#every few years i remember them out of the blue and its like lightning striking

[wulfhalls]

microdosing on killing myself by reading eruri fic exclusively for three days straight

[angelicyoongie]

the crimson shell

— pairing: jungkook x f!reader — genre: mermaid au, yandere au — w.c: 1.9k — warnings: mild stalking, near drowning, mentions of eating humans — notes: just wanted to contribute something to mermay! this is also my first time attempting to do anything in the realms of yandere (and mermaids!), so pls be nice lol. in this universe everyone is referred to as a mermaid, no matter what gender they are. this will most likely be a two or three part series with jk growing more and more obsessed as he gets y/n into his scaly clutches :)

Part I / II / III / IIII

— summary: you had always found comfort in being at the beach, often spending hours just watching the waves lap against the shore. but unbeknowst to you – something had been watching you back.

You inhale deeply, enjoying the salty smell that so uniquely belongs to the ocean. The last rays of sun are slowly disappearing behind the horizon, painting the skies and the waves in hues of deep pink and purple. You’re going to miss this view.

You sigh, running your fingers through the coarse sand as you let the gentle breeze caress your face. You’ve been looking forward to this for years, but now that your departure is so imminent, it feels more scary than liberating. The time has come to finally leave your home behind, and you feel a pang of regret as you realize you might not see your friends or family for a very long time to come.

Years of saving up your measly paychecks have finally paid off, and you’re setting sail for an island you’ve been hearing constant murmurs about for the last few months. Originally, you were only going to travel to the next kingdom over, hoping to find more suitable work there to help your parents stay afloat. But the talk of the mystery island abundant with riches piped your interest more than you would like to admit – and you’ve never been one to shy away from adventure.

However, you weren’t stupid enough to just blindly trust the rumours milling around your little town. In fact, you wholeheartedly believed it to be a scam until a familiar face suddenly turned up in the town square only a few weeks ago.

You hadn’t seen Jimin ever since he set sail for the unknown six months ago; and so everyone, including yourself, had presumed that your talkative neighbour had met an ill fate, and was floating at the bottom of the sea. You realized you couldn’t have been more wrong when Jimin returned with riches you never expected you would ever lay eyes on, his whole body adorned with various diamonds and gold chains.

It was Jimin who had urged you to seek out the same island, saying he barely even took a handful of all the treasures that were there. He had warned you about a price that would need to be paid, but you weren’t all that concerned. If a sea witch wanted your first born, then fine, you weren’t too keen on children anyway.

You busy yourself with drawing patterns in the sand, lost in your own thoughts as you try to remember your little mental checklist of all the things you wanted to see before you left tomorrow morning. You’re pretty sure this beach was the last one. It’s not much; just a short stretch of sand at the edge of the hill leading up to your family’s cottage, but it has always felt like home.

You come here every evening without fail, using the time to relax and breathe. The last month has felt a little different though, even if you don’t like to admit it. You’ve always stayed on the beach quite late, there’s nothing you know of that can rival the starry sky that appears once the sun had set. But lately, you’ve found yourself retreating back up the hill before the night could fully greet you.

It feels like you’re being watched.

It’s silly of course, considering the only thing in front of you is the quiet ocean. You would have noticed if there was something there, but still, you can’t seem to shake the feeling that something is out there – observing you.

It always happens so suddenly; one second you’ll be merely enjoying the view, and in the next, a sense of dread would knock into you so hard it left you breathless. It would make your neck feel tight, as if someone was gripping your skin, and the hair on your arms would rise in alarm.

Even just the memory is enough to give you goosebumps, and you let out an annoyed huff at how easily you seem to be able to scare yourself. You dust the sand off your hands before you rub them up and down your arms, trying to calm down the twinge of anxiety that’s slowly spreading through your body.

You don’t want to remember your last night here as something uncomfortable, so you let your gaze sweep over the beach one last time.

Something catches your eye just as you’re about to turn. Something red is ebbing and flowing along with the waves, and you hesitantly step forward until you can see it clearer. It’s nothing more than a pretty shell, but you’ve never seen that tone of red before. You snatch it up from the water before the tide can pull it out, slowly turning it back and forth to study it. The last sliver of light seems to catch on to it just right, giving the red a gorgeous golden shimmer.

You let out a low gasp of wonder, trailing your fingers along the scalloped pattern. It’s stunning, and you can’t help but think that it’s the beach’s way of saying its last goodbye. Maybe it was giving you a parting gift.

You clutch the shell gently in your hand, a soft ‘thank you’ slipping past your lips as you watch the ocean fondly. You notice a few sudden ripples in the quiet sea a little further out from the beach, but it has started to grow so dark that it’s impossible to make out anything below the soft waves. Chalking it up to just being fish, you shrug it off, finally turning on your heel to walk back up the hill to your family’s little cottage.

--

You’ve officially been on the sea for a week, and you’ve already grown tired. The small group of fellow villagers that you left with have already started getting on your nerves, and you’re not sure how you’re going to make it all the way to the island and back without going insane. Jimin said you would need to travel north for about two weeks, so you try to find solace in the fact that you’re halfway there already.

The journey so far has been pretty smooth, but the dark clouds on the horizon seem to be rolling towards you at an alarming speed. You dig into the pocket of your trousers, finding comfort in running your fingers along the shell you found on your beach. You can only hope it serves as a token of good luck, because the storm heading straight for you really doesn’t look good at all.  

It feels like you only blink before the rain is pelting down against the ship, harsh waves tossing the wooden boat back and forth to its whims. You’re clinging on the side with all of your might, but the floor has turned wet and slippery, and it makes it even harder to stay on board with all the vicious tossing and turning.

You feel the electricity before it hits, the static making your hair stand up straight right before a bolt of lightning slams into the mast. You can barely hear the loud creak of wood over the screams from the other travellers, you gaze transfixed on the large wooden pole as it starts tipping.

You’re frozen in place; all of your muscles locking up in terror as you realize the mast is coming straight at you. You’ll be crushed in you don’t move, but you can’t. You close your eyes instinctively as the looming shadow rushes towards you, harshly sucking in one last breath of air. You feel the ship lurch, and your fingers slip from the bars you were clinging to as you’re tossed overboard.

A blanket of silence wraps around you the moment you hit the water, all of the screaming and creaking of wood suddenly ceasing as the cold liquid mercilessly drags you downwards. You can see the shadow of the ship growing smaller and smaller, your last breath escaping you as it bubbles up towards the surface.

You flail your hands desperately, your body too low on air to properly function. Swim, swim, swim! Your mind is screaming, but your heart has already accepted the rush of water filling your lungs, and the heavy feeling in your bones.

Your vision grows hazy, the blues and greys of the ocean blurring together. A streak of red suddenly breezes by your line of sight, but your tired brain only managing to provide you with the fleeting thought of fish? before the exhaustion truly sets in. You can hear a low series of muddled clicking noises all around you, but it only seems to make you even more drowsy.

Sleep, a deep voice whispers in the back of your mind. And slowly but surely, all of the mixed colours fade into nothingness.

--

It wasn’t that hard for the mermaid to steer your ship in the wrong direction. The ship was in his waters, under his control, and the storm that suddenly picked up in the northeast presented itself like the perfect opportunity.

He had been trailing after your ship ever since it left the dock, making sure he could strike at the right moment. He couldn’t believe the weird creature he had been watching for months was finally coming willingly to him, but it was only right considering you had accepted his courting gift.

And now, as you were sinking to the bottom of the sea, you were finally his. The mermaid circled you excitedly at a distance as your limbs flailed around underwater. He tried to tell you to calm down – that the fight against his ocean was futile – but you just wouldn’t stop trying.

The mermaid bristled in annoyance, his crimson tail cutting through the sea harshly as he watched the stupid creature fight a losing battle. He needed to take it home now, before his brothers could realize it was here.

Finally, your body stopped moving. The mermaid quickly closed in, strong arms wrapping around your torso as he stared into your unfocused eyes. While he didn’t exactly know what you were, and why you had one limb too many, he had at least gathered enough information to understand that you needed to breathe in that pesky air in order to survive.

He pushed up, letting the currents easily carry him up towards the surface. Of course, he made sure to emerge far from the sinking ship. While the gurgling screams usually were music to his ears – he couldn’t keep you too close to the food. His brothers would be here in no time to feast, and he couldn’t let his new pet be swallowed up before he even had a chance to play with it.

The creature sucked in a shuddering breath as oxygen finally flowed through its veins again. It didn’t take long before all his precious water was being expelled from the creature’s lungs, the mermaid watching in displeasure as it was replaced with that wretched air instead. It just seemed so .. inconvenient.

You didn’t wake however, the near drowning having swept away all of your energy. The mermaid threw one last look towards the remains of the ship, thin lips curling into a pout as the gurgling was replaced by bloody shrieks. He was hungry too, but it seemed like it would have to wait until his pet was out of harm’s way.

Well, at least until it was out of his brothers’ way. The mermaid didn’t like making promises he wasn’t certain he could keep.

[sneezefiction]

answers

oikawa x reader

desc: oikawa changes some lyrics in taylor swift’s song “love story”

a/n: please keep in mind that most of this is just humorous & there’s no serious characterization in this particular story. i laughed a lot while writing it :,,) for @cutiekawa because you gave me the idea; thank you for that! and also for @seroto-rin because this is very similar to your husband’s lyric changing habits lol – i still laugh whenever i think about it <3 warnings: language, mentions drinking/being drunk

wc: 3k

— It’s 2 am when you hear Oikawa pattering down the hallway and past your room. From the gentle footsteps and the occasional whisper of “shit” when the floor creaks, it's obvious that he’s trying to stay quiet.

But his attempts are in vain because, one, you’re wide awake and, two, he’s just knocked over an empty beer can from earlier. It was probably the one he’d left on the hall table – you’d told him to throw it away but he’d refused saying that he’d “throw it away in the morning when his arms weren’t so tired.” 

This is just karma.

The clatter of the aluminum on wooden floors echoes throughout the dorm. A much louder, especially frustrated, “fuck” follows right after it.

The word, though crass, sounds deceptively attractive on his tongue. But most things Oikawa-related just happen to be attractive. 

You muffle your laughter with a blanket. He’s probably disoriented from the alcohol – it’s only been an hour and 5 drinks each since you both called it a night. You’d headed straight to bed but he’d fallen asleep on the couch where you left him, hair a-mess and lips parted.

But, for someone who used to stay out till daybreak on weekends, he’s spent most Fridays hanging out with you instead.

This weekend was no different.

Oikawa ordered Thai takeout, you found a mindless Netflix series to binge, both of you had a little too much to drink, laughter ensued, the doe-eyed boy found his head in your lap, and…

You pull a face – one that goes unseen because of the dark, but you make it anyway.

Okay, that last part was a little different.

He’d had his head in your lap.

His head… in your… lap.

And, if you’re not mistaken (or delirious), you’d had your hands in his hair, twirling strands and tracing circles at the base of his neck. A foggy image of him gazing up at you with softened eyes, deep chocolate in color, begins to solidify. 

That lazy smile, a hand on your thigh, tresses tickling your skin...

You turn over in your bed, bunching up your sheets and holding them close to you like a shield of fabric — a flimsy, make-shift defense against tipsy mind-wandering. It isn’t very effective.

Your brain is not wandering but racing around this hand-in-hair realization.

Like an iron rod poking at hot embers, these prodding memories make your cheeks grow hotter by the millisecond. You bury your face in your pillow, embarrassment tight in your throat. 

Somehow you’d forgotten that he’d practically climbed into your lap. You’re not in the clear quite yet, but your brain is functioning well enough that it wishes you’d had a little more to drink – just enough to forget about it entirely. You starfish out on your bed, arms and legs dramatically splayed across the mattress.

Do (hot, charming, charismatic, windswept) flatmates usually get this... cuddly? Is that normal?

Does Iwaizumi wrap his arms around his roomies after a long day and a few bottles? How about Mattsun? Makki…?

Okay, no, none of them really seem like the type to get up close and personal with their roommates without good reason. Well, maybe Makki, but he’d do it to be a pain in the ass – not to charm the living-hell out of someone.

You try to take in a deep breath and wrap your head around what this means for you… but end up inhaling a feather from your pillow instead. As you hack and cough, you try to smother the noise in more cloth material – you really didn’t need him coming into your room, much less leaning over your bed to check on you.

Oikawa is messing with your head. 

If you knew any better, you’d have run away screaming the moment he’d asked you to room with him. No one that pretty and charismatic is good news. At least, not when it comes to shared housing.

But, here you are, writhing under the covers and hot like a fever all because he couldn’t keep to himself. Screw him and his charming smile for putting you in this position.

He either knows you’re crushing like he’s the last man on earth or he’s blissfully unaware and way too physically affectionate for his own good. 

You don’t dare consider that he likes you back though. Only deer and Olympic athletes made leaps like that. Oikawa had too many admirers… an irritating amount.

The blankets scrunch even tighter between your fists, likely thanking their maker that they don’t have nerve endings.

Every fiber of your being is begging to know if these feelings are reciprocated. You’d hate to live out the rest of this semester knowing the boy down the hall may not like you back. Worse, that he finds out you think he’s hot shit and doesn’t like you back – that would be unrequited love at its finest.

But, with a degree and your mental health on the line, why should you care about such minor, itty bitty, pointless details. 

This isn’t that big a deal.

And even if he did like you back? Well, Oikawa isn’t someone you can simply “pin down.” He comes with a distinctive, dramatic personality and a meddling side. Not to mention, he’s already the embodiment of chaos – he’s proven this to be true over the past 4 months he’s lived with you.

There’s a familiar squeak of the shower faucet handle and the hiss of hot water. You jump at the sound.

Maybe he’d forgotten, but your bedroom shares a very thin wall with the bathroom. Though you recall him saying he wanted to take a shower earlier, so you guess that he’s only just remembered.

You pick up your phone, blue light casting a less-than angelic glow on your sleepy face. You pray that TikTok will have some sort of life-changing “I’m in love with my hot, crazy flatmate” advice. Or that it will distract you from your inner turmoil. Either would be appreciated but the latter seems more likely.

Scrolling slowly, you get through about 3 videos before something else catches your attention.

There’s a deep reverberation buzzing through your wall. A gentle hum, much like a shower-concert lullaby.

But the noise is getting louder. And the humming? A lot more lyrical.

You shift into a sitting position, propping yourself up with your hands. With your side sunken into a pillow, you press your ear against the cool drywall. Your ears tune into the sound.

Oikawa, voice confident and free, is… singing.

“...But you were everything to me, I was begging you ‘please don’t go’…”

But he’s not just singing.

“And I said…”

He’s belting Taylor Swift with the enthusiasm of an 11-year-old Swiftie super-fan. Like the world would end if he didn’t put enough passion into this performance. Like the showerhead is his microphone and the surrounding tiles are his adoring audience.

“Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. I'll be waiting; all that's left to do is run...”

Most people would be pissed if their friend were singing in the shower at 2 am… but you can’t find it in yourself to be anything but enamored.

God, you hate him for doing this right now. Hate that he’s inadvertently endearing you to him. Hate that, no matter what you do, he’s somehow always there.

Pressed up against you on the couch, meeting you for dinner at his favorite restaurant, fussing at each other over a shitty cup of coffee in your even shittier kitchen, calling you when he needs somebody to keep him company at the library… 

“You'll be the prince & I'll be the princess…”

And now he’s accidentally serenading you with Taylor’s “Fearless” album. In the shower.

You facepalm, sinking into your hands, exasperated and just so… done.

You sink back down into the bedsheets, wishing your earbuds were nearby to drown out the regrettably adorable performance. 

“It's a love story y/n, just say ‘Yes.’”

And your heart drops, panic setting in like the touch down of a whirling tornado. A fire tornado. A fire tornado with frogs and lizards and sharp objects spinning around inside of it.

What… did he just say?

The lyrics… they were muffled. You definitely heard them incorrectly. You… you just need to get your ears checked. Yes, that’s it. That’s all there is to it. You’ll schedule an appointment first thing tomorrow morning.

Because who the fuck sings like that at 2 am in a shared dorm? And who the fuck puts someone else’s name into a song like that? No one? Yes, no one.

Especially not the Oikawa Tooru.

And especially not with your name.

Because that’s just... weird.

The grip on your phone is mighty – thank God for durable glass because any other material would’ve splintered or shattered in your hold. 

But what the hell.

“Y/n, save me, I've been feeling so alone,” he sings as though he were Beyoncé’s son.

This time it’s clear as day. Oikawa is definitely still out of it and he’s undoubtedly singing your name.

No, no, no.

“I keep waiting for you but you never come…”

You bolt out of bed, feet hitting the floor at lightning-strike speed.

“Is this in my head? I don't know what to think,”

In one swift movement, you fling the bedroom door open and rush down the hall. You shouldn’t be listening to this. 

“He knelt to the ground & pulled out a ring, and said...”

And before you can stop your hand, it’s knocking rapidly on the bathroom door.

There’s a gasp, what you assume to a bar of soap hitting the shower floor, and an abrupt silence that follows.

You’d only wanted to stop him from singing.

However, you hadn’t thought through what you were going to say to him about this whole... lyrical mess. Your face feels like the surface of the sun, burning and flaring and flushing. What are you supposed to do now?

Oikawa speaks up, voice quiet, “Hello?”

Shit.

Maybe if you’re careful you can get yourself out of this. Just act like you didn’t hear anything and bring it up tomorrow when you’re both thinking straight. A thorough and sober discussion would be needed.

You had questions. Questions that needed answers.

Why did he have his head in your lap? Had you said anything to him that you’d regret later? Does he like you? Where should you two place your boundaries if he doesn’t like you back? And why Taylor Swift?

“Y/n, is that you?” He asks, nonchalantly.

Who else would it be?

The handle squeaks and, with that, the water stops. Only the gentle swirl of the drain and the occasional drips and drops from the showerhead are audible.

It’s too late. You’re already there. You’ve knocked and, in doing so, you’ve sealed your fate.

“...Yes,” is your whisper of a reply.

“What’s up? Was I too loud for you?”

You’ve got the entire building on high-alert singing that loudly.

...is what you would say if you weren’t currently imploding. This is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. And nothing you ever want to experience again.

“Um, yeah, sorry.” You look down at your shuffling feet.

The hallway is pitch black, hardly allowing for even a mere shadow. Rushing out of your room, you’d forgotten to turn on even a single light.

You hear him step onto the tile floor and the rustle of a tower from the bathroom closet.

“Wait, can we talk?” He asks as though it weren’t the question of the fucking year. “I mean, preferably after I get out of the bathroom.” There’s a lack of tact to his words.

This isn’t the charming Oikawa you’re used to. This is a blunt… confusingly straightforward Oikawa.

His tone wavers like maybe he’d had a little more to drink than you’d last remembered. Your memory was proving to be disappointingly unreliable tonight.

You swallow thickly, “Sure.”

Because what else can you say?

“Can I stop by your room in a minute?”

You take a deep breath, “Yeah.”

And you patter back to your no-longer very safe haven. Oikawa is about to infiltrate your space… with your permission. And the weapons he’ll bring will either harpoon you or leave you emotionally paralyzed – whether that emotional paralysis is a good or bad thing will be decided in the near future.

Your bed, though soft and blanket-covered, looks far less appealing now. It may as well be a bed of nails because you would rather hide beneath it than sit atop it.

But you sit anyway, letting the mattress dip and the springs twang.

The bathroom door cries as it opens, putting you on edge. Your heart is pounding like a drum at a summer festival – hotter and louder with every beat.

The trod of footsteps tells you he’s approaching and, sure enough, the open door reveals Oikawa.

With only a lamp to brighten the space, he’s more contoured than usual. His hair is wet and heavy against his head, taking on an even darker brown than before. You’ve seen him fresh out of the shower before, but this… is different. Oikawa’s shirt sticks to his chest slightly – he must’ve thrown it on without drying off fully to get to you faster.

He takes a few steps into your room, choosing to lean his back against a wall next to your work desk. Oikawa brings his hands behind his back, pressing his weight into them. Brown eyes flicker from you to the wall behind you and back again.

Naturally, tension lays thick as a fog in the air space. 

“Hey, I’m…”

You cut him off, “You don’t have to say sorry! It’s… it’s okay.” 

Oops, you’d said that a little too loud. Not that it mattered much after Oikawa’s passionate performance.

An eyebrow raises and confusion sparks across his face. Your body freezes.

He brings a hand behind his neck. “Oh, I was just gonna say that I’m still kinda drunk.”

You knew that much. Though you really thought he’d say something other than that. Preferably something about the, uh, devoted love-song?

Why is he acting so casual right now? Is this even Tooru? Had he read too many alien conspiracies and been abducted for learning too much about extraterrestrials? 

Maybe he doesn’t realize you’d even heard him say your name in the shower.

“Oh... right.” You say slowly, lips staying parted at the end of your sentence.

“Which… probably isn’t good for either of us,” Different words drawl out and there’s a soft slur to some syllables, but at least he’s easy to understand, “me drinking too much, I mean.”

“Yeah,” you mutter.

“I think we should both just go to bed then.”

Your chest tightens. Of course, you want answers.

They’re likely embarrassing, face-reddening, Taylor Swift-centric answers. But you want them, nonetheless.

Although, it’s probably for the best that you don’t bring this up tonight. It was all probably a joke or a harmless accident – and, anyway, he admitted to being drunk.

“Right.”

“But I think you should know that I like you. A lot.”

“Yeah,” you respond again, automatically.

There’s another heavy silence. The pretty boy just stares at you, cherry colors tinting his cheeks but showing no expression of fear or embarrassment. You stare back, processing his words at turtle-like speeds.

The words tumble out, “Wait, say that again?” You double back, your own face reheating to its earlier temperature.

“I’m gonna be mad at myself in the morning if I don’t leave right now. And I really need to stop listening to that stupid song,” Oikawa says to himself. 

“But I wanted to see how you would respond if I changed the lyrics,” the words are pointed back at you again.

He stands up, feet moving slowly toward the doorway. Did he just… completely ignore your question?

Your jaw drops, “Did…” you can hardly speak.

Clearing your throat, you try again, focusing intently on your words, “...did you mean for me to hear you?”

“...Maybe.” He draws out the “e,” looking back at you.

That’s it. He’s lost his fucking mind. You’re going to strangle him. 

No TikTok advice could have prepared you for the monstrosity that is Oikawa Tooru. How Iwaizumi put up with that... that child for all these years, you have no idea.

You have to make a note of sending him a “get well” card, because nobody could be mentally okay after dealing with him for that long.

“B- but… why? What?” You stammer out, back stiff as a board.

“You like me don’t you?” He tilts his head, hair flopping cutely with it.

You gape like a fish, mouth opening and closing.

And it’s not that you don’t want to respond.

It’s that you can’t. You have no words. You vocal chords are on a panic-induced lockdown.

Because he knew.

He knew this entire time. Which you thought he might, but that doesn’t make the situation any less infuriating.

“And I like you back.”

You’re dumbfounded. You can’t think. This is ridiculous.

You open your mouth once more but he has no intention of continuing this conversation.

“Sleep well!” Without further comment, Oikawa flashes you a sleepy smile and begins scampering back to his room after having wreaked havoc on your poor heart.

Your voice comes back just in time for you to wake up the entire building once more,

“No, you get your ass back here and explain yourself!”

[txemrn]

The Missionary's Daughter

Ch. 1: "Meant to Live"

Need to catch up? Prologue: "It's Over"

Chapter Song Inspo: "Meant to Live" by Switchfoot

Series Song Inspo: "Changed by You" by Between the Trees

Pairings: Drake Walker x OC (Margot Hughes); Liam Rys x Riley Brooks

Series Warning: 🛑 for mature audiences only (🔞); series contains angst, language, NSFW🍋 material; trigger warning: heavy discussion/depiction of drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, religion, mental health; please be advised and exercise discretion

A/N: When I say that this took a village, it would be the understatement of the century! Huuuuuuuuge thank you to all of my amazing sweet writing sisters that encouraged me and helped me pull this together, but especially to @charlotteg234 for brainstorming and mapping this out with me, @kat-tia801 for doing the same, but then having to deal with me incessantly asking, "Does this sound right?" and @chemist-ana FOR GIFITNG ME MY FREAKING AMAZING MOODBOARD! It's SO beautiful, and it literally puts me in the mood to write about my Druggy Drake and Margot! Thank you so, so much, friend! Most of the characters and some of the plot belong to our friends at Pixelberry.

A palpable crackle ignites the sterile air of the staff locker room. To say she was ‘nervous’ is a painfully severe understatement to the jitters that spark from her fingertips. But, rather than dance chaotically like cut wires on pavement, she is lightning, mesmerizing, lighting up the sky with excitement and power.

***

Dressing for another Monday morning at her weekly volunteer job at the prestigious Cordonia Family OB/GYN, Margot Hughes swiftly shimmies a monogrammed ceil blue scrub top down her curves. Pulling her brilliant strands of autumn harvest into a high bun, she slips on her work clogs while nudging her locker closed with her knee.

Before leaving the changing area, she catches her visage in the mirror, the unflattering fluorescent lights casting more shadows onto her worried features. She can feel the rumble of her rapid heartbeat echoing in her ears; her chest constricts tightly as her breathing becomes shallow. Her eyes begin to sting with fear as the whites burn red, threatening with a glaze of tears.

Today is the day her entire life will change; everything she has ever wanted, everything that she has ever worked for will suddenly determine the course of her future in a single moment. Seeing the all-too-familiar terror in her eyes, Margot flutters her eyelids shut. Her fingers nervously trace along a simple chain around her neck until they finally grasp tightly to a dainty sterling silver charm: a cross.

“Take my anxieties, Lord,” she whispers with prayerful conviction, her sparkling blue eyes gracefully opening to look at her necklace. She exhales deeply. “Your will be done.” Margot stares at her reflection for a few more moments, focusing on her breathing to calm her restless heart. “You are strong, Margot. You've got this,” she affirms herself in a hushed tone, a bright smile breaking across her face. “This is your day--" suddenly overwhelmed with peace, a joyous smile paints across her face. Chuckling to herself, she glances upwards: “I'm counting on You.” Taking a deep cleansing breath, she eagerly exits the stillness of her thoughts, and joins the bustle of the morning's clinic appointments. Today is her day.

***

Halos of blurred auras bleach his vision as Drake cautiously opens one blood-shot eye. His tongue sticks to the roof of his roughly parched mouth as he massages his pained forehead. Clueless of what day it is--much less what he did last night--he is greeted with a sudden glorious sensation: a supple wet mouth on his hardened morning length.

His body relaxes back onto the dampened, disheveled sheets of his bed; he releases a pleasurable exhale as he blindly reaches for the head behind the lips. He strains to focus his view, but can only make out a foggy shape of a nude woman with long, tousled brunette waves.

It’s her. His love.

Drake smiles; delicately tangling his grip in her strands, he admires how even the afternoon sun catches her beauty perfectly. He quietly smacks his lips. He can still smell her on his stubble; he can still taste her on his tongue.

Had she told Liam? Were they celebrating that they could finally be together?

As she takes in the head of his girth, he arches his back, relaxing his body into her hungry touch. Closing his eyes, he offers a guttural groan deep in his chest as she swirls her tongue around his firm thickness.

“God, you’re incredible, Riley--”

---

Pulling out a pen, Margot reaches across the counter to grab a patient’s clipboard--that is until Iris, the front desk manager grips her long, manicured nails to the other side of the particle wood. “Miss Mary-Margaret,” she leans in conspiratorially, lowering her voice, “do we know anything yet?” Margot chuckles, shaking her head. “Child, you better come find me the moment you know!”

“Only if you promise to start calling me ‘Margot’” the young blonde jests, opening her client’s chart.

“How about I start calling you what we’ll all be calling you in just a few short years: ‘doctor’?” Rosy pink swirls splash across Margot’s face, warming her cheeks to the touch. She bows her head coyly at the mention of her dream becoming a reality. The thought that she will soon find out if a medical career is in her future makes the twenty-one-year-old’s heart leap with unbridled excitement.

For as long as she can remember, Margot has had a strong desire to serve and help other people. Much of that selfless attitude was instilled into her heart by her own parents. They were called to be Christian missionaries when Margot was only eight years old. After much planning, church fund-raising, and prayer, Roy and Mary Hughes left their comfortable home of Lafayette, Louisiana, and settled in the small Mediterranean country of Cordonia.

Many of their friends and family were shocked that the church would send them to such a beautiful area of the world. Typically missionaries humble themselves to serve the needy, the homeless, the lonely and the sick. They sacrifice the luxuries of home for the sake of loving humanity. They help people in war-torn countries, third-world countries, countries that don’t have electricity or running water. But, this country?

Cordonia itself is a lavish nation, rich in heritage and traditions. And funds. Thanks to the ideal weather conditions, the fruitful soil produces bountiful harvests and exquisite supplies for fine textiles that remain in high demand throughout the world. The Cordonian government, a monarchy, discovered a new opportunity to expand their wealth in the late 19th century: costly tariffs to international investors. Within the first ten years of increasing the taxes on exports, the national treasury was not only in the black, but their funds had exponentially increased every year. Farms were flourishing as the working class became larger, stronger.

But, the treasury began to dwindle quickly due to the extravagant demands of the royals. For the first time in the country's history, commoners were wealthier than some of the nobility. Disdain from the upper class quickly ensued until finally, in the early 20th century under the rule of William I, a new tax law was implemented to all of Cordonia: anyone involved with international exchange would have to pay into the treasury to handle such business.

Unfortunately, there were no limitations to this new tax law, and many farms floundered, property ownership being seized by the government. Families were uprooted; jobs were lost, and worse, assets were sold for even more money, filling the pockets of the greedy leaders. The people that once had a plethora of goods at their fingertips were now starving and unsheltered. And vengeful. The Cordonians were outraged by the gouging, many of them forming violent riots, banding together with outside influencers in hopes of overthrowing the government.

On the cusp of a civil war, King William I decided to rezone the country, providing a place for the displaced working class to claim safety and sanctuary, a place that would offer shelter, education, and more affordable options for goods. To appease the people even more, he named the project ‘the Core,’ paying homage to their greatest export, the Cordonian Ruby. It was also a way for him to forever express his gratitude for such a fruitful nation: they were the core reason the nation was thriving so richly.

Like many government-assisted programs, it didn’t take long for the cracks to show in the infrastructure. And with funding cuts over the years, the Core began to crumble, striking a sharp contrast from the rest of Cordonia. The Core, now often referred to as ‘the slums’, have become a breeding ground for crime, drugs, and prostitution. It is the blemish of Cordonia, its existence often not acknowledged amongst the elite.

But, according to the Hughes, ‘God saw the need’. They were sent to serve in the slums of Cordonia, starting up several free programs, including a nightly soup kitchen, afterschool programs to keep children out of trouble, and trade classes to help adults out of poverty. The people accepted the help and adapted quickly to the missionaries; but even more importantly, they embraced these Americans as their own, many of them forming important and lasting relationships with the Hughes.

But, still there was something missing, something that burdened the missionary’s oldest daughter: healthcare. Having good health and access to a doctor is still treated as a privilege in Cordonia, and time and time again, the curable were disabled or buried. A change needed to take place. And Margot, although unsure of how, knew she would devote her life in making it happen for the Cordonian people.

As she makes a few notes on her clipboard, an olive-complected arm stealthily reaches around Margot, gracefully grazing her sun-kissed skin before gently placing a cup of piping hot black coffee in front of her. Staring at the hand, she instantly knows who it is. And she titters, playfully rolling her eyes. “Tadd! Another coffee?” She grabs the coffee, twirling on the ball of her foot to face the clinic’s young ultrasound technician. "My tab must be over a hundred euros by now!"

"Oh, don't you worry about that," he chuckles, rocking on his feet. “Plus, I figured with your new gig at Bríki--” he jovially shrugs his shoulders.

“You figured what?” Margot playfully punches his shoulder. “That I could sneak you free coffee?” She gives a mischievous smile, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t think Mr. Pavlis would appreciate me offering free drinks, especially since I haven’t even started yet--”

“That’s right!” Tadd eyes widen. “Today’s the day--!”

“As if I didn’t already have enough to be nervous about today,” Margot’s voice becomes shaky, as she clenches her teeth in a forced smile.

“Hey,” Tadd’s voice turns into an endearing whisper. He shifts his head until his piercing jade eyes meet Margot’s baby blues. “You have nothing to worry about. We both know you did well on that American doctor test--"

"The MCAT," Margot stifles a laugh, rolling her eyes into an appreciative grin.

"Whatever," a crooked smile grows across Tadd's handsome features. "And as far as the coffee shop, you're a fast learner. And a hard worker. Plus, if they see what we all see in you--" he sighs, his gaze never breaking free from hers, "-- they're going to love you."

Margot looks down at her feet, hugging her clipboard tightly to her chest. Feeling her palms begin to sweat, she coyly looks back up at her dear friend. "Thanks, Tadd."

After a few silent moments of staring at each other, Tadd clears his throat. "So, um--" he starts, "have you heard anything yet? About the test?" Tadd changes the subject. Margot shakes her head as she takes a pull from her coffee. "Well, when you do, um, maybe we could, I mean, I thought we could--"

Suddenly an intercom buzzes overhead. "Thaddeus to exam room four. Thaddeus to exam room four."

Tadd furrows his eyebrows, looking to the ceiling before resting a kind half-smile back on Margot. "Duty calls," he nervously sighs as he bounds down the hallway. Halfway down the corridor, he spins around to face Margot. "Hey, um, come find me! Before you leave at noon!" He finger-guns the air before returning to his pursuit.

Margot awkwardly finger-guns him back before smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand. "Seriously, Margot?" she mutters to herself, turning her attention back to the central desk of the clinic; however, she realizes quickly that the attention is all on her.

"When are you two going to make it official, Miss Mary-Margaret?" Iris chokes in the midst of her belly laughs, nodding with other scrub-adorned coworkers.

Biting her bottom lip feeling her heart flutter, Margot straightens out her demeanor, becoming stoic. "I--I don't know what you're talking about--"

"Margot, isn't it obvious?" Chimes in a jolly intake nurse. "That boy loves you--!"

"Who? Tadd?" Margot feigns innocence. She fixes her attention to the chart as she scribbles down more notes. "It's not like that--I mean, we're not, um--" she sighs. "We're just friends--" An instant roar of laughter abrupts from the reception desk, making it impossible for Margot to hide her toothy-smile paired with her scrunched up nose.

"You say that now, baby girl--"

"That's right," chimes in another giggling co-worker, "friends for now!"

An older plump nurse places a tender hand on Margot’s hand, a knowing smile spreading across her face. "Some of the best relationships come from friendships, moró. Give it time. Let the love grow," she winks at Margot.

Margot fidgets with her pen, delicately licking her bottom lip. She then tries to form words with her mouth, but no sound is heard. Her pink cheeks reveal she is flustered. She quickly closes up the chart, pushing loose hairs behind her ear. "Have a good day, ladies."

Hearing the squeals of her coworkers diminishing behind her, Margot quickly escapes into an empty exam room. Closing the door behind her, she leans against it, looking up at the textured ceiling tiles. She can feel the butterflies in her stomach bouncing through to her heart as her legs wiggle with weakness like gelatin.

The idea of 'falling in love' excites Margot, an idea she has dreamed about ever since she saw Baby meet Johnny. But, so far in her young life, she has never experienced it first hand, let alone a romantic hand- hold. Was this love? All she knew for sure was today was not the day to figure it out.

***

As soon as Riley’s name escapes his breathless moans of ecstasy, a searing sharp pain instantly ignites around his hardened girth. And Drake sees red.

"Fuck!" He lets out a guttural roar until no sound comes out of his mouth. He gnashes his teeth, trying to breathe through the agony, but only froths at the corners of his lips. The veins in his neck and his forehead protrude violently as streams of tears roll down his face. Petrified to move, his face turns a deep ruddy color. Before turning violet.

A sudden sensation of relief washes over him as the stabbing sensation fades to throbbing. Drake nervously looks down at his softening cock, relieved to see his member in one piece. "Goddamnit, Brooks," he pants furiously, "you fucking bit me--"

The brunette quickly tosses her curls out of her eyesight right before her fist meets Drake's jaw. "Oh, shit!" The cracking of the joints in his face echoes around the room. Drake starts to gently massage his chin. "You're not Riley--"

She climbs off of his body, standing her naked body in front of him. "No shit, Sherlock!" She slinks her short black spaghetti-strap dress over her dangerous curves before hastily grabbing her clear platform heels and racing out the door. "Fuck you, Drake Walker!"

***

A heartless, cocky laugh pours over the phone speaker. "Shit, Walker. Just--" the baritone voice trails back into a fit of laughter.

"It's not funny, Leo--" Drake warns, accidentally shifting his weight in bed, stirring a soreness to his recent injuries. "Ow!” he sucks air quickly between his gritted teeth, “fuck!" he whimpers to himself, adjusting the cold packs on his genitals.

"But you actually called her a different name, bro. A different name! With her mouth on your salami, your pocket rocket, on your--on your anaconda--" Leo's words fade back into cackles.

"As if you remember every goddamn hook-up’s name--"

"Dude," Leo interrupts, "if she's going to go all hungry, hungry hippo mid-blowie, I'm going to remember her name."

Drake scoffs. "Bullshit--"

"What? I'm serious, bro" Leo's voice becomes sincere. "All of these bitches we meet are looking for one thing--" he pauses dramatically for his wounded friend to finish his sentence; but the silence proves Drake is clueless as to where Leo was going with this. "A connection, Walker!" Leo's voice drips with conviction. "These women don't want to feel like they're disposable, even though--" he chuckles to himself, “let’s be honest: we’re doing them a favor--”

"--’A connection’, Leo" Drake interrupts, urging the conversation back on track.

"Right! ‘A connection," reaffirms Leo, circling back to his point. "Now, okay,” he knowingly titters, “I can’t remember all of these names--”

“Ha! See?” Drake barks.

“--Which is why--” Leo enunciates over Drake, “I use a single pet name. ‘Girl’.”

"'Girl'? That’s your trick? You call them 'girl'?" Drake raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Hear me out,” Leo continues. “If you call them something like ‘baby’ or ‘sweetie’, it can be seen as patronizing, that you’re clearly looking to smooth-talk your way into their pants--” Drake rolls his eyes, moving the phone to his other ear “--but now, calling them ‘girl’, I’m showing I want to be a friend, that I just simply want to connect. And then when you’re having your way with her, call her whatever the fuck you want as long as you finish the name with ‘girl’. Good girl. Dirty girl. Naughty girl. Sweet girl. Or in your case, hungry girl--”

Drake clears his throat, stifling a laugh. “--That is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard--”

“Hey!” Leo interjects. “Who is wearing a bag of frozen peas on his one-eyed trouser snake?”

“Touché,” Drake sighs. “So, where are you right now?”

“With Jason up at his shop.”

“Who?” Drake lets out yawn, looking at his bedside alarm clock.

“Shit, Walker, you really were fucked up last night," Leo sighs. "Jason. You met him last night.” Leo’s voice lowers into a whisper. “He helped you get fucked up last night.”

“Oh! Right, right,” Drake rubs his head, “that was--wow, that shit was--”

“Good, right?” Leo finishes. “Hey, come join us at his shop. We’ve got coffee, and he’s got some new, um, product he’d love to show you--”

“Oh, Leo, I don’t know--” Drake removes the melting bag of vegetables from his lap. Gently lifting up on the waistband of his boxers, carefully inspecting his bruised parts.

“Does Liam have you working today?”

“No, no, it’s not that--” Drake hesitates.

“Oh!” Leo knowingly exclaims. “Does Riley have you working today?” He begins to chuckle. “You might need to let her know that you’re currently indisposed for --”

“Leo--” Drake warns.

“Then what's the hold up?"

Drake glances over at the mirror affixed to his antique dresser, but he doesn't recognize his own reflection. There's an emptiness in eyes, an inexplicable turmoil overcoming the man he once was. How did everything get so complicated? How did he get to such a place that it's better to be absent in life than to live it?

She was just a friend--at least that's what he convinced himself when Riley Brooks first caught his eye. Beautiful. Extremely witty with a fight he had never seen before. When they first kissed, he swore it was a mistake. Hormones. It had been so long since he had touched the delicate petals of a woman's lips.

But, this wasn't just any woman. It was her. And he soon would find himself wrapped up in her bedsheets, wrapped around her finger, wrapped in an awful web of lies.

And, all of his transgressions were against him, his very best friend, the man he regards as closer than a brother, his closest ally and confidant. Normally, Drake would turn to Liam in a heartbeat with any troubles, but this? How could he? How could he talk to Liam about his own devastation when the truth would devastate Liam?

It's been four days since that fateful night of Liam's coronation, four days since the love of Drake's life walked away from him, forcing his hand into harboring secrets from the crowned prince. It's been four days since Drake heard his own voice in his head, four days since he's been sober enough to even think. Even though he deemed the temporary escape necessary, the sudden twinge of discomfort in his groin makes him realize that taking another hit right now is the absolute last thing he needs.

"I think I better stay put," Drake answers, combing his fingers through his disheveled tresses.

"Suit yourself," Leo jovially retorts. "If you need any oxy for your boo-boo, hit me up--Oh, and Drake?"

“Hrmmm?”

"Her name is Whitney."

"What?"

"Jaws? You know, the bitch who chewed on your Moby Dick?" Drake sighs heavily, regretting that he ever told Leo what had happened. "Her name is Whitney."

Drake furrows his eyebrows. "Now, how do you remember her name--?"

"Oh, bro, you don't forget WAP Whitney--oh shit, you probably haven't gotten a good look at your sheets this morning, have you?"

With a grunt, Drake ends the call. “Fuck me,” he mutters under his breath. He carefully gets up, waddling to grab his clothes before heading to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

In the middle of splashing his face with cold, soapy water, Drake's phone rings. Grabbing a hand towel he carefully saunters back to his room, answering the call without hesitation. "Just let it go, Leo--”

"Drake?"

An icy chill shoots down Drake’s spine, freezing him in his steps. He knows that melodic voice anywhere, a voice that reminds him of early morning sunrises and late night silver moonlit paths. “H-hey, Riley,” he stutters, caught off guard. A brief awkward stillness falls over the conversation. “How are you--?”

“I miss you, Drake,” she interrupts.

Drake’s vision suddenly begins to spin as the air in the room becomes stagnant. Stiffening his bottom lip in anger, his breathing quickens as he reaches out carefully to brace himself against the wall.

“Drake?”

“I’m here,” he chokes out. “What do you want, Brooks?” He can hear the tears in her voice, but he wills himself not to care, he wills himself to not even ask.

“Drake, I think I made a mistake--”

“No,” Drake barks out, “no, you can’t do this to me--”

“Drake, please,” Riley sobs, “I’m on my way to the doctor--”

“The doctor?” Drake’s tone suddenly changes. “Are you okay? Is everything with--um, you know--” he slaps his forehead with the palm of his hand, “--okay?”

“Yes--” she sniffles, “--no. I just, I can’t do this alone, Drake. I can’t do this--”

“Riley--” he roughly says her name to grab her attention, “you made your decision: you chose Liam. You want to raise our baby--my baby with him--”

“Don’t you think I want to have this baby with you? That’s all I can even think about Drake,” she takes a moment to calm down her shaking voice. “I love you, Drake. I want a life with you. I want you to be there when this baby is born, when this baby needs his or her father--when this baby needs you--”

“Riley--” Drake exhales with frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose, “--but Liam--”

“I know, Drake. I know--” Riley takes a deep breath, “Can we just talk? In person? Just so we can figure this out? I can come over there--”

“Brooks, I--” Drake stumbles over his words as he runs his fingers over his coarse, overgrown stubble. Of course, he wants her to come over. And to stay. But, has anything changed? Liam just proposed, and she made it clear what her intentions were. But, still, it’s possible she had a change of heart, and this was a second chance he may never get again. He sighs heavily. “Sure. Okay."

After finishing his impromptu conversation with Riley, Drake realizes he needs to make another phone call. He scrolls through his call history, and clicks the green send button.

"Did you change your mind, Evander Holyfield?"

"Funny, Leo," Drake sarcastically responds. "So, yeah, um, what's the address to the shop?"

***

“Does that--does that say what I think it says?” Margot nervously stammers. "I think I saw my score--oh gosh!"

“Here. Let me look--”

Margot quickly covers the computer screen with her hands, "No, Mrs. Iris!” Margot squeals. “I’m not ready--I’m not ready for this!”

“Child, you have been ready for this for months. Now, if you don’t get your hands out of the way--"

"What's with all the commotion?" A few technicians and nurses pile into the room, each giving an endearing rub to Margot’s back. Everyone begins craning their necks to see the computer, covered by Margot's arms. "Is it time? Have they posted the scores?"

"They sure have!" answers Iris before turning to Margot. She tucks several blonde wisps behind Margot’s ear before putting her finger under her chin. "C'mon, baby," she smiles encouragingly, "it's more fun celebrating than worrying."

"I'm--" Margot takes a deep breath, biting back her tears, "--I'm so scared--"

"--and the Lord knew you would be, baby." Iris wrinkles her nose at Margot, her voice becoming stronger. "That's why He called you to be courageous. C'mon."

Margot bites her lip, slowly nodding her head. Feeling the storm brew in her eyes as the weight of the world sits on her chest, she carefully peels back her hands. Her eyes scale the black and white on the screen, but nothing seems to make sense. A burst of silence overwhelms her hearing, time standing perfectly still. Her only company is the beating of her heart.

Take my anxieties...

You have nothing to worry about…

Your will be done…

Be courageous...

Like suddenly breaking through the surface for air, an abrupt roar of cheers fill the room, shaking Margot from her trance. "Our baby girl got a 519!" screams a tearful Iris, pulling Margot from her seat and into a tight embrace. Other coworkers join in, creating a giant group hug.

Margot remains speechless, shocked by her score. She always knew she was an excellent student, studying hard all through school and excelling in her classes. When it came to the MCAT, she was confident she would score better than average, a score of 500. But, to even be noticed by top medical schools, she needed to score in the top 5%, a score 517 or greater.

News swept like wildfire through the clinic, and shortly thereafter, Tadd and some other technicians filed into the breakroom with a decorative chocolate cake and punch in tow. "I knew you could do it!" Tadd cheers victoriously, offering a chaste hug to Margot. "Dr. Hughes," he swipes his hand in the air as if to paint an imaginary portrait. "It has a nice ring to it."

"I still don't understand why you put yourself through all of that," mentions an older phlebotomist. "Cordonia has a medical school right down the road--"

"Because Margot wants to go to one of the best medical schools in the world," interrupts a deeply demanding, yet sincere voice. “To Harvard. Like me.”

"Dr. Ramirez," Margot smiles brightly, jumping up to greet her mentor with a hug.

"That is, you are still looking at my alma mater for medical school--"

"Yes ma'am!" Margot's eyes light up with the thought that her dream of going to Harvard Medical School is becoming her reality. "It would be such an honor to go there, let alone to follow in your footsteps."

Dr. Ramirez pulls Margot in for another tight hug. "My word, Mary-Margaret, 519?" she presses her cheek to Margot's, "I am so proud of you."

"Thank you, Dr. Ramirez," Margot warmly responds, "thank you for taking a chance on me and helping me so much with my studies and research--"

"You know I did that for selfish reasons, right?" The practitioner stifles a smile while Margot squints her eyes with suspicion. "Cordonia needs more female physicians, and more importantly, physicians that will make a difference in its healthcare," she grips tightly to Margot’s hand, "for everyone. I believe you will lead this country in a health care reformation."

"I don't know what to say," Margot clears her throat as she fights back the tears. "I hope I make you proud--"

"You already do." Dr. Ramirez gently touches Margot's cheek lovingly before turning to exit the room.

"Oh!" Margot quickly chases after the obstetrician, “can I talk to you? Privately?” With a nod, Dr. Ramirez leads Margot into a quiet corner. “I know my work-study ends in two weeks--”

“I know. Don’t remind me, Margot--”

“Well, I was wondering,” Margot chews on the side of her mouth, fidgeting with her fingers, “if by any chance I could possibly stay on?”

“Oh, Margot, I wish I could. Unfortunately with budget cuts--”

Margot shakes her head. “No, no, Dr. Ramirez, I meant if I could stay on, shadowing my usual Monday and Thursday mornings, I mean, if that’s alright. Learn more? Keep up my skills?”

“You want to continue volunteering with us?” The doctor gives an inquisitive look. “Don’t you want to get a job to earn money before you move to the states next year?”

“I already got that covered,” Margot assuredly answers. “I just got a job at Bríki, the coffee shop past the square--”

“Oh my gosh,” Dr. Ramirez’s eyes light up. “Does Aleksi still own that place?”

“Mr. Pavlis? Yes! Him and his son run it together, I believe--”

“They have the best coffee,” she energetically smiles, “now I have another reason to stop by.” She kindly places her hand on Margot’s shoulder. “Of course, you can stay on as a volunteer. Whenever you want, however much you want. It is a pleasure to have you around.” With a squeeze of her arm, Dr. Ramirez turns to go to her next appointment, but stops halfway down the hall. “Oh, Margot? My nurse stepped away to make an important phone call. Do you mind escorting my next patient to the exam room?”

Margot dutifully nods with a grin. She twirls around, bounding for the front desk to grab the chart of Dr. Ramirez’s next patient, a new patient. After making a few small notes, Margot opens the door to call her back.

“Brooks? Riley Brooks?”

*****

Tags: (this is my original tag list for this series; if you wanted to be added or removed, please let me know!) @alyssalauren @ao719 @bbrandy2002 @burnsoslow @charlotteg234 @chemist-ana @choiceskatie @forallthatitsworth @gkittylove99 @glaimtruelovealways @kat-tia801 @khoicesbyk @lovingchoices14 @lovelyladyk88 @lucy-268 @mainstreetreader @marshmallowsaremyfavorite @neotericthemis @nestledonthaveone @sfb123 @shannonwrote @shewillreadyou @sweatyrysconnoisseur @taniasethi @tessa-liam @texaskitten30 @thefrenchiemama @thegreentwin @twinkleallnight @yourmajesty09

[nevervalentines]

(went looking for) a creation myth [read on ao3 here]

With the Vytal Festival just weeks away, Yang is left looking for answers to questions she is too scared to ask. 

***

Yang and Blake, before. 

[7k words of a speed run enemies-to-lovers, roughhousing with bladed weapons, and sexually charged hair washing]

Blood is seeping through the fabric of her top, and her tan jacket is gritty with dust. It’s enough to staunch the tacky, rust-colored stain, but only just, and the cut stings with sweat and friction as Yang raises her forearm to run it across her brow.

She slicks her bangs out of her eyes, and reloads her gauntlets with a tight punch at her side, bracing her arms for the recoil as the shells drop into their chambers. Ember Celica is overloud in the sudden quiet of the clearing. Moss-dampened and studded with new spring growth, Emerald Forest is surprisingly silent, as if Yang hadn’t been booking it for her fucking life thirty seconds before.

Then, just there, through the trees – she sees it. Yang’s heart drops, and she risks a step forward, eyes scanning the mulchy cover of dead leaves and underbrush for a trip wire. There’s the potential for anything, from a steel-jawed bear trap to a cartoon-esque snare and net. She really wouldn’t put it past them.

She sees nothing and raises her eyes to scan the trees, finds only the pale underside of the arcing canopy and the gnarl of tangled vines. Grinning, she feels an early flush of victory, a rush of satisfaction that pounds like a second heartbeat. She might actually win this thing; the others be damned.

Bleeding side forgotten, fists held loosely at the ready, she is about to take the final steps toward her target when the metallic click of a safety releasing freezes her in place. Yang winces her eyes closed, breathes out shakily. She feels the mouth of a pistol nuzzle in between her shoulder blades.

Yang knows who it is without turning around. Which is to say: the worst-case scenario. She swallows, hard.

“You don’t want to do this,” she says. At a firmer nudge of the gun against her back, she raises her hands, obedient.  “You can just pretend like I was never here.”

“And why would I do that?”

She turns slowly in place, arms still raised above her head, and finds herself face to face with her captor, finds narrowed, golden eyes, Gambol Shroud pointed squarely at her chest. Blake is wrinkling her nose in the way that means she’s biting back a laugh.

“Because you love me?”

Blake bites at her lip, considers. Shrugs. “Maybe. But not enough to let you take our flag.”

“I was so close,” Yang whines. She pivots her head over her shoulder, pouts in the direction of the blue fabric hanging from a flagpole just a few yards away.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Blake says, stepping closer, until the heat of her thigh presses against Yang’s, “you really weren’t. Pyrrha’s had you in her sights since you crossed the creek.”

“Have you considered,” Yang says, flattening her hands against the back of her head in a way that she knows pushes her chest out, in a way that, without fail, means Blake’s eyes will flick down to her cleavage, “that I was just a distraction?”

Blake hesitates for just a second, but it’s a beat too long, and Yang lashes out her leg, timing the strike perfectly with Weiss’s rush from the trees on the far side of the clearing, darting from glyph to glyph, a lightning-crackling Nora close on her heels.

Yang and Blake go down in an undignified heap, and Pyrrha’s shot spears the space she was in just moments before.

The scramble at the base of the flagpole dissolves into an all-out brawl. A petal-blurred Ruby drops from a tree and gamely tackles Weiss, and her subsequent shrill scream makes an entire flock of birds flee their roost from the above canopy.

More players from both teams race into the clearing, skidding through dead leaves and debris, pant legs flecked with creek water and mud, more roughed up than a 50-minute long, single class period game of capture the flag has any right to make them.

From her spot on the ground, the sky wheeling overhead, Yang distantly hopes some people stayed behind to guard their own flag, but the odds aren’t looking good.

At the edge of the tree line, Juane trips one of the exact traps Yang had been wary of, something rigged so quickly and neatly it has to be Ruby’s handiwork, and it hoists him overhead by his ankle. He dangles, looking resigned, sword sliding out of its scabbard and thunking Cardin squarely on the top of his head.

Cardin goes down like a brick.

Juane cheers.

They’re on the same team, but no one seems to remember the red/blue delineations at this point. The flag all but forgotten, Weiss and Nora are facing off against an odd match-up of Ruby and Ren, and Yang tries to clamber off the ground, ready to provide back-up.

But in the split seconds it had taken the feverish mob to descend, Blake has twisted on top of her, and is driving the hilt of Gambol Shroud down towards Yang’s face. Breathing hard, knees hugged tightly at Yang’s waist, she’s all lithe and muscle – completely unlike close quarter sparring with Ruby.

Yang catches her wrists and squeezes, and Blake drops the blade and scabbard, until the two of them are grappling like teenagers, pressed too tight for Yang to feasibly use her gauntlets, just adrenaline-flushed and tangled limbs, Blake’s eyes flashing, mouth open in an unexpected grin.

“If you wanted to wrestle,” Yang says, twisting on her back in the dirt. “We’ve got beds back at the dorm.”

Blake cuts her off with a forearm to her windpipe, presses down. “I want to do it here.”

Yang knows Blake can be playful – has seen her gloat after a long-fought evening of board games, or loopy with lack of sleep after a few too many all-nighters, pulling dry jokes that make Weiss cringe.

But this – the full weight of her levered onto Yang’s chest, bursting into a laugh as Yang’s hips jump, hands and legs meeting in a mishap of strikes and punches that would make Glynda weep – feels so young. It’s like the tether that tugs at Blake, forces her eyes over her shoulder, knots her brow with worry, has been cut free. Like just for a moment, just for now, it’s only the two of them tangled in the sun-dappled clearing.

They manage to roll to their feet, and Yang shakes her hair out of her face, cocks her fists loosely in front of her chin. Gestures Blake forward.

“Let’s see how nicely you play without your toys, Belladonna.”

Blake’s mouth pulls tight, and she drops into a crouch, leaving Gambol Shroud half-buried in the leaves.

Despite the weight of it, Yang barely remembers Ember Celica exists. It’s been an extension of her own body since her first years at Signal, but suddenly she’s much more preoccupied with how to best get both of Blake’s hands back on her.

“Yang,” Blake says. She flashes teeth. “Stop stalling.”

Behind them, Ruby and Ren are gamely losing, and Pyrrha melts out of the trees, cutting Juane down from the branch with a smile and a well-placed spear throw, catching him before he can hit the ground. All the partners had been split onto opposing teams, but Pyrrha leverages him gently to his feet anyway, backing up a few steps before gesturing for him to challenge.

Cheek smushed into the forest floor, Cardin has begun to drool.

With the full weight of Blake’s attention on her, Yang feels that same second-heartbeat-flush, better than any almost-victory. It’s a feeling she has been careful not to examine too closely for fear of what she will find.

They’ve been partners now for almost two full semesters, and she’s spent too much of it avoiding stating the obvious – avoiding the thing building in between them as if averted eyes will stop the pot from boiling over.

The few slip ups she chalks up to chance, to hormones, to a laundry list of excuses that Blake’s own silence seems to affirm.

It’s working, she tells herself. It’s working, it’s working.

Hair a tousled ripple down her back, Blake’s black cravat had dislodged at some point during the game, leaving her neck bare, skin shining with sweat, glistening in the hollow of her throat. She flicks her bangs out of her eyes and tenses under Yang’s gaze, firming her jaw until the muscle pops, half-smiles.

If Yang didn’t know any better, she would think Blake is enjoying this.

Blake moves on the offensive first, and it catches Yang off-guard, forcing her to step back to dodge a flurry of quick jabs before taking a fist squarely to the jaw. Blake flinches harder than Yang when she lands the hit, immediately backing off.

“It’s okay,” Yang murmurs. Her aura absorbs the punch, and she can feel her semblance simmer, heat lighting under her skin like the kiss of a match against a gas burner. “You can even go harder next time.”

Blake rolls her eyes, but acquiesces.

Even sparring, Blake is careful not to touch her hair – and part of Yang wants to tell her to stop taking it easy, to grab it, pull it. She wants to know what it feels like when Blake plays dirty.

Inevitably, always, Yang comes out on top, breathing hard, the both of them breathless with laughter – unsure what to do with her victory. She knows both of their aura levels are sinking, and Ruby – all but fleeing from Weiss across the clearing – has dropped dangerously low.

When a shrill whistle interrupts the scramble – the flag still dangling untouched, she and Blake immediately deflate, the fight going out of them as easy as it came. Yang heaves a noise of exasperation, drops her forehead onto Blake’s chest. When she lifts her head, Blake’s arms have wrapped loosely around her back.

“Call it a draw?” Yang says, digs her chin hard into Blake’s sternum. “I pretty much had you.”

“Nice try,” Blake says. Her words reverberate in her chest, and Yang feels every moment of their conception, the slight intake of breath into her lungs, the buzz of them as they carry through her throat.

Professor Port’s voice is like a bucket of cold water. He’s standing at the edge of the wood, brandishing a silver whistle, looking at them with ill-disguised exasperation.

“Class,” he says, “I believe the directive was to steal the other team’s flag, not to scrap like children on a playground.”

“Who won?” Weiss pipes up. She’s scraping her hair back into a neat ponytail, standing over a prone Ruby who must have fallen, and has wisely chosen to stay down.

“Everyone lost,” Port says, cheerily. “Back to the school. After that display, I don’t trust you all out here after dark.”

Despite the game’s failure, he seems in good spirits, clapping Juane on the back, and chiding Pyrrha about helping the opposing team mid competition. As punishment, Juane is saddled with Cardin, likely concussed, and directed to help him back to the infirmary.

Hauling herself off the ground, brushing clinging soil off of elbows, picking leaves out of her hair, Yang reaches for Gambol Shroud without thinking. It’s half-submerged in the close-knit groundcover, and she untangles it from curling tendrils of green, robotically sheathing the blade back into the blunt scabbard.

Only after, does she freeze, halfway to her feet. It’s an unspoken taboo to handle other huntresses’ weapons, certainly not without express permission, and here she had done it so casually, tactless.  

But Blake, one arm stretched over her head, shoulder muscles rippling, doesn’t bat an eye. She accepts it from Yang gratefully, fingers brushing as it passes between them. She slings it over her back, and reaches toward Yang, pulls a twig free of her hair.

Wordless, they head toward the group, Yang trying to gauge if she’s going to have to piggy-back Ruby to the dorm room. Still lying prone, Weiss is poking at her with the toe of a boot.

It’s only then, so brief she almost misses it, that Blake reaches between them, brushes her fingers over the cuff of Ember Celica. It feels like the answer to a question Yang hadn’t known how to ask, and the last of the fight, the tension she didn’t know she was carrying, coiling at the top of her spine, ebbs entirely.

They fall into step easily, automatically, and together reach down to help Ruby off the ground. Like a top-heavy punching bag, Ruby lists once she’s on her feet, limbs weighted with exhaustion.

Though Yang reaches out, it’s Blake who steadies her, one hand brushing Ruby’s bangs out of her eyes.

“Reunited at last,” Yang says, laughs at Weiss’s pinched expression. “Can’t believe that game had the audacity to tear us in two.”

“Shut up,” Weiss grumbles, but she’s smiling, and half-heartedly accepts Yang’s high-five. Yang bullies them into a bear hug before they join the others, an eight-legged jumble of girl-sweat and protesting laughter, leaning so hard on one another that when they begin to fall, they topple in turn, like dominoes.  

***

After Port’s dismissal, they troop back to the Beacon dorms leisurely. They have an hour of free period before dinner, and no one in seems to be in any rush to get to the dining hall, content to nurse bruises and grievances, ribbing each other good naturedly, flags forgotten.

Ren is quietly chastising Nora about what looks suspiciously like a human bite mark wetting the sleeve of his tunic, and Juane brings up the rear of the group, quietly sulking, a blessedly out-of-it Cardin’s arm slung over his shoulder.

The wooded forest bleeds into a scrubby grassland, and they wade through waist-high wheatgrass as the spires of Beacon come into view, dodging prickly burs and seedpods that cling stubbornly to their socks and hemlines.

Yang presses her palm to her side. It comes away tacky with old blood, and she grimaces. Her aura had strained to heal it, skin stitching together to staunch the flow, but the last of the fight had drained her reserves, and it reopened easily in the struggle. Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, Blake grabs for Yang’s hand, frowns down at her skin like a disgruntled palm reader.

“How did that happen?”

What she doesn’t say, plainly written on the landscape of her face in a language Yang is just learning to read is: is that from me?

“My own fault, actually,” Yang says. “We really don’t need to get into it.”

She ignores the stinging pain in favor of Blake’s fingers, stroking carefully over the dips of her knuckles.

“She fell out of a tree early in the strategizing process,” Weiss says. She’s snuck up on them, appearing at Yang’s elbow, face drawn with disdain. Her voice lilts, obviously mocking. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Weiss. I’m just getting the lay of the land, Weiss. Those branches aren’t too thin, Weiss.” She sniffs. “You could have broken your neck.”

“See,” Yang says, slinging an arm around Weiss’s shoulder, pulling her against her side, “she does care.”

“I didn’t say it would be a bad thing,” she says. But Yang doesn’t miss the way she turns her face into her casual embrace, her hand coming up to tug at the back of Yang’s jacket affectionately, clumsy, like it’s an action she’s unfamiliar with.

Blake smiles, ducks her chin. “Don’t say that. I like having her around.”

Yang quiets her internal rejoicing to a silent cheer. She feels, helplessly, like a child picking petals from a wilting stem. She loves me. She loves me not.

She beams, bumping her shoulder against Blake’s. “From Blake, that’s practically a marriage proposal.”

Cheeks flushing, Blake tucks a strand of hair behind one ear, looks away. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Who’s getting married?” This from Ruby, fending off an assault from Weiss who is trying to pat down a stubborn cowlick in the tangled mess of her hair.  

“No one,” says Weiss. “You need a haircut.”

“Me and Blake,” Yang says, cheerfully. “She was the one to propose and everything, it was super embarrassing.”

“Congrats,” Ruby says, batting at Weiss’s hands.

“Long time coming, really,” Yang says. She smiles at Blake. “I’m picturing a summer wedding.”

Blake rolls her eyes, but smiles. A rare one, with teeth. Yang almost stops walking, just to take it in.

Clearly over their antics, Weiss lengthens her stride to catch up with Pyrrha, Ruby trailing behind.

It leaves Blake and Yang alone, shoulder to shoulder, picking their away along the muddy, tire-rutted path that meanders toward the eastern portion of the Beacon grounds. In the distance, the colorful, striped tents of the Vytal Festival fairgrounds are just visible, the encampment half-pitched in preparation for the festival, mere weeks away.

The skeleton of a mostly-assembled Ferris Wheel crests over the treetops, like the pale, bleached bones of a Goliath, its mechanical frame at odds with the verdant landscape.

“Excited?” Yang asks. She bumps her shoulder against Blake’s, jerks her chin toward the pennants lethargically drooping in the stagnant spring heat.

“Hardly,” Blake says. She peeks at Yang out of the corner of her eye. “The tournament might be interesting, at least.”

“All the people, the spectacle, the fried festival food,” Yang reels off, ticking up her fingers, “it sounds like your –”

“—worst nightmare,” Blake says.

Yang laughs. “Maybe so, but,” she shrugs, “meeting new people, smashing their faces in, it’s the huntress way.”

“Now that,” Blake says, “I can get behind.”

Ahead of them, Weiss seems to be trying to engage Pyrrha in an in-depth analysis of the capture of flag bout, looking seconds away from pulling out a notebook and taking notes on every one of Pyrrha’s absentminded observations.

“This is painful to watch,” Yang says, gleefully. “If Pyrrha touches her, she’s going to –”

Pyrrha sets a hand at the small of Weiss’s back, guides her around a rock pitting the dirt path.

“Oh, there it is,” Blake says. She’s actually biting her lower lip to hold in laughter, eyes squinting with mirth. “Someone check the girl’s pulse.”

Like this, sun-lit and flushed, wearing her in-on-the-joke smile, Blake is radiant. She’s a little roughed up from the fight, ribbon a dark, striped wreath around her forearms, her top mud-streaked, the single button of her vest undone.

Yang is enamored. She offers her an arm to use as a crutch, and Blake leans into, buries a laugh in her shoulder.

Ahead of them, Weiss seems to be staggering her way through a conversation about semblances, ponytail swishing. She only comes up to Pyrrha’s shoulder, and when Pyrrha pauses, blithely rubbing at a scrape of dirt on Weiss’s cheeks. Yang can see Weiss’s face blush and burn, even from ten feet away.

Ruby, lagging a few steps behind, looks chuffed to be the most intelligible person in the vicinity.

“Why don’t you look at me like that?” Yang murmurs. They’re winding their way through a spindly grove of peach trees, the last surviving vestiges of the orchards that used to grow on Beacon’s loamy, river-rich soil.

Unkept, the trunks fork and spur, rough bark splitting like over-risen bread, papering off in grey-brown patches. This early in the season, the fruit is small and green, but Blake pauses under the heavy boughs anyway, tilts her face upward.

“What?” she says, studying the waxy, canoe-shaped leaves, veins bleeding from the midrib in furrows. “Like I’m going into cardiac arrest?”

“No,” Yang says, teeth parting around a laugh, “like you adore me.”

Blake gestures Yang forward, touches a palm to her cheek, guides Yang to look up to the branches above where, inexplicably, Blake has spotted a single ripe peach.  

Without needing to be asked, Yang knits her fingers at her belt buckle like a basket, offers it to Blake who leverages herself up to grasp a branch, just high enough to pluck the peach from the stem. She lands lightly on her feet, offers it first to Yang, who cups the fuzzed, sunrise-bodied fruit in her palms.

“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough,” Blake says.

Reaching out, she lifts Yang’s hands, brings the peach to her own mouth, and takes a bite. Juice dribbles from her lips, wets Yang’s knuckles, the vessel of her palm. Blake does not meet her eyes.

A world away, the dinner bell clangs on campus, and the sound reaches them across the grounds. From just ahead, Ruby yells for them to catch up.

**

Yang’s sweating again by the time they enter the Beacon courtyard, the sun creeping west across the sky. Already, the moon, in fragments, hangs low over the horizon like a coin toss, illusory and half-spun. Heat shimmers off the gray cobblestones, a sun-stoked haze that blurs the geometry of fountains to a mirage, and she wriggles out of her jacket, stripping down to her orange tank, hissing when the rotation of her shoulder pulls at her side.

Blake looks at her, and immediately cuts her eyes away. Looks back, lingers. She has an affinity for Yang’s freckled shoulders, has said as much, and Yang exposes them around her as much as possible.

Between them, Blake’s fingers brush the back of Yang’s hand. She thinks, for a moment, that Blake might take her hand in her own, and the idea alone leaves her with a wanting so keen it embarrasses her.  

It’s compulsive, chemical, that Blake’s presence pulls her attention like gravity.

A touch curls at the inside of her elbow, and Blake tugs Yang gently toward her, sidestepping a water feature that looms, overlarge and obvious.  

“You were about to walk into a fountain,” Blake murmurs. One of the loops of her bow flicks, a smile ghosts the corner of her lips.

Yang jerks her chin up, begins to apologize, and Blake shakes her head. “As fun as that might have been, I don’t want to miss dinner because I’m drying you off.”

“I think I could have handled it on my own,” Yang says, leans into Blake’s touch.

“What kind of betrothed would I be,” Blake says, releasing her elbow and moving toward the mouth of the dining hall, “if I left you wet and alone in your time of need?” She only spares Yang a glance before stepping out of the final slash of the sunlight, into the shadow of the doorway.

Frozen, Yang roots herself into the flagstone – tries to parse apart if Blake could have possibly intended that as – if she would have ever said something so – and no, right? No.

“Blake – ” she says, helpless. But Blake is already disappearing inside with a light laugh, leaving Yang to flounder in her wake.

In the early evening sun, buffered by classmates on either side, Yang stares after her, desperately trying to do the math, imagines petals shedding like snowfall.

**

It’s Blake who offers, which surprises each of them, but most of all Yang.

They’re scattered around the dorm room after dinner and a short stint in the library, Weiss pulling her pajama top over her head, Ruby dangling upside down from the top bunk, while Blake smooths a bandage over Yang’s ribs.

In just a sports bra, sitting on the edge of her desk, Blake’s hands trailing over her side, Yang feels like she’s lost control of the situation. Blake mistakes her shuddering breath for pain, and winces in sympathy.

“I’m sorry.” She presses down the adhesive of the bandage with her finger gingerly, nails skirting the rungs of Yang’s ribs, prodding the skin as she checks for inflammation. “I’m almost done, I promise.”

“All good,” Yang says, strained. She’s trying to decide if flexing her arms, like, only a little bit, is going to be a dead giveaway. “Take your time, really.”

Across the room, Weiss scoffs. Yang tries to pin her with a glare, but Weiss evades, busies herself tidying her discarded clothes from the day. Weiss must be the only person in the world who folds her shirts before she puts them in the dirty clothes hamper. It causes Ruby endless amusement, and she swivels her head to watch.

Blake’s hands are cool, and Yang can smell the citrus-perfume of her soap, the soft cotton of her t-shirt rubbing against Yang’s bare shoulder as she leans closer to survey her handiwork.

“I think you’re going to live,” she says. She meets Yang’s eyes glancingly before her gaze drops down, hovers somewhere around Yang’s mouth.

Ruby clambers from the top bunk and comes up on her feet, shaking her hair out of her eyes. Weightless with static from the thick, wool blankets, it frizzes and wisps, too short for a ponytail, and too long to do anything but make her look like a disgruntled miniature pony.

Pulling away from Yang’s side, Blake turns to Ruby thoughtfully. Yang, immediately missing the warmth of her, falls back onto the desk, her muscles popping gratefully with the pull of the stretch.  She examines the pulpy, drop-tile ceiling studiously, trying to calm her heartrate, embarrassed at the rush of longing Blake always seems to leave in her wake.

“You know, I could cut it for you, if you wanted,” Blake says. This to Ruby, whose eyes go wide, a little shy, a little pleased.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Yang turns her head, grinning again, shrugging the melancholy off like shedding a second skin. “Now this, I’ve got to see.”

***

Blake drags a desk chair from the bedroom, positions it in front of the sink. She’s spinning a small pair of silver scissors on her pointer finger when she ushers Ruby into the bathroom, and Yang and Weiss troop in as well, like it’s a given.

With the four of them crammed in the tiny bathroom, it’s a tight fit, and Yang leans with her back against the door, Weiss perched on the edge of the tub.

“I didn’t realize I would actually have an audience,” Blake says, quietly, but she isn’t successful in hiding her smile, mouth turning up at the corners.

The sink is running, and she dips two fingers under the flow, waits for it to warm, flicks water in Ruby’s face just to tease.

Shoulders relaxing, Ruby barely grumbles as Blake pushes her gently down into the chair, tilting her head back until her hair wets under the faucet’s flow.

“Too hot?” Blake asks. She cups water in her palms, diverting it until it wets Ruby’s hair to its roots, slicking her bangs out of her face with careful fingers.

Ruby shakes her head, bare feet swinging over the tiles. “S’nice,” she slurs, lashes fluttering against her cheek. “Mom used to do this, remember?” This to Yang, one eye cracking to look at her before closing again.

Arms crossed, Yang nods. “I do.”

Her voice sounds strange, swollen, even to her. She clears her throat, looks to Blake who is looking back at her, gaze soft and steady. The mirror over the sink is fogging with heat, and Yang is stupidly glad not to see her own expression reflected in the glass.

The memory is blurry with overuse, and she feels selfish for hoarding it, something she and Ruby talk about so rarely – the short window of domesticity, the four of them, together.

Blake must sense her discomfort and leans over Ruby, carding through her hair gently, warm water swirling down the drain.

“We’ll just do a trim, okay?” She tilts her head, considering. “Just enough to get your bangs out of your eyes.”

From her spot on the lip of the tub, Weiss is watching the them with open interest, dressed in her slouchiest pajamas, hair loose around her shoulders.

Blake looks back at her. “What do you think?”

Weiss looks surprised to have been asked to weigh in, and shifts unsteadily, pinning her hands under the backs of her thighs, lips tucked into her mouth.

“It will look nice,” Weiss ventures. Then, unsteadily, like she’s unsure if that’s the right answer: “Fine, I mean. It will look fine.”

“Weiss thinks I look nice,” Ruby says, dreamily, eyes still closed.

Yang laughs. “Anything to stop you from going into fights blind should do the trick.”

Blake is methodical and careful, her movements practiced, and Yang watches her hands closely, fascinated by the routine of her gestures. Her long fingers are sure as she brushes out Ruby’s hair, fixing the lengths of hair between two fingers, snipping, tendrils of dyed red spiraling to the bathroom tile.

“You’re good at that,” Yang says, careful not to pose it as a question, even if her curiosity is clear.

“After I left home,” Blake says, tilting her head to frown at Ruby’s hair, thoughtful, “there weren’t places where – well, there weren’t many places that would be willing to serve Faunus, let alone cut our hair.”

Focused on her task, Blake fits two fingers under Ruby’s chin, lifts until she’s staring straight ahead. She hums, approving. When she began to talk, Yang, Blake and Weiss each stilled, incremental, like curious children unwilling to startle a flighty bird.

It’s rare for Blake to offer much from before, even after all these months, and Yang squirrels away every piece of information she manages to glean, coveted closely in a well-hidden corridor in her chest.

“It was a necessity at first, we were moving around a lot, but I like it now,” Blake says. “It’s soothing.” She scrubs her hand under the fall of Ruby’s hair, appraising her work. “I wish we had some clippers, you would look really good with a, like, undercut.”

Tilting her head to look back at Blake, Ruby grins. “Yeah?’

“Oh, yeah,” Blake says. “Very edgy.”

Ruby’s eyes flutter closed again and she leans back into Blake’s hands, accepting the easy touch, pleased.

Watching her like this, the baby round of Ruby’s cheeks, her deep-set eyes, so like Summer, Yang’s heart pangs and pulls. She looks so young, and it’s been so long since she’s seen Ruby find comfort and closeness in groups like this. At Signal, she was always worlds apart.

Too young to hang out with Yang and her friends, and too buried in her comics and starry-eyed dreams of far-flung heroism to mesh easily with the other kids her age. Weiss is watching, too, almost hungry. She is starved, Yang has come to realize, in similar ways – for family, for acceptance, for the way Blake look back to ask her opinion, listening intently when Weiss ventures an answer.

“Okay,” Blake says, steps back. “All set, I think.”

Ruby pops up out of her seat, swipes a hand through the mirror’s condensation to look at her reflection, tilting her head this way and that, before grinning, bright.

“It’s perfect.” Then, shyly, “thank you, Blake.”

“Anytime,” Blake says. “We can pick up dye next time we’re in Vale, recolor the ends.”

Yang groans. “Don’t get her started, she’s been threatening more drastic dye jobs since grade school. I’ve had to talk her out of lime green more times than I can count.”

“The red suits you,” Weiss says, pushing off of her perch to more closely examine Ruby’s bangs. Ruby obediently stops fidgeting, submits to Weiss’s hands, but not before shaking her wet head like a dog, sending water droplets flying.

Aghast, Weiss hisses a chastisement, but cards her hands through her hair, all the same.

“I could cut yours,” Blake says to Weiss. Appraises her, head tilted. “It’s getting long.”

Weiss looks shocked at the sudden kindness, turning a gradient of shades, from a light pink to a dark red the longer Blake looks at her.

“Oh, no,” she says, haltingly. “I have a standing appointment at an Atlas salon but,” she trails off.

Blake nods, that tiny smile still evident on the puzzle-box mystery of her mouth.

Ruby looks on with interest, pokes at Weiss’s cheek, but knows better than to comment.

With a final thanks, the two of them troop out of the bathroom in a snippy caravan, Weiss already haranguing Ruby about an assignment due in the morning, Ruby loudly asking Weiss if she’ll brush her hair before homework, anyhow.

Their departure leaves a vacuum, a pocket of silence, just Yang and Blake, who both seem to realize how close they are standing at the same time, all excuses having fled the room on the heels the others.

“Thank you for doing that,” Yang says, quietly, she reaches out hesitantly and takes Blake’s hand, rubs her thumb across her knuckles. “It’s nice not to do all the mothering, for once.” She shakes her head. “I tried to cut her hair once, must have been about 13. Dad almost had to shave her whole head.”

“She would have loved it though,” Blake says. She doesn’t pull her hand away.

Yang laughs. “Yeah, probably.” She steps closer, emboldened by their hands clasped between them, by the way Blake tilts her whole body toward her, magnetic.

“It was really nothing,” Blake says. “Ruby restitched, like, four pairs of my leggings last week, anyway.”

“It was sweet of you to offer a trim to Weiss, too.” Yang lowers her voice, though the other two are well out of earshot, having closed the bathroom door behind them. “I don’t think she was ready for you to send her into a full-fledged sexual identity crisis.”

Blake throws her head back in a laugh, exposing the long line of her throat, cheeks dimpling. “Oh, no. That’s what Pyrrha is for.” A beat. “I don’t think I’m her type anyway.”

“How?” Yang blurts, clumsy and unthinking, tries to amend it with – “I think you’re everyone’s type,” which really just digs the hole deeper.

Blake looks at her steadily, in that awful way she does, and shoves a little bit at Yang’s shoulder, bullies her toward the chair.

“You should let me do you next,” she says. She must misinterpret Yang’s expression – which flatlines at an alarming speed, elevator music starting to play behind her eyes – and hurries to correct herself. “I mean, not a cut. I know how you feel about your hair, but I could wash it?”

“Wash it?” Yang looks at the sink, back to Blake. The air in the bathroom seems to be getting thinner, and she can’t stop looking at Blake’s forearms, the flex of them as she toys with the scissors, running her thumb lightly over the tapered point.

“You’ve still got leaves in it from earlier,” Blake says, words taut with amusement, “and if you lift your arms over your head, you’re going to undo all my hard work anyway.”

The cut is mostly healed, barely a pale scar at this point, and they both know it. Yang wonders how long they will continue to run round these excuses.

It’s working, it’s working, it’s – “Let me touch you,” Blake says. She presses down on Yang shoulder, guides her toward the chair. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

The chair creaks under Yang’s weight, and her outstretched legs butt up against the opposite bathroom wall. To maneuver around her, Blake has to step between her legs, her hips pressed tight against the inside of Yang’s bare thighs.

Unsure, Yang leans her head back, feels the porcelain cold against the back of her neck. “Like this?”

“Just like that.”

Blake turns on the faucet, and the lull of running water, the warmth of it, is enough to make Yang drowsy and pliant, hands clasped obediently on her lap.

“I love your hair,” Blake says, quiet, confessional. She runs her hands through it, pulls gently, the sensation sending tingles to Yang’s scalp. Yang’s eyes close, and she breathes out through her nose, shifting unsteadily in the chair.

She hears the plastic click of a shampoo bottle, and lavender perfumes the air. Yang thinks of gardens, of soft-petaled flowers, of sunlight and checkered blankets.

“We should have a picnic,” she murmurs. Her muscles feel putty-soft, and Blake’s hands, slick with water and suds, are drawing tiny circles under the fall of her hair, thumbs pressing ecstatically into the corded muscle at the base of her neck.

There’s laughter, barely hidden, in Blake’s voice. “Come again?”

“A picnic.” Yang doesn’t open her eyes. “Just you and me.”

“Did I knock you too hard in the head today?” Blake asks. “Give you a concussion?” Her fingers slip up to prod at Yang’s temples before her fingers firm, massaging there. Yang groans. For her sake, Blake pretends not to hear it.

“I’m not concussed,” Yang says. Against the back of her eyelids, there’s a constellation of color. Blake sluices warm water through her hair, washing out the last of the shampoo. Yang’s hand ventures from her lap, hooks her fingers in the soft cotton pocket of Blake’s shorts. “I just like you.”

She still doesn’t open her eyes, worried that if she does, reality will solidify, transport her away from the dreamy-liminal of this unspoken space, Blake’s hands in her hair, Blake’s body warm against her thighs.

“I like you, too.”

“Actually, I think you said you loved me earlier.”

Blake laughs. “I didn’t. You said I loved you.”

Yang does open her eyes now, finds Blake startlingly close, her gold-flecked eyes, the laugh lines that crease the corners of her mouth like the seams of a love letter, folded over, then folded over again. She steps out of the bracket of Yang’s legs to fetch a towel. Yang reaches to take it, but Blake pushes her hands away, preferring to towel at Yang’s wet hair herself, leaning across her body, her chest pressing against Yang’s shoulder.

Embarrassed now, Yang squirms, but submits to the attention, lets Blake dab away beaded water at her hairline, droplets dripping into her ears, wetting the shoulders of her t-shirt.

“But you were right,” Blake says, so matter a fact, Yang almost doesn’t understand her meaning. Comprehension pales in comparison to the sheen of water on Blake’s hands, her wrists, as she wipes them dry, her hair spilling long and dark around her shoulders, the ends wet where she had leaned over the sink. Blake tosses the towel underhand toward the hamper behind the door, reinserts herself between Yang’s legs. “I do love you. I really do. And yes.”

“Yes?” Yang asks, dazed, still stuck halfway inside the feeling of Blake’s body, pressed up firmly against her own.

“Yes to the picnic,” Blake says. “Just the two of us.”

She loves me.

Yang shifts to prop herself upright against the body of the sink and frames Blake’s hips in her hands, guiding her firmly into the V of her legs. Blake concedes, arms wrapping around Yang’s neck, petting through damp hair. The hem of her shirt scrunches under Yang’s fingertips, slipping up to reveal the unblemished hollow of her hip, the skin of her sides, goosepimpling under the duress of Yang’s touch.

“We should do that thing again,” Yang says, a wish, a confession. Said aloud, she’s worried, like memory, she’ll bleed away the magic of unspoken things, but it only seems to strengthen the energy between them, the accumulated weight of all that they never talk about.

Blake plays dumb, but she’s smiling, ducking close even as she asks, “what thing?”

Her breath is warm against Yang’s ear, and she presses her mouth just there, against the round of Yang’s cheek.

“Close,” Yang says. She exhales, grip tightening.

Blake drags her lips to Yang’s jaw. Then to the dimple of her chin.

“Closer.”

Blake kisses her, proper, all it takes is a tilt of her head, nose nudging into the plush-round of Yang’s cheek. They both breath twin sighs of relief, like the pressure of playing coy has been alleviated in a single moment. Blake’s hands knot in Yang’s hair, fingers threading.

Yang smiles, murmurs: “just like that.”

It isn’t their first kiss, but it’s close. New enough that Yang still isn’t used to the shape of Blake’s mouth, the rhythm of her kisses, or the taste of her breath. New enough that this alone is enough to alight a heady, perfect rush, the thrill of two whole, perfect things slotting into place.

Her hands slide to the small of Blake’s back, splaying wide across the ridge of her spine, and Blake whines low in her throat, tilting her head until their mouths catch in full, her teeth scraping against Yang’s bottom lip.

Blake swings her leg over Yang’s hip, then the other, settles on her lap. The warmth of her body like a weighted blanket, her chest pushed flush to Yang’s. Pulling back, breaths ragged, they survey each other, eyes bright.

Blake drops a kiss on the bridge of Yang’s nose. Again, on her mouth. Yang tilts her chin up, submits. Nods lazily into another kiss, rolls her tongue into Blake’s mouth.

They don’t talk about it, but they never do.

In the crowded, humid heat of the bathroom, the silence is enough, both smelling like the same shampoo, like lavender, trading kisses until their mouths are slick and pink, until Blake has a strawberry bite under the collar of her t-shirt, and there is no excuse they can make to Ruby and Weiss to explain the lost time.

Exiting the bathroom feels like stepping through a portal – the air of the bedroom is stale and cold, and tastes like the bitter-metallic spit of the cranky window unit that churns, futile and constant.

They shouldn’t have worried. Ruby and Weiss are passed out on Weiss’s bottom bunk, tilted into each other, Weiss’s head leaned up into Ruby’s chest, a textbook open on her lap.

Blake smiles at them, soft, and Yang presses a finger to her lips. Sound asleep, neither stirs when Yang removes the book or when she shifts both of Weiss’s legs to the bed, pulls the lip of the comforter up over their bodies.

Weiss does move then, but only to turn her face into Ruby’s throat, fingers curling into the sleeve of her shirt.

Across the room, Yang watches Blake walk through the final stages of her night time routine. Removing her rings, one-by-one, setting them into a china bowl at her bedside. Toeing off her socks – because anyone who sleeps in socks is a serial killer, yang – and turning back the cool underside of her covers.

Yang, suddenly shy, mythical, waits for an invitation.

“It’s only fair,” Blake whispers. She shifts over to make space against the hollow of her body. “Turn off the light.”

Yang does, the room plunged to darkness, and she feels that little-kid thrill in the few steps it takes her to cross to the bed. By the time she reaches it, she fears Blake will already be gone, leaving her only with under-the-bed monsters and grasping hands.

She shivers into the sheets, and it’s Blake’s warmth that accepts her, slinging a long, bare leg over her hip, claiming her cheek with a warm palm, stroking her bangs out of her eyes.

“We need to talk about it,” Yang whispers.

She can see Blake’s eyes gleam in the darkness, a flat sheen. Yang swallows, wriggles closer until she can insinuate her thigh between Blake’s legs, suddenly desperate to be close. She would swallow her whole if she could, sink themselves inside of one another, like nesting dolls, like palms cupped in prayer.

Yang’s eyes adjust in the half-dark in the time it takes Blake to answer, moonlight shredding through the parted curtains. When Blake opens her mouth, the wet of her mouth refracts light, the uncurling of her tongue.

“I know,” Blake says, voice small.

Their hips-stomach-breasts bully into one another, until every breath is a part of a cycle.

“If we don’t, we’re just going to keep colliding until something breaks.”

“I know,” Blake says, again. “There’s just so much I haven’t told you yet.”

Yang runs her hands up and down Blake’s side, slips her palm under the hem of her shirt to feel the blanket-heat of her bare skin.

“We have time,” she hushes. She tilts in, her lips find the corner of Blake’s mouth, press there. Retreat. “After the Vytal festival, then. We can have our picnic. We’ll talk about all of it.”

Blake nods, nose pressing into Yang’s. She giggles, readjusts, turns her mouth into Yang’s cheek. “Okay. After the festival.”

Pinkies twined under the covers, they seal it with a kiss. Blake nods more kisses against her mouth, slips a tongue behind her teeth, until the taste of her lingers well into Yang’s dreams.

Yang won’t remember falling asleep.

[pastelsandpining]

congrats on 200 followers!! my request: botw zelink with Selfless by the strokes :)

this turned out a tiny bit more of a Zelda piece than a Zelink piece but it's still there! I hope this is to your liking volt my beloved

Selfless

words: 1806

warnings: read with caution; grief, death mention, vague disassociation

Masterlist

------

It was quite the feeling, to be everything and nothing all at once. Zelda couldn’t recall what it was like to be physical. She couldn’t recall much more than the blank space she existed in, and the horrible sounds that encompassed it every time she was so painfully reminded of where she was. Only in those moments of remembrance, of realization, was she able to get glimpses of the land she’d given up so much for. So much of her kingdom had been lost: children, buildings, the very friends she swore to fight alongside. The Calamity claimed everything in its path and it devoured her, too. It was only fitting, fair, even that she should suffer in the void of existence with nothing but a demon and whispers of hatred as her companion.

Zelda was not in Hyrule, not really. Her body might’ve been, but she was elsewhere, using every bit of strength that she’d failed to have before, in the hopes that her one connection to her home would find his way back to her. But for a very long time, he lay buried deep inside a shrine on a hill. The only evidence he was there at all was the warm, very small, and very dormant ball settled in her chest, pulsating softly with every breath he took in his endless slumber.

It was like that for one hundred long, lonely years. The rhythm of his heart, slow but stable, was what kept her from losing touch completely. Goddess powers or not, corporeal or not, someone could only take so much of corruption, of malice, until it started to gnaw away at her peace of mind. It was a good thing that peace of mind was not an essential part of the sealing power, but she’d already lost everything. It would be too easy to lose herself as well... No, he would come, she just knew it, and she would live against the odds, for him.

So Zelda waited, ever patient, watching the land of Hyrule pass in bleary, half conscious moments. A flicker of a new birth here, a wave of grief there, a family settling down, a crack of lightning, a call of a bird, all things once insignificant—common. Now, it gave her the assurance that people were still fighting on, continuing to push forwards despite a devastating loss. They were still Hylia’s people, after all, and the Goddess herself put up many good fights.

The kingdom was as still as ever, as silent as the heavy night, when the hero finally stirred. It was nothing more than a twitch of the eyelids, a strengthening of a heartbeat, but she felt it like a fire burning through her chest, sending hope to the tips of her very fingers. He was alive, to what extent, she didn’t know. But she took that warmth and reached out with it, surfing across Hyrule until finally, at last, he came into focus.

“Link,” she called out, into the void of nothing. His eyelids fluttered. If she was corporeal, if she had any physicality at all, she would’ve sobbed. Instead, she tried his name again, begging in a whisper, “open your eyes.”

Whether he was truly hearing her, whether he recognized her voice or not, his eyes opened. They’d never looked more blue.

But she was not the only powerful being with the capability to sense an awakening. Calamity Ganon could feel it too, and for a moment, Zelda was fearful that it would get to him before she did. It would cry out, loud and obnoxious and horrible, and get into his head like the monstrous thing it was. She couldn’t let that happen, not again. Link did not deserve the horrid fate of facing him twice, though the cards had already been dealt. So she did all she could, instructing him from afar until he emerged at last from his grave. The light was brighter now. She could see him better, all of him, from the scarred skin to the shaky limbs and anxious stature. He was lovely, still.

Zelda wanted nothing more than to burst from her prison and accompany him on his journey. She wished to heal his mind and heart, tell him everything so that he was no longer in the dark, and warn him about the horrors he would face. She wanted to feel his arms again, hear his voice, hug him in those moments she knew so well: those moments when it all felt like too much. But sealing the Calamity, caging its physical form in the very midst of Hyrule Castle, a mere few meters away from where her father and mother’s thrones once sat, took a great deal of power. She could not watch him, protect him as much as she wanted to. She wouldn’t last forever, and so conserving was key. Zelda did not rush him, she did not plead or beg. It was his decision to make, it was his readiness to determine, and she’d already waited a century. What was a little more time?

She lended him something else instead, with every break he took to confront the Goddess. She gave what she had plenty of: strength. Every bit of drained power, every little increase in difficulty to contain the demon, was worth it to see him thrive. Link would come in his own time, and she would be ready for him when he did. Besides, she didn’t mind waiting. She enjoyed those moments when clarity hit, when she could see his progress from her spot in the realm of nothingness. A naturally gifted boy in many ways, but there was something so precious in the way he worked. In the years before, Zelda had come to understand him as this hard working and duty driven boy, but it was so much more intimate to see his efforts herself. Oftentimes, she felt it was something she shouldn’t have been seeing, but she was proud nonetheless. Link would always come to be the hero he was meant to be. Courageous, determined, selfless.

And when he stormed the castle, the warm pulse in her chest thundering in time with his the closer he came, she’d never seen him look so angry. Of course, he’d lost as much as she, if not more. He had every right to be angry. For one bitter but sweet, satisfying moment, she felt for the Calamity. It had its victory, and Link would not let it get another. He was vicious and cruel and precise, and it seemed now, he was returning all of what she’d lent him. Perhaps it was just his presence that made her feel stronger in the midst of the first break she’d gotten in decades. It took hardly any effort to restrain the beast to Hyrule Field, and she took great pleasure in decorating it with glowing targets for the hero to strike.

In a brilliant moment of intensity, Zelda could feel the world around her again. She could feel her body grow solid, the golden glow encasing her with a divine power her mortal vessel shouldn’t have been able to handle, and she faced the Calamity head on for a second time. With a strained cry, with the fury of a thousand lost souls, with the hunger for revenge for her friends, her father, her kingdom, her hero, the princess took her duty upon her shoulders and swallowed the darkness in the holy light of the Goddess. She willed her magic to carve into every crevice, tear it apart, cause it to feel the very pain it rained down upon Hyrule tenfold, but it would never be enough. The Beast was gone too soon. After a century of holding everything hostage, it was reduced to nothing. That was perhaps the worst part of it all. They would never be able to cause it the pain it had caused them, because it was not human. It was not a thing that could feel pain or regret. The only thing it knew was hatred, and for a moment, as Zelda collapsed to her knees and dug her fingers into the dirt, she worried if she was too similar.

She hated Calamity Ganon, hated all it had done and all it had taken from her, and she hated that she didn’t feel satisfied. She was angry, so incredibly angry, that it got to crawl back into its coffin until another ten thousand years had passed, but all of those lost to its claws could never return. She was angry that she couldn’t cause it the pain that it caused her, that it could take everything away from her and no amount of revenge could ease her pain.

She was shaking. She didn’t realize she was crying. But Link, ever the kind, patient, selfless man that he was, did not leave her stranded. His feet came into view, prompting her to lift her head and blink hard to clear her vision just enough to see him kneel before her. He extended his hands to her. They were trembling just as hard. Zelda slowly pulled her fingers free of the dirt, uncurling them just enough to hesitantly slip her hands into his.

Once upon a time, she couldn’t read his expression. A century later, on the battered ground of Hyrule Field, his eyes were misty and he looked like he would crumble at any point, but he looked relieved. She grasped his hands tighter, more desperate than before, and sobbed out a “thank you.”

His thumbs brushed against her, gentle as ever, and she had very little composure left. Her anger, her dissatisfaction in the truth that the Calamity would never truly die, dissipated like it had never been there at all. She found she didn’t care anymore, at least not in that moment, because she had something. She had hope, she had courage. She had Link, if he wanted her. It was an ache in her chest, nagging in her brain, and before she could think better of it, she whispered, “May I ask…do you really remember me?”

She didn’t want to know the answer. He was quiet for what felt like an eternity, and she wasn’t sure she had another to give. But then he answered, quieter than the wind but as sure as the sky, “yes.”

He tugged her hands, pulled her forwards into an embrace, and she clutched the back of his tunic with eager fingers. She could cry again, but she realized with a start that he was the one sobbing instead. Zelda held him tighter, buried her face in his hair, whispered into the wind that she was here, that they were okay, that it was over.

And when they finally lifted their heads, when Link smiled at her, she had no trouble believing it.

[asphodel-storm]

So. If Cobra Kai were DC.

First off, the man who is the source of most problems, John Kreese:

Kreese’s mentor was an agent of the League of Shadows/Assassins planted within the military. Kreese was invited to take his place after his death. He trained with Ra’s al Ghul after the war and then left to found Cobra Kai as a covert recruitment operation for the League (not every Cobra alum became an assassin, only the ones Kreese saw that potential in). Johnny was on the path to recruitment and it was the loss against Daniel and resulting fallout that changed that. Kreese has been on League business every time he’s been ‘dead’. 

Mr. Miyagi:

Mr. Miyagi was a Green Lantern. The ring chose him a while after he received his medal of honor and he was protecting the universe secretly during the Karate Kid movies. When Daniel overcomes his fear in TKK 3, Miyagi retires and the ring chooses Daniel.

Daniel LaRusso:

Daniel was a Green Lantern for years (a secret from everyone except Amanda and Miyagi), but the lantern’s power never replaced karate for him because karate is part of the balance that allows him to use the ring in the first place. The ring started to reject him during the period where his resentment of Johnny was overpowering his will (season 1-ish). It chose him again when he got a handle on that, but by then he had already turned his attention to teaching and empowering young people. He gave it up and it chose his daughter after she overcame her own fear at the end of season 3.

Samantha LaRusso

Samantha LaRusso was chosen by a Green Lantern ring after overcoming her fear and facing Tory at the end of season 3. She enters season 4 as a newly minted super hero. 

Tory Nichols 

Tory witnesses Sam as a Green Lantern early on. She has a lot of anger inside of her and seeing her rival - the girl who in her opinion was handed everything in life - chosen by cosmic power pushes her over the edge. Kreese encourages and feeds this anger, of course, though he does it with the intention of making Tory a better assassin. When a Red Lantern power ring chooses her that’s honestly a bonus. 

Johnny Lawrence 

Johnny was nearly recruited to the League of Assassins as a teenager - he would have been shipped off to official league training after highschool if he hadn’t lost to Daniel (and, likely, if Kreese hadn’t impulsively burned that bridge before remembering the larger plan). Instead, he was approached by the representative of an anonymous east coast billionaire after high school and paid to use his connection to the ‘late’ John Kreese  - and pre-assassin training - to infiltrate and sabotage some activities the League of Shadows had going in the Valley. He never learned the full extent of what the League was or his or Kreese’s connections to it during this time (like, he probably could have if he’d tried, but he’s Johnny). He was inconsistent at best in his vigilantism after that, putting on a mask and patrolling more when he needed an outlet than based on the needs of the community. He was briefly the ‘Batman of the Valley’ when Batman first franchised out into Batman Inc. He’d given that up for years by the time he met Miguel, but dusts off his cape when he learns of new League operations in the Valley in season 4 (likely being run by Terry Silver). 

His ‘cape’ is actually a red leather bodysuit. He definitely calls himself something like DeathFist or DeathFang or whatever in the long tradition of people in red bodysuits being called stuff like that (DeadShot, DeathStroke, etc.). 

Miguel Diaz

Miguel will hit the streets patrolling with his mentor, but the transition to vigilantism also hits him at a time when he’s realized he probably shouldn’t have Johnny on such a pedestal so he’ll also use the opportunity to strike out alone or with friends. The transition also comes at a time when Miguel has noticed certain changes about himself he can’t explain - like how he destroyed Demetri’s tv with lasers that shot out of his eyes when he got a bit too competitive about Mario Cart.

Yeah, the bad man Carmen moved them to escape was not connected to organized crime. He wasn’t Terry Silver. He was General freaking Zod. Why does General Zod live in Ecuador? He’s building up forces there. Anyways, Miguel is half Kryptonian and just awakening to his powers since his body has been healing from the school fight. The injury was a kind of catalyst and as he heals he’s also becoming invulnerable. So much for his rivalry with Robby, right? Nope, that’s still on. 

Robby Keene

Kreese thinks a mistake he made with Johnny was not bringing him into the fold sooner and getting him excited about the prospect of the League of Shadows. He knows very well that Robby will march out of Cobra Kai forever if he mentions anything about assassins before he’s ‘ready’, but he does start letting him know about the secret society of warriors and introduce him to some alumni who are with the league now. Maybe show off some missions where they actually intervened for good. Essentially, he makes him feel like he could be part of something - something that feels like family - which is bigger than himself (which is already an established part of his schtick). 

As part of this pre-assassin buttering up, Kreese procures something special for Robby - gloves laced with kryptonite. He told him it would only level the playing field between him and Miguel, but it is enough to weaken Miguel enough to be killed. The plan is for Robby to go in thinking ‘Miguel is pretty much indestructible even with these gloves’ so he goes all out and kills him and then while he’s dealing with the trauma of having killed him Kreese can pull him fully into the League. While the plan won’t work, the path to it will see Robby getting a lot more weapons/assassin-specific training than Johnny did.

He will eventually take over Johnny’s suit and code name.

Eli ‘Hawk’ Moskowitz

Kreese’s plan for Robby is a more elaborate and thought out version of his original plan for Hawk. Hawk was never really a top priority for Kreese, but he spiraled so nicely that it seemed he could be plucked off into assassin-dom early. He saw Tory and Robby as better prospects than Hawk for long term use in the valley in part because he expected to have Hawk shipped off to train under Lady Shiva by now. He just had to rip the murder bandaid, and the plan was to push him until he killed Demetri. 

Because Hawk was on the fast track, and because he was so good at convincing himself he didn’t care what he’d done to Demetri’s arm, Kreese actually already let him in on the true nature of Cobra Kai. He didn’t know for long before leaving and its not like he had any strategically vital info, but he knows enough to make him a loose end. Kreese sends the Cobras (minus Robby, but possibly including a Tory who isn’t quite used to her new power yet) after him. Hawk is murdered. And isn’t that a waste? 

Kreese set it up, but when the likes of Tory and Robby almost leave over it he pins it on Kyler ‘going overboard’ and says it’s fine, they can save him. Hawk gets thrown in a Lazarus Pit and rises confused and angry. Under the grips of Pit Madness he temporarily forgets a lot (like leaving Cobra Kai and reconciling with Demetri and Miguel, but also things like his parents. Kid is a very angry blank slate.) and since most people think he’s dead its pretty easy to send him to the League. He’ll turn up again a few months later, when the League sends a squad to secure their interests in the valley. He breaks off when he can’t quite kill Demetri in a fight, but he doesn’t remember why and roams around the valley causing trouble or helping out as he sees fit until Demetri can get through to him (Demetri’s eternal struggle). 

He doesn’t call himself Red Hood, but you get the gist. Hawk is already a code name. 

Demetri [Insert Surname]

Got Eli back only to lose him for good. He thought. Until Not-Red Hood shows up and causes problems. But the slippery assassin keeps getting away before he can really talk to him! Miguel is steadily developing Super Powers and wants to help, but things are also heating up over in the Main Conflict and Demetri is left chasing Hawk alone a lot of the time. 

Maybe it’s that determination that causes his latent metagene to activate. 

Demetri only ever thought super speed was the second best superpower, but he rethinks that after he has it. In hindsight, his smart ass does fit the speedster profile and Eli definitely can’t get away now! 

His lightning when he runs is blue.

And yep, that’s all for now. I’ll never write a fic for this ‘verse it’s just fun to think about. More so about how after the San Fernando branch of the League of Shadows is destroyed the kids can all make up and form a cool super team. Also, if I were to write fic, it would be Demeli. As I'm sure anyone I've interacted with in this fandom knows.

[inkformyblood]

in these bodies we will die

Commander Cody Week Day 04: Post-Order 66 @commandercodyweek

Pairing: Codywan, QuinObi, Cody x Obi-Wan x Quinlan Summary:  Cody knows something is going to go wrong when he wakes up on a mission to execute a Jedi. But that is also just a matter of perspective. Most days, the trooper wakes up and finds that he is still CC-2224. The world around him is sharp and dark: the purple crackle of his electrostaff mingling with the steady beat of his heart which remained as rhythmic as a march, until it blotted out everything else. He is nothing but a weapon, and he waits patiently for his orders, whatever they may be. 

On those days, he knows his place in the durasteel universe, following his Lord and enacting his will. The sneers — openly worn and honed to a razor’s edge — from the Brothers and Sisters that made up the Inquisitors didn’t impact him in the way they were hoping, because why would they? He is a weapon, one of a few who had been gifted beskar by their Lord, and who served at his convenience. 

“Trying for a saber of your own?” Ninth Sister spat one day as she stormed from the throne room, her anger rolling from her like lightning and breaking harmlessly on the impassive countenance of CC-2224. “Trying to be a Brother, clone?”

“I’m already a brother,” CC-2224 tells her, but he doesn’t know why. She turns on her heel and leaves in a swish of black fabric, and he returns to waiting for his next order. He listens to the rumbling breaths from Darth Vader, the slight mechanical click between each hissing exhalation adding to the reflexive count in his head. 

When Cody wakes on the transport, he knows that something has gone horribly wrong.

The floor shuddered beneath his feet with each roar of the massive engines, but the room is eerily silent. Before… Before when he was— Cody cut the thought off before it could travel any further. His mind felt fragile, as if it was constructed from freshly spun glass, and he knew that if it broke, he didn’t know how long it would be before he was able to pull control back again. Or even if he would want to.

Bile rose in his throat, hot and thick and acrid, and his shoulders contorted with the effort of keeping the scream trapped in his throat. He had woken up as Cody before but never prior to a mission. Never held the ability to escape, or to die, as closely as he did now. 

He could remember, beneath the dark edges of the Executor and the constant hiss-click sound of the man who had once been Anakin Skywalker, a single moment of clarity as he knelt in front of the shell that hid his rotted carcass. Cody had been holding a lightsaber, the edges of it scorched and warped, and the scent of iron lingered in the air from the blue blood that had seeped into the handle. For a moment, his thumb had twitched over the ignition switch that could have been his salvation or his doom, but then Cody was gone once again as Darth Vader raised his chin with one gloved finger. 

“Well done, Commander. I am glad to see I chose correctly.”

Cody had to hold on. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, he blindly ran a hand over the wall, fingers splayed until he found the recess, pulling the datapad free. 

For an instant, before the screen activated, Cody caught sight of his reflection in the tinted transparisteel and felt the world threaten to fall away from him once more, nothing but the void waiting to consume him utterly. 

 What had Anakin done?

Obi-Wan — traitor to the Republic, good soldiers follow orders, no! — hadn’t spoken about Anakin’s past, but a trooper would have had to be blind to not see the marks that his past had left on him, the anger that burnt low in his eyes and caused his mouth to twist whenever someone mentioned the troopers being owned. Cody had seen the scar on Anakin’s arm from his tracker removal, straight and well-healed compared to the now-ruined tapestry of scars that had covered his back. 

Cody’s fingers didn’t tremble as he raised his hand to his face, trailing a line from scalp to chin. He couldn’t feel anything different, a few new minor scars here and there pitting his skin like the surface of a moon, a far cry from the whorled raised scar that curled around his left eye. But that didn’t subtract from the new knowledge he carried: that Anakin had branded him like property with a red tattoo that would mar his skin forever. 

Focus.

Breathe in, then out.

(I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.)

Cody focused on the datapad, reading over the minimal briefing he had been given, doom slipping over his shoulders like a shroud. He had been sent to hunt a Jedi, to track the whispers of a survivor and kill them. 

Laughter, harsh and uncaring, bubbled up in his throat, trapped behind the cage of his teeth. What was one more when Cody had killed one of the men he loved with barely a second thought?

⁂

Cody felt himself slip partially beneath the waves of his consciousness the moment the trooper stepped outside the ship, hiding away from the first flicker of unspeakable terror that passed over a civilian's face at the sight of him. 

The CC-2224 knew the motions, just as well as Cody did. Alpha-17 had vanished into the wind, from what little he had managed to find out from scraps of rumors, but he remembered his, and the other trainers, words well. 

Move quick, strike hard, complete the mission. 

Salt clung to every visible structure, encrusted pillars that distorted the shapes of the shipping crates and barrels into hunched figures as CC-2224 stepped into the warehouse. His electroshock baton lit up with a hiss, bathing the room in a vibrant purple, and the trooper took a step forward. The floor crunched beneath his boot, grinding down the patchwork of salt as he slowly followed the faint trail of footprints, head tilted to one side as he listened. 

The Jedi — the traitor, no, all of them, traitors — was cornered with nowhere to run and had never been more dangerous.

He saw the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he is turning before the trooper can even think, but it is Cody who shouts, his voice tinged with a desperation that could have ripped the stars from the sky at a word. “Quinlan!”

The man stumbled, caught off guard for only a moment, before he turned, igniting his lightsaber. The green blade stole Cody’s breath away, Quinlan’s lips drawn back in a snarl as he shifted into the beginning position of Ataru, the muscles in his legs visibly bunching as he prepared to jump.

Cody knew what he would do. He had seen it so many times before; a deadly dance made beautiful by the care and precision behind it: a single leap and twist, with the blade following barely half a second behind, leaving nothing but death in its wake. 

His helmet clattered to the ground, the air biting at the tears that rolled down his cheeks. Then, the hiss of Quinlan’s blade stopped as the Jedi deignited it, stumbling forward half a step before he caught himself, hurt emblazoned across his face.

Cody was struck by how different he seemed now to their last parting. Before, where Obi-Wan had been the rising sun and Cody was moonlight, Quinlan was the midday sun, bright and vibrant and intoxicating. He had curled into Cody’s side, one leg thrown across his hip to prod at Obi-Wan, who was motionless, except for the faint rise and fall of his chest. His breath still held the sweetness of the wine from the previous evening, part celebration and part regret at having to be parted once more even as the war slowly drew to a close.

Extracting himself was a journey in parts as Quinlan slowly worked his way free, every movement languid and tinged with a deep melancholy. 

“You don’t have to get up with me,” he whispered, cupping Cody’s face with one battle-worn hand, his thumb smoothing over the jut of his cheekbone. Quinlan’s eyes slipped out of focus for a moment, warm brown no longer studying every inch of Cody’s face, but between one blink and the next, a warm grin spilled across his face. “But it is good to see you both.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Cody replied. It felt like a paltry offering compared to the roaring fire that rekindled itself in his chest for sustenance at the mere thought of the other men, but Quinlan only laughed, low and deep, before kissing him again.

“When the war is over—“ Quinlan cut off Cody’s attempt at protest with another kiss, infuriating and effective all at the same time before he continued, intent on daring the universe to defy him. “When the war is over, we will be together again.”

Cody tasted the promise like caff on his tongue, hoping with every shattered piece of him that Quinlan was right. His hands were steady as he untied the small token — a nondescript twist of metal with the edges worn smooth through the Force — from the leather tie around his neck, and pressed it into Quinlan’s hands. 

The man stepped backwards, a chill settling in the space between them, and closed his eyes. Cody settled back into the warmth of Obi-Wan’s embrace, watching the peace settle across Quinlan’s face, the edges of his grin softening. 

“Beautiful.”

“How?” Quinlan demanded, his voice harsh and broken, ripping Cody from the memory. “Why?” 

Cody’s hands spasmed around the handle of the electro baton, the urge to ignite it almost overwhelming. Quinlan was close, too close.

“Didn’t— Couldn’t—“ The words would choke him before he could speak. His free hand shook as he raised it, signing a single clumsy message as he trembled with the effort. 

He still tried to flinch away from the blow that Quinlan landed, the heavy hilt of his lightsaber thinking against his temple, then Cody was gone once again. 

When he woke, it could have hours, days, weeks, years later. But he was Cody, settling into the body it felt like he had borrowed, with a slight shift of his shoulders as he tested the restraints. 

He knew that he was on a ship, could feel the floor vibrating beneath him through the thin padding of the cot he was lying in. His stomach twisted and rolled as the autopilot shuddered into life, and then there was nothing to do but wait.

Pain pulsed through his head like a second heartbeat, blurring his vision when his eyes slipped open in coordination with the door. 

“Morning, Cody. Have I ever mentioned how blood-soaked is a very attractive look on you?”

“That makes three times now.” The words clawed up his throat as he spoke, dried blood flaking from his face with every movement. “And you were even stone-cold sober for one of them.”

“Such a liar,” Quinlan teased, his laugh choked and distorted by the tears that ran down his cheeks. The soft sound of metal clinking together followed him as he walked across the room, and Cody caught sight of the countless mementos strung across his chest on a sturdy chain.

“I can’t untie you,” Quinlan said, his voice heavy with regret as he sat on the edge of the bed. “After the first time, when you woke up and you weren’t you—“ He broke off with a grimace, the action mirrored by Cody.

He could barely breathe, regret and hope he thought he had killed long ago wrapping around his throat like a noose. “Are you okay?”

Quinlan laughed, the sound a distant echo from the rich timbre Cody remembered, leaning forward to press their foreheads together in Keldabe. “I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I’m notoriously hard to kill, which I guess is lucky for us both.”

As if sensing the dark direction Cody’s thoughts were starting to spiral in, Quinlan moved closer and kissed him gently, blotting out the universe for everything but soft warmth and the bite of salt and iron.

“I know about the chip. I can’t destroy it, cyar’ika.” 

Sorrow ripped through Cody’s chest like a blaster bolt. The memory of teaching Quinlan ‘cyar’ika’ each mumbled repetition punctuated with a kiss until it seemed to fill his very soul couldn’t stand against it, and Cody pulled away from the Jedi, curling in on himself as much as he could.

“I’ll hurt you. Eventually, I’ll slip back under, and I’ll kill you. Please, Quin.”

Quinlan shook his head, his jaw set in sly determination. “I can’t remove it. It’s too Dark for me to distinguish it from myself. But I know someone who can.

“You’re not a killer in the way you think you are, Cody. Obi-Wan is still alive. And he’s going to be so happy to see you.”

“Alive?” Cody felt as if the floor had fallen away beneath him, but he was still here, still in control. “He’s alive?”

Quinlan nodded, and Cody finally allowed himself to weep, pressing his face into the crook of Quinlan’s neck as the other man hugged him tightly, trying to hold his shattered pieces together for a while longer.

[writing-the-end]

LoL Chapter 53- Rescue

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU, designs, ideas belongs to @theguardiansofredland)

Grian is at the mercy of Dolios and his dark magic, but are the hermits there to save him in time? Or has the end come for the healing mage?

[Note: Hey everyone, I’m sorry for the time that was between chapters. A lot of really emotional and personal things happened over the past few months, and it just really pushed me off balance. But I really cant thank Red enough for being at my side the whole time- he’s the real hero in all of this. 

Happy Season 8!]

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To be back in the dark, cold bowels of the dungeons, willingly returning to the chamber that Dolios forced them to play his game in, left every hermit with a strange mix of dread and remorse. Almost every hermit, except for the few that weren’t around during the championship, can remember waking up in cells, being dragged from the hard stone floor at knifepoint, and turned into pawns for Dolios to control. Promising he will kill every last one in his game, and making TFC play along. 

But they hardly linger in the very chamber where their guildmaster outwitted the Magistrate of Lairyon, rather continuing on their search for a passage to the subchamber. Scar can feel the cavity in the stone beneath their feet, but no staircase seems to lead them down. It wasn’t until Cleo summoned the ghosts of those who died here, their souls lingering, that they are pointed in the right direction. So many souls, having seen so much suffering, not just from Dolios within these walls, though many are from his doing. 

A ghost guides the hermits to a circular room, and though their voice has long faded with time, their misty hands point to the center of the room. Mumbo kneels down. “There’s machinery here. If I just…” He places his hands against the smooth stone, and without even having to think, his magic appears. Redstone seeping through the seams of the rock, reconfiguring the mechanics and forcing the spiral staircase to descend. 

Everyone, including Mumbo, is surprised by his power. He’s never had such control before in his life. But they don’t linger on this new development. Not when time is running shorter and shorter for Grian. They cause a jam in the thin staircase, twenty something hermits rushing to the subchamber. Unlike the rooms above them, the stone is rough cut, no bricks or stenciling. It looks more like a cave blown open than a carved dungeon. 

A heavy weight wraps in on the hermits. They know they’re close as the pressure increases on their bodies. They follow the struggle to breathe, the feeling of carrying stones on their back. They’ve come to know the signs of a dark crystal well- and it leads them right to not one, but three towers of corrupted gems. 

They’re massive, protruding from the ground at an angle, black spikes erupting from the earth. The air is heavy with mist, swirling in tendrils, like the very tentacles of Eurynomos, way back in the forest. The mist grasps the open air, siphoning the very life from the stone and oxygen and taking it for itself. Every so often, a pulse of darkness bursts from the corrupted crystals, with such force it causes the entire cavern to shudder, and blows back the hermits’ hair and clothes. They all duck with each explosion, but one person remains standing, reveling in the energy that's breaking free from the crystals. 

Dolios’s fingers toy with the mist, grasping the air and feeling the power. With each eruption, the black seal between him and the central crystal glows. For a second, the hermits swear they can see the mist at his back look almost...feather-like. 

“Oh my gods… Grian.” Stress’s voice is so small, so quiet, the other hermits almost don’t hear it. But their captured friend’s name on anyone’s lips is enough to catch their attention. 

He’s grey, so monochrome that it was almost impossible to pick him out among the black crystals, the grey mist, and the dark magic. Limp body and hands, eyes open but unseeing, Grian is chained to the central crystal. Once blond hair, now an ashen grey, curls and crests over Grian’s face, his chin dropped to his chest. The hermits don’t breathe until they see him do so, but it’s a horribly shallow breath. Another wave of energy rolls through the crystals, and Grian’s body loses more of its color. More of it’s life. At this point, he hardly even reacts to the tearing of his lifeforce, his magic, from his body. Fingers twitch, but even those are beginning to turn flaky, fading away into oblivion. The tips of his once blue cape become little more than mist. Even the energy, the powers of the very atoms are being torn apart. Grian was very near death- or a fate worse. 

All for Dolios, and his insatiable need for power. The low thunder of every wave is broken by Dolios’s voice. He flexes his hands, laughing to himself. “Of all the angels I’ve stolen magic from before, it has never been this strong. Even Celia had nothing against you. I feel like I could blow all of Milliara apart with a windstorm this instant! Don’t worry, little bird, your magic is in good hands.” 

Iskall and Mumbo both scuffle to their feet, surging forward. Mumbo faster than Iskall. Too fast for TFC to grab him before he’s over the boulder they hid behind. And too fast to stop even his own magic from summoning. But it wasn’t the out of control magic that the hermits have seen before. Like destroying the crystal shard on Eremita, or in the depths of the Hangman’s Playground. 

No, even though lightning filled Mumbo’s vision, and magic surged through his veins like energy through a redstone circuit, he had every wit and thought about him. For the first time, he had true, full control. Every iota of power was at his command, like a dragon spreading it’s wings for it’s first flight across the sky. 

With a flippant wave of his hand, the twin satellite crystals shatter, red bolts of lightning creasing through the darkness-bound lattice. The air is filled with glittering crystals, mist freed from the quartz and purging it of the darkness. Mumbo turns his power, his attention towards the crystal that Grian’s chained to, and presses his fingers together to destroy the last crystal. 

He’s blown off his feet, a burst of wind from nowhere sending him skidding across the floor. When Mumbo gathers his wits and looks up, finally seeing Dolios through his anger, the magistrates is wild with manic delight. “Oh, now that’s real magic. I think this little bird’s powers might become my new favorite.” The other hermits dare to step out, walking through the shattered, transparent remains of the crystals. Dolios is the only color before them, his plush robes and rich colors standing out against the swirling magic. “Ah, the whole parade is here. Come to watch your friend die? Or will you all be joining him as well?” 

Dolios turns, resting his gaze on Grian. The hermits watch in horror as their healer looks as if he’s about to blow away in the wind. Like dust in the shape of a human. His eyes are empty, no glimmer of life left. They realize they may be too late. 

But that doesn’t stop them from getting their revenge. Mumbo remains focused on the crystal his friend is trapped against, but a sharp shard of gemstone goes flying through the air, cracking Dolios upside the head. Blood pours from the wound, matting the curly brown hair that crowns Dolios. He turns, anger mixing with the mania into a dangerous concoction. But his fury doesn’t get to live long, not when Scar drives a wedge of rock into Dolios’s jaw. This time it’s the magistrate that goes skidding across the rough hewn floor. In his attempt to stand up, Dolios becomes ensnared in just about every medium of magic the hermits can offer. Vines tie him down, radioactive spikes pin his clothes and hair to the floor, a ring of hellfire erupting from the depths of the earth. 

Mumbo, however, remains focused on his best friend before him. Summoning all his magic, every ounce of effort he’s ever put forth, he sends a bolt of lightning directly to the core of the crystal that is draining Grian. The lightning strikes true, hardly even raising a hair on what remains of the sky angel, but obliterating the crystal he hangs from. From the inside out, the darkness is banished by red light, like the sun rising red on a bright, beautiful daybreak. Blinding everyone within the cave- except Mumbo. He’s not lost in the light, the power, the magic. He’s a part of it all. 

The crystal shatters, and Grian falls. Crumpled to the ground, he looks to be little more than a pile of ash and rags among the sparkling crystal shards. Like the moon adrift in the sea of stars. 

When the hermits blink away their momentary blindness, they find Mumbo is already at his friend’s side. With a few teary blinks, the last of the lightning fizzles away, and Mumbo’s voice cracks like the very gems he destroyed. “G-Grian? Grian, wake up.” 

But Grian doesn’t move. Mumbo reaches out, grabbing the angel and pulling him to the safety of the hermits. Holding him close as the others surround. Ren reaches out, placing a hand on Grian’s shoulder. He retreats immediately, when Grian’s shoulder seems to fade from existence, flaking to ash and falling apart under Ren’s pressure. “Is he….” 

No one dares speak the word. Joe scribbles down a healing poem, but the magic does nothing. Grian doesn’t breathe, his eyes don’t blink. They just stare, empty, at the cavern roof above. And he continues to fade, all color lost, becoming nothing more than dust. 

“No, nononononono.” Mumbo’s words stumble and jumble together, and he shakes and jolts Grian as if trying to rise him from a dream. “Grian, don’t leave us! We need you!” 

Still nothing. 

Mumbo’s shoulders slump. A weight heavier than any dark crystal hangs over the hermits as Grian’s limp form lays in Mumbo’s arms before them. Tears threaten to spill from Mumbo’s eyes. Grian was his first real friend, the one who saved him all those years ago. And he couldn’t return the favor now. It was Grian that offered him kindness, offered him friendship. Grian who gave Mumbo a true family, a real home, who trained with him even when all seemed hopeless, and drank with him when nights were bright. It was because of Grian that Mumbo has a father in TFC, friends all around him. And now? 

Now his best friend was dead in his arms. Fading from existence, his magic and life stolen by a monster in magistrate’s clothes. Mumbo tips his head, breath stuttering as tears fall freely. Like a stream after a storm, rivers of salt water across his cheeks, cresting his jaw and running across the valley of his throat. Some droplets are caught in his mustache, others stain the collar of his outfit. All the hermits openly cry, even Doc. Memories flood alongside the tears, bowed heads over their fallen comrade as Mumbo holds his fallen friend tight.

One tear falls straight down, landing with a wet plop on Grian’s eyelid. Water, the lifeblood of Lairyon, slowly drips into Grian’s own vacant eyes. And from the ashen grey, empty gaze, a single vein of blue appears within his iris. 

Like a river, the blue flows freely, spilling across Giran’s sky blue eyes. Filling the empty grey valley with fresh blue water. And from the blue, like the sun reflecting off the see, a glimmer appears. 

Iskall noticed the color returning first. The pink of Grian’s face, sunlight colored hair beginning to renourish with color. Bringing Grian slowly back from death’s doorstep. He slaps Mumbo on the shoulder, his own breath gasping. Words struggling to break free from the nuclear wizard’s mouth, rather just random noises escaping his lips. 

It’s enough to get Mumbo’s attention, as well as every other hermit. Through teary eyes, they see the color spread. The red of Grian’s robes, the blue of his cape. The translucent, flaking form becomes solid and tangible again. 

And then Grian breathes. So shallow and soft, it’s almost impossible to see. But to the hermits, it might as well be an earth breaking tremble. Eyes blink, and parted lips move. A whisper of a voice breaks free from death’s grip. “Mumbo? Iskall? Guys?”

Grian can’t sing, but the words from him might as well be a chorus of angels. He was alive. Whether it was pure luck, the gift of life that water carries, or simply the friendship the hermits hold, something brought Grian back from the brink. 

Only one thing can break the joy. And that one thing has to open his mouth. From across the room, Dolios writhes in his bonds, snering. “Oh that’s just touching, isn’t it? If I can’t have it all, then I might as well kill every last one of you.” 

Doc realizes what’s happening first, but Dolios is just out of reach. A bout of strength that can only be attributed to previously stolen magic, Dolios tears apart the vines and breaks apart the crossed spears of iskallium. He stands, brushing off leaves and radioactive dust from his robes and tugging on his ponytail. When he opens his eyes, a crooked, crazed grin creases the leader’s normally charismatic face. “Do you really think such weak power can hold me down?” 

Wels reacts just in time to shield the hermits from the arc of magic that aimed for the group. Dolios doesn’t let up on his barrage, and the magical barrier begins to crack and contort against the dark energy. No hermit can step out from behind the shield without risking certain death. 

A wild, cackling laughter echoes off the cavern. “What will you roaches do without your precious angel now? Who will save you now?”

Wels’s barrier breaks. And Dolios attacks.

[kuchee]

for the prompts, u for zutaraang or zukaang?

zutaraang / zukaang + urgent 🌙

Zuko’s party stand at attention behind him, ready to board the hulking vessel that will take them back to their homeland. Aang tucks his face into his friends shoulder, squeezing him; he can see the captain shuffle his feet awkwardly, and kind of relishes how scandalous this greeting must be by the standards of Fire Nation decorum. 

“...don’t be late next week,” Zuko’s saying, reminding him again of the Sun Festival. “This is crucial, Aang, everyone important from the Fire Nation will be there, and they’ll be looking to see if I have your support. It’s only once–”

“-once every ten years. Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there, Sifu Hotlord, when am I ever late?”

“You don’t really want me to answer that.”

He drinks in Zuko’s grinning face in the misty orange rays of sunlight – the lowest it ever gets at this time of year. Aang watches Zuko and his entourage board, and waves the ship off, trying to wrest away the dull throb in his chest that always rises when he has to say goodbye to his friend; when he knows they won’t meet again for months. He flies back to the village and ducks inside the ice hut, ready to get a few hours sleep, if he can, before the sun is high in the sky again. 

Night falls over him. Grasscrickets chirp loudly in his Aang’s ears. As he stirs awake, his hands push down onto cool, damp earth, and he springs up into a sitting position. His limbs are too light, splaying too easily. He’d fallen asleep heavy, under layers of skins and blankets in the igloo, but they’re all gone now. Just as well – the stagnant air hugging his naked chest and back makes the idea of being wrapped up inside blankets unthinkable. 

The niggling feeling that he’s forgotten something settles in his stomach. He’d promised Zuko he wouldn’t be late, but he doesn’t remember what for, or where to go, or where even to start looking. 

He rises clumsily onto his feet to look around, the quickness of the movement making his head lurch. It’s like he weighs nothing. It’s unpleasant; like airbending without bending, out of his control. The vaguely familiar shape of the palace garden takes form, clusters of fire lilies, starbursts and marigolds materialising in the blue nighttime. 

Is he here for a meeting? For the ceremony? Or just to see Zuko, or someone else in the court? And where is everyone? He’s just about to rouse Appa to take a look around the perimeter when from the tall grove of trees in the horizon, Zuko appears. Something about him strikes a creeping unease in Aang’s spine, but just like everything else about this place, he’s not sure what. 

“Has the ceremony started?” Aang asks, though judging by the sky, it’s well past dusk, and the answer is obvious. “Where is everybody?” 

Zuko doesn’t seem to register the question. “You’re late,” he says, but he isn’t dismayed, or even annoyed, like Aang expected he would be. He’s only staring, expression blank, fixing Aang with a gaze that makes the back of his neck tingle.

Confusion gnaws at Aang’s chest. Zuko wears his snow jacket, the tall sealskin boots gifted from Sokka and Katara, the gloves that the children in the south had knitted for him – everything the same from when he’d set off out of Aang’s grasp mere hours ago. “If I’m late why are you still–” 

“You are late, Aang,” he interrupts. Now that he’s closer, Aang can see why he had felt off. Zuko is older – a lot older, maybe ten years older – the line of his jaw firmer, his cheeks harder, his billowing hair longer than Aang has ever seen. “You couldn’t decide, could you? You couldn’t get a grip on yourself to tell me how you felt. You couldn’t choose, and now it’s too late for us. If it’s always been Katara, then why didn’t you-” 

A screeching noise crashes into his ears, the grasscrickets amplified by the thousand. “No,” Aang says – shouts – over the din, but he doesn’t believe in his own words. Zuko’s looking through him now, right through his face  like he’s an invisible thing stuck in the Spirit World. “No– no, that’s not true, It’s you, too,” he blurts. “It’s you, Zuko.” 

Zuko stops short. His face softens, morphs into an expression so tenderly hopeful that Aang forgets to breathe for a second. 

The crickets quieten, and just like that, he’s grounded again. He glides towards Zuko on a breeze of his own making, closing the space between them in one decisive movement, their lips meeting desperately as if they’ve done so a thousand times before. Aang tugs at the fur-lined jacket, tugs at every stupid item of clothing keeping Zuko from him, not resting until Zuko is just as shirtless as him. His head pounds and his hands shake, but he can’t stop, not now, not when Zuko is here, and he feels the same way, he feels right.  

Aang pushes him gently down into the cool grass, Zuko’s firm arm around his waist taking him with him. There’s no moon tonight in this garden, but still,  moonlight catches Zuko everywhere: long hair fanning out under him, his eyes, dark bronze with lust. It makes silver globes of his strong shoulders, and brightens the smattered ridges of his lightning scar. Aang presses their bodies together. Their breaths mingle, warm and sweet, Aang’s mind shuttered by the look of raw, unfamiliar want on Zuko’s face. He licks his lips, parched, and scratches the itchy fur of the hood at his neck, momentarily distracted. 

He could have sworn he wasn’t wearing– 

The thing purrs, and Aang startles awake.

Momo is tucked against the back of his neck pecking away at a piece of dried fruit. Aang sits up with a start and takes long, gasping breaths. Sweat trickles on his chest, sticky against the stifling blankets and below that, something more uncomfortable strains his breaths. 

The biting cold of the polar winter seeps into him, just as icy as the realisation that it had been a dream. He looks down; Katara is fast asleep next to him, her brow clear of worry, one hand pressed underneath her cheek. Her hair fans out behind her, soft tresses tickling Aang’s arm. 

Frustration crawls its way up his throat, and so does the bubbling shame that comes with guilt, no matter how much he tells himself that what he’s been feeling is natural. 

Feeling may be, but hiding isn’t. The monks would have backed that one up. 

He wants to brush her hair away out of her face, but he can’t bring himself to, not when the ache of Zuko presses so urgently. He can’t get that expression out of his head. 

It had all felt so real. 

Momo climbs onto his shoulder, chirping confusedly. Aang scratches his floppy ear with a thumb, feeling cold, clammy and tired in a way that he knows sleep won’t fix. “Why me, Momo?” he asks, sighing. “Why now?” 

[send me a pairing + a letter] 

[deancas-fanfiction]

Hardest Part is Letting Go

Part 2/7

Pairing: Dean Winchester/Castiel

Fic Summary: Upon his diagnosis of a terminal illness, Dean vows to spend the rest of his short life with Cas by his side, completing his bucket list while learning what it really means to live and love.

Chapter Summary: Dean and Cas cross another item off Dean's bucket list. Shameless smut ensues.

Part 1

available on ao3

Days quickly turned into weeks as Dean and Cas continued to spend every day together. Some days that would stay in and watch old movies together and some days they would venture out into the city, needing a change of scenery. It was the end of September and quickly becoming bitterly cold. Earlier that day they drove into Lawrence to grab coffee from the quaint coffee shop where they had their first date.

They sipped their coffees by the large stone fireplace in the corner, reminiscing over a shared piece of coffee cake. It was nearly five years to the date that they started dating and it seemed a fitting way to celebrate. Dean still remembers exactly how he felt when he arrived and saw Cas through the large bay window. He arrived early and was sipping on a latte which left a little bit of foam on his upper lip. Dean grinned at that and his nerves were quickly replaced with complete adoration.

Dean and Cas first met freshman year of college. It was during welcome week at a forced mixer for all freshmen in their dorm. Dean was sipping on the sickly-sweet punch that was in desperate need of some whiskey to level it out when he inconspicuously made his way to where the aux cord was located. Just because he was forced to be at this party didn't mean he was stuck listening to today’s top hits.

When he was within sight of the aux, he noticed that someone else beat him there. It was the most attractive man he had ever seen. With striking blue eyes that were in perfect contrast to his dark sex hair, he was like Dean’s biggest fantasy in the flesh. His eyes appreciatively roamed Cas’s body noticing the way his dark jeans clung to his thighs and the way his dark t-shirt stretched tight against his chest and arms.

Cas was furiously scrolling on the phone when suddenly the song changed. Space Oddity by David Bowie was now blasting through the speakers. He looked immediately pleased with himself and continued scrolling, adding more songs to the new queue of the playlist.

“You know, if you’re going to try and get away with changing the playlist, you should really pick a faster song to make it less obvious,” Dean mused.

Cas jumped, unaware that he was spotted changing the music. He quickly regained his composure and smiled crookedly. “Bowie is always the exception.” His voice was gravelly and deep and holy hell he really was the hottest guy Dean had ever met.

Dean smiled at that. “I would say I’d drink to that, but this punch is certainly missing its kick.”

“You know, I think I can help with that.” Cas reached into his back pocket with an eyebrow raised and pulled out a silver flask. Glancing over his shoulder, he poured a healthy amount in Dean’s cup.

Dean took a long drink from the now significantly improved punch and grinned. “My god, and a whiskey drinker, nonetheless. Where have you been all my life?”

“Iowa,” Cas deadpanned.

Dean laughed and took another long drink of the punch.

“Want to get out of here?” Cas asked. “Go somewhere quieter, I mean. This isn’t really my scene.”

Dean grinned and raced out of the party with Cas in tow.

That night Dean and Cas walked along the deserted campus, passing the flask back and forth. They took turns being mock appalled over the bands the other hasn’t listened to, or the movies that haven’t been seen. They made future plans to correct those oversights and Dean felt true happiness for the first time in much too long.

Dean never kissed Cas that night. In fact, Dean didn’t kiss Cas until years after that night. They became comfortable in their friendship and Dean didn’t want to risk what they had. Cas ended up transferring back to Iowa for his last year of college to be close to his family when his mom was sick. After she passed, he moved back to Lawrence and it was through the late-night comfort sessions where Dean’s hands lingered too long, and Cas gripped Dean too tight that their friendship suddenly became so much more.

Dean was determined to do it right, so he asked Cas out on an official date and they went to their favorite coffee shop where they previously spent hours studying together. But this time, Dean could stare at Cas without worrying about the implications. He could reach out and touch him without trying to make up some excuse for it. It was freeing and exhilarating all at once. And now, five years after that first date, Cas still has that same impact on Dean.

It was those moments that Dean and Cas reminisced over in the coffee shop. Except there was an underlying tone of sadness and uncertainty for the future. But Dean pushed that away and focused on those happy memories. He focused on Cas and found himself just as stupidly in love with him as that first day he met him.

Now Dean and Cas were back at their apartment, cuddled on the couch with coffee for Dean and hot chocolate for Cas. Dean was exhausted from their excursion. His fatigue was really setting in now. He had felt it earlier, beginning to weigh him down like a blanket. He refused to let the illness win today. Cas deserved a nice day. But now that he was laying on the couch with his head resting on Cas’s chest, he just didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.

He was drifting into a blissful sleep when he felt Cas nudge him. Dean grumbled and chose to ignore whatever the reason Cas was trying to wake him and relaxed, feeling sleep win over once again. Once again it was interrupted. “Jesus, what is it Cas?”

“It’s raining,” He whispered, his mouth close to Dean’s ear.

“So?”

“So…it’s raining, Dean.” The emphasis he put on it seemed to wake Dean as he shot up, staring at Cas with a smile on his face.

“It’s raining! We can cross number three off the list!”

It wasn’t that rain was uncommon in Kansas. In fact, there is probably quite a few rainy days left before it turns into snow, but Dean wants to finish his list and he wants to experience the items while he can thoroughly enjoy them.

All signs of fatigue washed away from Dean and he was leaping off the couch, bringing Cas with him. They both threw on rain jackets and some boots before bounding down the stairs. He felt like a kid again.

It was a cold rain, not the warm rain showers they had grown accustomed to throughout the summer. But Dean preferred this kind; it was refreshing and the goosebumps that formed from it reminded him that he is alive. Dean lifted his face towards the sky, feeling the raindrops wash over him. He opened his mouth to catch a few stray drops, laughing to himself because he used to do the same as a kid. When was the last time he enjoyed the rain? When was the last time that he wasn’t rushing to get out of it or complaining about the inconvenience of it? The answer was too long. He needed to focus on slowing down and enjoying life. And that’s what his list was all about.

Cas grabbed Dean’s hand breaking his train of thought and dragged him through a large puddle in the street outside their apartment. Dean smiled at his boyfriend, with his dark hair that was curling at the ends from the moisture and his pink lips that were beginning to turn a light shade of blue from the cold. He truly was beautiful. Cas wrapped his arm around Dean’s waist and pulled him against his chest, grabbing his other hand.

“May I have this dance?” Cas questioned, his mouth close to Dean’s ear which caused him to shiver and created a wake of goosebumps of their own kind.

“Cas, you fucking sap,” Dean teased, but rested his head against his boyfriend’s shoulder nonetheless. They began to slowly pivot in the middle of the street, the cold rain falling against them, soaking through their jackets and into their boots but none of that mattered. Not when they had each other by their sides. Dean sighed contentedly. Maybe he should have added ‘dance in the rain’ to his list because this – this was absolutely perfect.

It wasn’t long before the cold rain began to seep into what felt like their bones, and they stopped dancing. They both were lost in their own thoughts, but when they looked at each other, green eyes meeting blue, their thoughts were quickly consumed of the other. Dean’s eyes glanced down to Cas’s lips and Cas rested his hand on the back of Dean’s neck, pulling him close.

The rain was cold, but their lips were warm, sending sparks of electricity through the other. Dean’s hands were on each side of Cas’s face as their mouths meshed together perfectly and leisurely. No wonder kissing in the rain was always romanticized in the movies. It was incredible. They kissed slowly and with meaning, pouring emotions into the kiss that neither could put into words. All thoughts of a bucket list, terminal illness, and the cold were quickly erased from Dean’s mind. Instead, all thoughts were of Cas. Dean deepened the kiss, running his tongue along Cas’s bottom lip. He pressed his body against him, suddenly wanting – no, needing more of Cas.

A bright flash of lightning struck, causing the two of them to jump apart, laughing at the other’s momentarily frightened expression.

“Come on,” Cas said, grabbing Dean’s hand once again. “Let’s go take a hot shower and we can continue where we left off.” Dean grinned and allowed Cas to lead him inside and upstairs to the warmth of their apartment.

It wasn’t long before they were shut in the bathroom, stripping each other of their wet clothes as the water heated up. What started as a frenzy turned into something much more languid. Cas peeled Dean’s soaked shirt off of him and left a trail of kisses in its place which blazed into Dean’s skin. Cas kissed along his neck, lightly sucking and nibbling on the spot just under Dean’s ear that always elicits the sexiest sounds. When he was pleased with the mark he made, Cas continued down to his shoulders. He pressed feather light kisses along his muscles, paying extra attention to his collar bones.

Cas’s fingertips lightly brushed Dean’s nipple, to which Dean whined in response. “Cas.”

“Patience,” He teased. Cas slipped his fingertips under the waistband of Dean’s boxers all while peppering kisses and licking along his broad chest. He ran his fingers along the soft skin and listened to Dean’s labored breathing. “Shower. Now.” Cas ordered, pushing his hands down and completely stripping Dean of his clothes.

They both stepped in the shower, letting the hot water wash over their chilled bodies. Dean raised his face towards the water, mimicking his earlier action in the rain. The hot water trickled down his body, washing away the chill. Meanwhile, Cas grabbed a rag and soaped it up. He rubbed it in small circles along Dean’s back, massaging where he carried the most of his tension. “Cas,” Dean moaned. “Fuck, that feels so good.”

Cas hummed in response and leaned against Dean’s back, pressing his erection against him. His hands moved to his front, gently moving along Dean’s chest and stomach, leaving soapy suds in its place. Dean let out a low moan in response to the gentle caresses and the feeling of Cas against his ass. Cas’s hand moved lower, gripping Dean’s cock. He gently moved his hand along Dean’s hard length, jerking him off at a slow enough pace to drive Dean crazy. Dean whined in response; he could already feel the heat gathering in his stomach. “Cas, please.”

“Tell me what you want, Dean.”

“You,” He choked out. “Please. I want to feel you.”

Cas moaned and removed his hand from Dean. Dean nearly whimpered in response to the loss but then he heard the click of the lube bottle opening. Cas spread Dean’s legs and slicked up his fingers. He slowly pushed the first one past the tight ring of muscles. Dean groaned at the sensation and wiggled his hips against Cas, urging him to move. Cas gripped Dean’s hips with his free hand, stilling his movements as he inserted a second finger.

Cas paused, giving Dean a moment to adjust before he began scissoring his fingers, readying Dean for him. “Ah fuck,” Dean hissed as Cas brushed his fingertip against his prostate. “C’mon, Cas, I need more.”

Cas chuckled at his boyfriend’s impatience and added a third finger. He slowly slid them in and out, feeling the warm heat of Dean. When Dean was ready, he removed his fingers and squirted more lube into his hand. He ran his hand along his leaking cock. Dean looked over his shoulder and nearly came at the sight of Cas touching himself. His head was thrown back, eyebrows furrowed, and lips parted open.

“Dean,” Cas sighed as he removed his hand. He smirked at his boyfriend’s lust ridden expression. His pupils were dilated, leaving just a small ring of color around them.    

Cas pressed the tip of his cock against Dean’s hole, lightly teasing him. “Fuck, Cas. Just fucking take me already,” He growled. With that, Cas slowly pushed in, letting the tight ring of his muscles surround him.

“You’re so fucking tight, Dean.” He growled.

Dean wiggled his hips in response, letting Cas know it was okay to move now that he was adjusted to the feeling of Cas inside him. He began pumping in and out at a slow pace, letting the tension slowly build. He adjusted his angle and brushed against Dean’s prostate on nearly every thrust.

“Cas, I need more,” He whimpered. Cas picked up the pace and began to kiss the crook of his neck. His breath was hot but still left goosebumps in its wake.

Cas whispered into Dean’s ear, “Touch yourself.” Dean immediately obliged, pumping his cock in time with Cas’s thrusts. It didn’t take long until that heat was ready to bubble over. He knew Cas wasn’t far behind based off the whimpers and curses falling from his lips. Cas picked up the pace, slamming into Dean’s prostate and Dean’s vision nearly went black from the pleasure. “Cas!” He screamed as he spilled over onto his hand and the shower wall.

As Dean expected, Cas was not far behind. It was a few more thrusts before he was following Dean off the edge with the cry of his name. The two of them caught their breath and quickly cleaned themselves up. Dean shut the water off and wrapped Cas up in a towel. He pulled him in and gently kissed him, soaking in the smell of his coconut conditioner.

“I love you so much, Cas.”

Cas grinned and replied, “And I love you more, Dean.”

Dean took in Cas’s look of pure adoration which made him feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. “Let’s go to bed, angel.” He said with another quick kiss.

Within minutes they were tangled up together in bed, sound asleep.

Part 3

[fallen-gravity]

Safety in Numbers

A surprise gift fic for @artsymeeshee, because the art she recently posted of the Stan Twins cuddling warmed my heart and apparently inspired me to write..uh...almost five thousands words.

Don’t you dare tag this as a ship.

Summary:  Every great thing that ever happens to you is usually followed by something much, much worse.

You save the world from the apocalypse, you're convinced that you've lost everything and everyone you've ever loved.

You gain your memories back, you have nightmares so vivid that they fuck with your sense of fantasy versus reality.

It's a lose-lose, if you ask Stan.

AO3

Stan awakens to an alarm clock he doesn’t remember setting. Groaning, he sits up, eyes not quite open yet, and his back makes an ugly popping sound he knows he’s going to feel as soon as his body is fully awake. He blinks his eyes open slowly, and takes a few moments to re-familiarize himself with his twin brother’s old study room. He turns, to check the time and stop that infernal beeping sound, but his neck is so stiff that it makes him want to blow chunks. That’s what he gets for sleeping on a couch, he supposes, but he’s certainly slept on worse, and even if Ford did have a bed somewhere in the mess of a shack he chose to call home, Stan certainly didn’t deserve it, because people who are probably responsible for the death of their family don’t deserve nice things.

Grunting, he swings his legs off the couch, and stands so he doesn’t have to bend his neck in any more weird directions just to turn the alarm off. Its obnoxiously bright red letters blink 5:31am, and Stan scrubs a hand down his face as he punches the clock’s OFF button with the other. 

That’s right. The only reason he set the damn alarm in the first place is because a stubborn customer who couldn’t speak a lick of English refused to leave the gift shop until she found the perfect gift for her little kiddo back home despite the Shack having closed nearly half an hour prior. It’s the only time in his life he’s ever been grateful for the year he was trapped in Colombia, because he’s sure if he wasn’t able to heckle with her in Spanish her into leaving with one of everything, he has a feeling she’d still be wandering back and forth across the shop. Stan laughs to himself at the thought, and makes a mental note to make that sort of thing an attraction someday if he ever gets a customer as stubborn as she is again.

But no, that’s not what matters right now. He bends over to pick up a hairbrush that’d been carelessly tossed to the floor the night prior and runs it through his soft brown hair that he promises he’s going to get cut as soon as he has the time and money, and as soon as his hair manageable enough to brush through it without snagging on any tough knots, he carelessly tosses the brush over his shoulder and heads out of the room, navigating himself around the place with a flashlight. He’s aware that it’d make things much easier to just turn the lights on, but keeping the gift shop lights on all weekend is already burning a hole in his wallet, and he’s not sure he could afford the electricity bill if he left the lights in the study room on by mistake for even ten extra minutes.

When he reaches the staircase leading to the basement, he flicks the flashlight off and sets it down on the counter by the cash register. It’s much easier to navigate down the winding steps with both of his hands free in case he falls and needs to catch himself, and the faint blue hum of the portal is enough of a light source to show him the way to the basement anyway. He sits down at the desk, adjusts the framed photo of himself and Ford at boxing practice in high school, and pulls Journal 1 out from the hidden shelf in front of the monitor. He’d spent all of last week desperately looking for 2 and 3, but the harsh winter snowfall had cut his search short and he didn’t want to waste any more time when he could just try to get the damned thing working without them.

“C’mon, Poindexter, y’gotta give me something to work with,” he mumbles, opening the desk drawer and pulling out a pad of paper and a pen. “I spent weeks memorizing all of your fancy shmancy ciphers. That’s more than I ever studied in high school. You can’t ramble on for two whole pages about how to crack them and then switch to this…” he squints at the squiggles scattered across the portal’s blueprints. “...Cooky alien language, or whatever. This is real life we’re talkin’ here. This is your life we’re talkin’ here. It’d be a lot easier if you didn’t write this thing in Klingon, or whatever” 

Stan knows, at the back of his mind, that talking to the journal like it’s Ford himself isn’t going to get him anywhere, but in a weird kind of way, it makes him feel less alone. Helps a guy out from feeling too lonely, y’know? 

He chuckles to himself at his own joke, taking comfort in the fact that if Ford were here he’d probably be rambling off about how Klingon is one of thousands of different intergalactic languages and how he obviously wrote it in Hqjolvk, thank you very much, and Stan can’t help but roll his eyes fondly as he flips through his notepad. He’s tried everything, he’s tried translating them to whichever letter in the English alphabet they just happen to look closest to, he’s tried throwing sentences in gibberish into three different ciphers at once to see if he could get anything even relatively close to whatever it is, and even when he “bought” a book at the store on ancient hieroglyphics and ancient symbolism the closest thing he got was just a bunch of dumb numbers.  And even then, translating all of those dumb numbers back to English from a1z26 just hit him against another dumb wall. 

Frustrated, he throws the pad of paper against the desk and kicks off from its edge, sending his swivel chair flying backwards across the room. When the chair finally stops rolling, his gaze fixes on the portal through the window in front of the desk he’d just been sitting at, and it’s really only now that he’s looking at it from this distance, from this angle, that he notices….the same weird squiggles from the journal carved all over the circular ring in the center of the portal. 

But...if the weird squiggles in the journal came from the portal, and translating those numbers from the Egyptian book through a1z26 just gave him gibberish...could...could it be that easy? Could it be-?

“Coordinates!” Stan yells, jumping to his feet, and tears build in his eyes at the epiphany. “Sweet Moses, they’re coordinates! How could it’ve been so obvious?” he cries, and nearly trips over himself in excitement as he scrambles back over to the monitor,  and his hands are shaking as he flips through his notepad. Once he finds the page he’s looking for, he forces his hands steady as he enters the number into the keypad. 

The tiny, logical voice in the very back of his mind is screaming at him that it’s never going to work, he only has a third of what he needs, he really shouldn’t get his hopes up, but the slamming of his heart against his chest drowns that sound out as he frantically enters and re-enters the numbers when he’s sure he accidentally entered the wrong ones (damn his chubby fingers), and when he’s finally, finally certain he’s gotten them all entered correctly, he presses the dark red SEND button, takes a few steps backwards, and waits. 

For what couldn’t be longer than two minutes but feels like six hours, there’s nothing. Stan’s about to sigh, call it a good stopping point for the day and kick himself for getting his hopes up too high, but then a flash of blue lightning sparks from the portal and strikes the ground.

“HA!” Stan exclaims, pumping his fists in the air. “I knew it! I knew it! Nothing can stop Stan Pines!” 

He sprints into the portal room, pausing only briefly to grab the toolbox on his way in. Two more bolts of lightning strike against the ground with a loud pop as he enters, and the grin spread across Stan’s face rivals them in brightness. Kneeling down in front of the lever, Stan opens his toolbox and pulls out his lucky red screwdriver that’s gotten him out of his fair share of car trunks, and goes to work on fixing up loose bolts and that awful crunching sound the lever kept making the last time he tried turning it on. 

Three bolts emerge from the portal, and Stan is too ecstatic to notice their uncomfortably close proximity to his head. He stands, once he’s absolutely certain he’s got the lever all fixed, and puts everything he has into shoving the lever from its off position to the on position. 

He can hear the gears turning in the machine, and his heart is pounding so hard against his chest it makes his ears ring. He’s tearing up again, but he doesn’t care, just as long as he gets to punch Ford in the shoulder and tell him off to never scare him like that again when he emerges in the next couple of minutes. The circular ring in the center of the portal begins to spin, slowly, and those weird symbols carved along it start to glow blue. 

Stan nearly drops to his knees, but no, he can’t let Ford see him at rock bottom, and maybe that’s a little selfish, considering all of the places Ford’s probably been the past two years, but the last thing he needs Ford to see is how much he’s been killing himself working to get him back. The ring spins faster, and faster, and where there was once a hole in the center of the portal that leads only to the back wall of the room, there’s now a blindingly bright flash of blue light, and Stan is knocked to the ground by the kickback. 

He goes to stand again, but the sound of shattering glass turns his attention elsewhere. He looks behind him, and the lightbulbs in the other room are exploding like it’s nobody’s business. He’s lucky his hearing was heightened from the ten years on the street, because he’s just quick enough to hear the cracking of the bulb right above his head that he’s able to dodge out of the way of the shattered glass as it rains down towards him. He jumps to his feet, brushing his clothes off, but he’s horrified to see that the portal’s ring is beginning to slow to a stop with no twin brother in sight.

“No!” he cries, and sprints back into the other room to reenter the coordinates into the monitor. But it’s just his luck, because the monitor’s glass is shattered to pieces as well, and there’s a thin line of black smoke rising from it. “No, no no no! I was so close!” he shouts, and sprints back into the portal room. He switches the lever from on to off and back to on again, but nothing changes. 

When the ring comes to a complete stop, the bright blue light fades away, an ugly kind of rage boils in the pit of Stan’s stomach. “This is all your fault, you dumb machine!” he yells, and launches at the portal like it was a thug trying to rob him of his wallet, and starts punching it like there’s no tomorrow, like if he gave it enough left hooks it’ll obey him and spit Stanford right out to his side. 

He’s about to go in for another punch when he hears the sound of the machine’s gears turning again. He grins, rubbing his hands together, and steps backwards to watch the process in its completion. Four bolts spark from the portal this time, but rather than strike the ground, they lunge for him, and Stan screams in agony as they jolt through his whole body. He takes it as a sign that he’s probably better off watching the process from the desk in the other room, but when he tries to turn heel and run, five bolts of lightning reach out and snake around his leg before he can take another step further, and he collapses to the ground. Gritting his teeth to avoid letting out a choked cry of pain, Stan tries to inch himself towards the lever for support to stand up, but it’s as if the damned lightning  has the power to read his thoughts, because it shocks the lever with such a thick bolt of lightning that it fries the thing black.

The charge from the lightning gives the lever just the right amount of static charge it needs to reactivate properly, and Stan doesn’t notice the hum of the portal’s gears getting louder and louder until he finds himself floating off the ground. “W-whoa, hey! Hey! Hold on a minute!” Stan scrambles around at nothing in particular, hoping his feet or arms will snag on something and prevent him from getting pulled in. “Let’s talk this over! We can work together!” He must be losing his damn mind if he thinks bargaining with the portal like it’s sentient is going to do anything, but it’s the only option he’s got left. “I just want my brother back! You want to stay on, yeah? You don’t like getting turned on and off at random, right? I’ll-I’ll keep you on! As long as it takes for my brother to find his way home, I’ll keep you turned on! I promise!”

The machine, of course, does not respond, and the higher Stan gets off the ground the blurrier his vision gets. Damn fear of heights. He flaps his arms around as if he could fly, but nothing seems to work. He starts kicking, as well, to see if swimming towards the ground could work any better, but he still doesn’t budge. 

But that does give him the idea of kicking off of the portal itself, since it’s the only solid thing left, save for the ceiling, and Stan curls himself up into a ball to try and get himself to flip over. It works, thankfully, but when he turns his glance back towards the portal his heart drops to his stomach. Curling himself up had helped his body change directions, yes, but it also changed his course entirely. Rather than being sucked towards the edge of the portal’s entrance, like he’d been when he was hovering above the lever, he’s now heading right for the center of the portal with nowhere to kick off of. 

“N-No! No!” He shouts frantically, kicking his leg away from the cold blue substance the portal emitted. When he spares another glance backwards, his feet are already sucked inside, and the rest of him is quickly following. “No! Somebody help! Somebody!” he shouts, his own words painfully echoing those of Ford’s when he’d been in the same situation.

Ford,

If the portal manages to stay active after he gets sucked in, Ford’s gonna be able to find his way home, but he’ll be all alone, left to wonder what could’ve happened to him. Vaguely, Stan remembers Ford had been saying something about shutting it down for good, and his panicked flailing at the thought that he may be the one never coming again only makes his descent into the portal quicken. “Stanford!” he shouts, in the odds that his brother can hear his cries from the other side of the portal. “Stanford, do something! Stanford!” 

The blue substance within the portal is thick and flavorless as his head is sucked in. He closes his mouth, because he doesn’t want to risk suffocating on whatever the hell this stuff is made of, and closes his eyes for impact for the same horrors that swallowed up his brother just two years prior, and…

…

…

…

…

…

When he forces his eyes open again, he’s lying on a bed. An actual, decently sized bed with fluffy blankets and at least three pillows supporting his head and neck. He’s not sure he’s slept on one of those in….what, thirteen years, give or take, if he’s not including the bug-infested hotels? 

All of his burns from the lightning strikes have seemingly vanished into thin air, along with that gnawing hunger that never seemed to leave his stomach even when he had the time to eat more than a single meal a day, and though the air feels cool, it doesn’t feel humid and stuffy like Ford’s old lab had felt moments ago. 

The rest of his aches are gone, too, he realizes as he sits up, replaced now by a dull pain in his hips and knees that he supposes he could credit to getting sucked into a portal and falling thirty feet to the ground to...uh, wherever he is now. 

Is this where Ford’s been stuck all this time? It’s no wonder he never tried to find his way back on his own, because all things considered, this place is actually pretty comfortable. Maybe he wound up on a friendly alien planet, and some locals rushed him to the hospital to get him fixed up. But there’s no calamity outside his door like there usually is in most hospitals back on Earth, and there’s no weird tubes attached to either of his arms and not a sight of ace bandages anywhere on his body. And...is he…swaying back and forth? 

Stan glances down at his hands, and the rest of his body still wrapped in a thick comforter. No, it’s not him, he realizes quickly, it’s the room that’s swaying back and forth. If he squints hard enough, he can make out the foot of his bed gently rocking back and forth. Scratching at his head, he goes to stand up and investigate his surroundings, until he notices a round window next to where he’d just been laying his head, just outside of his current line of sight. He lies back down, and his breath nearly catches in his throat at the sight. 

It’s the biggest cluster of stars he’s ever seen his entire life, and if he looks close enough, he can see streaks of what he can only assume must be the galaxy itself. It certainly looks like the Earth’s skies, and when he looks again he notices the stars are reflecting off of… some kind of body of water? 

Ah, so he’s on a boat. That explains the swaying. There’s a twinge of warm nostalgia in chest at the realization, of the days two scrappy little boys from New Jersey would spend their afternoons working on a sailboat of their own, musing dreamily about the day they’d finally sail away from the dumb town. 

But...no. That couldn’t possibly be right. He got kicked out at seventeen, and Ford is god-knows-where in the universe. This must be some sort of sick joke, or an optical illusion that plays on his greatest dreams, or something. He turns away from the window, covering that half of his face with the blanket, and fully intends to fall asleep so he can bug the boat’s captain in the morning about where the hell he is and how the hell he wound up here in the first place. Just as he’s about to close his eyes, though, he notices a bulky, bright pink book sitting at his bedside table next to the lamp.

Well, he’s got nothing to lose, right? Maybe this thing’ll have some answers. He flicks the lamp on and sits up. The book is called MABEL’S SCRAPBOOK, and the title written in glitter pen in a child’s handwriting. 

He snorts in laughter. Maybe the book belongs to the captain’s daughter, and she left it in here by mistake. Still, it could help to learn more about the family keeping him captive, and it’s not like she’ll know he ever read it, right? He chuckles to himself at the thought, but as soon as he grabs for the book to place it on his lap, the feel and smell of the dried glue and paint on the cover makes him feel dizzy, and his head’s suddenly swirling with so many thoughts that he feels like he’s drowning.

Grunkle Stan, it’s me! It’s me Grunkle Stan!

There has to be something we can do! I know my grunkle’s in there!

This is our first day in Gravity Falls, and this is when you let me take the grappling hook from the gift shop! Dipper thought I’d never use it, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Zing!

Over and over, all at once, the voice of two….wonderful, incredible rascal little nuisance kids keep yelling at him in his head, and he slams the book back down against his nightstand. 

Damn memory relapses. Ford warned him they could happen, since McGucket had experienced a few of them himself before Stan and Ford left Gravity Falls, but Ford never said anything about the nightmares. Yeah, yeah, he could see it as a good thing, extra proof that his mind’s intact and they don’t need to worry that it’ll ever be gone for good, but nothing sucks more than nightmares that are so based in reality that they fuck with your sense of what’s real and what isn’t. 

Stan rubs his eyes, and stands up. He figures it’d be a good idea to step out on deck and get some fresh air. He has no idea what time it is, but maybe if he goes and stares at the stars long enough he’ll eventually feel tired enough to crawl back into bed. He flicks his lamp light back off, and he’s maybe three steps out of his bedroom door before he notices that the light in Ford’s bedroom next to his is still on. 

Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. He wants to be mad at Ford for staying up this late, and any other night he would tell him off and guilt him into sleeping by lying about how his light and excessive scribbling is what woke him up, but tonight he’s actually relieved by his brother’s dangerous sleeping habits, because talking out loud about his relapses and distinguishing real memories from fake ones always seems to widen the gap between his next relapse, and it certainly doesn’t help that tonight’s nightmare was about Ford’s disappearance. He creaks the door open slowly, to avoid activating Ford’s flight-or-magnet-gun-in-your-face response, and his mouth closes just as quickly as he’d opened it to speak. Ford’s desk lamp is on, yes, but his nerdy brother is not, in fact, hunched over with a thousand stacks of paper covering his face like he usually is this time of night.

Oh no. The lamp, it seems, was left on by mistake, because Ford’s curled up in his bed, fast asleep with his face half-buried in the pillow and his glasses tucked away in the drawer of his nightstand that he must’ve forgotten to close.  Rolling his eyes, Stan sneaks into the room as quietly as he can and flicks the light off so he doesn’t have to replace the lightbulb when it subsequently dies out in the morning. 

He turns heel, and he’s set on going back to his original plan of staring up at the sky until he feels tired again, but as he turns to close Ford’s door he gets another close look at his brother’s sleeping form and his chest warms with nostalgia at the sight as another memory, one from his childhood, resurfaces itself tonight. 

When they were kids, Pa was...never the comforting kind of parent. And yeah, while that was pretty obvious in that it was always Ma who helped patch up their skinned knees and splinters from the boardwalk and the occasional bee sting, there were times he’d be...more subtle about it, if that’s even the right word to describe him. If either of them came poking their heads in their parents’ bedroom after a nightmare, asking if they could crawl in bed and sleep with them for the night, Pa would always brush them off and send them back to their own room, giving them some excuse about the shop opening early tomorrow and how he can’t afford to lose any sleep in case someone tries to come in and rob them.

From a young age, Stan and his brother learned that it’d be easier just to stop asking Pa at all, and instead they’d resort to climbing into each other’s bed instead. They shared a bunk bed up until they were about fourteen, and they had this unspoken system going where if the other poked them awake or tried to crawl under their blanket in the middle of the night, they’d have to comply and let them in without asking why because it usually meant they were having bad dreams. Ford learned very early on never to hesitate for Stan, because he knew that if Stan was willing to climb to the top bunk despite his fear of heights that his nightmares must’ve been bad. 

Stan pauses, and wonders if Ford still remembers those times as well as he does. He hesitates, his grip still tight around the doorknob, until he recalls that it had been Ford who had asked him to accompany him to the arctic, and Ford who kept their childhood photo tucked away in the pocket of his trench coat.  

Well, here goes nothing.

Just as quietly as he’d been before, he tiptoes over to Ford’s bedside, and he’s thankful to find that there was still enough room for him to crawl under the covers without squishing Ford uncomfortably against the wall. Slowly, as not to jostle the blankets too much to wake his brother, he flips a corner of the blanket up, crawls underneath, and as soon as his head hits the extra pillow he’s out cold.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If Ford had to complain about anything from his thirty year trip around the multiverse, besides, well...all of it, he’d have to credit the worst of it to his heightened hearing. 

Ages ago, when it’d just been two weeks since he was sucked into the portal, he taught himself to sleep with his eyes open, and he taught his ears to pick up on the tiniest of movements, even the wind blowing the leaves off a tree branch. He couldn’t afford capture, and if that meant he had to sacrifice sleep to assure it wouldn’t happen, then so be it.

He’d lost the habit of sleeping with his eyes open after all the time he spent with Jheselbraum, thank god, but he could never quite get over the habit of listening. Every time something creaked in the Shack, every time Stan or one of the kids awoke in the middle of the night in search of the bathroom, it’d wake him up in a jolt, and it’d always take him longer than necessary to fall back asleep.

The nights on the Stan O’ War II are usually the quietest and most peaceful nights Ford’s ever experienced since his childhood. Though he and Stan always spend their days tracking and hunting monsters, they’re always able to find quiet little seaport towns to dock their boat when they need a place to rest for the night where nobody makes a peep until sunrise. 

That is...until tonight. He’d been awake just a few minutes prior, mapping out the coordinates for the next monster they needed to track down and how long it would take for them to find it, but he finally got to a point where he had been so tired that his handwriting was starting to give up on him and he decided it was probably for the best that he just go to sleep.  Standing to stretch, he places his glasses in the drawer of his nightstand and didn’t bother with the lamp light because he could just replace the bulb in the morning if need be, and practically collapsed face first onto his bed and fell asleep. 

He heard mumbling coming from the thin wall to his brother’s room, and since their departure from Gravity Falls he’s become so used to Stan’s constant presence that it no longer bolts him awake. In a way it’s almost comforting, knowing he’s never alone on the vast sea. He shifts, when he hears his brother’s slippers lightly slapping against the deck, but dismisses that just as quickly.  

He can feel himself dozing back off to real sleep when he hears his own lamp click off and his bedroom door closing. Ah, Stan was probably coming in to check on him but left when he saw that he was already asleep. That’s fine; he did that a lot the week before they left for their trip. He’s used to it. 

What he’s not used to is the blanket getting ripped from his shoulders, and the bed making a dull creaking sound of...something  sitting on it. Baffled, he pops his eye open, ready to reach for his weapon in case some sea creature managed to slip on board and into his bed, but his heart rate eases when he makes out the familiar shape of his brother fast asleep in the other half of his bed.

The sight of it makes Ford want to laugh. 

He can’t believe Stan remembers. 

Closing his eyes, Ford shifts his position ever so slightly, like it’s a maneuver he’s been practicing for ages, and scooches himself closer to Stan without shaking the bed. He snakes an arm around Stanley’s shoulder, whose whole body seems to release itself of tension at the gesture. Unconsciously, Stan shifts himself closer to Ford as well, and snakes his own arm around Ford’s chest, like he, too, had been practicing the maneuver since they were separated all those years ago.

[aenwoedbeannaa]

Promise Me | Geralt x Reader

Warnings: Some violent, bloody monster-hunting, but also just a lot of fluffy fluff.

Summary: You’ve been traveling with Geralt and some of his companions for a few weeks, picking up some Witcher skills along the way. One moment of overconfidence leaves you seriously injured, and some deeply buried feelings come to the surface. 

Notes: Listen, I am a strong woman who loves other strong women but sometimes ya girl just wants a nice sweet Geralt to the rescue fluffy one-shot, and that is why we are here today. :’)

Sleeping doesn’t come easy on the road, despite the basic elixirs that the Witcher offered you. Valerian root, chamomile tea – nothing quite seemed to work. So, it is no surprise when you wake up with a start in the cold morning light.

Before jumping up and grabbing your sword, you try to remember the advice the Witcher has imparted on you throughout the journey. You take a moment to even your breathing, willing your heart rate to slow down. Of course, you’re no Witcher, so it doesn’t quite work the same, but it does help you gain some clarity.

In this case, you realize that you are, in fact, not imagining the sound of squishy footprints through river mud, nor are you imagining the strange gurgling sounds that immediately call to mind the morbid blue humanoids that seem to plague every body of water on the continent.

Drowners.

Upon listening for a few more moments, you calculate that there must be about three. Three drowners, after some of the monsters you’ve encountered on the road, seem like nothing. You grab you silver sword. Geralt gave it to you several days before. He said it was an old one of his old ones – though you have your suspicions based on its seemingly flawless condition and the fact that a recent contract had landed the White Wolf an overflowing purse of coin. It was also quite suspiciously the perfect size for you. You never pushed for answers, though. Geralt could be a brick wall when he wanted to be – which was most of the time.

You silently pulled on your travel leathers and slipped the scabbard over your back. Dressed like this, you felt much less like a common village wench and much more like a Witcher-Girl. You made absolutely certain that your steps were silent as you pushed open the canvas tent you’d been sleeping in, bracing yourself against the chill of the morning air.

As expected, there was no movement from any of the other tents. You’d save a whole lot of ruckus by taking care of the little hellions now.

You stealthily moved along, using trees and bushes to keep you out of the Drowners’ line of sight as you approached the river, smiling to yourself when you realized that you were indeed correct – there were three of the mutated beasts wandering around towards the shore.

You tried to picture the way Geralt moved – like fighting was some kind of complex dance – as you inched your way toward the riverbed. You were actually quite good at it, having been forced to take dancing lessons as a child back when you lived in the lap of luxury. Now, you just added a sword.

Your first strike was lightning-fast, for an ordinary human, and your pirouette and parry turned counterattack was equally as good (if you did say so yourself). You slashed the second drowner straight across the chest, from shoulder to shoulder. Blood sprays in your direction, and suddenly you feel even more like you really are some sort of Witcher-Girl.

The thing you hadn’t exactly planned for, however, was the third of the drowners. It had been hanging back farther than the rest, and you’d sort of assumed that you would have be able to give a few easy swipes of the gleaming silver and be done with it.

If only drowners weren’t so fast.

It came from nowhere, slashing out its webbed claws. They scrapped across the studded leather tunic you wore. Thankfully, they weren’t sharp enough to cut through, but it was enough to knock you back several feet. An unfortunately placed rock was the last thing you stepped on before falling onto your back, having twisted your ankle.

Fuck. This was not part of the plan.

You try to take Geralt’s advice – it should be instinct that you act on. But then again, he had years and elixirs powerful enough to kill an ordinary human to help him with that. You just had a few weeks of training.

Still, somehow, you manage to force your sword up against the drowner, which is now viciously trying to claw at your throat. You wince, realizing too late that the sword was turned the wrong way, sharp edges out – which was helpful in that the drowner backed up with a screech, blood pouring from a new nick across its shoulders, but also bad for you because the sharp silver managed to dig into your arm as well.

You try not to think about the way your sleeve is quickly dampening and hop up onto your feet, sword held out with your other hand. You parry a few times, letting the creature exhaust itself by throwing itself at you again and again, eventually losing its footing and stumbling back, as you had before.

Seeing your opportunity to attack, you rush forward aggressively, not hesitating a moment before grabbing the pommel of your silver with two hands and thrusting down, straight through the drowner’s heart. You heave a sigh of relief when it twitches only a couple times before falling completely limp, dead.

The adrenaline coursing through your veins had you pretty much blind to the fact that your arm was badly injured, and as it faded, you began to feel woozy at the loss of blood. Still trying to ignore it, you pull your sword out of the drowner corpse and walk over to the stream to rinse the blood from the blade, doing your best to ignore the fact that the water is turning redder and redder with as blood pours from your arm.

These last few weeks with the Witcher have, evidently, made you forget the fact that you are just an ordinary human, and could get hurt like one – even if you were picking up on Witcher fighting techniques at an alarming rate.

Your steps start to falter as you sheath your silver and head back to camp. As you walk, you pull your old steel dagger out of the sheath strapped to your thigh, pulling at your tunic in attempt to cut a strip of fabric to tie around your arm to staunch the bleeding.

Camp is in sight now, but it is becoming blurry as walking becomes even more difficult. The dagger slips from your hand, landing on the grass with a soft thud. You follow soon after, with a much louder thud that you don’t hear. The world is black.

                                      *                     *                     *

You come to your senses after an immeasurable amount of time. You smell the sharp scent of herbs and astringent, and you feel a numbness in your arm, which you vaguely remember should be in pain for some reason. As you open your eyes and see the white canvas of your tent, the memory comes flooding back.

You attempt to lift your head, but you are immediately stopped by a deep, gravelly voice. “Lay still, you lost a lot of blood.”

Fuck. He was probably the one to find you, knowing his Witcher senses. He was probably furious. The camp was supposed to head out today – and here you were, holding it up.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe, eyes meeting his, expecting to see them narrowed, expecting his face to be hard as stone, angry.

But it’s not. His expression is… soft. You don’t quite understand it. You’d wandered off from camp, like you weren’t supposed to, and you’d gotten yourself injured. Certainly, nobody else was happy. Geralt, ever in a hurry, should be furious.

“You wander off, kill three drowners by yourself while the rest of us blissfully sleep through it, get injured, and the first thing you do is apologize?” You’re still somewhat delirious between the loss of blood and whatever they must have given you to help with the pain, so you are almost convinced you might be hallucinating this whole thing.

But then you feel his calloused hand on your forehead, which you only then realize is sticky with sweat. He brushes a few strands of hair from your face, looking down at you with gentle eyes. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

You attempt a noncommittal shrug, but your left arm won’t listen, and you wince at the sharp pain. His free hand immediately rests on top of your hand, the pad of his thumb gently caressing your knuckles. “Best if you try not to move much,” he says seriously. “Y/N, you lost a lot of blood.”

“I couldn’t have lost that much!” Your attempt to protest is somewhat shattered by the fact that even speaking feels exhausting – which Geralt reminds you once again is because you lost so much blood.

“Baby, shh.”

His words, coupled with his hands – one stroking the side of your face and one holding your own – seem to surprise both of you equally. There had been several moments the last few weeks where you had suspected that maybe he reciprocated the feelings that you had kept bottled up tight, but you had never asked – there was no appropriate time to ask. But now…

You look up at him through sleepy eyes, willing yourself to speak again. The reality that, clearly, you’d been hurt much worse than you thought was starting to settle in.

The Witcher must have been able to hear your quickening heartbeat, or read the fear in your eyes, because the next thing he does is ease himself down next to you – taking care to lay on the side of your non-injured arm - on the blankets strewn on the floor that acted as a bed.

“You’re going to be ok,” he says softly, once again stroking your hair. You sigh, closing your eyes and leaning into his touch.

“Geralt,” you speak quietly, nervous about what his response will be. “Stay? Please?”

The Witcher responds by inching closer to you, and you instinctively nuzzle into his chest, relishing in the warmth, the feeling of his body next to yours.

“Well, I’ve been sitting here for half a day, I’m not planning on leaving now.” He says it with a wry smile, but you can see a glimmer in his eyes you hadn’t notice before as you blink up at him. “But you have to promise me you never scare me like that again, Y/N.”

Your eyes flutter closed again as you settle into his warmth, “I promise,” you mutter against his chest.

                                     *                     *                     *

Taglist: @divaroze, @fairytale07, @jesseswartzwelder, @haru-ririchiyo, @unnamedmaincharacter, @lazilyscentedwerewolf, @geeksareunique, @evyiione, @valkyriepuff, @p3nny4urth0ught5​, @moonlightreetops,  @divineslipcast

[perseusjackson-jasongrace]

the distance between daisies

This was a request from @supergaynerd​​ i am so forever sorry it took me so long i just have not felt the words on my fingertips in ages. but it’s here and i hope you love it!

masterlist; my links; picture below

this is also on ao3

Dear diary,

he loves me

1 month, and 8 days.

Dear diary,

he loves me not

28 days

Dear diary,

he loves me

20 days, and 5 hours

Dear diary

he loves me not

17 days, and 6 hours.

Dear diary

he loves me

1 week and 2 hours

Percy is having a very uninteresting day. Which he supposes should make him happy since those are far and few between in his life. But something about the weather—windy and bone chilling, despite the shining sun— is putting him on edge. He's never wanted to go home and wrap himself in a blanket and call his boyfriend more. He can imagine it now, that soothing voice rumbling about something completely mundane. Jason won't even demand a reply of him. He'll just be content to talk softly about anything and listen to Percy's hum of agreement every so often.

He walks into his psych lecture, groaning internally when he remembers its a double, and for the first time since he was twelve years old he wishes anything would spurt from the depths of Tartarus, so he can fight it. The day has in fact been that unexciting.

Instead he finds a seat somewhere in the middle and puts his head down to the cool wood of the table. The wood is scratched in pen and engravings that mark students long since gone into the world. His finger traces fading words absent-mindedly, bumping across "She loves him she loves him not," scraped deep into the table, a dying daisy hanging over it.

The story he imagines comes to him in a flash.

He pulls out his diary, the black leather-bound book falling in front of him with a thud. Scrambling for a pen, he clicks once twice, three times.

Dear Diary,

They start at an arcade. Beating each other at whack-a-mole. Giving each other hard-won prizes. They share an ice-cream. Mint choc chip and vanilla. They have a story to tell at the wedding they keep dreaming up. They go to high school. They see each other in the halls and smile like sunshine. They go on summer break and pick daisies, pluck at them until there's nothing but stem. They start college. And the flowers they'd picked that one summer evening bleed into the wooden table where the memory of them would live forever. They pass each other across the fields. They don't say hello. They never said goodbye.

he loves me not

1 week, and 48 minutes.

Percy's hands are shaking slightly by the time he puts the pen down. The lecture hall is almost full by now, and the shuffling of last minute feet slide across his mind. He stuffs the diary back in his bag and twirls the pen around his finger. The class is antsy with the need to feel the weekend on their skin. Friday afternoon lectures always make people climb to the highest distractions. A group is chatting animatedly two rows above. A girl with wings etched into her skin sits one seat down and diagonal from him, frowning at the highlights on her page; her leg taps to the beat of "I want to go". On the other side there are people slurping coffee and gobbling down fries as they attempt to polish off the last of their lunch. Some in the front rows have their textbooks open, a hesitantly bored look on their faces. A guy in the very first row perks up every-time the door swings open; he is waiting for the lecturer; he doesn't want to get out of this he wants to get through it.

Percy drops his head back in his arms and takes deep stale breaths. He just has to survive 45 minutes. That's only three fifteen minutes, or four and a half ten minutes, or nine five minutes. He just has to get through five minutes nine times. He can do that. He got through Tartarus once and that's actually hell.

The lecture room door swings and when it clicks shut it feels more final. He doesn't bother to look up as the class slowly quiets to something resembling a humming beehive.

"Good afternoon," The professor begins. He hears the door open, and knows someone is trying to be careful as they slip in late. They sit down at the end of his row. He doesn't see them but he knows they're there. He can feel their presence like gentle heat and curiosity. He's too tired to look.

"Today were focusing on the executive functions and how their damage can affect our psychology."

Percy drifts in and out of focus as the professor drones on, mentioning memory and attention and dementia and recall. Words float around in his head. He can't catch any of them. He should probably try. He doesn't.

"Can anyone tell me why we can sometimes encode things but then not recall them?"

Hands go up all over the room. He knows the answer but since so many others do, it doesn't matter if he puts his hand up.

"Yes, in the green shirt, with the blonde hair." The professor calls.

"It may be because the retrieval methods we're trying to use may not work for that type of information or—"

Percy freezes in time. He goes back to the dinosaurs. He goes forward to the end. He becomes the entirety of the present itself.

Slowly, every so slowly he turns his head. And there, his row partner several seats away, in an emerald green shirt and golden hair swept into something resembling angelic, is Jason Grace.

He sputters, chokes on his disbelief, the shock tightens around his lungs.

The blonde finishes his answer and then turns to look directly at Percy. And everything in that lecture hall becomes mist.

There is no-one around them, there is nothing. There is only grey and flashes of lightning and the distant sound of an ocean.

"Hello baby," Jason whispers, floating towards him, setting himself down on his table.

"You're here." This can't be real. This is Hera playing tricks. This is his mind finally too exhausted to keep the disillusion at bay. This is not real.

And hand, warm and gentle, cups Percy's cheek. And he knows nothing has ever been more real in his life.

"You're here." He whispers, he can't say it enough. "Why are you here? You aren’t supposed to be here till next week."

Jason presses their foreheads together, somewhere around them lightning strikes. It mirrors in those blue eyes. "You were getting bad again."

He always knows. He always knows. Three thousand miles apart and he knows.

"I wasn't." Percy shakes his head, hands finding indents on strong thighs. "I was just missing you."

"Your eyes are dark, like undergrowth, like dying seaweed." Those slim fingers cup his jaw, tilting his head from side to side. "Where are the oceans that live there?“

"The nightmares," He sighs, "They're bad."

"How long?" The question is simple but it makes Percy's heart screech to a stop.

"Four weeks."

"Oh baby," Jason's eyes shatter, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"There's nothing we can do." His shoulders are shaking, he doesn't quite know if he's crying, he wouldn't be surprised. "But you're here and right now that's all that matters."

"Let's leave for a little while." Jason whispers into his skin.

"Where?"

"You and your mom still have that cabin in Montauk?"

He nods, breathing in the scent of fresh rain and jasmine soap. The scent of his boyfriend. The scent of safety.

"Lets go there." The blonde is saying. "We'll come back the day before your birthday so you can spend it with the family, but let's escape before that."

“Okay," He doesn't even hesitate.

"Really, you'll go?" Jason squeezes his shoulder, excitement shining in his eyes.

"Anywhere in the world as long as its with you." He kisses his boyfriend. Soft and sweet and thank you spread across their tongues.

"Want to finish this lecture?" The blonde mumbles against his mouth.

Percy snorts, already shoving stationery into his bag. "Let's have an adventure, Jason Grace."

"Let's."

They escape through the haze, horses already forming from storms itself, and become everything the world has to offer.

And when the mist in the lecture room clears there's a single row empty and a new engraving in the wooden table.

Our love is not daisies it is entire gardens.

Dear diary,

he loves me

Now.

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

[image id: a grey background with black all-caps text that reads, “come back. come back to me.” end id]

[ao3bronte]

Obey

4 | 5 | 6

Warnings: Characters are aged up but still drinking underage (legal drinking age is 18 in France). Wild parties, hypnosis and NSFW themes will ensue.

This chapter includes explicit sexual content. Reader discretion be advised.

Below deck...

“Marinette…” Luka chokes on his words, his hands unable to stay idle. He cradles each of her breasts in his palms and brushes his thumbs across her nipples, powerless to tear his eyes away as she inhales against the feeling, so new and addictive. He does it again and again until Marinette is mewling, the pace of her hips increasing, and when he finally looks up at her face again, it’s with the implicit understanding that if they go any further, there will be no holding back.

“I want it,” she throws her head back as he grasps her breasts and squeezes, “It feels good.”

Luka doesn’t have the ability to answer, his tongue thoroughly tied as he pulls one hand back to unfasten the button of his jeans. She watches him as he tugs the zipper down his length, exposing a sliver of his bright purple boxers beneath.

“Are you sure?” his voice hitches as she shimmies backwards, giving him a chance to push his jeans down his thighs. She nods as he steps out of them, gnawing on her lower lip.

“I’ve thought about this moment,” she admits, unable to keep herself from telling the truth even if she tried. The old Marinette had certainly mulled over her first time, with the boys in her fantasies alternating between Luka and the forbidden boy she was determined to let go of, “And I want it to be with you.”

“Oh god,” Luka babbles, barely able to stop himself from shaking. His hands twitch at his sides before reaching out and settling on her hips once again, “Can I?”

“Yes,” she whispers, shivering as he hooks his thumbs into the straps of her panties and drags them down her bare legs. When he looks up, he falls back onto the bed and locks eyes with her, his expression wrecked and helpless all at once.

“Your turn.”

It takes a moment for Luka’s brain to catch up with her words, her gaze impossible to shake as he blindly pulls his boxers off. His erection bobs and Marinette’s eyes widen as she catches a glimpse of something she’s only seen in a textbook.

“Marinette…” He squirms under her gaze, bashful at the prospect of being completely naked in front of her. His hands start twitching again for something to do and he drives his fingers into his bedspread and clenches, the sheets bunching while he tries to fight for his composure, “I…”

She silences him with a kiss, quelling both of their nerves as she slides back into his lap. He cries out a little as his cock brushes against the skin of her belly, sending a lightning strike up his spine.

“Remember what I told you?”

Luka pulls away and melts like putty in her arms, “Please…”

“Yes,” she breathes, “And whatever you do, don’t hold back.”

~

Intelligent. Clever. Bright. Luka is all of these things, although he doesn’t always show it. At first glance, he looks like the kind of rough-and-tumble twenty-something who grows pot in his bedroom window. But beneath the surface of his smile, Luka’s brilliance roars in like the tide and brings melodies in its wake, only for his heartsong to suck you into his orbit like a rip current. Marinette feels like she’s floating in the whirlpool of his soul right now, their bare chests pressed against each other, their bodies entwined as he falls back against his bedsheets and she falls with him for the very first time.

“I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he murmurs against her lips, his cheeks flushing with a mixture of lust and embarrassment as she brackets his hips with her own.

“Neither do I,” Marinette admits in kind, bracing herself on her hands and knees above him, “But that’s never stopped me before.”

Luka’s lips curl into a smile as he combs his fingers through her hair, lost in the wonder of her gaze. She’s always burned the brightest of the two of them and he’s addicted to the light she sheds on his life, even while they’ve been apart, “True.”

“And we’d still be together, you know…” Marinette brushes her thumb across his cheek and presses a quick kiss to the corner of his lips, “Maybe we could figure something out.”

Luka feels his blood burn like it never has before, “Do you mean that?”

“You’re going on tour soon,” Marinette sits up straight and runs her fingernails down the planes of his chest, “And Le Papillon can’t akumatize you if you’re in Berlin or Bangkok. You can still be mine, if you want to be.”

“Yes!” Luka cries out before he can stop himself, excitement and joy welling up in his chest. The surge of adrenaline spurs his body into movement and he lets his instincts take the wheel as he flips them over and pins her underneath of him, kissing her recklessly, “You won’t regret this. You’re mine .”

Marinette’s eyes widen with surprise at the sudden change of scenery and keens as Luka leaves a trail of wet kisses along her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breasts. He draws one of her nipples between her teeth and she squeals at the newfound sensation that tingles all the way down to her toes. She knows why the old Marinette put this off for so long but now that the new Marinette has taken over control, she can hardly come up with a single argument to stop her from making love to him tonight.

“Does that feel good?” Luka asks, his expression hopeful as he rests his chin against her sternum. He waits until she nods before flashing her a toothy grin and going back to town like he was born to please her, to run his tongue and teeth against the sensitive skin of her breasts. She likes it when he circles her nipple with his tongue and she tells him so, burying her fingers in the shaggy blue hair at the nape of his neck to guide him.

“Use your other hand,” she whispers, a breathy gasp escaping her lips as he does exactly that. He swirls his thumb over her other nipple until the nub is impossibly hard and sensitive in a way Marinette can hardly stand. It’s like she wants more but she also wants him to retreat and her mind sings with the contrasting sensations, sending all sorts of strange and addictive signals to the apex of her thighs.

“Can I...?” he pulls away from her breast and his eyes easily betray his intentions, his lashes casting downwards as his gaze locks on her navel. She mumbles a shaky yes and suddenly she’s awash in a flurry of anticipation and need as he leaves wet kiss after wet kiss along her belly, tinted with hunger. He laves his tongue just below her belly button and his eyes suddenly bear the question they’re both too overwhelmed to ask; she can’t quite verbalize it, her nerve endings on fire, and hopes that spreading her legs as widely as she can answers his concern.

“Oh god,” Luka murmurs, having only seen this kind of thing through the screen of his computer. He’s orgasmed a thousand times to the tune of burying his face between her thighs and having her fall apart against his tongue. He doesn’t want to waste a moment — this time between them too fleeting to ignore — and peppers kisses against the inside of her thighs to try and reign himself in.

To Luka, Marinette has always been a puzzle to solve and this moment is no different as he parts her lips with his fingers and flattens his tongue against her core. She’s making those lovely noises again, the ones she’d been mewling over and over when he’d been kissing her breasts, and he pays close attention to their modulation and tone. He repeats the motion and draws his tongue up and against her clit, blooming with pride as she all but begs for him to do it again.

And who is he to deny Marinette, the heroine of Paris and his childhood crush for years ? She could ask him for the world and he’d present it to her on a platter, utterly committed to her every want and need.

He draws on what he’s watched on the internet, the amateur videos he jacks off to now and then in the solitude of his bunk on the tour bus. It’s always her he thinks about when he shuts his eyes and rolls onto his back, taking himself in his hand and pumping furiously on the nights where he can’t sleep. And now, lapping and sucking and fucking her fervently with his tongue, he knows he’ll never have to look at porn again. Not with this memory, with her taste on his lips and her cries of passion in his ears. She’s ordering him, begging him to go harder, faster as he slips a finger inside of her, the tight resistance of her entrance doing all sorts of wonderful things to his imagination.

“Please,” Marinette wrenches her knees upwards and Luka can sense that something’s about to change. She’s wound like a live wire and her heartsong is absolutely singing with harmonies he’s never heard before, building into a crescendo at five times the forte. She’s cresting at the decibel of a Jagged Stone concert and the giddy feeling in Luka’s chest swells as her thighs clench around his ears. He’s written songs about this moment as she clenches around his fingers and gasps his name like a supplication, tossing her head back into his pillow.

(And he’ll write a thousand more.)

She melts a few moments later, her eyes lidded and lovely as she beckons him back up towards her. He follows, completely under her spell and perfectly happy to be under her control.

“I’ve never felt like that before,” Marinette whispers, nothing but honest beneath the influence of Mesmer’s power, “I’ve...it’s so much different when it’s with someone else.”

Brimming with newfound confidence, Luka claims her mouth in a wrenching kiss, “Are you admitting that you touch yourself?”

“Well...yes,” Marinette gasps, the sting of his teeth on her lower lip quickly soothed with his tongue, “Once or twice. I wanted to know what it was like.”

“And now you’ll never have to wonder again,” Luka says, his cock brushing against her inner thighs. Marinette’s eyes sharpen with focus as she worms her hand down between their bodies. She caresses his side and slowly explores the vee of his hips before pausing, hesitating as her fingers brush through the tuft of black hair below his navel. She’s never done something like this before but she heeds Mesmer’s every word, every temptation; she is their Queen and she will show them what it means to be her lover! When she emerges on deck, thoroughly fucked and proudly his, everyone will see the true Marinette. She’s not innocent, not anymore. She’s a woman on the brink of destiny, a hero with the weight of the world on her shoulders and the weight of her lover holding her above water. She’s a force of nature and a sexy one at that if Luka’s whimpers have anything to say about it, mewling into her ear as she wraps her hand around his shaft and slides her palm from root to tip.

“I want you,” she whispers, intoxicated by his raw expression as she guides him towards her centre. He braces himself and draws the lobe of her ear between his lips, nearly deafened by the cadenza of this moment. He wavers, his apprehension of hurting her niggling at the forefront of his mind but there’s no stopping now; it’s just her and him and the need to obey Mesmer’s decree to allow themselves to be free from reservations.

“Let me know if you need me to stop,” he hisses through gritted teeth as he slowly pushes inside of her. Her slick, tight heat almost stops his heart right then and there and he’s never felt so good, so high, so utterly entranced as he feels right now, listening closely to her voice between the blood pumping through his ears. He pauses twice, sensing her tension and kisses her in the hopes of distracting her from the pain, her taste still heavy on his tongue.

“You can...move now,” Marinette takes a deep breath as he slowly drags his hips back and pushes them forwards again, committing to a steady rhythm almost immediately. She times her inhales to his inner metronome and soon the sting dissolves into a torrent of pressure that feels better than she could have imagined. The sensation of his cock rocking into her is addictive and she doesn’t know how to describe the friction except she never wants it to end, hooked on the slide and catch of his hips as his thrusts begin to accelerate in tempo.

He’s lost, panting and sweating as he tries desperately to clamber for control. He wants to make this good for her but she feels so so so good and he’s helpless to her whimpers and moans in his ears, a siren’s song that’s dragging him beneath the waves upon waves of pleasure she’s given him. He didn’t think his first time would ever be this good but, then again, he never thought Marinette would come back to him and make every single one of his dreams come true.

“Mari…” he groans against her lips, his rhythm stuttering. It feels like being struck by fireworks and lightning all at once as he comes inside of her, the sensation surging through his fingers and toes. His mind blanks for a moment and Marinette kisses him happily, catching every prayer with the sweetness of her tongue. Eventually, he braces himself on his elbows and flops onto his side, dragging her over into his embrace.

“I love you,” he murmurs, still buzzing somewhere in the stratosphere. She smiles and pecks him on the nose before burying herself in his arms.

“I love you too,” she says and she’s not even remotely surprised that she means every word. Mesmer gave her the opportunity to speak freely, to make decisions with a clear mind and admit everything she’s ever held back. A relationship with Luka wouldn’t be easy and they’d have to find a way around the long nights alone…

...she wonders if Luka would be willing to share.

[xparadisexlostx]

So Idk what possessed me to write this. I wrote it all in one go and it is in desperate need of a proof read and probably and edit... but I doubt I’ll ever do that lol. I’m tired and I’m getting a headache and I still have drafts to work on, so I’m just gonna post it before I lose confidence and hide it like the many, many other drabbles I’ve never posted.

I don’t know why I wanted to write this in first person. That usually annoys me, but for some reason it just sounded right in this case.

So this drabble is primarily about Beck and Cora, how they meet, and the relationship they have. Obviously I did a LOT, if not too much, condensing because otherwise this never would have ended. 

For context, Cora is Beck’s sort of adopted mom. She his a centuries old witch who was possessed, years ago by a spirit of hospitality. Over time the two merged into one being and that is why she’s pretty much immortal. Because of what she was she was made an outcast by her own people, the clan of the Grey Owls. Here is her face claim. 

_____________________________________________

A long life makes you accustomed to loss. You learn people are better at a distance. Far enough away that you can’t really make out their faces, and their voices turn to echoes by the time they’re in your ears. Any closer than that and you risk the pain that comes with a proper meeting. I found that out the hard way when Hattie passed. 

It was agonizingly slow. At first she just needed a bit of help with getting up after a long day in the garden. And then she couldn’t go as far on our evening walks. Eventually she couldn’t make it out to tend the flowers that she loved so dearly, and she forgot the names of the dairy goats we’d raised by hand and bottle. And when I saw Death come peacefully across the border of the Living Dream, shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight and invisible to my love, I lifted her up in my arms and carried her out to the fields of flowers. She didn’t remember my name, but she held me close to her with what dwindling strength remained in her arms, and laid her head on my heart while I whispered a silent goodbye.

We had never had any children. Back then we only escaped the scandal of being together by living on my family’s land and growing or making most of what we needed. People in the towns whispered, but they let us be so long as we didn’t make too much noise. That wouldn’t have been any life for a child. Children need community, friends, and more love than just two mothers could bring them. The mortals would have never accepted a child of ours, and the witches had cast me out years before on account of what I was---what I am.

I buried Hattie in the flowerbed, and I left my home after that. The place I had been made, where I had settled for three centuries, had nothing to give me but pain. Even England reminded me all too much of what I had lost. I was alone, and I imagined that somewhere else I could find a place where I was content with that once again.

And I did. In a cottage deep in the Sierra Nevada mountains, I found the peace that had evaded me for so long. People stopped by in the occasional way: lost travelers, rapscallion youths, the occasional farmer looking for good dairy stock. That was the way for well over a hundred years. It wasn’t until the storm of ‘01 that it all changed, that I noticed the pie I was cooling on the windowsill was gone, and there was only a small muddy handprint in its place.

In the afterglow of a lightning strike I saw him there. A great, hulking bear, tall as the horizon, pale as a fresh pressed bedsheet, illuminated against the black sky. On his head were horns made of trees, and his claws were gnarled roots. On his back he carried a forest with a heart-tree that glowed gold. My brother, older than me by millenia, scarcely seen but ever familiar, always present. He looked from me to the barn, and stared, transfixed, by whatever he saw, and then he was gone.

I pulled on a raincoat and stepped into my boots, and raced across the yard to the shelter of the barn. The goats stirred in their pen, and the chickens let out a low squawk of protest as the building flooded with light. I found my pie in the back stall and a trail of blueberry pawprints leading away from it and into a pile of hay, where I found a small, trembling kit, little enough to fit in my one hand.

She shook like a leaf, whining up a terrible storm, as I tucked her beneath my coat and took her into the house. The promise of a proper meal convinced her to turn back into the girl I already knew she was, but she still shook so hard that she lost half of every bite she tried to take. I might have scolded anyone else for stealing, but she was so slight, too small and slender for a girl her age, and she was covered in mud and briars and sticks that matted in her golden hair. And when I put her in the tub to scrub her clean I saw the bruises and the cuts that no branch had inflicted. 

Looking back on that night I never had the chance to hold her at arm’s length. From the moment I plucked her out of the hay and pressed her to my heart, she was mine. I couldn’t keep her. The Fox Bitch wouldn’t allow it. And no one would listen to me when I told them of the heinous crimes Elea Tandy was committing against her own kin. No one cared when I complained of the local coven teachers casting her out. 

I made myself content with what I could have, and I taught her what an old witch could when she escaped that awful house and made her way through the forest to me. I showed her how to sew up a skirt as well as a wound, and taught her what the woods had to offer when her mother denied her supper. When she couldn’t read my spellbooks I taught her songs and rhythms to help her remember words and order. How to milk a goat, how to shear a sheep, how to tie a good and proper knot, and how to cook anything you found or caught. Our time together didn’t always last long, and when she left I felt it like a stab to the heart, but she was mine. The baby Hattie and I never got to have, filled with more kindness and curiosity and life than anyone else I had ever met.

And I ought to have known by the sight of my Brother what she was, and that she could not belong to me, or to anyone forever, but it wasn’t until months later, when I saw him again, watching her ride through the woods with a wild abandon, that I understood. 

Feral. A term that makes every parent clutch her pearls and shiver in fear, even though they barely know what it means. Feral witches are born to leave. They are only a brief bridge between the Dream Realm and the physical, destined to merge once more with the Nature Spirit from which they came. 

She was not mine to keep, but I held on.

I held on in agony as she ran off, desperate for freedom and adventure and a respite from the violence of her home. I smothered her in loving arms every time she came back. But she came back less and less. It was too dangerous, and every time she risked us both. I told her I didn’t care, and that I wasn’t afraid of Elea Tandy… but I knew that she was.

She was right to be.

Even I had never imagined Elea could be so vile and twisted as to kill a familiar. And to make a child watch… It turns my gut even to think of it now. I thought it would be the death of her, and it likely would have been if her brother hadn’t turned on their mother himself. He tried to bring her back to life, and so did I. But there was nothing but fathomless despair behind those blue eyes. I finally had her safe beneath my roof, and she was dying in my arms just like Hattie had. No amount of love could ever replace what she had lost when Dawnbreaker had been hanged before her eyes.

After ages of lifelessness, she eventually became restless in her grief, and I imagined I was witnessing her end. I put her in my car and drove her as deep into the wilderness as I could, and when I wrapped my arms around her I said that same silent goodbye. I barely made it home before my own sorrow and anger threatened to drown me. She was too young, I thought, and how unfair it was that she should die having tasted so little happiness, having felt so few kind touches. Brother would care for her upon her return, but why had he ever allowed her to come from the womb of that wretched woman? I had gifted her all the love that I could, and it didn’t feel like nearly enough in the face of all the pain she had been put through.

I hated him for that. Perhaps I still do.

I left California the same way I left England, distraught, and purchased new land on the secluded shores of Lake Erie. I told no one where I went, and no one would have ever asked. 

When I saw the golden horse upon my lawn some years later I thought it was a reflection in the Living Dream, a spirit of what once was lingering, but the girl upon its back was no longer a child. Even at a distance, even after all those years, I knew her face, and when she ran into my arms I held her tighter than I ever had before. 

She was alive and more vibrant than I’d ever seen her---all golden curls and smiles and a wild glint in her eye. We rode horses on the shoreline and sang foolish songs around a campfire. She told me stories of where she had been and everything she’d seen as she wove crowns from wildflowers. The next evening she showed me the scars where the mountain lion had nearly ripped her life away, and then demonstrated her new form with such ease that I felt my knees go weak. Even at such a young age the power swelled around her.

Feral. The very thing that had made other witches reject her had allowed her to thrive. In the wilds she had found the peace and happiness that others had so cruelly robbed her of. And I felt a pride blossom in me that I’d never felt before.

She left me again, as I knew she would, as was her nature, but this time I didn’t feel grief. For as long as she was on this Earth, she would return to me. That much I was certain. And that much has always been proven true.

Now, without the fear of her mother’s viciousness, she comes to me more frequently, and she can linger in my house as long as her wild spirit will allow. Our time together isn’t so rare… and yet I know that it is still brief. 

Each visit I see the spirit grow within her, each year the magic grows stronger. It pulls in more animals, and it bends nature around her without her even noticing it. 

She doesn’t see my Brother when she is sitting upon her golden stallion, basking in the sun as it cuts through the forest branches, but I think she feels him. As the animals gather all around her and play like newborn lambs, as she feels the embrace of the woods around her, I think she feels him watching. Her eyes glisten and she smiles with a fondness that breaks my heart. I think that if she just takes one step she will be lost to me forever.

I call her name when she raises her hand to touch what she cannot see, and with the slowness of a drunkard she blinks her eyes. When she looks back at me in those moments I know she can see across the centuries. She knows what I am. 

Again I call her name. It’s selfish, maybe, to want to hold onto her. Perhaps I do nothing but hold her back. But she smiles at me, and the mist evaporates from her eyes to reveal that mischievous sparkle.

“Come away from there, girl.” I say, beaconing her back toward the house with a wave of my hand and I watch my Brother’s eyes with unbecoming smugness as she presses her golden stallion forward and exclaims “‘Race ya!’” as she charges back home.