#childhood beforehand where they all got along better than they do now???

[panicroomsammy]

My brain supplied me with the crack ship of Metatron and Cass in the form of a dream where the Metatron grooming Cass to do his dirty work arc took place over a longer period of time than it did in the show and now I’m honestly kind of disappointed that this arc didn’t take longer because I think that would have made it feel more organic

[linkspooky]

MEGUMI WILL LIVE

Sukuna reverting to his Heian era form sent the fandom into a panic because everyone assumed that Sukuna fully reverting back meant Megumi is now permanently dead. It doesn't. I understand how the fans would be worried because of how unceremoniously Gojo was just offed, but remember even Gojo got a long fight beforehand only the finishing blow was offscreened. He's still in Megumi's body though, all he did was change the shape of Megumi's body to look like his heian era self. It's the same way that Choso transfigured his host body when he was inserted inside of it, or other members of the culling games like Hajime did. The original owner of the body is still alive, because if the owner dies then Sukuna would still die along with him.

However, not only is Megumi not dead currently he's not going to die and the rest of this post will be explaining why.

Angel explains in chapter 199, that the reincarnated players are cursed objects swallowed by bodies who then use the bodies as vessels, reshaping them and then suppressing the body's original owner. It's the same for Megumi, Megumi at the finger and became a vessel for Sukuna, but instead of transforming all the way Sukuna stopped the transformation halfway through - until now. However, even in that case Megumi's soul is still there just suppressed.

Angel: My objective is to wipe out all players who've recinarnated. Most of them do it by suppressing the vessel's original owner... whether internally or subconsciously. And that's against God's laws... so it's wrong. Megumi: God? Angel: That's just a name I give to my beliefs. Pay it no mind. Angel: So I decided to live in symbiosis with Hana. Megumi: Can your technique revert possessed players to their original state? Angel: It's not impossible, but it's extremely likely they will die... because the cursed object and body fuse. SO it's difficult to strip away one. Yuji: That's why Sukuna dies if I die.

Sukuna hasn't completely killed Megumi, he's just suppressed the host consciousness, that was essentially the entire purpose of both the bath, and then killing Tsumiki immediately afterwards to bury Megumi so deep he won't fight back.

However, as I said that's just the technical explanation. I'm going to make a thematic argument about why if only one character of the four main characters survives until the end of the manga like Gege predicted, it will be Megumi. Before I begin though this is just a theory, I'm not saying Yuji or Nobara deserves to die so if you're a fan of them please be chill. Megumi will live and here's why...

Megumi's character arc is about birth rather than death. Megumi is a child, the end goal of his character death is not for him to die and be at peace with his death like Gojo and in my prediction Yuji, but rather for him to grow from childhood into adulthood. Everything in his character revolves around this concept, even his name.

Megumi, named blessing by his father. A child who is blessed in many ways, born with a technique that would have given Toji acceptance in the Zen'in if he had it, born a prodigy that got the attention of Gojo Satoru, and not blessed in other ways, no father, no mother, no adult in his life to guide him and forced to become a sorcerer or starve from an early age. However, more than that the name represents Toji's desire for Megumi to have a better life than he did.

Toji: Take care of Megumi, okay? That place is ueslss for someone like me, but for him...for someone with potential...it'll be a little better. Toji: I don't care... I don't care anymore. Toji: Hey, what's your name? Megumi: Fushiguro. Toji: Not Zen'in, huh? Toji: Good for you.

I have said before that Jujutsu Kaisen is a tragedy, but tragedies aren't really hopeless stories where everyone dies and nothing good ever happens. Even while Gojo's death is tragic, his dying dream is bittersweet as he reflects on the fact he made great friends in life and protected a lot of people. Which is why I don't think Megumi's name is supposed to be ironic, he was named blessing because he's supposed to be where the chain of abuse that started with the Zen'in -> Toji and carried on -> Megumi finally ends by breaking that cycle.

Megumi is a child, episode 5 of Juju Stroll "had Megumi describe Panda's smell as "ohisama" (お日様) which is a super childish way of saying "sunshine". It kind of literally translates to Mr. Sun, and it's such a cutesy way of talking that the girls get flustered. It's also mentioned in one of the audio dramas where they go out to eat beefsteak that Megumi only wants to eat the sauce and Yuuji reacts by basically saying "Are you a kid??" He also dislikes red peppers."

These childish affectations are there to show us Megumi is not what he appears. That's also basically the twist with his personality too, because he has an incredibly serious personality, and is considered a jujutsu prodigy most people mistake him for being mature for his age when he's really just repressing his emotions all the time.

Fushiguro had intended to just pay and leave but with his serious personality, his idea of leaving was dismissed by Itadori’s reasoning. However, his eyes that were as deep as the night that peeped out from the bottom of a deep ditch became even more lifeless. Fushiguro tried once more to switch off his self-awareness. Numbness was the safety feature of life. If he did not think of a way to protect his spirit, it would not be strange if a curse was born.

Megumi is putting on airs of being an adult, but I'd argue he's the most childish of the main three, because at least Nobara and Yuji both had parental figures and normal childhoods until high school. Megumi was handpicked to be a sorcerer at age six and received no adult guidance outside of that, just training to be a sorcerer. Megumi is a child forced into sorcery at a young age in order to pay his bills and survive, in the manga where the central goal of one of the main characters is that children should be able to live out their youths. If Megumi dies before he's even able to grow up, that goal will be unaccomplished.

Ijichi: Then Itdori will have to go into hiding for good. Gojo: Nah, I'll have him ready in time for the goodwill event. Shoko: Why? Goo: Easy. I refuse to keep this kid from living the best years of his life. Not just him, but everyone.

Of course that argument works for Yuji and Nobara as well. They're also children who I am predicting will die tragically early, wouldn't that go against the themes of the manga too? My argument is this, we've already seen kids die young, Mai Zen'in, Kokichi Muta, Junpei Yoshino, because Jujutsu Kaisen is a tragedy. However, there will be a few characters who survive into adulthood and live to see a better world where losses like the above characters don't happen anymore. Those characters however, are characters where their character arcs revolve around them living.

Yuji's character arc is a contemplation of death and searching for a proper death (I'll talk more on the differences later) Nobara's is more tricky without talking about the quality of the writing, but let's say Nobara's death shows that even a "main character" isn't exempt for death. Which is appropriate as Nobara thinks of herself as the main character of a story. Megumi's character arc however is specifically about a cycle of abuse that started with his father, and continued to him. Unlike Nobara and Yuji who were outsiders who made the choice one way or another (traveling to Tokyo, or swallowing the finger) to enter into the world of sorcery, Megumi was born into this situation and his choice was become a sorcerer when he was a teenager or starve. Gojo had the chance to break the cycle of abuse with Megumi and he didn't, because he saw another potential strong sorcerer.

Toji: But then the unexpected happened 11 years ago, when Toji Zen'in appeared. he was physically gifted through heavenly restriction and on top of that he was an anomaly who had escaped from cursed energy. As a human being who had escaped fate through the power of restriction... he destroyed our destinies.

Jujutsu Kaisen is a story about cycles, and not only is the narrative goal set by Gojo to 'reset this crappy Jujutsu World" so that the cycle of abuse adults heap on children will be broken by the end of the story, but Toji himself is referred to as the breaker of chains and Megumi is Toji's son. Megumi, who he named blessing. The inciting incident of the story happened, because the Zen'in abused Toji to the point he became a remorseless murderer and killed Riko in front of Geto's eyes, starting the domino effect that led to today's plot. Megumi is at the center of that, he is in a way the central victim of the story in a way Yuji is not because even Yuji got the choice to eat the finger or not. Eating the finger, and being executed to destroy Sukuna are burdens Yuji willingly took on whereas Megumi was possessed forcibly by Sukuna creating the current situation. Yuji also wanted to be a sorcerer and wanted to get stronger as one when sitting in his room and waiting to have the fingers delivered to him was a possible option, whereas for Megumi the choice was to be a sorcerer or starve.

Jujutsu Society will not have changed from Toji's generation, or even Gojo's generation if Megumi the child does not survive to adulthood like his father.

Megumi is someone with very little agency or sense of control over his own life, just like a child too he is at every turn practically helpless to the forces of the adults in his life. Of course he's a character who makes choices, but he's still making those choices in the framework of a world of adults who have authority over him. Megumi doesn't get to retire at being a sorcerer or he'll starve, so the choice he makes is "I'll selectively choose who I save as a sorcerer" which is a comrpomise he makes.

He doesn't have a choice but to be a sorcerer, so he chooses to be a sorcerer for selfish reasons. He's also someone with little care for the institution of sorcery. Even his choice to be a sorcerer with the Zen'in, or to be a sorcerer with Gojo is made on the axis of "What will give Tsumiki a better life?" The same with his choice to save Yuji from execution, he doesn't care what is right or wrong by sorcerer society standards, just that he personally wishes to see Yuji saved. Afterwards when Yuji expresses remorse for Sukuna's mass murder in Shibuya, Megumi is pretty unbothered by the moral ramifications of it.

"We aren't heroes fighting for justice. No one can ever truly judge us, so we must continually prove the worth of our existence. and we don't have the luxury of thinking of ourselves. We've just got to save people. I believe that was the original principle behind your actions. So start by saving me!"

Those words aren't just foreshadowing for what Yuji's final task in the manga is (Hint hint, Yuji now needs to save Megumi from Sukuna's possession otherwise Sukuna will continue to rampage in his body).

It's also illustrative of Megumi's character, he's not someone who makes moral judgements at all, not really. He has no concept of moraity, justice, because those are adult ideas and he is a child trying to survive in the world of adults with what limited power he has. Megumi does make choices as I said he chooses to forgive Yuji for mass slaughter in Shibuya, during the Culling games he chooses to make saving Tsumiki a priority above everything else even innocent people inside the games (something only Yuta is shown actually doing) which is consistent with the choices Megumi has always made. Megumi has no choice to be a sorcerer, so he chooses to use his power selfishly to protect one or two loved ones (and his comrades sometimes) instead of using them for altruistic reasons like Yuji or utilitarian reasons like Gojo.

Megumi doesn't have morals, because he's not in a stage of development where he can actually think and develop morals. This is a thing in psychology, Jean Piaget was the first psychologist to study ways in which children processed the world different from adults. He identified stages of moral development believeing it correlated with stages of cognitive deveolpment (congition = understanding) which Kohlberg then defined into roughly six stages of development.

Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment. Child is good to avoid being punishment. Stage 2. Individualism and Exchange: At this stage, children recognize that there is no just one right view handed down by the authorities, different individuals have different viewpoints. Stage 3. Good Interpersonal Relationships The child / individual is good to be see as being a good person by others. THerefore, answers relate to the approval of others. Stage 4. Law and Order Morality. The child becomes aware of wider rules of society, so judgments concern obeying rules to uphold the law and avoid guilt. Stage 5. Social Contract and Individual Rights. The child becomes aware that laws exist for good, there are times they work against interest of individuals. Stage 6. Universal Principles. Pepople at this stage have developed their own set of moral guidelines they apply to everyone.

Megumi is trapped at Stage 3, his only concern is how his actions will affect his interprersonal relationships with others. Everything he does is in regards to maintaing those interpersonal relationships, and he casually just disregards outside morality all the time. Even Kurusu who bonded with Angel and entered the culling games because of one kind deed Megumi did for her in the past shares this same reasoning, she does good deeds because she wants to be approved of by the person she likes.

Hana: Fate is all. I believed we would someday meet again. So little by little, in hopes of being worthy to stand by your side... I help people.

Megumi's morality is-selfcentered yes, but he hasn't developed into a mature enough person to be able to think of the points of view of other people. Even when Megumi does attempt to assert some control in the world an adult appears and steals control from him, literally in fact when we learn that his attempts to save Tsumiki were pointless to begin with, because Tsumiki is possessed by Yorozu. Shortly after this revelation Megumi permanently loses control, because his bodily autonomy and basic ability to make choices is stolen from him by an adult. Megumi's life is defined by how little control he has in it, he says it in what is his first inner monologue.

Megumi: The only thing that is fair about life is how unfair it is to everyone. She was the kindest person, there was no reason to think otherwise, she was someone who deserved to be happy, but Tsumiki was cursed. My father who didn't even know my gender gave me the name Megumi. He's still alive somewhere. Karma doesn't happen on its own. Criminals are disciplined under the law. Jujutsu sorcerers are only a cog in this retribution. If only more good people could receive fairness. I'll save people whether or not it's fair!

That entire monologue but especially the first sentence is true to Megumi and his life so far, the only thing fair about life is how unfair it is to everyone. Everything is chaos, especially the world of adults, something Megumi has not been sheltered from at all. Megumi's name was blessing, but his father who was responsible for taking care of him just ran off somewhere else and left him to the wolves.

You could even draw some kind of sick parallel to the king of curses himself, who refers to himself as an unwanted child. I don't know if we're going to get a sob story for Sukuna, but if the greatest curse in history was created because he was thrown to the wolves as a child, then that says a lot about sorcerer society. Megumi is just more aware of the dog-eat-dog nature of Jujutsu Society then the rest of the characters, it's why he's constantly trying to tell Yuji that sorcerers arent' heroes. It reminds me of two quotes from Buffy the Vamprie Slayer from Faith, another homeless teen exposed to the world's violence at a really young age with no adults to sheperd her.

Joyce Summers: You don't know the first thing about Buffy... or m Faith:  Don't I? I know what it's like. You think you matter. You think you're a part of something, and you get dumped. It's like the whole world is moving, but you're stuck. Like those animals in the tar pits. It's like you just keep sinking a little deeper every day, and nobody even sees! [...] Buffy: I gave you every chance. I tried so hard to help you, and you spat on me. My life was just something for you to play with. Angel - Riley- anything that you could take from me you took. I've lost battles before - but nobody else has ever made me a victim. Faith: And you can't stand that. You're all about control. You have no idea what it's like on the other side! Where nothing's in control, nothing makes sense! There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything. You can't even..."

Megumi's life is defined by this learned helplessness, he's not someone who at seventeen believed he had the complete freedom to do whatever he wanted like Gojo, he's trapped in the tar pits sinking a little deeper every day. There's a reason his Jujutsu Technique is shadows, which turn into muddy water when he uses his domain expansion, and why Sukuna bathed in black water to sink Megumi down to the bottom of his consciousness so he'd stop fighting back.

Megumi's someone with power, but with no real agency in how he uses it, as someone who avoids making choices, and asserting himself over ad over again. Unlike Sukuna and Gojo characters with overwhelming senses of self who seem to have complete freedom to choose, Megumi entirely lacks a sense of self, and therefore doesn't make his own choices.

Gojo: You sacrificed yourself so that Nobara could advance. Well, good for you. But people like Yuji and I... are always swinging for the fences. I'm not saying a sacrifice bunt is bad. Baseball si a team sport in which each member is expected to play their role. However, being a Jujtusu Sorcerer is an individual sport. Megumi: But isn't coordinating with other sorcerers important? Gojo: Yes, but no matter how many allies you have around you... you'll always die alone. Right now, you can only judge and match those around you instead of picturing a stronger future you. Maybe it's because of that ace in the sleeve you think in a worst case scenario if you were to at least sacrifice yourself all would end well. Keep that up and you can forget about becoming as strong as me, you won't even match up to Nanami. To die and then win, and dying victoriously are two completely different things, Megumi. Give it your all. It's okay to be selfish!

Megumi's narrative challenge goes beyond learning that it's okay to be selfish sometimes though, he's tasked with learning to cultivate a sense of self where he has none previously. You se Megumi is the most Jungian of Jung characters in the Jung manga, his power is literally the treasures he keeps hidden in his shadow. He's someone who continually fails to live up to his potential. He has no looked in his shadow at all whatsoever and therefore he's completly stunted in his development. His goal is to develop the ten shadows figuratively, but literally it's too cultivate a sense of self and reach adulthood as a fully grown individual and not the helpless child he is currently. He even is the first ten shadows user to develop a domain expansion, a domain expansion is a sorcerer using their innate domain (personal inner world) onto the outer world.

Megumi's endpoint is individuation (the process through which a person achieves a sense of individuality separate from the idenities of others and begins to consciously exist as a human in the world.)

As Jung Stated:

The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona, on the one hand and the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.

Jung's two theories on selfhood was divided between persona (what we are for other people) and the shadow (what we suppress about ourselves subconscious images we are controlled by). Here we have Megumi, someone who puts on the persona of being a mature, serious individual to survive in the world of adults, and also has the ten shadows which are representative of the suppressed undercurrents of violence but also his self-sabotage that Gojo identifies, suppressed emotions he is unconsciously controlled by. Both of these identities are Megumi and neither of them are.

Megumi's not a fully realized individual because he doesn't have a balanced sense of self at all, or even any sense of self because his two sides are all out of whack. In Jungian terminology the shadow is made up of primordial images shared by all of society, and what is more primordial then being literally possessed by a curse that's a character based off of a folk legend of ryomen sukuna in the real world.

Integration of the shadow is necessary for the process of individuation, Jung even names a confrontation with the shadow as a prerequisite for moral growth.

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”

Once again connecting back to Kohlberg's terms of moral development loosely, children see morals in terms of just outside consequences being applied to them. A child thinks "I can't steal this cookie because the adult who is the enforcer of morals told me it's wrong and will punish me." The final step of moral development is to create your own morals which apply to the world around you. Jung calls the shadow a moral problem because you have to become conscious that you yourself are capable of being wrong in order to properly render judgement on yourself. You can't judge yourself, or reflect on yourself, if you don't look at yourself properly, or ignore half of what you are because you don't want to see the bad in you.

The encoutner with theshadow and the confrontation with the beast is the first step of individuation, and what is Ryomen Sukuna if not one big shadow representing all the evils and selfishness of mankind. A cruel reflection of both Megumi, but also Gojo and Toji. Megumi, Sukuna says, this is how Gojo and Toji lived. They lived fighting from others and simply taking what they wanted, and no one could take from them.

It's extra ironic that Megumi is a blessing, and Sukuna refers to himself as an unwanted child.

Translation by @kaibutsushidousha

Sukuna is clearly a result of climbing to the top of the food chain after being thrown to the wolves, something which Megumi could become if he learned to wield his power that way and something arguably Gojo tried to push him towards (at least in the sense that Gojo wants to craft Megumi into a successor, into another Gojo). Megumi isn't nearly on Sukuna's level, but Megumi could become Sukuna, someone who only ever wields their power for themselves and only cares about being the strongest. That kind of person would never experience loss and discomfort the way Megumi did when he helplessly watched Tsumiki die. Sukuna is funcitoning as a beast for Megumi to compare himself to, even making Megumi himself feel guilty by getting Tsumiki's blood on his hands via killing her with his technique.

Kenjaku: What's the point of soaking in it? Ura Ume: To be near evil, and to submerge Megumi Fushiguro's soul.

Megumi has to confront Sukuna to learn that he is not like Sukuna. The other option is remaining helpless inside of Sukuna and just letting Sukuna completely have control. Regaining control of his body, and also discovering himself are essentially the same thing in this situation. Jung says that people who are unaware of their shadow, will be controlled by it, or at lest they won't realize that they're the ones messing up when things go wrong and will always attribute it to outside situations like fate instead of realizing they do have control and choices to make.

“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.” (Carl Jung)

To briefly reference another manga.

For Megumi regaining control over his body and assserting himself would also mean accepting that he's the one making choices here, he's the one to blame when things go wrong, and he's responsible. I argued over and over again that Megumi is effectively helpless yes, but that's because he's symbolically a child in order to grow into an adult he would have to learn to take responsibility for his actions like an adult would.

Such a process would also involve having to admit to some degree culpability and fault to his own actions. To become a person living in the world and therefore capable of making mistakes, rather than a dead dinosaur sinking in the tar pits.

“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.” — Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion (1938)

Megumi is obviously not even remotely close to there, not only is he blinded by shadows, but he's been referred to as a fool before this.

Let fate toy with you, before you die like a fool a prophecy which has been hanging over Megumi's head since the Reggie fight. You could take this as foreshadowing for Megumi's death, but honestly that's only if you're interpreting it in the most literal way possible.

Number one, what is fate in Jujutsu Kaisen?

Characters talk about it, but there's no canonical concept of fate. When Megumi asks Angel what God is, Angel says that you can just refer to God as a set of beliefs they have. In a Jungian reading, Fate is just what we attribute to things we think are out of our control but really aren't. It's not fate toying with Megumi, it's outside factors, and Megumi's own perceived lack of agency in his decision making.

Number two, what is death in Jujutsu Kaisen?

Remember this is the most Jung of the Jung manga, and when I hear die like a fool I think Tarot.

The Fool's Journey is a metaphor for the journey through life. Each major arcana card stands for a stage on that journey - an experience that a person must incorporate to realize his wholeness. 

In Tarot a set of 22 major arcana are used as stages in a metaphorical journey where an individual starts out as a newborn, a nobody, and becomes a fully realized individual through a series of stages and trials that prompt self reflection. Megumi would be in this manga the archetypical fool on the fool's journey, because as I said of the four main characters he's the one with the least sense of self and the most helpless. Megumi does not make choices, Megumi is pulled along by the nose.

We begin with the Fool (0), a card of beginnings. The Fool stands for each of us as we begin our journey of life. He is a fool because only a simple soul has the innocent faith to undertake such a journey with all its hazards and pain. At the start of his trip, the Fool is a newborn - fresh, open and spontaneous. The figure on Card 0 has his arms flung wide, and his head held high. He is ready to embrace whatever comes his way, but he is also oblivious to the cliff edge he is about to cross. The Fool is unaware of the hardships he will face as he ventures out to learn the lessons of the world. The Fool stands somewhat outside the rest of the major arcana. Zero is an unusual number. It rests in the exact middle of the number system - poised between the positive and negative. At birth, the Fool is set in the middle of his own individual universe. He is strangely empty (as is zero), but imbued with a desire to go forth and learn. This undertaking would seem to be folly, but is it?

The fool is in the center of his own individual universe, and is also strangely empty, a zero. A person who I'd argue like Megumi has no identity, and has to journey out into the world in order to find one. Once again, I'm arguing Yuji had a normal life for seventeenish years even if he's Kenjaku's science fair project, Nobara was raised in a small village, Megumi is the only person who was born within the small secular world of sorcerers and never experienced anything else (who is also one of the main four characters) and unlike Gojo is helpless and not the strongest dude in existence.

Death is a stage of the fool's journey, it's not the end or even a literal death but a transformation. The fool's journey argues that a symbolic death has to happen of the old self in orderto make room for a new one. Which is true for a lot of things of life, in order to grow into an adult you have to stop being a child. Entering the next stage of life requires leaving behind the last one.

DEATH: The Fool now begins to eliminate old habits and tired approaches. He cuts out nonessentials because he appreciates the basics of life. He goes through endings as he puts the outgrown aspects of his life behind him. He process may seem like dying because it is the death (13) of his familiar self to allow for the growth of a new one. At times this inexorable change seems to be crushing the Fool, but eventually he rises up to discover that death is not a permanent state. It is simply a transition to a new, more fulfilling way of life.

The next stage after death is the temperance, which has you know... an Angel, which there's totally not one of those in Jujutsu Kaisen. While I wouldn't say that JJK is a manga that strictly follows the fool's journey like say Tokyo Ghoul does where you can map out stages of the story to different major arcana, "let fate toy with you before you die like a fool" I think isn't a stretch to connect to the idea of death and what it means to the fool's journey.

Megumi arguably also has to let things die in order to progress as a person. Tsumiki is more or less dead by the beginning of the story. We never see her on her own terms just Megumi's memories and you can't be alive in a memory, there was never any chance of resucing her because we knew she was possessed by Yorozu we were just led into believing she might have been one of the people who awakened a curse technique instead. Megumi in a way as cruel as this sounds needed to let Tsumiki die, because there was nothing he could have done to help her, and he hasn't allowed himself to grieve or mourn her or move past her in any way. His entire identity is built around protecting his princess, but his princess isn't in another castle, she's dead. He needs to find a new identity, a new reason of living, and that can't be Tsumiki or even Yuji because Yuji is just a repeat of Tsumiki even in the sense that both of them are doomed by the narrative.

Megumi needs to let his sister die and mourn her, and that also requires being alive to mourn her when this is all over.

Sukuna: The destruction of Tsumiki Fushiguro will allow me to completely bury Megumi Fushiguro.

Sukuna argues that the death of Tsumiki will be the death of Megumi, but in reality that's just the death of who Megumi used to be. The person who defined himself entirely as being Tsumiki's protector and existing for the sake of her happiness is gone along with Tsumiki, but there's still a chance he could start from scratch. This is what Sukuna compeltely fails to take into account, but then again Sukuna doesn't even understand why people who are weaker than him bother struggling to live in the first place.

Sukuna: Well, allow me to ask. Why are you so weak? You're weak, yet you cling to life. Cotinuing on your path means destruction, yet you wish to be happy as long as possible. You should spend your lives stifling your misery/ Yuji: You should be the one trying to stifle this misery! Suuna: Come coloser. (Hm? Why is he so tough? No, that's not right! It's my cursed energy output that's low!) Damn you, Megumi Fushiguro.

Immediately after seeing this speech about how weak people should stop resisting him because it's futile, watching Yuji continue to resist him sparks inspiration for Megumi to fgiht back from within. All of this showing evidence that Megumi is not doomed, he himself can still move on to form a new identity after this "death" he's experienced of his old ones. In fact it's probably going to be what beats Sukuna, because this is Sukuna's blindspot he doesn't think weak people are capable of resisting him in any way.

Strong and weak are separate categories in his mind, he doesn't think people can grow. But you know, Megumi's whole narrative challenge is to grow up.

Why Megumi, why not Yuji?

Megumi and Yuji are close character foils and a lot of things I said for Megumi could be said for Yuji as well, but I am pretty firm in saying Megumi's going to live instead of either Yuji living, or them both living. As I said this is because of what I think the difference in Yuji and Megumi's arcs are, Megumi is the child that's supposed to grow up that's his backstory, that's what he is symbolically, the child neglected and failed by every adult who came into his life (Toji, Gojo) and by sorcerer society as a whole.

Megumi's goal is individuation, to grow into a fully developed individual, an adult. It would be too tragic even for this manga to have Megumi be neglected and abandoned all his life and then to die like a fool.

Well, wouldn't it be tragic for Yuji, too?

Yes, but Yuji's narrative has been setting us up for that tragedy since the first chapter.

Tragedies aren't just stories where sad things happen, it's a pretty rigidly defined narrative structure. A tragedy just like any story is about set up and pay off. You set up certain ideas early on in the narrative, you prepare your audience for an ending and you deliver on that ending, any last minute flips, twists, unless those are properly set up too are going to be seen as narratively unsatisfying.

Tragedies don't happen because rocks fall and everyone dies. Tragedies in the modern sense happen because of the choices of the characters made over the course of the story, in other words you reap what you sew.

Unlike Megumi's narrative arc which has been setting us up for him to grow up, Yuji's has been setting up the opposite since day one.

Grandpa Itadori: Yuji, you're a strong kid, so help people. It doesn't ahve to be all the time just whenever you can. You may feel lost. Don't expect gratitude. Just help them. When it's your time to go, make sure you're surrounded by others. Don't end up like me.

Yuji's narrative challenge, a literal dying curse given to him by his grandfather is for him to help people in his life so he'll die being surrounded by friends instead of dying alone. Everything Yuji does after that, and swallowing the finger in the first chapter, is contemplating the kind of death he thinks is a "Good/Natural Death" and the kind of ugly and unsatisfying deaths that curses bring on their victims.

Yuji's reason initially for agreeing to be executed is that if he eats all 20 sukuna fingers, then he'll prevent a lot of the unnatural deaths in the world that would have been caused by curses being drawn to those fingers. He draws a line against the abrupt, gruesome, early deaths caused by curses and their victims and the kind of death his grandfather had where he at least had a natural death at the end of a long life.

Death... Well, I can somehow feel death from the school. I'm afraid of dying. I wonder if grndpa was scared of death. No, probably not. I cried because I was sad, not scared. The death I face now, and Grandpa's death... how are they different? You're a strong id, so help epople. He was short-tempered and stubborn. No one went to see him besides me. Don't end up like me, huh? I guess so, but... I think you died peacefully, grandpa. (Faces a curse spirit) This is not a natural death.

No matter who they are, Yuji wants to spare them from an unnatural death, because he on top of that doesn't think he has the right to make judgement calls on who lives and who dies. Yuji is constantly contemplating his own death and what it means from the narrative.

In the Cursed Womb arc, Yuji feels like he can faith his death only for him to become so terrified in the face of fighting a special grade cursed spirit that he loses the ability to keep Sukuna under his control and can't switch back with him after letting him go. Yuji realizes his resolve isnt' as strong as he thinks it is when actually facing death for the first time, but also how to channel those negative emotions into something because he pulls off his first divergent fist in the heat of the motion.

When encountering Junpei and Mahito, not only does Yuji elucidate Junpei on why he doesn't want to make judgement calls on who lives and who dies because even if he inevitably has to be a murderer one day he feels like if he does life will lose its values, he also is confronted with Mahito the antithesis of Yuji's beliefs. Mahito's way of killing is to mutilate humans so horribly they are begging for death, the unnatural death possible. He creates victims who Yuji cannot save and cannot bring a natural death, only be mercy killed, and he creates another one of Junpei right in front of Yuji just as he was on the brink of saving Junpei from his unnatural early death and sparing him instead of hunting him down and killing him as a curse user as he is supposed to.

In The Origin of Obeidence / Death Painting Arc not only does Yuji realize the two people he's killed are living beings who cried for their family members (also his brothers what a twist), but also he is told face to face by Sukuna that his action of eating the first cursed finger which he thought would make less curses appear in the world, actually caused the curse fingers to resonate and draw stronger curses to them. The action that he thought would save more people in the long term, has in fact, killed some people in the short term because of this resonance.

In the Shibuya arc, basically everything is thrown in Yuji's face, what was foreshadowed in the previous arc that eating the fingers with Sukuna might not save a bunch of people in the long term turns out to be true. Now no matter how many people he could save by offering himself to be executed after eating all 20 fingers, Yuji still has caused the massacre of thousands in Shibuya because of eating the finger.

In the aftermath Yuji is mindlessly killing curses as a cog, until at least Megumi shows up and begs for Yuji to "start by saving me..."

Yuji's arc is a self-reflection and contemplation on death, and his goal is to die on his own terms, but also to die surrounded by people unlike his grandpa who would die alone.

Now, Yuji is currently the only character who has any interest at all in saving Megumi as a first priority (everyone else constantly just talks about the need to put Sukuna down first).

Saving Megumi at the cost of his life, fulfills Yuji's two narrative goals, helping people, and also dying surrounded by others. He also would be rejecting the cog mindset, because Jujutsu Society would say kill Megumi for the greater good above all else, it's what everyone else in this situation is prioritizing first. It's also fulfilling Megumi's request to Yuji "start by saving me..."

Yuji's death is tragic yes, but it would end in a way that's satisfying to his narrative arc. Yuji gets to determine the way he wants to die, and he dies out of choice, not as an unthinking cog, and not alone. Gojo's death is tragic, but it's also satisfying to his narrative, he wanted to live to be the strongest and using his strength selfishly even accomplishing some selfless goals and protecting others for selfish reasons and he got to go out on his own terms.

Yuji is the cage that Kenjaku built to contain Sukuna, and Yuji can probably devise some way to take Sukuna back from Megumi so he can choose once again to die on his own terms, this time at least for the sake of saving a friend who he can die beside.

Megumi's death would be tragic, and also unsatisfying to his narrative, because he wouldn't get the chance to grow up. He's not dying according to his own choice here either, if he's killed alongside Sukuna then he's being mercy killed, or sacrificed for the greater good (the greater good). Megumi didn't choose to get possessed, and if he's killed here by Yuji, or Yuta, or Maki or whoever he's not choosing to die either, or even getting to die fighting like Gojo did.

Jujutsu Kaisen is a tragedy, but it's also one where we have been telegraphed by the narrator that the society will have changed by the end of the narrative. The central goal of the narrative is to allow these ids to grow up in a better world, and become fully realized adults and in order to do that a few of the kids actually have to survive to adulthood. I argue that Megumi will be the one to survive, because he's the most childish, and with the most growing to do. It will still be tragic in a way, Megumi who only lives for others, having to learn to live for himself is about as bittersweet as you can get. However, if Megumi's narrative goal is to learn to live without Tsumiki, without Yuji, then the only way for him to do that is well... to live. Even if it's lonely, or hard, Megumi needs to live on past the end of the manga.

[machifuwa]

Autumn Cafeteria | Chapter 5

A week later. At the Meeting Room in the ES Building.

Tsumugi: Sorry to keep you waiting, Shu-kun~

Shu: You're late, Aoba. I already got one job done while I was waiting.

Hm? That parfait...

Tsumugi: Here is the new menu. I sent a photo through Hold Hands, but I wanted you to actually try it. We borrowed the kitchen of the company cafeteria in order to make it.

Shu: Why did you have to bring it yourself? If you told me, I could have come to the cafeteria myself and eat it there you know.

Tsumugi: That's true, but... I couldn't bear to bother Shu-kun, who just came back from Paris. Are you feeling okay? Any jet lag?

Shu: Long trips are tiring, but I've been back home every once in a while. I'm used to it by now.

Anyway, let's have the parfait now. I'm glad to have a supply of something sweet and cold to keep my mind sharp.

Tsumugi: Also, please try these Salt Cookies. They are said to be a dessert for those who do not like sweet stuff.

Shu: Sounds like a good palate cleanser. I'll have it along with this.

...The sourness of the cherries is stronger than I expected. The sweetness of the whipped cream neutralizes it, making it easy to eat.

Tsumugi: I heard that the cherry was Koga-kun's idea. It was supposed to be a strawberry at first.

The arrangement of the bottom portion was Yuta-kun's idea. The red color makes it look more attractive.

The acidity of the cut cherries and the jellies allow you to eat all the way through without getting heartburn.

Shu: Hoh. I remember that the whole idea was proposed by Suou. So it was a joint development by those three.

Tsumugi: The menu has remained the same since the restaurant opened, and regular customers are ordering it because they are curious about it.

Shu: ...Fumu. Just the regulars? How about new customers?

Tsumugi: As you can see, we've not been able to attract any new interest. I have the impression that it's been limited to the inner circle, or that there has not been enough publicity.

We can also advertise on our social media accounts. I doubt it will lead to continuous sales, but it will still attract attention.

We can't tell them who invented the new sweets, since we're not actually working there.

Above all, as idols, it should gain some publicity. Let's just say that we're currently doing this for personal development only.

It is most likely that we'll get complaints from people, so it's better to not disclose the fact that we were in charge of this.

It would damage us, and it's also disrespectful for the companies that try their best to protect our image.

Shu: So, we're basically limited to doing things. It can't be helped, then.

Tsumugi: Right. So, I was also thinking of taking advantage of the fact that we're idols. It's still not planned well, but...

I'd like NewDi to partner up with the café and provide working experiences for other idols.

Basically, it would have that "place where you can feel closer to your idols" concept.

Shu: ...I'm not sure if I'd like that place to be something like that--where the target audience are our fans.

However, the situation is already bad as it is. That's better than getting the café closed.

The question is whether the owner would agree with that proposal. Will it be all right for him to destroy the original image of this place for the sake of its survival?

Tsumugi: I already went through that. I asked the owner beforehand what things he'd want to be changed vise versa.

Actually, the owner is really determined to keep the original taste of the round bread.

Shu: The original taste of round bread...?

Tsumugi: When I asked about the details, it seemed like it was somewhat connected to the owner's childhood. Unsold bread, specifically round bread, was what the owner grew up eating.

I heard that his parents asked him to take care of the family business, so he ran away in the process.

A long time passed. He worked as an office staff in the city. After hearing the news of his parents' death, he returned home. Since then, the bakery has long gone out of business.

A short time after he left his parents' home, they closed the place with old age as the reason.

The owner missed the taste of the bread, so he looked for the recipe, but was unable to find it.

I guess there wasn't a recipe to begin with, since they were making it based on experience and intuition.

Even so, he's confident that he remembers the taste of the bread that he was forced to eat as a child, so he tried recreating it, but he hasn't succeeded at all.

As a result, the café was built in order to preserve the memory of his parents' bakery.

Shu: ......

...For some reason, I want to eat that round bread now.

Tsumugi: Actually, me too. Shall we buy some later?

previous | mastelist | next

translated by machi and mars

[dijeh]

I got tagged in a fandom meme! I haven't done one of these in a lot of years, so thanks @endless-season

I'm putting my disappointing answers under the cut, so you can enjoy this photo of a snail instead and scroll along.

3 ships you like: I'm... not the type to talk about that... They exist.

first ship ever: Oh man, no idea. Something from Greek mythology maybe? Or from one of those compulsory readings in middle school? Maybe earlier?

last song you heard: This. Also in French. It's apparently based on an actual love curse song and I can't stop listening to it.

favourite childhood book: Either a two-volume book on Greek mythology or the Mary Poppins series. I received the Greek mythology book when I was about 6 and it was the first "serious" book I managed to read all by myself (I'd only read some Bamse beforehand). I used to like the first volume, the one on gods, better than the second one which focused on the heroes, which I found sort of boring. I wanted to read about cool powers and the like, not guys doing things. I lent the books to a friend a few years ago and haven't seen them since, but I recently leafed through the volumes at another friend's house (every kid has them), and noticed my tastes have sort of reversed now.

As for Mary Poppins... I still remember that frustrating Midsummer Eve volume which created more mysteries instead of answering longstanding questions. Immortal Mary? ??? Also that Halloween chapter where I would mentally replace the park and lane with the park across the street and my own street. My mental image of the MP world was half whatever I read, half my own home. (I only watched the Disney movie much, much later and found it rather disappointing.)

currently reading: - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I had forgotten how verbose he is! I appreciate the irony/dry humour but there are so many unneeded passages. It's also quite quotable, in fact it contains my favourite quote ever that I learnt of before knowing the book.

Alamut by Vladimir Bartol. It's ok so far, I'm only ~70 pages in, so I can't draw a conclusion, but I can't say I'm awed or anything. I'd be tempted to blame the translation, but it might also be my expectations (cool assassin action yeah!) vs reality (newcomer learns about stuff in painstaking detail).

The House on the Borderland by W. H. Hodgson. Literally just started it, I'm looking forward to being spooked. I've only read two other things by Hodgson, The Voice in the Night, which I can't remember for the life of me, and The Night Land, which I read the only time I worked in an office and I still can't tell whether reading that book or working in an office was worse. I Very Much Dislike working in an office if you couldn't tell.

currently watching: The Last Kingdom. I quite like it, despite the biker vikings and the ridiculous premise that everything in (future) England worked thanks to 1 (one) guy™ and some REALLY unneeded character changes (historical power couple turned into lil bitch husband vs long suffering wife who fucks the protag of course). Can't talk yet about the writing quality after Netflix took over (started season 4), but I do appreciate the better costumes and accessories. People finally wear rings, necklaces, brooches, armbands etc! Wew. I do not appreciate the Middle Ages filter even though some colour does manage to make its way on screen from time to time. I also miss the battle tactics, but well, as long as the character interactions are nice...

currently consuming: Coffee in a coffee appropriate cup I randomly found in the kitchen. Where do all these cups even come from?

currently craving: Infinite time to read what I want to read and enough money and warm sunny weather to travel. I miss Naples! My love 🥺

[schneereggen]

Day 2 of GureShin Week - It’s Shinya’s birthday today! Happy Birthday 🎉🥳

So let’s take the occasion and have a deeper look into Shinya’s character.

I already did an analysis for Mahiru because of an anon ask. It was really interesting to think more about why she does what she does and how she became the person she's now.

So I wanted to do this also for Shinya. I did a lot of reflection about his character when I was writing my fanfiction "Why we cannot stop loving". As he was the point of view character I really wanted to dive deeper into his motives and why he’s feeling how he feels. Also I explored some situations I really wanted to see Shinya reacting to it. Like what Guren has been hiding from him.

But there’s also a lot of stuff that didn’t fit into the story which I had been thinking about as well. So I am now trying to write it down and explain where this might be coming from.

But maybe a short disclaimer beforehand because I know Shinya is a very well loved character: 

I base my analysis on what I feel would complete the narrative. There could be a lot of other interpretations about him. So this is just one version.

And it turned out a lot longer than expected. So apologies for that.

Drawing by Yo Asami, artist of Catastroph at Sixteen Manga

Analysis of Shinya's Character

Let's go back to...

Shinya’s childhood (Prologue book 3)

To know why a character is like they are, it’s always interesting to look into their childhood. In Shinya’s case, he first grew up with his parents. I expect him to have had a rather good childhood . It was said that he was already part of a Hiragi kindergarten when he was five but without the competition. Shinya was talented, was really good in school and had a lot of other talents. He was fast, good at magic. A lot better than the other kids. So he was probably praised by his parents, by other adults and he was used to surpass others, because he is very skilled. And no person is not infected by praise at an early age. Shinya probably got used to be able to do everything. He might even have been a lot more arrogant than now because he knew he could do all the stuff and was doing really great and he also got the confirmation that this was good and achievable. He was told that he was special and there was no instance that could have made him reflect about it. So when I think about Shinya being arrogant, I think more of the Shinya we see when he's desperate. Like the ice cold look he gave Guren when he was disappointed in him for not fulfilling his expectations. But more about it later. In general, I feel like Shinya wasn't always just nice and sweet. Or rather didn't use it socially that often back then because he didn't need to.

But then the Hiragi noticed his talent and took him in. First, this must have been a huge lost because he was taken from the parents he loved and that loved him. Maybe this also made him think they don't love him anymore because he never heard about them ever again. Knowing the way he later can very well hide his emotions, I can imagine that he also back then hid his sadness. He maybe cried a lot, maybe in secret at night later. Even thought it is said that he didn't have the time anymore when he was in Tokyo. And the reason for that might be the fact, that it was "an honour" to be selected by the Hiragi.

Because of the social status the Hiragi have, Shinya was probably also kind of proud. Everyone must have told him how well he was doing that he was given the honor to get with the Hiragi. In some way this must have pushed Shinya's ego though I still think on the inside he was hurt that he was given away. Nevertheless Shinya seemd to be a person that adapts very well to situations. So I can imagine him also managing well to fit in the new situation and surrounding. He maybe cried at night, but at day he was the same talented guy that impressed others. He probably made already some friends among the other contestens very quickly.

But we know he wasn't the only smart and talented guy. Even though he might got along well with others, this was also one of the first moments, Shinya had a real competition. The contest might has motivated him in the beginning to push himself even further. He always won in the past, so he was now in a surrounding where he had to win. And he must have done well.

But the competition always also meant that other children got killed. For being bad at school, and later in direct fights. So the challenge developed quickly into a hard, bloody reality. And he must have lost a lot of friends. Imagine just meeting a person one day and the next they will be gone and worst they have been killed by some other guys you know.

So slowly Shinya stopped making friends for real, because he knew in the end he would lose them again. He started to protect himself emotionally by not building bonds anymore with other people and focusing on himself. So a loss won't hurt that much anymore. Also he must have stopped showing his true emotions in general. Emotions can be a weakness in fights and in order to be strong, he might also have started to surpress his emotions. This way he became apathetic inside. Not showing emotion, not feeling anything, not forming bonds and friendships with people. All in order to win and most importantly survive.

It is said that Shinya started smiling permanently at that time to relive the stress. Also Shinya must have tried to cope with him surpressing his own emotions. Smile was his mechanism. Also it helped him socialice with people so he would not be pulled into trouble. Also it is said that it confused his enemies in battle. And I can imagine that Shinya started to use it as a weapon. To fool others to be able to win again them when they didn't expect it from such a seemingly nice guy that always smiles.

So Shinya's only goal was now to survive. And the price for that was the hand of Mahiru. He used all his energy for that one goal. He only lived for that goal. Only to then realize when he was suddenly selected as the winner of the tournament, that she doesn't even want him.

All the time and effort he put into it, shattered in just a second when Mahiru told him, she's already in love with someone else. Even though Shinya survived, he lost because his apparent goal was already out of reach. It's the first massive lost he experienced in his life. His ego must have been totally shatterd, realizing that it was all for seemingly nothing. A guy named Guren was already ahead of him.

And this was a new challange for Shinya. Despite having fallen deep by realizing he lost his goal and seemingly wasn't able to win Mahiru over whatever he did, he slowly started to shift his goal to Guren. He had what Shinya wanted. He was his opponent. Mahiru had told him mutiple times that Guren was a lot stronger and more special than him.

So Shinya wanted to meet Guren, desperately. That was Shinya's goal at that moment. Meeting him and finding out what was so special about him. Why Mahiru was talking so highly about him and what had made her fall in love with him.

And they met. In High School

Beginning of the High School Years (Book 1-4)

Shinya knew Guren was coming to their school. To find out what was so special about Guren, he wanted to challenge him. Find out if he's strong, if he's better in magic, if he was smarter, what so ever.

To approach him, Shinya used the techniques he learned from his childhood. Smiling and be nice to people, so you get what you want. He kind of treid to fake a friendshop between them. Just that it didn't work on Guren.

Guren hid his power from him. And even though Shinya pushed him, tried to beat him up, Guren just let it happen. And Shinya was really pissed that none of his usually techniques worked on Guren. He smiled, tried to get Guren's attention, but he just ignored him.

This led to that scene where Shinya protect Guren but starts being cold towards him. Shinya is disappointed in Guren. The person Mahiru spoke so highly about all those years, was nothing but weak. He seemingly wasn't strong, talented or anything. And Shinya still lost against him. And to make it even worth, if he was strong, he didn't even use his powers for something relevant. Another goal of Shinya was shattered.

But things change, when Shinya sees Guren fight at the tournament in school. He sees that Guren knows a lot more magic than he says. And Shinya's interest is back. He proceeds trying to befriend him and as we know, he succeeds.

Shinya starts getting to know Guren and he realizes that what makes Guren different is that he is still trying to achieve his goal. In book 4 there's one scene from Shinya POV where he thinks about why Mahiru chose Guren in which he realized that Guren is passionate about his goal. He is fighting for it. Shinya gave up fighting and winning when he realized he couldn't win Mahiru over. And Shinya thinks about how stupid Guren is to give up his humanity to save others. Though thereby he realizes himself that he always just killed for himself. He killed for the sake of surviving. Never did he invest any energy for others. And though Shinya thinks what Guren is doing is massively supid, he kind of admires him for this. And at the same time, it makes him want to help Guren as well. Even though he would risk his life, he wants to save Guren from the mess he got himself into. He wants to get Guren back.

Without noticing he had already formed a bond with Guren. The interactions he intially used to get close to Guren now made him actually made him becoming friends with him. And Shinya, who had not felt anything in years, now suddenly had again something he wanted. He wanted to protect Guren, if necessary to kill him himself.

That's why he went to the school and made a plan to attack Guren and keep him in place. He wanted to be the one saving Guren.

In the same events it is said that Shinya wanted to save Mahiru to be finally recognized by her. He was never recognized in the past. He wasn't strong enough. And by challenging her, he might get the recognition he always wanted. But we know how it ends, he never got it. But maybe it wasn't even necessary anymore for him.

Shinya and human bonds (Book 5-7 + Vampire Reign)

After the event in the High School in book 4, Shinya starts developing a deeper friendship with Guren. It seems like he had accepted that he couldn't take back that he started to care for Guren.

The next inside we get into Shinya's character is in book 6 where he saves Guren from Seishiro and they start to have a heart to heart talk about human bonds. Funnily in this dialogue it's now Shinya telling Guren that human bonds are important to have a reason to be strong. Because it was Guren that made Shinya realize that friendship and bonds were important in the first place.

Shinya, a person that had hid his feelings, became cold, never had a goal is now telling Guren, that he shouldn't become that way. And that's remarkable. Because it means that Guren changed Shinya, he changed how he's thinking. Shinya has learned that he doesn't want to be a lone fighter anymore and he doesn't want Guren to become one. He found his goal in supporting Guren and fight alongside with him. Shinya wants to use his power for something he believes in.

Later in book 7 he even tells Mahiru that he chose Guren over power. He knows it's stupid, but it's what give him joy, a reason for contuing, a reason for living.

But Shinya dies believing in Guren. Though he doesn't remember later. He dies knowing that he had good moments in his life in the year in which he had finally made friends for real again. In which he had shared good moments with others and wasn't alone anymore.

Though as Shinya doesn't remember failing on that route. His goal to be with Guren and to protect and follow him doesn't change. When Guren starts losing his own hope and goal in Resurrection Shinya pushes him to follow his goal. To give himself a reason again to continue.

And later, when Guren even betrays them in Vampire Reign, Shinya is the one that desperatly calls for more power to prevent him from leaving. Even though Shinya can still kill without mercy, if it is necessary - he can't leave anyone important to him behind anymore.

So why is Shinya so obssesed with Guren?

I believe the reason why Shinya started to develop a friendship and feelings for with Guren is that Guren was the first one in a long time to see and care about him.

Shinya had been used to be praised as a kid. Then his parents were taken away from him. He stopped making friends. Mahiru never saw him for what he was. And then Guren came along and he cared for him (even though he said he didn't because he's a tsundere).

And Shinya wanted to be seen by Guren. By protecting him, by helping him out, by staying by his side. Shinya wanted Guren's attention because it was someone that was stronger than him that he admired.

But at the same time, Shinya started to also care for Guren. And as we know, Guren also found comfort in having someone who he can blindly trust. That's what made their bond so strong and hopefully still makes it strong.

Just as Shinya is Guren's soft spot, Guren is Shinya's.

Guren changed Shinya and Shinya does not want to lose his trust in him again. He doesn't want to accept that he decieded wrong when he chose Guren. Because he started to undertand what made Guren so attractive.

[boldlyvoid]

Million Dollar Man | chapter two

18+

summary: Spencer's therapist recommended he branch out and meet new people who don't want to talk about his work... she didn't expect him to sign up for a Sugar Daddy website.

Content warnings: sugar daddy!spencer, age gaps (14 years), daddy kink, blow jobs, kissing, drinking mention, lowkey perv!Spencer, cum play, praise, oral (female receiving), grinding, love confessions, arrangements, Spencers anxiety, (more to add)

word count: 3.4K

a/n: updates on Wednesdays and saturdays at 2 pm est

Chapter Two | Masterlist

She sat on the subway with an anxious pit in her stomach and her purse held close to her chest. Her laptop in her bag, she didn’t want to lose it on her way to the most important meeting of her whole life.

Her story was becoming a book, she was almost done the final draft, they were making touch-ups to the cover and picking the type of paper today.

Her dreams were coming true within the next month, soon she’d have a physical copy of her book, her pre-sales were showing that she’d be on the bestseller list, and her name was finally going to be on the cover of this one.

She sighed and reached for her necklace, holding it between her fingers as she took a few deep breaths. She was doing so much better today than she was last year and it was all because of Spencer, he was the best thing to happen to her. To think she complimented his sweater vest and now he’s the only person in her life she can count on.

All she can think about is him for the rest of her journey, through 4 more stops she keeps her eyes closed as she thinks of all his little facts and his cute laugh. She smiles to herself and the anxiety slips away, she loves him and she knows that for sure, but she just doesn’t know how she loves him.

She’s never had a sibling, her best friends are all women, her previous boyfriends were all shit and her other sugar daddies were never this wonderful, and her parents are lesbians… she doesn’t know what her feelings really are for Spencer, mainly because she’s never known any other men to compare him to.

But she does know the exact moment she realized she fell for him.

He booked a hotel room in DC after a local case, asking her to meet him in there at 10 pm. She was waiting in the bathtub when he arrived, bubbles galore, her hair up and arms open, “welcome home, honey.”

He laughs, “you want me to get in there with you?”

She just nods, “let me take care of you, daddy?”

He takes off his blazer, pulls his tie off and starts to unbutton his shirt. She watches patiently as he gets undressed, and it’s not sexual to her. He’s her person, her best friend, the only human being she would ever share a moment like this with and that’s when it hits her.

She doesn’t accept it just yet.

It’s not until he’s lying on her chest, between her legs, cheek resting on her boobs as she runs a sponge over his back while he gives her a little run down on his terrible week. His co-worker almost died, his mom is stressing him out, the only good thing he has left is her and she knows that.

“And then I get to my moms facility and she’s had a really good day, she knows me and she knows all of my childhood again and she’s all right there in front of me and yet she’s so far away. I’m never going to get all the time I want with her and it’s really hard to accept.”

He shares things with her that he doesn’t even tell his therapist. Because his therapist doesn’t hold him like a child against her chest and tell him he’s okay when he get’s upset.

Y/N loves him, so she kisses his forehead, “I’m so sorry, I have 2 moms if you’d like to have one?”

“It’s okay, I would love to meet them sometime though,” he wraps his arms around her waist a little tighter under the water. “Thank you for tonight.”

“Did I mention my leg is 44 inches from hip to toe?” She asks in the middle of the silence, quoting pretty woman, knowing he hasn’t seen that far into the movie yet. “So basically we’re talking about 88 inches of therapy for the bargain price of $800 dollars a week.”

Her legs wrap around him and their naked bodies are closer than they’ve ever been and yet it’s completely platonic, “I’d spend a million dollars on you if it always meant feeling this good after.”

She runs her cheek along his wet hair as he snuggles into her neck, “mmm, I like the sound of that,” she teased. “My million dollar man.”

Her stop rolls around and she pulls herself out of her day dreams to get off the train and head to her meeting. She smiles as she walks through the station, up the stairs and onto the busy downtown streets when she gets a text with Spencers special chime. She opens it when she gets to where she’s going, safely inside and in the waiting room.

It makes her laugh in the waiting room. People look at her but she doesn’t care, he’s so special to her she feels butterflies in her stomach even when he’s not around.

“Y/N!” She hears her name being called by her editor, he’s over ecstatic as he comes running out to get her. “Come, come we have so many choices to make!” He jumps up and down as he holds her arm, like a child in a candy store.

“Andy, chill man,” she laughs at him and plays it cool, “It’s just the cover being finalized.”

“It’s our baby!” He teases back, pushing his glasses up and tugging her behind the glass doors of the office.

She’s surrounded by people and paper and huge versions of her book cover. She has a sharpie as she fixed mistakes and jots down final ideas. “And I wan’t Phil to look more human and less like data from Star Trek?”

“But Dorothy looks okay?” The artist asks, nervously and Y/N can tell.

“She looks beautiful! You really brought her justice,” she smiles, “really she looks the same in my head! It’s just Phil and I’m sure it’s tough getting a drawing to look like a robotic human, let alone human.”

“I have some ideas?” She opens up more, taking her iPad out and sliding it across the table, “I wanted to give him more of a Sophia feel? His face is silicone but his joints and everything are more like an Elon Musk crash dummy.”

“That’s perfect!” She’s shocked, “why didn’t that go in the first draft?”

“I was worried it was too much,” she’s a little older than Y/N, and yet her anxiety is that of a teenage girl. “I’m going to get working on the final, do you want some emailed versions tonight?”

“Yes please,” she smiles.

“So we’re done?” Andy asks, “we’ve made all our final calls?”

“I believe we have,” Y/N closes her laptop and takes her phone out, taking a photo of the final rough sketch of her book cover on the table to send to Spencer before he comes to pick her up. She can’t wait to see him now.

—

They’re sitting side by side in matching spa robes, he’s getting a pedicure while she gets her nails done. Leaning back in her chair with a face mask and cucumbers on her eyes, she’s never felt more relaxed in her life. And just in time too, her back was killing her from writing, her knuckles hurt and she just needed a break.

Spencer did too, he was genuinely not having a good time at work anymore, every case made him spiral and he always looked to Y/N on days like that. They met more than once a week now, she got $800 every Friday and she didn’t even really need it anymore. He was coving for so much of her bills and lively hood that her savings account was growing and growing because of him.

For the first time in her life she thought she would be okay if a man left her. As terrible as it was, as much as her moms tried to raise her differently, she fell down the daddy issues rabbit hole and she’s never going to find her way out— however, luckily for her, Spencer is down here too, and he brought a flashlight.

He understands her, more than anyone else on earth. He knows all her secrets, every crush and bad grade and snide remark she’s ever kept to herself. He didn’t judge her, he could actually listen to her issues and tell her why she had them. He gave better advice than a therapist and he was able to get information for her if he didn’t know the answer to what she was going through.

He’s absolutely everything to her and yet he’s 14 years older than her, he’s still traumatized beyond belief, he’s sad and ashamed and recovering… but he’s the best man in the whole world and she wishes he could see that. If he just looked at himself from her eyes, if he felt how she did in her soul when they were together, he’d love himself.

They’re too relaxed to drive home, and Spencer knew that would happen beforehand, bringing her a change of clothes (lingerie) and that robe me mentioned. He books a hotel above the spa and takes her to it. Arms linked as they enter the suite, she’s amazed to find more than one gift bag on the bed.

“How many gifts is this now?”

“We’re at 5 out of 24.”

She laughs as she wraps her arms around him in a thank you hug, “this is what you consider 4 gifts? Spencer there are like 8 things on the bed, let alone the massage and manicure?”

“If you think this is too much I guess you’re going to get really mad next week,” he teases as she looks up at him with a surprised look on her face.

“Spencer, I am so busy next week, I cannot be galavanting around with my sugar daddy,” she tries to act like she doesn’t want to go on an adventure with him again.

The last trip they took was the best week of her life. They went to all the historical sites in the UK that she and Spencer had talked about. Mainly old churches and castles, strange poets graves, random art and most importantly; stone henge. It was a trip of a lifetime and he took it with her.

“I watched the rest of Pretty Woman the other day,” he smiles, “and I thought I’d pull an Edward Lewis and really surprise you because you deserve it.”

“You know how the movie ends, right?” Her heart beats really fast in her chest and she wants him to love her so bad but it’s also terrifying now that she’s this close.

“He lets her choose,” he whispers.

“He rescues her,” she corrects him.

“And she rescues him right back,” he really did watch the end of the movie.

It makes her heart skip a beat as she swallows sharply, “what does this mean for us?”

“I have a whole plan, a whole sequence of events I want to stick to. I wanted to make you fall in love with me this week and ask you on your birthday, can we still do that?” He pleads with her, he’s so serious. He’s clearly put a lot of effort into this.

“Absolutely,” she smiles, “but if you’re going to make me wait that long for you to ask, you still can’t kiss me till then. No matter how much I already love you.”

“Really?” He’s so soft with her, she knows he’s not reacting to the teasing. He’s never had someone tell him they love him and then stay after.

“I would never lie to you about that, spence. I know what love means to you, I know how scared you are and I’m scared too. But I know there is no one else in the whole world I’d rather be scared with than you,” she holds him tighter and rubs her nose against his, “so what’s in the bags, daddy? Finish your surprise.”

She plays along perfectly, stepping back and hauling him towards the bed. “I got you some outfits and things for the next 2 weeks, we have a few things planned. We’re going on a flight soon, I have new luggage being delivered to your apartment this week and we’re going to see your moms for 3 days.”

“No,” she shakes her head, “there’s no way, Spencer, I haven’t seen them in 5 years, I’m going to cry.”

“I know,” he cups her jaw with his hand. “They’re really excited to see you.”

She hugs him tight, kissing his neck as she holds him. “Thank you, daddy, do you want me to put something on for you now?”

“I’m just going to take it off you, plus, what your wearing is sexy enough, he whispers back. “You’re always so beautiful, baby.”

“I thought you were saving the best for last?” She asks as she pulls back, overly eager and he can tell.

“I want to repay the favour from the other night.”

She doesn’t mean to gasp and yet she does, “please?”

He pulls on the tie of her robe, opening it enough to snake a hand behind her back and draw her in with a hand on her bare back. “Please what?”

“Please, daddy?” She looks up with her best begging eyes, perfect pout and all. “I want you to touch me, I promise I’ll be a good girl.”

He steps away from her to swipe all the bags off the bed before picking her up and laying her back against the pillows. He kisses down her body, hand on her lover back as she arches, he drags his bottom lip from her belly button to her cleavage. Nipping and sucking at the exposed skin on her chest, pulling her breasts out of the bra to suck on her nipples, she moans and it’s louder than she expected.

As she plays with his hair, he marks her, bruising small little love bites all the way down as he makes his way between her legs, “take me, please?”

He’s been dreaming of this for so long, he can’t even give you an accurate number of times his mind has drifted to the thought of how wonderful she would taste, how beautiful she’d sound…

“Tell me how badly you want me?” He asks as he spreads her legs and kisses her left thigh.

“I haven’t had sex in 10 months while waiting for you. Daddy, please you’ve owned me for so long, just take what’s yours already for gods sa- OH!”

With a broad lick, his tongue flattens against her core and it shuts her up. She gets what she wants, holding into his hair as she tosses her head back, taking it all in and enjoying it. He’s been on her mind for months, every time her vibrator was where he is now, she thought of him. he’s been the man of her dreams longer than she’s known him, and he was proving it.

“Right there, daddy,” she speaks through shallow breaths, “do you know how much I’ve thought of this?”

“You know I don’t,” the vibrations of his voice against her skin are glorious, he looks up at her through his lashes as his tongue flicks over her clit and she shakes a bit.

“Fuck,” she gasps, gripping his hair tighter, “better than I thought you’d be, fuck, too bad you— Jesus, don’t have the stash anymore…”

He stops and looks up at her, the smirk on his face glistening with her juices, “the stash?”

She nods, “I’ve thought about calling it the pussy tickler,” she teases, running her hand down his cheek and swiping her thumb across his bottom lip before bringing it up to her mouth to taste, “I want more of you.”

He kisses back up her body and she reaches for his robe the second he’s close enough. “Just grind against me? I know you’re waiting but we can still feel good together?”

He kisses the side of her mouth and she takes that as a yes, wrapping her legs around him so his hard cock is pressed right against her core as they move their hips in synchronicity with each other. His breathing is heavy as he kisses her cheek and jaw, her nails scratch down his back, he feels absolutely amazing against her.

She feels so empty, she wants him so bad she’s clenching around nothing as she squirms against his cock and wishes she was full.

“I wish I could move time,” she whispers. “Fuck, why can’t it be my birthday?”

He laughs against her, grazing his teeth over her neck and drawing another moan from her but then he stops moving his hips, “why are you so impatient?”

“Remember I said I stopped enjoying everything? Well, taking a 10 month break from sex and thinking about you every time I got off has made me desperate,” her hand cups his cheek, “I’d wait forever for you, but a girl needs to be fucked hard every once in a while.”

Only she could find a way to make something both profoundly beautiful and whorish at the same time, he loved her for it and she knew that now. He smiles and leaned in to rub his nose against hers and it takes everything in her not to kiss him. The same way it was taking everything in him not to slip into her as he began to grind against her once more.

She’s so close, the accidental edging has added a whole new level of desperation she’s never felt before. She wants to cum for him so bad, but more importantly she wants him to cum for her.

“Take my bra off,” she whispers, Spencer’s hands travel behind her back to unclasp it and he helps her out of it before tossing it to the floor.

“Cum for me daddy,” she whispers in his head with a hand in his hair, gripping him tightly as he bites at her neck, “cover me with your cum like you’re marking your territory.”

“Shit,” his hips sputter against hers.

“Say it, I know you want to,” she teases, so close to the edge but it’s too good of an opportunity. She loves seeing him fall apart like this and she can’t wait to see it again. “Who’s am I?”

“Daddy’s girl.”

He grinds down on her harder and faster and she’s so close, the bubble in her gut is reaching a fever pitch and with a gasp, she’s cumming and then she feels it. His load covers her stomach as he pants against her neck and grips her hips tighter as he comes down.

She wraps her arms around him and holds him as close as humanly possible, her breathing still heavy as he rises and falls on her chest. He’s heavy but she doesn’t care, she just kisses the top of his head and thanks him.

He brushes his nose against her neck, nuzzling her like a cat, “do you really mean it?”

“What, honey?” He remembers so much, this could be a question about something she said 2 months or 2 minutes ago and she has no clue.

“You’re not just playing along with my kinks right, you genuinely want to be mine?”

For being her million dollar man, his heart sure was broke. This is why he wasn’t ready, he still didn’t understand why she would want to stay without anything in return, he’s gotten so used to paying her for her time now that his anxiety has managed to convince him that she’ll leave when he stops being worth it to her.

“What does my necklace say?” She asks, knowing how close he was to it. “Read it to me, I forget.”

“Daddy’s girl,” he smiles again.

She soothes her hands over his back, “I would do anything with you because I love and trust you, but also because everything you do is sexy… you could read me the dictionary and I’d still want you to pump me full of cum after.”

“It sounds so crude after,” he laughs, “speaking of, we really need to have a shower.”

“I’ll wash your back if you wash mine?” She teases as he gets up.

“Only if you let me wash the front too?”

She smacks his bare ass and races him into the bathroom, turning on the water and getting in with him while still laughing and carrying on. He’s her best friend in the whole world, there’s no one else she would rather do this with… there was no one she has done this with. No one has made her feel this good, before during and after sex.

Spencer Reid was an anomaly, but he was hers.

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Sugar daddy fic (Some tags didn't work)

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[lick-me-lennon22]

George caring for a sick Dhani 💜

(thank you to @pmak2002 for this request!! it was supposed to be just a blurb but I did a little research beforehand and it ended up pretty much becoming a whole fic 😅 oops... either way, I hope you enjoy this one! 💕)

When Dhani wakes up for school on Monday morning, he immediately knows something his wrong. His throat is sore, his nose is runny, and his muscles ache like nothing he's felt before. He painstakingly drags himself out of bed, clutching the sheet around him, and heads straight to his parents' bedroom where he finds his mum Olivia still in bed. Dhani notices that the bathroom door is cracked open and cautiously steps inside to find his father, George, brushing his teeth. "Dad..?" he says quietly, voice hoarse. George startles, turning around to see Dhani in his unfortunate state and spits his mouthful of toothpaste into the sink, letting the water wash it down the drain before turning the tap off. "What is it, my boy? You sound bloody awful..," he gently presses the back of his hand to Dhani's forehead to assess his temperature. "You seem to be running quite the fever, son- let's get you to the doctor, all right? Just let me finish up in here and I'll be right out to take ye" George says. Dhani nods weakly, coughing into his elbow, and shuffles out of the room. George jumps into action- he swishes and spits some mouthwash, changes out of his sleepwear into a button-up and jeans, and sprints to the car, his son following close behind him and hopping into the passenger's seat.

 

"This is ridiculous.." George mutters under his breath as he walks his son out of the clinic and gets into the driver's seat of his car. They had been able to see the doctor almost instantly upon arriving; he had taken some swabs, run a few tests, and determined that Dhani had contracted the flu: "He probably picked it up from school," the doc had said. When George had requested a prescription of some kind to alleviate his son's symptoms, the doctor simply shook his head: "I'm afraid there isn't much we can do for him. The flu's been going around at many schools, I've seen a lot of children this past week with the same complaints. As it stands, all I can tell you is to give him some over-the-counter medicine, bring him some saltwater to gargle for that sore throat, and be sure he gets plenty of fluids and bedrest." George tried to argue, stating that there must be something he can do to cure Dhani of his illness sooner- but as the doc's hands were tied and George didn't want to subject his son to more stress, he took Dhani by the hand and led him out of the office, through the lobby, and back to the car. "Alright, my boy," George sighs- "seeing that the doctor was no help whatsoever, we're headed straight to the drugstore for anything that'll help you feel better. Sound good?"

"Yeah Dad, sounds good" Dhani croaks out and smiles weakly, glad just to spend some time with his father. Being a famous musician and all, George isnt able to spend as much time with his son as he'd like to, a lot of it consumed by work and media-related endeavors. Dhani admired his Dad more than anyone else in his life and though they rarely got the chance to hang out nowadays, they were practically best friends and had formed a close bond throughout his childhood. George was always a fun parent, bringing his son along to festivals and such ("Don't tell yer mum," he'd say with a grin), and sticking up for Dhani to authority figures and even other kids at his school- he was fiercely protective of his boy. However, he was also a gentle parent who allowed Dhani the chance to explore and express himself, and had fostered a mutual respect between the two of them since his son was but a toddler.

"I'm pulling you from school for the whole week" "But what if I'm- *cough*- all better before then?" "Just in case, Dhani- it's not like you really need them and their indoctrination, anyway.." George grumbles, never having been a fan of traditional schools or their teachings. Dhani however has always cared about his grades and paid close attention to the lessons he's been taught, in spite of what his father thinks. "...Okay, Dad" he says meekly, wanting to protest but unwilling to sacrifice more quality time with his famous father. George pulls into the parking lot of the nearest drugstore and marches in, intent on gathering all the supplies his sick boy could need: tissues, lozenges, cough syrup, pain medication, ice packs, and even more tissues- 'just in case.' He makes his way to the checkout, queuing up, paying for the items and hauling his bags back to the car. He drives Dhani home as quickly as possible, carrying him to bed and tucking him in before calling and cancelling any studio time, interviews, or collaborations he'd previously planned. There's only one committment he can't cancel- dinner with Paul tonight for the first time in ages. George sets his son up with all of the remedies he'd bought and tells his wife Olivia everything about the situation, including the "unhelpful and useless" doctor they had gone to see. She of course agrees to care for Dhani, sending her husband on his way to dinner with one of his long-time best friends.

 

The following day George rises just before noon, having stayed up late to pal around with Macca. He runs the few errands on his agenda, including grabbing his family some lunch, and pulls into his driveway back home where he spots the vehicle of none other than Richard Starkey parked outside. He makes his way to his son's room to discover that Uncle Ringo had come to visit the sick young lad (having found out from Paul that Dhani had come down with a bad case of the flu), joking and cheering him up to distract him from his poor state. The two close friends chat for some time in the living room before Ritchie departs, Olivia checking up on Dhani in the meantime. George thanks his wife and dismisses her from her nurse duties, taking on the responsibility himself. He tiptoes to his son's bedroom cautiously and enterd to see that he's been tucked in, the ice pack George had picked up from the store the previous day resting on his forehead, half-lidded eyes trained onto the telly. "Dhani..?" "Oh- *cough*- hey, Dad"

George approaches the bed and sits down carefully, holding a paper bag out to Dhani. "I brought you a burrito- your favorite," he grins down at his son, who takes the bag: "Really? *cough*- Thanks Dad, you're the best!" he says, hands emerging from the blankets to tear into the treat. George stays sat on the bed, determined to spend time with his sick boy and make sure he knows how loved he is. Glancing around the room at the piano and guitars he's bought and played with Dhani, then back to the young man, Ringo's words from earlier echo in his mind: "He's growing up into such a wonderful lad. He's just like you, ye know- good looks and all."

Olivia had always said they were very alike, but he'd usually dismissed the observation... until now. George couldn't help but realize that they were right- though he was but eleven years old Dhani was already becoming a very talented and creative musician, having learned much about music from his dad. He'd certainly taken after his Beatle father in that regard, and they were in fact very similar- not to mention their near identical looks. Sharing his Dad with the world had been difficult and a bit isolating for Dhani despite his many school mates. He admired and looked up to George from a very young age, always striving to be just like him. As Dhani grew up before George's eyes, he became more and more like his father by the day and George was immensely proud.

His train of thought was broken suddenly when Dhani finished the burrito, crumpling the paper bag and tossing it into the bin. He landed the throw, earning a hearty laugh and a high five from his father. He closed his eyes and laid back, George stroking his hair gently, the two of them cherishing this moment of father-son love. "Are you gettin' sleepy, Dhani?" he asked tenderly- his son nodded in response, already drowsy despite the brightness of the late afternoon sun. "Tell you what- I'll play you a lullaby, that way you can rest easier and know that I'm here beside you." "Dad," Dhani chuckled, "aren't I a little too old for that?" he lied, secretly longing for the affectionate gesture. George grabbed his son's acoustic guitar from its stand and begin to tune it: "You're never too old for yer old man's love and attention, eh? Now you just relax, close your eyes, and rest." Dhani didn't protest any further, heeding his father's instructions with a soft smile on his face. With that, George began to play- he chose "Here Comes The Sun," fingers strumming the strings gently and with care, dedicating the sweet words to his beloved son. By the time he was finished Dhani was fast asleep- grin faltering as he drifted off, but still visible on his lips. George placed the guitar back on the stand gently, taking care not to wake the sleeping lad. He smiled to himself, tears welling in his eyes as he turned to admire his son's peaceful face. "I love you, my boy," he whispered, placing a gentle kiss on Dhani's forehead before tip-toeing out of the room and shutting the door cautiously. Back pressed against the wooden door, George let his eyelids fall shut and sighed: "Sweet dreams, Dhani." ♡

[power-of-plot]

Pool day! Hcs.

I just realized i haven't been in a pool for over a damn year and a half .-. ... does this count as a spoiler? Bakugou is "developed" (his character) here. Also, i've written for him before but this ma first time posting it, tell me watcha think.

Warnings: Some cursing.

B A K U G O U

It takes you some convicing from you first since this type of activites just don't fit him that well, water is all happines and relaxation, he is living dynamite, or he used to be.

When he's "forced" to do some childish shit in a pool and sees there's no way of declining he lets out a somewhat exasperated sigh before giving green lights "Fine but next time i choose what we're gonna do , deal?"

Despite this not being his favorite, he's "angrily" joyful inside since whatever you do you'll spend time together, that's more than worth enough to bear anything for. 

He makes sure you got all you need like towels, goggles (wich he’d never use because ‘it looks fucking weird and his eyes are not going to fall off because of some water’) etc, don't mock him or call him a mom when he forces you to put on sunscreen before going into the pool or while he's applying it on your back.

When you give him a hand to put it on his back, he's surprinsigly calm, he even tells you his preferences in his own way. "Don't turn my back into a slice of bread with cream cheese. Done? Uh thanks.. i'm not blushing it's the fucking sun! THIS DAMN SUNSCREEN IS NOT WORKING."

He would ask if you know how to swim just in case before you go into the pool, how he acts around depends in your answer.

If you don't know how to (kinda my case) you're not going past the limit into the deep part unless he's strictly right next to you OR you have a donut floatie or a pool noodle, anything that doesn't depend on balance, he is not taking the risk of you falling off. "Do you rather being an embarrased 'little kid' or a drowned grown up?"

If you somehow slipped or went into the deep part.. the moment he hears water sloshing then sees you struggling to not sink, oh lord, he's gonna YEET himself right in propulsing with one almost-full power explosion, he doesn't give a fuck if it leaves a big black burn mark on the ground.

He's relaxed if you do know how to swim. He can drag you along if you push him into the pool or drop you in from his arms, you'd also play waterpolo or voleyball.

"DIE!" He had to pay in a public pool for a broken ball after one of his explosions turned it into pieces of rubber scattered all over the water. That’s just one of the times he literally exploded, the most remarkable would be when someone didn’t know where their eyes were looking and he casually scared them off.

He marks his territory. While chilling he'd either have an arm wrapped around you or have you resting on his lap with his hand holding yours, although not with the same potency due to the water the caramel-like scent of his sweat would still emanate from him.

If he's in a very good mood or you just have a way with words there's a chance you could end up "cuddling" in there. Him floating and you simply resting on his torso, clinging onto each other so you don't float apart. 

M I D O R I Y A

Give this dude an award for being the broccoli none of us would want to avoid, he gladly accepts when you suggest having a pool day! He’s fine with whatever you come up with, it means you’ll do something together, double win :D

He asks beforehand if you do know how to swim to know whether he should bring a floatie or not besides pool noodles because he likes them, he also brings a small extra sunscreen just in case you forget yours, when it comes to him reminding you to put it on he asks like a mom making sure you have seatbealt on “Wait, sunscreen?”

When he feels your hand touching his back he inmediately breathes in through his nose and tenses up, but when he turn around he has that adorable smile of shyness and a rosy color on his cheeks “T-thank you! I’m so sorry, i’m sort of shy!”

Izuku is a toe dipper you can’t change my mind! He holds out his leg then quickly dips his toe in to check the water temperature before slowly going in, if you don’t push him first, if you did, his face of feeling betrayal while having a coughing fit would be priceless

He’s alert if you get near the deep side and he’s not that close, another guy who would yeet right in if you don’t know how to swim, OFA enhaces his physical strenght, add the adrenaline of the moment, he could pull you out the water with one single arm.

He’s not rough at all, he wouldn’t push or drop you into the pool (unless you were the kind who likes it or asked him to), more like jump in with you, you’d definitely jump in holding hands or with you in his arms. He’d also have you on his shoulders or his back.

He looks like seaweed when he’s underwater.

You’d have a watergun fight! Believe me when i say he’s the personification of Terminator with that thing on his hands, he’s going to exterminate you until he has to re-fill his gun.

He’s alert on public pools, he’s not jealous he trusts you but he doesn’t like the idea of someone making you uncomfortable or looking at you on inproper ways. He’s rather affectionate than territorial, he’d put his arms over your shoulders and rest his head on the crook of your neck, you’d get some small pecks here and there.

When it’s time, he gets out the pool first so you don’t go through cold, he receives you with your towel open in his arms to wrap around you to your neck with a soft smile. 

T O D O R O K I

Another guy who’d be fine with whatever you like, you could invite him to sky dive and he’d be there falling limpily, holding your hand with a straight face despite he’s falling from dangerous heights.

You’re not going to a public pool on his guard, he’s going to use his father’s credit card to go into a private place, probably with a rooftop or an oversized pool where you can swim freely.

With his childhood privated from many pleasures it’s unlikely he has any floaties so he has to buy some, he buys a donut and a noodle, he likes to relax and float better than swimming around, as for you, he wants you to have freedom to swim around.

We saw him using no more than swim trunks while training at the pool in U.A but he seems like the kind who would wear something on top as well, like a short sleeved swimming t-shirt.

Even before learning to be okay with his left side he never minded the water temperature that much, he simply goes in with a small jump. Now the fun part is: you can ask him to warm the water up to your content, he’d hold you close while he’s irradiating heat, pretty relaxing if you ask me

(bruh that sounds good should i write a drabble about that? anon or not tell me lmao)

If you start drowning.. freaking Elsa from Frozen is coming to the rescue, he’s going to rush at you like that scene where she fleed from a castle by freezing her way through a river.

He’d create large water slides with his ice and again, have a straight face while he’s going down at great speeds, if you were not there that is, seeing just how happy he can make someone with his quirk and his mere prescence.. a genuine bright smile appears on his face.

If you pushed him into the pool he’d turn around and stare at you with an unreadable glance, as if saying “why?” with his eyes, he needs a hug! Would never drop or push you in, even when you ask him he’d use moderate strength, he rathers having you cling onto him resting over his back.

It’s just wholesome when he’s relaxing  on his donut and your next to him holding his hand or when he sitting on a stair of the pool with you resting on his shoulder, there are no words but you both enjoy it.

He doesn’t bring you your towel, he brings you to the towel. He carries you in his arms keeping you warm with his left side as he walks towards your stuff, he can hug you too so the towel doesn’t let any cold in.

What’s this, two post in the same week?! let’s see how much i can post in this week, i might post for AOT next :).

[thegreenwolf]

Betting on the Ponies (originally posted at my blog at https://thegreenwolf.com/betting-on-the-ponies/)

(Above:  Breyer Classic Arabian Stallion made over into a winged unicorn with real wings from a barnyard mix rooster I raised for meat.)

If you’ve been paying attention to my social media or my shop links at all, you may have noticed that I haven’t really been posting much in the way of new hide and bone art for the past year or so. It’s not that I’ve stopped; I still make some fun things for my Patrons on Patreon every month, and I make some bone, tooth and claw jewelry on Etsy to order. But ever since events dried up, I haven’t been regularly making new batches of costume pieces or other Vulture Culture art. My usual M.O. was to make all sorts of new things for an upcoming event, and then once the weekend was done and I was home, post whatever hadn’t sold on Etsy. And since there haven’t been events…well…I’ve just found myself doing other things.

Some of that is because I’ve had to scramble to make up for the lost income; events were a pretty big chunk of my “pay”, and losing them meant having to tighten the belt. I also lost several other income streams thanks to the pandemic making it unsafe to be around groups of people, which didn’t help. So I had to rely on what was left, along with adopting a few new sources of bits and bobs of cash here and there.

And, honestly, I’ve needed a bit of a break. I’ve been making hide and bone art for over two decades now, and while I love it, any artist eventually wants to explore different media for a while. Sure, I’ve stretched my Vulture wings in new directions, going from costume pieces and ritual tools to assemblages and the Tarot of Bones. But ever since the Tarot came out, I’ve been feeling….not really burned out, but a little creatively wrung out, at least. I’ve really appreciated my Patrons and Etsy customers who have helped me keep a hand in that particular medium, while also allowing me to head off in other directions, too.

Which is to say that if you have been paying attention to the aforementioned social media and shops, you may have also noticed that I’ve been increasing the number of customized Breyer model horses and other animals I’ve made over the past couple of years. This might seem like a heck of a departure from skulls, bones, and other dead things. But in a way it’s really me getting back to long-neglected roots.

(One of my favorite customs I’ve done on one of my favorite molds, the Breyer semi-rearing mustang. )

See, I was a horse girl when I was a kid. Or, rather, I was a wannabe horse girl. I never got to lease or own a horse, and even now in my early 40s I’m still about the greenest rider you’ll find. (Seriously, I need one of those kid-proof horses that’s seen it all, done it all, and is probably more trail-smart than I am.) But I was obsessed with horses from a young age. It started with my very first My Little Pony that I got Christmas morning, 1983 (Applejack, if you must know), and then exploded further with a book on how to draw horses and my first Breyer model (Black Beauty 1991 on the Morganglanz mold) in my preteens. Horse actually took over for Gray Wolf for a few years as my primary animal spirit during my teens, so we have a very long history indeed.

And since I couldn’t have a real horse, I ended up collecting model horses, mostly Breyers with a few old Hartlands for variety. I had over 100 at the peak of my collecting, but I had to sell them all in my early twenties when I was between jobs. In hindsight it was probably for the best because having less stuff made it easier to get through the period of my life where I was moving about once a year, but I do miss that collection.

Back then I did my part to add to the artistic end of the model horse hobby, mostly with badly blended acrylic paint jobs and terrifying mohair manes and tails. But it made me happy, and that was the most important thing. Even though I only knew a couple other collectors in my little rural area, and my only real connection to the hobby was through the quarterly Just About Horses magazine Breyer put out, my collecting really made me happy in the same way that my first fur scraps and bones would catch my interest a few years later.

2020….well, it sucked. We all know that. Pandemic, political stress, financial roller coasters and more made it a really tough year for anyone who wasn’t wealthy enough to hide away and weather it all. And many of us found ourselves with more time at home, in need of distractions and solace. It ended up being a time where many people rediscovered their love of childhood hobbies. I’m one of those people. I’ve been slowly edging my way back in for the past few years, starting with repainting a few old Breyer models found at thrift stores, and then gaining momentum as I found that not only was I much better at customizing these models than I used to be, but I was having fun without the pressure to make a living off of it. (Yes, I love my hide and bone art, but when an art form is your bread and butter, it changes your relationship to it. But that’s a post for another time…)

So 2020 saw me really ramp up my customization efforts. I had to stop for a few months in summer and fall when I moved to a spifftacular new living space on the farm I’ve been working on the past few years (with, by the way, THE best studio space EVER!) but as the days shortened I found myself making more dedicated time to repainting and otherwise customizing models. I even started keeping a few of the models I’d bought to customize that were in better condition to create a small, but slowly growing original finish collection, and that really helped me feel like I was back in the (not actually a) saddle.*

That’s why a well-established artist of organic, pagan-influenced arts made from fur and leather and bone and feather suddenly started painting all these secondhand plastic ponies. It’s giving me that deep injection of childhood nostalgia balanced with adult skill and perspective, and it’s offered me a much-needed break from the exhausting schedule I’ve been living the past decade or so. Because suddenly, even with the time spent rearranging my income opportunities to make sure I could stay afloat, I found myself with a little time that hadn’t been scheduled to death, and when I thought about what I wanted to do with that time, I gravitated toward one of the few creative outlets in my life that was purely for fun.**

(Yes, this IS fan art of “The Last Unicorn”! I used a Breyer Stablemate rearing Arabian for the unicorn, and a Breyer Spanish fighting bull for the Red Bull. A LOT of fun to make this particular project.)

In a way having all my events canceled was one of the best things that happened to me, because it made me slow the fuck down. I no longer had several weekends a year where I had to spend weeks beforehand making art and otherwise preparing to be away from all my farm responsibilities for 4-7 days at a time, with all the packing and moving and setup and vending and teaching and teardown and going home and unpacking and exhaustion that goes with each event. I realized just how much each one was taking out of me, especially as I’ve gotten older. And I also recognized how much pressure I had been putting on myself to ALWAYS MAKE MORE STUFF FOR ETSY EVERY WEEK OR ELSE.

So the model horses are really sort of a symbol of the childhood joy I’ve managed to recapture, wresting time and energy back from my workaholic tendencies. I’ve even been thinking about what my professional life is going to look like once the pandemic eases up enough to allow events again, and whether I’ll put the same amount of time toward vending and and teaching at conventions and festivals as I used to. (There are a few favorites that I’m not going to miss for anything, so don’t worry about me dropping out entirely.) But for the first time in a very long time, I’m relearning to prioritize myself, and figuring out that maybe I don’t have to go hell-bent for leather every week, every year, in order to keep the bills paid and the critters fed.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s okay for this dead-critter-artist, pagan-nonfic-author, teacher-vendor-farmer, to indulge herself with something fun, and bet on the ponies to help her get through the tough times.

(P.S. Amid everything going on, I am back to working steadily on my next book, which I mentioned in this blog post almost a year ago. As a recap, its working title is Coyote’s Journey: Deeper Work With the Major Arcana, and it’s a deep dive into that section of the tarot using pathworkings with the animals I assigned to the major arcana of the Tarot of Bones. It’s not just a Tarot of Bones book, though; it’s a good way to get a new, nature-based angle on the majors in general, as well as hopefully gain a better understanding of yourself. My goal is to have it out later this year, self-pub of course, and at the rate I’m going it may end up being my longest book! Stay tuned, and if you want to get excerpts of the work-in-progress, become my Patron for as little as $1/month!)

*At the height of my “horse girl” phase, I had a really beat-up pony saddle I’d bought for ten bucks at a yard sale, and got a cheap saddle stand for it and put it in my room. And yes, I occasionally sat on it and pretended I was riding an actual horse. Hey, it made me happy at the time, and it was the closest I was ever going to get apart from a trail ride every few years.

**Yes, I do sell my customs. But I don’t make them on a schedule, I take commissions VERY sparingly, and I’m getting to stretch some new creative muscles, especially in the realms of sculpting and painting, so this is primarily for my enjoyment. The sales are just a side benefit.

(My ode to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a Breyer deer repainted to resemble the Columbian black-tailed deer that frequent the farm I live on, along with hand-sculpted Amanita muscaria mushrooms, real and fake moss, and real lichens from fallen branches.)

[nalgenewhore]

Too Late To Turn Back Now - Five

masterlist - ao3 - last chapter - next chapter 

an: everything will be fine! i promise, just to preface, that everything will be a-ok 😊

+*+*+*+*+*+*

The day was half over already as Lorcan lounged around in Sadirah’s garden with his sisters, him and Aneha doing their best to distract the youngest sister as she worked her garden, muttering in Ozuye about how they were both clod-footed brutes that would ruin all her hard work.

They just laughed and continued on with their shenanigans, sneaking the weeds she pulled from the soil into her hair and flicking dirt across her face. Sadirah had always been the calmest of the siblings, always there to soothe hurt feelings and calm worked-up emotions so no one was surprised that she didn’t react, merely stared at them with a patient look. 

As far as things go, they all got on well, hardly ever fighting. With everyone having their own interest, there was no need to clash or compete to be the best. Sadirah was inclined to gardening and painting – most of the paintings in the house had been done by her, while Aneha was exceptional at music, specifically piano, and had a voice that could make the gods themselves weep. 

Eventually, it became clear that Sadirah wouldn’t crack so Lorcan and Aneha gave up, choosing to lie on the soft grass beside the patch of sweetgrass and white sage, the fragrant air soothing all his worries for now.

The gate opened and Lorcan cracked an eye open, thinking it was his mother, but no. It was Maeve. His sisters remained oblivious as Aneha braided flowers into his hair and Sadirah harvested sage and sweetgrass to dry in bundles and braids. Lorcan sat up, already nudging Aneha behind him as Maeve curled her lip at her great-nieces and nephew. “Lorcan. I need to speak with you.”

Sadirah froze and glanced over her shoulder, wrapping an arm around Aneha as she moved over to her side. Lorcan sighed and stood, leaning down to kiss their heads before stalking out of the garden, leaving his sister’s handiwork alone even as Maeve gave it a disapproving look. She had never liked his hair, but Lorcan refused to cut it, it would go against his faith and people.

“What is it,” he asked once they were out of earshot from the garden.

His great-aunt sighed and picked at her nails, “How long will this continue?”

“What are you talking about.”

“You’ve been in Doranelle long enough. It’s time to come back home so I can show you how to run the business. You’re just a secretary.”

Lorcan curled his hands into fists and his nostrils flared in anger. “I have a law degree, Maeve. Articling is something every law graduate is required to do.”

“And you’ve had your fun. But the family needs you back home. There is no one for me to pass on my business—”

“I swear to the fucking Creator, don’t tell me that bullshit again. You were an investor, and your investment was paid in full a decade ago. Mom is the one who sacrificed everything for her empire and you have yet to release it. You know nothing about how to run the businesses, and I have no interest. Do you understand that I’m a lawyer? Like, I graduated law school. Like the way Elide is a lawyer.”

Maeve’s eyes flashed dangerously and Lorcan knew he would come to regret the words, but in the moment, he couldn’t seem to find it in himself to care. “That woman is no more fit to be a lawyer than you are. She—”

“Insult Elide to my face and we’ll see how that goes, Auntie.”

“She is handicapped—”

“The fuck did I just say? If you want me home, talk to me fairly and speak with your chest.  Elide has worked harder than anyone I know to get to where she is, not that you would understand that. I have half a mind to uninvite you to the wedding, but I won’t. Stay away from my family, Maeve,” he spat. Lorcan looked her  up and down with a disgusted expression and shook his head, scoffing as he stormed away, too angry to begin thinking of the consequences.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Elide had just come out of the house from the quiet greenhouse when she’d heard terse voices arguing around the corner. Not wanting to interrupt anything, Elide stayed still, close enough to hear everything Lorcan had said. Something in her chest had tightened to hear Maeve insult her like that and then to have Lorcan defend her like that.

She waited another minute before walking out, leveling Maeve with a cold stare as she moved to follow Lorcan.

Only, she couldn’t find him and settled on leaving him alone to cool off. Elide sat on a bench overlooking an ocean cove and opened her book again, wrapping her cardigan further around her without taking her eyes off the page.

Fifteen minutes later, someone cleared their throat and she looked up, seeing Vaughan standing a few metres away. “Oh. Hello, Vaughan.”

“Hi, Elide. I’m sorry that we weren’t more accommodating yesterday. I was wondering if you’d like to go on a quick hike – a forest walk, really.”

Elide internalized her hesitation and nodded, “Sure.”

Vaughan nodded once and they were off, strolling along the cliff’s edge until they reached the trees. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

The man shrugged, “I’d like to get to know you better. Lorcan and I grew up together.”

Elide nodded, “Aelin told me you were cousins. Did you two grow up here?”

He barked a laugh and shook his head, “Oh, lords above, no. No, um, my parents weren’t… the best of parents and Odette took me in as a toddler so I consider her to be my mom and she sees me as a son. We lived on the Ozuye reserve on the mainland. Did Lorcan not tell you?”

She shook her head, the sun flickering through the canopy of pine trees, “No, he doesn’t talk about his childhood often.”

“Ah, well. His father was abusive and hit us all regularly. Lorcan suffered the worst of it,” his voice hitched and he cleared his throat before continuing, “I was smaller than him, so he would take my beatings and he could never stay in place while watching our mother be hurt.”

Elide’s heart clenched and she found herself saying slowly: “My guardian beat me.”

“They did?”

She swallowed past her tight throat. She had never been more keenly aware of her ankle right now. “My uncle. My parents died when I was young and he was given full custody.” The words died on the tip of her tongue and she couldn’t share with him the story of her ankle, not now, not with Vaughan. “What happened to the father?”

“He left after Odette got pregnant with the girls. Never saw or heard from him again. Odette began her first business and then the next and soon enough we were moving.”

They fell quiet and walked in an eerie silence that Vaughan eventually broke. “I’ve never seen Lorcan with anyone other than Essar, so I’m sorry if any of us are being rude. How the two of you act is very different. We all thought he would marry her one day.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. He even proposed.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, but she said no. They were young and they thought they were in love. Essar just knew she wasn’t ready and couldn’t stay with him. So, they broke up a week before they left for college and hardly ever spoke again.”

“Oh. That’s…” Elide trailed off as the path took them to yet another cliff, the water blue and sparkling ten metres below. “It’s beautiful here.”

“We used to come up here and cliff jump all the time.”

Elide’s eyes widened and she peered over the edge, a shiver running through her at the menacing rocks that appeared beneath the surface and the waves that slammed themselves against the rock face. “How did you not die?”

Vaughan laughed, “Run and shoot for distance. Maybe throw up a prayer beforehand.”

Elide chuckled and they sat on the edge, watching a pod of orcas circling a rock island, hunting for food. Eagles circled above in the sky and swooped in to clean off whatever the killer whales had left after the frenzy.

Vaughan stood and helped her up, “I should probably get you back. Wouldn’t want to worry your betrothed.” He winked and smirked as she attempted to smile, hating the guilt coiling in her gut.

When they got back, they found Lorcan at the woodpile, wearing a precariously cut tank top as he aggressively chopped wood, earbuds in. Vaughan made a face, “I’ll let you handle that.”

Elide laughed, “So gracious.” With a little salute, Vaughan sauntered off and Elide turned back to Lorcan who hadn’t even noticed anyone. His long hair was twisted in a loose braid and with every fall of the axe, a flower fell from it. Elide was transfixed by the sight, a filling warmth pooling low in her belly as she watched the cotton material of his top stick to his chest, enjoying the sight far too much.

She was a busy woman and hardly had time for that but when Lorcan looked like… a god, she couldn’t help but entertain the idea before she felt her cheeks flush and she quickly walked away from the scene.

Elide wasn’t blind or stupid either, obviously she’d seen how good he looked over the past two years. It’s not your fault, she told herself, he wears all those… fitted suits and likes to roll up the sleeves of his shirts and he has all those tattoos…  honestly, fuck him for having sexy forearms.

Her cheeks were still bright red as she slipped into their room, walking straight into the bathroom and turning on the shower. As she waited for the water to warm up, she walked to the window, opening them and pushing them as far out as they would go to cool her face.

There was a dull, repetitive chopping sound and she looked down to see that Lorcan was almost directly beneath her, the blade of the axe flashing in the sun as he raised it and brought it down again. She didn’t know that Maeve’s comments had angered him this much. The black ink on his arms that creeped under his top to cover his back seemed to capture the sunlight that made his copper skin glow.

Before she could get too distracted by the sight of him, again, Elide stood up straight and undressed to enter the shower, resting her forehead against the tiled wall as she cursed everything and everyone.

She was in such deep, unending shit.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Music set on the highest possible volume, Lorcan cut firewood until his shoulders burned and his chest heaved, his lungs greedily searching for air. He let the axe fall to the ground with a heavy thump and used the hem of his shirt to wipe his brow. The braid that Aneha had made was coming undone, flowers lying crushed on the ground around him and chunks of hair falling free from the constraints.

Lorcan didn’t bother to fix it as he stalked towards the house in need of a shower. Usually, he could exercise massive amounts of self restraint, but somehow Maeve pushed every button possible until he exploded. He didn’t see her as he moved through the house and figured she’d slinked back to the guesthouse she insisted on occupying every time she visited. 

His earbuds were still in and he nodded in passing to the boys who were in the living room, playing some video game. Maybe he’d join them later.

Tapping his fingers against his thigh to the Dead Kennedys’ Too Drunk To Fuck, he entered his room, closing the door behind him and shucking his shirt off to the floor.

He went out to the balcony, flinging himself down on one of the chairs and slinging an arm over his eyes. Lorcan basked in the sun’s rays until it became too hot and he stood up, his music still playing far too loudly as he walked inside and dropped his shorts, tossing them onto the dresser as he turned to the bathroom, completely oblivious to everything. He could’ve sworn he heard something so he turned around, seeing nothing and walking backwards.

Suddenly, something rammed into his back and he whirled, catching whatever it was as they went down.

They fell to the floor and he looked down just as Elide, a very naked and wet Elide, looked up.

They both yelled and jumped away from each other as Elide held her arm over her chest and crossed her legs, “Why are you naked?!”

“Why are you wet?!” Lorcan yelled back, holding his hands in front of his groin.

“Don’t look at me,” she hissed, not moving until he turned and she hastily grabbed a towel from the armoire. Lorcan’s phone had fallen during their abrupt greeting and he bent down to get while Elide yelled again, “Anneith below, can you not?! I can see everything.”

He quickly changed positions and tugged his shorts on, his face bright red as he turned and she demanded, "Explain yourself.”

“I didn’t see you! I was outside chopping wood,” he said, looking anywhere but his boss in a towel, skin gleaming.

“You didn’t hear me?”

“I was listening to music, princess. Why did you jump me?”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, “I did not jump you. Well, I didn’t mean to. I forgot a towel after my shower and you were just there.”

Lorcan looked down at her suspiciously, “Were you trying to seduce me?”

She rolled her eyes, “Please. Don’t flatter yourself, it’s not cute.”

He smiled cockily, raising his hands, “It’s fine, you know. I get it, I’m sweaty, half-naked, you saw me chopping wood and it made you feel some type of way.”

“You stink. Go take a shower.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Elide just rolled her eyes again as he walked to the bathroom, stopping at the door and looking over his shoulder at her, “Don’t take this the wrong way…” her back was turned to him and he saw her tattoo, a delicate line of script written down her spine, with a mountain range on her right shoulder blade, a wyvern mid flight on her left. He fell silent, unable to form words.

“What?”

“You’re a very beautiful woman, Elide.”

“Shut up,” she said, though when she glanced back at him, her lips pulled into a small grin.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Aelin and Nehemia were near tears after Elide recounted an adjusted version of her and Lorcan’s sudden and wet incident. She got along really well with the both of them and once she remembered that this wasn’t supposed to last, her chest grew tight and she needed to have a drink.

Odette booted Rowan, Vaughan, Connall, and Fenrys from her living room to the patio. They all smiled at Aelin and Nehemia, the bright grins dampening as they saw Elide. “Oh. Hey, Elide.”

She pretended not to notice it and ignored the pang in her chest again. “Hey.”

Vaughan broke the awkward silence by sprawling on the couch next to her, practically crushing her into the cushion with his frame. “Gods, I rule at gaming. You guys wish you had my skills.” That seemed to do the trick and the boys were quick to argue, dissolving into petty bickering.

Nehemia helped Elide push Vaughan off and reassured her, “Don’t worry – they’re always like this.”

“The first few months were unbearable,” Aelin grumbled, scowling at her boyfriend who remained oblivious. “We were all in the same dorm and they fought constantly.”

“What changed?”

“Please, don’t tell the story,” came another voice, deep and rumbling, and Lorcan came strolling out, in a pair of shorts and a band tee. He shoved Vaughan from the couch and sat next to Elide, nodding to her drink as he stretched his arms around the back of the couch, “Whatcha got there, princess?”

Elide rolled her eyes at the nickname, “Gin and ice. What’s this story?”

He groaned, dropping his head back. “I hate this story.” The boys chorused their agreement as Aelin exclaimed, moving to seat herself in Rowan’s lap. Everyone exchanged looks and scooted away from the affectionate couple.

“But I love this story.” Aelin pouted at him and Lorcan caved, waving his hand.

“Let’s hear it then.”

The afternoon bled into evening and then night, the sun setting and bathing Lorcan in golden and orange light. His arm had fallen down around her shoulders and she was tucked up into his side, his arm a welcome weight around her.

They had talked about everything, exchanging stories about everyone in rounds. It was Lorcan’s turn and they turned to Elide, waiting for something. Lorcan nudged her when she didn’t say anything, staring up at him in a soft silence. “El. Your turn.”

“Oh,” she sat up straighter, her side prickling at the loss of contact. He laughed quietly and pressed a kiss to the side of her head, tugging her back down. “A couple months before we got together, I was on this case and I fell asleep in the middle of the night in my office. I don’t even know why Lorcan was still there, but he woke me up and carried me to my car and drove me home.” Elide tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, running her finger over the rim of her copper mug. “And then he carried me to my apartment and put me to bed. It was really sweet and… nice.”

Elide was sure her cheeks were flushed as she grew warm and hid her face in Lorcan’s side as they teased him for going ‘soft’.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

When Elide yawned yet again, Lorcan stood up and picked her up, “Night, guys. Gotta get my girl to bed.” She smiled sleepily at ‘my girl’ and nuzzled closer to him, softly sighing into his neck as they said goodnight and he carried her through the house to their room, gently putting her on the bed. “Princess, where’s your pj’s?”

She didn’t open her eyes, pointing randomly, “Bag. Big one.”

Huffing a laugh, Lorcan opened her bag, pulling out a pair of sweats and crewneck with the logo from her university. As he moved back to her side, he commented, “Always thought you were a satin and lace nightie type of gal.”

Elide cracked open an eye. “You think about what I sleep in? That’s not very professional,” she teased him, a cheeky glint in her eyes as she sat up and took the clothes from him, her movements stuttering as his smile dropped and he took a too-large step back.

“There’s a lot of not professional things about this, Elide.”

Her face fell and she nodded, standing and moving to the bathroom without another word.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Walking out, she found him shirtless, sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. Elide padded over to him, hesitantly reaching out and resting her hand on his shoulder. “Are you ok?”

Lorcan laughed harshly and moved away from her hand, “Am I ok? What do you think, Elide? You’re blackmailing me and making me lie to my entire family.” He stood up and began pacing as she slowly sat, her hands in her lap. “And, the thing is, we aren’t even in the clear! I could go to fucking prison for you and ruin everything I’ve worked for.”

“I’m—”

“You don’t even seem to care,” he spat, glaring at her. “What, is this just another Monday for you? What is so bad in Terrasen that you can’t move back there?”

Her head was tilted down and she wiped her eyes, sniffling once. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Lorcan, but you’re not the only person who’s had a hard life.”

She felt so small sitting there, her vision blurring. So very small and alone.

The bed dipped as he sat down next to her and awkwardly wrapped an arm around her, nothing like when they were outside with his friends. Elide half-wondered what had changed and as reality crashed down around her, she stood like his touch burned her and moved without word to her side, crawling in and turning on her side away from him.

It had all been for show. 

Gods, she was an idiot.

+*+*+*+*+*+*

@mythicaitt @tinywolfofeyllwe @schmlip-scribble​ @the-regal-warrior​ @westofmoon @empire-of-wildfire @rhysands-highlady @city-of-fae @shyvioletcat @alifletcher2012 @tangledraysofsunshine @ttakeitbacknoww @tswaney17 @ourbooksuniverse @flora-and-fae @thesirenwashere e @queenofxhearts @maastrash @mynewdreamwasyou @superspiritfestival @yikesitsmaddie @flowerspringsea @queen-of-glass @sleeping-and-books s @b00kworm @bat-wing-rhys @poisonous00 @empress-ofbloodshed @feyrethedarklady @gorl-power @keshavomit @ifinallygavein let me know if you want to be added/removed from the tag list!

[for-ests]

Love It If We Made It: Oikawa Tooru x Reader (Part 1)

[ my masterlist ] Part 2

Warnings: angst, few mentions of death

Word count: 5, 105

Summary: You are Karasuno's volleyball manager, and when you tag along to their first match against Aoba Johsai, you reconnect with your childhood friend, Oikawa Tooru. A relationship soon develops, along with feelings that weren't present before. Problems soon arise though, because of his reputation, and your troubled past that he didn't know about. 

Everything happens for a reason.

That's what you always told yourself, realizing that one choice you made could lead to endless possibilities and situations you never thought you would find yourself in. It was far too easy to slip up, and let the world you had spent years creating turn to dust and fall between your finger tips.

You learned that the hard way, yet you were strong enough to pick yourself back up.

Joining the Karasuno Volleyball club as their manager came out of desperation on your end. In truth, it was a favor for your friend Kiyoko, who knew you were going through a tough time. When she explained the challenges, but emphasized that she couldn't do it all herself, you decided it was a good way to take your mind off things, while also helping others. Kiyoko was quiet, but it was her way of showing you she cared, by sharing her world with you and providing an outlet.

You needed something to do. Something that you could focus your energy on to forget your ex-boyfriend, the boy that had broken your heart. Along with that emotional trauma, you also had to deal with a devastating death in your family, your younger brother. Within the blink of an eye, those two events had changed you as a person. For two months, you had locked yourself away in your room to deal with it. And those who cared for you had started to grow worried.

That's why you were beyond relieved when you first walked into that gym, bombarded by underclassmen that soon became your friends. They were so happy, they were so passionate. Their optimistic nature began to inspire you in other aspects of your life.

Knowing you had a rambunctious group of boys to take care of, all the while alongside your friend, the massive hole in your heart began to repair itself.

As the weeks passed, the bond between you and the Karasuno volleyball club grew stronger, and you found yourself falling back into your healthy habits. You were smiling again, you were laughing again.

"What are you thinking about Y/N?" Hinata surprised you suddenly with a question. He had practically teleported to your side so quickly that you jumped.

"Oh!" You laughed, looking down at him with a smile to mask the once nostalgic expression that had graced your face. "I'm just really proud of you guys for making it this far."

The two of you stared down at the polished wood floors, the rows of stands, and the many, many schools that were preparing their fan sections for their upcoming games. It was the fall tournament, and the boys had won their first couple games—but now they were going to face an strong opponent- Aoba Johsai.

"Not you guys, it's us." Hinata said, conviction heavy within his tone. "We couldn't have done this without you."

A chuckle escaped your lips as you nudged him. "You're laying it on thick today."

Grinning, the orange-haired first year gave you a thumbs up. "I just want our Senpai to know that she's appreciated."

"-you have done a lot for us." Nishinoya joined in as the rest of the group caught up with you and Hinata.

All the boys had heard about your brother's accident. The trauma of it all was still looming over your head, threatening to take over your conscious at any moment. Perhaps the boys knew that being able to help and take care of them was a replacement for the family member you had lost. It felt good to be apart of a group again, with people who appreciated your time and efforts.

"Then I hope we win today." You made sure to use the inclusive pronouns. "So you didn't waste my time!"

"There she is!" Tanaka laughed a little too loudly. "Stop looking so nervous and keep making those jokes."

"I'm not nervous." You puffed your lip out, realizing the entire team had now surrounded you.

"You look really nervous." Kageyama finally spoke in monotone, seeming to deal with his own nerves in a completely different way.

"Okay fine." You grumbled. "I'm nervous."

The boys laughed.

"Why?" Kiyoko joined the huddle, looking concerned as she gazed at your face. You were trying really hard to remain calm.

Awkwardly twirling your hair between your finger tips, you tried to avoid locking eyes with anyone. "I don't want to put pressure on any of you-"

"Just tell us, it's okay Y/N." Suga's calm and reassuring voice whispered from behind you. The look in his eyes conveyed that he already knew what you were thinking, because that was also what was on his mind. This was your last year. Your last tournament. If you lost; it would be over.

"I really need you guys to win." You said. "Because I don't want this to be our last game."

It was true, when you thought about it for long enough, the threat of your time in the Karasuno volleyball club could be over in an instant.

Kiyoko gave your hand a reassuring squeeze, knowing you had grown to love the sport, and it's players, as much as she had. This moment was bittersweet.

"We will try our best, Y/N." Hinata said without his usual smile. Whenever that happened, you knew he was serious.

A brief moment of silence hung over the group, as if their situation had finally sank in.

You finally lifted your head to meet everyone's gaze. "Thank you all, really. Being apart of this team has helped me more than I can explain."

All of the boys replied instantly, more than happy that you were there with them. You could tell you meant a lot to them. Well, except with Tsukishima— but you knew you would eventually get there.

"Alright everyone, let's get to work." Coach Ukai encouraged as the tender moment faded. "We can't disappoint our managers."

He nodded at you, and you smiled back. When you really wanted to, you were a great pep talker.

"Now, Use your looks to distract our opponents!" Tanaka teased as he walked past you. Teasingly, you stuck your foot out to try and trip him- but his fast reflexes allowed him to casually step over it.

"Nice try!" He boasted.

Giggling from the interaction, you and Kiyoko crossed the volleyball court and to the coaching staff benches.

"Third years now have the ability to participate in the spring tournaments." Kiyoko said as the guys wandered off to begin warm-ups. "So if you want to, we can come back next semester."

"Really?" You breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God."

"I could tell you were getting sentimental."

Feigning discomfort, you slumped next to her dramatically. "Knowing that beforehand would have been nice. I just embarrassed myself in front of the team."

"I think they needed to hear that from you." She said with honesty.

The genuine expression she wore warmed your heart. You and Kiyoko were incredibly different, yet incredibly similar. You always appreciated the time you spent with her, she was an important friend.

Your eyes drifted to the opposite side of the net. The team still hadn't arrived for warm-ups.

"We're playing Aoba Johsai right?" You asked, eyes searching the gym for their supposed school colors.

"Yes." Kiyoko had already immersed herself with writing down notes on her clipboard.

The name Aoba Johsai felt so familiar, as if you knew someone who attended that high school. Yet, you couldn't quite put a finger on it.

Though you were well-known at Karasuno, you were unsure about other high schools in the area. You weren't the type of girl to care about people you didn't interact with on a daily basis, even if you were considered popular.

You just went about your days trying to be kind, and trying to make a name for yourself. The last thing you wanted to be known for was what happened earlier in the year. You didn't want to be pitied.

But sometimes, the people from your past are the only ones that can heal you. Sometimes, it's better to reflect and appreciate everything that happened, even if it hurts.

Everything happens for a reason. Even if that reason doesn't seem clear at first glance.

The gym doors squeaked open, and in waltzed Karasuno's opponent- Aoba Johsai.

Though only a portion of the fan section had arrived, excited cheers sounded from the stands. You scowled, wishing your classmates had come to support your team. It definitely would have had an effect on the players, since half of them loved praise and affection.

Starting from the bottom already put you at a disadvantage. Unlike your opponents, Karasuno had a reputation to build back up. Every game counted. Every game mattered.

With that thought in mind, you had lost focus through all the noise. You could feel your nerves creeping back, threatening to overtake your smile, one that was needed as a morale booster for your players.

"Look pretty." Kiyoko teased, mocking Tanaka's ridiculous suggestion. Not every boy got worked up about girl managers with good looks like him and Nishinoya.

But still, out of habit, you ran a hand through your hair and flipped it behind your shoulders. Though you weren't the star of the show, you could still feel eyes on your back.

You needed to keep your composure. Because of her extended time as the volleyball club manager, Kiyoko has perfected her posture.

"I'm going to get some water." You whispered, standing up from the bench. That would definitely be the best option since your throat was starting to tighten.

Walking quickly, you reached the shared water table that was provided to both teams. A great plus when participating in tournaments.

Out of curiosity, as you grabbed a water bottle and took a sip, your eyes drifted to the other side of the net, where you were met with a striking, familiar, set of deep brown eyes.

For a moment that seemed to stretch past time limitations, you stood frozen in place.

"Tooru?" You whispered, voice drowned out by the cheering and movements of the players on court.

Your heart fluttered at the sight of him. It had been years since you parted ways.

Oikawa had been staring at you before you realized it was him. His look of astonishment quickly switched to one of wonder once he realized your lips had formed his name. "Y/N?" He mouthed back, flashing his notoriously handsome smile.

Without thinking, you crossed the threshold to the other side of the court.

"Oh my god-" You managed to choke, stopping abruptly in front of his towering figure. "I never thought..."

His expression wavered, as if it was begging you to follow through with the natural actions that filled your mind.

As if you had done it the day before, you threw your arms around his neck and pulled him down for a tight embrace. For the first time in a long time, you didn't care what anyone else thought about your actions.

"Hi again." He chuckled at how rash you had become, knowing you must have been overwhelmed to see him with how openly you were showing your emotions. Curling his arms around your torso, Oikawa chuckled in your ear. "You look great."

You pulled away, studying the changes he had made to his appearance. He had grown into his stalking height, one that he used to get teased for. His hair was silkier, his eyes wiser.  "So do you!"

The boy's touch lingered. "Wow." He breathed, short on words. "I never thought I'd see you again, but I really hoped."

You met his piercing gaze, one that seemed to flicker across parts of your body that a normal friend would restrict themselves from staring.  "Me too."

Your excitement passed though, as soon as you realized that the eyes of both teams were on you. Darting your eyes away in embarrassment from your rash actions, you recognized another familiar face. The regret that had built up inside of you dissipated within an instant.

"Haijime!" You waved, beckoning him to come closer.

"Hi, Y/N." He smiled, also bending down to give you a friendly hug. A hug that was much different than Oikawa's.

Teasingly, you continued the conversation. "I see that you two are the same. Still obsessed with volleyball."

Oikawa rolled his eyes. "Duh, of course. But what's more surprising is that you're a volleyball manager?"

"Yeah, I never thought that would happen." Iwaizumi added. "We inspired you, didn't we?"

Grinning from ear to ear, you nodded, reflecting on the hours that you had practiced with them. Before you had moved, the three of you would spend hours at the gym. Joining the Karasuno volleyball club had rekindled your love for the sport. And the boys were surprised that you had so much previous knowledge, which was now obvious that it had come from Oikawa.

Though what saddened you was that you had forgotten all about that. Your wholesome memories had been replaced with something far more grim.

"Hey!" The Aoba Johsai coach yelled from the opposite side. "Get back to business, all of you!"

The three of you turned and noticed that the rest of the team had stopped what they were doing, and seemed to be gossiping about your relationship to Oikawa and Iwaizumi. You immediately blushed, your contempt flooding right back in.

"Oi! don't look at her like that! She's not a piece of meat!" Oikawa pointed aggressively at his teammates, causing them to scatter and pretend they had been invested in their warm up practices the entire time.

"You're just mad that everyone is staring at her, and not you." Iwaizumi gave him a slap on the back for good measure. "Focus now."

Iwaizumi wandered off, leaving you one more brief moment with Oikawa. He glanced behind him, then back to you, looking somewhat regretful. It was most likely because the outcome of this game was going to be disappointing for one of you.

"Wait for me after the match, okay?" He asked, yet it came out more desperate. In a way that caused your heart to hammer in your chest. You really couldn't figure out if it was because of him, or if it was because of all the eyes you could still feel pointed towards you.

Throughout your younger years, Oikawa had boosted your confidence, and pushed you outside of your comfort zone. But things were slightly different now. Someone as outgoing as him could tell you had become timid, for reasons he didn't know yet, but hoped he would eventually figure out.

"Good luck, Tooru." You smiled. "You'll need it."

All he could do was flash you a devilish smile.

Oikawa had always been a flirt. It was somewhat comforting to know that his bubbly personality hadn't changed. At least on the surface. He had always commanded the attention of everyone in the room, which made your more reserved nature recoil in embarrassment.

But now, at least on the surface, you could handle it.

Because your parents moved all those years ago, you had never gained the opportunity to tell him how much he had meant to you. But as you watched his presence command the movements of his team, you realized that now was your chance.

Turning back to your teammates, who were all as equally surprised, you scratched the back of your neck awkwardly. "I'm sorry for interrupting." You apologized.

"Y/N, you know Oikawa?" Kageyama was the first one to ask.

"Y-yeah... we were friends in middle school, before I moved here."

"Interesting." Hinata dramatically set his chin in his hand, stroking it as if he had a goatee. "Y/N-chan knows both the kings!"

Kageyama immediately smacked the back of Hinata's head. "Shut up dumbass!" He scolded.

You stifled a laugh, encouraging them to continue on practicing, reassuring them that you were still crossing your fingers for Karasuno to win.

"Y/N took my suggestion a little too seriously." Tanaka sighed, watching you shyly make your way back over to the coaching bench.

"She's so popular and beautiful." Nishinoya added. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really wish I was Oikawa right now."

Feeling more pumped up than you had before, you shouted a cheer from the sideline. "Don't disappoint me boys!"

❀∙∘✿∘∙❀

Knowing that volleyball meant the world to Oikawa, you were somewhat relived that Aoba Johsai had won the match.

You would be there for your team in the end, but in this moment, you couldn't be there for Oikawa. You hadn't been for years. That's why you were relived, knowing you couldn't stand to see him upset.

"Don't look at me like that." He teased.

"Like what?" You deadpanned, trying hard to remain upset with him, since he had just ruined Karasuno's chance at participating in the fall nationals.

"Like you're trying to hate me. Because I know you can't."

Finally cracking a smile, you averted your gaze with embarrassment. "You're right."

Oikawa instinctively stepped closer. The proximity caused your heart to pound in your chest, surprisingly because you had never felt like this with him before.

"Even if we lost, I still would have felt that I won." The boy didn't need to explain what he was referring to, because you knew it was about you. It was because you were in his life again.

Trying to remain calm, you scrunched your nose. "Now you're laying it on thick."

Seeming to accept the challenge, Oikawa continued with his flirtations. "I find it strange that I usually get everything I want, but I somehow never got you." The third year laughed sadly, staring up at the pale blue sky. He had always hoped to see you again, but he had never expected it to be in this way.

"You don't even know me anymore." You said, not intending for your words to come out so harshly.

You were right. Oikawa hated it, but you were. And for some reason it made you that much more attractive. Personality wise, and looks wise. Your maturated appearance didn't help his thoughts from wandering.

He had missed your presence more than he had realized. Knowing that you were going to be in his life again gave him a strange sense of hope. It seemed that he had been holding onto them at dream since you parted ways at the end of junior high.

Your parents moved away, taking you along with them. Since your childhood friend was no longer your neighbor and you didn't go to the same high school, your friendship prematurely ended.

Oikawa wish he had tried harder to keep contact, but something told him you might be better off without him. He was going through his own troubles, and needed to focus on himself.

"I should have called you, or something... I don't know." Oikawa admitted. Though it had been years, he still felt comfortable enough around you to speak his mind.

You were the only girl he could ever do that with. He had searched far and wide to replace you, but he always ended up empty handed. Perhaps he should have searched for you instead.

"It's okay." You assured, knowing that life had moved fast for the both of you. You would never hold a grudge against him for that, being young and naive, trying desperately to fit into your new environments. It also didn't help that neither if you had cellphones when you moved away, therefore making it practically impossible to keep in contact. "We were both busy."

Oikawa knew you were putting on an act, but it also seemed genuine. To him, you had always been confusing, your thoughts and emotions so complex that it frightened him. Girls like you had always been hard to find. Ones that were able to explain their resonating so well that it caused them to reflect on their own actions and behaviors. You had always kept Oikawa in check.

But right now, the spirit that he had grown to love was barely visible. He could tell you were happy to see him, but something inside you had been wounded. Whatever it was, Oikawa could tell you were hurting. And every fiber in his being wanted to fix it.

"What happened to you, Y/N?" He asked suddenly, the look in his eyes convincing you that you had done a terrible job concealing your emotions.

Averting your gaze, you shifted awkwardly on your toes. "A lot has happened, Tooru. Too much to explain now."

You could hear the boys loading into the bus, some of them shouting your name in reminder to hurry up your conversation. You glanced back and saw that Kiyoko was waiting outside the vehicle for your return.

Smiling to dispel the haunting memories, you continued. "I would rather hear about you for now. You must be really happy that you won."

"I worked hard...I worked my ass off for years to get where I am today." He kicked a rock across the cement sidewalk. "Watching Kageyama play so well helped me realize that I had been slacking. I guess I forgot what that feels like."

"But?" You pushed him to continue.

Oikawa grimaced, and for a moment, you wished you hadn't asked that question. "Our next opponent will be harder."

It was true. Oikawa had worked hard all his life. He hadn't been blessed with raw talent like his underclassmen Kageyama, but he followed his dream, he had followed his heart.

For some reason though, as he stared at your glowering expression, he began to second guess himself. Maybe he had been doing it wrong.

"Don't give up then." You said, voice wavering with conviction that surprised him. "Whether you were born with it or not, you still have talent. There's still ways to utilize that after High-school. If you really love volleyball then you will continue."

Oikawa's eyes widened.

"This is strange coming from you, who's been rubbing off on you?"

You chuckled. "Nobody. I just know what to say to you."

You were right again. You encouraged him in the most perfect way, but you never praised him like the others. Oikawa's mother always told him to never accept too much praise, and to never get too full of himself.

You were real. You weren't fake like the other girls who only fawned over him for his looks. He would have preferred you to watch him from the stands with genuine interest for the sport, unlike the other girls who were only there for him.

Why?

Because it was the truth. And it was normal. People who work hard to get to a certain point, stop once they reach it. But that's not what he had done. He kept trying. The boy tried harder than he needed to become the best.

No matter what anyone said, Oikawa knew he had to keep trying. He couldn't let his pride get the best of him like it had in the match against Karasuno.

Just by looking his way, he knew what you were thinking. Only a girl as special as you could make him realize that. A girl that had known him from the beginning.

He laughed at first, causing your eyes to drift towards him. You didn't seem surprised, instead, you were calm. "Well, I'm glad that hasn't changed."

You smiled as your hair rippled to the side from a gust of wind. "I missed you, Tooru." The tone of your voice was filled with hope, directly asking him to make the first move, and to not let you leave without a promise to see you again.

"I think it's finally time that you gave me your number." Oikawa held his phone out for you. You tried desperately to hide the blush that was creeping along your face. Everything he did was flirtatious, yet in a way that was childish and made you remember how you used to play with him back in primary school.

After typing in your number, you handed him back his phone. The entire time, you could feel his eyes on you, studying, lingering.

"Well," you apologized, gesturing behind you. "I can't keep them waiting."

"Go ahead, Y/N. I'll text you."

"I'll be waiting." You whispered, barely audible enough for him to hear. Turning on your heels and jogging towards the bus, you glanced behind your shoulder one last time, as if you were afraid to let him escape your gaze. Times were different now, you would see him again. You were sure of it.

You flashed him a smile.

Oikawa shoved his hands in his pockets. You would never know that you had already won over his heart. You had all those years ago, and your presence within him had remained.

Then you left, hoping and praying that he would keep his promise. Hoping and praying that nobody had taken your place.

True love wasn't real, you knew that well enough from your past experiences. Yet deep down, your heart claimed differently. You could anticipate what was going to happen.

❀∙∘✿∘∙❀

Four months ago

Your hands trembled.

Your thoughts raced as you swung your legs over the railing of your balcony, gazing at the stars that twinkled brightly in the sky.

Your bare feet brushed the plants underneath you, fresh dew gathering in their crevices.

You managed to smile.

It was a quiet and beautiful night. The moon illuminated the oak trees so mysteriously, it would have intrigued you on any other night.

But right now...

All you wanted to do was forget him.

It had been almost a month since the breakup, but you couldn't seem to forgive his iniquitous mistake.

You were a relatively calm and understanding person. But his betrayal had left you in shambles. Haruki was his name, and he had cheated on you with a girl in a different class- who knew that he was your boyfriend. A girl that hated you for no reason, only because you had something that she did not.

You had never been in a situation like this. Nobody had ever taught you how to handle the feelings that came along after heartbreak.

Your supposed first love had cheated on you, yet you didn't know how to respond. How could love just... disappear? Did he ever even love you? Had you wasted the last two years of your life on him?

You were bitter, angry, and confused. Time was supposed to heal wounds, and it did, but only to an extent.

You were a completely different person now. Some would say stronger, but some would say weaker. You had been out of touch for quite some time. And now you were finally sinking back into reality.

But what made you the most addled, was that you couldn't remember his face. It made you so angry to realize that you could forget a face you had studied for so long. Your stomach felt sick as you tried to remember the color of eyes, the taste of his lips, his smile, anything... But you were blank. You had already started to forget about the man you loved, but with good reason.

You had been so lost. And that's why it hurt so bad. You had been vulnerable, you had been taken advantage of. You felt sick knowing you didn't break from his spell on your own.

You winced, partly from the nighttime breeze, and partly from the cold hard truth. Haruki was the liar. But somehow you felt like it was your fault. How could you ever trust someone like that again? You had fallen head over heels for someone who was way under your league, pouring all of your love into the relationship.

You had tried your best to make it work, you had given him everything. All of your time, all your emotions, and all of your body.

But it was never enough. Why were you not enough?

You had made a fool of yourself. You had begged him to stay, because you felt guilty about letting him take your virginity. Haruki had cheated on you, thrown your love away like it was nothing, and left without seeming to care. But the thing was, you still cared.

You could only hold yourself together around your family and friends. But when you were alone like this, your mind drifted away.

You regretted the decisions you'd made with him. You really did. You had blindly followed a boy into a destructive relationship, thinking that he could be a man. Thinking you could fix him, and thinking you could make him better.

But if someone doesn't want to change, they won't. It hurt like hell. Because that's when you realized that people always lie.

Your love was wasted on a boy who didn't deserve it.

Guilt crept into your subconscious. Though you didn't want to admit it, you felt that you had disappointed whoever you were going to end up with in the future.

You leaned against the metallic railing, ears perking up at the undertone of cicadas. They sang mindlessly into the night, like you once had.

It wasn't meant to be, and that was alright. Yet it was still painful, the memories causing tears to prick at your eyelids. You felt helpless at times like this. Why couldn't you just forget about everything and move on?

You desperately wanted to, but deep inside, something was urging for you to never forget this pain. You had spent countless nights in this very position, staring up at the stars, cloudy sky or clear.

And it finally spelled out for you. You were never meant to brush these emotions aside. Instead, you urged to hold them close to your heart. You would never forget your mistake, so you would never make it again.

You had learned, you were stronger. You were different.

You had to put on a show for far too long, masking the pain Haruki had caused you until it was too late.

Now your broken heart was already healing.

Looking up into the black sky once again, you smiled for the first time in days. Tomorrow you would be looking at the same stars through a different lens.

You were changing, while he would stay the same. That was the greatest revenge of all. You would live on without him.

That was what you had convinced yourself until your mother called you the next day, and relayed the devastating news that your brother had died in an accident.

And just like that, two of the most important people in your life were gone.

And back into the spiral you fell.

❀∙∘✿∘∙❀

Tag list!! lmk if you want to be added for the next part <33

@ardorwrites-hq-mha​ @cuddlyasahi​ @vventure @writeiolite​ @allywritesimagines​ @benewol​

[iohourtime]

Kiokuya (The Memory Eraser) Review - With Spoilers

Since I read the book, sort of followed the filming progress, and read a bunch of interviews (that all sounded the same after a while), I should finish off by writing a review for the movie itself! 

Thanks to the pandemic, I was stuck at home watching Netflix for 7 months, so I’ve watched all sorts of movies & TV; sadly most are in the average to crappy category. To me, Kiokuya was probably in the average to slightly above average category. In other words, there are elements I like and there are things I feel the movie can improve on.

The review is a bit long since apparently I have a lot of thoughts about the script.😅 I pretty much summed up my thoughts in the “theme” section. If you are interested in the book / movie differences & things from the DVD visual commentary, I included those in the script & characters section. (Movie Walker included highlights from the visual commentary here.) . If you want to discuss the movie but don’t want to put spoilers on Twitter, leave me a message.

Theme:

The movie’s main theme is obviously about memory. If a memory is making your life miserable, or even stopping you from living, is it better to erase it? Or do all memories, even bad ones, shape you as a human? If someone’s memory of you is gone, are you killed in their minds? If you think someone is better off forgetting you, do you have the right to ask Kiokuya to erase their memories of you? Are the memories gone forever? If you have the power to erase someone’s memory, what are your responsibilities? And to some extent, what are the criteria to evaluate each request and what due diligence should you do before you accept this task? These were the questions the movie wanted you to ask. You know because the movie kept hitting you on the head through the dialogue! That’s probably my main complaint about the movie.

I didn’t study film so I don’t know the theories, but I think being heavy handed at telling you what you should be thinking is like listening to a textbook; it robs the audience of the chance to experience and internalize what they saw, and as a result, they are less able to connect emotionally to the film. That’s not to say people are not moved by the movie and empathize with the characters. I feel that it had more to do with the actors than the script though.

I think the cinematography was generally nice. I liked how they used the drone shots to film the beautiful Hiroshima scenery. The sunset scene was beautiful. The music did not seem intrusive. Other than that, I’m not sure I have more to say. (Fine. Yamada looked good in the plaid shirts and his hair was on point.)

Script vs Book: (Spoiler alert from here on!)

Kiokuya, the movie, was an adaptation of a “horror” novel of the same name. Although there were horror elements, mostly because Kiokuya was kind of a shadowy figure, even the novel itself was focused more on humanity. The original story was divided into 4 parts; the first 3 parts were really 3 separate short stories that explored different reasons people have for wanting their memories erased. The final part was about Kiokuya herself. The Ryoichi character simply served as a bridge between the stories. Here’s a brief description:

Kyoko - A while ago, she was attacked in a dark alley but was saved at the last minute. Even though she was unharmed, she developed a crippling phobia of the dark, so she locked herself inside her home at night and was not able to live a normal life. She and Ryoichi were kinda but not really dating, and Ryoichi, being a typical guy, figured he could fix her. Kyoko tried everything but as a last resort, she asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of the attack. Since her relation with Ryoichi was based almost entirely on overcoming the phobia, she forgot him too. Through this incident, Ryoichi remembered how Maki had her memory erased when she was 5 or 6 - she saw her mom confessing to her dad that she had an affair with her uncle. Kiokuya might have erased Maki’s memory a second time when she was 10-12. Finally, he realized he “forgot” about his year-long investigation of Kiokuya with Takahara & others. It seemed like he was doggedly pursuing Kiokuya because he felt violated more than his undying love for Kyoko. In his own words, he didn’t try to rebuild his relationship with Kyoko again after she forgot about him. There was nothing stopping him, so his feelings towards Kyoko were not that deep.

Takahara - He was a 30 year old ikemen lawyer, though like the movie, he was dying. The chapter focused on his touching friendship with his assistant. Takahara was also close with Nanami, a suicidal, 17-year-old daughter of a client who became very attached to him. When Takahara found out Nanami planned to kill herself after he died, he asked Kiokuya to erase her memory of him so that she would live on.

Misao & Kaname - They were childhood friends and Misao started crushing on Kaname. She confessed and was rejected, but after that, they were not able to be friends like before. She figured if she erased everything about Kaname, they may be able to start over and become friends again without the awkward feelings.

Maki - Ryoichi thought Maki was looking for Kiokuya to erase some unpleasant memories. Then he found out she was Kiokuya, who inherited her ability from her grandfather. In the end, Maki confessed to the burden of being Kiokuya and Ryoichi told her he would support her and that she didn’t have to do it alone. Maki decided to erase anything Kiokuya related in his memory, but their friendship remained intact. Oh, Maki was 17 in the book and also had a crush on Ryoichi. She erased his memories many times before. Like in the movie, she also would like Ryoichi to love her just once, although he never ever saw her as anyone other than his annoying little sister. 😅

The director of the movie, Hirakawa Yuichi, also wrote or co-wrote the script. While the movie stuck to the themes of the novel, the motivations were completely different. Kyoko and Misao were both rape victims, Takahara now wanted to protect his young daughter from the sadness of his death, and Maki was herself kidnapped by a psychopath when she was a kid. I guess Hirakawa needed to pump up the drama and felt the stakes were not high enough for a 2 hour movie? There is always some uneasiness with using rape and trauma to move the story along. I guess there is a difference between this and the usual example of “fridging a female character”, i.e. kill a love interest of the hero to motivate him on some journey. Ryoichi was motivated by being erased and he actually gradually realized he should not push for restoring Kyoko’s memories if it was her wish. He only found out what happened to her at the end of the movie. Considering their relationship in the movie was a lot more serious, they couldn’t really use the phobia of darkness reason. However, it would also take something really big for Kyoko to want her memory erased while not talking to Ryoichi beforehand. Anyway, I really don’t see a way out of this.

For Misao though, I didn’t think they needed to make her a victim of the same serial rapist, especially when they use the same reason as the book for erasing Kaname. I suppose they need to explain why Nanami (and later Ryoichi) was looking into them? But they could just have the doctor referred the case (who appeared to be breaking doctor-patient confidentiality?! Just me?) In fact, the whole Misao / Kaname storyline didn’t really do much other than allowing Ryoichi to find out from Kaname that Kiokuya was a young girl.

Maki’s childhood trauma was also a bit excessive. I can’t see it as anything other than to get Ryoichi out to Hiroshima to talk to Grandpa. While finding out mom was “dealing with” uncle would be traumatic for a young child, it might not be dramatic enough for a movie.

Ryoichi & Maki’s origins were also changed. They were now raised in Hiroshima and moved to Tokyo to attend university. The only reason was to place Grandpa-Kiokuya in Hiroshima after the bombing. While I liked the grandpa scene, was it necessary? They already covered the “Kiokuya after WWII” with the interview with the elderly woman. I think they could still keep Grandpa, since he was Kiokuya (and ironically suffering from Alzheimer’s) but maybe just skip the elderly woman part and use those minutes to build Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship! 

Upgrading Ryoichi & Kyoko’s relationship to being engaged gave him more incentive to look for Kiokuya, but all we got to see was 1 proposal scene and some snapshots, which made it harder for us to understand the loss Ryoichi experienced when Kyoko forgot him. Ultimately, I feel that more time should be given to the “before” times. They don’t even need that much. If done effectively like the movie Searching with John Cho, 5 minutes or so of clips would be enough to get us to care more. I’m not saying people won’t care, but it’s true that there are people who didn’t quite feel it. Yamada basically had to sell it with longing looks at Renbutsu, so how deeply you feel for them depends on whether you buy it or not.

Takahara’s story might have been changed because of who they cast. Also, Takahara & Nanami’s relationship in the book was kinda weird, considering Nanami actually loved him and she was 17 while he was 30. I definitely cannot agree with how Movie Takahara wanted to erase his daughter’s memory to spare her the pain of losing him. It reminded me of that Black Mirror episode where the mom put in a blocker to shield her daughter from bad things. It ended up messing up the girl & broke their relationship. Young children are resilient and the sadness would eventually change into something else, which would shape their characters. Also, just because she forgot her birth father didn’t mean she would suddenly get along with her stepfather. I won’t even get into the whole consent thing. It was a good thing Maki did not follow through.

Less good was what Movie Maki did to Ryoichi & Kyoko though. When I found out Movie Ryoichi & Kyoko were engaged instead of “pre-dating” like in the book, I was quite worried they would have Movie Maki erase Ryoichi from Kyoko’s mind for selfish reasons. I was hoping that maybe he got erased by mistake, but unfortunately, the script did go with the jealousy angle, which made Maki extremely unsympathetic.

In the visual commentary, they said they rewrote the ending because it didn’t fit. Maki erased her entire existence from Ryoichi's mind as penance for what she did. (I think initially, they were going with the book ending where Maki just erased Kiokuya from his head.) In the end, the actual cut used in the movie was more ambiguous - they “left it to the audience” to decide how much Maki erased and whether Ryoichi & Kyoko got a second chance at happiness. (The director said it ended on a hopeful note. Take it how you want.)

It’s unclear if Movie Maki erased Ryoichi’s memories more than once, but Book Maki had done it many times. Even though Book Maki seemed more responsible with her powers and didn’t slip up like Movie Maki, she did wipe part of Ryoichi’s memories without his consent. Ryoichi said that she didn’t have to do this alone and she could lean on him, so why didn’t she? Also, losing all that memory got to have some long term effect on him, right? In the movie, it was worse because Maki took the “easy” way out by erasing herself. Yes, she was punishing herself, but shouldn’t the more courageous thing to do was to own up to what she had done and work for Ryoichi’s (& Kyoko’s) forgiveness?

Speaking of Ryoichi’s forgiveness, I actually saw some viewers calling Ryoichi a cad for telling Maki that he would always protect her and be by her side to protect her. Apparently they seemed to think he was in love with Maki and forgot all about Kyoko. Well, I think in that moment, there were 3 things going on: 1) Takahara told him that it was better to forgive and that there will be justice in other ways, 2) he understood why it was devastating to Kyoko to remember what happened and 3) Maki was like his little sister. His immediate desire to comfort his friend overrode the anger and betrayal he might have felt. Had Maki not erased his memory around 2 minutes after, who knew if they would have a more substantial talk? He didn’t even have a chance to talk to Kyoko. (I suspect Maki would have tried to “spare him” by erasing his relationship with Kyoko as well. He still ended up at the cafe because he could remember physically going there a lot.)

Overall, I think the movie was a bit unfocused due to some extraneous storylines and having too much exposition, which was a disservice to some of the characters. It failed to show how their relationships build, like Ryoichi & Takahara became buddies over what seemed like a week! I wish they trimmed a couple of the minor stories and used that time to go deeper on the main lines.

Characters / Actors:

Yoshimura Ryoichi (Yamada Ryosuke)

I was watching the movie and halfway through when it hit me… Yamada’s Ryoichi was… normal? I mean obviously quite good looking in the boy-next-door kind of way, but Ryoichi was a regular, run-of-the-mill university student, who was normally an optimistic and forgiving but happened to be dealing with heartbreak at the moment. Seriously, if you’ve watched Yamada’s other works, his characters are usually kind of comedic, sort of pathetic, occasionally brilliant, psychotic, or… non-human. (Very odd roles for a Johnny’s actor.) He probably has not been this normal since the 24Hr drama. He still cried a lot, so that’s familiar.

OK, let’s get back on topic. Since Book Ryoichi functioned more as a character that connects the short stories rather than a real character, I didn’t have hopes for the movie version. Surprisingly, Movie Ryoichi came across as a real person and I did care what happened to him. While we didn’t get to see how Ryoichi & Kyoko were in happier times, he was able to convey the longing and slight awkwardness in their interaction when he tried to talk to her after. Similarly, in the scene where he learned of Takahara’s death, you could tell what was going through his mind even though he said nothing. Same with the final “confrontation” with Maki. Even though he didn’t say much, his eyes conveyed the emotions subtly: the longing, shock, confusion, etc. Overall, he was quite subtle and natural. As the articles say, he managed to “suppress his aura” and played an average guy. I hope he can play more of these subtle types of roles in future. (It is unfortunate that a lot of people have preconceived notions about Johnny’s actors, to put it politely. It’s like the reverse of the “fan blinder” that we sometimes get accused of having.)

Now there are some discussions as to whether he overacted in the crying scenes. The main “crying” scenes were probably 1) confession to grandpa in Hiroshima, 2) in the rain, and 3) reading the letter. I’ve seen people say he overacted in either 1) or 2).

When I first watched the Hiroshima scene, I did feel that his crying may have been a bit much because I was watching the movie with just Japanese subtitles, so I missed an important detail: Ryoichi told his mom he was going to Hiroshima to confront his past. When you consider that Ryoichi had been carrying the guilt for “causing” Maki’s kidnapping for 15 years, it was totally reasonable for him to prostrate himself in front of Grandpa. He would also be relieved when Grandpa told him the statute of limitation was over and he should forgive himself. As an aside, according to the director in the visual commentary, Yamada cried in the first take of the scene. Hirakawa said “Aren’t you crying too much?” Yamada said “OK, I’ll do another take without crying.” However, when the Director was cutting the movie together, he suddenly saw Ryoichi’s mental journey and ended up using the first take because it was the logical conclusion to the closure he got.

In the rain scene, he just learned about Kyoko’s attack. Knowing how much hurt she endured and how he did nothing to support and comfort her, he was still in a state of shock when he got knocked down. Then the dam burst and he cried hysterically. That seemed quite reasonable to me. I was more shocked that nobody checked on the guy who fell on the pavement and was crying. Pedestrians were cold! So I don’t really understand the objection to that scene. Maybe they thought this was something that happened a while ago and/or he didn’t love Kyoko that much, so he wouldn’t be that emotional?

I don’t think people have issues with the letter scene? Narratively, it made the most sense since he was close with Takahara, who was literally speaking to him from the grave via the letter. Oh, they talked about filming the letter scene in the visual commentary. Yamada was just reading the letter in silence and they added in Takahara’s narration in post production. Since he wanted to save the emotional outburst for the real take, he did not dare to look at the letter during the rehearsal.

One last thing, Yamada and Yoshine spoke in Hiroshima-ben when they were talking amongst each other. I have horrible listening skills and while I think he used some slang or phrasing, his accent still seemed mostly Kanto. It’s like if I call a bunch of people “wankers” with a Canadian accent; it doesn’t make me sound English. Maybe someone can tell me just how well (or not) he did.

Kawai Maki (Yoshine Kyoko)

I have only watched Yoshine in the drama Stay Tuned and I liked her there. She played this airhead character who could be super annoying if the balance was off, yet she came across as likeable. I think she portrayed Maki very well in this movie. Of course, I knew she was Kiokuya going in, so even at the beginning, you could see some of her subtle reactions to the Kiokuya discussions. I really liked her chemistry with Yamada - they felt like they could have been lifelong friends. While she played the annoying little sister part quite well, you could also see the pain she felt when she had to make difficult choices like erasing Nanami’s memory. Throughout the movie, you could sense her regret for what she did to Ryoichi. Her emotions in the final scene were also very raw. While Maki’s characterization was problematic, Yoshine was really good at playing that character and you might even be sympathetic towards her. Also, I feel that her Hiroshima-ben might be more on point? Some people didn’t buy that she was in love with Ryoichi the whole time. I thought the flashbacks made it pretty clear but I’ve also read the book, so there’s that.

In the visual commentary, they were talking about their various acting styles. Yoshine said she carried her emotions with her even after the director shouted cut. So when she was shooting the last scene, she was still crying furiously afterwards. Yamada said she was like an acting monster - she could get right into the emotions even during the table read. It was funny how different she is from Yamada and Renbutsu. They are the flip-the-switch type - when the director yells cut, it was like they woke up from a dream into a different world. She also apologized to Yamada when they were watching the scene where she confessed to selfishly erasing Kyoko’s memory of Ryoichi.😅

Takahara Tomoaki (Sasaki Kuranosuke)

I have not seen Sasaki’s other projects, so I had no idea what to expect. His Takahara came  across as pretty charming, easy going, and playful, though you could feel his love for his daughter and the hard decision he had to make. He also had a natural chemistry with the other cast and was very believable. While I disagree with what Takahara wanted, Sasaki’s acting as Takahara made sense. I don’t know what more to say. It is probably expected since he is a veteran and is generally well regarded as an actor.

Sawada Kyoko (Renbutsu Misako)

I have only seen Renbutsu in Hagaren. I liked her character there. I also liked how Yamada decided to break the ice with her back then by asking if she has any friends. (She had more friends than him. 😅) To be honest, there wasn’t much for her to do in this movie, although I think she was believable as the very confused Kyoko. She was apprehensive about Ryoichi in the “after” scenes, who was honestly coming across too strong. I don’t think Ryoichi & Kyoko really had crackling sexual chemistry based on the proposal scene, but they seemed like a cute couple. They were pretty cute together in the behind-the-scenes featurette when they took the “dating photos”. I wish those dates were included in the movie.

Conclusion:

As you can see above, I have some general issues about the script but I think the actors elevated the story. The movie could have been better if it streamlined some of the storylines. Right now, it was trying to go for a deeper message but the stories themselves were a bit too superficial to accomplish that. I suppose the problem was that the original novel was more like an anthology of short stories dealing with memory, so it was hard to create a through line for a movie.

[crystalirises]

The Final Answer (36 Questions AU 8/13)

Eight part.

A BETTER VERSION

“I’m sorry you had a shitty childhood, Dream. I couldn't even imagine what it was like with... I hoped when he came here, he never found out who you were.” They both had settled onto Dream’s seat, Fundy perched on the edge as he stared down at Dream. His ears were pressed to the top of his head, his tail curled around the blonde as if to give him some semblance of comfort. He didn’t know what to say, his mouth opening and closing as he wondered what he could possibly do to change the situation. Dream murmured a string of incoherent words beneath his breath, words that Fundy couldn't understand. He leaned closer, wishing he could do something, anything to assure the blonde of... Fundy didn't know what. He just knew Dream needed him, needed a moment of his compassion and sympathy. For just this moment, Fundy let his anger ebb away. He understood where Dream was coming from. Sometimes parents manage to fuck up their kids in some form or another.

“Well, it didn’t matter when we moved to the Essempy. I haven’t thought about my first life in ages. Even when he came for the elections. He died never knowing who I was. I haven't let myself remember my old life. It’s been a while.” Dream held onto Fundy’s tail, petting it as if to cement himself to their current reality. He could feel Fundy at his side, his piercing gaze at the back of his head. His green eyes were glazed and vacant, lost to memories he thought he’d long forgotten. He recalls his father's laugh, the sound sending shivers down his spine. His father had a terrifying laugh, even if he was laughing at a miniscule joke it always came out as if he was losing it with every second that passed. He hated the sound, hated it ever since he was a kid. To hear it again... He trembled, the memory of his father's laughter all too recent. “It didn’t matter until... I didn't want it to matter but then… Then he... I tried to avoid the conflict, but it was only a matter of time before I was dragged into another war. For the record, I didn’t switch sides for whatever reason you might be thinking right now. Trust me on that, please.”

“I wouldn’t blame you for that, Dream… even if it was the answer.” Fundy couldn’t shake Dream’s answer, the details of a life far away from where they were now. He reached down, placing a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder. He smiled as Dream turned towards him, his mouth agape as if he was waking up from a nightmare. Fundy moved closer, nearly falling into the blonde’s lap. He let out an awkward laugh, fixing his position on the chair they were both on. “So… you died before? That means you have two lives left…”

“The first time was painful… If I tried hard enough, I can still hear the crack of bones as my body fell against the unforgiving ground.” Dream shivered, tugging Fundy’s bushy tail towards his chest like a lifeline. He leaned his against Fundy’s back, feeling Fundy’s warmth as he tried to keep himself cemented to reality. He let his eyes fall shut, embracing the small moment that the two of them were currently sharing. “You can see why Wilbur’s insistence on the drug van caused me to panic.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah.” Dream nuzzled deeper into the back of Fundy’s shirt, all too aware that he himself was still wearing one of Fundy’s orange sweaters. “But I know that doesn’t change the way I reacted.”

“You blew L’Manburg up twice.”

“I know.” He let out a tired sigh, the sound muffled by the shirt. “It was a horrible mess that devolved terribly over these past few years… Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had just let it go.”

“Do you think we would have met on better terms?” Fundy glanced down, his hands occupying themselves by pulling at a loose string on his shirt. His ears strained to hear Dream’s reply, barely catching the small ‘I don’t know’ that the man muttered underneath his breath. He let out an empty laugh, wondering if they would have ever met at all. “It’s weird to think about… a world where we never knew each other. A world where we never met. You wouldn’t have needed me… and I wouldn’t have needed you. Never fell in love.”

“I’m not sure I would like that world.” Dream snorted, wheezing a bit as he pulled away from Fundy’s shirt. He shook his head, choosing to lean his head on the back of the seat instead. Fundy’s tail was wagging a bit, not quite happy but at least it wasn’t raised as if he planned to run at any given moment. He hummed underneath his breath, content to spend a few more seconds with his husband like this. But they needed to finish the questions. He cleared his throat, “What’s your answer to the question?”

“The question… The question.” Fundy grinned, leaning against the back of the chair. He placed an arm to support his head, laughing as he thought about his own answer. “Well, the question really should be what wouldn’t I wish to change? I wish my mom didn’t swim off into fuck knows where. I wish my dad didn’t go crazy and blow up the country I was raised in. I wish the ghost of my dad didn’t cling to my every damn fucking second. There’s a lot I wish I could change, Dream. Guess both of our lives suck.”

“No wonder we got along.”

“That’s not very positive of you, Dream. We didn’t fall for each other’s trauma.” Fundy snickered, trying to shake off the hollow feeling in his chest at the mention of his father. “If I could change everything, I would ask to be born in a family that actually cared. A mother that didn’t run away. A father that didn’t prioritize everything but me. An uncle who isn’t exiled and another uncle who didn’t look at me as if he wanted to murder me.” Dream froze at the word ‘exiled’. Fundy didn’t quite hold that issue against him.

“I’m not going to apologize for that. He burnt George’s house to the ground, during a ceasefire.” He didn’t mean for it to come out as harshly as it had, but he couldn’t take it back the moment it escaped his lips. Fundy blinked, a startled look crossing his face before it quickly disappeared. Dream could only thank the deities that Fundy didn’t back away from him immediately. Dream swallowed down the need to defend himself. He had nothing to defend himself. He did what was right. “Do you hold that against me?”

“Dream…” Fundy pursed his lips together, wincing at how he could begin to answer the question. He’d never had the best relationship with Tommy, his uncle who was younger than he was. He couldn’t bring himself to admit the slight sliver of satisfaction he had felt when he heard Tubbo banish Tommy from New L’Manburg. He hated himself for feeling it, but he couldn’t help it. Not that it mattered since his father disappeared just as quickly as Tommy had. Of course. “We should move on to the next question.”

“Of course.” Dream quickly nodded, thinking back towards the list of questions Fundy had asked him on the first date. He groaned, recognizing what the next question was. Well, it wasn’t exactly a question but a command. Fundy straightened up, realizing at the same time what the next question was. A question where Dream’s previous answer would differ from the answer he would be saying now. “Question 11. ‘Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.’”

Fundy shook his head, turning his nose up in slight disappointment. He hated these questions. “You know everything about me, Dream. I mean, you’ve had a front seat to the ‘Miserable Life of Fundy’ ever since the first war began.” His life beforehand was insignificant, a horrible jumble of memories of the times where Wilbur would carry him from place to place. Wilbur could never bring himself to stay in one area for too long. He probably shouldn’t have settled down because the one time he did, he ended up dying.

“I’d love to hear it again…” Dream internally flinched at his own reply, hoping that Fundy didn’t take that personally― He sputtered, a fluff of fur smacking him on the face. He blinked, realizing that Fundy just… slapped him with his tail. He felt Fundy quivering next to him, a low snicker rising from the fox hybrid. His face must look ridiculously funny right now. Dream scowled halfheartedly, trying not to laugh at his husband’s strange antic. Deities he missed this. “Wha... What was that for?”

“I could see you regretting your words in your eyes, Dream. Pfft…” Fundy shook his head, his sharp teeth showing underneath the grin he wore. “I don’t mind telling it again. I’ve added a new chapter, after all.”

“A new chapter?”

“These past few weeks have been hectic.” They both laughed at that understatement. Fundy breathed in. He could do this again. He could talk about his life again, couldn’t he?

“Where to begin… My earliest memory was a cold wintry day, my arms wrapped around my father’s neck as he scoured through a desolate land of ice and snow. My second memory was of a dark forest filled with all sorts of… aggressive creatures.” Fundy cleared his thoughts, wishing he didn’t have to remember those glowing purple eyes that hunted him and his father down relentlessly. “My father was a traveler and my mother ran off… at least that’s what my father told me… Well, actually he told me fucked a salmon…”

He could almost hear the snap in Dream’s neck as the blonde turned to look at him. Yeah, he may not have added that part in his first answer. “ANYWAY, um… My father and I eventually found our way here to the Essempy where my uncle, Tommy, lived. I then lived in a drug van for a while before the whole war began. Somehow, I managed to get my father’s approval to join the war… not that he ever gave me my own uniform. Then, that thing with Eret and the duel… where you shot Tommy for a bunch of flimsy discs.”

He gave Dream a pointed glare at that, a show of anger on behalf of his uncle. “Then… we met. Had our first date. We started seeing each other in secret. Then the elections came and we made that promise about how our politics would never get in the way of what we had. Yeah, that lasted for a while. Then my father got exiled and I had to play spy for… years? I’ve forgotten how long Schlatt was president for… All I know is, we got married at some point before the recent war. Then… Then… Then…”

He took another breath to calm himself. He could do this. He tried to ignore the way Dream looked at him, as if he would shatter at any moment. “Then… The explosion where I had to watch my home get destroyed before my very eyes. I also had to watch my own dad get killed by the grandfather I didn’t know I had.”

He felt Dream’s hand on his tail, petting it as if to soothe him.

“Then as if the deities wanted to mock me, my dad came back as an amnesiac ghost who refuses to take responsibility for anything he’s done.” Fundy rolled his eyes at that, resentment rising in his chest.

“I’m sorry, Fundy.”

Fundy shook his head, “We began construction on New L’Manburg, hoping that this time nothing goes wrong, but it seems L’manburg is cursed or some shit because guess what happened next?”

Dream gulped, knowing that this was where he came in for the recent time in the story of Fundy’s life. “Imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning, enjoying my walk towards New L’Manburg, only to see an obsidian wall surrounding the country.” Dream didn’t react as Fundy’s tail slapped him on the face again. “One meeting later, my husband declares to the entire land that he only ever cared about a child’s discs. Five days later, my uncle was exiled out of the country he had fought for. Then it all went to shit.”

Fundy had been heartbroken. It wasn’t a random decision he’d done one day. Ever since that declaration… “New L’Manburg continued on, but the only semblance of normalcy in my life began to wilt. My husband stopped coming home, stopped talking to me, stopped looking at me, and the one time I tried to talk to him… he said, ‘Not now, Fundy. Just trust me, okay?’ Ya, like that was supposed to be assuring. Like I didn’t spend my nights on our bed wondering if I’ll catch him coming back home at some point in the night.”

He took in a shaky breath, “The next time I confronted him, he got mad. Telling me that my fears were illogical, that he didn’t mean it literally when he said ‘that’s the only thing I care about’ when talking about the discs. He told me I was being crazy. That I should trust him. Then he left. Just like that. As if he expected me to still be in our cabin when he came back.” Fundy tried to keep the hurt out of his voice but he didn’t think he succeeded, “So before you accuse me of running away, know that you left me first.”

“Fundy…” Dream felt his throat constrict, unable to breathe at the overwhelming guilt he felt. He felt sick, knowing that despite the righteous anger Fundy felt, the fox hybrid didn’t try to move away. His tail was still in Dream’s arms. “I was wrong.”

“You were. You were wrong to leave me at the cabin like that. You were wrong to think I wouldn’t want a single hint that you actually cared for me.” Fundy sighed, too exhausted to move away from the man who had broken his heart too many times. “I just wanted one hint that you cared for me, Dream. I’ve seen you lie before. I’ve seen your hold on everyone here. I didn’t want to be another pawn in your game.”

“You were never a pawn in the game, Fundy.” Dream frowned… maybe before… maybe when he didn’t know the fox hybrid all that well. “You are not a pawn, Fundy. You’re your own man. I’m… sorry… I didn’t expect you to run away because of that.”

“I didn’t expect myself to run away either.” Fundy shook his head, eyes shutting close as he remembered the tears on his cheeks as he ran as far away as he could from the Essempy. At some point, he stopped at the Badlands, a thought entering his mind as he looked upon the desolate desert.

“I’m… also sorry for… threatening Ranboo into telling me where you were.” Dream felt the heat of Fundy’s glare at that admission. Though he can’t say he truly felt guilty for doing it. That action led him to Fundy, didn’t it? “I should probably start with my answer, huh?” Dream knew Fundy wanted to ask him about what he’d done to Ranboo, but he quickly interjected before the fox hybrid could inquire further.

“Well, I grew up an only kid to two loving yet distant parents. You know how my dad was, you worked for him after all. My mom wasn’t around so I spent a lot of time by myself. Ran away after a while. Got into a bit of trouble when I grew older. Met Sapnap and George that way when they thought they could try and hunt me down for some reward.” Dream nearly screamed as Fundy toppled onto him, both of them screeching as Fundy tried to go back to his previous position. “Fundy?!”

“You’re a wanted man?” Fundy blinked, an incredulous look on his face as he managed to clamber back to the way he was sitting before. He knew Dream was a war criminal on a rampage but he didn’t think he was actually wanted somewhere else. Dream wheezed at the question, nodding his head in actual confirmation. Fundy couldn’t help the small noise of surprise that emitted from the back of his throat. “I married a criminal!”

“I married a fox hybrid, Fundy. I’ve gotten furry jokes from George and Sapnap.” They both laughed at that. “I stayed with Sapnap and George after, then I died. We ended up moving to the Essempy and… you know what happened next… but I wouldn’t count any of that as my life. It doesn’t feel like my life.” Dream could feel Fundy’s stare at the back of his head. He patted Fundy’s tail, wishing his voice didn’t strain or crack the moment Fundy asked him to explain.

“What do you mean, Dream?” Fundy winced at how quiet his voice sounded, the small tremble at the end of his voice.

Dream smiled, a bittersweet smile that pulled at Fundy’s heartstrings no matter how much he wished it didn’t. Dream settled back into his seat, cuddling close to Fundy’s tail. He could do this. He needed to do this. For both their sakes.

“My life started when I went for a jog and spotted you in the path…” Dream found a smile climbing to his lips. It had been a sunny day, radiant golden light splashing the world with color. George and Sapnap were busy and he had chosen to head towards L’Manburg, a spring in his step as he ran down the path of Church Prime. His mind was abuzz with memories, pausing as he caught an orange blur clambering up the stairs. His first proper meeting with Fundy. “…walking with a fox. So, I stopped and asked, ‘Can I pet your fox?’”

He didn’t understand what made him stop. Perhaps it was the comedic sight. A fox hybrid tugging a struggling fox behind him. Dream didn’t know why, but he stopped. It was the best choice he’d ever made. “And so there we were, me and this adorable fox, basking in the abundance of sun our land provides. And suddenly, you blurted out ‘This isn't my fox, actually.’” He watches as Fundy’s eyes crease with agony at the memory. At the memory of…, “’It's my friend's fox, Fungi. I'm taking care of him while she's away.’”

Fundy had curled into his arms the day Fungi died, screaming incoherently until he fainted. Dream had yelled at Sapnap, his anger rising with every confused gesture Sapnap had shown him. “’He's a bit of a nuisance, ya know?’ And I laughed, and you laughed.” Fundy had tried to hide the red in his cheeks, flustered. Dream expected fear, he expected anger. He didn’t expect… Fundy… didn’t expect the joy in his eyes. “Saying you didn't wanna be found out when you asked me to a date, that there was no fox.”

He shook his head at what came after, “I said yes and you said, ‘I’m Fundy. And you?’”

It had been a joke. They both knew who the other was, having met countless times on the battlefield. Despite it, Dream had paused. A realization coming into mind of what could be, “Yet I heard the perfect opportunity to be someone else entirely.” A chance to begin anew. A chance to try again. At least for one night. He didn’t see what he could possibly lose from saying yes, but he had everything to gain from that one simple word. “Free from my history. For one single night of a date…”

It had been a foolproof plan at the time. A break from the war they had both gone through. “I would be someone else. Obviously, that's not how it went down. One single date night turned into two days at your house, three more dates and staying up to watch the stars ‘til the morning comes. Too late to backpedal. Too good not to keep going.” He never meant to fall in love… but he did. And he couldn’t let go. He loved what they had. “It felt like my life, but a better version. With you in my life, I was a better person.”

He held onto Fundy’s tail. He missed them. He missed what they had. He felt his throat close up, choking out his words, “I heard music in the words you were saying. Melodies with no band playing.” He glanced up, catching the tears in Fundy’s eyes before Fundy turned to look away. It stung… but Dream knew why. It didn’t change the way he felt. It didn’t change the way he felt about Fundy. He wished that Fundy could see that, could look at him, “For the first time, I was in love, and I loved who I was with you.”

He remembered their short-lived days of peace. The trips they would take as they headed down into uncharted caves. The walks they’d take in the middle of the night when no one was looking. “All the mundane shit I used to hate, like mining for iron and walking every day.” He remembered the sweet life they used to live together, “Making breakfast, paying tax, watering the plants on our window sill…”

Fundy brightened his monochrome world, “…was invigorated with your sense of wonder. Pillow talk, midnight walks.” He missed the secret little walks they took. The risk they took. “Holding hands on the wooden path of the Church Prime. Dealing with inevitable misfortunes that were barely manageable.”

He laughed to himself, “Like that time I accidentally hit your dad with my sword.”

The air turned cold, Fundy turning to look at him with an incredulous look. “That was an unfortunate anecdote. Do you know what I mean?” Dream winced, changing the topic before Fundy could yell at him again. “It felt like my life, but a better version. With you in my life, I was a better person.”

He drew closer, reaching out to hold both Fundy’s hands. They were warm, red scorch marks stained his fingertips. “I heard music in the words you were saying. Melodies with no band playing.” He looked up, and this time Fundy didn’t look away. Their eyes gazed into one another’s. Fundy’s face was devoid of emotion, but a flicker of light danced within his eyes. Dream took a deep breath, willing Fundy to see the truth. His truth. “For the first time I was in love, and I loved who I was with you.”

He had begged every deity for the conflict to be resolved immediately, then Schlatt made him a deal he couldn’t refuse. “But then the war started to grow worse because your L’Manburg has a bad curse.” He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. He couldn’t possibly show the horror he had felt when he realized they’d be on opposite sides. The sleepless nights he endured at the thought of his husband losing a life to a war that should never have happened. “We both changed our sides. You and me, different sides.”

He had forced himself to watch as his husband was ridiculed, unable to step in unless he wanted to set everyone off into thinking Fundy was the traitor. “I only hoped we didn’t fight. Then the world exploded.” He curled into himself, his hands shaking in Fundy’s hold as he remembered the heat of the explosion. Fundy’s eyes widened, a terrified look crossing his face. Dream nodded, confirming his fears. “They say before you die, your whole life flashes before your very eyes.”

He wanted to keep it secret, “Well, it didn't the first time. But this time I heard each and every lie.” Everything changed that day. “I'd ever told you. I tried to cling to the life I'd made together with you.”

He couldn’t let it end like that, “So, I did the only thing I knew how to…”

He remembered the argument they had, “…I denied everything, because I wanted to keep my life.” He told Fundy he wasn’t the villain. But he was. He still is. “But the better version. Your Dream, your husband.”

He sniffled quietly, a bitter smile on his lips. He missed the way he used to be, before everything went to hell. Before he let it all crumble down. “He was a better person. I memorized your voice.” They had fought the day Fundy left. Their usual morning routine was disrupted by furious screaming. He struggled to keep from drowning in his own tears, “And how you say goodbye, but you never said goodbye.”

He felt his hands move to grasp at Fundy’ collar, “You never said goodbye.”

Fundy watched as Dream broke down a second time, “And I held on to our life.”

Their faces were too close, “And who I was with you.”

Fundy couldn’t help himself… “Who I was with you.” He leaned closer.

“Who I was with you.”

Dream felt lips press onto his own.

And for just a moment.

He let himself fall.

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

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[readyplayerhobi]

A Court of Moonlight | 01

; Werewolf!Yoongi x Witch!Reader

; Genre: Fantasy, fluff, future angst, future smut

; Word Count: 14.7k

; Synopsis: As Prince Hoseok’s personal attendant, you travel with him on a diplomatic visit to Lunatis, home of the werewolves. There, you meet the enigmatic and intrguing werewolf prince, Min Yoongi, and discover more than you expected as a mere attendant.

; Spin-off from A Court of Curses

; A/N: So...this is only part one but as you can see, it’s already almost 15k so I thought it better to split in two! I’ve been working on this for a while; I hope it’s okay and you enjoy! Please, please reblog if you enjoyed so that other people can see it alongside liking it and I would love you forever if you leave me a comment or ask giving me feedback or your thoughts! :3 it helps encourage me on!

-

Folding the silk shirt in your hands carefully, you placed it down alongside the other articles of clothing that take up the large, ornate leather luggage case before running your fingers along the incredibly soft material gently. Turning your attention to the next shirt that has been passed to you by Soyeon, you give her a soft smile as she smiles in turn at you.

“Are you excited? I’ve never travelled beyond Hekatalia before.” She asks, her face sweet while her pretty eyes are wide and round with excitement for you. Soyeon is the Queen’s personal attendant, working almost solely to accommodate the Queen of Hekatalia’s wishes and demands.

Due to her busy life of ruling the kingdom, the Queen of the Witches was unable to travel to foreign kingdom’s herself. For the first 100 years of her rule, she had emissaries sent to her or hosted visiting royals and leaders while Hekatalia sent out its own emissaries to foreign nations.

But the last ten years had seen her husband take on a larger role in Hekatalian Court. Prince Hoseok, the Crown Prince of Sanguinus and Prince Consort of Hekatalia, had slowly begun to undertake diplomatic journeys to neighbouring kingdoms to provide a personal touch from the royal family that had been simply impossible beforehand.

The Queen’s entire family had been killed during the Great Demonic War, which had left her physically unable to leave her lands rulerless. Her marriage to Prince Hoseok had been forced upon her by the Faerie and werewolf kingdoms which had combined the vampires and the witches for the first time in history.

But it wasn’t a typical marriage; the marriage bonds also resulted in a curse being laid upon them both. Immortality was granted to them, but they had been forced to spend six months of the year in one another’s company and the remaining six months apart.

Any attempts to stay away or see each other during the respective time periods resulted in great pain for them both. Their kingdoms had to remain invested in the curse as well, as if the curse was ignored then the pain would spread out to the people of their kingdom, slowly killing until there was nothing left.

As such, both kingdoms had grudgingly accepted the marriage and curse itself.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first one hundred years of their marriage had been cold and glacial to onlookers. Centuries upon centuries of hatred, anger and bloodshed did not merely vanish overnight. Or so everyone thought.

Ten years ago however, Prince Hoseok had returned only three months after he had left. It should have been impossible, and they should have been screaming in agony at the pain of being near each other. And yet the Queen had ran to him, hands trailing over his face gently before they had sealed their reunion with a deep and passionate kiss.

While those closest to the Queen had been aware of the kindled love between the star-crossed lovers, the rest of the kingdom’s had been shocked to find out that the cursed couple had fallen in love decades before.

Despite this, the vampires were still not trusted by the majority of the witch population of Hekatalia, but Prince Hoseok had become slowly beloved by the population. His obvious adoration of the Queen likely had something to do with that, alongside the much heralded arrival of Princess Soo-Ah nine months ago.

For one hundred and five years, Prince Hoseok had not been assigned a personal attendant when he resided in the palace and simply had various servants serve him temporarily. As far as you understood it, Soyeon had acted as an informal personal attendant for him sometimes while she served the Queen as well. But Soyeon’s marriage to the Keeper of Words, Park Jimin, had meant Prince Hoseok had required a legitimate attendant.

Which is where you came in.

For five years now, you have acted as Prince Hoseok’s personal attendant in Hekatalia. You have dressed him, cleaned his room and his clothes, attended to his every whim and ensured that he has been happy in the palace. The appointment had been nerve wracking to you, still afraid of being around a vampire but you’d been pleased to find Prince Hoseok was a kind and sweet master.

This would be the first time that you were to travel with him outside of Hekatalia to accompany him on his diplomatic travels though. His normal attendant who accompanied him on such journey’s unable to due to illness. And it was to the strange wildlands of the Lunatus Pack, the ruling werewolf class of the Lupine nation.

“I am excited, but nervous as well. What if I do something that reflects badly on Hekatalia?” You chew at your lip nervously as you finish folding the remaining clothes and pack them away carefully, closing the lid of the luggage case and securing it so that nothing will fall out during the journey there.

Soyeon lets out a light laugh; the sound airy and sugary sweet. You watch her for a moment as she finishes packing a second luggage case that is filled with Prince Hoseok’s formal clothing and locks that case up too. Gesturing to the two guards who stand just inside the doorframe, they immediately whisper a spell that has the cases levitating slowly and following them out of the room.

“I doubt you will do anything that will make Hekatalia look bad. You’re not going to be meeting any of the royalty while there, that’s Prince Hoseok’s job. So unless you plan on destroying his room for him, or doing something illegal then you will be fine. And His Highness will protect you, you know that. He’s got a soft spot for you.” She grins, nudging you lightly in the ribs as you both leave his rooms.

Rolling your eyes, you stick your tongue at her rather childishly. Soyeon was right though, Prince Hoseok was incredibly kind to you and part of you thought it was simply because he appreciated someone being nice to him in turn. He had spent a long time being lonely in the halls of this palace, so just as Soyeon had become a friend to the Queen, you had become a friend to him alongside his close friendships with Soyeon’s husband, Jimin, and the Captain of the Guard, and your cousin, Jeon Jungkook.

“Is the Queen saying goodbye to him?” You ask, reaching the corridor upon which the door to the carriages resided. Soyeon chuckled and shook her head, fingers lifting up to place a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

“She said goodbye to him earlier, unfortunately she has the dignitary from the Sídhe to court today. I believe Prince Hoseok was going to the nursery to say his goodbyes to little Princess Soo-Ah, so you will likely need to go retrieve him.” Face breaking out into a smile, you chuckle in response and bow your head slightly.

You wait to leave until she disappears behind the door, likely to go say goodbye to her own husband who will be accompanying the prince on his journey due to his knowledge of werewolf society and trade agreements.

Turning, you move through the halls of the palace with an experienced ease, the intricate routes written into your brain from years of travelling them. The nursery is a new addition to the palace, an old storage room on the first level being converted into a room that Princess Soo-Ah would use as she grew up.

Her days were spent here, in the company of nursemaids and assistants while her parents attended to their day-to-day jobs. They both came and spent as much of their free time as they could with her, and Princess Soo-Ah slept in their bedroom at night.

The Queen and Prince Consort both maintained their own rooms, though it was well known that they both slept in one bed. Princess Soo-Ah, by their command, was to spend her nights with her parents. Even if it meant they lost precious sleep.

Due to his lesser schedule, it was usually Prince Hoseok who could be found in the nursery with his daughter. His complete and utter adoration for the tiny ball of dual sunshine and thunder was well known to all citizens of Hekatalia by now, and there was nothing that could put a smile on his face quicker than the sight of his tiny daughter.

Which is why you knew he would still be here, cuddling with her and likely reluctant to leave her for three months. 

Opening the door, you look around the vast room with an idle eye for a moment. The walls had been painted a soothing pale yellow with an alternating white that had been specifically created to make everything seem cheery and bright. Princess Soo-Ah was deeply beloved by her parents and they wanted her childhood to be as happy as possible.

As such, exquisite handmade wooden toys sat around the room on cabinets and shelving units, simply waiting for the little princess to be old enough to play with them properly. Comfortable, plush armchairs sit beneath the giant window that looked out onto the gardens, a bookcase already filled with famous nursery rhymes and stories from both Sanguinus and Hekatalia.

In the corner of the room is an intricate rocking horse, its skin a gleaming midnight black with a soft mane and tail of silver stars that fell to the floor. The dip in the horse’s face gave away it’s Sanguinati breeding while a delicate, red leather saddle and bridle sat waiting for the princess to ride. It had been a gift from Prince Hoseok’s parents in Sanguinus to celebrate the birth of a child that no-one had thought was possible.

Princess Soo-Ah’s nursemaid sits in a rocking chair in the opposite corner, hands working diligently on a knitting pattern and you recognise the beginnings of a warm and cosy jumper. Unlike her parents, Princess Soo-Ah was always dressed in what looked comfortable and warm. They felt that there was no need for a baby to be dressed to impress and simply wanted her to be happy.

Her crib stands against a wall, the dark and rich wood sourced from a copse of trees that have been soaked in magic from a nearby Source before being carved by master carpenters. All along the elegant wood are tiny engravings symbolic to both the vampires and witches, combining her heritage together.

And in the centre of the room, on a pale white rug, lay perhaps the most important person to the entire kingdom right now. Princess Soo-Ah is tiny, even at nine months old. She had been born two months early, likely due to her dual nature according to the physicians, and there was a worry that she would remain small.

But you had seen how quickly she was growing, and had no concerns about the sweet girl. She was likely going to grow up big and strong, just like her parents.

The man you had come to coax away was laid next to her on his side, his head resting on his arm where it lay underneath him while his other hand lay on Princess Soo-Ah. She was still so small that his hand took up almost her entire stomach, causing you to smile at the sheer love and adoration that radiated from his eyes.

You couldn’t hear him, but you could see the way Prince Hoseok’s lips moved as he whispered to his precious daughter. She gurgled in response, legs kicking happily as her head moved to face him and give him the brightest smile of happiness.

He grinned in response and you heard his soft laugh as his body shook before he shuffled closer to press a sweet kiss to her head before pulling back to watch her some more.

It was quite the dichotomy to watch, the large and astonishingly handsome vampire wearing all black, from his leather boots to his coat, in the middle of a room that was everything soft and mellow. You found it hard to believe vampires were capable of extreme bloodshed and violence while watching the gentle and tender way he handles his daughter.

“Prince Hoseok? We are ready to leave now and are waiting for you. Please can you accompany me to the carriage?” You keep your words low and quiet, noting how he doesn’t even give any indication he was surprised by your arrival.

He wouldn’t be of course; vampires had superior hearing to witches.

Sighing, his lips turn down in an unhappy frown as he moves even closer to her until he’s got his nose in her downy soft hair, inhaling her scent deeply with closed eyes. “Daddy has to leave now princess. I’ll be back before you know it though, so be good for your mummy okay? And...don’t grow too fast while I’m gone. Please. I love you sweet girl, daddy loves you. So much. I’ll miss you.”

He presses a final kiss to her head before getting up, simply kneeling there and watching her for a few moments with a forlorn look upon his face before he stands. Looking at the nursemaid, he bows his head to her. “Please take care of her. And make sure she gets her mid-morning cuddles.” 

“Don’t worry, Your Highness, I’ve already cleared out my schedule to make sure she doesn’t miss out.” The voice comes from behind you, causing you to jump with a squeak. Turning, you spot the adorable smile of Jeon Jungkook and scowl at him. Your cousin has always had an annoying ability to jump up on you.

With a final glance to his daughter, Prince Hoseok follows you out of the nursery and to the carriage, slapping a hand onto Jungkook’s shoulder with enough strength to make the younger man wince. “What does that mean?”

“It means...I know you’d worry about her so I’ve made sure that I can give her the cuddles you can’t. She’ll know it’s not you, but it’s her routine now right? And I’m not saying no to some cuddles with my favourite girl.” Jungkook smiles sweetly and you can’t help but shake your head with a smile. He’s always been a giant softie underneath his hard exterior, but you can see how much it means to Prince Hoseok as he struggles for a moment to keep a composed face.

This is the longest he will be apart from his daughter and wife, and despite spending years used to not being able to be near the one he loves, it obviously hasn’t gotten any easier for him.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” He whispers, nodding at Jungkook before heading out the door. Watching as he leaves, you turn to Jungkook before giving him a quick hug and patting at his chest.

“You are so soft. He really does appreciate it though, I hope you know that.” You grin, opening the door and turning to face him. Jungkook laughs and nods, resting a hand on the pommel of the sword at his hip.

“That’s why I did it.”

-

The journey to Lunatis, the land of the werewolves, was a long one and it passed through a wide variety of landscapes that changed drastically, including Sanguinus. Prince Hoseok’s own homeland was to the north of Hekatalia and according to all you had heard and read, it was a land that was vast and varied in its geography.

Barren sand dunes ate at the land in the west in vast deserts that shifted constantly before giving way to rocky peaks that soared into the sky in the east. Hills bucked their way in the land inbetween, and it was only as their land reached the Hekatalian border that it calmed and became gentle fields fit for growing crops and other plants.

The magic that enriched the very soil of Hekatalia also calmed the lands you and all your ancestors had been born onto. Forests were a rarity in Sanguinus apparently, but they were fairly common in the witchlands. Magic adored nature, and the careful use of it over the millennia by witches had soothed it into a pleasant presence that explained the absence of any extremes in either weather or landscape.

Lunatis however, was a land that was wild even by the vampire’s and the faeries standards. The people who inhabited it were closer to nature than anyone, even the witches. You lived with your magic in harmony with nature, but the wolves were a part of the very fabric of the land. The link between animals and humanity, joining the two together in an eternal bond.

You’d heard many rumours over the years about the wolf clans that inhabited the mountainous forests of Lunatis; situated to the east of Sanguinus and the north of the Fae lands. Some said their animal natures were a curse from a long dead witch, others said it was nature’s punishment for doing something so evil it had been forgotten in the minds of all.

Even the immortal Fae claimed ignorance of their origins, proving them to be one of the original races of the world you inhabited. The vampires were the newest, created millennia ago by a rogue sect of witches according to the Queen.

Still, you were excited and nervous to travel to the heart of their wildlands. During the long days it had taken to finally cross into the border of Lunatis, moving through Sanguinus at a steady pace, Prince Hoseok and Jimin had informed you of many tales involving the werewolves.

Apparently Prince Hoseok had visited their lands a few times as a dignitary for the Sanguinati court and was more acquainted with the Lunatus Pack than any other. It had been with fascination that you’d listened to his stories of their Great Hunts upon which the howls of hundreds of wolves could be heard echoing through the dense forests.

He always seemed to be half fascinated and half disgusted with them, but Jimin had informed you with a sly grin that it was purely because the two races didn’t get along very well. At their very nature, the vampires had originated from witches and so when they weren’t trying to kill each other the two got on surprisingly well.

Particularly given the positive interactions over the last ten years since the revelation of the Amendment to the curse. 

But the vampires were a prim and proper race, a society that thrived on rules and fashion and elegance. It was a rare day to see Prince Hoseok without looking like he could take the starring role in an epic ball, dancing his way through a ballroom with royalty from any nation with a grace and poise that had been drilled into him since childhood.

The wolves apparently, were a little more baser in their instincts. An incredulous look had often appears on Prince Hoseok’s face when he talked about some of their customs. Their love of leather and fur seemed to be a particular sticking point, along with their complete lack of fighting skills.

You had pointed out many times that they could turn into wolves, so what did they need to fight for? To which he’d sneered lightly and pointed out that witches could use magic, so why did your soldiers learn to fight too?

It was a good point, but you’d simply retorted that you thought he sounded a little snobby and prim. That had Jimin chortling for a good five minutes while Prince Hoseok had looked distinctly unimpressed.

He wasn’t stuck up, he’d insisted, he had just learnt how to be proper.

As much as you enjoyed working for him, and he was your Queen’s husband which automatically meant he had your respect, you couldn’t help but tease him constantly about it on the journey in the cramped carriage. Which was why the topic was being repeated once more as you looked out in wonder at the towering forests.

The forests of Hekatalia felt like home, welcoming and warm with a current in the air that whispered of magic that had kept your ancestors going through tough times. Lunatis truly did feel wild and untamed, the magic here almost crackling with energy from the lack of a source and a conduit like your Queen.

Your carriage was moving along a mountain road, bumpy and uneven yet still well used. The vantage of being so high up the mountain meant that you could see ahead for miles, and all you could see was a veritable ocean of rich, sumptuous green as conifer trees spread far into the distance.

They grew untamed along the sides of the great, heaving mountains that had punched their way out of the ground in angry bursts, jagged peaks covered in layers of crystal white snow. Endless blue sky stretched ahead, making everything look so bright and vivid and you found yourself pressing your face closer to the glass window.

“You know Your Highness, I can understand why they wear furs now. It’s quite cold here, so it’s surely just common sense to make sure that you can live comfortably?” The question slips from your mouth as you scan over the top of the wave of the forest, noting the smoke that makes its way lazily to the sky at various points.

Werewolf villages likely, maybe even hamlets given how dense the forest was packed. A ribbon of shame ran through you as a momentary thought of the wolves being too uncivilised to be able to have great cities ran through your head and you shook it carefully.

They lived in an untamed nature, but it did not mean that they themselves were untamed.

You recalled seeing some of the Lunatus Pack a few years ago when they had arrived for a meeting with the Queen. They had looked just as everyone else had, if only their outfits had looked a little more weather worn.

The imposing landscape in front of you made it all the more understandable, and you understand why they retained a part of their wildness. It was likely the only way to survive in such a foreboding land.

Prince Hoseok lets out a quiet murmur, his gaze focused far beyond the mountain range as he rests his chin in his hand. These last few days have been the closest you've seen to him being almost casual, the long hours in the carriage cramped for you all and campsites at night testing all your resolves.

It's obvious that he misses his home though, and most importantly the family in it.

“It's beautiful isn't it?” Jimin muses quietly as he looks out of the window too. You nod in response before sighing.

“It's magnificent. I love Hekatalia but it has nothing on this.” And you truly mean it. You loved your homeland and the way everything seemed peaceful and pleasant, but there was something astonishingly beautiful about Lunatis. As if nature had fought magic for millennia and nature had won.

“You should see Sanguinus if you want natural beauty. Lunatis is beautiful and rugged, but Sanguinus has everything. Mountains, deserts, plains…” Prince Hoseok's voice trails off slowly, almost as if he’s aware of how he sounds, but a glance at Jimin tells you that you both heard the wistful tone to his words and you recognise that he’s not being mean.

He doesn't visit his homeland very often anymore; his duties as a husband and father out weighing those of an heir. You know the vampires are okay with this at the moment, but the future is uncertain.

One day, he will take the throne of Sanguinus. But his wife, the Queen of the Witches, would be unable to rule in that land with him due to the symbiotic relationship between her and the Source of magic in Hekatalia.

Which likely explained why he spent so much time with his family now, because it would be reduced in the future.

Still, you are curious about his homeland. He rarely mentions it, preferring not to stir any potential vampire hatred but the mountains of Lunatis must be somewhat similar to those of his childhood home.

“Do you miss it? Sanguinus? I know you haven't visited in two years,” He doesn't respond for a moment and you bow your head. “My apologies for intruding Your Highness.”

Prince Hoseok waves a hand lazily, his mouth quirking. “It's fine. You both are almost family anyway. And I do. I miss the blazing heat of summer when the winds blow the desert air to us and the freezing cold of the winter when the mountains hold us in their grasp. Hekatalia is wonderful, but it is tamed. There's something delightful about being at the mercy of nature.”

“I feel if a werewolf said that then you'd be snorting and rolling your eyes at them for being savage or something.” Jimin points out dryly, stretching out his legs as best he can in the cramped space.

The Prince let's out a small laugh and nods. “Maybe. I don't really think they're savage though. They respect nature in a way that no one else does and are a very hardy people. We just...don't have a good history. You forget that the wolves have a whole academy devoted to vampire hunting.”

“That's to hunt wayward vampires though. The ones who have gone rogue and won't submit to law.” You watch the conversation with wide eyed fascination.

“Yeah, they do. At the behest of my own kingdom sometimes because they're that good. The perfect trackers. Doesn't stop them from killing innocents too. If you can believe it, the witches are not our bogeyman. Ours howls in the night as a warning.” The small space goes silent then, and Jimin catches your eye with an awkward smile.

Prince Hoseok doesn’t seem to recognise the uncomfortable situation though and that alone tells you that he’s speaking the truth. Only people who have experienced things like that can talk about it with so much carelessness.

None of you speak further for the rest of the day, the night spent in a comfortable inn that had the protection of the guards who had come along with you to protect the Prince. Though as far as you knew, he was military capable himself and could probably deal with whatever came his way. 

Although his comments about the vampire hunters made you worry for him that night, fussing over him a little more than normal as you helped him prepare for sleep. To his amusement, you’re sure, because there’s no way Lunatis would murder the Sanguinati Crown Prince and the Hekatalian Prince Consort.

You shuddered at just imagining the destruction your Queen would rain down on this mountainous nation in her grief and anger.

Not that they could actually kill him of course, but this was all just hypothetical obviously.

Needless to say, you’d been a little more anxious throughout the night and the rest of the journey to the home of the Lunatus Pack. Jimin could tell and kept trying to reassure you that all was fine, but it was hard to stop the anxiety that filled you.

The city that the majority of the Lunatus Pack inhabited proved to be an awe-inspiring sight when you finally came upon it, even if it looked almost nothing like the cities you were used to seeing in Hekatalia. Lykos, named for their animal counterpart, was imposing in a way that Hekatalian cities could never be.

Small buildings of timber dotted the outskirts, buried within the expansive forest before they slowly merged into a blend of stone and wood. By the time the carriage had reached what you presumed to be the centre of the city, the buildings were tall and built of solid stone. Further along the road, you noted an impressive looking complex that had been carved into the mountain itself, the solid rock protecting the inhabitants. 

Hard to be attacked if your home was literally a mountain.

“That’s Mount Selanus, the largest mountain in Lunatis.” Prince Hoseok noted, peering out of the window to look up at the remarkable peak. Blue-grey stone was dotted with trees along the base before becoming barren rock as it reached into the sky while pure white snow rested atop the crest. It was beautiful.

“It’s impressive. And a good defense, they’ve built their homes into the mountain itself.” Jimin notes idly, causing you to feel pride at the fact you had noticed that too. The prince consort nods slowly, his eyes scanning the surroundings slowly.

“Yes, clever. That mountain is important to them too, I don’t remember the story properly. Something about it being a great wolf god who tried to reach the moon goddess but failed. I believe there’s some kind of pilgrimage every year from all the wolf pack’s who travel here to celebrate it.” He murmurs before shifting back in his seat and running his palms down the front of his jacket. 

Your prince consort was no longer wearing his regal attire and had long since swapped it for more temperature appropriate gear. He’d claimed that it was because it was better to fit in with your host, as otherwise it could look like you were trying to be superior to them.

As such, his jacket was tailor made to cope with the colder weather while the outside retained characteristics that portrayed his loyalty to both Sanguinus and Hekatalia. Black with a subtle red accent was his overall colour scheme with silver buttons and fasteners. Prince Hoseok looked suitably regal while still observing the local fashions of the Lunatus.

Finally, the carriage came to a halt for the last time in this trip. You were finally here, the very heart of the werewolf lands and suddenly more nervous than ever. Jimin had coached you extensively on how to act around them, but what if you did something wrong?

The werewolves and the witches had never really had any truly bad blood between them, merely annoyances when the Sanguinati and witch conflicts had spilled into their lands. But still, they were often ruled by an animal instinct in a way that no other magical race was.

After checking over Prince Hoseok quickly, you exited the carriage first with the help of one of the Hekatalian soldiers who had travelled with you. The small retinue was already removing the Prince’s luggage and you eyed it carefully as they were directed by a Lunatus woman to head further into the mountain compound.

Stable boys were already quickly taking the horses from the soldiers who had ridden while others were removing the carriage horses, the tired animals being led away in the direction of the stables where they would be brushed down and cared for during your time here. It made you wonder how they would move the carriages without horses, but you supposed that was an issue for someone who wasn’t you.

The air smelled remarkably fresh here, to say that it was in the middle of a city. A small city yes, it had only taken around fifteen minutes to move from the outskirts to here, but it was a city all the same. In Hekatalia, that would mean the smell of rubbish, sewage, bodies and heat.

Here however, you scented pine and earth alongside the simple smell of the open outdoors. Indescribable, yet instantly recognisable. Perhaps it was due to the close proximity of the mountain and the surrounding forest; even from here you could easily see the towering tops of the striking trees. 

The werewolves may live together in civility, but they were never far from the wilderness. You found that fitting, and this small city, strange to you, felt oddly homely to say that you had never been here before. But you liked it all the same.

“Good evening Prince Hoseok. I trust your journey was safe and well?” A low voice rolls out to your side, the owner appearing while you had been busy staring at your new surroundings. Turning, you note the newcomer through steady eyes with interest.

He stands shorter than the Prince, around the same height as Jimin it would seem. And unlike the other two, he doesn’t stand with a regal bearing. Instead, he almost slouches in front of them with his hands in the pockets of his brown leather trousers, thick black boots on his feet kicking the floor lazily and causing plumes of pale dust to fly.

A brown linen shirt covers his chest, laces stringing together a gap along the top but even these are left undone to dangle down. His coat is long, reaching down to his knees and is an intriguing mix of dark brown leather, aged until it almost looks like it could crack with a mere movement, while the inside is lined with thick, warm fur.

He looks slim beneath his large clothes, almost like he could be frail, but you have no doubt that he could likely kill you with the barest amount of effort. Given where you are, this man is most likely a werewolf.

It’s only when he glances over to you that you know your suspicions are confirmed. His hair is an ashy-grey, almost silver before shifting to a colour that looks almost dark blue as the light moves through the soft strands. Wolf grey, you think to yourself. His skin is paler than Prince Hoseok’s, still golden but more along the lines of Jimin’s but it’s his eyes that truly give him away.

For a moment, they are simply dark before they flash a vivid amber for a second as they scan you over. A blink, and they’re back to their original dark shade once more. Yes, a wolf to be sure.

“Prince Yoongi. What an honour to have you meet us here.” Prince Hoseok states airily, giving the slightest bow to the man. Your eyes widen momentarily, scanning over the new prince quickly with a confused look. He does wear what you would presume a prince to wear, nor does he stand like he has had any training.

Sure enough, his eyes roll while a despondent breath leaves him. “You’re impossible. You know we don’t have royalty here. You’re the only prince in Lunatis right now.”

Prince Hoseok chuckles, his hand coming to rest on Yoongi’s shoulder lightly as he nods and walks alongside him. You begin to follow, Jimin stepping into line with you before giving you a light shrug in response to your questioning glance.

“True, but I know it annoys you. Which is why I do it. How have you been? My Queen sends her condolences for not being able to travel; you know the story.” Yoongi lets out a low hum, nodding as he strides through the open courtyard towards the entrance of the large building.

It’s a barren courtyard, with stone upon stone upon stone. The only things of note are the beautiful wolf statues that litter the area, standing guard at each entrance and exit. Each one stands taller than you, with the details lovingly sculpted until they look like they could come to life and savage anyone wishing ill harm.

“Thank you. I’m fine. And I don’t think anyone expects her to leave her kingdom honestly. How is she? You have a child now, I believe, a little girl correct?” You can’t tell if the question is just idle chatter or if they are actually friends. Prince Hoseok seems to be very relaxed around him, which is at odds with the centuries old fear and rivalry the two races have had.

But then again, he never misses a chance to wax poetic about his little girl. Sure enough, you see a dreamy look appear on his face as a dopey smile appears. “I do. Soo-Ah. She’s perfect. So tiny.”

You almost expect Yoongi to tease him at that, the way Prince Hoseok’s voice softens and fills with a love that makes your chest ache. Instead, he smiles and pats the Sanguinati on the back. “Fatherhood suits you apparently. I wish her many moons and an easy childhood for your Queen and you.”

“Are they friends?” You whisper to Jimin, confusion threaded through your voice and evident in your body language from the tip to your brow. The Keeper of Words smiled slightly, eyes narrowing as the movement made his cheeks rounder and softer before nodding.

“In a fashion. It’s because of Min Yoongi that Hoseok got the courage to petition the Faerie Queen. We owe our royalty’s happiness to him, and despite their differences I believe them to be friends. Or as close as friends that as Sanguinati and a werewolf can be.” At that, Yoongi turns around with a brow raised at you both.

“I can hear you. And no doubt your prince can hear you too.” Prince Hoseok laughs before gesturing to you both.

“They mean no insult, I think they just forget the advanced hearing of other races. This is Park Jimin, our Keeper of Words who has accompanied me to keep note of our meetings and arrangements. And this is my personal attendant. She normally resides in the palace the majority of the time but my normal travelling attendant is unable to accompany me.” You bow slightly to Yoongi, unsure of what the protocol is for him. Or what he even is. “This is her first time in Lunatis. I believe she is suitably impressed by your beautiful nature.”

Yoongi doesn’t respond for a moment, simply letting his eyes track you up and down until you almost feel naked before him. A silly thought of course, as your hands touch the fabric of your heavy dress while your ribs push at the bones of the corset. And yet...he watches you like you’re his prey.

A disconcerting thought given he is very much a predator.

The moment is gone suddenly when he gives a polite smile, nodding his head. “I welcome you to Lunatis then. It is a beautiful country, if rugged and harsh. I hope it lives up to your expectations.” 

As he scans you over once more before turning around, you can’t help but wonder what he thinks your expectations are. For that moment, you’re not even sure what your own are anymore.

-

A feast was given that night by your hosts, in honour of their royal guest who represented two nations. Delicious food that filled your stomach was brought in continuously; crisp roast chicken cooked with garlic and thyme, butter soaked carrots and parsnips, rich beef stew with hearty onions, potatoes and more than a splash of luscious red wine, seared pork chops coated in honey and mint, a leek and potato soup so creamy the serving spoon almost stood up in it and more. 

It was a feast of the kind that you’d never truly witnessed before, the foods all homey and rich in flavour but with nothing too outrageous or exotic. No lemon soaked chicken, no orange drenched beef or anything that would be common in Hekatalia.

This didn’t surprise you though. Where would the wolves grow summer fruits such as that in their cold homelands? The Lunatus pack made their home in the northern reaches of Lunatis, deep in the mountain ranges and far from the mild lands of Hekatalia, the Sídhe or Orkana; the traditional home of tasty fruit and spices that sung of summer and spring. 

Instead, the sweet foods that dotted these tables were a mix of decadent baked goods and cold resistant fruits. Luscious cakes with dense sponge layered in sweet buttercream frosting and dotted with apple slices, succulent liquor soaked cherries baked into pies with golden and crisp shells.

Everything was beautiful and made your tongue sing in delight, leading to you deciding that you would most definitely have to assess your own internal prejudices towards the werewolves. The absence of knowledge about them has resulted in a vacuum filled with terrible stereotypes, of which you would fully admit to believing.

You had been convinced that the food here would be basic, heavy on the meat with not much taste. Instead, you had found a veritable bounty of delicious food and even a few that you would happily beg the recipe for the cook's back in Hekatalia.

Jimin, beside you, had been most amused by your quiet yet lustful groans of delight as the flavours had burst on your tongue frequently. It had only been after five minutes of this that you had realised why, when many young male members of the Lunatus Pack had been staring at you with wide eyes.

Yoongi, further down the table, had simply looked amused while Prince Hoseok had laughed quietly to himself. 

At least you were appreciating the food and not turning your nose up! 

“Why do I get the feeling that people are surprised I’m eating?” The Prince asked his host towards the end, an elegant brow raising as he takes a sip of the strong ale from his goblet. You’re pretty sure it’s iron, but maybe it’s actually silver. Though weren’t werewolves supposed to be allergic to silver?

You didn’t know, though you would most certainly be querying Jimin to find out more after the meal had ended.

Yoongi lets out a low chuckle, spearing a piece of chicken before placing it into his mouth and chewing slowly. “Because they are. It has been a long time since your last visit, almost twenty years I believe, and many in this room have never seen your face. You are the only Sanguinati that we have seen in years and the stereotypes are still strong amongst the people. Not only that, you’re the Cursed Prince. That always gets you looks, as I’m sure you know.”

Prince Hoseok sighed deeply, taking a slice of apple from atop a cake and chewing on it. “Yes, the novel Prince. It’s always amusing to gaze upon someone else’s misfortune. And they are aware that I only drink blood, I don’t entirely rely on it?”

“Oh they know, but I’m sure it’s the same as your attendant over there being surprised that we eat things other than meat,” He gestures to you idly, causing your cheeks to heat as you squeak an apology. “Just ignorance that can be rectified once they are shown. And I believe you came out pretty well with this curse, correct? A wife that you love dearly and a much beloved daughter. There are other cursed beings who would give much for that.”

Your Prince nods sagely before sighing, running a hand down his face. He looks tired, which you have no doubt that he is after the weeks of travel. “Yes, I believe I did. But you must remember that everything good comes with a price for us.”

He stands at that, giving a slight nod of his head while Yoongi stands as well. Almost immediately Jimin and you follow, protocol stipulating that you follow your Prince’s movements. And he clearly means to retire for the night, for which you will be needed.

“What price is that? You will be king of Sanguinus one day; your wife is Queen of Hekatalia. Your daughter will rule both the vampires and witches, uniting them both.” Yoongi brow creases in confusion and you sighed sadly, glancing at Jimin who looks just as awkward.

Princess Soo-Ah was much beloved and she had been dearly desired by her parents. But everyone in the kingdom knew the cost to them. It was perhaps understandable that Yoongi did not know or understand, the curse was merely a story for the Lupine nation.

For Hekatalia and Sanguinus, it was their life.

“My daughter will never rule either nation. Our curse states that are our lands and people are directly tied to our lives. I will be king, she will be queen. Our lands will never know another leader, for we are cursed to immortality.” The werewolf still looks perplexed, and you can see his expression mirrored in those wolves who can overhear the conversation with the Prince.

Jimin takes pity on his ruler, and someone he has come to call a friend over the years as well, and informs Yoongi of what Prince Hoseok cannot manage to say. “Prince Hoseok and the Queen are cursed to immortality. Their children are not.”

Your Prince makes his excuses then and leaves, following one of the Lunatus maids as she directs him to his room. You follow behind quickly, glancing back at Yoongi to see the stunned look on his face. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for him, for the inevitable guilt he is likely feeling right now.

But there’s nothing to be done for it now.

Instead, you simply help Prince Hoseok to undress before leaving him to bathe in the warm water that has been drawn for him. He promises that he will be fine dressing in his bed clothes and bids you a good night as well, smiling softly as you rest a hand against his arm in a silent message of sorrow and strength.

Your own room is next to his for convenience, though you note it to be much smaller. Understandable obviously, given who he is and who you are. There’s no bath waiting for you though, so you leave to find a passing maid and ask where you can clean yourself as well.

She directs you to the closest bath house, located past a small garden that sits exposed to the world in a tiny courtyard. There’s not a lot here, but the ground has been turned and layered in dirt to allow sparse grass to grow along with a few carefully trimmed trees and colourful flowers.

A stone bench sits in the centre, looking slightly inconspicuous but you note that it once more carries the beautiful craftsmanship of the stone wolves outside. Combined with the awe inspiring compound, house, palace or whatever this place was called being carved into the mountain itself, you were positive that Lunatis contained some of the best stonemasons in the world.

Running your fingers along the edge of the bench, you crouch down to take in the detailed scene that plays out along the sides before spilling onto the back. It’s a series of wolves, painstakingly created until it looks like they could bound into the grass itself, leaping before they slowly begin to shift into half-man creatures before walking and running like the men and women they appear today. 

An incredibly simple, and perhaps bastardised, tale of how the werewolves became as they are today maybe?

Either way, it was stunningly beautiful and you can’t help but admire it for a few moments.

“It’s not our history, if that’s what you’re wondering.” You can’t help the squeak that escapes you, jerking sideways before falling into the grass. It feels cold, the ground beneath almost freezing and you shiver beneath your thick fur coat. 

Looking up, you sight the tall and lean figure of Min Yoongi before he crouches down with concern on his face. His hands hesitate over you for a moment before he’s gently pulling you up and looking you over.

“My apologies, I did not mean to scare you. I forget that witches cannot hear like we do.” His lips pursed slightly in a pout that looks far more adorable than you think he intends it to, and suddenly his foreboding image disappears. Gesturing to the bench, you sit upon the cold stone and watch as he sits next to you.

There is no ceiling in their garden, and instead you stare up with wide eyes at the awe-inspiring sight before you. Mount Selanus looms astonishingly tall above you, the wide and expansive base glowed a soft orange from the light of nearby fires before seeping into a deep black that blots out the stars. 

And what a field of stars it is. 

You see plenty of them in Hekatalia of course, but today it’s a pure expanse of tiny pinpricks of light that glitter and dot the surface. As if someone has taken a handful of sugar crystals and carelessly thrown them across the sky.

“You’re at one of the highest points in the whole continent here. We have more stars than anywhere else and Mount Selanus reaches higher than any other mountain.” Yoongi’s voice is soft, the syllables quiet and you find yourself curious as you stare at the large mass of stone and rock.

“Prince Hoseok said that you have a story about it. Something about a wolf god and the moon goddess?” The question you ask is implicit, even if you do not actually voice it out loud. His lips turn up slightly as you glance at him before he acquiesces to you.

“In our folk tales, Selanus was the first of us. In the beginning we were simply wolves, who ran across Lunatis on four legs in our great packs and hunted anything that came in our way. But then one day, Selanus looked into the night sky and instead of the thousands of stars he normally saw, he saw Lunarias, the goddess of the moon. Her face was pale and bright, lighting up the night and letting him see far beyond what he normally could. For years he would wait for her to brighten the dark skies and over time, he fell in love with the beautiful goddess.” Yoongi pauses for a moment, running his fingers over his chin before smiling.

“I mean, how could you not? The moon is beautiful on a dark night, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He would howl his love to her, as loud as he could, and she heard his cries of passion even from so far away. She would burn brighter for him, night after night to guide his way. But he was a wolf, and she had the form of a goddess, of a woman. And so he begged and pleaded with her. She acquiesced, and made bargains and pleas with the other gods to let her love take on the shape of a man. For then she could love him as an equal.” You were entirely enraptured by the story, imagining the ancient beings in such a passionate love, their story painting itself across your mind.

“They agreed, and Selanus was given the power to shift to a man. But the gods are fickle, and nothing comes without a price. Their price was that Selanus must forever be a wolf on the night the Lunarias’ power was strongest, her face the most beautiful. And Lunarias was banned from the Earth, forbidden to show her face at its full strength except for three days each month.” 

You frown at that in confusion, looking up at Mount Selanus. “But..that means they couldn’t be together? And they did that to be together...right?” 

Yoongi nods. “Yes. When Selanus was allowed to be a man, Lunarias was mostly gone with only glimpses given. When she was allowed to face her love, he was relegated to a wolf. She was forced to watch over him from above and the power she had given him meant she couldn’t fight it.”

“That’s terrible.” You whisper softly, looking down at your hands sadly. It may only be a folktale, but stories like this were important to your people and you could tell that this story held great importance to the werewolves.

“Yes, it is. Selanus was despondent with loss and Lunarias cried tears of pain that never reached the ground. He decided that he wanted to be with her forever, and he found the highest peak in the world with the conviction that if he could climb it, then he could reach his love. He climbed to the top of this mountain, but his love was still out of reach. His heart ache over it caused him to curl up at the top, where he eventually turned to stone under the watchful gaze of his beloved.” Yoongi lets out a soft laugh before shaking his head with a wry, almost embarrassed, smile. “I’m not the best storyteller, my grandmother tells it better than me.”

“No, no. We revere stories in Hekatalia. Oral history is important to us as so many of our spells comes from tradition. Thank you for telling me. It’s beautiful, if sad.” The night is quiet around you both, the smell of the earlier feast slowly dancing to your nose before passing by on a cold breeze.

“It’s just a story. I doubt that’s how the werewolves actually came about. But it gives us a reason as to why we have to take wolf form every full moon. Our actual history is lost to time but there is a statue of Selanus and Lunarias carved into the peak of the mountain by a generation long lost. It’s considered an honour to take a pilgrimage there.” He pauses for a moment, chewing on his lip carefully before sighing deeply. “About earlier...I did not mean to upset Prince Hoseok like that. I did not know, or think. The curse is just some story to us unfortunately, just like Selanus and Lunarias.”

You let out a deep breath of your own, stroking the soft grey fur of your coat. “I understand. But you must remember that it’s his life. He refuses to think about it. Princess Soo-Ah will live a few centuries at least and he takes consolation in that.” 

“But why have a child if you know that one day you will bury them?” He sounds confused and you look at him with a raised brow, causing his cheeks to redden in the dim lighting of the nearby torches. “I’m sorry. Children are important in Lunatis, family is pack and pack is family. The very idea of having children that you will have to bury every time...it’s anathema to everything a wolf is.” 

“Again, I understand but...think of it from their point of view. Everyone they know and love right now will die. And they will live. And the people they grow to love afterwards will die. And they will live. And the cycle will continue forever. Is it selfish? Yes. But they have so much love to give and none of us begrudge them the chance to have a family, to give that love to someone. Princess Soo-Ah will one day have children, and they will watch over them and so forth. I don’t envy them their position, and I don’t think anyone who does not have to go through what they will should judge their choices. They only have each other for the rest of time. They’re such good parents too, it would be such a waste.” The words you speak are truthful and you feel an ache in your chest at the idea of having to live forever and watch everyone you love die.

The silence falls once more for a few minutes, neither of you willing to say anything as you both absorb what you have explained. You can practically feel Yoongi turning it over in his head.

“I did not think. I don’t think anyone has. Is he a good father? He seemed happy earlier?” You smile at that, lips turning up as you remember the many times that you have walked in on him with his daughter, sometimes with his wife alongside him.

“He dotes on her. It’s well known in the kingdom that our Prince is completely smitten,” Yoongi smiles and laughs, shaking his head slightly. The poor lighting makes him look even more handsome oddly, and you watch his profile in the flickering light of a nearby sconce while curiosity bubbles in you once more. “If you’re not a prince, then what are you? I don’t really understand the structure of your...pack?”

The werewolf hums quietly, eyes flicking around the place as he chews on his lip while thinking of a way to explain his home. “My father is Alpha of the Lunatus Pack. That’s the equivalent of your Queen, only it is not inherited. Only the strongest take up the mantle of Alpha. Beneath him are his ten Beta’s, who give him advice and help him to run his pack. The Lunatus Pack is the largest and most powerful in Lunatis, which makes him the de facto leader of our nation which is made up of six packs. The five Omegas in our pack each lead a different area of society such as healing, the arts, education and so forth.”

“And you? What are you then? Everyone seems to defer to you here? I apologise if I overstep my boundaries, please tell me if I do. I’m just...curious.” You worry, concerned that you are asking too much of someone who you shouldn’t even be talking to. It’s an odd position to be in, being so close to one of the dual leaders of your own nation yet being only their attendant.

There’s every chance that Yoongi could become offended. But instead, he just gives you a sweet smile as his eyes flash that wolf amber once more.

“No, please. It’s fine. You’re a guest here too, and Prince Hoseok evidently trusts you. We have trials here, to judge the next Alpha apparent to see who will be the one to lead our nation once the Alpha retires or dies. I am the Alpha apparent.” He looks a little meek to be admitting that, and you let your eyes run over him once more.

“So...you’re important then? The Princess Soo-Ah of Lunatus?” A snort is your response, along with an eye roll.

“I guess so. But I’m not a prince. I’m not anything yet. I just stay with my father and learn what he does, because one day that will be me. The unfortunate fact of being born too strong to be anything else.”

“Oh...how ever will you cope.” Your words come out far more teasing than you intended, particularly for a mere personal attendant and almost immediately you bow your head in response while mumbling an apology. He merely waves a hand at you, uncaring of your faux pas and you wonder at the culture of the Lunatus Pack.

Were his own maids allowed to speak to him so casually? Although, you were technically with the guest of honour. So maybe you were being given more freedoms than you would be otherwise.

The night quietens around you, the windows slowly going dark as people retire to their chambers for the night. You note idly that there are no light wisps here, glowing softly amongst the sparse grass. Instead, there’s simply emptiness.

No sound escapes the Grand Hall anymore, nor do any scents and you presume that the kitchen staff are merely washing up for the night before eating their own meals. That’s how it was for the help. Serve first, self last. 

It would likely be no different here.

“I presume you are a witch then?” Yoongi asks softly, breaking the silence between you both. For a moment, you simply look him over once more in the gentle warm light of the nearby sconce that burns merrily on the stone wall.

He looks almost soft, with his silvery-ash hair burning a pretty orange from the fire while his skin almost appears warm to the touch. Lips glisten as his tongue runs along them while his fingers trace along the stone bench slowly. 

His chosen outfit for the dinner meant he wore less clothing than when he had greeted you all, but it still bore the distinct look of the astonishing wilderness that surrounds you. Supple leather that had been dyed so dark it was almost black clung to his legs while he also wore a shirt of clean white. It had buttons all along the front, each one an intricate piece of ironwork with the sigil of a wolf’s head howling.

For his venture outside, he had donned a black coat, the leather creaking pleasantly as he moved while the thick fur on the inside kept him warm. It pleased you to see that even the werewolves needed to remain warm in this cold place, even if he appeared far more content with the ambient temperature than you did.

“Yes. Isn’t that what Hekatalia is famous for?” Your smile kicks up slightly as you run your fingers along the pleasing fabric of your skirts. A lot of the women here seemed to favour trousers of leather or fur much like the men, and you wonder for a moment if women are allowed into their hierarchies as well.

“True, but it doesn’t mean everyone is capable of doing magic right? We have people who are born and cannot shift into their wolf. Instead, they are stuck in the body of a human.” Turning, you place a leg over your knee daintily as your brow creases.

“Isn’t that bad though? Do your people curse them for that? I would have thought it would be...well embarrassing or something.” You try hard to keep your tone neutral, afraid of offending him in some way but he simply smiles and turns towards you as well, drawing a leg up underneath him on the bench.

“No. I mean...it’s tragic yes, because everyone should have the chance to let their wolf free and run wild as our ancestors did. But we don’t judge them any worse for it. Lunarias makes them nowol’s for a reason. We don’t know what that is, but everything is done for a reason. Besides...why be cruel when they already have to live with their wolf trying to claw free?” At your confused look, he lets out a quiet laugh. “Nowol is what we call those who can’t shift. It’s just a shortened version of no wolf, because their wolf will never be heard.”

“That sounds...awful. I mean no offence when I say that but...I can’t imagine not being able to use my magic. Everyone born of a witch line can use it. Princess Soo-Ah will be able to use it, though it is unlikely that she would be powerful enough to act as a medium of power to the Ancient Oak given the Sanguinati in her. But she will still be able to wield magic of a far greater strength than anyone else.” The wolf heir looks confused at this, his face scrunching up almost adorably until you laugh.

Gesturing in front of you, tiny balls of light appear and begin to glow an ethereal blue-white in the darkness. Yoongi’s eyes widen as they form the shape of a tree, its branches overflowing while a tiny figure stands next to it.

“Magic exists in the world freely, but it is strongest in Hekatalia because there are more Sources there than anywhere else. The Ancient Oak in the Sacred Grove sustains most of the palace and city alone. We believe that these Sources exist as a way for magic to be channelled efficiently, to stop too much power coming at once and keeping a healthy balance with the land. The magic runs through the Sources before diverting through our Queen, and through her we all get a piece. If she was not there, then it would run rampant and wild, too much for us to comprehend. Magic would go haywire.” His mouth is open, the pink interior just visible to you as tiny balls of light filter from the tree to the figure and then back out.

“Like a dam? Your Queen makes it more manageable?” You nod with a smile. “That makes sense. Are you powerful then?”

“I have never been asked to join any of the Great Guilds. Not the Alchemists or the Pyromancers, the Healers or the Warriors, the Potion Masters or the Astronomers. My magic is small and if it was not for the fact that my cousin is Captain of the Guard then I would likely be working the fields with my parents.”

Yoongi watches the lights before they sputter and fizzle out of existence, his face falling slightly as darkness overwhelms once more. “I remember him. Jeon Jungkook right? Big, surprisingly muscular for a witch.” 

“Don’t tell him that. He won’t be sure whether to be proud or take offence.” You titter, letting your hand rest against your mouth as you take note of the silver ring that glints on his finger. It too has a wolf’s head engraved in it.

“Witches are connected to the earth right? So can you make proper grass grow here? And not this grass that reminds me of the Deadlands?” He asks, pointing to the sparse and sad looking grass that dots the area in clumps. Attempts have evidently been made to make the earth it grows in rich, but he’s very right in that it reminds you more of the corpse grass that grows wild in the Deadlands to the west of Lunatis and north of Sanguinus. 

You only know what it looks like because you have seen specimens grown in the experimental garden in the castle. It’s long and thick, the blades sharp and pale of all colour. There’s no wonder as to how it got its name.

“Well...I’m not the Queen and we are far away from a Source at the moment. It feels like we’re at least one hundred miles from the closest which means the magic here in your forests is wild and harder to control. On top of that...we are on a mountain and that is stone which seems to have...bound the magic almost? The earth cries but is muffled by rock.” But you have the urge to impress him, to make that sweet gummy smile you had seen at the feast come back to life.

You want to see his eyes flash that molten gold once more while he watches you, with the knowledge that it was caused by you and you alone. The thought of that makes you pause for a moment, a tiny frown creasing your brow before you shake your head.

It’s just because you never get to show off your powers. They’re nothing special, and living in a country of people far more talented than you...why would you need to show it off?

Kneeling down from the bench, you can’t help but grimace slightly as the earth presses against your knees beneath the layers of your dress. There’s little wonder that the grass is so coarse and hardy given that the dirt feels like it is made of purely small stones.

You try to ignore the small pinpricks of pain that radiates from the sharp ground, instead leaning forward to rest your hands against the frozen, hard floor. Closing your eyes, your breath leaves you in a long and slow exhale as you call to the magic that lies deep within the earth.

Your queen would probably be able to do this without even touching the ground, without even calling that hard. Even this far north, in this land of great stone where magic had run rampant and wild for millennia before sinking into the Sources that dot the continent. 

But you do not have her power, and sweat begins to dot your brow as you call and call. Magic is an intrinsic part of you, as easy to use and wield as it is to write a letter but connecting to something that has been hidden, that has slumbered for so long is hard.

After a few minutes of silence, you have no doubt that Yoongi is probably wondering what the hell you’re doing on the floor but he seems to be too polite to question you outright, you finally feel a flicker responding to you.

Reaching for it, you grasp it desperately and twine your magic through it slowly and gently. It’s a small flame in comparison to the warm, ever burning fire of Hekatalia, but it’s fire and power all the same. Weak and unsure, struggling to reach you as you gently tug it forth through the heavy stone that blocks its way.

The magic follows the path you trail, slipping through tiny cracks that widen as it pushes through and moving the earth as it comes to you like a willful puppy. “That’s right,” You whisper softly, smiling to yourself as you encourage it to stay with it. “Come to me. Bring life to this barren garden.”

Images of what you imagine leave your mind and travel down the tremulous link you have and the magic sparks in response, zipping after you faster until it finally reaches your hands. For a moment, the skin burns before the magic calms down beneath you, soothing the hurts and spreading out across the ground.

The next few minutes are a flurry of energy that sparks and crackles in the air, the hairs on your arms rising as the air becomes electric. Hard stones beneath your palms smooth out before disintegrating and when you open your eyes to look, you smile at the rich, dark soil that cushions you.

But then you notice everything else and your eyes widen in shock. The few flowers that had been there are now overflowing with an abundance of vivid and bright colours; species that hadn’t even been present and are sure to die in the cold weather this far north.

Smuggler’s ivy creeps across every wall, crawling upwards on the buildings and dropping over the edge of the walls while a tree sapling dances in the soft breeze that blows through. From the color of the bark and the leaves, you estimate it to be a witchling tree which causes you to lean back in even more confusion.

Witchling trees only grow in Hekatalia, their bark soaking up wild magic until they are pure white. Their leaves often end up a rainbow of colours, ranging from dark purple through to maroon through to brilliant azure and a hundred shades inbetween. It was a common witch tale that no witchling tree was the same, and they had never been found outside of Hekatalia.

Until now it would seem.

“Err….I thought you said you weren’t powerful?” Yoongi asks from the bench, looking around with eyes so wide that you can see the whites even from here. He stands before crouching down, running his fingers through the silk soft strands of rich green grass before moving over to the tree. “What is this? I think I remember these when I visited Hekatalia last?”

You send a small pulse of thanks to the magic, a little concerned at how strong it suddenly feels whereas before you hadn’t even been able to feel a whisper unless you concentrated. The magic flares in response, tugging at your feet almost childishly and you wince as the tree suddenly grows another foot.

It’s taller than you both now, with the tiny leaves glimmering in shades ranging from rich gold to burnished copper, a few glinting with striking silver inbetween them all. It would appear this witchling tree has taken on the colours of the land it inhabits, with its range of shades representing the colours of the wolf furs that run rampant.

“I...er...well...I’m not. This...I can’t even make flowers grow in Hekatalia. The magic is too refined, too tame there for me to do much of anything with it. Lunatis is too...rocky and barren, at least that’s what I thought. I thought I was just catching a tiny sliver of the magic that slumbers far beneath us, to make the grass grow a little smoother and softer.” Yoongi laughs as he runs his finger down the witchling, turning to you with a bright smile.

“Well...it looks like you did that and more. This is an actual garden now. I’ve never even seen some of these things. What is this? How did it get here?” He asks, reaching up to stroke one of the amber leaves. It reminds you of his eyes when they shift.

“It’s a witchling, and it shouldn’t be here. They only grow in Hekatalia because of the abundance of magic there. The Fae have a similar tree species only theirs looks more like an oak and the leaves are simply purple. Witchling trees are never the same. I...don’t know. I’ll ask Jimin, he’ll know more.” Your voice tails off, hands twisting as nerves take over.

Yoongi seems to be able to tell, his nose twitching with a few deep inhalations before he gestures for you to move ahead of him. You do so quietly, heading towards the bathhouse you had initially intended to enter before becoming sidetracked.

“Well...it’s pretty that’s for sure. If that’s what someone with no real magical skill can do, then I never want to meet your queen in combat. I can see now why Hekatalia has never been conquered despite its indefensible position.” Laughing slightly, you nod your head.

“She is far more powerful, yes. Though I think you’d need to worry about Prince Hoseok first. I’m sorry if...people don’t like that.” You point to the now overflowing garden but he shakes his head while bringing a hand to rest on your shoulder lightly. It’s an innocent gesture, done thousands of times before by hundreds of people and yet you can feel the sheer heat of him through your clothing.

It seems to affect him as well, with his eyes flaring gold for a second before he coughs and shifts away from you. “Don’t worry, no one’s going to complain that we have flowers and nice grass for once. Anyway, I believe I’ve wasted enough of your time tonight. I apologise. I will see you on the morrow.” 

You don’t even get a chance to say your goodbyes to him, for he turns immediately and walks away from you. Instead, you’re just left with the sounds of the night and the gentle crackling of the torch nearby.

A final glance to the garden has your head tilting once more, wondering why it had grown so rapidly and why species that shouldn’t be here look to be content. Even just the last few minutes has resulted in the witchling growing another foot, and you have suspicions that when everyone wakes in the morning they will find a fully grown tree in their midst.

You just needed to focus on not doing anything damaging in the future.

-

The Prince Consort is not in his rooms when you arrive the next morning to wake him, leading to you panicking momentarily and wondering if he has perhaps been kidnapped. You were not in your own lands after all, and the Prince was a race that was not well liked in this land of wolves.

But it only takes you mere minutes to find him when you rush outside to the little courtyard you had discovered the night before. He’s standing with Jimin, dressed in plain black clothing that is lined with grey fur and you wonder for a moment what your purpose is here if he’s just going to dress himself anyway.

Although he was prone to doing that sometimes back at the palace, so used to attending himself over the years. 

Neither of them notice your arrival however, their gazes fixed on the small garden before them. Or what had been a small garden last night, before you’d pulled magic through the stone where there had been none before.

Sure enough, just like you’d suspected, the witchling now towered over the building; its enormous branches reaching outwards desperately towards the peak of Selanus and the skies that loomed over Lunatis. The leaves almost shimmered in the morning light as they swayed in the breeze; golds and coppers and silvers and hundreds of shades in between.

The stark white bark of the trunk stood out against everything else, leading down to the dark dirt that overflowed with emerald green grass. Flowers dotted everywhere now, pinks and purples and yellows peeking out from between the grass and even on the smuggler’s ivy that covered the walls.

“Okay...I know that I drank a little wine and ale last night, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t drink enough to misremember this courtyard.” Prince Hoseok states bluntly, confusion evident in every syllable of his voice. You cringe slightly, shuffling forward to take your place beside him.

Jimin hums lowly, his own expression a mirror reflection of Prince Hoseok’s. “No, you’re right. This was not like this last night. I know that for a fact...because that’s a witchling. And they do not grow here. Something happened.”

“Like what? What makes a whole tree appear? And...all this?” His hand waved towards everything and you eyed Prince Hoseok, wondering if he would be angry at what you’d done. You should have known that Jimin would be able to tell what went wrong.

“Well...last night there was no magic here. It was as barren magically as it looked in terms of plant life. Now...now there is magic here. Seeping from a tiny crack in the ground. The witchling is absorbing most of it, but the bits that are escaping are causing everything else to grow. I have a suspicion that in a month’s time, when you walk the streets outside that they too will be covered in vibrant colours.” You want the earth to open up and swallow you at that, to ask the magic to take it and disappear back to where it came from.

But you can’t, because that’s not how magic works.

“Is that...going to be a problem? We came here for diplomatic reasons, to negotiate trade. Instead, we’ve apparently decide to send their city to the whims of nature. Will they be offended over that?” Prince Hoseok’s voice is decidedly concerned and your veins turn to ice, wondering if perhaps the Lunatus Pack will take this badly.

“Fear not Prince Hoseok, if anything we will welcome the beautiful nature. It’s hard to find fragile nature this pretty so far in the mountains. And I believe it may allow us to plant crops that are will not grow in our normal stony soil. Besides...it was my fault. I asked your lovely attendant to show me some magic and it appears the magic hidden beneath our land really wants to be free.” Yoongi’s voice is soft and calm as he approaches, his grey hair soft while his mouth quirks up slightly.

At his words though, Prince Hoseok and Jimin both turn and look at you with incredulous gazes. Jimin is the first to speak though, pointing out towards the garden. “You did this? I thought you had no real skill of note?”

He doesn’t mean the words to be offending or insulting, nor do you take them that way. Jimin speaks the truth, and you can understand why they are both confused. “I don’t. It was hard to feel anything but I found a sliver that responded to me. All I did was just...encourage it up. It would seem there’s a well under the Lunatus Pack lands that has been stifled by the mountains. Now it’s free. My apologies for anything that happens, I am not skilled with this.”

Jimin sighs softly, rubbing at his nose before looking back up at the overflowing garden. “I can stem the breach slightly. Magic will still flow but at a much slower pace. Ideally, you’d have a witch here who would be able to weave the magic and make use of it before it goes wild but I’m afraid you’ll just have to get used to the witchling. It will absorb the excess magic for you.”

“I think we’ll be okay with that. It’s possibly the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen. And given that I live in the midst of a forest, in a nation of trees, that says a lot.” Prince Hoseok chuckled at Yoongi’s words, shaking his head.

“Yeah, that’s the witches. Powerful, but pretty.” He teases Jimin then, smiling as he pushes the Keeper of Words forward with more affection than might be expected.

Jimin rolls his eyes in response, looking markedly close to his ruler, but he said nothing as he instead places his focus on the task at hand. Crouching down, he looks around the area quietly before he places a hand on the ground. 

There’s a moment of silence and you note Yoongi and Prince Hoseok looking at each other with raised brows, probably wondering what was going on but you can feel the weaving that Jimin is doing. Even from here, you feel the way he carefully crossed the magic over and under, over and under until it made a barrier woven entirely of itself before feeding the ending back into the ground.

It was skillful work and you half felt ashamed that you had worked magic so badly, particularly given the wonderful show you’d just experienced from the Keeper of Words. There was little surprise as to why he’d gotten to high and lofty position at such a young age.

Your shame must be written on your face as Jimin sighs quietly, standing and brushing his hands clean on his trousers before walking over to you. Resting a hand on your arm, he squeezes in reassurance and gives you a small smile.

“Don’t worry too much about it. You couldn’t have known how desperate the magic was to be released. This is a land which forced its magic underground long ago and we aren’t used to this. Don’t be hard on yourself, this would have taken all of us by surprise. Besides, it looks pretty at least.” He grins at that, gesturing towards the courtyard which now bloomed with a multitude of colours and delightful scents.

“That it does. I doubt there will be many who complain about this. We are a nature loving people.” Yoongi said, moving over to you both with that long and loping stride that gave him so much innate grace. You simply give a strained smile, hoping that he’s right and that you haven’t actually made a huge mistake here.

There could be nothing worse than going to a foreign nation to serve your Prince Consort and ending up accidentally offending said foreign nation. Perhaps you just were not made for diplomacy. 

Yoongi stands surprisingly close to you, the sheer heat of him warming you even beneath your thick clothing and you look up at him in surprise. He doesn’t seem to notice his close distance and you choose not to mention it. Perhaps a nation of shape shifters who live in packs wouldn’t think anything strange about being close all the time.

You see the way Jimin’s and Prince Hoseok’s brows rise slightly and know that they’re thinking it’s strange though. You can feel your cheeks warming from the rush of blood as embarrassment curls through you and you hasten to find a way to distract them all.

“Your Highness, I believe the morning feast is available now if the smell is anything to go by. Why don’t we head inside and make sure that you break your fast to start the day well?” Hands move to gesture towards the door that leads to the hall while you give him a bright smile. The slight wideness to your eyes probably gives away your desire to no longer be the subject of attention and his lips quirk slightly before he schools his face into a mask of pleasant indifference.

Bowing his head slightly, he begins to move towards the door with Jimin in tow before glancing back towards you, the corner of his mouth tilted up. “Thank you. After last night, I’m expecting a lot from this morning meal Yoongi.”

The wolf raises a single brow in response, his face carefully neutral and you chew on your lip slightly, wondering whether to rush after Prince Hoseok or wait for Yoongi to enter. It wasn’t seemly for the help to precede their hosts, particularly when their hosts were so high up in the hierarchy.

But this wasn’t Hekatalia, and you weren’t sure what you were supposed to do. Prince Hoseok gave no help, instead looking back once more as he reached the door and giving you a bright, white smile before he disappeared within. You got the sense he was enjoying something, and you disliked the fact that you didn’t know what that was.

“Should we go ins-”

“Would you like to co-”

The both of you speak at once; words rushing over each other and silence is suddenly deafening as you stop. Grimacing slightly, you gesture for him to speak first given his superiority to you. He gives a tiny, awkward smile and bows his head in response, rubbing at his neck.

“Sorry. I, err, would you like to come with me and explore the city? I can show you around...the interesting places and…” He trails off slightly, cheeks pinkening and you frown at him in confusion, wondering why he was asking you this. “Well, I mean...if you want to.”

“Don’t you have to go with Prince Hoseok and attend the meetings? And what about the morning meal?” The words are full of confusion, soft as they fall from your lips almost unsure. You don’t understand what’s going on, yet there’s a warmth in your stomach at the thought of exploring Lykos with only Yoongi and you didn’t know why.

Yoongi’s flush deepens, his eyes shifting amber as he looks away and works at his jaw before he shakes his head slowly. “No, he’s not meeting with me. I don’t need to be there. I just thought...that you might like to see Lykos. You seemed interested in our culture last night. And I know a nice bakery nearby to break our fast on.” 

Teeth nibbling at your lower lip, you hum lightly as your fingers twist and play with each other before nodding slowly. You didn’t imagine that you would get much chance to explore with how busy Jimin and Prince Hoseok would be, nor did you want to make them pander to you. But it did mean that you would have many hours of loneliness and potential boredom while waiting for something to do.

“If...if you’re positive. And that I won’t be a burden to you. Then...I would like that very much. Please.” There’s a shyness to your words that fascinates you, wondering what it was about this man that causes such a reaction in you. A sense of relief washes through you as you see his shoulders lower as he lets out a deep breath, his lips widening in a bright and gummy smile that positively lights up his handsome face.

“Excellent. That’s...great. I mean...we should go. Now...because...the bakery,” He fumbles over his words endearingly and you smile widely, wondering what’s gotten into him and why he seems so nervous suddenly. He had no problem talking with Prince Hoseok and you were merely an attendant. “I mean...yes. Let’s...let’s go.”

Without another word, he turns on his heel and strides towards another door that leads off from the courtyard, a low mumbling sound reaching your ears and you chuckle quietly as you realise that he’s grumbling to himself. It’s only when you make that sound that he freezes suddenly, shoulders stiffening before he turns around with a slight wince.

“I...it would be better if I actually took you with me I suppose. Not much of a tour if you’re not there.” He mutters, waiting quietly as you make your way over to him and follow him through the door. Eyeing his slim figure, you smile to yourself and shake your head.

Min Yoongi was an important person in the world, the heir to an important nation. And yet he was like no one you had ever met before. A contradiction of things, all fascinating and amusing and you simply could not figure him out.

This was definitely going to be one of the most interesting times of your life.

[mcrmadness]

I’m just wondering about ADHD again and how the doctors here say that there’s no need for testing me for ADHD because I had “no signs of ADHD in my childhood”. Well, I was born in 1991. The whole terminology and the knowledge over ADHD was different back then.

I was talking about this with my mom a couple of days ago and she said that I had troubles with homework - not that I would have not understood them, I just had such a hard time focusing on them. She said that she constantly had to remind me that I need to focus on the homework and not draw doodles or do other stuff. She sais she asked even from the school how deal with a child who cannot focus on their homework and from school they just said “Make sure the table is completely empty so there is no distractions.” but my mom told them “Do you really think that helps? All they need is a piece or paper and a pencil.” and those were the tools I had - my school books and pencil. I didn’t need distractions on the table in order to get distracted from homework.

She then also said that back then no one even talked about ADHD. It was still known as MBD aka Minimal Brain Dysfunction Syndrome and since I was not “stupid” and definitely did not show signs of learning/developmental disabilities - in fact I was learning faster than other kids - there was no need to worry about this syndrome. (Nowadays it’s apparently removed from the Finnish list but can still be used as an umbrella term for things like ADHD etc.)

I was trying to google this term now, to understand when was the term replaced by “ADHD”. I only found that this was done in the US already in the late 80s but I could not find anything about Finland, but I know for sure that what comes to things like mental disorders and neurodiversity, Finland has always been running late when compared to e.g. the US... I could only find some sort of Finnish ontology and thesaurus website and it says that the article about MBD was created in 1986, but the article about ADHD only in 2000. That would mean I was 9 years old (and my social anxiety and selective mutism were starting to really grow), and ADHD was still considered very much the “disorder of hyperactive boys”. This website does not even know the term ADD so I have no clue when did they start using it for the first time (in Finland). I just know that my sister got the diagnose along with an Asperger’s Syndrome somewhere in the mid 2000s. Now I’m starting to feel like I want to go find some old books about psychiatry just to see when did they start talking about ADHD and ADD in Finland and how did they describe it as BEFORE they discovered it exists also in girls (and since I’m afab, I most likely have the inattentive version), because this is just driving me so crazy.

I just... I don’t know. I just feel stupid because why is it me who needs to read about the history of psychiatry? Shouldn’t it be the psychiatrists doing so? But I do wonder what would he say if I went to him and really said that “no wonder they never suspected AD(H)D in me as a child when the term literally did not exists in Finland yet”. I just feel like I need to start writing down something like a book about my experiences. Collect EVERYTHING I can find that I have written over the past 15 years in the internet and copypaste them into a file and print this out to him. My brain just empties itself when I’m supposed to talk to a doctor but then I just face these things in everydaylife 24/7. And he just wants to give me antidepressants for anxiety. Okay, he did offer me occupational therapy too but I am afraid that it will just... kill my creativity again. I mean, look at my “timetable” for one week if we think I’d have a random person visit me once a week, let’s say e.g. on Tuesdays:

Monday: Nothing - the resting day after weekend aka no way I’m gonna get anything done. Know that there will be occupational therapy next day - don’t get anything done because mentally trying to prepare yourself for that. Tuesday: Hypothetical occupational therapy. Not possible to get anything done beforehand. Afterwards you’re so tired and the day is done so just sit around the flat and feel like going crazy from bored but be unable to do anything because TIRED. Wednesday: Nothing - the resting day after the therapy. The next day is a grocery store day. Start mentally preparing for that. Can’t do shit because of that. Thursday: Grocery store day. Can’t do shit before or after. Before because can’t start anything in case unable to stop in time - and when having to force a hyperfocus to stop when it’s not stopped on its own, it makes me so irritable and absent minded because can’t think of anything else but that one thing I was hyperfocusing on. Friday: Nothing - rest day after grocery store day. Mentally prepare for the weekend on which I usually always visit my parents on both days. They live in the same city, just less than 2km away but I still can’t start anything before that really, and I come back home so late I won’t be able to do much. Weekend: Visit parents on both days.

And then repeat. So when am I gonna draw? Edit videos? Write? I always do the creative things at night because PEACE and because my brain just works better at nighttime - ALWAYS has. I even found a diary entry I had written when I was 13 or 14 and I had been fighting with my parents because I always did my homework so late and my dad didn’t understand that, and I was then screaming in my diary that they just don’t understand that I am not ABLE to do my homework earlier than in the evening/at night, it’s just not possible to do them right after school.

Already now as I have about 3-4 free days in a week, sometimes even 5, I feel like I need more free time from my free time. I’m constantly thinking about how I want to do this and that, like I want to draw, write, edit videos, write... they are on the top of my mind 24/7 but still it takes weeks or months to get anything started. I just wrote about this yesterday that I feel like I have two moods: either too little time AND energy or too much time but a plenty of energy. There’s no in between. Now I am lucky to have too much time for myself but it also means I have all the time in my hands so I can always procrastinate and do everything the next day because I have time. Which means I won’t do shit, because I have no deadlines, and I start doing those things only when everything lines up perfectly. It’s never a decision to take my sketchbook and start drawing. It’s more of an impulse - I just feel like now it’s the day for drawing and suddenly find myself holding the papers and pencils in my hand.

Same happens with chores, chores just never make me feel good unlike doing one of these fun things. Oh and chores are also something that will make it hard to do the fun things because I kinda... don’t let myself start doing the fun things if I have the not-so-fun things undone. Which means again procrastinating and postponing something like dishes for days. I am not sure where have I got this mentality. Because like... wouldn’t it be a lot smarter to let myself to draw instead when I KNOW I can’t start doing the dishes, instead of punishing myself with “no washing dishes, so no drawing either”? Because as a punishment it does nothing. It does not motivate me with the dishes. They will be there for days or weeks anyway and they will be done only when I get that impulse to finally do them. Or, usually it’s not an impulse even. It’s just me needing food and in order to get food, I need to cook and in order to cook, I need clean pots and pans and in order to get those, well, I need to do the dishes.

I think this mentality partially comes from my school time. I aways knew how to prioritise my homework so that I get them done the most efficiently I could. Which meant that I always made the less-interesting homework first and the homework from subjects I liked, the last. I did this because when I started with the stuff I had harder time focusing on, it made it easier to focus on the interesting stuff. If I had started with the interesting stuff, I’d have had a lot less concentration and energy left for the less interesting homework and the chances of understanding a word of what I read would have been very minimal.

I still pretty much use this with everything I do - work first, fun later. I guess for neurotypicals this is not a big deal and probably something they all do, but my brain really wants to do the fun first and the work never. (By work for myself I mean things like chores etc. When I was actually working, it actually went: work first, fun never - because I was so tired after work I could not do anything that involved brains.) If I start with the fun, I literally will never do the work part. So I have to have the work first, even when it means I will procrastinate with EVERYTHING else too. But that is the only way to get it done at least at some point. It’s just that I feel like my life is nothing but work. I always have to shower, do the dishes, clean the kitchen table or start cooking. (Let alone the rest of the stuff like cleaning the HOME.) It’s a neverending worksite. I barely have time for fun because I don’t let myself to do that because the work is not done yet. But it just... never ends.

I think the reason why I hate chores is because no matter how many times I do them, I still always have to do them again soon. I shower, but I need to shower again in a few days. So it feels like it’s a waste of energy and time! Why to shower now when I have to do that after a couple of days anyway??? I do the dishes but there they will be again in a few days as I keep eating from them! Washing a plate after every use is also not an option - then “it’s just one plate” so it’s easy to put it in the sink because it’s not a big deal to wash it with other plates after a couple of days. Until it’s been 2 weeks and there’s again the rest of my plates in there and I hate my life again because I never remember how much washing the dishes also makes my back hurt but I need clean utensils because food.

But when I create something or play a video game, there is always a finish line and once you get past that, you don’t need to start over UNLESS you want to! When I draw something and it’s finished, it will stay like that! It’s not going anywhere, it won’t fade, I don’t need to draw it ever again if I don’t want to! So it’s not waste of my time, it’s something that will last almost forever. And I love the dopamine rush I get when I look at a finished product, but I don’t have the dopamine rush when I look at my cabinet with clean plates because I know they won’t stay like that forever. They won’t stay like that even for a few days. And that literally kills my motivation with every chore I need to do.

[wrinkledparchment]

phantom; | [n.s.]

Summary: You had an opportunity to save Nick. You missed it. You will do whatever it takes to make up for it. 

Word Count: 3,204

A/N: MY FIRST FIC of 2020!!! This series has two of my most popular fics and it’s only fitting that I conclude this series in the new year :) Hopefully, you all enjoy this part! I already have the next few parts planned out, ending with part 6, and an epilogue. Enjoy!!

Warnings: Angst, what’s new?

Taglist: @ohmypreciousgavinyeet​ @bi-mama​ @wittysidecharacter​ @iknowrocknroll567​ @serpiente-s​ @janoskiansecondsofdirection​ @helen-of-troi @perseny-blog​ @vannalovesyou​ @coureurs-de-bois9​ @losers-club6​

ghost; - one | specter; two | phantom; three | [coming soon] - four | [coming soon] - five | [coming soon] - six | [coming soon] - epilogue

Your first moments with him--beautiful, blue sky, and two young children bathed in the afternoon glow of the sun; childish grins, naivety, and a blooming relationship. Meeting on a small playground, he’d stopped you from falling off a slide. 

You had offered your signature bubbly giggle, and he, a kind smile, something the other children had withheld from you. In the malleable mind of a child, you saw him as a friend and playmate. You’d hadn’t wondered about the future. 

You hadn’t thought about what it would be like to lose him until much later. You recalled the butterflies in your stomach as you saw him laugh after you’d thrown sand at him. It was a warm day, and you, at eleven-years-old, had made your first friend. 

Nicholas Scratch had offered you a childhood; presenting himself on a warm day where you were playing without supervision, without friends, without care. Within two hours, you had decided you had a crush on him. 

By the time he began school at the Academy of Unseen Arts, you had seen him as the potential for more; handing him a handmade card scribbled in your best cursive, reading: You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. Happy Lupercalia, Nicholas.

You meant it without a doubt--he had stood up for you against the other young witches and warlocks, attending school dances with you if you weren’t asked, and you would celebrate every holiday together; riding your small bikes to stores to buy each other gifts. 

Nicholas Scratch was the first person to care, the first person you’d befriended, the first crush you’d had, and the first person you’d ever loved. He was mischevious, and only a part-time criminal, but you’d never expected him to steal your heart. Most definitely not your entire life. 

Nobody ever made you feel as happy as Nick did, and nobody ever will. 

Memories you shared, delicate snapshots of youth and innocence were playing in your mind, watching him give you a flower each morning, watching him help you cast charms. You began to catch up to more recent times. 

Feeling numb, feeling nothing, you desperately wanted to break free, knowing where it was going. You were limp, barely conscious as you watched it all. Him beginning to slowly slip into Sabrina’s life, and you watched as she began to slip into his heart. 

And suddenly, it was the night before he had sacrificed himself, and you watched his face, contorted in fear, ask you for his forgiveness. Tell you that he was going to do something dangerous, that he knew it would go right, but that he might not come back. 

“I might not come back, [name]. It’s dangerous but-- I have to.”

“You better come back to me, Nick. I don’t know where I would be without you. Promise me. Please.” 

“I can’t promise you anything. You know that.” 

Flashing to you apparating to Nick, after you had almost felt your world crack underneath your feet. And in a flash, you were standing in a ballroom, watching as Nick entrapped the devil inside of himself. 

Your screams echoed in your own mind like you were stuck in a glass cage, replaying the time, watching yourself miss the opportunity over, and over, to save the one thing in this universe that you loved.

You laid limp, on your bedroom floor, fighting a battle in your own mind. Begging yourself for mercy, pleading for yourself to please, please just release you from this hell, from this torture. 

Feeling the weight your own body was carrying, feeling the numbness seep through your veins, you wanted to scream. There was nothing physical about this--everything you saw was tied to your own regrets. 

You had an opportunity to save Nick. You missed it.

And oh god--  it replayed, over and over again. Replayed like a record stuck on a loop, scratching and aching against its holder. 

There was only a sharp reminder of him with you now-- not his words, or his first, kind smile or the bubbly, childish laugh he’d bestowed upon your memory. There was the feeling of him-- warm and enrapturing. 

It had an aura of its own-- covering you like a blanket and of course, you bathed in it. Like a warm bath on a winter’s day, an old friend’s hug after a particularly tiring situation. It felt like clouds and sunshine-- smelled like a fresh summer’s day and tasted--on the tip of your tongue--like childhood innocence.

It left you, along with him, over and over and over again. The same memory, the same words, the same missed opportunity drilling itself into your skull and etching itself into the fabrics of your being. 

Twisting like a serpent through your stomach, the guilt burrowed itself into the pit of your abdomen and waited--sharp and vengeful-- for your wake. It would stay, it would manifest until consciousness was regained to torture you, while in turn, you would be awake to remember it all. To digest, fully this time. 

. . . 

You opened your eyes quickly, ears ringing over every other sound as you struggled to get your body off the ground. You found your lungs aching, gasping for air and you felt even more suffocated than you had the first night he’d disappeared. 

The weight of your regrets, of the opportunity you had missed that cost your best friend his very own freedom, sunk deep into the pits of your stomach. He had offered you everything--saved you--and the one chance you had to save him, you missed it.

Nothing felt worse than how bloodied your hands felt, how all the ichor was stained like it was your fault that he was in hell. 

The dream floated through your head again, flashes of something much more innocent, a time when you felt safe. Giggles echoed in your mind and you yearned to see his smile just one more time. 

When they passed, along with your numbness as blood flew through your veins, pumping through as if high on adrenaline, you felt lighter. The pit in your stomach, the guilt, it was all there, but for the first time, you didn’t feel exhausted.

You didn’t feel like you were powering a whole other spiritual being in your body. You felt . . . light. Your heart was full of wide smiles and the feeling of sun on your skin, and you felt whole again. 

Your stomach was filled with warmth, filled with your much-sought-after youth, blue skies, and lemonade. You felt ready to save someone you loved. 

--

Another tear slipped down his cheek, “I’ve got to go,” he whispered. A moment of reflection, of debate, passed and you knew that if you held on for much longer he’d kill you.

The cold was slowly diminishing, fading, and so was he. He was leaving, you might not ever see him again, you would regret it forever if you didn’t speak up now.

Your hovering hand suddenly moved to cradle his frigid cheek, the temperature crawling and nipping throughout your whole body. You felt frozen, trapped underwater with ice above you, it felt suffocating.

You forced yourself to stay present, to ground yourself in his eyes, in the sorrowful look he gave you and you memorized his face. You could feel him slipping away underneath your fingertips.

“I love you, Nicholas Scratch,” you whispered before fainting, falling onto the ground with a loud thump, your heartbeat erratic but weak.

--

Sabrina’s wooden front porch squeaked underneath your feet, and you rapped your knuckles on her front door. With a few sounds behind the door, Sabrina pulled open the door, giving you a curious look. 

“Are you alright?” You nodded, and she gestured for you to come in. You’d been in her home once before, but before it was impeccably neat. You’d suspected that one of her aunts had done a lot of cleaning beforehand, and it was clear now that it was them who picked up. 

Books were in disarray all over her kitchen table along with a bowl of fruit. The room smelled of old books and dust like she’d gotten all of them from an untouched library. In one pile, she even had a bible, something you’d never see in a witch’s house. “What are you researching?” 

Sabrina’s downcast face shook sideways, and she stayed quiet. Her watery eyes danced everywhere around the room but avoided you, and as the sun peeked through the glass windows of her home, they cast shadows in the hollows of her face. Underneath her eyes were dark, tired circles, and you understood, but this time, you could help too.  

“I came to help you get Nick back,” you stated quickly, and for the first time since you’d entered her house, she looked you in the eye. It had a hint of either curiosity or suspicion--you weren’t sure which--and you knew you’d have to explain. 

“I did have his ghost attached to me, and I nearly died, trying to supply him all that energy. I think-- I think he wanted to apologize for having to leave you so soon. He misses all of us. He misses you.”

The sight of Sabrina’s eyes welled up with tears, flashed through your mind. The only other time you’d seen her like this was when he got carried into hell in the arms of Lilith, but this--it was different this time around. She was gazing at you, a plea in her eyes, begging you, begging anyone to bring her lover back to her.

Her eyes were a watery red, and you wanted so desperately to hug her, to let her sob into your shoulder, but Nick- he’d been the only one you’d ever held like that. Your heart--once full of all the warmth of a sun--felt broken. Like every day apart from Nick had been slowly chipping away at it, slowly whisking away until there would be nothing left. 

“I realized-- at that moment--that I love Nick. Not in the same way you do, of course, but I really do love him. Sabrina, you have my full support. I will do whatever it takes to get him back to us--to you. Just, please, let me help you.”

Sabrina, with a heavy heart and mind, put her palm out to you, face up. Your sight slowly shifted upwards, scanning through her own, teary eyes. Even with your hands violently shaking, you placed them in her own. 

Your skin met hers, soft, warm and comforting--though much smaller than Nick’s were, and less calloused, too. It was tender, like Nick’s old hugs when he would wrap his arms around you ever so tightly. His laughter rung through your ears, and putting all your trust in Sabrina, you gave her hand a squeeze. 

Despite your frequent jealousy, despite you barely trusting her until this very moment--she squeezed back. The gesture felt so similar to something Nick would do that your heart ached, and just like it used to when Nick would hold your hand, the feeling of being cared for, of being loved, washed over you like a wave.

Looking deep into Sabrina’s honey eyes, you smiled. It was meek, and barely there, being too damp with sadness to give warmth. And she-- she smiled back. Without a word, you sat down, and you knew now what she was looking for. 

. . .  

After a half an hour of scanning through various pages of the bible, you’d set your eyes on a familiar name. “Longinus,” you murmured underneath your breath, and Sabrina looked up. 

“What about him?” she asked, and her mind flashed through her previous attempt to actually kill Lucifer. Though in the heat of the moment she’d barely thought twice about his words, but after certain events, she felt like an idiot. 

“Nick--” you paused for a moment, feeling a pang in your heart at the mere mention of his name, “--he had mentioned before all of this that you’d already tried to fight Lucifer. Did he mention anything about Longinus’ lance?”

Sabrina felt her heartbeat against her sternum, feeling the steady thump as blood coursed through her veins, high on adrenaline. Suddenly, everything felt clearer. “Yeah, he said it was the only thing that could kill him. Why- why would that kill him?”

You looked over the bible passage once more, digesting every bit of information that could be useful before you answered. “Longinus is the Roman soldier that pierced Jesus’ side during his crucifixion. And that lance--the Holy Lance to be specific--is what he did it with. It was stained with holy blood.”

“I’m assuming he’s dead,” you concluded very knowledgeably, “do you think anyone knows where it is?” 

Sabrina bit her lip, wondering where in the hell you would find an old spear from the 1st century. She wondered if it would be in a museum, but suddenly and very conveniently, Ambrose wandered into the kitchen. 

“Hello cousin,” Ambrose greeted, pausing for a moment as he found you in the chair beside her, and Sabrina immediately began to ask him for advice. 

“Ambrose, you wouldn’t happen to know where the Spear of Longinus is, would you?” Sabrina leaned forward onto the table, propping herself up with her elbows just a few inches away from the open, dusty book that lay in front of her. 

Her cousin grabbed an apple from a fruit basket on their counter and took a generous bite, and even though most cousins, as far as you were concerned, would have to rewind for a double-take, he just nodded. 

“It’s in some mausoleum in Jerusalem that only high-ranking witches know the location of. They tried to hide it from children of the light so they can’t kill Lucifer or something. Why are you asking?” 

“[Name] and I need it to kill Satan,” Sabrina says nonchalantly, and you sharply turn towards her and furrow your brows, but Ambrose cut her off first. 

“There are so many flaws in that plan--”

And before he could finish, you spoke over him just as fast. “Firstly, you’d have to be--you know--not a witch to touch something called the Holy Lance. Second of all, how are we even going to find Satan? Are we just gonna saunter right into Hell and be like, ‘What’s up y’all, where’s the Dark Lord?’”

Sabrina struggled to hide her smile despite you trying to shoot her plan down, and she found herself understanding very well why Nick had become friends with you. Even in the most stressful, heavy-weighted situations, you still managed to be humorous and light-hearted, still managed to make people smile.

“Firstly,” she started, mimicking your tone, “I’ve been baptized because I’m a half-blood. And secondly, I already discussed where she was keeping them, obviously in the very center of the underworld, Hell’s Palace.”

Ambrose nearly spit out a chunk of his apple, “You do know that wandering through hell, even as a witch but especially as someone who was baptized is incredibly dangerous, yes?” 

“We have to try,” you reasoned, “Nicholas would have done the same for us. He would have gone to the ends of the Earth to save us, and we are going even further for him, even if it kills us.”

-- 

Aunt Zelda was sat at the table, across from the two of you, scouring over a few books she’d inherited from the barely-saved Blackwell Academy. “Why do you want to find this ‘Holy Lance’ anyways?”

Sabrina muttered something under her breath and Aunt Zelda raised an eyebrow, but at this point, she seemed so worn down by her niece’s antics to even try and stop her. 

“Very well,” she muttered, writing down coordinates and a small corner of wrinkled parchment before ripping it off and handing it to you. “Take Ambrose with you, just in case anything goes wrong. Sabrina, do you know any spells to cure burns?” 

Sabrina furrowed her brows, and without missing a beat, you supplied some information. “Touching a holy object would give you a third-degree burn if you’re not baptized or if you’re detected to be a witch. Just in case. Besides, I know a spell. We should be all good, Mrs. Spellman, thank you.”

Guiding you through her house to the top floor, Sabrina began to call out her cousin’s name. Surprisingly, a door opened quickly and her cousin, now not only in pajamas but also a silk robe, rushed back into his space. 

“Are you guys ready?” he asked, pulling out his wand, pointing it at the parchment in between your fingers, and beginning an incantation. You wanted to question exactly why he’d go to a mausoleum covered in dust and bones with a very expensive robe on, but you didn’t have time. 

The world spun underneath your feet, and wind whipped around your hair. You could hear Sabrina groaning, obviously off-put by traveling via teleportation, but this felt like nothing compared to having Nick’s ghost attached to you. 

Nothing compared to the seeking emptiness that swept through your abdomen, or the exhaustion that had seeped under your skin and burrowed itself in your bones. 

You finally landed, somewhere underground which was extremely dark, musty, and dirty. You lit up your wand and began to wander through the catacombs, with the two Spellmans following behind you. 

You could swear that Nick’s voice echoed through the dim, long hallways. Words that were coated with sugar, so soft and so sweet yet so far away. Every word swept a new piece of your heart away, and you just wanted to get out of here. 

Turning back, Sabrina had a similar, heartbroken and tear-struck look to her, as did Ambrose. This hallway, these catacombs, had obviously been tampered with to keep the lighthearted out. 

Nick’s voice, you felt it, planted phantom kisses on your skin. They were warm, and overpowering, the overwhelming feeling of I shouldn’t have this, I shouldn’t have this, I’ll never have this, drilled into your skull. 

But there was something in the core of your being that told you that a world without Nick was worse than your guilty conscience. That this torture of faux love, of being reminded of your scorching jealousy, was better than the emptiness of him being dead. 

And so you turned back around, and when the pelting of words into your ears got harder, you knew you were closer. Sabrina was close behind you, and unknowingly, you reached out and grabbed her hand like it was instinct. 

You finally trusted someone other than Nick. You could finally rely on a person that wasn’t him, and you felt free. Even with the warmth of his touch on your neck, and the prison that was never getting the real thing, you felt light. 

Something began to get lighter, and lighter, and soon, the inky hallways turned to flaxen-lit old brick, and you smiled. You’d found it. So Sabrina reached out her hand and grabbed onto something, and the light began to fade. 

There was no gasp, no scream, only diminished light, and a triumphant smile.

taglist/people who asked for a sequel:  @carostar2020, @wittysidecharacter, @grey-junior, @ohmypreciousgavinyeet, @palepaperfan, @marcelitachiquita, @onl-you, @cassidyiscool, @bi-mama​, @iknowrocknroll567​, @serpiente-s, @janoskiansecondsofdirection,​ @helen-of-troi, @perseny-blog,​@vannalovesyou​, @coureurs-de-bois9,​ @losers-club6​.