”

“Fantastic.” Just to make dragging his girl out of the ocean that little bit more entertaining. A put-upon sigh.

“Sit for a minute while I pump some seawater up here and wash off the living dead jellyfish.” Scott wasn’t smiling, but since it was clear now that Virgil wasn’t going to keel over on him, he could relax just a little.

“Fine.”

Penny looked up and smiled at him. It was a kind smile, despite his predicament.

He let his shoulders drop. At least the sun was warm and the breeze gentle as they danced across his shoulder blades. In a minute he would wash the mess off his chest, apply some anaesthetic cream, don a clean uniform and get back to work. But for the moment he was content to sit and watch Scott scrub down his ‘bird.

“Gordon?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll leave the water rescues to you from now on.”

His little brother laughed over the comms. “Aww, Virg, but you did so well.”

“Hmph.” A smirk. “Penny says hi.” The blonde woman looked up at him in question.

“Virgil!”

“Yes, little bro?”

“Watch it.”

“Well, she’s now seen me in my underwear and she makes a great co-pilot...”

“As if she’d look at you twice.”

“Oh, I don’t know. She’s looking at me quite bit at the moment.” He grinned at her.

“No flexing your pecs, you hulk.”

It was Virgil’s turn to laugh. “You are aware I have you on speaker, aren’t you?”

“Shit!”

Penny’s laugh was as delicate as she.

-o-o-o-

FIN.

[strongerwiththepack]

I got explosive device and storage unit, with Gordon? :D

Finally my boi! This is definitely the last one for the day but if anyone wants to leave anymore of these Whump Generator prompts for me feel free! I’ve really enjoyed writing them today <3 Thanks for the ask, hope you enjoy x

Gordon & Explosive Device & Storage Unit

“Okay that should be it.” Gordon nodded to the storage unit personnel as the doors to the escape pod whooshed shut. Water drained from the pipes past Gordons feet before the submersible pod detached from the unit.

Underwater storage units were very popular nowadays. Mostly for industrial use, big companies used them for long-term storage. They weren’t usually staffed, except for maintenance purposes. Too bad the maintenance was the most common cause of an accident. Today was one of those situations.  

The airlock doors had gotten jammed with half a meter of open space letting the unforgiving ocean overtake the facility. The escape pods had shut down due to water damage but Brains had talked him through how to override the failsafe and activate the pumps.

“All personnel are heading up to the surface now Thunderbird Two. Heading back to Four.”

“FAB Gordon, good job.”

Gordon waded his way through the knee-deep rushing water. He’d honestly have preferred if it had been entirely submerged, then at least he could’ve swam it. His eyebrows knotted together as he noticed flashing up ahead. He trudged his way forward to check it out before gasping in alarm.

He swiftly turned back the way he came, moving with much more urgency as he splashed through the water.

“Thunderbird Two, the chaos crew is here!” Gordon panted. “Fuse has left a bomb inside the facility.”

“Dammit, get out of there Gordon!” Virgil growled over the comm.

“Trying!” Gordon ground out. “I’ll go through the-“

Gordon was thrown forward as the explosive detonated. He felt the heat lick at his back even through the suit and fell painfully into the water. The flow became much stronger and debris now littered the stream.

“Gordon!” Virgil was shouting over the comms. “Answer me!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Gordon groaned as he kneeled in the water.  He heard Virgil sigh in relief on the other end of the comm.

“Can you get out?” Virgil asked. “Scott and Kayo are on their way.”

Gordon looked back at where the explosive had been. The blast had further damaged the integrity of the unit, water was gushing through. The lights flickered as sparks flew from the destroyed wall.

Then he heard beeping. Turning his head, he saw another bomb blinking rapidly to his right.

Too close. Too close. Gordon thought as he scrambled to his feet but it was two late. The second explosion went off and all he felt was a searing burning before he slammed into something solid and everything went black.

*

“Gordon! Gordon, please respond!” Virgil pleaded across the comms.

He opened up another channel. “Scott there’s been another explosion! Gordon isn’t responding.”

“I’m still 10 minutes out Virgil.” Scott replied regretfully over the comm.

Another explosion rocked the storage unit and Virgil cried out in alarm as the structure continued to crumble.

“I’m going down there.” Virgil declared as he unbuckled his harness and stalked down to the module area. “John, can you remote pilot Four back to the surface?” He knew his space-bound brother was listening in.

John’s FAB was drowned out as Scott interrupted. “It’s too dangerous Virgil. What if there are more explosives? What if the chaos crew are still down there?”

“All the more reason to get Gordon sooner rather than later.” Virgil replied calmly as he pulled his helmet over his head. “I’m going.”

“Thunderbird Four has breached the surface.” John reported before Scott could protest further.

“Just be careful Virgil.” Scott demanded. “Please.”

“I will Scott.” Virgil softened. “Heading down.”

Thunderbirds Four was always an uncomfortable fit for him. His shoulders were too wide for the seat and it always felt claustrophobic. This wasn’t a choice though. He grit his teeth as he manoeuvred the small submersible down to the flooding storage facility. Moving around the structure, he started scanning it using his brothers Bird. The scans were sent straight up to Thunderbird Five.

“Anything John?” He queried once he’d been round the building once.

“There may be a small opening on the lower right side.” John relayed as a map and route appeared in front of Virgil “But the inside is flooded with debris, it’ll be hard to get through to him.”

“I’ll manage.” Virgil promised before bracing himself to be flipped backwards into the water.

He swam forward once he oriented himself, the holographic map flashing from his watch. He turned on his shoulder torch as he reached the opening. He easily pulled himself though as a small current of water was still flooding the facility. The water was almost up to the ceiling, it would be fully flooded soon.

Virgil’s first problem presented itself. There was a wall of debris currently cutting him off from his brothers location, this was going to be a slow process. He’d just started shifting some beams when a gasp came across the comms.

“Gordon!” He and Scott both exclaimed.

Virgil continued. “Gordon, are you okay?”

Gordon’s harsh breathing continued to sound in his ear. “Virg?” Gordon croaked.

Virgil’s heartrate spiked as worry surfaced once more.

“Yeah, I’m here fish, I’m coming to get you.”

Gordon moaned through clenched teeth. “M’trapped.”

“Just stay calm Gordon, what can you move?” Virgil queried gently as he started moving debris away faster.

He could hear his brother shifting through the comm before the younger blond gave a sharp cry of pain that turned into a sob.

Panic flared through Virgil. “Gords, what’s wrong?”

“The whole left side of my suit is burned.” Gordon gritted out before taking a few panicked breathes. “And there’s urghh-there’s a slab of concrete on my chest.”

There was a shrill beeping from Gordon’s end.

“What’s that?” Virgil asked, fearing it was another bomb.

“M-my oxygen meter.” Gordon groaned. “My suit was damaged in the explosion. I only have a few minutes of air left.”

Virgil heart thudded so loud he was sure it could be heard over the comms.

Gordon gave an almost hysterical laugh. “Not looking great for me is it?” His voice cracked at the end and his breathing shuddered to reveal his true feelings.

“Just relax Gords, breathe slow.” Virgil soothed, trying to keep his voice steady. “We’ll get you out of this.”

He switched channels so that Gordon couldn’t hear him anymore. “There’s no way I can shift all this stuff in time.” Virgil relayed urgently. “We need a new plan.”

He heard John typing frantically in the background. “Your laser won’t be strong enough underwater to cut through any of the walls.” John mumbled. “And Thunderbird Four won’t be able to get far enough into the facilities for you to use her laser. There’s not enough time to construct a pod-“

“I don’t need to hear what we can’t do John!” Virgil grumbled. “I need an option here.”

“I’m looking Virgil!” John shot back.

“Cool it, both of you.” Scott barked. “We need to keep a level head here. Treat it like any other rescue.”

Virgil took a deep shaky breath. “FAB. Sorry John.”

There was no answer from his space-bound brother and Virgil didn’t want to interrupt him even though the seconds were ticking by far too quickly.

“I’ve got it!” John finally said. “There’s a surface protocol built into the facility that will activate the buoyancy balloons and bring it to the surface. The control room is to your left Virgil, looks like a clear path.”

Virgil was already swimming that way as Scott spoke. “Won’t he be crushed without the water providing some buoyancy to the concrete?”

John hummed. “It looks like it’s just one slab on top of Gordon but surfacing the building could cause further structural damage, so yes it’s a risk but-“

“But we don’t have any other choice.” Virgil finished for him as he reached the control room. “What am I looking for John?”

“Red lever on the wall by the door.”

Virgil spied said lever and grabbed it, forcing it down through the resistance of the water. Nothing seemed to happen at first and Virgil’s heart sank. This was their last chance. Then the building shuddered and Virgil could hear the whoosh of air as the bags below the structure inflated. They started to rise.

“Virgil, I’ve mapped a new route for you to Gordon. Once the water drains, your laser should be able to cut through that wall to get to Gordon.” John relayed.

“FAB.” He switched comm channels again as he swam back to his brother once more. “Gordon! We’re heading to the surface, just hang tight.”

Gordon’s wheezing breath came across the comm. “FAB.”

“There might be a bit of pressure once the water drains but I’ll be right there. We’re going to get you out of this.” Virgil was trying to convince himself just as much as Gordon.

He could tell as soon as they breached the surface, the currents increased as the water started to drain away. The building groaned dramatically and Virgil held his breath but it seemed to hold.

Once the water was at shoulder height Virgil activated his laser, cutting through the top half of the wall, impatiently waiting for more of the water to drain.

Gordon gave a choked grunt when he was almost though, crying out in pain before going eerily silent. Virgil decided he’d cut far enough at that point and finished off the incision, pushing the chuck of concrete through to the other side.

He clambered through the hole and immediately set sights on his brother. Gordon was lying on top of a collapsed wall with a thick slab of concrete pinning him down. The left side of his helmet was charred black and Virgil feared for the state of his suit once he removed the slab.

His brother was unresponsive as he set up the load-bearing stands at three key points under the concrete. Once he activated them, they slowly began to raise the debris. As soon as it was safe to do so, Virgil carefully slid his brother out from under it.

He removed his brothers helmet checking his airways. Breathing was weak but there. The worst part were the burns down Gordon’s suit. From the neck to his hip, the neoprene fabric was charred and melted. Virgil could see areas where the fabric was melted into Gordon skin and he shuddered.

“Hey fish” He choked, running a hand through his brother hair. “Told you we’d get you out. Maybe open those eyes for me in return?”

Gordon face remained slack and he sighed as he took out his portable medscanner. Scott clambered through the hole in the wall, pulling a hover stretcher with him, just as he got the readings.

“Aw Gords” Scott sighed as he knelt down on the other side of him, pacing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “What does the scan say?”

“Third-degree burns all down his side, cracked ribs from the concrete, possible concussion.” Virgil grimaced as he read it off. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

“FAB.” Scott sighed as they expertly lifted him onto the hover stretcher, the lack of response from their brother at the movement was alarming.

*

Virgil sighed as he took another sip of the 4th terrible cup of hospital coffee he’d consumed. Gordon had been in surgery for 3 hours now and they still hadn’t heard anything. John and Kayo were working with the GDF to try and track down the chaos crew. Virgil clenched his fists. They’d gone too far this this time. He had no more chances left to give them.

“I think we should do some more underwater rescue training.” Virgil said suddenly. Scott, the only other occupant in the room, turned towards him.

Virgil continued. “We’re out of practice. Gordon deserves to know he can count on us when he needs it.”

“You think he can’t?” Scott queried.

Virgil shrugged. “I’m just always so out of my element down there.”

“You saved him today.”

“John came up with the plan.” Virgil still had to apologise properly for snapping at him earlier.

“And you got him out. We’re a team Virg, Gordon knows he can count on us.”

Virgil hummed in supposed agreement but if he went out swimming more than usual in the next few months no one mentioned it either.

fin.

[spell-cleaver]

"Woah." Ahsoka murmured, her eyes wide in wonder, as she watched Luke in deep meditation, items floating around him as he was so deep in the Force his abilities outstretched his body. Vader in that moment had entered the room from the other side, pausing to take it in as well.

Previous parts on the masterpost here!

"Woah," Ahsoka murmured, her eyes wide in wonder, as she watched Luke in deep meditation, items floating around him as he was so deep in the Force his abilities outstretched his body. Vader in that moment had entered the room from the other side, pausing to take it in as well.

She smiled slightly to herself, watching the way Luke mindfully kept a hold of the datachips; the slight furrow of concentration in his brow; the way his signature pulsed and flared with every tug of wind that tried to pull the items out of his orbit. Even the sudden intrusion of Vader's harsh breathing, echoing through the arched pillars of the lake house to where Luke was seated on the patio in the back, couldn't break him from his spell. The Force had him in its grip; it wasn't letting its son go.

She'd been wary, when she started training him, that she wouldn't be able to teach someone of this sort of power. All too well she remembered Anakin during the Clone Wars, pulling off feats no one could imagine until they'd seen them, his power bright and sparking and untamed. It had been exciting to be around him, never sure what he was going to light up next, and she'd felt her own sense of the world expand vastly under his tutelage.

She'd never thought that one day, she would be training his son.

Especially not when the dark pillar of fire that his Force presence had become was hanging over her shoulder, watching.

She glanced at the chrono—Luke had been at this for two hours now, sitting still and sinking into the Force so easily it almost alarmed her, wondering how often Palpatine had forced him to sit still and be silent, how often he'd been forced to instinctively draw on his power to keep him alive and well. This was highly impressive, and Luke had been at it long enough; it was already clear that his connection was deep, true and abiding. It was time for lightsaber training.

So, heedless of the slight jolt Vader made towards her, as if he was trying to stop her from interrupting his son's peace, she stood up and walked forwards to place a hand on his shoulder.

She didn't bother calling his name verbally; there was a good chance he wouldn't hear her. Younglings were never quite skilled in balancing a deep submersion into the Force with paying attention to their mortal senses.

Instead, she just reached for the core of his presence, bright enough that it was almost painful for her to look at; she wondered how in the stars Vader managed it. Perhaps he enjoyed the pain, so long as he knew it was his son he was regarding.

Luke didn't come, at first. Ahsoka frowned, huffed; Obi-Wan would've known what to do, here. He'd trained Anakin, the Chosen One himself—he'd have known how to deal with this sort of power.

Or perhaps the fact that Obi-Wan had trained Anakin was precisely why Vader didn't want him training Luke.

She latched onto Luke's presence again, tighter, and tugged more fiercely. Come back, she broadcast, though they didn't truly have a master-apprentice bond to draw on, yet. It still did the job.

Luke came back, surfacing towards the material world the way he'd swum for the light dancing of the surface of the lake when they went diving that morning. He opened his eyes, flexed his hands and smiled faintly at her, letting the items hovering around him—a vase of flowers, a belt, a hat, datachips, even a footstool—sink to the ground gently.

It was then that Ahsoka realised Vader had vanished from the doorway.

"How did I do?" he asked.

She pursed her lips, though her smile didn't fade; it was an odd expression to wear. "It wasn't a task that can be measured in successes or failures..." she said carefully. "It's a spiritual thing, a repetitive thing, impossible to do wrong or right."

Luke nodded, though she could tell he didn't understand. Not really. The concept of failure was hammered too hard into him.

"But you did very, very well," she admitted softly. "You... you are very naturally skilled at all of this. I don't know what I was expecting when I came here, but it wasn't you. You're amazing." She reached out to touch his face; slowly, at first, then when he didn't flinch back she brushed her thumb against his cheek. "The only other Force wielder I've seen with your sort of skill and power was..."

She trailed off after a moment, not sure if she should say that.

But Luke seemed to pick up on her thoughts anyway, and his eyes lit up. "My father?" He cut his gaze to the doorway where Vader had stood—perhaps he had known he was there, then, and they'd connected in the Force in a deeper way than Ahsoka would ever understand—and his akk pup eyes lost a hint of their excitement when he saw it was empty.

Ahsoka nodded. "Yes. Your father. You've got exactly the same sort of power he had."

"That's..." Luke blinked. "Impossible. I'm—"

"Extremely powerful, and skilled. I couldn't ask for a better student." She ruffled his hair. "Now, you've been at this for hours, so I suggest we take a break now—and then I'll see you for lightsaber practise by the lake this evening?"

"Are you going to throw me in the water again?"

"Of course I am."

He huffed, and she laughed—but she didn't miss the way his gaze cut to the door again.

"Go find your father," she told him. "He was in here lurking earlier. He's probably got even more praises to sing than I have."

Luke nodded, and left to follow him. Ahsoka sat back on the patio, watching the sun creep towards the horizon, and smiled to herself.

Luke was doing so well.

Send me the first sentence of a scene from this AU and I might continue it!

Beginning | Previous | Next

[grapefruitsketches]

Untamed Spring Fest 2020 - Day 5: Fresh

1469 Words

Yunmeng Siblings, mostly WWX & JYL; very minor injury

Wei Wuxian had always struggled to keep his clothes fresh and clean, but had understood from a young age to hide any blemish as best he could. A child alone on the streets could be taken for a kid exploring while his parents shopped. But a child who had clearly not been washed or bathed in weeks would not even be allowed near the scrap piles, never mind close enough to the lotus seed booths to sneak a handful every once in a while.

Once he was taken to Lotus Pier, though, he had needed to learn a whole new kind of camouflage.

His first discovery was pure luck. He had been so taken by the beautiful colours and robes of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect that he had somehow forgotten that even these seemingly magical robes could fall victim to the most ordinary of mistakes.

After he had spent hours struggling through his first attempts at writing, Jiang Yanli had laughed when Wei Wuxian had emerged from his and Jiang Cheng’s room. There were fresh black marks of ink on Wei Wuxian’s arms, hands, and, mysteriously, nose.

She tutted as she wheeled her new brother back into his room and took his brand new outer robes off of him. She inspected the sleeves. “You’re lucky you were wearing dark colours today, or else I don’t think there would have been any hope of getting it out.”

Wei Wuxian, meanwhile, had begun scrubbing dutifully at his arms and face, “Jiejie, how do you do it? I’ve seen you copy pages and pages of texts wearing all kinds of light colours, and I’ve never seen any ink on you.”

Jiang Yanli booped Wei Wuxian right on the black spot on his nose, “I am very careful and patient. And,” She picked up Wei Wuxian’s last page of sloppy characters, the thick globs of ink still shining even in the fading evening light, “I do this.” She blew gently over the ink. It was still far too thick for it to dry with only a breath, but a couple of spots faded to a more promising almost-matte. She smiled, handing the page to Wei Ying now that he had dried his cleaner, though not completely unmarked, hands. “You try.” She said.

Wei Wuxian took the page and blew over it, persistent, as his sister scrubbed at his robes. He was nearly out of breath by the time he was satisfied that the page was dry, but Jiang Yanli was still working out some stains on the lighter grey detailing of his sleeves. He heard her huff with the effort and saw her hands redden with their prolonged submersion in water as she scrubbed.

He silently vowed to be more careful, to make sure his new jiejie would never have to work this hard on his behalf again.

He asked for darker outer robes the very next day. Jiang Fengmian was excited to finally hear an earnest request from his best friends’ - now, his - son. He eagerly obliged, without pausing to wonder what motivated the sudden wardrobe change.

--

“Oh, A-Xian!” Jiang Yanli exclaimed at the sight of Wei Wuxian, holding his side as he limped away from the drill ground one night.

A blubbering Jiang Cheng hovered close behind, “I-I didn’t mean to,” he wailed, “I just…”

Wei Wuxian had gotten distracted when an older disciple had used some sort of talisman to swipe his opponent’s legs out from under him. He had wondered whether it might be possible to achieve something like that without a talisman on hand. Jiang Cheng hadn’t noticed that his brother’s attention had been drawn elsewhere until it was too late to stop his swing. 

Wei Wuxian gave his brother a weak punch, “Don’t be modest. You should have seen him, Jiejie, I tried to dodge left, I tried to dodge right,” he mimed a dodge and lost his grin for only a split second as a sharp pain shot up his side, “but Jiang Cheng was everywhere I turned!” Even though he and Jiang Cheng had only just started sword training, Wei Wuxian had already earned an impressive reputation. He wasn’t going to take this victory away from his brother. A win was a win. It was Wei Wuxian’s own fault that he had let himself get distracted.

“Hmmpf. That’s not exactly how I would describe it.” Madam Yu interjected, appearing seemingly from nowhere behind them. She was trailed, as always, by her two maids, “You should be working harder, Jiang Cheng, if you hope to uphold the honour of our family’s name. You can’t cry every time your sword hits something. Though at this rate, we won’t have to worry about that happening too often.” With a whoosh of elegant silks, she passed the three siblings by, but not before looking Wei Wuxian up and down. Her gaze lingered on the bright red staining Wei Wuxian’s pale purple, almost white underclothes, just visible through the cut in his outer robes. She sneered and added, “Clean up this mess if you hope to join us for dinner. And do it yourself. Yanli is your superior, not your servant.”

Wei Wuxian bowed as Madam Yu left, not daring to wince as the movement stretched his side uncomfortably.

Once she was out of sight, Wei Wuxian stumbled and Jiang Cheng’s wails intensified. Jiang Yanli came around behind them, sandwiching herself in between and looping her arms in theirs, easily supporting them both. “Come on,” she said, leading them to Wei Wuxian’s room, “Let’s get you two ready.”

Their sister’s kind words eased the pain and helped clear the tears away, but she frowned at the stained underclothes Wei Wuxian had thrown on his bed after he had changed. “I don’t know if I can get this out…” she sighed. Wei Wuxian sat up straight in concern - Jiang Cheng hissed as the movement ruined his attempt to wrap the large, but shallow, wound. Wei Wuxian couldn’t help it though. Jiang Fengmian had given him these clothes just this Spring.

“Maybe…” Jiang Yanli muttered to herself as she flipped the garment inside out to inspect it. She gasped, “A-Xian! What is this?” she held up the underclothes to show faint brown-red lines crossing the inside of its back.

Wei Wuxian peered at it before realization dawned, “Ah! That’s nothing to worry about. Jiang Cheng and I went swimming a few days ago and I scraped my back against a dock on our way out. They’re just some scratches though - I must have gotten dressed too quickly after that.” It really hadn’t hurt, he’d barely noticed when it had happened. But still. He should have listened to Madam Yu. He didn’t like seeing Yanli’s frown of concern as she traced the rust coloured lines. He looked regretfully at the material. Between the lines criss crossing the back, and the mess today’s sparring had left on the side, the clothes were almost unrecognizable as part of the Yunmeng Jiang-purple outfit Jiang Fengmian had proudly gifted him.

“Hmm,” was the only answer his sister gave.

He sighed, slumping, “Is there no saving them?”

“Stay still!” Jiang Cheng tried to hold Wei Wuxian in place, still trying to get the bandages on, “You sound more concerned about the stupid clothes than about your injury!”

“A-Cheng’s right, you should take care of yourself first, A-Xian,” but Jiang Yanli didn’t fail to see the look of dismay on Wei Wuxian’s face. She smiled sadly as she spread the ruined clothes out on the table, taking a closer look, “the hole isn’t too bad, all things considered. It could easily be mended,” she mused, “but I don’t think the blood will come out. Unless…” She looked at Wei Wuxian doubtfully, “We could try getting it dyed?”

Wei Wuxian looked up, hopeful, “Do you think red would work?” Even if the colours of this sect were above him, he could at least preserve the gifts he’d been given. And if my clothes are red, Jiejie won’t be able to see the scrapes she doesn’t have to know about.

--

A few weeks later, Madam Yu was horrified to see, standing out starkly against a see of purples and blues, a dark navy and red shape that was Wei Wuxian, parading confidently amongst his peers. Later that day, she would wonder loudly to her maids why this child insisted on being such an embarrassment to the sect. She watched as he strutted about, showing off his new clothes to the small but growing fanbase he and Jiang Cheng had among the younger disciples. She couldn’t wait until it was time to send him off to Cloud Recesses. Maybe after some time in white he wouldn’t be so ungrateful as to find purples so below him.

[thewadapan]

Cybertron does not bury its dead.

(I wrote an honest-to-god Transformers fanfic. It’s three connected conversations strongly inspired by concepts from Brian Ruckley’s ongoing series for IDW Publishing, but very much set in a continuity of their own, with no background reading required. Nautica is in it. Artwork by my pal David “Ikkad” Salamante.)

“You know what I love about the sea?” asked Nautica.

A moment later, a faint burst of static came from her commlink. It sounded like a sigh. “I don’t know. You seem to love the ocean for a whole myriad of reasons, few of which make sense to me.” Though she was in her submersible mode, Nautica’s turbines remained still. She sank. “All right. What is it this time? The fish? The feeling of weightlessness? The way the corrosion eats away at your finish? It’s the fish, isn’t it—it’s usually the fish.”

Nautica couldn’t smile, but she would’ve. “I love the silence.”

“Ha, ha. Well, I’ll shut up then.”

“No, don’t,” Nautica laughed. The walls of the trench rose to meet her. “Road Rage. Roaaad Raaage. Say something.”

Another burst of static. “Something.���

“I just mean that it’s nice to sometimes be in a place where… where the only breaths you can hear are your own.”

“I don’t think you could’ve worded that in a creepier way if you’d tried,” remarked Road Rage.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Nautica. She liked talking to Road Rage, but she frequently found herself phrasing things more to bait out a reaction than to get her point across. As a scientist, Nautica felt it was important to be good at communicating herself clearly—and yet. “It’s just… up there, everything’s alive. The walls are alive. You can hear it all the time, the wind in the hallways.”

“I like that. It makes me feel like I’m part of something, like I’m never alone.”

Nautica’s headlights finally fell on the seabed. She started her engines. “You should come down here sometime.”

Static, laughter. “You know I can’t do that. We’re not all airtight. I’d sink, you’d have to fish me out… it’d be no fun for anyone. Plus, I’d stink of rust for ages afterward.”

“Like me, you mean?”

“Hey, I didn’t say that.”

Nautica fell silent for a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Look, I dunno, I just feel like maybe you’d feel differently if you came down here once in a while. Like, even now, when you’re about as away from it all as you can be, you’re still with Tidal Wave.”

“He’s sulking, by the way.”

“And the sky is blue.” Tidal Wave was dependable, but dependably sullen. Part of Nautica wanted to put that down to age—he was something of a giant—but apparently that was just how he’d always been. She liked to think that they were kindred sparks of a sort, as neither one of them much liked walking, but aside from that they had little in common.

Quietly, Nautica knew that one day she would be a giant like him. A submarine so heavy that it would never again be able to surface.

“Don’t tell me you’re sulking too,” came Road Rage’s voice.

“No! No, I’m not, I’m just-” A shadow separated itself from the gloom ahead, moving into Nautica’s floodlights for just a moment before vanishing again. A round form, coated in iridescent verdigris, with spindly limbs and sharp fins.

“Was that a sharkticon?” asked Road Rage. Nautica was quietly pleased to realise that she’d been paying attention to the optical feeds. “Since when do they come down this deep?”

“They don’t, usually, they prefer the shallows,” said Nautica, making no effort to hide her excitement. “This is new.” Another sharkticon swam through the beams.

“So why are they here?”

“I don’t know. Something must have…” In the distance, Nautica saw a faint pinprick of blue light. “Something must have drawn them here. Whatever that is, it’s drawn a whole shiver of sharkticons.”

Slowing her engines, she let the current carry her closer. The sharkticons swarmed around the light, occasionally darting towards it only to veer away at the last second. They ignored Nautica entirely. Eventually, she realised what she was looking at.

“It’s a spark,” she whispered.

“That’s impossible.”

Nautica drifted until she was almost directly over it. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing, and I’m seeing a spark.”

The sharkticons circled. “Nautica, you can’t bring it with you. If you transform, they’ll be on you in moments.”

“I’m faster than them.”

“Nautica, no, you can’t do this.”

“I can’t not do this. Look how big it is already—if it doesn’t get put in a protoform soon, it’ll collapse.”

“Yeah, and when you go to grab it, and you get…” For a couple of moments, the commlink transmitted nothing but static. “Well, what’d be the point in that?”

“I can do this,” Nautica insisted. “Do you trust me?”

“I trust you, which is why I really don’t want you to die.”

“Okay, then I won’t.”

Nautica transformed.

Far, far above the surface of Cybertron, Rubble stood in the outstretched palm of Metroplex and gazed out across the landscape. Bumblebee was talking to him.

“...And you see those spires, way over there in the distance? That’s Trypticon,” said his mentor, pointing, then glancing down at him to see if he was paying attention. He made no response.

Slowly, he raised a hand out in front of his optics, pointing his digits upwards. He lined it up with the glittering hands that made up the skyline.

“The Titans have lived for Millennia, Rubble,” said Bumblebee after a moment. “So will you. You’ll grow up to be just like them.”

“They’re all so still,” Rubble spoke.

“Well, when you get to that sort of size, moving around is very tiring,” Bumblebee laughed. “To say nothing of how the poor bots living inside them feel when corridors start going topsy-turvy.”

Rubble thought about that as he surveyed the landscape. Limbs and bodies, half-submerged in thick smog. Eventually, his optics fell on a Titan which stood out from the rest. He pointed. “That one doesn’t have any lights.”

When Bumblebee saw which one he was looking at, his mentor’s face settled into a strange expression. “That’s the Necrotitan,” he said. “I’ll take you there one day… when you’re older.”

Satisfied by that, Rubble turned his attention to another, one with gargantuan treads forming what might once have been described as a torso. “They can’t transform any more,” he observed.

The expression on Bumblebee’s face intensified. “No, they can’t.”

“I don’t understand. I can’t transform yet. You can.” Again, Rubble turned his hand to face the sky. “They could, but now they can’t.”

“That’s how life works. We’re all good at different things, and we all help each other out.”

“But their faces look so…” For a moment, Rubble struggled to find the words he was looking for. He turned to Bumblebee. “They look like the face you’re doing,” he said, finally.

Bumblebee didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Rubble turned back towards the palm’s edge, and stepped closer to it. “Aww, no,” Bumblebee said. He moved in front of Rubble, taking the protoform’s hand into his and stooping until they were at optic level. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know this would upset you, I shouldn’t have brought you up here. Let’s go back inside,” he said, but Rubble shook his head.

“It’s okay. I’m not upset.”

Bumblebee squeezed Rubble’s hand. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.”

Bumblebee led Rubble over to one of Metroplex’s fingers, which towered above both of them, and they sat down with their backs to it. For a while, they simply stared up at a blue sky full of stars.

“Have you given any more thought to what you’d like to be?” asked Bumblebee eventually.

“Yes,” said Rubble. “I liked flying with Thundercracker today.”

“Oh? Really?” asked Bumblebee.

“Yes. It was scary, but I got to see a lot.”

“So you like the idea of being a jet?” Bumblebee stretched his arms out to either side and moved them, like they were wings.

For a moment, Rubble smiled, before his face fell back into its default expression. “I don’t understand what jets do.”

“Oh.” Bumblebee dropped his arms, and hesitated. “Well, Thundercracker’s a good friend of mine, I’m sure you’ll see him again soon. You should ask him yourself.”

“Okay.” Rubble fidgeted, struggling to get comfortable against the hinge at the base of Metroplex’s finger. “I don’t want to be a construction vehicle.”

“Is this because of the things Hook said?”

“It just seems like a lot of responsibility. Like once you pick that, that’s it. You spend all your time putting up buildings. You have to do it right, so the spark goes into them.” Rubble made a motion, like piling things on top of one another, before his hand settled once more into a titanic pose. He studied it intently, trying to work out where exactly he would be sitting, were he a miniscule version of himself. “Everybody wants you to do a good job.”

“I’m sure you’d do an excellent job,” smiled Bumblebee, but Rubble just shook his head. Bumblebee sighed. “I knew leaving you with Hook was a bad idea.”

“I could just be a car,” Rubble said. “Like you. Then I could do whatever I wanted.”

“You could,” said Bumblebee. “You’re special, Rubble. You can be whatever you want to be.” He peered down at the highways in the distance. From this far away, the traffic barely appeared to be moving.

“What does Nautica turn into?” asked Rubble, but Bumblebee didn’t answer. He was staring at the cars. Rubble poked his mentor impatiently. “I want to know what Nautica turns into.”

“A submarine,” said Bumblebee, finally tearing his gaze away. “She’s a submarine.”

“I don’t know what that is,” said Rubble.

Bumblebee turned away once more, and pointed at another part of the horizon—a great streak of orange trapped between the black smog and the blue sky, surrounded by countless Titans. “You see that huge flat area over there?”

Rubble nodded, but his mentor wasn’t looking. “Yes,” he said.

“That’s the Sea of Rust,” Bumblebee said. “There are special alt-modes called boats, which float on its surface. A submarine is like a boat, only it goes below the surface instead. Nautica’s interested in sea life, hence… submarine.”

“I want to meet her one day,” stated Rubble. “Maybe I want to be a submarine too.”

“She’d be very happy to hear that.”

“I was reading about petro-rabbits the other day,” said Megatron.

With a grunt, Orion Pax pushed a log into the forge. He wiped a layer of condensation from his forehead. “I don’t suppose you could lend me a hand, so long as you’re waxing poetic?”

Megatron laughed, and hefted a log of his own. “Gladly, if you’ll lend your thoughts.” He carried the log over to the edge of the smelting pool, before balancing it with one end on the ground. He took a moment to collect himself. “On the surface, they seem to be quite stupid creatures. Sparkless. Living metal living on instinct alone. And yet, when one of their number dies, they drag its body down into the part of their burrow where it once lived, and they collapse it.” He tipped the log over the edge, and it landed in the forge with a hiss.

“All right,” said Orion Pax, as they watched it slowly sink into the molten liquid. The smoke was clouding his optics. “I suppose you want me to ask why they do that.”

“Well, you see, if they leave the body where it falls, turbofoxes come and consume it. And the petro-rabbits and turbofoxes are natural enemies. If the turbofoxes are well-fed, then they’ll multiply, and more of the petro-rabbits will die.”

“Clever,” said Orion Pax. Internally, he wished his friend had picked a less morbid metaphor. Turbofoxes—and other mechanimals, like sharkticons—had a deeply unpleasant method of subsistence. “You think that’s just hard-coded behaviour, I suppose? Not something they’ve learned?”

Megatron shrugged. “That’s not what I’m getting at here. It just struck me—the petro-rabbits bury their dead.” He turned away from the pool, and gestured at the great molds which lay empty below. “We bury our living.”

The log disappeared entirely below the surface, meaning it was time to add another. “How is Rubble doing?” asked Orion Pax as he moved over to the pile.

“Very well. We’ve seen each other just once since his forging. His mentor, Bumblebee, seems to be an upstanding bot.” Turning back towards the forge, Megatron held his hand out to feel its heat. It was ravenous, insatiable, and yet so oddly comforting. He turned his hand over and, after a moment, rubbed away the layer of black soot that had collected there. “His spark has settled. You know it was touch and go at first.”

“That’s good to hear.” Orion Pax dragged a log from the pile. “From what you said, it was a miracle he’d survived for so long down there.”

“It was, and a miracle he was found.” Megatron sighed deeply. “Senator Starscream wants to keep the whole thing under wraps. If Cybertron at large finds out that sparks are appearing at the bottom of the Sea of Rust—and dying there—there’ll be outcry.

“I think we deserve to know. It’s horrific.”

“It is,” agreed Megatron. “And yet… I find the notion of a submarine generation all the more horrifying. There is no more room here, Orion. You know this to be true, better than most. We could be out there, searching for new worlds like this one—but instead we’re turning in on ourselves, scrambling to save countless sparks while consigning them all to early deaths.” For a moment, Megatron was silent. “The senate and the populace both—it’s the dissonance between their stated values and their behaviour. It’s mass delusion, it’s self-deception.” He watched his friend feed the log to the forge. “You’re quiet, today.”

“I don’t know, Megatron. We aren’t built to make these kinds of decisions.” Again, Orion Pax walked away. “If I’m being honest… you scare me sometimes, when you talk like this. It’s so… callous.”

“You’re not scared of me because I’m callous. You’re scared of me because I’m right.”

“I don’t know that you are.” With a harsh sound of metal scraping against metal, Orion Pax turned on the spot. “The Titans, our generation… I think our roots run too deep. We’re stuck here. And if we aren’t the ones to leave, then who? Who, Megatron? Yes, perhaps not your submarine generation—but maybe the one after that.” He turned away. There was only a single log left in the pile. “It’s like with petro-rabbits, only the opposite. Not death leading to more death, but life leading to more life.”

Megatron gave no response to that, instead settling into thought and descending to the base of the forge. There, he turned his attention to the control panel.

Above, Optimus added the final log. “Has the situation with Road Rage improved?” he asked as he made his way down the ramp.

“Physically, she’s made a full recovery.” Living metal flowed out into the mold, casting Megatron’s face in orange light. “If the Senate follows Starscream’s lead, however… we’re concerned that she’s going to get herself into more trouble.”

“...And Nautica?”

The flow shut off with a hiss. “She’s alive,” said Megatron, turning away. “It’s for the best that Rubble doesn’t see her, for the time being.”

The words hung in the air. Orion Pax said his goodbyes and transformed, leaving Megatron to his work.

As he wound his way down through Metroplex’s arterial catacombs, Orion Pax counted the layers. The chambers of the lower levels had not been used by anyone other than the blacksmiths for a very long time, and the thick smog of the forges choked the tunnels. Those who had once lived here had long since outgrown their accommodation. Now, they were part of the world, and their voices were naught but the low wind that whistled through its fingers.

Metroplex’s own voice had left the audible range a long time ago, but his spark practically overflowed from his body—an inescapable will which permeated every wall. How many more skyscrapers?

Orion Pax thought about the things that Megatron had said. The Necrotitan cast a long shadow. Though Megatron had never gone so far as to speak his heresy aloud, Orion Pax knew him well enough to know that, if he had his way, the sparkless city would become the raw material from which Cybertron’s future could be forged. The world would forget that death existed, at least for a little while.

One by one, Orion Pax counted the layers, until eventually he lost count. He always lost count.

Even when the smooth panels of Metroplex gave way to the rough latticework that formed Cybertron’s old surface, Orion Pax’s journey was not yet done. He followed the trail between the stumps for a very long time, until finally he came to the forest’s edge. There, at last, he transformed.

He took his axe, and got to work.

Commentary

This story owes its existence entirely to Ikkad. In the aftermath of San Diego Comic-Con 2019, he was the one to comment that the axe of the new ‘cel-shaded’ Optimus Prime (designed to evoke his appearance in the 80s cartoon and celebrate the brand’s 35th anniversary) could’ve been improved if they’d made it cartoon-accurate orange. I got thinking about Prime’s axe, and realised that—despite it being an iconic design aspect for many of his incarnations over the years—there’d never been a take on the character that leaned into the lumberjack associations of such a tool.

Of course, Cybertron is a metal planet; it’s not traditionally known for its verdant forests. I wondered what sort of Cybertron could support the existence of Optimus Prime as a logger, while still allowing his rise to command of the Autobots to feel like a natural progression.

I. There Are Listed Buildings

The pitch for Dendrochronology was written on my phone, apparently around midday on Friday 19th of July, which means that I must’ve been at work at the time. I thought I’d written it on the train, but no, apparently I just spent my lunch break writing Transformers fanfiction, because I guess that’s the sort of person I am.

The idea of metal trees was inspired by some mixture of the organic life on Beast Machines Cybertron and the Tangle of Mirrodin from Magic: The Gathering. I envisioned the trees as being made from ‘living metal’, a phrase which evoked the ‘sentio metallico’ and blacksmiths of IDW’s first original comic continuity.

(Mirrodin Besieged was my gateway into Magic: The Gathering. In fact, had any other expansion been on the shelves at the time, perhaps I wouldn’t have fallen down the rabbit hole; I’m just kinda fascinated with metal worlds, I guess. When I spoke to him about it, Ikkad—despite being a fan himself—apparently didn’t know that it existed, and was quite taken with its landscape.)

I didn’t intend to write anything like a proper story based on the idea. Rather, I wanted to try and tell a short story entirely through worldbuilding: a descriptive piece with complete themes and something of an arc. I drafted some prose to that effect on my phone’s notepad app, then threw it on Pastebin. I’ve reproduced the text here:

Cybertron is very crowded.

When a new spark is born, it is placed into a specially-forged protoform. Although Cybertron is a world made entirely of metal, not just any metal will do - protoforms must be made of the "living metal" from which all Cybertronian life is formed. As the spark grows, so too must the protoform grow to accommodate it. As the protoform grows, so too does the amount of energy required to power it.

A Transformer can live forever, but their spark will never stop growing. At each new stage of their life, they must visit the blacksmiths, who nurture their growth by adding new layers of living metal. The most drastic change occurs when it is time for a Transformer to choose their alternate form - a complicated process steeped in tradition, by the end of which their body will have doubled in size.

The oldest Transformers fell still millennia ago, and their titanic frames form the cities in which their descendants now live. To keep the cities alive, new suburbs must constantly be added - all constructed entirely from living metal.

Long ago, as the borders of the cities met, they expanded in the only direction available: up. Vast quantities of living metal were moulded into towering skyscrapers, piled endlessly atop one another, reaching - grasping - at the stars, at life. Their voices became naught but the low wind that whistled between the spires.

Cybertronians do not bury their dead. They bury their living.

The youngest Transformers do not know where living metal comes from. They live in the newest dwellings, above the thick layer of smog which obscures the lower levels. It is no great secret. If they so wished, they could see the source for themselves - were they willing to spend the years needed to venture down the endless stairwells and navigate their way through the arterial catacombs along which fuel yet flows. Along the way, they could count the layers for themselves, and witness the lifetime of their species. At the end of their journey, in the strangled air of Cybertron's wilderness, they would find the trees, and witness how little remains of that lifetime.

When thinking about trees made of living metal, and Cybertronians harvesting that metal, I found myself thinking that it’d be much like if we lived in a world where trees were made of flesh. To me, that seemed to imply a completely different use for them—and yet at the same time I couldn’t escape the idea of trees serving as construction material. So I hit upon the idea that the Cybertronians’ bodies and buildings were one and the same: the smaller Transformers lived inside bigger ones (drawing inspiration from the so-called ‘citybots’ from the original toyline, and from the countless other figures with ‘base modes’).

A society stratified by size further implied something which has almost never been touched upon in Transformers stories: the idea that a Cybertronian might grow over the course of its lifetime, rather than simply having been born or constructed to a certain size. Of course, if the only way a Cybertronian could grow is through the addition of more living metal to their body, then there needed to be some biological imperative to do so—thus, I had the idea that the spark is always ‘growing’, requiring ever-greater amounts of living metal to provide it with physical structure.

I saw this as having links to ideas of transhumanism, and to the idea that Transformers are driven by a very literal kind of change: they change their own bodies not just as a means of self-expression, but because they must in order to survive. I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of identity through the lens of Transformers, particularly in terms of selecting an alt-mode—the Cybertronians literally must choose what they’ll turn into.

This premise came with ready-made conflict, too. There was an in-built, ever-increasing cost to the life of each individual Cybertronian. Dwindling resources have been a common theme in Transformers since its inception, which had its roots in the energy crisis of the 70s, but approaching this through the angle of raw material seemed novel. It also seemed more reminiscent of real-world agriculture and deforestation, while not exactly a direct mapping.

In this case, I had this image of civilisation encroaching on nature, one that stripped away a lot of the complexity of the real world. The restrictions placed on space and on resources were directly linked, and every aspect of the system was alive. I’ve always liked the idea of Cybertron as a world choked with smog and acid rain—and of course, the idea of feeding logs to a forge seemed like a cool inversion of their typical use as fuel.

The close relationship between the trees and the Cybertronians probably—I speak in retrospect here—also had its roots in the Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead, which I had to read for an astrobiology class I took a couple of years ago. I didn’t care much for the book itself, but it left an impression on me nonetheless. Unlike the relationship between the trees and the aliens in that book, the dynamic on Cybertron is much more adversarial.

Another conceptual convergence occurred when I recalled the last Transformers setting to place a heavy focus on size: Gigantion, the ‘Giant Planet’ from Transformers: Cybertron. Each colossal Transformer on that planet was partnered with a much-smaller ‘Mini-Con’ (a concept itself drawn from previous series). Their lives were spent constantly building and subsequently abandoning new cities; by the time of the cartoon, they’d started building new cities atop old ones, creating a layered planet. I could see a similar concept tying into the emerging themes of generational divides—each new generation literally being built upon the last.

I immediately drew a connection to the tree rings which appear annually in the cross-section of a tree trunk (in fact, I’m not sure which idea preceded the other). A quick Google search for tree rings threw up the word ‘dendrochronology’, which turned into the title of the pitch. I’m not actually that keen on that title, but couldn’t think of a better one (this seems to be par for the course with the things I write).

One of the main goals of my pitch was to communicate as much as possible with as little as possible, and as such there are a lot of ideas that it only hints at. The sentence about the ‘drastic change’ that occurs when a Cybertronian picks their alt-mode was intended to imply it to be an analogue of puberty. The use of the word ‘suburbs’ was probably supposed to evoke more ideas of generational conflict (I think a lot of my peers resent the older generations for creating the housing market as it is) while also implying that Cybertron moves at a slower pace than one might expect; suburbs are quite unchanging places.

I tried to avoid proper nouns aside from ‘Cybertron’, ‘Cybertronian’ and ‘Transformer’, as I feel like a lot of Transformers fiction has a tendency to throw out buzzwords (something which this story still ultimately wound up being guilty of), but did use the word ‘titanic’ specifically in reference to the Titans. There’s a beat in the final fic where Rubble moves his hand into a ‘titanic pose’; this was a word choice I went back and forth on, having at one point settled on ‘titan-like’ instead. I also had mixed feelings on the word ‘mechanimal’—an established portmanteau of ‘mechanical’ and ‘animal’—but stuck with it, even going so far as to name sharkticons, petro-rabbits and turbofoxes (some of which have historically been rendered as proper nouns).

When I wrote the pitch, I hadn’t intended the line about skyscrapers ‘grasping’ to be entirely literal, but it seemed like an evocative idea, so that’s how it shook out in the final story, and I ended up adding the hands as a backdrop to Ikkad’s design for Orion Pax (which I’ll talk more about later). The resulting image, to me, actually brings to mind zombie fiction—an unintentional connection, but one which holds weight in a story so heavily centred around death. To be trite, the Titans are like reverse zombies: alive, but unmoving.

Not everything that I came up with made it into the pitch itself, and not everything in the pitch made it into the story proper. I envisioned the story as having less of a focus on death and more of a focus on tradition: of people living with the decisions of older generations. I liked the idea that some of the younger Transformers would use the living metal from mechanimals, becoming versions of the Maximals and Predacons from Beast Wars and facing persecution from the older generations, who’d perceive this method of growth as being unnatural.

In case I’m not being clear: I hadn’t intended the story to be a cut-and-dry kind of ‘old people bad’ screed. The younger Transformers—in my head I was using the word Mini-Cons, but aside from size they have little in common with traditional Mini-Cons—were naive, literally living above the cloud layer obscuring the cost of their lives. In the pitch, I’d intended the hints towards an interstellar exodus to be read with a veneer of colonialism (like that of IDW’s comics), but decided to go with a more charitable presentation of Megatron’s beliefs when it came to writing the story proper.

Finally, you’ll note that—despite its roots—the pitch made no mention of Optimus Prime whatsoever. I envisioned him as being a younger bot who had lived above the clouds but travelled down to work as a logger. This seemed like a path that could ultimately lead to him returning to the world above and inciting change in Cybertronian society. One aspect of the pitch which didn’t survive the transition to proper prose was the idea that the Titans were so large that travelling from the skyscrapers all the way down to Cybertron’s surface would take years; I’ll talk a little more about this later.

II. My Year in Lists

The Pastebin’s reception was unanimously very positive, though admittedly the only people I showed it to were good friends of mine with similar sensibilities in terms of what they like to see in Transformers stories. At the time I was determined not to develop the pitch further, as I was in full ‘get as many of these old projects out the door as quickly as possible’ mode (over half a year later, I seem to have more projects on the go than ever). I knew that, if I wanted to do the pitch justice, I’d have to devote significant resources to it, and between work and “The Beast Within (My Pants)” I was decidedly occupied.

Once I’d released that comic, I started to feel fatigued with Transformers in general. Particularly in the aftermath of TFNation 2019, it seemed to be consuming my mind, and I suddenly felt a growing concern that there wasn’t really a future for me in the fandom. Not just in terms of the things I was making—look, nobody wants to read Transformers fanfiction—but in terms of the people I was meeting; outside my friends on Discord, I was increasingly feeling that I just didn’t want to talk to other fans. I’ve written more about this elsewhere, in a non-fiction work that is unlikely to see the true light of day.

Somehow, my efforts to divert my attention towards more productive things failed at every turn. I wrote a review of Transformers: Galaxies #1 for the Allspark, along with a long article about toys which might see a public release at some point. I made a bunch of posts promoting frikkin’ Hauler as a candidate for 2019′s baffling Hall of Fame vote (he didn’t win). I devoted an increasing amount of time to the Allspark Chat Discord server, and then—once that crashed and burned (a little more on that later)—to the TFWiki Discord server. Apparently taken by a fit of madness, I decided that I wanted to read every single Transformers comic Marvel ever put out (in a similar vein to the comprehensive BIONICLE read-through I subjected myself to during the summer), and while I’m barely a sixth of the way into that run I still have vague plans to expand my reading list to include a significant majority of Transformers print media, along with as much of the abominable original cartoon as I can stomach. I’m working on two different Transformers-related secret projects. And, oh Primus, I’ve spent money on action figures.

It seems like this might just kinda be my life, at least for the time being, so I may as well try to own it.

Marvel’s Transformers comics are, in my newly-informed opinion, severely underrated in the fandom’s current landscape. This is partially a result of the fact that there is no single definitive method in which to read them: IDW’s Classics reprints were the first to comprehensively print the US material in order, but their remastering process kinda butchered the artwork and introduced errors to both the colouring and the lettering. Their Classics UK line (which prints the various UK-exclusive comics mostly written by Simon Furman to slot between issues of Bob Budianski’s American series) seems to have been quietly put on indefinite hiatus, but working out a reading order with which to swap between these two series of books is challenging for the casual reader anyway.

Another factor that’s led to these comics falling into semi-obscurity is the relative prominence of the concurrent Sunbow cartoon, which—certainly in the US—reached a much wider audience and left a stronger impression, despite objectively being much worse. Modern audiences will be surprised to find that many of the most successful aspects of the live-action movies or IDW’s comics were actually present in the franchise from its inception, having been pioneered by the likes of Bob Budianski.

The original four-issue limited series in particular—written by varying combinations of Bill Mantlo, Ralph Macchio and Jim Salicrup, though I’ll specifically note that Macchio was the one to script the first issue’s iconic prose—is a pretty enthralling read, presenting a vision of Cybertron which actually feels very fresh when compared to its successors, and laying out the Earth-based conflict in a compelling way. The Classics reprints include Jim Shooter’s original pitch for the series:

“Civil war rages on the planet Cybertron. Destruction is catastrophic and widespread, and yet no life is lost.  None, at least, in the sense that we know life--for the inhabitants of Cybertron are all machines. There is NO ‘life’ on Cybertron save for mechanical, electronic, ‘creatures.’ As mankind is first among the organic denizens of Earth, intelligent, sentient robots are the dominant species on Cybertron. Even the planet itself is one vast mechanical construct. Perhaps there was once a ‘real’ world upon which Cybertron was built on, into, under, and through until no trace of the original planet can be found, but the origin of the planet is unknown, lost in antiquity. Similarly, it is unknown whether the robotic ‘life’ of Cybertron was originally created by some mysterious, advanced, alien race in the dim, distant past, or whether these strange metallic beings somehow evolved from bizarre, basic life forms beyond human comprehension.”

“What is certain is that the sentient, robotic beings of Cybertron are destroying one another.”

I was quite taken by the presentation of this premise, and posted it in Allspark Chat. Ikkad idly noted that it reminded him of the ‘lumberjack Prime’ pitch, and when I started reading the first issue of the comic itself, one panel immediately jumped out at me...

This is the very first view we’re given of the Transformers. It’s unlikely that any of the figures drawn here were supposed to be the actual characters they resemble: just by eye, there are colour schemes matching Bumblebee, Trailbreaker, Sunstreaker, Hound, and—most notably—Optimus Prime, whose actual body design could be interpreted as a pre-war version of the more toy-accurate design he’s seen sporting just a couple of pages later.

Having already been reminded of the existence of my pitch, I couldn’t help but see this Optimus Prime lookalike and his peaceful Cybertron as being dead ringers for those I’d written about months prior, and Ikkad agreed. Later that same day, he posted a pencil sketch that kinda blew my mind.

This sketch is basically the first time that someone’s drawn artwork inspired by something I’ve made! Suddenly, I felt the urge to tell a real Dendrochronology story, something with more than an hour or so devoted to it. Of course, if you’re here, you’ve already read the result, but I’ll talk about that later—suffice to say that once I finished writing, I started converting Ikkad’s sketch into a proper cover image for the story. Digitally colouring a photo of a pencil sketch is quite challenging, as I needed to clean up the linework; I’m not very good with the pen tool.

Once that was done, I began working out a colour layout. I took hues directly from the Marvel artwork and copied the layout for Prime’s upper torso. For the rest of him, however, I drew inspiration from his Animated incarnation; that Prime’s defining characteristics are his relative youth and inexperience, and he carries the trademark axe. I felt like Ikkad had himself used the character for inspiration, cleverly drawing a conceptual parallel between the double-wheel-heels found on many Animated Optimus Prime toys and those depicted on Optimus Prime’s Cybertronian ‘combat vehicle’ mode in the Marvel comic (which also provided the chest detailing for Ikkad’s design).

I’d originally planned to give him an orange axe, like the one he wielded in the original cartoon, but knew from the rest of the layout that it wouldn’t work. That didn’t stop me from attempting to make the logs on his trailer orange (there’s a certain order to how I used colour in the story itself, which I’ll discuss later), and sure enough I was immediately unhappy with the result. I also wasn’t happy with the white stripe across his chest, despite its origins on the Animated colour layout; Marvel had consistently used an outdated character model which lacked the stripe, and besides, I couldn’t help feeling like it made the chest of Ikkad’s design look like a moustachioed face!

For the final layout, I made the logs a blue-grey reminiscent of Optimus Prime’s original trailer, and opted for a red stripe, which I felt resulted in a cleaner look that was more faithful to the comics. I already had a sense of the tone I wanted to achieve with the final image: I wanted it to look, at a glance, like a piece of artwork from the poor scans of beat-up 80s comics I was reading. My version of Photoshop had a ‘color halftone’ effect, which—while not exactly authentic—was close enough for my purposes. I also deliberately avoided fixing minor colouring errors, particularly on Prime’s legs, to create a rough quality to the flats; this head-to-toe gradient also seemed to mirror the setting itself.

For the final version of the cover, I added hands in the background, roughly traced from stock photography using Photoshop’s vector tool. Their proportions could stand to be more titanic—the arms in particular should be much blockier—but I liked their dynamism too much to make changes, and worried that I’d block out too much of the sky (again, I’m sure you can see what I was going for with the gradient). The title (‘OENOROCHRONOLOGY’, heh) was just blocked out in a Transformers font I’d downloaded a while back, while working on the trading cards for the Allspark’s unofficial Hasbro Heroes Sourcebook Extended, with an outline applied.

I don’t have any aspirations of being a colourist, but I enjoy it, and working on lineart like this was pretty special. Ikkad gave me pointers towards the end, which certainly improved the finished piece.

III. The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future

The only constraint I placed on myself for Dendrochronology was that it had to feature Optimus Prime (or Orion Pax, as he ended up being called) in some significant capacity. I quickly decided that I wanted to include Rubble, the breakout audience surrogate from Brian Ruckley’s ongoing comic, and preferred the idea of porting over Bumblebee as well instead of setting up a new mentee/mentor dynamic between him and Orion Pax.

As I didn’t want to spend too long on the story, I gave myself two choices: either I'd do the whole thing as a single continuous scene, or I’d skip around a few short scenes with timeskips between them. The latter seemed like an interesting approach, because the time-adjacent concept of age was at the forefront of the setting’s themes. I’m not sure how exactly the idea to tell part of the story from Nautica’s perspective came about, except for the fact that her recent spotlight issue of the comic had left an impression on me. If I was telling the story in one scene, I’d have used dialogue to establish that she’d been the one to find Rubble’s spark; were I using connected scenes, I’d just have a short snippet of the moment itself.

(Like I discussed way back in the commentary for Another Son, I have something of a morbid fascination with the ocean. Also, the second #writing contest for the Homestuck Discord server—prior to the channel being shut down for being dead as a doornail—had a prompt about a submersible, but I didn’t enter, and since then I’d been vaguely feeling like I wanted to tell a story like that. You can read about the first of those contests in the commentary for “Cowboy”, if you like, though I must warn you that the two works I’ve linked in this aside are amongst the worst ones on this blog.)

There's a text file on my computer titled ‘DendrochronologyOutline.txt’, dated to the 24th of October, which simply reads:

- In the Sea of Rust, Nautica conducts a survey of mechanimal life. She finds a spark. - Rubble stands in the palm of Metroplex, with Bumblebee. - Orion Pax talks with Anode.

After writing that, I figured that if I dawdled any longer then I wouldn’t end up writing anything, so I just started typing. I wanted Nautica to have someone to talk to, and Road Rage—her partner from her aforementioned spotlight issue—was the obvious choice. But of course, Road Rage turns into a car (or a flying car, I guess), so they’d be physically apart. I liked the asymmetry of the dynamic: they talk as though they’re right next to each other, but there’s distance between them.

Thanks to the fandom, I’d actually misremembered Nautica and Road Rage’s dynamic as being more than the friendly professional relationship portrayed in the comic itself. Look, I’m not much of a shipper, but in this case it seemed like the natural angle from which to approach my versions of the characters; Nautica’s job is an isolating one, and Road Rage’s is far less evocative than her occupation as a bodyguard in the comic. I drew a lot from the idea of dating in the information age, where a huge amount of interaction just takes place over text.

(Later issues of Ruckley’s comic would actually bring the ‘subtext’ to the foreground, with Road Rage having unrequited feelings for Nautica; I’d approached the relationship from the opposite angle!)

Although I briefly considered using Broadside, in homage to the handle of a friend in the TFWiki server, I settled on Tidal Wave as a cast member very early on. The character is a favourite of the old Allspark Chat regulars, and indeed of the fandom at large, with his role in Nick Roche’s Sins of the Wreckers providing most of his characterisation in this story. I remember also thinking about the water mages from Worth the Candle (a niche web serial that’s basically my favourite story ever; I swear I mention it practically every time I write a commentary, for the love of god what are you doing here just go read it already, if I tell you Megatron is in it will that be enough to convince you), and saw Tidal Wave as having a similar relationship with the ocean. This didn’t really make it onto the page, as thematically I was already digressing pretty far from the core ideas I’d started with, but if I ever revisit the character that’s an angle I’d like to explore. A related metaphor serves as the focus of Jeff Lemire’s The Underwater Welder, a graphic novel which I didn’t much like at first but which I seem to grow fonder of as time passes.

Perhaps the biggest challenge with Nautica’s scene was that I couldn’t have the characters physically interact. Plus, as a submarine, Nautica doesn’t have any way of emoting! Still, I tried my best. I ended up describing Nautica’s spatial movement in more detail than I would’ve otherwise, and occasionally used the static from the commlink to punctuate Road Rage’s dialogue.

The prose mentions Nautica’s ‘headlights’, and at one point I actually debated a little about whether or not to throw a space in there. See, when editing a story for another friend from the TFWiki server, I’d noticed that they’d mistakenly described a character as having ‘head lights’, which I thought evoked the idea of a car with a literal head, like the Vehicons from Beast Machines. It seemed like a pretty soulful bit of prose, and I filed it away for later use, but ended up deciding that it’d be confusing in the context of this story. Another time, perhaps!

There’s an awkward line in the dialogue where Nautica says “And the sky is blue.” I wrote this intending it to be an expression of ‘yes, obviously’, but then realised that Cybertron might not have a blue sky, and that even if it did, it’d be filled with smoke on most parts of the planet. I couldn’t think of a replacement line that made sense in the context of both Cybertron and Earth, and didn’t want to trip up the reader, and couldn’t think of an entirely different beat to substitute, so the line persisted through to the final draft. I’m not really happy with it, but maybe you didn’t notice it; I made sure to describe the sky as blue above the smog in the subsequent section.

As a result of the challenges of this scene’s setup, I briefly considered playing up the parallel I was drawing to real-world messaging by switching format to Homestuck-style chatlogs, with no descriptive prose whatsoever. Looking ahead at the vague plans I was piecing together for two scenes to come, I realised this’d cause me more problems in the long run, in addition to serving as (yet another) barrier of entry to the story. Plus, I liked the imagery with the Titans’ voices from the pitch, and felt like there’d be thematic dissonance if I never actually had any of the smaller characters speak out loud.

When I laid out the image of the sharkticons circling the spark, I had a specific scene from another story in mind, but I couldn’t work out exactly what I was thinking of. Perhaps it was something from BIONICLE—fish circling a mask? Or maybe I was just remembering a couple of the illustrations from Another Son. The sharkticons actually caused me a bit of a headache; in traditional portrayals they usually transform, and are pretty aggressive, whereas I needed some reason for them to ignore Nautica at first. I settled on the idea that Nautica was safe so long as she remained in submarine form, a sealed unit that keeps the spark’s ‘smell’ in much like it keeps liquid out. The sharkticons could smell Rubble’s spark, and would approach it, but found that it held no living metal upon which to feed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a nice way of explaining this logic in the story itself, so it’s kinda up to interpretation.

I considered using other kinds of mechanical sea life from Transformers history, but the only ones which came to life were the Allicons and the other fish seen on the planet Quintessa in The Transformers: The Movie. In particular, I wanted to namedrop the squid-like creature that attacks Hot Rod and Kup, but apparently it was never named in the script or in derivative media. Maybe I would’ve called it an ‘octobot’, except I’m sure a brief Google search will show that there’s a billion other things with that name, and it sounds pretty dumb anyway. Speaking of Google searches, I had to look up what a group of sharks is called, and was not disappointed!

IV. Hold on Now, Youngster...

When the first issue of Brian Ruckley’s ongoing came out, I wrote a pretty impassioned review of it for the Refined Robot Co. Though the series has since surpassed that issue, it’s still the one which lingers most strongly in my mind, because there’s a real weight to the scenes that are just Rubble, Bumblebee and Windblade bumbling around the landscape of Cybertron—a powerful atmosphere of endless possibilities.

By the time it came to write the second scene, I’d very much settled on structuring the story as being three conversations between three distinct pairs of characters. There’s a delicious irony—which I’m sure was Ruckley’s intent—in using Bumblebee, the audience’s traditional point of contact with the robotic casts of Transformers stories, as the mentor to an entirely distinct audience surrogate.

In the end, my own take on the dynamic between the two wound up feeling more cynical than Ruckley’s. My Rubble struggles to express himself, and at times is almost vaguely hostile towards Bumblebee, who finds himself out of his depth with most of his mentee’s observations. A key trick I used with Rubble’s dialogue is that he speaks entirely in flat statements, using periods instead of commas and never asking questions (that is, until he finally asks about Nautica). Conversely, I deliberately made a significant proportion of Bumblebee’s dialogue into questions.

Bumblebee namedrops Thundercracker mostly because their friendship in the first IDW continuity was one of the highlights of those comics—certainly in the eyes of the ex-regulars of Allspark Chat, for whom Thundercracker is another favourite—and it seems unlikely to recur in Ruckley’s run. I wanted to characterise him in an oblique way, by hinting towards the idea that he spent a significant amount of time flying Rubble around but never actually explained what his job was.

Hook, meanwhile, was included in reference to Tyler Bleszinski’s “Constructicons Rising” arc of Galaxies, the other book set in IDW’s new continuity, which was shaping up pretty well at the time when the story was written. I saw him as just being his typical arrogant self, with Bumblebee being right that Rubble was put off mostly by his attitude.

The Titans Metroplex and Trypticon are both namedropped, but they weren’t the only ones I considered including. Aside from Fortress Maximus and Scorponok, I liked the idea of mentioning Omega Supreme as being the only theoretically-spaceworthy Titan, tying into the themes of the third scene, but ultimately decided against it. The Titan with treads on its torso that Rubble points out was intended to be Grandus, but I chose not to name him in the text itself.

I came up with the idea of reimagining some of the original combiner teams as hodgepodged-together citybots themselves, but it was an uneccessary complication. I could’ve also used the various Micromaster bases; there’s a certain pleasant irony in turning some of the smallest characters in Transformers into some of the biggest.

I saw cameos like these as being a good way of expanding the world; the existence of Thundercracker and Starscream implies that there’s a Skywarp out there (I actually wanted to namedrop him (her?) somehow, but I couldn’t find a neat way of doing it) while Hook implies that the rest of the Constructicons are around too.

One of my prereaders asked me what face the Titans and Bumblebee were making around the midpoint of the scene—this was something that I’d originally made explicit, but I realised that Rubble would lack the frame of reference to interpret a lot of expressions, and chose to introduce an aspect of ambiguity. For the record, I envisioned them as looking sad; Bumblebee worries that he’s made Rubble upset, but really he’s just upset himself.

The second part has the most heavy lifting to do in terms of laying out key aspects of the setting, but I did everything possible to avoid it becoming an exposition dump. There’s a fair bit in the way of physical description and imagery, albeit a clumsy sort, and most of the worldbuilding details are presented in a way which allows readers to fill in the blanks for themselves.

Bumblebee’s line “You’re special, Rubble. You can be whatever you want to be.” was a fairly late addition to the story. I wanted to make the frame of reference that I was drawing on—namely the millennial experience—a little more explicit. I was planting the seeds of Megatron’s “submarine generation”, a phrase which was supposed to evoke the so-called ‘snowflake generation’. In case you're wondering, yes, that’s why I used the snowflake-like design of sentico metallico from IDW’s comics as a dinkus.

(Huh, “millennial”. The Titans have lived for millennia—does that make them millennials?)

V. The Fall of Home

From the start, I’d planned to save Orion Pax until the final scene, wherein he’d talk to a blacksmith. At first, I wanted to use Anode—an original character from James Roberts’ Lost Light, with whom he’d explored the concept of a Cybertronian blacksmith—but there were a few problems with that idea. First, I’d feel the need to include Lug (Anode’s partner) in some capacity. Second, being a Roberts character, Anode’s kind of a jokester, and I had a specific tone I was angling for. Finally, I just felt like she wasn’t principled enough to lead the conversation I wanted.

Considering that I’d already completely reimagined Optimus Prime’s original occupation, I felt comfortable retooling another character into being a blacksmith, and I only really had one option: Megatron. I follow a one-time official Transformers artist on this site who, for reasons I cannot particularly fathom, likes shipping Optimus Prime and Megatron, and I think they must’ve rubbed off on me. Then again, it’s not as if there’s a shortage of compelling interactions between the two in official media.

I envisioned the scene as being something of a departure in form from those preceding it—I wanted the characters to disagree, but then to ‘leave the camera rolling’ and shine a spotlight on Orion Pax’s viewpoint. Megatron would temper his ideas in his forge, and Orion Pax would turn introspective on his solitary journey.

Once more, I found myself running into problems with the physicality of the scene. I liked the idea of having the characters feed logs to the fire, but wanted to avoid making the prose too repetitive. Hopefully I was able to keep some interest. I think the forge—which looms over the conversation—is a decent enough image, described as ‘insatiable’ to bluntly show that, so long as there are Cybertronians alive, more metal will be needed. I wanted to reference the Smelting Pool from the Marvel comics, which I thought was a suitably horrific comparison to draw. The idea of the forge having ‘molds’ is, of course, an oblique reference to the molds used to produce Transformers toys; I’m probably more pleased with this than I should be.

Orion Pax describes Megatron as “waxing poetic” in reference to Impactor’s famous “not more poetry” line from IDW’s first continuity, which cropped up a couple of times in interactions between him and Megatron. ‘Revolutionary thinker’ portrayals like this have (for better or worse) become the norm for pre-war Megatron, sharply contrasting with the ‘warmongering megalomaniac’ approach taken by older stories.

Megatron’s “petro-rabbits and turbofoxes” metaphor was inspired by Silva’s “last rat standing” soliloquy from Skyfall, which is a friend of mine’s favourite movie (yes, we know it’s got its problems, but there’s some good stuff in there). I was probably also drawing on my experience programming a ‘rabbits and foxes’ simulation for my computer science qualification back in high school. The metaphor was included entirely as setup for some version of the ‘bury their living’ line from my original pitch, as I was quite proud of it but didn’t want the Cybertronians in the story to have interacted with humanity.

My original concept for Maximals and Predacons on this Cybertron reared its head slightly in the prose where Orion Pax thinks about the mechanimals’ ‘unpleasant method of subsistence’. I was hoping that the reader would put the pieces together and realise that the trees aren’t the only source of living metal on Cybertron.

For this final conversation, I found myself cribbing a lot from rationalist ideology (although neither character takes a particularly rationalist stance). Rationalism—at least the kind that I’m familiar with, as a denizen of weird spaces on the internet—is about behaving in a way which produces outcomes that match your values; this is what Megatron finds frustrating about the “dissonance” he sees in Cybertron’s populace. To make some huge generalisations, a lot of rationalists generally care a lot about not dying, and take greater pains than most to avoid death, and think that everybody should be immortal. They also tend to be more interested in space than your average person.

The key points of disagreement between Megatron and Orion Pax concern the next generation and the Necrotitan. Megatron doesn’t want more Cybertronians running around, because he thinks they’ll be a drain on the world’s resources that won’t contribute to its long-term survival; Orion Pax wants to give as many people as possible a chance to increase the likelihood of some small number of them learning how to solve the world’s problems. Megatron wants to tear down the Necrotitan and start using mechanimals as sources of living metal; Orion Pax is deeply uncomfortable with these ideas and sees them as temporary measures anyway.

Of the two, Megatron’s point of view is the more radical, but in my opinion���to be glibly centrist—neither of them is entirely right. This is a world where mechanimals are empirically less sentient than Cybertronians (they lack sparks), and where the reasons against melting the Necrotitan are entirely cultural; it would be a tragedy for any Cybertronian to die when these sources of metal are so readily available. On the other hand, it seems obvious that the world’s current population isn’t equipped to solve its problems, and time is unlikely to change that (most Cybertronians are very old; if they were going to do something, they already would have done it).

The Necrotitan was actually a fairly late addition to the story; I remember going back to the Rubble/Bumblebee scene to insert the beat concerning it while I was writing the Orion Pax/Megatron scene. The original Necrotitan appeared in John Barber’s comics for IDW’s first continuity, and I’ve always thought it to be a pretty evocative conceit. In the setting of Dendrochronology, it serves as a reminder that death is real, ever-present on the skyline.

Starscream is the only additional character to be namedropped in the final section, drawing inspiration from both of his IDW portrayals. Until this point in the story, I hadn’t given much thought to factions—in fact, I deliberately chose Decepticons as cameos in earlier scenes, wanting to present the image of a united planet. With the final scene, I wanted to plant the seeds of the Decepticon movement; Megatron’s use of the phrase “self-deception” was intended to be the origin of its name. I wasn’t too interested in laying out the whole conflict, but suffice to say that Megatron would fall out with Orion Pax and ally with Starscream, with Orion Pax using his unique insights to lead the opposition.

Throughout the story, I tried to use colour for effect. The Transformers movies are a prime example of the ‘blue and orange’ filmmaking trend, and it made sense to call attention to those colours in the story itself. The spark and the sky are both blue, and they share associations with the future. The forge and the sea of rust are both orange, and they’re associated with the ugly costs of living.

VI. A Slow, Slow Death

There’s one major aspect of the story that I’ve left untouched thus far, that being the ultimate fate of Nautica. While writing the end of the first scene, I (unironically) became concerned that I was introducing pro-life undertones. I was approaching the setting on a generational basis—the question posed being ‘how many sacrifices should we make for the next generation’ (answer: lots)—but the actual mechanics of the Cybertronian life cycle meant that sparks were a direct analog to unborn children. This was my intention, in the abstract sense of ‘we have an obligation to those who have yet to be born’, but that’s subtly different to ‘we have an obligation to unborn children’, and I was worried that people’d be more inclined to read it as the latter (which is a much more concrete real-world point of contention than the former).

So yeah, in the scene, Nautica risks her life to save the spark that’ll become Rubble. At the time, I didn’t want her to die—hence her “then I won’t” line—but as I headed into the next scene, I started running into problems.

See, my issue was that I’d never intended Nautica to be Rubble’s mentor; I wanted instead to present the idea that the whole world has an obligation to young people. If Nautica raised Rubble, she’d be his parent in all but name, and the setting hadn’t been created with themes of parenthood in mind. I found the idea that she’d never met Rubble very compelling, and wanted a reason for that to be the case.

At first, I considered that it’d be a case of governmental meddling, perhaps with some functionism mixed in—‘we can’t have submarines raising our kids’—but once again, I was really muddying the waters in terms of what the story was about. It’s not a story about government oversight, nor is it a story about about institutional discrimination, nor is it a story about adoption. I believe a lot in economical narratives and clear themes, and kept finding myself with neither.

So I was like, well, damn, I guess I’d better just kill Nautica then.

The final exchange between Bumblebee and Rubble was absolutely supposed to create the sense that she’s not around any more. I wanted to juxtapose the possibilities of Rubble’s lifetime against a lifetime with no possibilities left. From there, Nautica’s death becomes a shadow which hangs over the story’s conclusion—a real and personal symbol for the cost of life. It was made explicit in the original ending to the exchange between Orion Pax and Megatron, which lacked a few lines present in the final version:

“Has the situation with Road Rage improved?” he asked as he made his way down the ramp.

Living metal flowed out into the mold, casting Megatron’s face in orange light. “Physically, she’s made a full recovery.”

The words hung in the air.

Although I think that first draft of the story was a little cleaner, it was a weaker, more conventional approach, and all in all I found myself pretty uncomfortable with it.

In terms of the writing on this blog—and most of the writing off this blog—I don’t have a stellar record in terms of doing right by girls. I was initially happy to realise that, thanks to the conversation between Nautica and Road Rage, Dendrochronology passes the Bechdel test, being the first of my stories to do so.

(Although their conversation does include a brief mention of Tidal Wave, for the most part it’s squarely concerned with the relationship between Nautica and Road Rage. However, one might argue that Rubble’s spark—the focus at the end of the conversation—counts as a male character, thus invalidating the test. Either way, this is still less ambiguous than candidates from previous stories of mine: the conversation between Lizzie and the maybe-a-figment-of-her-imagination devil at the end of Are You Happy, and the conversation between gendered-according-to-interpretation characters at the end of Retrace Steps. If it sounds like this is becoming a little tortured and overwrought, there’s two reasons for that: one is that the Bechdel test is kind of a dumb metric, and the other is that I don’t write enough about girls.)

If I killed Nautica, I’d be fridging her, perhaps burying her too (though I suppose textually that’s open to interpretation). It felt grossly cynical, and pretty far removed from what I’d set out to say with the pitch. Ultimately, my friend gearshift from the TFWiki Discord server came up with a simple solution: not killing her.

In abstract, leaving Nautica grievously wounded is a kind of fridging all of its own—but the key difference is that it leaves room for her condition to improve. This neatly mirrors the state of Cybertron itself: she’s not doing well, but with a little care, she’ll survive. Aside from clarifying that she’s alive, I decided that the less said in the story itself, the better. Whatever condition she’s in, it’s bad enough that they don’t want Rubble to know about it. I see Road Rage as wanting nothing to do with Rubble; she can’t help but blame him. This fate also has symmetry with the events of Nautica’s spotlight issue in Ruckley’s comic.

VII. ...And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes in Unison

From a certain perspective, Dendrochronology fails to live up to its potential. Had I been able to devote an unlimited amount of resources to the fic, it’d look wildly different. The stratified society would ideally have provided the structure: the story would begin at the highest point on Cybertron and end in the forest on its surface, with the protagonists passing down through the layers and witnessing their life cycle in real time. It’d be told more traditionally, with, y’know, actual events, rather than the kinds of static conversations which usually constitute short stories. Ideally, it’d have more thematic focus.

Aside from that, I’ve deliberately avoided giving the hypothetical fully-realised version of this story much thought, because I have other stuff I want to work on. The idea of writing Transformers stories strongly appeals to me—and heck, I’ve talked a stupid amount about them—so it was nice to finally put my money where my mouth is and write a piece of serious prose. I’ve got maybe three or four pitches or openings for different Transformers stories sitting around on my hard drive, but they’re all too ambitious, which is why the goal here was to always keep things as constrained as possible. Right now, I feel like I can’t commit any real amount of time to any project like this; maybe one day the world will convince me that the things I make will be read by more than a dozen people, and I’ll be able to justify it. Or maybe when more people read my stuff I’ll just feel bad for not making enough? I don’t know. We’re in the doldrums of the commentary now, where I realise I’ve spent more time writing about the thing I made than on the thing itself, and start thinking about the fact that after I add the thing to the list of things I made I’m probably not gonna hear about it again, and that I’m not entitled to anything more than that anyway. Okay, this paragraph’s gotten needlessly self-indulgent and depressing, time to abort.

Ikkad’s favourite Transformers is Cosmos, and I drew a terrible redesign for him in MS Paint. I figure maybe in the good ending of Dendrochronology, he’s the first in a generation of spacefaring bots. I had this vague idea in my head—and I suppose Cybertron would look quite different if this were true—that the Transformers maybe wouldn’t grow if they were in stasis, and that once a ship escaped the pull of Cybertron’s gravity it would fall dormant, only awakening its crew members upon arrival on another planet. Y’know, kinda like in the 80s stories. Or maybe Cosmos is, for the time being, one-of-a-kind, tumbling through space as far away from home as anyone’s ever been. He’s historically been characterised by his loneliness.

Yeah, I kinda suck at drawing. Poor Cosmos didn’t deserve this. Here’s a compilation of stock photos of my sources of inspiration for this redesign, in case you want to steal his look.

Okay, okay, I’ve kept you longer than I should’ve—I’ll wrap things up.

This project has been sitting completed in my drafts folder for many months now, and that’s in large part down to the fact that—for most of those months—the future of my long-time home in the Transformers fandom, Allspark Chat, was deeply uncertain. This isn’t the place to tell that story, but the long and short of it is that most of the longstanding members of that community were ultimately forced to abandon what was once one of the fandom’s most eminent forum. We’re making a go of it in the brand-new official TFWiki Discord server, and we’d love for you to join us—certainly, that’s where people will be chatting about this story!

Without the ex-regulars of Allspark Chat, Dendrochronology really wouldn’t exist—in many ways, it’s a love letter to them, and the scores of conversations we’ve had. I hope that one day I’ll be able to dedicate to them something with a higher word count! More people responded to the original pitch than I can name here, but in particular I should thank my prereaders, who gave me a ton of feedback and encouragement: Fear or Courage, gearshift, and shiny. I’ve already talked about Ikkad’s role in the creation of this story, but I should thank him one last time for all of his support.

If you enjoyed this story, tell your friends about it! The ones who’d be interested in Transoformers fanfiction, that is. The rest of my writing—including rewritten versions of old Transformers comics—can be found right here on this blog. In terms of wholly-original fiction, I recommend checking out Retrace Steps if you haven’t already. If you want to be informed when my next project gets released, you should follow me either here or on twitter (where I mostly just ramble about robots occasionally)—and as always, my ask box is open. Thanks for reading!

[mrosenkov]

He has found some peace at the back of the ship, on the quarter deck near the mikan trees and main mast. Sits with a book, but does not read, does not even glance its way once he puts it on the ground, Kikoku leaning on the wall at its side. He just watches the sky, edging to blue. Just … sits and breathes. In and out. Just sits, elbows on his knees, pressing fingers into his temples, rubbing at his eyes, wiping the salt-crust from his face, and thinking, thinking, think.

His foot taps the deck. He cracks his knuckles. He thinks about Bepo. Wonders about Penguin. The Polar Tang. Tries not to think about all of them, sitting in the galley, crowded around the table, Uni shuffling a deck of cards. Dealing him in even though he never plays.

It becomes very real then. A sudden wave crashes into the hull of the ship and Luffy laughs, nearly falling overboard, Nami yells, and Law… feels it then, so incredibly, so intensely, that he can barely breathe.

So lost in a memory, Law almost misses the sound of a heeled boot stride across the deck, as someone comes to sit by his side. 

Brook has, in his palm, a silver tray with two empty tea cups and a matching teapot. The set is delicately painted with blue and purple flowers, each one more detailed than the last. He places the tray on the bench between them.

“Sanji-san told me earlier that this tea set was made in the North Blue.” Without a word, he pours the contents of the pot into both cups, right to the brim, the rich, familiar smell of black tea steaming the air.

“Law-san, would you like a cup of tea?”

Law eyes him warily, but the skeleton is about as easy to read as his straw hat captain—as in, not at all. With a stiff nod, he places the book at his feet and takes a cup, the tea warming his palm.

Brook sips his beverage loudly, Law’s eye twitching at the sound.

“Yoho. Tea does help clear the mind, doesn’t it?”

Law’s still watching him. Brook’s staring over the ocean, rim of his cup resting near his teeth. And he must feel the weight of Law’s gaze on him, because he adds, quite purposefully, “And tea with company can do wonders.”

Law looks away then—to the dark liquid, sky reflecting in its rippling surface. Luffy and Usopp have started some kind of race on the quarter deck, their yells filling up the open air. Chopper’s shouting something too, Zoro and Sanji bickering near the kitchen, seagulls overhead cawing, the waves picking up in vivacity, slapping loudly against the hull.

And he thinks again on his own crew, the intense quiet of the submersible, nothing but the beeping of machinery to keep him company. So different and foreign to the chaos of the Strawhat ship, but then also… not. Because there was that time Penguin started a betting ring with fighting scorpions he’d bought from a strange, traveling merchant and half the crew didn’t sleep for days, loudly drinking and gambling away everything they owned. Or when Jean Bart was sick, so they all cramped in the infirmary, taking turns on watch so Law could get some sleep. Ikkaku’s constant singing; Bepo’s ever-present company. Penguin demanding to stay in his room, when it was clear Law wasn’t sleeping. Him reading aloud a book, of all things, the sound of his voice pulling Law to rest.

Law takes a sip of tea, the taste bitter on his tongue. “I know this porcelain,” he says, instantly regretting revealing too much. Carelessly continues, however, “It’s from an island, near where I… was born. They hand paint each one individually.”

Brook seems to regard his cup, but stays silent. 

“You told me that you lived after your crew died, Bone-ya. What did you do for company, then?”

He can’t hide the resentment in his voice—the horrid jealously that stirs in the pit of his gut. Here, on the Strawhat ship, surrounded by nakama and none of it familiar. Ready to accept his death with no closure of his own.

But Brook, like all Strawhats, does not care for negativity; takes it in like it is his own burden, and without a word, places down his cup and pulls his violin seemingly from nowhere.

Puts his bow to the string, and asks, “Do you have a song request, Law-san?”

Law stares at him, angry, lost for words—this weird lump pushing against his throat, eyes stinging. He thinks, you’re so lucky and you don’t even know. And he thinks, you don’t understand.

Persistent, Brook asks, “Perhaps a song from the North Blue?” and Law’s thoughts, a turmoil, if I die tomorrow, what would I tell them?

“St. Vincent.” 

It leaves his mouth before he has time to think. Law instantly wishes he were able to snatch the words from the air between them.

Brook, though, does not say another word, the first note of the shanty cutting through the air as an answer—clean, beautiful, clear—and all Law’s thoughts suddenly—

Go.

Because he knows this song, singing it with Penguin and Shachi and Bepo, when there were only four. He knows this song, deep within the depths of the Tang, Ikkaku singing, her haunting voice echoing down the silent halls as she worked her chores. As they would dock in the shallows, the whole crew working the deck, lyrics carrying the rhythm of their toil.

And as Brook finishes the last note, Law finds he hums the words despite himself, pride suddenly swept away by memory. And he feels the emotion building in his chest, that lump in his throat still there, burning behind his eyes, and he understands, then.

Perhaps it is as simple, that if he dies tomorrow, he would say nothing to his crew at all. And just be with them. One last time.

[baepsaetan]

Inkarnate

Summary: Hoseok is a film student looking for muse, and Yoongi is a tattoo artist looking for money. When they meet, the two find that they could give each other far more than creativity and cash, but soulmate isn’t spelled p.e.r.f.e.c.t, and Yoongi’s tattoos cover up more than just his skin.

Chapters:  pt.1, pt.2, pt.3, pt.4, pt.5, pt.6, pt.7, pt.8, pt.9, pt.10, pt.11  -> read on Ao3

Genre: Soulmate! AU, Angst

Warnings: Smut, main character death, swearing, implied alcoholism, implied past abuse, seriously a lot of angst, cancer.

Length: 8k

A/N: Another one! Already! Ideally this frequent posting will become a Thing but if we’re being honest Maybe Not. Still, hope some people have a chance to read this! Also shout out to @samwithham​! It really has been a hot second, but I’m grateful you’re still reading <3 

---

The last short finishes with a melancholic flourish that’s a little campy but still effective, and applause fills the theatre. Unlike at normal showings, there’s no immediate mass exodus; almost everyone stays to watch the credits, and even as they roll to a close, only a few people drift out. A low murmur arises from the crowd, and Hoseok hears snatches of opinions on the piece.

“Can you believe he said that?”

“… still caught me by surprise. I liked the depiction of family as…”

“Weren’t you crying? I thought…”

They wash over him, and he drowns in the ideas and impressions bleeding their vivid colours into existence even after the film is done. It doesn’t matter that the lights are coming on, that the screen is black, that people are slowly finding their feet and their car keys and getting ready to leave. There’s something comforting about his satisfaction, something tangible and unquestionable and honest, and Hoseok wants to bury himself in that emotion until he can’t see or feel anything else, forever.

He wants to, but he can’t.

During the presentations of the films, especially as they’d gotten into it, he’d managed to submerge himself in the experience, yet now that it’s over, Hoseok is drained, exhausted. Yoongi had kept hold of his hand for most of it, they’d eventually banished the arm rest and curled up together, and if the artist had dozed off once or twice during the four hour showing, well, Hoseok isn’t in the mood to hold it against him. At least he’s awake now, watching the black screen with a furrowed brow that makes Hoseok think he might be creating some tattoos off of what they’ve seen.

Hoseok eventually rises from his seat, unexpectedly stiff, and Yoongi is much worse, cursing and standing up so slowly he may as well have claimed a senior’s discount. Watching the grumbling sight, against his inclination Hoseok smiles.

“Such an old man,” he comments gently.

“That’s not what you said last night,” Yoongi replies, and laughs at the instant flood of red across the face of the other man, the quick glance to see if anyone heard.

Once he’s sure there’s no one within earshot, Hoseok relaxes, though he’s not necessarily keen on keeping up this line of conversation. Not in public, anyways. As they file for the exit, he asks, “What was your fave? Film, I mean.”

Yoongi pauses by the garbage at the entrance and throws out the wad of Kleenex he’d shoved into his pocket when his nosebleed had ended, a few minutes into the first film. “The one with the girl who gets lost,” he replies. “Though it’s fucking bullshit she never finds her way out.”

Hoseok chucks away the now-empty bag of candy that his boyfriend had impatiently refused every time it had been offered. Remembering the picture Yoongi’s talking about – the editor had gone crazy with the light filtering, but the tracking shots were gorgeous – Hoseok frowns. “You’re calling the ending bullshit but it’s your fave?”

A shrug. “I think we’re supposed to be pissed off about it. Mad no one helped her or something. It being bullshit is the point.”

That… is deeper than he’d expected Yoongi to go, and Hobi probably shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. It’s not like his boyfriend isn’t a thoughtful person – not in the least, actually – but he tends to get impatient trying to explain what he means, and it isn’t often he sounds so calmly certain about a point he’s trying to make. And Hoseok finds himself agreeing. There had been something demanding about the end of the short, about the way the camera spiralled away in an ever widening shot, something that asked why she was left standing alone in that barren space.

“Didn’t look at it like that, but I think you’re right,” Hoseok says quietly, and can’t quell the swell of guilt that washes over him. Had Yoongi been able to see it so clearly because he feels equally abandoned?

The other man glances at him, eyebrow raised. “I’m glad a soon-to-be famous film director agrees with my theory. Maybe I should publish a thesis paper or something.” Sardonic, but lightly so, and Hoseok may or may not be imagining the searching concern hidden behind that sarcastic gaze.

“You can put my name on it, if you want.” Hoseok smiles as he says it, but turns away from the worry his conscience might be making up. If he’s right – if any of the thoughts skittering through his head are right – it isn’t Yoongi who should be looking at him with that veiled compassion. If he’s right, he thinks his heart might just break under such a look.

“I’ll take you up on it,” the tattooist promises. “Until then… what was your fave, Mr. Expert?”    

Did he even have one? It’s not that he can’t remember them all individually, but it’s as though Hoseok had tried so hard to submerse himself in the films that he had accidentally pushed too hard against them, smudged the colours and details of their wet-paint newness into a blur. There’s nothing that truly stands out, and that’s… well, that’s just a shame.

“They were all so good. I’m not surprised any of them were included in the festival.”

Head ticking to the side, Yoongi sucks on his spit, opens his mouth, seems to think better of it. He looks down as they push their way through the doors and out into the early evening, his hands crumpling the beanie he’d taken off long ago into a tight ball before shoving it into his hoodie pocket. From the corner of his eye Hoseok catches him chewing on the inside of his cheek, the motion almost savage. Throwing up a hand to shield from the sudden sun, eventually the artist mumbles, “I just – I hope you enjoyed it, yeah?”

“Of course!” The reply is immediate, fervent, because Hoseok can’t bear the tentative way he asks that question. “Especially – man, that you thought of me at all. That you got the tickets for me. That’s so cool, Yoongs.”

The other man relaxes. “Well, like I said, they were free. Really wasn’t much.” That had been such a relief the first time Hoseok heard it, and even hearing it again has him sighing gratefully. He knows Yoongi doesn’t have money to spare – he makes a respectable amount tattooing, but almost everything goes into the rent for Born Tiger – and the thought of him paying had put Hoseok’s throat in knots. At least Yoongi had set that straight during the first intermission between showings.

It suddenly occurs to Hoseok that he knows that Yoongi isn’t lying about getting the tickets for free. Knows, not assumes or believes. It’s like knowing a fact is true because he’s seen it for himself. Where does that certainty come from? Where did–

He jerks his thoughts to a hard stop. He’ll figure it out, one way or another, but for now… for now Yoongi is watching him with gentle, tired affection, and if his eyes are bruises and his skin too blanched, at least he looks happy. Hoseok would do a hell of a lot more than play dumb to keep that expression in place, if only for a little while longer. They stop a little way down the street, keep out of everyone’s way. “You wanna get something to eat?”

Yoongi considers that for a moment, but eventually shakes his head. “I don’t want to take too much of your time – it’s already cool you agreed to spend some time with me today.”

“Y’know, I’m not a celebrity just yet. It’s not like my time is worth gold or anything.”

“Nah,” Yoongi replies with a wry twist of his lips, “just worth something else. Let me start paying you?” Then he reaches over, catches at the back of Hoseok’s neck, and Hoseok is already grinning at the familiar joke, but his smile becomes softer under his boyfriend’s mouth.

This kiss is quiet, almost too timid, so he throws his arms around the other man, pulls him closer, anything to cement their contact. His boyfriend responds with a low hum, the sound a reverberation of appreciation that pulses through Hoseok’s bones, replaces his marrow with a contentment that’s too airy to hold the weight of everything else. But – for a moment, it can manage. And it does, as they break off and Yoongi presses his face against Hoseok’s chest, though not quickly enough to hide the expression on his face, so tender it appears a mere breath from falling apart. Tightening his arms around the small man’s shoulders, as though that alone could hold them both together, Hoseok kisses the top of Yoongi’s head. Was there a way, some magic of filmography he hasn’t found yet, to extend this moment forever? Not freeze it like a photograph, but just… keep it going, keep all the affection and warmth and the way the sun burnishes Yoongi’s blonde hair into feathery gold?  

“I love you,” Hoseok murmurs, and for once there’s no anxiety in those words, no uncertainty or fear of rejection. He and Yoongi – together, like this – is so right. Maybe only for a minute or a moment, but for as long as it lasts, he can close his eyes and feel that rightness like music in his ears, like honey on his tongue, like a shot of some view you’d climbed miles to see.

For a long time, there is simple quiet in response, but Hoseok is aware of Yoongi’s shoulders trembling as he struggles to draw in breath after breath. Eventually the artist clears his throats, whispers shakily, “Yeah. I love you too, Hobi… so much,”

They stay as they are for several minutes, secure, linked by touch and something so much heavier, something Hoseok can’t name. Eventually though, Yoongi stirs in his arms, eases himself away. His mouth is a reluctant slash when he looks up, but nonetheless he says, “We should go. You got too much shit to do to be standing around.”

In more ways than one, he’s right. Hoseok can hardly think about the various project deadlines and exams coming up in the next two weeks, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And besides, if he’s actually going to make himself go through with the plan…

It’s his turn to take in a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But I’ll drive you home first.”

“It’s not that far,” Yoongi snorts dismissively, already turning to walk away.

Hoseok catches his wrist. “You set all of this up for me. It’s the least I can do.”

“Aish… okay.” The surrender comes quickly, more quickly than Hoseok expects it to, and he finds himself wondering at it as they begin to stroll to Hobi’s car. For all of Yoongi’s dismissive tone, it is a pretty far walk to Born Tiger – is that why he’d agreed so promptly? Because a walk like that is hard for Yoongi nowadays?   

Jiggling his keys to keep the electric tension at bay, the warmth dissipating like water through his grasping fingers and leaving something cold in its wake, Hoseok can’t stop himself from chatting as they walk, but his heart isn’t in it. Neither is Yoongi’s, to judge by the distracted responses, and he keeps expecting there to be a sudden crack, a sudden halt, a sudden outpouring of whatever is welling up inside the both of them. It never comes, though. The thunderous clouds just swell without rain, and he’s no god to know how to change this weather pattern.

He has to try, though.

By the time they’ve slipped into the car and Hoseok has pulled into rush hour traffic, that knowledge has hardened into resolve. When the other man takes out his phone and starts fiddling with it, he glances over – probably too intently – and asks so casually that it’s not casual at all, “Are you gonna call your doctor for an appointment now?”

Yoongi fumbles the device, drops it into his lap. “What – right now?” he asks, picking it back up.

“Not everyone works ‘til two in the morning, Yoongs. Pretty sure doctor offices close soon.” His companion is frowning at him, and Hoseok just hopes Yoongi assumes he’s nervous about bringing up something that was close to starting an argument a few hours ago. Which he is. Amazing how even a lie can rest on a foundation of truth. Clearing his throat when the other says nothing, he coaxes, “It’ll only take a moment.”

“And you get to see me doing it,” the artist observes flatly.

Hoseok flinches, can’t deny the implicit accusation. But neither can he backtrack, so he keeps his eyes on the road and sits a little straighter. “You put this off a lot, Yoongi. I’m just – I’m trying to help.”

A violent exhale from the man beside him, and Hoseok flinches again, more from the guilt of what he isn’t saying than anything else. After a moment of fraught silence, another sigh, considerably softer than the first. “I know you’re trying. I’m trying too. It’s just, this,” he touches his nose like it symbolizes all the misery he’s been going through, “this ain’t anything until someone tells me it’s something y’know? And I think I would have preferred… I mean, that I’d prefer not knowing. Easier.”

“But not necessarily better,” Hoseok says quietly, and wonders how much of this is real and how much is just more of the same.  

“Maybe…” A few seconds pass in torn silence, and then abruptly Yoongi snorts. “Fuck. I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Without waiting for a reply, he scrolls through his phone, has it up to his ear before Hoseok can doubt if he’s actually going to call. “Hello? Dr. Cho? Yeah, this is Min Yoongi calling. No, not – not about that.” It’s impossible to miss the tension in Yoongi’s voice, the coolly impassive look plastered across his face when Hoseok risks a glance, but Hoseok can’t make out anything the person on the other end is saying, just hears an incomprehensible voice.

“No, I don’t want that. I just wanted to schedule another appointment….” A pause as he lets the other person talk, and if anything, Yoongi’s expression grows colder. Or maybe not colder, maybe just… rigid. Eventually he seems to interrupt. “I know all that. Thanks. Like I said, just want an appointment. Some time next week? Yeah, sure. Uh huh. Mhm. Yeah. See you soon. Thanks.” His hand drops to rest limply on his thigh, and it takes several more seconds before Yoongi hangs up the call.

He turns to Hoseok. “Three o’clock on Tuesday. You satisfied?”

Refusing to rise to that combative tone – it’s obvious this call has unnerved his boyfriend, and in between his guilt and his pity, Hoseok can’t feel anything else – the film student just smiles as brightly as he can. “Sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Thanks, Yoongs. Seriously – thanks.”

His voice has lightened into something closer to grumpiness than anger when he replies. “Yeah, whatever. Now I get to spend an hour having her rip into me for not scheduling sooner.”

“Do you not like her?” Hoseok asks in surprise. He’s always assumed Yoongi’s aversion to getting a checkup was an internal issue, but maybe it was partly his doctor’s fault? That makes him hope. Maybe he is overreacting. Maybe it really is as simple as that. Maybe…

Yoongi grimaces. “It’s not like that. She’s just… pushy. Doesn’t like putting up with my bullshit.” His laugh isn’t very amused. “Guess that makes two of us. Anyways, no, I’ve had her for awhile now. She’s fine. I’m just being a bastard.”

“Good to hear.” Although it isn’t, not really.

They don’t talk much for the rest of the trip, Hoseok sweating over somehow giving himself away while Yoongi seems withdrawn and comfortable staring out the window without speaking. When they pull into a spot a short distance from Born Tiger, Hoseok feels like he’s about to have a heart attack. Hands pressing into the steering wheel until they ache, he almost doesn’t manage to make himself do it. Yoongi’s gathered up his stuff, hand on the door, before a surge of desperation rips the words from Hoseok’s tongue.

“Uh, hey! Could I borrow your phone for a sec? Mine’s dead.”

“What do you need it for?” Yoongi asks, but he’s already handing it over, nothing but distracted amusement on his face.

“I forgot I wanted to text Jimin, tell him I’m just gonna grab some fast-food for dinner. Ask if he and the other guys wanted anything.” The pads of his fingers are sweaty, and he has to try a few times to type Yoongi’s password – genius – before getting in. He hovers for a moment over Contacts, struggling to make himself move.

Meanwhile, Yoongi scoffs. “Dunno why you even need to ask. Tae and Kookie would eat out of a garbage bin if someone told them it was free.”

Hoseok cracks a weak smile. “Probably not out of it.” He still can’t make himself do what he’s been planning since before the films.

“Yeah, you’re right. They’d get plastic plates first.” It’s the fondness in Yoongi’s voice that does it. Pushes him into leaving Contacts untouched and pressing on Phone History. Because that gruff, protective affection for the younger boys… Hoseok can’t lose it. He can’t stop having those rough, secure words in his life, not when everything before Yoongi was too smooth to hold onto. He just can’t. And if this isn’t what he dreads it might be, well, Yoongi will be pissed, but he’ll also be forgiving, sooner or later. Haven’t the last few months proven that?

Phone tilted away from the other man, Hoseok taps into the most recent call, made to a Dr. Cho Jiyoo. Moving his fingers like he’s texting, he just stares at the number there instead, committing it to memory to the best of his ability. A few seconds later, he actually goes to Jimin, sends the message, and then hands the cell back to Yoongi with an empty hollowness in his stomach. It’s a good thing his boyfriend has his own things to worry about, because Hoseok isn’t exactly doing this with picture perfect guile.

It doesn’t take hardly any time at all for Jimin to reply, which is a blessing. Hoseok can only repeat the numbers in his head for so long before he’s bound to mess them up, especially while encouraging Yoongi to do most of the talking.

Breaking off a story about a guy who fainted dead away within five minutes of his first ever needle, the artist checks his vibrating phone. “Jimin says Taehyung is eating with Jin, but he and Jungkook could go for something.” Another buzz of an incoming message, and he barks a laugh. “Jungkook votes for McDonald’s, so I was right; he would eat out of a dumpster if it was free.”

Shaking his head at that – 4, 53, 67, 32, 08 – Hoseok asks, “Did Jimin get a vote?”

“Subway. You roll with the most high-class people, hey?”

“Oh, ‘cause your choice would be so much better.” When Yoongi opens his mouth, Hoseok adds, “Starbucks isn’t that classy, Yoongs.” 67, 32, 08…

“You would know,” Yoongi shoots back, with a gummy smile that’s nothing short of breathtaking, and it lurches through Hoseok’s throat until he almost lets go of the numbers and plan altogether. He can hardly breathe through his shame about not speaking honestly to Yoongi, and with that trusting grin right in front of him…

“Yoongi,” Hoseok says, and the man across from him dampens his smile at the strangled tone, leans forward a bit.

“Yeah?” the artist asks quietly, brows furrowing in miniscule tension.

Please tell me the truth. The words are so easy – so impossible to say. What is the truth? What is the nagging feeling that drags like oil across Hoseok’s brain whenever he looks at his tattoo? What is the crumpled expression Yoongi wears when he thinks no one can see him? And what the hell could Hoseok do if Yoongi refused to answer any of those questions?

And what if he didn’t?

His fingers drum against the steering wheel, and when he can’t get them to stop, Hoseok wrenches them off, buries them in his lip. He smiles, or tries to. “I’ll call you later tonight, okay? You can listen to me cry about how behind I am with everything.”

“My favorite mixtape,” Yoongi jokes, though the furrow across his forehead doesn’t really disappear. “I’ll be expecting that call. Don’t skip out.” His way of saying that he’s around to listen, that he doesn’t want Hoseok to keep it to himself. If they don’t get away from each other soon, Hoseok really is going to start crying.

Keeping his breath shallow, he shakes his head. “I won’t. Don’t worry. I’ll see you later.”

He’s actually relieved when Yoongi doesn’t make any move to kiss him goodbye. It’s not the usual – just another signal of how off things are between them – but Hoseok’s pretty sure if they touched right now, everything would come spilling out. Not necessarily through his lips, but maybe through his skin, or his head, or his heart… or wherever this aching connection is anchored, somewhere beyond his mere body.

Hand against his neck, Yoongi hesitates before he opens his door. “Happy belated b-day, Hobi,” he says, and the humour is so pale it might as well be invisible. All Hoseok can do is incline his head and murmur a tight thank you. Fingers still stroking across his neck, there’s another breathless pause before Yoongi shuts his eyes and heaves himself out of the car, movements stiff and pained. “I’ll see you later,” is his low promise, and then the door is thudding closed between them.

Because the spikes of restless agony are threatening to drive straight through him if he doesn’t move to avoid them, Hoseok doesn’t wait to watch his boyfriend walk to Born Tiger. Because there’s something ripping him apart already and anything added will splinter him into even smaller pieces, he doesn’t look in the rear-view mirror once he’s beyond the other man. Because the only thing he can do right now is go forward, Hoseok doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn around, doesn’t go back. He sets his jaw, looks up a number and an address on his almost fully charged phone, and puts it into the GPS.  

---

The office looks as conventional as any medical company Hoseok has seen, at least from the outside. Short and insistently rectangular, the building is painted a sandy brown, while the double doors of the entrance are white, and plenty of windows dot the squat structure. There’s a little bed of flowers and some potted plants out front. It doesn’t look like a place where people go to learn they’re dying.

But it is. This isn’t the doctor’s office Hoseok had expected when he looked up the name and the number he had taken from Yoongi’s phone. He isn’t really sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t an oncologist’s office. The CL Courage Clinic is, according to the website, a specialty cancer clinic that deals with various kinds of chronic leukemia. There aren’t all that many cars in the parking lot, but then again, it’s kind of late. He wonders if Dr. Cho is still here. He wonders what he’s doing here.

His pulse is thrumming in his throat, and when Hoseok swallows it feels like his heart is about to burst through his trachea. He knows what the doctor looks like – the website had all of their pictures – but there’s a layer of static over everything he sees and he’s not altogether confident he’ll even be able to recognize her. Breath so harsh he can’t hear the music playing on the car radio, eventually Hoseok shuts it off, anything to reduce the unrelenting everything that’s crushing him into a panicked nothing.

What am I doing here? He’s falling to pieces so quickly he can’t put himself together again. Am I really about to– He can’t think about it, he can’t, he can’t. He has to do it.

He has to, but for a long time Hoseok just sits in his car, shifting constantly, rubbing his fingers raw against anything that comes under his hands. He’d thought he’d go into the building, ask for the doctor, but now he’s starting to wonder if maybe he should just wait for her out here. Maybe she’s gone home already. Maybe the thought that has him caressing his collarbone and then jerking away as if stung is more ridiculous than anything else he’s managed to think up. After so many months – after what feels like a lifetime – would Yoongi really not have told him?

By now, Hoseok isn’t really sure what he’s talking about, even within his own mind. Told him what? About sickness? Or soulmates? Or are they somehow the same thing, now?

Minutes pass and doubts churn trenches through Hoseok’s head, ruthlessly treading the same paths over and over again until it feels like there’s no way to think outside the ditches, no way to leap beyond their bounds. He thinks, and only manages to dig himself deeper into paralysis.

For the seventh or eighth time, the clinic door opens, and someone steps outside. He looks towards them, empty of expectation. That might be why it takes him a moment to recognize the lady in a flora summer dress as she hitches a purse over her shoulder and walks with quick, short strides. When he does, everything… collapses. The fear, the doubts, the shrieking, formless anxiety, they don’t disappear, but they contract into a place somewhere just behind his sternum. It’s almost as though the sheer weight of his breakdown has finally ripped a blackhole into existence, and it’s dragging his heart and lungs and stomach into a mangled mess of impossible heaviness. What emotions could escape the gravity of such dread?

He forces his door open too hard, has to wrench it back to avoid smashing into the truck he’d parked next to. Clambering out of the luxurious car feels like a confession of sin, and his jerky steps are quick to leave the sleek vehicle behind.   

“Dr. Cho. Umm, Dr. Cho!” The second time he calls she hears him, turns his way. His immediate impression is thinness – thin black hair, thin lips, thin eyebrows, thin shoulders… thin patience, if the expression on her taut face is any clue. He’s not sure how old she is – maybe fifty, though the exasperation makes it harder to be sure.

“May I help you?” she asks, in a slow way that suggests she’s hoping the answer is no. He can’t entirely blame her, given the time and the way he’s accosting her outside her work.

Bouncing his weight back and forth from foot to foot, Hoseok nods several times as if the motion alone might shake some words from his head to his too-dry mouth. It doesn’t, but the compression in his chest hasn’t managed to swallow his tongue quite yet, and so he manages to push out a quick introduction. “Uh, hello, Dr. Cho. My name is Jung Hoseok. We haven’t – I saw you on the clinic website, and I, umm, was hoping we could talk.”

If anything, her eyes narrow even further. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jung, but I generally only meet by appointment, and only during office hours. You could have phoned the clinic and scheduled a time to talk.” ‘Should have’ is more than implicit in her words, but the doctor’s displeasure hits his chest and – dissolves. It can’t gain any purchase in the flattened landscape of his feelings.

“I’m really, really sorry, but I couldn’t – I only just, uh, found out I need to talk to you.” Because I’m stupid. Because I’ve failed him.

Dr. Cho sighs, adjusts the purse on her shoulder. The motion makes her seem less annoyed and more… tired. “Did you receive a referral from your family doctor? I know it’s always very terrifying to receive a possible diagnosis, but it really would be better to schedule an appointment, so I have the opportunity to look at your information and –”

“I’m sorry,” Hoseok interrupts, the pressure mostly squeezing embarrassment into oblivion. He doesn’t even flush at accidentally giving her the wrong impression. “It’s not about me, it’s about one – one of your patients.”

Immediately her back is a little straighter, her brow a little more creased. “One of my patients?”

“Yes. His name is Min Yoongi. He’s… I think he’s been seeing you recently?”

She mouths the name, not as if it’s unfamiliar, but rather as though it surprises her to hear someone mention it. The tightness behind his ribs contracts even further, to the point of pain. He’d thought – hoped, prayed, begged – that she wouldn’t know what he was talking about, but she definitely knows Yoongi. Everything had suggested that she would, but if it had been a misunderstanding, if he’d gotten the wrong doctor… It’s getting a bit hard to breathe.

For a second, it looks as though curiosity might impel Dr. Cho to speak further, but the inclination is quickly suppressed, and her wariness comes back. “We’re not permitted to discuss our patients without their permission. It’s best if you ask him about–”

“He won’t tell me.” Even to his own ears, the toneless certainty is too flat to be anything but despairing. Hoseok tries to picture it – tries to imagine a conversation between he and Yoongi that leads towards them understanding each other more, and not breaking apart – but he can’t. He believes Yoongi loves him, but now, with the open chasm of truth before him, Hoseok knows his boyfriend would do anything to avoid pitching him into its consuming blackness. That must be why. It’s the only reason he can think of for why they haven’t taken this plunge together.

It doesn’t make him feel better – if anything, it just makes it worse. He had thought honesty was white, was open, was a bridge between two trusting people, but this – this isn’t that.

Her eyes flick to his face and then quickly away again, embarrassed or uncomfortable with whatever she finds there. When the doctor speaks, her voice is kind but without an inch of give. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t help you with this. It seems best that you talk to him directly. If he gives permission for me to disclose information…” By the way she trails off, Hoseok isn’t the only one who knows that won’t happen. How long has Yoongi been seeing her for, that she’s so aware of that fact?

Straightening her shoulders, expression apologetic in face of his hopeless silence, Dr. Cho inclines her head. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I hope everything works itself out.” And with that she moves to leave.

It turns out there’s one thing strong enough to escape the blackhole nestled in his chest – desperation. “Wait!” Hoseok reaches out, jerks back his hand before he catches her. Nonetheless, she pauses. Hardly knowing what he’s doing, he finds himself scrabbling at the high neck of his shirt, yanking it down with enough force that it sounds like the fabric is ripping. Ignoring that, he pulls it even further, baring the wilted flower there. The way her eyes widen, the way she leans forward with a mixture of revulsion and reluctant fascination, tells him it’s exactly as it’s been for the last few weeks.

He knows what she’s wondering as her gaze traces the withered lines, the tones that smudge more towards ashen rot than any real flower would ever experience. Why would someone get a tattoo like this?

Why did he get a tattoo like this? And God, doesn’t he know the answer?

“This belongs to him,” Hoseok blurts out, still only half sure of what he’s saying.

She doesn’t look away from the decaying image, but there’s no dawning awareness on her face as she replies, “Yoongi is a tattoo artist, isn’t he? He did this?” Can he blame her for not understanding? How long has it taken him to finally grasp what’s been hovering over this mark? How many times has he been on the verge of holding it, only to let go at the last moment, afraid that comprehension will make it into a reality too heavy to carry?

He takes too long to respond, grappling with what to answer. Dr. Cho straightens, finally pulls her eyes away. “It seems you’re good friends, and he’s obviously very talented, but that… I still can’t help you.”

“No, I don’t –” Just what is he trying to say? The pressure crushing his insides is finally too tight; cracks are ribboning through the blackhole, fissures of agonized acknowledgement that his whole existence isn’t enough to suppress. Guilt, terror, rage, grief – what are those words in the midst of the detonation blossoming it’s frenzied heat up his throat?

His hand finds the tattoo, presses against it. Too hard, his nails digging into the skin, but the heat remains, and so does the flower. It will continue there. He can’t rip it off. Nothing can. Nothing can separate the mark from the flesh. Hoseok finds a sudden, bracing relief in that thought, as though, with everything spiralling out of his hands, this alone will remain as it is. No matter what he says, no matter what he does – this bond is going to remain.

He breathes through his clenched teeth, as if the air burns his lungs, but there are a few words that haven’t been immolated in the fire. “This tattoo belongs to Yoongi,” Hoseok repeats, his tone almost too shrill. “It belongs to him, because–” There is a small falter, another hard inhale, before he continues, voice picking up force and certainty. “Because he belongs to me.”

Caught up in the torrent of his declaration, Dr. Cho understands what he means immediately, and her expressive eyebrows jump up in startled incredulity as she takes an involuntary half-step back. He almost wants to do the same, with the words still searing his tongue and blistering his lips. Saying it feels like releasing a spell, like casting some kind of dreadfully powerful incantation that he couldn’t undo even if he wanted to. At the same time, there’s a shuddering throughout his whole body, as if his muscles and bones are snapping into their proper places, for the first time in forever. He belongs to me. Hoseok wouldn’t unsay that, even if he could.  

This time, when her gaze lands on the mark, it tears along the lines like a surgical knife, trying to separate the bleak colours from the skin, to see it in a different light. And see it she does, as the understanding settles into something deeper, sorrowful realization mingling with heavy pity. Hoseok doesn’t want to see that – he wants to shut his eyes – but that won’t stop the sensation discharging through his arteries and carrying liquid anguish to the rest of his body.

“You two are bonded?” Dr. Cho all but whispers, and it’s so easy to ignore the way his eyes are aching and simply nod instead, as though he’s known all along. So easy to acknowledge that blood is red, tears are clear, Hoseok has a tattoo, and he and Yoongi are soulmates.

Why is it so easy? After months of refusing to believe, embracing this truth feels like holding onto Yoongi; light, warm, and altogether too real to be doubted. Hoseok finds himself mouthing the words, though he can’t quite say it yet. We’re bonded.

The doctor’s lips twist, her head tilting slightly, but nonetheless her examination doesn’t let up, body angled unwillingly forward to get a better view. “It hasn’t always looked like this?” she finally asks, and he wonders suddenly if there’s some kind of medical practice that takes the condition of soulmate tattoos into consideration. If she could have used this earlier.

It’s not so easy to shake his head, but Hoseok forces himself to do it anyways. “No, it hasn’t. Just – just recently. It’s always been – it’s never been absolutely perfect, but never this bad.”

“He really hasn’t told you anything?” Her disbelief hurts him, ashes and cinder burning along his throat as he’s reminded of how wrong this is.

Swallowing the embers, he replies, “No, he… I didn’t ask him enough. I should have pushed harder. I should have…” There’s too much to write in this column, not enough ink to jot it all down. He should have, he should have, he should have. “Please, I don’t know what else to do. Please, just…” Help me. Hoseok doesn’t know how to say that to this stranger, this woman who may well have been keeping his soulmate alive, who is undoubtedly judging him for his severe deficiencies now.

But if Dr. Cho is judging him, that judgement doesn’t overwhelm her sympathy. Eyes rising from his tattoo to meet his frantically imploring stare, the thin woman taps her forehead, where thoughtful creases have appeared. She doesn’t seem like the type to agonize over a decision for very long. And sure enough, far before the apprehension can do more than constrict his throat, the doctor turns away, begins to walk back to the clinic. Hoseok stares after her, not daring to expect anything.

Over her shoulder, she calls words that give him the barest hint of a reason to hope. “Come. We should discuss this in my office.”

Injected with something resembling relief – but not that, never that, not while Yoongi’s reality is still so twisted from what it should be – Hoseok hurries after her.

---

He’s collapsed on the couch, back pressed into the armrest, knees drawn up, a sketchbook resting on his abdomen and balanced against his legs, his coloured pencils on the table next to him. Yoongi is hunched over the drawing, almost curled around it, as though it’s an open wound that needs protecting. And maybe it is. He’s made several dozen strokes of his pencil along the page, but they’re just aimless slashes, split seams with nothing in between. He’d wanted to put his feelings down – on paper and otherwise – but his ideas keep slipping away, and if Yoongi knew what he wanted to draw when he sat down, he certainly doesn’t know now.

Hoseok’s face keeps intruding. That isn’t unheard of – and typically it’s more of a pleasure than a pain – but today is different. The sun without its rays is stark. Hoseok’s face without its smile is bleak.

Today had gone so fucking wrong.

I am so tired of this fucking bullshit.

It’s true, but it’s truer to say that Yoongi is tired of his own bullshit. Whether he means his body’s slow deterioration or his constant lying to hide that decline depends on the day – hell, it depends on the hour. Right now, he pretty much means the lying part. Pulling himself together enough to accompany Hoseok to the film festival after the news Dr. Cho had given him hadn’t been all that difficult – even Atlas had to get comfortable with the world on his shoulders, sooner or later – but had it even been worth it?

More and more, when Hoseok looks at him, Yoongi senses that the other man is… searching. Looking beyond the barriers he throws up, even looking beyond the concrete comfort that they feel when they’re together. His sun tattoo has been looking off recently, too. The colour isn’t draining, but the rays of light have become sharper, more defined, almost painfully distinct. Little spikes of anxiety. The overall tone has also shifted to a redder hue, more like a dying sun than a brilliant one.

Brushing his thumb over the inside of his elbow, he can’t stop the twist of his lips. Today, with Hobi all but demanding he call the doctor, Yoongi wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss him or smack him upside the head. The concern is touching, a heart-hurt that he can only be grateful for, but it can only lead one way, the one way Yoongi can’t accept, and he suspects they’re getting closer to that path.  

In fact, as Yoongi had shut the car door and walked away, that feeling solidified into certainty. Hoseok found something. That’s what his demand was about, that was why he was acting so shady. The realization had been all altitude and dizziness for Yoongi, and even now, there’s nausea cringing at the corners of the artist’s stomach, like he expects the floor to collapse at any second and send him plummeting straight down. What had Hoseok found? Which secret? Any? Or is this just paranoia stacked on pain?

Another rough line added to the rest of the strokes, and it’s still a mess. Nothing clear. No answers. Just the wild apprehension teeming like termites through his wooden brain. Mumbling to himself, Yoongi tears out the page, holds it in his hand for a moment before, with a low exhale, he casts it aside.

He can’t start over anywhere else in his life, but isn’t that half the appeal of what he’s doing now?

This time, when Yoongi begins to draw, he has a better idea of where he wants to go. He’s borrowing from the film he’d liked. The concept, not the actual image. A single stem of soft blue orchids, floating in a black expanse that’s barely discernable as water. It looks more like ink. Some of the flowers are already partially submerged in the dark substance, the gentle petals streaked with oily shadows. There’s no ripple across the water, no sign of movement or change. Just the orchids, alone, slowly sinking.

It takes him a couple of hours, and during that time he can pour everything into the long funnel his focus creates, splattering the page with his loneliness. The fear, the anger, the guilt, the grief, it’s all there in that limitless lake of black. It’s nothing more than a sketch; he needs a table and a better setup to draw something worth showing to others. It is what he wanted to draw, though. As he finishes he knows that, yet… when Yoongi looks at it, his pencil falling into his lap, the itching, frantic feeling is already beginning to squirm to life again. He can’t exorcise it with this torrent of truth.

What if Hoseok does know? What then? Where is the beaming man in this picture?

Yoongi glances at his cell, checking the time. He’s only a little surprised to see that it’s a bit after 7. Time is a construct, after all, and it’s especially unstable when creativity and emotions come out to play together. A direct quote from Namjoon. Yoongi scoffs at it even as fondness makes him smooth the page against his knees with more gentleness than he might have done otherwise. The despair is demanding he crumple paper and shatter glass, but the artist shoves it down. Remembers the look on Hoseok’s face when he saw the theatre and realized where they were going.

His pencil – a yellowy gold tone – hovers uncertainly over the corner of the drawing. Can he add this? Does he deserve to add it?

Before he can make up his mind, there’s a knock on the entrance downstairs. Hard. It comes again, and then again, no regularity to the sounds. Again, like stuttering breaths or crippled steps. The pounding sets his nerves alight, and against any rational thought, Yoongi freezes, his fingers curling into fists. It’s probably some drunk messing up where they are; there are enough of those on Skymont, even if it is kinda early. Or maybe it’s a customer who forgot something, even though he’s meticulous about cleaning the studio and hadn’t found anything recently. It’s probably nothing. Maybe he doesn’t even need to answer.

It isn’t any kind of rational thought that has Yoongi casting his eyes down, half-flinching at a new round of knocking. It isn’t even intuition, the kind you laugh at during the day and heed while walking down dark streets. Something more forceful, inexorable, makes him drag his gaze back to the tattoo he had been considering only a few hours ago. A tattoo that is, before his eyes, slowly but surely dissolving through a slew of sickly colours, like diseased flesh across his skin. Yet, even as Yoongi watches in numb, detached interest, the form begins to solidify in an explosion of brighter, harsher tones.

As it does, he hears someone call in a voice stripped to its ragged core, “Yoongi!”

The sun loses its colours, finds them again, shot through with waves of distortion that look like a mirage. Repeat. And repeat.  

The entire process takes about five minutes, and the knocking doesn’t stop, and still Yoongi can’t make himself move. He watches the tattoo, waiting for it to fade into nothing, or at least go dead and black. It doesn’t, the jumbled swirls of colour continuing, but the person at the door calls again, “Yoongi! Yoongi – open the door.”

Yoongi’s complained about his thin walls before. Hoseok knows that he can hear. It wouldn’t even matter if he hadn’t. The tattooist – feels his soulmate. All the time, yes, but more so now, the awareness closer to a deafening noise than any kind of conscious recognition. And the wavering lines of the tattoo mean… just exactly what he’s suddenly terrified that they mean. The numbness is washed away in a flood of ice through his stomach, and Yoongi realizes that he’s trembling.

Almost too hard to make it down the stairs, hand on the wall for balance.

Stumbling off the last step, the artist makes his way down the hallway, through his tattooing parlour. The scents and sights of his chairs and equipment aren’t reassuring; he’s alienated from them, as though he’s become a ghost, just drifting through an existence that’s no longer his. Each knock jars him further from reality. He can’t seem to formulate any thoughts. No words or excuses or apologies to set his slanted world back on its straight axis.

The dread is a far stronger impression than anything else, coppery on his tongue, and by the time Yoongi gets to the front of the store, he can even feel it coating his fingertips. Lifting a too-heavy arm, he pauses at the lock, watches the way his hand shakes in front of it, and abruptly feels contempt. He’s so afraid. Does Hoseok deserve such a cowardly person?

“…Yoongi?” Quieter now, as though he knows how much closer Yoongi is, Hoseok’s voice wedges into the icy fear, sends little cracks shuddering through it.

His other hand comes up to press against his neck, almost hard enough to cut off air and dread altogether, and in the same motion, Yoongi throws the bolt. He can’t make himself open the door. He doesn’t need to. The other person must hear him fumbling with the lock – or maybe they just know – and a second later the door is jerked open.

The bell rings. Yoongi flinches. Hoseok doesn’t.

His crumpled mouth hurts more than even the red, frantic eyes, though those are hard enough to meet. It’s just, Yoongi hasn’t ever wanted to be the reason Hoseok frowns like that, like he’s going to crumple at any second. Hoseok is the most beautiful person on the planet when he smiles, and right now his mouth looks like it will never remember how to smile again. Yoongi caused that misery one too many times already, and he’s literally sacrificed everything to avoid doing it again.

Looking at Hoseok’s foundering expression becomes too painful and he wrenches his eyes down only to see his hands, running feverish tracks along the seams of his jeans. Faced with the silent, screaming pain of those fingers, Yoongi doesn’t know what to say.

[paulieshore]

Obey Me / Scm Au Series

Warnings: None

This will be the last chapter without warnings, violence, drama, romance is going to start commencing. S**t is about to hit the fan. --> Ch5

Words: 2667

I do not own the rights to the characters, characters belong to:

·         Obey me! Shall We Date

·         Voltage- Star Crossed Myth

 Chapter 4: Pride and Joy

 It had nearly been a month since you were last in Devildom, not that you were counting. After Zyglavis and his visit yesterday, you felt pretty bummed out. Pretending to be asleep whenever there was a knock at your door. You honestly didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. Constantly asking yourself, over and over again.

‘Why haven’t they contacted, am I just another pawn to other means...’

Depressed would be trivialization.

Another knock at the door disturbed you, turning over in the bed and keeping silent.

Karno’s voice sounds on the other side “Y/N, It’s me. I’m coming in, alright?”

Luckily the door was unlocked, he peaked his head in to the dark room. Noticing she still had the curtains closed, glancing around and catching a little figure shifting beneath the sheet.

Sighing to himself ‘She’s upset…. What did Zyg say to her exactly...’ He slowly walked towards the curtains and drew them open.

The sun light flooded into the room, igniting all the colours and brightening it from its depressing state.

“Y/N I know you’re not asleep… I’m sorry things aren’t the way you want them to be…” He sat himself at the end of the bed. “I care about your wellbeing, and your mental state. Could you try to meet me half way? Shutting yourself out isn’t going to make anything easier, why don’t we do something?”

You were completely submersed under the bedding, grumbling “Like what? I’m not allowed to go anywhere, or do anything. THEY don’t seem to like me too much, so It’s probably best if I just stay here and out of the way.” You barked out, hidden.

You heard Karna begin to laugh, does he find this funny!?

Scrambling to get out of the covers, with the sourest look on your face. You meet Karna’s smiling eyes.

“There she is, come on. Get ready let’s go out” Glowing as he speaks.

It was like he wasn’t even listening to you, “Look, I’m not doing anything, I haven’t-“

*SNAP*

With a snap of his fingers you were completely dressed, out of the jammies you were snug in. You looked down and noticed the attention to detail, you’ve seen this dress before... It was the one you wore the day you got your driver’s license!

Your ‘good luck dress’. You were about to say something to him when he spoke.

“The day you got your license, you wore that dress. Y/N, I have had the duty, no the honour… Watching you grow from a shy, happy go lucky girl, to the woman you are today.” Karno looks down to the floor, a slight shade of pink graces his cheeks.

“You were so happy when you held your passing certificate. Cheering about the freedom, you were so nervous, considering you failed twice before this test…. Do you remember how down you were then? Do you remember the sense of achievement you got when you tried and tried until you succeeded?” He finally looks back, pushing off the bed and standing. “No matter how tough a situation is, you never give up. That’s just who you are, so, don’t give up now.” Tilting his head slightly to the side.

Maybe it was because at this present moment you longed for someone to care. Someone to reach out and just say something that made you feel like you mattered. You felt yourself choking up, nodding along to what he had said.

“Thank you, sir.”

Karno scoffed following with a chuckle, “You really need to stop being so formal, I know we’re old but you don’t have to constantly point it out.”

Your eyes met, and the room was next filled with laughter.

.

The House of Lamentation

“Luci love, where are you hiding? Come now Luci, Mammon is crying for you, the game is over. You win my boy.”

“Grawrrrr!!!” A young Lucifer jumps from behind a pillar.

Fate turns around, pretending to be frightened, “Oh my, some-body please save me!”

“No, no, I’m playing mom. See it’s me! Your pride and joy!” Shaking his hands, showing a toothy grin.

She bends down and brushes the hair from his face “Luci…. Lucifer…...”

…

“Yo, Lucifer man wake up” Mammon starts shaking his brother who’s dosed off in a chair.

Lucifer slowly opens his eyes, squinting at Mammon.

“Man, not like you to fall asleep so unguarded around the house like this.” Mammon leans on the wall looking down to him.

Lucifer rubs his face “I was not asleep, I was just… resting my eyes.”

“Pfft, yea okay then! You were clearly asleep, smiling away. Hey, you better not have been dreaming about Y/N!” He folds his arms and looks at Lucifer suspiciously.

“No, I was having a delightful thought on how I am going to punish you today.” Looking to Mammon with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Mammon’s face drops and drains of its colour “I’m out!!!” with that, he was gone. Brushing passed Belphie, at high speed.

Belphie watches as his idiot brother scurries away, turning his attention to Lucifer dazing off into the distant. “What did he do now?”

Lucifer responds without even a glance, “Nothing…. Yet.”

Belphie examines his brother, clearly noticing something off. Lucifer was always busy, reports, meetings, you name it, he was on it. Finding him sitting here doing nothing rather than relaxing in his room, alone, spelled suspicion. “What going on with you?” He steps closer.

“…”

“Same as usual then, hiding things, are you?” Belphie says with distain, turning to leave.

Lucifer still staring off, “do you ever think of her?”

Belphie stops in his tracks, looking back “Who? Y/N? Of course, I think it’s safe to say we all miss-“

Lucifer stands up, “No, of mother.”

Belphie is taken back, speechless; blinking his eyes numerously.

“Never-mind, forget I asked anything...” Taking large strides distancing himself, retreating away to wherever he needed to be.

…

.

Belphie thought about what Lucifer said as he walked back to his room. He flopped not so gracefully onto his bed and gripped his pillow tighter…

‘The others already seemed to mix Y/N up with Lilith, sure she is her decadent, but that’s all… But to be mother’s incarnation, that throws a spanner into the works.’

Belphie was thinking, he felt bad for you... Not that he’d ever admit it to ya. Though the more he thought about it the more it made sense, you reminded him so much of her. Only mother wasn’t nearly as dull and gullible as you were.

Grinning to himself.

.

Human Realm: Some-where

“Karno, where exactly are we going?” You say as you two waltz around the busy streets.

Even with Karna dressed in ‘civilian’ clothing, people were stopping and staring in awe of him. When you had gone to London with Lucifer, Satan and Mammon, you guys walked around pretty much unnoticed. Well except for Mammon was accused of murder, that yanked a lot of unwanted attention…

But this, Karno still glowed no matter what he wore. People were acting as though he was some sort of celebrity!

“Your friend Solomon lives nearby, I thought I could meet you half way and we’d see someone from school.” He turns to you and smiles.

Solomon!?!

You practically jumped on Karno, “REALLY, SERIOUSLY!? THANK YOU, THANK YOU!” Giving him one of those bear hugs Beel would give you.

Karno’s face went a bright red before placing a hand atop your head, “Okay, okay settle down. Don’t want the others to start bugging you for hugs now...”

You looked up and asked Karno what he meant.

“You see, the departments have reflecting pools. It allows us to do our jobs. Each of the Ministers have private ones in their rooms, down here and in heaven. While the rest of us, use the shared reflecting pools. We can see everything that is happening, chances are we are being watched.” Pointing up to the sky, awkwardly.

You dropped your arms to your side, and as Karno began to walk away… You stuck your tongue out towards the sky, like a child. Moments later there was a crash of thunder, even though the skies were clear. You nearly jumped out of your skin and ran frantically to Karno’s side.

.

The House of Gods

“Cheeky.” Leon smirks to himself, watching two figures in the pool.

He found himself constantly watching the way the girl smiled at the simplest things. The way she swayed here and there, drunk on life it seemed.

This fragile life, an incarnation.

She lived and studied alongside demons the last year of her life.

Demons… Who were once pupils, ‘friends’ he could have once said?

Now, the filthiest of filth. He disagreed with how Diavolo wished for everyone to happily live alongside each other, like the old days.

Look how that turned out, but what the King says is law. Probably just another one of his twisted games, that’s probably why he agreed to Diavolo’s proposal. When he heard Lucifer was now Diavolo’s right hand man, furious would be a watered-down word for how he felt.

That brat once served him, now… Made him sick to think.

This girl survived alongside those brutes, even cared for them. It was laughable, Karno’s little side job. To think she is her, or apart of her, perhaps another one of those twisted games.

He shook his head and returned to his desk, picking up the reports on the side.

Knocking at his door-

“Enter” He roars.

Huedaut steps into the Chief Ministers room, “Ah Leon, you are here. You’ve been spending a lot of time down here.”

“…and you haven’t?” Leon looks to Hue with a smug expression.

Hue shakes his head, “Unlike you, I’m tasked to ensuring the little lamb doesn’t relapse with sickness. She was suffocating with miasma when she first arrived, it’s a miracle she didn’t die.” Looking down to the files on Leon’s desk.

Leon pulls a bottle of wine from his desk, “Is it though?” he then proceeds to grab two wine glasses from the cabinet behind. “Drink with me, talk.”

Hue doesn’t say anything, he nods his head and proceeds to take on of the seats infront of the desk.

.

Human Realm: Solomon’s Apartment

Karno said he’d stick close by, giving you some space to visit your friend. He told you the apartment number, and off you went. You hoped he was home, knocking on his door…

The door opened, “Y/N?” He smiles to you and steps to the side “Come in, it’s been some time.”

“I’m sorry for turning up un-announced, I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d pop in!” You bow to him.

He gave you a questioning look, “Yea, how did you know where I lived though?”

You panicked, nobody said whether or not you could throw around the gods as excuses so quickly telling him Asmo’s once mentioned it to you.

“Ah, Asmodeus… Once he brought a load of women here with him, I thought I was going to kill him that night….” Solomon shakes his head with a scowl “I probably wouldn’t have been so angry but at 4 am in the morning….”

You burst into laughter, “Sounds like him!”

It felt quite relaxing chatting away with Solomon, you were caught up with everything down below as far as Solomon knew.

“So, have you spoken to any of them recently?” He refills your cup of tea.

You fell silent, and shook your head.

Solomon could see you were upset, “Have you tried? Where have you been this time? Home?”

Again, still silent, you shook your head.

A sudden knock at the door-

Made you jumpy, Solomon slowly got up and answered. “Uh hello, can I help you?”

Karno was standing opposite, “Hi, I’m here to bring Y/N back home” Giving Solomon one of those charismatic smiles.

Solomon leans back and calls you to the door. You thank Solomon for his time today and tell him you’ll have to meet up again, when he tells you to wait one moment. He leaves the door and goes further into his apartment, you turn to Karno.

“We have to leave already?”

He gives you a pathetic smile, “I’m sorry but it’s not entirely safe for you to be out for so long, I am sorry…”

You realise then Karno took a huge risk taking you out today, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry for sounding ungrateful! It literally only hit me now, thank you Karno!”

Just then Solomon returns and hands you a gift. You accept it and thank him with a look of curiosity.

“Don’t worry its nothing bad *laughs* Its pictures I’ve collected during our year at RAD. There are some good ones in there from the retreat at Diavolo’s castle, I’ve also put my number in the box. Feel free to text me, it’s my personal mobile number” Solomon reaches out and just barely touches your shoulder.

“Thank you” Bowing.

Solomon watched the two leave, or watched the man more so. His aura was familiar to Simeon and Luke’s only much, much stronger. ‘So, she’s staying with them I take it’ Thinking to himself.

.

The House of Lamentation

Lucifer was sitting at his desk, trying to look over recent reports.

Trying being the word.

Remembering his mentor’s teachings, her kind words of encouragement.

.

.

“When I grow up, I’m going to be just like you and father Hue!” Little Lucifer exclaimed.

She shook her head to him, “No my love.”

Remembering the feeling of being wronged in that moment...

She then scooped him up, “I want you to be better than us” planting kisses all over his face.

The memories of his childhood…

.

.

He couldn’t focus, setting down the files, another thought occurred.

‘We never wrote back!’

He practically jumped from his seat, texting his brothers to meet in the dinner hall immediately. Then rushing out the door of his room, as he passed by rooms, he heard phones binging. Quickly one by one each of the boys following suit and making their ways to the hall.

“What’s this about?” Satan shows the text.

Levi moans, “I was in the middle of a boss battle…”

…

They all fall silent as they observe Lucifer’s strange state.

He stands tall and crosses his arms, “We never replied back to Y/N’s letter...”

“That’s is?!”

“Yes.”

Everyone pondered a moment before Mammon spoke, “Well THE great Mammon, Y/N first boy, actually wrote her a letter.” Puffing his chest in victory.

“Wow do you actually have enough in your vocabulary to write a full letter?” Satan teases.

“That’s enough” Lucifer jumps in before the situation detours, “Mammon bring your letter now, if you all wish to write one, I will give you an hour before I leave to the human realm.”

Everyone looks in scepticism.

“The human realm? Isn’t she with those ‘gods’?” Belphie points out.

Lucifer nods, “Yes, but if memory serves me well, the house of gods is located in a rundown looking mansion…. In the human realm.”

Beel’s eyes bright up, “I wanna come too, I want to see Y/N, you’ll come to right Belphie?”

Before anyone has a chance, Lucifer dismisses “No, it won’t be safe. You seem to forget…..” Trailing off.

Belphie approaches, “No, we know. Remember what you promised us? We will do this as a family, you don’t have to do everything yourself. You’re not the only one who has to bear the burdens.”

Lucifer looked to his younger siblings who were all nodding and anticipating his response.

“Very well, then we should set off. We should see for our very own eyes how she’s doing.”

.

Heaven

The king looks down in the pool with distaste.

“How unexpected” He says sarcastically.

“Altair, come to me.”

A handsome little boy appears before the king, “Yes your highness!”

“I have a message for Scorpio, see to it”

…

To Be Continued

CH1 - CH2 - CH3 - CH5

 Story has also been uploaded to AO3 

Thanx for all the support, you know what to do! xxxx

[authorellenmint]

New Chapter With Duke Rutherford -- I really need a damn title if this is going to keep going.

First Chapters

Second Chapter

Third Chapter

An inhuman groan peels from Cullen’s lips as he lowers his weary body into the steaming water. The old tin tub clangs as his backside sinks to the bottom, more water slopping over the side than he anticipated. Too many days trapped in his office and not enough in the field.

“Sir,” a lone voice calls from the sitting room to his sleeping chambers. “Do you think you will require my assistance?”

Sighing, Cullen tips his head back and says, “No James. I believe I can handle a bath.”

“I’m needed down at the southern wing of the estate, but if you think...”

“For god’s sake, Jim. I’m a grown man. I do not need to be coddled like a babe.” Cullen spits, weary of the constant groveling. He winces at his tone even if the anger feels right.

“Very good, Sir.” Only the sound of the door closing answers after that curt dismissal. No doubt the lower stairs would be gossiping about their brute of a Duke for that one.

Bunching his knees up, Cullen drags his head down below the soapy surface. Just before his face slips under the water, he pulls in a breath to embrace his submersion. The other officers had hazed him something awful when he appeared on deck, green as the algae. A true sailor, a man worthy of the salt, could hold his breath for at least four minutes underwater. Cullen trained his lungs every chance he could, even as he was expected to remain dry on deck. He never could last longer than three minutes before aching for air.

Concussions rattle around him, the explosions dampened by the water swarming around him. His tries to keep his eyes closed, salt already crusting over his lashes, when a hand pushes against his back. Cullen’s eyes open upon a lagoon of blood swirling like wet fog from the mass of bodies tumbling to the sea.

Gasping, he sits up fast in the bath, the jangled memories seeping off his body like nightmares come dawn. Some nights he turns to find it is his brother’s or father’s dismembered hand pressing against his back. Others, it’s the same nameless limb as from the Atlantic. The ghosts will not cease haunting him, the man entrusted to their care, the one who lost the battle but won the war. The dead care little if their sacrifice was warranted.

With both hands, Cullen massages across his temples, trying to worry away the unending cloud. To think, the day had begun rather delightfully. Caroline invited him a bowl on her lawn. He’d adored the game as a child, and often won quite a few tournaments as he aged. At first, it was relaxing to fall back to the familiar, Caroline directing him to the proper manners of the day, guiding him to who mattered and who was on the outs. For a time, he felt all of 17 again, uncertain about this nobility curse placed upon his head, but trusting that he’d somehow figure it out.

Then his knee twisted on a throw, the ball careening so wildly off course it looked more of a cannonball aiming to take out a leg. Cullen kept himself upright; a Duke rolling upon the ground in pain was undignified after all. But the reality crashed hard around him. He wasn’t a spotty youth savoring time in the sun, he was a broken man tricked by fate into the life he tried to run from. All his efforts to try and prove himself beyond the family title and all he got was a game leg and the same yoke as before.

Reaching for the end table, Cullen uncorks one of the medicine bottles. The stench reminds him of horses, not the animal itself, but something in the care needed to keeping them going. He’s not certain what’s in it, only that the doctor’s told him to rub it into his knee every other day for the pain.

Funny, he thinks to himself while loading up his palms and slathering the herbal oil over his knee. If he were a horse, they’d have put him down for such an injury. The musket ball wobbles under his skin as he rubs. It’d been trapped too dip for the doctors to remove before, but somehow in the year hence it moved. He often finds himself pressing against the ball, wringing it through a small pocket under his skin. While there is pain for such a move, it is nominal, and the feel oddly centers him while he sits in dull meetings.

No doubt a doctor would shout him stupid for such a folly, and be right to do it too. He should tend to himself, he is the last remaining head of the household now.

Cullen snarls at the thought and grows tired of the pruning around his fingers and toes. Grabbing both hands to the sides of the tub, he begins to rise -- when a searing pain pierces from his knee down the length of his calf. He crumbles to the water, his backside bounding against the bottom while curling over in agony. Water gurgles into his gaping mouth, but he barely notices, spraying it back out as he crumples deeper to try and wick away the pain.

“James? Hello?” His pride crumbles as Cullen realizes that he cannot escape the bath alone. “Is anyone out there?” Only crickets respond to the Duke’s command. Delightful. How else could he be humiliated today?

“Hello?”

No. No, no, it cannot be...

The door doesn’t open, but he hears her body press tighter to it as she asks, “My Lord, do you require assistance?”

The Governess is the only person near enough to hear him. “No!” he cries, his body blushing at the thought of her having to haul him from the briny depths. Of her delicate fingers swept over his arms, her shoulders providing a crutch below his helpless body.

“As you say,” she says, clearly put off by his dismissal.

“Wait,” he speaks, wounded by his own barbed tongue. Wait how? How can she possibly be of assistance? “I am...I require assistance,” Cullen admits, his face cringing at the thought. “I am trapped in the...bathtub.”

“Oh? Oh...” her eagerness to help slams into a wall as she realizes what that means.

“Perhaps you can fetch the Steward, or another man wandering the halls to...” he begins when the door swings open. On instinct, Cullen pulls his naked body deeper into the tub in order to disguise as much as he can. Lady Trevelyan walks in with her hands extended outward and a handkerchief knotted over her eyes.

When she bumps into a table, she leans to the right and gasps, “Can you guide me towards you? I’m not certain where I’m heading.”

“Forward,” he squeaks realizing that the woman is dead set on helping him. Which means she will have to touch him. The flush burns to a crisp across his entire body, Cullen boiling like a prawn in his own soup. “A little more closer,” his lips fumble as the woman glides into his bedchambers. She may not be able to see anything, but the fact she’s even willing to risk so much to help him is...confounding.

Her fingers slide first against the lip of the tub, then cup the back of his naked shoulder. As she gets a grip on his skin, her touch warm and gentle, she says, “Could you put my hands where you need them?”

The trust is nearly insurmountable, Cullen wondering what she’d do if he turns out to be a cad. But, as he wants to be free of this unending nightmare, he pulls her hand around to the other side of his shoulders. “Dip down, please,” he orders, his own wet hand gripping to her pretty dress. He had never noticed before how well it frames her chest or that the color harmonizes with her deep green eyes mercifully hidden behind her blindfold.

“Lift,” Cullen commands, both of them straining as he puts half of his weight on his undamaged leg, and the rest upon her. But she does not speak a word against it, Miss Trevelyan waiting patiently for her next step. Standing on one leg, Cullen stares out over the floor he must cross. Stepping over the tub requires him to slide her hand lower.

Mother Mary, forgive me for this. Wrapping his hand over the top of hers, Cullen pulls her hands down until it rests at the start of his waist. He pushes her fingers in, trying to tell her that she will have to grip against him no matter how much it might disgust her. But the Governess seems unsurprised. “Ready?” she whispers, and Cullen counts down. Once one is reached, her strength transfers to her arm and the pair haul him clean out of the tub and to the floor.

Quickly, he hobbles towards his bed and the long nightgown he knows can hide his shame. Even as the pair limp together in a childish three-legged race, he feels the flush pooling in his loins and growing more turgid with each step. That is not helping!

At the bed, he lunges free of the Governess, snatching up towels to envelope around his hips. All the while she remains poised, her hands cupped to her stomach as if she didn’t mind having to carry him. Cullen snarls to himself, “Foolish, impotent, having to be helped from the tub as if I am some child or the elderly.”

His fussing freezes when he feels her delicate fingertips glance against his back. They press to the linen he threw across him, but with his body yet wet it sticks tight. “We all have bad days, my Lord. It is not wrong to need help every now and again.”

“I...” he turns to the woman who trudged into his bedchambers even knowing he was without clothing all to help him. If any knew, if any heard of this, she could never escape such a scandal. Yet she didn’t even hesitate. Tipping his head down, Cullen confesses, “Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

“Pickles, most likely,” she says with a laugh bringing a smile to him as well. “Do you require anything else?”

“No, no, I’m...good evening, Miss Trevelyan.”

“To you as well,” she says with a bob of her head. Turning on a dime, she exits his bedchambers with her hands extended outward for guidance.

Unable to handle the shame of his bungle, Cullen avoids the Governess and all bodies of water for a day. Exhausted and weary, when he returns to his bedchambers, he’s shocked to find a rope attached to a pully system strung from his ceiling to the side of his empty tub.

“James?” he shouts to the Steward ordered to never leave his side. “What’s this?”

“Ah, Miss Trevelyan’s idea.”

“She put this in?” Cullen marvels tugging on the rope. The pull is clean and sturdy, the wheels oiled to not even whine.

“Yes, she said it was to assist you should you ever need help,” James explains with his back straight. No doubt the servants gossiped like wet hens over their Duke’s latest escapade.

Cullen bends down to inspect the knots on the sandbag to counter his weight. Strong, unbreakable. A sailor’s knot. “Miss Trevelyan, is she...?” he begins, before shaking the foolish thought off. Women weren’t sailors. And James stares in anticipation of a command. Blushing, Cullen finishes, “Thank her for me, and please reimburse her for her work designing this.”

“Of course, my Lord,” James says while bowing to take his leave.

“Miss Trevelyan,” Cullen whispers to himself, “you are an ocean of surprises.”

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Dragon Dancer III: “I Believe You” Redux

Only a few minutes left until mission start.

I examined myself in the tiny mirror wearing the hightech diving gear. 

I’d already thrown up twice. 

It was the worse nerves I’d felt since my early days of ballet school. They made me dizzy, shaking, sweaty and nauseous. There wasn’t just a performance on the line. I could lose my lover, one of my last remaining friends, and hundreds of thousands of innocent people on the shore. Including Lu Mingfei.

My stomach turned. “Mingfei... Mingfei...” I said over and over, leaning against the latrine. The thought of his dying because of my decisions rocked me to my core.

Master List

I reached into my pack to text Johann when he knocked. “Meixiu.”

“That’s right...” I didn’t need to tell him when I was feeling this badly.

I opened the door and held on to him tight. “I don’t... I can’t do this... I can’t do this...” I said over and over.

“You have to!” Johann rarely raised his voice, but the echo in the hallway told me he did.

He whispered. “Listen to me...” He tilted my head up. “I received a message from Schneider. The dragon will defend itself using an illusory barrier. Only those with the highest purity bloodlines can pass through it without being overcome. That’s why we have to do this.”

“In the whole school, the highest purity ones are in order: Mingfei, you, me, Nono. Mingfei’s out. So that leaves you to lead as the one who’s least likely to fall prey to this tactic.”

He loosened his grip on me as I started to relax. “I can raise my blood purity if needed... but you know how dangerous that can be. You can stop my conversion into a servitor... but that just makes you more necessary.”

“You’re not the only one in this position. Chisei is here because he’s the last of his clan. He understands how you feel. So if you need reassurance just talk to him. Alright?”

“Okay.” 

He held me close to him and stroked my hair. “You can do this. I know you can.”

A buzzer rang on the PA system. “Trieste passengers report to deck!”

“It’s time to go.” His hand was light against mine until I took it. 

“Caesar always focused on what he was going to do after the mission was over. What will you do, Meixiu?”

“Um... I think... I think I’lll cook Chisei a very nice meal in the galley kitchen.”

“Oh! Uh...  you will?”

“Yes. Something to really make this moment memorable.”

“Your dishes certainly are memorable.”

I giggled and held on to that thought. After the mission, maybe a seafood boil. Hopefully they had enough spices on board!

The Trieste may have been small as far as submersibles go but it was still huge to me, hanging here in itsinternal dock, waiting for me. Chisei immediately approached. 

“I’m okay.” I said.

He halted. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “It’s sweet that you’re worried.”

Chisei laughed a little and didn’t acknowledge my words. “The bomb you’re carrying is a high density sulfur bomb, specially formulated to kill a dragon fast. It will deliver a high enough dose to kill in about three minutes. But to keep the ocean floor stable, the strike must be precise. The bomb only has a range of about one kilometer.”

“That’s very close.” I thought about what Johann had told me. I really did have to do this.

“It’s a safe distance don’t worry.” He reassured me.

I forced myself to agree. “Right... Okay.”

“The submersible has been preheated and everything is inspected. All systems are green.”

“I’ll show you to our systems experts and they can further explain.”

While Chisei was going out of his way to reassure me. Nono was entertaining the rest of the crew, sitting on a desk and flirting with half a dozen blushing men. Was she making up for lost time? Or was this filling a hole? Both? She did look something special in that skintight wet suit.

Johann was on the phone. Probably with Schneider. I turned my attention to instructions I was given. The Trieste was small, it was old... but it was mechanical. There wasn’t a lot of computer technology when it was built, so everything was adaptable, fully testable and not reliant on software. Like an old car, so long as you had a part, it could be repaired with simple tools and it was not hard to understand even for someone like me with little training.

I looked to Chisei and nodded. “Okay, I understand.” 

He put one hand on my shoulder. “Good.”

“Meixiu. Schneider wants to talk to you.” Johann called out.

Nerves returned. Talking to that guy was never a fun time. I separated reluctantly from Chisei to take Johann’s phone.

“Agent Meixiu, we are now using an encrypted Channel. The following information is for your ears only. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“The task is simple. Descend, launch the bomb, ascend. I will be your support contact. Chisei Gen is your assistant. Rely on us for advice and direction. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“You can trust him.”

“Yes.”

“I understand that this is a heavy weight on your young shoulders. One that they simply were not built since childhood to bear. However, they can bear it. In the event of an unforeseen complication, Chu Zihang is well prepared to handle himself.”

“Nono is also experienced and can read a situation. Trust her instincts.”

“Okay...” I felt myself calm down again. 

“You have the best dragonslaying army in the entire world behind you, Meixiu. Hold your head high. And charge!”

“Yes, sir!”  I took a deep breath, smiling. I looked at Johann, hope stoked by the Executive Department lead. He gave me a return smile and thumbs up.

As we walked out to the Trieste, the entire staff stood up and started chanting. “GANBATTE!”

It was overwhelming and I struggled to contain tears, waving at them all.

The hatch was opened but before we climbed in Chisei shouted, “One more thing!”

When we stopped he said: “Do you know about deep sea pearl divers?”

“These women will dive hundreds of meters deep, with a rope tied, one end to them, one end to their relatives. They believe that if they’re in trouble, their relatives will pull them to safety.”

“You’re our pearl divers!” He said, looking up at me with a paternal smile.

“Yes!” I agreed shouting back down at him. “And I believe you!”