#bloody hell could the website have crashed any more??
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imsurroundedbytheocean · 1 year ago
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Guess who’s seeing TAYLOR SWIFT (and thus PARAMORE MY SECOND FAVOURITE BAND EVER) in Cardiff next year!!! Getting tickets was the most stressful two hours of my entire life
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wickedgamesoyaoya · 4 years ago
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↝ ᴘʀᴏᴍᴘᴛ: having them crash your date
↝ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀꜱ: aomine x f!reader
↝ ᴡᴄ: 1500+ 
↝ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: wanting to kill aomine for being aomine, being an ass during a date, kissing, using someone to make another jealous. 
↝ ᴀ/ɴ: first time writing for aomine... hope it’s alright LMAO this is a college au btw. 
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The restaurant selected for your date was rated four out of five stars on the internet. It was classified as fine dining and proclaimed to be the ideal location to celebrate a special occasion or to impress a potential client. What the numerous websites did not state was that it attracted a certain type of crowd – those who did not care for the ridiculous prices attached to their small portions. 
When the hostess guided you and your date to your reserved table, the customers you slipped on past raised an eyebrow at you, easily detecting the one person who did not belong. Instead of cowering under their targeted stares, you fixed a smile onto your mouth, ignoring the crawling sensation spreading throughout your arms.
You would survive this one date – you had to. It was your fault for arguing with that idiot, and for accepting an invitation solely to further piss Daiki off. The thought of that insufferable male prompted a hallow melody to dance up your throat, though you were quick to swallow the sound.
How dare he call you undesirable? Coming from someone who lacked any notable characteristics, that was rich. An idiot. Aomine Daiki was a complete idiot.
But who was the bigger idiot here? You or him? He wasn’t the one who was on a date with someone who was probably cheating on their wife, and he wasn’t the one caught in a traditional game of unrequited love.
“Have you found something you like?” The blonde male did not bother to secure eye contact, instead his icy irises scanned the menu ahead of him. “Shall I call the waitress over?”
“I did, thank you.” There was no point in maintaining a polite smile, particularly when your date would be unaware of its existence, yet it remained plastered on your visage. They say that if you smile during uncomfortable moments, it can trick the brain into thinking you are truly happy. And if that did not work, you could always employ your secret weapon – the flask of vodka in your jacket pocket. Under the influence of alcohol, even someone as bland as your date could become interesting, or at least bearable.
“Perfect.” Bringing the booklet to a close, he gestured the waitress over with a short wave. The fluidity of the motion had you questioning how many times he had brought someone here, was this his special spot?
Or were your perceptions merely a product of your imagination?
The following thirty minutes made you realize it was the latter. There was nothing interesting about the wealthy man sat ahead of you. And you almost felt guilty accepting his invite, since he was quite serious about finding a future wife.
“As I was saying…”
Accidentally tuning out the latest story he was narrating, your attention drifted across the establishment. It was at this point that you caught visual of a pair that did not appear to belong, just like you.
Astonishment morphed into disgust when your eyes locked with his – the damn reason you were here.
“Hiii, y/n-chan!” The pink haired girl sang out the greeting, bouncing towards your table with Daiki trailing behind. Those seated around you grunted in irritation at the disturbance, but your date wore a blank expression. Though, from the twitch of his eyebrows, you assumed he was at least mildly interested in those preparing to approach him. “How funny! We were just passing by when we saw you from the windows!”
The deceitful answer was coated with a sugary tone and accompanied by a wide-eyed expression. The deadly combination seemed to have satisfied the man sat ahead of you. In fact, he seemed far too smitten with Momoi to notice the large male standing behind her. But you on the other hand, could not remove your attention from Aomine – not for a single second. Everything about the athlete had your emotions flaring.
How could he stand there so casually?
No longer entertained by the deadly glaring match you engaged him in, Aomine took in his surroundings with a quick scan of the space. It was as if he was evaluating your decision, and most likely critiquing it mentally. 
The last thing you needed was his judgement.
“Are these friends of yours?” The question implanted a wedge into your concentration, guiding your gaze back to the blonde.
Did you accidentally tune him and Momoi out? From the matching expressions painted on the pair ahead of you, it seemed you did.
“Yeah, kinda.” The qualifier was a lackluster attempt to capture the blue haired male’s attention. Surprisingly, it worked. Aomine had shot you a lazy grin in return.
“Then you are welcome to join us.”
The invitation came far too swiftly for you to successfully curtail it. Further, neither Aomine nor Momoi missed a beat, claiming the empty chairs without hesitation. When the athlete settled onto the chair beside you, he inched it closer to yours, before stretching out his spine. The sloppiness of his movements was in stark contrast with the elegant mannerisms of his best friend.
“Thank you so much!” A bright smile was flashed to display her gratitude, whereas Aomine offered an unenthusiastic “thanks.” The blonde simply nodded to acknowledge their words. But it was quite clear that so long as Momoi was present, he would bypass any other distractions. Including the large male who was practically pressed against your side.  
Typical.
Once the pair officially joined your date, the atmosphere loosened considerably. However, the change was restricted to your table. For a moment you soaked in the change with a titter threatening to spill from your lips. Watching Momoi cast a spell on the one who was once set out to woo you was amusing to say the least.
“That’s your type?” The male beside you adjusted himself after vocalizing the question. And whether he was stretching his neck or tilting his head inquisitively was unknown, but the movement brought him dangerously close to you.
Flickering your gaze to the minimal space between his head and your shoulder, you cursed yourself internally for the fluttering sensation inside of your stomach.
“So, what if it is?” A small “hmph” was tactically added to your response.
“Never pictured you being into an old rich guy. Does he know you hate places like these?” The basketball player remained slouched in his seat for a few more seconds before settling into a comfortable position. 
Was he serious right now? 
“Shut up and keep your voice down.” The demands were whispered in a stern tone, but you doubted it would work. 
Unsurprisingly, he returned your hiss with short-lived laughter.
From the opposite side of the table, your date’s attention briefly returned to you – a natural reaction to the vigorous sound. He was seconds from becoming more aware of the scenario unfolding around him, but Momoi was prompt in eliminating his concentration.
“Oh, tell me what I should get!” A menu was then placed before him, to remove you from his line of sight. The artificial behaviour did not catch you off guard, you knew the two of them were scheming – a fact confirmed by the startled expression she exchanged with Aomine prior to opening the menu.
“I don’t know what you’re up to but stop it.” Exhaling a sigh, you propped an elbow onto the table before resting your cheek against your palm. 
But did you really want them to stop? Not really. This was the most enjoyment you had since you arrived. Not that you would let him know that.
“What we’re up to?” He echoed with a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “What about you? What are you doing here, y/n? Are you here to prove you’re desirable?”
His words visibly stunned you at first.  
Aomine knew exactly how to push your buttons, and his style of teasing was ridiculously potent. To refrain from acting on your urge to attack him physically, you curled your fingers in and grinded your teeth together.
“Aomine. You ass-”
Your lips were about to complete the curse when he connected his mouth with yours. It did not require much to close the distance due to the limited spacing that existed in the first place. Inside of your chest a parade had commenced, one that matched the metaphorical fireworks that accompanied the kiss. 
You knew it was wrong. Your date was sat right ahead of you, albeit hidden behind the remarkably large menu. Yet, you enjoyed it. 
When you instinctively tried to push away, he placed a hand at the back of your neck, keeping you in place. With each passing second your resolve melted until it no longer remained. A minute felt like an eternity, and when Aomine settled back in his seat, a flustered groan vibrated inside of your throat.
“Oi. Satsuki. Let’s go. I want a burger.” After tending to the crick in his neck, the athlete raised from the chair, purposefully ignoring the bewildered expression being presented up at him.
On cue, Momoi slapped the menu shut and stood up. “Okay! So sorry for disturbing you two. We’ll be on our way now.”
Your narrowed gaze slowly travelled from Aomine to the pink haired girl, who dipped an eyelid into a wink at you.
What the hell.
You could barely comprehend what occurred and watching them leave only increased your bemusement. Across the table, your date questioned if you were alright. Pressing your palms against your face, you shook your head with another groan. 
No, you were not alright. 
You were in love with the Aomine Daiki, the biggest idiot to exist. 
Which meant you... would never be “alright.” 
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Taglist: @newfriendjen @yourstarvic @bloody-bella @seijurosempress​ @haikyuusimp91 @chaichai-the-weeb [only tagging those who I know watch KnB lmao] 
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The Set Up - Harry Styles One Shot (Part 3)
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Part 1    Part 2
**
 A week has passed since your sort of date with Harry that ended with a kiss. He had left for New York for some appearances and wouldn’t be back until later in the week. Despite the time difference and your schedules, you two had found time to FaceTime or call one another. The conversations started with mostly small talk, but as each conversation grew longer it turned into more. 
Neither have you had really addressed the kiss until about the third conversation a few days into his trip. You were rambling about something you don’t even remember, when all of a sudden Harry just blurted out, “I really wish I could kiss you right now.” 
You stopped mid-sentence looking into the phone, noticing a bit of redness tinting his cheeks, “Why? So, I’ll stop talking?” You joked. 
“No,” he laughed adjusting the phone. “Because just one kiss wasn’t enough for me and you’re looking really hot right now.” 
“Oh, well, thank you,” you smirked flipping your hair back. “But if it’s any consolidation, I wouldn’t mind kissing you again, too.” 
“So, you’re perfectly fine with picking me up at the airport when I land in a few days?” He smirked. 
“I’ll send you my Uber rates,” you joked. 
He laughed shaking his head, “Have spoken with my sister lately?” 
“Um, I’m actually grabbing drinks with her tonight,” you said. “Why? Is there something you want me to tell her or not tell her?” 
“Well, she’s probably going to ask about us,” he said. 
“Yep, it’ll probably be the first topic of conversation,” you laughed. “Since we both know she’ll ask, what do you want me to tell her?” 
“A huge fucking part of me wants to not tell her because the last thing I want to hear is her bragging that she was right,” he laughed. “It was bloody annoying when we were younger and it’s still bloody annoying now.”
“So, what you’re saying is don’t tell her that we’re talking and that you kissed me?” You smirked. 
“Pretty sure you kissed me back, love,” he smirked. “You’re just as guilty.” 
“Better lock me up and throw away the key then,” you joked. 
“Don’t tempt me,” he winked. 
“Anyway,” you laughed. “Back to your sister.” 
He coughed, “Right, even though I rather not hear her bragging, she’ll find out eventually, so might as well get used to it.” 
“Sounds good,” you smiled. “Besides it wouldn’t feel right lying to her. She is my best friend.”
“I don’t know why, but hearing you say that makes me happy,” he said. 
“And hearing you say that makes me happy,” you smiled. 
**
Later that day, you arrived at the restaurant where you were meeting Gemma for dinner and drinks. You had a meeting that ran over, so you were practically power walking to get there. When you walked inside, you instantly saw her and made your way over.
“So, sorry,” you gasped. “Meeting ran late.” 
“No worries,” she smiled. “Everything okay though?” 
“Yeah, we’ve got a photoshoot set up with an artist tomorrow, so we are going over details, plus we’re recording for the Podcast tomorrow, too, so just... we go through spurts where we have plenty of time to get shit done and the other’s it’s like we’re grasping at it,” you said. 
“Well, you certainly sound like you need a drink,” she laughed pushing her glass over towards you. 
You laughed taking a sip from it, “Thank you. Oh, wow, that’s delicious.” 
“Yep, can’t even taste the vodka,” she laughed. 
“And that’s when they’re dangerous,” you giggled. 
After the two of you had ordered dinner, you could tell by her demeanor she was about to change the subject and you knew exactly what it was going to be. 
“Okay, it’s been like a week or so since I introduced you to my brother, I’ve been more than accommodating by not pressing you for details, so spill,” she said. “Just.. if there’s any like sexual details, feel free to keep those out, in fact, I’d rather you did.” 
You laughed,”I can say there are zero sexual details to even talk about it,” you said. 
“Good,” she smirked. “But anyway, so what details are there to talk about?”
“I mean, we did talk that night after the party,” you said. “We just you know, did small talk, he asked me about The Mixtape and that was about it.”
“So, that’s it,” she said. “That’s the only conversation you’ve had with him?” 
“Well, I mean, we’ve talked on the phone a few times,” you said nonchalantly. 
Gemma smirked, “Interesting.” 
“Don’t even get that look on your face,” you said. “We’ve spoken a few times, met for dinner, doesn’t mean we’re getting married here, Gem.” 
“Well, I’d be a little worried if you were,” she joked. “But really, that’s uh. that’s nice. What do you think of him?” 
“I’m not discussing that with you,” you said. 
“And why not?” She asked. 
“Because if I say I don’t like him, you’ll get upset or offended,” you said. “And if I say I do like him, you’ll tell him or you’ll start freaking out getting all excited or something that might not even happen.”
“Okay, one, I want you to know that you’re my best friend,” she said. “Even though I introduced the two of you and if there is anything comes from you two hanging out, I would never mix my relationship with you and him. If you told me someone in confidence, I wouldn’t tell him and vice vera.” 
“Well, thank you for that,” you smiled. 
“So, tell me,” She smirked. 
“Again, we’re still getting to know one another,” you said. “So, there’s nothing to tell just yet.” 
“Yet?” She smirked. 
“Don’t do that,” you laughed. “Don’t try to twist my words to make it seem like you’re getting information.” 
“I’m not,” she defended. “But seriously, let’s talk hypotheticals here, if there was some feelings building, would you want to pursue a relationship with him.” 
You rolled your eyes, “Well, that would depend on if he would want to pursue a relationship as well. And do you honestly believe he would even consider that with going on tour? I mean hypothetically speaking.” 
“Look, if you were hypothetically having any doubt about him going on tour or whatever,” she said moving around in her chair. “Don’t because I can guarantee that he felt something for you to get into a relationship, he would do whatever he needed to make it work.” 
“Well, hypothetical me is happy to hear that,” you nodded. 
“Why?” She smirked. 
“Because hypothetical me would most likely not turn down the offer,” you said. 
**
Harry was backstage preparing for one of his secret shows in New York. He had only a few more days and then he’d be headed back home to London. He couldn’t believe how much you had been on his mind ever since that kiss. It took everything in him to pull away that night, but he knew it was better that you two stopped in that moment instead of taking it further. 
He really liked you, so he didn’t want to give you the idea it was just about sex because it wasn't for him. When Gemma had mentioned setting him up, he thought nothing of it. He knew it wasn’t the time to start a relationship and he wasn’t even looking for one. Yeah, it sucked not having someone like that in his life, but he was okay being on his own. 
But after meeting you, he knew all of that was about to change, he just hoped you felt the same way. Not only was he worried about how you felt about him, but he was worried that you wouldn’t want to give him a chance because he would be on tour. If you decided you weren’t ready for that, he would completely understand. Hell, he didn’t even know if the shoe was on the other foot if he’d be willing to start a new relationship with someone who would be traveling for months on end, being in different time zones. 
Only a few of his past relationships actually occurred while he was on tour. Usually, he only worried about dating someone when he knew he would have time off, which wasn’t much during his One Direction days. Of course, looking back being on tour was usually one of the reasons behind the inevitable break up during those. 
However, he couldn’t focus on that because touring was always going to be apart of his life, at least he hoped it would be. If he wanted to find that special someone who could share his life with, he would have to find a way to make it work and he knew that if anyone was worth trying, it would be with you. 
It was crazy just how fast his feelings came on, of course, he knew a lot of it was the newness of it, but he could tell there was something different about it, about you. Maybe it was because you already knew his sister and his mother, you already had their approval. Or maybe, just like Gemma had said, you were the one person who was perfect for him. 
“You ever going to tell me why you’ve been so glued to your phone and acting all giddy and shit,” Jeff asked, bringing Harry out of his thoughts. 
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate,” Harry said putting his phone in his pocket and grabbing a water to sip on. 
“And now you’re lying,” Jeff said. “There’s something different about you.” 
“Ever think maybe it’s because I’m back in the game again? I’m on stage, talking about the record, seeing fans,” he pointed out. 
“Yeah, but this is different,” Jeff added. “I’ve never seen you like this before. I mean I’ve see you on your best days and some of your worst. I’ve seen high and drunk many times, but I’ve never seen you like this.” 
“Heeeyyy, I’ve not been drunk or high that many times,” he pointed out. 
“Now, you’re avoiding the question,” Jeff smirked. 
Harry rolled his eyes, “I’m only telling you this so you’ll shut the fuck up.” 
“Fair enough,” Jeff said crossing his arms. 
“I met someone,” Harry mumbled. 
“What was that?” Jeff asked turning his ear towards Harry. 
“I fucking met someone, okay?” Harry groaned. “We’ve gone out once and talked a bit while I’ve been here and I uh... I like her.” 
“This someone wouldn’t be Gemma’s friend wouldn’t it? The one who crashed our table at the Brits?” Jeff asked. 
Harry rolled his eyes, “One she didn’t crash, she was invited, and two, yes it’s her.” 
“I was just joking,” Jeff laughed. “But no, she seems cool and she’s into music, right? That uh, podcast thing?” 
“It’s a blog turned website turned magazine with an added podcast,” Harry said. “And she’s like the co-founder/owner of it.” 
“Damn,” Jeff said. 
“Yep,” Harry smirked. “It’s pretty cool.” 
“Oh my god,” Jeff said. 
“What?” Harry asked. 
“That’s why you’ve been fucking attached to your phone!” He said. “You’ve been listening to her podcast!” 
Harry’s cheeks quickly redden, “Oh, fuck off,” he said. 
“This is so cute,” he smirked. 
“I’m done with this conversation! I’ve got a show to get ready for!” Harry said covering his ears and walking away leaving Jeff shaking his head with a laugh. 
**
“Okay, yeah, I love that,” you nodded to the decor stylist on the set of the photoshoot. “Those colors are gorgeous together.” 
You had a busy day ahead and you were already feeling the early call time. You sipped on your coffee as you watched the shoot from afar. You always made sure to show up at the photoshoots to make sure everything got started properly. After you left there, you would head to your office and get a few things finalized before going to record the new podcast episode. 
“Hey, Y/N,” Micah, a journalist who would be interviewing the artist after the photoshoot. 
“Hey,” you smiled. “Ready for today?” 
“I am,” he smiled. “I’m a little nervous, if I’m being honest. This is my first solo interview.” 
“We’ve all been there,” you smiled. “You’re going to do great. Just make conversation, be causal, don’t make it seem like it’s just you asking questions and waiting for them to respond.” 
“Thank you,” he smiled. 
“It’s what I’m here for,” you smiled. 
“And over here we have our lovely, wonderful, sexy, gorgeous and fit co-founder and editor, Y/N,” you heard Nikki, your social media person say, before holding a phone at you. 
You laughed, “Good morning,” you smiled. “Let me guess, Instagram or snapchat?” 
“Both,” she laughed turning the phone off. “You about to head to office?” 
“Yeah, I’ve got prints to look over and then Jam an I are recording a new episode today,” you said. 
“Oh, great, I’ll pop by and get some behind the scenes footage.” she said. 
“Sounds good,” you smiled. 
You walked over to your photographer and the shoot manager, “About to head out, call me if you need anything and to keep me update.” 
“Will do, boss,” they smirked. 
You rolled your eyes with a laugh as you headed out the door. Your office building held not only the offices you and your writers, but there was also a space for the photoshoots and your recording studio, which meant you didn’t have to go very far. 
You spent the next couple of hours looking over the prints for the next issue for approval. By the time, you had to head to the recording studio, your eye were already feeling cross and your had a bit of a headache. You popped an advil and snacked on some crisps as you made your way to the studio. 
When you arrived, Jam, your best friend and co-founder, and the rest of the podcast crew team, were staring at you. 
“What?” You asked. “Am I late?” 
“No, right on time, actually,” Jam said. 
“Then why are you all staring at me?” you asked. 
“Because you have a delivery,” she said. “And it’s from a man!” 
You look at her confused until your eyes land on a bouquet of flowers on the table. 
“Oh,” you said walking over to them. 
You smiled giving them a sniff before taking the card out and reading it. 
Hope this will make your day a little brighter. Only two more days until our wish comes true. Miss you, H.
“We’re waiting,” Jam smirked. 
“For?” you asked. 
“Details!” She groaned. 
“Um, I believe we have a show to record,” you smirked. 
“You’re killing me, smalls!” She groaned following you into the booth. 
**
Harry was on his way to the airport, he was finally able to head back to London and have some time off before tour started up. Yeah, there were details that needed to be finalized and rehearsals would start soon, but he would be in his own bed spending time with friends and gearing up to be on the road. This also meant he would be getting to spend time with you, which he was really looking forward to. 
When he arrived at the airport and boarded the plane, he got an alert on his phone that your newest podcast episode was now available and he couldn’t wait to listen to it. He knew it was stupid, but he was a bit a obsessed with listening to them. Not only was he using it as a way to hear your voice, but to get to know you. 
As soon as he was given the green light, he popped in his headphones and started listening. 
“Okay, okay, okay, so, before we get into today’s topic,” Jam stated. “We’ve got a little something to talk about first.” 
“For fuck’s sake,” you mumbled. 
“What?” Jam smirked. 
“I know where you’re going with this,” you said. 
“Hey! I gave you the opportunity to fill me in off the mic, but you declined,” she said. 
“I didn’t exactly say I would do it on the mic either,” you laughed. “Besides, our listeners to do not want to hear about this.” 
“Sure they do,” she smirked. “Besides it won’t take very long.” 
This was going to be interesting, Harry smirked to himself. 
“So, to fill everyone in on what’s going on here, when we arrived at the studio today, there was a delivery, a fancy bouquet of flowers,” she smirked. “Now, here I am thinking it was for the whole team, but nope, it’s for one person in particular and who might that be, our very own, Y/N. Care to explain?” 
Oh shit. 
“There’s nothing to explain,” you said. “Yes, I received flowers. What else do you want me to say?” you laughed. 
“Details! Who are they from? Do you have a secret admirer? Are you moving into the taken territory?. Come on tell us,” she pressed. 
Harry could feel his palms sweating as he waited for your response. Surely, you wouldn’t mentioned him because that would cause a lot of unnecessary problems. 
“Look, there’s not much to tell,” you answered. “I got flowers from someone, that’s it.” 
“So, then you’re not dating someone?” she asked. 
“Technically, I’m not,” you said. “It’s only been one date.” 
“Must have been a hell of date,” she joked. “No one has ever bought me flowers after one date.” 
“Can we move on now?” you laughed. 
“For now,” she said. “But we’ll be coming back to this for an update in another episode.” 
**
Harry had just landed at the airport and got into his car before heading home. Luckily, it wasn’t too late, so he texted to you to see if you were home and it was okay for him to come over. By the time, he to out of the shower and started to get dressed you had responded with a yes and that you were making dinner. 
He sent you a text that he would be there in less than twenty minutes. Knowing he was about to see you again sent his body into excitement mode. He felt kinda pathetic at how he was acting. It reminded him of what it was like when he liked someone back during his teenage years. 
Once he was changed and ready to go, he grabbed a bottle of wine from his cellar and headed to your flat. He parked his car and went over to the front door. He looked for your address and hit the button for you to buzz him in. When he got to your floor, the butterflies in his stomach were on high alert. 
He was just outside your door, taking a deep breath, running his hands through his hair before knocking. It only took a moment or two before you answered the door. You were standing there wearing a oversized sweater with leggings. Your hear was pulled on top of your head into ponytail with a few strands framing your face. 
Neither of you said anything at first, not sure how to approach this first time seeing each other. If Harry had it his way, he would put his arms on your hips, bring you closer to him and press his lips to yours, but he wasn’t sure if that would be too forward. 
“Hi,” he smiled at you instead. 
“Hey,” you smiled putting a strand of hair behind your ear. 
“I uh, I brought some wine,” he said holding it up. “I figured it was the least I could do, since I’m sort of dropping by on short notice.” 
“Oh, thank you,” you smiled. 
You both stood there awkwardly. It hadn’t yet occurred to you to invite him in because you were only thinking about one thing. 
“Before you come in,” you said. “Are you going to make our wishes come true or-” 
He smirked holding the wine bottle by his side as he placed his free hand at your hip. 
“I’ll admit, kissing you was the first thing I wanted to do as soon as you opened the door,” he said. 
“Then why didn’t you?” You smirked wrapping your arms around his shoulder. 
“Don’t really know, actually,” he laughed. “Didn’t want to seem too forward, I guess.” 
“Didn’t I tell you? When it comes to you, I like forward,” you smirked. 
Smirking back at you, he pulled you closer towards him bringing his lips down towards yours. He hovered over them you could feel his breath against yours, sending a fire through your body. You both smirked as you playfully teased the other with almost kisses before finally allowing both of your lips touch. 
The kiss started off tame, just simple pecks with not much movement, but it quickly turned into something more. Letting out a small gasp for breath he took that as an opportunity to deepen the kiss before backing the two of you up so that your back was against the wall in the foyer of your apartment. Your hands found their way into his hair causing a small moan from him. 
The two of you were completely lost in each other making it obvious to either of you that your front door was still fully open. At least until you heard a familiar voice from behind you. 
“Hypotheical, my ass!” Gemma smirked crossing her arms as she watched the two of you quickly remove yourselves from one another with lipstick both smeared across your faces. 
**
DUN DUN DUN! That was part 3! Again, I’m not sure how many parts this will be, but I don’t expect it to be super long! 
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insomniac-dot-ink · 5 years ago
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The Grave of a Trees
genre: fantasy/DnD
words: 2.6k
summary: post-industrial revolution a hobbit goes to the ends of the earth to look for the Ents.
Read below or on my website: iawriting.com
The rumble of the car vibrated up Bast’s spine. It moved all the way from his toes to the top of his head, sending his teeth clattering and tail bone aching. The jeep careened around corners and sped along dirt roads with a certain gusto reserved for berserkers in battle and water nymphs drowning lecherous young men. It was something one was born to relish.
Bast was weightless for a moment as the car floored it over a small hill, his stomach swooping and body floating like an astronaut caught in orbit. Gods help the shocks on this thing, he thought to himself.
They landed with a crash and Bast yelped helplessly, Floria in the front just chuckled to herself at his reaction. An imp was the only person he could get to take him out this far.
The whole vehicle was scented with something like tar and licorice, the imp would sometimes glance in the mirror back at him. Luckily, the engine was so ferocious and feral that it’s noise blocked out any thought of having to make small-talk. That fit Bast just fine.
It was well-past noon by the time the car considered slowing down, skidding across the barely-there gravel road and approaching the thickets of woods. The far west had enormous forests like this covering it’s coast: dark, closely-knit and energy hovering on carnivorous.
The dark between the trunks was absolute and the leaves rustled far above with a threat between their teeth. The forest floor was sparse and padded with leaves and dark moss, there wasn’t enough sun leaking through the canopy above to help anything grow there.
The car gradually hissed to a halt as the lumpy road gave a final rocky wheeze and disappeared altogether. The car lurched violently into park and the engine rumbled thunderously before falling quiet.
Floria took the keys out and turned around, a perpetual smile plastered across her face and two shiny fangs protruding out from her mouth. She had red skin and cherry-blossom pink hair that hung at her cheeks in a bob, her eyes were inky black blots. Little tiny wings flapped on her back as she faced him.
“I’d play a funeral march now, but the radio conked two acres ago.” She commented breezily. “I noticed.” The only thing louder than the engine of the car was the gravely screamo remixes blaring from the speakers for the last four hours.
Floria grinned somehow even more widely, “are you sure you’re up for this, little ranger?” Bast just frowned delicately, “there’s nothing for it.” He whispered, patting his pocket and then reaching for the door, “this is it."
There had been stories, long ago and buried under other frayed memory, of hobbits that talked to the trees. They bonded with them deeper and longer than even the elves and the druids and all the folk in between. Bast owed it to them to keep trying.
That’s what his ancestors would have wanted, however long dead and forgotten they were.
Floria just snorted in return, “I’ll be back in a week. If you aren’t here in a couple hours I’m going back to the town and telling ‘em you died sucking tree bark.” Bast rolled his eyes elegantly, “I appreciate it,” he said dryly, “try not to lose your hearing on the return.” “What?” She said loudly and he met her eyes just in time to see the sparkle there. They shared a very brief chuckle. “I’ll see you Floria.” He hopped out, shouldering on his massive pack and only pausing a moment to glance back at the imp. “Wish me luck.” Floria leaned out of her jeep and threw up a peace sign, “pull some magic out of your ass, Halfling. You’re gonna need it.” Bast just wrinkled his nose and turned around, Floria revved her engine and sped away in a rainfall of dust and small rocks. Bast took a deep breath.
He stared at the trees for a long, tense moment, listening, feeling sweat lick down his neck and the cool breeze beckoning from the depths of the woods. This wasn’t a place for mortals, but very few forests were.
He patted his left pocket in a reassuring way, felt a large lump there, and then began to walk.
˚*❋ ❋ ❋*˚
There was a moan in the wind. It was hushed, barely there, just a shiver under his skin and a soft finger across the back of his neck.
There was, nonetheless, a moan on the breeze. Bast’s ears twitched as he picked up on it, flicking back and forth. He had spent years being teased for their size, called “elf-blood” by peers and worse by everyone else. It was only by irony alone that his ears saved him time and time again.
Bast jumped over a dead tree and weaved back and forth among enormous trunks, following the moan deeper, deeper into the Forest of Saints. The name was a bit of a misnomer since no saints had died here, and since no one lived near there at all. The locals hoped it would call in some divinity to a place most considered generally “cursed to hell and back again.”
It was true Bast didn’t find a lot of holiness here. He just found shadows, spiderwebs, and the prints of animals bigger than anything under the mortal sun. The size of them matched the size of the trees themselves- trees so wide and dark they felt like walls.
It was quiet, no bird songs or bugling of elk, nothing but his own hushed footsteps and steady breathing. It smelled of something wet and green, dizzying and promising head colds every morning.
Bast thought it would take longer to be sucked completely into the heart of the woods, but the pulse of this place ate you whole and brought you into its bloodstream as quickly as any hungry mouth. It was vast and took you exactly where it thought you needed to go.
It led him past berry trees with fruit so red it almost stung to look at and trickles of streams and stone monuments by men and elves that had fled this land long ago. Bast endured it quietly as he saw the same stones and streams and broken shrines again and again.
“Show me,” he whispered to the dense trees, “please.”
The sun hung low and sour in the westerly in the sky when a new noise permeated the silent thickets. Bast stopped dead in his tracks, a growling coursed through the thin empty air, he turned around in circles, “I mean no harm.” He spoke in Common.
The growling was visceral. It was bloody, raw, and filled with things so old it could turn a normal person to dust and mold.
The sound grew with each passing moment, Bast’s skin crawled and his impressive ears perked up with a quiver. “I am a ranger,” he called, putting his hands up in the air. “I am Bast, son of Hemla. I am here for the trees.” The growling seemed to come from all directions, surrounding him and planting itself deep in his chest. He turned around once more, every hair on his body standing on end. Then he stopped. A great green-grey beast stood on a low branch above him.
Bast’s eyes went huge, his whole body taut and breath catching in his throat. It had a massive snout, trailing white whiskers, and two triangle ears, it stood on the lowest branch of a huge mother tree.
The beast’s paws were the size of Bast’s head and her legs as wide as his body. She was covered in dark dappled moss and growing things- like an island onto herself.
Underneath the greenery was grey fur so thick it looked like you could cut your hand on each hair.
Bast stumbled backward when the great beast leapt down, gracefully landing in the place in front of him. He felt the impact in his teeth.
“Forest wolf,” he whispered, but he knew she was something more than that. Much more.
An ancient dire wolf, bigger than any he had seen before. She had yellow eyes like glowing amber and a pelt covered in the very forest itself.
Bast put his hands further in the air, “I am Bast.” He said again, slowly, carefully. “I am a ranger. I can make the plants grow and the waters flow. I am not here to hurt your forest.” The forest wolf twitched her great snout, sniffing the air deeply. Her growling withered away and they were left at an impasse. She watched him through slitted eyes.
“Great guardian,” Bast tried one last time. “I want to save the Ents.” He winced so hard it hurt, “I have something.”
She watched him expectantly. Bast reached into his pocket, heart throbbing painfully. There was nothing for it, he had come so far or there was a high chance the guardian would bite his head off and think nothing of it. He swallowed thickly, cradling his treasure in his hands and hunching over.
“I know what we’ve done to this world,” he looked down at his feet, “mortals are hungry, no matter the species. We’ve hurt many forests.” He shook his head, “but I found this. At the very bottom of the Ashen Well in the volcanic plains.” He held up a single seed, about the size of a baby’s fist, it was a perfect acorn shape, and it pulsed warm in his hand like a tiny beating heart. It was shiny and hard, the throb of it was barely there, but it was still warm to the touch. “I’ve tried everything,” Bast whispered, “but I can’t raise him. I don’t know how, we need… I need to find someone to help, please.” The guardian looked down at the seed of a baby Ent, something worth more than all the gold in the world. It was said hobbits of old had a connection with the Ents, that they talked and listened and grew orchids together.
Perhaps I can do this yet, Bast thought to himself as the great forest guardian regarded him. Perhaps the planet is poisoned, perhaps it’s already over, but I can still do this.
The wolf closed it’s maw and padded closer and closer to him, he could smell the earthy scent of mulch and blood on her. She saddled up next to him and Bast looked dumbly back up, her belly reached the very top of his hat.
She lowered herself, haunches bending in an elegant arc and folding down to his level.
The wolf began to growl again, “okay, okay.” Bast returned the seed to his pocket and slowly approached her, she waited for him to grab onto a handful of fur. Her back was slippery with moss and hair thick as pine needles but he managed to clamber up high on her shoulders.
“Woah,” he was jostled backward the second he swung his legs over her back and had to hold on desperately with both hands. The wolf bounded across the forest floor and her back rolled like an ocean underneath them, they took off toward east of the sun.
Bast held on for dear life and his eyes began to water as the two of them pounded the earth and sped along the forest floor, the scenery becoming a blur of green as they moved.
His already-bruised tailbone ached as they crashed through the underbrush and went deeper and deeper into The Saint’s forest.
Will I be able to find my way back? Will I come back from this at all? A stray worrisome thought entered his head, but he dismissed it. I have to follow the forest spirit wherever she will take me.
It could have been an hour, it could have been five when the breakneck pace slowed.
The she-wolf lumbered to a slow stop and Bast cracked his eyes open, just as he heard the babbling of distant water and bird songs.
He blinked up, squinting into blotches of sunlight filtering in from up above. “Oh,” he hummed, feeling his chest expand.
This was a totally different part of the forest, dappled light spread all across the grassy floor- thick with foliage and animals skittering back and forth. “Thank you,” Bast said slowly, “thank you so much old mother.” The wolf just gave another brief growl and Bast swung off her back, landing with a heavy thunk and shudder felt through his knees. Bast managed not to topple over and firmly righted himself, the forest guardian started walking away the second he landed.
“Wait for me Old Mother,” he trotted along behind her and looked around once more. “Is this where they’ve been hiding?” He asked in a hush, “I’ve waited so long.” It had been five full moons since he had found the seed of an Ent. He was sure others existed but kings and treasure hunters craved them out as well, and then who knew what happened to the other tiny seeds. There was no telling if the one in Bast’s pocket could even still sprout.
The woods guardian led him toward a break in the trees, entering to a damp clearing with birds chirping high above and deer picking their way along the edges of the light. Bast could feel sacred energy of this place, he craned his neck back and took a deep breath.
“Great Ents!” He had to try, “please hear me!” He spun around in circles, “I have brought one of your own.” Nothing but chirping responded to him, Bast kept looking, circling the area and cupping his mouth to call out again and again. His voice echoed and the whole forest seemed somehow much stiller and emptier than it had before.
“Forest shepherds, tree lords, Ents of old,” his spirits began to flag, the sun was wilting into the earth, it was nothing but shadows brewing now. “Speak to me." Bast stopped when the wolf turned from him, facing the center of the clearing and padding away. Bast started to stomp after her, “why did you bring me here Old Mother?” He couldn’t keep the frustration out of his tone.
The wolf turned her massive head and Bast looked past her, the clearing had water running down the roots of a tree and pooling in a small clear pond at it's base. It was the largest tree he had ever seen, fit to house mansions or cities or more.
It breathed old life and the promises of all of time.
Bast ran, “is that one?” He called, a wild smile growing across his face. "Is this where the Ents have been hiding?" And then he looked up, the tree swept tall and larger than life, but the branches were bare, empty and bark ashen, it was only the hollow of a tree.
Bast’s shoulders fell, his heartbeat slowing and chest squeezing painfully. He turned to snap at the wolf, the birds, anyone, “is this some sort of game?” If this was ever an Ent, it was not living anymore.
Then he paused, stopped, eyes growing wide as he looked down. Some of the roots tangled into a shape: a little pocket woven like an uneven bean, filled with water so clear and blue it almost glowed. A cradle shape.
Bast trembled, he softly approached the cradle, fingers trembling toward the clear bubbling water. He could feel the magic there. The wolf followed him, her fangs exposed slightly and ears perked up.
There was still a chance he could lose his head.
Bast just nodded, he reached into his pocket, and he plucked out the little beating heart.
“Dear one,” he whispered to the baby, “I will protect you, we will do all we can, just,” he squeezed his eyes shut, pinpricks of water forming there. He slowly, slowly held the seed over the cradle of water, “come back to us.” He eased the seed into the Ent water. The seed settled at the bottom of the cradle and Bast looked down at it’s tiny pulse, beating hard and fast.
Please little one, he prayed, barely breathing, it’s your turn now.
A tiny, silken, white hair sprouted from the top of the acorn.
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sambart93 · 6 years ago
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2019.01.14 GARO Stage Vol 3: Kami no Kiba - JINGA - Reincarnation [Review]
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Official Website here Official Twitter here Press Coverage 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Videos 1
CAST and CHARACTERS
Inoue Masahiro as Jinga Yamamoto Ikkei as Sasha Inami Anju* and Oda Erina as Tomoha Masaki Kaoru as Ruka Matsunoi Miyabi as Amelie Fukuen Misato* and Nazuka Kaori as Shera Shimizu Saki as Ontake and Yuzuki Miyagi Koudai as Ushio Sengoku Minami and Isohara Kyouka* as Saeka Yumoto Misaki as Kerusu doNcHY as Tomino Sato Daisuke as Ramedo and Pakutora Sato Kazuma as Kaise Namiki Shusuke as Ikari Noda Hiroshi as Kido Iwata Arihiro as Lumido and Midouji Nakamura Seijiro as Fugi Horrors: Ega, Ryo, Hiro-C, Taka-ki, Kraus, Shimoo Hiroaki, Kudo Shoma, Katakabe Hiromasa, Sakai Hayato, Noda Ryunosuke, Yoshiba Yuki, Tezuka Sae, Ito Reina, Taguchi Fumiya
*There were some double casts so the * signifies the ones I saw.
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NON-SPOILER REVIEW Overall: This was very good. This was a solid stage. I thoroughly enjoyed the action, I enjoyed so many of the new actors, seeing the horrors IN PERSON and so up close was amazing! The use of the projection mappings and how they used the front screen for the effects was really cool! The combination of heavy rock and action scenes was a perfect combination and I absolutely adored the two - three big action scenes that used heavy rock music to their advantage to intensify the action. One of the fighting scenes actually really impressed me with HOW they did it! Also the fact that we had a LIVE band performing is awesome! The adlibbing was gold. I can see a lot of potential in some of the characters and their future storylines. I hope we get more development and more appearances from certain characters in the future! I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this stage, even with the earthquake about 30 minutes into it which FREAKED me off. However, I had a few technical issues. This play could’ve been amazing with about 2 - 3 more days rehearsing. Let me clarify; the actors are not the issue at all! But, the sound staff and the scene transitions were very questionable at times. Sometimes the sound effects for punches and such were either played too early or too late, and it was glaringly, obviously off beat. There were a lot of moments where the orchestra would go from one song to the next as a scene ended and started, but there’d be like 10 seconds during that transition where none of the actors could more or say their lines, and it felt very unnatural and roboticly timed. If they had had just a few more days of rehearsals I really think they could’ve fixed and perfected the sound and music timing. The other issue I had was the story. The main story and the main points of the story were absolutely fine, but I felt like one character and their story line (which is attached to the main plot) was totally unnecessary. At first I thought maybe only I have these issues, but upon talking to other friends, our negatives about the play matched completely. They also had problems with the timeline in the story too, they said it was confusing to figure out when all these events are supposed to take place. But luckily, I was able to understand the timeline without any problems. But besides me, my friends found that a problem. Rating: 6/10 - I enjoyed myself, but with a few more days of rehearsing and script revising, this stage could have been amazing.
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*
SPOILER REVIEW
PreShow
I was very confused when I got to the cinema and got in line for the goods. My goodness Goods was confusing!! You had to pick up your goods from the tables first THEN line up to pay?! No wonder the line was going so fast!! XD It took me a minute or two to figure out what the hell was going on. I kind of wish all shows did this. Would be so much faster in the goods line!! Rather than waiting for Miss-Take-A-Lot who is always in front of me buying about 40 sets of different bromides when all I want is a pamphlet but I have to stand behind her for 10 fucking minutes, also because the effing staff are taking their god damn time too trying to get everything and counting everything out for then about three times. <<< A common occurrence I experience unfortunately.
But anyway....
Then I got into the theatre and right away the very front screen is down and the projection mapping for the Garo opening sequence/advertisement on the screen looks so damn cool! And the GARO music to go along with it!! It was very Messiah-esque in that it had random patterns and shapes floating about but you knew they signified something or someone. Just like in Messiah’s movie openings. It was so cool to watching while counting down to show time.
I was to the right of the stage fourth row, but just not far enough to have any of the stage cut off - PHEW!!
Finally, about 20 minutes in, I ‪FINALLY experienced an earthquake during a show! It was bound to happen soon xD‬ although it went on for much longer than I was comfortable with so I momentarily didn’t focus on the play, so I have no idea what happened during those few minutes.
The Story
I want to talk about the story first:
So the story actually jumps around; it occurs before, during and after the Jinga tv show. Some people (as mentioned above) found it really difficult to figure out when it was set but I took little hints to figure out when it was. The first 40 minutes or so are set before Jinga is reborn as a human; he’s still hanging around Amelie and the Horror are bowing down before him. Then the middle section is set during the Jinga tv show; we see where he went those few episodes where he came back bloody or he doesn’t remember what happened. And the final part is setting during after the events of Jinga when he gets his Horror posse to turn and such.
The main running thread throughout all this is a girl called Tomoha. Tomoha is a Makai Priest in training, and she has a group who she trains with, she has a sister, and has some normal friends. One of her normal friends unfortunately succumbs and becomes a horror, but Jinga gets involved and reverts her back to a human being. Tomoha learns that the person who saved her friend is called Jinga and that he can turn horrors back to humans. After this she decides to find him, but when she does Jinga doesn’t recognise nor remember her. She realises there are two Jingas. Later she wants to introduce him to her training clan but while there Jinga’s Horror henchmen, and a group wanting to destroy Jinga turn up and the entire clan is doomed.
That the basicness of the entire story. Now to get into details.
The Show
Maybe I’ll just get the negatives out first and then I can flail to the end.
☆ As mentioned above I had some technical issues with the play. First was the timing between action/movements and the sound effects. The timing of some action hits were either too fast or too slow. And the off beat of the sounds were glaringly obvious unfortunately. Also, the transitions between songs, the actors would stay frozen until the right note in the music and then the scene or line would start, which made it look and feel very robotic.
☆ I really do think just a little more (a few days of) rehearsing would’ve really perfected this stage! There were technically things like timing that could’ve been spot on if they had had just a little more time. I heard from a friend that:  they didn’t have a GenePro for the press because it wasn't good enough yet, and that they kept pushing things back until eventually just cancelled the GenePro and only gave interviews instead. So clearly, I’m right in thinking (even at Senshuuraku) that they needed a few more days. During the curtain call, Masahiro even commented that he only had one day to rehearse. But I’m not even calling out on the acting! I thought everyone did well. I only had issue with technically stuff.
☆ Call me bias but the first 30 mins or so were so unnecessary and were pretty boring. They use Tomoha as the central character for the plot but in all honesty, Tomoha’s entire storyline and participation was unneeded and unnecessary.  I liked the main storyline for Jinga, and the storyline of Jinga being tracked down by the Ikkei crew, but Tomoha was completely pointless. We didn’t need her in order to know about a training group of priests and knights, we didn’t need to know she had a sister, we didn’t need one of her friends to turn horror, we didn’t need her begging for Jinga to save her. This all could’ve been just a random human or a random training crew and nothing in the main storyline would have changed. Jinga could’ve just found and gotten to that training crew on his own, Jinga could’ve ‘saved’ this human-turn-horror without introduction. We didn’t need to know about her or her sister or any one specifically at all. You could’ve switched ANYONE in where she was and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the story at all. Having her as the ‘main character’ just made the first half full of unnecessary introductions, absolutely pointless, and SO BORING.
☆ And because the story was somewhat lacking, they really missed a great opportunity to have Jinga get really evil. We have Tomoha who has clearly fallen for Jinga and completely trusts him, and you’re telling me Jinga didn’t even TRY to manipulate and use her?! I really wanted Jinga to USE her! Manipulate her! USE HER!!! That’s what the real Jinga would do! He’d be like ‘oh this idiot LIKES me. Well I’ll trick her into falling in love with me and then she’ll do anything for me mwahaha’ but nooooooooooo the story makes a romantic bullshit subplot out of it where it’s hinted that Jinga also likes her. Oh FUCK OFF! The real Jinga would have used and abused her, and he would have laughed in her face the moment her world came crashing down! That’s the Jinga we know! But alas the story did not go there. Seriously, a few more days of script writing and rehearsing would’ve made this amazing!! 
☆ Another thing I wish that changed in the script was during a few battle scenes, the entire cast are dancing to the battle music rather than actually fighting... wtf?Again, another missed opportunity! Even as the music and the dancing started, I immediately thought: TARANTINO!  I really wish they had done a Tarantino-style thing: Jinga orchestrating and dancing to music while everyone else is actually fighting and screaming. That would’ve been much better. I was completely fine with Jinga being all orchestry and dancing but I think going Tarantino style would’ve been better: only he can hear the music and is dancing, while everyone else is actually screaming and fighting. Instead of this bullshit of everyone, including Horrors, dancing to the entire song.
☆ Lastly, I didn’t have a problem, but a lot of people were confused as what the the timeline of this story was. I’ve already explained above, but I can see how others might been confused. It wasn’t exactly stated so you just had to pick up on what people were saying and who was where in order to understand what point in the timeline we were in.
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Now to the fangirling!!
☆  Sticking to the fighting and music topic: The actual fighting scenes with the very heavy rock music were AMAZING! You could feel the music through the floor and the fighting was very well choreographed! It was so god damn fun!!
☆ I’m jumping ahead but the best fight scene was definitely the climax fight between Jinga and Sasha. It was absolutely amazing how they did it!!! Ikkei (Sasha) had a body double so it looked like Sasha could move super fast from one end of the stage to the other! It was so fast paced, and so well executed, that even from the 4th row, I couldn’t tell where the real Ikkei was during the fight! Also the use of the lighting during this scene, and having their weapons light up. We had some points that were in complete darkness and all you could see were Jinga’s sword and Sasha’s weapons that were lit up and fighing. It was SUCH A GOOD SCENE. It was best scene in the entire play. Absolute kudos to the choreographer and to Masahiro, Ikkei, his body double and everyone involved in that scene because holy hell it was amazing!
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☆ We had a LIVE orchestra the entire time which was absolutely amazing! The music itself is just a masterpiece! It’s so good! I guess that’s why they called it Garo the ‘Live Entertainment’.
☆ There was a higawari/daily change guest every day and the show I went to had Kashiwagi Yusuke as the guest. If you don’t know, I love Kashiwagi so I was super excited for this! And he did not disappoint. He was GOLD.
Yuusuke did fucking Osomatsu!!! Everyone was DYING of laughter! Even Amelie and the other cast couldn’t keep it together! SO MANY OSOMATSU JOKES!! So his story is that Amelie and co. can’t eat him because he already made a promise with Jinga that Jinga would devour him. So he explains that he wanted to save his brothers (and that there are six of them), but they accidentally got mixed up in his scheme of trying to rob a bank, and they all ended up getting shot at. In exchange for stopping those bullets from hitting his brother, he agrees to make a deal with Jinga. During his storytelling four of the ensemble came on stage in the other Oso-coloured jumpsuits and Yusuke’s like ‘WHERE’S PURPLE?!?! You couldn’t even get me five people?!’ He was absolutely amazing! So many round of applauses during his higawari. And he did some backflips too. At the Amilie ran after him with her knife like ‘KKAAARRAAAMMAATTSUU!!!’.
During the curtain call, he said he wants to come back as a Horror if they ever let him come back. He also apologised to the vast colour difference between everyone’s outfit and his; he was ain a bright blue jumpsuit with a kimono styles scarf over his shoulders xD Absolutely GOLD.
☆ I absolutely loved being able to see Jinga’s costume so up close! I absolutely adore his grey coat from the TV show and being able to see the detail of that coat so close in person was amazing!
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☆ Also the full body Horror and Makai Knight suits that we got to see on stage were phenomenal! They looked AMAZING! They were pretty terrifying as they went past me in the theatre! xD And huge kudos to the people wearing those suits. They must be absolutely dying in sweat in those suits!!
☆ There is a scene where we get to see the switch between Human Jinga and Horror Jinga. Seeing that transition right in front of my eyes was amazing! I love how different his body language and posture is between the two Jingas. I also adore how different his fighting style is too between the two versions of him.
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☆ Ikkei/Sasha was so good too! I absolutely adored his look. I love how he always called himself ‘Sasha’ and referred to himself in the third person, and I love how over the top he can be. And I already said but that final fighting scene with him was phenomenal!
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☆ Nakamura/Fugi’s fighting style and weapon is so cool! I really loved how much control he had with his weapon. He had some moves where the weapon could’ve easily fallen out of his hand and gone flying but he had such control and so flawlessly used it. I was so impressed.
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☆ Koudai as Ushio was GREAT! He was playing a young, cheerful, sorted stupid Knight in training and he just lit up the stage with his happiness and silly moments xD I wanted so much for him to survive and get all revenge-y on Jinga’s ass! I was so sad when he died. I wanted so much more from him!
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☆ A quick note on the Sasha/Fugi/Ruka/Ontake group: They are neither Makai nor Horror. From what I understood, they’re from their own world and Ontake is actually like....a god? or at least an overseeyer of the human world. Because she has a forest of candles, and the candles are everyone’s life/souls. Some candles have black flames which shows who’s become a horror, and the rest are normal flames. So essentially they’re from another... dimension/world? And they hear about Jinga’s plan to steal their goddess/spirit called Tomino so they want to kill him before he can get to Tomino.
☆ There is a twist at the end where Tomoha is possessed by Tomino (we assume she’s a goddess/spirit from the world that Ikkei is from) which means ‘Tomoha’ might have a bigger role in the future.
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☆ A comment from curtain called that I enjoyed: Nakamura mentioned that he’d like a spin off dorama just about his character Fugi, and then Ruka’s actor was like “I hope Ruka gets a spin off dorama too!”. Inoue immediately after said ‘not like Sasha’s gonna get one cos he’s dead’ and Ikkei was absolutely distraught looking, it was hilarious. He was like ‘hey!!!!!!!!! I can come back! I can just pop out of nowhere!’
☆ After the show: Miyabi/Amilie was at the dvd corner and Inoue/Jinga was at the buppan corner!
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And that’s all! I hope you enjoyed this short review!
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wafflesetc · 6 years ago
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I’ll be there for you, Chapter 5 (previously)
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Mood Music: Bleeding Love
You already know it’s coming, @kkruml you’re the best- Thanks for the moodboard and always making my shite postable for this website. Also special thanks to @the-fear-you-wont-fall who held my hand as I wrote this chapter!
1 Year Ago Jamie
The one that’s an accident
Jamie Fraser was a stubborn man. He knew it himself. Hell, Jenny- his sister- consistently reminded him time and time again.
One thing he knew down to the very marrow of his bones- he was in love with Claire Beauchamp.
He had accidentally asked her out- almost without realizing it himself. He had stumbled in from work, a bunch of papers for the company’s project in his hands, and dropped them on the couch. She had stumbled out, her hair wrapped turban-like above her head, and a facemask on.
“Bad day?” Claire had asked, meandering through to the kitchen and pouring herself a glass of whisky.
He nodded, striding across the room taking a seat on the barstool.  “Ye could say so.” Jamie reached in front of him, taking her glass and swallowing the contents in one large gulp.
“Damn.” Claire laughed, pouring him another.
“Want to get out of here for the night, I ken a place that’s not sae far from here. A hole in the wall little diner. They serve great waffles.” Jamie shrugged his shoulders trying ot shake the day off and ran his fingers through his hair.  
Claire laughed, nodding at him. “Give me five to tame these medusa curls and throw some clothes on.”
“The Diner” was an apt name: a retro diner with neon sign illuminating the front window. Waves of patrons dotting the red pleather booths as the hours ticked by until only they remained.  
He had ordered her pancakes and him some waffles- each stacked a mile high, ‘wi’ all the proper fixin’s ye ken?’ as the illustrious server, Mrs. Crook, liked to point out. That first night she had talked his ear off- telling him stories of growing up around the globe: riding camels in Egypt, spending summers in Boston, and enjoying wine off the coast of Italy. He had nearly forgotten about the work project that night. And it was then, he’ll look back and remember her face smothered with whip cream, a red M&M stuck to her cheek because she dove into the pancakes head first, and smelling like lavender that was the moment he accepted he loved her.
Always.
The one where it’s a second-not-so-formal-invitation Date
The second time Jamie Fraser asked Claire out was the first time his college best friend and newfound brother in-law met her.
“Ask her out, ye bloody fool!” Ian laughed popping open some beers. “She seems like a lass who can hold her own. Almost like yer sister.”
Claire had stridden in clad in her teal scrubs, hair a bird’s nest atop her head, and blood on her white lab coat.
“I’m so sorry, I told Geillis I would meet her at spin and I was running late in the ER- there was a car crash and damn I’ve never done so many stitches in one sitting!”
Ian had just smiled and laughed, shaking his head.
Realizing Jamie had company over, her cheeks flushed as she stammered, “Jesus. H. Roosevelt Christ! I forgot my manners. I’m Claire, Claire Beauchamp.”
“I ken who ye are lass. Our shared lad doesna stop telling me all about his superhero of a roommate. I’d invite ye to come out with us, but it seems like ye have a busy night ahead, we will catch up soon.”
“Rain-check?” Claire asked as she slid off her sneakers.
“Aye, rain-check.” Jamie agreed. Claire smiled and escaped into her bedroom.
“I like the lass.” Ian said, elbowing his friend and walking out the front door.
****
The bar was crowded for a Wednesday night. The soft hum of classic rock echoed in the background. Jamie and Ian had decided to meet their other friend, John, out for a round or two to celebrate John’s recent promotion. John was technically Jamie’s boss, but the two had befriended each other years back on a work project, and the friendship had remaind.
“Aye, John ye shoulda seen the look on his face when she walked in the door!” Ian laughed taking a large sip of his beer. “It was full on grin. I didna ken our Highlander could smile sae big.”
“This would be his roommate, correct?” John Grey had asked in his thick, formal English accent.
“Aye. She’s a Sassenach like ye as well.”
Jamie sat at the high-top bar swirling the remnants of once cold beer.
John took his knee and slightly nudged his friend, grabbing his attention. “And when are you finally going to ask the lady out?”
Ian let out a small chuckle and nodded. “Aye, Fraser, when ye goin’ to finally ask the lass out?”
“It isna like that…. She’s my best friend and roommate. Drop it.” Jamie rose from his stool and walked to the bar to buy the next round of drinks.
****
Ian had left early to go help his wife with their newborn. John had bid his farewell to go meet his new lady friend named Isobel. He really hadn’t cared- he loved his dear friends, but tonight they had made him start to think some thoughts that he had pushed far away.
The streets of Edinburgh were crisp for the October night and he clutched his jacket tight to his body, rounding the corner to The Diner. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket as a text filled the screen.
“I see you walking by The Diner. Come help me eat these stack of waffles. You’re buying.”
He smiled as he opened the door to see Claire in their booth, accompanied by a stack of waffles.
“Care to share, Sassenach?” He asked sliding into the booth.
“They are the world’s best waffles.” She gleamed with a smile on her face.
That night, they truly were the best waffles he’d ever had.
The one where she meets the boss, again
The third time Jamie had inadvertently asked Claire out, his nerves had gotten the best of him. He had been dying to ask Claire out-planning every night for 3 weeks to get the courage to ask her out-but never quite finding the strength.
She was way out of his league, and he knew it. Yet, when the tickets to the theatre were left on his desk with a hand written from Colum stating, “Bring the English lass”- he figured he had the perfect cover.
“Your boss…” Claire had said, “Wants me to go with you?”
“Aye. Weel… I dinna ken if he means with me – I rather think he just wants to see ye again. Ye are a charmer, Sassenach.”
They had gotten ready- Jamie dressed like a Highlander in full regalia, Claire dressed to the nines in a floor length red gown, with a black shawl.
She was breathtaking.
The night was filled with tender touches from her on his chest- his arm always finding its way around her shoulders or waist, her chest resting on his. It shocked him just how easy it felt to be with her- and more than that, how easy it was to want to touch her. There was champagne and bad jokes of Bonnie Prince Charlie. 
Colum had been right, Claire was the perfect person to attend the evening’s festivities.
The night had ended with her falling asleep on his shoulder in the Uber home. He had carried her upstairs and put her to bed, wishing no more than to do just that for the rest of his days.
The third time was the time Jamie knew he had to try to win her heart.
The one where the Scot takes a chance
He had it planned. All laid out in his mind. It was her birthday and he was going to spoil her, and hopefully make her his own.
She would come home from her ER and be exhausted- having no plans to celebrate her special day. He’d be waiting on the couch, have a glass of whisky ready to hand her and tell her he had a surprise.
He had wanted to take her to The Diner- Mrs. Crook had special orders for a waffle stack with “Happy Birthday” written in chocolate sauce on the side, accompanied with her favorite thick cut bacon.
Nothing too over dramatic- nothing too simple—something that was just them. Just like wanted- just like he hoped for.
He heard the keys in the door as Claire came home. She looked radiant as ever when she came in, her bun half falling out of her face, her glasses crooked on her nose.
“Oh my god.” She laughed. “What a day.”
“Weel, it is a special day indeed.” Jamie almost whispered. “Happy Birthday Sassenach!”
She tossed her lab coat on the edge of the couch and plopped down next to him.
“Shit. I forgot.” Claire admitted as she shrugged her shoulders.
“How do ye forget yer own birthday?”
“I don’t know. I rather… Just have been busy with work and I didn’t realize it was the 20th already!”  
Jamie shook his head, pouring her a glass of whisky.
“You’re the best.” Claire bellowed taking a glass from his hand.
Jamie poured his own glass, reaching over to Claire, tipping his glass to hers. “Slainte.”
“Slainte.” Claire repeated.
“So I was…” Jamie started as he heard Claire’s phone buzz. She looked down and smiled at the text.  She stood and crossed the living room, turning around to face him, a grin from ear to ear.
“I have a date tonight! That professor from about a year ago, do you remember? Frank Randall… That’s his name.”
Jamie half smiled and nodded. “Aye.”
“We ran into each other the other day at the library- he asked me out for drinks tonight. I said yes. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a date, figured I’d have nothing to lose.” Her voice was hopeful, yet somewhat flat, he noticed.
Should he stop her? Should he let her go? Did she have nothing to lose? Was he that something she could lose?
“Aye, lass. That’s right, nothing to lose.” Jamie stated- his tone flat and dry. He took down his whisky in one sip, swallowing the hope he had instilled to make this woman more than a friend.
Damn you, Frank Randall. Jamie thought to himself as he pretended to listen to whatever it was Claire was telling him.
He had wanted to take the chance, but had waited too long. Now, any chance he had of winning Claire over fizzled away.
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gumnut-logic · 6 years ago
Text
Sharing the Scenery
I was looking at my phone while sitting in the audience of my daughters’ school end of year concert when I discovered the prompt. I scribbled down the beginnings of this but had to stop as the production started. So here I am at 11.30pm four hours later with the scene complete. I hope you enjoy it :D
Oh, and in other news...I’m now on leave from work for four weeks! So with a bit of luck, I might have some more time to write - still have to run the business, do my tax, make jewellery, I have a new website to design, a presentation to build, another website to overhaul, and a booklet to layout and design to go with that presentation, plus a house to spring clean and a holiday away to prepare for, but hey, time off work!!!
Title: Sharing the Scenery Warm Rain Series Author: Numnut 27 Sep 2018 Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS Rating: Teen Summary: “We have some great palm trees.” Word count: 1030 Spoilers & warnings: Virgil/Kayo  Author’s note: Another little scene in this universe - prompted by this post. Set sometime after Lug Day. I hope you enjoy the scenery :D Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.
-o-o-o-
The sun had hit that angle in the late afternoon where it gold plated everything. Kayo nursed her glass of water and wandered out onto the balcony, taking a moment to just enjoy the scenery and breathe in the fresh air of the approaching evening. Birds and the distant roar of the ocean were the only sounds on the breeze. Except for…she took a further step out…grunting?
And there beneath on the patio was Virgil.
Exercising. Two hands on the concrete, shoulders flexing in that same golden light as he forced his body into a series of energetic push-ups. Fast paced, a thin film of sweat on his bare skin, he was really pushing himself.
He wore only a pair of board shorts, a knee wrap and no shoes.
She frowned. He had been grounded for weeks since the incident in Guatemala. Throwing himself untethered from a speeding train to save a child who had been thrown out a window had resulted in road rash down the length of one side of his back, the friction of his slide across the asphalt burning through his uniform and grating skin. That and an awful concussion, despite his helmet, and a wrenched knee.
The child had survived with only minor injuries, Virgil wrapping his body around the little girl as they fell.
Kayo had been the one to apprehend the perpetrator. The sight of her brother falling and skidding, tumbling…
She grit her teeth.
There was very little left of the bloodied mess she had seen when Scott had picked him off the road. It would never be the smooth unblemished skin it had been. It was mottled and still somewhat dark. It looked rough.
She wanted to touch, to reassure...
A frown and she mentally shook herself.
His grunts continued.
She sipped her water.
The birds called and the waves crashed in the distance.
Moving to the edge of the balcony, she lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the decking, content to simply watch the world around her.
And Virgil.
The man was an enigma.
She wondered what meeting him would be like if she never knew him. Met him in a street somewhere, not knowing about International Rescue, not knowing the determined man behind the gentle voice. What would she have made of him?
Outwardly he was quiet, socially reserved, calm and practical. There was nothing brash or boastful about Virgil. He was an achiever who never really shouted about himself. His brothers had trophies and ribbons and careers that spoke of their achievements. Virgil…Virgil was no less an achiever, yet, he had little bling to show for it.
Unless you counted the scars.
She knew he would say that the road rash was worth it. If it was hers for the same reason, she would agree, but it was harder when it was someone you loved who had to suffer for the cause.
He had moved to one armed push ups now. She hoped he wasn’t pushing it too hard.
Virgil hated being grounded. For a man who teased his eldest brother unceasingly about his need for speed and to be in the air, he wasn’t much different on that front. His beloved green ‘bird nursed his heart and soul.
She smiled wondering what would happen if Virgil found a woman to share that heart. How would she manage the competition?
Hopefully she would realise that there would be no competition. Virgil had the biggest heart she knew. That little girl he caught was only the tip of the iceberg.
Another swallow of water to try and loosen her throat.
It was an old fear. That one day one or more of her brothers wouldn’t return from a rescue. It was one of the reasons she had worked for Thunderbird Shadow, one of the reasons why she trained so hard, the reason why she was head of IR security.
There was nothing more important that protecting the five souls who could save so many others.
And let her hell rain forth on any who dared hurt them.
The sack of dirt on the train in Guatemala? He wouldn’t be walking for a while.
Virgil lowered himself to the concrete one last time before pushing off and bounding to his feet.
Walking away from her, he grabbed a towel off one of the lounges and began his cool down routine with a series of stretches.
She didn’t miss him favouring his weak knee.
Damn, he had over done it.
The sun was laying the last of its gold for the afternoon, heading toward sunset, catching his dark hair lighting it aflame. The breeze made it flicker.
She found herself staring at his shoulders again.
A sigh.
He was definitely well built.
Blink.
And she was ogling her brother.
Growing up in a sea of testosterone had a tendency to mute her reactions to men. Virgil was her brother, not eye candy.
And he chose that very moment to turn around and notice her.
Their eyes locked.
His widened and, to her surprise, grew alarmed. “Kayo?”
She didn’t let her consternation show, simply bringing her glass to her lips once again for a deep drink. Swallowing, she peered down at him. “Yes, Virgil?”
“How long have you been sitting there?”
A slow smile. “Long enough.”
His eyelids lowered into a half-hearted glare. “Enjoying the view?”
“Definitely.” A smirk. “We have some great palm trees.”
Another glare, but he couldn’t hide the slight smile on his lips. “Yes, we do.”
There was an awkward silence after that. She found it perplexing. What did they have to be awkward about?
His smile was somewhat shy. “Well, I’m off to have a shower.”
A small smile of her own. “Take it easy, Virgil.”
He caught her meaning, his shoulders stiffening just slightly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I want to see you in the sky.”
His eyes shot at her, a mixture of emotion swirling in their chocolate. “You will.”
“Good.”
And he disappeared underneath the balcony.
She drank the last of her drink, her thoughts about her brother bouncing around her head.
The palm trees swayed in the wind.
Yes, the scenery was definitely beautiful.
-o-o-o-
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theessaflett · 6 years ago
Text
72 Hours (ish) in... MANCHESTER
Your friendly neighbourhood Essa has a look round a city best known for the industrial revolution, bees, and bad weather. 
…The start of my trip to Manchester wasn’t the smoothest.
The only thing I could find to eat at Euston station for my tea before my 19:40 train were chips coated in some sort of suspicious chilli dust, so it was a very queasy Essa who arrived at Manchester Piccadilly a few hours later and wandered around trying to find the exit. (I had in fact been to the station before last October as part of a band tour, but as I was VERY sick and feverish at the time I had very little recollection of the place indeed!) I trundled my suitcase out of the station and off into the night - and my, what a night.  9.45pm on a Saturday night in Manchester is quite the experience, and as Google Maps took me down back alley after back alley I found myself humming ”Just keep swimming, just keep swimming” to myself with increasing speed. One particularly memorable back alley held two sad looking figures, one of whom was violently throwing up behind a bin. 
“You alright, Tim?” called the other one, who was busy trying to use a wall to stay upright. Tim was almost certainly not alright. I left them to it. 
After about 20 minutes of nervous trundling I arrived at Hatters Hostel. It turned out that Hatters was on top of a nightclub, opposite a nightclub, and instead of being part of the Hilton hotel chain as I’d originally surmised it was called “Hilton Hatters Hostel” because it was on Hilton street. I was beginning to regret some of the decisions that had led to this moment. 
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Looks nice, doesn’t it. LIES. 
I tried to get the eye of the receptionist, was told I would have to wait as she was “doing the money”, and sat down on the only couch next to a man in gym clothes who had seemingly waited so long he’d passed out. Many minutes passed. In the end I passively aggressively opened and shut all the leaflets next to the desk  - Manchester offers two walking tours and a make your own beer festival, incidentally - and once Sleeping Man had been woken up and his booking put through it was my turn. Sleeping Man had been asked for ID, and I nervously started my explanation that I’d forgotten my passport but had my 16-25 train card when it was cut off by the receptionist. She didn’t really care, it was just a formality. Also, where had I dyed my hair? She’d tried to dye it that colour but it had just gone green and her mum had made her cut it off because green wasn’t an acceptable colour for her sister’s wedding. But now it was purple which was also cool. I murmured positive words about purple, took the key card and headed for the lift, trying to ignore the fact that the floor numbers on the wall were peeling off. I found 104, glad that the door looked less battered than some of the other ones, and after the second time of trying, keyed myself into my home for the next three days.
…The Hatters Hostel website photographer deserves some sort of award for misguiding photography. And possibly to be sued. I was expecting a fancy room, plush and cosy. I admittedly got quite a comfortable bed, but I also was given a TV that had been installed at an angle that meant I would need to be the girl from the Exorcist to watch it in comfort, a broken heater, no main light, no kettle, thin, pathetic towels…and a hell of a lot of noise. Here’s the thing about arriving, at 10.30pm on a Friday night, into a room on the first floor directly on top of a night club and opposite several other nightclubs: it is astonishingly, awe inspiringly, horrifyingly loud. The vibrations shuddered through the floor and up my legs, and my suspicions about the sturdiness of the walls were confirmed when I laid a hand on one of them and felt vibrations shuddering through the brickwork too. Some optimistic soul had put in double glazing on the one, sad looking window, but it was no good: the pounding music was coming up through the bare linoleum floor and in the cracks between said floor and the walls. Friends, I am not so proud as to deny that I had a bit of a disappointed sniffle as I sat on the edge of the bed in the cold, listening to four different nightclub bangers (that all had driving dubstep basses…they sadly didn’t even merge into one pleasing cross-rhythm beat) and trying to reassess my accommodation expectations. The reason for the massive tub of free ear plugs on the reception desk was becoming terribly, horribly clear. After a bolstering call to my parents where I let them know I’d arrived and tried to elicit some sympathy for the damp boombox situation in which I’d found myself (“Well go down to reception and ask if you can get another room then, sitting there moping at me isn’t doing anything”  is arguably the Scottish version of “Aw poor diddums” so I consider the sympathy bid a success) I mournfully trailed back to ground level and put on my best pleading puppy face. It was no good: there were no other free rooms for the whole weekend, he was very sorry, my heater should be warming up at any moment. (this was a lie. I am certain that I had no heating for the full three days.) I grimly stocked up on earplugs and, comforted with the paltry commiseration that the nightclubs shut at 1.30am, went back to my unappealing room. This was it, was it? This is what £264 got you for three nights in central Manchester? Bloody hell. Tried out the shower. It was cold. Went to bed and sulked. (To be fair, several Destiny’s Child and Britney Spears medleys later, the noise did mercifully stop at 1.30am. Which was just as well, as by that point I was fantasising about punching night clubbers.)
Day 1
My main reason for being in Manchester over the weekend was to attend a one-day writing course at the LGBT Foundation  - 2019 may be a year of me writing lots of things but there’s still not much time for writing “just for fun” so I was looking forward to writing anything I liked for a full day! I blearily made my way out of the hostel - glaring at anyone who looked like they might have been making noise six hours earlier - and headed off to the Foundation, stopping at the “park” (a few trees and a bit of squelchy grass does not a proper park make, Manchester) Cafe Nero on my way. This proved a wise move, as soya milk has not yet made it to the LGBT Foundation so I was sadly under caffeinated for the day…
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The LGBT Foundation 
The writing day itself was lovely; I enjoyed the chance just to spend time tapping away on my laptop, the other course members were friendly and the heating was on. The only real disaster was lunchtime, when I ordered rice at a nearby Asian to-go place and got noodles instead. I can’t eat noodles. Ended up eating random selections of snacks and showing people my noodles whilst saying sadly, “Look, they gave me noodles!” (Received a satisfactory amount of sympathy from all.) The LGBT Foundation staff were friendly and it’s great that there’s such an extensive support centre in the heart of the Gay Village…my only quibble about the building would be that it was surprising and disappointing to see they only offered Male or Female toilets and there was no mention anywhere of the additional “IAQ+” that I’m used to London folk using most of the time. It would be a real shame if Intersex/Asexual/Non-Binary/Gender Queer young people used the building and didn’t feel like they belonged, when just a few posters and different bathroom signs  would make the Foundation welcoming to absolutely everyone. (Alright, snowflake millennial moment over!)
After the course I headed over to HOME   - stopping off at Pizza Express on the way, where a chatty waitress asked me if I was an artist…I considered creating a new persona but in the end decided I didn’t have the energy - to see the Old Vic production of Wise Children. 
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Part of the HOME complex
Although I felt like some elements of the production jarred (why must new plays always include grim scenes of child abuse, incest and/or rape?) and the ending was just bizarre, I thoroughly enjoyed the onstage music and the breath-taking stage design…and the fact that I knew one of the cast members! Paul Hunter from Told By An Idiot didn’t look very different to when I worked with him on Get Happy in 2013 and it was great to see him in action, getting belly laughs from the whole audience as he strutted up and down the stage in full-blown comedic idiot mode.
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The brilliant stage design for Wise Children
Getting back to the hostel afterwards proved a little more difficult than anticipated due to a lost Uber driver and there being two Hatters Hostels (naturally I was delivered to the wrong one) but I eventually made it back to Purgatory Room and grimly waited out the Michael Jackson remixes coming through the walls by watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine clips with my head underneath the covers to retain warmth. By 1.20am I was passing the time by fantasising about how I was going to switch on both of my radiators in my London flat when I returned on Monday night and toast myself in front of the two of them until the heat was similar to Barbados in August.
Day 2
I groggily crashed out of the hotel at 11am with only one clear thought: CAFFEINE. Manchester decided to give me a true North of England experience: it was cold, grey, and miserably wet. I tried to find my cafe of choice with some urgency.
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Teacup Kitchen Cafe
Teacup Kitchen was recommended as a vegan cafe on Yelp. This, it turned out, was not wholly accurate. Some of their menu was vegan. Very little of their menu indeed was gluten free, but it turned out that that at least was easily rectified as they did have GF bread. As I had clearly stumbled into the Manchester equivalent of Shoreditch the decor was brutally bare, the music was loud and everyone was dressed in black so it was impossible to tell who were the waitstaff and who were just pretentious. (I found this very funny until I realised I was also dressed in all black, at which point I found it slightly less funny and instead wondered when it was exactly that London had turned me into such a hipster stereotype). 
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Note the bare light bulbs... 
I ordered poached eggs and avocado on toast, which, this being Northern Shoreditch, came with chilli flakes and raw onion for some reason. I pleaded for no onion but got it anyway, which led to some sad toilet trips later.
General Public Announcement: Food intolerances aren’t just fads, everyone!!!
Who would ruin a perfectly good avocado by dumping a whole load of onion on top of it anyway?! 
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Indignant with this most first world of first world problems, I paid an eye-watering £17.10 for what was essentially eggs on toast, a cup of tea and a juice (more expensive that Shoreditch?! Discuss)  and trudged out into the rain once more. …Then hopped into Forbidden Planet, because Forbidden Planet!! For the uninitiated, Forbidden Planet is a magical world of deep nerdy joy.  
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If a non-geek person would react to an object by saying, “Oh that’s from that show you like, isn’t it…that’s nice…?”, they probably have it. That being said, they did not have nearly enough Doctor Who or Tim Burton merchandise for my liking and after wandering around having fun spooking all the nervous looking nerdy teenage boys (A woman!!, I could practically hear them whisper amongst themselves. The last time we had one of them in here was in 2009! Darren still hasn’t recovered!!) I headed off to the John Rylands library.
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The (rather wet in this photo) John Rylands Library
Now, my understanding of the John Rylands library was that it was one, quite impressive, hall. This proved to be similar to saying that the Titanic was quite big. It was absolutely massive, with four or five main library spaces and lots of awe-inspiring  corridors and staircases in-between, many of which I am certain have been used in Harry Potter films. By pure good luck it was a great time to be visiting, as there were two really interesting exhibitions on about the role of women in literature and society in general. The Women in Manchester exhibition in particular was fascinating and gave a brief but vivid idea of how crucial the women of the city were both in the Suffragette movement itself and in protests before and afterwards. The “Historical Bathroom” is worth a visit too (if you’re as curious as I was about that description, it turned out to be a ladies bathroom that had been preserved exactly as it was when the library opened in the early 20th century. It was fully functioning but very draughty), as is the main Historic Library. 
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The magic of the building overall was, for me at any rate, slightly dimmed with the knowledge that it wasn’t actually very old at all, just built in the style of earlier buildings by late-era Victorians wistful for an earlier “Utopian” age of social harmony, unnerved as they were by the unrest and turbulence of the Industrial Age in which they found themselves. I’m sure that most infamous of old-school folk song collectors Cecil Sharp, for instance, would have been delighted by the righteous pomp of the marble statues and stuffy regal halls, the library a grand symbol of an age and an Empire already on the way out when the building first opened.
That said, the John Rylands library is still beautiful, impressive and well worth a trip - just allocate more time than I did! I finished off my visit with an organic cola (would not recommend) from the rather chilly open-plan cafe then tried to decide what to do next. My initial plan had been to go to the Museum of Manchester, but a quick check of their website brought up the unwelcome news that due to renovations the only section still open was “Fossils and Meteorites”, which was not a gallery that exactly filled me with unbound excitement. In the end I decided to go to the People’s Museum instead  - admittedly because it was only four minutes away and, after inevitably going the wrong way and walking round in circles for a bit scowling at Google Maps, I arrived at the brutalist museum in dire need of the loo and a plug socket for my fast-dying phone battery. 
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The rather damp looking People’s History Museum 
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They had both of those things, so we were already off to a good start when I guiltily ignored the “Use The Stairs, Save Our Environment!” sticker next to the lift and saved my aching legs the climb to the third floor. It became fairly clear very quickly that this was a museum where if you accidentally started the exhibition backwards everything was really quite confusing, but sadly that was what I somehow did on every single floor. (There are still some things that I’m puzzling over, and probably will be forever.) I also started off foolishly presuming that as I was on the 3rd floor I would be going chronologically back in time rather than forwards, but it turned out that there was no such clear organisational system in place for the exhibits: rather, photographs from the 1940s and propaganda posters from the 1880s rubbed shoulders in cheerful harmony. This only added to my overall confusion but gave a nice overall air of linear history being an unnecessary construct of our modern-day society. The writers of the Old Testament would have approved wholeheartedly!
The museum was truly fascinating, and quite shocking in how openly socialist-bordering-on-communist it was in its beliefs; lots of Karl Marx quotes on the walls and leftist liberal exhibit blurbs. I enjoyed it thoroughly -  particularly the excellent section about the Votes for Women movement - and was delighted to find the cafe offered a proper cuppa and gluten free biscuits. This was the life. The museum sadly shut at 5pm (as do many, many things in Manchester) so I was turfed out to wander the wet streets once more. After an accidental detour into a very posh outdoor dining area complete with more decorative lightbulbs than you could shake an over-priced mojito at, I arrived in China Town. My main aim was to get a good photo of the famous China Town arch, but as I achieved that in the first five minutes I decided to also do something else, whatever that might be. 
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China Town’s Arch
I’m not sure what I was expecting from China Town, but I was expecting it to be big; instead, unless there were lots of shops hiding from me, China Town was largely just a square - bizarrely, a square built round a car park - with maybe 20 or so shops… and then that was pretty much it. Those shops were wonderful though, and I loved being an unabashed tourist and wandering round a seafood place full of giant tanks of lobsters, supermarkets filled with cans of things you never thought to pickle but apparently are in fact pickle-able… pickled mango was an especially interesting concept… and gazing hungrily at the menus tacked up outside the many Chinese restaurants. (I had no luck. Very not Essa friendly indeed.) 
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Instead I settled for a bubble tea from Chatime. I made several bad decisions and ended up with an apple tea with little ball things (??? Tapioca??? Whatever it was they were suspiciously savoury and worryingly chewy) and rainbow jelly. I gave up halfway through as I could feel my teeth beginning to rot. 
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Diabetes in a cup. 
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Chatime 
After risking my life and health on some questionable 50p Asian sweets - they were covered in sugar and salt and my pathetic Western constitution decided it couldn’t quite cope with this final insult - I finished off my day out with a very nice sit watching the coloured fountain display in the “park” and then going off to somewhere I could confidently expect to be fed: Zizzi’s. 
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The very splooshy water fountains. 
...They may have fed me undercooked, over salted gluten free pasta, but it was gluten free pasta never the less, and I trooped back to the hostel fed and happy.
After attempting to write my journal in the communal kitchen next to a group of very noisy Italian twenty-somethings making a very complicated meal that seemed to need lots of loud chopping, banging and semi-regular cheering, I relocated to the communal lounge instead and turned up Royal Blood to eardrum-bursting volumes to drown out the horror film the other two sofa loungers were watching. By 11.30pm even loud rock wasn’t managing to drown out the film and I was beginning to suspect the heating had been switched off as it didn’t seem much warmer than my own little ice box of a room, so I waved the white flag of surrender and beetled off to watch YouTube under the covers once more. Would it be too much to hope that Sunday nights at least were fairly quiet here in nightclub land…? My heading to bed was foiled, however, by the fact that the key card to my room no longer worked. I trailed unhappily back down to the ground floor and explained the situation to an unsympathetic receptionist who said, “Oh it always does that for 104, just try it a few more times” without looking up from his computer. I explained through gritted teeth that I had been trying it for five minutes, thanks very much, and he reluctantly came with me to see what the problem was. I passed the journey by mentioning how my heater didn’t work. “Oh, that heater,” he said without a hint of irony. “Yeah it doesn’t work, it’s just for decoration.” Apparently my room was meant to be heated by a magical vent blowing warm air into the room. I said grumpily that it did not seem to be doing that at all. “Well, it’s 104,” he said with a shrug. “It’s always cold and the door never works. Dunno why, it’s really weird.” As I contemplated the fact that I HAD BEEN STAYING IN THE POLTERGEIST ROOM THIS WHOLE TIME he swiped me through with his master and left me in my Spectre Apartment. I lay in bed in the dark that night pretending very hard that I wasn’t the slightest bit unnerved and listening to the pounding bass coming through the walls (one stubborn nightclub somewhere in the middle distance was subjecting its patrons to Sunday night indie rock) until 1.30am blessedly rolled around and Geoffrey the Ghost and I managed to get some sleep.
Day 3   
By this point I was thoroughly sleep deprived and just generally over the whole staying-in-a-hostel thing, so it was with a happy song that I stuffed my belongings back into my suitcase. It was an uneventful exit from Hatters apart from one heart- stopping moment when a bit of the shower fell off at exactly the same second that the bathroom light went out (…It was just the timed light clicking off and me turning the wobbly thermostat wheel too firmly. But, hey -  let me tell you: when you’re standing there in the pitch dark, naked and alarmed, “ARGH!” is the defining first thought rather than “I’d better wave my arms and get the light to switch back on.) I strode out into the Manchester streets and decided that as I’d had an improvised breakfast of snack bars I didn’t really need anything else apart from a cup of tea, which I could probably get at Chetham’s Library. Second library of the trip, here I came!
After a significant amount of lost trundling, sometimes round in circles, my suitcase and I finally arrived at Chetham’s, which is situated next to a very nice but sadly throughly fenced-off park and an absolutely enormous museum about football. I sat on a little stone pillar, tried to enjoy the park’s water feature despite the massive fence and munched on fruit I’d bought from the nearby M&S (it had occurred to me that I hadn’t really had much in the way of fruit or vegetables since arriving in Manchester, which is possibly a true representation of the Northern diet but it did seem a shame to get scurvy on my weekend off). 
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The very picturesque park with a very large fence. 
It was all very nice but I needed the loo  - an ever present theme in my life - so I decided to get a move on and go see the Library. This is when my day went horribly wrong.
I had not, you see, realised that the Chetham’s Library  - unlike the Bodleian Library -  didn’t have anywhere for visitors to dump their suitcases. Worse, the grumpy security guard refused full-stop to let me take my suitcase anywhere near the building whatsoever. What was I meant to do, I asked him with quite poor grace. I had the suitcase. I wanted to go and see the library. Couldn’t he look after it in his little security hut? What if it had a bomb in it? I assured him there was no bomb. No. Absolutely not. I had a suspicious unidentified suitcase. Hadn’t I seen the news recently? Maybe I could see if the station across the road had lockers.
It was an unimpressed Essa that stomped into Manchester Victoria on the hunt for a locker. There were no lockers. The Information Centre might have been a useful place to ask for advice about what to do next, if it had been open. I went to the loo (always a good thing to do in a time of crisis, I find), stared suspiciously at a very creepy statue of a bee in a dress and decided that as I seemed to have found the busy hub of tram travel I might as well get on a tram.
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TRAM!!! I thought the trams were very exciting. 
 After trying to buy a tram ticket at a ticket machine for actual trains for an embarrassingly long amount of time I realised that the tram ticket machines were on the tram platforms and navigated the alarming open-track walkway to get to the right bit of the station. (Manchester runs its public transport system from the viewpoint that if you’re stupid enough to cross a walkway without looking left and right first you deserve to get mangled by a massive tram. I only nearly died once, which frankly is quite good for me all things considering.)
I bought my astonishingly cheap £1.40 one-way ticket, tried to tap my paper ticket on the machine for tapping in plastic travel cards and was puzzled for really an unacceptably long amount of time for a 23 year old before I figured out what was going on, and got on my first TRAM!! It tooted to another tram and I felt like I was living my best life. It would have been even nicer if the tram hadn’t smelt of weed and wee, but as most of Manchester seems to smell of weed and wee I accepted my fate. I realised I had previously been unfair on the “park” as we rumbled through it  - there were considerably more trees than I had first thought and the grass looked less mushy. I admired the greenery, noted with resignation that the tram was making me travel sick and then realised it was time to get off! In a…deserted dark tunnel…? I really don’t know what I did, but I found out later there was actually a legit way to exit the tram station, with proper doors and a little escalator and everything, and I most definitely did not do that. I ended up wandering around a tunnel, nearly getting run over at one point when a tram unexpectedly came round a corner (told you I’d nearly got mashed) and finally finished my mini underground journey by being spat out next to the taxi rank. After some seriously bemused searching I found the train station, only to decide that it was actually just too draughty a place to wait out out a few hours and marched down the hill towards the Costa…that was about an 8 minute walk from the Hostel I’d left with so much optimism several hours previously. Ha. Ha. Ha. Isn’t life funny. As I was meeting a friend at Manchester Piccadilly I decided to just call it quits, buy several random Costa snacks to create lunch and have a quiet few hours in the warm before having to heave my suitcase back up the hill to the station for 3pm. Who says I don’t know how to live a wild life…? 
After a very enjoyable catch-up I was back on the train and headed, feeling slightly battered, back to to noise and grime of Euston station. It had been quite the weekend, and I left still unsure of what I thought about Manchester. At times it had seemed ruggedly attractive, the several red-brick old buildings nestled in amongst all the mid-20th century concrete particularly eye-catching, and at times it had just seemed…wet. And a bit grey. 
The whole “bee mascot” thing has, to an outsider, been taken to a slightly unbelievably wild extreme - there were bees everywhere. On walls. On doors. In restaurant and shop logos. On mugs. On bags. On posters. Even on street bins. As someone who doesn’t particularly like bees, this was a bit unnerving.
On the whole, I did like Manchester - and I would certainly visit again, which says something in itself. 
Next stop: My mum and I’s trip to Berlin in April! Where should we visit? 
What Essa saw:
Manchester LGBT Foundation 
https://lgbt.foundation/ 
HOME Manchester 
https://homemcr.org/ 
Teacup Kitchen
https://teacupandcakes.com/
Forbidden Planet Manchester
https://www.facebook.com/fpmanchester/
The John Rylands Library (free entry)
https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/ 
The People’s History Museum (free entry)
https://phm.org.uk/
Manchester’s China Town
https://www.visitmanchester.com/things-to-see-and-do/chinatown-p275031
Where Essa stayed (but does not recommend):
https://hattershostels.com/manchester-hilton-chambers/ 
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childofthemoon86 · 6 years ago
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@francisandtheworldweek Day 3: Teaching each other to dance
Two Steps to Dance
Pairing: (pre)FrUk Characters: France, England, America, Gaul, Britannia. Rating: T for language Word count: 3509 Cross posted on FF.net Summary: France has a secret. A few in fact, but one of them is that he’s not a very good dancer. But that’s not going to stop him from stunning everyone with his move at the Dance Festival. He just needs someone to secretly teach him first. Time to pay England a visit…
“Absolutely not.” “Please Angleterre.” England huffed, angrily throwing down his needlepoint to glare at France. “Just what part of ‘no’ don’t you seem to get Frog?” France bit his lip in worry. Of all things, he was certain he’d never beg England of all people for help, but, here he is. He considers leaving, after all, it’s not like Arthur is the only one who could teach him. He could always ask Spain, Toni is bound to know how to teach him right? But if he goes to him, Toni will definitely tell Prussia about his eh, lack of skill, and then he’ll never hear the end of it. And he dare not ask America, lest he risk throwing out his back, or gaining some other painful injury. No, Francis sighs, anyone else he goes to is bound to turn him into a laughingstock for the next decade. So, as much as it pains him to have to ask England for anything, he’s the only one he can trust to teach him, because there’s no way Arthur would admit to being an expert. Dropping down onto the sofa next to the green eyed man, Francis pleads, “Come on Arthur, I really need your help.” Raising a bushy eyebrow at him, Arthur scoots back, putting as much distance between them as the three seater allows. “Why is it, every time I have a day off, you always turn up to ruin my day?” It takes a lot of self restraint for Francis not to snap at Arthur for being his usual unhelpful self. Or to tease him that if he didn’t what Francis to come visit, then why’d he never ask for the spare key to his house back. Arthur knows he has it, and it wasn’t like it was hard to steal. Instead, he forces himself to stay amicable. “I don’t always visit on your days off.” “No, you also feel the inexplicable need to bother me on your days off too.” Finally growing too annoyed, Francis snaps, “And why can’t you just do this one nice thing for me?” “Oh what sort of fool do you take me for?” England snaps back, glaring at Francis, “Do you honestly expect me to believe you, of all people, can’t dance?” “Please Angleterre, I’m begging you!” Francis cries, throwing himself onto the other man’s chest, “Teach me how to square dance!” Rather than answer him, Arthur twists around, swinging a leg up to kick France off of him, sending the man sprawling back over the arm of the other side of the couch. Why Francis expected any other reaction, even he’s not sure. He watch’s as Arthur angrily stands, but before he can storm out of the room, Francis lunges at him again, tumbling off the couch to grab England’s legs as he lies on the floor. “Pleassssse!” He continues to beg, fighting to keep a hold on Arthur while the other attempts to break free. “Let go Frog!” “No! Not until you agree to help me!” “What even makes you think I know how to square dance?” “I’ve seen you! Please, just teach meeeee!” “Oh for the love of-” Arthur growls, halting in his attempt to kick Francis off of him, “If I agree to help you, will you leave me alone?” Francis grinned happily up at him, putting on his best charm, “Oui, I promise I won’t bug you anymore. Just as soon as you teach me.” Huffing in barely contained contempt, England gives in. “Fine. Now let go of me.” Smiling wide at his success, France jumps to his feet, dusting himself off before looking expectantly to Arthur. “So, when do we begin?” “Well not in here, obviously. We’ll need to go somewhere with more space.” “Lead the way then.” Arthur sighs again, making this out to be such a hassle. Honestly, France wonders how this man enjoy’s anything besides arguing all the time. “Just why exactly do you want me to teach you? And why square dancing of all things?” Francis blinks in surprise, “You haven’t heard yet?” “Hear what?” Arthur looks highly suspicious, and suddenly things start to make sense to Francis. “Hasn’t Amérique messaged you yet?” Arthur frowns, looking around for his phone, “Probably. But it’s my day off, and I refuse to spend it going through the mindless drivel he sends me every twenty minutes.” That… is actually something France can agree on. The strange humour of the younger nations these days is beyond him. Finally England locates his phone, it having fallen off the coffee table during their scuffle, and starts to sift through all the messages from Alfred since yesterday. Francis comes over to help, raising an eyebrow at the number of ‘memes’ the boy seems to deem necessary to send. “What is ‘Big Mood’?” “Don’t ask.” Arthur sighs that long suffering sigh of a man given up on trying to understand. “Ah, this one!” Francis points, happy to find the right message, while Arthur frowns down at the one of dozens of annoying texts sent from the boy. Dudes check this out!!!! 👀👣👣🤩 url “I’m not clicking some random link from him.” England huffs, moving to just delete the text, but Francis beats him to it, opening the link. A second later and an annoyingly bright and flashy website fills the screen, proudly proclaiming Summer Dance Festival. “See?” Francis asks, scrolling down the page to the invite list and those already signed up. “What the?!” Arthur roared at seeing his own name listed, along with pretty much the rest of the world. “Why the hell-? Oh, when I get my hands on that boy!” Francis temporarily ignored, England furiously dialled America and, much to France’s amusement, noticed that Arthur has him on speed dial. Deciding it’s best to get out of England’s immediate striking range, Francis heads for the kitchen. While he busies himself with making tea, the sound of angry shouting filters through to him. “Alfred F. Jones, what the bloody hell do you think your playing at?!” … “Don’t you ‘hey dude me’!” … “…oh what ever gave you that idea?” … “…I sound upset do I?... No I’m furious! You-” … “Fun?! When have I ever-? …You didn’t consult-… oh and I suppose you have everyone else’s blessing for this?” … “That’s what I thought.” … “Good cause or not-! …Yes… No… Well now your just-… Argh! Fine!” The volume slowly decreases, and Francis smiles in wonderment at how Alfred can so easily convince Arthur. Perhaps he should ask him sometime… Tea made, France heads back into the living room to find Arthur resignedly slumped on his sofa once more, sighing into the phone. “Fine, fine. I’ll see you Sunday, but don’t expect me to like it.” Once he hangs up, Francis smiles softly and sits beside him, offering the tea in Arthur’s favourite mug to him. It’s times like this that Francis remembers just how well he knows Arthur. Without even thinking, he’d made Camomile tea just the way England likes it, knowing it’s the blonds go-to for de-stressing. He blinks out of his thoughts, sipping at his own drink, but still he can’t help but see the thankful glance Arthur sends him as he sighs into his tea. Moments like this are some of the few times things can actually be genuinely peaceful between them, and Francis wonders at his strange longing for more moments like these… He shakes himself out of such thoughts, setting his drink down and forcing himself to end the moment. “So?” He asks. “So?” Arthur parrots back. “The festival? You agreed?” “Well I can’t very well back out now can I? What sort of nation would I be to not turn up for a charity event.” He sighs, leaning back and holding his cup in his lap, “So this is why you want me to teach you square dancing?” “Oui, it is the main event.” “Alright. Well, we don’t have much time before Sunday, so you better be ready for a crash course.” He sighs again, though this time he sounds much calmer, a good sign for Francis, “Damn that boy. Why on Earth did he pick Cumberland Squares as the main dance?” France tries to hide his grin as he thinks to himself, probably because he knew picking one of your dances would make you more likely to turn up. Suddenly sitting up, Arthur turns to Francis and frowns, “Alright now shoo.” “Eh?” “Go on, get out. I now have to go arrange somethings, and I can’t have you under foot all day, so get!” “What am I to you, a cat?” “No,” Arthur smirks cheekily, “cat’s are useful.” X “Arthur?” Francis called quietly as he entered the lobby. When Arthur said he’d find a place for them to practice, he didn’t actually think he’d get a dance hall for them. “Hello there, can I help you?” The receptionist asks at seeing him looking lost. Switching on the charm, Francis smiles warmly as he walks over, “Oui, I am supposed to be meeting someone here today. Do you know if Arthur Kirkland is here yet?” The woman blinks, them smiles back, “Oh, you must be the last one then. Mr. Kirkland is in Hall B with the others.” Francis nods, thanking her before wandering off to find England, while also wondering what she meant by ‘the others’. He soon finds out however, when he enters hall B, finding Arthur along with six other humans milling about. “Arthur?” He asks curiously as he walks in. “Finally. Your late.” Is the first thing England says to him, before calling out to the room, “Alright, places everyone.” Francis is starting to feel a bit out of his depth as like a switch being flipped, everyone moves at once. He watches as they form three pairs and stand like a square; two pairs facing each other one way, and the other facing Arthur the opposite way. Impatiently, Arthur looks over at Francis, raising an eyebrow at him, “Well? Are you coming?” Slowly, Francis makes his way over to Arthur’s side, guessing that he’s going to be paired with him, and Arthur quickly shoves him to stand on his right. Once at his side, Arthur turns to address the group. “Everyone, this is the Frog I mentioned, Francis. Frog, this is the Two Sisters Dance Troupe. They kindly agreed to help your sorry arse out, so be grateful.” Despite Arthur’s sour attitude, none of the dancers seem put off by it, in fact, a few of them seem more amused than anything. The first to introduce themselves is a short blond girl to Arthur’s left. “Hi! I’m Sindy and this here’s my boyfriend Markus.” She beams, hugging the taller teens arm. “That there’s my big sis Clara and our cousin Jamie.” She continues, pointing to the pair at Francis’s right. “And the last two here are Yasmine and Sonya!” She ends, indicating the pair of young women across from Francis and Arthur. “Bonjour.” He nods to the group, relaxing more as he sees how easy going they all seem. “Yes, yes,” Arthur huffs moodily, “We don’t have all day, so let’s get started. Try to keep up Frog.” He then glares pointedly, “And if you step on my toes, we’re done, got it?” “Oui.” Francis winks, smiling when Sindy and Yasmine giggle at the act, making Arthur grow flustered. “Good. We’ll go through the step slowly first, then try the full thing with music later, got it?” “Anything you say mon cher.” Arthur glares at the pet name, no doubt suspecting Francis is acting up for the groups amusement, but begins anyway. “Well then, first thing you need to know for the Cumberland Squares Frog, is we have top couples; those who have their front or back to the music, and side couples; those who have their side to the music. So Markus and James are top pairs, we and Yasmine make up the side pairs. We’re doing it this way so you can see the moves before trying them, and also because those two have a male/female paring, makes it easier to demonstrate with. Now this dance works in a sequence of Tops, then Sides copy, Tops repeat, then Sides again, get it?” Arthur explains. “Oui, I think I follow so far.” “Good, then let’s try the first part. Tops face each other in an elongated pose side on.” Arthur orders and Francis watches as the two pairs turn, spreading their arms out wide and clasping hands. “Now the guys slide back to back for eight, then back again with the girls back to back. Go.” Just like that the pairs are off, side stepping toward the centre, Markus and James pass back to back just like Arthur said, all while the two ladies and Arthur clap to maintain a rhythm, with Arthur counting out the timing. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and back, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and stop. Good, then when they return to home, we Side pairs do the same.” Francis blinks, jumping to face Arthur, surprised that the other man isn’t putting up any protest at holding hands. But Francis becomes so distracted with this that he fails to keep up with the sudden movement, resulting in Arthur half dragging him for the first few steps before he forces himself to pay attention to his feet. With Arthur taking the lead, Francis Just has to follow along with his moves. It should be easy, but no matter how hard he tries to focus, the feeling of Arthur’s hands in his and how close their bodies are is just too distracting. The trip was inevitable. Francis isn’t exactly a bad dancer per-say, he’s taken part in plenty of court dances in the past, but now it’s like he has two left feet as he stumbles over himself and tumbles to the ground, almost bringing England down with him. “For God’s sake!” Arthur grumbles as he catches himself, cheeks oddly tinted pink, “Can’t you at least try to have some semblance of coordination?” “Sorry, Sorry!” Quickly jumping to his feet, Francis rejoins hands with Arthur, and they restart the move. Thankfully for both their dignities, Francis is at least able to focus long enough to follow the steps through without falling again. “Right,” Arthur huffs, stepping back slightly from Francis, “Next part is the right and left hand stars. Pretty simple, top couples step into the centre, raising their right hands first to touch at a point in the middle, and then do eight walks to the right, then back again with left hands to the left. Go.” Carefully Francis watches as the pairs move just like Arthur said, this time also clapping along to the beat. “…2, 3, 4, 5, 6 And left hands, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and back to home. Then side couples.” Taking the cue, Francis moves in, raising his right hand up to join the star and walk the circle. This one, he’s happy to do without trouble. “Good, now the next part is the most difficult of the dance, so pay attention frog.” Arthur glares pointedly at him again, before going on to explain, “This part is called the Basket or The Helicopter. First top couples move in to a tight circle in the middle, then the guys link hands behind the ladies waists, and the ladies hold on at the shoulders for grip. Next we do what’s called a heel and toe polka. Place the right foot forward and put your weight on it, then do a cross step to the right. The point of this move is to spin fast enough to lift the ladies feet off the ground as you spin for eight. Then when you finish, guys make sure to keep a hold of your partner so no one goes flying. Now go.” Francis blinks, Arthur wasn’t kidding when he said this part was complicated. The others make it look easy as they rotate, Markus and James easily lifting Sindy and Clara up, their feet swinging out behind them to Arthur’s counting. They separate and return to base, making room for Francis and Arthur to join Yasmine and Sonya in the middle. As Arthur clasps his hand with Yasmine at Francis’s waist and Francis is forced to hold onto the blonds shoulder, he becomes hyper aware of just how close Arthur is. Heat rushes to his face of it’s own accord, and dread fills him as he just knows he’s going to mess this up. There’s no way he can concentrate like this. The deep frown remains on Arthur’s face as he begins counting, and immediately Francis loses all sense of footing, tripping into Yasmine and breaking the circle apart, this time, actually pulling Arthur down too. “God damn it Frog!” England roars, face red as he pushes Francis off of him. “Why don’t we take a break?” Sonya suggests before a fight can start. Without a word Arthur storms out, leaving Francis bewildered on the floor. As soon as he’s gone though, Sindy grins wide and laughs, “Ha! Toooooold you~ Pay up Jamie!” France watches in confusion as the lanky teen sighs, before going over to the bags in the corner and fishing out a £20 note to hand to his cousin. “Don’t worry about them.” Clara smiles, offering Francis a hand up. “They made a bet?” “Yeah,” she nods slowly, shifting from foot to foot. “Am I really that bad?” Fran sighs. “Oh no, it’s not that! Well, I mean, your not great, but not terrible! Just…” She trails off, seeming unsure if she should really be talking about this. “Just?” He presses, but Sindy jumps in before she can answer. “So when’s the wedding?” “Sindy!” Clara cries in shock, slapping a hand over her sisters mouth. “Oh don’t be so prude.” Sonya huffs, rolling her eyes at the pair. “It’s plain as day for anyone to see,” she turns to look up at Francis, “You like Mr. Kirkland right? He sure likes you.” “Eh?” Francis balks, shocked at the suggestion. “Don’t play dumb! You like him~” Sindy sings from behind her sisters hand. “Non, Non, you’ve got it all wrong! We’re just…” Francis tries to explain, but finds himself unsure what to say. Just what is England to him? A friend? Enemy? Occasional drunken night fling, forgotten by the morning? He’s always tried to avoid labelling their relationship, it’s just too complicated for him to think about. And he always thought he and Arthur had an unspoken agreement never to discuss, well, them. But how does he go explaining that to a bunch of young humans? “Here,” Yasmine suddenly says, bringing Francis out of his spiralling thoughts, “Let’s do a test. Pair with me, Sonya, you go with James. Let’s run through the Basket again.” Francis thinks he knows what they’re up to, and the logical part of him is screaming at him not to do it. You don’t want to know the answer, it’ll only make things more complicated than they already are! But, he’s always been a man to be ruled by his heart over his head, and his hearts telling him to go along with them. It’s just like his head was warning him, he does the move perfectly, no distraction to be found. Yasmine beams, voicing what Francis has dread being true, “You like Mr. Kirkland. That’s why you’ve been messing up.” “And he likes you~” Sindy pipes up again. This is suddenly all too much for Francis to reconcile with. After centuries of skirting around each other and denying his feelings, to have a group of kids telling him the truth he’s tried so hard to avoid… He needs air. As he rushes out, an old, long forgotten memory flutters back to him. X The sea breeze ruffled Francis’s hair as he held his mothers hand, following her to the small settlement ahead. There, they met up with a woman with hair like fire, and the fiercest green eyes he’d ever seen, carrying a bundle of cloth nestled in her arms. She’d be scary, if it weren’t for the warm smile she shared with his mother. “Gaul,” the woman sighs tiredly, “you came.” “Anything for you Britannia dear.” His mother smiles. The woman, Britannia, then turned to him, and smiled, “You must be Francis. Look, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Her eyes were soft as she kneeled down, holding out the cloth bundle to him. And in it he saw a  sleeping baby, an infant no more than a few days old, but instinctively Francis could tell he was just like them. And when those bright green eyes opened at him for the first time, Francis instantly fell in love. And he’s been in love ever since… X As he bursts out the lobby, Francis halts on the steps to the street, coming face to face with those very same eyes. He takes a deep breath and steps forward. Moment of truth…
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awol-newt · 6 years ago
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they call this battle fatigue
Rating: Teen (for language) Fandom: Wynonna Earp Summary: They’re all so tired. This battle fatigue or operational exhaustion or whatever you want to call it these days. It’s the same thing, right? Or at least the same end result? Anguish, suffering, nightmares, loneliness. Hurt.
Character introspection.
Post-3x05.
jeremy.
‘Pack up your science shit, Chetri. You don’t get to be a part of this anymore.’
‘It’s easier to blame me than the dead dragon, right?’
They call this shell shock. Battle fatigue. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
He’s seen it before. In other Black Badge agents. In Dolls. In himself.
There isn’t anything quite like survivor’s guilt, he knows. Or surviving a car crash that kills everybody in your family but you. There’s more blame to go around than you know what to do with, so most of it is turned inward. Of course, it manifests outwardly in different ways.
Hostility. Depression. Pain turned outward inasmuch as it is turned upon oneself. Physically, mentally, emotionally. It’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to break.
He should know.
Maybe it isn’t exactly battle fatigue, but they are fighting a war and lately, it feels like they’re on the losing side. The bombardment of one thing after the next is getting to them all.
They’re all hurting. They all have their scars.
Even him. Especially him, maybe. Because he knew. He knew and he couldn’t save Dolls no matter how hard he tried. And then he stayed away while Jolene ripped his family apart because he was too afraid to think that maybe he doesn’t belong here after all.
Jeremy is tired. And maybe the toll of this war has revealed to him and everybody else that he doesn’t quite fit right. That he won’t ever and that it isn’t a redeeming quality anymore not to fit.
The thought hurts.
-
doc.
There was not a word back then. A word to describe the tremor in his hands, the fear that closes his throat and makes it hard to breathe. The nightmares that startled him awake with fire still singeing the hairs of his neck and the smell of brimstone and blood still burning his nose. The hurt that encourages such reckless behavior as taunting the demon Clootie and worse, listening to him in the first place.
Jeremy refers to his ailment as post-traumatic stress disorder. Battle fatigue, he said it was called mid-century and shell shock during the time before that. He used the Wikipedia and another website on the World Wide Web called WebMD.
What he read was nothing new. He knows a man is changed by certain encounters. Death is never cheap, after all. But hurt sharpens the tongue. It brings out the worst of man to the fore and makes him do and say that which he will surely regret come next sunrise.
He remembers his words. Dismissive and terrible words spat at the one person who believed in him first. The first person to think him good and honest since the early days of his rides with Wyatt Earp.
He is tired, and as sure as he is now that he would burn for an eternity to protect those girls, he is so very exhausted from these battles. He is so very tired of hurting the ones he loves. Wyatt, Kate, Waverly, Wynonna. Nicole, Jeremy.
Dolls.
He is tired but he will not rest until Bulshar is in the ground with that harlot Jolene who tried to destroy the one good thing he seems to have found in this lifetime.
Do not mess with a man’s family.
-
wynonna.
‘Half-sister.’
Half-sister. Low fucking blow, Wynonna.
Agitation, irritability, mistrust. The self-destructive behavior is par for the course with a name like Earp, but damn it all to hell when she takes it out on her baby sister. Her sister who means more to her than anybody or anything else in the world.
Yeah. Sure. Battle fatigue.
She’s had enough damn trauma in her life to make any shrink into a millionaire with all the therapy she needs.
Half-sister. Damn it, Earp.
Except it wasn’t all Jolene’s delicious, tripping brownies. She knows it wasn’t. Because the thoughts were there, buried deep and only pried to the surface by the psychotic bitch.
Sometimes it sucks to try to separate the lies from the truth. She’s got years of experience with the former, and everybody who’s got a brain knows that the best lie always has a morsel of truth. That’s how you hurt them the most.
She’s tired.
Tired of being the screw-up. Of screwing up everybody else’s lives. She dragged Waverly into this shitshow — never mind her pre-existing murder wall and weird love of dead languages that only show up in grimoires and other creepy books that Wynonna doesn’t understand. First Waverly and then Nicole. And now Dolls is dead and what’s left?
Guilt. Pain. Sadness.
Just one more strike against the good ol’ name of Wynonna Earp.
Fuck, she’s tired.
-
nicole.
She said things and did things. She doesn’t know what was real and what was—
Was it all Jolene? Was it all her?
The things she said weren’t all that wrong and she knows it and Waverly knows it; she can’t take those things back. She shouldn’t. Not if they want to keep moving forward.
It wasn’t the words that hurt.
(Hurt them both.)
It’s how they were said. Harsh and scathing and with a physicality that Nicole has never embodied before with Waverly. Not like that. Not in a way that meant to shut her down and shut her out. In a way to make her feel broken and alone.
She’s tired of others getting hurt. She’s tired of seeing her own self-doubt reflected in Waverly’s eyes just because she’s said goodbye more than once.
Nicole knows. She knows she was ready to throw in the towel on that cliffside where Dolls died protecting them all. She also knows that it hasn’t been the first time that she’s been willing to let go.
Willing to let go for Wynonna. For Waverly. For this found family that has accepted her and loved her.
Nicole isn’t tired of the fight. It isn’t battle fatigue. Not yet. Survivor’s guilt, maybe. Nightmares, sure. She’s okay, though. She can keep fighting. She wants to keep fighting. For her family.
Still. Sometimes there’s a difference between letting go and giving up. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to save the people you love.
But damn it if she isn’t frigging tired of people making Waverly cry. Herself included.
Step one: balloons and flowers and stuffed animals. Step two: Apologize and talk. Step three? Whatever Waverly wants and needs.
-
waverly.
Waverly is tired.
She is tired of hurting. Of watching others hurt. Because of this knob-gobbling curse. Because of her.
She’s tired of her friends, her family, giving up and giving in. Waverly is tired.
Because she’s seen it in Jeremy’s eyes. In Doc’s and Wynonna’s.
In Nicole’s.
This battle fatigue or operational exhaustion or whatever you want to call it these days. It’s the same thing, right? Or at least the same end result?
Anguish, suffering, nightmares, loneliness. Hurt.
She’s tired of raising more questions and more distress with her very existence. She’s tired and Jolene knew that. The demon bitch stripped her of her confidence, made her believe that she was alone and unwanted and unloved.
And it made her realize something.
She’s tired of feeling tired.
The self-doubt, the questioning, the accompanying depression and anxiety — it’s there and it’s a fackin’ liar. And that realization isn’t enough to disperse those thoughts and those doubts. It doesn’t wipe the slate clean. But it does mean something.
The war isn’t lost.
Because Waverly remembers. She knows.
Families fight; it doesn’t mean they stop loving each other. Waverly is loved. She has something to give them in return.
She’s here. She is here. She stays. She loves them back and never, never, never gives up on them.
It’s time to wake up now.
-
i’m running from nothing, no thoughts in my mind oh my heart was all black but I saw something shine thought that part was yours, but it might just be mine i could share it with you, if you gave me the time i’m all bloody knuckles, longing for home if it weren’t for second chances, we’d all be alone - ‘second chances’ by gregory alan isakov
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lirlovesfic · 6 years ago
Text
The Choice
A Doctor Who fanfic Summary: After GitF, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey back to the estate to solve a problem involving the TARDIS herself. But when they see a familiar face, the face of someone who should not exist, they realize the problem is deeper than they thought and could endanger the Doctor’s very existence. Primary characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler. Genres: Romance, mystery, adventure, drama, character study, HN AU, fobbed!Nine, sick TARDIS. Pairings: Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose Rating: Adult
Warning: None for this chapter
a/n: I am currently working on editing this chapter-by-chapter, with the hopes of completing a chapter a day until I catch up with myself. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m doing it to try to get back into the swing of writing and to build some momentum in order to finish this. Also, there have been some tiny things nagging at me for a while (grammar, punctuation, etc.) so I’ll be correcting as many of them as I can find as I go. The story will not change. In fact, most of the changes are going to be so minor that I doubt anyone (besides myself) will notice. But to keep me on target, I’ll be posting it all here as I go, with links to the other websites it’s on. I hope you enjoy it.
This chapter: on AO3, on TSP, on ffnet
Chapter One—London, 7 July 2007
Present day…
Long blonde hair. Big brown eyes. A generous mouth…
John woke with a start to the sound of screaming coming from outside his window. Curses were being hurled back and forth, or maybe they were being volleyed. It was almost like a tennis match.
The neighbors were rowing again. There was always someone rowing in this block of flats. This time it was the unmarried couple, Rita and Chuck, two over and one down.
He tried to get back to sleep, to recapture the elusive dream. He dreamt about a lot of things ever since he’d woken up in the alley on New Year’s. His dreams were strange and bizarre, all about alien planets and stars, about fire and war, about the color blue and gigantic pepper pots of all things. But he mostly dreamt about the girl. The girl’s face haunted him, both when he was asleep and awake. He still didn’t properly remember anything, not even his real name, but the girl—the girl was the closest to an actual memory as he came. Maybe he knew her from somewhere. He couldn’t quite recall what she looked like when he was awake—just had a vague impression of blonde hair and big, expressive eyes—but he could when he was sleeping. Her face was clearest to him in dreams. With thoughts of her, he began to drift off…
Rita let out a string of expletives in a variety of languages, and John was jerked awake again. For a second, as Rita shouted, he wondered if she had been in the navy. That was the only possible way she could have learned a few of those words, and how to pronounce them in exactly that way. She even used the right syntax.
John groaned as he glanced over at the clock. Half four in the morning. Too early for him to get up. Too early in fact for them to be up. They were never up before eleven. This must be the tail end of whatever had been going on between them last night.
There was a lull in the arguing. Thanking all the gods of the Greek pantheon, he pulled the pillow back over his head and tried to get back to sleep again. A fool’s errand, he realized, as Rita almost immediately began to swear again. That was followed by a loud crash. Soup pot against something hard and probably breakable by the sound of it. Not the window. That would have shattered. This was either the drywall or perhaps the door. The doors in this block of flats were thin, easily broken, particularly the interior doors. And as part-time maintenance man in return for a reduction in the rent, he’d probably be the one who’d have to fix it.
With a heavy sigh, he hauled himself out of bed, slipped on his jeans and a lightweight jumper, and headed out the door.
A crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle. There were people everywhere: on the balcony, on the landing, in the courtyard, even on the balconies of the other buildings.
“This is better than last night’s EastEnders,” he heard someone say as he headed down the stairs to the floor below.
“What isn’t?” someone else replied. “Last night’s episode was horrible.”
With an eye roll, John pushed his way through the crowd to the arguing couple. Rita was standing in the doorway to her flat, clad only in a thigh-length T-shirt and fuzzy slippers, while Chuck, standing against the railing, was dressed in a buttoned down shirt, jeans, and some sort of high-priced trainers. As John drew close to them, he got a whiff of cigarettes and stale beer coming from Chuck’s general direction.
“Oi!” he shouted. “Knock it off!” At the sound of his voice, the arguing couple both quieted for a moment, almost as if they hadn’t realized they were the center of a spectacle. “Rita, Chuck, I’ll thank you to save the domestics for a reasonable hour. Other people have to get up in the morning.”
Rita tossed her long, black hair over her shoulder. “John,” she said. “That… that…” Her dark brown eyes flashed angrily as she gestured at her boyfriend. She slipped into Spanish, as she often did when upset. “Este pinche hijo de puta que no vale nada esta dentrando a las cuatro de la mañana y el cabron ni tiene la dignidad que dar una buena escusa.” She became more and more animated as she spoke. “¡Estoy segura que esta cogiendo una puta por ay!” She looked at her boyfriend in disgust. “Su verga ni esta tan grande para que todas estas putas se tiren en su camino.”
“Más despacio, por favor,” John replied in fluent and unaccented Spanish. “And in English this time. My Spanish is a bit rusty.”
“This… piece of shit… has been shagging the waitresses down at the pub, I’m sure of it,” she spat. “Then the bloody wanker has the nerve to come back here—at 4 am—and tell me it’s all in my mind!”
John turned to Chuck, a young man whose pointed nose and greasy brown hair made him look a bit like a weasel. “Is this true? You been sleepin’ around on her?”
“Yes, it is!” Rita interjected before Chuck could answer. “But why they’d bother with him, I have no idea. The son of a bitch can’t even get it up half the time.”
“Shut up, you slag!” he yelled. He lunged at her, and John caught him with one hand.
“Knock it off!” John ordered. Then he pulled a face as he caught a whiff of more than just beer and cigarettes. “What is that smell?” He took a big sniff and grimaced. “You definitely need a shower, for one thing. And for the second, unless you’ve taken to wearing women’s perfume, she’s right.”
Chuck shook John’s hand off his shoulder. “You’ve got it all wrong…” His voice trailed off and he didn’t continue.
John raised an eyebrow. “Seriously. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’ That’s what you’re goin’ with?” He tapped his nose. “If there’s one thing this nose is good for, it’s smellin’ shite, and I’m smellin’ it now. And as for you,” he said, turning back to Rita, “I don’t know why you put up with him. If I were you, instead of throwing pots against the door, I’d be throwing his stuff out into the courtyard.”
“She can’t do that!” Chuck protested.
“Oi! I’m talking here!” John said to him. He turned back to Rita. “I’d toss him and his sorry arse out onto the street. You shouldn’t put up with that kind of behavior.”
“He’s right,” said an old woman who lived next door. She was wearing a floor-length dressing gown patterned with sunflowers, and her snow white hair was pinned up in pin curls. “I threw my second husband out for that and never looked back. Or was it my third…”
“It was your third, Gladys,” her sister answered. She was dressed almost identically in a floral dressing gown, only hers had daisies. She wore her steel grey hair loose around her shoulders. “Remember? He was the one who you told me always ate crisps in bed.”
“You’re right, Irene,” Gladys answered. “My second one was the one who—”
“Anyway,” John interjected before the women could continue to reminisce. “You,” he pointed to Chuck, “shut the hell up and find somewhere else to be, and you,” he pointed to Rita, “stop yelling and throwing things. And the rest of you lot, go back to your flats. I’m headed back to bed, and I don’t want to hear another word out of any of you.”
He glared at the crowd for good measure, and slowly they trailed off. With another glare at Rita and Chuck, John returned to his own flat.
Back in his bedroom, he stripped down to vest and pants and crawled back into bed. But after tossing and turning for almost half an hour he finally gave up, sleep having proved elusive after the confrontation. Damn, he thought with resignation. Might as well get up.
As he toweled off in the tiny bathroom after showering, out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of an unfamiliar figure in the small mirror above the sink. Startled, his heart pounded with the surge of adrenalin at the sight of a stranger in his flat. He momentarily froze, then slowly turned to face the intruder head on. The image in the mirror turned with him.
John snorted and rolled his eyes. It was his own reflection.
“You’re definitely losin’ it,” he said to his reflection.
He frowned and leaned forward, scrutinizing his appearance. For a split second, when he’d emerged from the shower he had expected to see a different face reflected in the glass. Older, wizened—no, younger, perhaps, with dark, curling locks. But no. His own steely-blue eyes stared back at him as he examined a largish nose and oversized ears partially covered by straight-as-a-brick dark hair. No curls here.
He ran a hand over his cheeks and chin, feeling the prickles of what, if he left it alone, would undoubtedly turn into a thick beard. For a moment, he considered shaving and then decided against it. Why bother, he thought. He had just shaved yesterday. Or perhaps it was the day before. No matter. Besides, no one cared what he looked like. Not even him.
He returned to the bedroom. As he dressed, this time in a denim work shirt rather than a jumper, his eye caught the sketchpad that he kept on the bedside table. He’d been trying to record images of his dreams, to see if by analyzing them he could somehow trigger his memories, but so far it hadn’t helped. Instead of clues to his past, the notebook was filled with rough sketches of metal men and spaceships and disjointed, unfamiliar faces.
But by far, the most common image was of the blonde girl.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up the sketchpad and a pencil and began to work on the drawing he had started the day before.
Long blonde hair, big brown eyes, a wide smile…
Her nose. He couldn’t quite remember what her nose looked like. Cute, he thought. Feminine. Nothing like the hawkish beak he’d been born with.
He sketched in a smallish nose. Dissatisfied with the results, he erased and began again. Still not right. He frowned. Maybe work on her ears. Her ears… smallish, well, smaller than his at any rate. Then again, whose weren’t?
And for the next two hours he worked on a sketch of a girl he couldn’t remember ever having met before. But a girl, if she was real, who could possibly hold the key to whoever he was.
~oOo~
Mickey Smith sat on the jump seat in the TARDIS control room watching the Doctor at the mushroom shaped console in the center of the room. He was programming in their next destination: an alien planet, he had promised. One with a purple sky and green clouds and the best food this side of the galaxy. It might have been interesting, if he hadn’t been talking about it for fifteen minutes straight without taking a breath.
Bored with listening to his rambling monologue, Mickey glanced over at Rose. She stood nearby, leaning against one of the coral struts that stretched from the floor to the arching ceiling high overhead. Her arms were crossed, face carefully schooled to be completely expressionless. Having known her since childhood, and even dated her for a short time, Mickey knew that expression well. She was upset. But not the kind of upset that would result in a row. No, she was hurt. And he knew exactly why.
Ever since they had left the spaceship that had held portals to eighteenth century France, the tension between the Doctor and Rose had been so thick you could cut it with a knife. Oh, they were both ignoring it, pretending it didn’t exist, but neither of them were fooling him, or each other.
“Rose,” the Doctor said, “come here for a moment.” As she moved to stand next to him, he gestured at the controls in front of her. “Hold this button down while I begin the materialization process.”
With a small nod she silently obeyed.
Mickey wished she’d just yell, slap him, throw things… just something, anything rather than being quiet like this. This wasn’t the Rose Tyler he knew.
Oh, this is bad, he thought. The last time he had seen her at this way was…
The TARDIS gave a sudden lurch and an ominous sounding bell began to toll. Its deep bong bong bong echoed through the TARDIS so loudly that Mickey could feel the reverberations in his bones. The Doctor lunged at the controls, and Mickey saw something on the Doctor’s face he had never seen before: panic.
“What? What is it? What’s goin’ on?” he shouted.
“Somethin’ bad, Mick,” Rose shouted back.
“That’s the Cloister Bell. Only rings in dire circumstances. Looks like we’re gonna have to put off your visit to the Rhomulian cluster a little bit longer,” the Doctor said loudly, trying to be heard over the sound of the bell.
The TARDIS shook violently and jerked to a sudden stop. Rose and the Doctor, who had been hanging onto handholds built into the control panels, were thrown against the console. Mickey hurriedly grabbed onto the edge of the seat, barely preventing himself being flung to the floor.
The Doctor and Rose rushed out the TARDIS door. Mickey followed close behind. He bumped into Rose who had stopped short only a foot outside the doorway. Behind them, the Cloister Bell fell silent.
The TARDIS had landed on the pavement of a deserted city street. Its back was flush against a tall graffiti-covered fence that surrounded a dilapidated building. Across the street was a vacant lot, filled with weeds, abandoned car parts, empty beer cans, and other, less appealing things. Tall concrete buildings less than a block away loomed overhead, dominating the skyline to their right. In the distance, they could hear the sounds of city traffic and of a radio blaring rock music.
“Is this some sorta joke?” Mickey asked.
“We’re on the Estate,” Rose exclaimed in disbelief. “What are we doing here?”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor answered. He was walking around in a circle, staring in puzzlement at their surroundings. “And this is no joke. The Cloister Bell doesn’t ring for no reason.”
“Well, it looks pretty peaceful to me,” Mickey said. “No plastic people walking the street, no alien ships overhead. So where’s the big emergency?”
“I don’t know!” the Doctor snapped. He turned and stalked back into the TARDIS. Rose shrugged, and she and Mickey followed him.
Inside, the Doctor was squinting at a display screen on the console. It was covered with the circles and other geometric shapes that Mickey knew was the written form of the Doctor’s own language. Muttering under his breath, the Doctor pulled his glasses out of a pocket and put them on. He shook his head.
“I don’t get it. The TARDIS says that the emergency is here, in this place and time, and what’s more, involves the TARDIS herself.” He moved closer to the screen and his forehead furrowed. “And me,” he said in surprise. He took off his glasses, shoved them back in his pocket and turned to them.
“Well, we can’t leave here until we figure out what’s going on,” he said irritably. “Rose, why don’t you and Mickey look around a little, see if there’s anything going on out there while I examine the TARDIS a bit more.”
Rose stared at him for a moment and then bit her lower lip, a gesture Mickey recognized as meaning she was nervous, but he couldn’t imagine why: they were on the Estate.
Then the penny dropped.
“You’re leavin’ us here, aren’t you?” he accused. “Just like you did with Sarah Jane. You’re tryin’ to trick us into leavin’ the TARDIS, and then you’re just gonna take off.”
The Doctor’s jaw dropped. He gaped at them. “Is that what you think?” He turned to Rose. “Both of you? You think this is just some ploy to abandon you here?” Rose didn’t answer. “But I told you…” His voice trailed off as he stared at her. “I am not leaving you behind. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t,” that part was accompanied by a shake of his finger at both of them, “I wouldn’t be able to, because with the TARDIS in the state she’s in, she wouldn’t take off anyway.”
He fell silent. He searched Rose’s face and looked troubled at what he found there. “Mickey, would you excuse us for a minute, please?”
Mickey looked at Rose for confirmation. She nodded. As he left he caught snatches of their conversation.
“Honestly, Rose, how could you think—”
“Seriously? How could I think anything else after you—”
Evidently he had been wrong, Mickey thought. They were going to row.
With a small smirk of satisfaction, Mickey shut the door behind him to give them some privacy.
~oOo~
When Rose left the TARDIS a few minutes later, Mickey was waiting for her.
“So?” he prompted.
She didn’t answer. Instead she stalked off down the street. Mickey had to jog to catch up with her.
“What happened?” he asked. “What did he say?”
“Don’t want to talk about it,” she told him shortly. She didn’t look at him. “Just need to get out of there for a bit.”
“This isn’t the way to your mum’s,” he said. “And it’s not the way to my flat either. So where are we headed?”
“I… I don’t know,” she said. She came to a stop and turned to him. “I don’t want to face Mum right now, and I don’t want to go back to the TARDIS either.”
“All right,” he said slowly. “I have an idea. He was gonna take us to eat, and he didn’t. Let’s go ourselves then. Leave him here to do… whatever the hell he doin’ in there.”
“Mick…” Rose said. “I’m not really hungry.”
“Well, I am,” he told her. “So we’re goin’.” And with that, he took her arm and pulled her down the street.
Ten minutes later they were sitting at a small table at the back of Mickey’s favorite pub on the Estate, a table they had been very lucky to get. When they had arrived, they had discovered it was Saturday at lunchtime and the place was packed. As was typical, on the telly over the bar there was a game on, but for once Mickey wasn’t trying to keep sight of it. Instead, unlike every time they had gone to the pub while they had been dating, he was entirely focused on Rose.
“Honestly, Rose, I don’t know why you let him treat you like that,” he said.
“He doesn’t treat me any different than anyone else,” she told him.
“And that’s part of the problem. He should,” Mickey said. “Besides, he didn’t treat that fancy French bint that way.”
“He had to save her,” she said. “This is what he does.”
At this Mickey rolled his eyes.
“Seriously, Mick. Those robots weren’t supposed to be there. And I looked her up. She was really important in France’s history, influenced the revolution and stuff. If it wasn’t for her, who knows what would have happened? It’s his job to fix things like that.”
“Was it his job to snog her? And then brag about it? He threw it in your face, Rose. Not to mention the fact that who knows what the two of them got up to while he left us on the ship. He treated you like crap. Shitty boyfriend he turned out to be. Almost as bad as Jimmy.”
Rose gave him a look that said don’t go there. “I told you, Mick, we aren’t like that. We’re just friends. Who he snogs is none of my business.”
“‘We aren’t like that, Mick,’” he said mockingly. “‘We’re just friends, Mick.’”
“We are!” she insisted.
“Yeah, right. Pull the other one while you’re at it. If you’re just friends, I’m the Queen.”
“Nice to meet you, your Majesty.”
They were interrupted by a waiter carrying a heavily laden tray. Big baskets of deep fried cod and chips and tall pints of light gold cider were placed on the table in front of them. Mickey immediately tucked in, eating with gusto. While he shoved huge forkfuls of food in his mouth, Rose picked at the basket in front of her.
“Let’s just say I believe you,” Mickey said around a mouthful of food. “Which I don’t. But even if I did, he still abandoned us on that spaceship.”
“Mickey, he told me straight off, on one of our very first trips, that it was a new morality out there. I had to get used to it or go home.”
He shook his head and stared at her. “So that’s it then? Get used to it or go home? And you’re okay with that?”
“It’s worth it. Getting a chance to see what’s out there… it’s worth it,” she said.
“Rose, he abandoned us on that ship. Not just you. Us. We almost got killed by those robot things while he was off gettin’ drunk.”
“He didn’t know—”
The crowd in front of the telly let out a cheer, but neither of them paid attention.
“Maybe not,” Mickey said, raising his voice loudly enough to be heard. “But that’s not the point. You might be able to live with that, but I can’t. So if I have to get used to it or go home, I guess I should go home.” His eyes widened, as if he was shocked at the words that had come out of his mouth.
She blinked. “You’re… you’re gonna stay here?”
“I, uh, I guess I am,” he said.
Rose bit her lip. She hadn’t initially wanted Mickey to come with, but now that he wasn’t going to travel with them anymore, she realized she didn’t want him to leave. “I… I can’t stay.”
“I know.”
“I’m gonna keep traveling with him as long as he’ll let me. I can’t imagine anything that would make me want to stay here.” She looked up to see him frowning at her. “I’m sorry, Mick. I didn’t mean…”
“No,” he said. “We talked about this before. It’s been over between us for a while. It’s been over since that first day the two of you met, probably. Just one question though. Are the two of you really just friends?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Just friends.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?” she asked.
“I mean, it’s obvious how much he cares about you, and I know how you feel about him…” he said. “Wait a minute. Does he know how you feel about him?”
“Yeah. Maybe… I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t do that sort of thing.”
“Oh, yes, he does,” Mickey argued. “I think Reinette proved that.”
She leaned across the table and slugged him in the arm. “‘S not what I meant. He can, he told me he can… don’t ask,” she said, holding up a hand and cutting him off before he could say anything. “He just doesn’t do… relationships. Too tough on him. He’s lost so many people, he told me so, and I don’t think he can bear to lose anyone else. Or maybe it’s that he can’t do relationships. Thing is, he’s alien. He looks human, but he’s not. He doesn’t react the same way to things as we do, doesn’t think the same way we do.”
“What if he was human, Rose?” Mickey asked. “What then?”
She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not like he can just up and turn himself human. And why would he want to anyway?”
Another loud cheer came from the front of the pub, and this time Mickey strained his neck to try and see the match over Rose’s head.
“Go ahead,” she said indulgently. She jerked her head towards the television. “Might as well get caught up.”
Mickey grinned. “You’re the best, babe,” he said, picking up his basket and cider and carrying it to the bar.
With a sigh, she sprinkled more vinegar on her food and speared a chip with her fork. It was only halfway to her mouth before he was back.
“You gonna eat your fish?” he asked. He didn’t bother waiting for a reply, just grabbed it with his fingers and put it in his basket.
She rolled her eyes. “Not anymore,” she replied.
He grinned and gave her a kiss on the cheek before returning to the bar.
Later, after they had both finished eating and, more importantly, when the match was over, Mickey and Rose wandered back out onto the street.
“So you’re really gonna do this then?” she asked. “You’re really gonna stay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I mean, it’s exciting an’ all, the aliens, the adventures, the runnin’ for your life, but it just doesn’t do it for me like it does for you.”
“It’s not always like that, Mick,” she told him. “There’s lots and lots of times when we’re just traveling, just going new places, seeing new things. Like that planet he was going to take us to.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Come on with us when we go. You’ll see.”
After a moment, Mickey shook his head. “My flat is still here. I’m gonna go see if I can get my old job back. After all we’ve only been gone, what, a day or two?”
They rounded a corner and stopped in shock when they saw the shop. It looked different somehow, newer almost. The sign in front had received a fresh coat of paint and the plate-glass windows were sparkling. From where they stood, it looked like the repair bays of the garage were full. The tiny car park next to the shop was filled, as was the street in front.
“Wow, I’ve never seen it so busy,” Mickey said in amazement. “For sure I’ll get my job back.”
Rose didn’t mention her suspicions that the changes that had taken place had to have taken more than a day or two to make.
The inside of the garage was as packed as the outside. Cars were indeed in every bay, and the waiting area in the office was packed with people. They made their way to the reception desk where the receptionist was on the telephone.
The receptionist/bookkeeper/office manager was Abhirati Mudali, the wife of the owner. Her name—which could be loosely translated as mother of five hundred children—suited her, as they had five children at home and appeared to have a sixth on the way. And very soon by the look of her.
“Mrs. Mudali,” Mickey said. “Where’s Mr. Mudali?”
“I don’t know,” she replied crossly. “Somewhere in there.” She gestured vaguely with her hand at the interior of the garage.
“Can we go find him?”
She shrugged. “You can try,” she said. As they turned to leave, she called after them. “And if you do manage to find him, tell him we need more help here unless he wants to have this one born in the office rather than in hospital!”
Like the office, the garage itself was also a study in chaos. People were everywhere. As Mickey searched for his former boss, Rose trailed along behind him. It was either that or go back to the TARDIS or go to her mum’s flat, and she really wasn’t in the mood to see either the Doctor or her mum yet. As much as she had protested to Mickey that she wasn’t upset by the business with Madame de Pompadour, it did bother her that the Doctor had been so quick to leave them behind on the spaceship. Not to mention how much it hurt that he had asked Reinette to go on a trip with them. She’d never forget the look on his face when he found out she had died waiting for him. As much as he denied it, she knew he had been crushed.
The business with Reinette following immediately after running into Sarah Jane just drove home the point to her that she was merely one in a long parade of people—women—in his life. And despite his claims she was different, that he’d never leave her behind, the truth was he had left her behind, her and Mickey both, almost immediately after that. That told her that not only was she just one of many, she wasn’t even an important one.
She tamped down the jealousy that was again threatening to overwhelm her. She had always been jealous of the attention he had shown other women, right from the very first, starting with Jabe at the end of the Earth. But her feelings for him weren’t the reason she was staying with him. That part of what she had told Mickey was the truth. Reinette had had it backwards. The Doctor wasn’t worth the monsters. The chance of traveling the stars in the TARDIS was worth whatever she had to put up with with him.
But she still wasn’t ready to face her mother right now. Her mother had a way of knowing what she was feeling by just looking at her, and she didn’t want to risk it all coming out.
All of a sudden she realized that she had lost track of Mickey. She looked around. She recognized a couple of the mechanics she had known from when she had been dating Mickey. There were a couple of others she didn’t know, and then there was the one that had his head buried under the bonnet of a midnight blue car she recognized as a Vauxhall of some type. His dark jeans and heavy work boots looked vaguely familiar, as did the shape of his back as he was bent over the engine, but there was really no way of knowing who he was unless she got a closer look.
Finally she spotted Mickey, deep in conversation with his old boss. She made her way across the room. Since she didn’t want to disturb them, she stopped before she actually joined them, but she still made sure she was within earshot.
“Please?” Mickey was begging. Neither of them seemed to notice her, which suited her just fine.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Mudali said. “You were gone three months—”
“Three months?” Mickey asked in disbelief.
“And I couldn’t wait any longer. I hired someone else, a brilliant mechanic. He’s the reason that we’re so busy. People come all the way from Ealing to have him look at their cars. One even came from Reading. We’re doing so well I’m even thinking of expanding, having him take over here while I open a new shop across town.” Mudali paused thoughtfully. “We might be busy enough to take on another mechanic part time. I’ll let him decide. And you know he’s another Smith, in fact. Maybe you two are related.” Mudali laughed at his own joke. “Hey, Manchester, come here! There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Oi, I’m busy here!” the man shouted back. Even muffled by the rest of the sounds of the garage, as well as his head being halfway in the engine, it was obvious he had a strong Northern accent.
“Who’s in charge, eh?” Mudali snapped. “You come when I tell you to come.”
With an irritated groan the man stood up and turned towards them. Rose’s breath caught and her heart skipped a beat. She walked up to join Mickey, who was gaping at the sight of the mechanic.
“It can’t be,” he said in a low voice. “‘S just someone who looks like him a bit, is all. You can’t really tell under all that hair.”
Rose didn’t answer, still staring in shock at a prominent nose and overly large ears, features that—despite being hidden behind slightly too long hair and an unshaven face—she knew as well as her own. Her heart began to beat again, pounding wildly, almost painfully, in her chest.
“It can’t be him,” she whispered. “It can’t be. I saw him change myself.”
As the man crossed the room to join them, he stumbled over a large spanner that had been left in the middle of the floor.
“Oi!” he shouted to the room at large. “Who’s the stupid ape who left this lying here?”
“Oh my God,” Rose murmured. “It’s him. It’s really him. It’s the Doctor.”
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iamcmims · 7 years ago
Text
SUPERNATURAL: Olivia Parker: Home
Words count: 8K
A/N: And here is the new chapter! The episode “Home” was heartbreaking, writing it was heartbreaking. In this chapter, you will have more answers about Olivia and Khogalla and what’s happening around her. 
Feedback is always highly appreciated! If you want to be tagged, just ask me!
Taglist: @ohsoevilsoul
Warning: Blood, ghosts, evil, angst.
Previous parts: Pilot — Wendigo — Dead In The Water — Phantom Traveler — Bloody Mary — Skin — Hook Man — The Fight
Previously on Olivia Parker…
"So anything?", "I had them check the FBI's missing person data bank. No John Doe's fitting Dad's description. I even ran his plates for traffic violations.", "Sam, I don't think your Dad wants to be found.", "We will find him, but if he doesn't want to be found, it will be harder, meaning you'll have to be patient.", "I know."
"The mutilated body was found near the victim's car, parked on the 9-mile road. Authorities are unable to provide a realistic description of the killer. The sole eyewitness, whose name has been withheld, is quoted as saying the attacker was invisible.", "Dad would check it out."
"Was he with somebody?", "Not just somebody. Lori Sorensen", "Who's Lori Sorensen?", "She's reverend's daughter."
"She heard scratching on the roof. Found the bloody body suspended upside down over the car.", "Wait, the body suspended? That sounds like the—", "Yeah, the Hook Man legend.", "Maybe the Hook Man isn't a man at all. What if it's some kind of spirit?"
"Listen. You two and your brother—", "Oh, don't worry, we're leaving town."
"We could stay." Sam shakes his head. Dean watches Lori looking sad, he shakes his head and drives away.
"Levy! Stop!" The guards run forward, missing him. He takes something out of his jacket. "So close to finding you." A pearl in his hand shines bright red. He puts it back into his pocket and walks away.
"He's not just a thief, he's the prince of thieves. He's a metamorph, he's powerful. He has four of the eight pearls. We cannot let him have all of them. You find me this thief, and you kill him. I want his head far from his body."
"Khogalla is mine, you're not getting it back, Gabriel."
"Queen Olivia! You're back!", "Who are you?", "Oh right, it's right. I'm Levy, your thief. I almost have all the pears to bring you to Khogalla, your kingdom, Majesty."
"This is the kingdom of magic. Profeta is evil, but the ground of Khogalla is good, when she took over, the bad did too, killing everything that was good.", "Why are you showing me this?", "You're our savior.", "I'm a hunter! What makes you think this?", "It's in the prophecy."
"Khogalla..." On the ground of dead flowers stands one brand new rose, and the echo of Olivia's voice "Khogalla..."
"I'm bringing you home, my queen."
"The Naiads don't exist anymore."
"Archangel Gabriel, if you hear me, please show me the path to Tenebris Aurea. Help me stop this useless war."
"What if Profeta wins?", "The prophecy didn't change. Each day I look at it, each day it remains.", "Prince of Thief, I hope you're right."
"For Khogalla.", "For Queen Olivia."
Tenebris Aurea. The slayer of Hell. The well of power. The book of Alathea. The hand of the spirit of the Future
"Why would I kill the prodigy? You can't stop the hands of time."
"We're going to bring you back to your kingdom, Your Majesty.", "My what now?"
Today — Lawrence, Kansas. — Night.
A young woman named Jenny is sitting on the floor of her home, unpacking boxes. She comes across a photo of herself and her husband at their wedding. She begins to cry just as her daughter, Sari, comes in the room. "Mommy?" Jenny looks up. "Hey, sweetie. Why aren't you in bed?", "There's something in my closet."          Jenny opens the closet doors and looks inside as Sari watches from her bed.", "See? There's nothing there.", "You're sure?", "I'm sure. Now, come on. Get into bed." Sari crawls into her bed, and Jenny tucks her in. "I don't like this house." Jenny looks at her daughter and sighs. "You're just not used to it yet. But you and your brother and me — we are going to be very happy here. I promise." She kisses Sari on her forehead. "I love you." She turns off the light and gets up the leave the room. "The chair.", "Okay." Jenny moves a chair under the doorknob of the closet. "The chair. Just to be safe." Sari lies down and goes the bed. Jenny leaves.          After returning to the living room, Jenny continues unpacking boxes. She stops when she hears the sound of scratching coming from the basement. "Please, God, don't let it be rats."          Jenny goes downstairs into the basement with a flashlight. She tries turning on a light, but the switches don't work. "Terrific."          In Sari's bedroom, the chair begins moving on its own, away from the closet doors. Sari sits up in her bed, wide-eyed and afraid.          Jenny keeps looking around. On the floor, she sees a large black trunk. She kneels down and opens it, pulling out old photos of the Winchester family. Written on the back of a picture are the words, "The Winchesters. John, Mary, Dean, and Little Sammy." Jenny smiles.          In Sari's bedroom, the closet doors open by themselves. Standing in the closet is what looks like a person, but is entirely made out of fire. Sari screams.
The door of the motel room opens, Sam and Dean turn, Olivia enters. Dean stands up. "Where were you?" Olivia looks at him but doesn't answer. She closes the door and sits on the bed. "I…" The anger that Dean felt was replaced by worry and concern. "Olivia?" He walks to her, he kneels down, puts his hands on her legs, and looks up at her. "Olivia? You're okay?" Sam stands up too and sits on the bed. "I'm fine. I just, I'm tired." She didn't know what to make of everything she found out. The prophecy that was attached to her name, her past life, the people she left behind, the kingdom she left behind. She didn't know if she was supposed to tell Sam and Dean or not. One thing's for sure, she did not lie to them when she said she was tired. She was beyond tired, she was exhausted and lost but at the same time at so many places. Her brain kept going back to Khogalla, to Levy, to her parents, her son, and husband, to Sam and Dean. She had a choice to make, she knew it, but she didn't know if she would be capable of making it, or if she would be capable of putting this burden on Sam and Dean. So she looked at Dean and smiled, "I'm fine, don't worry. I've been walking a lot, got lost, had no signal and had to walk a lot only to realize there was a shortcut. I then went to drink and crash at a church, the father helped me find my way back." The only question was which way back is she going to chose?          While Sam is sleeping, he begins dreaming of Jenny. She is inside her bedroom, screaming for help. Sam wakes up, confused.          The next morning, while Dean is on the computer, Olivia reading, Sam is drawing a picture of a tree. "All right. I've been cruising some websites. I think I found a few candidates for our next gig. A fishing trawler found off the coast of Cali — its crew vanished." Olivia puts down her book and looks up at Dean. "And, uh, we got some cattle mutilations in West Texas." Dean and Olivia look at Sam. "Hey." Sam looks up from his drawing. "Am I boring you with this evil stuff?", "No. I'm listening. Keep going." Olivia chuckles and focuses back on Dean. "And, here, a Sacramento man shot himself in the head. Three times." Dean waves his hand in front of Sam's face. "Any of these things blowing up your skirt, pal?" Sam looks at the tree he drew. "Wait. I've seen this.", "Seen what?" Olivia frowns and looks at Dean, only to find him frowning too. "Seen what, Sam?" Sam gets up from the bed and goes searching through his duffel bag. "What are you doing?" Olivia stands up. Sam finds a photo of their family from when he was a baby. He compares the tree in the photo to his drawing. They are the same. "Guys, I know where we have to go next.", "Where?", "Back home — back to Kansas." Olivia is taken aback, she sits back down in her chair. "Okay, random." Says Dean. "Where'd that come from?" Asks Olivia. Sam showing the photo to Dean. Olivia stands up and looks at the picture then back at Sam. "All right, um, this photo was taken in front of our old house, right? The house where Mom died?" Dean and Olivia glance at each other. "Yeah.", "And it didn't burn down, right? I mean, not completely, they rebuilt it, right?", "I guess so, yeah. What the hell are you talking about?" Olivia stays silent, hoping they won't have to return to Lawrence. "Okay, look, this is going to sound crazy but—the people who live in our old house—I think they might be in danger.", "Why would you think that?", "Uh—it's just, hum—look, just trust me on this, okay?" Sam starts to walk away, Olivia follows him. "Wait, whoa, whoa, trust you?", "Yeah.", "Sam, that's weak. You have to give us a little bit more than that. I'm not going back there on a 'trust me, okay?' I need more.", "I can't really explain it is all." Dean walks to Sam and Olivia and stands next to Olivia. "Well, tough. We're not going anywhere until you do." Sam sighs. Dean waits expectantly, so does Olivia. "I have these nightmares." Dean nods, "I've noticed.", "And sometimes—they come true." Olivia frowns. "What?" Dean is stunned, "come again?", "Look, guys—I dreamt about Jessica's death — for days before it happened." Olivia was even more confused. She was about to say something but Dean cut her, "Sam, people have weird dreams, man. I'm sure it's just a coincidence." Dean sits down on the bed, Olivia stays up. She knew better than anyone that dreams have more meaning than that. After all, she did find out in her dreams that she had a kingdom and a throne awaiting. "No, I dreamt about the blood dripping, her on the ceiling, the fire, everything, and I didn't do anything about it because I didn't believe it. And now I'm dreaming about that tree, about our house, and about some woman inside screaming for help. I mean, that's where it all started, man, this has to mean something." Sam looks at Olivia. "Right?" Olivia takes a chair and sits down. Dean looks at her and then back at Sam, overwhelmed, "I don't know." Sam sits down across from Dean and Olivia. "What do you mean you don't know, Dean?", "What Dean means—what we mean is that it's a lot to take in, alright? We all have bad memories from Lawrence, the three of us.", "This woman might be in danger. I mean, this might be the thing that killed Mom, your son and husband, and Jessica!", "All right, just slow down, would you?" Dean stands up and begins pacing. "I mean, first you tell me that you've got the Shining? And then you tell me that we have to go back home? Especially when—" Olivia looks at Dean saddened. "When what?" Sam looks at Olivia, clearly missing something, she looks back at him and sighs. "Dean swore to himself that he would never go back there again." Sam sighs. "Look, Dean, we have to check this out. Just to make sure." Dean nods and looks at Olivia she nods too. "I know we do." Olivia looks away. Sam looks at her. "Olivia?" She looks at him and clears her throat, you guys should go. I'm going to stay here. Work on some salt and burn. Dean faces her, "Olivia—", "No. I'm not going back there. I'm not."          Sam and Dean pull up the Impala outside their old house. "You're going to be all right, man?" Sam asks, eyeing his older brother. "Let me get back to you on that." They get out of the car. After knocking on the front door, Jenny answers it. Sam is shocked that she is the same woman from his dream. Jenny looks at the duo in front of her, "yes?", "Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but we're with the Federal—," "I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother, Dean. We used to live here. You know, we were just driving by, and we were wondering if we could come see the old place.", "Winchester. Yeah, that's so funny. You know, I think I found some of your photos the other night." Dean raises his eyebrows, "you did?" Jenny nods and sets aside. "Come on in."          Inside the house, the three of them go to the kitchen. Sari is at the table doing homework, Ritchie, her jumpy toddler brother, is in his playpen. "Juice! Juice! Juice! Juice!" Jenny looks at Ritchie then at Sam and Dean, "that's Ritchie. He's kind of a juice junkie." She takes a sippy cup out of the refrigerator and hands it to Ritchie. "But, hey, at least he won't get scurvy." Jenny walks over to Sari. "Sari, this is Sam and Dean. They used to live here." She looks at the two men, "hi." Dean waves at her. Sam smiles, "hey, Sari." Dean focuses back on Jenny. "So, you just moved in?", "Yeah, from Wichita.", "You got family here, or…?" Asks Dean. "No. I just, uh—needed a fresh start, that's all. So, new town, new job— I mean, as soon as I find one. And new house." Sam nods, "so, how do you like it so far?", "Well, uh, all due respect to your childhood home—I mean, I'm sure you had lots of memories, happy memories here." Dean smiles weakly. "But this place has its issues." Sam frowns, "what do you mean?", "Well, it's just getting old. Like the wiring, you know? We've got flickering lights almost hourly." Dean nods, "oh, that's too bad. What else?", "Um—sink's backed up, there are rats in the basement." Jenny pauses. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to complain." Dean shakes his head, clearly not offended. "No. Have you seen the rats or have you just heard scratching?", "It's just the scratching, actually.", "Mom?" Jenny kneels down next to Sari. "Ask them if it was here when they lived." Sam looks at Sari, "what, Sari?", "The thing in my closet.", "Oh, no baby, there was nothing in their closets." Jenny turns to Sam and Dean. "Right?" The brothers nod. "Right. No, no, of course not.", "she had a nightmare the other night.", "I wasn't dreaming. It came into my bedroom — and it was on fire." Sam and Dean are shocked in front of what the little tells them.          Sam and Dean walk out of the house to their car, they get inside. Sam calls Olivia and puts her on speaker. "So, verdict?" She asks. Dean sighs. "The little girl says she saw something in her closet and that it was on fire. — She what? — You hear that? A figure on fire." Says Sam. "And that woman, Jenny, that was the women in dreams?" Dean looks at Sam who nods. Olivia is heard sighing over the phone. "Yeah. And you heard what she was talking about? Scratching, flickering lights, both signs of a malevolent spirit. — Yeah, well, I'm just freaked out that your weirdo visions are coming true. — Dean." Dean looks at the phone, he could picture the disapproving Olivia was giving him. Sam was panicking, "well, forget about that for a minute. The thing in the house, do you think it's the thing that them? — I don't know!" Sam looks at the phone, "Olivia? — Still here, just thinking. What do you think, Sam? — Well, I mean, has it come back or has it been here the whole time? — Or maybe it's something else entirely, Sam, we don't know yet. — Dean is right, Sam. Perhaps you want it to be the thing that killed Mary and Jess so much that you pick up clues that aren't even ones. — Well, those people are in danger, Dean. We have to get them out of that house. — And we will. — No, I mean now. — Okay, Sam, no. I'm on the way, you can't deal this alone. — Okay. Be careful." Dean hangs up the phone and looks at Sam who was still insisting on going now. "And how are you going to do that, huh? You got a story that she's going to believe?", "Then what are we supposed to do?"          Dean parks the car in front of a gas station, they both got out of the Impala. "We just have to chill out. That's all. You know, if this was any other kind of job, what would we do?" Sam sighs. "We'd try to figure out what we were dealing with. We'd dig into the history of the house.", "Exactly, except this time, we already know what happened.", "Yeah, but how much do we know? I mean, how much do you actually remember?", "About that night, you mean?" Sam nods. "Not much. I remember the fire—the heat." Dean pauses for a moment. "And then I carried you out of the front door.", "You did?", "Yeah, what, you never knew that?" Sam shakes his head, "no.", "And, well, you know Dad's story as well as I do. Mom was—was on the ceiling. And whatever put her there was long gone by the time Dad found her.", "And he never had a theory about what did it?", "If he did, he kept it to himself. God knows we asked him enough times.", "Okay. So if we're going to figure out what's going on now—we have to figure out what happened back then. And see if it's the same thing.", "Yeah. We will talk to Dad's friends, neighbors, people who were there at the time." After a pause Sam breaks the silence, "does this feel like just another job to you?" Dean says nothing for a moment. "I will be right back. I have to go to the bathroom." Dean walks away, after turning a corner, he stands next to the bathroom door and takes out his cell phone. After making sure no one can see him, he dials a number. "This is John Winchester. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean at 866-907-3235." The beep sounds. "Dad? I know I've left you messages before. I don't even know if you'll get them." Dean clears his throat. "But I'm with Sam and Olivia. We're in Lawrence. And there's something in our old house. I don't know if it's the thing that killed Mom or not, but—" Dean's voice breaks, he pauses, barely keeping himself together. "—I don't know what to do." He begins the cry, not able to hold everything in anymore. "So, whatever you're doing. If you could get here. Please. I need your help, Dad." He hangs up sadly, with his eyes still full of unshed tears.
Olivia puts all of her stuff in her bag. She collects the things Sam and Dean left behind. She opens the door and finds the father in front of it, ready to knock. "Father. What are you doing here?" He looks at her bag. "I see you're on your way." She looks down at the duffel and then back at the Father. "Yeah, but come on in." She steps aside and closes the door once the father is in. "What can I do for you?", "I found something, I think you might need it." The father gets out a necklace that had eight pearls on it. She puts the bag down and takes it. "What is it?", "It's our world's pearls." She looks up at him. "You mean the pearls that they need for me to be back?", "Yes, but without the eight other pearls, the ones you have in hands are useless.", "Padre, what are those pearls exactly?", "You. They're you. It's your powers as it is your soul and your memories. Once the sixteen pearls are back together, everything will be back to the way it was.", "You mean it will defeat Profeta?", "No. That only you can do. You and your sword, The Slayer Of Hell.", "The Slayer of what?", "The Slayer Of Hell is your sword, it was made from the Archangel Lucifer's blood and the fire of his anger, and the powers of his brother, Michael. This sword can kill anything, from Gods, Angels, Archangels, Creatures, to Humans. No matter what it is fighting against, it is able to destroy it." Olivia looks down at the necklace. "I know this is a lot to take in, my child, but there isn't much time. If Profeta has the full power and control of Khogalla—" Olivia looks at him, "she'll go for the rest of the world." He nods. "I have to go, Padre. But I will be back.", "You have the phone of the church.", "And you have mine. We will keep in touch." She walks the father to the door. "Thank you." He smiles and leaves. Olivia closes the door and goes to the bathroom, she washes her face with cold water. She dries it, takes the necklace and puts it on.
In Sam and Dean's old house, Jenny is showing a plumber to the kitchen, near the skin. "No, sir, nothing weird down there, I promise. Sink just backed up on its own.", "Well, I'll take a look.", "Thanks." They look at each other for a moment until Jenny gets it, "Oh, okay, I'll get out of your way." Jenny leaves, the plumber sets down his tools and begins looking at the pipes under the sink. A few feet away, by Ritchie's playpen, a toy monkey is sitting with cymbals in its hands. Without warning, the monkey starts up. It clashes its cymbals together loudly while cackling. After a moment, the plumber looks up, confused. The toy stops, the plumber stands up and tries turning on the garbage disposal, but it doesn't work. Instead, he rolls up his sleeve and sticks his hand down the disposal. He thinks he feels something in the drain, but when he takes his hand out, there is nothing. He sticks most of his arm back down the disposal. Suddenly, the garbage disposal starts up. The plumber's arm is being completely torn apart as blood splatters everywhere. At the same time, the cymbal-clashing monkey starts up again, cackling as the plumber screams.          At the Guenther's auto repair, Sam and Dean are talking to the owner of the garage. "So you and John Winchester, you used to own this garage together?" The man nods at Dean. "Yeah, we used to, a long time ago. Matter of fact, it must be, uh—twenty years since John disappeared. So why the cops interested all of a sudden?", "Oh, we're re-opening some of our unsolved cases, and the Winchester disappearance is one of them.", "Oh well, what do you want to know about John?", "Well, whatever you remember, you know, whatever sticks out of your mind.", "Well—he was a stubborn bastard, I remember that." The owner laughs. "And, uh, whatever the game, he hated to lose, you know? It's that whole Marine thing." Sam and Dean nod. "But, oh, he sure loved Mary. And he doted on those kids." Sam speaks up for the first time since they're in the garage. "But that was before the fire?", "That's right.", "He ever talks about that night?", "No, not at first. I think he was in shock.", "Right." Sam nods, "but eventually? What did he say about it?", "Oh, he wasn't thinking straight. He said something caused that fire and killed Mary." Dean frowns, "did he ever say what did it?", "Nothing did it. It was an accident — an electrical short in the ceiling or walls or something. I begged him to get some help, but…" Dean pushes, "but what?", "Oh, he just got worse and worse.", "How?" Asks Dean. "He started reading these strange old books. He started going to see this palm reader in town.", "Palm reader? Do you have a name?" The owner scoffs at Dean, "No."           The Impala is parked by a payphone where Sam is looking through a phonebook. "All right, so there are a few psychics and palm readers in town. There's someone named El Divino. There's uh—" Sam laughs. "—there's the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky. Uh, Missouri Moseley—", Wait, wait. Missouri Moseley?" Sam looks at Dean, "what?", "That's a psychic?", "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess so." Dean goes into the backseat of the car and pulls out John's journal. "In Dad's journal—here, look at this." He opens to the first page. "First page, first sentence, read that. "I went to Missouri, and I learned the truth." Dean shrugs. "I always thought he meant the state.          Sam and Dean are in front of their motel, leaning on the car. Olivia's car pulls up next to the Impala. She get's out and walks to Sam and Dean. Sam notices her necklace and frowns. He points at it. "What is it?", "Oh, uh, a necklace. So where are we heading?"          Missouri Moseley is escorting a man out of the house while Sam, Dean, and Olivia sit on the couch, waiting. "All right, there. Don't you worry about a thing. Your wife is crazy about you." The man thanks her and she closes the front door behind him. "Whew. Poor bastard. His woman is cold-banging the gardener." Olivia laughs. "Tough.", "Why didn't you tell him?" Wonders Dean. "People don't come here for the truth. They come for good news." The trio stares at her. "Well? Sam, Dean, Olivia, come on already. I ain't got all day." She leaves the room. Sam and Dean exchange a confused look, Olivia chuckles and shakes her head. They stand up and follow her into the next room. "Well, let me look at you." She laughs. "Oh, you boys grew up handsome. And Olivia Parker, you look a lot like your mother when she was your age." She points a finger at Dean. "And you were one goofy-looking kid, too." Dean glares at her while Sam and Olivia smirk. "Sam." She grabs his hand. "Oh, honey— I'm sorry about your girlfriend." The three of them are shocked. "And your father— he's missing?", "How'd you know all that?", "Well, you were just thinking it just now." Sam raises his eyebrows, surprised. "Well, where is he? Is he okay?" She looks at Dean. "I don't know.", "Don't know? Well, you're supposed to be a psychic, right?", "Boy, you see me sawing some bony tramp in half? You think a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room, but I can't just pull facts out of thin air. Sit, please." Sam smirks at Dean, they sit down. Missouri snaps at Dean. "Boy, you put your foot on my coffee table, I'm going to whack you with a spoon!", "I didn't do anything.", "But you were thinking about it." Dean raises his eyebrows. Sam smiles. Missouri looks at Olivia. "You seem preoccupied, young lady." Missouri looks at Olivia's necklace. "That necklace around your neck, it's powerful." She looks at Olivia, frowning, searching for an answer. "You're in a conflict. You have a choice to make." Olivia clears her throat and slightly moves in her seat. Sam looks at Olivia and sees her discomfort. "Okay. So, our dad — when did you first meet him?" Missouri keeps her eyes on Olivia, then looks at Sam. "He came for a reading. A few days after the fire. I just told him what was really out there in the dark. I guess you could say—I drew back the curtain for him.", "What about the fire? Do you know about what killed our mom?" Missouri nods at Dean's question. "A little. Your daddy took me to your house. He was hoping I could sense the echoes, the fingerprints of this thing.", "And could you?", "I—" She shakes her head. Olivia frowns, "Missouri, what was it?" She answers softly, "I don't know. Oh, but it was evil."          Jenny is on the phone in the kitchen while Ritchie jumps around in his playpen. "Look, I feel just awful about the poor man's hand. (...) Wait, but how can I be held liable? (…) Yeah, but I can't afford a lawyer." Jenny begins to hear noises from upstairs. "Okay, listen, you just have to let me call you back." She hangs up. "Ritchie, um, Mommy's going to be right back, okay?", "Okay." Jenny leaves the room.          "So, the thing that killed your mom, your girlfriend, your husband, and son—you think something is back in that house?" Sam nods, "Definitely.", "I don't understand.", "What?" Asks Sam. "I haven't been back inside, but I've been keeping an eye on the place, and it's been quiet. No sudden deaths, no freak accidents. Why is it acting up now?" Sam shakes his head, "I don't know. But Dad going missing and Jessica dying and now this house all happening at once — it just feels like something is starting." Olivia sighs, Dean shakes his head, "well, that's a comforting thought.          When Ritchie is alone in the kitchen, one of the screws on his playpen mysteriously comes out of place. One of the playpen's sides falls to the floor. At the same time, the safety latch on the door of the refrigerator comes undone. The fridge opens, curious, Ritchie walks over to it. Inside, he sees his sippy cup full of juice. "Juicy." He climbs into the fridge and sits on one of the shelves. Suddenly, the refrigerator door closes, and the safety latch locks into place.          Jenny returns to the kitchen. "Oh, baby, either we have rats, or Mommy's going crazy." She sees that the playpen is empty. "Ritchie? Ritchie?" Panicked, she rushes into the other rooms and tries to find him. "Baby, where are you?!" she comes back into the kitchen, breathing heavily. She sees milk leaking out from inside the fridge. She goes over to it and opens the door. "Mommy.", "Oh my, God!" She takes Ritchie out of the fridge and holds him in her arms. A few moments later, there is a knock on the door. She answers it and sees Sam, Dean, Olivia, and Missouri. "Sam. Dean. What are you doing here?" Sam smiles. "Hey, Jenny. This are our friends, Missouri and Olivia.", "If it's not too much trouble, we were hoping to show them the old house. You know, for old time's sake."Dean shows a quick smile. "You know, this isn't a good time. I'm kind of busy.", "Listen, Jenny, it's important." Missouri smacks Dean on the back of the head. "Ow!", "Give the poor girl a break, can't you see she's upset?" Missouri looks at Jenny. "Forgive this boy, he means well, he's just not the sharpest tool in the shed, but hear me out." Dean looks at Missouri stunned. Olivia rolls her eyes, at first Missouri was fun, but she kept picking on Dean. It started to grow on her. So, she slowly takes Dean's hand in hers. He looks at her, she smiles. Jenny looks at Missouri. "About what?", "About this house.", "What are you talking about?", "I think you know what I'm talking about. You think there's something in this house, something that wants to hurt your family. Am I mistaken?", "Who are you?", "We are people who can help, who can stop this thing. But you're going to have to trust us, just a little." Jenny looks unsure.           Missouri, Sam, Dean, and Olivia are in Sari's bedroom. Olivia's phone rings. She excuses herself, gets out of the house and answers it. "Olivia Parker. (…) Father? (…) Where are you?! (…) I'm on my way. Hide. I'm coming." She gets upstairs, she takes Dean's hand and gets him out of the room. "I have to head to somewhere. A friend of mine needs me." Dean frowns. "You've been secretive lately.", "I know, I know. And I promise you I will explain everything, but I have to go. His life is in danger." Dean nods, "okay. But be careful. Messages." Olivia nods and leaves the house. Dean returns to the bedroom with Sam and Missouri. "If there's a dark energy around here, this room should be the center of it." Sam looks at Missouri, "why?", "This used to be your nursery, Sam. This is where it all happened." Sam glances at the ceiling. While Missouri looks around the room, Dean pulls out his EMF. Missouri looks at him, "is that an EMF?", "Yeah.", "Amateur." Dean glares at her. He nudges Sam and shows him that the EMF is beeping frantically. "I don't know if you boys should be disappointed or relieved, but this ain't the thing that took your mom. "Wait, are you sure?" She nods at Sam. "How do you know?" Asks Sam. "It isn't the same energy I felt the last time I was here. It's something different.", "What is it?" She shakes her head at Dean's question, "not it." She opens the closet. "Them. There's more than one spirit in this place." Dean looks at Sam then back at Missouri, "what are they doing here?", "They're here because of what happened to your family. You see, all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes, wounds get infected." Sam frowns, "I don't understand.", "this place is a magnet for paranormal energy. It's attracted a poltergeist. A nasty one. And it won't rest until Jenny, and her babies are dead.", "You said there was more than one spirit." Missouri looks at Sam. "There is. I just can't quite make out the second one.", "Well, one thing's for damn sure — nobody's dying in this house ever again. so whatever is here, how do we stop it?" Missouri looks at Dean and sighs.
Olivia stops her car in an alley. "Father Moore?" She looks around the dark alley, she takes her gun and loads it. "Father Moore!" She hears something moving, she points her gun at it and approaches. When she's close enough, she sees Father Moore lying on the ground. She unloads her gun and runs to him. "Father!! Oh my, God." She puts him on her lap, she presses her hands on his wound that is on his right side. "What happened?", "You have to be careful." She frowns. "Profeta is here." She looks around her then back at Father Moore. "Okay. I'm going to bring you to the hospital." He slightly shakes his head. "Bring me to my Church.", "What? But you're going to die!!", "I'm not afraid of death. Please." Olivia puts him in the backseat of her car and drives as fast as she could to his church. Once she arrives, she pulls up, gets out of the car, opens the backseat door and helps the Father out. They slowly walk to the church, once they're inside, Olivia makes him sit on a bench. She kneels in front of him. "There's got to be a way.", "There isn't. I'm the message. She's coming for you." Father Moore coughs, making blood come out of his mouth. "Oh, this is bad. Please let me bring you to the hospital! You have internal bleeding, please, please.", "No hospital can save me, Queen Olivia." She frowns. She stands up, pacing in the church. She was starting to panic. She stops and looks at Father Moore. "Father?" Her grunts, showing Olivia he was still alive. "Okay. Okay." She turns around and looks at the Jesus statue. "Okay." She takes her necklace in her hands. "Please. Make it work." She closes her eyes and goes down on her knees. "Levy. If you hear me, please. I need your help."
"This is the seventh's pearl. Only one left. And we will be able to—" A strong wind is felt. Levy and the man look around. "Levy. If you hear me, please. I need your help." Levy's eyes widen, "Olivia.", "We have to find the eighth pearl." Levy nods. "And we have to hurry."
"You need to talk with your heart." Olivia turns around and looks at Father Moore. "He can hear you, but he can't find you. Your souls are bound, he's your other half. Talk to him with your heart, it's the only way for you to get him to find you." She nods and places herself again.
Levy was searching with the man for the last pearl, they were both walking when he suddenly stops. "What's going on, Levy?" Levy's eyes go red. "Olivia…" In front of them, something bright red raises in the air. The man looks at it. "Levy, it's the last pearl." Levy raises his hand, the pearl comes to him and into his palm. Suddenly, Levy wasn't in Khogalla anymore. He was in a church, in front of him Olivia was on her knees, her necklace in hands.
Sam and Dean are at Missouri's house, sitting around a table. On this table are different herbs and roots. "So, what is all this stuff, anyway?" Asks Dean. "Angelica Root, Van Van oil, crossroad dirt, a few other odds, and ends.", "Yeah? What are we supposed to do with it?", "We're going to put them inside the walls in the north, south, east, west corners on each floor of the house.", "We will be punching holes in the drywall. Jenny's going to love that." Missouri looks at Dean and answers slyly, "she'll live.", "And this will destroy the spirits?" Missouri looks at Sam, "it should. It should purify the house completely. We'll each take a floor. But we work fast. Once the spirits realize what we're up to, things are going to get bad."          Missouri is walking Jenny and her kids outside. "Look, I'm not so sure I'm comfortable leaving you guys here alone." Missouri smiles at Jenny, "just take your kids to the movies or something, and it will be over by the time you get back." Jenny, still slightly unsure, leaves with her kids. Missouri goes back inside.          Sam goes into one of the rooms with a hammer. He kneels down by the wall and begins using the end of the hammer to hit against the walls. While he is doing this, a plug on the other side of the room takes itself out of the outlet. A lamp begins to move on its own. The plug snakes its way towards Sam.          Downstairs in the kitchen, Dean is punching the wall with a small ax. Behind him, a drawer begins to open on its own.          In the basement, Missouri is looking around. She brings a bag full of herbs to the wall. She hears a noise and turns around to see a table coming towards her. She screams as it pins her against the wall.          Dean hears a noise, he quickly ducks just as a knife hurls itself into a cabinet. Dean places a table in front of himself as more knives come through it.          Sam is chopping a hole in the wall. The lamp crashes to the ground. Sam turns around to see what the noise was, and the cord wraps itself around his neck. Sam falls to the ground, trying to get the cord off. Eventually, he lies weak on the floor. Dean runs upstairs and into the room. "Sam!" Dea rushes over to him and tries to get the cord off, but it won't budge. Instead, Dean kicks a hole in the wall and places the bag of herbs inside. A blinding white light leaves the room. Once the spirit is gone, Dean goes back over to Sam, who is completely weak. Dean unravels the cord from around Sam's neck and pulls him into a fierce hug.          A few hours later, Sam, Dean, and Missouri are standing in the extremely messy kitchen. Sam looks at Missouri, "Are you sure this is over?", "I'm sure. Why? Why do you ask?", "Never mind." Sam sighs. "It's nothing, I guess." They hear Jenny enter the house. "Hello? We're home." She comes into the kitchen and looks around. "What happened?", "Hi, sorry. Um, we will pay for all of this." Dean looks over at Sam, confused. "Don't you worry. Dean's going to clean up this mess." Dean stands there, not moving. Missouri looks at him. "Well, what are you waiting for, boy? Get the mop." Dean begins walking away. "And don't you cuss at me!" Dean walks away, muttering under his breath.          Missouri and the boys leave the house. Jenny waves and shuts the door behind them.
Jenny is in bed, reading a magazine. She yawns and puts the magazine on her bedside table. After turning off the light and sliding underneath the covers, she goes to sleep. A few seconds later, she opens her eyes, startled. The bed begins to shake violently. She screams and gets out of bed.          Sam and Dean are outside the Winchester house, sitting in the Impala. "All right, so, tell me again, what are we still doing here?", "I don't know. I just…I still have a bad feeling.", "Why? Missouri did her whole Zelda Rubenstein thing, the house should be clean, it should be over.", "Yeah, well, probably. But I just want to make sure, that's all.", "Yeah, well, the problem is, we could be on our way to Olivia and find where she is. I still have no messages from her, she doesn't answer my calls. Goes straight to voicemail." Sam looks up at Jenny's bedroom window and sees her screaming, just as in his dream. "Dean. Look, Dean!" They rush out of the car and run towards the house. "You grab the kids, I'll get Jenny."          Inside Sari's bedroom, the figure made out of fire is standing by her closet. In the hallway, Dean rushes to Jenny's bedroom door. "Jenny!", "I can't open the door!", "Stand back!" Jenny moves back, Dean kicks down the door and brings her downstairs. "No, my kids!!", "Sam's got your kids, come on."          While carrying Ritchie in his arms, Sam goes to Sari's bedroom, where she is screaming for help. Sam goes to Sari's bed and picks her up in his other arm. "Don't look. Don't look!" They leave the bedroom. Outside, Dean and Jenny rush out of the house. Inside the house, Sam rushes down the stairs and puts the kids down on the floor. "All right, Sari, take your brother outside as fast as you can, and don't look back." Suddenly, an invisible force makes Sam fall to the floor. He slides backward into another room, crashing into a table. Sari screams and runs outside with Ritchie. They rush outside to Dean and Jenny. Dean kneels down to Sari's eye level. "Sari, where's Sam?" Sari, crying, answers to Dean, "he's inside. Something's got him." Panicked, Dean looks at the front door. It slams shut on its own.          Dean opens the trunk of the Impala and grabs a rifle and an ax. He rushes to the front door and begins chopping away at it. Inside the kitchen, Sam gets flung into a set of cabinets. He stands up and is pinned against the wall by the invisible force. He can't move any part of his body. The fire figure makes its way towards Sam. Dean continues chopping down parts of the door. Eventually, he makes a whole that he is able to step through. He walks through the house, looking for Sam. "Sam? Sam!" He finds Sam. As he looks at the fire figure, he raises his gun. "No, don't! Don't!", "What? Why?!", "Because I know who it is. I can see her now." Suddenly, the fire vanishes. Instead, standing in front of them is their mother, Mary Winchester. Exactly as she was the night she died. Dean's expression softens. In shock, he lowers his gun slowly. "Mom?" Mary smiles and stops closer to him. "Dean." Tears form in Dean's eyes. Mary walks away from him and goes to Sam. Dean watches her, never taking his eyes off her. "Sam." Sam smiles weakly, crying. His mother's smile fades. "I'm sorry.", "For what?" She looks at him sadly but says nothing. She walks away from them and looks up at the ceiling. "You get out of my house. And let go of my son." Once again, she bursts into flames. When she is entirely engulfed, the fire reaches the ceiling and disappears. The force holding Sam to the wall is released. He walks over to Dean and the two of them look at each other, stunned. Sam sighs, "now it's over."
Dean is standing by the car with Jenny, looking through old photos. "Thanks for these.", "Don't thank me, they're yours." Dean puts the trunk of photos into the car. Sitting on the front steps of the house, Sam is joined by Missouri. "Well, there are no spirits in there anymore, this time for sure.", "Not even my mom?", "No.", "What happened?", "Your mom's spirit and the poltergeist energy, they canceled each other out. Your mom destroyed herself going after the thing.", "Why would she do something like that?", "Well, to protect her boys, of course." Sam nods, with tears in his eyes. Missouri goes to put her hand on his shoulder, but she stops herself. "Sam, I'm sorry.", "For what?", "You sensed it was here, didn't you? Even when I couldn't.", "What is happening to me?", "I know I should have all the answers, but I don't know.", "Sam, you're ready? We have to find Olivia." Sam nods and goes to the car. Jenny thanks all of them. Missouri looks at Sam and Dean, "don't you boys be strangers." Dean nods, "we won't." Missouri smiles, "see you around." Jenny waves. They smile, get in the car, and drive away.
Missouri comes inside her house and sets her purse on the table. "That boy—he has such powerful abilities. But why he couldn't sense his own father, I have no idea." John is sitting on the couch. "Mary's spirit—do you really think she saved the boys?", "I do." John nods sadly and twists his wedding ring on his finger. "John Winchester, I could just slap you. Why won't you go talk to your children?" Tearfully, John answers, "I want to. You have no idea how much I want to see them. But I can't. Not yet. Not until I know the truth." Missouri and John share a look. "Dean said that Olivia is missing." John frowns. "What? Since when?", "She was with us yesterday, she left, and since then they have no news about her." John looks at Missouri, "you know something, don't you?", "Sam is powerful, but Olivia? She's a force of nature."
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bacontodae · 7 years ago
Text
Cheat |Pt.3|
Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader
Genre: Angst
Length: 4.5k
|Pt.1|  |Pt.2|
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You were pretty convinced that it would take a year at the most to get over a heart break; it was useless spending the next couple years of your life sulking about your ex. So it came as a surprise to you that four years on, you still thought about Baekhyun and everything you shared and experienced together.
 He was undeniably one of the biggest things that happened to you as you had never really bothered to care about love or any of that boring shit. All the “inspirational” quotes on Instagram were complete bullshit to you, you just needed to work and earn the money to get you to a financially stable position and maybe then, would you find a partner.
But thanks to Baekhyun, that wouldn’t be the case as he just stepped into your life, made you feel like a Queen and then proceeded to cheat, make your life a living hell and make you feel guilty for doing what anyone else would have done in that same situation. He deserved to be hated by you and you definitely knew that but it was hard. Unless you had experienced it yourself, you wouldn’t know the real pain and heart break that you would feel as your soul left your body to join other broken hearts.
Every day you would curse at yourself because you knew that what you were doing was damaging your mental state but that was what love did to you. It ate away at your brain, telling you to hold grudges and to remember all the pain he caused but then it would tell you to give him a second chance, to relive the good times again. You had an angel and a devil on each of your shoulders like the cartoons but little did anyone know how emotionally tiring those stupid miniature figures actually were.
Four years may seem like an eternity to some and to others a short while but to you, it was bang in the middle. It wasn’t too long where you could actually feel yourself going insane but it wasn’t too short where you had sat for a couple of hours one day wondering where all of your time went. Seeing Baekhyun and Taeyeon going on dates together and kissing in public all over Dispatch and other Korean news websites was what made the years long as they always looked so happy and like they didn’t give a damn about everyone else which was exactly what you wanted with Baekhyun. The people knew that you were a sweetheart and you were not here to cause any sort of trouble or harm to Baekhyun and the fans but it was the fact that people thought you were taking Taeyeon’s place.
You and Baekhyun were in love but there were always some salty fans that just had to rain on your parade and ruin everything. Dates were crashed by jealous fans and on countless occasions, certain fans had tried to assault you in attempts to scare you off away from their “oppa”. But none of this made you want to leave Baekhyun and this only made your anger build and build years later. The amount of times that you had sacrificed your happiness for him and your relationship was almost embarrassing considering the fact that he did a 180 turn from you to Taeyeon. 
When the word had got out, hundreds of people mocked you saying that he cheated because you were not good enough or up to his standards. All the harsh words were egging you on to leave everything behind and live another life in another place at another time. Despite your friends pleading, you had a plan and that plan was to end it all here. Your will was written and the decision was locked. It may of been a slightly dramatic thing to end your life just because of an ex boyfriend but the way that the couple seemed to mock you unknowingly through their public displays of affection was close to unbearable, like you couldn’t escape them not matter how hard you struggled to.
It was Chanyeol who basically lectured you and pushed the idea into your head that ending something so special because of something that could be changed and resolved was so stupid. When you would have late night chats with him about your feelings and how your day had went, he would always end the call with “Stay strong Y/N”. He may have been harsh with his technique of pushing the idea of suicide out of your mind and turning over a new leaf instead but it most definitely worked as you were now in another part of the city with a reasonable apartment that you shared with your dog. 
You could finally witness the light that had been missing from your life without really realising that you had done it. It was such a refreshing feeling and the gratitude you felt towards your friends (Chanyeol especially) was overwhelming. You no longer tortured yourself by checking the reporting websites for updates on Baekhyun but instead, you made the mature decision to congratulate the couple on their engagement. 
Yes, engagement. And the wedding was in two weeks. 
“Come on!” Chaewon exclaimed through the door of your bedroom. Somehow, that certain someone had managed to convince you to take a nice trip out with her to town to buy a new dress for their wedding. And yes, you were invited by the one and only Baekhyun and yes, you had also been persuaded to go by all of your friends as it would be “part of the healing process”. Whatever it was, you were sort of glad that you could confidently say yes to Baekhyun over the phone and his cheers of glee warmed your chest.
“Alright, calm your tits.” You mumbled but Chaewon still caught on and accused you through the wooden barrier that her tits were perfectly calm and stable. It was very obvious to you that when you had first met her, she was destined to be your best friend. After all, who has a conversation about shook tits?
Giving your hair once last shake, you walked out of the bedroom to see Chaewon pacing around, hands on her breasts. There was no point questioning her so you grabbed the car keys of your dining table and called for your confusing best friend to follow.
To your surprise, you ended up meeting a lot of your old (and new) friends at the dress shop in which you bought a lovely black and white dress. Apparently the wedding was going to be absolutely huge with basically everyone and their mothers going to it to watch the deep in love couple finally seal the deal. Of course it was slightly heart breaking whenever someone brought it up and gushed about how amazing the wedding will be as the feelings for Baekhyun still remained and would most likely never leave. You would try and blame yourself for everything such as not giving him a second chance but why would you give a cheater a second chance? 
 The dress was classy and accentuated all your curves as the white detailing outlined your body shape. It was slightly below mid thigh and you were close to not buying it and going for a longer flowy dress but with the persuasion of your law school graduate best friend, you ended buying it with a smile on your face. You decided on simple black heels that you made sure they wouldn’t kill your feet by the end of the night. After all, it was inevitable that everyone would have you dancing or probably running after someone the whole night.
The two of you made a pit stop at a rather aesthetic coffee shop that was decorated with rustic wood and bunches of classic flowers. It was small but cosy inside and it was tempting to hide in the storage room so you could spend the whole entire day and night here. The waiter took you to your table which had a small plant in a light grey pot and the smallest salt and pepper jars you had ever seen. The whole shop was very easy on the eyes.
“What are you going to get?” Chaewon asked whilst scouring through the drinks menu like a hawk. Everything on the menu sounded so good and like a bloody mission to try and decide on one thing to get. 
“Would it be greedy to get everything?” 
“Yes.” Chaewon deadpanned before bursting into a fit of laughter which was typical of her. You know, everyone had that friend that would do the most random things out of the blue and you would laugh because there was no other way that you could actually respond without being miserable or mean; she was one of those people.
Thankfully the waiter came to take your orders in time before Chaewon would actually end up buckling over and falling of her seat with tears in her eyes and her limbs flying about like leaves on a windy day.
You and Chaewon had finally (and safely despite having a near miss with another driver who was very obviously drunk) made it home and had invested yourselves in a warm cup of hot chocolate and a deep conversation about life. It started off with Chaewon talking and moaning about her co worker who would not leave her alone even though she would talk about him all the time because he was “really attractive and probably an A* in bed”; but then you ended up slipping into a discussion about how you were going to deal with having to face the bride and groom in two weeks. The thought alone made you cringe and want to curl up in a ball and forget about all of it.
The wedding was much too close to just cancel on them and besides, that would be horrible and would completely let down your friends, your family, yourself but more importantly, Baekhyun. Several years on from that messy situation and yet you still didn’t want to see him upset or hurt. Then again, he had cancelled on you that one time when you two had arranged to meet up in town to talk things over. He had said that it was due to nerves and that he wasn’t ready to tell everything to you just yet, and you believed him. He sounded so sincere and you knew exactly what his sincere voice sounded like.
“I honestly just think that you should turn up, make him so jealous by having some handsome ass man hanging on your arm and have him regretting everything.” Chaewon explained and the idea didn’t sound half bad. You could get Chanyeol to turn up with you and you could give a twinkling gaze towards Baekhyun whenever he looked at you. Sure, it was petty but it would give you that confidence that you were lacking.
“Maybe but that would just ruin his day and I can’t do that on his wedding day.” You got satisfaction from being petty and showing someone that you weren’t completely helpless but it would just be immoral of you to do that on a once in a life time experience.
“Wow, you’re boring me. Just do it and he’ll feel guilty; it’ll be great.” Chaewon rolled her eyes at you and took a sip at her warm beverage. 
“You’re a horrible person.” You said and she rolled her eyes at you again.
Someone humming the traditional wedding ceremony tune began to slowly wake you up from an uncomfortable sleep filled with anxiety, guilt and anticipation. You had barely caught any sleep that night as you were basically reciting the exact words you would say to Baekhyun and Taeyeon when you saw them later that day. 
The sweet humming got closer before you bedroom door was pushed open and a wide awake Chaewon started going through your drawers.
“What are you doing?” You asked her, silently cringing at the sudden whiff of your morning breath. It was always that worst feeling when you first smelt that horrible stench otherwise known as morning breath.
“Trying to find your expensive bra…” She mumbled almost incoherently. Her comment made you rise from your position in bed and shoot her a questioning look. She only raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders before trotting out of the room, your expensive bra in hand.
Once you were left alone once again in the naturally lit room that you essentially kept all your secrets in, the real realisation of what the day had in stored for you finally settled in. An unsettling bubbling feeling coursed throughout your veins and your heart thumped loudly in your ears. There was absolutely no reason to be this anxious about the wedding but you still seemed to be panicking and planning out different escape routes and strategies in case things got nasty. It was unlikely that anything terrible would happen but you weren’t too sure on how their friends and family would react towards you.
Would Baekhyun’s parents send cold glares your way for destroying their son’s happiness all those years ago? Or would Taeyeon herself turn on you that evening and completely break you apart until you fled the ceremony, shoes in hand and mascara running down your face uncontrollably. But, that was all very dramatic and (hopefully) unlikely.
On the more optimistic side, you could spend this day with your best friend as you both pampered yourselves ready for one of the biggest events you would ever attend. It had taken some convincing to let the nearly-wed couple allow Chaewon to come but when they had, it had felt like a few more bricks had been taken off of the almost toppling stack of your shoulders. It was rather easy though; all you had to do was remind them of the hurt and the agony you had suffered for years and then you were well on your way.
A familiar jingle filled up the empty space of your bedroom. Your phone displayed a few notifications from your various social medias on the lock screen and a text from Chanyeol.
From Chanyeol: I’ll pick you up at 1. Be ready
The winky face he included on the end of the message implied that he was clearly teasing you about this whole situation. Chanyeol had the ability to sense awkwardness in advance and he used that to his advantage as he would constantly tease you about awkward situations before they had even happened. You crossed your fingers and hoped that today wouldn’t be as disgustingly awkward as everyone was making it out to be; you just want to celebrate your friend’s new beginning.
The ceremony venue was absolutely breathtaking. Mahogany chairs decorated with white cushions in rows of six were lined up on either side of a pristine white carpet that was rolled out leading to the front. There were trios of white candles in an alternating pattern at the end of the last chair of a row; they were scented like roses and added to the flower theme of the ceremony. Cherry blossom plants were stood at the entrance where the bride would walk through and tiny pink blossoms lined the edge of the carpet. Great time and effort had been put into the setup of the wedding and despite all the hard feelings, you felt so much excitement and anticipation for the couple.
You spotted Chanyeol and the others just outside of the venue where everyone else was crowded, waiting to take their seats. You had arrived with Chaewon who was currently gawking at the special couple taking pictures against a rustic wall. They looked so perfect together as Taeyeon stood in the most beautiful white dress and as Baekhyun stared adoringly at her with the utmost love for her doing laps in his eyes. Obviously, the slightest bit of jealous coursed through your veins but the feeling of satisfaction and admiration overpowered it greatly.
The photographer continued to take pictures of the family and friends as you quietly stood at the side of the meadow outside as it was the polite thing to do regarding your situation. Chaewon had ran off somewhere probably making new friends leaving you alone but the scenery and atmosphere made you feel warm and content inside. You watched Baekhyun and Taeyeon laugh with Chanyeol and the others as huge grins took over their faces; it was so refreshing to see Baekhyun happy again all thanks to his friends and family.
It was almost time to go inside the beautifully decorated venue when Baekhyun caught your eye from across the field and beckoned you to come over. Your group of friends all looked in your direction as a wave of realisation (and guilt) washed over their faces. You allowed an amused chuckle to escape your lips and you struggled to walk over in the heels you were wearing.
“I’m so sorry Y/N!” Baekhyun exclaimed holding out his arm to allow you to slip in next to him for another round of photos with you. He looked unbelievably handsome in his black suit and tie, hair perfectly styled to perfection and a light smile constantly on his face.
“No it’s fine. I enjoyed watching you from over there.” You smiled back. Though is sounded a little creepy, it was true as nothing warmed your heart quite as much as watching your friends be happy. The photographer took multiple pictures of your group and it felt so right to be standing together once again. All those years back and everything had separated you all apart but the happiness of Baekhyun and Taeyeon managed to bring you all back to where you belong. Today could only get better and better if the beginning was the only thing to go by.
The organ echoed throughout the hall as the traditional music began to play despite the old lady at the organ looking like she was about to crash out on the keys. Everyone turned their heads towards the entrance where Taeyeon had begun to stride on in looking like a goddess but you kept your excitable gaze on Baekhyun. His eyes were becoming glossy and his hands were shaking uncontrollably; you just wanted to run up and tell him everything will be alright and that this will be the happiest day of his life.
The ceremony ran smoothly and just about everyone teared up when each partner said their vows. It was crystal clear how thankful each one of them were for each other and how in love they were when their adoring gazes poured into each other’s eyes.
This made you think about your own love life and how little there was of it. You were grateful for being single as it didn't restrict to anything but watching them together up there made you regret a few things. Perhaps you were too harsh on Baekhyun making him feel lost and almost like he had to date Taeyeon just so that he was happy. It was incredibly wrong for you to be pondering about such things at a certain time but it was out of your control for the most part.
As everyone was filing out of the beautifully decked out hall, you caught up to Jongdae who was laughing at something Minseok must’ve said. You tapped him on the shoulder and greeted both of them before expressing your happiness for the newlywed couple.
“I don’t think I’ve seen Baekhyun this happy in a while.” Minseok said shaking his head slightly with a soft smile upon his lips. You and Jongdae nodded in agreement.
“It’s definitely refreshing to see that bright smile of his.” You commented causing Jongdae to mumble something under his breath (probably about how his smile was bright too) but he was smiling nonetheless.
Whoever was hired to organise and decorate this wedding needed a promotion immediately. The décor was similar to the ceremony layout but the place had a more lively and energetic atmosphere to it. Several courses of amazing food were being served to each and every person and rounds of various alcoholic beverages were being served. You were sat at a table with Chaewon and the boys (excluding Chanyeol who was obviously the best man sitting at the table with the parents and the dreamy couple).
Poor Chanyeol’s speech was a stuttering mess but it had the whole room laughing hysterically at his adorableness so as a result, he didn’t really mind. Taeyeon’s speech was exactly what you would’ve expected from her- beautiful and graceful- she spoke with no hitches other than when she teared up when talking about how accepting everyone was. However, Baekhyun’s speech was the most hard hitting for you especially as he mentioned you on multiple occasions. He talked about how everyone deserves a best friend who is as accepting and encouraging as you. He expressed how none of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for your “stubborn ass” and that he is unimaginably thankful to have you in his life. Obviously, the battle against the tears was once again lost but you smiled through it all.
The friendship between you two was an emotional rollercoaster within itself. You started off as his choreographer and then as his friend until he never gave up on his flirting techniques that would make anyone and their mothers cringe. You became lovers who were completely star struck by each other but all of that came crashing down like mountain of fragile playing cards when the reality of his careless actions hit you. It was then that you became complete strangers, never acknowledging each other no matter how hard it was to forget the good times. Then, something clicked; you realised how pathetic this whole situation was and how you had lost someone who meant so much to you that no words could ever express the gratitude and love you felt towards them. Would it be silly to refer to him as your guardian angel? Because that was what he was to you. To call him your best friend once again was perhaps the best feeling in the world and you promised to never let each other go again.
The crisp air nipped at your bare arms and legs as you watched the city lights glimmer in the pale moonlight. You would do this often- watch over the busy city and imagine what each person was doing or going through right then. You would get so invested in watching birds glide past or watching stray leaves float peacefully in the gusts of wind that any of your own problems would disappear with them. Some would call you crazy but it was all just a coping mechanism in the end. And it worked, so it didn’t matter what anyone thought, as long as you were calm and at peace.
The soft creaking of the balcony door brought you straight back into reality but you just assumed it was the wind colliding with the delicate door frame. That was until a gentle voice spoke up and a body came close to your side.
“You’re still doing this?” You registered the tranquil voice to be Baekhyun’s and you instantly relaxed again.
“What do you mean?” The question came out much more quietly than you had anticipated but Baekhyun heard you perfectly.
“Trying to imagine yourself as a bird or a leave.” He chuckled into the cold air and turned his head to you with the softest of smiles. You purely replied back with a gentle smile of your own and rested a hand on his forearm.
“I have told you once but I’ll tell you again, it’s the best way to forget all of your problems and to just focus on everything peaceful about the world.” Baekhyun’s nose crinkled as he knitted his brows together in false confusion.
“There is nothing peaceful about traffic or a busy city.”
You let out mere laugh.
“That is when you’re up here and not a part of it.”
Now it was his turn to laugh at your bluntness as it reminded him of all the unforgettable times you two shared together…as a couple. It was so wrong of him to think about such a topic at his wedding day with the love of his life but there was still something so enticing about you and your romantic feelings towards him. Even after all this time, he still likes to believe that you think about him romantically and you recall all of the major events in your relationship at least once a day. Perhaps that’s a little selfish and conceited of him to imagine but he couldn’t say he didn’t do that himself.
“I still think about you,” He shifted from one foot to the other to gain a better look at your concentrated face. “I miss you a lot actually.”
You averted your gaze towards him expecting to see his famous shit eating grin but instead you were greeted with a frown and unreadable eyes. He looked so upset but at the same time he looked angry, like he was ready to explode at any minute and break down.
“I miss you too Baekhyun.” You said barely above a whisper as you took a hold of his hand trying to ease whatever tension he was feeling. It was unclear of what he was going to do or how he was going to react but you had enough faith in him to assure yourself that he wasn’t going to try anything.
“No. I mean, yeah of course we miss each other but I really miss you. A lot of the time I just lay awake thinking about you and how much I regret…” He paused and looked away from your expecting gaze. “…doing what I did. I’m obviously glad we are best friends again as you honestly mean the fucking world to me.“
He took hold of both of your hands and started into your eyes with what you could barely make out being regret and sadness. “But I will never forget what I did to you and how much I destroyed your life. I will never forget the countless times I went to bed crying my eyes out because of how much I hated myself.”
Your eyes began to sting and your nose began to tingle as Baekhyun began to become more blurry as your eyes began to cloud up.
“I will never stop loving you even if it means I destroy myself in the process. You mean the absolute world to me.” He paused to let himself take in a huge breath and for you to allow warm tears roll down your cheeks and eventually evaporate on your arms.
“I never want to lose you again Y/N. I love you.” It was then that he wrapped you up in his arms and rested his tear stained cheek on the side of your head as you two sobbed into each other’s shoulders hoping that this special moment would never end.  
A/N: at last, i have graced your feed with pt3 which so many of you enjoy (i hope). i’m so sorry this took so long! i started school and just got uninterested in writing anything but im back and ready to write more.
though this is the final part so give it some love <3
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chibisquirt · 7 years ago
Text
“never (always) the same”, HP/MCU Soulmarks
His marriage was already dying when the soulmarks came.
It wasn’t that he didn’t try.  And they got on alright, him and Ginny; they were good friends, at least, and some days he really did think he was in love with her.  
But it wasn’t all the days.  And she wasn’t in love with him on any days, not anymore, there was no getting around that.
Still, they were comfortable.  They hadn’t moved into separate bedrooms yet when the soulmarks came, but they were thinking about it:  Harry kept odd hours for work, Ginny got up damned early for practice, and both of them had nightmares, although Harry’s were, they both agreed, worse.  Ginny had mentioned it, tentatively, as something the very old-fashioned pureblood families did, and Harry hadn’t agreed yet because he liked it when he could smell her in his sleep, but he knew he was going to.
And then one night, as he was changing into his pajamas, Ginny had asked, “What the bloody hell is that?!”
The mark had been on his left side, just beneath his collarbone.  It was dark, not like skin is dark but like ink is, a blue so deep it was almost black.  The handwriting was blocky, all caps, not like a child would write but like an adult would if something were very, very important, and it was an inch tall, maybe a handswidth long.
GET OUT
(There is a readmore! Mobile users, ‘ware the cut!)
That was before they knew what the marks were, of course.  Harry had gone in to the office early the next morning to get it tested, but there were half a dozen other folks doing the same thing.  It was quickly declared to be an Alarming Situation, and Harry was actually named as the Special Investigator in charge of discovering what on earth the marks meant.
The muggles got there first, though; Dudley, of all people, was the one who clued Harry in.  They met for lunch once a month, by that point, and Dudley had asked Harry, in the tone of one looking only for the latest gossip, whether he or anyone he knew had a mark.
Harry spilled his tea.  “I’m sorry?!  What-- what do you mean?”
Dudley looked at him oddly.  “Do the wizard folk not get them, then?  The marks, Harry, like writing?  Appear on people’s bodies?  Generally the first words someone has said to them...?”
Harry’s pulse was pounding in his ears.  “We get them, yes,” he answered.  “Not... not all of us...  Is it all muggles?”  It had sounded like that, when Dudley said it.
“No, no-- no one I know.  Well, that I know of, anyway.  I think they said one in twenty?”
Harry’s eyes widened.  There were one hundred twenty-seven people in the entire MLE department; twenty-four, that he knew of, had marks.  “It’s, er... It’s more than that.”
Dudley’s eyes widened.  “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?  They say it’s most common in folks from small villages, folks who never intend to leave; and wizards are a bit like a small village, really.  When you think about it.”
Harry felt the astonishment resting on his face.  “Dudley,” he said, voice urgent, “are you telling me they’ve made statistics about this?!”
After that, Dudley had taken him to a library and shown him the information-- the “Interwebs,” he called it, chortling at some private joke.  The “website” for the NHS had a whole section about the marks.  
The markings, or “soulmarks” as they have colloquially become known, are a new phenomenon that has appeared across the country as of the 13th of this month.  There is little conclusive information on them, and those who have discovered such marks on their person should continue to exercise caution.  Early interviews indicate that the marks are not self-inflicted; that, in fact, most wearers were unaware of their condition until they visually discovered the marks.  
It went on.  
The muggles had discovered, through a wide-spread research initiative that Harry was frankly envious of, that the marks were always the first thing someone had said to a person-- unless the bearer had no idea what they meant.  In a couple of cases, someone had had no idea until the words had actually been spoken: one had even heard the words from a nurse when they called to report it!  
And, overwhelmingly, the person whose words formed the mark was someone the bearer loved.  
The rumor that the marks are from a person’s “soulmate” is, of course, unsubstantiated; however, there is usually a loving relationship between Marker and Bearer, be it romantic, erotic, or, in rare cases, merely physical.  One woman, an author of romance novels, reports, “Jack and I knew each other during the war-- that would be the Great War, World War II to you.  He stayed at my family’s farm; I was maybe... sixteen?  No, I must have been fifteen, because he was sent away early.  We were together for seven months, and I have never forgotten them.  Glorious months!  He never loved me-- I don’t think I really loved him, either.  I didn’t really know him, you see.  Not really.  But oh, when he touched me...  I have never forgotten it.  I have spent my whole life trying to define that feeling, and I have never truly succeeded.”  The speaker, who remained anonymous, has a total of three marks on her.
In other markings, there is no physical element to the relationship at all.  Jackie from London describes her relationship with Julia:  “We were always best friends, of course.  Then Julia’s husband began to beat her, and she would come to me.  We would sit on my couch and eat ice cream, and I would hold her while she cried.  I realized I was in love with her, but of course I was married, and she was, too, even if he was pond scum.  But she was my whole world, really-- people say that, and you think they’re exaggerating, but I’m not.  She died the next year-- car crash.  I’ve always wondered what would have happened, you know?”  
Harry sat back from the computer, astonished.  He felt himself having two different reactions at once.
On the one hand, as the Special Investigator In Charge, he was excited about the first solid lead in the case since they had run dry two wees ago.  They had tested the mark for every kind of curse there was-- tested multiple marks, the Curse Experts at the Department had been thorough-- but they had definitely found they weren’t that.  They had tested the marks for magical residue and found a little, but they weren’t enchantments, and there was no artifact or transfiguration spell which could possible have hit all of them at the same time.  
That left only charms, and there were millions of charms, but their international contacts had informed them that the phenomenon was world-wide.  There were only a few charms that could be cast on that kind of a scale, and this wasn’t one of them, which meant someone must have created a spell,. But again, that was easiest with curses, and the marks weren’t curses...  
But love spells were a wholly unexplored category.  This was a lead.
On the other hand, though, Harry also had the perspective of a man with a mark.  
He touched the place under his collarbone where his shirt covered the two words.  The marks didn’t seem to care whether you were married or not, and he didn’t have one from Ginny.  But all the same, it seemed like there was someone out there for him...
His heart started to pound crazily in his chest, and he curled his fingers into a fist.  
Someone out there for him.  
He felt like he had been looking down a long, featureless hallway, stretching into forever, and now, for the first time... 
...he had spotted a door.
Their investigation went much more quickly, after that.  Harry learned far more than he had ever wanted to about love spells-- and he also learned that Madam Pomfrey had known what this was from the beginning, since apparently it was a spell that was used about once every couple of years on a student, inevitably cast by a fifth or sixth year girl.  Whoever had set the global version had just magnified the spell, that was all-- difficult, and requiring incredible power, but not impossible.  Harry forwarded his report to Internation Law community, got his new assignment, and moved on.
Infuriatingly, the muggles had had it right:  they really were soulmarks.  Your Marker was someone whose life would change your soul, the books said, and then hastily clarified for the better.  Not always a lover, but if not, then a beloved; not always a beloved, but if not, then a lover.  Usually both.  
Harry touched his mark, again and again, but he had only had one lover in his life, and he knew it wasn’t from her.
That was the other element of the spell, the bit that made it tricky: it wasn’t purely a charm.  There was also a hefty dose of divination in the spell, which meant Harry would have never found the answer on his own.  (He was not overly knowledgeable about divination. Trelawney, after all.)  So if it wasn’t someone who had changed your soul, then your mark came from someone who was going to change your soul.  
Harry touched his mark, again and again and again.
He made an official report to the Daily Prophet, and endured the swarm of owls which resulted.  He also convinced Percy to convince the minister to start looking into occurrence rates, since he still found it fascinating that muggles had them much less often than wizards.  And he told Dudley about the spell, too, when they met up at the end of March; he apologized, since he knew Dudley didn’t like it when magic affected his life.
“Oh, it’s not so bad.  I’m not like Mum and Dad, I don’t mind it.  You saved my life with magic, once; never forgot that.”  Dudley toyed with his pint for a second, then looked up at Harry hopefully.  “So, does it-- I mean.  I actually...  You know.”
Harry couldn’t quite believe it, but he did know, actually.  “You have a mark?” he asked.
“Yeah!”  Dudley nodded, only a little too fast.  “Yeah, I wasn’t-- you know.  I wasn’t quite ready to say, last time.  But it’s-- yeah.  On my ankle.”
Harry wondered, for a brief, hysterical, horrifying second, whether Dudley had ever told him to GET OUT.  “What...  What does it say?”  He was almost too scared to ask.  
“It says, ‘Excuse me, you great lout, me an’ my girl is tryin’ to get a drink, here,’“ Dudley reported proudly.  
Harry blinked a lot, trying not to let the relief show.  “Oh,” he managed.  “That’s-- gosh, Dudley, she sounds like a--”  Winner--no.  Tramp--I can’t say that.  Lush?  Fuck, no-- “--a real sparker!”  
He winced, mentally.  Still, he could have done a lot worse.  
And Dudley was beaming at him, pleased by his take on it.  “Yeah,” Dudley said, “That’s why we’re here, right?”  They usually met in a tea and coffee shop near Dudley’s work.  “Because it sounds like that’s in a bar, and I want to meet her, so...”
“That’s great, D.  I’m really happy for you.”  
He was, too, he realized.  It was good to see Dudley looking so... so hopeful.
“So what about you?” Dudley asked.  “You got a mark from that pretty redhead you married?”  
Harry felt his face shutter.  “Not-- exactly.”  
Ginny did have a mark, it turned out.  She had already met the man, and they both knew who it was.  She swore that there was nothing there, nothing between them, and Harry even believed her.  (She had been too pissed off when he said it was a love spell to be lying.)  But they were, very definitely, sleeping in separate rooms, now.
And they didn’t talk anymore.  That bothered him.
The wizarding world didn’t have divorce, though.  They were stuck.
“I, uh...  I don’t think I’ve met her,” Harry said.  “It’s pretty-- I mean.  It could be a few different people.”  
“Oh,” Dudley said, and then immediately looked embarrassed.  “Sorry.  I, uh... How are your kids!”
Harry relaxed immediately.  “Great!  They’re great.  Lily starts school next fall, she’s very excited--”
Ron and Hermione had each other’s marks on them, Ron on his arm, Hermione on her calf.  They both looked devastated when Harry admitted, haltingly, that he didn’t know whose mark he had.  Ron shouted at Ginny over it; Ginny shouted back.  Then everybody else shouted at Ginny, too, until finally Harry shouted at them.  Hermione, uncharacteristically, didn’t say anything; she just looked desperately sad for both of them.  
Family dinner that week was incredibly tense.  
Ginny’s soulmate was married.  With a child.  His wife was beautiful.  
Ginny refused to even talk to the man.
Harry tried not to be relieved.  Mostly failed.
Tried not to be jealous.  Humiliatingly, he mostly failed at that, too.
They spent a lot of time with the children, and when they weren’t with the children, they watched Quidditch matches together.  That turned out to be a little bit easier; they could talk about the game, about the Beaters and the Snitch and the absolutely abysmal form of the Puddlemere Keeper.  It was a topic they mutually enjoyed. 
Slowly, they regained their friendship.  The topics spread back out again, to Harry’s investigations and the pranks the Aurors played on each other.  (The Aurors played abominable pranks on each other, and no departmental memos would put a stop to it, because they could always write them off as “training exercises,” which, after all, were useful.  Even if it was a little hard to see how enchanting beans to throw themselves at Milton was training for anything.)
And then, one day, as Harry was telling her about the new trainee, it happened.
“She’s not bad, actually,” he was saying.  “She’s got a knack for keeping her eye on everyone.  She’s not young, not like Ron and I were; closer to our age now.  She used to be a foreman at Sleekeazy’s, and she’s a dab hand with potions, of course.  But she said she wanted something different, something that would matter, so sure, we let her join the training; worst that happened was she dropped out, right?  And wouldn’t you know?  She’s the top of her class.”  
Ginny leaned towards him.  Her voice was light, almost hopeful as she asked, “Is she pretty?”
Harry thought about it.  “Ehn?  She has good hair, I guess.  Well, she would, wouldn’t she?  And her eyes are pretty-- brown, like yours, but with really thick lashes.”
She bit her lip.  “You should go for it,” she said.
Harry blinked, confused.  “Go for what?”
Ginny rolled her eyes and tilted her head to the side, waiting for him to catch up.
It still took him a minute.  “OH!  For that?  No, thank you!”   
Down the road, someone looked over in alarm, and Harry realized how loud he had just gotten.  He lowered his voice.  “Gin-- I can’t.  Couldn’t possibly, you know that-- and besides, she’s not that pretty.”  
Then he realized what he had just said, and flushed.  “Not that-- I mean-- I don’t think-- oh, bugger.”  
Ginny laughed, her eyebrows drawing up in the center like it hurt to do it.  “It’s alright, Harry.  I’ve known-- you know.  That’s I’m... not the one.  For you.  For a while.”
Harry swallowed, and tried to fight down the shame.  He slumped in his seat.  “I’m so sorry,” he muttered.  “Gin-- I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” she repeated.  “It hurt.  For a long time.  But I don’t think you’ve ever loved me the way I loved you, and by now I’ve had some time to get used to it.”
His head snapped up.  “I do love you,” he insisted.  
She smiled again, sad as anything.  “I know,” she said.  “But not the way I loved you.”
And there really wasn’t any arguing with that, because it was true.
The sex used to be pretty nice.  Harry remembered that; he knew he hadn’t just made it up.  Ginny used to light up under his hands, eyes crossing and moans pouring out of her throat.  It was like a magic trick, back before magic had been everyday:  Ginny was a proud woman, and strong, independent... but then he took her in his arms, and she melted.  She used to go really crazy for him, but them those days got rarer, and rarer, and then just... stopped.
He wondered sometimes if he could have held it off by going a little crazy for her, too.  
He never had managed to turn off the little voice in his head, though.  The one that wondered if he was doing it right, if she were going to think badly of the noises he was making, or the knobbiness of his knees.   It was hard to go crazy when he was wondering how to angle things to keep from having to change the sheets.
The sex thing might have been mostly his fault.It was November, now, almost a year since the marks had appeared.  Harry was on a new case, a Special Investigation into a series of portals appearing throughout Manchester.  Portals were doors like the entrance to Diagon Alley, hidden until they were opened, and the space they opened into wasn’t quite here.  But these portals were baffling, because when you opened them, they didn’t open into anywhere.  Most of them were blank walls which shifted and turned and rearranged to reveal... more blank walls.  
So Harry was looking into it.
There was one at the back of an alley not far from Maine Road.  The alley was near a few different restaurants, and they all opened into it; there were three different dumpsters, and the smell was astonishing.  Harry had wondered, maybe, if the number of doors near the portal had anything to do with it; all the others, he thought now, had also been near at least two actual, physical doors.  So he was “opening” the portal-- the graffiti there rearranged in fascinating, kaleidoscopic ways-- and trying the back doors of the restaurant, but nothing about the facilities was changing when he “opened” the portal.  
And then a man ran into the alley.  
He was actually running, too; his feet made little skid-stops as he came to an abrupt halt in front of Harry.  He looked terrible, his hair lank, his clothes dirty and scuffed.  He reminded Harry, quite viscerally, of Sirius, and after a second, Harry put his finger on the resemblance (beyond general dishevelment): the man looked hunted.
He was young, younger than Harry at a guess, maybe in his late twenties, early thirties, assuming he was a muggle.  He was dressed like a muggle, anyway, but so was Harry-- the better to go unobserved.  
The man was also, Harry couldn’t help but notice, extremely handsome, with high cheekbones and poetic mouth.  His eyes were wide and pale, and when he saw Harry, they widened further.  
“Damn it!” the man said.  He looked back the way he had come, and then around the alley, his eyes pausing for a moment on each of the dumpsters.  Large, metallic-- good cover, Harry thought.
The man turned back to Harry, his face and back making an urgent line.  “Get out!” he ordered. 
His voice was urgent, too.  It was the tone of someone who saw a potentially casualty in the fight to come, and was trying to get that casualty out of the way.
Harry narrowed his eyes, and set his feet.  He didn’t draw his wand, but he loosened it in its scabbard, letting it fall down inside of his oversized sleeve.
The stranger picked up on his obstinance and made a noise of disgust.  He took one of the dumpsters by the side-- what good was that going to do, Harry wondered-- and moved it sideways, perpendicular to the direction of the alley.  
What? 
He hauled a second dumpster across on the other side, so that anyone entering had to pass through the narrow column between them.  
What?!
Maybe the dumpsters were empty?  But, no, there were bags poking out of the top of the third one...
And then the other men started to arrive, diving through the opening and rolling immediately to the side.  And they were all men; all muggles, too, dressed in dark colors and tac gear, wielding appalling large guns.  
The stranger raised his left arm defensively between himself and the guns; he was wearing some kind of metal glove, which would likely not be enough to save him.  Harry snapped out a spell under his breath and counted.
There were seventeen of them.
No, Harry decided.  No, this was not going to be happening.  He wasn’t sure what was going on-- some kind of muggle hit, from the looks of things-- but the stranger seemed to know he was hunted, and that was an awful lot of men to go after one target.  
And they were muggles.  Didn’t have any kind of defenses at all, really.  Well, maybe the guns, but those didn’t count.
There was a particular kind of spell that was very useful if you ever had to do crowd suppression.  It wasn’t perfect-- it was particularly vulnerable to shield charms, so it was rarely used outside of crowds.  Wasn’t worth it.  But if you knew your target couldn’t cast a shield for whatever reason...  They were called chain lightning spells because of how they looked, and there were a whole set of them.  Basically, they would knock out one target, and then use them as a base to seek out the next target, and then they would take out him.  
Harry had the whole set of attackers on the ground, unconscious, in less than three seconds.
The stranger’s back stiffened in shock.  He pivoted away from the attackers, turning towards Harry, his movements slow with dread.  
Belatedly, Harry tucked his wand away, spreading his arms to calm the stranger.  
The man shook his head, looking baffled.  “Why?” he asked.  "You could have just left.  Why would you interfere?"
His accent was American.  His hands twitched at his sides.
Harry thought about it, about how to explain the near-instinctive assessment he had made.  How to explain the way he knew the attackers had been up to no good.  Was it the way the man had told him to run?  The way any of the players had been dressed?  The number of guns the bad men had had, or the lack of guns on the stranger?  
Harry sighed, and phrased it as simply as he could:
“I don’t like bullies.”
He took in the trail of men on the ground and sigh, shaking his head.  He used another chain lightning spell without taking his wand out of his sleeve-- memory, this time, instead of knockout; none of the men would remember the last half hour of time.  He crossed past the stranger, kneeling next to one of the unconscious thugs and checking his pupils to make sure he hadn't gone too far; Harry's power had grown as he had gotten older, and sometimes it was stronger than others.
"It says that."  The stranger's voice was bottled up, as if he hadn't wanted to speak but hadn't quite been able to help himself.
"Says what?" The thug was fine; now, what he could say that would keep him from having to Obliviate the stranger, too? 
"'I don't like bullies.'  Says it in red.  On my chest."
Harry froze, his head swinging slowly, reluctantly up to the-- the stranger.
He hadn't even learned the man's name.
"Yeah," the man said softly.  His mouth twisted into a smirk, or at least something pretending to be a smirk.  Sardonic, Harry thought; that was the word.  "Apparently, we're supposed to be soulmates."
"Show me."  It came out halfway between an order and dare.
Without breaking eye contact, the man reached down with his metal-gloved hand, hauling upward on the three or four layers of clothing to reveal bare skin.  Quite a lot of bare skin, actually, over an equally shocking quantity of muscle.  And then the man's chest was revealed, or at least his right side pec, and a single, wide brown nipple.  At the base of the pec and following the curve of the muscle, in a small, sharp handwriting that Harry knew intimately, were the words:  
I don't like bullies.
It wasn't red, Harry thought distantly.  It was darker than red, almost maroon.  The color of dried blood.
Any wizard would have called the color "Gryffindor red."
He swallowed, once, and jerked his chin at the closest restaurant door.  "Come on," he said.  He got to his feet with more aches and pops than he really felt entitled to.  "We should talk."
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sorrowsflower · 7 years ago
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The Choices Made (Adlock)
Set at the end of The Reichenbach Fall
Motherhood had never been part of the Woman's plan.
For most of her life, she had been focused on survival and domination, and she had pursued both with a reckless frivolity that burned everyone in her path. None of these things were conducive to raising a child.
Her first discovery of the new little parasite she was incubating was not a joyous moment, as it was for some women. 
Her initial reaction was of shock, because she had always been very careful. Meticulous to the point of obsession. Though her work as a dominatrix never involved actual sexual intercourse, she'd had her own set of lovers, both male and female, prior to her acquaintance with a certain consulting detective, and protection was paramount to her.
It must be a mistake. A false positive.
But before the opportunity to analyze how, and which, bout of sexual activity with said detective -- it had to be Sherlock's; all her other recent lovers had been female -- had resulted in this little inconvenience, the dread settled in. 
It was not dissimilar to a wall of rain come crashing suddenly down on her head, invoking a long-forgotten childhood memory of watching little cartoon figures with black clouds above their heads.
Dear God, she was thinking of cartoons. It was already starting.
She drew a deep breath. That felt a little better. 
Perhaps this was not the black cloud she was imagining it to be. Hell, she wasn't even sure if she really was pregnant.
The dread lifted somewhat, eased by practical thought into a small niggling at the back of her head that could be easily ignored. Tomorrow, she would go to the doctor. Just to make sure.
...
Tomorrow, however, did not bring the fair weather report she had been expecting. The moment the doctor walked in with the results, she had known even before the other woman had opened her mouth.
"Congratula--!"
The Woman held up a hand. She didn't even want to hear it. The dread, which until then had been at the back of her mind, came to the foreground and threatened to take over.
But she was the Woman. She was not given to emotion or sentiment. She had already allowed emotion to take over once, and look where that had gotten her -- sitting in a clinic with a foolishly smiling doctor offering her congratulations.
Her brain immediately went into damage control, as it always did when confronted with a crisis. Find the root of the problem, and fix it. 
She quickly went over her upcoming calendar in her mind, and without letting the doctor start a spiel on -- God, she didn't even want to use the word -- pregnancy and pre-natal care, she cut the doctor off with a cold, professional hand and set up an appointment.
The doctor tried to argue, to offer other options, but she was stopped by the calm look on the Woman's face. There was no confusion, emotional turmoil or hysteria there. Only calm decisiveness. She had made her choice.
The appointment was made.
...
There were no major changes to the Woman's routine. At least not at first. No specific alterations or concessions made for the developing creature inside her, except maybe her morning routine was altered to compensate for the absolutely horrid morning sickness.
Then the "morning" sickness turned into "morning to noon" sickness. But still, it wasn't that bad. She had always been good at concealing physical ailments. And tea helped.
But when it quickly became "the whole fucking day" sickness, she had to admit, it was harder to conceal. The tea, which was now unpalatable, no longer helped. She had to scale down on her clients, and cancel various appointments because now she just felt violently ill all the time.
She abhorred it. The wretched nausea, the sweating, the heaving and dry-heaving, the dizzy spells and light-headedness, the weakness. It was all so distasteful, especially for someone who had been so meticulous about her body, and so immaculate in appearance. 
Pain she could handle -- she was a dominatrix, after all; pain was her bread and butter -- but this prolonged, ever-present discomfort was threatening to undo her. That, and the lack of control over her own body, which before had been a beautiful weapon for her.
Still, she took comfort in the fact that this would all be over soon, and she could return to her normal (if it could be called that) life.
...
Three days before her appointment, an article appeared on the British news website she frequently monitored. 
SUICIDE OF FAKE GENIUS
It was accompanied by a photograph of a man in a dark Belstaff coat and a blue scarf lying on the street, face intentionally obscured to spare the readers the man's gruesome, bloody death. But even through the blurring, the vivid red bloodstains on the man's face and on the street he had landed on were evident.
The bile that she had been suppressing all day rose to the back of her throat, and she had to look away to keep from being sick. 
She slammed the laptop shut and tried to breathe.
It took her several long, shaky minutes, but the nausea eventually subsided. Enough, at least, for her to be able to pick up the phone and place some calls. Half an hour later, she was feeling slightly better (physically, anyway), the story was confirmed, and she received an unobscured copy of the photograph.
The nausea threatened to come up again, but she tamped it down with a deep breath, and analyzed the picture as logically and impartially as possible.
It seemed genuine.
The blood was real, and though there was no way to be sure until her contacts at the morgue confirmed it, she would venture a guess and say that it was his. The face, covered as it was with blood, closely resembled his as well. 
But she, of all people, knew how easy it was to fool someone with a pretty face.
And she had seen his work, too. She had seen the cleverly-edited video of her own "execution" that had made its way into Mycroft Holmes's hands. As loathe as she was to admit it, if she wasn't alive and whole -- and now currently carrying evidence inside her body that would absolutely refute her death in Karachi -- she probably would have been fooled by it too if it had been her.
It wasn't real.
It couldn't be. He was too clever, too good of an opponent to die. True, he had a certain self-destructive streak, but there was no way someone as arrogant as he was would ever commit suicide. And certainly not for something they both knew was a lie.
That thought helped her calm down and settled her nerves.
All she had to do now was wait for the video to prove it.
Fifteen minutes later, the email arrived, and she opened the file. The angle of the video was limited to Sherlock alone, as her contact had been focusing on him, and the sound was less than ideal, but it was clear enough that the detective on the roof was speaking to John Watson, unseen, on the street. She could hear Sherlock confessing to the lie the press and the British public had been fed. 
Rich Brook. Reichenbach. 
They both knew it wasn't true. She, herself, was evidence that it was a lie. And yet, here he was, extolling the opposite to John Watson.
"Keep your eyes on me."
That immediately raised a flag. A magician directing the audience to the illusion and away from the trick. The Woman examined the video intently, trying to spot any discrepancies.
And that was when she saw it. 
A glint of sunlight from the roof a few buildings to the right. It only appeared as Sherlock said "Goodbye, John" and hung up the phone.
Before he dropped the phone and jumped, disappearing from her contact's view and the camera's.
Frustrated, and though she would never admit it to herself, more than a little shaken, she played the video again, to the part of the timeframe where she saw the glint of sunlight. She knew what that was.
The reflection from a rifle's scope, revealed only at the last minute before the shot. A shot that Sherlock Holmes's apparent death had prevented.
A sniper.
And it wasn't pointed at Sherlock.
And then she understood.
Sherlock, despite all his arguments to the contrary, was an irrationally sentimental being. He formed emotional attachments to people. 
While between the two of them, the Woman was more attuned to people, it was Sherlock who actually cared for them. When she had been exposed, it was only too easy for the Woman to abandon all ties, including her loyal Kate, and leave her former life. 
Sherlock, on the other hand... He had a whole brood of people he surrounded himself with. The doctor, his landlady, his brother, the detective inspector, his mousy little pathologist. 
If an instance occurred where he was required to give up his life for the few people he cared about, especially if it included John Watson, she had no doubt the idiot would actually do it. Hadn't he already infiltrated one of the most dangerous terrorist cells in Asia to save her life?
Foolish, foolish man.
She stopped the video and closed the laptop.
...
The day of the appointment came. And went.
She stayed home, phone in hand.
It never rang.
_______________
By SorrowsFlower
Yeah, okay, so I made this on one of those “writing game” sites where you “fight” a monster by completing x-amount of words in the allotted time. So my lazy ass didn’t edit, proofread or research any of this stuff like I normally would have.
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Misdirection
Bonjour, mes chers. I have to get ready for work soon and I’ve been feeling a little down and a little obsessed with a favorite old movie of mine so I decided to write a drabble! I know, when was the last time I wrote a drabble for a movie? I hope you enjoy it, none the less!
For those of you who don’t know, by the way, I have a Patr(e)on! If you think I’d be worth spending a few dollars on every month then consider checking it out! There are polls asking YOUR opinion on what I should post next, what stories I should start, and what ones I should work on again! Check it out at the Patr(e)on website with the name mjanderson.
Warnings for: Gunshot wounds, shipping vibes, and mentions of blood Drabble Idea One: What if in the first movie of ‘Now You See Me’ Alma Dray ended up shooting Daniel Atlas instead of letting him go that night of their New Orleans show?
::
Dylan Shrike watched as the Four Horseman performed their second major show and felt a swell of what could only be called pride. It was a struggle to keep his expression skeptical, as if he was loathing every minute he was forced to sit there, but there were prices to be paid in the game he was playing. Alma Dray was far too clever and Dylan was almost certain that she knew more than even he gave her credit for. It had been almost painful to have little to no reaction at hearing her go on about Lionel Shrike and how he did his greatest tricks. How he had seen so far into the future and how he had died… No, Alma Dray was definitely someone to not underestimate- Ah, the bubble exploding bit.
Henley was rather a fan of dramatics, wasn’t she? Dylan had seen that clear enough when he had watched her in Los Angeles and she made her entire audience think she had been torn apart by flesh eating piranhas. Macabre, but wildly entertaining and viciously clever with how she had pulled it off. No one saw a figure moving through the crowd when they were thought to be in mortal peril.
And Daniel caught her just as he was supposed to. They really had come a long way in a year. All four of them clashed no doubt, but on stage they began to work flawlessly as one cohesive unit. Dylan hoped to God that they remembered these shows when this was all brought to a close. They would need it.
As the audience cheered and clapped, Dylan turned his attention to Merritt as the real magic began. Thirty years of planning and hiding behind a disguise and it had all led to this moment. He wasn’t sure where it would go once it was over, but he sure as hell was going to be enjoying the ride there.
The theatrics continued on the stage, each Horseman carrying with them sharp wit and blooming charisma that made them shine where so many other magicians had fallen by the wayside. They truly were deserving of this.
It was only an afterthought that Dylan remembered to play his part, instructing the others to be on standby and making sure everything was planned out as it should be. This was where it got hard and everything had to go just right in order for this to be pulled off.
Dylan wasn’t the only one Tressler had screwed over and judging by how packed the show was, he certainly hadn’t been the last. While a part of him had longed for this for selfish reasons, it was amazing to see all these people finally get what they were owed.
“Hey, is this for real?” Dylan spoke quickly to his team, fighting back a smile at the confusion on the other end. “Is this happening!” It was and it was utterly beautiful.
“We got confirmation, it’s really happening. They robbed him!”
“Do not let them get away!” Grin appearing for only a moment, Dylan quickly pushed himself up, Alma following his lead. Moving quickly, Dylan fell back into his role perfectly, running down the stairs and towards the stage.
“Stop! Stop! Nobody move!” Ah, this was going to hurt, wasn’t it? At Daniel’s cheeky little wave, Dylan increased his pace and took a bracing breath. “Freeze!”
“Quarterback!” Merritt and his mentalism were certainly something, Dylan would say that much for him. Thoughts tumbling, Dylan jumped up on stage, viciously proud when the four escaped with not an ounce of fear in their eyes as the hypnotized crowd rushed up to tackle him.
“We are The Four Horsemen. Good night!”
Now this is where the game really got fun.
Ordering everyone out of the security van, Dylan shouted orders and followed the tracer, shouting out directions that would have his own agents confused and turned around so the Horsemen would be able to get away but still be seen on occasion.
Running through the town, Dylan emerged into the crowd, jumping up on top of the police car and quickly taking stock of the scene. He could see police cars blocking off a few parts, another one vanishing into the crowd that he didn’t bother to track anymore- Ah, there was Alma chasing after Daniel. Remembering how vicious Alma had been in looking beneath the surface and digging into everything, Dylan mentally swore and quickly chased after them.
“He’s heading South on Exchange Place.” Following the two North, Dylan started to gain on them when Daniel climbed up onto the wall, Alma screaming just as he got to the top.
“Stop!” All three of them freezing, Dylan watched with baited breath as Daniel slowly looked back, hands raised in the air peacefully. Dylan saw the twitch in the man’s fingers and knew in a second that he would run the moment he saw weakness- Which he would. Alma Dray was fresh off the desk and seemed to always have her nose buried in a book or file. There was no way she would shoot.
Jogging to catch up with them, Dylan watched as Daniel took a step back and quickly began to turn, Dylan only stumbling to a halt as he heard the sharp crack of gunfire echoing throughout the alleway.
Dylan wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised of the three, and, okay, that had been- That had been a close one. Alma had been a glorified desk jockey, though, there was no way she had actually managed to hit him, even with the close shot.
Alma lowered her gun, eyes wide and face pale as Daniel stumbled off the top of the wall instead of jumping gracefully like he should have. Not sparing Alma more than a glance, Dylan quickly rushed over the wall after Daniel, shocked to see the man was right in front of him- No, shocked wasn’t the right word. Shocked was too weak of a word for what he saw.
Okay, ‘Rhodes’, time to play your part. They were too far in to lose now. Any of them. “Stop right there, Atlas! Hands up, nice and slow-”
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” Wrong. Something was very wrong here. Daniel’s voice was cracked and shot through. Everything he knew said that he would be fine under pressure. “Afraid you’re a bit too late for that, Agent.” Oh… Oh, no.
Dylan rushed forward and caught Daniel just as the man collapsed, swearing up a storm as he saw Daniel clutch at a spot right beneath his left shoulder, the man’s breath going shallow and panicked. He was going into shock. “Hey- Hey, focus on me, Atlas. Come on, I need you to focus, now.” Daniel’s eyes were glazed and dilated, the man moving as if he was getting ready to take his chances and run away. “Don’t even think about it, you idiot.”
Okay, okay, he had to think this through carefully. Shit- Shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of them were ever supposed to get hurt like this. Ignoring the radio constantly going off at his side, Dylan gritted his teeth and shifted Daniel to get him onto his feet as gently as he could, “C’mon, c’mon, it’s not ending here.”
They only had a limited amount of time before Alma got her feet back under her and started chasing after them again. If she radioed in for help then there wasn’t much that even Dylan could do. If they took too long here then everything could fall apart. Dylan could not let that happen. Not when he had four lives besides his own riding on the line.
“What… What’re you-” Daniel cut himself off with a noise that bordered on a sob, Dylan feeling guilt tear at his insides as he quickly half-carried and half-led Daniel over a split off of the alleway. The parties were still in full swing and Dylan was sure that any agents running by would quickly pass them over.
Guiding Daniel to sit down on the ground and lean up against the brick wall, Dylan knelt down in front of him, “Hey, hey, you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay, come on. You’re a magician, kid. You’re not allowed to die unless you’re on stage.” Tearing at the suit jacket the man was wearing, Dylan pulled and yanked at the shirt until he could see the wound. It… It wasn’t good. The angle Alma had shot at and the fact Daniel had already half-jumped at least made it so the bullet hadn’t lodged itself into the skin, but it was still bad enough that Dylan could understand the kid’s panic.
“‘S more escape artists kind of thing.” J. Daniel Atlas always with a clever quip and last one-liner. Usually that made Dylan pretty damn proud, but right now it was easy to tell Daniel was bluffing his way through everything.
“Yeah, well tough shit.” Jerking his tie off, Dylan bundled it up as best he could before pressing it tight against the wound, gritting his teeth at Daniel’s strangled scream that escaped before he could cut it off. “Hey, c’mon, Danny, focus for me, okay? I need you to hold this in place. Can you do that?”
Shaking like a leaf, Daniel pressed an already bloodied hand to the impromptu bandage, pressing down hard and giving another sob as his body jerked forward. Dylan was there in a second and cupped the back of the younger’s neck, carefully guiding Daniel to rest his forehead on Dylan’s shoulder. “Ssh, ssh, easy there, Danny, easy. That’s it, that’s it. Just breathe for me, alright? You’re gonna get out of this just fine, just breathe.”
He was giving away too much. If the Horseman found out too much too soon then they might try to approach him before the end of this and it could all come crashing down in flames. Daniel was too curious for his own damn good and if nothing else he would be the one to search for answers. Dylan was giving away everything, but… He couldn’t help it.
Noticing the shaking had barely even died down, Dylan clutched Daniel closer and quickly looked around the alleyway. Shifting just enough to grab Daniel’s phone, Dylan sent a quick text to the other three Horsemen before putting it back. How out of it was this kid that he didn’t even notice what Dylan had done?
Taking a breath, Dylan tightened his grip around Daniel for a moment. “Sorry about this, kid.” Letting him go suddenly, Dylan tried to ignore the sharp whimper of pain as he stood up and took a few steps back, drawing his gun and keeping it aimed at the ground at as he used another hand to grab his radio. “Where are you idiots! North on Exchange Place, I’ve got Atlas cornered but he’s been shot. Get me medical and back-up here now.”
There was a panicked gasp from one of the other Horsemen that Dylan pretended to not hear and then a scrambling of footsteps that he was hard pressed to not look up at. They needed to work a bit more on sneaking around, it seemed. Taking another moment to yell into his radio, Dylan glanced back up and cursed loudly and freely, pouring his frustration over what had just happened into his tone.
To anyone listening in it would just sound as if Agent Rhodes was pissed at the Horsemen once more getting away. Which was good. He had slipped enough in front of Daniel… God he hoped he would be okay. More than that, he hoped the pain had been bad enough to blur Daniel’s memories once he was patched up and healed. The last thing they needed was any complications. It was going to be bad enough to try and explain the blood that was literally on his hands. He would come up with something, though. He always did. After all…
It wouldn’t do to have his grand finale spoiled before the rest of the show.
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