#but its the difference between feeling “my body is deviating from what i desire and am comfortable with bc of gender” and

[jinzouacting]

i think umm i think that prev (nyancrimew) post is pretty cool and im not going to say smth annoying in her tags but it reminded me of something related to the subject re: perception of trans people / bodies / things perceived as gendered

[arvandus]

Touch Pt. 13 - Relapse

Pairing: Dabi x Fem!Reader

**18+ ONLY - MINORS DNI**

OVERALL FIC WARNINGS: Soft!Dabi, F!Reader with a fictional backstory, fanon version of past events (I started this before the canon stuff dropped), manga  spoilers, canon deviation, drug abuse/withdrawal (with inaccuracies since it’s outside of my experience and relies on research and imagination), violence, heavy angst, past trauma/abuse, anxiety/panic attacks, PTSD, hurt/comfort, pining, slow burn, eventual emotionally charged SMUT,  all characters will be written with complexity (i.e., no  one-dimensional/hateful representations). *please pay attention to specific warning tags within each chapter!*

CHAPTER WARNINGS: Explicit 18+ themes, drug use (opioids, weed, alcohol, smoking), drug dealing, drug withdrawal, chronic pain. Primarily a Dabi POV chapter, Reader is minimally present.

Chapter Song: Go Easy On Me (Stripped) by Matt Maeson

Part 1   Part 12

Artwork credit to @hellowon31 on Twitter (https://twitter.com/hellowon31)

Chapter 13: Relapse

He was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, but he didn’t care.  It was the only way he could have you, the only way he could satisfy that deep, devouring desire that threatened to consume him and shred him to pieces.

 Your soft lips locked over his, your hands on his jaw as he opened his mouth hungrily to welcome your wet tongue.  Your body was pressed against his as you straddled his lap, your soft thighs framing him. His hands roamed your sweaty skin, deft fingers slipping beneath the hem of your shirt to pull it over your head, exposing your cotton-clad breasts to his gaze.  The bra you wore was strangely familiar, its simplicity echoing like a forgotten memory in his mind, but he didn’t care.  All he cared about was you, the feel of you, the heat of you, the taste of you... he buried his face between your breasts, his tongue flicking out to lick the sweat there, and you moaned against him, your fingers tangling in his hair as your hips ground down into his lap, desperate to feel his firmness.

 This. This was all he wanted. He wanted to bury himself in this place, bury himself in you until he forgot who he was.  He wanted to freeze himself into this moment and let the rest of the world fall away.

 But he knew any minute now it would change. This moment would vanish, this wanton picture of you bursting into an explosion of blue flames beneath his sweating palms only to be replaced by nightmares.

 His grip on your hips tightened, fingers digging into flesh as if it had the power to change fate, to change the inevitable rising of the sun.

 Any minute now.

 You whispered his name desperately against his lips, the heat of your breath like warm honey, before trapping his lips with your own again, your body moving against him.

 He wanted to close his dreaming eyes, to let himself sink into the feeling of you, and yet he couldn’t – if he did, then you’d be ripped away from him, taken hostage by the monsters in his mind.

 ‘Not yet.’ He thought. ‘Don’t go.’

 But you didn’t go. Not this time.  Your skin still felt warm against him, the touch of your flesh soft and familiar. So familiar, and yet... something was different this time.

 It felt real. Too real...

 Dabi’s eyes shot open, and the first thing he saw was the back of your head.  His breath stopped in his throat while his chest pounded, bewilderment locking his body in a frozen panic.  His eyes darted around the room, taking in what he could see as he slowly began to make sense of what his eyes were showing him.

 He was in your room. The early grey light of morning seeped in through a crack in the curtains, stretching across the lower half of your bed to end at the closed bathroom door.  It wasn’t as bright as his room in the morning, your bedroom facing west instead of east.  But it was enough to allow him to see the details of your space draped in a monotone hue.

 The memories of the previous night bubbled forth like flotsam.  Compress, you, your sensory overload, Dabi fighting to carry you, the waiting, the darkness, the conversations, your hand on his shoulder...

 Dabi’s pulse slowed, and he once again took in where he was and what he was feeling, his gaze shifting around slightly.

 He felt warm, and he realized he was pressed up against your back with his right arm trapped under your head. His left hand was resting on your hip, his thumb tucked beneath your shirt where it rested against your bare skin.

 No wonder it felt so real...

 You were so warm. The scent of your hair tickled his nose, and he fought the urge to inhale, his muscles tensing against the instinct to pull you even tighter against him and bury his face into your neck.

 Instead, he watched you silently, taking in the steady rise and fall of your breathing.  You were still asleep – that much he was grateful for.  He wasn’t sure how you’d react to waking up with him wrapped around you the way he was. To make matters worse, the dream he’d been having was still very much present in the forefront of his mind, and his pants felt uncomfortably tight against the pressure that had made itself at home within his black jeans.

 You shifted slightly in your sleep, your rear rubbing against his groin, and his fingers tensed on your skin.  A part of him wanted to push you away, the other part wanted to pull you closer and-

 You shifted again, blissfully deep in dreamland, unaware of your actions, as you pressed further against him. This time, Dabi’s entire body stiffened as he clenched his jaw.

 God damn it. You weren’t even awake and you were torturing him.

 He wondered what you were dreaming about but before his imagination could go too far, your head moved slightly, a soft, innocent moan coming from your dreaming lips. The sound alone sent an electric jolt through his body right down to his jeans and ignited a war in his brain between his arousal and his common sense. How quickly his body wanted to respond on instinct, to see if he could pull that sound from your lips again, this time with more... intention.

 But the fantasy of that thought was in stark contrast to the reality of the situation, and the deep thrumming of his pulse shifted like a pendulum from arousal to panic. If you woke up right now, to the touch of his hand on your side and his hard-on pressed against your ass through no fault of his own... Dabi imagined the slap you would deliver to his face.  Maybe even take a couple more staples out of his cheek while you were at it.

 Dabi removed his hand from your body and rolled to his back before he did something incredibly stupid. You were still pressed against his side, his right arm still trapped beneath your neck.  The touch of you felt like fire against his skin, every undamaged nerve on high alert, but at least it was manageable.  And most importantly, you stopped moving.  Deep sleep had claimed you once again, and Dabi was mentally thanking whatever deities granted his silent plea.

 Silence stretched, long and painful as he laid there, still as a stone, forcing steady breaths in and out of his lungs.  His dream of you still had its grip on him, and Dabi struggled to think of things that weren’t you in an effort to cool the hot desire that still coursed through his blood. But it was in vain.  You were everywhere – your scent, your warmth, the weight of your neck on his arm, your ass nestled into the crook of his hip and looking awfully cute in your pajama pants that he’d personally selected for you last night.  His blue eyes caught the shape of your bra on the floor, abandoned and forgotten, and it immediately brought forth the dream he’d been having, with your legs straddled across his lap, and your breasts-

 Shit.

 This obviously wasn’t working, and now the binding pressure in his pants was beginning to get uncomfortable.  He adjusted himself outside of his jeans in an effort to relieve some of the discomfort, to find a position within the dark denim that didn’t feel like being bound in a torture device, but all it did it was make it worse.

 Dabi needed to get out of here.  He needed the privacy of his own room so he could handle the problem in his pants and finally have his first rational thought of the day.

 He began scanning for his things.  His shoes were on.  His wallet was in his back pocket. His phone- where the fuck was his phone? He was holding it last night when he fell asleep...

 His free hand tried to search the covers, his head tilting slightly to look over the edge of the bed. Finally, he spotted it, on your nightstand next to your own.  You’d plugged it in for him, your own phone left uncharged.

 His chest constricted slightly.

 Dabi carefully reached over your sleeping form and grabbed it, making every effort to not touch you more than he had to as he deftly unplugged it with one hand.  He paused when his face was mere inches from your cheek thanks to the angle of his reach, hesitating for just a fraction of a moment to drink in your features.

 Fuck, you were pretty.

 Then the moment passed, and he averted his gaze and retreated carefully back to his side of the bed.  The device was safely in his fingers, and he laid back down before finally releasing the breath that he’d been holding.

 Time froze as Dabi noticed a text message notification from Giran.  His pulse spiked as he unlocked his phone and opened the message.

 Hey, kid. I found someone who has what you need.  Lemme know if you’re still interested, and I’ll give you their contact info.  It’ll cost ya, though. Prices are up right now. This guy ain’t cheap, but his stock is legit.  Lemme know if ya need a loan.

 Dabi’s eyes widened, and instantly, everything shifted.  What had started as an awkward morning of silent suffering now shifted to a single-minded focus.

 He could get his drugs. Today.

 A wave of relief washed over Dabi, transforming into giddy excitement.  He could almost remember the feel of them, the low hum of constant peace. It was so very different from what you gave him.  Your pills and your quirk helped, but it wasn’t the same.  The pain was always too quick to return every time they wore off, and mentally, well...

 Something was always missing, something important.  Something vital.  Something he needed more than anything.

 Silence.

 His life had been so much simpler with his own pills.  They kept the pain within his heart buried deep under a constant stream of artificial chemicals, and hid away the old, dusty memories, the ones that used to make him smile when he was young. In its place it left an empty space, a residual footprint of old things lost, those rooms of his mind abandoned and locked.  Joy was a figment of the imagination, a secondhand experience lived by a stranger. Sorrow was a small footnote, the undertone that set the tempo for his rage to thrum against, transforming tears into spiteful laughter. With everything else buried deep, it’d allowed him to focus on his anger, his bitter need for justice, giving him the strength to pursue his mission with single-minded focus at the cost of everything else.

 His drugs were the double-edged sword that would bring him both victory and destruction. They were a necessity that allowed him to transcend his limits so that he could see his work done.  Then he could vanish like the ghost he was, let his quirk take him like it was meant to. Maybe then it’d finally be over, and he’d finally have the peace in death that he’d never been able to find in life.

 That was what he always believed, at least.

 ‘Promise.’

 The word echoed in his mind like a faint whisper, a reminder of something that should have never been said, hastily spoken from an immature, inexperienced heart.  Dabi pushed the thought away swiftly before it could worm its way deeper into his mind.

 Still, he couldn’t help but look at you.  You looked so peaceful right now, content, even.  The steady rise and fall of your breaths, every muscle of your body relaxed and loose in perfect comfort.  The corners of Dabi’s lips pulled down in a frown, his brows drawing together slightly.

 You wouldn’t like it. Dabi knew that.  You’d try to talk him out of it, telling him that he didn’t need to do this.  You’d say that you were already working on it, that his pills would be ready for pick up any day now.  That if he’d just hold out a little longer...

 Dabi rubbed at the bridge of his nose as he began to feel the dull throbbing of a headache. Irritation simmered and he stared at the text message again.

 He didn’t want to wait any longer.  He didn’t want to be held back from getting what he needed.  Even if you did manage to get his pills for him, you’d want to control his access, out of concern for his safety.  Your intentions were pure, but the thought soured his mind.  He didn’t need a babysitter. And he didn’t want to delay what he was owed. He respected you, and valued his growing bond with you, but he’d be damned if he let anything get in the way of his purpose, even you.  He’d already wasted enough time.  Endeavor was ripe for the picking now that he was the number one hero, and Dabi was on borrowed time.

 And yet, even so, in this moment with his phone hot in his hand and the thin black line blinking in the text message box, he hesitated. It left him feeling bewildered and frustrated at his own inaction; he’d never hesitated, not once. Not for this.  But now, here he was, deliberating as if one wrong move would cost him more than he was willing to pay.

 Discomfort tightened in his chest like a coiled snake.

 If this had happened before last night, he would have left the instant he got the message without a second thought.  But now...

 Now it felt like he was being ripped in two, pulled in different directions.

 Something was different, a shift in his world that had happened right beneath his feet.  Dabi couldn’t quite put words to it and what it meant and that irritated him more than anything.  Yes, he felt closer to you.  Yes, he could finally admit to himself that he cared about you, although to what extent, he couldn’t quite say; there were things he felt that he didn’t yet have words for, and he wasn’t ready to define them.  But his goals hadn’t changed.  His focus hadn’t changed.  No matter how he felt about you, taking down his father took priority.

 And yet, all he could picture in this moment was the disappointment on your face and the hurt in your eyes once you’d learn what he’d done.  Because you would find out.  As soon as you woke up and he was gone without receiving your help, you’d know.

 Dabi stared at you again, long and hard in the silence of the morning as he absently tongued at the wound in his cheek from where you’d ripped out his staple the night before. He could feel the pain there now that your quirk was starting to wear off, throbbing in tandem with his growing migraine as last night’s pills burned from his system.  The ache made his jaw stiff and his teeth felt like they had needles shoved into them.

 It was a pain you’d given him, the consequence of your generosity.  The crying, the screaming, the agony you’d suffered as your quirk turned on you because of him... And before that, it was the bruises on your arms, the fear in your eyes, the constant state of exhaustion that hung on you like a shroud...

 So, this was probably for the best, right?  He’d be back on his own pills, with his own supply, and you’d be free of him, free of his constant need of you. No more sensory overload.  No more late nights dealing with his bullshit.

 But even with that obvious fact, Dabi felt a resistance within himself, a selfish stubbornness. He knew that doing this would drive a wedge between you that could not be undone. It’d be the highest betrayal, undoing everything you’d sacrificed for him, everything you’d worked for. There would be no forgiveness after this.  It would erase every heartfelt conversation, tarnish every vulnerable moment.

 The thought tasted bitter on his tongue.  He’d just finally allowed himself to tear down the wall he’d built against you, for the first time allowing himself to connect with another person.  That act alone had cost him more than he’d expected, opening up a vulnerability within himself that he was still grappling with. And you’d met his vulnerability with grace and kindness, which was far more than he deserved.  He didn’t want to give you up. He didn’t want to lose you over this. He’d grown accustomed to having you around, always there when he needed you. Always being checked on, always being seen. He liked it. The way you made him feel... your smile, your touch, your quirk-

 Your quirk...?

 Something intangible tightened around Dabi’s throat, cold and hard.  It took him a long moment to be able to put a name to it.

 Fear.

 Because the fear of losing your quirk and how it made him feel had nothing to do with feelings.  It had everything to do with addiction.  And he knew better than most how addiction preyed on the mind, warping and twisting lies and illusions into false truth.

 Maybe all of this... whatever this was... these feelings he felt, this attraction that consumed him... maybe it was just because of your quirk and your pills.  Was he really attached to you? Or was he attached to his addiction of you?  Did he just trade one drug for another?

 Was none of this real?

 You. You were real. Your words and your hand on his shoulder last night were real.  Your kindness and friendship towards him were real.

 But that didn’t mean that his feelings were real.  It could just be his addiction, a monster in sheep’s clothing, a leech looking to attach itself to whatever will feed it.  Dabi was familiar with it, had watched with dulled, detached interest as it had drained liquor bottles and gone through opioid medication like they were candy.  But this time was different.  Because this wasn’t alcohol or pills. This was you, a person.  A person that, for better or worse, Dabi gave a shit about.

 Dabi rubbed his hand down his face, stopping over his mouth as his fingers tightened around his clenched jaw.  He stared at the message again.  The chasm of conflicting desires sewed shut, two roads coalescing into only one option.

 He was going to get his drugs.  Today.

 It was the only option that made any sense.  You’d stop suffering because of him, and he’d get back to his mission of taking down Endeavor.  And then maybe he’d finally be able to figure out what was real and what wasn’t.

 Dabi slowly slipped his arm out from under your neck.  You shifted slightly but stayed deep in slumber. His body ached all over, a combination of lingering exhaustion and the downward spiral of his withdrawal beginning to sink its teeth into his bones.  As he stood up, a fiery zap shot up his leg, and he nearly buckled back down onto the mattress.  His teeth bared as he sucked air into his lungs.

 Shit, shit, shit. That desperate need filled him again, and he immediately felt the pull of you and all you offered.  He needed your pills, your quirk.  Anything to take away the pain.  

 He loathed it.  He loathed his dependency and the way it controlled him and sapped him of his strength.  How the hell was he supposed to meet up with Giran’s source when he could barely even make it to his room?  

 He’d have to wake you. You hid your pills from him, after all. It wasn’t like he could just help himself to your bag and leave you a note.  

 An idea lit up his pain-addled mind.  If he woke you up now, then you wouldn’t suspect anything once he left.  He could get his drugs and you’d be none the wiser. Maybe he could get away with it... maybe he could keep it secret... maybe things wouldn’t have to change...

 All he had to do was wake you up.  Ask for your pills.  Let you use your quirk.

 Dabi looked at you again. The wound in his cheek throbbed, a warning.  The night before flashed again in his mind. His hands clenched into tight fists as he stood rooted to the floor.

 He couldn’t.

 He refused.

 He’d have to figure it out on his own.  He had cigarettes, he had alcohol, and he had weed. All of them were poor substitutes for what he really needed.  But a deep hit of a joint and a couple of quick shots of cheap whiskey would be better than nothing, and he could keep a pack of cigarettes on him to help with the jitters until he met up with the dealer.  Besides, once he got his pills, the problem would fix itself.

 He just had to survive long enough.  He could do that; he’d done it before when his bottles had run dry.  Only before, the drought he’d experienced had been mere hours instead of days.

 With a final glance at your sleeping form, Dabi left, careful to make as little noise as possible as he opened and closed the old door.

 Once he’d crossed the hall and made it safely into his own room without being seen, Dabi took a deep breath of relief.  Another arrow of fire laced between his shoulder blades, and he buckled, crouching down to sit on his heels against his closed door.  A second wave came soon after, this time igniting up his neck, blending into the ache of his wound on his cheek.  It made his vision blur, and he shut his eyes against it, letting it wash over him, helpless.

 Once the pain subsided, he settled down and leaned his head against the cold wood, his breathing ragged. He could already feel his body begin to sweat.

 Shower.  He needed a shower.

 Dabi pulled himself up and made his way into the bathroom where he turned on the shower faucet.  As the water ran, he pulled out his phone and texted his response to Giran.  He declined the offer for the loan; he knew better.  A loan from Giran was a loan that never got paid back.  He’d have to find his cash in other ways.

 Then, he stripped down and entered.

 Dabi cursed as soon as the cold water hit his body and he leaned forward to prop his forehead on his fist against the cold tile as the icy tendrils ran rivers down his skin.

 For minutes he stayed that way, letting the cold compete with the frayed nerves and aching muscles. As he stood there, he kept glancing at his phone resting on the counter, waiting to see it light up, to hear the buzz. Panic began to fill him as he waited, staring, silently begging for Giran to respond.

What if he missed his chance?  Did he wait too long?  What if you wake up before he can leave?

 But then he saw it – the familiar screen of a new text message, the phone vibrating on the countertop. Dabi snatched it immediately, careful not to get the phone too wet from the stray shower drops.  He quickly opened up the message, and there it was...

 An address. A time.

 And a note of urgency – the seller had another buy lined up but was willing to meet Dabi first to see what he offered at the behest of Giran, thanks to Giran’s good reputation.

 Dabi frowned at the information.  The meetup time meant he had to leave.  Now. Which didn’t give him much time to put together enough funds for what he was about to do.

 Still, he had to try. Dabi shot back a quick confirmation text.

 Then he finished his shower and dressed himself.  He threw on his hoodie, sunglasses, and stuffed his face mask in his pocket. Where he was going, he wasn’t anticipating being seen by any heroes who might know his description, but with his current weak condition, it was better safe than sorry.

 Also, his hoodie made it easier to hide stolen wallets.

 Dabi downed whiskey straight from the bottle and found an old joint inside one of his jacket pockets. He lit it with his finger, taking a long drag of it into his lungs.  As he waited for the effects to kick in, he began scrounging his drawers and his pockets for every single wad of cash in his possession.  It didn’t take long until he’d overturned nearly every pants pocket, every cubby and hidey hole.  He frowned at the pitiful amount crumpled into the palm of his hand.  His gap in his medication had left him unable to find work doing seedy jobs for hire, or even just simple pickpocketing or robbery. Between the two weeks of no work and the money he’d spent on ramen and junk food, his savings was severely dwindled.

 Would it be enough?

 Maybe he could borrow some cash from the other League members.  After all, they were able to go out and steal whenever they needed to. Surely they had something they could give him...

 But the longer he lingered here, the smaller his chances of leaving before you woke up. Not to mention there’d be questions, and prodding, and each conversation would steal precious minutes from an already tight schedule.  He could end up missing his appointment entirely.

 Well, that obviously wasn’t an option.  He’d just have to find ways to line his pockets during his commute.

 Dabi took another long drag of his joint, the smoke swirling out of his nostrils on the exhale.

 He'd have to be careful about it, nothing too showy or noticeable.  No flames.  No dead bodies.  He didn’t want to make himself noticeable to heroes.  In his current state, there was no guarantee he’d be able to fight or escape if he got caught.

 Pain curled itself along his neck and a wave of nausea followed soon after, twisting his gut. Dabi sucked air through his teeth before forcing a few quick breaths through his nostrils, fighting back the impending sickness watering his mouth.  His vision blurred.  His entire body tensed, waiting for it to pass.  After a moment of intense focus, it subsided, vanishing back to blend into the dull hum of suffering that was beginning to shroud him like an invisible cloak.  His vision refocused and he stared at the crumpled joint that was now clutched tight into his fist, its ashes littering the floor.

 Fuck.  He didn’t even get to finish it.

 His pain was getting more unbearable, the withdrawal creeping up like a swiftly rolling fog.

 Borrowed time...

 Decision made, Dabi stuffed the cash into his pockets.  He grabbed the whiskey bottle one more time and took a quick swig from the neck.  Then he grabbed his dented pack of cigarettes and stuffed them in his jacket pocket as he headed downstairs, careful not to make too much noise past your door.  He could only hope the stench of his self-medication didn’t wake you.

 He left quickly, forcing himself out in the bright daylight before any of the league members could ask about his whereabouts.  Once he’d put sufficient distance between himself and the hideout, he pulled out his phone and entered the address into the navigation.

 ------------

 You were unpleasantly woken up by the all-too-familiar skunky smell that seeped beneath your door, invading your space.  Your senses were still a little on edge from last night, and the odor assaulted you, causing you to scrunch up your nose and pull your covers over the lower half of your face.

 You stirred and rolled to your back, your hand reaching out next to you to meet only empty space and cold sheets.  He was gone.

 You sat up quickly, your brain swiftly putting the pieces together. The stench of weed, his absence, and the very obvious fact that it was morning and you hadn’t treated him yet.

 Maybe he was self-medicating in his room, biding his time as much as he could to let you rest.  Maybe he was just having a smoke and nursing a bottle of whiskey until you showed up.

 ‘That idiot, why didn’t he just wake me?’

 You threw the covers off and slipped your feet into your shoes before leaving your room. You crossed the hall and knocked on Dabi’s door, and you held your breath as you fidgeted and bounced nervously.  

 Surely, he’s in there. Any minute now, he’ll answer the door, giving you one of his half smirks as a wall of smoke hits your face.

 But nothing but silence greeted you.

 You knocked again, banging harder this time.  Maybe he was really fucking high and napping, or in the shower...

 He had to be here.  He had to be.

 He wouldn’t leave, right? Not in his condition, not without receiving your help.  You had everything he needed here.  You had a system, a plan in place.  It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough.  It was working.

 Unless...

 Unless he found something better.

 You pounded on his door again, this time letting out your frustration, panic rising from your chest to your throat.

 “He’s not there.” Grumbled Shigaraki’s voice.  You spun to face him as he stood a few feet away, drying his hair with a towel.

 You swallowed.  “Where did he go?”

 “Dunno. I heard him leave a few minutes ago.  It’s not my job to keep tabs on you guys.” Then his red eyes narrowed.  “Is there a problem?”

 You hesitated. “No.”  

 Then another entirely different thought came into your mind just as Shigaraki turned to leave.  

 “Wait!”

  Shigaraki paused and half-turned to face you, the towel now draped over his shoulders.

 “What happened to Compress?” you asked. “Is he okay?”

 “He’ll live.” Shigaraki replied.  “He’s still recovering with Giraki.”

 Elation filled you as you inhaled and released a deep breath in relief.  “Thank God...”

 “God had nothing to do with it.” Shigaraki replied casually. “ Garaki said your quick thinking probably saved his life.”

 You felt your skin flush at the praise.  “Thank you.”

 Shigaraki stared at you a brief moment before turning and retreating to his room. Once you felt free of his scrutinizing ruby eyes, you turned and hurried towards the stairs.

 You stumbled into the common area to see Toga, Spinner, and Twice playing cards.

 “Have you guys seen Dabi?” you asked.

 “He left.” Toga answered.

 “When?”

 “I dunno, like five minutes ago?”

 “Did he say where he was going?”

 “No? He never tells us anything,” Toga pouted.  “He stunk to high heavens, though.”

 Spinner scoffed.  “That’s nothing new. He always seems to be on something one way or another.” You froze at Spinner’s casually astute observation, but kept silent.

 “He’s probably back to recruiting members for the League. It’s all he cares about.” Twice said. “Guy’s gotta get a life.”

 You ran for the door. Five minutes.  Surely, he couldn’t have gotten far in five minutes...

 You stumbled outside, your eyes squinting hard against the daylight as you covered your brow with your hand.  You scanned up and down the street, looking for his familiar form, his dark sweater or swirling jacket.

 But there was nothing. Dabi was gone.

 “Shit.” You muttered.

 You went back into the hideout before too many people started to notice you standing out in your pajamas.

 Three sets of eyes stared at you as you closed the door behind you.  “Does anyone have Dabi’s phone number?”

 ----------

The bus was fuller than Dabi thought it would be, and it was working in his favor. He’d already managed to snatch two wallets, one from when he stood waiting for people to step off the bus, and another as everyone shuffled in to find their seats.  All of the seats were taken now, with a few people forced to stand.  Dabi stood as well, positioning himself to be conveniently in the way of anyone who opted to leave before he reached his designated stop.

 An old woman stood next to him, her metal rolling cart in front of her, its handle held in her gnarled fingers.  She was short, barely coming up to his chest thanks to the hunch in her back.  He stared down at her through his dark sunglasses, taking in the look of her clothes, her belongings.  She’d gone to the market evidenced by the bok choy sticking out of the bag in her cart.  Its green leaves drooped in the heat of the bus, surrounded by all of the warm bodies and closed windows.  Her other hand held the vertical bar, and she swayed like a leave on the wind with each bump and jolt. It was obvious that she didn’t have much of value on her. Nothing but a simple gold band on her finger, its surface scuffed and worn as if it had sat there for decades.

 Still, the elderly were more likely to carry cash on them then the younger generations, who relied more on credit cards.  With her purse bag zipper already open, it had taken just a quick dip of his fingers to snatch the worn leather wallet and tuck it up his sleeve.

 Dabi’s phone buzzed in his pocket.  He didn’t have to look at it to know it was you, but he did anyway. He stared at the number with no name attached, a strange awareness leaking through his muddled, inebriated mind.  Now he had your number. You’d offered it to him before, and he’d declined. What a shitty way to finally get it.

 “Someone special?” the old lady asked.

 Dabi turned the phone to silent and shoved it back into his pocket.  “No,” he replied.

 Just then the bus hit an especially deep pothole.  The old woman to stumbled, tripping over her cart and landing on the man sitting in front of her. His coffee spilled all over his cheap suit, and he cursed.

 “What the hell!” he shouted. He shoved the old woman off of him, and Dabi subtly positioned himself to catch her body against his to keep her from falling back.

 Others stared at the man in reproach, but no one spoke up as the old lady stammered an apology, pulling out her kerchief to wipe away at the stains on his clothes.  He batted her hands away from him.  “Don’t fucking touch me,” he demanded.

 The man pulled the string above the window and grabbed his things in a huff as he made his way to leave. “Clumsy old hag...” he muttered under his breath.

 Dabi’s eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses.

 The man made his way to leave, and Dabi blocked him just enough to bump shoulders with him, which earned him a glare. “Outta my way, jackass,” the man huffed.

 As the man exited the bus, Dabi felt the weight of the new wallet now held snuggly in his hand within the sleeve of his hoodie. He wasn’t sure if it had much in it, but even so, a twisted sense of pride lit up his veins just the slightest.  Dabi wasn’t very picky on who he stole from, but this one felt especially good.

 Once the man was gone, the old woman wiped away the remnants of coffee from the now open seat and sat down. On the next stop, the seat next to her opened up and Dabi gladly took it, his head swimming from the constant motion. His headache was worsening again, the numbing fog he’d induced earlier through alcohol and weed starting to dissipate. He was grateful for the sunglasses, but the heat of the bus was stifling. He forced open the window latch and inhaled as soon as the crisp air hit his lungs.

 “Thank you,” said the old woman.

 It took Dabi a moment to realize she was talking to him.  “For what?”

 “Opening the window. It’s gets so hot on these buses sometimes, and my old hands can’t open the latches anymore.”

 Dabi grunted.  He hunched himself over as his stomach twisted uncomfortably and his leg began to bob up and down.  His phone buzzed again, and once again, he pulled it out and stared at the number.  Again, he silenced the call, sending it directly to voicemail.

 A sharp jagged pain cut across his back and his muscles tensed as he braced himself against it until it passed, his eyes squeezed shut.

 “Whoever it is must be worried about you.” She commented, her voice cutting through his haze.

 Dabi kept his eyes closed and didn’t respond, hoping she would stop talking to him. He didn’t like when strangers started talking to him, especially nice old ladies that he’d just stolen from.

 He heard a panicked gasp, and he opened one eye to see the old woman desperately rummaging through the contents of her purse.

“Where is it?” she asked herself.  She looked at Dabi, her wrinkled eyes desperate. “Have you seen a wallet?  It’s brown leather, torn on the edge...” she returned to rummaging through her things.  “I know I had it, I paid my bus fare, and...” her expression fell with each passing moment, and she looked on the verge of tears. “Oh, no no no...”

 Dabi sighed inwardly and snuck the wallet from his sleeve before pulling it out from behind him as if he’d sat on it.

 “Is this it?”

Her face lit up instantly as she took it from his hand.  “Oh, bless you!  Thank you, I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost it... It must have fallen out of my purse earlier...”

 Before Dabi could close his eyes again to wallow in his failure, she’d opened the worn leather to show him a picture of an old man with glasses.  “This is my late husband.  It’s my favorite picture of him and it’s the only copy I have.”

 Dabi stared longingly at the yen notes that were poking out of the top edge, his eyes barely registering the photograph she was showing him.  He gave another brief grunt and went back to closing his eyes.

 She continued talking. “I take it with me everywhere I go. Makes me feel like he’s still with me.”

 Dabi shifted uncomfortably, leaning his head back against the window as his leg continued to bob.

 Silence fell again and he listened to the sound of her once again rummaging through her purse.

 Then Dabi felt a small nudge against his shoulder and he opened his eyes to see a folded 1000 yen note.

 “For your help,” she explained.

 Dabi hesitated for a moment before taking the cash and pocketing it.

 “Thanks,” he mumbled. He stared ahead of himself at the person across from him reading the newspaper, Endeavor’s face plastered across the front.  His hands balled into fists and he felt his temperature rise slightly. If he could just go one day without seeing his damn face...

 The old woman’s voice cut in again. “...You look like you’re having a rough day,” she commented.

 “Not for long,” he replied curtly.

 She took out a bottle of aspirin and opened it, popping a couple of the contents into her wrinkled, frail palm.  She held them out to him in offering.

 Dabi let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, lady, I’m fine.”

 “Hm... maybe something stronger...” she muttered.  She put the pills away back into the bottle and began to rummage through her purse again. Dabi leaned his head back and contemplated getting off the bus early. He just wanted some damn peace and quiet while he suffered on his commute...

 Another tap on his shoulder got Dabi’s attention, and he turned to see an open tin canister with a single rolled joint inside as the old woman gave him a knowing smile. It took him by surprise, and he stared at the offer dumbly.

 “What’s that?”

 “You know what it is,” she chided.  “Just take it. I can see you need it.”

 Dabi took it.  “You’re not what I expected...” he replied.

 “I use it for my joints. Arthritis, you know,” she explained.

 “What if you get caught?”

 The old lady laughed. “What’re they gonna do? Throw me in jail?” she laughed again.  “No, they’re too busy catching real villains to deal with an old lady like me.  Besides, on this side of town, no one cares. You could light that right now and the bus driver won’t say a thing.”

 Dabi was tempted as he stared at the joint now resting between his fingers.

 He glanced at her purse. “Why not get a prescription for pain meds? It’s legal and stronger.”

 “Ah, no.” she replied. “Nasty stuff, those opioids... seen one too many old friends get lost to it. This works just fine for me.”

Dabi’s gut sank in disappointment.

 He stared at the joint in his hand then back at the empty canister.  He handed it back to her.

 “I’m fine.” He replied.

 “I have more at home, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

 “I don’t need it,” he said.

 He’d had enough charity and pity from others to last him a lifetime.

 The old lady gave a small laugh.  “I’ve been around a long time. I know withdrawal when I see it.”

 Dabi’s mouth pulled into a frown behind his mask and he took the joint back begrudgingly. He put it in his pocket, to save for when he reached his stop.

  “Are you trying to get clean?” she asked.

 Dabi glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, his blue eye locking with hers behind his sunglasses. “Not really.”

 “Hm, you should.” She replied.

 Dabi’s mood soured at the unwelcome critique.

 “Not really an option,” he replied. To make his point, Dabi pulled up the sleeve of his hoodie just enough to give her a glimpse of his scars.  Her wrinkled eyes widened slightly.

 “I see,” she replied. “That’s unfortunate luck.”

 “Yeah.” Dabi replied. The next stop was his, so he stood and pulled the string by the window.  “Thanks for the joint.”

 “You’re welcome.” She replied.

 He turned to leave but she called to him one more time.

 “Call her.  Don’t let her worry.”

 It was just a lucky guess on her part, but when Dabi looked back at her, he could see a hint of pain in her eyes.  For the first time since she came onto the bus, he wondered about her, about her life and her experiences.  Did she lose someone close? A child? A friend? A spouse? He glanced at the old wedding band on her finger and he tried for a moment to recall the face in the photo she’d shown.  It cut through Dabi’s sickness enough for him to hesitate.

 Call you... he couldn’t do that.  Not now. If he heard your voice, he might...

 Pain danced along his sweaty skin causing a wave of nausea and he forced himself forward. Without answering, he looked away and stepped off the bus.

 ----------

He was screening your calls. You knew it.  It would ring a couple times then go straight to voicemail.

 ‘ Leave a message.’ *BEEP*

 “Dabi... please call me back.  Please.  This is important,” you said as you struggled to keep your voice from shaking.

 Please don’t do this...

 Mental images of Dabi passed out, overdosed in an unknown alleyway flitted through your mind.

 Please come back to me...

----------

A short walk and one joint later, Dabi found himself within eyesight of an uneventful building in a poverty-stricken neighborhood without a hero in sight. He looked at the address number on the map, and identified it as an old hole-in-the-wall eatery.  Its windows were frosted over in yellowish tones from years of sun damage to its laminated surface and it was marred by so much graffiti that he couldn’t even see inside.

 He ducked into an alleyway a couple of shops down and pulled the stolen wallets from his pockets and sleeves.  One by one he checked each of them for cash, pulling what value he could out of them before incinerating them in his hands.

 Once all the cash was gathered, including the yen note the old woman had given him and what he’d started off with before he’d set out this morning, Dabi’s total cash amount was around 10,000 yen.  While that amount would have fetched him a half a bottle of pills before, he had a sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be nearly enough this time around.  

 Dabi slipped a couple of the coins in his back pocket, enough for the bus fare home.  The small bit of change wouldn’t make much difference in the deal anyway, and he didn’t want to get stranded so far from the hideout.

 The joint the old lady gave him helped a little, but it wasn’t nearly enough. His booze had worn off, leaving his headache worse than before, the weed making him foggier than ever. And the pain... the pain hummed along, unforgiving and relentless.  His gut felt twisted and on fire, his legs ached miserably.

 He knew it was going to be a rough meeting.  Offer too little to start, and the dealer would laugh in his face.  Offer everything up front, and the dealer would take advantage and inflate the price, banking on his desperation.

 There was nothing else he could do about it. He’d just have to try to get whatever he could.  Maybe he’d be able to get just enough to last him until your source pulled through.  Either way, he needed this.

 Dabi left the alleyway, the cash stuffed deep into his pockets.

 Dabi stared at the door handle, his hands clutching the hidden bills and coins in a death grip.  That uncharacteristic hesitation took hold again and your face flashed in his mind again.  His phone felt hot and heavy in his pocket.  He wondered how many messages you’d left. He wondered what they said.  Were you angry? Crying? Telling him to go fuck himself and that you hated his guts?

 Dabi clenched his sore jaw. You wouldn’t understand.

 He was doing this for you.

 It was what he wanted to believe at least, even as his fingers twitched, dreaming of the feeling of the yellow bottle in his hands, of the weight of the pills resting on his tongue.

 He opened the door.

 The smell of food hit his nose, making his burning stomach churn.  He hadn’t eaten anything all day, but he knew in this state, nothing would stay down anyway.  To his right sat the only other person in the small food joint.  He didn’t look up when Dabi entered, his eyes busy with the folded newspaper in his hand, but Dabi knew it was the man he was looking for.  A magazine sat next to his half-eaten plate, a picture of All Might across the cover.

 Without so much as a word, Dabi sat down at his table.  The man didn’t bother to look up, his eyes still on the paper.

 “Not even gonna order something to eat?” he chided.

 Dabi stared at the untouchable spread of food in front of him as the man took a bite.  Dabi’s lips pressed into a thin line.

 “Not hungry,” he replied.

 Already, Dabi was being put at a disadvantage, cornered into showing some of his own hand by the simple choice of eating or not eating.  He was either too poor to afford food, or too far into withdrawal to want to eat. Either way, his choice communicated desperation.

 The man finally looked over his paper, his dark green eyes locking with Dabi’s through salt and pepper bangs.  This guy was good, and had likely been doing this for years, maybe decades.  The man returned to his meal without a word.

 Dabi hated men like this, men who got cocky on their ability to lord their goods over the needy, the poor, the desperate.  And Dabi hated being all of those things.  It was a cold reminder of how far he’d fallen from grace, from how far he’d landed from his birthright.

 If they had met in an alleyway, Dabi could have taught him a lesson about arrogance.  It was his favorite lesson to teach, after all...

 But the man was smart, and now doubt was experienced in dealing with men like Dabi. There was a reason he chose an eatery rather than a more secluded meeting place.  And there was no telling what sort of quirk this man may have in retaliation.

 So, Dabi resigned himself to waiting, each minute ticking by slower than the last.  The migraine tightened its chokehold on his senses, making the daylight coming into the establishment brighten, dark spots starting to float in his vision.  The itchy irritation of his healing burn began to grate on him, and he fought the urge to move his body within his hoodie to provide some semblance of relief, knowing you’d scold him if he reopened the healing tissue.

 “Are we gonna wait here all day?” Dabi finally snipped.  “I got shit to do. If you’re just here to waste my damn time-“

 “I’m here as a courtesy to Giran.” The man wiped his mouth and put down the newspaper.  He eyed Dabi up and down, his eyes narrowed in judgement. “Hm.  Look at you.  Let me guess. Fire quirk?  You look like you’re already on death’s door, probably be dead in a year.  I don’t know what he sees in you that makes you think you’re worth my time or my resources.”

 “I have money.” Dabi replied.

 “Not very much, apparently.” The man replied, his eyes on Dabi’s clothes.  “And for how high in demand my resources are, I’m afraid you may be below my price range. I have to maintain a respectable business, and if word gets out that I’m giving handouts to street rats, then every rat will come knocking.”

 “Then why bother meeting?” Dabi’s limited patience fraying.  He did not run out here, risking everything, just to be told no. “Why waste my fuckin’ time?”

 “You misunderstand me. I’m not wasting your time. You’re wasting mine.” The man picked up his newspaper again, but Dabi’s hand stopped it from blocking his view of his face.

 “Giran said you were willing to make a deal,” he hissed.  The paper beneath his hand started to smoke.

 “HEY!” interrupted a deep voice.  Dabi turned to see the store owner glaring at him. “No fucking quirks in here, got it? Take it outside if you have to.”

 Dabi suppressed his rage and crumpled the burning paper in his palm, snuffing out the fresh embers before they could cause more damage.

 The store owner held his glare a moment longer, his mustache bristling, then turned away to return to cleaning his grill, muttering, “Fire quirks.  I fucking hate fire quirks...”

 The man stared at his ruined newspaper for a moment before setting it on his now empty plate.  “Giran gave you false information. I said I was willing to meet. The deal depended on this meeting, and I must say, it’s not going well for you.”

 Dabi’s jaw clenched tight and the pain from his torn staple blossomed.  It flooded his brain, sweeping away the rage only to replace it the fresh memories of how he’d gotten the wound.  It helped him refocus his temper... barely.

 Besides, killing the dealer certainly wouldn’t look good for Giran’s image.  Impact Giran’s reputation, and you lose Giran’s support. And Dabi couldn’t afford to lose that, even as a member of the League.

 The pain throbbed, and Dabi forced his wounded ego aside.

 “I’m willing to pay,” he grumbled.

 “How much?” the man asked.

 Dabi pulled out the cash he had in his pocket and put it on table, papers laid out and yen coins ringing. It didn’t matter that the owner was there, able to see it.  He was sure this wasn’t the first deal to go down under his roof.

 The man stared at the money before he began to pick them up one by one and straighten them as he counted. Dabi watched silently.  When the man was done counting, he set the money back down onto the table and pursed his lips.

 “Is this some kind of joke?” the man finally asked.

 “The hell you talking about? This would get me at least half a bottle.”

 “Not in this economy it won’t.  Did you hear about the shipment that got intercepted? Feds and heroes were all over it. They’re still following leads and plucking up users,  dealers and cartel throughout the city.  Half the dealers aren’t even selling right now, waiting for this whole thing to blow over.”

 “It’s all I got.” Dabi muttered.

 The man eyed him for a long moment, before finally speaking.  “It’s not enough.”

 Dabi scowled and reached for his cash, but the dealer’s hand got to it first, sliding the bills and coins back towards himself.

 “However... I am willing to be generous today.” He replied.  “It’s not enough for the whole bottle, but it can cover some of the pills.”

 “How many?”

 “Five.”

 Dabi’s jaw dropped.  “Five??” he shouted angrily.

 The owner slammed down a clear plastic bin filled with vegetables and gave Dabi a hard glare.  Dabi clenched his teeth and his fists and lowered his voice.

 “Five??” he repeated. “That’s extortion and you fucking know it.”

 “It’s business. Supply and demand and all that,” the man replied with a casual wave of his hand. “And if you can’t play by the rules, then maybe you shouldn’t be in the game.”

 Dabi pursed his lips again as he struggled to hide another sharp snake of pain that laced along his arm. “What’s the dosage?”

 The man pulled the bottle out of the inner pocket of his jacket and showed it to him before hiding the bottle away again.

 “That’s it?? That’s half than what I was getting before.”

 “Like I said... hard times. You should feel lucky that there’s any still on the market at all.”

 Dabi’s leg began bouncing vigorously under the table as he weighed his options, but his options were limited.  He had no more money, and he had nothing else to barter with.

 “Let me see one.” Dabi ordered.

 The man’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

 “To make sure it’s legit. You can’t just raise the price that high and not expect me to check.”

 The man silently pulled out the bottle again and showed Dabi the pill between his thumb and forefinger. Dabi leaned forward and stared at it with narrow eyes.  It had the right color, and there… the stamp of authenticity, proof that it was made in a pharmaceutical lab.

 Still....

 Dabi held out his hand. “Let me hold it.”

 The man pulled the pill back out of his reach, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. Then he slowly handed it over.  “Don’t try to take it.”

 “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

 Dabi held the pill in his hand, checking the weight, the shine of it, and once again looking over the details of the number stamped on the side.  It was legit.  Dabi felt the loss of it as soon as he handed it back to the dealer.

 “Fine.”

 “What was that?”

 This fucking asshole...

 “I said fine. I’ll take the five pills.”

 The man grinned, and Dabi fantasized about knocking out his perfect teeth before setting his face on fire.

 “A wise choice.”  The man took a small dime bag out of his coat pocket.  Then he opened up a clean napkin and counted out the pills in front of Dabi.  Once Dabi nodded his approval of the five pills, the man put them into the small baggy and handed it over, pocketing Dabi’s cash with his other hand.

 Dabi took the bag and carefully put it in his hoodie pocket.

 “Don’t lose them.” The man commented sardonically.  Then he stood up and went over to the owner, slipping him some of the cash Dabi had paid him.  The man gave a curt nod and pocketed the bills.  The dealer turned around and winked.  “Cost of doing business, am I right?  Pleasure doing business, kid.” And with that, he left.

 Dabi sat for a few minutes, staring at the half empty plate and burned newspaper.  The magazine was gone, to be used as a way to discretely hand over the rest of that bottle to someone with more money.

 A wave of self-loathing and hatred washed over Dabi, but he stuffed it down before he let it consume him. If he dwelled on it much longer, he’d burn this whole building to the ground.

 With a stubborn set of his jaw, Dabi grabbed what remained of the food on the plate and ate it quickly, the taste like ash on his tongue.  Then he pulled out the small bag and grabbed a pill, downing it with what remained of the dealer’s water glass.

 He had to eat something if he wanted to keep the medication down, and there was no point in letting food go to waste.  Especially when his own pockets were now empty.  

 Dabi stared at the rest of the pills, debated swallowing another, but decided against it.  He had to make it last.  He had to make it worth it.  The guilt crept up again, unwelcome and intrusive.  He forced it down again and pocketed the little bag back into his jacket.

 Then he stood up and left.

 Dabi eyed the street up and down for the dealer, but he was already long gone, no trace of him anywhere. Dabi kicked an empty soda can in frustration.  How he would have loved to have cornered him...

 Probably a teleportation quirk... Dabi thought.  It was the only possibility that made any sense, why he’d be willing to meet in broad daylight with the risk being as high as he made it out to be.

 Begrudgingly, Dabi made his way toward the bus stop, his hands in his pockets.

 The bus back was less packed than the one he came in on; he found a seat towards the back where he could watch people come and go in solitude.  He knew he should stand again, wait for opportunities to pick more pockets in order to line his own empty ones.  But at this point, the combination of sleep deprivation, withdrawal, dehydration, and starvation were all beginning to take a toll on his weak body. All he wanted was to sit and wait for the opioid to take effect, to feel that high that he’d missed for so long. All he wanted was a reprieve from life.

 Ten minutes in and it hit him like a wave, washing over him, cleansing of him of his discomforts.  A part of him wanted to cry at how good it felt. The blissful blanket of pleasure surrounded him, cradling him like an infant as the beast of addiction purred contently in his veins.  Euphoria warmed his blood until he was floating, protected and safe from the harsh pain of his body and the world around him.  It hit harder than he’d expected, but then he realized he’d been without them for two weeks, even with your pills to offset his withdrawal.  His body had already started to forget, resetting years of carefully laid out neural synapses.

 Either way, he didn’t mind. If anything, he was glad it was working as well as it was; he’d been afraid the pills would be useless at their lower dose.  But now he was grateful – so, so grateful – that he’d managed to negotiate for at least some of them.  He’d forgotten how good it really felt, and he let himself soak in the bliss as he sat on the bus.  People came and left in a hazy blur.  Dabi stared out the window, the motion of the bus lulling him into a half sleep as he finally began to surrender to the exhaustion of his broken body.  

 But the smaller dosage had its own small consequences, its effectiveness wearing off faster than he’d hoped.  It seemed like he’d barely closed his eyes before being woken up again by the throbbing pain in his head and aching limbs.  What had it been? A few minutes? His eyes noted the shift in the shadows and daylight within the bus, the rays now coming through the opposite side.  No, hours had passed.  How many?  The nausea was awakening in his gut.  His awareness began to sharpen, jagged and cutting, unwanted emotions beginning to bubble to the surface like black tar. Not enough.  He needed this, for just a little bit longer.  He pulled the small bag out of his pocket and swallowed another pill.  His phone buzzed in his pocket but he didn’t feel it.

 A few minutes later, he sank back under, safely nestled in the pill’s effects.  Time lost its meaning.  Business signs and streetlights lit up, one by one in the late afternoon that steadily faded to twilight.  They blurred as they passed, like watercolor across a page that made the faces on the billboards blur and fade into a sunset palette of oranges and blues.

 Dabi missed his bus stop. And the one after that, and the one after that.  It wasn’t until he saw the harbor spread out before him that he realized he’d reached the end of the bus route.  The sight of the water called to him, and he quietly he got off, his feet never quite touching the ground.

 He walked to the edge and stared out into the water as stars began to awaken and twinkle.  Storm clouds hugged the horizon, and the cold, damp gust of wind across the water brought the promise of night-time rain.  The bridge crossing the bay was lit up in white lights, the low distant hum of traffic floating over the lapping waters at the base of the wall.

 Dabi felt content. For the first time, his world was quiet, the struggles he’d been grappling with faded and disconnected. The memories of his troubles were softened around the edges, blurring into the hazy background until nothing was left.  Nothing left but you.  Your voice, your gentle laugh, your soft touch.  Memories of happy moments drifted forth.  You throwing a napkin at him. Eating ramen in your room.  Laying on your bed as you treated him in the late hours. Your feet stretched out across his lap as you slept.  

 Holding you in his arms after he’d caught you.

 Waking up next to you.

 He stood there as time passed, and all that kept coming up in his mind was you.  You, you, you.  He felt warm despite the cold, and he knew it wasn’t because of his quirk.

 So maybe it wasn’t just addiction after all.

 A sinking feeling began to grow in his chest, its weight an ache that he couldn’t quite name.

 ‘Promise.’

 His own word echoed in his head, the hazy memory drifting up like a leaf caught in a gentle breeze. The weight of it stifled his lingering high, pulling his thoughts back closer to the present.

 What did he promise again...?

 He struggled to remember, but the details were slippery, fading in and out of his mind.  All he could remember was your face in the dark, the feel of your chin between his fingers.  You were sad about something...

 BZZ BZZ BZZ

 Dabi pulled his phone from his pocket to see a series of text messages.

 Are you okay?

 Where are you?

 Please call me.

 Dabi, I need to know you’re okay.

 He could hear your voice in the words, and with it he finally remembered.

 ‘I don’t want to end up alone again...’

 Reality sharpened around him as his senses began to return – the chill of the damp cold night air soaking through his clothes, the itching on his back, the ache in his legs. The pulsing in his temples began to throb, and he closed his eyes against it, pressing his fingers against his closed eyelids.

 The medication was finally wearing off, and now Dabi realized how much time must have actually passed. Twilight was long gone, the dark of night in full swing.

 When he opened his eyes again, your words blared bright in the backlight of his phone screen.

 I need to know you’re okay.

 You were worried.

 Of course you were. You always worried over him.

 ‘I don’t want to be alone again...’

 You were alone now, stuck back at the hideout, desperately sending messages into the void and hearing nothing in return.  And it was his fault, his choice.  He left you alone.

 But he’d promised...

 I did it for you, he thought.

 It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours...

 You did it for yourself, a voice in his head answered back.

 Anger welled up in his chest.

 “GODDAMN IT!!!” the curse ripped from his lips, and his fist collided with the wooden telephone post next to him.  The pain of the punch erupted across his knuckles and his wrist, but he didn’t care. He punched it again, with his other hand.  Then he did it again. And again.  Blue flames licked and teased off his knuckles, little dancing demons that left scorch marks on the damp wood before being snuffed out on the next hit.

 Over and over Dabi punched, as if the pain could erase his mistake, could erase the mental picture of the look on your face that you’d give him once he returned.  But it didn’t do any of those things, and he kept punching until his knuckles were raw and bleeding, littered with splinters.

 He didn’t stop until the familiar sharp pain of his damaged nerves lit a streak of agony up his leg, just as it had that morning.  He buckled, collapsing to his knees before falling to his haunches until he was leaning against the post, his breaths heavy.  His hand instantly went to his pocket, eager for relief.  Just as he pulled out the last three pills from the little bag, he froze.  He stared at them, his hand shaking from the adrenaline and the withdrawal.  They were small, harmless looking things, but they felt heavy, filled with guilt, accusation, and dependency.  They drew his attention like the gravity a dead star threatening to suck him in until there was nothing left.

 He recalled all of the ways he’d convinced himself it was worth it. How it would free you from his clutches, how he’d be able to get himself back on track if he could just get some.  They had promised relief, freedom. But Dabi knew it was fake, knew it was a temporary fix. They’d be used up by morning, and then he’d be back where he’d started. And you... you would never trust him again.

 Yet he still wanted. He craved.  He stared at the pills and licked his chapped lips. He picked one and brought it to his lips.

 ‘Promise.’

 Dabi hesitated, his hand shaking.  

 Then with a frustrated yell, he threw the pill into the harbor, followed quickly by the remaining two, still tucked into their little bag.

 And just like that, they were gone, swallowed up by the night, their contents lost to the lapping waters.  Dabi stared at the black water dumbfounded at himself as regret settled in the form of aching limbs and a pounding head.

 Stupid fucking idiot, he told himself.  Why did you do that?

 The voices in his head didn’t respond, the answer buried too deep for him to find.

 A raindrop touched his head, and then a moment later, another landed on his hand.  More and more began to fall, speckling his hoodie, his head, the ground around him.  A flash of lightning lit the sky, followed a moment later by the loud boom of thunder. The drizzles instantly turned into a downpour, and Dabi sat in the rain, letting the cold wash over him as the raindrops sizzled on his hot skin.  If only it could wash away his mistakes.

 But it wouldn’t.  He’d have to go back eventually and face what he’d done.

 He’d just gotten you back. The one person who gave a damn about him, and the first person to truly see him for who he was.  And now he was going to lose you - all over five, measly, stupid little pills.

 Dabi forced himself up and walked away from the water’s edge.  He held his phone inside his pocket.  He should respond to you.  Let you know he was okay.  But it was pouring buckets now. He needed a safe place.  He made his way back to the bus stop, where the awning that covered the bench from the elements gave him the protection he needed.  It certainly wasn’t perfect, with the wind blowing the rainwater sideways with each gust, but it was enough for Dabi to pull his phone out and hunch over it against the elements.

 He found another missed message from you, time timestamp on it from fifteen minutes ago.

 Please come home.

 Dabi tapped the message box, and the little text bar blinked, waiting.  Dabi stared at it, his fingers frozen.

 As if you had sensed his hesitation, your number popped up, his phone buzzing with each silent ring. His thumb hovered over the red button before switching to the green and tapping it.

 He put the phone to his ear and waited, his mouth dry, tongue stuck.

 “Dabi??  Dabi, are you there?” your voice came through, slightly choppy from the interference of the weather and the poor cell phone service. But it was there, panicked, and shaky with worry.  It grounded him instantly, and he finally found his voice.

 “Yeah.  I’m here.” He finally said, his voice slightly hoarse.

 “Oh, thank God,” you breathed.  “Are you okay?”

 Dabi hesitated a moment, before answering.  “No.”  He was far, far from okay, he realized.  He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been okay in his entire life.

 “Are you hurt??”

 Another pause. “No.”  

 A half lie he realized as he inspected his knuckles on his free hand.

 “Okay. Are you close by? Are you able to come home?”

 Home...

 Dabi felt a stone form in his throat and his eyes began to burn.  He rubbed at them with his thumb and forefinger, refusing to cry so many times in a single week.  He cried all the time when he was younger and weaker.  He wasn’t weak anymore.

 He cleared his throat.

 “I don’t have any bus money.”

 “It’s okay, Kurogiri get you.  Where are you?”

 Dabi looked at the map next to him, encased in plastic on the inside of the bus stop.

 “I’m at bus stop 23, at the harbor.”

 “Okay, stay there. I’ll let Kurogiri know.  Do you want him to transport you to your room?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Dabi, don’t hang up.” You ordered.

Dabi didn’t answer, but he didn’t hang up either.  He could hear you on the other end of the line, opening and closing a door, the sound of footsteps, your muffled voice talking.

 A moment later, the familiar black portal opened up to his left.  Dabi hesitated then stepped through.

-----------------------------------

Chapter 14

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[charmedreincarnation]

What was the void like for you, and what was your personal process of getting into it? 😊

The Void State can be a difficult concept for some people to understand, so let me start by saying that experiencing the Void State is unique for everyone. It’s not hard because of the state itself, but due to versatility of its usage and peoples definition, the information you see can get absorbed so fast it becomes more complex than need be. Anyways, For me it was a feeling of total emptiness. It was like my mind was stripped of all thought, and I became aware of the present moment. It was a peaceful, calming sensation that cannot be replicated with words.

The process of getting into the Void State began with meditation. I started by taking a few moments to be still and quiet. I would close my eyes, focus on my breathing, and try to empty my mind of all thought. After a few moments, I would begin to feel an inner peace begin to spread throughout my body.

As I continued my practice, I began to focus on the space between the thoughts in my mind. Rather than thinking about what was going on around me or in the future, I was focused solely on being in the present moment. This allowed me to ignore any and all distractions, allowing myself to become completely aware of the now and nothing else.

The deeper I got into my practice, the easier it became to slip into the Void State. My body became still and relaxed, while my mind started to wander into a place of peace and tranquility. I felt the world around me melt away and I was left with nothing but a deep sensation of inner stillness. Once I reached this point, I simply allowed myself to stay there, feeling the emptiness and peace wash over me. This practice worked wonders for me as it allowed me to become in tune with my inner self more than before. The Void State is something that can be reached through self-awareness and meditation.

I want to clarify I have adhd so while I was doing meditations, it was to help clear my chaotic mind. I eventually got into the void state with intention as I do manifestion and shifting. I do not like methods as I am not a methodical method but I always begin my journey with what’s the most emphasized in my research which in this case I found to be meditation and mental clarity.

I am no means a master of the void state at all, and I am still on my journey to be more consistently aware of it, and become a master of tapping into it. the research and I found while exploring this cool concept had made this journey so enjoyable. I would copy and paste my findings in this reply but it will be too long 💀and I don’t want to deviate from your question!

But I did learn how my name is integrated in many religions and meditation. In Buddhism, this idea is present in many forms of meditation, while in Hinduism it is employed through the concept of Maya. For example, In Buddhist meditation, practitioners focus on letting go of ideas and concepts that are not helping them and replacing them with more positive thoughts and emotions. The idea is to let go of attachments that drive negative behavior, so that the meditator can become closer to enlightenment. Through reality shifting, practitioners free themselves from the limitations of their current experience in order to better understand the subtleties of reality.In Hinduism, reality shifting is present in the concept of Maya, where practitioners strive to gain a better understanding of life through understanding the various facets of Maya ..

anyways you didn’t ask but I really wanted to add that! But the point is make your journey fun and and explore to make it more enriching if you so desire! It can make it less stressful. Finally, I just really want to emphasize all of our journies will look and feel differently for everyone so cater your journey to your mind, desires, and imagination and no one else’s 💓

[roselungs]

The Details

Do you know why people die when they are pierced by a bullet? Because 70% of the human body is made up of water Just as if you made a hole in a water tank.

Was it a random clash dancing at the head of the alley when I passed Or was there a sniper watching me and counting my final steps?

Was it a stray bullet Or was I a stray man even though I’m a third of a century old?

Is it friendly fire? How can it be When I’ve never made friends with fire in my life?

Do you think I got in the way of the bullet Or it got in my way? So how am I supposed to know when it’s passing and which way it will go?

Is an encounter with a bullet considered a crash in the conventional sense Like what happens between two cars? Will my body and my hard bones smash its ribs too And cause its death? Or will it survive?

Did it try to avoid me? Was my body soft? And did this little thing as small as a mulberry feel female in my maleness?

The sniper aimed at me without bothering to find out that I’m allergic to snipers’ bullets And it’s an allergy of a most serious kind, and can be fatal.

The sniper didn’t ask my permission before he fired, an obvious example of the lack of civility that has become all too common these days.

ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

I was exploring the difference between revolution and war when a bullet passed through my body, and extinguished a torch lit by a primary school teacher from Syria acting in cooperation with a Palestinian refugee who had paid with his land to solve anti-Semitism in Europe and been forced to emigrate to a place where he met a woman who was like memories.

It was a wonderful feeling, like eating an ice cream in winter, or having unprotected sex with a woman you don’t know in a city you don’t know under the influence of cocaine, or…

A passerby tells me half of what he wants to tell me so I believe him then we stab each other like two lovers, a woman beckons to me to follow her so I do and we have a child who looks like betrayal, a sniper kills me so I die, the sky falls on the passersby so the tourists flee, the sky falls on the passersby and my heart doesn’t flee, the sky falls upwards so a poet commits collective suicide in his room even though he was alone that evening.

That evening oblivion attacked me unawares, so I bought the memory of a soldier who hadn’t returned from war, and when and when I noticed the flaw in the time, I couldn’t find a place of exile appropriate to my wound so I decided not to die again.

The city is older than the memories, the curse is fenced in by melancholy, time is late for its appointments, walls enclose time with monotony, death looks like my face, the poet leans on a woman in his poem, the general marries my wife, the city vomits its history and I swallow the streets and the crowd swallows me, I, who distribute my blood to strangers, and share a bottle of wine with my solitude, beg you, send my body by express mail, distribute my fingers equally between my friends.

This city is bigger than a poet’s heart and smaller than his poem, but it is big enough for the dead to commit suicide without troubling anyone, for traffic lights to bloom in the suburbs, for a policeman to become part of the solution and the streets a mere background to truth.

That evening, when my heart stumbled, a woman from Damascus took hold of me and taught me the alphabet of her desire, I was lost between God whom the shaykh planted in my heart and God whom I touched in her bed, that evening, my mother was the only one who knew I would never return, my mother was the only one who knew, my mother was the only, my mother.

I sold my white days on the black market, and bought a house overlooking the war, and the view was so wonderful that I could not resist its temptation, so my poem deviated from the shaykh’s teachings, and my friends accused me of cutting myself off, I put kohl on my eyes and became more Arab, and drank camel’s milk in a dream and woke up as a poet, I was watching the war like lepers watch people’s eyes, and had arrived at frightening truths about poetry and the white man, about the season of migration to Europe, and about cities that receive tourists in peacetime and mujahidin in wartime, about women who suffer too much in peacetime, and become fuel for the war in wartime.

In a reconstructed city like Berlin lies a secret that everyone knows, which is that the… No, I will not repeat what is known, but I will tell you something you don’t know: the problem with war is not those who die, but those who remain alive after the war.

It was the most beautiful war I’ve been in in my life, full of metaphors and poetic images, I remember how I used to sweat adrenalin and piss black smoke, how I used to eat my flesh and drink screams, death with his scrawny body leaned on the destruction committed by his poem, and wiped his knife clean of my salt, and the city rubbed my shoes with her evening and the street smiled and the city counted the fingers of my sorrow and dropped them on the road leading to her, death weeps and the city remembers the features of her killer and sends me a stabbing by post, threatening me with happiness, and hangs my heart out on her washing line strung between two memories, and oblivion pulls me towards myself, deeply towards myself, deeply, so my language falls on morning, and balconies fall on songs, headscarves on kisses, back streets on women’s bodies, the details of alleyways on history, the city falls on the cemeteries, dreams fall on the prisons, the poor on joy, and I fall on memory.

When I became a member of the Union of the Dead, my dreams improved and I began to practise yawning freely, and despite the drums of war singing close to my bloated body I had plenty of time to befriend a stray dog, who chose not to eat from my corpse despite his hunger, and was content to sleep by my feet.

A number of people tried to pull me out of the way, but the sniper argued with his gun so they changed their minds, he was an honourable sniper, worked honestly, and didn’t waste time or people.

That little hole, Remaining after the bullet had passed through, Emptied me of my contents, Everything flowed out gently, Memories, Names of friends, Vitamin C, Wedding songs, The Arabic dictionary, The temperature of 37 degrees, Uric acid, The poems of Abu Nuwas, And my blood.

The moment the soul begins to escape through the little gate the bullet has opened, things become clearer, the theory of relativity turns into something self-evident, mathematical equations that used to be vague become a simple matter, the names of classmates we’ve forgotten come back to us, life is suddenly illuminated in perfect detail, the childhood bedroom, mother’s milk, the first trembling orgasm, the streets of the camp, the portrait of Yasser Arafat, the smell of coffee with cardamom inside the house, the sound of the morning call to prayer, Maradona in Mexico in 1986, and you.

Just as if you are eating your beloved’s fingers, or suckling from an electric cable, or being inoculated against shrapnel, just as if you are a memory thief, come, let’s give up poetry, exchange the songs of summer for gauze dressings and harvest poems for surgical thread, leave your kitchen and the children’s bedroom and follow me so that we can drink tea behind the sandbags, the massacre has room for everyone, put your dreams in the shed and give the plants on the balcony plenty of water, for the the discussion with iron may go on for a while, leave behind Rumi, Averroes and Hegel, and bring along Machiavelli and Huntington and Fukuyama, for we need them now, leave behind your laughter, your blue shirt and warm bed, and bring your teeth and nails and hunting knife, and come.

Throw away the Renaissance and bring on the inquisition, Throw away European civilization and bring on the Kristallnacht, Throw away socialism and bring on Joseph Stalin, Throw away Rimbaud’s poems and bring on the slave trade, Throw away Michel Foucault and bring on the Aids virus, Throw away Heidegger’s philosophy and bring on the purity of the Aryan race, Throw away Hemingway’s sun that also rises and bring on the bullet in the head, Throw away Van Gogh’s starry sky and bring on the severed ear, Throw away Picasso’s Guernica and bring on the real Guernica with its smell of fresh blood, We need these things now, we need them to begin the celebration.

— Ghayath Almadhoun, tr. Catherine Cobham

[hardkuna]

Completionist

› 𝙺𝚎𝚗𝚖𝚊 𝙺𝚘𝚣𝚞𝚖𝚎 𝚡 𝙵𝚎𝚖!𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 

› 𝚗𝚜𝚏𝚠, 𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚕, 𝚠𝚊𝚡 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚢, 𝚜𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚜𝚞𝚋/𝚍𝚘𝚖?, 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚑𝚎𝚕𝚍 𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚜𝚖.  𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚢 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛 𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚘𝚛𝚜. 𝙰𝚐𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚙.

› 𝟷,𝟿𝟽𝟾 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚜

𝙺𝚎𝚗𝚖𝚊 𝙺𝚘𝚣𝚞𝚖𝚎 was a completionist. Every game, whether it be on a console, computer, or court, he would complete with precision. He was known to spend hours upon hours grinding for a single reward, opening every rooftop chest just for a single achievement. It was that same keen attention that let him play games for four to five hours at a time. A fixation to do every minor thing in order to reach a final prize. To get every single checkpoint along the way. Grueling work as it may be, relaxation dug its nails into the process with satisfaction following soon after. It applied to every portion of his life, a sweet hum of “we aren’t done until I reached my checkpoint.”

 That’s how he found himself above you, holding a lighter to a paraffin candle. The room was filled with the sound of the burning wick and your small pants. Kenma knew you were waiting for something to start, your mind running through all of the different routes. You liked the games just as much as he did. There was comfort in the concentrated blare of the wick alone.

  He never spoke much unless you acted out. He didn’t like when things seemed to glitch on him. That gentle complaintive whirr of wanting to be played until the end. Whenever it happened, Kenma would always want to restart until it worked again, properly. Lucky for him, tonight didn’t seem like one of those nights. At least not yet.

  He thought you looked cute with one of his hairbands tied over your eyes. Not that it was necessary considering your fists remained balled over them. Teeth rolled the plump flesh of your lip between them. You were waiting for him to start, but his game was just loading. Anticipation for a new level curled around your insides.

  The candle was raised slowly. The shift of his weight being the only warning as pretty white seeped from the side of the container. It started with a few drips, beads of wax splattering along your upper abdomen, just slightly between the valley of your bare breasts. The way your muscles reflexively recoiled at the sting causing the setter’s mouth to draw open in a delicate ‘oh’. So that’s the reaction he’d get from this one. It was a minor achievement, spurring a desire to see more of it.

  A small bitten back sound whined from the crevasse your throat as your arched your back upwards. The lines left a vibrant sting before dying into a comfortable warmth. The trickle of each deviating lane danced its warmth down your sides.

  Amber hues locked onto the steady stream pouring, creating drizzled lines that rolled this way and that to the curvature of your body. Like a level being conquered, he was glued to the screen that was your form in front of him. The way the hairband twitched, following the movement of the brows below it. The hitching of breath shown in your shuddering chest. Pretty. A small smile crafted onto his lips in admiration.

  If you were a game, you’d be story based. Rich in lore, background, and texture. Rich in your soundtrack, which was thickened honey to his ears. Rich in visuals, leading his eyes to wander along the artistic crafting of your skin.

  His hand reached out, the pads of his fingers a cool contrast to the warmth underneath them. The wax was soft still, but crackling with each upheaval of your chest. Gooseflesh threatened to pucker along your surface. His small smile flickered to daintily delighted. Everything for him was a game. An achievement. A reward for the time devoted for it. You were different. You reacted to him faster than any game. The way your thighs squeezed together at the slightest of touches a testament of the fact. You gave him things games could never. A sense of home and warmth and love and unwavering devotion. For each level of the relationship, he needed that second player to unlock it. You never let him down, you never disappointed. You silently challenged him in ways he never dreamt of before.

  And now, as the tips of his fingers trailed across you, a new challenge was set in the soft mewl of his name. Carefully, he picked the hardened pieces off, lips tracing each reddened route upwards. The tickle of his breath along you triggered a roll of your hips along the thigh between your legs. Friction. You’ve been deprived of it for all too long. The first grind began the swirl in the back of your mind and the pit of your stomach. The fluttering of his lips, the caress of his hands over the warm sting beneath them, each slow and soft movement was calculated.

  The tips of his fingers reached the underneath of your breast, sliding up onto them, allowing the buds to slip between with index and middle digit. Maintaining the steady-slow pace, the fingers came together, pinching the bud right where they joined. He reveled in softness of them. The bit of nerve that peeked between, his tongue met with a long and lavished lick. It didn’t matter if he tasted the salt of his own hand. The gasp, the buck of your hips at the muscle of his thigh, followed by the annoyed jerk of your chin made up for it.

  You weren’t glitching out just yet, so he could keep his game going.

  Kenma found his hands slipped down your body, down the valleys he’d found to trigger quick times if he pressed into you with just the right amount of pressure. Along the softened skin just at the outer edges of your stomach. Pressing slightly at the valley of your pelvis. The touch began to ghost before lifting. You whined again, lips curling into a pout while his pulled into an anticipatory line. He truly was a cat, ready to pounce at the movement of a mouse just before him.

  His next checkpoint was his favorite one. One he savored whenever it was his turn to create the scene. The checkpoint where you beg for his tongue on you. You two were competitive to a degree and this checkpoint was the most difficult to get to. It involved beating a harder boss – your ego.

  So, he leaned forward, pressing his thigh onto your pulsing cunt, letting you determine your own friction and pace. His lips met yours in a light kiss, cock twitching as you bit his lower lip hungrily. Your hands wound into his hair, pulling him closer in a desperate attempt to increase the friction of your swaying thighs. The slight friction caught on his length as well, the teasing of pleasure lapping at the underside of his belly. He let out a husked hum in response, slinking his hand to hold your chin between his thumb and forefinger. The other tugged the headband from over your hazy hues.

  Heady and heavy lidded, Kenma toyed, “Do I need to restart the game or will you let me play?” Eyes searched each other in challenge before you conceded to him, slowly rolling so that you lower back rested on the bed once again. It was a painfully restrained motion and you knew he bubbled with glee at the quiver of your lip. The player in question inwardly breathed a sigh of relief as you gave him a moment of reprieve. The heart-beat strum between your legs fueled a summer fire in your gut, drying your throat to his next question, “Hm?” His head tilted, a playful glint in his eye as he watched you unwind.

  “Please jus’ fuck me already.” The words came out in a strangled whisper. The gentle sting of the wax remained in the form of his torso pressing on yours, reinviting the claws of heat along the skin. You rolled your body to press into his, stealing another staved kiss.

  Check Point: Reached.

  Sometimes, Kenma could be the most expressive person. In that moment, you could see the excitement spread through the soft lift of his features. He moved down, dipping his head between your thighs. It wasn’t precisely what you had asked for, but was greedily indulged in all the same. Fingers spready your lips, his tongue running up flat, the tip expertly curling just beyond the entrance before flattening again and pressing onto the bundle of nerves above it. You were a muted sweetness, like warmed sugar water that he drank up like nectar. He could replay this level over and over. It was the one piece he didn’t mind working harder for. Feeling your thighs twitch and tighten around his head, the way your lips parted in moans with the thrust of his tongue.

  It might’ve been silly, but he tended to get lost in it, nearly forgetting the angered ache of his own sex. What brought him back to reality was your feverish grip in his hair and the way your hips rocked. Breath caught in your throat, but the desperate way you moved begged for more and he humbly obliged. Two fingers slid easily into the slick, finding the rhythm and spot to make you hum a honey-thick sticky ‘nnn’. The coil in you burned at his touch, condensing like taught wires ready to snap. To spite the ache in his jaw, his tongue circled languidly in contrast to the quickened pace of his hands. If gaming taught him anything, it was excellent hand coordination. He panted onto you, exhaustion building from the effort. He knew you were holding it.

  So, he stopped, sat back on his haunches and crossed his arms. His brows furrowed, creasing in slight frustration. He should have gotten you already. Twice at least by how your walls had half sputtered along his fingers. Kenma reached his checkpoint only to be met with delayed gratification.

  If he couldn’t achieve it with his tongue, the very least he could do was forcibly snap that wire with what you had originally wanted. With that said, the blond motioned for you to lay on your side, pulling one of your legs up to his chest while the other remained between his legs. Flexibility was never entirely a problem for you, he found during the first few games. Arms wrapped around your leg, pinning it to him as the tip of his cock found its way to your sopping arousal.

  He guided it in slowly. So slowly that your walls attempted to pull him in. Your cheeks grew a pretty pink, lashes shut, brows furrowing in concentrated pained pleasure. Kenma leaned his cheek onto your calf, “S-serves you right for holding onto it for so long.” The air in his tone was a smug matter-of-fact betrayed by the struggled stutter. From all the pent up teasing, the friction of your hips on his cock, your taste on his tongue, and now the butterfly-like flutter along his length as he rut into you, Kenma Kozume could soon claim completion. The withheld orgasms frayed the tightened wires in your core and from it, a lathered and lush howl escaped. The tight vice of you milked at Kenma’s cock, his own breath hitched as his strides stuttered. With one last thrust, thickened whips of cum lashed warmly at your walls.

  As he pulled his sweat-sheened cheek away from your leg, slipping out of you in the process, Kenma flopped onto your chest. Both of you panted in near alternating synchronicity. His eyes slid shut, relishing in the sound of your rapid heartbeat. Your fingers shakily soothed through his hair, “Love you.”

  “Love you too…” He peered up at you, then at the hand which lifted from your bicep with an audible stick, “I hate being sweaty… shower?”

  “Hell yeah. Cold, though!”

  “Disgusting, but fine,” The corner of his lips curled up as you flicked his forehead.

[aquilaofarkham]

title: mishpachah rating: T+ word count: 3,085 summary: Five years after rebuilding the manor—and the birth of a new Belmont into the world—Trevor decides to share an old recipe with his newfound family.

For @fibulaa 💛  Thanks so much for commissioning me!

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The first bread Trevor Belmont ate while living his newly orphaned vagabond life was so dry it cut at the inner walls of his throat. He swallowed each bite with grimace after grimace, knowing that despite the pain, the already hardened child of thirteen could stave off starvation for a little while longer. Until he tasted the faintest tinge of copper on his ruined tongue.

Putting those years far behind, he now stands in front of a wooden counter, blurry eyed and with a yawn reminiscent of a sun drunk cat. It seems clean at first glance but in every corner Trevor notices fragments of past meals which he tried wiping away once they were finished and placed on a more pristine table meant for family. Bits of salt, half minced vegetables, and crumbs of bread much softer than the ones belonging to a later childhood he would rather forget. This kitchen, warm in its early morning sunlight, was the final instalment of the manor, newly risen from the ashes. Or rather, simply rebuilt thanks to the calloused, blistered, and splintered hands. No more ruined stone, no more fire blackened beams holding together little less than an architectural skeleton. The somewhat mirror image of Trevor’s lost home has been faring better than the castle. Too many memories, fresh, ranging from bitter to incomprehensible.

Slowly, he grows conscious of his surroundings and his own self. A continuing habit of being the first to wake not just in this manor hold but in life. Reluctantly opening his eyes prior to dawn covering the landscape while still traveling alone only to drag a pair of worn boots back along a similar muddy road. Trevor never wanted to wake up before the sun. He just couldn’t bear to stay in the same place for much longer whether due to the laundry list of dangers or more often than not, his newfound hatred of whichever backwater hamlet he unfortunately found himself in.

He’s happy to wake up early. Happy to never feel a need to leave or escape, happy to know that lack of food replaced with pints of liquid pleasure mixed with death will never plague him again. Happy to prepare breakfast in a hot iron pot over a well stoked fire. What he thought he lost forever has come back, along with new additions to the family he’s carved out.

Another presence bounds her way into the kitchen and ambushes Trevor from behind. He’s not old—not yet, he’ll give it time—but years of drinking have made their permanent stay, dulling the more acute senses. Makes it easier for a five-year-old to catch him off guard. Trevor’s eyes bolt open as tiny arms hold him in a tight cage.

“Good morning, papa!”

His ears ring at the sound of Mirele’s loud voice, but at least he won’t have to worry about nodding off. He stares down at the youngest Belmont who looks as though someone had split Trevor and Sypha straight down their centres into four pieces and sewed each differing half onto the other in order to create a new person. A homunculi of messy dark chocolate hair, bright eyes shining with blue ice, full rosy cheeks somehow conspicuously smeared with some sort of dirt or jam, and enough energy to wear out an electric powered jackrabbit. 

“How’s my little monster doing this morning?” Everything Trevor says is laced with his own personal touch of affection and Mirele loves it.

“Mama and papa are still asleep. Help me wake them up! Pleaseeee?”

This doesn’t surprise him; Sypha has always preferred to savour her last moments of sleep longer than normal and Alucard is… well, Alucard.

“Tell you what.” Trevor places a lid onto the simmering pot with a heavy clank. “While this heats up for our breakfast, we’ll go wake up those lazy bones.”

“Right!” Hand in smaller hand, the two make their way upstairs into the shadowy master bedchamber. Curtains drawn with only a sliver of light cutting its singular path across the floor and over two distinct lumps covered by blankets and furs. They seem conjoined, linked in each other’s arms, unaware that a third party has been missing for long enough. Mirele plunges into the room first, jumping onto the bed as all children do when parents refuse to join the land of the conscious. She playfully shoves and cuddles her way between the two bodies who sink deeper beneath the covers, lazily moaning like ghosts.

“Mama! Papa! Wake up! It’s time to get up!”

Trevor hopes that his tactic of throwing open the weighted curtains works in a more effective manner. Listening to the rising chorus of wordless protests coming from behind, he’s pleased with the results. “Never thought I would be the one setting a good example for our daughter.”

“Do not get cheeky, especially this early.” Sypha’s response spills out like running water. It’s clear her mind isn’t quite all there yet. But she can scoop Mirele into her arms, find every ticklish spot, and illicit giggles that only canines might hear. “At least we both know how to have fun, right my sweet?”

“Vampires… nocturnal…” A deeper, muffled voice emerges from under one of the pillows.

“Something you’d like to share with us, Alucard?” Trevor quips, amused at how the other father of the household can never seem to shake off his morning dishevelment. Perhaps sleeping in a coffin would help—a very large one so he doesn’t have to be alone. Alucard reluctantly removes the pillow as tangled heaps of gold fall over his face.

“Vampires are supposed to be nocturnal. Would you rather I burst into ashes upon contact with the sun? Think of our girls, Trevor.”

“We’ve all seen you in the sun before, it’s about as dangerous as a clove of garlic.”

“I have my own means of physical protection. Far beyond your measly human comprehension, love.”

“Personally, I’ve been able to comprehend you plenty.”

Mirele stares up at Sypha, her bushy brows furrowed. “What does… comp… sshhheshion mean?”

“It’s just another word your fathers use whenever either of them want to feel smart.” 

Alucard gives Sypha a gentle pinch on either side of her abdomen. “I thought you were on my side.”

“What about my side?” Trevor asks, excelling at the greatest strength he possesses—the ability to never take anything seriously, only when he must.

“I’m hungry,” Mirele speaks up. “Hungry and bored. Can we eat now?”

--

This life is not normal, but then again it is. It always has been for them. Normal once meant coming together because of violence, encroaching darkness, and some flimsy prophecy stringing them along one dead body at a time. A prophecy which never said what had to be done after they followed it to the hard earned letter. Perhaps that’s why Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard floundered afterwards. No instruction on how to live their upturned lives.

Fuck prophecy.

They made this life by their own standards and in accordance with their own desires. They loved how they wanted to love and no prophecy could have foreseen Mirele. How she calls for her father while both Trevor and Alucard turn their heads at the same exact second. How she quickly calms herself when presented with a bowl of warm oatmeal drowning in honey and wild fruits hand plucked from the surrounding forest. But it’s not enough. Nothing ever is for someone always growing, always wanting more from life at such a young age.

“Can I have bread?”

Trevor, half way through his bitter coffee, turns to Sypha then Alucard as all three parental figures exchange glances. They haven’t the heart to tell Mirele. No bread at the ready, only the necessary ingredients and a considerable amount of flour bags to blanket Enisala. There’s the option of making it themselves, yet it depends on a certain someone’s capacity for patience.

“How do you feel about baking our own?” Trevor’s voice wavers, which he tries to mask with his characteristic dry tone. It’s been a long time since he’s made bread. Then again, helping the manor cooks was a somewhat selfish endeavour as it meant extra servings for the baby of the Belmonts. Yet his proposal goes over well with Mirele, whose inherited eyes light up at the prospect of trying something new.

“I wanna make bread! Can we? Can we please?”

“When was the last time you baked anything, Trevor?” Alucard asks, genuinely curious and with a healthy dose of skepticism. “You still won’t tell us much about anything concerning your former life, let alone the sort of foods your family ate.”

Trevor feels a twinge in his gut—still better than a punch. His two lovers, even his daughter, they only know of his mother; a matriarch in her own right. They know her name, the monsters she killed, and not much else. Trevor’s excuses: he doesn’t remember anything about her, despite the fact that he does. He didn’t know her for very long or very well, so there’s no point in missing her. Trevor did know Sonia and he does miss her, sometimes more than he can handle. Then the easiest excuse: it’s just another self-preservation tactic.

Out of this inner reflection comes an idea. It breaks tradition in a way. For the Belmonts and other Jewish families, everything is passed down through the mother—recipes, forms of worship, blood memories, centuries old tactics of bruising one’s knuckles and temples. Trevor doesn’t think this slight deviation from his culture’s norm will make him any less of what he’s always been. Mirele will simply have to pick up where he left off when she’s grown.

He doesn’t want to think about that now. She’s only five after all. One lesson at a time. 

“Alright. Gather round, pupils. The bread we’re making isn’t just any bread. Forget everything you know and everything you’ve been taught because this will be the closest thing to heaven you’ll ever taste.”

“How dramatic…” Sypha mutters under her breath. Alucard joins her amusement with a subdued chuckle. 

“I believe you were partially his influence.”

Trevor knows how much trouble he’ll be in if he puts Mirele through the most agonizing cruelty of waiting a second longer than necessary. Fearful of her pint-sized wrath, he gives everyone the order to start gathering ingredients: flour, eggs, honey, and some indulgent herbs to make this particular bread something special. As much of a strategic leader in the kitchen as he is when the world is coming to an end. With everything spread out on the countertops, Trevor guides his family step by step through the only recipe he remembers. He calls this bread “challah”, which Mirele immediately strains her freshly green vocal chords, trying to pronounce the word exactly as her father does. She quickly gives up and focuses on mixing the ingredients with an intense look—almost to a fault as bits of sloppy dough fly out of the bowl. Good. This enthusiasm is what Trevor wants to see.

Kneaded and allowed time to rise, the next step is the most important. Trevor divides the dough into four halves, then again, and again until each participant has their own handful of raw unbaked strips. 

“We have to braid them?” Mirele asks following his explanation. 

“That’s right. It’s what makes this bread different from all the rest.”

“Just like when papa let’s me braid his pretty hair!”

Every pair of eyes turns to Alucard, whose smile widens in that way which causes his eyes to shut tightly. Fangs happily bared as he pulls Mirele into his flour and dough covered arms while she giggles in delight. After they all return to work, her loaf turns out the same way as the braids she gives to him—lopsided, uneven, lacking a few outsticking stray hairs, but filled with affection and genuine resolve.

Three loaves are placed into the oven, including a fourth crudely constructed but still adequately done piece. Mirele is now more willing to play the waiting game—so she claims. Sitting in front of the oven while staring directly into its insides, utterly fascinated, oblivious to her surroundings. Unaware that her three parents are whispering behind her back. Eventually, Sypha has to gently pull her away with her bottom dragging along the kitchen floor.

“How about you and I do something a little more interesting while your fathers keep watch over things.”

“But what about the c… the calla!”

“Don’t worry, they will look after it. And we are not going far, my sweet.”

“We’ll make sure nothing burns down.” Trevor assures, despite it being Sypha who usually revels in cinders and ashes, intentionally or not.

The two retreat down the corridor past diamond shaped stained windows and into one of the manor’s smaller libraries where the cabinets reach the high ceiling painted in deep blue hues. Scattered from corner to corner are constellations of stars and midnight clouds obscuring each phase of the moon. Once when Alucard found Mirele curiously asleep atop a number of pillows when she should have been in her own bed, it was his decision to paint the library in new colours. Sypha moves aside an entire shelf of thick volumes as though trying to find a carefully hidden switch that will lead them into a secret chamber. It’s what Mirele hopes but turns mildly disappointed when the books do not in fact magically shift to reveal a stone passageway. Her soured anticipation is only countered when Sypha places a box on the desk.

“Can you guess what’s inside?”

“Is it treasure?”

“Close! You are almost right.” Sypha opens the lid just as Pandora did except there are no horrors, no evils to be wrought upon humanity. Mirele peeks inside and her eyes shine with the glistening silver of trinkets, pendants, and talismans. She resists the innate urge to reach her hands, still white with flour, into the box only to briefly experience the sensation of holding one between her fingers. Even children know when something is sacred.

“These belonged to your grandparents. They used them for protection and strength. A long time ago, before you were born, their home burned down and everything was destroyed.”

“Papa’s home?”

Sypha nods, grateful that this story now has its happy ending, slight as it may be. “However, when your other father started building the manor we live in, he found this box trapped amongst all the rubble. It managed to survive.”

“What do they say?”

Mirele points to one pendant molded in the shape of a sword. Inscribed along the curve of its ash-riddled blade are the Hebrew names of angels which must have been muttered by Sonia or Gabriel. The longer Mirele stares, attempting to decipher yet another new language, the brighter her cheeks grow red with frustration. Her mother acts quick just as her eyes begin to water. 

“It’s alright if you don’t understand what any of them say.”

“I can learn! Please, mama? I promise I’ll study really hard!”

Sypha’s lips curl as Mirele continues her begging. Oh the mind of a child. How quickly it changes.

--

The kitchen feels hotter, wafting through the air. Enveloping the room and everything caught between its walls. Trevor stands by the oven, a thick cloth ready in his hand. It shouldn’t take much longer. At least there’s no stench of something burning. Almost makes him pine for the days of his family’s massive stone oven and how he would sneak around at night and pick out leftover morsels from inside like an insatiable mouse. Not unlike the actual beasts which he hunted throughout the hallways before moving onto larger prey typical of a Belmonts’ work—or as large as his own runtish body mass could handle.

Minutes of quiet pass, still eyeing the loaves with a keen gaze. Trevor’s concentration soon broken by the feeling of two arms wrapping around his softening yet still robust midsection. Slow and careful, until his back is pressed against an equally broad chest.

“Can I help you?” He asks as Alucard buries his face into the curvature of his shoulder blades.

“You’re already helping.” The dhampir, unchanging in his physical appearance (a revelation both Trevor and Sypha refuse to acknowledge for the time being), tightens his embrace.

“Something wrong?”

“No… I just enjoy feeling how much softer and warmer you’ve become.”

Trevor’s cheeks blush ever so pinker and not because of the oven’s heat. By now he should be used to Alucard’s sudden bouts of outward affection.

“You even smell better.”

There it is. Trevor thought he would be waiting forever to hear that little jab, though said with nothing but a good heart.

“That might be the herbs you’re smelling.”

Alucard shifts around so that the two of them are side by side, cheek to cheek, as he chuckles in Trevor’s ear. “Come here.”

He doesn’t offer a kiss, not where Trevor was expecting. Instead of his lips, Alucard singles out every patch of stray flour on his face, kissing, wiping, even licking them clean. Cheek, jawline, and nose. Trevor’s expression twists into a ticklish, surprisingly delighted facade. 

“You’re a half vampire, not a cat.”

“Better to clean you now than later.”

“Always so fucking odd…”

“You love it.”

Much to his lucky stars, Trevor manages one curse mere seconds before Sypha and Mirele return. They let their daughter speak at a breakneck speed neither one can fully comprehend—something about silver pieces and whether they can teach her a new language—until one series of questions finally sticks.

“Is the bread ready yet? Can we eat it now? Can we please?”

Trevor placates Mirele by revealing the fruits of their joint hard earned labour: four freshly baked and perfectly shined challah loaves each representative of whoever did the braiding. She bounces in her chair before simmering down to an excited tremble once Trevor warns her of how they need to cool. In order to make this more of a meal, he rummages about in search of two other beacons from his childhood. He’s rewarded with one of the few fresh apples they have left while Sypha, ever in tune with his inner thoughts, grabs another small pot of honey for him.

Trevor thanks her by gently running his palm across her lower abdomen, over the growing bump. He keeps it there for just a second longer, a subtle gesture of love noticed by Sypha. Fingertips intertwined with each other, they join Alucard and Mirele at the table as the midday sun shines golden through the windows.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Field Medicine - on ao3 or tumblr pt 1, pt 2, pt 3

Wei Wuxian had been spending much of his free time as of late at the Cloud Recesses – he could regularly be seen walking through their many paths with Lan Wangji always at his side – and Lan Xichen couldn’t be more pleased, except for when he thought about his bride-to-be that would soon be joining them there.

It would be sad to lose Lan Wangji’s company, he reflected, although he supposed that with them both being men and there being no expectation of children unless they opted to adopt a war orphan, it would be reasonable to request that they split their time between the Lotus Pier and the Cloud Recesses once they’d properly settled down. Still, Jiang Cheng clearly needed their help more than he did, at least in the beginning, as Lan Xichen still had his uncle and his elders to support him as sect leader while Jiang Cheng was doing it on his own – it would be entirely reasonable for him to request that the two of them start their lives together at the Lotus Pier, and Wei Wuxian would probably insist on it anyway.

Lan Xichen thought, however, that he would be able to make a plausible argument that the two of them should come to ground in the Cloud Recesses for a while once he and Jiang Yanli had children.

All they needed, really, was for Wei Wuxian to stop his insistence on demonic cultivation.

Lan Xichen really didn’t understand what the issue was. It had made sense to deviate from orthodoxy during the war – when fighting someone of Wen Ruohan’s power and forces of the magnitude of the Wen sect, they had needed every weapon they could find, and Wei Wuxian’s formidable intelligence and creativity had given them the edge that had made all the difference. But at the same time demonic cultivation was well known to be dangerous to the user as well: it affected the temperament, with its practitioners known to become arrogant, cruel, and selfish, uncaring of life or death of others, and more than that, it affected the body and soul, damaging them, risking not only this life but the next.

Why would Wei Wuxian persist in such an unwise course of action now that there was no need for it?

Lan Xichen had often wondered such a thing, but he had spoken to his sworn brothers on the subject (Lan Wangji was useless for such discussions, unsurprisingly) and both of them had been much less surprised than he. Nie Mingjue had spoken, haltingly, of how difficult it could be to open one’s hand and put down the saber after years and years of holding it too tightly – of how the war might end but the adrenaline remained, how the fear and caution that had served so well for years might no longer be necessary and yet the body remembered, the subconscious mind remembered. Jin Guangyao had spoken in turn of the allure of power to one who had once lacked it: the security of knowing there was no need to bow before others, no need to compromise oneself and yield, yield, yield – the difficulty in giving up that safety and placing it in the hands of others, of those who might not live up to the trust, how slow the process was to learn to rely on others in truth rather than merely on the surface.

He could understand that, and so understood that Wei Wuxian’s actions were not unreasonable – and yet, they remained a problem.

Lan Xichen knew that the subject had been often on Lan Wangji’s mind in recent days, troubling him, and there seemed to be no particular solution forthcoming. It was no wonder, given his feelings for the man that seemed so clearly evident to Lan Xichen that he wondered everyone wasn’t speaking of them. 

Lan Xichen himself had initially been too occupied to give the matter much thought. He might have more people to rely upon than Jiang Cheng, but his home had been utterly destroyed as well, and there was much work to be done in rebuilding. Still, he’d been thinking on it more and more as of late. 

After all, Wei Wuxian was no longer exclusively or even primarily Jiang Cheng’s problem – it had been one thing when he was refusing Lan Wangji’s company at every turn, when a relationship between him and Lan Wangji was nothing more than a dream or a possibility that simply wasn’t to be, when he was someone that Lan Wangji could acknowledge as having loved and lost in his youth without too much regret. But now that he was here. He had agreed to come to Gusu to negotiate his shijie’s marriage, and they were spending so much time together…

Wei Wuxian would be Lan Xichen’s brother-in-law, his soon-to-be bride’s little brother, and that meant that Lan Xichen had to think about him from that perspective as well. He had grown to love Jiang Yanli’s smile, and she smiled most of all when speaking of the two brothers that she loved so much, just as he smiled best when he spoke of Lan Wangji, or even of his two (sometimes difficult) sworn brothers.

Yes, Wei Wuxian was definitely Lan Xichen’s problem now.

He only wished that there were more that he could do.

“Zewu-jun! Zewu-jun!” several of his Lan sect disciples called, hurrying over, and their raised voices made him frown at once – causing excess noise is prohibited – whatever the cause, it must be urgent.

It was.

Wei Wuxian had burst into Jinlin Tower in a rage during a public meeting – had gotten into an argument with Jin Zixun and threatened him – he had killed several Jin sect retainers at the Qiongi Path and kidnapped the prisoners of war they had been guarding – he had retreated to the Yiling Burial Mounds and was threatening all who came near with the Tiger Seal –

Lan Xichen hurried to Jinlin Tower at once.

Jin Guangshan was holding court with his family at his side, railing at Wei Wuxian – how dangerous he was, how uncontrolled – and pointing out how he had for some time already been saying how inappropriate it was for such a powerful magic tool to end up in the hands of such an arrogant and impulsive young man. The others were there as well, Lan Xichen the last to arrive: Nie Mingjue scowling down at them all from his excessive height, Lan Wangji still as stone to conceal how upset he was, Jiang Cheng standing there with his face black and clenched fists trembling with anger, Jiang Yanli at his side with her lips pressed tightly together, equally distressed.

She looked at him, seeking comfort – seeking commiseration, since there was no comfort to be had.

After all, what could they do? Jin Guangshan was right. They had all been concerned about Wei Wuxian, his erratic behavior and dangerous demonic cultivation. They had been worried about what he might do now that there was no war in which to put his efforts, and now he had proven all of their fears wholly justified.

He had committed crimes, killed men. Even if they wanted to say something in his defense, what grounds did they have to speak?

Lan Xichen’s steps slowed, suddenly, the thought giving him sudden pause.

What grounds did they have to speak?

What grounds had his father to speak, when it had been his mother who had had blood on her hands? He had not condemned her, as he ought have; instead he married her and challenged all who knew of the matter to dare defy him – he had rested upon the power of his clan, the power of being a Great Sect, and he had protected her against the world, although it had in the end cost him everything.

Lan Wangji could not do the same, although Lan Xichen could see on his face that he wished he could – it was one thing for a man to claim a woman, to promise that he would act as her bond and keep her from further wrongdoing, but it would not be understood that way for a man. No man could restrict another to the courtyard, not unless they were being held as a prisoner, sentenced to their fate, and that was not the answer here: no one would believe that Lan Wangji’s intention was to save Wei Wuxian rather than exploit him, not when the man was as powerful as Wei Wuxian was. Even if the feelings were the same, the world’s understanding of the situation was simply too different.

No, Lan Wangji could not act. To join Wei Wuxian now would be to turn him from a single wrongdoer into the leader of a rebellion, hastening the cultivation world’s desire to crush him, and yet – to abandon him was surely unthinkable.

Feelings or no feelings, Lan Wangji was only a single man, unable to stand against the world. He had no ability to speak.

But Lan Xichen did.

“We will certainly take that under consideration, Sect Leader Jin,” he said, his words sliding in during the small break between words when Jin Guangshan paused to breathe. “Your wisdom and advice are greatly appreciated, as they always are. We will think carefully on your suggestion.”

Jin Guangshan turned to him in surprise, and he wasn’t alone – everyone was staring, not least of which was Jiang Cheng himself, clearly stunned by his interjection. Lan Xichen hated it, hated being the center of attention, but he had been brought up to be sect leader; no matter his preference in avoiding the spotlight, avoiding fights, avoiding unpleasantness, it was all irrelevant in the face of his duty.

He kept a pleasant smile on his face. Ignorance, he thought, was the best approach to permit all sides to save face – he did not wish to start a fight with Jin Guangshan if he could avoid it.

He might not be able to avoid it, but Lan Xichen loved his family too much to really care.

“Zewu-jun,” Jin Guangshan said, and Lan Xichen could see him gearing up to tell him that his not-yet-crystalized demands were not a suggestion, that they were necessary, that the Jin sect – as the victims – had rights to call upon.

Lan Xichen couldn’t let him speak, so he didn’t. “I appreciate the same for all of you,” he said, raising his voice just a little, and surveying the room full of sect leaders. “Your concern for our family matter does you all credit, and we will not forget it.”

“Family matter?” Sect Leader Qin scoffed, his eyebrows arched. “How can this be a family matter?”

“Wei Wuxian is soon to be my brother-in-law,” Lan Xichen said with a smile. “My sister’s shixiong, raised by her side – how can it be anything else? Jiang Wanyin, I will of course provide you with any assistance you require in uncovering exactly what has happened and in determining a punishment to suit.”

“This is not a private matter,” Jin Guangshan said. “My Jin sect retainers were killed by a corpse raised by Wei Wuxian –”

“The sects have always managed justice for their own in the first instance, with others interfering only if the punishment is insufficient. Surely that has not changed,” Nie Mingjue said, and oh, Lan Xichen loved his sworn brother so very much. 

He might be stern and harsh at times, but he was loyal to those he loved beyond all reason; he was stepping up to defend the (possibly) indefensible on Lan Xichen’s word alone, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him as they always had in battle, in battle and everywhere else. He had forgiven the false information that Lan Xichen had inadvertently passed along, and trusted him unreservedly once more. 

“If my Nie sect cultivators do wrong, it is my obligation to carry out justice and my shame if I do not,��� he continued. “Demonic cultivator or not, Wei Wuxian is the head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang. Who has the grounds to speak first and foremost to his punishment if not Jiang Wanyin?”

Jiang Cheng himself was still working his jaw, trying to say something and failing.

“No one is questioning the ancestral right of the sect leader to manage the sect, da-ge,” Jin Guangyao said, stepping in at once. “It is only that this is a difficult situation, you understand, given the nature of Wei Wuxian’s demonic powers – and, of course, that the Jiang sect is still rebuilding…”

“Which is why I volunteered my sect to help,” Lan Xichen said, glad for the opening that Jin Guangyao had given him even if he suspected it was inadvertent. He didn’t like being on the opposite side from Jin Guangyao, much less publicly, but he understood the necessity of it. His sworn brother could not go against his father’s wishes, and Lan Xichen had long ago learned the hard lesson dividing private and public interests. “We have many techniques designed for suppression of evil and many experts. Even if the Cloud Recesses was burned by the Wen sect –” 

There, a not-so-subtle reminder that the prisoners of war that the Jin sect had been guarding had offended his sect more than the Jin, and that he was more entitled to demand punishment than they. 

“– we were still able to preserve many of our magic tools and ancient books, and I have faith in our capability. And, naturally, as Wei Wuxian’s future brother-in-law, helping is what I should do.”

He shot Nie Mingjue a look.

“You may have any assistance you want from me and mine as well,” Nie Mingjue said, putting his hands behind his back, standing like the general he so recently was. “Am I not your sworn brother, Xichen? But if you and Jiang Wanyin do not adequately investigate the matter or fail impose a proper punishment that suits the crime, I will be the first to speak against you.”

And that quelled more than half the voices that had been about to raise protest. If some argument could be made that Jiang Wanyin was too weak towards his shixiong to properly punish him, then there was Lan Xichen behind him, and if he, too, was inclined by his temperament to be seduced into mercy when it was inappropriate, there was Nie Mingjue as well. Who would dare suggest that the righteous Chifeng-zun would not demand that justice be done?

We are three of the four remaining Great Sects, Lan Xichen realized, suddenly giddy with it. Between us, we have the loyalty of the majority of sects in the cultivation world, and the reputation to back it – who does not know how much we did in the Sunshot Campaign, Nie, Lan, and Jiang, even as the Jin sect held back and dithered?

When we stand together, who can tell us we are wrong?

Perhaps Jin Guangshan realized it, or perhaps it was Jin Guangyao who understood how close his father was to making a mistake, because he glanced his father’s way and stepped forward with a smile, echoing Nie Mingjue’s words of support, smoothly reminding the world that he, too, was one of Lan Xichen’s sworn brothers, and almost immediately afterwards it was Jin Zixuan who was speaking, offering the support of the Jin sect in whatever capacity was required.

Offering, not demanding.

Lan Xichen glanced at Lan Wangji, who was looking at him with the sort of admiration that he thought they had left behind in their childhood – his eyes were positively glassy with relief and thankfulness. When he looked over to the Jiang sect he saw that they were just the same, and actually on that note it was time to quickly bring this scene to an end before someone (possibly Jiang Cheng himself) burst into tears.

He said a few words, indicating that they would leave to prepare to initiate the investigation at once, and soon enough the bustle of sect leader voices rising up in commentary began to drown out anything Jin Guangshan might have said. Lan Xichen could safely begin to make his way out.

Jin Zixuan managed to find him before he escaped the crowd. “Good luck,” he said, and glanced over to where the Jiang sect stood – Jiang Cheng responding to questions with non-answers and assurances that promised nothing while Jiang Yanli stood by his shoulder, his stalwart support. “She deserves someone like you.”

There was some wistfulness in his eyes, the perhaps belated realization of what prize he had let slip through his fingers, but although Lan Xichen was a kind man, he was not so kind as to give up something he valued so dearly.

“Thank you,” he said, thinking to himself that Jin Zixuan was a good man underneath all the gilt and flash, and that the world would be notably improved once he took over the Jin sect. He would need to ask Jin Guangyao if there wasn’t any way that they could think of to shift more of the decision-making power in the Jin sect from the older generation to the younger sooner rather than later. “Your words of support were both timely and welcome.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Jin Zixuan said, and disappeared once again into the crowd.

It took some time to get away from them all, but finally Lan Xichen was alone, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, and then soon enough there were the Jiang sect coming in through the door, Jiang Cheng and his sister, his Jiang Yanli who had held her tongue and the feelings Lan Xichen knew she must have felt, standing with perfect poise despite the unbearable provocation. The perfect person to be by his side in the future, helping him restore the restrained tranquility of the Cloud Recesses.

And she was perfect in this way, too: after the eyes of the crowd were no longer on her, she abandoned restraint for joy and threw herself into his arms, delighted and laughing and thankful, and he forget himself enough to kiss her. Which he did, very happily, until a quiet cough brought him back to awareness.

“We’ll find a way to fix this,” he said, looking up at where Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji were standing side-by-side, both of them looking indulgently at the two of them. “We’ll find out what happened, why Wei Wuxian did what he did, and then we’ll start our new life off the right way. With life, not death, with our loved ones at our side.”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said. “We will.”

“Yes,” Jiang Yanli said, and stood on her toes to press her lips to his again. “We will. Thank you, husband.”

Lan Xichen smiled.

[demoiselledefortune]

Post canon sangcheng fic recs for @runespoor7

(wooohoo that’s only 25 fics haha)

Silence by inberin

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17441771

a conversation in the snow.

Wonderfully nuanced characterisation. It hints at whole relationship and dynamic with a lot of delicacy.

Windrose by offlight

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18997546

Nie Huaisang is forced into a coma to stop his qi deviation. Jiang Cheng is tasked with waking him up.

There’s a lot of intriguing dreamscapes in this one, and I love Jiang Cheng (and in the background Wei Wuxian)’s desperation and obstinacy.

All the innocence we give by shamiran

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18864910

Learning to renavigate the ground between them is easier than Nie HuaiSang expects. It's also harder than he could have imagined.

Just a sweet story.

Taste the wine off your lips by ExNihiIo

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20129245

A light pat lands against his back, and a cup of water is pushed in front of his face. “Not even Zi Shi, and you’re already tipsy?,” asks a teasing voice, while a thin hand puts down the cup. Jiang Cheng coughs a little more, shaking his head, and sends a dirty look at his host. “I am not tipsy.” “Hm, and yet your cheeks are all red. What would your disciples think, if they saw you in this state?” “They’d think about running away while they can. I can break legs more easily than I can drink alcohol.” A smile curves the edges of Nie Huaisang’s mouth, and he closes his fan with a curt jerk, sitting across the table. He’s wearing lighter clothes, Jiang Cheng notices, compared to the ones he had during the Discussion Conference. Where those had been tight and rigid against his body, these now fall softly on him, the large sleeves sweeping delicately as Nie Huaisang moves to pour himself a cup.

I like the melancholy tone of this one.

The light of autumn: you will not be spared by crooows

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19901467/chapters/47138221

Nie Huaisang arrives a week early for the conference which will be held in Yunmeng to discuss the position of chief cultivator.

[Title is from a poem called "October" by Louise Glück!]

A bit funny, a bit melancholy

You can run but you can’t hide by ThirtySixSaveFiles

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21119297

Nie Huaisang has noticed something about the way Jiang Cheng takes compliments; Nie Huaisang has a theory, and he intends to test it out.

Just Huaisang figuring out Jiang Cheng has a praise kink. Established pairing.

Evening Bloom by dragonofeternal

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20958518

Jiang Cheng is spry and lithe well into his twilight years, living well off Wei Wuxian's stolen youth; Nie Huaisang's golden core, on the other hand, has always been poor- he blacks his hair with ink and dyes, hides the pudge of indolence and the wrinkles of age behind the latest fashions and the finest fans. Perhaps for their peers, finding the space to be vulnerable came easy, but for them it's taken this long to maybe think of letting someone in.

I have a big weakness for stories about old people falling in love and this is one delivers very sweetly.

Four Days in Lanling by Halotolerant

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21722695/chapters/51817036

Nie Huaisang looks at him. ‘You are confusing me, Clan Leader Jiang, perhaps I misunderstand, but…’

‘You didn’t misunderstand. You don’t misunderstand. You understand all of it.’ For six months Jiang Cheng has been mulling this over, and now with Nie Huaisang in front of him he can’t figure out if he most wants to knock him down or kneel at his feet. What he does is try and breathe. Clench his hands at his sides. ‘And now I am going to ask you to do something for me. You have to do something for me. You have to help Jin Ling.’

Ok so perhaps it’s misrepresentating to call this a post canon fic  since most of the action is mid-13-years-of-WWX-death but the fairly important framing part is post canon. Also it’s one of the best sangcheng fic out there and a must read.

Shadow eternal by rynleaf

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23162944/chapters/55439032

“You want me to distract the Chief Cultivator from the Annual Cultivation Conference, so you and other sect leaders can… what. Sign contracts without adult supervision?”

“If Jiang-zongzhu is amenable,” Sect Leader Ouyang repeats with a nod.

Jiang Cheng pinches the bridge of his nose. The pressure he felt building behind his eyes all morning is swiftly coalescing into a bitch of a headache. “Just what do you all think I’m capable of?”

Sect Leader Ouyang bows with a cheerful smile. “We have utmost faith in Sandu Shengshou’s abilities.”

-

In which a night hunt ends in disaster, Jiang Cheng catches a glimpse of Nie Huaisang's heart, and feelings are discussed after a certain fashion.

One that’s between sweet and angsty.

The way is shut, and we cannot go back by saltedpin

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23592523

One month since Guanyin Temple, and some people are coping better than others (or not).

This one is a mostly sad and bitter take on Jiang Cheng reacting to Nie Huaisang’s plot (and being very drunk).

Living memory by ghosthouses

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24827980

Once Jin Guangyao has left, he gives himself two indulgences. The first, a day to scream in his rooms made soundproof with a talisman. The second, a physical list written in code, to keep his older self, who will have let the pain dull with time, accountable for what must be done.

It has only two commandments:

He will die.  

and 

He will know.

Nie Huaisang puts it in his sleeve with the intention of keeping it with him at all times, to be added to but never reduced, a living memory of his task.

This and its prequel which you should also read is quite short but probably one of my favorite depictions of their dynamic (and probably one I find most plausible).

What’s Left of us by cangse-sanren

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979081

“Well,” Huaisang tries hesitantly, “both of us seem to have a rather fraught relationship with things like older brothers and the concept of betrayal. And regret,” he adds as an afterthought. "Perhaps you just understand me more than most."

Yet another that dwells into Jiang Cheng reacting to Nie Huaisang’s plan. I really like that take although it’s barely shippy (and quite short).

Descending by lightningwaltz

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25296595

“I want to… to not be embarrassed.”

“To not be embarrassed during what?”

“During sex.” There. Jiang Cheng can say it. “In general. Also with you right now.”

“Very good.”

“When did you become so authoritative?” Jiang Cheng wants to sound irked, but can’t quite manage anything beyond nervous curiosity.

Very interesting fic and in many ways unusual. I’d say it’s hypnosis kink, but it’s much more character driven than that. With a context of established FWB arrangement between Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang.

Tell him that I miss our little talks by xiaolongbaobei

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25232023

the post-canon fic where Jiang Cheng becomes the Chief Cultivator, realizes that it's not too late to fall in love and learns to ask for what he wants

Longish fic exploring Jiang Cheng as Chief cultivator working with Nie Huaisang and slowly falling in love with him. I adore this one, and not only because I love fics that explore the idea of Jiang Cheng as chief cultivator.

Blind for Love by manamune

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25760272

Jiang Cheng is poisoned with an aphrodisiac and needs to orgasm repeatedly in order to flush it from his system.

The first person he thinks of going to for help is Nie Huaisang, who does what any good friend would do: he shoves his three decades worth of feelings for Jiang Cheng deep into the recesses of his mind, locks them up so he can pretend they don’t exist, and then fucks him so hard that he passes out.

Mostly a long smutty piece, but with a lot of fun character bits along the way.

A Tight-Knit Family by aldalin

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500481/chapters/61862899

“Jing Ling, we need to talk.”

Jin Ling has too many uncles, and he’s about to get another.

Sect Leader Jiang announces his marriage to Sect Leader Nie.

A fairly different take, more focused on Jin Ling and Wei Wuxian reacting to Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang’s relationship.

A trip to Qinghe by Scorpiwriting

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26974741

An unexpected hunt forces Jiang Cheng to leave the Lotus Pier a bit earlier than he had anticipated, so he decides to send Jin Ling to Qinghe, for the sake of not sending him back to Lanling so soon: it turns into a learning experience for the young sect leader, who gets to peek into the life of the Headshaker.

or.

Jin Ling learns that not everything people say is true and that perhaps there is some merit to art. He also learns that loneliness is a dark beast and that his uncle should definitely do something about it.

Another one more focused on Jin Ling’s reaction to it. Honestly more of a gen piece about Jin Ling and Nie Huaisang, but an interesting one.

Silver bracelets on their wrists by mercurious

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25797715

“Can’t I find excuses to visit an old friend?”

Ok so this one is a bit fucked up in interesting ways. It combines Chief Cultivator Jiang Cheng and explicit longing about Wei Wuxian, and BDSM as catharsis. It’s a fascinating piece.

Welcome to love by amphigoric

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22412866/chapters/53549794

Desire, Jiang Cheng learned, flourished even in love’s absence. It surged hot and fast through his veins at the sight of Nie Huaisang’s spread thighs, marks still lingering from the last rendezvous they had. He felt it burning through his chest as Huaisang raked lines down his back, breaths coming in short, desperate gasps: “Jiang Wanyin, Jiang Wanyin, please, please.”

It’s a little bit clumsy at times, but also very passionate and intense in a way I still find compelling. Featuring a lot of self sabotaging Jiang Cheng.

When your stitch comes loose by heyninja

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27868454/chapters/68234434

Sometimes people see you for who you really are. Sometimes because you let them. Sometimes whether you like it or not.

A triptych of collisions between Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng.

Only the last part is post canon but it’s the most important part, isn’t it?

Peel your heart like a pomegranate by Izumi_silverleaf

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29458974

"It's an extraordinary feeling when parts of your body are touched for the first time. I'm thinking of the sensations from sex and surgery."

Sometimes you just need to read a very hot guro fic. It’s a weird fic but it’s a cool one.

If you give a Nie a cushion by LesbianLazerOwl

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29470236

Prompt: Long enough After Canon that everyone's mostly okay these days, Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang get drunk and wind up comparing masturbation habits; each is aghast at how the other spends their personal time.

Funny and hot

To Distraction by isozyme

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763816

It’s the third night of Yunmeng’s kite festival celebrations. Nie Huaisang has come visiting, eager to partake in the food, the arts, and Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng wants to forget. Nie Huaisang has some new lube and wants to see if he can put his whole fist in somebody’s ass.

Established pairing in which Nie Huaisang fists Jiang Cheng. It’s hot.

Safe in Your arms by Dragon_scribe

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30070503/chapters/74058315

In the aftermath of a night hunt gone (very) wrong, Jiang Cheng wakes up to find himself in the Unclean Realm. As he recovers from his injuries, he and Nie Huaisang grow closer and as time passes, their friendship begins to shift to something more.

Very sweet/sappy and hurt/comfort orientated, with a small bit of reconciliation dimension too.

[chezzzie]

Why Contemporary Women Artists Are Obsessed with the Grotesque

If artists are generally boundary-crossers, a younger generation of (mostly women) artists is going for full penetration—making artworks that speak to something deep in the body, producing responses that range from carnal attraction to disgust.Among the most potently grotesque examples are Tala Madani’s nightmarish babies and dystopian fantasies of voyeurism and violence, and Jala Wahid’s visceral, sculptural allusions to cuts of meat and dismembered organs and body parts. Or take Marianna Simnett’s unsettling, darkly comic videos that bring to life imagined narratives of bodily invasions—including a gruesome nasal operation and a fable about varicose veins and cockroaches-cum-cyborgs. Then there’s Maisie Cousins’s glossy, close-up images of a wet soup of food, decaying plants, and bodies, which recall the more appalling corners of Cindy Sherman’s imagination. In painting and drawing, too, the grotesque is rampant, with elastic, deformed, or monstrous bodies populating works by Christina Quarles, Ebecho Muslimova, Jana Euler, and Dana Schutz.

In recent exhibitions of work by older and historical artists, as well, we’ve seen the walls erupt in freakish, fleshy forms that have threatened the contained space of a room, as in Dorothea Tanning’s Chambre 202, Hôtel du Pavot, on view in her retrospective at the Museo Reina Sofia and traveling to the Tate Modern early this year. The ceilings of art spaces have dangled with multi-limbed, Medusa-like monsters and cyborgs (like the sci-fi-inflected psychic landscape of Lee Bul, who had a retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery in 2018).

With much of these artists’ works, the feeling of deep dread is often a blade’s edge away from erotic desire. As the narrator of Simnett’s film The Needle and the Larynx (2016) says, as she fantasizes about having her vocal chords surgically altered: “So sharp were his knives, so appealing…this was an irrevocable invitation.” This expression of temptation suggests a calling to make art—to create—as much as it does an inclination toward self-regeneration and other forms of transgression. The possibility of metamorphosing one’s flesh and image—of permeating thresholds—is both intoxicating and anxiety-inducing.

The grotesque is inherently associated with the feminine, long having shaped depictions of the female body—prostitutes, femmes fatales, and sorceresses.

The grotesque, as art historian Frances S. Connelly writes in her book The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture (2012), is “a boundary creature” that “roams the borderland of all that is familiar and conventional.” It is desirous of transformation—an “open mouth that invites our descent into other worlds,” like the underground rooms of Nero’s Golden Palace, excavated in the 15th century, which turned up walls decorated with hybrid figures sprouting bits of plants and architecture, and birthed the term “grottoesche.” (Today, our general understanding of the “grotesque” has been boiled down to mean simply “comically or repulsively ugly or distorted,” but art historians and theorists read more complexity into the term.) It is, in many ways, inseparable from the body, which is the most fundamental of boundaries. “What is most regulated in any culture is the body, particularly women’s bodies,” Connelly said during a recent conversation.

The grotesque, she writes, is inherently associated with the feminine—bodied, earthy, changeful. That thinking has long shaped depictions of the female body, including archetypes of sexual or environmental threat, like prostitutes, femmes fatales, and sorceresses. Even centuries before the term emerged, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle “advanced the influential argument that a woman’s body is monstrous by nature, a deviation from that of the normative male,” she writes.The term is fertile, opening up a womb-like space for new ideas and ethical conundrums to accumulate—a conduit through which cultures can play with taboos and shift the parameters of mores and conventions. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that some of the artists touching the grotesque assume a childlike, fairytale language. A fable tells us what is right and wrong, Simnett pointed out when we met. It is also “a game that you can write the rules for,” she said, one through which you can distort or expand reality. The landscape of morality tales and childhood lessons is ripe territory for boundary-pushing perversions to take root.

Very dark fairytales

Children play a central role in several of Simnett’s films, whose absurdist, grotesque narratives are preoccupied with infection, augmentation, and altered states. In her opus Blood In My Milk (2018), the girl protagonist flirts with the outside world, even as adults warn of the risks that this external environment poses.In scenes that take place within an echoey pink space suggesting the inside of an organ, children receive a lesson about the prognosis and treatment of mastitis in cow udders, interspersed with shots of oozing teats being squeezed and dissected. While an officious farm hand dispenses information about how to keep one’s milk clean and pathogen-free, the children engage in playground dares and brinkmanship that include fantasizing about dismantling a girl “into a million bits so she can never be rebuilt.” The children lust after blood in their milk.

Tala Madani is another artist who, in a different way, explodes any veneer of female containment or childhood innocence, making infants and girls agents of the grotesque. In her painting Sunrise (2018), a baby wields a sharp knife at a naked woman’s groin. An infant’s first act, the painting reminded me, is one of violence.In other compositions populated by menacing babies on all fours, withering adults are left in the dust. Shafts (2017) depicts a group of monstrously overgrown tots crawling off into a void-like cyberspace, with beams of light projecting out of their assholes. An aged man in the foreground holds up a flaccid string of feces like a banner of mortality—the next generation might have evolved into light-shitting cyborgs, but we are still blood, matter, and excrement.

The children in Madani’s works also exercise sexual agency. In her animation Sex Ed by God (2017), a young girl with legs splayed is being studied by an older man, a boy, and God (the narrator of this lesson). She reaches out of the frame and grabs her male onlookers, shrinking them down to size and squeezing them into her vagina, along with the rest of the scene. The adolescent counterpart to a baby who explores the world with its mouth, this teenager-protagonist processes the world and corrects its distorted power balances through her sex. (Madani has a corollary of a kind in the work of Ebecho Muslimova, whose ink drawings feature a female alter-ego who fills and consumes the world with her vast and doughy naked body, luxuriantly covering and penetrating objects—a piano, patio furniture—with uncontrollable flesh and organ.)Madani’s universe is one whose grotesqueries seem shaped, at least to some degree, by the thrills and anxieties of sexuality, motherhood, mortality, and technological change. But it is also one in which children subvert the hierarchy between parent and progeny. The grotesque becomes a means to dissolve power structures.

Both familiar and alien

The contemporary grotesque is interested in underlining the way that bodies that are different from the (white, male) norm, or that, in deviating from impossible standards, are treated as aberrant or monstrous. Artists who touch the grotesque subvert and claim power in part by owning flesh and blood.When I visited Jala Wahid’s studio recently, one sculpture she showed me comprised a cast of the artist’s buttocks resting on a smooth liquid-like surface that is based on the shape of a natural oil well. The exposed position of Wahid’s dismembered rear is both “a provocation and a vulnerability at the same time,” she told me, its position on an oil slick alluding to the politics of Kurdistan, where her parents are from. In her work, she is often thinking about the contested Kurdish body, which is continually “under threat” but also resilient—a body that is both powerful and yet subject to power and control. Another in-progress sculpture in the studio, a thick wedge of slick red jesmonite, will eventually approximate the form of a bloody ox liver that Wahid encountered in a meat market in Kurdistan. (It brings to mind the work of Paul Thek, whom she cites as an influence.)

The contemporary grotesque is interested in how bodies that are different from the white, male norm are treated as aberrant or monstrous.

Wahid is drawn to the great diversity of textures and colors that exist in bodies (in flesh, organs, offal), as well as the relationship between butcher and animal. She wants, in some way, to approach her role as a sculptor like a meat handler—with both violence and reverence—and to create forms that are live and confrontational. To frame her work solely in terms of power dynamics is to simplify it, however. She is interested in bodies in states of transformation, in their formal nuances and their vast capacity for expression. (She showed me a picture of an Assyrian frieze at the British Museum, which features the form of a hunted lion, its upper body upright and fierce, its hind legs shot through and flaccid—a single body in which “you have something really strong but at the same time dead and limp,” she explained.) But she does want her sculptures to have autonomy and wield a certain affective power in the room.

When bodies spill out of their boundaries, or when parts are severed from the whole, they become something unsettlingly other. That forces viewers to renegotiate the borderlands between inside and outside, between themselves and the source of their disquiet. In Wahid’s work, body parts and unidentifiable cuts of meat force viewers into a visceral encounter with objects that are familiar, but also alien. “A human corpse is not in itself abject, but one’s encounter with it certainly is,” Connelly writes, describing an idea within the philosopher Julia Kristeva’s seminal 1982 essay on the abject in art. This recalibration of one’s relationship to the object engages the body as it tries to gauge whether the foreign article is a source of threat or attraction—perhaps both.In the work of sculptor Doreen Garner, we see this at play to profoundly disturbing effect. In some cases hung from meat hooks, her hulks of fleshy silicone are neither human nor meat—too dismembered and deformed to be human, too suggestive of the whole to be flesh alone. Upon inspection, the horrifying human steaks, pierced with pins, reveal the fingers of a hand, or a stray breast. Garner’s objects are intended to touch a nerve deep in the viewer’s own body—specifically, to register the trauma visited on the bodies of enslaved black women by members of the American medical industry. This is the grotesque as a means to produce shock and empathy—to expose the transformation of the body into something monstrous as a consequence of the abuse of power.

Garner’s work occasionally recalls the work of a historical pioneer of the grotesque in art—Robert Gober—in particular, works like the artist’s Untitled (1990), a slumped chest cast in wax that sprouts a female breast on one side, a hairy male pectoral on the other. This crumpled human fragment expresses the vulnerability of the human body, and insists on its gender hybridity, while also speaking to another abuse of power that simmers beneath his work—that of the U.S. government’s failure to respond to the AIDS crisis.

A fascination with monstrous bodies

The grotesque, of course, is not owned by women artists. It’s interesting, as well, to note how queer artists, in addition to Gober, have played in this terrain. In his latest show, at Ashes/Ashes, Ryan McNamara presented a sculptural showcase that included I Can’t Even Think Straight (2018), a sad, cartoonish figure practically melting off the wall. Faces dissolve into pools of liquid fish scales (Whispers, 2018); a series of gungey monsters with skin dripping from their brains joyfully snap selfies. The ghoulish group was in part conceived as a celebration of the queer nightclub in Phoenix, Arizona, where McNamara danced with other outcasts and misfits in his youth.But women, too, are deploying monstrous bodies in the world to empower the marginalized, or to satirize cultural norms and behaviors around age and gender. In two of artist Jana Euler’s latest paintings, she seems to offer biting commentary on our culture’s existential angst and exaltation of youth. Global warnings (people who are over 100 years old) (2018) is a mosaic of portraits of the elderly, each with a fantastically warped face. They are melted, pinched, and sunken, with cyclops eyes glaring from foreheads, and mouths swiveled 180 degrees.

In race against yourself (2018), a naked man rides an equine incarnation of himself, hands and feet turned into muscular hooves. This ghastly centaur and its rider are set against a fleshy backdrop composed of a snaking, human-faced colon, squeezed into the painting’s borders. The work speaks to something deeply perverse in human psychology—a propensity to hurtle through our lives at break-neck speed until our bodies crumple and we hit the grave. We can’t escape our own proclivities, much less our flesh and blood.Indeed, a profound awareness of human mortality is rarely far from the surface when it comes to the grotesque. When I asked Connelly about the common preoccupation with degrading flesh and food, she had this to say: “Life is constant change; we’re eating the world, the world eats us. We’re all mortal. We’re all human. We’re all meat. That’s seen as really traumatic.”

Other artists have created distorted, dismembered, and multi-limbed bodies to more optimistic effect. Christina Quarles paints bending tangles of limbs, bodies that insist on setting their own parameters and determining their own identities. Cindy Sherman continues to irreverently expand the possibilities of the grotesque, harnessing digital technologies to create fabulously idiosyncratic faces via her Instagram feed—ones that contort her visage in every direction except towards any convention of beauty; her fictional selfies are gloriously aging, sun-damaged, plastered in makeup, with features too big, too small, too gender-ambiguous.

Sherman expands the aesthetics of the (female, queer) body. In Maisie Cousins’s saturated close-ups of decaying messes of flesh, entrails, petals, prawns, and flies, too, something generative emerges. Cousins’s celebratory collisions of wet body parts, food remnants, and plants give the abject a facelift. Images of mild disgust find a place within the aesthetic of slick fashion magazine advertising. As such, they variously recall Sherman’s glossy, stomach-turning mixtures of waste, Marilyn Minter’s photorealistic renderings of gaudily made-up bodies and imperfections, and Gina Beaver’s paintings of bodies and fast food. (The latter artist will open an exhibition at MoMA PS1 in March.) Cousins’s photographs are full of innuendo, ripe, inviting us to find beauty in things spilling outside of their borders—to see our own bodies in the bounty of organic matter that the world has to offer.

It makes sense that among a generation increasingly comfortable with open, fluid approaches to identity—and fluent in the great toxic and transformational soup of the internet—artists value aesthetics rooted in states of change and hybridity. “I feel that is a constant, to be in a permanent state of transition,” Simnett told me. “In a sense, everyone is undergoing a mutation. It’s where I feel most natural. You get to meet a million more people, species, ideas. It’s like tendrils constantly reaching out, rather than staying put.” This hunger to explore and break down the boundaries of human experience, however anxious or unsettling—to deconstruct and reinvent the body—is generating some of the most vital and complex art being made today. 

Tess Thackara

source

[xiyao-feels]

new tu and xiyao fan from earlier. i searched ao3 as per your suggestion and there's only 500 or so fics for them. :( however, i do have a legit question - what are the differences between mdzs and tu (i've never read the latter). and if you want expand on nieyao (or xiyao) please feel free! i love reading meta! one of the few reasons i miss old school fandom spaces lol. thank you!! :D

Hmmm, I see about eight hundred if I limit to English? But I take your point! But that was just as a way to start; once you do find an author you like, you can look at their bookmarks, for example. (Also I'm not sure if you're familiar with the AO3, but if not, sorting by kudos when doing a general search is a way to get stuff that at least lots of people thought was good. I'm not saying it's perfect, but when you're starting in a fandom it can be better than the default by-date-updated.)

Also I'll take the opportunity to plug my absolute favourite xiyao author, roquen. I didn't mention them last time because they haven't I believe written a post-canon fixit, and you should know that they're mostly sticking to MDZS instead of CQL canon, although with some sprinkling of CQL elements and characterization. Some particular favourites of mine include their AtLA AU and their Sunshot/on the run fics (both series with a couple of short fics), their what you might call a mid-temple hopeful fix-it (divergence where LWJ strikes to kill and LXC takes the blow), the baby LXC fic ("Lan Xichen reverts to being a fifteen-year-old junior, and immediately gets an epic crush on Lianfang-zun"; disclaimer that I was fairly involved with the creation of this one but it's GREAT) and, of course, above all, their gigantic canon fix-it verse, it's worth it every time. It's SO GOOD and the characterization is fantastic and the prose is excellent and UGH. It's so good!!!!! Disclaimer that the second fic in the series, which is the main work, is still WIP, but roquen updates regularly and there are only a couple of chapters left; if you're still wary of WIPs, I'd at least recommend the first fic, which stands alone and is brilliant in its own right.

As to the differences between MDZS and CQL…ho boy. There are quite a few, both major and minor, and I'm by no means familar with all of them—especially the ones that don't involve 3zun, lol. I tried to google around but unfortunately the ones I found tended to be either short or, if more in-depth, contain inaccuracies about JGY/LXC—I think people tend to be more interested in the Wangxian, and then this stuff goes by the wayside. The wiki can be a good source for differences for specific incidents, and although I think it's not always accurate it /does/ usually cite chapter or episode, which can be pretty helpful. 

This, by hualiann, looks like a good overview, though I'd add that JYL, WQ and WN didn't study at Cloud Recesses in the novel and that more generally MDZS has a lot of actual undead.

In general my advice is to take things people say about the novel with a large grain of salt, myself included. And about CQL, too! I have no idea if this is you but when I joined the fandom, if people asserted stuff about CQL I tended to just kind of take it as fact—oh, I thought, I must have misremembered! My memory is pretty terrible, and honestly there was absolutely stuff I did misremember. But also sometimes other people misremember, or fanon gets taken as canon, and then there's stuff like—I mean, I'm certainly not going to blame people for not realizing that "JGY conspired with XY at the Unclean Realm" is a lot more uncertain than you might guess at first, especially if they're more Wangxian focused which most people in the fandom are, but I'm still not going to present it as straight-up fact. (veliseraptor has a recent post examining this here which I would very much recommend).

Honestly I think I'd recommend reading the MDZS NMJ Empathy flashback—chapters 48, 49, and the beginning of 50. That gets you a lot of the JGY, LXC and NMJ backstory, and then you can compare for yourself! I'm also going to recommend Mercy's thread, here, listing common fanons about MDZS (I will add to the list, since it's a bugbear of mine, the idea that LXC recognized NMJ's fierce corpse by his abs).

Okay with all that out of the way, and in no particular order, Sun's extremely idiosyncratic and particularly- aka mostly JGY-focused differences list:

-In MDZS, LXC doesn't become Sect Leader until the burning of Cloud Recesses by the Wen, when his father is injured and then succumbs to his wounds. In CQL, he's Sect Leader from the beginning of the show, his father having apparently died not too long before the show started.

-In MDZS, MY wasn't working for the Nie at all before the beginning of Sunshot; he joined the Nie forces just after Sunshot began. NMJ didn't instantly promote him to be his deputy when he's telling at the Nie men for bad-mouthing him; it takes a few more encounters and/or battles with the Wen (after which MY clears the battlefield and helps the commoners).

-In MDZS, xiyao's first meeting happens when LXC is on the run with the Lan books after the burning of Cloud Recesses. We don't see it happen on the page, and we don't know any details of that time beyond, like, MY helped LXC.

-NMJ willingly sends MY away from the Nie, with a letter of recommendation for JGS, after, uh, an extended overhearing of a conversation between MY and LXC wherein MY's desire to be recognized by his father and gain a proper place in the Jin, the opportunity offered for that by JGS recruiting talent at Langya, and the possible difficulty of obtaining permission from NMJ are all established. 

-NMJ sees MY stabbing a /Jin/ captain, at Langya, after he goes looking for MY. Rather than taking a blow for NMJ, MY stabs himself, faking suicide, then immobilizes NMJ (who's trying to save his life) and flees. This is because NMJ wants MY to go turn himself in for killing the captain; MY thinks they'll kill him, while NMJ says that if the captain has actually been mistreating MY as MY said, MY won't be killed. Personally I think that all the evidence suggests that MY is right, and NMJ is blind to the effects of his position to the extent it's a not insignificant moral failure.

-Okay, so, you know how in CQL MY stabs WRH while he's distracted with WWX, outside on the steps with the Sunshot alliance right outside? In /MDZS/, they're in the Sun Palace, WWX isn't anywhere near the place, he does it to save NMJ's life, and then he starts lugging NMJ's unconscious body out of the palace. And then NMJ comes to consciousness amd demands his sabre and tries to kill him. He likely only survives because of NMJ's wounds, and if LXC hadn't shown up (responding to a message MY sent for aid for NMJ) NMJ might easily have killed him. If you want a more in-depth analysis, I take a close look here in my response to someone's, er, imaginative interpretation of NMJ and JGY's relationship in MDZS.

-In CQL, NMJ's qi deviation happens at the stairs incident. In MDZS, it happens later, when he overhears JGY being upset to LXC about how NMJ treated him at the stairs, and, overcome with rage that JGY would dare (arguably in combination with being polite and pleasant to NMJ's face, although the last time he was confrontational to NMJ's face NMJ kicked him down the stairs and tried to kill him so), he kicks open the door and tries to kill him. He also kills several people as he's qi deviating (seeing them as JGY—while in CQL he also sees several JGYs they seem to be just illusions), and injures NHS.

-In MDZS, NMJ sets fire to all of NHS' nice things. I don't think we're told either way in CQL, although it's worth noting that in MDZS this happens after the stairs (and before JGY starts playing for him again). (I think they do something in FJ?? But I don't take FJ as canon for CQL; see confusion-and-more's post here).

-In CQL, JGY suggests to NMJ that he's always played the corrupted Clarity for him (though granted this is in Empathy, so it's hard to say for sure if this is what he actually said, but in any case it's the only version we're given). In MDZS, it's strongly indicated that JGY only started playing Turmoil for NMJ /after/ the stairs—there's a variety of evidence, but I think the most objective is that WWX, who in MDZS Empathy can literally feel NMJ's anger, actually observes it working beforehand:

Since [JGY started playing for NMJ], Jin GuangYao would travel from Lanling to Qinghe every few days, playing Sound of Lucidity to help quell Nie MingJue rage. He tried his hardest, without speaking even a single word of complaint. Sound of Lucidity was indeed effective. Wei WuXian could clearly feel that the hostile energy within Nie MingJue was being suppressed.

(Exiled Rebels translation, ch. 49)

And then the next scene is the stairs incident, so.

-In general, the degree to which JGY's position is completely awful is played down in CQL. confusion-and-more talks about it a bit here; I'd also note that some of JGY's dialogue defending himself is removed ( “Some trivial achievements?” He spoke in a shaking voice, “…What do you mean, some trivial achievements? ChiFeng-Zun, do you know how much work I put into such trivial achievements? How much I suffered? Glory? Without the handful of glory I have nothing!”, for example), we don't hear about his mother at the guqin scene, the temple flashback where his mother is dragged naked outside by a client and he's kicked down the brothel stairs is eliminated, etc etc.

-There is absolutely no second flutist in MDZS; also JGY tells us in the temple that QS was already pregnant before he found out about the incest. I think even in CQL it's questionable whether he actually intended to kill Zixuan (see this whole conversation), and significant unveiling or no CQL never actually says QS wasn't pregnant before their marriage so I tend to go with that too, but certainly it's easy to walk away with the impression that he definitely did both deliberately, especially if you aren't familiar with the novel.

-(In general, I think CQL JGY is a lot more sympathetic than most people think once you look closely, but he's also very much set up to look upon a more casual watching as Villain, so.)

-In CQL it's All A-Yao All The Time but in MDZS we see LXC calling him san-di after the sworn brotherhood, and then it's back to A-Yao in the present day (see my last addition on this chain here).

-In MDZS, JGY doesn't shove JL out of the way of the incoming attack.

-The LXC lifting JGY out of his bow thing is from CQL

-The watchtowers! Oh /man/ the watchtowers. God the watchtowers are so much. Uh, confusion-and-more has a post about how much they're mentioned in MDZS vs CQL here, and see my last addition to this thread for an argument that the watchtowers were indeed a force for good. God. Twelve hundred watchtowers. He must have saved so many lives...

-confusion-and-more's watchtower post also reminds me that CQL has the Guanyin temple giving out medicine, while MDZS does not

-The episode 23 scene where Sect Leaders Jin, Nie, and Lan agree to spare some of the Wen doesn't exist in MDZS (though I'll take the opportunity to observe that I disagree with popular interpretations of that scene, see point three here).

-In MDZS NMJ's fierce corpse is literally trying to kill JGY, there's no saber spirit. And like, it's been trying to kill JGY for a long damn time, that's why JGY dismembered him.

-The XY plotline—in MDZS, JGY recommends a young XY (who at thay point has a reputation but is not known to have committed any massacres) as a Jin cultivator, as part of an effort by JGS to recreate the Yin Tiger Seal. JGS has multiple people trying, but most of them aren't getting anywhere and XY is getting furthest. It's during this time that XY kills the Chang clan, and is discovered as guilty by XXC, who brings up the evidence at a conference happening in Lanling; the Jin are stalling, MMJ gets angry and shows up, he almost kills XY on the spot and gives JGS a lecture such that he's forced to relent and sentence XY to death (and incidentally scares JGY, imho quite seriously, while he's at it). Then JGS turns it into life imprisonment once NMJ has left, and then NMJ is extremely angry and attacks JGY at the stairs. (Ch. 30 and 118)

-I mentioned before but I'll add it here too: in CQL JGY asks LXC to stay and die with him, and LXC agrees.

-The CQL ending in general is...hmmm. Despite having most of the elements which complicate MDZS' ending (JL is in a terrible position!), it kind of presents as...happy ending all is fixed now? In MDZS I think it's presented as—more complicated, even though Wangxian do very much get their happy ending.

-Also LWJ is a lot less. uh. Okay, so in CQL he's more Mr Morality, and in MDZS it's much more Wei Ying Right Or Wrong. Also, he doesn't become Chief Cultivator in MDZS! I think that's my least favourite change, because it's like...LWJ hates politics, hates compromise, and never attends the cultivation conferences. At least one of 'this is going to be a major diisaster' and 'LWJ is going to have to go through some significant shifts in his worldview and approach' are going to have to happen, but that's not the vibe CQL gives off at all, and I think it really works against some of the major themes of the text :/

-OH RIGHT I knew I was forgetting something—in MDZS MXY's revenge is focused solely on the Mo; JGY is not part of the curse.

Okay I don't want to go too much on about xiyao or nieyao, because this is already quite long and I don't want you to be waiting forever, but broadly although I certainly think NMJ cares about JGY a great deal it seems to be about his competence and potential; he doesn't really seem to, like, actually like who he is as a person. JGY, meanwhile, is at first very grateful to and then increasingly exasperated by and very much fucking terrified of NMJ, but...well, he doesn't seem to be into him or interested in spending time with him for the sake of it or etc etc.

On the other hand—xiyao. Man, xiyao!!!! They just—they get each other so fast, they're /partners/, they work together so well, they like and they respect each other, they're both like—LXC and MS are on their own tier for JGY, LWJ and JGY are on their own tier for LXC, they're for each other in a way neither is for anyone else, they care a lot about the same things—it's not perfect overlap, obviously, but it's more overlap I think than either has with anyone else, they—invest, they're builders, JGY was planning the watchtowers project from way back and although I have no doubt he was driving it LXC was with him and!!!! ugh!!!!! xiyao are REALLY GREAT, okay.

[the-silentium]

The Lost Future Pt. 2

Masterlist Part 3

Pairing: soulmate!Five Hargreeves x Reader

Summary: Soulmate AU where the soulmates share their wounds. || Along with your brother, you are transported into the 1960's with a bunch of kids you don't know. Turns out they are trying to stop the 2019 apocalypse and you are playing a key part of it.

Words: 3500 words

Warnings: Violence, swears, angst, fluff. FRENCH WORDS Y'all have to bear with my French Canadian ass.

A/N: Yay part 2 is out! We are almost at the best part :3 I love comments and feedback 💜 The French words are translated so no need to go on google translate and have a bad traduction. Also, I anyone want to be tagged in the next part, feel free to ask. Enjoy!

After everyone had calmed down and the two slashed hands were taken care of, the food was shared and people scattered to different places in the house and bunker. Andrew hasn't left your side until 11, asking non-stop how you were feeling and catching you up about what happened into his life while you were away. 

"So yeah. Oh and I got a puppy." You squealed in excitation. You loved dogs and puppies were the best. You already knew what breed Roo's companion was, you both had wanted one for years but you would never deny your old Mountain Bernese, Berrick, all the love and attention he deserved. 

"You got a Samoyed?" Oh how you wanted to shower this little ball of white fur in cuddles and kisses. 

"Ya. Named him Yukon. He's the happiest puppy of the world but damn! He loves mud better than his food! I swear, he starts dancing when it rains and the second we open the door, he rolls into the closest puddle of mud." You laugh wholeheartedly, the image clear in your mind. Your joy was short-lived when you caught the sight of a certain blue-eyed boy. Your soulmate. 

The thought felt weird but incredibly right. Deep inside you, a primal desire was burning for you to dive right into the newfound relationship without any back thought and see what would happen next. Unfortunately, you knew what would happen next. It was inevitable. 

So maybe you could save Five from a major heartbreak and just reject him. It would hurt every party involved, but it was the best option. You couldn't lead him on, make him love you, and then break his heart. From what you learned while being around Five today, is that he has walls around his heart. So tall. So thick. You were sure any trauma that would leave someone else broken in thousands of pieces would not even bother him. But your link with him gave you a secret passage through these defenses making you one of the few things that could hurt him. 

"Do you really want to do this to you? Deny yourself to be happy?" Damn him and his perfect reading of you. 

"You know what I'm going back to when we go back in 2019." 

"I do. That's why I say that you should enjoy it while it lasts. You deserve it." 

You scoffed at his comment. "It would be selfish. He would suffer because of me." 

Andrew sighed, he would never change your mind and he knew it. He softly patted the back of your hand before getting up. "All I say is you have your last chance." He made his way in another room, where his not so comfortable bed was waiting for him to try and sleep as much as he could before another day began. 

You harshly wiped the fresh tears for your eyes, but your throat was constricting despite your best efforts. At least, you managed to keep your sobs in, the only telltale of your predicament being the regular shakes of your body. 

You froze when you felt fingers stroking your arm in a reassuring manner. You didn't dare to breathe, in fear of letting a sob escape your lips. No one else could know.

"I'll kill him if he hurt you." Your ragged breath caused the pressure on your arm to increase slightly. You really tried to resist. You tried. But you needed the comfort. Just once. You would allow it just this once. 

"That's what brothers do. You should know that." Five hummed before moving closer. You didn't know how your body knew that Five was going to get onto your bed and sit so that your head would be on his lap, but it did. Your desire to cry came back full force when you realize how heavenly the feeling was. His hand in your hair, his fingers tracing lines on your arm, his patience when waiting for your shaking form to calm down. You felt so dirty to enjoy his presence while knowing that you were digging the grave of his happiness. 

"I'm definitely killing him." You laughed, tapping his legs in a playful manner. His chuckles sounded like music to your ears and you knew right then that you signed your fate. You needed to hear it again and maybe if you were lucky enough, you could hear his laugh before everything ended. 

"Sooo…" You turned on your back so you could try to discern his handsome features in the dark. "Why does Klaus call you old bastard? We are all born on the same day, right?" 

"Yes. But when I jumped into the apocalypse, I got stuck there for 45 years, meaning that my mind is 58 years old." The three lasts words were so low that you almost missed them. Almost. "Deal breaker?" Your bandaged hand reached for his, testing the water. 

"No. Never." You closed your eyes the second his fingers interlaced with yours. You tried to engrave this perfect moment, your first intimate time with your new-found soulmate in your memory.  

"I'm sorry." Five's whispered. His fingers were tracing the border of the bandages covering your hand. 

"For what? You didn't hurt me." You admired his hair, contemplating how soft they would feel under your fingers. 

"Yes I did. I was a hitman. I got stabbed, I barely survived an explosion, I hurt myself in the apocalypse so many times that I'm surprised I didn't die from an infection-" Your furrowed brow made him ponder. "You never got hurt because of me?" 

"Nope. Never. Did you?" He shook his head. His fingers slowed their motions on your hand, telltale of his mind working at light speed. You couldn't stop yourself this time and reached for his dark strands, combing your fingers through their softness. For a tiny second, Five tensed, stopping his ministrations simultaneously but soon relaxed and leaned into your hand. You smiled and massaged his scalp just like your mother did to you when you weren't well. "Maybe our bond couldn't link us through the timelines." He sighed before a tired smile stretched his lips. "I'm glad." 

You giggled, trying to suppress the yawn building in your throat, but failing miserably. A kiss fell on your uninjured hand followed by a stroke on the cheek. "Get some sleep." Your whine got a chuckle from him. "We'll have plenty of time after we stop the apocalypse." A last kiss landed on your forehead and Five moved to get up.  "Good night, mon âme soeur." 

You smiled at his flawless use of French. "Bonne nuit, my soulmate" 

…………………………….

Just after breakfast (read here the rest of yesterday's diner) everyone gathered in the bunker to assess yours and your brother's powers. 

"So, Roo can kinda dematerialize himself? I don't know how to explain it." The Hargreeves were all sat on couches, watching them intently. Vanya had woken up and was briefed of the recent events. 

"Just show us." Diego played with a knife, obviously bored. 

Andrew placed himself in the middle of the room while you joined Five and sit on the ground between his legs. Andrew pointed to Klaus who was fiddling with a controller. "Throw it at me." 

The surprised cough of Klaus made you giggle. His left hand went to his chest dramatically, his eyes wide. "Me? Throw an innocent controller at you?" Letting go of the act, Klaus' eyes returned to normal, a smile on his face. "Fine." 

The throw was messy and weak, hitting its target on the chest nonetheless before falling to the ground and a back piece of it broke. Your twin lifted his arms as to say "see?" He then pointed to Diego, shiny knife still in hands. "Throw it at me. Don't hold back and don't deviate." 

The room stopped breathing. "Sorry, what?" Diego was incredulous, just like everyone else, minus you. 

Confident, Andrew nodded. "You heard me. Bring it on." 

Allison and Vanya tried to dissuade their brother, clearly afraid that someone would be gravely hurt in this process. "You asked for it." You weren't surprised by the amount of force Diego put behind his throw. The knife flew at an incredible speed, passing right through Andrew leaving no hole, no blood, nothing. On the other side, the wall wasn't as lucky. 

"What?!" Diego was on his feet in a second, quickly getting to his knife to inspect it while your brother flashed a smug grin. "Things pass through you?" His eyes went from the broken controller at their feet to the weapon, trying to figure out what really happened. 

"When I want them to." Hands digging in his pants pockets, Andrew swung himself on his heels and toes. "It comes very handy in fights."

You had indeed witnessed a fight between Roo and 3 bigger tugs, the outcome hasn't surprised you, but seeing it was very impressive. He had to time his punches so his body would be fully materialized when the punch landed all the while taking care that his body was dematerialized for any punch threw at him. His power had no secret for him and he mastered it completely. Unlike you, who lacked practice. 

Andrew then sit on the floor, his eyes not leaving yours. It was your turn. You nodded. Your nervosity was making your hands shake a bit. It has been a while since you last used your power and you were scared that you would embarrass yourself in front of the perfectly trained Hargreeves. A deep breath entered your lungs before you concentrated on visualizing Roo's soul. 

You could see it neatly, a pale ivory flame softly floating within Andrew's seated form. You projected your own soul forward, reaching for the silky edges of your brother's and pushed him into the back seat. You took control of his body, slight nausea hitting you in the first seconds. You blinked quickly, adjusting to your new vessel and assessed the scene before your new eyes. 

Your real body was laid down on the floor with a panicking Five leaning over it. He slowly shook its shoulders, your name falling from his lips in an urgent tone. Allison and Vanya scurried to help him, Klaus and Diego watched seemingly paralyzed and Luther was the one to slap the back of your current head. 

"What's happening to her?" 

"I'm fine. I told you, my body just shut down when I project myself." A furious Five raised his head to meet your eyes and you suddenly felt very small despite Andrew being taller than the blue-eyed boy. 

"Y/N? It's you in Andrew's body?" You nodded, unsure of what you just got into. "You didn't tell us shit!" His harsh tone caused a lump to form in your throat, blocking almost completely your airways. You knew you'd screw something up. Andrew's soul became agitated, its pure ivory slightly turning grey on the edges. You could feel his anger at the back of your mind, his need to punch something. I don't care that this midget is your soulmate. He better watch how he talks to you. You cringed at Andrew's thoughts. 

"Sorry." You muttered. You quickly projected yourself back into your body to try and appease everyone. You pondered if leaving the room was a good idea, fleeing from the trouble you had just created and more importantly, trying to forget Five's anger directed at you. The ex-assassin was thinking ahead of you, because even before you could set up your mind, a hand caught yours keeping you in place. He helped you get into a seated position and positioned himself right behind you, encasing you with his legs on each side of yours. 

Five's muscles on your back softened only slightly. Allison stayed close by despite everyone else regaining their initial place. "Now can you explain?" You didn't want to meet their eyes in fear of what you would see, so you kept your eyes low. 

"I can project myself into someone else's body. It’s like I take the wheel of their body and they are in the backseat. They can still see and hear what’s happening and when I get out, they remember everything. They just don’t know it was me.” You paused, trying to see if you missed anything. “Oh, and I can hear their thoughts and access their memories too. That’s pretty much it.”

“So you can possess anyone?” Andrew obviously didn’t like Diego’s tone despite it being a legitimate question. 

“As far as I know, yes. But I’ve not used my power much and I would never use my power on you guys. I’m not dumb.” 

Diego lifted his hands in the air in surrender even though his face clearly showed that he didn’t believe you. Klaus' way of watching you, elbows on his knees, eyes reduced to slits, a hand under his chin, set off alarms in your head. A stupid comment was coming your way. “Sooo. How is it to have, ya know, an extra appendage?” You nearly choked on your saliva at the pretty forward inquiry and your brain went blank for a second. You should have known. It was written in the sky that Klaus would get stuck at THAT fact. 

“Seriously Klaus?” Allison wasn’t impressed. Like. At all. 

You shivered at the memory of the first time you tried your power. You didn’t know what it was at the time, so you let Andrew persuade you to try it on him. The trick was, you two were kids back then and Andrew had a very tiny bladder. To top it all, you didn’t know how to get out of his body yet. “Eeeeh. J’essaye de pas y penser? Parce que c’est inconfortable pis troublant en criss.” “I try not to think about it? Because it’s really uncomfortable and fucking disturbing.” The reboot of your brain apparently forgot to change the default language from Canadian French to English, causing a chorus of what? in the room. A very familiar laugh followed suit, annoying and embarrassing at the same time. Your only comfort was found in the shape of Five’s arms wrapping around your waist.

“How long can you last into someone else’s body?” Five’s hot breath in your ear made you shiver for a totally new reason. You would have loved it if the moment hasn’t been broken.

“That’s what she said!” You were very, very close to hit someone, them being Roo or Klaus, you had no preference. Back at home, you weren’t known for your patience, quite the opposite. Your nickname wasn’t Panda for nothing. You liked to pick fights, even if it meant some black eyes at the end of the day. You tried to get up, escape the grip keeping you on your butt, with no big results. 

“I need an answer.” The serious look on his face made you stop squirming. 

“So far? An hour? A bit more? Why?”

Five nodded, a content smile on his perfect lips. His head tilted a bit to the side and he watched you like it was the first time he ever saw you. “You can stop the apocalypse.”

Andrew’s unstoppable laugh abruptly came to an end at those words. “I’m sorry. She what now?”

…………………………….

The plan was brilliant, not that you expected anything less from Five. The only issue was that you would need to take over someone’s body for way, way longer than an hour. The only way for you to do just that was to practice. And boy, did you practice. The Hargreeves way. 

You panted, the return to your original body was brutal and spontaneous. Every muscle in your body was screaming in pain, your lungs were burning and your heart was a movement away from exploding. You laid on the couch, staying as steady as possible to appease your aching frame. If it wasn’t enough, even your mind felt on fire. The multiple jumps from body to another was getting its toll on your mind and to help your cause, the ones you possessed were instructed to fight you back as much as they could. 

The Hargreeves and Andrew rotated between themselves to be your target. Undoubtedly, Diego was against it, but after some persuasion Five’s-style, he soon joined the training and damn did he fight you whenever his turn came.  

Each day you made progress, but as soon as you hit the pillow at the end of the day, you were gone for a good 14 hours to be able to function again. On the good side, you were now able to stay in a calm host for more than a day and managed to keep a hostile one for a good 10 hours. At one point, Five had instructed you to jump from a host to another one. You had shown him the middle finger as quickly as your suffering muscles allowed you, indulging to his demands nonetheless. Jumping from a person to another was difficult to say the least. You often lose focus while transferring, catapulting yourself back into your own body or the second host would immediately put you K.O. the moment you tried to push them in the back seat. 

It was safe to say that you hated these trainings. Each time you had to remind yourself why you were doing it and in the end, you made it. It took 2 whole days, but you made it. And today you mastered it.

“You last 9 hours in Luther and 7 in Klaus. That’s more than enough.” Five appeared at your side and took your hand in his, stroking the back of it slowly. You noticed said boys exiting the room to give you both some alone time. 

“No more training?” Your hoarse voice made Five frown. He leaned over you to grab something on the coffee table and as carefully as he could, he bring the water bottle to your lips. You make a last effort to take the bottle yourself, not surprised when your hands don’t move an inch. 

“No more training. Now you need to rest.” His hands slipped under your shoulders and knees and he lifted you like you weighed nothing. You so desperately wanted to stay awake, enjoy being in his arms before the last lap to stop the apocalypse began so you fought the exhaustion as much as you could. 

"You're so beautiful." His comment just above a whisper made you hide your face in the crook of his neck in self-consciousness. You were never one to like receiving compliments, always waving them off or at least say it back. The latter would have been a good option if you weren't scared of where that led you. 

"Five?" He hummed, waiting for you to continue. "What if I screw everything up?" 

Five finally reached your attributed bed, carefully setting you down on the covers before joining you. He stayed at an acceptable distance from you, so if a certain male was to pass, there shouldn't be any blood spilled. His hand went to your waist, slowly caressing the skin exposed by your misplaced shirt. 

"You won't. We trained you for this and I know you can do it. You're my soulmate after all." His signature smirk was back on his lips. His confidence relieved some of the anxiety that was slowly expanding at the back of your mind and you started to think that maybe you could do it. You could really save the world. "What do you miss the most to do? In 2019 I mean."

You furrowed in brow, deep in thoughts. You missed doing a lot of things.

"When I was a kid, once a year my parents would take us to a drive-in movie theatre. I've not done that in a long time." Five found himself reciprocating your dreamy smile. 

"It's a date then."

"What?" 

"It's a date." He repeated. "The first thing we'll do when we get back is go to that drive-in theatre, then I thought we could go stargazing at one of my favorite place." 

It was so unexpected, tears formed into your eyes in a flash despite your best efforts at repressing them. It didn't take long for Five to notice the water rolling down your cheeks, worry tainting his sharp features. 

"Shit. Is it too soon?" 

"No." The speed of your shaking head almost made you dizzy. "I'd love to go there with you." Even the radiant smile on your face couldn't stop the flow of tears cascading from your eyes, leading Five to see them as happy tears. He smiled in return, reducing the distance between your two bodies to none as he cradled you into his chest, his face buried in your hair. 

Your mind wanted to scream at the universe. Yell for the unfairness of your predicament and for how much pain your selfishness would inevitably create. 

The events of the day got to you, your mind getting foggier and your breath steadier. As you were about to fall asleep, three little words flew to your ears, soft, almost indiscernible but pretty clear. 

"I love you."

Part 3

[goulets]

Heartland

Chapter: 4/9 Pairing: Jason Todd/Dick Grayson Additional Characters: Roy Harper, Lian Harper, Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake Case Fic / Kid Fic a03 link

Lian looks proud.  “My first word was Daddy,” she tells Jason.  “I bet Dani’s will be, too, since she has two daddies.”

It takes Jason a moment to process what Lian is talking about, and when he realizes it, Roy is suppressing a huge peal of laughter and Dick’s eyes are so wide they’re about to pop right out of his skull.

***

(romina)

The view has changed.

When Romina Falcone was a child, she had stood in this very office at the right hand of her grandfather and looked out this very window, down into the sprawling urban jungle. She’d thought Gotham City was beautiful. Carmine had a story for every building, every street, every truck and car and pedestrian. The businessman who needed funds to keep his product line moving, soon to be in debt to their family. The district attorney’s office who wanted to cut fiscal corners on an exterior remodel, soon to enter into a contract with them. The gas station at a particularly desirable intersection, soon to be abandoned and auctioned off - the delivery van pulling up to the pump, soon to motivate the owners to abandon it. There was nothing, he said, that was out of reach for them. There was no one who could afford not to answer their call.

She sits in the seat he once sat in, her brother at her right hand, the city laid out below her, and she sees none of it.

“Romina? Are you listening?” her brother asks, angry.

“Obviously not,” she tells him. Who would she pick out of this crowd, if she was her grandfather? The woman in the suit, maybe - a journalist, ambitious and easily bought. The corner bistro, in the red for the third year in a row, about to be turned down for a loan extension. The restless pawn shop security guard, washed out from the police academy, in need of a better outlet to exert his will upon the public.

One by one, she thinks. One by one, they will all be within her grasp.

“ - drives me fuckin’ insane,” her brother is complaining, now, to their cousin Antoni and their new employee, Tiberius. “Never listens to a goddamn word I say - “

“Mario.” Romina turns in her chair to face him.

“What?” he demands.

She raises a dark eyebrow.

He straightens, and appears to compose himself. Much better. “Sorry, Ro. There’s a situation at City Hall that I’ve just been made aware of.”

When he doesn’t immediately go on, she feels a flash of irritation. “Well?”

“It seems that several records were accessed over the weekend - the logs were deleted, but our alert system was set off before they covered their tracks.” A dark look passes over his face. “They were looking into Uncle Vincenzo.”

Romina understands. Vincenzo Rizzuto, her mother’s half-brother, is the name they’ve been recruiting under, a name relatively yet-unknown in Gotham. They hid the real Vincenzo well - Romina had Antoni remove her uncle’s head and hands after he killed him, and since the man had been in the country illegally from Montreal, there should have been almost no way to identify his body. The city coroner’s office hadn’t managed it, but obviously, someone else did.

She taps her fingers against the desk. “How inconvenient.”

Tiberius looks curiously between them. “Think it was law enforcement?”

Antoni barks out a laugh. Romina has to agree - besides, she’s been given the distinct impression that Gotham PD is more than willing to welcome them back into the fold.

Unruffled by their scorn, Tiberius moves on. “Surveillance?”

“Plenty,” Mario says. A vein begins to throb in his forehead. “Doesn’t appear to be tampered with. There’s a camera pointed directly at the terminal that was accessed. Didn’t pick up shit.”

“Ah,” Romina nods. An invisible researcher. This explains Mario’s bad mood. “A meta-human, then.”

“Fuckers,” Antoni grumbles.

Tiberius glances around at them, faint amusement in his pale features. “Can I speak freely?”

“No,” Mario spits, but Romina holds up her hand.

“You may.”

Tiberius cracks his knuckles. “I know your family is more...traditional, let’s say, but you guys aren’t seeing the big picture. A lot’s changed since your grandfather was in charge, not just in Gotham. Meta-humans are a resource. A fucking gold mine. You can hire them, create them, sell them, buy them - as a commodity, they bring a higher return than almost anything else out there. And the scope of the industry is unlimited. The Russians are already in the process of cornering the market in Bludhaven. You could have shipping routes all the way out to - ”

He stops, suddenly, because Mario’s patience has expired. He advances heavily on Tiberius, clicking the safety off on his pistol. Romina wonders idly whether it would be more prudent to buy off or to threaten the city clerk to alter their records. It’s too late this time, but it would do well to have someone in City Hall working for them, in the future.

“How many times,” her brother seethes, “do we have to tell you, Tiberius. We’re taking the metas out. Your freak squad has been running this town for too goddamn long.”

“Hey, they’re not my freak squad,” Tiberius protests, putting his hands up. “I’m just pointing out a business opportunity, shit.”

Antoni looks between them, interested. Romina sighs.

“Enough,” she says coolly. “Mario, stand down. Tiberius, you’ve overstayed your welcome. If I want business propositions from you, you’ll know.”

Tiberius straightens his jacket, glaring around at them all dispassionately. He’ll not last much longer, she thinks.

“Antoni, when are the trucks coming in from Chicago?”

“Should be within the hour, boss.” He grins at her. Romina feels a wave of affection for her younger cousin, all bloodlust and mania. If their grandfather had known him, he would surely have adored him as well.

“Go meet them,” she instructs. “Take Tiberius with you. He should meet our cousin Nicola, since he’s so interested in the family’s shipping routes.”

Antoni grins wider. Perhaps Romina was too careless with her phrasing - if Antoni can tell she means to replace Tiberius with Nicola Viti, then he can probably guess it as well. No matter. With both cousins watching him, he won’t have an opportunity to betray them.

Once they leave, Mario comes to stand next to her, turning his gaze out the window to mirror hers.

“It looks different,” he says, sliding his Beretta back into its holster. “That’s what you were thinking about, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she replies. “But I find that the longer I look, the less different it seems.” And indeed, the view is becoming clearer. The run-down garage two blocks over, its owners tired and brittle and all too willing to sign away to new management. The half-finished housing project, abandoned by the city and looking for a new developer. The drug dealer squatting in its basement, hungry to ally himself with a steady supplier.

After a moment, Mario clears his throat. “We need to get rid of Tiberius. His ideals don’t align with ours.”

He’s right, of course. It won’t do to have one of their own sowing discord among the lower ranks. Romina has made one thing clear in their recruitment process - they’re not making a power play for Gotham’s meta-trafficking trade, not entering into competition with Scarecrow or Riddler or whichever absurd character is putting on a show to engage the Batman this week. They’re eliminating them. Meta-humans and theatrical villains might be an inescapable reality of their world, but Gotham belonged to their family first.

“I’m not ready for you and I to go public just yet,” she tells him. “We need Tiberius for one more thing, first.”

He doesn’t argue. “I hope it’s Susie. You’ve kept her waiting long enough.”

Romina scoffs. “She’s lucky that’s all I’m doing to her, after she disobeyed me. No, I’ll have him fetch her in a few more days. Do you think he’ll suspect the trap?”

“No,” Mario snorts. “He’s too convinced of his own importance. Didn’t even blink when I pulled my piece on him. He thinks he’ll wear you down, eventually.”

She nods, satisfied. “That was my read as well.”

“Is it really necessary, though, to risk alienating Susie?”

Romina purses her lips. “She was instructed to leave no survivors,” she says. “I served her an opportunity to settle a score up on a platter, and she repaid me by doing the exact opposite of what I asked. She knew there would be a cost.”

Mario looks skeptical. “Seriously, Ro, it was just a baby. It wouldn’t’ve even remembered its parents.”

“It doesn’t have to remember.” Romina thumbs over the scar on her wrist, the memento from all those years ago. “I don’t like giving orders to kill children, and I don’t expect Susie to like doing it, but it’s necessary to do. The Maronis left us alive, and where are they now? Scrambling in the shadows like rats, terrified to show their faces. You have to be prepared to hunt the children of your enemies, Mario, or they’ll grow up to hunt you.”

Mario grimaces. “It fucking creeps me out, when you talk like that.”

“It’s something our grandfather understood,” she tells him. “It’s practically colonial.”

“Jesus, Ro.”

She smirks. “Don’t like that comparison?”

“You know I don’t, but you’re right. Fuck,” he sighs. “Fine. I’m guessing you want to put Antoni on it?”

“It can wait, for now.” Antoni is reliable as a triggerman, with no limitations to speak of, but he does have a habit of going off-script, and Romina doesn’t want any more deviations in this particular directive. “As you said, it’s only a baby. It can’t pose a threat to us for some time yet.”

Mario exhales, relieved.

On to more pressing matters. “Do you know, I think it’s time we started recruiting in Bludhaven.”

“I agree,” he says, immediately. “The Russians have been struggling to gain a foothold since losing Intergang. It’s the perfect time to strike.”

“And once we deal with them, the entire canal will be ours,” she muses. “Start looking for someone to run the cement factory, will you? I want that housing project on 15th.”

Mario grins wolfishly. “You don’t think it’s too early for city contracts? We can’t take them out under Vincenzo’s name, you know.”

“No,” she agrees. “But it’s nearly time.”

The view is shifting, the longer she looks. The points of connection are starting to take shape, the lines of power that her grandfather once saw so clearly all leading back into the palm of his hand. Recruitment is child’s play - the people of this city are as tired of the Bats and the Jokers as she is. It’s more than a mission, it’s her birthright. Her father was too foolish and weak to recognize it, but Romina was born with her grandfather’s soul. Now, in his office, with the city laid out before her, she begins to understand how he must’ve felt, back then. She can almost taste it in the air. Gotham is ready to come back to them, and Romina is ready to seize it all.

***

(jason)

“I gotta say, I’m a little hurt,” Roy says, throwing a sideways look at Jason.

Jason’s ninety-nine percent sure he’s gonna follow up with something obnoxious, but he gives him an indulgent glance over his coffee cup all the same. “Yeah?”

“That you didn’t call me, you tool. Why wasn’t I the first person to know about this?! Instead I gotta hear it from Donna, who heard it from Wally, who heard it from Dick!! Not cool, dude!”

Jason feels a headache coming on. They’re out on the balcony outside Dick’s room, and it’s as spacious as a balcony for a single bedroom can be, but it’s starting to feel claustrophobic all the same. “It was need-to-know, okay? I was going to tell you, obviously. In case you didn’t notice, I’ve had a few other things on my mind.”

Roy isn’t having it. “You know how Wally knew? Because Dick called him to ask for advice. Because Wally is a father. Kind of like someone else you guys know, right?”

“I did call you,” Dick says from the balcony doorway. Dani is awake in his arms, and Roy’s five year old daughter Lian is at his side peering up at her in fascination. “You didn’t answer.”

Roy flushes slightly. “Well, without a text, how was I supposed to know why you were calling? I figured it was something like, world-ending-cavalry-calling thing. Can’t blame me for wanting to sit it out.”

Dick nods at Jason. “But you’d answer for him?”

“Hell yes I would. I happen to like him better, no offense,” Roy says, offense clearly intended. Dick rolls his eyes.

Jason doesn’t exactly know what went on between the two of them, except that it happened when he was dead. Roy hasn’t been forthcoming about it, and he’s never bothered asking Dick. Clearly it’s not completely water under the bridge just yet, but Dick looks happy enough to see him, and Roy didn’t even blink at letting Lian run off with him, so Jason thinks they must be starting to make up. Really, it’s the last thing he should be hoping for. Dealing with either of them one-on-one is bad enough. If they get chummy again, he’s done for.

“You’re shit out of luck, then,” he says to Roy, about half a second before he remembers the guy’s daughter is standing right there. “Crap. Uh, sorry, Lian.”

“Daddy says ‘shit’ all the time,” Lian replies, shaking her dark hair back from her face. “Shit is just poop, really, so it’s not such a bad word.”

Dick laughs. “So wise.”

“When can baby Dani learn to talk?”

“Um…” Dick looks at Jason, who shrugs helplessly. “Probably not for a while, I’m guessing. She’s only four months old, so she has a lot of milestones to hit before then.”

Lian tilts her head comically. “What’s mile-stones?”

“That’s just a name for important things that babies learn to do, sweetheart,” Roy tells her. “Things like rolling over, grabbing their feet, sitting up, and standing up. You hit all your milestones right on time.”

“Grabbing their feet? That’s silly, Daddy.”

“Hey, it’s an important motor skill, kiddo. Just as important as first words. You were a foot-grabbing prodigy, so I should know.”

Lian looks proud. “My first word was Daddy,” she tells Jason. “I bet Dani’s will be, too, since she has two daddies.”

It takes Jason a moment to process what Lian is talking about, and when he realizes it, Roy is suppressing a huge peal of laughter and Dick’s eyes are so wide they’re about to pop right out of his skull.

“We’re not - I’m not her dad, Lian. She’s not my kid.” Jason should probably just shut the hell up, since he doesn’t think Roy would be too happy about him explaining why Dani is in their care in the first place to his young, already somewhat traumatized daughter.

“We’re just taking care of her,” Dick adds, gently. Lian looks puzzled.

“So you’re babysitting her?”

“Exactly, yeah.”

“Hey pumpkin,” Roy says, reaching over and patting her on the cheek. “We’ll talk about this more later, okay? Let’s not ask too many questions to Dick and Jason, you know how silly Bats are about their secrets.”

“Oh, right,” Lian giggles, looking between them all conspiratorially. “Especially Mister Bruce, right, Daddy?”

Dick raises his eyebrows. “You told your daughter Batman’s secret ID?”

“You wanna fight about it?” Roy asks. His tone is teasing, but there’s a hint of real challenge in his eyes.

Lian looks confused, and Jason takes pity on her. “Guys, knock it off.” He shoves Roy’s shoulder lightly, and shoots a hard look at Dick. “Not in front of the kids, come on.”

Dani, fortunately, diffuses the tension by spitting up in a truly spectacular fashion all over her onesie and Dick’s arm.

Roy bursts out laughing. “Okay, I gotta say, I do not miss that.”

“Did she just barf?” Lian looks horrified.

“No, this is something babies do a lot,” Dick reassures her. “Usually it puts her in a much better mood when she does it, so it’s actually a good thing.”

“Okay…” Lian says uncertainly. “It’s kind of gross.”

“Kind of,” Dick grins. “I’ll just go change her, and, um, wash up.”

“Can I help? Can I pick out her clothes?” Lian looks at Roy excitedly.

“Sure, you’ll be a lot better at picking them out than me,” Dick beams back at her. “Be right back, guys.”

Once they’re out of earshot, Roy turns to Jason. “I didn’t tell her Batman’s secret ID, just so you know. He told her himself a couple years ago, after the attack on Star City. We were all up in the Watchtower, and he didn’t have his cowl...it was such a crazy day, I honestly never thought she’d remember it.”

Jason nods peaceably. “I don’t really give a shit, to tell you the truth.” It’s not quite the truth, actually, but hopefully Roy won’t call him on it.

“Just saying. Anyways, Jaybird, what the hell is going on with you and Dick? Are you fucking?”

Jason almost spits out his coffee. “What?”

“Is it really that weird of a question? You’re living here all of a sudden, raising a baby together, I mean.” Roy tilts his head, looking remarkably like his daughter. “Okay, I guess you’re not fucking.”

“We’re not anything,” Jason says, more harshly than he means to. “Jesus Christ.”

Roy gives him a look of dawning comprehension, which Jason doesn’t like at all. “I see.”

“Do you.” Jason narrows his eyes. “Well, fucking don’t.”

“All right, all right. I’ll cut you a break since I remember what it’s like to be up to your eyeballs in diapers and sleep deprived as hell and being expected to deal with your asshole friends like everything’s normal.” He leans forward to pour more coffee in Jason’s mug. “Talk to me about the kid, then. You said she’s not sleeping very well?”

Jason shakes his head. “She was sleeping great until this past week, I have no idea what changed. Every single noise in the room wakes her up. And if she catches sight of me, it’s all over. She just cries and cries until I pick her up, and she wakes up again if I try to put her down.”

“Damn,” Roy says sympathetically.

“I haven’t gone out in four nights,” Jason tells him, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “Dick’s got Russians to deal with in ‘Haven, so he hasn’t been able to take a night off, and I can’t…I just can’t leave her. Doesn’t seem right.”

“You shouldn’t, anyways, if your head’s back here,” Roy says. “Learned that one the hard way.”

“I don’t know what the fuck to do, then. It’s not a fever, she’s not hungry, or wet, she just won’t sleep.”

Roy leans forward. “Listen. This is actually a totally normal, completely awful thing called a ‘sleep regression’ that nobody fucking tells you about before you have a kid. They go through them every couple months, usually before hitting a major milestone. It’s fucked, but it’ll pass, I promise.”

Jason stares at him in surprise.

“What? I know things, fuck you.”

Jason kicks him lightly under the table. Not the best demonstration of thankfulness he could’ve come up with, but it’s all he’s got. “So what do I do, until it passes? Just keep holding her all the time?”

“You could try, but honestly, I think that’ll just make it worse. Do you have a white noise machine?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you tried really cranking that sucker up?”

“Yep.”

“Have you tried putting her in the swing?”

Jason frowns. “They’re not supposed to sleep in there.”

“What, really? Says who?” Roy looks incredulous.

“The fucking American Pediatric Association, that’s who. It says so right on the box. It’s a suffocation hazard.”

Roy’s forehead creases with worry. “No shit? Damn, no one told me about that. I used to put Lian to sleep in that thing all the time when nothing else was working.”

Jason spreads his hands. “Any other ideas?”

“Yeah, actually. Babies have REM cycles, you know, they’re just different from ours. When they’re in a sleep regression, you gotta wait until they’re deeply asleep to put them down. Give it, like, ten extra minutes after she falls asleep.”

“I can do that,” Jason agrees. “Doesn’t do me a lot of good, though, if she wakes up as soon as I fucking cough or unload my gun.”

“Oh yeah?” Roy cocks an eyebrow. “We’re unloading rubber bullets now?”

Jason kicks him again. “Shut up.”

“Shit, Jay. I just can’t believe Dickie is okay with it.”

Jason can’t quite believe it either. He keeps the loaded gun hidden in a shoulder holster under his jacket, but he’s not stupid enough to think that Dick hasn’t noticed.

Roy stretches his arms behind his head. “Sure nothing’s going on between you two?”

“Roy, I’m not having this conversation,” Jason says.

Roy grins. Jason hates that grin. “Alright. So, if she always wakes up when you’re in the room, don’t be in the room. Get a monitor and sleep in Dick’s room. Problem solved.”

Jason takes a long drink of coffee, trying to calm the sudden hammering in his pulse. “Yeah, that’s not fucking happening.”

“Why? If there’s nothing going on between you…”

“Roy,” Jason growls.

“Daddy, look! I helped baby Dani get dressed!”

They both turn to look at Lian in the doorway, standing in a superhero pose with her hands planted on her hips. “Ta-da!” she announces, leaping aside with a flourish. Dick appears behind her, lips pressed together like he’s trying hard not to laugh, Dani presented forward in his arms in a little red dress, red bloomers, and little red socks with white hearts. A little red bow is just visible among her tufts of black hair, and Jason’s heart throbs violently in his chest.

“Wow, sweetie!” Roy opens his arms and gives her a big hug. “Red, huh?”

“I think it’s her favorite color,” Lian says, shyly glancing at Jason. “It’s mine, too.”

Jason swallows. “Where the hell did that dress even come from?” He doesn’t know why he bothers asking, he doesn’t have a clue where any of Dani’s clothes come from. They seem to just materialize in her drawers, and he could probably pinpoint who purchased each item if he laid them all out and put his mind to it, but he finds it’s much easier just not to think about it.

“I don’t remember who got this one, actually.” Dick peeks at the tag. “It’s Ralph Lauren. Maybe Helena?”

“Hey Dick, I was just spitballing ideas with Jason,” Roy says, suddenly. Jason goes to kick him again, but damnit, he’s still holding Lian. Using his own kid as a shield, the fucker.

Dick looks up from bouncing Dani, his eyes widening innocently. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, about your kid’s sleep issues. Jay said she’s startling easily, once she’s down.”

Dick looks at Jason apologetically. “It’s been rough,” he admits. “Sorry, I know you haven’t gotten much sleep either.”

“Apparently it’s totally normal,” Jason says quickly, glaring at Roy. “Roy says it’ll pass in no time. Don’t worry about me.”

“I was suggesting, actually, that she might have an easier time if Jason wasn’t clattering around all the time and waking her up,” Roy goes on, pulling Lian up into his lap. Jason is going to kill him. “You’ve got room, right, Dick? Makes more sense for you two to share so she can get some peace and quiet.”

“Oh!” Dick spares Jason a fleeting glance. “That does make sense...we have the video monitor, after all. You are kind of loud, when you take off your armor.”

Jason crosses his arms. Everyone’s a fucking critic. “Fine. I’ll sleep on the floor, whatever.”

Dick makes a face. “Jason…”

Roy gives him an exasperated look. “What is this, cooties? Are you twelve?”

Lian tugs at his sleeve. “What’s cooties?”

“It’s what Jason’s scared of getting if he sleeps in the same bed as Dick, sweetheart. It’s super silly.”

Dani has apparently had enough of being held on display like a doll, and fusses loudly, kicking out towards Jason and curling both hands up toward her face. Jason can tell she’s a few seconds from a full meltdown - they’ve been coming on faster and faster, since this whole “sleep regression” started. He’s on his feet in a heartbeat, and Dick passes her over without a word. It’s a little terrifying how used to this they both are, Jason thinks as he brings Dani up to his chest. She’s already bigger than the tiny ten-pound bundle that had turned up at the Manor just a few weeks ago, and she’s outgrown the first sets of pajamas they’d put her in. He pats her back soothingly, feels the patch of drool on his shirt that indicates she’s stuffed her fingers in her mouth again. Normally, he’d drop a kiss on her head, but he finds himself reluctant to do so in front of Roy. He doesn’t want Roy to read anything into it - he’s already given away too much during this visit.

“Awww, she’s so cute,” Lian giggles, leaning against her dad. “I wish I could hold her, Daddy.”

“Maybe next time, honey. Baby Dani just wants her grown-up right now. You know how that feels, don’t you?”

Lian nods, looking up at Jason. “Yeah.”

Jason feels ridiculously exposed, under their twin gazes. If it wasn’t for Dani, he’d have jumped over the railing already.

“What are you guys up to for the rest of the day?” Dick asks, rescuing him from their unnerving combined perception.

Roy gives his daughter a nudge. “What are we doing, pumpkin?”

Lian lights up. “We’re going to see Donna!”

“Her favorite,” Roy confirms, grinning down at her. “They’re having a girl’s night, apparently. I’m not invited.”

“Maybe when Dani is bigger, she can come to a girls night with us,” Lian suggests wistfully. Dick looks sad, and Jason doesn’t have the heart to tell her that’s never going to happen.

“Hey, wouldn’t that be fun.” Roy ruffles her hair playfully. “You’d have to share Donna, though.”

Lian pulls back to give him a reproachful look. “I know how to share, Daddy.”

“Sheesh, okay. Anyways, I’ll be around, if either of you needs a wingman,” Roy says, looking between Dick and Jason hopefully.

“I’m staying in,” Dick says. Jason blinks, this is news to him. “Russians are laying low, and no one’s sprung our Falcone cousin from jail yet, shockingly. I know you’re going stir-crazy, so I’ll stay with her tonight.”

Jason feels a surge of warmth towards Dick. He is going nuts, and not just from sleep deprivation. It’ll do him a world of good to get out and get some real exercise, check on all his favorites in the neighborhood and put the fear of the Red Hood back into all the local dirtbags. Tim’s been doing a more than decent job on keeping him updated, and Jason’s grateful, but there’s something to be said for good old fashioned violence when it comes to keeping his people in line. Jason’s itching for it - he hasn’t been back in the field properly for way too long.

“You up for it, Jaybird?” Roy asks. His eyes are practically sparkling - Jason can already feel the beginnings of regret. “It’s been a minute since we teamed up.”

Jason sighs out heavily. “Yeah, okay.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Roy laughs. “It’ll be fun! I can impart more sagely parenting advice, you can, um - ” he cover’s Lian’s ears “ - b-a-s-h some s-k-u-l-l-s, it’ll be real therapeutic.”

Lian swats at his hands. “Daddy.”

Jason looks at Dick. “You sure B’s okay with you taking a night off?”

“I’ll make him okay with it,” Dick says grimly. “Besides, I miss her.”

God help him, Jason’s going to miss her too, when he’s out for the evening. Not enough to want to stay in, but damn close.

He looks down at her, dozing lightly against his chest, one round cheek pressed flat, the other drooping onto her curled up shoulder. An image flits through his mind - Dani, older, her tufts of hair grown out long like Lian’s, a wide, toothy smile on her face and her big brown eyes crinkled up at Jason. Calling to him, reaching for him. Daddy. It feels like a bullet piercing his heart, but he can’t stop imagining it. Can’t stop imagining her laughter, the solid feeling of her body in his arms…and someone else next to him, strong hands held out to catch hers, sweetheart sounding out in a voice he’s gravitated toward since he was thirteen years old -

“Jason? You having gas or something?” Roy sounds half amused, half concerned.

Fuck. “Headache,” Jason manages, shoving the intrusive images as far back into his subconscious as he can. God, does he know how to torture himself.

“Well, get rid of it. Imagine how embarrassing it’d be if you got k-i-l-l-e-d by some punk in the Bowery because you were off your game.”

Jason shrugs. “You’d avenge me.”

Roy laughs. “Damn right I would. I’d have to fight Dick here for the honor.”

“To get back at some Bowery punk? Nah, Dickie wouldn’t bother.”

Dick rolls his eyes, but his mouth is twisted with humor. “Hey, I might, depending on how embarrassing your demise was.”

Roy claps his hands. “See, if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

Dick goes pink, but he looks happy, at least. Jason imagines strangling Roy, to avoid anything revealing coming out of his mouth.

“I’d better go tell little D he’s got my patrol tonight,” Dick says, after a mildly suffocating moment of silence. “I’ll stick a bottle in the warmer for when she wakes up.”

“You are the worst person alive,” Jason tells Roy, once Dick is gone. “The worst. I literally don’t know why we’re friends.”

“Jason’s joking, sweet pea,” Roy grins at Lian.

Lian huffs dramatically. “I know that, Daddy.”

How the hell Roy Harper created such a great kid, Jason will never know. “What are you and Donna doing for your girl’s night?” he asks her, rocking Dani gently.

“So many fun things,” she tells him seriously. “I have a new Lego set, so we’re gonna build that, and then maybe we’ll play princess school? Or animal rescue school, or maybe both...and we’ll definitely watch a movie! And eat popcorn, of course.”

“Of course,” Jason nods.

She smiles at him, her nose scrunching adorably. “What are you and my daddy doing for your boy’s night?”

Jason makes eye contact with Roy. “Well, I doubt we’re gonna have as much fun as you.”

“No,” Roy agrees, tweaking her nose. “I think we’ll still have a pretty good time, though.”

***

Jason’s prepared for the worst, when they arrive in Crime Alley. He’s expecting his safe house to be trashed by squatters, his civilian apartment to be robbed, and all the local hot spots to be generally on fire. Well. Maybe not on fire, it does seem like Tim’s been doing a pretty good job covering for him. But still, he’s not expecting to roll into his territory and find it…quiet.

Roy takes to the rooftops, and Jason goes to the first busy street corner he sees. “Hey, Ginger,” he calls, jogging up to a working girl he’s got a friendly rapport with. “How’s it going?”

Ginger looks surprised to see him, but not unhappy. “You finally remember your address, Hood?”

“Doesn’t look like I needed to, though,” Jason remarks, glancing around. “Your girls are all good? Any problems that require my attention?”

“Aren’t you sweet.” Ginger looks over his shoulder, as though expecting someone to be there. “No Red Robin tonight? Damn.”

Wow, so that’s how it is. Jason’s already chopped liver. “Ouch,” he says in mock offense. “You know, it was me who told him which blocks to keep an eye on in the first place.”

“You can take that white knight shit straight back to wherever you’ve been hiding out, honey.” Ginger sounds unimpressed. He swears he was more intimidating a few weeks ago. She gives him a meaningful look and makes a shooing motion with her wrist. “It’s good to know you’re still in one piece, baby. Now run along, before you scare off all my customers.”

Taking the hint, Jason moves down the block to his favorite bar, a hideous dive run by a neighborhood relic called Mac Deveroux. Back when Jason was a kid, Mac had frequently paid him to make deliveries, taking alcohol and sometimes food to his customers who weren’t in a position to come and get it themselves. Most of the deliveries were superfluous errands that Mac could just as easily have run himself, but he liked Jason’s observational skills, and the real value of the trip was the gossip Jason was able to pick up along the way. Jason has no idea if Mac remembers him - it’s possible he had a dozen kids on his unofficial payroll, it’s equally possible that the years and the drinking have written Jason’s existence out of his mind. But the man is just as congenial and just as all-knowing about everyone’s business as he’s always been, so Jason makes it a habit to visit him and trade information.

“Hey, Mac,” he calls, pulling off his helmet and sliding into a seat at the end of the bar. He doesn’t always order a drink when he comes here, and he’s not planning on it tonight, but Mac seems to prefer talking to him in just the domino. “Been a minute.”

It’s early, so the place is still mostly deserted, except for a handful of local drunks in various stages of stupor. Mac looks startled for half a moment, then pulls his ballcap down and goes back to being inscrutable. “Glad to see you alive and well, Red.”

Why is everyone so surprised to see him? He’s only been off patrol for a week or so, and he was checking in every few days before that. “Some reason I shouldn’t be?”

Mac side-eyes him suspiciously. “Not especially. People talk. That friend of yours - Red Robin - stupid fucking name, by the way - he’s okay too?”

Jason picks up his helmet and switches the comm on. “Red Robin, Red Hood checking in. Are you dead or injured?”

Tim’s voice comes through almost immediately, annoyed. “Uh, no?”

Jason switches it back off. “Yep, still kicking. Pretty sure Batman hasn’t bit it either, but the night is young. What’s with the sudden concern for my well-being?”

Mac shakes his head. “Folks been talking lately, that’s all. Lots of shit about taking down the Bat, all the rest of the capes in Gotham. Can’t blame me for wondering.”

“People around here are always running their mouths,” Jason says dismissively. “Half the time they tell me about it to my face. Since when are you sweating shit like that?”

“Since it started seeming like more than just talk,” Mac says, serious. “I mean it, Red. You ought to watch yourself out there. And be careful who you talk to, too. I appreciate all you done for me, but it’ll be better if I don’t see you in my bar all too often. You need to chat, you’re better off coming in the back.”

Jason recalls how quickly Ginger had hurried him away, and feels his blood run hot with anger. So these fuckers think they can come onto his turf and threaten his people? They’re gonna be needing more than new kneecaps by the time he’s through with them.

He cracks his knuckles. “Right. Let’s go to the back, then.”

Mac meets him next to a stack of boxes behind his delivery door. He pulls out a joint and starts patting his pockets down, looking for a lighter.

“Here.” Jason fishes one out from his coat pocket, tosses it to him. Not like he’s lighting up much of anything these days.

“Appreciate you, man,” Mac says, catching it. “You want?”

Jason shakes his head briefly.

Mac nods, as though he expected Jason to decline. He exhales a stream of smoke. “Gives me a reason to be back here, you know.”

“Sure.” Jason leans cautiously against one of the stacks of boxes. “So, what’s all this chatter that’s got you and everyone else so spooked?”

“Hmm.” Mac takes another long drag off his joint. “Just a few too many mouths telling the same story in my bar, I’d say. I’m used to hearing guys talk big about taking you out. But this is different, they’re all telling the same story about somebody else taking you out. Taking all the Bat folks out, and the Jokers and the Scarecrow gang too. Saying it’s gonna be open season on all the capes and metas in Gotham, that sorta thing.”

Jason really doesn’t like the sound of any of this. “Who’s supposed to be taking us all out, exactly?”

“That’s the thing about it. No one wants to say, I don’t think most of ‘em even know. You heard about that bloodbath down by the docks, a month back?”

Jason tenses. “Uh-huh.”

Mac looks shrewd, suddenly. “You know who did it?”

Jason can tell from his tone that he doesn’t know, but that he’s dying to. “If someone like you hasn’t found out yet, Mac, I think it’s because certain people want it that way. Just like certain people don’t want you talking to me.”

“‘Certain people’ can kiss my ass,” Mac grumbles.

“Here’s a question, totally unrelated,” Jason says. “Does the name ‘Romina Falcone’ mean anything to you?”

Mac stares at him, dumbfounded. “No....Romina? Mario Falcone’s little girl?”

Jason shrugs one shoulder, trying to appear casual. “You heard anything about her being back in town?”

“No…she’s been gone from Gotham for years. Sad story, really. You know it?” Jason does, but since this is a casual inquiry, he motions for Mac to go on. “Her daddy was Carmine Falcone’s son, a real straight-shooting type, good student, honest, the whole nine yards. Never touched the family business.” Another long inhale off the dwindling joint. “When Falcone first went to prison, gotta be over twenty-five years ago now, the Maroni family took over. Mario wouldn’t throw in with them, so they killed him and his wife. The kids, Mario Jr. and Romina, went to live with relatives in Chicago, last I heard.”

A mob orphan, Jason thinks, just like Dani. Except that Romina and her brother hadn’t gone to live with just any relatives - they’d gone to live with the Viti family, headed by none other than Carmine Falcone’s bloodthirsty sister. “So, no one’s heard from her since then?”

“No one heard from her before then, either. She couldn’t’ve been more than eight or nine when all that shit went down,” Mac says doubtfully. “You sure your intel’s good?”

Jason’s deep in thought, suddenly. “Didn’t say anything about intel,” he tells Mac. “Just asking a question. I gotta go, though. Okay if I slip out the door here?”

Mac gestures obligingly. “Hey, be my guest. I’m gonna do myself a favor and forget this whole conversation now.”

Jason snorts. “Good idea. See you around, Mac.”

“Yeah, yeah. Watch your back out there, kid.”

Jason’s out the door before Mac’s parting words echo back to him. Watch your back out there - what was he, eleven? Twelve, the last time he heard those words?

Maybe it’s a coincidence. Or, maybe Mac Deveroux has a better memory than Jason gives him credit for.

He puts his helmet back on. “Arsenal, status report.”

“All good over here, Hoodster,” Roy replies brightly. “Knocked out a handful of drunk and disorderlies outside a Buffalo Wild Wings just now. Didn’t realize the Bowery was so gentrified already.”

Ugh. “Not all of it is,” Jason sighs. “But, yeah. Sure isn’t how it used to be, over there.”

“No kidding. I’m watching this girl steal a souped-up Camero right now. Ran the plates, and based on the owner’s resume, I might let her get away with it.”

Jason snorts out a laugh. “Works for me. I’ll come meet you over there, just give me ten.”

He’s barely made it two blocks when Oracle’s voice sounds in his ear, her tone making him snap to attention at once. “Hood, we have a situation.”

He stops still on a dingy government housing rooftop. “Go ahead, O.”

“It seems Susie Falcone was sprung from jail earlier today - we missed it because her release was processed under another name, but I have the video feed, and it’s definitely her.”

Oh, fucking finally. Jason was starting to think he wouldn’t have a chance to get any real exercise tonight. “You got a name for me?”

“Guy by the name of Tiberius. Albanian, according to Red Robin. I’m running his face through Interpol, but it takes time.”

Jason hops onto a nearby fire escape and swings up to the roof of an office building to get a better vantage point towards the harbor. “Is B gonna crap himself if I take the lead on this?”

Barbara’s quiet for a moment. “Do you care?”

Jason flexes his hand over the grip of the gun strapped to his thigh. “I mean, no,” he starts to say, knowing as soon as the words are out of his mouth that it’s not entirely true. “Just...it’ll be a pain in the ass if I have to fight a whole fucking mafia, plus him, that’s all.”

Oh, incredibly convincing. Jason’s surprised he doesn’t hear her laughing down the line.

“I think you know how to avoid his ire,” Barbara says. “You’re closest, so I’m putting you on it.”

“Okay. Thanks,” Jason adds, feeling more like an idiot by the second. Forget Dick, talking to Barbara always makes him feel about twelve fucking years old. At least she’s not openly judgmental about it. “Hey, Oracle. One last thing.”

“Oh? I’m listening.”

“Can you do some digging into the Viti family? I feel like there’s gotta be a reason Romina came back to Gotham now, when she could’ve made a play for the city years ago. If she’s been in Chicago all this time, it’s probably something to do with them.”

“…Yes,” Barbara says, slowly. Jason hears a flurry of typing. “Since they trade over state lines, that data will be with the Feds…it’ll take me a little while, I’ve got my hands full with some more urgent things right now. But it’s a good idea, Hood. You’ll know more as soon as I do.”

“Okay,” Jason agrees. “Thanks,” he adds, lamely.

She lets out a short huff of amusement, and Jason’s past self cringes at him in embarrassment. “Oracle out.”

Right. Tiberius. Jason’s been waiting for a chance to take on this ostentatiously-named asshole. From his own observations that night with Dick, and from Tim’s reports, the guy is a particularly sleazy type of hired muscle. Fantastic. Jason needs the workout.

He gives himself a shake, and then takes off towards the police impound lot. Within ten minutes, he’s found a suitable bike and is on his way to the East End, changing comm channels in his helmet to call Roy. “Arsenal, are you good to finish up my patrol? I got a lead on somebody in this mob case I need to handle.”

“Wow, Hood. And here I thought we were having a boy’s night.”

“Hey, if nothing’s going on over there, you’re welcome to join.”

“Yeah? Hey asshole, stay down,” he snarls. “Maybe I’ll meet you after I finish up.”

Jason hears a moan and a thud on Roy’s end. “Anybody interesting?”

“Just some model citizen I found trying to drag a passed-out woman into his car. Said she was his girlfriend, but he neglected to mention she dumped his ass two months ago.”

“Break his legs,” Jason proposes, feeling a mild rage rising in his chest.

“Red Hood says I should break your legs,” Roy tells the guy. “It’s not really my style, but I’m just temping over here. You’d better leave town, because if he finds you doing this shit again, you’re gonna wish I took him up on it.”

Please, man, Jason hears in the background. He hadn’t honestly expected Roy to take his suggestion. Turning onto a side street, he hears an alarm start to go off somewhere close by. Robbery, sounds like. Exactly what he’s looking for.

“Alright, I’m starting my manhunt,” he says to Roy. “You’ve got my coordinates if you need to find me.”

Roy makes some kind of hooting sound that Jason takes to be acknowledgment. “Make me proud.”

Jason kills the bike in an alley and parks it under a staircase, slipping a loop of electrified wire over the handlebars. Easy enough to disarm, but he’s not planning to be gone long. The store being robbed is a liquor store, and the goons smashing it up aren’t criminals so hardened that they’ll take any effort on his part to crack. He storms in the front, grabs the first guy, and throws him over the counter. The second pulls a gun on him - he shoots it out of his hand a split second later, then fires three more shots into a glass case of upscale liquor, to fairly spectacular effect. The remaining guys all hit the floor, visibly terrified. Jason holsters his gun.

“Hope you guys don’t mind me crashing this little party you’re having,” he calls, kicking the fallen gun to the side. “I need to find a guy by the name of Tiberius. First one to talk gets to walk away.”

They all goggle at him. “Did he say Tiberius?” one of them whispers.

“We don’t know anybody called that,” the one he tossed behind the counter says.

Jason clicks his tongue. “Wrong answer.” He fires a rubber bullet into the guy’s shoulder, and he goes down. By the time they realize it’s not a live round, he’ll be in the wind.

He holsters the gun again, and turns his attention on the one he’d disarmed. “Your turn.”

“We don’t know where he is,” the guy says quickly. “I only met the guy once. He doesn’t give us orders.”

“Who does he give orders to,” Jason counters, advancing on him menacingly.

“Dealers, mostly? My cousin Zion reports to him, he slings down by the Wharfside Pool Hall. Swear to God, man, I haven’t seen Tiberius since he moved us all off the docks.”

Jason looks around at the wreckage of the store, realizing something. “You guys aren’t robbing this place, are you.”

They don’t say anything. Jason doesn’t need them to - their silence is confirmation enough. They’ve been tasked by Romina and her lackeys to trash this place and force the owners to sell. And now he’s helped them do it. Fuck, this is why he hates mob cases.

Nothing to be done about it now. Once he puts a bullet in Romina’s skull, maybe he can come back and see that these people get their store back. First, he’s gotta find her.

“Be seeing you, gentlemen,” he says, tossing out a couple smoke pellets. “Don’t expect it to be as painless next time.”

It’s a quick ride to the Wharfside Pool Hall, and Oracle sends him a photo of Zion Lee on the way. He finds him immediately, parked on the corner by the emergency exit. It’s a short conversation. Zion doesn’t know where to find Tiberius either, but he does tell Jason where to find his supplier, and once Jason takes a look at the supplier’s rap sheet, he decides there’s not going to be a conversation at all. Kidnapping, trafficking, sexual battery - hell, if Jason can’t find Tiberius tonight, at least he can take his aggression out on this piece of garbage.

He roars up to the supplier’s house on the stolen bike and throws a smoke bomb through the window, the rush of impending violence like fire in his veins. Then, as luck would have it, he sees a familiar muscular figure rushing out the back door towards a Jaguar that’s parked in the shadows at the end of a driveway.

Tiberius, in the flesh. Looks like Jason’s date with this supplier will have to be postponed.

Quickly, he considers his options. The adrenaline junkie in him is tempted by the prospect of a good old-fashioned car chase, but this area is just a bit too residential for him to be strictly comfortable with it. Too bad. He lets Tiberius get to the end of the driveway, and then he shoots out the Jag’s tires. Tiberius returns fire immediately, which, again, is not the most desirable outcome in a residential neighborhood. Jason aims a shot at his firing hand, but the guy is already ducked down and reloading.

Fine. Jason will just have to throw something bigger at him, he supposes. He revs the bike’s engine, kicks off and guns it towards the Jaguar, bailing off to the side when Tiberius stands up to shoot at him some more. The bike keeps going, propelled by momentum, and crashes beautifully into the driver's side of the Jag, knocking Tiberius hard to the pavement when the open door that he’s been using as a shield swings violently sideways with the rest of the car.

He doesn’t stay down, of course. Before the impact is even finished reverberating through both vehicles, he’s hopping back up, more nimbly than Jason would’ve expected, given his size, and taken off running down the street. Jason pushes himself up and hightails after him, the thrill of the hunt making him practically giddy, his heart accelerating with the pace of his boots against the concrete.

Damn, but it feels good to exert himself. Jason’s been cooped up for too fucking long. Tiberius is seriously in shape, and fast, almost as fast as Dick, too fast for Jason to catch without playing dirty. He’s running too hard to aim with any real accuracy at a moving target, but he squeezes off a half dozen shots at the car windows Tiberius is running past, and the resulting spray of breakaway glass slows him just enough that Jason is able to launch a kick at the back of his knees and tackle him to the ground. They tussle - Tiberius pulls a knife and manages to wedge the blade under Jason’s chestplate, but luckily the tip of it catches on the kevlar, and Jason is able to knock it away before it does any real damage. He headbutts Tiberius savagely, breaking his nose and sending him sprawling out over the basement landing of a boarded-up tattoo parlor.

Before Jason can get up and draw his weapon, Tiberius is on him again, fists coming in like hammer blows and seeking out all the soft spots of his suit with frankly impressive accuracy. Jason’s pulse is pounding in his ears, he’s always gotten a kick out of fighting guys that are bigger than him - though, admittedly, most guys he went up against as Robin met that qualification. Fighting Tiberius is a little nostalgic, in that sense.

How did he used to do it? Bruce had taught him all the fastest ways to incapacitate someone, and Jason’s lived enough by now that he can admit that more often than not, Bruce’s way works just fine. Maybe with a few embellishments, depending on the perp. He’d need better footing, but he could do that here. He could snap Tiberius’s collarbone with the flat of his hand, knee him in the balls, and finish him off with a punch to the throat. But before Bruce, before he’d had his street fighting skills polished and streamlined, a younger, scrappier Jason would’ve had a different strategy. Back then he’d had to be patient, had to last out his enemies and watch for the moment they overextended themselves, the moment they let their defenses slip because they were sure they had him. A school bully, taking his attention off Jason long enough to call to his friends. His mother’s heroin dealer, pausing at the top of the long brick staircase to tell Jason not to bother checking on her. Batman, parking the Batmobile in an alley and just leaving it there.

Nostalgia wins, and Jason waits. He takes the punches and waits until Tiberius gets cocky, having landed a few well-placed blows to his ribs under the thickest parts of his armor. He rears up over Jason, sneering, hand going to Jason’s throat, arm fully extended and vulnerable - and Jason moves. He rocks up into a crouch, catches Tiberius’s wrist in his hand and wrenches, shattering the bones in it easily and dislocating his shoulder in the process. Within a couple of seconds, they’re back on their feet, but Tiberius is unsteady, his breathing thick and labored, and Jason takes the opportunity to kick him square in the chest, sending him crashing down into the walk-out landing and through the building’s flimsy door.

Then he follows Tiberius into the basement, and before he can dodge, a bullet catches him right in the thigh. Shit. He’d assumed the gun had been lost back at the car, but he hadn’t actually checked - an embarrassingly rookie mistake, Jesus. His armor stops it, but it still hurts like a motherfucker. “Real cute,” he snarls, stomping on his opponent’s broken wrist and picking up the gun. He debates shooting him in a few non-lethal places, but Dick’s face suddenly pops into his head, and then Dani’s, and the worst of his anger ebbs away. He empties the clip instead, pocketing the gun. “Now that that’s out of the way, you and me, we’ve got a few things to discuss.”

“Fuck you,” Tiberius seethes, curled up and clutching his wrist in pain. There’s blood all over his face, dripping onto the floor.

“Better men than you have tried, Tiberius.” Jason rubs his hands together. “Here, I’ll make it easier for you. I know you’re working for Romina Falcone. I know she’s back in Gotham, and I know she ordered the hits on your old boss, and most of your old coworkers. I know you sprung her cousin Susie out of jail earlier today, and I know she’s got you running the drug trade down here. So don’t bother telling me any of that shit. I just want to know two things: what her endgame is, and where I can find her.” He steps on Tiberius’s knee, puts just enough pressure to make him cry out. “Talk. Now.”

“Get the fuck off me,” Tiberius gasps, kicking out uselessly with his other leg. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, just let me up.”

Jason stands back, ready to kneecap the guy permanently if he goes on the offensive again.

Tiberius sits up, panting. “Shit. Fuck, I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming.”

“Hood, I lost your GPS signal,” Roy says in his ear. “Fortunately, the trail of destruction was pretty easy to follow. I’m on the warehouse roof outside, across the street.”

“She set me up,” Tiberius goes on. “She fucking set me up, that bitch.” He looks up at Jason, shaking his head. “Yeah, Romina asked me to bail Susie out of jail today. Probably so one of you fuckers would come after me. She’ll be pissed as hell that she didn’t get Batman.”

Jason grinds his teeth. “Arsenal, we’re gonna have incoming soon,” he barks into his comm.

“Thank God, I’d hate to get bored up here,” Roy replies easily.

“Whatever backup you have, it’s not gonna be enough,” Tiberius says. “Romina doesn’t take chances. I can’t tell you where she is, couldn’t even tell you the neighborhood. I’ve had two meetings with her at her office, they had me drugged and blindfolded coming and going. Drove for a long-ass time, too, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Fine,” Jason snaps. “So you’ve had meetings with her. Tell me what she’s after.”

“What she’s after? She’s after everything,” Tiberius says bluntly. “The whole goddamn city. Thinks it’s hers by right, because of who her grandpa was. She’s fucking nuts, even for Gotham.”

Everything. Jason turns it over in his head. She’s not just seizing control of the East End, not just the canal, but everything. They’ve got an overachieving mob boss on their hands. Out-fucking-standing.

“I’ve got twenty guys coming in hot, Hood.” Roy sounds tense. “More trucks pulling in. I can take down most of them, but I think they’re just the first wave. We don’t have enough ammo for this.”

“She hates you guys,” Tiberius laughs bitterly. “If you get away, she’s gonna lose her shit. Sucks I won’t be around to see it.”

“A real shame,” Jason agrees, distracted. He can hear the sound of fighting outside. Time to bail. “Who else is - “

“Hood, we have to go, now.”

Jason pulls the gun from his shoulder holster. “If you survive, I’ll be seeing you soon,” he promises, voice low and deadly. The look on Tiberius’s face tells him just how likely he thinks that is, and Jason can’t help but agree. The blindfolds, the errands, the lack of family connection all add up to one thing: disposable. Tiberius is no made man, he’s just a hired hand, and it’s clear Romina has decided to terminate his employment. Jason remembers Tim’s story about Tiberius passing around photos of murdered kids to the grunts at Intergang, and he feels no sudden impulse to drag the guy to safety.

Outside, he and Roy shoot their way through the dozen or so remaining mobsters, Jason aiming as non-lethally as possible. Roy’s taser arrows cut the last few down, and then they hit the street running, down the block, through a boarded up ice cream shop, down an alley, and up to the rooftops. Jason hears a few gunshots below them when they make the jump over a particularly wide gap, but he keeps them running north, away from the harbor and towards the river, hoping to lose their pursuers on unfamiliar turf. It works. Romina may have her sights set on all of Gotham, but most of her henchmen have seldom ventured more than a few blocks out of the territory they grew up in.

After about half a mile, they stop to catch their breath, and Jason sits down to massage his thigh where the bullet had struck earlier.

“How’d you get over here, anyways?” Jason asks. They’d left their bikes in Jason’s storage unit on the west side of Crime Alley, Roy’s borrowed from Dick for the evening. If Roy left the bike next to a shootout, Dick’s going to be mad as hell.

“Helicopter arrow,” Roy deadpans. Jason looks for something to throw at him. “No, I just took an Uber. Grand theft auto’s not really my thing, these days.”

Jason stares at him. “Since when?”

Roy shrugs. “Since Lian started asking questions about it, I guess. It’s just like...whenever she hears about a crime, like finding out why we lock the car doors when we leave it, she asks me all these details about it. Sometimes she asks if I’ve ever done it, and I can’t lie to her, you know? I want to be able to tell her what she wants to hear, which is ‘no, Daddy hasn’t stolen any cars lately’.” He points at Jason accusingly. “Whatever. Don’t judge me. You’re just lucky yours can’t talk yet.”

“I didn’t even say anything,” Jason protests. He objects strongly to Roy referring to Dani as his, too, but that’s probably exactly why Roy did it, so there’s no point bringing it up. “I’ve got a safe house not too far from here, next to a chop shop. Does it count as stealing to Lian if the car is already stolen?”

Roy laughs. “Not sure she can parse the nuance there. How about you do the stealing, and that’s the technicality I can skate on.”

“Fine.” Jason gets to his feet, wincing slightly as his thigh burns.

“You all good?”

“Yeah, just got a lucky shot in. My fault for not checking to see if he still had the damn gun.”

“Hey, at least in the Manor you’ve got all the whole Bat Hospital at your disposal,” Roy grins. “Among other perks, of course.”

Jason is very glad Roy can’t see him blush under the helmet. He was just thinking about how he wants to get back and see Dani - how he’ll need to take his armor off to check out the damage to his leg - how taking his armor off always wakes her up, so he’ll have to do it in Dick’s room - how the offer is on the table for him to sleep in Dick’s bed -

Business appears to be booming at the chop shop, and Jason decides on stealing a flashy little Lexus coupe that makes Roy whistle in appreciation. They drive back through the Bowery, stopping once so Jason can beat the crap out of a bouncer-turned-wannabe-pimp trying to sell girls outside of a gentlemen’s club. Then they get back to the bikes, and he checks in with Oracle to see if there’s any other action they need to investigate before they call it a night.

“I think you boys have stirred up enough trouble tonight,” she tells him firmly. “There’s been surprisingly little action in your neck of the woods, actually. Bludhaven is the hot zone tonight, I sent Black Bat and Spoiler over there earlier to help Robin out.”

“Fingerstripes will be sorry he missed it,” Jason says. “Russians again?”

“Arsonists, this time. At least five of them.”

“Shit. Sounds more like a Gotham thing than ‘Haven.”

“It does,” she agrees. “It feels choreographed, somehow. I’m going to keep looking into it, along with the Viti family. Oracle out.”

Roy raises his eyebrows. “Arsonists, huh?”

Jason snorts in surprise. “You hacked my comm line?”

“Let’s put it this way: Babs let me hack your comm line.”

True enough. “Sounds like they’ve got everything in hand, at least,” Jason says. “Don’t really feel like dragging ass all the way to Jersey’s armpit. You sleeping at the Manor tonight?”

Roy scratches the back of his head. “Thought about it, but I think I’m gonna text Donna and quietly crash girl’s night. Whenever I get shot at, or almost blown up or whatever, I just kind of need to see Lian. Tell Dick I’ll bring the bike back tomorrow.”

Jason nods. “I’ll catch you later, then.” In truth, he knows exactly how Roy feels. He’s dying to get back to Dani as quickly as possible, to see her and touch her and make sure she’s okay. It doesn’t make sense - he’s the one who got shot at, she’s been in arguably the most secure location in the whole tri-state area. But somehow, in spite of his bruised ribs and what’s sure to be a wicked hematoma on his thigh, all he can think about is keeping her safe. He’d walk through fire to make sure of it, he knows without a doubt. Fortunately, all he has to do tonight is make the trek back over the Robert Kane bridge.

Roy gives his shoulder a friendly squeeze, and then takes off in the direction of the old Titans bunker in Robbinsville. Jason parks the Lexus in his storage unit, arms the security system, and then kicks his bike into gear, making a beeline for the highway and the bridge, which will take him back to the Manor, and back to Dani.

***

[flatfootmonster]

Reflections

Neither the gentle rustle of the wind, the ease of the dark, nor the ache of exhaustion is enough to lull me to sleep. Curiosity is an itch that I’m familiar with but not growing in the shadow of ignorance in regards to someone’s emotions. How someone feels has always been inconsequential. 

The half-wild creature next to me still shivers, despite the heavy robe now draped over him. But he makes no move to turn or leave, even if these are his chambers I wouldn’t put it past Na-Kyum to storm off and sleep outside. That thought pulls at a thread of amusement and I find myself grinning. He is unknowable; a fey animal dancing on the boundaries of this world and an ethereal realm. 

My fingers move on their own, reaching for him and finding soft strands of hair beneath my fingertips. The enjoyment I receive from the way he feels beneath my hands and the gratification that comes when he sighs, inching across the narrow span of space left between us is an even weight. His body is curved towards me—not away. Why am I taking so much stock in irrelevant observations?

He’s just as restless. I could demand he tells me what is bothering him but that concept is foreign; I’ve never needed to know how someone feels. It’s never mattered before. Yet, as he trembles and sniffles, the same anxiety that had its grasp around my gut when he was ill plays in the same shadows my curiosity grew. 

Has his spirit been broken? What exactly did his teacher say? That single memory coaxes a tide of murderous anger… 

“He is a fool, you realise.” There's an edge to my voice I didn't intend, sharp enough to let blood. Certainly strong enough to make him flinch yet he stays still. Contrary creature. Withdrawing my hand, I resist the urge to pet him—not least because comforting isn't something I often feel compelled to do. Or ever for that matter. That aside, given his unpredictable nature, it's a toss up whether he’d sob or bite me. 

Tilting his head up, he gazes at me wide-eyed. The innocence in his soul cannot be sullied—even by me. A long moment of consideration passes before he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” Eyes once more are cast down, and that subservience grates me—it shouldn't be there, not for In-Hun.

“It does,” my reply is as firm as the finger I place beneath his chin, tilting his face back up, eyes meeting mine again. “It may be foolish to love without a thought for yourself but the bigger fool is the one who would snub a love so pure. And not only refuse it but to shame it.” My thumb rubs gently along his chin without being told to do so. His lips slacken, the pink tip of his tongue darts out to wet them. Somehow I can feel his tension being eased. The shivering subsides. 

“He said I— that I’m a p-prostitute.” 

The tide of anger swells again, it's so easily provoked in this matter. The arguments that froth at the surface all relate to me. Implying that I would sleep with a prostitute, or pay for intimacy, would be a misstep that I'd answer with a blade rather than dignify with words. But I cannot give worth to another borrowing from my own standards. 

The stern expression I know I've donned, that Na-Kyum now sees, sparks fear in his eyes. Yet he doesn't pull away. "And what do you think?" 

The hesitation is enough to alleviate my fury. He at least has the confidence and freedom of thought to question his mentor—or past-mentor. "You keep me here to paint, the agreement was for nothing more," he comes to a premature halt, holding back the speculation I took more than I asked for. He wouldn't be wrong. "I'm not being paid for w-what we do." 

A rare and discomforting pang of guilt thrums through my veins. Despite what he says, up until tonight he never had autonomy in our affairs. Choice is a difference between himself and a prostitute. That matter wouldn't normally trifle me, let alone induce guilt, but there it is. 

But he came to me now, asked me to take him. Was he simply submitting to his lofty teacher's assessment? Is that what brought this on? As I study him, confusion welling like tears, I see something other than that. Perhaps I want to see it, but it's a point he's been shamed over by In-Hun and used by myself as a probe to tease. 

"Enjoying it makes you feel conflicted?" In his naivety, perhaps he assumes the only people that enjoy sex submissively are prostitutes, and that's why they do it. Slaves to desire and nothing more. 

His mouth moves wordlessly, unable to even admit the pleasure. But his gaze doesn't deviate from my own. His spirit isn't broken, I'm sure of it. "Not it," he stammers. "It's not what we do, it's that it's you that does it." 

My brows knit together as I try to pick apart his words. "What I do makes you feel conflicted?" But the meaning unfurls as I speak. Pushing myself up on one elbow, I look down at him, my hand resting on his neck. His heart is running as wild as his emotions. 

"The way I feel—my dreams—" his words stop and start. Impatience is a barely restrained force as I wait for his thoughts to be articulated. "I yearn for you," he whispers finally. 

I hear the now that's missing. His adoration lay at someone else's feet, undeserving as they were. But now his allegiance has changed. Something stronger than anger expands in my chest, I can barely breathe for the possessive instinct that overwhelms me. He is mine—body and heart. A battle was won that I had no idea I was fighting. 

My fingers curl around his pale and fragile neck, as my thumb runs over his Adam's-apple to the crest of his chin. His head tilts with every minute direction of my hand, apprehension in his eyes, waiting for whatever comes. 

He used to feel like a small bird trapped in my fist, I could anticipate the beat of his frail wings before I'd loosen my hold, and mirth would rise as I'd imagine the ways he might try to escape. Now, as he lays beneath me, if I closed my fingers on that bird until bones crunched, the only fight would be its heart against a delicate cage made of ribs. Yet if I hold my palm flat, the bird will perch on my finger.

His spirit isn't broken but he is enamoured in the foolish way he loves, forgetting himself. "You are the fool it seems," I admonish gently, but there's no heat in it. If he is a fool then I must be one, too. Of course I’m aware of the exceptions I make for him.

And he reads between the lines, for once seeing me as transparently as I see him. "Then I am your fool, My Lord." They are the first firm words he's uttered. 

Will he now defend my honour, the way he did his teacher’s? Has he done so already? I'm drowning in curiosity over matters that should be insignificant. No—his loyalty is not insignificant; small perhaps but persistent, like the grain of sand that becomes a pearl. I won't probe. Proof of his nature is already abundant, in my memories and before my eyes.

"My fool." The repeated sentiment falls softly from my lips; a coveted caress. Past that, I find it difficult to move from this moment. The stillness draws out as I simply hold his throat in my palm, enjoying the racing pulse that radiates from his surrendered heart. That revelation calls for motion, my hand answers as it slips down to his heaving chest, fingers splayed across vulnerable flesh. He’s blissfully warm where the beat is strongest. 

The tip of his tongue darts forth again as a tentative hand drifts up to my arm. Gentle fingers test my bare skin. "You're cold," he murmurs, "let me." The offer is made as his hand falls to the robe, opening it from around himself and proffering one side. 

A heavy breath rushes from my lungs as I nod, unravelling muscles that had tensed at some point. Arm laid flat, I settle beside him, allowing the material to be draped over my torso. He fusses over it, focussing on his work as our makeshift covers are smoothed around my shoulders. There’s a furrow between his brows as he does so and I can’t help the way my lips pull at the corners. 

“Are you going to mother me now?” I can’t blame him when my jest falls flat. When has he ever heard me joke to know how my tongue paints humour? But that doesn't stop the whiplash of regret that’s inflicted when he recoils, looking down in self-deprecation. I already know his cheeks are red despite the dark withholding solid facts. 

He may be quick but so am I, I grasp his hand before it disappears in the folds of fabric. And with his hand I catch his attention, both brought to my mouth as I push a firm kiss to his wrist and then place his palm flat against my chest. 

"Don't." It's a one word warning, I'm not sure how to tell him not to pull away from me again without ordering him or begging. After all his candour I should be softer, I just have little practise. "I like your body heat." 

I listen to him breathe in the quiet, three haggard exhales before he moves closer. His hand stays where I placed it, warm and soft, and that sensation spreads as his body presses to mine. He tucks his head beneath my chin, and the air that leaves his body caresses my skin. "Is this… OK?" 

There's little to be done against the will of my fingertips, my hand runs the length of his back before resting at his nape, holding him tight against me. I hum a yes and it sounds like a contented purr. But there are matters to straighten before I let my senses dull. I already slackened by allowing us to lay here—we should be in my own bed. "Tomorrow you will eat every meal in my presence." He nods quickly, hair tickling my neck. 

"I will, My Lord." 

"I do not want to see you get sick again." The hardness in my tone resurfaces, but by the way he clings tighter to me he reads it in the context intended: worry rather than impatience. Perhaps he has started to know me, or my hands give me away. They have a mind of their own as they sweep over his smooth skin. "Do you need to eat now?" 

"No." 

My finger drifts to his chin, tilting his face up so I can peer down at him. "Are you lying?" He shakes his head, a singular and minimal motion, eyes locked to mine and lids heavy. With sleep, or perhaps... 

"I want to stay here—this way," he murmurs, emphasizing his meaning by pressing closer. 

I draw a line down his torso, finger coming to stop at his naval. "If I hear any complaints from here," I poke at his slender stomach to emphasize my meaning, "then I will feed you myself." The soft beneath my touch pulls taut. He’s tense. Did he expect hurt? It would be a fair assumption given the marks my hands have already made on him. The taste of that realisation is sour but short lived when I hear the soft huff expelled from his lips. Before I’m certain of the reaction that I just witnessed, my fingers run along the seams of his muscles, to the soft spot above his hip. The tensing becomes a full flex as his body curves protectively and something happens that I hadn't expected or considered. 

The huff becomes a gentle gurgle. He’s laughing. He’s laughing and I have never wanted to capture something as futile with my fingers before now. I’ve never heard him laugh, and if he’s smiled I can’t recall it. The night and it’s secrets be damned, I can’t see the expression this new development brings to his face. I want to see how his eyes wrinkle, the shape his lips take, the warmth flood his features, whether his cheeks dimple. And now I have stared too long so he grows still. Does he think I disapprove of laughter?

“It’s ticklish,” he murmurs as way of explanation, as if it’s needed and I’m too dull in my senses to draw that conclusion on my own. 

“I realise.” And even I can hear the pleasure on my tongue. There’s a pause, he’s hesitating, I imagine he intended to apologise for such a natural and wonderful reaction. It’s down to me to make some things clear, I’m not one for many words, especially when it comes to assurances. “I like your laugh. You will do it more often.” It sounds as ridiculous as I intended the demand be, and he hears it. I grin when my efforts win another soft snort. 

“Yes, My Lord.”  

[kkintle]

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Quotes

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

“I always loved you, and if one loves any one, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be.”

“Is this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off.”

Then, for the first time, grasping that for every man, and himself too, there was nothing in store but suffering, death, and forgetfulness, he had made up his mind that life was impossible like that, and that he must either interpret life so that it would not present itself to him as the evil jest of some devil, or shoot himself.

“Some think marriage a game; for others it is the most serious business of their lives.”

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” (...)

“Vengeance is mine,I will repay.”

“Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me. And the most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault—all my fault, though I’m not to blame. That’s the point of the whole situation,” he reflected.

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself.

They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth.

He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.

He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.

“Why, of course,” objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But that’s just the aim of civilization—to make everything a source of enjoyment.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin’s, that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class—she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.

‘Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy loving-kindness.’

“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

(...) If one forgives, it must be completely, completely.

Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before Kitty knew where she was she found herself not merely under Anna’s sway, but in love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married women. Anna was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and the unflagging eagerness which persisted in her face and broke out in her smile and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look in her eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.

“So now you know whom you’ve got to do with. And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor, there’s the door.”

“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better,” (...)

“Well, there’s nothing to be done. . . . It’s not my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new way. It’s nonsense to pretend that life won’t let one, that the past won’t let one. One must struggle to live better, much better.”

“Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.”

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other.

“ (...) ‘No one is satisfied with his fortune, and every one is satisfied with his wit.’ ” The attaché repeated the French saying.

He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder.

“ (...) There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian’s women . . . Women, such as one sees in dreams . . . Well, these women are sometimes to be met in reality . . . and these women are terrible. Woman, don’t you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it’s always perfectly new.” “Well, then, it would be better not to study it.” “No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it.”

In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last year’s leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass. “Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!”

“Count the sands of the sea, number the stars. (...)”

“The great thing’s to keep quiet before a race,” said he; “don’t get out of temper or upset about anything.”

He was angry with all of them for their interference just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right.

This child’s presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him farther and farther away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin.

(...) like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!”

(...) “we mustn’t forget that those who are taking part in the race are military men, who have chosen that career, and one must allow that every calling has its disagreeable side. It forms an integral part of the duties of an officer. Low sports, such as prize-fighting or Spanish bull-fights, are a sign of barbarity. But specialized trials of skill are a sign of development.”

“Who are you? What are you? Are you really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness’ sake don’t suppose,” her eyes added, “that I would force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you.” “I like you too, and you’re very, very sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time,” answered the eyes of the unknown girl.

“Perhaps so,” said the prince, squeezing her hand with his elbow; “but it’s better when one does good so that you may ask every one and no one knows.”

“But time’s money, you forget that,” said the colonel. “Time, indeed, that depends! Why, there’s time one would give a month of for sixpence, and time you wouldn’t give half an hour of for any money.

“ (...) I’ll be bad; but anyway not a liar, a cheat.”

“(...) while you have at your disposal a means of helping them, and don’t help them because to your mind it’s of no importance.” And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so undeveloped that you can’t see all that you can do, or you won’t sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.

“I imagine,” he said, “that no sort of activity is likely to be lasting if it is not founded on self-interest, that’s a universal principle, a philosophical principle,” (...)

Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

“No,” he said to himself, “however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love her.”

He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw, the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and take interest in other things besides his tooth.

“It is a misfortune which may befall any one. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only thing to be done is to make the best of the position.”

And it was not the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted her.

“To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to work too.”

Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of personal affairs as he is.

“The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas.”

When Sviazhsky had finished, Levin could not help asking: “Well, and what then?” But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to be so and so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain why it was interesting to him.

“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten—death.”

The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary painful ordeal which would pass over.

By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber.

She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.

Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind.

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now, when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.

“It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then somehow everything becomes of no consequence. When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant!

(...) no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, (...)

“What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other—in loss, in death—bear one’s trouble in peace, but that one must act,” said he, as though guessing her thought. “One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can’t live á trois.”

“One may save any one who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to her salvation, what’s to be done?”

“What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces any one, you know.” “Yes; that’s true,” said Levin; “it generally happens that one argues warmly simply because one can’t make out what one’s opponent wants to prove.”

(...) he had firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear out of his heart his regret at the loss of her love, he could not erase from his memory those moments of happiness that he had so little prized at the time, and that haunted him in all their charm.

“Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind,” (...)

“There’s some sense in this custom of saying good-bye to bachelor life,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “However happy you may be, you must regret your freedom.”

In reality, those who in Vronsky’s opinion had the “proper” view had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all this into words.

The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.

Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill with him, (...)

And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first.

He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.

At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.

But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction

“He’s just one of those people of whom they say they’re not for this world.”

He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul.

One may sit for several hours at a stretch with one’s legs crossed in the same position, if one knows that there’s nothing to prevent one’s changing one’s position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them.

She had prepared everything but the words she should say to her son. Often as she had dreamed of it, she could never think of anything.

(...) and slightly turning, was saying something to Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of injury.

“You think he can’t fall in love,” said Kitty, translating into her own language. “It’s not so much that he can’t fall in love,” Levin said, smiling, “but he has not the weakness necessary.... I’ve always envied him, and even now, when I’m so happy, I still envy him.” “You envy him for not being able to fall in love?” “I envy him for being better than I,” said Levin. “He does not live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And that’s why he can be calm and contented.”

“I don’t think anything,” she said, “but I always loved you, and if one loves any one, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....”

“It’s our Russian apathy,” said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; “we’ve no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize these duties.”

But her chief thought was still of herself—how far she was dear to Vronsky, how far she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an ever-growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to try whether they hindered his freedom.

“But you say it’s an institution that’s served its time.” “That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more respectfully. Snetkov, now ... We may be of use, or we may not, but we’re the growth of a thousand years. If we’re laying out a garden, planning one before the house, you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s stood for centuries in the very spot... Old and gnarled it may be, and yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You won’t grow him again in a year,” (...)

But, as he told her, the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.

“If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it’s true, as papa says,—that when we were brought up there was one extreme—we were kept in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it’s just the other way—the parents are in the wash-house, while the children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children.” “Well, what if they like it better?”

(...) felt a great weariness from the fruitless strain on his attention.

Anna had come from behind the treillage to meet him, and Levin saw in the dim light of the study the very woman of the portrait, in a dark blue shot gown, not in the same position nor with the same expression, but with the same perfection of beauty which the artist had caught in the portrait. She was less dazzling in reality, but, on the other hand, there was something fresh and seductive in the living woman which was not in the portrait.

Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great weight to the ideas of the person she was talking to.

If you knew how I feel on the brink of calamity at this instant, how afraid I am of myself!”

There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same way.

Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.

But as he looked at her, he saw again that help was impossible, and he was filled with terror and prayed: “Lord, have mercy on us, and help us!” And as time went on, both these conditions became more intense; the calmer he became away from her, completely forgetting her, the more agonizing became both her sufferings and his feeling of helplessness before them. He jumped up, would have liked to run away, but ran to her. Sometimes, when again and again she called upon him, he blamed her; but seeing her patient, smiling face, and hearing the words, “I am worrying you,” he threw the blame on God; but thinking of God, at once he fell to beseeching God to forgive him and have mercy.

In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.

She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the decrease of his love. Not having got an object for her jealousy, she was on the lookout for it. At the slightest hint she transferred her jealousy from one object to another.

This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the pain he had given her. “I don’t expect you to understand me, my feelings, as any one who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did expect,” she said.

For an instant she had a clear vision of what she was doing, and was horrified at how she had fallen away from her resolution. But even though she knew it was her own ruin, she could not restrain herself, could not keep herself from proving to him that he was wrong, could not give way to him.

“(...) What’s so awful is that one can’t tear up the past by its roots. One can’t tear it out, but one can hide one’s memory of it. And I’ll hide it.”

“He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as any one in the world knows me. I don’t know myself.”

“We all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice.”

“Yes, of what Yashvin says, the struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that holds men together. No, it’s a useless journey you’re making,” she said, mentally addressing a party in a coach and four, evidently going for an excursion into the country. “And the dog you’re taking with you will be no help to you. You can’t get away from yourselves.”

Then she thought that life might still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and how fearfully her heart was beating.

“Yes, I’m very much worried, and that’s what reason was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there’s nothing more to look at, when it’s sickening to look at it all? But how?”

“There’s no one I should less dislike seeing than you,” said Vronsky. “Excuse me; and there’s nothing in life for me to like.”

And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an inner trouble, that set his whole being in anguish, made him for an instant forget his toothache.

And he tried to think of her as she was when he met her the first time, at a railway-station too, mysterious, exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that last moment. He tried to recall his best moments with her, but those moments were poisoned forever. He could only think of her as triumphant, successful in her menace of a wholly useless remorse never to be effaced. He lost all consciousness of toothache, and his face worked with sobs.

Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the frost is immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.

(...) something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life. He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments. He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all his spiritual forces to the utmost to escape from this condition.

“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life’s impossible; and that I can’t know, and so I can’t live,” Levin said to himself. “In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.” It was an agonizing error, but it was the sole logical result of ages of human thought in that direction. This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all their ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and of all other explanations Levin had unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it, as any way the clearest, and made it his own. But it was not merely a falsehood, it was the cruel jeer of some wicked power, some evil, hateful power, to whom one could not submit. He must escape from this power. And the means of escape every man had in his own hands. He had but to cut short this dependence on evil. And there was one means—death.

Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and far from trying to prove that he was, nowadays he avoided all thought or talk about it. Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it. So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for, and harassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he was afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life.

“Then she recovered, but to-day or to-morrow or in ten years she won’t; they’ll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her or of that smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skilful, soft action shakes the ears out of their husks. They’ll bury her and this piebald horse, and very soon too,”

“Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,” said the prince. “That’s true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing for them.”

“The people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not for murder,”

“Were you very much frightened?” she said. “So was I too, but I feel it more now that it’s over. (...)”

“What is it? you’re not worried about anything?” she said, looking intently at his face in the starlight. But she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had not hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled at him.

“No, I’d better not speak of it,” he thought, when she had gone in before him. “It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words. “This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul. “I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

[hollenka99]

An Abundance of Theseuses

Summary: Wilbur can’t move on and Thes refuses to accept that so ends up visiting his brother with each reincarnation in the hopes of remembering him so he can free him from his fate.

Warnings: Blood mention, death, mention of major injury

This is based on We’ve taken different paths but I know we’ll always end up on the same one by Alexander_Wesker. First of all, please read the fic because this one contains spoilers but also it will help this make more sense. Check out their other stuff too because they’ve written some great stuff.

THESEUS, 1752-1778 The axe comes down and with it comes the permission to be relieved of his current ordeal. There is cheering and an order for the King to be brought his head. He simply closes his eyes, exhaling as the acceptance that his fate has come for him. He thought eternal rest would arrive to offer its hand more immediately but perhaps even an omnipresent figure's horse requires time to reach him. Alternatively, it could come barrelling into his chest, arms open and ready to encompass him wholeheartedly. "Wilbur!" And there he was. Wilbur had no need to discontinue their embrace because there was only one person whose hold felt like this. He'd last laid eyes on him when he'd collapsed to the ground, eye bleeding from the fatal shot. Being apprehended had denied him the chance to even say goodbye. The King had taken great pleasure in mentioning the dishonour of leading your kin astray, that was for sure. He hadn't made his true feelings known in the presence of the royal family or their affiliates. Ha, as if he would give him that kind of satisfaction. That did not, however, mean Thes and those he'd loved as kin were absent from his private thoughts, where the King had no access. This current outcome did not soothe him. He could not see any possible reason why Thes would be foolish enough to travel here to witness a personally harrowing event. Nevertheless, he would never reject his embrace, especially not now. "Thes?" "It will be alright soon. I would say it takes a minute then you'll feel the tug too." "You're here." "I was waiting for us to go together." "Wait, you saw what transpired but a moment ago?" He subconsciously begins turning to the very scene he is referring to but Thes stops him. "Don't look, it will do you no good." His brother guides his face with a gentle hand so their gazes interlock. "And yes, did I not just establish that I was waiting for you?" As the second-born son had predicted, an intangible force does claim him. It becomes apparent to him that its desires will prove a disappointment to his brother. "I feel this pull you previously mentioned but it is sending me north, not skywards." Thes pulls back, hands now on his brother's respective arms. Now that he is able to see it, Thes' eye looks horrendous. Were they both not dead, he'd be rushing to gather supplies and calling for a medic to treat it. "No, you are confused. It will be okay, give it a second then you will realise it is directing you the same way as it is me." "Thes," He provides a melancholy smile to ease the blow. "I can assure you... it is not." "No. No, no, no, it is, it is. It has to be." He takes Thes' hands in his. "Please, go be at peace. You fought so well and I am proud of you for it. However, you deserve to rest after all the miseries that befell us." "You speak as if you don't deserve the same." "Perhaps it is not the will of-" "No, cease talking because all that seems to be coming from your mouth is nonsensical. God's will or not, it is through my will that you shall join me." "Theseus-" Thes' head drops, the top now resting against Wilbur's chest. "I've expended all my efforts to last long enough so that I could be here by your side at this very moment. So forgive me for being unable to resist it for much longer." Their eyes make acquaintance once more. "But listen to me, Wilbur, I am going to make you an oath. No matter how it can be done, no matter how long shall transpire before I see success, I will find a way for you to be freed so that you may join me." "You do not need-" "Well, have you considered I want to?!" A reprise of the previous embrace. This one is not as joyous or a source of relief. It is not a 'hello again' but rather a 'fare thee well'. "You have not committed enough wrongdoings to deserve any form of Purgatory. I promise I will somehow succeed, Wilby." Thes fades without warning and leaves the elder Soot brother to grasp air in his absence. He'd light heartedly chastise him for how improper disappearing in the middle of a discussion was if Thes was still here. Instead, Wilbur sets off with a defeated sigh. Thes spoke the truth when he claimed remaining here would do him no good. TIMOTHY, 1779-1824 The path he takes brings him back to the location of his greatest failure. It makes sense that his purgatory would be here. Over there was where he believes his tent was, the very place he dealt playing cards among those closest to him on what would be the final evening for thousands. He'd witnessed a bloody back live up to their name towards those trees. And approximately in that direction... was where his dear Thes fell while attempting to secure the survivors' right to remain surviving. Regardless of what once was, he remains where he has been positioned. Spring becomes summer, becomes autumn, becomes winter, becomes spring once more. On and on this cycle continues without deviation. It is not long before any trace of his and his men's final stand is gone from the world. The bodies were removed for fear of being unsightly and the blood spilt has been washed by rain. It is simply him and the desolation of it all. He hopes, whatever became of his Theseus, his brother is faring more happily than he is. It is during one of many autumns that a common man comes to pay the battlefield a visit. It's peculiar and unexpected but Wilbur cannot say he minds it. The fellow isn't doing anything untoward, nor does he give the impression of having any intention to act in such a way. The impression he does give, however, is one of a troubled individual. What strikes Wilbur above all else is that this is Thes, this man is somehow his brother. He can intangibly feel it. He knows this inexplicable fact to be the truth. Externally, the two bear no resemblance. The person before him is not blond, has long since seen his 20s and there is not a single trace of a curl in his receding hairline. And yet... this is Thes, through and through. There is no doubt in his mind that he is in the presence of the soul that once identified as Theseus Soot. "Thes, it's me. You've found me!" He grins, rushing to stand in front of him. What a fool he was to doubt Thes' ambitions were possible. There is no response or indication his brother's new form heard him. "Thes, do not ignore me. You know full well it is improper to act in such a manner. I- I won't have it." It's a lie, an attempt at authority when there are none to rule over. Thes' counterpart shifts his weight between his legs before proceeding with baring his thoughts. "Let me preface this by explaining I did not intend to come here. I don't know why I travelled here to be in what is essentially nothing but a field. It makes no sense to me. And yet... and yet here I am. At great personal expense, no less." "Please, simply look at me. I am right here. Whatever is troubling-" The fake Thes sighs, frustrated. It morphs into a grimace. "There is a reason I'm in a city, not just whatever compelled me to steal a horse so I could be here tonight. You must do what you have to in order to keep those dear to you in good spirits. I feel You would understand that in all Your heavenly might." "I would never be blasphemous enough to profess myself to be on par with the Lord." He says to nobody who can hear his light hearted words. "It is still my intention to find work, of course, I am nothing if not a man who does his best to be of good virtue, but in the meantime, I must risk being hung. Or perhaps they shall be merciful enough to send me to New Holland to rid of me." "Oh Thes," He attempts to offer comfort but just as the moonlight passes through him nightly, so too do his hands. "No, don't lead yourself astray out of desperation, I beg you." Thes takes a step as if he plans to leave it at that, reconsidering at the last second. Hope swells within Wilbur as he convinces himself this is finally the moment recognition comes. Surely, this all a ruse, a cruel trick from somebody who used to find such joy in winding those dearest to him up. Alas, it is not so. Instead, Thes remains oblivious and Wilbur remains an intruder to a private confessional. "If I am to go to the gallows or be transported, if it is only myself and God who can hear, then... perhaps I can be honest. I was filled with such- such satisfaction when I heard of Princess Charlotte's unfortunate passing. It was a terrible thing. Neither mother nor child survived the birth, I wouldn't wish that kind of tragedy on a soul. Such a sad thing and yet it was the royal family's misfortune that I- a part of me, at least, took great joy in that development. It's not such a crisis nowadays, I believe they have a new heir, but I dare say something from the very depths of my soul would have celebrated their downfall. Then this past January, when his majesty himself died, I felt the same sense of vindication upon learning of the news. It is maddening to experience such conflict within myself. I hope you can find it in Your benevolence to forgive me." "I cannot speak for God but I forgive you. I would have privately allowed myself to feel positive upon his passing too. It is only natural after he caused us such strife." Having said his piece, Thes makes his departure. All the while, a ghost continues to futilely endeavour to be noticed. TARQUIN, 1825-1854 Thes arrives the next time with a boy a stride behind him. It's not the first occasion he's seen this Thes but this is definitely the debut of his son for Wilbur. By now, he has made peace with the fact he is imperceptible to his brother, the same way he is to everyone else. He had originally clung to the preposterous notion Thes would personally break through that curse simply due to being Thes. If anyone was going to see his face or hear his voice for the first time since 1778, surely it would be him. No such luck. "Right here in this very field, if I am not mistaken, was a battle. Minor, didn't count for anything." You would not be saying that if you knew your true self. It was anything but inconsequential to us. "My grandfather was a boy at the time. He always claimed it was one of the factors that inspired him to choose to pledge loyalty to his king. He's very dear to me. In fact, I should have us visit him as soon as I return." Yes well, Wilbur didn't want to be so bold as to voice it but he did sense the apple didn't fall far from that tree. He appreciates younger sons must venture into specific professions for the sake of staying gentlemen. However, he would have wished for Thes' thoughts to sour at least slightly at the idea of playing a part in military conquests that serve (indirectly or not) to strengthen the image of the royal family. Perhaps there is a disgruntled young man underneath who is secretly cursing the situation his birth has placed him in. "However, it is a harsh truth that your superior officers aren't inclined to care." He cared. He cared enough that every person under his command that never returned home to their families felt like a personal loss. Those final 8000 plague him, as do the numerous others before them. "You have a job to do, as do they. It is their responsibility to see you and the rest of the men under their command through to the other side. Yours is to do the same from the ground. One day, you might be nothing more than a name among many. You may even end up the same as those who fought here, your efforts disregarded. What matters more is whether you have your fellow soldiers' backs. Be loyal to the Crown, of course, do yourself and her majesty proud, but be even more loyal to your brothers at arms. See falling in their stead as an honour, not a misfortune. Do you understand?" The boy hesitantly begins to nod. There is a glimpse of sorrow as Thes gazes out across the field, hand on his son's furthest shoulder. Please brother, remember your past. Even if it is a mere glimpse, the slightest slither, remember being Theseus, remember having a brother you thought the world of, remember your determination to help see a fairer end to suffering under an institution so much larger than yourself. Thes doesn't. Father and son soon depart with haste. Thes never comes again and Wilbur fears the worst. He's right to. TANWYN, 1855-1914 They transform the former battlefield into a cheap attraction. The disgrace of it! Have they no shame or respect for what occurred here? Around the area are some plaques detailing the conflict and replications of the cannons used. Collections of people will visit, listen to an exceedingly brief summation of the Battle of L'Manburg (not Nottingham, whatever could have- Wait, perhaps don't answer that. He knows exactly why), then go on their merry way to another destination. On this particular day, Thes is among the small crowd. He wistfully surveys the land. The fellow directing the group calls to him so that he may not be abandoned. Thes replies with a "Forgive me, got lost in my head there." then carries on with his afternoon as if nothing unusual had occurred. However, was that a... Welsh accent? What on earth is Thes doing, being Welsh? Wilbur absent-mindedly smiles to himself at the thought. If anything, he should think Thes would be better suited to being born Scottish if he was required to not be English this time. Still, he cannot be one to judge divine intentions. This is it, he thinks. Thes will visit when it is dark and therefore barren. It is in his nature, to be drawn here, to openly speak to the air as if someone is listening. Wilbur waits for his brother's newest form to reappear. He anticipates all the updates he could receive regarding Thes' current life. No matter how potentially mundane a topic could be, he will eagerly listen to it. This time when the Welshman doesn't return and Wilbur fears the worst, he is mistaken. TILL, 1915-1932 This Theseus is weary when Wilbur finally is permitted to see him. While he'd like to call this one a man, it is impossible to do so, given it is a boy that is in front of him. He was never good at estimating ages but he would reckon this one was perhaps around a decade his Thes' junior. So close to adulthood and yet not close enough. With his countenance appearing so ailed, it would seem he would never cross that threshold. If his face did not expose the morbid truth then the way he stumbles towards a cannon to rest against it or the wheezy laughter undoubtedly do. It is evident that achieving his goal of reaching this destination brings unimaginable relief. Thes weakly mutters things in German. He tells of various occurrences in his life, the family he left behind, how he miraculously managed to stowaway on an England-bound ship and further how he expects to be mistaken for a homeless beggar come daylight. As he speaks, Wilbur is reminded of similar discussions regarding trivial things he once shared with Niki. His modern languages tutor may have been insufferable but the knowledge paid off once and now here too, who knows how many years later. Wilbur attentively listens to it all, brief as it may be. Thes' current counterpart leans to the side without forewarning. It takes a moment for Wilbur to realise why on earth his brother would attempt to have his weight supported by empty air. Ah. Were the circumstances different and Thes aware of the ghost beside him, he would surely tease his brother for trying to rest his head upon Wilbur's shoulder as he often did in life. But as if stood, Wilbur was forever incorporeal and outside the realm of visibility to everyone including his own dear brother. With effort, Thes corrects himself to resume sitting with his back to a cannon. Wilbur too returns to being seated on his right, hand atop his brother's. The minutes pass. With them, so do Thes' breaths. Wilbur can do nothing but sigh forlornly and kiss his brother's forehead. "Rest well, Thes." His is the first face the spirit lays eyes on. There is shock at the sight of an executed man, confusion as if questioning whether they have made acquaintance before then a wide smile that could belong to none other than his little brother. Wilbur does not even get the chance to say hello before Thes groans. "Remind me to never die of consumption again. Absolute tedium and with no pleasant variety either." "I'm sorry." Thes shakes his head. "Think nothing of it. Though... it would appear I have an apology for you too. I couldn't make myself remember before it was too late again. I promise I am trying my best." "I know you are. I do not mind it. All I care about is having the pleasure of seeing you once more, regardless of circumstance. I admire and appreciate the efforts you so diligently pursue for my benefit. But please, I implore you to find peace. That is what I want more than some futile quest." "The years of solitude have caused a deficit in your memories also, it would seem. I would never quit you, Wilbur, never. You would do well to remind yourself of that truth." A distracted look to the skies. Thes opens his mouth to continue, to make another comment. Wilbur beats him to it. "Go. I will be fine until we see each other once more." "Very well. I will come as soon as I am able." "You always do." An exchange of smiles then Wilbur is alone with the grass once more. TONY, 1933-2003 There are children here, a boy and an older girl. He would state his confusion on where their nurse, or whatever their family's equivalent should be, was. However, they seem self-sufficient enough. What does not surprise him is why the boy has approached this place with haste. He should think this is the youngest he has ever seen an incarnation of Thes. The daisies are growing nicely and plentiful this year. Though, he supposes, they will do that just about anywhere the room can be spared. The children show them appreciation until the girl grows irritable. "Tony, come on. Pops may not be home to scold us but Ma certainly will be. I don't even know why you're so insistent on seeing this place. It's nothing but an empty field with some plaques and fake cannons." He ponders for a minute. "I like it here. That's all." "Well, you won't have time to pack Percival if we leave it too late. I cannot guarantee we'll be kept together and... and you'll need him if I am absent." "I don't see why we have to go in the first place. I wouldn't attack Nottingham if I was Mr Hitler. It's boring here and there are so many more people in London." "A city is a city." The girl huffs. "Ma says they likely won't take us far anyway. We'll most likely never even leave Nottinghamshire. I should think all they'll do is send us to some village or small town." Her impatience is blatant. She fidgets as her brother reads the words engraved onto the plaques, ardently playing look-out as if there is cause for others to journey here. This transforms into incessant tapping of her foot upon the ground. "But if we stay here forever, we shall miss the train, never mind not having a single thing in our suitcases. So come along before I make you." 'Tony' resists a moment longer than his sister has patience for. Being led away, he glances back over his shoulder. There is not a hint of recognition in his eyes, though that is to be expected. He eventually returns time and time again. As an adult, Th- Tony visits (or at least plans to) on the first dry day of each month. Wilbur witnesses as the years gradually strip him of his youth then replace it with greying hair and less firm skin. He ages further than Thes ever got the chance to. It pleases Wilbur to see it. Tony is not always alone. Sometimes there is a dog or occasional family member. One way or another, he remains a fairly steady constant for decades. Thes never manages to recall why the field is significant to him but then again, they would be fools to aspire for so much. Years later, long enough for women's fashion to develop into something shamefully immodest, a young miss approaches with a letter when the battle site is devoid of its usual visitors. She speaks of how her grandfather wished for the 'friendly presence of soldiers' to know he'd passed. The letter is short, the words of a dying old man who'd never solved the greatest mystery within his heart, but it is not any less heartfelt or grateful for the sense of comfort this place has inexplicably provided him. "Thank you. And my sincerest condolences." Wilbur whispers. Onto the next one then, he supposes... TOMMY, 2004- He sees the boy come again and again. This one bears an achingly strong resemblance to the true original. He's like the last version of Thes too, staying loyal to the promise of visiting whenever he can. Though, Wilbur reminds himself, none of these incarnations ever truly understand why they feel drawn to the former battlefield. On this particular day, the weather does not appear favourable. It will rain soon if he is not mistaken. That fact makes little difference to him but there is no doubt it will cause Thes to scarper upon the feeling of the first drops. For now though, he peruses the text he has skimmed so frequently he must have committed it to memory by now. Oh and here come the aforementioned first raindrops of this downpour. Thes startles in response to nothing Wilbur can spot. It must bother him a great deal given that he is hastily searching for the source. He sets his sights in Wilbur's direction so the dead general comes to the natural conclusion it is something behind him that has spooked Thes so. Out of curiosity and perhaps boredom, he turns towards the forest to try to discern the culprit. Honestly, he believes the best course of action is for Thes to return home, to avoid the weather potentially inflicting any ailments upon him. A shrill ringing originating from an unknown source shocks them both. Wilbur faces his brother once more and Thes resumes looking directly at him, fear and confusion evident. The realisation comes. He could see him. Thes could see him. Oh, how he's waited for this day! Congratulations, dear brother, on progressing a little further in your endeavours. Or perhaps Wilbur is fooling himself. Why would Thes, after all these long years, suddenly gain the ability to see him? His brother remembering his former self was the goal, not perceiving Wilbur in any way. He won't look a gift horse in the mouth though, that is for sure. "Thes?" He dares to hope his assumptions are not unfounded. The ringing makes a reappearance, causing Thes to redirect his attention to it. He speaks with the device to his ear, incredibly apologetic towards whoever the communicator's recipient was. He makes his departure but not without searching for Wilbur once more. Evidently, it would seem the potential for the effects of this latest development lasting were too good to be true. A small voice inside him calmingly insists this won't be the last time this Thes returns. With the downpour, he prays it is a warm home his brother is hurrying back to. Thes simply requires time to process and rationalise it, he is sure of it. Wilbur himself could use a minute to accept this encounter was not fantastical. And so he waits, as he always has, for his Theseus to return to him. He is fortunate this time that it will not take long for that to happen. Luckier still, he has a gift he can deliver with the hopes it will assist with keeping himself in Thes' thoughts, regardless of the forces determined to keep them apart. This may be the beginning of something good and he gladly anticipates what may come of it.

[charliejrogers]

Under the Skin (2014) - Review

For a lot of science fiction movies, I find myself enjoying the ideas of the film more than I think I actually enjoyed the film. It’s what I’ll refer to as the Annihilation-syndrome, named after the 2018 movie that I found to be an absolute bore while also being an exceedingly intellectually stimulating discussion about the nature of cancer, mutation, and biology in general. The film I am reviewing now, 2014’s Under the Skin, honestly is nowhere near as unenjoyable as Annihilation, but I mention the film because I think much of this review will focus on the really interesting ideas this movie brought up which might make you think I thought this is a masterpiece. It’s not. It’s good, very good even, but not as good as its theme and ideas.

A lot of my restrained enthusiasm has to do with the fact that the film is purposefully cryptic and full of esoteric imagery. While there are spoken parts, I don’t think much would be lost if we couldn’t hear what was being said. That is to say, the dialogue doesn’t do much to make sense of what we are seeing displayed on screen.In fact, there are large sections of characters interacting without any dialogue, yet everything is understood.

To its credit, what we are seeing is largely very beautiful from a cinematography point of view. Much of the film takes place in the city of Edinbugh, Scotland and it captures well the urban grit of the city and how our protganoist fits well within that urban environment. The way the red lights of Edinburgh’s traffic lighst cast a foreboding, menacing band over the protagonist’s eyes as she drives about town on the hunt for men to ensnare in her trap shows that this dangerous character is right at home in the anonymity of the city.

The protagonist is played by Scarlett Johansson, who spends most of the film alternating between being the pinnacle of seduction in the eyes of the heterosexual male gaze and being a lifeless void. That’s because Johansson plays an alien (I think) or at the very least a humanoid being who seems to have the sole purpose of finding lonely men, taking them back to her lair, and trapping them in a sunken-place-like void where ultimately everything but their skin is extracted from them. I’ll henceforth refer to this character simply as “the humanoid” with she/her pronouns for clarity. We never learn the humanoid’s motivations, but we know that she’s not acting alone. She’s supported in her ventures by a (presumably) humanoid motorcycle gang who also double as agents who will clean up her messes.

At the beginning of the film, the humanoid appears to have no free will or consciousness. When she comes across her first dead body, she is more interested with the ant crawling along the body than the woman who used to inhabit that body. She simply steals that woman’s clothes, and begins acting out what seems like a pre-designed course for finding and trapping men. As soon as she has completed an interaction with a human, all of the emotion drains straight out of her face. Johansson’s face takes on a scary lifelessness on par with Billy Skarsgård’s Pennywise the clown from the It movies. There’s a scene where the humanoid, in the process of attracting a new victim, stumbles across an infant that has been abandoned at the beach and is screaming out. Perhaps the director is toying with audiences’ biases that the humanoid, appearing as she does as a human woman, will “naturally” want to reach out and save this baby. That she doesn’t seems to signal to the highest degree that this “woman” is no woman at all, but a cold, merciless something else.

Yet, somehow, by the end of this movie, I found all my sympathies lying entirely with this decidedly inhuman killing machine who makes her living preying on people just like me. This is because something happens that changes the humanoid about midway through the movie. Up to that point, it would be easy to classify the film as a feminist revenge fantasy, where men’s penchant for objectifying women and their aggressive desire to “conquer” women is met with a dish that is served so very coldly. It’s oddly satisfying to watch men who will blindly get into a car with a complete stranger and follow her into a creepy house just because they want to fuck her, end up being exposed as little more than skin around a bag of meat.

But then the humanoid comes across a man whose face deviates greatly from the norm due to some unnamed medical condition. It very much resembles the face of the protagonist from The Elephant Man. He is out an a walk at night to the grocery store. The humanoid doesn’t see him like the rest of the world does. She doesn’t understand how insensitive her genuine question about why he shops at night might be to him. In a darkly ironic sense, she’s the first person in his life to truly see him as a man and not a hideous monster. He has none of the arrogant sexual bravado like the humanoid’s prior victims. He’s sexually innocent, a virgin. When she offers to take him back to her place, he doesn’t take pride in any successful conquest. We see that he’s pinching himself just to prove that he’s not dreaming. It’s a heartbreaking sequence. Whereas we may have been on board, at least symbolically, with the humanoid’s cool takedown of the patriarchy, this particular abduction flips the script. Our sympathies lie more with the man than the “woman.”

Why he doesn’t succumb to the same fate as the other men is not clear. Notably, he’s the first we’ve seen that isn’t fully erect despite the humanoid ardent attempts at seduction. Secondly, he’s like the first to take some stock of the fact that he’s been lured into some black void from another dimension. He obviously finds Johansson attractive, but it’s almost like he is more amazed by what is happening, his penis “disarmed” so to speak, compared to those who came before him who were “armed” to conquer. And in lacking their sexual aggression, he was deemed to have a “lighter”, purer heart, preventing him from sinking into the deep of her trap.

This seems to change the humanoid. It’s as if she questions her whole purpose in life up to that point. Maybe all those men who had come before were as gentle as sweet as this one. Or maybe she yearns to be more than a monster.

Previously we had seen the humanoid stare at women from her car in much the same she looked at men, yet we never see her take women as a victim. It’s more like she was curious by these creatures, like she didn’t know they would be there. She shows the same curiosity towards her own body. She stares at it, hugs her curves. Just after her encounter with the man with the dysmorphic face, she looks long at her face in the mirror and then at a fly stuck to a window. It’s as if she’s looking at how she looks to others (humanoid) compared to what she really is (more like a bug, an alien). As the film goes on, it’s almost as if she’s trying to convince herself the skin is not a farce, that it’s really her, that she’s real, and that there’s nothing else under the skin. There’s an ironic beauty in the dysmorphic man wanting to be seen for what’s on the inside where she wants to be seen for her outside.

We subsequently see the humanoid undergo something of a coming-of-age as she flees into the more rural surroundings of the bogs of Scotland, presumably to avoid her motorcycle-driving allies who don’t want her to veer off course. The camera work in this part of the film highlights her as a stranger in this strange land, with her hot pink sweater standing in stark contrast to the drab Scottish milieu. And truly from the rocky/pebbly beach below the impossibly high bluffs at the ocean to the Mars-like desert shrubbery of the bogs, Scotland has never made Earth look so alien. Yet it’s in this foreign land, far from the trappings of the dirty city that the humanoid experiences the pleasure of being a human, or more specifically being a woman. For a few days she is even one man’s princess, and I think it confuses her so much that she enjoys it.

The genius of this film is the way it makes you forget that the humanoid isn’t actually human. In the latter half of the movie we celebrate her cautious steps towards humanity. There is a love scene that is among the most intimate I’ve seen filmed. Yet, we also fear for her and feel sorry for her when her fantasy comes crashing down and it is revealed to her and to us that her initial approach to men proves was much more appropriate.

This is a slow film that rewards patience, but ultimately it doesn’t do much to excite. There are abstract sequences of light and color accompanied by discordant sounds of chanting that seem straight out of the Jupiter sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. These do little more than confuse, and sometimes bore. And even if the lack of excitement is deliberate (perhaps intended to deconstruct female seduction) that doesn’t make it anymore enjoyable. Still, it is a beautifully shot picture that provides a stunning condemnation of our male dominated society. It would manage to make even the most bitter-hearted viewer feel sympathy for a humanoid who just a half-hour ago was on a cold-blooded murder streak. Still, even if it doesn’t introduce any hard-hitting questions about humanity like the best sci-fi, in the end it revels in a different dominant theme of sci-fi: no matter the monster man meets, man is always the ultimate monster.

 *** (Three out of four stars)