#black metal canopy frame

[colinkloecker]

Transitional Bedroom New York Inspiration for a large transitional master light wood floor and beige floor bedroom remodel with white walls and no fireplace

[makestrongminds]

Transitional Bedroom Inspiration for a large transitional master light wood floor and beige floor bedroom remodel with white walls and no fireplace

[renietan]

Transitional Bedroom New York Inspiration for a large transitional master light wood floor and beige floor bedroom remodel with white walls and no fireplace

[cry4mina]

Spite

(Vampire!Mina x fem!reader)

Word Count: 4K

Smut

Disclaimer/Summary: this was literally the first thing I ever wrote and sent to a former mutual who will not be named before I started this blog. It was sent to provide points of interest for a specific type of smut they didn’t know how to write.

Since credit wasn’t given when stated it would be- I’ve decided to unearth it from the messages, tweak it, add to it and post it. So if it seems familiar, know that this was what was originally sent to help spark SOME of the ideas for that fic, specifically.

The context of this is reader is trying to save Mina from her alter ego vampire “Sharon” who can hypnotize people and bend them to her will. Reader has feelings for Mina but was unaware of the powers Sharon holds. Mina was chained up before to avoid Sharon hurting anyone. But uhm…she didn’t stay that way.

TW: aggressive smut, vampires, blood, straps, choking, mind control, hypnosis, cursing, feral fucking lmao lemme know if i missed anything!

A/N: Shout out to those who encouraged me to finish this and also @nr1chaedickrider @miinatozakiii @namojoon for also contributing to the subject matter of the fic this went into! 🖤

And a shout out to @ghostykapi for helping me find some pictures for this! 🖤

Your eyes flicker open to a slurry of lightning flashing. The sounds of rain and thunder jolted you of a glorious dream of you and Mina. A wet dream, soft and sweet, passionately tangled together in a heated scene. It felts so real, it’s shame it wasn’t.

Hands reaching up to wipe the slumber off your face. You kicking your feet out of the warm sheets and sit up, yawning and stretching to pull the rest out of your bones and forget the dream you wished you stayed in a little longer.

Unable to remember falling asleep, the last thing you recall is Mina in chains and then everything going black. Chaining her down to the floor to keep her safe was the only option to protect not just you, but everyone around you too.

The difference between Mina and Sharon was night and day.

Mina was caring, kind, and full of love. A warm wave of safety that never ceased to amaze you in how pure she was.

Sharon was malevolent, disturbing, and evil. An iced entity of stoicism that was bloodthirsty and power hungry. Willing to do anything and everything to get what she wants. Chaining her down was the only way to keep her from feeding. Unnecessary death was always to be avoidable as long as she was chained up and away from everyone.

Sharon was powerful already, being able to use hypnosis on those around her with her eyes and touch, manipulating to gain whatever she could. Dangerous, seductive, and violent.

A hint of copper in your mouth makes your face contort, confused on how the metallic flavor was present against your taste buds. Rolling your tongue around mindlessly, trying to figure out if you had a cut in your mouth, you stand up the concern on your face palpable when you realize you don’t know where you are.

An unfamiliar room with large floor to ceiling windows, giving you a view of the storm raging outside. The bed was large with a black wood and a filigree pattern up the canopy supports. Sheets of satin, night stands that matched the frame, the room was dark in design and eerie in feeling.

The feeling of being watched makes you shiver, grabbing your own arms to hold yourself in the discomfort.

“Good Morning, Y/n.” heard creeping out of the shadows, startling you out of your own head, forcing you to fully wake faster than you normally would.

Another shiver down your spine, you recognize the voice, and pan the room to see a glow of red eyes and the faint pale face of Mina.

Sharon had already taken over her, the infected half of her DNA with a mind of it’s own. Using Mina’s body for her own gain, seducing people to lure them in and goring them before they even had a second to realize what was happening.

You take a step back but she matches your movements. You look for an exit in a panic, not knowing the danger that you could be in when it hits you. The eye contact that causes a surge of desire, running hot in your veins, rendering you tense. Your thoughts are haunted by lewd ideas of her…just like the dreams you were having only moments ago but with more of a sadistic twist.

“You really thought it wouldn’t come to this?” She grinned, voice contorting to a slightly deeper tone, giving an unfamiliar tang to the face you see in your dreams.

“I always thought you’d fight back a little harder…maybe actually try to do something about me…” Pacing as she speaks, admiring how you wince at her words. She knows she can’t be stopped especially because of how you felt about Mina. She did have her face after all.

“How do you feel?” the rhetorical question she asks almost passes you by.

You’re too busy blankly staring at her to see how she’s is sizing you up like a snake about to consume a meal after a long while. Her gaze burns a hole into your chest, the heat rising through the beaming chasm that once was where your heart sat, now all consumed by manipulative lust and yearning for her.

“What do you mean “how do I feel?”” trying to play it like you weren’t scared shitless and insatiable, completely soaked in your own arousal as the flashes of her on top of you pass through your mind.

She giggles and steps closer.

The realization hits that there is no escaping this while she is in front of her, her eyes hypnotic in the way they stay on you. You’re losing your sense of self by the second.

There’s no escaping her.

“Don’t you taste it?” She’s just toying with you now, playing with her food before it’s consumed.

Your eyes widen when you grasp what she’s hinting at.

“W-Who am I tasting?” A sudden clash of thunder reverberates in the room, lightening flashes through the windows, erasing the shadows and allowing you to see her blood stained lips.

She continues watching you without blinking to see if you flinch at the sounds. The hunger in her crimson laced eyes was intimidating and indecipherable. Lust fueled or blood driven, you were unsure. Was this just apart of her plan? Bring you here while you were asleep to seduce you and then…death?

“That would be me, actually.”

Sharon maneuvers her hair, shifting it from one shoulder to the other to show the imprint of your teeth in her neck. A normal human teeth bite mark into her neck…you don’t remember doing that. More importantly, what happens to a human when they drink vampire blood?

“You chained me up…I didn’t like that very much. I’m sure you understand.” She leans against the wall, watching you in a predatory way. Taking every slight movement in, making sure to look up at your eyes to keep you under her spell.

Pulling at your shirt to detach it from your body, her eyes on you makes you feel like you’re being hunted, creating a flash of heat within you.

A small chuckle leaves her mouth menacingly as she watches you remove the article of clothing.

“While you were under my spell, I saw everything. Your thoughts…your feelings…your fantasies…” Pausing for a moment to watch the embarrassment fall over your face, knowing that she had seen the dreams of Mina, from the soft sweet ones to the vile filthy ones.

“They intrigued me.” sauntering over to you, placing a finger under your chin exposing a wound on your neck that she had left before you woke up.

Cocking your head at the statement, pulling your face out of her hands as you furrowed your brows in confusion and try to exact your free will and get out before it’s too late.

Even with the ache between your legs urging you to make a move, this wasn’t Mina…this was someone who just looked like Mina…even though you were fighting your desire of her, it was still very much present and you did not want to give in so easily.

“My mark looks good on you…maybe if you’re a good for me, I’ll give you another” her voice drenched in a possessive tone, the inflection of ownership on you rattled you all the way down to your core.

“Excuse me?” You spat, trying to put up a fight against this supernatural trance she’s put you in.

Sharon cupped your face and looked deep within you, violating the privacy of your thoughts. Intrusion into your brain, into your soul.

“I’ve seen it all, you know….Your fantasies about me, the way you dream of me. It’s so pathetic, really.”

Removing her hand from you and turning her back to walk to the door and lock it by the knob and the deadbolt fixated to the frame.

“I’m going to turn you into my play thing.” Hissed with bated breath, spinning around so rapidly that it created a gust of hellish wind.

“When I'm done with you, you’ll only be able to say my name…I’ll remove all those thoughts out of your head until you’re just my worthless toy… Since you’re so desperate for her to touch you…I figured why not show you how she can really be!”

In one swift movement, “Mina” is in front of you with her hand tightly squeezing your throat, digging her nails into the sides of your neck and baring her fangs in an attempt to get you to submit.

It surprises you how much you’re enjoying this, even hating to admit it to yourself. The idea of Mina being rough with you had consumed your thoughts a few times, you just never thought it would be Sharon to enact them.

Pulling at her hands to get her off of you, her other hand swings and smacks you across the face. She knows your thoughts, she knows you want this and the slap was another attempt to get you to see that she was in control and you had no choice but to let her have her way with you.

Bringing your own hand up to cup your cheek, feeling the heat emanating off the slowly developing red mark, you can’t help but wince at the sting.

Swinging your hand out to slap her back, she leans out of the way causing you to completely miss. She had the dominance that you craved but the urge to fight back was louder than the pulsing between your thighs.

“Mina” tightens her grip on your neck, causing your breath to hitch and almost stop completely as she glares into your eyes, the red storms of putrid rage clashing around matching the weather outside.

“Don’t. Do that. Again.” Gritted through her sharp fangs.

She squeezes one last time and then lets go, dropping you to the floor. You collapse and on your knees, gasping for air and trying to remove the vile thoughts you are having about her.

“I can see those…” Looking up to see her alluringly evil smirk painted across her face, a seductive horror anthology was about to take place. This grin was your warning.

Mina licks her lips and pounces, fully knocking you to the floor, straddling you right above your waist to keep you locked into place.

You’re at her mercy, wrapped around her finger, and completely hypnotized by her spell.

Fangs out and hissing as you attempt to struggle underneath her. She forcefully stretches your hands above your head and pins you down with only one of hers. When did she get this strong?

She kisses you roughly, a striking contrast to the Mina you were used to. Moaning into her mouth, you feel the heat that has been building between your thighs. Avoiding clenching them together, you try to use your strength to push her up to get a better angle.

Her hands slowly trailing up your torso, making sure to drag her nails over your fabric covered nipple just to hear you mewl at her touch.

Hand now wrapped around your throat again, she stands up and drags you with her, and tosses you onto the bed.

The frame rattles against the wall and the softness of the blankets welcome you back sooner than expected.

Quickly mounting your waist once more, hands returning to your throat causing you to nervously swallow at what’s to come.

Sharon leans in to your ear and growls “I’m going to ruin you.”

A third shiver travels through your body and you use every ounce of strength to lift Mina off of you and flip her around on her back.

In this moment, your brain is clouded with desire for the person underneath you, thoughts so intense that your efforts to shake the thoughts out were failing and you needed to try to leave before you succumbed to Sharon’s lust driven needs.

You jump up and head toward the exit but halt immediately when you feel a hand on the back of your neck.

Head spun around for you vigorously, you’re met with eyes glowing red. Mindlessly hypnotized by how deep the pools of crimson.

Slick leaking down your thighs as you rip your bra off and toss it, not caring where it landed.

Why is your body laying down without you telling it too?

She’s so stunning, you need her…Lost in the swirling red that sliced through your hopes of escape.

Within seconds, Sharon’s mouth was on your neck again. Dragging her teeth and hissing possessively. Groaning softly at the sensation of her warm fangs over the bite mark that was already present.

Your hand wraps around the back of her head, fingers weaving through her hair. Your chests are pressed against each other in the heated whirlwind of the moment. Wanting nothing more than for her to touch you. Anywhere and everywhere.

You let go, allowing her to take you, how ever she wanted.

She felt your submission and smiled fangs fully out and grazing the skin of your neck, leaving small cuts at how razor sharp they were, blood dribbles out slowly. She licks the cuts clean, humming at the taste of your life force.

“You belong to me now” growled at you, causing you to clench around nothing.

SMACK

The sound of her slapping your breast echoes in every corner of the room. Red welts appeared on your chest as she bent down to take your nipple into your mouth. Roughly abusing you as you squirmed underneath her.

You can feel how absolutely ruined your underwear is and shift uncomfortably, trying to unstick yourself from the cloth. Sharon notices and stands up, removing contact from you. Eyebrow furrowing at the lack of touch, you let out a needy whine as she watches and towers over you.

“Take your pants off” crossing her arms and waiting. You hesitate. She grabs you by the face hostilely, pinching your cheeks between her index finger and thumb.

“If you don’t take them off, I’ll rip them off of you. I need to know what you taste like.”

You cocked your eyebrow, challenging her. Pursing your lips as if to dare her. She scoffed and ripped your pants right off your body. The sound of the rip only makes the wet spot on your underwear grow even larger, the craving you had for her was unbearable.

Aggressively pushing you back down on the bed, throwing you around effortlessly like a rag doll. She crossed her arms again, glaring at you.

“Don’t move or you’ll fucking regret it” Sternly, the malice present in her tone, before gracefully strutting towards the dresser in the corner, removing all remaining clothes as she made her way over to it.

You hear a soft demonic whine from the other side of the room.

Sharon returned hastily with a device already fixed at her hips, other end of the double ended strap on already inside her. Her thighs glistening in the sleek essence dripping from her core.

Coasting your tongue on your bottom lip as an invitation, you hunger for her.

Suddenly, your legs are pressed against your chest, her knees on either side of your hips, hands pinning your arms above your head, and she’s biting your collarbones and chest leaving trails of fang marks behind in a scattered pattern.

You wince at the pain, feeling yourself falling into the subspace as she navigated around your chest. Slowly descending down to tug on your nipples with her teeth which transitions to licking and sucking the cuts her fangs leave on your tits and listening to you whine for more.

“Please I need y-“ you started to beg for her when she grabs your waistband and rips your underwear clean off your body revealing your soaked state of yearning for her.

“Oh, fuck” breathily escapes your lips.

Sharon takes the tip of her strap and glides it against your slit, eliciting more primal sounds out of you.

“Awh, look at you. Desperate and pathetic for me….or for her…this is your fantasy, no? Don’t you just want her to tease you…to take what’s hers? Too bad I’ll get there before she does.”

It’s hard to hear her talk about Mina like this, knowing it was her body touching you, but she wasn’t present, only this succubus fronting in the warmth of her.

Sharon takes her strap and smacks your clit with it a few times, splattering your slick and returns to sliding it up and down against you. You lift your hips in the same rhythm as her thrusts, unable to look away from the intense eye contact had between the two of you.

“Don’t worry about what she thinks.” reading your mind yet again, at this point you don’t even care she’s being so intrusive.

All you want is her.

All you need is her.

“Mina is enjoying the show.”

She guides the tip to your entrance, pushing her hips into you. Hands on the back of your thighs to keep them against your chest as she enters you, bottoming out in one smooth stroke.

She wastes not a single second more, giving you barely any time to adjust to something being inside you, she pulled back out and snapped back in. Your cunt screams at the mix of pain and pleasure, coating her strap in slick effortlessly.

“Look at how fucking wet you are and I’m just getting started. Someone is eager to be my whore, isn’t that right?”

Unable to focus on anything else other than the desire for her to keep going, you nod your head between gasps, moving your hands to the back of your thighs where hers were so she could use hers how she wanted.

Sharon slows down her pace until halting her motion, watching and waiting for you to answer.

“Say it.” spite-fueled harsh whispers emulating the tone of her seriousness.

“Yes, yes, please…fucking please!” the longing for her was too much, you fear for what you’d become if it wasn’t satiated.

Sharon maniacal laughs turn into grunts when she begins to slam her hips into you again. All you care about is her touch, mesmerized by every single moment of contact and the glare she gives you.

Sharon moaned at the sensation of her clit rubbing on the leather of the harness and the rocking of the silicone inside her.

The coil in your stomach tightens with each sound you both make, threatening to break as she kept jackhammering into you, tip kissing your cervix with each groan had between the two of you.

“M-more…fu-uh-uh-uh-ck, please” slurring your words as you tried to wrap your legs around her to push her deeper into you.

Lowly growling at you and prying your legs from her hips, she pushed them down to your chest again. Fighting the urge to drain you for defiance.

You were her toy and she was going to do this her way.

The pace quickened as she plowed into you. Blurred vision, stars in your eyes, coming close to your high when she let out a snarl and pulled out. Using her strength she flipped you over, pushing your face into the sheets.

“Arch your fucking back” Sharon placed a cold hand on your spine pushing down while lifting your ass in the air.

A finger found its way to your folds. Teasing you and watching the slick drip out of you.

Removing her finger, she bent down and started sucking on your clit. Gasping and writhing as she rhythmically licked your sensitive bud, building up brick by brick the sensations she wanted you to feel.

Dragging her nails up and down your thighs and her tongue continued to dance on your folds, being sure to taste every drop of you.

Two fingers suddenly plunged in and curled towards your G-spot. Pressing down repeatedly causing you to lose touch with any left over moments of reality you still had.

“I’m gonna cum” you scream into the sheets as you start to contract around her fingers.

Essence belonging to you drips down her hand. She’s continuing to pump into you and bring you to your moment of ecstasy. Blissfully being devoured by a demon who looked like an angel.

A devious smirk wipes across her face as she continues to let you ride out the orgasm she gifted you.

You’re completely in shambles, unable to speak full sentences, legs shaking and not willing to hold the weight of your body anymore.

Frozen hands wrap around your waist, you can feel your body being held up.

“Don’t think I’m finished with you yet!” a smack to your pussy startles you.

Feeling her slide the strap back in with ease, both moaning as she pulls out to the tip and continues the deadly pace she had before.

Screaming underneath her with no sense of control, you were overstimulated in the best way, the sensitivity of having just cum was a mere thought when the need for her took over again.

Sharon continued to fuck you senseless, snarling behind you as she pumped, craving her own climax. You felt her hips stutter and falter as she growled, trying to keep her pace.

“Use me, Make me yours -fuck fuck fuck-, Sh-Sharon” you whined, knowing it would push her right over the edge and into the raptured to heaven moment you just had yourself.

She snarled and sank her teeth into your shoulder, moans muffled by your flesh and the tension of her jaw while her hips haphazardly jerk, not letting you out of her venomous bite.

The sound of her cumming, the feeling of her digging her teeth into you, and the movements of her strap set off into another pulsating moment of pure unadulterated bliss, cumming around her, gripping her and making it difficult for her to keep her already unsteady rhythm as she tried to ride out her own orgasm.

She slowly came to a stop and gently draped her body on your back, softly wrapping her arms around you while she caught her breath, licking up the blood gushing from her deep bite.

Her warm torso resting against you was heaven, in and of itself.

You both laid there, chests heaving when she pulled out of you. The sudden emptiness and the stroke of it makes you gasp and whimper again. She undid the device from around her hips, putting it on the night stand to be cleaned tomorrow.

She looked over at you, making eye contact. You notice that her eyes are brown like before, you blink a few times at her. She puts her hands up in defense, eyes widened at how quickly you realized she was back to Mina.

“I can explain!”

[noira-l]

𝚄𝚖𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚊 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚃𝚠𝚘

𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: Beneath the rain’s steady rhythm, you cross paths with a stranger, sharing an umbrella on a quiet, forested road. What begins as a fleeting act of kindness unfolds into an unexpected connection, leaving questions and longing lingering like the rain-soaked air. Will you meet again?

𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 — teacher!geto suguru x afab reader

𝚐𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎 — fluff, teacher au

𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 — polite and gentle Suguru, shy reader, adorable reassuring dynamic, losts of blushing from reader, walking hand-in-hand, Suguru is a true gentleman, Satoru makes an brief appearance at the end.

𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 — 5,9 k

𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚛'𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎 — One of my favourite texts, I see the potential to write a part two, let me know what you think and if you like it c:

𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚙𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚖𝚎 — september - sparky deatcap

𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝

The rain had been falling in torrents since late afternoon, a warm deluge that soaked the earth and wrapped the air in the scent of wet leaves and damp soil. It was almost the end of summer, that fleeting stretch of warmth before the world cooled and grew crisp. You held onto the net of small purchases, pressing them close to your side.

Your sandals squelched against the wet asphalt, water seeping through with each step, though you hardly minded anymore. It was too late to avoid the inevitable, and there was a sort of childish thrill in the way the rain drenched you, despite the protection of your transparent umbrella.

The umbrella itself was a delicate thing, clear plastic that mirrored the drops of rain as they slid down its surface, catching the muted gray light of the cloudy sky. You tilted it slightly to better see the road ahead.

Around you, the world was hushed, softened by the rain. The desolate fields you had passed earlier were now behind you, the tall grass bending under the weight of the downpour. The trees of the forest loomed up ahead, dark and dense, the kind of green that seemed almost black when wet. Their leaves glittered with moisture, heavy with rain that dripped in a rhythmic patter to the forest floor.

Your village was still far off, a small cluster of houses tucked away from the busier parts of the world. It always felt like another century back there, with its narrow lanes and low stone walls.

Your friend had been kind enough to drop you off to work in the morning, but their day had gone another way, leaving you to make the journey home on foot. You didn’t mind too much; there was something oddly peaceful about being alone with the rain, even if your calves would ache by the time you made it back.

The forest stretched on, its canopy forming a natural tunnel that swallowed the sound of your footsteps. The air was warm, almost muggy, but the rain kept it fresh, a relief against your skin. You could hear the distant gurgle of a stream somewhere, the kind of noise that made you want to linger, to breathe it all in. But your arms were growing tired from carrying your bag of purchases, and you quickened your pace slightly, already looking forward to dry socks and tea.

Just ahead, a bus stop stood at the side of the road. It was a modest thing, little more than a metal frame with a roof and a bench, its glass walls speckled with droplets that caught the light like tiny jewels. You recognized it immediately as one of the few stops along your route, though the buses never came often enough to rely on them.

From a distance, the figure standing under the shelter’s roof was striking - a tall man with long, raven-black hair, though one strand of hair spilled to the side, framing his face. He wore dark clothes that resembled some sort of uniform, their edges dampened by the rain, though he seemed largely unbothered by it, his sharp eyes focused on the phone he held in one hand.

The glow of the screen cast a faint light on his face, accentuating his features. He didn’t look up as you drew closer, too absorbed in whatever he was reading or typing.

You hesitated, unsure if you should tell him.

It felt like an awkward thing to point out - that the nearest bus wouldn’t arrive for another two hours. You knew this, of course; you’d lived here all your life, and the unreliable bus schedule was just part of the routine. But there was something about him, this stranger standing so composed in the rain, that made you reluctant to correct him. You didn’t want to come off as rude or condescending, even though he looked far too poised to be ruffled by something so trivial.

With slow, deliberate steps, you moved closer, finally able to get a proper look at the stranger’s face. And then you stopped, caught entirely off guard.

He was beautiful - stunning, even.

His features were sharp but balanced, his skin pale against the wet strands of dark hair framing his face. There was an elegance about him, the kind you’d only ever read about in books, a kind of beauty that seemed out of place in a bus stop on a rainy day in the middle of nowhere.

Your breath hitched, and for a moment, you froze, suddenly unsure of yourself. It wasn’t just admiration that stopped you - it was the feeling that he might notice. And he did. The stranger raised his gaze, meeting yours with piercing eyes that made your stomach flip.

You felt as though you’d been caught in the act of something, though you couldn’t quite say what.

"Excuse me…" you began, your voice unsteady, the words slipping out before you could overthink them "From this stop, the next bus will only leave in two hours."

You saw his expression change, his face hardening for just a moment before he glanced at his phone. A flicker of realization crossed his features, followed by the subtle tightening of his jaw. Two hours. You watched him absorb the information, weighing it in the way one might consider an unexpected puzzle piece.

"Which destination are you trying to go to, sir?" you asked tentatively, hoping to soften the atmosphere.

The stranger shifted slightly, his posture still composed, his voice was calm, almost melodic when he replied.

"I was supposed to have transport arranged..." he said, his tone polite and precise "...but it didn’t show up. I’ve been walking this way for a while, trying to get to the nearest railway station." he glanced out at the rain, a resigned smile touching his lips "For now, I’ll just wait until the rain lets up."

Okey, so no formalities.

You bit the inside of your cheek, a twinge of pity blooming in your chest. Maybe it was the tiredness in his eyes, or maybe it was the strange comfort his voice seemed to offer, but something about him made you want to help. You felt yourself faltering, unsure if it was compassion or simply the pull of his presence that made you act.

Taking a small step forward, you hesitated again before speaking.

"I-I would give you my umbrella if I could.." you said shyly, stumbling over the words "but…I could share it with you instead, i-if you’d like. I’m walking that way, anyway." your voice was barely above the rain’s patter, and you glanced up at him nervously, your heart pounding as you waited for his response.

The stranger raised an eyebrow in surprise, his sharp features softening as a smile spread across his face. It wasn’t just any smile - it was warm, affectionate, the kind that could melt away the weight of the rain.

"That’s very kind of you." he said gently, his voice carrying a note of sincere gratitude "But are you sure? I wouldn’t want to trouble you."

You nodded quickly, almost stumbling over your own reply "It’s not a problem at all." you said, your cheeks heating despite the cool rain.

He stepped closer then, the movement calm and deliberate.

"May I hold the umbrella?" he asked, his voice steady but tinged with the kind of humor that made you feel at ease.

You blinked at him, caught off guard by his earnestness. Then, in a burst of nervous laughter, you blurted out "This isn’t some elaborate plan to steal it, is it?"

He chuckled in response, the sound rich and unhurried, with a warmth that made your heart skip "I promise you, I’m not that desperate. Though I must admit, it’s quite a fine umbrella."

You couldn’t help but laugh at that, a little more freely this time "All right." you said, handing it over "No running off with it, right?"

His smile widened, and he inclined his head in mock solemnity "You have my word."

As he took the umbrella from you, he glanced at the bag in your hand "That looks heavy." he said, his tone still gentle "May I carry it for you? It’s the least I can do."

You blinked, surprised by his offer "Y-you don’t have to." you said quickly, though the weight of the bag was starting to bite into your shoulder.

"I’d like to." he replied softly, his voice full of tact and patience. He met your gaze with an earnestness that left you speechless for a moment "Let me repay your kindness in some way."

Before you could overthink it, you handed him the bag, watching as he slung it over his shoulder with ease. He took the umbrella from your hand as well, holding it high enough to shield you both.

"Thank you." you murmured, feeling your cheeks flush again.

He smiled down at you, his presence at once intimidating and comforting "It’s the least I can do."

You fell into step beside him, careful to keep your hands close to your chest to avoid brushing against him by accident. The umbrella bobbed slightly as you walked, its surface dappled with countless raindrops that caught the dim light filtering through the trees.

His shoulder brushed yours occasionally, and each time, you felt a jolt of awareness that made you press your hands tighter together.

The rain continued its steady symphony, the forest growing deeper and darker around you. For a while, neither of you spoke, the quiet punctuated only by the soft rustle of leaves and the rhythmic tap of rain against the umbrella. Yet, despite the silence, the atmosphere felt warm, a shared sense of understanding hanging in the air.

The proximity of this stranger, his presence just inches from you, made your skin prickle. Your attempt to edge further away left your shoulder and arm exposed to the rain’s relentless assault, cold water trailing down your skin. You shivered involuntarily.

He noticed immediately. Without a word, he adjusted his stance, stepping slightly out from under the umbrella’s reach, allowing more rain to fall on himself. Then, with an effortless, almost graceful motion, he raised his elbow, lifting the umbrella higher in a silent gesture of encouragement. The movement was subtle but clear, his expression calm, his eyes soft as they flickered to you.

"Please, come closer." he said gently, his voice steady but filled with warmth "You’re getting soaked. That’s not good."

The simple suggestion caught you off guard. Your heart fluttered in your chest, a mix of embarrassment and warmth. You felt your cheeks begin to burn, a blush rising that had nothing to do with the summer rain.

"I-I’m fine!" you stammered, the words tumbling out unconvincingly "I don’t want to invade your personal space."

He tilted his head slightly, his long raven-black hair shifting with the movement. A polite smile curved his lips, one that carried both reassurance and a trace of quiet amusement.

"I wouldn’t ask if I minded." he said, his voice as soothing as the patter of rain around you "But I won’t push." slowly, he lowered his hand, letting the umbrella dip back to its previous position.

You hesitated, a tangle of emotions swirling inside you. Embarrassment, nervousness, and something softer - an inexplicable pull that made it hard to look away from him. His behavior was so composed, so gentlemanly. The way he moved, every gesture precise yet natural, left an impression. His politeness was disarming, his patience soothing, and yet his presence was almost overwhelming.

Your gaze flicked over him again, taking in the details you’d been too shy to linger on before.

His profile was sharp, his jawline defined, the curve of his lips soft and poised in a way that seemed almost practiced. His eyes, when they turned to glance at the rain-soaked path ahead, were striking - a light amber that seemed to hold a quiet intensity, like they noticed more than they let on. The line of his nose was elegant, his skin smooth and pale, save for the faint shadows under his eyes that hinted at sleepless nights.

He radiated a quiet confidence, the kind that didn’t demand attention but drew it effortlessly nonetheless. But also some kind of laziness, like some kind of easiness, that was calming and reassuring. His voice, when he spoke, was enveloping, each word seeming to hang in the air just a second longer than necessary. It was a voice you could listen to for hours, soothing yet alluring in a way that made your heart quicken.

You wondered if you should get closer. Your shoulder was getting more and more wet, which was an added encouragement to get closer to this absolutely handsome man.

It's just sharing one umbrella.

Finally, you exhaled softly, giving in to the pull you couldn’t quite resist.

With slow, uncertain steps, you moved closer, slipping your hand between his arm and his side. The warmth of his body was immediate, a stark contrast to the cool dampness of the rain. You felt the firm strength of his forearm beneath your fingers, the contours of muscle that you hadn’t expected but now couldn’t ignore.

Your fingers pressed lightly against his arm, and you bit your lip, heat spreading through your cheeks even more. It was impossible not to notice how solid he felt, how steady. You dared a glance up at him, hoping for some sort of reassurance, but he wasn’t looking at you. His gaze was focused ahead, his expression calm and unreadable, though there was a faint curve to his lips, almost as if he were holding back a smile.

The moment felt absurdly intimate, and your mind raced with thoughts you couldn’t quiet. The way he held the umbrella so steadily, the ease with which he carried your bag, the slight tilt of his head as he kept an eye on the path ahead - it all made you hyperaware of the closeness between you.

For a brief moment, you wondered if anyone passing by would mistake you for a couple. The thought sent a fresh wave of heat to your face.

Are you not dreaming too much?

His voice broke the silence after a moment, soft and steady "Comfortable?" he asked, glancing down at you briefly.

The question sent your heart racing again, though there was nothing teasing in his tone - just genuine care "Y-yeah." you managed, though your voice wavered slightly.

His eyes softened, and the faintest trace of a smile touched his lips "Good." he said simply, his gaze returning to the path.

Walking like this, hand in hand with this beautiful stranger, felt surreal. You tried to focus on the rain, the trees, anything other than the growing warmth in your chest. But it was impossible not to notice every detail - the curve of his lips when he smiled, the faint sparkle of raindrops caught in his dark hair, the steadiness of his voice whenever he spoke. It all left you feeling utterly unmoored, caught in a moment that was both ordinary and extraordinary, with no idea where it might lead.

The rain continued to fall in soft, persistent waves, the sound of it soothing as it mingled with the rhythmic crunch of your footsteps on the wet gravel path.

"Are you coming back from work?" he asked, the words floating gently between you.

Your thoughts snagged on the word, circling back to the weight of your day. The rain, the walk, the shopping - it had been such a long day that the details of work already felt distant, blurred by the rhythm of the journey home.

Noticing your brief silence, the stranger glanced at you, his expression open and polite "Ah - was that too personal?" he asked, his tone softening with genuine consideration "I didn’t mean to pry."

You shook your head quickly, flustered by his tactfulness "No, not at all." you reassured him, your voice a little breathy as you hurried to fill the space "I was just…thinking. Yes, I’m coming back from work."

He nodded slightly, a faint, encouraging smile tugging at his lips. Something about his attentiveness made it easy to keep talking, so you did.

"I work at the local library." you said, your voice growing steadier as the words tumbled out "I run classes with the kids from the nearby school sometimes. You know, little activities - arts and crafts, storytelling, that sort of thing." you smiled faintly at the thought, picturing the chaos of sticky fingers and mismatched crayons that usually accompanied your sessions "I also run an art club there, and…sometimes I help a friend in his flower shop. It’s not really a job, just something I do to help out."

He tilted his head slightly, his golden eyes watching you with quiet curiosity as you spoke. When you finished, he nodded again, as if considering your words carefully before speaking.

"That sounds fulfilling." he said finally, his voice carrying a note of admiration "You must be good with children."

You laughed softly "H-hah.. Well.. They can be a handful, but…yes, I like it. It’s nice to see their creativity come alive. I guess you get used to the chaos after a while."

His smile deepened slightly, and you caught the faintest glint of amusement in his eyes "I can imagine." he said.

Wanting to turn the attention away from yourself, you hesitated for only a moment before asking "What about you? Where do you work?"

He smiled again, this time with a touch more ease "I’m a teacher!" he said simply "I work with teenagers in high school. My friend and I - someone I’ve known since my school years - we both teach there."

The way he said it, with just the faintest trace of fondness, made you smile too. There was something reassuring about the way he spoke of his friend, a subtle warmth that hinted at years of trust and shared experiences. It made him seem…steadfast.

You glanced up at him shyly "Do you like it? Teaching, I mean."

His answer came without hesitation, his voice soft yet certain "It’s difficult." he admitted, a thoughtful look crossing his face "Teenagers require a lot of attention, and…a lot of patience." he glanced at you briefly, the faintest curve of his lips returning "You probably know what I mean. You work with children too."

You nodded, returning his smile "I do, but…I think teenagers would be a whole different challenge."

"They are." he said with a light chuckle, his deep voice carrying the faintest note of weariness. Then, as if to counter it, he added "But I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. It’s not always easy, but…it feels right. Like I’m where I’m supposed to be."

His words struck you in a way you hadn’t expected. There was something deeply genuine about the way he spoke, an unshakable confidence in his choice of work. It made you pause, your gaze lingering on him as your thoughts wandered.

You studied him quietly for a moment, considering his features again with fresh perspective. His composure, the way he carried himself, the gentle tact in his words - it all seemed to fit perfectly with the image of a teacher. You could picture him in a classroom, standing before rows of students, his sharp eyes softening as he patiently explained something. His presence, so calm yet commanding, seemed tailor-made for guiding others.

You realized you were staring and quickly looked away "You seem…well, like you’re made for it." you said quietly, hoping the compliment didn’t sound too forward.

He glanced at you, a flicker of surprise crossing his face before his smile softened.

"That’s kind of you to say." he murmured, his voice as warm and steady as ever.

But... there was curiosity in your head.

You wanted to ask what he was doing here, in a small town that offers little except rural peace and quiet. You didn't know what he could even do here. However, you didn't want to be nosy, so you sidestepped the question, leaving silence.

Perhaps he was visiting someone or had an errand to run here?

The dark embrace of the forest began to loosen its grip as you emerged into a wide clearing, where the rain seemed to soften just a little. The shift was almost imperceptible at first, but with each step, the oppressive weight of the dense trees gave way to the open expanse ahead.

Fields stretched out on either side of the path, their crops swaying slightly in the breeze. Droplets bounced off the umbrella with a little more delicacy.

The silence between you and the stranger was not awkward but companionable, like the quiet that comes with a shared understanding. The air felt fresh, cleansed by the rain, carrying with it the faint earthy scent of wet soil and the sweetness of grass. You let your gaze wander over the scenery, taking in the rolling hills in the distance, dotted with clusters of trees and lined with distant hedges. The outline of your small town was barely visible ahead, its railway station like a speck on the horizon, still far off but reassuring in its presence.

The stranger’s voice broke the silence, low and calm "It’s beautiful here." he said, his tone soft, almost contemplative "Fields like this, the hills… It’s peaceful."

You turned your head slightly, catching the way his eyes lingered on the landscape, his expression relaxed but thoughtful. There was something about the way he spoke - simple, understated - that made you feel the weight of his words. His appreciation for the scene seemed genuine, unhurried, and you found yourself smiling without thinking.

"It is." you agreed quietly, glancing out at the fields "You don’t really notice it sometimes, not when you see it every day." he hummed softly in response, a thoughtful sound that didn’t demand more words.

Without realizing when or how, you found yourself speaking again, your voice spilling into the stillness as easily as water flowing over stones. You talked about your friend from the flower shop, recounting little quirks and habits that made you laugh. You shared snippets of life in your small town, anecdotes about the library and the children who always managed to surprise you with their boundless creativity.

He listened attentively, nodding occasionally, his faint smile encouraging you to continue. At one point, you glanced up at him and noticed the slight tilt of his head, the way his eyes softened as he listened, as though he was genuinely invested in every word you said. The realization made you feel oddly self-assured, your initial shyness melting away as the conversation grew.

Eventually, you turned the question back to him, asking about his life, curious about what kind of life this composed, enigmatic stranger led.

"I teach in Tokyo." he said, his voice carrying a faint note of wistfulness "It’s…different. Busier, louder. There’s always something happening, but it’s not without its charm."

You say that most of your friends moved to the city after graduation.

So he went on to talk about his friend, the one he had mentioned earlier.

"He’s…energetic." he said with a small chuckle "And very teasing. Honestly, he’s the best person I’ve ever met, but don’t tell him I said that - he’d never let me live it down."

You laughed at that, charmed by the small glimpse of his life.

He shared a few anecdotes about their time teaching together, little moments of chaos or hilarity that had unfolded in the classroom. The way he spoke about his students and his work confirmed what you had already suspected - he was dedicated, thoughtful, and quietly passionate about what he did.

In return, you found yourself sharing even more stories from your own life. You recounted small, funny moments - like the time you had accidentally herded a neighbor's chickens into your yard, thinking they were lost, only to have the neighbor laugh and tease you for trying to "adopt" them. Or the summer afternoon when you and a group of friends decided to build a raft out of old planks and rope to sail across the pond, only to have it sink halfway through, leaving everyone soaked and laughing.

You both laughed easily, the sound mingling with the rain as it continued to fall lightly around you. The conversation flowed effortlessly, like a stream winding its way through familiar terrain. His presence, which had initially been a little intimidating, now felt warm and grounding, like a steady current guiding you forward.

At one point, you ventured to ask if he had a family, expecting perhaps a brief mention of siblings or a spouse. Instead, what he shared left you momentarily speechless.

"I have two daughters" he said suddenly, his voice soft and contemplative.

You blinked, caught off guard "You…you have kids?" the surprise evident in your voice. He looks quite young.

He nodded, glancing at you briefly before his gaze returned to the path ahead "They’re both in their teens now. I adopted them when I was just a little older than they are now - barely finished with school myself. They didn’t have anyone else... and I couldn’t imagine leaving them to fend for themselves."

The revelation left you momentarily speechless. You turned to look at him, truly look at him, as if the weight of what he’d just said needed a second to settle.

"That’s…incredible." you finally managed, your voice quieter than before, in awe "I can’t even imagine taking on that kind of responsibility at such a young age. You must have sacrificed so much."

He offered you a faint smile, one tinged with a mixture of humility and pride "It wasn’t easy." he admitted "But they’re everything to me. They’ve shaped my life in ways I can’t even begin to explain."

You couldn’t help but picture it - this tall, composed man stepping into a role that most would shy away from, shaping not just his own future but that of two young lives. It was admirable, truly.

"What are they like?"

He smiled again, this time with a warmth that softened his sharp features "Oh, they’re full of life, though very different from each other. One’s quieter, more reflective - she is very fond of plushies and all similar crafts using yarn. The other is…well, let’s just say she keeps me on my toes. She’s fearless in a way I never was. She loves photography and good food."

You simply nodded.

"I think they would enjoy your art classes. The way you talk about it makes me want to visit it myself." he added after a moment.

"You think so?" you asked with shiny eyes.

He nodded with a tender smile "Absolutely. They love anything that lets them express themselves. Art, storytelling… They’re always asking questions, wanting to understand more about the world. I think they’d have enjoyed listening to you. You have that…spark."

The compliment made your cheeks warm, and you quickly glanced away, focusing instead on the sights around you.

The conversation shifted naturally to other topics. You spoke about the world, exchanging thoughts about the small joys and challenges of everyday life. You found yourself opening up more, sharing little pieces of your own mind and heart.

As the rain finally stopped, he closed the umbrella with a soft click, holding it casually at his side. You expected him to move away then, to reclaim the space between you, but instead, he stayed close. His hand remained loosely linked with yours, his warmth still a steady presence beside you.

The world around you seemed to exhale, the fields and trees glistening with a fresh sheen as the last droplets clung to leaves and blades of grass. The sky above remained a soft, pale gray, the kind of color that hinted at the sun’s return but didn’t quite promise it yet.

With each step, the railway station came closer into view, its outline growing sharper against the backdrop of the hills. But the approaching destination only made you more aware of the fleetingness of the moment. You felt a pang of something you couldn’t quite name, a mix of gratitude and reluctance, as though part of you wanted to stay in this quiet, rain-kissed world just a little longer.

The train station finally came into view, small and modest, with its quaint stop marked by a weathered sign bearing the name of the town.

Just beyond, on one of the intersecting streets, you noticed a sleek black car with tinted windows. It stood out starkly against the quaint, rural charm of the area.

Leaning casually against the side of the car was a tall man - even taller than the stranger next to you, but dressed in a similar uniform. What immediately drew your attention, however, was his unmistakable shock white hair and a black blindfold wrapped around his eyes. His presence was striking, almost aloof, despite the relaxed posture and the wide grin that spread across his face.

"Yo, Suguru!" the white-haired man called out, his voice carrying easily over the distance. His grin widened, impossibly cheeky, as though he found the entire situation endlessly amusing.

Suguru.

So this stranger’s name was Suguru. You repeated it silently to yourself, letting the name settle in your mind. It suited him somehow, elegant and distinct, much like the man himself.

You hadn’t asked, too shy to break the natural flow of conversation earlier, the name rolled around in your mind, attaching itself to the face you had grown so familiar with over the past hour.

As you neared, you hesitated slightly, loosening your hand from his and stepping away to give him space. Suguru’s warmth lingered for a moment before the cool air slipped between you, a quiet reminder that your paths were about to diverge. He stepped forward to meet the white-haired man, who straightened from his casual lean, revealing that he was indeed taller than Suguru by a noticeable margin.

The two men greeted each other with an ease that spoke of years of familiarity. The white-haired man’s smile remained fixed as he raised a brow.

"What took you so long?” he teased, his tone light but carrying an edge of mischief.

Suguru’s expression remained calm, though you caught the faintest flicker of irritation in his eyes "You left me." he said simply, his voice steady but firm "You were supposed to wait."

The white-haired man shrugged nonchalantly, clearly unbothered "I figured you could handle it." he said, waving a hand dismissively "In the meantime I bought some souvenirs!"

Then his grin returned, sharp and teasing "Besides, looks like you found yourself a companion."

At that, Suguru glanced over his shoulder at you, and for a moment, his amber eyes softened. He stepped back toward you, handing over your shopping bag and umbrella with both hands, his movements deliberate and courteous.

"Thank you." he said, his voice kind and sincere, with just a hint of warmth. He bowed slightly, a gesture that felt both formal and personal "For your time, your help, and your kindness."

You felt a flicker of embarrassment under his gaze but managed a small smile in return "I’m glad I could help." you said honestly "And…that you found your transport."

Suguru reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small card, holding it out to you. You accepted it hesitantly, your fingers brushing against his for the briefest moment. Glancing down, you read the text printed neatly on the card.

Geto Suguru Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School (There was a phone number printed underneath.)

"If you’d like to talk..." Suguru said softly, his tone measured but kind "...or if you see something…unusual, don’t hesitate to call."

Your heart fluttered slightly. His words lingered in the air, their meaning layered with a subtle weight that you couldn’t quite place.

You nodded slowly, your thumb brushing over the edge of the card "Thank you." you said, your voice a little quieter now, tinged with a shy kind of gratitude.

The white-haired man let out an exaggerated grunt from behind Suguru, clearly impatient "Alright, alright, we’re on a schedule here, Suguru! Let’s go!" his voice was teasing, but there was an underlying firmness that suggested he meant it.

Suguru glanced over his shoulder at him, then back at you "Goodbye." he said, bowing slightly once more.

You returned the gesture, bowing politely before straightening up and giving him a small wave "Goodbye." you said softly.

As you turned away, your steps taking you toward the village path, the rain-soaked world around you seemed to glow. The thick gray clouds began to part, their edges gilded by the first rays of sunlight breaking through. The golden light spilled across the fields, painting the wet grass and the distant rooftops with a soft shimmer. You adjusted your shopping bag and umbrella, your figure gradually retreating into the peaceful scenery.

You felt happy and excited to have another conversation with him someday.

Behind you, Suguru watched silently. His soft eyes lingered on your silhouette, his expression unreadable but calm, as if committing the sight to memory. The way you walked - unhurried but purposeful, your damp hair catching the faint glimmer of sunlight - held his attention in a way he didn’t fully understand. There was something quietly remarkable about the moment, about you, and for a fleeting second, he almost considered calling out to you again.

Almost.

From beside him, Satoru nudged him playfully in the ribs, his usual grin tugging at his lips "You’re staring~" he teased, his tone both amused and pointed "Should I be worried? Or are you just enjoying the view?"

Suguru didn’t glance away immediately, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he watched you take another step into the sunlit clearing.

"Just appreciating kindness." he replied, his voice calm but tinged with something softer, almost thoughtful. Then, with a flicker of amusement in his own tone, he added "And a view like that deserves a moment, doesn’t it?"

Satoru let out a dramatic sigh, rolling his eyes behind his blindfold "You’re such a romantic, Suguru. Just don’t go writing poetry about this later, alright?"

Suguru chuckled lightly, finally turning toward the car "Not everything needs words, Satoru." he said, his tone warm with a trace of amusement "Some things just stay with you."

Satoru tilted his head, his grin widening as he opened the car door "Alright, philosopher. Let’s go before I turn into a sap too."

Suguru gave one last glance in your direction, his gaze lingering for a second longer than he intended, before stepping into the car.

As the car rolled away, Suguru found his gaze lingering on the path where you had disappeared, his thoughts quiet but persistent. He wondered, just briefly, what might have happened if he’d stayed a little longer - if there’d been more time to talk, to walk beside you under the clearing sky.

A faint smile tugged at his lips, as he told himself, almost absently, that this wasn’t the last time he’d see you.

© noira-l 2024 | all rights reserved. do not copy, translate, modify, or redistirbute my work without permission

[uzurimisery]

chapter 5: the call. / coriolanus snow / nsfw

Rating: Explicit

WC: 6746

Warnings: MDNI, he's still insane and possessive, he's not a good guy but he's hot, vomit mention, not beta read

AO3 version | Series master

Friday evening had finally come, the pit in his stomach made Coriolanus anxious. Somehow, despite the years he’d known your mother, and the year he’d spent “dating” you, he had never met your father. The man had taken your mother’s last name when they married, something that rarely happened before, maybe only twice. A myriad of questions swam in his head, threatening to drown him. Ancient myths of sirens singing his doom. Would he be just as insane and twisted as your mother? He couldn’t be, he was far too public-facing. Would he be more like you then? A playful actor with a cold nature? You had to get that from someone and it was not your mother. The traits you shared with her were cruel.

Sometimes his mind was his worst enemy. He conjured up scenarios that ranged from disastrous, to pleasant, to ones that ended Panem as he knew it. He couldn’t shake the feeling like he was walking into the lion’s den. 

“Will you quit picking at that seam?” Tigris slapped his hand away from his suit pocket. “I spent too much time making that for you to ruin it.” It was a miracle she had agreed to come to dinner tonight. 

That last time they spoke had ended badly, the confrontation lingering. Despite their difference, Tigris did care for her cousin. 

“Relax, it won’t come undone from that.”

Grandma’am chided, “Now you two play nice. I am far too excited to talk with Mr Gaul about updating the apartment to let you both ruin it.” She was oblivious to the underlying tension and chirped excitedly about getting a look inside your family estate.

“Sorry Grandma’am,” Tigris always backed off when she got in trouble. “It won’t happen again.”

When the car pulled up to the gates, a private force of peacekeepers let them through, opening the gate after confirming their identities. He had known that your mother kept security with her, but not to this extent. The drive up to the front of the house was long, longer than it should be. The winding driveway, flanked with trees, led them to the crest of the hill and when the canopy lifted, Coriolanus could see your house.

Bathed in the warm orange of the setting sun stood the grand chateau-style mansion. Its two-story structure adorned with intricate architectural details and expansive windows lit from the inside. The mansion’s commanding presence, nestled amidst the green rolling gardens, was a symbol of just how important the Gauls were. 

Tonight was going to be a formidable challenge, his nerves building as they got out of the car and escorted through the front door by an Avox. The foyer featured a grand staircase at the back, sleek black railings with intricate breaks in the straight metal showcasing various scientific objects, custom-made to reflect the occupants of the house. The floors were white marble, polished to a mirror shine, reflecting the twin crystal chandeliers that illuminated the space. If the Snow apartment was extravagant, this was utter decadence, opulence in inches of the estate.

Underneath the foremost chandelier stood your family, your parents flanked you on either side. 

Mr Gaul was a tall man, taller than Coriolanus. His hair was neatly cropped and styled, the sides tapering into his beard, which was short and neatly trimmed. The combination framed his face, etched with lines of experience and an air of stern authority. Everyone in the Capitol knew him to be a fashionable man, and tonight was no exception. His suit was velvet and impeccably tailored, a testament to his discerning taste and attention to detail, only adding to his imposing physique. He had on a house coat as well. It was in a matching velvet and embroidered everywhere apart from the trim, with fine beads swirling and encircling each other. He had a way of making people look at him. It must be where you got it from. Your mother was speaking to the both of you as he watched on. 

Dr. Gaul was not wearing a lab coat-esque top for once and instead was in a black pantsuit. The trousers hung straight on her, a crisp pleat going down the centre, stopping just past the heels. Her blazer had a white inside that carried out onto the lapels, and under it was a simple black blouse. She had told him once that fashion was something she didn’t care about. 

You were the first to notice the Snow family approaching. It seemed like black was your family’s colour tonight. Your gown was longer, trailing behind you as you walked, turtleneck and long-sleeved. It was simple. Nothing very interesting about it other than the way it clung to your curves. You pulled your hair back and up, a few curls loose to frame your face. You were stunning.

“Welcome Snow family,” Dr. Gaul spoke first. “Thank you for joining us tonight.” She extended her hand for Grandma’am to shake. 

Grandma’am shook it and offered her own greetings. “Thank you for your invitation. I thought it a wonderful idea to get us together before the engagement party.”

“Of course. Mr. Gaul was insistent on it.” Did he have a protective streak? 

Your father finally spoke, his voice bassy and resonant. “I would like to know the man my daughter is marrying before walking her down the aisle.” He was friendly, all smiles, as he grabbed Grandma’am’s hand and kissed the back of it. “You must be Mrs. Snow. Lovely meeting you.”

He moved on to Tigris, offering similar treatment, before coming to Coriolanus. Mr Gaul stared him up and down, picking apart his appearance. Coriolanus felt like a shadow was being cast over him, the man looking down at him as if he was appraising a purchase. His gaze was unwavering, judgement and assessment being made every second Mr Gaul looked at Coriolanus. He could feel the pressure mounting, settling on top of him heavy and grinding, expectations being placed on him. 

“So this is the man that has the Capitol in such a stir, proposing to my daughter without a ring on national TV.” 

Coriolanus stood tall, composed despite Mr Gaul’s intensity. “Yes, sir.” 

The older man cracked a smile, bright and blinding, as he reached out to grab Coriolanus’ hand. Mr. Gaul’s hands were soft, but Coriolanus could still feel the remnants of calluses. “I like your gumption, son.” Relief washed over Coriolanus. 

“I couldn’t risk the chance of ever losing her,” Coriolanus smiled, hoping it was charming. 

“Are you two done, then?” Your question was jovial, playful and light, as you came to the pair. Mr. Gaul pulled you in for a hug and kissed the top of your head. He watched Coriolanus as he did, the smile he previously had gone and his eye holding a warning. Perhaps Mr. Gaul was the judge and jury, and Dr. Gaul was the executioner when matters came to you. 

“We’re done.” Mr. Gaul’s previous expression was back on his face as you pulled away from the hug. “The chef is just finishing up the first course. While he does, I wanted to give you all a tour of Gaul Manor.”

“A tour would be wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Gaul.” Tigris was the first to accept the offer, wanting to get away from whatever had just happened between your father and her cousin. She was followed by Grandma’am voicing excited agreement. 

“I’d like to show Coriolanus the gardens before the sunsets entirely. Would that be alright Father?” 

Mr. Gaul didn’t seem like he wanted that to happen at all, lips tightening into a fine line, but the man was weak to you. He always had been. “Of course, baby girl.” Surrender.

You walked Coriolanus to the gardens, pointing out the different rooms as you went. The click of your heels echoed down the corridors. He could see the back patio lead out to the rear gardens down a set of stairs. The train of your dress was going to get dirty if you walked around like that. He grabbed it, lifting it off the ground for you. Why did he do that? He didn’t care if the dress ruined, clothes were just clothes. Did he care if it had been ruined and it upset you? His emotions had been haywire since he woke up. 

The twilight embrace of the gardens was nice, the air filled with the scent of blooming flowers and the gentle hum of insects. Suddenly you laughed, holding your stomach and grabbing Coriolanus’ arm as you walked through the garden. 

“You looked terrified.” 

Indignation ate at him. “I did not.” 

“You did. I swear I could see you trembling, shaking in your shoes as he stared at you.” You straightened up, facing him. “He’s always wanted to do that to someone. He thinks it’s one dad thing he’s never had the chance to do.” 

“Wonderful” Coriolanus was sardonic in his reply. 

“Oh, lighten up. Let him have his fun. If this alliance is serious, this will be the only time he’ll see me get married.” 

Did you not believe Coriolanus was serious about this? He had told you, in not so many words, that he wanted this. He didn’t make friends, let alone allies, but you were both things. Was your worry about him falling in love with someone and screwing you over serious? How could you doubt him? He had given you no reason to. 

“It is serious. Did you think I’d say that in jest?” 

You shrugged. “Perhaps. You’ve been all over the place for the past couple of months. One minute we’re friends and the next you’re telling me off for standing too close to Dennis Fling, of all people.”

“I’ve had a lot on my mind.” Coriolanus knew that the answer was lacklustre. It didn’t account for his actions, nor explain them. The past few months there had been a lot on his mind, grappling with his growing feelings for you and going between acting on them or closing them off completely. He’d get close to the latter, and then he’d see you again and his resolve lost. The want he had for you vexed him, and he’s felt sick to his stomach since realising he loved you. 

“You can talk to me about it.” Your shoulder bumped into his as you spoke. “We are friends, and allies now, too.”

“Another time perhaps.” 

“Sure.”

The rest of the stroll through the greenery was quiet. Coriolanus lost himself in his own head again. Should he give up his previous plan and tell you how he feels now? It was there, threatening to jump out of his mouth. But doing that was risky. You could still walk away from him. He should just wait until you had been married or a few before telling you that being married made him fall in love with you, not that his desire to possess you led to him genuinely coming to care for you in the past year. Sick and twisted bastard he was.

He was in too deep, the surface feet above him and he could not reach it. 

“We should go back inside with the others. I imagine dinner’s ready by now.” 

“Sounds good.” 

Coriolanus held onto the train of your dress until you were back inside, letting it fall and fan around you. He hadn’t realised the chill that had seeped into his bones from being out there. It wasn’t cold today. Maybe he was just sensitive. He made sure to escort you properly, fearful your father would pop out of a corner, glaring at him for not treating you properly. Dr. Gaul had cameras everywhere, so who’s saying there weren’t any in the house?

When the two of you reached the dining room, the rest of the party was seated. This was the smaller of the dining rooms, the other being reserved for large parties. Mr Gaul had designed the one to offer a more intimate space, better for conversing as a whole. It was just as ornate as the rest of the house, the ceiling an ornamental relief. Each of the Gauls sat at opposite ends of the table, Tigris and Grandma’am on the left and right of Dr. Gaul respectfully, leaving the only seat free near your father. 

Coriolanus pulled your chair on for you before sitting on his own on your father’s right. Two waiters came out, putting down plates in front of everyone and filling their wine glasses with crisp white. The first course was some sort of salad, colourful on his plate, a champagne vinaigrette tossed over it. 

“What did you think of the gardens, Mr. Snow?” Dr. Gaul asked him as she took a sip, an eyebrow raised. 

“They were wonderful.” His words were polite, nothing too overplayed.

“Indeed.” Was he supposed to say more? 

Before he could, Mr. Gaul injected. “I spent a long time designing them and then pruning them. When the plants finally matured, I hired a gardener for it, hoping that they’d be taken care of. But much to my chagrin, they weren’t. So I fired that gardener.” 

Your mother hummed. “Finding a new one was a simple task, wasn’t it, husband?”

“Very. You’d be surprised at the number of competent men who lined up for the job.” 

“You had a replacement picked out that same day if I recall correctly, no?” 

“Indeed, I did.” Mr Gaul wiped at his mouth with the napkin on his lap. “Luckily, that new gardener was good at his job.” The threat was hardly hidden in the story. Coriolanus was replaceable to the Gauls. If he acted out of line with you, they would cut him down. He felt your foot rub his ankle, a show of comfort. 

“You’ve always been too attached to those gardens father,” You were aware of what your parents were telling this story for. “Someone might think that it was your child and not me.” 

Mr. Gaul backed off. “Well, they would only be partially blind to confuse the two of you. You’re as pretty as a rose.” 

“Grandma’am are you still keeping up your rose garden on the roof?” Coriolanus could kiss you right now, as you steered the conversation away from him. 

The chatter was light as everyone ate, courses coming and going. Mr Gaul was a jokester, cracking them to make yourself, Tigris, Grandma’am and even Dr. Gaul laughed, but it never reached her eyes. They were always on him, studying what he said and did. How he looked at you. 

It was odd, striking in a sense, so different from the initial stiffness of your interactions and formality that had previously been established. It was homey, a warm blanket on a cold day. You had grown up like this, a sprout the Gauls had watered and tended to until you bloomed one day just as you were now. 

Would you want a house like this? To have family dinners and tell stories of the days you had? Coriolanus didn’t think he could offer that. He didn’t know how to be a good partner, only play at one. His parents’ marriage was one based on fear and obsession, just like his own feelings for you. To him, that’s what love, partnership, was. A foundation of need. Even now he still wanted to hide you away, to run from the situation. Your parents’ overarching care for you is tenuous to navigate. It’d be a tough role, he’d stumble over his lines, his delivery shaky, but he could try if it made you happy. If it made you stay. If it made you love him.

___________________________

“We’ve received an increase in our budget.” Dr. Gaul stood at the front window of her office. It was two stories above the main lab and looked out over it all. 

From here she saw all. Right now she was watching you, her only child, as you led a training session. Your lab coat was an altered one. She had permitted you to wear black over the usual white. It was an older style, pre-war, from a country that was no doubt dead. You had read about them in an old book, Cheongsam, and you told her that when you grew up, you wanted a lab coat just like her but one that looked like that. Her favouritism for you was a quiet thing, often unnoticed, but she gave you that. 

She had summoned Coriolanus to her office with little warning. He had been mid-experiment when his communicuff buzzed with two words. “Office. Now.” 

He was unsure what she needed to tell him that urgently. When the family dinner ended well, he assumed he was off the hook. Mr. Gaul agreed to push the engagement party to the end of the month, instead of when it was supposed to be today, citing that he wanted to make the event more grand. Coriolanus was grateful for that. 

“That’s great news. It allows us to move forward with expanding the arena”

“Yes, it does.” Dr. Gaul’s tone was flat, devoid of her usual sing-song, her hands clasped behind her back as she stared down below. It was always so quiet in her office. There was no ambient noise to soothe the mind, only silence unless you spoke, and she was quiet. 

“Do you need me for anything else Dr. Gaul?” 

“Tell me, what do you think of her?” His blood turned to ice. 

“Of who?”

“Don’t play stupid,” she sighed, low and heavy. “Of my daughter, my Y/N.” 

His panic built, rising in his throat, the taste of bile settling on the back of his tongue. His heart pounded, a relentless drumbeat surging against his ribs. It was so loud he swore she could hear it. Sweat built at his forehead, his palms clammy. This was a test. She had seen something at the dinner that set her off, a bloodhound on a trail.

“I…” his voice caught in his throat, words refusing to form. “I think she’s extraordinary.” 

The words felt inadequate, but too much at the same time. Did she want to hear about how skilled you were? Should he lament on your strongest attributes and how he admired them? Or should he confess to his greatest sin, his need to have you?

“Yes, she is.” The short answer she gave only tormented Coriolanus, unable to determine what course to take. “Did you know she almost killed me?”

He stammered. “I’m sorry?” 

“When she was born, she almost killed me. I carried her for 40 weeks, gave up opportunities for her, and then when she came into this world, kicking and screaming, I nearly bled out,” she spoke without turning to face him. 

“I-”

“I didn’t like her at the start. She was small and fragile and cried so much. I could never get her to latch properly, making her colic. There were times when I wanted to end my suffering and kill her, but each time her father would be there and she’d calm down again. She’d smile. And then one day, three weeks after she was born, she latched on with no issues.” He was afraid to speak again. 

“I started watching her after that, treating her like an experiment. To me, she was one. Was I capable of motherhood? Of loving a child? It’s a hypothesis that is still being tested to this day. Bur preliminary results show one thing.” her body turned and finally facing him. “I care for her. I have killed for that girl and I will do it again, regardless of the consequences.”

Dr. Gaul began walking towards him, her steps silent.

I raised her with everything that I had. I gave her every opportunity and helped guide her into the ambitious woman she is today. From the moment she suckled on my teat, I laid the world at her feet, feeding her independence.” 

They were face to face now. Even though she was markedly shorter than him, she still looked down at him. 

“Are you a threat to her independence, Mr. Snow?”

Coriolanus stood his ground, gaze unwavering under Dr. Gaul’s scrutiny. Her tone laced with pride for you and an accusation for him. She questioned if he was a threat to you. Was she threatening to kill him? Replace him like they had the gardener.

“I would never do anything to jeopardise her independence, Dr. Gaul.” his voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. Even now, after years of working together, she unnerved him. “I would never dream of doing anything to harm her.”

Your independence with him was still under question. If he could let you do as you please, just like you had been this whole time, was something he didn’t know the answer to. So far, your independence has been good for him. But would it always? People change over time and who was to say you wouldn’t change, no longer view him positively. If that happened, your independence would most likely be lost. He wouldn’t let you get away from him. Would he hurt you then? Nothing life-threatening.

“Her father likes you.” Her eyes narrowed, slits like a viper ready to strike. She tore apart his words as she looked over him, searching for any hint of deceit, but she found none. “Do you know how an actor dies?”

“No.”

“They start to believe the part they play is real, that the story is real, that their feelings are real. Do you believe that it’s real?” He wanted to vomit, expel the contents of his stomach and her feet. To gag and gag as they poured out. She was onto him. She knew everything. 

“No, it’s not real.” 

She had seen the lie there, that he thought it was real, and that his feelings for you were real, and she called him on it. “Don’t lie to me, Mr. Snow.”

“It’s real.” He was exposed. “It’s real to me.”

She turned again, walking back to the overlook. What ever anger she had for him now covered. He couldn’t tell what she wanted. Was this the right answer? Had he passed her test? 

Her voice was flat when she spoke. “If you ever hurt her, I will destroy you. I will cut you from pelvis to neck, pull your innards out and suspend them. I will lock you in that state, pump you full of the bare minimum nutrients you need to live and force you to watch your loved ones die, and for her to live on happily. Do you understand?” 

“I understand.” 

“Good. Now get out of my sight.” 

Coriolanus was out of the room before she could finish her sentence as Dr. Gaul’s words rang in his ears. She would always be watching him, making sure that you were safe. You would always be hers before you were his. She knew the truth now too, that his perverse need for you, debauched thoughts, had him in love with you. His tie felt like it was choking him, fingers pulling at the knot to free it. His pace rushed as he retreated into his private lab. This was bad. It was more than bad; it was deadly.

How did he play this out? Would Dr. Gaul demand you stop seeing him, ruin all his plans? She wasn’t someone who spoke in empty threats and Hypotheticals; she spoke only of factual reality. Even if it meant destroying her protégé, she would do it for you. This was a bed of his own making, tangled in the sheets called emotion and desire, that he had to lie in. 

On the walk to his lab, he could feel Dr. Gaul watching from above. Or perhaps he was paranoid, imagining the feeling of a thousand eyes on him. Coriolanus’ mouth was dry, his hands trembling slightly. Weakness prevalent. Panic prevalent.

When the door closed, he nearly collapsed, stumbling across the room, knocking over a cup of pens as he reached his chair. The rows of instruments, intricate machinery with vials filled with different solutions, sat mocking him. They were tainted. Signifiers of his ambition now show just how much he still lacked. 

If your mother knew, did you? Had you known his feelings this entire time and strung him along? If you had known of those, how much did you really know? Coriolanus had never considered what you might know about him and what he’s done. What if Dr. Gaul had told you of his sins, how he turned on Sejanus and reaped the benefits? The possibility of you knowing the truth, his biggest flaws, wasn’t something he could let happen. You’d turn on him in judgment, your affection lost. 

A knock on the door pulled him from his thoughts, the mask slipping on again. 

“Come in.” He needed to drink something. Speaking felt like sandpaper on his vocal cords. 

The door opened as you slipped in, closing it behind you. “You alright? You looked like you were upset.” 

You were the last person he wanted to see right now, unsure if he could hide what was going on. 

“Yes, I’m fine. Just need to rerun a test.” 

“Oh. That’s unlike you,” you spoke as you plopped down on his couch, clueless about his struggle. “Normally you’re so on top of things.” 

You didn’t believe him. You were questioning him. Have you already spoken with your mother? Did she tell you everything? The temptation to confess, clear the air before it could change, pulled at him. 

“What do you know?” His accusation was sharp. 

Your presence, perceptive gaze that was always watching, unnerved him. “In general or?”

“What do you know about me? About my past?” Coriolanus knew he had to tread carefully, caution in every breath. He had to stay guarded and protect his ambition, but he desperately craved your understanding. The acceptance that what he had done was fine. 

You were silent, unsure what to say, dropping your flashlight in the dark, reaching out to find it. “Well,” He could tell with just that you knew it all. “All of it, I suppose, other than what you were feeling.” 

His voice wavered, a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. “How?” 

“I was there when my mother got the jabberjay. She almost ignored it, but I pushed her on it.” You had always known what he had done the whole time. “I told her that the extremes she had always wanted me to go to and I was incapable of, you could do them. That you’d be what she wanted.”

You had been the catalyst, the one that saved him from having to live out 20 years of service in District 2. At any point, you could have told the Plinths what he had done, but you didn’t. You had met them many times and never said anything. In fact, you offered condolences for their loss when you had first met them. Said that Sejanus had always been a positive light at the Academy. 

“What about the games?” 

“Just that you cheated, gave her rat poison and made the snakes desensitised to Lucy Gray’s smell.”

You sat there, casual and relaxed in his lab, acceptance clear. There was no question of morality from you, how he could do that to Senjaus, how he could cheat at the games. You understood that the ends justify the means. This was just another ordinary Tuesday for you. 

“I did have one question for you about her actually,” Coriolanus tensed. “Did you love her?” 

“No.” Coriolanus hadn’t loved Lucy Gray. He loved controlling her. He thought that being with her would be enough, but it wasn’t. She would always be District, low class and Covey, and he would always be a Snow. It was youthful naivety to think that being with her would ever amount to anything. 

“Is she dead?” 

“Yes, I killed her.” 

“What changed? You looked close during the games.” 

“She was a distraction, a liability, a threat to my success.” That’s all Lucy Gray had ever been to him. “So I killed her.” 

“You were right to kill her, then. Sounds like she was a loose end and the last thing we need is loose ends.” You were so unbothered by his confession, like you had expected it ages ago. “We should be more truthful with each other if this alliance is going to last.”

“Then it’s your turn to share. You know my biggest secret.” 

He felt calm now. The weight of your acceptance comforting him. Morality was inconsequential in the pursuit of greatness, and you knew that and you agreed with it. He had been vulnerable. You could have struck and crushed his heart by running, but you sat there taking it in. 

“No more secrets?” you questioned, offering to establish equal ammunition on his side. A pact of mutually agreed destruction. 

“No more secrets.”

“Do you remember Emon Quiver? You might have seen him on the Academy campus before. He was in my year.” You went on describing the boy, familiarity reminding him exactly who you were talking about. 

“He’s the one who got sent to District 11, no?” 

“That’s him. I lied about him ever touching me. Poor boys never touched a woman because of me.” Coriolanus watched you pick at the lint on your trousers. “The true story is that I was cheating off of him in history with Professor Demigloss. It was fine for a while. He let me do it with no problems until one day he wanted more from me, tried to say I owed him and if I didn’t sleep with him, he’d tell everyone that I was cheating.”

“What did you do?”

“What needed to be done. Told him to meet me in the library, made out with him a litter, put us in a position where he looked like he was in control and forced me. I waited for a few minutes, letting it happen. He didn’t know it, but they were doing an inspection of the Library that day, and all the staff was there. So they walk in and see Y/N Gaul underneath him. I started crying, begging him to stop, and said that I didn’t want this. Next thing you know, he’s off in 11 with no flesh on his fingers, if he even has fingers anymore.” You yawned as you finished the story. 

Your moral compass was just as fucked as his own. The willingness to crush others beneath your heeled feet, like the bugs that they were, was so similar to his own. “What if they believed him?” 

You laughed. “Why would they?” The point was fair, you were very convincing. “Anyway, that’s my big secret. I was thinking we should go out for lunch today. I’m tired of being in the lab.”

“I think that’d be fine. You can pick where we go.” 

As you started going through the option that you and he could go to, Coriolanus was stuck in limbo. He had expected this conversation to go so much worse than it did. You hadn’t cared that he turned on Sejanus and Lucy Gray. In fact, you commended him for it. Told your mother that his willingness to destroy others, kill their physical form and the memory of them, was a good thing, something she needed. It sent a jolt through him, heady with lust, making him giddy. You were validating his true nature, content with the darkness, at home in it. 

He felt a connection with you he had never felt before. You weren’t the sheltered playing card he had thought you to be, but a formidable force all in your own right. You understood the true nature of power and control, and the extremes one had to take to obtain it. You were cruel and vindictive, condemning a man to District 11 for threatening you.

It excited him. The prospect of navigating the Capitol’s political arena side by side, both of you playing the game well. There might be times when your interests clashed, but you were smart and willing to adapt. 

All he could think about was biting into your cherry-red lips like the fruit they were. Their tempting fullness waiting for him. He used to be afraid you’d run if you knew his truth. Now that you knew it, he just wanted you more.

But could he bear telling you that?

Don't worry! The series isn't dead. Holidays have just had me busy

(edit: forgot to do the tag list originally, silly me)

@serrendiipty @namelesslosers @glitteryblizzardsalad @harrysbitvh123 @secretsicanthideanymore @ayyyeeeeidk @hinata7346 @kisstheskin @sumo-b98 @duds31

[camillechan]

The Light Emissary - Azxriel x fem!reader (Chapter 3)

Helloooo! Ready for the chapter 3 ! I added a bit of more details in my description this time! Let me know if you prefer it like that or before! Please, leave some comments or a like, I would love you forever! Happy reading! Summary: It's Y/N turn to fill her Highlords on details. Has she found anything regarding the new threat? Rating: 18+ Warning: Still no smut yet. You are waiting I know... It's coming in future chapter. Also violence, bad langages and all.

Previous chapter --------------------------------- Y/N P.O.V

I watch Azriel disappear into the dark in front of me. I am still feeling a bit shaken up by what just happened. The dark presence lingered just beyond the edge of perception, a suffocating weight pressing against my senses. It carried with it a chill that sank into the bones, a cold that wasn’t just a lack of warmth but a void, an absence of life itself. I have the impression that his presence didn't attack outright—it didn’t need to. It fed on fear, on the growing paranoia that it might, at any moment, step out of the darkness and make itself known. Its power lay in its subtlety, in its ability to erode the psyche, gnawing away at courage until nothing but dread remained. A faint tremble remained and I winnowed away back to the palace.

Once my feet hit the ground of my bedroom, a relief washes over me. My shoulders slump and I let myself fall onto my bed. I look at the ceiling, the small light of the dawn reflecting on the white marble. I close my eyes for a moment, trying to regulate my breathing. Everything is fine. I am fine. I raise again and start to peel my black clothes off my body. I move under the sheets of my bed. It’s a grand canopy bed that stood at the center of the room, its frame carved from pale, polished wood adorned with delicate motifs of blooming flowers and radiant sunbursts. The canopy is draped in layers of translucent fabrics, white and gold, that ripple gently in the faintest breeze, creating an almost celestial aura. I need to rest, need to shake that feeling of exhaustion and fear before confronting Helion with what I’ve learned…

*** 

After a few hours of sleep, I am back on my feet, clad in my usual Day Court armor. My armor is a radiant blend of artistry and strength, forged from gold-toned metals that shimmered like sunlight. The breastplate featured intricate engravings of sunbursts and blooming flowers, radiating warmth and vitality. Shoulder guards flared gracefully, resembling solar flares, while sleek gauntlets and greaves bore delicate carvings and inlaid amber stones that glowed faintly, as if infused with the sun's energy.

Beneath the gleaming metal, golden chainmail provided flexibility and added brilliance. A flowing, weightless cloak of gold and ivory cascaded from my shoulders, its embroidered flame-like edges catching the light with every movement, making the wearer a living embodiment of the Day Court's luminous power.

I walk at a fast pace towards Helion’s office at the far back of the palace. I need to go on with my research on this dark magic. I knock softly on the door once I reach my destination. I am fidgeting a bit at the threshold, feeling still a bit off. I hear some rustling, then the door creaks open. Helion’s smile is bright as he peers into my face.

“Morning, darling.”

He said in a purr, his voice pure velvet. He moves to the side and mentions with his hand for me to come in. I roll my eyes when he doesn’t see me and stand in front of his desk. Helion follows me and leans against the tabletop. take a good look at the male before me. He is a figure of striking beauty and commanding presence, exuding an effortless charisma that makes him impossible to ignore. His skin gleams like burnished gold, a testament to the sun's touch, and his warm, amber eyes shimmer with a mischievous spark, as if he’s perpetually on the edge of a wickedly clever remark.

His hair, dark as the night but streaked with threads of gold that catch the light, falls in soft, tousled waves, framing a face both regal and roguishly charming. His smile is radiant, seductive, and disarming, hinting at the passion and confidence that define him. Helion's build is strong and athletic, a balance of grace and power that mirrors the unyielding yet life-giving nature of his court.

His clothing is nothing short of spectacular—flowing fabrics of white and gold that shimmer with every movement, tailored to perfection and often leaving little to the imagination. Embellishments of sun motifs and golden thread work adorn his attire, a reflection of his pride in his court and its light-filled splendor.

Helion’s presence is magnetic, radiating warmth and vitality that draw people into his orbit. He is a man of knowledge, a lover of both books and pleasures, with a sharp intellect that matches his playful demeanor. But beneath his charm lies the unwavering strength and brilliance of the Day Court's High Lord—a being as fierce and radiant as the sun he represents.

“Mistiel told me about that mission of yours… with the Shadowsingers. I thought you would inform me of your plans before acting on them.”

There is still this mischief in his eyes, but his voice is more commanding, more tense. I sigh. Of course, Mistiel would have told him everything. His loyalty to Helion is above anything, even keeping a secret for a childhood friend. I clear my throat before answering. 

“Yes, but I thought it was wiser to investigate further before coming empty handed. I wanted to bring information to you and be sure there was something worth your time, my Lord.”

I say with a certain determination, repeating the words I said to Mistiel earlier. Helion nods briefly. He raises from his leaning position and moves closer to me. He grabs my chin to force my gaze into his.

“Everything you do is important to me, Y/N.”

I tense under his stare and from his words. I nod and he releases me.

“So, I guess that since you are here, you have interesting news to share.”

He turns and walks around his desk. He sits at the massive chair behind his golden desk. I nod once more, swallowing nervously. 

“I do…”

I start to explain every detail of the mission from the meeting with Azriel at the border of the Night Court to us winnowing away in urgency at the Day Court. Helion’s smile turns into a thin line and he rubs his chin by the end of the story.

“Dark magic that can take control of individuals… I haven’t seen this or heard about this before. You were not able to cleave it with your powers?”

He asked, voice filled with concerns.

“No. I was stuck in place, unable to do anything. I am lucky he wanted me to deliver you a message. if not…”

I don’t want to finish the rest of my sentence. Helion rises in a swift motion.

“Very well, then. The libraries are at your disposal for research. Let’s keep this to ourselves for now… and the Night Court. I don’t want to alarm the rest of Prythian or else, this ‘thing’ will know we won’t stand down and may very well act on his threats.“

He waves towards the door, disposing of me. I bow to the waist and leave his office. Library it is, but first, no need for formal attire anymore… I go back quickly to my room and change into a simple yet efficient dressIt is crafted from flowing, lightweight fabric in shades of cream, designed to reflect the light and keep the wearer cool. The bodice is fitted, with subtle sunburst embroidery along my neckline, while the skirt flows freely around me, allowing ease of movement. A thin, golden belt cinches my waist, and the dress is sleeveless, with elegant straps that evoke rays of sunlight. Its beauty lies in its understated design, combining comfort and grace with a touch of radiant charm. Finally, relieved of the weight of my armor, I leave my room heading straight for the biggest library of the Day Court.

***

A couple of days later, I am still seated at the table, in the middle of the library. The surroundings are tranquil and radiant, with towering bookshelves filled with tomes lining the room. Warm sunlight filters through the windows, casting a soft glow that enhances the serene and intellectual ambiance of the area. Piles and piles of books are stacked around me on the table. My eyes are moving down the pages at an impressive speed. The place is quiet, save for the faint rustling of papers on the desk where I sat, focused and unaware. I didn’t notice the subtle shift in the air behind me, the quiet sound of a presence approaching.

The first hint is the faintest breath, brushing my neck like a ghost’s touch, sending a ripple of awareness through me. My body stiffened as the warmth of someone close enveloped my back, my pulse quickening in response. The whisper came next, low and impossibly close, the words vibrating softly against the shell of my ear.

“Found anything interesting?”, came the voice, smooth and deliberate, wrapping around me like silk. My breath hitches, caught between surprise and something deeper. I turn to face the owner of this smooth voice.

“Azriel! You scared me!”

I answer immediately with a hand on my heart. I smile faintly as I see a small smile displayed on his beautiful lips. He moves next to me to sit down by my right. 

“So?”

He raises a brow, his eyes looking over what I am currently reading. 

“I think I found something actually.”

I look around to see some scholars passing by with books in hand. I leave my seat and grab the book I was reading. I look towards Azriel and dip my head for him to follow me. He turns serious, then follows me to a more secluded area of the library. We slip between different bookshelves. I feel the gentle shift of air as he moves closer, his presence like a warm current that wraps around me. My heartbeat quickens slightly, not from fear, but from the quiet intensity of the moment. I hold the book against my chest and look into his hazel eyes.

“In this book, it talks about dark beings able to control others with a single snap of the fingers. Remind you of someone?”

I say with a voice so low that Azriel leans further towards me, pressing a scarred hand next to my head against the bookshelf behind me. I clear my throat a bit and continue, my voice barely a whisper.

“It says that those ‘things’ are feeding on magic and can only affect people who have magic. When they act on others, they gain control over them. That’s what I felt when I was not able to move at all.”

Azriel’s eyes turn cold and calculating. I can see that he is trying to assess everything. 

“Where are they from?”

I lower my gaze towards the book.

“It says that they are not part of this world…”

He closes his eyes for a brief moment, clearly being torn apart by what I just said. I take the moment to observe him. His face was a masterpiece of contrasts: sharp cheekbones carved by shadow and light, a strong jawline softened by the curve of his lips.

Then, his eyes open again. Those eyes bear into mine and hold me captive—dark, enigmatic pools that seemed to hide secrets older than time. They glinted with something unreadable, a flicker of intensity that made my heartbeat stutter. His gaze isn’t cold this time, but it isn’t warm either. It lingers on me as though it could see beyond my exterior, piercing through the layers of my thoughts and defenses.

The faintest trace of a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, as though he knew the effect he had, but he gives nothing away. 

I cannot tear my eyes away. There was something about him—something dangerous, something magnetic—that made the world fade into the background. He wasn’t just beautiful; he was captivating, like a dark star pulling her into his orbit. And at that moment, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to resist or let herself be consumed.  His scarred hand lifts to meet my cheek and his fingers brush it softly. I feel his gaze shift, no longer meeting my eyes but settling lower, lingering. My breath is caught, an awareness spreading through me like a warm tide. His attention is fixed on my lips, deliberate and unyielding, as if he is reading something there that I haven’t spoken aloud.

The intensity of his focus sends a subtle heat rising to my cheeks, my pulse quickening in response. I resist the urge to press my lips together tightly or look away, the weight of his gaze making me hyper-aware of every movement, every breath. I have the impression that he is leaning towards me as a faint cough is heard at the end of the alley of bookshelves. Azriel blinks a couple of times before putting some reasonable distance between us. I look towards the sound, a scholar is facing us, frowning and a disapproving look on her face. I lower my gaze and start to move back to my table, Azriel following me closely. 

“I know someone who could enlighten us about beings coming from other worlds.”

He says, voice low enough so only me can catch his words. I nod without turning towards him, my cheeks are aflame and I am certain that I am bright red. What just happened back there?

[angelicyouth]

Youth ; Chapter 15

⇢ pairing: kenny mccormick x marsh!reader x craig tucker

⇢ synopsis: ❝Growing up with the boys as the sole girl of the group, it was only natural for them to grow protective over their pseudo-little sister as the years went by.❞

⇢ [AO3 link] ; [series masterlist] ; [previous] ; [next]

The shrill sound of the telephone wakes up the sleep deprived group of teens slouching in on each other for more comfort. The rickety chairs that have been more or less their tentative homes in the recent days squeak and groan at every movement of their too-large bodies as they shift to forced consciousness. 

Their bleary eyes scream at them when they fight off the last dregs of sleep desperately begging to bring them back into its embrace, the glowing numbers of the clock hanging on the wall announcing to them that the time is now currently 2:48AM. Tired hands come up to their faces, languid in its motion as it takes a couple of times to direct the appendage to wipe at their sleep encrusted eyes when it repeatedly misses its intended target.

Hearing the muffled words coming in through the transparent window separating the boys from the detectives at their desks, Stan immediately shoots up in his seat when he hears my name being tossed around. He shushes the tired groaning of the others, bringing a hand up as a nonverbal command to keep their bodies still.

Results.

Phone tracking.

Location.

Now.

This is the last thing the elder Marsh hears before he clumsily heaves his body up, hands blindly reaching for his jacket to throw onto his rushing form as he runs out of the double doors leading to the outside world of the police department. 

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

A sea of luxurious silk linen lightly caresses every curve of my body, the softness of the mattress surrounding my form as I lay in the depths of its smooth embrace. I’m seated upright in the temporary fortress that I’ve woken up in since the day of my abduction—a four poster queen sized bed with a canopy of gentle white, the soft material cascading down into billowing curtains over the metal rods that support the structure.

Shackled around my ankles are a cool metal, heavy in its weight and linked to the bedposts at the base of the two rods in front of me. Higher above the swollen, red skin that’s been uncomfortably chaffed into tenderness from my confines is nothing but a babydoll dress made up of black lace adorning my frame.

To erase anything from your old life, they had said.

Sick pervert, I had thought back in discontent.

My wrists are currently screaming in searing pain, the bones that make up my non-dominant hand dislocated and mangled beyond belief as I forcibly slip it free from the rough texture of the ropes that bind them together. I will myself with all of my might to not pass out from my self-inflicted agony as my head becomes increasingly light, the mounting dizziness forcing black spots to teeter into the edge of peripherals.

Body trembling from the excruciating torment, I can feel my perspiration begin to lightly bead against my hairline as I force my shaking hands to bring the thick cord back around my wrist to keep up the illusion of detainment. My throat tightens around itself as I force the bile that threatens to come out back down from the burning feeling. I try to focus on the distinctive, copper taste that my teeth invokes from my lip in an effort to discourage any sounds from escaping my mouth.

I curse inside my head when the door to the room opens up, my perpetrator perching themself down onto the length of the bed in front of me. Their added weight makes my body lean closer to theirs, the slight shift of my faux bonded hands behind my back making me want to scream into oblivion. In stark contrast to the binds that keep me in place, their touch is gentle as they carefully bring the metal edge of a spoon towards my lips, silently urging me to take in a mouthful of food. 

My head stays slightly lowered in submission, my eyes never making eye contact when a few seconds pass by with no movement on either end. I don’t even flinch when my captor predictably loses their temper at my disobedience, the piping hot bowl of soup getting thrown at the nearest wall when I refuse to eat.

As always, my assailant will become violently upset when I don’t part my mouth for any sort of nutrition they try to provide me with and I wonder when it will inevitably turn into their seething appendages against my flesh. My eyes don’t waver from its unrelenting focus onto a particular spot on the blanket covering the bed as they loudly curse to themself at my predictive unwillingness to cooperate, their thundering footsteps echoing out into the hallways before they come back to clean up the mess they have made.

Investing their time into bringing the room back to its orderly state allows them enough moments to calm down before they resume their undivided attention to my still form, their body settling back down onto their previous position from before their little tantrum. A warm yet damp washcloth glides over my smooth skin, running along the droplets of stew that became a casualty in its demise as my perpetrator’s hands softly tend to me.

“... I’m sorry you had to see me like that. You know that I just care about you, right? I wouldn’t ever hurt you. It only worries me when you don’t eat.” Their voice is hushed in the otherwise quiet room and my mouth remains shut. 

I have not deemed my captor worthy of my voice for anything unnecessary since the kidnapping and they routinely sigh at my expected muteness, their larger hand coming up to lightly cradle my cheek when my skin is deemed soup-free. I’ve been extremely selective with what I say, the rare times my lips part to let out my thoughts are when I ask them to let me talk to or see my friends and family—nothing more.

My throat is sore from disuse and my refusal to drink even a bit of water. I don’t even allow myself the short respite of sleep because if I do, the waking world will greet me with severe disorientation and a panic attack when my eyes settle onto my unknown location. I didn’t need my captor rushing into the room from my distressed cries and screaming to comfort me, not wanting a repeat of the first time it happened. The less contact with each other, the better.

My assailant’s thumb is almost nonexistent, my brain not registering the carefully gentle movements as they attempt to soothe the soft skin of my cheek as I begin to disassociate. “You haven’t eaten anything since you’ve came and you don’t talk to me. I’m just trying to help you, you know? You’re safer here and I can give you anything you want, Y/N… I can make you happy.”

Better than most situations, yes.

But it was still disgusting, to be frank.

Almost vile.

Sickening.

Granted, my perpetrator didn’t mistreat me in any way or intentionally inflict any abuse either physically or psychologically onto my person. But, their sick delusions in keeping me locked up for their own selfishness made me sick to my stomach—the obsession this person harbored that grew until they couldn’t hold themselves back any longer when they saw me alone at the parking lot. 

The one, rare moment that I wasn’t seen with any of the boys and they jumped at the opportunity. Just thinking about it brings up the nauseating question: how long have they been closely watching me to seize such an infrequent occasion? 

There’s a stretch of silence between the two of us before they sigh in defeat from my unwavering stubbornness and I try my absolute hardest to refrain from sneering in disgust when they plant a gentle kiss onto my forehead. My jaw tightly clenches and my eyebrows crease together as I feel my anger manifest into the physical remnants of tears beginning to thinly coat my eyes in frustration.

I count it as a small victory when nothing escapes from my eyes—they didn’t deserve my tears.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

It’s a whole operation, one with full combat gear and everything. Exhilaration fills everybody’s system as they follow the glaring colors of red and blue sitting on top of the multitude of police cruisers rushing down the desolate streets of South Park. 

It’s quiet in the car, the teens forgoing the sound of music in exchange of the wailing sirens from the Tactical Response automobiles that they closely keep their eyes on. The prospect of finally getting their missing member back fills every pore in their body with a nervous thrum of anticipation, hands trembling on their seated laps in bottled up energy as they come across a swarm of officers exchanging words and talking into radios behind the police tape.

When the boys unload the two vehicles that they all crammed into, they’re predictably denied entry from getting closer to the site as they were deemed unauthorized personnel. They instead take the time to take in their surroundings and from mere observation, it seems that the signal they traced from the phone call brought them to an industrial block close to seemingly nowhere.

Most of the buildings seemed to be factories and warehouses, almost eerily abandoned from the husks of cement that encloses them. The windows adorning the stretch of structures are eerily dark, resembling the empty eye sockets of a person in its lifelessness.

Kyle subtly motions his head in the direction of the surveillance van that is heavily armored and the group catches his nonverbal cue as they pretend to leisurely check out the area in order to bring their bodies closer. From their position, they can see an abundance of green-tinged surveillance screens and a multitude of unfamiliar electronics that flash LED lights. 

Interlaced with the humming and whirring of the electrical devices, they can hear a detective murmuring directions into their mouthpiece as they keep their eyes glued to a live feed of one of the helmets of the men inside. The night vision of the cameras give the screens beyond the mess of wires and cables a green hue, looking similar to the ones you’d see in ghost documentaries or horror movies. 

Suddenly, words become more rushed and frantic as fingers rapidly begin to dance along the keyboards stationed inside the array of devices, the boys instantly surging into impulsive action when they hear the words: getting away. 

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

My lack of clothing causes goosebumps to arise all over my body as it hits the cold Colorado air, my perpetrator hastily shoving me into an unmarked van in an attempt to put distance between us and the frenzy of law enforcement that steadily gets louder as they approach our location. Curses cut through the air of anxiety ridden breathing when we suddenly hear loud footsteps, a foreign body suddenly tackling my assailant from behind.

Taking this opportunity of transferred attention, I finally cease my charade of faux restraint as I push the tangle of bodies away from me to run in the opposite direction and take cover to the closest area. The sound of scuffling continues with the added noise of yells so I keep my body hidden in a mixture of nervous anxiety, not wanting this sliver of hope to diminish if I were to be seen.

My body curves in on itself as I crouch as low to the ground as I can while my hands cover my ears, shaking fingers curling over my unwashed hair as I pray that no one finds me. I force myself to pay attention to the pieces of gravel painfully digging into my bare feet while I try to regulate my breathing, my body hunching in on itself even further to insulate more heat.

It isn’t until the sounds of grunts and fists making contact with flesh come to a stop that I chance a peek over the broken rubble of what was possibly a wall long ago. My eyes widen in surprise when I see that my boys have come to my rescue, covered in an array of both cuts and bruises with their chests rapidly heaving up and down from exertion.

The moment of elation immediately turns into dread when I see that my captor has unfortunately obtained a new hostage in my absence, the air thick with newfound tension. Butters winces at the tightening arms locked around him, his hands shooting upwards to soothe the exerted force of the headlock he’s in. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.  

Adrenaline starts to pump through my veins as I try to desperately rack my brain for any ideas on what to do when something catches my eyes. The reflection of moonlight creates a glare over its shiny cover, the item that piqued my interest under stray pieces of rubble. I silently make my way to the object and feel the corner of my lips quirk up when I’ve identified the heavy steel as a compact handgun—a fully functioning glock that must’ve been knocked away during the altercation minutes ago. 

I would say that I’m pretty adept with using the weapon—my Uncle Jimbo having taught my brother and I at a young age whenever he took us out to spontaneous camping trips as a sport, but most importantly to teach us a decidedly lethal form of self defense. He began to take us to shooting ranges instead, however, when our combined stubbornness caused us to refuse the purposeful harm of inflicting wounds on innocent animals.

I step out of the concrete camouflaging my body to reveal myself, my face devoid of any expression and my voice flat yet loud. “Let him go.”

“Y/N!” All of the boys exclaim in relief when they spot me but I don’t acknowledge any of them, refusing to look away from my target for even just a second to allow them an opportunity of escape.

My perpetrator’s eyes widen behind the material concealing their identity when they land on my form, a black ski mask with just a large oval cut out of it for their vision. They laugh, irritatingly confident with fake assurance of our time together. 

“Come on, babe. You wouldn’t shoot me. Now be a good girl and come back here so I can let your little friend go.”

I let a few beats of silence go by and when time proves that they won’t relent, I tiredly close my eyes.

Breathe in, and out.

Concentrate.

My chest rises up as I inhale a deep yet steady breath to bring clarity into my mind, my neck leisurely rolling my head around before I grant myself my vision back and focus. Steadily bringing my arms up into the stance deeply ingrained into my body from my adolescence, my fingers take off the safety to pull the trigger and shoot. 

The sudden onslaught of meticulously thought out bullets causes my assailant to drop Butters in their surprise, but none of the shots I take pierce at their skin. I only have the metal pieces graze at the fluttering material of their clothes in warning and the outline of their body in an effort to intimidate them. I walk forward with confidence, expertly dropping the first magazine and quickly reloading it as I let muscle memory take over.

In my ruthless shooting, I don’t take notice of Kyle whacking both Craig and Kenny behind their heads in admonishment when their lips slightly part at the sight of me in awe. Deep vermillion shades their cheeks despite the situation, their hands distractedly coming up to pat Butters in reassurance when the blonde hastily makes his way back to the group.

My eyebrows don’t even furrow in my unwavering concentration, my face apathetically blank as I finally stand in front of my disguised perpetrator. The conservative amount of openings on their mask doesn’t provide much but the sight of their eyes is all I need to know that their body is racked with fear.

Without breaking eye contact, I reach into the front pocket of their flannel shirt to lightly graze my fingers against the box of cigarettes that I know is almost permanently etched in there. Bringing a stick up to my lips, I light it up with the lighter kept in the box for convenience and languidly inhale the toxic fumes until it fills up my lungs. 

Tendrils of smoke begins to slowly leak from my mouth before I mockingly blow a stream of it onto my assailant's face, my eyes lazily trailing down when I see the growing pool of wetness that forms between the material of their shaking legs. The pungent smell of urine invades my nostrils from our close proximity and I cruelly smirk around the rolled-up nicotine, my hand bringing the pistol in between their eyes.

I slowly lift up my unoccupied hand, ignoring its screams for medical attention as I lightly graze the cheek of the person in front of me. Gently grasping the course material covering their face in between my fingers, I take my time in lifting it further up and away from their head. 

The boys behind me suck in a sharp breath when it’s finally revealed that it was none other than the teen that approached me at North Park Funland’s food court when I was waiting for the guys to grab lunch.

“What the fuck?” Someone exclaims from behind me in a mixture of confusion and exasperation, desperately grasping onto the faint remnants of memories that contain the face in front of us.

Pressing the cool metal further against his skin in threat aides him to nervously speak up, his mind running at a million miles per hour as he answers the unprompted questions in all of our heads.

“Don’t you recognize me, Y/N?” Despite the anxiety overcoming his body, there’s a manic grin that begins to stretch wide on his face yet I continue to keep my face devoid of any emotion.

He laughs and the sound of it makes everyone in its vicinity uncomfortable, the madness and hysteria in his tone sharply bleeding through his vocal chords. “See, this is why I took you. I bet you only remember me from the time I came up to you at the amusement park, huh? I went to North Park High with you, and I loved you. You never dated anyone so I thought you returned my affection too, just waiting for me to finally gather up the courage to speak to you.”

“… Holy shit.” A voice exclaims from behind me at the deranged confession.

“But before I could, you suddenly disappeared at the beginning of sophomore year. I was devastated, Y/N. How could you do that to someone who loves you? How could you do that to us? How could you just leave me so easily? When I finally saw you back at the amusement park at North Park, I thought you finally came back. I knew I had to talk to you when I took all of the times that I could have for granted but when I finally did, these bastards interrupted. They took you from me, Y/N.”

A shaky hand reaches forward in an attempt to caress my cheek but I just press the cool metal harder onto the skin of his face in wordless threat. “You understand, right, Y/N? That I had to do it, for us. They changed you—you weren’t like this last year so I knew it was all of their faults.”

My eyes apathetically blink slowly at the pleadings leaking out of the mouth in front of me, the glowing embers of my cigarette casting a warm light against the visage of the begging teen in front of me. The mixture of shades are reminiscent of the color I’d associate with the blazing pits of Hell, a place that’d be worthy of housing the pathetic figure in front of me.

“Just come with me, Y/N. I didn’t hurt you, right? I showed you that I could take care of you and I wasn’t lying when I said that I could make you happy. Come on, Y/N. Let’s go.” He offers me a placating smile, wobbly around the corners yet gentle all the same. But despite the soft way his lips curve around his cheeks and how his voice noticeably lightens when addressing me, the deranged undertone of his intentions cannot be ignored.

A beat of silence stretches on as everyone tentatively soaks up the onslaught of information, a whistle cutting through the area. “… What the actual fuck.”

“This guy is actually batshit insane.”

“More like pathetically delusional.”

“You sick fuck! I swear I’ll bash your fucking head in!”

“N/N! Back up before he tries to do something!”

In answer to everything and everyone, my wrist fluidly turns the object in my hand around to harshly slam the butt of the gun onto his face. When his hands shoot up to nurse the blood streaming down from his now crooked nose, I pounce on his larger form and begin my assault on his face with my relentless fists. 

There’s a small quirk to my lips when I hear the satisfying sound of his bone crunching underneath my knuckles, the voice below me just begging for reprieve. The point of contact between the both of us that I know will inflict a world of hurt causes an overwhelming sense of euphoria, the body trembling underneath me in both unadulterated fear and absolute pain.

For the first time in days, I feel good.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

My revenge didn’t get as far as I would have liked it before a cacophony of panicked voices fill the air at my merciless revenge, arms settling themselves over my waist as they heft my body away from my assailant. When the distance between us steadily grows, I take petty satisfaction in spitting at the vivid reds and deep purples beginning to bloom in a sea of blood.

When my cigarette is but a slowly diminishing roach, my hands flail to extinguish the flame onto the skin of his face. I struggle for a bit as a scream of anguish rips out of the gurgle of blood in his throat but my quick attempt as a last resort of revenge proves to be fatal when my perpetrator quickly grabs onto my mangled wrist.

I yell in excruciating pain as they purposefully exert force in the hold that they have over me, knowledgeable of the tender skin laying underneath their grip and using it to their advantage. Their unoccupied hand hurriedly reaches into the denim of the back pocket of their jeans, the arms wrapped around me frantically trying to pull me further away as I desperately try to wrench back my screaming wrist.

Their efforts prove to be successful as if in slow motion, a syringe filled with a sickly green gets brandished before they try to stab the thin metal into the expanse of skin onto the arms wrapped around me. I can physically feel the color drain from my face when I can feel a slight pinch in my skin come from the needle being ruthlessly jammed into my arm in its haste, my veins beginning to feel like they’re burning as he mistakenly injects me with a foreign liquid. 

My body immediately falls limp like a puppet whose strings got cut off at the unknown intrusion, the other boys quickly tackling my assailant to properly hold him down. He begins to maniacally laugh as he eerily smiles at me, my eyes glassy and distant as I stare back. It’s like I have no control of my body, my mind desperately willing my fingers and toes to move, to do anything but all my attempts are otherwise unacknowledged by my body.

I can’t do anything as I fall onto the rough asphalt of the floor, pieces of gravel painfully digging into my exposed body as Tweek falls from my unexpected dead weight. The blond cushions the rest of my body as he cradles me in his lap, my head facing up into the dark sky from my new position. 

There are no stars up above to provide me Craig’s gift of everlasting comfort, I realize.

Tweek’s shaking hands push my limp head to the crook of his elbow, my form draped across the safe solace of his lap as he adjusts my body for comfort. Slender fingers tremble as they try to clumsily push away the stray strands of hair that fell over my face, my sticky cheeks making it harder as silky locks are wet from the tears that were invoked when my assailant forcibly applied pressure to my self-mutilated wrist.

My body feels as if it’s alight in pure hell as every single cell in my body begins screaming at me, willing it to do anything to rid my system of this tortuous sensation. Tears begin to gather at the corner of my eyes, my vision glassy and unfocused at the pure agony that my nerves rapidly signal to my brain for some desperate help.

“Guys! GUYS!” In my silent suffering, I fail to notice the apprehension of my prior classmate as the boys begin to quickly gather around me at the sounds of Tweek’s frantic yelling. 

His erratic fingers continue to desperately push away the locks of hair obscuring my vision, his chest quickly heaving up and down in panic as he takes in my state. “Ngh! She hasn’t moved since the guy injected her with something—she hasn’t even BLINKED!”

“What?!” Kenny roars in anger, not comprehending how the situation got even worse than it already was at the slight error on their part for not quickly capturing my perpetrator as soon as I started attacking.

“What the fuck did you do?! Fucking ANSWER ME!” My brother thunders out loud this time, but nobody can provide an explanation as they watch my terrifyingly still body.

Kenny shoves his way to where Tweek has me, the blonde getting roughly pushed aside as I’m forcibly transferred onto another lap, the new face revealing itself to be my blonde lover. His brows are furrowed in frustration and his normally crystal-like eyes have a thin film of cloudy tears around it, threatening to break free when he heaves a shaky breath out at seeing my unresponsive face.

“No. No, no, no. Princess?” His whisper is so feeble and weak, his normally confident and easygoing voice utterly distressed as he frantically scans my face for any detection of life. 

“Come on, baby. Don’t do this to me, please. No more, I just got you back.” Shaky hands gently grasp at one of my shoulders, softly urging me to do something as his pleading voice transitions into feeble begging.

He lightly presses his forehead against my own, his fingers softly grasping onto my hair and twirling it around his fingers as an outlet to release his nervous energy. My body screams out at him but no one can hear me, my form as limp as ever and still burning. However, Kenny’s arms wrapped around me so securely after so long apart causes a bit of relief from my own internal torment.

He can’t help the sob that shakes his entire body at its sheer magnitude when I don’t respond to his familiar touch or the soothing cadence of his voice like I usually do after minutes of trying. The blonde’s breathing becomes increasingly panicked, every inhale and exhale of his chest shaking my own form as he cradles me against his clothed one.

“Always and forever, remember? You can’t leave me now. We’re supposed to get old and grey and when our lives are almost done, you’re supposed to grin and turn to me and Tucker and tell us all about how much fucking fun you had.” His voice comes out in broken whispers, almost becoming delirious from his haywire emotions in its rawness and how utterly torn it sounded. 

As ironic as it is, up until this moment the blonde truly thought he knew death. Dying as often as he did, Kenny figured that it could never get worse after all of his gruesome experiences with it. But it never quite prepared him to consider the other perspective of it, to watch someone else pass and the foreign emotions that came with this new territory. He’s lost his limbs, even his own heart, but he has never felt such a loss like this in his entire life.

In the privacy of the darkness that overtakes his room with nightfall, he would consume a conspicuous amount of alcohol and drugs in order to numb the pain of constantly dying. But after the discovery that I’d remember if he left, he realized that he didn’t need all of that anymore when he knew that someone was expecting him back. That sole moment of discovery was an absolute dream come true because Kenny absolutely hated dying, the way the hurt never got better and how it made him feel so forgettable and insignificant.

It was the reason he opted to take home economics in elementary school instead of the shop class filled with sharp material and dangerous equipment with the rest of the boys. It was the reason he chose to be a fucking princess in their fantasy role-playing game, wanting to be the one who got saved for once in his life from his intimate relationship with death and his time as Mysterion, the superhero who rescued others. 

Because he never understood—who saved him while he always saved everyone else?

But at this very moment, he thinks about how he’d gladly take my place if it meant seeing my smile again. Despite how much he grew up absolutely dreading the familiar emptiness that came whenever he woke up to the water-stained ceiling of his bedroom. Regardless of the way the people he held so dearly to him acted so normal when he came back, as if something wasn’t amiss despite their swollen red eyes or the lingering smell of alcohol on Stan’s breath.

Because to Kenny, the blonde saw the heavens every single time my lips curved in happiness. And he didn’t want to lose the one good in his unfortunate life full of poverty provided by his deadbeat parents.

Not now, not ever. Not when there was still a promise of always and forever.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

Red locks suddenly appear in my peripherals, a large hand going over my chest as Kyle leans his head closer to my still body. After a few seconds, he places his fingers on the pulse of my neck and wrist before ultimately placing a finger in front of my nose.

“… There’s no sign of breathing.” It feels like a cold bucket of water drenches my body at the curly haired teen's whispered words, my mind screaming that no, I’m still alive. 

“How the—but she was just… Is she dead..?! Please don't tell me she's dead.” Clyde’s panic-stricken voice wobbly sounds out from somewhere to my left, the boys yelling out shocked expletives at Kyle’s solemn announcement.

“There’s just no way. Try again, Kyle. Please.”

“No. No, no, no. Not her. Please, not N/N.”

“Are you sure you checked correctly? Maybe it’s faint, check the pulse on her neck or wrist again!”

“How..? She was just breathing.”

All variations of false hope, all coming to the same conclusions no matter who checks and how. Stan doesn’t relent in his desperate attempts, determined to hear the sound that belongs to the other half of him.

It just didn't make any sense, it couldn’t even register in his mind despite everyone’s efforts and their repeated confirmation. I’ve always been there with him. Who was Stan Marsh if not the twin of Y/N?

My heartbeat is all that he's ever known, the one thing he’s so sure of in a universe filled to the brim with the undiscovered. It’s something that he's so in tune with—he knew the exact beats of it and could recognize the warmth of it whenever he was near me. But right now as I lay still with my eyes wide and glassy, it was like listening to deafening static and hoping for nothing.

I would’ve jolted if I had control of my limbs as an agonized scream sharply cuts through the air, my brother’s voice full of anguish at the reveal. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!”

“You better speak the fuck up or I swear to fucking God that you’ll wish the police got to you before we did.” Craig’s monotonous voice rings out from somewhere to my side, my screaming brain wailing out to my raven-haired lover because I feel scared even in the comforting presence of the others. 

I hear something loudly make contact with the ground, my perpetrator grunting a little further away. “FUCKING DO SOMETHING! YOU WANTED US, RIGHT? NOT HER! YOU WANTED TO MAKE HER HAPPY YET YOU STILL DID THIS TO HER! TAKE ME INSTEAD!”

In the quietness of the night, so soft that it’s almost hard to hear he speaks again. “Please. Please, just take me instead.” 

The raw pain colored in Craig’s voice hurts my apparently unbeating heart even more, his voice breaking apart as it dissolves into a small plea at the end of his sentence in unadulterated desperation. A drop of liquid falls onto my face as he threatens the teen and my eyes shift up to see Kenny softly weeping over me, the sight making my heart feel like it's breaking into a million pieces as I desperately wish to just reach out and soothe the weeping boy.

Nobody says anything, the sound of sobbing and sniffling the only thing filling the air.

When the blonde pulls me closer to his chest in order to bring my limp body into a tight hug, the slight alteration to my position allows me to see Craig as he takes a few quick strides to where he threw my assailant. The groaning teen begins to cry out in pain when the ravenette intentionally grabs him by the shoulder where a deep crimson begins to bleed through his jacket.

“FUCK YOU, you sick fuck. I can’t believe you’d kill someone you claim to love. If you make it out of this alive, just remember: when you killed her, you didn’t kill just one person.” He raises his fist and roughly slams it against the already battered visage of the bleary eyed teen in front of him, quickly lifting his curled fist to deliver repeated punches again and again.

He laughs but it’s devoid of any emotion. Yet it’s somehow ruthlessly cruel in its emptiness and hollow in its hurt.

“Never get too attached to anyone, dipshit. Unless they also feel the same way towards you. Because one-sided expectations can mentally destroy you. Well... I guess it’s too late for that, you crazy fuck.” Craig cuts off the boy begging for mercy or for any sort of undeserved reprieve as he kicks him down onto the ground, pressing a knee onto his chest as he scoffs at the delivery of his too-late advice.

He exerts as much of his weight onto the wheezing body in front of him, the struggling teen spitting out the onslaught of blood that pours into his cut lips from his broken nose. His hands clumsily shoots out to try to relent some of the pressure from the ravenette’s knee as a large hand reaches for his hair to harshly slam his head onto the ground. 

My unnamed assailant frantically begins to yelp, his voice raspy as he tries to force out the words from his throat. “Stop, STOP! She’s alive, okay?! Just let me go and I’ll do something.”

Kyle backs away from me and I feel the tears begin to leak out from the corner of my eyes quicker than when I was in pain and I know that my body would have been absolutely sobbing in distress if I could move. The diminishing presence of the boys around me causes my brain to go into a frenzy of panic, desperate to be heard from the others and to keep their comforting presences with me.

Already overwhelmed with the ongoing pain coursing throughout my body, the additional panic of the boys losing hope wills myself to open my mouth to yell out for them. When nothing works, I curse at the fact that my eyes were left open because now I just wanted to block everything out—for everything to be over with. Whatever was injected into my body was killing me and I could feel it.

It’s as if whatever higher deity is up there finally answers my prayers as tufts of silky blonde hair enters my vision from the corner of my eyes, Butters expression filled with melancholy as he scans my face. He brings a hand up to the skin of my cheeks, his touch so soft that it almost feels nonexistent. He lightly skims his fingers over the expanse he has access to and when they creep towards my damp eyelashes, his hand stills from their gentle ministrations.

His eyebrows furrow, his voice soft in its disbelief as he speaks up. “She’s crying.”

“What?” Tolkien approaches my view, his own expression tensely mirroring the blondes in his well-deserved skepticism. He carefully watches as Butters brings up the soft material that makes up the sleeves of his jacket to gently dab at my eyes, the area not staying dry for long before my tears immediately resurface.

“Holy shit, she’s crying.” He echoes out in confirmation, a mixture of bewilderment and confusion painting his words.

A beat of silence tells me that they’re all looking at the previously masked teen for answers, the boy speaking up at their expectant faces when the sound of a fist meeting skin sounds out through the air. “Fuck! I told you, it’d be a slow and painful death. She’s not dead, yet. She’s still alive, I can do something if you just let me.”

“No fucking way! We can't trust him!” Cartman barks out to the group in caution, a sneer deeply curled onto his face as he stares down at the beaten teen.

Butters immediately starts sobbing at my lifeless face, the salty tears that are escaping his eyes begin to gently drop down his face until they meet the already damp skin of my own. He’s frantic in trying to catch every drop that trails down from my own orbs, his aim not that accurate due to his shaky hands.

“Fellas! FELLAS!” The blonde musters up what little of his strength he has left as he yells over the boys arguing, effectively cutting off the voices fighting over our heads. 

“We have to help her. We have to. She’s my little sister, I can’t lose her.” He hysterically babbles, his frantic speech making it hard to make out his words.

“Butters, calm the fuck down.” A hand tries to placate him by laying itself on one of his shoulders, the blonde venomous as he urges everyone to just listen as he sharply slaps away the comforting touch.

Although hope was beginning to form due to Butters’ efforts, the pain coursing my veins was starting to change, feeling like something within me was ominously shifting. While everything still hurt, my senses were beginning to gradually fade as my body began to give up its fight. Everything around me felt like it was getting duller, my brain slowly starting to not register the feeling of Butters’ fingers against my face and the surrounding voices of the others.

“We can’t trust him! He can’t do anything, he’s just fucking lying again! He’s deceived us once and he's just going to do it another time. She’s GONE! He can't bring her back!” Cartman impatiently tries to yell some sense into the boys, everyone lost on what to do and sharing conflicted looks with one another. 

“Let him go. Do it.” Stan decidedly breaks the silence, tensely forcing his demand out through gritted teeth as he vehemently glares at my assailant. 

I felt so… gone.

But my brother knew he had to take the chance, however small and uncertain it may be. He had promised and he was going to do whatever he was capable of doing at this moment to keep it. Every time he was there, he always told me that I’d be safe and he’d be damned if he turned his back on his baby sister. Because if there was even a chance, a small sliver of hope that I was still alive…

“He might be lying, Stan…” Kyle shakes his head, a pained expression crossing his face as he whispered logically to the furiously demanding teen.

“DO IT! I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND, FUCKING FIX HER!” His scream pierces through the air, a few of the boy’s bodies jumping slightly at the sheer volume of his distressed voice. He ignores his best friend’s reasoning, not even sparing a moment to acknowledge that his emotions may be irrationally controlling the decisions he’s making.

No one moves for a moment, everyone warily eyeing each other. Cartman furrows his eyebrows and takes a step forward before Kyle stops him. “If you do this and something happens, it’s on you. Would you be able to live with your conscience if nothing happens to N/N and he’s able to get away?”

“It’s a chance that I’m willing to take, Kyle. Don’t fucking question me, this is my fucking sister.” Stan impatiently snaps at the curly haired teen, the redhead glaring back at the bleached blonde from the insinuation of his words.

“Don’t fucking play with me, Marsh. She’s my little sister, too.” He bitterly bites back as he roughly pushes past the sneering teen and grabs the discarded gun from the floor before kneeling down, freeing my perpetrator from the thick rope the boys used to crudely detain him with.

Kyle threateningly points the heavy metal towards his head, the other boys closely watching to see if he’ll flee as their bodies tense on the chance that they may have to jump into action. My captor grabs something from the unmarked vehicle, his hands nervously shaking as he brings another syringe out to imbed into my skin. The boys all collectively flinch when they watch the long needle trespass against my arm, their breaths baited as they tensely observe from the crowd formed around me.

The second the liquid enters my system, it’s as if my body got released from the paralysis keeping me shackled in its silent hold. Only one deep breath gets heaved out before I let out a bloodcurdling scream to vocalize the intense agony I’ve been feeling all this time.

Shocked, the boys didn’t know what to do as they watched in muted horror as I begin to scream bloody murder on Kenny’s lap. They just kind of expected me to wake up, never having guessed that they’d be presented with the painful image of my back contorting to an exaggerated arch and my limbs violently flailing everywhere. 

My sobs begin to combine with my torturous screaming, my hands failing multiple times before they’re able to grab onto the material adorning Kenny’s frame as I shake his still body. “MAKE IT STOP!”

The screeching finally prompts him into action as his hands attempt to restrain my thrashing body, my chest painfully heaving as I blabber nonsense to anyone listening through my thick tears. All the boys could do was cry at the sight, feeling useless and frustrated as a few of them join us on the ground to assist the blonde in keeping me still.

From upside down my vision, Craig gently but firmly grabs onto my cheeks to still my flailing head as he presses his soft lips onto my skin to speak against my forehead. “Shh, I’m here, babe. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

All the boys let out their own shaky variations of both verbal or physical assurance and comfort yet nothing changes. Clyde hysterically sobs, turning his face from where it was nestled into my neck to beg at the teen who administered my pain. “STOP THIS!

He glares at my former classmate without breaking contact with me, the teen looking sheepish as he averts his gaze from the deathly looks of the group of teens. His voice is low and meek as he mumbles to the others, “... Her body’s been getting tortured like this since the moment the liquid entered her system. It’s just that now, she's finally able to physically and verbally react to it.”

Everyone feels their entire guts plummet at the information revealed to them, my body beginning to weakly curl in on itself as my screams fade away to loud sobs. They’re speechless at the fact that I’ve felt like this the entire time, all of them ignorant to my silent pain and for thinking I was already dead.

“I’m going to fucking kill you.” Kenny vehemently seethes from where his own body is wrapped around my own in an attempt to comfort my relentless weeping, his form shaking in unbridled rage.

My whole body twitches and throbs before the pain manifests itself into bile forcibly exiting my mouth, my delirium unable to put a name to the voices and hands trying to soothe me. Whatever happened with the second dose made my eyes heavy with fatigue, my head going eerily limp from the sudden decrease in energy.

“Stay with me, okay, beautiful? It’s over now, you just need to stay awake with me. We’re going to keep you safe.” 

But I was too tired, too filled with pain, and too weak to keep the promise of the comforting voice. I could feel gentle fingers stroking my cheeks, soft kisses placed against the skin of my face, and both of my hands in someone else's grip.

“Come on, baby. You can do this. Stay with me.”

The sounds around me gently morph into an orchestra of panic but all I can do is lightly smile at the cacophony of hysterical noise as the warmth from everyone comfortingly surrounds my whole body to rest. 

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

My parents had offered to drop my brother and I off to school, the both of them pulling Stan aside to exchange a few hushed words as I patiently wait along the pavement of the frosted sidewalk. I vibrate in place as I wait for Stan, excited to finally be away from the sterile, white confines of the hospital walls.

Once their conversation concludes, he walks the short distance between us as he intertwines our fingers together, his moving feet leading me along the almost desolate hallways of the school. His body is slightly ahead of my smaller one, as if shielding me from anything that we could possibly come across and I just softly smile at his ridiculous yet endearing overprotectiveness.

I unconsciously shrink in only myself before he notices and shoots me a comforting look, his supportive smile making me stand a little bit taller in confidence before he pushes the heavy wooden door to our first class of the day–homeroom. My eyes flicker from side to side, slightly widening as I take in my surroundings to look at the faces around me in a mixture of both anxiety and excitement. 

Not paying much attention, I fail to notice that my brother has stopped walking as my body softly runs into the thick material of the jacket that adorns the back of his body. I lightly giggle at my clumsiness, my inattentiveness making the both of us grin as he begins to slightly pull our interlocked hands to bring my form a little forward. 

The expression on his face is soft as he lightly smiles down at me as a form of reassurance, his eyes taking the time to run along my face to take note of any signs of discomfort. Once satisfied after nothing sets off his instincts, I offer a soft grin of my own when my brother brings my attention to the group of teenage boys gathered in front of us.

They’re all in varying stances, some perched onto the seats of their desks while a few lean against the table top of the hard structure to be in closer proximity with their friends before the school day starts. My face slightly angles downward towards the linoleum floor when I notice that all of their expectant gazes are carefully watching me, nervous energy reverberating from their bodies in barely contained energy. 

Of what, I’m not quite sure as my eyes look back to search for ones identical to my own in encouragement as the nervous thrum begins to run along my veins at their attentive stares. My brother’s voice is patient when he speaks up, soft in between the contrasting air of chattering students surrounding all of our bodies.

“N/N. Do you remember any of them..?”

My body seeks refuge from the intense gazes of everyone as I slightly retreat to hide half of my face behind Stan’s clothed arm, my hands clenching around the ones in my hold in anxiety. I shake my head, the nonverbal answer knocking the bated breaths out of the group of teen’s bodies in a mixture of evident disappointment and apparent anguish. 

There’s an apologetic expression on my face as I whisper honestly to my brother.

“No.” 

[jtargaryen18]

Scenting Their Prey

Slowly getting past this writer's block. Hoping to finish this by this weekend. A/B/O soft/dark with an Omega reader and two alphas, Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark.

Warnings: non-con touching

"They are hunting us," she whispered just loud enough for you to hear. "Don't you get it?"

Hunting?

"What?" you mouthed.

She leaned close, getting in your ear. "There are alphas hunting us," she whispered. "It's just a game to them."

You stared at her in horror as you moved back. You didn't miss the perspiration on her brow, her labored breathing. Her scent was strong around both of you. Climbing warmth spread out from your neck to the rest of you. Now that you'd paused, you became aware of it. Your fear escalated as your hand flew up to cover where he'd shot you.

"What did they give us?" you whispered.

The other omega glared. "What do you think?"

With horror, you realized what they'd done. 

"My heat is coming on fast," she hissed. "Yours will too. If we stay together, the scents will be too concentrated. They'll find us easily."

You knew she was right but your heart sank. You'd just found someone else in your situation. It would have been nice to work together, find a way out of the woods. 

If you ever did. If you even could.

"Go!" she hissed and you started moving. 

Even though it was a cool autumn day, you were hot and it was getting worse. Your mind spun as you tried to move quickly but quietly. How many of you were they sending out? How many alphas were looking for the lot of you? What was going to happen?

You struggled to breathe through your nose, to watch where you stepped. There was a chance you'd make it out, right? You could survive this without being found by some arrogant American alpha. You just needed to keep track of your direction. Glancing up in desperation, you were looking for the position of the sun through the canopy of trees. 

And that's when you saw him.

The man was perched high up in a tree, dressed in black tactical gear like the soldiers at the facility except one of his sleeves was shiny, threaded with gold. Is that how the alphas are dressed? Brown hair that just touched his shoulders framed his face. The bottom half of that face was concealed by a black mask and steely blue eyes watched you intently above it. Crouched up there in the tree, you couldn't tell how big he was. You just hoped he wasn't fast.

You sprinted away, racing through the forest as fast you could and praying you wouldn't trip and fall. You heard him hit the ground hard. Your heart threatened to beat its way out of your chest as you just kept going, hoping he hurt himself in the fall. 

The heavy sounds of his footfalls came up behind you fast. A strong arm grabbed the back of your sweatshirt and swung you around. You were shoved back against a tree hard, knocking the wind from your lungs. The edge of your vision faded to black to see the man in front of you, his blue eyes lit up in determination. He held you to the tree by your neck. When you tried to pry his hand off, you found it was unnaturally hard. It wasn't a shiny sleeve. It was a metal arm.

The man plucked the black mask off his face, dropping it to the ground as he leaned in and pressed his face into your scent glands. He took another whiff of you as you trembled in his grasp. His own scent invaded your senses: deep plum, leather, and winter forest. The smell of him pushed the growing flames burning inside you higher, your thighs clenched together and moisture flooded your panties. Was it the chemical they gave you to provoke a heat cycle?

Even so, he was a head taller than you with wide shoulders and long muscular limbs. His intent gaze burned into you as he held you there, struggling in his grip. You jerked as his flesh hand grabbed the waist of your jeans, plucking them open before sliding down into your panties. Your range of movement was limited as he held you by the neck against the tree. No matter how much you twisted and squirmed, you couldn't keep his seeking fingers from sliding through your heated folds on all the slick your body was producing. The slight smile that curved his mouth filled you with dread as he pulled his hand free of your denim.

All you could do was stare when he brought those fingers up to his mouth, his lips and tongue cleaning them. His low hum was a deep sound that you felt in every inch of your body. Some dark intent lit up those dark blue eyes as he focused on you.

[librarian-xavi]

004 - Dumpster Diving

The strangest skill to gain and then transfer to a zombie apocalypse is the ability to find good trash. Xavi was used to hand-me-downs, thrift and yard sale items, and the occasional "just take it" left on the side of the road or by the dumpsters. College was where that really became a skill, especially knowing what to look for that was simple cosmetic damage and what might indicate the reason it was really being thrown out.

But also how to fix them up. Paint and such was always a big one, but often people ended up throwing things out just because they didn't happen to have the right part laying around or having the right know-how to get something back into place.

Of course, with an entire neighborhood of furniture to go through, there was no reason to go digging through outright trash, but at the same time, in a way, all of it was now trash.

His trash.

That thought was more sad than anything if he thought about it too long, but if he was going to be stuck roving between a few different safehouses, he was going to make something of it. His current lodgings, as he waited for the heat to die down from his main "home", were in need of some attention. It was a place he had originally ended up in just because it was easier to protect, with the fences and yard making it harder for any random undead to shamble into, but the interior was also already reinforced.

Granted, that's because the building was condemned.

The boards over the windows and doors would've told him absolutely not to enter as just trying to get in might cause enough noise to bring a horde down on him, but it also had been boarded up much longer than just around the start of the outbreak. He had passed it multiple times and always wondered why it was even condemned as so much of it seemed in good condition.

This was the case with a lot of things he would find in the garbage, though. Things that seemed absolutely fine, even almost new, but hiding whatever was actually broken on the inside. When he happened upon this house during a harrowing night of trying to stay out of sight, his curiosity got the best of him when he saw the side door's boards had entirely fallen apart. The nails still in the surrounding frame and walls, the boards over that door must have had some kind of rot and warped enough to fall off of the nails after enough heavy rains.

The door even showed no signs of splintering the way ones that had been knocked on by the shambling neighbors would. It seemed to be in the clear. Which made all the questions be the interior...

In another fit of luck, perhaps because no one paid enough attention when the whole place had been boarded shut, the side door was unlocked. He opened it quickly and slipped inside with a single motion, shutting it as carefully as he could to avoid noise. The darkness inside would normally be easy to adjust to at night, but with everything boarded up, even the scant moonlight wouldn't pierce inside. His flashlight would be necessary here, but at least the same caveat applied going outward as well - his flashlight wouldn't easily give him away to a wandering corpse outside that might see.

The interior was a surprise as he scanned with a flashlight. Most of it was remarkably intact for the age and condemned status. It had only been about a year since it was shuttered, but he still expected more. It didn't take long to find it.

The entire kitchen was black. It was a stark transition, where the hallways suddenly gave way to exposed and charred beams and remnants of drywall hung to old wiring. The tile was still stained black with streaks, some from footsteps likely from the ensuing commotion of the fire and putting it out, and some from an almost streak towards the center back of the room where only the leftover metal in the ceiling hinted at what would've been an oven canopy. The whole section had been removed, likely due to the fire from the stove warranting its removal.

He could just see the sudden belching of smoke and ash that must've been caused to make this. The adjacent cabinets and drawers were first entirely gone, then blackened splinters, then mostly just charred wood before suddenly looking mostly normal. The countertops were a mess and the ends showed signs of some melting close to where the stove would have been, but it was hard to tell as the counters abruptly ended, having been cut to likely help remove the unsalvageable appliance.

The walls were also worse for the wear. Stained almost everywhere, peeling all along the stove-side wall and barely even there on the opposite, with the holes in the drywall and exposed support beams right in the blast zone. The place was lucky that, somehow, the fire hadn't caught the entire room, and the house with it. It's possible that little fire was involved and the smoke and ash and soot caused the majority of the damage. This wasn't unheard of for contaminating a house enough to get it condemned.

Which made it a questionable place to sleep, but better than the other options he had at the time. Thankfully, most of the house had already long since been aired out and had some of its most dangerous leftovers removed. Likely it was too much damage for the owner to have repaired at the time and became a write-off.

But now, after having to leave "home" for a bit, he was back here. Holing up in the other, cleaner rooms was still not half bad and the boarded up windows were all still intact. This one big bit of trash would do for a while. Again.

[monster-disaster]

If you are still taking requests: how about mage/mind flayer? Like mage is the most successful opponent the mind flayer has had, still standing after a tough battle, and maybe there's mutual respect there

mind flayer!opponent x mage!male!Reader Good to know: mention of blood and injuries

Underneath the lush canopy of trees, their bark cracked and blackened, the air is thick with the smell of burnt ozone and smoke. Every breath tinged with a metallic tang, sharp and unpleasant. The ground beneath your feet still trembles, the tectonic plates deep within the earth trying to find their new place. The forest floor is a mess of scorched patches and upturned soil with shattered branches and leaves all around.

The silence between you and the other male crackles with tense energy. His clothes are torn and burnt. The golden details are black and muddy. Loose strands of his silver hair frame his face, just as dirty as the rest of him. His eyes are still on you, not wandering away from your similar form even for a second. His gaze is unyielding and steady. His purple skin is covered in gashes and wounds. And you are sure you don't look better either. Your breathing is ragged, and your limbs feel heavy. Here and there, your skin still burns with the memory of fire and magic. The remains of your power still buzz in your veins, but it barely glimmers anymore. Just a dim echo of the strength you once wielded. The once vibrant colors of your attire are now dulled and marred by soot and blood. Your hair, matted and tangled, clings to your face, and each movement sends a fresh wave of pain through your battered body.

"You will be formidable one day, Y/N," the other breaks the silence first. "No one withstood me and lived to tell the tale." The corners of your lips twitch at the sting of his words. One day, he says. He is exhausted and wounded just as you and he dares to say one day. It fills you with amusement. Long seconds of silence follow his words. There is no malice now between the two of you, only a new, strange feeling borning at the moment. Respect, maybe. A mutual understanding. "Perhaps," you agree with him at the end. "But for now, let's part as equals." Your words are soft, almost content. With every word you say, your lower lip burns with a gash on it. The taste of your blood lingers on your tongue.

The male thinks for a second and nods in agreement. Tonight, none of you find victory here.

After a long, silent second, slowly and cautiously, both of you retreat back to the edge of the woods surrounding the small, destroyed clearing. Each step is measured and limp from injuries and exhaustion. "It's funny, you know?" He asks, making you turn back to face him. You can barely see his silhouette in the shade of the trees. "In another life, we might have been allies." There is a faint smile on his lips. You nod. The thought is strange but doesn't repulse you entirely. "Perhaps."

[creative-author]

The First One. Ever.

Chapter 2

“You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. [...] Breathe.” - Bruce Lee

The sound echoed back from the high walls and was even louder than in the hut. However, I still didn't know where it was coming from.

As I looked around, I saw movement, and as suddenly as the noise had come, it was gone just as quickly.

The silence was almost worse. My ears were ringing.

I heard a faint voice. I thought I had imagined it, but I still walked to the center of the large lawn.

"Hello?"

This time, I hadn't imagined it.

With slightly faster steps, I approached the metal cage and peered cautiously inside.

I stood frozen for a moment, startled.

"Can you help me?" His voice sounded alert, not scared.

He looked around the cage while I still stared down at him. His black short hair stood out sharply against the light gray T-shirt.

"I have a rope here! Can you pull me out with it?" He looked up at me. Freckles covered his relatively pale face.

I nodded slightly, and he immediately threw one end up to me.

I took one last look into the metal cage before firmly grasping the rope and taking a few steps back. He needs me to get out. There isn't a single crate in there, I noticed.

"Are you ready?"

I felt him tug on the rope briefly.

I tightened my grip. "Yes," I replied in a hoarse voice. It'll be fine.

I felt a stronger tug on the rope and pushed against it. I squinted my eyes and made a small loop in the rope to grip better.

The tug subsided, and I opened my eyes again.

"Thank you." He lay on his back on the ground, breathing deeply several times. "I'm not made for climbing ropes," he muttered before sitting up.

I let go of the rope, which I still held in my hand, and let it fall. "Who are you?" My voice sounded hoarse.

"Liam." He looked like he wanted to say something else, but I interrupted him.

"What do you remember?"

He closed his mouth again and looked up thoughtfully. Then he slowly turned around on his own axis. He was noticeably taller than me.

"Where are we?" He didn't look at me but continued to look around. "Why am I here?"

I sighed. So he didn't remember either and had no idea.

"Are there others here? Why are there such huge walls? What's behind the walls? Why did I come up in such a box?"

He asked more questions, but I had no answer to each one, and with each non-existent answer, I became angrier.

"I've been here for less than an hour, I have no damn clue!" I yelled at him. His questions just upset me. I had no idea myself, and it won't get any better if he keeps bombarding me with questions!

I turned around and walked towards the small forest.

∞

In the shade of the trees, I saw him heading towards the hut. He hung his head a bit, but I wouldn't apologize just because he threw too many questions at me.

I went deeper into the forest. The light was muted by the green canopy of leaves, but I could still see enough to find a small pond. I sat down on the ground and leaned against a tree trunk.

Why can't I remember anything?

I desperately tried to remember. My name is Rose. I am a teenager.

After a few minutes, I hung my head. That's it. I don't even know what I look like. Wait. I looked up again. The pond!

I stood up and went to the shore. Carefully, I looked into it.

It was very strange to see my reflection in the clear, green water. I knew it was my face, but it looked so unfamiliar.

My skin was pale, my lips barely stood out from it. Black shoulder-length hair framed my face. I had a light, cool eye color that almost disappeared in the reflection.

I continued to stare at the reflection, trying to digest the fact that I looked like this. I feel like I'm trapped in a stranger's body.

Eventually, I sat back down on the tree trunk. I still knew nothing about this place or why I was here.

I stood up energetically. Sitting won't make the answers fly to me, I thought determinedly, and I made my way out of the forest.

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[gobboguy]

Chapter 17: The Conquest Begins

In the heart of the Orcish village, surrounded by ancient trees and echoing roars, Gelbeg, now the united leader of the Orc people, stood with unwavering determination. Before them loomed the ship, a formidable creation forged from sweat, timber, and tenacity. Its presence was a beacon of hope amidst the verdant wilderness.

With the books on carpentry and shipbuilding spread before them, the Orcs, more accustomed to battle cries than the subtleties of construction, stared at the foreign symbols and diagrams with confusion etched on their faces. Progress was slow, the learning curve steep, but Gelbeg was relentless. He knew that this ship was their gateway to a new world, a world they would conquer and mold in their image.

Amidst the labor, an Orc, his brow furrowed in confusion, clutched a hammer and nails like relics of an ancient past. Gelbeg, patient and understanding, approached him. "Like this," he said, guiding the Orc's hand with his own calloused fingers. Together, they hammered the nail into the timber, the sound resonating like a battle drum in the forest.

When timber was needed, the Orcs, once hunters, now wielded axes with a newfound purpose. Trees that had stood for centuries fell under the might of their blows. Teepees, once their homes, were dismantled to provide the canvas for their sails. There was no turning back; the Orcs had no intention of returning to the icy shores of their homeland.

Weeks passed, marked by sweat and determination. The ship, although rough around the edges, stood proud and seaworthy. Its mast, a symbol drawn from Gelbeg's vision, bore a sail that rippled like a living thing in the wind. Proudly, Gelbeg painted the sails black, adorned with the green hand of the orc. It was a defiant symbol, a warning to any who might witness it: the Orcs were coming.

The Orcs, their muscles tired and their hands calloused, stared at their creation with a mixture of awe and anticipation. This ship was more than wood and nails; it was their vessel of destiny, a destiny they would carve with blood, sweat, and unyielding determination. The horizon beckoned, and the Orcs, their spirits aflame with the promise of conquest, stood ready to embark on a journey that would shape the fate of their people for generations to come.

Under the sprawling canopy of ancient trees, where sunlight filtered through leaves like shards of gold, the Orcs toiled ceaselessly on their vessel of destiny. The air was thick with the scent of sweat and wood shavings, echoing with the rhythmic thud of hammers and the scrape of metal against timber. The ship, now a magnificent behemoth, stood tall and proud, its sails unfurled like the wings of a mythical beast.

In the midst of this bustling activity, the High Priestess, Split-Nose, emerged, her demeanor solemn and purposeful. Cradling a steaming bowl with reverence, she approached Gelbeg, whose formidable frame stood out amidst the crowd. The tribes had labored endlessly, their collective effort transforming the ship into a masterpiece of Orcish craftsmanship.

The bowl in Split-Nose's hands held a peculiar mixture, a blend of the tribes' combined urine. It symbolized unity, a fusion of the Orcs' essence mirroring the amalgamation of their tribes. With an air of sacred ceremony, she had dipped the bowl into the communal latrine, drawing forth the amalgamated liquid that represented the strength of their shared purpose.

As Split-Nose recited a holy hymn, her voice resonated through the clearing, invoking the name of MOG, the Orc God, in reverent tones. She approached Gelbeg, her eyes alight with a fervor that mirrored the flame of a sacred pyre. Anointing his forehead with the pungent mixture, she intoned, "Warchief of the Orcs," bestowing upon him a title that echoed with the weight of their people's destiny.

Gelbeg, his forehead marked with the sacred blend, stood tall, his eyes reflecting the flickering light of the campfire. The murmurs of the tribesfolk hushed to a respectful silence, a collective breath held in anticipation. The title bestowed upon him signified not just leadership but a divine calling, a mantle he was destined to wear.

In that moment, amidst the scent of timber and the distant calls of wildlife, Gelbeg felt the weight of his people's hopes and dreams settle upon his shoulders. He was not just Gelbeg anymore; he was the Warchief of the Orcs, a beacon of their united strength, and the harbinger of a new era for their people. The ship, their vessel of conquest, stood ready, its timbers infused with the essence of Orcish determination. The tribes, once disparate and fragmented, had become one under his leadership.

With a newfound purpose burning in his eyes, Gelbeg gazed upon the ship, now adorned with the mark of the green hand, a symbol of their defiance and unity. The time of reckoning was near, and Gelbeg, Warchief of the Orcs, would lead his people across the sea, guided by MOG's divine will, to claim the destiny that awaited them beyond the horizon.

The Orcs, a unified force, stood tall and resolute upon the deck of the ship, their gazes fixed upon the distant horizon where their destiny awaited. A thousand strong, men, women, and children, they were the embodiment of Orcish might, their spirits aflame with the promise of conquest. The vessel, christened "The Conquest," groaned under the weight of their collective hope, its timbers thrumming with anticipation.

In the hold below, casks of provisions were carefully stowed - dried meat, fish, Orcroot, and sweetleaf, sustenance for the journey and beyond. The scent of dried meat mingled with the earthy aroma of Orcroot, creating a heady atmosphere below deck. Casks of bloodgrog, the Orcs' favored brew, clinked together, promising both solace and strength in the face of uncertainty.

Gelbeg, their revered Warchief, stood at the forefront, his imposing figure casting a shadow upon the deck. His eyes, filled with determination, scanned the faces of his people, acknowledging the trust they had placed in him. He raised his hand, a signal for silence, and the clamor of the Orcs hushed, their attention fixed upon their leader.

"I salute you, my kin, for declaring me your Warchief," Gelbeg's voice boomed, resonating with the depth of his gratitude. His hand slapped his belly, the sound echoing across the deck like a war drum. "I salute you, my mother, for giving birth to me." Another resounding slap, this time reverberating with the love he held for the woman who had raised him.

His gaze turned towards the island they were leaving behind, a land that had molded them into a race worthy of conquest. "I salute you, Orc Island, for forging our people into a race worthy of conquest." His voice carried over the waves, an acknowledgment of their shared history and the trials they had overcome.

The pride in his mother's eyes was unmistakable, her tears reflecting the magnitude of the moment. Gelbeg's voice rose, his words infused with an iron resolve. "We set sail for lands unknown, but know this. I will fight alongside you and will continue to fight until we have reached our promised land." His words hung heavy in the air, a solemn oath etched into the hearts of every Orc present.

"In that place of conquest and plenty," Gelbeg thundered, his voice carrying the weight of their collective ambition, "we will spread like a plague upon the land, consuming and pillaging until this world is marked forever more with the conquest of the Orcs!"

A chorus of fervent roars erupted from the Orcs, their cheers merging with the crash of waves against the ship's hull. With a mighty heave, the vessel surged forward, leaving Orc Island behind in a spray of frothy waves. They sailed towards the unknown, driven by their hunger for conquest, their will unyielding, and their hearts aflame with the promise of a new world waiting to be claimed by the Orcs.

The deck of the ship vibrated with the collective energy of the Orcs as Gelbeg gazed upon them. They were a people unpolished, perhaps even uncivilized by some standards, but in their eyes, he saw the spark of determination. They were a raw force, unrefined and untamed, but there was a primal strength within them, a relentless desire for dominance.

As the Orcs cheered, their voices merging into a thunderous cacophony, Gelbeg knew that despite their rough edges, they were worthy. Worthy of the power they sought, worthy of the conquest they envisioned. With a great heave, the ship surged forward, propelled by the sheer will of the Orcs. In that moment, they left their island behind, their past fading into the distance like a fleeting memory. Their journey towards the unknown had begun, and with every beat of their hearts, they were ready to leave their mark upon the world, shaping it in the image of Orcish might and ferocity.

[usafphantom2]

Here’s why SR-71 Blackbird Tires were Silver and why were Changed after 10 Takeoffs

By Linda Sheffield Miller

Mar 25 2023

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Even though the tires could last for approximately 15 full-stop landings SR-71 Blackbird tires were changed after 10 takeoffs.

SR-71 Shop

CLICK HERE to buy unique SR-71 Blackbird merchandise for your HABU collection.

During its career, the SR-71 Blackbird gathered intelligence in some of the world’s most hostile environments. The SR-71 was conceived to operate at extreme velocities, altitudes and temperatures: actually, it was the first aircraft constructed with titanium, as the friction caused by air molecules passing over its surface at Mach 2.6 would melt a conventional aluminum frame.

Its engineering was so cutting edge that even the tools to build the SR-71 needed to be designed from scratch.

There are so many interesting facts about the legendary Blackbird.

For instance, the tires of the SR-71 were silver.

Why were SR-71 tires silver?

SR-71 print

This print is available in multiple sizes from AircraftProfilePrints.com – CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS. SR-71A Blackbird 61-7972 “Skunkworks”

According to the sign accompanying the SR-71 tire on display at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Hutchinson, KS, SR-71 tires [like that featured in the photos of this article] were infused with powdered aluminum. The addition of aluminum to the rubber gave a much higher flash point to the tire, helping it withstand the high heat caused by friction with the ground upon landing at extreme speeds. The tires were also filled with nitrogen. By inflating the tires with nitrogen, instead of air, a fire would be less likely to start due to the absence of oxygen. The tire pressure on the SR-71 was 415 psi (compared to the 32-35 psi in your automobile tires!). Each tire costs $2,300 and would last for approximately 15 full-stop landings.

Even though the tires could last for approximately 15 full-stop landings they were changed after 10 takeoffs, as Colonel Ken Collins, former A-12 and SR-71 pilot, explains;

‘The tires were changed after 10 “takeoffs”. The wear & tear was during takeoff. The extreme pressure was at that point of rotation. That the reason we took off with half fuel load and air-air refueled shortly after takeoff, that reduced the tire stress. The temperature in the cockpit at the front windshield got up to 650 degrees F. Early in the experimental flight testing we wore silver suits. At cruise if you touched the side canopy glass it would melt the silver coating on you glove. The coating on the suit was not “silver” metal. The cockpit and the pressure suits were air conditioned. The cockpit got hotter as you burned the fuel. You were ready to get new fuel as it would cool it down.’

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird model

This model is available from AirModels – CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS.

The SR-71 needed to deflect a large amount of heat as it flew at an average speed of Mach 3, or roughly 2000 mph! At this extreme speed, the metal skin of the SR-71 would heat up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Over 90 percent of the aircraft’s frame was made of titanium to withstand the intense heat. In addition, the SR-71 was painted with a highly sophisticated and specially formulated black paint to radiate excess heat.

The special paint also provided protection against detection by disturbing incoming radar energy, rendering the aircraft less detectable by enemy forcess

[shedmasteruk]

Carports – Review 2023

Carports – Review 2023

Carports – Review 2023

A carport is a great way to protect cars, trucks and motorcycles from weather and sun damage. It’s also a great solution for homes without garages. Use a carport as storage for boats, tractors or trailers too. SHEEDMASTER has models in one-car and two-car sizes.

Metal carports are made from industrial-grade steel frames with galvanized roofs. Choose a peaked, arched or flat roof style. They offer wind and snow load strength and stability for year-round protection. A powder coating — in white, off-white, black or grey — protects the frame against rust and corrosion. If you need extra protection from rain or snow, you may want to add an enclosure kit made with UV-resistant fabric, featuring easy access and heat-sealed seams for water resistance.

You can find other creative uses for a carport canopy around your property. They’re great for protecting an outdoor work space and keeping projects safe from weather damage. You can use one for shade in a backyard to cover patio, deck or garden areas

Palram – Canopia carports are made out of a heavy-duty aluminium frame and incredibly resilient polycarbonate panels. Aluminium carports are the smart choice because they are rust-resistant, maintenance-free, and extremely sturdy with a high strength-to-weight ratio. Polycarbonate is a glass-like, virtually unbreakable polymer, making it the perfect material for outdoor structures. The lightweight carport roof panels provide the light transmission benefits of glass in a much safer manner because they are high-impact, harsh weather, and UV-resistant.

Things To Consider When Buying A Carport

When you take the decision to purchase a carport, there are a few things that you will need to keep in mind. It can be tempting to try to find a bargain but spending a little extra on your carport will be a wise investment. Doing this will ensure that you have a structure that will stand the test of time and provide the protection your car needs. But this is not the only thing you will need to think about.

Size

One of the most obvious things to think about before making a decision is the size of the carport in relation to your vehicle. For smaller cars, you may be able to get away with something a little more compact. However, it is essential to take measurements to ensure your car will get full coverage.

Moreover, it is essential to think about the area that the carport will be placed and that any overhanging parts of the roof will not interfere with other nearby structures.

Durability

The materials from which the carport is made will tell you a lot about how robust the structure is. For example, materials like aluminium and steel offer incredible durability and are very resistant to the elements.

These materials are typically treated so that they won’t rust and usually last a very long time. This makes them perfect for long term use. On the other hand, if you only need a temporary solution, perhaps while your garage is being constructed, a cloth canopy may be suitable. When choosing this option, it is crucial that you go for a material that is waterproof and offers UV protection.

Ease Of Use

The last thing that anyone wants when erecting a carport is a structure that is nigh on impossible to assemble. For this reason, you should look for carports that are easy and quick to put together. Being larger structures, it is likely that you will need two people for the job. You should also make sure that the carport comes with all the correct fittings to secure it. What’s more, it is important to look at how easy it will be to drive your car into the carport. A good structure will have a wide opening with plenty of room to easily manoeuvre your vehicle.

How much does a carport cost?

How much does a carport cost UK? The cost of your carport will vary depending on the materials it is made from and the size. It is perfectly acceptable to think that you will be able to pick up a carport for less than £1000. However, there are more expensive options going towards £3000 and budget options for a few hundred.

Are carports worth it? If you want to protect your car from the elements then a carport is absolutely worth it. Having somewhere safe to store your car will prolong its life and reduce the amount of maintenance you need to perform on it.

Do carports add value to a home UK? The carport itself may not add value to your home, especially if it is a temporary structure. However, the appeal of the carport and its pleasing design will make your home more appealing to potential buyers.

[syawntanhi]

Rebirth

This is an OC Avatar fic, none of the main characters(Jake, Neytiri, etc.) will appear here until probably later on.

I mix English words for na’vi words sometimes throughout the fic. If that annoys the majority of you I’m willing to change that. The main character is trans btw!

Chapter 1

Underneath the thick canopy of interwoven branches, and above a labyrinth of caves that held dazzling veins of metal, the Huyuticaya were born. Estranged from their sister clan, the Ometicaya, when their ancestors chose different paths. The path of the warrior, honor, and life within death.

They prided themselves in the cunning, agile, sleek and deadly accuracy of the Nantang. They were one with them, even more so amongst the warriors of the clan. Bodies painted black and dipped in white, scars littered upon their bodies and worn with pride. These all marked the dedication of a true warrior, a true Huyuticaya to live on and bring honor to their names.

And in a tent, woven and painted intricately, a boy was born. A boy, not yet a man, who was determined to be one of the great warriors, to bring honor to his name. The sunrise trickled into the home, waking him up.

He couldn’t move, not yet. His arms and his legs wouldn’t allow it, he felt heavy and lethargic as if he ran all day. Footsteps entered in, and he turned his head to inspect.

Ätxää, the Tsahik. Her neck piece crafted in a dark ornate leather, white paint dipped on her fingers and over her eyes. With delicacy, his arm raised to his forehead and drifted toward her.

“Oel Ngati Kameie, Tsahik,” he greeted. With a smile she greeted in response.

A bowl of oil, from various healing herbs and leaves was put down, with gentle hands Ätxää peeled the cloth that bound his chest.

“Have you been taking care of your wounds?” She asked as she rubbed the scars on his chest with oil.

The scars, done by the medic and overseen by the Tsahik herself, was a step in the direction of his manhood among the clan. It was precise, and dedicated.

The boy smiled. “Yes I have. I am ready.”

Ätxää paused. “Today?”

“Yes, today, I cannot wait any longer.”

Ätxää continued to tend to his wound. “I will see to it, your rite will begin tonight. Be prepared my child.”

“I will,” the boy promised. “I promise I will.”

“Good. Your wounds have healed, you do not need cloth.” The Tsahik began to gather her things.

“Thank you, Tsahik.” He said, it was met with a smile and a gentle kiss on his head.

He was able to leave his tent later that evening, helping as much as he could without straining himself. The young hunters would come to him to congratulate him, hug him and tell him how much they missed him as he recovered. They were his brothers and sisters, providing for their clan together.

The boy found himself wandering to a creek at eclipse. Staring at his reflection. He looked… different. The sides of his head were closely shaved. There was thick muscle that clung to his frame, a state he worked hard on the leading months. The scars on his chest had healed perfectly. The boy looked deep into the eyes that stared back. That is when he knew his difference, felt and looked right. He looked like himself, and joy danced in his heart.

In the evening, the boy made his way Into the main cave entrance. Inside, more tents and fires were held. Ätxää was there, with open arms, and Onge the Olo’eyktan.

Taken into another system, the soon to be man was bathed under the cold stream of a cave creek. He was then painted in white by Ätxää, all while Onge recited a prayer. He knew, outside his mother waited for him, for her son.

He could hear them, the people, outside the cave system, singing and howling in the night. And when he stood in the middle of his people, watching his leader grant him Into adulthood he was only barely able to contain himself.

And when a hand was placed on his chest, and he was asked-

“What is your name, my son. The name you have chosen, the name among your people, and the name Eywa will call you.”

The man answered truthfully,

“My name is Ra’äte te Tstotä Ing’i’itan. That is the name I choose, that is the name among my people. This is the name Eywa will call me.”

“Ra’äte!” Onge called out to the people.

“Ra’äte!” They called back.

Ra’äte could feel his mother’s hands on his shoulder, holding tightly. Over and over, his people shouted his name. Ra’äte could not contain the tears any longer.

Finally, he was free. He was reborn among his people. An honorable son.

———

Ra’äte found himself back at the creek later in the night. His body was still painted, and Ra’äte stared at his reflection again. He felt whole, and solidified. There was no denying his position in the clan any longer, this is who he was. Ra’äte, son of his father Ing’i, another warrior buried among their people.

He made a promise, silently to himself and over his father’s grave. He could not, and would not fail.

Even on his day of celebration, his first hours of manhood, a solemn mood washed over him like the creek at his feet. At home, he stood in front front of his father’s spear and ran a finger on the dull alabaster bone of the blade. His mother, Änawar, gently leaned onto his shoulder.

“He would be proud of you my son,” Anäwar said calmly.

“I must become something he will be proud of, a warrior,” Ra’äte said plainly.

Anäwar made a point to turn Ra’äte to face her. “You do not need to be a warrior to make your sempul proud. The day you were born Ing’i was willing to move mountains for you, do not be too hard on yourself.”

Ra’äte took the time to contemplate, looking back at the spear.

“I have been gifted a second chance, I must be better, I must prove myself. This is what I chose, sa’nok. This is who I will be.”

Anäwar held his face in her hands. “… be careful. That’s all I want, what your sempul wants.”

“I know.”

“Slow down, Ra’äte. Your life has just started.”

Ra’äte tore his gaze from his father’s belongings and back to his mother. “I can’t.. not yet…”

Anäwar casts her gaze down, and gathers her son in a hug. Ra’äte, embracing his mother back, made another promise. When he has become a protector of his clan, it is only then will he strive for a personal peace. Find a mate, carry on his Father’s name.

Translation:

Sempul: father

Sa’nok: mother

Nantang: viper wolf

Oel ngati kameie: i see you