#but for those curious yes dark does show up in my mile long rambling.

[thevalleyoftriumph]

hi!! saw your post of DID Chosen (am I allowed to call it that??) and I have been curious ever since, apologies if any of these has been asked before https://www.tumblr.com/thevalleyoftriumph/757624875107090432/so-um-for-those-who-arent-in-the-ava-community?source=share ^ Post I'm referring to just in case What are your characterisations of Chosen, Beast and Killer like? Going off of Killer not recognising Dark in the post, it was Chosen fronting in AVA3 yes? Who was fronting during showdown? Going once again off the post Beast is non-verbal/ mute/ straight up doesn't know how to talk, is that why he resorted immediately to violence upon returning from Alans PC? Assuming that was Beast Was Chosen co-conscious during showdown? Simply watching as someone else used his hands to tear his best friend apart? Or did he come back to find his life destroyed, and best friend killed, with no idea how any of it happened Also, what are Chosen, Killer's and Beasts pronouns? I assume they differ from eachother. And are your Chosen and Dark siblings? Sorry I'm aware this is an insane amount of questions, apologies if it is overwhelming Final thing, all I know about DID is from DissociaDID (may be spelled wrong) on YouTube, and I have no idea how trustworthy of a source they are, nor have I watched them in years, so apologies if any of the terms/ information I have here is out of date or proven false Anyway, that's all, hope you have a good day :]

hi oh my god anon i love you. sorry i just really adore getting asked about stuff i love yapping and youve offered me a LOT to talk about, please expect a MASSIVE wall of text. like i mean it the wall is huge and took me like, an hour or two to type up. you opened the floodgates anon.

FIRST THINGS FIRST ☝ never apologize for being curious it is the most wonderous trait a person could have. i have spoken about some of these before but mostly in the replies or dms of people and thus it is perfectly okay by me to ask for me to repeat them here. secondly your questions are not at all overwhelming in fact i got very excited to answer once i realized how much youve asked. thirdly your phrasing is pretty accurate yes! ones you used are def pretty common, and i appreciate the willingness to be corrected - lots of phrases [though not specifically the ones you used, i mean more generally] are picked up and dropped by people for a whole variety of reasons ranging from comfort to accuracy to current knowledge, so being open to being corrected is a wonderful mindset to have when going into something youre unfamiliar with ! <3

anyhow, answers to the questions, numbered to each, under the cut ^_^ and just for ease im also going to actually type like a normal human being just this once lol. last warning here if you click "keep reading" youre in for a MASSIVE wall of rambling!

1: What are your characterisations of Chosen, Beast and Killer like?

I'd say my characterizations aren't anything too far from common interps, mostly regarding Chosen.

Chosen is a relatively soft spoken and monotone individual. He's prone to getting lost in thought a lot, especially when in conversation - he likes to think things through very much before speaking. A stick of few words, he likes being simple and blunt. He has a very hard time trusting people, but when he does, he trusts fully and deeply -- he is a very, very loyal person once that trust is earned. Even if someone he trusts does something to cause him to become upset with them, such as with Dark, he is willing to hear them out. Despite this, he's also very rash - much as he loathe to admit it. He may not speak without thinking, but he very much acts without thinking, sometimes even doing something without realizing it at first. This leads to a lot of things bad - such as him shoving Dark from the console in the flashback. He acts in ways he thinks he should, consciously or not. He's also got a bit of Dark's stubborness - once he sets his mind to something, it's a very difficult task to get him to back down.

Killer is, despite their name, very different from what you'd assume. They're a relatively happy person, all things considered, and despite having trust issues of their own, often tries to see the best in people. They're also a more ""casual"" fronter, bordering on co-host, as they usually end up in front for more minor things, or even just incidentally after they wake up. They're quick to adapt, usually masking as Chosen in these cases, but are equally quick to relax in safe environments and be more themselves. They're very talkative, and love learning about any and all topics that interest them. They also fidget a bunch - often with the ends of the body's scarf, or with their bracelet, gloves, belts, whatever is closest. Despite all this, they're also quite jumpy - they are primarily responsible for internal things, especially regarding their memories, and thus holds quite a few negative feelings and memories that they'd all rather not have. And yet, somehow despite all of that, they have a hard time with people. Like shown in the comic, Killer isn't always in front, and doesn't have access to nearly as many memories as you'd think for someone with their "role." In fact, they had no idea Dark existed until the very moment in that comic, which in my mind takes place years after Dark and Chosen ended up living together. How on earth they managed to go that long without meeting him, well your guess is as good as mine. I'd say it's a mix of good timing [or bad, depending on how you look at it] and generally "better" circumstances not requiring them to switch in as much as they previously had to.

Beast... Beast is a whole other can of worms, honestly. It's a general wildcard. The result of being treated inhumanely and without compassion, Beast is someone who is stuck in fight or flight mode for it's whole life -- and it's response is anything BUT flight. It is aggressive to anyone outside of the system, and anything it could see as a threat to their safety. Like I mentioned, it doesn't really speak - internally, it can't, and externally, it just forgets that the body isn't limited like it is, so it ends up silent. This leads to a lot of body language - it is incredibly expressive, and has a bit of a staring problem when it's not actively trying to maul something. Honestly if I drew sticks with eyes it'd totally do that thing that cat eyes do in the dark where it just looks at you super ominously from the shadows lol. Anyways, despite this, as I will always reiterate when talking about Beast's personality, it is not malicious. It is not evil, and it is not trying to hurt people on purpose. It is, first and foremost, protective and scared. It does not know HOW to calm down, or how to feel safe, because every time it's ever fronted, it has been faced with progressively worse and worse circumstances. It is determined and protective, and willing to go to great lengths to protect the system -- and perhaps, one day, if it can heal enough to trust others, it would do the same for them. If you thought Chosen was loyal, then you haven't seen Beast at its absolute best.

2: Going off of Killer not recognising Dark in the post, it was Chosen fronting in AVA3 yes? Who was fronting during showdown?

You'd be correct, for the most part! During the beginning of AVA3, when Chosen was still imprisoned as the ad-block, it was primarily Beast - thus, the chains on it's design, and its seeming unawareness of them. Then, once freed, Chosen had essentially force-fronted into co-front with Beast to fight his way out, eventually allowing Beast to sorta "pull back" out of front over the course of the episode - probably when Chosen and Dark team up. [And for clarification - when I mean "pull back," I mean sorta slowly being pulled from front in a switch. I'm not ever really sure how to describe what it feels like to slowly not front instead of being forcefully switched out, but this is how it makes the most sense to me. I'm sorry if it makes absolutely zero sense to anyone else lol]

As for who was fronting during Showdown, I'll admit that I haven't entirely decided. Initially for sure, during the flashback, it is 100% Chosen. Even during the early fight scenes it's primarily him - he's not being completely overpowered or even threatened with complete death [as, at the very least in my interp, Dark never intended to kill Chosen, just incapacitate so that he could go through with his plan. He only started striking to kill with the CG, but not Chosen - never Chosen.]

However, I'd say Chosen and his systemmates were, after a point, REALLY fucking blurry for a lot of that episode. Rapid switches that left them disoriented and dizzy and much slower to react than they'd usually be. When Chosen goes back to Alan's PC, that is when it's not necessarily unclear anymore. I'd say at that point particularly, Chosen has pulled away enough for the sorta blurry mess in front to be exclusively Beast and Killer, with Killer being busy masking as Chosen to get rid of the Virabot, but Beast being sorta hovering ominously over their shoulder internally thanks to the SEVERELY negative associations with the desktop. Killer's masking would probably have slipped a bit at seeing the CG, mostly out of personal shock at learning about them, but they would've left back to the Outernet before they could really think too hard about it.

The rest of the episode, especially when Chosen is seen overpowered by Virabots, is totally 100% Beast IMO. The situation of being contained, restricted, overpowered and in danger - life threatening to them, even if Dark never intended for it to be that way - it was much too similar to their early days on the desktop. Thus, Beast VERY solidly force-fronted and in doing so with taking complete ""control"" made it so neither Killer NOR Chosen were there for the ending of Showdown. A lot of the actions done once TSC came back were just done out of shock, and a very rare show of trust - TSC had shown Beast that they were willing to fight to protect them, collectively, even if it was really in response to their friends being harmed - protect one, protect them all, if that makes sense. TSC had removed the threat, and thus, Beast had sorta filed them away as one of the very few ""trustworthy"" sticks - even if it's not necessarily trust, it's the closest thing to it.

3: Going once again off the post Beast is non-verbal/ mute/ straight up doesn't know how to talk, is that why he resorted immediately to violence upon returning from Alans PC? Assuming that was Beast

Beast totally had a hand in it, yeah. Despite it and Killer being relatively equally "there" so to speak during the return to the PC in Showdown, Beast did have a MASSIVE influence on their collective actions. Killer fought because it knew it had to prevent bad things from happening, while Beast fought because it was the ONLY thing it knew to do to prevent bad things from getting WORSE. That is to say you're pretty spot on there lol

4: Was Chosen co-conscious during showdown? Simply watching as someone else used his hands to tear his best friend apart? Or did he come back to find his life destroyed, and best friend killed, with no idea how any of it happened

As briefly explained previously, Chosen wasn't the only fronter for a lot of it, and got completely booted out of co-consciousness after a point. Thus, while he knows logically that he fought with Dark, and when he DID front again, he could connect two-and-two together and realize that Dark got fucking murked, you're right to assume has remembers VERY little of the in-between and the specifics.

In fact, quite a few memories from even the co-conning were instead "given" to Beast and Killer. That's not exactly how it works but it's the best way I can describe it, based off my own experiences with co-conning with others -- sometimes you just don't end up getting the memories if there's multiple people in front, for one reason or another.

Anyhow, yeah, most memories of that day are kinda stuffed in the metaphorical closet. Chosen knows something happened between him confronting Dark and him ending up at home on the couch with a hole in the 2nd floor walls, but he just.. doesn't remember any of it. He can make the connections - he can look out the window and see the result of TSC's final blow to Dark from their house, after all. He can tell Dark isn't just hiding out somewhere. He's forgetful, not a fool. But he doesn't know what happened in the fight, or necessarily who killed Dark, and honestly Chosen's internal communication with his systemmates is absolute shit and there's no way in hell Killer OR Beast are leaving notes about a Really Traumatic Event in a journal for him, so his ass is NEVER finding out unless someone tells him.

[Which, to explain why he knows of TSC's powers in Wanted in that case, on some occasions memories do get ""passed"" from alter to alter. This is usually done in the case of "filling in" for the host, for example, where the alter requires information that another alter had taken in. This is commonly seen in situations where, for instance, a system is out at the store, but whoever entered had switched out for one reason or another, and the new fronter needs to mask as the other one to finish their task without "giving away" that something happened. This isn't the most common thing for Everyone I'd say, but it happens with my system sometimes, and also happens with some of my system buddies too. Thus, in my mind, it happens to Chosen too sometimes. It doesn't ALWAYS happen! Ie, that time Killer had no idea who Dark was. But it Can and so I'm portraying it here lol.]

5: Also, what are Chosen, Killer's and Beasts pronouns? I assume they differ from eachother. And are your Chosen and Dark siblings?

They do, yeah! While I've seen some systems sorta default to one or two sets of pronouns collectively, a lot of alters DO have preferences for pronouns pretty commonly. I mean, I myself vary wildly from some of my systemmates, a lot of whom, for example, use she/her, but I myself don't at all! It's honestly pretty interesting to see the differences, from a curiosity standpoint.

Anyways, back to Chosen. I would once again like to state that these are my personal headcanons and also I don't own Killer OR Beast, I'm just giving them character, and thus not everyone may agree necessarily.

Chosen: He/him primarily, but doesn't mind they/them too. He's kinda like that one tweet that's like "I think I'm nonbinary but I have a job so idc about that right now" in a way lol

Killer: They/them. Has a very wavery sense of identity though, so it's not like they'll get mad or anything at other pronoun usage. They honestly encourage people to get a little fun with it.

Beast: It/it's. Not in a dehumanizing way, but in a reclaiming sort of way.

Lastly, in my interp of Chosen and Dark, they are indeed siblings, yeah! I really adore the headcanon of all 4 hollowheads being siblings, it makes me incredibly happy, so it's like that in pretty much all of my interps/AUs. If it's work done by me, you can probably assue Chosen and Dark are related lol.

anyway yeah that's about it i'd say :] once again i love you so very much for asking questions, and i hope these answered them and didn't just run you in circles for twenty minutes ! i do have a bit of a habit of just yapping on and on and not being very clear, so if anything doesn't make sense or if you want me to expand on any points, or even if i've just repeated or even contradicted myself, then feel free to point it out or ask anything else! ^_^

[ask-de-writer]

MET BY MOONLIGHT : (Part 1 of 3) : Flocking Bay

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MET BY MOONLIGHT

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

5740 words

© 2020 by Glen Ten-Eyck

written 2003 by Glen Ten-Eyck

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express written consent of the author or proper copyright holder.

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It was evening in Flocking Bay. My last patient had gone home hours before and I had finished up my day’s lab work, ground the last lens, and eaten a leisurely dinner. The second day of July was a fine one and I planned a quiet stroll by the last light of the sun and to finish by the light of the full moon which would not set until almost morning.

The long shadow of the ridge behind the town had covered my home and place of business, The Blackwall Street Ophthalmology Clinic, an hour before. As I sauntered along Blackwall, which ran across the back of the town, just under the ridge, I admired the lush green foliage fading toward black as the sunlight failed. I like the evening and the dark.

My ramble had taken me up the street nearly a mile. By now, the full moon was providing all of the light. The sun was just a glow of memory beyond the ridge. I passed the old Hilstrom House. It was the oldest house in Flocking Bay. Built in 1647 by the first Hilstrom. He had got the land for the town by shooting an Indian Shaman in the back. Peeling paint revealed hand squared beams and other details that showed its age. Many generations of Hilstroms had been born here, raised here and died here.

Seven years ago, the last of the Hilstroms had vanished. The courts had just declared him dead and now the place was due to go on the auction block for back taxes. I remembered all of the questions that I’d had to answer when it was realized that he had vanished — And I was the last to see him.

I had truthfully told them that I had last seen Mr Hilstrom in front of my clinic. Of course he was still there, – in slightly altered form – for any who knew what to look for. Only one living person that I was aware of did know what to look for. Myself.

I am the last descendant of the Marquost Shaman that the first Hilstrom had murdered by that shot in the back. That black deed and its bloody aftermath had gained the land upon which Flocking Bay had been built. The slaughter that followed that killing was the result of cooperation between white and Indian. The other tribes had not even coveted the Marquost land. They gave it away to the whites after they had used the whites to break the grip of our magic upon them.

The other Indians had sold the Marquost children into slavery with other tribes . . . a mistake. There has, as a result of that bit of greed, been a Marquost Shaman to hound them down the full tale of the years since the massacre in 1647. And the descendants of those Indians still think that the tribulations that they suffered are the result of white-man’s duplicity. . .

Hilstrom House was at the edge of town. Only a little further, just out of town, was the old Wikes place. I planned to turn around there and go back, loop through town, past the library to the waterfront and then back to my clinic. About four miles altogether.

I spent a short time contemplating the perfectly done, absolutely ugly, example of Carpenter Gothic architecture that was the old Wikes place. On my return, I became aware that I was being followed. At first glance, I would have thought that it was a wolf. That couldn’t be. The Maine Wolf has been extinct for over two hundred years.

It had to be a stray dog. Big dog. One of those Husky types, maybe. One good glimpse showed it to be a female. The dog kept its distance and I ceased to worry about it once I realized that it was not being hostile. Curious perhaps. I had no real fear.

Flocking Bay has little crime and few stray animals of any kind. Such crime as there is comes mostly from outsiders. We get along with a town constable and a justice of the peace.

The latter is a woman some thirty or forty years of age whom I met during the investigation of Mr Hilstrom’s disappearance.

I completed my walk and the dog followed me almost to my door. She paused at the round black stones that line my walk and parking lot. Her hackles rose just a bit as she sniffed at the stones, in particular the one that used to be Mr Hilstrom . . .

The beast disappeared into the night more silently than a ghost.

The next morning I looked up animal control in Flocking Bay’s tiny phone book. I dialed the phone and it rang a number of times before it was picked up.

“Laelia Darkmoon, Justice of the Peace,” said the voice from the receiver cheerfully. “What can I do for you, Dr. Fredricks?”

“Hi Laelia. Isn’t caller I.D. wonderful? I must have dialed wrong. I wanted animal control.”

“No, you dialed right. I wear both hats. Lost a critter?”

“No, I don’t even know if I should bother you with this but last night I saw a big stray dog. No collar, looked to be sort of a Husky-Wolf hybrid or something. I was out for a walk and it followed me from the woods out near the old Wikes place.”

She laughed, “I know it. Don’t worry. It’ll never harm a soul. Grey, white blaze, bit of a ruff at the neck, straight tail with long hair?”

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Only a few times. It’s the Flocking Bay werewolf. Not really a werewolf. It seems to be the very last Maine wolf. It wouldn’t matter if it did hurt somebody. It’s protected to the hilt by the Endangered Species Act.”

“Why’d you call it a werewolf?”

“Due to better light, its mostly seen at or near the full moon. It’s there anytime though, don’t worry about that. It’s real enough.”

“Thanks for telling me about the wolf. That was fascinating. I’ve only met you professionally. Coffee and the pastry of your choice at the Stone Oven, noonish, say?”

“You’re on. See you there.”

I got through my morning appointments without any problems. Simple glasses, a set of contacts, all the usual minor difficulties. I told my receptionist that I would be out for two hours at lunch.

Allison grinned at me. “Got a hot lunch date, Doc?”

“You wish,” I retorted with an equal grin. “I’m going to go talk to the Justice of the Peace about a wolf that I saw last night.”

“You saw the wolf?” asked Allison, wide-eyed. Wistfully she added, “I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve only heard other people talk about it.”

“I really saw it. I thought it was a stray dog until Laelia set me straight about it. It came right up onto the front walk of the Clinic.”

“It did?” She pointed, “You mean right out there?”

“Yes. Say, Allison, why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? My dime. Go take out your little sailboat or something. Enjoy.”

With a “Thanks, Doc!” thrown over her shoulder she was gone before I could change my mind. I locked up and walked down toward the waterfront. The Stone Oven Bake and Coffee Shop was only a block back from the water and had a nice view through a small park to the docks and the sea.

Laelia was waiting for me at a small table out in front. She was a large, spare woman, nearly 5'9" tall, with gray-black hair that had a white streak near the center of her forehead and icily blue eyes. I could not even make a guess at her age. Belying her otherwise formidable appearance was a smile of genuine warmth.

One of my little accomplishments is the reading of heraldry and she had a pin shaped like an escutcheon that could be heraldically interpreted. “Sable, wolf’s head proper erased argent, in the sinister chief an anulet argent,” I read.

She looked startled and then laughed. I liked that. She had a good laugh. “Not many can read that pin. It’s an heirloom. The family crest from the old country.”

“It looks like a wolf under a new moon,” I said and added, “Just coffee and pastry or would you like lunch? They have a fabulous stew served in a fresh baked bread bowl here. I can smell that it’s ready.”

“Lunch sounds and smells fabulous,” Laelia said stretching in an animal-like fashion. “The pin does represent a wolf under a new moon. Our family name was unpronounceably Polish before it became Darkmoon. That was a long time ago, though. 1648, I think.”

“Truly interesting.” I said as I seated myself. “Few know much at all of events that far removed in time. I had people here in Flocking Bay but the last of them was gone in 1647.”

She looked at me curiously and said, “1647? That was the Year of Founding, as they called it in the Annals of the Township. The Year of the Massacre would be more like it, I think.”

Slightly on my guard, I asked, “What do you know of the Marquost massacre? Most people haven’t even heard of it.”

“Did I tell you that local history is one of my hobbies?” she asked. “I have the complete Darkmoon Diaries, the older Hilstrom Diaries, the Annals of the Township – 1647 through 1882, and a long standing friendship with Mrs. Alderman, the Librarian. What she can’t lay hands on, hasn’t even been rumored to exist.”

I laughed. “I, too, have met the formidable Mrs. Alderman. Have you seen her file on the Wikes place? Now there is a mystery for a long winter night!”

I was surprised at the grimness of her response. “I not only have seen it, I entered a legal true copy into the Court Records when I got the order to block further sales of that house. Sixty innocent people have disappeared there!”

She relented and added, “Both the Township and Flocking Bay Realty opposed the order. The Township cited the loss of tax revenue from the estates of the missing persons!

“Flocking Bay Realty tried to cite loss of income by using the historic sales record. I asked if they wished to be named as accomplices in an investigation into the deliberate disappearance and probable death of sixty people. They shut up.”

Next==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

[psalloacappella]

Sirens - CH 5

Title: Sirens Pairing: SasuSaku Chapter: Ao3 | FF Rating:  M

Additional Notes:  new cast alert, enter Ino!; spicy; sad; Sasuke kind of a SIMP; make some noise; some parts nsfw .

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And so again, he finds himself on some surreal plane of existence where there’s another unfamiliar pretty girl in his kitchen, hailing from fuck knows where, tossed onto earth in a momentary absurdity — arriving on a magic carpet or hot air balloon. Often a silent observer to conversations weighty with importance, he has the talent of existing in a room and giving the impression he’s somehow hearing everything and nothing in the same moment.

Introductions dispensed. Coffee and food, he’s learned, always serve as a sufficient social lubricant and functions as the perfect excuse to give them time together to untangle a conversation that sounds like an argument they’ve been having for several years of their lives, the type of historical artifacts that define the best relationships; they’re familiar echoes of the bond of a brother long broken and a best friend that he’s sure has extended much more grace than he’s deserved.

Fingers linger on the handles of mugs, grasp them and set them down, pantomiming and gesturing and weaving stories about people he doesn’t know and passing tokens of lives lived in a separate dimension than his. It’s odd, how the histories of others intertwine and as people share pieces of themselves they fill in the empty questions to create bonds anew, the pasts and presents overlapping, echoing and transforming in layers and rings as carbon dating. The details that follow in the tracks of family lines and secrets.

If he listens, he’ll be able to glean the things this girl has such a difficult time telling him.

“You know it’s hard for your friends when you do this,” Ino chides, reaching forward to flick a lock of her pink hair. A cherished gesture, the type only people so close will tolerate. “Disappear and resurface hundreds of miles away, always moving, never checking in.”

“You should be used to it by now.” Sakura takes a sip of coffee to hide the slight waver in her voice. It gives Sasuke pause and he glances at her over his shoulder from his sentinel role at the stove.

The tint of her drink reminds him of a specific shade of paint, a desultory memory of his home — Saint Martin Sand.

“And every time we come together again, I tell you, stop punishing yourself for no reason. At least this time you’ve made some friends. Cute ones.” Ino watches him watch Sakura and their eyes meet — he breaks it with the slightest blush.

The glitter in her eyes is so knowing, so like Naruto’s, he wonders if he should have taken a long walk instead.

“So let’s just lay this on the table,” Ino continues, setting down her mug with a sharp sound. “You two are a thing, and judging by that ridiculous soap opera outside, you’ve been staying here with him?”

“We’re not together— ”

“Yes, yes, you don’t date, I know.” Ino waves a hand, sweeping away her fruitless protestations. Lifting her chin, she says to Sasuke, “I didn’t mean to join in, it’s just, I finally find her and she’s getting chased by some guy, you can see how I could’ve had the wrong idea.”

“I understand,” Sasuke responds, not turning around. “You two are very close.”

“A man of many words.” Ino refocuses on Sakura, who’s running her fingernail on the lip of the mug, staring into coffee the shade of tropical sand. “As long as he’s kind to you, I suppose I can’t show up and start analyzing it.”

“But you will,” Sakura says, grinning.

“Of course I have a million questions; you’re terrible at keeping in touch. For starters, why is your ankle busted?”

With a bleak groan, Sakura lets her face fall into her hands, fingers sinking into her hair. Ino laughs in a weary way, the love of years so lush and apparent throughout, and their feet tap one another under the table. Both pass the heel of a hand underneath their eyes, a quick swipe, gestures in a mirror.

“Are you going to come sit with us or what?” Ino snarks, fearless in her insistence. A similar frankness that Sakura has in her best moments which take peeled layers to surface. Sasuke wonders just where and when their paths forked, and how those laden with cracks in the soul are lucky enough to find supports like these. Adjusting breakfast to a simmer, he brings his own coffee to take up a seat on an adjacent table side, between them.

“So — how did you two meet?” she asks, tapping the table with each word. Eyes hungry for details, she sways left and right, waiting for one of them to indulge her.

“Ah—”

“Well—”

“He’s a fan of my radio show,” Sakura finally articulates. “He and Naruto — his friend, own a bar and they called in, and honestly I was so curious so I ended up coming in a few days later. And the rest is history.”

Ino smiles. “So how long is that history, two, three weeks?”

Sasuke busies himself with copious coffee drinking, aware he’ll run out before being able to leave the table.

“That’s so cute, it’s nauseating,” Ino adds, grinning at Sasuke. Amused by his embarrassment and baffled that a guy so handsome is sitting here being twisted into knots by a little gossip and interest. She must drive him crazy.

As she watches both of them glance away, askance, eyes on anything but one another, knowing Sakura as well as she does means this dynamic and situation for her is a new foray, an unusual wrinkle and snag in her usual routine of cut and run.

She likes him too. And this, out of all of it, is the most unusual development for her friend that routinely rips up her roots or rarely stays long enough to grow them; the girl that’s been afraid to breathe the same air for one too many heartbeats in fear of making mistakes, taking what she deserves.

And the longer Ino sees Sasuke’s handsome face up close — messy dark hair, charcoal, sharp eyes, the patrician slope of his nose — there’s thoughts sifting in that slippery layer of the unconscious, shifting as sand in soft winds. A sense she’s missing a crucial detail in a larger game.

“You definitely had a good first night with this one. I know, I can tell.” Refusing pretense, Ino drops this on the table and sips with a satisfied smile.

“Pig, please!” Sakura sounds annoyed, but it still marries a soft, scolding tone to what must be a childhood, agreed-upon name.

Scrunching up her face, Ino taps her forehead twice. Children making faces on glass windows or at one another on a playground, a reference to simpler times. They grew up together bonded by dirty knees and whispered secrets. Not unlike the way Sasuke and his brother were so long ago, before they were groomed, primed for their inescapable roles: A reprieve from destiny is not the pardon.

All three startle at the sound of jangling keys; Sasuke, with his back to the door, turns in his seat and throws a careless arm over the back of the chair. Glancing back to Sakura, they exchange a small ghost of a smile, a hidden and intimate reference to experiences only privy to them.

“‘Kay, Sasuke, I know you told me not to just walk into your apartment, ‘specially now that you’ve had this super cute girl around, but this is definitely, totally—”

When he sees Ino at the end of the table, Sasuke gracing him with the woebegone, tired expression that he always receives when intruding, and Sakura smiling at his arrival, he stops in his tracks over the threshold.

Naruto’s mouth falls open with impunity. Sakura waves at him.

“ — important,” Naruto finishes, closing the door with his foot behind him. Shoulders sagging, he tosses his keys on the counter and whines. “Unreal, man. You found another one. An impossibly attractive girl and now they’re both in your damn kitchen!”

Ino points at him, palm facing up, in a lazy gesture. “Who’s this dork?”

“That’s his best friend,” Sakura says, nodding at Sasuke.

“Seriously? This guy?”

“Naruto,” Sasuke begins, running a hand through his messy hair, “the fuck did I tell you about walking in like this? Just knock. Or as you remind me, we have phones.”

“Well maybe you should start putting up a sign or something, or a sock on the door or some shit, because I can’t keep up with your life.” Without invitation, Naruto helps himself to coffee and continues rambling while lifting the lid to inspect the simmering food. “Or better yet you could let me know when you’re just befriending beautiful women and where exactly you find them, because you have zero interest in the ones at the bar.”

“Listen, uh, what’s your name? Naruto, you said? Sasuke and I haven’t had the pleasure of—” Ino breaks off, hissing ow! under her breath from a well-placed kick. “It’s not like that. I’m Sakura’s friend — I’m like the you to him,” she says, pointing to each of them respectively to illustrate her point. “So relax, because I’m assuming you’re joining us.”

Sakura starts laughing while Naruto drops the lid back onto the pan and stares, mouth in a perfect, round “O.”

Smiling wide, Ino preens in the manner of an exotic species so very cognizant of its worth.

“So, go back to the part where I’m impossibly attractive.”

.

.

.

Sasuke’s second breakfast consisting of people other than Naruto and himself sails by in the way time well-spent feels warm and sublime. The buoyancy of laughter and a tentative kindling, the way it proceeds through a fated narrative as each piece settles into its destined groove. Naruto, unstoppable from the glow of caffeine, breakfast he didn’t make, and an attractive blonde, narrates the dramatic and fated meeting of his best friend and this radio girl of the night in sordid detail, to Ino’s delight. Sakura interjects to correct notions along the way, and Sasuke abandons fantasies of pitching him off the balcony or dropping him down the fire escape, instead settling for heavy sighs and staring at her while she speaks, as she augments the conversation with slender hands and pointed fingers.

“So then last night he rushed off to save her from the police station. I mean, I was worried too obviously. And . . . I don’t know what all happened after that. You never called.”

Both of them with widened eyes, a clear giveaway as any of all the details that sound ludicrous in the light of day. This time, it’s Sasuke who speaks.

“All I did was pick her up. She was helping someone out and the police needed to speak with her to confirm things.” Taking a quiet sip of coffee, he adds, “She didn’t need saving.”

Sakura’s eyes soften, and she drops her eyes to the remnants of her breakfast.

Ino sighs, setting her fork on her empty plate with a clink. “Knowing her, she beat ‘em up herself.”

“Come on, Ino, why don’t you just tell him all of my embarrassing stories?” Sakura pouts, a joke laced with the tiniest warning, a rough string tightening. “More importantly, I need your help with something.”

“Name it,” Ino says. “I have all the time in the world! I’m staying at a hotel, trying to get a real feel for the city. Never been here, you know, and I’d like to stay a while before—” She breaks off, glancing at Sasuke, and changes tack. “I haven’t seen you in a long time, that’s all.”

“Work is having an event, and I think it’s fancy, very high-class, you know. Those things make me so uncomfortable.”

“I always tell you, everyone’s faking it at those events. You’re sweet enough to muddle your way through one night.” Ino looks Sasuke directly in the eyes; he has the distinct feeling she’s untangling him, and this, and that she has the tenacity to see it through.

“These are rich people, Ino. I’m a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and I don’t belong there.”

The comment piques Naruto’s interest momentarily and he tilts his head; Sasuke watches her closely.

“Don’t start that,” Ino warns, again waving away her concerns easily.

“Apparently it’s not the radio subsidiary itself, but the parent company. The night I was working I think the man I spoke with was the owner, the CEO."

Eyes alight, Ino reaches for her bag slung over the back of the chair and pulls out a thin, light laptop. Pushing aside her empty dishes, she boots it up in half a second and waits for details, eager fingers poised over the keys. “Tell me details.”

“Tall, pale eyes. A stoic sort of guy. Brunette, very long hair. Like yours,” Sakura says to her, “and just as cared for.”

“So very pretty, your usual type, heh,” Ino teases. Her fingers fly over the keys. “I might have an idea . . .”

“Ino has a well-known family,” Sakura explains to Sasuke. Touches his arm in a soft gesture to hold his attention, not that he’s ever able to be distracted away from her. “The Yamanakas?”

Waving blithely, Ino rejects the notion. “We aren’t that regal, please. We’re in a totally different universe than, say, the Uzumaki’s.”

A full ten seconds passes before what she says registers on Naruto’s face. The typing continues at a lively pace. Sakura’s looking at him with a strange expression, an impassiveness that seems to be a projection, a mask, hiding twisting questions beneath. Naruto looks at Sasuke and opens his mouth —

— and all that comes is an ow! and tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

“Here we go,” Ino says, pulling back the attention of the group. Turning the laptop around for them to see, she points. “Neji Hyuuga, one of the youngest media moguls and owner of blah blah enterprises, took over when his dad passed away, the usual way it goes in families like these.”

The pale eyes remind her of the girl from the police station, and she looks to Sasuke as if for confirmation. Confirms it to her with an imperceptible nod.

“I assume there’s a press release,” Sakura says, intrigued.

“Of course. They probably control whoever writes about them anyway. Talk about a conflict of interest.” A relentless cadence of tapping keys, and her ocean eyes are just visible over the lid of the laptop. “‘Annual event, mighty and generous’, blah blah, ‘held at the historic but well-loved — wow, look at this place. It’s beautiful in that old money sort of way.

Chair legs scrape against the floor as they gather in a semicircle to read along, emitting whistles and comments here and there as they take in the grandiose venue and the Hyuuga family’s credentials. Sasuke, though, is quiet. Sakura’s eyes are wide, dazzled and intimidated by the prospect of all of it.

“Oh god, I can’t go to something like this,” she groans. “I’m going to look so stupid and out of place.”

“Sakura!” Ino pushes her chair back, startling the other two as they back out of her way. Taking her shoulders, she shakes her a little. “You have to go to an event like this. People bend over backwards maintaining relationships with this family and donate money just to potentially go to this! I know why you need me — to dress you, of course! This is supposed to happen; I know it.”

Sasuke takes Ino’s empty seat, eyes darting over the screen.

“Ino, you’re such a romantic. What am I even going to talk about with these people?”

“It doesn’t matter. These are basically playgrounds for the rich and famous. If you want to give your career a leg up, you have to do this.”

“My career?” Sakura snorts, shoulders sagging. Closing in on herself, an instinctual fear. “Ino, I failed out of pre-med and change leases as often as clothes. Now I do a radio show in the dead of night speaking with lonely people.”

“All the more reason to get out there and find people who can help you. Maybe it’s time to stop leaving with the wind and start trusting yourself. Besides,” she says, hands on her hips, daring her to disagree, “isn’t it time you let yourself have some fun?”

Sakura doesn’t answer, lips slightly parted and seeking a rebuke she doesn’t have. Whirling around, Ino demands of her new friends, “Back me up here!”

“Ah well, Sakura,” Naruto says, sheepish and red, “I’m with Ino, here on this one. And this is totally my own opinion because you’re really cool, and we’re friends now, I think. All these families know each other. It’s a ‘who’s who’ of important people in a lot of industries. And,” here he grins, eyes bright, “you can do and find whatever you want at an event like this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sakura asks.

“It means,” Ino says, cutting across his response, “that you will not be taking a walk of shame in a princess dress on a dingy train or in the back of a cab. You can stay in my hotel room downtown — it’s not far from the venue. You will arrive and leave from this event in style. If you come home, of course.” She winks with gusto.

“I’m borrowing this,” Sasuke says abruptly, picking up the laptop and taking his phone out of his pocket with his other hand. Ino shrugs, go for it. Taking up a seat in his own living room, he connects with someone on the phone and speaks to them in a tone relatively terse, his rich voice commanding as opposed to conciliatory.

The sound of his voice tips a smile onto Sakura’s face. Ino glances between the two and the understanding is a jolt of electricity, a hundred tiny neurons firing to complete the picture in the spark of a moment.

“You asked him already.”

“I’ve vetted him,” Sakura teases, and now it’s impossible to hide. The way the thought of him snatches the air out of her throat, the heavy swallow to recoup; green eyes consuming and caught in a mimeo of the past and Ino knows that it’s not him who has her, but he who has stumbled and tripped into her orbit. And Ino’s only ever seen her look at one other man this way; the nascent and feverish meeting of chance, the genesis of an endless chain reaction, atoms in a runaway chemical tryst. Ino had been present for it but somehow failed to notice everything that was wrong. All of it colliding in this moment as she sees the shadow of its consequence in her gaze.

“Thank you,” Sasuke says. With the slightest incline of his head, he returns the closed laptop to Ino and pockets his phone. Unable to tear her gaze away now, Ino struggles to form words as his fingers take Sakura’s elbow and he murmurs to her in an undertone. A talent of omitting others from his space if he chooses, even as they scrabble on the outside, a manipulation, or closer to a bewitchment, of reality.

Sakura looks down at her wrapped ankle, giving it a flex and wiggle. Ino knows he’s already doomed by the damned, and all she can do is give her futile warning and watch it play. Sasuke speaks again, but the chaotic buzzing in her ears drowns it all out.

Sakura folds her arms, resolute. “That’s so expensive, Sasuke. I’ve . . . never been anywhere that nice.”

And he tucks pink strands behind her ear in the crackling and kindling of the atmosphere difficult to breathe in.

“And a suite? What could we possibly do with all that space?”

But there’s a smile seeping into the corner of her lips, and his suggestive silence leaves myriad answers.

“You have a balcony.” Ino raises her voice, pulling them back to reality. “Show me it?”

Sasuke shrugs in genuine indifference; Sakura narrows her eyes. “You just want to interrogate him. Please don’t scare him away — I’ll do it soon enough.”

Ino brushes past them and throws aside the sliding glass door, styled French, reflecting that this isn’t the type of man many likely manage to forcibly do much of anything. It may be curiosity or out of deference to the woman he’s entangled with, but he follows without complaint.

The door is barely closed before she bursts.

“Do you even know her, Sasuke?”

Furrows his eyebrows as if she’s a mildly interesting painting, but doesn’t respond to her immediately. Dark eyes glimmer with a suspicion that makes her shiver a little as they're turned on her, unflinching, a shadow in them she wasn’t expecting — likely the very thing that’s brought Sakura to it, a frenzied moth to light. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, the alluring visions in her eyes drowning him in an ocean similar to the stories, the schizophrenic and duplicitous nature of open family secrets.

“Do you even know who I am?”

“Please,” she snorts, surveying him. “Messy dark hair, that attitude of yours. Handsome nose. Those eyes.” At this, her gaze flits away to the horizon. “You’re an Uchiha.”

Though he doesn’t confirm, the way his gaze stays steady, level, and intense is enough.

“Granted,” she continues, “there are a lot of you, and you all have quite the strong genes, looking so much alike. You’re one of the most famous families in the country. And I think she has an idea, but it’s different when you don’t grow up hearing the stories; when you’re not in the same circles. She’s not like you.”

“If you have something to ask,” he says, “I’d rather we not dance around it.” The bite, the press of assertion.

Ino knows it’s everything Sakura has a taste for, a history of — a craving that’s always worth tearing apart at the tendons and roots.

“If I thought you’d be straightforward about it, I’d ask. I think you have no idea of the type of person you’re obsessed with.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t bother with denying it. You think I haven’t seen this before? Look . . . we do this all the time, run in circles. After she left town, and her parents died, I tried to keep up with her. She’s my best friend. She’s not ever out to ruin anyone but that’s what she usually does. Guys, just, they get wrapped up in her and then when it’s too serious for her, she leaves. She thinks she’s hard to love, like she’s cursed or blessed or something that ends up more like a sickness than something functional.”

The accuracy and plain verity of her words feels like a sharp jab to the chest.

“And I don’t know much about you as a person, but I do know what I’ve read and what I’ve heard.”

“You’re right,” Sasuke says. “You don’t know anything about me. And I don’t give time to gossip and rumors.”

“You don’t get it. She didn’t even have my number in her new phone, and she never keeps any. You know why? She expects people in her life to disappear, so she just leaves them first.”

Sasuke remembers the call to the bar, the number that would have been fresh in her mind or the one on file with the city, as opposed to his personal phone.

“She can’t stay away from certain types of people. Certain men. Everyone has a weakness, right? And that’s hers. The more I’m talking to you, seeing you around each other, I have the feeling your problem is the same.”

He’s certainly not in the mood for another woman too sharp for her own good. Avoiding her assessment, he deflects. “How did you even find her, then?”

“Trade secrets,” she says in a sardonic tone. “My father’s a, what do you call it, ‘analyst’ for the government.” She adds air quotes to make her point clear. “Sure that’s what he does. I can tell by the types of friends we had, all families who understood the culture. You only have gatherings like we did when your family’s, A, in the government or B, organized crime.” Tilting her head, she smirks. “You’d know.”

“So, family resources?”

“But really,” she laughs, “I just used the internet. It’s not so hard to do if you know enough about someone. We are best friends, after all.”

Like Sakura, it can be difficult to tell how close she is to sarcasm. A similar brand of mordancy. He takes Ino at her word with a nod.

“She’s smart. She probably has an idea of who you might be, maybe she’s trying not to know. And she’s never been one for gossip or celebrity news — she reads a lot, but always nerdy subjects. Well, that’s why she was going to be a doctor, I suppose.”

A silence. When he deigns to speak, Ino isn’t able to hide her surprise.

“She’s told me a bit about herself, but not much. I don’t think her and I are people who open up easily.”

“She used to be different,” Ino says wistfully. “But there are things in this life that are difficult to shake off; they hurt you so deeply you don’t heal. Or at least, you don’t heal correctly.”

“I’m guessing you won’t tell me what those things were?”

When she raises her sapphire eyes to his, she’s torn between spilling it all and knowing that a betrayal so significant would ruin a relationship with the only person she can still trust. Still, she’s terrified thinking about the prospects of either outcome with this man, knowing that he is madly, stupidly in love with a harbinger of chaos, and most don’t make it out of that web in one piece. Perhaps no one does, with her.

“That’s not my place,” she finally says. “Go with her and have fun. You strike me as someone who could use some, too. But I mean this in the kindest possible way — one day she’ll run, and she will leave. She can’t help herself. She . . . can’t stay away from the mess.”

Sasuke continues watching her in mild amusement. His smirk causes a nervous flutter in her stomach; Ino puzzles over his underreaction to her words.

Opening the door and gesturing her back inside, signaling the end of their conversation, he simply says, “I know.”

They rejoin the other two:  Sakura with her ankle propped up on a cushion and Naruto next to her babbling about what sounds like his childhood, tales of adventures and boring classes in private institutions, uniforms and study prep and a flush of love for parents long gone. Sasuke suspects now that the place and life she comes from is a world he’s not familiar with; when she nods and makes careful comments here and there, trying to carefully step around the gaps in her knowledge, that emotion swells again. That urge to drape her in finery and act as the constant indulgence she can use over and over, to absolutely and unequivocally hand her the keys to a kingdom. A compulsion to fulfill a need unspoken.

“Hey you, Naruto.” His babbling screeches to a halt, and he automatically catches the phone Ino tosses to him with a smile. “Let me get your number.”

The way his expression flips in an instant, confusion to an incandescent brightness, causes another fluttering. “Sure!”

Ino exchanges with each of them, and she notices as she wanders around their contacts in her surreptitious way that neither of them have Sakura’s last name in their phone. Filing that detail away for herself, her thumb hovers over the screen as she finishes her entry in Naruto’s phone and returns it.

When she looks at his contact card and sees the name Uzumaki, she taps to edit and adds a sunshine, grinning.

“By the way, if you’re planning to stay for a long time and don’t want to be in a hotel for all of that, I mean, I live across the hall. Just saying. That way you’re close to Sakura and people you know in a new city!”

Hand on her hip, Ino tries to keep her ego tamped down, if even just a little. “You’re so transparent.”

Horrified, he holds up his hands with palms out, shaking his head. “No, no, I have a guest bedroom, no one stays in it, really. I’m not trying anything funny.” Indicating Sakura, he laughs. “She’s punched two people in a month, and I’m one of them. If you’re her friend, I know what I’m up against.”

.

.

.

Growing up Sasuke was in his fair share of fights and scraps on the playground, and then older, in bars and with drunk friends — after his mother dies he will participate in and be the progenitor of so many more. Her scolding reverberates in his ear about all the reasons he shouldn’t mar his handsome, regal face, and he hears his father in these same memories dismissing her concerns, sneering that it’s good he toughens up in any way he can.

If his mother was still alive she wouldn’t know what to say to this behavior, these mistakes he’s making: Writhing beneath the burning touch of a tiny nymph with pink hair, splayed beneath her as if blown apart and pinned up by the limbs, lepidoptera, as she straddles him in a hitched-up navy skirt with the heels of her sandals etching divots into his skin that will soften and fade to beautiful bruises.

Two fingers in his mouth and her other hand working in a heated, rhythmic pace on his cock, he’s sure there would be a distinct lack of approval of being roughhoused by this girl with no name who seems to have the desire to leave him a shaking, gasping excuse for his family name.

He’s sure he would agree to let her kill him if she wanted; there’s almost nothing at this point that’s beyond the realm of reasonable requests. Especially with her pinning him without mercy, soaked and dripping between her thighs, a red and mottled flush surfacing through the skin of her chest and collarbones as she presses him into small submissions, the ways that men with faces like his don’t often experience.

(Returning from shopping with a large bag swinging from her hand, eyes bright despite her little limp. Volunteering information before he’s even apt to ask:  She loves it, and no he can’t see it yet, and she has work in a while but not quite yet. Ino’s out exploring the city accompanied by Naruto.)

And it’s what she doesn’t say but he hears in her voice, in the come-hithers and low tones and the space between them always feeling like an ache, an endless expanse that yearns for nothing but to be restitched and torn over again in repetitious revolutions, the drowning and resuscitation an addiction in itself. Coming together to pull apart and wound with another million fibers each time in a dazed and deadly isochronism.

Small and light like feathers and lips like morphine:  With her legs around his hips and fingers in his dark hair yanking him to expose the apple of his neck, she hisses

I want to hear you

Down the hallway and he does as she bids, gritting his teeth while her lips tour his neck and linger in his ears

I want your noise

And he tries to take her with him but she places her fingers on his chest and bounces him into the soft bedspread, straddling him, clawing at his shirt and maneuvering it over his head to toss it aside. Bites her lip as she raises her chin to gaze down on him, jade eyes and parted lips and rolling her hips in an agonizing move that tears a moan from his throat —

Good boy she says, good boy

And when she says it his pulse beats in a stilted cadence and his hips press up against her, desperate, unable to touch enough of her like this and how did he fucking end up here, with her still clothed and him barely so while coaxing the full beautiful, colorful continuum of human sounds from his throat, sounds he’s stymied to know or possess and why when she calls him this his breath hitches, a choke, a reaction he’s unable to hide, not the least when her slim fingers reach for him, the scrape of her nails on his belt

Hips jerking and shuddering again as she takes him into her hand

It’s unfair how attractive you are, Sasuke

Like before he reaches for her, the calluses of his fingers dragging across her canvas of skin on fire and

she slaps them away, clicking her tongue in admonishment, he doesn’t learn

I meant what I said; that’s no way to get me to help you

Swallows down the pathetic word that sits as a lump in his throat, the one she’s aiming for and he doesn’t know how she knows it’s there but she’ll tear it from him no matter how many minutes a breakdown takes, and great fucking god he’s about to give it to her under duress of those soft silk fingers, the same ones that hold coffee mugs and command his attention and tell stories but now they feel like they’re where they belong, pumping him with the practiced and smooth movements of one who wields control so precise

Fuck, Sa-Sakura, fuck

Oh sweetheart, that’s not what quite I’m looking for

The first time a finger finds its way past his lips and into his mouth, open and panting and wanting already, the jolt and shudder and full roiling of his lean, fit body forces a breathy gasp from her own; the dangerous rock of her own hips she indulges in leaves her eyelashes fluttering shut in glimmering repose.

The tang, it bursts on his tongue

Unable to process the taste — salt, sweat, musk, the liminal zest between his and hers impossible to sift between

Then another long, slim finger in his mouth and here she persists again, ruthless and divine in and inhuman and the unceasing rhythm as she works him stays just a single syncopated note from release, as if she knows the precise rhythm and flow in which they could collide

Please

I want to hear you, Sasuke

Incoherent, torn him from him as skin from fruit, the feathering of plumage

Please — !

That laugh, spreading and coating as viscid honey, dense and lush and soaking him down

You’re so good, you know. I know men like you hate this

— the buckles of her heeled sandals patterning friction on the skin of thighs and the repetitive sticky scrapes of well-worn athletic tape as she holds him, cages him—

but you just look so good like this, I love you like this

So precious, she reflects for a moment, taking him in, wasted and dashed and black pupils blown as his eyes lose focus for a moment. Removes her fingers from his mouth with a wet hollowing sound that brings with it a guttural groan, throaty and incoherent

And the absolutely desperate pitch at the close

undoes her and she yanks him up by the hair, scrabbling at the bare skin of his shoulders with her fingernails and kisses him, when he lifts her so easily and they fumble with flimsy and frustrating fabrics until she settles on him again with a moan, filled to the brim and lost in brilliance

stuttering out his name in his ear in ways that make her forget she doesn’t plan for forevers.

.

.

.

“Dude.”

Naruto snaps his fingers in front of Sasuke’s twice, thrice. A flicker of recognition and reality surfaces and he blinks, swatting away his friend’s hand.

“Don’t.”

“Oh I’m sorry, you’ve just been spaced the fuck out for ten minutes.”

“I doubt that,” Sasuke says tartly, plucking a piece of paper from the office desk and pretending to consider it. Careful ignorance seems preferable to enduring the endless taunting and ribbing from Naruto, and lately that’s been nothing less than a guarantee.

“Okay, a minute or so, but you look blown out. Wasted. I can’t put my finger on it. Do you feel sick?”

“Shut up, will you? I’m—”

“Sad?”

“Working,” he finishes firmly.

“Nah, yer not.”

Naruto folds his arms and squints at Sasuke, then takes a meandering lap around the back office, hemming and hawing.

Though he’s not concentrating on any numbers in front of him, he loses focus again, flatlines, lost in a dream. Contented.

Naruto punches his fist into his hand opposite, shaking his head with a laugh. “I’m an idiot.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

“She laid you out, didn’t she? Sent you on a ride. What obscenely tight part of you did she get into?”

Sasuke leans back in the office chair, folding his arms. Avoiding his eyes and the flickering heat in his face that threatens to give him away, like he’s a little boy. “Fuck off.”

“I’m definitely going to ask her what she did to you. You’re like, bright. Glowing? I’ve heard that word. It’s coming off you in, like, waves.”

“If you ever say that word around me again,” Sasuke says, snatching up a stapler, “They won’t find your body.”

Raising it, Sasuke pretends to throw it — Naruto flinches. Relaxes.

Sasuke whips it at him anyway.

“Ow! Temper, tsk tsk,” Naruto teases, rubbing his arm where it hit.

Shikamaru strolls in with his hand in his pockets, sighing. “Ah, Sasuke, there’s someone asking about you at the bar. He’s been hanging around for a while and I don’t think he’s leaving. I figured if he knew you, he’d contact you directly, but—”

“Hey, hey Shikamaru,” Naruto interrupts. “Look at him. He’s too busy being lost in—”

“Who is he?” Sasuke asks. “What does he look like?”

“Eh, honestly, he looks a lot like you. Older, maybe? Same eyes, spiky hair.”

A lurching, a twisting in the gut. The expression on his face foreboding enough that both of them move swiftly out of his path as he heads for the front, adrenaline pouring into his limbs, readying for a brawl.

When he arrives, however, nothing’s left but the wrinkled napkin, weathered and worn from dallying fingers and the perspiring empty glass, drunk to its dregs.

For a moment Sasuke gazes across the bar — a slower night with lingering groups in booths and a few scattered and two-top tables. No one remains that looks like him, not even close.

After all, he can always feel them in a crowd. As if bonded by invisible strings, always forced into the productions and whims of the family, it being a force so much darker and greater than himself. The portraits in the old house halls with a multitude of photographs in varying time periods and shades, an illustration of consolidated privilege and sovereignty. Far from the old ways things used to be done but nevertheless woven into the fabric of societal institutions in a manner so deft and desecrating.

The things his brother had always hated, railing against it in quiet dissent.

And in the end he had made his point, violent and vehement in a final way.

It rises, a pain in his chest and an unbidden, murky memory of the way his father slammed his hands on the table, again and again in an unceasing rhythm and his finger so close to his brother’s face he was sure it wouldn’t make it through the argument. As the years aged them all, he had begun to reject the authoritarian notion and the name. Perhaps it had broken him more than Sasuke had been able to understand.

When he remembers it again and he’s unable to breathe, he hates how he grasps the counter and gropes for the nearest bottle, and he would lunge for paint thinner if it made it all stop — the echoes of potent rage rising to a crushing din

You don’t bring people like that around — !

Never again — !

You

don’t bring

her here — !

[hanramm156]

Rammstein Family Game: Get to know me! (Warning: a long ramble)

I’m honored to be tagged by @cherrisplace​ and @momoredcrow​. ^^ It’s been a pleasure to read other people’s Rammstein memories and opinions, so here comes mine as well. Writing is one of those rare things that keep me sane during this crazy season, so I apologize this being super long. More rambling is probably coming when everything’s cancelled and I have nothing else to do.

Rules: There are no rules. Tag whoever you want. Don’t tag yourself. Tag yourself. You don’t have to answer all the questions. Do what you please. Have fun.

Created by: @vapor-stein

1. I’m curious: when did you discover Rammstein?

2004 properly, but I might have heard Du hast or other popular songs even earlier.

2. Tell me your story. How did you discover them?

As said, it was 2004 and I was watching some random Finnish music show. Back in the days, I watched a lot of music videos from the tv and recorded my favorite ones to VHS. One evening Rammstein’s Amerika came from the show and I was like “??? What on earth is this??? Sounds interesting…”. I wasn’t into metal music back then (I mostly listened to indiepop and alternative rock), but for whatever reason, I got hooked instantly to this German band’s dark, eerie sound. It was refreshing to hear something else than English and the video was also thrilling.

Rammstein had intruded my mind already, but the final straw was when I saw the Mein Teil video. I liked both the song and the video A LOT - so much that I even felt kinda “dirty” for liking something this dark. A 14-year-old me was constantly asking from myself that: “am I even allowed to like this kind of stuff this much?”. The backstory for the song was creepy, but so mesmerizing – like I had been introduced to the darkest corners of human mind: yes, this kind of stuff happens, and we shouldn’t close our eyes from it. So next, the only thing I could do was to buy Reise, reise album, listen to it on loop and sketch my German notebook full of Rammstein lyrics. Here’s a proof:

I have so many stories about my relationship to Rammstein that I might have to write them all down now when there’s a lot of time.

3. Favourite song?

This topic would be worth a novel itself, but here are some of my favorites:

Asche zu Asche – So badass, gives me such an energy every time – plus, not to forget the burning microphones and SILVER REESH!

Bück dich – Yes, it’s a horrible story once again in this song, but I can’t help but to admit that the song is freaking catchy and in a weird way, hot. Also, there’s a funny backstory when I was in 9th grade and we almost performed this song in our official graduation party with my boyfriend and a bunch of our friends (maybe good that the idea was abandoned in the end…). We had a vague clue what the song was about, but we just thought it was funny – also, our German teacher dressed always in leather and loved Rammstein (she played us Bestrafe mich during one class and I’ll always remember the awkward atmosphere) so we were thinking to dedicate the song to her for as our goodbye. XDD Seriously, why I have been so weird for all my life…

Sehnsucht – In most of the pop songs, longing is described by tender words and soft lyrics, but not in Rammstein’s case. I’ve had this weird feeling of “longing” all my life that I can’t describe properly. It’s kind of an inner emptiness, only arts and music can help to deal with it when it hits. I think Sehnsucht describes so realistically what is longing about in reality: it’s this angry pressure in your heart which you want to get out of your chest but can’t. In the end, you just want to scream your lungs out.

Mein Herz brennt – Powerful song that always gives me goosebumps. I can’t even explain why. Maybe the fact that “tough” men being emotional is my soft spot and Rammstein hits that spot hard.

Links 2-3-4 – I have always been kind of a rebel and I feel like when everyone else is going to the “right” I have to go to the left, to the unknown. My heart is longing for adventure, for the paths the others are not going. I dunno, but this is such a powerful song for me. When I hear it, I always just want to jump around. In Tampere concert I went totally nuts when Links started as the second song, lol. From that moment I felt like I was back home with my boys.

Mein Teil – No need for further explanations anymore.

Los – The harmonica solo!!! The dropped c tuning and the acoustic sounds!! I love it.

Amour – My favorite R+ ballad. I confess that I listen to this and think about the lyrics when I’m in the mood for writing something painfully romantic.

Weit weg – There’s this painful longing once again that always resonates to me. I listened this to a lot after the “after blues” of Ratina concert.

Tattoo – A song that I didn’t care about so much at first, but for whatever reason, it’s almost my favorite from the new album nowadays. It’s catchy as hell and I like the “rattling” guitar riffs.

4. Least favourite song? Come on. I know you have one.

Feuer frei – Too much Vin Diesel vibes. I also get a picture of drunken, middle-aged Finnish guys on a R+ gig who don’t care about to band, but just want to have a party of their life and get drunk, far away from their wives. (No offense to anyone, but as music is almost like a religion to me, I can’t help but to have a bit of disrespect for kind of people who just “consume” music.)

Pussy – Both musically and lyrically, so bad, but I get the point the guys tried to give with this nonsense.

5. Favourite album? & 6. Least favourite album? aka. I ramble about all the albums.

Tough one… as the rules were vague, I decided to have a short opinion about each of the albums.

Herzeleid – Summary: a bunch of guys, born and raised in DDR, are tired of everything so they get together and play aggressive songs - you can almost smell the testosterone miles away while you are listening to this album. I have to admit that I love this album even though it’s not musically super creative. It’s just raw men with raw feelings – and I have to say, it works for me.

Sehnsucht – I was creeped out of the album art as a teenager, lol. But yeah, musically improved from the former one and there are some classic songs that make Rammstein as they are nowadays. I listen to this often when I’m driving.

Mutter – The album that they had the most struggles with if I have understood correctly. The pain can be heard through the songs and it’s so honest and raw. I lost my friend in 2004 tragically and this album was one of the things that kept me sane back then. Especially the beginning of the album (MHB, Links, Sonne) hits me hard in the guts.

Reise, reise – The album that started all this hype in me, so it has a special place in my heart. I also liked how they tried something different to their usual sounds in this one, like orchestral and acoustic songs.

Rosenrot – To be honest, this album has always left me a bit “cold”, so I cannot even make a real opinion of it. There are some good moments though, like Mann gegen Mann that really speaks to me.

Untitled: This has been on the loop since last August and I was honestly surprised how good the album was. I hadn’t listened to Rammstein for a while, but when I got this album to my hands after the concert, holy shit it hit me. I like hearing the path the guys have gone: their new music is much more mature than the first angry albums. Also, I love Till’s poetry in this one, like Was ich liebe and Weit weg.

I think I answered the question #7 already, so I’ll skip to #8.

8. Unpopular opinion about a member? A scandal? Anything?

Even though I appreciate Till as an artist and a poet, I don’t find his appearance attractive. You can throw rotten tomatoes at me now, but this is just my opinion, no means to offend anyone. Maybe the reason is that my taste for men tends to go for androgynous side, so I am not drawn towards very masculine men.

I’m not interested in Lindemann project and I don’t like their music so much, but the tour looked entertaining though. I bet all the people who attended had a lot of fun.

How Richard pronounces English is extremely sexy to my ear, even though it clearly sounds like a German guy trying to sound American - still, it’s like honey to my ears. Stupid man who makes my knees weak with everything he does.

I hate to admit that I don’t like Ohne dich so much. I don’t know why. :(

9. Have you ever seen them live? Tell me what you felt.

Three times this far! Oh man, I could talk about for hours how the concerts have made me feel, but I try to be reasonable now.

Ruisrock, Turku, 2005 – My first time seeing them live – and going to a festival without any adult supervision, so it was a special experience overall – and they blew my mind. It was raining and thundering and we were completely soaked with my friends, but it was worth it!

Bonus for everyone who managed to read this far: teenage me waiting for Rammstein to start playing, looking so badass with my denim jacket and R+ logo drawn with eyeliner. :D

Hartwall Arena, Helsinki, 2012: We went to the show together with my boyfriend to celebrate Valentine’s day and holy shiiiiit it was awesome. Hands down one of the best evenings of my life. I was so hooked to Rammstein afterward that when we were at my bf’s family’s cottage, his brother had to tell me to stop blasting Herzeleid all the time in the kitchen. :’D

Ratina Stadium, Tampere, 2019: Aka. byebye my life, say hello to fics, listening to the band all over again, stupid memes and all the content this fandom creates. I fell in love again with Rammstein during this concert.

I have tickets for Düsseldorf and Tallinn, but now I can only wait and stress that will Corona ruin everything. In that case, I’ll weep alone and write fics about the tour 2020 that ended up never happening.

10. Do you play any instruments? If you do can you play any song by them?

Yeah, I play guitar and piano but nowadays I mostly sing. Rammstein songs are super easy to play with guitar and I recently learnt to play Tattoo and Sex. Have been practicing Engle on piano as well. Some songs I like to sing are Deutschland, Tattoo and Engel. The “speaking” parts are difficult though. ^^;

I’m not sure who I could tag to this who hasn’t done it already, but I’ll try my luck: @ah-its-too-much​ @soronya​ @einemelodie​ @xiaolianhuax​ @so-darya-darya​ @maximaembra​ @kvidasjuklingur​

[atmilliways]

((fic)) Hello, How Are You

One devastating turn deserves another, so this fic is brought to you by @calliopinot‘s Noon On A Tuesday (which you have to read in order for this to make the right amount of sense), plus these headcanons and also this one (thanks @spaceviking), and Hello by Adele but with a nicer ending. 

Oh, and an all day wine and food event with 40 participating wineries. Don’t worry, I only made it to 8. That’s not even my record, and I actually remember the end of the day. That’s a serious accomplishment in Zinfandel country.

Anyway, the end of this fic is sappy as hell and I’m not sorry at all about that.

Hello, How Are You

It had taken him years to come here because, really, he wasn’t a dumb kid anymore. With time and therapy, he’d outgrown the idea that his love and existence was so flawed that it destroyed anyone he cared for. 

Ironically, he now stood on the doorstep of the man who had first made him believe that, simply by being the first to be left standing. 

Toki checked the paper in his hand for probably the tenth time, wondering if he had misread Pickles’ messy scrawl — the house was just so ordinary. He had lived this way himself for decades now, of course, but somehow hadn’t expected it in connection with today, with the man he was hoping to see. It was only one story and modestly sized, with a bay window looking into a sparse but cozy living room. The yard was filled with ornamental grasses instead of a classic lawn and had a winding stone path through blooming roses and perennials. Real colors, when he tended to remember the place’s owner exclusively in grayscale and blond, as so much of their life had been back then. A part of him regretted ringing the doorbell as soon as he did it, but the sound of guitar arpeggios echoing through the house made the corner of his mouth twitch. 

Little touches, like that and the miniature wolf statue peering watchfully out from amidst the bushes by the door, assured him yes, Skwisgaar did live here. 

As Toki waited for someone to come to the door, absently twisting the wedding band he still wore, he heard the thumps and whines of various dogs jostling around inside. A muffled voice scolded them briefly and then the door swung open to reveal the same Skwisgaar that he remembered, black shirt and faded jeans and all, except for the silver at his temples and the lines that had crept into his face around the eyes. 

“Oh. Uh,” Skwisgaar said, staring. 

That was as far as he got before three huskies swarmed out from behind his legs. They milled around Toki’s legs, nosing at his hands and crotch inquisitively — so unruly compared to the golden lab mixes Abby’d had over the years, but those had all been well-trained service dogs. At least no one was trying to jump up and lick his face. 

“Nej, gets back heres you dumb goofballs...” Skwisgaar shooed the dogs back inside before shooting him a look that was both sheepish and curious. “Sorry. They gets, uh, pretty exciteds when people comes by. Don’t gets a lot of visitors here, you knows.” 

“Yeah, it was kind of hard to find.” His mouth felt so dry. Why was his mouth so dry? He also felt unaccountably stupid showing up in a button down shirt and khakis like this was some sort of job interview or something. Toki rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, wondering if this was how Skwisgaar had felt during that one visit years ago, so... thrown, by memories versus reality. 

They stood in awkward silence for a moment until Skwisgaar cleared his throat, still trying to hold back the tide of dogs. “So, you wants to come ins or something? I could meet you arounds on the back porch if you don’ts want to deals with these dildoes.” 

“Oh, it’s fines,” Toki said, then felt his face redden at the slip. All those years of Leah helping him with his English, the kids playfully teasing and correcting him on the occasional misplaced a plural or mispronunciation, apparently didn’t hold up to facing this fragment of his past. “I mean, I don’t mind dogs, as long as they don’t try to hump my leg or anything.” 

“That... Well.” Skwisgaar shuffled backwards, grabbing onto the collar of one of the huskies. “I just puts him in the music room for yous. The others am okays, come on ins.” 

Toki followed him inside, pulling the door shut behind himself and looking around. The entryway was fairly bare, just white walls and dark wood floors, about what he would have expected. “So you still play? I wasn’t sure, after you stopped doing that masterclass thing.” 

“Oh, you watched that?” Skwisgaar called back distractedly from deeper inside the house. 

“Luke did, when he was learning guitar.” Toki couldn’t help smiling a little, with no one there to see. “He got into metal for a while after he saw some pictures of me from the old days. I think it was the long hair. He never did want to cut his short.” 

There was the sound of a door slamming, and then the lanky blond reappeared with the remaining two dogs crowding at his heels. “Wasn’ts all you had was girls, last time I heards?” 

“Oh... Sorry, I forgot you wouldn’t know.” Toki shrugged. “He changed his name from Leah Jr. to Luke before college. It’s not a big deal. The hormone therapy is going really well, he’s starting to grow a beard now. It’s coming in the way mine did though, remember that time I tried growing it out? And it came in all patchy? I told him he might be better off with just a mustache, but who knows if he’ll listen to me, I’m just his dad or whatevers.” 

It occurred to him that he was rambling and that Skwisgaar was giving him a weird look — not one of the looks that meant Toki would have to punch him in the face in defense of his son, just one that wanted to point out they hadn’t spoken in almost fifteen years but, like, didn’t at the same time. It was an unexpectedly hopeful look, shuttered away after an instant as though it hadn’t been meant to be seen, and the implications tugged unpleasantly on Toki's insides. His mouth snapped shut and he followed the other man down the hall into a spacious and, again, mostly white living room. He could see a river winding past through the sliding glass door on the other side of the room. It was nice. 

“Have a seats, huuueeeeuuugghhhh, anywheres,” Skwisgaar said into the awkward silence, gesturing to the white couch. Or, the mostly white couch with a liberal dusting of husky hair on it, even in places where Toki wouldn’t have thought a dog that size could or would climb. It was probably also the reason there weren’t any of the plush fur throw rugs Toki remembered him preferring. “You want some coffee or anythings?” 

“No, I’m fine thanks.” 

“Okay. Uhhhhh... Anyways, ja, I plays,” he continued while Toki made himself comfortable. “Don’t really does much with its now, but sometimes Nathan wants a thing written for ones of those shows he ams working ons, he gives me a calls, Charles sends the checks in the mails, all thats. But it ams, you knows. A goods hobby.” Once his guest sat down in a tall but well-padded easy chair, he took the couch and immediately had two dogs happily vying for control of his lap. “What abouts you?” 

Toki looked down at his hands. “I still play sometimes. More since the kids all left home, but less than... since Leah.” 

Skwisgaar sighed. “I heards about that. Thoughts about going to pays my respects, but...” He gave a pained grimace that was, maybe, intended to be an apologetic smile. “Didn’ts really knows her, and Pickle tolds me it was probablies not the best ideas.” 

“Oh,” Toki said blankly. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Pickles had never mentioned Skwisgaar wanting to come to the funeral.  But would he have remembered if he had? That had been, to put it mildly, a bad time. Juggling all the funeral arrangements, hospital bills, and suddenly being a single parent to a teenager and two preteens — it had been a lot. He’d barely kept it together for the first few years, and still felt bad that Juliette had taken it upon herself to help look after her siblings and grown up so much so quickly. 

“...You lets your hair grows out somes,” Skwisgaar blurted out. 

“I did,” Toki agreed, grateful for the change of subject. He swished his fingers through it, a fall of brown that came down to around his chin, just like when they’d first met. “Two girls and a gender fluid kid in the house, we used to have some wild hairdo parties, let me tell you.” He laughed. Kind of forced, but close enough to real. “And it worked out. Juliette is doing really well in cosmetology school.” 

“That’s greats, Toki.” 

The smile on Toki’s face was a brittle one. He was proud of his kids — hell, proud of himself for producing three non-fucked up human beings, considering his own bleak childhood, homeless adolescence, and raucous early adulthood. Things really had turned out for the best. 

Mostly. Because while he’d had a loving, supportive partner to help lay the groundwork for his wonderfully normal new life, it hadn’t turned anything like what he’d imagined. She’d died and he’d found out that there were even worse things than having his heart broken, like having to decide whether to keep all of her old things around as a constant, heart-stabbing reminder or carrying overflowing boxes out to the curb past his crying children, pleading to hold onto the memories of their mother. Impossible choices. 

The conversation had hit another lull, both of them just looking at each other over a canyon of decades. 

“So,” Skwisgaar said awkwardly, “why... ams you decided to visit todays? Nots that I minds the companies,” he added quickly, unwilling to drop the strained pretense of gracious host. Clearly he didn’t want to be as blunt as Toki had been when he’d visited, all those years ago. No attempt had been made to flaunt his carefree, unattached lifestyle out here in the countryside, with no neighbors for miles and no real obligations to speak of save for occasional songwriting favors. He hadn’t gone for the jugular with, to name an example completely at random, a #1 Guitarist mug. 

Toki’s smile cracked. On the couch, the two dogs raised their heads and looked at him inquisitively, approximately one second before he sucked in a breath like a man afraid of drowning and sank his face into both hands. For a long time he’d been able to keep his old life and live locked up tight, separate from his newly constructed family. He’d stopped discussing it in therapy years ago, long enough that his therapist never thought to bring it up anymore. Long enough that he hadn’t realized the parallels for a long time. 

And it all came pouring out a torrent of word vomit that tasted all the more bitter for how long he’d been holding it in. A family of five? The way Leah had died, carving a chunk of his life big enough to leave him broken — what was he supposed to do, let it? And then the kids moving out. Little Abby had been the first to go and the last he had expected to lose so soon, a blow out of nowhere just like Murderface lapsing without warning into a coma. Luke had developed new interests, decided on a far more ambitious musical ambitions than his old man, and gone off to school at a fabulous conservatory half way across the globe, echoing Nathan’s departure for new and interestingly brutal pursuits. Juliette, like Pickles, had stuck around the longest, but now she was finally getting into cosmetology full time and living with her girlfriend, fostering an endless stream of troubled kids that the system had failed because her heart was just that goddamned big. There were visits, and phone calls, and occasionally even meeting up for lunches or dinners, but they had their own separate lives to get back to. Toki had... nothing. Just like after Dethklok. 

Nothing but this ghost from his past who, before he realized what was happening, was kneeling in front of his chair and pulling him into a rough hug. Toki let himself be pulled. The dogs crowded around him and licked helpfully at the tears and snot boiling out of him before it could land on Skwisgaar’s shirt, though it caught its fair share of slobber and stray fur instead. Thumps and distressed dog noises from elsewhere in the house suggested that the third had some idea of what he was missing out on and resented being excluded from it, but oh well. Special persons invite club cry-a-thon, no leg humpers allowed. 

Because Skwisgaar was crying too. First it registered as a growing dampness on his shoulder. Then Toki realized that the other man’s hands were gripped onto his shirt in big handfuls, and what had seemed like a comforting rocking motion was the Swede shaking with the effort of keeping his own tears silent and unobtrusive. 

“Skwisgaar, what’s…” More alarmed than he would have expected given his own simmering breakdown, Toki managed to disentangle himself enough to pull back and get a look at his face. There was no hope of passing it off as ‘just gettings high’ today — not that it had ever been very effective ruse, Skwisgaar was an ugly crier and always had been. “What’s wrong?” 

“Because,” came the choked up reply. “You saids you was happy. I s-stayed aways because you was happy. You didn'ts…” Skwisgaar was squeezing his eyes shut in an effort to not totally lose it, but his grip was clearly slipping. “You didn’ts deserve for it to all falls so much to shits that you comes to see me." 

“Oh…” Toki slid to the floor as though his bones had been removed and replaced with cooked spaghetti, because that was exactly it. Skwisgaar had dumped him and it had been devastating, but he’d reinvented himself, met a girl, made a new life for himself without him. 

It had taken so long to decide to come here precisely because he had been happy. Ecstatically so, and in the new life he’d made, even after Leah, there had been no room for Skwisgaar in it. But to see that Skwisgaar had known that — hell, actually respected that enough to leave him be for all these years — made him realize. 

“Skwisgaar,” Toki said, sniffling and reaching to smooth some of the other man’s tears away. Skwisgaar startled at the touch, blue eyes flying open.

“Whats?” 

“I don’t regrets anything about my family,” Toki told him earnestly, “but it was always supposed to be you.” And kissed him. 

They were both still crying so it was wet and clumsy and messy, but their lips fit together just as perfectly as Toki remembered. Sure, he’d repressed that memory for a long time, but he’d had to. 

For so long they’d been spun around in a dance of wanting different things, never on the same page, perfectly compatible but just off somehow. Then there had been Leah and it had felt impossible to reconcile those dual loves, so Toki had always told himself that his first choice had never been right or good for him. And maybe that instinct had been spot on, maybe Skwisgaar back then had been all wrong, a pentagonal peg that Toki had desperately fit into a round hole — but things had changed. So much was different now, about both of them. Here in this modest house, sitting on the floor with dogs trying their best to cheer up two idiot humans with even more slobbery kisses than the one they were currently sharing with amazed enthusiasm, they fit together in ways that was far more than just physical. It finally felt like they were on the same page, older and wiser but still head over fucking heels for each other. 

A third furry body crashed into them and Skwisgaar broke away with a cry of, “Fucksdammit Morderface, if you brokes another door you ams sleeping outskied tonights I swear to fucking Odin!” 

Toki laughed and rubbed his face on his sleeve and stood, despite the (pudgier, more blunt-nosed) husky immediately going for his leg as he did so, offering Skwisgaar a hand up that he accepted without hesitation. “You named him Murderface?” 

“Ja,” Skwisgaar said sheepishly. He didn’t let go of Toki’s hand once he was up, instead threading their fingers together. “Uh, ands the other two ams Nathan and Pickles. Makes me feel less, eughhh, lonely out heres, you knows.” 

“Huh.” Toki looked down at their entwined fingers. Smiled. Squeezed. “Just those three?” 

“There ams only one Toki Wartooth,” Skwisgaar told him seriously, then pulled him into another kiss that lasted much, much longer.

[imagine-loki]

Across the Divide

TITLE: Across The Divide CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter Two AUTHOR: wolfpawn ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki sneaking out of the palace as a youth to see the city and countryside, while out one day, he accidentally gets in trouble for something, but a young girl deals with the situation, allowing him to be left alone and his true identity be kept secret. She is a poor girl who is only in the city to sell goods with her father, so she does not realise it is Loki, even though she sees his face. They form a friendship as she shows him around the city, and tells him the date she comes to the city every month for a particular market. RATING: Teen and Up

For the month, Loki thought about what Ariella had told him. He spent more time paying attention to when peasant matters arose when he was in his father's council, learning about the realm, and he realised that nearly nothing was said of the issues of the lower classes. Everything was about their productivity, nothing of their wellbeing. He watched as the man in charge of such matters, Lord Ivan rambled on, dressed in his finest silks and gold gleaming in the light as he spoke about how there had to be more done about getting them to be more productive. Loki watched as his father merely nodded and Thor seemed to be daydreaming, neither paying any heed to what was being said.

He went to the city a couple more times in the month, not on days of any particular importance and though she said she would not return until the following country market, he kept an eye out for Ariella, but she was not there. When the day finally came again for the market, Loki prepared for it well in advance, he feigned a small headache the night before and stated he was going to use the day of rest to read and recover in his rooms. Being as reclusive as he was, his parents and brother paid no heed to him. Usually Loki could be found indoors anyway, be it in some dark corner of an unused room practising magic he was not supposed to know yet, or in his rooms, or even in the indoor training arena, he was renowned for his love of the outdoors, unlike Thor, his mother, and others, though that the reason for their highly contrasting skin tones.

Rushing through the city, Loki barely paid any heed to his surrounds, though he did have the wherewithal to ensure he was in no way suspicion-arousing. In the month since Ariella had scoffed at his overly clean and pristine clothes, he had made them more like those he had seen at the market; scuffed, an occasional rip or hole and with a few stains on the sleeves and pants. He still looked cleaner than most others, but he fit in far more. What irked him as the fact he had not bathed the day before or that morn or kept his hair as tidily, making him feel somewhat unpleasant, his mother would be appalled if she saw him, but it gave him an authentic appearance, he thought. When he got to the fountain in the city square, he looked around. The clock tower stated it was not yet noon, something that caused Loki considerable pride. He despised being late for things, one of the traits he had inherited from his father, though he rarely acknowledged such.

"Much better," He smiled and turned around to see Ariella behind him, smiling.

"Really?"

"Yes, I am impressed," She grinned before her face altered to one of seriousness. "Why did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"The belt buckle?"

"I wanted to help."

"I am not a pauper, I do not need your pity."

"I did not do it out of pity, I did it because I can because I have it to give. I have so many things I never use that are worth money, before, I used to discard them, but they are of use to you."

"Wait, you discard silver?" Ariella stared at him in disbelief.

"I never realised…" Loki felt ashamed for not realising sooner how little he realised something was worth. "What have you to get today?"

"Nothing." He frowned at her. "My father has not given me money to get anything."

"But do you need anything?"

"Those are two different questions." Ariella smiled. "Come on, we'll get in trouble for loitering here." she began to walk off.

"Do people often get in trouble for standing around, Court is effectively nothing but that."

"The differences a title makes. Us low-borns cannot be up to anything good when hanging around." she explained.

"Can I ask something?" Ariella looked at him. "Did you use the buckle?"

"At first, no, I had planned to give it back to you but then the rents went up. I pretended I found it and my parents used it to make sure we could keep our home for the rest of the year."

"A year?" Loki frowned. The scrapings needed for their broths the last time were nothing substantial, but they had been a small portion of the belt, a home, he thought, would be substantially more. "What sort of home is it?"

"It's small, tiny really, but we have a small plot next to it where we can grow some food, and there is room for a goat, so we have its milk," Ariella spoke fondly on her abode. "When Mikhail was alive, it was getting so cramped, I remember thinking it would be a lot easier without him there, but I always thought of him moving out, getting married, not…" she swallowed guiltily.

"How did he…?"

"He was working in a mine, they were forced to do longer shifts, it…well when people get tired, accidents happen more frequently. The mine was not properly secured, it collapsed, everyone was lost."

"How many?"

"Four hundred." Loki's eyes went wide. "So we were not alone in our loss."

"How long did it take to get him?" Arielle scoffed. "He's still down there?"

"The term 'financially unviable' was used a lot. What does that mean?" she asked, the hope in her face telling Loki she had no idea what it meant and that she truly was hoping he did.

He swallowed, "It…eh, it means that the cost of something is not worth the return," her head cocked slightly to the side. "They will not do it because they do not think it is worth their time or money," he explained. "I am so sorry."

Ariella seemed to take only a moment to think about what he said before sighing. "Such is life." Loki felt incredibly guilty at how easily she accepted the fact her brother was never going to be given a proper burial. "At least he was not alone."

"I do not know what to say," Loki was unsure he should even say that, but he felt he had to say something.

"Do you want to go anywhere in particular?" Ariella had chosen to not focus on the past.

"What is outside the city?"

"Well, the edge of the forests are only a mile or two from here if you want to see, I love it, it is so contrasting." She smiled.

"Please, I've never…" he blushed slightly.

"You've never seen the forests?" She asked in disbelief.

"I have not been allowed."

"How high born are you?" she asked curiously. "If I were to ask the right person, who would I be told you are the son of, Fandral?"

Loki swallowed at her using the false name he had given her. "Quite high." He admitted.

"Royal circle?"

"Yes."

"Wow." She took another moment to analyse things. "This way." Ariella guided them as they walked through streets and streets before the numbers of people began to thin and they finally could see the green that to Loki was only in the far distance for the most of his life, seemed to be beginning to grow to a great height above him. "What would you like to see?"

"What is there?" He asked excitedly.

Ariella showed him the routes to the different towns, including the one she lived near; Loki made note of that route before she brought him to the water's edge. He had seen the water that made one whole side of the city's outskirts from as far back as he could remember, and as he had used the Bifrost to go off realm with his parents, but he had never been to the water's edge, something that he had always wished to do and was somewhat giddy to finally get to do. When they got there, Ariella took off her shoes and placed her feet in the crystal clear water, sighing contently as she did. Loki watched for a moment before copying her when he placed his feet in, he realised that like her hands, her feet were  marred in some form of what seemed to be permanent dirt, he also noticed cuts and sores that were akin to the blisters he had from ill fitted armour and clothes, looking at the shoes, he realised they were too small for her feet and aged, he could not imagine the pain she was in from simply walking, and knowing what she said of having to walk back to her home, he felt guilty for having her walk so far with him. "You seem to like this."

He looked up to see Ariella smiling kindly at him. "it is great, I never did this before, it is colder than it looks though."

"It is." she grinned before she looked at him curiously, "Why do you do this? Why do you leave your home and walk the streets?"

"I want to see what I am not taught, I want to see the whole realm, not what I am told is the realm."

"Maybe the realm will be better in the future if you are able to speak with King Thor about it."

"Do you think Thor will be king?" he asked. Ariella did not respond. "Honestly."

"I cannot say." she looked at him in a manner that caused Loki to become highly curious, but she said no more on it.

"Please, Ari, you can tell me, I will not tell anyone." He pleaded.

"I cannot, talking ill of them, it is forbidden."

"Who?"

"The Allfather, his sons."

"Really?"

"It is punishable with whippings." Loki's eyes went wide and his jaw dropped. "If you speak ill, what happens in court?"

"What do you call 'speaking ill' exactly?"

"Saying something they have made law is not a good idea, or that they do not care about us low-borns." she stated.

Loki could hardly process her words. "You are not allowed voice opinions?" She shook her head. "Court is nothing but people shouting them and most of them stupid, uneducated ones."

"Wow."

"I thought you were going to say something like if you want to overthrow Odin or not have a king there would be an issue."

It was Ariella's turn to stare, but hers was one of terror. "That is treason." She scolded, looking around to ensure no one saw them, to her relief, they were still alone.

"Well, yes, that is a no-no in court too, it comes with a trial and an adequate punishment."

"What's a trial?"

Loki laughed for a second before realising that genuinely, again Ariella had no idea what the words meant. "The process by which a person, accused of a crime is put forward, along with evidence to support the proof of that crime and they are found innocent or guilty and released or punished accordingly," Loki explained, trying to keep it simple for her.

"You use a lot of big words." she commented, "So the village constable does not get free reign in the city?"

"What?"

"In the villages, the constable does all of that, though not with a trial, I have not heard of such things before. Do they really let you go if the claims are false?"

"Of course, why would you punish an innocent person?"

"Because innocent is innocent," Loki stated firmly.

"The city sounds so much nicer," Ariella smiled sadly.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You just did," She smiled. "Sure."

"Have you eaten today?" the smile fell from her face. "Your stomach is grumbling."

"Food is getting more expensive," She explained. "My father has what little we have to get as much as he can."

"But they said they wanted to increase production," Loki frowned.

"What?"

"Nothing, something I remembered," He dismissed with a smile. "Where is there to eat around here?"

"Nowhere, it is not highly populated, people either live in the city or the forest, not in between."

"Can you walk to the city?"

"Yes, I already did it today, remember, I live that way." she laughed, pointing towards the woodlands.

"But your feet." He looked down, only to see that even though she had washed them, the dirt was still there, he wondered if it was dirt at all.

"I am used to it."

"That looks so painful."

"I shall live." She shrugged. "But, so long as you do not feel overly adverse to it, I may leave these off until I get to the city."

"Can you leave them off altogether?"

"No," She laughed. "You have to be properly clothed for the city."

"Oh," Loki had not realised. "Well, leave them off for now, why do you not get another pair?"

"If I cannot afford to eat, what makes you think I will buy shoes that only get used once a month? I got these two years ago, I cannot ask for more so soon."

Loki swallowed at the idea of a new pair of shoes every other year, he thought of the new boots he had gotten the day before, to add to the many other pairs he already owned. "I am sorry, I just…How is it all so different?" he snapped.

"Fandral?"

"You have nothing, you have not even eaten today, and I…" guilt grew in him. "It is not fair."

"It is not your doing." she stated kindly.

"I feel as though I am part of it."

"How so?"

"I…" he swallowed, he could not admit who he was. "I just do."

"Well you kept a roof over my head, so you are not. I am lucky, I still have a home." She smiled before walking on. "Come on high-born, you will not be home in time if you keep this pace going."

Loki said nothing but followed. Though they were reluctant, they made reasonable time back to the city and before long, Ariella brought him through the streets to another access point to the wealthier area of the city. "Will you be here again next month?" Ariella nodded, not able to speak as he chewed on the bread that had come with the broth Loki had insisted on buying. She had eaten her own bread before it, but Loki insisted on her taking his too, she was too hungry to decline. "Can I meet you again?"

Having swallowed all of the food, she nodded. "Sure, I…oh Norns."

A figure came into view and she watched as he approached, Loki turned to see a grizzly looking man coming towards them, seemingly somewhat drunk. "There you are."

"Father," Ariella swallowed.

"Where were you?"

"Walking around, I did not realise…"

"Who is this?" He demanded, looking at Loki.

"This is a boy I met, Fandral, we just went for a walk to stay out of trouble." She explained.

"Trouble is all that could come of such things." Her father commented, looking Loki up and down. "She is too young for that."

"Sir, I would never…"

"Sir?" Ariella's father stared at him, "What sort of man says 'sir'? What sort of airs and graces do you think you have to talk such a way?" Loki swallowed, unsure of what to do.

"Where is the cart?" Ariella asked, not wanting her father to focus on her friend, for fear he would raise suspicion as to who he was and expose him, meaning she would lose the only good company she knew.

"Where I bloody left it, so get going." He turned and walked away.

"Sorry," Ariella stated sadly. "Since my brother…he did not take it well."

"Here." Loki took her hand and put something in it. "It should help."

Arielle looked at the pouch, it contained some coins. "I cannot take this."

"Please Ari, you have to, take it." He insisted. "I left a note in there, it will be where we will meet nice month, okay?"

"I…"

"Ari…"

"I cannot read," she admitted. Loki stared at her. "I do not know how to." She explained.

"The forge, on the worksmith's street, same time." he insisted. "Go, before he gets angry and comes back."

"Bye Fandral."

"Goodbye Ari." he watched as she rushed off, saddened at her life, but more determined than ever to see what could be done.