#frog blinking through pain

[bethn0tfound404]

Me rn bc my throat and stomach are working together to kill me while on medicine:

(I have congestion, a sore throat, and an upset stomach ache because of which)

[chlobliviate]

Wolfstar Microfics - Fix it fic

Words: 803

@wolfstarmicrofic

***

“It’s not you, is it?” The words stopped Remus in his tracks. He turned to face Sirius, who had appeared in the doorway of his room. “It’s Pete.” He whispered.

Remus blinked at him, “It’s Pete?”

“I gave everyone different information about where James and Lily would be last night. I told you they’d be at Hogwarts, I told Marlene they’d be staying in Hogsmeade, I told Pete they’d be at home.” He paused, “He went there last night. Voldemort. Blew the place up.”

“No.” Remus shook his head. “Are they—”

“They’re fine. They were at The Burrow with Molly and Arthur.” Sirius looked at his friend. “Why did you let us think it was you?” Remus shook his head. “Why did you let me think it was you?”

“I thought it might be you if that’s any consolation.” Remus sounded pained. “I didn’t want to believe it, though. And, I suppose, with what Dumbledore’s had me doing, I thought you all might as well think me the traitor. It would be less painful for you all when I inevitably didn't come back.”

“Please tell me.” Sirius’ fingers gripped the edge of the doorframe. “Fuck what Dumbledore says. Tell me, Remus.”

Remus sighed, “I’ve been trying to convert werewolves to our side. Greyback and his pack, mostly.” He shrugged, “Fairly unsuccessfully.”

“You’ve been with Greyback?” Sirius’ knuckles were white. “Why would he ask you to do that? That’s fucking awful.”

“He couldn’t exactly send anyone else, could he?”

“But still!” Sirius looked devastated and Remus wanted to wrap his arms around him and never let go, but he took a step back and leant against the wall opposite Sirius’ door.

“Do James and Lily know? Dumbledore?”

“Yeah, Aurors picked up Pete and a few others this morning.” A tear escaped from the corner of Sirius’ eye. “I’m so sorry, Moons. I’m so sorry.”

“I would never,” Remus said quietly. “I owe the world to you, James, and Lily. I would never put any of you, or Harry, at risk on purpose.”

“I know.” Sirius bit the edge of his lip to stop it from trembling. “I don’t know how we got here. This fucking war is destroying everything and I’m destroying everything.”

“Sirius,” Remus looked so tired, “I’ve forgiven you for worse.” He tried to smile, “We’ll get through this.”

“Will we?” Sirius took a shaky breath. “All this time Pete has been feeding us lies about you, and we just believed them. ‘Isn’t it strange that Moony never tells us about his missions?’, ‘Remus missed another meeting? Weird.’ And…” He shook his head, “He said that he saw you kissing Barty Crouch from school.”

“I see.” Remus said slowly, “Well, for what it’s worth, I have never kissed Crouch.”

“Good, he’s a fucking state.” Sirius half laughed, half sobbed. “He made it sound so believable, Moons.”

“I’m sure he did.” Remus said, “I wish you’d all had more faith in me, but I understand what it must have looked like.”

“Can you not be so fucking understanding just this once?” Sirius shouted, “We thought you were a traitor, that you’d give up James and Lily. How can you be so calm about this?”

Remus pressed his lips together, “I’m so tired, Pads. I don’t have it in me to fight anymore. Pete was making comments to me about you, too. I started to believe them. So, I get it. He was our friend, why wouldn’t we believe him?”

“But you’re our friend. Why wouldn’t we trust you?” Sirius rubbed his eyes, “I don’t know how to make this right.”

“Pads,” Remus said softly, taking a step towards him. “Please, listen to me. I’m upset about it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love you. Uh, all of you. All of you.” Sirius’ eyes flicked up to meet Remus’, who instantly looked away.

“Love you too, Moons. Oh!” Sirius pulled a chocolate frog out of his pocket, “It might be a bit melted now, but…”

“Thank you.” Remus took the frog and held it against his chest.

“For the endolphins.”

“Endorphins.” Remus corrected.

“Yeah, same thing.”

“It’s not the—” Remus smiled cautiously. “I would be so lost without you. It’s important to me that you know that, alright?”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” He asked quietly. They’d shared a bed fairly often at school, staying up late and talking. Even since living together, there were nights when Sirius would crawl into Remus’ bed after a bad dream. “It’s fine if you want to be alone, obviously.”

“Of course you can.” Remus looked towards his room, “I really don’t want to be alone.”

“I missed you so much, Moony.” Remus could tell that he didn’t just mean from the week he’d been away with Greyback’s pack.

“I missed you too.”

[mediocreanomaly]

Uncanny Vash HC’s (SFW)

Authors Note: I’m sweating I have so many drafts to get out so I'm going in order, I promise all your ask shall be answered let me feed the creature lovers rq tho- Uncanny Vash is funny and I like to think about weird creature boyfriend, some repeats from the cuddling HC’s because this was already in the works but suck it up buttercup

• I’ll start easy with my “Vash purr’s” propaganda because Vash 100% purrs

•Only thing is he’s not a small animal, he’s a full grown man (plant?) so his purring is a bit different, it’s pretty loud and sounds like a rumbling motor rather than a soft rattle, and often sounds like it comes from every direction. It’s a bit unnerving if you don’t know it’s him making the noise

•It’s still soothing though, especially if your laying on his chest or if he’s laying on you? Let those vibrations sooth you to sleep, Vash happy purring naps are the best

• Staying on the topic of noises, Vash can do that chattering thing cats do. He doesn’t do it unless he’s with people he’s close with but if he’s interested in something you’ll just hear “ack ack ack ack” and turn to see him laser focused on something chittering away

•Vash’s eyes do that animal reflection thing, and it’s honestly terrifying to wake up to at night and although he knows they do this he some how never comprehends how scary it is to see him looking at you in the dark

•I see it like that one south park audio: *Everyone in the dark* Meryl: “Y/N I’m starting to think this is a really bad idea” Milly: “Oh I’m not Y/N, I’m Milly! I thought you were Y/N?” Meryl: “No I’m Meryl” Wolfwood: “You’re Meryl? Where’s Y/N?” Meryl: “Who are you?” Wolfwood: “I’m Wolfwood!” Vash who’s eyes are currently glowing in the dark: “ha ha guess who I am you guys!”

•All of Vash’s proportions are just ever so slightly off, it’s a plant thing, you’ve seen his sisters. This is one that freaks people out because sometimes they notice it but can’t figure out what they are seeing

•Basically: his arms and legs are just a little too long, his fingers stretch a bit too far, his eyes are a little too big, he’s a bit too tall, all stuff that once added up are kind of hard to pick out when your looking at him as a whole, so you know something is off about this man but you just don’t know what...

•Teeth? Teeth. Vash has fangs, in fact most his back teeth starting from his canines are pretty sharp. You don’t really notice unless he yawns and you watch as all his sharp back teeth are flashed in his gaping mouth and- oh he stopped yawning don’t worry about it 

•Vash can drink water with his skin. His sisters have to live in the tanks and take in water through their skin and while Vash prefers to drink like a normal human he can totally dip his hand in anybody of water and it’ll hydrate him. It’s a party trick his does for the group and it freaks Wolfwood out when he drains a cup with his hand

•Vash frog blinks lmao. If he stares at something for too long or is really focused he’ll blink one eye and then the other, he can’t help it

•Speaking of which, Vashes eyes are triple eyelided like a crocodiles, which means he can be asleep and his eyes are wide open. It also means when he frog blinks you can see the other eye lid if you stare hard enough, scares a lot of bar goers who happen to look a bit too closely

•One time Milly had a whole conversation with Vash thinking he was awake but he was not. He was asleep. It’s that damn extra eyelid...if he’s really tired he falls asleep with his eyes open like that. It’s weird.

•He doesn’t keep body heat very well. Maybe it’s due to the fact his sisters live in water but he likes being in the sun to soak up it’s warmth (why else do you think he can wear that coat in the heat?) 

•Vash...if he’s distressed will make this noise. You’ve only heard it once when a city was destroyed and he thought you were dead but...it’s like a howl or animal in pain? It echoed through the entire desert and your body had a visceral reaction to it like it was warning you of a feral animal not to be messed with. When you had stumbled out of the rumble the noise had ended as Vash quickly scooped you up into his arms sobbing telling you never to do that again, it still keeps you up sometimes when you think about it

•Vash...somehow? blends in with his surroundings very well. It’s kind of weird, if he stands still its like...hard to see him? but it shouldn’t be, logically this man in a bright red coat should not be able to be missed but sometimes it’s like your brain forces you not to see him. He knows it freaks people out so he talks with his hands and moves a lot so it doesn't happen

•Feathers! Vash sprouts feathers. Usually it’s when he’s very content or happy although it can happen in extreme distress too. They look like normal bird feathers but they shimmer slightly and they feel weird like they’re made of hair, fern or something softer, Vash is pretty embarrassed about them but it’s super pretty

•Vash sometimes get’s places he shouldn’t be able to get to. Your motel room will be fully locked with no key and you’ll open it to see the blonde on the bed and he’ll just wave like it’s no issue. Trust me don’t ask how he got there

[robingoetia12]

I Love You, I’m Sorry

Despite the fact their communication had improved, Blitzø still had his walls up and Stolas didn’t know how to get his boyfriend to open up. But god damn it, he had to try.

Or where Stolas has no idea of the pain Blitzø is hiding and tries to get him to open up, but aren’t drunk words sober thoughts?

Tags: Stolas and Blitzø have made up, Stolas is a worried boyfriend, Blitzø is traumatised, no smut, angst with fluff, mentions of alcohol problems, Blitzø misses his mum, Cash Buckzo is a prick, mentions of abuse

Chapter 1

After Stolas had finally pulled his head out of his cloaca, he and Blitzø had a long talk and finally sorted the shit out in their relationship. Now things were absolutely amazing between them.

Blitzø spent most nights at Stolas’ palace and he even brought Loona with him so she and Via could spend time together. Everything was perfect… Almost.

Despite the fact their communication had improved, Blitzø still had his walls up and Stolas didn’t know how to get his boyfriend to open up. But god damn it he had to try.

Blitzø was never late back to Stolas’. Ever. Every passing minute of the clock and every coffee refill only caused the prince’s mind to increasingly fester with worry. His thoughts kept flashing to every worst possible scenario of what could’ve happened to Blitzø. As his thoughts travelled to the possibility of Striker kidnapping him, the door swung open.

In stumbled Blitzø, clearly drunk. Stolas sighed in relief and walked towards him then crouched to the imp’s level to meet his yellow eyes that were fixed on the floor. “Darling. Where were you? Are you okay?”

Blitzø, unusually silent, wrapped his arms around Stolas’ waist. Stolas hugged him back but then felt him shaking in his grip and then heard quiet sobs coming out of Blitzø’s mouth, the tears soaking the owl’s feathers. And then the frantic mumbling started.

“I’m sorry…”

Stolas tried to pull Blitzø back so he could look at him properly but Blitzø clung to him tighter, his voice rising and cracking more.

“No momma! Please I’m sorry.”

Stolas froze up. Blitzø had never mentioned his mother or any of his family before. “Darling-”

“Mom please! I love you, I’m sorry.”

Stolas knew he wasn’t listening and was too drunk to focus so he scooped his boyfriend up and tucked him into their bed. He headed out to get him a glass of water to sober him up. What he heard next nearly made him drop the glass.

“Dad please don’t! It hurts!”

Stolas nearly let out a hysterical sob but covered his mouth to stop himself so it came out as a quiet, strained cry. He could see that Blitzø had fallen asleep but then heard one more murmur from him.

“Please, I’ll be better… I just want to see Fizz…”

Stolas got into bed next to him and reached out for Blitzø’s spikes on his back and could still feel the shaking from his body and Stolas noticed how he wrapped his tail around himself. He rubbed his back gently to try and soothe him. “I love you darling…”

He couldn’t sleep after that. He kept tossing and turning, desperately trying to figure out what Blitzø went through and how he could help him but thinking about what it could possibly be made his stomach churn.

How did he not notice?

How did he not realise how affected he clearly was by whatever happened to him?

How could he help him open up?

Blitzø woke up the next morning, head pounding. He fell back onto the bed dramatically. “Ugh… I drank way too much last night, fuck…” He turned his head and saw Stolas clinging to him, still asleep. He smiled softly and stroked his feathers and went to check the time and saw it was 9am.

Shit.

He needed to be in the office in 15 minutes. He gently extracted himself out of Stolas’ arms, being careful not to wake him and jumped off the bed seeing his jacket hung on the back of Stolas’ door and pulled it on. Stolas sat up and blinked like a frog, groggily observing Blitzø rush around. “Darling? Everything okay?”

“Yeah… I need to go like now. We have a client who wants us to kill their target in some bullshit way so I gotta go.” He explained whilst opening the door.

Stolas followed him, red dressing gown on and holding the glass of water. “Do you want something to eat before you leave?”

Blitzø turned around. Despite the fact he and Stolas were a couple he still wasn’t used to being cared for. He was used to people leaving him…

“What? Uh no thanks it’s fine I’ll pick something up on the way.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket as he got to the front door. Stolas gently pulled him back.

“Will you at least drink this before you leave? You came home very intoxicated last night. It’ll do you some good.”

Blitzø rolled his eyes and took the glass. “Fine…” He downed the entire thing and then placed on the nearby table. Stolas was still frazzled from last night. He desperately wanted to hold Blitzø and protect him from anything that might hurt him again.

Stolas quickly spoke up before Blitzø left. “You’re coming home tonight aren’t you?” Blitzø looks up at him, holding his keys. “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout last night, can’t have been fun to put up with me shit faced.” Stolas bent down and hugged him, mumbling about how he didn’t have to apologise. Blitzø snorted slightly, hugging him back. “Christ on a stick, someone’s all lovey dovey this morning.”

Stolas pulled away and kissed the imp softly on his lips and pressed his forehead against his. “I love you darling…” Blitzø smiled and opened the door. “Love you too, ya dork.” He left and sped away in his van. Stolas sighed heavily as the van disappeared. His heart was in his chest, he didn’t know how to help Blitzø.

But he would do whatever he could to keep him safe and happy.

No matter what.

A/N: Proof read by my sister @charliewalkersgf (she doesn’t even like Helluva Boss so she’s been forced into it lmao 🤣) and thanks for the people who replied to a post I made about the dialogue!! You all were very helpful and creative!!! Hope you enjoyed the fic!!! More chapters to come!!

[penumbra-mayhem]

Barely Breathing at All - Sam/Darlin' Fic

"Their heart was pounding so hard their chest ached. The car wasn't moving. Why weren't they moving?"

This is partly inspired by Hozier's song "Abstract (Psychopomp)". It takes place a few months after Sam teaches Darlin' to heal that little sapling. Also, I hc that Darlin' has a stutter, more on that here.

TW: car crash, light gore, PTSD/flashback

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

“Let’s take the long way home, yeah?” Sam asked, gripping his mate’s hand as they walked to his car after a long-winded pack meeting.

Darlin’ glanced up at him with heavy lids and gave a small hum in agreement. Over the past week, they had been struggling to sleep more than usual. Sam hoped a car ride would help.

He was right. With the windows down and old folk songs playing quietly, Darlin’ was slumped in their seat within ten minutes. Sam didn’t even need to glance over; he could tell they were asleep just by listening to their breathing. The balmy summer night saturated Sam's senses with a chorus of frogs and the scent of pine. It was a leisurely winding drive on the outskirts of Dahlia. Sam's core thrummed with satisfaction as he drove.

—

Darlin's eyes shot open as their body lurched forward, their seatbelt locking up to prevent them from crashing into the dashboard.

Their head whipped back, slamming into their headrest.

They blinked rapidly.

Their heart was pounding so hard their chest ached.

The car wasn't moving.

Why weren't they moving?

Darlin' looked frantically through the windshield to see what they'd hit.

Nothing. Just empty road.

They looked to their left.

Sam was frozen in his seat, his hands locked around the steering wheel. His breathing was fast—too fast. And shallow, like he was barely breathing at all.

"S-S-Sam," Darlin' croaked as they tried to push through their own disorientation, "Wh-wh-wh...h-h-h-h.....y-y-y-y-you h-h-h-hurt?"

"I uh.....I'm...." Sam mumbled.

With fumbling hands, Darlin' unlocked their seatbelt and clambered over to Sam. They started scanning his body, checking for any signs of blood or broken bones.

"I'm fine," Sam whispered, but his eyes weren't really seeing Darlin' and his chest was still moving too quickly.

"Wh-wh-wh-wh-what h-h-h-h-happened?" Darlin' asked, holding Sam's tense shoulders. When he didn't reply, they tried again, "Sam?"

"...deer...I tried...tried not to..."

Darlin' turned to look back out the window, just in time to see something jerk up and then fall back down out of view. They slid back into their seat, opened their door, and stepped out. Just a foot or two in front of the car was a deer, bleating weakly in distress as it moved to stand and then fell again.

Darlin' crept forward, trying to keep their own breathing under control. Once the deer was in full view, they could see that its right hind leg was broken, the bone jutting through the skin in two places.

"S-Sam," Darlin' called out. The deer grew louder as they approached and knelt next to it. They tried again, a bit louder, "Sam!"

Nothing.

Darlin' looked up. He was still frozen, his gaze distant and panicked.

"Sam I-I-I c-c-can't.......I d-don't kn-kn-kn-know how...."

They looked down at the deer. It stared back in abject fear.

"Fuck," they whispered.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

"Okay..." Darlin' muttered, ".....okay....I c-c-c-can d-d-do this."

First the deer. Then Sam.

Touch does make it easier.

They placed their hands gently on the deer's mangled leg, wincing when it bleated in pain and tried to pull away.

Close your eyes. It helps.

They squeezed their eyes shut.

Now we just breathe for a bit.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Take a little bit to tune into the rhythm of your magic.

Darlin' focused on their core—felt it tremble. They tried to steady it, tried to strengthen it with each breath.

...reach just that little bit outside of you...it's just a little stretch...you just have to guide it...

Darlin' could hear something. The sound of movement. A car door opening. But they couldn't focus on that now. They were so close.

It doesn't need shape. It doesn't need form. It just needs to flow....it just needs your intention.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale...

Darlin' felt their magic rush from their hands into the deer. They felt the bone meld and the skin knit itself back together. Their eyes shot open. They quickly moved back, just in time as the deer scrambled up and raced off. Nausea washed over Darlin' as they sat there for one breathless moment, staring into the dark woods.

"Darlin'?"

They jumped, causing their head to spin. Sam was standing outside of the car, gazing at them. Darlin' rose on shaky legs before heading towards their mate.

"Sam, are y-y-y-you..." they trailed off as they scanned him again, worried they missed something in their initial search.

"...I'm alright...just...just..." he mumbled, body trembling.

Touch does make it easier.

Darlin' held his hands. "Y-you're safe. I-I-I'm r-right here."

Close your eyes. It helps.

"C-close y-your eyes. F-f-focus on m-my voice, y-yeah?"

Sam's eyes shut. His breathing was still too quick, too shallow.

Now we just breathe for a bit.

"C-c-c-can y-you m-match my-my b-breathing?"

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

"G-good. Y-y-you're d-d-doing s-so good, l-love."

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale...

The frogs started their chorus again. The scent of pine flooded Sam's lungs with each inhale. Everything began to settle, the spinning and trembling dying down like embers. Darlin' wasn't sure how long they were standing there. They would have stood there forever if they needed to.

Eventually, Sam pressed his forehead against Darlin's.

"You healed the deer."

"I....I d-did."

"Thank you."

[gintrinsic-writing]

A Flicker in a Distant Timeline

CW: references to violence, loss of a limb, blood.

--

Like this, the King of Evil didn’t look like much—sweating through his robes, hair in disarray, panting through pain and exhaustion alike. He was too weakened to transform, and his baser form—his simple Gerudo body, absent of Demise’s visibly corroding influence—lacked the same petrifying, untouchable presence. Link figured he should tell him so. 

“You reek.”

Ganondorf’s glare was half-ruined by the tears rolling down his face; courtesy of some well-aimed dirt, Link thought smugly. “And you,” Ganondorf managed between breaths, “sound like a dying frog.”

Link barely had enough energy to muster up the indignation that deserved, but he managed. “A frog? That’s the worst you could come up with?” He scoffed, ignoring how much it stung to do so. “Were you even trying?”

“Croak, croak, croak,” Ganondorf griped, waving a hand back and forth. The Triforce of Power shimmered like a kaleidoscope against the back of his hand. “Annoying little wheezes.”

“Oh, forgive me. Some asshole punched me in the throat.”

“Only after another asshole pulled my hair!”

“So what?” Link croaked—ah, dammit, Ganondorf was right. What a miserable day.

“So, hair’s off-limits.”

“Off…” Link paused to stare. He blinked several times for good measure. Only a little blood managed to dribble into his eyes. “It was a fight! To the death!”

“Fated by the deities themselves,” Ganondorf agreed darkly. 

“And you think hair is off-limits?”

“Well, yes.” Ganondorf sneered at Link as if the hero was particularly dense. “We’re not animals.”

“You literally are, you dumb pig,” Link groaned. 

Ganondorf made some weird growling sound, then coughed. “Just you wait,” he grumbled. “As soon as I catch my breath, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Link mocked. “You’ll kill me? With what weapon? You couldn’t summon a speck of dust right now.”

Ganondorf curled his lip disdainfully. “As if you’re one to talk. You can’t even get up, can you?”

Link chose that moment to finally admit to himself that he’d been managing his half of the conversation while lying prone on the ground. He was sure the Master Sword was within grasp if he needed it. Probably. “I can move,” he answered loftily, only croaking a little, “whenever I want to.” 

“Sure,” Ganondorf agreed.

“I can.”

“Like I said, sure.”

Link groaned again. Dirt stuck to his lips in a very unheroic way. 

Seconds passed, then Ganondorf heaved another breath. It sounded more significant than the previous ones in some strange and foreboding way. He pushed off his knees with both hands and stood up straight. His spine popped immediately. “Damn the goddesses,” Ganondorf spat, bracing a clawed hand against the small of his back as he resumed his slouch. Link couldn’t help but nod in tired agreement. “And damn Demise!”

That sounded particularly vicious. Link nodded again for solidarity. “Is Demise the reason you’re so fucked up?”

“Yes,” Ganondorf hissed.

“Ah.” What was he supposed to say to that? Something meaningful, probably. “Sucks.”

“Indeed.” 

Something wet fell on Link’s face. Then it happened again. Rain, he thought bitterly. Maybe he’d be lucky enough to drown. “I don’t suppose you’re dying? Spare me the trouble of having to finish this?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Ganondorf grumbled. “You?”

“Also unfortunately no.”

Ganondorf eyed him skeptically. “I thought you’d bleed more when I cut off your hand.”

Ah yeah, that. His right wrist really hurt. “To be honest, me too.” A wave of dizziness washed over Link, which he promptly ignored like he had the last four times. “How did you survive that light magic bomb?”

Ganondorf shook his head. “No fucking idea. Luck, perhaps. I felt my heart stop for a moment.”

“Really? Cool.”

Ganondorf shrugged. 

“So… now what?” Link asked quietly, licking at the raindrops gathering on his upper lip. They tasted like dirt. “You gonna kill me?” Because in all honesty, he couldn’t get up. Trying left his pulse racing and his limbs trembling. He was pretty much useless. 

“I should,” Ganondorf answered just as quietly. 

When nothing else was said, Link grunted. “But…?”

“I’m tired.” Simple, honest, absolute. 

“Yeah,” Link muttered. “Me too.”

With a pained little oof, Ganondorf sat down beside Link, crossing his legs at the ankles and keeping his weight off of his left hip. He fiddled with his many bracelets. Link struggled to read his expression. “Perhaps I’ll feel up to it in a minute,” the King of Evil finally said. 

There was something awkward about that. Something sad. Link decided to do what he did best and make a nuisance of himself. “Did you have to sit so close? I wasn’t lying earlier. You stink. Does deodorant not apply to demon kings?”

“Shut up, worm.” Ganondorf flicked a pebble at him. Somehow, it landed right between Link’s eyes. 

“Ow! Fuck you.”

“In your dreams.”

Link gagged, loudly. The effect was ruined when it started to rain in earnest. Before he could think of the best way to complain, Ganondorf threw out a hand, and tendrils of dark magic formed a barrier above them. 

“Oh,” Link said lamely. “Guess you’re not out of juice after all.”

Ganondorf frowned up at the barrier. “It’ll last a minute if we’re lucky.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll get wet. Maybe you’ll be able to walk by then, assuming you don’t bleed out in the meantime.”

A pretty bold assumption, all things considered, but Link wasn’t going to say so. He’d take what he could get. “And then?” he pressed. 

Ganondorf clearly held back the first answer that came to mind. He pursed his lips before saying, “Your choice. I got us this far.”

Link couldn’t help it—he laughed. It sounded pretty terrible. “Yeah,” he wheezed after several seconds. “Yeah, I guess so. Okay.”

Ganondorf shook his head in apparent resignation. The barrier began to flicker. 

[malicedragoness]

Ok, but what if Syzoth can transform into an actual lizard? Not a Zaterran (is this what they’re being called now?), but like a monitor lizard or an iguana. And he can accidentally change back when he’s caught off guard.

(Not proof read. We die like men. And if you can guess the 80s movie reference you get a cookie 🍪)

@bihansthot Syzoth fluff 🤗

Imagine it:

Syzoth only turns into an iguana when he’s extremely weak and is trying to hide from whoever is pursuing him.

He’s got gashes on him, he’s cold, and has been starving. He can’t hold his form anymore. He transforms and climbs into a tree to hide and make himself small. He tries to stay invisible until they’re gone, but it’s getting too difficult.

Once his pursuers are gone, he decides to rest there and falls asleep. Hours later, he wakes up when he hears a noise.

That’s when Syzoth meets you. You climbed a ladder to pick apples from the tree he’s hiding in. He continues to watch you, ready to transform and jolt if he has to. He’s still not sure if he’s able to. Everything hurts and he feels weak to his bones.

But the longer he watches you pick apples and sing to yourself, he realizes you’re not a threat. Your voice is lovely to his ears. Your hair is so pretty he wants to touch it. Everything about you, your body language and scent, seems so soft and gentle.

When you climb further up and get to his branch, you let out a surprise yelp when you see him.

“Oh my god! Are you ok, little guy?”

Syzoth couldn’t help but laugh internally. He must look horrible being surrounded in green blood. But your wide eyes and sweet voice was so cute.

“Are you alive?” He blinks when you reach to touch his nose.

You look at him and then down to the ground for a few minutes, contemplating your next move. You turn back and pet his nose again. “I’m going to pick you up and take you home, ok? Please let me help you. And please don’t bite me!”

Syzoth closed his eyes shut, pain searing through his body as you carefully pick him up. You settled him against your chest, his claws hooked onto your shirt, little tears already forming, and blood staining your shirt. He did his best to not sink his claws into your flesh, but the pain was making it hard to concentrate.

You climbed down the ladder, as slowly as you can, repeating “Please don’t bite me. Please don’t bite me. Please don’t bite me.” Once you were down the tree, you put him in your basket and took him home.

You spent the next few hours researching everything an iguana needs to survive. You bought a heat lamp, some fruits and greens, giant fake rocks. You’re not sure if you just throw the greens at him or cut them up to make it easier for him to eat. But you’re trying your best.

Syzoth watches you put a bowl of greens and fruits in front of his face and stare at him. If only he could tell you that he would be fine in a few days and all of this wasn’t necessary. Although, he did appreciate all the kind gestures.

After seeing you cry about him not eating the food and worrying about him dying, Syzoth decides to eat the food you prepared for him. His gentle heart couldn’t handle your tears, and it made him happy to see your face light up.

As the days go by, Syzoth lounged on his fake rocks, ate all the food you gave him, and watched you go about your daily routine. You kept calling him ‘Zammis’, and he had no idea what that meant.

He’s healed, but he’s had such a lovely time being with you that he doesn’t wish to go. He knows it’s wrong, keeping this secret from you. But you’re so happy with him there, he couldn’t bear the thought of you crying again.

You fed him his greens while watching a movie. (Another favorite thing of his to do, watching the moving pictures in the giant screen). A princess on the screen kissed a frog and he turned into a prince. You sighed and complained about how unrealistic that is.

Then your face filled Syzoth’s vision.

“Are you a prince, Zammis?”

Syzoth blinked. Then you leaned in further and kissed his nose.

Syzoth’s heart leapt in his throat. And suddenly he’s back in his human form, sitting in front of you on floor. Your hand still holding his bowl of greens and eyes wide as saucers.

“Z-Zammis?”

“Actually, it’s Syzoth, princess.” He said shyly.

[goodolddumbbanana]

(Molten/Sun platonic) A little nightmare [TW: Violence, blood, maybe bugs]

Summary: I like angsty and fluff. i have problem man.

The Thing Creator install still inside Sun's head. It still totured Sun but it made him forget everything after he woke up.

They say there are three things that separate machines from humans.

The first is that humans feel pain, machines don't.

The second is that humans can dream, machines don't.

And the last is that humans have emotions, machines can only fake them.

So when all three conditions are met, can machines call themselves human?

***

Someone's heavy breathing. The hallway is dyed red with blood, seeing the fleeing figure struggling in the swamp of flesh and bone that is dragging them down. They are like trapped in the stomach of a monster, with the walls vibrating in a steady rhythm as if breathing and the flickering eyes that watch their misery like something to behold.

Sun tries to pull himself out of the swamp. His limbs thrash in panic, as his mouth opens, hoping to get some oxygen. A sweet, fishy taste rushed into Sun’s mouth, making him make pitiful gurgling noises as he was about to choke.

‘It’s not real.’

‘It’s all in your head, Sun.’

‘Be patient, Moon will come to save you.’

But no matter how many times he repeated the mantra, Sun himself couldn’t believe it.

Every night. Every damn freaking night. Sun would be stuck here, reliving the endless pain his dear old father had left him the day that wretched old hag hacked into his head.

First was the broken leg .

Pain that made him hard to breathe. Pain that felt like his lungs were being squeezed and submerged in water. Pain worse than anything Eclipse and Moon had ever put him through before, pain that left him unable to scream. His nails dug into the metal, bending it and creating ugly scratches and dents as an unhealthy defense mechanism to ease the pain. 

If Sun had a tongue, he would have bitten it off by now.

Then came the loss of vision .

The mist was so thick it was hard to breathe, surrounding Sun like a heavy, wet blanket. It clung to Sun’s throat, sharp as if it contained tiny metal fragments, invading Sun’s circuit boards and fans like termites, feasting on the wires inside Sun’s body. It felt like thousands of worms were eating him from the inside out, with buzzing sounds mixed with screams that almost reached the limits of Sun’s madness.

‘Tear it out… Tear it out… Take it all out! PLEASE!!!’

Sun cried out for help, but nobody came. His pearly eyes were still red, the smell of burning flesh lingering in his nose like sap on the hottest day. The electric explosions were whistling inside him, the system kept popping out golden triangles, even now, it was replaced by plump white legless creatures crawling across his inner screen.

Hearing was the last thing.

In that eerie silence, Sun's screams were swallowed into nothingness. He had a mouth, but he couldn't scream.

***

"Frog dissection experiments are really inhumane, right Mr.Sun?"

Sun blinked, and suddenly, he was in the daycare. The room music was whispering in his ears, and the brilliant colors of light kissed Sun's skin.

'Wha–?!'

A small hand grabbed Sun's ribbon and shook it. The little boy with the superhero cape had eyes shining like stars, looking at him with anticipation and excitement.

"What did you say? I don't understand..." Sun stuttered. "Well... It's educational to some extent... I guess?"

"Sunny!!..." The kid huffed. The other kids looked at each other with amusement.

"See, Huey, you're wrong!" Another kid, wearing big glasses and blond hair, shouted.

"Shut up Jackie! My mom says it's not nice to hurt animals!" Huey waved his arms wildly, for some reason the red of the cape wrapped around this kid reminded him of blood.

"Pfft!! You are chicken!! Chicken Huey!" Jackie stuck out his tongue.

The twins behind him squealed with laughter, matching the rhyme: "Huey's a chicken! Huey's a chicken!"

"Come on James, Jamie. You can't tease Huey like that." Sun cut off the teasing when he noticed Huey was starting to tear up. “That’s not good, okay?”

“I’m not a chicken.” Huey’s eyes were red, his voice starting to crack. Sun pulled Huey into his arms, patting the child’s back. A sick feeling came over him as the child lay snugly in his arms.

“No one said Huey was a chicken. You’re the bravest person I know. Those kids were just teasing…”

“But what do you think, Sunny?”

A whisper rang out in Sun’s heart. The music had stopped at some point, and something was dripping behind Sun.

“What–!?”

“Do you think that because a frog’s life is worth less than a human’s, it deserves to be tortured like that, Sun?”

Something slipped out of Sun’s arms, falling to the ground. A human body, the body of a child. In Sun’s arms was only Huey’s head. Two empty eye sockets stared at him, the boy’s mouth still open, smiling at him.

In the blink of an eye, what had once been the daycare was gone. Bodies were strewn everywhere, and blood was in Sun's hands. But right now, Sun was too small, too weak. A laugh rang out, a laugh that Sun was sure was his own, but it didn’t escape his mouth.

His clone, another Sun, stood before Sun with a look of satisfaction. There was blood on the other’s sunbeam, and his intestines and brains were still neatly placed on the monster’s shoulders.

“Brother, look. We have a winner~~~”

“Oh~~~Why don’t we give the winner a prize?”

Sun didn’t even have time to react.‌ The other’s claws shot out, grabbed Sun’s head, and slammed it hard against the ground. He couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but watch as his brains were splattered and his limbs were torn to pieces like rag dolls.

***

“Doctor, look at this specimen.” Sun suddenly found himself trapped in some kind of operating room, with his real body. Surrounded by anatomical images of fish, frogs, and even worms. Opposite his sight was a fish tank. The goldfish swam silently inside, circling around a moon doll whose head was torn off by someone. “Even though it’s dead, it can still move~~~”

Bloodmoon appeared before Sun’s eyes, the red moon model grinning at him with delight, the monster wearing a pure white nurse’s uniform, not a single blemish in contrast to their bloody hands.

The other person was also Bloodmoon, but it was the one who had been destroyed by Puppet. Over their red and blue coats was a surgical gown that specialized doctors often wore.

Sun felt the inside of his chest split open, these two gremlins's hands rudely stirring up the wires and circuit boards inside.

“ Hmm, you’re right, my nurse. Let’s say, I think if we increase the current, I feel like we can make some progress .” Blood nodded, as they ruthlessly tore the fan off Sun’s body.

“ Aren’t you afraid it will die again? ” The other chuckled, but his hand was already ready to plug the power cord into Sun’s charger.

“ Isn't It just a useless thing, my nurse? We can easily replace it with something else .”

And the pain tore everything white, accompanied by Bloodmoon’s cruel chuckle.

***

Sun felt like he was going crazy.

Maybe he was already crazy.

In a blink of an eye, he was back in hell. His whole body was shaking, choking on the air filled with mist and smoke, with a heavy feeling like someone’s hand was dragging him down into the mud. Sun could only limp to the ground, even moving an inch was enough to hurt him so much that he couldn’t breathe.

A black figure stood staring at him, an almost octopus-like body with tendrils shooting out all around, pitch black with irises staring back at him.

“What more do you want!!?” Sun spat. He glared at the person in front of him. His torturer. His prisoner. His newest roommate for over a dozen days.

The Thing.

And as always, the bastard said nothing. A virus, whose sole purpose was to torture him, that didn’t even have a sentient yet.

It moved closer to Sun, the seemingly delicate yet sturdy metal wires pulling Sun up despite Sun’s feeble struggles. The wires clung to the joints and shafts of the frame, tight enough to make him walk like a puppet.

“What?!‌! Say something!!!”

There was only silence in response. There was the sound of dripping water, and the rattling of plastic balls in Sun’s ears. The pain suddenly disappeared, as did the unreadable look on ‘The Thing ’s’ face, always shrouded in red mist.

Sun felt no pain. He felt nothing. He felt empty, so empty and peaceful that it was scary.

Suddenly, a loud, harsh noise, the sound of metal breaking.

What could it be? Sun wondered absentmindedly, suddenly finding his vision lowered.

Oh… The thing that broke turned out to be him.

Piece by piece… Piece by piece the metal that had once shaped Sun fell, crumbling to dust. His face fell off, sinking into the water.

The darkness was cold and too suffocating.

Sun prayed that this would be his final destination.

***

“Sun? Sun, wake up.”

A strange, monotonous, mechanical sound rang out in Sun’s ears.‌ The saffron-colored animatronic jerked awake in confusion, its mouth opening in a jumble of questions.

A soft icy blue light caught Sun’s eyes. A Freddy model with white fur and orange spots, looked at him curiously.

“Oh? Molten? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, no. I saw you fall asleep. Are you tired, Sun?”

Sun looked around in confusion. He was sitting in front of the movie screen. It was strange, when did he fall asleep? He and Molten were watching a movie. Something from Marvel… Then maybe he fell asleep because he was bored? Sun checked his internal system, and found that his battery was only below 30%.

“Oh… It’s okay Molten, I just forgot to plug it in. I guess practicing magic somehow drained my energy more than usual.”

“Can I help? I want to help.” Molten’s ears twitched as if he was excited. It was strange because Sun had never seen Freddy or any Freddy model like Molten.

It was… quite cute to some extent.

“Oh, no need.” Sun stood up and stretched. His whole body was sore, probably from lying in the wrong position. Right now, all he wanted to do was lie in bed, but the thought of going back to sleep or standing up to charge somehow made him feel discouraged .

Never mind, he could charge himself standing up with the solar power anyway.

“Are you used to everything here, Molten?”

“Yes! Everyone here is really nice!!” Sun could feel stars twinkling in Molten's eye as they rambled on about Moon, about Solar, about Daycare…

“And you haven’t met Jack and Dazzle yet. They’re all pretty cool, trust me.” Sun chuckled, his eyes wandering to the chair where the popcorn crumbs were scattered. It was dirty , bugs, bugs, he hated bugs… Why does he feel like he wants to hit something right now?

“Oh, new friends? I like having new friends. We can play games, and watch movies…” Molten nodded. Their hands were bent, but the sharp, smooth wire still made a rustling sound along the way. Something made Sun feel uneasy, but Sun didn't know what it was.

Maybe he should ask Moon to run the system again, it had been a long time since he had upgraded anyway.

But maybe later. Moon was quite busy, and Solar too. The Computer got broke, which caused them a lot of trouble. Too much work to do and too little time to spend.

"But you're fine, Sun." The words sounded so gentle in Sun's ears that he was startled. Sun looked up, Motlen's face still looked the same, a look of innocent joy that made Sun a mixture of guilt and relaxation.

Why are you so nice to me? I don't deserve it, I really don't deserve it at all. I'm not as smart as Moon or as reliable as Solar. Even Monty is more responsible than me.

I will destroy you.

I will be the venom that will burn you from the inside.

I will turn the best part of you into something ugly, like Rocksan, like Nexus, all because I dare to think about caring.

Eclipse is right, I'm an ungrateful idiot who only knows how to cling to others.

As if reading his mind, Molten smiled. "I love to hang out with you because I know you are a good and caring person. But I know it is hard for you to believe it. So I will keep saying these words until you believe the words I say are true."

Something stirred in Sun's chest, so quickly that he immediately suppressed the feeling.

Can he really have a friend? Someone wouldn't suddenly break like Rocksan, someone wouldn’t be so spiral like Nexus.

Is it okay for him to have someone other than Moon?

“Hahahaha… yeah sure, Molten.”

Sun laughed, but inside he had no answer to that confusion.

Please leave me.Please stay with me.

***

“Hope is a terrible thing, Sun. It keeps you from giving up no matter how hard things get, but it can also make your situation worse without you even knowing it. Why is the sinner clings to a spider’s thread, even though he knows it will break, he still tries to climb up countless times?

That is because of hope, or desperation?

A song that is danced to many times will become boring too, don’t you think it is true, son? Are you ready to give up?”

Creator asked his creation affectionately, who was forcefully sitting on a throne that was stacked high with human bones.

Exhausted, bloody, bruised, and stained with a clean brown and yellow, the son of the most self-absorbed bastard on the planet, who could only move his head right now, gritting out the words.

“Go to hell, old man.”

“Oh well, and I thought I am making some progress.  It's a shame this talk didn’t work out. Let's try again, my boy. See you next time, Sun.”

The brain chuckled, and once again the hands grabbed Sun and pulled him into the water, making gurgling, gurgling sounds.

“Maybe I should switch the target to Molten.”

[edupunkn00b]

Ribbit

In the aftermath of frogging out after the Lee and Mary Lee's wedding, Patton feels like he owes everyone an apology. Mostly because he does. But before that, he and Thomas still have some things to work out. Rated G - WC: 2728 - Written for @tsspromptmonth's Sleepy Bean Fanfic Café for the great @dndeceit.

It's okay, Patton. I know you'll do anything you can to make things right.

Patton blinked away the sight of 8-bit Thomas sprawled unconscious on the floor, Janus shielding him with his own body. He swallowed back a quiet ribbit and tried to smile. Thomas was shaken but standing. Unharmed.

Well, physically, at least. "Thanks for trusting me still, Kiddo. I'm…" Unnaturally quiet, the room screamed with the Princely Side's absence and though he'd sought out the solace of his own room, Roman's pain remained, pulling at Patton's chest with icy claws. If anything, the privacy of his own room allowed him to let slip his hero's mask and his cries reached out to him through the Mindscape. "I'm gonna go check on Roman." And try to tell him how sorry he was.

He tugged the sleeves of his catigan, eyes darting automatically to the floor where Logan's spot was currently filled with Janus' carefully polished shoes. How was he ever going to apologize to Logan?

"Before you go..." Thomas' voice pulled him back and Patton looked up. Did he want him to stay? "I think I understand now what it means... Deceit being here as a part of me.

"Oh." Glancing at Janus, Patton fought to keep his smile. "Yeah?"

Janus' hurt crackled through the air, seizing Patton's heart. "Oh, yeah, that's cool…" he muttered flippantly, adjusting his gloves. Despite the thick layer of sarcasm, Janus' pain stole his breath and the Protective Side avoided both his and Thomas' eyes. "Talk about me like I'm not here."

Thomas didn't seem to notice. "...It's not that I'm an evil liar or even a fractionally fiendish fibber. Everyone has a capacity for deceit, including me. And all that means is... I'm not perfect. Just like anyone else."

Patton nodded. "And those imperfections..." He started to reach him but the back of his hand was covered in bright green splotches and he yanked it back before Thomas could spot them. Janus, however, did. "Those imperfections don't make us any less worthy of love." Throat tight with panic, Patton managed to croak out, "Janus?"

He had to get out of there before he got worse.

"I'll take care of him," Janus murmured, tilting his face to show more of his scales. If anyone would understand, it was him.

Nodding his thanks, Patton sank out and stood in the Mindscape hallway. All the doors were closed, with only a thin light spilling up onto the floor from the stairwell nightlight. The gap under his own door was dark, its usual honeyed glow dimmed. He reached for the doorknob, the cold metal impossibly small in his grip. Patton flipped both hands over. The skin between his fingers had stretched up to his middle knuckles, thin and growing a near-transluscent green. He touched his door and it warmed against his skin, the light beneath growing, inviting him in to huddle under the covers with a mug of hot cocoa and his stuffies and just forget this awful day.

"Oh, Roman, thank god you don't have a mustache." Janus' pain sizzled, scalding Patton's skin and he took a half step back, nearly bumping into Thomas' blinds. "Otherwise, between you and Remus, I wouldn't know who the evil twin is." Patton didn't know where to look. When neither of them leapt to his defense, Roman's heart screamed for him, begging Morality to banish Deceit back to the shadows. But Thomas… Thomas shared Janus' hurt. He stared at Roman, shocked that his Princely Side would stoop so low as to insult another of his Side's name. Again. Roman's hurt turned to outrage. "Are you guys seriously going to take his side?" "N-No, I—" "Over me?" "Wh- he-" Patton drowned on Roman's tears. "Thomas... I thought I was your hero..." "Y-" His eyes flicked over to Janus. "You are!" The Protective Side had long ago given up hope of becoming Thomas' hero and even he couldn't hide how much that hurt. Not from Patton, at least. But this was no time for sarcasm and both he and Patton knew it. Eyes downcast, he nodded at Roman, confirming Thomas spoke no lies. "Huh." So ready to believe the worst from him, he couldn't hear Janus' honesty. "Wow. I can't believe this. Did you forget that he's evil?!—" 'If I'm evil, then so is Thomas…'

Patton really needed check on him first. Tugging at his too-tight collar, he turned to Roman's room.

The ache in his chest deepened the closer he got to the gilded red door and he heard Roman's crying before he could even knock. "Ro? Kiddo? Can I come in?" Patton called through the door.

Virgil answered and stood in the doorway. Patton peered past him, just making out Roman's boots tossed haphazardly on the floor, the Princely Side curled on the bed, back to him. Frowning up at Patton, Virgil shook his head and wordlessly closed the door.

"Yeah, um…" Patton said to the red lacquered wood. "Maybe later?" he added, hope cracking in his voice. Just in case Roman changed his mind, he stood shivering in the hall an unreasonably long time. Eventually, the Prince's tears quieted and the flickering glow of the television flitted under the door. Nodding, Patton stepped back. Virgil had him.

Logan's door stood a few steps away. Rubbing the back of his neck, he made his way over. The silver constellations carved and painted into the dark navy wood had lost a bit of their sheen but the splintered edges had recently begun to stitch themselves back together and the heavy pewter door knocker had been recently polished.

Hand outstretched to knock, Patton noticed the blooming green splotches all over the back of his hand and arms and he yanked his catigan from his shoulders. He squeezed into it, the material stretching to its limit to fit around his suddenly broader shoulders, thumbs tucked into their little holes the only thing keeping the sleeves from riding up and revealing his now completely green arms. He pulled the hood up, tugging at it to try to cover where his hair had dissolved into smooth green flesh.

It didn't quite fit, but it was better. Maybe. He hoped.

Patton knocked and the door quickly opened.

Remus glared up at him, one hand on the door, the other still clutching a roll of gauze. Neck half-bandaged, Logan sat on the edge of his bed. He turned away when he saw who was at the door. 

"I thought…" Patton stepped closer, reaching for Logan without thinking but Remus held his ground, jaw tight. Patton stepped back, fingers twisting together. "Sorry," he mumbled. "But I thought we couldn't be harmed by things with no real-world impact. I… Janus' crook is…"

"A metaphor?" Logan finished from his spot on the bed. He still wouldn't look in Patton's direction.

"Well…" Patton shrugged, his catigan growing tighter as Logan's room got just that much smaller. "Yeah."

Rolling his eyes, Remus returned to Logan's side. "Skipping Thomas' logical contributions happened in real-life, Daddy Frog Legs." He moved to reveal the bright red and blue bruising along Logan's jaw. "There's your impact."

"Oh," Patton whispered, stumbling backwards over too-large feet. He ended up in the hallway, once again facing Remus. He tugged his catigan hem down over his belly, hearing the stitches stretch and pop.

With a dismissive wave of his hand, Remus turned and closed the door. As it clicked shut, Patton's clothes grew, once again falling comfortably over his cartoonishly large frame. "Um, thank you," he called back and tucked both hands into the big front pocket, shivering in the empty hallway.

Moving further down the hall, Patton hurried past Lucas' room, the rusty orange paint cracked and peeling. The door rattled but he ignored it. He couldn't even hear it. Nope, couldn't hear any—

"Isn't denial my job, Morality?" Janus murmured from the top of the stairs.

Patton hopped in surprise and whipped around. Janus stood, relaxed, leaning with one elbow resting on the railing. A feigned casualness belied by eyes that never left his. "Shouldn't someone be with Thomas?" he asked, eyes swiveling to Roman and Logan's doors.

Janus nodded slowly. "Yes. He's asked for you. Besides…" Golden eyes darted over to Logan's door. "I have some apologies of my own to make."

"You mean for impersonating Logan again?"

Face a stiff mask, Janus waved his hand in a failed distraction from the guilt sizzling between them. "That, and…"

The Sides' hurt from Janus' dig about the 'evil twin' clawed at Patton's throat. Roman's outrage. Janus' pained contrition. And, softer, but just as caustic, the sharp stab from Remus when he heard. By the time Patton caught his breath, Janus had already slipped into Logan's room, the lock clicking quietly into place. Alone again, Patton felt Thomas' call and he sank down, emerging in Thomas' bedroom.

Well, the hall just outside Thomas' bedroom. Door open wide, soft warm light spilled out into the hallway. Patton tapped the door frame. "Knock, knock," he asked more than said. "Can I come in, Tomathy?"

Wrapped in a plush flannel blanket, Thomas sat curled in the big armchair next to the window. A steaming mug of hot chocolate, a tall glass of fizzy water, and a Switch paused on the Splatoon loading screen crowded his nightstand. His phone was turned off and set on the charger, along with his watch. "Janus has really been taking good care of you, huh, Kiddo?"

Guilt washed over Thomas' features and he eyed his phone. He started to rise, the blanket falling to the floor. "I should turn it back on, shouldn't I? Quil was working on their portfolio and they might need help. I haven't heard from Joan in a while either—"

Patton led him back to his seat and pressed the mug of hot chocolate into his hands. "No, Kiddo, no! That's not what I meant. It's… It's good." He pressed a smile onto his face and hid his green fingers back into his catigan pocket. "It's good he's taking care of you—that you're taking care of you. I… I'm glad." Stepping back, he swallowed against the lump in his throat, lips pressed hard against the  weird little clicking ribbit pushing up. "I'm glad he could take care of you when I couldn't. To… to protect you. Y'know…" His tongue felt too large for his mouth. "Protect you from me."

Thomas set down the mug and really looked up at him. His eyes fell over his hulking shoulders and the way his knees bounced even as he stood still. "Pat?" he asked and scooted over in his seat. "C'mere, buddy."

Eyeing the cozy spot next to him, Patton shook his head and perched on the side of Thomas' bed instead. He pretended he couldn't see the hurt in Thomas' big puppy dog eyes. Fingers curled under his palms, he folded his hands in his lap. "Dee—Janus said you asked for me," he said after a while.

Thomas nodded and folded his legs up in the chair, knees hugged close to his body. "Yeah, Pat… We… we should talk."

Lips pressed together, Patton nodded. When he noticed Thomas watching him, he painted on a bright grin. "Sure thing, Kiddo."

"Pat?" Thomas reached for his hand, smiling when Patton tentatively reached back and folded his sleeve-covered hand over his. "Pat, I think we're past pretending nothing happened back there."

Patton started to shrink back but Thomas held tight to his hand. "You… You're right." Mouthing opening and closing, faint wordless popping sounds the only noise he could make. Patton nodded again and sucked in a deep breath.

"Take your time, Buddy," Thomas finally said. "I'm not really sure where to start apologizing, either." He hung his head, shoulders hunched and tight as he avoided Patton's gaze.

Patton shifted, scrunching his socks with long, webbed toes. He drew in another shaky breath, watching Thomas do the same. Guilt churned in his guts and he let go of Thomas' hand to wrap both arms over his belly, hugging himself.

Thomas copied his action.

"Hey, Kiddo…" Patton began and Thomas' head jerked up, eyes wide. Scared.

"Yeah, Pat?"

"Ki—Thomas," Patton tried again, inhaling slowly, Virgil's voice counting their breaths echoing through his memory. "I'm feeling really guilty for what I did to you." He spoke as plainly as he could, Janus' cryptic nod and Romain's despairing sink out of the living room playing on a loop through his mind. "You don't need to feel guilty."

"It's kinda hard not to, Pat," Thomas shrugged, still not quite meeting his gaze. "You're at the core of a lot of my feelings, right?"

Nodding, Patton silently counted to four as he inhaled.

"I think it goes both ways for us."

Recalling all the nights he'd spent comforting Virgil or Thomas after a nightmare—or after a real-life disaster—Patton slowly nodded again. "Maybe it would help if…" Patton had no clue if his idea would even work or if it would just make Thomas feel even worse. Logan would know. Eyes flicking over to the corner spot next to Logan's bedroom spot in front of Thomas' framed degree, he shuddered. How many more times would Logan forgive him? How many more times would he need Logan to forgive him?

Sour guilt flooded his chest, rising up into a very clear, very loud "Riiiiib—bit!"

Thomas had curled into himself, eyes faraway. "Kiddo, let's try something different."

The hand that reached for him was a little less green than it had been when he'd first arrived at Thomas' door and he threaded their fingers together. With a gentle tug, he pulled Thomas up to his feet and wrapped both arms around him. After a long moment, Thomas hugged him back, face buried in the thick fleece catigan. He'd gotten closer to his regular size but still the top of Thomas' head barely grazed his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Thomas," he whispered, voice catching in his throat. "I'm sorry for everything."

"It's okay, I—" Muffled by his shoulder, Thomas' sob broke free and he gripped Patton tighter. "I just want—I want…" Patton rubbed his back as he shook with another sob. "I want to make you proud."

Pushing down another awful ribbet, Patton whispered. "Oh, Kiddo, you do!"

Shaking with relief—and exhaustion—Thomas leaned against him and Patton stood tall, lips pressed tightly together. But then Thomas hugged him tighter and the words spilled out. "It's all I want, too."

To his own ears, Patton's voice burst out in a croak but Thomas didn't seem to mind. He only hugged him closer and nodded. "You do, Pat, all the time."

With that, the dam broke and his own tears rushed out, wetting Thomas' hair and his own arms and hands. His green splotches faded under each drop, and the guilt clawing up his throat softened, spilling out with his tears. Soon, both their tears had soaked through the catigan, turning the light grey a mottled charcoal. Patton pulled back, letting out a choked laugh when he realized he once again stood eye-to-eye with Thomas.

"Maybe I don't need this right now?" Swimming in the soggy fleece, Patton needed Thomas' help to disentangle himself. Working carefully, they peeled away the heavy fleece and gently laid it at the foot of the bed to dry. Back in short sleeves, Patton shivered, but not a speck of green was to be seen.

"C'mon, Pat." Thomas smiled and pulled him over to the arm chair before covering both of them with his blanket. "Let's warm up," he said, lifting his hot chocolate. A similar mug this one in bright green on a red saucer, sat behind it. "Hey, look—" Thomas passed him the steaming mug. "I think this one's for you."

Wordlessly accepting the cup, Patton marveled at the twins' colors, the buzz of their creative magic familiar and welcome against his fingers, comfortably warm in his hands. He peered into the cup, a smile tugging at his lips when the ripples in the cup briefly spelled out, Please sleep soon. Nodding his assent, he sniffed the steam. Rich and chocolatey, he picked up a bit of peppermint and vanilla. It smelled good. It smelled right.

"Cheers?" Thomas asked, raising his cup.

Smiling back at him, Patton clinked their cups together. "Cheers."

[silvercap]

Blindfold and buried for the drabbles? (Chris w/chreon or if you don't feel it, Leon instead :3)

Oooooh for sure! (Prompts)

Blindfold/Buried

Chris can't see anything around the blindfold tied securely over his eyes, a second length of fabric pulling awkwardly on his jaw where they've tied it far too tightly into a makeshift gag, his wrists bound similarly in front of him. He stumbles, bare foot landing on the sharpness of what must be a rock or stick with a flare of bright pain that makes him stifle a groan. The wind is cool on his bare arms and calves, grimy underwear and muscle tank the only things still defending him from the elements, a shiver running through him as it brushes past bruises and wounds they've done nothing to treat. Chris grunts as muscled arms shove him forward again, dizzied by the lack of visuals to balance him.

"Move it, soldier, I don't have all fucking day," a voice sneers behind him, the man who's been overseeing his imprisonment every so often. Chris still doesn't know who he's associated with, the people who'd captured him an unfamiliar group who'd had access to BOWs that weren't included in the mission briefing. All he knows is that they've been less than welcoming. Anxiety twists in Chris's gut as he's frog marched forward, the vague sloping of the ground beneath him making him think they're leading him up a hill. He can't help but imagine it dropping off into a cliff or steep ravine, hoping against hope that they're not taking him up here just to break him with a fall. He hopes they'll just execute him quickly, if it comes to that.

It's not long before they slam him to a halt, yanking him backwards before he can take another step.

"Right here, Captain," a second voice drawls sardonically, and then Chris finds himself being forced to step down onto what feels like a wooden platform. They force him to his knees and then make him lie down, wooden edges scraping his shoulders and feet that tell him he's in some sort of box barely big enough to accommodate his bulk. Distress twists in his stomach. Whatever this is, it can't be good, but he's not sure what---

The blindfold is ripped away with brutal speed, the bright gray sky above blinding Chris for a moment. He blinks. Two faces loom over him, both of whom he recognizes from the compound they'd been keeping him in. He shivers, watching them grin.

"Don't worry, now, you were going to end up in the ground anyways," the scarred one says cryptically, and it's then that Chris notices with icy epiphany the dirt piled up around the edges of the coffin they've laid him in. He whimpers involuntarily, starting to sit up---but the other man steps on his shoulder with a boot and Chris is too weak from days of starvation to resist. His eyes widen. He works the gag in his mouth, trying to plead, bargain, anything at all, but the men just exchange smirks. "Might wanna hold your breath."

The scarred man lifts what looks like a long, rectangular board, and Chris can only watch in horror as he lowers the end towards the boards by Chris's feet. The second man lifts his boot, and the first drops the rest of the board into place, sealing Chris in tight darkness that steals the breath from his lungs. He shudders, fighting not to hyperventilate as nails pound into the mildew-scented wood from above, eyes squeezing shut when dirt begins to thunder onto the surface.

God, he never thought it'd end this way. Chris's heart aches at the thought of Claire, of Jill, of Leon, the panicked realization that he'll never be found four feet underground in a random forest in a foreign country bringing tears to his eyes. One falls as the last muted shovelful scoops dirt over his grave, and then there's only silence.

Locked in the dark, chest barely an inch away from the roof of his prison, Chris screams.

[cowboylament]

Around the corner, I found the dining room doors open. I could hear their murmurs. They weren’t displeased, not in any great way, it was pleasant even. If I upset them I had to believe that this could not ruin what had begun, our small and sacred acts of seeing. I approached still with quiet silent steps. From the hall I glanced in, neither High Lord noticing me. The shadowed edge of the table, the light other. Someone else was there. Someone in color at the opposite end, all brightness, and his face, watching me already.

Oh.

There was no change in the eyes. Or eye, the other, metal.

Or Y/N was forgotten until Lucien remembers Dawn!reader x Lucien

Part Two, Part Three Part Four (AO3)

Whatever had followed me home was hungry.

The summer frogs and critters had gone silent. Beneath my window, twigs snapped, as the creature made its third pass by my room. I’d have known it was there even in silence. Circling my home a heavy dread peaked and fell as it circled. Once it rounded the corner away from me did it fall again to a powerful hum, steady, like a heartbeat. With each pass, its steps grew more sure so I suspected I had little time. Lying in bed staring at the ceiling so still, taking long breaths, deep even ones, I waited in that hum, waiting for the ascending dread. This was not a dweller of the woods. I’d known it when it began to stalk me. Nothing in Dawn Court was capable of such feelings, to warp and wield dread so intentionally. It was not like the danger of death, it had everything to do with being alive. Whatever it was felt my fear and reached for it. The beginning shift came, the rising hum. The feeling settled in my ears, my throat, and only once it reached my chest did I turn over and flick on my bedroom light.

I fell from my bed and winnowed to the kitchen below. I ducked under the window just as it latched itself to the brick. A dark shadow, darker than all the night around us, passed over the small glass and blocked at once the moon. It was almost unbearable, the dread this close, as if such pure terror could cause physical pain. This creature really, proof that it could.

The world was still, like I was already dead. The bed shifted above me. Then silence.

I did not swallow or dare anything. With death this close, I barred from my body any proof of life, even blinking. But even if I had managed something it would’ve ceased the moment I heard that laugh. Gutteral, rasped, unnatural it plunged into the air with enough weight to cut a hole in the world.

A voice followed, razor-sharp, precise, slithering through all things, “Strange, your kind is not usually so clever.”

It knew I was here and yet I knew it was there, but its voice came from all things, untraceable and I did not dare answer it.

“Rare was it when I wouldn’t find them in their beds, but you. I’m not surprised. I could feel it in you, as I sense it now, something…else. Do you know it as I know it, what makes us so alike?”

I gave no answer, not even a breath. Silence fell in the house, but I knew without sound it was circling above me, the dread coming with little reprieve. 

Another laugh, quieter, more pleased than amused. “It lives where I lived. It is born where I was born. What is in you is as old as pain. I feel that too, as you feel me. I know where you have been. I know where are. Wait and I will show you what you know.”

I was so utterly frozen in place. The voice both closer and far away, in my ear and in my bones. The dread and despair remained constant, never wavering, never moving. And yet the beast, it was somewhere in my house. It was somewhere up above. It was—

“Oh what you’ve begun, now I must have you,” It said, and suddenly from the silence came one creak on the stairs.

The grass bowed to me. The seconds after landing at the far end of the meadow were serene in a way. No crickets, no wind, not even a flutter of some winged insect. Just my breath caught on its fear rising into the full mooned sky, the bent grass in surrender and sacrifice to me, broken under my feet. All before the world erupted. 

Wood splintered and stone exploded, and I ducked behind the trees knowing it was too late. It knew where I was and where I was going. It would’ve known this even had I been able to put greater distance between us. From behind me came a snarl, far enough to have time, but not enough for comfort. This was a delay of the inevitable, I knew that, but I’d lasted so long. And I’d last as long as I could. So I ran through the thicket before the border of Day Court. The patch of woods gave way to even more grass. That endless field I’d sat afternoons in, lounging for the sun. How it stretched across the land like open arms for me once. It held me as nothing had ever held me. I would remember it, the gentleness of this part of the world. I was tired already, the starving winter hadn’t been gone long enough to give a body that could fight for very long. 

But I fought anyway. Into the clearing, I kept on, a second and third snarl much closer. I just wanted more time. More time to sit with the world and its beauty. I wanted to see spring again, feel the heat break in the evening, watch the moon wane. I spared a glance, that round full thing arcing the sky. Day was not far, real day, and the court. I’d not known it was the last, that sun streak through the window that had brushed against my lips, did not know that as it warmed my lips it had been a kiss goodbye. So I held the memory as I ran, a final goodness of the world, that there was light.

I made it a few more steps before the creature swiped at my side and I fell. I whirled at it as soon as my hips hit the soil. What had I been expecting from a creature that produced such pure dread? Claws and scales or too many teeth, but in fact it was not that at all. It was terror undiluted. The marrow dissolved from my bones. All hope winked out. Otherworldly, it seemed and confined by this one to take an almost shape. Yet I saw it nonetheless, its power and its being, as if veiled by a poorly made glamour. This strange creature, stuck in one world and belonging to another, straddling many words and belonging wholly to none. 

As I paused to watch it, it watched me too, head cocking to the side less the predator, more curious. Like it had not expected me either. Above us was nothing but as clear a night as ever, I didn’t even need to look directly at it to know it was there. Whatever end there was, my eyes would fall back, land on that beautiful sky lit by stars, beyond it darkness, and beyond that eternal darkness. A tendril of the beast's power seemed to swallow my power. It was a different darkness almost leathery, clawing away at the light beneath my skin. It replaced everything with fear so full and rich I froze. All but my mind was paralyzed, a rapid succession of thoughts slipping before me: would it hurt? Yes, it would. That day in the woods I’d thought it was death but it was not and this was surer than anything, as sure as memory, as forgetting. But there’d be somewhere else after with grass, and rivers, the sun would be as warm, life would be full again, onward, new goodness, new things. That I could hope for, this I could never lose. And the final thought came vivid and bright like dawn, remembering was waiting. Two faces, outstretched arms, voices saying I know you. I couldn’t smile, but my blood sang. 

And yet, as if touching a nerve, suddenly the terror rippled and broke open. The beast flinched back. Paralysis took hold, but no longer of me. Beneath the skin, something hot and unending boiled. I had no choice but to use it. I closed my eyes.

The world bathed itself in light.

And when I could no longer see the thing everything seemed to right itself in a kind of way. The fear bottomed out and in the wake of not a snarl, but a terrified hopeless scream. The grass was beneath my feet again. I was running. The inevitability of the world vanished. So I kept on, faster than before. Wind swept across the grass and I could’ve laughed, not because it felt so beautiful, but because despite everything going on I’d noticed the beauty at all. 

Beyond the border, a figure appeared from nothing. His hands already in motion were telling me to run, faster, further. The tall grass gave way to a clearing and it didn’t seem as if I’d crossed anywhere different but I had. I could smell the slightest change, relief made real. I was close enough now to hear him over the beast.

“Don’t look back.” He yelled, truly yelled though the world in my head was quiet. “Jump.”

I thought of no fate other than his outstretched hands. Just out of reach, three long strides, my feet struck the soft earth, and I leaped. The space clearing between us, he moved into my trajectory, catching me. His arms barely closed, we began to fold in. The last sound of that part of the world I’d guarded those years rattled with rage. I would not hear its end, just the terrible building arc of that godless scream.

***

It was hard to say what I realized first, that I was awake or that I was gasping. The air had been so thin, so slight before he’d grabbed me. I’d not even thought to breathe. Perhaps all death was like that, a forgetting to breathe. I remembered thoroughly, even defiantly, though by the time my eyes opened. Someone lunged to grab me again in my momentum as I swung upward. Their arms bracing against my chest, I turned, their eyes hard.

The same male. 

I flinched. Skin on skin—it hurt almost. Not in the place where we met, he managed a softness about him. It was a kind of pain that reached from the past. How long had it been, really, since someone had put hands on me? That final night I don’t think anyone touched me at all. There’d been no time, but there’d been maybe one moment… I pulled at the memory as if flattening crinkles in a page to see the words better, but it revealed nothing. I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t thought to remember as I should’ve. My hands closed in the hopes I might hold the past here a little longer, but I found more skin, skin that was not my own.  

Digging my heels into the firm mattress, I pushed off the bed out of his reach, and slammed the crown of my head into the headboard. I let in a sharp inhale, collapsing forward, pulling my whole body closer to me. It wouldn’t get hurt that way, if I kept it close, somewhere I could hide it. I pressed my fingers into my hair and found the throbbing bone.

“Relax,” the male said. His voice was firm, commanding. Within me, some taut muscle, or something even thinner than that, the blood rushing, calmed. I closed my eyes feeling for the impending respite. Each vertebrae, each joint, every hair on my arms, my legs, fell looser than it should’ve. All that panic fell away like rain in summer, there and gone again. I pressed the skin of my scalp feeling for a lump. It was easy to find. Lulling fast circles around it, I slowed as the pain began to soothe.

Yes, there was my body.

It revealed itself more readily now, nosing at the sheets, curling into the mattress, grabbing for something to hold onto. I nuzzled close to the linen, too soft to be cheap. This was a home. I could tell despite the creases in the fabric that stretched down as far as I had sight. They all ran parallel to each other, the markings that came when fabric was cared for or unused, tightly folded in a cupboard. I wouldn’t have known which it was, the cause for such lines, if they didn’t have that scent of use. Yes, a home. 

This was a grass. The smell on these, I think, or simply fresh, something that had been found close to my home. I stopped my fingers. It would take me a little while to know what. Half a century ago I would’ve known immediately. But things change, time passes. Time had already passed. 

I closed my knees before I removed my face. The only way I could sit up was by force, by pushing myself out of my own safe and hidden space. I was in a room, I realized, in a very big and equally fine bed to house such sheets. The creased linen seemed to cover a bed that extended a lifetime. A few people might lay here shoulder to shoulder with space to turn on either side. A single divot in the mattress told a story I knew very well. I was alone.

But I was not alone.

The male watched me from my bedside. Any lingering tension I had evaporated. For all his sternness he could not hide the handsomeness of his face. He had a civilized reluctance. The tentative primal suspicion that naive and truly wild animals can never quite be. Approaching on wobbly legs, ready to dash, nose first, smelling for motive. On the fae such suspicion was different, a careful hand outstretched with permission. Look how slow I move, but I can be quick, if you are quick. I can be deadly, even if you are deadly too. But I knew when not to bite. I could recall those long lost my manners.

“Are you alright?”

I rolled my shoulders, my neck, and turned my body from side to side but met no resistance beyond exhaustion. I twisted with slow caution back to face him, not wanting to cause alarm, and shook my head. I knew I was not a threat, but perhaps such a thing is never as obvious as we think because his reluctance did not leave his shoulders or mouth. In fact, he seemed more tense than before. Some inner conflict was waging inside him. His eyes, like mine, shifted left and right, studying. I settled with certain personifications, trying to make such body language larger and easier to see.

“You've been out for a few days. A precaution.”

After a while alone you lose track of the days. I was used to such ambiguity, of living based on the seasons. Crocuses marked the passing of one year to the next and birthdays had become pointless. Everything new and good started in spring. Then there was the elongating light, more sun, more time for things, and the creatures that revealed themselves with the spoils of warmth. Lucky I was to be in a solar court, perhaps the weather would do well in Spring Court, but time would be impossible to gauge. Here, I might finally learn again the month we were in.

“You gave us a scare. Do you…remember what happened?”

A thread of terror in me sang. I’m sure that dreaded note was always there, but never with such volume. Now it had woven itself inside my ribs and I don’t think I could ever forget where it was. A vacant space, a phantom note, was filled and I could never unknow it. So of course I remembered. It was my job, to preserve such memories. I nodded.

“Do you know what attacked you?”

Shoulders sagging I shook my head. I didn’t know it. It was like nothing I’d ever seen or researched. Behaving in ways familiar to something wild and predatory, but I had no name, not even a guess or inkling. That was a rare thing. I’d dedicated so much time to the natural world and I’d been out there long enough to know it. If not by name then at least by sight. I couldn’t even guess what family it had come from or from where it had strayed. 

“Did you see it?”

The question conjured its image immediately behind my eyelids. The heel of my palm dug into my forehead as if I could push out the memory of that creature between worlds, how it had looked at me so curiously. Such humanity, in its wonder. But it was distinctly inhuman, from somewhere far away and between, where dreaded thoughts and things come from. I negated its words. It did not live where I lived, was not born where I’d been born. We were made of opposite things.

“I understand,” he said simply. “We’ve been tracking the thing for weeks. It’s why I was out there, how I heard you. So far it's managed to evade us, but the few who have seen it, they don’t speak of it. I just needed to be sure.”

Sure? I must’ve said the question with my face because he gave an answer.

“It’s not supposed to be in the wild, it’s supposed to be in a library in another court. After a few sightings and an attack on a village close by, I began tracking it as a favor for a friend, the friend whose library it came from. We’re trying to put it back where it belongs, but unfortunately, it’s very clever.”

I pulled my knees in and rested my cheek against them. I was in new clothes, they were buttery and fine as everything here, wherever here was. So the stalking had been random, I was just someone close by. It had caught my scent and went that way. Unlucky. But what library needed such a thing? None I could think, not at least of the ones we knew and talked about before. After her burnings and demolition perhaps the ones that survived had taken better precautions now. Good news to return to. I’d consider this a good thing, what we’ve learned to protect.

I pulled the blankets tighter. Goosebumps had risen against my skin despite the balmy weather. Through the open window, the curtains curved against a stronger gust than all the rest. Summer was not nearly over, but it was beginning to fray at the edges. Or maybe the weather behaved differently here, maybe we’d left Day Court for somewhere else. Through one of the windows, tall fescues swayed outside of it, the view looking right out onto a lawn. That was the smell, on the sheets, fescue. I remembered now. I shut my eyes a moment and inhaled. Warmth pressed at my eyelids, illuminating the skin. The image of the beast was gone. Such richness instead, the vivid color, it was hard to say what was different about the light here, but something in the quality was brighter. Day Court then, no doubt.

“You’re from Dawn.”

Not a question. It was not very easy to forget he was there, to slip into the passing beauty of mid-day when the small space between us rippled. I felt its hum. Power. Such a thing is always familiar in the way that what you don’t have feels familiar by lack. Knowing the shape of something's absence also means knowing its presence, so when it does arrive it is then unmistakable.

He had power. It filled the room in the places I did not and never had. Relax, he’d said, and I had listened. My eyes slid back to his. Such grace, how he moved, how he sat, and the handsomeness of his face. A High Lord. One who was waiting now, staring at me. High Lord of Day Court. 

“I saw your light. I winnowed as close as I could, but.” His voice fell off. It wasn’t obvious in face but disappointment shadowed everything he did. I could feel it the way you feel anger in even the biggest of houses. If he didn’t want me to feel it he could do nothing about it. It was there. He continued, “The creature seemed to be, by the time I got there, wounded somehow. Or so it sounded at least. Did you have anything to do with that?”

I didn’t know how to answer that one. Yes and no seemed elusive. But it’s scream, that light, the feeling of its magic along my own. How it had twined its way, how it had touched something, something deeper than bone. A pit in my stomach opened up, sweat began to form at my nape, and a radiating heat hovered along my skin. I pressed a hand over my mouth. The pit, it was trying to come out. The male’s eyes went wide and he reached for something, pulling it from the nothing. A pail. He shoved it into my lap and I retched as soon as my eyes landed on the dark bottom. Bile, nothing but bile. The acidic flem burned my throat. It took a few minutes to will my stomach to settle, to not let the bitter taste in my mouth turn my stomach inside out. He handed me a damp rag, removing the bucket from my lap in an unfair trade. I wiped at my face, bowing in thanks.

Whatever question he’d asked was lost to him, unimportant, or perhaps he simply didn’t notice it, the silence. I’d made a noise. I suppose that was easy to mistake for participation. Which was fine, I couldn’t remember being much of a conversationalist, of ever needing to be. His eyes fell over my shoulder into a distance I couldn’t see, contemplating something, something I hadn’t said. I didn’t mind. It gave me a moment to recover. His gaze sharpened eventually, turning back to me. 

“I went back. It took me a minute, but I found your home. There were holes, in the wards, I can see those things.” He paused. I’d tried to repair them but the magic was complex and my knowledge was incredibly limited. As was most of my mending abilities which over 50 years would’ve been helpful. I’d learned some, but. “The deterioration was relatively new but those are very powerful and old wards. The fact there were holes suggests they’ve been protecting something a while.”

In a way. 

“Is there someone I can get for you? A relative, a friend?”

No. I shook my head, no one at all. 

“No one else was there. I checked. But did you leave anyone behind?”

No again. 

“No one is in trouble. We want to prevent another attack.”

We. Strange word for someone singular. Strange assumptions too between us. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be in trouble to begin with, truthfully. I’d seen enough of a dangerous situation I suppose I’d begun to believe I’d know it on feel alone. But he didn’t seem at all dangerous to me, even with the power he wielded. If he’d wanted to harm me he could. That was a fact of life, of nature. I’d learned not to lament over fate like that. Death passes through and sometimes you’re struck, sometimes it skims by you, sometimes it forgets you’re there at all. Predator or prey, we got to be those things from time to time. I wasn’t special. So if he could be quick, I could be quick too.

Until then I shook my head. It was the truth, there was no one there.

His gaze turned heavy and contemplative. He tilted his head to watch me from a new perspective, eyes narrowing. I dropped my gaze, my fingers interlaced. I undid each one and placed my palms slow and flat along the bed, turning them over for him. They were calloused. It was the best proof I had. His eyes fell and the silence didn’t reveal to me what he’d seen in them, if anything. I did not close my hands. I wanted to. I wanted to close my body around myself and retreat again somewhere less real like a dream. I knew one thing with such certainty. It was me in that house. No one else. And he, I don’t know if he believed me. Denial of such a fact was worse than forgetting. I was at risk of disappearing entirely. But this, to be with others, had been a dream once too.

I let out a breath as he watched.

A contemplative hum left him. I had no idea what he meant. 

“I can take you back there. If there are things you need, but…it’s…”

He didn’t want to deliver the news that I had known well and true, what I had heard that night without needing to look back. The house, it was ruined. He could say it all he liked, but what had been there had ceased as many and all things eventually did. And maybe the structure was left, the outline, the memory, but that was not enough. Plenty of things stay in this world that way without use or existence.

I made to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. His eyes flicked to my throat before he reached for a glass at the bedside and passed it to me. How available it was, no well or spout. Not at least, here between us. Just a glass. Just a glass in an expensive large room. I held it to the light out of habit but I knew it was clean and brought the cool cup to my lips, forcing myself to take it in slow sips instead of insatiable gulps. As anyone did, as anyone who had such amenities would. His reluctance seemed to have subsided. Reassurance, that was what the fae liked. I guess I’d given some. 

See, I thought, I’m like you.

He nodded as if he understood this unspoken desire but I knew better than to think he’d heard me. He was pleased merely that I finished the glass. I think he was pleased also to have been the one who provided it. Once I handed the cup back he stared at the emptiness as it caught the light. His fingers moved it back and forth as he studied it. I didn’t mind the quiet, it had lost that touch of awkwardness a long time ago. I could stand a long pause. I let him collect his thoughts and watched as the pleasure fell away into an emotion I had difficulty placing. Sadness, but closer, more precise. 

“I’m sorry. We didn’t know it had strayed that far, that it had left my court. I would’ve—”

He stopped himself, finally placing the glass on the nightstand. Guilt. That was the emotion. But what could he have done? The house was warded, even if he could see those things he had no reason to believe I was there. There was no record of me. He’d seen me, for that I was grateful. To me that was already enough. My fingers twitched like I might reach for him, my mouth parted like I might say it’s okay, but neither occurred. I didn’t feel I had the control to make either thing happen.

His mouth pulled into a tight line, “The friend, I told him what happened. He got here immediately and we’d like to help you.”

For a moment all I wanted was to have the words. To say, don’t bother, to say, I’ll be okay you do not need to trouble yourself, to say your guilt is enormous but it doesn’t need to be, yet all of those things seemed wrong in different ways. Either because they were untrue or because I knew they wouldn’t help.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen or—” He cleared his throat, leaning his elbows on his knees, “When did you get there before or after the war?”

War.

I’d known things were tense, for lack of a better more informed word. It showed itself in many ways. People passed through. I didn’t make a habit of showing myself, but I’d listened. I’d been caught only once and the wards, they’d worked. However, there were times I’d been afraid. Times when I knew even with the precautions in place not to look out my window. But I didn’t know there’d been a war. He noticed my confusion and stiffened. 

“You were unaware.”

No, I confirmed for him, I wasn’t aware of anything. Knowing the curse broke, knowing she was gone, that had been a blessing of chance from the mother in and of itself. 

Now he swallowed, throat bobbing, “After the 50 years you didn’t go—“

I shook my head. There was no after the 50 years. I had been there the whole time, alone. I had not gone to that cottage because Amarantha was gone, I’d been there because she showed up. And it was now another 6 years later since she left. I’d tried going back. There was no returning, not after her. And today I was somewhere else. Today was another different day and another different life.

His face paled ever so slightly, the seriousness turned sad. I closed my hands, stuffing them under the blankets. I didn’t return to be pitied. That was worse than being lost. At least alone I understood. There was beauty and goodness where I was from. I would let no one tarnish it.

“You’ve been there since the curse.”

I nodded.

His words became flimsy. He searched for the right thing to say and said only what came to mind immediately it seemed, “Forgive me. I assumed that the house was old, that perhaps after she—that you returned looking for someone. That they had not survived.”

Wrong. If anything, someone should’ve come looking for me. I could feel the hardness of my gaze. I didn’t need to give an answer he could see it on my face.

“What then were you doing there?”

I drew in a long relaxed breath and turned away, eyes trailing the room. The walls were so nicely decorated, so ornate, the door seemed to disappear behind them. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I couldn’t miss it. The glittering handle, its gold coat. Somewhere else lay waiting behind it. Maybe I could go. 

His question was not totally lost to me. Such a question required words, but what was the answer really? I was there to guard, to protect what we’d gotten away those years ago after she’d arrived. I belonged there, to the field, and the cold creak, with the birds. There was much to say and yet I don’t know if anything I could say would convey the totality of the truth. Despite all manners and reason, I wanted at least to give him that. If he were to help me, if this ‘we’ were to help me, then I thought it would be important that they know everything immediately. There would be no trouble. I just had to say it, had to find those words. I had gone there whether I knew it or not to be forgotten, to remember, to be the one who did the remembering.

I licked my lips but after another minute he opened his mouth. Whatever he had planned he didn’t get to say. A knock came at the door. He sighed, rising to his feet, and as he put distance between us a small thread of disappointment had been plucked. He made no noise as he walked. Yet when he saw who or what was on the other side of the door, his eyebrows lifted. It was muted, the voice, but it was certainly a female’s.

The High Lord turned to me, “Just a minute,” he said smiling with feigned emotion before he ducked out.

As soon as I heard the door shut I collapsed into the bed face down, groaning. It was refreshing, mildly, to hear my own voice. For so long this was all I wanted, someone there when I woke up, an excuse to talk, and despite knowing this—knowing what I wanted, having was another thing entirely. I guess I thought it would feel differently. I thought it would be a relief. I took in a breath, steadying the thudding of my heart. My throat constricted around the place a voice would be. My eyes burned.

I watched the empty glass at my bedside table. In the light, I could see where my lip print had been. Look, I thought, you were here. I took a steadier deeper breath. 

Most people like caring for others. That was one of those things that I liked about living, something I missed. In the woods, I cared for myself. So small a thing too, but the more I thought about it, the more sacred it became what we’d done. Knowing what you need and asking for it, is that not innate proof of living? And being the one to give it, proof of togetherness, of something shared. Sacred was the closest word but there was probably a better one. I bowed my head in thanks for the reminder though he was not there to see it. It had been a long time since I was alive.

The voided margin of my life seemed, so slightly, to fill the longer I stared at it. Such a thing hadn’t happened for a few years. I mouthed a thank you to the mother until I made the sheets damp, manifesting the words in a physical way, and sat up again as I had been.

It was a good world. It would be a good life. Soon. I hoped. 

The door opened again. He returned in a way no one ever did and with new skin. Or to say, some deeper tension, that battle in his mind had settled. So there was something more natural, more real about him than when he’d sat there before. His face was taken with embarrassment and charm at the same time, a slight smile, the shake of his head. He had another question, but this one I liked. 

“Would you like to go outside?”

My mouth twitched, almost a smile. Not quite an answer, but sound, I nodded,“Mhm.”

***

Someone dressed me, the female outside the door apparently, who’d chided the High Lord, driving him outside before he could utter another word, which it had seemed he greatly wanted to. She brought with her food that, like the water, I practiced not eating ravenously. The smell alone boasted of flavors I had never forgotten, even as they’d begun to be out of reach from me. I couldn’t, at that time, remember seeing a plate of such abundance.

She took care of me. Stiff in body, unsure, and second-guessing all meaning of directions, I tried to let her take care of me. Her nimble fingers worked through my hair, sometimes grabbing my head and righting it if it began to sag too far in one direction as I ate. She told me about the Summer Solstice celebrations they’d had a few weeks ago, how the swelter here had been unbearable. The heat though broke in the night and they, the workers included, had celebrated until dawn with Helion. Helion, she kept saying, Helion did this or that. She spoke about him with a casualty that at first, I had no idea who she meant.

“Did he introduce himself?”

He had in a way, at least enough for me to figure out who he was. High Lord of Day Court. Everything suggested as much. My court he’d said, and the beast had slipped through here. There was no closer court, it was not so difficult to put together, even if I didn’t know his name. But he didn’t know mine either. So I guess neither of us was showing our best manners. My thoughts continued, sifting through, and as I realized I was thinking too long it occurred to me also that she hadn’t spoken again, that she was actually waiting for my answer. I shook my head, deciding to be literal. No, no introductions. 

“I knew it! Helion thinks everyone knows him by sight.”

Helion, the High Lord then.

“Stupid fool,” She muttered, “And I’ll tell him so.”

I didn’t doubt it.

The clothes she gave me were light, good for the weather. I didn’t need anyone’s help putting it on. There were no buttons, no ties too complex, but when I, out of instinct, reached for the garment she grabbed it first with a coy smile.

“Turn around.”

In the hall she walked with me, filling the empty space with her voice. There was never enough to say. I’d missed decades of life outside my own so I suppose there would never again be enough to say. I’d never catch up. A silent gratitude passed between us though, for her chatter and life. As we walked, turning a corner into a long bright corridor where two large glass doors opened she nodded in acknowledgment for what I didn’t say. We approached the entry and the yard began to reveal its rolling hills but between them and myself two figures could be seen through the glass. I stuttered in my step, walking now silently. 

She turned toward me with nonchalance, “Don’t let them scare you.”

It wasn’t quite fear that I felt, but I understood why it seemed that way. It was really a genuine curiosity. Helion was with someone. A male. I could hear the jovial laughter they exchanged, their bodies angled toward each other, hands moving as they spoke, brushing shoulders and falling with ceratin comfortable and routined laughter. Their familiarity was easy to read on them and it made me ache. Yet despite this, they could not have appeared more different from one another. While Helion seemed to brighten standing in the sun, the other seemed warm, yes, but the light only further contrasted the shadows of his face. 

Was this the friend, the ‘we’ he’d meant? I’d assumed he meant someone of this court, but it was plainly obvious he did not belong to this place. That he was not born here.

We reached the door and she opened it for me. The two males calming from their laughter turned, soft smiled, toward us. With slow steps, I interlaced my fingers, squeezed my own hand, and took a step into the light on the terrace. Similar to Helion it was not difficult to notice it, the power the other male had. Through his shirt, I could see whirls of tattoos. It was not hard to guess once we faced each other. He, I knew by reputation. High Lord of the Night Court. His name escaped me. We stared at one another, Helion looking between us brows pushed so slightly inward to conceal the totality of his concern.

“You wanted something embarrassing?” The female behind me said, breaking the silence. I could hear her smugness. Our gazes broke and he looked beyond me, raising a brow in interest, his smile sharpening with delight. The two seemed to have allied, a private joke among them all. Helion’s face fell flat with annoyance though he didn’t use his position over her. “He didn’t even introduce himself. His ego so big I’m sure he was relying on looks of his alone.”

The High Lord of Night Court crossed his arms and peered at Helion, “He’s got the face for it.”

Helion said, “I wasn’t.”

The female scoffed, “Well, you certainly weren’t relying on charm and niceties. Ask him what her name is too. If he’d asked for it he would know.”

“Helion,” the other High Lord smiled, “Don’t tell me I’m beginning to have the better manners of us.”

“The Suriel revealed your bond to your mate. I don’t think it will bode well for you to begin a contest of things we didn’t say.”

The two smirked between them, each conceding to the other's point. I’d disappeared again. I didn’t know them as they knew each other. I couldn’t really participate. Sometimes when I missed the world I tried to imagine all the things that no longer happened since I’d left. I’d make a list in my head of everything I guessed was gone, and when I found a world I liked stripped of its vices I’d make a longer list of everything I hoped that remained. It was nice to see what always stayed, the gentle teasing, the way two people know each other. It was nice to see two people who weren’t miserable.

“Rhysand’s ego is still the biggest, it gets in the way, don’t let it this time,” said the female with finality before I heard the door close. Both male’s brows were raised and they gave each other a sidelong glance.

Rhysand. I said it in my head which felt like saying it aloud until I remembered that this was no longer the same thing. That logic had abated with the house. 

Rhysand turned to Helion, “I like her.”

“I knew you would.”

The pair's eyes then landed on me but now with unwavering focus and I felt it. They’d pulled me into the light. The other male bowed, “Hello, it's nice to finally meet you. I’m Rhys, High Lord of the Night Court.”

I nodded back.

“You’ll have to forgive Helion, he’s usually more polite. He’s High Lord of Day,” He said turning back to look at the male who’d saved me that night, who’d sat with me only an hour ago mostly unknown to me. The both of them were calm, all manner of teasing having vanished. I looked between the two. Helion gave a small nod. I turned my eyes back to Rhysand who had seen the whole thing and bowed my head. He gave a small smile, “Despite his behavior, it seems you made a good impression on her Helion.”

“I’m not as brutish as you.”

Rhysand laughed, “My tactics are an acquired taste.”

Helion turned to me, “Be glad I found you. He’s been known to have controversial methods when it comes to…rehabilitation. Tossing to the wolves some have said.”

Rhysand rolled his eyes, “Cassian and Feyre have gotten to you.”

The High Lord of Day gave a cool smile and it struck me now the full spectrum of his beauty, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

I could tell that something was funny but I didn’t know what. I was on the outside of the context, some closed quotation that had happened before. A shut door lay between me and the amusement I felt them share, at least they could. It did not escape my notice this small pleasure that came with being witness to that kind of thing. The way happiness and amusement even when you’re not versed in their circumstances allowed for some participation just the same. I held the hand by this that touched me.

“Don’t listen to him,” Rhysand said. “He’s a bore as much as I’m a brute and asked you a thousand questions which I have no intention of doing.”

“What then were you going to do, bring her to the weaver?” Muttered Helion.

Rhysand ignored him gesturing to the lawn, “Shall we walk?”

The light off the terrace hummed, reaching for me, waiting. It held a whisper, come home. I didn’t answer his question, just walked toward that call, as if enthralled by some spell. Stepping down into the grass I closed my eyes, turned my head up toward the sun, and took a long breath in. There lay no smile on my face, but something had pulled itself pleased. I dropped my gaze, didn’t look back at the two High Lords, and began to walk.

Rhysand and Helion let me stray ahead, their voices managing to reach me still as they spoke idly of family, of people I didn’t know and names I couldn’t commit to memory. Day Court was all green, bright, more shrubbery than flowers and blooms. It was something my parents would’ve liked.

My father said I married heaven and earth. He who studied the sky, my mother who studied the sea, and me the in-between—I united us. We three, together, knew everything we’d believed. On afternoons like this, after we’d left the library, we’d take the long way home, walking through fields, running. It was like the test, we’d point out things we knew and say what they were, explain them, and whatever I didn’t know they did. The feathergrass would sway and bend and we’d wade into it sometimes until it got dark. Here there was no feathergrass, just lawn, but I didn’t mind. Before I would’ve minded, if it were another afternoon of ages ago I would’ve told Helion what better grasses there were, how they’d glow gold in the sun of his court. 

I wandered in all directions. There was nothing denied to me, no call from behind telling me to go another way. It was all the comforts of living alone without being alone. I took in a long breath. Fescue, salt, pine, oak, it all mingled with me, following from the other side of the border. Where you go I go it seemed to say, so I was never too far from where I’d been. Some things were forever. It warmed the insides. So as I walked I told the wind the story of how it all happened until my feet hurt, until I reached an incline at the other end of the estate pausing below it. 

I turned back, the two males were in that same familiar stance I’d found them, standing close, fingers accidentally brushing as they spoke with their hands. All the while I was bumping shoulders with a ghost. I knew only one person well in the way they knew each other. They were far away. A good thing I’d learned.

I looked ahead and climbed the hill I’d found myself at the bottom of. From atop I met ocean. It was too far now to touch, but I could see it again. Waves glittered, breaking and reforming the light along their surface. A breeze sent pleats across the grass and I sat back, the dress rising higher, the sun soaking through. It was a privilege, I knew that now, to feel these things. I was not so much taking advantage of this second chance, I’d always paid this kind of attention, but I remembered the feeling of sadness, the thought of never feeling the warmth of the sun again and so I noticed it more acutely than ever. I’m sure when death came I’d miss the world, but for now, it was here and I could stretch out across it, leave an indent, if only until someone or something else came.

“You’re the talk of the house though no one knows your name. I, however, would like to call you something.”

I turned just enough to see Rhysand standing behind me. Helion was at the bottom of the hill still, speaking with someone. I looked back toward the High Lord of Night Court. I tried to imagine him saying my name back to me if I answered. It would be more real an existence I’d had since I got out there. It had been a long time since someone else had said it, too long since it had a place and weight in the world, cutting through the air, tumbling out of a mouth, mumbled in secret. I could not hear it on anyone else's tongue anymore even in my mind. At the cottage, you never need to use your name. Almost never, but I’d begun to say it sometimes. First at night, then calling myself in for dinner, then saying good morning. I didn’t want to forget, if a person could forget such a thing. The boundaries of memory had gone blurry.

It would be easy to say it. It would be good to say it. Nothing though came. Such silence made other people uncomfortable. Rhysand waited though, a good while, staring at a face he didn’t know well enough to sense it was trying, and eventually put his hands up in surrender. My shoulders fell, too slight to notice. The opportunity seemed lost though the letters were there rolling up from my stomach. Just tell him anyway, I thought. Say it now. But nothing came. I let out a breath. A breeze curled up over the hill and I smelled the sea. I could find the good in plenty. I concluded it was better this way. You cannot forget what you were never told. Maybe that was the secret all along to living for forever.

Rhysand admired the land before us, “It's beautiful, this court.”

I agreed with a bow of the head, the both of us staring across the water where it met the sky. The delicate heart behind my ribs began to beat louder, harder, not faster but pushing against my skin as if to reveal itself, to prove it still worked.

“I’m biased, I think my court's scenery is best, but Helion’s hosts such spectacular afternoons. It’s my second favorite. And not just because he’s a friend.” Rhysand said, adding with a sidelong glance, “I’d actually say our friendship makes it even less likely for me to admit that.”

My mouth slightly pulled at the edges. I was in on this joke. I’d seen it for myself, his friendship. I’d had one friend like that. The love had been of such comfort. You think you’ll never lose it, that was what we thought at least. Helion's laughter rose up the hill but I didn’t turn back to see it. I forgot the buoyancy of that sound, how it rises to meet you. I took in a long breath as if it would enter my body and become my own. I missed that feeling, the sensation of not being able to hold all that goodness in. But it was, again, like having in a different way, not having it. Helion’s was enough.

 “I suppose you’ve seen beautiful mornings yourself out there though.” His voice lacked any pain, any pity. There was something almost sacred in this act as well, where you are not denied the life you’ve lived or made to be its victim. The preciousness of recognition, that such good things, no matter how small, could be fawned over in such a way. I liked him for that. It seemed to settle any question I had about who he was.

My attention drifted skyward. The potential those first moments of daylight held, the soft tints, those lingering mornings. I could feel the lifetime I had in those early hours, where it seemed for all the world I’d do more than survive. I nodded.

“Good, I’m glad,” He said. “Have you traveled much to the other courts?”

I shook my head. My family had not strayed too far. We’d gone to the sea often enough, but never much further. I liked Dawn and knew it intimately, but it had never occurred to me to leave it. Not because I didn’t want to but why would I have? Now I wasn’t sure I could stomach a return, if that was what their help meant. I would have to tell them of that at least, of what I couldn’t do.

“You should see it sometime, my court,” He mused. “Perhaps you will become as biased as me.”

I looked over at him with a raised brow. The Hewn City wasn’t exactly on my list of places to visit. I’d seen sketches of it once while working. It gave the impression, the court at least, that it was more a prison than a home. The library, however, from which that beast had come, that would be worth a journey no doubt. I’d known nothing of it, but I’d be interested to see what needed such protection. 

Rhysand laughed lightly at my reluctance, “I don’t mean the court under the mountain, a different city.” His words seemed tight despite his laughter. As if that place, even its name, haunted something deep within him. It relaxed though, quickly. Helion mentioned a mate, the emotions he revealed and what he didn’t were for their understanding. I couldn’t pretend to comprehend the shifts of his face, the change in his diction. It was a language made for someone else. He turned to look back at the sea, relaxing, thinking, “Though after facing Bryaxis and living I’m sure you’d manage just fine.”

Bryaxis, the beast had a name. I mouthed it, rolling each syllable from the back of my mouth and letting it disintegrate into silence and air. Bryaxis who had spoken to me, had targeted me, Bryaxis who had watched me in its curiosity and hesitated. I didn’t know it. Even now knowing the name I knew I’d truly never heard it, not even in passing.

“What did you do before you tormented beasts?”

I huffed something like a laugh, something like what had become of my laugh. That was an answer I could say. I knew the word, knew it better than any other. My eyes on the horizon and yet again my voice strained, falling deeper in my chest. I suddenly had nowhere to begin. The words I’d had snagged in my throat by their inadequacy. He waited, but my mouth only opened and closed.

Rhysand made to speak. Say it I thought. I’m alive. I am not gone from history, the answers are not yet erased. Slowly, unnervingly quiet, I managed one word. It fell into my lap like a lead burden.

“Archivist.”

Despite the flatness of the answer, he gave me a look of casual surprise. It's cause I wasn’t sure, the occupation itself or the fact I answered at all, but he asked, “In a library?”

I nodded, pulling my knees into my chest. The sun began to fall toward the water. It painted our faces a deep orange. I threaded my fingers through the cool lawn, pulling up a few strands and tossing them to the wind. 

“So you studied?” 

My eyes widened slightly at that. Archivist positions, they weren’t scholars. Most people hadn’t asked about studying once they’d learned what I did. But that was then. I had been a scholar—or I was very close. If I’d had a little more time, if she hadn’t sent them that night to Dawn for destruction, if there hadn’t been the gap, then I would’ve. And then I wouldn’t have been in that cottage at all. Then everything would be different. 

But it wasn’t. This was my life. I traced my eyes over the beauty that was really here instead of the imagined one. Rhysand waited for my answer, expecting it now since I’d given one. This was the story I’d practiced telling many times, but every flourish I’d memorized, every bend I’d been telling and retelling alone evaded me, presented only a false start. I hoped that maybe the wind would say what I could not, that the memory it held would catch a gale and whisper into his ear. That it would pull everything from the past in a way I couldn’t then. There was no concise way, no summary that seemed to be true enough. The wind died down, so I confirmed without words. 

He put his hands in his pocket, his chin dipping, “What was it you studied?”

I gestured to everything around us.

“Day Court.”

I shook my head.  

He thought a minute, mouth falling open with an ahh sound, “Nature.”

“Mhm.”

“Out there then, it came in handy.” He’d developed a slight smile but it shrank as he thought a moment, “It’s what helped you survive so long.”

I shrugged more or less. His throat bobbed and I saw it, how he was aware of something. I knew then that Helion had told him everything. Despite the laughter and the conversation, despite all appearances, he was aware of me. But this was different from how Helion had been. Maybe the wind did talk. Whatever thought or idea had come into clarity changed the shape of his body, the way it lay against the world. There still came no pity, but I knew. He’d heard something I had not said, something maybe he only suspected. Something bad had happened. Not simply the cabin itself, but something else. He could feel it. There was a wound. I said I’d tell him. When I knew what to say I would tell him.

He avoided my eye, his own searching the horizon again. We used this world as a crutch between us. He waited a moment, another, then again and I knew that words were coming, difficult words, “I was sorry to hear of your home.”

It was my turn to withdraw from this part of the world for a more pleasant one. I went to the cottage for a minute and let myself visit one final time. I recalled with such clarity those late afternoons in spring when I’d come to the field and lie down beneath the grass to hide from the cool atmosphere. When the sunlight was enough, a shawl to thaw away the last dregs of winter. How fine a home it had been, protecting and nurturing, holding the last of a memory that for now had never been.

“It's not easy.”

Loss, I shook my head, no easy was not the term. The wind returned in time and pushed through my hair like a comb. I thanked quietly the earth for its care. For those long years nothing had touched me as those natural things, that quiet life in between moments and places. It was not the same in this place and these people, but they proved caring, regardless of what Helion had implied. There were no wolves. It was all gentle, if only in its own way, and I liked gentle things.

Helion’s footfall came up the hill. It paused on the edge of the moment, not quite part of it and yet witness too. A silence overwhelmed the moment and I could tell it was one in which two people are communicating silently with each other. My back turned they had a minute to shift their faces, to say what it was they needed to say. Rhysand continued, “Did you have any questions for us?”

The force of my question rose with great curiosity. Enough that I momentarily lost sight of what couldn’t be said. It was simple, but I wanted it. I wanted to know and so I tried. I asked. 

“The date.”

We returned a while later to the manor and both males were quieter as we walked. I narrowed my eyes at them a few times, watching. I could see it; some thoughts passed first through Rhysand and then into Helion. The two were not so much conspiring, but mulling something over. What to do with me maybe. Whatever it was, whatever they were thinking and could tell in the other, I didn’t mind too much. Privacy is a fine thing and while they were occupied I had a moment alone too. 

As the days progressed we acclimated to one another. I forgot the way people would meet you where you were but it did not go unnoticed to me all they did. The slight change from long-form questions to yes and no, the working around my silence. It was just a little too hard otherwise, to think of everything I wanted to say. I wanted to gather my thoughts. I practiced though, managing sometimes an audible yes, an audible no. I could tell they liked it when this happened, that it made them feel as if they were helping. They were. I would tell them when I could. When I had the words I knew they’d listen. 

At night I said my name to the ceiling. By morning all simplicity vanished. But I tried. 

After our routine, after dinner a week from the attack, the two High Lords bid me goodnight, crossing the hall into a sitting room where the door did not quite click into place. In consequence, I was not far enough away to not hear the beginning tension of their conversation. Curiosity got the better of me. I walked backward on silent feet, my ear angled to the door. 

“I’ve had Azriel do a flyover every day since I arrived. He can feel it near the border.”

Helion swore under his breath, “Has it bothered anyone else?” 

“No.”

But it would. The silence between them said as much. 

“What are you going to do?”

Rhysand sighed, “I don’t know. I’ve found nothing on how they put it in the library in the first place. Nothing on its deterrents, your men from Dawn haven’t had similar abilities when they’ve gotten close so it's not a matter of the court power itself. And that scream…I’ve faced it more than once, Cassian’s faced it, and never has it made such a noise.”

“I’ll consult the library.”

“Please.”

In my room, my hair was pulled from its pins as the female who’d been my company between the walks talked on. For the first time I wasn’t really listening. I liked it usually, hearing of her joy, of what she’d thought and seen. My mind though had gone elsewhere. Do you know it as I know it, what makes us so alike? Outside the moon had risen, waning. Time was passing over our idleness. The wind blew in the window with a familiar story. I relayed it over and over again in my mind, feeling its edges, the grooves, feeling for the dimensions where I knew they ended. 

“Where does Rhysand stay.”

I’d never interrupted her. It seemed simple, there in my head, everything. I’d had to interrupt her while it remained so. She stared at me in the mirror unphased to learn I could speak. 

“He’s been in the study late,” She said before leaning in to whisper. “I feel bad for his mate. Up at all hours.”

“How do I get there?”

I followed the directions I was given. The soft-hued night painted everything blue, even the hall. It made the light falling through the crack in the door more obvious. As if the sun were there in that part of the world and nowhere else. I gave a soft knock. Something stilled, something behind the door bigger than a body, maybe the entirety of the life I felt waiting on the edge of everything. A long shadow passed in the crack beneath the door before it opened. Rhysand looked surprised before he’d even opened it. He knew it was me. I didn’t wait for him this time. 

“I could help you,” I said with a quiet made for night only. It was a voice that had bled into everything I did. Like no part of me would risk betraying what I’d learned to do, how I’d survived by not being alive.

His mouth turned downward with confusion. I forgot again. Things have gone unsaid. An hour or two had passed. Our minds were not linked by thought and obsession. He couldn’t know what I had not told him. 

“Bryaxis.”

I knew I’d lose if he said no and he seemed inclined to do so. I didn’t have it in me to argue, didn’t have enough time to find my words and think, to articulate. He stared at me, hard. The room, his thoughts, everything about him really I didn’t have much access to. I could see a sliver of the study, a half emotion on his brow. I had only guessed what Helion had meant by his teasing, how he could be. Perhaps he’d let me with the wolves if I chose it.

“Why?”

“A library should be protected.”

His mouth pursed slightly, “That’s not your only reason.”

It wasn’t. I knew he’d wait for this answer, he’d probably wait all night. I could not escape it. The window in the study was open and a draft plucked at my ankles. I knew what it was saying.

“It seems plain to me—like I’d been planning on helping all along and I just figured it out.”

“And a good omen that this has got you talking.” Rhysand nodded slowly, thinking it over but I could tell he’d already made a decision, “Okay,” he said and stepped away from the door gesturing me to come in. “Have you decided to see my city then?”

Both he and Helion had offered me a place to stay. I didn’t know where I’d go, knowing was not the word, but there was a premonition. I could only describe it as how I imagine the migration of birds, some ancient memory in the bones pushing them in a direction even if they’d never gone that way before. It seemed I was going regardless, already flying, but I did not know until now which way it was, until he said yes.

I nodded.

He gestured to a seat and I took it. At the bar he’d strayed, offering a glass to me but I declined. He poured one for himself anyway. It was quiet here even with the window open. Bryaxis was lingering near the border but even the mention of the beast seemed to send life here to the very edge of everything.

“If you wanted to stay with Helion you could. We could come get you.”

“I know.”

He fell into his chair and rested the cool glass against his knee. The dew on the outside of his drink was already dripping onto his pants wetting the fabric. The heat of summer had ebbed and flowed, but tonight it didn’t want to break.

“There will be a lot to discuss before we can go out there,” He said bringing the glass to his mouth and swallowing with a sigh. “We have some time, not much.”

I bowed my head, opening my mouth to speak. There was plenty to be said, if only I said it. Sweat beaded along my hairline, I wrung my hand before wiping my damp palms on my clothes. We were rarely so solitary, our attentions so focused, and perhaps that’s why he noticed the inclination I had to speak, the moment I needed to gather the words.

“There are…things you don’t know,” I said swallowing. My brows furrowed but still he waited. He’d leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees like he’d find my words by proximity. “I’ve been trying…”

The sentence died out there. The air had gone noticeably stagnant, the simplicity of everything vanishing again without sign of return. I turned my attention to the window. Outside the tallest branches sat unmoved. I closed my eyes, clenched my jaw, I could remember. The wide maw of my life opened fast, descending rapidly. It heard more than felt the speed of my heart, it a similar beast ready to bite.

“I’m not supposed to be…” I pressed my fingers to my forehead smoothing out a wrinkle. Show me the words. All of them. Please. Who was I talking to? 

“It’s okay,” Rhysand said, with obvious gentleness. My despair was great, too great to miss. You did not have to know me to feel it. A rush of sympathy overcame me at Helion’s guilt. I couldn’t look at him, could not face this level of care coming from his being. “You can show me.”

It was like a cold front. The edge of two things, one sweeping in from the margins and pushing out the other. The hair on my arms stood up. I knew what he meant. I did not have to ask. My eyes met his and he took fear for question. 

He continued, unaware, “You know of the gift of daemati?” 

I tripped over the table to my left, surging again, away from Rhysand with speed that did not account for such things. Glass broke. I walked over it. I knew I had by context not by feeling. I couldn’t have missed it. The noise booming in the quiet intruded, breaking the peace and stillness. I was so much like that beast. It was right. He stared blank-faced at me as I backed myself toward a wall, stranded in a room with something wild and no idea what to do or how to help. And the trouble was I knew he wanted to, I knew he’d suggested this only to help, but I could not fight it, that terror rising like bile.

“No.”

“I don’t—”

I shook my head, “No.”

He took a breath and I saw it, how it had calmed him. I tried the same to no relief. The pause only added to the growing tension, sharpening like a needle with which life would pierce me. 

“I only see what you choose. It won’t hurt.”

Something familiar crept inside me, clawing, and opened a hole in my stomach. I felt it fill with something foul, something from another place, somewhere I’d never been. I shut my eyes as if that would prevent the lens with which I saw the world to become filled with it, but even behind my eyes I watched it rise in my waterline until it passed over the iris, until suddenly the world was swimming in the tint of gloom. 

Helion burst through the door. Rhysand raised a hand to him before either could speak again. I couldn’t tell if he’d arrived with speed, time had begun to mean nothing again. All I knew was it was summer and the world was very dark despite the odds.

“I can tell you. I know the words,” I said turning to look at him praying just the assertion would conjure them. But doing so only illuminated to me something else. Rhysand had betrayed me. Such sadness had overcome him. A face of pity. I had wanted more than anything to have the words, but now they’d never come. 

He must have seen it on my face because he spoke, “Even if you did, I need to see what you saw that night.”

“What about the Veritas orb?” Helion said. I’d forgotten he was there. How quiet he was. He turned to me, eyes falling to the floor. The glass. I was a poor guest. I was bleeding all over his fine house. I’d stain. I’d never leave. I’d haunt everything.

Rhysand shook his head, “It shows only glimpses. I need everything, every feeling, every sound.”

I took in a breath, the biggest I could remember needing. I wanted to yell, I wanted to give him what he wanted, but instead what came was that soft voice made to conceal everything, “I’ll tell you what it said.”

The solution I hoped the offer would bring seemed further after I’d made it. The pair looked at me. “Bryaxis spoke to you?”

I nodded. 

Rhysand rubbed at his forehead, “I can’t send you out there without knowing. It’s too dangerous. With how clever it is I need to know precisely what was said, what you felt, if your magic reacted.”

I winced. Stepping back the glass crunched and I forced myself to feel it. The males cringed, and suddenly I could smell the tang of my blood. Slowly I remembered what had been forgotten. I’m in this world. I’m in this room.

Rhysand continued, guilt-ridden, and I understood—I’d understood before, “I can no more give back your house than I can your life.”

But I could not do it. I turned away, my eyes blurred, stomach in my throat. I said into my shoulder, even quieter than before, like my voice knew before me it would no longer be needed, “But I remember.”

Rhysand met the quiet with his own, “I believe you.”

His final words were unsaid, but I heard them. I need to see. I waited a moment so as not to be rude.

 “No,” I said and left. 

I lost track of time easily like a habit. I made sure not to get blood anywhere. In that very large bed, too large for even two people, I climbed, already having pulled the glass from my flesh. The wounds in a momentary glow stitched together and within a minute it was like they hadn’t been there at all. I tried to remember they were, tried to remember how many pieces I pulled out, but that was already leaving me. I didn’t have the space for it. I let my head meet the pillow, tugged the blanket to my chin, and did not know the number of days it took me to get up again.

***

“You were at the library of Aurora.”

Once I got out of bed they came to see me often even though I did not talk. Unmoving, staring out the open window, they spoke to my back. The branches in the distance were a mimicked stillness. They hadn’t moved since that night. I ignored the cold sweat that began to buzz against my skin. My stomach and its emptiness clawed to get out. I ignored the echo of that name in my knees. Aurora.

“I realized it the first day we met,” Rhysand continued. It was him talking this time. I think they took turns. I think I thought that at some point. I lost track of what I believed. “You want to protect my library because you saw Aurora burn and got away.”

Gone. All that knowledge destroyed, and it was me who was supposed to preserve it. Centuries of work, centuries of records, all lost. And I’d fled as it burned. I left them to their fate as he had left me to mine.

“So I know you understand the importance of what I’m asking. How crucial it is to ensure you we don’t lose information by not sharing it.”

A sob fought its way through my chest at the innate cruelty, that I was as important, as precious, as that library and what it held. No, I was just a female from the woods. I was a memory. I’d hit a hole in the world and fall through like everything else forgotten and it wouldn’t matter what I had, what had been in that house, what had happened to it. 

 “Your secrets are yours I won’t go anywhere besides that night at your home. Helion can be there if you’d like.”

The scent of oatmeal wafted toward the window, crossing my path before running away into the world. I would not eat it as I had not eaten the last bowl. Rhysand could harm me easily and Helion could do nothing about it. That is the order of all things. I was not lamenting over the trivialities of nature. What is in you is as old as pain.

“I want to help.”

Maybe I could go back, maybe I could repair.  I swallowed, “Can you put it back?” 

Silence. A cloud moved over the sun. 

“What?” 

I repeated, “What your claws break, can you put the pieces back together?”

It wasn’t secrets I wanted to keep. I’d tell him everything if he asked. If he let me help, I’d tell him what he would never figure out, could never know about that night, about the years after. And I knew they were claws, knew how they felt, the ease with which they shattered. I wanted to preserve something else more fragile than a house, than a life.

“No,” he said.

The cloud passed and from behind me, the bedroom door shut.

***

It was the same dream. A needle pierced the current and caught my legs, I followed the light. There in the thicket, I’m asked for my name. This time I say it. Yet with each letter given voice the dream dissolved. First him, then the birds, then the water, until there was nothing but darkness. I did not try to grab for that world. I knew I could not keep it. 

***

I woke with clear eyes. I knew the way well enough. No one was coming for me so I did not wait. Walking as I always had, like I was in a current almost going downstream. There was no stopping, you could only get out, and I didn’t want to get out. I had no reason to believe I should do this really and as I walked I tried to find a why but I had none. Life was different from when I abandoned it and maybe I no longer fit in the space I’d left behind. Maybe not even from a distance. I didn’t know though, and I guess I wanted to know if there was room for me even if I was different from what I’d been. I kept walking. For now, I knew only that I had to keep walking. 

Around the corner, I found the dining room doors open. I could hear their murmurs. They weren’t displeased, not in any great way, it was pleasant even. If I upset them I had to believe that this could not ruin what had begun, our small and sacred acts of seeing. I approached still with quiet silent steps. From the hall I glanced in, neither High Lord noticing me. The shadowed edge of the table, the light other. Someone else was there. Someone in color at the opposite end, all brightness, and his face, watching me already.

Oh.

There was no change in the eyes. Or eye, the other, metal. His full lips unflinching, gaze unending, but as our attentions met, I saw it. I knew what memory looked like and how forgetting affected the face. That thing you can’t place and it's confusion. Or worse, not even confusion, not even the grasping hands for the edges of the mind, those echos of slight recognition. Just blankness.

Helion caught us first.

“We have a guest.”

I didn’t know if it was directed at me or Rhysand who turned to see I was standing there, still in my pajamas, the skin under my eyes purpling despite the long sleep I’d taken since that night in the study. There was no desire, no instinct, to look away from the hard edges of this male that began to soften like the beginning colors of morning. Not before I knew for certain. He stood. A slight bend at his waist settled for manners. I dipped only my head. I didn’t think I could safely manage much else without revealing the intensity with which I felt the need to watch him. Every window was open, the sunlight bled into his skin. He glowed warm, like a field in late afternoon, like a summer’s full moon.

“We just sent someone to get you,” Helion said. 

 Rhysand stared between us. His gaze sharp, he watched from the middle of our line of sight, our attention passing through him and he seemed to feel it. He introduced us, “This is Lucien, emissary of the Night Court.”

Lucien. 

The emissary waited a minute, for my name, but I’d never given it. It was all muscle memory in a way. His own mouth pulled slight and pleasant, glad for something but I didn’t know what. The stare breaking, he turned toward Helion and Rhysand,  “We’ve met.”

All at once the world became more solid than it had ever been. As real as the lip print on a glass. I took one long breath and when I exhaled it came as a relief. 

“Just once,” I said.

His face relaxed revealing just barely more of his smile, “Yes. Only once.”

Both High Lords had stiffened at the revelation. The inadequacy of my words caught up with me as they never had. Faster than I would’ve guessed if I’d had the chance. If there’d been time. 

“When?” Rhysand asked. 

“A few years ago.” 

The hole in my stomach once gaping began to shrink. I didn’t know anyone could still do that—remember me. Helion stared between us, his brows rising slightly. He turned toward Rhysand and the same thing happened that had occurred those days before, a thought seemed to pass through them. I knew though, or suspected it at the very least, that some communication was happening inside their heads. It was not so figurative, not the work of long-time friendship, it was tangible words being said along some avenue Rhysand managed to speak through. 

“Are you hungry at all?” Helion asked, turning his focus back on me. 

I nodded. I was starving, I realized. Each step I took into the room seemed to solidify something in me that had become translucent. I couldn’t say what it was. The absence though was filling. Lucien waited to sit until I had. His manners reminded me again to perform my own as Helion pulled out the chair I’d always taken, the one just beside Lucien.  Strange how it happens this way. I straightened my shoulders and crossed my legs. I was not in the woods. 

Helion and Rhysand resumed the conversation they must have been having when I wasn’t in the room, about someone they both knew, and it was as if nothing had happened. They were not overly cautious, not afraid I’d return to the person I was when we were alone. They would not let me haunt this place. They were not looking, but I bowed my head in thanks and made a plate. 

Wordlessly we passed each other dishes. Lucien took only a little food, his plate had been empty, but there was enough to suggest he’d already eaten and was now going for seconds. I chewed even slower than the last time, not wanting him to figure out I was ravenous despite being in such a fine place. I had no explanation, not one at least I wanted to give as to why I was the way I was. The flavors were so rich it became impossible not to eat with some vigor and before long I found myself looking across the table for a glass. Without ceremony, however, Lucien passed a teacup over to me already poured. I took it with sturdy hands, the warmth of him apparent the moment we were a little close, fingers pulling, overlapping. I sipped it gratefully. 

“Did you sleep well?”

It always happened the same way with that dream. The dreamland disappears and a sky just close to dawn appears. And then there's no sleeping, no ability to return to the depth of unconsciousness I’d found. But it was a deep sleep, the kind that leaves you groggy.

I opened my mouth but decided instead on shaking my head no. He stared at me, a sense of anticipation on his shoulders, some tension building. The light off the lawn cast his face in kindness, something soft. An old desire formed in my gut, some weightlessness of being that made my hand light enough to rise from its place. I wanted to touch him, his face, run my fingers over his cupid’s bow, feel the dip. But I did not. Instead, I placed my palms flat on the table so he could see them.

“Have you been here long?”

‘I…don’t know.”

Despite the worn look of confusion, the tension in his shoulders settled. He didn’t understand me. This was not so foreign. I wasn’t sure how to describe it, the feeling of time slipping from your hands like water. The inability to track where your disruption had begun, where all that cool clear current had been touched by you. My hands flinched as if to close, but I didn’t let them.

“I’ve lost track of time.”

“The moon is repeating again, since its phase at the start of summer.” 

Two weeks then, since I arrived. I took a sip of my tea, staring down the table into something empty. Time again had passed. Perhaps Bryaxis by now had moved on. A library unprotected, a beast in the world. All the while the two High Lords looking for it here with me. I hummed some note by way of reply. It came on instinct rather than on purpose. Some part of my mind paying attention. 

“I never caught your name,” he said. The words were quiet enough that no one might hear, as if they’d come from the past. In a way they had. Even so, it drew me back into him, into the present where I was not alone at the table. I was glad for it. There was a time when I’d have given anything for that, someone who could draw my attention. 

Yet when I turned to him in answer my thoughts were so blank it was like a name had never been there. My mouth hung open in the silence. His eyes dipping to it forced me to look away. I wanted not to do it, to remove my hands, but I did, balling them into my pajamas. He never knew it, and yet telling him seemed to ensure more readily that I’d be forgotten altogether. That strange fallacy of fate all heroes make in trying to avoid theirs. My throat formed a lump the size of a worry stone. Everything was slipping away like a dream before you woke up. I wanted to ask anyone, anything, for it not to happen, for here of all places to stay. Say it, I thought, or he will think you never will. 

Then his voice, delicate like a sunbeam through leaves, interrupted the current of my mind, “Take your time.”

I blinked a few times and released my dress, counting each finger as I did until it lay flat again. Slowly I crept forward, placing those two palms on the cool wood of the table. My eyes found the window and I kept him in my line of sight as the stone I’d swallowed began to vanish, the syllables taking shape, until everything formed perfectly in my mind, every letter, every thought, every good reason I had to share this answer with him.

“Y/N.”

His eyes traced back and forth, dipping then rising with the peaks of my face like one would follow a mountain range. 

“Y/N,” he said once to me. Then again after he turned to his plate but more to himself. He held the name in his mouth, rolling it around. I did the same with his as I had since we met. I closed my fist around the fork but kept it on the table. I had a simultaneous urge, like when the sun is too bright but you want to turn your face into its warmth, of something wanting to disappear and something else wishing to get out.

He sipped his own cup. Though his eyes were not on me I could tell I had his attention so fully that nothing would escape him. I’d already done that and I don’t think he planned on letting it happen again. Even downcast, even seeming to be miles away, he was taking great care to see me, to be aware of me, from his place in the world. I wanted to reach out and say that I was going nowhere, but I had no idea if that was even true so I thought of something else to say, slowly, while feeling the weight of his awareness.

“You’re Night Court,” I managed to get out.

He nodded, “Yes.”

“I thought maybe you were something else.”

“I was.”

I bowed, nodding, my chest strained just a bit, but not enough for me to stop the plain words, “I was something else too.”

He placed his hand on the table and my eyes fell to the food he wasn’t eating, though he’d piled such healthy proportions. My every word he hung onto now there was no time left for the things he’d begun. 

“What were you before?”

I thought of the ghost, of all the things I might tell him, but it was almost like a mirage, some obscuring that happened by proximity where being further away gives a false clarity. When I tried to reach for her to see her detail I found she was gone. 

He must have noticed the conflict in my mind because he spoke again, “You don’t have to say if you don’t wish to.”

“Thank you.”

He gave me a simple smile and we returned to something quiet. I knew he’d listen if I ever had the words. When we met I could see the kindness off him like you see ripples in a pond, the greater Os disappearing into the outer boundary, shy and thin. I felt as if I were a very far away edge touching the lighter rings and now it seemed I was at the center where the kindness was more immediate, more intentional. I don’t know if anyone had ever been so gentle. Not the false gentleness where they believe you will break, but another kind entirely. An understanding that the world was cruel and that he was continuously deciding he wouldn’t be. 

I ate my own food in silence, waiting for his attention to diminish, to wink out entirely. Only it didn’t. Only actually, there were things I wanted to say if I could reach them, if only I had access.

“Do you…” I began, “Did you find her?”

His brows rose slightly and his eyes flicked toward the other end of the table for less than a moment, but I’d seen. He cleared his throat, “Yes.”

“Is she…is she well?”

“Very,” he said and though his face didn’t show it, I felt something in his words like relief. 

I bit into my bread, chewing, thinking of the next words, “I put something out for her. For the mother.”

Lucien’s face returned to that softness of when we’d found each other in the same place again, when he still didn’t know my name, “Thank you.”

I nodded, content to leave it at that, but found the question rising before I could wonder if I should ask it, “And is it nice where you live? In the Night court?”

His mouth pursed with the question, an answer not so available. It did not seem a coincidence that an emissary arrived just when they were in need of one. However, he did not seem poised to lie, to sell me on anything. If he had the answer would be easy.

“I like to think that I will love it eventually as I have come to love everywhere I’ve lived, but it does not quite feel like home as I know it.”

“You’ve lived many places?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not here to convince me of one.”

His brows rose and he turned down the table to look at the other occupants, “Of Rhysand? No.”

“Why?”

He paused, but not with thought, with something else that maybe if I knew him a little better I could say. His hand flinched forward, but shifted from its unknown trajectory toward a glass.

“Right now, I doubt that is what you most need.”

Death felt close—so to say I forgot again about breathing. Not for very long, but long enough. Everything else, everything I had wanted to say or ask didn’t yet arrive with the same clarity. If he was emissary for the Night Court then all I could hope was that there'd be time to say it. That something somewhere would give me time to get it out. For now, my cup was empty. I stared at the bottom, the tea leaves forming a pattern and maybe if I’d been a scholar of such readings of fate I could use it. Maybe I wouldn’t think it at all a bias that when I looked down I saw stars.

“Have you been back swimming this summer?” He asked.

“Yes. I love swimming.”

His mouth twitched, “You do.” 

I don’t know what I’d thought really, that he remembered me and had not remembered anything else, but it surprised me again that even the context for which we met was so available to him. That, on any given day since the first time and now, he could conjure me in that stream swimming. He could picture the scene, imagine the moment, and I would be there as he had been there in my own memory. I was not used to it, to any of what had become of me. Something within, some hidden note, was plucked like a harpstring. It hummed in my inner ear and I sighed.

“I used to go swimming all the time,” He said. 

“Not anymore?”

He shook his head, “I’ve been busy.”

“Oh,” I said unsure of what to say next, blindly following the whims of my mind as if a light had been shut off and I needed to find my way through a dark forgotten room. I leaned forward, hoping he’d hear me despite his attention on his food. “Where did you swim before?”

He finished cutting into his bread only to put his hands in his lap, the fork now idle jewelry at his side. “At home, there was a pond we’d go to. Now I suppose the—” He coughed, shifting in his chair uncomfortably. I was too close, I realized. I pulled back resting against the chair. I tried to remember better manners, and space, and those things we learned as children. 

His mouth momentarily downturned he continued, leaning towards me, “I’m sure there are a few hidden places. I haven’t looked hard enough yet.”

“Maybe you will like it better, where you are, if you return to something old in a new way,” I said, nodding a moment, collecting the jumble of thoughts that had appeared. He watched my face, knowing there was more and waiting for it. His hand so close to mine I could grab it if I wanted to, let my own drift his way, and check that he was really here. Yes, these were the words. “The way water makes you weightless, that's one of the things I’ve always liked about swimming—that reminder that I’m not so in control as I think. Nature is there and I might get swept some way and find myself in a different and new part of the world, exposed to its beauty even if I don’t know it yet, didn’t know I had wanted to see it until I got there.”

Lucien’s face took on a more refined contentment. I watched it happen as I spoke, the way he listened. My voice seemed to settle on him with a precise weight that relaxed his shoulders, brightened his eyes. I don’t know if I’d ever seen anyone listen to me with such a face, not even surprised that I had so much to say, but as if he were expecting it all along and was glad to finally have it in his presence.

His throat bobbed, “it’s nice—nicer, when you think of it that way.”

I managed a very slight smile, closer to happiness than I could then remember. Larger too, more real than anything since that night where I’d gone and had never quite come back.

We walked as we did but in a different way. The rolling hills, the sea, they were out of sight. Lucien had to go. He’d come to deliver a message, and he’d done that before I arrived. It was all the same as it had been but instead of the great lawn there was the formal patio followed by great grassy paths and the conservatory. 

He stayed close to me, not letting me stray as the other two did. Delicately his fingers grabbed for long blades of grass, pulling them from their root as he walked by, dropping them once a few steps had been taken. Everything ran through his fingers, nothing passed his notice without finding first his hands, pressing for the boundaries, the veins, the green, the bloom. All of it was his to touch and he did. The white fabric I wore overlapped with his legs at times. I was aware of it as I was aware of everything—acutely.

“You’ve enlisted to help get Bryaxis I hear.”

“Yes.”

“That’s brave,” he said. “I’m told it’s unbearable up close.”

“It is.”

“So you’ll be joining us.”

I was quiet. There were still things left to do and I didn’t know what would become of me once they’d been done. But at least I got to see him. At least now I knew what I knew, that he was real and he remembered me. I could still do such things and that was a gift. I wouldn’t waste it. The golden gate of the property came into view. Our time was over. My hand at my side it pushed outward for him but I changed its momentum, bringing it into crossed arms. The pair of us stared ahead. 

“Are you afraid to see it again?”

Fear was not the word and yet in some sense it was. Because I would feel fear once I said it again, of that I was sure, but I was not afraid at the prospect of being afraid. When it is certain there seems less to worry about. It no longer was difficult to imagine how terrified one could be and so too that prevented any misunderstanding of what I was doing. 

“Fear is not quite right.”

“What is?”

“I don’t know.”

Our shoulders brushed and I turned my head up to him, his tall frame. If it were not noon he’d block the sun entirely from me. It cast through his shirt revealing so much of him. There were no secrets, there was nowhere denied besides the places strangers ought to be denied. He and I had skipped that with me I suppose.

“I hope I see you. I’d just begun to think you got away.”

“I did,” I said. “More than once.”

Silence fell between us and I tried to mend what had begun the way I used to. Birds chirped overhead Goshawks, chickadees, sparrows—I rattled each one off as it spoke, taking inventory and filing it all away. First I wanted it in the memory, the one happening where I was walking along the path in Day Court and nothing seemed wrong even though it was. But that seemed a little too flimsy, something easy to slip out of your grasp so instead I put it in an index of what wildlife flew free under Helion’s sun.

“Vassa and Jurian are waiting,” Lucien said giving a glance back before settling his gaze again on me. “Goodbye Y/N.”

I did not say it back. The sentiment expanded the hole in my stomach that had begun to close ever so slightly. Gloom caught the world but I brushed it aside like a cobweb. There he was, going now, the first person in 50 years who had not forgotten me. That was one of those good unexpected things. Life was full of those. It was worth it in a way, to stay alive, to see what found its way down the current onto my side of the creak. 

He walked down the grassy path toward the gate. Rhysand behind me didn’t approach, but I’d felt him show up as Lucien was leaving. I waited for the emissary to pass the boundary. I couldn’t see it, but suddenly he felt very far away, small, yet still there in my line of sight. My hair brushed against my shoulders, the lawn flattening giving shape to the breeze that had returned, bringing with it something simple and sure to the world. My life, yes, this was my life. 

“I will show you,” I said.

Rhysand approached next to me watching the male too but with different emotion, something unsure. He extended a hand my way. I turned to look at it. 

“I don’t do tattoos.” 

The High Lord smiled, “Luckily this isn’t a bargain. You can leave at any time. I mean it. Bryaxis is my problem.”

I swallowed, turning to see the glint of the last male in the world who’d known I was there, there in those woods. How small he was. Wind blew through the front lawn relieving the heat. 

“There's something you should know before you extend your offer officially. If you wish to withdraw I won’t hold it against you. I don’t want you feeling you’re under any obligation to me. 

“It’s my beast.” 

“And they were my wards.”

“If it means so much to you we can split the blame.” 

I crossed my arms, “You like deals.”

“I’ve had luck with them in the past, yes.” His face once again settled on the horizon. Our peripheral watched as the Emissary finally disappeared, but I knew he’d been there. There was no worry between us, no doubt. Someone had once believed in me this way, but only once. My heart beating with the story I’d told a thousand times, the words rising with ease, a beginning and an end. 

“I’m supposed to be dead.”

[amnevitahwritesstuff]

Every day, Rhysand wakes up next to Amarantha in her bed Under the Mountain. A prisoner, a weapon, a High Lord on a leash. He's been down there so long, it's starting to feel like time doesn't matter. Until one day, it doesn't. Feyre's death sends Rhysand back in time, waking up on the same day - over and over. Now, Rhysand must discover how to break the time loop, save his mate, and keep his sanity intact. A "round robin" style fanfiction with different authors. This work is meant to be read from beginning to end, but each chapter is written by a different author with their own spin on the time loop prompt.

Part of the @feysand-hivemind

Pairing: Feyre/Rhysand

Rating: Teen

Triggers: Murder, (Temporary) Character Death

Surprise! Bet you didn't think you'd see me as a part of this project (except you probably did because I haven't been nearly that subtle these past few months)! Anyway, please enjoy this (very short!) silly little palette cleanser of a chapter before I hand you back off for our regularly scheduled angst.

Tumblr Masterlist | Read on Ao3

Chapter Five: The Mermaid (Loop 26)

“What the-?”

Arielle blinked her eyes open in confusion at the waves and ripples that had disturbed her slumber. She had just settled down for the night, in her bed of waterweed and algae, when- 

There, towards the little shore of her pond, she spied a pair of feet wading through the water followed by the sound of drunken laughter. Were they…? Oh Cauldron, they were!

The mermaid grimaced in disgust. 

Did the high fae not teach their children any manners? Honestly!

Clearly some people still needed a reminder not to encroach upon the homes of others. 

While river mermaids were somewhat different from their sea dwelling cousins (primarily in that they were lazier and more prone to napping in the sun rather than luring sailors to their deaths) they more than made up for their lack of blood thirstiness with pettiness and a zero tolerance policy regarding home invaders. 

Especially if said invaders were trying to get frisky right on her front doorstep. 

“Excuse me!” She said tersely as she swam towards the intruders. “Don’t you know this is private property-”

And that was right about when one of them decided to step on her hair. 

Arielle shrieked, jerking back in pain and shock and knocking the perpetrator clear off their feet. She felt them crash into the water with a cacophonous splash while their companion seemed stunned into stillness at discovering that this pond was, in fact, home to something other than a few frogs. 

“First you invade my pond without permission and then you attack me in my own home?!” The mermaid screeched furiously as she grabbed ahold of the figure trying to scramble back to their feet and pulled them back underwater. 

They toppled into the water and while they were still disorientated, the mermaid wrapped her fingers around the figure’s skinny little neck and squeezed. Their hair floated prettily around them like gold thread as the fae thrashed instinctively before their neck…snapped.

Arielle blinked. 

Surely fae were sturdier than that? She’d pulled several down into her pond in the past for one reason or another and they always managed to fight her off easily enough. So why did this fae have such a breakable little neck?

Wait…no. Not fae. 

Human. 

The mermaid stared down at the intruder, puzzled, noticing rounded ears and tasting the whiff of mortality that hung around the creature like a cloud. 

What was a human doing in her pond?

They were Arielle’s last thoughts before a different set of hands grabbed ahold of her and tore her out of the water. 

She thrashed. 

Until she came face to face with the High Lord of Spring himself. 

And he was furious. 

“Do you realize what you’ve done?!!”

“Do you realize how rude it is to invade someone’s home?!” The mermaid couldn’t help but snap. High Lord or no, it was terribly rude to gallivant through her pond without so much as a by-the-by. 

“She was our only chance of breaking the curse! You’ve ruined us!”

For a moment it felt like the High Lord was speaking in riddles. Curse? What curse? But then…

“…Oh. Well that’s not good.”

The High Lord didn’t answer, only exploded in a flurry of fur and claws and Arielle’s pond soon ran red with her own blood. 

In the shadows of the trees, Rhysand banged his head against a tree and moaned in agony and frustration. 

“How the fuck did I not know there was mermaid in there?!”

[sinning-23]

Ripples (Usopp x Siren!Reader)

Warnings: mild violence? reader is hungies

Enjoy

The sound of his name in honeyed tones draws his attention. Usopp whips around almost instantaneously, searching for the source of the sound. It sends shivers down his spine skin prickling with goosebumps as he swallows hard. It was intriguing, to say the least.

It's hard to shake, but he blinked curiosity away and continued to walk with the rest of his crew. Nami stopped when he did to try and figure out why he seemed so jumpy all of a sudden before continuing onward.

They trudge through the greenery still, and the same tone, more...desperate sounding calls him again. Yes, so sweet, so inviting, but also needy...like the voice had be craving for something...for him. His chest heaves with labored breathes as he becomes more and more determined to find the source. Who was calling out...And so feverishly too.

What needed him so bad?

"Usopp!" Nami calls, grabbing his wrist as he shakes out of the stuppor once more.

“What’s your deal?” She questions with a whisper, pulling him close so as to not draw attention or concern to them.

“You don’t hear it??? ” He swallows hard, pupils blown wide as his voice coming from something so angelic made him... warmer, somehow.

"What? No, just calm down. The sooner we get out of here the better." Nami huffs, releasing him, only for Usopp to turn away and follow the voice, and call off his crewmates drowned out.

He twists around trees, bushes, vines, and stumps, the air getting more moist as he ventures on, clawing any shrubbery out his way. He sinks into mud, and gravel, calfs becoming suken into the soil as he reaches a pond of sorts, rocks covered in moss, bluebells,and painted ferns.

Its too quiet, even the sound of what should be frogs groacking and bugs chittering away is nonexistent. Usopp's stomach twists at the severity of his situation, now waist deep in what feels like quicksand. Twisting, turning and struggling does n good ashe only digs himself further down, the ripples in the once still water before him becoming more and more prominent...and a hell of a lot closer.

He cries out for help, a plead that is only met with silence and the shoshing of mud. He calls again again, the last time being shuhsed by the sound of his name, laced with sugar. He gulps, fear thic in his throat. in front of him is just barely half a face, apair of shining (e/c) hues starign right back at him.

It rises more, nose, lips, nec and collar being revealed. He's still cautions, not in much a position to run away. He let your webbed hands and sharp nails trace his face, twirling one of his locs between your pointer and thumb.

"Let me save you, Usopp" You hum, feeling the fear in him melt away. He leans into your touch, his body slowly becoming less and less tethered to the mud and more to you as he's dragged into cool water. Your hands wander, pulling his shirt, then his body closer to yours, your tail doing its best to avoid grazing him.

His pupils fill the brown of his eyes and you smile, teeth sharp and ivory colored. He tries to tread water, his feet no longer touching the mossy and rocky botton of the pond. Your nails work quickly at tearing the fabric of his shirt, letting it slide off and sink to the bottom. He doesn't speak, only resting his head against your shoulder as you ready your teeth to sink into the flesh of his shoulder.

He’s sweet, the metalic and bitter sweetness makes you hum in delight,l. You tear away a sizeable chunk, the pain sapping him out of his trance, but this far too late. His screams are cut short when you pull him below the waters surface. He fights to gasp for ait but you're quick o pull him back down, sinking yout teeth into him again.

His mouth and lungs filling with water once more when he screams and crimson mixes with the clear water, the signs making you grin. The sound is muffled by water. He doesn't stop though, his final attempt to escape serving useful when trio tugged him away from your unrelenting grasp.

A hiss slips past your lips as the three look at you with a look you loved far too much. Fear. You slip back into the water licking the blood form your lips and razored teeth.

Nami had managed to grab Usops hand mid drown as Luffy and Sanji helped pull her back AND drag him from your grip. They made haste to leave the area but upon further speculation....they had realized their swordsman...was gone.

And…

unfortunately, all Zoro needed to hear was the sound of 'Luffy's' voice, calling out to fim from the wet, mud and moss-covered path ahead.

[scarletsaphire]

33 writer's choice thonk frog

You get heroic amusement or maybe just Regular Pitch Pearl because apparently neither of you sent 33 Pitch Pearl and that's rude tbh.

Send me a ship and a number and I'll write a scene!

---

Fenton kept his eyes closed even after he had woken up. He knew it was the middle of the night since his alarm hadn't gone off, and he knew that whatever it was that woke him up could wait until morning. Probably.

The soft green light he could see through his eyelids proved him wrong.

"You know, the whole point of this was so that one of us could sleep in," he said before blinking the sleep out of his eyes and taking in the room.

Phantom floated at the foot of his bed, face twisted into a grimace. His arm hung limply from his side at an off angle that Fenton knew from experience hurt like hell. "I am sorry," Phantom said, softer than he ever spoke in public. "But I-"

"You needed me," Fenton finished. He kicked the blanket off and stood, making his way over to where Phantom was. Fenton hissed when he saw just how bad the injury was. It wasn't the worst one they'd ever had, but it definitely wasn't pretty. "Who did this one?" he asked.

"Skulker. The clever conniving creep got a lucky hit in."

"That is so uncool," Fenton said. "Anywhere else you need to run off to tonight?"

Phantom shook his head. "Skulker's mess is cleaned up. Amity Park should be safe. For now."

Fenton grabbed Phantom's elbow, tracing down gently to his hand and threading it through his fingers. "Then we're in no rush to get you back out there." He brought their entwined hands to his lips, kissing his knuckles gently.

"There is certainly a faster way to do this," Phantom protested, but the chill of their fingers becoming one took away from any real argument he might've made.

"Not as fun though," Fenton said. He continued to kiss up Phantom's arm, as carefully and delicately as he could. Every place he kissed quickly stopped being Phantom's arm, becoming their arm instead.

It was an odd feeling. Before the split, there hadn't ever been a distinction between the two. The joining now was different. Fenton could feel the faint pain from where the ectoplasmic construct that resembled a bone had broken, could feel the even fainter sensation of the jumpsuit against his skin beneath that, but it wasn't like he was the one feeling it.

Phantom was more complicated than most ghosts were. Most ghosts didn't bother with bones or veins or muscles or nerves. Some couldn't even be bothered with skin. After all, they didn't need those things to function, and the effort it took to maintain those things was more trouble than it was worth. Phantom did it naturally, a perfect copy of a human body, the body of the Danny that had entered the portal for the first time.

Fenton placed a kiss on Phantom's shoulder, lips coming back sticky with ectoplasm. The imitation was still more trouble than it was worth, most of the time. The bones still worked, and could still break, and could still hurt. It did give Phantom a unique advantage though.

Most ghosts, when they were hurt, needed time to stitch themselves back together. Phantom could do that too, in the same amount of time a ghost needed. But when he was given something to take from, a perfect copy of what his body should be? It could take barely any time at all.

Fenton kissed Phantom's neck, slowly making his way up towards his jaw, then across his cheek. He didn't think they'd be rushing this one.

When he finally reached Phantom's lips, the kiss was beyond awkward. They shared an arm, and part of their torso, but that didn't stop them from kissing until Fenton had nothing left to kiss. He opened his eyes to his once again dark bedroom, where he stood alone. He could feel Phantom's mind at the edges of his own, a mixture of annoyance and joy and contentment, the remnants of pain disappearing already.

Fenton stretched, reacquainting himself with his limbs, before sitting himself down at his desk and turning on his computer. It may have been the middle of the night, but he was already awake. No point in wasting their time together.

[scarleeto]

to give [arthur morgan x reader]

summary: after returning from Guarma amidst his battle with tuberculosis, you look after Arthur with a little bit of grooming when all he wants is to look after you.

masterlist

1.8k

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It was getting harder to deny that he was getting worse. Seeing him most days tended to soften the blow. It seemed unfair to even consider the metaphor of the boiling frog, he was the one in the metaphorical pot afterall, but the similarities were there. This life was slowly boiling him to death.

Only after he had come back from Guarma had you fully comprehended the gravity of the situation. The symptoms of tuberculosis and being shipwrecked had all blended together, but it hardly mattered, your mind was not on the cause of his state, rather the result. Arthur was going to die.

That simple fact was the only thing running through your head as you watched him; sat on his cot, keeled over himself, forcefully expelling a gut wrenching cough from his throat. It put up a fight, stuck in his lungs like a fly in honey, and it took a while for him to battle it out. You blinked away the tears brimming in your eyes. It was one thing to kill a man, in this life it was commonplace enough, but to watch a man who had lost the ability to fight back fade away was different.

Once his thunderous cough had diminished into wheezes, he regained his composure and was able to claw his way back to reality. “Sorry,” his voice had returned to him in rocky mumbles.

You would have pinned his demure tone to embarrassment if you had not known him better, if you had not known that it was down to nothing more than genuine guilt. He knew how much it hurt you to see him like this. Your whole life you had been prepared for his death, as he was for yours, as an occupational hazard, but this was not to merely die, but to creep out of existence as a ghost. It tore you up that he knew that was how you felt; a brave face could only go so far with a man you had known for the better half of your life.

“It’s okay,” you reassured him as your hand reached for the razor for a second time.

Much to your relief, he had finally let you tame his beard that had grown so much in his absence. It was not pride that had stopped him from allowing you sooner, it was his priorities, and he had decided, once again, that the gang took priority over himself. If it were not for the fact that he looked like a walking corpse, this unconscious decision of his told you his fate.

As you lathered the soap onto his beard, he said nothing, instead he leaned into your touch, letting out a shaky exhale with drooping eyes. You tried to be as gentle as possible, your touches perhaps much lighter than they needed to be as you carved the lather from his gaunt cheeks, reaping a small relief of folded soap and bead trimmings that you promptly wiped from the blade before going in for a second time. Each pass whispered the familiar scrape of a blade that, accompanying the broken scrapes of his exhales, took on a much more domestic light than either of you were accustomed to.

Just as your third swipe of the blade closed in on him once more, a course, yet overpoweringly gentle, hand grasped at your wrist as he once again sunk into a rhythm of misshapen coughs. This episode was easier than the previous, though just as hurtful; even the mere gasps he took in between his hacking spoke of a pain that went beyond his coughing, a pain that, quite selfishly, you seemed to feel in your own chest and up to the tightening of your throat as you turned you wet eyes away from his view.

“It’s okay,” he reassured you this time.

What he had intended to be a comfort made everything so much worse. Trust him to be holding you up while he crumbled to the ground. His unadulterated selflessness was something you both loved and hated about him; a gentleman through and through, yet a bonafide door mat for the world that was beginning to see the long overdue signs of wear.

Bringing his fingertips to your chin, he brought your face up until your eyes met his. You both stared at each other for a second before you reprimanded him through the biting sensation in your throat of held back tears: “Stop it, Arthur… Please.”

As his palm shifted to encapsulate your cheek, he brushed a lock of stray hair from your forehead, shaky hands and all, tucking it behind your ear, “I love you,” he whispered.

You buried your face into his palm, your response implicit, as you finally laid a single kiss on his wrist before dragging yourself away and the blade closer once again.

In all the gentleness you could sum up, you tried to finish as quickly as possible. Each wipe of the blade revealed a starkly polished edge that, upon bringing it back up to his face, was a just as stark juxtaposition with the man in front of you, battered and broken. As you stripped the lather from his face each individual hurt seemed to scream at you; he looked like a bruised apple at the bottom of the basket on market day with eye bags that not even a wagon could carry. You do not think he could manage to look bad even if he tried, not to you, though he looked undoubtedly worn in a way that you had never seen before.

As you finished up, wiping the remnants from his face with a towel that had seen better days, his eyes affixed to you. It was hard not to feel scrutinised under the rumbling discontent of his shimmering eyes, though you know he would have hated to have made you feel as such, to feel as though he were looking straight through you and into the pitying thoughts that shamed you, and would have done to him, to no end.

“Listen,” he started with much effort, “I want you to do something for me…”

Putting the towel down, you held your palms up to his hollowed cheeks. His hands found their place on yours so quickly it must have been unconscious; there was no grand romance to it, just simple comfort of two people who had been around each other far too much. “Anything,” you replied sincerely.

“When I’m gone–”

“Arthur…” you hated to talk about it. Hated it. And though he had indulged you as to avoid it so far, all things must run their course, his strong sense of duty would not let him forget that.

“Listen,” he started once again, “when I’m gone, I don’t want you around here anymore, there’s nothing here for you.”

He looked desperate, his pleading eyes and downturned mouth matched his downtrodden state in a way that, if he could see himself, he would rebuke himself to no end.

“My whole life’s here, Arthur,” you exhaled deeply, “I know you mean well but, it’s just… this is my life. I can’t just go strolling into civilisation like it’s not the very thing I’ve spent my whole life fighting.”

“I know, I know it,” he squeezed your hands, “believe me. But you ain’t a fool, you know this can’t last: us, the gang, we’re done for. Staying around’ll get you killed, you know it.”

You nodded, sniffling away all the while. “Then let’s go.”

Any brightness in his eyes that had followed your agreement fizzled, his whole body, the newly exposed muscles of a working man starved, deflated with a sigh. “You know it’s not that easy… I want to, I do, I really do, but I need to see this through to the end.”

“I don’t want you to see it through to the end,” you replied, all too aware of the bleak double entendre.

“I have to, I hardly have a choice.”

That was not true, of course, not in the literal sense, but you knew the twisted cocktail of duty, honour, and loyalty that compelled him to believe such a thing. Dutch had really done a number on him. You said nothing, there was nothing you could say.

He continued, “I want you to go. John and Abigail, they’re starting anew, go with them. Please.”

You had not realised you were crying until he wiped away hot streams of tears from your cheeks and gently pulled you into his chest.

“They’re going to build a life, a real life. There’s so much you can do and I won’t… I won’t drag you away from it, drag you down with me. I can’t.”

“It doesn’t feel that way… like you’re dragging me down,” you mumbled from your place in his arms.

“It is that way, it is,” he responded, and without the look in his eye, he seemed much more stern, perhaps the sternest you had ever heard him.

You leaned back, unwrapping your arms from him, slow and unwilling as molasses. Brushing a strand of hair from his face, as he had previously done to you, you smiled, “You’ll let me cut your hair next?”

He gave a weak smile, “Of course.”

You ran your hands through it, easing out the tangles you encountered with deft fingertips as you brushed it away from his face, revealing the damage that it concealed. It mentally winded you, like being thrown from a horse, it was something that you would not have time to get used to. But for now, it was his hair that called to your attention, that was one of the few things you could help with.

“You’ll go?” he asked after you had delayed him as much as you could with your fiddling with his hair.

“I’ll go,” you affirmed, letting your hands drop from his hair.

He leaned forward, in his weakened state, exerting himself far too much for an action that, only a few weeks ago, he would have thought nothing of. You met him more than half way, catching his meaning, and bowing down to kiss him where he sat. As simple as it was, you smiled, as giddy as a youngster, the novelty of love had not worn off, and you were scared that it never would.

Your voice came out hoarse, hardly familiar to even yourself, “I’ll miss you, Arthur.”

Bringing his hands up to your shoulders, he embraced you. Your chin rested on his shoulders and your hands wrapped delicately around his torso so as to not aggravate his cuts and scrapes. Though he did not say it, he would miss you too for the time he had left, which, looking at him now, was not long. All he said was, “Thank you,” and that was enough because he had already given all that he could give.

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thanks for reading <3

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Destinytober24: Day 17 - Fragmented

...it might have been a nightmare.

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there

It's dark and the air is thick with moisture. That's the first thing the Drifter notices.

There are frogs and draperies of moss-like vegetation. The water sparkles, glowing. Wait. Is it water?

No. That's not water. That's Radiolaria.

The Drifter looks around, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. There's angular stone protrusions all around. This is definitely Nessus. The malachite green glow of Soulfire appearing down a nearby tunnel causes him to rest his hand on Trust, but moments later he relaxes because it's just Eris.

"Hey, Moondust," he says as she steps out of the tunnel. She doesn't answer him. This is not unusual, but her complete lack of reaction is a bit odd, as though she didn't hear him. Eris Morn has excellent hearing. Usually she will sigh or make some other dismissive noise to acknowledge him if she is purposely focusing her attention elsewhere.

"Eris?" The Drifter asks. She turns to the side, examining the wall.

The Drifter walks over to place his hand gently on her elbow. "Hey, Three-Eyes, whatch'a doin'?"

She stills at his touch, tilting her head. "I miss you, Rat," she says, her voice suffused with sadness.

"Well, good thing I'm right here."

"Would that you were," she speaks dispassionately.

"No, seriously, I'm right here, lover." He reaches out a hand to brush his fingertips against her cheek, not minding the coolness of her paracausal tears sliding along his skin.

Her three eyes dim and she leans into his touch. "You feel so real." There is pain in her voice. Sorrow.

"I am real, lover, I'm literally standing in front of you touchin' your face."

"I had thought the pyramid on Luna bringing back my dead fireteam to torment me was the greatest psychological torment that could be inflicted upon me. But this… you here now… the physical ache of your absence, the memory of your touch, the longing to hold you again… this is worse."

The Drifter stares at her in confusion. A nessus frog splashes into a pool of radiolaria behind them.

Eris catches her breath. Before him in the dim lighting black diagonal lines appear on her face and body, like long parallel cracks.

"The end then," she whispers.

"What?" he asks.

His throat clenches in horror as the black lines along Eris' face begin to widen and slide against each other, splitting her apart, fragmenting her slowly in front of his eyes.

"Would that I were with you…" Her voice is becoming more and more distorted. "I did not wish to go through it alone."

He reaches out shaking hands to try to push the pieces of Eris Morn back together, like squaring a messily stacked deck of cards. The pieces of Eris slide against his fingers and move farther apart.

"No," he whispers. He grasps wildly but the pieces of her are slipping, breaking into even smaller slices.

"I loved you, Germaine." Her voice is barely recognizable. "Why did you leave me behind?"

"Eris!" He screams her name as though if he is loud enough it will solidify her identity and knit her back together again.

The pieces of Eris Morn collapse into a heap on the ground at his feet with a sound like broken dinner plates. Her Ahamkara bone hovers a moment in the air, whole, before it, too, falls down with a loud crunch, shattering bits of her with its landing.

The Drifter sinks to his knees and grabs the orb in both hands. "Bring her back," he says, his voice trembling. "I don't care what it costs, you bastard! Bring her back! I wi-"

The Drifter feels himself violently lifted up in the air and slammed into a wall. The impact makes a metallic, hollow sound. His vision goes white.

He blinks.

It's still very bright. A cool hand rests against his cheek. He closes his eyes and leans against familiar fingers.

"Germaine." Eris's voice. Her normal voice. Not distorted. "Can you hear me?"

He blinks again. Nessus is gone. There's no frogs. The bright lights are in the ceiling on the Derelict. He's staring up at them. He is lying on his back on the metal grating of a hallway floor.

A shadow interrupts the brightness of the lights above him. Three green eyes peer down at him, unbound. The scars around her eyes flex and shift. Eris' mouth below them is twisted in concern. Small short tendrils of hair dangle down like fingers.

The Drifter laughs. It is a painful laugh, tinged with hysteria. He begins to sob and tears well up in his eyes.

"You're ok," he rasps.

"Yes," she says.

"And you're alive."

"I am."

"And I am too."

"Yes."

She helps him to sit up. He rubs the back of his head. There is blood. He looks around. He is wearing a loose clothing for sleeping. Eris is kneeling beside him, wearing one of his shirts. It comes down to her knees. Both are barefoot.

Her glowing orb is in the corner across the hall. He looks at it in concern and back at her.

"Was I…"

"Attempting to make a wish, yes. I hope I have not overly harmed you. It was necessary for me to act quickly."

The Drifter glances around and his eyes rest on a bloody splotch on the wall. He pulls his fingertips from the back of his head and looks at the blood on them, then at her, and nods.

"Thanks. Has it… Has it ever done that before?"

"It has tried. It has never succeeded to such an extent in the past, but it has only ever really had myself as a potential victim. I will be renewing the warding. Perhaps my protections have become weakened over time."

The Drifter nods and leans against Eris. Whole Eris. Not split into pieces. Not left to die alone. He pulls her close and nuzzles his face into the scars along the side of her neck. She smells of wet earth tinged with vinegar. He focuses on her breathing and his own, her warmth and the feeling of her skin against his own.

Tactile. Present. Real. Grateful. Alive.

Link to the entire month's worth of prompts on Ao3, posted daily.