#bending of the prompt but i did 2 days of paintings in a row so i get to do what i want

[cosmonott]

day 3 - demon quest

[libermachinae]

Cradle

Available on AO3 Summary: Post-battle roll call. Notes: For @soundwaveweek, prompt was ‘poetry.’

---

The MTOs were stressed. He could understand that, and in fact had little choice but to. Coming online in a crashing shuttle was a less than ideal way to begin life, and the hours of listening to gunfire and artillery going off just outside their prison-slash-shelter almost guaranteed the sorts of injuries no tool could fix. Soundwave had no idea whether the silence that followed the Decepticon victory would have been a welcome reprieve or the most hellish stretch of the experience, but his torch cutting through the crumpled hatch had broken its hold on them, and now they were frantic.

Their thoughts cut him like millions of grains of sand caught up in the exhaust of a shuttle launch. There were questions, the standard Who is that?, Am I going to die?, and Is that supposed to happen? Then the observations, It’s dark, It’s light, He’s blue, He has a gun, and I have a gun.

Mostly, though, they were giving off impressions that could not be condensed so neatly into words, not without at least a few days’ practice to understand the ebb and flow of language. Without it, Soundwave could feel the crush of the darkness, the burning slice of the light. When he announced himself on arrival, his voice came back to him thirteen different ways, shivering or sliding or in boxes, an impressive feat for a group whose sum total life experiences were the inside of a dead shuttle and each other.

The volume increased as he approached them, both due to proximity and their own increasing anxieties. Their thoughts were loud enough to be knocking against his helm, adding to the cacophony the echo of his own internals, but he soldiered on, approaching the first cradle, its occupant staring at him with a mouthless expression that nevertheless seemed to snarl.

“Designation,” Soundwave demanded.

“Megatron.”

Hisses and whispers and flares. Soundwave wished he could turn down his sensitivity, but with all the cassettes investigating other casualty reports, he couldn’t risk making himself that vulnerable, even if it meant he would be taking a splitting processor ache to berth with him that night instead of recharge.

“Your designation,” he said, with no patience to start with.

The MTO stared at Soundwave, optics glancing first over his face and then the length of his frame. He started to speak, aborted the effort, attention straying to his comrades before snapping back to the officer. His thoughts were bright, sour, and runny, becoming more disorganized the longer Soundwave stood waiting for an answer. Now he was tearing through his data packs, the disorganized folders spilling open with instructions on how to shoot, who to shoot, which way to run—

“No designation,” Soundwave concluded, feeling a part of his psyche slump with resignation. “Serial code.”

The uncomprehending stare slid again to the other MTOs, whose own thoughts echoed the globular confusion. A few of them were in the same process of upending their entire storage libraries, and although any one of them could have accurately pinpointed the coordinates where their plummeting ship had disappeared off the edge of the battle map, not one of them could provide him the very basic information he needed to complete this task and leave these soldiers for the recovery teams to salvage.

Soundwave made a quick visual inspection of the MTO, who tried to lean away—not far, given that he was still suspended in the cradle—now that his defensive bluster had dried up. No printed serial code, nor was there on the MTO beside him, a quiet mech who barely glanced at Soundwave as he came close. No serial codes, either printed or coded.

“Any identification markers?” Soundwave asked the room at large. A flicker of movement: Soundwave looked down to the mech at the end of the starboard row, the one installed opposite the sole casualty, aside from the ship itself. His thoughts had been quieter than the rest, colorless and inflexible in a way that had suggested a concussion, but Soundwave’s question had provoked a brief flare. He was looking up: on the ceiling above his squadmate was painted the number 2.

That, unfortunately, was something that could be plugged into a database, checked against the shuttle manifest and production logs, and be used to reverse engineer a serial number. Success, though, depended on this being a legitimate deployment, and certain signs were suggesting the opposite, though none so definitively as to trigger a full investigation. Soundwave put out a recall signal to Frenzy and Ravage, wary of how isolated the shuttle’s final resting place was, and tuned his sensors up higher…

Only to immediately turn them down again as the minutiae of the newbuilds’ thoughts flowed like acid rain through fresh gaps in a roof. He could read the rudimentary threat assessments they were running on him and taste the swell of emotions too new to differentiate yet; the bravest among them had started to free curiosity from the mass, and they plugged it into every observation they made, building questions on top of each other until the thoughts were heavy enough to bend under their own weight. Within the shuttle, everything felt compressed and heavy on top of him.

“Calm down,” he commanded, and winced at spikes of anxiety impaling him from multiple directions.

What a waste, he thought as he recovered from the burst, of his time and their lives. Nova Point was captured, the Autobot base overrun, and Starscream’s choice to put him on recovery meant vital logistics standards were being delayed. The already lengthy identification process would easily be doubled if this much of his processor remained dedicated to his hypersensitivity sensors, and he was vulnerable as long as the soldiers’ thoughts were filling his audio feed. Soldier was even a generous word for the mechs he’d been tasked with risking his life for. Their minimal data packs and emotional instability would make them ill-suited to the promotions occasionally offered to MTOs. They would be getting hauled out of one wreck only to be pressed into another, one that would more likely than not reach its intended destination.

Soundwave did not fault Megatron for leading a chunk of their forces off to the distant front lines on other worlds, but he did long for his leader at times. Megatron would know what was best, whether to forge ahead with the recovery efforts or leave them here to—

“A new row of unlit lanterns is marched in, And I can’t remember what my world looks like In the dark.”

The recording was poor quality, torn from a processor moments before it went offline. Soundwave kept hoping to find the rest of the poem, but bots who survived that time were few and far between, and they guarded their secrets fiercely. Because it was short, he let it play out, and when it finished the attention of the MTOs had narrowed.

“What was that?” the first one asked.

“Untitled,” Soundwave said, which wasn’t entirely accurate. He had a recording of a secondhand account that referred to the poem as ‘The Chain Runners,’ but had never been able to confirm it. He could have asked, but then he would have to tell Megatron he kept the old poem, and that wasn’t a conversation he was ready to have yet.

“But what was it?” The MTO jerked in his cradle; despite the clatter of plating, it did nothing to free him.

“Identification: a poem.”

The complete absence of understanding was a hole Soundwave could have fallen into. A couple accepted that as an answer—a poem must have been another form of marching order, the only communication style they had been brought online to understand—but the others prodded him with their curiosity, audials straining to catch another blip of that strange voice.

“That wasn’t you,” one of the others said.

“Negative,” Soundwave said. “Speaker…” He stopped, remembering how the first MTO, now gazing at him with useful curiosity, had snarled the poet’s name. Had that been out of a sense of pride? A desperation to answer the question, using the only scrap of information they had? Or had it been in worship, choosing his lord’s name to be his first word to the real world? The clashing, violent thoughts did not readily bear an answer to Soundwave, but they did give him pause as he considered his response, long enough that the MTOs’ anxiety rose up once more in a wave.

“What’s it mean?” one of them asked.

“Definition subjective,” Soundwave said. He still had so much work to do. “Silence requested.”

“It’s a code.”

“Negative.”

“Then it’s gotta mean something.”

Soundwave grasped uselessly for words, wishing Ravage were there already. He was better at this. Soundwave wasn’t good at conversation, but most of the time he could get out of it by virtue of the fact that the people he ran into were either his subordinates and afraid of him, or at about equal level and jealous of his proximity to Megatron. It was so rare for him to enter a room without his reputation having already made the rounds for him, he had no basis for navigating this.

He couldn’t come up with anything, and the longer he let the silence drag out the louder the background of thoughts grew to compensate. At a loss and desperate for relief, Soundwave dove into his archives and pulled a file at random, plugging it into his speakers without even scanning the contents.

“The revolution failed because the lords were unamused. The smoke that rose from the burning corpses of their clerks Soured their palmful drinks, And the chants which rose to their balconies, Calling for their heads, Were out of tune with the afternoon symphony.

(The first chair would be tossed out at intermission, And the crowd would suck closed empty fuel lines While inside, the lords sipped in peace.)”

Even with his speakers playing at a high volume, the relative noise inside the shuttle dropped instantly. Their minds were still working, turning over each word like they could find the meaning hidden underneath, but without the fear of the unknown it was quieter and reflective.

“If you still say your knuckles ache, Lay them here, on my knee. I cannot take from you That pain, But I will map the seams of your palm. I will memorize you, Memorialize. I will chart your construction And between your seams find…”

Crunching data while listening to Megatron’s voice was second nature by now. Soundwave stood in the center of the wrecked shuttle, seeking out the identity of the MTOs, while around him they leaned and twisted in their cradles, hunting down the poems like the twinkle of an enemy across a battlefield.

[itsomgitsgreenblogging]

The Star Damned Itself: A Critical Role Fanfic

My fic for Day 2 of @essek-week​ I chose the prompt, Loneliness because of course I did. I don’t usually lean heavy into angst but you know, sometimes you just gotta. This one is a more character study/gen fic. 

Trigger warnings: Definite dysfunctional family dynamics//gaslighting//mentions of abuse//crisis of faith

Read the collection on AO3

Maybe there hadn’t been a singular moment. Maybe there had been a thousand cracks, a thousand fissures, and a thousand dislocations. Maybe Essek had never been whole at all. Perhaps Essek Theylss was just a collection of broken shards gathered into a body he had to justify was his.

Was there a moment?

Essek sometimes struggled with that thought. Had there been a moment when everything went wrong? When he realized that he was better off alone? He could conjure a thousand memories to mind. A quiet hallway, the corner of the library where he hid from a party between the shelf and the wall, the sharp pain of a rap on his knuckles that split and bled, the twist of a pinch in the classroom. When had it been? Could it be the day he heard his father hissing to some distant aunt about his inability to listen? Was it the moment he passed his sixteenth birthday and his mother’s lip turned up in a sneer because Essek was just Essek and there was no long dead great living in his body? When he had raised a fork to his lips and realized that food had no flavor? Had it been something earlier? When?

Maybe there hadn’t been a singular moment. Maybe there had been a thousand cracks, a thousand fissures, and a thousand dislocations. Maybe Essek had never been whole at all. Perhaps Essek Theylss was just a collection of broken shards gathered into a body he had to justify was his.

Maybe it was this: hacking his hair off in the bathroom the day his heart was broken and swearing never to do it again.  

Or this: a beacon traded hands in the darkness. 

Or this: 

“People don’t love broken things. Oh stop that, everything is replaceable,” his mother had sighed, with little remorse as she threw the cracked porcelain bowl at a servant. Essek had so often admired it, wondered at the beautiful flowers painted along the edge and the silver rim. She had wanted him to make it float to prove his lessons weren’t a waste of her time, and Essek had made it do so despite the fact he was too young to do it. But he had done it, and had done well and Essek could tell his mother was almost proud of him--until his sister purposefully slammed a door close and startled him. The bowl went tumbling from the air and crashed onto the floor...destroying him completely. 

 The bowl had been bought a long time ago, brought from the Menagerie Coast and settled in the corner to gather dust and be a relic of the den’s wealth. They had it because they could afford expensive things, not because it fit anywhere.  In Essek’s eight year old imagination it took on some sort of legend. He had pestered his science tutor about those flowers, who had listed off their names with a put-out tone. Cornflowers and marigolds, larkspur and chicory. There were almost no flowers native to Rosohna anymore (the endless night had robbed them of that) but that bowl showed Essek that there was a world outside of his father’s grimaces and his mother’s disapproval, and it was a place he could go one day.  It became a little song he sang in his head on those long days. On the days when his mother had no patience and his father had even less and everyone was fed up with him again and again because he wasn’t perfect yet and his mind spun the tune: cornflowers and marigolds, larkspur and chicory, Empire, Rosohna, Tal’dorei, Menagerie. 

People don’t love broken things. Everything is replaceable. Hissed his mother’s voice and his father’s voice as he stared at the closing door. It overtook that childish rhyme and became something deeply engraved in his heart. 

Essek wondered if that was the moment when he realized that she was talking about him. 

Or this: 

“Oh Luxon, holiest of lights, bless this child with eyes that can see past the marauding darkness and turn him towards the light,” the Luxon cleric said as he dabbed oil on Essek’s forehead. Essek looked at his family seated at attention in the rows, and felt his mother’s gaze digging into him. He turned and stared at the beacon...and just saw it. Incense swirled in the air--puffs of smoke caught on the strobing lights. There was just light. He couldn’t feel anything. 

What were they all feeling? Essek wondered as panic slicked his insides and broke goosebumps across his skin. Why? Why couldn’t Essek see whatever they saw? Why couldn’t he feel what they felt? He had done everything right, studied the ritual down to the last detail, but he could feel nothing. He just wanted someone to tell him what he was doing wrong...someone to comfort him. Somehow the wanting made it all the worse. His tutors had told him that though the stars looked close together, they were really an unquantifiable distance apart. And in that moment he realized that was him, gazing into the light of a star, adrift in the vastness of the heavens alone. He was surrounded by people--always, always being watched, but he was so alone. No one loved a broken thing like him, not even the Luxon--but what if--what if--? 

Don’t leave me alone, Essek begged the star. 

The star damned itself, and gave him no answer. 

______________________

As Shadowhand, he was given a certain number of perks. One of them was real estate--a home to be exact. When he received the title to his new home, he had nearly balked at the audacity of being able to live alone in a world that was defined by your den, but then became overwhelmingly excited. In fact, he clutched the deed to the land with a shaking hand hidden by a long sleeve and refused to let it go for the first two hours of having it. 

When he finally came back to his family’s ancestral home to pack his most important things and to send for the rest, his mother was not impressed. 

“Why would you move?” she demanded of him, as the servants helped to fill his trunks. The servants stopped at the sound of her displeasure, but with a look at Essek they continued. 

“Mother, we already spoke about this,” Essek said tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I have already accepted, and have put down the money--my money to be clear, for the upkeep. I understand you are not pleased but it is already--” 

“We have not spoken about this,” she said haughtily, smoothing her hands on her red dress as if she could make Essek see the reason in her position. Essek saw none.  

“Did you think when we were talking about this last week, and then three days ago, and then yesterday, that this was all--what? Hypothetical?” Essek asked, his annoyance becoming obvious in spite of his best attempts. “If that isn’t the case then you have a very selective memory, Mother.”  

He was being far too petty, that was exceedingly obvious. Essek was doing himself no favors, in fact, what he should have been doing was being pleasant and considerate and polite. Mother preferred that version of him, the son that did nothing but exist solely to further her every last ambition. It was too hasty, showing the self he kept private just like his mother wanted. No one liked this Essek, not that this Essek had anyone he would care enough about to care. The eagerness he felt at the idea of being alone without his family constantly breathing down his neck was intoxicating and it was making him something he was loath to admit: bold. And his mother noticed because of course she did, and her skin took on a lavender flush of fury. 

“It simply doesn’t make any sense. We can take that residence and do something useful with it, give it to a branch of the family. A single man has no reason to have a whole estate for himself, it’s just wasteful. Especially considering--” 

“Considering what?” Essek demanded, cutting her off. The servants at this point grabbed the trunks and escaped the room like harpies were descending on them. “Go ahead, Mother. Say it.” 

“Oh don’t be dramatic, Essek. We both know you have no desire for a family of your own, don’t make me out to be the villain in this story you tell yourself,” his mother said with a roll of her eyes. Essek was furious now, his blood was boiling under his skin--something ugly and terrible was clawing at his insides attempting to escape, venom was filling up his throat like bitter bile. 

“The only thing I don’t have a desire for is being bred like a prized Horizonback tortoise,” Essek hissed before throwing up his hands. “But you know what? You are right. If that’s what having a family is like I would rather be alone, so just let me go. If you ever loved me, even a little bit, you would just let me be.”  

“This is not your decision to make,” she warned him. She wanted him to bend--to break. For once, Essek didn’t back down. Instead he stood tall, facing his denmother with a kind of strength he didn’t know he possessed. “The Luxon will not shine on this decision. Your place is here, I am your denmother--your Umavi, and you will respect my will.” 

If the Luxon existed and it chose you as the paragon of virtue, then it is a foolish deity, Essek thought.

“I have already made my decision,” is what Essek said before walking out the door. 

____________________

One of his mother’s favorite tricks was making Essek feel like he had gone absolutely crazy. When he was around her and when she was talking to him, he often had the acute sense that his mind was slowly being peeled back from its foundations like a soggy old parchment. He would say something--bring up something that had happened in the past, and she would deny it as if it had never happened in such a convincing manner that it left Essek feeling like maybe he had lost his grip on reality. She would tell him they had never argued, or she had never taken away a beloved blanket, or any number of things and Essek would almost believe her every time. 

Essek was finding that living alone was better and worse in that regard. Essek didn’t have anyone else making him feel like he was slowly going mad, but instead it was now springing from his mind. His job thankfully kept him on a rather rigorous schedule, but when (if) he returned home to his empty towers time seemed to both slow to a hardening syrup and speed up beyond his control. His trances were made short and abrupt by the sound of the wind and the cold of the stone, with little else to do once he was home he often researched on his projects for hours on end without stopping. He feared the day he retired (maybe, if he was lucky and his treachery wasn’t discovered) because Essek felt he would lose track of time all together. 

Not that there was retirement in sight. His new position as Shadowhand barely left him time to breathe, let alone work on the things he wanted to. But things were better. They had to be better than before. Anything was preferable than before. 

“This is what I wanted,” Essek reassured himself, as he lay on the floor in his second tower on a rug that had cost enough that he felt that he was entitled to be able to lay on it. “I wanted to be alone.” 

Had he? When had he wished that? 

The thought stumped him. When? When had being alone become the price he had to pay for his brilliance...for his research...for living? It seemed like it had become as natural as breathing...to be alone. He was suited to loneliness like a bird was to air. After all, whenever he had to speak to someone outside of work he felt like he was slowly withering away into nothing. And yet now he couldn’t even remember the last time he had even spoken honestly with another living being outside his head where all of his conversations went according to his daydreams...and it was suddenly very alarming. The Assembly was useless for that he had found, despite his hopes otherwise, and there was no one in Rosohna he could think to enjoy. 

He didn't like to admit it, but he had wanted a kinship with them... at least the mutual respect a fellow researcher deserved. But as always, it never worked out. The Cerberus Assembly was just another collection of old biased fools who worked only to absorb more power and prestige. Of course he would be happy with the research they were doing, and he was learning more. And learning was everything, the truth was the only thing, but even so...

Maybe tomorrow would be different, Essek thought. There was no reason to think so...there would be the meeting with Lythir and the Bright Queen and whatever guests were probably coming from the city of beasts, and then he would be caught up in all sorts of official nonsense. But maybe tomorrow the sting of loneliness wouldn’t be so apparent. Maybe he would be cold hearted enough not to care. 

Maybe tomorrow, Essek thought, staring at his ceiling alone. Maybe tomorrow. 

[timelordthirteen]

A Card for Mr. Gold - Part 3

Mr. Gold/Belle, G

Summary: Mr. Gold receives a card on Christmas Eve.

Chapter Summary: Prior to the events of chapters 1 and 2, Mr. Gold ruminates on the Christmas gifts he's sold at the pawn shop.

Notes: More angst. :( I'm sorry. Set two days before Christmas Eve and the first chapter of this story. For the 31 Days of Fandomas prompt #9 - Shopping.

[AO3]

Two days until Christmas and Gold couldn’t wait for it all to be over.

The emerald ring sparkled in the bright light over his workbench, and he checked the sizing again to be sure before he put it away. He snapped the lid shut on the black velvet box before nestling it in a pile of green tissue paper inside a small, shiny red bag. The strings of the bag were tied with a white ribbon, the ends curled into corkscrews with a quick slide of his scissors. He found himself smiling as he stepped through the curtain into the front of the shop where David Nolan was waiting with a rather pensive look.

“That’s it?” David asked, his fingers tapping on the counter beside the cash register.

Gold inclined his head slightly as he set the bag down between them. “Yes, as promised.”

David blew out a breath and stared at the bag. “This is really happening.”

Gold wasn’t sure if he was being spoken to, and his lips twitched in amusement. “It is if you have the last payment.” Then he flipped open the small notebook he kept by the register and examined the page. “I believe there was two hundred left?”

David’s head shot up and he frowned. “Two? It was four.” He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, twenties and fifties held together with a large binder clip he’d probably borrowed from his soon to be fiance Mary Margaret.

Gold shrugged. “My notes say two.”

David leaned back a bit, eyeing Gold. “What are you up to, Gold?”

He huffed, ignoring the fact that he'd lowered the remaining price by two hundred dollars. “Mr. Nolan, it’s nearly Christmas, and I believe you wished to be engaged by then. I suggest you don’t argue with the man helping to make that happen.”

David undid the clip and peeled off two hundred dollars, laying each bill on the counter slowly so it could be counted. He glanced up when he was done, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Two hundred.”

Gold snatched up the cash, and popped open the register drawer. “Pleasure doing business with you,” he said absently as he laid the money out in the appropriate slots.

David smile. “Thanks, Gold.” His voice was warm and Gold could tell there was a smile in it without looking. “Merry Christmas.”

Then he picked up the small bag, turned, and left the shop.

Gold sighed and leaned on the counter. It was just after four and he was strongly considering closing up early and going home to a glass of scotch and leftover tuna salad. Only the former seemed appealing at the moment.

Bloody Christmas.

He shook his head and retreated to the back room once more, having decided he’d at least finish up his ledger for the day before he left. Sitting at his work table he scanned the columns, which, lately, consisted of rent and holiday gifts. Despite his reputation and general misanthropic ways, he paid a lot of attention to other people. There were always ways to exploit others or bend them to his needs, and as a by product it made him quite good at steering customers towards the item their intended giftee would want.

There had been Leroy, who was seeking something for Astrid, the girl he was sweet on but hadn’t yet asked out on a date. She left the convent over a year ago, and had only recently found employment and a place to live after a short period of being ostracized by half the town. Gold had nudged him away from anything religious as a start, and towards something tasteful for her new apartment, an antique vase with delicate, hand painted cherry blossoms. She’d gazed at it more than once when she’d come to him during her apartment search, and his mouth curved as he imagined her rather ear piercing squeal of delight when she saw it.

Hopefully, it would survive her clumsiness.

Ruby Lucas had needed something for her grandmother and her girlfriend. Necklaces with little charms that had meaning for both her and them fit the bill and budget perfectly. Dr. Whale needed to keep his latest bed mate happy, and Gold was all too keen to encourage the idiot to buy the most ridiculous and expensive yellow diamond earrings. It was inevitable that Whale would philander his way into breaking her heart, and Gold hoped to see her come in his shop in the spring, selling the earrings back to the very shop in which they’d been purchased.

David Nolan wanted to propose to Mary Margaret Blanchard, and had decided that Christmas Eve was the right time. After all, their first kiss had been on Christmas Eve at Granny’s annual party, or so Gold had heard. At first David had been drawn to a princess cut diamond ring, bordered by smaller round diamonds, with tiny stones set all along the band. His intentions were noble, believing that she deserved the best, but not only was such an ostentatious ring more than he could afford, it wasn’t what Mary Margaret would have wanted. After several days of coming in and staring at rings and leaving empty handed, David finally decided he wanted something less traditional. Gold was able to direct him to an emerald solitaire set in a unique platinum band. Mary Margaret had looked at it several times over the years when she’d been in the shop, and once David saw it, he knew it was the one. He said It reminded him of a ring his mother had when he was little. Now it was in a little gift bag and on its way to Mary Margaret’s left hand.

Gold closed the ledger, and leaned back in his chair. He helped so many others find the perfect gift for their loved ones, and yet it had been ages since he’d been on the receiving end of a present. The last one had been -

He let out a short huff and tossed his pen down on the table. Mulling over the gifts others had bought for their loved ones made him wish he had gone home to his excellent scotch and mediocre sandwich. Sighing, he pushed back from the desk and lifted his coat from the rack by the back door. He switched off the lights as he made his way to the front of the shop, and then stepped out into the cold, dry December air.

Shivering, he turned his collar up and fluffed the knit scarf around his neck to block the chill from slipping in the gaps. Less than a block down the street, Belle French was exiting the Dark Star drug store, and he paused beside his black Cadillac, watching her. She waved to Mr. Clark on her way out, and smiled at Leroy as she held the door open for him. Over one arm was the handbag she’d been carrying the last few months, notable for its bold, cobalt colored leather, which matched the shoes she was wearing today.

She always had a kind word for him, and a smile, and for a brief instant he wanted to cross the street and say hello to her, though he’d never done it before. Sure they had talked from time to time, but only in passing. He’d never sought her out in any kind of friendly way, but then he noticed what else she was holding.

In her free hand were two bags, one of which looked like a bright green gift bag, and he felt a small pang in his chest. She had probably purchased a gifts for her friends and family, and Christmas cards to boot. She struck him as the type who would spend an inordinate amount of time wrapping them, making sure the corners were perfect, and decorating them with elaborate bows and ribbons that coordinated expertly with the pattern of the paper. He could see it all in his mind’s eye, and smiled in spite of the ache in his ribs.

Belle had been in his shop just twice since moving to town, but if anyone ever wanted to buy her a gift, he knew exactly what to pick. At that moment, she turned in his direction and raised her hand in a wave. Abruptly, he turned away at the same time, and yanked open the car door.

She had just stepped off the curb when the car’s engine rumbled to life, and he ignored her as he pulled out into the street. He drove passed the houses with their rows of lights, flashing and blinking in all manner of colors, and pulled into the driveway of his three story pink Victorian. It was absent of any decoration or indication that any sort of special day was approaching. It was a dark void in the riot of Christmas that lined Morning Glory Lane and every other street in Storybrooke.

He sneered as he got out of the car, glaring at the blinking rows of light up candy canes on the house across the road. The hell with the whole town, he thought. Maybe he wouldn’t open the shop at all tomorrow. It wasn’t as if anyone would care. Though there was always the chance of someone needing a last minute gift, and he did appreciate a desperate soul.

[bluefurcape]

Sakura and Kakashi - Part 1

For the KS Month 2018 prompt, “Locked In.” Posting a few days early because it’s getting obscenely long... Part 2 here!

  @thekakasakusquad​ @itslulu42​

It had been one year and forty days since the last time Sakura had spoken to Kakashi. But she wasn’t counting. The long silence was not surprising, since ‘Dead Last,’Sasuke’s affectionate(?) nickname for Naruto, was an apt descriptor for the esteem Sakura held in Kakashi’s eyes; something that had been a bit of an unacknowledged truth since their trainee days. She was a grown woman now, self-actualized enough to know that her worth didn’t come from the approval of others. Still, a thin shard of hurt pierced her every time he brushed passed her in the halls of the hospital without so much as a friendly, “Yo,” as he failed to meet her gaze, his nose buried in a worn orange volume in a blatant show of not to noticing her. The first time may have been an honest error. The second time too. But now (after the seven hundred and fourth time, she wasn’t counting), it was all too clear that the snub was deliberate. He had cut her from his life and she didn’t know what she had done wrong.

“Forehead, as irritating as you are, you’re a perfectly fine friend. The problem lies with the old man, not you,” Ino had said early on when Sakura began to notice the distinct lack of Kakashi interactions in her life. Ino’s blunt observation steeled her. She tried her best, as she always did, to be the person that people could rely on and trust. When she made mistakes, she apologized and made it right. She was imperfect, but she didn’t deserve the cruel cold shoulder without any explanation. If she had done something wrong, then Kakashi should have come to her; the fact that he hadn’t only drove home that even after all of this time, even after facing the end of the world together, he wouldn’t do her that small courtesy when she would have torn apart the moon if he ever came to ask her for help (and presumably asked her to tear apart the moon).

She was done. Done with his bullshit and his aloof, brooding manner. He didn’t care about her and it was time to come to terms with it, painful as that would be to admit. Since she was a young girl, she had tried so hard to meet his expectations, exceed them even, because his expectations had not been high when it came to her. Why did she try so hard? That was a question that would require a hard look at herself that she didn’t want to do. She disliked the hunger, the need to be liked, that made her feel small and petty. She didn’t need him. She had other people who cared about her enough to treat her like a human being. Her job was not to try and fix him or bend over backwards for a golden star that would never come. How much of herself had she poured in the effort to gain Kakashi’s approval? Too much. She needed to move on.

She sighed, leaning back in her creaking chair. The thick medical texts on her shelves were grouped by body part, starting with the head downward, though she thought it might have been better if it had been by illnesses and conditions; these were then further alphabetized by title within their grouping. Her framed certificates had been leveled on their respective places on the wall. The little juniper bonsai growing in its blue ceramic pot had been trimmed and re-wired. If she were to open her drawers, all of her supplies would be in perfect order, her paper clips in stacked rows from end to end, her sticky notes arranged by color. Her office was normally neat, but today, it was on a different level of organization. She was beginning to eye the various pens in the cup sitting before her and considering whether to arrange them by color or nib thickness. As of late, this was the routine that she’d settled on, lingering after work without much reason. Too drained from a full day to treat another patient, but still feeling an itch, a need to be doing something instead of sitting at home.

The surface of her desk gleamed in the late summer sunset that streamed through her office windows, the small nicks and stains from coffee mugs highlighted. From where she sat, she could see many of the hospital staff leaving the building, their shifts over, heading to dinner with their loved ones. The streets of Konoha outside of the courtyard began to fill with slow foot traffic, shopkeepers waving to customers, eateries opening their doors to welcome the evening rush. She watched them aimlessly, feeling as if the world was moving forward and she had stopped.

A familiar shock of silver hair surfaced through the many heads in the crowd. The corners of Sakura’s lips twitched down as she spotted Kakashi walking leisurely against the flow of traffic, headed toward the administrative building that was just a short jaunt from the hospital. Jerk, she thought.

A sparrow fluttered onto the ledge outside of her window, interrupting her idle people watching, and politely hopped further in. Sakura held out her hand, letting the bird bounce into her palm and disappear in a puff of smoke. It left behind a small rolled up scroll tied with a piece of twine. When she opened the message and read its contents, her brows knitted together at the summons to see the Hokage, stamped in the corner with a seal to notate the high level of urgency.

She thought of Kakashi walking to the administrative building. A sinking feeling weighed down on her that he had received a similar message and that their paths would be crossing that day.

#

The administrative building was eerily empty when Sakura arrived. When she walked through the front doors, a lone aide greeted her and led her to one of the lower levels underground, where the offices and meeting chambers were more secure, built for conferences among the political elite of Konoha. The hairs on the back of Sakura’s neck stood as she anticipated being briefed on a mission. Once they reached their destination, the aide unlocked a heavily fortified door, making a few quick hand seals, and gestured for her to enter. Sakura glanced around uneasily, prone to suspicion especially when the situation did not seem quite right. She peered inside and saw that Kakashi was already there, slouching in a chair while he read, the lines of his body language completely relaxed. While she was still apprehensive of his company, she was somewhat reassured that he was present and seemingly blase about the whole thing.

The room decor was like many of the other office spaces in the building, spare, but functional. A rectangular table dominated the center, meant to seat many people at once, though there was only one occupant now. The blank walls were painted an unassuming light beige, with the barest decoration, a set of old fashioned festival masks carved from wood to represent a fox demon, a shrine maiden, and tengu. Not a window in sight. On a side cabinet, Naruto had provided a samovar of coffee and a little bar of sugar, cream, and stirrers, possibly anticipating a long night. Upon entering, the door shut with a thud behind Sakura, making her jump. Many clicks followed as the mechanisms within turned back into place. A complicated seal of characters snaked out from the center of the stone, coiling in a perfect circle as its edges expanded. When it reached its end, the characters glowed red briefly before fading back to black.

Sakura turned away from the door to her only companion in the enclosed space, awkwardly standing there as he ignored her presence. He didn’t even spare her a glance as she sat down at the table, a few chairs of respectable space between them. The moment her butt hit the seat a panel in the table parted. She leapt back to her feet, while Kakashi remained thoroughly unimpressed. A speaker rose up, whining to life.

“Test, test,” Naruto’s voice came through.

Sakura slammed her hands on the table, forming delicate cracks on its surface. “What the hell is going on?”

“Good evening, friends. So, there’s something that I’ve noticed in the past…month or so that things have become awkward, to put it lightly,” Naruto said. Not that she explicitly talked to him about her troubles with Kakashi, but Sakura still rolled her eyes at the fact that Naruto was always the last one to notice that something was amiss. There were a few snickers in the background, indicating that a few others had the same thought as Sakura. Wait, others?

"You're such a dope, Naruto," Ino's voice crackled over the speaker.

"Hey, if I'm such a dope, then how did I come up with this super brilliant plan? Now, Sakura. Kakashi. You're probably wondering what is going on."

"You noticed that things were weird between Kakashi and me and decided to lock us in a room until we talked," Sakura responded flatly.

Silence followed.

"Err." A slight rustle as he shifted uncomfortably. "Yea." A healthy chorus of mocking laughter ensued. Sakura could almost see him standing there dejectedly as he was sympathetically, if not condescendingly, patted on the back. An 'A' for effort at least.

"Who else is there?" she asked suspiciously.

"Not that many of us." His voice went an octave higher as he lied. She scowled. She could clearly hear Hinata softly giggling and Tsunade's cackle was too distinct for her not to recognize, especially after she'd heard it live on many occasions when a bottle of forbidden (by Shizune) sake was involved. Kiba loudly whispered that he predicted that this would end in sex. Her cheeks flushed. Naruto cleared his throat and continued, his tone very much like the one that he used for wayward Academy students that had been brought to him for a good scaring. "This is for your own good! You're both acting like children and honestly, it's high time to grow the fuck up. We'll check in on you in the morning, but you're in a reinforced room made of stone that naturally dampens chakra. There are snacks and drinks in the cabinet." He was gloating. He was definitely gloating for all those times that she'd used the same tone of voice on him when he and Sasuke got into one of their ridiculous spats.

"Let us out, you psychos!" She grabbed hold of the speaker, rattling it. In that moment of desperation of not wanting to be trapped in the same room as the man that she'd been avoiding for months, she forgot her own strength even without any enhancements from her chakra, ripping the electronic device from the open panel. The ends of the raw wires sputtered with sparks as she stared at the now quiet box. She let out a squeak of dismay as she stared at the broken speaker. Shit. She dropped the speaker on the table, changing tactics, turning to the door that she had come from just a few minutes ago. The imposing seal bore down on her as she called upon the familiar pathways of energy that ran through her body that would grant her the ability to bust through the wall like the human wrecking ball that the legends and myths surrounding her claimed she was. Briefly, she felt a surge of strength, but like a candle being doused, it guttered and she instinctively knew that punching through now would only result in a broken hand. Being in tremendous pain would not change the fact that she was stuck in a room all night with Hatake Kakashi, masked man of infinite scorn, the silver haired asshole of silence....judgy judgeroo. Grabbing a chair, she threw it with all her might at the door, shattering it into splinters. Not a scratch. She cried out in frustration until her throat felt raw. By the time she quieted, her face was heated and she was breathing hard.

“Oh boy,” Kakashi muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” she snapped.

“Nothing.”

She glared at him as he continued to read. When the force of the resentment from her eyes failed to kill him on the spot, she returned her attention to the seal, taking in its construction and trying to find a weak point in it.

“The Fourth invented that thing on the door, you know,” Kakashi said, referring to the past leader who was most famous for successfully sealing a demonic creature of ancient malevolence into his infant son. She felt a brief surge of empathy for the nine tailed fox.

So she did the only thing that she could do given the situation and sat down on the floor, her face in her hands, resigning herself to the fact that she was in for a long night. Compared to other, high risk missions where she had fought off enemies determined to tear her limbs from their sockets, this was infinitely worse. It wasn’t that she didn’t want this awkwardness with Kakashi to end, but it was getting to the principle of it all. He needed to learn that he couldn’t treat her like this anymore. More than anything, she needed to know that she wouldn’t let him treat her like this.

No words passed between them. A clock did not grace any of the walls, nothing to tick away the seconds and marking the drag of time. She paced. She lied down on the ground. She stood on a chair and checked one of the air vents, only to find it too small to even fit her head, a precaution likely to prevent covert activities while important political discussions were being had. The silent was beginning to feel like a cloud of noxious perfume, tolerable when there was enough distance between them, but concentrated and choking in an enclosed space.

“I think it’s been more than three hours,” she claimed aloud, just to break the monotony.

Kakashi glanced at his watch (when had he started wearing watches?), and responded, “It’s been forty two minutes.”

Loud swearing followed.