#cracks me up too that sparrow wants normal to be normal when he wasn’t a normal kid either . like he and lark were fucking weirdos and i sa

[flaphack]

it’s actually so crazy that anthony dropped the lore that LARK FUCKED SPARROW’S WIFE. that’s so crazy. can you imagine. your wife fucks your IDENTICAL TWIN BROTHER and you know but you don’t say anything bc it’d be too awkward and he lives w u and you’re so used to managing your family (specifically your dad and brother - basically acting as an intermediary between the two) and being the peacekeeper that you internally compromise and decide to never bring it up. a couple years go by and you’re ignoring it and then you get trapped in a crazy eldritch horror dimension with him and get so drunk and shocked by the horrors you are witnessing that you TELL HIM YOU KNOW. IN FRONT OF YOUR SON. AFTER TELLING YOUR SON YOU THINK HES A DISAPPOINTMENT. and allllll this happened to my buddy sparrow swallows oak garcia.

[lvllns]

a loose follow up to this.

—

“I think,” Sparrow says as they sit next to him, “that I should show you a few things.”

Mason lifts a brow. “Fun things or…?”

They grin, a bit of fang peeking out from behind their upper lip. “Not really.” A finger plucks at the hem of their sweater before they sigh, dropping their head back against the sofa. “Before this,” they say with a wave of their hand, “I had, um, kind of started putting some shit together.”

He leans against the arm of the couch, head cocking to the side. Sparrow still looks a little too pale, whatever sun had kissed their skin before fading a little as they adjust to this new normal for them. It’s been a rough couple of months. The initial turning had gone about as smooth as they could have all wanted. Sparrow was down for two days, sleeping and only waking up to stare at the wall in a haze before slipping back under. Mason was sitting there, their hand in his, on the third day when they woke with a hiss, squinting, and immediately starting to complain about how hungry they were. The months after consisted of figuring out their strengths, understanding new weaknesses, and settling into a new normal.

Pressure on his hand and Mason blinks. Looks down and finds Sparrow’s fingers twined with his.

Their grip is stronger now.

“You good?” they ask, eyes brimming with concern.

“Yeah, ‘m fine,” he says with a shrug, squeezing their hand back. “Lost in thought.” Sparrow hums, searching his face, and he stills them when he cups their cheek. “Promise darling, nothing terrible, just thinking about, well.” Mason reaches up and pokes at their lip, right over where he knows their new fangs are hiding. “That.”

They bat at his hand, laughing brightly. “These?” A wide smile, lips peeling back just enough to reveal two long, pointed canines. They’re out more often than not these days as they learn how their emotions influence the appearance of their fangs. Sparrow drags their tongue along their teeth. “I’m fond of them.”

Mason thinks about last night, about the way it felt for them to sink into him in a new way, and absently rubs the inside of his thigh. “Me too.”

“That’s not what I want to talk about,” they say, scooting away from him with a shake of their head. “It’s all this.”

He watches as they lean around to the side, grabbing a box off the ground and plopping it down on the sofa cushion between them. Sparrow taps their fingers on the cardboard lid before yanking it off and tossing it to the floor.

“What…” Mason frowns as he looks into the box.

It’s stuffed with books. Well, some books, mostly what look like photo albums and a decent number of journals. There’s a well-worn copy of The Iliad in there, and he notices it immediately because he knows it’s their favorite copy. The one they’ve read a few dozen times, that’s so full of sticky notes and annotations you can hardly read the original text.

“Sparrow?” he asks, voice soft. “What is this?”

They take a deep breath, a habit they still haven’t dropped, and look at the wall behind him. “Before we talked about this, before I decided to turn, I knew I was going to die.” He opens his mouth, but they lift a hand. “Humans die, Mason.” They look at him now, eyes glinting in the soft light of their warehouse bedroom. “I wasn’t planning on dying for another few decades, but shit happens.” They frown. “I think…it was about a year after we met that I started…compiling things.”

The box is nudged in his direction, and he carefully removes the top photo album. He rests it on his lap, watching them and ignoring it, until they motion for him to flip it open. It isn’t until the cover cracks that they continue.

“Pictures, mostly. I’ve always loved photography, always loved looking back at pictures of my father. I figured, you know, when I was gone…” Sparrow clears their throat, their voice cracking as they speak. “I wanted you to have things to look back at,” they whisper. “I mean, you were taking your own pictures too, but…some of those were taken by Felix, Nat, Tina, among others.”

Mason pauses looking through the album, stopping on a picture of him with Sparrow in his arms. Their head is thrown back, eyes shut tight as they laugh, and his hands rest on their thighs.

He swallows. “Who took this one?”

They lean over to look before chuckling. “Ava, if you can believe it.” Sparrow taps the picture. “That was the Scotland trip.”

“It was,” he says quietly. “The day before we left, pretty sure I had just told a fucking terrible joke.”

“I still think it was hilarious.”

A soft laugh, and then he says, “You look so happy.”

Sparrow hums. “I always do when I’m with you, and I…I wanted to be able to leave you with that knowledge.” They scratch at their jaw before rubbing their forehead. “Your memories…I didn’t know what would happen when I…”

His jaw drops open. It’s not something he had thought about, willfully ignoring that critical piece of information. “You were worried your death…could have…” Mason’s voice cracks and he drops the photo album onto the sofa. Presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Fuck Sparrow.”

“I didn’t want you to forget,” they murmur, a hand reaching out to brush his hair behind his ear. “I didn’t know what would happen, I didn’t…I wanted you to have something to remember eventually, if it proved to be too much at the time.”

“Shit,” he says, voice hoarse.

“Do you want to stop?” Their hand runs through his hair, blunt nails scratching at his scalp. “We hardly need to talk about all of this right now after all.”

He shakes his head. “No, no, let’s just, fuck, if you don’t do this now, I’ll never let you talk about it again.” Mason looks up at them. Immediately, their thumbs sweep under his eyes, catching the tears and wiping them away.

“Okay,” they say. “The rest of these are journals.” Sparrow pulls a leather bound book out, relatively thick, and they set it on the coffee table. “Do not read them all at once,” they say with a soft smile. “It’s a lot.” They shift on the sofa. “I wrote a lot. Random things mostly. Quick notes about what we did, a shitty joke you told. Texts we sent back and forth, that kind of thing. There are a few, um, longer letters, I guess, in them.” Sparrow shakes their head. “A few I regret writing now because they’re such long goodbyes, but I think…you deserve to read them. They were for you, anyway.”

“If, Bird,” he says, not looking at them as he drags his fingers over a picture of them draped over Nat in the library, “if I want to…to burn the journals…”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees them tilt their head. “They’re yours, beloved. I wrote them for you, to do whatever you need to do with.” A pale, freckled hand settles on his thigh, thumb rubbing the outside of his leg. “If you want to burn them, burn them. If you want to let them rot in a closet for thirty years before even touching them, do that.” Sparrow wiggles closer, sighing softly as they rest their head against his shoulder. “I did what I needed to at the time, now they’re yours to do what you need to with.”

Mason nods. Snaps the photo album shut and reaches around them to tuck it back in the box, trying not to jostle them too badly. He buries his face against the top of their head, eyes fluttering shut, and wraps his arms around them. Leaning down, he threads the fingers of his left hand with theirs. Not stopping until the rings on their fingers knock together with a soft click. Sparrow looks down, nose dragging along his throat, before they hum. Tuck themself back underneath his chin and throw a leg across his lap.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” he whispers into their hair. Speaking the words like a secret, planting sunflowers along their scalp. Mason rubs his thumb over their joined hands. “The letters…do you know where they are?”

Sparrow stiffens for a moment before nodding shallowly, not wanting to dislodge themself from where they sit under his jaw. “I do.”

“Can you take them?” Mason chews on his bottom lip for a second before, “Don’t destroy them but just…fuck, I don’t know. Hide them.”

“I can,” they say without a pause.

He exhales, body sagging, and kisses their temple. “Thank you.”

“I have you cariad,” they murmur, lips ghosting over his neck. “Always.”

[hufflautia]

in the soft silence of her love

Warning: biphobia 

Summary: Slytherin supports Hufflepuff after a break-up. 

“And then,” Hufflepuff continues angrily, “he said I would probably cheat on him with a girl!” 

Slytherin’s forehead creases while Hufflepuff paces around the dormitory.  

“He sounds like the type of guy who would ask for a threesome after you tell him you’re bi,” she replies. 

“Right?!” Hufflepuff plops onto the bed, her arms splayed over the duvet as she stares at the ceiling with blazing eyes. “Honestly, fuck him.” 

“Fuck him,” Slytherin agrees, laying beside her. 

“I’m glad I told him I’m bisexual,” she huffs. “Otherwise, I’d still be in a disgusting relationship with that rat without knowing how much of a dick he is.” 

I always suspected he was an ass, Slytherin thinks. But how was I supposed to tell my best friend I hated her boyfriend? 

Hufflepuff’s demeanor shifts into something undeniably desolate, and she closes her eyes. Slytherin sees a stray tear slip from her eye and past her ear. 

“Hufflepuff?” 

She turns her head to see Slytherin staring with furrowed brows. She doesn’t respond, not even when her eyes become clouded with tears. 

Slytherin pushes herself upright and says her name again but in a more gentle tone. 

That’s when she wordlessly sits up and holds her arms out, to which Slytherin scoots forward to embrace her. 

Her face wrought with emotion, Hufflepuff sobs into the crook of her neck. Slytherin doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Hufflepuff will talk when she’s ready.  

After several minutes, her breathing gradually evens out, and all that can be heard is her occasional sniffles. She draws in a deep breath and exhales shakily.

“He said I should’ve told him in the beginning. He said I tricked him. And it, it hurt,” her voice cracks, “to hear that. To hear him say all those things to m—me.” 

Slytherin hugs her tighter. “I know,” she murmurs, rubbing her back in a methodical manner. “I know.” 

Hufflepuff feels herself shake and tremble from the effort of muffling her own cries. It doesn’t take long for her to let it all out. Snot begins to leak from her nose as tears streak down her face, but she doesn’t bother wiping them off. It hurts. Everything just hurts. 

But with Slytherin by her side, it hurts a little bit less. 

- 

It’s been two weeks since the breakup. They’re studying for their Potions exam in the Slytherin common room, where it's quiet and peaceful. Slytherin is too focused on her work to notice that Hufflepuff hasn’t written a single word down in the past ten minutes. 

“It was you, wasn’t it?” 

Slytherin regards Hufflepuff with a puzzled expression. 

“What?” 

“You were the one who jinxed you-know-who last week.” 

Slytherin snorts and says, “If you’re talking about Voldemort, then no, I did not jinx that no-nose egg. But I would if I could.” 

Hufflepuff shoots her a pointed look. 

“Okay, okay,” she relents. “Yes, I turned your ex into a rat. But only because he deserved it!”  

Hufflepuff wants to be mad, she really does. After all, Slytherin has gotten detention plenty of times because of her—well, for her, really. But she cracks a smile. It was pretty funny to see him walk through the corridors with the tail still intact; Madam Pomfrey can do many things, but even her healing magic has limits. 

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Hufflepuff says.  

Slytherin arches an eyebrow. 

“Who said I did it for you,” she asks. “Maybe I wanted to see him scurry around for my own amusement.” 

A wide grin stretches across Hufflepuff’s face. She doesn’t bother pressing her best friend about it. She knows the truth. 

They go back to their work, and before Slytherin can truly return her focus to the assignment, Hufflepuff speaks. 

“Thank you.” 

[I normally don’t put songs in one-shots, but I’m watching sapphic tiktoks while revising this fic, and I came across this song and it’s so beautiful that I simply have to include it because the vibes are immaculate and it flows well with the story. The song is 25 seconds long, but it loops for 3 minutes. You’ll be able to finish the story before it loops. No need to rush. Here is the link.]  

Slytherin meets her eyes and grins.  

“Of course,” she says. “You deserve the world.” 

Hufflepuff offers a soft smile. 

“Hopefully we’ll see it together.” 

And then she goes back to her work, but Slytherin doesn’t look away. Not yet. Not when she’s gazing upon the girl whom she has silently loved for years.  

Yea, Slytherin thinks. Maybe we will. 

~

Inspired by this post I found on Instagram (originally from Tumblr, funnily enough):  

Unrelated, but that gif is of a character played Phoebe Tonkin, my mermaid QUEEN. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed. Check out my masterlist, and lemme know what you thought of this one-shot! I love reading your comments <3 Thanks for reading! 

Tags: @slytherpuff-shenanigans @axieleration @sunnniiee @just--another--bean @determinedpines @zenobiagrace @asterinflower @cinnamon-roll-unicorn @mossy-axolotl @dumbbitch11 @hitchhiker-of-the-galaxy @notsowiseravenclaw  @arianatorpotterhead @luciferswife16 @walkinganomaly @asunshinepuff @lewispoolerpayton @adreameratdawn @thewitcheswords @oncergleekpotterhead @princessstoopid @stardustzainy @flvrqnce @multi-fandom-nutjob @eunnieah @iamahufflepuff @1hufflepuff @introvertedrae @princessstoopid @jasminedayz @magnoliamermaid @HOPEFUL-HUFFLEPUFF-PEEVES @peanut-in-the-goal @pufflehuff929 @sophiexteresa @da-fox-rangerrr @dawinehouse @shipping-book-keeper @xxavaloraxx @silverhetdanes @im-a-solanum-lycopersicum @elegantcroissantplaidpony @theoriginaljohnwatsonsblog @theoriginalsherlockholmesblog @vickeyunicorn @arianatorpotterhead @hmilkwhoney @simpering-simpleton @grandcyclecreation @sweetinvisiblewriter @marvelenthusiast10 @mvlpksvthisht @qiaopa @beardedhumanoid @jadefox05 @justanotherperson @inkedintothepaper @minty-malfoy @trippy-morgan @fangirlgeekandfreak @boilyourteeth @absentmindeduniverse @colettedelaurel @halfelven1 @happy-puff @coloring-bud @in-love-with-remus-lupin @autumnpleaves @crakencc @flyme--tothemoon @hedgepuffgirl @littleemotionalpanda @pancakes-and-sugar @korra4321 @aquietkindofthunder @qixnsriess @porksoba @thatfann @hellounicorn @i-have-a-bad-feeling @aasa2102 @zuko-28 @annie-mcl @clementines-x @writtenfoxscreams @randomwriter23 @cryingabtwandavision @coolninjavoid @urfaveslytherin @malfoys-demigod @tumlbr-trasher @violayaxley @wolfpack-arts-industries99 @zainieees-stuff @milk-leaves @priii @capt-sparrow @blueberry-9-pancakes @stressy-depressy   

[letapollojusticesayfuck]

“would you come to my funeral?” + narumitsu

"I'm going to write something short," I say, and then come out with nearly 1300 words of Angst. But this really was the perfect line for some good angst, and so I hope you like it! (and please excuse any typos, I very much have not done any editing here)

Thanks, Sparrow! :)

Send me a randomly-generated line of dialogue and some characters, and I'll write a (relatively) short fic!

............

It’s raining. That’s the thing that Phoenix notices, first—the way the water collects on the pane-glass of the window, the office dark and silent otherwise.

How long has he been in the building for the weather to have changed so drastically? How long did it take to extricate himself from the aftermath of the trial, to escape the celebrations and cheer once he’d noticed the conspicuous absence where someone should have been?

Long enough for the cup of tea abandoned on the desk to have gone stone-cold, he realizes, when he presses his fingers gently against the side of the delicate china vessel. Long enough that Miles Edgeworth might be long gone by now, and he’d have to ride his bicycle home in the storm, without even getting a chance to check in with his oldest friend.

Motion, from the corner of his eye, and Phoenix swings around to a previously unexamined corner of the room, in the shadow of the vibrant pink sofa and the framed jacket on the wall. A hiding place, of sorts, and for half a second he feels the chill of adrenaline through his veins as he wonders if he’s about to be attacked in Edgeworth’s office, victim of a trap planted for the prosecutor and not for him.

But he relaxes, as much as is possible, when he recognizes the figure slumped against the wall by his distinctive cravat, his steel-grey hair. Miles Edgeworth, looking distinctly miserable, but Phoenix will take it if it means he’s here.

“Of course you’d manage to find me,” the man grumbles, and Phoenix laughs, awkwardly.

“Well, you know what they say about defense attorneys,” he jokes, hand combing through the hair on the back of his neck. “Always sticking our noses where they don’t belong.”

Miles huffs, as though he can’t be bothered to dignify that with a response. With some trepidation, Phoenix moves closer, kneels next to him, attempts to put himself on a level with the prosecutor. He doesn’t quite reach out, the way he so desperately wants to, because he’s never quite sure where exactly he stands with Edgeworth, these days. He’d hoped, that since they’d cleared up the history behind the DL-6 incident, that they would have properly reconnected, but…

Well. It’s unfortunate that they only ever seem to see each other at opposing ends of the courtroom, or so it seems.

But Edgeworth looks so downtrodden that Phoenix can’t help but want to help him, and so he crosses his legs and leans against the wall, nearly casually, and risks his life to ask his next question:

“What’s the matter? Why aren’t you out with everyone else, celebrating a job well done?”

“Wright. Really?”

“Well, yeah, maybe it didn’t turn out quite as well as it could have, but...we’re still a step closer to fixing the justice system, aren’t we? Sure, the Chief Prosecutor’s….in jail, and the Police Chief is...alsoin jail, but--”

“Wright, I’m going to stop you before you can jam your foot even further in your mouth than it already is.”

“That’s...probably a good idea, yeah.”

They pause, for a moment, listening to the wind and the raindrops against the window. A distant lightning strike illuminates the office, and Phoenix is reminded of quite how high up they are.

“Would you come to my funeral?” Edgeworth asks, apropos of nothing, and Phoenix’s head whips around almost faster than he can process the words.

“Your—Miles, what are you--” He can’t form a full sentence, finding his mind blank even at the prospect. Edgeworth sighs, deeply, and leans his head back against the wall, eyes closed.

“My funeral, Wright, it’s not that difficult of a question. At such a time as I perish, whether through natural or unnatural means, would you attend the event that I assume someone would inevitably arrange for honoring my memory or other such tripe.”

Phoenix is still stuck processing, the very prospect of Edgeworth and death and funerals all sparking associations he’d rather not think too hard about, calling to mind the ceremony they’d had for Mia not even six months ago—and, even earlier, the image of a far younger Miles Edgeworth in a black suit, surrounded by arrangements of lilies and with an unreadable expression.

“I—well, in a purely hypothetical scenario, because you aren’t going to have a funeral anytime soon—in that case, of course I would come to your funeral, Miles, what do you take me for?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know. I’m not—” and Edgeworth pauses, clutching at the fabric of his sleeve as he averts his gaze to the opposite corner of the room. “I’m not exactly a paradigm of innocence, and your reputation for...well…”

“Are you still trying to say that you’re guilty when we’ve proven that time and time again to be untrue? Miles, c’mon, that’s bullshit. And—my reputation?What, do you think I’d even care, if you were—”

“Wright, surely you’re not that much in denial. I’m as much guilty of evidence tampering as Lana Skye. And worse—you know the tactics us prosecutors employ. I did not gain the name Demon Prosecutor for nothing. I’m not—you shouldn’t even associate with me.”

Phoenix frowns, eyebrows furrowing. He’s clenching his hands into fists, he realizes, as he takes a deep breath and focuses on trying to have this discussion rationally, as much as possible.

“Miles Edgeworth, you can’t blame yourself for doing as you were taught. You were only a child, you should have been able to trust your mentor figures—it wasn’t on you to be able to construct a detailed critique of the legal system! And you think that I wouldn’t associate with you because of that? I guess…” he swallows, looking away from the prosecutor. “I guess you don’t know me as well as I thought you did, then.”

The silence is almost tangible, as they let Phoenix’s words sink in, settle around them in the dark office. In his mind, Phoenix begins to count the seconds that it’s taking Edgeworth to answer—one, two, three…

“I suppose I don’t,” he finally supplies, and that’s it, then, the kind of sentence you don’t continue a conversation from. It’s not the only thing he seems to want to say, Phoenix notes, but it’s the only thing he vocalizes, letting the sound of the rain fill in the empty spaces.

Phoenix breathes out, slowly, and stands up. His knees pop as he does, tiny cracking noises competing with the rumble of thunder from outside.

He looks over his shoulder, and Edgeworth’s still on the ground, avoiding eye contact. It’s not like he wants to leave, but…

Maybe Miles just needs some time alone. He seems to have a lot on his mind, and Phoenix probably isn’t helping by bothering him with conversation.

He lets himself out of the office, vowing to himself that he’ll check back in tomorrow morning, when the rainstorm’s let up and the world’s back to normal. He isn’t going to let Edgeworth wallow in his thoughts for too long, at least.

Overnight, the rain fades to nothing, clouds making way for soft sunshine, promising bright blue skies for the day and uncharacteristically warm weather for February. Miles Edgeworth’s office window lets in the sunlight, where it illuminates the grand desk and the items on top of it. In turn, the light falls on a pen, a nameplate, a lamp.

A teacup, still half-full from the night before. And…

A note, with one single line of neat cursive penned in the middle of the crisp, textured paper:

Miles Edgeworth Chooses Death

[interstellar-shores]

Your Mind Aches - Ch 3. Fireworks

Josh Kiszka x (F) Reader x Jake Kiszka

Warnings: Jealousy, healing, that’s it.

Summary: It’s okay to date your ex’s brother. Right? After being in a successful long-term relationship, things get rocky when the boys prepare to go on tour. Through long text threads and occasional coffee outings with your best friend, you discover that your ex’s twin has feelings for you. 

Tag list: @garbagevanfleet, @brianmaysclog, @anditsmywholeheart 

Months after the break-up.

Y/F/N and I went to get coffee at our favorite cafe, not too far from my apartment. I was still sore, but I got over Josh. With the help of Y/F/N hanging out with me and the self-care habits I picked up, my wound closed up slightly each day.

It wasn’t closed because of the text threads I maintained between Jake, Sam, Danny, and sometimes Ronnie. It was hard for all of us to bring up Josh in our conversations since Josh was always cracking jokes and making up funny characters.

I was keeping a cool atmosphere, except for when Jake called me a month prior. I called the boys, except for you know who, but one night Jake called me after a set to tell me how it went and to check in on me and his beloved hometown. All was normal until I heard Josh talking, and after every joke or remark he made, a girl’s laugh followed it. I tried to ignore it, but then Jake stopped talking. I could only assume the worst. Jake then started again but kept stuttering. He then apologized and hung up the phone.

Oh god!

A week after the odd phone call, Sam and Danny face-timed me while they were eating dinner. The conversation started normal, laughing, talking, and informing when I noticed Josh standing behind them. 

He was with another girl. She was touching his arms, laughing at everything he said, and he smiled at her with a mischievous grin.

Sam and Danny noticed my divided attention and looked behind them to see the heinous sight. They got up and went outside to continue our conversation. I remained calm and tried not to show the underlying rage building within me. Sam, Danny, and I finished our conversation and said our goodbye’s. The typical ‘love you, talk to you later’ stuff.

I texted Y/F/N and told her what happened. While I was texting Y/F/N, Sam texted me and said he was sorry I had to see Josh and his new prospect.

I love Sam sometimes, but other times I ponder his judgment of breaking news to people.

“Hey, silly! Where did you go?” Y/F/N asked while smiling into her cup of coffee.

“Just thinking.”

“About Josh and his groupie?”

“Woah, Josh isn’t like that. But yeah, I’m thinking of Josh’s groupie. What if she is his groupie or his girlfriend?”

“Hey, don’t get bent out of shape. Y/N, you have been working so hard to get past this break-up, as much as you want to know what he’s up to, you can’t consume yourself with those thoughts. He broke up with you. I know it’s hard to do this, but you have to stop giving a fuck.”

I looked at my coffee and my half-eaten bagel, internalizing what Y/F/N said. She’s right.

“You're right,” I started, “I gotta get those thoughts out of my head, but I have to manage conversations with his brothers without it being weird if they mention him. It’s like I’m a character in Harry Potter and Josh is he-who-shall-not-be-named. It’s weird.”

“I believe you. But what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, but it’ll be a work in progress.” Was the best answer I could muster. I never had to go through this. The ping of jealousy and awkwardness when I thought of Josh and that girl.

“Sorry Hun, I have to leave for work.” Y/F/N got up and put her jacket on, “I’ll text you later,” She hugged me then put ten dollars on the table to cover her part of the bill, “Love ya!”

“See ya, Love you too.”

Two hours later

I walked through the park across from the cafe. I took in the Autumn air and the beautiful colors. There’s a woman feeding ducks over by a bench. I continued walking and stopped. The statue of a woman with her eye’s closed and holding a sparrow in her arms. It reminded me of when I met Jake.

Jake and I first met by this statue before he was even aware of Josh and I. I was looking at him and he looked confused as I studied him.

“Um, hey, do you mind?” He chuckled.

“Uh, sorry, you just look like my boyfriend,” I said without realizing that it sounded like a pickup line.

“Uh, well, thank you, but I’m not looking right now.” He looked at the grass.

“Oh, I mean that you look similar to this guy I’ve been seeing, his name is Josh.” I stared at the grass and smiled.

“Oh, oh my god, Josh Kiszka? He’s my twin brother.” His face lit up.

I smiled at the memory. A sweet warmth swept over me. I reach for my phone and search for Jake and I’s text thread.

*I accidentally deleted my old blog so the is Interstellar Shores 2.0*

[mediaevalmusereads]

Strange the Dreamer. By Laini Taylor. New York: Little, Brown Books, 2017.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, Strange the Dreamer #1

Summary: The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around— and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving? The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: blood, violence, drug use, rape, sexual slavery, abduction and imprisonment

Overview: I really enjoyed Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, so I decided to give her new work a go. Overall, I also really enjoyed Strange the Dreamer because it had a lot of things that are characteristic of Taylor’s writing that I love - lush, lyrical prose; tragic, star-crossed love; a political conflict involving otherworldly creatures. The reason why I’m giving this book 4 instead of 5 stars mainly has to do with the pacing and the way events played out. There wasn’t anything wrong, I think, with the way Taylor handled her story - it’s just that I felt like things started to rush to a close too quickly, and I would have liked to spend more time in the book exploring character emotions.

Writing: Taylor’s prose tends to fall into two categories: lyrical and descriptive or straight-forward and economical. Part 1 of this book is more lyrical; the metaphors are more fantastical and the prose evokes a sense of longing and fascination. Taylor really captures the feeling of being immersed in a library, surrounded by stories, as well as what it’s like to have a dream (not a dream in your sleep - more like a goal or a wish that has a small or nonexistence likelihood of coming true). Part 1 was probably my favorite part of the book for this reason, as subsequent sections tended to lose that lyrical quality and fall into a style more typical of YA books.

Taylor’s pace is also fairly well-done in that I didn’t feel like I was being rushed or that I was plodding through the book. The only thing I would change in terms of pacing is the book’s ending; I felt a lot of things were dropped on the reader all at once, and though they were foreshadowed earlier in the book (which I very much appreciated), I tend not to like endings where too much happens.

Before I close this section, a couple of notes on descriptions and worldbuilding: though I know teenagers have sexual urges, I was a little put off by the descriptions of teenagers’ bodies in certain places. I can remember a few instances where Taylor describes the look of one character’s breasts, and though it wasn’t gratuitous, I didn’t like that these descriptions were included. I also thought the worldbuilding detail of “women get tattoos on their bellies as a rite of passage/coming of age marker when they become fertile and Sarai longs for one of her own” was a little uncomfortable. It made me feel like the world Taylor built was concerned with showcasing female reproductive capacity, and that just seems exclusionary. While it could have worked if the story was more about pushing back against reproductive regulation or exploring what such tattoos would mean for trans characters, as the book stands, that doesn’t really happen, so it was a weird detail that I felt distracted from the main themes.

Plot: This book primarily follows Lazlo Strange - an orphan who dreams of finding the lost city of Weep - and Sarai - the daughter of a dead god and a human who must hide her existence in order to stay alive. Lazlo is surprised one day when some inhabitants of Weep - led by someone called “the Godslayer” - show up in his library, asking for assistance from the land’s greatest scientists. Though Lazlo isn’t a scientist, he is the most knowledgeable person about Weep and its culture, so the Godslayer elects to take him along. Meanwhile, Sarai and several other demigods live in a secluded Sanctuary, hiding from the inhabitants of Weep so that they won’t be slain on account of their parentage.

Without spoiling anything (which is kind of hard, since there is a lot that happens), I will say that I really liked the central conflict of this book. Taylor does a good job of setting up a problem with no black-and-white solutions; it seems like everyone had a legitimate reason for acting the way they do, and no matter what happens, someone will be hurt.

But perhaps the thing I appreciated most about the plot was that Taylor never sets up a surprise twist that comes out of nowhere. I feel like I’ve read a lot of YA books that drop a bomb on the reader with no set up, and I personally feel like such twists make the story feel less cohesive. Taylor sets up all her reveals and twists by dropping hints early and frequently, and rather than make the story feel dull, I felt like they made the end emotionally fulfilling.

If I had one criticism of the plot it would be that the romance doesn’t feel genuine. Lazlo and Sarai seem to fall in love with each other too quickly, which made it seem like they got together because they just hadn’t had opportunities to meet other people. I didn’t see what they saw in each other aside from looks and special qualities like “oh, he’s able to share my dreams” or “she was kind to me when so many other people weren’t.” I wanted more out the romance, like Sarai falling for Lazlo’s kindness and Lazlo falling for Sarai’s compassion towards those who would harm her. Maybe there was some of that, but it was definitely overshadowed by lengthy descriptions of kissing, which I wasn’t much a fan of. I also wasn’t really a fan of the “dates” that they went on; some parts were cute, but overall, they dragged.

Characters: Lazlo, one of our protagonists, is likeable in that he’s pretty much the embodiment of a lot of book nerds. He starts off shy, completely absorbed with fairy tales and folklore, and loves to roam the abandoned stacks in his library. What I liked most about him, though, was his willingness to help people even if they treat him poorly. For example, there’s a character named Theryn Nero who is basically a Science Bro. He’s rich, beloved by everyone, and gets famous for cracking the secret of alchemy. While he puts himself up as the lone genius, he was actually aided by Lazlo and takes sole credit for a lot of things that Lazlo proved to be key in discovering. Lazlo, though annoyed, never lets his feelings get in the way of helping Nero when the greater good is at stake, and I really admired that.

If I had any criticisms of Lazlo, it would be that I wish his “dreamer” status or knowledge base was put to better use. After Lazlo gets to Weep, he isn’t quite as interesting as he was before, probably because he no longer needs to use his vast knowledge of stories to make his way through the world.

Sarai, our other protagonist, is fairly sympathetic in that all her problems feel undeserved. She is forced to stay locked away in a hidden Sanctuary in order to protect herself and her little found family (composed of other demigods), and though it’s for the best, it also feels stifling. I really liked that Sarai was not single-mindedly fixated on revenge for the things that happened in her past. Without spoiling anything, I will say that something happened which put the demigods and inhabitants of Weep in conflict with one another, and there is no easy solution that would guarantee that the demigods stay alive. Sarai has a lot of dreams like Lazlo - of finding family, of living a normal life, of living among the humans - but it’s not really viable for her, and instead of letting hate consume her, she tries to think up other ways of existing.

Sarai’s “family” is also charming. The group consists of 5 demigods who are the last remaining offspring of the slain gods, and all of them feel fairly complex. They all possess some kind of magical “gift”: there’s Sarai (who can produce supernatural “moths” that allow her to enter people’s dreams), Ruby (a girl who can turn herself into flames), Feral (the only boy, and he can summon clouds), Sparrow (a girl who can manipulate plants), and Minya (a girl who can make ghosts do her bidding). I liked that these characters had different personalities that often put them in conflict. Ruby is boy-crazy and seems to be obsessed with sex. Sparrow is more passive but has sweet moments where she makes a “flower cake” for Ruby’s birthday and braids Sarai’s hair. Minya is completely consumed by her desire for revenge, and it presents some real barriers to finding a solution to the group’s problems.

The supporting characters down in Weep are also fairly compelling. The Godslayer is sympathetic in that he doesn’t revel in his heroic image or title; instead, he feels complex and seemingly warring emotions tied to guilt over what happened to Weep and his role in it almost 20 years prior to the events of this book. The Godslayer’s companions are also sympathetic and have emotions that are easy to understand, and I loved that they seemed to take to Lazlo so quickly. They welcome all outsiders with open arms, but they have a soft spot for Lazlo, which I liked because it meant that he didn’t have to face bullying or gatekeeping from people he had longed to meet his entire life.

The inhabitants of the world outside of Weep were interesting. There’s Theryn Nero, who seemed like he would be a primary antagonist but doesn’t have enough “screen time” to truly be a threat. I liked that his conflict with Lazlo was low-key - it was intense enough to be annoying, but no so intense that their rivalry consumed the whole story or put petty emotions above the greater good. The other “scientists” who follow the Godslayer back to Weep served their purpose; not all of them had rich, complex lives, but they didn’t really need to because if they did, the story would feel crowded.

Overall, there weren’t any characters I disliked, per se. While I do wish Lazlo got to develop differently, there wasn’t much wrong with his character, and I think all of the main players had interesting backstories and motivations, and I appreciated the layer of complexity they all had. I do wish there had been more queer characters though. There is one wlw couple, though they aren’t too prominent in the grand scheme of things. Of course, that could change, as there is a whole second book to go through, but I wish some of the demigods had been lgbt+ so it felt like Taylor’s world wasn’t overwhelmingly straight and cis.

TL;DR: Despite some pacing problems at the end and minor details that didn’t fit my personal tastes, Strange the Dreamer is a lush, evocative fantasy about the power of dreams. Readers who enjoy epic fantasy and stories about gods, star-crossed love, and will probably adore this book.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

I’m really intrigued by Rayla’s moonshadow assassin peers. I especially am interested in Andromeda because I think she is the only other girl in the group? Do you have any headcanons in how these teen/young adult assassins interacted? Do you think Rayla isolated herself from them because she was always iffy about taking a life? Also TDP finally colored their map and I know you live maps, find any new cool stuff? I especially love how there’s a frozen sea north and a spinning sea south, imagine the powerful Magic’s that channeled to make them.

Okay, so I jumped straight to the map, did 80% of it, and wandered away for a few weeks. I apologize, anon. Let’s get this going again:

I’ve got a few headcanons on the Moonshadow assassins! It seems likely that they hang out mostly with each other, when they hang out, to reinforce their teambuilding and to give them some socialization, since assassins tend to keep others at arm’s length. So I kinda figure they tend to roam as a pack on their evenings out in the village, if they’re not married to a non-assassin like Runaan is.

I think that could be part of the reason that Rayla might not have hung out with the others as much, too: Runaan wanted to be either training or at home with Ethari, so Rayla probably spent a lot of time doing those things just because he did them. And when Runaan was doing more serious training or missions, that’s when Rayla had her free time to run around the forest and make adoraburr friends. 

Runaan could’ve probably insisted that she do something more assassiny with her free time. Shadow an assassin, do more studying, practice certain prescribed skills on her own. But he didn’t. He let her play. Soft assassin is soft!

Listen, anon, I have a fun headcanon for you about Andromeda--and by fun, I mean it’s really angsty half a second after you start thinking about it. Ready? 

What if: Andromeda is Runaan’s half-sister. If they’re both Lujanne’s children by different assassin dads who kept dying in battle, but a Moon mage needs an assassin leader partner to defend Xadia with, and Lujanne knew her son Runaan wasn’t old enough to lead yet, so she burned through three or more husbands protecting him until Runaan was well trained enough to lead the assassins himself and had fallen in love with a mage who adored him and would be his partner in her place.

 Andromeda looks a fair bit like Lujanne, too:

Along with Runaan, they all have long hair, side tails bound in silver cuffs, and some form of braids. Andromeda’s hair is sectioned in front similarly to Runaan’s. Her accent sounds more British than Scottish, though she only has the one line: My eyes for truth. And Lujanne and Andromeda are the only two Moonshadow elves we’ve met who have medium blue horns, while Runaan’s are dark blue. Almost everyone else’s horns have purple or pink as their base color.

But then, see, Andromeda went on Runaan’s mission, and she died. Her spirit was the most aggressive in TTM, usually closest to Rayla with her sword out, as if she hated Rayla the most. If she had a vested family interest in Runaan’s mission succeeding, and then it went pear-shaped because of Rayla, that would make sense.

No matter if she’s related to Runaan or not, she’s wearing horn cuffs, so she was in a dedicated relationship of some kind, and that’s so sad. Someone’s missing her the way Ethari’s missing Runaan. :’((((

Anyway, it’s just a headcanon, but since you asked, there ya go.

Okay, on to my thoughts on the map, of which I have a normal and healthy amount:

The Map Border: 

Everyone doodles in the borders. I love to see what they put there.

Starting in the upper left and going counter-clockwise, the five human crowns are cool

Cornucopia swirls center left look like an homage to Cabbage Man from ATLA

Bait is staring at Evenere. his home? Or maybe he just wants to eat the dragonfly on its logo

Human defender has a beard. Hairagorn. He's very heavily armored but has no helmet. Long hair is braided to rest on front of shoulder, like the blond elf in the painting at the Moon Nexus. Old timey hairstyle?

He’s defending Katolis Castle specifically. I wonder if the little white building is kinda random or if it’s supposed to represent the Banther Lodge. Nah, I have a better guess: that’s where Viren grew up

The crack in the map looks meta. It's been repaired somewhat. Makes me wonder if it's an in-world map, whose, who ripped it, and who fixed it. Sir Phineas Kurst seems like the kind of guy to almost shred his really cool map

The star behind Zym's egg has seven points

The two ships on the southern waters are western and eastern respectively. Tidebound elves from Singapore? Jack Sparrow would be proud

There is land just south of the Dragontail, wonder what’s there?

The leaves around the human figure are small and numerous while the Moonshadow elf has fewer but bigger leaves

The elf is standing in the way of one of the six leaves growing out of the rune rose and that leaf's curly tip seems to have been replaced with a curl of the elf's very long hair

The human pose is more offense and the elf pose is more defense. But the elf has two swords, and one has some wicked hooks in it.

Elf has 4 fingers instead of 3 so whether it’s in-universe or meta, they were drawn by a human :DDD

The elf's braid winds around their horn and I think that's clever

High collar shirt under protective layer, bracers and elbow gloves, bare biceps, complex shoulder getup, ornate hair that's butt long and partly braided, two long slightly curving swords... horn cuffs too. This is a Moonshadow assassin in the same gear Runaan's got, poised to defend the Xadian half of the map as the human is poised to defend his side

The rune rose isn't a compass. It has a two sided pointer and six primal runes. Just decorative I guess. ;)

More lettuces on right center.

Maybe a portaling caterpillar on the center knot? Little bug pal, I see you

“The Five Human Kingdoms” lettered in red, “Xadia” in blue. Giving me Stratego flashbacks. Even the flowers on their banners are color coded

Banners in the corners are similar but Xadia has more fluttery tips

Thunder drawn all attacky top center, does he have anything to do with the Frozen Sea being frozen?

Compass rose under Thunder’s wing

Dick island near the compass. Well, Duren is the breadbasket of the human lands. A most excellent cartography joke! 10/10 would chortle wholesomely again

The Human Kingdoms:

Neolandia

Capital Eboreus seems to be a lake city below a mountain and I'm here for all the Lake Town refs. 

It's also the eye of the elephant shape

Not a lot of trees, mostly grasses or desert. Only borders Duren across a couple rivers/estuaries/sea channels

Heart shaped island next to elephant trunk

Land generally broken into several sections by sea/rivers 

If it’s rivers, they seem to generate from the capital’s lake and flow in several directions. And they say there’s no magic left in the western lands! ;)

But if there was exactly one source of freshwater in a desert land, it makes sense that you’d find a way, magical or mechanical, to spread that lifegiving water in as many directions as possible so your people can thrive so kudos to Neolandia’s ancestors/Tidebound elves/whoever managed that, it’s brilliant

I can and will make up explanations for anything on a map. I adore worldbuilding

Del Bar

Two named locations. Since Del Bar’s national symbol is a serpent, I guess Serpentongue is the capital.

Hinterpeak is a sweet name. Looks like Helm's Deep with that retaining wall. What’s it for? Are there dwarves in this land? Is it an Earthblood stronghold? Maybe it’s like the Mines of Moria, and the Earthbloods were chased out and/or killed inside and now it’s full of nasty orcses but someone left a MacGuffin down there so *nudges hero* Off you pop.

Nice forests around the southern mountain range but northern DB is more arid or grassy lands like Neolandia. 

Considering that crops grow well in Duren, which is farther north, I assume there is a massive meteorological gyre over the human lands, with a southern wind blowing down over the western realms and keeping them icy until the mountains of Hinterpeak block and divert them, protecting Evenere. The winds don't blow eastward without warming right up-- and causing thunderstorms in Katolis how about that-- because there is a warmer side to the gyre over Katolis and Duren, blowing tropical warmth and moisture north and providing rain for trees and crops alike. Most years, anyway.

How does the weather fail in Duren for seven years in a row, anyway? That seems like a Thunder issue. Unless it’s a Sunforge issue, which I’ll get to below.

Ahem.

Borders Neolandia, Duren, and Katolis across rivers, but most border is coastline.

Serpentongue probably got its name from the two river heads around it

Cluster of dead little cracks spawns a single river. Looks like someone cracked the tub and it drained away. I wonder how much of this landscape has been affected by the Mage Wars. Big watery basins have flooded and other spots seem dead. The lands may or may not actually touch depending on how deep some of these waterways are

Evenere

Looks like someone punched holes in the land with a giant pencil to make it a separate island. Broken outline with scattered islands

That Pawprint Isles has only four toes

Moon-shaped island is very crescenty indeed

Are these isles home to refugees or outcasts from Xadia? Listen, I want pirates and that sea looks pretty Caribbean to me

No capital city, hmmm what's that about? Is it underground, does it move? Maybe Fareeda’s capital is on the back of a world turtle and she’s constantly on tour around the island?

That arm of land ending in a peace sign, please can we get surfers

The hills emanating from that claw shaped headland look like something is sleeping under the island, hello yes I am here for giant immortal creatures please

Katolis

its capital is also called Katolis, the only human realm to use the same name twice

Weeping Bay could be a ref to the tears the humans shed after they reached the west. Or the Moonshadow elves as they left their forest for the east. Or both. Both, in this case, is bad but balanced

Boomerang island next to the Dragontail

The river the Dragaang rode on was going uphill

The watery slash in the land between Katolis and Del Bar is awfully straight. So is the one between Del Bar and Neolandia. I call magical warfare.

Katolis has a bunch of mountains in the east, part of an old natural border before the lava one appeared

Mt Kalik is probably volcanic. It's a standalone mountain and it's really tall. Rex Ignius maybe? Oh, probably not, I think I see him peeking on the other side of the map

The trees of Duren and Katolis are different then the western lands. Softer green, deciduous. And the land itself is yellower, warmer in tone

Forests centered on Mt Kalik

The Moon Nexus looks like an eye on a dragon head near the Dragontail, and Evenere looks like a severed wing (Yes I am still wondering where Luna Tenebris went, why do you ask)

Weeping Bay looks like the most natural body of water in the western lands

Three red little trees scattered around the Katolis map. Fruit trees? How very Moonshadow.

Duren

The only land border among all the human kingdoms is between Duren and Katolis. Maybe it used to be further south along the river?

Capital is Berylgarten, set on a lake. Beryl is a stone that’s usually green, blue, or yellow in color, very gardeny

Second smallest realm but the breadbasket of the human lands. Has several little forests and great tilled fields

Being a farmer in Duren is probably as awesome as being an assassin in the Moonshadow Forest; you do what you do for all your friendly kingdoms

Northernmost land is cold and craggy, named Skall's Hook along the sea

Third ship in the Frozen Sea is icebound and crushed. Looks western, indicating no possible passage

Lots of colored trees and shrubs as if fruitbearing, I keep comparing Duren to the Yakima Valley in Washington State

Where the lava reaches the Frozen Sea, it melts the ice next to Duren's mountains

Northern Xadia:

Lux Aurea

Most of the center lands of this map has warm tones for its ground. Maybe that’s because of the long reach of the warmth and light of Lux Aurea’s Sun Nexus, and only the lands that are just too far from it are truly cold and icy. It would explain why Duren is a breadbasket realm so far north--it’s just across the border from Lux Aurea.

If there’s anything to that, then I suddenly worry for the fate of all the human lands now that the Sunforge has gone dark. It’s early summer now in Xadia, and crops in Duren will be ripening soon... Unless the sun’s magic was helping them grow. This coming winter could be rough. Next winter, people will die. Unless they can purify the Sunforge again.

Also, I have to wonder if Duren’s seven years of famine had anything to do with Sunforge shenanigans. They’d have happened at Khessa’s command, and we know she despises humans. If she was responsible for all the struggles that humans had to go through without enough food for seven years, and then their desperate attempt to fix the problem by invading Xadia for a Magma Titan’s heart which extended and exacerbated the war, I can see why Aaravos might feel Queen Khessa deserved to die

The city’s shaped kinda like an Egyptian pectoral necklace on this map, and that’s super pretty and not at all ominous

Also that’s a lot of gold for a whole city and I wonder how they got it all

The Shiverglades and the Shards

These areas are north of Lux Aurea and seem cold but not very icy, even though the Frozen Sea is right there. More thoughtful glances at the Sunforge over this one. Is it warming the land, or not warming the sea? Both?

Shiverglades is a play on Everglades, so this is a cold swamp, which sounds super fun I’m sure. Permafrost, tundra maybe?

The Shards seem to be rock islands with ice mountains. Glaciers are cool. 

I wonder if something broke those islands off on purpose. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy worldbuilding? Yeah, well, I like world-wrecking, too.

Storm Spire

Has a good view on everything that happens for miles, including Lux Aurea, the Midnight Desert, the Shiverglades, the Black Tundra, the Uncharted Forest, and Drakewood. 

Defensible position, no other tall mountains nearby

Also able to alert others to danger, especially since Avizandum could teleport like lightning

The Midnight Desert

It’s pretty big! And it looks like it’s littered with ruins of columns and dead palm trees. Like something else used to be in that great space and then something Very Bad happened to it. Maybe there was one great city where all the elves could mix together, and then it got utterly obliterated and the elves all fled to their respective safe places around Xadia. A city of black stone, back when Aaravos wore a crown? Now pulverized to dust and surrounded by not one, not two, but three primal nexuses? Hmmm...

All the wisps could be heat from the sand, or spooky spirit hints, or just an ominous sign of danger from the snakes below, but the overall effect is that the land is unhealthy if not cursed

The oasis is marked, and it must contain a spring since it runs a river out to join the river that passes through the Moonshadow Forest

Also the actual oasis kinda resembles a blue lizard which is adorable and probably also terrifying

Moonshadow Forest

The Silvergrove is the only village marked in the forest, so in keeping with the other lands and general map legend rules, it’s likely the capital/central village for the Moonshadow elves

The village is marked by four round-roofed homes between two tall leafy trees that shelter and hide them. It’s a hybrid balance between the blocky manmade castles of the human lands and the actual forest around them, showing a blending with nature that even the Sunfire city of Lux Aurea did not embrace, with all its golden buildings

It’s a good-sized forest, and it kinda stretches thin to the east but there it tentatively connects to the Drakewood Forest

Moonstone Path to the west just chilling in the lava like a blank alignment chart. Moonstone Path is Chaotic Hot.

Southern Xadia:

Ruins of Elarion

Elarion is a city, and it’s been lost to the humans for a thousand years

The building outlines are squared-off towers like the more modern castles in the west, suggesting that humans in Xadia built for strength and defense as soon as they could. They felt vulnerable and created protections in their architecture. The three elven cities we see also play to their strengths, but those strengths include magic. Elarion’s humans had to find a different strength, and they went with craftsmanship and ingenuity

It seems to be the only human city from before the border was drawn

“Ruins” doesn’t necessarily mean no one lives there at all, but it’s been emptied of humans and no one else has maintained it since

It had a great position on a vast lake, with sheltering hills and easy sea access

Sea of the Castout

This inland sea has five inlets and outlets. It’s hard to be sure which is which with some of them, with the way the water is drawn on this map. But I’m kinda liking the idea that all the water swirlies are places where Tidebound magic has been placed over the millennia, so the water can do whatever it needs to do depending on circumstances. That goes for the human lands, too. Katolis backward river, you’re off the hook.

With a name like "Castout,” I wonder if it was some kind of universal toilet to flush away things you didn’t want--including humans--who might wash up near Elarion and start to build there. Yeesh.

The rivers that flow into this sea pass through or near the Moonshadow Forest, the Midnight Desert, the Storm Spire, Drakewood, and the Uncharted Forest. That’s a lot of drainage.

It’s pretty far from the Tidebound Archipelago, so maybe its name is referencing Tidebound elves who have left their home colony

Was this always a sea, or did something that Xadia wanted to forget get flooded and hidden in the depths?

The land around it seems open and hospitable. It could be a good place to build/rebuild in a time of peace.

The Far Reaches

Open grassland with low hills

Two of the hills look like giant boot prints

Several colorful trees which I hope are fruit trees

Bounded by two rivers from the Sea of the Castout

Looks homey tbh, great spot to retire to get away from everything if there were a war that really shook you up

Ocean Point

There’s a Star rune here, and it could mean many things

The closest other marked location is Elarion

If this was where Aaravos lived of his own free will, I can see why he’d take a shine to the humans. They were his neighbors.

If he is imprisoned here, it’s literally the furthest point in Xadia from the other elven realms, with the Moonshadow Forest being the closest one and Umber Tor not too much further but in a totally different direction. If they were trying to isolate him physically with a portable mirror to watch over him, that’s a good spot for it

Possible location that the cube is leading Callum toward? Portal to the Star Touch home plane? Aaravos’s seaside B&B? Trap street?

Eastern Xadia:

Drakewood

Umber Tor looks to be the tallest mountain in all of Xadia, save possibly for the Storm Spire. It’s more traditionally mountainy, with a nice snowcap. Since it’s labeled, I’m guessing it’s the Earth Nexus, under which an Earth Archdragon sleeps

Also there’s a giant yellowish-brown dragon chilling next to the Tor. Yeah, he seems nice. Rex Igneous, I presume?

Or maybe not, since the neighboring forest is called Drakewood. Maybe this woods is just where a bunch of Earth dragons hang out? Ezran and Pyrrah flew off and returned with a crew of Sun dragons from somewhere, so dragons must have communities too

The mountains that edge the sea are shaped roughly like a stone dragon in flight

Drakewood seems to be the forest closest to Umber Tor, with both deciduous and evergreen trees, though there’s a huge swath of wooded land here, to the north and to the southwest. I wonder what the locals consider the border where the Drakewood becomes the Uncharted Forest and why. The way the evergreens are drawn almost looks like a border, a sort of kingswood set aside for a specific use. Rex Igneous’s best toothpicks?

Uncharted Forest

Okay this is a properly magical name, very mysterious. But uncharted by whom? People with charts? This might be a Sir Phineas Kurst name, which is outsidery, and it makes me wonder if the locals/neighbors have their own name for it, which the human explorer never learned, a la “Thunder” for Avizandum

Maybe “Uncharted Forest” just means no one ever turned those trees into charts though, old growth ftw

If no one lives here, will someone move here? If someone lives here, who are they? Earthblood elves? Moonshadow elves? Humans? This mystery, it calls to me

the trees are mostly deciduous and fill basically all of this whole section of land, up against the mountains and the rivers, so it seems very fertile land indeed

Earthblood elves could live here, but there is no city marked. Maybe because we haven’t gotten that far in the show, or maybe that’s the wrong sort of descriptor for how the Earthbloods live and organize. Maybe the whole forest is their city, like Pando, the interconnected quaking aspen clone forest

The northernmost part of this forest lies right between the Storm Spire and the Tidebound Archipelago, so it might get a regular flyover route for migration or messages

Yes, this forest is the most interesting place in Xadia to me, I desperately want to learn more about it

Black Tundra

Yeah this place isn’t ominous

Similar to the Shiverglades, but where that has shrubbery, the Black Tundra has single dead trees and creepy curving spikes. Scorched? Poisoned? De-magicked?

The water north of this area isn’t frozen, and with a lake to the south and a river and a moderate mountain range, the whole area looks like it would otherwise be decently habitable, but instead it’s cold and black

Is climate change a thing here, or will we get a nice horrible disaster instead?

Tidebound Archipelago

These islands have dotted lines around them, like they’re submerged at high tide, or maybe made of shifting sand that literally moves around like sand dunes across a desert, or perhaps they’re exactly at sea level with half their civilization in the air and half underwater or in cool bubbles, or maybe the islands actually float

Maybe the Tidebound elves even sank them on purpose for defensive purposes

The archipelago is about even latitudinally with the Storm Spire Lux Aurea, Berylgarten, and Eboreus so they probably get pretty nice weather

There’s no ice in sight here in any direction along Xadia’s east coast, so presumably the prevailing current is a warm one

do they have bridges connecting the islands? Ferries, animals who give them a lift across?

the islands have quite a bit of space on them. I wonder if there’s a big population, maybe a shifting population? Do Tidebound elves migrate up and down the coast like gray whales and return to the islands for certain holidays or social events?

This is probably the hub of the Tidebound elves’ culture, but the sea surrounds the whole land and infiltrates it with many rivers and lakes. The Spinning Sea and the Frozen Sea are pretty firm Do Not Enter signposts, but a determined Tidebound could get around either one if they wanted to

What I’m not seeing here is a city. Either it’s not been marked yet, or that’s not a thing that Tidebound elves have in their culture. If they don’t have a city, they’re possibly migratory in family groups, or maybe they stick to small villages like the Moonshadows do, but with even less central leadership

[starl1ght-child]

Folie à Deux II

Part 2 of the Paramour Series [Read Part 1 on AO3] Chapter 2 : Ikhnaie [WC : 2.4K]

perma tag list : @mail-me-a-snail @speed-boop @shins-wife @eeviethree @squadnos

Rose didn’t stay in her Tower apartment for long.  After her first few patrols, she found that she was more comfortable out in the wilds than she was in the Last City or at the Tower.  She built herself a home base underneath the protection of a cluster of willow trees.  The hanging branches provided her coverage from prying eyes.  She kept a bedroll in the corner and installed a small kitchen so she could cook for herself whenever she was home.  The cabin was like a small greenery.  She set up an irrigation system so that the plants she cared for didn’t die while she was on patrols and some UV lights and heat lamps so they could thrive in Old Russia’s cold climate.  She raised a small herb and vegetable garden, along with some sunflowers, roses, and lilies.

She would come to the Tower weekly for supplies, but otherwise, she stayed out in the thick forests that stretched an entire region of the Cosmodrome.  During one of her trips into town, she found a vendor that sold custom class armor for Guardians, made out of incredibly strong but lightweight metal or fabric.

She bought a cloak from him, the first of many.  But it was her favorite.  It wasn’t heavy and didn’t weigh her down, but it kept her warm and it moved behind her like a flag in the wind.  The cloak was the color of sunflowers, the design that started at the top of it was intricate, almost resembling the outline of the bloom, with petals that drifted down the length of it.  Those designs were what drew her attention in the first place.  The top was held secure on her shoulders by sturdy metal plating that clipped onto her breastplate.  The hood was wide and loose, and it covered her head before it pooled on her shoulders.  Oftentimes when she was tracking down a bounty, her Ghost would tuck herself into her hood and rest in the crook of her neck.

After a couple of months of successful patrols, Cayde offered her a chance to officially join his scout network.  She was an excellent tracker and with Fallen and Hive constantly encroaching on their borders and Guardians disappearing, he needed her to start tracking down Guardians who were missing in action.  Rose took the position gladly.  

And she was good at it, too.  Rose was good at finding people who were abducted, lost, or just didn’t want to be found.  She always got there just in time, Arc Light dancing around her body, cloak flying behind her like a pair of wings.

People had started calling her Ikhnaie.

Rose was supposed to operate a search and rescue on a Guardian whose final transmission was a panicked request for backup.  They were investigating a Hive nest somewhere deep in the Cosmodrome, preparing it for a strike team when something went wrong.  The Hunter’s comms had been dead ever since. 

Rose got the briefing almost immediately and headed out into the wilderness to find the missing Guardian.  It was the Vanguard’s hope that they could find the missing Hunter quickly and bring them in, securing what intel they had managed to find.  They gave her the coordinates of the Guardian’s transmission, but it was only a starting point.  She would have to follow any trail of them from there.

She left by midday, armed with a hand cannon and a shotgun, a few flares in her pack, and a long, sturdy rope slung across her chest, and rode fast on her sparrow towards their last known location.  She arrived by nightfall at the entrance of a cave somewhere deep in the mountains of Old Russia.  She hopped off her sparrow as it transmatted away.

“Iris, show me those coords again,” she said as she crouched down at the mouth of the cave.  It was dark and seemed to go on forever.  The light that her Ghost emitted didn’t give her much more work with, either.  The coordinates popped up behind the face of her helmet and she glanced at them briefly.  Compared to their current location… that Guardian was somewhere in the depths of this cave.  There was almost a kilometre between her current location and their last known.  Rose sighed, checked her ammo reserves, and placed a hand over her breastplate as she stood, slender fingers covering Alpha Lupi’s crest.  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

Her first steps into the cave were determined.  At first, there was nothing, everything seemed like it was normal.  She followed the Guardian’s footprints that were just barely recognizable in the dirt.  When she reached the halfway point to the transmission’s location, Hive corruption started to fester and cling to the walls of the cave system.  Rose hated the way it seemed to move and breathe as you went by.

Rose’s footfalls became quiet and cautious the deeper she went in, the closer that she got to the missing Guardian.  She was right on top of their last known coordinates, they were just below her.  Down a dark hole that seemed to lead to nowhere.  She reached into the small pack on her hip and pulled out a flare, ignited it, and dropped it down.  As it fell, she counted the seconds before it hit the ground below.

Five long, quiet seconds before the distinct thunk as it hit the bottom.

“Iris,” she whispered.  “Be ready to light my spark in case this hurts more than I think it’s going to.”

“Why?”  The Ghost sounded so worried as Rose stood up, pulled off the long rope that was slung across her chest, and tied one end around a sturdy rock.  “Are you insane?”

“Only way to find that Guardian is to go down.  And that’s a long fall.”  Rose tossed the rope down the hole then cracked her knuckles and did a few side lunges to stretch her legs.

“Why don’t you just climb down like a sensible human?”

“Iris, we are running out of time.  Stand-by for resurrection.  Just in case.”  Before her Ghost could continue to try and argue, Rose jumped down the hole.  She hit the bottom hard and tucked herself inward, rolling to the side to try and break the fall.  She moaned in pain from the impact.  She felt like she had shattered her ankles, but she could stand up just fine.  Rose walked over to the rope that was dangling behind her and gave it a firm tug, satisfied that it didn’t come loose.  

Iris appeared by her side.  “You’re an idiot,” the Ghost sighed.

“I dunno, I think I stuck that landing pretty well,”  Rose laughed quietly.  “Now focus.  That Guardian has to be around here somewhere…”

The hole they fell down led into a completely new area of the cave system, this chamber was wide open and damp, but there was more Hive corruption here than what she’d seen above her.  The Hunter cloaked herself and turned invisible as she scoured the room for that Guardian and looked for any other offshoots of the cave that they could have gone to hide in.

Rose felt her stomach lurch when she found their corpse, bloody and mangled by the Hive that likely overwhelmed them.  Their Ghost was in their hand, dead as well, drained of its Light.  Her invisibility faded as she crouched down beside their body as her Ghost hovered over and examined them.  There was a pile of empty magazines on the ground.  They spent every last bullet trying to survive.  Rose closed her eyes.

“COD was a single GSW, just underneath the thoracic cavity.”  

“A gunshot wound?”  Rose was astounded by that conclusion.  She looked over at the wound; it was torn around the edges.  She’d never seen any bullet make a hole in someone like this before.  It completely ripped through the flesh with a strange, jagged edge that curled around the outside of it.  “Are you sure?  What kind of gun are we talking about, Iris?”

“I don’t know… It’s not like any wound I’ve seen before.  Guardian… look at this…”

Iris’s light flicked over to their hand.  The Hunter shifted closer and tilted her head with curiosity.  A single, black petaled rose was perfectly tucked in their hand underneath the dead Ghost, clutched in their fingers.  Rose reached over and gently picked up their Ghost, then picked up the bloom just as carefully.  She examined the petals underneath the light from her Ghost.  They were black like the midnight sky and fragile, and dipped in the victim’s blood.

She felt sick to her stomach, but she didn’t know if it was from the smell of the Guardian’s corpse, or if she felt sick from the blood that dripped from the rose onto her fingers.  She closed her eyes and pressed the back of her hand against her helmet, as if she was covering her mouth, and swallowed down the bile that rose to the back of her throat. 

Out of nowhere, a low chittering.  Her head shot up and she stood, rose and the deceased’s Ghost in her hands.   She recognized that low rattle, it sounded like teeth grinding and chattering with a low groan that hissed through the silence.  The Hive were coming, and they could smell her Light.

“Iris, to me,” she said as she started to walk away from the corpse.  She tucked the Ghost and the rose into the pack on her hip.  “We need to get out of here.”  Her Ghost flew over to her quickly and disappeared.  Rose ran over to the dangling rope, jumped into the air and grabbed hold as the chatter grew louder and screams started to echo through the chamber.  She climbed up the rope and pulled herself up, her feet caught the sides of the hole to give herself some leverage.  She pulled herself over the ledge and started to run, her footfalls echoing off the stone walls.  The chittering started to grow louder and louder as Thrall filled the cave behind her.

“C’mon, Rose,”  she muttered to herself as the Thrall started to catch up.  “C’mon.”  Arc Light started to dance around her body, it spread up her arms and her legs as two blades formed in her hands.  Her speed hastened and she cut through any and all Hive that got in her way.  Black blood from their bodies splattered her armor and cloak.  As she neared the cave’s entrance and the light of day started to illuminate the tunnel, the Thrall started to back off.  It was just after dawn when she stepped into the light.

Her legs were sore from sprinting for so long, her pulse was thumping hard in her carotid and sweat slipped down her spine.  She summoned her sparrow and sat down on it to rest, pressed her fingers on the release for her helmet, and air hissed as the pressure released.  She pulled the helmet off and placed it on the hood of her sparrow.  Rose leaned back on the seat, trying to get her breathing under control.

“You alright, Guardian?”  Iris asked as she materialized out of thin air.  “You’re blood pressure is really high.”

Rose turned towards her Ghost and narrowed her eyes.  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, I just climbed out a hole and ran for my life from a horde of Thrall, no biggie.”  Her eyes rolled as she reached into her pack and pulled out the dead Ghost.  She grimaced at the sight of it, now that she was in some better lighting.  It’s shell was all beaten up and it’s Light was gone.  “I need to notify the Vanguard that their scout was murdered,” she sighed.  She slid the Ghost back into the safety of her satchel then slid her helmet back on her head.  “C’mon.  Let’s head to the Tower.”  She leaned forward, grabbed the controls of her sparrow, and punched the throttle.  After a wide turn around through the trees, she headed off for the Last City.

She gave the report when she arrived.  Every gruesome detail.  She placed Ghost on the table.  Hopefully the Vanguard could get any of the information they needed, but Rose advised against sending a strike team down there.  Their numbers down in that cavern were astounding.  She blamed herself for not getting there in time.  Maybe if she had been faster, she could have saved them before they ran out of bullets.

When she told them about the rose, she saw all of their shoulders tense up.  Ikora was the first one to turn to her.

“Rose…”  The Warlock Vanguard sighed.  “There was nothing you could do.  They were likely dead before we even assigned you the extraction.”

“Who did this?”  Rose asked, her voice was tense with frustration.  Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.  “You say that like you know who’s responsible for all of these unexplained deaths and disappearances.  Who is doing this to us, Master Rey?”

“We don’t know who they are, Rose,”  Ikora said firmly.  “Nor do we know their motive.  We just know that they are out there, and that they will not stop.  Several of my Hidden are trying to track them down.  Please, do not worry yourself with this.”

Rose’s entire body went rigid as her muscles tensed with anger.  “‘Don’t worry myself with this’?  Are you actually telling me not to worry about someone who is out there, killing guardians for sport?!  Most of the people who have gone missing are scouts, Ikora!  Do you really think that I shouldn’t be worried about it?”

“If you wish to step down from your position, we would—”  Zavala started.

The Hunter slammed her fist on the table.  “Like hell I’m going to step down!”  She snapped.

“Easy there, Rose,” Cayde butt in before she could start cursing out the Vanguard Commander.  He turned to the Titan adjacent to him.  “She’s the best scout I got, Zavala... maybe we could—”

The Titan shook his head.  “Absolutely not.  I won’t put any more of your scouts at risk, Cayde, we can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

“If anyone could find this guy, it’s Ikhnaie!  She earned the name for good reason!”  Cayde exclaimed.  He turned back to Rose.  “If you’re up for the job, of course.  I don’t need to tell you about the risks, you already know them.”

Rose placed her hands flat on the table and looked at the dead Ghost that was between them.  Cayde was right.  She was the only one who was uniquely skilled with tracking.  And she had the rose to go off of.  Evidence that was so uniquely theirs, she could follow similar signs.   Look for patterns in the deaths and disappearances.  But it was dangerous.  Even if she found them, there was no telling if she could get out alive.  She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath.

“When do I start?”

masterlist

[pandawritespoorly]

A Shy ‘Sparrow’: Chapter 4 - Changes

@starpony999

Author’s Note: Eyy, it's been a while hasn't it? Well here I am! With a new chapter too! I've written more for this story, and I'm getting a better idea of how long it'll be, so I might change the chapter count to a rough estimate once I've posted this.

Chapter Summary: The side effects of a broken miraculous are beginning to catch up with Marinette.

First | Previous | ???

A month since Alya posted that picture, and things aren’t going well. The amount of attacks has almost doubled, and Marinette can’t help but feel that Hawkmoth is targeting her.

If he is, it’s working, because she’s been getting worse, fast.

Alya now shows up at the bakery to walk with her to school each day, because no one wants her to faint in the middle of the street. If Alya is absent, then Adrien or Nino will come to get her.

Her parents have been sending her to a doctor for a while now. She was prescribed something a week ago, and it’ll be starting to take effect properly around… today, actually.

She and Alya arrive at school together as usual. What isn’t usual is that for whatever reason, the school’s population is buzzing in excitement about some girl who transferred in.

“Well, she sounds interesting…” Alya remarks, unsure. The stories seem off somehow.

Marinette hums. She’s not sure about this new girl either.

Her classmates are gathered around a desk in the front. Not tightly, just all facing that way and closer than they normally would be.

“...my sprained wrist hasn’t healed properly, because- Oh! Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Well, I guess you all seem pretty trustworthy,” the girl looks around carefully. She’s dressed in a gray romper with an orange jacket. Her hair is tied into two ponytails in the front. They resemble sausages more than anything.

It’s certainly a… unique look.

“See, I’m actually Sparrow! Chat and I are dating- Oops! We didn’t want that to be public ye-”

“I don’t believe you,” Marinette cuts in. Another wave of dizziness passes over her, and she clutches at Alya gently, swaying.

Crocodile tears come to the girl’s eyes, “H-how c-c-could you say th-that? I work so much for th-this c-c-city, and this i-i-is the th-thanks I get?” Marinette collapses, falling to the floor. Her classmates gasp, and several rush to help her.

“Oh, so now she’s pretending t-to be sick so that y-you’ll all believe her-” New Girl sneers.

Everyone falls silent, processing what the new girl said.

“What,” Adrien snarls. She pales, but attempts to continue.

“W-well, she c-c-clearly is jealous, and is tr-trying to discredit me, and is looking for sympathy p-points by pretending to-”

“Oh, shut it!” Alya snaps, “Mari has been sick for weeks. I have to walk her to school everyday so that she doesn’t collapse in the street, and just because she didn’t believe your frankly outlandish tall tales, you’re saying that she’s faking it?”

“W-well no-”

“Really? Because that’s what it sounded like to me,” Adrien growls.

“I sh-should go. Jag-”

“Just leave.” Nino glares, “You aren’t welcome here.”

The girl makes her escape, and the class turns their full attention on their favorite pigtailed designer.

Max is muttering medical statistics to Rose and Juleka who are doing their best to revive her. Soon enough, she stirs, putting a hand to her head and groaning.

Both girls hug her, and Max sighs in relief.

“Maybe you should head home, Mari…” Alya hugs her.

“No, I’ll just go to the nurse first, if I need to go home, I’ll call Maman or Papa.” Marinette suggests, “You shouldn’t miss class.”

“Alright…”

After everyone wishes her well and she makes her way to the nurse. Of course, then she hears the sounds of an attack.

No break for her, huh?

Hurrying out the door of the school, she ducks into an alley to transform.

“Duusu, Spread My Feathers!”

Instead of the usual warm calming feeling of magic washing over her, it feels like searing fire. Every bone feels like it’s splintering and her muscles tense. She’s stumbling, but that is barely registered amidst the tidal wave of pain she is drowning in. She coughs, choking on nothing as her throat struggles to function.

Her back hits a wall, and she slides to the ground, falling until she’s nothing but a limp body on the ground, spasming occasionally.

She needs to detransform. She needs to detransform right this second.

Just thinking takes immense effort, so talking is out of the question. She’s relieved when she registers the sound of beeping from far, far away.

A voice echoes around her, something blue flying around above her, mumbling about medication.

“Wha’?” Nothing is coming into focus, but at least the pain is fading, even if she feels sore and utterly exhausted,

“I- I didn’t want to say anything, because it wasn’t completely certain to happen, but often, magic doesn’t mix well with medicine…” the blue thing chirps.

Kwami, she can barely understand French words, let alone identify… anything.

“Wha’?” Everything is swimming again, she still can’t move properly.

The blue thing rushes towards her - hiding, she thinks - as something dark lands in the alley.

“Good Kwami, what happened to you Ma- Miss?”

The dark thing crouches near her, and she does her best to repeat the blue thing’s - Duusu’s - words.

“...medzz...bad..reacshhun…” she manages.

“You had a bad reaction to your medication.” He - Chat Noir - repeats, looking for clarification.

She nods almost imperceptibly, trying to move upright but instead finds that her arms give out and she returns to the ground.

“I can take you home.” Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “Uh, where do you live?”

Marinette does her best to mumble ‘bakery’ and hopes she gets the message across properly. She’s entirely spent.

Chat Noir picks her up as gently as possible, and hurries to get her home without jostling her too much. He hands her off to her parents, doing his best to explain what she’d told him.

They nod, and her Papa takes her to bed while Maman calls the doctor. It doesn’t take long for her to give in to the exhaustion, falling into a restless sleep.

She wakes up a few hours later, feeling weak and tired.

“Duusu?” She croaks. The Kwami immediately flies up to her, looking relieved that she’s awake.

“Marinette! How are you feeling?” She’s uncharacteristically uncomposed, flitting around distractedly looking over her holder.

“Just… really tired. My head hurts, I’m kind of sore…?” She holds her head, staring off in space until something occurs to her. “The akuma! I can’t leave Chat alone!”

She stands quickly trying to get to her balcony, only to fall back onto her bed, feeling shaky.

“Marinette, that was hours ago. You aren’t well.”

“What happened?” She can’t really remember anything past transforming.

“It- I’m sorry. The miraculous uses some of your energy to transform, usually it wouldn’t be noticable, but… it’s broken. It’s trying to use your energy to heal itself, but that’s not going to work. The medication blocked that, but by transforming, you forcibly went against that… so it didn’t end well. My last chosen-” Duusu’s voice cracks, and she tears up, “Oh, Emilie, my poor little peachick…”

She shakes herself out of her mind after a moment, “Since you are younger, there was a chance that the medication wouldn’t have done anything, maybe even help, so I didn’t want to worry you…”

Marinette sighs. “It’s alright Duusu, it’s not your fault the brooch is cracked. Though, maybe I should be trying to fix it. How can I do that?”

Duusu pauses to think. This girl has proven to be very capable, and is certainly responsible. She’s ready to know about the Guardian.

“There’s a Guardian of the miraculous. They are responsible for taking care of and protecting the miraculouses. He is in Paris, that much I am sure of. He is the one who gave Chat Noir his miraculous, and he is in possession of Tikki. Together, they would be able to fix it.”

“Great!” Marinette cheers, “So just tell Chat I need to see the guardian?”

“...no. The Guardian is meant to stay a secret and it’s possible that Chat does not even know of their existence. If you were to out them, it would not look good for you. If Chat does know, he’s probably doing his best to protect him as well, given Hawkmoth’s goal. Telling him that you have to meet with the Guardian and Tikki? It wouldn’t be a good look.”

“Especially after I missed an attack…”

Duusu nods regretfully.

“Can I make sentimonsters for searching? To try and track him down?”

“I suppose. Depending on which Kwami they are the holder of it may not be as effective, but there’s no way of telling.”

---

The peahen heroine is transformed, out on patrol. Her sentimonster already healed the minimal damage from the attack. She’d rested enough earlier that she feels comfortable making another.

Touching another amok to her brooch, she allows the sentimonster to take shape. A dark crow forms in front of her, waiting for instruction.

She holds her hands out to let it rest. “Find the Guardian. Find Tikki. That’s all. Do your best,” she whispers, kissing its forehead and letting it fly away.

A Cat hero in the shadows hears the words and frowns.

That’s not right.

---

Author’s Note: Crows are predators to turtles, you know.

Did I come up with some magical nonsense as to why Marinette can't use medication for the sake of angst? Yes. Yes I did.

This story might be moving faster than you were expecting, but I never intended for it to be as long as With Time. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

Stay safe, and have a wonderful day and night! ☀️🌙

[california-raccoon]

eye's on the sparrow

He just stares at her, like he’d been wishing for his mom but she appeared instead. This belief - in wishing, in divine intervention, in fate - is probably the reason why he chooses to believe in her. BLEACH / AU / ICHIRUKI • [PART 1/?]

A/N: It figures my first official attempt at fanfic is gonna be for this old ship in the wildest year 2020. Apologies in advance because I am no writer, but like a kid messing around in a kitchen, I hope you enjoy it anyway. Bone apple teeths, my dudes.

——————

I.

The first time she meets him, he’s by himself on the side of the road. He isn’t doing much of anything, just a lot of crying, same as that day his mother died. Rukia wasn’t there to see it happen, but she saw the officers and the cars all hovered around the scene in the aftermath, a pop of bright yellow about her height wailing like a siren. 

For all of her seven years of living, she is precocious enough to understand death and loss, but when she greets him weeks later, she has no kid gloves to treat him with, just her bare-knuckled fists knocking into his shoulders. He loses his balance among other things, face no longer crunched together in tears but spread wide with shock. 

“What’s wrong?” says she, without any hint of sympathy. The boy offers her nothing in response. His hand is on the pavement, catching himself.

He just stares at her, like he’d been wishing for his mom but she appeared instead. This belief - in wishing, in divine intervention, in fate - is probably the reason why he chooses to believe in her. He swallows his tears long enough to tell her “I lost my mom here,” with a glint of hope in his eyes as if she could find her for him.

“Was she pretty?” Is all Rukia asks, trying to imagine her, and the boy cracks a smile.

“The prettiest. She made the best blueberry pancakes for breakfast and held my hand while we walked. I was supposed to protect her… but,” The boy chokes, big drops forming on the sides of his eyes.

“Just… don’t forget her.”

The boy gulps at this, not really understanding but nodding anyway. Maybe it’s Rukia’s imagination of his mother now in her mind, as pretty and warm as the sunshine, smelling like pancakes and blueberries, that causes her to reflect. She squats down next to him with a frown on her face.

“You’re lucky, I don’t have a mother to remember.” Rukia says, “So whatever you do, don’t forget her.” 

He looks up at her then, eyes as big as saucers, and she helps him up to his feet. They say nothing else in the exchange, but he keeps looking at her, so she ruffles his hair to make him stop. She likes that she’s a little taller than him that she can do that; the other boys she knows are older and too tall for her fingers and fists to reach.

When she sees him the next day, he isn’t crying anymore but he talks. About little things, at first. A lot of stories about his mom, so he won’t forget. How she warmed the room with her presence, could peel apple skins in one long strip and loved reading books about funny English plays. As the days go on, it mixes with stories of things he’s learned in school, or his classmate in karate who he can never seem to beat. Rukia listens. They walk together down the road on his way home.

“Where do you live?” he asks one day, between showing her this new Pokemon card he’d traded Mizuiro during recess. It’s another rainy afternoon, but he’s okay, and they’re sharing his umbrella on the road home.

“Up that hill over there,” she says, pointing past the street they’re on. 

“That’s pretty far. You can take my umbrella with you; I live right here.” The boy exclaims, stopping right in front of a family clinic. There’s a chipper smile on his face as he hands her the umbrella to hold.

She doesn’t really know what to think, the gesture unusual to her, but she takes it with a small thanks before parting ways.

 -

II.

Ichigo is six the first time he invites a girl over to his house. He doesn’t really know her name, nor does he know much of anything about her, now that he thinks about it, but they somehow walk home together every day and he’s happy for the company of his new friend.

She doesn’t accept at first, but once she manages to sneak up to his window by climbing the adjacent tree, it’s as if she’s always been there. He shares his manga and his favorite snacks and teaches her how to play Pokemon among his growing collection of cards. She’ll stay over an hour after sunset, the pair of them reading and laughing until he has to head down for dinner, and she’ll leave the way she came. If his dad is wise to the situation, Ichigo doesn’t really know, but the man is all too happy to give him extra snacks to carry into his room whenever he asks.

On one weekend Ichigo finds himself packed in with his sisters in the car, dad behind the wheel with a list of things to buy and the promise of candy and ice cream at the end of the day if they behave. When they pass the hill, all he sees are lush forest greens and the Torii that pokes its head among the body of stairs. There are no houses, so he asks where they are.

“There are no houses there, son. Just the orphanage near the Shinto shrine.” His dad answers with unexpected gravity. 

Ichigo says nothing in response to this, but he looks up what an orphanage is later in the dictionary once they get home, remembers the girl with no mother and cries.

He notices it, seeing her again on his way home from karate. She usually comes up to meet him from the river, playing by herself. Her clothes are a little too big on her, waiting to grow into them like the hand-me-downs his sisters complain about.

He can’t really bring himself to say anything to her, though he really wants to. It’s on the tip of his tongue, to tell her that he knows, but he never gets the chance to because they’re home before he realizes it and the door bursts open just as soon as he gathers the courage to speak.

“Welcome home, Ichigo!” His dad surprises him outside their doors just as they’ve arrived. There’s a sly look on his eye that Ichigo is too young to decipher, but he feels as if some secret’s been found out when his dad turns to the person frozen in place next to him.

“And who is this young lady accompanying my son home today?” 

Ichigo’s mind is racing to respond but he can’t find a simple answer. Static bubbles out of him instead in stammers and incoherent half-words that only stop when she says her name.

“Rukia,” his dad repeats with gentlemanly charm. “Thank you for keeping an eye out for my son. Come in and stay for dinner.”

His dad figures out everything but he’s surprisingly lenient about it. She’s allowed to stay as she wishes, for snacks, for games, as long as she heads back before nightfall. The terms are fair, especially with the long summer days ahead of them, and sometimes his dad will leave work ahead of schedule so they can have earlier dinners with her as their guest.

It’s how most of Ichigo’s summer unfolds: him, his sisters, and Rukia eating dinners together, watching tv and playing video games. Her drawings of bears and rabbits mix with Yuzu and Karin’s on the refrigerator. The newness of having her over gives the family something to talk about, and they welcome her openly. The rest of the days are a haze of laughs and pixelated dungeons where they save princesses. 

“Why do you always play by the river?” Ichigo asks her one afternoon. The question stops her in her tracks, thrown off by the question. They’re on the way home, the usual babble of the river filling her sudden silence. She’d been talking to him about her strategy to defeat the boss at the Fire Temple. He’s a little guilty he wasn’t paying attention.

“My friend Renji was adopted a week before I met you,” she tells him. “We used to sneak out and play by the river all the time before he went away.”

“Will you go away too when you get adopted?” 

“I don’t know. Probably.” She shrugs, but her fingers are tightly wound like the first day they met.

Later that night after she leaves, Ichigo tugs on the bottom of his dads shirt as he’s putting away the last of the clean dishes and stares up at him.

“Can’t we adopt her?” He chokes out, vision wet and blurry as he says it because he already knows the answer.

His dad sighs, picking him up by his armpits, and suddenly he’s four years old again, crying on the kitchen counter. Ichigo is surprised to find himself tightly wound in his dads arms, a hug so warm and sincere he thinks he could choke if he doesn’t remember to breathe.

“Sorry, kiddo.” His dad ruffles his hair when they pull apart, and looking up at him, his eyes look wet too. 

The last of his summer is a countdown till it finally happens. It’s a normal sunny afternoon walking back from karate. He lingers over the view of the river before walking home alone for the first time in months. There’s a pit in his stomach that he ignores and he mostly sulks in his room the rest of the evening.

She shows up two days later with a big smile on her face that he’s never seen. He knows before she even says it.

Her smile is so big it eclipses the frown that threatens to show on his face because the more he listens to her, the happier he genuinely feels for her. A young couple from Tokyo, and the woman is warm and sunny just like any mother should be, she says. 

“The man isn’t as goofy as your dad, but he seems nice… I’m moving with them to Tokyo this week once the papers are signed.”

The mention of the move makes her nervous, the only other emotion she’s expressed in her retelling of the past two days. They spend the rest of the afternoon on his father’s computer looking up pictures of Tokyo, then find a map in the garage to see how far it is from Karakura.

On her last day, Ichigo and his dad go out to buy a small bouquet of flowers in congratulations, and they snap a photo together along with his sisters, who are hugging her in a fond embrace. 

“Write to me,” he says with a grin, hand stuffed in his pockets, suddenly feeling too cool for goodbyes. She ignores it completely and gives him a fierce hug.

“Of course.” She laughs at him, then punches him fondly on the shoulder for good measure. “Thanks, Ichigo.”

The words throw him off, the first time she’s ever called him by name, and he tries hers in kind. 

“See ya later, Rukia.”

They write to each other the way pen pals do, in a pattern of energetic bursts of conversation between the pauses of closing signatures that grow wider until their lives fill with classes, exams, friends and families. The letters stop coming at the end of the year.

[PART 2 → ]

[frstbiitten]

cw: blood, death, gore

Not a week has passed and she already felt that the world was stagnating her, observed the cracked streets with tired eyes, the others forgot that part of her world existed, and also the universe forgot about her sorrows. She stared at the cigarette smoke with some appreciation, what would it be like to fill her lungs with that toxic cloud? Frost saw it rise to the lights of the brothel, it had become just another resident, one of the rats that walk between the feet of the customers, ignores the dangerous steps of heels like knives, and takes the food to its nest.

Jasper was the one who gave the idea in the beginning. Sometimes she felt compelled to visit this temple not so far away and pray to the Elder Gods, never expected answers from them, she didn't expect anything, but it soothed her soul for a few days or weeks until she found it necessary to return. Frost knew well which place they would visit; she had already been there many times. Faith seems to turn blind the ignorants, or so she thought long ago, didn't think this way about Jasper, she didn't want to think this way about her.

Her intentions were always good, even though she sensed she was surrounded by snakes and whatever sinful creature was at her side, under or over her, this was her way of "purifying herself". They arrived at a temple of a structure somewhat standard for the rest of the buildings, the neighborhood had changed to one that was more or less stable, there were gardens with flowers of hundreds of colors, families enjoying the outdoors, teenagers playing or listening to music. That scenario filled Frost with envy, not a light one, but a very toxic one, even though they were constantly ignored, nobody in the neighborhood noticed them, for them they are ghosts. The sacred building was located behind a gate with vines, there was an unbearable smell of summer flora as if it was the last day they would see the sun. A path of stones guided them to that structure that seemed to be alive, with a glass that looked like an enormous flower on top; it was not a colored glass but one that dispersed the light, broke it, and turned it into a soft rainbow.

The smell of incense and sandalwood was the welcome card, silent and almost dark even though the light came to gently touch the marble floor. And speaking of marble, a slightly greenish stone rose from the floor on the wall like a tree with dry branches, it reached the curved ceiling, one could hear a fountain at the other end, sharp stones and flowers coexisted, light and darkness coexisted. Wooden seats and glass and glossy stone statuettes. There was no one else there except for the gentle sound of a broom, a lady bent over to remove the dust that formed with the hours that passed inside of the temple. "From dust, you come, and into dust, you shall return." She couldn't ignore this saying, much less if one day she lost a fight, would she be dismembered before placing her shattered body in a garbage bag for the rats, or would her body be set on fire so that the heat of hell would consume her first?

Jasper pointed with one of his index fingers, never noticing how bony they were, her gaze fixed on a small wooden cubicle from which incense smoke was emanating and forming a cloud above. "There you can tell a priest your sorrows, that you feel you have done wrong, she will say nothing to anyone, for no one knows who they are."

"I know, I have come here before... many years ago." Frost decided to focus on something less threatening than a cubicle against the wall from which there seemed to be no one inside, but there was something inside, more like someone.

"Oh, I thought you didn't believe in heavenly beings." They both approached it, there was someone else inside, they couldn't hear what he was saying, just a muffled murmur through the thick wooden walls.

"I used to do it."

The cubicle opened, an old man came out, walked with a cane, and greeted them the best he could. He was a grandfather who was slowly dying with the days, coughing on his way out, so here they come the desperate ones too, those who see the road end.

The idea of going in doesn't seem like a tempting idea for Frost, to go in and tell your secrets to a stranger, and even though Frost was surrounded by people she barely knew well. She simply shook her head, and at that signal, Jasper entered the wooden cubicle, leaving Frost alone with the echo of the temple.

She remembered it, the offerings of flowers and bread with sparrow feathers and little stones, she remembered the soft fall of the silver coins towards the bottom of the fountain, she approached the fountain that ended up resembling an empty pond, only heard the murmur of the water flowing between the stones and the roots. The statues of the Elder Gods were not as imposing as the place where they stayed, they seemed calm, sitting as if they were meditating with their eyes closed. Was it a metaphor about them? That no matter how much you make offerings to them they will never see you? She had a grudge against these false idols, their innocence, and wasted time while leaving thoughtless offerings on an empty stomach. Frost was young and ignorant, perhaps she still was, but she knew what to believe and what not to believe.

Heard Jasper leave the cubicle, looking calmer than before as if she had been lightly sedated and her eyelids were heavy. But she was awake, only her eyes looked swollen, reddish, her veins were visible, had she been crying? It was probable.

She was silent for a long time until they arrived at her apartment, Jasper desired to lie down a bit, recharge her energy before the night. Frost didn't know if it was a good idea to stay with her, but she hadn't said anything about her leaving. She seemed to be in a strange trance as if her eyesight had become blurred and could only look straight ahead the whole time. Sat down in a somewhat old armchair near one of the windows, Frost didn't know what to do, whether to touch her shoulder or leave her, the first option was the most feasible for her. Approached her without any intention of scaring her, cooled his fingers a bit and reached for her shoulder, reacted with a deep breath, her eyes distressed and red. Jasper took her hand and got up from the chair.

"Jasper? What is happening? Are you okay?" Frost was almost as disoriented as she was, having no idea what had just happened.

"Can you... Can you stay with me for today? I can lend you some clothes for later, you can use the bathroom if you want, sleep for a while, whatever you want? But please stay with me, just for today."

"Yes, of course, I have nothing to do today."

************************************

Night had fallen, this time Frost had the opportunity to wear some of Jasper's clothes, a sleeveless blouse that looked like red velvet (although it wasn't, as much as she wanted to) and some dark jeans with boots and her hair braided for the very first time in years. Maybe Jasper had gotten excited with the makeup and hairstyle, the blue eyes of the cryomancer were adorned by red and black shadow, the lips were dark red, maybe Jasper had gotten excited a lot. Although the two seemed to be in stark contrast to each other, Frost felt a little uncomfortable at first, hiding in their break rooms. 

That night she was a little more daring, passing through the corridors, observing the details of the environment around her, the faint red and pink lights inviting sin, the cigarette smoke coming off the lips of strangers, the expensive perfume, the sound of the heels. She didn't belong to this world, although she felt some connection with these women. Why do they do this? Some like it, others don't. Frost certainly liked winning a fight, venting her anger, being the center of the world's attention while opening wounds. Others, no, others didn't like the world that they are forced to live in.

Her feet were leading her to the entrance, actually, to the main hall, it was a rather interesting place, the lights were moving and changing colors erratically, the music was filling her ears and seemed to be stirring her body, there was a catwalk included, but there was no one on it at that moment, later there would be some of the girls dancing on the pole. Frost went down some stairs straight into the midst of strangers, didn't know which song was playing at that moment, but the blue and green of the spotlights predominated. What could she do here? Wasn't in the mood to dance, even though all this crowd was dancing, rubbing their bodies against others, she felt the weight of a look from the shadows. 

She was a lightweight if she didn't concentrate enough, observed between people, would anyone see her? The short hairs behind her neck stood up, it wasn't the cold of her body, it was that gaze fixed on her. But the one she did find in the crowd was Jasper, who seemed to be quiet among so many people, Frost made her way to her, touching her shoulder to attract her attention.

"Do you feel better now?" Because of the noise of the music, she had to exaggerate the movement of her lips so she could read them.

"Yes, I'm better now." She spoke with a smile, her eyelids shone with a pale rose and gold, glossy lips and wavy hair, it seemed that time and sweat did not affect her, but it gave this divine soft aura around her, for some reason, made Frost feel safe around her.

"Well, but, I have something to tell you, I think someone is watching me."

Mentioning that, Jasper looked to the sides, a determined glance at different directions and she couldn't see anyone staring at them, not in her world, she was always the one who was watching.

"Do you want me to call you a cab?"

It was an exhausting and long moment, seconds that were striving to turn into hours, she couldn't answer her in time, simply nodded her head but she had already forgotten about the question when those seconds returned to their normal course. Her eyelids were stained with violent red, part of her neck, and even her chest was painted with such horrific color. Frost heard screams too, they weren't hers but came from different directions around her being, as Frost hadn't said anything. Had Jasper collapsed on the dancefloor, a hole in the side of her neck from which hot blood was gushing out like a volcano that had just erupted. Her only reaction at that moment was to see the exit of the building, heard the door slam and without thinking it twice, she ran in that direction. There was no moon that night, the boots were not the best to run after an elusive stranger who took advantage of the darkness and architecture of the neighborhood.

Jumping over garbage bags, stairs, and walls of asphalt and bricks, he was very agile but not stealthy. It didn't take long for Frost's eyes to give off that glow of fury on her way to meet the stranger. The smell of sweat and gunpowder was wafting off, her instinct prompting her to throw an ice ball the size of her hand in the direction of his feet before he could get out of a passage between two buildings. That was enough to make him stumble, listening as his body collapsed on garbage bags, glass bottles broke under his back, plastic folded, and even rats came out of their hiding empty-handed. She could see the fear creeping down his cheeks in the form of tears and sweat, trying to become one with the wall waiting for it to hide him from that girl approaching from the darkness with her eyes turned in a strange and deadly glow.

"Why did you ki-"

"She didn't have to die, she had nothing to do with it!" The man let go as he hugged his icy leg, he could see the ice piercing his skin and growing to his knee with a devouring intention. "It was you... you had to die tonight!"

"... Who sent you, was it Lewis? Are you a Black Dragon? ANSWER ME!!" Her voice seemed to have as much effect on him as the ice. Did he know he was going to die tonight? Frost soon used one of her cold hands to press on his neck, heard the exact moment the man started to pee himself and tremble -either by the fear or the cold-, the smell didn't bother her completely, it was the fact that he was still alive. 

He didn't say anything, obviously out of fear, but he nodded his head a couple of times, that was enough for her. He was going to die sooner or later, Frost's hands had already done enough and the man had lost the energy in his body, and suddenly, it was it, his soul was gone forever from his body. Could it be a heart attack? The girl's eyes returned to normal, she should have been the victim but Jasper ended up paying the price for a stupid mistake. One less innocent person and Lewis was still playing around with her patience. It was better to go back to the others, could hear the police sirens approaching.

[cutegirlmayra]

Lavinya the Red Fox’s part in Soler’s story

This is for @solerwolf21​‘s story, where he was wondering if I’d let Lavinya have a cameo for it!

Here’s the scenario he gave me for my Sonic OC (Who is OP and basically Genie-like from Aladdin. Just a jester, comedy relief character to be honest, but as brilliant as Jack Sparrow’s accidental tomfoolery)

Our chat: 

solerwolf21 : Alright if your down theres two the first is like an intro to the character if you want but basically shes doing some task around the base (leave that up you) and she's about to bite it in doing the task but Soler comes to help her and we learn that they know each other (this definitely isn't the first time he's helped her)

The second is later on Shay escapes and Soler, Shadow and Sally are late to get there but someone is distracting him turns out is its our girly (again you can go nuts with whatever it is shes doing) but before Shay could get in a hit Soler comes in for the save again and though he tries to scold her slightly she feels she's saved the day (which she sorta did lol)

cutegirlmayra : Lol sounds legit how Lavinya behaves lol My first idea is that he's trying to get past her and she slams her hand into the wall to block him and looks up like, "Hey, you're hot." and he's like really confused. "I didn't say that out loud." And he's like, "Are you an idiot?" and she goes, "Wow, but you said that out loud." lolololol

I wrote this immediately after:

First part:

It wasn’t long before the base was trying to recover, and work continued with only a minor set of hiccups…

“HYUK!” A red fox with strange blonde hair suddenly flung her back up from bending over to collect some files out of a cabinet. “Hyuk! Hyuk!” she seemed to have hiccups, and looked around for some water.

Not finding any, her tails suddenly shot her back and made her jolt towards what looked like a corner. “Ow! Hey!” the tail, as though having a mind of its own, felt around a moment before finding a cooler and began to pour a drink.

When it presented the drink to her, she sighed in relief, “HYUK!” she quickly took the cup and drank down the water, holding her breath to try and get rid of the hiccups while the tail seemed to ‘shake it’s head’ at her stupidity to even manage her own life.

“Office work…” she plugged her mouth to not hiccup, when nothing came out, she slowly opened the hand like a barn door… looked down to her mouth to wait… and then continued, “Isn’t really my forte…”

She was startled again when Soler walked by, seeming troubled and maybe focused on staying lost in his thoughts before his foot crinkled a piece of paper in his speedy walk.

“Huh?” He bent down and picked up the paper, amazed by it’s importance before examining the rest of the room. “Why are all these documents scattered everywhere?” He must have thought they were still being ransacked, so the Red fox girl quickly ran over to aid him.

“N-no-no! It’s just a light hurricane of hiccups.” She wagged her hands out in front of her as though to calm him, but he thought she was speaking metaphorically and sighed.

“Lavinya… why is it there’s always a hurricane of something when it comes to you?” He helped her picked up the papers, “You’re more suited for something where you can move around… maybe not something as delicate as… paperwork organizing.” he looked at the crinkled pieces of important papers and sighed again, ‘Who put her up to this anyway?’

“Hehe… yeah… well,... my portal hopping and poofing doesn’t exactly suit well with the princess…” She gulped, feeling her nicely cooled throat by the cold water as she did so. “They say I’m too dangerously unstable for a mission…. Since I could compromise things, and I’m not too good a messenger since I either forget or lose the message in the process. And last time, my brilliant tape recorder was almost stolen by Eggman’s forces too… soo…. I’m kinda here.” she looked around the office, showing her disdain but also sorrow at being so useless to everyone. “I can’t control my powers… so I can’t really follow directives.” she picked up another paper, and her tail swished to do the same, holding it up to her like a mouth of a creature.

She smiled sweetly and took it, “Anyway, that must be hard to understand, right?”

He looked down, thinking hard about what she said. “Actually? I completely understand.” he flopped the papers down on the desk and walked by her, patting her shoulder. “You’ll master your abilities in time. Keep at it. I know there’s a special word and symbol we can’t say or draw around you, but besides that, you’re kinda impossible to defeat, right?”

“Defeat?” She looked a little offended, “What am I? A monster to you!?”

“Well, you do say your tail is a evil mastermind.” he jokingly pointed to her tail, which at the time, was acting like a normal tail. “Who’s to say you aren’t just covering for your random tendencies to cause trouble?”

“I don’t mean too!” She slammed the papers on the desk and stormed after him. “Hey! Soler! Wait!”

“I’m leaving you in the hurricane.” he waved behind him, smiling slightly at how silly this crazy girl could get, but knew in his heart her circumstances weren’t so far off from his own… except, they were completely different, but the feelings and desires to be enough for others were the same.

----

Situation 2:

Shay flexed through the dust of his latest attack, brushing off the rubble and then cracking his individual fingers, “My poor neck…” He taunted, cracking it before rolling his shoulders as though just coming out of a leisurely spa-day. “Now… where is that charming brother of mine..?” he turned to what looked like an office, room with the wall crumbling away from it. “They don’t just kill themselves, now do they?” he continued to march with a purpose before seeing a blonde but red fox girl stick her head up, trembling, from below a desk.

He smirked, seeing the fear. He gestured for her to slowly withdraw back behind the desk, and her blue eyes just simply blinked at his gesture.

He held a finger up to his mouth as though she should remain silent, and continued towards the door.

However, before he could reach it, she slammed her hand into the wall just before the door, putting her elbow up to loop her hand behind her head, and pretended to seem like she was just chilling there.

She stuck up her lower lip and continued to play it cool… even seeing his eyes… slowly… narrow to a deadly, hostile glare of annoyance.

She thought fast, “You’re hot.” she slipped out, checking him out in a humorous way that was completely faked.

Confused, he just narrowed his eyes and slightly withdrew his neck back at her appalling display. “What did you just say?”

“Nothing out loud, I can assure you.” While her hand was behind her, she silently kept snapping it, waiting for something to randomly happen. A rubber duck poofed in behind her head and landed behind her. As it squeaked about hitting the ground, rolling till it’s head got in the way, he slowly turned to glance down at it, then raise an eyebrow.

“Eh heh, office decor. They say it’s like your home so…” she stopped herself from furthering that awkward sentence…

She kept snapping and many random items fell from behind her. A miniature rowboat, a toy snake, a slinky, a stuffed puppy, before Shay finally had enough of it.

“Are you an idiot?” he grabbed her hand that was--not so secretly--snapping and shoved her back against the door.

“Ow!” she flinched, her eye twitching slightly at the pain. “Well, you said that out loud.”

“I won’t say this again.” He leaned in and softly spoke out such harsh and cruel words, twisting his grip to really tighten and pain her arm further. “Get out of my way, witch.”

Her eyes widened slightly.

She flexed out her hand and fell back through a portal.

Out of surprise, he let her go, amazed as the vortex looked so incredibly pitch-black with other minor colors swirling around that he honestly thought she just did something magical. He felt around the space, unable to see anything, before the red fox girl’s head popped out from the ceiling.

“Yoohoo!” she called and he turned around to blast a Chaos beam at her, but she was already portaling to another spot in the office. She blew a raspberry as he suddenly was playing whack-a-mole with this strange fox girl.

“What kind of power is this!?” he stepped back and slid on the rubber ducky, causing him to fall on the rowboat which blasted a horn. He covered his ear and turned, but that triggered the toy snake which clomped on his nose. “AH!” he jumped up to his knees but the Red Fox girl grabbed the slinky by having her two arms stick out of the portals, making a pretty twisty bow as she locked his legs together.

He tried to get up but stumbled from the horrible knot and fell down again, unable to move much but he did struggle.

As he fell, she removed the soft puppy plushie as his head hit the ground hard, and then proceeded to look at the puppy as though not sure how this would help but started whacking him with it.

The door opened and seeing her friends, she held her hands up and swayed them over her face, “Hurricane~” she teased, knowing only Soler would get the reference.

She had stalled him just long enough, and that was honestly her goal.

“Lavinya…” Sally marveled, seeing him struggling to break the slinky and realizing that her power made it an unordinary slinky. “Did you do this?” she looked at her in awe.

Lavinya flexed like a strong man a few times, her tail joining her, “Well, ah-ha, yeah, I did~” she showed off, “But I was honestly going for a sword…” she deflated herself a bit and let her arms dangle down from her hunched back in front of her. Her head also seemed despondent.

“Hmph, maybe you’re not just a clown after all.” Shadow walked by her, rubbing her head as her entire character changed to sudden glee, and he went to finish the ‘rope-tying’ she had started.

“ENOUGH!” Shay blasted the room with a Chaos Blast that had each of them shoved up against a wall.

“Offph..! He hit the mole…” she joked, even while in pain, and slid to the ground. He was strong enough to finally break the strange alien slinky as the rest of Lavinya’s summoned objects suddenly poofed out of existence once she was hit and fell to the ground.

She gripped her head, and as he grabbed her tail--which mimicked biting him, as though it had regained it’s separate personality from her again--looked as though ready to rip her to shreds.

“I’m not very fond of games…”

“Lavinya!” Soler swung a punch to a--once again--distracted Shay and helped her up. “What did I say about trouble!?”

“Sally… S-Shadow…” Lavinya weakly pointed to them as Shay’s eyes shook.

“Oh no.”

-need more @solerwolf21​? lol it was fun xD- (This is based on my commission I made for him as well.)

I JUST REALIZED THAT THE COOLER WOULD HAVE FLOODED AND THE RUBBER DUCKY SLIP AND FLOATING ALONG THE SLIPPERY FLOOR WOULD HAVE MADE SO MUCH SENSE AND BEEN SO MUCH MORE FUNNY LOLOLOL

Note: My spell check is the WORST on the planet, so if there’s some errors forgive me T-T

[batfam-imagines]

Pregnant Batsis

Request: So we all know how badass Batmom is, but how about a badass, single mother batsis? Maybe she is older or like a year younger than dick, but she took pregnancy and taking care of her baby like a true warrior. How do you think the bat fam will take that?

 A/N: So I don’t know if I quite followed the prompt, but I did my best! I’m a little rusty when it comes to writing! Hope you guys like it!

--

“I have an announcement to make” Glancing around to make sure everyone is paying attention, you focus your attention on Bruce, “I’m pregnant, 22 weeks if what the doctor said is right”

Surprisingly Jason is first one to react, “Are you both healthy? You were literally out on patrol yesterday ...! Why the fuck were you out on patrol if you’re pregnant?!?”

“I just found out for sure this morning, and I’ve only had suspicions for like a week. According to all the scans she took today everything looked fine”

Dick finally seems to get over his shock, “Did you get any pictures? Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Yeah, I did. I’ll show you in a few minutes, Dickie.” Bruce still hasn’t said anything, “B? Are you alright?”

“I assume the father is still in the picture? And that you’ll be resuming Patrol once the child is born? You know how important the Mission is, and even these few months without Sparrow’s presence will put a strain on everyone else”

Tim’s brow furrows, “That’s what you think of? The Mission? Your oldest daughter just told you she was pregnant and all you want to know about is when she’s gonna be back on the street. You can’t even say congratulations?!”

Holding up a hand, you step between everyone, “Calm down. It’s fine, Timmy. B, the father isn’t in the picture anymore. When I told him, I might be pregnant he said that he didn’t want anything to do with me or the baby and said that he would hand over all parental rights when the baby was born, and I’ve already moved into my own apartment. And I didn’t intend to go back to Patrolling full time after the baby. I’ll come out in emergencies, but I was going to have Babs teach me how to man the comms while I’m pregnant.”

“I think that’s a great idea. You can be there if the little tyke needs you, and you can give Babs a break every once a while.” Jason throws you a smirk, “Between us and the girls we’re driving her batty”

“That was terrible, Todd, however having Y/N on communications would be much more preferable to Gordon.” Your youngest brother shifts out from under the arm Dick slings across his shoulders, “I would also very much like to see the pictures of the child”

Sitting down on the large empty couch, all your brothers gather around to look at the various pictures, “We couldn’t find out the gender today, the ultrasound technician said that the baby wasn’t in a good position to tell anything.”

Unfortunately, Bruce doesn’t seem interested in looking at pictures, he just gets up and leaves the room.

--

Two days later there’s a knock on your apartment door. It isn’t any of your brother, because one of the first things they made you promise was to give them 24/7 access to your apartment.

“Y/N, it’s me. Please open the door” Opening the door a crack, you and Bruce lock eyes, “Can I come in? I think we have some things to talk about”

“Just so you know, I told Steph and Cass last night about the baby. Cass did that angry stare thing when I told them about your reaction, and Steph threatened to put itching powder in the Batsuit”

Bruce snorts, “I wouldn’t expect else from Stephanie, and I already got a video-call from Cassandra. She was actually the one to convince me to come here.”

“Because we all know you’re emotionally stunted, and wouldn’t have come here on your own”

“Right” Bruce shifts awkwardly, “Please, Y/N. I realized that the other day could have been handled better”

“Yeah, alright, fine. Come in. Excuse the mess, the boys were over last night, and I haven’t had a chance to clean up”

“It’s fine, I know how much of a mess those boys can make” Bruce glances around at he empty pizza boxes on the counter and the blankets piled on the couch before sitting on the empty side of it.

Taking a seat in the arm chair, you lean forward, “So what did you want to talk about?”

“I wanted to say that I am sorry for the way I reacted the other night when you announced your pregnancy. No matter what you’re my daughter, and I don’t want anything to come between us. This family has enough problems, without me adding another one to it. I don’t want to create another rift between myself and my children, Y/N, especially when there will be a new little one soon. I hope that you can accept my apology, and if you don’t want me in the child’s life, I hope that you will at least let me still contact you”

“Wow, I think that’s the most I’ve heard you talk without yelling in a long time. Of course I want you in mine and the baby’s life, B! I was hoping you’d get your head out of your ass soon so you could be a grandfather. This means I’ll have to call the other’s and call off all the pranks”

Bruce chuckles, “I would appreciate that, but you know your brothers will still do something in retaliation.”

“Oh, I know, but if I at least tell them you apologized it might not be as bad.” Glancing towards the clock, you flash a grin at Bruce, “Now, as the final part of your apology you’re going to take me out to lunch and then we’re going to go people-watch at the mall”

“Whatever you say, Y/N. Why don’t you call your brothers and ask if they want to come? Alfred is already preparing dinner for everyone tonight, Stephanie and Cass are flying back from their mission now, so everyone will be there”

“So you’ll get to spend the whole day with me! Aren’t you lucky, B!” Bruce chuckles, “I’m gonna go get dressed and call everyone”

--

Thankfully, there are no other family problems during the pregnancy, and everything progresses like normal. Barbra teaches you how to hack and how to man the Comms. There are a few instances where someone comes back to the Cave hurt and Alfred starts teaching you how to patch everyone up. During the day you continue to teach Criminal Justice classes at Gotham University.

“Guys, will you quit. I’m pregnant, not an invalid, I can still go to work!”

Even Bruce looks concerned, “Are you sure? You have to stand in front of class … should you even be standing anymore? Are you sure this apartment has enough room for you and the baby? I can still get you a better one, or you could move back into the Manor -”

“Bruce! I don’t need you to buy me an apartment, I can afford this one just fine and it’s plenty big enough. I’ll come to the Manor and visit, but I like living near work. And of freaking course I can stand!”

Tim peeks over the back of the couch, “We just to make sure you’re alright, Y/N. None of us have ever really been around pregnant people, especially pregnant family”

“I know, Timmy, but sometimes you guys can be a bit much”

“If Drake or Todd are the ones causing you stress I can … get rid of them” Dick nudges Damian and raises an eyebrow, “Or just challenge them to a fight for you”

Dick rolls his eyes, “That wasn’t much better, Dami.”

“Y/N cannot fight in her condition, so I will do it for her”

“I don’t need anyone to fight for me, Dami. I’ll just make them wait until after I have the baby, and then kick their ass” Damian grins at this and nods.

--

When the baby is born, everyone is there. The boys try to distract you from the pain, Bruce is a constant presence at your side, and the girls are constantly asking the nurses questions and arguing with the boys.

“Alright, Ms. Wayne, who do you want in the room with you when it’s time to deliver?” The nurse smiles and checks the fetal monitor while asking the question.

“Just my dad, while I love my siblings, I’d rather they didn’t see my vagina”

Jason barks out a laugh, “I appreciate that, Y/N. We might be a close family, but I’ll come back after the baby is out”

“Alright, that sounds like a plan, Ms. Wayne. Everything is looking good here, the baby looks like they’re in a good position, and the heartrate is looking good too. You were at 7 centimeters when I just checked, so the contractions might be getting a little more intense. If you need anything just hit the call light”

After the nurse leaves, Bruce turns to look at you, “You really want me in here?”

“Yeah, you’re gonna be the baby’s grandfather, and … you’re my dad. I need someone’s hand to break”

--

Once you’re discharged from the hospital, everyone refuses to leave you alone. Alfred makes sure that your fridge is full, Bruce constantly stops by the apartment after work to check-in, and your siblings drop in at all times of the night and day.

“You know I can handle this myself right, I don’t need someone to constantly check on me!”

Bruce snorts, “We’re always here because we care about you and want to be a part of Alex’s life. We know you can take care yourself and your child, we aren’t questioning that. Your pregnancy just … brought everyone together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the boys get along this well, just last night Damian and Tim had a conversation without fighting, and Cass smiles more than ever! Alfred seems to have more energy now that you named him honorary Great-Grandfather. I’ve even noticed a change in myself”

You flop down on the floor and lean against Bruce’s legs and let out a resigned sigh, “Well, when you put it like that … I guess everyone can keep coming around to bug me”

———————————————————————————–

Let me know what you think! Send any ideas or requests you have to my Ask Box!

[lightningbuggie]

for a prompt could you write a short blackwatch!sombra x blackwatch!mccree? it's an au that i quite like, but i can never find any stories for it. feel free not to though! that's totally fine too

McCree was always hesitant to trust new personnel - a trait that stemmed from his Deadlock days - and today was no exception. He didn’t truly understand the purpose of a ‘hacker’ anyway, he couldn’t imagine hacking was any more resourceful than a gun. Reyes apparently thought it was, considering he personally spent months tracking down the recruit in question, and weeks further convincing her to join Blackwatch. Had McCree been asked, he would have said their team was big enough with the cyborg and the witch, but ultimately Reyes made the call and decided they needed one more. 

They brought her in late after work on a Tuesday night, apparently on her request. McCree couldn’t remember the last time Reyes took someone else’s orders so willingly, but he’d obliged her every demand. None of them were even allowed to be at headquarters during her tour, for her ‘privacy’s’ sake. Neither McCree nor the others were particularly pleased.

The day he finally saw her was a whole two weeks after her initiation. They had just finished a mission briefing in a conference room far too grand for their tiny team, and McCree couldn’t understand why Reyes was sticking around after adjourning - he was normally the first to leave. The cowboy quietly left the room with the others, but hung around by the door, taking one last peek inside once Genji and Dr. O’Deorain were out of sight. Back in the meeting room he witnessed a flash of purple, revealing the vibrantly dressed hacker lounging in a seat he had assumed was empty. He watched as she and Reyes chatted for a moment before shaking hands and heading out different doors. The commander approached the door McCree was standing by and he quickly sidestepped away as the door opened. He wasn’t quick enough to get out of view however, as Reyes barely took one step out the door before his eyes found McCree. 

“Settlin’ in the new recruit?” McCree asked, trying not to sound embarrassed.

Reyes held his gaze for a moment before ignoring the question and walking away with a huff.

Genji actually brought her up first. The two of them were going over some floor plans for a building they were meant to break into, and McCree brought up the concern of security cameras.

The cyborg just shrugged, “I’m sure Sombra can take care of them.”

“Sombra?” 

Genji raised an eyebrow as if he didn’t understand McCree’s confusion, “Our new hacker.”

McCree didn’t realize until that moment that he hadn’t even known her name, “Have you spoken to her?”

“Yes. She offered to help upgrade my cybernetics. She seems capable.”

McCree didn’t know what to make of that. He’d like to think Genji had good insight, but he could hear the Deadlock crew in the back of his mind reminding him to never place anyone else’s judgement above your own.

Moira spoke of her next. McCree had entered her office for a pre-mission checkup, something he often put off as long as possible to avoid leaving himself in the hands of the witch. 

Dr. O’Deorain kept her examinations minimal. McCree seemed healthy enough, but she wasn’t happy with the state of his mechanical arm - as was evident by her constant poking and prodding of the metal.

“I intend to run a few minor tests on this.” She told him, cold and clinical.

“How long’s that gonna take?”

“I’m not certain. Sombra raised some concerns on the matter of remote hacking, though we’ve yet to discuss the process or potential solutions. ”

“Not like you to listen to other people’s suggestions, doc.”

She gave him a pointed look, then raised an arm in the direction of the door. McCree took the cue and left. 

It was two nights later when McCree interacted with her for the first time. It was well past when he should’ve been asleep, but the cowboy was busy sitting in their training room going over floor plans for their upcoming operation. He’d been ignoring the ticking of the training room clock, but the ding signalling midnight was finally enough to send him packing back to his room to get some rest. He only made it as far as the living quarters entrance however, before he was stopped by the sight of a dim purple light seeping through an adjoining hallway. He followed the light to its source, a seemingly unassuming door made special only by the violet glow seeping through its cracks. McCree tried the handle and to his surprise the door opened without issue. 

The room was dark, illuminated only by a series of monitors in varied sizes. Most of the screens displayed coded information, while some showed weapons diagnostics, and the largest presented the floor plan McCree had been pouring over all night. He turned his head to the chair sat in front of the monitors, which seated the infamous hacker as she scrolled through some code on screen 2. 

“Close the door if you’re coming in.” She replied offhandedly in a Spanish accent.

Ah. Spanish. All of a sudden ‘Sombra’ made a lot more sense. He closed the door behind him and stepped into the room. This time he took in the other aspects of the space, noting a couch, full bed, and mini fridge occupying the area behind her desk. Far more lavish than any of the other rooms he’d visited, his especially. 

She spoke up again, “Did you notice the same thing I did?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The plans.” She pointed a manicured nail at the largest screen. “Gabe’s plan could use some work.”

He’d never heard anyone refer to Reyes as ‘Gabe’ before - she was either too valuable to lose or two minutes from being fired. Ten minutes ago he wouldn’t have been confident guessing which, but now seeing how well Blackwatch was treating her, he had some idea. 

He cleared his throat, “Reyes wants us to infiltrate through the east entrance, but I was thinking-”

“The west is closer to the target, why risk being in there longer than you have to?” She finished. 

Her seat was turned around, finally facing him. Her eyes were a shade of purple so electrically bright he couldn’t help but stare. He’d already noticed her half shaved head from his last sighting, but now he could see the implants lining her skull in perfect clarity. She was like nothing he’d ever seen before. 

“That’s what I figured.” He took a step forward, maintaining eye contact. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, McCree.”

“I can say the same. Everyone’s been talking ‘bout you lately.”

“Am I employee of the month?”

“If the doctor likes you, it’s hard to tell.”

Sombra tossed him a mischievous smirk as she stood up. “Sombra.”

He tipped his hat to her in return. “Shadow, huh?” 

“Si, vaquero.” She looked pleased to know he spoke Spanish. Sombra nodded towards the couch and he took a seat, while she walked over to the mini fridge and began rummaging through it. “I’m going to suggest the west entrance tomorrow, I’d appreciate it if you mentioned it too.”

“Sure. Though Reyes mentioned something about that route being too close to where they house their mechs to be viable.” 

She stood up holding a bottle of rum and two lowball glasses. “Nah, I can deal with that.”

“Oh yeah?” McCree was going to comment that it was quite late for a drink, but watching her crack open a new bottle of fairly pricey alcohol was enough to convince him to stay for one. “How do you plan to do that?”

Rather than answer, Sombra just tossed a glass in his direction. His reflexes were normally lighting quick, but seeing as he was caught off-guard, he was just a second too late to reach for the glass. He didn’t have to worry about it breaking however, as his mechanical arm caught the glass with ease, operating completely out of his control. McCree watched in horror as his arm, now sentient, held the glass still as Sombra waltzed over and poured an ounce of rum into it. 

McCree brought his eyes back to her as she poured her own glass. “How’re you doing that?”

She just smiled and wiggled her fingers, purple light emanating from her nails. “That’s my job.”

“I’m gonna ask ya kindly to give me back control of my arm.” He warned. She did, and McCree almost dropped the glass as he suddenly regained command of the appendage. Thankfully he managed to hold onto it, which was good considering he was going to need a drink after that. “Thank you.”

Sombra took a seat on the coffee table itself, her legs resting inches from his. “That’s how I’ll deal with them. If they try to use the mechs I’ll just shut them down.”

“What if they try the same thing?” He asked, taking a sip of his drink. 

“Yeah I know, I’m working on it. You have it easy, your friend Sparrow is a glowing green target. Too easy to hack.” 

“How does hacking him work? Make him throw the mission?”

“And more. I could make him help the enemy if I wanted to.”

McCree downed his drink and set the glass on the table. “Well here’s hoping you don’t.”

Sombra grabbed McCree’s mechanical arm and pulled it on her lap, causing the cowboy to sit forward and press his shoulder against her as she examined his tech. Her nails glided over the indentations, leaving a comfortable cooling sensation in their tracks. He glanced up to watch her features, her brows furrowed, lost in concentration as she tried to solve a problem he couldn’t see. He had to chuckle at the strange intimacy of the moment, but immediately regretted the action as he watched her focus drop. 

“What?”

“Nothin’, just expected you to be dry and serious, but you’re provin’ me wrong. You this comfortable with everyone you work with?”

She let her voice drop an octave, “Only if I like them,” and followed the words with a shameless wink.

McCree chuckled, “You know, my old partner used to tell me to never trust a pretty face.”

She gave him back his arm and studied his face, “You shouldn’t trust anyone, period.”

“Sounds like a rule straight outta Deadlock.”

“More like Los Muertos.” She stood up, swishing her drink around in its glass. 

McCree followed her. “You were in Los Muertos?”

“Mhm,” she hummed as she sipped her rum, walking him to the door. “But that’s a conversation for Friday.”

“Friday?”

“I have an idea for how to set up a stable firewall for your arm, but I’m gonna need a few days. Same time?”

“You sure you want me coming by so late?”

Her smirk returned full-throttle as she opened the door for him, leaning on the door frame with her drink at her lips. “I’ll see you then, McCree.” 

He tipped his hat to her and headed back down the hallway towards his room, using every ounce of strength to avoid turning back as he heard her door shut behind him. The walk back was quiet and introspective. He could practically hear Ashe screaming in the back of his head to be more cautious, but nonetheless as his eyes scanned the ground beneath his feet, watching the light fade with every step, he knew his dreams would be basked in a purple glow.

[breadrollsequel]

May the darkness within you find peace in the light

Read the full fic here on AO3!

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy (TV) Rating: Not rated, contains some mild descriptions of drug abuse Wordcount: 1714 Tags: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves (minor), Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Reginald Hargreeves’ A+ parenting is back with a vengeance, Canon Compliant, pre-S1, Side B takes place a little after the final scene in S2 

Summary: 

Two one-shots, where Klaus loses Ben in some form.

Side A: The first time Klaus manages to shut out the ghosts, he shuts out Ben as well. Side B: Hours after losing one Ben, Klaus meets another in the flesh.

*Spoilers for S2 finale*

*

“You know, I’m tired of seeing you wallow in self-defeat.”

“Then avert your gaze.”

The screams were getting quieter now. He was going to make it.

              Klaus groped for the bottle and shook out the remaining pills onto the palm of his hand.

              “Klaus, that’s enough.”

              The voice cut through his senses like hard sunlight cutting through the blinds in a dark, smoke-filled room. A few capsules slipped through the cracks between his fingers.

              Ben’s face swam into view amongst the shifting pinks, yellows and blues of his vision.

              Go away, Ben, he wanted to say, why was he always such a buzzkill when it came to parties?, but instead he let out a giggle.

              Oh, but Ben didn’t have that disappointed look on his face that he usually had whenever he came to crash one of his parties. He looked frightened.

              “Klaus, you’re in bad shape. You have to stop now.”

              Klaus blinked. He didn’t feel any different from how he usually did. In fact, he couldn’t really feel much at the moment, other than being way, way out of planet Earth. The sounds of people laughing around him sounded like he was hearing them through a really thick carpet, the guests were acting out a scene from his favourite romantic drama and his brain felt like cotton candy and – he could see a face now, beside Ben’s, the dark circles under her eyes and the bridge of her nose caving back into her face, whispering and pleading his name…

              “Oh, no. No, no, no.” The colour was draining out of his vision, out of the fountain and the towers of red cordial. It was getting louder again, they were coming back. He held his hands to his ears. “Shut up!”

              “Klaus - ”

              He’d never heard Ben this distressed before. More faces were starting to appear behind him, blue smudges that made awful whimpering noises, faces that would later turn into bodies…

              “Shut up!” He crammed the pills into his mouth.

              They tasted like fire and then they tasted like the toffee he and his siblings used to sneak back on the way back from missions. Ben was also calling his name. Shut up, Ben, he thought. I need the ghosts to shut up. He pounded at his head with the base of his palms so it could be quiet –

              When he blinked his tears away, Ben’s face was inches from his. “You’re going to be fine, stop it, please.”

              The other ghosts started to scream. He felt his head starting to split open. There were many times for Ben to be annoying, but this wasn’t one of them. “Don’t be stupid, Ben.”

              He pawed the ground for the lost pills, found one lodged in the folds of his pants, and gulped that down. Colour burst to life in his vision. The blue faces exploded into blue flowing water that soaked his feet and sparkled as the sunlight hit its surface. Ben’s face became… smudged, there was no face there, like how he’d looked when Klaus popped his first pill. He didn’t like that.

He saw a bright yellow fruit smiling at him from where it floated in the water. He took a bite out of it.

              The blue smudges turned into yellow smiley faces, and their mangled, misshapen bodies turned into brightly-coloured dresses and suits. Ben was wearing the suit he’d worn the day he died, with a splitting gash that stretched from his neck to his stomach, leading down to a void that seemed to suck out all the noise in his head. That wasn’t right. Klaus rubbed his eyes with his fruit-stained fingers, and waved his hands like he used to back when he thought it would shoo away the ghosts.

              The party was over. There was no more screaming. He’d done it.

              Klaus clapped with glee. It was the only sound in the silence of the room. “What’d I tell you, Ben-Ben? Suck it up!”

Ben sat further away from him now, almost blending into the shadows. He sat hunched over himself, his eyes closed.

“Ben?” he tried again.

              When Klaus woke up the next morning with a sip from his flask, there were no ghosts, and there was no Ben.

*

“He wanted me to tell you that he was too scared to go into the light. It wasn’t you that made him stay.”

*

“Your uncle Ben, he took down four of them at the same time.”  

Time travel was weird. It was the only thing Klaus could keep telling himself, the minute he met him. Suddenly he couldn’t really blame Five for murdering his way into a mid-life crisis at thirteen, with the powers that he had.

              Ben was dead, right? He’d felt him – realised he’d felt him go, almost a day ago. And now he wasn’t.

              And it wasn’t because the feeling of Ben’s physical presence - instead of the floaty, omnipresent presence he’d felt throughout half his life – was unfamiliar to him.

              This Ben didn’t feel like his Ben.

              A spinning wheel of statements went round his head before he started the conversation. “How was… not dying?”

              Sparrow Academy Ben raised an eyebrow, confused.

              “In our timeline,” Klaus coughed, searching for the right words. “The timeline where you are my brother - ” The words came out more desperate than he intended, it happened and no amount of time travel could change that. “ – you died.”

              “Your timeline me must have been a colossal wimp, then,” Ben said.

              “How’d you become such a prick?” Klaus muttered, then back to Ben, “Yeah, you were. Your timeline Dad didn’t make you read those dead-language, cult-y tomes in the middle of the night until you broke out in hives? Force you to eat that weird casserole so little Ben Jr. inside you wouldn't get hungry, that made you puke black goo for a week? Made you sleep on a pentagram to see if a different tentacle monster would pop out of you like some sick Kinder surprise?”

              “He did,” Ben said firmly. “But Dad was very patient with me, and while my training was painful, I learned to get over it.”

              “He was patient with you?” Klaus forced out a laugh. He held his arms out in faux admiration. “Well, congratulations on becoming daddy’s boy, because Dad wouldn’t have ‘changed tactics’ if it wasn’t us who showed him the wonderful shitshow his normal parenting came out with.”

              “I see why he decided not to adopt you happy few,” Ben sneered, the scar on the bridge of his nose appearing more jagged.

              Klaus balled his fists, but he couldn’t bring himself to deck Ben upside the head.

              Vanya took a cautious step forward. “Klaus, don’t fight him, That’s not –“

              “Not our Ben.” Klaus made a swallowing sound, then continued, pacing towards Ben. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to believe that all this while, sweet, voice of reason, sometimes a little annoying Ben was the least likely to turn out like Dad.” He stopped, cringing at Ben’s uniform. “Did Dad liking you more this time inspire you to be daddy’s little monster?” He nodded at the Sparrow siblings on the other side of the room. “I guess your new siblings turned out to be even bigger assholes so you had to play daddy to keep them in check?”

              “My brothers and sisters pushed me to be the be the best version of myself,” Ben countered, his voice raised. Klaus remembered the other time he sounded like this was when he was berating him for going on one of his drug runs. “They didn’t hold back.” He frowned as he said this, but his tone returned steady. “But I’m thankful that I had them.”

              “But you didn’t have me,” Klaus said bluntly.

              “I can’t imagine you being my brother.” Ben shrugged. “You’ve got a lot of trouble letting it go. I’m sure you’d drag the whole family down with you.”

              Klaus was quiet. His fists trembled.

              “Klaus,” Vanya tried quietly, touching his shoulder. “Now’s not the time.”

               “If you’re telling the truth, then Dad trained us well,” Ben’s tone softened slightly, almost in a consoling manner. “And maybe I owe it to you six that he learned not to make the same mistakes. And I came out stronger because of it.”

              Reginald Hargreeves had considered that the early demise of Number Six was in some part due to his own miscalculations. So unlike the new six that he’d decided to raise, he’d decided to take a different approach with the number he’d failed – slower steps this time, more nurturing, more encouragement, all for building Number Six to live up to his name, until the day came when The Horror emerged from a room littered with the broken bodies of criminals, uniform drenched in blood and hair sticking to his forehead, with a bright smile on his face.

              “I guess you could spend a few minutes with my siblings and see how much of an improvement they are over you,” he continued. “Before Dad kicks you out of the house.”

              He nodded to the rest of them, and walked away.

              “I’ll pass,” Klaus mumbled, putting on his hat.

              Vanya gripped his arm firmly. “Our Ben was real.” She looked at him with the eyes that had watched him fade into the light. “Nothing changes that.”

              “Actually it felt just like talking with our Ben,” Klaus said to the ground. “But if every conversation we had was an argument.”

              Vanya nodded.

              Before she pulled away, Klaus grabbed her shoulders. “He didn’t meet us. That’s why he’s such a prick. If you guys are planning something - " He took a shaky breath. “We need to kidnap him, or something, take him on a life-changing field trip with us, with me…”

              It felt like Dave in 1961 again, begging him to believe in a future that would definitely change as soon as he talked about it. What did he care, time travel wasn’t his thing. “Or what do you think?” Klaus sighed. “You’re the expert on supervillains. No offence.”

              Vanya put a hand over his, one of the few affectionate gestures she’d started showing her siblings after the incident in Dallas. “We’ll come back for him.”

              Klaus nodded, blinking back the stinging in his eyes. “We’re coming back for him.”

[trying-write-fanfics]

OverhaulXReader part 41 (O)

Y/n climbed the stairs slowly up to her apartment. However she stopped. Was she afraid of the stairs from recent events or was something wrong? Not wrong with her even though there were tons of things wrong in the moment. She invited Overhaul up to bed with her, but he still declined. He should have stayed. He made a big deal about tonight, the food, the wine, the flowers, everything was perfect. But now he couldn’t sleep by her side? Was it the touch thing? No, they've slept together so many times. Y/n looked at the reflection in the window. He wasn’t down there waiting for her to change her mind and beg him again. He has to know she was shaking, terrified, and she needs him! But the date, something was off, everything was off. It’s not that Overhaul didn’t try to take his beloved on dates, it’s just there was never that much effort, someone else would cook or entertain them. Overhaul wasn’t a performer or a cook. He’d bring her to nice places. Never a garden, never a charcutierie he made, never his own hand picked wine unless it was at his place. 

 Y/n’s stomach twisted and turned as she was overthinking the whole night that had unfolded only hours ago. She couldn’t leave the step. There was nothing waiting at her apartment, no Overhaul. She looked at her hands, and realized what tonight could have been about. She pinched her finger and realized he could have proposed tonight. He already has asked to move in with him, they finally got on the same page about children, and his project must be coming to an end soon. Maybe he wasn’t going to propose, but maybe he has a ring. She’s never told him her preferences! Does she have any? Overhaul knows her, he’s saved her, there’s no way he could mess up. It had to be the external forces keeping it apart, maybe he had bad karma coming at him. 

 Y/n did manage to drag herself to bed, but she didn’t sleep. He was going to propose wasn't he! She should have gone after him instead of going inside. She was breaking the rule of being by him when he needs her most. Her body was like a cement block at the bottom of the ocean in her bed. He needs her doesn’t he. The whole day or maybe even ever since he planned that night, or even before he was building the confidence to propose only to have the night to be crushed by MT Lady’s big feet. 

 The alarms went off and a groans filled the bedroom. Y/n’s eyes didn’t shut enough during the whole night. Though she didn’t get enough sleep she was still suffering from an anxiety attack. So many times Y/n had nearly kept her lift by the skin of her teeth, but her heart told her last night was the biggest night of her life. With the permission of her alarm she got ready. She didn’t relax, she just went with her routine, not even scrolling through news. 

At the porch of her building she looked at two routes, she looked at her way to work and then looked towards the way to go to Overhaul’s place. Then she looked at the bike rack. It was someone’s unlucky day, they probably deserved it, she was giving out their bad karma. Y/n road a stolen bike towards her lover’s home. She wanted to make time to get to work only an hour late. What to say? That last night was the most thoughtful date they’ve ever had, and that she regrets leaving him last night. It was weird to ride a bike at full speed, but she once saw a video where someone outran a subway, she could beat all the subways if she was on two wheels. 

 Overhaul’s neighborhood seemed to be empty and yet, there was noise. It didn’t matter, the sky could be falling, but Y/n was determined to see her love to tell him everything, her feelings, and to build him back up. There was no way he deserved all that bad karma from last night. Her phone started ringing, she whipped it out to see her boss was calling. However her eyes trailed up to see some sort of monster fighting a green flash. Her hand squeezed the brake of the front wheel launching her off the bike. However her eyes couldn’t leave the monster. It had a lot of arms and roared. Her body slammed into the cement.

 But she wasn’t done for. 

Y/n’s body on sheer determination pushed itself back up, out of the puddle out of her own blood. Knees, elbows, face, and hands were scrapped and bleeding. It didn’t freak out the body. It wandered towards its destination. It had to find him, no matter the condition the body was in. 

 Fatgum helped Kirishima get into the back of the ambulance. After the fight everyone was in, peace would be known soon enough. Kirishima really had earned his name from the red riot. There was a mix of emotions he felt, but he was mostly glad that his intern learned a lesson about being a hero he’d never forget and would never learn in the classroom, but his current state was shattered. Police swarmed the area, taking as many witness accounts that they could, reporting everything, hauling the thugs. 

 The pro hero’s eyes widened as he saw a figure carry themselves like a zombie. They used a wall to keep their body up, and muttered on their breath. Blood dripped down their skin leaving a trail. It was the biggest confirmation he had that the two were connected. A bloody Y/n with empty (color) eyes was walking towards the compound. They weren’t focused on any person, the body was just trying to make it towards the compound.

“Where...where is he?” she asked slowly. She wasn’t really there, it was like a ghost searching for a cursed mirror. “Where…”

Fatgum was quirk to grab her she tried climbing him, even though they both weren’t in a state to struggle. Blood smeared on what was left of his jacket.

“I found an injured civilian, can she ride with someone to the hospital? She's covered in blood!” Fatgum yelled.

“Where is he!” The woman cried out. 

 “She must have gotten hurt when he busted out of the ground.” One of the cops said. 

 She tried to crawl over Fatgum’s shoulder, begging to find a certain man. Her knee brushed against his chest, and he realized his injuries were more severe than he anticipated . He was hoping she wouldn’t say “overhaul” or “Kai”. If she keeps her mouth shut then only she would know the two were connected. Tai began to focus on the questions she’d be asked and possible charges. There had to be no way she was connected with the child Eri. Tai had to save Y/n, surely she would save a child if she knew they were in danger. Overhaul also harvested her blood for those drugs, she can’t be on his side. He was using her, and now she’s here, looking for him, injured, probably his fault. Her file never came up during any briefing, she would have been here fighting them if she was truly with the yakuza. Overhaul must have thrown her away because her quirk wasn’t useful, or maybe he did this to her because she saw too much.

 “Get in with her, your injuries look painful.” The paramedic said as they were strapping her down on the stretcher. 

Fatgum nodded as he climbed in. Y/n quieted down, but she was a mess. Her face was caked in blood and dirt. Fatgum reached for her hand to give the poor lonely woman some comfort, but noticed her palms were bloody and scrapped. What did he do to her? Pushed her down and beat her? Did she find out something she shouldn’t have? Was he trying to dispose of her now that her blood wasn’t as useful as Eri’s? Was she trying to fight him? Did they break up? Her eyes didn’t register anything that was going on. As they made it to the hospital the two went their separate ways. 

 Fatgum mostly suffered face injuries, and a cracked ribbed, but nothing that was going to keep him from working for too long. The hospital wasn’t providing him enough food, he was starving. He looked at his intern Amajima, and couldn't have been more proud of him. It was one of the most dangerous missions he or the kid have ever been on, and they both survived. From what he heard so far, no one had died yet. He looked over at his other intern, the bright red mummy. In such a short time the even younger kid proved himself. 

 “I’m gonna step out, you two need anything?” Fatgum asked. 

“Are you asking out that civilian?” Kirishima asked.

“What no! I have a couple questions for her though.” Fatgum told him. “She’s the lady who manages the wicked sparrow’s bakery.”

“Ask her if she can please make me some of those fancy cream puffs.”

“I will.”

 He asked the officer which room the woman was in. The officer explained she hadn’t been talking much, but was somewhat awake. Her injuries looked worse than they actually where, but it looks like this was her second or third concussion, so the hospital was going to keep her there, and they had sedated her before they understood the nature of her injuries. She was struggling against them, bleeding on her legs, hands, arms and face. Her phone had been broken, but she had ID on her. The hospital had called her parents, but found no luck with getting into contact with them after they mentioned their daughter. Y/n was alone in a hospital room, injured, and confused. Fatgum opened the door and went in there. She was watching the monitor. Her face and arms were patched up, but she was still a little swollen.

“How you feeling?” He tried to ask as cheery as he could be. 

“That voice….but.” Her voice trailed. “Who are you?” She asked turning her gaze towards him.

“It’s me Fatgum! C’mon your favorite customer?” 

“You’re not wearing your mask.”

 Here he thought she was gonna bring up his weight.

“I came to check on you.” He told her. 

“I have a habit of getting in trouble, don’t I.” She said lowly. “I didn’t think your face looked like that”

“I don’t normally look like this.” He told her. “I came here as a friend.”

“So you want me to call you Tai?” She interrupted him. 

“I want you to answer these questions here before you talk to the police.” He told her. “I know you’re connected to Overhaul.”

She concealed her reaction. Y/n had not yet known what had happened. When the first round of police came, they asked her mostly about her injuries and if there was anyone to call. Not wanting to get her boyfriend stuck with police and the feeling of overwhelm ness over took her to ramble gibberish. It was again she felt alone, in pain, and couldn’t reach out. How many times would she be stuck in hospitals. How bad was her past life to beat her down with this much bad karma? What problems will she have with all these concessions? Will she die like an retired NFL player? 

“You two went to the same elementary school. Your grandfather was close to the older head of the Shie Hassakai. I have pictures of those two here somewhere. And what reason would you have to be going to that neighborhood other than to see Chisaki Kai? It’s the opposite direction from your work. Were you helping him escape?”

“Escape...from that monster?” She asked.

“Monster?”

Fatgum was stunned she didn’t recognize her own boyfriend. She must had been hurt by him before the fight, and she doesn’t even know. How bad did Overhaul manipulate this woman? Of course she wouldn’t know him to be in such a powerful, destructive form, but she couldn’t fathom his quirk could turn him into that thing? Wasn’t she mad at him?

“Do you know what Overhaul was doing.”

“You’re my friend right?”

“For now.”

“We both agreed the less I knew would be better.” her voice was hoarse, but it was honest.

“But you were attacked due to your connection to him, remember that?”

“That wasn’t when the agreement was made. He was selling drugs, something his father was against. I was mad because...he was hurting weak people. I know those people struggle with addiction.”

She doesn’t even know what type of drugs they are?!

“You didn’t try to stop him.”

“He doesn’t tell me how to do my job...but I knew I didn't know enough to help redirect him. He was going to do it anyway.”

“He used your blood.”

“What?” Y/n thought Fatgum was lying to get more out of her. “What do you mean? What good would my blood-“

“There were a couple cases of criminals who were injured, but their injuries healed even though their quirks were entirely something else. We found human blood in it. The elimination process wasn’t that hard when the drugs were traced back to Overhaul, and I had already known your connection to him. Your quirk was recorded when you were very young and not often used, but it was a regeneration quirk.” He told her.

“That’s not-“ she couldn’t believe it. The quirk she had so disparately hidden was so easy for the world to find? How many people believed her when she told them she was quirk less and then later looked it up and knew she was a liar? How many people laughed at her and wondered how they figured out her quirk so late? Overhaul used her? Her own blood? He wouldn’t? How would he? He turned her into a drug? Endangering her life more? What if the demand grew? How much of her blood was out there. “Thats not-“

It felt like she was suffocating. He loved her, he had to of loved her! Why would he do this? He hated quirks! So he exploited hers for money when he could have just been selling cocaine? He used her! Was he going to tell her? Was that what last night was about? Hey I stole your blood, but now I’m gonna be rich so let’s just be happy about it? Here she thought he was going to propose, but how can you propose to someone with such a secret! When did he do it? How did he do it? Was he annoyed with her drinking that much he took advantage of her drunken state to take her blood?

“That’s not the worse thing he’s done.”

“Where is he?” Y/n asked. “I have to see him!”

“He’s going to jail. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get visitor rights.” Fatgum told her. “You might become a suspected accomplish.”

 Y/n thought she could marry that man just minutes ago, and now she found out he was selling her blood on the market. She couldn’t breathe! How long was he hiding this? Wait there’s more? This was the worse commercial deal of a life time.

“What did he do? What did he do that got him arrested. It wasn’t my blood...wasn’t it?”

“Y/n take a deep breath-“

“What did he do?” She sobbed.

“There’s a child. Her quirk is the finished project. He’s used her blood, so much of her blood, he was abusing her and putting her back together for…”

 The words started to fade. She heard what the child’s quirk could be. Did Overhaul secretly have an affair and a child? Did he fall for someone else? Did he have that child just so he could make those pills? He knew Y/n might have wanted kids, but he went and did it with someone else? That poor kid! That’s why he was so uneasy when she wanted to visit him! His kid was there and how can he explain that child when everyone knows not to bring a kid near the yakuza! He had a child just to have his quirk reproduced and use their blood instead of using his own!

 “He had a kid-“

“Eri is not his child. He’s stated so. We thought he did too, but it’s not the case.”

Y/n began to sob. He didn’t cheat but was one of the worst people and she had loved him. Like an idiot! How long was he using her and then switching to a child! How did he get Eri? Who were Eri’s parents? Did he do some black market children buying? Her boyfriend didn’t do anything noble, he was just awful. Using people to get what he wants. Did he even love her? He had to! He had to! She was allowed to touch him! Or maybe he only allowed it to keep her around. When Pops fell under, she wasn’t allowed to touch him. Could he not keep up the act anymore? 

“Y/n, Eri is safe now, here, and so are you.” Tai tubbed tissue in her eye. 

“Who was that monster?”

“It was Overhaul.”

 Fatgum stayed with Y/n as she cried. He had gotten the information he needed. Y/n was the manipulated girlfriend who did not consent to the drugs, and didn't even know that Overhaul was that huge meat monster. Was it just pure bad luck she got caught up in this? He didn’t tell her to go with him to escape the city? He would have been able to tell her to meet him someone here else wouldn’t he. He knew she wasn’t lying, no one could fake a reaction like this. It was like more of her world was just shattering. She was questioning everything about the relationship, from the time she found him at the wedding all the way to last night. Did he ever love her? Did his feelings fade, and that’s why he thought it was okay to use her like she was a blood factory? Was it when Pops fell ill, or before that?

“Why were you going there?”

“Last night I thought he was going to propose, but he didn’t….I just thought I should talk to him about it, like it’s okay to be scared, but...but oh my god…” she sobbed. “Now I don’t know what last night was about.”

 He had gotten it all recorded. Fatgum tried doing his best to comfort Y/n sitting next to her. He pulled her upper body into his chest and lightly rubbed her back with his not injured arm. She wasn’t expecting such kindness from the enemy of her boyfriend, but she was so lonely and was a little touch starved. Yeah the two knew each other before this, but the stakes were never this clear.

“I promise I’ll help you get through this.” He told her. 

“I need to be alone for a minute, this is all a lot to take in.”

Fatgum went back to his interns and the news got worse. The league of villains attacked the ambulance Overhaul was in and he had lost his arms, the drivers and Sandman were known to be injured. It seemed the final product had went missing. 

“How do know that woman?” An officer asked Fatgum.

“She manages a restaurant in my patrol area.”

“Her family doesn’t seem to be stopping by. The hospital can’t let her go home alone. Her injuries are too severe for her to be off on her own.” The officer said.

 “You can contact her boss at the Wicked Sparrow, but I don’t know who else to contact.” 

“But aren’t you two friends?” A nurse asked coming in. “You two knew each other previously.”

 So there was someone watching. Were they listening too?

“Yeah, but I can’t take care of someone, I’ll be busy.”

“You’ll need time to rest.” The nurse said. “She needs someone around to make sure she doesn't faint.” 

“Wouldn’t it be a conflict of interest if a hero takes care of a civilian?”

“A friend taking care of a friend. We can send her someone to check on her, or maybe hospice, but we really can’t send her home without having someone with her to watch her these next couple weeks.” The nurse corrected. 

 The real conflict was the complicated feelings Tai had for Y/n since the day he saved her from getting choked to death. She was grateful to be saved, but then she gave him a free meal. She wasn’t embarrassed or put off by him ever and even invited him to the restaurant and bakery after hours to talk. Yeah he did that to spy on her for a criminal case, he had his own suspicions she was connected to Overhaul one way or another. She hardly talked about her boyfriend. It would be hard to even know he existed. Of course she wouldn’t want to talk about Overhaul with a pro hero she wasn’t dumb. So many times they would talk late at night. She would ask him what would help make her recipes better. He wasn’t the best chef, but she valued his opinions. Maybe she did that to distract his true cause for being there and to make herself look as innocent as possible if she was guilty, but she was the most genuinely interesting, fun person he’d ever talk to. She never tried to be someone she wasn’t was how he saw her. She didn’t pretend to ever have heroic dreams, but was honest to be scatterbrained with her life goals. She was well traveled, had so many hobbies, and always an adventure to tell. She went to cooking because her teachers thought she was really good, it was one of her better known talents, so she went with it. She dissolved being Overhaul’s possible secret mistress to a friend.

“I don’t know. We’re not totally close.” Fatgum said. 

“How’d you two meet?” The nurse asked being extra nosy. 

“I had to save her a couple years ago.”

“And you two aren’t close?”

“It’s a weird coincidence that you were at the scene and she was too. Is this the second time you saved her?” The cop asked. 

“Maybe it’s fate?” The nurse suggested “Wouldn’t that be funny. It’s like the universe is giving you a sign, and you keep ignoring it.”

“She wanted to look if any houses were for sale in that neighborhood to see if she could move there. You know checking out the corner store, where to go for a late night snack.” Fatgum lied. 

“Really?”

“Nice little stroll before work. She’s been in an apartment, ready to expand.”

Fatgum was lying but he was gonna keep Y/n’s secret safe. Sometimes you fall for the wrong people. She was truly shocked to find out her blood was part of the drugs he sold. How did he get her blood? How did she not notice? Was there someone with a memory quirk? Did he kill her like Rappa and then out her back together? Did the Chrono guy slow her down and they drew her blood. For now he would tell himself he wouldn’t let their friendship blind them, but was going to get his information instead of sending it to the police. Right now Fatgum was going to protect her, because she had been innocent so far. Her innocence to the situation only made it worse for her though. The last few years of her life now all seemed like a lie.