#could maybe get by on a solide dozen years worth of sleep

[adharastarlight]

can someone pause time for a few decades so i can have a quick powernap?

[drabblesandimagines]

Blessing

Clive Rosfield x fem reader Fuffy/bit of angst, based on this request

You can’t sleep.

Usually you find falling sleep as easy as breathing – be it on bedroll, mattress or solid ground – but recently it has been eluding you, despite feeling the exhaustion run down to your very bones. It would be a lie to say you weren’t used to patchy sleep either – when you were out on Cursebreaker missions it was rare there was the opportunity for a full night’s rest. You were often spread thin, finishing off one job and having to immediately head off to the next, lucky to grab a few hours’ of sleep on a bedroll before setting to work under the cover of darkness.

Then, when you’d return to the Hideaway, you’d sleep deeply, catching up on the missed hours – the missed hours that had been so worth it, as new Bearers would also be spending their first night in safety.

But you’ve been in bed for hours now, staring at the ceiling, and sleep remains elusive.

Perhaps it’s the bed? You shuffle slightly – as if you hadn’t tossed and turned a dozen times already - testing your theory. It’s a little uncomfortable, maybe… Oh, look at you, you scold, a couple of years on and off on a proper bed and now you’re judging it? You’re no lady of court. Perhaps you should spend a night in the Chocobo stables to remind you of your luck, of how things used to be. Of how things still are for those unfortunate souls.

Clive sighs contentedly besides you, burying his face. You adore watching him sleep – sometimes it feels like the only time he is truly relaxed. His face softens, the weight he has taken on his shoulders lifts and he appears serene, dreaming of the future he wishes to craft.

It’s a face you see in the moments when the two of you share a sweet kiss.

You so desperately want to see it all the time and maybe – no, truthfully – that is why you cannot sleep.

Clive has never been one to hide emotions – his face is an open book to his soul, and when you’d returned that afternoon after a few nights away, skiff empty once again of rescued Bearers you could not miss the flicker of disappointment his face gave away.

It has always been hard to convince Bearers to take a leap of faith and come away with you to the Hideaway, but lately you haven’t even been getting that far. Too many times you’d followed up intelligence to find the Bearers gone already, sold on elsewhere, or worse – petrified in place.

Clive is working so hard, day in and day out, traversing the continent, helping Bearers and everyone besides wherever he goes, slowly but surely felling Mothercrystal by Mothercrystal.

And you? You can’t even bring one Bearer back to safety.

He is doing his duty, he took up the mantle of Cid, shouldered the many burdens of the Hideaway without a word of complaint and kept the cause alive, despite setbacks and pushbacks from those you’re so desperate to help.

You are his partner – he’d said himself he’d fell in love with your compassion, your optimism, your kind heart.

You should be helping alleviate the weight he’s taking on, not adding to it, not making his face flicker with disappointment. Why are you so useless now?

Your eyes burn with tears of your failures and you swallow back the emotion. You can’t do this now, not when Clive is sleeping so peacefully. You’ve added to his load enough, you don’t need to add a poor night’s sleep on top of it all.

Stop it, you chide yourself, pull it together.

But you can’t. Your mind continues to whirl, your chest feels as if it’s burning. You clench your jaw and your fists, just trying to keep it held in until you can get out of this room.

You sit up slowly, feeling like your heart is pounding loud enough to wake the entire Hideaway. You’re careful not to disturb the mattress as you place your feet down on the floorboards and stand up tentatively. Clive mumbles half a word causing you to freeze, but he settles for nuzzling his face deeper into his pillow once more.

You choose your next steps deliberately. The hinges had been oiled recently – thank the Founder – so it opens without a creak and you silently slip out.

The whole Hideaway is in slumber but your eyes still burn. The acoustics the ale hall provide work well for the bard, but not for the sorrow you continue to swallow down.

You walk with a little more purpose across the cool floor, heading past Charon’s counter and towards the stairs leading to the loading dock and the lift beyond. You could never hear the lift when you were in Clive’s chambers so you step in and pull the lever up and down, still careful to keep your emotions in your mouth as you descend.

It’s not safe yet.

There’s a cool breeze off the blighted lake tonight – it chills you a little, dressed in nothing but a nightgown. You press on, hurrying towards the end of the dock, seeing Obolus’ skiff bobbing gently in place.

As you reach the edge, you drop to your knees, finally letting out a strangled sob from deep within. It doesn’t feel like a release though, only opening the floodgates of what you’ve held in for so long. You lean back, drawing your legs in front of you and wrap your arms around them, weeping into your knees.

Failure.

Waste of space.

What good are you?

The negative thoughts consume your mind, sucking you into the void and the tears flow like the Dzemekys Falls.

--

Clive wakes with a start and immediately notices two things - an empty bed and what sounds like Torgal scratching at the chamber door.

“Love?” He sits up, immediately awake at your unexpected absence. He places a hand on the space you usually occupy - the mattress retains your warmth so you can’t have been gone long.

The scratching at the door continues and his stomach sinks with nerves.

He gets to his feet, grabbing his shirt and his leathers – he slept in his smalls, after all – and tugs them up his legs with some difficulty. He opens the chamber door and finds Torgal sat there, head tilted.

Clive pulls his shirt over his head before kneeling down, scratching the wolf behind his ears. “What is it, boy?”

Torgal growls playfully, spinning on his heel and trotting down the stairs, waiting for Clive to follow. He barely makes it down to the last step when Torgal scampers off, obviously leading him somewhere.

Leading him to you.

--

Your breath is short, hard to catch it as the tears continue to flow. It feels like you should’ve run out by now - your knees are damp, your mouth is dry.

Between shaky, shuddering breaths, you can hear soft clicks of claws on wood over your shoulder, before a wet nose buries its way down to your cheek, nudging gently at you. Heavier footsteps follow at a quickened pace. You keep your head down, trying to muffle your continuing sobs, hoping this is all a bad dream.

“Darling…” Clive sounds panicked, a warm palm is now on your shoulder as he takes the wolf’s place. Torgal backs away a few paces and lies down – blocking the path. Clive sits down besides you, wrapping his arm around your shoulder and pulling you into his broad chest. You quickly drop your knees, pressing your cheek into him, feeling guilty that it’ll be damp in moments. It’s not enough for him though as he swiftly pulls you into his lap, cradling you like a newborn babe, pressing frantic kisses to your crown, gently rocking you back and forth.

“I cannot bear to see you like this. What can I do?”

“G-go back to-bed.” You choke out, your throat feels constricted from the overwhelming sorrow. “Please.”

“Sweetheart…” He holds you tighter, if that was possible, as if he could squeeze what has upset you so entirely out of your body. “I could never.”

He doesn’t press you further, resting his chin on your head, one hand rubbing what he hopes are soothing, reassuring circles on your back and sways back and forth gently as you sob pitifully into his chest, clutching at the fabric of his shirt as you do so.

Slowly but surely, his warmth, his touch, his love for you as you’re enveloped in his arms, tucked up in his lap eases the ache in your heart, slows your breathing, and the tears begin to dry until only small, soft hiccups remain.

Still, Clive doesn’t question. He just lets you be, occasionally pressing another soft, lingering kiss to your head.

“I’m sorry.” You whisper, mumbling into his chest.

“Whatever for?” He replies, gently.

“For adding to your burdens.”

“I do not understand what you mean, my love.”

“You are doing so much, taking on Cid’s legacy, the Mothercrystals, helping our allies…” Your throat goes tight, but you press on. “It’s been weeks since I’ve brought back any Bearers to the Hideaway, let alone saved any. I’m always a step behind.”

“It is not your fault-“

“It is. I’m not good enough, I’m not good enough for you.”

He sits up a little then, moves his hand under your chin to tilt your face upright. You want to squeeze your eyes shut – you can’t bear to see the disappointment on his face again.

“Darling, I wish I had the words to articulate what you are for me, what you do to me.” He says, sincerely, adoration in his stormy blue eyes as he looks down at you. “When I am weary, one kiss from you makes me feel as if I’ve had a whole night’s rest. When I am upset, a smile from you makes me forget all my worries. I love you.”

He presses a soft kiss to your lips then – chaste, delicate.

“The love you so graciously bless me with lightens all the burdens I could ever take on and I do so gladly. Why did you not speak with me about this before?”

“You do so much, Clive.”

“As do you. The Hideaway is not a one-man show – everyone plays their part, do they not?”

You bite your lip. “I suppose…”

“I know it has been difficult lately. It has for me too. The Bearers hear Cid the Outlaw and would rather remain where they are. But we continue to fight and, as I know you are there every day to replenish my spirit, I only hope I can do the same for you, sweetheart.”

“You do. I love you so much.”

He smiles, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“Promise me you will tell me if these feelings overwhelm you again. I will hold you for as long as you need, allow me to be the light in the darkness that you are for me. Please.”

“I promise.” You nod, yawning a little.

He cradles you back to his chest once more, an arm slipping under your knees and he smoothly gets to his feet as you wrap your arms around his neck and he turns to head back along the dock.

“Now, allow me to get you back to bed. You’re freezing.”

You feel exhausted once more, the outburst of emotion surely the cause, and relax in his embrace, resting your cheek against his chest. You can hear Torgal trotting behind at his heels.

The journey back up to the chambers is made in silence. The wolf goes back to his place by Charon’s counter, awaiting his morning treats. Clive had left the chamber doors open in his rush so he simply nudges them shut with his foot as he enters, before walking over to the bed and placing you down gently in your rightful place. He takes a moment to tug off his leathers once more and clambers in behind you, pulling you against his chest, tucking his knees up behind yours and pressing another kiss to your jaw.

“You will never be a burden, my blessing.”

--

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[olivinesea]

In the Golden Dark

a/n: Having never done any ship writing before I’m just going to jump feet first into the deep end with a little Hotchreid for you today. It’s nice. No warnings except maybe some angst because we are who we are. Probably the softest thing you will see from me so enjoy the moment. Completely unnecessary disclaimer that I would find this relationship wildly inappropriate in real life but thank god we’re out here in the lawless fiction of the internet. And you’re getting full on song lyrics bc Hotchreid is nothing if not decadent af. There’s more but I’m impatient so here’s the first bit. ~ 2.7k

what the hell am I doing here in the golden dark? feeling like I’m someone else who looks the part I built up barricades to block my heart cause I don’t wanna fear you

He leaned back in his chair, reaching his arms up and clasping his hands behind his head, arching his back slightly. With his eyes closed it could be any time of day. He inhaled deeply and pretended for a moment that he was nowhere. He even gave himself a few extra seconds, indulging in the quiet that was the office at night. If only he could feel so peaceful in the right moments—before sleeping perhaps. When he opened his eyes all he could see was the reflection of his office light in the black windows. There hadn’t been daylight for hours. He’d switched off the overhead lights in favor of the small desk lamp that pooled the light only in the area of immediate relevance. Everything beyond its reach faded in and out of existence as his focus fell deeply into the forms in front of him.

He pressed his elbows back as far as they would go, pulling up slightly on the base of his skull, stretching out a day’s worth of stress, countless hours spent bent over report after report. He never could have imagined that saving people would require so much paperwork. Reducing the chaos of the lived experience, the searches and the takedowns, the intricate patterns of dozens of personalities layering choices upon one another; it turned out to be quite difficult to do. It took him hours to wrap up cases, even with everyone doing most of their own reports. Which, through no fault of their own, wasn’t always the case. He usually ended up siphoning off a fair number of those reports in addition to his own.

He didn’t mind, he needed to go over everything, needed to make sure that any possible negative feedback that came back would fall to him and he would be prepared if it did. His team were his responsibility, he would be neglecting his duties if he didn’t ensure that things were handled properly. None of them needed the headache of administrative errors. He was good with details, good with forms, good with protocol. He would happily be the filter that saved them all the trouble of little errors even if it hadn’t been part of his job.

But that didn’t change the fact that it was eleven o’clock on a Wednesday and everyone else had gone home hours ago. Only the late night janitorial staff wandered in and out occasionally, nodding at him in silent greeting as they reset the offices to give the illusion of an endlessly renewable supply of fresh starts. People that didn’t stay late never gave this transformation a second thought. They left the office with full trashcans and small debris scattered on the old carpets, only to return the next morning to find a place untouched by human presence, metal fixtures shining and glass doors free of oily fingerprints. That was just how the world worked for them, generous with new beginnings. People who lingered knew better, that effort was put into the effect. Beginnings were never easy, never flowed so inevitably as the set and rise of the sun.

Hotch had been working late for many years, long before he was even in the BAU. He had learned in law school how to brew the coffee strong enough to stay up all night if need be. How the indoor lighting changed without the support of daylight, tinting the world a thin sickly green color without the natural light to round out the fluorescence. He only got worse about it once he joined the Bureau, the stress of the job causing old habits and old secrets to float to the surface. He compensated by working the hardest, doing the most, never allowing anyone to see him need things that other people needed. He could handle this job, this was all he ever wanted after all. To save the world. Or maybe, more modestly, to save the world of a few.

Now, with Haley gone, Jack with her, somewhere well out of his disastrous reach, there was no reason at all not to fully give in. No reason not to let his insomnia at least be productive. To let the latent self destruction that fueled his actions at least have a positive impact on the people he cared about. He could do that at least.

He rubbed his face with his hands, he was getting loopy. There was no reason to be letting his mind wander so far, there were still reports he could get through. Perhaps, as unlikely as the idea felt, he could even get ahead. He looked back down at the paperwork, letting his feet settle flat on the floor. The letters swam in front of him and he sighed, rolling his pen beneath his thumb, considering. He could probably make it another hour. He could get another pot of coffee into himself. He cast about for his mug, finding it empty on the shelf behind him. He sometimes kept it there to prevent his reports from acquiring telltale dark rings. Rolling back from the desk, he hooked the handle with two fingers and headed out to the kitchenette.

Wrapped up in making plans for what he could finish tonight and what could be left for the morning he was startled to find a light still on in the bullpen. He was certain everyone had gone home long ago. They’d each passed by his office, offering him an out as they made their ways home—perhaps their exit could be the motivation he needed to break out of his office, to head towards his own home. What they didn’t realize was that home was not better for him. Work was far better, far safer, with tasks to complete, a purpose. If he was smart he would stay at work forever.

So he waved to them as they checked out, giving them small smiles that, though imperceptible to strangers, they recognized as both apologies and well-wishes. He knew they worried, that they didn’t like to see him tied to his desk late into the night. They thought it was one of his many methods for making himself suffer but he didn’t have the heart to tell them that this was him making a good decision, this was him trying his very best. In his experience, nothing good happened at home.

He thought he remembered everyone leaving, each goodbye. But every day was the same and they all bled together so he must have missed one because he cannot deny the light down below. As he walked down the stairs, confused by the discovery that he was not as alone as he had been imagining, his tired vision focused better. He could make out dark blond curls and a darker sweater hunched over the desk in the middle of the room.

“Reid?” The name came out as a croak, he hadn’t spoken in hours and probably hadn’t had any water in that time period either. He cleared his throat and said it again, louder and closer to the other man than before. Reid’s head snapped up, expression as guilty as a child caught out of bed.

“S-sorry,” he stuttered, eyes wide.

Hotch frowned, not because he was upset but because he was still a little disoriented and his muscles fell back into the most familiar actions.

“I—“ Reid ducked his head and started pushing papers together on his desk, shoving them haphazardly into a file folder. “I was just…” he trailed off, not really having intended on explaining himself. He was simply also startled and reverting to the familiar.

Reid explained compulsively, able to handle the world when parsed down to facts and numbers. He didn’t have a fact for why he had stayed so late, only a feeling and that he didn’t know how to explain. Nights had been particularly lonely recently so he had allowed himself to stay later and later, getting lost in his thoughts at his work desk. Even without people around there was a sense of occupancy, their faint impressions lingering in the air. Plus there was always Hotch up in his office. He didn’t actively think about him or what he was doing but he liked knowing the man was nearby. Hotch’s solid presence always made him feel more secure, less concerned with whatever might jump out at him from the shadows overlapping the world and his mind.

He couldn’t tell Hotch that, was far too embarrassed to admit that sometimes, even with all the lights on, it was too dark in his apartment. No matter the illumination, he couldn’t quite dispel the unease of the night when he was alone. It wasn’t always like this, sometimes he had enough brightness to spare. Recently, however, things had been hard. So much had been going on, he couldn’t quite pinpoint why but he knew he felt uneasy. Too much had changed, there was too much risk that the floor could still fall out beneath him at any moment. And it hadn’t been so long since he’d escaped the consequences of his kidnapping, his addiction, that he trusted himself to be able to manage too much more uncertainty. Backsliding was always a risk and right now the world tilted at a frightening grade. So he let himself stay late in the safety of familiarity, sometimes working but more often not, idly rereading the books he had brought in and forgotten around the office. Tonight he had actually started to doze off, which contributed to his shock upon being discovered.

Hotch continued to frown at him, watching as the thoughts raced across Spencer’s face. He noticed how deep the shadows were beneath his eyes, the way darkness pooled in the space below his cheekbones, as if they were concave impressions filled by seawater. He knew Spencer didn’t eat enough, was all too familiar with the ways too much coffee and not enough calories pinched the skin and exposed the fine lines of capillaries beneath the surface.

“Sorry,” Spencer repeated.

He looked genuinely ashamed and it made Hotch a little sad. Couldn’t Spencer see that he was just as guilty of whatever it was he thought he was doing wrong by being here? He made a conscious effort to soften his expression, to show the warmth he felt for the younger man. After having spent his entire life masking his emotions, protecting himself one of the only ways he could, it wasn’t always easy to show his affection. Especially not at this time of night, when all he could do was cling to his walls and hope to find himself still on solid ground when the sun rose. Spencer wasn’t looking at him, too caught up in his own maze.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” Hotch said, trying a different tactic. He was smart, he knew not to make it a demand or a comment on Spencer’s health. It was only an invitation, firm enough for Spencer to know he meant it, that it was not just a pleasantry or an obligation he’d rather avoid. A hand extended, an offer of easy company to pass through a little more of this unwanted time. Spencer looked up from where his fingers were worrying at the corner of the file in front of him and smiled shyly. Hotch smiled back, a real smile that scrunched up his dark shining eyes.

“Give me five minutes to close up,” he said and turned back toward his office. As he packed his briefcase, his heart felt like it had been wrapped in a soft blanket. He didn’t bother questioning it—who didn’t like finding someone to commiserate with when they’d only expected more of the lonely dark?

*

Their late night meals became a regular occurrence. Not every night but once, maybe twice a week, they found themselves the last ones in the office. They fell into a rhythm, each learning to read more from the other’s subtle cues. They almost always went to the same place, a 24-hour diner near the office with deceptively strong coffee and a seemingly endless variety of pancakes. Hotch rarely ordered food, though he encouraged Reid to get anything he wanted. He accepted bites of whatever the younger man ordered, happy enough to reciprocate the excitement over strawberry rhubarb or cinnamon blueberry pancakes.

They talked about inconsequential things, mostly Hotch listening as Reid spun out information on whatever topic was on his mind that day. Reid, for his part, made mental note of the things Hotch responded to and had opinions on. Spencer sought out more information in that vein to bring up. He loved to talk, sure, but what he loved more was to discuss. During the day there was rarely time to let his thoughts wander so freely. It was a dream to have someone there, following along and challenging him with questions, building up new conclusions.

On the nights that followed difficult days, when they were both too stubborn to order anything of substance, they drank their coffees and avoided looking at each other too directly. Those nights they were both tied up in their own thoughts, islands separated by more than just distance, but there was something undeniably pulling them together. It was probably just the natural consequence of having opposite dominant sides but they mirrored each other perfectly across the table. Once, they both happened to reach for their mugs at the same time and the backs of their hands brushed against each other. They each noticed but responded differently. Hotch repressed any reaction, pretending the quick touch of bony knuckles and cool skin hadn’t registered. Maybe it hadn’t. Reid, on the other hand, jumped as if shocked, sloshing the hot coffee into a puddle on the table. This only flustered him more and he yelped at the sting of the liquid and the sting of embarrassment. It wasn’t like they’d never touched before. But here, in this nowhere time they’d constructed, it felt different. In his mind that brief touch became nails dragging across his skin, impossible to ignore. But he pretended the mug was too hot and Hotch didn’t argue, quick to assist with napkins and sounds of agreement to accompany Spencer’s half-coherent excuses.

When their meals were done, mostly cleaned plates of syrup and crumbs stacked to one side, they hesitated before standing up. Hotch always offered to give Reid a ride home, Reid always declined, insisting he could get there himself. This led to Hotch giving him a doubtful look and insisting that it was no trouble. Reid, secretly wanting a ride the whole time, struggled to argue for his self-sufficiency a little longer before giving in. It became a silly thing, both of them knowing exactly how the argument ended but they held onto it for some reason. It was a part of their ritual now, an important piece of the night. It kept this, whatever this was, contained, strictly occasional, random even. Not something they planned for, not something they looked forward to.

Hotch waited for Spencer to get in the door of his building before driving away. He knew it wasn’t necessary, Spencer was a grown man and a trained FBI agent with a weapon. Still, it made him feel better to see him safely inside. Sometimes he thought he would feel even better if he could walk Spencer all the way to his front door. But he knew that would be asking too much. As it was, the nights when they shared this extra hour or two together, extended further by the drive home, had been giving him more than he could have imagined. He wouldn’t dare impose himself further. The brittle excuse of safety would crumble if he were to start following the other man inside. He was not ready to find out what that would mean. He smiled unconsciously as he drove to his apartment. For now, it was enough that he had found companionship on these late nights when he would otherwise be slowly, meticulously, working his way into the grave.

~Part 2~

[kuroopaisen]

ripples. (kita shinsuke)

➵  you take up a part-time holiday job as a miko at the local temple. little do you know, you have the same face as the woman kita once loved. 

wc: 5.2k

warnings: f!reader, reincarnation!au, kitsune!au

a/n: remy my love, this one is for you! i love you so so much, and i hope this feeds your need for more inarizaki content. 

A storm pelted against the wooden roof, the sound melting with the tinkle of a woman’s laughter.

An August storm, late summer, heady and heavy.

Kita used to hate weather like this; it meant that everyone else stayed inside, that the swaying fields were out of reach, that tomorrow would be stained with mud. But recently, he’s been enjoying the storms. They meant that, if she was with him, she’d stay.

She sat across from him, her long dark hair pulled behind her shoulders as she bent over the chawan. The little black bowl had seen much use, but it stood strong. In her hand was a little whisk, kneading the matcha at the bottom of the chawan.

Dark splotches under dull eyes. A vacant expression. Rehearsed, mechanical actions. A kosode arranged a little more haphazardly than usual. Her entire form was damp from running through the beginnings of the storm on her way here.

But she had a warm smile for him. She always did.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” Kita asked, straightforward as always. 

She sighed as she raised her head to look at him. She was trying to smile with her eyes, but the light wasn’t quite reaching them. “I am quite fine. Thank you for your concern.”

Kita’s features softened with concern. “You do not have to be so formal.”

“Ah, well,” she smiled, returning her attention once more to the whisk. “I hope you can forgive me.”

There is nothing to forgive, he thought. But he’s sure she’d laugh at him for saying something like that.

“How’s your family?” He asked, grasping for some topic of conversation.

She nodded slowly, eyes still on the bowl. “My younger sister is engaged to be married.”

“Is this something to celebrate?”

“I’m not sure,” she sighed, the slightest of trembles in her hand. “But father is pleased with the match.”

“Rich?”

“And powerful,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “Father expects that this gentleman will be very influential in the coming months.”

Kita knew things were changing, outside his little shrine. By how much, he wasn’t sure. The human world was beyond him, a realm of blood and darkness that he didn’t quite understand. A world that hurt her. Part of him hated it for that.

“Will he expect you to get married?” The question escaped him before he could think about it.

She caught his eye, smiling. “Not as far as I know.”

He breathed out slowly.

“I can stay with you, for now,” she murmured, reaching over and placing her hand over his.

Something was wrong. Something was off. She’s tired. She’s distant.

And he was afraid.

That fear grounded him for a moment in eternity.

✧ ✧ ✧

Kita was better at handling loneliness than most. But even he suffered under the weight of four hundred years. Especially when he’d known what it meant to love.

When she passed, he had taken the time to travel. He only moved during the night, dodging humanity when and where he could. But as the years rolled on, the night began to get blotted with lights – first by fire, later by bulbs.

So, he’d crawled back to his little shrine, hiding himself away in the nooks and crevices. This was his place, and it always would be. His duty was to remain here, as something of a guardian spirit. So he would do just that, even if it brought him little enjoyment.  

Sometimes, he let children catch a glimpse of him. Usually, he could mirror their joy, their wonder. But even that hadn’t been lifting his spirits as of late. He’s been reticent, perhaps even melancholic.

But he hung around the shrine anyway, letting the days ebb on into an endless eternity. It hounded him, that never-ending existence that stretched out before him. He’s wise enough to recognise the irony in a kitsune feeling existential, but he’s always felt more human than most.

Today, he made his way to the shrine, slipping through cracks under doors and the gap where wooden planks meet each other. It’s easy for him to move around in his spirit form, more a mist than a man.

He slipped into the central shrine, duty-bound as always, to accept whatever offerings had been laid forth.

He hadn’t expected what lay in wait for him.

A miko, dark hair drawn back in a ponytail and red hakama tied over a white kosode.

You were sweeping the floor, mind seemingly somewhere else. You were humming to yourself, and Kita couldn’t help but feel this was awfully familiar. Something about your shrine had the echo of what he’d seen long ago, one of the dances the miko at his shrine would perform.

The miko had made a return, apparently. In the last few decades, they’d become something of a cultural icon. A lot could change in four hundred years.

You turned around, and Kita finally caught a glimpse of your face.

He froze.

It was her face. The woman he’d loved, adored, mourned. The woman who had left such an impact on him, who had engraved herself so deeply into his very being that he still felt the ripples of his love for her all these centuries later. The woman he had spent so many stormy afternoons with, cooped up in each other’s warmth.

He was more keyed into the secrets of the universe than most, being a kitsune and all, but even he was dumbfounded.

Kita took a deep breath, settling into his fox form. You most likely wouldn’t trust some random man coming up to you and insisting that ‘yes, actually, I am the patron spirit of this place.’ But he was sure that his fox form would grant him some authority on the subject.

He padded to the centre of the room, sitting himself down on his haunches. He wasn’t really aware of it, but it was quite regal. His four tails swished around him with a slow rhythm, each one tipped with black. His pale grey fur gave off a brilliant shimmer in the sunlight that fell between the window slats, creating a real sense of grandeur as he sat there.

He stared at you for a long moment, blinking his large brown eyes.

You stared back, gormless.

Maybe he should say something—

You thrusted the broom forward, waving it in front of his snout. “Shoo!”

He jerked his head back, stunned.

Had you not noticed his tails? Did you think he was just some average fox, scuttering in from the cold? Would he have to show you his human form?

It’s worth a shot, he thought.

He transformed in a flash, body morphing into something adjacent to humanity, fur knitting itself together as an edo-style haori.

You watched him change with wide eyes, knuckles blanching as you gripped the hilt of the broom.

Kita gave you a little wave. “Hello.”

You screamed.

Kita flinched. Why were you screaming? Wouldn’t people come running?

He took a step towards you, hands outstretched. His first instinct was to comfort you, to let you know it was all okay – after all, you had her face. “It’s okay, I—”

You whacked his hand with the broom.

Kita faltered, staring at you with wide eyes.

You… hit him? A kitsune? With a broom?

You blinked at him.

He blinked at you.

He traced your face with his eyes, his mind swirling with images of her. A beauty as fresh as the petals that bloom in spring, as clear as a spring, as bright as the morning dew.

Her face. You had her face.

You made a solid jab at his chest. Kita stumbled back, eyes wide. What were they teaching mikos these days?

He didn’t get the chance to ask. You fled, dashing out of the room with a small billow of your hakama.

He stood in dumbfounded silence, unsure of how to process what had just happened. You were the spitting image of her. But, you weren’t her. If you were, you wouldn’t have screamed. She had never run from him, never screamed. She had always treated him with respect, with a sense of reverence that came with her role as a miko. You… well, you were quite the opposite.

But you had her face. Her voice. Eternity shuddered to a stop, blocked by her – or was it your – face. Each memory flashed through his mind with startling vibrancy, coupled with a swell of emotion he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Oh, he realised. I’ve made a terrible mistake.

✧ ✧ ✧

A dozen web articles and a trip to the library later, you’d come to the conclusion that you had most definitely done something quite heretical on sacred ground.

Presuming, of course, that the man you’d whacked in the shrine was, in fact, a kitsune.

Your immediate instinct had been to run far, far away from that place; maybe even skip the country for a week or two. But then you’d considered the consequences of that. Would you be cursed? Did kitsunes inflict curses? You certainly hadn’t treated him very well. You’d hit him, actually. You thought that, at the very least, deserved an apology.

So there you stood, in the middle of the shrine, wrapped bento box in hand.

You weren’t quite sure why you’d come back. Maybe to prove to yourself that it was real, and that you weren’t just seeing things. Maybe because it might’ve been a practical joke, and you wanted the closure. How someone could’ve pulled such an elaborate ruse, well… that was beyond you, for now.

But going from seeing… that, to trying to pretend that everything was normal? That didn’t feel possible.

You’d only taken up this position as a holiday job. The extra cash didn’t hurt, and you thought it was an interesting way to spend the winter…

“Hello.”

You flinched, turning around. How on earth—

No, you shouldn’t be so surprised that he’d managed to sneak up on you. Not when a real kitsune was standing right there. A kitsune that you’d hit with a broom.  

You bowed, almost at a perfect ninety-degree angle. “I am so sorry.”

The kitsune blinked at you for a moment, but you don’t see it. “It’s okay.” His voice was soft, perhaps even comforting.

You stood up and held the bento box out to him with stiff arms.

The kitsune raised his eyebrows at you.

“I, uh… I did some research, and…” You swallowed, hoping you weren’t about to make a fool of yourself. “Kitsune like inarizushi? Apparently?”

He stared at you for a very long moment. It was a little rude, truth be told.

You stared right back. Was this the right thing to do?

“Yes,” he cleared his throat, giving you a small bow. “Thank you.”

“It’s an apology,” you blurted out, your face feeling a lot hotter than you would’ve liked it to.

“What for?” The kitsune asked, tilting his head at you.

“For… for hitting you.” You could feel your cheeks growing hot. God, this was already a bit of a disaster.

“Oh,” he smiled softly at you, shaking his head. “It’s okay.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I’d…” You took a deep breath, unable to meet his eyes. “If I’d known you were actually some kind of yokai.”

An amused glint sparked in his eyes. “You’re at a shrine. What did you think I was?”

“Well I…” You opened your mouth, braving a look at his face. “I don’t know.”

He was smiling now. And it made him quite beautiful. “You’re a miko.”

“Well, not really…” You bit your lip, glancing down at the bento box. Your arms were starting to ache, stiff as they were. “I didn’t really… believe in any of this before a couple of days ago. I just needed a part-time job over the uni holidays.”

He stared at you.

That was certainly different. She’d been deeply spiritual, seeing her role as intensely important. And yet you, the girl with her face, did not.

“I see,” he murmured, glancing at the floor. Uni holidays… was that university? Sometimes he struggled to keep up with the evolution of language. And that was to say nothing of the spattering of English words he heard people use. That was a whole other beast.

But that was of no matter. He looked back at you, a gentle smile on his face. “What do you study?”

You stared at him, silent.

He tilted his head at you. “Are you alright?”

“Well I—I guess I just didn’t think that, you know…”

You bit your lip.

He’s a kitsune. A yokai. Oh shit, did that mean Inari existed, too? Was this guy linked to Inari? What if he was Inari? Was that possible?

“Oh, the inarizushi,” he murmured, his eyes now on the bento box. You’re not sure why he suddenly decided to focus on that, almost as if to give you a reprieve in your little verbal breakdown, but you were more than delighted for this opportunity to change the conversation.

“Yes!” You sounded more enthusiastic than you would’ve liked, but hopefully this would smooth things over. But if anything, you needed appeasing more than he did.

You handed it over tentatively, deliberately trying to not let his fingers brush against yours. This was a whole new world for you, and you didn’t understand the consequences of such things. Better not tempt fate. 

The kitsune settled himself down on the floor, folding his legs beneath him.

You raised your hands to shoo him off, driven by instinct. You weren’t going to let him leave crumbs.

The kitsune blinked at you, brown eyes round and quizzical. “Is there a problem?”

You paused, hands raised in front of you. Well, it was his shrine…

“Sit with me, if you’d like,” he smiled softly, nodding at the floor next to him.

You let a moment pass, watching his face closely. He gazed at you, tilting his head to the side. He looked genuinely confused. Did he… want you to sit with him?

You sat yourself down on the floor with a sigh. You thought it best to adopt the seiza position, knees on the floor as you tucked your legs underneath you, folding your hands in your lap.

“Please, relax,” he nodded at you with a smile. He unwrapped the bento box, picking up the chopsticks with a certain kind of elegance.

He smiled down at the inarizushi in his lap. You had no idea that he was comparing them to the ones she used to make him. Hers were neater, more delicate. Yours had all the signs of inexperience; rice was spilling out of one of them, and the casing looked a little too thick. But, you’d put in the effort, and that was enough to touch his heart.

You were just observing him quietly, your mind wandering off in its own direction.

If you’d told your younger self that you would be talking to a real, breathing kitsune, you would’ve spun some romantic fantasy of what that kitsune would be like. Skin like lily petals, hair white as snow and soft as silk, elegantly pointed ears, a face with all the sharpness and grace of a fox. That’s what you would’ve expected.

It wasn’t that he was a disappointment. It was just that there was a gravity to him; and yet, a sense of ethereality that you’d never seen before.

“So,” he hummed, picking an inarizushi up between his chopsticks. “You didn’t think my kind existed.”

You blinked at him for a moment. “Honestly? No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?” He popped the inarizushi in his mouth, chewing at an unhurried pace.

You didn’t really have an answer for that. “I just… didn’t.” Frankly, you just hadn’t thought about it. Nothing more to it.

He gazed at you, tilting his head. There was rice stuck to the corner of his mouth. “And now?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think now?” He said, gesturing to himself.

“Well, you’re…” You looked him up and down once. “You’re certainly real.”

He smiled at that. “Anything else?”

Was he asking for your opinion? “I guess you’re… different. From what I might’ve expected.”

“And what is that?” There’s a playful lilt to his voice.

“I… I don’t really know,” you admitted, twiddling your thumbs.

The kitsune just smiled as he picked up another inarizushi. “These are good.”

“Thank you.” You give him a half-bow, relieved that your efforts paid off. At the very least, you hadn’t angered him. Although, you weren’t quite sure if you could imagine this man as anything other than composed.

“Could you make me more?” His voice was gentle, halfway between a command and a question.

“Uh… not… not right now…”

“I meant for tomorrow,” he said.

“Oh.”

Right.  

“Could you, please?” He leant forward, and you caught your breath.

There was such sincerity in his voice. Quite honestly, you still weren’t sure how to process everything that was happening. Kitsunes were real. One was sitting right in front of you. And he’d enjoyed the lunch you’d made him. So much so that he wanted you to make more.

Was it right to deny a spirit?

You took a deep breath, clenching your fists in your skirt. “Well, if I’m going to be bringing you lunch, then I may as well introduce myself.”

He smiled, tilting his head to the side. “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

You made your introduction quick, trying your best not to stutter through your own name.

But he smiled, repeating it back to you in a melodic cadence.

“What… what should I call you?” You asked.

A certain softness entered his eyes. “Call me Kita.”

✧ ✧ ✧

“Would you like some?” Kita held the bento box out to you, tilting his head to the side.

You were sat across from him on the ground, safely shrouded by a wall so that no-one else would see the two of you. He’d implored you to sit with your legs crossed this time, and you’d complied.

But, you certainly weren’t comfortable enough to intrude. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to take away from your—”

“Please,” he nudged the box towards you. “You seem hungry.”

You tilted your head at him, unsure of how to respond.

“You’ve been glancing at my lunch ever since I opened it.”

“Oh.” You lowered your head, suddenly embarrassed. “Right.”

“Are they not feeding you?” Kita frowned, looking around the room.

He’d shown up, without any warning, while you were preparing omamori. Trying to explain to your superiors why such a piercing shriek ripped from your throat that didn’t involve the sudden appearance of this strange kitsune friend of yours had perhaps been the most challenging part of your entire miko experience.

“No, it’s not that!” You waved your hand at him. “They treat me quite well.”

“But you’re hungry.”

“I just… forgot to eat lunch, that’s all.” It was the truth – you were hungry only because of your own mindlessness.

Kita held the chopsticks out to you, placing the bento box on your lap. You took the chopsticks from him tentatively, giving him a half-bow. “Thank you.”

You picked up an inarizushi with the chopsticks, popping it into your mouth. Even just the feeling of food in your mouth gave you a sense of relief. You nodded at him again, smiling.

He smiled right back, his hands folded in his lap.

“Hey,” you swallowed, your gaze flitting downwards. “Can I ask you some questions?”

“Of course,” he nodded.

“Thank you, Kita.” You gave him another small half-bow.

He blinked at you. He hadn’t expected hearing you say his name would make him feel so… odd. But, you’d said it just as she had, all those years ago, inflection and all.

“How are kitsunes born?” You asked, shovelling some rice into your mouth. It was the opposite of elegant, but Kita almost found it charming. Almost.

But, your question made him blush. “I… would prefer not to answer that.”

Your own cheeks burned in response. Maybe that was a bit too much. “Okay… how long have you been alive?”

“Do you remember how many tails I have?”

“Uh…” You frowned, trying to remember that very eventful day. “Four, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“So… four hundred years?” That’s what those many hours trawling the internet would indicate.

“And a half,” Kita smiled.

He’s just happy to be talking to someone. To be seen, heard, felt by someone. 

He’d been warned against reaching out to people by some other yokai, but Kita had been unable to quell that curiosity. There was much delight to be found amongst humans and their lives, and Kita had always enjoyed observing them. And they really were delightful to speak to, whenever he could. Besides, was it not his duty as a spirit to maintain good relations between the two worlds?

But ever since she had passed away, he’d been reticent. He’d gained more understanding of where that advice came from. Advice that perhaps, came out of a profound sense of loss. Something he now understood much too well. 

Maybe it’s foolish of him, sitting here and talking to you so frankly, simply because you looked just like her. Was this some kind of reincarnation? A coincidence? Maybe it was just a cruel trick of the universe – or an expression of its fundamentally uncreative and cyclical nature. 

“That’s… a while,” you nodded slowly.

“Some kitsune may say that I’m barely an adult,” he chuckled.

“Really?” You frowned.

“I’ve much more life to live if I want to be considered wise,” he said.

You gazed off for a moment, blinking slowly. Four hundred years sounded like an awful long time to you, but… well, you weren’t immortal. And this man sitting with you likely was. An uncomfortable feeling crawled its way through your chest, your mind circling with thoughts and questions you didn’t feel quite ready to grapple with.

The conversation needed to move on.

You frowned, tapping your lips with the tip of the chopsticks. “Okay, so.”

“Yes?”

“What’s been your favourite decade to live in?” 

He paused, doing some quick fact-checking in his mind. “The fifteen hundreds, I believe.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Kita murmured, looking away from you. How would he even begin to explain that? ‘I was in love with someone who looked and sounded exactly like you?’ He prized honesty, but perhaps that was too honest.

You blinked, biting your lip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” 

“It’s okay.” He turned to give you a weak smile. 

A tenuous silence stretched between you, and he almost regretted being so terse. Almost. 

“Are other yokai real, too?” You asked, poking at the rice. 

“Some of them.”

“Only some?” You raised an eyebrow at him. 

“If you ever get yourself a cat, you better keep an eye on its tail.” 

You swallowed, unsure if he was joking or not. “Are… ghosts real?” 

“Perhaps it’s best if you don’t know the answer to that question.”

“Uh…” You turned the thought over in your mind for a second. “I’m not sure.” 

You turned your attention back to the inarizushi, popping a few more into your mouth and chewing away contentedly. After a few moments, you gestured to the bento box, your mouth full of food.

Kita nodded, holding his palm out. 

You placed the chopsticks in his hand, blushing as your fingers brushed against his.

“Tell me about yourself,” he hummed, setting the bento box in his own lap. 

You swallowed, your face growing hot. “There’s not really anything interesting to say.” 

“Why did you choose to be a miko?” 

“It’s just a part-time job,” you shrugged, playing with the fabric of your skirt.

“But you could have chosen from a whole range of jobs,” he persisted. “But you’re here. Why?”

You paused, turning the question over in your mind. “I don’t know… it seemed interesting?”

Kita nodded. “Why?”

“I… I guess I thought it would be a fun way to connect with the culture,” you shrugged. “Because it’s… very traditional.”

“Have you enjoyed yourself?”

“I have.” You could answer that question confidently, at least.

“That’s wonderful to hear,” he smiled softly.

“I should get back to work,” you sighed, rising to your feet.

“Be sure to take care of yourself,” he nodded, getting up himself. “Don’t overwork yourself.”

You cocked your head at him. “Huh?”

He shook his head. “Nevermind.”

Those were the words he’d say to her, all those years ago. Words that she never heeded as much as he wished she would.

But, he had to remind himself, time and time again.

You’re not her.

✧ ✧ ✧

“You’re very good at making those.” Kita sat on the floor next to you, watching as you arranged little omamori into the categories of a large wooden box.  

“What, these?” You held one towards him.

“Yeah,” he nodded, taking it from you gently. He turned it over, the sky blue silk soft beneath his touch. 

“Thank you,” you blushed

“I don’t recognise this colour,” he murmured. “What are they for?” He asked, deciding that he’d hold on to this little omamori. You’d made it yourself, after all.

“That one’s a love charm,” you nodded at his hand, smiling as you organised a set of gold silk rectangles. “Apparently they’re very popular during the New Year.” You pointed at another group of pink and blue charms in the box. “The one you’re holding is for single people, but these ones are for couples.” 

He swallowed, turning it over in his hand. A love charm. She had made him one, all those years ago. Albeit, she had given it to him with a lot more intention.

“Thank you,” he murmured, tucking it into the sleeve of his kimono.

You grinned at him, eyeing his sleeve. “Hoping it’ll help you out?”

“I—” His cheeks bloomed red as heat crawled up his neck. Perhaps he’d been thinking about love more often, these days. But he wasn’t quite ready to process all of that. Was he so obvious?

“I’m just teasing,” you giggled.

He fought back the urge to pout. He was glad, at least, that you felt comfortable enough to say something like that. But, it saved him at least a little bit of embarrassment.

You’d been visiting him for the past few weeks, bringing him inarizushi every shift you’re in for.

And it made him so, so happy. He’s being seen. Being noticed. And, he liked talking to you. Maybe more than he should. More than he wanted to.

“When was the last time you’ve been to town?” You wondered, looking at him.

Kita frowned. “Uh… a couple hundred years, maybe?”

You gaped at him. “What?”

“Well, I…” He stopped, tilting his head at you. He didn’t quite know what to say. Yes, it had been a very long while, but he’d only just found the strength to open himself up to the human world like he once had. He’d been an observer for the past few centuries, but it had been quite a long while since he’d engaged like that. And besides; ‘town’ must be very, very different.

You scratched the back of your head. “Do you want to?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you want to go to town?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m going to a festival this Friday,” you said, smiling at him. “It’s nearly New Year’s.”

Oh, right. New Year’s. 

Would you leave him, once the year turned over? 

He swallowed the thought back. No, he wouldn’t think about that. He didn’t want to. 

“Come with me on Friday,” you smiled, placing your hand on his shoulder.

Kita froze, feeling a certain kind of warmth in his chest that he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time. A type of warmth he hadn’t felt since her. A type of warmth that was at once exhilarating and terrifying. 

“It’ll be fun, I promise!” You beamed. If you’d noticed his reaction, you didn’t give him any indication.

“Okay,” he mumbled, suddenly much more interested in the omamori in his sleeve than before. 

“Yay!” You clapped your hands together, your face full of joy. “I’ll see you Friday!”

Kita swallowed roughly. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that. But he didn’t want to say no to you. Not when you were smiling at him like that.

✧ ✧ ✧

“Are you alright?”

Kita blinked, looking at you. “Hm?”

“You look… uncomfortable,” you said, tilting your head at him. “I mean, I think that’s discomfort on your face.”

He swallowed, looking down at the ground. “It’s just… there’s a lot of people.”

The two of you were stood at the edge of the crowd, just out of the light of the lanterns. Kita knew that there was going to be a large throng of people, but he hadn’t expected it to be so busy.

“We don’t have to go if it’s too much,” you smiled, folding your hands behind your back.

“No,” he shook his head. “I want to try.”

You nodded, looking over the crowd. “We’ll go when you’re ready, okay?”

Kita gazed at you for a moment. He was glad that you shared her kindness. But, it was also very much your own; a sense of compassion that you’d cultivated yourself.

He took a deep breath, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment. A myriad of scents flooded his nose – lanterns burning, tea brewing, fish cooking. It was almost overwhelming, the entire area laced with such dense, powerful sensations.

“I’m ready,” he murmured, opening his eyes.

“Wonderful,” you cheered, hopping into the lamp light.

“Try not to get lost,” you said to him, glancing at him over your shoulder. Your face was bathed with golden lights, your eyes glittering in a way that made his heart ache.

Kita nodded, gazing over the crowd. There were so, so many people; more than he’d seen for centuries.

There was life in front of him. Humans, chatting, laughing, glowing. Each of them was a ripple, a reinterpretation of someone who had come before. But they were also individuals; people with their own lives, dreams, hearts.  

Kita took your hand, an action taken partly on instinct, partly on desire. He didn’t want to lose you in this crowd, to watch you disappear into the mass of heads milling around the street and leave him alone. But he wanted to be close to you too. To feel your warmth. 

You turned and smiled at him, and his heart felt light. Lighter than it’d felt for centuries.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew why.

He felt seen. Understood. No longer a ghost flitting between the corridors of a shrine, full of aimless yearning.

You were smiling at him with her face, her eyes. But, you were not her. No, you were someone else entirely – someone just as wonderful.

The feeling of your hand in his. A sharp memory, yet something new. Something that felt like a possibility.

This little affection, this small gesture, anchored him to the present. Even if just for a second, you chased away eternity.

[yandere-sins]

It’s tough to be a god

Summary: “Disturbed, that's what you were. Disturbed by the people acting as if you weren't a living being anymore. No matter their love or devotion, no one wanted to see you for what you were, they just wanted to see the illusion they had of you as their god.”

»»————-———— ♡ ————————-««

Rating: Explicit Characters: Reader (AFAB), Multiple unnamed characters (Villagers) Word-Count: 3615

Warnings: Blood, Non-Con, Yandere, Mistreatment, Mishandling, Gore, Degradation, Mentioning of Starvation

»»————-———— ♡ ————————-««

a/n: Yay, I finished it! Yes, it was inspired by same-named song, though, as this is no happy-go-lucky story, it isn’t as chipper. Please proceed with caution reading this, and I’d love to hear what you thought, so please let me know! ♥ Enjoy!

»»————-———— ♡ ————————-««

Chapter I

No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't remember their face. Neither the shape of their nose nor the color of their eyes still remained in your brain. You didn't remember if they had big ears or long fingers, and you couldn't recall the name they had before they became 'It'. After twenty years of them gone, how could you possibly remember someone you maybe never truly looked at in the first place?

If you believed the tales, they had been a beautiful, young man. He didn't come from your village, wasn't born here, and never grew old in the huge walls of the palace the people only build for him. They used the last of their gold to make him a home, last of their silk to make robes for him, and they fed him the last of their corn. All of that, and much more, they sacrificed, just so he'd become what they desperately needed him to be.

A god.

Your people wanted nothing more than a deity that would reign over them. Who would make the harvests great, the rivers clean, and the people healthy. Considering that a couple dozens of those families had nothing to their own before their god arrived, it wasn't a surprise that they'd be seeking divine help to even make it through the day. You hadn't been born back then, but you knew first hand how hard it must have been for them.

This… god, he helped them. He made it rain, and he gave them instructions. In return, they kneeled at his feet every day, praising him, telling him about their sorrow and worries. He listened to them, helped them find a way to restart their lives and to become better than what they were before. The villagers settled on mud and barren land, and your town rose from the ground as if he had snipped his fingers to build it in a little under a night. Never again had your village known hunger or despair. There hadn't been a day that anyone suffered, no illness that managed to spread and destroy their happiness. It was pure bliss, and it was all thanks to their god. 

Yes, you didn't remember him. At least, not entirely. Strangely enough, you remembered a time where he held you in his arms. And you knew it was him. You felt safe and sound as he hushed you, rocking you lightly, blessing you with his presence. No other feeling could compare to the one as you laid there, still a baby, just a few days old. You still heard his voice call your name, a sweet ringing sound, and the only other thing you could remember of this god.

But never would you be able to hear the sound again, as he vanished when you were only two years old. He vanished, and no one ever saw him again. And with him, everything that was good and well, disappeared too, leaving your village in ruin and dirt. You were a mere toddler then, you couldn't possibly have known anything about the world yet. But still, his voice haunted you in your sleep, when at two years old, you heard his scared whispers as you laid in bed, your parents thinking you were asleep. 

"I need to leave."

"It's not safe."

"We need to go. All of us."

"Don't let them take the child away--"

Your memories got ripped off by the sound of a loud gong, the echo vibrating in your head. It was the usual signal, every day, at the end of every mass, every important event. To say it was making you sick, was an understatement. With always the same sound - and you heard it so much - you couldn't help but want to cry with how loud and obnoxious it was to you by now, years of its nuisance clogging your ears. 

Even after all this time wearing them, the chains around your wrists and ankles were still too heavy, cutting into your flesh. The weights on the other ends were solid, placed in little molds on the ground so they wouldn't move. No matter the struggle, nor the strength you managed to bring up would even sway them. If not a strong warrior came, or the high priest with the keys, you wouldn't get out of them. They kept you in place on the throne; kept you seated well. You may have stopped the struggles months ago outwardly, but at the first chance of being free, you would have run, and everyone knew that.

Accompanied by the gushing 'Ah' and 'Oh' of the people kneeling before you, you lifted your gaze. Usually, your head hung low, the crown on top of your hair was of solid gold and as heavy as a stone crushing down into your skull. But you had to resist the urge to curl up even more into yourself, knowing this midday-mass was the only time you would be able to see your mother. 

Scanning the area, you felt sick to the stomach as everyone looked at you. If you said only a word, they'd be drooling at your feet, eager for more. You were their everything. The cities most valued thing. All day long, you were on their minds, even if they weren't attending your holy presence. Even then, they would praise you at any given moment while they were living their lives peacefully, away from you. But to mass time, everyone was attending, no exceptions, no matter the age or gender. They hoped you'd bless them with your gaze, that their attention would gain your favor. Yet, you had no favors left to give them.

Finally, you spotted her. Your mother was a beauty, no one could ever come closer to how pretty she was. She had been a priestess to the god way before you were born because of her highly regarded wit and cleverness. And she had been in favor with everyone, because she was so forgiving and beautiful, like a rare, strong flower blooming between all the weeds that the village offered.

Even now, bruised and famished to her bones, to you, she was still the prettiest woman in the village. You were well aware that she wouldn't last much longer, but her attendance and the small smile she'd give back to you as you looked at her, gave you the tiniest sparks of hope. They were the only things worth living for anymore. 

Oh, what had you pleaded and kissed the feet of the priests that they'd forgive her for trying to break you out? Take those chains off of you, and run with you? What all had you done to make them soften her sentence? Never in your life would you have endured the embarrassment and pain to be mishandled by these people if it wasn't for her. But, in the end, they never followed through with your wishes. 

Wasn't it weird to deny their deity's wishes? It was almost like they wanted her to slowly wither away just so they wouldn't have to deal with a mother that wanted her child to be happy and free from the burden that had been shoved onto it. As if they knew that what they did was wrong, and yet, they didn't care as long as they had a god to worship, and NO ONE would take that away from them. Not even the god's own mother. If only she could have at least lived alongside you, that was your dearest wish. 

You had just turned 20 when your life was turned around. Undoubtedly, ever since the god left your village, it had been rough for everyone involved. He had abandoned everyone - you and your mother included. The land turned barren once more, the rivers dried out, sickness spread quickly. It had been 18 long years of barely making it through the day, but living off of carrots and water that you fetched every day from miles away, you two had made it somehow, no matter how hard and endless the days seemed. 

That was until you cut yourself in the hand while working on the fields.

And from your blood, which fell to the ground, a flower rose, red like blood and big as your hand. And another, and another, just as long as your blood dripped into the ground. On your twentieth birthday, a long, painful life laid behind you, but no more. You discovered why the god talked about leaving when you were merely two years old, in a matter of hours, which you wished you had never have to experience.

Because not only you discovered your 'power', but everyone in the village did. Someone on the field next to you ran to get the next best priest they could find, and he inspected you right then and there, his robes sullied by the earth he had to cross to get to you. You remembered the look on his face, the hitch in his voice before he fell to his knees, bowed his head to you, and so did everyone else under his shouts of submission. 

The priest took you away from your part of the town, without even letting you say goodbye to your mother. You wouldn't see for a long time after that, but you didn't know as you stumbled after him. Never had someone touched you so roughly, his hand on your wrist as tight as the fear of losing you was. You remembered stumbling, falling a few times, your shins cut open by little stones and branches. But where your blood touched, new life sprouted, and a path of fresh green followed you as you were taken to the holiest place your village had to offer.

He took you from the fields to the palace of gold, the old home of the god they worshipped. Never before had you seen so much gleam and glamour, only the priests being allowed to go to this place still after it was abandoned by the most holy. People were cleaning and scrubbing everything before you even arrived. They all looked at you in awe as you finally got dragged through the door, cheering and bowing to you.

They already saw something in you that you had yet to discover. Being cleaned and put in silk, you felt embarrassed by all the people watching you, giggling and merrily touching you up and down. There was no way you could have ignored the dreadful feeling as you were pushed and directed to an ancient stone table in the back of the palace, engravings carved into it in a language you didn't know. But despite your anxiety, you did what the people of your village instructed you to - the same people you were supposed to trust and bond together with.

Now, two years later, all you remember from that day was the pain. The terrible pain as they let you bleed out on top of the stone, collecting your blood and distributing it everywhere. You thought you'd die then and there, but you didn't, even though the altar was stained by your extremities. You couldn't. Gods cannot die.

Since then, you never had taken a bath alone anymore. You had been placed under constant supervision from the moment you woke up after being milked for your blood. There were eyes on you even when you slept, when you ate, when you studied ancient scrolls you couldn't even read. No one would let you slip out for even a second, let you get a breather alone on the balcony. It didn't help that you tried to run in the first few months of being announced god, tried to jump out the window to end this misery only when you realized you couldn't escape from them. It only made them more careful and suspicious of you. But despite their sideglances and whispers, they still crowned and put you in golden shackles. They put you on the throne of your people and called you 'God', and you had no opportunities to object.

Because it was who you were, a child of a god. A god.

Before that, no one had batted an eye at your dirty form, muddled by the filth of the fields, and clothed in ruined clothes. You weren't a candidate for marriage to anyone, and you were called 'stupid' and 'useless' more than thanked for the hard work you did every day. You were no one and nothing, and it had been okay. You and your mom alone had been everything your mind had been thinking about anyhow. It didn't matter if they called you a 'bastard', and it didn't bother you to be the least welcome person to any festivity. Your mother, too, was an outcast, so you two just stuck together as much as it was needed.

If you looked at yourself in the mirrors these days, you didn't see a god. You still saw the same young person that stood on the fields with their hands in the dirt to get the vegetables out of the mud. You saw the person making soup for their sickly mother. You saw yourself. But that wasn't what everyone else saw by now. They saw their god, their deity. The thing they'd have to worship, so their lives were full and splendid - that's what they saw. You had transcended the stage of being called a person, and you had to agree. 

It had been forever that you felt alive too.

Some part of you must have died on the altar on that day. You were sure of it. The feeling of their knives cutting open, so you'd give them more of the precious blood that would make the land healthy again, still haunted you when you thought about it. But the next day, your body had been whole again, no bruise, no cut, no scar. And that's when they knew you had the genes of your father. Your father, the god.

You didn't even know why your mother never told you about it. Maybe, she tried to forget. Perhaps she knew what he had gone through - the same you were now. Just maybe, that was why she wanted to keep you from it as long as she could. She must have been glad that by 20, you still hadn't shown any signs, completely forgetting about it. If only she hadn't. If only she would have gone with him back when he pleaded for her to leave together. Then maybe you wouldn't have needed to end up as miserable as you were.

But it wasn't her fault, and neither was it yours.

As much as you wanted to blame your father, after being under the attentive eyes of the priesthood for two years, you couldn't find it in your heart to be angry at him anymore. At first, you had screamed and cursed him, but now you understood. If he felt the same as you did now - miserable, lonely, wishing for your death rather than your life - then you understood him. Even if you wished he had been more insistent on leaving with your mother, or at least taken you with him, who were you to judge him, feeling his sorrow more than anyone ever could?

But you didn't have the strength to ponder. You were tired from not sleeping as you were always surrounded by ten people staring at your uncomfortable form lying in bed. You were in pain from your shackles, your crown, the heavy jewelry around your neck. Jewels, laced into gold that made for nothing but a beautiful sight, even if they felt like the most expensive cut to your throat. You were embarrassed by the lack of privacy, not remembering the last time you had taken a bath anymore without dozens of hands washing you. And you lacked the nutritions, from not eating off their elegant plates full of every fruit, vegetable, and meat that you could have only dreamed of growing up. But you just couldn't bring yourself to eat any of it, knowing it was nothing but the fruit of your own blood.

Disturbed, that's what you were. Disturbed by the people acting as if you weren't a living being anymore. No matter their love or devotion, no one wanted to see you for what you were, they just wanted to see the illusion they had of you as their god. You should have been at the top of the village, but really, you were at the bottom. The producer of fertilizer for their best lives, you had to bear the pain for their sake, without anyone asking if you wanted that even.

The most disgusting thing, though, were the expectations. You were expected to bring the people good. You were expected to put all your life aside just to serve them. You were expected to put up with anything and everything if it meant to be a good god to them. But at what cost? Your life? Your humanity? Your dignity?

There was no other explanation than expectations, as to why it would be necessary for you to be strapped to a bed regularly, people undressing you, themselves, with their eyes shining in the darkness. The sights of naked skin, paired with the feeling of greedy fingers was something that would forever haunt you. 

"We are not doing this for fun," they'd say. "It's an honor."

"It's nothing but necessary."

"Sacrifices must be made."

They called themselves the elite. The purest of the pure. The servants to their god.

But they were nothing but pigs. Ugly, disgusting pigs. No god would ever forgive them for the sins against you. You would never forgive them for sweating, moaning, saying your name in delight. The only time they let the formalities fall was to ask you how good you felt as they all towered over you. And suddenly, you were nothing again - no god, just the same, dirty person, as you were back on the streets. No, now you were less. You were a glorified whore, covered in white dirt, instead of the common brown one. There was no such thing as love or affection when they rammed you into the bedsheets mercilessly, despite your screams and tears.

The only joy you had was when one of them clasped their hand over your mouth, unable to stay aroused with someone wailing about wanting to go home to their mother and how much it hurt. You bit off his ring finger, without hesitation. No one knew how you did it, but divine wrath was a pretty excuse to leave you alone for the rest of the day. That priest never got his finger back, and it was your only meaningful achievement since you were theirs. Afterwards, you were treated even worse than cattle, gagged and blindfolded, turned onto your stomach so you couldn't do something like this again.

If there was anything good in your life, any hope for a god still watching over you being mistreated like this, it was never getting pregnant from the amounts of semen the left you with. That was what the priests wanted: For you to produce more god-spawn, secure the bloodline. They never wanted to go back to the dread of being without a god; in the rare case, you did run away or died. But from the first time someone had his way with you, you swore you wouldn't let them have this. You wouldn't let someone else take your place after you. This wouldn't continue with another miserable, innocent life destroyed like they had with your father's and yours.

"You can rot for all I care," you sighed longingly, the mass finally ending. It was what the villagers wanted, right? You, talking to them, letting them hear your divine voice. Collective gasps ran through rows of people, with children starting to cry when they saw their parent's horrified expressions. From your lowered gaze, you couldn't see the red heads of the priests, upset about their deity's words. But they didn't take long to make you feel their wrath. The people's wrath, even.

Everyone got ushered out of the temple as you were dragged over the floor, blood gushing from the cuffs cutting into every limb. The sound of metal filled the halls as your crown plummeted to the marble, as did your head, a terrible crack hitting your ears. They had no restrains on themselves as they carried you away, limbs cracking as the weights held you back. All despite you never resisting their demand to get you back to 'your' chambers. But no one could relieve you of the burden that was your life, no guard rushing to get the weights, not your mom having to watch her child being mishandled and bathed in its own blood, none of your handmaiden that cowered in fear of more divine punishment.

By the time you woke up again from your torture, painfully aware of the reality, the people of your village had collected at your feet once more, everyone bringing presents of food and wine, jewels, and flowers. 

Thinking that all that you were going through was going to be solved by worshipping you more. By loving you in an unhealthy way, and by allowing to have their lives bound to one being, innocent of their delusions and things they swept under the rug. They did all this and more if only to gain your favor, and to have your attention on them as if you were something special.

All just for the sake of you loving them back someday as the god they wanted you to be.

[the-coda-project]

The Coda Project | 1.02 - Inherit the Flames

After reuniting Tommy Collins with his family, Dean and Sam stop for the night in a town called Rifle.

They’re about two hours out of Blackwater Ridge, at a dumpy motel on the edge of a town called Rifle, and Dean’s been staring at the tree-print wallpaper for so long that he’s started detecting patterns in the branches.

A cheap plug-in air freshener in the bathroom has the whole place reeking of artificial pine. Between that and the walls, Dean’s starting to feel as though the wilderness they just barely managed to escape from has followed them here. Hell, maybe they didn’t escape. Maybe he’s still strung up in the mine; maybe the wendigo is still tossing him around like a ragdoll, scrambling his brains just enough that he’s dreaming of a motel that doesn’t exist.

Outside, an eighteen-wheeler passes on the I-70, close enough to make the windows rattle. Dean shifts in his bed as if a different position is going to be enough to distract him from how badly his ribs ache. His scratched-up neck feels raw as road rash.

No matter how hard he tries, sleep still feels so far out of the realm of possibility that he starts wondering how long he should lie here before he can cut his losses and call it.

But then Sam pipes up—“Hey, can I ask you something?”—from across the room, not bothering to check first if Dean’s awake, and immediately he wants to just keep feigning sleep until morning. He might have sought out his brother’s company only a couple of weeks ago, but right now, with the memory of Sam’s dismissive attitude toward helping the Collins family fresh in his mind, he doesn’t feel much like talking to him.

“Dean.”

He presses his eyes shut, ignoring the part of himself that’s berating him for being childish. Whether he can get to sleep or not, he’s too goddamn exhausted to talk about anything that isn’t life or death.

If he thought there was even a chance that his brother was angling to talk about Jessica, he’d be sitting up and listening in a heartbeat. But his tone is inquisitive, not hesitant, and Sam’s been so closed-lipped about his grief that Dean only knows how much her death is affecting him because of how loud and frequent his nightmares have been.

“Dean,” Sam says again, slightly louder. “I know you’re awake.”

With a huff, Dean tilts his head to squint at him across the gap between their lumpy mattresses. He grimaces as the motion pulls at the claw marks on his neck. He’ll be lucky if they don’t scar, but maybe it’d be better if they do. Maybe it’d help if he could see something visibly fucked up when he looks in the mirror. Maybe that would make it easier to explain away the revulsion he feels when he meets his own eyes.

“Dude, can it wait until after I get a solid four hours?”

Bullheaded as ever, Sam ignores the question, sitting up and tucking his shaggy hair back behind his ears. He looks twelve years old. Dean figures he always will, in some ways.

“Did something happen with Dad? Before he took off, I mean.”

“Like what?”

He’s not sure why he bothers asking Sam to clarify.

Maybe it’s just to buy himself some time; to give himself a second to come up with some version of the truth that doesn’t amount to Dad’s an overbearing, pigheaded prick, just like you’ve always said, and if I didn’t think he was in trouble right now I’d be glad to be rid of him for at least another month.

Even thinking it makes him guilty. Like he’s a bad son for being so angry with the guy. But he’s gotta believe that his actions are the important part here; proof that no matter how much he hates his dad sometimes, he still loves him enough to want to keep this family as connected as he can.

Still, a part of him is wondering if it’s really worth it anymore to keep up the act. If his clinging to John and clinging to Sam is just making things worse for all of them. Making John think he’ll put up with whatever he throws at him. Making Sam think he doesn’t care enough to take his side against John when he’s being unreasonable.

A part of him wonders—but it’s not a big enough part to win. The thought that something might have happened to him keeps him from letting the bile spill.

Because if they can’t find him—or worse, if they do find him but they’re too late—Dean doesn’t want Sam to have more reasons to be angry with a dead man than he’s already got.

It’s not as though Dean’s not used to keeping this shit locked down, anyway. There’ve been other disagreements, other fights, other circumstances over the years that he knows weren’t even close to being fair on him, but that’s just his life. It sucks, but it’s how it’s always been. No use complaining about it if it’s never gonna change, and after living this way for twenty-two of his twenty-six years, he sees no reason to consider change a possibility.

In the grand scheme of things, this particular incident doesn’t even make the top five list of awful things John’s put him through. The honors there go to that time with the shtriga, abandoning him at Sonny’s and then uprooting him as soon as he let himself get comfortable, the hunt he sent him on as a seventeenth birthday “present”, the night he told Sam not to bother coming back if he left for school, and the simple act of raising his kids into this shit in the first place.

This one might make it into the top ten, though. He hasn’t decided yet.

“Well,” Sam says, pulling him out of his thoughts. “You said you hadn’t heard from him in… what, three weeks before you got that message? Seems weird that it was so long, is all. You were on a hunt, he was on a hunt… it’s just weird that you weren’t checking in more often.”

Dean rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. There’s a water stain on the popcorn tile overhead that almost looks like a cactus if he looks at it the right way.

Christ, he could use some tequila right now. Maybe he can find them a case further south while they wait for some sign of John to turn up. Someplace warmer than the mountains in Colorado. Someplace where he can roll into town, waste a ghost, and then knock back a few drinks on a motel patio without having to talk to anyone at all.

“I mean, you usually check in more than that, right?” Sam goes on, and Dean sighs. He lifts one hand to rub at his brow.

“Yeah, usually.”

“So… what happened?”

“Nothing you gotta worry about,” he says, and immediately knows it was a mistake. Sam zeroes in on what Dean didn’t say just as intently as anyone else would focus on what he did.

Maybe he should go to law school after all—he’s already got the artful-conversational-trap shit down.

“You had a fight.”

“Sam—”

“No, c’mon Dean. You asked me to help you find him. If you had a fight before he left, that seems like it might be relevant.”

“It’s not.”

“So why won’t you just tell me?”

“It was nothing,” he insists. “Dad isn’t exactly Mr Congeniality, Sam. We fight all the time.”

“No, me and Dad fight all the time. The two of you are usually on the same page.”

Dean suppresses a snort and rolls onto his side, his back to Sam now as he looks at the narrow strip of moonlight edging past the thin motel curtains.

“You know I’ll just ask Dad when we find him if you don’t—“

“Jesus, Sam. It was nothing. Just a stupid disagreement about the hunt we were on. You know how he can get.”

“What was the hunt?”

“A witch in Louisiana. We had different ideas about what was going on, but it’s done, the witch is dead, and it doesn’t matter anymore. Okay?”

“That’s all?”

It’s not all.

Thanks to a botched salt-and-burn in Kentucky the previous month, things had already been tense well before they checked into a motel in Souffran, Louisiana. It only got worse when they ran into a woman Dean knew on their second day in town.

She’d been a civilian, last he’d seen her. Said she was a hunter now.

John had been ready to leave as soon as he found out she was already looking into it, but Dean wasn’t so eager.

It wasn’t that he thought Marisa was helpless—far from it, in fact. She’d been teaching capoeira when Dean met her in Texas a few months back. Had the thing terrorizing her students been corporeal, he has no doubt that she never would have needed any help in kicking its ass. But she was inexperienced as a hunter. Green as they come.

Dean didn’t love the idea of her taking on whatever was killing kids in Souffran alone.

When he told John as much, his dad just gave him a sly look, as if he thought the only reason Dean cared was because he was looking to get into Marisa’s pants. Dean wasn’t, for the record. As he saw it, it was his fault that she’d decided to try hunting on for size in the first place. He figured he owed it to her to back her up while she was still so new.

At first, all they’d had to go on was two kids who’d gone missing and turned up dead a week later without any visible injuries beyond a circular burn in the center of their chests; a girl named Lucy Parker who’d disappeared without a trace from her grandmother’s backyard yesterday but was yet to be found; and half a dozen wildly inconsistent reports of strange lights being seen in the swamp running along the north edge of town.

John had been convinced that they were dealing with a fi follet—a kind of malevolent will-‘o-the-wisp known to enact vengeance and drain the blood of children. When Dean disagreed with him, explaining to Marisa that the whole thing felt witchy to him, and pointing out that neither of the kids who’d died had shown any signs of blood loss, John got pigheaded and petty.

He called Dean arrogant. Accused him of acting like John was an idiot ever since they left Kentucky. Spat, “You spend one day showing a civvie the ropes and now you’re an expert, huh? Well go ahead, kid. Handle it on your own.”

And then he bailed.

Left Dean and Marisa to track down a missing eight year old on their own, and made Dean feel about three inches tall when he did it.

It took them almost a full two days to track the thing responsible. A witch, like Dean had thought, who’d been draining the kids of their life force in a desperate, last-ditch effort to stave off some sickness that was eating away at him. But the spell he’d been using was unstable and ineffective, and he’d been haggard and jittery when they found him in a rusty little shack out in the middle of nowhere.

Lucy Parker was right there with him in the room, suspended in mid-air by some unknown force as pale, flickering light leached from the center of her chest and down into a copper bowl on the floor beneath her. Her eyes were wide and rolled back to the whites. Her mouth was open as if she were screaming.

Marisa shot the witch point blank, right between the eyes, and Dean had darted forward to catch Lucy before she could hit the ground. He’d spent the entire time terrified that they were going to get to her too late; that she’d turn up dead before they could figure out where she’d been taken or how to deal with the thing that had taken her.

When she landed in his arms, he’d almost been sick when he felt how cold she was. How limp.

But after a second, she gasped, and coughed, and then she was clinging to him. Shaking.

He couldn’t put her down. She wouldn’t let Marisa take her.

He’d been forced leave the shack while Marisa dealt with the witch’s body and destroyed all the evidence before some local could stumble upon it, and when she’d emerged gray-faced and bloody half an hour later, with the crackle of fire just audible over the steady croak of frogs in the nearby water, he’d known that Marisa wasn’t going on any more hunts.

Lucy still refused to let go of him once they got back to the car, so he’d let Marisa drive them back to town, sitting in the back seat with the kid clinging to his side and sobbing snot into his jacket. He hadn’t even minded. If he didn’t think it would scare her more, he might have let himself cry out of sheer relief at finding her.

Late that night--once Lucy was back with her grandmother, and Marisa was on her way back to San Antonio, and Souffran was far enough in the rearview that it was safe to stop for the night--Dean had called John. He didn’t pick up.

Just sent Dean’s call straight to voicemail, then texted him coordinates for a poltergeist case near Mobile, Alabama an hour later. A few days after that, more coordinates directed him to the voodoo hunt in New Orleans.

So yeah, a witch in Louisiana is not all. Not by a long shot. He doesn’t tell Sam that, though. What would be the point?

“Yeah, that’s all,” he lies, still staring at the gap in the curtains. Another truck rumbles past, air brakes hissing as it slows to take the town exit. It’s so loud that he’s not sure that he’d manage to sleep here even if he wasn’t a headcase. “C’mon, I gotta crash, man.”

For a minute, it seems like Sam’s gonna keep at it. Like he’ll needle at Dean until he spills everything out onto the pilled carpet between them. How scared he is. How angry. How resentful. All the ugliest feelings that seem to be pressing up his throat and onto the back of his tongue like bile.

But he doesn’t. Just sighs, sounding as tired as Dean feels, and says, “Yeah, okay. Night, Dean.”

Dean grunts in reply, and Sam starts snoring after a half hour. Another half hour after that, his nightmares begin. Low, helpless murmurs of Jessica’s name and high-pitched whines of terror that stick in Dean’s chest like buckshot.

With dry eyes and an ever-present lump in his throat, Dean pushes out of bed and heads for the bathroom, taking the laptop as he goes.

If he’s lucky, he’ll find them a hunt before Sam wakes up. He can get them back on the road as soon as the sun rises. Keep them focused on something that isn’t the complete lack of leads on John.

If he’s not, maybe staying up will wear him out enough to sleep tomorrow. He’ll take what he can get.

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[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || Also on AO3

Chapter 50: Jon

“Do you have anything to declare?” the rather bored-looking man behind the counter asks without looking up from the paperwork.

For a brief second, Jon oscillates between how would you react if I told you what was in my pocket and yes, I declare this to be a complete waste of time, but he’s anxious to get this over with, so he simply says, “No, nothing.”

The man rattles off a few more standard questions, which Jon answers with only about half his attention. His eyes keep wandering over to the gates, just a dozen or so yards away. It’s so close, he’s almost there…

“Right, that’s everything,” the man says at last. He stamps Jon’s passport and pushes it, along with the requisite forms, over the counter. “Welcome to London. Next!”

Jon moves towards the down escalators, awkwardly attempting to stuff the papers back into his bag as he walks. Well, technically walks. He’s moving at a fast clip that doesn’t quite count as a run but could probably keep up with one. Part of his brain wanders off down the path of linguistics and semantics, trying to figure out what distinguishes a run from a fast walk, but most of it is preoccupied with what’s on the other side of those gates. Through the portal, down the stairs, outside and to the Tube station; he’s not thrilled about it, actually, but under the circumstances, it’s the best he’s going to be able to do.

Damn Julia for destroying his phone. Again. Nowhere has pay phones anymore, either. God, they’re going to be so worried, he promised to check in and he didn’t and now he’s a whole day overdue from what he originally said would be the latest he’d be back. The trains should be running, even this early, he should be able to get home before they have to leave for the Institute, and if he doesn’t he can just go the rest of the way to the Institute and meet them there…

He’s tired, he’s jet-lagged, he’s stressed. He’s used up too much of himself, given in to the Eye more than he should, and it’s overwhelming. He’s learned virtually nothing useful on this trip and he just wants to be home. He feels like he could sleep for a week. Or at least like he wants to.

When this is all over, he promises himself. When it’s all over, after the Unknowing, if Elias is still around, Jon will insist on vacation time for himself and his team members. They need the downtime, and Jon won’t lie, the idea of getting to spend a few weeks with just Martin and Tim is appealing. For the moment, though, he’ll have to settle for a few hours.

He would dearly love to take the day off. But Elias has made it clear that he wants them to think time is of the essence, so he can’t tip his hand and stay out too long. Maybe they can come in late. On second thought, though—he glances quickly at the outsize clock on the wall—he’s not going to make it home in time for much more than a quick nap, if that, before they have to leave. Maybe he should just go straight to the Institute, use the phone in the Archives to call and say he’s back, and curl up on the cot he still keeps in the storage room. He can at least get some rest, maybe—

“Jon! Jon!”

Jon’s head jerks up and whips around. He doesn’t have any checked luggage, so he just kept going and he’s crossed the line from the passengers-only area to the public area, but he hasn’t been paying attention to much around him. There’s a bit of a crowd, but not so much of one he can’t see Tim and Martin watching him from a few yards away.

Jon breaks into a run, never taking his eyes off of the two people he’s wanted most to see as they do the same towards him. He somehow manages to avoid tripping on a small child dragging a rolling suitcase and flings himself into their arms.

For the first time in almost two weeks, he feels some of the tension leave his body. Martin is soft, Tim is solid, both of them are warm, and he’s safe here. The song the Primes danced to, the night the three of them moved into their house, floats through his head, and he clings to Tim and Martin and inhales the scent he’s come to associate with home. For a long time, they just stand there clutching one another.

“Melanie’s right,” he says at last. “Jet lag sucks.”

Tim and Martin both laugh, a little desperately. Jon laughs, too, and looks up. Martin has at least a day’s worth of stubble growing on his chin and Tim’s shirt is inside out. It looks like they just rolled out of bed and came straight for the airport, or…oh, God. “Tell me you two haven’t been sitting here waiting for me since yesterday.”

“We thought about it, but no,” Tim assures him. “The Primes called and said you’d be coming in this morning.”

“We got them one of those throwaway phones,” Martin adds. “Honestly, we should’ve done that a long time ago, but…it’s a long story. We’ll tell you about it when you’ve had a chance to get some rest. You look exhausted.”

“So do you.” Jon looks from Martin to Tim and back again. “I’m sure we can take a half-day without anyone getting too upset. Do you think Sasha and Melanie will handle things for us?”

“Sasha owes us,” Tim says. He eases back but keeps one arm around Jon; Martin does the same. Jon shifts his arms so they’re behind Tim and Martin’s waists. “She’s taken a fair bit of time off these last couple weeks—and it’s for good reason, so don’t think I’m saying otherwise. But she owes us. I’m sure she’ll hold down the fort for a couple hours.”

“I’ll text Melanie when we get to the car and see what she says,” Martin offers.

They walk out of the terminal together and to where Tim has parked his car. Jon half-expects they’ll talk on the way home, but they don’t; he really is exhausted and he can tell they’re tired, too, so the ride is made in silence. None of them speak when they get to the house, either. They just head inside, where Tim and Martin pull Jon into the bedroom and none of them really bother to change into their sleep clothes, just shuck their outer layers and collapse into bed together.

Jon is plagued by his usual nightmares, plus a couple new ones, but honestly, at this point he’s used to them. He wakes up abruptly, but not screaming, and is momentarily disorientated by the brightness of the room and the awareness of another presence in the bed before he registers that he’s back where he belongs, safe and secure between Martin and Tim. Well, between is stretching it a bit; among might be a better word to use. They’ve somehow managed to end up in a tangled pile of limbs and extremities. Jon’s cheek is pillowed on the soft, warm fleshiness of Martin’s upper arm, his neck fitting easily into Martin’s elbow, and one of Tim’s legs is hooked over Jon’s hip. He normally doesn’t like the sensation of skin against skin, or at least he hasn’t with anyone he’s ever been with, but this feels…right.

Something clicks into place, all at once, and it makes his breath catch in his throat. When he called to talk to Tim and Martin because he needed to hear their voices, he didn’t expect to get so relaxed and comfortable that he stopped thinking before he spoke, and as soon as he heard the words love you both slide out of his mouth he panicked and ended the call before giving them a chance to reply. He’s spent as much of the last three or so days as he can—when he can spare the brainpower for it—turning his feelings over and over and trying to analyze them. He doesn’t doubt he meant those words, but he’s been trying to parse out what he meant by them and what it means for them all. Everything he’s been through between then and now has meant he’s been a bit stressed, a bit on edge, and hasn’t really had a lot of time to think about it clearly.

Now, though, he thinks about the safe and secure feeling he gets when he’s in their arms like this, about the desperate way he’s mentally cried out for both of them every time he’s been in danger, but also about the moments of deep and utter happiness they’ve shared over the last year, the nights they’ve laughed so hard they start crying, the afternoons they’ve spent with Charlie in their kitchen. He thinks about falling out of Helen’s tunnels into their arms and the perfect moment of joy when he saw their faces in the airport. Most poignantly, he thinks of the yawning chasm that seemed to open up the minute he crossed beyond the security barrier when he left London two weeks ago—the empty blackness that separated him from Martin and Tim—and for the first time, everything coalesces into pure certainty.

Love you both. Of course he does. He loves both of them with a depth he’s never felt before, and it scares the hell out of him because he runs the risk of losing them both to what’s coming. At the same time, it fills him with a sense of utter peace, because he has them now.

He wishes they could just stay like this a little longer, but an alarm he hasn’t realized someone set goes off and both Martin and Tim stir with varying noises of dismay. They’ve got to get up, got to get to the Institute. Still, Jon clings to them both for a moment more before, reluctantly, he climbs out of bed to go take a shower.

Tim drives them to work, and none of them argue.

Sasha meets Jon with a huge hug when he walks in. Surprisingly, Melanie offers him one, too. It’s a bit stiff, but it feels genuine, and Jon takes it willingly.

“I’m sorry you’re trapped here,” he tells her. “But for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here.”

Melanie shrugs. “My choice. Maybe one I shouldn’t have made, but still…my choice. Glad I can help. Now tell me what I need to do.”

Jon’s more grateful to her than he can express. Looking around at the Archives, at the assistants, at his family, he can see now what he wouldn’t let himself see before: Sasha’s hunger, Tim’s exhaustion, Martin’s strain. They’re all on edge and they’re all walking a fine line. Melanie hasn’t fallen as hard as they have; she’s still just a regular assistant. Still a bit of an outsider looking in. She’s far enough away from all of this that she can…well, she can’t walk away, but she’s at least not having her soul sucked out of her body with every step she takes. And she’s choosing to be here, choosing to help. She’s someone he can trust to protect his people without reservation or hesitation.

And if what the Primes have said is even half true, which it seems to be, she can probably handle herself almost better than the rest of them.

“For starters, I’d like to hear what you’ve been up to while I’ve been gone,” Jon says. “Then, perhaps, I can tell you what I’ve been up to. We—we need to make plans.”

“War room or downstairs?” Sasha asks. “Either one should be fine. Elias left sick about twenty minutes ago, so we can all convene without him knowing.”

Jon is startled. “How do you know?”

Melanie looks gleeful. “Sasha went up to tell him you were back and that you’d be in later today and all that, and while she had him distracted, I distracted Rosie and mixed laxatives in with the creamer she was putting in his coffee. A lot of laxatives.”

“The whole building heard him, practically.” Sasha smirks. “Rosie wanted to call him an ambulance, but he insisted he’d be fine to get home on his own and that he just needed rest or something like that. I didn’t read his mind,” she adds, evidently catching something in Jon’s expression. “Or hers. Manal told me.”

“See, this is why I drink tea,” Martin says with a straight face.

Jon is torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to scold them both for recklessness. Instead, he says, “If you’re sure…let’s go ahead and do this up here. The seating’s a bit more comfortable.”

Melanie turns on her heel. “I’ll go get them.”

Jon ducks into his office only long enough to grab a couple of things, then joins the others in the War Room. There are a couple of additional pins on the board and a new color of string; considering it stretches from London to Beijing to start bouncing around the States, Jon guesses it’s tracing his journey. The whiteboard has a list of the most common names and places they’ve seen in the statements, with tally marks indicating how many statements they’ve come up with for each, but Sasha begins erasing it with the explanation that they’ve already made a more permanent copy of those notes. They’ve also set up a secondary tea station in the room itself, which Jon appreciates, since it means Martin doesn’t have to be out of his sight for the length of time it would take him to brew tea for them all.

God, the separation anxiety is terrible.

Melanie arrives with the Primes just as Martin finishes up the tea; Jon Prime crosses over to where Jon stands, smiling wanly, and pulls him into a hug. “I hope your trip went better than mine,” he murmurs in Jon’s ear.

“I doubt it,” Jon mutters back. Jon Prime sighs regretfully and lets him go.

He gets a hug from Martin Prime, too, and then they all settle into seats in a rough semicircle around the boards and single desk. Jon brings the mug of tea to his lips and inhales for a moment. Jon Prime is right, it doesn’t taste as good when Martin doesn’t make it. “Right,” he says at last. “Fill me in. What have I missed?”

“Not much, honestly,” Tim says. “A few live statements, Elias being a dick, and…whatever that mess was on Tuesday. But we haven’t been able to find much about the Unknowing.”

Jon is instantly on edge. “Tuesday? What happened on Tuesday?”

“Pick something,” Melanie mutters, with just a bit of an edge to it.

Martin sighs. “Peter Lukas was here.”

“What?” Jon barely manages to stop from dropping his mug. “I-I thought—I thought the deal was that he had to stay away from you.”

“The Institute doesn’t show up in those pictures in the Light, apparently, so there’s no way for the Keeper to actually know he violated the contract,” Martin says. “Unless someone tells him, which, well, if I can figure out how to find him, I’m going to. I got it on tape, at least, so there’s evidence. But yeah, apparently he had a meeting with Elias and made a trip down here first.”

Upset, Jon reaches over to touch Martin’s arm lightly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’ll admit it was a bit rough, but that’s just because I was already kind of…not at my best. I took a live statement two days in a row,” Martin admits, wincing under Jon’s look. “But anything he did to me, I got over pretty quickly.”

Jon doesn’t like the emphasis Martin places on the word me, but when he turns to scan the others, he realizes the one who looks the worst off is Martin Prime. Jon Prime meets his eyes, and his lips flatten. “Peter Lukas trails the Lonely after him. I wasn’t here,” he says softly. “Martin woke up alone and…”

“It was a bit touch and go,” Martin Prime says. “But we’re all right.”

“Where were you?” Jon asks his counterpart. It’s not like him to go haring off around London, especially during the day.

“Hill Top Road. Your team found a statement I remembered…when Martin brought it to me the first time, I remember being tempted to investigate but feeling very strongly that I shouldn’t. I had the same feeling this time, so I went,” Jon Prime answers. “I thought I might get some…useful information.”

“Did you?”

“Not about the Unknowing.”

Jon waits a second, but it’s obvious Jon Prime isn’t going to say further, and he decides not to push him. Sasha evidently comes to the same conclusion. “I feel bad that I missed all of this, but I was out for the afternoon. My uncle called and wanted to talk to me, so everyone told me to just go.”

“Is everything all right?” Jon asks.

“Depends on your definition of ‘all right’,” Sasha replies. “He’s being released next week. Which is great, and I’m actually quite excited about it. But he also—he had a statement.” She points at the shelves. “Tape’s in there if you want to listen to it later, but short version, the Corruption killed my parents and grandparents. Uncle Wade and I probably had a lucky escape ourselves.”

“Sasha, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Anyway, that was basically all that happened with us while you were gone. What about you?” Sasha pushes her glasses up her nose with her middle finger. “Did you learn anything useful while you were gone?”

“Maybe? Not by actually following Gertrude’s path, though.” Jon takes a sip of tea to brace himself, then sets it on the desk and takes a deep breath. “Did Martin and Tim tell you about what I found in Chicago and Pittsburgh?”

“Fat lot of nothing,” Melanie says. “Except for the fact that Gertrude Robinson managed to not actually get charged with anything after being arrested.”

“Essentially, yes.” Jon glances from Martin to Tim and back, knowing they’re going to be upset. “As you know, then, I planned to take the bus from Pittsburgh to D.C., then fly home. I should have been home yesterday. But…well, the bus I was on made a stop to allow us to stretch, and I was…accosted.”

“Jon,” Tim says, “did you get kidnapped again?”

“Only a little,” Jon protests. He knows how feeble it sounds, but it does at least get a surprised laugh out of Martin. “I’d—I’d had a feeling I was being followed since I landed in Chicago, but by the time I got to Pittsburgh…I’m sorry I didn’t say anything while we were on the phone on Monday, but I-I didn’t want to worry you two unnecessarily. But by then I was sure. I had hoped the cop that was stalking me would be left behind, but no, he was still after me when the bus stopped.”

“You got kidnapped by a cop?” Martin’s voice rose a bit in pitch.

Jon shook his head. “No, by someone chasing that cop. Alleged cop, anyway. You recall that statement last year, the—the anatomy professor with the students with the strange names?”

“Wh—oh, yeah, the Stranger statement. First live one after…” Martin waves a hand around the room, indicating the Primes, the timeline on the whiteboard, and his own scars.

“Well, apparently one of them was hiding out as a Chicago beat cop. Must have recognized me, or at least spotted the Eye’s influence on me. But he didn’t actually manage to get to me. I got kidnapped—or escorted, as she would have it—by Julia Montauk.”

Sasha’s eyes widen. “Robert Montauk’s daughter?”

Jon nods. “She’s working with Trevor Herbert. The vampire hunter. He’s still alive…somehow. They’re over in America hunting…monsters. Mostly.” He shivers slightly, remembering the smug sneer on the man’s face: The line gets blurrier every day. Could he…no. No, he won’t think about that.

Martin and Tim both reach for Jon’s hands at the same instant. He clasps them both, grateful for the connection. Melanie frowns. “Fill me in. Who are these people?”

“Robert Montauk was a serial killer, but he was also working with the Dark,” Sasha tells her. “Julia Montauk was, well, his daughter. She gave a statement a few years back. Trevor Herbert was a man who spent basically his whole life hunting vampires. Or at least that’s what he calls them. There’s this whole…thing. We thought at first he died of lung cancer, like, literally in the middle of making his statement, but apparently he survived.”

Melanie taps her finger on her mug. Her eyes go vacant for a moment. Before Jon can continue, though, she turns to Jon Prime. “So is he part of the End or the Hunt?”

“The Hunt,” Jon Prime says, looking surprised. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought so, but the whole cheating-death thing made me wonder, that’s all.”

“A lot of—of avatars have cheated death, in one way or another,” Jon Prime says slowly. “But it’s their patrons, I suppose, keeping them alive. One more favor.”

Melanie hums. “’S irrelevant, I guess. Anyway, I’m up to speed now. Go on. You got kidnapped by a Hunter and—the daughter of the Dark?”

“She’s with the Hunt now, too. I got their statement while we waited for Max Mustermann to—well, regrow a body.” Jon shudders a bit again. It was all a bit grisly. “They obviously didn’t know anything about the Unknowing, but I was hoping Mustermann would.”

“Did he?” Martin asks softly.

Jon sighs. “Mostly what we already knew. He didn’t even know when it was set to happen, just ‘when things are ready.’ I’d have tried more questions, but Trevor and Julia decided they weren’t going to get anything else useful out of him and dispatched him.”

Tim sighs, too. “So you got a net total of…nothing.”

“Not quite. Julia and Trevor offered me a—a thank-you of sorts, for helping them catch Mustermann. Apparently they’d been after him for some time.” Jon lets go of Tim and Martin’s hands and reaches into his pocket. “I made a deal at the time. Bring this back to England, promise to dispose of it after, and I’d get all the information I needed.”

Jon Prime chuckles slightly. “That sounds familiar.”

Jon pulls out the folded page he’s been carrying for two days. Martin eyes it apprehensively. “Jon…what did you do?”

Melanie leans forward. “Is that—leather?”

“Technically, I think leather has to be tanned first. It’s just skin.” Jon studies it. “There’s a book—Mary Keay had it. It’s got pages on it with—it’s hard to explain, but the pages are sort of…possessed by the spirits of people who’ve died. Technically, mostly people she murdered. Gertrude Robinson knew how to do it too, and…she bound Gerry into it. Uh, Gerard Keay.”

Sasha’s eyebrows shoot up. “Gertrude Robinson murdered Gerard Keay?”

“No.” Jon reconsiders. “Not technically, but I’m inclined to hold her responsible. She had to have known how little time he had left—his cancer was incredibly advanced when he was admitted to the hospital. But I-I don’t think violent death is necessarily a prerequisite for being bound into the book, just…fresh death. I wouldn’t know.”

“You’re right.” Jon Prime massages his temple with one hand, eyes closed. “I would rather not know those details, but unfortunately I do.”

Martin Prime slides a hand between Jon Prime’s shoulder blades and rubs gently; Jon Prime leans into him and sighs, almost inaudibly. Martin studies the page in Jon’s hand. “So what did he tell you? I—I’m guessing you…summoned him.”

“Nothing yet,” Jon answers. “Like I said…he promised to tell me everything he could if I would just bring him back here, and then burn the page after we’re done.”

He unfolds the page, takes a deep breath, and begins to read aloud. As the last time, the air grows thick and heavy, and the words taste bitter on his tongue. He aches with sympathy for the dying—technically the dead, but reading it, he feels there, the same way he does when he reads the statements.

“‘And so Gerard Keay ended,’” he concludes, lowering the page. And just like last time, there the figure is in front of him, with no clear idea of when he appeared or how he got there. Martin makes a strangled noise of surprise. Jon can’t help but smile a bit as he makes eye contact with the specter. “Welcome home, Gerry.”

Gerry grins and makes an ironic little half-bow. “Archivist.”

“My friends call me Jon.” Jon waves a hand around him. “And speaking of…this is my team.”

He introduces each one of them in turn, including the Primes. Gerry is particularly startled to see them. “Time travel? I didn’t know that was possible. How’d you do it?”

“Spiral,” Martin Prime says succinctly. “Not the best option in the world.”

Gerry studies Martin Prime for a minute, then gives Jon Prime a meaningful glance with a raised eyebrow. Jon Prime rolls his eyes, but there’s a fond smile on his face as he kisses Martin Prime’s temple. Martin Prime relaxes a little, and it occurs to Jon, all of a sudden, that he’s jealous, at least a little bit.

Turning back to Jon, Gerry folds his arms across his chest. “All right. I suppose you’ve got questions.”

“Just one,” Jon answers. “How did Gertrude plan to stop the Unknowing?”

He knows what the Primes did, but he’s hoping against hope Gertrude might have had a different plan. Blowing up a factory will work, but he’s afraid to let Tim get that close to an explosion in the name of revenge. Unless there’s a way to do it long-range…

“Don’t know,” Gerry says casually.

Melanie throws up her hands dramatically. “Great! Just great. Big help.”

“Hey, now,” Gerry protests. “Okay, I don’t know exactly, but…Gertrude reckoned it couldn’t be stopped ahead of time. It could be delayed, but nothing we could do would actually stop it properly. Even the Dancer could be replaced. But once it starts, it might be vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable to what?” Melanie presses.

“I dunno.”

Melanie lets out a string of profanity that would have had Jon’s grandmother washing his mouth out with soap and salt water. Sasha hides a laugh behind a cough. “Seriously, she never said?”

Gerry’s eyes twinkle. Jon’s pretty sure he’s enjoying teasing them. “She did say she had something that might disrupt it.”

Sasha rolls her hand in a go on gesture. “What?”

“Not long before I went into the hospital, she told me that if something got her first, I was…” Gerry pauses, and there’s a flash of pain in his eyes. Jon realizes he really, truly did care about Gertrude, in his own way. “There’s a storage unit on an industrial estate up near Hainault. She said she rented it under the name Jan Kelly, and hid the key somewhere in the Archives.”

Jon remembers the key he found under the floorboards with Gertrude’s laptop. “Oh. Uh, I think I found that, actually.”

“Well, it’s in that storage unit,” Gerry says. “Whatever she thought might disrupt the ritual, stop the Unknowing, that’s where it is.”

“But you don’t know what it is.” With a sinking feeling, Jon realizes it has to be some kind of explosive.

“No,” Gerry answers. “When I asked her, she said she’d show me when we got back to London. Mind you, she had this weird look in her eyes, like it was some kind of joke.”

Melanie sighs. “So we’ve got a net gain of…a storage unit.”

“Hey, at least I know where to go now,” Jon points out. “It’s something, at least.”

Gerry looks around at them, then turns to the Primes. “Did it work when you did it?”

“It did,” Jon Prime says quietly. “But we lost a lot in the process. We were hoping there might be another method.”

“I reckon if there was, Gertrude would’ve had more than one plan set up,” Gerry says. “She was like that. Never put all your eggs in one basket unless you only have one basket, or you’re damned sure of it.”

“Or you don’t have that many hens,” Sasha says.

Jon sighs and nods. “Thank you, Gerry.”

“Sure. Glad to help what I could.” Gerry studies Jon thoughtfully. “Don’t forget what you promised.”

“As soon as we’re done here.”

Gerry nods. “I think I’m ready to go now. Thank you. For bringing me home.”

“Of course. Uh…I dismiss you,” Jon says, a bit awkwardly.

Gerry sighs in relief and smiles. He gives a wink and a thumbs-up to Martin and Tim, and then he’s gone.

Jon sighs, too. He folds the page back up, then goes over to the metal trash can in the corner, drops it in, and fishes out the spiderweb lighter he keeps finding in his pocket even though he has definitely quit smoking. “Right,” he says, mostly to himself, then lights the page on fire.

None of them speak while the page crumbles away to ashes. Once it’s done, Tim exhales heavily and slumps in his chair, rubbing at his temples with his eyes closed. “Christ, that hurt.”

“Hang on.” Martin grabs Tim’s mug and brushes a hand gently against his cheek before hurrying over to the tea station.

Jon barely stops himself from dropping the trash can and hurries back to Tim’s side. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

“I’ll be okay. Just—lot of power, you know? It’s getting harder and harder to stop from seeing the marks without trying, and the—the page itself was bad enough, but watching it burn—I don’t know why, but it was painful.” Tim takes a few deep, slow breaths. “I’m okay, Jon, honest.”

Jon doesn’t move from Tim’s side until Martin comes back with the tea and slides it into his hands. After a few moments of inhaling the tea, with Jon on one side of him and Martin on the other, Tim finally looks up and manages a smile. “Sorry for worrying you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tim.” Jon takes a chance and brushes the hair on the back of Tim’s neck lightly. “How are you feeling?”

“Bit drained,” Tim admits. “Should be okay tomorrow.”

Jon Prime sighs. “Tim, if you’re using your abilities…whether you mean to or not, you’re going to need a statement to really recover well.”

Melanie half-rises from her seat. “I can go try and grab you one. Then you can, I don’t know, read it while we go look at this storage unit?”

“We can do that later,” Jon says, waving her to sit down. “Look at the storage unit, I mean. As for the statement…” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the tape Tim locked in his desk drawer weeks ago, the one labeled in Gertrude’s distinctive handwriting with nothing more than a date and location. He holds it up to show everyone. “This is the statement we’re pretty sure is my father’s. Anyone who wants to can leave…but I think it’s time we listen to it.”

[owl-with-a-pen]

(SO, Last night’s Doctor Who episode gave me some major inspiration. I decided to turn that inspiration into a quick fic that may be expanded upon ever so slightly in the future.)

SUMMARY: The Doctor has always hated endings. She shouldn’t be sad about it. She isn’t sad about it. No, instead, it gives her an idea.

After all, she isn’t bound by Time Lord laws anymore. And there’s one person she had always been meaning to save...

It’d been a long two decades.

Maybe not the longest two decades she’d ever lived, maybe not even close, but in the grand scheme of things, it had certainly felt longer than most.

All that time to think, and… what conclusions had she made?

Well, for starters, intergalactic prison food was terrible. All the nutrients required for a dozen or so assorted species packed into one solid brick of barely ingestible material. Honestly, she would have preferred to go without. But then it would’ve been harder to think. And she’d really needed to think.

Okay, what else?

Angela? Terrible neighbour. Literally the worst. Couldn’t get a wink in with her buzzing about. Plus, having Silent Bob next door had made thinking very difficult. Couldn’t focus on a single thing without it washing away the second she glanced in the wrong direction.

At least she’d been able to hold a conversation with the Ood.

Love an Ood. Even an ill-tempered one.

Doing it again, Doctor. She was missing the point. The big ol’ elephant in the room that she was getting particularly good at avoiding.

Had she seen any elephants in that prison? Bit odd. Odd as the Ood. Did they have something against elephants?

Focus.

Two decades. No closer. She was no closer to figuring out who she was, the identities that were hers and hers alone. That had been taken from her. Erased by higher forces just to keep her in check.

And it burned. Deep inside her chest, igniting both her hearts, making it difficult to breathe.

Or, maybe that was just prisons for you. Not like they made it easy for you to do anything. Although, she supposed breathing was pretty necessary to live out your sentence.

Seven thousand offences. She would’ve needed to breathe for a very long time.

She’d lost Ryan.

Lost Graham.

Her fam. Gone in an instant. Quicker than a blink, really. Faster than a Weeping…

“They’re not gone,” the Doctor said.

It was the first thing she’d said in a while. Out loud, at least. No one to talk to at the moment. 

The TARDIS rumbled affectionately beneath her hand, sending a calming pulse through her fingers as she continued to fiddle with various dials.

Well, maybe that wasn’t necessarily true.

The Doctor’s lips twitched. She ran her thumb along one of the TARDIS’s nodules, grinning when it flashed an encouraging blue. “Been a while since we talked, hasn’t it mate?”

Yaz was somewhere within the TARDIS. If the Doctor had wanted, she could have opened a psychic link with her ship, noted her exact coordinates. They could’ve talked, too.

Maybe the TARDIS was prodding her to do just that. Maybe she didn’t want to be prodded.

“Okay,” the Doctor relented. “They are gone. But, just from me. That’s not too shabby, now, is it? They’re safe. Ryan and Graham. Defenders of Planet Earth.” Her smile weakened. “Maybe Jack can push ‘em in the right direction. Didn’t wanna get too involved, thought it’d be best for them to find their footing on their own. Although, maybe a couple of calls wouldn’t hurt.”

The TARDIS made a soft whirr, a clanking groan following soon after from somewhere at her centre. The Doctor’s fingers clenched across the console. “Too soon? Maybe they need space.” She blinked. “Then again, we are already half a galaxy away.”

She felt the TARDIS’s thoughts probe gently against her mind. They weren’t thoughts in the predominately biological sense of the term. It was an impression of thought, really, like warm water tickling her brains. She knew what it meant, what it always meant.

And, distantly, the TARDIS procured something recent of hers. A fresh memory, still buzzing at the surface.

It’s okay to be sad.

The Doctor shuddered. “No, mate. Don’t play that game.”

The TARDIS groaned again.

“Why?” the Doctor asked, baring her teeth. “You know why. I’m not sad. How can I be? They’re off doing their own thing. They’re happy.” The last word travelled morosely around the room, punctuated by every metal wall it bounced across.

The Doctor reached restlessly for something to fiddle with, turning a gear that offered no further progression to their journey. They weren’t positioned for time travel right then, after all. Just space. Just… exploration. Idle movement. Something to do while Yaz caught her bearings.

She needed time. Plenty of that about on a time machine, after all. She’d be okay. Just needed some human comforts. Food and sleep – both of which the TARDIS was happy to provide to her in abundance. Maybe the Doctor should have gone to her.

It’s okay to be sad.

No. No, no, she wasn’t opening that one. It was silly, really, not something worth focusing on. Besides, there was so much more she needed to think about.

“Ten months,” she murmured. “Lots can change in ten months. Ten years. Ten decades. Ten…” She stopped, her mouth falling open. “Ten,” she repeated, a little surer of herself. Her lips twitched fondly. “Haven’t thought about you in a while, have I?”

She glanced up, narrowing her eyes. That was something to focus on. Something she quite liked, actually. No, even better. This was a plan.

And a plan meant she could think.

The Doctor skirted around the TARDIS, trailing her fingers along every bump and notch until she found what she was looking for. One of the data screens, reeling information about their current location. Nothing too fancy for the moment.

The Doctor grabbed at its handle, pulling it down towards her. Her mind was beginning to whir again, that familiar clank of gears not too dissimilar from her own ship’s. She caught the flash of her own eyes in the screen’s reflection, a ghostly image with a toothy grin, ready to enact a plan. The best plan.

“Y’know,” the Doctor said, engaging with her ship once again. “I used to play it safe, always so considerate that I had these set amount of lives. It was the Time Lord way.” She reached out blindly, wrapping her hand around a familiar lever. “But, it got me thinking. I’m not a Time Lord, am I? Actually, I don’t know what I am. But… time is still the same. Same rules apply. My rules, though?”

She caught something in her reflection. A darkness settling comfortably behind the shimmer of her eyes. She looked away, staring adamantly at her console. Her TARDIS.

“Ryan and Graham are safe. But I saved… I saved someone else. A long time ago. Too long ago.” She closed her eyes, gritting her teeth. A sharp pulse shot through the Doctor’s chest, teasing her hearts with a new fire.

She could do this.

“I saved her. But, that wasn’t enough,” the Doctor continued. “I could’ve done more. Could’ve…” She sucked in a breath, shaking her head. “But I can now, can’t I, mate? ‘Cos I’m not who I thought I was. I’m more. More than any of ‘em.” She clenched her free hand, lifting it towards her chest, feeling both hearts thrill inside. “Maybe I still don’t know everything. Maybe I’ve got a lot to learn. But, one thing I do know is that I have exactly what it takes to bring her back.”

The Doctor’s hand tightened firmly around the lever, pushing it down with a rattling thud.

“I got more lives than I ever thought possible,” she murmured. When she looked up at the screen again, she no longer saw her own eyes staring back at her. Instead, a new face took up every inch of visible space. Or, should she say, an old face.

River’s eyes, both old and young at the same time, stared back at the Doctor. An abundance of densely packed curls framing her face, a crease in her eyes as she grinned out from the photograph she’d given her a good century ago, at least. 

A face the Doctor hadn’t seen in so long. A face she ached to see again.

“Guess what?” the Doctor asked, bracing herself as the TARDIS shuddered into action. She grinned tightly, a power she hadn’t felt in quite some time resurfacing within her. “I’m gonna use one of them to save you.”

[boxoftheskyking]

Pick Up Every Piece, Part Three

This chapter is rated M, warning for PTSD, alcohol, war, probably a bunch of other stuff.

Wei Ying and the important gals in his life. 

(You know when you’re trying to do a style thing and then you’re like Maybe I just don’t Get Prose? this is one of those times.)

Part One, Part Two

--

Wei Ying is having a hard time breathing, but he doesn’t really mind. His face is shoved into his pillow and Wen Qing’s elbow is digging into the right side of his spine in a way that he thinks might bruise later. Just when he’s about to cry uncle, she lets up and sweeps the heels of her palms down to his waist, and it’s so good a few tears come out.

It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon with nowhere to be, and he’s just a body on a bed with his best friend, not a thought in the world.

“What is this one anyway?” she asks, pressing her thumb into a spot on the right side of his spine, just below where his waistband would be if he were wearing anything.

He turns his head and spits out the pillow. “Huh? Which?”

“This little one.” She rubs it again.

He thinks over his tattoos; there’s seven on his back, if he’s remembering right, scattered around in blacks and reds.

“Oh, the goat?”

“That’s a goat ?”

“Yeah.”

She rubs over it again. “From which angle is that supposed to be a goat?”

He props his chin up on his arm. “Have you not noticed it before?”

She squirts out some more lotion and starts working on his lower back. He doesn’t moan, because Wen Qing says she hates it when clients moan, and even though he’s not a client, he does try to be polite.

“I’ve never paid much attention to it.”

“Clearly you need to pay more attention to my ass.”

He tries to wiggle the ass in question, and she pinches him. Which is fair.

“Be nice. That’s my prison tattoo.”

“Your prison tattoo.”

“Yeah. I was in prison, so I had to get a prison tattoo.”

She scoffs. “You were in prison for like a year.”

He was, technically, in prison for a year. That’s what it says on his record. Right after leaving Gusu, on the road to Yiling, he got drunk and fought a cop, and a year was the best his brother’s influence could get him. As far as everyone knows, he served his time, annoyed the life out of hardened criminals, and went on his merry way.

Everything else that happened that year, that’s between him and Jin Guangyao and the dead.

“I can’t believe you got a stick and poke in prison.” Wen Qing is doing her judgy voice, which unfortunately always gets him hard. Well, harder. It’s some kind of automatic response—he never paid enough attention in the one psych class he took in college, so he doesn’t know the right word for it. At the moment it’s just uncomfortable because she’s got him pressed down into the mattress

“Lots of people get them,” he says, a little defensive. “I paid for it, too.”

“Do I want to know how?”

“Two weeks of my meat rations and a blow job.”

“Wei Ying.”

“What, the guy was cute.”

She sighs, judgmentally. “Why a goat?”

“He said that’s the only thing he knew how to draw.”

“Well he lied to you. You could’ve gotten an infection. On your ass.”

“He was very clean. Cleanest guy I ever sucked off behind a dryer, and that’s saying something.”

She snorts at him and then digs her knuckles into the meat of his ass, scooting down so she’s sitting on his legs. She’s just in her underwear; he can feel the soft insides of her thighs against his calves.

“So I don’t pay enough attention to your ass, huh?” she asks, pinching him again.

He hums.

“We could, you know, do more of that.” She sounds carefully disinterested, going to town on his glutes but not pushing in any other way.

He swallows. “Um. Maybe.” He’s blushing for some reason, but the pillows hide it.

“Cool. Turn over?”

This means the sex part is going to start, which is great since he’s been ready to go for the past half hour. The massage part is equally great, and he really needs it. He knows he’s the luckiest person in the entire world, because his best friend happened to have a massage and acupuncture certification as her fallback degree after he ruined her life. He’s doubly lucky that she still speaks to him, never mind has sex with him sometimes. Add in free massages and he’s basically won every lottery in the country.

He’s tried to return the favor, but she can get better from her coworkers, so he just pays her back in orgasms. Orgasms and journalistic brilliance, when he can manage it.

He turns over and she settles back over him, shifting his dick around so she’s comfortable, making him bite his lip almost bloody. She drives her knuckles in the front of his shoulders until he hisses.

“Are you doing the stretches I gave you?”

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

“So, only on the days that I remind you.”

He pouts. “Ow! Yes. Which is sometimes.”

She grinds her hips down on him so he chokes on his own spit. He tries to reach up to kiss her, suddenly very ready to move things along, but she leans over him and presses all her weight down on his shoulders. He tries to push her up, but he doesn’t have the core strength.

“Mean,” he whines. “Mean, mean, mean.”

“You like mean.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

She lets him up and grinds back down. “Hm. You really like mean.”

He catches her then, she lets him, and they lazily make out for a while. This is the best part about hooking up with his best friend. He’s not worried about being smooth or clever or impressive, he’s just enjoying the softness of her skin and her hips and the underside of her arms, the small but solid weight on top of him, her sharp teeth. Way back at the beginning—in college, when she was his kind-of advisor—he was always so bewildered that she was interested in him, always trying to do twelve things at once, to prove to her he was worth it, that he could be amazing. Calm down, kid, she’d laugh at him, pinning his arms over his head.

Now they just roll around, warm and comfortable in an angled patch of sunlight, heading vaguely towards sex.

“Hey,” she says, a little breathless as he sucks on her ear. “Can I sit on your face?”

“Fuck. Yes. Please.”

“Awesome.”

She crawls off him to take her underwear off. “Lan Ziyi never lets me sit on her face.”

Wei Ying laughs. “That’s what you get for dating a Lan.”

“We’re not dating . We’re just—hanging out.”

“Whatever. They’re all repressed.” He feels a flash of guilt. “Not repressed. Logical. It’s an illogical activity.”

“She’s good at other stuff.”

He doesn’t have to respond; she crawls up and settles on his chest, running her finger over his bottom lip. “Comfortable?” she asks.

He tugs her closer in response and sets to work. It’s one of his favorite activities, the overwhelm of it, being held down. He’s always trying to be steps ahead, to be good at things, to be vigilant, but when she’s riding his mouth and his chin and his tongue he forgets all of it and surrenders to the heat, the wet, the rhythm of her.

“Fuck, I’m gonna drown,” he mumbles against her.

“Huh?” she gasps, lifting herself up.

“I’m gonna drown.”

“What a way to go, though.” She smiles down at him, red-faced and panting, one hand against the wall, the other tugging at her nipple.

“Fuck yes.” He yanks her back down with a growl and loves the way her laugh gets broken by a groan.

“Can you scratch my back?” she asks. He reaches up and runs his nails lightly down her sides. “I mean hard. Can you scratch me hard?”

He reaches up her back as high as he can and rakes his nails down. She shudders on top of him.

“Thank you,” she gasps, and he blacks out for a moment.

He’s always had an unexplored thing for being thanked in bed. That one psych professor—or the doctors at the hospital that one time—would probably say something about his childhood, his desperate need for approval. In reality it probably has more to do with that one night in college, Lan Zhan pressed between him and the wall, panting “ Thank you, thank you ” into his ear.

Wen Qing slams her hand on the wall when she comes, sweet and hot over his lips. He imagines himself dripping with it, down his neck and his chest to his feet, soaking into his skin. She pulls away after a minute and shifts back down over him, kissing his whole face, his cheeks, licking him clean.

“Good?” he asks.

“Mmm,” is all she says, but it’s enough to make him preen a little.

She reaches over to his bedside drawer and grabs a condom, and he’s suddenly reminded of how painfully hard he is. After nearly an hour of ignoring it he’s certain he’ll pass out the second she touches him.

He doesn’t, but he does grab her hips and shut his eyes. When she sinks down on him—one smooth slide—his breath punches out and he surges up to hold onto her, to hold onto something. It’s fast and inelegant from there, loud and jerky and ragged and so incredibly good. She throws her head back when she comes again and he buries his face in her chest as he follows—a long, shaking, suspended moment.

After, he collapses back onto the pillows and she goes to the bathroom. The massage and the orgasm catch up with him and he’s nearly asleep by the time she comes back. She doesn’t leave, though, just pulls her underwear back on and curls around him. It’s got to be close to  five o’clock and they’re framed by the lowering sunlight, warm and golden.

“Sleep?” he mumbles. She shushes him and pulls up the blanket and he’s out.

A lake, a raft. Lotus flowers. Someone beside him, tapping his arm. A river, narrowing. Wind. Yanli talking behind him, saying . . . Trees by the riverbank, branches growing toward him, twisting, sharp fingernails inches from his skin. He’s standing in the mud. Alone. Not alone. Feet sunk into the mud, up to his ankles. Dry creek bed. Flies. A dozen people standing, frozen, staring at him. Eyes so wide, he can see the whites all the way around. Flies on their faces, crawling into their eyes. Darkness rising like a cloud, like fingers, grasping. He reaches out—

“Wei Ying!”

“— looked. I just looked. I just looked at them. I just looked .”

“Wei Ying! Stop, stop, Wei Ying.”

He throws himself off the bed, gasping, crouching against the wall, nails digging into his arms. His throat is aching, he’s been shouting.

“You’re okay,” Wen Qing says carefully. Her hands are held out to him like he’s a wild dog, something that could bite her.

“I’m okay,” he says, rough, wiping at his face.

“You’re back.”

“Yeah. Fuck.” He digs his fists into his eyes for a moment, pressing hard enough to see a starburst of light. “Fuck, fuck. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” It’s not, it’s really not, he can hear it in her voice.

He sits back on the bed and runs his fingers through his hair. Wen Qing wraps herself in the blanket, watching him.

“I’m okay.”

She nods.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No. No, it’s not that.” She looks away, blinks hard. “You were saying— You know, you were saying it again. Same thing.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know. It’s not your fault.” She’s not looking at him, though, and where she holds onto the blanket her knuckles are white.

“Fuck,” he says again, like that can cover it, everything he owes her.

“It’s fine.” Her voice is tight. It always happens like this, his hurt doesn’t line up with hers, they’re not in unison. He covers one of her hands with his. She holds it, rubs her thumb over the back of it, where it’s rough and patchy. He’s not sure if it actually helps, feeling the scars, but it’s the best thing he has to say, Look, it already happened, it’s over.

She lets him go and goes into the bathroom. He flops down and holds a pillow over his face. It’s not as good a weight as her body, but it keeps him in one place and not breathing and it’s nice for a moment.

There was a time, in the direct aftermath of the war and the Bad Time, where he thought maybe they’d get back together. That maybe they had complementary damage, that their ripped out parts might fit and close up. But they hurt each other—unintentionally, but his shattered edges always cut her. Sometimes he lashes out in his sleep. And even when he doesn’t, it’s a chain reaction. He gets set off and reacts and it activates all the bad memories in her. It’s why she doesn’t spend the night anymore, why they never moved back in together after he got back from the hospital five years ago.

Five years. It should all be scar tissue by now. Nothing should be raw, pulsing, bleeding anymore.

What’s wrong with them, that they still bleed?

By the time she comes out he’s in his boxers and t-shirt again, fishing under the bed.

She sits down next to him, face wet and toweled dry, and tugs his comb through her hair. He pulls a half-empty bottle out from under the bed.

“You want?” He takes a sip from it.

“What’s that?”

“Bedroom whiskey.”

She raises her eyebrow. “To go with the desk whiskey and the couch whiskey?”

“And the bike whiskey, yes.” He gives her a salute. “Always be prepared.”

She rolls her eyes, but takes the bottle and drinks.

He stretches, twisting his spine. He tenses up so bad after a nightmare, it sucks when it happens after massage and sex. “You know,” he says. “There was a few weeks, back this summer, when I got sick anytime I drank. Like sick to my stomach, indigestion.”

“Probably had a bug.”

“Yeah. It freaked me out, though.” He takes another drink.

“Because you thought you’d have to quit?”

“No. ‘Cause I thought I didn’t like it anymore. Like listening to your favorite song and all of a sudden the singer’s off key. It was . . . unsettling. I didn’t really know what to do instead. It passed, though.”

“It’s gonna come bite you.”

“Someday, yeah.”

Her hair untangled, she gets up and goes to his closet. “Is my red sweater still here?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She digs around. The right side of his closet is all hers—not a ton of clothes, just a collection of years of days like this.

“Plans?” he asks.

“I’m having dinner with Ziyi.”

“Aren’t you popular?” he teases.

“You should get out there. You know. Date around.”

He snorts and lays back down. “I’m not made for relationships.”

She stops digging through the closet and looks at him. “Wei Ying, you are tailor made for relationships. You were made in a lab, specifically, for a relationship.”

“If that was true I’d have more of them.”

“No. Your problem—”

“Oh, here we go.”

“Your problem is you’re so obsessed with being a partner, you never put any work into finding a partner. You just throw all this partner energy at people and they don’t know what to do with it.”

He throws his arm over his face.

“I’m right.” He can’t see her but he imagines she’s waving her finger at him like a grandma. “You just want to be dropped into a relationship three years in. You want to wake up with a spouse and kid and a mortgage payment due on Monday. You don’t want to do the awkward beginning stuff.”

He squints over at her. “I did it with you.”

She sighs. “A long time ago.”

“Yeah, but—”

“In the literal eighties , Wei Ying.”

He sighs. “You should wear the black sparkly thing.”

“Hmm.” She considers him like she might keep pushing, then lets it go. “The dress?” She pulls it out, holds it up thoughtfully. “Nah, it’s too cold. I don’t feel like wearing tights.”

She pulls on her jeans and the sweater, then twirls her hair up in a bun. He kind of wants to tell her to wear it down, or to ask if he can braid it. But it looks good like this, swept up, showing off her neck. It makes him want to kiss it, so it’s an effective style for a date.

“You look good,” he says. She smiles at him then, a real one, and things feel settled again. She gives him a kiss before she goes.

“Tomorrow night,” she says, pointing at him from the doorway. “I want that column and I want two new proposals for next week.”

“Sir yes sir.”

She snorts and goes. He takes another drink and then tucks the bottle back under the bed.

He goes out to his desk in the living room and pokes around at his column for a while—the beginning and the end are there, but he’s missing a connection in the middle. He’s rambling about cultivation again, potential civilian applications if the government ever allowed real scientists to study it. It’ll piss people off, particularly Jin Zixuan, but it’s his column and he’s used to it.

He accepts that he’s definitely stuck and goes to the kitchen to grab the phone. He’s old-fashioned, still not switched to cordless, so he hops up on the kitchen counter and twirls the cord as he listens to the ringer.

“ Hello! ” Yanli’s voice, cheerful and musical. “ Thank you for calling Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli! Oh! And little A-Ling! ” she laughs. “ We’re not available at the moment, but please leave a message with your phone number and we’ll be sure to call you back. Take care, we will speak to you soon! ”

He smiles and leans his head against the fridge.

“Hi Jiejie! I just wanted to hear your voice. A-Cheng went back to Yunmeng this week, so I’m all alone. Well, I’m not all alone, Wen Qing was just here. Do you remember when we all played that game—what was it? That card game. And you and Wen Qing just destroyed us. Jin Zixuan was so angry, it was so funny. How is A-Ling? Did he already read the books I sent him for his birthday? I’m sure he is a good reader with such a smart mama. Does he remember me? I know I haven’t visited . . . Well, I better go. Zixuan hates when I use up all the tape, I know. He’s so grumpy, your husband! That’s why he and A-Cheng get along so well. I’m all alone without you here.” He shuts his eyes, feels the cool of the fridge against his cheek. “Okay. I love you, Jiejie. Bye.”

He hops down and hangs up, contemplates a drink. Decides against it, which is some form of progress, probably.

He’s finally worked out the middle of the column when his buzzer goes. He blinks over at the window—somehow night fell, a while ago. The buzzer goes again, in rhythm. Bzzzzz bzt bzt bzt bzzzzzz.

“Yeah, yeah,” he yells, not that she can hear him. He doesn’t bother with the intercom, just buzzes her in and goes back to the computer. A-Qing slams the door open just as he’s triple-saving and digging around for a floppy to backup. He keeps everything saved in a couple of places now. He’s learned.

“Hey, kid,” he says.

She grunts at him and dumps her backpack on the ground, kicks off her shoes. The futon is more hers than his at this point, and she’s not shy about flopping down.

“Hungry?” he asks, tucking the backup of his backup into the hidden file on the bookshelf.

“I could eat.” Her voice sounds younger than she is. He’s not sure if it’s intentional, part of the act, or if she’ll just sound like a little kid her whole life.

“Want a shower?”

She sniffs at her armpit and scratches at her scalp. “Yeah, okay.”

She never asks for anything beyond the futon. When she stays with him, she never asks for food, for the shower, for an extra blanket or a sweatshirt. For the first month or so he never thought to offer anything until one night he was still working and she was asleep and her stomach growled so loudly he thought it was a dog. Since then he’s learned how to offer, to set things out in front of her to take if she wants.

He calls in their usual order and starts flipping through his stack of newspapers while she showers. He gets as many as he can from as far afield as will deliver to Yiling. He always reads the Gusu Herald first, old time’s sake. He makes a few notes on his steno pad, a couple stories that might lead somewhere interesting or might have a local angle. No one bothers to cover this far West, no one but him and Wen Qing, but there are a couple of national stories he might be able to work with.

A-Qing comes out in a pair of Wen Qing’s sweats and an old sweater of his, which is like a dress on her. He keeps a clean towel and something comfortable on the hamper in the bathroom every day, just in case. Her hair is wet and stringy around her face, she looks so little.

They ignore each other until the food comes. Sometimes she’s quiet and solitary, turning away from him and going to sleep. But sometimes, on a good day, after a little decompression time, she wants to talk.

“Whatcha writing about?” she asks around a mouthful of noodles.

“Mm. Not sure yet. Just finished my column for the week. About cultivation.”

“Again.”

He sticks out his tongue at her. “You want to read it?”

She doesn’t answer. He does this sometimes, pokes at her, tries to get her to admit she’s faking the blindness. She never really does. Six months ago, back at the beginning, he’d experimented with leaving the lights on, waiting for her to ask or turn them off herself, but she never did. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him. At least, he doesn’t think that’s it. She wouldn’t sleep in his apartment if she didn’t trust him. Probably.

There was one time he came stumbling out of his room after a nightmare, before he had bedroom whiskey, scrambling for a bottle and crying through the phantom pain in his arms and hands. She’d stood up and come over to him, keeping a wary distance but not scared.

“You look terrible,” she’d said. He’d snorted around his mouthful and gotten whiskey up his nose and choked and she’d laughed at him.

She has nightmares too, but they don’t bother each other too much. So the partial blindness or completely fake blindness or whatever it is ends up just another thing they don’t talk about.

Now he considers her as they eat. “You go to school this week?”

She shrugs. “A little bit. It’s boring. They keep me at the back, there’s nothing to do. Teacher Wang keeps saying they’re getting a classroom aide for me, when they have the budget. I’ll be gone before then.”

“Where will you go?”

She shrugs again. “Dunno. Nowhere. Not school.” She drops her empty takeout container on the coffee table and flops down on the futon, propping her feet up on the back. She grabs a pen from the table and starts spinning it through her fingers, deft and controlled, not looking at it. Times like this he remembers what a good pickpocket she is.

He cleans up and gets an orange and a knife from the kitchen.

“Does it help getting what you need?” he asks casually, slicing it. “Being blind, I mean.”

“Kind of.” He hands her an orange slice and she eats it thoughtfully, licking the juice off her fingers. “I’m old now.”

He snorts. She glares over at him.

“I am. When you’re a kid, a little kid, people give you stuff because they feel bad, because you’re small. Because you’re cute, or you’re pitiful. Nobody wants to give anything to a teenager. I look like a teenager now, I think.” She looks over at him.

“I guess. You’re still pretty small.”

“How old were you?”

“When I was on the street? Really small. I got adopted at like six, I think. My birthday’s made up, so I’ve never been sure.”

“I got adopted when I was six, too.”

He stops slicing. “You had a family?”

She nods. “It didn’t last.” He gives her another slice. “When you’re little, and they catch you, people will smack you around, but a teenager—people want to teach you a lesson. People want to give you a limp or something, a scar maybe. Set an example.”

His instinct is to ask Who? and then head out with a bat, but he stamps it down. He remembers the slaps, the kicks, the dogs. But he was tiny and smiley, and no one wanted him hurt badly, not really. They just wanted him gone.

“But being blind helps?” He hands her another orange slice. She sticks it in her mouth and smiles around the peel.

“Mm-hmm.” She chews. “For now. But I’m getting too old. I’ll have to get a baby or something.”

His knife slips. “Fucking—” He sticks his bleeding thumb in his mouth and points the knife at her. “Do not get a baby.”

She purses her lips. “It’s one of the best things you can do. People always give to a baby. Babies are a great distraction.”

“Yeah, but then you have to feed it and take care of it. Never mind getting —” he waves the thought away, too disturbing. “It’d be a wash. Babies are expensive.”

“Is that why you don’t have any? Too broke?”

“Ha ha.”

She scoots so her hair is hanging off the edge of the futon, kicking her feet up on the wall.

“Don’t digest upside down,” he scolds, sounding like Ms. Yu. “You’ll puke.” He goes to the bathroom for a band-aid.

“What if you could rent a baby? Like just for a couple hours? Do you think people do that?”

He pokes his head out of the bathroom. “You could just get a really convincing puppet.”

She laughs, loud and delighted. She’s missing a couple of back teeth, which he can only see when she actually laughs.

He straightens up the towels, the bottles she knocked over, and moves to put his comb away. “Do you want—” he clears his throat and goes to the door. “I could braid your hair. If you want.”

She stops laughing and looks at him.

“It won’t tangle, then. If you want.”

She considers him, then turns right-side up. “You know how to braid?”

“Yeah. It’s not hard.”

“Okay.” She plops down on the ground. He comes and settles behind her. It’s weird to be this close, suddenly, but she’s not tense or uncomfortable, picking at the fibers in his shitty old rug.

“Do you have a tie?” She holds up her wrist to show him the rubber band. “Okay, scootch up a bit.”

He starts combing her hair from the bottom, careful not to pull.

“It was my uncle who taught me. How to braid my jiejie’s hair.”

“You had an uncle?”

He hums. “Yeah. He adopted me. I guess technically his wife did too, but she wasn’t really like my auntie. I think maybe I called her Auntie when I was really little, but . . . I don’t know. I’ve got a bad memory.”

“My memory’s really good.” She says it seriously, like it’s an admission of something.

“Yeah, I bet.”

A silence settles, but not a bad one. He can feel her breathing where she’s leaning against his shins. It’s nice, alive. It reminds him oddly of when A-Ling was first born, the first night Yanli let him babysit by himself. The hours he spent humming little songs, rocking him, smelling his head, listening to his snuffles and squeaks, watching him dream. The warm weight against his chest. Like a fresh baked potato , he’d told Yanli, and she’d laughed.

Suddenly, quietly, she speaks. “I had a family.”

He waits, combs.

“I had two uncles. And a cat.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. They adopted me when I was six.”

“Was it good? Having uncles?”

“Mm-hmm.”

He starts braiding, trying something complicated to make it last longer. He always liked people playing with his hair.

“They weren’t bullshitters. Sometimes the foster families are so full of it. They act like they’re going to keep you forever even when they know they’re not. I don’t like those. They’re worse than the children’s home, or the ones who just ignore you.”

He waits.

“They weren’t like that. Uncle Song always called me Little Shit.”

Wei Ying grins. “Suits you.”

“The cat was named Little Pig.” She runs her thumb over the corner of the coffee table where the wood’s worn down. “Uncle Xiao was blind.”

He pauses. “Really?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Is that how you learned?”

She shrugs. “I guess. He was good at everything. People would try to do stuff for him all the time, but he never needed help. Sometimes he’d let them, so they’d feel good. That’s what he told me. He said sometimes you have to let people help you, even if you don’t need it, because sometimes people need to help someone.”

“Sounds smart.”

“Yeah, he was smart. Uncle Song said he was too nice.”

“Ms. Yu used to say that about my uncle, too. She always said people were going to take advantage of him.”

She laughs. “That’s what Uncle Song would say.”

He undoes the braid and starts over.

“Did your uncle die in the war?” She asks it quietly, chewing on her fingernail.

“Yeah. My aunt, too. He worked in the government, and Qishan came to Yunmeng early on. You probably don’t remember it. We had a big— Well, it was our house but then a bunch of other buildings. Like a compound. Ms. Yu had a textile business, she worked out of Lotus Pier and a lot of workers lived there. And Wen Chao thought it would be a good base, so he— It was early, so they thought they could fight him off. Nobody knew how big the army was. I don’t know if you— Wen Chao was one of Wen Ruohan’s sons. He was a dick. I don’t know what they teach you about it in school.”

She shrugs. He tilts her head back for a better angle. Her eyes are closed.

“That’s what happened at our house, too.”

“Hmm?”

“The army wanted to take the house. They came at night. I think I was eight? It was a long time ago. My uncles said no. They said to leave us alone.”

He swallows. “Yeah.”

“The killed Uncle Xiao. They wanted Uncle Song to see. That’s what the guy said, the guy in charge. I could hear them from the doorway. And Uncle Song said no, and they shot him too. And then I went outside, and they pointed their guns at me.” She holds up her hand, fingers out like a gun. “But the guy in charge said no. He said, ‘It’s just a kid.’ And I didn’t look down at them on the ground. Uncle Song always said, ‘Just look where you’re going. When you’re scared just look straight where you’re going.’ So I didn’t look down. And they said, ‘Look, she can't see.’ They said, ‘The kid can’t see.’ and they let me just keep walking.”

Wei Ying closes his eyes, tight.

“I forgot Little Pig though. I should have taken her with me.”

He leans forward to press his forehead to the top of her hair, just lightly. She rubs her nose on her sleeve.

“That’s the secret to being blind, anyways.”

He swallows. “What is?”

“Just look where you’re going.” She holds her arm out again, pointing. “Look straight ahead, and don’t let your eyes touch anything.”

Don’t let your eyes touch anything. People in the creek bed, flies on faces.

He looks down at his wrist, the spot where one of the scars curves like a ragged half moon, like a melon with a bite out of it. His hands are shaking.

“Tie?” he says instead of anything else.

She pulls the rubber band off her wrist and hands it back to him. He ties off the braid and pats it. He can’t hug her, or anything like that, so he just pats her hair.

“Do you want an extra blanket?”

She stretches and gets up. “It’s not that cold.”

“Still.”

“Yeah, okay.”

He goes into his room for the blanket and sits down on the bed for a moment, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. His ribs itch, his lungs are tied up in rubber bands. He considers the bottle under the bed, but doesn’t reach for it.

She’s curled under her one blanket when he gets back. He thinks for a second about spreading the extra one over her, tucking it under her chin, but he doesn’t. He leaves it folded by her feet. She doesn’t say anything, just watches him.

“Do you want the light on?” he asks, standing by her feet.

She shakes her head.

“Okay.” He scratches his nose. “Good night, A-Qing.”

“Night, boss.”

It makes him smile, a little. He checks the door locks, pulls the curtains closed, turns off the lamp. The light from the kitchen reaches into the living room—it can barely be called a separate room, anyway. He goes to the kitchen and fills a glass with water, leaves it on the coffee table. Just in case. He watches her for a moment from the kitchen door, holding on to the light switch. She doesn’t say anything, and he starts to feel creepy, so he turns out the light and goes to bed. He lays on his back and looks up at the streetlights filtering in through the curtains and tries to think about nothing.

Part Four

[wkemeup]

Okay but what was Bucky saying about y/n to Steve and Peggy before they met her 😂

I’m With You - Masterlist

“You need to talk me off a ledge, Steve.”

Bucky stood in line behind a dozen angry passengers boarding a 3am flight to Atlanta, all tapping their toes incessantly and trying to peak up and over the shoulders of those ahead of them in hopes of getting on the plane faster, but Bucky would have much rather his flight have been canceled entirely.

“What’s going on?” Steve replied with a yawn.

Bucky could hear the tiredness in his friend’s voice, the soft rustle of the bed sheets and the click of the lamp. He felt a sharp stab of guilt, just realizing what hour it was, but he was sure he was going to collapse into a heap of himself if he didn’t talk to someone. This night couldn’t have possibly been real and if he didn’t tell Steve, he was sure might find a way to convince himself it was all a dream.

“Is that Bucky?” he heard a quiet voice mumble through the phone; English accent laced with sleep. “Put him on speaker, love.”

“You’ve got both of us now, punk,” Steve said and Peggy whispered a quick ‘hello.’ Bucky gritted his teeth and before he could offer an apology, Steve added, “you better start talking before we fall back asleep.”

A passenger shoved Bucky hard in the shoulder, pushing past him when he didn’t take the two steps ahead of him fast enough to keep up with the line. He let the man go without complaint.

Bucky realized then, he couldn’t talk about his sister; not with the anxiety peaking again and rushing through his veins like rapids. It only seemed to calm when you were with him and he didn’t know how that was possible, to have just met someone hours earlier and for his entire world to be dropped upside down like this.

But it was and it had been. And now, he was in trouble.

“There’s, um, there’s a girl.”

Silence. A pause, then, “a girl?”

“Yeah, Steve, a girl,” Bucky snapped. “Stop making me feel like I’m in middle school.”

“Hey you’re the one calling me at 3am over a girl, Buck!”

“Boys, stop it,” Peggy snipped, a light thump through the speaker as she swatted Steve’s arm before she let out a sigh. “Bucky hasn’t so much as mentioned a girl or anyone in three years, so give him a break, darling.” Then, to Bucky, sweetly, “tell us about her.”

Had it really been three years since he landed stateside again? It felt like longer than that and yesterday all at the same time. 

There were pieces of him could still feel the gravel under his back when he slept at night and he still found himself glancing over his shoulder for threats in shopping malls, sneaking around corners at his office building, constantly vigilant. The other half of him felt like it was a lifetime away, like he’d been this isolated, shell of himself for decades, like he hadn’t used the muscles in his cheeks in a millennium.

He swallowed, shoving a hand into his pocket and letting a family of five behind him cut the line. He wasn’t ready to get on this plane just yet. The bag of skittles in his pocket were heavy as stones.

“You remember the stupid shit I used to do with Bec in Charlotte?”

“Is that why you’re callin’ so late?” Steve asked, his voice considerably softer and Bucky wondered how much Peggy’s silent stare had to do with that. “Your flight get canceled?”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose, “but it’s back on. I’m boarding now.”

Another silence took over and Bucky wondered if they could hear his heart pounding through the phone.

He glanced back at the long line of people behind him and resided to simply step to the side. He was letting just about everyone pass him by anyway, might as well be the last one to board. He took a deep breath.

“The girl, Bucky,” Peggy reminded him gently.

“Right.” Bucky scratched at the back of his head, finding that his eyes kept drifting down the terminal in search of you, though he knew it was foolish. You had a flight to catch, too. How could he possibly miss you this much? It ached in his bones. It burned like a fire.

So, he told Steve and Peggy everything.

He told them about how you’d been the only other person in the terminal to smile in relief when the cancellations starting rolling in. He told them about the man in the suit who spilled your coffee all over you and how you’d been so patient and kind to the gate agent who looked to be about seconds away from tears.

He told them about how when he was faced with the possibility that you might just walk right out of his life right then and there, he’d done something he hadn’t done in years and asked to buy you coffee. He told them how adorable you’d looked because you were so surprised, shocked even, and he’d let himself flirt for the first time since he’d been home from the desert.

He told them about sitting in the coffeeshop people-watching past when the café was supposed to close and how he’d dragged you into cartwheels at midnight.

“Cartwheels?” Steve gaped. “Seriously, Buck? She must have thought you were completely insane.”

“She did,” Bucky confirmed, a slight laugh in his voice. He didn’t even realize he was smiling. He didn’t notice the nerves left his body.

“How terrible was it? You hadn’t done one of those since your layovers with Becca when you were sixteen. I bet it was awful,” Steve teased, though it was followed by a short grunt and Bucky was certain Peggy must have shoved him hard in the side for that. Bucky grinned.

“Don’t pay attention to him,” Peggy said. “Then, what happened?”

Then, Bucky told them about how you didn’t give him your name until almost an hour later and while he played it cool, it drove him impossibly insane. He told them how he took you to get snacks at the store Charlie worked at – yes, that old man is still alive, Steve! – and then, about how you’d told him the reason you were going to Atlanta in the first place.

“Oh, that poor girl,” Peggy sighed.

Bucky could still picture the look on your face; the genuine belief that you were somehow not worthy of this jerk of an ex-boyfriend and he couldn’t understand it. You were impossibly kind and funny and so stunningly beautiful; Bucky could hardly keep his heart in check around you.

He told them how he tried to explain his situation with Becca to you, how it came out as a jumbled mess, how easily you changed the subject without hesitation and the relief he felt at that.

Then, he told them about the questions over giant checkers and Steve teased him relentlessly, despite Peggy swatting him again, telling Bucky, ‘well I think it’s sweet and Steve could learn a thing from you.’

It felt like a month’s worth of time sat in the span of a few hours and Bucky found himself leaning up against the wall, watching the grumbling passengers make their way to the plane, a smile aching in his cheeks the longer he talked about you.

By the time he got to the end of the story, about how he’d just barely kissed you before the damn intercom went off, alerting you to your flights that were dangerously close to boarding, there were only a few stragglers left in the line.

“Y/n sounds lovely,” Peggy said after a moment. “So, why the ledge?”

Bucky sighed, slowly making his way to the very back of the line. “I don’t know. Maybe I was too much, you know? I don’t remember how to do this stuff. I feel like I dumped all my baggage on a woman I’ve known for a few hours and I fucked it all up.“

“Come on, man, I don’t think that’s true,” Steve said reassuringly, all tracing of the teasing nature leaving his voice. “It sounds like she likes you. I mean, who else would put up with cartwheels in the middle of the airport?”

Bucky found himself chuckling under his breath despite himself. He handed the gate agent his ticket and they pushed out a tight-lipped smile, nodding for him to continue down the gateway.

“She’s really something, Steve. I don’t know the last time I felt like myself and when I was with her… I don’t know, it was easy again, like all this stuff with Bec never happened and I never enlisted. I was laughing and smiling and telling jokes and—Jesus – I was flirting. Didn’t know I could still do that.”

He could hear their laughter in response through the speaker as he stepped into the plane. Everyone else was seated, most people already trying to close their eyes and find some rest before the plane landed in Atlanta.

“Tell me you got her number,” Steve begged and Bucky clenched his jaw, slumping down into his seat. The silence was enough of an answer. “Bucky!”

“I know, I know! But I gave her mine, at least,” Bucky replied weakly. “Just have to hope she’ll call.”

“She will,” Peggy said and the soft rustle of the sheets came like static through the phone. She yawned. “Y/n will call, Bucky. I’m sure of it.”

It was a problem for another day, he supposed. 

A flight attendant stood over Bucky’s shoulder, eyeing his phone and he muttered a quick apology.

“I gotta go. Plane’s taking off,” Bucky mumbled into the phone, nervously glancing back up at the attendant who was still watching him as he continued walking through the cabin.

“Call us tomorrow when you get settled,” Peggy requested. “I know Sunday won’t be easy but we’re here for you. Just need to keep busy on Saturday. Think you can do that?”

Bucky nodded, letting out a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll find something to keep me occupied.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, pal,” Steve said, the click of the bedside lamp turning off. “Anyone who willingly goes along with your ridiculous layover shenanigans has got to really like you. I’m not sure I would even do a cartwheel on that dirty floor for you, buddy.”

Bucky laughed, his cheeks muscles sore and whether it was from the lack of sleep or from smiling more in one night than he had in years, he wasn’t sure.

“You off the ledge now?” Steve asked.

“Yeah. Consider me back on solid ground,” Bucky replied. The flight attendant was making his way back down the aisle to scold him again and Bucky quickly said, “okay I really have to go now before I’m the reason this plane never makes it to Atlanta. Get some rest, guys. Thanks.”

“Always, pal.”

“Fly safe,” Peggy added.

With that, Bucky ended the call and turned off his phone, holding it up for the attendant to see. He narrowed his eyes on Bucky, almost in warning, before he retreated back to his seat for takeoff.

Bucky settled into his seat, folding his arms and letting his eyes drift closed. Despite the lumps in the back of the cushioning and the arm rest to his right completely taken over by the man next to him, Bucky felt a sense of calm, a wave of relief, for the first time in a long while.

His mind drifted back to the beautiful stranger in the airport. The woman with the coffee on her shoes and the laugh of an angel and the kindest eyes he’d ever seen.

He found you again in his dreams.

[when-they-write-stuff]

I didn’t get all the way through the list, but I already couldn’t choose, so 55. “Sorry doesn’t fix everything.” or 75. “What are you talking about? You’re married!” or 80. “But you promised..”

Written for: “Sorry doesn’t fix everything.”

- -

“Tell me a story about how the sun loved the moon so much, he died every night to let her breathe.”

When Derek first left Beacon Hills, that’s what Ms. Morrell told Stiles to think about. He sat across from her just like he had nearly two years ago and picked at the hem of his shirt instead of his lacrosse stick. He hadn’t played lacrosse in a long time; not since the Nogitsune. Not since the return of Kate 2.0.

When Derek first left Beacon Hills, Stiles was told to look on the positive side of things. He was told that by everyone else, at least. Certain other people remained elusive. Certain other people who made Stiles so mad, he stopped going to counseling for an entire three months until his nightmares started waking him up in screaming fits and night-sweats again.

When Derek first left Beacon Hills, Stiles was told to think about the sun and the moon. And he was so fed up with everything sometimes.

He was so fed up with everything.

Like what they faced after Derek left. So many things. Stiles learned what it was like to be considered untrustworthy. He learned what it was like to be considered a real murder. To have blood on his actual hands.

He did this… thing when no one else was around. He didn’t tell Morrell about it and he didn’t tell his father. He most certainly didn’t tell Scott, but they hadn’t been talking that much lately anyway.

And if Stiles’s dad was to snoop around his bedroom one day, he might find a neat stack of letters. Ones that were never sent out, but always slipped in clean envelopes. Ones that were all addressed to the same initials, but there was never an address. Stiles didn’t think he’d send them even if he got an address; but it was a lot like the instance with Derek Hale’s number currently in his phone. He’d stared at it for hours before, debating making a call. A text. Something.

He never did though. Stiles thought he’d have a lot less control with the texts. So he wrote letters instead.

When Derek Hale first left Beacon Hills, the words; “Tell me a story about how the sun loved the moon so much he died every night to let her breathe” had circled through Stiles’s mind so often, he thought he was going crazy.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

When Stiles had gone into high school, he’d never expected to come out of it surprised he’d survived. They all made jokes years and years ago, yeah. But Stiles still couldn’t believe sometimes that he’d survived.

When he graduated as a senior, he’d stopped going to the counseling sessions. His dad had tried to bring up actual therapy but Stiles was at the point where he realized how Derek had felt when he first returned to Beacon Hills years ago. Once upon a time, when Stiles had been an idiot sixteen-year-old kid and Derek was nothing but tired and sad. 

For the first time, Stiles kind of wished he could go back in time and apologize.

Because hell, Stiles was tired. He was sad. He was tired like when Derek had buried himself in his childhood house and attempted to ignore the world. He was sad in that sometimes, he felt like he’d lived and died a dozen lives, and maybe he was just going through the motions these days.

He might have looked for Derek in the crowd the day they’d graduated. Because if Derek Hale was ever going to return to Beacon Hills, it would be then. When most of the danger had passed, when most of them had survived.

Most of them. Not all.

Stiles attempted to organize a vigil for those who hadn’t made it to graduation. A little ceremony. Something, anything, to remember that they all weren’t so lucky.

No one except for Lydia, Melissa, and Stiles’s dad had shown up.

They’d lit candles, murmured a few quiet words, looked over the graves, and Stiles wondered how much it had hurt Derek to lose so many of his pack. Peter had called it like losing a limb. Stiles sometimes wondered if the pain he’d felt when Derek had left was similar to that.

He hadn’t just felt like he’d lost a limb though. He’d felt like he’d lost so much more.

Stiles liked to believe Derek would have come to the vigil if he would have known. Maybe he would’ve taken a candle and stood by Stiles’s side as they overlooked Boyd and Erica’s graves. Surrounded by wolfsbane, because Stiles didn’t know if that was an actual thing, but he remembered seeing it around Laura Hale’s grave so many years ago.

He’d nearly gotten caught when he snuck out one night months ago to plant it. But there was over a handful of purple flowers growing now. Dancing across each grave. Crawling up the stones. Not in the perfect circle like it had been for Laura but… maybe it was enough.

Though, Stiles didn’t know how that could be enough if he hadn’t been.

He’d told himself he was going to leave Beacon Hills after high school. For good, maybe. Or at least for a few years. And Stiles had managed to stay gone for a solid semester, but then his dad had been shot in the line of duty.

Nothing fatal; a shoulder wound that put him in the hospital for six days and took him out of duty for another three months after that. But Stiles had driven straight back to Beacon Hills and hadn’t looked over his shoulder since.

Two years had passed and Stiles sometimes still wrote the letters.

He kind of thought it was stupid.

-

Hey, Sourwolf, remember that one time you left Beacon Hills without telling anyone? Yeah, well, I do too. And I’m so fucking pissed at you for it, I would literally kill to say that to your face. Which, funny story, wouldn’t be my first murder. Remember that time you said I’d be alright? That everything would be alright?

Yeah, well, that’s a bunch of bull.

  Stupid question, but would you pick the sun or the moon? That doesn’t make sense right now and I know, I’d be getting the ‘Seriously Stiles?” growly brows right now. But I’d really like to know. For… scientific reasons. Shut up, I’m probably not going to send this anyway.

  By the way, of the sun and the moon, which one of us is dying here?

  You think I would have had enough riddles to last me a lifetime at this point, but Morrell doesn’t seem to think so. Both her and Deaton get under my skin sometimes, you know? Like, is a straight answer really so damn hard?

It sure as hell seems like it.

  I’m supposed to be graduating and living my life pretty soon. I still can’t make a proper boiled egg and sometimes, I forget not everyone wants to hurt my friends or family. Funny, right? I’m fucking hilarious.

  I swear to god, I love you.

-

Stiles took this one class that talked about poetry and all the questions of the universe. He wasn’t sure why he took it exactly, but there was one thing that caught his attention from the beginning. One story about the moon and the sun; and the constant chase, the constant sacrifice that they made for each other. Over and over again.

He hated that class for all he was worth. He didn't think that was much anymore.

Stiles went to college for another year with no official degree in mind, but maybe he could be a history major or something? But then he got the call that his dad was planning to retire soon and Stiles found himself taking a few steps back. Turning away from the morning classes, the late-night parties, and all of those normal things, and applying to the police academy instead.

For some reason, he always thought Derek would’ve made a good deputy.

Stiles still looked for him sometimes.

He looked for grey-green.

-

I think I could track you down if I wanted to. You know, talk some sense into your little werewolf-y brain. I’d probably say something about ‘Having a plan B’. Because there has to be something else. We were always supposed to have a plan B, weren’t we? Maybe yours was leaving. Maybe it was not looking back.

I just wish I could’ve left too.

-

When Derek Hale first returned back to Beacon Hills, Stiles had friends at the local coffee shop, friends at the Sheriff’s station, and even a few friends from his old Uni days. He had them scattered here and there. He hadn’t written a letter in ages.

When Derek Hale first returned to Beacon Hills, Stiles didn’t actually know it until he ran into the man while grocery shopping. Derek had gone stock-still down the aisle, a basket held loosely in his hand, and Stiles’s milk had gone splattering to the floor.

When Derek Hale first returned to Beacon Hills, Stiles was told it was ‘a second chance’. He thought that sounded painfully familiar. He also thought, for a moment, he was going crazy again.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Sometimes, he thought he could leave it all behind. Scott had long since followed the rest of his pack to New York City and Stiles had lost touch long ago. There was still the occasional supernatural baddie in Beacon Hills; but Stiles had a little bit more than a baseball bat now.

There was this… misfit group. Those that had been left behind. Stiles; when he’d become a Deputy. Lydia; when she returned back to start her own online company from the ground up. The few who had never left. Or never stayed gone.

Then there was Derek.

Stiles hadn’t planned on speaking to him ever again, thank you very much. He’d made a beeline from the grocery store and either Derek hadn’t followed, or he’d been too preoccupied with the newly spilled milk to give chase.

Stiles saw him later at the coffee shop. He turned right back around and suffered the station’s coffee for the rest of the week.

He saw him running in the early mornings when he left for work.

He saw the man in his sleep.

It had been so long since Stiles had woken up with the memory of blazing red eyes, or sharp electric blue underneath the moonlight, or the simple green-grey that gave him the saddest look before turning away. 

It had been so long.

Stiles made a bonfire in the preserve one night with a pile of his own kindling; a little stack of papers. But then he never went through with it.

One morning, there was a man in his apartment building.

Stiles had never thought his ‘fight or flight’ instincts would kick in when he was facing Derek Hale. But then the man was standing in front of him in nothing but sweatpants and an old t-shirt. He held a bag of bagels in one hand and his mail in the other and it took Stiles one second too long to realize the bastard was living in his building.

It took Stiles one minute too long to realize he was crying.

See, Stiles had imagined their future meeting over and over again in his mind. When Derek had first left and Stiles was still raw, he imagined he might scream a little bit. Maybe curse the man out.

Or maybe just beg him to stay.

Then as the months had stretched on, Stiles thought maybe he’d just give him a hug. That maybe, maybe if he could prove to Derek Hale that there was something left for him in Beacon Hills, he would consider staying around for a little longer.

Jump to three years later and Stiles was just standing here like an idiot, silent tears spilling down his cheeks. And it took him far too long to realize he was crying.

Derek was only a few feet away by the time Stiles snapped back to reality.

Some part of his mind was tempted to punch the man. Some part was tempted to turn and storm off. Stiles thought he could only be more pathetic if he dropped to his knees along with the tears.

Derek looked utterly torn. Stiles hated how little he hated him for a moment.

“Stiles—”

“Do you remember the day you left?”

Derek’s mouth snapped closed and Stiles’s words were trembling. The man made an abortive move forward as if he was going to reach out, but then he promptly drew back. Stiles’s heart twisted in his chest.

“Huh, Derek? Do you remember the day you left?”

“It was… a long time ago.”

“Yeah, asshole, it was. But I just want to know one thing,” Stiles said, and he hated himself for how pitiful he sounded. Because right now, he was pretty sure he hated himself more than he hated Derek Hale. If he even ever had. “Did you ever look back?”

Derek’s jaw ticked and he didn’t say a word. Stiles felt like his stomach had dropped.

“Did you ever think about returning?”

“I’m sorry, Stiles.”

And that wasn’t the answer Stiles had been looking for, but maybe it was the one he should have expected. Silently, he nodded, turning back away. He wasn’t trembling so hard anymore but he still felt like his world was falling apart at the seams.

“Wait, Stiles.”

Despite himself, he froze. Despite everything, despite knowing better. Derek looked shattered when Stiles glanced back and for the first time, he wondered if the man had possibly missed Stiles and much as he’d missed him.

But then Derek just ducked his head again and Stiles knew he was an idiot. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t fix everything.”

Though turning away, eyes burning, Stiles sure as hell wished it did.

-

I swear to god, I hate you.

-

Stiles never asked to fall in love, alright? He never asked to look into grey-green eyes and find himself rendered useless. If someone had told his teenage self that one day, he’d been spending his life thinking about a certain leather-jacketed asshole, Stiles would have laughed them off.

If his life was a movie, Stiles thought Derek would have shown up on Stiles’s doorstep. Maybe with flowers, maybe with just an apology.

Stiles would have been careful, cautious. But he would have let Derek in. There would have been soft conversations, possible tears, maybe even a love confession. And then Stiles would have been alright again.

Derek Hale never showed up on his doorstep. Stiles still dreamed of grey-green eyes.

There was this part of him that sometimes still came to the shocking realization that Derek was back in town. When one of the deputies introduced Stiles to his new ‘good friend’ and Stiles had nearly had a panic attack at the sight of Derek’s face. When he went to the farmer’s market for the first time since he was a child and turned the corner to run face-first into a soft henley and firm chest.

Sometimes, Stiles had to stop and take a breath. 

And then like the snap of two fingers, suddenly Stiles nearly stopped breathing altogether.

He’d survived his teenage years. He’d survived psychotic werewolves and bloodthirsty alpha packs. He’d survived demon possession and being forgotten by all those he loved. Stiles had survived one thing after another. All of those dozen lives that he’d lived.

He took a bullet to the chest on a Tuesday morning. And Stiles was pretty sure he was finally going to die.

But when he came-to, it was in a hospital room.

Stiles felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his brain. There was the faint sound of a beeping machine and someone was hunched over where he laid. Stiles managed to blink once, twice, a low groan leaving his lips, and then the person was jerking like they’d been shot.

Derek Hale made an abortive move to stand, looking like he’d been caught red-handed doing something illegal. Stiles focused in on his face slowly, confused for a second, and then he was pretty sure his heart stopped.

Slowly, Derek sank back into the chair at his side. “Stiles?”

“You’re not really here.”

The man’s face did something strange and Stiles was almost tempted to reach out and touch it. But he still felt like he was floating outside of his body, ears ringing, and this wasn’t real. Either he really was dead or they’d put him on enough drugs to make him see what Stiles usually tried to pretend was a bad dream.

Derek looked terrified. Which was funny, because usually their roles were reversed.

“Stiles, how are you feeling?”

“You’re not really here,” Stiles said again. God, why did his brain hate him? The man’s throat bobbed as he swallowed and Stiles thought that up close, his face looked a little less hardened than it used to. His eyes were a little less sad.

“Stiles, you’re in the hospital. You were shot.”

“I know that,” Stiles said, huffing despite himself. “But you’re not here.”

“I am.”

“No,” he said softly. “No, because this is all a dream. Or a hallucination. Or a nightmare. You’re not here because that’s not allowed. We’re not allowed. Someone told me and I’ve spent three years thinking so.”

Derek flinched. Stiles managed a weak chuckle.

“We’re not allowed, Sourwolf.”

And then Derek Hale took his hand. 

Stiles’s brain logged offline for a moment. His heart skipped a beat. Because Derek Hale— dream Derek Hale, hallucination Derek Hale, whatever— had his hand. And Stiles could feel the warmth of his skin. The steady beat of his heart. The callouses that lined his palm.

Derek took his hand, squeezing gently, and for a moment, Stiles just stared.

Then he yanked back like he’d been burned.

“No, Derek. No, Derek, no Derek, no! You’re not here! You can’t be here! Get out. Get your furry ass out right now or I swear to god, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?”

The words were asked gently. Derek raised a brow, glancing down at Stiles’s chest, and his features tightened a little as he looked back up.

“You’ll what, Stiles? Nearly die again?”

“Fuck you.”

“I…” the man's voice wavered. “I’m sorry, Stiles. But I’m not going anywhere.”

And wouldn’t Stiles have loved to have heard that years ago? Derek would have come back or maybe he would have never left. He wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t supposed to have gone anywhere from the start.

“Why?” Stiles asked. “Why now?”

Derek dropped his gaze, starting to pull his hand back. But Stiles latched on as if it was a lifeline. Grey-green eyes snapped back upward and Derek nodded, gripping his hand tight again. “I… I heard what happened.”

“Yeah, so I nearly died. I’ve nearly died plenty of times before, you know. You never showed up then.”

Stiles was pretty sure he was hitting every single point of pain. Because Derek looked more and more stricken with every word and if Stiles was a better person, he would stop. But suddenly, it was all spilling out of him. Because yeah, he could hate the man silently all he wanted, but that had never done him any good.

“Why did you leave, Derek? Goddammit, why did you leave?”

“I had to.”

“You had to leave Beacon Hills?”

“Stiles—”

“Or what, Derek? You had to leave the pack? You had to leave me? You had to scurry off into the night and never so much as call? I wanted so bad to hate you, dammit! How could you let me try and hate you?”

“Because that’s what you were supposed to do!”

Stiles froze. At some point, Derek had drawn away. He just looked at Stiles now, eyes blurry and jaw clenched. For a moment, Stiles was pretty sure he was going to get up and leave. But then the man just ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

“That’s what you were supposed to do, Stiles.”

“Why did you leave me, Derek?”

“Why would you ever want me to stay?”

There was this one letter Stiles had written asking himself the same thing. Why did he want Derek back? Why did he even care whether or not the man decided to suddenly up and leave?

Why Derek Hale? Why would he ever care about Derek Hale?

“Because when you left,” Stiles said shakily. “It felt like losing a limb.”

Derek made a soft noise at the back of his throat, shaking hands clasped together in his lap. His eyes were fixed on the floor and Stiles didn’t think he’d ever seen the ex big bad Alpha of Beacon Hills so fragile. But he was pretty sure right now, if he said the wrong thing, Derek would shatter.

“Because you were gone,” Stiles said. “Before you were even mine.”

Some part of him thought Ms. Morrell was wrong. There was no moon or sun. There was no chase, there was no sacrifice. Unless it was on both sides. Because dammit, Derek looked like Stiles had just said everything he’d experienced. The man breathed out shakily and nodded once more glancing up.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t fix everything.”

“I know.”

“Are you staying?”

“... Yes.”

“For good?”

For a moment, Derek stared. Then he nodded. Stiles smiled a little and for the first time in a while, felt like he really meant it. He shifted, pulling himself into a sitting position and wincing a little at the stretch of his injury. Derek straightened and Stiles just waved a hand through the air, managing a small laugh.

Slowly, the man relaxed back. 

“Then me too,” Stiles said softly. “I'm sorry for trying so hard to hate you.”

Derek huffed, eyes shining. And it had been so long since Stiles had hoped he’d actually ever get to see that. He reached out and Derek took his hand, squeezing tightly. And it was all so real. The pulse point beneath his fingertips. The long fingers intertwined with his own.

It was all so real.

“I’m not leaving again, Stiles.”

And beneath Stiles’s fingertips, the heartbeat of the man stayed steady.

-

There’s this thing about the sun and the moon, Sourwolf. One can’t survive without the other. And it’s always been about survival between us, right? Sometimes, I’d love for that to all be a lie. I really would. But I need you to survive, remember? I need you to survive, which is why I haven’t let you go.

Which is why I might never let you go.

- -

I should really know better than to write at night bc nothing but angst ever ensues. Thank you so much for the prompt, Matt! I had fun with it <3

(if you enjoy my writing, consider supporting your student writer? You can also request a prompt if you’d like!). https://ko-fi.com/rh27writer

[feedmecookiesnow]

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Here’s the plan.”

“With no due respect,” Clint says, “you can take your plan, and you can shove it.”

Bucky sighs into the darkness of the shipping container. “Tone down the attitude. Remind me again who got us stuck in here?”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Clint protests. “You said follow the bad guy, so I followed the bad guy!”

“And then let him trap you in a wooden crate.”

“Let---” Clint cuts off with an indignant noise. “I didn’t let him do shit. If it wasn’t so damn dark in here, you could see that. Why didn’t you super punch him out of existence?”

Which okay, that’s fair. Really, if this is anyone’s fault, it’s Bucky’s. He knows Clint is best on high ground, picking off targets from a distance. He should have been the one to follow the arms dealer in here, not Clint. But he’d been distracted by the grenades being thrown at his face, and the hail of bullets, and everything had happened just a bit faster than he could process. Bucky hadn’t even realized Clint was in trouble until he wasn’t answering the comms.

“We should’ve brought Natasha,” Clint sighs. “We’d be home eating dinner right now.”

“Wishful thinking isn’t going to help anything,” Bucky says. “We need to figure out a way to get out of here.”

“How, genius? I’m out of explosive arrows, the walls are at least three inches thick, and the door locks from the outside. So unless your super fancy arm can punch us out---which we know it can’t, because we already tried---then it looks like we’re trapped in here for awhile.”

Bucky thumps his head against the back of the crate. Clint’s right. They’re pretty well stuck. They’ve already tried the exits, and banging on the walls, and everything else possible. The crates are full of guns, but no ammo, and trying to shoot their way out would be stupid. “Well, this sucks.”

“Why’d you follow me in here, anyway?”

“Uh, because a bad guy shoved you in a wooden crate?”

“I was handling it!”

“You were unconscious!”

“I was waking up!”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Why can’t you just say thank you and move on?”

“Because, you moron, now both of us are stuck in here, getting shipped off to Siberia or wherever, and now the team is down two people instead of one!”

“Well, next time I’ll just let them kidnap you!”

“Yeah, maybe you should!”

A tense silence descends. Bucky gets up and feels his way around the boxes, moving back over towards the door. Might be worth it to take another shot at the door. Maybe he can pop the hinges off or something---

He trips, sprawling onto the metal floor with a loud bang. “Ow, what the---”

“Wanna watch where you’re going?”

“It’s pitch black in here! What are you doing on the floor?”

“Where am I supposed to sit, the ceiling?”

“No, I just---” Bucky snaps his mouth shut, then pats around until he finds whatever he tripped over. It’s Clint’s leg, apparently, because as soon as Bucky makes contact, he jerks it back with a pained hiss. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“He shot me,” Clint says, voice tight with pain. “It’s fine, I’ve got a bandage on it.”

“He shot you? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Clint snorts derisively. “What good would that do?”

“I could help!”

“What are you gonna do, perform blind surgery? It’s fine, I’ve got it wrapped up, and it---” He cuts off with another pained hiss as Bucky’s fingers skim over the bandage. It’s wet.

“You’re still bleeding,” Bucky says, feeling around the bandage. “It’s not---is this your shirt?”

“Limited options,” Clint mutters. “Can you stop poking it, please?”

Bucky pulls his hands back. “Sorry. Just---hang on, let me---”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Clint says. “It went straight through, I don’t think it hit anything vital. It’s just bleeding.”

“A lot.”

“Bullet wounds do that.” His voice is low now, all the anger and derisiveness exchanged for exhaustion. “Look, Bucky, I’m really tired, so can you just...” He trails off and sighs. “Just leave it, okay?”

“You’re tired because you’re losing blood.” He yanks off his own shirt and ties it tight around the wound, wincing as Clint makes a little noise. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We gotta get more pressure on it.”

“It’s okay,” Clint says. “It’s---it’s fine, just do it.”

He’s trembling, Bucky realizes. “You’re shivering.”

“It’s cold in here.”

“Hang on.” Bucky crawls back over to where he was sitting and retrieves his jacket, then goes back to Clint. “Here.” He drapes it over Clint like a blanket. “Best I can do, short of cuddling.”

He means it more as a joke than anything, but Clint shifts a little and says, “We can do that .”

“I---what?”

“You’re hot,” Clint says, and Bucky can practically hear the blush that follows those words. “I mean like temperature. You and Steve. It’s a super soldier thing.”

“Uh-huh.” Bucky feels like he shouldn’t push the topic, but it’s just too good a chance to pass up. “So how often are you and Steve---“

“Shut the fuck up,” Clint says, embarrassment clear in his voice. “That’s not what I meant, god. Just---just get over here, will you? I’m freezing.”

Bucky snickers. “Alright. Come here.”

It takes a little rearranging and a lot of apologizing, but eventually Bucky ends up against a crate with Clint leaning against his chest. He puts the jacket back over Clint, then wraps his arms around him. “How’s this?”

“Much better,” Clint mumbles, tilting his head back onto Bucky’s shoulder.

“Hey.” Bucky rubs his arm. “Stay awake, Clint. Don’t pass out on me.”

“I’m awake.”

“You don’t sound awake.”

“Whatever.” Clint clumsily pats his arm. “Thanks for this. You’re a very nice murder machine.”

Bucky snorts softly. “Wow. Charming.” He pulls his arms a little tighter, hoping to ease some of the shaking. “I thought you hated me.”

“What? I don’t hate you.” Clint turns his head. “You’re just easy to rile. Can’t help myself.”

Which is a fair point. Bucky does let Clint get to him way too often. Natasha’s told him that more than once. “You are very annoying.”

“It’s a talent.” Clint’s head lolls, and then he jerks awake. “Fuck.”

“Don’t fall asleep.”

“I’m not sleeping.” He wriggles a little more into Bucky. “I’m just tired. Bleeding to death is exhausting, you know.”

“You’re not bleeding to death, don’t be dramatic.” Bucky gently pats the bandage, feels the wetness seeping through. “Well, maybe a little bit.”

“Very reassuring.” Clint pulls his leg away, then groans in pain. “Seriously, stop touching it.”

“Sorry.”

A silence descends over them, broken only by the sound of Clint’s ragged breathing. Bucky counts the heartbeats under his palm and tries not to worry.

After an eternity, Clint shifts under his grip. “I gotta tell you something.”

“I’m listening,” Bucky says, relieved to hear the sound of his voice.

“I don’t hate you.”

“You said that already.”

“No, but I mean it. I don’t hate you. I kind of like you.”

Bucky stiffens a little at that. “You what?”

“I like you.”

“You like me?”

“Okay, I thought I was the deaf one here.” Clint turns his head. “Yes, I like you. Is that so hard to believe?”

“No, I just...” Bucky isn’t sure what to say. “I just...didn’t know.”

“I suck at feelings,” Clint says. “So I generally show my love by annoying people to death.”

“You should probably rethink that approach.”

“Probably.”

“You’re sure this isn’t the blood loss talking?”

“Could be.” Clint reaches up, presses his hand to Bucky’s face. “But I felt like this when I did have all my blood, so probably not.”

“Oh...good to know.”

Clint’s hand pulls, and Bucky lets his head dip with the pressure. It’s too dark to see properly, so their first kiss isn’t really a kiss at all. But they figure it out after a moment, Bucky adjusting his position so Clint doesn’t have to angle himself so awkwardly. It’s nothing to write home about, as far as kisses go, but also it is, because it’s Clint. Because in his wildest dreams, Bucky never, ever imagined this would actually happened.

Dreamed about it, yes. Hoped it would, yes. But to actually do it---

“There,” Clint says, pulling back. “Just wanted to do that once before I died.”

“You’re not going to die,” Bucky says, resisting the urge to kiss him again. “Don’t say that. It’s not funny.”

“Sorry.” Clint moves against him. “I’m really tired. Not thinking straight.”

“I know. But I need you to stay awake, okay?”

“Kay.” Another shift, and then, “Tell me something.”

“Anything.”

“No, you idiot.” Clint whacks his arm with a weak hand. “Talk to me. Give me something to focus on. Tell me about---I don’t know. Something better than being shot.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. “So there was this one time Steve and I...”

He talks for what feels like hours. Most of his memories are hazy, ruined as they have been by Hydra and his years as the Soldier. But he makes it work, fills in the gaps as best as he can. He doesn’t care if it’s right, he only cares that Clint nods along, and occasionally makes a comment or two. The world is narrowed in here, the oppressive darkness folding in around them until Clint’s steady breathing is the only thing Bucky can be sure is real.

He’s in the middle of another story when Clint slumps a little in his arms. “Hey,” Bucky says, and shakes him. “Clint. Clint. Wake up, man.”

Nothing. Not even a moan.

Bucky presses his hand to Clint’s neck, relieved to feel a thready pulse under his fingers. “Come on,” he says again. “You gotta wake up, Clint, you gotta---”

There’s a thumping sound on the outside of the crate. It reverberates through the metal. Bucky looks around wildly, then with his metal hand, reaches out and rips the lid off a nearby crate. He hurls it at the doors. It’s an awkward throw, but it gets the job done, banging against the metal with a solid sound.

“Someone’s out there,” he says to Clint. “Help is coming. Hold on.”

It might not be help, he realizes as he blindly reaches for his gun. It could be the arms dealers they were chasing, come back to finish the job. It could be a dock worker. Could be anything, really. But he doesn’t care. It’s better than the darkness. He’ll deal with it. He’ll kill a dozen people if that’s what it takes to get Clint to safety.

There’s another thumping sound, and a terrible creaking of metal. Then the doors blow open with an explosion that nearly blows Bucky over. He curls up instead, covering Clint’s face as best as he can.

“Barnes!” someone yells. “Barton! You guys in here?”

Relief floods through Bucky at the sound of Rhodey’s voice. “Over here!” he yells, waving a hand. “Clint’s been shot, I need help!”

It’s a whirlwind of things after that. Rhodey calls for medical support, and then Natasha is there, murder in her eyes even as her fingers gently skim over the makeshift bandages. “The arms dealer?” she asks, and Bucky nods. “I’ll take care of it. Let’s get him up.”

“I got him.” Bucky carefully slides an arm under Clint’s leg, then another under his shoulders. Natasha helps steady him as he gets up.

Clint’s eyes flicker open with the change in height, and he blinks up at Bucky. “Whas’ going on?”

“Rescue,”  Bucky tells him, utterly relieved to see him awake. “You’re the damsel in distress.”

“Lucky me.” He tips his head to look at Natasha. “Hey, you.”

“Hey yourself,” she says. “What’d you get shot for?”

“Dramatics?”

“Figures.” She kisses his forehead. “I’m gonna go clean up your mess. Get him out of here, Barnes. There’s an ambulance waiting.”

“On it.” Bucky starts walking towards the door.

“Hey,” Clint murmurs, and Bucky looks down at him. “The things I said.”

“What about them?”

“I meant it. All of it.” He pokes Bucky’s chest. “You’re gonna kiss me again after this, right?”

Bucky laughs. “You get better,” he says, “and then I will. I promise.”

“Sounds good,” Clint mumbles, a small smile spreading over his face. “Gonna hold you to that.”

“I promise,” Bucky says again, carrying him into the ambulance. “As much as you want.”

“Gonna want a lot.”

“That’s okay.” Bucky sets him on the gurney and settles down next to him. “I think I will too.”

***

If you like the things I write, I’m participating in the Charity Hawktion, and you can bid on me here! Winning bid will get a 5-10k story of their choice, written by me! All money goes to a good cause, so if you can, I would encourage you to participate! <3 

[thewritepages]

The Diary of the Older Collegiate (#TheFreshman Series) (2)

Synopsis : Annabelle Green is somewhat in a situation no thirty year woman would want to find herself in : (Un) Happily divorced, childless and with a job worth peanuts and migraine. The downward spiral of her life doesn't seem to end anytime soon until her sister reminds her of her most cherished dream.

College.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

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

MAY 10, 2019

3.30 A.M.

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

Maybe Kat was right- A few days away has done me good.

I've actually stopped bawling every ten minutes. I have even managed to sleep for five hours straight last night, which is a significant improvement.

My family members quickly realized that I had to no intention to talk about the disastrous interview or about my estranged husband. Instead, they've tried distracting me with all sorts of things-

Mum: "Anna, darling, come here and help us with the gardening."

Me: "Who's the other person in the 'we'?"

Kat: (appearing out of nowhere) "That would be me."

Me: "Okay, fine. Wait...Mum. Didn't you complain of knee pain? You may have arthritis! You need to stop exerting yourself."

Mum: "Oh, Anna, really, it isn't so bad-"

Me: "And you, Kat, what do you think you're doing here? Without GLOVES?? You may develop toxoplasmosis! Do you know how toxic-"

Kat: (rolling her eyes) "Oh, now enough already Miss Know-It-All. I was going to wear them! Would you please-"

Me: "On second thoughts, gloves won't suffice. According to Youronlinegynac.com, You have to make sure you wear long sleeve blouses, long trousers, rain boots and a mask, for good measure."

Mum: "Anna-"

Me: "Plus, you're carrying twins for heaven's sake. Don't you ever read pregnancy articles? You must give your back as much rest as possible-"

Kat: "I JUST GOT OUT OF BED-"

Me: "Back to you, Mum. The morning sun is not very good for your aging skin. I think-"

Kat: "You know what, Anna? Never mind about us. You should probably go back to sleep."

Jeez, so much for being considerate.

So, yeah. That's what I've been the entire week – Eat, Read and Watch Movies. Sometimes, Kat pops in to chat but storms away ten minutes later claiming that my "Ridiculous Internet Articles" exasperates her. I completely fail to understand why she gets so agitated about it. The other day when I told her all about Kim K's regime for fighting flabby abdomen and about her extremely shapely hips despite having four kids, all she did was glare at me for a full minute and then stomps away.

Must be the hormones.

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

MAY 11, 2019

3.30 A.M.

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

IT'S DEFINITELY THE HORMONES.

I MEAN, HOW COULD SHE - I WOULD NEVER – IT'S JUST IMPOSSIBLE –

Calm down, Anna. Deep breaths. In and out. In and out.

Okay... let's just rewind all that.

About two hours ago, I was just roaming around the house, munching on Pop Tarts, having nothing else to do with sleep permanently erased from my mind. Passing through the corridor, I suddenly spotted the narrow staircase leading up to the attic.

Deciding to go check out the old stuff stashed up there, I climbed up the rickety staircase, opening up the dusty wooden door. As I rifled through old furniture and documents, a familiar cardboard box caught my eye. It was labeled "ANNA'S STUFF. DO NOT TOUCH." In my old scrawly handwriting. As my gaze lingers on the label, memories seep into my mind. Why did I skip college? Why did I leave town? Why did I sacrifice everything...for him?

With shaky hands, I open the box.

The box was filled with dozens of college applications, unfinished application essays and my high school books. I touched the frayed sheets, decaying with years, wondering how life would have been, if I had just taken the chance.

"Anna! What happened? " Kat dropped down beside me, breathing heavily.

"Kat! Why did you come up here? The latest article in the Mom-to-be e-magazine says that –"

"Oh, will you just stop with your goddamn articles and tell me what the hell is wrong? Why are you crying?" Her gaze shifted to the box.

"What's in that?"

I quickly closed the lid. "Nothing, nothing. I'm just being my usual pathetic self, I guess." I wiped my cheeks hastily.

"Aw. C'mere, Annie." She opens her arms wide, offering comfort. I accepted it gratefully.

"Okay. Now tell me what's wrong."

Despite my state of weakness, I still found the strength to roll my eyes at her. "Really? You want me to tell you the messy details of my marriage, once again?"

"Oh lord, not that. I'm sick of hearing your big, sad story." I let out a sad chuckle. "The other reason for your misery. There's something else, I know it."

I sniffed. "How do you 'know'? "

"I just...know."

"Jeez, and I thought I was the weird one."

She broke away from the embrace and looked at me right in the eye.

"Now, will you stop deflecting the topic and tell me what the hell is wrong with you?"

I looked here and there for some distraction. A few moments later, I realized that I was trapped.

"It's nothing, really."

"I'll be the judge of that." She smiled kindly at me.

And that was it. I began to bawl like a two year old.

"I wish I never skipped college. I wish I never gave up on my dream. I wish I'd waited like you d-did. "I swallow the huge lump in my throat. "And you know what's the worst part? I gave up everything, for that...that bastard!" I threw my face in my lap, muffling my high decibel cry.

Kat, on the other hand, waits patiently. Ten minutes later, I sit up straight, staring at her with bloodshot eyes.

"So...no words of comfort or consolation?"

"Why is there a need for that when the solution is right in front of you?"

"What do you mean?"

Her face grows impatient. "You sound like you're eighty and lying on your deathbed or something. You have so much of life ahead of you, so many opportunities waiting for you."

I shake my head, still not getting the point.

All of the sudden, she grabs my face tightly and looks at me with happiness glimmering in her eyes.

"You wanted to attend college, right? Get a degree? Discover your talents? This is the moment, Anna! You can finally live your dream!"

I stare at her for a solid minute. And then I stare at her some more.

"Well?" she inquires.

"Me? Attend college? Now?"

She nods vigorously. "This is your chance, Anna. What's there to stop you?"

I blink. She blinks.

Suddenly, I explode into a full-fledged, insane laughter. I laugh and I laugh, till my cheeks hurt.

Kat waits again, calmly as ever. She appraises me grimly. "If you're done with the schizophrenic behavior, would you be kind enough to tell me what you found so funny about what I said?"

"What's funny about it? Seriously? I'll tell you what's funny." I stand in front of her. "Look at me. I'm a thirty year old divorced, childless woman with nothing to look forward to. I've spent my entire life listening to complaints, be it from my boss in office or from my husband back home. Now that my darling husband has got rid of me, I have to work extra shifts to pay the rent, the bills, everything."

"So what, Anna? This is what you've always wanted to do. You are an intelligent, young"- I snorted-"independent woman, as far as I've seen you. You deserve a fun college experience, even if you think you're twelve years late for it."

"Well, sorry to burst your bubble, Kat, but I really am twelve years too late to apply. And anyway, which college will be willing to take me in?"

"Any college would be lucky to have you, Annabelle Green. Just you wait and watch." She strides out of the attic, determined and excited.

Oh, well. Now that I think of it, all of this was probably a part of the mood swings she goes through. I bet she'll forget all of this by breakfast time.

Yeah, nothing to worry about.

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

A/N :

Hi there, thank you for taking the time to read my new diary styled new ChickLit series:

"The Diaries of an Older Collegiate"(#TheFreshman).

If this chapter ignited an interest for this series, please let me know by reblogging or sending me a message. It helps a lot and keeps me motivated. Till then stay healthy :)

Love and Kisses,

D <3

[tibbinswrites]

Hi! Absolutely LOVE your writing!!! If you still have a spot left for your prompts can you do #7, Destiel, cannonverse, and angst as long as it ends happy? Also, just wanted to say a couple years back I struggled really bad with depression and self-harming (though I haven’t in 3 years now, yay!) and how you write Dean just resonates so much with me and makes me feel like I’m not alone. You just portray that so well, so thank you so much for your sharing your writing with us, it is wonderful! 🙂

Hi!  I didn’t forget about this, I promise! I’ve just been struggling to write anything lately so I was doing like a sentence at a time. Congratulations on making it 3 years! That’s an incredible achievement, you should be so proud :D I’m so happy that my Dean resonates with you. You are not alone and I’m really glad that my Dean helps with that.  Thank you so much for your kind words, here is your fic ^_^ you asked for a happy ending, but given the subject matter the best I could do here was a hopeful ending. I hope you like it :)

Alcohol/Alcoholism cw.

Prompt 7. “Are you drunk?”

It was a bad habit of his, he knew. Probably his worst habit if he had to rank them. When a beer at the end of the day became two, became a half-dozen, became almost a full fifth of whisky. It didn’t happen every time, he comforted himself by reasoning. Sometimes he really did have one beer and could leave it at that, but sometimes, even on good days but without the excuse of a party, he could be found passed out in one of the rec rooms, or in the kitchen, or that one time in the hallway.

This morning he woke curled up in the backseat of Baby like he was in his twenties again. Every screaming, cramped muscle quickly reminded him that that wasn’t the case. He groaned and untwisted himself slowly, giving his spine time to ease back towards straightening. His mouth was tacky and disgusting, his head a throbbing mess and he smelled his own rank alcohol-sweat infused into his clothes and the leather below them.

“Sorry Baby,” he croaked, resolving to clean her later. After he’d had a shower and brushed his teeth. But he didn’t even get that far when, during the process of inching his way out of the car, he saw Cas at the mouth of the garage, watching him. “Are you drunk?” He asked, his voice harsh and too firm for Dean’s sensitive ears. “No, Cas. If I was drunk I wouldn’t hurt all over.” Cas made an angry sound and shook his head. “You don’t approve?” Dean said, trying to add as much mockery into his tone as he could with his head pounding away like Michael was still in there.

“No.” Cas said shortly. “What if Jack had seen you like this?” “Pretty sure he has. What? You’re worried I’m a bad influence?” he chuckled. “Bit late for that.”

Cas just pursed his lips and watched as Dean leaned gingerly against the car, holding his hand to the cool metal for a few seconds and then pressing it to his forehead. It helped, a little.

“I just don’t understand,” Cas said. “It was a normal day. We returned from a hunt two days ago so you’re not going stir-crazy, the hunt itself went well so it’s not the after-effects of that, you were in a good mood all day but we weren’t celebrating anything and you didn’t sleep before you started drinking so it wasn’t a nightmare. You don’t have a reason to get as drunk as you did. I don’t understand why you keep doing this.”

Behind the anger in Cas’ voice Dean could still hear the worry, the desperation, and suddenly he didn’t feel so cocky anymore.

“I don’t either.” He said. “But it’s safer this way.”

“Safer?” Cas repeated. “Dean, you’re killing yourself.”

Dean winced. He didn’t think of it that way. He knew that drinking was an unhealthy coping mechanism, and he was pretty sure that that’s what it was that drove him to the bottle on bad days. He knew what alcohol did to the body and he saw some those effects in himself. He was pretty sure it was an addiction, but he also knew he could never admit that. Logically, he knew that if he were anyone else then yes, absolutely he’d be drinking himself into the grave, but realistically? With the life he had he was pretty sure he wouldn’t get the chance to die of liver failure.

“Safer than going on hunts when my hands are shaking and my eyes get blurry?” He shot back. “I know my limits, Cas.”

Of course, his limits had changed over the years. Once upon a time drinking while on a case was unthinkable, now he had no problem with it. He never overdid it when they were specifically going in for the kill, but in the preliminaries? Just asking questions and coming up with theories? There was no harm in indulging a little. The burn in his throat made him feel clearer. It was a sharp comfort, familiar and warm. Plus, his tolerance was solid. It took him a lot to even get buzzed, and when that wasn’t his aim, he hardly ever needed to go that far.

“I hate that I can’t heal you of this.” Cas said, his voice quiet but echoing in the garage. “I can sober you up, heal your liver, but I can’t stop your craving. I can’t stop you from doing the damage again, I can only take it away once it’s done.” Dean didn’t know what to say to that but he felt guilt begin to shift around inside him. He never liked to think about what other people thought of his bad habit, especially people he actually cared about. He’d tried to turn it around once, remembered how it had felt to see 2014 Cas strung out on drugs, powerless and grinning, stupid with his own misery. Was that how the others saw him? He’d followed that thought with a bottle and a half of Jim Beam until he forgot all about it. Looking at Cas now, that same helplessness he’d felt was in the angel’s eyes. He wanted to take it away, but he knew that doing so would take something from himself, something that he wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. It wasn’t about the drinking, not really, it was about the comforting habit of it, like a child sucking their thumb. It soothed him to know that no matter how shitty the day, there would always be booze at the end of it, smelling like gasoline and promising a few hours of blank memory.

They all needed something. He’d said it before. Hunters always needed something and he was far from the first to choose the bottle. His father had, and Dean, always eager to shrug into John Winchester’s ill-fitting jacket, had copied him. Sam hadn’t developed his obsession with food until later. He’d never minded burgers and chilli fries growing up, though Dean had done his best to make sure Sam ate at least some vegetables, and only after they began hunting together in earnest, with the stakes getting increasingly higher, that Sam began to clamp down rules on what he would and wouldn’t eat. The rules didn’t always make sense to Dean, and they seemed to vary from day to day. More than once Dean had offered to make something that Sam had asked for the previous week, only to be snapped at like he’d said something offensive. He always tried not to snap back. It was just Sam’s way of getting some control back in their lives that seemed to constantly go off the rails.

Drinking didn’t exactly give him control, but it amounted to the same thing. If you took away the thing that a hunter used to cope, you’d have an inefficient and probably quickly dead hunter. He couldn’t afford to give it up when he stood to lose so much more if he did. He was a damn good hunter the way he was, and with the world in the balance he couldn’t risk tipping the scales.

“I can’t do anything about it any more than you can right now,” he said wearily. Dropping even more of his weight back against the car. “I know how to work like this, Cas, it’s the only way I know how to work. We’ve got bigger things to deal with. Like I said, it’s safer.”

Cas didn’t look pleased, but he edged forward all the same. Dean felt his heart warm, even though the defeated expression on Cas’ face hurt him. “And after? Once we’ve dealt with what needs to be dealt with? Will you give it up then?”

Dean reached for the angel and drew him in close. This was a new thing between them, well… not really, Dean had wanted it for a very long time, but only recently had they decided that they wouldn’t lose anything by trying, because in the grand scheme of saving the world, who cared if an angel and a hunter admitted they were in love? This specific happening was pretty new though. Usually it was Cas comforting him. After a bad hunt or when grief threatened to overwhelm him or when he had nightmares Cas always held him, rocked him, soothed him. But now it was Cas clinging to him like a barnacle, tucking himself against Dean’s chest as though he didn’t care that Dean smelled like a dumpster in a heatwave. Dean ran a hand down his back and up again, pressing kisses of apology into Cas’ hair. “I’ll try,” he promised. “I really will.” Maybe it wasn’t the happiest of conclusions to this conversation, but this was a healing that Cas couldn’t do, and Dean knew himself that there was no quick fix. He hated hurting Cas like this, knew that he was hurting Sam too, but at the moment, it was too dangerous to do anything else. There was hope though. Dean had already figured out that he drank less when he was happy, and this was the first binge he’d had since he and Cas had decided to let it be called love. Dean already called that progress. It might not be the progress that Cas wanted, but he was proud of it all the same, and once the world was safe he really would try to give it up. It would be a hard slog, but what in his life wasn’t? And it would be worth it. To stop his family worrying, to see Cas’ huge, gummy smile, to see the quiet pride in Sam’s eyes. Maybe it was a long way off, but as he tightened his hold on Cas, he knew that he would make damn sure he got there.

[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧  Chapter 189

The very next day, the 23rd of November (two days away from your sixth anniversary with Tony), you were sitting down in your office. Sipping coffee in the early afternoon. Reading the various headlines that had come out of yesterday’s little outing. The usual heavy hitters were all in your favor. People were wondering what The Avengers were up to, but they trusted it was likely good things. Sleep had not come easy, again. About two hours. 

You were feeling yourself slowly slipping away. The anniversary was a pinpoint. A mark on the map. If you could just get there… if you could just do what you wanted to do- what you needed to do… it would make all of this worth it. It would make all the troubles melt away. 

There just couldn’t be any more nonsense packed into the next two days. That was all. A measly forty-eight hours. Couldn’t you make it there? Couldn’t the universe lay off? 

The phone ringing on the corner of your desk startled you. Because you knew. You knew that it going off was the universe answering you back. 

With a big, fat, no. 

 Your hands were only slightly trembling (something you attributed to over caffeination, stress, and lack of sleep more than fear) when you picked it up. “Yes?” 

“We have a problem in the lobby.” 

Always a good start to a bad time. Your cell phone going off next was a pretty big indication, too. “Give me a second, I’ll sort it out.” You put the phone down on the desk and then picked up your cell phone instead, knowing this was the same issue twice over. And- reading the ID- you lamented being you right now. “How can I help you?” Overly sweet as you answered. 

Coulson, on the other line, didn’t sound remotely amused. ...maybe that was his usual voice, though. “I need to come up. It seems since I was here last I’ve had my security clearance revoked.” 

“Hmn.” Humming with a dry air about you. “Yes, that might have happened after you promised me a report on a huge issue and just vanished into thin air.” 

“I have the report. I’m here to make a trade.” 

The shaking had worked its way up from your arm into your entire body. This was not something you wanted to deal with now in the slightest. But there was no putting it off. If you didn’t let Coulson up now, he’d find a way up himself. Really, he was probably just calling as a gesture of good will. Not because he actually cared to have your permission. “I’m in my office.” Hanging up quickly after saying so, and alerting security downstairs to let him through. 

There was about five minutes worth of decision making time to call Tony. And they were going very quickly.

It had been nine months since the attack on the UN. Nine months since Coulson had told you he would handle that situation, get to the bottom of it, and send you a detailed report when he was finished. Him surfacing now to do so was no coincidence- not with what had happened yesterday. Something was bugging him about your current involvement in whatever was happening now. Because it was always something-

Which meant the probability that he knew about the ATCU was extraordinarily high. That thought alone made your stomach twist into knots. Coulson was on your side- there was no way he would be behind something like this or involved with it now. It was more likely that he was working on a way to shut it down behind the scenes and your getting involved was too public- 

The time to call Tony to come to your side was over. Coulson was entering your office. 

You didn’t stand to meet him, instead pushing up a solid wall of defense. You were falling apart. He couldn’t know that.

Underneath his arm as promised, he held a manilla envelope. A very thick one, at that. And once he got close enough to your desk, he took a seat, and then put it on top. “Everything you need to know about the incident at the UN is in there.” Cutting right to the chase. 

Reaching for it, ignoring him, you tore the top and took out the hefty paper report, skimming the first few pages. Adamo Dioli- murdered. The Italian ambassador that- ...you remembered. The agent leading the mission- Marcus Scarlotti, in custody. The man behind the operation- Daniel Whitehall, a top Hydra leader actually known as Werner Reinhardt- terminated. 

His team had been busy. Something you had assumed. It wasn’t like Coulson had just been sitting around doing nothing. When he promised you he would handle this, you knew that to be the truth. But the radio silence and the broken promise over a prompt report were an issue. And, judging on the dates you were still looking over, he had had this in his possession and wrapped up for a long while now. Which made it inexcusable to not hand it over sooner. 

But just as you got midway through the report that detailed the weaponry used in the attack, he reached over and put a hand down. “Let me be clear about one thing. This is to be shredded when you’re finished with it.” 

He was lucky that you were able to resist rolling your eyes. “I used to work for you guys, in case you forgot. I know exactly what top secret means.” 

“Then let me be clear about something else.” The strangely warm way he said this drew your gaze towards his own. “I don’t think you should read this. And I don’t think Stark should, either.” 

That tossed about a dozen red flags onto the field. Coulson was feeling rather… protective. Why? Your brow arched. “Give me one good reason why not.” 

He stayed outwardly composed, as always. “How have you both been handling the events in New York?” 

Confusion wrote clear across your face. “That was years ago. Why bring that up?” 

His eyes then were steely. “Take a guess.” 

Little pinpricks agitated you- and you heard his voice- arguing with you and Tony- a memory from a little while back- what this whole report was even about-

What difference would it make? If I listed off ten alien races on SHIELD’s radar, what difference would it make? You don’t have any information.

That’s kind of the point, don’t you think?

The both of you had suspected this was alien weaponry. There was no way for it not to be. Now Coulson had gotten to the bottom of it. Dissected it. Knew what it was. ...and that information was sitting right in front of you. And he didn’t want you to look at it. 

“You think I can’t handle this?” There was little point in getting riled up, but self-defense was an easy go-to. 

“What I think is irrelevant. ...but, since you’re asking, I think there’s no reason for you to at this time. I came here to tell you to stop provoking President Ellis, and to leave the ATCU to me.” 

A scoff left as you shook your head. “I knew it.” 

“Of course you did.” Prompt as he sat back down. You let the report fold closed for the moment so you could put your focus better on him. “What’s in that report ties directly to what the ATCU is doing. Therefore, it’s an issue that you still left to me. And I’m working on it.” 

“Not hard enough. Soldiers attacked young girls a few nights ago. What would have happened to them if I hadn’t been there?” Bearing down on him now, a fresh wave of anger waking. 

Coulson, for once, gave a rare show of questioning. He didn’t have all the details, and that didn’t sit right with him. Maybe he thought he should know about that incident. “What girls?” 

“Mutants. But I think everyone is going around calling them Inhumans.” Cruel dig that that was. 

It took him a series of moments- moving from one emotion to the next rapidly inwardly, while his face remain impassive as he stared at you. Disbelief, unsure, then to confusion and then next to a little bit of smugness. “Mutants and Inhumans are not the same thing. I’ll forgive the mistake, I’m sure you weren’t aware of either until very recently. That must mean you went to Xavier.” 

This was a little too much information to process right at the moment. So instead of doing that, you clutched to the one thing you knew what to do with. “I did.” 

“He asked you to help him.” 

“He did.” 

“And you’re going to.” Saying this so knowingly. 

Instead of giving him the win, you decided to go against self-preservation. Something inside you told you it was better to give this to him and walk away. Play blind. Turn the other way. It would keep you where you were right now. And not further down the rabbithole of madness in this ever expanding universe. “What separates Mutants from Inhumans?” 

This he took his time with. Marinated. Really thought about- not only if he should answer, but if he did, how he would say it. You remained patient. That he wasn’t outright denying you an answer meant he would give you one instead of just reciting the whole back off play. 

Him sitting forward spooked you a little, but when he reached for the report again you let your hands off it. Sliding it his way and turning it, he flipped through a few pages, and when he finally  found what he was looking for, he pushed it in front of you yet again. But the two of you were left staring at one another. He was letting you know- 

Once you read this, there was absolutely no going back. Like always. 

You had a choice to be willfully ignorant. 

...but you couldn’t. 

The weapon that had literally turned Dioli into ash- had separated his atoms- was known as a Splinter Bomb. Hydra made weaponry. Built from the power of something called The Diviner. And this so called Diviner… alien tech. Left on earth by a race called The Kree. Thousands of years ago. The Diviners carried inside of them something called Terrigen Crystals- which played into experiments Kree were doing on humans- mutating them- the Terrigen Crystals emitted Terrigen Mist- which activated these mutated genes in humans through a process called Terrigenesis-  turning them into- 

...Inhumans.

Without the presence of the genes, the Diviners would rend human beings. ...which was what happened to Dioli. And countless others who had come into contact with them. 

Coulson was calling your name. You heard it. Barely. Echoing through a fog. There was a tunnel of white around your vision. 

Experiments? Aliens had been doing experiments on people? Thousands of years ago? They’d mutated them? Enhanced them? For what? Why? Where were the Kree now? What were they doing? Would they come back? 

...did this have anything to do with  you? Coulson was saying Mutants and Inhumans were different. Mutants had some sort of mutated gene that was verifiable. That’s how Tony knew you weren’t one. But these Inhumans- it seemed like they were dormant until hit with the presence of these Crystals- 

“Am I-” It took you too long to realize you couldn’t breathe. That you weren’t there. More questions arose. Had SHIELD known about this? If they did, how long had they known? SHIELD had apparently known about the Mutants and Xavier. Fury had some sort of deal with them to leave them alone. If they’d known about this, too- could it have- 

“You are not an Inhuman.” Him saying this helped secure your focus. 

Was that what you were going to ask? Was it even feasible? They’d clearly thought your powers had come from the Tesseract or something Tesseract adjacent, which you now knew to be these Infinity Stones ...something else you didn’t want to think about. But this Inhuman mutated crystal nonsense? “How can you be sure?” 

“Your alteration profile is different. Which means that if you’d been hit with that Splinter Bomb that day, you would have died.” 

A breath sort of wheezed out of you. “Thanks.” As if that really helped. 

“Anything to help.” 

Strangely, that sort of had helped. You felt a little more balanced. But your nerves were shot. “Where are the Kree now? When was their last point of contact?” It seemed like they’d done these experiments all those years ago and then left. For whatever reason. There was data missing, but it was probably just because nobody knew yet. 

But Coulson growing just a little bit uncomfortable shoved you right back onto that edge. “I’m going to be truthful with you. We encountered them again on this planet in 1990.” 

1990. 1990. Why was that year haunting you? What did that have to do with you? This was twice now. 

It was basically twenty pages all blacked out except for a single paragraph about the Tesseract- a subject number- a subject gender- and a date- 1990. Running theory… either she was another experiment. ...or she was you.

But Fury had gotten angry when you’d asked him about all this. And he’d told you- 

“What does this have to do with Carol Danvers?” Coulson moved to shock extremely fast the second that name came out of your mouth. Clearly he hadn’t known that you knew. This was your only chance. Fury had blocked your attempts to learn the truth about this. Tony had no way of getting to the bottom of it, either. But Coulson knew something. So you resorted to pleading. “Please, Phil. Please. I’ve been on a nightmare tour these past few months about how this all connects back to me. I know she was here in 1990. I know SHIELD knew about her- I know it connects to the Tesseract, but Fury said they weren’t doing experiments on her- but whatever happened was the reason they were able to single me out when I was a kid- and now you’re telling me Kree were involved too? If you know something you have to tell me. Please.”

He stewed in his thoughts. Long enough to finally, finally, have a third party appear. You knew exactly why Tony was entering into your office at that moment. You hadn’t called him. -...or maybe you had. Just not over the phone. He grew stormy immediately, seeing Coulson sitting in front of you. Some report on your desk. And you in shambles emotionally, no doubt. 

He always came when you fell apart. Because he knew. He felt it. Maybe on some subconscious level, in moments like these, you reached out to him without him knowing. 

“Looks like I’m interrupting something. Hopefully nothing important.” He tried to keep his own mask up as he closed the door behind himself and came over to your side of the room, perching himself on the corner of your desk. It was clear he was trying to spy on that report out of the corner of his eye, but you reached out, redirecting his attention as you took his hand in yours. 

Barely hanging on. 

As if Tony was not there at all, Coulson picked up where the two of you had left off. There was no point in backtracking, and there was no point in telling Tony to leave. He wouldn’t. Everyone in that room knew that. So, instead, Coulson finally opened up. “Carol Danvers is a human woman who was enhanced by the Tesseract. The blast was accidental. It wiped her memories. The Kree came upon her and treated her like their own- but they were holding her prisoner. Eventually she figured it all out. The Kree and the Skrulls were waging a war. Still are. And Carol and her Kree supervisor finished their battle on earth. SHIELD tailed her the whole time. Got close with her. She’s an ally. But she’s been away for a long time.

Whatever report you think you tracked down- I think I know the one- and for whatever reason- I think I also know that- it’s been redacted. Because of you.” He took a moment to really nail the sentiment of this as he stared at you. Tony’s emotions were going pretty haywire. You eclipsed him entirely. But now his brain was scrambling at a million miles a second to try and piece together why Coulson was talking about this right now so he could catch up enough to grill him about it the second it was over. 

But that wasn’t just yet. Coulson continued after another minute, “We assigned a researcher to that case after she left the planet in 1990. We got some base level information. About her powers and the Tesseract. He worked on it for a long time. Too long. We believe it drove him crazy. So… when one of his instruments picked you up, after the incident with your college professor… he went after you. Off the grid. AWOL. Fury knew his intentions were malicious.” 

You’re lucky you’re not dead.

You remembered Fury saying this to you on the phone. Your head dropped. “Fury killed him.” 

“Fury made a choice. It was him or you. He chose correctly. He dumped the files- anything the guy had on you. Anything to do with you-”

 Tony held a hand up. “Yeah. Except a prelim report and the only eyewitness account that mattered. Funny about that.”

 Coulson sent a dead-eyed stare up his way. “And as I understand it, both those reports are destroyed now. How about that.” He let that sentiment and all it was worth sit before addressing you again. “All the guy’s work work regarding the Tesseract was burned, too. And Danvers. Fury made sure no one looked into what happened to your professor any further.” 

Your gaze fell downward and you’d let go of Tony’s hand, putting both of yours on your legs. Kind of just… clawing absently as you shook your head. “Why?” 

“Because you’re an important asset. Fury knew that. And he was right. Look where you are. Look at what you’ve done.” Coulson was strangely trying to reach out to you even if not physically. It was clear he didn’t like seeing you like this. All… twisted up about this. But how could you be any other way? “Between the both of us… he was fond of Danvers. I think he was holding out hope you’d be like her.” 

A bitter ugly laugh shook from somewhere deep inside you. “Is that what it is? What? I’m a disappointment to him?” Is that why he was so rude? So mean and callous to you at every turn? At every opportunity? 

“Not a disappointment. Just not her.”  

Tony crossed his arms rather tightly. “I realize I’m a little late to the party but- you mind me asking- where is this supposed Wonder Woman of the 90s?” 

Coulson finally acknowledged him as a participant of the discussion. “Away. Far away. We have a method of getting in contact with her, should we need her, but it’s for emergencies only.” 

You absolutely could not help the face you made over this. “If she’s that powerful, why didn’t we call her during the Chitauri invasion?” 

“The Avengers had that handled.” He sounded so sure of himself. 

But this just… it pissed you off. Incredibly so. Your hands found their way flat onto the desk, not in a slam, but there was a pointed noise that arose as you lifted yourself out of your chair. “They almost nuked New York City- where was she then? Tony nearly died and you’re telling me you had an ace in your backpocket this whole time?” 

A flutter of nervousness emanated from Coulson. ...was he scared of you? But it was shadowed by the warmth pounding suddenly in Tony’s chest. Honestly- all this bullshit about this woman- and you- whatever it had to do with you, something or nothing, that was so small in comparison to the fact that SHIELD had a heavy hitter and they were keen to just wait it out while Tony put his life on the line-

If he didn’t need to do that- If they could have called her in? 

“You were waiting. Like always.” Not yelling as you spat this out, but serving it with ice. “Fury counted on Tony handling that nuke, and you guys counted on the Avengers handling it- but if Tony had died going into that wormhole and it hadn’t been enough- then would you have called her? How much loss of life would have been acceptable to you?” 

Coulson stared up at you and held himself very steady. “You’re arguing with me as if I made all those decisions. Let me assure you, I didn’t. No loss of life is acceptable, I think we can both agree on that. But Fury had faith that the Avengers had the situation handled. Disturbing Danvers is for emergencies only.” 

Tony found himself another spot in the conversation. “Because of the implication. What it would do. Sure. Calling what would look like an alien to earth to help out- SHIELD couldn’t handle the amount of damage control they’d have to do in that case. So they got comfortable letting other aliens tear us apart for the betterment of their reputation. Am I getting warm?” 

Coulson settled his hands together in his lap. “This is a completely pointless conversation and a waste of my time. Which has become very valuable as of late.” He directed his attention back towards you. “I’m not here to tell you I’ve always agreed with Fury’s methods. Or SHIELD. You know that’s not the case. Let me deal with the ATCU.” Circling around to the original point of discussion so quickly. 

You had almost forgotten that was even the point of all this. “You say that like you came here to ask me. You didn’t. You’re ordering me to step back.” 

Finally, maybe realizing he was going about this the wrong way, Coulson softened up. “I’m not ordering you to do anything. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. We both know that. I’m asking you to let me handle this. I already have a hand in this world. I’m already on top of it. And from what I heard, you and Stark were looking at retirement. Start trusting your team to do some work.” 

Tony’s head tipped a little to the side. “Are you part of our team? You’re the new head of SHIELD. We never hear from you unless something important is happening on your end. Like college kids that need money.” 

“If you want me to stay out of things you’re already doing, you need to start actually telling me what you’re doing. You realize that, right? This is getting old.” Tiredness seeped into you, having thoroughly exhausted yourself- ...and the few days without any good sleep wasn’t helping. Coulson telling you he’d take this off your plate? It was practically a godsend. And he was right. You and Tony were supposed to be semi-retired. You didn’t want to deal with this. You just had no choice. 

Up until the point he’d presented you with one. 

Strangely, a small smile came to Coulson’s lips. “That’s a valid point. I’ll make note of it.” He stood from his chair, signaling this meeting was a few seconds from being over. “I know the woman running the project. Rosalind Price. We’re working together.” 

Ah- you did recognize that name. One of the soldiers had said it. But, just to be sure, you sent a dark gaze up his way. “Not to cage kids, I hope.” 

“No. And I’d ask that you hold off on whatever PR work you’re doing for Xavier until we have this all sorted out. Just to make sure these worlds don’t collide any further.” 

Tony held a hand out. “I’m missing a few pieces, but I think I’ve got it. This has everything to do with alien life, doesn’t it? So Inhumans and Mutants aren’t the same. And now you’ve got a lot to deal with before you can let all this get out to the public.” A slight pause and then- “If you ever do.” Hinting at the fact that, like the predecessor before him, Coulson wanted to keep this quiet. 

Which was exactly why he wanted you to stop. Because that was the opposite of what you did. And certainly the opposite of what Charles Xavier wanted. Whether or not Mutans or Inhumans were the same- which, clearly they weren’t- it was all going to start getting swept up into superpowered soup. The average person wasn’t going to care who got powers from what source. 

All they were going to care about was that everyone was suddenly different. And scary. And that road… that road was going to be the most dangerous of them all. 

You had a choice to make here, and it was not an easy one. But. Maybe that was the point of all this. What your team had been saying. And now what Coulson had presented to you. He’d given you more information than he’d come here wanting to give up. And now… now he was asking you to let this go. Again. 

“This coincides deeply with my team. Our world. If this gets away from you in the exact wrong way, we’re all going to pay the price.” Laying it all out there for him. 

He gazed at you, waiting, and then, “I’m well aware.” This was him asking simply: do you trust me? 

Did you? 

A small breath escaped from you. “Fine. I needed time to figure out the Xavier thing anyway. But- I want a report. And not one nine months later when you’re finished. When you’re done you come to me. Is that understood?” 

This time he really did smile fully. “Yes, ma’am.” 

You held a hand up. “No. No. I don’t like that.” That almost implied… he was working for you. And that was a huge no. 

But he was already turning his back on you and heading out. Tony gave an empty wave. “Nice seeing you. Coming to the holiday party?” 

Coulson opened the door. “I’ll see if I can fit it in.” 

Then he was gone. The door was shut behind him. Leaving you and Tony and a big ugly report about aliens and other nonsense sitting on your desk. One Tony wanted to read very badly. You could feel it. 

You put a hand to your head. “Tony.” 

His attention immediately diverted to you. “Yes, honey?” 

“Our anniversary is in two days.” 

“It is.” 

“I’ve been trying to- I’ve been hoping that nothing was going to ruin it.” 

“Funny. Me, too.” 

“That report is going to upset you. It’s going to get your brain going. But if I take it away from you, you’re just going to stress about reading it until you get your hands on it. So.” Finally you looked up at him. “What do you want to do?” 

Leaving it up to him. Because this was going to impact him no matter what. Would delaying it be the worse thing? Or would reading it now and digesting it be the worse thing? Only he knew the answer to that. 

His eyes searched yours, maybe trying to understand just how bad that report was- clearly it was pretty bad, if your reading it had summoned him here shortly after. And he knew it at least had to do with all this alien talk- something that triggered him regularly. You didn’t want him to fall into a hole, but he probably would no matter what. So you needed to know when and where that was going to be. So that you could be by his side and help him. 

Just like how he’d come to help you. 

Reaching, he took hold of one of your hands in both of his. And, gently, “Let’s go away.” 

This was not exactly what you were expecting. “Are you sure?” 

His nod was firm. “Yeah. For a few days. Short anniversary vacation. And everything else… we’ll deal with it when we get back.” 

Feeling a little more secure and just… at home with him, even here, safe and protected from all of this, a smile found you. “I love you.” 

His own smile by comparison was so much warmer. Like a beat of sun shining down on you. “I love you.” 

Two more days. Two more days… and then you’d make it official. Proposing to this man would be one of the best things you’d ever done. Right next to marrying him, you were sure. Whenever that happened. 

[swordmeetssorcery]

Sir Ebrenn’s Houseguest

Aefsheen shifted in his sleep, dream memories washing through his mind…

 The teenaged half elf looked over at his human counterpart, the girl panting as heavily as he. They were in their usual hiding place, an abandoned and shuttered storefront in the mill quarter. The two urchins had been sneaking in here for years, and over time had furnished it with castoff items. There was a wobbly crate for a table, a couple of broken chairs they'd crudely repaired enough to use, and a couple of abandoned mattresses found on the street. They stank of the wood smoke they’d used to drive the bedbugs and fleas out, but they were better than lying on the bare earth floor of the old storefront’s storage room. They each now lay on one, bruised and bleeding and out of breath from their flight from the city watch. As he caught his breath, Aefsheen spoke.

"You know, Danniven, there are some things I understand and accept. If we pinch food from a butcher or grocer and get caught, I expect a couple of kicks and a head knocking. They're trying to survive just like us. Don't get me wrong - I'll take that food and dodge that beating every time I can, but I don't hold a grudge about it. I'd do the same thing in their place.

But what that watchman does. And it's not just us - he strides roughshod over the whole quarter. Bullies people that haven't done anything wrong. And just now? We were lucky to get away. I think this time he meant to kill us."

Danniven, wiping blood from where it still flowed freely down her chin from her nose, nodded.

"You're right, Aefsheen. Absolutely right. He needs to be taught a lesson, that one."

"Yeah, but what can we do, Danni? He nearly killed the two of us singlehandedly. He even managed to take our knives away.”

“Well, yours he took. Mine, I left in his leg. I guess I’ll have to break into another butcher shop and steal us some replacements. But I know, brother. He nearly killed the two of us. But could he take ten of us down? Fifteen? I don’t think he could.”

“Are we back to that, sister? We’ve talked and talked about it.”

“Yes we have, and it’s time to stop talking and act, Aefsheen. I know you’re not thrilled with the idea, and I honestly prefer going alone or with just you, but we’ve caught the Watch’s attention now, and they’ll be hunting us. We won’t survive on our own any longer. We have a few friends. Let’s talk to them and they can talk to their other friends. We’ll see how it plays out.”

Aefsheen turned it over in his mind and the more he thought about it, the more he realized she was right. The pair had targets on their backs now. If not the whole watch, then at least this tyrant and his friends would hunt them down now that they’d wounded him. Reluctantly, he agreed to organize a group of other youths from the neighborhood.

  Tohlfehn meandered through the mill quarter. He was a large man, but lazy, and so had chosen to join the city watch rather than fell trees or labor in the lumberyard. When he’d finished his training, at first he’d resented being sent here to police the city’s laborers and drunks and urchins. But he soon came to realize that he could truly make use of his great size and strength and have some fun with the city’s poorer citizens. He’d always been a bully, and he soon turned the quarter into his playground, knowing the locals would never bother to complain to his superiors. He pushed around drunkards, beat children, and occasionally had his way with some of the fairer women unfortunate enough to catch his eye.

Movement in an alleyway caught his attention, and he hefted his mace and turned that direction. He limped into the shadowy space between the butcher’s and the tanner’s shops and paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Then he saw her. One of the two little bastards from last week. He’d caught them stealing apples and tried to arrest them but they fought. He’d beaten them with his fists until they pulled knives. He’d managed to disarm the pointy ear boy, but the filthy girl had sunk her knife into his leg. They used the distraction to escape. Now she was standing at the other end of the alley, face still swollen, but she wasn’t running this time. She spoke as she approached him.  

“Your days of abusing the people of this neighborhood are over, Tohlfehn. You’ve terrorized us for the last time. It ends today.”

The burly watchman, confident in his leather armor, iron headed mace, and sheer size, laughed loudly enough to echo through the alley and out into the street beyond. He reached out and grabbed the front of her tunic. She didn’t resist as he dragged her out into full view of the growing crowd.

“Little girl, what do you mean, threatening ME? I’ll give you the beating of your life right here in the street as a lesson to any others that feel brave. Ha! I’m a man of the city watch, and you’re nothing. You’re an insect! What threat is an insect?” He lifted her by her tunic and punched her in the face. Her head rocked back, then she lifted it back up and looked him in the eye. She grinned at him as the crowd closed in on them.

“You’re right, watchman.” She spoke the last word with all the disdain she could muster. “One insect is no threat. It stings, and you swat it and it dies. One insect is a nuisance. But a swarm? There’s your threat.” He felt the bite of a blade entering his back and she laughed at the look of shocked pain in his eyes.

He dropped her and spun around, swinging his mace inches over Aefsheen’s ducking head. Aefsheen reached out and left a bloody gash in the large man’s thigh as more than a dozen children and youths emerged from shop doors and alleys, running to attack Tohlfehn at once with knives, table legs, boards, and cobblestones pried from the street.

Danniven laughed as she drew her knife and joined in the attack. She leapt onto Tohlfehn’s back, wrapping her legs around his waist and one arm around his head. “Meet the Swarm” she murmured in his ear as she buried her blade in his neck.

  He woke groggily from his dream of the Swarm’s first attack. He sat up and looked at the faded tattoo of a wasp on the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger on his right hand while his left hand rubbed his swollen jaw and he took in his surroundings. He appeared to be in a small stone cell with an iron grate for a door. The bed was a wooden platform jutting from the wall, almost padded by a thin mildewed blanket. There was another bed across the cell, a chamber pot in one corner of the cell and a pitcher near the door. The whole room was perhaps eight feet square with a low ceiling.

He took a look and a sniff at the pitcher. It appeared to be water. Maybe a bit stale, but likely not dangerous. If his captors had wanted him dead, they’d have killed him while he was unconscious instead of going to all the trouble of imprisoning him first. He drank the water and tried to think through the throbbing in his skull. How had he wound up here? As the water revived him, his memory slowly returned and he remembered the conflict. He’d gotten lost in a forest after seeking shelter from a storm. He was camped for the night when he found himself surrounded by soldiers including one mounted and dressed in full plate armor and helm, holding a lance and wearing a sword.

As it turned out, the mounted man was Winslir, Sir Ebrenn Markwell’s squire. Winslir informed Aefsheen that he was trespassing on Sir Ebrenn’s lands and accused him of poaching, although he was clearly eating dried meat and fruits inside his wagon, taking shelter from the rain still soaking everything around him.  

This was bad. He’d heard stories of Sir Ebrenn. He was referred to as the Mad Yeoman, although presumably not to his face. He was crazy and, ironically for his station, reclusive. He was as likely to treat a guest with all the hospitality of a noble lord or with all the cruelty of a twisted inquisitor, apparently completely randomly. By all accounts, he was an old man, too old to ride into battle anymore. His squire was said to be up in years as well, and to have fought in many battles in his youth, but Ebrenn had always refused to grant him knighthood, and kept him away from any noble who could bestow the honor so that he could keep the poor man indentured to him for life. Most other men would have abandoned Ebrenn long ago and sought a new mentor, but Squire Winslir was afflicted with a deep sense of either loyalty, twisted honor, or his own brand of madness, and he’d remained in Ebrenn’s service all these decades. Ebrenn was rumored to have employed unscrupulous wizards and sorcerers in the past and was supposed to keep monsters as pets and to have inhuman hordes, either as henchmen or prisoners, depending on the story you heard. This was not a man whose prisoner Aefsheen wanted to be. For that matter, he’d prefer to not even be an invited dinner guest.

Aefsheen tried to explain that he’d merely gotten lost in the storm, and offered to leave immediately, but they told him they had standing orders: Anyone who entered Sir Ebrenn’s land without immediately announcing himself at the castle was assumed to be a poacher or an invader and was to be arrested on sight. He’d resisted, and at first fought off his attackers, but then the squire landed a solid sideways blow with his lance across Aefsheen’s jaw, and the world had gone black. The next thing he knew, he was waking up from his dream of the Swarm, feeling hungover without having had the night of revelry to make it worth the headache.

He got up and crept to the door of his cell. He saw a stone hallway leading to his left and right, lit by torches in sconces set just close enough to provide dim lighting in this dungeon. The other side of the hallway appeared to be solid stonework, unbroken by any other cells or doors. He could hear stirrings off to his left and assumed he wasn’t the only prisoner.

 “Pssst. Anyone there? Are you awake?” He asked in the Common speech, hoping the sounds weren’t coming from a guard sleeping at his post. In reply, he heard a wordless baritone grumbling.  

“Humph. I’m awake, alright. Now, at any rate. Second time in the last few hours I’ve been awakened on your account. How’s your head? They had to carry you in here last night” the deep voice answered in the accent of the dwarves of Worldcrown Mountains.

“It hurts, and my jaw’s fairly swollen, but I’ve had worse from drinking at the wrong tavern.” Aefsheen replied with a chuckle.

“Well, welcome to the dungeons of the Mad Yeoman. From all accounts, he could hold us for life, let us out today, or have us killed at any time. I’ve heard he’s even pitted prisoners against each other in gladiatorial combat. Who knows?”

“Well, that’s … unfortunate. How long have you been here?” Aefsheen asked as he began investigating the lock on his cell door. It was a purely academic act, done out of habit and to occupy himself, since his captors had taken his lock picks along with everything else but his clothes.

“I’ve been here a week or so, assuming I haven’t lost track of the days. They keep the water pitchers filled regularly, but the meal schedule is pretty irregular, as is the quality. Sometimes it’s stale bread and moldy cheese, sometimes it’s a feast of roast mutton and potatoes. At any rate, the mercurial timing makes it hard to gauge time. My name is Fehrehngarr Stonehew, skald of the Clanfolk. Who might you be?”  

“I’m Aefsheen. Question, Fehrehngarr: Have you tried escaping yet?”

“Oh, aye, it’s crossed my mind, lad. But I’m not capable of bending steel bars nor of burrowing through stone with my bare hands. I’m no picker of locks either. So here I sit until an opportunity presents itself. So far they haven’t made it easy. They don’t open the door – they just pass the food through the slot down by the floor and have me pass the chamber pot and empty pitcher through the same way.”

“How many guards do you see at a time?” Aefsheen inquired.

“Usually two, sometimes just one” came the answer.

“I may have an answer then. Wait a moment.” Aefsheen took off his jacket, and began rubbing a spot along the bottom hem against the roughhewn stone of the cell’s wall, fraying the thread of the hem. He pulled at the thread and removed a gold coin concealed there and dropped the jacket onto the bed.

“What are you up to over there, elf?”

“Half-elf, actually, my new friend, but I applaud your ear for voices. And plotting our escape is what I’m doing. The soldiers took my weapons and pouch, and emptied my pockets, but I have a few tricks. For example, this piece of gold that was hidden in the seam of my jacket. If there’s one thing I’m sure of regarding soldiers, it’s that to a man, they consider themselves overworked and underpaid. Makes them easy to bribe.”

“Humph. I can’t argue with that logic, but tell me this – what will you do when the guards take your gold and then leave you sitting there anyway?”

“I’m two steps ahead of you. I’ll offer it, then retreat to the rear wall of the cell. When the guard comes in, the door will be open and I’ll have my window of opportunity.”

“I admire your ambition, but they’re armed and armored. You’re neither. What do you hope to accomplish?”

Aefsheen sighed. “Fehrehngarr, you have no faith, but that’s forgivable, since we’ve only just met. This won’t be my first time fighting this type. Soldiers, city watch, gaolers – they’re all the same at their core. Assuming this one fights like the ones who took me last night, I think I’ll be alright. After all, it took four infantrymen and a mounted squire to bring me down. And if we’re visited by a pair of them, I’ll bide my time until there’s only one to better my odds.”

The pair passed the time with casual conversation. Aefsheen discovered that Fehrehngarr was from the Rockfall Clan, a group of nomadic dwarves roaming the Worldcrown Mountains. He was a skald, recording and reciting history and heroic tales in the form of songs and epic poetry. He’d gone off into the world to seek out new tales to add to his repertoire, and to find opportunity to add his own deeds to his library of songs. To that end, he’d served an enlistment in the mercenary company Swordsong. He’d just finished a three year enlistment and was headed home to reunite with his kinsmen, although he’d caught the wanderlust and would probably venture back out into the world after a bit.  Aefsheen, true to his own nature, revealed just enough of himself to achieve a rapport with Fehrehngarr. He spoke vaguely of growing up in the north, and of his travels as a drover and courier, carrying goods by consignment throughout the five baronies. Fehrehngarr, thinking of Aefsheen’s earlier comment about having fought watchmen and gaolers before, came to his own conclusions about what sort of goods Aefsheen ferried.

After an hour or so, they heard booted footfalls descending a stairway nearby. When Aefsheen realized there were two sets of boots, he quickly slipped the coin back into his pocket. The guards refilled the water pitchers and slid plates of food through the slots in the cell gates. At the sight and smell of eggs, ham, and dark rye bread, Aefsheen realized just how hungry he was and his mouth watered. It didn’t even matter that the food was cold and looked already picked at, hinting that it was probably leftovers from the soldiers’ mess.

The two prisoners ate their meals quickly, and one guard left to take the bucket of water back upstairs while the other waited to take the empty plates back. Seeing an opportunity, Aefsheen spoke up as he placed his plate on the floor and pushed it through the slot.

“Quite the meal, my good man. Thank you – much better than the jerky I was accused of poaching last night. So good of your master to feed his falsely accused prisoners so well.” As the guard started to bristle at the insult to his employer, Aefsheen produced the coin from his pocket. “I’ll wager so petty a nobleman isn’t likely to pay his soldiers well, eh?” The gold coin twirled across Aefsheen’s knuckles as he spoke, gleaming in the torchlight. “Here’s an interesting proposition – I’ll trade this coin for that ring of keys on your belt. It’s probably as much as the old miser pays you in a fortnight. More than enough to let you get away from here and start anew elsewhere.”

The guard slid the plate across the floor and away from the door with his foot. He reached for the key tucked into his belt. “These keys for that gold coin, you say?” He asked, greed in his eyes.

“Yes. Surely it’s a more than fair trade. Gold is worth so much more than iron…”

“Aye, that it is, poacher. That it is. However, I don’t like my chances of getting away from here alive if I did that. For that matter, I wouldn’t place any wagers on your escape, neither, if I did let you out. So why don’t we remove the temptation, and I’ll just confiscate your contraband. I’ll do you a favor and not even mention it to the others. That way, you won’t get into even more trouble. You’d likely be executed for attempting to bribe me.” With the last words, he drew his shortsword and moved to put a key into the lock.  

Aefsheen moved toward the back of his cell, forcing the guard to come after him. Once inside the cell, the guard hooked the keys back onto his belt, held his sword at the ready, and extended his other hand, palm up, demanding the coin.

“I suppose I should’ve expected treachery from the hired sword of a knight who imprisons travelers for the crime of getting lost.” Aefsheen said with a heavy sigh and held out the coin, which he fumbled and dropped, sending it rolling between the soldier’s feet. As the man looked down at the rolling coin, Aefsheen acted quickly, grabbing his jacket from the bunk and whipping it over the other man’s head, then giving him a hard shove, sending him sprawling on the floor. The guard fumbled his sword, and Aefsheen stepped on the blade, pinning it to the ground. As he knelt and reached for the hilt, the guard freed himself from Aefsheen’s jacket and flung it aside. He put both hands on the sword’s handle and the two struggled over it. The guard was the stronger of the two and was about to wrest the weapon away when Aefsheen leaned over and drove his forehead into the supine man’s face. The stone floor prevented his head from rocking back to absorb the impact, so his nose and mouth took the full force of the blow and, dazed, his fingers loosened their grip for just long enough that the half elf took the sword away and stood up.

Aefsheen pointed the sword tip at the guard’s throat while he retrieved his jacket from the floor.

“I’ll take the keys now, if you don’t mind. Nice and slow.” As the guard handed them over to him, Aefsheen nodded his thanks and walked out of the cell, closing the door with a clang. “It only seems fair that I let you keep the coin after all that trouble. I just hope your superiors don’t find it and think you took the bribe…”

 Fehrehngarr shook his head and chuckled at that last bit while Aefsheen unlocked his cell.

“Now, do you have any idea where our things are? We won’t get far without weapons, no matter how stealthy we may be.” Aefsheen asked the dwarf. Fehrengarr looked up at Aefsheen through eyebrows as bushy and red as his long beard, and replied “I’ve only seen guards come and go from that one direction.” He replied. Indeed, looking the opposite way from the stairs the guards had used, they saw only a few more yards of corridor and a couple more cell doors. Looking toward the stairs, they saw the corridor went beyond them and took a turn underneath the stairwell.

The pair headed that direction, came to the turn, and after cautiously peeking around the edge of the corner, continued on. Soon they came to a heavy wooden door. Aefsheen put his ear to the roughhewn surface and listened. After a couple moments of silence, he started trying keys in the lock. On the third try, the lock clicked open. He slowly opened the door while Fehrehngarr stood by with clenched fists, ready to jump into battle should anyone be lying in wait on the other side.

The door opened into a dusty, little used room. They saw piles of crates and chests stacked here and there. There were old weapons and sets of armor, traveling sacks and backpacks, all covered in deep layers of dust. Some of the metal implements were showing rust through the grubby accumulation. But closer to the door, lying atop a rotting wooden chest and piled on a creaky table, were their own belongings. Some of them, anyway. Fehrehngarr’s gear was all present: chain mail shirt, dagger and short sword with the red wrapped hilt and silver plated pommel in the shape of a harp (displaying his standing as honorably discharged from Swordsong), and his great battle scarred ax, pack, and the bag holding his lute and bagpipes. The only thing of Aefsheen’s to be seen was his armor and the pouch he carried on his belt.

“You go unarmed, do you, Aefsheen? Seems dangerous for a courier traveling alone.” Fehrehngarr commented.

“They must have disarmed me when they knocked me out. They probably put my weapons in my wagon – I’d have been lighter and easier to carry. Damn. I’ll just have to make do with the guard’s sword, since these others don’t exactly seem fit to use.”

Fehrehngarr pulled on his hauberk, strapped on his sword belt and hefted his battleax, and Aefsheen donned his leather breastplate studded with steel rivets. They surveyed the room and saw two doors at the other end, and made their way there through the clutter. The first door wasn’t locked, and Aefsheen eased it open. They slipped through and found themselves in a larder. There were crates of various foods and sacks of flour and other ingredients on tables along the walls. There was a large icebox in one corner, and an open stairwell leading upward in the middle of the wall on their left. There was light coming down that stairway, and they could hear kitchen sounds. Likely the next meal was being prepared. As shadows grew on the stairwell, they beat a hasty but silent retreat back out of the pantry to the storage chamber and closed the door as quickly as they thought possible while remaining quiet. Their options were to go up the stairs the guards used to get to the cells, which seemed ill advised, or the other door leading out of this locker. After a brief discussion, they opted for the door in front of them. It had layers of dust and cobwebs built up on it, to the point of obscuring the seam between door and jamb. It had obviously not been used in many years.

Fearing a squeaky hinge would give away their presence, the pair searched the store room and found a discarded oilcan that still contained some thin, watery oil at the bottom and they applied it as well as they could to the hinges. The door was so encrusted, it took both of them pulling on the ring in the center of its face to open it. Even freshly oiled, the hinges squeaked and the wood, so long settled in place, creaked loudly enough for them to halt at one point, fearing the sound would be heard from the kitchen, even through a door and two rooms. They heard nothing from the kitchen, but they could hear sounds of alarm coming from the direction of the cells. It had only been a matter of time before the locked up soldier was missed and discovered, and that time had come. They’d run out of options. They yanked the door open another foot, which allowed them to get through. They plunged ahead through a curtain of cobwebs, pulling the spidery silk off their faces as they went.

They heard calls behind them as they ran blindly down the web filled space. “After them – they’re getting away!”

 The space beyond was more tunnel than hallway, unfinished earthen walls, supported at irregular intervals by rotting wooden beams collapsed in places, allowing soil to landslide down, partially blocking their way and forcing them to climb over or run around small mounds of loose dirt.

The tunnel smelled of damp earth, rotting wood, and decay. They could hear other shouts now, from the door. Orders and refusals: “Go in after them!” “I’m not going in the tunnels – we all know what he keeps down there!” “You’ll follow orders or answer for it, coward!” “I’m no coward, but I won’t go down there with those unnatural *things*!” “Fools! The Harvestmen are rumor and myth. Stories told to scare children and keep them from trespassing on Sir Ebrenn’s estate. Now get in there!”

Sounds of scuffling reached their ears, above even the sound of their own labored breathing as they ran and wondered what had the soldiers so frightened. They rounded a bend in the tunnel and stopped to catch their breath. Fehrehngarr pulled remnants of spider web from his beard as Aefsheen nudged a small snake away from his foot. As a dwarf and a half-elf, they could see in the darkness of the tunnel, so had not bothered with any of the torches from their places on the dungeon wall, but they could see the light from torches carried by the soldiers begin to slowly creep in their direction. Apparently the sergeant had proven scarier than whatever bogeyman the men feared in the tunnels. They began their flight anew. Here and there, they began to see small tunnels branching off the main one. These obviously weren’t dug by men, because they weren’t even with the floor of the main passage. They were at seemingly random heights, even through the ceiling, and they had to watch their footing lest they step in one. The smaller passages didn’t always fork off at right angles. When the pair bothered to look, most of the smaller tunnels seemed to twist in odd turns and directions, and many looked to be lined with a white silky coating.

The tunnel they ran through gradually devolved from the structured, semi-finished passage it had started as to a simply dug, rounded hole through the earth and began to twist and turn like those side tunnels they'd passed.

They began to notice an upward incline to the tunnel, and they could just make out a hazy light up ahead, as if daylight were creeping around a doorsill. Just as they started to feel some hope of escape, they began to hear a new noise mixed in with that of their labored breathing and the clamor of the soldiers blundering through the tunnel in pursuit. From all around them, they heard an odd skittering noise, much like the sound a beetle might make as it crawls across a piece of parchment.

Then, in the semidarkness of the tunnel, they saw the first of the creatures. At first, neither believed his eyes, because the images were so surreal. Dozens of what appeared to be gigantic spiders crawled out of the twisted cross tunnels. Up through the floor and down from the ceiling, as well as from all sides, they climbed over each other in their haste, presenting a chaotic swirling tableau of oddly jointed legs like crooked stilts, all racing each other to get to the two adventurers. Each one seemed to be about a foot tall, with a body about the same size, and a leg span of at least five feet. But that was the most easily digestible part of what they saw. What took them valuable seconds to believe was the human face on the front of each of the creatures, and the fact that the first pair of limbs wasn’t spidery legs, but humanoid hands. As though that weren’t bad enough, several of the creatures held sticks or rocks in their hands, presumably as weapons. If the horrid screeching sounds issuing from those ghastly mouths was speech, it was no language either man had heard before.

As the beasts drew closer to the front, and the soldiers closed their distance from the rear, the two men felt real fear creeping at the sides of their minds, threatening to swarm panic over them. They gripped their weapons and looked at each other. “More inspiration for your tales, if we survive, eh, skald?” joked Aefsheen with gallows humor. Fehrehngarr adjusted his grip on his ax, gave it a flourish and replied “Don’t stand too close to me when it starts – an ax requires a wide berth in battle. Shall we?”

“Ready when you are.” Aefsheen readied his stolen sword. Fehrehngarr gave a great roar, lifted his ax, and charged into the cluster of monstrosities with a mighty swing. As he cleaved the head of one, Aefsheen thrust his blade into the face of another. They pulled their weapons free, and not caring to try to kill all the man-faced creatures, began to hew a path through the crowd.  They pushed and fought their way through the arachnid throng, making progress by ax stroke and sword thrust, spilling foul blue ichor from the unnatural beasts. For their part, the monsters, through sheer weight of numbers, took their toll on the pair trying to escape this nightmare dungeon. Aefsheen and Fehrehngarr both were covered in deep bruises and shallow cuts from their clubs and stones. The two could better see the light coming into the tunnel now. It looked as though the tunnel led outside and its opening had been loosely capped. They hacked their way towards it.

A great beast of a harvestman made a leap and landed on Fehrehngarr’s chest, wrapping its spider legs around his back and grabbing his beard with its humanlike hands. He could feel others pummeling his legs, and a well-placed blow to the back of his knee caused his legs to buckle. As the beast on his chest lowered its mouth toward his face, fangs dripping with venom, Fehrehngarr dropped his ax and began wrestling with the creature, trying to keep its teeth away from his flesh. A dollop of poison dropped onto his cheek and he felt his skin burn and smelled his whiskers singe. As other monsters crawled onto him, he began to lose his struggle and the fangs drew closer to his cheek. His arms shook with the effort of pushing it away, and just as he felt the tips of those murderous fangs make contact with his flesh, he saw the beast’s head flinch, and the point of a sword exited its forehead. As the blade retracted, he shoved the corpse off himself while Aefsheen set to work slashing at the others who’d crawled aboard the fallen dwarf.

As Fehrehngarr regained his feet, he could see Aefsheen being overrun himself. Not daring to swing the ax and risk cutting the half elf as well as the man-spiders, he drew his own sword and set to work skewering and prying the monsters to free his comrade.

As they were freeing themselves from the onslaught, they noticed a slight ebb in the arachnid tide. They could hear screams from the way they’d come, indicating that the troops had now encountered the swarm.

Aefsheen had a flashback to that first attack by the Swarm he’d helped to found. He saw the irony that he now faced almost certain death at the hands of another type of swarm. If he ever survived, this would make for the perfect tale to share with Danniven and the other remaining founding members back in Oakyard. But first, he had to survive.

Fehrehngarr spoke, “Aefsheen! Stay with me, friend. It’ll take both of us to make it out of here.” Aefsheen shook his head, clearing his mind of the flashback. Fehrehngarr picked up his ax and continued “If I use my ax properly, it takes both my hands, but here – borrow my sword. Do you ever fight with two weapons? It might make the difference.”

Aefsheen replied “It’s how I prefer to fight, actually. These blades are a bit shorter than I’m used to, but they’ll do.”

They resumed their push toward the light. As Aefsheen thrust and slashed to both sides with the pair of shortswords, and Fehrehngarr hacked and swept his way through the arachnid hybrids, they heard a renewed pursuit coming toward them. Just ahead, they saw a large, round stone blocking what looked to be their exit out of this hellhole. There were just a few yards of distance and only a couple of the creatures between them and daylight. They each dispatched a man-spider and then both broke into a run for the stone blocking the exit. Coordinating their timing, they both crashed into it with their shoulders, hoping against hope that their weight and momentum would open their escape route and let them get away from the horrific horde behind them.

Breaking free from the spider hole into the sunlight, they shoved the capstone aside and their momentum carried them to the ground. As they caught their breath, they took in their surroundings. They were in a small, lightly wooded, naturally bowl shaped hollow a few dozen yards across, whose sides sloped up to the crest about twenty feet higher than where they lay. There were fallen trees and boulders strewn around the depression, all covered in webs still beaded with moisture from last night’s rain. They also spotted too many web-obscured lumps that looked uncomfortably humanoid shaped. There was a light scattering of web strands across the rest of the ground as well, resembling a light frost, while the lower branches of trees might as well have been subjected to a blizzard for all the white clinging to and hanging from them.

 As the pair stood up, they heard more battle sounds from the tunnel, but more ominously, as they looked toward it, they heard a loud rustling from the fallen leaves beneath the trees behind them. They turned to find another cadre of the spiderlike monsters approaching them from the leaves, while their second line dropped on webs from higher branches.

The fight began anew as the adventurers thrust sword and swung ax, and did their best to dodge and parry stones and sticks. They could hear the fight from the tunnel getting closer, and just when they were beginning to wonder if they’d run out of stamina before their enemy ran out of numbers, they saw the knight’s guards hack their way into the sunlight, having finally overcome the spiders in the tunnel. The guards emerged blinking at the sun’s brightness contrasting with the tunnel they’d just fought through. They seemed confused as to whether they should continue to pursue Aefsheen and Fehrehngarr, or to fight the creatures. The question was answered for them as a new pack of Huntsmen broke away from the main force and encircled them.

 After what seemed an eternity of fighting, hearing the screams of men and the horrific screeching of man-spiders, enduring the bruises and cuts of wounds, and feeling the burn of cramping muscles in desperate need of rest, the two escapees found themselves backed up against a web-shrouded boulder alongside the last two soldiers left alive. The giant spiders seemed to be regrouping in a semicircle facing the four. Everyone on both sides seemed to be taking the moment to catch their breath. Hearing the guards ragged breath, seeing one looked like he was about to die, Aefsheen steeled himself to take his last stand. He spoke, “Fehrehngarr, this looks like the end. Shame, too – I feel we could have been friends under other circumstances.” For his part, the skald looked around at his impromptu battle mates and took a deep breath. When he spoke, his sonorous voice carried the authority of a historian and the inspiration of a poet. “Few against a throng Captain Asfandiar Cried out ‘Cut down the vile invaders!’

 He raised Troll-Sunder Swung down the notched blade and Elf heroes laid waste to orc raiders”

 Raising his ax blade as he spoke the last stanza, he then roared and charged the gathered spider throng. Aefsheen, inspired by recognizing the name in the poem, gave both blades a whirling flourish and leapt back into the fray with renewed vigor. The soldiers, encouraged by Fehrehngarr’s oration, began once more to swing their own swords.

There weren’t so many monsters left now, and by this time, the men had begun to figure out the weak spots to aim for, and soon turned the tide. There was a scream, and Aefsheen and Fehrehngarr, having each dispatched the last of the creatures facing them, turned to see only the sergeant left alive. He was disarmed, on his back, wrestling with one of the beasts, much like Fehrehngarr had been earlier. The dwarf strode steadily toward him, drew back his ax and swung. The blade bit right through the monster, cutting it in half, sending the two pieces scattering, and covering the soldier in blue blood, but sparing him the venom that had killed his companion beside him.

 “You could have left me to die and made good your escape. Why did you help me?” the man at arms asked, and Fehrehngarr replied “No, I couldn’t. Have no doubt I’ll be leaving, but I couldn’t walk away from any man and leave him to die such an unnatural way. If you wish a clean death in battle, let’s take a moment to recover our energy and we’ll have a go at it. Otherwise, I’m walking away now.”

 “Not at all. You’ve more than earned your release as far as I’m concerned. Looking at some of those shapes wrapped up in webs, I think I know what happened to some of our ‘deserters’, and what would have happened to me and the bodies of my men had you not intervened.” He looked over to Aefsheen, who was using the shirt of one of the fallen to clean the sword blades. “I’ll retrieve your wagon and deliver it to you on the road near where you were captured last night. Just wait until after nightfall when the knight and the squire have retired for the evening.”

Aefsheen nodded his thanks and replied “Just don’t wait too long. If I don’t have reins in hand by midnight, I’ll come back in for it myself. And I won’t be caught unaware this time.”

 ________________________________________________________________

  Later that night, having regained his wagon, donned his own swordbelts, and returned Fehrehngarr��s blade, Aefsheen took shook the reins and set his team to a relaxed canter despite the rain having started again. There would be no stopping tonight – he wanted as much distance as possible between himself and whatever dark wizardry was responsible for what they’d just survived. He looked over to the dwarf seated next to him and asked “What was that bit of poetry you called out back there?” The dwarf shrugged and replied “Oh that was just the end of the Tale of Asfandiar Silverthorn. I’m surprised you’re not familiar – it’s a true tale that took place during the Orc War up in your part of the world.” “Oh, I know that much. We just didn’t hear a lot of poetry or singing in my quarter. Well, at least none that wasn’t lewd.” They shared a laugh that helped relieve some of the day’s tension. Then Aefsheen got serious. He was distrustful by nature, both from upbringing and profession, but this man knew things he wanted to hear. Plus, they’d just saved each other’s’ life. He decided to let himself trust the bard.

“Some time you’ll have to tell me the rest of the poem. To be honest, I’ve heard quite a few stories about Asfandiar. For example, did you know that Asfandiar took a human wife in the Treeguard Barony?”

“I’ve heard rumors about Asfandiar Silverthorn’s human woman, aye. But the historians are divided on how true it is.”

“Humph. The elves provided a proper funeral for him, but then abandoned his widow and child afterwards… Yes, any tales you’ve heard of Asfandiar, I’d love to hear them, my new friend. And in exchange, perhaps I can supply you with some you haven’t heard.” Fehrehngarr stole a glance at the man he’d just met, looked at the head and face that was shaped like an elf, but bore beard and mustache like a human and started to ponder.

“Aefsheen, are you saying –“

 Aefsheen cut him off and said “I’m saying that in my mother’s house, in the mill quarter of the city of Oakyard, on the wall above her fireplace is an elfmade longsword, with a prominent notch in one edge, hanging below a scrap of banner from the Elderwood kingdom.

I didn’t tell you my surname, did I? It’s Silverthorn.”

(Copyright 2020 Robert Worth Cadenhead, Jr)