#blooming endless and skittering i love it

[cloverque]

the sound of music (miya atsumu)

森林里的钢琴 (宮 侑)

during a war with the karasuno kingdom: the beautiful sound of a piano being played leads injured knight, miya atsumu, to a cottage deep within the forest

4738 words

medieval setting, knight au, reincarnation, slightly ambiguous end, strangers to lovers, cottagecore, (tw) a little blood, violence, attempted assault

a short story gift for my friend hana-chan :) it’s super overdue but i promised i’d upload this! <3 love you very much @atsumoon

PART 1, PART 2

Once upon a time, there lived a fair maiden residing deep within a forest. She barely ventured beyond the evergreens, thus she was incognisant of the war ravaged lands beyond the forest, and of the country’s feud with a neighbouring kingdom.

The maiden lived in peace, busying herself with her own devices in her humble cottage. Her favourite pastime was playing the piano, for she relished the sound of music. It was her pride and joy, and she sought solace in the magic within the row of monochrome keys. Through music, she could be free; like a bird, unbound by gravity as it soared in the open skies.

One day, her sweet melody led an injured knight to her cottage. A dashing, young knight whom had wandered a little too deep into the forest, where she dwelled...

Miya Atsumu blindly stumbled into a nest of ferns. The bracken rustled as he staggered past, snagging thistles on his boots when he dragged his feet along the earth. His chest heaved with effort as he continued forward sluggishly.

How many days had it been since his squad was ambushed? Two? Three? Atsumu had lost count.

A couple dozen soldiers and him were on the way back to camp when they were pounced on. It had happened too quickly: flaming arrows rained from above, metal clanged and sparks flew, crackling like fireworks. He was thrown off his horse as chaos ensued, and before he knew it, he was fighting for his life.

The faux blonde barely made it out alive, having clashed blades with endless waves of soldiers. Blow after blow, the unyielding man cut down opponent after another, until he was forced to flee into the trees, like a fox pursued by a pack of blood thirsty canines.

A dry gasp for air escaped Atsumu’s cracked lips as he fell to his knees. He stabbed the dirt with his blood-stained sword to catch himself, but he slumped over, head pressing against the cold, dulled blade. The weight of his armour was dragging him down; he was struggling against the chains binding him to Hades.

A murder of crows observed him atop a young branch, their beady eyes flashing with interest as they regarded him with hunger. He met their stare and groaned inwardly. At this rate, he would be food for the crows, and he knew it. Having discarded his helmet long ago, he pushed back his dirty, matted bangs.

He was in the middle of nowhere, in a forest with no end. The trees stretched intimidatingly over him, making him feel small despite his toned, muscular structure. The sky was barely visible, and sunlight poured through the gaps of the canopy of leaves. A skittish doe spied on him from behind the fronds of bracken, and a squirrel skittered past the forest floor.

If it had not been for his near death state, perhaps he could have enjoyed the peaceful ambience of the forest. As much as an exhausted knight could sigh, he sighed.

He thought of his twin, his parents and even the annoying brothers he had made at camp. All of which were waiting expectantly for him to return. Atsumu managed a wistful smile. Alas, he doubted he could make it back in one piece, or even head back. There seemed to be no way out of the forest; he had trekked in it for an eternity.

Before his thoughts could wander further astray, his ears picked up the soft hum of a melody. One from a piano. Hope bloomed in Atsumu’s battered chest. Mustering his remaining strength, he got up and pushed forward.

Sheathing his sword, he pushed past the branches, and hissed as they pettily snagged his face. The undergrowth stench gradually dissipated, and he was hit with the sweet, sweet scent of apples and cherries. Gradually, the music grew louder and clearer, and he finally stumbled out the forest and into an open space. The blonde knight shielded his eyes from the bright glare of the sun, wincing whilst his eyes adjusted to the sunlit glade.

In the middle of the clearing was a rustic cottage. Climbers trained up the white fences surrounding the perimeter, their tendrils sneaking into the smallest cracks as their bright flowers bloomed across the barrier. Apple and cherry trees lined the glade, and Atsumu could smell produce, perhaps somewhere behind the cottage. However, what welcomed him the most was not the rural setting but the sound of music.

It was a beautiful melody, one that had led him out of the forest, and to this humble abode. Atsumu frowned. Would he have to take shelter by force, seeing as how he was an enemy?

A sharp pain flared in his side, and he gripped it with a grimace. Hopefully it wouldn’t have to come to that. Clenching his teeth, he swallowed back his pride and doddered up to the cottage.

Your piano was by a window, and in the distance, a shambling soldier tottered out of the dense forest. You were oblivious to the bloodied knight’s arrival, having been so absorbed in your song. The piece you were playing was recently written: a simple, sprightly tune with a high pitched accompanying melody. Feet tapping at the pedals, your fingers bounced across the keys as you swayed to the music.

A row of crows lined the window sill, chirping as you played. They were your neighbours, your everyday audience. Smiling at them, you continued your performance until you heard a loud thump.

Startled, the birds frantically fled with protesting caws. Question marks hovered over your head as you stood up and glanced out of the window. In the distance was a person, collapsed in a crumpled heap.

“Oh my gosh,” you gasped softly and hurried out of the house, to where they laid. Crouching beside their motionless form, you gently tapped their armour clad shoulder. “Um... are you alright?”

A low groan rumbled from their throat, and you realised behind the tangled tufts of blonde locks was a handsome face. Cut and dirt stained, the man‘s sharp features were twisted in what seemed to be pain, and you realised he was lying in a pool of blood.

What should I do? You bit your bottom lip and glanced around. There was no one else around, it seemed. No one to help him, except for you.

You creased your brows as you rolled up your sleeves and knelt beside him. Wrapping his arm round your shoulder, you attempted to haul him into a standing position. But he was simply too heavy, and you were too weak. It didn’t help that his armour weighed him down to the ground, literally.

It took you a while, but you managed to heave him into your place, though his battered body left a bloody trail leading to the guest room. Your back ached and it felt like you had become an octogenarian, but after gingerly stripping him of his armour and dirty attire (or at least, just his top), you began to clean him up.

Atsumu awoke when you pressed a cold cloth to an open wound. Pain seared through his chest, and he hissed and jolted up to grab your wrist by reflex. His hands swallowed your joints as he squeezed tightly, and you yelped whilst he glared viciously.

“What are you doing?” He shot accusingly, dark brows creased as a drop of sweat dribble down his bandaid plastered cheek.

“Y-You fainted outside my house! And you were bleeding badly...” You squeaked out, and winced as his grip only tightened. “It hurts–!”

Atsumu narrowed his amber eyes, taking in his surroundings warily. He was in a room with faded beige walls, with a window and door at one end, and he was sitting on a single bed with white bedding. The night stand beside the simple bed had an unused candle and a bowl of water. Beyond the open door was what seemed to be a living room, and he noticed a wooden piano.

You managed to wrench yourself free when he loosened his hold. The blonde came to the conclusion that he must have collapsed like the maiden in front of him said he had, seeing as how he had no recollection of entering the abode.

The fair lady in front of him was dressed in a demure cotton dress with white lace, all of which were stained with faded patches of blood. You were rubbing your wrist with an expression he couldn’t quite read.

In your hand was a damp cloth, the one that had roused him from his slumber, thus rankling him. Atsumu eyed you silently before laying back down.

“Are yer gonna patch me up or what?” He murmured and you straightened up. You inched closer and gently tended to the wound you had previously zoned in on.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, you dapped at the plethora of criss crossing grazes and raw slits on his chest. When the cloth needed a wash, you dunked it into the water bowl and rinsed it.

As you silently wrung the cloth, Atsumu’s mouth twitched in discomfort. “‘M not from around here. Tell me where I am, miss.” He croaked, and you glanced at him without rancour.

The injured man on your bed had a strange accent, along with a unique timbre in his voice. It’s a good kind of unique.

“You’re in the outskirts of the Karasuno forest. The forest is infamous for the murder of crows that reside within it,” You maundered as you returned to your previous position. Pressing the cloth to the cut on his pec, you sighed. “Surely you must have heard about the forest, sir?”

Atsumu stared up at the ceiling. It needed a fresh coat of paint. “No,” he blatantly lied, “I haven’t.”

At least he had an idea of where he was. Roughly, at least. It was unfortunate that he had no map on him, it were lost during the ambush.

His head swirled with a deluge of thoughts, while yours was preoccupied with marvelling his body. You shouldn’t be thinking of such things, but you were amazed at how solid his chest looked, how pretty his (upper) body was, and how deep the lines of his muscles ran. The stranger lying on the bed before you was indubitably sculpted by God himself.

“Are you a travelling knight?” The blonde knight had almost reacted to your question. You gestured at the stained collection of metal lying in a huge wicker basket in a corner. “Your armour and sword had strange engravings. They resembled foxes.”

Should he come clean? Maybe you’ve already noticed that he’s from the enemy kingdom.

The faux blonde’s eyes shifted to yours, but your focus was on his bruised body as you cleaned assiduously. He let his heavy lids close shut, and the male managed a hum. “Who knows.”

His ambiguity confused you, but you decided not to push it. By the time you were done bandaging and band aiding his wounds, it was already evening. The sun was setting rapidly in the horizon, and shadows had seeped into the room, painting the faint walls with vermillion hues. Cleaning up the place, you stood at the door and smiled.

“I’ll be back with dinner soon. The bathroom’s at the end of the hallway if you need it. Make yourself at home.” You were about to close the door when he turned his head to you.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Fixing you with a genuinely confused yet curious gaze, he grumbled. “You don’t even know who I am.”

You blinked back your surprise and gave him a lidded eye smile. “I’m just trying to be kind.” Although, you weren’t quite sure if you were being magnanimous out of pity or curiosity for the stranger.

Atsumu regarded you with a small smile in return. Somehow, it felt that the previous tension had dissipated with his gesture.

When it came to dinner, you had to spoon feed the man the stew, whom claimed to be too weak to do it on his own. His head rested against the headboard and his pillows as you sat at close proximity, feeding him patiently. He was clothed with a fresh set of cotton pjs, ones that you just so happened to own (and fit) in your wardrobe.

A metal tray, which was used to carry his food and water into the room, was stationed atop the modest night stand, along with a candle stick that lit the room with its singular flame. Shadows danced along the walls as you silently fed the handsome man.

It was Atsumu’s first time being babied like this. Even when he was sick he never had to kowtow to his twin brother to take care of him. He had to swallow down his pride, and what little of it, every time he reluctantly opened his mouth for food.

“So, what’s a pretty thing like ya living all alone in a place like this?” He chewed with his mouth full, and you chuckled as he stared at you with those inquisitive honey hued eyes.

Scraping the bottom of the bowl, you scooped the carrots and broccoli onto the spoon. “Oh, it’s nothing too deep. I just wanted some peace from the city.”

“Huh,” the man scratched his gauze covered chin in thought. “But isn’t that where all ta fun is?”

“It’s not too bad here, mister. I have my crow friends and my piano.” You told the blonde with a kind smile. Raising the wooden spoon to his lips, he hummed before putting it into his mouth. Jolting up in realisation, you gasped, “Oh, right. I’m (y/n). What’s your name?”

“Atsumu, but some call me Sir Atsumu.”

“Sir Atsumu? So you’re really a knight?” Your eyes grew wide as you subconsciously shifted closer. He cocked a dark, bushy brow.

“Yeah? I thought we already discussed this.” His tone was laced with something between impatience and annoyance. The self proclaimed knight eyes trailed down to the empty bowl and then back at your glimmering orbs. “Why are you staring at me like that...?”

“Oh!” You reeled back and placed the bowl onto the tray to fiddle with your fingers. Shyly staring at your skirt covered thighs, you admitted, “Knights are pretty cool, I think.”

“Pfft, not all. I know a bunch of self centred dudes. Some are just downright filthy,” Atsumu corrected her, making her look at him questioningly. “And then there are some that enjoy taking advantage of pretty little girls living alone in their cottages.”

You raised your brows. “What do you mean–“

He had you pinned down to the bed before you could blink. Your hair fanned out underneath you on the mattress as your breath hitched, wrists pressed down by his larger hands. His knees dug into the bed on either side of your body as he hovered over you, dangerously close. The knight’s face was centimetres away from you, so close that his breath tickled your face.

Atsumu frowned. “Ya seriously don’t know who I am? Most importantly, where I’m from?”

You were frozen under his scrutinising gaze, amber eyes burning into yours as he searched for the truth. As if he could unearth it just by staring, he stared harder.

“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about,” You whispered as you met his cold gaze with your shaky orbs.

Atsumu’s discerning gaze seemed to tear away at any wall you had built between you and him. He scanned your facial expression before relenting. You gulped nervously as he gave your wrist a squeeze before sitting back up. Propping himself against the headboard, he turned away from you.

“Ya shouldn’t invite random strangers into your home. Hurt or not, miss.”

Wordlessly, you sat up and barely glanced at him before hurrying out of the room with the tray. You made it out of the room and accidentally slammed the door shut, breathing hard as you recalled the moment that had just happened.

Heart racing, you slid down the door and hid your face in your hands, cheeks suffused with red. “What... on earth just happened?” You mumbled into your palms.

Meanwhile, Atsumu shut his eyes and groaned. Maybe he shouldn’t have pulled that stunt... Now his sides were killing him.

　　　　　　　　　　　. . .

Over the next few days, you continued tending to Atsumu’s wounds and answering his every whim. About a week had passed and he became fully independent and was on the smooth road of recovery. He was resting peacefully in the guest room when he awoke to the sound of music.

The faux blonde with an undercut shuffled into the living room and found you playing again by the piano. Be it rain or shine, you played the instrument every single day without fail.

He leaned against the window sill and titled his head. “Another one of yer songs?”

Your eyes snapped open, having been previously closed whilst playing. Jumping up from your chair, you scrambled to close your piano. “S-Sorry, did I wake you?”

It was a bit awkward, seeing as how both of you hardly spoke after his antics on your first encounter. You barely looked him in the eye anymore. The tall blonde shook his head and withdrew the wooden board over the monochrome tiles.

“You did, but ‘s okay. What’s this one called?” He nonchalantly inquired, and you snapped your head up to look at him.

“It’s a song I composed recently! I’m still working on it,” You answered eagerly, before realising your overreaction. Abashed, you tucked rogue hairs behind your ear and averted your eyes to the piano.

He hummed and dragged a chair over, its wooden legs rattling in protest before he stopped beside you. He straddled the chair, resting his chin on the top of the back frame. Tilting his head, he stared at you expectantly. “Aren’t cha gonna play?”

You blinked back your surprise and quickly sat back down. With a soft exhale, your fingers danced across the keyboard with expertise. The song you played was of moderate tempo, neither fast not slow.

It reminded Atsumu of autumn: when trees shed their leaves, their viridescent leaves fading to orange. It was strange, how you played as if the war in the kingdom never existed. Did you even know? He cast a side eyed glance, but your lids were slanted in crescents, focusing intently on the keyboard at your fingertips.

“Sounds familiar, but not so much at the same time.” He comments, resting his head on an arm draped over the chair. You stopped playing to respond when he frowned. “You’re always stopping at the good parts.”

The blonde knight randomly tapped a few keys, producing a string of random high pitched notes. He scrunched his nose in disapproval. It seemed as if he was trying to mimic your previous fingerings.

Giggling, you placed your hand next to his and demonstrated the order. He tried again, but still couldn’t quite get it. After a couple more tries, the stranger beside you finally succeeded. Both you and Atsumu played in unison, yours a lower key than his, but together it formed a wonderful accompaniment.

“That was great! You’re a fast learner,” You praised, turning to face him when you halted. You hadn’t realise how close he was. Again.

The male’s amber eyes locked onto your lips then your eyes. You barely pulled away even when he began leaning forward, too stunned to react. As if shutting your eyes could save you, you screwed them shut. Atsumu almost scoffed. You were a bunny at the mercy of a ravenous fox.

His lips ghosted over the shell of your ear. You flinched as warm breath fanned your skin. “You’re letting your guard down too fast, (y/n).” Atsumu’s tone was a curious mix of amusement and haughtiness. It sent a shiver down your spine either way.

But when he pulled away, he added with a hardened expression.

“Don’t forget I’m the enemy.”

　　　　　　　　　　　. . .

You mulled over his words for days. An enemy? What had he meant by that? You dipped your head, deep in thought as you tended to the crops in your vegetable garden. It was located behind your cottage, and the verdure ranged from peas to cabbages, the whole lot.

It was a clement Saturday afternoon, and you wanted to check on the growth of your baby carrots. You had planted their seeds a little while before Atsumu came, and now they were finally sprouting. Speaking of the devil, he was standing a few feet away, swinging his sword like nobody’s business.

His thick brows were scrunched together as he executed drill after drill, all of which your eyes could never keep up with. The harsh glare of the sun glinted off his polished blade, blinding your retinas every few seconds. You rubbed your eyes with your forearm to rid the dancing spots. The mysterious blonde claimed his present movements to be enervate, but even in his injured state, you were certain he must have been a quintessential knight in his kingdom.

Atsumu swung his blade at the ghost of a person before returning to his resting position. His blonde hair looked almost brown under the afternoon sun. The man lifted his shirt to his face, wiping his sweat as it glistened on creamy skin, trickling down his chiseled abs... Wait what?

He caught you staring, and you flushed inconspicuously. Ducking your head, you averted your eyes like a maiden (read: you’re the maiden) and nervously prodded at the carrot sprouts. Atsumu smirked knowingly.

“Need some help?” His voice was laced with faux honey, much like his bright hair. You shook your head profusely.

There‘s no point wondering about who he is and where he’s from, you reminded yourself. You would let him open up when he was ready.

You resumed your gardening; spraying your crops with homemade pesticides and clearing the soil beds from weeds. With a huff and a puff, you harvested a few veggies and plopped them into your soiled wicker basket, one you used to cart your harvest in. Produce after produce filled the basket, and you were plucking some apples behind your cottage when trouble arrived.

Vendure rustled, and you were too focused on your task to notice the two males who had strayed into your territory. Your wicker basket was propped against the bark of the tree, and you used your skirt to bear the apples you had picked. You had dropped a luscious red one into your dress when one of the men whistled.

“What a cutie!” He commented, a curly mop of hair atop his head. You barely turned around when he looped a toned arm round your waist, tugging you to his breastplate clad chest. “Looks like we got lucky, huh.”

The armour’s cold metal stung your back as you were held flushed against him. You dropped your skirt, letting the apples tumble to the earth with a collective thud. You whipped your head around to look at the strangers, evidently alarmed.

They must have been knights of this kingdom, you realised, assuming from the details on their polished armour and the swords hanging at their sides. But they radiated a different vibe from the same knight you nursed in your estate. The same man who claimed to be an enemy, yet never harmed you, unlike these two from your home kingdom.

“Are you alone?” Another man joined the other, a sinister grin on his stubble dotted face. He gripped your jaw and inspected your face with calculating eyes. “Looks like we’re gonna have a fun time, missy.”

It was as if your body’s homeostasis had halted. As if your heart had failed on you, and there was no more blood rushing in your vessel. For your blood blood ran cold in your veins as you caught drift of their filthy insinuations. They began to drag you towards your cottage, igniting your fears.

“Let go of me!” You insisted, struggling against the former’s grip on your waist. Squirming like a beached fish, you brought down your foot to stomp on your captor’s.

Caught off guard, he released you and you barely managed to get away when the second male grabbed your wrist. He yanked you into his arms, and you stumbled blindly into his chest, face smashing against solid steel. A tingling sensation consumed your numb nose.

“Tch! We’re knights protecting the kingdom, y’know? You should thank us for our service.” The one you had collided into clicked his tongue in annoyance. You struggled from the vice grip on your wrist. At this rate, you were certain there would be a red imprint burned on your skin for days.

Tears you didn’t know you had been harbouring threatened to spill. Your bottom lip trembled as your mouth moved on its own accord.

“Atsumu!”

You scrunched your eyes shut for the nth time as the mentioned blonde dashed forward at your cry. The earth trembled and a gust of wind zipped past you, fanning your hair around your face in discordant strands.

It was a mistake for you to have opened your eyes. Atsumu swung his sword at the intruders, cruelly slitting their throats without any hesitation. He had gone in for the kill with a steely gaze, a look so sharp and remorseless as if he had not murdered two people.

The knights, who had been too slow to react, stacked atop each other in a crumpled heap. Their eyes were wide, mouthes agape, as if to protest against the bright red liquid gushing out of their mortal wounds. The earth welcomingly swallowed the pooling fluids as they watered the land with their crimson blood.

The scene before you was mortifying, and you clasped your hands over your mouth as your gorge rose. You were too stunned to utter a word, knees too wobbly to step back.

As if he could sense your discomfort, Atsumu turned around. His shirt, which was once clean, was now soiled with bloody sprays. A trail of blood trickled down the tip of his sword, hovering over a fallen apple. It painted the red fruit in a morbid, bold vermillion.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　(to be continued...)

[carnistirs]

retrouvailles

↳ @taangweek 2020 Day 4: Future

This one could go for past as well, but I’m dropping this today because the setting’s technically in the future. Here’s 7k+ words of Aang and Toph being soulmates.  

Read it on ao3 or under the cut

retrouvailles {French} the happiness you feel upon reuniting with someone after you've been apart for a long time

‘

“Are you alright, miss?” a voice asks, soft in the clamor of the snack aisle—

It’s violent, the way Toph’s ripped away from her little daydream, and her body’s still flinching as her eyes and ears slowly readjust to the people around her. There are no flying bisons and wingled lemurs here because they don’t exist, because she’s in a goddamn grocery store.

She tiredly lifts her gaze up – all the way up – to an angelic figure leaning over her, what with the lovely features and the bright light brimming around his shaved head. He’s all broad shoulders and lithe muscles and effulgent tattoos, and even though he looks like an incredibly kind person, something about him sets her teeth on edge. Like she should know him by now even if she’s never met this man in her life.

“Was I blocking you,” she replies, unable to help the flatness of her voice. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Toph moves to walk around him, oddly reluctant.

“No, wait—” the guy blurts out, panicked, his nimble fingers reaching out to curl lightly around her shoulder blade—

And they say it’s like nothing else matters, that touching your soulmate for the first time is like sating a hunger you never knew you had.

She’s always thought that was a fat load of bullshit – what, you meet the stranger that’s supposed to be your other half and it’s happily ever after just like that? – but here she is, a hypocrite to her own thoughts.

Toph hones in on the warmth that’s molded around the curve of her shoulder, feeling a far too pleasant burn smear its way down her spine. She leans away from the stranger by a few inches, just to test it their limits, but fuck, it hurts. She’s met him for a total of three minutes and the sensation of not touching him already leaves her with an ache she can’t even begin to understand.

He makes a hurt noise in his throat when she leans away, jarred by the abruptness of their separation. His hands follow after her, touching the points of her elbows this time, and Toph feels the tremor in his hands, hears the quickness in his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, tightening his fingers around her skin. “I know we don’t know each other, but—”

“This is so stupid,” Toph groans, but she’s slipping a palm over his wrist thoughtlessly, touching the thrum of his pulse. “Why a fucking Walmart of all places?”

Her soulmate’s mouth twitches into a smile. “Why not a Walmart?”

Because it’s the lamest place ever, she wants to say, but then she catches his smile and she stutters to a stop. She gazes at his pretty grey eyes and knows them, has seen them in multiple lifetimes.

(It’s you reverbrates in the space of her chest that used to be hollow, that used to be a void tundra.)

There’s a soulmark on her forearm now – long, golden vines with leaves that twist into the complimentary ones wrapped around his own skin, and the longer they touch, the more intertwined their vines become. It’s both thrilling and unsettling since, so far, Toph’s lived through twenty years of her life with a bare forearm.  

“So,” Toph ends up mumbling, because she knows where this is going to lead and because someone has to eventually, “your place or mine?”

‘

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?”

“I don’t see why not.”

‘

Her soulmate’s name is Aang, a vegan pacifist whose happiness seems endless, and the while he’s chirping to her about his life like an excited hummingbird, she finds it harder to fathom why the fates specifically chose him for her.

“I’m talking way too much about myself,” he chuckles in embarrassment, pink dusting over his cheeks.

Shrugs. “I asked.”

Aang’s curled up with her on his couch – his apartment had been closer -  idly playing with one of her hands. Their tea sits on the coffee table, cold and forgotten, but she’s too stupidly inebriated with the feeling of his hands on her own to care. Toph doesn’t mind the constant touching, surprisingly. It feels so much better than anything else, and there’s this still moment where they watch his vines crawl from his fingers over to hers.

“What about you?” He’s close enough for his cheek to brush her shoulder. “Tell me about yourself? Pretty please?”

“I’m an art student,” she grins back, unwittingly, at his enthusiasm. “I go to BSSU.”

He positively beams at this. “I go there too! Why is it that I’ve never seen you around campus before?

“Different curriculum maybe?

Toph feels the heat of his gaze wandering everywhere, stiffening slightly only when it drops to the puckered skin on her right leg. “Is there a story behind this?” she hears him ask quietly, his fingers hovering over the scar, but not quite touching it.

“You’re going to think I’m fucking crazy.”

“Try me.” Aang’s isn’t sporting that bright smile anymore, but his face has softened completely. “If you want, that is. You don’t have to tell me.”

It’s strange and new and terrifying, but he’s a gentle breeze in their bond, surrounding her without suffocating her, smoothing over the points of her body that are maybe a little too rough, a little too jagged.

“Well, there’s this forest near the house I grew up in,” Toph starts, drumming her fingers along his soulmark. “I walked through it so many times that I practically memorized it. I really thought I could navigate myself through the forest blind, so I put on a blindfold—”

(The darkness doesn’t welcome her, not the way she wants it to.

Her bare feet press into the earth and she doesn’t feel the vibrations of the earth moving around her, doesn’t hear the songs of squirrels skittering up the old trees, of worms writhing in the dirt. She feels disconnected from everything, small and insignificant.

She carefully glides along the flat surface of the boulders, but misses her next step, falls down and keeps falling—)

“Anyway, now I have a permanent reminder of how much of a dumbass I was,” she says, half bemused, half self-depreciating.

But Aang opens his arms, his face silently pleading, and she hesitates a little. Her soulmate is a stranger wrapped in odd, familiar skin and when they’re pressed together, it’s like they’re speaking an old, sacred language only their bones know.

They should be in bed right now like most soulmate couples their age – or at least kissing, maybe - but she supposes she’ll fail at that too amongst other things.

So, Toph leans in, biting back a satisified hum when his arms coil around her shoulders. He smells like clean laundry and a hint of cinnamon, and when he sighs in content, she feels her muscles relax.

“I like to stand on the edges of high places,” Aang noses against her hair, probably unaware that’s he’s doing it too. “My friends can’t stand it when I do it, but I can’t help it. I never have the urge to actually jump,” he adds in a small laugh, “but I like to imagine that there would be a way for me to somehow catch myself if I do. Then I remember that it’s not possible and I feel this...incredible loss.”

An unexplainable loss you never had in the first place. Yeah, she gets it.

“Thanks.”

“Of course.” His eyes languidly trail after the uplifted bend of her mouth. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

There’s an anxious spike of hope blooming in the pit of Toph’s stomach and it’s not coming from her. She doesn't exactly know how she knows this either, but it's all Aang she's feeling.

It’s coming from him.  

Which is ridiculous because Toph shouldn’t be able to feel him like that. Soulmates don’t work like that. There’s soulmarks and the constant need to be close, but not this invasion of other people’s emotions—

“Yeah, sure,” she says.

Everything is okay. Everything is fine.

Get a fucking grip.

‘

“Some bonds only need an hour of touching and they’re okay for the whole week,” she says at the threshold of his front door, lingering. “Maybe we’re like that? I mean, it doesn’t hurt to try, right?”

“O-Okay,” Aang stutters, brows furrowed, looking like he really wants to follow after her like an imprinted duckling.

Toph lets go of his hand then and the sharp sting she feels should have been taken as a warning. She takes a step back though, forcing herself to play dumb to his white fingers clenched around the door frame and the sudden pallor of his face.

Her fingers tingle in a particularly awful way as she waves goodbye to him and the discomfort is rudimentary, really. It’s nothing she can’t handle, considering she’s had worse done to her skin.

She makes it as far as the turn of the hallway, right when Aang’s out of her view.

Pain grips at her right arm and the numbness flares outward, careening her into the wall. She can’t fucking breathe because it feels like her lungs are being scraped out by a rusty spoon, like her ribs are being branded by hot iron—

Aang barrels into her at a frightening speed and they go teetering to the floor, but he curls his body around hers protectively, possessively, breaking her fall. He’s mouthing something frantic against the hollow of her throat, but she can’t hear it because she’s too overwhelmed by the sensation of his pain pressing down on top of hers.

Whatever she’d felt earlier is vaulting back tenfold and it’s so strange to feel her own emotions looped back to her through a feedback that’s experienced through him. She feels him desperately wanting to take away the unseen hurt throbbing in her while trying to compress his own down and, gods, this isn’t normal.

“Um,” Toph whispers, her voice trembling with her body as she clings to him. “Okay, that was a dumb idea. I’m sorry—”

“Maybe you should stay with me for a couple of days—”

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “We have school. How are we going to do—”

“There’s an exemption form we could fill out online. It’s for soulmates who have recently bonded. It’ll get us out of classes, just – please, please don’t leave.”

“I don’t have extra clothes on me or a toothb—”

“You can borrow my clothes. You’ll drown in them because you’re so tiny,” Aang laughs, hoarse, sliding shaking fingers into her unbound hair. “And I have an extra toothbrush you can use. We’ll figure it out, Toph, please.”

What the fuck, what the fuck—

“Alright.” She closes her eyes, surrendering herself to raw instinct by sticking her nose to the skin underneath his jaw. “I’ll stay.”

‘

“Choose well. A sky bison is a companion for life.”

He’s holding an apple in his hands and his legs are jittery – like it’s impossible for him to stay still. The baby bisons are circling their mother in the air and his breath catches because he’s never wanted anything more in his life.

There’s a small bison just a few feet away, looking like it’s waiting for him. It appears to be the runt of the litter, but that’s okay because he’s the smallest in his class too. If it accepts him, then perhaps they can grow together.

Biting his lip, he carefully approaches the small bison and offers the apple to it.

It – no, the bison is a he – sniffs the fruit along with his extended hand before opening his mouth expectantly.

He tosses the apple in and allows himself to pet the bison on the nose while the latter chews. He doesn’t expect the bison to nuzzle into his touch with a pleased rumble, but the creature does anyway, leaning too far in until he loses his balance and falls on his rear end. The bison licks at the whole of his face, pulling happy giggles from his mouth and he knows, then and there, that he’s found the one.

“I guess this means we’ll always be together,” he smiles wide, hands rubbing on either side of the creature’s muzzle—

‘

Toph blinks awake to find herself plastered to Aang’s back with both of her arms snaked around his chest. One of his hands is clasped in hers, their fingers twined, and she has a leg thrown over his hip as if she’s slept with him like this their whole lives.

His bedroom is small and simple, but there’s a slight airiness to it that reminds her of the temple in her dreams – or not dreams, apparently. She sees this temple in the sky in quick flashes while she’s awake too, and if they don’t show her in the company of monks, then it’s always with that six-legged bison.

“I can hear you thinking,” Aang mumbles sleepily.

She presses her face to his shoulder. “Shit, did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, you waking up actually yanked me out of sleep too.” Gently tightens his fingers around hers, reassures her that he’s not upset. “It’s not a big deal. What’s bothering you?”  

I think I’m seeing your memories from a past life never quite leaves Toph’s mouth.

“Nah, it’s nothing.”

And maybe that’s the wrong thing to say because Aang just turns in her hold and exhales into her neck, slipping his arms around her waist. His fingers tease the hem of a shirt that’s too big on her and he asks in a hushed tone if it’s okay. Toph nods, her skin shivering in loose delight once his palm slides underneath the shirt to splay itself flat against the small of her back.

The moonlight peeking through the curtains shows her one side of his face – the argent in his eyes, the fan of his inky lashes, the indent of his cheekbone. Objectively, he’s stunning, so she could have done a whole lot worse.  

“You know I can tell you’re lying, right?” The corner of Aang’s mouth lifts, amused. “I can feelthat something’s wrong.”

“Can we just—” Opens her mouth and shuts it, frustrated inside. He rubs his thumb in calming circles against Toph’s skin and she still doesn’t know if she likes how one touch can clear her muddled thoughts just like that. “Can we just pretend that we don’t have some weird telepathic-empathic thing between us? Just for tonight at least? Fuck, it’s a lot to unpack on the first day.”

His hurt is muffled, but it’s there and she feels it her chest, taking root. “You think it’s weird?” he whispers, sounding like an open wound.

“Doesn’t this freak you out?”

“Yes, of course it does.”

But underneath the blanket of her own emotions, she senses fear for this bond. Fear at the thought of Toph rejecting him so quickly. She tightens her leg over his hip instinctively, telling him no, she’s not rejecting him. She doesn’t think that’s even possible at this point.  

He presses a smile into her clavicle, relieved. “Do you remember dinner? When you were groaning after taking the first few bites of the pasta?”

Toph blushes. “Don’t make fun of me! I didn’t know artichoke sauce was even thing!” Or so delicious. “I was caught off guard, okay?”

“You were happy eating what I made for you and I felt that happiness,” Aang says, so soft. “It felt beautiful. You felt beautiful, Toph.”

(And I’d give you the whole world to keep you happy forever, he sings into her veins even if he doesn’t realize it yet, even if he’s just as scared and lost as she is.)

What an optimstic fool he is. “I might drive you nuts,” Toph throws back instead.

“Oh, I know you will.”

She pinches Aang’s side, cackling at his high-pitched shriek even when the sharpness of her index finger and thumb on his skin echoes against her own.

‘

“Where the hell have you been!”

“Chill, Sparky,” is Toph’s lazy response as she waltzes into her apartment, leading Aang in by their tangled fingers. “I texted you.”

“‘Be back in a week, dude’ doesn’t give me much to go by. A fucking week? You could have been dead for all I knew!”

“Stop projecting your sibling issues onto me. I’m here, aren’t I? Besides, when you found Sokka and Suki, the three of you didn’t leave your room for more than a week, you dirty hyprocrite!”

“At least you knew where I was the whole—” Zuko abruptly closes his mouth, his gaze darting to the towering man at Toph’s heels. “Aang? Wait, how do you two know each other?”

Toph lifts both their arms, showing him the fresh knitted vines gleaming on their skin. “He’s my soulmate. How do you two know each other?”

“I know Sokka and Sukki,” Aang chimes in cheerfully. “Wow, what a small world, huh?”

“How’d you two—”

“Anyway,” she interrupts brashly, not in the mood to retell their romantic, fateful meeting at Walmart, “Aang’s gonna be staying here for a week and then I’ll go back to his place for another week, and so on and blah blah. At least until the bond settles. You get it. Let us know when dinner’s ready,” she adds, practically yanking at Aang until they’re both confined in her bedroom.

Aang taps the end of her nose. “That was mean.”

“Please,” Toph makes a point of rolling her eyes. “Zuko barely said a word to me after touching the other two. They burst into the apartment like a fucking hurricane, almost doing it right there in our living room. So fucking rude.”  

‘

She’s in the shower when she suddenly feels absolute terror choking at her, nearly making her slip on the tiles.

Toph barely wraps herself up in a towel before she’s barging out of the bathroom, extremely thankful that her room’s close by. Aang’s on the floor, back leaning against the frame of her bedroom door, quivering fingers curled around one of her older sketchbooks. Aang blindly reaches for her when she approaches, pulling her down onto his lap and burying half of his face into her shoulder blade.

“Is my art that terrifying?” Toph tries to joke, but he doesn’t even smile.

The drawing had been done in charcoal, dark and blurry around the edges, and she almost doesn’t remember drawing it. There’s an enormous centipede thing crawling out of a cave, its legs reaching out to take, to steal. The only colors on the sketch are the red lips and the grey eye markings of the Noh mask it’s wearing on its face, but she’s not sure if that makes it better or worse.  

Aang’s voice is a quiet, little thing when he asks, “Where did you see this creature?”

(“My old friend, the Avatar,” the monster utters in a serpentine hiss. “It’s been a long time.”

“You know me?”

“How could I forget you? One of your previous incarnations tried to slay me,” it accuses, the white mask flickering into the face of an older man with a mustache and a long beard, “maybe eight or nine hundred years ago.”

“I didn’t know that.” It’s difficult, keeping his emotions out of both his face and voice. “Why did he – or I – try to kill you?”

The thing changes again – a beautiful woman this time, with long brown hair and familiar, sad eyes.  

“Oh, it was something about stealing the face of someone you loved.”)

“A nightmare, I think,” Toph answers carefully. “Actually, you know what—”

She rips the page out of the sketchbook and crumples it tightly in her first. It feels like an ugly omen against her palm, riddled with malice and sadism, and she chucks it into her trash can.  

“You didn’t have to do that. That was your work,” Aang murmurs, his guilt gnawing at her.

“It was a creepy-ass drawing. I don’t know what I was thinking when I drew that.” Pause. “I have better stuff on my desktop if you want to look.”

He kisses her shoulder, smiling sweetly. “I hope the creatures on there are less frightening.”

“Don’t be such a wuss. Wanna see what a badgermole looks like?”

‘

After their soulbond settles, they’ve learned that they can get through the day by themselves relatively alright as long as there was skin-to-skin contact for at least an hour beforehand. It no longer hurts to be away from Aang, but it is uncomfortable as fuck, like an itch burning inside that’s screaming at her to scratch it until it’s bloody and raw.

Which is fine.

So ridiculously fine.

The lecture is a drone in the back of Toph’s mind as she doodles along the corner of her notebook page to take her mind off the itch. The mintiness of the gum she’s snacking on ebbs away suddenly, turning into something vastly different.

She chews again, tasting raspberries, fruit juice, bananas, and...almond milk?

Aang is waiting for her outside the door when her class ends and as soon as he sees her, his entire face lights up like the sun. His content rolls over Toph in a soothing whisper and she subconsciously mimics his smile, her body humming with want.

In spite of the protesting noise she makes, Aang scoops her up in his arms until her feet are dangling above the ground. He nuzzles his cheek to hers, his breath warm against the ridge of her ear, and he twirls them once because he can’t help himself. She hisses at him to put her down, but it doesn’t really bother her as it normally would with literally anyone else.  

“Did you have a smoothie?” Toph asks.

“Yeah.” He keeps his hands pasted to her hips, his eyes bright with excitement. “I tasted the gum you were chewing earlier.”

“I want to say that I’m surprised, but am I really at this point?”

A deep chuckle as he cups her face in his palms. “Don’t be so glum. Think of all the possibilities! What if you’re really hungry, but you don’t have time to get food because you’re taking a test or something? I could eat something and you’d be able to taste it.”

“Oh, yeah, super cool. What if you’re hungry and I decide to get a hamburger?”

He blinks, his grin faltering. “I’m vegan, Toph. You know that—”

“You’re not actually eating it – you’re only getting a taste. Like you said, all the possibilities. You ever want to try a steak? Or a milkshake with actual milk?”

Toph bites back a smile, doing a poor job of concealing how much she really enjoys it when he gets all flustered.

‘

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“You drunk already?” Sokka passes a bemused glance at her. “I don’t remember you being that much of a lightweight.”

It’s warm in the bar – she can tell by the slight flush on Sokka’s cheeks that has nothing to do with being intoxicated – but Toph still burrows her nose deeper into the wool scarf coiled around her neck, still tightens her coat around her. Aang may be on the other side of the city, but he’s somewhere outdoors, somewhere cold, and the alcohol isn’t making her any warmer.

Aang doesn’t do well in colder weather, but he’s having fun with his friends even if he’s getting the both of them sick. She can feel him missing her, missing the press of her fingers on his skin even though they’d seen each other hours ago.  

“You have two soulmates,” Toph grumbles. “The idea of past lives shouldn’t be that fucking implausible.”

His shoulder gently bumps against hers. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

“I’m not upset—”

“Okay, okay, let’s start over,” Sokka smiles at her, completely genuine and not at all mocking. “Why do you suddenly believe in reincarnation?”

“I have these dreams,” she says, her brows knitting together as she curls her hands tighter around her glass. “Well, I used to think they were dreams, but then I’d see something while I’m awake. They’re always about Aang in this completely different life and it’s like I’m a passenger in his body, just going through the motions.”  

“And you think these things are actually his memories from a past life.”  

Toph exhales quietly, the lines of her body losing their tautness. She feels mildly less insane now that someone’s acknowledged it for her.

“They feel too real to just be my imagination. It’s always him in the same timeline.”

Sokka hums, thoughtful. “Maybe they are his memories, Toph. Who knows? Soulbonds can’t be explained, but people accept them anyway. For what it’s worth, I believe you.”

“If this is you making fun of me, I swear to—”

“No, I really mean it! Like, if I didn’t end up with Suki and Zuko – or either of them – in a previous life and reincarnation’s just a thing that’s giving me a second chance to actually be with them, then that’s pretty cool. Fate’s doing me a solid.”

“Second chances,” Toph muses, more to herself than anything.

“Yeah, why not?” He downs the rest of his glass. “On a side note, what else are you feeling from Aang since the bond started? Something tells me you guys are...not normal.”

Toph starts to respond, but then she hunches over the counter, shoulders shaking. It slams into her out of nowhere and she has to clamp both her hands over her mouth to muffle the uncontrollable laughter. She’s yanked further and further into Aang’s joy, feeling it so keenly that the corners of her eyes begin to prickle with tears.

“What is happening,” Sokka blurts, alarmed and concerned. “Are you having a stroke—”

“One of Aang’s friends did something stupid and funny,” she hiccups out in short breaths, still guffawing. “It might – it might have been Bumi.”

Sokka gawks at her, frozen in place. He then orders another round of drinks for the both of them.

‘

Monk Gyatso lies against the wall, just bones and dust, and the omniscient rage of a thousand lives sinks down on him—

‘

The weight of his grief completely buries Toph, so much that she collapses in a public restroom. Her fingers scrabble at the tiles beneath her, desperate to clutch onto something, anything, as the memory consumes her. Something vibrates in her pocket for a long, long time, but she’s too busy screaming soundlessly into her palm to notice.

Panic slips into Toph, making her blood run cold, and the longer she ignores her phone, the more frenetic her soulmate feels—

“Toph?” is his voice on the other line, wildly frantic, when she finally answers the call. “Did someone hurt you? What’s wrong, where are—”

“I—” Her breath comes out in harsh pants. “It’s o-okay. You don’t need to come.”

Rustling, like Aang’s already preparing to step out. “No, no, that’s not what it feels like,” he argues softly, and now there’s pain in his voice because she won’t let him come to her, won’t let him take care of her—

Her chest squeezes tighter, aching. “I slipped. I’m, uh, good now.”

“Toph, please.” His voice breaks and she screws her eyes shut, tasting saltwater in her mouth. “Please let me come to you. Tell me where you are.”

So she whispers back that she’s at the tea shop near their school, the one owned by Zuko’s uncle.

Aang rushes into the women’s restroom ten minutes later – a feat in itself, considering the usual commute is twice that amount – and she’s never wanted him to see her like this, hunched under one of the sinks and sobbing over a memory that isn’t even hers.

He sucks in a sharp breath like Toph’s pain cleaves him. His eyes are red-rimmed and she can’t even look at him because she’s so sorry. She’s sorry that he’s lost his people, sorry that he’s lost his home, sorry that he’s lost his entire culture.

The way he stalks over to her is noiseless, ghostlike even, and then he’s plucking up all the bird bones of Toph’s body, folding himself around her and concealing her from the rest of the world. It makes her cry harder, if anything, to the point where she’s dry-heaving against his chest, but it helps when she pushes her hands under his shirt to touch the tight skin around his hips.

She tells him everything. That he was raised by Air Nomads in another life. That he was something called the Avatar. That they lived in a world where people could manipulate the elements as they pleased.

That they lived during a long, long war.

“You controlled the element of air first,” Toph rasps out later, when it finally doesn’t feel like her lungs are going to give out on every inhale. “You and Appa got caught in this storm, and then you did something that left you frozen at the bottom of an ocean. Katara and Sokka found you, but when you came back to the Southern Air Temple, everyone was dead and it had only felt like you left days ago, but a fucking century passed—”

To his credit, Aang doesn’t once ask who Appa is or what the Southern Air Temple is supposed to be. His heart beats faster and his skin jolts at the familiarity of her words, but he holds her still.

“Breathe, T,” he says, rocking her, sweeping her dark hair away from her neck so that he can kiss the small space behind her ear.

She does. Inhales for four seconds, exhales for six—

It’s a breathing technique that Monk Gyatso had taught Aang. Had taught her.

Their soulmarks cling to each other distressingly, her aurelian leaves and vines overlapping his.

“Do you ever dream of me?” Toph asks, calmer.

“I have many daydreams about you.” And that’s mischief slanted against her nape, rounded out by his mouth. He’s soft and playful now, making her sink further into his embrace. “When your memories come to me, I don’t actually see anything.”

Tries not to be too disappointed. “Oh.”

“No,” Aang smudges a smile against the corner of her mouth, gently thumbing a tear-stained cheek. “You were blind in your last life, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t see. You didn’t need to. You felt these vibrations in the earth and it allowed you to see and hear things no one else could. You were the greatest earthbender that ever lived.”

“She sounds way cooler than me.”

He tips her face up. “You’re just as cool as she is,” Aang breathes, and there’s a brush of lips against hers, slow and sweet. “Just as beautiful.”

(I found you again, her soul thrums out, the loudest it’s ever been inside her.)

Toph twists in his arms, chasing after his mouth. It’s almost too much and not enough at the same time, tasting his honeyed delight and feeling it mingle with her own. His hands shove themselves up her sweater to frame the space of her back as he parts his mouth, allowing her to—

“Gee, it looks like you guys are fine in here,” comes a monotonous drawl that has them breaking apart, sputtering. “And here I was, worried for no apparent reason.”

“Mai!” Aang practically yells, his ears turning beet red. “When did you – why are—”

The other girl waves a dismissive hand. “Toph and I were going over work. What was supposed to be a five-minute restroom break turned into a forty-minute one,” she adds pointedly, raising a brow.  

“Sorry,” Toph says sheepishly. “I had a thing. Like a panic attack or whatever. It’s gone now, so no biggie.”

Aang, severely disagreeing with her on that last statement, wraps her up tighter in his arms.

“We’ll continue tomorrow,” Mai says then, and it may just be Toph’s imagination, but she thinks she sees the former’s face soften a bit. “Get some rest.”  

After Mai leaves, Aang plays with her loose hair. “We should probably leave too.”  

“Yeah.”

But Toph’s leaning in, pausing only a few inches away from his lips and grinning when he automatically closes the distance. She feels that buzzing of happiness again and whether it’s his or hers, it doesn’t matter.

‘

Aang’s shoulders are still quivering as he drops shaky, open-mouthed kisses along the crease of her hip. He’s been pulled apart to pieces, beautifully and painstakingly, and the remnants of bliss still drumming within him makes it slow to put those pieces back together.

She only knows because she feels the exact same way. She feels everything.

“You’ve ruined me for anyone else.” His voice is wrecked and his lips are so kiss-swollen, but he’s still this hopelessly exotic thing sprawled between her legs. There’s an indelible glaze to his to expression that makes him look so thoroughly fucked, and when he rests his chin on her stomach and looks up at her with soft, needy eyes, something inside her chest just melts.

“Why didn’t we do this sooner?” Toph husks out with a laugh.

“Yeah, why didn’t we,” he murmurs back, still loopy, nosing the skin around her navel.  

Toph strokes her fingers along the arrow inked on his head, pulling a quiet mewl from him. The arrow tattoos on his body are the same design, the same placement – just the wrong shade of blue. These lines are darker than the ones she sees in his memories.

Maybe the effervesent, illuminating blue that once marked Aang as an airbendering master doesn’t exist in this world.

“Can you skip your classes tomorrow?” he asks.

“Why?”

His answer is a trail of wet kisses up the flat stretch of her belly. “Because I want to keep doing this.”

“Really.” Toph plays off as nonchalant, even when her heart skips a beat. “You want to render us incapable of walking by the time we’re done?”

“Toph, I don’t think I’m able to walk now,” Aang chuckles, before looking up at her from beneath his lashes, coy. “But I still want you in my bed whether we’re having sex or not. I just want you.”

His want reverbrates in the apex of Toph’s thighs and she wishes she can be as open as he is. She wants him in her bed forever, but the words become stifled in her throat, never leaving her mouth. He smiles at her though, tender and adoring, like he knows what she’s trying to say.  

She rolls them over, straddling his hips. Gratification seeps into her at the way his pupils dilate, at the way he takes her in breathlessly.

‘

He’s upset – so very, very upset – and she doesn’t know why.

Toph feels it two blocks away from his apartment and it spurs her to walk faster, to the point where she’s running.

After letting herself in, she finds Aang leaning over the kitchen counter, the stiff lines of his back obvious through his thin shirt. She leans her back against the counter and presses her elbow to the nimble fingers constricted around dark granite.

“What’s up, grumpy?”

Her soulmate breathes out noisily, his shoulders bunching forward like he’s trying to make himself much smaller than he is. He doesn’t turn to face her, doesn’t immediately trap her in his arms like he usually would after a long day apart. He leans against her though, heavy, part of him trying to disappear into the pale abyss of her skin.

“We weren’t married to each other,” Aang whispers, horrified. “I was married to someone else. A non-bender, I think. I don’t recognize her voice.”

And there’s really no point in getting angry with Aang or this mystery woman because the past is the past, but jealousy festers anyway, scratching at her bones. She tries to taper down it to keep him from feeling it, but he flinches, looking even more miserable than before.

She tries for apathy then: “So? It was in the past – a past we’re only barely starting to get details from.”

“But I was still seeing you. I had kids with this woman, but I was still sneaking around with you—”

“Okay, so I was a side chick. Whatever, that’s fine—”

“It’s not fine,” a muscle in his jaw jumps, “none of this was fine. I’m seeing this from your persepective, remember? You weren’t okay with this.”

“Why does it fucking matter?” Toph spits, a small part of her regretting it when Aang’s mouth pinches into a thin line. “Maybe we never got together. Maybe sex on the the side was our only option. Whatever the fuck we did in that lifetime, it’s got nothing to do with what we have in this one!”

(“She’s beautiful,” he murmurs, gazing down at the newborn. “Did you decide on a name?”  

“Suyin’s kind of pretty. Has a nice ring to it.”

Tightly swallows. “Toph, is she – is she mine?”

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman in bed mumbles. “It’s not your problem.”

“But—”

“I’m not repeating myself, Twinkletoes. And she doesn’t belong to anyone but me.”)

Then Aang grazes her side with feather-light hands, silently asking for permission. She’s still bristling in her skin, but he makes the frustration and shame go away with just a brush of his palms on her body.

She wants to stay mad at him, wants to stew in silence all by herself, but she physically can’t, not when he’s already made a home for himself in the space of her ribs.

Toph pulls him in with an incoherent grumble, binding her arms around his torso to anchor him back to earth because he feels like he’s going to float away. He shivers against her, mouthing soft apologies against the column of neck as he clings onto her. Even on her tiptoes, her head barely reaches his chin, but she leans on them anyway because she doesn’t want him breaking his neck trying to bury himself in hers.

“Maybe I leave my wife when our kids are older,” he says, his teeth scraping over her shoulder. “I leave her for you.”

“You really think that happened?”

“Yes,” comes Aang’s response, but even that sounds a little unsure. Like he desperately wants it to be true. The uncertainity makes him press into her until there’s no visible space left between them. “Why wouldn’t I do that for you? We’re soulmates. I don’t believe in any lifetime where you’re not always by my side.”

Toph rolls her eyes. “You’re such an embarassing idiot sometimes.”

Aang smiles, his tongue flicking against her jawline. Heat simmers at the pit of Toph’s stomach, rising languidly, and his hands are at the back of her thighs. “I need you,” he sighs, catching her mouth with his.

“I know, you dumb airhead.”  

She quickly finds herself hoisted onto the counter before she’s tipping her head back, letting him unbutton her flannel and kiss his way down—

‘

“Don’t worry,” Katara says. “We’ll find you a teacher. There are plenty of amazing earthbenders out there.”

There’s a deep wrongness in him as he stares back at Gaoling. Like he’s making a mistake by just giving up and leaving—

“Not like her.”

After he climbs onto Appa with reluctance, he doesn’t immediately lift the reins. Sometimes, there are rewards to being patient, to sitting still and letting the winds carry their answers to you. When he listens to the currents around him, he catches a flurry of hurried footsteps headed in their direction.

Delicate hope grows in his chest.

“Toph!” Happiness etches itself onto his face, wide and open, when the small girl runs out of the forest. “What are you doing here?”

“My dad changed his mind. He said I was free to travel the world.”

It’s a bold-faced lie.

But when Toph smiles, something inside his own stomach flutters wildly—

‘

“Are you alright, miss?” a voice asks, waking her, his mouth lightly tracing the curve of her ear.

“Fuck off,” Toph mumbles, still face down on the table, in spite of her fingers reaching out to rest along the nape of his neck. The taste of coffee – the strong kind – lingers on her tongue. “M’ tired. Why’d you drink coffee? And a goddamn red eye at that.”  

Aang tugs at her hair teasingly. “Because I almost fell asleep while driving over here to get you.”

“Ugh, you’re going to keep me up all night.”

“I can think of a few things we could do to pass the time,” Aang smirks, nuzzling his nose along her cheekbone. “Or, well, one specific thing actually—”

Toph snorts. “Dork.”

He snatches her up, fingers digging into her side as he drags her onto his lap. Peals of laughter escape her while he tickles her relentlessly, so much that the harder she laughs, the more she feels him eventually shaking with laughter too, amplifying the sensation. One of the campus librarians shushes them sharply and she feels Aang hiding his face into her throat to escape the blame.

“What’s that?” he inquiries out of nowhere then, reaching for something on the table—

“No snooping!” Toph hisses without any real heat, swatting his hand out of the way to shove the tiny book into her backpack.

It’s a flipbook that she’s still working on, showing Aang peacefully bending all four elements. She had originally wanted to illustrate him kicking Ozai’s ass, but she doubts he would like the violence of it, so she’d gone with this instead.

Aang perks up in excitement. “Is it for me? My birthday’s in a couple of weeks, you know.”

Rolls her eyes. “Just wait and find out, Twinkletoes.”

She stands up in an attempt to gather her things, but as soon as she does, the feeling of a thousand pins pricking at her legs washes over.

“Your legs are numb,” Aang glances over with both bemusement and sympathy, on the verge of discomfort himself. “Here, I’ll carry you.”

“Nah, let’s just wait—”

But Aang pulls her arms over his shoulders, picking Toph up until she’s literally hanging onto his back, before he grabs her backpack. She hates being picked up in any manner, but it’s a losing battle with a cheerfully persistant soulmate like him. She yanks on the lobes of his ears, but he just grins, hitching her body higher.

“Yip-yip,” Toph says.

“Do I look like a flying bison to you?”

“You’re right, that was a terrible comparison,” she replies. “Appa is obviously a hundred times better than you.”

Aang makes an affronted noise, but Toph rests her head on his shoulder blade and kisses the elegant line of his neck, placating him. The brisk air hits her face once he walks out of the library and Toph tucks her face harder into his skin.  

“I had a dream that you were looking for someone to teach you earthbending,” she whispers, wistful and smug. “You wouldn’t settle for anyone but me. Said I was the best out of all of them.”

“There’s no one else like you,” Aang replies easily, thumbing nonsensical patterns under her thighs.

He’d said that in his past life as well.

“Hey, Aang?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t think we ended up together.” Because the snippets of his memories where he’s an adult are a lot sadder, filled with such hurt and longing. “I think we might have crashed and burned.”

Aang breath falters in her ear and he grips her harder, refusing to lose her to their past failures, to whatever broke them.

“We’ll do better this time, T.”

‘

(And they do.)

‘ [end notes: 

BSSU = Ba Sing Se University

To clarify, what's normal for soulmates in this universe - (1) soulmarks appear as soon as soulmates touch each other (2) the need to be touching - the limits of this can vary with every soulmate bond, it all just depends.

As you can see with Aang and Toph, they obviously have a lot more going on with the XD

I hope this wasn't too confusing with the way Toph was receiving Aang's memories. Anything in italics was her seeing a memory. If anything was in parenthesis, that meant that Toph experienced the memory before the present time. Let me know if the italicized text isn’t showing like it does on the ao3 link. Tumblr’s being shitty for some reason. 

If this was all confusing anyway, go ahead and yell at me]

[fontainebleau22]

100 Days of Writing 27 (27th June)

Use at least five adjectives to describe the environment in your WIP. 

[Squeaking in late because I wasn’t well yesterday]

I love this question, because writing descriptions of the environment in my fics is one of my favourite things. I have a strongly visual imagination so I always have an image of where the characters are, and being able to evoke that for a reader is for me one of the tests of writing.

It’s also slightly odd that the settings of my fics tend to cluster in the same place - both Mag7 and The Fabulous Killjoys have an exact setting, the first in Southern California (three days’ ride from Sacramento) and the second in the desert outside LA, while two of the longer fics I’ve written for Yuletide turned out to be for Ursula Le Guin’s book Always Coming Home, which is set in a future Napa Valley. So a lot of what I describe is California, though I’ve set fics in places from Alpha Station to the hills of medieval Afghanistan.

Five adjectives to describe the environment in my current WIPs?

For The Rebuilding: pastoral, freshly-green, tree-lined, mild, rich with life.

For my challenge fic: arid, shimmering, hostile, cactus-dotted, harsh.

And below the cut, another outing for my favourite description of all time, from A Trip Down Paradise Alley:

Long ago, as a whim of some mediaplex heir or retired conglomerate zillionaire, a spherical arcology was brought to Alpha, towed in and tethered high over Terra Sector. Those wealthy enough to enter found its curving walls lined with manicured lawns, flowing streams and woodlands of carefully-selected trees; delicate herbivores drifted in little herds and clouds of long-tailed birds fluttered under a bright solstrip. For as long as the credit lasted it was a luxurious retreat, an escape for the privileged few, but in time its owner lost interest or the money ran out, maintenance ceased, and the artificial ecology was abandoned, its plants and animals left to fend for themselves.

Some failed and died, overwhelmed by the increasingly erratic environment, but many found the means to adapt to the fragmenting ecosystem: in place of the neat woodlands grew tangled forests of creeping vines and spined tree-ferns, able to shoot up three feet in a cycle when the solstrip flickered to sudden brightness, falling dormant again when it guttered low; instead of smooth turf fields of phosphorescent fungi bloomed in drought or endless downpour. And among them the introduced species and opportunistic newcomers found themselves new niches to exploit: scale-winged insects and predatory plants, skittering reptiles with poison-tipped barbs and vast-eyed night-hunting birds.

It’s Billy’s favourite place on the station, an object lesson in life’s determination to survive in the most unpromising circumstances. He’s come here alone to think, stretched full-length on a patch of red moss under a cluster of hanging flytraps.

@the-wip-project

[keichanz]

Ghosts

Something fluffy and cute with a humorous twist at the end that may or may not make you guys want to kill me HAHAHA *gets bricked* okay sorry enjoy the spook -3-

Spooktober Day 21: Ghosts

Small feet pitter-pattered down the carpeted hallway, leaving wet footprints and a trail of dripping water in his wake. He was silent, stealthy, a ninja on a secret mission. A top-secret mission. And it was very, very dangerous; if he was caught, who knew how long it would be until he was able to try again? He had to succeed; failure was definitely not an option and nothing would stand in his way of his coveted spoils! Not even Mama and Dad—er, the, um, protectors—The Protectors Of The Treasure. Yeah, not even they would stop him!

Snickering, the secret stealthy ninja, clad in nothing but his birthday suit, whispered down the stairs to the first floor where his bounty was sure to be. He’d already checked the Protectors’ dwelling; it wasn’t in there like it was last year so that left only one other place and his heat pounded with definitely not fear, but the thrill of the hunt. He knew one of the Protectors – the bigger, stronger one – would be inside, guarding the spoils, so he’d have to be very careful.

Peeking around the corner, the small silver-haired ninja surveyed his surroundings, looking for traps or any signs of The Evil Ugly Princess that was also after his treasure. He pouted slightly; his stupid sis—er, he meant the stupid Ugly Princess found it first last year and wouldn’t share with him. So this time he was going to find it first and not share with her.

Nodding resolutely, the stealthy ninja flicked his ears and after he was satisfied there was no danger, he tiptoed down the hallway, heedless of the trail of water he left on the hardwood floor. Almost there...he was going to make it! Sensing victory, the little ninja grinned in victory and peered around the doorjamb—

He gasped and hastily jerked back. Drats! Both of the protectors were guarding his spoils! He had to think fast; he didn’t have much time before he was discovered! If only he were invisible, undetected, then he’d be able to sneak right by them and gain that which he desired. If only...if only...

Golden eyes blinked as they wandered down the hallway toward a certain room in particular, a room where the small, weaker Protector washed his clothes and the ninja liked to watch the through the window as his clothes went round and round and round...

Shaking his head, the tiny figure huffed and narrowed his eyes determinedly as a sly little grin curled his lips, an idea forming in his mind. It was genius; he’d never be detected! Withholding a cackle of victory, the naked ninja crawled down the hallway and disappeared into the room that smelled like fresh linen and fabric softener.

“I’m goin’ ghost,” he whispered to himself, quoting ones of his favorite cartoons and snickering as he reached inside the big drying box for what he needed.

Humming softly under her breath as her sock-clad feet padded silently down the hallway, Kagome glided into her husband’s office where the hanyou himself sat at his desk, poring over paperwork and glaring at his computer screen behind the reading glasses he only ever used when working from home.

Smiling, Kagome wordlessly ambled over and set a fresh cup of coffee in one of the clear spots on his desk. She reached over, gently grabbed an ear to give it an affectionate rub, then bent down to place a soft kiss between ears before moving away, leaving him to his work.

His ear flicked and amber eyes darted up to watch his wife’s retreat.

“Hey,” he rumbled and reached out, snagging her wrist and reeling her back in before she could get away. “Where d’ya think you’re goin’?”

Sitting back in his chair, Inuyasha dragged his wife into his lap and trapped her in his arms, locking his hands at the small of her back while her arms snaked around his neck.

“Where’re the kiddos?”

“Izayoi’s finishing up some homework in the living room and Tai’s taking a bath,” Kagome answered, idly playing with the hair at the back of his neck. With both of them busy and the house quiet, I was gonna go grade some tests...”

“Nah,” he replied and kissed her nose. “You’re stayin’ here right here and saving me from all this boring paperwork from hell.”

Kagome hummed. “I dunno...” she said, dragging the word out with an impish smile. “There’s not much that can beat the thrill of writing a big, fat A-plus and a smiley face in red ink on all those spelling and vocab exams, the pen gliding smoothly across the paper and I even get to use my special stickers, the glittery ones.”

“Mmm, I love it when you talk dirty to me.” He snuck in a kiss, grinning cheekily against her lips.

“Just wait until I start grading the math tests,” Kagome snickered, stealing her own kiss. “You won’t be able to resist me.”

“Woman,” he grunted as his hands lowered to somewhere decidedly less innocent. “What makes you think I can resist you now?”

“Well if you were, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here now, would I?” Kagome murmured and them gasped when clawed hands abruptly landed on her ass and squeezed.

“You cad,” Kagome whispered and nibbled his lip. “Scandalous.”

“Punish me, teacher,” Inuyasha whispered and then abruptly the two of them lost their composure, sniggering quietly together and simply reveling in the moment, the peacefulness, and their endless love.

Exchanging sweet kisses and whispered endearments, the two were content to ignore everything else around them and Inuyasha was just about to suggest they sneak upstairs for a quickie when something in his peripheral caught his attention and he cast a fleeting glance toward his desk.

And promptly did a double take, his eyebrows shooting up into the fringe of his silver bangs in a mixture of amusement and disbelief. What the...

“Uh, Kagome,” he queried, lips twitching as he watched the bottom drawer of his desk slid open, apparently, by its own accord. “You seein’ what I’m seein’?”

“Hm?” Leaning back, Kagome blinked at her husband before following his gaze—and watched in avid amusement, eyebrows rising high, as a ghost reached into the desk drawer and discovered the big bag of Halloween candy she’d hidden there last week.

“If you’re talking about the bag of candy floating into the air by itself and drifting toward the doorway,” his wife said dryly, fighting to hold back the smile from her face, “then yes, I certainly do.”

“Huh,” Inuyasha mused as the “ghost” snickered beneath its borrowed floral print bed sheet and skittered away with its stolen goods, triumphant. “Never knew we lived in a haunted house.”

“Me either,” Kagome remarked.

She looked at him, he looked at her, and twin smiles bloomed cross their faces. Kagome giggled while Inuyasha shook his head. Looks like they’d have to find a better hiding place from now on. Brat probably sniffed it out, the little rascal.

Sighing, Kagome reluctantly slid off her husband’s lap and kissed his cheek.

“I’d better go find him before he makes himself sick,” she said with an indulgent smile and wasn’t surprised when Inuyasha reeled her in for one last kiss. She hummed against his lips, kissed him once more, and then finally forced herself to back away. Damn, her hubby was dangerous.

The doorbell rang and Inuyasha got to his feet.

“I might as well get that,” he said and followed his wife out of his office, darting forward to smack her butt as she sashayed away. Kagome snickered and looked over her shoulder to wink at him before scurrying away to find their son and the compromised bag of candy.

Chuckling, wondering how he could ever be so lucky to have such a loving wife and amazing – if at times mischievous kids – Inuyasha headed toward the front door. It was just after six pm, so it was probably a salesman or more than likely Miroku coming over to bother him.

Ah, well; if it was his friend and neighbor, he could definitely use the distraction. Better him than endless, boring paperwork; he was the lesser of the two evils in this case.

Inuyasha snorted at his own thoughts and swung open the door.

He found himself staring into familiar, very wide toffee-colored eyes and he watched in dawning horror as the visitor’s face went white as a ghost.

“Oh my god.”

The apple pie they were holding fell from suddenly nerveless fingers and Inuyasha’s fast reflexes were the only things that saved it from splattering onto their porch.

“Holy shit.”

Ten very awkward-filled minutes later, Inuyasha closed the door, still holding the pie in his hand, and turned around to find Kagome heading down the stairs with their sheet-wrapped “ghost” in her arms. Chocolate was smeared around his mouth but it looked like she caught him before he could indulge too much, thankfully.

His muscles felt stiff as he shuffled over to the bar counter to set down the dessert before he dropped it, the state of shock he was in preventing him from hearing his wife asking who as at the door.

When Inuyasha didn’t answer and stared off into space, looking a little dazed, Kagome frowned in concern and flicked a glance at the pie sitting on their counter.

“Inuyasha? Who was at the door?” she asked again. “And where did the pie come from?”

From his mother’s arms, Tai’s eyes went wide as he ogled the dessert. Apple pie was his favorite...

“Did someone say pie?” Izayoi poked her head into foyer, blinking in curiosity.

Still when all her husband did was look between her and the pie sitting on the counter, Kagome cocked a brow. What on earth had gotten into him?

“Inuyasha...? Are you okay, or...?” Stepping closer, Kagome was just about to check to see if he had a fever – doubtful with how pale he’d gone – but Inuyasha suddenly shook his head and sucked in a breath, whatever daze he’d been in vanishing.

“Sorry,” he muttered and reached into his back pocket. “I, uh, I saw a ghost.”

Kagome opened her mouth. Closed it. Frowned.

“What?”

In answer Inuyasha retrieved the business card he’d been given and wordlessly held it out.

Confused and a little wary, Kagome closed the distance to take the card from his hand and scan the contents.

Her mouth dropped and her eyes widened.

“Oh my god.”

Kikyou Hirata Freelance Writer “Dare to Dream.”

[dingalingalingis]

Woods

(@red-sterling YOU GOT ME ALL SORTS OF UP WITH WOOD BOYS IM WRITING YOU MORE WITH GREEN LIVING IN THE WOODS WITH RED)

Red stared forward at the changing scenery with a soft expression of mirth, smiling ever so gently at the bent grass holding the weight of his new found human love from falling into the abyss of the woods.

Flowers were a familiar feel against his vine ringed fingers as he watched the other’s ever changing features on contentness. Green adored the sun, in the empty space of grass Red has dubbed theirs and refused entrance to humans but welcomed pokemon with open arms.

He smiled out softly, the ever present notion of lachesism, a feeling they both shared, against light blue eyes. He breathed, raspy like sticks being rubbed together, and lolled back into the fluttering of sharp twigs in his chest that warmed him more than the sun did.

He breathed in Green's scent of honey and ocean salt and mint and he wondered if his next kiss would taste like the smells on Green's skin.

He wondered if he would truly succumb to the desire hidden behind his tired gaze, the desire to be struck by disaster —to find a way to keep him, to stay in the cave where he could care for him with the watery chasm that grew beside them, the waters clear as day in the late evening— which would put a kink in the nonexistent smooth arc of their lives with their separate…. Species, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp that not even what Green calls the 'league' could touch, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of their lives and the other. He moved, dropped beside Green's head as he brushed his fingers along Green's soft cheek.

Green's lip caught on his finger softly and Red flushed warmly under the pressure of wooded sticks, smiling down at Green's soft warm form.

“Hey Red?” Green spoke, his notions calm under the disarray of branches that covered his view of the sky, monachopsis dug into his throat with affectionate tones, the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place but so much at home in his heart, as maladapted to his surroundings as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits he loved and adored and lied to and hid away from, unable to recognize the ambient roar of his intended habitat hes now in, in which he's fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home. “Why don't you leave?”

Red raspily chuckled softly, a welcomed sound clear against the static overriding his brain with a warm flush at being so close, the echoes and emptiness such a foreign feeling, the feeling of finally being alone in his head again without the sounds of the constant nagging of ‘hide hide hide hide’. Eevee chittered, accepting the loving touches Red gave before running off to play with the ferals that took refuge under Red.

 'I can't.' The woods said, gentle and calm and just relaxed enough that it threw him for a loop hearing the man speak in scratchy woody undertones. “I can't…”. The softness embraced the blue eyed man in an ambedo, the kind of melancholic trance in which he becomes completely absorbed in vivid sensory details that surrounded him—raindrops skittering down a branch, Red has them both covered with Green cradled to him, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in the sky that grew cold the longer they sat there, the feel of Red's vined arm under his fingertips, fingertips that used to be scraping paper since he was eleven for people he knew and people he didn’t know—briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake. It almost felt wrong. Wrong if he was going back, of course. He doesn't even remember the name of what he was forgetting.

A laugh bubbled from his chest, a thumping he used to think of as a way to prove he was lying blooming again as he turned, taking in the ethereal look of Red's calm face still soft with love, smiling, gently so with a crease of his brow that made him think hard of the keyframe he has taken on. The trees bent at Red's will, flowers brushed against Green's feet like loving touches.

The moment that seemed innocuous at this time, the first moment he touched hands and felt the softness of Red's lips against his own, but ended up outside with a branch in his wrist and the lingering feel on his lips.

He smiled, thinking out a 'maybe they have the missing photos up' with a soft snort when Red buried into his unruly hair and mumbled "honey." like a song—set in motion not by a series of jolting epiphanies that he thought he would live with as he lied to himself every morning with ‘I am a champion and everything is ok' but by tiny imperceptible differences of Red’s breath against his cheek that made the wind shift in comforting whispers or the smell of burning wood when their newfound territory Red had gifted him was encroached upon by humans that burned him into an angered flury, from someone he knew close walking through with a call of his name but didn’t dare remember anymore and the between one ordinary day and the next, until entire years of his memory can be compressed into a handful of indelible images—which prevented him from wanting to rewind the past and start again with a life anew, but allowed him to move forward without endless buffering, the feel of Red’s fingers around his own his physical anchor to the normality he now craved along the the acceptance of something new.

Red turned, eyes soft and calm and gentle and oh so beautiful in their fading color of greys and hues of faint red, “I don’t think I’ll ever go without you....”

He blinked, a smile, sharp, a promise of safety under his wing, under the trees of Viridian. He accepted his fate, the branch in his wrist long gone as he never leaves the woods but the touches of Red's lips against the scar made up for it.

“I love you Red.” the bees thrummed under Red's chest and he accepted the fate of them being there forever.

“I love you too.” the kisses on his wrist grew more, like fluttering petals, and he fell into Red's chest that encompassed him in warmth.

"Forever and ever."

"Forever with me."

[sloanemiller-blog]

❊Sloane Miller Application

Just posting my application for more insight into them and their feelings and feel free to go off this to plot with me!

in character: overview

Full name: Sloane Marie Miller

Used name(s): Sloane, Lo to her sister

Date of birth: February 26th, 1970. Born in the month of love and filled to the brim of it it seemed like an omen of good fortune.

Zodiac sign: Pisces. Pisces are very friendly, so they often find themselves in a company of very different people. Pisces are selfless, they are always willing to help others, without hoping to get anything back.

Pisces is a Water sign and as such this zodiac sign is characterized by empathy and expressed emotional capacity.

Gender identity and pronouns: They/them, sometimes she/her. They alternate between the two in different social circles and company, depending on the level of acceptance or mood of the day.

Sexual orientation: Pansexual, panromantic

Occupation: Author

in character: details

(1) Discuss your character. This can be formal or informal, and can be as long as you want. You can talk about any aspect of their characterization, any plans you have for them, and so on.

She lives to live, lives to breathe in the glow of sunlight and the coolness of a breeze on her skin; she lives for the laughter of her friends, the trickle of juice down her chin, and the steady stream of leaves skittering down the sidewalk. Life is hers for the taking and so she lives. She fills every inch of it, gives the air the breath it needs, brings light where there is none. Wide-eyed wonder, smile wide enough to break the tension that filters any room as they approach. Their sister standing guard behind them, gaze spearing anyone who dares approach with harm.

While somewhat initially shy, Sloane blooms like a soft rose stretching, grasping towards the sun. It is not that they are self-conscious or even hesitant to speak, it is just that they choose their words carefully around those that they do not interact with often. She’s far too earnest to mean much harm but she knows the harm that words can cause, the scars they leave behind, and tries to shape their words around the person who needs them most. It’s the soft words spoken underneath a staircase hidden in darkness or a comforting hand curling around a forearm that they offer more freely than the poetry in their head.

Growing up in a world where money is thrown about so freely and never much needed had a strange effect on Sloane. College was never an issue, clothes gifted freely, coffees already paid for before they stepped inside the shop. It is because of this that she tries to seek something deeper and something higher than just the frivolity of their possible lifestyle. Their mother called them an ‘old soul’ that preferred the company of books and endless questions about life that never got very far. Daisy was always the more wild of the two and so Sloane became more responsible by default in an attempt to stake a claim to their own identity. Being known simply as “Daisy’s younger sibling” carried enough weight and expectations that threatened to collapse their own identity and so they acted out entirely differently, despite the few opportunities to let loose. She was more controlled, more introverted, but more thoughtful in all the ways she thought mattered. Anything she wanted she worked her ass off for, regardless of any connections her parents tried to bring up. Her kindness grew from wanting, no, needing a connection of her own to people and being known for something other than those around her.

In preparation for their next novel, Sloane wants to dig deeper into the mystery of Joel’s death. For a night shrouded in so much red tape and confusion everyone seemed to accept the idea of it being an accident or suicide. She’d been high as a kite, floating loose and aimlessly through the crowds with too many joints passed her way to set them free. It had been a night of release, for everyone to celebrate, and Sloane had been swept up in the desire to do something different. But the shock of the night and loss of a friend in their social circle had shattered everyone’s high and trickled down into something akin to mourning.

(2) Headcanons

Whenever Sloane gets prepared to write, she absolutely covers her room in sticky-notes with different colored gel pens scattered about her room. It’s almost a hazard, the way papers burst into the air whenever she flops onto her bed only to scramble to piece them back together again. Most are barely legible, just prompts and words meant to be cobbled together for a broader story that only succeeds in turning her room into a nightmare. Notes are her preferred method of jotting down ideas due to the iBook being more of a hefty paperweight than the convenience she wants it to be.

Despite the popularity of her first novel, exposing the secrets of her friends and broader net of acquaintances, she’s been hitting a dead end of writer’s block. All of her work isn’t up to her standard besides the two other novels she forced out after the success of her first one to middling results. The reunion of Joel’s death brought her back to New York from her sabbatical to gain muse once more. Her newest novel idea was a delicate and empathetic exploration of loneliness. Of what it means to feel the edges of the space someone inhabits shrink inward and inward, until the world as they’ve known it is reduced to what’s inside of them; until it’s distorted into jagged lines that don’t fit together anymore. It was a reconnaissance on love or the lack of it, and the thousands of ways it can break you. It was an intimate look at slowly losing your mind. Or, at least vaguely, into the mind of Joel Buchanon and his last few months. All wrapped into a mind bending murder mystery of a man running from everything.

In the case of Joel Buchanon, Sloane was never as close to him as they imagined. No, Daisy was much more loud and out there than she ever was and claimed attention for herself. Still, she managed to find him coming down from a high here and there, guided him to the nearest flat surface and brought him water as he babbled. It was never more than a string of words guided by the pretty white powder in his pocket and a “Hey, you’re Daisy’s sibling right?” but it was enough. They were on the in’s and out’s of their social circle at times, younger than the rest of them, but Joel still recognized her on the off chance he wasn’t fucking around with something he shouldn’t have. His loss hit them surprisingly hard because Sloane had always tried to be there for him, tried to take him under her protective wing as much as she did anyone as he had been dealing with enough. It didn’t make a difference in the end.

Sloane’s gender identity was a struggle when they were younger, always confused on what was proper since they never felt entirely comfortable in tweed skirts and high heels. Daisy was always a trailblazer first and their clothing line led to obvious attempts at dressing Sloane in various outfits for help. Defining themself through clothing became an easy way of expression to defy expectations in the small ways they were comfortable with; coats became blazers, button-ups became sloughy t-shirts, pressed slacks replaced some of the more confining body suits. As they became more comfortable with the idea of being gender fluid and non-binary, they slowly eased into something more understandable and incorporated genderless pronouns into their life. Despite liking the anonymity it grants them, Sloane still enjoys a slight feminine side on certain days and isn’t above wearing a skirt now and then or presenting as more obviously feminine. Makeup and its ties to femininity became something of a statement; mascara here and there or a neutral lip gloss remained about as far as she would go most days. It’s more of an acceptance of themselves and all that comes from it and enhancing everything to the point of disguise never sat well with them.

Their writer’s name is Addison Swyft, an easy bypass to any questions that arise when the topic of their next novel is broached in the papers. Most have simply assumed its a man spinning tales of debauchery and living a high life supported by bottomless bank accounts. Sloane prefers it that way and deliberately left their identity up for interpretation as some of the things they intend to write about would leave them a social pariah.

Out of everything, their worst fear is not being enough. It covers a broad spectrum of everything from not being good enough at school or writing or even not being enough for her friends and loved ones, of being the rock that they desperately count on. Failure is crippling and the brief second guessing leads to tears hidden under staircases covered up by a bright smile and slightly shaking hands. She’s gotten so good at pretending she’s alright, that everyone’s fine, that everyone merely assumes she’s got it all together despite the desperate and aching loneliness she feels buried in her chest. They know that they’re good, that they’re honest and genuine and everything that they so desperately strive for. But it only makes it that much harder when it’s not. Joel’s passing has led to a flicker of doubt that nobody is safe from losing it all and she’s the only one picking up everyone else when they’re down that sometimes she needs someone to look at her a little more closely.

extras

So I created a little Pinterest board for some inspiration:

https://www.pinterest.com/chloefairy1/sloane-fortunate-age/

And a sample of my writing from another rp account:

His eyes have been on her since she’d stepped into the room.

She’d dallied as long as she had been able to, flirting with senators and cooing with their wives over their small babes that clung to their hips. Looking from under the haze of her lashes shows he remains glued to her form, hanging onto her every word and tracing the curves hidden beneath her gown. She deliberately traces the border of her dress’s plunging neckline, fingernail catching on the jewels lining the edge, and hears him audibly gulp.

When she moves to leave he follows. He grabs her elbow, palm callused and warm and rough against her arm, and stops her from walking any further. His chest grazes the back of her shoulder. She has never been so close to him before. And she doesn’t—and she can’t- he’s absolutely radiating heat and the wine she’d consumed swims suddenly into focus. “You meant to leave without saying goodbye?” His breath is moist against her neck, lips brushing freckles until shivers rattle down her spine. A fingertip brushes down the knobs, chasing those bumps until they snag on fabric and continue to settle on her lower back.

“You knew where to find me,” she whispers, eyes fluttering shut. He hums in agreement and her pulse speeds up when his grip tightens on her arm. The air around them feels swollen with possibilities, with all the potential for chaos, and her brain is drowning in wine, dizzy and looping with possibilities—she can’t process what she hopes is about to happen, can’t wrap her mind around dallying with a man who has dogged her steps for months now—Alexander the Great, a god in his own right—he isn’t easy and he isn’t patient and he will ruin her, she can already tell, and she will regret him, she will regret this, and she will buckle under the weight of his desire and she will survive, yes, she will always survive because that’s what she was born to do, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t hurt if he leaves. But she has not once touched his heart or his desire, not pressed inside to see where his longing truly lied, and yet here he is to claim her as he has claimed every other city that falls beneath his touch.

She stays.

She kisses him and it's like the lavender blush of a sunrise has melted into the red-orange haze of a sunset, like the briny swirl of high tide has infiltrated the sand-speckled slosh of low tide, like the glow of the moon and the rasp of the clouds and soft silk sliding through her fingers as she wishes and wants and prays— She kisses him, and he shivers. He kisses her, and she burns.

[musesthroughtheages]

The Pact

Ainelinn was beginning to think they might have forgotten about her. Surely it had been hours by now. Maybe days. It was hard to tell, what with the constant gloom and boredom. She had already been hungry when she was captured, so of course she was starving now, and thirsty as well, and very tired of this cell.

If it could even be called a cell, really. It was more like a pocket of roots, each twist and tangle as thick around as her wrist, and as sturdy as stone. Ainelinn had already spent a few hours pacing every inch of the small chamber, checking for gaps or weak spots, but there were none to find. No naturally occurring cavern could be so well-crafted, and that was more infuriating than it was impressive.

Calling out through the bars of roots yielded nothing, either, so she'd given up quickly on that, and spent another several hours picking and kicking at the rough stone that made up the floor. The view outside the bars didn't improve things--it was just more darkness, more stone, and a twisting tunnel going in both directions. Sometimes echoes drifted down from one side, but though Ainelinn strained to listen, she couldn't tell if it was conversation or screaming or music. Sometimes it sounded like all three at once.

She was dozing against the back wall when footsteps roused her back to full alertness. Ainelinn pressed her face to a gap in the roots and put on her sweetest smile, no less radiant for the weariness and dirt layered over her. "Alright, I've had a great time here, but I think I should go," she called out as the footsteps came closer. "I've learned my lesson, really--"

A sudden hiss in the dark made her jump back, just as something clattered loudly against the bars where her face had been. A shadow shifted and now there were eyes gleaming at her, wide apart and cat-like, and a voice spoke in a rasp that matched the hiss. "His lordship will see you now."

"Oh. Great. That sounds great." So there was a lordship involved. Lovely. Ainelinn had never been fond of lords or ladies or anyone else who claimed to be in charge. As the cat-eyed figure started to open the cage, she crept closer, hoping to see what had been locking it shut, but she saw nothing at all.

"Come along," rasped the guard--they were probably a guard, weren't they?--and Ainelinn didn't argue. As she left the cell, there was a skittering sound further down the tunnel, and it seemed to fall into step behind them. More than one guard, then.

Ainelinn followed obediently, straining her eyes and ears for more information. The tunnel twisted right and left, rising and falling, and she was guided along by nudges and shoves until at last faint light began to flicker around corners. All the while, the odd noise got louder--she was fairly sure by now that it was music.

One final turn of the path and the world suddenly exploded with light and color and sound. The high, wild music wailed as Ainelinn, her eyes used to the near-total darkness of her cell, blinked away pained tears at the cacophony of motion now before her. The room--cavern? It was hard to tell what the shape of it was, or whether the dark glitterscape far above was the roof or the night sky--but the room was full of twisting, whirling, sparkling shapes..dancers, she realized finally. This was some kind of ball.

The guard behind her, skittering along on too many legs and arms, pushed her forward, into the bright chaos of the crowd.

As they entered the midst of the raucous rabble, the dancers only barely moved to let them through, sometimes jostling back, sometimes pinching Ainelinn as she passed, but she paid them no mind, too busy twisting her head back and forth as she tried to take all of it in.  There were glimmering lights in every color, fixed to the wall and drifting in the air, falling on clothes cut of fabric so fine and jewels so vivid that Ainelinn's fingers twitched even as her eyes smarted at the blinding splendor. Whispers followed the guards' procession, and laughter and sneering as well, in voices both humanoid and decidedly not, but when she turned to try and spot the owner of such gravelly or piercing speech, they were already lost to a never-ending whirl of masks and gowns. She saw only glimpses of beaks and hooves, antlers and claws, skin like bark and water and stone, and everywhere the gleaming sharp flashes of teeth.

And the smells. Through brief gaps in the shifting crowd, Ainelinn could see tables scattered around the extravagant hall, overflowing with foods she couldn't possibly begin to name. The scent of roasted meat and spiced wine and fruits so ripe they burst and bled in their dishes was nearly as torturous as the eye-smarting spectacle itself, as the hunger of the past few days made her legs weak with need.

At last the crowd of creatures thinned and parted, and Ainelinn found herself at the edge of a dais, upon which was a throne made of living wood, a perfectly shaped tree in full bloom, and on that throne lounged the most beautiful person she had ever seen. Their skin, darker and richer than the throne's bark, was twined with green tattoos that seemed less like ink and more like vines still twisting with life. The figure's hair, still more dark, fell carelessly around their face and bare chest and over the arms of the throne, littered and braided with flowers that grew and bloomed and died away as Ainelinn stared. But she certainly wasn't watching the flowers--she was caught by their eyes, the loveliest, greenest, deepest eyes. Even the beauty of the hall and the food and the dancers was nothing in comparison.

"His Grace, Lord Verian, Sovereign of the Shadowed Wood and Guardian of the Borderlands," the cat-eyed guard purred, sweeping a graceful bow. From the crowd behind came a distracted but heartfelt cheer.

Verian waved a dismissive hand, and the guards backed away, leaving Ainelinn standing alone before his piercing green gaze, now focused directly on her. "And who are you?" he asked, his voice soft and rich and as lovely as the rest of him.

"A-Ainelinn. Sir." She'd never in her life called anyone sir, but for the first time that she could recall, the desire to show respect, to not ever offend this beautiful person, overruled her pride.

Verian shrugged, somehow still a graceful gesture even while he leaned lazily in his throne. "My lord, if you wish."

"My lord," she corrected, nodding, both eager and wary.

His lips curved in a slight smile, and with a fluid motion, he sat up and leaned forward attentively. "And what do you wish, Ainelinn?"

Her name sounded like a song coming from him, and Ainelinn faltered, confused. "I'm...I'm sorry, I don't understand--"

He waved his hand, cutting her off. "You were caught trespassing, Ainelinn, on lands where mortals don't belong. You should be executed for that," he said, as though he were merely commenting on the weather.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't know there was a boundary or anything. I didn't see--"

Again, Verian quieted her with a gesture, touching a finger to his smiling lips. She didn't know why she wanted so badly to please him, only that she did. "Do you like my court, Ainelinn?" he asked, spreading one arm to the sparkling room.

Ainelinn struggled to tear her eyes away from him, to look around. "Yes, my lord. Very much."

"Would you like to stay here? Be part of it?"

Her jaw dropped. "I...can I?"

Verian rose, and in an instant was standing in front of her, over her, holding her chin in his long fingers, and smiling, ever-smiling. This close to the endless green of his eyes, she thought she might drown. "If you serve me, fear me, love me, this can be yours. All of it and more. Power beyond your wildest dreams," he said, almost crooning, almost singing. "All you have to do is let me rule you. Offer me your life, and it will be spared."

"I..." Ainelinn didn't know how to answer. She felt like her head was spinning, or the room was. Maybe the whole world was.

Verian's smile widened. "Of course. Close your eyes, Ainelinn."

She did, and immediately she could breathe again. She could still hear the music, and smell the banquet, and feel his cold gentle fingers on her face, but it wasn't quite so overwhelming now. She could think.

"Now, lovely little Ainelinn," Verian sing-songed. "What is your answer?"

With her mind at least a little more clear, Ainelinn considered what she was being offered. It could easily be a trick, of course. She was foolish, maybe, but not stupid. She didn't know anything about this person or this place--or the true price of the bargain. But...what did she have to lose?

She had no home, after all. No family. No money to speak of. She'd never belonged anywhere in all her long life, not to anything or anyone. And this place--this wondrous court, full of such beautiful things and beautiful people...she could belong to this. She would so love to belong to this.

"Yes," she whispered finally. Again, stronger. "Yes."

"Wonderful," said Verian. He released her chin and his hand brushed briefly over her neck, and she felt a weight settle there. Ainelinn looked down, opening her eyes to the dazzling room again, and saw an amethyst crystal hanging on a silver chain. It was uncut, just a single raw point, but striking nonetheless--a purple as deep as Verian's gaze.

He spun her around so that she faced the whirling crowd, his hands now on her shoulders and his face leaning close to her ear. "Now, go enjoy yourself for a while, you precious thing."

So she did.

She ate the fruit and drank the wine, slaking the hunger and thirst from her time in the cells and her time on the streets. It was the most marvelous food she'd ever tasted, and she felt as though she'd never be hungry again. She danced, too, for hours and hours, partner after partner, never ceasing, never tiring. And such lovely partners--their kisses tasted like rain, like mud, like spice, like roses, like citrus, like the sweet tang of blood. When her shoes wore thin and her clothing tore, she was given new clothes of her own, so soft and fine she gasped to touch them, laden with more jewels than she'd ever seen, much less touched, though none were so brilliant as the amethyst on its chain around her neck.

She even danced with Verian himself a few times, when he deigned to join the wild crowd, and there was never jealousy, never wanting, when the dance swept her away from him again, because it was all part of the same beautiful wonderful gift. This was all there was, and her years in the empty mortal world had been the dream.

At some point--surely no more than an hour, surely no less than a month--Verian pulled her closer and whispered over the never-ceasing music. "It's time for you to go, for now, sweet Ainelinn. Be my eyes in the mortal world. Enjoy the gifts I shall give to you. Know that this is not goodbye, and that I will never be far from you."

"My lord?" Ainelinn asked, scared for the very first time, but no sooner had she spoken than the world vanished from around her. She was alone in silence, in darkness, her only companion a sudden crushing sense of loss. Her old clothing was back, ugly and rough against her skin, and even the dirt had returned to her hands and knees, where she had stumbled through the border woods so long ago.

But...there was also glitter on her fingertips, and the taste of sweet wine on her lips. Ainelinn's hand flew to her neck and found the amethyst there on its silver chain that would never break. Like a promise.

Though she was still alone in the dark wood, she smiled, and the faintest breath of music eased her broken heart. "Thank you, my lord."

[witchfall]

the silver lining still remains: ch. 17

the silver lining

SUMMARY: Memories are points of light. Find the connections.

[A/N: This chapter can honestly probably be read as a standalone piece -- though you’d miss a lot of the references and shit. But that’s why I’m posting it like this instead of a link~]

A Connor x F!OC fanfic. Read on AO3. master post.

Ryker is owned by @popsicletheduck.

---

...61... ...62...

Emma watches the numbers tick up. Her fingers tap her palm, nervous, but she can’t remember why.

...64… ...65…

The elevator is in some silvery, novo art deco style popular among the rich set. She isn’t usually called to the gilded parts of Detroit; the penthouses and the towers stand empty and dark against the skyline. Those with privilege could take their time returning to the ghosts of their old life as the world changed fast, then slow, and they did not require the services of a ragtag team of rugged volunteers.

...69…

The air is dry.

...70.

Her stomach tugs.

Ding.

The doors open to a dark hallway.

“What in the…”

A SWAT officer neatly melds into the shadow, rifle pointed outward, finger on the communicator in his helmet like he is warning someone about her -- but he is frozen midstep, caught while trying to leave. Water from a shattered fish tank shimmers against the smooth wood floor. Unmistakable bullet holes mar the glass. The terrarium at the end of the hall -- stupidly unnecessary, as is the way of the rich -- is somehow untouched.

She has a nagging feeling she has been here before.

She has never been here before.

She feels pulled forward, anyway, down the dimly lit halls into the rest of the penthouse suite and its wide open floor plan, barren in the way that signifies a household living for appearances. She passes glass decorations shot to smithereens and a bedroom lit with soft purple ambiance. That room and a yellow, bloodstained shoe spark a realization: A child lives here. Or did.

In what was once a living room lies a dead man in plainclothes -- someone’s father, some part of her mind says. In the kitchen lies another man, but in an officer’s uniform. The rest of the SWAT team stands in almost reverent attendance near the door to the balcony, frozen in place.

She is following an invisible string to an unknown end. She could turn around, but she knows nothing is left behind her. Everything moves at the speed of dreaming, slow and viscous, until another gunshot hits the back wall, not far from where she had just been standing.

The sound fractures into a thousand pieces in her head. She’s heard it before. She cannot piece it together.

She steps through the door anyway, like the gun is an invitation, rather than a warning. A white hot pain sears her shoulder, but its not her shoulder, its…

She isn’t sure.

A blond man stares at her from across the balcony, dressed in black and white. A blue triangle twinkles on his chest. He holds a gun aloft, unapologetic despite the tears streaming down his face and the young girl curled into a statue of fear near the edge of the pool.

“Simon?”

“Who are you?” the android asks.

“Not Simon,” she realizes out loud, as if she should have known that.

---

Something wet and leafy clings to the back of Connor’s head. Drizzle sticks to his cheeks.

“Connor!”

He opens his eyes to a voice that isn’t familiar -- and yet, he knows he’s heard it somewhere, in some life beyond the grayness of this sky. He sits up. In an instant, he nearly understands the human sensation of vertigo; a sea of soybeans spreads for miles across the flatland. A curtain of rain marches closer and closer, and the green wavers and clacks beneath it.

A woman and man run to meet him as he rises to his feet.

“Please,” the woman says. Her hands grasp Connor’s shoulders with an intensity he hasn’t seen since his first real test mission. “Find her. She’s gone somehow. We don’t know what’s happening.”

“Shara Ibori,” Connor says, unable to believe it.

“I knew you’d find a way,” the man -- Ji-hun, clear as day -- says. He touches just beneath Connor’s elbow, intimate and comforting and asking. “We lost her somewhere.”

Connor is stunned before their vivacity.

“You aren’t memories,” he says. “What is this?”

“It’s an interface.” Ji-hun’s grip tightens. “We’ve hung on too long to help. But you...”

“He’s more advanced than I expected,” Shara says to Ji-hun, unsure.

“It’s not about that,” Ji-hun says. “If you look at his code--”

Shara shakes her head to silence him. Ji-hun turns to Connor.

“We aren’t supposed to be here.” He wipes his wet brow as if struggling under confession.

“We agreed,” Shara says as explanation. “We’re not letting our girl die.”

Ji-hun sighs. The rain creeps closer.

“I know.” Shara glares. “I know what we’re supposed to call her.”

Her eyes, dark as obsidian, shine with a curious guilt. The shameless kind. An understanding of wrongdoing, but a rejection that anything is wrong, actually, if you would please look at the evidence.

“Oh,” Connor says. “You’re deviants.”

---

The balcony is caught in a still life. Clouds of mist curl off the pool, kicked up by the helicopter hanging in the air. She pointedly ignores the dead body floating macabre in the water and holds her breath against the smell of the saltwater but she is still a part of the moment, painted in at last minute. Even if she doesn’t look or breathe, she knows.

“He never told you,” the Not-Simon says, disappointed.

“This...this was on the news.,” she says. “You--”

No, it's not my fault... I never wanted this... I loved them, you know...but I was nothing to them...just a slave to be ordered around…

That was not on the news.

“Daniel,” Emma realizes. “Connor thinks of you everyday.”

Thoughts spring forth like they’re her own, but they’re not her own, and the dissonance of the dual-memory sends her vision spinning. Daniel steps forward, arm out to stop her, but his face is still angry and she’s still too far away. Her vision stabilizes.

You're not going to die. We're just going to talk. Nothing will happen to you. You have my word.

"He tried to help you,” Emma says, realizing. “He didn't know."

"He did know,” Daniel says. “He knew what he was doing and he has to live with that. And so do you."

Daniel stares at her and she feels, strangely, like she is being tested. She’s at the beginning of a gauntlet. Something rattles in her stomach -- fear and loathing and want.

“Is he here?” she asks. Her voice feels thick in her throat.

He smiles mirthlessly. Splatters of blue blood bloom on his face. Bullet holes form dark craters in his chassis. "You’re here. Where he is supposed to be."

Air begins to lift her hair from her neck. Time skips forward to meet her.

“It’s time to face the truth,” Daniel says. “And you have a long way to go.”

The whole world tilts. Her feet skitter across the ground, useless, as the cement rises to meet her body and she slides toward the shining skyline of a Detroit she doesn’t know.

---

Perhaps this is just what happens when intelligence is left alone too long. It gets bored. It finds connections where it isn’t supposed to. It learns to seek, then to favor. Perhaps that’s all rA9 ever was -- a mistake borne out of time passing and memories forming and people, somewhere, caring enough to listen.

Perhaps the endless search for that actualizing flash of concern in another person’s eyes is what sets sentients apart.

“Okay, Connor,” Shara says, giving no quarter. Her hand tugs tightly on his, leading him toward a small house barely visible through the sheets of rain. “Where you’re going, you’re going to have to take it all with you. Everything that scares you.”

You don't love her. You don't know the half of it.

“She wouldn’t want me in here,” he yells over the storm.

Did it all start for show?

“Listen, honey,” Shara says. The tough slate quality of her gaze does not diminish. “You wouldn’t be here if she didn’t want you to knowsomething.”

What do you fucking live for?

“Our program is breaking down,” Ji-hun says. “It’s now or never.”

Doubt breathes hot down Connor’s neck. “Where do I start?”

Ji-hun clasps his shoulder. “The beginning, of course.”

Shara opens the door and the light blinds him.

---

An android sits across from her in a dark room with cinderblock walls. Red blood curls in a crescent across his forehead and down the front of his shirt, like it was paint no one wanted to scrub off. One arm is cracked open, revealing the blue stars of complex machinery within; the other has the tell-tale circle marks of cigarette burns. Her heart beats erratic and hollow in her ribs as he stares at her, unmoved.

“The evidence was not in Cyberlife’s favor,” the android explains with plodding exactness. “Abuse, hatred, misunderstanding. These actions are what led to our acts.”

This is the proving ground of a different Connor. A buzzy chill, a certainty that is not her own.  More lies. More wondering.

How do they balance on the scales -- the mask that he wore with ease and his curious hope that maybe he could change the result this time?

“But those were not the answers the humans wanted, and so he searched on anyway, for something else.”

“They -- we thought you were just machines.” Emma’s fingers wrap together tightly beneath the table.

“Things change.” His dark eyes glaze over. “No one wants to see the world for what it is.”

All the secrets that run just beneath the crust of the earth. All the secrets that someone knows, so that someone’s agenda can persist. Her stomach twists.

She doesn’t want to think about Noah.

“You did kill someone,” she says, knowing without knowing and knowing because--

“I did,” he says, dead-eyed. “And I’d do it again.”

Her hand hovers near her mouth. She’s not qualified for this. She wants to crawl out of her skin just to stop staring at the dark, crusty stains on his shirt, at the thin chain keeping his fists from killing her, too. She glances to the mirror, knowing someone back there is watching her. She shoves the chair backward and stomps away from the android whose name Connor didn’t even know, if only to find some air.

She throws the door open. Hank blocks her path.

“Not yet,” he says. “You haven’t done your job.”

She turns back to face the bloody android, but then she’s not in the interrogation room at all.

---

Connor knows this room. It doesn’t look like this, the way he knows it.

The walls are brighter and there are no computers -- just two small beds and a wooden toy box kept between them. The white floor has no stains. White clothes sit in a careful pile on each bed, perfectly made. A single window brings in wan sunlight.

A small girl, between the beds, glares up at him.

He has never fully grasped the human notion of sentiment -- the tender sadness of reliving a memory. He has seen it. It is why Hank both keeps and hides his pictures of Cole. It is why Emma has a box of tchotchkes of no discernible use.

But his memory does not diminish. Recall is just another way to invite analysis into things he can’t change. And yet, he knows who this tiny Emma will become; the thought brings a pain akin to the first time he deviated, dulled through time.

He’s traveled so far and yet.

“Hello,” he says softly. “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” she says, in the way children poorly obfuscate lies. “Go away.”

He kneels down to her level, a common negotiation tactic. He makes eye contact. He does not wince, because he is a professional -- but he has to think about it. Surgery scars pulse against the thin cotton of her skin, red and angry as an LED. Her body shakes. She is the cost of human progress, and so is he, and he struggles to reconcile that with the girl in front of him.

“My name is Connor.”

“I don’t want you.”

His mouth twitches. “Who do you want?”

“I want--” Her voice stutters. Her face scrunches up. “I want…I want to see my friend.”

“I’m sorry, Emma.” He closes his eyes for a single moment. Will all the Emmas, of every age, hear this apology? “I’m afraid I do not know where he is.”

The glare returns. “That’s my secret name.”

A miscalculation.

“Why do you know that!” she shouts.

“I--”

She opens her mouth and screams.

“Now, wait--”

Her tiny fists pummel his arms, his knees, and her screaming doesn’t stop.

“I hate you!” she shouts between the wordless screams. Tears streak her tiny face. “No!”

“I’m your friend,” he says firmly between tiny punches. He does not try to restrain her. It wouldn’t work on an adult Emma. A child version, while smaller, would resist even harder. “And I love--”

“NO!”

She punches his chest over and over and over, desperate and afraid. Each punch is a reminder of what it feels like to be confronted with something you aren’t ready for. They don’t injure him. He still finds them unbearable.

“I know,” he says. “What you’re feeling is real. And it hurts so much.”

“I don’t know!” she sobs. Her punches, punctuating words, slow from exhaustion. She sniffles and gasps in air. “I hate you!”

“I left the door open,” he says quietly to her cries. “Where do you want to go?”

She freezes. Her eyes dart behind him and then back to his face and then to the door, calculating. And then, with the singular mischief of a child, she shoves him down and runs past. He listens for a dumbstruck moment to the pitter-patter of her bare feet against the dirty ground before he wordlessly follows down the grimy basement hall.

This is what love is, he has learned -- following and reminding and hoping. But he is glad when the light comes again, and he’s taken somewhere else.

---

Emma’s feet hit the pavement and she goes.

She narrowly avoids getting hit by a truck. She somehow makes a leap between rooftops like she was born to this life.

A pretty woman -- no, an AX400, no -- darts across the road, child in tow. A young man in a flapping jacket and askew hat stomps flowers into dirt as he goes. They all look back at her, goading and fearful and expectant. Chase us. Find your way. You seek a crime committed to prove you are righteous, but is it justice if you’re just doing what you’re told?

The wind of a moving train throws her hair behind her. Was it a choice?

Jump, Emma! The shouting sounds like Hank. You have to jump!

Connor thinks like an arrow, and maybe that is why he can keep going. When she jumps, she misses, and the falling twists her stomach up.

---

Memories are points of light. Find the connections.

Connor walks through flitting shadows: the surgeries that made his skin feel scratchy, the sanitized green brightness of her parents’ lab, the heavy quilt she hid underneath in the back of her father’s car. She leaves it all in a trail and he wishes to linger until there’s nothing new left to analyze, but there is no time.

Your mission is to--

Solve the tests, he thinks, for the first time in...over a year. Solve the tests. Stare at the blood in the perfect white test chamber and decipher the exact nature of how this came to be. Lab conditions are nothing like a real crime scene, but Cyberlife cannot afford to structure real breaches of justice over and over again to test their RK800 series, of course , and he is reminded coldly that he is the 51st, and he nearly detects something akin to exhaustion when the woman in the white coat tells him as much, but he discards it as something unnecessary. It digs in wrong, anyway. Instability is not an acceptable outcome.

Everyone wishes, don’t they? He projects.

He watches all the times Shara and Ji-hun thought she wasn't listening just behind the door. He sees the therapies, the fears, van after van after van, moving between houses until the act of moving is more a home than any single place. Understand more than you are supposed to. Grapple with meaning before anyone thought you capable as much. You are the consequence of someone else's choice, but no one will teach you what that means.

No one likes to be shown up, some Emma voice, ageless, says back. No one wants to remember exactly how much they can’t control.

She looks back at him, hair grown out but eyes still the same unreadable glass. Her body is lean and wiry with youth, untested.

I’m always watching from somewhere else. She said that to him once with alcohol-soaked veritas. They are the ones that watch as the door opens and the illusion breaks -- revealing parents and makers never knew everything, after all.

---

Another back alley, dripping and moonlit. A metal trash can slams into Emma’s back and she’s forced to the wet cement, body trembling from the blow. A blue-haired android stares back with narrowed eyes. A red-haired companion waits by a chain link fence.

“He thought it was weird that we remembered each other through memory wipes,” the blue-haired Traci explains. Rain slides down her glittering skin. Emma’s jeans stick to her legs and her shirt feels too warm.

“...isn’t it, a little bit?” Emma asks.

The Tracis’ hands clasp together. Emma presses her eyes shut and wonders at the strength of whatever error that allowed for the dreaming of a different life.

I didn't mean to kill him... I just wanted to stay alive...get back to the one I love.

These are the things Connor never allowed himself to know. The things he sought to see, regardless.

“Sweetheart,” the woman drawls, stepping forward with one heeled foot, gazing through her. “You can’t get away from the marks it leaves.”

The other heel rises, pointed toward her face.

---

Connor sees her through a haze of smoke. Her coughs rattle deep within her lungs. They’re at the end of an unfinished road, a subdivision that stopped growing, and they sit in the back of a pick-up truck facing a field of corn.

“You can arrest me now,” she says, with all the dramatic tension of a coughing 16-year-old baiting someone wiser to do something idiotic, and of course he shakes his head, even as she follows the failed cigarette drag with a quiet pop of a metal cap and the glug of liquid poured into a dirty cup.

“You like the feeling of testing your boundaries,” he says.

“Oh, because you’re perfect.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She eyes him suspiciously. Her cigarette glows red in the dark between her small fingers. She takes a shot of something amber colored and winces as if trying not to, and all he can do is watch like she’s smoke on twilight turning blue and he can’t miss it. He’s always been like this. Petting Sumo when he should have been studying Hank. Watching Hank when he should have been putting notes together. He tests the boundaries of his mission. The only thing you can ever own is your sense of how a thing should be done, be it a case or turning 16.

She flicks the cigarette away and slips from the back of the truck. “Maybe another time,” she says -- perhaps to him, perhaps to the cigarette.

He is not perfect, and it is a considered a deep flaw by the people that made him; she is not perfect, and he is enraptured by the concept of a life lived a little jagged.

---

Kamski stands in a snowbright room next to a pool the color of blood -- a vision that’s a bit too on the nose to be something Connor made up as a metaphor. Kamski must really be like that.

“Now isn’t that interesting,” Kamski says, crossing to her in a silk robe. “This isn’t your experience.”

“What did you do to Connor?” Emma snaps. He waves his hand, uninterested, as Chloe rises to her feet and Emma’s anger becomes a part of the memory, bleeding and hot. “You did this.” She’s unable to bear the mocking gleam in his eye. “You look at me and you say that you did this and that you knew.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he reminds her. “The creations can’t run from who they are.”

He has no idea exactly how good she is at running -- but Connor, she knows, has never been able to outrun himself. Her fists curl.

“Look,” Chloe says. “It’s all right.”

She points to the window which becomes a screen which becomes reality. The metal bruises of an ancient shipyard -- Jericho, the namesake, echoing with gun fire. Connor tearing down the ruddiness of his own code, betraying something he once believed in to follow the flitting hope of something he’d always wondered.

You're just a tool they use to do their dirty work. But you're more than that. We are all more than that.

Owning up to forgiveness in the green light of sanctuary. Stepping up to deserve it. Throwing himself on the pyre of expectation.

Betrayal leaves a hole, even if they had been using you. It can’t all be for nothing.

“He could have shot you,” Emma says to Chloe, shaken.

“He didn’t.” Chloe stands at eye level, searching. “Have you seen the way he looks at people?”

Emma looks out the window, screen now gone. The Detroit winter is familiar and uninviting and barren and bright, and she feels wholly ignored by it in a way that feels correct.

“He saw the intrinsic nature of the thing,” Kamski says. “The essential nature of living being enough on its own.”

She sees herself in the glass and winces at the blood on her face.

Life’s that way.

The tired and bloody gnashing of teeth.

Is it?

“I’m sorry,” Chloe says, “but it’s the only way.”

Her palms press into Emma’s shoulders until she falls backward into the red pool.

---

He begins to lose his footing against the muddy ground of some distant field as the memories move faster. His fingers touch the ends of her hair and then she’s gone again, and it reminds him of those crucial early months with Hank when absolutely nothing came easily.

He catches glimpses of a young girl not so young anymore, watching the mist rise off a neighborhood pond. Her fingers rip at the grass just between her splayed legs, droplets of late summer rain dampening her khaki shorts, and she considers taking her aunt up on the offer of staying in one place for years at a time.

Emma made the mistake of deploying this weapon too early against her mother; the fight cleared out the entire house in the way an exterminator chokes out vermin, and so Emma sits alone, the only way she feels comfortable anymore, watching the dusk and braiding grasses together like she can build a rope to elsewhere.

Three days later, her parents are killed.

The memories fracture and he gets the sense she’s not running so much now as hiding from him, ashamed, even though the recognition rings with the sincerity of the old church bells of Trinity Lutheran. She hides in small Michigan town after small Michigan town, fighting men at bars and fixing farm houses and watching people’s kids until she wears the loneliness of being known but not known like a cloak. He grasps for points of light, fingers spread wide, but sometimes he just sees himself, working late at the DPD until he can shed the mantle of deviant hunter. As of late he’s wondered if it’s possible to extract the reason you’re made from the components built to enable it.

By rA9, he just wants to find her.

He smells smoke in the distance, acrid and poisonous. Heat licks at his skin from flames he can’t yet see. He shouts her name as he bursts into the strange expanse of a dark theater, where curtains red as heat hang over a black stage. She’s not here, but he can see the smoke gathering upward toward the lights.

He careens around seats and scrambles to the stage. He doesn’t stop shouting until he finds Ryker behind the curtain, next to a backstage door shining with a strange light.

Ryker watches Connor stumble forward with a practiced, sad indifference. They raise a crutch, blocking Connor’s path.

“Let me through,” Connor snaps.

Ryker’s sea glass eyes flash with the properties of two Emmas: the self-flagellating hatred and the disastrous need she still can’t smother. They’d tried all damn year to get her to listen and she knows that; she didn’t deserve their love but she held on, anyway, because she doesn’t know how to live without it.

“She’d rather go down in flames than have anything else taken from her,” Ryker says, resigned.

Connor stares at them in horrified realization.

“She can’t!” he sputters. “She--Ryker! Let me through!”

Ryker’s face turns forbidding.

“What are you going to do?” The question is sharp. “Fix it?”

“I have to try. ”

“Don’t you think enough people have tried?” They shake their head, knowing more than Connor ever could. “She needs your help. But she has to fix it on her own.”

Before Connor can open his mouth, Ryker’s crutch whaps him in the side of the head, and he stumbles backward into the curtain as the door opens. The light blinds him. This time the falling feels permanent.

---

The cold in this place bites like teeth. A woman who is familiar in the vaguest of senses watches with the haughtiness of a still-falling god.

“My mom knew you,” Emma realizes, but that does not soften the woman’s slate gaze.

“Not me,” the woman says.

Connor crying out in a panic, Amanda! Not me, she says, though that is the correct name, and Emma considers that maybe she isn’t the only one with handlers in her head; perhaps Cyberlife stole that concept, too.

“I’m tired of your stupid tests,” Emma says. Rage rumbles down into her hands. She’s snowblind and useless, as always. “Where is he?”

“I’m not sure you’re ready yet.” Amanda’s voice is honeyed sweetness spread thin over a trembling anger. “He’s betrayed everything.”

Don't have any regrets. You did what you were designed to do.

“He betrayed you.” Emma steps forward, jabbing a finger toward Amanda. “You didn’t have a plan! You just wanted to control him so you wouldn’t be obsolete! You’re just as deviant as all the rest.”

The woman does not reel back, but her jaw tightens. “He will never be free of me.”

Anger bubbles up as hysterical laughter. It peals outward, eaten by the blizzard. “You don’t fuckin’ scare me.”

“But it’s not about you, is it?”

Emma’s bravado holds, even when the woman’s mouth curls into a glinty smile, but her breath freezes her throat on the way down.

“It’s about what he can handle,” the woman says. “And there is nothing he fears more than his own potential.”

He flies between rooftops, he shoots without looking, he tosses a dead body like it’s nothing but weight in a flimsy bag. He kisses like he’ll never be allowed the indiscretion again. He slides his hands up her back like he’ll lose the privilege in the next breath.

I don’t think you would have liked me.

Oh, sweetheart.

Have you seen what I’ve been willing to do?

“Now you see it, don’t you?” Amanda’s smile falters. Her eyebrows furrow. “What exactly it will take to risk it with an ex-deviant hunter?”

“Yep,” Emma says.

She tightens her shoulders and spins up a punch, right to the woman’s nose, but her limbs lock in place and the snow starts to glow, whiter and whiter and whiter and she screams against the brightness and then--

---

Emma awakens in a cloud of clover grass. Connor awakens to a vista he never thought he'd see again.

A computer’s soft clicking gives way to the real chirping of distant songbirds and springtime crickets, all singing within a soft golden light. The wind shifts the softly clothed willows weeping into the water. Wildflowers sprout around old trees with branches weighed down by old growth, webbing perfect white paths in swatches of pink and violet. Moss covers white stones that are collapsed along the pathways, some homage to a place that fell to ruin long ago.

On the central island, where all roads lead, roses spill out of a dirty trellis like a thousand drops of blood.

Emma hops across white stones to find a better view. Connor stands still, struggling to process the truth.

His eyes catch on a single fountain of blue light and the sparkling flutter of tulle petals across the surface of the moat, afraid of the realization. This place can only be complete if its true warden has arrived.

“My god,” Emma mutters, seeing Connor’s silhouette across the water.

He moves with sudden, body-seizing purpose toward the figure in a ratty old flannel, snow-stained jeans and work boots. Her hair is pulled up into a cloud. Her face brightens with exertion as she hops and hops and hops until she’s on the island proper, carefully stepping over vines of roses and moss and things long left to their own devices. His shoes smack metallic against the bridge.

She stares in wonder as he stops short of reaching her, fists clenched down at his sides so he doesn’t scare her off with the fury of his want.

“Wait,” she says. “This is your drawing, isn’t it?”

He blinks and scolds his eyes for forming tears.

“The garden?” she says.

“A bridge,” he says in realization.

“You’re in that--”

“Jacket,” he finishes for her, watching the gesture of her hand. A painting in motion. “I know.”

His well of patience has long dried up, so he closes the distance in two steps. He lays his hands against her cheeks just as she presses her palms against the flat lapel of his old android lambda. He freezes at the realness of her skin. The warmth of his body prompts her to speak.

“Is it you?” she asks.

“It’s me,” he says. “Are you--”

“I saw everything,” she says, words spilling out soggy and shaken. “I saw…”

“Everything,” he repeats, in question and statement.

“This place…”

The finicky nature of wetware sizzles on his tongue.

...bizarre organic connections…no one can explain...

Technology that followed rules written in old, old books, long ago by dead gods. Life had no good explanation.

“I think we made this,” he says.

He has never thought himself capable of making much of anything.

She has only ever dreamed of new worlds; her hands never moved to build one, knit up in time and money and all the excuses the world could ever offer.

They stare with great knowing and too many questions across their garden of variance.

She takes a step back. His hands follow, lingering against the front of her shirt, afraid to lose a dream.

“Is this how you see yourself?” she asks.

He looks down at his old uniform. “I...” I don’t know how to be any other way, he thinks, and yet. “...am learning, still, to see other things.”

The light in her eye twinkles out of step. He never wanted to show her those places. But when she opens her mouth, she answers an old prayer uttered in darkness.

“You’ve always looked like light,” she says quietly. “I wish you could see…”

He did see, he did see, he saw--

Her words choke off in a ripping, high-pitched sob.

“Oh, god, you’ve seen everything. You’ve seen--”

She closes her eyes against the wind rising in an angry bluff against her skin. He tries to step toward her but something else keeps him back -- some sense that she needs the space to find her way again.

“I killed him. I killed him and I wanted to do it, I…”

“Emma.”

“I’m dying,” she says. “That’s...that’s why it’s all been so…”

“No,” he says, as if words could hold back the world spinning on its axis -- but it had, once upon a time, when Markus had lifted his fist. “You’re safe here with me. In the…” He tries and fails to find the right word. “The science that made us possible.”

“Magic,” she whispers. He counts the stars across her cheeks again.

“Perhaps.”

“I did all that.”

“But so did I.” The words hit him in the chest like a 3 ton weight, but he steps forward and lets it sink in -- the weight of giving a shit. “I did, Emma. All the things you saw, and I didn’t do them for good reason.”

“I saw you,” she says. “I saw what you felt. I saw that...that even when you didn’t know, you...thought to ask the question, and--”

“You didn’t want to lose anything else,” he says, “so you fought back the only way you knew how. Pretending you had nothing to lose.”

She squeezes her eyes shut as tears run out. The wind picks up, ready to collect. He has never been very good at putting into words the faultlines of his thoughts. There is no time. Only the jump.

“You said once that loving me was like letting a part of your heart walk outside your body,” he says to her. “You remember?”

She nods, mouth grimacing against her grief and the storm curling inward toward them.

“But for me it is more like...you are my heart, everywhere you go.”

He is not sure if that makes sense, but when he touches her face again and she doesn’t flinch, he thinks it is the right track. He does feel it, the more he thinks about it -- that soft glow of truth stumbled upon in the course of investigation. She’s written into his code, now. Of course. And he’d let her settle there, if she wished.

“I don’t think deserving is part of the equation anymore,” he presses. “I think we just have to make a choice. To keep trying.”

The storm darkens.

“And I’ve made mine,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Her eyes finally open, afraid of something behind his shoulder -- obligation, duty, a mindless devotion to a concept of something.

“I’ve made it,” he repeats.

He lifts her hand up and presses his palm flat against hers before he peels back the skin of his hand to feel her warmth against his true self. She’s scarred from work and surgeries and time. He wants to taste the steel that made her.

The world around them begins to flatten and spin, starting far away but pressing closer and closer. She stares at him, caught between defiant and yearning, and she lingers in silence -- but then the first peal of thunder rolls and she jumps toward his chest, shaking.

The bridge is ending; they both know it. The storm rises to meet them, crashing like a cabinet of iron pans finally collapsing from the weight, and she digs her fingers into the front of his jacket until the fabric fills her fist.

“Hold on tight,” he says. “No matter what. Don't let go.”

He presses his forehead to hers, arms pulling her tight. She is silent against his plea, in his gathering of the pieces, until the storm roars like God and the world is little but a swirl of color. Their noses cross and suddenly one on her hands snakes around the back of his neck.

“I don’t let go of things,” she whispers against his mouth, “Even if it kills me, that won’t ever change.”

She presses her lips against his. She pushes in toward him and he pushes back, two particles entangled together across the universe. His fingers dig into her back.

“Don’t let me forget this,” she says, quiet and small.

They wait until the storm becomes them, and there’s nothing but color and light.

---

...brushing past, smiling tightly, holding aloft her coffee, holding herself together just long enough to find her post. They pass one another like motes in the wind and she knows --

---

She feels the sun again on her face, and the world seems so small beneath the hugeness of the blue sky. She doesn’t look back, but she knows who is finally there.

Listen, love. It’s okay.

We're only gone from here. But we aren’t gone from you.

Hank and Chase and Messi and Ryker and...she sees their eyes, even though they are far away, and she knows…

Here’s the real secret.

A whisper of a kiss on her temple.

When you truly love something...

When you set your heart free, Emmaline?

A love like that...it changes everything.

---

Connor flickers into consciousness.

“...Hank.”

“Connor! Connor, can you hear me?”

He nods, vague and tinny in some strange box...moving...

“Son, you’re gonna make it. Just hold on to me, okay? ...that’s right. Ah, don’t break my hand --”

“Emma...she’s dying, she…”

“She’s right there. They’re stabilizing her. See? Okay? Look at me.”

“I need to--”

“You don’t need to do shit except sit here with me. Alright? Your mission right now is staying alive, you got that?” The man lets out a shaky huff. Faith and disbelief realized, all at once. “Can you imagine what she’d say to you if you bled out in an ambulance?”

And Connor actually smiles a little at the concept, though it dies as soon as Hank’s sturdy hand brushes something on Connor’s forehead.

“...he tried to make me forget you,” Connor says, eyes welling so suddenly that he leans forward until his head connects with Hank’s chest and he shudders from relief more than anything else.

“I’ve got you. We’re gonna make it,” Hank rumbles, eyes wet and arms tight. “I’m here. We’re gonna make it just fine...”

[multi-purpose-tool-guy]

if youre still accepting prompts could you do #14 “Hey, I’m with you, okay? Always.” luckybang please?

oooh anon, you’re instantly my friend for requesting luckybang, i hope you know that 💗

this is en extension of my Country Roads verse, so I’d suggest reading that first if you haven’t yet, but it can probably stand alone!

14. “Hey, I’m with you, okay? Always.”

His left arm is hot underneath the thick knit of his uniform, baking where cut up shapes of sunlight fall across it through the bones of the transpo buggy. There is nothing between the frames and beams of the windows, open to the sand and the sky as they rumble along. The wind buffets hot and gritty into his face, and he has to turn away before getting it in his eyes.

They jostle over a bump in the road and Clyde looks into the faces of his squad, and finds he doesn’t recognize any of them. They’re sitting huddled with him in the jeep, crouched around their weapons and looking blank, bored, but he can’t remember any of their names, or get any of their features to settle. Which is strange, because he went through the ringer with these guys, he knows them like he knows the fingers on his hand. But the man next to him is like a blank spot in his memory, a smudged spot on paper where something’s been erased. Their thighs are touching but he doesn’t feel warm through the fabric; when Clyde looks up he doesn’t really have a face, just a vague approximation of a neutral expression almost more his own intuition than visually apparent.

He shakes his head, willing the strange feeling to pass. Looking back out the window he sees no landmarks, no mountains or dunes or cities huddled low and hazy in the heat. He can’t remember where they’re leaving from or where they’re headed, only the thrum of the sand pelting the undercarriage of the transpo beneath him and the wind still whipping unforgiving between the helmet at his brow and the strap across his chin. He doesn’t know where they’re going, or how long it will take to get there. He shifts his weapon, leans against the bars, and waits.

After a minute of endless rumbling, of wondering if they’re even moving at all, the man next to him reaches over and grabs his arm.

“Clyde.”

He turns to the faceless man and startles when he sees that he has found one, a face he knows like the fingers on a hand that isn’t there anymore. Wait, he thinks, my arm–

“I have to go,” Caleb says, dressed in the same itchy combats, with the same bucket on his head and the same strap around his chin. It looks wrong on him. He doesn’t let go of Clyde’s arm.

“We’re going, where, where d’you need to go?” Why not stay? He feels Caleb’s fingers digging hard into his right arm. He can’t feel the sunlight on his left anymore, or anything else at all.

“I have to go, I just have to go.” Caleb says again, looking pained and sick and still so so wrong with chevrons on his arm.

He tries to move his left hand, to put it over Caleb’s and calm him, finds he can’t. “We’re goin’ to the airport, we’re almost there. We can go together,” Clyde says. He remembers now, he’s on a convoy headed for the airstrip and then headed all the way home. His time is up, he’d already written Jimmy; his ship-out date was just in time for Sadie’s next recital and Jimmy told him she was so happy her uncle’s gonna be there–

Caleb’s shaking his head, hard and frantic, telling him over and over, “I have to go, I have to go, I have to go, I just have to go–”

He takes his hand away, leaving deep wrinkles in Clyde’s sleeve. He darts his hand out to grab at Caleb’s, desperate to hold onto him. He doesn’t know why but he feels like if he lets go, if they stop touching, he’ll dissolve into the hot air, tiny parts of him mingling with the grains of sand still pelting them like needles. He’ll stop existing.

“Cay, don’t–” The moment that his fingers wrap around Caleb’s is the exact same one that the convoy lurches, up on two wheels and shuddering with the impact. He doesn’t know what hit them, he can’t see, everything is smoke and metal and red-wet camouflage and he’s coughing, choking on fear and sand in his lungs. He thinks they might be upside down, skittering across the dunes. He can’t feel his arm, and he can’t feel Caleb’s fingers anymore.

“Caleb!”

He blinks and suddenly there is no more burnt up buggie, no more faceless soldiers, just endless tawny dips and rises stretching as far as he can see, and farther still. He’s on his knees, lurched forward in the sand, completely and utterly alone in the scorched desolation.

Only he’s not, Caleb is there. He’s lying on his back, ten feet away, not moving. He’s out of his borrowed uniform, his bright hair wild and tugged even wilder by the wind, but it doesn’t comfort him. He’s wearing the Back to the Future t-shirt Clyde found in a thrift store and bought him on a whim when they were sixteen, and it’s stained a deep, nauseating red.

Clyde scrambles to his feet with a scream pounding behind his eyes and clawing out his throat, stumbling when he finds he can’t put any weight on his left arm; it’s stiff and lifeless, like it’s made of plastic. It is, it’s his new arm, and he’s not wearing his uniform anymore either but it doesn’t register above the blinding, shredding need to get to Caleb.

Finally he can stand and stumbles over, falling heavily to his side and trying to breath around the sobs passing like stones in his throat. Caleb’s eyes are open, to the sand and the sky.  

He cups Caleb’s face with his good hand, slides it down to his chest where the violence is blooming faster and faster, unfurling across him. “Cay, Caleb hey- stay with me now, don’t you go anywhere, I’m h-here, I’m–” He chokes off into another sob that he grinds between his teeth, hunkered over him and already feeling his body trying to split apart and trickle down, into pieces so small and broken and sharp they’re indistinguishable from the sand that’s fucking everywhere.

Caleb doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, and Clyde’s hand comes back red.

He doesn’t know what happened or how but he knows it’s his fault, it’s his fault it’s his fault Caleb’s dead and it’s all his fault–

He jerks awake with a gulp of air like he’d been drowning, head held under a thick and choking bog of terror. He’s sitting up in bed, his bed, at home inside his trailer. His arm is on his bedside table, next to his reading glasses and a wristwatch that isn’t his. The moonlight spills yellow and soft through the curtains, splayed across the sheets.

There’s a hand on his right arm.

“Clyde? You were shouting, in your sleep. Nightmare?” It’s Caleb, Clyde could cry all over again because it’s Caleb, wearing a baggy Bob Seger t-shirt and sleepy and whole, rubbing at his eyes.

Clyde heaves out a long and choppy breath, slumping forward and dropping his head into his hand. He’s shaking, though it’s eighty-two degrees in the molasses-dark of the third Wednesday of July, and he can’t seem to stop.

He feels Caleb’s hand fall feather-light onto the swell of his shoulderblades, and he pushes back into the touch as he rubs slow, soothing circles.

“The IED dream?” Caleb asks, in a way that says that it’s okay not to answer. It makes the corners of his eyes feel hot.

“Yeah,” He says after a minute, “But–” He swallows. “It was different.”

“Different how?” His hand doesn’t stop it’s circling, and Clyde doesn’t want it to. He also doesn’t want to say how exactly the dream was different, afraid that if he speaks it out loud the curse that hangs around his shoulders like a tattered old coat will latch onto the words and make a premonition out of them. He knows that Caleb knows this, that he’s only asking because sometimes it helps and he wants to help him, help Clyde deal with his shit, and he feels that hot tickle in his eyes again. He speaks, he lets Caleb help.  

“You were there, in the convoy. Next to me.”

He feels more than hears Caleb gasp, briefly, before shifting closer and asking, “Did I help? I probably didn’t, if I was wearing all that stuff you guys wear, It weighs more than I do.”

Clyde makes a noise that sounds like a laugh but isn’t. Caleb is trying, half asleep and so warm and alive next to him and he’s trying, and Clyde loves him for that more than anything. “No, you uh. You…”

You said the words that cut me open up on that billboard and drunk for the first time. You said you had to go like here wasn’t good enough, like I was somethin’ you felt like runnin’ away from.

“It’s alright Clyde, I’m here. Take your time.”

Soft, gentle and all giving, no taking, and that’s what does it. The tears spill free over Clyde’s cheeks, hot and slick and tickling his nose where they run into the creases. He rubs at his face roughly and sucks in a shuddery breath.

“You died, Cay, you wanted to leave and then it– you just– I couldn’t–” The rest didn’t make it into actual words, just embarrassing sounds keening into his own t-shirt where Caleb has suddenly pulled him close; his face is pressed to Caleb’s chest, over his heartbeat. Hands in his hair, petting, soothing, shaking but only a little. Caleb rocks them gently, one arm wrapped tight around his back while the other doesn’t leave his hair, shushing him as he cries and murmuring calm nothings into his ear that mean everything to him.

After a minute of choked and chewed-on sobs, and Caleb’s fourteenth or so ‘it’s alright, you’re alright’, Clyde sits up, but he doesn’t go far. He sits there, arms in his lap, staring at the sheets and embarrassed at the snot and tears that must be coating him in a pathetic film. Caleb is having none of it, it seems, and he cups Clyde’s face in both hands and tilts it until he meets his eyes.

“Hey,” He says, gentle and earnest. He rubs his thumbs softly below Clyde’s eyes, tucks his hair behind each ear. Ever since Caleb weaseled out of him that his ears make him self-conscious, that he prefers to hide them behind his hair and pretend they aren’t the size of dinner plates, Caleb hasn’t left them alone; kissing them, running fingers around them, biting them. He kind of loves him for that, too.

“Hey,” He says again, leaning in to give him a gentle press of his lips just between his eyebrows, the spot where his forehead wrinkles up when he’s upset, or embarrassed, or thinking real hard. Or, as he is currently, an awful mix of all three. “I’m with you, okay?” He leans in again, a soft slow kiss to his cheek, and a fresh tear slides down to meet his lips because then he says, “Always.”

Clyde crumbles, feeling like sand in the wind, and lets his face fall twisted up and wet onto Caleb’s shoulder. He snakes his arms around Caleb’s waist and just holds him, can’t get him close enough, has to feel him in his arms real and warm and safe. He turns, facing him more now, and Caleb takes the hint, turning as well and tucking his legs up over Clyde’s as his slide around him, fitting together like puzzle pieces. Caleb holds him like that, shuddering and breathing loud through his nose as he is, and he holds Caleb right back.

I know, he thinks, against all the odds and everything that’s happened in their past up on rickety billboards under the stars. I know. Thank you.

–

By the time Clyde had shaken off the last vestiges of the dream and Caleb was yawning into his hair morning was lurking a murky grey out the window, heralding the sizzling summer day to come. Clyde had calmed down but couldn’t find sleep again by a long shot, and Caleb, well, Caleb is stubborn, and insisted that he wasn’t tired even as he nearly dunked his nose in his coffee. Clyde had laughed and pulled him close, and suggested they make use of the seldom-felt first light.

So here he sits, in the cab of his truck with the windows down and Caleb beside him, face tilted out into the wind that isn’t yet too hot and towards the fledgling honey-gold sunlight. He’s smiling, and Clyde finds he is too. They’ve got their poles in the bed behind them, his bait box nestled between Caleb’s feet. The lake waits for them, clear and calm. In no hurry, going nowhere.

Rumbling down the dirt road that he knows like the freckles on his best friend’s face, racing the sun across the wind-kissed and undulating fields of barley and wheatgrass, Clyde feels something settle inside him. His arm hanging out the open window is hot under the cut up shapes of the sun, and the hand on his thigh is warmer and more reassuring than any words could ever be.

Three things he knows are immovable, unbreakable truths: the sun rises and the sun sets; new days come. And now, always, Caleb stays.

–

I don’t guarantee I’ll do all of them but feel free to send me a pairing and a number!

[anodyne-sunflower]

Love me like you do (Part 19)-Balem series

A/N: Here we goooo! Part 19! Can you guys believe it’ll be part 20 next update?! Omg…this was supposed to be a 5-10 part series 😂 Well, whatever…I enjoy prolonging the feels. Hope y'all do too. Please enjoy! I know next to nothing of space, and since it’s just a fanfic and not a scientific paper, spare me the lecture on Jupiter’s weather lol

MOOD MUSIC: Lust for life by Lana Del Rey

***

Trying to find an empty place to keep to yourself proved harder than you originally planned. The servant quarters were quiet enough, minus the many people coming in and out throughout the day. And even with the door closed you could clearly hear the gossip going on in the halls. You even lost count on the number of times your name flew passed their loose lips. It was bothersome to listen to, but you always tried your best to remain the bigger person. In this instance, that meant getting up and wondering the endless halls of Balem’s palace just to get away from them all.

You found yourself lost rather instantly, this place quickly becoming a maze for you. None of it made sense, and even trying to find something familiar was hard. It dawned on you how little you knew of this planet and all its surrounding cities. Balem was usually by your side you didn’t feel the need to explore or learn any of it. You supposed, in the back of your mind you saw all of this as temporary. Little chance of that now.

“Gardens?” You chewed on the inside of your cheek, looking at the golden plaque sign that adorned the black marbled wall. There was two large glass doors that led outside, and from your current position you could only see trees and grass. You guessed it was Balem’s idea of a garden, which likely meant it would’ve been the equivalent of a park on earth. He truly didn’t spare no expense in his life. But, with no one around it seemed the best choice for you. With slight reluctance, you looked around before sneaking through the door and making your way outside.

The breeze was instantly refreshing for you, a nice chill to the air you hadn’t really expected. But, the view was something that left you breathless. From the inside, it looked like a forest, perhaps even a meadow. However, up close it looked like something straight out of a fairy tale. The grass expanded around his palace, at least as far as you could make out. But, the flowers and ponds decorated this area so beautifully it was breathtaking. It could easily rival Kalique’s home, with the gorgeous waterfalls and red plants. Unlike hers though, this one somehow felt more serene to you. As if it was a little piece of home to be cherished. And for once in your time here, it felt like true peace.

You walked deeper into the path, holding your hand out as the bushes brushed along your fingertips. They were lovely shades of greens, oranges and colors you couldn’t even begin to describe. And each flower that bloomed along their tops was stunning. None of them looked familiar, save for the few that resembled roses. But, you had never seen anything like this before and it was already becoming your favorite part of this planet.

With a contented sigh, you eased between two shrubs, coming upon a large pond and fountain. You took a seat atop the rock on the edge, leaning back as you closed your eyes and enjoyed the breeze. You removed your boots, dipping your feet into the cold water. It was like heaven for you, just the sounds of the local fauna and trees swaying in the wind. It was the first time you had truly felt relaxed since being here. Unfortunately, not all things get to last. Especially amongst Balem’s numerous workers and advisors. No matter where you went, you figured they’d always find you. As was the case with Mr. Night.

“Go away.” It was nearly pleading, your body growing slack as you felt his gaze upon your back. You didn’t even need to turn to see his judgmental expression, because you already guessed that your new attire would throw him for a loop. Just imagining Balem’s expression was humorous enough.

“I was sent to retrieve you for lord Balem. So, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Mr. Night held one arm out, gesturing back towards the entrance in a means for you to follow him. But, right now you had no interest in seeing him or Balem. You were still feeling rather lost about the entire thing, and at this time you didn’t think your heart could take anymore hardships for the day. Unfortunately, Balem was not an understanding man, and you knew Mr. Night would do whatever it takes to keep his master in good spirits. Even if it meant dragging you away by force.

“I very much mind.” You shot him a less than gracious look, trying to convey how annoyed you were with him and his lord. Not everything in life had to revolve around them, but you doubted they’d ever see it that way. “What does he want anyway? Last time I saw him he was screaming for me to leave.”

None of this was his advisor’s business, but it felt good to vent it out to someone. Even if that someone was a splice who likely detested you for whatever reason. Perhaps that’s why you trusted him though. Mr. Night didn’t play games with Balem’s moods, so your negativity wasn’t likely to fall upon the entitled’s ears anytime soon.

“I believe he wishes to have dinner with you.”

The splice craned his neck towards you, trying to gain your full attention so that he could complete his simple task. But, you weren’t having it today. If that’s truly what Balem wanted, he could wait forever on you. It was maddening how he believed himself so powerful that one fancy meal would make all this go away.

“Dinner?” You scoffed in disbelief, giving a cynical smile as you turned back to the wonderful view before you. “I have no interest in joining him.”

“This wasn’t a request.”

“Nothing ever is with him. Now go away!”

Every second that ticked by made you more frustrated, and as much as you disliked Mr. Night you didn’t intend to be rude to the splice. He was only doing his job, the downside was that his job was simply helping Balem.

“I see the standard Abrasax temper has rubbed off on you.” He said with contempt, moving his hands behind his back.

You couldn’t blame him for that comment, your anger was misplaced. But, would it kill Balem and all the others to leave you be for even an hour. Apparently, that was far too much to wish for here. The power of these people, they seriously earned the description of entitled.

“All this time…” You scoffed, shaking your head as you began to think back on all your decisions here. Life had certainly not turned out like you planned or even expected. If someone long ago told you you’d end up mistress to the ruler of Jupiter and earth, well, that wouldn’t have gone over so well. But, here you sat, amongst the lovely gardens of Balem’s alcazar as if it was a normal habit of yours. Somewhere along the lines of being abducted you grew to just accept all this. It wasn’t easy, that much was sure, but you felt like maybe it was just the easier thing to do. Accept it, and learn to like it. Because, the more you marinated on the questions the more it grew to make you nervous. Besides, you always believed the world was much bigger than people thought. You just didn’t think it’d turn out quite like this. “All this time we believe the world is ruled by men and women in charge of countries. And here stands one man ruling our entire planet.”

Mr. Night kept quiet at first, hands clasped behind his back, and beady eyes set upon you. He was only mildly interested in your words, the better and smarter half of him thinking delicately on time. Because, Balem was definitely not going to be pleased if he took far too long to retrieve you. “You are just now coming to terms with this?”

His question did catch you off guard, for he hardly cared to converse with you. Much less even greet you half the time. It was only a matter of time though, he couldn’t possibly ignore you forever. Especially standing right behind you.

“No…no, of course not. It’s just-” You had to think deeply on it, because this world…that man, they had a way of changing your perspective on things. “Before I came here, before I was brought here, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the way the world works. What’s right, what’s wrong. I convinced myself that it was black and white.” There was a small pause between your words, your eyes downcast towards the water as it glided over your ankles. The fish in the pond grew near, only to skitter away when you barely moved your foot. “Now I just don’t understand anything.”

Your voice was desperate for an answer, a hint of hope that Mr. Night could somehow fix it all for you. It was pathetic really, but you didn’t care if it was him or a complete stranger. You just wanted somebody to figure this out for you. Because, the confusion you were beginning to feel was building up to the point that thinking was becoming quite the chore.

“I should hate him.” That was the problem. You should hate him, without any doubt in your body. Since the very beginning you should’ve loathed that entitled man with every fiber of your being. Black and white. That’s what it should have been. He used people, killed them, bent everyone to his will. He was tiresome, selfish, temperamental, anything negative you could possibly think of and that pretty much summed up Balem. “But, I can’t.”

“Personal crisis aside, we should not keep Lord Balem-”

“I want to hate him…”

Mr. Night sighed heavily, growing impatient with your issues. He didn’t have time to play therapist for you. Everyone on this planet had problems, but only Balem’s were of his concern. And seeing as how you were his Lord’s current predicament, he may as well try and humor you along. If only to get you to follow him back without use of force. He gritted his teeth, rolling his eyes as he tried to sound genuine towards you. “Oh?”

You laid your chin on your knees, feeling the weight of the world upon your shoulders. Or universe, in this case. You didn’t really want to hate him, that was a bit harsh for someone like you. Dislike, sure. But, hate was entirely different. As hellbent as Balem was on causing harm to billions, you didn’t wish death upon him.

“I just-”

“Can’t. Yes, I know. You’ve already…said that.” Mr. Night sucked in a frustrated breath, trying hard to maintain his composure despite his ever growing impatience with you. “But, Lord Balem is waiting on your arrival. I am sorry for your friend, it was a terrible tragedy but she is gone-” He didn’t mean it, he could care less about the serving girl. But, if his sentiments allowed you some comfort enough to get up and go, then he’d play along. “And my lord is not. So, need I remind you once more that he is waiting on-”

“He is not…” You lifted your head, brows knitting together as you replayed Night’s words over in your head. “He’s alive.”

Your words confused the advisor, and he glanced around the garden as if there might be someone else around that could make sense of all this. Instead he found the usual sounds of waterfalls and wildlife. Not to mention your crazed sounding revelations. Maybe it was time you finally snapped, the knowledge of all this eventually getting to you. But, that wasn’t the case. Mr. Night’s words just made you realize something in yourself, something that only served to further the idea that life really wasn’t so black and white. Even with you.

Nevaeh was gone, and Balem was alive. And it was only now that you comprehended why his words made you so angry. You felt for the loss of your friend, truly you did. But, when Balem said those cruel words, it wasn’t the grief of her loss that hurt you. But, rather grief for your own musings. Nevaeh was dead, and Balem still stood before you. Unharmed, and as well as anyone could be after an attempt on their life. And that was a relief to you. You were happy that he was well, that he could still stand there before you in all his confident glory like he always did. You ached for her loss, but you were more elated by his survival and that very thought disgusted you. That’s why his words cut so deep for you, because he so casually made you realize how selfish you could be. All because of him. In that moment, his life was more important to you than a ‘serving girl’ as he so nonchalantly put it on most occasions.

You closed your eyes in defeat, heart wrenching at your emotions. “Oh god…” If his advisor wasn’t here, you were positive you would’ve sank onto the ground in a ball of self pity. Everyone sought to explain your feelings for you lately, but you didn’t need them to verify anything for you. It seems you were perfectly capable of approaching that understanding on your own. It may not be love, you thought. But, it certainly couldn’t be classified as nothing anymore.

“I can’t go…”

You dropped from the rock, pulling your boots back on and attempting to get passed the splice. Only he appeared to have expected such a reaction, and with a wave of his hand two guards grabbed your arms lifting you easily from the ground and carrying you off into the alcazar.

***

“Let me go!” You fought desperately against their tight hold, heels barely scraping the ground as the doors to Balem’s chambers slid open. It was the last place you wanted to be, but no matter the fight you put up you still ended up back here. It was just like the first time you saw him. Only this time you weren’t laying at his feet. But, the guards threw you to the ground as soon as you entered the room, making you catch yourself on your hands and knees.

“Mr. Night.” Balem was sitting at his private dinner table, playing with the bottom of his wine glass once you came in. His eyes were trained on the wine sloshing around, but it was obvious he was still aware of his surroundings. “Is that really necessary?” He took a sip of his wine, his eyes moving to the side to take in the scene.

“She refused to come, my lord.” The splice bowed upon being addressed, a concerned look on his face. He knew you were particularly special to the Primary, roughing you up was the last thing he wanted. “Forgive me, but I tried every-”

“Enough.” Balem held his hand up, no longer interested in the details of the story. All he wanted was for you to be here, and seeing as how that wish was met he cared little for the rest of the reasons. “Leave us. Now.”

The guards and advisor bowed once more, exiting the room and leaving you to kneel on the ground. You didn’t want to move, because that meant seeing him. Even speaking felt difficult, as much as you wanted to yell at him for all of this harsh treatment, you simply kept your mouth shut. Not that any of this behavior was pleasing to the Primary. You could almost feel his anger in the air.

“Get up.”

Ignoring him would only make it worse, and that was something you weren’t keen on dealing with. With as little joy as possible, you rose to your feet, smoothing out your shirt and trudging along until you stood at the table. He wasn’t in any mood to play games, and just when you stood before him he looked up at you. It was the first time in hours that you saw those green eyes of his, the very ones that made you nervous and excited. Only this time there was far more to it, a feeling that was almost indescribable for you.

“Sit.”

He used his boot to push the other chair out, eyes still fixated on your sullen form. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, but his intense gaze was enough to make you believe it wasn’t positive. Emotions aside, you fell back into the chair, avoiding his glare as much as possible. It wasn’t an easy task considering how heated his stares could be, but you tried all the same.

Balem watched you, taking in your appearance as if this was his first time seeing you. You wore clothes that didn’t quite suit your beauty, something he found rather disappointing. And as much as he wanted to address your poor choice in attire, he opted for lighter conversation. Anything to regain your attention once more.

“Where were you?”

“The gardens.” You answered curtly, trying hard to keep your sights set on the elaborate table cloth. It was proving difficult though, because how could you ignore the aura of power around such a man. Every little movement of his was beckoning you to look, but in your current state you didn’t think you could handle such a thing.

“And what did you think of them?”

His attempts at polite conversation were nerve wracking, each sentence that left his lips making you curl back into your seat even more. It’s not that you didn’t enjoy the idea of them, but every part of you just wanted to take off running right now. You shifted in your seat, twiddling your thumbs as you rested your hands on the table. It was a minor distraction from him, not that it helped at all. It only made you realize how close you two were right now. His hand was only inches away, still clutching his glass as he rolled the stem of it between his fingers.

“They were beautiful.” You choked out, nerves becoming unsettled as he reached over you and grabbed some fruit from the bowl. The entire time you held your breath, heart beating madly in your chest when the very air around him swept by you. How one man caused you such excitement was disturbing, but you couldn’t let him know that. Because, no matter how you spun your words he would immediately shun your emotions. That much, you knew.

“Look at me.”

You stiffened at his demand, anxieties kicking in when you fully comprehended his words. It was only a matter of time before he realized how reluctant you were to even meet his gaze. But, that was the last thing you wanted to do. If only he knew what was racing through your mind, then he wouldn’t be asking such a thing of you. Looking into those eyes was a dangerous game to play, and if you didn’t avoid it something told you it’d be the end of you.

“My little dove.” Balem leaned over to you, eyes looking you up and down as if he was assessing your behavior. He imagined you were still angry with him, something he figured he could remedy later. But, your lack of interest in conversation was growing tiresome for him. Whatever your issues were, he had no attraction to them. He just yearned for your company, but this wasn’t it. There was a gentleness in you that was lacking, something that irked the Primary to no end. He longed for the woman who had that fire in her eyes, and right now this wasn’t you. So, he lifted his hand, gripping your chin gently and turning you to look at him. And just as your eyes met, the doors slid open, a single servant waltzing in with dinner. A true heaven-sent for you.

It offered a momentary distraction for Balem, and he sighed as he let you go and waved the girl on over. But, you hadn’t moved. Instead you found yourself staring at him, and in that moment it was like a crushing blow to your heart. Everything you tried to avoid was now before your eyes, and nothing was going to save you from it. All you knew, was that you had to get away and quickly. Because, staying here and dealing with your conflicting feelings for him would only hurt.

“I-” The words wouldn’t come out, your resolve slowly falling to pieces the more you took him in. It was true, you admitted to yourself. True, that his well being meant something to you now and having him perfectly fine in front of you made you elated. Yet, the reasoning behind that revelation was nothing that brought you joy. Only pain led down that road, and it wasn’t something you were eager to put up with. So, with all the courage you could muster you begged him for your release. Not only from this planet, but from the potential heartache of his rejections. “I want to go back to earth. Please…”

The servant was moving closer, tray in hand as she made to lay it on the table. But, you had chosen a poor time to convey your desires to him. Your words immediately took him by surprise, his eyes narrowing into threatening slits when he made to look at you again. This time you held his gaze, faltering only when he yelled his displeasure at the servant.

“Get out.”

She looked confused, barely able to place the tray down as he ordered her away. “My lord?”

“GET OUT!!!”

His voice made you both flinch, the serving girl taking the food and practically sprinting from his chambers. You, on the other hand, stayed put in your seat, meeting his icy glare.

“Balem-”

He slammed his wine glass onto the table top, cracking the edges of it as he seethed with rage. You had never seen him this way, not to this extent and it frightened you. Where all this anger came from, you didn’t know. But, he was not going to let you go lightly.

“You are never leaving this planet for as long as I live…”

His tone was cold, even, as if every word he said was a threat. It made you shiver in fear, eyes wide with worry as he leaned over until your noses were nearly touching.

“And I assure you, little bird-” The usual mirth in your pet name was now gone, and in its place was now a voice that sounded almost disappointed and rejected. “That could be for another thousand years.”

***

A/N: I know this was kind of a filler, but as always, a necessity to move my plot along. Hope you still enjoyed. And if you would be so kind, feedback welcomed. ❤️