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thedisasterfam · 2 years ago

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4E 206 - part I: Bruma

(Me? Posting my writings? Unheard of.)

The year is 4E 206. After all the trouble with dragons, the civil war, an ancient dragonborn and rampant vampires and so on, Listener Kajo has decided to focus on what is really important to her: The Dark Brotherhood. It is about time to begin proper rebuilding, spreading back into other provinces, and what could be the better place to start than Cyrodiil, the center most province of Tamriel. Surprisingly, Cicero wishes to tag along, eagerly offering his help once again, and who is Kajo to deny his wishes. He is the last remaining member of the Cyrodiilic Brotherhood, after all, and knows the secrets of the old Sanctuaries better than anyone else.

And of course, who else she would even want to bring into new adventures with her?

---

Bruma looked almost exactly as Cicero remembered it; Small, quiet, a bit rugged due to its location up in the mountains, but somehow quite homely. The walls surrounding the town were still somewhat damaged by the war that had ravaged around the province, but masons were busy setting the new stones, and life seemed to continue as normal. It was nostalgic, really, walking down the streets of Bruma again, just looking around and seeing if anything interesting from the past waited around the next corner. The houses did look exactly as Cicero remembered them, but it was funny to him notice how similar they looked to the houses back in Skyrim. Made sense, though, since many Nords favored this little town right by the border between Cyrodiil and Skyrim. Not too far from home for them.

“It really hasn’t changed much,” Kajo pointed out as they sat down on a stone fence by the market area, wanting to eavesdrop on people for a bit. “Or at least I don’t think so, but I only visited very briefly before crossing the border.”

“Not too much,” Cicero chuckled, nodding in agreement. It had been much longer for him since his last visit. Fifteen or so years, closer to twenty now! Yes indeed, he had been in his very early twenties when moving to Cheydinhal. “Bruma is very much the same as Cicero remembers it!”

“Have you seen any familiar faces?” Kajo asked curiously, wondering if people from Cicero’s childhood still lived here. The jester thought for a bit, furrowing his brows deeply as he stared at the people wandering around the market area.

“The current stablemaster looked quite familiar,” he scrathed his head then, humming in thought. “Cicero thinks he might be the son of the master I used to work for a short bit after getting kicked out.” The kind stablemaster let young Cicero stay in his barn for a while, even gave him food, only asked him to help with the horses in exchange. Not his favorite job, but it did lead to a fateful night when he killed a fellow teen who he had thought to be a horse thief and even got away with it, no one ever finding out what exactly happened. Well, except for the Dark Brotherhood, that is how they found Cicero and invited him into their family. Oh, how he fondly reminiscenced that night, how he found his passion!

“But he did not seem to recognize Cicero at all!” the jester suddenly exclaimed sorrowfully, sniffling in such a manner that Kajo instantly knew him to be faking his grief. “Cicero has gotten old, that is why! No one recognizes his wrinkly face!”

The bosmer snorted amusedly and slapped his thigh playfully, to which he giggled stupidly. “Maybe you have some wrinkles, but you are that not old, silly!” Kajo said, shaking her head.

“Maybe not really, but Cicero sure feels like it!” Cicero shrugged. He had been through so much it felt like at least two lifetimes, and he was only barely 40! The same age as Kajo, yes, but age worked differently for mer, as she would live at least hundred years longer than him. “It feels almost like a thousand years have passed since I’ve been here.”

All things considered, knowing Cicero’s story, Kajo didn’t continue arguing and only nodded. “Right,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder and felt Cicero lean towards her a little, accepting this little show of affection. “How are you feeling, though?” the bosmer decided to change the subject a little, worrying that being here might be bringing back unpleasant memories. He didn’t seem uncomfortable at the moment, but it was sometimes difficult to tell with him and Kajo wanted to be sure.

After thinking about his answer for a bit, Cicero nodded. “I’m doing fine,” he admitted. “Bruma is not too bad. Cicero has memories here that he isn’t too fond of, but… not too bad. Quite funny to be back, even if just for a bit!”

“That’s good,” Kajo smiled widely, feeling relieved for now, although the slight bit of worry would probably never leave. “But do tell me if something is feels too much.”

“Cicero will!”

“There isn’t much left here,” Kajo sighed disappointedly as they cautiously rummaged through the old Sanctuary. A lof of it had been completely burned to ashes nearly twenty years ago, as Cicero had already told her, but Kajo hoped to find something, anything. But the damage of the fire that had once ravaged here was bad, and clearing the place would take forever and perhaps too much coin to do it discreetingly without rousing any suspisions in the town. Having been sealed away from the outside world for so long, the blackened walls still smelled of fire and ash, already causing Kajo’s head to hurt. Bruma would be a wonderful location, but this was a little too much to deal with.

“Cicero told the Listener,” the jester said as he kicked an old piece of charred wood out of his way, melancholically wandering around the old hall. There was a slight sting to his heart as he looked around and remembered that day. He had been out on a contract when raiders or soldiers – whoever, it didn’t really matter – managed to find their way into the Sanctuary and burned everything down, killing everyone within. He should call himself lucky, but it didn’t feel right. Such a tragedy and it felt sad to be walking these halls again, not being greeted by his dear dark siblings, many whose faces he couldn’t remember clearly anymore, faded over the years. “Nearly everything burned. Cicero did manage to save some old records and brought them with him to Cheydinhal. But other than those, I found nothing.”

Only the scorched corpses once the fire had calmed down enough, which he had carefully gathered to the tomb… gave them the best burial he could. Thinking about it hurt. Really, really hurt.

Kajo noted the jester’s sudden silence, and gave him a quick glance and saw him struggling to remain composed. He was on the verge of tears, she could see it, having hard time pushing aside the memory of that day. His family, a family that finally felt like one, gone in just a moment and he couldn’t do a thing about it. Life was unfair.

“Cicero.”

Kajo’s gentle voice snapped the jester out of his thoughts, and he saw her standing right by him now, tenderly touching his arm. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out; he didn’t really know what to say without breaking down. Instead, he reached for Kajo’s hand and held onto it tightly. She smiled softly and rubbed his hand with her thumb. “It’s alright. I think I’ve seen enough, we don’t have to say.”

There was nothing for them here, it was alright to move on, especially since it was causing the jester a great deal of sorrow. Something Kajo had feared.

Yes, this place was nothing but a reminder of the death of so many who had once been important to him, but regardless Cicero fought with himself, wanting to be helpful and keep digging, but at the same time knew that he shouldn’t be here, that it was too much. He nodded weakly then, tears finally forcing themselves out and he let them fall, and Kajo reached to wipe them away with her cape.

“How are you feeling?” Kajo asked, watching Cicero with worried eyes. They had settled in for the night at a local inn, and although Cicero busied himself with his usual evening routine of helping the Listener get out of her leather armor and writing in his journal, he felt off. He was so awfully quiet ever since they left the Bruma Sanctuary and for a good reason, really, and Kajo worried for him. She already felt terrible for dragging him along on this journey, even if he had suggested it. She did love his company more than anything, but making him face the past that still causes pain felt wrong. And Bruma was just the beginning, in Cheydinhal he could potentially face his biggest trauma.

Laying on the bed, Cicero sighed and rubbed his face, but turned his head to look at his lover then. He didn’t know how to put into words what he was feeling at the moment, as his thoughts were a mess, but he did give her a small, melancholic smile, which told Kajo more than a thousand words could. He was feeling upset, raw, hurting, but still tried to retain his usual cheerful self. Kajo tenderly smiled back at him and crawled onto the bed, snuggling against his side to remind him that he was not alone in this.

“I’m sorry,” Kajo said quietly after a bit, drawing circles on Cicero’s chest with her finger. “I’m sorry for everything you have been through and for putting you into this situation.”

Cicero looked at Kajo, a bit puzzled. “Listener needs not to apologize for anything!” He said then, shaking his head fervently. “Cicero knew what he signed up for!” He had known that this wouldn’t be an easy journey to make and had tried to mentally prepare himself for it, but… well, it was difficult to predict what it would be like to be faced directly with such sad memories. “Cicero is in his head a little now, but he is fine. Sad, I admit and I’m sure Listener can tell, but I will be fine. Cicero will be fine as long as Kajo is with him.”

Kajo sighed and lifted her head to properly look the imperial in the eyes. He looked quite miserable, yes, eyes red from crying and like he needed a very long nap, yet still he seemed determined to continue with her. She watched him for a bit, but leaned down to press a small kiss to the tip of his nose then, smiling when she pulled away and was met with his usual goofy smile.

“You can always tell me if something is too much, okay?” Kajo reminded him once more. “I want nothing but happiness for you and don’t want to put you through situations that hurt you. There have already been enough of those.”

“Cicero knows,” the jester nodded, looking a bit more joyful now, and pushed hair behind Kajo’s elongated ear. How she cared so much for him and his wellbeing made his heart thud with so much joy he could sing about it. But not now, he was too tired for that. Right now it was enough to just get to hold her close. “I want to be here and help the Listener, but I will. I will tell you if something is wrong.”

“Good!” Kajo chuckled and smiled widely, giving him another little kiss, on the lips this time. “Now, we should get some rest. We have a long trek ahead of us tomorrow.”

#drabbles

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anchanted-one · 2 years ago

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Legend of Lightning Chapter 42: Problems on Tatooine

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43208574/chapters/111451216

In Orbit, Tatooine

“General, we’ve reached Tatooine.”

“Good. I can’t tell you how worried I am right now. While you were busy on other worlds, Master Kiwiiks secured our weapons facility and all subsidiary facilities. She was in the process of reviewing footage, looking for any breaches, when she sent out an urgent communique saying they were under attack. That was minutes before I called you.”

“Tell me about the Tatooine project.”

“It was codenamed the Shock Drum,” Godera cut in. “The weapon discharges massive ultrasonic vibrations into the ground, damaging enemy fortifications at a microscopic level. Literally softening them up.”

“That could be a major environmental hazard too,” Vajra said, eyes narrowing.

“But that’s not all. The Shock Drum eventually disrupts the planetary core. At critical mass, the core explodes.”

“Which is why I banned further testing,” Var Suthra cut back in. “We only recently discovered its full capabilities. However, there’s a fully operational Shock Drum prototype in the facility. If Darth Angral captured it, the results will be catastrophic. There’s little help for you down there. A few soldiers, a few SIS bases. But they’re critically understaffed thanks to the planet’s insignificance. I’ll send you the coordinates to the facility. Good luck.”

“Wait,” Kira said. “I had one question. How long can an organic hold up when exposed to the vibrations for too long? I can Sense Master Kiwiiks. She’s in great pain. This is just a hunch, but I think she’s been left to die near the Shock Drum.”

“Which means it’s been activated?!” Var Suthra sounded alarmed. “You’ve got to get started immediately!”

“Ordinary people would be killed within an hour,” Doctor Godera answered the question. “I’m sorry.”

But Var Suthra wasn’t done. “But I’ve seen Jedi who could enter trances that allowed them to endure even radioactive environments. Not to give you false hope, but if you hurry, you just might save her.”

“Let’s get ready for landing then,” Vajra said. “Come on. Let’s get the speeders and kits ready.”

Anchorhead Spaceport

The problems started the moment the ramp opened up to the outside world. The heat caused by Tatooine’s famous binary suns instantly started to make itself known. Stepping out into the open was torture. The sun’s rays immediately started to irritate his skin. Even the air he breathed felt hot in his lungs, to the point that breathing became difficult. His vision began to swim. He instantly had to grit his teeth to keep from screaming or cursing. He began to sweat profusely at once.

“Phew!”

“That’s fucking hot!” Kira groaned. “And not the good kind!”

“Are you okay?” He shook his head, but he couldn’t shake the haze that was descending over his mind.

“Yeah. Damn, I think we’ll need to stop somewhere—aha! There’s a shop right here! Guess they know they’ll get business from unsuspecting off-worlders. Cmon, let’s buy some more protective clothing!”

“I’ll manage.” He had to suppress a yelp as flashes of light reflected off of windowpanes brought back unwanted memories.

“But—”

“It’s fine. Pick out whatever you need.”

She gave him an uncertain look. “Okay, whatever you say, boss.”

Vajra barely paid attention as Kira picked out several thick overcoats and scarves for herself. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, taking another swig of water. “The thing I need is water. At this rate, I’ll drain all of my canteens before we reach the outskirts.”

Kira looked at him for a moment before turning back to the shopkeeper. “Yeah, we’ll take two more. Can you make them both orange? Same color as his robes. And three more scarves. Thanks.” She tossed one set at him. “Put it on. It’ll help you conserve water better.”

“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “But we still need more water.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you about the drought,” the shopkeeper interrupted. “But there’s a fucking drought. Water cans are a hundred credits per bottle. For the moment. It’ll only get worse the longer you’re here.”

“Damn.”

“Hold on, I have a call incoming.”

“Jedi? Please tell me you haven’t left Anchorhead yet.”

“We’ve barely left the docking bay. Who is this?”

“My name’s Fauler. I’m a representative of the Republic. I need your help, son.”

“I’m sorry, sir. But I have an important mission.”

“Oh, I know how you’re helping Var Suthra clean up his mess—”

“Then—”

“Please, Jedi. I know, and I’m asking for help anyway. Does that tell you anything? There were others who passed through recently. Captain Stede, Captain Roban Queens. Heck, Devel Nirol from your own Order passed through forty minutes ago. Everyone’s busy… but this is important, and I’m getting desperate. Please, give me ten minutes to explain myself. I promise, you’ll agree that this is even more important than whatever project Var Suthra has locked away, or a missing Jedi Master.”

“More important than—I really wanna deck this guy,” Kira whispered. “But what do you think?”

“Ten minutes,” Vajra agreed. “But if you exaggerated or lied, I promise we’ll be angry.”

“Terrific. Come to the embassy. It’s a quick run from your location.”

The ‘embassy’ was more like an underground warehouse. They needed to take an elevator almost twenty meters beneath the surface to get to it.

Still, Kira was relieved to be out of those suns.

They were put on their guard when they saw the hole in the door. They entered cautiously, and came upon thirteen people in green and yellow uniform. Twelve of them held the last at gunpoint.

“…ly tracked you down, Kamus. You stole important documents. Czerka doesn’t take industrial sabotage lightly. We’ve come to… terminate your services.”

Two of his comrades laughed stupidly, but Kira saw one roll his eyes.

The threat was enough for the boss. He rushed in at once, Lightsaber igniting with a snap-hiss that echoed in this cramped facility. He placed himself between the shooters and their target, with a growled “Oh, I don’t think so!”

“JEDI!” someone screamed, and all twelve thugs grew much more wary.

“You know the policy,” the leader with the lame sense of humor said. “No survivo—I mean witnesses. Open fire!”

“Blasters?” The boss scoffed as a wall of blue plasma reflected his attackers’ blaster bolts right back at them. “Seriously, guys?”

“Oah…” the last one whimpered softly as he went down.

“I mean, it has to be common knowledge by now that we can do this trick, so why does everyone still think blasters are a good idea?” Kira asked the young man cowering behind the boss.

“I don’t know, ma’am!”

“Oh well. Not that we’re complaining. We’re sort of in a hurry.”

“We’re looking for one Mister Fauler.”

“Here’s Fauler!” the man himself came running into the room. “Someone called? Ugh! Come on, Kamus! You know how I feel about corpses in my workspace!”

The man called Kamus looked at him incredulously. “You—you were supposed to be here! I was supposed to be under your protection!”

“Sorry, Kamus. As an ‘official Republic representative, I have to at least look like I’m being diplomatic with the locals!”

The boss looked at his chrono. “You’ve got seven more minutes.”

“What? Oh, come on!”

“Time is life. We have a bomb about to go off nearby—”

“A bomb!?” Kamus squeaked.

“—but you said your job is way more important. Tell me why. Six-forty.”

“Okay, okay!” Fauler began to speak in a hurried tone, dropping his salesman persona at once. “Point one. I’m not a diplomat, I’m with the SIS. And my current headache… oh, sod it! Kamus, cliff notes, fast!”

“I’m an employee for Czerka corp, and I found a bunch of documents describing a billion-credit research facility for the study of a ‘type-seven device.’”

“That’s Czerka shorthand for planet-killers,” Fauler finished.

The boss and Kira looked at each other. “So what you’re saying is that Czerka has designed a superweapon?”

“No, they found one here,” Kamus replied. “On Tatooine. It’s beyond ancient, according to the documents.”

“They actually dug it up decades ago, but abandoned it for reasons we’re not clear on. Not entirely, at least. It sounds like the device went haywire, and Czerka bailed rather than clean it up.”

“I think we’re sold,” the boss said defeatedly. Kira knew how he felt. There was no way they could ignore this one now. “What do you need us to do?”

“Oh, thank you so much!” Fauler seized one of the boss’ hands and shook it hard. “You’re a lifesaver! Oh. Time. Mission. Right. So, we need you to search Czerka’s old compound. It’s close to the place where Var Suthra’s facility’s at. About a klick and a half away, as a matter of fact. If you each take one objective, you should be done in—oh, four hours, tops?”

“Four hours?”

“Both of them. You should be done with both of them in four hours. Here, take this comm. It’s a secure line back to me. And only to me.”

“Master,” Kira whispered as they made their way out. “Maybe we should split up.”

The boss hesitated, then shook his head. “I know why you’d say that, but we can’t.”

“But why not? Both objectives are critical. We need to find the Shock Drum before it destroys the planet, but we also need to thwart Czerka. And Master Kiwiiks might not have hours, even the planet does.”

The boss fumbled for a bit before getting his answer straight. “This world… it’s different from Nar Shaddaa or Coruscant. Different from Taris, even. The heat and terrain are so disorienting, and we haven’t even left town yet. I almost lost my head twice getting here from the spaceport. If anything goes wrong, the closest help will be kilometers away.”

“I guess that makes sense…”

He nodded, looking apprehensive. “I understand how you feel, though. This situation… why do we have to be the ones to deal with this? Is Havoc Squad’s mission so much more important than ours? Is Juun’s? Master Nirol’s? Why is it that we get stuck with so many ‘superweapons?’ It wasn’t cool the first time around!” He clammed up after that. Kira couldn’t help but agree.

The boss stumbled and cursed when he stepped out into the sun, reminding Kira to brace herself.

No one spoke on the ride out. The suns beat down on them like sledgehammers despite this model of speeder coming with a roof. As the boss predicted, they ran through two bottles before their first hour was out. Kira began to feel dizzy and nauseous despite that medicine she’d taken earlier. At least it kept her from throwing up. She really didn’t want to lose any more water than she had to right now.

“I think that’s it,” the boss said after three hours at top speed. “How strange… I Sense people down there, but can’t see anything except those large woolly beasts...”

<Beast nomenclature = bantha.> T7 informed them. <Their presence = indicates || Tuskens = also present. Tuskens = Sand People = natives: hostile, nomadic, territorial.>

Kira squinted. “I see… I think… yes, I can see movement down there! They’re well camouflaged!"

“I see a few blasters pointed at us. T7, set us down on high ground. We don’t want to lose our ride out here.”

<Affirmative.>

“Kira?”

“Yes, Master?”

“Does the language implant cover their language?”

“I… I don’t think so.”

“I feel bad attacking them. All those guns trained on us, and not one shot fired yet. Let’s try diplomatic first.”

The two Jedi approached the closest Tusken slowly, arms outstretched. Vajra felt his head swimming. The air was scorching his throat as he breathed, and the blur of mirage made the air shimmer a mere ten feet away. His head ached so badly, it felt like there was someone trying to break his way out with a hammer and chisel. He had to draw on every iota of his will to keep from stumbling or slipping.

As he walked, he kept an eye on the natives. They regarded him with open hostility, but did not fire. “Do you speak basic?” he asked. “I’d like to talk first.”

The Tuskens did not move for a second, then one stood up. He barked several phrases in an unknown language.

“Can you wait a second?” Vajra asked before reaching for his comm. Five guns refocused on him as he moved. “C2? I need a translator here. I’m speaking to the Tuskens. Do you know their language?”

“Why, of course, Master!” The droid cried out in delight. “I would be delighted to be of service to you!”

“Tell them that I don’t want to fight. Tell them that I request safe passage on their lands.” He coughed, the effort of speaking burning his throat.

C2 complied, replying in the same barks and trumpets that the Tusken had used. The Tusken considered the droid, then responded.

“He wants to know our reason for… ah, visiting.”

Vajra licked his chapped lips. The Tuskens seemed to multiply before his eyes. “Tell them that... that there’s two bombs on this planet which can destroy everything for miles.”

The Tusken’s reply was curt.

“He finds that answer unconvincing, Master.”

“What can we do to persuade him? What if we’re not lying?” He had to take another long draught of water as he waited for the translation.

“He allows that the invaders—offworlders—have brought many dangerous weapons onto these sands. What we say might be true. But he is not happy. He says that this proves that we’re not to be trusted. We’re always coming up with new ways to kill.”

“The Jedi protect. We do not build such weapons.”

There was a stir among the Tuskens for a moment.

“He asks us to wait. They are going to call their chief. He says to not move.”

“Can you tell him we’re not used to this heat? We need a place out of the suns.”

“They agree, but they will not share their black melons with you. I gather that’s where they get their water from.”

“Thank you. And thank you too, C2. Please stand by.”

Shade was difficult to find out here, since rays from two suns covered more ground, literally. In addition, the sands reflected a lot of those rays right back into the air. In the end, one of the Tuskens reluctantly invited them into their tents.

Just as reluctantly, Vajra offered him one of his bottles as thanks. The Tusken looked at him for a moment, then accepted.

“While I like the idea of repaying courtesy with courtesy, this leaves us with just four and a half more bottles each.” Vajra looked at Kira wordlessly, fighting for words. “Are you okay, Master? You look—”

“Better now that we’re out of the sun,” he rasped. “But I’m starting to hate this world. If Master Kiwiiks wasn’t trapped here, I might be willing to just leave this dustball.” He considered his own words for a moment. “After evacuating the people, of course. I’m sure there’s any number of worlds which are better than this one.”

“Yeah. Binary suns… what a riot!” Kira coughed hard into her fist.

The chief arrived several minutes later. He conversed with the Tusken on guard for several seconds, looked over the water bottle Vajra had given them, then entered to speak.

“He says that they will give us permission to walk their sands,” C2 translated. “But in exchange, they want this lab in two weeks, including the moisture vaporators.”

“Tell them they have a deal.”

The Tuskens gave Vajra and Kira each a gaffi stick.

“These staves are proof of our deal today. Do not betray it.”

“Thank you for your kindness. We will not forget it.”

The Sand people escorted Vajra inside the lab.

Ah, finally! Shade at last!

The Tuskens had already occupied most of the facility, except for several rooms on the top floor which they were busily trying to crack open.

The chieftain spoke, and the warriors stood aside for the Jedi. Vajra approached the door and pressed the intercom. “Hello? Is anyone inside?”

“Y…y…y…y…”

“My name is Vajra, and I have my Padawan Kira with me. We’re Jedi.”

“Oh… ohh thank goodness! Give us a minute, we’ll get the door open for you!”

“You should know, the Tuskens are still here. We basically came to an arrangement.”

There was silence for a minute. Like the rest of Tatooine, it was a hot one. The bad pun made Vajra want to hit himself. Also… Why did it have to be about the heat!?

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I offered terms, they accepted. No one else dies right now.”

There was a sigh. “I’ll take what I can get. At least they haven’t killed any of us yet.”

The door opened to reveal several beings inside. One—probably the one who’d spoken up earlier—was an older human woman with dark skin. The rest were small creatures in hooded brown robes. The only thing he could see was their bright yellow eyes.

“Come on in, Jedi. My name is Hare’en. I’m a seismologist. And these adorable little rascals are my family.”

One of the short aliens spoke in a rapid language.

“I’ll… need translation,” Vajra sighed.

“His name is Brikk. This is his crew. What’s left of them after the Tuskens got the rest.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t be. Jawas tend to be light-fingered. Brikk’s crew tried to steal from the Tuskens, so the attack wasn’t completely unwarranted.”

Brikk said something else.

“He’s glad the Tuskens aren’t fighting this time, however. Fewer dead people.”

“You’re in charge of the Shock Drum Project?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Where are the other scientists?”

“They were shipped off-world before the Sith came.”

“Why? I thought they’d be needed to make sure all the documents had been gathered up!”

“Well, that’s what the droids are for.” She pointed at the dozen or so droids still at work in the room.

“Fair enough, I suppose. Now, we need to know what happened here.”

“Well… I don’t know where to start,” Hare’en looked around at the Jawas. “I guess I can start right before things started going south. About three months ago, we finished building the Shock Drum Prototype and used it to level a large block of reinforced ferrocrete. It was then we realized that the Shock Drum’s true potential. Var Suthra, General back then, ordered us to stop developing the weapon and instead look for ways to combat its effects. Shortly after, the Planet Prison incident began.

“Master Kiwiiks showed up, openly annoyed about the weapons projects. But she kept things civil, and helped us wind up our work properly, as opposed to just demanding it all be over with a snap of her fingers. Things were going smoothly until we got invaded by a small army of Imperials. We had defenses, but the Sith in charge tore through them like a wave through a sand castle—”

“Please don’t say sand!”

“Sorry. Anyway. He overwhelmed our defenses and entered the facility. Master Kiwiiks tried to fight him, but he defeated her after a short fight. Took her alive. He left with the Shock Drum. That was… when was that again?” The Jawa chittered. “About five hours ago. No more than six.”

“So it hasn’t been too long yet!” Kira burst out. “We can still save her!”

“And the Sith spared you?” Vajra asked.

“Well… yes. I found it odd, now that you think about it. I lost five brothers, three sisters and an adopted son to marauding Sith. Strange that this one let us go… he seemed almost… disgusted by the idea. He all but ignored us.”

The Jawa interjected, but Hare’en shook her head. “No, he may have destroyed your droids, but he didn’t harm us. He said we were no threat, and didn’t deserve to die!”

“Never known a Sith that could show mercy,” Kira snorted.

“He wasn’t kind, but I certainly wouldn’t call him cruel.”

“So he’s taken my old master, and left with the Shock Drum. Which is about to destroy the planet. Where does that leave us?”

“Brikk, his crew and I were attempting to restore power so we could triangulate the Drum’s location, but the Sand People attacked. Now, if we could just connect the generators…”

“I’ll help. I’m not bad with machines.”

“Since you don’t seem to understand Jawaese, I’d rather you didn’t. You could just get in each other’s way.”

“Alright.”

“Master, we can look into that old Jerka base while we’re waiting.”

“Good call. Let’s go.”

“Wait, what’s this about the Czerka base?”

“Turns out, there’s more than one superweapon on this planet,” Vajra replied, feeling exhausted. He massaged his throbbing temples. “And no one else is ever available.” He had to clam his jaw to keep from ranting again. “Hey, I don’t suppose you have any more water cannisters in here? We’re going through our supply at a dangerous pace.”

“New to this kind of clime? Shame. It takes years and years to get used to it. We have a few tanks of water in the basement, and the vaporators around the facility, but please don’t take too much. We have a lot of mouths to feed. Especially since—” she looked at the Tuskens. “It looks like there will be more people than expected.”

“Come on then. Sooner we get this done, the better.”

The Czerka facility was overrun by Gamorreans, who weren’t happy to see two Jedi waltz right in. They put up quite a fight.

The boss allowed Kira to take this one solo, which pleased her. It allowed her to better test where she was at, skills-wise. Her Master was a good Lightsaber instructor and a better friend, but way too good a fighter. Whenever he charged ahead, it was an exercise in futility trying to get in on the action.

And then there were times like Nar Shaddaa, where the boss was just extra kind to Kira.

So today was special. It was the first time since Ord Mantell where he let her fight alone.

The Gamorreans weren’t Jedi or Sith, but they were two meters of raw power. Faster than they looked too. And in such numbers, a threat to any overconfident Jedi.

Kira flipped elegantly over the trio of charging brutes with their vibroaxes, then riposted the blow from a vibrosword. The Saberstaff spun in her hand, throwing the swordsman’s center of gravity into empty space. He collided with two of the Gams behind her. The third joined two others in a combined attack as a fourth held back, waiting for the trio to give him an opening. Which was when she finally noticed the pattern.

Nice job, genius. Only took you five quartets to see through their plan. Guess learning the Lightsaber isn’t the same as learning to be a warrior. Still, I did take down five quartets!

She parried two more axes, then sidestepped the third, which broke on contact with the floor. The power behind the blow surprised her… either that, or the axehead had grown weak from use.

“That’s it,” she nodded approvingly. “Use the force!” She stabbed the shocked Gamorrean through the chest. His comrades attacked with loud squeals, but by now she was used to their attack pattern. It was a simple matter of dodging one, parrying the other, then using momentum to turn her blade into his face. She then speared the stumbling Gamorrean with a downward thrust.

The three stunned Gams stood up and tried again. This time she killed the point man, kicked his dying body into the next one in line, sheared off the third one’s neck, and finally slew the one on the floor.

All seven who still stood squealed and trembled… but they did not break ranks. Family and bonds were everything to these porcine humanoids. Loyalty. It was something Kira could truly respect them for.

They eventually got their morale back and charged. After facing wave after wave of four-Gamorrean teams, the team of seven looked a little daunting. But she managed it.

Dodge, swing. Flip, cut. Parry, stab. Spin kick, cut. Triple cut. Duck, upward jab. She ended with a spinning slash.

“What do you think?” she gasped happily.

“Nice work!” the boss clapped. “Your Lightsaber skills are superb now. But you need to work on things like tactical and situational awareness.”

“Yeah, it took me way too long to realize they were coming at me in groups of four.”

“In addition, you worked up quite a sweat. Bad on this world.”

“Oh, shit,” Kira cursed, finally noticing that her clothes were soaked through.

He handed her a water bottle. “Drink it all,” he instructed her. “And don’t worry about our rations. We can take some from their stores afterwards. He nodded at the downed Gamorreans. “Now stay back. Catch your breath. Cool down. The last thing we need is for you to go all out like that again.”

Kira sat down on a nearby crate, trying to ignore the smell of burnt flesh. She started to feel a little guilty about what she’d just done. She had killed almost forty of these poor guys. They may have been low-level bandits, but did they really deserve to die like this?

She finally understood why her poor friend had almost crumpled after each fight with the Khrayii. He had killed just over two and a half thousand of those savages. Each encounter had left him looking like he had been forced to bite his own heart out. And then there were the Power Guards…

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit! She hadn’t realized it until now! Well, she had, but never truly appreciated it! She felt a dizziness totally unrelated to the heat of Tatooine.

I owe him a few big favors, she realized. More than I thought I did.

As she watched, T7 unlocked the blast door into the next room. There were a pair of humans inside, along with four more Gamorreans. There was also a man on holo.

“So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?” the man on the holo asked.

The lead Gamorrean—who was dressed in heavy ceremonial armor, marking him as a warlord—grunted assent.

“Marvelous! I have absolutely no idea what you just said, my indelicate friend, but marvelous!"

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the boss poked his head in. “But I can’t let Czerka claim what’s in that base.”

“Silly Jedi,” the caller scoffed. “What’s inside already belongs to Czerka. You don’t have the authority to take it.”

“It was yours until you abandoned it. Tatooine laws, not mine. And why is Czerka after such a dangerous machine, anyway?”

“I see that rat Kamus hasn’t squeaked about everything just yet. Don’t worry, you won’t live long enough for your lack of insight to matter. Boys, kill him if you will.”

Kira was quite interested in how the boss would approach this fight.

Normally he played a game of attrition, teasing enemies by jumping from one to the next, overwhelming them with his skill and mobility. Today, he went with economy.

One hit, one kill. Minimum movement. He slid out of one attack vector after another, his Lightsaber moving in one, continuous arc to slay each enemy as they reached him. The Czerka mercenaries, predictably, fell to their own reflected blaster fire, though the leader—the one who had held the holocomm—attacked in melee. He fell with the Gams.

Master Vajra crushed the comm beneath his heel as, unprompted, T7 casually rolled up to the computer beyond and began downloading the files.

��Real smooth, Master,” Kira grinned as she walked up to him. She frowned. “Hey, you alright? Not torn up about killing Czerka goons, are you?”

“No…” he said in a small voice. “The exertion was a bit much.”

“I’m sorry?” Kira didn’t quite hear that, but he didn’t repeat his words.

“Hey, can you look for the clan’s water reserves while we wait? I’ll stay and guard T7.”

“Of course, Master. Mind if I just bring it here?”

“Go on.”

Luckily, Gamorreans were not the smartest people. Nor did they have the best short-term memories. Hiding things was difficult for them, as it wasn’t uncommon for them to forget where they left things. The more important something was, the more obvious its location.

The water cans were left lying all over the base. In fact, Kira had rested her ass on one of them. She hummed a merry tune as she filled the empty bottles—the Force was so convenient, allowing her to lift up a twenty-kilo tank like it was nothing—then returned to the adjoining room.

“Our stores are full!” she said brightly, handing over a bottle. “We can even load up a few onto our speeders just in case.”

“Good,” he said after draining it in one go. “We sent the data, we’re just waiting on—ah, perfect.”

His holo started chiming right on cue.

“Hey there, Jedi. We finished looking through some of the data. We also got a call from one ‘Gayem Leksende.’ He was gloating about how he killed you, and promised he’d come for us next.”

“I have no idea who that is.”

“He’s a rich-boy cyborg with a love for dirty work. His dad’s an executive, so he’s enjoyed a life of virtual immunity from consequences.”

“Oh. Sounds like Tarnis, actually.”

“Anyway, he said he was filing an official complaint with the Republic that we’re disputing Czerka’s property rights.”

“Including their ‘rights’ to me,” Kamus interjected sourly. “I read my contract thoroughly! There’s no indenture clause in there! They must have inserted it afterwards if they’re claiming it's there!"

“Don’t worry, my friend! Since you’ve got your original contract with you, we can easily dispute their claims. Still, their representatives in the Senate can excuse any ‘incidents.’”

“Give me their names. I’ll deal with them.”

“Whoa there, boss! That sounded a little dark!”

“Sorry. So what have you found out?”

“One of the files was a personnel listing!” Kamus said excitedly. “It named everyone who worked for the facility!”

“Most of the employees are long gone, but there’s still one out there. He can help us find the facility. His name’s Grommik Kurthson. He was a drifter for a while, until he bought a moisture farm. And the sweet part? It’s close to where you are. Right next door in fact. Just a twenty-minute drive.”

“Great. Let’s get started then.”

Kira noticed her Master freeze and clench his teeth, but neither of them mentioned it. It was just the heat, that’s all.

#star wars #star wars the old republic #the old republic #swtor #fanfic #fanfiction #star wars fanfiction #swtor fanfiction

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ledenews · 5 months ago

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#Benwood #Cameron #GlenDale #McMechen #Moundsville #TheEcho #TheMoundsvilleEcho #UpperOhioValley #WestVirginia

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leviiattacks · 4 years ago

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May I request a Levi x Reader angst fic? Just barely any fluff, mostly angst going on lol. The reader is a traitor, formaly working for Marley, but betraying them in secret and putting their loyalty on Paradis. The reader is also a shifter and married to Levi for a couple of years. That love and care however is gone once readers identity is found. He truly despises them, insults them, maybe a bit violent with them, and outright tells them that they mean nothing to him anymore and hate them to bits. Readers punishment is to hand over her titan to Erwin, and they agree instantly, broken over everything, believing its all their fault. Once Erwin inherits Readers titan, he breaks down and screams, crying, because Reader was innocent the whole time. They never betrayed Paradis. Never killed anyone, never harmed anyone. They finaly know why they betrayed Marley, the abuse being to much for them, enough to just leave them behind for Paradis. Just... loving and caring as they all saw them. But now the damage is done. They wont come back, they're dead, believing that they died, hated and despised, with no one to mourn their death. Everyone regrets everything.

author note :: i was thinking of leaving this in my drafts but i already wrote it and may as well post it. it didn’t end up going the way i hoped but yeah i hope it’s ok anon. anyways ANGST. ANGST, ANGST. as always i love feed back :-) ⟹ all of the headings with the years are just meant to mean it’s a different moment from that year so those moments don’t happen right after each other i hope that makes sense!! word count :: 7.2k warnings :: canon typical violence, death

845, i.

Everything is falling in place when it shouldn't.

Sun never makes itself known in Liberio yet here it is shining down onto the bustling streets. You half expect for it to crash down and burn into the hundreds of civilians going about their daily business yet nothing of the sort happens. It's typical sunlight and you curse yourself silently for your sinister thoughts.

Secretly the voice at the back of your mind still whispers frantically but you don't wish to hear what it has to say. Instead you choose to drown it out with the sound of Zeke's voice. Finally deciding to pay attention to what it is he's been droning on about for the past ten minutes.

"Soon, soon, soon." He sighs dreamily looking a little delirious.

"Soon?"

Your question catches him off guard, he lightly shoves you with his elbow scoffing in annoyance.

"Did you sit here to not even listen to me?" He turns to take a sip of whisky and the hearty gulp he chugs shows his mild irritation. You assume he's been rambling on about Marley's plan to infiltrate Paradis. You have to admit that the idea of destroying those demons from the inside is amazingly well thought out. However it's all he's been able to discuss for the entire week now and frankly you're getting a little exhausted of it.

"I zoned out..." Quietly placing your glass back down onto the wooden counter you sigh closing your eyes. It's too early to be drinking and you don't trust Zeke enough to slip into ignorance and leave yourself vulnerable. Men are to not be trusted, especially Eldian men. The thought of Eldians triggers your flight of fight response, you want to shrivel up into a cocoon and never come out until the world is rid of the monsters. The lowest of the low, the dirt in between the crevices of Marleyan soldier's boots. That is what Eldian's are.

It's ironic coming from you, your entire family labelled as undesirable Eldians yourself but you, you know you're different. An honorary Marleyan is what you will become. What you are. The treacherous imps who are but an ocean away are the true evil.

Eyes flicking to Zeke he's lighting a cigar. Old habits die hard and he's yet to quit this self destructive custom of his. You couldn't care less if he chooses to cut his lifespan short by ten years, it's his own choice to make. A disgusting cowardly choice but it's a choice fit for an untamed man like him.

The Island Devils are said to be the bad apples but you can't help but stare at your fellow citizens from time to time and wonder what it is they could be hiding. If a demon slipped through the cracks you wouldn't be surprised. Sly in nature, persuasive in tone, that is how devils go about their daily lives alone The hymns they drilled into you all the way through elementary school echo and rebound in your mind.

Locking your bitter thoughts away you have to push yourself to not punt Zeke in the mouth when he teasingly blows a puff of hot smoke into your face.

Fingertips grazing with his he freezes at the sudden contact giving you the perfect opportunity to slip his cigar away and take it in between your lips. You allow for it to linger there but you aren't foolish enough to inhale its contents.

"Zeke, my dear friend. We shall soon be met with the fruits of our own labour but I assure you that discussing Marley's plan constantly will be of no benefit for you nor I."

The day you and Zeke had met had been at warrior training camp. Zeke was a miserable, unmotivated oaf. Always tripping and falling behind the rest of the warrior cadets. You felt rather bad for him, if you were born as unskilled as him you don't know what you would have made of yourself. Zeke, the only child of his parents ironically only ever ended up rising through the ranks after handing them over to the Marleyan government. His father and mother had been conspiring an escape plan but were executed immediately alongside their fellow team members once Zeke had outted them. Unexpectedly he was spared, the fact he turned on his own parents showed where his loyalties were. To his surprise, he was even allowed to continue his training with the other warriors - only this time everyone kept an increased distance away from him. The warriors weren't informed of what he had actually done but everyone had a gut feeling. Everyone apart from you stuck with that feeling. You thought strategically, If he were to become an enemy in the future you knew being close would come at your advantage.

The day you and Zeke had met your mother died, his mother passed away the same day. At least that's what he had told you.

The two of you bonded over the little things, told each other stories about your life at home. Reminisced about what it was you missed.

Then it all came crashing down the day Zeke confessed. The day he told you he killed his mother and father by handing them over to Marley. Your knees buckled underneath you, crashing the floor he tried to grab at you but you thrashed around in retaliation kicking and screaming not understanding why he did what he did. Yes, they were traitors but they were his parents and if the monster had the nerve to turn on the people who gave birth to him who's to say he wouldn't do the same to you or to Marley.

Zeke doesn't know it but ever since then you take the opportunity to sneak the occasional glance at him. Every single time you narrow your eyes in malice. If there's a man in Liberio who you don't trust in the slightest it's him, he must think the feud between the two of you from childhood has been put at rest but it hasn't.

Zeke takes another swig of his alcohol. On this occasion he downs it entirely slamming the glass down with vigour.

"ONE MORE GLASS BARTENDER!"

846, i.

Another day of extensive training is about to end, your back is layered in uncomfortable layers of sweat and the same can be said for your forehead. Kneeling down in the under layer of the forest you're hidden waiting to strike. Going up against the elites is nerve-wracking but you're sure you can pull it off so long as you stay calm during this game of hunters against prey.

It's simple enough if you can conceal yourself and stay out of sight. The robust trees that surround you act as decent enough camouflage and your green cape paired with them lets you veil yourself, keeping you further into the foreground, blending into the environment.

No one will be able to catch you if they can't see you.

All of a sudden your previous thoughts are thrown away when you sense something in the atmosphere has changed, the hissing of the wind behind you isn't natural.

Turning to your side you don't bother to cover up the sound of leaves rustling and branches cracking, your priority is slipping away fast enough to hide again, a tug can be felt at your cloak and your reaction time barely covers for you, your gear fastens itself to a low enough tree branch and the descent is mind numbing. Your breakfast churns in your stomach but you ignore the uneasy feeling, leaping and diving wherever you find a small enough gap. You believe you can outrun your huntsman.

That is until you sneak a glance back and your muscles nearly tense up in pure astonishment, you've been kicked in the teeth just by the man's presence. Captain, Levi slinks behind you weaving through the gaps with increasing speed, he's gaining momentum and all the while his face stays relaxed, this isn't even his full effort.

Terrified you dart upwards and then left, a corner comes into view - Levi should assume you've turned into it and so you rashly choose to dart back down. Much to your hard luck you find that his senses are well adapted, the direction of the wind is enough for him to trace your whereabouts.

The pursuit resumes, and he stays disturbingly relentless.

Arm shooting to the right you think perhaps making it look like you're aiming to fly somewhere else again will completely catch him off guard, he can't expect for you to pull the same trick twice.

Setting your plan into motion your finger pulls at the trigger but you startle when the cable doesn't come out, it's jammed. Panic seeps into you and to make matters worse your gas is running out.

Without warning you're thrust into the body of a nearby tree, the bark scrapes against you and scratches begin to form anywhere you've made contact with the jagged surface, you want to admit defeat but the warrior inside of you denies Levi the pleasure of seeing you beg. In its place you deliver a harsh kick to his thigh, you're aware he's injured it and you're certain there are no rules to say you can't play dirty. Your boots hammer against leg hard enough for him to give out and let go of your body, but then you realize you lost this game from the very moment your grapple hooks broke, you have nowhere to hold onto.

Before you can even let out a shriek of horror Levi's shot back to you, he frantically accelerates and by a miracle humanity's strongest is able to grab a hold of you again. This time you don't dig your heels into his leg and you allow for him to clutch you by the torso.

Within a minute the two of you descend towards the forest floor and Levi throws you into the dirt furiously.

"You could have died. Being foolhardy will only lead to an early death." He barks as he directs his blade towards your neck.

"Am I dead yet?" Whispering back your gaze isn't trained on the blade but right up at him.

His nostrils flare up, his hair sticks to his forehead haphazardly and the knuckles that hold his pointed blades are white in tangled dissatisfaction.

Grabbing you by the hips he flings you over his shoulder choosing to not continue with the confrontation.

"I know what you're up to." His voice is still rugged from the pursuit and it takes you a split second to register what he's said.

Your eyes widen and your breath hitches in your throat, no way, there's no way in hell he knows. He's sharp but he's not a mind reader.

Your position means he can't read your face seeing as you're facing his back, instantly steeling your features you let out a breathy laugh.

"And what may that be?" Silently you pray he's worded himself ambiguously to catch a slip up.

"Being gutsy, you think that makes you a good soldier. It doesn't."

Relief floods you. He doesn't know.

"Soldiers need to be brave." Your retort makes him grumble.

"If you die with no meaning by being reckless what's the purpose of being a soldier?" His question has you stopping and thinking on what the correct answer is.

Unable to think of an answer you ask another question.

"Are you saying your previous comrades died without meaning?"

"No. Their deaths fueled me slay more titans."

"So if I died back there who wou-" He swiftly cuts you off showing no inclination of wanting to hear what it is you have to say.

"I'll cut your tongue off if it's stupid." He clearly isn't serious about the threat but he does mean it when he warns you to not overstep.

Despite the consequences you say what's on your mind. "I just wanted to ask who would give my life meaning if I ever died. I don't have siblings and my parents died long ago."

Silence follows and the crunch of his boots against the muddy leaves tells you he probably doesn't wish to answer your question.

"Sorry-"

"I would. I would give meaning to your life." He says it with such ease you almost want to admire the enemy but you know he's said it because he feels he has to.

"You barely know me but I hope one day you can stop thinking everyone has to rely on you." You say it with taunting understanding.

Another bout of silence follows. Only this time the two of you feel warmly comforted, he doesn't understand how you've seen through his facade but it's easy for you to spot another liar.

846, ii.

Brows drawn back you observe your surroundings attempting to mask your scrutiny. The place is running amok with uncontrollable Eldian folk. The stench of unadulterated sin makes itself known but you seem to be the only person able to smell it. Eren bumps against the table you're sat at and your face twitches a little but you say nothing. You're yet to get used to these people's lack of manners.

At least that's how you force yourself to think. To be truthful, you don't quite understand what it is these people have done wrong. Ever since you've arrived you've been nitpicking at every single minor inconvenience or possible issue. A girl stole a potato and broke it into uneven pieces to share and you attempted to twist the story in your head to make her look like an unfair, greedy voracious demon but... you found yourself finding very little to actually be angry at. These people are essentially normal in every way of the word, they aren't demons and you can't help but feel yourself slip away from everything you once knew as reality. You're finding it difficult to believe what years of Marleyan education taught you, the hymns that were once drilled into your brain permanently are but a vague memory.

You feel disgustingly under-dressed and out of place, you don't belong here not when you're meant to hate these people, not when you're meant to despise them. You should be fighting the urge to shove their heads onto pitchforks or to skin them alive and feed them to pigs. Everyone back in Marley told you to control your impulses but now you're here and you've settled down even having the opportunity to converse with these individuals, share their pain, share their loss, share their suffering, you wonder why you have no impulses to control. Have they brainwashed you? Or is it that you're the real demon in this situation?

Fingers mingling with each other on your lap you sit hopelessly alone. Interacting with the so called enemy is much harder than you expect. Worry consistently bubbles in the pit of your stomach and every night is spent tossing and turning evaluating then reevaluating who the bad guy really is. At first the task of daily interaction isn't a big deal, you find it easy enough to approach members of the team and fake interest in their lives until the original plan falls through. You do become invested in your team members lives and stories that it comes to the point where you don't have to force yourself to smile at their jokes or to sympathize with their tales of grief. You become one of them and you swear you're meant to feel like a traitor but eerily you feel like you belong.

Nevertheless you try your best to stick with what you know. You're nothing like Zeke, you're loyal, capable, faithful and trustworthy. Never will you turn your back on Marley.

Rising to excuse yourself from dinner you think you've just about made it and escaped finally able to hide away in the confines of your bedroom but your lips form into a straight uncomfortable line at the feeling of someone's hand latching at your wrist. You're halfway down the hallway just a few more steps away from your bedroom. You hope it's one of the rookies.

"Oi, come here."

Head shooting backwards your eyes land on Levi, his dark curtains fall in front of his eyes - you note that he hasn't trimmed them as he usually does. Despite his size his grip is firm and your wrist squirms around a little trying to manoeuvre out of his bruising grasp. He seems to notice he's underestimated his strength once again and loosens his hold on you. Narrowed eyes analyse your anxious form, they're grey and in this lighting almost glow appearing silver. For a brief second your mouth is left ajar by the delicate but rough manner of his face.

"Everything Okay?" He doesn't typically seem to care very much about anyone, the question activates your senses and you're on full alert but the eye contact you make with him seconds later slows down the gears in your mind, they only whir and hum in anticipation completely coming to a halt.

"Yes, yes everything is okay." You're playing around with the hem of your shirt and you silently question when you were ever this nervous around anyone. You're a Marleyan soldier for heaven's sake not an unrestrained, unsupervised child left to play in a park.

Despite your clear inability to cushion and shield yourself from your Levi's stabbing gaze you attempt to appear as nonchalant as possible.

"I'll be going I just feel a little —" At first you had thought to fake you were ill but at the feeling of a sudden strike of pain you hold onto your stomach, the ache burns into your abdomen and without permission it travels higher up towards your ribs. "A little unwell." You manage to wheeze out. Hand placed onto a nearby cement wall your thought process is hasty speeding up by the second. Have they figured you out and had you poisoned? No, you barely ate anything today.

You hunch over feeling the bile crawl up your throat, on reflex you clamp your eyes shut not wishing to anger a superior by acting insolent and disposing of your dinner in the hallway. Shaky palms reach hesitantly for your lips and you force yourself to keep it in. Levi would commit a murder if you heaved and gagged letting it all out in front of him.

You motion towards the door trying to emphasize that you can handle yourself in the privacy of your room. Tears bite at the sides of your eyes and your vision is so blurred you can only make out the faint outline of the man who was just in front of you.

"Relax. I'll clean it." Your hair is brushed away from your face securely held back and you can't hold it in any longer, the acrid storm surges through your throat, you retch at the harsh sting it leaves behind. Breathing heavy, perturbed and anxious you gasp in all the air you can get.

"I knew you looked ill." His hands hold your jaw gently, the pads of his fingers are calloused but his touch remains soft. A tissue dabs at your mouth wiping away the excess untouched sick.

Just like the sick which surged through you less than a minute ago you feel something else entirely tear into you. You can't put a finger on it but it's dangerous for you to not feel contempt.

847, i.

Your heart accepts what your mind has been ignoring for months on end when Levi looks you square in the eyes after a heart wrenching expedition. The vacant look on his face is enough for the guilt to consume you whole but he doesn't know that. He doesn't know of your sins.

The wagon of corpses reeks of death and desperation. It's rotten and the smell is sickening. Forcibly you stop yourself from feeling any more grief. The despair isn't yours to go through.

Your first ever personal loss outside of the walls and you've learnt Paradis is not home to demons. Cheeks burning in mortification you can't formulate any thoughts on your own accord, instead they continuously emerge in bursts and finally a single thought sticks out from the rest - Are you aiding in the destruction of innocent human life?

The both of you are sat on guard duty with the corpses, half of the team has been wiped out in one sweep. Your trembling hands don't seem to want to steady any time soon and you sit there with your guilty conscience strangling you slowly, your airflow is getting shallower. Shorter, quicker breaths leave you. The imaginary gash in your chest is bottomless, and your lungs push and pull in a power struggle.

Levi's coarse hands abruptly hold onto yours and the floodgates open again, he doesn't know what you've done to him, done to his soldiers, done to his people. If he knew who you really were, would things be different?

"This was out of your control."

Do you tell him?

The question sits in your mind for a while until you shake your head. He takes it the wrong way and think you're responding to him.

"This was not your fault." For the first time in months you've heard his voice crack under pressure.

"Pe- Petra she- I could have taken one for the team and died instead of her." All that remains of your dear friend is her blood soaked cloak. Her body was one of the few that had to be hauled away earlier to decrease the carriage's load.

The fabric still smells of Petra, smells of honey and chamomile and the simple soap offered at the base, but it still smells of her.

Firm hands grab your shoulders and Levi's fingers dig sorely into your flesh.

"Don't."

"But I- I didn't contribute as much as her and she has family who are alive." Hiccuping you try to bare with the fact that you'll wake up tomorrow and not see her preparing breakfast for everyone else. You know you could have propelled her out of the way just in time if you hadn't been so taken aback by the entire situation.

"You were her comrade. She made the choice to die for you."

You want to reach out, sob into his chest and yell that you regret it all, scream and tell him about the secret you've been hiding. A sorry excuse of a comrade you are to let her die on the battlefield not knowing your true identity. The tears roll down your cheeks and Levi feels his heart constrict and squeeze as he comprehends the lack of regard you have for your life. "It should have been me." Is repeated over and over again, your eyes are raw and bloodshot, the vicious wind sinks its teeth into you.

"Then die."

"If you're willing for her life to have no meaning. Die." The words he spits out are as cutting as the bitter wind. He feels cheated and you're finally able to come to your senses.

He's faired much worse but you doubt he's ever acted out the way you have in front of another person. In this never-ending void of darkness locking away the dull ache caused by deafening loss is the best choice for everyone.

Much like the night you had been sick he takes a grip of your jaw and directs your face towards his, this time he's not as gentle as before but you conclude that it's because he's drained, completely exhausted from the battle. The eyes are the windows to the soul but Levi's window panes are shattered, completely crushed by the weight of the constant burden he has to carry.

"I'm sorry." You croak out the apology. He grits his teeth because he doesn't want you to apologize but he doesn't voice out his opinion. As a substitute he presses his arms against you, the terribly raw panic is murdering you. Levi's gruff voice is a mixture of faux irritation but mutual understanding.

"Cry." He allows for your head to loll against his shoulder.

As the dark envelopes both you and him the scent of the dead only becomes more and more pungent, recalling fond memories of Petra and the others you know your heart settles on a decision before your mind does. You're a two timing back stabbing traitor for this. What you hated Zeke for you have become yourself.

Disloyal, unfaithful and fickle.

That day you place your loyalties with Paradis.

847, ii.

Levi's wiping down one of the kitchen tables, you're kneeled on the floor scrubbing vigorously. The others have already given up, panting they've left using the excuse of fetching water from a nearby well. Your back aches but you find cleaning reassuring and somewhat of a decent distraction.

"Why do you like to clean?" You're used to Levi asking you abrupt questions by now, after all the two of you have been acquainted for well over a year now. Through that year he's learnt about you and you about him. When in the midst of what looks to be humanity's final year's, twelve simple months is enough to form a bond worth a decade.

"I'm not good at a lot but I am good at cleaning."

"You know that's not true idiot." The tone of his voice indicates that your answer doesn't please him.

"But I do think I'm good at cleaning? Maybe not as good as you but I am half decent."

"Not that. You're good at much more than half the people I've ever met." He sneers, his footsteps edge towards you. "Purely being a good person is a talent these days."

You suppress a flinch because you aren't a good person at all. Neither are you that middle ground between good and bad. Rough around the edges and uneven, you're shards of glass ready to slash and hack away at him if Marley somehow lures you back.

The confession, if you could even call it that catches you by surprise and anger fills you. You almost want for him to not trust you and call out your bluff. It's a little unnatural how badly you want for him to realize the truth.

Your head turns up to stare at the man who's a few steps away from you. "Or am I just good at acting genuine?"

You don't even mean to snap at him and you don't even realize you have until you see his eyes widen and mouth part in imperceptible surprise. Biting your tongue your attention is diverted back to the wooden floor. Driving your washcloth into the crevices and dips of the floorboards you ignore Levi's leather shoes which now stand right in front of you.

"Are you questioning my judgement of character?"

Be born in Marley, That's what you had done, trained to destroy people you thought to be devilish entities, foolishly chose to grow attached to the so called enemy. Your mind lingers onto a specific thought and you're deathly afraid to be thinking it in the first place but there's no more avoiding it.

Falling deeply in love with Levi is your worst mistake to date.

"What I did. It was out of my control." you reply, voice hard.

"Not disclosing what it was?" He asks.

Your silence is his answer. Kneeling down to where you are he disarms you, the washcloth is taken out of your hands and he places it onto a table.

"You are a good person." His voice is brusque and he states it like it's a fact, something you should know. Hot tears threaten to spill over, he's stupidly naive for not rethinking that opinion of his. Lips thinned and eyes watering you don't know how to feel.

"Levi. I'm sure you'd like to think that but I am not."

"You love the members of the corps unconditionally I can see it in the way you look at them."

"Sometimes you look a little sad when you stare." The last sentence he adds in has your pulse racing. He's right, you often feel miserable thinking about how everyone would react knowing who you really are.

"I'm not interested in bad people." He sounds distant saying such warm words and it takes a moment for them to actually sink in. You don't quite believe you've heard him correctly. The dread sinks to the bottom of your stomach and the feelings you've buried at the back of your mind hit you like a tsunami. The thought of him feeling the same way for you, is agonizing.

"Stop being ridiculous." The uncertainty is killing the both of you.

"Loving you is not ridiculous, if you don't feel the same way you can say that and I'll step away. We'll be back to normal."

"No, no, no. You don't get it. You're just saying that." Your voice quivers and the intensity of this new revelation is too large for you to cope with.

"Why would, you," He begins, voice just above a whisper, "ever think that way?"

"Why would you even look twice at me?" You reply.

"Because I worry for you."

"You worry for everyone."

"I worry for you the most."

Instead of letting you respond to him this time he carries on speaking.

"We both know we feel the same."

You already knew you were in love with Levi, you didn’t need for him to tell you. You knew you were in love when you tried to memorize his facial features, you knew you were in love when his laughter was the cause of your laughter, you knew you were in love when you threw yourself in front of that abnormal for him.

That's when you begin to understand what all his signals meant. You now knew why he'd let you stare so intently, you now knew why he laughed particularly hard when it was you who had made a joke, you now knew why he scolded you and nearly broke down at the sight of your injured arm after that specific expedition.

You know it. He knows it. You both know what this will lead to.

But you still lunge onto his lap, you still press your wobbly lips against his. You still choose to surrender yourself to him and he still reacts by taking a hold of your shaky hands which lay on his chest. He envelopes them in his warm grasp. Slowly but gradually the ice thaws and dissolves. Heartbreak, anguish and suffering when one of you loses the other will be the end of your romance, you're sure of it. Hell, the both of you are in the middle of a war but your heart flames up thinking of all of the possibilities.

Perhaps it'll play out the one way you wish for it not to.

Could your ending be in betrayal?

848, i.

"Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded hus-"

"Cut the crap and kiss me." Levi's crude interruption isn't appreciated by Erwin but everyone knows Levi doesn't care all that much for formalities and hates being in the spotlight for too long.

Gripping him by the collar of his suit your lips are a centimetre away, he stops you tightening the hold he has on your waist. His lips gently press against your collarbone and his breath meanders towards the shell of your ear.

"Swear you won't die on me."

Gulping you look away apprehensively. You know you can't promise that.

“Oi, I’m expecting an answer.” His voice flickers slightly.

Forefinger holding your chin up you see your soon to be husband close to tears, he valiantly blinks them away. Levi has never been one to make his pain public and your heart twists in your chest as you realize just how much of a hold his feelings for you have over him.

"I can't promise that, you know it'll only hurt more." The strange bitter taste in your mouth won't let you comply with his request and by measuring his reaction you see his eyes cloud in an unidentifiable emotion, you're sure it's nothing positive.

"We may not have a happy ending Levi but we'll always have a happy middle."

Levi scoffs in derision, he has to think your attempt at being meaningful is ridiculous.

You lean into him and it's all so heart-wrenchingly familiar yet foreign. His body sags comprehending that not everything will go the way he wants it to. One of you is guaranteed to leave first.

Hands finding purchase in the cloth of his white dress shirt Levi doesn't cringe at you creasing the fabric as he usually does. He allows for you to call the shots this time, your lips brush faintly against his before you nosedive into him. No resistance is felt and he replies almost immediately. Everyone applauds as his fingertips press into the back of your skull and you find that this is all incredibly hideous. The innate disloyalty you feel, you throwing your entire life away for this man but you find yourself not caring. To hell with that miserable life crammed with sin.

Levi smiles against your mouth, you assume you're meant to magically smile back but you can't make yourself. It's uncomfortable relishing in the undeserved happiness knowing it won't last forever.

The world you live in isn't ideal nor is it forgiving.

Momentary joy is all an antagonist can hope for.

849, i.

Jean can’t take his eyes off the newly weds.

You’re cooing into your Levi’s ear gently, his cheeks flush scarlet at the feeling of your hot breath against his skin and he scolds you for having the gall to rile him up in public.

Jean sniggers finding some sort of odd delight from the interaction - he’s never seen the Captain this content and at ease.

849, ii.

You don't know why you've dragged yourself out of bed just to stare at your husband's face but you have, despite the toll life has had on him he seems sound for once. His breathing peaceful yours is anything but that. When it's dark the weight becomes heavier, your skin tingles and your throat burns aching for release.

Eyes blurring your hands shake reaching out for him but you can't find the courage to make contact. Nothing will ever warrant plaguing him even more with your existence.

The memories become increasingly bitter.

"If we make it out of this alive we'll have children and they'll look just like you."

"I want them to look like you." had been your reply.

Levi winced not seeming to like the idea.

"No, I want them to look like you. You're beautiful."

How wrong he was for thinking that.

You, beautiful? He'd stab himself ten times over if he knew just who exactly he had said those words to.

850, i.

Zeke had betrayed you after finding out who you were to Levi but you half expected that he would tell him the truth at some point regardless of that fact.

Tear stains travel through the mud and grime on your face, Levi's eyes are indifferent as he twists his wedding ring off his finger flinging it into the surrounding rubble.

Without your permission he yanks your arm forwards intending to take your matching ring away but you hold on digging your heels into the dirt beneath you.

"You disgusting bitch. Give me it."

You scream, high and awful, he continues jerking at your arm the muscle throbs crying out for him to stop but he doesn't and no one steps in to put a halt to any of it. Levi having had enough grabs at your neck ruthlessly. In any other circumstance he'd be labelled callous or cruel but everyone on the battle field shares a similar empathy for their Captain. Neither they or Levi had expected your disloyalty.

"I said give me the ring if you know what's good for you." His fingers slide around your neck, his seemingly low words cling onto the little respect he has left for you.

"No." Your defiance has his eyes hardening in and posture tensing. "I'm not handing it over."

Levi says nothing, he only holds onto your throat tighter, if he really keeps at it your windpipe will be crushed in no time. You know he's holding out on purpose, he's still giving you a chance. He expects for you to stand your ground, say you never deceived Paradis, say something, anything to make him let go of you.

"Marrying you... It just happened somehow. I know it was selfish of me." He squeezes harder. "I know it was. I'm sorry Levi." Gasping and breathless you clench and unclench your fists finding it too difficult to explain.

Your mouth opens, you want to tell him you haven't seduced him like he thinks you have, tell him you dropped that plan of yours long ago but then you falter at the last second. It's typically hard to tell when Erwin's infuriated but it's painfully obvious when you make eye contact with him over Levi's trembling shoulders. It's enough to tell you to give up. Enough to tell you that you're beyond redemption, you've ran and hid long enough.

"Hand over your titan." Levi says nothing to Erwin's proposition, the hold he has on your neck loosens but his silence is sickening. It means he agrees.

This is fate's idea of a cruel joke.

But you agree, on the basis of one condition.

"Fine but-"

Levi cuts in, all regard for you devoid from his system.

"You're in no place to be making demands." He snarls, his patience quickly running thin.

However Erwin urges you to continue speaking taking you aback.

"If it's not too much maybe we can accommodate your final wish." Erwin had always been thoughtful in nature and you thank him for even bothering to show you a sliver of benevolence.

Everyone's looking, all eyes are on you. Some are blinking away tears, others are disgusted unable to stare at you for more than a few seconds at a time. Levi falls into the latter.

Brazen with not an ounce of shame you mention the ring again. "Let me keep it." Your left hand covers your right and underneath the flesh is the last symbol left of your union with Levi.

Whispers and murmurs orbit you, none of them are kind and Levi loses it.

His reflexes are paralyzing, he's back at it clawing your neck mercilessly but you don't scream or shriek as you did previously. You take it, you let him unload his frustration.

"Levi. Let it go for the sake of humanity." Erwin says pointedly. Irritation pricks him, he wants this over and done with and your rebelliousness doesn't look as if it'll be tamed any time soon unless you're given what you want.

Levi's face is crimson, the fresh blood from the expedition still steaming. "Y/N, I'll saw your arm off if I have to." But, you know he's already given into Erwin's orders when he throws you to the ground letting you crash and wheeze for breath.

850, ii.

Levi's been appointed to guard you for your final night alive. The room feels wistful as you think back wondering if the life you lived was respectable.

"Why did you stare at me when I slept? Did you think of killing me?" Half commanding and half pleading his voice cracks. He coughs attempting to cover it up.

You jolt not expecting the interaction at all and you're not the slightest bit surprised that he had seen you all those nights staring so deeply. He'd always been a light sleeper. You turn your head up hoping he's looking at you.

He isn't.

"I wanted our children to look like you. I think you're beautiful."

It's now his turn to recoil, only he does so in repulsion remembering the familiarity of those words. They had left his own lips not too long ago.

"I'd never have children with the likes of you." He sounds tense then.

You understand. No one would want to have children with someone as hated and as despicable as you.

"I know." You whisper faintly.

850, iii.

When Erwin's eyes glaze over unable to focus on anything in particular Levi assumes it's him growing used to the titan powers. What he doesn't expect is for his Commander to bang his head against the floor unrelenting screaming your name.

Pairs of hands move to stop him but he thrusts them aside wailing. Levi stresses trying to figure out what it is you could have done in the wake of your death.

But Erwin Smith. Courageous, brave Erwin Smith, who never cracked at loss of life for the sake of humanity, who always eloquently spoke to everyone around him at all times, finds himself slumping down to his knees and weeping for you.

The warm blood from his self inflicted assault still trickles down his nose, a tremor shakes through his entire body when he thinks of breaking the news to Levi.

The edge in Erwin’s voice grows dangerous.

"We made the wrong choice."

Erwin can't word it any better than that.

But Levi understands right away, he wishes he didn’t, he wishes he was ignorant enough not to.

Hange sticks an arm out aiming for his shoulder but he stumbles away nearly falling back into the floor not wanting to be touched by anyone.

He finds that he is not human enough to cry. It’s that or he’s not human at all without your presence.

854, i.

Levi has grown old without you, lived to see months and new seasons without you by his side. Over time his eyelids have become heavier, the corners of his mouth naturally droop and he remains perpetually somber.

Sometimes you visit him in his dreams, each time you make a silly comment about how his grey eye bags make him look like he’s been punched in the face. “Levi Ackerman, I swear if you don’t sleep soon!” You cushion the blow by whispering sweet nothings, reassuring him that you still think he’s beautiful.

Occasionally you add in that you don’t blame him for the past, but those conversations only last for a few seconds at a time.

“I don’t blame you.” It always starts off with the exact same phrase.

“I should have listened to you.” Levi’s tone is stern and uncompromising .

“Lev, I was never going to tell you to spare my life. You tried to listen to me, I could tell you wanted me to deny it.”

Levi refuses to answer you, he still thinks he’s at fault.

Not a day goes by where he doesn’t think of that ring. He regrets throwing it away recklessly into the rubble.

Some day he’ll return to Shiganshina to find it. The idea sounds laughable but he has to find a reason to smile as he fights for his life.

That is what Levi thinks as two set’s of jaws snap shut onto his legs, a flurry of red surrounds him. His throat constricts at the feeling of his thighs being ripped away from the rest of him.

“I tried.” He whimpers to no one in particular, eyes blank and losing meaning.

“I know Levi, I know.” The same voice from his dreams soothes him.

“Do not despair. Find me again in another world.” The biting wind adds in.

Levi’s eyelids flutter shut unable to do much else.

He’s unsure if he has the courage to face you again in another lifetime.

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sardonic-sprite · 2 years ago

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Oh, My God, They Were Roommates

Very late entry for #jaystephweekend2022. Prompts filled: college, they were roommates, dancing, after hours

Much love and credit to @Lettuce-prays for cowriting/editing

"Nnnnnnnyyyyyyygggggghhhhhhh!"

Jason looked up from his novel and glanced over to his roommate Stephanie, who had flopped back on the couch, sprawling like a fainting Victorian maiden. Her computer was balanced precariously on her lap, so Jason picked it up and set it on the coffee table.

"Writer's block?" he asked, glancing at the Word doc that only had about a hundred words on it.

Steph whined inarticulately. "Writer's execution block. I can't write a thing in this goddamn economy."

"Mood," Jason nodded.

"Six to eight pages!" Steph wailed, "How am I supposed to write six to eight pages!?"

"Keysmash and pray something legible comes up?" Jason suggested.

Steph looked him dead in the eyes and proceeded to smash her forehead into the computer eight times before Jason finally stopped her on the ninth.

"Not like that!" he scolded. "You're going to end up killing something, and whether it's you or the computer, both are detrimental to me."

"Really feeling the love there."

Jason sighed, hesitantly letting her go. "How long have you been working on this?"

"When did the semester start?"

"Yikes." Jason hissed in sympathy.

"My prof is a total psycho! Like, literally, I can diagnose him with five of the disorders we studied!"

Jason pulled the computer closer to read her header. Dr. Jonathan Crane. "Shit."

"Mm. Let me guess, he's a villain in your story?"

"Well, he drugs people into hallucinating their worst fears, so."

Steph made a face, squinting her eyes and sticking her tongue out. Her nose wrinkled, and never in a million years would Jason call it cute.

"Accurate, actually. He tried to make psychoanalysis a class activity."

"That feels illegal."

"Homework should be illegal," she griped, finally sitting up properly and reaching for her laptop.

Jason slid it out of reach. She gave him an incredibly unimpressed stare.

"Give," she hissed

"You need a break."

"I'm going to have a mental break if you don't give me my laptop back."

"I'm serious." Jason saved the document and shut down the program. "Take half an hour, it'll help."

"I don't have half an hour, Jason!" Steph cried. "This thing is due in two days!"

"Plenty of time."

Jason clicked shut down and closed the lid right as Steph lunged. He swept it away and stood up, holding it above his head.

"Hey!"

She scrambled up and tried to jump to reach it, but, well... Steph was small. Kick-your-ass and angry small, but still. She wasn't going to get the computer when he had two feet on her.

He saw her eyes dart to the couch, the coffee table, and the chair he'd been sitting in in quick succession.

"Don't try--"

Too late.

She jumped onto the table and launched herself off it with a war cry. Jason dropped the computer on the chair and barely grabbed her before she could tackle him to the floor.

He pressed her close to him, half to comfort her, and half to prevent the five feet of fury from doing any actual damage.

She pouted at him. "I will kick you and you will not like where."

He let go immediately.

"You're still taking a break."

"I'll break you," she muttered, and he took another step back. As a precaution.

Finally she sighed, shoulders sagging. He didn't like the defeat on her face. Stephanie Brown was undefeatable.

"Come on," he said, tilting his head towards the door. "Let's get out of here for a while."

"And go where, exactly? In Gotham city in the middle of the night?" She raised both eyebrows at him.

He shrugged. "You act like if something were to happen we wouldn't be able to handle ourselves."

"Haven't you died before?"

"It was for two minutes, and it was very traumatic, thank you for reminding me."

She didn't back down. He'd always liked that about her. That he could just say things and not have her instantly pity him, or treat him like he was fragile.

"We could go to Blackjack's Tavern."

"I thought you were a nerd."

"I'm also a richboy with a reputation to uphold, I was mostly seeing if you wanted to buy yourself a drink and have me drive you back."

"Oh yes, and you'd hold my hair back as I puke my guts out from how drunk I get."

Jason turned away so he could blush a little. "Then how about Mafioso Does Pizza?"

"That's Maroni territory so, no."

Jason raised his hands in surrender. "Well, we could go to the Martha Wayne Arts Center, I guess."

"Where the hell did that come from?"

"It's a big open space. I could teach you how to swing dance."

"I didn't know you knew how to dance."

"I went to rich-people parties for seven years. Yes, I know how to dance."

Steph looked sheepishly towards the floor, "I've never danced with anyone before."

Almost in an instant Jason grabbed her hand and made towards the door. "Well, I guess it's high time you learned."

"It's high time alright," she muttered, but followed him anyway.

"Are we technically supposed to be here?" Steph wondered, glancing around at all the shadows.

"Probably not, but this building is named after someone who is technically my grandma, so they can suck it."

She giggled a little, comforted once he flicked the lights on. The choir room was indeed big and open, with a piano against one wall. Jason hurried towards a door in the corner, picked the lock, and started messing with what looked to be a sound system.

"Another rich people skill?" she teased.

"Mmhm," he called distractedly. A minute later the first few bars of Shut Up and Dance blared around the room.

Was she imagining that he was blushing as he came back?

"This goes at about half time," he said, holding out his hands, "so it'll be easier to learn with."

"You're the boss, I guess."

He waited for a minute, then reached out and took both her hands. Her face flushed. "Oh, right."

He gave her one of those crooked half-grins that always filled her with butterflies.

"So, starting with 'home base,'" he began, and Steph wanted to make a joke, but also didn't want to put such jokes in his head, "we go forward right, kind of passing each other..."

He stepped quite close, gently pulling her hands so they stood side-to-side.

"And back."

He pulled away again, and Steph switched the feet she was supposed to use, stumbling a little. Jason's grip tightened until she got her feet underneath her again. Her face was hot.

"Then left and back."

This time she watched their feet, noting how he only moved one foot, and then didn't set it all the way down. Once she copied him, they got into a smoother rhythm. She looked up, beaming, to see a much-too-soft smile on Jason's face.

"Now you're getting it."

"Shut up and dance with me," she teased, and he laughed.

"Wanna try a turn?"

"I guess..." Hopefully she didn't sound too excited.

"Ok." Jason kept stepping forward and back, leading her with him, as he gave a play-by-play of the turn. "So I'm gonna let go of your right hand, and lift your left, then you're gonna twirl. Just... go with the flow."

"Brilliant advice."

They stepped right and left, then as they returned to home base, Jason dropped her right hand and raised her left, like he'd said. Steph spun underneath their arms, wishing she had on a dress or skirt so she could see it flare. A giggle escaped as she came back around and Jason caught her hand. She failed to get back in the rhythm of their steps, though, stumbling for a moment before Jason stopped them to reset. Her face flushed.

"Like I said, never danced before," she mumbled sheepishly.

"Well, I think you're doing pretty good," Jason smiled.

She smiled back.

He led her in swing stepping for a moment before attempting the turn again. This time she only fell behind by a beat, catching up on the next side-step, and daring a glance up from their feet to see Jason grinning.

The last bars faded, but almost immediately were replaced by soft piano notes. Jason paused for a second, tilting his head consideringly. Steph had hardly thought, His eyes are really green, before he nodded and said, "This can work."

He began moving them again, falling into the same rhythm as before. A second later the lyrics started, sung by a remarkably young voice, and...

"Is that... Greatest Showman?" she laughed.

Jason shrugged, definitely blushing this time. "Dick's obsessed with it."

"Mmhm. That's why it's on your playlist."

"Shut up."

"That was the other song."

He stuck his tongue out at her. She stuck hers out right back, missing her cue to twirl and stumbling.

"Whoops," Jason smirked.

She shook her head, laughing again, and was ready for the next twirl when it came. What she was not ready for was when Jason dropped her left hand and whirled around himself, ending up beside her with a mischievous grin.

"What was that?" she half-yelped, half-laughed.

"Well, I can't let you have all the fun with spinning."

"I guess you are a little too ginormous to spin under my arm," she teased.

"Just a bit."

They went on, taking turns twirling, until the violins went crazy, and Jason kept spinning her and spinning her, slowly orbiting her twirls, until she was dizzy from spinning and laughing so hard. And then right as everything dropped out, he pulled her against him, arm around her waist to hold her steady and close.

She stared up at him, noticing there were faint freckles on the bridge of his nose.

His smile faded to something both softer and more intense. His gaze dropped to her lips.

"Jason..."

His whole face flushed, eyes coming back to meet hers as he stammered, "I..."

"Kiss me."

He blinked. Then a soft grin spread over his face as he bent down, and pressed his mouth to hers.

It only lasted a second. But it was sweet and gentle, and Steph didn't even know how long she'd wanted it, or that she'd wanted it so bad until that one second came.

The music picked up once more, and Jason let her go, stepping back into their pattern of trading twirls. But they both had an energy and a smile that had changed so much because of that second.

As the music cut away, he pulled her close again. Steph rose up onto her tiptoes to claim another kiss.

"I could get used to that," she whispered as she slowly dropped back down to her heels.

"Yeah?" he murmured breathlessly.

"I guess I need more dancing lessons," she suggested with a wink.

"I guess so." The mischief came back into his smile. "If you're gonna come to the next gala with me."

#jaystephweekend2022 #jaysteph #jason todd #stephanie brown #college au #fluff #romance #no capes au #dancing

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holden-caulfield · 4 years ago

Text

Let's Make A Deal

↪︎ 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

Summary: draco and reader get hurt during a quidditch match and they wake up in the hospital wing together.

Warnings: mentions of blood (nothing too graphic i think, but if you're not ok with it don't read this!)

Word Count: 2040

This idea came to me unexpectedly and i thought it was really cool. I hope you think so too :)

It was the day of the match: gryffindor vs slytherin. The stalls were filled with hundreds of people sporting the colors of the two teams, creating two giant moving blocks of red and green. The teams were already hovering on their brooms throughout the entire pitch and with them, you. You were one of the chasers for the gryffindor team, fast and agile, second only to Harry Potter who dashed through the air at the speed of lightning.

On the other team, the slytherins were getting ready, trying to intimidate your squad with all kinds of dirty looks. They did in fact intimidate you, but not because of their mean glares, because you knew they would have been ready to do anything to win. Much was at stake that day: the victory, the quidditch cup and honor.

When Madame Hooch blew the whistle, everyone sprinted for their respective balls: you went for the quaffle. The game was going smoothly, maybe even too smoothly as you and the other chasers kept on scoring for gryffindor. The reason, as you soon noticed, was because the bludgers weren't hindering you: one of them was currently being thrown around by Fred and George while the other one was ruthlessly pursuing the slytherin seeker, Draco Malfoy. A rogue bludger, you reckoned.

The seeker was trying desperately to get rid of it, but no matter how hard he tried, the bludger was always hot on his tail.

"What are you doing, y/l/n?!" shouted Oliver Wood from his post in front of the giant hoops as you stopped in mid-air to look at Harry and Draco being mercilessly chased by the big iron ball.

"That's a rogue bludger, we have to stop the game!"

"You can't stop quidditch! Plus, it's only helping us, keep scoring!" you scowled at Oliver knowing that nothing was more important than winning the cup for him and resumed the game, but as you took hold of the quaffle, the bludger snapped past you, almost making you lose control of your broom. The slytherin beaters had managed to free Draco from the rogue bludger, but it wasn't long until the ball chased him again.

Both Draco and Harry had now seen the golden snitch and were sprinting to grab it before the other.

"Malfoy!" you shouted at the top of your lungs, but it was of no use. The sudden distraction of the snitch made Draco forget about the bludger that hit him square in the head, causing him to fall down towards the ground at a frightening pace. You rushed towards the boy without a second thought: he might have been your opponent, but such a fall could have even killed him and you wouldn't have allowed it. You caught him inches from the ground and jumped down from your broom, laying him down.

"Malfoy! Hey, Malfoy!" he was unconscious, the bludger had hit him quite well.

Draco might have been done with the bludger, but the bludger wasn't done with Draco: you saw it dashing in the sky and descending at a dangerous speed towards the blond boy. You acted on impulse and covered him with your body, shielding him from the hard sphere that would have surely damaged him even more.

"Y/n! Get away from there!" you heard Fred shouting before the bludger struck you on your back. You let out a harrowing shriek, supporting yourself on your elbows not to crush the boy underneath you. You gritted your teeth as the bludger kept on beating you, only increasing its strength. You felt tears pool in your eyes as you felt your back breaking with every new hit, until it stopped.

Madame Hooch had managed to destroy the rogue bludger and you simply rolled beside Draco's unconscious body, eyes still tightly closed as you felt blood soaking your robes. A large crowd formed around you and the slytherin and you did your best to get up from the ground, but instead clutched your back with your hands, crossing your arms in front of you.

"Oh for Marlin's sake, how are you feeling, dear?" Madame Hooch questioned, looking distraught as she kneeled down in front of you and Draco.

"I'm not complaining. I'm not the one who has been hit in the face by that demonic thing." you managed to breathe out. Talking made the pain in your back even more excruciating and you bit your lip in order not to shriek again, almost drawing blood from your lips.

Dumbledore and other professors had joined the circle that was surrounding you, staving off all of your teammates and the other slytherins, eyes widening after seeing the state in which you and the other boy were in: you were writhing on the ground, trying to find a position in which you wouldn't feel like shards of glass were puncturing your skin, while the slytherin laid completely still on the grass, his platinum blond head now getting increasingly redder in the point the bludger had hit him.

The two of you were immediately brought in the hospital wing and Madame Pomfrey almost killed the professors after seeing two students in such conditions. She cursed quidditch and its 'barbaric ways', all the while examining your back and Draco's head. Madame Pomfrey gave you a glass of some liquid and focused her attention of the boy laying on the bed next to yours.

"Will he be alright?" you asked softly, peeking over her shoulder to see if the blond had awaken yet.

"Drink that and then get some sleep, miss y/l/n. Broken backs are serious stuff and I can't do much for the pain."

"But will he be ok?" you insisted. Madame Pomfrey sighed and turned to you.

"He will, but do yourself a favor and get some sleep. When you will wake up, you'll ask him yourself." that seemed to be enough for you and you drank the glittering liquid in the glass. The pain decreased only slightly, but enough to allow you to fall in a deep slumber. Deep but not peaceful since the only scenes that replayed in your head were the one that happened earlier that day. You found yourself questioning your choices: why did you blindly took his place? Why didn't you just let him on the ground by himself? Not even his teammates had rushed to help him, so why did you? But, as you kept falling more and more asleep, you couldn't find any answer.

The next morning you still felt a searing pain in your back, but it was far more bearable than the night before. You were still half asleep, eyes closed, when you heard someone whispering next to you. You kept your eyes sealed, focusing on the voice to hear it better.

"Come on, wake up. Please wake up." you weren't sure whose voice it was: it was deep and slightly hoarse, as if the person had just stopped crying.

"Come on, you have to wake up. You endured a bloody rogue bludger and you can't wake up?" you heard the voice assert, slightly chuckling and sniffling. The voice stopped talking for a moment. You felt a pair of hands grasping yours and holding it tenderly, drawing mindless pattern on its back.

"I'm pretty sure you can't hear me now, so i want to thank you. You didn't have to do it and yet you did." you recognized the voice to be Draco's, but you remained silent.

"I don't know why, no one would have done what you did, especially a gryffindor." he sniffled once more.

"You have been incredibly daft. You could have been seriously injured and for what? For me? You are an idiot if i ever saw one." he continued, giggling lightly. You could almost picture him in your mind, his bandaged head, his grey teary eyes and his cheeky grin.

"I never thought i would have had a chance with you but now that i almost got you killed i know for a fact." you desperately wanted to open your eyes and tell him that he still had a chance. Hell, he had even more than a chance, but you kept them closed. He remained silent for a few seconds again, still caressing your hand, and then you felt a light drop wet the back of it.

"Please wake up. I need to see you're alright."

"Why?" you asked, opening slightly your eyes with a smug grin on your face. He left your hand and immediately got up and distanced himself from you, thoroughly ashamed.

"How much did you hear?" he asked almost panicked.

"Oh, i don't know... i heard you insulting me though. That's not a very nice thing to do when talking to someone on an hospital bed." you replied cheekily and his cheeks heated up a little. You stretched your arm out and motioned for him to sit down again. When he did, you offered him you hand once more and, after eyeing it suspiciously for a moment, he gingerly took it in his own.

"Do you want to know something funny?" you asked playfully and he raised an eyebrow at you.

"You had a chance with me until you called me an idiot." you stated and he chuckled once more.

"So you heard that too, huh?"

"Seems so."

"Does it hurt?" he asked, suddenly conscious of the whole reason why you were there.

"Less than before. But don't change the topic." you said and you tried to sit up, but underestimated your pain and winced.

"Woah, woah. Stay down, i'll go call Madame Pomfrey." you grasped his hand firmly, preventing him from leaving you alone.

"Don't. I'm fine." he looked at you with concern written all over his face. "Please, stay."

His eyes softened and sat again in his chair, moving it slightly closer to the edge of your bed.

"How's your head?" you asked. As you had imagined, he had a white bandage across his head, with a red stain on the back.

"I'll survive." he shrugged his shoulders before continuing, "Thanks to you." you grinned widely at his words and shook your head in fake disapproval, causing a loose strand of hair to fall in front of your face. He instantly tucked it behind your ear, his hand lingering there before returning in his lap.

"Well, i don't think you would be doing too good if it hadn't been for Madame Pomfrey!" you corrected, still holding his hand in yours.

"Of course, but if it hadn't been for you, Madame Pomfrey couldn't have done much... They told me what you did."

"And...? It was heroic, wasn't it?" you said proudly, feigning superiority with a smug smirk.

"I stand by what i said. You are an idiot if i ever saw one." he replied matter-of-factly, but still in a playful manner.

"Oh, you hurt me, Malfoy!" he tried to stifle a laugh but couldn't and instead shook his head lightly. Your eyes suddenly widened and Draco's did too as soon as he noticed.

"Are you ok? What happened?"

"Who won the match?" Draco stared at you, mouth agape, a look of incredulity in his silvery eyes as he scoffed slightly.

"Well? Who won?" you asked again, expectantly.

"I don't know. Pomfrey hasn't let anyone inside het." you stayed silent, pondering for a few seconds.

"Let's make a deal."

"A deal?"

"A deal. If gryffindor won, i'll forget you ever called me an idiot and we can go on a date."

Draco's lips curled up slightly, "and what if slytherin won?"

You waited for a moment, staring at him in defy.

"Then we don't talk ever again." you said inching closer with your face towards the boy. Draco had a one-sided smile plastered on his face and his eyes narrowed at you. He extended his hand out and you shook it, sealing the deal. Right in that moment, Fred and George burst inside, with Madame Pomfrey in tow, trying to restrain the twins.

"Y/n! Still alive?" shouted Fred.

"Out of here now! They need to rest!"

"Madame Pomfrey, can i talk with them for a moment?" you tried asking, but she was not having any of it.

"You need to rest! You'll see them later!" and she started to usher Fred and George outside by force. You glanced at Draco who was looking at the scene very amused, then back at the twins.

"Who won the match?" you inquired, almost shouting, and the twins managed to respond before being shut outside by Madame Pomfrey.

"It's postponed."

Taglist <3

@turn-to-page-394-please @gwlvr @dracosaccount @astoria-malfcy @dracomalfoys-wh0re @ch0kemedracomalfoy @cherie-draco

[if your name is crossed out, check your privacy settings!]

#fanfic #fanfiction #harry potter #draco lucius malfoy #draco malfoy #draco imagine #draco x reader #draco x y/n #draco malfoy fluff #fluff #draco fluff #draco soft #quidditch #slytherin

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mochiimiiki · 4 years ago

Text

| Act one: Possibility |

[Xiao x F!reader]

[Pyro vision reader]

Summary: Feelings are something of a concept, humans determine their meaning and everyone else simply accepts. But what if he has no concept of emotions and you’re in denial? What becomes of it then?

Warnings: spoilers for xiao’s story, angst, violence, blood, slow burn

A/N: first time writing a proper fic sooo be nice! also italics are being used for past events!!

Masterlist

- - - - - -

Your encounter was an accident. A mistake, a flaw in the matrix. However, It was a memory you held onto even after all of those years. Staring across Dihua Marsh, your mind couldn’t help but wonder, wonder all the way back to the vigilant yaksha. Whom refused to converse his name. His real name.

It was in the depths of night where the demons lurked, and as an adventurer you often encountered such mutated creatures. It was not your duty to defend the land nor protect the innocent from the midnight stalkers. Yet, you felt obligated to. Perhaps it was a form of misconception or the chivalry in which your father had brought you up with. Nevertheless, you found yourself stalking a possessed abyss mage. In hopes of vanquishing it before the mutant could perform damage upon any civillians.

The moon guided you, luring you to where the beast crept. Through squinted eyes, you could just about see a sleeping village a few hundred metres from where you stood. Determination pumped through your veins, urging you onwards with a singular goal; vanquish your opponent.

In the brief moments that you were distracted the target had vanished. Frantically, you begun searching. ‘Where’d it go...?’ You breathed to yourself. Fear creeping along your spine and infecting your mind.

Suddenly, a cryo shot sent you flying back into a rock. Your back hit it with a thud and the wind was knocked from you. Dazed it took you a moment to adjust your senses. As your vision became focused you quickly rolled out of the way as another cryo shot narrowly missed you. Reaching for your bow you aimed at the abyss mage.

You scoffed. A cryo abyss mage? The fight would be over in no time. Your bow charged quickly and you launched your attack. You jumped with glee, You’d hit the shield directly in a patch you’d grown accustomed to know as a weak spot. However, as the steam cleared from the melt combination you realised you’d done little to no damage. The unsettling anxiety seeped it’s way into your heart once more. “I-Impossible!” You declared, to no one in particular. “I hit you!” The abyss mage let out a low chuckle. It’s sonar voice vibrating off of the trees and rocks that littered your midnight hunt. However, you realised something was off with this mage. Not only was it’s voice an octave lower but a strange black mist eminated from its being. Was it possible this was the kind of creature your father had warned you about...?

Before you got a chance to react the abyss mage launched you backwards once more. This time you landed in the soggy pits of the marsh. You blindly fumbled with your bow attempting to ignite it with your pyro element. However, the dampness of both yourself and the weapon caused evaporate. You silently cursed. No, no, no! This couldn’t be happening not now, not when you were so close. Repeatedly you tried again. Only looking up as you heard the familiar chuckle of your enemy.

Squeezing your eyes shut you begged Rex Lapis to not let your life end so soon. You had so much to learn! So many places to be and you still had to find the truth of...

You thoughts came to an abrupt end.

Suddenly, a gush of wind sped past your face, in turn your eyes shot open. It was just in time too, as you witnessed your saviour.

In the moonlight his hair appeared dark grey and his clothings multiple shades of silver however, black and turquoise mist eminated off of his being. Your eyes widened in shock as one blast of his power shattered the cryo abyss mage’s shield. “EVIL CONQUERING!” He cried throwing it back into the same rock it had once thrown you into.

Pulling enough energy from your damaged body you limped over to your saviour. “You saved me!” Exclaiming in delight. “How did you... no I should be thanking you! Thank-” Yet, before you could continue your praise a final blast of cryo hit you from the dying mage. Falling to the ground you felt your senses dim. Blurry vision caught sight of your masked hero finishing off the job only to finally pass out. A deep, charcoal black enveloping you in an everlasting grip.

- - -

Upon awakening you had found yourself placed in a bed in a familiar building. One you had only viewed on the outside: Wangshu Inn. Clambering out of the comfort of the bed you stumbled to the doorway.

A violet sky was clear from the room in which you occupied. Dim stars twinkled as a rouge sun dawned. You stumbled over to the balcony, confusion clouding your thoughts and erroding the pain.

You collapsed onto the railing of the balcony, thanking the red painted wood for the sturdiness it granted. You glanced out across Dihua Marsh. It’s landscape accentuated by the red light from the dawning sun, her face glowing brightly and guiding adventurers and monsters alike into the unknown.

“What are you doing?” A low voice growled behind you. Instantly you jumped from the disturbance to the peace, immediately after regretting it as a sharp pain jolted through your side. Glancing down your eyes settled upon a bandage wrapped around your waist. You realised the only material shielding you against the harshness of the cool autumn morn was the bandages that started at your chest and ending at your waist. Instantaneously a flush crept over your face and along your neck. “Y-You did this? Pervert!” You shouted, a finger pointing accusingly.

For a moment the boy appeared taken aback before scoffing. “First of all.” He growled taking a menacing step towards you. “I didn’t do that.” He glanced down, taking another step. “Second I saved your life, so even if I had you should have been grateful.” Another step. “And last of all, it was the Inn keeper who helped you. You can thank her later.” He was inches away from you, his brows furrowed in irritation and it was clear your comment had irked him.

You swallowed thickly and uncomfortably. You pushed against his chest, attempting to create distance between himself and you. However, he remained rooted in place. Whether, or not he intended to intimidate you or was simply setting straight facts you were unsure of.

Eventually, he acknowledged your efforts and with a grunt stepped backwards. You tried to steady your thoughts, and clear your mind. Up until now you’d been thinking irrationally and it had ended with you in a critical state.

You opened your mouth to speak once more when with a dismissal of his hand the man spoke first, “Unfortunately, there are other matters that require my assistance. If you’ll excuse me.” Though he seemingly asked for his departure you knew that it was more of a statement than a request. “W-wait!” you cried suddenly, grasping his wrist as he leaped onto the railing of the Wangshu inn.

The man stared puzzlingly at your hand, almost in a way that suggested he’d never been touched by a mortal before. “I didn’t ask your name.”

“I go by many names.” The figure retorted bluntly, an action that caused your hand to retract and your face to drop. With a sigh he spoke once more, his tone etched with a little less aggression. “However, you may call me vigilant Yaksha Xiao. Or for short Xiao. Should you ever need my help, or cannot face killing a monster call my name. I will aid you.”

With that he vanished before your eyes. Taking on the form of shadows and fleeing into the Abyss.

- - -

Staring across the Marsh now it appeared so different. Not only had it been two years since your return to Liyue but it was also daytime upon your arrival, a splintering summer sun sparkled brightly amongst the leaping clouds. It suddenly occurred to you amongst your reminiscing that you had never gazed upon the marsh in the daylight. To bestow it the title of breath taking was an understatement, to simply put it, it was exquisite. How the summer rays of light bounced across the murky waters of the marsh and that they illuminated the once gloomy surroundings. It was a sight to behold, it was beyond enchanting as it bewitched its onlookers and lured them to an untimely death.

“Ma’am?” A voice called for you, intruding your thoughts. She gave you a gentle smile, one you knew was plastered on to appease customers. “Your room is ready madam.” She spoke so softly that had you been immersed in a conversation with another you may not have heard her. You exchanged a polite nod as she led you up the stairs of the Wangshu Inn.

Despite your absence from Liyue for two years the Inn had not particularly changed. It was still lined in the same ruby red railings albeit faded to a salmon blush. And it had the same wooden floors, that creaked and squeaked ever so slightly under foot.

“Here is your room, I hope you enjoy your stay.” Quietly excused the girl as she departed. Leaving you standing alone in the doorway to a room too large to fit a single person.

Hauling in your luggage you flopped down onto the bed. The scent of Fresh linen tickled your nostrils, a particularly summery smell.

As the night progressed you had departed from your room and explored a little more of the grounds belonging to the Wangshu Inn. Fully satisfied with your miniature expedition you retired to the cafe and settled in for a long night.

- - -

The evening wore on tranquility reflected in the expressionless faces of the Inn stayers and keepers alike. As the café grew quieter you had taken it upon yourself to mark out your journey on your map. Small red exes marked the spots of your previous journeys, and although you wanted to pursue the land of the unmarked you had unfinished business to complete in Liyue harbour. Tapping your pencil on the page as you pondered your next move a shout caught your attention. Your quiet night had come to an abrupt end when a face you believed you’d never set your eyes on again appeared before you.

It was the dead of night. The only two souls that remained in the lobby of the Inn were you and the owner’s wife. When suddenly, a third party joined.

In stumbled an extremely battered and bruised man. His hair was knotted in scruffs and a deep gash seeped into the skin in his chest. With a startled cry the woman behind the reception desk ran to his side.

You stared in horror into the cat like eyes of this man. A flash of a familiarity flickered in them, in a brief possibility that he recognised you a bubbling emotion of hope fluttered in your stomach. However, the feeling was all but short lived as his eyes fluttered closed and he collapsed, toppling to the floor. Completely unconscious.

#genshin impact #genshin diluc #genshin kaeya #genshin traveler #genshin xiao #genshin zhongli #design #genshin childe #genshin impact xiao #anime #xiao headcanons #xiao x reader #xiao imagines #xiaolumi #xiaoven #zhongli headcanons

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paddymoonstruck · 4 years ago

Text

𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬┃𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫

chapter one

warnings: cursing, mentions of death, season 4/manga spoilers ??? (that’s about it, think!)

word count: 2,705

notes: this is the first installment of wistful irises !!! i guess it would be a slow-burn fic that would contain 5 or more chapters. i wrote this to cope with the tragedy of AOT manga chapter 138 — that’s just fucked up tbh. please give this one a like/reblog/feedback so i know whether or not you liked it !!

NEXT CHAPTER: H E R E

𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐟, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐢𝐟𝐭 𝐰𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐧 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬

It was quiet — so eerily quiet, a hand came up to soothe her ears bitten by the cold wind. Devon’s palm felt at the rough rubbles on the surface of which she was sat on. Everything she laid eyes on tugged at her heart, scanning at her surroundings as if she looked one more time, her vision would change.

Alas, she gazed upon the damaged cities from her place atop Wall Rose, with no success. Devon threw her head back, opting to find comfort at the stars that laid peacefully on the sky.

“They’re dead.” She asserted, nearly winced at the wave of overwhelming devastation rushing at her heart.

However, she was unsure who or what she was alluding to. Was it the people of Paradis? Those she lost? Or even — the stars?

Nothing was clear, at the moment. Only hurt and confusion clouded her devices. She found her palms closing in on the small rubbles she had caught, clutching them tightly in her fist.

It had been four years since everything went into a complete spiral. Perhaps it was for her alone, considering a massive part of her died along with the hundreds of comrades who sacrificed themselves for the sake of the truth.

She remembered the day they found out about the life that existed beyond these walls. The walls she had known all her life, was quite literally, made to imprison its people. It was unclear whether she was angry or sad that there was a whole world out there that hated their existence so much that they’d created monsters to attack them.

“It’s late, Devon.”

She recognized that sweet-tuned voice instantly but didn’t turn to look his way as she spoke. “It’s awfully cold, too.” Her voice came in a whisper.

Her new companions footsteps grew closer, making her glance to her right. “Are you here to wallow in despair with me, Armin?”

The blonde simply sat down beside his friend, looking ahead the dark path. “No,” He answered. “I was just looking for you.”

The silence returned after that. Chilly air wafting at the night, Devon laid her hands on her lap, inspecting how they’ve gotten small cuts from the sharp stone she had held. Her ears felt blocked as her hands began to tremble. She clenched her teeth in the hopes to ebb away her impending emotions. She exhaled a shattered breath, pressing her hands against the skin of her face.

Armin’s hand that intended to ease Devon’s cries, seem to have worsen them the moment it touched her. However, he continued on, rubbing small circles at the column of her back.

“I — “ Devon started, her voice failing her as another ripple of pain pounded at her chest.

An encouraging hand reached up against her own, gently coaxing her into a state of solace, just enough for her to be able to convey her emotions.

With a breath, Devon began once more. “I thought we’ll be close to peace, once we discovered what was in that goddamn basement,” She laughed, lacking humor. The back of her palm wiping at the tears that had fallen on her cheeks. “But — it was just another door to one more disaster.”

“That’s true,” Armin agreed, but still mulled over her words. “It is a big step from freedom, though.”

She gritted her teeth, baring the headache that came with it. There was a part of her that knew it was the exact idea Armin had in mind. Regardless of her understanding, she couldn’t help but feel a whistle of displeasure crawling against her lips.

With a swing of her head, she finally flashed her attention to Armin. Devon gave him a once-over, noticing how his once shoulder-length hair, had been cut shorter, lips curled into a frown, dragging down a creases on his forehead. The main thing that always saddened Devon was the look in his eyes.

Armin was the last person Devon thought she’d see with those haunting wisp. He was the last shred of hope she had in this world, even before everything came tumbling down, Devon saw Armin as a beacon, that she could run to whenever it all became horrifyingly dark— staring at him now, Devon felt extremely helpless, loneliness grasping at her throat, catching herself reaching for Armin’s hand that was placed on her back, snatching it on her own.

“We’ve lost so much,” She mumbled, compressing her grip on his hand. “I can’t afford to lose anything anymore— Armin—”

“You won’t—”

“— If we go tomorrow, I will—”

“Devon—”

“No— we’re going into a lion’s den! Every single person in that goddamn land wants us dead!” She stressed, leaning in closer to Arnim as if it’s bound to improve his comprehension.

Armin halted, observing the panic flood in Devon’s sunken eyes. The usual brilliance of its green hue had faded over time. In it’s place were tired, dull irises staring back at him.

He swallowed the lump building up his throat, nodding in understanding. “I know— but we have to bring him home, Devon.”

With a quick dark chuckle, Devon faced the sky, leaning her head back. “I don’t even know if I want to see him,”

Huffing out a breath Armin was holding, he abruptly got on his feet, pulling his hands from Devon’s freezing ones.

The latter flashed him a confused glance, awaiting his next move. She watched as Armin shook off his Survey Corps jacket, soon hanging it on her shoulders.

Maybe it was the topic of discussion that made them neglect the air that had been a lot chillier than before. Devon felt warmth seeping back into her skin as she hugged the material tighter against her body.

“You don’t seem to have a choice for the matter,” Armin muttered, gazing down at her. “Whether or not you’re in good terms with him, Eren still belong with us.”

Devon grimaced, as if Armin had said something completely ridiculous— in her eyes, it was.

She recalled that painful night, about three months ago. The night Eren decided to sneak out and leave Paradis. He had been babbling about it for weeks prior to his escape. Devon made the mistake of thinking it was all that— mindless babbling.

She was wrong, of course. Eren had actually planned everything. He was going to see through his stupid plan.

“Are being fucking serious right now?” Devon hissed, distressed eyes were scanning Eren’s face, hoping this was some sick prank he’d gotten everyone in.

Eren cringed at the volume of her voice, hands putting up immediately to cup her mouth. “Devon— Please— Listen, yeah?”

His pleas were met by deaf ears, as Devon slapped his plams away from his mouth, glaring at him with the outmost disbelief.

“You’re being stupid,” She scoffed. “This is stupid— Eren— You want to go there?” Her furrowed eyebrows deepened the more she thought about it.

Eren bit his lip, nodding slowly, standing rigid in front of her, frozen at the fire in her eyes. He examined her, sitting on her bed, contemplating the information he threw at her face.

The light of the single candle in the room, illuminated the left side of her face as she turned to him again. “What ever you think is going to fix this, it’ll only call for another war—”

“That’s nothing new.”

“You selfish—” She had lunged at him, limbs acting before her brain. “—little brat—!” An echo deafening resounded in the small enclosed space, rearing on the silence it followed. Devon’s palm stung, eyes raging and barely seeing anything beyond her seething anger.

Before she had the mind to process anything, her head banged against a solid surface, a groan leaving her lips from the impact.

Everything was fuzzy, scarcely making out anything at sight. Only cloudy images filled her vision, almost not feeling the bruising grip pressing her down by the wrists.

The searing breath near her ear, felt uncomfortably cold, a pair of lips grazing at the tip, making her shudder.

“For your own protection— all of you— remember that . . .”

The words echoed, but she could barely hear the last ones, as her breath turned calmer, the last thing she saw were those turquoise orbs, looking back at her with an emotion she couldn’t quite read.

Devon shook herself out of the memory. There was more to it, she knew that — but she couldn’t seem to remember. When she tries, a huge headache always came crashing down on her. A sick wave slapped her as she thought about the dreadful possibility of Eren, messing with her memories.

She hated the big gapping wall in her mind. It was always incomplete, left her nothing but empty guesses about what else he could have said to her that night before he left her hanging with a missing piece in her heart.

He left them — and just like that, he gets to come home in the most unnecessarily brutal way possible. Eren was asking for a bloodbath, and unfortunately, that was what most likely going to happen tomorrow.

“He’s going to get us killed.” She muttered, voice thinning at the thought of her fallen comrades — endless blood — fire — explosions — “We’ll be lucky if we all make it out in one piece.”

This time, Armin didn’t contract her declaration, having her look down. He was frighteningly aware of the fact that any of them could die at any given moment. It brought him peril at how Devon had smacked him in the face with the reality he was trying to avoid. A part of him wanted to believe it was all going to go smoothly, but the logical part of him had mulled over the dreadful alternative for a long time now.

He sympathized with the hostile feelings Devon had grown for Eren. Perhaps it was due to the puzzling relationship they possessed. If he was to base it on his observations alone, it was painfully obvious that they cared deeply for one another but never had the time or courage to say it.

No one has ever pried about their relationship, since they both dismissed it as nonsense. It was perplexing yet as clear as day what they had for each other.

They would always be found bicker when they were younger, Devon calling Eren an ugly airhead then Eren shooting back that they were the same. Back then, it was true. They were kids who thought they could do everything themselves. Armin could say, Devon grew out of that attitude as time passed by when he got to know Devon a little better.

After the battle with Zeke, Reiner and Bertholdt, the amount of trauma everyone endured was terrible. The bloody aftermath of Paradis was engraved into their minds, never fading until their last breath.

The guilt ate at Armin when he found out how he came to be alive. He often wondered why it was him. Why did Captain Levi give him the chance to live over Commander Erwin.

On the other hand, remorse gripped at Devon’s throat at the unintentional betrayal that crossed her mind that day. She found herself opening her mouth before she could hide it away.

“I was so desperate for peace . . .” She whispered, yanking down Armin by his hands, his behind slamming against the hard concrete as he was forced to sit down in front of her. “That I . . . For a long time — I believed that only Erwin could lead us there —”

“It’s alright — “

“It isn’t — it was meant to make me happy, for goodness sake — you came back from the dead after I stood there and watch you get burned alive . . .” She failed to realize she was crying until she felt droplets of her tears falling on her hands, intertwined with Armin’s.

Looking away, she continued, Armin watching her carefully. “Mikasa and Eren were desperately convincing Captain Levi to resurrect you — while I stared at both yours and Commander Erwin’s body , absolutely loathing the choice that had to be made.”

Devon could no longer hold in her heavy sobs, as it broke through her completely. “I get why you thought that, and you weren’t selfish for doing it, were you?” She listened to Armin’s reassuring voice. “You thought Erwin should’ve had it because you believed people would follow him and would avoid getting hurt — “

“ — you’d be able to do that too, though . . .” Devon countered, sniffling as she glanced back at Armin’s oceanic orbs. “I was just blinded by fear to think straight back then.”

Armin smiled at Devon in a silent gratitude. “I thought about everything you did, too, and maybe you’re right, maybe I’m too blinded by my own fears to face another life that was given to me — but I promised Captain Levi and Commander Hanji I’ll do everything it takes to bring us the peace we’ve been seeking out for years.”

Devon winced at the sudden touch on her head, chestnut locks swishing from one side after the other as Armin ruffled her hair.

“Regretting could only get you so far,” Armin stated, a small smile gracing his face. “What’s important is what you decide to do about it.”

Warmth flooded at Devon’s core, nearly bursting into tears at Armin’s comforting words. Her mind went back to Eren, his circumstances and living conditions on that island were mostly unknown. But seeing as he had the facilities to send a letter, hints that it must be at the least safe.

She started to fly over the scattered thoughts inside her head, mulling over how mentally drained she has been, yet the noise and dull of her heart seem to only worsen. The countless times she had to convince herself of the good things left in the world to bask the gift of life, but lately, she found herself sitting by the windowsill of her room. Eyes always glancing up the sky whether or not they were painted with shining stars.

Devon often clutched her chest when the uncontrollable pangs in her heart refuses to remain still. Some days, the rejection of waking up rattles her tremendously, and the refusal to face the day ahead was stronger than anything.

She wanted nothing more than to take a few steps back and reverse time to relish the tranquility of it all. It sounded ridiculously selfish, but she’d trade anything if it means she would awake to Eren and Jean’s loud voices arguing or to see Sasha pocket goods she had stolen from the kitchen while being chased down by Armin. And oh — what she wouldn’t give to replay the day they’ve all bonded together after Keith Shadis made Sasha run until she was in the brink of insanity.

It’s those little things that made her nostalgic, bringing a sad smile on her lips that she wasn’t sure if she wanted those thoughts randomly popping up her mind. Sometimes, disbelief hits her harder than anything whenever she’d allow herself to scan the faces of what’s left of her teammates.

When Erwin had told them, he knows “they’d one day go far and achieve great things”, if he was still here, Devon would surely make him look at what had become of them.

Everyone was preparing for the expedition in Marley tomorrow. Devon had exited the room when she had heard the severity of the situation. Eren was going to wreck havoc in that foreign island and he gave them no other choice than to lend him aid.

It was rather conflicting, Devon was worried for him but nonetheless, despised his living-breathing self. She often wondered about his whole motive, considering his adamant proclamation that it wasn’t for his own self-indulgence.

It felt like it was, as she began to feel the shuddering screams of the impending battle that was set to take place.

If another life of her loved one’s taken from her tomorrow, she fears that it might throw her in an unstable state and she had every right to blame it all on Eren.

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highdramas · 4 years ago

Text

bandit like me | criminal!bucky

warnings: language, violence, references to criminal behavior, allusions to sexy shit, bucky being a cocky asshole

word count: 2197

summary: if you and bucky are doomed, you want to see the glorious fallout.

note: this is the start of a bucky au series which will eventually be based on the heist from oceans 8! this is just an intro to bucky’s history with the reader, and their dynamic, but i’m so excited to continue!

enjoy! <3

god, you love vegas.

there’s a certain sort of dirty glamour that you can’t find anywhere else, you think-- and while you spend the majority of your time in new york these days, you find that your heart always has a certain tug to las vegas. after all, it is where you got your start as one of the finest pickpockets and swindlers on either side of the mississippi.

among other things.

it’s where you met james buchanan barnes for the first time.

you’d heard his name like a whisper in the wind for years before you met him in person. james “bucky” barnes, criminal extraordinaire. of course, you were young, and you had stars in your eyes and you had not yet been hardened by the world. you had not yet had to kill your way out of a shady job, had not yet conned a man of everything he was worth.

that was your favorite part, you think.

taking from men what they had earned unfairly.

if justice wasn’t coming for them, you would bring it upon them yourself. you would take it all and you would feel no remorse. their wealth, their assets, their connections.

sometimes, even their wives.

but those were petty games that you had played when you were young. you like to believe that you are more mature now; both in your swindling and in your personality.

sometimes, you miss those days. you miss running with natasha and chewing up men and spitting them back out. you miss the high of pulling off a real good job. you miss watching a man crumble beneath you, begging for mercy. of course, you would never give it. but you would make a show of thinking about it, and natasha would laugh, and she would say, “stop playing with your food, honey.”

that’s another thing.

you rarely reveal your real name.

not even to your closest confidants. not even to natasha.

no, you find that there are two ways that you introduce yourself. you either stare straight with a narrow gaze, murmuring something along the lines of, “your worst nightmare.” or, you smile sweetly with an outstretched hand and your head gracefully tilted. “call me honey.”

there’s only one person that you’ve worked with who knows your real name.

and he’s sitting at the hotel bar.

already, you can feel your annoyance begin to bubble. you can do one of two things-- you can saunter over there and properly ignore him, knowing that he will notice you instantly. or, you can go up to your room.

you decide you need a drink more than you need your sanity.

somehow, you’re sure that he already knows you’re here. you approach the bar and tap on it, smiling at the bartender. “cosmopolitan.” you turn your head to the right and he’s already looking at you.

“i thought you’d never show, doll.”

a smirk begins to play on your lips, and you thank the bartender as you slide your drink to yourself. “i should get a restraining order,” you muse as you lift your glass to your lips, taking a lengthy sip. “you creep.”

bucky laughs and he takes a sip of his own drink, and you don’t even have to look to know what it is-- whiskey coke. god, you always gave him shit for it. told him he should at least drink his whiskey neat. he would always give you that same stupid smirk and he would say, “what, i can’t have a little sweet, honey?”

“that’d be no fun,” he says and god you know that he’s right, but you hate to admit it. “who you here for?”

all the attempts of not looking at him are futile, and you throw a glance in his direction. he looks as glorious and handsome as ever. the man drips with luxury. from his suit to his hair to his beard which has grown out slightly since the last time that you saw him-- everything about him tells you that he is expensive. “you think i’d tell you?”

“i’m here for pleasure, darling. i’m not going to infiltrate on your job.”

you scoff. “i have a hard time believing that. when are you ever not thinking about work?”

bucky’s desire to work is the cause of all of his success, as well as all of his problems, you think.

part of you feels sorry for him, knowing how much stress he places upon himself. another part of you can’t help but resent it, knowing it is the reason that you two would never, ever, ever possibly work as something more than easy flirtation and a good night between the sheets.

“i’m a changed man, honey.” bucky gestures to the barstool beside him. “you gonna stand and drink that all night?”

a pointed look is thrown in his direction and you finally take a seat. “you knew i would be here, didn’t you?”

“heard from nat,” bucky takes a sip from his drink. “i’ve got some intel on your hit.”

your hit isn’t your normal vegas regular. no, your hit is alexander pierce, one of the highest ranking government officials you could sink your claws into. you’d met him networking at an event in dc and he had been quite interested in you, which you always liked to use to your advantage. luring him out to las vegas took little effort and much amusement, buying you time to do your research.

you’d clear his room of all his belongings and sell off the paperwork to your government contacts who would purchase them for a steep price, and you would be on your way.

without a trace.

you were good at that part. going off the grid. no social media footprint, nothing to track you by-- you were living in the world partially invisible. you like to keep it that way.

though, sometimes it gets lonely.

no one knows that better than the man who sits beside you now.

“spit it out, then.”

bucky smiles and for a moment, you think he might say something else, but he begins to divulge quickly. information about his security detail, shift rotations. information you could’ve found out easily, but don’t mind having handed to you. but you’re less interested in that. your brows furrow as you look at him. “how far out of your way did you go to get this intel?”

he gives a nonchalant shrug. “far enough.” he smiles. “gotta help out my girl.”

“i’m not your girl,” you say with a smirk. “if anything, you’re my bitch. getting me intel, following me around to tell me.”

this gets a laugh out of him and you look forward again, finishing off your drink. “now that’s my girl.” he throws a hundred dollar bill onto the bartop and follows suit, tipping his head back to empty his cup of its contents. “walk with me?”

you stare and watch as he outstretches his hand to you. despite your better judgement, you take it. the pair of you walk side by side until you’re stepping out into the still warm air, but the breeze offers enough of a chill that the hairs on your arms stand up. bucky looks over at you and begins to shuck off his jacket, making you immediately protest. “bucky, no--”

but he’s already draping it over your shoulders, and you are tugging it just a bit closer to you, and you note that it smells like him. like that stupid ysl cologne you bought him all those years ago.

well, you didn’t buy it. you’d stolen it.

no words are exchanged as you move along on the sidewalk, watching on at people busking and performing on the street, ignoring the elsa’s and spiderman’s who try to pull you in for photo ops. one of them gets particularly aggressive and bucky pulls you into him, as if you’re not a woman who has driven a dagger into the gut of a man for far less, saying, “move along, pal.”

“so touchy tonight,” you purr, leaning into him slightly when he doesn’t remove his arm from your waist. “like the good ‘ole days.”

“oh, you remember?” bucky jokes, and it already has you laughing. “you were acting so coy back there in the bar, i thought that you might’ve forgotten me altogether.”

you shake your head and you stop in the street. you wear his jacket and he straightens his tie and he smiles down at you. “of course i didn’t.” you jut your chin up. “doesn’t change anything, though.”

what doesn’t it change, exactly?

it doesn’t change that the last time you saw james buchanan barnes, you had told him that you loved him. and he had told you that he loved you in return. and you had both agreed that it needed to end now before either of you caused irreversible damage to the other.

criminals being with criminals never ends well.

“not a thing,” he agrees with you. he pushes a piece of hair back and it’s getting harder to remember why you were so stubborn when it came to him. why, exactly, you felt the need to push your feelings away so desperately. “wish it would, though.”

“yeah.” a small, almost shy, smile works its way onto your lips. “me too.”

bucky’s jaw slacks and his fingers trail your cheek, and you can feel the cool metal of his rings against your flesh. “it’s not like this with other people, is it, honey?”

“of course not,” you nearly hiss. “is it like this with other people for you?”

bucky has a knowing sort of smirk. “no.” he wets his lips, his eyes settling on your lips for just a beat too long. “it never will be.”

the tension surrounds the both of you, and you’re the one to break it. you press your hand to bucky’s chest and push on it slightly, pushing him away, pushing away all of the feelings and confusion that comes with him. “we’re not doing this tonight. i’ve got a job to do in the morning.”

you begin to walk, and bucky is on your heels. “so our pillowtalk can be about work,” he says, and you can practically hear the cocky and sly charm in his words. “i made sure to get a king bed. and a bottle of moet.”

again, you stop, and you turn to him. you’ve nearly walked a circle around the block, and you can see the hotel not far off. “you really got info from nat about my job, got me intel to butter me up, and then want to take me to bed?” you huff and even you can’t help but laugh. “nothing’s changed, barnes.”

you set off again and he groans, following after you. “you know it’s not like that.” he catches your wrist and he spins you, getting you to face him. “it’s never that that… simple with you.”

you rip your wrist from his hand and make your way into the hotel lobby, making sure your hips swing just a bit more than usual. you remember bucky laughing and gripping those hips on a late winter night in new york city, nearly three years ago now-- “such a tease,” he had said into your ear.

“bucky,” you say as you both approach the elevators. “it’s not happening.”

he sighs and he hangs his head. “yeah.” he looks up at you. “i do miss you, doll.”

“yeah, i know.” the elevator doors open and you step into them. bucky tries to follow after you, but you hold your hand up. “i’ll be seeing you, james.”

“see you, honey.”

the doors click shut and you practically collapse. the effort of pretending to not love bucky is exhausting.

in a blur, you go to your room and unpack your things. you take off your makeup and your expensive jewelry that you plucked off the wrists and necks and fingers of random passing civilians during all of your worldly travels. when you pick your phone up, you notice that you have a text from an unknown number.

floor 45, room 7.

you roll your eyes and toss your phone back onto the bed. you’re a strong woman-- certainly strong enough to resist the temptation of knowing exactly where to find the one person that you want.

one hour passes. you scroll through instagram.

another. you finally crawl into bed.

three hours. it’s nearly three in the morning and you cannot sleep.

by four, your feet are in slippers and you wrap a silky robe around your body.

you don’t move. 4:30am blinks at you on the clock.

at five, bucky is opening the door, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and staring at you.

“don’t say a word,” you hiss before you’re grabbing for him, pulling him to you, and pressing your lips to his.

but bucky is a smug asshole. as you move through his suite, his hands are everywhere, and he pushes you back onto the bed. once he’s hovering over you, his lips just a ghost above the shell of your ear, he can’t help but whisper…

“looks like nothing’s changed.”

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x you #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes au #bandit like me

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fires-of-ninjago · 3 years ago

Note

Drabble prompt Kai and Pixal being buddies?

One Chaotic duo coming up! XD

Title: Tangled Chaos

Words: 800

Pairing(s): Kai x Pixal (Platonic)

Warning(s): N/A

“I cannot believe I let you talk me into this,” Pixal said as she scowled over at the master of fire. Kai, for his part, chuckled as he finished placing the last of the fake cobwebs around the courtyard. The two had started doing their decorating that afternoon out of sheer boredom, and now they were almost finished with everything.

“Oh please, half of this stuff was your idea!” Kai said as he hopped down. “Besides, everyone could use a little something to loosen things up after the month we’ve all had!” Pixal shook her head as she picked up one of the nearby transmitters and started making a few last-minute adjustments.

“Be that as it may, I still calculate a 74.5% chance of an accident-”

“Yeah, yeah, just trust me!” He said as he finished putting on the last of his costume. “This will be aaaaawesome~!” Pixal shook her head as she finished up her final tweaks and hid the transmitter in her sleeve..

“I hope that you’re right about this Kai. Zane still will not let us both into the kitchen unsupervised after that popcorn incident.” Kai chuckled as he remembered that night.

“Hahaha, I still don’t remember how that fire started,” he said. Now Pixal was the one chuckling as she finished adjusting the last piece of her costume.

“You decided to make root beer mint julep and dropped the glass when the flaming marshmallow fell inside and set it on fire.” Kai laughed as he put on his wig.

“Bwahahahaha! Oh yeah! Right into the popcorn bowl!” He laughed; Pixal was about to join him as her memory of the event flashed to the forefront of her mind, but the sound of front gates opening stopped them both in their tracks. She looked back at Kai, just as they both killed the last of the lights and got into their places. Even turned away from the door, they knew exactly who was coming through.

“What the-” They heard Jay ask as he stepped through the doors.

“Why are the lights off?” Nya immediately followed. Kai gave Pixal a careful side-glance as they waited for the rest to filter in. Though they both knew that they didn’t have much longer to wait as they heard the heavy foot-falls of the Master of Ice.

“Who’s there?!” Zane asked with his voice instantly gaining an edge.

“Show yourselves!” Cole followed.

“Show time,” Kai whispered to Pixal; without missing a beat, she hit the transmitter hidden in her costume, and the flow of music started to fill the air.

“I put a spell on you... And now, you’re mine,” he started out, following the flow of the music.

“You can’t stop the things I do...I ain’t lyinnnnn~!” Pixal followed.

“It’s been three hundred years, right down to the day...Now the witch is back! And there’s hell to pay!” They both started to sway as the music began to pick up its tempo.

“I put a spell on you...And, now...you’re...MINE!!!~” Just when the beat hit its crescendo, Kai kicked his foot out to knock a large switch brought a series of dim stage lights to life as they both spun around to face their friends and family. Everyone started at them in utter surprise, as Kai and Pixal began dancing. Kai grinned like an idiot as Pixal took her spot in front of him.

“Hello Ninja, my name’s Pixal! What’s yo-” Just as they were hitting their stride, the chicken burst through the back doors of the monastery wearing one of the spare costumes, and clucking away! They could have gotten away with it too, had she not knocked-over one of the lights causing it to break. Kai shot a kick glance to check the damage, but then Jay screamed and zapped them with his lightning!

“KAI” Pixal shouted as she pushed him out of the way. The good part was that Jay’s attack missed...but then Kai looked up and realized that his lightning just set a large swath of the fake cobwebs they’d put up on fire!

“GYAAAAAHHH!” He shouted as he tried to control the flames, but in his hurry, he’d accidentally spread the fire over more of the cobwebs!

“Nya, help us!” Pixal cried out as she sprinted for the fire extinguisher. Before anyone else could even react, Nya had pulled as much water from who knows where, and had doused the flames before they could spread any further. Kai let out a sigh of relief as he heard the hiss. But before he say anything else, he felt a hand spin him around, and found himself staring up into the very annoyed eyes of his sister.

“Okay, that’s it! We are never leaving the two of you alone again, period!”

#Ninjago #Ninjago Kai #Ninjago Pixal #Kai Smith #Pixal Borg #Phosphorus #Drabble #Drabble Prompts

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theglitterypages · 3 years ago

Text

Title: Brat

Pairings: levi x fem! Reader

Summary: Instead of Titans, vampires are the one causing horrors in towns, Survey Corps are the vampire slayers who stayed out every night to protect the town together with the Garrison. You accidentally stayed past curfew because you missed your bus. (Time setting in modern times)

Warnings: None

Word count: 2000+

Typographical and grammatical errors ahead!

*****

The sky is already dark, the pale crescent moon shone like a silvery claw in the night sky. The wind was howling as you walk alone, it's not ideal and it's not comfortable to be alone in the streets. You look around you, you couldn't help but shiver as your eyes settled at the big ass trees. It's damn scary.

You can already see your Mother's angry face as she waits for you at home. It's already past curfew, not everyone is brave enough to stay outside their houses at this time of the night, not when there are vampires lurking all over the town.

You silently prayed that the Garrison deployed troops to patrol in this part of the street and if you're lucky enough you hope that the Survey Corps are also around to kill vampires since they're the ones expert in doing so.

The cold wind slapped your face and you shivered, you hugged yourself and held the strap of your sling bag tightly, you still failed to sight any uniformed men around, they're probably late in patrolling again or they already left. Either way, you're in big trouble now.

“Need someone to accompany you, little kitten?” says a deep bloodcurdling voice. Your blood ran cold as you stopped dead on your tracks, you couldn't see where the hell was that voice came from but it's damn near. ”You are a fool to stay outside. Wanting to get eaten aren't you?” that was when a man wearing a black shirt appeared out of the dark part of the street.

“I can already smell your blood from where I stood, I wonder if they taste as delicious as you look.”

You took a step back, both knees trembling as the man slowly close your distance. Given that the man is a vampire—you can see his fangs, you're much slower than him, you focused on your peripheral vision, if you'd run towards the woods, it would be more dangerous, other vampires are probably in there waiting for their preys.

You cussed mentally, before running as fast as you could while you scream at the top pf your lungs, hoping that somebody would hear you. You occasionally look back to see the vampire smiling at you coldly, he's enjoying the chase, purposely running after you in a slow manner so you would get tired and give up but there's no way you'd willingly let him suck off every ounce of your blood.

As you kept on running away from the hideous vampire you suddenly bumped into someone, you gasped in horror, thinking that it was another vampire but you saw a short man wearing a Survey Corps uniform with a light gray button up shirt underneath it along with a white ascot.

He's hot not gonna lie.

“You're a stupid bastard for choosing to hunt while the Survey Corps is around.”

When you looked back at the vampire you can already see the terrified look in his eyes, slowly stepping back from you and the man. “Petra, take this girl somewhere safe. We'll be questioning her later for staying outside at this time of the night.” a short woman with blonde hair and brown eyes appeared, wearing the same uniform that the man wears. She offered her hand to you and you gladly took it so you could stand up, wanting to get away from the danger.

The woman took you somewhere far enough from the short man and the vampire but still near enough to hear whatever they are talking about. “Is it okay that you left him there?" You asked the woman named Petra, she laughed at your question as she shrugged her shoulders. “I would be more scared of that Vampire's fate. Captain Levi's not an easy guy, he has killed hundreds of vampires.” your mouth gaped open at the way she spoke so fondly of the man, you deduced that she's crushing hard on him but who wouldn't? He's looking like a full course meal, he'd probably be arrested for killing all the ladies because of that face.

But that wasn't your business, your eyes went back to the man and the vampire, the vampire was obviously frightened yet he still stood in front of Levi who was calmly holding his swords in both his hands, his green hooded cloak danced with the wind.

Levi smirked at the vampire, “You're not gonna piss your pants right now, are you?” he stepped forward and looked at the vampire with his dull gray eyes, “Don't you even dare think of running.” after that, the vampire already ran away while Levi chased him with ease, his outstanding skills in using vertical maneuvering equipment evidently shows as he chased down the vampire.

When he landed in front of the vampire, he gave him a cold smirk, “What makes you think that you can escape from me?” the vampire charged himself towards Levi but Levi swiftly avoided his blow, he kicked his knees and stepped on his back. “You will see where your boastfulness would bring you, Ackerman.” Levi flipped the vampire over and pointed his sword at his heart, his foot firmly pressed against his stomach, making him incapable of moving.

“Shut up and die.”

He struck his sword on the vampire's heart, killing him instantly, it only took seconds for him to turn into ashes, Levi boredly placed his sword back to its place as he quielty walked away from the scene heading back to where you are.

Your knees quivered when he stopped in front of you, you are short yourself and he's still an inch taller than you, despite of the not so big height difference you couldn't help but be intimidated as his dull gray eyes pierced onto your soul. “Captain, we should interrogate her at the nearest headquarters, Commander Erwin would—” Levi raised his hand to stopped Petra from talking, “There's no need for that. This brat's parents are probably looking for her now.” he said in a monotone.

“Captain Levi!”

Your head snapped towards the direction of the voices you heard, you see four men running as they shout Levi's name over and over but as they got closer you've come to recognize one of them. “Eren?!” you shouted when he finally stopped in front of you. “Y/N?! What are you doing in here?! You're the one attacked by a vampire?!” he shouted as he held both of your shoulders, shaking you violently.

Eren is a friend of yours, you met him because of his parents, you two knew each other since you were kids. “Are you okay?! Did that vampire do anything bad to you?” he looked at you from head to foot before shaking you again.

Before you could even scold him, Levi's hand flew to the back of his head. Eren winced as he rubbed the sore spot, staring at his Captain with wide eyes.

“The vampire wasn't even able to touch her loud brat, you're the one making so much damage. She'd probably lose more of her brain cells because of how violent you shook her.” Levi deadpanned.

Eren blinked twice as he pouted, you suddenly felt Levi held your elbow and turned you so you could face him. “Before we let you go, what the fuck are you doing outside? You could've been one of the corpse we'd take at the town's morgue.” You frowned at him as you removed his hand on your elbow, “I was at the school library, I missed the last bus. I got no choice but to walk.” Levi crossed his arms over his chest as he narrowed his eyes at you.

Gunther slowly pulled back Petra away from you and Levi, “He looks so pissed.” Eren whispered worriedly as he stood beside Eld. Oluo snickered beside Eren before leaning in to whisper, “He always look like that, kid. Get used to it.” Eren gulped and his eyes settled at you and Levi once more.

“Are you even thinking? Troops are dying everyday to save this town and here you are, roaming the streets past curfew as if offering yourself to the vampires. What kind of stupidity is this?”

You crossed your arms over your chest, imitating his pose as you raise your chin up. “Look, I'm thankful that you saved my life but you better watch your mouth, Shorty." Gunther, Eld, Oluo, Eren and Petra coughed to surpress their laughter. They never heard anyone talk back to their captain the way you do and it was very amusing.

“Did you just call me, Shorty?” he tilted his head looking at you from head to toe before smirking deviously, “You're not the one to talk.” he insulted back, his grey eyes staring into yours.

You gasped. “Are we done now, shorty? My Mom's probably looking for me now. I have no time for your childish shits.” the man is hot but he's getting on your nerves, those gray eyes are mesmerizing but he's too much to handle.

Levi was amused, it was the very first time that someone bravely insulted him back, as much as his pride was hurt at the shorty comment he commends you for entertaining him. It was fun to have someone shot back insults at him, his comrades are always afraid to talk back to him but you, you're different, very different.

“Did somebody ever told you that you're such a brat?”

“Did somebody ever told you that you're a dick?”

Eren stepped in between the two of you, he slowly pushed you away from Levi as he whispered at you, “I'll take you home, we have to get away from here as soon as possible.” you grimaced, “What? He insulted me first!” you complained but Eren shook his head at you, telling you to stop talking.

He's not really ready to face Levi's wrath, not when he just got kicked by his captain few days ago, it was painful as fuck.

He knew Levi wouldn't dare hit a girl but no shit Sherlock the heated argument between the two of you might escalate more and he doesn't know how it would end but he's sure it wouldn't end really well.

“Captain, I'll be meeting you at the headquarters, I just gotta take Y/N home.” Eren smiled awkwardly.

Levi shook his head firmly as he took a step forward to pull Eren away from you. “You have to stay with them, Eren. You know exactly why, I'll take her home.” Eren's eyes widened as he hold onto Levi's arms. “Captain, my friend was just joking about everything she said.” Levi's eyes settled on Eren's hands that are clutched onto his sleeve.

“If I saw that there's a dirt in my sleeve because of your filthy hand, you'll sleep at the basement.”

Eren immediately let go of Levi's sleeves. He's afraid for what might happen if Levi would be the one to accompany you to your home but he's more afraid of his own fate, you're a strong independent woman, he's damn sure you can handle yourself.

“Wait right here. Watch out for vampires.” Levi ordered.

You stared up at him as his bangs got blown by the wind, he looks so good with that undercut, those gray eyes are attractive too but you also noticed the dark circles around it, he's probably sleep deprived, given that he works in the Survey corps. Poor little beaitiful thing, wait, what? “What, brat? You gonna stay here staring at me or we'll get going so you could go home?” you snapped out of your thoughts and rolled your eyes.

“Ugh. Fine, bye Eren.” you waved at your friend and he waved back with an awkward smile. “Bless you, Y/N.” Petra couldn't help but stare at you and Levi with genuine shock written all over her face, why Levi is insisting to take you home? He's not the type to do such thing.

“Captain we could—” before she could suggest that she'll walk you home herself, Levi already talked over her. “Save it, Petra. Stay here and wait for me to get back.” he commanded before he gently pushed you so you could start walking.

The first few minutes of walking with Levi was filled by awful silence but he was the first one to talk.

“Just so you know, once we spotted you roaming the streets past curfew again, I'll bring you to Erwin.”

“This is the first time I stayed out past curfew. Not doing it again.” you snickered and Levi let out a low chuckle.

“You better keep your words, brat.” he whispered as he raked his fingers in his jet black hair, as the two of you walk in silence again, you couldn't help but observe him in your peripheral view.

Levi is quite short but his physique is well developed, the man has the charm to make every girls crazy just by the way he walks like he owns the streets, he's attractive only if he's not so sassy.

You snorted at the thought and Levi's gaze landed at you, “Still cursing me in your head?" He smirked, triggering you to talk back to him but you chose not to, you were too preoccupied because of his scent, he smells like fresh soap with a calming aroma of manliness.

Sweet Lord, he smells so damn good.

Levi noticed how your cheeks slowly turned to crimson red, he doesn't have any idea why but he assumed that you're red because you're so pissed because of him. He found himself staring at you for so long, as you walk with your head slightly down, your hair freely sway with the cold breeze, its vanilla scent tickles his nostrils and he almost cussed underneath his breath as he inhaled your feminine scent.

“Ahm, Captain...we're already here in front of our house.”

Levi jerked out of his thoughts and he stared at the house in front of him. “Hmm, you should go inside.” he told you as he pointed the brown metal gate of your house, you awkwardly held onto the strap of your sling bag, shifting your weight from foot to foot as you stared at Levi.

“Well, ahm. Sorry for acting like a brat earlier and thank you for saving me.” you told him in a low voice as you looked down trying to hide the blush creeping in your cheeks.

Levi found it adorable, he clicked his tongue as he clasped his hands together. “It's fine, go inside your house, brat. You better be home before curfew on the next days and don't spend much time with Eren.” you looked up at him, confused why you were being told not to spend too much time with your best friend.

“He's my best friend.”

“Just follow my orders, he doesn't need a distraction in our duties.”

Levi wouldn't be able to say that Eren is now a vampire, it's a classfied information and it shall stay within the members of the Survey Corps but he has to warn you, Eren is unstable every time he'll turn into a vampire, they're still looking for ways to turn him back to normal.

“Fine. I gotta go inside, thank you.” you gave him a small smile and Levi somehow froze in his position but he managed to nod at you as he turned his back, ready to walk away but you called after him.

“Levi!”

When Levi looked back, you were already standing in front of him, his lips inches away from yours, he breathed heavily but you didn't notice. You just fished something out of your pocket, you took Levi's hand and placed a pack of wet wipes in his hand.

“There's a dirt on your sleeve. You better wipe it, it looks filthy.” You winked before running towards the gate of your house, opening it silently as you walked to the main door calling out your Mother's name while Levi was stucked from where he stood.

His eyes was fixated on the pack of wet wipes and slowly, he smiled at the sight of it but his smile quickly faded when his gaze landed on his sleeves, it was indeed dirty, Eren's dirty hands left a mark on it.

“Fuck it, Eren.” he growled.

#levi x reader #levi ackerman fanfiction #captain levi #levi aot #attack on titan #levi attack on titan #levi x y/n #levi ackerman #levi x you #fanfic #aot fanfiction #aot x you #aot x y/n #eren yaegar #survey corps

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maulusque · 4 years ago

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WHAT IF MAUL KIDNAPPED ANAKIN RIGHT OFF OF TATOOINE

(I started writing this and then it got out of hand and now it’s 3:30 in the morning, rest of it’s under the break so i don’t monopolize your dash)

So for whatever combination of reasons, Maul spits out the kool-aid and gets really disenchanted with Sidious a lot earlier than in canon. He starts wondering things like “why is he not telling me his master plan if i’m so important to it?” and “why do i get nothing more than vague promises of power sometime in the future, when i should be guaranteed a position as his second-in-command, after all I’ve done for this guy?” and “why does he treat me like i’m disposable, and then constantly tell me i’m crucial for his plans?”

and he starts thinking things like “hey wait a minute, none of that childhood torture made me better at anything sith-related, it just gave me crippling trauma that actually impairs my capacity for self-control and incredible violence” and (possibly due to his experiences at Orsis Academy) “oh whack looks like kids learn a lot better and faster when they’re, like, having fun? Whatever ‘fun’ is?”

and anyway by the time he gets to tatooine with orders to “find that stoner jedi and kick his ass”, Maul is pretty annoyed at his master. And when he senses not one, not two, but THREE powerful force-presences on Tatooine, one of which vastly eclipses any other force presence he’s ever felt, and belongs to a nine-year-old slave boy, Maul gets an idea. You know, (he thinks), his master sure would love to get his hands on a force-baby like that. Master Sidious sure would be evilly thrilled to have an extremely powerful nine-year-old delivered directly to his doorstep on coruscant, with the jedi having to do all the heavy lifting of training the kid. Master Sidious would probably want nothing more than to have this kid be taken in by the Jedi, so he can start grooming a new apprentice.

And Maul, full of spite and an as-yet-undiscovered need to adopt every force-sensitive in sight, decides to deprive Sidious of a potential apprentice. He follows Anakin to Naboo (in this universe, Anakin still wins the podrace, still wins his own freedom), and, after the fighting is over, sees a prime window of opportunity, and kidnaps Anakin right out from under the Jedi’s nose.

(In this universe, Obi-Wan does not cut Darth Maul in half and dump him down the garbage chute- Maul, unwilling to do his master’s bidding any longer, doesn’t go full out against Qui-Gon, doesn’t kill him, and Obi-Wan doesn’t get that grief-and-rage filled boost that helped him dismember Maul last time. The fight ends, the Jedi are convinced that Maul is dead, and Naboo is freed).

Once Maul has the kid, since he’s a pragmatic guy, he also returns to Tatooine and takes the kid’s mom. Maul doesn’t know how to cook, do laundry, tie shoes, or any of that shit. He doesn’t want to have to PARENT the kid, he just wants to train him.

Maul has zero money, and also zero subtlety, so he stomps into Watto’s shop, grabs him by the neck, and says “The boy's mother is coming with me. You will disable her slave chip and let her leave unharmed, or I will squeeze your head off.” Watto complies. For Anakin, this is his first real impression of Maul- storming the junk shop and threatening his former master for the freedom of Anakin’s mother.

Maul is determined to do a better job training Anakin than Sidious did training Maul. Because FUCK Sidious. Maul can be a WAY better Sith than Sidious ever allowed him to be. And since Maul is slowly realizing how... unhelpful... the way he was raised was, he’s determined to figure out how to do it better.

So he reads. He reads training manuals, child psychology books, teaching books, studies on motivation and performance, anything he can get his nerdy little hands on. He learns that frightened children don’t perform well. He learns about “trauma”, and how “trauma” makes it hard to control your emotions sometimes. Well, you can’t have THAT in your ultimate sith apprentice. Okay, so no scaring Anakin and no traumatizing him. Maul quickly realizes that literally everything he does frightens Anakin or his mom, and frightening Anakin’s mom also frightens Anakin (cut him some slack, he’s literally never been in a positive relationship, Maul has no model for any behavior other than “evil abuser” and “subservient slave”).

Maul is not an idiot. He knows he’s not doing it right. He’s reluctant to start teaching Anakin ANYTHING until he knows he won’t accidentally damage his precious spite-apprentice. So he mostly ignores the kid while he reads and learns.

He also observes. Specifically, he observes Shmi Skywalker. Somehow, she seems to be able to interact with Anakin without scaring him. She can even tell him what to do without scaring him. She can teach and correct him without scaring him. And she never physically hurts him at all. Maul is kind of blown away- he didn’t even know it was possible to interact with people like that? HOW does she DO it???

So Maul watches and learns. He practices. Shmi helps, guides him, tells him when he messes up and tells him how to do it better. Maul gets a lot better at restraining his murderous urges. Turns out, if you immediately kill everyone who annoys you, it’s hard to ask them for advice after. The other person Maul gets pointers from is C3PO, the protocol droid the kid dragged along. Maul understands 3PO better than he understands Shmi and Anakin. 3PO is a droid. Maul was raised by a droid. Maul knows how to talk with 3PO, whereas talking with Shmi or Anakin feels like wandering around in a fog full of landmines.

So anyway, Maul and 3PO become unlikely friends, and, as Maul, determined to out-parent Sidious in every conceivable way, learns more and more social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills, he truly comprehends how fucked up his own childhood was. There’s rage. There’s grief. There’s murderous desire for vengeance. But there’s also Anakin. Who would be scared if Maul smashed the ship or killed random people to vent his anger. Anakin, who needs something called a “positive role model”, who needs to be taught how to use the Force, and who needs the adults around him to have their shit together. There’s also Shmi, who makes him soup and hot chocolate when he’s feeling bad, and tells him off for breaking things, and who helps him get better at being a real person, and who doesn’t seem to want anything from him other than a general expectation of not hurting her or her son. So Maul deals. He grows. He heals, slowly. There’s setbacks, and gains. And somewhere in there, he starts teaching Anakin how to use the Force.

The problem is, Maul learned to access the Force first through fear and anger. Turns out, it’s really hard to teach someone fundamentals of force usage via fear and anger without first having to traumatize them. So right away, Maul hits a barrier. He doesn’t have any clue how to teach Anakin a different way though. He needs help.

But also, FUCK the jedi. NO WAY is Maul asking the Jedi for help, he hates the Jedi. Maul is still a Sith, he’s just a new, better kind of Sith, the kind that trains apprentices who are gonna kick WAY MORE ASS and be HEALTHY WELL-ADJUSTED PEOPLE while doing it (let him dream, ok?). So Maul starts hauling Shmi and Anakin around the galaxy, seeking out any non-Jedi Force-users they can, to learn Force techniques that the Sith didn’t teach Maul.

They spend time with the Guardians on Jedha, with those weird duck-people from that one episode with Jar-Jar’s girlfriend, with some wacky monks on a tiny island in the ass-end of nowhere, and even some time with a long-lost sith cult in a box system in the middle of the Unknown Regions. Maul learns. Anakin learns. Maul uses what he learns from the other force-users, combines it with what he knows, and teaches Anakin even more. The Jedi and the Sith are really the only two groups who really use the force for Big Impressive Things, like telekinesis and lightning and whatnot, so while the other force groups would have a lot to teach them both, they wouldn’t really be able to teach Anakin how to levitate something. And you can’t be the kick-assiest, bestest Sith Apprentice Ever if you can’t levitate shit. So Maul takes takes all these new techniques, like “being calm and chill when you meditate instead of super pissed off” and “using the Force while not being filled with incredible rage” and “mindfulness techniques” and “who knew you could do cool stuff like floating rocks without having to exhaust yourself by hating everything in existence, including yourself” and applies them to the skills and methods he already has. He and Anakin have to do a lot of fumbling and exploring and mistake-making, but they figure it out. And Anakin learns. And he kicks ass.

When Anakin is 11, Maul hauls him off to Ach-To to dig a crystal out of the roots of an ancient tree. He tells Anakin to hold it and meditate, to let his emotions rise around him, to feed them, to pull them through the crystal, let it resonate, let it take on the shape of his strongest feelings. After all, that is how Maul was trained to bleed his crystals. Maul’s pain and fear and anger yielded him red crystals.

Anakin comes out with yellow. Determination, fierce protectiveness, drive, hunger for justice, righteous fury. That is Anakin’s lightsaber.

Anakin grows up, planet-hopping with his Mom and Uncle Maul in a beat-up freighter with under-the-hood enhancements out the ass (Maul ditched the Scimitar right after Tatooine so his master couldn’t instantly track him down, and Maul and Anakin are both huge mechanics nerds and bond over things like “but what if you put ANOTHER PLASMA CORE IN THE ENGINE”, so this ship is, uh, certainly some sort of thing). Anakin grows up learning a hundred different Force traditions- just about every major Force tradition in the Galaxy (except for Jedi), and more than a few obscure ones. He grows up, tinkering with his droid, learning Juyo from Maul and how to sew a button from his mom. He grows up, beholden to two destinies only: “Help me take down Sidious, because he’s an asshole and a shitty Sith Lord” and “do whatever the fuck you want, because you are a Sith and no one gets to tell you what to do” (”except me.” Shmi interrupts. “Sith Lords still have a bedtime.” “Sith Lords still have a bedtime,” Maul amends, having no desire to repeat what happened when he encouraged a ten-year-old Anakin to ignore all the rules on purpose).

And what Anakin wants to do is what he’s always wanted to do- go back to Tatooine and free the slaves. Maul thinks that a big project like that would be an excellent learning opportunity for Anakin. He also wants Anakin to succeed, so he sits him down and talks logistics. How do you free the slaves without hundreds of slave owners detonating their chips when they hear what is happening? How do you keep them free once you do that? How do you get them jobs, clothes, food, houses? What about the ones who want to leave Tatooine? What about the ones who want to stay? And what about the economic upheaval that will happen when you deprive a whole planet of its cheapest source of labor? When Anakin is fourteen, they start planning.

When Anakin is eighteen, they make their move. Anakin, coordinating with Shmi, who returned to Tatooine three years earlier to organize things on the ground (living with a woman named Beru Whitesun, who is a gateway to the Freedom Path network), activates several massive orbital EMP devices, frying every electrical device on the planet, including slave chips. (The EMPs came from a pirate friend of his mom’s, who seems to do whatever she wants as long as she makes him hot chocolate). All over the planet, lights go out, slave chips fry, and radios go silent. And Shmi’s agents get to work. Ordinary citizens all over tatooine grab their rifles and head out. They meet up with others in their settlement, and the teams sweep the area, following a plan devised by Skywalker and Whitesun. They systematically visit every house in every settlement, city, spaceport, and town that is known to house slaves, and tell the slaves to grab their families and most treasured possessions and follow them.

(Tatooine is a sparsely populated planet- you can count the major settlements on two hands. If it weren’t, this would never have worked.)

Not many slaveowners put up much of a resistance- fifty angry masked people pointing guns in your face tend to make you compliant. The only slaveowner who puts up more than a token resistance is Jabba the Hutt. His resistance, however, lasts about thirty seconds, before Anakin cuts off his head.

Maul meets Anakin at Jabba’s palace, where he’s rounding up the last of Jabba’s cronies.

“No trouble?” Maul asks.

“Nope,” Anakin replies. “You?”

“None.” Maul said. Turns out, it’s like, super easy to take down an entire criminal organization when you can turn up to a meeting of the Hutt family heads, kill them all, and waltz out past all their security forces without breaking a sweat. (Seriously, it’s kind of hilarious how Maul is literally just that good).

“The slaves here are freed?”

“Yep,” says Anakin. Then frowns. “Hold on...” He senses a presence. Big, hulking, simple, and starving. He can sense that, whatever it is, it hasn’t seen the sunlight or been able to move freely in years.

So anyway, that’s how Anakin turns up at Mos Espa at first sunrise, riding on the back of Jabba the Hutt’s pet rancor. “Who’s a good girl,” Anakin says, scratching behind her ear nubs. “You are!” And she is a good girl. Padme (”I just think it sounds like a nice name, you know?”) is very good at dispersing angry slaveowners who look like they might start rioting.

The slaves freed overnight have been gathered together at pre-designated safe zones-mostly warehouses or large buildings that Shmi has been buying up over the years for exactly this purpose.

(The slaves living in remote settlements, at moisture farms and homesteads, didn’t get a visit from the freedom teams. However, Shmi had a plan for them too. She has made overtures to the Tusken tribes. Once she managed to negotiate her way into speaking to one of the leaders without getting killed, she sold them a story, a dream. A revolution. Free the slaves. Transform Tatooine. She doesn’t promise the Tuskens to expel humans from the planet entirely. She promises them equal rights under the law (she also promises the existence of laws in the first place). She promises them the right to raise Banthas, the right to traverse their ancestral lands and the return of sacred sites taken from them, the right to trade, the right to control who passes over their lands. She promises them the right to water and shade. And, she promises them half the seats on the ruling council she plans to set up. And so, on the night the EMPs blow, Tusken raiders visit every homestead on Tatooine (again, there’s only a few hundred, a thousand at most), and kidnap the slaves. Perhaps not the most reassuring experience for enslaved peoples who have been taught their entire lives to fear the Tuskens, and not without reason, but, nevertheless, it is freedom).

As the new day dawns- Tatooine’s first dawn as a free planet- Anakin, Maul, and Shmi know that the easy part is over. Now, they have to house tens of thousands of people currently cooped up in warehouses with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They have to establish and keep iron-tight control over the planet and its settlements, and quash any violent reprisals before they gain momentum. They also have to completely rebuild an economy completely upended by the overnight emancipation.

However, Shmi’s not the only one who’s been busy for the past few years. While Shmi was on Tatooine, planning a revolution, Anakin and Maul were traversing the galaxy, gathering resources, using the Patented Maul Method (TM)- breaking into the headquarters of powerful organizations and threatening to kill everybody in charge unless they did what they said.

As the second sun rises, ships begin arriving in Tatooine’s orbit. Pop-up housing is dropped onto the outskirts of Tattooine’s settlements, the kind that mining companies use to set up new bases on mineral-rich asteroids. The accommodations are small and sparse, but each family has a kitchen, bathroom, beds, and private space. Huge generators are hooked up to cool the new housing. Anakin knows that the already-existing slave quarters, made of stone with no windows and mostly underground- are already built to keep the occupants cool, but he refuses to make the former slave population live in slave quarters. Some of the freed people are moved into Jabba’s old palace, some into buildings abandoned by rich business owners who fled the planet when they saw what was happening. Food, water, medicine, clothes, books, toys, tools, and shoes are deposited. (the Republic’s equivalent of the FBI had been utterly baffled when Galaxy’s three biggest criminal organizations started moving cargo that looked less like a drug trade and more like a disaster relief mission).

Anakin walks among the newly freed slaves, reassuring them- yes, you are free. Yes, you will be fed and housed and clothed as long as you need it. Yes, we will try to find your child/husband/wife/mother who was sold years ago. Yes, you can go home, you can do whatever you want.

He also asks for volunteers. And he gets them. Hardly anyone would say no to the chance to work with the Skywalker, who once was a slave like them, but freed himself and returned, who freed the slaves in one night of glory, and appeared at sunrise riding a rancor.

Anakin sends out messengers, all across the planet. “Tatooine is a free world,” they say. “All slaves are hereby freed, by order of the He who Walks in the Sky. Any slaveowners who, by their own free will, turn over their detonators will not be harmed. Any who resist, will be.” Not many resist.

At the end of that first day, as the suns are setting, once the freed peoples of Tatooine are fed, and given water, and sheltered, Maul comes to Anakin.

“I am proud of you.” He says. “You have come into your power, you have mastered yourself, and so have mastered the Force. You have the freedom and the power to do anything you choose. You are no longer my apprentice. Lord Skywalker, you are a true Sith Master.” Anakin pulls him into a hug. He maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe cries a little bit. Maul maybe also feels mildly annoyed that Anakin is a full head taller than him now.

(Sidious would be truly, utterly offended at Maul’s criteria for Sith-Lord-ness. “THAT’S NOT SITH” he would have said. “THAT’S BARELY EVEN DARK SIDE ADJACENT, YOU ARE DILUTING OUR THOUSAND YEAR HERITAGE-” but Maul wouldn’t care about Sidious’ stupid opinions, anyway).

And Anakin and Shmi get to work. They employ the newly freed people of Tatooine, constructing permanent houses, tearing down slave markets, building critical infrastructure. Anakin pays them more than a living wage, thanks to the extremely deep pockets of Crimson Dawn. He brings in doctors and teachers, and guarantees healthcare and education for all who want it (whenever one of Crimson Dawn’s higher-ups says “wait, why are we dumping massive amounts of money into this one random-ass planet?” Darth Maul just casually sidles up behind them with his lightsaber until they remember that he can literally just show up anywhere, at anytime, and kill them unless they do what he says. If Maul’s busy, he sends 3PO instead- 3PO’s been outfitted with about ten times as much weaponry as is legal, and can be very convincing when he wants to be).

While Anakin works on infrastructure and supporting the freed peoples of Tatooine, and unfucking the economic trainwreck they caused, Shmi and Beru work on the government. They write down a few, very basic rules-Tatooine is to be ruled by a council of people, half of whom will come from the Tusken tribes, all of which shall be selected by fair and free election. All citizens of Tatooine shall have the right to vote in these elections, and the right to vote shall be guaranteed to all- except for those who have ever owned or sold a sentient being. (it was a huge debate in the Lars-Whitesun-Skywalker household, this matter of restricting voting rights. In the end, it was decided that slaveowners, and ONLY slaveowners, were to be the sole exception for universal suffrage). Every citizen of Tatooine is guaranteed access to food, medicine, and water, and has the right to have their grievances addressed by the council.

Shmi works quickly to gather her council- she knows she has to do it fast, to prove to the Tuskens that she is as good as her word. The first elections are chaotic, and perhaps not completely non-violent, but in the end, there is a council of twenty representatives, with Shmi Skywalker representing Mos Espa.

The Council proceeds to have raging- and occasionally violent- debates about the structure of their future government. What rights to guarantee citizens. Should they have a court system? What about a financial system? How are they to guarantee water, food, and medicine to everyone? What even are taxes?

The Rebuilding of Tatooine is long, and hard, and contentious. There are arguments and rage and fighting- the repatriation of traditional Tusken lands is especially fraught. But Shmi promised, and so she makes it happen (Anakin and Padme may have helped too). Maul, for his part, keeps training Anakin, and keeps managing the criminal underworld with a careful balance of death threats and actual death, but mostly stays out of the way of Anakin’s Senior Project.

Soon, Anakin is able to re-purpose the pop-up housing, since most people have moved into traditional Tatooine-built homes, suited to the environment. The newly restructured economy is tentatively taking its first steps, and Tatooine’s baby government is becoming less and less dependent on intergalactic criminal funding (partially thanks to Anakin confiscating the entirety of Jabba’s personal fortune). He spends a lot of time in Council meetings, trying not to scream at people while also trying to stop Padme from eating them. The Council debates what is next for Tatooine, and eventually, they vote to petition the Republic for membership. Tatooinians, as a people, including the Tuskens, are fiercely independant, but, as Shmi points out, joining the Republic would guarantee them to certain things like humanitarian aid, a voice in decisions affecting interplanetary trade routes and taxation, legal legitimacy and the right to call on the Republic for aid should their sovereignty ever be threatened. Most importantly, slavery is illegal on all Republic planets, which means that if any slave-owning organizations ever pushed in on Tatooine, there would be another (much better funded) organization to call on to help quash it.

The Republic requires that a petitioning planet’s head of state visit the Senate on Coruscant to ask the Senate for entry into the Republic. The Council, grumbling, re-jiggers their constitution to allow for a “chief councilor”, and promptly elect Anakin to the position (”Fuck me,”) Anakin says. Maul laughs at him, then sobers and tells him to be careful on Coruscant (”My former master lives there.” he says. “Mind your shields, and do not let him know your true nature. You are not yet ready to take him on, and you have your planet and your people to think of.” “Yes, Uncle Maul.” Anakin says. “I will be careful.”).

Anakin shows up in the Galactic Senate, sandy robes, uncombed hair, and half smirk on his face. “I am Anakin Skywalker, free person of Tatooine,” he says. He presents the case for Tatooine’s admittance to the Republic in a booming, confident voice, drawing on his inner strength- his righteous anger and determination to ensure his people’s future- to keep his voice from wavering.

There are grumbles. Muttering. No Senator wants to be the one to blatantly say “no”- it’s a sort of miracle story, Tatooine, the little planet that rose up and threw of the shackles of slavery and now wants to join the Republic- the exact sort of mythos that the Republic itself is built on. It’s bad PR to vote against that little planet. But at the same time, Tatooine is a sandy, useless dustball that’ll need fiscal support from the Senate, with nothing to offer in terms of economic value. Many Senators are debating with themselves, not whether or not to say “no”, but how to vote “no” without losing ten points in approval ratings.

Until the Senator from Naboo, a diminutive woman who somehow reminds Anakin of his rancor, stands up. She gives an impassioned, off-the-cuff speech, reminding the Senate of how her own planet had thrown off the shackles of oppression not ten years ago, how the Republic was founded by planets like Tatooine, and how, most importantly, they had no legal basis to deny them entry, and if the Senate voted no, Naboo’s lawyers would litigate the issue six ways from taungsday- which, due to a clause in the Senate’s constitution that forbade them from passing legislation while the issue of a planet’s admittance to the Republic was on the floor, would effectively paralyze the Senate until the courts made a ruling. And, as Padme made sure to emphasize, if the court’s decision was not favorable, she would appeal. She could feasibly stop the Senate from doing anything for years, if necessary.

Tatooine is admitted to the Republic.

“Two Senators,” Anakin demands. “In order for my people to be fairly represented, my planet requires two Senators.” When complaints are made, Jar-Jar Binks threatens to explain the complicated dynamics of a planet attempting to grapple with a colonial past. He doesn’t have to. Tatooine gets its two Senators.

Anakin meets with Senator Amidala in her office, to thank her.

“Of course,” she said. “I remember a little boy who helped free my planet- how could I not help you when you needed it?”

“Uhh, thanks, yeah, that’s, really nice of you. Like your hair. Which is nice. In an objective sort of way,” Anakin says, because there is no universe in which Anakin is not a complete idiot in front of Padme. “I named my rancor after you,” he blurts.

Before Anakin is scheduled to leave Coruscant, the Jedi send a knight to scope out the new planetary leader. Obi-Wan Kenobi shows up at Anakin’s hotel room, and goes “Oh. It’s.... you.”

“Obi-Wan!” Anakin grins. He only knew him for about two days when he was nine, but he still greets him like an old friend, like a brother. They fall into easy, teasing conversation. “I thought you were dead, I confess, after you disappeared from Naboo,” Obi-Wan admits. “I am truly sorry that I was unable to fulfill Qui-Gon’s promise to train you as a Jedi Knight.”

“That’s ok,” Anakin waves his hand dismissively. “I got trained as a Sith instead.” Then he freezes. Oops. He was not supposed to say that. Maul would be so disappointed in him.

“Beg pardon?” Obi-Wan says.

“I, uhh, got trained, as a, uh, sift...er? Instead? A sand sifter? I sift sand for a living?”

“You said Sith.”

“No I didn’t, I definitely said sift.”

“No, you said Sith.”

“I definitely did not.”

Anakin changes the subject, and Obi-Wan lets it drop. He’ll tell the Council, of course, but he honestly cannot fathom the concept of this kid being a Sith. He senses nothing Dark about him- well, at least no more dark than is present in any sentient. Besides, it’s not like there are any Sith Lords around anymore, ever since he killed Maul (luckily, Obi-Wan doesn’t see the picture in Anakin’s wallet, a candid shot 3PO took in the cockpit of their family’s ship. Fifteen-year-old Anakin, at the controls, hyperbrake still on with his hands on the hyperdrive lever, Maul, standing behind him, hands gripping Anakin’s seat and face distorted half-way through a panic-induced rant about flight safety, and Shmi, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, laughter on her face and knitting needles in her hands).

Anakin contacts his mother, tells her the good news. The Council, moving with alacrity, elects Tatooine’s first Senators. And four days later, one year after the Dawn of Freedom, Senator Shmi Skywalker and Senator Ooutrigh (a Tusken warrior) of Tatooine arrive on Coruscant and address the Senate for the first time.

Of course, while Anakin has been growing up, planning for Tatooine’s future, and annoying the shit out of Maul, Palpatine’s own plans have continued apace. Barely four months after Tatooine is admitted to the Republic, Obi-Wan finds himself in an arena on Geonosis. The battle goes much differently this time, partially due to the fact that Anakin has retrofitted the cargo bay of his family’s ship to house Padme (the rancor, not the Senator), and descends onto the Arena sands just as Yoda and the Clone Troops arrive, and deposits both Padme’s (the rancor, and the Senator) into the melee.

“Hi, Obi-Wan!” Anakin calls, whipping out his lightsaber to deflect the hail of blaster bolts (Maul would disapprove, but Maul isn’t here, he’s ten clicks away, chasing down the Jedi dropout Sidious replaced him with).

“Anakin, what the FUCK” Obi-Wan says, staring at Chief Councilor Anakin Skywalker of Tatooine, riding a rancor and swinging an honest-to-Force yellow lightsaber.

“Master Yoda, what the FUCK” Anakin says, later, after the battle is over, when he finally gets Yoda to answer his questions about the clone troopers. “You found out about an entire-ass army of slave child soldiers commissioned AND PAID FOR by one of your own council members, and your reaction is ‘oh thank goodness, now we have an army?’ What the FUCK is WRONG with you?!” Yoda tries to explain to Councilor Skywalker that the situation was dire, they’d had no choice, but Councilor Skywalker just keeps repeating “AN ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS” at him. “No choice, we had,” Yoda says yet again.

“BULLSHIT, you had no choice!” Anakin yells. “You could have chosen to not use the entire army of slave child soldiers that you legally own!”

“Let Kenobi and the others die, you would have? Hmm?”

“PROBABLY, YEAH!” Anakin hollers (”Thanks,” mutters Obi-Wan). “Sometimes the choices you have all really suck, but you still have to make them! You can’t just pretend you didn’t have any options, you HAD OPTIONS, and you chose the one that involved using a SLAVE ARMY OF CHILD SOLDIERS.” He gestures behind him to the battlefield, where clone troopers and medics are moving amongst the bodies, white and red stark against the sand, tallying their dead brothers.

Yoda shakes his head. “emotional, you are, young Skywalker.” he said. “Cloud your judgement, your feelings do.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking emotional!” Anakin practically screams. “I have personal beef with slavery, so excuse me if I feel emotions about it. Your problem is that you’re able to use an ARMY OF SLAVE CHILD SOLDIERS and not feel bad about it! Your lack of emotions is clouding YOUR judgement!” He stomps off. Yoda shakes his head. Skywalker is young, and too close to the issue of slavery to really have perspective on it. He does not understand. It was a great loss to the Jedi Order when the Council rejected him, all those years ago- if he had been trained as a Jedi, he would have learned to put aside his emotions about slavery, and he would have understood why it was necessary now. If Anakin could have heard what Yoda was thinking, he would have turned right back around, picked Yoda up, and punted him like a limmie ball.

Anakin and Maul return to Tatooine. Maul offers to assassinate the entire Jedi Council, but Anakin says no. He’s still fuming about his conversation with Yoda. He knows he gets emotional. He knows that Yoda isn’t entirely wrong- he knows he lets his emotions cloud his judgement sometimes. It’s something he’s worked hard on, over the years, him and Maul. How to take a step back from the emotions howling in your head, and how to view the situation without them getting in the way. And what kinds of situations you should let your emotions guide you. Anakin thinks he’s damn well entitled to strong emotions about slavery.

Short of declaring war on the entire Jedi Order, Anakin doesn’t know what to do about the Republic’s slave army. The Tatooine Council releases a public condemnation of it, explicitly calling it slavery and calling for the clones to be freed. The Council seriously debates joining the Separatists, until Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor) and Shmi look in-depth at the Separatist Council, which is buried deep in the pockets of corporate interests. Shmi files a lawsuit, under the Republic’s anti-slavery legislation, suing for the freedom of the clones. It’s a battle of miserable inches, and meanwhile, the war rages.

With Dooku gone, Sidious’s only means of controlling the Separatists is through Grievous and Ventress, both of whom are loose cannons whose loyalty (and competence) he seriously doubts. It’s frustrating for him, and not necessarily better for the Jedi and their army (of slave child soldiers). Sidious needs to keep the war in careful balance, neither side gaining too much ground, to draw it out and grind the Jedi down and manipulate their public image until he can heap all the blame on them. Without Dooku to pass down his orders, he has no way of keeping a firm check on the Separatist Council, and the Seps are in serious danger of completely overrunning the Republic. The droid army is fifty times as many as the clones, and the Separatists have the Trade Federation, the Banking Clans, and all of the major military tech corporations on their side. Honestly, it’s a testament to the Jedi and the Clone Army that they haven’t lost the war in the first month.

Speaking of that first month, Anakin doesn’t spend long on uninvolved in the war. Scant weeks after Geonosis, the Separatist Army threatens to roll right over Tatooine on their way to gaining control of the Outer Rim Hyperlanes. Tatooine has no army, doesn’t even have a police force. It has no fleet, no orbital defenses, and the droid army headed their way has ten times more droids than there are guns on the planet. The Council faces a choice. Ask the Republic to send in the GAR to defend them- ask for an army of slaves to be sent to die on Tatooine, to stain the sand with enslaved blood so soon after Tatooine clawed her way to freedom, or do nothing, and almost certainly ensure the annihilation of Tatooine and her people. To die, or to live by the blood of slaves who died for you. It’s not a pretty choice.

In the end, the choice is taken away from them (and perhaps it’s a kindness, that they weren’t forced to choose, perhaps it’s the coward’s way out, but it is what it is). A GAR cruiser shows up in orbit, and the Council is hailed by a man identifying himself as Captain Rex, commanding officer of the 501st legion of the GAR.

“The Republic sent you here?” Anakin asks, incredulously.

“Well, not exactly.” Captain Rex hedges. “The 501st is due for leave on Kamino, but the hyperdrive was making funny noises, so we decided to stop off in the nearest Republic system to check it out.” Rex shrugs. “If a bunch of tinnies just so happen to show up, it’s not like we’ll just sit back and watch.”

“Why are you doing this?” Anakin asks the clone captain, once they’ve got him on planet and in the council room. He’s got a lump in his throat, and his eyes are stinging. The 501st has no Jedi on board, no natborn officers, and no orders to go to Tatooine. Rex and the 501st showed up here of their own free will. Because they wanted to. To defend Tatooine.

“Geonosis.” Rex says. “On Geonosis, you saved the lives of over two hundred of us. Including me. We couldn’t stand by and let your planet fall to the Separatists, Councilor Skywalker.”

After the battle, during the cleanup, when Tatooinians are passing through the rows of injured, giving out water- giving out life- Rex tells Anakin the other reason.

“We all know about Tatooine, sir.” He says, quietly. “A bunch of slaves who stood up and said “no,” and took their freedom.” He shrugs. “Stories like that, it gives us hope. For the future.” He fixes Anakin with a stare. “If we let that hope die, we die too. Tatooine cannot fall.”

That is the first time Anakin and Rex fight together. Somehow, when the 501st leaves Tatooine, Anakin goes with them- officially, as a consultant/observer, appointed at the request of Senator Skywalker to observe the GAR and monitor the health and wellbeing of the troopers. Unofficially, Anakin and Rex become a lethal team, making the 501st one of the most effective legions in the Galaxy. Anakin isn’t dumb. He knows he’s being a massive hypocrite, running around with an army of slave child soldiers. Rex, however, insists that it’s different.

“First of all, we asked you to come with us.” he says. “Second of all, it’s not like you staying behind would have made any difference in our situation. And besides, scrapping clankers isn’t the only reason I asked you to come with us.” Anakin raises an eyebrow.

And Rex introduces Anakin to his older brother, Cody, commander of the 212th (Anakin is happy to see Obi-Wan again, but appalled to meet Obi-Wan’s fourteen-year-old togruta padawan, because why would you put a CHILD in a warzone, in a COMMAND POSITION). And Cody brings Anakin in on The Plan. The clones will not remain slaves forever, and they will not wait for some elusive promise of gratitude after the war is over. They will take their freedom, and they will defend their own, and they’re asking Anakin, who freed the slaves of Tatooine, to help them do it.

“So basically, you want me on as a consultant.”

“Basically, yeah.” Cody says. “And also as a guy with a lightsaber who can leap fifty feet into the air and dodge blaster bolts. Those are always handy to have around.”

So Anakin and Rex and Cody, and Cody’s small circle of commanders, lay their plans. And in the meantime, there’s a war to fight. Shmi’s still on Tatooine, but Maul comes with Anakin and the 501st. He and Rex get along like a house on fire, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them- they do nothing but argue and needle each other. Rex sarcastically calls Maul “Commander Maul” because it pisses him off so much, and it catches on with the whole legion. Maul constantly mutters about murdering and/or poisoning Rex.

But after Ventress almost chokes Rex to death, and breaks into his mind to make him do her bidding, Maul doesn’t leave Rex alone for a week, and clutches his hand tightly in the medbay. Rex doesn’t mention it, so neither does Anakin.

Padme, on the other hand, makes no secret of how much she loves Rex (the Rancor, not the Senator, though she likes him too). Padme seems to have concluded that Rex is some sort of long-lost hatchling, and can be seen chasing Rex down the hangar bay, trying to corral him into the nest she’s constructed in the corner reserved for her. Rex gets used to surprise cuddles from a massive predator.

The Jedi Council are at their wit’s end with Skywalker, but their hands are full and honestly, he’s a benefit to the war effort, so they assign Obi-Wan to “supervise” the legion, and leave them to it. Obi-Wan and Anakin strike up a deep friendship, unfettered by the baggage that comes with being master and padawan. Obi-Wan finds himself having serious questions about the Jedi’s role in the war, since Anakin is not at all shy about challenging him on the whole “slave army of child soldiers” thing. Obi-Wan is also, quite frankly, too busy to effectively teach a padawan, and by this point, he knows that Anakin’s had some sort of Force training. He’s fought beside him enough to be confident in his skills, and often sends Ahsoka on extended missions with the 501st, and explicitly begs Anakin to help him fill in the gaps in her training. Anakin obliges enthusiastically.

Of course, Maul helps train her too. Obi-Wan shows up on the Resolute one day to pick her up, and asks how her training’s going.

“Great!” She says. “Skyguy’s weird uncle is teaching me jar’kai-”

“Anakin has an uncle?” Obi-Wan asks, surprised. “Who knows jar’kai?”

And so Obi-Wan and Maul meet once again. And Obi-Wan is just absolutely pole-axed.

“Darth Maul?” He splutters. “Is your uncle?”

“Not biologically,” Anakin shrugs. “He practically raised me, along with my mom. He taught me everything I know about lightsabers and the Force.”

“...”

“...you did say Sith, Anakin, you bastard, sand-sifting MY ASS-”

“Oh, it’s you.” Maul says. “I won’t kill you, but only because Anakin likes you.” Obi-Wan throws up his hands.

Somehow, Obi-Wan and Maul come to an understanding. Somehow, Obi-Wan doesn’t turn him over to the council.

At one point, a giant of a zabrak, easily eight feet tall, with skin a poisonous yellow, shows up, claiming that Maul is his brother, and that he’s here to bring him home to Dathomir. Maul takes one look at Savage and goes “Fuck that”. “I will train you in the ways of the Force,” he says. “I can show you power like you’ve never wielded before.” he says. “You shall be a great and feared Sith Lord,” he says. “Have some hot chocolate, you look cold,” he says. “Put on a sweater.” Savage, slightly bemused, comes to terms with the fact that he’s just been adopted.

It’s Maul who figures it out, of course. How could he not? He was raised by Sidious. He knows how devious he is, how his plans have layers upon layers, backups upon backups, contingencies stacked from here to the Outer Rim. Once Sidious moves, you can be sure that any reasonable outcome will be in his favor, because he has completely engineered the situation before you were even aware it existed.

The Sith caused the war and are playing both sides. The Sith caused the clones to be commissioned (these things are trivially easy to figure out, if you’re paying attention). The Sith want the Jedi dead.

“Contingencies,” Maul mutters. “It’s always a trap, and there’s always contingencies.”

When he finds the chip in Rex’s head, he shakes with rage and refuses to talk to anyone, fearing, for the first time in years, that he will lose control and hurt someone he loves. It is Rex who talks him down, who manages to get close to him, who embraces him and lets him cry on his shoulder, then scream and rage and punch the walls. When Maul is able to explain, Rex has to choke back his own terrified, horrified sobs. He holds them back, and calmly looks at Maul and says “What are you going to do about it?”

The surgery, they discover, is simple enough. An astromech can do it in two minutes (C2PO can do it in seventy seconds, and Artoo can’t stand it). When Anakin is told, he goes quiet for a minute, and when he looks back up, it is not Anakin, Rex’s friend, Maul’s kid, who is sitting at the table in the briefing room. It is He Who Walks in the Sky, Huttslayer, Breaker of Chains, who looks back at them. Anakin Skywalker has always wanted nothing more than to free all the slaves. And Anakin Skywalker’s destiny has always been to do what he wanted.

They tell Cody. They modify their plans. They quietly contact medics throughout the GAR, and Artoo quietly sends the details to every military astromech he trusts. When the army is safe from Sidious’ control, Anakin, Rex, and Maul conspire to lure him off of Coruscant. Maul takes over Mandalore, exiling the duchess and announcing a New Sith Empire. Sidious shows up, declaring that Maul has become a rival, disowning his former apprentice and attacking him, with intent to kill. Savage loses an arm. Maul almost loses his life. But as he lies on the ground at Sidious’s feet, arms trembling with the effort of holding the parry keeping Sidious’ saber from his throat, he hears “We’ve got the face shot! Go, go go!” in his earpiece. Gunfire, real slugthrowers, difficult to block with a saber, erupts around him. C3PO and his arsenal, along with Fives, Jesse, and Echo, the 501st’s best ARC troopers, open fire on Sidious. The Sith is forced to back away, raising a hand to stop the bullets in midair. Maul leaps to his feet, and Anakin joins him, lightsaber drawn.

The fight is quick, but brutal. Maul’s hands threaten to tremble with terror, facing down the horror of his childhood, the monster whose treatment of him is woven fundamentally into his psyche, whose shadow has haunted Maul all his life, and still invades his dreams. But he reaches out to his family, to Rex, beside him, steady, full of faith in him, to Anakin, a blazing sun of love and anger, a shield of raw power, and to Shmi, all the way in her Senate offices on Coruscant, cool and calm and soothing like a desert spring as ever-present as the stars. His hands do not tremble. He raises his lightsaber against his master, beside the blade of his son. Together, they beat the Sith Lord back. Anakin binds the Sith’s blade, knees him in the ribs, and while Sidious is thus occupied, Maul cuts his head off.

“You were a terrible parent,” he pants, and spits on the corpse. Then, he collapses, and Rex is there to catch him, and Maul clings to him and shakes, and cries. Anakin reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, and Rex pulls him in with a look, and together, they surround Maul, a bulwark against the rest of the world, a safe circle for him to fall apart for a little bit. At some point, one of them unstraps the small camera that Maul had been wearing on his chest. Ahsoka has, at that point, already sent the footage to every major news office on Coruscant.

That evening, plastered all over the galactic news, is a video of the Chancellor himself, showing up on a neutral world and attacking its sovereign leader, wielding red lightsabers of all things. And it’s obviously the Chancellor; there’s a clear shot of his face when he knocks Mandalore’s ruler to the ground and the camera gets a good view right up into his hood.

It’s a massive scandal. One tabloid shows the footage with a little counter in the corner, counting up every treaty and galactic law that Palpatine violates onscreen. The only thing that saves Palpatine from impeachment and arrest is the fact that he’s already dead. Inquiries are launched, investigators are sanctioned, documents and hard drives and testimony are subpoena’ed. Padme (the Senator, not the Rancor), spearheads the investigative committee, and within a month, they’ve uncovered decades worth of bribes, backroom deals, contracts with droid manufacturers, clear evidence of Palpatine authorizing Republic funds for weaponry that went straight to the Separatists, and even communication records between the Chancellor and the two military leaders of the Separatists. Grievous and Ventress go into hiding (the Tales of Grievous and Ventress, unlikely buddies forced on an intergalactic road trip on the run from the cops, is a story for a different absurdly long post at 3am). The Separatists break down in chaos, and the war grinds to a halt. In the middle of all the political hurricane, Cody enacts his plan, and the entire GAR simultaneously deserts, and fucks directly off to Tatooine. This ignites another scandal, with Senators calling for Tatooine’s expulsion from the Republic. Shmi stands in her Senate Pod, hands tucked into her roughspun sleeves, listening attentively while Senator Burtoni of Kamino accuses her of theft.

“If Tatooine does not return the stolen military assets, the Senate may sanction the use of force!” the Senator from Ryloth threatens.

“Pardon me,” Shmi says, “May I ask what army the Senate is planning sending to invade Tatooine? I was under the impression that the only Republic army was already there.” There’s a bit of an awkward silence.

In the middle of the shitstorm, before Shmi is arrested and Anakin declared an enemy of the state, Shmi’s lawsuit finally receives a ruling. And just like that, the clones are legally free. And the judge orders the Senate to pay reparations. Anakin cackles with glee when he hears.

Rex and Cody, with the full support of the people of Tatooine, begin the long, hard, work of resettling their brothers and building a life for the vod’e. Shmi files a lawsuit against the Zygerrian Empire. Savage receives a new arm, courtesy of Anakin, who may or may not have added a few extra utilities to it. Ahsoka is knighted, and controversially invites Anakin to be present at the ceremony, along with Obi-Wan. Maul admits, very quietly and where only Rex can hear, that he doesn’t actually want to poison him. “I know,” Rex says, smiling at him. Anakin, meanwhile, finally marries Padme, the love of his life (the Senator, not the Rancor).

And in Mos Eisly, there is a stone slab, pulled from a crumbled wall and stuck upright in the ground in the middle of the square. No one knows who put it there, but someone carved fifty-seven names into the stone. The fifty-seven names of the clone troopers who died defending Tatooine from the Separatist army, at the beginning of the war. The last slaves to spill their blood on the sands of Tatooine.

#maul adopts anakin #and invents a new kind of sith #which is almost nothing like the old kind of sith #just co-opts the name really #rex/maul #kinda? it wasn't on purpose it just happened #my writing #maulusque's writing #might slap this up on ao3 later #we'll see

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ledenews · 5 months ago

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Moundsville Loses Its Newspaper After 133 Years

In the 20th century, the local newspaper bonded communities in small American towns. The news this week that Moundsville, WV is losing its 133-year-old newspaper, the Echo, is a harsh reminder of the country’s information crisis, and the struggle of Americans to maintain and nurture social ties. Publisher Charles M. Walton told the Associated Press that he is “exploring options”. “We simply cannot get anybody to work there,” Walton told the AP. “I’ve been advertising for years for people. I don’t get any resumes. It’s just been a disaster to find anybody to even work part time.” (I’ve stopped by the Echo office a dozen times in my years chronicling the fascinating story of Moundsville, and Walton has always refused to talk to me.) Start-up costs for online newspapers are minimal. You need a laptop, a phone/camera, and an internet connection. But there’s no easy business model anymore. Not enough Americans are persuaded professional journalism is worth paying for. It’s also hard to get qualified journalists to live in places like Moundsville. You’d need a business model that could generate a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue. That can work in cities like Baltimore and Pittsburgh, but usually not in places with populations under 10,000. (My idea: A Marshall Plan for journalism. A billion dollars year could fund a thousand million-dollar newsrooms.) For generations, the Echo functioned as Moundsville’s news source, community bulletin board, and what we now call a Facebook page. In August, 1916, for example, the Echo reported that on Western Avenue “occurred a unique fight between a dog and a copperhead. The fight was waxing warm, though neither had the advantage until a resident of the street appeared, hit the snake with a brick, and then attacked it with a hoe. The snake was a very large copperhead, over three feet in length, and about three inches in diameter.” A few months later, the Echo reported: “A valuable horse belonging to T.G. Hawkins of Roberts Ridge was instantly killed this morning, when a large tree feel, striking the animal. The other horse hitched to the wagon escaped and the wagon was slightly damaged. Mr. Hawkins had his team standing near Dietz store, while he was having some cider made, when the roots of the old tree gave way. The tree was an old landmark.” Moundsville is the largest city in Marshall County, but there is much more territory to cover. (Google Earth Image) Said Moundsville town historian Gary Rider: “The Echo provided information about local events that are not covered otherwise. Especially the loss of the obituaries that announce visitations. There are so many people that do not use Facebook that we feel a profound loss.” The Echo, said Steve Novotney publisher of Ledenews, my favorite local news startup, based in nearby Wheeling, “put obituaries on the front page and they put our future on the front page, a.k.a. our children. It’s a sad day that the Echo has stopped publishing for everybody in Marshall County.” The paper was founded in 1891, by James Davis Shaw, a businessman who’d done oil and lumber ventures in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. (His obituary noted that he was a Civil War veteran, but did not say whose side he had fought on.) On November 12, 1891, the West Virginia Argus noted: “We have received a copy of the Moundsville Echo. It is a nice neat paper and best of all is strictly Democratic. We wish brother Shaw great success in the good work.” The Weekly Register noted: “The Moundsville Echo is the name of a new Democratic paper just started at Moundsville, this State, by Mr. J.D. Shaw. It is a neat and newsy paper, ably edited, and will be a power for the Democracy in that benighted stronghold of Republicanism. We wish the Echo success politically and financially.” Shaw’s son Craig took over in 1917, and his grandson Sam in 1951. For over 40 years, Sam Shaw rode his bicycle around Moundsville collecting news. The Associated Press, profiling Shaw in 1984, called him “the sort of one-of-a-kind character that still pops up from time to time on the edges of our urban-oriented, cookie cutter society.” Shaw was a renaissance man who sang bass with the Ohio Valley Chorale, which toured Romania and Spain. Shaw was a bachelor who lived with his sister, Alexandra, and forbid liquor from his house, or the pages of his newspaper. Shaw wrote a daily news column called “Jots”. He said that “instead of just one boss, I’ve got 39,000—the people of Marshall County.” Once, Shaw tried to shut down beer and gambling joints in town by printing the names of the people who’d been arrested. “My father got busted several times for running poker games,” recalled Pittsburgh-based artist John Mowder. “Nobody was embarrassed. The cops continued with their raids and the church population believed their tax dollars were being well spent.” In any case, Shaw was a conscientious newsman who modeled the methodology of professional journalism for people in Moundsville. Now that residents no longer see one of their neighbors practicing journalism, they’re more likely to regard outside journalists with suspicion, unaware that reporters at institutions like the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and New York Times talk to as many sources as they can, check facts, and print corrections when they make mistakes. (As does this website). Mowder left Moundsville over a half-century ago, but he always stayed in touch with the town though the Echo. “The Echo had been in my mailbox for 60 years,” Mowder told me. He recalled, while working as a flight attendant, seeing first-class passenger being offered the Echo and The New York Times. Many chose the Echo. John W. Miller Read the full article

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kaylaxwrites · 4 years ago

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Into You

Pairing: Jessica Jones x Reader Words: 2.5k Summary: After the police practically dismiss your concerns of stalker, you turn to Alias Investigations for help. Request: Jessica Jones x f reader where reader hires her as a pi (for whatever reason) and the case takes awhile so reader develops feelings but doesn't want to act on them because it's in appropriate since Jessica is working for her. Then as soon as the case is over Jessica pulls out two glasses and some whisky and is like "I'm a pi obviously I noticed you're into me now let's drink together and see where this goes cuz I like you too" (anon) A/N: Sorry this took so long! It might not follow the request exactly (I forgot to make the case like take a while) but I hope you like it!

Warnings: reader has a stalker, gets cornered by stalker and is also punched

Tears stung your eyes as you stepped out of the police station. You were convinced, you knew, you had a stalker. Someone had been following you for several weeks now, left crude “love letters” taped to your apartment door, and generally left you with an unsafe and uncomfortable feeling. You went to the police today for help—any help—and left feeling crushed and defeated. The officers inside didn’t take you seriously, brushed you off, dismissed your concerns and you were angry.

Afraid.

You started walking down the street back towards your apartment, brushing away stray tears. Being in the open—even in front of a police station—made you feel uneasy. You didn’t know what to do next and you were about to spiral into a panic attack. One step at a time, you tried to tell yourself, taking deep breaths as you walked. You would go home, and figure out what to do there. Right now you just needed to get home and calm down.

You looked to the sky as a means to keep your tears at bay when a sign in a fifth-floor window caught your eye and slowed you to a halt.

Alias Investigations.

A private investigator? Could they help you with your problem? Maybe they could help you get the evidence you needed for the police to take you seriously. Did you have the money for it, though? Fuck it, you thought. It would be cheaper than moving across town and changing your name. With a steading breath, you opened the door to the building and made your way inside.

You soon arrived at the fifth floor and anxiety knotted your stomach. This building looked sketchy—the suspiciously blood-like stains in the elevator was more than enough to give you that uneasy feeling—but you were already here. So might as well. Right?

You knocked hesitantly on the door, surprised when you heard what sounded like muttered curses from the other side. Did you come at a bad time? You almost left but then the door creaked open and you were met with the annoyed face of a pale, black-haired woman.

“Can I help you?” she asked curtly, opening the door only enough to show her shoulders and face, trying to appear as unwelcoming as possible.

“Uh…” The woman and her weird greeting left you somewhat speechless so you weakly pointed at the window where Alias Investigations was printed in bold letters. “Alias Investigations?” you said as if she wouldn’t know the name of her own business. You could kick yourself for your awkward stuttering.

“Shit. Hold on.” She closed the door in your face and you took a step back, startled. Through the opaque glass on the door, you could see the silhouette of the private eye quickly picking up the main room of her apartment, throwing trash and other stray items out of sight. You stopped yourself from smiling when the door was thrown back open and she welcomed you inside.

You sat tentatively in one of the chairs across from her desk as she sat heavily in the opposite seat, folding her arms on the top of her desk. She gestured for you to start talking and you did. “I think I have a stalker,” you started. But then you shook your head, restarting. “I know I have a stalker. I don’t know who he is, but I’ve caught glimpses of him a couple of times and he keeps leaving me these…letters on my door about once a week.” You dug into your bag and pulled out several of the letters you tried to bring as evidence, laying them on the table.

Jessica, you realized from her name tag on the desk, picked them up and scanned through them. “Have you been to the police?” she asked.

“I went there this morning. They practically dismissed me outright. I was walking home when I saw your sign.” You nodded towards the window behind her that advertised to the street.

She shuffled through the letters some more. “And do all of these…?”

Talk graphically about what your stalker would do once you were “together”?

“Yeah. The officer…” You cleared your throat, feeling tears stinging your eyes once again. “The officer said that I-I had probably led some guy on and that’s why he was leaving me love letters. He hasn’t threatened to kill me, so they aren’t—they aren’t going to help me.” Your voice was strained by the end of your sentence and you knew Jessica picked up on it.

“And you don’t know who it is?”

You shook your head. “Like I said, I’ve caught glimpses of him, but…”

“What does he look like?”

“Tall. Six foot, maybe? White. Not skinny, but not like super muscular either. He always has a hood or sunglasses on, so I’ve never really gotten a good look at his face. He hasn’t talked to me in person, either. Just leaves the letters.”

Jessica thought for a moment, looking over the letters once more. “I’ll help you,” she said eventually.

You nearly shot out of your seat. “Really? Oh my god, thank you. I don’t know what else I’d do.” You reached into your bag for your wallet. “How much will I owe you? I only have two hundred to give now, but I can find more to pay you later.”

“I’ll take a hundred for now. I’ll figure out the rest later.”

You pulled five twenties out of your wallet, half of your paycheck you cashed out earlier that day. You also gave her your phone number, address, and your schedule for the week. Jessica said she’d be in touch with you and you soon left afterwards, feeling lighter than you had in weeks now that the weight was beginning to lift off your shoulders.

You didn’t hear much from Jessica the next few days. She said she was going to watch you in your daily routine for a little while to see who she could find that was suspicious or she saw a lot in your vicinity. You never once saw her watching you, so you had to take her for her word—that either meant she was really good or you just gave a hundred bucks to someone who was going to ghost you. Thankfully, by the end of the week, you didn’t have to worry about being ghosted by a P.I.

Jessica found your stalker.

James Williams, she said his name was, but it didn’t ring a bell. You didn’t know him and you weren’t sure how he knew you. “You could’ve helped him at work or smiled at him on the street,” Jessica assured you. “These assholes will take any random act of kindness as a love declaration.”

“You could say that again,” you muttered. But you thanked her for her help and ended the phone call, agreeing to meet in about two hours after you got home from work. You pulled yourself from your hiding spot in the stock room of your workplace and finished up your shift.

By the end of the hour, you were starting your walk to Jessica’s office. You were less than two blocks down the road when an arm wrapped around your shoulders and backed you against the wall of an alleyway. Your head smarted against the brick and you blinked rapidly as you took in the face in front of yours.

You didn’t recognize it, but it must be…

James.

“What—what do you want?” you stuttered, your brain suddenly short-circuiting.

“You called…you called a P.I.?” he asked. He almost sounded…heartbroken. “I—I had a plan. I had a plan for us and you ruined it!”

“I don’t want to be a part of your plan. I don’t even know you!”

“I had everything figured out. We were gonna—”

“Get off of me, fucking creep!”

You instantly regretted your words as a look of anger flashed through his eyes. Maybe calling the psychopath a creep wasn’t the best way to go. Before you could brace yourself, he swung his fist and you were met with a flash of pain in your nose, a trail of blood following not long after. The force of the blow had you spiraling towards the ground and your felt your ankle twist as you fought to remain upright. Gravity won in the end and your palms scraped across concrete as you fell. Before your thoughts could even register, James’ hands were at your shoulders, lifting you upright, and pressing you against brick once more.

“Do not…call me that,” he said between heavy breaths. You flinched when he reached a hand up to cup the side of your face, brushing away blood with his thumb. Your mind flashed through every self-defense post on social media, but you couldn’t think clearly to remember specific moves. You were halfway to hyperventilating when James was suddenly yanked aside and thrown down the alleyway.

“You okay?” a voice asked. You looked to your left. Jessica.

“I’ll be fine,” you managed.

Blood was pouring from your nose still and you tried to stem the flow with the sleeve of your shirt. Movement down the alley caught your eye and you glanced over. James was staggering to his feet and started towards you. Jessica huffed and rolled her eyes, meeting the man halfway. In the blink of an eye, she lifted him and threw him into a nearby dumpster, latching the lid closed so he couldn’t escape.

“That’ll hold him until the police get here,” she said, brushing her hands off.

“Police?” you asked.

“Yeah, that little stunt will get him time for assault. And you won’t have to worry about him anymore.” She took a few steps towards you. “Let me see,” she said, gesturing towards your face. As the bleeding was now mostly stopped, you lifted your head so she could see the damage. “It’s not broken,” she said after a moment, “but you’re gonna have one hell of a shiner in the morning.”

Great, you thought. But if it was the price to pay for getting rid of your stalker…

At that moment, a police cruiser pulled into the mouth of the alley.

You don’t remember much of the statement you gave to the police. The throbbing in your skull pretty much override it all. But thankfully, before long, the officers were taking James away in handcuffs and you were allowed to leave, the card of one of the officers pressed against your hand. Jessica stayed by your side through it all and you were thankful for her presence.

When you were allowed to leave and the officers had left, you tried to stand on your sprained ankle, but could barely make it a single step. The walk back to Jessica’s office was going to be one hell of a trip. Jessica took one pitying look at your pained step and bent as if she was going to pick you up. You quickly shuffled out of her reach. “What are you doing?” you asked.

“You can’t walk,” she answered simply.

“So what? You’re just going to try and carry me? Halfway across Hell’s Kitchen?”

“You got a better plan?”

You looked down at yourself. Your shirt was splattered with blood from your nose. Couldn’t exactly take an Uber looking like you did. “I guess not,” you sighed in defeat.

“So?”

“But you can’t carry me!” Jessica was tiny and you… “I’m too…”

“Heavy?” You gasped as your eyes widened in shock. Jessica was blunt, sure, but… “Shit, not like that. I didn’t—” She sighed. “Just… Look.” She knelt down in between two parked cars, placing a hand under each of the bumpers. With barely a grunt, she stood, lifting the ends of the cars on either side of her until the wheels were nearly waist high.

“Holy shit,” you breathed.

“Yeah.” She dropped the cars and they bounced to the ground. You were surprised the alarms didn’t go off or the wheels didn’t bust. “So are we good here?” You stuttered to find words. You wanted to just let her pick you up—she did just lift two cars, after all—but you were still worried. “So can we go or what?”

“I-I guess.” You moved awkwardly as Jessica lifted you into her arms. Your ankle throbbed as your weight was lifted off of it. You tried to situate yourself comfortably as Jessica carried you, but you didn’t know what to do with your arms. You settled on one across the back of her shoulders and the other curled into your chest, trying to minimize the points of contact with Jessica’s body.

But then you realized just how close Jessica’s face was to yours.

You took in her profile, watching how her hair bounced as she walked, how her pale skin practically changed colors under different streetlights. You realized then just how beautiful she was and maybe you were starting to have a thing for her. Great.

You blushed and turned away as her eyes turned to you. She huffed out a chuckle before returning her attention to the sidewalk.

Eventually, Jessica set you down on the couch in the living room of her office. She stepped over to the bookshelf in the corner of the room, a bookshelf that held more liquor than books, and poured two large drinks. She crossed back to you, offering you one of the glasses. You took it gratefully as Jessica fell on the couch next to you. You sipped your drink slowly, carefully—but by the time you were only a quarter done with yours, Jessica had already refilled her own, having brought the half-full bottle across the room with her.

The two of you sat there quietly, drinking, unwinding, for several minutes until you felt the need to break the silence. “Jessica, I—,” you began, but she cut in, finishing your sentence for you.

“You’re into me.”

Your face flushed and you turned your gaze quickly to the dark amber liquid in your glass. You weren’t even really sure what it was—whiskey? Bourbon? Was there a difference?—but you were tempted to reach over and chug the whole bottle if this was the conversation Jessica wanted to have. “I-I was just going to say thank you,” you stammered, “for everything.”

“You sure that’s all you wanted to say?” She turned her whole body to face you, tucking one of her legs underneath her. You refused to meet her gaze. “I’m a PI. A good one. And you’re an open book. You didn’t think I noticed?”

Your face burned hotter than ever and you wished the couch would swallow you whole—were you really that obvious about your feelings? Jessica reached behind her for the liquor bottle and refilled her drink once more as well as topped yours off. You took several burning gulps to try and distract yourself from the situation. You would give anything to be anywhere but here. You were into Jessica, but she wasn’t into you—the following conversation would be the most embarrassing of your life.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I should go.” You stood to try to gather your coat and your bag, wanting nothing more than to leave.

Jessica’s iron grip on your arm stopped you dead in your tracks. “For what it’s worth,” she said, almost scoffing, as if what she was about to say wasn’t worth anything at all, “I’m into you, too.”

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#jessica jones x reader #jessica jones imagine #jessica jones x you #jessica jones x Y/N #jessica jones/reader #jessica jones/you #jessica jones fic #reader insert #mine

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