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whirlybirdwhat · 4 years ago

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East Sea of Monsters - Chapter 22

Jimbe has always dreamed of suns

Shoutout to the wonderful @soccersarah01 who beta’d this fic for me - love you!!!

Read the entire series on Ao3 for better quality and author’s notes, especially warnings for content within the fic!! Tag “Ficart” on my blog should also show some fanart and podfics for this fic, as well as the link to translations! give them some love!

Sun - Jimbe

Jimbe is the first son of the sea, and he has always dreamed of suns.

Bright, red and bloody – passionate declarations of dreams and something better. A cry of understanding, in the one burned onto his chest, and a shout to the dream of a queen, a race, a kingdom - heralded overhead in bright colors, lighting up the sky.

Suns are red, and yellow, and orange.

Suns mean freedom – mean something better than this.

In his dreams, Jimbe is always reaching out to them. His webbed hand reaching and reaching – for the horizon, for a flag, for his queen, for Fisher Tiger, for something more.

He never seems to reach it.

All he has, when he wakes up, is his hand clutching his own heart, his own personal sun.

It isn’t the same. He’s never grasped that red sun.

Yet now –

Now, in a battlefield beneath a darkened sky, in a war with death in every heartbeat, in a massacre, a hell, Jimbe holds a dying sun.

This sun – it is not red, or bloody, or bright.

This sun is dark, and dying, and a supernova of the deepest pits of hell.

Jimbe holds Luffy as he explodes into something Jimbe can’t quite see, ripping past the Veil and into oblivion; watches Luffy erupt into grief covered by a brother’s blood, holding a sun brighter, and darker, and far more terrifying than anything Jimbe’s eyes have ever seen before.

(There’s something wet running down his face. He thinks his eyes are bleeding.)

Portgas D. Ace dies in his brother’s arms, a burning hellfire finally flickering out, and Jimbe can finally hold the sun.

(As men die and admirals fall, and the world is shaken apart by a grief and monster with insatiable hunger, he wishes he couldn’t.)

When Jimbe fights him for the first and last time, Ace is as the sun incarnate - the sun burning - even as he chokes on his own ashes and flares through sea water.

Jimbe had wondered, at first, what kind of strength it took for a devil fruit user to use his powers through the hate of the sea. It wasn’t a kind of strength he had attributed to the young warlord.

Then, Jimbe remembers the bones shaped into the hull of the Spadille; remembers the way Ace cracks apart in the corner of his eyes, and thinks it isn’t strength at all.

He knows the stories of the East. Every fishman does – the way waters corrupt, the way the waters are dark, and the way that monsters lurk beneath their surface, far deadlier than those at the bottom of the sea.

(They say the East has no seafloor – that it aches, forever, a wound into the world’s side, dark and infected. That it was the void from whence all hell poured forth, that it was death.)

Fisher Tiger had told him more, when he could bear to speak of it – monsters in chains, the way slaves and guards alike went missing in the night, the way people had sharper teeth than any animal, there, and were twice as bloody.

(Fisher Tiger hears the story of the bottomless East and laughs.

Dark waters, he says, eyes far away and hands aching for a weapon, are not endless. But you don’t want to know what’s at the bottom. Better it be endless, bottomless, then to know what’s there.

He doesn’t speak of the demon from the seafloor he met at the tower of gods.

Jimbe doesn’t ask.)

By the fire in Ace’s eyes and the unholy fire cracking from underneath his skin, there is no other sea that he could have possibly come from.

(A demon – a demon, a son of the devil-)

Jimbe fights Ace for five days. He hungers, and he thirsts, and he’s so tired, but Ace does not falter in the face of Jimbe’s sea, so he must keep going.

Jimbe burns, ropes of fire winding their way up his arms and down his back. Haki is useless when every hit cracks apart Ace’s skin, molding to his fists because of inhuman capability instead of any devil fruit, and the sea fears nothing but the devil.

(And it can only drown false ones.)

Ace lands a punch on the third day, one imbued with haki and fire and false fire. It hits Jimbe on the side of his face, and even as Ace stumbles and chokes on the way his skin cracks apart, Jimbe burns.

It cracks into his skin, searing apart scales and flesh, and he is marked by hellfire.

The other burns will fade, the ones littering his hands and feet, the ones made by false fire, devil fruit fire. The one on his face, burned into the side like a flame, and the ones wrapping around his forearms by scorching hands, will forever remain.

A reminder, some will say, but Jimbe will remember the way the flag burned at Fishman island by hellfire, and will know it is a sign of war to come.

Ace burns away the fog around them, on this island, showing the secrets of the world, and Jimbe fights surrounded by monstrous spades.

Monsters in human shape that tower above the trees, monsters without faces, monsters with too many teeth and too many limbs, monsters that smiled and cheered as their captain burned through saltwater.

Jimbe falls on the fifth day, a smile gracing his face toward an enemy that is so much more than him.

It is a miracle when Whitebeard arrives.

Otherwise Jimbe thinks he might have followed that sun to see where it may have set.

After Marineford, Jimbe shakes at night. He can’t speak of what he saw there, when the sun fell from the sky and became red and dark; when gouges were scarred into the ground and left bloody men in their wake.

After Marineford, Jimbe has another scar from a demon.

This one is not a mark of war.

It is a claim, directly around Jimbe’s heart, as if his future captain understood that the sun there was more precious than anything else.

(A dream)

It scares him, sometimes, that he wants to follow the man who fell the Navy - who ate the hearts and souls and flesh of admirals and spit them back out as dead men walking.

It scares him that he wants to follow Straw Hat Luffy, who wears a crown made of straw - made with room for the horns that sprout off his head -who will be king and who lives a trail of hell in his wake.

Jimbe does not remember Marineford well.

He does not remember –

(The island’s name no longer exists in his memory.

Don’t bring him there, Rayleigh had said, as they followed a submarine towards Amazon Lily. You will all be dead come morning.

Rayleigh smiled like a creature of the deep sometimes.

Jimbe wondered why he didn’t trust it.

Aye, Jimbe, fresh from a war, had agreed, and they didn’t go to Amazon Lily.

They went to–)

The aftermath, beyond the words that fought whatever beast lived in Luffy’s chest, born of loneliness and hell.

Jimbe shakes after Marineford, but now, under the sea, he will not forget the demon who saved an island.

(The brother of the demon who burned their flag.)

Luffy soars overheard, and defeats a legend made of wood and an army made of flesh. 1,000 men are unaccounted for in the aftermath.

Jimbe does not question it, and offers his blood to a demon who doesn’t need it.

(In the end, it wasn’t about blood anyway. It was about the things that bind men, the things like suns on Jimbe’s chest and the vows that still ring in his head.)

Luffy, full of teeth and bloody fangs, smiles at him, then, and Jimbe no longer belongs to himself.

In Impel Down, when Ace is chained to the wall next to Jimbe, the very first thing the demon does is laugh.

“It stayed!”

The scar on Jimbe’s face burns.

“You couldn’t bother to say hello?”

Ace laughs again, sparks flying out of his throat despite the sea stone wrapped around his limbs, and Jimbe knows that all the legends are true. “Why would I? There’s more important things going on.” He dismisses, and he is smiling, mouth glowing, despite their situation.

“Hmph,” Jimbe huffs, and settles down for the long wait.

Next to him, the breath of a demon settles into something slower, and though Jimbe’s eyes are long adjusted to the dark, the soft glow of Ace’s heart beat is a comfort.

(He wonders, when Fisher Tiger was chained next to monsters, if he ever felt this way.)

He does not sleep that first night in a cell with a demon. Jimbe, instead, listens to the thrumming of the sea outside his cell, and tries not to think about how the stone sinks around Ace and the hotness in his cell.

He tries not to think of the wet spots all over the walls, the gouges in the corner, and the way men enter and never leave Impel Down’s cold, cold walls.

Across from him, a man made of sand smirks, his hair still impossibly greased and jewels still lining his hand.

“So,” the Crocodile drawls, “They caught you too? A little hunger, picking us off one by one.”

Jimbe has heard how Monkey D. Luffy saved a country on the behest of a single friend; how the Crocodile was the first to fall and Moria didn’t come long after; how even the Marines whisper that he is hungry and Monkey D. Garp laughs at the lists of missing marines following Straw Hat battles.

A man, who hungered for the top.

Who hungered for dreams.

Odd, that Crocodile would assume Jimbe was next.

“No.” He says at last, the word drawn out. “No,” he repeats, and it echoes around the room, “he did not get me.”

The Crocodile cackles then, and it is nothing like Whitebeard’s Gurararara or King Neptune’s Hohohoho – it, instead, is dark like rumbling sands at night, without form or shape in the dark, and Jimbe shivers. “You will,” the Crocodile says. “You’re already marked for it.”

Jimbe has never met Monkey D. Luffy in his life, and the burn scars that arc about his face in a flaming pattern of death are invisible to his beloved crew, to the king, to anyone who isn’t–

Oh, Jimbe thinks and doesn’t say aloud, looking at the Crocodile once more. Oh.

He is glad Ace is the demon he is sharing his cell with.

Then, at the very least, he knows his heart won’t be ripped out of his chest while he sleeps.

On Fishman Island, at the bottom of the sea that is brighter than the East, there is a feast, and then a pirate challenges an emperor.

Jimbe is not surprised.

He cannot be.

(Hey, Jimbe, did’ya know I have a little brother?)

He can only watch, as a ship of dreams, of monsters, sails off into the sea without him; can only know that his home, his captain is leaving him.

(Aladine says Jimbe is different after Marineford – that every man who set foot upon that island is. It was war, Jimbe dismisses, but they have fought in wars before, have fought admirals before.

It’s different, fighting a demon, fighting with a demon, fighting for a demon.

It’s different when a demon eats you whole.)

Jimbe wants to go home.

Jimbe sees Garp the Fist once before Marineford.

It is in Impel Down, and he is crying from a thousand different eyes.

“Ace,” the grandfather of a dying child says, and it hurts. “Why, dammit! Why!”

His voice is like a choir of growls out of harmony. Still, Ace relaxes in his chains as if it were a lullaby.

“Gramps,” Ace acknowledges, and there is no anger there. “You know… you know why.”

Son of the Devil, Jimbe knows, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? More than Jimbe can see with two eyes made of mortality rather than death.

Garp crumbles, and it is as if Jimbe is seeing the fall of something great.

It’s horrible.

It won’t be the last one he sees today.

Garp leaves after that, to the chuckles of the Crocodile and the howls of the other inmates. There’s bloody marks and gouges on the ground where he was, but there is also something in Ace’s grasp.

It isn’t a key.

Jimbe can’t exactly see what it is, only that when Garp left Ace lunged for some empty spot on the ground, hand slipping out of a cuff with the ease of someone made molten, of someone with scars running down his hand due to a missing pinkie.

(How-?)

When Ace leaves, he leaves behind ash marks and burning droplets at Impel Down. He also leaves something feather soft, that Jimbe can’t quite see, but feels like the comfort of ages.

(Later, when Luffy arrives, he will look into the cell and see not Jimbe, but the place Ace left behind. He will pick up what Garp, what Ace, left between cell bars and he will not smile.

Instead, he will put it into his pocket to the sound of the Crocodile’s jeers.

Did’ya know I have a little brother? Ace had asked Jimbe.

(He knows, now.)

On the way up, when men are eaten alive, the Crocodile will slink next to Jimbe and whisper,

Did you know that the hungry one isn’t the first demon to break out of these walls?

And Jimbe will be left with the reminder that Impel Down has never been able to hold the monsters of the world–

And that they roam free.)

At Marineford, Jimbe stood with an emperor against three admirals (stood with men against a monster).

(Or so he is told.)

Now, he stands before an Emperor and does not shake.

A man who is to follow the future king of the pirates, a man who is to follow Luffy, a demon who has daggers in his mouth and boiling blood in his veins, cannot afford to be afraid of a mere emperor.

Big Mom’s eyes are hungry as she stares into Jimbe, but he does not flinch.

He is claimed - by marks around his own personal sun, by a king, by a monster, by a conqueror.

He is not Big Mom’s any longer.

He never was, from the moment Luffy looked into his eyes and took him.

(Jimbe cannot afford to be afraid of a mere hunger any longer. )

An emperor rages, a deal is done, and Luffy laughs so bright and loud it burns like the sun, as chaos reigns again, conforming to his will.

Jimbe has never felt so alive –

(Not since before Marineford – not since before the world fell apart.)

Jimbe sees Luffy and Ace together twice in his lifetime.

One is at Marineford, when brothers fought together, when the sun went out and the world went black.

(He does not remember it well – Ace’s smile was something almost too private to bear, even as blasts of Conqueror’s Haki illuminated the truth.)

The second, again, is at Marineford, but in it’s bloody aftermath.

When Luffy rings in an era, blood scarred on to his arm by his own hands - a call to his crew, to his family - he stops by the place where his brother died.

Jimbe wonders if this was what Loguetown was like, to see a king stand in ashes.

(The Devil King did not cry at Loguetown, only laughed.

Luffy is crying.)

He sees Luffy cradle bits of Ace’s bonfire in his arms, the only person who could bear to touch it, and sees brothers reunite for one last time.

(There is a chill over Marineford, as Luffy draws in the ashes of Ace’s own body turned funeral pyre. Jimbe can’t read what he writes, but there is a spark, somewhere, in Luffy’s eyes, and something in the air breathes more easily.)

Days after, Marineford sinks to the bottom of the sea, its ravines and cracks from a monster's grief too terrible to sustain – Luffy’s rage, his echoing cry for a new era, is its final send off.

Jimbe wonders if the Eastern sailors found their way home, at the bottom of the sea.

(There’s no sun down at the bottom of the sea.

Jimbe would hate to drown like that.)

In the middle of a raging ocean just off of an Emperor’s domain, Jimbe is home, he’s home he’s home he’s home, aboard this ship of dreams but–

He can’t stay.

He can’t.

There is an emperor chasing them, and Jimbe is not scared and he is strong, but his crew–

His beloved crew–

They love him.

He cannot abandon them here, to the mercy of hungry monsters.

(He cannot take them with him, to the crew of a hungry demon.)

Jimbe tells Luffy, soaked and shaking, as such.

“I CANNOT ABANDON THEM NOW!”

And Luffy–

Luffy, who Jimbe held dying in a battlefield that hazes from his memory, who Jimbe watched rise, who went a dark supernova–

Becomes a sun again.

“JIMBE!” Luffy says, and his teeth are snarling and his eyes are hungry, “I AM YOUR CAPTAIN NOW!”

And Jimbe finally holds the red sun of dreams in his grasp.

(Jimbe is the first son of the sea, and his dream is the sun.

Red, bloody, and free.)

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c-atm · 4 years ago

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Fighting Flirty: Character Select PT4 (Act 4.3)

"Oooh, that's a beautiful shot," Alex grinned, taking a picture of the not couple standing back to back, fixing the wrist of their gloves. “and with that, we’re done with the couple shots.” She announced, getting a sigh of relaxation from the two.

As it turned out, there wasn't much official art of Shinji and Asuka together in romantic situations, and any scenes that did show them was kind of iffy.

'Forgot how psychologically screwed up Eva was .' Alex mused, looking over her shots. ' Ah well, that’s what model sheets and fanarts for...And boy, did I get some good ones then…'

Steven and Connie watched as the photographer started to chuckle to herself, both looking a bit concerned.

"Hey, you ok there, Alex?” Steven voiced.

“Hmm!?!” Alex looked up to see the two gazing at her, Steven with his arms crossed and brows arched while Connie had her hands in the jacket pocket smiling cheekily at their photographer, ”What?” Alex blushed, feeling the gentle tease in their eyes.

“Nothing, you. Um…”

“You seemed very proud of your work.” Connie continued where Steven paused.

“You better believe I am. This is Diamond status stuff you two gave me.” Alex praised with a grin, “to think I’d get two wonderful subjects. It’s a photographer's dream.”She laughed as she walked back to the desk, “come look at your shots, yourself.” she challenged, “You’ll understand what I feel.”

Steven and Connie took that challenge with a nod to each other walking back over to the workstation as Alex plugged the camera into the laptop and pulled up the catalog of pictures she just took of the two of them.

“These are some good shots, right?” Alex smugly asked as she watched the duo’s faces as they stared at the first picture.

It was a simple shot and the most current one. The two of them back-to-back, fixing their gloves while looking heroically determined as if they were going to battle. It was a bit cheesy but also cute.

"Look at how hot you are with your brows furrowed, ready to take on the angels." Connie praised, "not to mention how well the picture shows your body, Bisky."

"I think you're looking at the wrong thing Heartberry," Steven suggested, instinctively pulling her close to his torso as he interlaced his fingers over her stomach, "You're the one who is stealing the picture, with the way your fist tighten and smirk on your lips," He praised, nipping the back of her ear and evoking a small purr. "That confidence is alluring. Looks like you're about to give a class on beating down evil and making it sexy."

"That just…My 'Auska psychosis' acting up. "Connie leaned into his oral manipulations, holding his nape. " Hmm~mm, that feels nice . "

Steven laughed upon her skin, giving her goosebumps, as he went to the next picture. It was of Connie lifting and dangling him by the costume collar in anger while he looked surrendered, his hands up a sheepish look on his face.

"That’s a cute one." Steven laughed, "Really showed your 'mad bitch' in this picture."

"Not to mention my physical ability." Connie teased, "though holding 260 lbs of dead round, thick muscle is a lot harder than bench pressing your standard 320, you ok?" She rubbed his cheek with a smile, "Didn't dig into you, right, Mister?"

"Hey, hey! I should ask you if you're ok. You are the one who basically balanced my whole body on their forearms." He countered.

"I mean, you did take care of the strain when you touched down." She blushed, "I'm fine. More so than Alex was."

"You're small compared to him!" Alex exclaimed, "and yet; you can deadlift this burly man for ten seconds without shaking. - Clap! - What - Clap! - kind - Clap! - of - Clap! - training - Clap! - regiment - Clap! - are - Clap! - you - Clap! -on!"

Connie giggled at Alex's animated praise, "Trade secret, Alex." Connie shrugged, grinning.

"Oh, come on," Alex pleaded."You gotta tell me what's what."

"Now, if we tell you all our secrets," Connie leans a bit forward, closing her onyx eyes halfway as a slightly mischievous grin enveloped her lips.

“You might lose interest in us, and we don’t want that,” Steven added as he wrapped his arms over Connie’s shoulders, interlacing his fingers and gingerly resting his chin on her crown, giving Alex a similarly flirty smirk and gaze.

'These two! It should be a crime to be this teasy.' Alex screamed in her mind as she felt her cheeks glowed a little. "Yeah, like that gonna happen." Alex scoffed, turning away from her muses, "just finish looking through the pictures and while I set your camera for Connie's solo shoot in that costume." Alex hummed in pause, "Are you going to shoot in all those other costumes?"

"Yup. We need them for a project." Connie nodded, "Though, they won't be too big. Five singles each and five couple pics."

"Still gotta make it for the parade," Steven added as he kissed Connie's crown, getting a smile. "Though, doubt we'll be wearing these two to the parade."

"What you got planned, Mister?"

Steven grinned at her suspicious smirk.

"You two are adorable." Alex chuckled," speaking of the parade, I'm going to be there...So maybe, I can get some candid shots of you two, In whoever you two are going as."

"Alex, is that your way of asking to be our photographer?" Steven implored, grinning at Alex's sudden bashfulness.

"I don't appreciate the tease in your voice, Universe."

Steven's eyes widened a bit at the slight edge of her voice.

"Sure," Connie answered, looking up at Steven, who nodded.

"To me taking pics at you-

"To both, Alex." Steven clarified.

"You have a talent for getting the best shots of us," Connie spoke in slight distraction. Her eyes on a picture of Steven and her grabbing each other by the collar with angry stares. "This is a cute one too!"

"It really is," Steven laughed In agreement before turning to Alex, "That doesn't mean I'm letting you take my solo shoots of Connie." He playfully warned Alex."Those are for me."

"Thought those were for me." Connie's arched her brow at Steven.

"No, it's definitely for him/me." Alex and Steven corrected simultaneously, giving each other a knowing point.

"Hmm." Connie bit the inside of her jaw, " you wanna make this a game then, Mister?"

"A game?" Steven pondered, getting a nod, "what type of game, Heartberry?" He kissed her forehead.

"A competition on who can take the better photos and be the better model." Connie proposed.

"There's something underneath that... I know there is." Steven dipped down, capturing her lips with his own as Connie squeezed his wrist in excitement, "Talk, you mischievous Minx."

'This man and his damn husky baritone gonna be the end of me one day.' Connie thought breathlessly, "Oh, of course, there's something more to that, but you haven't agreed to play yet?" She bit her lips," and if I stay silent, you'll try to force it out." She gave him a slight shrug, "why should I miss out on that?"

"She is trying to get more kisses."Alex laughed.

"Alex isn't wrong."

Steven sucked his teeth at those onyx orbs that shined with a prankster's ambition. Those full-sharp lips in an alluring half-smile. 'This lioness and her damn seduction gonna be the death of me one day.' Steven mused as he dipped down gently and captured her lips with his own in an upside-down lip lock.

' And once again, I get to witness their very close friendship , if you can even call it that.' Alex smirked the camera once again in her hand, putting the two in her crosshairs. Watching his palms trailed the sides of Connie's costumed torso as her hands rubbed his whiskered cheeks, simultaneously pulling him deeper into the lip lock as her back arched due to his manal manipulations.

The slight peek of tongue every time they broke with a popping -CHU!- and rejoined. The gasping breaths that slipped from Connie's mouth, accompanied by his teasing little nips on her lips that made her eager to pull him back in. It was all beautiful, all sexy, playful and them, but she was waiting...Waiting for the shot. The moment that showed everything.

Even the thing they hid from themselves.

- click!-

' Oh! That's...That right there...That's the money shot.' Alex inwardly praised herself as she looked at her newest prized shot.

Both of their eyes half-lidded in a sensually adoring gaze with the bridge of their noses brushing against each other as Connie's fingertips gingerly touching the corners of Steven's lips, while Steven palms lovingly held her upper torso, right under her breast, and their lips met the others forehead, at the same time.

It was a quick moment, a millisecond in the deepest part of their world, a secret shared between the two, and it was caught on camera. As she placed down the camera, they were already looking over the pictures again

"Pff!! I like this... A lot" Connie laughed at the picture of her stepping on a spread out Steven.

"Bet, you would…" Scoffed her Mister, who soon rubbed his chin, "though it is kind of alluring, with how it's your toe and not your whole foot on me." The appreciation in his voice was evident.

"Can't say I'm surprised.'

"Oh!"

"You like being under me, Eh-heh-heh!"

"Cheeky Minx!"

"Yeah...What's you gonna do about it, Bisky?"

"Gonna put you through your paces during your photoshoot and then make you red-face during mine."

"I don't turn red-face, blushy...I turn maroon, heh. Besides that, you're running a lot of mouth for a 'Shinji' to an 'Asuka.' Writing a check your butt can't cash, Mister."

"Oh, you really are cheeky right now."

"As if most of your pictures aren't going to try to exhibit my 'cheekiness.' "

"You have a lot to show."

"I feel like I'm being slandered; you hearing this right, Alex?"

"Don't pull me into your competitive flirtation!" Alex yelled as she watched the two.' I should be working, but this is too entertaining.'

"It’s not slander if it's true. Not that I would slander you anyway." Steven said, rubbing on her knees, trailing upwards.

"Whatever you say, Hippy." Connie breathed a teasing whisper in his ear, squirming gently as she allowed herself to bask in the touch of Steven's hands on her outer thighs. ' This man and his touch.' Connie sighed.

"Hey, now. Just because I prefer peaceful resolutions doesn't mean I'm a hippy." His baritone voice argued with a grin.

"Nuh-uh, you can't back out now; you threw down the gauntlet." She nuzzled behind his ear.

"I'm trying to give you an out."

"Cocky and hippy, now aren't we?"

"You're to blame for both, you amorous lioness."

"Ain't my fault your hands squeezing my hips right now."

"Oh, it's definitely your fault, cheeky temptress. You heart-shaped, honey trap in red-latex."

"You know this and yet, here you are." She crossed her legs, "ensnared and entranced by everything under my navel."

"Who's cocky now?"

"By the way, you're breathing and staring...I'd say both of us...Though, mine is more mental and less physical ."

"Why'd you crossed your legs then?"

"Cause you like when I do or anything that has to do with my lower half, Hippy . "

"Upper-half too, Nini. The whole package is lovely."

"You're a hot package yourself, Burly Bisky in blue."

"You just like big guys."

"You're to blame, big guy."

" so we're both to blame for our preferences."

"Admitting you're a lover of the hips."

"If they're yours."

'I think that's a checkmate.' Alex chuckled, lifting her camera to Connie's adorable marooned cheek face, bit-lipped pout in a low glare at the smug charm of Steven and his smile.

-click!-

Just when Alex was about to sit the camera down, it happened.

Connie's face switched from blushing prey to beautiful predator as her thumb and index finger gripped his chin, making him face her before closing her eyes and giving his lower lip a nipping, suckling kiss.

Steven brows rose before the sensation traveled through his nerves. His eyes closing, his body melting into the kiss as he held her by the hips, instinctively kissing back, getting a swooning giggled from his Heartberry, though not as vigorously, willingly being led by her in this lip lock.

She broke the kiss with a clipping -chu !-, licking her as she opened her eyes to a dazed and lovestruck Mister, feeling herself slowly fall into the same state. "Since you love my hips so much.." she chuckled like a fox, grinned like a jackal, "I expect you to show that reverence in your pictures." and spoke like an empress.

A conquering empress, treasuring her most precious heirloom as she thumbed his lips. Her onyx eyes steeled as they were, glowed with passion, affection, playfulness, and protection. All while being the target of Steven's dreamlike gaze and pink-cheeked smile as he nodded.

-click!-

' She took the win from defeat.' Alex surmised, looking at the last two pictures. 'These two...God damn...Can’t wait to see how they act during their head-to-head photoshoots'

"Well, then." Connie stood with a stretch giving him a peck on the nose before bounding back on the stage. Turning on her right foot to face Steven and Alex, the not quite yet birthday-girl bent forward by her waist, letting her hair hang low, pulling the hat down, so the brim shadowed her left eye."I'm ready for my close up, Mr.Universe."Connie breathed out flirtatiously before she gave a small toothy snicker.

'God damn. She can switch from cunning and amorous to cute and adorable at a drop .' Both Steven and Alex thought, both red-face.

"Good-luck."Alex teased, handing Steven the camera, who nodded before turning and walking towards the stage. Stopping just foot away from it and six from Connie.

"Ten shots." Steven started. "Ten shots to make me fall for you...want you."

"More than you already are and do, you mean." Connie countered with a lick of her top front teeth.

"Cheeky. "

" And love it…" She teased, patting her hip. "You got ten-shots to make me squirm and blush involuntarily."

"So you gotta charm me."

"And you gotta break my character."

The two stared at each other before laughing. Excitement surging through them over the new game.

The new bond and memory to be had.

"Good-luck, Heartberry." Steven teased with adoration and competitiveness on his tongue.

"Good luck to you too, Mister." Enamored heart and a hunger to win fueled her reply, " make me beautiful."

"You already are...Now give me, dynamic."

#fighting flirty #steven universe #connverse #connie maheswaran #steven universe future #steven universe fanfiction #steven and connie #older steven #older connie #connverse fanfic

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rasoir-national · 5 years ago

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Horror and format use

@ghostplantss I don't know anything abt podcasts or horror and i'm curious what you think?

Right, so it took me a couple of days to figure out how I wanted to answer that, and it turns out I really want to talk about Horror and use of medium so I’m going to ramble about that.

So. I. Love. Horror. Note that I say horror and not “the horror genre” because while you can consider that horror has become a solidified genre, my interests go deeper than that. I think I’ve mentioned my mother is a psychiatrist, and so I grew up hearing the concepts of “ego”, “perversion” and such thrown around, but there’s one in particular that always fascinated me : the Id.

If you don’t know, according to Freud’s theorization of the human psyche, it can be fragmented in 3 parts : the “ego”, that’s to say, the conscious self, the “superego”, the learned (social) restrictions imposed upon one self, and the Id. The Id, or “subconscious self” is sort of the primal self made entirely of pulsions, both “good” and “bad” according to social standards, but absolutely unpoliced by them. There are two essential pulsions, “pulsion of life” and “pulsion of death”, that tug and warp around each other, forming both the basis of our survival instinct, and our primal penchant for annihilation (of the self and others). Unconscious desires, latent fears, dreams and nightmares, “appel du vide” as we say in french for the sudden inexplicable desire you can feel atop a cliff to jump, all these stem from the Id. I know Freud gets a bad rap nowadays, and his own application of his theories have been completely invalidated by modern psychoanalysis, but he was the first person to say that it was okay to have those pulsions, that they didn’t make you “wrong” or a bad person. And what’s more, they didn’t even define you. He was the first to put in theory the idea that there’s a part of us we aren’t entirely in control of, that we don’t entirely understand.

Why am I saying all this ? Well, I think everything we think of as “horror” ultimately comes down to this very idea : there is something within us that we do not understand. And I’m fascinated by that. I’m fascinated by the unknown, the unsaid, the inexplicable, the dark side of the moon, whatever you want to call it. I’m fascinated by both our fear and our desire to understand it. And what good horror does, is allow us to explore this “something” and our relation to it through metaphor, storytelling and catharsis.

From childhood, we are bathed in horrific stories. It’s common knowledge nowadays that fairytales are a way to allow children to confront their deepest fears and desires in a safe, metaphorical manner, and “exorcise” them in order to learn social constructs and become a functioning adult. But I think we never stop craving that feeling, the confrontation with the inexplicable in a manner safe enough for us to enjoy.

That’s why I love horror. More precisely, that’s why I love every form of horror. I think any art medium can be defined by two things : what it can do and what it cannot do. A book can put words onto a feeling, but it cannot picture that feeling. A melody can convey emotions through sound, but not words. We can talk and draw pictures about both, but the medium itself is limited to the very tools that make it what it is. Or, to put it another way : for every medium, there is something it cannot fully express. Does that remind you of anything ?

Horror is, I think, the most interesting way to study the differences between forms of media, precisely because it relies so much on what cannot be explained, what attracts us, what we fear, the very limits of our ability to comprehend the world and ourselves. Take movies, one the most multimedia form of storytelling : what makes a good horror movie ? If you’ve ever seen any, you know the fear doesn’t come from what you can see or describe but from what you cannot. There’s this common wisdom that whatever you can put onscreen, it will never be as scary as what the audience can imagine, or rather, fail to imagine. The unknown is more potent than the known.

So horror movies are great, and if you want I’ll make a list of my favourites on occasion. But what if we now take a medium that’s more constricted than movies are ? Now you have to work with the fact that something you could show, or describe, or put into music, or all three, onscreen, can now only be some of those things. In Art, I think we don’t give enough credit to the creative benefits of limitations : if I can’t draw something, I’m going to have to work extra hard to get you to picture it without images. The more you are not allowed to do things, the more you’re going to invent new ways to convey what you mean.

And that can go for limitations we don’t even think about. Take one of my favourite examples, comics and manga. What makes them different from movies ? They have no sound, but also, instead of an image moving into the next on its own, it’s the reader who’s in control of when or if they turn the page. That factor, the “page turn”, is a limitation, but that’s also something that’s unique to comics ; in written books, the effect is not the same, as we cannot process a page of written text as fast as we can an image on a page. And some artists have used that limitation to enhance the effect they were going for. The master of the horror manga, Junji Ito, is I think best known for his page turners. In horror especially, you have to deal with the fact that some images alone are capable of disturbing and shocking you. In movies, there images come to you, for example in the form of a jump scare. But in comics... You’re the one theoretically in control of the page. You can close the book. You can especially close it if you know, thanks to codes of storytelling, that on the next page is something quite horrific. But if the book is good... ? You’ll have to turn the page, because you have to know. The author puts you in control of the images you’ll see, then puts you in the situation where you willingly choose to scare and shock yourself. That’s taking a limitation, and turning it into a way to enhance the effect you’re going for.

So this brings us to podcasts, and the sort of horror revival they brought. Horror has a long history with the ancestor of the medium, the radio, for obvious reasons. If we again define a podcast via its limitations, what do we get ? This is a medium without pictures, only spoken words and sounds, and it’s an episodic medium. So what you have to work with are voices, music, sound, and, equally important, the fact that you’re in control of how much you give your listeners every time, and how much time there is between what you give. All of these are considerable assets if your goal is horror.

Take Welcome to Night Vale. Its shtick is pretty simple if you break it down, and is two-faced. First, it is, in-universe, a radio program, and second, it cannot be pictured. Let’s start with the second part : the genius of Welcome to Night, and what I think every story should aspire to, is that it couldn’t be told better in another format. The characters and stories in Night Vale cannot be pictured. They can only be described. Sure, you can make fanart, but “the glow cloud” will never be better represented than it can be described. You can draw “the faceless old woman that secretely lives in your home”, but it won’t ever truly be the faceless old woman that truly lives in your home. This is horror that’s entirely reliant on the non-superposition of words and representation : our language can express things that cannot be pictured. And if you think about it, that’s incredibly scary. The second part of the schtick is the magical realism aspect of the podcast, as in, the apparent normality with which all these “abnormal” things are described in the context of a radio program, creating for the listener a warped sense of perception : what are you supposed to fear ? When should you be afraid ? I should make a separate post of magical realism, remind me someday.

As for the Magnus Archives, I’ve now listened to the first season in its entirety so I have more of a grasp on it. I had a bit of a problem with the first season, which was that it had one foot in magical realism, and the other in the fantastical, two genres that are pretty much the opposite of one another, without really seeming to decide where it wanted to stand. It’s got more of a footing now, for reasons I won’t discuss in order not to spoil you. But one of the elements I like about it is its use of multiple layers of storytelling. The shtick of TMA is the fact that statements containing short horror stories are being audiorecorded by a professional archivist for research purposes on some old tapes. As the story develop, we learn more about their place of employment, their colleagues, and what might more largely be going on. Again, we take a limitation of the medium : you can’t tell when what you’re listening to has been recorded or if what has been recorded is all that happened. And you use this element of ignorance to play with your audience : when has the story you’re listening to been written ? When did it happen ? When is it recorded ? What happened in the meantime ? If the person who wrote it and the person who records it have different points of view, how does this come into play ? What else might be recorded onto the tapes ? As I said, I’m only a fourth of the way caught up right now, but I can already see them making use of all those elements.

So yeah, hopefully this gives you an idea of the way I enjoy horror, and gives you more of an appreciation for it yourself. Some actual recs if you want to get started while I’m at it :

- The Night of the Hunter (1955 movie) : not “technically a horror movie”, but absolutely a horrific one in its use of black and white

- The soundtrack to Suspiria (1977 movie) by the band Goblins : I adore the film, but listening to the soundtrack on its own is also an interesting experience

- The Silent Hill game series (especially Silent Hill 2 and 3) : video games is, I think, the most multimedia format, and taking into account the fact the player is in control of the character, makes for some of the most creative horror ever

- The Haunting of Hill House series : tons of things have been said about it, I’d say look at the way it uses framing and editing

- Francis Bacon’s paintings : a huge inspiration for the Silent hill series, probably the best example for horror that can be represented but not described

- Junji Ito’s Uzumaki : the masterpiece of horror mangas ; pay attention to the weight of a page turn

- Emily Carroll’s Through the woods : fantastic horror comic that uses the fairytale format

- Sarah Waters’ Let the right one in : one of my favourite horror novels, pay attention to the use of narration and subjectivity

Aight, I think that’s enough rambling for me. Hope I’ve answered your curiosity !

#horror #tma #wtnv #tw: freud

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romanogersweek · 6 years ago

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Romanogers Week Presents:

Natasha Appreciation Weekend 2018 ↳ October 19TH ~ October 21ST

The celebration will start from October 19th (12:01 am EST) to October 21st (11:59 pm EST). On our official appreciation weekend, everybody is welcome to participate without any exclusive sign-up.

This Appreciation Weekend is our fandom’s celebration to show our love and support for the ship with all types of fanworks we can make, such as fanfiction, graphics, aesthetics, mood boards, gifsets, fan mixes, fanvids, fanart, etc. with a special focus on Natasha Romanoff! Whether or not you believe they belong together, you can’t deny that Natasha and Steve have a special bond. So let’s explore their relationship, from romance to brotp and everything in between, all interpretations are up to you! Every single fan contribution is welcome!

NOTE: There are eight prompts to choose from, but you do NOT have to do all eight for the weekend event! You can do as many as you want, although we would like to challenge all participants to do at least three if you have the time.

What to know more about? Rules & Guidelines

We will track the tag #romanogersweek during all the event. So, don’t forget to tag in the first five tracked tags of your post.

Remember our Natasha Appreciation Weekend Themes are:

Home Is Where the Heart Is ~ your home will always be the place for which you feel the deepest affection, no matter where you are. What does that mean for Steve and Natasha, and how does this affect their relationship?

An Unlikely Friendship ~ The Soldier and the Spy; no two people could be any more different and yet, here they are... together.

Weekend Adventure ~ If you could go anywhere and do anything you wanted, what would it be? Steve and Natasha have a rare weekend off and does chaos ensue? Or is it nice and relaxing? You decide.

Long Distance ~ traveling or operating between distant places or between people. Whether Natasha and Steve conquer this is up to your interpretation.

"...remember when we did this?” ~ the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences... OR as we all know it, the journey of Nat and Steve.

Secrets That Only You Know ~ It’s no secret that Natasha is full of secrets... but maybe the secrets aren’t what you think they are. Could be fluffy, could be angsty.

The Sparks That Fly Between Us ~ Chemistry between the two characters is plain for everyone to see.

I’d Like to Hangout With You My Whole Life ~ The one person you’ll never get sick of and can be around them for 24/7.

All fanworks (fanfiction, fanart, gifsets, graphics, photosets, fan mixes, mood boards, aesthetics, quotes graphics, etc) are allowed and the interpretation of the themes is up for your consideration.

Special thanks to @sleepygrimm for creating the artwork for this month’s romanogersweek challenge! Be sure to pop by her blog to see more of her amazing artistry on display.

#romanogersweek #romanogersweekend #natashachallenge #romanogers #natasha romanoff #steve rogers #natasha appreciation challenge #admin!

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shining-scion · 2 years ago

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Alia’s allowed Wattpad OC privileges. Anyways I was trying to get this out for Wiz’s birthday but failed.

Anyways, thank you kingsisle for literally encouraging me as a kid. I’m not kidding, baby me sent so much fanart and fanmail and they were so nice about it. Like what.

All stories start with a day like any other, and mine’s no exception.

You see, I grew up in a small town in Michigan, the kind surrounded by woods and long roads that lead to the rest of the world and also absolutely nowhere at the same time. It was peaceful, quiet, the kind of place where everyone knew your name, and a secret was a hard thing to keep to yourself— ‘cause someone would always just so happen to overhear something or other about the deepest, darkest aspects of your personal life.

For me, that was the fact my mother was the weirdest person to ever grace the town. She was a lively woman that just showed up and asserted herself one day, dancing around the town for about ten years before promptly falling ill and dying, leaving behind a four year old me and a heartbroken businessman. Everyone described her as magical, like the atmosphere and world would simply light up in her presence. My dad would scoff, and I’d pull my hoodie up over my face and mutter a half hearted thank you for their condolences.

My mom wasn’t just eccentric, though. She also had a pretty weird trait she’d passed onto me— brightly colored hair. Her’s was purple, and mine was blue. When my hair started growing in as a baby, my dad flipped out, and we’ve been dying it a deep brown ever since. A cliche right out of a crappy fanfiction, I know, but… that was life. It wasn’t that big of a deal, it was just a matter of keeping up with it every month or so. No one cared either way, I got good enough grades to get away with looking like I’d dyed my hair bright blue, but… it was just easier to hide it.

I looked like I didn’t care much about school. It was the first day of ninth grade, and I was dressed in an old baggy hoodie, heavy boots and jeans. The way I carried myself screamed “future dropout,” though that wasn’t my plan at all. I just didn’t care enough to look the part of a straight A student.

Anyway, the exact moment things got weird was when I was walking down the long road to the high school, stumbling slightly, as the road was built on a hill, overlooking a massive forest. That forest surrounded the town, shielding us from everything else. It wasn’t like the outside world was barred off, just… far away for a fourteen year old.

I had stopped, for no real reason, to stare at that forest. As I stood there, back to another patch of trees, a gust of wind suddenly forced itself against my back, sweeping past me in a wave strong enough to pull my hood over my head. As the force rushed past me, I could feel a hand grab my arm, trailing down my forearm as it moved before letting go. I stumbled forward with it, but recovered quickly. It left me there, slightly dazed and really, really freaked out, but…

Not freaked out like I was scared. See, a common belief is that I was kidnapped, that some unseen force took me off somewhere, but that hand on the wind wasn’t a forceful hand, it wasn’t the grip of malice I felt, it was a beckoning, an invitation to the show.

So, I listened to the wind, taking one hesitant step towards the edge of the hill, then another, then another, until suddenly I was jumping the dinky metal fence that told cars not to drive off the road, and coming face to face with a long dip down. The force met me again, sweeping against my back and lacing unseen fingers against my own. It took my hands into its, and pulled me forwards, gently and slowly, as if it didn’t want to shove me down.

It didn’t need to urge me on any longer. I jumped down that hill, falling just a bit too slowly to be natural, and then my invisible guide started ushering me forward, this time with urgency and viger. I followed it, moving ever deeper into the forest. Though no words were said, I could feel this being’s message to me drifting past in the air, encouraging me onward.

”We haven’t a second to waste, Alia! They’re waiting for us!”

I ran deeper into the forest, following that voice, until we came to a very, very small clearing. At the center of that clearing was a swirling mass of purple, covered in sparkles that seemed like the stars themselves.

The wind stopped as I stood in front of the portal. The world went silent, as if someone had paused everything. Not even the trees rustled. For the first time ever, my life was completely, totally still.

Another breeze swept at my back, and I just knew what had to come next. Without any fear, without even a flutter in my chest, I ran forward, and jumped into the gateway to the unknown, closing my eyes as I crossed through.

The world was cold, it was hot, it was weightless and I’d never felt gravity so strong. I was flying and falling, swimming through the depths of the ocean and running on the driest of land. I was alive and dead, awake and dreaming— I was a living paradox, aware of everything and nothing.

My eyes opened to voices, and light streaming in through dusty windows.

#wizard101 #cw: parental death

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milliebeeweasel · 7 years ago

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Draco Veritas: the anticlimactic conclusion to the fanfics that made Cassie Claire famous

This is the worst one. The worst one.

You can read my adventures through Draco Dormiens and Draco Sinister through those links.

And thus begins my spork, as promised.

Before anything else, there’s a small detail I forgot from the end of Draco Sinister: at the big finale party, a ~mysterious benefactor~ gifted Harry a magic red bracelet, called a runic band. That turned out to be kinda plot important, so yeah. Sorry about that.

Draco Veritas, it beginneth thusly.

Harry Potter and da Crew are all back at Hogwarts for their last year, sitting in a potions class that immediately gives me flashbacks to Draco Dormiens, back when I was young and naïve and had no idea what shit I was getting into.

But I actually like this opening! Draco and Harry are abusing this psychic connection they’ve developed since the first fic to cheat through the class. Snape gets annoyed as Draco keeps secretly giving Harry the answers, until naturally Draco gives him a very wrong answer to mess with him, and … IDK it’s funny and in-character, and a sweet callback to the first fic to show character development. It’s good.

Draco has a dream/vision about Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy, who’re nattering about “four worthy McGuffins”. I mean OBJECTS. Four worthy objects. Yeah. (Take a brief moment to celebrate because holy shit, Voldemort is actually IN this fic!)

However, the plot rapidly dissolves as we discover that, despite the heavy Draco/Ginny shipping at the end of Draco Sinister, Draco is now dating Blaise Zabini. Blaise, in this fic, is a redheaded girl and not …

Hindsight is 20/20 when a character’s gender isn’t confirmed until several books in, I guess.

So Harry and Draco are now captains of their respective quidditch teams, and—because for some reason they don’t want anyone to know they’re friends, because god forbid anything possibly ever unite the houses of Slytherin and Gryffindor—they stage regular arguments and fistfights in order to keep up appearances. And by “stage” I mean “actually knock the stuffing out of each other”.

Despite the sweet, fluffy Harry/Hermione ending of Draco Sinister, it turns out Harry and Hermione are now having relationship problems for nonspecific, aggravating reasons, and spend all their time moping or having wild domestics. Draco and Ginny also kinda hate each other, and basically act like bitter exes despite having barely dated, and Harry’s feeling constant, generalised RAEG and … look, if you’re wondering about Voldemort and the four worthy McGuffins, buckle up because we have several hundred pages of this soap opera bullshit before the plot is even remotely addressed.

But don’t worry.

Rhysenn Malfoy is here to make it all worse.

(Screenshot straight off my phone of the fanart included in the fic.)

This Amy Lee looking motherfucker pops up throughout the fic to bother everyone, pass on cryptic messages from Lucius, and grope at Draco. Her “cousin”.

Gross.

Anywhoo, Draco realises Harry is having a bad time, and goes to his staple solution for everything: alcoholism. By which I mean a trip to a wizard strip club called the Sleazy Weasel. This isn’t even close to the weirdest thing to happen in this fic.

Help.

While they’re getting merrily wankered, it turns out Ron has a ~secret girlfriend~, with whom Cassie plays the pronoun game for half the fic so we can’t guess who he’s illicitly fucking in every other POV swap. Make your guesses now. If you get it right I’ll … I dunno, write you a ficlet or something.

Meanwhile, Ginny reads a trashy romance book called Passionate Trousers, the text of which takes up huge chunks of the fic. (Uh, Cassie. I, uh, I don’t think you’re in a position to parody or criticise trashy romance stories. Just saying.) She also starts dating Seamus Finnegan, aka the only decent person in this story, and meanwhile Harry asks Sirius if he can visit James and Lily’s grave but Sirius says it’s too dangerous and Harry storms off in a huff, and …

PLOT? VOLDEMORT?

HELLOOOOO?

Nope, still more soap opera.

A random Slytherin catches Ron doing the sex with his ~mystery girlfriend~, but then passes out and suffers an immediate bout of amnesia, so that comes to nothing. Rhysenn keeps pointlessly bothering Draco, and reveals that, on top of being goffick and beautiful, she’s also immortal.

You could say … My Immortal.

Harry and Hermione’s domestics get to such a ridiculous point I start to long for Order of the Phoenix Capslock Harry, as Hermione screams at him in the Great Hall for not paying attention to her, and Ginny falls off her broom and hurts herself—

And finally, a tiny wee bit of plot shows up, when someone shoots Draco Malfoy with an arrow, throwing him off the Astronomy Tower.

You’d think this would kick-start the plot in earnest but … no. Draco’s up and about in time for the Yule Ball (which is now apparently a yearly occurrence, and not just an event for the Triwizard Tournament), and apparently he’s feeling perky enough to be a cheating whorebiscuit and snog Ginny in the rose garden. Not a euphemism. Honest.

Meanwhile, the golden trio go to the pub and have a snowball fight and general, wholesome fun, and Hermione makes them promise to always be friends, which is fanfic code for “we’re about to be totally fucked”.

250 pages in, and we have barely scraped the edge of an inciting incident.

By this point in Draco Dormiens, Draco and Harry had swapped bodies and were wreaking havoc. In Draco Sinister, Salazar Slytherin had kidnapped and date rape drugged Hermione.

This is supposed to be the grand finale. The epic third episode in this trilogy.

And it’s just … relationship drama. It’s slow and it’s boring.

So Harry and Draco sneak off to visit James and Lily’s grave, a scene which sounds good but is actually dull and stupid and utterly pointless. In Deathly Hallows, Harry seeing his parents’ grave at Godric’s Hollow breaks my heart, and guarantees a little tear every time.

‘And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.’

In Cassie’s version?

She literally says he “feels nothing”.

Yeah, Cassie. I’m sure Harry would suffer all this melodramatic angst over his love life, and not feel a single scrap of pain or loss or regret at seeing the graves of his parents. His parents, whom he wanted to know so badly in Philosopher’s Stone, he saw them in the Mirror of Erised—the “deepest and most desperate desire of [his] heart”.

And of fucking course, Rhysenn Malfoy then shows up and proceeds to molest Harry a few feet from James and Lily’s grave. And since Harry goes to putty in her presence, and immediately throws up after Draco chases her off, you can probably guess what Rhysenn is long before Cassie deigns to explain.

She’s a succubus.

Yeah, gasp, ahh, whatever.

Dear Cassie,

GIVE ME SOME FUCKING PLOT.

Where are the stakes? The carefully interwoven mysteries? What is the goal of this fic? I thought you were good at plot, Cassie! I praised you for it! Where did it go? Where is Voldemort? Is he knitting socks to go with Nagini’s jumper from Draco Sinister? She doesn’t need socks, Cassie! She’s a snake!

(Just let me stare at this adorable tiny snek until I’ve calmed down.)

Phew.

OK. Draco realises his wound from the arrow is now glowing, and his blood’s turned silver. That’s … healthy. And left unaddressed for another fifty pages.

Hermione realises the plot probably should’ve kicked in by now, so she researches the four worthy McGuffins from Draco’s dream. It turns out, in the time they’ve been pissing about doing nothing, Voldy’s got his act together and already collected the Mirror, the Scabbard, and the … something else? IDK the third item wasn’t important. The important thing was there was one item left: the Cup. So Harry P and da Crew decide they need to get it before Voldemort does, by stealing it from the wizarding museum where it’s on display at Stonehenge.

Several pages of build-up are wasted on planning this heist, but I’m so glad plot’s arrived I’m willing to be forgiving. At the museum, Draco causes a distraction by kissing Ginny, prompting Seamus to punch him in the face. While their fistfight ensues, the golden trio replace the McGuffin Cup with a fake.

And it all goes down flawlessly.

Because god forbid we might get some external conflict.

When they get back to Hogwarts, Hermione hides the McGuffin Cup. Meanwhile, Draco becomes seriously poorly from a combination of whatever that weirdass arrow’s done to him, and the thorough shit-kicking my boy Seamus gave him.

Harry shows Ron the Christmas present he’s got for Hermione: a ring. Ron freaks out because you CAN’T give your girlfriend a ring, she’ll assume you’re PROPOSING and that’s CRAZY. (And here I sit, wearing the two rings my boyfriend gave me on separate occasions, howling with laughter.)

Anyway, Ron’s epic bitchfit comes to a dramatic end when he reveals the identity of his ~secret girlfriend~.

Hermione.

(Those of you raising your hands for your ficlet right now … just hold on a second. You’ll see.)

Because Hermione is completely dumbfounded by this reveal. She insists it’s not true, while Ron gets angrier and more distraught. Harry finally uses the veritas spell to make Ron tell the truth, and Ron confirms that yeah, he’s for defo been fucking Hermione on the sly. Hermione screams that it isn’t true and Harry storms out in a rage.

If you, like me, are currently shrieking, “POLYJUICE POTIONS EXIST YOU FUCKING MORONS!” … I am sorry. I am sorry for all of us.

Hermione goes to Draco in tears, and Draco once again falls back on his reliable solution of alcoholism. They get drunk and snuggle up in bed together because, uh, that’s … not cheating?

Ron meets up with his ~mysterious girlfriend~ again, and strangely, she has no clue about all the domestics that just occurred. At this point, Ron finally twigs that this isn’t fucking Hermione. Draco and the real Hermione also burst in, but because everyone in this fic is an idiot, the imposter gets away. Following this is even more relationship drama, as Harry and Hermione break up and everyone now hates Ron for backstabbing them in spirit, if not technically in reality.

Hermione and Ron toddle off to their separate homes for Christmas, and Draco, apparently the only one with two brain cells left to rub together, works out who the fake Hermione is:

Pansy Parkinson.

So, if you guessed “Pansy Parkinson, with the Hermione Polyjuice potion, in the Astronomy Tower”, you may now request your fanfic. Please be patient, as I have to pause every time I remember this detail, and nearly crack a rib laughing.

Meanwhile, Ginny tells Seamus about the events of Draco Sinister and he is … one hundred percent accepting and supportive, and gives Ginny a magic bracelet for Christmas, and invites her to visit him in Ireland.

I maintain Seamus is the only decent person in this fic.

The only one.

Harry and Draco get up to shenanigans at Christmas at Malfoy Manor, in which for once Harry is the one getting plastered and not Draco, and … I swear, this fic feels like it’s aiming towards a Harry/Draco ship 90% of the time. Harry spends so much time waxing lyrical about Draco’s beauty, his elegance, his perfect perfection, and it’s weird, because when Sirius and Narcissa get married they’re basically going to be stepbrothers so—

CASSIE. PUT YOUR INCEST KINK AWAY.

I’M NOT JOKING, CASSIE. PUT IT AWAY. I’VE READ MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, I KNOW THERE’S WEIRD INCEST SHIT IN THAT, TOO. AND I KNOW IT’S NAMED AFTER THAT ONE ACTUAL RON/GINNY INCEST FIC YOU WROTE. AND ALL THIS RHYSENN/DRACO AND DRACO/HARRY—

PUT THE KINK AWAY.

PUT IT AWAY.

SHAME ON YOU.

Sirius and Narcissa throw a wedding rehearsal dinner, and it turns out both the entire Weasley family AND the entire Parkinson family are invited, so Draco decides to be a vindictive little shit and announce to everyone that HEY, PANSY AND RON HAVE BEING DOING THE NASTY.

Charming.

AND THEN.

PLOT ARRIVES.

By which I mean Lucius Malfoy and all his cronies crash the party, kidnap Harry, Ron and Draco, and magically boot everyone else out of the manor. And just a sec, I might need to go lie down and weep after slogging through that entire crappy first half of the fic.

So Lucius locks Harry and Draco up on some balcony, and demands they give him the McGuffin Cup. He even offers to trade it for an antidote to that poisoned arrow currently fucking Draco up in all kinds of ways. Unfortunately, Hazzer and Drazzer don’t have a clue where Hermione hid the Cup. So Draco basically yells, “I don’t want your stinking antidote, and fuck you anyway,” and smashes the antidote to pieces.

He’s a … smart boy.

Meanwhile, Ginny uses her time turner from Draco Sinister to do some convoluted time travel, including going to Malfoy Manor in the past and meeting baby wee twelve year old Draco. She also takes Tom Riddle’s diary from Lucius’s desk (which has a fat hole in it from where Harry stabbed it with the basilisk fang) for … some reason? She also nicks another book of dark magic, because in for a penny I guess. Then she finally travels into the present, where she rescues Harry and Draco. They’re chased out of the manor by hellhounds, and Harry uses that plot-important runic band to scare them off, and there are actual stakes and there’s pacing and I’m practically sobbing with relief at this point.

However.

If you’re wondering where Ron is …

Ron gets to play chess.

With Voldemort.

For basically the whole of the rest of the fic.

See, apparently the reason Ron is so good at chess is because he’s a seer, so he unconsciously reads the future and predicts his opponent’s move. And Voldemort needs like, a really, really powerful seer for this ritual he wants to do. So he takes Ron to a secret castle in deepest darkest Eastern Europe, and essentially forces him to grind his seer ability up to level 100 as fast as humanly possible.

So the whole crew, except Ron, head back to Hogwarts, where Dumbledore tells Snape to make a fresh antidote for Draco. Which Draco SHOULD HAVE DONE as soon as he realised he was POISONED. I don’t care how “independent” you are, if you are seventeen and you suspect you might be dying of a fucking glowing wound inflicted by a wierdass arrow from nowhere, you get help.

Meanwhile, in Voldemort’s secret castle, Ron is tortured in the most horrific manner imaginable.

He is made to listen to Rhysenn’s backstory.

Allow me to sum it up for you:

RHYSENN: “Dad’s a Malfoy. Mam’s a succubus. Bit of a shock for him when he found out. Also now I’m doomed to servitude in the Malfoy family forever.”

See? That doesn’t need to take twenty flipping pages.

The fic goes back to Draco lounging dramatically in bed contemplating death, interspersed with other characters waxing lyrical about how beautiful Draco looks even when he’s dying and—

On Christmas day, Harry gives Draco the Marauder’s Map, and Draco gives Harry a copy of the Malfoy Family Code of Conduct—a running joke throughout the Draco Trilogy stolen directly from Red Dwarf’s Space Corps Directives. (The joke was better in Red Dwarf.)

Hermione does more book-reading (specifically, that dark magic book Ginny nicked), and realises why they haven’t seen Ron in effing forever. Voldemort’s going to drain Ron’s blood for his evil plan.

After everyone falls apart with even more friendship drama, Seamus decides he’s too good for these assholes and breaks up with Ginny, who immediately fucks off back in time. Gotta love that coping method. “Yeah well screw you, time travel!”

So Ginny goes back to when Tom Riddle was still at Hogwarts. Tom turns out to be an unapologetic sadist (no surprises there) and follows up breaking Ginny’s wrist with … weird, rapey advances.

Then, in the ONE AND ONLY Moment I Unironically Enjoyed in this whole shitfest of a fic, Ginny spits in Tom’s face and gut-punches him. Satisfied with her fistfight, Ginny lets Dumbledore take her away and returns to the present.

However, this begins a reoccurring trend in this fic: everyone being an absolute fucking shitweasel to Ginny Weasley.

Dumbledore proceeds to tear Ginny a new one for her time travel shenanigans and for daring to try and change the past. Ginny points out she wasn’t going to change the past—she only wanted to take one of Tom’s hairs so she could make an epicyclical charm and use that to kill Voldemort in the present. Dumbledore then rips her another new one because apparently an epicyclical charm requires a soul to work, and Voldemort doesn’t have one of those. Also, Ginny accidentally left that dark magic book in the past, giving Tom the whole idea to do this ridiculous blood ritual in the first place.

So to punish Ginny for this mistake, which was technically preordained and had to happen somehow since time travel in Harry Potter is a closed loop, Dumbledore tells Tom Riddle in the past Ginny’s full name, so Tom can go gunning for her in Chamber of Secrets. Because of course eleven year old Ginny totally deserved to be punished for shit she hadn’t even done yet.

Ginny runs up to her room and smashes everything in sight, and then collapses sobbing on the floor. In the process, however, she manages to cut herself, and her blood and tears get on Tom Riddle’s diary.

I’m sure that won’t come to anything.

Meanwhile, Snape orders Harry to leave Draco once he gets his antidote, because he thinks their psychic connection is super unhealthy for poor woobie Draco. Harry reluctantly agrees, and shortly overhears Snape telling Dumbledore he’s got an antidote. Then, because no one ever sticks around to eavesdrop on an entire conversation, Harry legs it before Snape points out the “antidote” is only temporary and just gives Draco a few more weeks to live rather than curing him completely.

So Harry leaves goodbye notes for Draco and Hermione, and fucks off to finally go and fight Voldemort.

You know, that thing this whole fic was supposed to be about.

Later, Ginny’s sulking in the Gryffindor Common Room when Seamus finds Tom Riddle’s diary—and is instantly possessed by the ghost of Tom Riddle.

“The ghost that Harry killed with the basilisk fang?” I hear you say?

Yes, that ghost.

“But—”

No, no. But nothing. Cassie has finally realised this fic is boring as shit, and chosen to introduce Tom-Possessed-Seamus in a desperate attempt to add some external conflict. I am not going to bitch about things making sense as long as something is finally happening.

So Tom finds the letters Harry wrote for Draco and Hermione, and decides to fuck with everyone in the vicinity by burning Hermione’s and magically rewording Draco’s to be full of backhanded compliments. He then nances down to the Common Room and finds Ginny. She works out pretty sharpish that this new, creepy “Seamus” is actually Tom screwing with her, and for a few paragraphs, this fic reads like M rated torture porn waiting to happen. Then Ginny sticks her arm in the fireplace, causing her charm bracelet to go haywire and explode all over the place.

This would be cool, except:

There was absolutely no indication before now that bracelet + fire = explosions

Why didn’t Ginny just toss the bracelet in, rather than setting her own hand on fire?

So Tom flees and Ginny passes out. Meanwhile, Draco takes his kinda-antidote, which actually gets him out of bed. This is surprising, considering the fic claims it contains both belladonna and nightshade, each of which are poisonous.

Cassie … what the fuck.

Anyway, Draco and Hermione find unconscious, lightly charred Ginny and rush her to Madame Pomfrey, and then discover Harry’s remaining letter. This naturally results in a slew of drama I can’t be bothered to recount, but suffice to say Draco is pissed. They decide to hunt Harry down, presumably so they can kick the shit out of him in person.

When Ginny recovers, she explains the new Tom Riddle plot thread, and follows it up with, “Fuck this shit, I’m out.”

Yeah, she literally just … goes home. This actually didn’t annoy me, because it seemed like the only sensible decision anyone in this entire fic had made so far. “There are dark wizards fucking everywhere and every time I try to do anything helpful I screw it up and get yelled at. Yeah, fuck you guys, I’m going home.”

Meanwhile, Tom sets up in Diagon Alley, where he reads up on his future self’s adventures and decides “Screw that guy, I can do better.” He runs into Harry and, rather than killing him on the spot, he directs him to a nearby friendly Death Eater establishment.

So Harry flees the Death Eaters, and winds up bumping into Draco Malfoy down a quiet alley. And um. This happens.

Well, no, OK, it’s not really Draco Malfoy.

It’s a polyjuice prostitute.

A prostitute who takes polyjuice potion … in order to look like Draco. For customers.

I’ll uh … I’ll just let that sink in.

Anyway, the polyjuice prostitute takes him to safety. By which I mean a brothel. A polyjuice brothel. O-of course?

Meanwhile, back at the Burrow, Ginny gets a visit from Ben Gryffindor and Gareth Slytherin—the respective sons of Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin she met when she time travelled in Draco Sinister. It turns out Gareth has a bracelet that looks suspiciously similar to Harry’s runic band, and apparently it repels demons. However, Gareth can never take it off until the day he dies.

So Ben and Gareth give some vague, unhelpful advice, and the plot grinds to a halt as we cut to several tedious pages of Hermione reading Teen Witch Weekly, followed by Draco having EMOTIONS.

And the emotions of these characters. The melodrama. They randomly fly off the handle over the smallest, most meaningless little things. Like, Harry could be stuck on his homework and mutter, “Ugh, I don’t understand,” and Hermione would leap up and scream, “NO, YOU NEVER DO!” and run from the room weeping.

One exchange is literally:

DRACO: You look cold. Shall we go back?

HERMIONE: No … we can never go back …

HE MEANS “GO BACK INDOORS” YOU MELODRAMATIC LUNATIC.

And SO MUCH drama is built on this pointless little exchanges. It’s infuriating—the characters just can’t seem to ever have a normal conversation. I know teenagers can be emotional, but they’re not like this. Jesus.

Meanwhile, Blaise Zabini—oh yeah, she’s in this fic—figures out that Pansy Parkinson is the one who shot Draco with the poisoned arrow, on Lucius Malfoy’s orders. Pansy confirms that there was only one vial of antidote, and Draco’s pretty much doomed at this point. Man, isn’t Pansy just a giant pain in the ass in this fic?

Anyway, back at the Polyjuice brothel, while Harry hides out, Tom walks in with Ginny’s hair. And if you can guess where this is going … I’m sorry.

So while Tom tortures, murders and rapes a polyjuice prostitute pretending to be Ginny (yes, in that order), Hermione and Draco break into the brothel looking for Harry. This involves Hermione dressing up all slutty, because undercover. Of course.

Naturally, they find the dead fake Ginny, but Tom escapes, and Draco theorises that Tom is in love with Ginny and … isn’t coping well. I guess murder is a pretty serious case of not coping.

Draco then finds Harry, and they bicker briefly before Harry runs away again. Because no one in this fic can sit down and discuss their problems like rational adults. Draco and Hermione go back to their hotel room and get down to their own unhealthy coping, which means copious snogging. I guess cheating is at least a healthier outlet than murder.

So Tom finds Lucius, who is like “Yeah I’ll totally help you kill your older, uglier self, no problem bud,” and they merrily get down to hunting all the Death Eaters who betrayed older Voldemort. Tactically, you’d think it would be smart to recruit them, but no. Tom just murders them in revenge. Or … pre-venge?

Meanwhile, Harry manages to stumble through the floo network to Victor Krum’s house, where Fleur Delacour also lives because apparently that ship is a thing now. Harry then travels to Prague, and Hermione and Draco show up to Victor’s house too late, and Draco collapses because oh yeah, he’s meant to be dying, isn’t he?

So Fleur tucks Draco up in bed, and … unbuttons his shirt … while whispering to him … while he’s unconscious …

Damn it, Cassie, why you gotta put me through this?

Well, it turns out she’s not JUST sexually harassing Draco. She also gives him some of her Magid powers so he can continue with Mission Kick the Shit out of Harry in Person. (Yeah, I also completely forgot Magids were a thing until now.)

Over in Prague, Harry’s caught out after dark by vampires, but luckily Draco and Hermione show up in time to scare them off … by using two swords to make the shadow of a cross. The shadow. Of a cross.

Draco then knocks Harry the fuck out before he can escape again, takes him inside and ties him to the bed. Luckily, Cassie puts her incest kink away before Harry wakes up, and they all take turns talking about their feelings for several pages and ultimately resolve nothing.

Meanwhile, Ginny discovers that Tom is gunning for Pansy Parkinson’s family, and decides, ugh, fuck it, fine, she’ll join in on this shitshow. By the time she arrives, Tom’s already murderkilled the whole Parkinson family, and is busy torturing Blaise Zabini. Tom drops Blaise in favour of torturing Ginny, but then realises he can’t. Every wound he inflicts on Ginny also appears on him, because something, something blood magic connecting them. This is actually kind of a cool concept, and I’d love to see where it could go in the hands of a skilled writer

Ginny, however, decides bugger all this for a lark and tosses herself down the stairs.

I mean. That’s one way to kill Tom.

Meanwhile, Death Eaters show up and attack Harry, Draco and Hermione. Harry kills a Death Eater and has a minor existential crisis over it, which apparently distracts him enough to let the Death Eaters capture Hermione.

The Death Eaters drop Hermione off with Ron in Voldemort’s Evil Castle of Doom, where Hermione and Ron immediately start formulating a plan … oh wait no, they just bicker pointlessly. It turns out Ron’s got pretty sweet digs in this castle for a prisoner, so Hermione gets to take a bath, and then Ron makes out with Rhysenn pretending to be Hermione and … ugh, this is all just so unbelievably stupid I want to die.

So Draco and Harry finish their own pointless bickering and fly after Hermione on thestrals. Where did these thestrals come from? No idea, but Cassie wants thestrals, so here they are.

Meanwhile, back at Voldemort’s castle, Rhysenn calls out Hermione for being an indecisive slutmuffin because come the fuck ON, woman you gotta pick Harry or Draco at some point, and I thought we’d been THROUGH this already. This rant is all the more bizarre coming from a succubus, of all things.

And then Voldemort shows up and shoots a cruciatus curse at Hermione, because I guess today is just Beat Up Hermione Day.

Harry and Draco stop off in a vague European village for a light lunch of crusty bread and cheese and brandy (because Draco’s alcoholism continues), and I laugh because Cassie seems to think Europe hasn’t invented fucking sandwiches.

We get a few paragraphs of Lucius Malfoy poncing around doing nothing, before Tom bursts through his window clutching a half-dead Ginny and screaming at him to heal her. Instead, Lucius locks them both in a magic marble tomb and buggers off to tell grown-up Voldemort about this whole debacle.

By the way, POV swaps at this point are so swift I am lumping two or three chunks together in a somewhat helpless attempt to make everything flow better than Cassie did. I’m also hacking away huge chunks of pointless, meandering text. You’re welcome.

So we hop back to Harry and Draco walking up to Voldemort’s castle. Draco at this point is going blind because, oh yeah, he’s totally dying isn’t he? And they finally, FINALLY address Harry’s letter. The one that pissed off Draco so much. The one that Tom Riddle tampered with.

And.

AND.

*Deep breath*

Christ doing handstands on a unicycle at the fucking circus, Draco’s whole problem with this stupid goddamn letter is so obnoxious and pathetic I want to scream. Chapter upon chapter of drama over some vague fucking backhanded comments that just aren’t that fucking upsetting, OH MY GODDDD.

Draco realises Harry doesn’t know he’s still dying, but chooses not to tell him because???

Thankfully for my blood pressure, a plot hole … um … black hole opens up in the ground and swallows them up, which is pretty fucking satisfying at this point, let me tell you.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the cruciatus curse (or “excruciating bane” as Cassie calls it, because she has access to a thesaurus and zero common sense) totally didn’t work on Hermione! The McGuffin Cup apparently protects its holder from curses. How neat.

So the baddies guess the flask on Hermione’s belt is defo the Cup, and take it off her, and I am SO convinced they are right and the obvious decoy is not, in fact, an obvious decoy.

At this point, Lucius shows up and tells Voldemort all about wee babby Tom, and then teleports Tom and Ginny over so Voldemort can meet himself in person.

That was a weird sentence.

Ginny has spent the interim since she tried to off herself having fever dreams about Passionate Trousers, that crappy romance book she was reading before. This, apparently, is her equivalent to the river of the dead that Draco saw in Draco Sinister when he almost died. Yeah … Draco gets a spooky river of ghosts, and Ginny gets a thematically inappropriate bodice-ripper.

Lame.

But whatever, she wakes up in time to meet Old Voldy … and promptly faints again.

Our heroine!

At this point, Harry and Draco are traipsing through an underground tunnel when they run into those weakass vampires again. Draco’s like, “You really don’t wanna bite us, bro,” but a vampire bites him anyway, and then instantly dies from all the poison in Draco’s blood. The weakass vampires all run screaming, and Harry FINALLY realises Draco isn’t actually cured.

With tears of exhaustion, I reach the penultimate chapter, and pray to the powers that be for a finale that was worth slogging through all this crap for. But really, deep down, I know I’m just tumbling further and further into the sunk cost fallacy with every page I read.

So Ginny wakes up in a big fancy bedroom, where Tom tells her that he’s working with Old Voldy now, and I gigglesnort because all I can think of is Nega Scott the end of Scott Pilgrim vs the World. “He’s not that bad when you get to know him. We actually have a lot in common.”

On the bright side, Ginny get to be Tom’s special prized concubine forever while the rest of the world burns. Yay? Tom leaves and Hermione appears, and continues the tradition of bullying the shit out of Ginny. She victim-blames the hell out of her, because it is just so GROSS that Tom is obsessed with her and that’s all totally Ginny’s fault, and never mind the fact that Hermione was in exactly this position with Salazar Slytherin in Draco Sinister.

So Hermione finishes yelling, “How dare you seduce Tom Riddle, Ginny!” and proceeds to tell Ginny her plan for defeating Voldemort, which involves … Ginny continuing to seduce Tom Riddle.

UGH.

So Hermione finally fucks off, and pretends Rhysenn has killed her. Because reasons.

Outside, Harry and Draco finally reach Voldemort’s castle. Harry tries to gently Wingardium Leviosa Draco over the battlements, and ends up tossing him through a window. Harry is then chased by a bunch of Voldemort’s guards, but his runic band lights up and murders the shit out of all of them … and then crumbles into dust. Not sure why it chose this specific moment to die, but I guess Cassie got tired of Harry carrying around a get out of jail free card.

It turns out Draco coincidently burst through Ginny’s window. AND AGAIN, the instant he sees her he’s like, “Oh fuck off, what’re YOU doing here?”

Like. BITCH.

Ginny only fucked up in this fic because everyone was such an unapologetic shitweasel to her. And then she tried to fix her mistake, even to the point of attempting suicide. Jesus Christ, what do you all want from Ginny?

CAMPAIGN BE NICER TO GINNY 2K18.

I didn’t take very good notes over the next part, mostly because I was skimming but also possibly because my hand was occupied with the glass of rosé I sorely needed to get through his hellfic unscathed. But basically everyone winds up having a big battle; Draco, who couldn’t stand unaided one page ago, is suddenly able to charge into a sword fight no problem; Hermione’s “play dead” plan lasts exactly 0.1 seconds and amounts to nothing; and everything utterly fails and Voldemort captures them all anyway.

So Voldemort kills them all and gets on with his spell, right?

Nope.

He keeps them alive.

Why?

Because Cassie Claire is too cowardly to kill a protagonist and too lazy to invent a decent explanation for how they survive, that’s why.

So Voldemort chains them all up around a whacking great pentagram with the four worthy McGuffins, and I roll my eyes because we’re back at the end of Draco Sinister. Draco and Tom have an argument about Greek mythology which is supposed to show how smart and cultured Draco is, but actually just shows that Cassie’s only research into Greek mythology was watching Clash of the Titans because she thinks the Kraken is a Greek monster … and I slam my head against a wall because JUST LET THIS BE OVER ALREADY.

So Voldemort cuts Ron open to get at that delicious seer blood, and the ritual kicks off with Cassie stealing the “close your eyes!” gimmick from Indiana Jones.

Guess what happens next?

It’s OK, I’ll give you a second.

That’s right! The McGuffin Cup wasn’t really the McGuffin Cup! Hermione pulled the old switcheroo, and it totally wasn’t obvious even slightly at all.

So Voldypoldy gets trapped in the pentagram, screaming his guts out, and Tom does a runner. Draco goes racing after him, because Ginny decides not to tell him that killing Tom will also kill her. This lack of communication would piss me off, but after how fucking horrible everyone’s been to Ginny I’m not surprised she’s suicidal. And frankly, I am also ready for death.

Meanwhile, Harry dives into the pentagram to fight Voldemort, while Ron and Hermione fight Lucius. The pentagram cooks Wormtail alive for some reason, and Voldemort tries to stab Harry but—

The Malfoy Family Code of Conduct in Harry’s pocket stops the dagger.

Seriously. We are pulling a “Bible stopped the bullet” here.

Voldemort then remembers he’s a fucking wizard, and throws a killing curse at Harry. The curse bounces off the McGuffin Mirror, one of those other worthy objects we all forgot about, and kills Voldemort instead. And then Harry cuts Voldemort’s head off for good measure. Because everyone loves unnecessary violence.

Meanwhile, Draco gets thiiiiis close to killing Tom, before Tom points out Ginny will also die. So naturally, after knocking Tom out and tying him up, Draco realises what a douchecanoe he’s been to Ginny and apologises—HAHAHAHA no, he just berates her some more.

Ron and Hermione apprehend Lucius, and all is looking good. Voldemort’s dead, the others baddies are dead or captive … surely there’s not much left, right? I check the page counter at the top of my screen.

260 A4 pages left.

So it turns out the whole reason Lucius was such an unapologetic dicknozzle this whole time was because he sold his ability to love to Voldemort. For like, power? Or something? And now Voldemort’s dead, Lucius suddenly loves Draco, and realises he poisoned him, and has Some Regrets. Unfortunately, Draco doesn’t give a fuck, and in some of the most awkward, out of character dialogue in the fic, he tells Harry to just kill him if he wants.

TEENAGERS DON’T TALK LIKE THIS.

However, Harry decides not to kill Lucius, instead interrogating him for information about Draco’s antidote. Turns out they’re missing one ingredient: argent dragon’s blood. Too bad argent dragons are extinct. This might’ve been a clever twist, if argent dragons had ever been mentioned before this moment.

Harry then leaves Lucius alone with Ron, who proceeds to prophesise the fall of the Malfoy name and the loss of everything Lucius holds dear. And because Ron is a seer and couldn’t possibly be making shit up, Lucius freaks out and kills himself.

For complicated, nonsensical reasons, Rhysenn now becomes Draco’s servant. Draco’s like “Bugger it all, I’ll free you if you kiss Tom Riddle’s soul out of Seamus’s body,” because apparently succubi work just like dementors. So Rhysenn does that, and then leaps out the window, presumably yelling, “DOBBY IS FREEEEE!”

Draco makes some long, sad speeches about how very hard he is dying, and then does what he’s been threatening to this whole fic, and stops breathing.

Well. I wish.

The final chapter begins with a funeral, but as anyone with half a brain can guess, it’s not Draco’s funeral. It’s Pansy Parkinson’s. Draco is actually in a coma. And despite the fact Pansy poisoned Draco and tricked Ron into shagging her and basically ruined everyone’s lives, they all show up to her funeral. Possibly just to ensure this bitch is deep in the cold, cold ground.

Well, except for Harry, that is. Harry has apparently sat motionless at Draco’s bedside for three straight days. This I do not buy. A man does not go three days without needing to get up to piss.

Meanwhile, Ginny is busy looking after poor, shell-shocked Seamus Finnegan, who claims to remember nothing about being possessed, but who wakes up from nightmares screaming for people to run, or begging someone to stop. You know, totally normal, not at all PTSD stuff. And naturally, Ginny is patient and understanding, because this isn’t something you just “get over”, and she treats Seamus with the same kindness he always showed her—

HA, NO. Ginny resents Seamus for making her look after him, and acts like an absolute martyr for showing a single ounce of human decency.

God damn it, Ginny. I defended you.

Anyway, apparently it took three effing days for anyone to have the bright idea that Harry should try and contact Draco through telepathy. This essentially amounts to psychic Harry dramatically begging Draco to “Hold on!” while psychic Draco acts surprisingly millennial and yells back, “LET ME DIE, I’M FUCKIN’ TIRED.”

Meanwhile, Ginny realises Harry’s runic band had argent dragon blood it in. A shame, since the damn thing poofed into a million pieces, but luckily she knows someone else who’s got one. So she does a few time travel trips, and winds up arriving at the moment Gareth dies so she can take the runic band from him.

Snape manages to get the argent dragon blood out of the runic band, but then points out it needs to brew for 1,000 years. So they make two vials, and Ginny does more time travelling. One vial goes to the Malfoy family (that’s the one Lucius will eventually have), and one vial is hidden in the Hogwarts library.

Ginny also passes Gareth’s now-empty runic band to Rhysenn in the past, so Rhysenn can be the ~mysterious benefactor~ who gives the band to Harry at the end of Draco Sinister. If all this sounds like a really confusing episode of Doctor Who … yeah, I’m sorry. I can only guess that Cassie realised the time travel shenanigans worked well in Draco Sinister, and so she decided to cram WAY MORE time travel into Draco Veritas.

So Ginny gets to the present, but it turns out time travelling that much is kinda bad for you so she starts coughing up blood and passes out. (Side note: I love fanfic, where coughing up blood is a symptom of basically any generic illness, as opposed to reality where it means “punctured lung”.)

So they manage to tip the antidote down Draco’s throat, and he wakes up fine and dandy, but now Ginny’s dying instead. There’s some drawn-out angst, until Seamus marches in, grabs the time turner from Ginny’s neck and smashes it, which somehow magically makes her well again.

So uh … the end?

No, no, no.

Time for an epic Cassie Claire epilogue with pages and pages of pointless friendship drama and romance angst. Because we haven’t had enough of that already!

Ginny hangs about with Seamus, bitching at him for being miserable (yeah Seamus, how dare you be traumatised by Tom Riddle possessing you and using you to rape, torture and murder and bunch of people!), and eventually she asks Hermione for a love potion so she can try to actually enjoy the rest of her miserable life with Seamus. Hermione reluctantly gives her a potion, but then Ginny spends the next several pages mooning about wondering if she should take the bloody thing.

Meanwhile, Cassie pulls “Dumbledore the master manipulator” out of her arse and claims Dumbledore had Snape deliberately mess with Harry and Draco’s polyjuice potion way back at the beginning of Draco Dormiens, with the intention of them swapping bodies and gaining these psychic powers and—

THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

If Snape and Dumbledore knew about the bodyswap thing back in Draco Dormiens, why would they allow Lucius to take Harry back to Malfoy Manor, thinking he was Draco? Why wouldn’t Snape be keeping an eye on Draco all the time at Hogwarts? Surely, if the whole plan was to ensure they were best buddies in time to kill Voldemort, the safest and most responsible way to do that was with them both at Hogwarts, where Snape and Dumbledore could watch over them.

AAUUUGHHHH.

Well, whatever. Snape and Dumbledore say they have an antidote for Harry and Draco’s psychic connection, so they can separate and go back to being their own individuals again. This means Harry and Draco spend the next several pages angsting over their imminent separation.

Draco takes Harry to the bottomless pit from Draco Dormiens, and chucks his two epicyclical charms down it. I guess this is meant to be symbolic, but since the epicyclical charms did fuck all in this fic … meh. Then again, when you consider that Cassie’s username used to be “Epicyclical”, this scene has some frankly hilarious connotations.

So Seamus once again decides he’s too good for these assholes and fucks off, leaving Ginny and Draco to finally fucking get together again. Harry proposes to Hermione, and astoundingly, she shows half an ounce of common sense and tells him they’re too young for that bullshit. Also Ron and Blaise are a thing now. Apparently.

Ginny tosses the love potion away, and then finds out it was never a real love potion anyway. Harry and Draco refuse to take their antidotes, instead choosing to go on an EPIC PSYCHIC ROADTRIP.

And this monstrosity of a fic finally fucking ends when Harry and Draco stop off at Hogwarts so Draco can look in the Mirror of Erised, because Cassie is sodding obsessed with mirrors. He sees himself exactly as he already is.

So, overall thoughts?

It was shite. Godawful. This was a behemoth-sized fanfic of absolutely nothing sodding happening. Draco Veritas commits the worst sin any writing can commit. It’s BORING. Friendship drama can be fine and enjoyable, but not in a fic that’s meant to be an epic whirlwind fantasy adventure. By this point, I would expect the characters to have their shit together, but instead they’re bickering and falling out and weeping more than ever.

The first half is definitely the worst—so bad I almost gave up several times. In the second half, Cassie seems to realise the characters should be doing something by now, so she starts throwing in heists and kidnaps and Tom Riddles for conflict. But it’s all just swallowed up in more pointless, meandering drama. If anyone else reading this has waded through Draco Veritas, you’ll know what I mean when I say I’ve cut out over half the shit that happens in this fic to try and boil it down to an actual plot. Writing out this spork was like doing a fucking archaeological dig. “I know the good shit’s down here somewhere, but there’s about six meters of mud to shovel out before we can see it.”

I can’t believe Cassie Claire became a BNF on the back of this. I can’t believe she got a publishing deal and was a roaring success on the back of this. Accusations of plagiarism aside, the whole fic is just plain bad.

And honestly, as much fun as I had laughing at the Draco Trilogy, I’m glad I never have to read any of Cassie’s writing again.

Well … until I dig out that Ron/Ginny fanfic, anyway.

#draco veritas #draco trilogy #cassie claire #spork #harry potter

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artistic-writer · 7 years ago

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CS AU : The Perfect Proposal

Once Upon a Festive Giving Exchange 2017

Title: The Perfect Proposal [full res fanart] Summary: Killian Jones has an image of the perfect proposal in his head, the one way he will surely win over the woman he wants to give his heart to for the rest of his life. But will taking Emma on a five day break to the romantic, Austrian mountains help him find the courage and perfection he so desires? Rating: T Word count: 5089 - AO3 Author/Recipient: @artistic-writer for @pearlmackie AN: Written for @pearlmackie for this years Once Upon a Festive Giving Exchange 2017 - I hope i nailed all of the things you love about CS! This has been written for a while now, and i made the fanart first, but thought you would like two gifts, so wrote a little ficlet too! I know, I know, 5k isn’t exactly little but it is for me lol Have a glorious Christmas my lovely! <3 With special thanks to my lovely beta for this project, @winterbaby89 <3 <3

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Killian was ready. He had been ready for months, simply waiting for the right time. He had been carrying the tiny, velveteen box around with him, petrified that Emma would somehow discover it if he had left it at home. It was easy to hide really, Maine was one of those states that often lends itself to needing a coat of some kind, which means plenty of pockets and plenty of hiding places.

Only now, as he stands on top of one of the whitest snowy peaks he had ever seen, Killian was suddenly not ready.

This holiday had been a planned getaway after they had both decided they needed to unwind, and to just celebrate them. They had decided they needed some alone time, time to get away from everything, but as they had previously found out, it was rather difficult to ‘escape’ family. In the gentlest way he knew how, Killian had suggested to Emma that they leave America and holiday somewhere further away. Somewhere in Europe.

As it was Christmas, they had gone somewhere with snow. Following a quick internet search they had decided on a small, alpine retreat where they could indulge their fondness for skiing, in Austria. They chose a huge log cabin with an open plan living space and jaw dropping panoramic views of the white capped mountains around them from the floor to ceiling glass windows and a sun soaked balcony. Killian had never been to Austria before and the subtly placed cabin wasn’t even a distraction from the Dachstein Mountains around them.

The day they had arrived, they were both too exhausted to do anything but stoke a log fire, warm some cocoa on the stove and enjoy each other, wrapped up in a huge real fur blanket. The cabin owners had left them a short list of instructions on how to work everything, but they figured it could wait until they were warm and toasty. When they retired for the night, having lost the natural light of day early in the evening, Killian checked on the tiny black box he had smuggled across the ocean with a smile.

Their second day, Emma had wanted to explore the wooded area near by. So they had piled on clothes over their thermal base layers, and fumbled with the zips on their snow gear. The crackling fire was the only sound as Killian watched Emma pull a grey, woolen bobble hat down over her ears.

“What?” She smirked, catching him watching her.

Killian stepped towards her, closing the gap between them and pulling her into his arms. “Just admiring the view,” he smiled down at her, pressing his hand into the small of her back.

Emma rolled her eyes and relaxed into his embrace, swaying in his arms. “The windows are behind you,” she purred.

“I know,” Killian grinned boyishly, holding her eye contact. Emma’s eyes were the most dazzling shade of green with tiny flecks of amber littering the inner hues and if Killian didn’t know better, he would say the sparkle behind them was only for him.

“You old romantic,” Emma arched into him, flattening her palms over his chest with a smile that melts his heart. All of the self doubt he had previously experienced faded away the second Emma smiled up at him.

Once again, he was ready.

Only, things didn’t go exactly as he had hoped once they were actually outside. Emma had slipped, losing her footing on some ice and tumbled down a snow covered slope where she landed flat on her behind. It had kind of ruined the mood, so between laughing and scooping her up into his arms to carry her back to the cabin, Killian had decided that there would be more opportunities to tell the woman he loved how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

On the third day, Killian arranged for them to try their hand at mushing. They were both dog people, turning to blubbering messes at the sight of a puppy, so he figured that Emma would love the feel of being in control of a whole team. It was something he had also wanted to try, and after a few quick tutorials from the musher, they had decided to take it in turns to steer.

The sled was rickety, despite being made of some very strong yet lightweight wood, but it glided over the snow like it was a feather. The dogs pulled at their harnesses so hard that whilst she was sitting in the basket, Emma felt the front lift up, and briefly lost sight of the dogs. Snow churned up from their paws splattered over her face but she didn't mind, too lost in the exhilaration to care.

When it was time to switch positions once more, Killian halted the dogs at the end of a designated trail. They all stopped on his command, each dog’s tongue lolling to the side as they panted and sucked in the cold air between yelps of detest. Killian dropped the anchor, stamping on the two pronged metal spike until it was buried under the snow, then made his way from the back of the sled.

The snow came up to back of Killian’s knees, cooling his lower limbs instantly and he sucked in a deep breath with the shock. When he reached the side of the sled he offered an outstretched hand to Emma and pulled her to her feet.

“That was amazing,” Emma breathed, stepping over the edge of the sled and gasping at the sudden cold enveloping her feet. Even through her boots her feet felt the chill of the snow compacting around them.

Killian brushed some speckles of unmelted snow from her face with his mitten covered hand and when he knew she was steady on her feet, rubbed his hands up and down her arms to try and put some warmth back into her. He had noticed Emma’s chin begin to quiver as her teeth chattered together, so he pulled her tight against his chest.

“I knew you would like this,” Killian told her softly, squeezing her tightly and pressing his lips to the tip of her nose.

“OH!” Emma squeaked, pulling back. “Your lips are cold!” She laughed.

Killian raised an eyebrow. “Well, I have been on the receiving end of the wind for twenty minutes,” he laughed with her.

“And now you get to warm up in the basket on the ride back,” Emma beamed, hooking her arms back under his and pulling him back to her. Killian tucked her under his chin, the stubble on his jaw catching in the wool of her hat.

“I’m alright,” Killian told her as he watched the moon join the low sun in the sky behind her. “It’s getting late. If you want to ride on the sled on the way back, I don’t mind.”

“Oh no,” Emma pushed him back and shook her head. “Stop.”

“What?” Killian chuckled, stepping after her as she walked backwards.

Emma halted him with her own mitten covered hand and narrowed her eyes. “The ch...chivalry,” she shivered.

“Chivalry?” Killian asked innocently.

Emma waved her arm around, ignoring the pain in her muscles from the dropping temperature. “You think you can just charm your way into having another turn as musher,” Emma smirked and stepped back again.

Killian mirrored her smirk. “Seems you have caught me, love,” he said softly.

Emma smiled just before she fell backwards, having tripped on an unseen root beneath the snow. Killian was unable to grab her in time and Emma landed in the deepest pile of snow he had ever seen with a muffled oomph. He couldn’t help but laugh at the sounds she made as she struggled to free herself from the packed snow.

“Killian!” Emma squealed at him as he laughed, clutching his middle from the spasming pain radiating out from his diaphragm. “Killian Jones, help me!” She groaned in frustration, grabbing his hand tightly.

“Alright, alright,” he clutched her hand, before stepping backwards pulling her free of the snow cavern, brushing a dusting of it from her as she stood in front of him. “Are you okay, love?”

“I’m fine,” Emma huffed.

“Are you sure?” Killian dipped his head so that he could catch her gaze, brushing hair from her forehead and pulling her hat back down over her ears when her body betrayed her words and began trembling with shivers once more. Emma looked up into his eyes, the twinkle in them outshining any star in the sky. He loved her more than he could say; unconditionally, with honesty, and absolute certainty that she loved him back just as much.

“I’m fine,” Emma repeated, narrowing her eyes. “And I’ll be just fine mushing these dogs back to town,” she glared at him, unable to contain her twitch of a smile.

“Oh,” Killian smiled when she had worked out his plan, well, part of it. Killian had wanted to tuck her back into the sled basket and begin their journey back to the cabin, stopping half way as the moon rose in the sky to replace the sun. It was then that he planned to drop to one knee, show her the ring he had been hoarding for so long, and ask her to marry him. But if she figured he just wanted a second turn, he would let her think that to keep his secret.

“You forget, Jones, I know you better than anyone else,” Emma chided, stomping back to the waiting sled. The dogs sensed the return of their musher, jumping at the end of their ropes, barking and squeaking at each other in anticipation.

Killian watched her with a swell of love in his heart, even if she had thwarted his plans to propose once more. It wasn’t Emma’s fault, and she wasn’t even aware of what he was doing, but with the holiday already half way done, he was running out of time.

“Aye, love,” Killian smirked, smacking his hands together and rubbing them together furiously. “You do.”

The fourth day had been one they decided to spend in the cabin. After all, what good was a holiday if there was no resting involved? Killian woke before Emma, as usual, padding barefoot to the kitchen to brew some coffee. He knew Emma well enough to know that she wouldn’t even get out of bed without the aroma of roasted coffee filling her nostrils.

Once the kettle was filled and set atop the gas fuelled hob, the blue flame licking at the underside of the cast iron pot, Killian moved to the lounge. He knelt down in front of the open fireplace and used one of the nearby tools to poke around at the ash that had been left from the night before. Killian scooped it carefully into the provided ash bucket before restocking the cavity with dried logs. Killian tutted to himself. There were only two logs left which meant he would have to go outside and chop more, as per the owner’s instructions.

With a grunt he pushed himself to his feet, heading back to the bedroom to grab some clothes. Peeking around the doorframe, Killian noticed Emma was still asleep, so he made sure not to make a sound as he got dressed. The kettle began to whistle from the kitchen and with wide eyes, he almost ran from the bedroom to stop the shrill sound before it woke Emma. Killian wrenched the knob that turned the gas off and the kettle stopped its whistle, the sound dying off and just silent steam pouring from the spout.

Shooting a glance over his shoulder, Killian froze, waiting for any indication that Emma was awake. When he was met with silence, he moved to the couch and fell into the seat, leaning forward to pull his heavy snow boots from under the coffee table where they had been drying by the fire from the day before. Killian pulled them on one at a time, rising to his feet and heading for the door.

Emma was pulled from the pleasantness of slumber by a dull, rhythmic thumping. It echoed in her head, in sync with the heartbeat in her ears, and she focused on the thumping, to drown out the sound of silence. Was she still dreaming? Was there a woodpecker tapping on the inside of her brain? With a foggy haze clouding her cognitive ability, Emma could only groan as she rolled over to find Killian’s side the of the bed cold and empty.

Emma peeled an eye open, pressing her face into the cool edge of the pillow with a frown. The noise continued, and as she rubbed at her eyes, it grew louder. The silence outside was broken by a thud and a splitting noise time and time again, and finally, Emma could take no more. She simply had to find out what was going on and where the noise was coming from.

Throwing back the huge, thick comforter, Emma was instantly hit with the chill of the room. The room was cold, the usually comfortable warmth in the air missing and as soon as her feet touched the floor, Ema shivered. Why was it so cold? Where was Killian? Meanwhile, the thumping continued, so Emma pushed herself to her feet and followed the sound, grabbing her jacket and throwing her arms into the sleeves along the way.

“Killian?” She called, peering around the wall that lead to the kitchen area. He wasn’t there, but the noise was louder. Emma noticed Killian’s snow boots were missing and that the fire was out. That would explain why it was so cold in the cabin, and with a smirk, Emma realised what the repetitive thudding actually was and immediately headed towards the back door.

Emma wrapped her arms around herself, the jacket she was wearing rustling. She was still in her pajamas bottoms so her jacket looked oversized, but it was keeping her warm as she approached the balcony. What she saw warmed her instantly, setting the love in her heart afire and making her lips twitch sideways into a smile.

Killian was chopping wood, repeatedly lifting half logs onto an old tree stump and swinging a razor sharp axe until the logs split in two. He was sweating, tiny beads littering his brow that glistened in the morning sunlight. Tiny wisps of evaporating hotness wafted up from his hair and neck, his coat long since discarded under the heat of his exertions. He took a breather, straightening up with a wince and exhaling a long, visible breath.

“Can’t you chop that wood faster?” Emma teased, leaning her elbows on the snow covered railing. “It’s freezing in here.”

Killian whipped his head toward her voice, a smile erupting on his face. He let the axe slip between his fingers until the head hit the ground beside his boot and leaned against it with a cocky grin. “Aye? I hadn’t noticed,” Killian winked, kicking a tuft of snow in front of his foot.

Emma raised an eyebrow and felt a shiver run up her spine. “It’s cold out here too,” she said softly, her teeth chattering. “Come back inside.”

Killian lifted the axe again, swinging it hard until the head hit the tree stump. He quickly gathered some of his split logs, bundling them into his arms and heading back towards the cabin. Emma smirked as he approached, leaning over the handrail a little more with a pout, eagerly awaiting his lips on hers.

Killian walked right up to the balcony, pressed his lips to Emma’s and hummed contently against her lips. Emma’s hands were cold on his cheeks and he gasped when she slid her chilled fingertips to the back of his hot neck, relishing the way she giggled when he made a very unmanly yelp. “You only want my body warmth, love,” Killian smirked, his eyebrow jumping up on his face.

“Oh, you got me,” Emma rolled her eyes.

“Come on sweet,” Killian nudged his head sideways and reluctantly pulled his head from her grasp. “Let’s get you warm.”

Once Killian had successfully stoked the fire with Emma sitting on the nearby couch in her pajamas, he pushed himself to his feet and turned to face her. He offered her a warming smile and moved to join her, his heavy woollen socks moving silently across the floor. Killian dropped into the seat next to her and when he lifted his arm, Emma instinctively pressed herself to him. Killian rubbed a hand up and down her arm, pulling her tighter to him and turning his head to kiss to top of her head.

“There, that’s better,” he mumbled into her hair, inhaling her sweet scent.

“Mmmm,” Emma hummed contently, clutching harder at Killian’s sweater.

“Miss me, love?” He smiled down at her.

“Always,” Emma whispered into the fabric of his sweater.

The tightness in Killian’s chest became more apparent and he felt the prickle of nervous heat flush over his body. He stared into the fire, watching the flames flicker and the wood pop and char. Emma’s one word admission was like a trigger, setting Killian’s heart fluttering in his chest and suddenly reminding him that he had a very important question to ask.

“Are you okay?” Emma asked, shaking him from his daydream when she got no response.

“Aye, love,” Killian said nervously, pulling himself from her grasp. “I’ll be right back. I just need to use the little boy’s room,” he smiled at her, pressing his lips to her cheek for a quick kiss. Emma looked confused for a second, but Killian assured her he would be right back, and that it was simply the cold weather bringing on the call of nature.

As soon as Killian was in the bedroom, he scrambled around in the top drawer of the bureau where he had left the ring box, grabbed it and rushed into the en suite bathroom. Was he having a panic attack? His breath caught in his throat and Killian clutched at his chest, flattening his palm over his heart that was thundering in his ribcage. He gripped at the edge of the sink, his hands shaking as he stared at the box in front of him. Taunting him.

Why was this so hard? Killian had been in possession of the ring for so many months he was almost annoyed with himself for buying it in the first place. Emma was not a material person. She wouldn’t care if he had a ring or not, and all he cared about was that she was happy. Was she happy? Emma seemed happy, so would giving her a ring change anything?

Killian lifted his head and stared at the reflection facing him. “Come on, Jones,” he growled at himself. “You can do this. She will say yes. Stop being such a bloody coward.” He took a deep breath, nodding to his reflection and swiped the ring box off of the vanity.

The only sound Killian heard when he re-entered the room was the crackling of the fire. He was gripped with fear when he couldn’t see Emma anywhere. He rushed to the couch and felt relief wash over him when he saw her blonde locks poking out from underneath the blanket that covered her. Killian relaxed instantly, moving around to the front of the couch and kneeling down in front of Emma’s sleeping form.

She had fallen asleep, maybe from delayed jet lag, but considering they only had a few days left of their holiday, Killian decided to let her sleep. Tomorrow they would go skiing, and when they were back at the cabin once more, Killian was sure he would find his opportunity to propose. The perfect moment would arise, he was sure of it, but for now he would let Emma sleep. Emma whimpered in her sleep, before sighing deeply. The blanket had slipped from her shoulders and a few wayward strands of her hair fell over her face.

“Maybe next time,” Killian whispered so softly his voice was barely audible as he pushed Emma’s hair from her face. He reached out and tucked the blanket back under her chin, running the back of his knuckles over the apple of her cheek and mirroring her smile when Emma’s lips twitched.

The fifth and final day of their holiday was filled with skiing, and lots of it. Killian had never been so exhausted in all of his life, never realising how much of a tremendous effort it actually took to stay upright on skis. They had attended a short instruction seminar earlier, but then they were free to roam the slopes as much as they liked. And Emma liked. A lot.

“Are you not tired, love?” Killian huffed, digging his ski poles into the snow on either side of his bright red skis.

“No!” Emma squeaked excitedly, pushing off the the snow in front of him and heading back up the incline of the hill. “This is so much fun!”

They had found a quiet, out of the way slope and were enjoying having it all to themselves. Emma, the more confident skier, effortlessly sailing down the white covering time and time again whilst Killian, the more cautious, took his time walking sideways and checking the density of the snow underfoot. Emma had laughed at him, throwing her head back and giving him the open mouth smile that caused familiar palpitations in his chest.

There was something about Emma Swan that made Killian Jones want to hold onto her forever. He was sure it was more than love, even greater than true love, but as he had never felt it before, he was both amazed and petrified by how she could make him feel. There were so many little things that culminated into one giant burning ball of endearment that was sometimes so overwhelming, Killian simply froze. Like now, as Emma glided over the alpine snow towards him, skidding to a stop in slow motion right before him, the sun radiating around her form like an Angel sent to guide him.

Killian was so lost in his awe of Emma that he almost missed the polarized flash of another skier as he came hurtling down the slope towards them. The other skier was clearly inexperienced, losing his footing and almost tripping over his own skis. He called out, digging his ski poles into the snow behind him but it was to no avail.

“Emma, watch out!” Killian screamed, pushing Emma aside and taking the full impact of the wayward skier. The man, clad in an all white tracksuit which was ridiculous for skiing, tumbled into Killian with such a force that both men were sent hurtling further down the slope and into a safety barrier at the bottom of the hill.

“Killian!” Emma cried, sliding after them in a slow side to side descent. Her heart pounded in her chest and the chill in the cheeks prickling with heat and panic.

Killian was in a heap, knocked out completely by the impact. Before Emma had even got to his side, resort paramedics were by his side, taking off his one remaining ski and assessing him for injuries. Miraculously he was mostly unhurt, the soft snow having absorbed most of the impact from the collision, but they would take him to the nearest hospital anyway.

“He is not sedated but we gave him something strong for the pain…”

“He has a lot of bruising…”

“He is a lucky man…”

The voices in Killian’s head were, as it turned out, not fake as he had first suspected. He was just coming around from the accident, and the pounding in his temple was proof of that. The glow of light from the room cast a dull red over the inside of his eyelids and he could feel warm fingertips on the side of his face, easing the tension in his muscles.

“Swan?” He croaked, not opening his eyes but moving his eyeballs around under his eyelids frantically.

“I’m right here,” Emma soothed and Killian felt her clutch at his hand.

“Are you alright?” He rasped, coughing a little and wincing from the pain that shot through his chest. He finally peeled an eye open and saw Emma sitting beside his bed. He didn’t know how he had arrived in said bed, or this room, but he recognised it unmistakably as a hospital.

Emma let out a small relieved laugh, expelling all of the pent up emotions she had been fighting to hold back. She surged forward, planting her lips on his so hard he thought she might knock his teeth out. Killian fought the scorching pain in his muscles as lifted his own arm, cupping Emma’s cheek and smoothing his thumb over the swell of her cheek. Emma’s lips trembled against his, as her hot, fat tears soaked both of them.

“Are you alright?” Killian repeated when Emma finally pulled her lips from his and rested her forehead on his.

“Killian…” she sobbed. Chastising him with one single word, his name, that told him so much all at once. Emma rolled her forehead against his, letting the panic she had been feeling escape in the form of more tears.

“I’m alright,” Killian smiled weakly, brushing her tears away with the back of his knuckles.

“They said you could have been seriously hurt,” Emma choked out between sobs.

“But I was not,” Killian told her softly.

“Even the thought of losing you made me feel so cold and empty,” Emma continued, her sobs catching in her throat.

Killian cupped her face in both of his hands until she was forced to look him in the eyes. The bright green hue of Emma’s eyes was watered down with the salt of her tears, dulled by her shock and fear. It had never been like Emma to open up so freely, even in the face of losing somebody that she loved, and Killian loved her even more for it.

“I’m not going anywhere, love,” He smiled at her with a raised eyebrow. “Do you really think you can get rid of me that easily?”

Emma laughed at his teasing, pulling from his grasp to grab a tissue from the table beside the bed. As she did, she spotted Killian’s belonging that had been placed inside a clear, plastic ziplock bag when they had removed most of his clothing. Emma spied a small, square box and stopped breathing.

“Yes,” She breathed quickly, looking back to Killian with wide eyes and a tear stained face.

“Oh, well, in that case…” Killian frowned.

“No, Killian,” Emma shook her head and grabbed the bag. She set it down on the bed and when Killian realised what she was looking at, and what “yes” meant, he paled. Emma fished in the bag and pulled out the box, holding it between them with a gasp. “I mean, Yes,” Emma nodded.

“Oh,” He breathed, the word nothing more than a sound on his breath. “About that…” Killian rubbed the back of his neck nervously, letting his finger linger behind his earlobe.

“This is what I think it is, right?” Emma gulped, lifting her gaze briefly before opening the box and looking down at the ring inside. Killian had decided on a plain white gold band with a white diamond set on top, and when Emma saw it she snapped the box closed nervously.

“Well, yes,” Killian admitted. “But I have been trying for months to find the right time to… you know, ask you properly.”

Emma watched Killian fidget like a scolded child that had been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. “Months?” Emma sounded hurt.

Killian watched the spark fade from Emma’s eyes once more and he swallowed the dry lump in his throat. “I just wanted it to be perfect,” he sighed, looking down at his lap as his top teeth fiddled nervously with a patch of beard hair below his bottom lip. When he looked back up to Emma, he was surprised to see she had dropped to the floor and pulled the box open once more, only now it was facing him and the glow in her emerald eyes was back. “Emma, what are you…”

“Killian Jones, will you marry me?”

The slacked jawed expression he gave her seemed to only spur her on to continue.

“Killian Jones, you are many things. I have never met such a handsome, talented, caring individual in all my life. Everybody loves you. Everyone thinks we are one of those couples that can never remember their anniversary because they simply feel like they have been together forever, so a little date is irrelevant…”

“It’s September 19th…” Killian smirked.

“Shut up,” Emma glared, trying to hide her grin. “The truth is, we, well some of us, are just not bogged down with the unimportant things in our lives. What is important is having somebody in your corner, someone to help you find your way…”

Killian reached out and clutched Emma’s hand when her tears began to flow once more. Emma quickly turned her head and wiped the tears on her shoulder, the tiny box shaking when her hands began quivering. “You are my person, Killian. There is no right time for something like this, you just have to know when the universe is perfectly aligned for two stars to collide forever. You are the light in my darkness, the… the…” Emma faltered.

“The peas to your carrots, love,” Killian smiled and Emma laughed.

“Stop ruining my proposal with your Britishness,” she feigned annoyance until he apologised with a bow of his head. “What I am trying to say…”

“Yes,” Killian interrupted her quickly, squeezing her hand. “Emma Swan, I will bloody well marry you.”

Emma launched herself into Killian’s arms, mindful of his bruises as she peppered kisses all over his face. Killian took the box from her hand and pulled the ring free from its foam security, aligning the white gold circle with Emma’s finger and slipping it on. When it fit, mostly intuition on his part, Killian had never felt more connected with anyone in his entire life.

“This was not how I had this planned,” he told her softly, pressing his lips to hers once more.

“You can’t plan for perfection,” Emma beamed, stroking her fingers through his scruff.

“Aye, love,” Killian agreed, pulling her into his arms. “That you cannot.”

#cs au #cs fluff #a little angst #once upon a festive giving 2017 #gift exchange #killian jones #emma swan #cs ff #cs fic #cs fanfic #pearlmackie

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