#for that vague reference to what his hand touched in that hole forever ago

[erenozturk]

setting: the campgrounds, night one

featuring: eren öztürk & jo parker @deputyjparker

His life was no fairy tale, but if it truly had been then Eren’s story would have started simple: Once Upon A Time there was a boy who fell in a hole. Ridiculously sounding at first, until the event which would end up defining his entire existence had been outlined. An event which he had tried to blink away from the hazy corners of his mind as they’d been driving through wooded areas towards the massive clearing for the final exercise of this whole event. Eren had spent decades of his life trying to forget that moment, the tumbling forward over his own bicycle into the murky depths, scraping his knees and elbows, trying to feel around for purchase, only for the deafening squelch as his hand settled into something soft and decaying. He had to swallow down bile at the thought, covertly taking a large swallow from his water bottle and hoping no telepath could hear it as he silently smoldered and reminisced. The last thing he needed was a panic attack where the whole town may see.

Perhaps that was why he’d been so damn surly during all of it. Anger flaring at the “sleeping arrangements” he and his partner had been securing, the only comfortable option for such a low ranking team that ensured they both slept decently without having to explore the potential of accidental touching being stolen away by some douchebag of a witch who by the way was too fucking tall for the sleeping bags anyway. This was asinine, this was messed up, this was—

It's a cruel (Cruel), cruel summer Leaving me here on my own

He liked the way Bananarama put it, the song blaring in his ears as he went about setting up for the night. Perhaps it was karma, for having dealt a somewhat cruel hand to a fellow fae with their own situation during the whole swap and steal mess of the game, but Eren found himself trying to craft a makeshift bed out of what he’d brought for himself beside the weird sack which he unceremoniously dumped on his partner. Perhaps it wasn’t as kind a gesture as it could seem — gentlemanly, because of course the ghost of his mother haunted him and told him he needed to take care of anyone else he was with more than himself, but there was also an odd sort of dynamic between local law enforcement and private investigators. A weird sort of camaraderie that also gave way to some level of animosity and rivalry at times. So he offered Jo the bivy sack while he neatly folded up the jacket and extra long sleeve he brought along for the two night camping, creating a sort of pillow to layer over his duffel and then laying out his unseasonal trench coat he took with him everywhere as a sort of “mattress” to lay on. Perfect by no means, but it would suffice.

Arriving back sometime later from the bathrooms, toothbrush still sticking out of his mouth and the nightwear combo of a potentially surprising white short sleeved t shirt and less shocking joggers, (because he’d been boiling all day in his layers and perhaps needed the cool night air on his skin to calm) Eren settled down onto his makeshift bed, flattening his leather gloves before carefully placing them between his folded clothes pillow and the duffle. Shaking his fingers out, flexing the digits that had been choked all day in their comfort confines, he turned then to the sack which was a few feet away and lifted his chin in an acknowledgement nod towards Deputy Parker. “Are you settling in fine?” He asked, words soft and expressing a sort of care though his tone was painted in his frustration with the whole thing. He was spraying his bare arms, the sleeves extra short and hugging his shoulders, with big repellent and had his head phones around his neck, volume up enough to hear the low hum of his music, but not enough to fully register the words. Eren stopped the casette player a moment later, digging out the tapes he’d brought along and flipping through to find a calming music mixtape he had made a while back for anxiety inducing moments such as this, shoving it into the Walkman and placing his small collection back into the duffle but not playing it just yet. “I���m sorry I didn’t spring for something better, but I assumed off that hiking pack that you may potentially be used to some level of roughing it while camping?” And at least it was ground level, as he could originally tell with one of their other options that the deputy disliked heights.

[peakyblinderswhore]

DAY 3 ⇨ MATRESS ANGELS 

GENRE: Christmas!au, Fluff I’m a fucking liar, Smut, 18+ only.

PAIRING: Michael x Reader

SYNOPSIS: Michael and yourself weren’t exclusive but strictly speaking, you did spend an awful amount of time together that certainly suggested that you were. Spending the night at Polly’s on Christmas Eve would only make this assumption more valid. On the assumption that you are exclusive, Polly offers up one of her rooms... with one bed. What are two, young, hormone-filled adults going to do with just one bed?

W/C: 3.4k

WARNINGS: it’s fucking dirty, yo. swearing, oral (m + f receiving), cunnilingus, fingering, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it!), degradation kink(?), hair pulling, spit is used as lubrication (it’s the 1920′s, c’mon), it doesn’t really have anything to do with christmas, pwp, it’s the dirtiest shit i’ve ever written, tiny tiny overstimulation, dom!michael, sub!reader ig, sex, sex, more sex, uh that’s it i think

A/N: to that one anon who always asked me for michael smut. yeah. you know who you are. i’m not sure if i’m writing this out of anger or to please you. bruh i love you fr fr though. in the heat of the moment i actually wrote something. lol hats off to you though.

cross posted onto ao3 here

“Michael, there’s only one bed,” you whisper to him.

He hums, “Mum must’ve had an inkling about us. I can sleep downstairs if you want,” he offers, raising an eyebrow.

The two of you were spending Christmas at Polly’s as per your suggestion in her townhouse out in the countryside. To be fair, you had mentioned it in passing after Polly had mentioned that she would have more than enough room for Michael to stay for the eve of Christmas and to be there the morning of to save journey time. He had winced and his hand that rested on your lower back firmed, he didn’t know how to reply and you could sense that through the thin material of your dress. 

“I don’t know, Mum, I was going to do my rounds with Y/N.”

Polly’s eyes had lingered over Michael’s hand that rested on your back but only momentarily, you had noticed this but pretended not to when you said, “Well, I was only going to visit Michael... if you don’t mind me staying the night too I’d be more than happy to make up for the burden.”

That was two weeks ago. And here you were, staring at the bed. The singular bed. The only bed in the room. At least it was a double.

“It’s okay,” you say, referring to his offer of sleeping elsewhere, “we’re adults. We can share one bed.”

Michael perches on the end of the bed and takes off his shoes, opting for something more comfortable, while you lay down on the other side, arms spread out wide, trying to think of something to say to keep the conversation going and to stop your mind from wandering.

“Let’s make snow angels!”

“Pardon?”

“I said,” you reiterate, pushing yourself up on an elbow to look at Michael peering over his shoulder at you, “let’s make snow angels!”

“How old are you?” although his comment doesn’t hurt as his grin widens on his face as he shifts his body to face you properly, “plus,” he begins, “It’s a mattress, much less, er, snow than what we would need.”

“...Mattress angels?”

Michael’s eyes suddenly darken and he makes his way to crawl towards you, I know what we could do...” his voice trails off and his fingers circle the skin where your dress finished suggestively.

“Michael!” Your face heats up form the suggestion, mortified that he would want to do something that dirty with Polly just a few doors down, “Polly, your Mother,” you emphasise, “is only a few doors down.”

He shrugs his shoulders and smirks, “Worried she might hear you?”

You snap your legs shut and sit up abruptly, startling him and forcing him to sit back again, “She’s not going to hear us because it’s not happening.”

Michael pulls back, not one to push you into somehting that you didn’t want to do, “Alright,” he moves on with the conversation, “Mum said we can go down for a late night snack or join her for a drink in a few.”

“Sounds good,” you say, thankful for Michael respecting your wishes, “I’ll slip something a little more comfortable on, then.”

Downstairs, Polly was passed out on the settee, a glass resting on the arm of her chair, her head resting on the back of her chair, lightly snoring. She had mentioned something earlier about being busy last night and the morning following it on. You smile and Michael chuckles, “We wouldn’t have had anything to worry about.”

You press a soft kiss to his lips, “This is nice though.”

“It is,” he presses a kiss back, kissing you slowly like he’s trying to savour every second he can to the fullest. His hands are resting on your hips, mindlessly rubbing circles with his thumbs whilst yours hang loosely around his neck, fingers scratching at the bottom of his hairline.

The fire crackled in the background as you and Michael continued to deepen the kiss, devouring each other as you began licking into the other’s mouth, tasting the wine that Michael had with his dinner earlier on. It gave him an intoxicating feel, making you want to taste this forever, his musk filling your senses and his fingers trailing your waist, contemplating whether or not to go much further. When Michael pulled away and rested his forehead against yours, he looked down to where his hands rested before flitting up to meet your gaze. His mouth was hung open, drinking in all the air that he couldn’t get moments ago.

“We should stop, you didn’t want to earlier and I’m afraid that if we continue I won’t be able to stop.”

Your eyes fill with lust, he notices but waits for you to say the word, “She is asleep,” you manage to whisper, still praying that she’s fast asleep adn far from waking up anytime soon.

“You can’t take it back if you say it.”

“I know...” you bring your lower lip between your teeth and bring your fingers to face, cupping his cheeks, you say, “take me upstairs, Michael.”

His mouth finds yours and he pushes your mouth open with a swipe of his tongue, moulding your mouths together as his hands wrap underneath your thighs. You obediently jump, locking your ankles behind his back and he holds you up by your ass. He doesn’t open his eyes as he walks up the stairs, sure you should’ve been worried but his mouth was much more captivating at this precise moment in time.

Before you knew it, you were being laid out on the singular bed in your room that you were staying in. Michael let go, kicking off his slippers and unbuttoning the top of his shirt. When he connects your mouths again, it’s a clash of teeth and tongues and your hands instantly reach for the warmth underneath his shirt. His hand reaches behind your head and pulls at the pins holding your hair together before throwing them in the vague direction of the dresser that had become home to your limited luggage.

You had locked your legs around his waist again, aching for the feeling of his hard cock against your heated core, praying for some kind of friction that would relieve your need for him. His hands rested either side of your head, slowly crawling onto the bed to meet you level with him.

At this, you arched up, pulling your hand from his shoulder and slipping off your robe and pushing it to fall off of the bed and then reach to unbutton his shirt all the way and throw it on the floor with your robe. This meant Michael was half naked but you still had a slip on. He lifted a hand and wrapped his fingers around your throat, pulling you up to meet his tongue and to see how far he could get his tongue before you whined, like you usually did.

Whimpering, Michael smiled at your vocal plead to move on, unravelling his fingers from your throat and connecting his lips to your neck, wanting to see how far he could get you without touching you.

He bites and licks at your neck, enough to make your eyes roll and your nerves to tingle, making your fingers curl in his hair, tugging from the pleasure. You breathe heavily against his ear and push him away from your neck, unbuckling his belt with eager fingers, but as you were about to push his trousers down to his thighs, he stops you and presses a firm kiss to your lips.

“Let me,” he whispers against your mouth, “just...” his voice fades away as he lowers his head to your perk nipples, showing evidently through the incredibly thin slip you were wearing. Without a second to spare, he latches his teeth to your nipple, lightly pulling them, making you fidget from the sensitivity you were currently experiencing. Then, he circles his tongue on your areola thorugh the fabric, leaving a wet patch before capturing your breast in his mouth.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, Michael...” your head rolls, “I’m begging you to fuck me... like you mean it.”

Grunting, he pushes his trousers down and kicks them off, obediently, not wanting to miss this moment, either, “I fucking love you so much right now.”

You lift your head to view his figure. His eyes were ravaging your body as he thought about what to do next. You grasped the bottom of your slip and pulled it over your body and reached a hand down to acknowledge your throbbing pussy.

“Oh fuck, that’s hot.”

You giggle, “Do something about it then, won’t you,” you pout and put on the best puppy eyes you can, “please?”

Immediately, his tongue swirls over each of your taut nipples and down your stomach, loops your belly button and nudges through your pubic hair to your clitoris. His lips attach and suck for dear life, making you let out the girthiest moan you’d ever heard from your own body, making you slap you hand over your mouth as Michael continued, refusing to let up. He reaches a hand below your leg, hooking it over his shoulder and bringing his hand around it to rest on your inner thigh to hold it in place. His other hand runs along your folds, teasing you. He halts briefly to push his fingers past your soft lips, lubricating them with your saliva before bringing them back down and pushes one slowly into your hole. 

“Tell me... use your words with me,” he growls against your clit.

His tongue doesn’t leave your clit, swiping his tongue from your hole to your clit and mimics the tongue twister you had joking taught him one time.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you breathe out in breathy moans just as he pushes a second finger into your pussy, meaning that you were now barely able to string together a coherent sentence. It was more than enough feedback for him, what with your fingers tightening around the strands of hair you had in your fists, he responded to everything your body was telling him. “You like that, baby? Huh?” His eyes flick up to watch as you begin to fall apart, breathing heavy and eyes unfocused.

“Y-yes.”

Still pushing his fingers in and out of you, he continues feeling around for the spot that he knew was nearby -- he was no stranger to your body this intimately.

“How about this, then?”

He lifts his head from your throbbing pussy and lets his hand that was locked around your thigh move to rub calculated circles over your clit. He spits onto his fingers as they continue to move in and out to allow an easier slide.

At this point, his fingers hit the spot and your body arches, lifting away from the bed, “Th-there, don’t... s-stop.”

Now knowing where he was aiming for, he allows his fingers to move at a faster pace and lets his thumb rub harder circles into your clit. He bends his head down to lick stripes into your pussy wherever he could, occasionally lifting his thumb to switch for his tongue and vice versa, pushing you to the edge.

“Yes, Michael, yes!”

He  switches his fingers for his tongue, pushing in and out of your entrance, wanting to taste you.

“Wanna taste you,” he says, “can you do that for me, baby?”

You bite your lip and nod, “Mhmm.”

His thumb continues its attack on your clitoris and within seconds your coming apart on his face. Micahel laps up your release on his tongue and helps you ride out your high.

When your body relaxes and your fingers uncench his hair his lifts his head, lips glistening from your arousal, “You taste so fucking sweet.”

Ignoring him, you pull his face up to yours and begin to kiss him sloppily, mind still foggy from your orgasm only moments ago. You smile at the taste of yourself still fresh on his lips and reach a hand down between the two of you to address the, ahem, third member present in the room.

Michael moans as your fingertips brush lightly across the strained material of his underwear, over his erect cock.

“Your turn,” you mumble, “wanna make you cum.”

Tucking your fingers under the band of his underwear, you push them down to his knees and push at his chest lightly, making him lay back so you could pull them off all the way. The soon got lost in the jumble of clothes piling up on the floor.

Swinging your hair over your shoulder, you thumb lightly at the head of his cock, swiping the moisture that had gathered and spreading it before circling your fingers around his rock hard cock and pumping it a couple of times.

Michael bites his lip, holding back a low groan, “Suck,” he demands.

Willingly, you grin and wrap your lips around the head and swirl your tongue around the tip. You begin to gradually push his dick further into your mouth, flattening your tongue on the underside of his dick and humming. Bobbing your head up and down, Michael knots your hair around his fist and helps you maintain your rhythm. “Y/N, just like that,” he groans out. You let your hand travel down to your pussy and to play with your clit, getting off on Michael’s moans dancing through the air like a sweet lullaby to your sinning ears.

“Greedy slut,” he says, grinning, “can’t wait for your second orgasm when I haven’t even had one?”

You stop toying with your clit and decide to see just how far you could take his cock in your throat and hollow your cheeks. At this, you could practically feel it twitch in your mouth. You press your hands onto his thighs to balance yourself as you lower your head until your nose is nudging the hair at the base of his cock. He lets out an almighty growl as he strains himself, not wanting to buck into your mouth but you moan at the feel of him and he fucks into your mouth, cock hitting the back of your throat and tears filling your eyes from the stinging.

“Fucking hell...” he moans out.

You lift your head and bring one hand to the base of his cock, squeezing at different pressures before lifting your lips from his cock and releasing it with a pop. You wipe the tears with the back of your free hand.

Michaels head lifts to meet your eyes. You smile, saliva dribbling down your chin, “Good?”

His eyes darken at the question, “Do that again and I might cum down your throat.”

Your eyes squint at the challenge and you drop your head to lick a stripe from the base of his cokc to the tip, making him shiver from the pleasure but before you could drop your lips to his cock again his hand grips at your neck, “Not today, baby. I need to fuck you.”

He pulls you up and goes to flip you but you quickly blurt, “Can I be on top?”

“Fuck yes, you can.”

He helps you up to hover above his erect penis. You grip it tightly and guide it towards your entrance before sinking down onto it.

“Oh, Michael,” you groan at the girth of his dick, pushing your pussy open.

“Y/N how are you so fucking tight?”

You laugh a little, the sting of the stretch of his dick stopping you halfway and settle on resting your hands on his chest, “Why don’t you fuck me more often?” You counter.

Michael’s eyes darken more — if that’s even possible — and lifts you off his dick almost entirely before slamming into you, making you whine.

“Like that?”

“Yes,” you whimper.

You move forward to rest on your elbows, the sting subsiding from the stretch and begin to move your hips in a swiveling motion, not wanting Michael to abolish your pussy before you’d even started.

“Such a fucking tease.”

You clench your pussy around him, loving the jolt of pleasure that ran through your body at his comment, “Oh, shit.”

“You like that? You dirty little slut, soaking my dick for me.”

Meeting your swivels, Michael sets the pace, thrusting up and everytime you bit back a moan from echoing against the walls.

“Michael,” you whimper out, making him throw his head back and growl at your needy self.

You try to force Michael to go slower but he only ghosts his fingers across your clit, rubbing vicious circles into it. Your head falls forward and you groan as he grunts with every thrust.

He was forcing you to edge quicker than you would’ve liked but the high outweighed any con your fuzzy brain could muster up when the pleasure Micahael was inducing soared through your pussy and to the coil in your stomach, slowly tightening the more he did it.

“Michael, s-so close...”

At this he pulls out and flips you so you’re on your hands and knees and he’s behind you, lining up his cock with your centre and sinking in, once again met with the warmth of your velvety walls.

He slams into you, once again and continues to pound at the same speed, making every thrust harder than the last, somehow reaching further than the last time.

“Hold it for me, baby, can you do that for me?”

You whimper in response, already so close as it is and not sure how much longer you can fend it off.

Michael grips your hair and pulls you back so you arch up and your back meets his chest, “I asked a question, can you do that?”

“Yes. Fuck me, Michael.”

“Good, little slut.”

You clench at that and he lets go of your hair, stabilising himself by gripping your hips hard enough that there would probably be finger-shaped bruises but you didn’t care — not when he was pounding into you, hitting your spot just right, “Right, there, Michael, I’m so fucki—”

He sneaks a hand round to rub circles in your clit and lets the other grab a handful of boob, squeezing and kneading it as much as he wants.

“Good girl, I’m so close, almost there, now.”

You whine, his fingers getting quicker and his thrusts sloppier.

“Oh, fu-fuck..” he groans, “now, you can cum now.”

Crying out his name, you release your hold on your orgasm, feeling the coil snap inside you, now thrilled that you no longer have to stave it off and you fall forward. Michael wraps his arm around your chest, catching you so he can continue to fuck into you.

“That’s it, baby, milk my cock like the good fucking girl you are.”

Michael’s thrusts become erratic as he chases his high. When he reaches it, you feel him releasing his seed deep inside your pulsating pussy. He slows down his thrusts, riding out both of your highs for you. 

When he shudders one final time, he slumps forward, cheek resting on your sweaty back but he didn’t care.

After a few moments, he pulls his softening cock out of your sore pussy, making you wince from the over-stimulation. He presses a soft kiss to your back and goes to fetch a wet soft-cloth to clean you up. Your eyes flutter closed and you only know he’s returned by the soft caress of his hand down one thigh, pushing them apart so he can clean you up. You whimper from the soreness but let him continue as you know it has to happen in order to stay clean.

He hums as he goes about cleaning you up and tosses the cloth to the side where he can address it in the morning.

You pat the bed beside you and he climbs in, hugging you from behind and pressing multiple soft kisses to your back, making you shiver.

“That was...”

You wait for him to continue.

“Can we do that again?”

“Like now?” you reply, alarmed.

“Uh.”

“Jesus Christ, Michael, what are you made of?”

“So I’m guessing that’s a no.”

“You bet your ass it’s a no.”

He waits a beat. 

“Wake me up before Polly gets up in the morning,” you mumble.

Michael grins, “You know I will.”

“I do.”

[gureishi]

prompt 2 with v tysm take care of you ^^

Thank you for this wonderful request, and apologies for taking my time writing it!

I thought a whole lot about this prompt and Jihyun and my mind said PINING and I wrote this long, sprawling thing. It’s a slightly different format from my other requests—I hope you don’t mind! Writing this made me feel all kinds of things. ♡♡

two: fall into yours arms again

JihyunxReader, G, words: 3620

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・

97 days

It’s windy today.

You wake up late and throw open the window that you can reach from your bed. The sun’s already high in the sky and beating down through the thin, gauzy curtains. You need to buy new curtains.

The window sticks; you push; it opens. The cool breeze whips through your hair, in stark contrast to the sun—nauseatingly hot and dry. The wind cools your neck, wipes away the last remnants of what you suspect was a nightmare.

Though it’s June, the air still smells of spring. The azaleas in the community garden down the street have wilted, but some of their fragrance is in the air today, and it startles you, spins your head around.

He left in March and the chaos of April and May have been locked away in your memory, behind a wall that says think about this later. Now it’s undeniably summer, the days lengthening, your tendency to sleep through the morning worsening. Time has slowed: the afternoons feel languid and the nights unbearably long. You stretch, letting your shirt—his shirt—fall off your shoulder. It’s long lost its scent by now, grown softer as you’ve slept in it, worn it while cleaning up the little loft you once lived in by yourself. You lived here what feels like forever ago, before you made the misguided decision that led to your life turning upside down and now, somehow, righting itself in ways you still don’t understand.

“I miss you,” you mouth into the wind.

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191 days

When you get home you’re shivering, underdressed and underprepared for the turn in the weather. You turn the key in the lock, shoulders hunched against the cruel chill that has abruptly permeated your quiet little neighborhood.

You slip inside and shut the door, the wind chimes jangling harshly. You toss your things haphazardly to the side—keys, bag, sunglasses, coffee cup. Everything you needed for the day except a stupid jacket.

The house is cool, too—the wood floors retain some of the warmth of summer but you haven’t turned the heat on yet out of some convoluted mixture of stubbornness and frugality. You shrug on your thickest, floppiest sweater and move through the house, closing the windows one at a time. You shouldn’t have left them open to begin with.

You survey the mess you’ve made: bag spilling out onto your multicolored shag rug, sunglasses hanging over the hand-painted lamp on the side table. You decide to leave them there.

As you so often do lately, you slip into the well-worn chair at your small desk in the corner, under the little window that faces north. You rub your hands together, gaze at the growing pile of paper, stacked precariously high. You know there’s work to be done, emails to be answered—instead, you pull a new sheet of paper toward you, begin a letter than can never be sent.

“How are you?” you write. “It’s getting cold here. I hope it’s warm where you are.” You pause, well-chewed pen cap in your mouth. Scrawl the words you know he won’t read on the paper you have no way to send to him. “I think about you,” you write. “Every single day.”

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277 days

You laugh and wave and laugh again as you see the grey cloud your warm breath makes in the air.

You call out a last goodbye toward your friends’ receding backs and then wrap your scarf more tightly around your neck, feeling the cold more strongly now that you’re alone. You make your way back through your neighborhood, stopping only to pet the head of the tabby cat that your down-the-street neighbor lets roam free. The sun is setting—the midday chill is turning to a biting evening cold.

You approach your little loft: open the gate, half-run down the path. When, you think, will this feel like a home again? How long, you wonder, till this feels more real that those two weeks that are still illuminated in your memory, brighter even than the events of yesterday or last month or last summer?

Automatically, you check your mailbox. Automatically, you riffle through the bills you can just barely pay and the magazines subscribed to by the apartment’s former occupants. At the very bottom, there’s an envelope, one side covered completely in stamps. You climb the steps, peering at it curiously. You recognize the writing.

You trip.

You should get back up and go in the house and turn on the lights—open the letter where it’s warm and bright. But instead you stay right where you are, on the bottom step, jacket twisted up under you. You tear off one mitten, your hands shaking a little, and open the envelope.

“Dearest,” he’s written. “I don’t know if I’ve sent this the right way or how long it will take to reach you.”

There are already frozen tears on your eyelashes, blurring your vision. You wipe them away frantically with your other hand, still engulfed in your warm, chunky mitten.

“There’s no regular post office where I am so I had to improvise,” he goes on. His thin, messy scrawl is the same as you remember it. You can feet your heartbeat in your fingertips. “Still, that’s no excuse. I’ve written so many letters to you and thrown so many away. I never knew where to begin. I hope you can forgive me.”

The tears are falling hard and fast now, and you give up on wiping them, squinting to read the minuscule letters he’s crammed onto one single sheet of paper.

He describes where he’s staying in detail. It’s beautiful and evocative and you can tell that he’s stalling.

He asks after you—how your work has been going, how you’ve settled back into your own home, if you’ve been eating well. He asks after the RFA too, one at a time, by name. This answers a question that’s been lingering in the back of your mind—so it’s true, you think. He’s written to no one else.

The final paragraph is neater that the rest, as if he’s written and re-written it, practiced and copied it over.

“I am trying to live in the present moment and not worry over the future,” he says. “But every night I can’t help but imagine the life we could have together, when we are both ready. Do you imagine it too?” Your eyes are blurry with tears. “I miss you,” he writes, and you mouth the words as you read them, almost able to hear them in his sweet, gentle voice.

“If you don’t feel like writing me, I’ll understand,” he says. “But I’ll be at this address for some time, so please do write, if you like.” You think of all the letters, the ever-growing pile on and under your desk. You giggle through your tears, imagining how much it would cost to send them all. 

He signs the letter “Yours.” At the bottom he’s added cramped letters, so small you have to bend over, nose almost touching the paper, to read them. “By the way,” he writes. “Please call me Jihyun.” 

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352 days

To you, March will always be him: the sudden rain showers in the midst of sunny days are his eyes and the scent of plum blossoms in the air is the indescribable warmth of his arms.

There’s a string of pictures now above your bed—you’ve hung each one that he’s sent, strung them up on a piece of bright green yarn. When you told him you’d started doing this, he began sending them with a hole already punched in the top—delicate, perfectly round, just the right size.

You sit on the floor, bare legs extended in front of you, a book propped on your lap.

“All the snow has melted except for the one, long icicle outside my window,” you write. “I think I’ve grown attached to it, and I’ll be sad when it’s gone.”

Your letters have grown longer over the months—his last was five whole pages, front and back. He sends photographs he’s taken of the beautiful landscape where he’s living and sketches he’s made, mostly of nature—and a few of you.

He includes vague references to his companion, and though he’s never mentioned him by name, it’s become clear to you who he’s with. It’s brought you immense comfort to know—if not in much detail—that he is alive and well.

“Tomorrow I’ll be seeing everyone,” you write. “I know you both still need more time, but not being able to give them any news is killing me. Not everyone is doing so well, you know.” You bite your lip, consider crossing off the last few lines. You don’t. He’s healing—and you’d give anything in the world to ensure that he has the space and time he needs. That they both do. But the time you spend with the other members has been dwindling and the evidence of their suffering—some of them more than others—is becoming abundantly clear.

“I think I want to have a party,” you write. “Not for months, maybe longer, but I want to start thinking about it. I think it might help.”

You sip from the glass of water you’ve set on the floor next to you, swirl it around a little to listen to the sound of the ice clinking.

“I miss you desperately,” you write. “And I love you, Jihyun.”

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

478 days

The song that plays through your headphones is soft and pretty, not nearly loud enough to drown out the shouting of the street vendors and the overall atmosphere of chaos. It’s Sunday, and you’ve ventured into the city to shop. You don’t love the crowds or the fast pace, but you do relish the savory scents drifting from food stalls and the feeling of your thin pants swooshing against your legs.

You hoist the two large fabric grocery bags up; they’re nearly slipping out of your sweat-slick hands again. The mid-afternoon July sun beats down on you. You slow your pace.

It’s been a few weeks since you’ve gotten a letter. This isn’t shocking—he’s staying somewhere new now, and it’s even more remote than before. He has to travel into town to mail his letters, so the gaps between them have grown longer. You’re used to it, but you still can’t help feeling like a cold hand is clenching around your heart whenever you check the mailbox and find it empty.

You reach the train station, grip both bags with one hand so you can tap your card. You go through the motions: standing in the station, boarding the train. As you have so many times, you repeat the words of his last letter in your mind. You know it by heart.

“I bought plane tickets last week,” he wrote. “He hasn’t been feeling well the last few days and we decided together to cancel them.”

This isn’t a first either—the tickets bought, the tickets cancelled. And you know that it isn’t just Jihyun’s “companion” who needs more time. They are both still healing—physically, mentally, emotionally.

“Please tell me when you decide on a date for the party,” he wrote. “I’m sorry to hear the plans aren’t going smoothly. And I’m sorrier that I can’t offer the other members some solace—particularly where it concerns him. I must respect his wish for privacy.”

The train is packed; you set your bags at your feet so you can hold on. The gentle rocking motion is familiar; the air conditioning is a relief.

“I saw a flower yesterday that I couldn’t identify. It was raining here, but the flower’s petals were open. I was afraid it would wilt from the force of the rain, but it didn’t. I watched it for a long time, and saw the raindrops collect inside it. I thought of you.”

The train rumbles to a stop. More people get on. You adjust. A new song plays in your headphones—it’s slow and a little melancholy.

“Every morning I imagine the things I will do with you in our bright and beautiful future,” he wrote.

The train picks up speed again. Sweaty people read newspapers and speak quietly to one another, underscored by the gentle music in your ears. You close your eyes.

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

555 days

You run to catch the bus, the leaves crunching delightfully under your feet. It’s pulling into your stop as you’re crossing the street and—why does this always happen?—you bow your head and sprint, waving frantically at the driver.

The driver sees you. Smiles. Waits.

“Thank you,” you pant, jumping the steps two at a time. 

“It’s okay. I remember you.”

Ouch.

You stumble to a seat and collapse into it. If you’re late for the bus often enough that the driver remembers you, you’ve really got to try and pull yourself together.

You comb a hand through your sweaty hair. It’s hard, as it turns out, planning an RFA party while keeping up with your old life—you’ve got one foot in the world of working and cleaning and paying bills and the other in the world of CEOs and mysterious guests and anonymous donors.

As you’re catching your breath, you pull the newest letter from your bag. It arrived just this morning—perhaps that was why you almost missed the bus again—and you’ve only read it once so far. You scan the page with eager eyes, searching as you so often do for clues and hints and promises hidden between the lopsided words.

“I made a painting today,” he tells you. “I won’t describe it to you, because I want to show it to you in person.”

But when? you want to ask. You can’t help the frustration that’s creeping under your skin. The bus rocks; you lean your head against the window.

“I’ve realized something,” he writes. “I wonder what you think about it. I feel closer to you than I’ve felt to anyone before. And yet every day I find things I still don’t know about you, because of our circumstances. What are your favorite things to eat? What smells make you reminisce about the past? What music makes you sleepy?”

You sigh, fold up the letter. It’s true, you think. You love him with a warmth that encompasses your whole being—a feeling you’d never even dared to imagine. But how does his face look in the morning when he sleeps through his alarm? Which groceries does he always forget to buy?

You don’t write these questions down. Instead you turn over the letter, scribble on the back. 

“The party will be March 24th.”

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

641 days

It hardly snows this winter, but it rains. The sound of the rain fills your dreams: it pounds on the roof of your little apartment, and you wake up and run to the kitchen to check that the window is closed. It fills your waking hours, thrumming on your giant umbrella as you navigate the narrow streets of the city. When it lets up, you still hear it, humming in your eardrums, reverberating inside your chest.

You sit at your desk again. No longer is it covered in stacks of paper, records of yearning—those letters have been long sent or put away in pretty boxes with colored lids. Your laptop buzzes, hopelessly trying to cool itself down. You press send and cut the frightening number of messages in your inbox down by just one more.

You lean back in your chair. The rain goes tap tap tap on the roof and you rub your sore neck. It’s a Friday night and even in this weather, you can hear the distant sounds of people gathering at the bar on the corner. You open another email.

“I’m working hard,” you wrote in your last letter to him. “Sometimes I feel that I can barely keep up with it all. Other times I’m sure I’m burying myself in all of this work on purpose, making myself busy so I don’t have to feel lonely.”

You scan the email with expert eyes, dash off a quick reply. Both are true, you suppose—planning a proper party, not one hastily thrown together in a few weeks under extreme circumstances, is a full-time job all on its own. But you are lonely, you think, taking a break to stretch your arms over your head. There are people around you all the time, but your chest feels hollow. “I’m taking good care of myself,” you wrote to him last week. “I do feel fulfilled. But…”

But you can no longer re-create in your mind the exact way that he smells, the sweet freshness of nuzzling your face into his shoulder. You can’t always hear his voice clearly in your mind when you read the sweet, beautiful words he writes to you. “I love you like the way the ocean crashes into the rocks and then spills peacefully over the sand,” he writes. “Does that make sense?”

It does.

You shake your head to clear it, type a few brief, carefully-worded lines.

“I’m ready,” you say out loud, and the words echo in your apartment: warm and cluttered and bright and full to the brim with thoughts of him. “I’m ready when you are.”

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

702 days

For the first time, you wait to read his letter.

You find it in the mailbox as you’re leaving in the morning and you whisper “patience” to yourself as you walk to the bus. You wait at the light, you cross the street. You sit at the bus stop for two whole minutes before the bus arrives and the driver raises his eyebrows at you in surprise.

“Patience,” you whisper to yourself again as you exit the bus, breathing in the fresh, early-spring air. And “patience,” you think, as you greet the venue manager and listen to her running through the event checklist for what feels like the eight hundredth time.

“Almost,” you tell yourself as you leave, taking a picture on your phone of the orange and purple sky. You board the bus again, watch the sunset fade into star-speckled navy through the smudged window.

“Now,” you say out loud as you unlock the door to your flat, hanging your light jacket and keys on the hooks you’ve recently mounted by the door. “Now.”

You tear into the letter as you make your way to the bedroom, turning on lamps as you go, bathing the room in amber light.

You pull out the paper and your hands, steady all day, start to shake. You hold it up to the light. It’s shorter than usual. He’s written your name at the top and he’s answered your questions, described a walk he took on the waterfront yesterday, offered updates on the plants growing beside the house where he’s staying.

And at the bottom, he’s sketched a picture in light blue ink. His lines are soft and wavy, but the details are clear: it’s two plane tickets. They’re dated.

You inhale sharply.

Thirty-two more days.

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

734 days

It’s warm, but not too warm. The lights are dim, but not too dim. The air is lightly scented like spring flowers and rain, but it’s not overwhelming, and the chatter of the crowd is enthusiastic and warm.

In other words, you’ve done a very good job.

You step onto the balcony for a moment, patting your red cheeks with both hands. You’ve been receiving compliments all night and it’s made you feel like you’re floating several centimeters off the ground. You’re proud of yourself—you worked hard for this.

But as the night’s worn on, your anticipation has built to a fever pitch, and you have to keep reminding yourself to breathe. If he were arriving on any other day, you’d be meeting him in private— and would you feel more or less nervous, then? You can’t decide.

But of course it’s today, because the most important events of your life always seem to coalesce around each other. There’s a beautiful garden surrounding the party venue and you take comfort in the ivy wrapped around the wrought-iron trellis; it reaches almost as high as your eye level and its balance of sturdiness and delicacy gives you strength.

You slip back inside, take in the groups of expensively-dressed people clustered around tall, elegant tables. There’s a string quartet in one corner and a mouth-watering array of hors d’oeuvres arranged toward the back wall.You straighten out your clothes surreptitiously, sneak a peak at the clock, flash a bright smile at the nearest group of guests .

And then, for a reason you’ll never be able to explain, you know what’s about to happen. Your eyes fly to the door. You gravitate toward it like a moth to a lamp and you know no one else has noticed but somehow you feel that the room has quieted for you.

The door opens. Your hands fly to your mouth.

“Hi,” he says.

He’s always been spring to you but it’s as if he’s brought summer with him. He’s taller than you remember and his collared shirt is open and he’s got the warmest smile you’ve seen in your whole life. Your thrill and worry and hope are reflected in his bright eyes. 

He holds out a hand—cautiously, as if afraid you’ll float away. You take it and his fingers are soft and cool, like the petals of a flower.

“Welcome home,” you say. “Jihyun.”

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in my future mysme writings <3

@currentlyprocrastinating @thesirenwashere  @ultrasupernini​ @cro0kedme​ @otomefoxystar​ @dawn-skies06 @nad-zeta

[that-was-anticlimactic]

Once many moons ago you asked for some avatar writing prompts and I’ve been thinking of it ever since. Anyway I’ve also been thinking a lot about your Tourette’s!Sokka hc and fics and I was wondering if you could write a lil bit about how Toph finds out? I know you mentioned that she’d find out after pulling him out of the hole... but I’d love to read more about it

Anyway no pressure and if i’m totally out of line please let me know

Hi!!! No no, thank you so much! You’re not out of line at all!! I could talk about this forever and this is exactly something I need to procrastinate!

for those who don’t know, they’re referring to this post and this oneshot! It’s a lots of headcanons about Sokka (atla) having Tourette’s Syndrome!

This takes place during Bitter Work (I mean... Sokka is a hole haha) and for purposes of speculation and plot convenience, we’re assuming he’s been in the whole for at least half of the day (I mean, maybe that’s canon??? He had trouble walking when they got him out and it was long enough to make Katara worry...).

I tried writing this in a different way, so if anyone has strong thoughts / feelings / opinions on how I portrayed his tics, let me know! The last thing that I want to note beforehand is that tics are... weird and you can’t plan them. Writing for them is harder than I thought because they are random. I, personally, found it easier to write his verbal tics as the same few words because you don’t think of tics, they just happen? So writing them was weird, haha!

Stuck

Word Count: 2,590

Tw: anxiety attack, tic attack (for those with TS or tics, I do write his tics in. They triggered some of mine, so proceed with caution)

----

“Rah-Rah-Rah-Rumble!”

Sokka sighed. “Maybe going to underground Earth bending tournaments was a bad idea,” the young warrior (nose wrinkle) said to himself. “I’m going to be rumbling-- rah-rah-rumble-- for ages now.”

He laughed. Then laughed again (blink, whistle). Then he shrieked in frustration.

Being stuck in this hole was miserable, and not just (whistle, nose wrinkle) miserable, it was terrifying. He couldn’t move his arms, he couldn’t move his legs, moving his fingers was possible, but he had clenched them so much that it was painful to continue, and he needed to move his arms, he needed to (whistle, whistle, whistle) tic.

The others were off training, and that could take hours. He was alone (blink, “yip yip, rumble rumble”) and they had no idea where he was, all they knew was that he was hunting.

The pain… it was hard for his brain to fathom the pain he was in. His legs (blink, whistle, blink) were numb but his arms (“Rah-Rumble”) were sore, they were aching and longing for the ability to move, to tic. It made his head (whistle, blink, blink, “yip, rumble, yip”) hurt. It was hard to breath.

“That’s-- rumble-- it,” he wheezed. “This is how I’m gonna-- rah-rah-- die. Oh, spirits, I’m gonna die!” Panic, pain, and loneliness were savages, wrecking the sanctuary and peace of his mind and body.

“AANG!”

Sokka’s voice clipped, his body feeling (“yip yip, you need to yip yip”, blink, nose wrinkle) awake once more at the sight of his friend.

The monk turned at his name, his face lighting up upon seeing the water tribesman. “Sokka!” he (nose wrinkle, whistle) cried, running to him. “Are you okay?”

He opened his mouth, prepared to make some witty or sarcastic comment, but (whistle, blink) all that came out was a stifled, relieved sob. “I-I’m-- fah-fah-fine, fine-- I just need to get out of this stupid hole,” he assured, tears of happiness welling up in his eyes.

Aang studied him for a moment (“yip yip”), then grabbed onto what he could of Sokka’s hands, trying to pull him (blink, blink, nose wrinkle, whistle) free.

Pain shot through his arms and up to his fingers. “Ow! Stop, stop! You’re-- rumble, rah-rah-- gonna pull my fingers off! And (whistle) I don’t think the r-- re-rah-rumble, rah-rah-rumble-- rest is coming!”

Aang sat down in front of him, panting. “I would try to airbend you out, but I don’t think that’ll do anything.”

(Blink, whistle) “Oh, you can Earthbend me out!” Sokka cried excitedly (blink, blink, “rumble”). “That’s what you’ve been working on, right?”

“I can’t.”

“Well, what about-- yip-- Toph? Can you get her so she can Earthbend me out?”

“I can’t do that either.”

“W-- Wah-Wah-- Why not? I’m stuck and-and I can’t move and--” Sokka broke off into an unstoppable stream of “yip-yip”’s.

Aang started, reaching his hands out, but drew them back. “Suppose you probably don’t want to be touched right now?” he said sheepishly. “I’m sorry. Toph will just get mad at me if I go back. I’m a terrible Earthbender.”

“I just-- yip yip (whistle, blink, blink, nose wrinkle)-- I just want Katara.” The words stumbled out, and for a second, he felt like that young six year old again, asking for his mom when (blink, blink, blink) he had tic spasms during stressful training sessions.

Aang’s grey eyes were filled with sorrow. “I know you need help. I need to get over myself and just face Toph but… I just don’t want to let anyone down…” he trailed off, and (nose wrinkle, whistle) suddenly Sokka wanted to be out of that hole more than anything so he could give Aang all of the love that he deserves.

“Oh! Is that a baby Sabertooth Moose Lion?” asked the monk, a smile popping up on his face as the creature jumped out from the bushes.

“Aang, Foo Foo Cuddly Poops. Foo Foo-- rumble, rah-rah-- Cuddly Poops, Aang,” Sokka introduced nonchalantly, still mentally going through various ways to encourage Aang to get help.

“Huh, that’s weird,” Aang (“yip yip!”) stated, picking Foo Foo Cuddly Poops up. “Their moms are usually really protective.”

The Spirits must have something against Sokka, and maybe once he’s out of the hole he’ll ask Aang to visit the Spirit World and figure out what it is. Almost as if it were on cue, a loud roar shook the trees surrounding them, and Sokka soon felt overcome with blinking and screaming “yip yip”.

The roar came from behind him, but he couldn't move he couldn’t move he couldn’t move he couldn’t-- Spirits, he was crying. He was blinking so hard and so consistently that he was crying. His throat felt tighter and tighter with each “yip”, but he still held onto that small sliver of hope that Toph or Katara would hear him and come help him.

“Aang, I can’t-- ca-a-an’t yip-- I can’t see! I-- you need to yip yip-- can’t see! Is that- is that-thu-thu-- the mother? What’s happ-- yip yip-- ening? I can’t-- you-you, yip yip yip-- I can’t stop-- yip yip yip yip, RUMBLE-- AANG!” His words flew out of his mouth, they were uncontrollable, a storm that had been building up for the past however long he had been in here, festering and brewing. Sokka didn’t know what he was saying, his tongue was improvising, his words were a script never written. Honestly, he would be surprised if Aang could even understand what he said through his nearly constant stream of tics.

He couldn’t see, and not just behind him. His blinking was too excessive. His eyes hurt, his vision completely blurred. He was crying, from fear, pain, blinking too much, and because he just wanted Katara. The ringing in his ears returned, and he wanted to curl up into a ball, letting his tics run their course, holding his head in his hands.

A gust of wind ruffled his already messy hair, some of the longer strands falling into his mouth, but he barely registered it. Through the ringing, he vaguely heard Aang speak to him. And suddenly Sokka sobbed even harder because Aang was twelve and he shouldn’t have to worry about Sokka having a tic attack. The first time he had one around Aang, he had terrified the kid. Poor Katara had to run back and forth between making sure Sokka was alright and not in any pain and that Aang understood what was going on.

Spirits, Aang was probably scared out of his mind right now because they were being attacked and Sokka could do nothing to help him. They were in danger and it felt like he was cowering while the Avatar worked to save them both.

Moment after moment, he continued to tic, and, as Aang later said, continued to have an anxiety attack. It felt like an eternity when he finally saw the blurred face of Aang in front of him, moving in and out of focus. The monk’s mouth was moving, but no words were coming out.

He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even think. The world around him had faded, falling into a grey abyss of nothingness where even feelings were numb and cold. He forced his eyes shut.

Suddenly, the ground beneath him began to move, it rumbled (much like he was), and out of nowhere, a hand gripped his hair tightly and pulled.

Freedom. He was free, but he couldn’t register it. He swatted at the hand until it let go of him, letting him crumble to the ground in a hysterical heap. The touch only worsened the feeling of restriction, even though he was no longer confined to the hole. The ringing grew louder and louder still, and through it all he could hear was someone screaming his sister’s name. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was Aang.

The curled into a ball position that he so longed for was finally attainable, and Sokka immediately fell into it. His legs were twitching, his hands continually flying to the sky and flashing the number three (a new tic he had picked up that replaced the fist pumping. Where his body picked it up, he hadn’t a clue, but he supposed it was better than fist pumping at everything).

“I can’t-- yip yip, yip rumble yip-- breathe-- bruh-bruh-bruh--!” he screamed it. How his vocal cords found the strength to scream, he didn’t know. All he knew for certain was that he felt like he was dying.

A tender, cool, calloused hand landed on his shoulder and he shuddered at the touch, desperately trying to shake it off. The hand would not relent.

Oftentimes, the light at the end of the tunnel was his name. The ringing halted to a stop, when through the blaring he heard: “Sokka”. The voice was loud but it was not forceful. It was commanding yet compassionate. “Sokka, can you hear me?”

Eyes still forced shut to calm the blinking, he nodded.

“It’s Katara. I know I’m already touching you, but can I hug you? Is that okay?”

Katara… his sister. His mind halted at once, the thoughts of death and breathing slipping away. Cautiously opening an eye, Sokka found his sister in front of him, one hand on his shoulder, the other hovering near his back.

A relieved sigh fell from her lips as he opened his second eye, blinked a few times, and then met hers. Her beautiful blue eyes felt like home. “Thank the Spirits,” she mumbled. “Can I hug you, is that okay? Aang chased away the mother Sabertooth Moose Lion and Toph got you out of the hole. You can move now.”

Realization hit him in full force. Toph didn’t even know he had Tourette’s yet. The chance to tell her never really came up. She probably hated him now.

He nodded once more, leaning into his younger sister’s touch, wrapping his own shaking arms around her, and letting her hold him as he whimpered.

Her touch was warm, heating the coolness of his fear into oblivion. He always liked when Katara hugged him. She always hugged him loosely, allowing him the room to maneuver or wiggle his way out if he felt uncomfortable.

Peace flooded over him, his tears vanishing with each passing moment and his breathing more stable with each breath.

“I’m-- rumble- rah-- so sorry,” he gasped once he extracted himself from the hug, finally calm and back into reality, as the world came back into sight.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Katara stated firmly, sitting beside him. “We should have looked for you sooner when you didn’t return. I was just so caught up in Aang learning Earthbending and Toph is kind of a mean teacher--”

“Katara, it’s-- yip yip-- fine, really.”

“You were stuck here for hours, Sokka, hours! I was so worried…”

Hand holding wasn’t his thing, not in the slightest. It made his fingers hurt and he could never get his hands to hold still long enough for it to be comfortable for anyone. Katara, though, was the one exception. He reached for her hand, holding it tightly and rubbing his fingers against the back of it.

“Thu-Thu-- Thank you,” he whispered. “I love you.”

Katara leaned her head against his shoulder, finally allowing herself to breathe, all of her worries and fears slipping away with every exhale.

From the corner of his eye, Sokka noticed Aang slowly inching towards him, Toph lingering at his side. He gulped. “Aang, sorry I f-- fr-fre-fuh-fr--freaked out on you. Did I-- rumble rumble-- scare you again?” he asked.

Aang nodded sheepishly. “A little bit. Sorry I couldn’t Earthbend you out. I should’ve gotten Toph right away.”

Sokka shrugged, careful not to jostle his sister’s head. “Eh. It’s okay. You just started l-- luh-luh-rumbLE, LE, LE-- learning.”

The large grey eyes grew wider by the second. Aang bit his lip and glanced anxiously at Sokka. It was a look that Sokka had learned early on. “Come here,” he sighed, gesturing to his other side. “Not too close, though, okay?”

Aang immediately zoomed over and into his side, scooting away slightly before settling.

Sometimes, Aang just needs to be loved and reminded that he’s just a kid and that it’s okay to feel worried and that it’s okay for him to not believe everything was his fault. That look, that look was one asking for forgiveness, one of asking for affection.

And then there was Toph.

It was funny, really, how quickly Sokka could go between completely freaking out and needing someone to help him to him being the comforter, the calm and collected one. He supposed it was because his tic attacks weren’t very frequent, and this one was more extreme than most (probably due to being stuck for hours and having an anxiety attack), so he was used to jumping back into normalcy.

Toph, on the other hand…

“Hey, you,” he called. “Blind Bandit-- yip yip, you need to yip yip-- come join us!”

The hesitant and frightened look (Spirits, she was only twelve too) on her face was a huge contrast in comparison to her pale and usually uncaring complexion. And for a moment, she faltered. Being new and all, Sokka really couldn’t blame her. She barely knew them.

“I’m f-- fuh-fuh--fine,” he assured her. “I have Tourette’s so sometimes-- rumble-rah-rah-- when I can’t move my body freaks-- yip yip (whistle)-- out and sometimes I panic. Then we got attacked by a Sabertooth Moose Lion, I think? I kinda blanked out for that part-- rah-rah-rah--, but anyways, point is, I’m okay. And, I’m sorry for sc-- yip yip-- scaring you.”

The young Earthbender cautiously took a step forward.

“Don’t worry-- wah-wah-worry--, it’s not usually this bad. I guess me getting trapped in a hole-- rumble, rumble, rah-- wasn’t enough torment for the Spirits so they threw a large animal at me. It’s usually just small, normalish things like making hand gestures or my neck twitching,” he continued to explain, his tone gentle and trying his best to suppress his vocal tics for the moment to coax Toph closer. “Are you okay?”

Toph snorted. “I’m not scared, Snoozles. I just… I just couldn’t see what was going on completely and I was confused!”

“And worried!” Aang piped up from his side. “Don’t forget that you were also worried!”

Sokka smiled while Toph growled. She stomped her foot on the ground and a beam of Earth collided with Aang, sending him flying through the air and roughly hitting a tree.

“Ow,” he mumbled, rubbing his head.

Toph just shrugged, quickly making her way to steal Aang’s spot next to Sokka. The young warrior saw the Earthbender raise her fist towards him, then falter.

“Yes, you can touch-- yip yip-- me now,” he laughed. “Uhh, also, sorry for hitting you earlier.”

A hard blow landed on his arm, but he couldn’t have felt happier about it. The trio learned very early on that punching arms was Toph’s way of showing affection. “No biggie. I can take it.”

Aang came stumbling towards them, pouting. “No fair, Toph! I wanted to sit next to Sokka!”

“Well then, make Sugar Queen move and take her place.”

“But Katara has first dibs, she’s his sister!”

“Snooze you lose, Twinkle Toes.”

“But--”

Katara opened her eyes and then proceeded to roll them. “Just come sit next to me, Aang,” she interrupted, extending an arm for the airbender to lean into.

Aang’s face lit up and he raced to her side.

Sokka sighed. Ah, normalcy.

----

Ahhh okay! I hope you liked it!

In case anyone was wondering, the reason why I stopped writing the tics in during the tic attack is because tic attacks (in my own personal experience) are kind of a constant stream of tics where something is always happening, and it would be really hard to write. So, when he had his anxiety / tic attack, I let it flow from there because there’s no way I could write that well or portray it right!

Thank you for reading! I’m always open to Sokka with Tourette’s questions, comments, concerns, etc...! I enjoy talking about it haha! I would also love to hear anyone’s personal Sokka with TS headcannons or ideas or any TS character stuff!

I am also always up to procrastinate, so if anyone ever has any writing prompts or fic recs, please lemme know!

and as always, Katara is FANTASTIC:)

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Ghost Ship (Ao3 link) Fandom: DC's Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart

Summary: The Oculus spits Len back out into the world, a little over a year after he sacrifices himself.

He finds things different, and not in a good way.

A/N: For @ice-whisper, who requested Len angst that ripped her heart out. Hope this works for you. Happy birthday!

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Len goes to his death with his eyes open, his heart set, and an apology on his lips.

Mick survived without him, after the fire. Thrived, even.

He'll do fine without Len.

Len's sure of it.

What happened next, though, Len isn't expecting.

Len isn't expecting to come back to life.

He isn't expecting to find himself back on the Waverider, a little over a year after he died.

He isn't expecting to find it so very different from what he’d left.

Most of all, though, he isn't expecting to be right.

Because Mick is.

Doing fine without Len, that is.

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"There are no strings on me," Len says, best smirk on his lips, and Mick on his mind.

Mick - best friend, lover, husband.

Partner.

Len's body is there when the explosion comes, so sudden and shocking that he doesn't feel pain nor flame nor even hear the sound of it, but his mind is far away, back in a warm bed, the golden light of the afternoon fading. Mick beside him, their limbs intertwined, putting aside his lighter voluntarily, turning back to Len, pressing their lips together -

Len's lips buzz with the feeling -

And when the blue comes and eats away at the scene, eats away at everything, eats away at Mick - not Mick, never Mick - eating away at him like the flames -

Len's lips buzz with his screams -

Screams and screams and screams and screams -

"Snart! Wake up!"

Len opens his eyes.

Mick is standing beside the bed. Already dressed, Len notes with hazy regret.

"You were dreaming," Mick says. His eyes aren't focused on Len, but somewhere beyond him. "Nightmares, again."

Len nods mutely. He lifts a hand, all instinct, for Mick's belt loop, intending on pulling him in, but Mick rocks back on his heels, a minute gesture, but enough that Len falters.

Enough that Len sees the horrible paw, the deformed, misshapen, melted stump that is - that was - his right hand.

Len retracts the hand mutely.

"You're awake early," he says instead, after a few minutes. After swallowing a few times. His throat's gone dry for some reason. "Is there a mission?"

"Thought I heard Gideon calling," Mick says. Vague.

Means no.

Means Mick just wanted up. Wanted out. Out of the bed before Len noticed he had ever been there.

Oh, Mick put a good face on it. He never said he wanted out, never hinted he regretted sharing his quarters with Len now that Len's own had been given away to some fresh-faced puppy who'd never finished growing up.

Len never asked if Mick wanted out. He didn't want to hear it, if the answer was yes.

If.

That's a laugh.

When. That's more like it. When Mick finally concedes that all is not like it used to be. When he finally admits what they had was gone. Admits what should be admitted.

It's over.

It’s all over between them.

Len sits up. "Want me to come with?" he asks.

"You don't have to," Mick says quickly. Too quickly. "You're still recovering."

Len rolls his eyes. "It's been three months, Mick. I'm fine."

Mick is silent for a moment too long.

"...I've lost time again," Len says flatly.

"Only five weeks. It’s been four months and change, since we found you."

"Month and a half," Len says bitterly, getting up. He grabs his jacket, wraps it around himself. He's already got three layers on, but it doesn't matter. He's always too cold. "Hardly nothing."

"You'll get it back," Mick says encouragingly. "You've been getting it back faster each time."

"With holes."

"Better than nothing."

Nothing, yes. That's what Len's wonderful brain has boiled down to. Holes. Nothing.

The blue glow of the Oculus has eaten into his brain until it's all he can do to remember his own goddamn name.

(He always remembers Mick. Even when he wakes up screaming, the whole life of him gone until there's nothing but the terror of opening his eyes into the wide open world for the first time, he always remembers Mick.)

He's cold.

What irony.

He'd been Captain Cold. Leonard Snart.

Finest thief in Central City. Smartest brain. Quickest hands. Toughest gun. Best crew.

Len paid them all to save Mick's life.

He didn’t regret it, no. For Mick, he’d always pay it all.

But he misses them.

He’s cold without them.

He's no thief, no supervillain, not anymore: he gave all that up when he joined the Waverider crew the first time, sold his services for a lark and a promise of adventure.

Gave it up again when he refused to go berth at home, to shelter his useless wreck at Lisa's side. Lisa would never turn him away - that's why Lisa's home, why she'll always be home - but that's the same reason he can't do it to her. Let her be free, his treasure, his Golden Glider leading the Rogues that in another life could have been led by him.

Everything else is gone, too.

No brain, not anymore. What good's a planner who can't even keep track of what day it is? Len trained himself a master with a skillset dependent on his brilliant plans and perfect internal clock. Now, the plans look like Swiss cheese and the clock's gone haywire. His brain boiled in the blue of the Oculus, swimming in nightmares and losing memories like a leaky ship bailing out, and sometimes getting memories that aren't his stuck in places they don't belong. Confusion reigns supreme.

No hands, either. He can barely use the thick paws that curl in front of him to dress himself, much less nick something in the flicker of fingers. His skin didn't burn when the Oculus hit him, oh no, it melted. It oozed like plastic, fusing finger to finger. He didn't even have proper fingernails anymore. Gideon kept trying to fix them, kept trying to think of new reasons why her first attempts at regeneration didn't work, but he screamed at the touch of her rays, the bright blue light that shone down onto him, and when she’d tried, he'd ripped himself free of the medical chair by his teeth in a frenzy of blood spurting out onto the floor. They'd tied him down, only for her next attempt to fail to cure him as well.

No gun. Palmer had taken it. Palmer had -

Len doesn't remember.

No. No.

He will remember. He will. It was his gun, damnit; his, only his, ever since he stole it fair and square -

The plans for the cryogenic cyclotron sit in front of him. They don't know what they had, these stupid labs; they hoped merely to use it to power a new set of refrigerators, but he knew better even though he was no more than a mere thief. He could get the pieces he needs to build it into a gun - to refine it, to fix it, to make it do things its original inventor couldn't even conceive of – not even the Flash could stand in his way with this -

That's not true, damnit. He stole the gun from Ramon, from STAR Labs. It got sold to him in a dirty warehouse by a dirty man who he'd put in a dirty grave.

(He remembers those plans, though, and putting together the gun by himself after all those prototypes. Another universe, perhaps. Another life.)

In this life, though, Palmer had – Palmer -

Wait, he has it; he remembers. Palmer took gun apart to stop a bomb instead of just freezing the fucking thing. He hadn't been there, which is why he doesn't remember it, but Mick told him about it.

Len wants to wrap his hands around Palmer's throat and shout "you're supposed to be smart, you bastard", but he won't. Palmer could swat Len down like a fly, pathetic as he is now, and he doesn't want to display his weakness even more than it already is.

So that's that. No brain, no hands, no gun.

No crew.

That's what's burns the worst. That's the ice that scorches him, the oozing wound in his soul, the hole in the center of his heart that bleeds him dry.

The Waverider has bonded in his absence, the ragtag gaggle of idiot do-gooders turned into a family. A family he has no part of.

Not even Mick is his anymore.

Mick, his partner, who stood by him through everything, who he thought would always be there.

Mick's moved on.

Mick -

Mick only sleeps in his bed by the barest technicality, coming in late and leaving early. Mick goes out with the team on missions that function like a well-oiled machine, while Len stutters and stops and doesn't fit. Mick has jokes with the team, references to things that Len wasn't here for.

Mick can barely look at the mess that's left of Len: melted hands, melted brains, even his pretty face scorched up one side by the terrible flame - a lightning strike webbing his cheek and crawling up his ear. Scars that sometimes glow blue in the dark even where there's nothing blue in the room.

Mick's hands shake when he touches Len, which isn't often. He doesn't want to. Len can tell.

Len doesn't blame him. He's disgusting.

Useless.

Their partnership - their marriage - used to be based on something. Give and take. Len's the brain, Mick's the muscle. Len's the quick thief, Mick's the wall of force. They balanced each other. Fire and ice.

Len's got nothing more to give. He's spent it all.

Mick wants out, Len knows.

And one day, one day, Len will give Mick a final gift, give him his freedom. Len will absolve Mick of the guilt that keeps him at Len’s side and watch him go off to live the life without Len that he should have had, if only Len had never crawled out of death's grip and back here to bother him further.

On that day, Len will freeze the heart that he gave to Mick long ago with the gun schematics that live in his brain now and put himself in the same grave his father lies in. But that’s not important. Mick’s what’s important. He forgot that and left him behind, to the prison system, to the fire, to the tender mercies of the Time Masters. He’ll be paying for that forever. No, Len’s learned his hard-taught lesson. He needs to let Mick go.

One day.

But not today.

"Let me get dressed," Len says, pretending he's not already most of the way there already. "I'll come with you."

Mick nods and heads to the door to wait for him there.

Not today, Len thinks.

Not today.

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Mick's nails have been chewed down to the quick, a habit that he thought he'd broken years ago when he was just a child, but they still cut half-moons into his palms with how tightly he's squeezing them.

Len.

God, Len.

His beautiful, brilliant Len, his Len, not some Doomworld copy created and altered by the Legion of Doom, the one he loved and he lost to his own terrible stupidity. The one who knows everything he's ever done. The one who took his spot at the Oculus, his self-hating sacrifice, so that Mick could live, because Len loves him. Because Len is the only person to ever look at Mick and see him, really see him, and still love him anyway.

Len.

There's a pit in Mick's stomach, knotted up tight with anxiety and guilt and self-hatred, and it's worse than anything he's ever known. It makes him vomit. It makes him cry like he hasn't in years, bawling like a child with his knees pulled up to his chest in the corner of the restroom in his suite, trying to keep quiet so that Len doesn’t wake up and hear him. It makes him want to light fires, then shy away from that release because wasn't that always the root of the goddamn problem?

Len, Len.

Len, whose face and hands - his beautiful hands, his pride and joy, the part of his body he always cared for most, with gloves and lotions and stretches and careful minding - have been irrevocably scarred, irrevocably ruined, and all because of Mick.

Len, who must hate him, now.

Mick can't see how he doesn't. Mick's failed every test of friendship and comradery, of the love and loyalty he swore to Len. Mick sold him out to the goddamn Time Masters, let them set him up, let them send him as a weapon against him, seeking vengeance. Threatening Lisa, the surest way through Len's defenses; using Len's love for his own self as yet another tool to hurt him. Refusing, even once they were teammates again, to forgive him for so long, so very long.

Spending days and weeks of their precious time together fucking around being angry, because he thought he had forever.

Taking Ray Palmer's place by the Oculus, and that must be the worst of all the reasons Len hates him now, because look at what that caused. Palmer called Len a hero, right after it happened, but Mick knew better. Mick knows better.

Len took that place at the Oculus for Mick and Mick alone, as yet another plea for forgiveness, in the hope that Mick would forgive his ghost the way he'd refused to forgive the man.

Mick's lips are numb with how often he's bitten them to keep from screaming apologies that would do no one any good.

What would it help now, when Len wakes up each night with terrible screams, high-voiced and horrifically unlike him - unless you happen to have heard him as a child, that is? When Len's wonderful brain loses days, weeks, months, years, decades each morning, only to struggle all day to recover?

Mick doesn't even have his partner's cold gun, to which he had been entrusted. No, he couldn't even do that much right.

Len had left it to him, a bequeath from a dead man, and Mick had given it away before he'd even worn his widower's weeds for a full year.

No wonder the Len the Legion had altered had been willing to kill that other version of Mick.

It all makes sense, now. It's all forgiven now, that murder of a man who wore his face and came from the future. Maybe the Legion version of Len, brainwashed as he was, saw the truth, saw what Mick should've seen, that Mick had betrayed everything he's ever loved for -

For nothing.

Just the way he always does.

It all tastes like ash in Mick's mouth.

You'd think he'd be used to ruining everything by now - his family, his life - but it hurts, it hurts so bad. He never thought he'd ruin Len, somehow. After all those years together, he'd let himself think that maybe, just maybe, Len couldn't be ruined, that the job had been done long before Mick ever showed up.

But no.

Mick should have never doubted his ability to destroy.

Len was always so careful with his heart. He gave it to Lisa, to his profession, to his skills. To Mick.

And Mick gave every one of those away: he betrayed Len, he threatened Lisa, and now - in the end - he took away everything else, too.

God, Mick can barely look at him.

He can't let his eyes linger on that beloved frame, lest he see the resentment, the hatred, in those beloved eyes. He doesn't want to see the knowledge in Len's face that this all could have been avoided if only he'd given his trust - his love - to someone more worthy of it.

He can barely bear to touch him, lest he see how Len recoil from him. He sneaks into their bed like a guilty man, waiting until Len is fast asleep so that he can have a few blissful hours with Len in his arms, pretending that things were as they once were, soothing Len through the tremors that wrack his frame each night, hoping only give his sleeping form some moments of peace as Mick hungrily memorizes Len's face - no less beautiful to Mick because of what it has gone through, only different.

He's awake and gone each morning before he can see Len's eyes open, that single moment of contentment and unclouded joy before reality sets it and he remembers.

He remembers what Mick has done to him.

What Mick has robbed from him.

That moment when that joy darkens and fades, when tight-lipped unspoken rage and misery replaces it. Mick's seen that look on Len's face before - all life crushed brutally under heel, no pleasure at all, because all he cares for sits in the hands of a man that could crush him with a gesture. No peace, no, just -

Submission.

Mick doesn't know when he became Lewis Snart to Len, but he can't bear the knowledge of it.

One day, Mick will man up and tell Len that he's free. That he doesn't have to keep up appearances, that he doesn't have to play nice for Mick. That he doesn't have to pretend not to be angry, not to hate him. Mick can take whatever punishment Len wants to dole out, just as long as he lets Mick stay by his side.

Mick wants to promise Len that he'll never hurt him again, that he'll never let him be hurt, that he’ll never choose anyone, anything, not even his own self-hatred, over Len ever again. But that would all be a lie.

He remembers the bruises he left on Len's face, Len's body, when Len offered up his silent apology for leaving Mick behind, while Mick made no apologies for what he'd done. It wasn't the first time, either. Mick can't swear it will never happen again because he's sworn it before. He's sworn it so many times. He's lied, so many times.

How can Mick offer anything to this man, who he loves more than his own heart?

He loves Len more than fire. He knows that truth down to his bones - having been forced to go without both, he knows, now, which one he'd pick. He doesn't want the world to burn any less, but he'll let the flint and tinder slip through his fingers for a single true smile from Len.

But Len will never know that.

Even if Mick tells him, he'll never believe him.

Mick lost Len to the Oculus.

The Oculus gave him back, hurt and damaged and angry, and Mick is so painfully grateful for the smallest scraps of Len's attention - what pity Len has to give him, he will take - because something, anything, is better than nothing.

It's even worth staying here on the Waverider, with all the whispers and the ill looks, the jabs and the cuts, where everyone thinks he's nothing but a dumb thug. Where they all know that he's the piece of crap that Len gave his life for, a lesser thief, an inferior asset, and now they have Len there to remind him of what they could have had if Mick hadn't let Len take his place.

Len doesn't want to go back to Central, so they won't.

They'll stay here, then, as long as Len wants.

Mick lost him once.

He can't bear to let him go again.

Never again.

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They say such terrible things, the crew, when they think Len can't hear them. Len can hear - many, many things.

"Snart doesn't even have hands anymore," Jax hisses. "We can't let him go out here; it's way too dangerous."

"Mick says it'll be good for him," Sara says.

Jax snorts. No doubt he knows that Mick is speaking out of pity, out of scorn. He knows Mick well, now. Mick was always fond of him; Jax no doubt knows how trustworthy Mick is, how cunning, how insightful. How skillfully he handles people.

How skillfully he's handling Len.

Yes, Jax's disdain is all for Len. He knows how useless Mick's efforts are. He knows how useless Len is, now. He knows that Mick's only being sentimental.

Len creeps back to his room, silent and unheard.

“I really do think the best place for the poor guy would be at some sort of hospital,” the kid Len can never recall the name of is saying, his hand clasped with the girl who replaced Kendra - what's her name - Amaya. She’s new, too. Len hears them as he passes by the library on the way back to his room. “Somewhere where they can take care of him properly.”

“I agree,” Amaya says. “He may have been one of the team, once upon a time, but keeping him here is just cruel.”

“I don’t know,” Palmer says, sounding like he's frowning. The two of them and him and Stein are all sitting around a table, looking through books. “He said he doesn’t want to go back to Central.”

“Mr. Snart doesn’t necessarily know what’s best for him,” Stein points out. “Especially not with the deterioration of his mental facilities as a result of the Oculus.” He shudders, clearly horrified by the thought.

“Injured soldiers are worse than animals,” Amaya says. “An animal will realize when the fight is done. A soldier will just hurt himself more. There are places that will take him even if he doesn’t want to go. Someone with a damaged mind can be cared for there. It’s best for them, even if they don’t agree.”

“You don’t know Snart,” Palmer says with a snort. “He doesn’t stay anywhere he doesn’t want to be.”

“Even now?” Stein asks.

Palmer is silent.

Len passes them by, going back to his room, silent and unheard.

He takes the long way there.

"Mr. Snart," Gideon says. She speaks to him in a whisper, now. He's asked her to, and she listens to him. Someone still listens, at least. "You need to take your medication."

Len shakes his head mutely. He doesn't like the drugs.

"Mr. Snart, your high tolerance for pain aside, you must permit your body time to heal. It cannot do so if it’s in pain."

The drugs make him fuzzy. Make him not think. Like the first few days before the Waverider found him, all alone on that abandoned ship on that beach, the wreck of the Mary Celeste. Him and the ghosts, where everything was horror and agony.

Like every morning, when he wakes up with a new hole in his head.

"Please, Mr. Snart."

No.

"If you do not take the medication, I will be forced to inform Mr. Rory."

Len falters.

He can't burden Mick more than he already does.

"Fine," he says, tasting bile. "But I want a camera."

"It's yours, Mr. Snart," Gideon says. It's strange, but she almost sounds relieved.

She must hate the idea of one of her crew dying when she could stop it. Mission not fulfilled, or something like that.

The camera lets Len sit in on the mission meeting even when he's splayed out on his bed, shaking and shivering and fuzzy from the drugs he's taken at Gideon's request.

It lets him see what his presence has cost Mick.

"Your services will not be necessary on this mission, Mr. Rory," Rip says, his voice crisp. "It requires a certain subtlety and delicacy."

"Not quite your style, Mick," Sara jokes, punching him in the shoulder.

They all laugh. Mick shakes his head a little in what must be amusement - his back is to the camera, so Len can't tell for sure.

"Mr. Rory's limited capacity for thought is too busy to be concerned with matters of delicacy," Stein says, shaking his head. "This mission calls for intellect."

"So where's that leave you, Gray?" Jax laughs, a tease among friends.

The talk turns to logistics.

Len bows his head. He knows what they really mean.

Mick hardly lacks for subtlety, of course. Mick was Len's right hand man for a reason - he was always better at reading people than Len, even if Len was better at manipulating them. Len's plans, without Mick, were by necessity mechanical, lifeless things, tricks of timing, metal and machine, and what went wrong was always the people.

With Mick, Len's plans were works of art.

Each person accounted for, each contingency planned for -

Together, they were unstoppable.

But now -

Now, Mick has a new crew. New partners. Palmer, perhaps - Mick had given him Len's gun, and Len's seen his old jacket, Len’s old favorite jacket, hanging in Palmer's closet. Or maybe the new partner was Amaya, who stood so close to Mick and smiled at him like she understood everything about him. Maybe it was both of them.

It doesn't matter. Mick's brain and intuition and willpower, his strength and his wisdom, are offered to them, now, the most precious of gifts. Not Len. Not anymore. It's all for them.

Or it had been, anyway.

Len can see the way they tease him, the way they pretend to think that Mick's nothing more than the dumb thug he plays for a hostile audience - jabs that make Len see red and gnash his teeth to keep silent, laughter that rings in his ears long after they’ve left the room. And Mick, Mick nods along with them. Mick, Len's Mick - once upon a time, Len's Mick - says nothing to stop them or to censure them.

There is, Len presumes, some in-joke he is missing. Some secret event that bonded them together, to make this type of humor, which Len’s always hated and Mick never seemed to be fond of, be fine. Be acceptable, when each word makes Len taste bile and rage.

But that was then. Now -

Now they leave Mick out of their planning, and that, too, must be because of Len.

Because Mick's mind is consumed with Len, rather than the mission. Mick is too concerned, too sentimental, about Len to focus adequately on the job at hand.

It happens, sometimes. Len knows how to handle it: let Mick take the time, let him cool off. Let Mick focus on the thing that’s gotten his mind focused – whether it be a fire or the local urban garden or a stray kitten that needs round the clock care – and once he’s worked his way through what he feels he needs to do, he’ll come back. The Legends seem to have learned that lesson as well.

Len never expected to be the kitten in that scenario.

The Legends – the Legends must know Mick so well, now. Better than Len does anymore. Mick's changed so much in the time Len was gone.

Len misses him. There's an empty space at his side that Mick ought to fill, but even when he's standing there, Len knows that he's not there, not really. He's still with the crew.

The crew, who he permits untold liberties.

God, when Mick was Len's, Len would murder anyone who talk to him that way. Hell, he has murdered people who said that sort of thing. He doesn't understand what's changed.

He doesn't understand at all.

If Mick tolerates this, there must be a reason. If they leave Mick out of their discussions, if they don't give him choice part of plans, if they tease him for inadequacies he's never possessed -

There must be a reason.

What's changed?

Only Len.

If Len is keeping Mick back, keeping Mick down -

He doesn't want to do that.

Mick sits out of missions he could have commanded. He defers to Sara, to Palmer, to Amaya, even to Jax or that annoying one Len can never seem to remember the name of. Puppies half his age; men that wouldn't ever make the cut for Len's crew, not even worthy enough to kiss Mick's boots.

Nate and Palmer and Jax talk about fixing the ship, but fall silent when Mick walks in, despite all he must know from his time as Kronos. Despite his intuitive understanding of machines that work on combustion of any sort.

Stein speaks sharply and Mick moves to accommodate him, little gestures that smooth the path in front of him, and Stein's eyes are too busy looking at Len to appreciate the gestures.

Sara speaks with Mick in low voices that Len can't overhear, and Mick's shoulders slump in defeat.

Len is holding Mick back.

As long as Mick is stuck babysitting Len, he can't take his rightful place in the Waverider crew.

It's Len's fault.

He should let him go back to the Waverider, to his chosen crew, where he belongs.

Just -

He can't bring himself to.

Not yet.

But soon.

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Len's pulling away from him.

Mick's losing him.

He's losing him.

Mick knew the day would come, when Len would demand a reckoning. But it's too soon, it's too soon.

He can't lose Len again so soon.

He can't lose Len.

Period.

He's never losing Len again.

He doesn't care what he has to do, what he has to give up, but he's never losing Len to anything ever again if he can help it.

He'll fight armies by his side; he'll go up against men who make time stand still and throw lightning; he'll spit in the face of time itself for him. He'll bind them together and beg for Len's forgiveness. He'll walk beside him into death, this time, if that's what it takes.

For that, though, he'll need supplies.

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There's something in the air.

None of the crew, the Legends, notice, but Len does. He always could smell trouble wafting down the way. He has a sense for it.

He remembers Alexa.

Security deposit job. It was a beaut of a job, everything planned out, everything perfect. Len had been younger, then, him and Mick together, and he'd been eager to sign his name to such a job. Mick had already been talking big as to how he'd spend the money when they had it.

And then Len's nose started twitching.

He smelled trouble and he tried to deny it, at first, because the job was that damn good, but that spot between his shoulder blades, his blind spot - it wouldn't stop feeling like someone was right about to slip a knife right into it.

He'd pulled them out.

Mick had bitched for a day or so, moaning about the loss of money, the prestige, all that crap, but a few drinks and a nice fight soothed him soon enough.

And a week later they watched as their former compatriots were marched out in line, handcuffs shining around their wrists. Those that were alive, that was. Not everyone was taken alive.

And now -

Well, Len's nose is twitching and his shoulder blades feel less like an oncoming knife than a full on spear. Maybe that spear of destiny they keep talking about but never explaining.

Len shuffles through the hallways, his useless hands curled into his chest, his eyes darting from side to side. He knows he looks half-deranged, but for once he woke up knowing where he is, knowing who he is, knowing what he is, and what he is absolutely - goddamn -

Terrified.

Something is coming.

Some terrible storm, some knot, some safe that can't be cracked, some last minute change -

Some mystery -

He doesn't know how long he's been there, amid the grizzled hulking mast and the slick wet wood of the deck. He doesn't know how many times the ghosts have come for him, shining blue in his vision.

He doesn't know what shore they've landed upon.

He doesn't even know his own name.

"Mick," he gasps, when the ghosts bring him water. "How's Mick? Where's Mick?"

They pour water down his throat, sore from screaming.

"Tell us your name and join our crew," they whisper in his ears.

"Mick," he begs. "Tell me of Mick."

They put bread to his lips, but pull it back before he can eat it.

"Your name," they whisper. "Our crew."

"Mick!" he calls. "Mick! Are you there?"

They sigh and feed him, and they flee in terror when the Waverider blasts into the sky above the wreckage that holds those who drowned ten thousand men or more.

"Something's coming," Len says, resting his head against the cool grey wall of the Waverider. "Gideon. Something's coming."

"Mr. Snart," Gideon says, her voice smooth and emotionless. "Are you feeling well?"

"Where are the Legends?" Len asks. "Where did they go?"

"They're on mission," Gideon says. "1959. Please return to your quarters, Mr. Snart."

"No. I need to find it."

"What are you looking for?" Gideon asks. "I can help you find it."

"I don't know," Len whispers. "But I'll know it when I see it. It's coming. It's coming for me."

"What is it, Mr. Snart? What's coming?"

Len closes his eyes.

"A nightmare."

"Holy crap, it's Snart," Jax shouts, his arms and head ablaze, blasting through the wild-eyed men who rush at them. Pirates, lured in by the wreck, from every era and every time, ridden like horses by the ghosts that they slowly become as they join the deathless crew. The Legends had tracked a group of troublesome time pirates who stole something that the timeline desperately need to put back to be made right. "Guys! It's Snart!"

"I thought we put him back in his timeline," Sara shouts.

"We did!"

"Then what the hell is he doing here?"

Len starts screaming again as the pain hits again, the roiling pangs that come in as sure as the tide.

"Shit! Something's wrong with him!"

The Legends rip him free and take him to the ship. Mick's there. His eyes are wide and wild, but he's whole, he's hearty.

It's Mick, it's Mick, it's Mick!

"What's happened?" Mick rasps. "What - why is he here?"

"It's Snart," Palmer says unnecessarily, then grunts as Len's flailing arms hit him right in the belly, knocking the air out of him.

"I can tell it's Snart!" Mick roars. "Why is he here? Why isn't he back where he belongs?"

Mick - doesn't want him here?

No, that's wrong.

That's wrong.

"You'd think you'd be happier, Mr. Rory," Stein says snippily as he and Jax split apart. He has a busted lip; that's probably why. "He is your partner."

"One I put back into the timeline after watching him murder another version of me," Mick snaps.

Len did that?

Len did -

"Why is he screaming? What's the - "

They pull his head up, and the bandages the ghosts wrapped around his face fall away.

"Oh god," Mick whispers. "Oh god - oh god - his face – his hands - Len - Lenny -"

"What happened to you?" Sara whispers.

"The Oculus," Len tells them, delirious with pain but strangely lucid. "It was the Oculus."

His eyes are fixed on Mick's face, so he sees his face twist with horror, with some realization -

"Lenny - it's really you -"

And then the pain comes again and wipes out all thought.

"I'm telling you," Len insists. "There's something wrong."

"You're sick," Sara says with a sigh, exchanging long-suffering looks with Stein. "Listen, Leonard -"

"Not so sick that I don't know when something's the matter," Len says, keeping a tight leash on his temper. His voice is nasal with irritation. "I'm getting better -"

"Yeah, yeah, getting better every day," she says. "We hear it from Mick." She hesitates, softens. "Leonard. Listen. I'll - I'll do another check, okay?"

"You think I'm hallucinating again," he says bitterly.

"At least it's not as bad as when Mr. Rory was suffering a similar affiliation," Stein says.

Len swallows down his sudden rush of anxiety - Mick hallucinated? When? What? - and focuses on the task at hand. "Where's Mick?" he asks instead. He'll believe me, he'll understand - won't he?

"He's getting some supplies," Sara says. "Just relax, will you? Nothing's going to go wrong. This mission is a piece of cake."

Len stares at her for a long second. "What next," he says dryly. "At least it couldn't get any worse? Cue thunderstorm?"

They stare at him blankly.

"Never mind," Len says, and stalks off as best as he can. His back was straight, his head held high, but his feet still drag and his useless hands are curled in front him protectively and there's nothing he can do about that.

He needs to find Mick.

"No!" Len shrieks. "No!"

"Calm down, damnit!" Stein shouts.

"I've got his arms!" a black woman far stronger than she ought to be shouts in return.

"I've got a leg!"

"Leonard, we're trying to help you," Sara pleads. "It's Gideon - don't you remember Gideon? She fixed your hand."

Len doesn't want to be fixed.

He killed Mick, he hurt Mick - he doesn't remember it, but then again he doesn't remember his own name half the time - and if Mick says it's true, then it must be true -

They force him into the chair.

Len looks up into the light above the chair - blue light -

His scream this time has no words.

Len can't find Mick.

Mick's out, they said at first. Supplies.

Then he misses a check in.

A minor delay, they assure him. No doubt a complication that Mick is handling even now. Or maybe he just went to a bar.

Then they laugh.

But the hour grows later and later. Their smiles fade. Their faces grow drawn and worried.

Len roams the halls of the Waverider like a restless ghost.

A ship out to sea, looking for its anchor.

He can't find Mick.

If something happened to Mick - if he was so worried about Len that he let his guard down -

God, why wasn't Len there?

This is like that horrific nightmare that was their original trip to the 1950s, with the loneliness and Jax turning into a hawk, and all of that concluding with the revelation that while Len had been dicking around, Mick had been at the mercy of the Time Masters, turning into -

Len stops as he hears the door of the Waverider slide open, and he turns to face -

His breath catches in his throat as he sees -

Kronos.

"No," Len whispers. "No."

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

Len wakes up slowly.

He's in his bed on Willow Avenue, Central City - no.

Cell Block B in Iron Heights - no.

The Waverider - no.

Where is he?

Len sits up.

"I don't know this place," he says, tasting the truth on his lips.

"You didn't make it in here last time," a voice says from the door.

Mick.

Len blinks at him. He's wearing the Kronos suit, but not the helmet, but he's smiling at him.

Smiling.

Len smiles back helplessly. "Mick," he says. "What happened?"

"You fainted," Mick says promptly.

"That's a filthy lie."

"You did," Mick says. "But I think I gave you a shock."

"What am I doing here?" Len asks. "Why are you dressed like that?"

Mick pauses. Licks his lips. "It's for you," he says.

Len blinks again. "What is?"

"It's my old time ship," Mick says. "From when - well. You know. But it's mine. Ours. I want - it's for you."

Len doesn't understand.

"I disabled the Waverider," Mick says, tapping his arm-piece. "It's not unfixable, but it'll take them some time to repair. They saw me come in as Kronos, which will confuse and mislead them, so even if they do start following us, they won't look it in the right direction. That'll buy us even more time."

"Buy us time? For what?"

Mick strides forward, falling to his knees with a clatter. "Len," he says, and he's swallowing like there's something tightening his throat the way it's tightening Len's. "You were hurt. I don't want you to be hurt. We can go back. We can change the past - any time, you just name it - you want us to stop your dad, you want to stop my fire, you want us never to get on the Waverider, we will, anything, anytime. I want you to be happy. I want - I want to be by your side, no matter what. No matter how short a time."

"You want -"

"I want to give you a chance to change history. Your history. Like you wanted to originally -"

"Forget that," Len says, because there was something far more valuable in that uncharacteristically long babble of words. "You want to be - with me?"

Mick's face reflects shock.

Len doesn't know why.

"You're my partner, Lenny," Mick says, his face twitching as he tries to control himself. It was always Len's skill, not his. "You're the best thing I've got. I lost you once, damnit; I'm not losing you again."

"But -"

"I know that you - that you might be rethinking our partnership -"

"Never!" Len bursts out savagely. "Never - Mick - god, Mick - how can you think that?"

Mick's eyes are wide and wild and lost, just as they were when they saw him again that first time.

"I should, I know," Len continues. "I ought to let you go, if I wasn't so goddamn selfish. I'm keeping you back, holding you down - I'm the dead weight you have to carry - annoying - hideous - useless -"

"Who told you that?" Mick says. His voice is very, very flat. "Was it one of the Legends?"

"I don't need them to tell me what I already know," Len scoffs. "When you won't spent a whole night in my bed and can't even look at me - you won't even touch me - "

"I thought you hated me," Mick whispers. "For the Oculus. It's my fault -"

"I make my own choices, Mick," Len snaps. "I always have. Isn't that what you told me, after the fire?"

"But - your hands - your mind -"

"I know," Len says. "I'm useless to you now."

"That's not true," Mick says. "Your mind is getting better every day, and Gideon even says there's hope for your hands to recover mobility, one day. And even if it weren't true, I'd still want you as a partner. As long as you'll have me as yours."

"But the Waverider," Len protests. "You're - you're theirs, now. You listen to them - you joke with them - jokes I don't get -"

"I've lived with 'em for a year longer than you," Mick says gruffly, sounding puzzled. "Bound to be a few in-jokes you don't get. Not a big deal. Not enough to make you back away from me like you've been doing -"

"But you let them say - god, Mick! Maybe it's just my sense of humor that's faulty -"

"He finally admits it," Mick mutters.

"- but I just don't find it funny, you know, when they're joking about you being thick or dumb or brutish or an animal. When they pretend they don't let you help plan the jobs, when they make like they think you don't got skills -"

Len trails off.

Mick's face is white.

Realization comes, months too late.

"They're not joking," he says. His voice is as flat as Mick's was, earlier. "They don't respect you. I left you with a crew that doesn't respect you -"

"It's not your fault," Mick says. "It started - after. After you, and the Oculus."

Len's useless hands clench. "I'll kill them."

"You'll do no such thing."

"They insulted you!"

"Len -"

"They meant all of that crap!"

Mick pulls Len into his arms. "Shhh," he says. "You're shaking, Lenny."

Len is, in fact, shaking.

It's not cold, though, for once.

It's rage.

Unleashed at last.

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

Len still wants him.

Len - Len still wants him.

Mick doesn't know if he was a saint in a previous life or something, but he knows he's been no saint in this one. He doesn't deserve a second chance like this.

You won't spend a night in my bed - you can barely touch me!

"I spent every night in your bed," he whispers into Len's ears, his arms still wrapped around his partner, trying to distract him from the all-consuming rage that's burning him from the inside. "I took you into my arms, just like this, and I held the nightmares at bay. Best part of my day."

"Then why did you leave?" Len whispers. "In the mornings?"

"Thought you wanted me too," Mick says honestly. "I think I made a right fuck up of it, Lenny. I never wanted you to think I didn't want you."

"My hands -"

"We'll manage. I don't care how. Worst case scenario, we get Ramon to build us some bleeding edge prosthetics and chop 'em off."

Len swallows a laugh, but Mick knows that particular way his shoulders shake.

"My mind -"

"I'd still bet on you against the world," Mick says. "I know I can't help with the planning, since my brain doesn't work that way -"

"What're you talking about?" Len asks, and he sounds almost bewildered. "You always help with the planning."

Mick frowns at him.

"Mick," Len says, and he's staring Mick straight in the eyes and there's nothing of the liar in there, nothing of hatred, nothing of resentment. Nothing that Mick was so afraid of. "I always ran all my plans by you so you could ID the bad stuff. You're good at planning. You're smart. Fuck, that's why I thought they must be joking - you're the best goddamn partner a man can have, and it never occurred to me that they wouldn't see that."

Mick swallows. Kind words, he's missed those. But it's Len saying them - and Len is rarely kind, but always so painfully precise. That means he means what he's saying.

"Look at what you did now," Len urges him. "It was you, wasn't it, that figured out a way to lure them to the 50s, didn't you?"

Mick pauses, but that's all the confirmation Len needs. Len's brilliant, beautiful mind, working in high gear again.

"You got them to the right time period," Len continues. "You found your old armor, and wore it, even though I know how much you hate it and everything it represents -"

That's true.

(The Legends would never have noticed that.)

"- and you got me out in a way that deliberately echoed the first time we did this dance because you knew it'd wreak havoc with their minds."

"It's a smash and grab job," Mick says. He's aware his face is burning red; it's been so long since anyone's spoken of him in an admiring way, and a good word from Len was always worth a thousand of any others. "You don't need brains for that."

"Not brains for machines and layouts," Len says. "That's my job. But you, Mick - you get people. You can read 'em as well as I can pick a lock."

Mick just buries his face in Len's shoulder. He wants to say thank you, thank you for reminding me, thank you for being back when I thought you were gone for good, but he can't. It's not their way.

"When should we go to?" he asks, instead.

He feels more than sees Len frown. "What d'you mean?"

"To change your past. Our past. Do you want to aim for your dad again? Maybe after Lisa was born? Or sometime later -"

Len's melted hands curl around Mick's shoulders.

"The only thing I want to change is the fact that someone wearing my face killed a version of you - any version of you - when I was gone," Len says.

Mick's forgiven him for that long ago, and said as much. He knows that version of Len had been brainwashed by the Legion. But Len still nurses the wound.

"The Oculus - if you hadn't been there, your hands and mind wouldn't be -"

"Mick," Len says. "If I hadn't been there, you would've. You think that's something I'd okay? Ever?"

"We could've left Haircut there," Mick says, but he doesn't really mean it.

"Nah," Len says. "I'm not interested in changing the past. As long as I have you, I'll make the rest work. No, it's the future I'm more interested in."

"You want to go run a heist in the future?" Mick asks. Seems like a Len thing to do.

"Maybe later," Len concedes. "But right now, I want the Legends to pay."

"Len -" Mick starts.

"No arguments," Len says.

"No killing," Mick rebuts.

Len makes a face at him, but Mick knows that’s a concession.

"Besides, what are you thinking?" Mick asks. "I can't fight them in this drone ship. Too small, too weak compared to how Hunter amped up the Waverider. Hell, after all the crap he’s done to her now that he has the whole timeline to pick from, I doubt there’s a ship out there that could stop them."

Len hums thoughtfully. “Hey, Mick,” he says. "You remember that beach where you found me?"

"Sure," Mick says, puzzled. "That old shipwreck that the time pirates we'd been chasing used as their home base. What about it?"

"It's not quite just that..."

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

The wreckage of the Mary Celeste is far more than a wreck on a beach somewhere near Gibraltar.

See, for one thing, the Mary Celeste was never wrecked.

It was salvaged, empty, its crew gone missing – but not wrecked.

Not in anything but the imagination of millions, the queen of the ghost ships, and that has its own type of power.

That’s why here, on this lonely forsaken beach, the wreckage of that ship lives forever.

The ship – and the ghosts.

This is the home of thieves and pirates: from every era, from every timeline, every religion, race, or creed. Alive or dead. It matters not. They mix freely.

Each legends in their own time, or in later ones – men who once walked the earth, men who walk it now, men who will but have not yet been born, men who pulled themselves free of their pages come together equally alongside women with proud smiles and occasional complaints at the gender inequities.

Thieves, all.

In the end, it’s no surprise that this is where Leonard Snart, the thief who undertook to free the sea of time from the confines of the Time Masters, would be reborn.

Really.

It’s the least they could do for one of their own.

And when that thief that was born by their efforts but never joined their crew comes back, his lover standing behind him – eyes wide like saucers – and calls for them, they answer in all their warring legions. The ghosts of the past, the ghosts of the future, the madmen who come to warm their souls by the fires.

Len grins when he sees them, his face still half-melted, his fingers still curled like clubs, but there’s hope burning in his eyes where before there was none.

“Hello, there,” he says. “I’m looking for a ship that can help us hunt down another ship. Figured this was the right place for it.”

The ghosts are silent, staring, considering. Why should they grant such a request, and from a man yet living? A man not yet part of their crew?

“Of course,” Len continues, casual and blithe as if he wasn’t facing an army of the most terrifying thieves in history. “For a job like this, I need the best. So if you ain’t the best, don’t bother to apply.”

The ghosts murmur amongst themselves, the pride in their ships warring with the request from –

Well. In a way, he is one of them.

So maybe it’s okay to say yes, just this once.

Len looks at the crowd before him and his smile broadens.

“Who’s first?”

[kirkwall-group-therapy]

City of Blood, ch 6

[Mature content warning, Act 1: cursing, adult topics, violence]

Chapter Six: Rivani

Hawke and Fenris had met twice now for their reading and writing lessons. Hawke brought several books for their first lesson, but pretty quickly realize that teaching someone to read was not as simple as she had expected. Hawke spent the first lesson bumbling around trying to figure out how to attack this thing called teaching.  Hawke was struggling to figure where to begin and how to tackle this challenge. It meant more to her than she realized, and she was incredibly frustrated by how difficult it was proving.

The second lesson started out marginally better than the first, since Hawke was at the very least aware that her first approach would not work. Strangely you can’t just cram words into someone’s brain. Who knew? But the second lesson was only marginally better.

“Heh. Who would have thought that trying to teach someone how to read would be so difficult,” Hawke said, embarrassed at her obviously poor talent for teaching.

“It’s ok Hawke,” Fenris said. “I’ve gone this long without being able to read.”

“Fenris, this is important. You cannot truly be free if you have to rely on others to translate for you. That gives them all the power and places you at their mercy. I refuse to allow you to quit,” Hawke said.

“Hawke …” Fenris said, surprised and touched.

“I’m … I’m sorry I’m so bad at this. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. My talents mostly include being a stubborn pain in the ass, and smashing things. Varric would be a better teacher, honestly,” Hawke said.

“I’ll make you a deal Hawke,” Fenris said. “I won’t give up on learning, if you don’t give up on teaching.”

Hawke looked up from the piles of parchment and ink, scribbles and smudges of her second failed lesson. She was surprised but appreciative of Fenris’ vote of confidence in her, even if it was foolish.

“Deal,” she said. Hawke sighed heavily looking through the papers again. “Maybe we should just start with your name.”

At last she had realized that she had been making it more complicated than it needed to be. They spent the next few hours going over the letters in Fenris’s name, and then they moved to ‘Hawke,�� ‘Varric,’ ‘Bethany,’ and Aveline.’ An unfortunate outcome, depending on how you look at it, is that Fenris would forever spell hawk, as in the bird, with an e added at the end. No one knew if it was something that was just stuck in his brain, or if he deliberately did it, as Varric corrected him many times over the years. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story.

~

“Varric,” Hawke said as she entered his room.

“Mmmmm. What’s up Hawke? What can I do for you?” He asked as he looked up from his work: apparently working on his latest book.

“If I were, maybe, possibly, trying to teach someone how to read …. How should I go about it? Where should I start?” She asked.

“You … teach?” Varric asked with a laugh.

“That’s exactly the reason I’m here asking you … because it, it hasn’t gone so well. My poor teaching ability is to blame,” she said.

“Just who is it anyway?” Varric asked, dying of curiosity.

“I’m not sure this individual would appreciate me disclosing their name. I’m not sure how they feel about others knowing,” Hawke said.

“Alright alright,” Varric said, but after a moment’s pause he said, “It’s Gamlen, isn’t it?”

“Heh,” Hawke said with nervous laughter.

“Alright, alright. I won’t pry. Hmmmm. Where to start, eh?” Varric said. “Well, they have to know their letters and numbers first. So teaching them the common language alphabet is the first place to start. But, easier said than done.”

“My teachers always made it seem easy,” Hawke said. “Despite my efforts to make it as hard as possible. I actually did well in school, whenever I could myself to sit still and focus that is. And now I’m wondering if my teachers weren’t all Tevinter sorcerers.”

“Ahahaha,” Varric laughed. “To teach you, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to resort to blood magic. Let me try to find some learning materials suitable for an adult. I’ll let you know by the end of the week. For now, maybe just start by teaching them the letters of their name and things like Kirkwall, Hightown, Lowtown, Hanged Man, the Docks, names of the streets, etc - that way they can at least read a map, maybe.”

“Thanks Varric! You’re the best,” Hawke said, and gave Varric a big hug.

Fenris and Hawke met two more times before the end of the week. They were a tremendous improvement over the first two attempts, but Hawke still felt woefully inadequate. But Fenris it turns out, was a very quick learner which made things much easier on Hawke. By the end of the week Fenris could read and write his name, and they had begun working on the names on a map that Hawke had pinned to one of his walls.

Varric had managed to locate a tutor who had been secretly tutoring a noble lord, one who had managed to evade most of his childhood schooling. There was a whole first year curriculum. Small books, practice papers, notes. Hawke couldn’t believe it, and honestly, it made her feel a great deal worse about her own initial efforts. It was also a bit overwhelming, which was evident in her expression as she looked through what Varric had given her.

“You don’t have to use everything,” Varric said. “Find things that you think would be helpful, and discard the rest.”

“Varric, I can’t thank you enough,” Hawke said.

“I’ll just put it on your tab,” Varric said and winked.  “So, what’s the job this week,” Varric asked.

“Well,” Hawke said, not sounding very confident. “Do you remember Javaris, the dwarf we rescued a few weeks back?”

“Vaguely,” Varric said.

“He sent me a letter. He says he has a job for me. Apparently, Tal-Vashoth have been murdering travelers in the Wounded Coast,” Hawke said.

“And he wants you to kill them for him, I take it. What’s in it for him?” Varric asked.

“I guess the Arishok said he would give Javaris the recipe for an explosive powder that doesn’t require lyrium or magic, if he found a way to clear out the Tal-Vashoth. It’s not really my first choice for a job. I’d really rather leave all of the Qunari alone, Tal-Vashoth or not. Naturally Aveline doesn’t approve. But I don’t have the luxury of being choosy, and they are murdering innocent travelers,” Hawke said.

“Damn. Those are some tough bastards,” Varric said.

“Want to join us?” Hawke asked, flashing him her best puppy eyes. “I could use another hand since Aveline said she can’t participate. Guard Captain can’t be involved in something like this, or whatever.”

“Sure, I’ll come along. Why not. What could possibly go wrong hunting some Qunari Tal-Vashoth?” Varric said.

In theory, the task was simple. But as the wise Varric had said, Qunari are some tough bastards. Built like ox, tough as nails. They stand at least a head taller than humans, and are typically at least a full shoulder broader than the typical muscular male human. What really tops off their intimidating looks though, is their grey skin and their horns. Yes, horns. Rumor has it that ages ago, somehow dragon DNA was added to the mix. But the people and the religion are confusing Qunari is both the name for the race and the religion, but non-Qunari races can be part of the Qun, and are thus always considered Qunari. Those who leave the Qun are called Tal-Vashoth, so technically a ‘Qunari Tal-Vashoth’ could be an oxymoron, unless you were specifically trying to refer a person of the race who left the Qun. However, most refer to them simply as Qunari and care little for the technicalities.

These massive paragons of muscle generally favor great swords and javelins! Javelins! One of those will put a decent sized hole right through you. And they certainly did their best to take a chunk out of Hawke. True to Javaris’ letter, th Tal-Vashoth were lying in wait on the Wounded Coast, attack virtually everything that moved. They the advantage of higher ground and saw Hawke’s group approach long before Hawke had any inkling about where they Tal-Vashoth were camped.

Javelins flew the air as the Tal-Vashoth bellowed impressive war cries. Bethany screamed from surprise, but likely the first wave of Javelins only managed to penetrate sand, and not flesh. The Tal-Vashoth rushed down the embankment, and Hawke met their steel with her own. It was one of the most difficult battles Hawke can recall. The sun was beating down on them and cooking both her and Fenris inside their armor. The sand beneath their feet shifted, making deflecting blows difficult, and challenged their balance. The Qunari themselves were some of the most formidable opponents she had ever faced. They were similar to the darkspawn in many ways. They fought without reservation or hesitation, and they were capable of impressively forceful blows. And the Tal-Vashoth weren’t weighed down by heavy army. In fact, they wore very little at all; only modest trousers, boots, and red war paint that covered their chests and faces. It was not Hawke’s best fighting performance.

That first encounter on the beach, they out numbered 2 to 1, and Bethany’s attacks seemed to have the greatest effect against them than swords and arrows. Each block and parry only shoved Hawke backward in the sand, or forced her to stumble backward. She had to get to firmer ground or she was not going to win the fight. Up ahead she could see a wooden platform. It looked like at one time someone had tried to cover part of the sandy path with wooden planks. Hawke let out a deep war cry of her own, and pressed her opponent forward taking several great strides until they were close enough to the platform that she could block and pivot under his swinging arm, and move herself into a flanking position. He turned quickly and blocked her swing, but the firm ground was all she needed to to turn her fight around. Bethany had already managed to take one out, and Varric’s arrows had found one of their necks vulnerable. Hawke struck her opponent in the face with the pommel of her great sword, and in one swoop brought her blade down onto his skulls. He fell to the ground, his blood staining the sand a deep red.

One of the Tal-Vashoth yelled some in Qunari, and rushed at Bethany. Hawke blocked him just in time, but his cries had alerted reinforcements. She killed her opponent quickly, and began making a dash for the embankment. One of the javelin throwers had run out of weapons, but he still had the advantage of the upper ground. Hawke was charging right for him. He side stepped her charge and sucker punched her right in the face when she turned toward him. She hit the ground with such a thud and didn’t stir for a solid minute. Fenris barely fought off three Qunari until Hawke staggered to her feet again, and eventually put her sword right through the Qunari’s thick neck. And that was only the beginning of it. They had to fight their way to the Tal-Vashoth stronghold, located in one of the caverns further up the sandy hill. Inside the Tal-Vashoth numbers were even greater, but at least it was cooler and the ground was much firmer. The gang was able to hold their own and gain some ground until a  saarebas, or a Qunari mage, suddenly appeared and scoured the cave with lighting, inflicting everyone in it’s path with lightning burns. They defeated the Tal-Vashoth in the end, and banged and bruised they shuffled back to the city.

Hawke sent word that evening to Javaris that the Tal-Vashoth had been taken care of, but apparently that wasn’t the end of the deal. Javaris said he couldn’t pay until he had the black powder in hand, and since Hawke had been the one to kill the Tal-Vashoth, he insisted that Hawke go with him to see the Arishok. So the day after the fight with the Tal-Vashoth, they went to see the Arishok. Bethany had done her best to heal Hawke’s eye while Anders was away on some kind of business. With some magic and a few salves, the swelling vanished and only a purple-yellow ring around Hawke’s eye remained. The lightning burn on Hawke’s arm still stung, but otherwise wasn’t bad and no longer needed to be bandage.

“There you are,” Javaris said. “What took you so long?”

“You said to meet here at noon, and it is noon,” Hawke said.

“Yes, yes. Come on,” Javaris said. He led the way into the Qunari compound and the biggest Qunari you’ve ever seen approached, and sat in something equivalent to a throne.

“Arishokost. Maraas shokra. Aanaan esaam Qun,” Fenris said.

“What did you just say!?” Varric whispered in harsh surprise. Hawke starred at the elf, mouth slightly agape.

“The Qun, from an elf? The madness of this … place,” the Arishok said in a deep, bellowing voice.

“Friend of yours?” Hawke asked quietly.

“Friend of no one,” Fenris replied.

“Yes,” Javaris said stepping forward. “Ahem, well. That said, I am here to report that Hawke here felled your hated Tal-Vashoth, one and all. So, I’m ready to open negotiations for the explosive powder, as we agreed.”

“No,” the Arishok replied simply.

“Fenris?” Hawke whispered. “Have anything useful up your sleeve? Maybe say something more in Qunari?”

“Qunari do not abandon a debt,” Fenris said. “I humbly request clarification from the Arishok.”

“I have a growing lack of disgust for you,” the Arishok said. Hawke had to repeat that in her head a few times to understand what he meant. “The dwarf imagined the deal for the gaatlok. He invented a task to prove his worth, when he has none.”

“Then we have wrongly inserted ourselves in your affairs. Would you have us kill this dwarf?” Fenris asked. Hawke jerked her head in surprise.

“Wait. What now?” Javaris asked, stepping back a bit.

“If you faced Tal-Vashoth, he is not worthy of dying to you. As he was not worthy of dying to them. But you … you keep good company. Let him live. And leave,” the Arishok said.

“You may want to take this opportunity to go,” Hawke said to Javaris.

“But he has to sell. It’s a product. People want it,” Javaris said.

“There is no profit in empowering those not of the Qun. The means of creating the gaatlok is ours alone. It shall be dispensed only to our enemies, in the traditional manner,” the Arishok said.

“Youuu are a frustrating people,” Javaris said. “And you, you’re fired,” he said to Hawke.

“Now wait just a minute,” Hawke said angrily to Javaris, but he was already stomping off.

“Horn-headed oxmen and mongrel dog lords. Suck your own powder and blow your head off. Sod it!” Javaris said as he stormed out of the compound.

“And you will leave as well human. There is no more coin for you here,” the Arishok said.

“Don’t worry Hawke,” Varric said as they left the Quanri compound. “I’ll have my contacts chase Javaris down. He’ll pay up before the end of the week.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Hawke said through her clenched teeth. “The only thing I care about right now is getting royally fucking drunk.”

It had been one hell of a fight, it had been an all day affair, and there had been injuries to boot. It had promised to be a well paying job too, and now it was a no paying job. To say that Hawke was pissed, was putting it mildly.

“So tell me Elf, how the blazes do you know the Qunari language?” Varric asked back at the Hanged Man.

“I lived with a group of fog warriors for a time,” Fenris said.

“Fog warriors?” Varric asked.

“They are native warriors in Seheron. They fight both the Qunari as well as the Imperium. They were the ones who taught me the Qun,” Fenris said.

“Does that mean you’re Qunari then?” Varric asked.

“No, I am not Qunari,” Fenris said. Which made everything as clear as mud for Varric.

“Riiiiight,” Varric said.

Below, in the main hall, there was a great deal of shouting and cheering. That was all fairly normal, but it usually calmed down pretty quickly. This was only growing louder, until over the cacophony they heard a woman shout, “Fight me! Come on! Is there truly no one who thinks they could be beat me?!”

“What now?” Varric asked, and all four got up to see what the commotion was about.

“My my,” the woman said. “What do we have here? You look like a strapping lass.” She said grinning from ear to ear as Hawke descended the stairs. By her accent, she was unmistakably from Rivain and she was strikingly beautiful, to put it mildly. Her dark mocha skin glistened in the flickering glow of the tavern lights, and the numerous gold necklaces around her neck twinkled in the light. Her large bosom was attractively lifted and on display thanks to the corset and white, revealing tunic that she wore. Her dark hair was partially covered beneath a blue silk and gold bandanna, and her legs were bare from the knee to her hip, where the tunic split down the side. Every eye in the room was on her. She bit the gold stud on her lower lip, and eyed Hawke seductively.

“Ah, no Isabela. This is Hawke. You don’t want to fight Hawke,” Merrill whispered.

“So this is Hawke? Now I definitely want to fight her,” the woman grinned wickedly. “Hawke is it? I challenge your womanhood,” she winked. “Will you fight me to defend it?” The woman was clearly drunk. But so was Hawke.

“Well, now that you’ve challenged my womanhood, in front of everyone no less, I have no choice but to defend it,” Hawke replied loudly, equally grinning from ear to ear. Hawke appreciated the joke, and immediately took a liking to this incredibly attractive woman. Her posture, pose, and stature all indicated that she could hold her own, drunk or not, which meant that Hawke didn’t need to worry too much about accidentally hurting the woman.

Isabela leaped off of the table where she had been standing, and the two of them threw fist after fist, ducking, dodging, stumbling, knocking over a number of mugs and chairs. Isabela kneed Hawke in the gut pretty hard. Hawke doubled over and coughed, but quickly recovered and responded by giving Isabela a swift kick in the rear end. Corff, the bartender, was yelling and pleading with them to stop. The fight ended when Hawke lost her footing on a wobbly stool. She grabbed onto Isabela for stability, but instead pulled Isabela down with her, and they both fell sideways off a table. Half of the patrons were cheering, while the other half were cursing their spilled ale.

“Haha,” Isabela laughed as she stood up, clutching her side. “I knew I would like you, Hawke.”

“And I think I like you,” Hawke said, carefully untangling herself from a nest of scattered, and some broken, stools. “Perhaps you would care to tell me your name?”

“A round of whiskey for everyone,” Varric shouted to appease the masses.

“I am Isabela. Previously Captain Isabela, but the title rings a bit hollow without a ship,” she said.

“How do you know who I am?” Hawke asked, as she touched her eyebrow. She pulled her away away to discover blood on her fingertips.

“Merrill talks about you all the time,” Isabela said.

“How do you know Merrill?” Hawke asked. They both sat down at the table with Merrill, Bethany, Fenris, & Varric.

“You know, that wasn’t as arousing as I expected it would be,” Fenris whispered to Varric. Varric nearly choked on his beer.

“I met Isabela the other week,” Merrill said. “I had come by to talk to Varric, and well, I’m sure it was all in good jest.”

“Some men decided to harass Merrill, and so I simply returned the favor to them. Funny how they didn’t appreciate it much,” Isabela said.

“She’s so pretty,” Bethany whispered to Varric.

“And you must be Bethany,” Isabela said, looking her up and down. “You are beautiful as Merrill said.”

“Thank you,” Bethany blushed.

“And you, my my what a handsome, saucy little devil,” Isabela said, looking Fenris firmly in the eyes with such desire and thirst, and a tremendous power of seduction. Fenris was rendered speechless for a moment. He swallowed hard and before regaining his senses.

“Ha ha,” Fenris mocked.

“Oh I mean it,” Isabela said.

“No doubt,” Fenris replied.

“You must have ice in your veins, to be able to resist me,” Isabela said.

“Lyrium, actually. But I am not so easily seduced,” Fenris replied.

“Oh ho, playing hard to get I see,” Isabela winked. “I will win you over just yet, wait and see.”

“Hawke, there you are,” Anders said as he walked over to the table.

“There’s my hunky healer,” Isabela said, standing up and hugging Anders tightly with her arms and legs.

“Uh, huh, yes, hello Isabela,” Anders said.

“You’re no fun,” she said, and sat back down again.

“I heard you went to the Qunari compound today. Whatever for?” Anders said, visibly concerned about the matter.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Hawke sulked begrudgingly. She had only just forgotten about it.

“We had taken a job to clean out the Tal-Vashoth,” Bethany explained. “But it turns out there wasn’t actually a job, as the Arishok explained to us.”

“You killed Tal-Vashoth?! Maker, Hawke,” Anders said. “And your eye.”

“I tried to heal it all the way,” Bethany said feeling embarrassed at her lack of healing ability. “You should have seen it when she first got it.”

“They’re bad news Hawke,” Anders said, sighed, and sat down at the table. “Maker, I need a drink now.”

“You missed it Anders,” Merrill said cheerily. “Isabela challenged Hawke to a fight, and they went soaring through the air, bounding over tables and stools. It was quite impressive.” Indeed Anders was sad he had missed it.

“Hawke, kitten tells me you’re planning an expedition into the Deep Roads?” Isabela said.

“Well, Varric and his brother are. We’re trying to convince his brother to make me a partner in it,” Hawke explained.

“And you need more money to do that, yes?” Isabela said.

“Ah, yes,” Hawke said, not sure where Isabela was going with this.

“It just so happens that I have a few jobs, and without my crew, I find myself a bit short handed,” Isabela said.

“What kind of jobs?” Hawke asked.

“Smuggling mostly. And don’t worry, I don’t do any jobs that involve smuggling people,” she said.

“We have experience smuggling,” Bethany smiled.

“Ah heh,” Hawke laughed.

“Perfect! Then it’s settled,” Isabela said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, that man over, no not that one, that one, has been eying me hungrily all night, and it’s time now that I go and absolutely devour him.” She winked at Hawke, turned, and walked over the a big burly man sitting on the opposite side of the room. Everyone watched Isabela, completely transfixed as her hips swayed so perfectly with each step. She lightly caressed his big, muscular arms, and sat down in his lap. Hawke saw Isabela deftly lift his coin purse without his notice, before proceeding to pet him heavily. They couldn’t look away.

“So Hawke,” Varric eventually said, shaking himself free. “Let’s talk about your fear of spiders.” Bethany and Merrill’s eyes were glued to watching Isabela, but the rest of the table had gladly turned their attention to Varric.

“Oh Maker, please no,” Hawke said.

“Arachnophobia is a phobia that I’ve never understood. Jesters now? That one I get,” Varric said with a shudder.

“She’s always been afraid of them,” Bethany said, returning her attention to their own table.

“Yes but they eat other bugs,” Varric said.

“That’s their only redeeming quality,” Hawke said. “And it’s for that reason that I want to like them.”

“When we were kids, this man from the University of Orlais, an entomologist I think he said, visited Lothering to study the giant spiders in the area. Father agreed to accompany him into the outskirts of the city, just before the Korcari Wilds. Father was his guide and was there to provide some protection. Anyway, he ate dinner with us one night and went on and on about spiders, and told us that we are never more than 6 feet away from a spider at any given time,” Bethany said.

“Little ones are creepy enough as it its,” Hawke said. “They hide in the shadows, in the corners, in the crevices. Above you, below you, behind you. In the folds of your clothing, in your bed sheets. And they bite! But the giant spiders, what do you think they eat Varric? Tiny little flies?!”

“There were some caverns in Lothering, and every now and then the town would have to go and clear out the giant spiders. They would eat small livestock, Mabari puppies, even small children,” Bethany said.

“Yeesh,” Varric said.

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This fanfic is based on the amazing Dragon Age games, specifically focusing on the DA2 game. Thank you EA/BIOWARE for such amazing games & characters!

I’m new to tumblr, so please bear with me as I figure out the best formatting.