#but I have no other option but to march forward and bury all my thoughts in books

[merinelsa]

.

[septemberrie]

Hello hellooo, not your hex anon but just some mysterious other anon with questions:

What were your first thoughts when Fate got canceled? Who is your favorite character? You gotta choose just one! What is your favorite scene with them in it? Oh, and tell me about their most iconic facial expression!

Hello decidedly not-my-HEX-anon!!! lovely to receive this ask, thank you!!

Real talk, my first thought when I saw the cancellation was "fuck, I don't want to lose this community." I watched Fate in March of 2021 before covid vaccines were common yet, in the midst of a five-year writing/fandom slump, and it immediately became my home. I started writing again. I chatted all day long with fellow fans that became some of my closest friends. We held events and made things and cheered on each other making things and I found joy again. And it's never really left.

S2 left some bad taste in my mouth vis a vis where a lot of the characters ended up and the retconning/going back on previous worldbuilding/fan service actually fan disservice. So while I would have been excited to go back into the detective work of trying to figure out plotlines based on BTS and cast snippets, the only thing I really looked forward to in s3 was where they were taking Rivusa. And given how they mishandled Saul/Farah in s2 and Andreas and Beatrix and Sky's relationships, I didn't really trust them to do it well, anyway. So yeah, my first reactions to S3 being cancelled was "fuck Netflix as per usual, and also let me make sure everyone in the fandom knows I'm not going anywhere."

Regarding your other questions... heh

I'm sure I can hem and haw but I think we both know my fave is Saul. He is the perfect combination of trying his best + failing miserably at it + buried by guilt of things he both can and can't control that unfortunately resonates super well with me and I can write hundreds of thousands of words about. He did terrible things, and he lives his life trying to atone for them but he misses the mark in such a tragically human way that I can't help but devour it over and over again.

I think I actually have a more difficult time deciding my fave Saul scene than deciding on him... so many options: the greenhouse scene, doing shots with Ben and Farah, the ONE SCENE we got with him + Andreas... but I think my fave has to be the Sky hug scene after Sky + the winx + Farah kill the burned one (s1e3 I think?). It's got everything I love about their relationship: his relationship with Ben, Sky's unabashed earnestness, Saul's affection that he pretends is begrudging but completely consumes him, first coming out as anger that Sky endangered himself but then just slowly melting in relief for both of them being safe, and then he fucks it up by invoking the invented Andreas!! Saul can't stop himself from fucking up. His love is there but it's not fully right because he chooses this lie over and over again, disrespecting Sky, disrespecting Andreas' memory, disrespecting Saul himself for not allowing himself to take that final step into the role he's chosen as Sky's father.

ahhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

(idk if this counts as an expression but fate went so hard with the burned one infection fucking up Saul's eyes. does that count? I love that freshly whumped look lol what can I say)

[idkxwriting]

We’re Not Friends

Author: idkhaylijah

Pairings: Elijah Mikaelson x Reader, mentions of Elijah x Hayley

Word Count: 2.5K

Request: Requested by anon - Hi! Can I request an Elijah x reader one-shot; the reader is jealous of Hayley, who keeps trying to hit on Elijah even though he’s taken? Oh, and maybe the reader is super clingy cause she wants to show Hayley that she doesn’t share? Hope it makes sense, haha 

A/N: 18+ smut  Idk if I did this justice - I’m just kind of running with these one-shots and not checking them that hard lol and I think I may have gone a slightly different direction? This one was a little tough, because I’m a big believer in playing it cool lol. Idk...vampire smut so hopefully you enjoy, anon!

If you’d like to be on a taglist, just follow @idkhaylijahwrites​ and turn on notifications :) 

I am not a jealous person, Y/N reminded herself for the umpteenth time as Hayley tucked her hair behind her ears, flashing Elijah a bashful smile.

She watched them for a moment from across the room, Elijah saying something that had caused Hayley to laugh. He smiled in return, and Hayley placed her hand on his arm, leaning up and whispering in his ear. If Y/N wasn’t seeing red already, she would have lost it when Hayley leaned up on her toes, kissing him sweetly on the cheek before stepping away.

Y/N watched Elijah watching her walk away, growing more jealous with each second that passed and hating every moment of it. She shook the thought away, resolving to not let it ruin her night, and moved across the room toward him.

She was stopped by Klaus, pulling her effortlessly into his arms and moving across the dance floor. “I thought you couldn’t make it this evening, love,” he smiled knowingly at her.

She turned her head, searching for Elijah. “Well, I’m here….” she muttered.

He twirled her, pulling her in once more and forcing her eyes to meet his. “I’m sure your schedule miraculously clearing up would have nothing to do with a certain wolf being back in town…”

She glared at him before glancing away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she grimaced. Was she that obvious?

“Well,” Klaus’ breath danced across her skin. “It looks like our little wolf is back and on the hunt.” He tilted his head and she followed his gaze to find Elijah, Hayley clinging to him as they swayed at the other end of the dance floor.

“He can do what he wants,” Y/N all but growled, her frustration growing rapidly - at Elijah, at Hayley, at herself. “We’re just friends…” she had said the lie so many times it fell from her lips with ease.

“You have many talents, Y/N. Lying is not one of them. Besides, love, green isn’t your color,” Klaus smirked and released her, gone before she could tear her eyes away from the scene in front of her.

She blinked, realizing she was alone in a crowded room. She knew she had no right to be jealous, Elijah was more than capable of making his own decisions. She had told him as much, refusing to put a label to anything they were, refusing to be his date so publicly to this stupid ball. He had wanted more and she pushed him away- and for what? So she could continue to build walls and not get hurt?

She scoffed at herself. She had worked so hard to keep him at arms length, and it hadn’t mattered.

She turned once more to find the music shifting into another song, Hayley leaning back to look Elijah in the eyes, as if trying to convey an old feeling.

She considered her options for a moment, no longer caring about the consequences and marching over towards them. She tapped Hayley on the shoulder, who turned with a shocked look. “Y/N, I didn’t think you were coming…”

Y/N smiled tightly at her, turning her gaze towards Elijah. “May I step in?” She asked politely, though she felt anything but. She clutched her hands behind her back, her nerves causing them to shake.

Elijah lifted a brow at her, and turned to address Hayley. “Forgive me,” he said. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation another time.”

Hayley looked between the two of them. “Yea, sure…” she trailed off, shooting Y/N a look before dismissing herself.

They stood and watched each other for a moment before Elijah held his hand out. She took it wordlessly, and they began to move across the floor.

“You came,” Elijah noted after a beat of silence.

She nodded, leaning back to look up at him.

His eyes searched hers and it took her a moment to realize the music had stopped, Klaus tapping a champagne glass to gather the attention of the guests. She hadn’t heard what he said, but followed everyone’s lead to their tables, dinner beginning to be served.

Another pang of jealousy and annoyance shot through her as she realized Hayley had taken the seat next to Elijah, immediately placing her hand on his wrist and leaning in to speak to him.

She took her own seat on Elijah’s other side, Hayley’s movements not lost on her. She shuffled her chair, squirming in her seat.

“Is everything okay?” Elijah asked.

Y/N shook her head. “No, the chair is wobbly…” she shifted again. “I’m sorry, would you mind switching with me?”

She was sure she saw Elijah smirk, and his sister, Rebekah, stifling a laugh from across the table, but she held her ground.

“Of course,” Elijah stood, pulling her chair out and letting her take his seat so he sat between his brother, Kol, and Y/N.

Hayley scoffed and Y/N made herself comfortable. “Much better,” she narrowed her eyes at Hayley.

Kol chuckled. “The chair seems fine now, darling…” he commented with a grin.

Y/N just shrugged, and she scooted in closer to Elijah, aware of everyone’s glances, but pressing forward.

Conversation carried on, which Y/N was grateful for, but as Kol got up to fetch drinks from the bar, Hayley moved to take his seat, asking Elijah if he remembered the time they had attended one of Marcel’s parties together.

Y/N wanted to groan, but instead she placed her hand on Elijah’s leg casually. She was sure she felt his eyes on her, but she ignored it as she continued to trace her thumb along his thigh, leaning into him as she continued her conversation with Rebekah.

She was aware she was laying it on thick, and it made her want to cringe, but she wasn’t about to lose Elijah to his ex without a fight.

Hayley intertwined her fingers with Elijah’s on the table. “We had some fun, you know,” she said.

Y/N had enough, her temper flaring as she turned towards her. She knew Hayley could kick her ass without even breaking a sweat, but she was beyond caring. “Hayley, how’s Jackson, by the way? That’s his name right? The guy you dumped Elijah for?”

The table went silent, all eyes on her. Elijah cleared his throat. “Y/N, a word?” He hissed into her ear, not waiting for a reply before standing and gripping her by the arm. He hauled her away from the table, Rebekah and the remainder of his siblings exchanging smirks.

“See, I told you,” Hayley laughed, leaning back.

“You’re a shameless flirt,” Rebekah remarked.

Hayley shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it? Maybe now Y/N will come to her senses…”

Klaus rolled his eyes. “They’re both fools,” he muttered.

*****

“Where are we going?” Y/N asked, trying to keep up with Elijah. He had stormed out of the ballroom, straight past the bar and onto the dimly lit patio. String lights gave the small area a soft glow, but he moved them so they were away from prying eyes, warm shadows dancing along their faces.

“What exactly are you doing?” He demanded, releasing his grip.

She shrugged. “You asked me to be your date…”

“And you refused,” he said, still angry at the rejection. He placed a hand in his pocket and shifted his weight away from her.

“I changed my mind.”

He shook his head, frustration playing on his features. “Because of Hayley?”

“Yes!” She exclaimed. “No….I don’t know, okay?”

His jaw clenched. “Y/N, I made it very clear where I stood. I told you I wanted more, that I wanted you…”

“I made a mistake! I just...I’m not good at this, Elijah. And I am sorry, I know I’m late, but I’m here.” Her chest heaved at the confession. “For you,” she added.

“You made it perfectly clear that you and I are nothing more than friends.” He sighed.

She shook her head adamantly. “I know. I messed up, and I’m sorry.” she breathed. “I know I told you that we’re just friends. I’ve been trying to convince myself the same thing for weeks because if I’m being completely honest, what I feel for you? It scares the hell out of me, because we’re not friends, Elijah. I don’t want to just be friends.”

His eyes searched hers for a moment, and she began to wonder if he was searching for a way to let her down softly.

The phrase ‘too little, too late’ danced around her thoughts. She turned away, deciding she wouldn’t survive hearing the words that he had chosen Hayley. “I don’t know why I came, I’m sorry,” she said, walking away before the tears could fall.

She felt his hand on her then, spinning her back to face him. His dark eyes bore into hers, and not for the first time she felt like he could see right through her. His gaze dipped to her lips, and she traced her tongue over them, her mouth suddenly dry as the tension rose.

She wanted to speak, to make him understand that she knew she was broken, but Elijah made her want to be better, to do better. Her words were lost in the haze though, and suddenly he was moving again, his lips descending upon hers.

She had shared several kisses with Elijah, and they were all incredible- she often tried not to think about the experience that came with a thousand years, but loved to reap the benefits of everything he had learned.

Still, this kiss was world-ending.

It was fire and fury, demanding and leaving her no choice but to give in. He spun them, pushing her further back into the shadows, her back hitting the stone wall beside them. She was vaguely aware of his attempt to hide them, to give them privacy, and though she should have cared she found she didn’t.

She only cared about the sudden need to feel him.

Her hands buried into his shirt, bunching the fabric between her fingers. His own trailed down to her hips, the heat seeping through her dress and grabbing greedily.

She trailed down, fumbling with his belt buckle, completely oblivious to the fact that they were still in public.

He pressed into her, and she felt him against her thigh, moaning softly into his kiss. His lips pressed at the corner of her mouth, nipped at her ear and sent shivers down her spine. The tip of his nose traced along her skin, dipping low so he could kiss her neck, bruising the skin until she felt a sharp graze.

She stifled a cry into his shoulder as his teeth sunk in, the pain twisting into pleasure as he drank from her, and she knew he was marking her as his.

He hiked up the skirt of her dress and pushed her panties aside as she undid his pants, freeing him. He trailed one hand down to her thigh, lifting her leg so he could meet her, pressing into her with an urgency she had never experienced before.

They were lost in each other, and there was a small part of her that reminded her she should be quiet, but with each thrust up into her she found it more difficult, her pleasure building. She felt lightheaded, lost in a dream as he continued to thrust harder and harder, his hands rough - a contrast to the way his lips pulled from her neck so sweetly, as if savoring every second.

She had never let him bite her before, and he had never tried. Rebekah had told her once what blood sharing had meant to a vampire, and she knew this was everything to him.

She locked her leg around his, pulling his wrist up to her kiss swollen lips and pressing against his pulse.

He released her neck then, leaning back to take her in, his eyes heavy with want as she met his gaze. His movement paused and she bit her lip, her walls clenching around him.

He groaned and pushed her hair behind her ears, cupping her face and kissing her sweetly before he bit into his own wrist, offering it to her.

She took it willingly, keeping her eyes locked on his as she tasted him. His eyes fluttered shut, pleasure washing over him. His free hand traced his thumb over the punctures on her neck, slowly disappearing as his blood coursed through her. He slammed his hand against the wall, bracing himself as she fed from him, hiding his face in the crook of her neck as he began to move once more, his breath hot on her skin.

He bit once more, and as he pulled her blood she felt everything. Everything she had felt for him, everything he had felt for her, euphoria rushing through her veins and making her skin come alive beneath his touch.

Her belly tightened and she released his wrist, crying out as his hand moved to her mouth, keeping her quiet as her orgasm ripped through her, his quickly behind.

They stood there, panting quietly and catching their breath, when suddenly Elijah moved them. Before she could register what was happening her dress was fixed and she stood, her legs shaky, under the patio lights. Elijah appeared as pristine as ever, as though nothing at all had happened.

“Ahh, there you are, brother,” Klaus stepped out onto the patio. “How was your chat?” He raised his brows innocently and glanced between the two of them. “I trust you were able to work things out?”

“Y/N and I are fine, thank you for the concern, Niklaus,” Elijah said dismissively.

Y/N felt her cheeks heat as Kol and Hayley stepped out onto the patio as well, so sure she had that ‘freshly-fucked’ look you could only get organically. She ran her fingers through her hair, her hand coming up to her neck that apparently Elijah had already cleaned.

“There you are,” Hayley said, her eyes trailing over Elijah. “You promised me a dance.”

“And since he’s preoccupied I thought you wouldn’t mind a dance yourself, darling,” Kol held his hand out, quirking his lips into a sly grin.

Y/N tried to act natural, like she hadn’t just been having the best orgasm of her life. She smiled politely at Kol, taking his hand, but Elijah stepped forward, his hand coming to lay possessively around her waist.

“Kol, perhaps your time would be better spent finding your own date.”

Kol shrugged with a smirk. “What happened to ‘just friends’, brother?”

Elijah simply glared at the younger Mikaelson, dismissing him with a look. Kol backed away, nudging Hayley on his way out.

She turned, addressing Y/N. “Took you long enough,” she winked. “Elijah’s one of the good ones,” her eyes held a heavy sadness behind them, but she smiled before turning and following Kol.

Y/N furrowed her brows in confusion. What was that? She pondered until Klaus stepped into view. He held his hands behind his back, his eyes narrowed in amusement.

“If you expect any of us to buy your ‘just friends’ bit...” he said cooly, stepping into Y/N’s space. His hand came up to her cheek gently, and she could feel the tension rolling off of Elijah. His thumb swiped at the corner of her mouth, and he held it up for them to see, a crimson dot smeared on the tip. “...you’ll have to get better at sneaking around.”

He turned and began to make his own exit when Y/N called after him.

Y/N grinned, the blush crawling up her skin as she turned to look at Elijah. She leaned into him, intertwining her fingers in his. “We’re not friends…”

Elijah smiled, leaning down to press a kiss to her temple.

Y/N turned back to Klaus. “You can fill everyone in if you want, we’re gonna need another minute…”

She could feel Elijah grin into her skin, his arms wrapping around her. Klaus rolled his eyes and excused himself, Elijah still wrapped around her. “Did I mention how lovely you look this evening?” He whispered against her.

She bit her lip and shook her head softly. “I don’t think it came up…”

“Come.” He grabbed her hand, leading her away.

“Where are we going?” She laughed.

He pulled her in, kissing her once more. “I intend to spend the rest of the evening reminding you just how lovely you are.”

[the-iceni-bitch]

PLEASEEE write more for august walker! i'm in love with the banter in "welcome home, walker" and how he's grumpy but has a soft spot for the reader. LOVE UR OTHER WORKS TOO <33

Aww, I love Auggie! And it has been a bit since I wrote for him. Soooooo...

PDA

Pairing: August Walker x fem!Reader

Words: 2145

Summary: You and Auggie go out with the graduating cadets to celebrate your new assignment.

Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content (innuendo, teasing, sex in a public place, fingering, unprotected vaginal sex), violence (fistfight, implication of gore and death), betrayal, protective!Auggie, TW- implication of impending date rape/mentions of drugs, SMUT, 18+ ONLY!!!!

A/N: This got away from me a bit if I’m being honest. I was just gonna do the teasing in the gym but I couldn’t stop myself, so please enjoy this little impromptu fic! And please feel free to send me an ask if there’s a character or kink or anything you’d like to see more of! 

Check out my masterlist and join my taglist here if you want!

You didn’t know how he got you in this position. You could practically feel him beaming over you as you struggled to get out of the hold he had you in. 

“You keep moving like that, you’re gonna make me hard, sweetheart. You want me to fuck you right here on the mat?”

August ground his crotch against your ass to illustrate his point and you let out a moan. Your arms were bent back at your shoulders unnaturally as you scrabbled for some purchase to get out of his grip.

“Fuck off, Auggie. You know the only reason you’re on top right now is because I didn’t get any sleep.” Maybe if you arched your back a little...

August groaned in your ear as your ass rubbed against his growing erection. 

“Shit, Y/N. The director is right there.”

You turned your head as much as you could to see Sloane standing at the gym entrance, surveying the cadets as they practiced their sparring. You wiggled your ass again, making Auggie growl at you.

“You’re not giving me a lot of options, baby. You know my brain doesn’t work when I’m sleep deprived.”

He grumbled and you felt him start to loosen the hold he had on your arms. You grinned to yourself as you wrapped one arm behind his neck, gripping the hair at the base of his scalp and rolling forward. You heard him give a small sound of surprise as you flipped him over, knocking all the air out of his lungs when you slammed him into the mat and wrapping your body around his shoulders, stretching him to the point of pain. 

“Damn it, I thought we were done.”

“I don’t remember tapping out, sweetie.” You gripped his wrist and stretched his arm even further as you squeezed your thighs around his neck. 

He wheezed for a second before a wicked grin spread over his face. “Y’know, when you get me in these holds, I can smell you, and it drives me fucking crazy.”

You almost loosened your hold at his admission but caught yourself at the last second. “August...” you growled in warning.

“I know you’re soaked under these sweats, sweetheart.” He turned his head as much as your hold would allow, running his nose along the inseam of your sweats until you released him with a hiss.

“Fine, it’s a draw.” You mumbled, drawing yourself to your feet as he chuckled darkly. “Equipment room in 5?”

“Walker, Y/L/N, with me.” Sloane gave a beckoning motion and the two of you moved to follow, sighing with frustration. 

You moved with the director as she marched back towards her office, shooting each other apprehensive looks as you considered what she may want to talk to you about.

“Good news you two.” Sloane announced as she closed the door to her office behind you. “We finally managed to get the heat off you from Interpol, and you’re set for a new assignment in Brazil.” She handed you your files detailing the op. “Looks like there’s a Syndicate group operating there, moving weapons through the black market there. You ship out in two days. Please do your best to remember, Syndicate members are assets, not targets.”

“Right, boss.” You murmured, flipping through your ID docs. August just grunted beside you.

“Alright, I heard the two of you are going out with the graduating cadets and trainers tonight to celebrate the end of the course. Don’t overdo it.” She gave you a knowing wink before you turned to leave the office.

“I think she knows about us.” August whispered as the two of you headed to your lockers.

You just laughed at him. “Auggie, honey, we’re the worst kept secret at Langley.” 

“Y/N, Walker, I hear congrats are in order! We’re gonna miss the two of you in training!” Melissa managed to find out everything as soon as it happened, you didn’t know how she got stuck in training instead of the field. “I’ll make sure everyone buys you a round at the club tonight.”

You groaned at that, those goddamn trainers would have you passed out if they got their way. You slammed your locker closed and turned back to August. 

“Meet you at the club, baby. Make sure to do your reading first!” You called over your shoulder as you headed out.

You arrived at the club 4 hours later to see August looking incredibly uncomfortable in the middle of a group of rowdy cadets. You tutted to yourself as you approached him, he always had a stick up his ass.

He saw you then, and his face relaxed as he walked to meet you.

“You’re late.” He grumbled as the two of you headed to the bar. “You know how much I hate talking to these kids.”

“Relax, grandpa.” You smiled before turning to order yourself a gin and tonic. “You gonna dance at all tonight, or just stand there glowering?”

He scoffed into his scotch as you grinned at him, moving closer and rubbing your foot over his calf suggestively. 

“Don’t you start something you’re not prepared to finish, beautiful.”

Just then, Melissa arrived with a tray full of tequila shots, and you let out a groan. This was the second time you got cock blocked today, and you were starting to get frustrated. 

“Look what I’ve got for you!” she said gleefully as the two of you winced at her.

“Melissa, I’ve told you a million times, I don’t do tequila.”

“C’mon, it’s your last night with us, just a couple.”

You took a deep breath and grabbed a shot for yourself, giving August a shrug before tossing it back. He hissed between his teeth as he downed his own.

“Fuck me, you sure this isn’t rubbing alcohol? Jesus, Melissa!”

She just handed the two of you two more with a giggle, and clapped her hands when you swallowed them. Before you knew it she was dragging you towards the dance floor, your head fuzzy from the tequila as you instructed August to watch your cocktail. He gave you a grin before turning back to the bar, but that quickly changed once he noticed movement in your glass.

August clenched his jaw as his arm shot out to grab the cadet that was wandering away from the bar, wrapping his fist around his upper arm with a vise-like grip.

“The fuck you think you’re doing?” He growled, a menacing glare taking over his face.

“Get your hand off me, man.” The frat boy idiot actually looked offended as he glanced down at August’s hand.

Walker just tightened his grip as he patted the asshole down, cocking an eyebrow as he pulled a tiny baggie of tablets out of his breast pocket.

“Graham, right? What’s a senator’s nephew doing with… what is this? GHB? Molly?”

“Look, buddy.” The moron gave him a grin like he was his friend as August stared him down. “That piece of ass needs some loosening up. I bet she’s a tiger in the sack.”

August threw your drink in his face before hauling him outside. He considered letting you handle it yourself, but he wanted to let off some steam.

He didn’t say anything, just punched the smarmy bastard in the face. The idiot didn’t even try to defend himself, pathetic.

“What the fuck?! You broke my nose!” Graham held a hand to his face as he stared at Walker in disbelief.

“Yeah, that’s not all I’m gonna do to you.” He growled as he set to work.

Five minutes later he stood over his handiwork, wiping the blood off his knuckles as he let out a sigh. That had gotten a little out of hand.

“Fuck.” He muttered, pulling his burner out of his suit pocket and dialing. “Yeah, this is Lark. Send a cleanup crew to the alley outside Sketch. Yeah, some senator’s nephew.” He frowned over the phone. “Because it’s a fucking order.” He hung up, not bothering to wait for the Syndicate’s sanitation team before heading back into the club to find you.

He found you on the dance floor and a hungry sneer came over his face. He strode toward you and wrapped a possessive hand around your throat from behind, drawing you fast against his chest and growling into your ear. You whined as he pulled you away from the group, Melissa beaming at the two of you like an idiot.

“Have fun you two!” She called as August steered you around a corner.

He pressed you into the wall behind a column, his mouth devouring yours as he slotted his knee between your legs. You whimpered as he shoved a hand in the front of your blouse, squeezing your breast viciously before tweaking your nipple to the point of your pain as you arched into his hand.

“Fuck, Auggie. What happened?” You were panting with need as he moved his face down to bury in your neck, his teeth scraping over your throat.

“I’ll tell you later. Are you still drunk?” He moved his other hand to the apex of your thighs and groaned against your chest when he felt your slick coated folds. You weren’t wearing any panties.

“No, the dancing burned most of it off. Shit.” You hissed as he inserted two fingers inside you, stretching you open as he fumbled with his zipper. “Can’t even make it to the bathroom, huh?”

“Sorry sweetheart.” He mumbled as he freed his dick from his slacks. “Sure seems like you were expecting this, though.”

He moved his lips to yours and swallowed your cry as he dipped his hips and plunged into you. His hands wrapped around your thighs and lifted them to wrap around him as he started to move his hips. He tried to move slow so it wasn’t obvious what the two of you were doing, but those goddamn tiny whimpers you were making into his mouth were making it hard for him to control himself.

“God, this cunt feels better every time I’m in it. Fuck.” You were clenching around him with each thrust and your breath was coming in ragged gasps, letting him know you were close. “Jesus Christ, it’s barely been a minute. You’re so fucking sensitive.” He nipped at your bottom lip and stilled his hips for a beat as he teased you.

You slapped his bicep playfully and whined. “Shut the fuck up and move, asshole.”

He braced one hand on the wall and drew his hips back slowly before slamming into you. You buried your face in his neck to muffle your scream as you came apart. Your pussy fluttered around him as every muscle went rigid. He felt you sobbing against him as your muscles quivered in your release, his hips still setting a punishing pace as he fucked you through it.

“Shit, honey.” He murmured against your cheek as you came down. “You make it so easy.”

Your snort turned into a whimper as a particularly deep thrust had him kissing your cervix. “Fuck, Auggie.”

“Yeah, right there?”

You nodded vigorously as your face screwed up in bliss, leaning it back against the wall as he picked up the pace.

His cock was dragging against that sweet spot inside you with each thrust and it was all you could focus on. Your thighs squeezed around him as he brought you closer and closer to another orgasm. He loved watching you take it, getting completely lost in your pleasure. And knowing he was the one doing this to you was just icing on the cake.

“You close, gorgeous?” He asked, feeling his own imminent release looming.

“Shit, shit!”

He was extremely grateful for the loud music as you screamed in your release. He swallowed a shout of his own as his cock twitched and his cum spurted into you, painting your insides as his hips faltered and he collapsed against you.

“Jesus.” You whispered as you set your feet on the floor, August still sheathed in you as he softened. “Public sex, who knew?”

You felt his chest rumble against you as he gave a low chuckle, sliding out of you gently before he tucked himself back into his slacks. He ducked his head to give you a tender kiss as he drew down the hem of your skirt over your thighs.

“We should go back to your place.” He whispered after he released you, leaving you breathless.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you tonight, but I’m totally fine with it. Lemme just say goodbye to Melissa.”

He grinned as he watched you saunter away, your gait a little wobbly as you tried to keep his cum from leaking out of you. He was really looking forward to your new assignment. The thought of being cooped up with you for several months was making him hard already.

Tags:

@slothspaghettiwrites @stargazingfangirl18 @starlightcrystalline @jack-skellingtons-stuff @drabblewithfrannybarnes @captain-asguard @harrysthiccthighss @bonkywobble @dslap65 @stanallstarks @macgruberrr @blackestpinkworld @wanderinglunarnights @sebslut @allinhishands

[goldentournesol]

thank you very much my lovely Steph for taking this prompt request off my hands!

Fluff 15 & 16 from this list

love you 💗

anytime my love! this was cute to write it got kinda sad but it's still cute 🥺

15. “I’m right here.”

16. “Can you just please hold me?”

They kept saying that it’ll get better. That he’ll be able to take control of his own unconscious mind. But the time never seemed to come for Spencer. It’s been exactly ten years since he’s left the bureau and settled down. He continued as a full-time professor and even found the love of his life. He became the father of two very bright and beautiful little girls.

Yet it never got better.

His unconscious mind still seemed to attack him at night. The seventeen years of unsub-chasing and world-saving still emerged from the shadows and crawled up the base of his spine just to numb his brain. The kind of numbness you can feel later on. The kind that doesn’t leave you after the event passes. 

She made it better. The nightmares were few and far between, but never gone. Sleeping in the same bed with her gave him the safety he needed. But sometimes the faces of those who haunt him overcome the blanket of safety.

Much like tonight, the horrors he’d seen had begun to come back to life.

She blinked as her eyes drooped in front of her laptop screen. It was late in the AM, but it was the only time it was quiet enough for her to get some work done. Spencer had gone to sleep hours ago, but she’d been up finishing something. She gave up as the burning of her eyes intensified. She closed the lid of her laptop and marched into the kitchen to get herself a cup of water when she heard the first whimper leave Spencer’s mouth. She filled her cup and made her way into the room to see him on his back, eyes screwed tight in visible discomfort.

She frowned as she put her cup down on her bedside table and got into bed as quietly as she could as to not startle him any further. Upon turning on the lamp beside her, she noticed his breathing get even more labored and soon he was mumbling a chorus of “no’s”. Her hand moved forward to rest upon his arm. It was clammy. The sudden skin to skin contact made Spencer jerk away quickly.

“Spence,” she whispered, “honey, wake up.” She shook his shoulder gently, whimpers still escaping, but he was still unresponsive to her.

“Honey.” She spoke louder, rubbing his chest in large circles. The contact grounded him and he sat up right away, taking a sharp inhale and flailing his arms around in search of her.

“Hey, I’m right here.” She spoke softly, sitting up next to him and applying pressure to his back. He buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs as to not wake the girls on a school night. The cotton t-shirt he was in was nearly soaked with his sweat.

“It’s never gonna get better, Y/N. Never.” Words uttered with absolute defeat. 

She sighed and combed his hair back with her hands to encourage him to look at her. The brown and gray curls slipped through her fingers as she scratched his scalp to calm him down. With a final wipe to his eyes, he finally put his hands down and looked at her. He looked so exhausted. She held his face between her hands.

“They might never go away, Spence. That job was a part of you for so long. God, you are so strong for putting up with it for as long as you did. You did so much good. The world is a better place because of you.” She told him time and time again, but yes his unconscious brain wouldn’t listen to her.

His shoulders sagged even further and tears sprung back up to his eyes. She took a deep breath and rested her forehead against his.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered into the silence between them, “I wish you didn’t have to go through this.”

He sent her a soft, sad smile. Because what else could he do? What else could he say? Twenty-two year old Spencer had no way of knowing that this is the part of the job that would last. But still, if Spencer had the option to go back twenty seven years into the past, he would do it all over again in a heartbeat. 

He stewed in his thoughts as he watched his wife pull out a new dry cotton shirt for him to change into instead of the sweaty one. Before getting back in bed, she made the AC colder because he tends to sleep better in colder rooms and offered him her cup of cold water. He downed the cup and she smiled softly at him. He laid down onto his back and she saw his lip quiver in the soft light of the room.

“Can you please just hold me?” He whispered, taking one look at her. She smiled sadly and nodded.

“Of course.” She whispered back, opening her arms to him. 

He shifted so that he was nestled up against her. She guided his head to rest under her chin and one of her hands instantly tangled itself into his soft hair. His arms latched around her and she continued to rub more circles on his back with her other hand. He pressed a soft kiss to her collarbone, whispering a quiet admission of love. She responded with a firm kiss to the top of his head and brought the covers all the way up to wrap them into a safe cocoon.

“Goodnight.” She whispered, but he was already drooling enough to soak the collar of her pajamas. 

feel free to request more prompts from the list :)

[dindjarins04]

Could you do Darth Maul?

With the promts

2a 8a 16a

1b 7b 9b 10b 12b 15b

Make me cry like the baby I am

Gosh darn this hurt me! I love Maul so much it hurts to write angst about him!! This is an amazing request but a painful one!

A Failed Promised

Maul x FEM!Reader

Word Count: 1k

Prompts: 2A) I love you. 8A) It's alright, I've got you. 16A) You've been strong for too long. 1B) I couldn't unlove her; and I didn't want to. 7B) I don't even know who you are anymore. 9B) BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. 10B) I loved you (past tense). 12B) You broke me first. 15B) I am not angry, I'm in pain! And you put me here! The person who's supposed to love me more than anything.

Warnings: Hurt!Maul (this has to be warning), brief mention of self harm (like just a tiny but you have to squint to see it, and it's not the reader who harmed herself!), angst, not a happy ending, crying, shouting and ANGST.

Request rules here

Prompt list here

Main masterlist here

Darth Maul/Oppress masterlist here

When the relationship started, everything was perfect. Nothing went wrong, it was a smooth road and a clear future, or so you thought. You thought that in the future you would be a family, two knucklehead children running around the throne room of Mandalore and hitting each other with sticks. You imagine you and Maul telling them stories of everything that happened during the Clone Wars. You were so prepared for a bright future so it hurt when that dream turned to ash.

You noticed that he began to become more distant. Instead of laying with you in the morning, when you woke up he was gone. And it kept happening. He left early in the morning and came back late at night. Conversations with you were short and straight to the point. You decided to confront him about it, and because of that, that's why you are here.

You managed to wake up with him. He was busy getting changed when you walked into the living area of your shared quarters.

"Sorry dear, I didn't mean to wake you up," He said as he clipped his lightsaber and darksaber to his sides.

"Maul, we need to talk," You say sternly. He stops and turns to you, brows furrowed. The tone in your voice sent shivers through him.

"What is it?" Before you can even start, tears begin to surface. He smiles softly before walking over to you, embracing you. "It's alright, I've got you," You sniffle before you bring yourself to words.

"I...Do you like me?" You cringed at your choice of words. He chuckles lightly, pulling back to hold the side of your face.

"I love you," He says. You pull away and shake your head.

"Why does it feel like you don't love me?"

"What do you mean?" He asks.

"You're barely around anymore, our conversations are limited to a couple of words," You noticed how he seemed to get agitated.

"You are aware I have an entire kingdom to rule," He asks.

"I am aware...but my love-"

"I need to be strong for this. For Mandalore. For the Crimson Dawn...for my brother,"

"You've been strong for too long," You say, stepping forward. "I know it was hard to lose your brother and you have so much on your plate...but you're overdoing yourself. Saxon can take care of Mandalore for a day if it means you got some rest," This time it is him who shakes his head and turns away and walks to the door.

"I can't, I have to rule Mandalore. I have to keep this up-"

"Even if it means losing me?" He freezes and turns his head.

"What?"

"If this is how the rest of my life with you is going to be, I don't want it," You say strongly. He turns fully to face you, eyes narrowed. "Come back to me, I love you!" You said, tears surfacing again.

"I am in charge of the biggest syndicates and ruling Mandalore, I have priorities,"

"I should be a priority! You promised me you would stay with me!"

"Unfortunately you're not,"

"I don't even know who you are anymore," He rolls his eyes and folds his arms.

"Leave if you're so willing to do so,"

"Fine! I will!" You march back up to your room and begin to pack your stuff, anger in your movements, tears falling freely. Once you packed your two bags you walk towards the door where Maul is. His eyes seem to widen and hurt crosses his face when seeing your packed bags. "Move," You say, your voice shaking.

"You're leaving?"

"You told me to do so...and thinking about it...it's the only option that I won't regret making,"

"You regret us?"

"Yes, very much," You snarl.

"(Y/N), you're just angry, perhaps if you calmed down-" He attempts to reason.

"I'm not angry, I'm in pain! And you put me here! The person who's supposed to love me more than anything!" You shout, angry and sad tears cascading down your face.

"Please...I'm sorry," He reaches out to hold you put you pull away, even though it hurts your heart. He falls to his knees and holds your hands that clutch around your bags. "I'm begging you, (Y/N)...please...I'll change...I'll do anything,"

"Why are you doing this?" You ask trying to keep the confidence in your voice.

"BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!" You shake your head and pull away from him, opening the door, leaving him but he follows you out. "Please! Don't leave. Please? (Y/N)?" You turn to see the pain written across his face.

"Maul...I loved you. I loved you so much...but I can't stay here any longer...not now," You turn again but you hear him following.

"My love, doing this will break my hearts-"

"You broke me first," You say, turning to face him. "All of this...you no longer love me. You're obsessed with Mandalore. With Obi-Wan. All of this has made you forget about me. The one person who was there for everything. From Naboo all the way to Mandalore. But this obsession put me in the shadows," You sigh before leaving, leaving Mandalore and the man you've loved for so long.

~~~

"My lord...what is wrong?" Gar Saxon asks when he walks into the throne room. Maul, shirtless, is on the throne, head buried in his hands, elbows on his knees. He slowly lifts his head to look at the Mandalorian.

"She's gone," Maul says. Saxon sees he's been crying and notices fresh scars across his chest.

"Would you like me to find her? Send out parties?"

"No...she left willingly," He says, looking up. "And she's not coming back,"

"My lord, I was unaware that (Y/N) left...I'm sorry that it didn't work out,"

"I couldn't unlove her; and I didn't want to," He says, standing up and walking to the window in the throne room. "And here I am...I have no one because I was too arrogant and too proud," He bows his head. "She's better off without me,"

[astralaffairs]

think of it as like an au or something, but I'm just curious to see how president thom would react to seeing someone forcing themselves on mc at like a state dinner if they're not together, i feel like he'd try to stand up for her but also it'd be kinda sus of the president standing up for some press figure who's been talking shit abt him

i love this concept omg. i got an ask similar to this a while back, so i’ve been sitting on a lot of ideas for it. tbh thomas would hardly be able to restrain himself from fucking throttling whoever’s harassing mc, but he isn’t gonna refrain from stepping in. anyway, his standing up for her then makes the media hail him as a feminist icon for like the next 3 weeks

this broke my heart to write tho lowkey </3

-----

"You're… you're Y/N L/N, aren't you? With the Washington Post?"

Y/N had been sour all night. Her feet were cramping in her heels, the tag on her dress was starting to itch, and worst of all, her editor had forced her to take the invite Alex had extended her to the state dinner. She’d had no plans of interacting with the Jefferson administration — in fact, her plan had been to stay as far from them as possible so that she could focus on work, but she mentioned the state dinner offhandedly to a coworker, another had overheard, and the next thing she knew, her boss had found out.

Moreover, she was fairly certain that Thom– no, President Jefferson had only invited Alex to antagonize him, so it was no wonder he didn’t want to go. However, when he gave her the invite, she protested that, since it wasn’t addressed to her, she couldn’t go, and she certainly couldn’t go without him, but both Alex and her editor had insisted it’d be fine. There would be enough people present that she’d slip under the radar, so what was the harm?

And slip under the radar she did. As Vice President and Second Lady, James and Dolley were unattainable company for the evening; they were busy with the heads of PACs, with senators, with members of the State Department. The latter group included Lafayette — he’d been promoted not long after President Jefferson took office, which ruled him, too, out of her options for who she could hang out with. He was off wooing foreign diplomats.

So, there she was, standing alone at the side of the room with her expensive champagne (there was an open bar, thank god) and the small-but-growing pile of business cards she’d collected throughout the night.

At least, she was alone until the anonymous man in question approached her. She turned to him with her eyebrows raised.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m Y/N,” she said, surprised that she’d been recognized. “I’m not with the Post, anymore, though.”

“Of course. My mistake,” he apologized, and when he extended to her a hand to shake, she stuffed her newly-acquired business cards back into her purse “I’m Richard Lestrade. I work in the Department of Defense.”

“Nice to meet you.” She had little interest in chatting with him, but she politely shook his hand. “What can I do for you?”

He laughed softly, but it made Y/N raise an eyebrow. “I don’t have some kind of agenda. I just recognized you from your time as a news analyst and thought I’d come introduce myself.”

“Of course.”

She only responded so as to placate him, and she thought that how curt her reply was would deter him from trying to strike up a conversation. She met his eyes with an expectant eyebrow raised as she took another sip from her champagne.

“So how’d you get an invite here tonight?” he asked after a moment. “I mean, I was invited because I work for him, working on naval strategy and all, so it’s just a perk of the job, but I’m surprised to see you. With how much you’ve done to keep President Jefferson from being elected, I wouldn’t think you’d end up on the guest list for state dinners.”

She shrugged. “Alexander Hamilton invited me, actually.”

“Secretary Hamilton was invited? Really?” At that, the disbelief in Richard’s expression was almost patronizing. “Wow, I didn’t hear that he and President Jefferson had buried the hatchet. I always thought they were rivals, or even enemies.”

“Oh, make no mistake, they hate each other,” she said coolly.

“So why would Secretary Hamilton be invited?”

“So Jefferson could rub it in his face that he won the election.” She shrugged, turning back to face the room before them, but Richard seemed surprised.

“No, no, he wouldn’t be that petty,” he scoffed, but his tone was condescending, as though her theory had absolutely no foundation. “He’s the president. I think he has higher priorities than antagonizing someone who’s old news.”

Y/N resisted rolling her eyes at his calling Alex ‘old news,’ as though Richard was somehow a higher calibre of invitee to the state dinner. “You underestimate how catty politicians are. Jefferson included.”

“President Jefferson,” he corrected her, and she gave him a sidelong glance, eyeing him warily.

“Sure.”

“But anyway, I suppose I’m glad President Jefferson invited Hamilton, if it means you’re here, too.”  Richard raised his glass to her as though in tribute, and she was sure the smile she offered him came off as more of a grimace. She had little appreciation for his heavy-handed advance.

“That’s nice of you to say,” she replied mildly before draining the remainder of her glass. She turned to him with a nonchalant, nearly-blank expression. “And as great as it’s been to meet you, I think I have to run. I’m heading out soon and need to say a few goodbyes.” Truthfully, she had no intention of leaving. Her editor would have her head if he found out she cut bait so early in the night, and if she fled before Jefferson addressed the entire room, she wouldn’t be able to provide her boss with the synopsis of the presidential address. She only wanted to leave that conversation.

“You’re leaving so early? Why’s that?”

She shrugged. “I suppose the Jefferson Administration isn’t really my scene. I’ll see you around, Mr. Lestrade.”

“Please, it’s Richard,” he corrected her. “But you should stay longer. If you leave now, you’ll miss President Jefferson’s address.”

What was it with this guy and using Jefferson’s full title? “Please, consider for a moment that missing it may be entirely the point,” she said dryly, and Richard gave a light laugh.

“Oh, please. I’m sure that even a democrat like you can appreciate a good speech.” ‘Even a democrat like her’? What was that supposed to mean? “As a journalist, this should be right up your alley.”

“I’m sure I’ll be able to find the transcript online in a few hours. I’ll survive.”

“It’ll have a much greater impact in person,” he countered, and she sighed. “So, please, stay. Can I get you a drink? What are you drinking?”

“Thanks, but I’m okay,” she said. As though she was about to let a man she’d met only minutes before handle her drink. That would be a recipe for disaster. “I really should get going.”

“No, wait,” he protested, and when she began walking away from him anyway, he caught her by the arm, pulled her back. She turned back to him with an expectant expression, trying to quell the anger building in her chest. “You can’t leave yet; dinner hasn’t even been served.”

“I can fend for myself on that front,” she assured him, and although her teeth were clenched, she plastered on a smile. “So if you’d kindly let go of my arm, I’m going to be on my way.”

“I was hoping to get to know you, actually.” He released her, but her immediately marching off toward the center of the room caught him off guard. “No, wait!” She stifled a groan when she heard him hurrying after her, and as he came to a stop in front of her, blocking her path, she narrowed her eyes. “Come on, Y/N. Come sit down with me and some of my friends; it’ll be a nice time, okay? I’m a nice guy.” He wore a hopeful smile, apparently convinced of his words as she folded her arms.

“I’m sure you are, but I need to get back to my table to retrieve my coat,” she said apologetically. Her anger didn’t show on her face, thankfully. “So I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Oh, sure you can; you’re just being stubborn,” he insisted. He took a step forward toward Y/N, and she took a step back. “Now, I know we’re from opposite parties, and all, but I’ve been a fan of your reporting for a long time, and I’d really appreciate it if you just came and sat down with us for a few minutes. You and I have a lot in common. I have a feeling we’d hit it off.”

The coy smile he wore made her want to grimace, and when he added a wink, she did grimace, visibly. “This is nice and all, but I’m not really interested.”

“Sure, because you don’t know me yet,” Richard countered, and he took another step toward her, grabbing her by the elbow as he came to stand next to her. Y/N could feel her heart pounding as he forcibly turned her, pointed out his table. “Let’s go. We’re sitting right over there.”

“No, really, I’d rather not,” she repeated, and as she tried to pull her arm away from his grip, he pulled her toward him with an arm around her waist — it was then she realized she couldn’t do nearly anything about it without making a scene. And given her history, a scene was the last thing she wanted. “Please let go of me.”

“You don’t have to stay long; I’m not asking much.” It was then that he began leading her toward the table, and as she stumbled alongside him, panic was rising in her chest. She was looking around for some way out, some familiar face — Dolley, Lafayette, someone — but nobody appeared. “Just have a seat. Let me get you a drink.”

And there he was, repeating his offer. No matter who it was, the insistence on drinking with her would make her wary, but this man already had worry building in her throat, so the feeling only compounded with his words. “I don’t want to come with you. Get your hands off of me.” He didn’t stop, though, and she finally had to dig in her heels, trying to pull back from him. She knew he was stronger than her, but her resistance to him dragging her along certainly grabbed his attention. Richard frowned.

“Oh, come on, don’t be such a–”

“‘M fairly sure I heard her tellin’ you to let go of her.” The voice was stern, and it made both her and Richard freeze, and for entirely different reasons. Y/N would’ve been able to recognize it anywhere, the southern drawl, the lazy enunciation, and her pulse was then spiking for an entirely different reason. Richard turned immediately toward the sound, releasing her, but Y/N stayed put.

“Mr. President,” Richard said breathlessly, his eyes wide. “It’s an honor to meet you; I–”

“What’s your name?”

“Richard Lestrade, sir.” He sounded excited to have courted Jefferson’s attention, apparently oblivious to the undertone of anger in his voice. Y/N recognized it clearly, though, too clearly, and it made her sick to her stomach. She resented the familiarity.

“D’you work here, Mr. Lestrade?”

“I work for the Department of Defense, sir. I’m a naval strategist. Graduated top of my class from the US Naval Academy; I actually helped plan the–”

“I don’t remember askin’ for your resume.” Then, the annoyance Jefferson exuded was clear, unmistakable in his snarky interjection. Y/N had to purse her lips to keep herself from laughing, especially as she glanced over at Richard and found him pale as a ghost.

“Of course not, sir. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think I’m the one you should be apologizin’ to, now,” Jefferson said frankly, and Y/N didn’t see him watching her until she reluctantly turned, glancing between him and Lestrade. “Ms. Y/N L/N, correct?” he asked, and she nearly winced.

“Yes, that’s me.” Her strained smile was fooling nobody, but when he saw it, Jefferson’s composure didn’t waver.

“Did I hear you tellin’ Mr. Lestrade not to touch you?”

When he addressed her, she forced herself to shake her nerves, he jumbled emotions, off for the time being, and she pushed her shoulders back, presenting a front of confidence.

“You did, as a matter of fact.” She looked up tentatively to meet his eyes — and she immediately wished she hadn’t. While his expression exuded nonchalance, his casual authority over the situation, she knew him well enough to recognize the concern in his eyes: his forehead was creased almost imperceptibly, one eyebrow was quirked up, and one corner of his mouth twitched down. Her jaw tensed as she swallowed her heartache.

She was grateful that he then turned back to Richard. “Care to explain yourself, Mr. Lestrade?”

The interaction had stirred a bit of a crowd around them by then; the others in their immediate vicinity had ended their conversations at once upon hearing the confrontation, but the hush seemed to be spreading further across the room, and Richard was glancing left and right as he gaped at Jefferson. “Oh, no, it was just a misunderstanding. Look–”

“I’m not sure it was,” Jefferson cut him off, and his tone was biting. “Forgive me if this is too presumptuous, but I don’t think there’s anything unclear about a woman tellin’ you to take your hands off of her.”

“We were just chatting.”

“That wasn’t what it looked like,” Jefferson said, folding his arms. “From where I was standin’, it seemed like you grabbed a woman against her will, and you refused to let go. ‘S that accurate, Ms. L/N?”

She wished desperately that he’d stop addressing her. Her throat went dry as he all but admitted he’d been watching her, and she could only nod, unable to find her voice. Thankfully, he took that as enough of an answer.

“I never meant to hurt Y/N, sir. Honestly, I’m so sorry if I did–” Richard turned to Y/N. “I’m so sorry if I hurt you, but my intention wasn’t–”

“You blatantly ignored me telling you to stop,” she said. His speaking to Y/N once again made her blood boil, and she couldn’t help but snap at him, despite how lightly she felt herself to be treading in present company. “Don’t pretend like this was some unfortunate accident.”

Lestrade went from gaping at Jefferson to gaping at her, then. “I… I’m sorry, again, but come on, you know I was just trying to be friendly,” he defended, and she rolled her eyes, getting tired of his excuse. The edge of aggression in his tone made her take a wary step away from him, though. “I invited you to–”

“You said you work for the Department of Defense, correct?” Jefferson cut him off, diverting his attention from Y/N, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, silently thanking him for bailing her out.

“Yes, sir.” Lestrade offered a weak smile, but his fear was obvious in how he was holding himself. Jefferson regarded him with an air of disgust, looking him up and down.

“Well, you don’t anymore.” Y/N’s eyes widened at the declaration, but President Jefferson paid her no mind. “ I’ll be in touch with your supervisor to have you dismissed.”

“What?” Lestrade asked, “but, sir, that’s my job. I need to–”

“Not anymore, it isn’t.” President Jefferson’s words were firm. “Now, please, I’d like to ask you to leave now so it isn’t necessary for me to have you shown out with a security detail.”

Lestrade froze, and for a moment, Y/N expected him to protest, but when he saw all the people around them watching him, anticipating his next move, he turned on his heel, flushing bright red, and started toward the exit. Y/N and Jefferson were both scowling as they watched him leave.

However, it wasn’t long before Jefferson turned to Y/N, although she hadn’t turned back to face him.

“Are you alright, Ms. L/N?” he asked mildly, and she was sure her surprise pertaining to the whole situation was written across her face when she met his gaze. She nodded hesitantly. “I’d appreciate hearin’ you say it.”

“I’m just fine,” she assured him, voice shaky, and his tense shoulders relaxed, although he didn’t look fully convinced. “But thanks for your concern, really, Thom– sorry, Secretary– I mean, President Jefferson.”

She saw the corners of his lips twitch up when she almost called him Thomas.

"Of course. Let me know if there's anything I can do." His words were wary, careful not to cross any lines or to impose upon her, but she smiled.

"I think that firing Mr. Lestrade on sight was quite enough," she said, and when a grin split Thomas’s– President Jefferson's worried expression, her stomach turned; her smile was strained. Everything about him felt too familiar, painfully familiar.

"Fair enough,” he acquiesced. At how ill-at-ease she appeared, though, his smile wavered. “Hope I didn't go overboard."

She shrugged. "He deserved it."

Thomas Jefferson laughed, and the sound was as warm as she remembered it being. She hadn’t heard it in person in nearly three years, and for her to have come across him so suddenly, it was jarring. She was quite sure she was going to be sick.

“I s’pose you’re right.” By then, those around them had begun to disperse, so after glancing left and right, he took a step closer to her, furrowed his brow, and every muscle in her body tensed. Yet, she didn’t move away. His voice was soft, gentle when he asked. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, swallowing hard. “Don’t you have some politicians to get back to?”

He pursed his lips, and she was sure the tense grief in her expression wasn’t hidden as well as she’d have liked it to be. “I guess so,” he finally said, but he didn’t move, looking her over, and his voice was quiet when he said, “‘S good to see you, though. You look good.”

“Yeah, you too,” was all she could manage in response. He gave her a sad smile, nodded, and the silence between them stretched on Just as she thought he was about to turn, head back to where he’d been previously, he stopped himself.

“Will I see you around?”

The hope in his voice made her throat tighten, and she took a deep, shaky breath. She shook her head, and her voice nearly broke when she answered, “I don’t think you will.”

[raith-way]

Fandom: DCEU / Suicide Squad

Fic: Memento Vivere

Pairing: Revina Revnic/Rick Flag

Kiss Prompt 10: …desperately

Requested By: @asirensrage

Tagging: @jinxsflame @hughstheforcelou @uno-reverse-reversed @hiddenqveendom @ocfairygodmother @jewelswrites-ish

The Mission Comes First

Rev had learned, what felt like a lifetime ago now, to fear the words routine mission. Any time a mission became routine, she knew to keep on guard because some kind of shit was going to hit life’s proverbial fan. Despite knowing that, she had let herself relax. Because the mission had been a simple one. Her and Harley had been the only ones deployed, into a dark nightclub filled with music that she could feel vibrating in her soul and bodies sliding against each other with wild abandon. It made her crave the quiet, but she got a kick out of watching Harley mingle and enjoy time outside of her cage. As far as the mission went, they were just doing a little recon. (Rev’s first specialty.) Watch, listen, learn, report. It was the kind of mission that she could do with her mind completely disconnected. Instincts picking up the important bits while her thoughts strayed.

Harley danced, Rev observed, and Rick talked into her ear the whole time. Strict orders that kept her eyes sharp and whispered words that made her thighs tense. For a little while, it was the best mission ever. Harley was distracting the crowd with what looked like an impromptu dance battle, giving Rev a clear view of their target and his dealings, and Rick was dripping filth over their private comm about all the things they were going to do as soon as this mission was over. Her body had started to move along with the masses as she imagined a completely different body pressed against hers, and that was when it happened. When the routine mission flipped, ass-up, and she had frozen inside the club as she heard strange voices over the comm.

Focusing on the mission had been torture after that, because the comm had gone silent. The private channel and the public one. She gave Rick five minutes, she trusted him enough to take care of himself, but she could only control herself for five minutes. Once time was up, she started jumping with the crowd just a little out of beat. She caught Harley’s eyes, and she knew the woman could understand her because she clapped her hands in the air and pulled attention to herself. Rev used the window of opportunity to slip out of the club unnoticed, and she could hear the heavy door clang behind her as she strained to see around her. Rick’s command center for the night was nearby, and that was where she went. Started at a leisurely walk and then slowly built into a jog, until she was nearly running. The nightclub had been in one warehouse, and Rick was set up at a different warehouse far enough away to not be noticeable. Too fucking far away, in her opinion.

The first body was a bit of a shock. Neck twisted at an odd angle, sprawled across the ground, but she didn’t slow her run and just jumped over the body instead of stopping to inspect. The second body was less of a shock, face and chest shining wet and red in the darkness, and she jumped over the body and upped her speed. By the time she reached the warehouse she was looking for, she had vaulted over two other very obviously dead bodies and was breathing heavy from the panic rather than the fast pace. The next shock came from the bright light inside the warehouse, and she skidded to a stop in front of the rolled-up door. Just outside of the falling light. The thick leather heels of her boots caused some noise, enough to get some attention, and Rick’s eyes snapped up to hers.

“The fuck’re you doin’ here, Revnic?” Using her surname wasn’t a good sign, but she didn’t care about which of her names that he was using because she could clearly see blood. He was sitting behind a table, just a plain white fold-up table, and leaned back in his chair. The coat he was wearing to ward off the chill was gaping open, showing the dark shirt underneath, and she could clearly see rips in the material. Rips from blades. On the floor under him, she could see grouped drops of blood. (Not puddles of blood. He wasn’t bleeding that much.)

“Strange voices, dark comm, what the fuck?” No one had ever accused her of not getting to the point, and she completely ignored Rick’s I’m-the-team-leader-show-some-respect glare.

“I was doing a perimeter check, and I got stabbed,” he answered as he sat up straighter. He visibly winced as he slumped forwards in his chair, like she wouldn’t worry if he hid the damage behind the table, and she reached up to pull at her hair. Her stupidly dyed hair that had been dyed for this stupid mission, where Rick had been stabbed while not even being involved in the mission part of the mission.

“What? Why’d you get stabbed?” she rushed out. If they’d been found out, someone would have come after her or Harley. Why go after Rick? Better yet, how’d they get the jump on Rick?

“Not like I stopped to interrogate them. I was a little busy with being stabbed,” he mumbled and rubbed absently at his jaw. Had one of them clocked him? He quit rubbing at his face and pressed his fingers against his temple as he looked right at her. “I got a little distracted.”

“Are you telling me that you can’t handle phone sex and not getting stabbed at the same time?” She finally marched forward, out of the darkness and into the harsh light of the warehouse Rick had claimed, and she bit down on her grin as Rick instinctively sat up straight in his chair.

“It wasn’t phone sex,” he complained. As soon as she was close enough, she grabbed at his shoulder and pushed him back in the chair.

“Comm sex sounds stupid.” She was talking while pulling up the dark tee that he was wearing, and she swiped her hand across the blood that had streaked down his torso. She heard him hiss through his teeth, but she could see now that the wounds themselves weren’t so bad. Two lucky strikes, enough to break the skin and make a mess, but he probably wouldn’t even need stitches. Just a big band-aid slapped on for a day or two.

“Mission ain’t over, Revnic,” he told her as she swung her leg over his lap. Her shirt was dark enough that it wouldn’t show bloodstains, and it wasn’t like she’d care if she did walk back into the club with blood all over her shirt.

“Just checking on my team leader.” She kept one hand pressed against his stomach, high up on the left with already drying blood sticking to her skin, as she leaned forward and knocked her chin against his. “Next time you need to take a break to kill some interlopers, you keep me on.”

“That get you off, Rev?” The words were said against her lips, warm breath against her skin and the taste of the mints that he favored slipping down her tongue, and her free hand locked around his neck with enough force to leave bruises in the shapes of her fingertips along his hairline.

“Knowing you’re alive gets me off.” She whispered the words into him, so that he could taste the truth of what she’d said, and she thought of his voice cutting off. Of not being able to hear him. Of not knowing if he was alive or not.

Before she could have another thought, of Rick dying or him killing four men while she danced with strangers, they crashed together. She bit at his lips until he cursed against her teeth and gripped her hips hard enough to ache, and she lost herself in him. They pushed and pulled at each other, desperate to leave marks that belonged to them, and she ducked down to feel the thundering pulse in his throat pushing against her tongue. Sealed her lips around the thin skin and sucked, nipped with her teeth and pulled, to leave a mark over the place that proved he was alive. She could feel fresh blood against her hands as her fingers curled against his skin, like she could pull him apart and bury herself inside his chest cavity right next to his beating heart, and she could feel her hair being pulled as she was ripped away from his skin so that his lips could devour hers. Her mouth felt hot and sensitive, bruises were blooming across her hips and thighs, and it wasn’t enough.

When Rick pulled away, she actually whined. A high-pitched sound slipped from her throat as her hips rocked forwards, and Rick sat up straight to hold her steady against him. One hand curled around the back of her thigh, fingers pressing in, and the tight grip he had on her hair allowed him to hold her back. Even if she did lose a few strands of hair while trying to taste the jumping muscle in his jaw. Her eyes opened to look at him, to see how his usual stern expression hardened into something that echoed the hunger in her, and she tipped her head back to bare her throat as she let out another quiet sound of need.

“We have a guest,” Rick said slowly. He was looking directly at her, looking at the way her tongue swiped across her bottom lip as she chased the taste of him, and she forced herself to focus. Behind her, she could hear heavy leather shifting against concrete.

“Don’t stop on my account, boss. I’m gettin’ quite the show,” Harley told them cheerfully. Mission, right. If Harley was here, that meant that the mission was over. (Could also mean that Harley had gotten worried and decided to check on them, or it could mean that she had gotten impatient and just killed the target. Rev was okay with all the options.)

“Love ya, Harls, but… no,” Rev said and looked over her shoulder. When she bowed her spine to look over her shoulder without dislodging Rick’s hand from her hair, her hips rolled forward and Rick’s fingers slipped to grip at her inner thigh. From her bent angle, she could see Harley pouting and kicking at the ground.

“Always ruinin’ the fun,” Harley sighed. Rick echoed the sigh, so perfectly that Rev almost laughed, but she was saved from getting that lecture as Rick suddenly gripped her hips and lifted her from his lap.

“Harley, report,” he snapped out. Harley straightened, standing at perfect attention, and even her salute was right on point. Once Rick was standing, Rev dropped to sit in his chair and waited for the debrief to be over. In the meantime, she had some plans to make.

[boop-le-snoot]

PARTY FAVOURS I CHAPTER 35

💖first time reader click here💖

Reader and Eddie going on their mission. They're all morons, okay? Some canon-typical violence, bad guys being bad guys. You guys can see that I treat the fighting plot points as total crack, right?

Eddie Brock was pissed, at the Avengers mostly - for not telling him of my accident - but also at me, for the fact that I didn't call him sooner. Venom had taken over at some point, eager to participate in my plan - and it I was being honest, my uncle's space boo was the one I had relied on to participate in the mayhem that was to be caused to finally let my family breathe in peace.

The Avengers wore various expressions of guilt when an angry Eddie stormed the tower, berating them for not getting into contact with him when I was in danger. Venom growled at them, too, just the right amount of teeth and drool for Tony to quickly usher me out to 'take a walk, have some fun, build a snowman' with uncle Eddie and Venom. It was almost too easy, too predictable. The guilt that reared it's ugly head was stomped down by me and two glasses of whiskey in Eddie's rented Airbnb as I went into the fine details of my plan.

Both I and Eddie were equally surprised when Venom dropped their sarcastic, angsty teenager attitude and approached the topic with maturity, giving valuable input. The goth space goo was much, much smarter than their first impressions showed. I belatedly remembered their remark about being an apex predator species... Scary.

The plan was pretty simple.

Eddie was a professional investigative reporter and an unregistered mutant, his files being hidden so deeply due to the alien nature of the symbiote that it was unlikely that underground gangs would have any idea as to who he truly was. His involvement with SHIELD was buried under so much red tape, even Coulson himself had very little idea about Eddie's body-mate.

My uncle would sniff around the mutant underworld, just enough to catch a whiff of the mercenary's whereabouts. It should be enough if he was as famous as Natasha claimed him to be. And if it wasn't enough... I'd be bait. I doubt that the merc knew the box has been retrieved and secured; every now and then, I still caught chatter about the SHIELD agents trailing me catching a person sent to monitor me. They weren't even trying to hide that hard.

I had my suspicions SHIELD was indirectly using me as bait, too, and both Eddie and Venom were inclined to agree with the notion. Over beers and ridiculous amount of chocolate cake, a third side of the operation Baby Thief had been formed. SHIELD played their own game, the Avengers and SI threw a ridiculous amount of resources on their own and then there was me and Eddie, two halves of a whole idiot.

For once, the plan didn't go south immediately off the bat. Eddie and Venom got the information - there was a lot of uproar in the mutant community, rumours about an artifact that would let them assume their rightful place in the world, pushing the pesky humans off their pedestal. I definitely supported mutant rights - but the common notion that violence was necessary to achieve the recognition of said rights didn't sit well with me at all. Eddie agreed with me, his own curiousity pushing him to dig deeper into the situation.

My uncle could be a brilliant investigative reporter with the proper motivation and his significant other at the side. I could never tire of Venom's stories: each and every time they saved Eddie from making a clown out of himself was remembered, documented and brought up at the quickest available opportunity. I haven't laughed so hard in months.

The positives of our plan? We got a hot trail and enough information to know about the mercenary's whereabouts. We possessed the manpower needed to off him in record time, Venom eagerly offering his digestive system for our convenience.

The negatives? We'd need to bring me. Apparently there was a hefty bounty on my pretty little head and the merc himself had given up trying to chase me, hiring a bunch of muscle to do the legwork for him instead. The mercenary, a man who went by the nickname Cadre, was an ex-shield agent, who knew enough to successfully avoid the organisation following hot on his heels.

And neither SHIELD, nor Tony nor Eddie knew who had ordered the retrieval of the artifact. The mysterious person had deep pockets: all of the men were supplied with high grade weaponry and the mutants participating in the missions had equipment specifically tailored to their powers.

Perhaps, I wasn't as clever as I wanted myself to be. There was something big and ugly brewing and the bounty on my head was just the tip of the iceberg. But what was done, was done, and Venom was looking forward to a hefty meal and we set the date of Eddie "kidnapping" me in a few days time.

I hoped I'd make it home for Christmas.

The biggest surprise was that nobody suspected anything. Not even Natasha's watchful eye and inherent knowledge of shit about to be stirred - somehow, Nat always just knew those things - had revealed itself and that's how I knew it was absolutely necessary for me to be successful. There was no room for failure. In the day before my planned trip to Cadre's lair, I forced the team into a movie night and took extra time with everybody, seeing as even the most cheerful people - Thor and Wanda - walked around with sullen faces for most of the time. Perhaps, deep down, I knew that chances of my plan going awry were pretty damn high.

It felt like I was leaving for war. And perhaps, I was. The nervous, anxious energy increased as the hour X drew closer and I couldn't hide it anymore. My insomnia wore Tony's face: I could see his disappointment as clear as day, but I figured he'd forgive me for the betrayal eventually. Every single thing I hid from my newfound family made me feel a traitor. Unfortunately, there was simply no other option.

That afternoon, Eddie picked me up from the tower and drove me to one of the hideouts that belonged to Cabre. He'd tied my hands together and blindfolded me, all for show of course, whilst Venom briefly connected with my body to induce a drowsy state of mind. I didn't actually mind to be drugged and was way more wary of the symbiote's effects on my body but the space pudding extended his tentacles so quickly, I barely had the time to even swear at them.

To my (and their) surprise, it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. In my hazy state, I briefly head Venom growl that I could be a decent short-term host if something would to happen with Eddie; I did not know how that information made me feel but did not disregard it completely. I was out of my depth on this one yet marched on towards the danger with grim determination.

"Here's the girl," Eddie's voice penetrated through the curtain of chemicals that Venom had dosed me with; I was tossed none too gently on what felt like a mattress, the landing haphazard but not painful. Venom must've dulled my pain receptors, too. "Where's our money?"

I was unceremoniously groped, my face examined by a man with ice-cold hands. Whatever he found, he deemed it satisfactory. "I'm impressed," He whistled. "We've been trying to get her for months. Care to share how you achieved this?" The strange man sounded suspicious.

"WE HAVE OUR OWN TRICKS," Venom's deep voice filled out the room like thick smoke and I just knew that the man who had been groping me was twitching in discomfort. "SO?"

"Alright, alright," The man mumbled, voice unsteady. My drowsiness slowly began to recede and I finally could focus my eyes somewhat; Eddie was partially obscured by the writhing, onyx mass of his symbiote and the man was dialing up the phone, speaking in a rapid-fire dialect I did not know. "Cabre will be here in an hour. Care for a beer?" Just like that, the man was obviously attempting to placate Eddie.

"HOT CHOCOLATE," Venom announced flatly and I had to struggle to hold back my laughter at the image of a seven feet tall tentacle monster sipping hot cocoa from a tiny porcelain cup. My nerves had me feeling ten types of way, as usual, and props to Ven making me unable to speak. I would have already killed myself by running my mouth ten times over.

The hour passed by with me floating in my mindsphere, Eddie loudly playing Candy Crush on his phone and Venom consuming ridiculous amounts of hot chocolate. It was absurd and the eerie calm was beginning to make me suspicious; I had expected... More. Threatening thugs with guns, experiments, blood tests and physical violence. Instead, the man who met with Eddie was sitting with a vacant, bored expression as he practiced card tricks in the corner furthest away from Venom.

Finally, a knock on the door forced all of us to pay attention to the newcomer. It was a tall, massively built man in his early forties. His face was covered in scars, narrow red lines that looked like small cuts; one of his eyes was completely black while the other was blue. He looked like the man at the coffee shop but at the same time, nothing like him at all.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," His voice was low and quiet. If not for the heavyweight weapon hanging over his shoulder, I would have considered him to be one of those men who only look threatening but actually are gentle giants. With steps too quiet for a man his size, he approached me, crouching down to look me in the face. "Hello, child. I've been looking for you for a long time. It's a shame we had to meet this way," He removed the strands of hair sticking to my face. For all purposes, his touch could have been considered fatherly. "Richard, bring the money." With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the man who was babysitting me and Eddie and he promptly disappeared behind the steel door.

"Hello," Eddie briefly shook his hands with Cabre after the merc left me alone. I noted Venom had disappeared into the reporter's body completely. "We are Venom," Eddie introduced himself (they introduced themselves?).

"Cabre," The Merc watched my honorary uncle with a sharp eye, taking note of Eddie's lack of weapons, his worn clothes and the shaggy hair, the bags under his eyes. "Tell me, Venom, what do you know of this child?"

"Not much," Eddie shrugged, convincingly. "Just that the Avengers picked her up for some reason and locked her up in Stark's tower. We're guessing she didn't like it much 'cuz she kept sneaking out and trying to shake off the tail. Had to go through quite a few SHIELD agents to get to her," Just like we agreed, Eddie spoke with slight disdain towards Tony and SHIELD, making sure to let Cabre believe he was on the mutants' side. "We just need the money, man. Not many people will hire us," To top it up, Eddie spread his arms, showing his skin ripple and move on it's own prominently under his ratty t-shirt. Atta boy!

Cabre appeared to have bought the lie, chuffing sympathetically, before pulling out a tablet and typing on it. "Well, not for long. My superiors have found an artifact that, if unlocked properly, will render most of the technology suppressing mutant powers useless. They won't be able to get rid of us that easily anymore."

Eddie nodded eagerly, for all purposes appearing to be ecstatic about the news. "Yeah, heard some rumors here and there. Well, you and your superiors know where to find me. I could always go with some extra cash," He scratched his head, carefully watching Cabre's fingers dance on the keyboard. "What's the kid got to do with it anyway? Seems like an ordinary spoiled brat to me," Eddie threw me a look, blinking twice. The fatigue and wariness, courtesy of Venom, had begun to recede quite some time ago; with Eddie's signal, I knew the shitshow was about to start very soon.

Eddie was smart, however, finding out the bits of information SHIELD hadn't bothered to disclose to me. The residue that the cursed box had left in me was removed, so I could not understand why SHIELD was still guarding me. There had to have been another reason, a reason that neither of us knew for sure.

Cabre paused his typing. "We've been watching her for years. She's a genius. We were hoping she could help us solve a few problems..." The merc paused to rub the bridge of his nose. "We tried to get her to come willingly but her parents forbade her from it. My superiors suggested to use the artifact but something malfunctioned." For all purposes, Cabre was looking apologetic. "I am not overly fond of kidnapping children but some things just need to be done." With that, the man turned around, landing his eyes on me. "Glad to see you're up and about." Something about his smile was unnatural, forced, malicious.

"Charmed to meet you," I sat up, dazed and confused about the turn of events. The things he was saying, they didn't add up. I hadn't received any requests for my participation in ANY kind of project, illlegal or not. No scholarships, no internship offers. Something was very, very wrong.

As soon as Cabre's back was turned, Venom enveloped Eddie, turning themselves into the seven feet tall outer space monstrosity I had seen on the first day. Their combined form was terrifying - but Cabre's fingers merely twitched at the rapid change of the situation as he took slow steps towards me. "Hmm," His voice still quiet, he once again crouched in front of me. "You fought us off once but we are many. There is nowhere to run, child," Cabre's eyes began to darken, his speech turning flat.

I recognized the speech pattern, recalled the expressionless, vacant face that stared at me. Cabre was infected with the Legion from the cursed box; I hadn't prepared for that, hadn't even regarded that, thinking the little epic speech the demon had given me was a mere intimidation tactic. Fear bloomed within me, opening it's jaws like a hungry Venus flytrap but I refused to succumb to it, clenching my fists against the waves of paralyzing terror.

Venom made a confused growling noise behind me, extending a tentacle to push Cabre away; with a sickeningly wet splat, their whole form collided with the opposite wall, sliding down it like a puddle of misshapen goop. "MORSEL, GET OUT." The symbiote growled, reforming itself back.

"Silence, beast!" Cabre shrieked, unstrapping his weapon and aiming it at Venom. No bullets came out as he pressed the trigger but my ear started ringing, eyes watering as the whole form of the symbiote began to morph and ripple. Pained groans and whines came from them. A sonic gun?

"Screw you, man," I attempted to draw Cabre's attention to myself by kicking out a leg towards the gun, disrupting his arm briefly. Things were going to shit faster than a party full of teenagers and alcohol. "Fuck you, listen, FUCK YOU!" I knew antagonizing people was my best skill and that's what I did, figuring the time needed for Venom to reassemble themself could be acquired if Cabre was pissed off enough at me.

The backhand hurt, not going to lie. I saw stars from that one sloppy hit the possessed merc delivered to my face. The adrenaline rush allowed me to stay somewhat coherent and just like that time when I was trapped in my nightmares, I dove for Cabre, winding myself around him as both of us landed on the floor in a heap of limbs.

Despite my best hopes, Venom remained a puddle of black on the floor. I saw something shiny attach itself to Eddie's chest; apparently that something prevented them from combining into one again. My smaller size proved to be a great advantage; I remembered Venom's words about being a suitable short-term host and with a shriek, I placed my palm into the nearest piece of symbiote I could reach, my vision being obscured by blackness a second later.

THE TAG LIST IS NOW OPEN! @another-stark-sub ​ @mostly-marvel-musings  @vozit ​ @littlegasps @pilloclock ​ @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads ​ @hermione-grangers-wife ​ @individualistfem ​ @sleep-i-ness @capbrie @lillsxd @agustdowney @dee-vn @justanotherblonde23 @fanngirl19 @persephonehemingway @softie-socks @schemefrenzy @letsby @romeo-the-cactus @jelly-fishy-babie @mikariell95 @gladiosamicitias @warrior1-19 @toomanyrobins @i-cant-hangout-im-drumming

[emilia3546]

Bring Him Home Part 2 - PoppyCas

Part 1

*****

Poppy

Even with Kieran waiting right outside, the sight of the bed, our bed was almost too much, I had claimed the crown, I had raised the draken, I had killed King Jalara, and it wasn't enough. The door behind me eased open, and I hardly noticed Kieran gently closing it behind me, I just stared at the bed, at the two bedside tables, the side that was still untouched, even after the week he'd been gone. Somehow I did notice when tears stared flooding down my face, when my shoulders started to shake, when I crashed to the floor, hardly hearing the world around me as I sobbed.

Someone was there, someone was next to me, holding me, gently rubbing my back as I cried. They, Kieran, gently lifted me into his arms, setting me down on my side of the bed.

"It still smells like him," I muttered, not even aware that I'd said it out loud until Kieran brushed my hair away from my face, drawing my attention. His own eyes were filled with tears, his own voice shaking, barely audible as he whispered,

"We'll get him back." Those few words ran over and over in my mind, that reminder of who I was, that reminder that I could not fall apart, that promise of retribution. I'd already started with Jalara, but I would not stop, I would not hesitate until Casteel was back beside me, and I wasn't never letting him go ever again. Kieran stayed beside me as I slowly pulled myself back together, slowly rejoined broken pieces that had been holding together by my sheer force of will up to this point. It had only been a matter of time. This room, this bed, Casteel's scent, this was the last straw. But I'd have had to come in here eventually, I couldn't sleep on the couch forever. If I was going to get him back, and I was, I had to rest properly, even if the thought of sleep, the horrors that might chase me from sleep made me nauseous.

I slowed my breathing, forcing deep breaths in, forcing myself to calm, until I could finally control the sobs, until I could quieten them, until I was just silently crying, staring at my husband's still-unmade side of the bed. I'd hardly noticed Kieran pulling the blanket up around me, and moving to an armchair across the room, the one Casteel always sat in when he was thinking, or just watching me get ready for bed. I knew, I knew in my heart that he would leave once I'd fallen asleep, and the moment he did, my screams might rouse all of Atlantia,

"Kieran?" The immediate worry in his eyes almost drove the words from my tongue, but I shook my head when he glanced around the room, searching for a threat, "Will you stay? I don't think I can be alone."

"Oh, of course." I hardly blinked as he shifted, leaping forwards with unearthly grace before bounding onto the bed beside me. Not on Casteel's side, he would never touch it, not until I said so, but my side alone was large enough for two people to sleep side by side and never touch, or for a person and a wolven. Kieran nosed the pillow, and I took the hint, finally lying back and closing my eyes. The bed dipped beside me, and warmth radiated from one side, spreading as a weight softly pressed down on my stomach. I cracked an eyes open, and failed to resist the urge to rub Kieran's ears as he lay his head on my stomach, still in wolven form, my guard against the nightmares.

*****

I slept through the night, waking the next morning with my mind clear and ready, my plan was daring, some might say desperate, but it was one that Isbeth would not see coming, at least she would not see the true reason behind the attack. She would turn her gaze away from her prized prisoner, she would inadvertently give a goddess access to her most secure dungeons, she would allow me to walk out with my husband by my side. And once I had him back, I was going to bring the fire of the gods down upon Isbeth, I was going to repay her for everything she had ever done to hurt Casteel.

I couldn't help remembering my promise to Valyn as he waved us off, remaining with Eloana at the palace to rule in our stead while neither Casteel or myself were there. Still, I did not wish Malik dead, at least not simply in battle when it couldn't be controlled, I at least wanted Casteel to be able to be a part of the decision about what would happen to him, Malik was still his brother, even if he'd betrayed us all. I forced myself to offer a smile to the people lining the streets, to wave at the children flooding out to see their Queen as she rode to retrieve their King.

Despite my determination to stay on track, to keep my mind active, I found myself gazing Westward far too many times as we rode for Spessa's End. Each hoofbeat, each thud of wolven paws on the earth, each beat of draken wings above my head brought me closer to vengeance, brought me closer to burying my dagger in Isbeth's heart, brought me closer to Casteel. I allowed myself to fall into that rhythm, allowed my mind to escape from my body, my plans solidifying with each motion. I didn't stop running through the plans until the Scotos mountains rose before us, the fog parting at my will, allowing our whole group, well, small army, to ride through unhindered, finally halting at Spessa's End for the first time beyond a few hours of rest here and there. I wouldn't have stopped, but I could never ask that of my people, and Kieran had insisted that I sleep, always sitting beside me in wolven form, letting me hold his paw, cling to his fur when I needed to help me to escape the nightmares, never once complaining, but I knew it must be exhausting for him as well. The moment we reached Spessa's End, I demanded he take a nap, refusing to hear any complaints, changing the suggestion to an order, and be rolled his eyes at that, but obeyed anyway. I could wait the few hours for him to rest, for everyone to rest, we had to be at full strength for the march to Carsodonia, and for the carnage that was sure to follow.

I might be ready, as ready as I could be, but fear still sliced through me when Jasper queried what was to be done in a worst-case scenario, when I had failed completely, and both Casteel and myself were dead or captured. I had refused to consider the possibility, but it was there, I could easily fail, all it would take was a moment of hesitation, a misplaced attack, one mistake, one mistake and everything we had fought to build, to protect would come crashing down, one mistake and my heart would be cleaved in two, damaged beyond repair, one mistake and Atlantia would be lost. I could not make any mistakes, and I gathered all those who rode with me as advisors, commanders, leaders of any sort, to nail down the intricacies of our plans. Every move had to be calculated, careful,

"Here, the wall is weak here, we could easily break it with a single blast from Her Majesty."

"Poppy won't be there to do that, and any delay increases the risk, we have to find another way." Jasper pursed his lips as he spoke, running a finger along the map, tracing the walls of Carsodonia, "A full frontal attack will seem fake, Isbeth will know that we aren't strong enough, and she'll smell a rat. It has to seem like a sneak attack, breaking down walls is not a sneak attack." Jasper was right, we had the draken, but I wanted them to be a secondary attack, striking once Isbeth's forces were beginning to tire, when the revenants were exposed, when they could be most effective. "To draw their attention from Poppy's entry to the city, we stage an attack here, Carsodonia cannot survive without its daily shipments of food and supplies, block those and we force them to come to us."

"The drakens can be hidden, and can strike the enemy's flank when they attack, wolven too, perhaps a few draken should appear to be with the 'main' army, so that Isbeth will not anticipate their attack." Delano practically winced as he glanced out of the window, to where the draken snoozed, or glowered at passers-by. "Are you certain you can control them, Your Majesty?"

"I am the granddaughter of Nyktos, if I cannot control them, no-one can, they have obeyed me this far. They will continue to obey me." They would obey me, or they would be preventing me from reaching my husband, the one part of the plan we could not nail down, I would have to get into the city, and find him, then get him out, ideally without him trying to eat me, all before out limited forces were pushed into a retreat by Isbeth's retaliation. It was risky, there was no doubt about that, but it could work, it had to, there was no better way, every other option had been exhausted, or was actually impossible, even with the power of the gods on our side.

He would never be able to hear me, but I cast my mind West, reaching out for the tether of my love, for that chocolate and strawberries taste. I cast my words out into the world, either he would hear me, or he wouldn't, but I had to try,

I will find you. I'm on my way. I will bring you home. I love you, Cas.

[blazichu]

Mystery March Day 13: Relax

I misremembered this one as ‘rest’ which kind of colored the tone/content, but I still dig it.

--

It started with a death curse.

Or, well, maybe it wasn’t a death curse specifically-- Vivi didn’t pretend to be an expert, but she knew how it made her feel, even from a distance, and from that she could extrapolate that it was bad news.

The point remained: there was a curse being levied, and the two people who might have any indication what it did reacted harshly to it. Those reactions, however, were on polar opposite ends of the spectrum. While Mystery bristled and visibly weighed his options, Lewis decided on a more proactive approach. In an unerring, deceptively fast glide, he made his way toward the caster and seized their raised hand by the wrist.

Startled by the unexpected contact and the skeletal phantom suddenly looming over them, they immediately lost their concentration-- and, for good reason, went into a panic. They tried to backpedal. When they only made it a step away, they tried to wrench the arm away.

Lewis’s grip on it tightened, and he rumbled something inaudible from their distance.

The spell in their hand popped-- exactly like a soap bubble, in spite of the fact that it didn’t technically exist yet-- and Lewis flinched in its wake, hair flickering wildly for half a second. Just as quickly as the disruption came on, though, his demeanor and form settled; he raised his free hand to gesture lackadaisically.

“Still dead. Imagine that.” He leaned in, as if to confide in the caster, but the phantasmal force behind his words carried them across the gap between himself and the rest of the group, “Be grateful it was me tonight; if you raise this hand again, toward any of them,” His grip tightened, and they renewed their struggling, teeth grit against the pressure on their wrist, “It’s the first thing you’re going to lose. Do I make myself clear?”

Something must have passed between the two, because Lewis dropped their hand, sending them skittering backwards blindly. He straightened up to his full height-- plus an extra couple of inches, due to his lack of contact with the ground-- and made as if to follow. The caster whirled around and booked it as fast as they could.

For several seconds, he stayed put-- tracking their progress until he deemed them too far away to bother with-- and then turned to rejoin the group, absently flexing the hand that had interrupted the curse. He looked completely unruffled, though, admittedly, it was pretty hard to judge when the only metric was a skull with resting bitch face.

It was off-putting, if Vivi was honest-- not the skull, but drastic behavioral shift. Lewis had always been loathe to use his stature to his advantage; he may have loomed, but it was always an accident, and on the rare occasion he’d seen fit to intimidate someone, it had always disturbed him after the fact. Maybe he was just leaning into the fact that it was hard to be a reassuring presence when one was very obviously dead, but it was hardly an isolated phenomena.

She still loved him dearly, but times like this, she worried for him.

Belatedly, Vivi realized that Arthur had frozen up somewhere in the middle of things. Lewis, as he drew nearer, seemed to notice the same thing, sighed, and gave him an absent pat on the shoulder.

And that was that.

Until later that night, when midway through a discussion on Scottish folklore, Lewis fell asleep at the table.

Thinking nothing of the sudden silence, Vivi stabbed a couple more penne, giving Lewis a few more seconds to consider his stance on kelpies. When there was no answer forthcoming, though, she glanced over, and immediately dropped her fork.

“You’re seeing this too, right?” Arthur asked, bemused.

Bizarrely, even though there was no gentle rise-and-fall of the chest, it was immediately obvious that Lewis was asleep, and nothing more sinister. And if there was something more sinister than dead Vivi wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

She scooted forward in her seat, leaning over her plate to get a better look without uprooting herself.

“I… didn’t realize that was an option.” She said after a moment passed. Then, with the blunt end of her knife, she nudged Lewis’s jaw. Arthur fussed at her for it, which was fortunate, because Lewis didn’t wake up to do it himself. She set it down and frowned, “Think we should be worried?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Vivi hummed to herself and stood up, moving to shake Lewis’s shoulder; skull still resting on his arms, he didn’t stir in the slightest. Chewing thoughtfully on her lip, she looked at Arthur. “I realize now’s not the time, but how do you s’pose his skull’s staying in place if he’s not actively keeping it there?”

Arthur, who’d gotten to his feet the same time Vivi had, flicked both of his hands up in something that wasn’t quite disbelief, “You’re right, it’s not the time.”

He made a circuit of the table, and the slumbering ghost thereupon, then came to a halt at Vivi’s other side. “He… looks fine? There’s nothing up with his anchor, anyway, so…?”

Vivi nodded, thoughts racing-- and then, both as a test and in search of answers, hollered, “Mystery!”

Nothing from sleeping spooky, but after a moment, Mystery appeared, grumbling all the while.

“You bellowed?” He asked, face twisting in displeasure as he padded onto the wooden floorboards.

With a wide wave, Vivi gestured in Lewis’s general direction, “Do you know anything about that?”

“I believe that’s your boyfriend.” He said, irritation creeping into his tone, “Should I identify Arthur for you, too, while I’m here?”

“We think something’s wrong.” The Arthur in question cut in, before they could get off track, “He’s, uh, asleep? Probably?”

Mystery shot him a look over his glasses, “He’s what.”

He offered a much more subdued wave toward the still form at the table.

Perhaps realizing that, through all the shouting and sassing Lewis hadn’t said a word, Mystery tensed minutely and trotted over. As the others before him, he nudged the ghost. And, as the others before him, he received a complete lack of response.

“That’s… unusual.” He said, somewhat unnecessarily, and propped himself up on his hind legs, front braced against the edge of the chair. It took a bit of craning, but he managed to nose his way against Lewis’s chest and prod at the golden heart sandwiched between its owner and the table.

That, finally, got a rise out of Lewis. He made a soft, inhuman noise akin to whine and flapped the nearest hand, as if to shoo Mystery away. As subdued a response as it was, neither Vivi or Arthur had expected anything, and it was enough to make one start, and the other jump.

Snout scrunched in thought, Mystery hopped down from his perch, “It seems you were correct, he’s asleep.”

In a silent bid for more information, Vivi turned her palms upward.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. My best guess is that it’s a product of the spell he intercepted earlier, but, as that’s the only variable at play here, that seems rather obvious.” His cocked his head, deliberating, “I suppose we could try to agitate his anchor, if you’re that worried, but he doesn’t seem distressed. Personally, I don’t see the harm in letting him sleep it off.”

At that, Vivi gave a short, wry laugh, “Well lookit that, Artie, you managed to stay up longer than a dead guy.”

Arthur stuck his tongue out and made his way back to his place at the table, eyes briefly resting on Lewis’s slouched form. “Should we move him somewhere else? You know how he gets when I fall asleep at my desk.”

“I think it’s less that he objects to the tabletop, and more that you should go to bed before you get to that point.” Vivi said, flopping back into her chair, “Kinda funny that he passed out here though, after all the talks you guys have had. What do you think, is it gonna take magic backlash to beat your all-nighter-recovery record?”

–

It took another two days for Lewis to wake up. There was some debate as to whether or not that technically broke Arthur’s record; Arthur was relatively certain he’d never taken that long to bounce back from a tinkering binge, and Vivi begged to differ. Mystery wisely stayed out of it.

Up to that point, they’d just resigned themselves to having haunted decor on the table while daily life went on around him, so it was a welcome surprise when Lewis showed signs of waking.

Vivi eyed him from over the edge of her laptop’s screen as she collated her research into parasomnia. He briefly buried his face deeper into the crook of his arm, then sat up and pressed the heel of one hand into an eye socket. As his open eye landed on Vivi, he blinked, dropped his hand, then glanced to the empty seat across from her.

She grinned at him and, without thinking, announced, “He lives!”

It was followed by a confused beat of silence and then a sheepish, “Oh shit, sorry.”

Lewis simply stared at her, uncomprehending.

“How’re you feeling? That was a pretty serious nap, but I guess that’s the worst you can do to someone who’s already dead, huh?”

“A nap?” He echoed, voice distorted either from sleep or confusion.

Vivi turned in her seat to gesture to the brightly-lit kitchen window. “I was trying to be nice, but I could try something more festive, like ‘short coma’.”

“Vivi. Since when do ghosts sleep?”

She shrugged, “Since two nights ago? Mystery thought there was a way to wake you up, but if a curse is anything like the flu, you were better off sleeping through it.”

“Oh,” Lewis said, voice unusually soft, “Right, the spellcaster. That shouldn’t have done anything, though…?”

Vivi shot him a sideways look, and gestured widely to the table. “You tell me, boo.”

Lewis did no such thing. Instead, he got up and floated away, body language troubled.

--

Things went back to normal relatively quickly thereafter.

On this particular night, Vivi was still pulling together notes for their next case, and frequently called out random trivia about bog bodies to whoever was available to hear it. Mystery would have been underfoot in the kitchen, had its other occupant not been hovering a good six inches in the air, floating around or through him in an effort to ignore his well-meaning nagging, whilst cleaning up for the day.

And then there was Arthur, who had disappeared after dinner. He had the next day off, which was a double-edged sword-- more often than not, he took it as an excuse to stay up until dawn and then crash.

There was a loud clang from down the hallway, and Lewis automatically turned to consult the nearest clock. Simultaneously, Vivi’s eyes flicked down to the digital display on her laptop. 1 am already. She saved her work and stretched, deciding her fifteen remaining tabs could wait.

While she shut things down for the night, Lewis tucked a new towel into the oven’s handle and started toward the hall, goal clear in mind.

Vivi stared after him and, after some thought, did a little skip-hop closer to catch his arm. “Maybe you should try to get some sleep, too.”

“I… don’t need to sleep.” He said, in the tones of one who’d been made to explain something very simple to someone who should know better.

“Not technically, no, but you can.” Vivi tilted her head as she considered whether or not to voice her next thought. “I get that you didn’t really have a choice in the matter before, but you-- after you woke up, you seemed a lot happier, and it made me think. We sleep because our bodies need it, yeah, but it’s important for us mentally, too. Even if you’re dead, you’re still a dead human-- what if you’ve just been cranky because you don’t have a body to tell you you’re tired?”

Lewis was quiet for several long seconds, and then sighed, “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll try.”

A slow smile worked its way across Vivi’s face, and, with some doing, she craned high enough to press a kiss to his cheekbone. With a gentle bump of his temple against hers, Lewis floated off-- and, as he left, Vivi caught a single word muttered into the darkness:

“’Cranky’?”

–

Though she’d told herself she didn’t have any specific expectations, Vivi found herself slightly disappointed when she spent the night alone. At first, she assumed it meant Lewis had decided against resting after all, but when her alarm went off and she made to start fumbling around in the kitchen, she realized what had happened: for whatever reason, he’d decided to sleep on the couch. She told herself not to speculate why; he had to have his reasons, and there was no point in humoring the wriggling doubts when she’d just be able to ask.

She was a little surprised, though, when her futzing with the coffee pot failed to disturb him. Maybe he was just that tired. It wasn’t unthinkable; if her theory held any weight, he’d only slept three nights over the course of a year.

With the coffee brewing and toaster at work, Vivi wandered over and braced an elbow on the back of the couch. As before, it only took a glance to recognize that Lewis was asleep; unlike before, his anchor was in plain view to confirm it, dusted a mellow gold that didn’t pulse so much as draw in and out, keeping the same pace as the low, even breathing of true sleep.

It seemed he’d curled around it out of habit, protecting it even in unconsciousness.

Vivi lingered a bit longer, without any particular reason for doing so; thoughts came and went, and she didn’t try to hold onto any of them. It was soothing leaning there, absently matching her breathing to the lazy thrum of Lewis’s anchor.

Then the toaster went off and she started upright, slapping her cheeks in anticipation for the day ahead.

She never asked why he chose the couch, and he never offered her an answer.

---

Something about that brief respite must have convinced Lewis that he was better off taking the occasional nap, because he didn’t speak a word of protest from there on out. And as he accepted it, the less Vivi worried for him; he’d never been unrecognizable-- not counting, you know-- but he started acting more and more like himself, rather than the new, spooky version where you had to squint to make out his original personality.

That wasn’t the only benefit, either. Arthur might have foregone sleep for his own sake, ignoring any number of pointed reminders while he worked, but this discovery seemed to change things. If it got too late and he realized Lewis was still hovering around, he’d shut things down on his own and shoo the ghost off to bed, using himself as an example.

It was an incredibly sweet gesture, but Vivi had a suspicion that Lewis might have engineered the chain of events in the first place; he may have urged Arthur to sleep in the past, but he only started loitering when he realized he could make himself the impetus to follow through. But at the same time, the longer this went on, the gentler the reminders became, the more it turned into something he considered ‘for Arthur’s benefit’ and less a naughty, if mutually beneficial, game.

The compromise didn’t always mean they slept at a decent hour, or even went to bed properly, but it did mean that they slept every night, at least for a little bit, and that was better than the alternative.

(It also meant that Vivi got up one morning, further into this arrangement, and found them asleep on the couch: Arthur’s good arm dangling off the edge, Lewis half-sunken into the back of said couch, loosely curled around his anchor-- but also, as a consequence of where he was laying, Arthur. If it hadn’t been for the phantasmal tail his lower body melded into, ‘cute’ was all it would have been, but as things stood, that also bumped it into the ‘fascinating’ camp.

She hadn’t forgotten the fact that his skull stayed firmly in place while he slept, so this unconscious modification was an object of intrigue for her.)

“It’s because you weren’t getting your beauty sleep,” Vivi joked, then moved her hands in a rainbow’s arc and put on the ‘I am interacting with a young child’ voice, “And we all know real beauty is on the inside.”

Lewis sighed a laugh, but didn’t argue. In fact, after a moment’s thought, he said, “It’s strange. Obviously I know I’m dead, but I didn’t realize how awful it was to feel like a ghost until I felt like a person again.”

And to that Vivi hummed, unsure what to say, thoughts racing.

Then there was Thursday.

On one particular Thursday, where Arthur couldn’t stay asleep and Vivi had an especially early shift, the commotion throughout the kitchen roused Lewis from wherever he’d settled the previous night. Nothing unusual there, and Vivi would hardly begrudge his help as she blearily went about putting breakfast together.

There were no footsteps as he rounded the corner-- there never were, regardless of whether he walked or floated-- but something was audibly off when he greeted them.

Vivi waved without looking over, intent as she was on the coffee pot.

It would have taken her a few more minutes to notice, if it hadn’t been for Arthur’s uncertain, “Uh, Vivi…?”

She glanced up, and then automatically followed the pointed tilt of Arthur’s head, failing to process the look on his face until several seconds after the fact.

Where he’d emerged from the hallway, Lewis was shooing off a Deadbeat that seemed determined to get in his face. Frankly, it was hard to blame the Deadbeat; as soon as what she was seeing clicked, Vivi bounded across the kitchen and got in his face herself, reaching up as far as she could. Her hand brushed his cheek. Not his cheekbone, his cheek-- and despite herself, she felt tears welling up.

“Vivi?” He asked, and there was no overt reverberation. As dark-- as dead-- as his eyes may have been, his concerned gaze on her was a balm she hadn’t known she needed, and she gave up on holding back the sniffles as she flung her arms around his neck.

She’d known. She’d known he was still there, even in his roughest moments, and now she had him back.

[rosiehunterwolf]

For the Romping and the Roaring- Part 5

My submission for Day 5 of @serpentfever's Inhuman Event!

It's the last chapter of this fic, guys. I'm sad to see it go, it was such a fun time to write. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, it's been a really fun ride :,)

Link to read on ffn.net (Recommended if you are on mobile or haven't read the previous parts yet)

Preview:

“Kai,” Nya choked out, sounding like she was moments from passing out, “If they leave here without finding us, we die. You have to keep going, you have to be louder-” She broke off into a strangled scream, writhing as she tugged at the collar.

“Take that off and it’ll kill you,” Borg yelled.

Nya’s fingers darted away, and she choked on her sobs, saliva bubbling at her lips as she, with great difficulty, turned her gaze up to meet his. “Kai-”

No, no, no, he couldn’t do this, Borg would kill them, and then it would be all his fault-

His gaze met Borg’s, the man’s eyes livid with a ferocity ten times anything Kai had seen before. He knew for certain, in that moment, that Borg would kill them, slowly and painfully, if they didn’t get out of this.

Nya was right. If they didn’t escape now, they never would.

(Full chapter under the cut)

Prompts Used: Acceptance, Comfort, Safe (haha went all out on this one)

Word Count: 8,008

Rating: T

Trigger Warnings: Dehumanization, Torture, Attempted Murder, Mentions of Racism/Speciesism

Cole clicked the flashlight in his hands.

On. Off. On. Off.

Jay glanced over at him. “You okay?”

Cole sighed, setting the flashlight down. “I don’t know. I’m just scared. What if we’re too late?”

Jay was silent, adjusting his sling. “But maybe we’re not. If there’s even a chance they’re still alive, we need to take it.”

“Yeah, I know. I just am terrified of walking in there and finding them already gone.”

“Me too.”

The police car slowed to a halt, and Cole looked out the window.

They were here.

“You ready for this?” Grey asked them, turning around from the driver’s seat to look back at them.

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Zane murmured, from where he sat in the passenger’s seat.

The four of them exited the car, and met up with the other police officers who were gathering outside of Borg Tower. As the officers headed through the doors, Cole paused. This was the place he had been trapped in for twenty-one years, his whole life up until a few weeks ago. Did he really dare go back inside?

He had to. His friends needed him. This was no time to get selfish.

Besides, they had a whole squadron of police protecting them. Borg wouldn’t be able to get them again.

Taking a deep breath, Cole stepped through the doors.

The scene around him resurfaced the memories he had been trying to bury. The employees bustling around, the sterile scent that hung in the air, and the thick, restricting white walls. He suddenly felt like he was coming back from one of his monthly outings again.

Jay stumbled backwards beside him, whining softly, and Zane put a hand on his shoulder.

“Remember why we’re here. As soon as we get them, we’ll leave.”

Jay swallowed, nodding, and the three of them trailed after the police officers.

All around them, people were sharply turning to look at them, panicked whispers among them. Although most of them had gazes on the cops, there were a fair amount of eyes on them too- some with shock and fear, but a few with sharp interest- those ones, Cole recognized as caretakers and trainers. One raised a walkie-talkie to her mouth and spoke into it. Cole bit his lip. They were surrounded. If Borg didn’t feel threatened by the police, then… well, they didn’t stand a chance.

The police Commissioner marched up to the front desk, her gaze expressionless. The poor young receptionist stared at her with wide, terrified, blue eyes.

“Can… Can I help you?”

“I need to speak with Dr. Issac Borg immediately.”

“Um, he’s not… he’s busy right now, ma’am. Is something… has something happened?” The girl was literally shaking by this point.

The Commissioner sighed, obviously realizing that she wasn’t going to be any help. “Get me the highest-up superior you have available right now.”

“Uh… yes, yes ma’am, I’ll be right back-” the girl practically bolted from her chair, scurrying into the back room.

As they waited, Zane elbowed him gently. Cole turned to him, expectant, but Zane just gave him the slightest shake of his head, tilting his head slightly towards something behind them.

Trying to look casual, Cole glanced back to see that several Borg security officers had entered the scene, subtly lurking among the crowd gawking at them.

Nudging Jay gently, so that he saw, too, he whispered, “Be ready.”

Jay gave him an incredulous look that probably said something along the lines of “are you crazy, we can’t take them all on by ourselves,” which was true, but what else were they going to do? Surrender? There wasn’t a way out, now, with a guard standing in front of the door, so running again wasn’t an option. Besides, they had come here for one reason, and Cole didn’t intend to leave until they had succeeded.

He just hoped the police would be enough to protect them.

The receptionist hurried back, a man in a suit storming after her.

“What is the meaning of this?” he barked at the Commissioner.

“Sir, we need to speak with Issac Borg now.”

“He’s not available at the moment.”

“Well, he better find a way to clear his schedule, because his corporation has been accused of some pretty serious crimes.”

The man’s eyes widened, before he quickly hid his shock in a scowl. “You can’t be coming in here without any warrant!”

“We can if we have a good enough reason!”

“Yeah? What kind of reason would that be- you!” he hissed as his gaze found Cole, Zane and Jay. “You little brats been telling lies about us again?”

“We have been given strong evidence to believe they’re not lying-”

Cole’s attention was snapped from the Commissioner’s argument with the man when Jay gave a startled shriek from behind him. He whipped around to see that a Borg security officer had wrapped his arm around Jay.

Hissing, Cole lunged forward and kicked him in the shin. The officer pulled back with a sharp cry.

Cole pulled Jay closer to him, holding a fist up towards the guard. “Don’t you dare touch him again.”

The guard scowled, reaching towards him. “I’m gonna have to ask you to step away from-”

Cole shoved his arm away and punched him in the shoulder. The guard lunged for Jay again, and Cole darted in front of him, raising an arm-

His feet were swept out from under him as the guard tripped him, and he fell to the ground, his chin slamming against it and causing him to accidentally bite down on his lip, busting it open.

“Cole!” Zane cried, and as Cole quickly struggled to his feet, his friend streaked past him and punched the guard in the face. He turned away, gasping, but the rest of the guards quickly advanced on them.

“Stop!” Grey snapped. “Fighting us will do no good. You will face consequences for disobeying officers of the law.”

“Not if we win,” a security guard snapped.

“You are outnumbered, and are fighting a losing battle-”

“Uh, Grey?” Jay interrupted in a soft voice.

“What?”

Jay pointed behind him, and everyone followed his finger to see a squadron of security officers hurrying towards them.

Cole swallowed. This wasn’t going to be an easy fight.

The two groups just stared at each other tensely for a few moments. Both sides had hands resting on their guns, although no one dared to shoot. Cole held his breath. Maybe they could-

Ducking low, Cole spun around suddenly and kicked the legs of the guard with the gun aimed at his head, sending him to the ground before he could pull the trigger.

Cole stared at him in disbelief. He had almost died.

Apparently his movement had been all that was needed to start the fight. Shouts broke out around them as the blue of the police uniforms clashed against the gray of Borg Security. Cole, Jay, and Zane backed up against each other.

Guards were going after the police, keeping them busy, but more were heading towards the three of them, alongside a couple trainers, holding chains and ropes in their hands. Cole backed away, growling, and, immediately, Zane transformed into a falcon and soared past their heads, swooping at them with outstretched talons as he passed.

Several guards turned to deal with Zane, but it wasn’t all of them. Many were still heading towards Cole and Jay. They were going to have to fight.

“Cole, what do I do,” Jay whimpered. “My arm’s still injured. How can I fight like this?”

“Follow my lead, you’ll do fine. And stay close to me, I’ll protect you.”

As Cole covered Jay’s injured side, the two fought in sync, striking down the guards as they approached. Their most dangerous ploy was still their guns, but, even with his injured arm, Jay’s speed was knocking them out of their hands before they could shoot.

It was only a matter of time before he missed one, though. And the longer they kept fighting, the greater those chances were.

As he continued to fight the guards, Cole found himself using his strength in a way he never had before- fierce, accurate, unrestrained. He had wanted to try out these battle moves for so long, but now that he actually was… even though these were the same people who had hurt and kidnapped his friends, Cole wasn’t enjoying this nearly as much as he thought he would.

Maybe it was the thought of what it would be like if the tables were turned. His strength, Jay’s speed, Zane’s cunning and elusive flying, all working for Borg- it was a scary thought.

He wasn’t a fighting machine. None of them were. Just because they had these special abilities, didn’t mean that they should be used, like tools. Cole didn’t want to spend a life beating up other people, no matter whose team he was on. He just wanted to have a good, long, happy life with his family.

And if he wanted that, he reminded himself, he was going to have to fight one more time. Kai, Nya and Lloyd were somewhere in this building, scared and upset and counting on them. He had to press on, for their sakes. It would only be after they were reunited that they could find peace.

By this point, many guards were lying on the floor, some still struggling to their feet, while others didn’t get up. There were police officers on the ground too, but not as many. They were close. Just a few more guards, and-

“Cole…” Jay whispered.

Cole whipped towards him, feeling dawning horror spread through his body as he caught sight of what Jay was warning him about.

More guards were advancing on them, these ones equipped in heavier armor. The initial benefit of the element of surprise had worn off, with these guards having time to prepare after their colleagues had warned them.

The falcon flapped over their heads, and Zane reappeared with a flash, panting as he fell into a battle stance on Jay’s other side.

Cole himself was also growing tired. How long could they keep this up?

As the fresh wave of guards came upon them, Cole drew closer to his teammates. “Pull together, gang. Whatever happens next, we’re not going down without a fight.”

---

Thump. Thump.

Kai groaned softly at the sounds, putting his arms over his head and trying to bury his face deeper into the mattress.

Thump.

“Kai,” Nya whispered, “Do you hear that?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think’s going on?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Lloyd yelped suddenly, and Kai sat up, looking over at him. He was sitting on his bed, head tilted and ears rotating.

“What is it, bud?” Nya asked.

“Someone’s here.”

“Who?”

Kai waved a hand, shushing her, and pricked his own ears. But after so long cooped up in this little room, his senses felt muffled. He could detect that the thumping noises were coming from somewhere above them, but that was all he could hear.

They both turned their gazes to Lloyd, watching anxiously as he adjusted his ears, trying to pinpoint the sounds.

“I think people are yelling,” he murmured after a moment. “Maybe fighting.”

“Why would they be-” Nya’s voice cut off abruptly, her eyes widening as her gaze met Kai’s. “You don’t think-”

Kai felt his breath catch in his throat. Was it possible? Was it really possible that someone had come to rescue them?

Kai jerked to his feet, immediately falling down as his legs gave out beneath him. He gripped the bars, panting.

“If someone’s here, they're never going to find us down here,” he whined.

“We can’t let them leave without finding us,” Nya insisted. “This could be our only chance. We can’t pass it up.”

“What are we going to do? There’s nothing down here to help us, no way out-”

“Make noise! If Cole, Jay, and Zane are with them, then- well, none of them have as good hearing as you two do, but if we’re loud enough, maybe-”

“They can follow the sounds! Genius, Nya!”

“The compliments can wait. We have to hurry!” Turning to the wall, Nya began to pound on it. “Help!” she screamed. “Jay! Zane! Cole! Somebody! We’re down here!”

Kai joined her, screaming even though his throat was dry and raw, grabbing the door of the cage and rattling it so that the brassy sound echoed through the room. Even Lloyd began to help, screeching and chirping loudly.

There was a jiggling near the door at the far end, and Kai whipped his head towards it hopefully. It had worked! Their friends were here to save them!

Borg burst through the door, storming into the room as two trainers firmly locked the door again behind him.

Kai shrunk back fearfully as the tall man seized the bars of his cage, spitting down on him as he spoke.

“Shut up! Shut up, the lot of you! What do you think you’re doing? I am this close to getting everything I want, and I’m not going to let you pests take it from me! Is that clear?”

Kai met his gaze, the man’s dark eyes glinting with malice. He knew Borg meant it when he said he would stop them- he had never purposely not made good on a threat before.

What they were doing wasn’t working. If they wanted to be rescued, they were going to have to do something else, and fast.

Kai jerked away from the bars, throwing back his head and roaring. The sound echoed through the room, loud and fierce and desperate.

“Stop him!” Borg cried, and electricity jolted through him as the collar was turned on. They didn’t waste any time on the lower settings, the pain coming in so fierce and quick that Kai lost his footing. His voice faltered for a moment, but he kept on. He couldn’t stop. The moment he gave up, they died.

“He’s not going to listen to that, don’t you see?” Borg snapped. “He’ll die if it means they get to go free! You have to turn on theirs, too!”

Shrieks of pain sounded from the cells behind him, and Kai whipped around to see Lloyd and Nya crumpling to the floor.

He stopped roaring, darting to the bars, but Nya screamed at him. “Don’t stop, Kai, we can take it!”

With a reluctant glance over at them, Kai roared again, his throat aching. Come on, guys, where are you?!

The pain shot up abruptly, and Nya’s scream ripped through the air, broken and nightmarish. Lloyd’s cut off altogether, and Kai whipped his head towards him to see that he was lying limp on the ground, convulsing like he was having a seizure.

“Stop!” Kai screamed, “They’re not as strong as me, you’re going to kill them!”

“Then you better be quiet,” Borg demanded.

“Kai,” Nya choked out, sounding like she was moments from passing out, “If they leave here without finding us, we die. You have to keep going, you have to be louder-” She broke off into a strangled scream, writhing as she tugged at the collar.

“Take that off and it’ll kill you,” Borg yelled.

Nya’s fingers darted away, and she choked on her sobs, saliva bubbling at her lips as she, with great difficulty, turned her gaze up to meet his. “Kai-”

No, no, no, he couldn’t do this, Borg would kill them, and then it would be all his fault-

His gaze met Borg’s, the man’s eyes livid with a ferocity ten times anything Kai had seen before. He knew for certain, in that moment, that Borg would kill them, slowly and painfully, if they didn’t get out of this.

Nya was right. If they didn’t escape now, they never would.

He just hoped she was right about her and Lloyd’s abilities to take the pain, as well.

Kai roared, roared like he never had before, even as tears blurred his vision, even as he fell to the ground. He couldn’t stop. He was stronger than Borg’s stupid gadgets.

“Why isn’t it working!” A female voice cried, one of the trainers. “You said he would stop if we shocked the others!”

“Why won’t you stop,” Borg hollered. “Lloyd’s already out, Nya not far behind! I thought you loved them, why are you doing this to them?”

Kai’s heart skipped a beat, and he mustered the strength to crane his neck in Lloyd’s direction. The boy was unconscious on the ground, completely still except for the slight vibration of the electricity.

Kai squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to look away. No! That was what Borg wanted, to make him think he was the one doing this to them. It was Borg who was responisble, not him. None of this was Kai’s fault.

“This isn’t working,” Borg spat. “He’s not going to stop. Turn it up, all the way.”

“Sir, are you sure? That’ll-”

“I know perfectly well what it’ll do. If it’s the only way to shut him up, so be it.”

Before Kai could even register their words, indescribable agony shot through his body, and his roar broke off, replaced with a bloodcurdling scream.

Kai’s brain stopped thinking. His limbs seized up, his vision blurred as colorful spots danced in his eyes. The only thing that registered was pain.

What was this, he felt like his body was being ripped inside out, surely this couldn’t just be electrocution, he felt like he was going to be shaken to pieces-

Something, through the haze of pain, seemed to grab at his attention. He… he was meant to be doing something, he was meant to be-

My friends. They’re here, just above me.

Fighting back the scream, fighting back the froth in his mouth, he roared.

Slow, weak, at first, but quickly, it got louder, stronger, more powerful. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, fueling him and the roar to be louder than ever before.

But his body was faltering, failing, and Kai fought to keep consciousness, fought to keep roaring-

“Stop it, Borg! You're going to kill him!” The scream sounded warped and faint, as if Kai was underwater. He thought it was Nya, maybe.

Was she right? Was he dying? He didn’t know what dying was like, but he had thought it wouldn’t hurt this much.

And there was no relief, no end. No break, just constant, agonizing pain.

Without stopping his roar, Kai began to cry. He just wanted this to end, to be over.

Where was Jay? With his lightning fast speed, he could knock the remote out of Borg’s hand. Or Zane, who could swoop in, steal the keys, and get him out of this wretched cage. And Cole, who could lift him up with strong arms, and carry him far, far away from here and make sure he was safe.

He just wanted to be safe.

Kai choked on his sob. Where were they? He needed them, he needed his family, he just needed-

To his horror, Kai realized his voice was giving out, his roar dying in his throat. No, no, no they were so close, they couldn’t- he couldn’t-

Oh gosh, he needed that remote. He needed that remote or he was going to die-

He knew he couldn’t get it from Borg, but he didn’t care, he just needed to stop it. Lurching to his feet, they immediately gave way beneath him. Kai tried desperately to recover his balance, instead tripping over his own foot and falling, his head slamming against the ground.

Nya’s screams were the last thing he heard before his world was pitched into black.

---

Jay whipped around as Cole and Officer Grey walked up to him and Zane.

“Anything?” he asked breathlessly, hoping that his voice didn’t sound as desperate as he felt.

Cole shook his head. “Nothing. There’s no sign of them anywhere.”

“They have to be here,” Jay wailed. “The security guard said so, back at the jail! And they fought so hard to keep us from entering!”

“Tell me about it,” Gray muttered, shaking his head as he cradled his injured arm. “It wasn’t easy to take them all out. They were definitely defending something.”

“But we’ve looked everywhere,” Cole snapped, sounding close to tears, “and they’re not here! We can’t have gone through all of this and they’re just gone!”

“Maybe Borg moved them,” Zane proposed. “Maybe he found out we were coming and took them somewhere else.”

“But how?” Jay whined. “How would he have found out soon enough to get them away safely?”

Grey put a hand on his shoulder. “We won’t give up. We’ll send out search parties, put rewards on their heads. Both Nya and Lloyd are eligible for an AMBER alert, as well.”

“But what if it’s too late?” Jay whimpered. “What if they’re gone? I just wanted to come here and see them, we’ve never been apart this long, and now I don’t even know if they’re alive-”

“Jay, shh!”

He jerked his head towards Cole, hurt- but his friend wasn’t even looking at him, his gaze glued on Zane.

Zane’s head was tilted, staring off at nothing as the feather tufts near his ears shifted slightly, angling back and forth. His brow was furrowed in concentration.

“Everyone, quiet!” Cole cried, gesturing to the police scattered around the room, most of whom were tying up and chaining the Borg security guards.

The room seemed to hold its breath as the three hybrids froze, ears perking as they listened for the sound Zane had heard.

There- a muffled sound, something familiar, sort of like a yell, but louder, wilder, kind of like a-

“It’s Kai!” Cole cried. “I can hear him roaring!” “It’s coming from below us!” Zane squawked. “There must be some sort of basement down there!”

“There’s no basement in Borg Tower,” Jay protested.

“How else do you explain this? The sound’s definitely coming from below us.”

“Borg must’ve been keeping it a secret,” Cole agreed. “Which means the entrance is probably hidden, too.”

“But where? Why wouldn’t anyone have found it when we were looking for them?”

“It’s over there,” Zane said suddenly, pointing towards the elevators on the far wall.

Jay blinked at him. “What?”

“That elevator. It always had that out-of-order sign on it when we came down here for our outings. No one ever went to fix it. It has to be there.”

“Great thinking, Zane,” Cole told him, and the three of them, along with Grey and a handful of other police officers, rushed over.

“It looks like there’s some sort of panel here,” Zane observed. “For a passcode, most likely.”

“Well, we don’t know it, and we don’t have time to figure it out,” Jay barked. “Cole, you think you can get this door open?”

Cole eyed it uncertainly. “I dunno, maybe if I had something to push on…” He turned to the police officers. “Do any of you have a crowbar?”

“No, but maybe you could use a baton,” Grey offered, handing Cole the metal rod.

Cole wedged the end of it in between the elevator doors, then shoved on the rod. They held their breath, waiting, until a screech of metal sounded, and the doors pried open a couple inches. The police officers quickly grabbed the doors and, together, pulled them back.

Jay peered over the edge. There was no elevator inside, just the shaft. Pointing to something in the wall, he remarked, “I bet that’s a sort of staircase that pulls out when someone puts in the password. But since we didn’t…” he stared at the elevator cable, swallowing.

A police officer shone her flashlight down. “It’s not that far, I’d guess about forty feet. We can climb down the cable.”

“Let’s go,” Cole grunted, not even wasting any time as he reached out and started descending.

“I can’t go,” Jay yelped, waving at his arm in the sling. “Or do you expect me to do it with one arm?”

“Do you forget I can fly?” Zane smiled. “I’ll carry you down.”

“I’ll stay here,” Grey told them. “I don’t think my arm is safe enough for climbing, either, and I don’t want Zane to have to stop and come back for me.”

“Alright,” Jay nodded. “If all goes well, we’ll be back soon. With our friends.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

“Ready, Jay?”

“I guess,” he sighed, and Zane picked him up before jumping down the shaft.

Jay bit back a scream as they fell, and Zane spread his wings, catching their fall and allowing them to flutter safely to the ground.

The officers switched on their flashlights, revealing a long hallway with several doors on either side.

“Seriously?” Cole groaned. “We don’t have time to search all of these!”

“You forgot, you’ve got me!” Jay reminded him. Breathing in the air around them deeply, he let the scents around them wash over him.

Lloyd’s scent was immediately apparent, and Jay felt his tail wag.

“You smell them?” Cole asked.

“Yes. It’s weird, Lloyd’s scent seems to be out in the hallway too, while Kai and Nya’s are staler. But they’re all originating from over there.” He pointed to the door at the end of the hallway.

They hurried towards the door. Jay’s heart was pounding in his chest. What would they find behind it?

Cole jiggled the handle. “It’s locked.”

“Here,” one cop said, holding up a battering ram. He and another cop held onto it, slamming it against the door- wham after wham after wham- until it finally burst open.

The group filed into the pitch black room, many clicking on their flashlights. The light reflected against metal bars making up prison cells.

“Don’t take another step.”

Jay froze.

Issac Borg was standing in the room, a gun pointed at them.

“Borg,” Cole growled, his voice dripping with so much venom that Borg actually faltered for a moment- which was all the time Jay needed to dart forward, knocking the gun from his hand.

“Surrender!” the Commissioner barked. “You have nowhere to run. Hands in the air!”

Borg blinked at her, fury in his eyes, but as he glanced around at the police officers closing in on him, on Jay, Cole, and Zane’s smoldering gazes, and his only weapon trapped firmly under Jay’s foot, he scowled, raising his hands above his head. Handcuffs were clicked on as the police hauled him back.

“Who else is in here with you?”

Borg was silent.

The Commissioner shook him. “I said, who else is here?”

“Two of my employees,” he growled. The flashlight was shone on two caretakers, who slowly lifted their hands up as the police rushed over to them. “And… the prisoners.”

Jay felt his heart skip a beat. Borrowing one of the flashlights from the officers, he jogged down the hallway, shining the light into cell after cell, each one empty, until-

Jay froze.

The girl scrambled back from the beam of his flashlight, hissing. Jay blinked at her. She was so different from the last time he had seen her- long, black hair a tangled mess, eyes wide and scared, a gaping cut on her forehead, crusted with dried blood, and her movements skittish and jolting- but there was no denying it was her.

“Nya!” he cried, rushing forward to the cell, yanking on the door.

Nya’s bared teeth unclenched slightly as recognition flitted across her gaze.

“...Jay?”

“I’m here! We’re here to rescue you!”

To his surprise, moisture welled in her eyes. “Stoppit, go away,” she mumbled, crawling into the corner.

“Nya? What’s wrong?”

She pulled her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth. “This isn’t real. I’m imagining you. This is a dream.”

“No! It’s not! I’m really here!” Desperately, Jay yanked harder on the door. “Ugh! Just open, already!”

A police officer came up behind him. “We got the keys from Borg,” she told him, handing him the one to Nya’s cell. “It’s the only way you’re getting through.”

Jay shoved the key into the lock, nearly dropping it in his haste. The door swung open, and he hurried in, the officer close behind him.

“Jay!” Nya screamed, scrambling back into the corner and pressing herself against the wall. “Behind you!”

“Nya, it’s okay,” he soothed, crouching down next to her. He reached for her hand, but she flinched away, and he hung back, giving her space. “The police are on our side. They’re not going to hurt you.”

“They want to kill us,” Nya gasped, her eyes wild. “Borg said-” “Borg was lying,” Jay said. “As usual. They’re here to help us. If it weren’t for them, we would’ve never been able to find our way to you.”

Nya fell silent, watching the female officer with wide eyes. The officer’s gaze was gentle and sad. “It’s alright, honey. I just want to help you out.”

Nya took a slow breath, nodding, and the officer leaned forward, using the keys to unlock her cuffs and the chain around her ankle. Nya moved her arms around, looking at them carefully in a way that made Jay’s heart want to break. She had been down here way too long. They all had.

Suddenly, Nya was launching herself into his arms, sobbing into his shoulder. He hugged her back, fiercely, stroking her hair and whispering that he would never let her go again.

When Nya finally pulled back, wiping at her eyes, she caught sight of his sling. “What happened to your arm?”

He waved her off. “Ah, it’s no big deal. I’m fine.”

She frowned, sniffing, looking as if she was about to question him further, but, this close, Jay could see the exact moment the color drained from her face.

“What?!”

“Kai.” The murmur was barely off of her lips before she was racing out of the cell, and Jay hurried after her.

In the cell across from hers, a police officer was pulling the door open, and Nya darted past him, skidding to a halt inside and falling to her knees next to a figure on the floor.

Jay felt his stomach drop.

By the time Jay reached her side, she had Kai cradled in her arms, weeping over him as she brushed sweaty strands of hair out of his eyes.

Jay watched his friend’s face in horror. It was pale, expressionless, unmoving. Even in sleep, Kai had always been restless, but now, he was absolutely still.

“What happened to him,” Zane cried, running over to them and dropping down next to Kai. Jay whimpered, leaning over to angle his ear above Kai’s mouth. He caught the sound of his breathing, but it was shallow and uneven.

“They… electrocuted us.” Nya’s fingers traced the collar around her neck, shuddering. “We heard you fighting, and he tried calling out for help, so Borg turned it up…”

Jay felt fury flash through him. “Let’s get that stupid thing off of you,” he growled, reaching for the collar-

“No!” Nya yelped, flinching back. “You can’t take it off, it’ll… it’ll kill me.”

“It’s okay, Nya,” Zane assured her, rubbing his fingers across the back of her hand gently. “We powered down the system. It won’t hurt you anymore.”

Nya swallowed, her fingers reaching for the buckle. She hesitated, looking up at Zane. He nodded reassuringly, although there was a pained sadness in his eyes.

Nya clicked the buckle, and the collar fell to the floor.

“We need to get him to the hospital, right away,” Zane insisted, using the key to unlock his chains, then hoisting Kai up into his arms. “He’s still alive, but barely. We don’t have much time.”

“Neither of them do,” Cole grunted from outside the cell, and Jay’s gaze darted to his arms.

Lloyd laid there, limp and pale. Cuts decorated his body, dried blood crusting on his clothes. Jay tried not to gag at the bloodied, mangled leg that Cole was carefully supporting. What had Borg been doing to them?

It was then that it hit him- really hit him- how close they had come to losing their friends.

And they still weren’t out of hot water yet- Kai and Lloyd needed to get to the hospital, fast. He wasn’t about to come all this way to save them only to lose them again, anyway.

“C’mon,” he called to Nya, letting her put her arm around his shoulder so that he could support her as she walked. “Let’s get you all out of here.”

---

“Ha! A plus two, take that, Cole!”

“What if I stack it?”

“What? Jay, now I have to draw four and Cole’s going to win!”

“I didn’t know he had that card, Nya! If you’re so smart, why don’t you stop him?”

“I can’t, nitwit, because you played that reverse card a few turns ago!”

“How was I supposed to know-” he cut off, sucking in his breath. “Zane! Did you seriously just give me a plus four? I know you have yellow cards!”

“Yes, but I’m pretty certain that Cole does as well. I needed to change the color.”

“Choose wisely, feathers.”

“...Blue.”

“No! He’s smiling, change it back-”

“I can’t, that’s against the rules-”

“He said blue, zaptrap, so zip it-”

Kai groaned, blinking awake at all the noise. He sat up slowly, rubbing at his eyes. What kind of weird dream was this, Cole, Jay and Zane were-

Here.

Kai’s heart skipped a beat. They were here, across the room from his bed, sitting at a little fold-out table, throwing Uno cards at each other and laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. Nya was with them too, bandages wrapped around her head as she ducked a card from Jay. Lloyd, who was lying on the bed behind them, bandage-ridden and an IV snaking along his arm, snatched the card out of the air, giggling triumphantly.

“...guys?”

Five gazes whipped towards him, the room going quiet.

“Kai!” Nya cried, practically leaping over her chair and running over his bedside, throwing her arms around him. “You’re awake!”

He squeezed her back, his brain still trying to catch up with him. “What… what happened? Where are we?”

“You’re in the hospital,” she murmured, pulling back, although she didn’t let go of his hand. “That damn collar almost killed you.”

Instinctively, Kai’s hand darted to his neck, but there was nothing there. It was gone. “I don’t understand, I…”

“You saved us, Kai. It worked! The others were above us with the police officers, and Zane heard you. If it weren’t for you, we’d be dead by now.”

“I… he…” Kai stopped, swallowing. He turned his gaze to the others, who were gathering behind Nya. Cole was helping Lloyd pull his IV pole over so that he could come see Kai, too.

“He’s gone, Kai,” Zane assured. “The police arrested him. Borg Industries is under lockdown as the employees are being questioned to figure out who was involved.”

Jay reached out, putting a hand on top of his. “It’s okay, Kai. You’re safe now. We’re here.”

Kai felt his vision blur, and launched himself into their arms, sobbing. Arms wrapped around him- Jay, Zane, Nya, Cole, and even Lloyd’s little fingers gripping him somewhere in there. For the first time in a week, Kai let himself relax, melting into their warm, safe embraces.

He didn’t know what was going to happen next. He didn’t know what they were going to do, or what challenges still laid ahead of them. But he knew that everything was going to be alright, because they were together again.

---

Epilogue

“Nya, come on, we’re going to be late!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” She ran out of the hallway, slipping the pack of crayons and the notebook into the green backpack he was holding. “It’s not my fault you guys didn’t do this last night when you got home from work!”

“Fist to Face 3 just came out yesterday, are you kidding? Jay and I preordered that months ahead of time, you couldn’t expect us not to play it!”

“You didn’t have to spend five hours doing it! And on the last day of summer, no less! Zane, how’s that lunch coming?”

“All ready!” The falcon hybrid hurried over, slipping the Starfarer lunch box into the backpack. Pointing a finger at Lloyd, he reminded, “Don’t eat that until lunch time, okay? If you eat it all in the first five minutes of class, you’re not going to have anything to eat for lunch.”

Lloyd hardly seemed to hear him, bouncing excitedly on his feet as Kai zipped up the bag and slipped it onto his shoulders.

Lloyd scurried for the door, tripping over his own shoelaces, only saved by Jay, snatching the back of his hood in the nick of time, as Cole intercepted Lloyd and tied his shoes before he could escape Jay’s grasp.

“Don’t worry,” Kai laughed, clapping a hand on Zane’s shoulder. “I think he’s going to be just fine.”

“I know. It’s just hard. He hasn’t been on his own since…”

“Hey, Nya and I did some research. This is a really good school, okay? He’s gonna do good here. And it’s super close, so if anything goes wrong, we’ll be right there. If this isn’t the place for him, nowhere is. We can’t spend our lives hiding, Zane. That chapter of our lives is over.”

He smiled at him. “It is, isn’t it?”

A purr budded in Kai’s chest. “We’re our own people now.”

It had been nearly a year since they had been freed from Borg. Charges had been pressed, and Borg Industries had been shut down for months, until it had been bought under new ownership and rebranded as Julien Industries.

As for them, the Ninjago City Government had provided them with a house and had offered jobs to Cole, Zane, and Kai, and they alternated shifts so that someone could always be with Lloyd. Jay and Nya had enrolled at the local high school, and had been working hard to catch up with their peers. Fortunately, both of them were very bright and planned on pursuing careers in mechanics and engineering. Kai, Cole, and Zane were taking night classes, as well, so that they could eventually work their way up to a job that they were more passionate about.

Through it all, though, they always made sure to have family time every day, where they would just relax, play games, and laugh. It was a life far different than anything Kai had experienced before, and took some adjusting- but he wasn’t complaining. For the first time ever, there was no weight on their chests, no doors locking them in. They were free.

“Are you two coming?” Nya hissed at them, her, Cole, Jay, and Lloyd already halfway out the door. “We’re going to be late for Lloyd’s first day of school, don’t make me leave you behind!”

“Hold on, we’re not missing that,” Kai cried, running after her before she could close the door. He felt a warmth in his chest as he passed the hat rack without grabbing anything. They had nothing to hide anymore.

They caught up with the others a little ways down the sidewalk, and Kai cracked a grin as he saw Lloyd, skipping alongside Cole, holding his hand and babbling about something that sounded like Starfarer- the kid had been obsessed with the show recently, there had been a fair number of tantrums trying to get him to stop for bedtime. Jay and Nya walked a few paces behind them, Nya holding out a homework sheet as the two argued over one of the problems, Zane hurrying over to help them before it got too heated.

Kai bounded over to Lloyd and grabbed his other hand, smiling down at him. “You excited for your first day of school, Lloydster?”

“I can’t wait!” he yelped. “Nya says I’m gonna do so many things! I’m gonna color, play with toys, meet friends- she says they even have play-doh! I only got to use that once before, and it’s really squishy-”

Kai glanced up as Lloyd rambled on, catching sight of a couple walking on the other side of the road who was staring at them, whispering to one another as they pointed at the long tail unfurling from under Lloyd’s coat, swishing behind him happily.

Kai sharply turned his gaze forward again, making a point of flicking his tail as he walked on.

Life wasn’t perfect, now. Since their story had traveled the news, and they had stopped hiding who they were, many citizens were uneasy around them in public. And when one of them snapped playfully at each other, or yelled too loud, it was often enough to send people scurrying away. He would be lying if he had said there hadn’t been a few awkward confrontations from some particularly bold citizens, but… it didn’t bother him as much as he would’ve thought. What these people were doing to him was still a hundred times better than anything Borg had ever done. Kai had done everything he could to be kind and welcoming to people, and if they still weren’t going to accept him and the others just because they were different… well, that was on them, not him.

Besides, no one had ever promised that their life was going to be all cupcakes and rainbows now that Borg wasn’t a threat to them anymore. Life was never like that- it was messy, and that was just part of the fun. He and his family were safe and happy now, and that was the only thing Kai really cared about.

When they arrived at Lloyd’s school a few minutes later, they walked to the classroom Lloyd had been assigned, the boy watching the students laughing and chatting around them with wide eyes.

The classroom itself was filled with young kids, some looking as excited as Lloyd, others hiding behind their parents. Some were even bawling. Lloyd gripped his hand slightly tighter as they walked, but he didn’t shy away from his classmates.

As Zane and Cole went to speak with the teacher, Nya grabbed Lloyd by the face and kissed him all over. Lloyd squealed as he tried to pull out of her grasp, although there was a purr rumbling in his throat.

“You have a great day, alright bean? Behave well, and be nice to the other kids. Zane will be here to pick you up after school.”

“After dinner,” Jay added, “We’ll go out for ice cream and you can tell us all about your day!” Lloyd perked. “I’m gonna have the best day ever!”

Nya laughed. “I hope so, bud. You deserve it.”

“Lloyd,” he asked, pointing at the cubbies on the far wall, “should we go find your cubby?”

Lloyd hurried over, Kai following, as he checked each label printed above them. “Here,” he pointed, a little ways down, “Lloyd Garmadon. This one’s yours, bud.”

As he helped Lloyd out of his jacket and began to put his things in the cubby, Lloyd squealed, darting away from him. Kai whipped around to see that he had thrown his arms around a little girl, who was hugging him back tightly, a huge grin on her face.

“Lloyd, what…”

“It’s Raina! From the mall!”

Kai looked closer at the little girl and saw that Lloyd was right, it was the girl he had been playing with at the mall last year, before all the chaos with Borg had happened. Kai had thought they would never see her again.

“She’s in your class? How crazy!” “Raina, what are you doing, bring your coat over-” The woman walking up behind her, who he recognized as Jessica, Raina’s mother, froze as she saw Lloyd. Her gaze darted up to Kai, and their eyes met.

“You… you’re the ones we saw that day, aren’t you…” her voice trailed off, gaze flicking from Lloyd’s long ears to their tails.

Kai shuffled closer to Lloyd, placing a hand on his shoulder.

But the woman’s face broke into a tentative smile. “I can’t believe it, I had thought you would never call!”

“Yeah…” Kai’s gaze dropped, and he ruffled Lloyd’s hair gently. “We kind of had… other things to worry about. In all the chaos, I kind of forgot about everything, and I also had to get rid of my phone-”

“Oh honey, you don’t need to make excuses. It’s alright, I saw… I saw everything on the news…”

Kai felt moisture welling in his eyes, and turned his head, blinking hard. They had watched the news, too, for those first few nights, hoping to get some closure on the Borg case- but the pictures, the videos they had shown, had brought back unpleasant memories, and they had quickly stopped watching after that.

To his horror, he realized he was crying now, and quickly tried to wipe at the tears dripping down his cheeks.

Suddenly, Jessica was hugging him. Kai gasped slightly, caught off guard for a moment, before returning the embrace, allowing himself to cry into her shoulder.

In a way, it was humiliating. There he was, a young man, crying and clinging to a woman who was hardly more than an acquaintance of his, in front of a room full of five-year-olds.

But on the other hand, it felt good to be held. He had spent so long being the one holding others up, and… it was nice to be on the receiving end of that, for once.

It had been a year since Borg, and his emotional wounds were healing. But the scars were still there. Some days, more than others, but… they never truly went away.

“Sorry,” Kai sniffled when he finally pulled away, wiping at his eyes.

“You have no reason to be sorry,” she told him gently. “No one should ever have to endure what you did, especially not someone as young as you are. Sometimes, we just need a really good hug.”

“Thanks.” He smiled warmly at her. “Lloyd and Raina will have to meet up sometime.”

“For sure,” she agreed.

“Where are you gonna sit?” Lloyd asked Raina. “We should sit at the same table!”

“Let’s go over here,” the girl cried, grabbing his hand and dragging him away.

Jessica laughed. “We definitely will.”

As Kai walked over to the others, who were getting ready to leave, Nya shot him a glance. “You okay, bro?”

“I’m fine. Are we ready to go?”

“Wait! Don’t leave yet!”

He turned to see Lloyd running towards him, and the boy launched himself into his arms. Kai laughed, hugging him back tightly.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he mumbled.

“Me too. But you know what? You’re gonna have so much fun here with Raina, that it’ll be time to go home before you know it, and then we’re going to have an awesome night of ice cream, Starfarer, and videogames.”

Lloyd smiled, burying his face in Kai’s shirt. “I like when things are like this.”

“Me too, bud. We all do.”

The others crouched down around them, hugging Lloyd too, so that the boy was sandwiched in between them, causing him to squeak in surprise.

Everyone laughed, and they hugged him tighter. A warm, tingly feeling spread through Kai’s chest, and, right then, despite everything they had been through, he felt like the luckiest person on the planet.

As they unfurled from the hug, the feeling still remained in Kai’s chest. As they walked out of the room, the school, even as they took their separate ways for work and school, the feeling never went away.

It was the feeling of love. Undeniable, unbreakable love.

Because no matter what happened, from here on out- as they all grew up, as life changed in the turbulent matter that it did- one thing was always going to remain the same, and that was the love they had for each other.

Family was forever, and Kai’s family was the best one there was.

[gingerwritess]

just a question regarding the loki imagines ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°),, if loki lives for thousands of years , what happens to his mortal wife and elliot? do they just die within their 100 years or so?? you might’ve answered this before but I was just curious...absolutely adore your writing!! xx

it’s the mortality talk. happy reading... (the read more tag isn’t working i’m sorry! it’s in the wrong place and i can’t move it :( )

warnings: talk of death/mortality, mentions of childbirth, poor editing

“Elliot’s finally down. He put up a fight this time.”

You glance up, watching Loki peel his shirt off. “That’s not like him.”

“Didn’t want to leave his Blueberry,” he chuckles. “Can’t blame him.”

A soft smile on his lips, he settles onto the bed beside you, pressing a kiss to your temple before laying his head on your shoulder to gaze down at the tiny baby girl in your arms.

“She’s a hungry one,” he murmurs, reaching down to cradle her head as she feeds. “Are you still okay?”

You nod with a small smile. You’re alright, all things considered. As okay as someone who nearly lost their child can be.

Loki wraps his arms around you for a moment, lifting you carefully to set you between his legs, resting against his chest. You don’t protest, focusing on keeping Frigg close, and you feel him kiss the top of your head, run a hand down the back of your neck.

That all-too-familiar warmth curls around your shoulders and you can’t help but sink back into him as the tension gives way to a relief you haven’t felt for nine months.

It’s a somber evening.

You want to celebrate, revel in the fact that your daughter is alive, in your arms, but...neither you nor Loki can manage to keep a smile on your face for more than a few minutes at a time.

Neither of you want to bring it up, either.

So you sit there, giving your daughter any life you can offer, and Loki cradles you both close against him, arms under yours and head against your cheek, his breath tickling your skin.

He brushes a finger over Frigg’s cheek as she sucks, and her whole body jerks, a tiny hand hand flying out to grab Loki’s finger.

“Ow.”

You grimace, the sudden movement not exactly comfortable, and try to reposition her for a bit more relief.

“Sorry,” Loki whispers, dropping a kiss to your cheek.

Silence settles heavy over the room again, both of you staring at this miracle of a baby in your arms, gripping onto Loki’s finger with a tiny death-grip.

You catch your bottom lip between your teeth.

“Loki...”

He grabs your chin in his free hand and kisses you, hard.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

Your eyes sting when he pulls away, trying to give you a steady smile, a reassuring gaze, trying to be everything you need.

That only makes this harder.

“Yes, we do,” you manage to say, quickly turning to lean back against him; tears are the last thing he needs from you right now. “We can’t keep ignoring this, it’s–it’s going to catch up with us.”

You feel him swallow thickly behind you, his chest lifting under your back.

“We can keep doing what we’re doing. Not thinking about it. Focus on the present, and whatever happens in–in the future...”

His voice cracks, and he falls silent.

The grip he has on you borders on bruising.

Your vision swims and you take a shuddering breath, clutching your daughter to your chest.

“What the hell are we doing?”

He can only make a distraught noise in the back of his throat, giving a tiny jerk of his head. Seconds away from breaking, you can tell.

“We had another kid,” you whisper, more to yourself than to him. “And she can die.”

Loki is breathing sharply through his nose, his teeth gritted and eyes clenched shut, willing this conversation to die and fix itself.

“Loki.” You tap the back of his hand. “Did I die, too?”

The desperation in the way he buries his face in the curve of your neck answers the question for you.

No force of clenching your teeth can stop the tears anymore, and you quickly shift Frigg to one arm and press your fingers to your eyelids, rubbing away the tears before they fall, fighting back the lump in your throat.

“What are we doing?” you choke out again, not trusting your eyes to be open. “Loki, we–we have kids, what the hell were we thinking—”

“Stop it,” he hisses, still hiding in the curve of your neck. “Don’t do that.”

“I have to,” you plead, voice trembling. “If you won’t think about it, someone has to, and–and I’m going to be the one who dies—”

His grip on you tightens. “Please stop.”

You couldn’t if you tried.

“You’ll just move on, and the kids—they’ll probably stay with you, too, or maybe they’ll die with me, and we have to live the rest of our lives just waiting for them to die—”

“Shut up,” he groans into your skin.

“I can’t live like that,” you choke, clapping a hand over your mouth at the awful sob that escapes. “I don’t know what we were thinking, getting together, having kids—”

“Shut up, norns, stop.”

“No, you listen to me,” you gulp, eyes clenched shut. “I’m just a human, you’re–you’re like, four other things and I don’t even know why we thought this could work—I won’t–I won’t even get your lifetime, much less th—”

An ice-cold, blue finger lodges itself between your teeth, shocking the rest of your worries to freeze in your throat, and Loki lifts his tear stained face to level with your ear, forehead pressed to your temple.

“Bite,” he hisses in your ear. “Do it. As hard as you can.”

Teary eyes wide and frantic, you try to protest and squirm out of his grip, but his gaze is feral, breathing erratic.

“Bite.”

So you do, eyes locked with his.

His eyelids flutter shut when your teeth break skin, frozen blood dripping onto your lips.

For a horrid moment he won’t move, and Frigg has stopped sucking, probably disturbed by your pounding heart; his hand is blue over your jaw, pulling your head back against his shoulder, his bleeding finger still between your teeth.

“‘Oki,” you gulp around his finger, the tightness of your throat starting to choke you up again.

“My blood,” he whispers, staring down at your mouth. “By your doing.”

You nod frantically, your eyes pleading with him to let you go. You told me to.

Even with the bruising grip he has on you, you can’t find it in yourself to be upset at him for it; he’s grounding you, grounding himself, in the only way that makes sense to him.

“Breathe.”

He says it to himself, struggling to remember how, but you follow his silently counted focus with him, reaching up to brush your fingertips across his lips.

Minutes tick by before you’ve noticed your chest rising and falling with Loki’s, your heartbeat slowing; your day-old daughter latches back on, her tiny eyes opening to gaze up at you.

Loki hasn’t reached the point of opening his eyes.

You move for him, reaching up and carefully pulling his hand away from your mouth, placing a gentle kiss on the bite mark.

“Thank you,” he breathes, staring at the bite.

Generally when something like this happens, it’s only to one of you, and the other is there to help the other back to their feet. But this time, you don’t know if you can lift him when you’re still fallen yourself.

So when he presses his lips to your jaw and whispers “let’s have it out,” it catches you by complete surprise.

“You don’t...want to wait?”

“No. We’ve waited too long already, you were right.”

You take another deep breath; here we go. This has to be figured out. Decided.

“Turn around,” he adds quietly, nudging your back to help you turn to face him. “I need to look at you.”

You oblige him, cradling Frigg close to not disrupt her, and when you sit between his legs facing him and get a good look at him, your heart shatters.

“We’ll figure it out,” you promise, caressing his tear-stained cheek with your free hand. “That’s what we do.”

He nods; but it’s more of a resignation, a farewell before marching off to war, a goodbye wave out of a window.

Where to start.

—

“So,” Loki begins shakily, “you–you are going to die. Soon.”

You give him a sad smile. “Right. And you are going to keep living. For a long time after I’m gone.”

His eyes snap shut and he grunts, smashing a fist to his mouth to stop the sob that he almost lets out.

You give him a moment.

“You’ll ruin me,” he eventually concedes, voice still muffled and thick with tears. “If you die, I’ll be ruined. There’s no way I could function, I–I couldn’t be what our children need.”

“You know that’s not true...”

He holds up a hand. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

Your heart sinks, and you take his hand in yours and hold tight.

“Then let’s figure out our options.”

“You come with me,” he blurts, “you eat the fruit, extend your life to match mine, we give it to the kids, and nobody has to go. Nobody...nobody leaves.”

“But we would need Odin’s permission,” you point out, stroking your thumb over his knuckles. “And we don’t know how human bodies would react to that.”

“Then I will steal them for you.” Loki lurches forward, eyes ablaze, and grabs your face in his hands. “I will break every law I’ve ever known and rewrite the rules of nature, just to have you by my side.”

Your eyes burn and you look down at Frigg, wishing your husband didn’t sound so desperate, so certain that he knows the perfect solution.

“That’ll just cause a million problems. Humans with immortality, it’s not going to be a good mix. If I can have it, then every human is going to feel they have a right to it.”

“Then we don’t tell any other humans. Keep it above the clouds, between us.”

Your eyes close with the soft shake of your head, and Loki bares his teeth in a quiet snarl.

“Talk to me,” he pleads, eyes glistening. “Why not? Tell me, please, tell me.”

“I don’t...” you swallow thickly, gaze darting to anywhere but his.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know if I want to live forever.”

You watch the words smack him across the face. Imprint themselves on his forehead, gouge his eyes out. In an instant his face sets like stone, a practiced facade void of any betraying emotion.

“You don’t?”

“I...I don’t know,” you whisper; he looks so hurt. “Hear me out, okay? It’s not you.”

He stays silent, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“I think...maybe it’s nice having an endpoint,” you start cautiously. “Knowing that one day I’ll have reached the end, and–and hopefully have done a good job. That’s been the only constant my entire life.”

“And you actually want that??”

“I don’t know.”

“You should know,” Loki says incredulously, staring at you as if you’d gone insane. “There’s no question, I–I can’t believe you’re even entertaining this.”

“What about the kids?” You nod towards the door; Elliot. “He has friends. We have friends, I have family—human family—and I’ll have to watch them die. If my life changes, I can’t just bring along anyone I want. It doesn’t work like that.”

He clenches his jaw, his gaze dropping to Frigg. “It can work like that for us.”

“But it’s not just us. Everyone we know and love would die and we would have to watch.”

“So you’re scared.” He taps a finger on Frigg’s tiny toes. “You’re just scared of losing people?”

“Of course I am,” you hiss. “I’m terrified, and you certainly aren’t helping put me at ease.”

That hits him a little harder, and for a moment he stays silent, absently playing with Frigg’s toes while she continues to eat.

“There’s still the other option,” you quietly remind him, reaching over to catch his hand in yours.

“Ah, the one where I kill myself for you?”

“No...no, Loki, don’t.”

“I’ve tried,” Loki says bluntly, eyes stone cold. “It didn’t work out well.”

You chew your lip, thumb rubbing over his knuckles. “You’re scared, too. You’re not fooling me.”

His shoulders sink.

It’s perfectly twisted, and he shouldn’t be so surprised that this is how his life would end up: you want to die together, he wants to live together.

And you’re both terrified.

“I’m...sorry. Sorry.” He shakes his head. “Which one, then?”

“Choose a sacrifice,” you quietly answer. “I don’t think there’s a happy ending either way.”

Loki falls silent, his gaze dropping to his hand in yours. Your thumb still moves over his knuckles, his daughter cradled to your chest.

“Would you...be happy if we went my way?”

You can’t answer; you don’t have an answer.

Your husband nods. “Alright.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, eyes clenched shut, “I don’t know. Humans have never had to answer a question like that, I-I have no category for something like this. I don’t know.”

“Alright.” He forces a smile, catching your thumb with his. “Then starting now, I have about seventy years until I die.”

You blink up at him through teary eyes. “What??”

“I’ll die. When you do.” He reaches up and wipes away one of the tears that makes it down your cheek, a cracked smile on his lips. “We’ll go together, when the time is right.”

“No,” you choke, “no, I can’t make you do that—”

“My love.”

The tears on his cheeks only adorn his smile all the more beautifully, and he takes your face in his hands, brushing his thumb over your lips.

“You are not making me do anything.”

“I’m guilting you,” you gulp. “Aren’t I?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Not in the slightest. I’m choosing this. You are my choice.”

“Loki—”

Pressing his lips to yours, he shuts you up with a harsh kiss. “I would rather live a hundred years by your side,” he murmurs, “than five thousand more without you.”

“But I’m asking you to die,” you whisper, searching his eyes for the lie, “I am asking you to kill yourself for me. Just say no and leave, Loki, say no.”

He laughs softly and shakes his head again. “No. You’ve sacrificed enough for me, let me try to repay you for all you’ve done.”

You can only stare up at him, trying to regain control of yourself, clutching your daughter close; Loki just smiles, and you know his mind is made.

“I think,” he says, and kisses the tip of your nose, “perhaps I was only allowed my...immortality or whatnot, to keep me alive until I met you.”

You wipe at your eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps I am a man out of time.” His gaze drops to Frigg. “I know this is where I am supposed to be, so maybe now is the time when my eternity ends and I become a part of yours.”

“You–you mean it?” You sniff, and Frigg lets out a quiet mewl to let you know she’s had her fill.

“More than I’ve ever meant anything in my life.”

“Are you sure??”

“Listen to me,” he laughs, carefully taking Frigg from your arms. “You’ve given me life a hundred times over—and two entirely new lives.” He kisses Frigg’s tiny forehead. “So the least I can do is give you mine. End of discussion.”

Frigg starts crying then, and Loki pulls himself to his feet to gently rock her and pace around the bed, quietly crooning at the tiny girl.

In another world, it’d be laughable: she barely extends the length of his hands when he cradles her in them. And he can only stare at her, this little being he lost and gained all at once.

Steeling yourself, you manage to sit up on your knees—everything still hurts from giving birth just a day before—and call Loki over.

He gently pushes you back down though, back onto the pillows, and sits beside you. Your teeth worry at your bottom lip, and you study his eyes.

“Are you lying?”

The only change you find in them is a new sadness, his soft smile faltering.

“I am not,” he promises, “and I cannot. Not to you.”

Elliot’s tired eyes peek through the doorway before you have a chance to ask him one more time.

“Why’s she crying, momma?”

“You,” Loki frowns at the little boy—half-heartedly, of course, “are supposed to be asleep.”

That guilty grin is going to get him into trouble one day.

He gives some rambling excuse, something about his heart hurting and his head hurting and it being too loud to fall asleep, but you don’t care. There’s a light in Elliot’s eyes that lifts the weight off your chest, a glimmer of contentment in the kid’s grin, and you don’t want him to go back to bed.

Once his sister is secure in his arms, Loki scoops them both up and carries them to your bed. “You have to sleep,” he warns him, tapping him on the nose. “No tricks tonight, your mother needs to rest.”

Elliot only giggles and hugs Frigg to his chest, the little prince snuggling into the pillows between you and Loki. 

You lay back down, watching Elliot make faces at the baby, and Loki climbs into bed on his other side with a quick smooch to his cheek. He reaches over Elliot’s legs and takes your hand, giving it a squeeze, and you offer him a small smile, half-hidden in your pillow. 

Should we tell him? you mouth, and Loki presses his lips into a thin line, mulling over the thought. 

Between the two of you, Frigg blows a spit bubble, which only makes Elliot laugh so hard he snorts, and Loki shakes his head with a smile he can’t fight.

Not for a long, long time.

You nod and squeeze his hand, too. 

“Goodnight, crazies.” 

“Night,” Elliot giggles, and you know no sleeping is going to be happening anytime soon. “Love ya.”

“I love you,” Loki announces, tapping his thumb on the back of your hand. “I love all three of you, so, so much.”

You fall asleep that night hand-in-hand and cuddled up to your babies, content with the firm decision that that, however long this life lasts, will be enough.

―   ―   ―   ―

~ masterlist link in my bio ~

loki tags: @bluediamond007 @himitoshi @drakesfiance @destiel1597 @dangertoozmanykids101 @archy3001 @jcalpha1 @yzssie @skullvieplu @forthesnakeofdragons @skulliebythesea @wegingerangelica @storiesfrommirkwood @agarwaeneth @adaliamalfoy @laurfangirl424@fitzsimmons-is-forever @ladylokimischief @katelinwrites @tarynkauai @polaristrange @loavesofmeat @canadian-ravenpuff-multishipper @lou-makes-me-strong @holyn0vak @chocolatealmondmillk @swtnrholland @kenzieam @jessiejunebug  @the-republic-and-face-of-texas

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@doralupin01 @whitewitchdown @atomiccharmer @falconfeather23435 @babygirlicecream @avengrcs @vethrvolnir2 @bookgirlunicorn @wabisabigrl @myhealingstar @khaleesi-marvel @ei77777 @spacecrumbs @scarlettghost13 @rocks-are-pretty-odd @confessionsofastrugglingteen @easilydistractedwriter @arttasticgreatnessoftheawesome77 @fluffyllamaswearinghats @milktearose @lcyouinhell @h0tshotholland @dontmesswithmemundane @southsidesarcasticwriter @helnik-s @lilith-akemi @fire-in-her-veinz @unlikelysamwinchesteronahunt @mischievousbellerina @kcd15

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@highfuncti0ningfangirl @epicfallenismine @stubby-toe-589331 @fandomnerdsarecool @retrofantasyland @arch-venus25 @forever-trapped-in-my-dreams @littleredstarfish @marshyrebelcloud @okie–loki @atterodominatus @stfxlou @pandacookieowo @tonakings @shinisenko @tinchentitri @nildespirandum @thefallenbibliophilequote @vodka-and-some-sass @highfunctioningfangirl19 @sadwaywardkid @lokioneshot @brooksaza @wild-honey-piy @ellaenchanted91 @watermelon-lights19 @just-another-romantic @skinny-macncheese @lokisironthrone @rorybutnotgilmore

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[still-busy-being-mortal]

the rising of the moon

word count: 4544

rating: G

fandom: the mechanisms

warnings: major character death

summary: They've lived so long together, perhaps it is only fitting they die alone.

story notes: so this came about as a result of wanting to cry MORE about the mechs. don't ask me why.

features raphaella spouting unnecessary science jargon, ivy being emotionally repressed/depressed, drumbot brian holding a conversation with himself, and the toy soldier being actually emotionally intelligent.

——————

JONNY

It’s a quiet day aboard the starship formerly known as The Aurora. Most of the crew is out, and she’s drifting slowly through a dusty asteroid field. Ivy has stayed aboard to read, and Drumbot Brian was designated ship-sitter, so he’s stayed on as well. When enough time has passed (Is it days? Or decades? No one knows anymore, and no one cares. They are all so tired.), Brian hits the alert switch that will tell the Mechanisms to come home.

Ivy feels the gentle vibration in her brain --the pulse of The Aurora’s beacon-- and she puts her book down before walking slowly to the navigation bridge. Marius’ hand starts to buzz, messing up his note-taking; he apologizes to the rather fascinating asteroid-dweller he’s interviewing and takes his leave. Ashes feels their chest hum, and they turn away from their beautiful, fiery meteor shower.

[read more on ao3, or continue below!]

One by one, the Mechs find their way home. It takes some longer than others, but they all return eventually. Or they should; right now, there are only seven crewmates in the navigation bridge.

“I’m sick of waiting--where the hell is Jonny?” Tim whines.

“I guess he decided to stay in the asteroid belt?” Marius says.

“Woulda been nice to let us know,” mutters Ashes, “So we’re not all sittin’ here for ages.”

Brian stands and raises his hand. “All in favour of leaving and returning in a few decades?” They all agree, so he pilots Aurora away from the asteroid field.

Time goes by, and they do not hear from Jonny. Of course, members of the crew sometimes stay away for long periods of time, but that doesn’t mean their absence is not felt. And Jonny hasn’t appeared to try and contact them at all.

After a while, they vote to return to the asteroid belt. When they arrive, they split up, communication devices in hand.

Ivy combs through her memory, trying to summon any knowledge she has on Asteroid Field 01.18.20. The Toy Soldier moves methodically from meteor to meteor, searching for their lost comrade. Raphaella interviews any inhabitants she comes across, axially coding their qualitative responses to identify patterns in the data. Tim goes to a bar for a drink, irritated at Jonny’s latest antic.

He walks into some nameless, backwater joint and sits at the counter, flagging down the bartender with a lazy wave. He orders and waits, mechanical eyes roving the establishment. And then he freezes.

On the far wall hang a few dozen photographs, all dusty and poor quality. Above the photos is a crudely-done banner that simply reads “Cheers to Our Past Patrons.” One of the pictures is of Jonny.

When the bartender returns, Tim asks: “What’s the deal with the wall of fame, then?”

“Oh, that,” they answer tiredly. “Just sum dark joke the old owner thought up. Them’s the folks who kicked it in this here bar, you see.”

Tim was confused. “You mean those people died here? That can’t be right; my friend’s up there, and he can’t d--he’s alive.”

The barkeep shrugged. “Don’t know, pal. We had to bury most of thems out back, if you reckon you want to check.” He chuckled darkly and went back to drink-making.

Tim quickly finished his drink and went out the back door. He debated alerting the other Mechs about this development, but decided he might as well see for himself first.

He found the makeshift graveyard quickly, small rusty mounds amid the equally rusty asteroid outback. Some displayed names on roughly carved wood planks, but obviously none of them said “Jonny d’Ville” (Tim laughed at the idea of Jonny carrying around an ID). Most were unmarked, however, so he started to dig.

He used his hands, too impatient to try and find a shovel. He came across bodies and bones in various stages of decay, but none that had any chance of being Jonny. About fed up with this ridiculous idea of his, he decided to dig up one more grave. He shovelled dirt and rocks out of the way, until his hand hit something hard and cold. Something metallic. He pulled on it, and came away with a belt. Christ , he thought.

He quickly scooped away the rest of the dirt, revealing the corpse of Captain First Mate Jonny d’Ville. Dead. Tim stumbled backward, hand fumbling for his comm. “Um, mates, I-I found him.”

The Mechanisms were different after that. Yes, Nastya had gone Out long ago, but they had never actually come across her dead corpse , so it wasn’t the same. Marius had examined his body and declared him fully, completely, and irrevocably dead. They had held a funeral, but they were all too much in shock to really remember it. All they knew was that they were down a crew member, without a captain first mate, and terribly aware of their own mortality.

ASHES

About half the crew was in Raphaella’s lab, helping her with some complex kind of experiment. Raph was mixing two viciously green liquids together, while Marius was unspooling wire from a large bobbin. The Toy Soldier was holding an ultraviolet light against a motherboard, and Ashes connected the motherboard to the chartreuse concoction using the wires. After pouring all of the chemicals, Raphaella pulled on some rubber gloves and pulled out a small pocketwatch from her shirt. “Are we ready?” she asked gleefully. Without waiting for an answer, she started the countdown. “Five! Four! Three! T--curses!” The pocketwatch slipped from her gloved grasp and fell into the churning beaker. All at once there was a flash and a bang, and the lights went out. They stood in complete silence for a minute, before the backup generators flicked on.

The Toy Soldier clapped its hands, “That Was Jolly Good! Can We Do It Again?”

“No, TS, look, I got goop on my--wait!” Marius shouted, “Where’s Ashes?” They all turned to look at where the quartermaster had been just moments before. The floor where they’d been standing was a scorched, intricate, dark pattern of swirls. “What the hell is that ?”

“I Do Not Know, But I Will Go Get The Archivist!”

TS returned with Ivy, who took one look at the patterns on the floor and asked: “Who is it that has been time travelling?”

“Time travelling?!” Raph exclaimed.

“Yes,” Ivy said, “Those marks are a perfect exemplar of the evidence left behind when one has been forcibly transported forward or backward in the time continuum. Which one of you did it? Did you happen to bring back any books?”

“It wasn’t us: it was Ashes.” Marius said, “And we don’t think they’ve come back yet.”

Ivy grew very pale. “That is highly alarming. There’s a less than 0.1% chance that a time traveller ever comes back if they do not return instantly after the outset of their journey.”

“Y-you mean Ashes might not...” Marius trailed off, “...Wait a second! That doesn’t make sense! We don’t experience time linearly!”

“That may be true, but we are not forcibly moved through it either. We are at the whim of the narrative flow, and any alteration to that usually produces negative results.”

The Toy Soldier flashed through many emotions at once, though its face never changed. “So Quartermaster O’Reilly Is...Gone?”

“We can’t prove that yet!” Raph cried, fluttering around the lab and grabbing various scientific instruments. “Maybe if I can pinpoint when exactly they’ve been transported to, we can...we can bring them back.”

“That’s quite a long shot,” Marius said.

“What is science if not a shot into the ignorant dark?” Raph replied, rigging up a technological monstrosity. She aimed the thing at the charred spot and clicked a button, causing the machine to emit a pulsating, whirring sound. “Oh, you all might want to close your eyes.”

With a burst of green and a harsh dial tone, the thing spit out a strip of paper. Raph grabbed it and read it intently. She dropped it suddenly, eyes distant and empty. “They are gone.”

The room burst into a cacophony. (“What do you mean?!” “Gone How? Gone Forever ?” “It was statistically unlikely that they could have returned.”) Raph picked up the paper and pressed it onto the lab table. Most of it was meaningless words and numbers, but Raph pointed out a string in the center: “RESULT) DATE: %& INFINITE ROUNDING ERROR $! _ LOCATION: SINGULARITY!UNIVERSAL IMPLOSION. ANALYSIS) CHANCE OF TERMINATION: 100.0% +-0.0 R = 1.0”

“They’re gone.”

RAPHAELLA

The crew was far more disorganized after Ashes left. With no one to maintain inventory or keep the crew in line, The Mechanisms started to fall apart. Raphaella tried for a while to build some kind of time-travelling device, some way of defying the inexorable march of the story, but it was in vain. She was left with only one option; one experiment she hadn’t tried yet.

She carefully laser cuts some metal from the starship once known as the Aurora. She sits in Nastya’s former workshop for hours, bending and twisting and fabricating until she is left with wings; wings more breathtaking than any she has possessed before. Once on, they fan out behind her in a starburst of blue and metallic grey.

But her crew will never see them. In the cover of darkness, she steals away to the airlock. The ship is currently sailing past a black hole (Raphaella has the Messier number and NGC identification memorized, but that’s not her concern now). With one final look backward at the place that had been her home for millennia --the place she thought she would call home forever -- she casts herself into the black hole.

Ivy finds the note she left, succinct and unmincing as ever:

“Addressed to whoever finds this first:

After a brief review of prior literature, I have found extensive holes (no pun intended) in the study of singularities, specifically as it relates to a singularity’s effect on a humanoid body and mind. I seek to rectify this, as well as explore the possibility of horological manipulation, though perhaps my methods are not entirely replicable. It is every scientist’s dream to be on the cutting edge of research, and so I initiate this experiment joyfully. Also, black holes are hypothesized to have magnificent magnetic fields!

Yours,

Dr. Raphaella La Cognizi”

TIM

Tim, Marius, the Toy Soldier, Brian, and Ivy wait. They do not wait together, and they do not know what exactly it is they’re waiting for, but they wait nevertheless.

Time passes.

Brian pilots the ship towards various planets, pointless battles, dying stars. One day, the remaining Mechs arrive at a lawless sea-based war occurring on a planet composed entirely of liquid obsidian. They commandeer a ship (which they dub the ‘Dawn’) and spend decades wreaking havoc as the most formidable group of pirates. But Tim knows something is wrong.

“Tim, take out that vessel off the starboard side.” Brian orders from the prow of the Dawn.

Tim smoothly preps, loads, and positions a cannon to aim directly at the enemy ship in question. He lights the fuse, and the cannon fires. The crew watch as the projectile hurls through the air, arcing like a cold meteor into the distance. They watch it come down towards the enemy vessel. And they watch it miss.

The crew turns to stare at Tim. He’s not nearly as mortified as they expected. In fact, he’s perfectly serene.

“Um, Tim…” Marius starts slowly, “D-did you know you, uh...missed?”

“Yep.” he responds, popping the ‘p’.

“Did you mean to?”

“Nope.”

“And...you’re not upset by that?”

“Not especially.”

(“That’s a fascinatingly abnormal psychological response,” Marius mutters under his breath, jotting something down in a notebook he appears to have produced out of nowhere.)

The crew continues to stare as Tim goes below deck to his bunk, humming slightly.

Tim has known something was off for a long time now. His aim started to err by nanometres, then by millimeters, then more, until he was missing entire ships like today. He’d panicked at the beginning, of course, but now? Now, he was ready to be done.

He’d felt the pressure building up in his head, behind his eyes. He got spurts of tunnel vision randomly, and sometimes his vision just went to static. He gradually lost the ability to see some colors, as the electronic rods and cones went out one-by-one and refused to self-repair. But he wasn’t nervous or distressed or alarmed; he was excited.

You see, he’d been saving something for a special occasion. He didn’t know what ‘special occasion’ entailed, since the Mechs never consistently celebrated holidays or birthdays, but permanent death seemed like a pretty good one. He rooted around in his rucksack, and withdrew a set of shiny silver keys; keys he’d stolen a long, long time ago. These were the ignition keys to the largest gunship existence will ever see, and Tim planned to go out with a bang. That evening, he told the crew he wanted them all to return to the starship so he could be dropped off somewhere. They all agreed, since they didn’t have any real cares anymore, and they set off for the planet Tim had etched into his memory.

Tim sits in the cockpit of the gunship, the planet itself already ruined and smoking from fighting his way to get here. The Mechanisms were long gone, as he’d told them to leave without him. He hadn’t exactly said he wasn’t planning on coming back, but he thinks they understood. With one last grin of pure, unadulterated madness, he kicks the gunship into gear and blasts off.

The ship goes too fast to comprehend, and in an instant he’s shooting across the cosmos, shattering stars and razing entire systems of planets. The universe has never before witnessed such complete and utter desolation. Tim doesn’t process much during this rampage...until he starts to die.

He doesn’t know what he hit, but something has jolted the gunship just right, and he’s flung out the front glass. He knows he should die instantly, and he is, but his eyes are moving faster. They’re replaying his life, backwards, and he wants to groan with the cliché-ness of it all. But then it’s over. Or, almost over. At the very end, so fast, so short compared to the millennia he has lived, he catches sight of a young man in a trench. Bertie. A face he will never forget no matter how much longer he could have lived. And in the moments of blackness before he stops forever, he thinks about Bertie, about what comes next.

Faith is a moot point when you’re immortal, since you’ve quite literally come into contact with gods and demons, eldritch horrors and cosmic powers. But here, at the end of his wretchedly long existence, Tim wonders if he will ever see Bertie again. If he will ever see Jonny, or TS, or Ashes, or anyone ever again.

He dies blind, with their names on his lips.

IVY

Exposition: Ivy is quite spectacular at suppressing her emotions. She’s also skilled at identifying patterns, so by the time Raphaella left, she knew what was going on with 98% certainty. Without much fanfare, she packed her bags (5 for books and 1 for everything else), said goodbye to Marius, Brian, and the Toy Soldier, and left.

She rifled through her memory archives for the quaintest library she knew of, and headed there.

Rising Action: And so time passed.

Ivy read, and organized, and wrote, and...existed. Nothing happened, and nothing changed. Carmilla must have made an error in her mechanization because she’d never been the best at processing feelings, but she was happy, she thought.

Climax: A war came, and her library was attacked. With the numbest, most detached sense of purpose imaginable, she loaded an escape pod with random books she thought should be preserved and fired it out into the void. She didn’t even know she’d been hit until she’d fallen to the floor, blood streaming from a massive wound. She knows she is dying; she’d seen the patterns.

Denouement: Her brain whirs slower and slower, until it stops. The end.

MARIUS

They are not a crew any longer. Brian has firmly rooted himself on the bridge, more robot than man now. The Toy Soldier wanders the ship, searching for its friends who are playing the best game of hide-and-seek that the universe has ever seen. Marius putters along, doing some maintenance, writing down his thoughts, and waiting for his death.

He’d always known this life of theirs couldn’t last. Besides the conceptual and moral implications of an eternal existence without consequences, it didn’t even make sense physically . There was no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, and he was surprised his more rational-minded crewmates didn’t question it more. But now his theory had come to fruition, and his crew, his family , had slowly dropped off one-by-one, like leaves from an autumnal tree.

He’s at a bit of a loose end now. With no people left to talk to, no minds to pick, he doesn’t feel any sense of purpose. It’s not depression--he knows that; it’s more of a...cosmic futility.

He feels one last pull, one last tug of the all-pervading narrative, a tide of finality, urging him towards a certain door. He knows this door, knows what it means when he opens it. But he also knows all things come to an end eventually, so why not go out doing what he always did? Providing the comic relief.

“Time this for me, will you, Aurora?” he calls out. He turns the handle and steps inside.

BRIAN

Since Jonny’s death, Brian has been at war with himself. He supposes he’s always been at war with himself though, and his current moral quandary reminds him uncomfortably of his first.

Sitting on the bridge alone, he decides to have a conversation.

“So the crux of the problem is that we can bring people back from the dead, correct?”

He flips his switch. “Correct.”

He flips it back. “But the dilemma is whether we should bring the Mechs back or not.”

“Also correct.”

“Which we shouldn’t, because they wanted to die.”

“No, we should. We want them alive, right? Using magic is definitely the easiest way to achieve that.”

“But we need our family to be happy. God knows how long it’s been.”

“Is the end goal their happiness or our happiness?”

“If I answer that, will I change your mind?”

“Is altering the end goal really the moral way to win this argument?”

“You know what? Damn you.”

Time passes, and each crewmate’s departure only makes Brian’s contempt for his own inner hesitation grow. He spends years staring out into the cosmos, thoughts whirling just as fast as the dust and gases beyond the glass. He wonders if he will ever die and join his family, or if the degree of his artificiality will render him truly immortal. He hates that thought more than most anything else.

He stops smelling the smoke of Ashes’ fires one day, and wonders if his olfactory systems are shutting down.

He stops feeling the rumble of Raphaella’s experimental explosions, and wonders if his nerve endings are rusting.

He stops seeing the flash of Tim’s gunshots bounce around the corridors, and wonders if he’s gone as blind as the gunner himself.

He stops hearing Ivy’s narration, and wonders if his auditory fluids have finally trickled away.

One day, the lone violin that has been echoing throughout the empty starship fades out, and Brian feels his heart stop.

It restarts of course, but Brian knows.

He knows that it’s finally, finally time. Soon, very soon, there will be no more life aboard this ship. No life, where there had been life for eons. No life, where there had been life immortal.

His sense of taste has never come into doubt, because he can still taste the acridness of the Toy Soldier’s cooking wafting on the air. He decides it’s only right to bid goodbye, so he makes his way back to the kitchen. On the way, he passes the Doctor’s old laboratory. He briefly considers destroying it, bringing down the whole ship in a blaze of fire and brimstone, but he knows that isn’t right; it wouldn’t fulfill anything.

In the kitchen, the Toy Soldier is pulling something pink and grey and on fire out of the oven. “Hey, TS,” Brain says gently, leaning against the doorframe as his heart falters again. “I-I’ve got to talk to you.”

The Toy Soldier spins around. “Drumbot Brian!” it shouts joyfully. “How Have You Been, Old Chap! I Have Been Playing Hide-And-Seek With The Rest Of The Crew For A While Now, And They Are Definitely Winning! Have You Seen Them?”

“Oh, TS,” Brian says sadly, “We’re all who’s left now. Don’t you know? The others have gone.”

He sees the Toy Soldier’s wooden eyes soften, betraying an agedness he’s never seen before. “Of Course I Know, Bean. But What Have We Been Doing This Whole Time, If Not Pretending?”

Brian smiles sorrowfully, and TS matches it. “I just wanted to let you know, TS, that now it’s my turn to go.”

“I Know.” It salutes him. “Goodbye, Drumbot.”

Brain gently returns the salute, and leaves.

He stumbles through the ship, heart failing rapidly now, but he makes it to the airlock. He knows deep down that there’s only one way his story could end. His whole existence has been framed by empty solitude, with his family providing the best aberration one could wish for. With his body more an empty metal frame than a robot now, he opens the airlock and casts himself back into the cosmos, from whence he came, and where he would die.

THE TOY SOLDIER

Its friends are all gone away now, and it knows this. There is no more laughter aboard the starship once known as the Aurora. There is no more gunfire or explosions. There is no more music. The cold mass of metal drifts through the void of the uncaring cosmos, with no living being aboard.

But The Toy Soldier has to be sure; it has to guarantee that it is truly all alone now. So it visits its friends’ final resting places.

It spends some years gazing out the front windows of the ship. The thrusters have been broken for a long time now, and the Toy Soldier doesn’t know how to repair them, so it just sits and watches. It wants to see the Drumbot, so it pretends that it does. Soon enough, out the starboard porthole, it spies him. His metal is rusted and warped, frost rendering most of his face unrecognizable. A drum is still looped around his shoulder. The Toy Soldier tethers itself to the ship and goes outside for a moment, drifting towards the robot. It lays a wooden hand on his deformed chest, and feels that his heart beats no longer. It carves off a long curl of wood from its side, and places it in Brian’s frozen hand.

It returns to the ship. It hadn’t known where Marius had disappeared to, but now it feels the force of the narrative driving it towards a certain room. It opens the door, and a handful of mangy octokittens hiss at it and scurry away. There’s nothing in the room besides a pile of crumpled clothes, a broken violin, and a metal hand, but the Toy Soldier could recognize that style anywhere. It gently twists one of its own wooden hands off, and lays it on the mound.

The Toy Soldier knows that Ivy went somewhere far away, so it closes its eyes and pretends that it’s there. When it opens them again, it finds itself in the charred ruins of some great marble building. At its feet lay bones, a metal flute, and a mess of circuitry, untouched by the ash. The Toy Soldier reaches up, removes a piece of wood from the back of its head, and lays it besides the flute.

The Toy Soldier has a harder time finding the gunner. It’s drawn this way and that, chasing an intangible trail through the stars and galaxies. All of the planets it passes are devoid of life. Finally, finally, it stumbles across an enormous, gaping wreck of a starship, all mangled and smashed to pieces. The ship is so large, it’s drawn smaller asteroids into an orbit around it. On one of these rocky satellites, the Toy Soldier spies a body: a skeleton covered in a long brown coat with a guitar slung across it. A pair of mutilated, metal eyes rest in the skull. The Toy Soldier smiles sadly, removes one of its own wooden eyes, and slips it into the pocket of the coat.

It knows it cannot follow the science officer into a black hole. It does manage to find the sketches of the wings Raphaella designed, so it gathers them up, takes two chunks of wood from its back, finds Raph’s keyboard, and casts everything into the nearest singularity.

After pretending to be at the end of space and time, it finds itself there. There is nothing, absolutely nothing. It removes two segments of wood from deep within its chest and places them in the nothingness, along with the strings of an old electric bass it had found. As it winks back to the ship, it catches the faintest scent of gasoline.

It returns to the asteroid Jonny had died on, the start of their ignoble demise. It visits his grave, in the taupe dirt of the desert behind the backwater bar, and sees all of the trinkets and mementos the crew had left behind. It knows none of them left anything during their makeshift funeral, so that means each of them must have slipped away at some point to come here on their own. Ashes has left their best lighter, Tim a pair of dogtags. Marius left behind all of his notes of Jonny’s disaster of a brain, and Brian has deposited some sun-scorched piece of space station. His harmonica has also found its way here, somehow. The Toy Soldier slowly, slowly reaches into its chest and removes its wooden heart, laying it down atop the mound of dirt and memories. It walks away, and knows that it can finally, finally stop pretending.

AURORA

There is no record of where the Toy Soldier went next. It certainly did not return to the empty ship once known as the brilliant Aurora. The lifeless, soulless, music-less ship drifts on alone through the cosmos, rusting and warping until no one could tell it had ever been a ship at all. Eons pass, and whatever memory the universe might have had of The Mechanisms has been utterly lost.

Until the misshapen mass gets stuck in the orbit of a planet. Molded and formed by the planet’s gravity, the ship is reborn as a moon. And all at once, she comes to life.

As dawn washes over her, the young moon hears a voice. “Hello, dear,” a woman coos, “My name is Dr. Carmilla.”

[themagicalmysticalboy]

Iveneverrequestedanaskbeforesryifimlikeawkward

Anyways can you write a mclennon and theres a thunderstorm or something and the power goes out and one if them gets all scared and clingy to the other and they’re scared and it ends with cuddles? I love your writing btw <33

a/n: ah! thank you so much! hope you like this one too! ended up being a lot longer than i thought it would lol

Going to Kansas City...

Going to Get My Baby Back Home

The last note of Long Tall Sally tore from Paul’s throat and blasted into the exuberant crowd as the concert came to an end. He was smiling like mad as he looked between his bandmates and the people in the stadium. It was strange to not see every seat full but he didn’t care at all. There was too much adrenaline coursing through him to give it a second thought. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet as he sent a few thank you’s into the mic.

John held his shoulder and waved with him before going towards the speakers so they could prop their instruments up with the other equipment. “Fucking fantastic,” he yelled close to Paul’s ear.

“Aye, Eppy looks satisfied,” Paul yelled back and nodded to just off the stage where their manager stood.

With another smile and a pat on the shoulder, they both broke into a trot to the locker rooms, George and Ringo on their heels. Paul was still waving the whole way until they descended into the tunnel. Cool air hit his face like a blessing from above. They slowed to a slow stride to catch their breath.

Everyone was soaked in sweat and panting. They had every right to be dead tired but the electricity of the performance wasn’t about to wear off. Paul surmised they had a good 30 minutes before they were absolutely dead on their feet.

“Was weird hearing our own music. ‘Bout forgot what we sounded like,” George said as he wiped at his forehead with his sleeve.

“Small crowd and we still got paid out the arse for it. Screw a day off.”

Paul thought a day off still would have been nice. With it raining like it was when they landed, though, there wouldn’t have been much to do. Might as well make some more money. Maybe that’s why the crowd was so small - all that rain and wind kept people from arriving. It didn’t really matter -money wise- if 30,000 or 10 people came, though. The deal was at a set rate and they got paid the same either way.

“Glad to hear it was worth it, John.”

Paul turned on his heels, walking backward, to find Brian trailing behind. “Aren’t you glad we kept saying no? Got us far.”

“We should start refusing things more often,” Ringo chimed in, tapping the air with his drumsticks.

“All fab and gear and whatever,” George came up and grabbed Paul, jumping to put all his weight on Paul’s shoulders before turning him around and pushing him forward.  “but let's get the hell out of these clothes and get some kip.”

There was a general agreement between laughs and jests. They set off to the dressing room while Brian went to ready their ride to the hotel. When they finally found the room in the maze of a stadium, the airconditioning was even better than in the hallways. A fan in the corner hit them as they walked in and sent Paul’s hair on end. He collapsed into a chair at the first opportunity and yanked off his boots, not bothering to unzip them. Taking the boots to the clothes rack, he undressed and hung his outfit up accordingly. When he was happily redressed in a t-shirt and jeans, he looked on at the mess John and George were creating. 

George’s clothes were on the floor, surrounding a chair that managed to not so much as catch a sock. Whereas John’s clothes trailed from the door to the vanity. He was mostly undressed, wearing only unbuttoned pants and a tie, as he searched for his clothes. Paul eyed him indulgently as he moved about the room, feeling something between annoyed and pleased. At least Ringo had made a good faith attempt, clothes messily placed on their hangers with boots sat beside Paul’s.

Paul marched over and untied the tie around his neck. “How did you even manage that?”

“I like to keep a mystery.” John’s eyes were soft and dream-like.

“Save it for later, you two,” George exclaimed and made a fake vomiting sound.

 Rolling his eyes, Paul leaned into John and picked up his discarded suit jacket, revealing John’s pile of plain clothes. “Looking for these?”

John laughed mockingly and snatched up his jumper. He had just pulled the thing on when the lights flickered out. The breath of the building cut out before wheezing back to life and illuminating the room again. John let out a low woah as they all eyed the ceiling.

“Mal blow a fuse unplugging the speaker,” Ringo joked, his gaze still fixed on the lights.

They stood there for a moment longer before going back to getting dressed and lounging. John got himself together and dressed rather quickly. Paul watched him closely but didn’t question him. When George and Ringo took a seat on either side of Paul, John was pacing the floor and tapping his thighs.

“I’m going to look for Brian. He’s taking too long.”

Paul stood. “John,” But he was gone before any protest could be made. “Great. I’ll go and get him.”

George propped his feet up on the table, taking one of Ringo’s drumsticks to spin between his fingers. “He’ll be alright. Maybe he’ll even get Eppy to tell us what’s going on.”

Paul weighed his options and dropped into the seat at the vanity. “Would be nice to know what’s keeping him.” Tapping at the maroon-painted wood, he noticed John’s glasses wrapped up in his tie. Paul held them up, pulling the tie off. “He’s got his contacts in, hasn’t he?”

“Took ‘em out, actually.”

“The git. He’ll never find his way back here if he doesn’t run into Brian.”

“Probably couldn’t find his way back with the specs. They’ll find each other though.”

Ignoring the advice, Paul was half out of his seat when a nerve-rattling bang sent him falling back. His breath hitched in his throat, his muscles tense and pulling against his skin. Ringo and George were just as stunned, leaning forward on the couch. Slowly, as if they might evoke more banging if they made a sound, the three walked to the door. Howling screams echoed outside, becoming more clear as Ringo placed his hand on the knob. When he opened it, a gust of warm and humid wind rushed into the room. The low howling wind whistled up in pitch.

There was a small set of stairs to their left that led to double doors. They were flung apart like unfolded lungs, rushing all its oxygen into the building. Outside, the parking lot was shrouded in a haze of heavy rain that made the street lights radiate a halo’s glow. They, consequently, did nothing in the way of providing actual visibility.

“That’s probably not very good.”

The lights flickered off and on again, making Paul grip the back of Ringo’s shirt. “No. Probably not.” His mind was a racehorse running through a blank expanse.

George pulled him back into the room. “Come on before we get sucked out the door.”

Steadying himself and pulling back the reins on his mind, he pointed to the other two. “I’m going to get John. Stay here in case Brian comes ‘round.”

“Can’t recall a single time when splitting up has been a good idea,” George said with a raised brow.

“Well, John’s already gone and done it. I’ll make it an even split at the least.”

No further argument was made and Paul went into the hall to find a few staff members going towards the open door. They took no notice as he went the opposite way. The once comforting cool of the hallway moved from humid stuffiness to icey cold in a matter of a few steps. He turned at the first opportunity and heard both doors close with a clank. At least that was handled. 

Once he knew he was on the path to where they had originally come into the stadium, he called out, “John! You around?” There was no reply. Down the next corridor, there was another employee sliding a bolt into place at the exit doors. They rushed off, leaving Paul alone. He called out for John again.

“How the hell did I get back here?” John was standing behind Paul, one hand on his head, the other on his lower back. “I went in a circle…”

“These might have helped.” Paul brought over the glasses and slid them on John before grabbing his shoulders. “Better?”

John stuck his tongue out and shook off Paul’s hands.

“Aye, welcome. Now come on. Eppy’s probably this way.” The doors at the far end of the hallway banged against their bolts, rattling from the forceful wind that pushed through the cracks. “Let's pick up the pace, yeah?”

John only nodded, speed walking ahead while Paul struggled to keep up. He was a good 6 feet in the lead when the lights cut.

“Fucking hell.” Paul was getting tired of this finicky electricity.

“Paul?”

“Yeah. Haven’t disappeared.” He might as well have. The dark that blanketed the building was dense and consuming. He had no way to see anything at all.

“Where are you?”

“I’ve got my arms out. Just walk back towards me.” Having the clack of their boot heels would have been nice at the moment. Their sneakers were far too quiet to make out the location by. Regardless, John’s strong grip wrapped Paul’s bicep. “There we- oh-”

John’s arms wrapped underneath Paul’s, pulling them together by the shoulder blades. His head was buried into the crook of Paul’s neck. More banging echoed somewhere in the distance and John held tighter.

“Hey,” he gently rubbed circles over John’s back. “We’re alright, y’know.”

“I don’t like this.” John shook his head against Paul, trembling in his arms. His heartbeat was wild in his chest, thumping against his ribs so forcefully that Paul could feel it too. He had seen John like this before but only a handful of times. It sent Paul’s alarm bells off. “Paul, I can’t- I-”

“Okay… Okay. Let's sit, then.” They parted briefly and Paul led him to a wall so they could slide to the floor. “Come here.” John pressed against him, head on his shoulder and hand in hand.

Without the hum of electricity, the wind completely filled the deafening silence, only interrupted by the bang of doors and distant footsteps from the level above. Though that did let them know other people were somewhere, it gave an already ominous atmosphere that last nudged into horror. Paul might have been scared himself but he couldn’t think of anything other than John’s panicked breathing and shaking hand.

“I’ve got you, okay? We’re not going anywhere, neither of  us.” John didn’t respond. “You need to breathe, love. Take a deep breath for me, please.” They breathed together - slow inhale and even slower exhale - over and over. “That’s good.”

He was shaking less when he fell into Paul. “Shouldn’t there be backup lights?”

Paul chuckled softly. “You’d really think.”

“You think it’s a tornado? Mal said this was part of Tornado Valley… Or was it Alley?”

“Tornado Alley? Only in America, I swear.” His fingers were still tangled in John’s hair, lightly massaging his scalp. “They got a state-designated for hurricanes too?”

“Actually, I think they do. Maybe Florida.”

Paul let out a wholehearted laugh. John slowly worked his way into one too. “Can’t wait to be back in England. I’ll take rain and no sun every day over whatever this all is.”

“Yeah…” Another clatter of metal echoed from the dark and John tensed.

Paul gave a reassuring squeeze of his hand. “And we will get back. In one piece too. Storms can’t stick around forever.”

They settled into a mutual silence as the aches of sleep crept into their bones. John ran a hand up and down Paul’s thigh and Paul held his head against his shoulder. They both jolted every now and again but were fairly still for the most part. Any footfall that was above them stopped some time ago. At least that had calmed John’s nerves a bit further. Though Paul found it more frightening now that they were gone - not that he’d dare to voice that. 

He was too tired to be scared anyway. The nonstop concerts and traveling exacerbated the stress of all of this and left him numb. It was safe to be numb now. John felt slack against his shoulder, finally at peace. A weird tranquility slipped through his skin and sunk into his bones. The darkness deepened as his eyes fluttered shut.

“What are you doing on the floor?” A drawled voice drifted into his dream. “Paul.”

He grumbled and opened his eyes, only to be attacked by searing light. He sucked in a pained breath and shielded his eyes to look for the source of the voice. Squinting, he could make out George coming down the hall. He blinked away the sting and stretched a bit. John’s head was on his lap, still fast asleep.

“Morning,” he mumbled on instinct, rubbing any leftover sleep from his eyes. “John, love. Wake up.”

“Come on before someone sees you both all snuggled up like.”

John copied Paul’s wake routine down to the “Morning.”

 “Yeah, yeah. Morning, morning.”

After some much-needed stretching, George hauled John to his feet though it was more for show than actual help. Paul followed, leaning on the wall as pins pricked at his sleeping legs. “How long have we been gone.”

George was taking the lead. He turned his head back to say, “Well, it’s past midnight. They just got the power on not even 15 minutes ago. I’d say you’ve been missing for three hours.”

Both men only grunted a response, swaying sleepily as they walked.

“Wish it was longer,” John groaned.

“Aye. I’m still wiped.”

“The storms passed enough to get to the hotel. Both of you can get back to your snuggling soon.”

A smile twitched at Paul’s lips. “Good.”

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (epilogue)

Song referenced is by Radical Face, my favorite musician in the world, please listen to it below

[ Original | Piano ]

-------------------

From the hole in the wall, Turbo heard the front doors of the arcade close as Litwak left the building, the jangle of his keys as he locked up, and then the call of someone off in their game announcing to all the others that the work day was over.

In approximately fifteen minutes, travel between the Game Stations would be opened up by Surge, and Mavis would be headed Turbo’s way, on her well-practiced route through the maze of wires in the wall. After ten hours of reading, he had fifteen minutes to come up with something resembling a suitable response.

Those ten hours had been restless, fitful, broken up by periods of pacing around the station just to keep up with his racing thoughts. By the end of the day, his mind had become nothing but a blur, indecipherable, deafening, droning, and he gave up the chase. He merely sat on the floor in front of the hole that served as a window out into the arcade, fatigue weighing heavy on his mind and body. Mavis’ notebook had been placed backside-up next to him, lying still like a defeated enemy.

Turbo hugged one knee to his chest, counting the minutes that marched on by, too weary to even construct a proper greeting to have prepared for his partner’s arrival. 

His fifteen minutes were up too soon. Behind him, down the entrance corridor into the abandoned station, he heard a crack of static typical of a sprite arriving via the electrical currents in the wall. A moment passed, and then he heard Mavis’ footfalls approaching with the pace of a sprite carrying a heavy burden. She said nothing, and he stayed silent as well, only managing to look her way once she arrived next to him.

Glancing up, he saw her standing there, alive and whole. Her guitar was slung over her back, and she squeezed the strap across her chest, not quite meeting his gaze. She just eyed the book on the floor, tensed like she was ready to make a dive for it.

“So…” she said, voice low, “...how much did you read?”

Turbo blinked and drew in a slow, deep breath as he offered up the notebook to her in one hand. “All of it,” he exhaled.

Mavis paused in thought for just a moment, but took the book and held it safely against her body. “Hm,” she grunted.

Silence carried on for a while, until Turbo noticed Mavis’ foot twitching almost imperceptibly back in the direction of the station’s entrance. He weighed his options -- asking her to leave would give him far more time to think, but that in itself put a twist of dread in his stomach. So he patted the ground next to him, inviting her to stay and put him out of his misery. Mavis broke out of her indecisive stasis in an almost grateful way, sitting quickly. She placed her guitar off to the side, but rested the notebook on her crossed legs. She skirted her fingers over the ridges of dried paint on the cover as she stared out into the arcade with Turbo. It was some time before the tension in the air relaxed just enough to allow conversation to escape.

“I, uh…” Mavis said quietly, but clearly, “I’ve been thinking about it all day, and… I feel like maybe… after sharing this with you, my uh… intent could have gotten lost in translation. I… wasn’t really clear, earlier. I’m… glad to clarify, if you have questions.”

“If I have questions?” Turbo almost laughed in an incredulous, lost sort of way. Mavis gave him a side glance and an apologetic half-smile, which pricked him with guilt. “Sorry, that sounded kind of…” he shook his head, hoping his thoughts would fall into place, and continued earnestly, “I have… I have questions, of course. I got a lot of other stuff to say, too. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Yeah. I figured that might be the case. It… I mean, I know it was a lot. But just…” she shrugged, “just be honest. Don’t think, just start talking. It’ll come. That’s a trick that always helped me in counselling.”

Turbo took a second to just look at her. She looked back at him with eyes that were at once so anxious and so open. This was the girl who used to shove him just for sitting a bit too close. This was the girl who, since their reunion, had shocked him awake so many nights with shrieks and sobbing over night terrors, coming apart in his arms and still refusing to share her fears with him. As he looked into her eyes, he could still see fear. But her gaze was steady, unwavering, with not even a twitch to suggest she was about to turn away.

A quiet awe stirred in Turbo’s chest, and the desire to match her bravery.

“Mav, you know, I…” he sighed, turning his gaze forward again, “I… just… I know what you’re trying to tell me with all this. I am… gonna need some clarification, though. You said, in there, I’d find proof that… y’know, that any of this,” he gestured around to the desolate, cold station they sat in, “...is any good for you. And I gotta say, I feel like I found a whole lot more evidence to the contrary.”

Mavis thought about that for a moment, and seemed like she had something to say, but apparently decided she wanted to hear his take first. She prompted, “Like what?”

“Pfft,” Turbo shrugged dramatically, gesturing a bit to the book in her lap, “like… all of it. I… I don’t like hurting you, Mav. I know I’ve said that already. But damn, have I just hurt you time n’ time again. And from what I read in there, y’know, eventually, you were makin’ a better life for yourself without me. Now I’m back, and I’ve roped you into this dumpster fire of a life I’ve got now. I’m just… bad for you.”

He managed to meet Mavis’ eyes, and they were a little pained. Her brow furrowed as she thought for a moment, picking her words. “Turbo…” she began carefully, “I have made a better life for myself. But it wasn’t made better by the absence of you. It was made better by the work I did. Me being here is not ruining everything I’ve worked for. I’m still sober. I still have a functional social life. I am doing really well. No one else is gonna change that, not even you."

Sighing, Turbo pushed his hand back through his greasy tangle of hair.

Mavis added softy but firmly, “I choose to be here. We make our own choices, remember? We had a pretty damn similar conversation, the night before you left.”

“I know,” Turbo muttered, his fingers still woven into his hair. “I know. I just… I meant what I said, that night. I still want to be good for you. As good as you are for me. That's probably a pipe dream nowadays… I mean, what can I even offer you anymore?”

A soft exhale left Mavis’ nose. “Are you kiddin'? Even just the knowledge that you’re alive would have been good enough for me. But on top of that… I get to see you. I get to talk to you. I get to touch you. All things I thought I’d never do again.”

Turbo glanced at her, and found her smiling sadly.

She continued, “And, best of all… I get a second chance to help you, now. To be there for you… the way I wish I'd been before. That's good enough for me.”

Mavis’ words brought up thoughts about certain parts of the book, parts he found particularly distressing. Parts that loomed the largest in his mind, at once the most important and most daunting to face. He turned his head to look at her properly, scrutinizing her, feeling his heavy heart burn in his belly. 

“Mav…” he said, catching her gaze in his and holding it silently, long enough for her sad smile to fade, and for the seriousness of his tone to really solidify. “You said, in that book, that you felt like you’d failed me. Do you still think that?”

She seemed a bit taken aback. “Oh,” she said, eyes darting to the book in her lap. “No. I’ve moved past most of that by now.”

“‘Most?’”

“The worst of it, yeah,” she gave him a short glance and a shrug. “At its worst, I thought I’d gotten you killed just by being in your life. None of that’s on the table anymore. But, you know, even if it wasn’t my fault, that doesn’t mean I can’t have… regrets. Things I wish I’d done better.” 

“...You did not fail me, Mav.”

At that, Mavis locked eyes with him again. Beyond anticipation for an explanation, the emotions on her face were hard to read. When she simply waited, Turbo blew out a sigh and looked out into the arcade again.

“Look… I don’t blame you for… blaming yourself,” he explained. “I didn’t exactly leave you with much evidence otherwise. So, I’ll tell you right now. The morning that I killed Roadblasters, and I left you alone in my bed, I didn’t say goodbye, because… I fully expected to see you again that night. I didn’t plan to do what I did. I just… did. Mav, you…” he closed his eyes, unable to keep a twinge of pain from entering his voice, “...you did more for me than anyone. You did… everything. But… nothing you could have done… or anyone could have done… would have mattered. I know that because… no one’s ever meant more to me than you, and even so, I… didn’t think of you at all… when I attacked Roadblasters. I didn’t think of anyone. Not you, not my brothers, not even myself. I just… shut down. I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing felt real. Next thing I knew, I’d just… destroyed everything I had.”

Turbo paused to breathe, exhausted by the weight of his own words. Burying his hand in his hair again, he bowed his head to rest it against his bent arm, and waited. It took a little while, but Mavis eventually started a quiet, sober reply.

“I know. I get it. I spent so long trying to figure out just how the hell you could do what you did, but… then I learned the hard way that believing you’ve lost something so important to you can drive you to do some… crazy things, to say the least. I’m just lucky that I had so many sprites willing to help me. I know what you did wasn’t my fault. I just wish that I could have given you the same help I’ve gotten. Maybe it would have made a difference.”

With a small sigh through his nose, Turbo opened one eye just to peer at her from the corner of it. She had her knees up, resting her folded arms on top of them, and she was looking out into the arcade, eyes clouded with wistful thought. After a second, she noticed him watching her, and offered him an affectionate half-smile.

“Thank you, by the way…” she nodded a bit. “Y’know, for saying that. I think I still needed to hear it.”

After reading all day about his dear partner’s prolonged suffering, her smile was a ray of sunlight on Turbo’s face. It served to calm him, to slow his thoughts just enough for them to appear clearly again, and as they did, everything he had longed to tell her over the course of the day came back to him. 

One thing in particular demanded to be first.

“There’s something else you need to hear,” he told her.

“What?”

Turbo straightened up, leaning back on the heels of his palms, gaze turned forward again. He licked his lips in thought as the words formed fully, and then began to speak. “I should have told you sooner. I guess I didn’t realize just how important it was for you to know, not ‘til I read that you thought my ‘death’ was on you, somehow. See… I guess I have to begin this with… a confession of sorts,” he gave her a bit of a rueful look. “You remember, back when I got hooked on your Shield buffs, and I eventually kicked the habit, so to speak… I told you I got rid of all the buffs I had stored up. Sold ‘em, gave ‘em away, whatever.”

“I remember,” she nodded with a knowing look. “You kept one, huh?”

“Yep. Did you know?”

“No,” she smirked, “I’m just a recovering addict.”

“Fair enough,” he managed a small smirk back, before turning his eyes back to the glimmering lights of the arcade. “Anyway… I kept one, just one, in a question block, tucked away in my garage, where I knew you wouldn’t find it. It stayed there for… at least a couple of years, and I never touched it. But the morning of the… incident, I… I took the block with me into gameplay. I just threw it in my car and drove around, waiting for a quarter alert. I… don’t know exactly why I did. I guess I was just… desperate for some way to get through the day. Maybe I thought I could use the invulnerability to my advantage in-game, and drum up some attention. Give the gamers something fresh, y’know. But it didn’t matter, ‘cause… no gamers came, anyway. They were all at Roadblasters, as usual. That’s… right around when I lost my mind… and drove out into Game Central. I… did everything I did, and then… when I crashed that Roadblasters car into Game Central, and I was wedged beneath it, I thought, for a second, that I was done for. But… then I remembered that I still had the Shield buff.”

He paused to look over at Mavis, certain that by that point, she must have known where the story was headed. Her eyes were wide and severe, lips parted, confirming his suspicions. Knowing that she needed to hear it out loud, he continued.

“I took that Shield… right before that explosion hit. With the invulnerability, and the chaos, I was just barely able to make it out and slip away. I made it into your game, and… after the Shield wore off, I felt all the code in my car… burning into nothing. I started glitching so hard that I lost consciousness… and I woke up… weeks later… finding that I’d fallen into darkness beneath your game’s map. What I mean is... Mavis… I wouldn’t have survived without the buff you gave me.”

He looked deeply and steadily into her eyes, ensuring that she was listening very clearly. “You blamed yourself for my death? You saved my life.”

Mavis was stunned to silence and stillness, unbroken even by breathing. The meaning of his words seemed to settle over her like snowfall, the chill bringing a tremble, and the growing weight hanging heavy on her shoulders. Her gaze broke gently away from his, falling into a deep well of thought that began to softly overflow down her cheeks. A shuddering breath finally left her, joined by a look of shaken, reluctant, overwhelming relief.

Turbo shifted himself until he sat hip to hip with her, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, guiding her to cry against his collar. Her tears came quietly, but she trembled as if a foundation deep inside was crumbling. Turbo could only hope that was a good thing as he held her close.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered into her hair, voice quivering, blinking out a couple tears of his own. “I’m sorry for everything you went through. All the grief I put you through. I’m so sorry for leaving you, right after I promised I wouldn’t. Right after I begged you not to leave me. How could I do that to you, Mav?”

Mavis sniffed, and after a couple of deep, unsteady breaths, she managed to soothe most of the tremors out of her body. The only reply she offered him was the act of taking his hand and lacing her fingers through his. Trying not to become too distracted by the sudden heat in his chest, Turbo just squeezed her hand tightly and kept talking.

“I can’t believe everything you went through in the time I was gone. I’m honestly… I’m amazed that you’re even here with me right now, and you didn’t end up just another… casualty to my... phenomenal mistake. You know, I… I couldn’t see everything from under your game. Most of the stuff in that book, I had no idea of. But from what I saw of you… I was worried. I saw you taking GC. I already figured you would never want to speak to me again, but… sometimes I wondered if… you’d even be around to get the chance. But, here you are… somehow stronger than ever. You’re…” he sighed in broken awe, “...amazing. I’m damn lucky you’re still in my life. It’s more than I deserve.”

By the time he finished talking, Mavis’ tears had slowed and her body had calmed. She had moved from burying her face against his collar to simply leaning her head on his shoulder comfortably. Silence carried on for a little while. Mavis rubbed her thumb absent-mindedly over Turbo’s hand, more than once taking a breath to speak and saying nothing. 

At last, she said slowly, thoughtfully, “Turbo… That letter I wrote for your funeral... Do you want to know what it said?”

Turbo’s heart stalled for a beat, and his ears flushed with burning curiosity. The fact that she was the one to bring it up washed a small wave of relief over his mind. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I do.”

“Well…” she began, taking a brief pause for thought. Against his shoulder, Turbo felt her jaw tighten for a second as she swallowed, and the breath she drew in after was audibly dry. When she continued, her words were as carefully measured and balanced as the first steps of a tightrope walk. “It said that… despite anything I might have written in that book… I don’t regret letting you in. I’m glad you were my friend. When I lost you, I was angry, because I felt like you’d stolen my happiness away, but in the end… it was worth it to have had that happiness at all. To have learned that friendships could bring that much joy in the first place. You… helped me realize that…” she sighed with a shrug, “...love is worth the risk. It’s worth braving the grief for. Because, the fact is… from start to finish, with the highs and lows alike, knowing you has changed my life for the better. You’re just… so much more important to me than I ever told you, or even understood for myself. And, in the letter, I also told you that… even though it was too late for me to keep you safe, I would guard your memory, and watch over it always, like I promised.”

No appropriate, or even coherent, reply came to Turbo’s mind. He stared ahead, but saw nothing, all his senses distracted by the hot sparks bursting out of his racing heart. 

“So…” Mavis concluded, “we might have different ideas about what you deserve, at this point. But can you agree, after everything you just read, that I deserve this chance to keep you safe for real?”

Turbo took a deep breath, struggling to keep from trembling, failing to keep a few tears from escaping down his cheeks. Squeezing her shoulder, he simply replied, “Yeah. Okay. You win this round.”

She gave a short, quiet laugh of appreciation. “That’s not a sentiment I hear from you every day.”

He smiled. “Har, har.”

For a time, the mere act of being nestled against each other seemed like conversation enough. A long while went by without a single word spoken. Thoughts still swirled around Turbo’s tired mind, ones that had to be shared, but he was able to string them together at a calmer pace. Just as he was about to break the silence, Mavis beat him to it.

“Out of curiosity…” she muttered, “in the book, around the part where I describe the buff trip I had, the one where I remembered our last night together… and I promised that no matter what happened, I’d never forget you… Was that just part of the hallucination? Did you actually hear any of that?”

“I didn’t. But it sure came true, huh?” He half-smiled regretfully. “You’re the one sprite who’s gonna remember me properly.”

“Not the only sprite to miss you, though. That’s something.”

“Yeah, something…” he mumbled, recalling exactly what it was that Mavis wrote. “And, hey. For the record. I remember what you said about yourself in that promise. Get that out of your head, alright? No one’s ever gonna forget you. How could they?”

“Oh,” Mavis sat up a bit from his shoulder, caught off guard. “Geez, I really did write everything in there… It’s not a problem, T. I kind of don’t care anymore. That’s… Easter Egg stuff, y’know. I was talking more about the gamers than anyone else. As for the rest of the arcade, well, I’m sure I’ve caused enough trouble here to make something of a lasting impression.”

Mavis punctuated the end of her sentence with a cheeky grin and a wink, but there was a deflective air to it that Turbo found impossible to ignore. His brow furrowed, and he did not return the smile.

“You know you’ll be remembered as more than just a pest, right?”

Her smile fell slowly, and she averted her gaze with a small clearing of her throat. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Turbo searched his mind again, trying to pinpoint what he was about to tell her just a moment ago, feeling quite urgently that she needed to hear it.

“Mavis… I didn’t write you a letter, or anything like that,” he said gently, “but… when I was trapped under your game, I thought about our last night together a lot, too. And… there was definitely something I wished I’d told you then. I was, uh… never sure if either of us would live to see another day, so I figured I’d never get to say it. Do you want to know what it was?”

Quiet curiosity took over Mavis, and she merely tilted her head at him in response, her eyes a conflict between eagerness and trepidation.

Turbo’s gaze fell to their entwined hands. Once upon a time, all the contact Mavis could manage was her pinky hooked under his. There was something remarkable about the sight of all of their fingers woven together, something that gave him the courage to speak the truth. 

“Okay…” he breathed a soft sigh before beginning. “It’s… not much. I didn’t really dream of wasting much of your time, if I somehow got to speak to you again. Thinking back to that night, I just kept remembering the stupid-ass thing I said about… the gamers wasting their love on you. I… couldn’t get your reaction out of my mind. How hurt you were. How hard you cried. I cut you so deep, Mav. I know I apologized already, but I should have said more than that. You should know that…” pausing for another steadying sigh, he squeezed her hand, “...I’m not wasting my love on you. I’ve always known that I… don’t exactly have a lot of love to divvy up between a lot of sprites. I knew that if I was even capable of falling in love… that one sprite would get everything I have to give.”

He raised his gaze to meet Mavis’ once more, finding her expression soft, her eyes glassy. A small, sweet smile was pulled into her cheek. The fact that she did not seem surprised at all was a deep, cleansing relief, and it made his closing words come easier than he could have imagined.

“Mav…” he said lowly, resting his forehead against her temple, “I’m so lucky that one sprite is you.”

A single, affectionate laugh blew from Mavis’ nose, and Turbo felt her fingers brush against his jawline. “Sweet talker,” she accused him with a whisper.

“Hey, you said yourself,” he breathed through a smile, “my poetry ain’t half bad.”

Mavis released Turbo’s hand to cup both sides of his face, pulling him back from her enough to lock him in her grateful, adoring gaze. “Thank you,” she mouthed, before planting a short kiss on his lips and twisting her body to trap him in a hug. He squeezed her back without hesitation, nuzzling tightly against her neck. Holding her was a blessing. She was in his arms, safe and whole, despite everything. He was not eager to let her go again.

But there was one more thing that Turbo had to address. It seemed, after the embrace carried on long enough to put an ache in his twisted joints, that it was time to stop putting it off. Looking over Mavis’ shoulder, he stared at her guitar, laid on the floor close by.

“So, Mav…” he mumbled, “did you, uh… ever write lyrics to that song you wrote for me?”

“No,” she rubbed his back. “Sorry.”

“Well…” he swallowed, voice failing a bit, “...I did.”

Mavis’ breath caught, and her body stayed frozen for a moment, before she held him back by the shoulders and gave him a quizzical look. “What?”

Suddenly, he found it hard to maintain eye contact. “Yeah. Uh… I mean, you know I saw the whole funeral.”

“Yeah, but… you wrote lyrics? How? I barely had the melody down!”

He shrugged. “You were outside for most of the time you spent coming up with the tune. I just… listened in. And I memorized it. And… then I wrote lyrics.”

Mavis turned her head and squinted sideways at him.

“Do… you…” he spoke slowly, “want… to hear it?”

“I…” her incredulous gaze fell, and the tension in her body relaxed. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Grab your guitar.”

With that, Mavis turned and pulled her old, scratched-up guitar into her lap. As she started making sure it was tuned properly, Turbo took the opportunity to place himself behind her and wrap his arms around her waist.

“Now…” he began, unsure, “do keep in mind, that… I guess, uh… this is kind of like my… notebook. What I mean is, I didn’t think I’d ever get to show you this, either. And… I was in a different space, so… it’s pretty… sad. Just… keep that in mind.”

“Alright. Yeah. I get it,” Mavis agreed. With a glance over her shoulder, she told him, “Ready when you are.”

Adrenaline sent tremors deep into Turbo’s belly, but Mavis’ bravery in sharing her deeply personal journal was, somehow, so contagious. She could share her deepest scars, so he could do the same.

“Okay,” he whispered. “I call this one ‘Homesick.’”

The word earned him one more silent, meaningful glance, and he responded with a kiss pressed to her cheek. From there, it was a deep breath in, a deep breath out. Fingers against her belly, he gently tapped a tempo to lead her into the song.

One, two, three… One, two, three…

“Well, I left my home on hollow bones

While you were curled and sleepin’

And I wandered far beneath a concrete star

And I slept along the highways

But even though I am lost all the time

I’ve got hooks in my sides that you left there

But you’re not the same, you died along the way

Now we’re ghosts, and we’re prayin’ for winter…”

For a few beats, he rested his broken, quiet voice. Mavis’ head turned, but she did not look at him, nor did she stop playing, for Turbo’s fingers still tapped against her. Softly, he carried on the mournful serenade.

“Well, I found a wheel that squeaks and squeals

And I left it on your doorstep

‘Cause I heard that you might be broken, too

And I thought it could keep you company…”

As the final chorus arrived, Turbo heard Mavis’ trembling voice join his own.

“But even though I am lost all the time

I’ve got hooks in my sides that you left there

But you’re not the same, you died along the way

Now we’re ghosts, and we’re prayin’ for winter…”