#groove: dark lily grin

[imasallstars]

D-ark L-ily’s Grin (2D Rich ver.) by Monochrome Lily

　Lyrics: Hiroaki Suzuki (SUPA LOVE) 　Music&Arrange: Hiroaki Suzuki (SUPA LOVE)

[persephone-writes]

A Diviner's Guide to James Potter

Chapter Ten: Scurrilous Scoundrel

James Potter x Fem!Gryffindor!Reader

Chapter Nine - Chapter Eleven ☆ Series Masterlist

Description: Saturday nights are always eventful, but not even Carly Simon saw this one coming

Word Count: 6.3k

Sirius made a comical face of disgust as Lily twirled Marlene around in the middle of the deserted corridor. They were singing a muggle disco song, mostly to annoy Sirius, spurred on by the promise of Saturday night festivities. During a particularly forceful spin, Marlene nearly slipped on the stone floor, Lily catching onto her arm just in time. 

“Disco sucks,” Sirius said as if utterly revolted by their singing, though this had no effect on Lily or Marlene’s spirits. Remus shook his head at him with a small smile, far too used to his mate rocking the boat for no good reason. 

“You’re no fun,” Lily said, swinging her arms by her side as she started walking normally again. 

“I’m telling you,” Sirius began, “by the end of the summer, disco’s gonna be dead.”

“No way,” Marlene drawled, waving him off. 

“I can feel it in the air. By eighty it’ll be a relic of the past,” he said, quite sure of himself. “And good riddance.”

“What a shame,” you said, turning to James with a frown. “What’ll you dance to then?”

James huffed, shoving you lightly on your shoulder, his bag swinging as if it didn’t contain copious bottles of firewhiskey. Your next steps were uneven, sending you forward as you laughed. 

“Brutal,” Remus mumbled, chuckling when you turned to smile at him. 

“You can take a man from the groove, but you can’t take the groove out of a man,” Dorcas snickered. Now, everyone was laughing at James’s expense, only furthering his existing grumbling. 

“Anyone want to tack onto this while it’s still going?” James asked, glancing around at his friends. 

“I have a few complaints,” Sirius said with a devilish grin. 

James scoffed, stopping in the middle of the corridor in front of the entrance to the Astronomy Tower. “So have I, you prat.”

“Come on,” Remus sighed, pushing James’s shoulder. “You two can fight in the privacy of the RoR.”

In a few moments you all stood in front of the blank wall on the seventh floor, waiting patiently as Lily took up the task of pacing in front of it. 

“Elderberry wine,” Lily muttered, breaking out in a fit of giggles when Dorcas began laughing at her. “Somewhere for Marlene to puke her guts out.”

“Hey!”

The door slowly revealed itself, dark wood of intricate carvings, curved upwards before coming to a point. Lily stopped pacing, smiling triumphantly as the stone walls of the castle morphed around it, solidifying its shape in front of her. 

“I can’t believe that worked,” you said, smirking at Marlene who had crossed her arms, tapping her foot on the floor. 

Lily was the first to push open the heavy doors, holding it for the others who came in behind her. As always, the room of requirement was a mess of piled trinkets, old furniture, books, chandeliers hanging from the tall ceilings, trunks, bits and bobs, globes, instruments, sculptures, and just about every other object one could think of. A layer of dust covered it all, save for the handful of chairs you’d been able to pull out of the piles over the years. You all moved forward, navigating through the stacks until you found your usual spot. Hidden within the mess was a small, cleared space with a few overstuffed armchairs, a green velvet settee, and four other wooden chairs. A small bowl sat on the arm of one of the armchairs, acting as an ashtray, partially filled from the last time you were here. 

Sirius plopped himself into one of the comfortable chairs, throwing his arms over the back with a sigh. Marlene stood in front of him, her expression flat. 

“Don’t you want to save the nice spots for the ladies?” she asked, motioning to Lily who came up beside her. 

“Dorcas is not a lady,” Sirius laughed. Dorcas walked by him, kicking his foot before sitting in one of the less-than-desirable spots. 

“Remus is a gentleman,” Marlene said, pointing to the man in question, sitting in a wooden chair himself, his gangly legs stretched out in front of him.

“Whatever,” Sirius grumbled, resting his ankle on his knee with seemingly no plan to move any time soon. 

Behind you, James grabbed ahold of your shoulders, causing you to tense up at the surprise. You suddenly felt jittery, glancing back at him with a sheepish smile. His eyes twinkled, his smile too waggish for your liking. 

“What?” you asked with a nervous laugh. 

He pushed you forward towards the other armchair, forcing you to sit down. He flashed you another smile, undeterred by your state of confusion. 

“I call the settee!” Marlene said, dragging Lily over to it. 

James moved around your chair, placing his illegally charmed bag down on the floor carefully and kneeling down to reach inside. He pulled out a bottle of firewhiskey, handing it up to you before taking out the bottle of wine for Lily. He stood, throwing the bag onto Sirius’s lap, which thankfully was rather weightless due to the charm. Without needing instructions, Sirius rummaged around inside, the bottles clinking together as he began taking out various glasses stolen from the RoR and properly cleaned of their centuries old gunk.

James walked over to Lily with the bottle of wine, handing it over. “Here you are, you old lady.”

Lily took it from him with a mock scowl, saying something disparaging about him to Marlene as he waltzed back over to the chair beside yours. You cracked the seal on the firewhiskey, filling a mug Sirius had given you before he snatched it from your hands. He took a long swig straight out of it, a drop dribbled down his chin as he smiled across the way at Marlene. 

“You’re disgusting,” she said with a grimace. 

Sirius laughed at her repulsed expression, filling his own glass before leaning across the center of your small circle and giving the firewhiskey and a pair of glasses to Marlene. She took it begrudgingly, pouring some into an old crystal tumbler despite her reservations. Soon enough, everyone had a mismatched cup filled with firewhiskey, or in Lily’s case, cheap elderberry wine. 

“Tonight,” James began, glancing around at the group as he walked around to the front of his chair, “is very important, if I do say so myself.”

“And why is that?” Dorcas joked, taking a sip of her firewhiskey. 

James grinned, climbing up onto his wooden chair while trying to balance his glass so nothing would spill. You looked on in amusement as James’s deep concentration was broken by his own wobbly footing, his glass held out in front of him as the liquid sloshed dangerously. Successful in his endeavor, he smiled victoriously from his spot above the rest. 

“I would like to propose a toast,” he began, pausing for effect with a raise of his brows, “to Y/N, who not only got into her first proper duel, but who has also shown us, at least in my opinion, what it really means to be a Gryffindor.”

A joke about the ridiculousness of his assertion died on your lips when he looked down at you, glowing beneath the soft light of the lamps peppered throughout the room. Your chest ached even though he was incredibly corny and a large part of you wished he would stop talking. Marlene whooped, a pleasant distraction from what was occurring before you. 

“Not only did she not report Mulciber, even though the twat deserved it,” James began again,“but she also turned down the extremely enticing offer to prank him and his gang into utter oblivion,” he paused, the jovial glimmer in his eyes softening. A new wave of embarrassment began to creep up on you the longer he kept speaking, though James seemed set on making it even worse. “She’s the very best of us,” he finished, his tone undeniably sentimental. 

Lily lifted her glass, smiling widely. “To Y/N.”

“To our Diviner,” Marlene laughed as she raised her tumbler, followed Peter who raised his glass as well. 

“May your cup never be dry,” said Dorcas, suppressing her own laughter. 

Your hand came up to your face, finally empathizing with Mary. You, too, wanted the ground to swallow you up. 

Remus raised his pint mug, giving you a nod. 

Sirius followed, smirking as you sunk deeper into the cushions. “To L/N. You got your ass kicked, but it’s the effort that matters.”

You rolled your eyes, heat rising into your cheeks. 

“To Y/N the chivalrous,” James said, raising his glass before taking a long drink. The others followed, Remus downing his entirely. James hobbled off the chair, plopping himself down in it with a pleased look.

 “That was awful,” you groaned, unable to resist your growing smile. 

“You’d do it for us,” Lily said. 

You swallowed, overwhelmed by an incredibly fondness, heavy on your heart. There was only one thing you could say, so you said it, “I love you guys.”

A chorus of “I love you’s” came pouring out, Lily popping up from her seat to throw herself down in your lap, giving you a hug. You both began to giggle, Lily’s wine nearly spilling over the arm. 

“All right,” you said, a bit breathless, “enough! No more trying to cheer me up. I am properly cheered.”

Lily got up, glancing down at you with another warm smile before returning to the settee. 

“Hey James,” Dorcas said, nodding towards the bag at Sirius’s feet. “What else do you got in that bag?”

•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

“Boo!” Marlene called, throwing an Every Flavoured Bean at Sirius. Your small corner of the RoR erupted in garbled, messy laughter, Peter nearly falling off his chair. 

Sirius scowled, his arm propped up on the side of his guitar. “What’s wrong with Stealers Wheel?” he said, bitter from the poor reception to his performance. 

“Give us something we can dance to,” Marlene drawled, leaning far too much on Lily for support. Dorcas was sitting in front of her on the floor, her back against the settee. 

“Try a little harder!” Another Every Flavoured Bean was thrown, this time dinging on the body of the guitar. “Merlin, your fucking relentless. Got any requests?” 

“Give us some Carly or something,” Lily said, giggling when Sirius huffed, properly irritated. 

"No."

“Come on, you learned it and everything,” Marlene begged, the hand holding her glass whipping around dangerously. Thankfully, there was very little firewhiskey left inside. 

“That’s because I was dating Eloise,” Sirius whined like a child asked to set the table. “I’m never playing that song again.”

“But you sing it so well,” Dorcas said with a snicker. 

You smirked, holding your glass by the rim as your eyes drifted towards Sirius. “Would you play it? For me?” You flashed him your most convincing puppy dog eyes, though you knew it was unlikely anything but peer pressure could sway him.  

Sirius glanced at you, then around the room for a moment. 

James, who’s cheeks were blazing red, was sitting so far down his chair you didn’t know how we wasn’t falling off. It was always nice to see him like this, unburdened, even if just for an evening. “Just do it,” he laughed. 

Even Remus, who had little skin in the game, was giving Sirius a look to urge him to appease the others for a single song. Sirius turned back to you, his face falling in pure melancholy. He hung his head for a moment, causing a wave of laughter to spread again. 

“Fine,” he sighed, picking his head back up. “But you owe me, L/N.”

Marlene flew from the settee, grabbing Dorcas and forcing her to stand with a gleeful grin. Sirius begrudgingly began to strum the intro, rolling his eyes when Marlene twirled Dorcas around. Lily was far too happy as well, placing her glass on the floor before standing up and moving around the pair. She stood before you, though you only stared back at her with raised brows, a cigarette burning between your fingers. Behind her, Marlene began to sing, or rather scream, the first verse. Lily stretched out her arm, wiggling her fingers as she eyed you. 

You sighed, placing your cigarette on the lip of the shallow bowl. “If you insist.”

As soon as your glass was down and you were off of the armchair, Lily wrapped one arm around your shoulder, holding your other hand as she began a face paced, bastardized waltz. Marlene and Dorcas had now broken out of the circle of chairs, spinning around in one of the paths between the piles of random objects. 

“.. .that they’d be your partner, they’d be your partner! ” Marlene scream-singed, completely overpowering Sirius’s voice, which was actually decent due to the singing lessons he was forced to attend in his youth. Although his shoulders still slumped, even Sirius couldn’t help but smile as he watched Lily turn you around, pushing you out so you twirled back into her arms. 

Already dizzy and far too drunk, laughter bubbled out of you freely, breaking up your own poor rendition of the song. An old marble statue of a prim-looking man in typical 13th century wizard garb, now wearing a pointed hat in a lovely shade of fuchsia placed there by Peter, looked over you like an honorary party guest. The glittering light reflected from a crystal chandelier bounced off a few old mirrors, making a kaleidoscope-like pattern across a pile of tattered books. You soon found both of your hands in Lily’s, each of you jumping around with no particular choreography. 

Dorcas ran up behind Peter and James, placing her hands on their shoulders and poking her head between theirs. Peter was slightly startled, side eyeing Dorcas with ample suspicion. James, however, turned to look at her with a lopsided smile, straightening his crooked glasses before he let her shove him off his chair to stand. She reached around, pulling him over to her and Marlene. You and Lily stilled for a moment, howling as James now spun Dorcas around like a ballerina, mumbling along with the words, the majority of which he did not know. It wasn’t even a particularly funny sight, but that didn’t matter much given the state you both were in. 

“I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee…” Sirius sang, the acoustics in the RoR surprisingly impressive. Remus, who was clearly entertained by the whole affair, threw an arm over the back of his chair as he watched Sirius sneer with every line. 

Marlene waved you and Lily over through her excited jittering, moving between the chairs towards you. She grabbed your hand, leading you out of the circle, Lily following behind. Now you were spinning with Marlene, hand in hand, quicker and quicker until you could no longer keep hold. You stumbled back, falling into someone who caught your shoulders. You craned your head, finding James grinning at you, his eyes sparking and cheeks rosy as ever. 

“Sorry–” just as you spoke he spun you around, grabbing your hand and placing his other on your back. Like Lily, he rocked you back and forth, dancing with no clear pattern around the limited space. 

James spun you around so many times it would have been impossible to keep track. Your cheeks hurt from smiling, your breath shallow from your steady stream of laughter. James was laughing as well, his voice cutting through the guitar, the singing, even Marlene’s shouting. Everything but James’s face was blurred, streaks of different colors and ill-formed shapes that vaguely resembled their true qualities rushed all around you. Your feet were moving faster than you hazy mind could keep up, nearly tripping over James’s with every step. Another burst of laughter came barreling out of you when you finally did step on his foot, though he moved you out of the way without a second thought, still grinning madly. His hand was warm, the heat moving up your arm and into your chest like a bonfire. Butterflies erupted in your stomach, your head dizzy and slow. As you danced, nothing in your body was fearful or unsure, telling you to flee while you still could. All logic was gone, presenting you with no reasons why this wasn’t a good idea. For once, everything felt totally, unequivocally right. You were meant to be here, giddy off of firewhiskey, held by James, your whole body fuzzy. The hand that was around his shoulder slowly crept to the back of his neck on its own accord, tickled by his curls. You felt his eyes running across your face, and for the first time it didn’t make you nervous. The air felt like it was lifting you up, higher and higher until you’d hit the ceiling. You had already forgotten about your friends dancing beside you, allowing James to lead you wherever he pleased. For all you knew, you could have been jigging your way to the edge of a cliff, whirling towards your end without a care. 

Sirius was nearing the end of the final chorus, strumming his guitar with far more fervor than when he began. It was loud, reverberating off of every odd surface, mixing with what seemed like a thousand other sounds. Without warning, James stilled a bit and dipped you down, your heart dropping for a moment as one of your feet lifted off the floor. His smile was like sunshine, his glasses nearly falling off his face as he bent towards you. Your head tilted back, your hand gripping his harder as he pulled you up to standing. 

“You probably think this song is about you, don’t you, don’t you?” 

Sirius ended the song with a heavy, fast strum, the notes blaring out and straight into your buzzing head. Off balance, you fell into James’s chest, giggling into his shirt. His hand splayed across your back, holding you just a bit tighter. You could feel the vibrations of his voice on your forehead, unsure if he was laughing or speaking. The last thing in the world you wanted to do was pull away to find out, though you were forced by necessity. You moved back, smiling up at him like a fool in love (you were, of course).

“What’d you say?” you asked, your eyes drifting over his curls, messy and sticking this way and that. 

“Nothing,” he said between a chuckle. Then, as if trying to remember, his mouth opened and closed a few times before he spoke again, “I said you’re a good dancer.”

“No, I’m not,” you said, shaking your head. The sound of Marlene and Lily’s laughter made you turn towards them, James releasing you from his hold. Your whole body remained buzzing, though your mind began to drift a bit out of its fog. As your heartbeat quickened, finally acknowledging what had just occurred, you realized how important it was that you acted normal .

“I think you’re an excellent dancer,” Sirius drawled, smirking at you. You shot daggers at him, your face growing even warmer than it was already. You staggered back to your armchair, trying not to look at him or James. You stared down into the bowl, frowning when you saw your cigarette had burned to the filter. 

“Thank you, Black,” Marlene giggled, sauntering over to the chairs again.

“You’re not welcome,” Sirius said, though his small smile did nothing to prove his point. 

“You two are such party poopers,” Lily said to Peter and Remus, who hadn’t joined in on the impromptu dancing. 

“No one wants to see me dance,” said Remus, his eyes half lidded. 

“That’s right,” Dorcas drawled, still breathing a bit heavy from all her jumping around. Remus took no offense, snorting as she tripped over his legs, catching herself with a wild wave of her arms. “Godric, Lupin!” She threw herself down into the chair beside him, shoving his arm when he kept smirking. 

“Play another, won’t you?” Lily asked. 

Sirius sighed, brushing some hair off his face before glancing around the group. “What d’you want?”

“Save something good for when I come back,” Marlene said. “I’ve got to go to the loo. Can I borrow the map and cloak?”

“Sorry McKinnon,” Sirius began with a shake of his head, “you are not authorized to operate such important artifacts solo.”

She rolled her eyes, placing a hand on her hip as she looked down at him. “Someone’s gonna have to come with me then.”

“I will,” you said, needing a breath of semi-fresh corridor air anyway. However, you did give Sirius a look which you hoped properly conveyed your annoyance with his rule system, as well as his earlier comment. “That is unless I don’t meet your qualifications.”

“I have to go, too,” Peter said.

“Why don’t we all just go back out into the corridor and pace again to make the whole bloody room a lavatory?” Marlene suggested, though no one seemed keen. 

You grabbed James’s bag from the floor, digging around for the cloak. You pulled it out along with the map, taking your wand and shoving it into your pocket. “Anyone else coming?” 

Five “no’s” and a few head shakes gave you your answer. You handed the map to Peter, throwing the cloak over your, his, and Marlene’s heads as you left the Room of Requirement. 

“Any sign of him?” you whispered to Peter as you walked down the empty corridor. 

He shook his head, staring down at the map. “No, he’s all the way by the North Tower.”

“Do we even need the cloak then?” Marlene asked, her steps slightly unsteady. 

“No, I guess not,” Peter answered, pulling it off and hanging it over his arm. “Mrs. Norris is a little down the east corridor. I don’t think they’ll be back this way for a while,” he paused for a moment, swallowing. “Zephyr is out though–”

“What ?” Marlene said a bit too loudly, rushing over beside Peter. Not meeting her eyes, he allowed her to view the map. She gasped, ripping it from his hands and walking a bit ahead. “Oh, that little dungweed!”

“What’s wrong?” you asked, making sure to keep your voice down. 

Marlene glanced back at you in complete shock. “He’s with Wilkes!” 

“Godric, really?”

Peter stood still, watching it all play out with pained eyes, looking as though he’d rather be anywhere else. He flinched as Marlene spoke again, her voice shrill.

“Yeah, they’re cuddled up in the bloody broom closet,” she huffed, lowering the map as her hand came up to rub her eyes. “You think I would’ve figured this out sooner. How could I be so thick? He told me he wasn’t in the right place for a romantic relationship–”

You snatch the map from her, frantically searching for the pair. You quickly found them, realizing she was not mistaken. Their banners were right beside each other, clear as day. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry Marls,” you said. Marlene was heartbroken when Zephyr ended things between them right before the winter holiday, and even then you struggled to help her get through it. Now, this was a whole other surprise. You wished Lily were here, for she was always better with these things than you were. 

Marlene walked around the corridor in circles, her hands waving in front of her. “I just,” she spattered, her movements uncoordinated. “Why wouldn’t he just tell me? It’s really just that he’s gone for a Slytherin that's so awful. Ugh! I can’t believe this. Wilkes of all people!”

“Come on, let’s not do this with full bladders,” you said, trying to lead her down the hall. The static in your head was lessening ever so slowly, only making you realize how much you had to pee. “You’re gonna get a show if I don’t get to a toilet soon.”

She chuckled, though it didn’t last for long, sighing heavily as she rubbed her temple. “Why does this sort of thing always happen in corridors when I’m drunk?”

Peter waited underneath the cloak outside the boy’s lavatory for you and Marlene to finish. When you two emerged, Marlene having emptied the entire contents of her stomach, your moods were still completely decimated. Peter took off the cloak, smiling a bit at you both, his brows pinched in a way that made it entirely unconvincing. 

You closed the lavatory door as quietly as possible, not trusting Marlene with the task. Her head was hung low, her expression clearly crestfallen even in the dark. 

“It’ll be all right,” you said softly, placing a comforting hand on her back. “At least now you know it had nothing to do with you.”

“Thanks,” she said, her voice laced with sorrow, a sad smile pulling at one corner of her mouth as you all walked back towards the RoR. Peter still said nothing, his shoulders slumped. 

You rubbed your eyes, your head still a bit light as you checked up the map to see if Filch and Mrs. Norris were still far enough away that the cloak was unnecessary. They were now meandering by the Transfiguration classrooms, safely at a comfortable distance. As you flipped it closed, you noticed someone else moving down one of the corridors. Upon closer inspection, you were presented with something incredibly odd and entirely unexpected. Mulciber and Snape were moving through the dungeons towards the stairs, seemingly towards Wilkes and Zephyr. You stopped walking, drawing Peter and Marlene’s attention.

“What?” she asked. “Don’t even tell me what they’re–”

“It’s Mulciber and Snape,” you whispered, glancing up from the map. You met Peter’s eyes, an awful feeling gnawing at the pit of your stomach. 

“Where are they?” Peter asked, coming around to look at the map. Marlene did the same, peeking over your shoulder. 

Mulciber and Snape moved up the stairs, forcing you to flip the page. Their pace quickened as they turned down a corridor towards the broom closet, where Zephyr and Wilkes had moved farther away from one another in the small space. You stared for a moment, your fingers tingling.

“I’m going down there,” you said, struck with the idea like a bolt of lightning. You had no idea what had gotten into you, but you guessed it was in large part due to the firewhiskey. Your conviction had never been stronger when you turned to Peter, your eyes falling to the cloak on his arm. “Give me the cloak.”

“What if they’re just, y’know,” Peter began, his expression growing more and more uncertain as he went on. 

“What?” you asked, feeling your chance to catch up with them slipping away from you. 

Peter shrugged, his nose scrunching a bit. “What if they’re all, ugh , hanging out…together.”

You rolled your eyes, taking the cloak without a second thought. He said your name, but you ignored his wary voice, turning to Marlene with the utmost seriousness. “You can come if you want, but I understand if you don’t. If not, you’ll have to get back to the RoR without the map,” you paused, your eyes softening. “Sorry.”

“If you’re going, I’m going,” Marlene said immediately. 

“I’m supposed to stay with the map,” Peter squeaked, frozen in place. 

“Come with us, then,” you said, throwing the cloak over yours and Marlene’s shoulders, your heads still poking out. You held the map and your wand in one hand, the light on the tip radiating out into the empty hall. 

“I don’t know,” he began hesitantly, his gaze darting between you and Marlene.

You rolled your eyes again, growing impatient. “You don’t have to do everything Sirius says, you know.” 

You cringed at yourself for being so harsh, though it appeared to have the desired effect. Peter’s lips pressed together, giving you a curt nod before moving to slip under the cloak. 

“Yeah, fuck Black,” Marlene said gleefully. She was met with silence, her eyebrows furrowing as she glanced at you and Peter with an awkward smile. “Too much?”

“We’ll forgive you,” you said, scurrying down the corridor towards the portrait of George von Rheticus. Marlene nearly got tripped up on the bottom of the cloak, cursing under her breath as your pace didn’t slow. Soon, you stopped in front of the portrait, von Rheticus snoring in his lace-collared robes. You stuck your head out of the cloak, pointing your wand at him. His eyes fluttered open at the light, yawning as he looked down at you. “Scurrilous scoundrel.”

“Humph ,” he mumbled, his eyes narrowing. “It is rather late, is it not? What is the time?”

“Eight thirty,” you lied, shoving the map into Peter’s hand as you stepped out of the cloak. So much for “Y/N the chivalrous.”

“It is dark for such an early hour,” von Rheticus said, glancing down the corridor. “Well, I suppose you have always been a fine student. Safe passage, Miss L/N.” 

He swung open, revealing the passage to the grand staircase. You rushed through, hoping Marlene and Peter were able to make it inside. 

When it closed, Marlene threw the cloak off of her and Peter with a huff. “What a pain, he is.”

You shook your head before holding out your hand to Peter, who gave you back the map without a word. Before either of them could say anything, you began to run down the passage, flying ahead of them and ignoring Marlene when she called something out to you. You could hear their steps following behind as you descended the first staircase, turning a sharp corner before going down another. It was a few minutes before you popped out on the first floor of the grand staircase, double checking the map as you did. Mulciber and Snape were now all squeezed into the broom closet, how you did not know. They must have been packed like sardines, one on top of the other. Above you, a second floor staircase shifted, swinging to the right with an unmistakable swoosh . Then, a few more staircases above did as well, connecting to the platforms with a heavy click. It must have struck midnight. 

You glanced back, seeing Marlene and Peter close behind, skidding to a stop beside you. Marlene threw the cloak over you all, taking the map into her hands and flipping through the pages. She located Filch, who was now on the third floor corridor between the middle and northern courtyards, Mrs. Norris not far ahead. Peter closed the portrait and the three of you pressed forward, down the marble staircase and into the Entrance Hall, turning right to move around and into the corridor the Slytherins, plus Zephyr, were hiding in. The walls were lined with portraits, though none could detect you underneath the cloak. The torches on the walls were all extinguished, leaving the space nearly pitch black. All you had was the light from you wand illuminating the map, but it’s rays could not permeate past the cloak. 

When you spotted the small, rounded door to the broom closet up ahead, your heart finally began to race, a bout of dread pouring over you. The others seemed to feel the same, though no one made a move to stop. You continued to near the door, yet you heard no sound until you were within a foot of it. You all stood close, though not enough to be hit by it if it suddenly opened. Trying to steady your breath, you listened carefully to the murmurs. 

“Shh ,” someone hissed. “Keep your voices down. Who knows where that bloody squib is lurking.” It was Mulciber, his voice as wicked as you remembered. 

“I’ll stun him so fast, he won’t have time to see our faces,” said Wilkes with a cocky scoff. 

“Snape,” Zephyr began, ignoring Wilkes’s assertion, “is it ready?”

“Nearly,” Snape said, mild and drawn out as if he was in no hurry to finish his sentence. “Just a few more days and it will be finished brewing.”

“Excellent. I’ll find a way to slip it in her drink some time next week,” Zephyr whispered. 

You swallowed, balling up your fists as your palms began to sweat. 

“You better get it right the first time,” spat Mulciber.

“I will,” said Zephyr. “None of them suspect a thing.”

Wilkes snickered again, short through his nose. “Can you imagine how mad everyone will be when she turns on her mates—”

“Shut it, you bloody oaf,” Mulciber said. 

“It’s like Zephyr said, no one suspects anything anyway,” said Wilkes.  

“They don’t suspect Zephyr,” Mulciber began, his tone biting, “but they do suspect us .”

“You spoiled it with all of them,” Snape seethed, though he spoke so quietly it was difficult to hear.

“Potter challenged me first,” Mulciber said, the words rushing out like the steam of a kettle. “Couldn’t let him get away with it like you do, Snivellus.”

“Stop it,” said Zephyr before Snape could counter. None of them spoke for a moment, the only sound being of shuffling feet and a few sighs. 

“You shouldn’t have dueled her,” Snape whispered. 

It felt as if the world stopped turning for a moment, everything coming to a stop as you took in Snape’s words. Another long beat of silence fell, leaving you to wait in the dark as you held your breath. Beside you, Peter shuddered. 

Finally, Mulciber spoke, low and wry, “You would’ve too if you saw the look on her face. I thought she might faint the moment she saw me.” He chuckled, sending a shiver down your spine. “It was worth it just to see Potter’s pathetic goons holding him back during Potions.”

“It was reckless,” Snape said. “I still think we should leave her alone for now–”

“No,” Mulciber barked. “It has to be her.”

Marlene’s eyes drifted to the side of your face, but you only stared forward into the stone wall, listening intently and holding on to every word. 

“Why not Potter himself, or Black?” Wilkes asked. 

“No, it’s worse if it’s her,” Mulciber said. “Think about it. Who would Potter rather see hurt, him or her? 

“It’s foolish to go after her so soon. They’ll go straight to Dumbledore and tell him what happened–” Snape began. 

“Evans, then,” Mulicber said. You could practically see his smirk through the door, devious and vile. “He’ll be pleased another mudblood is ridden from the castle.”

Your heart dropped, the darkness of the corridor looming all around you. Marlene’s hand wrapped around your wrist, squeezing you tightly. Slowly, you unclenched your fist, lacing your fingers through hers. 

“Fine. Let it be L/N,” Snape said slowly, defeated but not entirely subdued.  

“She’s good,” Zephyr said with a quiet chuckle. “Won’t be able to do a thing. She’s practically useless without someone there to protect her.”

“She gave you a good fight,” Wilkes laughed softly. 

“Watch your tone, Wilkes,” said Mulciber, followed by the noise of more shuffling feet. “I could have killed her if I wanted to.”

Your breath hitched, your heart beating so hard you felt it in your ears, the blood rushing through your skull like a flood. You held Marlene’s hand tighter, clenching your jaw for fear that it might shake. 

“What did you say to Potter, anyway?” Zephyr asked. “He was miffed for three days.”

Mulciber snorted a bit, making you want to scrawl out of your skin. You saw him standing over you again, blood dripping down your chin. “Told him to make sure the coast is clear next time he wants to shag his little pet in the Forbidden Forest.”

Wilkes and Zephyr snickered, muffled by what you assumed was their hands. 

“S’fucking great, mate,” Wilkes said. “I remember in fifth year when you used to like–”

The sound of someone being pushed against the door made the three of you jump back, a scuffle occurring on the other side. The sounds of wheezing breath and grunting far louder than any of their words came pouring through the cracks. Someone was whispering “Stop it, stop it!” though no one heeded their warning. Suddenly, down the corridor, you heard a clanking noise, one after the other in uneven beats. Those in the broom closet must have heard it as well, for their ruckus ceased immediately. You shared a look with Marlene and Peter, all three of you with the same instinct. You turned as a unit, bolting down the corridor in the opposite direction. 

You ran around the corner like you had before, whizzing up the wide steps in the Entrance Hall to the first floor of the grand staircase. The cloak was fluttering behind you, likely revealing six phantom feet, though none of you had the mind to care. In a minute you were back at the painting, which thankfully did not require a password. Peter stuck his hands out of the cloak, pulling it open and throwing himself inside. You and Marlene tumbled in after him, panting as you caught your breath. The cloak was hanging on your shoulders, slipping off into a heap on the passage floor. 

Marlene was hysterical, pushing herself against your arm to look down at the map with wandering, wide eyes. “Where are they?” she whispered frantically, grabbing at the parchment. 

Mulciber, Wilkes, Snape, and Zephyr were running down the west corridor, likely heading towards a less traveled stairway into the dungeons. You saw now that it was Peeves you had heard, who was now chasing them quite relentlessly. 

“Get ‘em, Peeves,” Marlene muttered. 

After a moment of silence, the weight of what you had discovered seemed to be hitting all of you equally, Marlene’s mouth hanging open a bit. 

“Merlin’s saggy balls,” said Peter with a long breath. 

Marlene leaned against the passage wall, sighing as well. “I feel like I might be sick again.” 

You felt sick as well, and atrociously sober, reeling with the information which had just been thrust upon you. He’ll be pleased. Everything was far worse than you had thought, more serious than a couple of Slytherin’s high off of a superiority complex. You were ill equipped, too exposed even in the passage. You rubbed your eyes, dropping your hand as you turned to Marlene and Peter. “We’ve got to get back. Right now.”

Chapter Eleven

[astrid-sorensen]

Healing you - Joel Miller x reader

Genre : Angst, Fluff, Hurt + Comfort my favourite.

Word count : 2,040

Warnings : Established relationship, nightmares, injury, child death yk the drill. Tell me if I missed any and feedback welcome!

MASTERLIST

A long 12 years after Sarah’s death, Joel can’t seem to open up to you again. But you’re never gonna stop trying.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You woke to him pivoting your leg off to his side, leaving him just enough room to shuffle his large mass in between your legs, easing his weight down on top of you. His fingertips dug into the plane of your lower back, his skull pressed in between the bare flesh of your breasts. You began to straighten on the bed, awaiting his next move. His wavy hair a messy mop on his head as you began to lovingly comb through the ashy strands.

The dark hollow glow of your Boston apartment echoed with the eventual quiet sobs of Joel, your Joel. Agonising nights like this weren't uncommon, Joel always struggled with rest without the help of pills and brown malt liquor. And when the nightmares rolled in, he turned to you for comfort as his fatigued cries lulled himself back to sleep.

You clutched across his broad shoulders, attempting to soothe him with your words. "Shhh, I've got you. I'm here." Hot drops of his pain pooled on your skin, if you weren't so pained you'd had wiped them away. Joel wouldn't have minded, but you couldn't bring yourself to disturb him. He pressed harder into your sternum, the rhythmic thump of your beating heart grounding him. Eyes watching down as his face scrunched up tightly before softening.

The eventual soft snores of his blocked nostrils signally he had finally drifted off again. You let out a soft breath you didn't realise you were holding. God, he was in so much pain, it stunned you every time. Even though his blank stares and loss of affection had become a sort of ritual by now. Love and tenderness were an abandoned cause.

—

"Ready?" The southerner asked from where he was stood, packed and ready to go. Joel's words were few and far between, so unlike the cheery funny man you once knew back in sunny Austin. You shot him a sharp nod, tucking your trusty dagger in a leather case and into your side pocket.

You followed him out the QZ, cold benevolent rain drops pattering down on the stark city streets. You only had to skip past two soldiers before crouching through the busted wire fence, it were only a matter of time before the tear would be sealed up again. You crossed short planes of long grass and rubble terrain before entering the safety of the nearest borough, no one from the QZ would be after you now. Watching your step not to trip or slip on the muddy ground.

You trekked along, Joel's large hand falling to his side, his fingers loosing hanging. Envisioning your palms closing around each others, the heartwarming feeling of companionship. But you didn't dare establish it. You had tried many times, the forbidding shake of his arm to get you off, too painful to bare singly once more.

"Hey, Joel?"

"Yes."

"I wanna talk to you abo-"

The grooved soles of you feet were no match against the sloped grass, your boot making a sharp decline behind your front one. Pulling you down to the concrete ground you'd started from.

A burning pain shot through your knee, a squeal and grunt leaking from your lips as you moved to steady yourself on the floor. You eyes squeezed shut as you straightened your leg, the pain only intensifying. Joel had quickly jumped back down to join you sitting on the cobbles.

"We're going home now." He stated bluntly. You interjected. "It's not safe. You’re unable to walk properly."

"No, it's ok-"

Brawn branches heaved you up from your standpoint. In another life you could picture this same position, grins ear to ear as the church bells rang. Lily white petals fluttering and spinning through the air as they fell to the chapel floor. 'Just married' drawn on the back of the vehicle as you left for your honeymoon. Bliss. A utopian yet impossible bliss.

Your wrists curled around the thick trunk of his neck, the grisly hairs scratching across you skin. Tucking into his neck for better weight distribution you noticed how close you were. The deepened frown lines of his face and the golden glow of his beautiful tanned skin. The sight made you hands clammy, you don't remember the last time you gazed upon him this close. A heat spilled into the depths of your rib cage.

Back at the flat, Joel kicked open the fragile wooden door, then slammed it shut behind him. He strode into the living area, ever so compassionately plopping you upon the torn up couch. The back of your head touched the cushion, a controlled breath leaving your cracked lips at the pain.

"Still bad?" His eyebrow cocked towards you inquisitively. Your eyes shut briefly with a nod of your neck, the larger male crouching down to the floor as he decided what to do next. "Pants off." The Texan told you. Your began to shuffle out of the worn out denim, filled with thinned patches and threadbare.

He noticed your difficultly and you leaned your weight with your upper back against the furniture, his hands grabbing simultaneously at the waistband to tug down the fabric. Once you got to your knees he eased out your good leg, before doing the same to the other mercifully.

"Shit." He gruffly leaked under his breath. The swollen cup of your knee cap, red and beginning to bruise. His hands moved to the wounded limb, one pressed on the side of your thigh as the other lay on the light hair of your shin. It was worse than you had both expected. "You need'a rest."

Later, your rested your leg outstretched on the worn out mattress. “I’ve gotta finish this run. Should be back tomorrow if I’m lucky.”

“Joel?” He turned facing you. “I love you.” His nodded, eyes gazing off in a line as the words registered in his head and like that he was gone. The worst part was that night, it didn’t feel too different to normal. Empty and cold.

—

The next evening you woke to the door shutting. Quickly you turned to the bedside draw, shaky hands gripping at the handle to pull it out and fetch your dagger. The tall dark male entered, your heart pounding once more before started to go back into rhythm. “Fuck.” You heaved in shock. Joel sent you an apologetic look, emptying his pockets of his weapons and supplies before standing over the bed.

“You hungry? Cold?" Joel was curious, he had deep purple bags under his eyes and a shallow cut on his jaw. You would ask him about it later.

"No, I'm okay."

"Ok, I'll just-"

"Can you come here?" He meandered closer standing to the side of the bed as he sat into his hip. You sat up moving across so he could perch on the side, your foreheads touching as you placed a hand to his toughened cheek. You leant in, millimetres away from your lips touching — his head turned, facing away from you.

Your hand fell in rejection, the familiar crushing weight of loss cascading through you. "You won't even kiss me anymore," You let the words hang, his head tilted in what looked like guilt. Your heart ached for his love again his longing and desire. You used to be like rabbits never able to keep your mitts off of each other.

"And we haven't had sex in years." Your tears bubbled as the statements festered in the grooves of your brain. “Joel, please stop pushing me away."

"She wasn't even your daughter." You hunched away from him, the stinging sharp torture of your knee paling in comparison to the sentence just uttered. You lower lip dropped in shock, unable to fathom how he could muster such a thing.

"You knew how close I was to her. I spent years getting to know her and looking after her! How dare you!" His jaw tightened, still not daring to look at your furious expression. "I know your mourning her! I am too! But you don't know how it feels to mourn someone whose hasn't even died!" The words stung the brunette like an angry wasp.

"Baby-"

"No, Joel. Don't.” Mumbled words slipped through your teeth. “I can't take this anymore, I miss you so much. I just wish I could make you happy."

"You do make me happy." Joel commented. His eyes scanned down to see a small silver chain hung around the supple skin of your throat. A small diamond heart pendant hung from the jewellery.

Joel gifted it to you for your birthday one year after a lovely romantic dinner at your favourite restaurant of course. He’d paid Tommy to look after Sarah that night, leaving you enough time to have a long hot bubble bath with some red wine. Joel was joint at your hip that day, always a hand on you whether it be holding your hand, around your waist or shoulders or resting softly on your thigh.

You were like a drug to him, he was hooked. Smothering you in kisses and heartfelt confession of his love. Making your next sentence a torturing wake up call.

"You can't even look at me anymore.”

"No, no." His body spun from where he was sat, leaping over you til your frame was trapped inside his larger one. His hand cocooned the back of you head, keeping you pressed into him. He squeezed you tightly before pulling back his hands drilling into the sides of your face to look at him. "I love you. I love you so much.”

There was a deep desperation in his face his eyes hollowing out your soul and pleading with your heart. You lip wobbled, the loving man of your past shining through with the exception of his pitiful distress. Eyes falling down to his small chapped lips, he knew what you were after. Hesitantly, he gave in.

Flesh on flesh, his warm mouth joined your own, a searing kiss coveting everything he was trying to say. It was forceful, not enough for you to pull back, but just enough for you to place a hand on the puffed up plane of his chest. He moved his lips against your a few more times before pulling back.

“I just feel like I’ve lost everything. We were so happy, you me and Sarah.”

"I'm sorry,” Joel began, “I'm so selfish. I didn't even realise I was neglectin' you." You swallowed hard, savouring the dark honey taste of him on your lips. "I can't begin to make it up to you, but I'll promise I'll try." Offered the male. “Don't you cry now, you'll set me off." A small smile cracked onto your face. “You need’a get some sleep, you look tired.”

“I am.” You agreed. Joel walked around the bed, pulling back the blankets and getting in beside you. You snuggled up into his side, his arm protectively cuddling around you. Pulling you into closer to his flannel clad skin. His other hand clutched your head, tender stroking his hand over your dirty tangled hair.

Joel watched your eyelids close, your long lashes resting on your plush cheeks. It brought him back to the days back when. Back when you’d cuddle up on his living room couch, Sarah sat on the floor doing her homework with the TV on.

He’d knew in that moment you were it for him. He’d never leave your side. He wanted you in every way another person could have someone. Loved and cherished. Devoted and loyal.

“Your still just as beautiful as the day we met.” Words whispered into the cold air. Clouded with red light shooting through the bed sheet covered windows.

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not. You’re the only woman I’ll ever love.” There was wretched plea coating his tongue. “I miss touching you.”

“You have me.”

That night you both slept like a baby. The tall brunette crushing you back into his chest as his limbs glued your skin together. He lay the shyest of kisses to the back of your neck, shoulder and head. One hand brushed along the skin of your hip. Whispering sweet nothings as he pacified you to sleep. "Shhh, I've got you sweetheart. I'm here.”

[barbex]

Happy Friday! I wish you would write something where the characters are lost and need to find their way back somewhere safe – maybe for Hawke/Merrill?

I got you! Thank you for the prompt, for tonight's @dadrunkwriting, it did indeed inspire me for Merrill x Hawke. I hope you like it.

--

"I think we're lost." Hawke drops her pack into the sand and sits down next to it. Her feet hurt, her shirt sticks to her back and some insect has bitten her neck. It's not far to the water's edge, so she kind of knows where they are in the general sense, but not really in relation to the way back to Kirkwall. 

Merrill bends over a bush with prickly leaves and white flowers. "Oh, are you sure?" she says absentmindedly. She breaks off a branch from the bush and stores it in the bag at her hip. 

"Well, I look at my map and I can't find any landmarks and it all looks the same..." Hawke digs her heels into the ground in frustration. "Shouldn't you know where we are and where we should go? Isn't that a keeper thing?" She immediately regrets her outburst when she sees the shadow falling over Merrill's face. 

Merrill straightens her shoulders and looks towards the horizon. "You're right, lethallan, that is a keeper thing."

"I'm sorry. That's not —"

"There's a storm coming," Merrill interrupts. "We need to find shelter."

"I think I saw a cave back there," Hawke says sheepishly. 

"Yes, where Melava's lilies grew." Merrill grabs her staff like a walking stick and turns back towards the cliffs. 

Hawke has no idea what flowers Merrill is talking about. She hasn't ever paid attention to the names of flowers, and the names Merrill knows differ from what her mother's books postulated. Merrill walks with confidence, leading Hawke on a path she can't remember having seen before.

"Right here," Merrill says, pointing at blue flowers, which look elegant somehow. The wind picks up, blowing her hair into her face. For a moment, she loses sight of Merrill.

"Here." Merrill grabs her arm and pulls her into a thicket.

Hawke trips over something, stumbling into Merrill's arms. The wind doesn't reach them anymore, just in time as the rain starts to hammer down outside of the cave Merrill pulled her into. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine, I trip all the time," Merrill says.

"That's not what I meant."

Merrill lets her hand slide down Hawke's arm and takes her hand. "I know."

Pressing her hand, Hawke stares out into the approaching darkness outside of their shelter. "I shouldn't have said that."

"But you were right." Merrill pulls her deeper into the cave, balancing a fireball in her hand. "This is a keeper thing. But I cannot read your maps. I read the flowers, the grass, the mushrooms."

"Of course. I'm such an idiot."

"You're not an idiot, vhenan." Merrill places the fireball in a groove between stones and sits down to pull their mats from their packs. "You are just such a city shem!"

Hawke presses her hand to her chest. "Ouch! I guess I deserved that."

"I know which way we have to go to get back to Kirkwall, but it's too late now." Merrill pats the place next to her. "Come here."

Hawke sits down and wraps her arm around Merrill's shoulders. "Can you tell me a story?"

Merrill grins at her. "Yes, that is also a keeper thing. But maybe we should eat something first."

"I knew you're the smarter one of us," Hawke says and pulls a pack of sandwiches from her bag. As they eat, the rain falls like a curtain just a few steps away from their hiding place. The fireball paints the cave in warm light. Hawke looks at Merrill, how the light makes her vallaslin glow. "I really know that you're smart."

"I know, vhenan," Merrill says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. "Now stop being silly and eat your food or I won't tell you a story."

Hawke hurries to bite into her sandwich, watching Merrill. Despite everything, it looks like Merrill brought her to just the right place tonight. Must be a keeper thing.

[spirals-within-spirals]

[Video Transcription Begins]

A clip from SBN 1, Sinnoh's main broadcasting channel. In Lily of the Valley Stadium, the largest and grandest battling arena in the region, two trainers face off. On one side of the field of packed earth stands Spiral, clad in their signature red and cream with pokétch at the ready. Opposite them stands a young woman in a gorgeous flowing silver ballgown, wide grin on her face and locks of dirty-blonde hair trailing down her back.

The crowd is cheering already as the announcers introduce the match. "It's time for the second quarter-final of the Lily of the Valley Conference, good folks, and this is shaping up to be a big one!" a deep male voice says enthusiastically. "On one side of the field we have Spiral Uxon from Ten'i Village! Sinnoh's least normal Normal-type specialist has thoroughly demonstrated over these past weeks that if anything their misadventure on Coronet has only made them stronger!"

A tinnier female voice takes over after the cheers die down a little. "They may have made quite a stir in the Top 16 with the spectacular unveiling of an unexpected Mega Evolution, but will that be enough to defeat their opponent today? Because on the other side we have Sally Starward from Oreburgh City!"

"That's right!" The male voice takes over again. "She's Sinnoh's own Queen of Steel, and a favourite to win this year - her skill with her type rivals Steven Stone! Will Uxon be able to match up to her, or will they be only a stepping stone on Starward's rise to the top?"

"And it's not an unfamiliar matchup to either of them - we have a real clash of rivals here today, these two go back years! Since the very start of their careers they've been going head to head, and we have the pleasure of hosting their latest showdown, here at Lily! Of the! Valley!"

The crowd erupts again with cheers as the referee talks to both trainers, and the announcers list the rules - a 6v6 single battle, all standard league rulings in place. A hush comes over the crowd as both battlers signal their readiness, and they each heft a pokéball - Spiral one that looks indistinguishable from a standard-grade pokéball apart from a thick spiraling groove carved into it, Sally one that seems to be made of fine silver.

They look into each other's eyes with a strange intensity as everything but them, their opponent, and the battlefield between them fades out of existence - to their minds, at least.

The referee signals to an Alakazam stationed next to the battlefield, and within moments a bright blue barrier flickers into life around the arena, fading into transparency after a few seconds but still present and capable of stopping anything on the inside from affecting the outside. The referee nods, signals the battlers, and blows his whistle.

---

A view from above makes the field look like an orrery - dozens of miniature planetoids the size of buildings, ripped from the ground and levitated by raw magnetic strength, thousands upon thousands of tons of rock hovering around a Magnezone whose mirror-clear surface shines like the sun. It seems to have stolen the light of the rest of the arena, which is covered in a strange darkness.

A Clefable giggles as she prances upside down and sideways from planetoid to planetoid, gravity a mere suggestion as she dodges Magnezone's attacks with milliseconds to spare, beams of blinding light and bolts of lightning that tear through her psychic shields like paper, planetoids that crash into each other and rend one another to gravel. She moves at impossible angles, throws up substitutes and illusions, teleports like mad, calling on all the tricks of the fae to survive, though the cloying darkness of the battlefield seems to inhibit her.

She retaliates with light of her own, tongues of strange fire, aura and darkness made manifest, but they're visibly far weaker than the Magnezone's attacks, and most are absorbed by hastily erected Light Screens.

In the trainer zones, Spiral's mouth is a constant stream of nonsense, coded phrases Clefable seems to interpret as commands. Sally, meanwhile, barely speaks at all, using only the occasional gesture or single word.

Clefable lands on one of the planetoids and shoves her hand inside the solid rock with little resistance, and it begins to glow with a pale pink light, drifting toward Magnezone. It faces itself toward it, but the rock seems to be beyond its control, flowing and reshaping itself into a pointed star shape shooting for the magnet pokémon.

So Magnezone glows for a moment, and then the screen goes completely white. When the cameras regain functionality, Clefable's shooting star is gone, though Magnezone looks to be shining a little dimmer than before.

Clefable seems unphased, touching down on another planetoid to fire off more attacks, but as she moves to infuse it with her starlight, iron shackles shoot out of it and wrap themselves around her feet.

Her immediate surroundings are instantly enveloped in an impenetrable Darkness as Magnezone devours all light and begins to radiate like a second sun. She disappears before the attack goes off, called back into her pokéball by Spiral. They seem unaffected, but their expression never changes from a giddy grin the entire video, so it's hard to tell. They grip another identical pokéball, and a massive Snorlax materializes on the field.

The screen goes white again as Magnezone unleashes its blinding attack on the newcomer instead.

---

A volume warning comes up as the video jumps to show an Aggron riding a tidal wave of stone - the remains of Magnezone's planetoids can briefly be spotted within it, fallen to the earth and devoured to build a throne for the titan of steel, over twenty feet from horns to tail. The rocks move like water, holding the titan high aloft as it crashes across the battlefield like a horizontal landslide and leaves the ground behind it a shattered ruin.

Aggron's quarry is a strange sight - the Snorlax from earlier somehow leaps over a hundred feet into the air, harnessing the wind to move herself through the sky fast enough to outrun the cataclysm behind her and for long enough she has time to sleep in mid-air before waking up to take another leap.

But the arena is only so large. Just as Aggron is about to catch up, Snorlax lands hard enough to open up a massive fissure ahead of her and stops dead. Aggron crashes into her harder than a freight train, only to find itself with the remains of a substitute hanging off its horns.

Aggron's earthen throne turns on a dime, and Aggron glances down into the massive fissure Snorlax dug up. Then it looks down at its own feet, just in time to see the earth erupt below it as Snorlax comes raging from below, landing a devastating Superpower that... leaves a small dent.

And in return, Aggron wraps its tail around Snorlax's arm before she can disappear back into the earth.

The reason why Snorlax has been evading Aggron becomes terrifyingly obvious - Snorlax is a titan in her own right, intensely strong and with monumental bulk, but in close quarters Aggron treats her like a chew toy. The sheer difference in strength is clear as day, and although Snorlax manages to dent Aggron's armour with several Fighting-type moves as she fails to escape the steel titan's grasp, the Head Smash Aggron delivers in return sends her flying and almost knocks her out in a single blow.

Spiral recalls her before she hits the opposite wall.

"C'mon Spiry, you can do better than that!" Sally chirps, her partner roaring its victory at a deafening volume. "A little rusty?"

Spiral flips her off, seemingly more for the pun than for the ass-kicking she's giving them, and sends out a massive Drampa with white fur and turquoise scales who roars his dominance as he rises into the sky. Aggron's roar is louder, yes, but there is nothing quite like the roar of a true Dragon.

---

The video changes again. The same Aggron now stands at the heart of a horrid storm. The surface of the battlefield, torn to gravel by it and Magnezone before it, has been swept up by a veritable draconic hurricane, thousands upon thousands of rocks infused with bluish-purple light. Cracks in the ground spew that same light, and the sky glows blood-red with draconic energies above the eye of the storm where Aggron stands its ground.

Drampa can be vaguely seen within the storm, acting as its beating heart. Its claim has been made and the battlefield is its domain, its moves empowered to the high heavens. Against a lesser opponent, this might even count as a win condition.

But Spiral isn't facing a lesser opponent. They're facing Sally Starward.

Aggron roars with defiance as countless rocks break off from the storm and rain down on it like draconically empowered meteors - they are outside its control, infused as they are with Drampa's power, but the earth below is still up for grabs. Spikes larger than Aggron shoot out of the ground, Drampa's meteor shower countered with one in reverse, but Drampa is prepared, taking the distraction to dive at Aggron like a draconic javelin and getting off a Dragon Pulse that looks more like a purplish-blue Hyper Beam than anything else, strong enough to visibly hurt Aggron despite the resistance. Drampa barely dodges a horrifyingly strong Dragon Breath in return.

It's a war of attrition from there. Earth Power and Flash Cannons and great gouts of fire are exchanged, and the sky seems almost more rock than air by volume. By the time Aggron finally falls, marking the first actual knockout of the battle, Drampa looks absolutely exhausted, though the storm still goes strong.

Spiral's technically in the lead, for now. But what did it cost?

---

A Lucario leaps through the storm with a martial artist's grace, jumping off the countless thousands of rocks that hum with draconic power, or creating solid platforms of aura when one isn't available. The fact that it's hundreds of feet in the air doesn't seem to bother it in the slightest, nor does the fact that the storm seems to be centering on it, blasting it with stone and fire and wind to blow away mountains.

It merely punches it away, its aura-laden fists allowing it to strike the storm itself, parting the fire and wind like a dike before a raging river even as it flips and pushes off one of the now quite few rocks not yet reduced to gravel to propel itself toward the Dragon at the storm's heart.

Spiral signals their partner and fire gathers in Drampa's throat, putting all his boosted might into a fivefold Fire Blast to intercept the leaping Lucario, who tries to pivot but can't quite avoid it in time. The resultant airburst explosion shakes the arena.

And Lucario comes bursting out of it a moment later behind a shield of aura, bruised but nowhere near broken, slamming Drampa in the back hard enough to knock him out of the sky.

Spiral's dragon may dwarf Sally's pokémon in size, but not in strength. Never in strength.

The storm begins to die down as the referee declares Drampa unable to battle a few moments later, equalizing the score, and Spiral's grin wavers as they sends out a Staraptor in his place.

---

A gnarled Ferrothorn stands its ground against winds to make a hurricane look like a mild breeze, anchoring itself into the ground with its limbs even as the winds turn hotter and hotter, gravel still imbued with Drampa's lingering power. The windmaker, a Staraptor barely visible as anything more than a blur, circles high above.

The air is thick with pollen, but it's starting to burn, and Sally frowns. Then she grins, and then she speaks.

"Ingrain!"

Spiral immediately changes tack at the word, and Staraptor quickly shoots upward, peppering the ground below with blades of wind. The commentators ooh and aah cryptically.

Ferrothorn, meanwhile sticks its vines deeper into the ground, and the battlefield is surprisingly silent for a moment.

And then the earth erupts. Countless thorny vines thicker than tree trunks burst from beneath the ground, and within seconds it's difficult to tell where the arena stops and Ferrothorn stops. Staraptor's blades cut through a few, but there are too many, far too many, and at Sally's direction they converge at the center of the field, burying ferrothorn completely as they wrap around each other and begin to climb into the sky.

The commentators call the technique "World Tree," though that is an incredibly charitable name - it resembles little as much as a demented beanstalk, or perhaps an inverted rope woven from thorns, reaching from the Earth up to the heavens to strangle the life out of its kings.

Staraptor attacks it, slashes at it, tries to burn it, but the thorns are tough as rock, and the damage he deals is repaired in an instant. It doesn't take long before the 'World Tree' reaches hundreds of feet in height, branching up and out and leaving Staraptor little choice but to rise even higher or to be caught in its grasp. The heat from its wings makes the air shimmer, but the tree refuses to catch alight.

Staraptor looks to the sky, and a beam of light shoots out of his beak, taking a few seconds to condense and solidify into an orb of warmth hovering high above the battlefield. The effects are immediate - the tree's growth accelerates from the source of energy, reaches ever higher, vines reaching toward Staraptor like a thousand thousand fingers, and it's all he can do to avoid them.

Then it catches fire.

The response comes just as fast, the flames instantly put out as water begins to leak from every pore of the tree, though it evaporates just as fast.

Staraptor dives, burning wings cutting through smaller vines like paper. His eyes flash with Detects as he performs impossible maneuvers to dodge the larger ones, and a pass through the burning bough lets him cut through the trunk itself, sending the top third of the tree crashing to the earth.

Then a vine catches him, and it's all over.

---

The commentators are laughing at the absurdity of the current situation - a Spinda runs along Ferrothorn's vines, somehow missing every single thorn. The tree still stands, vaguely, but it's clear Ferrothorn isn't focusing on it - rather, the roots of the tree are tearing themselves up, writhing like a nest of Ekans, trying to attack the little creature running along their length, and missing. By millimeters, yes, but missing nonetheless, which is deeply strange considering there are hundreds of them lashing at the thing, thick as tree trunks and circling like thorny whips, trying to hit the tumbling little creature that looks almost unable to stand up. Roots branch and branch again, trying to trip, trying to grab.

And yet Spinda is yet to be hit.

"This sorta situation isn't all that uncommon with rival starters," the female commentator says. "These two have probably battled dozens of times, trained with each other. They know each other too well."

"You've got to admit though," her counterpart says, "I don't think we were expecting a Ferrothorn-Spinda Weather War when we came in today!"

It's true - Spinda seems to have somehow taken control of the Heat Waves Staraptor picked up, reinforcing them, and each step in his wake, every spot he brushes by Ferrothorn's vines, leaves a trail of fire. Staraptor's sun still burns hot above, occasionally reinforced by Spinda. And in return Ferrothorn tries to drown the battlefield, every fire being put out within moments, and dark clouds look to be leaking out of the tree itself, rising toward the sky and threatening to blot out the sun. The 'World Tree' weeps.

Yet Spinda stands fast. Somehow. And he's winning. Slowly but sure, the 'World Tree' runs out of tears to cry as Spinda continues his dance around it, blocking every vine he can't avoid with quick shields or Substitutes, and flames begin to creep across its branches, burning out the roots. Smoke rises high.

A crashing sound is heard from beneath the rootbed and the vines fall still as Ferrothorn, metal scorched and badly hurt, tears itself out of its own creation, cutting its losses and flinging itself at Spinda.

And its own former vines reach for it, usurped by Spinda the moment it let go. Not enough to do much, Ferrothorn is far, far too strong for that, but enough to hinder it before it takes control again. Enough for Spinda to close the distance, striking with a series of flaming strikes hitting perfectly between its thorns. Ferrothorn thrashes and flails with terrifying precision, but Spinda puffs out of existence, another Substitute taking the hit.

Sally lifts Ferrothorn's pokéball and makes to recall it, but it makes a loud noise of protest. She seems to think for a moment before loweing her hand again, letting Ferrothorn duke it out with its old rival.

The video starts to skip through the next part of the battle, which seems to take a while - it's a battle of attrition, Ferrothorn attacking and attacking, but Spinda avoids whipping thorny vines, weaves between storms of spikes, stumbles out of the way of desperate rolls that would knock it out in a single hit. A stray vine hits him on the back of the head and knocks him clean across the arena, smashing into the barrier with a loud crash, though he recovers just in time to dodge a dozen broken branches of the 'World Tree' tossed like javelins.

When the view shifts to show the trainers, Spiral is visibly sweating rivers.

Gambit after gambit by Ferrothorn fails. It takes time, but eventually Ferrothorn begins to glow with an overpowering light, and Spinda reacts in an instant, burying beneath the ground as the screen goes white, Ferrothorn's finishing explosion briefly turning the arena barrier opaque from the strain.

When the smoke clears, all that's left of Ferrothorn's grand tree is ash. A burned and bruised and bare conscious Spinda surfaces as the referee declares Ferrothorn unable to battle, evening the scores again at two KOs each.

For how long?

---

Clefable and Magnezone are again facing one another on a darkened battlefield, though it's a far cry from their first clash. Both look worn down - Clefable's fur is scorched, and Magnezone's surface has lost much of its luster, and it has a large dent on its top side. It's not only the battlers who are hurt, either - what was once a standard-regulation battlefield of packed earth on stone is now little more than half-melted uneven piles of gravel and ash, and their strategies have adjusted to match.

Clefable tosses up clouds of ash to hide herself as Magnezone's one giant eye tries to get a lock on her, metallic cylindrical rods being magnetically flung at her at hypersonic speeds the moment she dares to stand still. A teleport and a gout of wild faefire lets Clefable distract it for a moment - long enough to do something incredibly strange.

Clefable glances up at false sun still hanging heavy in the sky above the two, created by Staraptor and empowered by Spinda, and reaches out. What happens next is disorienting - Clefable's arm doesn't extend in any way, yet she reaches far enough, hundreds of feet up, to grab the false sun out of the heavens. And then she swallows it.

Sally grips her head as her eyes fail to comprehend what just happened, and Spiral's grin widens. Clefable begins to glow brighter than the false sun, and Spiral shouts,

"Doris! SUPERNOVA!"

Clefable teleports right on top of Magnezone, receiving a hypersonic railgun shot to the stomach for her troubles, but it's too late - Clefable grins wider than her face as a conflagration of beautiful, deadly light tears itself out of her, and the arena is consumed by a glorious conflagration of fire and fae. When it finally clears both pokémon are unconscious on the ground, the entire area around them melted into slag. Three-to-three.

"Stupid Fairy taurosshit!" Sally yells, calling back her partner.

"Badass stupid Fairy taurosshit!" Spiral counters, doing the same.

They both take new pokéballs from their belts, and when the referee whistles they both release their new battlers.

On Spiral's side, Snorlax materializes, still hurt from her bout with Aggron but still standing strong, almost fifteen feet tall from head to toe, all rippling fat hiding muscle.

The crowd goes completely silent as Sally's pokémon appears, though. It would be hard not to, with the sheer *weight* of the pokémon that materializes on the battlefield - a giant of molten metal and exactly eleven metal hex nuts, towering over even the titanic Snorlax. The broken, gravelly ground deforms beneath its bulk. Spiral pales a little, and Sally grins wildly.

"She's breaking out the big one here, folks!" one of the commentators says with a cheer that doesn't fit the relative silence of the arena. "Laniakea, Sinnoh's only Melmetal and Sally Starward's undisputed Ace, has taken the field for the first time this year! Uxon's in for the match of their life!"

Spiral wastes no time, and Snorlax stomps the ground hard, causing the earth to begin to shake, plumes of raw power beginning to shoot out of the ground within moments, bringing literal tons of gravel and slag with them.

One shoots up beneath Melmetal, who doesn't show any reaction to the super-effective attack. It simply begins to walk toward Snorlax, deforming its liquid body to make each step longer. Snorlax flees from it without a moment of hesitation, shifting the ground beneath her to fling herself into the air, but Melmetal isn't as helpless as Aggron at a distance. Its body warps and deforms, swinging its multi-ton weight to fling itself into the air. Snorlax tries to dodge, but Melmetal stretches itself out as it spins in the air. It looks... incredibly silly.

Less so when a glancing blow is enough to send Snorlax crashing into the ground, and the arena barrier strains as it impacts it with a gigantic crash. The molten giant sinks several feet into the ground as it lands, and turns to find a five-pointed Fire Blast headed its way. It lifts one arm to intercept it, unphased, and the blast doesn't visibly move it even as the rock below melts.

Snorlax looks hurt from even the glancing blow, though she looks somewhat better after chowing down on a berry. She makes to jump back into the sky, but a sharp command from her trainer stops her.

There's a shift in the air, and Sally grins as Melmetal rearranges itself. the six hex nuts making up its arms drawing themselves into its torso and rearranging themselves, hollowing out the center until the pokémon resembles a living tube more than a humanoid.

There's a glow within the hollow, and the screen goes white as an iridescent beam, something like a Hyper Beam but a hundred times as blinding and crackling with electricity, shoots out of it. It's not a tube. It's a cannon.

"I've seen the thing named as the single strongest 'mon in the tournament circuit, you know," says the female commentator as the light renders the cameras useless.

"What, worse than Armand's Altaria?"

A hasty Protect does little to protect Snorlax from the blast - when the dust clears, she lies in a crater, fur scorched and barely conscious, though another berry helps take the edge off. Not fast enough to avoid Melmetal, back in humanoid form, getting in close range.

It easily lifts her up by the foot, its sheer strength making Aggron look gentle. Spiral yells something and Snorlax begins to glow with unbridled power, but a single punch ends it, slamming her unconscious into the earth.

"Depends on how you classify 'strongest,' I guess. Can't deny the raw strength of it at least."

"That you can not."

Sally's back in the lead - an inlay at the bottom of the screen shows her to still have Lucario and an unrevealed pokémon in the back, as well as the Melmetal on the field. Spiral only has two - a badly hurt Spinda, and, as is revealed when they call her onto the field, Lopunny.

A cheer picks up in the crowd as the bunny pokémon comes out. They all know what's about to happen. Spiral plays it up, lifting their Pokétch into the air as the swirling, warping energy of Mega Evolution grips Lopunny.

The sound barrier breaks the moment the transformation finishes, and Lopunny flings itself toward Melmetal with a snarl. Spiral screams out their commands, desperately trying to keep control, because if they don't... it's already over.

Melmetal lifts a fist to intercept, but Lopunny is so much faster it's not even funny, blurring around it and landing a sixfold strike on Melmetal's head, each blow strong enough to send out a shockwave, for all the good it does - Melmetal looks unperturbed, responding with a surprisingly fast punch Lopunny barely has to wherewithal to avoid. It instead slams its fist into the ground, passing into it like air and kicking up enough gravel to inhibit visibility.

"It's Ace versus Ace here, folks! That Lopunny's something nasty, but she'll need more than the element to surprise to come out on top! One good hit from Melmetal and it's over, I reckon."

Melmetal uses the momentum from its missed blow to start spinning, turning its torso into an axle with its arms out like a spinning top. Lopunny lands a few more hits, though she looks to be carefully only striking the hex nuts, avoiding the liquid body, but it takes only seconds before Melmetal becomes a blur, too dangerous to approach.

Lopunny backpedals, summoning fire into her palms and blowing it like a kiss to envelop her opponent in a gout of flame, but Melmetal's blurring arms bat it aside.

Spiral's eyes narrow, and Lopunny leaps high into the air - just in time for Melmetal's arms to erupt with twin beams of blinding raw electrical power, each weaker than the one leveled at Snorlax but still easily enough to melt the surface of the battlefield into slag as they sweep across the battlefield at speeds beyond what the camera can properly capture, leaving the molten surface somehow crackling with electricity.

Lopunny's ears glow as she flies high above the devastation, bursting with aura that breaks off and flies at Melmetal, impacting with explosions that don't seem to phase it. She dives as Melmetal shifts its rotation to sweep its twin beams of power into the air at her, fur scorching and burning as she barely avoids them to land a heavy strike on Melmetal's head, perfectly hitting its eye and pushing it back for the first time in the fight.

The impact causes the metal titan to sweep one of its arms through the ground like it isn't there, spurting molten slag hundreds of feet into the sky, and Lopunny quickly coats its six limbs with ice to protect herself as she comes in to land halfway across the battlefield. She looks tired, as does Spiral, panting heavily with a rivulet of blood running from their nose. Mega evolution is something to behold, but they can't keep it up very long.

Lopunny continues to pepper Melmetal with Aura Spheres as she blurs around it, dodging devastating beams as she tries to get closer. Spiral grits their teeth and screams something, and Lopunny snarls as she rolls herself into a ball, hurtling toward her opponent fast enough to cause a sonic boom, fast enough Melmetal can't react before she unfurls and lands a devastating blow right to its eye...

Only to get caught on the rebound.

The punch catches her from above at a dead angle and sends her crashing through the ground with a deafening boom, hard enough to leave a deep crater. When she becomes visible again, Melmetal lifting its arm for another swing, she looks barely conscious, and one of her legs is twisted at an angle that just looks wrong.

And yet, before Melmetal can strike again, Spiral yells something, and Lopunny's eyes glow before she falls unconscious, the Mega Evolution falling off her like it was never there.

But the energy remains, rising out of the crater and spreading across the arena. Spiral looks dazed, their eyes bloodshot, but their grin doesn't fade. One final pokémon remains.

The crowd goes wild as a barely conscious Spinda once again materalizes on the field, and Lopunny's lingering power rushes toward him, healing his wounds and rejuvenating his energy. He looks at his opponent, that titan of metal, and then back at his trainer, then back to the battle with a look of utter determination on his face. No words are needed. It's showtime.

Sally just sighs, gritting her teeth.

Melmetal's first beam impacts an instant later, utterly annihilating a Substitute, but Spinda is already gone. He emerges from the ground a moment later, glowing with Psychic power, and blasts his opponent with invisible force that does nothing visible but disturb the slag at its feet. In response, Melmetal punches the earth and shatters it, opening up fissures across the arena centering on Spinda, who uses his psychic power to briefly hover above the devastation even as the earth tries to swallow him whole.

Switch it up.

Spinda's eyes glow with a strange light, ripping away Melmetal's control of the earth with Disable and disappearing into it. The ground beneath Melmetal's feet turns soft, and it sinks down to its navel before freezing the ground solid and smashing its way out like swatting away a Spinarak's web.

Switch it up.

Spinda surfaces, fists wreathed ice, and dodges a beam as the arena begins to freeze over. He slides around it like an Eiscue toward his opponent as the frost begins to creep up Melmetal's legs, solidifying its liquid body.

The fire that bursts off the metal titan melts it in an instant.

Switch it up.

A beam of burning light shoots up into the sky, recreating the false sun from before, and Melmetal's flames begin to turn in on itself, usurped from the titan's control, scorching its hex nuts black until it rearranges itself into a cannon and blasts the false sun out of the sky.

Switch it up.

Spinda uses the opening to close the distance, tumbling around Melmetal's reconstituted fists and perfectly landing powerful blows on each of its eleven hex nuts in turn, and even as Melmetal begins to spin like a top he seems to almost accidentally duck beneath each spin, several times a second as the strikes continue, before Melmetal explodes with electricity, a hasty protect eating the bulk of the blast but still sending Spinda flying into the arena wall.

Switch it up.

Before Spinda even lands, he spits up enough water to act as a cushion and uses it to slide across the arena, leaping off to use it as a shield when a mighty bolt of electricity arcs toward him.

Switch it up.

Spinda's ears slam into the solidifying ground, slamming up a swarm of rocks that each impact Melmetal in turn.

Switch it up.

Space warps and twists in that signature way of Trick Room, but it doesn't stop, the twisted space winking in and out of existence to disorient Spinda's opponent while it moves as if nothing is off, closing the distance to land more hits.

Switch it up.

Spinda sets himself on fire, only for the flames to spread to Melmetal a moment later.

Switch it up.

Every time Melmetal tries to adapt to Spinda attacks, he changes them.

Switch it up.

Every move answered in kind.

Switch it up.

And little by little,

Switch it up.

The bird grinds down the mountain.

It's a small mistake that does them in. The ground shifts in a way Spinda wasn't expecting, and in the single moment of variance, Melmetal lands a glancing punch that knocks him out in an instant, crashing against the barriers with a crack. Spiral winces and recalls him.

"Spiral Uxon has no remaining Pokémon!" the referee announces as the crowd explodes. "Sally Starward is the-"

Spiral raises their hand, catching the referee's attention. Their gaze is fully fixed on Melmetal, still standing stock still after its final strike.

And then, slowly, like a skyscraper falling in slow motion... it collapses to the ground. Sally sighs, but her grin only grows wider. She's soaked in sweat just as much as Spiral is, albeit less bloody.

Spiral cheers wildly even as the referee continues to declare them the loser, the crowd cheering with them. And then their knees finally buckle under them and they fall to the ground, out like a light.

[Transcription ends.]

[thoughtfullyyoungduck]

Never felt the rain

Summary:  Could you write something with Bill having a young daughter and when she asks him to go playing outside in the rain while he was working, he brushed her off, so she went out on own her own and got lost, so Bill thinks she went missing like Georgie?

A/N: here you go anon, I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think, it would mean a lot! Also, thank you for requesting this, it had me writing again after a long time and I really missed it, so thank you

Bill has a habit of writing as soon as rain starts drizzling from the sky. He doesn’t usually maintain a schedule, especially not after going back to Derry for a second time an gaining six friends who flitted straight back into his life and who each deserved as much of his time as the others, but when it rains, he forces himself behind the computer.

He draws the curtains shut, puts on a pair of noise cancelling headphones, and hopes that the downpour stops soon. According to his therapist, it’s because the weather reminds him of the day Georgie died and he turns to writing as a distraction, and while she might not be wrong, Bill prefers not to think about the specifics. All he knows is that as soon as dark clouds gather, he retreats to his study.

Audra knows this, and has, to Bills great shame, been a victim to his snappish behavior when he gets disturbed, so she leaves him be, and takes their daughter, Lily, on a mother daughter retreat. It’s their own routine that work well for the both of them, and so far, there haven’t been any problems with it.

Today, the bad weather struck out of nowhere, the rain spatters drumming their own beat on the windows and the foundation of the house, and Bill and remembers how bleak Georgie’s last day on earth had been. He retreats to his study in quiet without informing his daughter or wife about his plans, and slips into an imaginary world, where there’s no rain or bad memories.

He gets lost in it, thankfully. The rhythmic tapping of his keyboard and his own hushed voice lull him into a state so fully focused it allows him to forgo his environment. That includes ignoring the rain, but also the wooden door opening behind him as a small child sneaks in, big blue eyes full of a playful innocence.

He doesn’t hear Lily calling out to him, and is only notified of her arrival when her hand tugs on the sleeve of his shirt. It startles him, a cursed ‘Jesus’, slipping from his mouth before he clamps his teeth over his lips to stop more from tumbling out.

‘Daddy’, Bill reads of his daughters face, before he finally clads off the headset and hears her voice filter through.

She’s Georgie’s age now, and she resembles him a lot. For one, she looks up to her dad with as much wonder as her uncle did, a daddy’s girl through and through. She has the Knick for adventure too, though Bill is not sure that’s always a good thing.

‘What is it honey?’ He asks her with a soft voice. He suppresses the twinge of annoyance, now he’s broken out of his concentration, it’s hard not to notice the outside, and it’ll be difficult to reenter his writing groove.  

‘Can we play outside?’ She suggest, lips contorted in a devious little smile that proves that Audra must have said no to her question, and she’s now trying her hand at the person she has wrapped around her finger.

Bill’s gut reaction is to agree. How could he not, when he made the promise to himself to always be the best dad he could be, ever since finding out Audra was pregnant. He swore to himself that he’d never neglect his child, never put her on the backburner for anyone or anything, and that he’d enjoy, relish in every memory he’d be allowed to make with her.

But, he can’t. Not in this situation. Not when Pennywise only came back a mere four months ago, and he was forced into painful memories and past mistakes. Not when he’s relatively convinced that IT’s gone for real, but not 100% assured.

He smiles painfully, and gently pulls his daughter in his lap. It’s not so much that he’s trying to spoil his daughter, it’s just that he loves spending time with her as much as she adores spending time with him. His heart twinges painfully at the notion of disappointing her.

‘Not right now Lil, Daddy’s working.’ He presses a kiss on the top of her head, and squeezes her a bit tighter when a particularly hard downpour causes his heart to clench painfully. If only he had given Georgie a hug like this before letting him out that day.

It’s far too late for that regret now, but he won’t allow the same fate to be bestowed upon his daughter.

‘Please?’ Lily pouts, blinking her eyes in a way that is entirely disarming. She’s so good at convincing, she would make an excellent actress one day. ‘It’ll be so much fun.’ She leans in closer on Bill’s lap, bumping her forehead against Bill’s chest. ‘I promise I won’t step in any puddles.’

It’s a complete lie of course, and Bill can’t help but grin at the idea of Lilly thinking she’s being sneaky about the whole thing, but still, he can’t concur.

‘Later, alright buttercup? And I promise that I’ll spend an entire day with you tomorrow?’

Lily doesn’t smile, so Bill does the one thing he’s become a pro at since becoming a dad; ticking her until she can’t help but laugh.

She shrieks instantly, squirming away from Bill’s fingers as the dance over her sides until she’s nearly toppled of his lip in her haste to escape him, and then giggles long after Bill’s stopped.

Once that too dies out, she bites her lip, seemingly scanning her chances of getting him to agree on going out anyway, but then she concedes.

‘Alright then’, she says a little bit disheartened, but agreeing none the less. She slitters back out as quiet as she came in, but not before a kiss over her shoulder and waving at Bill.

‘See you later dad.’

Bill smiles and waves back, crushed by love and grief battling in his heart for the upper hand, then he puts on his headphone, covers his ears, and he neglects to hear the front door open and lock with a deafening pull.  

----

In the end, it’s the guilt that makes him give up only a half hour after Lilly came in to ask for his time. He peruse the last line he’d written, he hadn’t managed to find his flow after the interruption anyway, and closes the document of his new book for the day.

He still can’t find the strength to go outside in this weather but perhaps he can convince Lily that watching a movie and snacking on popcorn is a much better activity then getting wet and cold.

He shuffles into the kitchen, where Audra’s is already at, and wonders if they have enough corn to put together homemade popcorn.

‘Do you think Lily will want to watch a movie? I’m thinking Disney might be the way to go?’ He inquires Audra absentmindedly while scouring the pantries for the ingredients he needs. He knows, just from the sounds of Audra’s voice that something’s the matter.

‘She’s not with you?’ Audra chokes out, voice pinched in panic.

Bill’s heart stops for a full second, before rabbiting so hard his chest feels like exploding.

‘What?’ He asks, but the words feel foreign, like he’s not the one saying it.  Audra’s responding look is enough to give him all the answers he needs.

----

The rain remains unforgiven towards Bill, the background of the yet another great tragedy in his life. Cliché as it is, it does help cover up his tears, about the only positive thing in his situation right now. Audra is next to him, on the same level of utter panic as Bill’s, but he hopes for her sake that he appears more composed then he actually is.

He viciously wishes for the losers to be with him now, but calling them would take up to much time and they live too far away to be of any aid anyway.  

His neighbors are aiding in the search, but they’re not enough. He doesn’t trust them like he trust his friends, he doesn’t want the life of his daughter depending on strangers.

They keep telling him that she’s fine, that she’s most likely having the time of her life without realizing how her parents are in shambles, but Bill can’t believe that. Lily’s been out for at least thirty minutes, that’s the time they noticed she had disappeared, and even Bill is shivering his socks off. He can’t afford to think about how cold Lily must be.

He separates from the group of searches after the weird glances he receives unsettled peeks when he ducks on his knees and calls out for his daughter in a sewer. Audra, who knows in part what happened to Georgie, lets out a sob.

Bill feels bad for leaving his wife all by herself, but he wants to cover as much ground as possible. He can’t wait at their front porch praying for Lily’s safe return, he knows from experience how feeble that is.

The options of where Lily could be are limited. Her friends live too far away for her to have walked to them, and there was only one place kids of her age liked to hang out. Still, when the park turns up nothing, he scours the area surrounding it, yelling out Lily’s name until his voice skips and a hoarse tone underline his words.

‘P-p-please.’ He screams with his head thrown back towards the sky, his stutter going unnoticed. ‘H-haven’t you t-t-taken enough from m-m-me?’ He’s unsure who he’s calling out too.

Bill’s attention is pulled towards a curtain that wobbles open, and old lady peeking from behind it, judging him with curious eyes. The first one to gossip apparently, but the last to help. Just as with Georgie. Bile threatened to spill as Bill walks on.

With his energy running low, as does his hope, Bill concedes to try and walk in the other direction of his home, to see if anyone else has had more luck than him. Then, seemingly using up all of Bill’s luck for the rest of his life, a wobbled; ‘Daddy’, cries out.

He’s never backed up so quick, and when he lays eyes on Lily, he’s never run that fast towards her either. It’s the pure and utter fear you experience as a kid, when you get lost in a comic in the store and you swivel back around to your mom, but she’s gone somewhere and you can’t find her.

That’s the feeling that linger when you lose someone close to you. And when she pops back up, that’s the utter relief Bill gets to taste now.

He’s back on his knees before he can comprehend it, and his hand curls around Lily’s back and head, cradling her so close this chest it’s nearly suffocating. Bill weeps, caressing his daughters hair as he checks her over.

‘Oh honey’, he chokes, swelling multiple times to force back the lump of tears.

Lily’s crying too, though it seems more out of reluctant than anything else.

‘I’m sorry dad. I just wanted to go out and play. But I fell and I think my bike is broken. I’m really sorry.’

Bill sorrow laughs. He can’t stop the ridiculous laughter that’s so absurd.

‘Lily, I couldn’t care less about a bike’, Bill explains, and he means it every bit. He pulls her back in a tight hug, allowing himself ten more seconds before he has to let go of her.

‘Please don’t ever do that again,’ he whispers, leaving a quick kiss on her head. He holds her as close as he wish he could have done to Georgie, if he had been found alive too. Maybe later, tomorrow or the day after, he’d have a more firm conversation about how sneaking out is not okay, but today, the relief wins over every other emotion or lecture.

‘Is mom mad?’ Lily asks, her own arms clenched around Bill’s shirt so tight it’s clear that she also had a large fright.

Shit, Audra. In an instant, Bill picks up his daughter, arm holding her up by the knees. She’s old enough to walk, but Bill has longer legs and walks faster.

‘No’, he assures her, despite a conformation of Audra. He’s sure his feeling are rekindled in his wife too. ‘But we have to let her know you’re okay. She’s worried too.’

‘Okay’, Lily agrees easy, her head resting on Bill’s shoulders. The rain isn’t that cold anymore, now that he has his child back in the safety of his arms.

----

That evening, Bill, Audra and Lily are cuddles together on their couch, watching Aladdin. Lily has long slipped to the land of dreams, but Bill and Audra want to keep her close for a little while longer. Maybe they’ll all spend the night here anyway, regardless of future back pains, but that’s a discussion for later.

Bill swipes one of Lily’s curls from her forehead gently, smiling when she snores deeper, then settles again.

‘Love you buttercup.’ Bill says, in his mind, he thinks, ‘I’ll never let anything happen to you.’

[thewickedkings]

Between the Two of Us ~ Chapter 10

Masterlist || AO3 ||  Previous Chapter || Next Chapter

Summary:  Jurdan High school AU. Rivals Jude and Cardan are forced to partner up  for a history project, and drama ensues. Filled with banter, pranks, an unhealthy amount of pining, and Jude being clueless as usual.

Trigger Warnings: Mild cursing. Please let me know if there’s anything I missed!

~~~

A/N: This chapter is even longer than the last one, at 4k words. Also, you’re welcome in advance.

That Sunday was one of the busiest at the café. Students were streaming in to work on all their assignments before Thanksgiving break, and by the time they caught a break, Jude was out of breath.

“Damn, I don’t think it’s ever been this busy,” Lili said, wiping her forehead.

“No wonder no one else wanted this shift.”

Lili groaned. “I have to go home and write not two, but three essays. I know I shouldn’t have procrastinated, but it was my birthday week.”

“I’ll help you edit them if you want,” Jude offered. For some reason, she actually enjoyed editing essays, and Lili had definitely taken advantage of that in the past. “And you know it’s called birthday, not birth week,” Jude snarked.

“Shut up, Ms. I-made-googly-eyes-with-Cardan-all-night.”

“I did not.”

“Yes you did. Now please tell me what happened, because I know something did. The sexual tension when you guys came back down was disgusting.”

Thankfully, Jude was saved by a customer who had walked in. But Lili was stubborn, and after Jude took her order, she pressed, “Nope. Spill.”

Jude grimaced before recounting the incident, which she now referred to in her head as ‘the bathroom incident.’

Lili gasped comically. “Oh my God. Cardan has more game than I expected. Kissing your thumb after band aiding it? Hold on.” She called out the customer’s name, leaving the drink on the counter, before returning. “Damn, that’s smooth.”

Jude groaned. “I know.”

“Wait, did anything happen when he drove you home?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

Jude blushed even more as she remembered the drive. They had been bickering as usual, as if that could stop them both from thinking about the increasing tension between them.      

And then the silence they’d both been avoiding like cowards descended. The painful, awkward as hell silence.

By the time they got to her house, Jude was anxious to get out of the car. She reached for the door handle right as Cardan spoke, staring straight ahead. “So we’re really not going to talk about it?”

She froze, not expecting them to address it. “Talk about what?”

“Jude.”

“Cardan,” she mimicked, and he rolled his eyes.

“Fine then.” He pushed his door open at the same time as Jude.

“What are you doing?” “Walking you to your door.”

“I can walk to my door by myself.” Her foot caught on the edge of the sidewalk, and she’d stumbled before righting herself.

“Righttt,” Cardan drawled and followed her up the sidewalk.

She ignored him, pulling out her keys and unlocking the front door. “Okay, you can go now, loser.”

“Weirdo,” Cardan said.

“You’re a weirdo.”

Cardan snickered. “Nice comeback.”

“Shut up.” She felt his gaze on her back and was thankful for the dark, because she was blushing for no reason.

“You shut up.”

They both snickered like the immature idiots they were, and Jude knew she had steered clear of the conversation for now.

When Cardan reached his car, he hollered. “We’re going to talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she hollered right back.

Cardan just grinned. “See you tomorrow, Duarte.”

Her expression must have been doing something weird at the memory, because Lili snorted. “You’re in deep shit.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Um, maybe first off, actually admit you like him?”

“I do not.”

The Bomb raised her eyebrows.

Jude groaned. “I can’t like him. Not him of all people.”

“But you doooo,” the Bomb sing songed. “You and Cardan are in-”

“Lili, I will not help you edit your essay if you don’t shut up right now.”

She went silent immediately. “That’s just cruel.”

Jude grinned. “So… how’s Van?”

Lili glared. “You’re not subtle at all.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

She wiped down the counter, silent for a beat before she sighed. “Fine. He’s just- I think I need to move on.” Jude opened her mouth to interrupt, but the Bomb continued. “I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, I think he likes me like that, but I don’t know… he’s always so skittish when I try to take things further. And I don’t want to ruin things between us.”

Jude knew there was more to the story, but before she could say anything, a group of girls entered the café, and Jude had to take their orders. She dismissed it, figuring she’d bring it up later.

 ~~~

Jude didn’t see Cardan at school the next two days. Meeting her college application deadlines took up most of her time, and before she knew it, it was Thanksgiving Break. Vivi came home from college, and suddenly their house was much more lively than usual.

Before Thanksgiving dinner, Vivi stomped into Jude’s room and shut the door behind her. “I know I haven’t visited much, but what’s going on between you and Taryn?”

Jude pulled out her headphones from her ears. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“That’s what she said too!”

“Viv, just leave it.”

“Well, you’re going to have to figure it out, because even Oak’s annoyed at this point.”

“He is?”

“You are all idiots,” Vivi mumbled on her way out of the room, before popping back in. “Oh, by the way, I think your mac n cheese is burning.”

“Shit! Why didn’t you say that first?”

Throughout dinner, Vivi proceeded to force Jude and Taryn into conversation. The ease at which Vivi slipped back into their dynamic was uncanny after so many months away, but Jude supposed that was the way with family.

Madoc and Oriana carried the turkey to the table while Jude prepared for the grand reveal. Oak bounced in his seat in anticipation of what had becomes Jude Thanksgiving tradition. When Jude pulled back the foil to reveal her mac n cheese, it looked perfectly fine. Except for unmistakably charred edges

Taryn snorted. “It’s definitely better than last year’s.”

Jude cracked a grin. Maybe there was something to say about Thanksgiving in bringing the family together.

 ~~~

Jude spent the end of the break hanging out with Lili, Van, and Garrett. The weird energy between Lili and Van was palpable, and Jude instinctively looked for Cardan to raise her eyebrows at before realizing he wasn’t there. Cardan had texted that he was busy with family stuff on the group chat, and Jude couldn’t help but wonder if he was avoiding her. Logically, she knew she was being self-centered and he probably was busy, but the thought stung more than it should have.

Monday came far too quickly, and Jude rubbed her eyes as she walked to her first class, bumping into the last person she expected to see: Locke. For the past few weeks, she’d been messing with him, but not too obviously that he would suspect she knew about what he did. Her revenge plan was still brewing, but until then, she could have some fun.

She and Lili made a game out of replying to his texts with the weirdest responses, just to see how much he could take. Her favorite was when she had ‘accidentally’ sent him a picture of two tampon boxes, asking which one she should get. When he had responded with a ‘whichever one fits??’ Jude had exploded with laughter before clarifying that it wasn’t meant for him, except that it definitely was.

When she’d asked him if he wanted to come to dinner to meet her sister and her parents, with an emphasis on her dad, he had avoided her for the next two weeks.

Which made it even harder to control her laugh when his face paled when he saw her. “Sorry, I’d better get going. I’m going to be late.”

“Right. Let me know if you can make it to dinner. My dad really wants to meet you.”

Locke practically tripped as he ran away from her.

“Damn, Duarte, what did you say to scare him?” Cardan’s familiar voice drawled out from behind her, and a grin escaped her lips, a small part of her relieved that he sought her out. She hadn’t realized how ingrained he was into her routine until she hadn’t seen him for a week.

His pace matched with hers until they were walking side by side, falling into their familiar groove.

“Just mentioned how much my dad wanted to meet him for dinner.”

Cardan grinned and handed her a cup full of coffee.

“What’s this for?”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. It’s black. I don’t know why you would willingly drink that, but you do you.”

“Yes, okay, but why’d you get me coffee?”

“Consider it me paying you back for accidentally spilling your coffee that one time.”

“Accidentally, my ass.” She frowned at her cup. “It’s not poisoned is it?”

“Fine. If you don’t want it, I’ll find some other psychopath who likes black coffee.”

Jude hugged her coffee protectively to her chest. “No. Mine.”

“I figured. Also, we need to finish our project. It’s due…“

“Next week, I know,” Jude cut off. “We still haven’t bought a poster.”

Cardan groaned. “We should have gotten one from Dollar Tree.”

“Well maybe you could’ve gotten that instead of a tiara,” she said, grinning up at him as they stopped in front of her class.

Cardan rolled his eyes. “So are you free Thursday night?”

“Yeah. Text me when later.”

“Good. We’ll talk then,” he said, with an extra emphasis on the word talk. His eyes dropped shamelessly to her lips, long enough that it was anything but unintentional, before he smirked and strode away.

Jude called after him, unwilling to let him get the last word. “About the project!”

“Of course. What did you think I was talking about?” He disappeared before she could respond.

Kissing. She was thinking about kissing him. Ugh.

She grumbled angrily to herself as she placed her bag next to her desk. When she caught Taryn staring at her, she snapped, “What?”

Taryn opened her mouth to speak, but the bell interrupted her. “Nothing.”

 ~~~

After soccer practice on Thursday, Jude went home to take a shower. While blow drying her hair she texted Cardan to figure out when they were meeting up. He immediately responded with ‘can’t do my place,” and Jude frowned. After a couple messages, they ended up deciding to go to the library at Cardan’s suggestion.

Oak was throwing a fit over something or another as she headed out the door, and Oriana paused their argument to place a hand on Jude’s shoulder. “Heading out?” It wasn’t in an overbearing tone, just gentle.

“Yeah. To the library.” Jude hesitated, battling the urge to say something more. Oriana might not have been her real mother, but Jude realized what a blessing it was to have someone that checked up on her and cared the way Oriana did. She swallowed and said, “I’ll be back soon,” and headed out.

By the time she got to the library, Cardan had already texted that he was there. Seconds after she turned off her car, a knock sounded on her window, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Cardan grinned sheepishly when she opened her door. “Sorry.”

She shrugged it off and handed him the poster she from the passenger seat. She glanced around the parking lot for his car. “Where’s your car?”

“I walked.” At the shock on her face, Cardan added, “Don’t look at me like that. Just because we live in a suburb doesn’t mean I have to drive everywhere. Plus, it’s only a fifteen minute walk.”

“Okay, but… car. Fast. Walk. Slow.”

Cardan rolled his eyes and tugged her wrist impatiently. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

They walked through the archway that opened up into the entry area of the library, ‘welcome’ inscribed into the stone. The wall behind the front desk was patterned with hexagons of different pastel colors, and the librarian behind the desk gave them a friendly smile. Her dark brown hair was tied up into a ponytail, strands of gray beginning to appear.

“Cardan, nice to see you. I see you’ve brought a friend,” she said to Cardan. Her honey-colored eyes glanced at Jude with curiosity.

“Um, yeah. Mel, this is Jude. We’re doing a project together.”

Jude introduced herself, trying to hide her own curiosity.

Mel smiled at Jude warmly. “It’s nice to meet one of Cardan’s friends.” Turning to Cardan, she added, “The back room is empty, if you two want to head there.”

Cardan thanked her and gestured Jude to follow him. They passed the kid’s section, which was littered with bright signs and seating, and when they were out of hearing distance, Jude asked. “So… you come here a lot?”

“Um, I guess. I came a lot when I was a kid, so sometimes I stop by.” The tips of his ears turned pink, and damn, Jude felt something squeeze in her chest at the sight.

“Cool.”

His head jerked up at her response, and whatever he saw in her expression had him reaching for her hand and twining their fingers together. He tugged her hand, and she followed him through the stacks, the only sound their footsteps and the comforting hum of the library.

She grinned at the floor. This boy never ceased to surprise her.

They stopped in front of a room divided from the rest of the library by a wall of glass, and Cardan pushed open the door. The opposite end of the room was also completely glass, and the window looked out over the lake behind the library. A table with four chairs was on the left, and a cozy armchair sat on the right.

Cardan let go of her hand, and she ached to pull it back to hers, feel the warm callouses of his palm against hers. Instead she put the poster on the table and pulled out her laptop. “This is nice. I’m surprised no one else took it.”

“Mel saves it for me sometimes.”

Jude snorted. “You really do charm everyone, don’t you?”

Cardan sat down across her, humming in agreement. “It’s only a matter of time before I charm you too.”

“Keep waiting.”

Cardan kicked her leg under the table, and she bit back a smile. If his leg stayed there, pressed against the side of hers while they worked, neither of them mentioned it.

 ~~~

“Not bad, if I do say so myself,” Jude said, as she looked down at their poster. Yes, it did feel like a fifth grade science fair project, but Jude was still proud of it. Something about cutting and gluing things together made it seem so much more satisfying.

“Not bad? This is fucking gorgeous.” Cardan pushed his curls off his forehead, his silver rings catching the light. Jude’s brain automatically snagged on how unfair it was that guys could have such attractive hands. Like how did that even make sense?

Her gaze caught on them now, eyes tracing the veins and the flex of his fingers where they tapped against the edge of the table. She’d noticed that Cardan always seemed to fidget with his hands, unable to keep them unoccupied.

“Jude?”

“Hm?” She pushed her thoughts away and tried to focus. “Yes, gorgeous,” she agreed.

He gave her a strange look, and she felt a flush creeping up her neck. She started hastily picking up the scraps of paper and tidying up the table. When she dared to meet his gaze, he looked like he was battling himself with something.

“What’s up with you and Locke?” Cardan blurted a few seconds later.

“What do you mean?”

This time, his words were a little more deliberate. “I know you’re messing with him, but does he think you’re… dating?”

“I don’t know. We only went on one date, and I pretty much scared him off when I mentioned my dad.” She shrugged, confused as to why he was bringing up Locke. “Does it matter?”

His hand stilled. “I guess not.”

Silently, the two of them worked until they had finished gluing on all the information. They cleared up the excess papers and started cleaning up.

“So when are you going to break it off with him?”

“Well, I was planning to do a whole revenge prank thing, but I haven’t fully planned it out yet,” she said contemplatively, scraping off the dried glue from her fingers.

When she looked up, Cardan was looking at her with a devious smile. “What?”

“I have an idea.”

 ~~~

The sky was dark when they arrived at the grocery store. As they placed their items on the counter to check out, the cashier gave them a strange look. Jude simply smiled and said, “Isn’t it such a wonderful night?”

At Cardan’s direction, Jude drove to a neighborhood a few minutes from Cardan’s, and they parked in a darkened spot on the side of the street.

Jude’s nerves thrummed in anticipation. She hadn’t been this excited in so long, probably since the last time she had pranked Cardan. She had to admit that scheming with someone made it all the more fun.

Cardan pulled on a black sweatshirt, and his eyes met hers as he pulled up the hood to cover his curls. The wicked grin he sent her made her stomach squeeze.

“You take the right, and I’ll cover the left?”

She nodded, and silently opened the door and stepped out as Cardan did the same.

They crouched on the sidewalk next to some trees and silently made their way towards the lone house at the end of the street. Thankfully, Locke’s car was parked out front. They hadn’t exactly planned for it if his car had been in the garage.

A car door slammed across the street and Jude looked at Cardan. “Where-”

He clapped his hand over her mouth before she could finish, and he pointed across the street. A car was reversing out of the house next to Locke’s, its headlights nearly passing over them. Her heart beat furiously against her chest.

The car drove away, and Cardan suddenly dropped his hand from her mouth. Her lips burned from the ghost of his hand, and her heart sped up for a completely different reason.

“That was close,” she whispered breathlessly, and Cardan nodded, his eyes darting away from hers.

They crept up his driveway, and Cardan passed her three rolls of plastic wrap from his backpack. Slowly, Jude unfurled the plastic wrap, and pushed it over the top of his car until Cardan caught it. He wrapped it over his side before rolling it under the car back to Jude. She hadn’t realized how painstaking the process would be, but they kept at it. The sound of the unfurling wrap seemed too loud against the silent night.

Twenty long minutes later, Jude passed the last of the last of the final roll of wrap to Cardan. She waited for Cardan to secure it into place, shifting impatiently on the balls of her feet.

A gentle whirring sound cut through the night, and Jude’s eyes flew to Cardan, who was tip-toeing back towards her from around the car.

“Run,” he whispered urgently.

She grabbed Cardan’s backpack from the ground right as a spray of water hit her arm, drenching her and the side of the car. She glanced behind her and almost laughed, realizing the sprinklers had turned on, not some sort of security device like she had thought in her panic.  

Cardan looked at her, his eyes glinting with laughter. “Come on, let’s go.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her.

They ran across the sidewalk like criminals fleeing from a crime scene, narrowly avoiding the sprinklers, and Jude felt giggles breaking out of her chest. Her heart pounded against her chest, her breath coming out in pants. The cold water pressed into the skin of her arm, a sharp contrast to the warmth of Cardan’s hand in hers.

They ran all the way back to her car, and they finally stopped to catch their breath. Jude leaned back into the car, panting, her hands braced on her chest to hold her heart in.

Her eyes met Cardan’s, who was panting as if he had just been in a police chase, and a giggle escaped her mouth. And then another. And then both of them were laughing like maniacs.

“Who the fuck-” she laughed, “turns on their sprinklers-” another fit of giggles overtook her. “-at midnight?”

Cardan laughed harder, leaning into her, a palm bracing himself on the car behind her. “Your face,” he wheezed, “when the sprinklers turned on-”

She could barely breathe in. “The way you said run, oh my god.” She broke into another fit of uncontrollable laughter, clutching her stomach. Cardan wiped tears from his eyes as he tried to regain his composure.

Eventually, Jude’s laughter slowed. The sound of crickets chirping and cars whizzing by on the street behind the neighborhood settled into the air as they caught their breaths. Jude leaned back against the car, tipping her head back up to the night sky.

Cardan was still leaning into her, the moonlight casting a faint glow over his face. When she met his eyes, his lips tipped up in a little smile that sent warmth to her stomach.

With a will of its own, her hand reached up to push back his hoodie, cradling his jaw, and he swallowed, his expression sobering.

A breeze blew over them, lifted a strand of her hair from her face. Her heartbeat thudded against her chest, a different type of adrenaline shooting through her body as his eyes darted to her lips.

In an unspoken agreement, Jude leaned up, and Cardan’s head bent down to reach hers.

Their lips brushed hesitantly, a barely-there kiss, before Cardan pulled back slightly.

Oh. Oh.

“Jude.” His voice was hoarse, a question, a plea exhaled across her lips, and she silenced it with her mouth.

Their resolve snapped, and Cardan’s hand slipped to cradle the back of her head as his head dipped and his lips pressed into hers, again and again and again, warm and soft and desperate. Jude buried her hands in his hair, pulling him closer, until she was pressed against the car, his forearms caging her in.

She had never been kissed like this.

It felt as though they were running past the sprinklers again, a rush of adrenaline running through her body. Her lips parted under his, and he made a noise in the back of his throat that set her blood on fire. Her thoughts fizzled into nothing, everything except the two of them fading away.

When they pulled back for air, Cardan’s lips were swollen, and both of them were panting. He rested his forehead against hers, one hand still tangled in her hair, and Jude‘s eyes finally fluttered open.

“That,” Cardan rasped, “was worth waiting for.”

“Shut up.” Her voice was a little too breathless for her liking.

“Jude, Jude, Jude,” he murmured as he nuzzled the side of her face, and she felt goosebumps erupt on her arm. “Now you know exactly how to make me shut up.”

“Oh?” She tilted her head, barely close enough for another kiss, before shoving him back, hoping distance would help her regain her composure. “You wish. There are other ways to shut you up.”

He stumbled back with a breathless laugh. “I do wish.” He glanced around at the street, as if just remembering where they were. “We should probably go.”

“We should. Wouldn’t want to get caught.”

“Okay, right.” His hands spazzed at his side for a moment before he spurred into motion, opening her door for her with a roguish grin.

Jude didn’t exactly know what she was getting herself into, but she couldn’t bring herself to put an end to it.

~~~

A/N:  And there you have it, the scene that inspired this whole thing. It’s the first scene I even wrote, and everything else was just fun to write to lead up to it. I was about to cut this chapter off before the last scene, but I decided to keep it in because it takes me forever to update. Like I said at the beginning, you’re welcome 😌  I hope it’s as good as it was in my head 😭

Okay, but the fact that this is the tenth chapter and people are still reading?!! Thank you all so much for reading this and supporting this!! I probably would have abandoned this if not for you <3

As usual, let me know what you think in the comments!! Reblogs are appreciated :)

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klance holodeck fic 1/2

Lance is gone. Lost in the plunging gaps between astral bodies, sewn into an invisible seam in spacetime. Missing, for two long years. It’s impossible, to think of the time he's already lost with him. Time passes strangely in a war, and stranger still in space. Stars gasp their dying breaths and ripe dust clouds give birth to whole planetary systems. Some light reaches them with its centuries-old fingers and some can’t weather the journey. So many beings shiver and die. Lance would be twenty now. He tries not to think about it.

Keith can't bring himself to grieve when he knows Lance is still out there. Instead, he follows versions of him down holographic rabbit holes, trying to pry closure out of his memories, and losing himself to an obsession with the simulated landscapes where Lance was never lost.

(Read on AO3)

At first, it’s a french restaurant.

Slate grey and stationery white, sunlight drooping over the tablecloths like curling petals on calla lilies. Keith presses the knot of his tie into the hollow of his throat and swallows against his fingers. The get-up is ridiculous—grey suit, red tie, cufflinks, Italian leather shoes.

He’s never worn anything so expensive or well-tailored in his life, and he can already picture the precise geometry of Lance’s expression when he sees him: badly suppressed smile, like a slipped disc, his cheeks puckered.

Keith seats himself next to the window, fiddling almost immediately with the circlet of his napkin ring. The trees outside rustle and drizzle shade over buskers and vendors across the street. His designer watch has both hands folded over the twelve. A waiter breezes past and lays a rectangle of cardstock in front of him, smiling conspiratorially. As soon as he’s out of view, Keith has forgotten his face.

He looks at the menu, and the transition from the burbling restaurant to the cramped typeface is disorienting, like a cut scene in a video game. When he puts the menu down again, his head is swimming sickly with words like bordelaise and remoulade. And then, like a sweet apparition from a terrible dream, Lance drifts through the doorway.

For a moment, the sight of him is impossibly painful.

Keith’s fingers go again to the knot of his tie, and he makes an involuntary noise, gulping air as if surfacing from extreme physical exertion.

“Lance,” he chokes.

Lance smiles, quicksilver. “Hello.”

“You’re here,” Keith says, staggering to his feet. He crosses the bistro to take Lance bracingly by the wrists. The napkin holder is still in his hand, and the circle of it presses into Lance’s forearm so tightly that his skin bulges through it a little. “Do you—do you know where you’ve been?”

Lance should be defensive, or sly, or angry, or bashful. He should be telling a story that Keith can barely follow at a pitch that he can barely stomach, bragging about all the stupid things and downplaying all the impressive things.

Keith knows that’s not how this works, but still. It’s the Lance he knows.

He focuses on the brittle warmth of his body, the details that are just right. His heart breathes into the paper bag of his chest.

Lance just keeps smiling wanly. His hair is styled wrong—there’s too much volume, and it swoops down too close to one eye. His tie is robin’s egg blue. “No need to get up for little old me.”

Keith shakes his head, off-balance. “What?”

“I’m here to spend time with you! Why don’t we take a seat?”

Keith swallows painfully. It’s like looking at an animatronic figure of his friend—a jolting uncanny robot at an amusement park. “Lance, look at me.”

“How could I not?” he says cheekily, and winks. But his eyes haven’t quite settled into the same groove as Keith’s.

“Tell me—“ Keith starts. “Tell me what you remember. Tell me who you are.”

“Oh, you know me,” he says. “Name’s Lance ‘Loverboy’ McClain, blue paladin, sharpshooter extraordinaire, and defender of the universe.”

“Please.” It’s meant to be derisive, but it ends up falling somewhere closer to desperate. His hands slide up from Lance’s forearms to his shoulders. The napkin ring clatters pointedly to the floor. In a wide, embarrassing moment of weakness, Keith says, “you have to--be him. At least try.”

Lance chuckles.

Keith shakes him, and his shoulders jitter unnaturally.

“Come on. What’s the point if you can’t even act like him? Who would fucking buy this?”

“I don’t—“

“Stop using his voice,” he warns. His hands have crept up to Lance’s neck, and abruptly he lets go, repulsed at the almost-familiar feel of him.

“I would also be pretty overwhelmed to meet an intergalactic celebrity,” Lance assures him.

He’s starting to breathe too fast. He keeps seeing the real Lance—craned into the three-dimensional spread of a star map, brow furrowed, freckled hand curled loosely in the handle of whatever hot drink he found planet-side—superimposed over this stranger’s weird, unblemished face.

“Who am I?” Keith demands.

Lance grins. “My date.”

Keith pushes him hard in the chest. He nearly topples into a neighbouring table, and it’s unlikely, how he keeps his gangly legs underneath his body.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Lance says. “This isn’t the place for roughhousing.”

It’s the wrong cadence, but it’s so like something Lance would say that it’s debilitating. Keith stumbles through the momentum of another graceless shove.

“I told you to stop using his voice,” Keith snaps. “This is cruel.”

“Didn’t you want to meet me here?” Lance asks innocently.

“Of course I did. But you’re not—not—” Suddenly, he’s so fatigued with disappointment that he can’t speak.

After a long moment, he feels an ephemeral hand on his shoulder. And with the help of the ghostly waitstaff, the false Lance maneuvers him back to his place at the table. “Just tell me where to look and I’ll go there,” Keith begs, half-stumbling, half-dragged into his seat. “I swear. I know I can find you, I’ve faced bad odds before.”

“How about a drink?” Lance is saying, apparently unfazed.

“I thought that if you thought like Lance, maybe I could talk an answer out of you,” Keith says. Lance cocks his head, pleasantly receptive. “But really I thought I would look at you and I would feel better. Or at least I would feel angry. But you’re worse than a punching bag.”

“Red?” Lance says, and Keith’s heart is—airborne.

“What?” he asks sharply.

“Wine,” Lance explains. “Red or white?”

His whole body caves in. Rockslide. Catastrophic. He looks into Lance’s wide, earnest eyes, feeling uncomfortably like he’s levelling a shotgun at a newborn. “Neither. End simulation.”

The bistro melts instantly into the oily blackness of the Paladin Simulator.

His jaw is clamped tightly with shame and grief, and as the dark presses in, he folds his arms self-consciously over his chest. He’s ending his session an hour early, and he’s grateful, now, for the uninterrupted quiet.

He shouldn’t have let himself do this.

It should have been obvious what a bad idea it was when he didn’t tell any of the other paladins what he was planning; he was already falling back into his old, knee-jerk isolation, trusting only himself with his secrets.

He just couldn’t take any more of their pity. It was constant, wide-eyed, confused—why would the person who got along with Lance the least feel his absence the most? Sometimes, Hunk looked at Keith exactly the same way he looked at an old clunker of an engine that was in need of replacing.

Keith had heard tell of the simulators years ago, they all had. Liberated planets with the tech (and the admiration) had started building little cyber shrines to Voltron. Like a hyper-advanced arcade game, you could plug in your specifications, step into the simulator, and play out your wildest fantasies.

He’d gathered that tittering fans, unexceptional nerdy types, and bright-eyed kids were the most common customers; the lettering on the swinging board out front promised all kinds of adventure and celebrity:

Join Voltron! Become one of the gang, fighting Galra scum and saving the galaxy from tyranny!

Enjoy a candlelit dinner with the paladin of your choice, and get up close and personal with your hero!

Pick up your very own bayard, and spar with living combat legends! Who will win?!

Although it’s more advanced than the training room controls on the castle of lions, the programming still has its limits. The likenesses aren’t really supposed to stand up to the scrutiny of someone like, say, a paladin himself, but the experience is still sensory, impossible, the science fiction daydream of someone on Earth.

Lance used to love the idea of it, joking that it was the Star Trek filler episode he always wanted. He said he would win every game, romance himself, and beat up holo-Keith without feeling bad about it. He said he could finally stop pulling punches when Keith was just, like, light particles and shit.

In his grief, Keith convinced himself it was right and just and necessary to believe in a false lead. He told himself that the coat rack in the dark looked enough like a person that maybe he could hang all his hopes on it.

And so he had sought out the small, ever-bright planet of Seachmall, where night lasted for twilit months, and massive outdoor markets boasted every good and service you could possibly think of. Continent to continent there were melting, zipping lights, sky-high neon encircling tall buildings like bangles, and criss-crossing lanterns—buoyant in the low gravity—coasting up towards their celestial cousins.

In the capital, the local population joyfully shared liquor and arm-clasping greetings, speaking in the fast creole dialect of a port city, dancing to reality-bending music that haunts every forking path in a dizzying labyrinth of market stalls. Every single day on Seachmall was a feverish, luminous midnight that raged unceasingly past its breaking point.

And every step in the springy too-dark soil, every halting conversation in common, every sizzling technological spectacle that borders on nightmarish, Keith thought that Lance would have eaten this experience alive.

But Lance is gone.

Lost in the plunging gaps between astral bodies, sewn into an invisible seam in spacetime. Missing, for two long years.

It’s impossible, to think of the time he's already lost with him. Time passes strangely in a war, and stranger still in space. Stars gasp their dying breaths and ripe dust clouds give birth to whole planetary systems. Some light reaches them with its centuries-old fingers and some can’t weather the journey. So many beings shiver and die. Lance would be twenty now. He tries not to think about it.

Often, he resents those years he spent on a space whale, cresting out of his teenage years faster than he could track, trying to staunch the flow of memories with the paladins before he lost them all. He gets double vision looking at his mother, thinking of what he knows about love and struggling to apply it to this stranger.

When Lance disappeared just months after Keith returned to the castle of lions, he understood, finally, that loss is the bitter shrapnel of love.

In an alternate universe, Keith would have threaded Lance’s difficult needle, held his jaw, sharp and slight as a paring knife, and told him every wriggling, guilty, breathless feeling he’s inspired in him since they were sixteen.

In that universe, he stepped out of the time warp and into Lance’s embrace, and they were never parted again.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, Pidge started to refer to Lance in the past tense. Allura took over piloting Blue full-time, and Keith Red. The castle, already barren with the loss of Altea, became even more eerily quiet. Keith’s guilt swelled up and took any of their remaining teamwork hostage.

Space is so massively large and radiantly indifferent, but Lance is out there, surely, or Keith would have felt Voltron’s current being disrupted, as it had been when Shiro blinked out of the Black lion. But time stretched on, and he felt nothing at all.

When Lance disappeared it was from the middle of a battle for a nothing quadrant of space, and he was practically teleported out of the fray. They recovered his lion on a smalltime Galra ship within the hour, no sign of a struggle, no sign of Lance.

It was eery. Impossible. They interrogated sentries and hacked systems, combed entire light years of space using Allura’s wormholes. They waited for a distress signal, an apology, a triumphant return. But he just—vanished.

Keith ripped through the galaxy for any scrap of him, a blue flash, those bright ringlets of laughter, the flush of his skin tone in a kaleidoscope of different species.

Allura and Shiro joined him on the ground at first; Pidge, Coran, and Matt worked tirelessly to devise a tracking system, while Hunk took Red apart, hoping to unlock the moment that she and Lance had detached—but it was like her memory had been wiped clean. All they could feel was the panicked thrum of her loose bond with Lance, Keith more than anyone.

Romelle and Krolia hadn’t known Lance for long, but they always came when called. More bodies in the search party, more hands in the alliance. Once, he caught Romelle’s lip wobbling during a debrief, and he remembered the way that Lance had dragged an extra chair in for her first team meeting, winking, and then laughing himself to stitches when Romelle tried to wink back and couldn’t.

In pieces, Keith understood that he loved Lance, and as always, he was processing an obvious truth too late. His grief was swollen purple, and even as he told himself that no one would ever, ever understand, he knew they did. All around him they did, loudly and at length, hurting at such a frequency that Keith was scared it would drown out Lance’s return.

He left the castle of lions more frequently, turning over whole populations, infiltrating Galra ship after Galra ship, singularly driven—but also callous and unbalanced without his team, participating in more violence in six months than he had in five years of war and survival.

Once, Keith stumbled into Lance’s abandoned room and pulled clothes and trinkets out of his closet, stirring up the smell of him and crying like a child. He picked fights with his mother, because she had been a terrible absence once, too. In the artificial light of castle dawn, he sparred more than his body could sustain, and when he found a planet full of unmarked tombstones in his search, he ripped at the ground with his bare hands until his fingernails tore.

The longer he looked, the more he found that the whole universe was exquisite with death, every piece of it burnt out and drifting into expanding blackness. He was so tired of feeling like space rock himself, fast, deadly, and aimless, waiting to burn up in the atmosphere somewhere. So, heart striving ahead of his body like an eager dog, pockets full of tokens, he wandered Seachmall until he found the flashy booth where he would waste the next eight months of his life.

He leaves the simulated french restaurant that first time fully believing that he’ll never be so weak again, but it’s barely twenty vargas before he’s back, trembling all over.

He finds Lance in a simulation of battle, and in the rush, it’s much easier to forget that he’s a fake.

“Not this time, amigo,” Lance crows, looping around an enemy ship and blasting ice the whole time, showing off. Keith is shocked to find a smile bruising his own face. His hands close over fake-Red’s controls. It’s so strange, not feeling her at all while he’s piloting. It’s as impersonal as a Garrison sim, but eons more advanced, nearly authentic. He can feel the heat of battle through Red’s visor, and as always, his calloused thumbs creak against the wheel when he turns too sharply.

“On your right,” Keith warns.

Lance dodges dutifully. “Thanks!”

I know, Lance groans, in his memory. I’m out here flying too, Keith, this isn’t one of those drills where I’m fucking blindfolded—

“Red Paladin,” Allura’s voice cries, weirdly high and operatic. “The evil lord Zarkon is moving in for the kill. You must help us form Voltron!”

“Yeah, right,” he huffs.

The forming itself is so stupid, obviously programmed by an outside observer who’s never felt the itch of unity, the reverse detonation of an impossible bomb, where every scattered thing fits back together to be whole again.

There’s a silly bit of choreography, and fake-Red goes on rails, like a carnival ride. And then, without feeling anything concrete, Voltron pulls in around him.

“Hooray!” Pidge says, sounding like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz.

“Nothing can stop us now!” Shiro says, sounding like Shiro.

“Can we get back to putting Zarkon in a second grave now, please?” Keith says.

“Always the fighter, Red,” Lance says. Keith blinks.

“I love you,” he blurts.

“Aw,” Hunk says. “I love you guys too.”

“Lance—“

“Use your sword? Exactly what I was thinking,” Lance says.

“Let’s do it,” Shiro says. “Use your bayard, Red.”

“I know,” Keith snaps.

It’s obvious that the simulation has programmed Red in as shorthand for whatever player is in his spot. It would be the same no matter what lion was chosen, but hearing Lance’s nickname for him out of Shiro’s mouth is just—stunningly wrong.

The world trembles from the impact of a Galra bogey, uncomfortably real, and his instincts press him into action.

He turns his bayard in its slot, and the sword shimmers into reality. He watches at a remove as Voltron slices at Zarkon’s craft.

It’s actually starting to get to him, the memory of this battle, the reality of which was a lot more challenging, and much, much uglier. He remembers his frenetic pulse in his fingertips, the threat pressing endlessly past their defences, the damage to Green’s hull, and the awful discovery of Black’s empty cockpit afterwards.

He shudders.

“End simulation.”

In the dark, the adrenaline eases its panicked hands from his throat. You’re alive, he reminds himself. You survived. So did Shiro. So will Lance.

______

The next day, he goes back again.

He spars with himself, out of curiosity, and then with Shiro and Lance, but the holo-paladins are uninspired, easily blocked, programmed to strut and preen through choreography more than they are to improvise and adapt. Lance doesn’t play dirty even once, and Keith shuts down the simulation again, gutted. He wishes there were different difficulty levels, like the bots in the castle. You could program almost anything into—

He stops, midway back to his cruiser, the braid of market-goers loosening around him.

He taps twice on his communicator, and hastily opens a channel with Pidge.

After the long, peculiar swish of the line connecting, she answers, “‘sup?”

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Urgently?” she asks, distracted. He can hear the clatter of keys and the beep and whir of her latest project.

“It’s about Lance.”

The clatter stops. She doesn’t speak for long enough that Keith feels truly bad about himself. And then, “well Jesus, Keith. Isn’t it always?”

He breathes out. “How comfortable are you with the holodeck interface?”

“Very,” she says, no hesitation.

“And do you still have those files from a couple of deca-phoebes ago? That user profile thing you tried to instate, the uh—“ he dodges a Seachmallian waving a kebab in his direction.

“Yes, Keith,” Pidge drawls. “What, do you think I burn data when my projects don’t pan out?”

He shrugs, though she can’t see him. “I would.”

“Forgot who I was talking to,” she says flatly. He’s paused at the ice-cold entrance of a shop selling edible soap bubbles, light and iridescent.

“Do you think you could put together a—a simulation, compatible with a more advanced operating system?”

There’s a throb of silence. “What exactly are you asking me to do, here?”

He closes his eyes, still ducked under the awning of the store, feeling the cold move through him. “Don’t make me say it.”

“You want Lance,” she says. “On a fucking USB.”

“I want to find him,” he growls. “Remember when you wanted that too?”

“That’s low,” she says, deadly. “I’m not the one who’s trying to sleep with a hologram of my dead friend so I don’t have to grieve him.”

He cuts off communication. He feels feverish with embarrassment, and completely sick to his stomach. Candy bubbles breeze past him, over the apron of the booth across the way, which is advertising robot fights—both in Seachmallian and blocky common.

He remembers Lance, a lifetime ago, saying, when I go, I want all the stuff in my brain stored in a giant ship.

His comms ding, and he jabs the accept button on his wrist.

“Fuck you,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Pidge says. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he says fiercely.

“I know.”

“I just need to know if it was premeditated, if he ever had a safe house or a code in case we got separated, something we could look for.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” Pidge says thoughtfully.

“I know.”

“But I do think it’s a pretty terrible idea for you to do it.”

He grits his teeth, upset in a directionless kind of way. “I can handle it.”

“I know you’re on Seachmall,” Pidge says, “and I already thought that was going to get pretty gnarly. All they’ve got is, like, the mythology of us. Can you imagine what the information in the Altean databases could do to that kind of tactile VR experience?”

“Sort of,” Keith says.

“It would be like if all the OG broadway actors showed up to participate in a high school production of Cats, comprende?”

“No,” Keith says, waspish. “Less.”

“It’s the next step for Altean hologram technology for sure. It would probably revolutionize AI. It’s also not real, Keith.”

“I don’t need it to be real,” Keith snaps. “I need a lead.”

“Well,” Pidge says slowly. “You know I can do it. Can you wait a few quintants?”

He sets his jaw, and against the deep blue horizon, a billboard gleams so brilliantly yellow that for a moment, he thinks it’s the sun.

“As long as it takes.”

______

Keith meets Pidge when she touches down on Seachmall, windswept and gaunt, and although he doesn’t really understand what she intends to do, he dutifully distracts security as she futzes with the control panel.

It’s barely fifteen minutes before she beckons him into the alley adjacent to the simulator room, a sample platter of bolts and wires spread out around her knees.

“Alright chief, it should be compatible, now.” She pulls a stray length of cable from where she’s been holding it between her teeth and pockets it. The little nib of her ponytail bobs as she stands.

“So it’ll be him this time?”

“I mean, almost exactly. I programmed his profile into the grooves set into the existing simulation, but I softened the edges a little so he’s not too self aware. I don’t want him realizing he’s a projection, I’m not that cruel.”

“Right,” Keith says, uncomfortable.

“If you don’t find what you’re looking for and you have to go back in, all you’ve gotta do is punch in this code.” She jabs him in the chest with a folded piece of card, as close to paper as they’ve been able to find out here, and twice as durable. She could have sent him the info, but they both know this transaction is better left under the table. “The system should wipe itself automatically when you’re done. And Keith—“ Her hand flattens on his dark chestplate, and her eyes are troubled. “Please don’t forget why you’re doing this.”

He nods, and puts a gloved hand over hers. “I won’t. I’ll figure this out, and I’ll find him.”

She nods back, a wobbly smile rolling over on her face.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, I gotta go. I can’t—I wish I could see him, but.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees sadly.

She smiles again, fleeting, and gathers her kit. “We can’t spare another paladin,” she says, quickly, like it doesn’t matter. “Don’t get lost in there.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but she’s already putting her visor down, and walking out into the crowd.

______

This time, he finds himself on a boardwalk during a powder pink sunset. The air smells blisteringly of salt and roasting meat, and faceless people mill over the beach: parents holding hands with kids, couples sharing shaved ice, a galloping golden retriever in a red bandana.

The leftover scorch of the day blows in off the coast to meet him, like the wave from an open oven door.

He walks purposefully onto the sandbar, craning in circles, trying to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. He feels—pre-heartbroken, caught in the final moments of a long walk to an open casket.

“Where’ve you been?”

He whips around, and Lance is pulling one earbud out, squinting into the sun at him.

“Lance?” he asks, through what feels like a mouth full of marbles.

“Uh-huh,” he says, eyebrow quirked. “The one and only.” He settles back into the shade of his umbrella.

Keith shakes his head to clear it. There’s a red and white striped towel set out next to Lance’s, and he sinks down onto it, overcome. Is this Earth? Did Pidge program this specifically? Is it one of the date settings on the simulator? He can’t remember. He can’t see past the illusion at all.

Lance offers him an earbud. “Come on, Red, will you relax? Pretend you’re not the kind of person who sleeps with a knife under your pillow.” He accepts the bud, numb, and tucks it in his ear. He’s expecting synth pop, but it’s an old R&B song, smoky and familiar. “No overthinking on the beach.”

He can’t stop looking at him. It’s uncanny—the dusky chapped lips, the mole next to his mouth, the cowlick over his ear. His eyes are intelligent, laser-focused on Keith. “Where are we?”

“Dear sweet Keith. Senile at age twenty. So sad.”

“Shut up.” He has to look away, to mask the full-colour magazine spread of conflicted feelings on his face. It all feels a bit like a lucid dream that he shouldn’t jostle too hard. “I’m not used to this.”

Lance’s expression softens. “Hey man, I get it. Being home is weird. Sometimes it’s like—I can’t even remember how we got here.” He shakes his head. “But also I’m so happy to be back, I’m like—screw PTSD.”

His chest aches, badly. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“Rich coming from you, Mr. repression,” Lance says, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not doing that any more,” Keith says. “I’m working through my shit.”

“How admirable.” His mouth twitches. He produces a Palm Bay from his slouchy little backpack, tossing it from hand to hand as if testing its heft. “I’m drowning my sorrows in coolers, personally.”

And then he lunges, spritzing the can open in Keith’s face.

“Jesus, Lance,” he sputters, smacking it out of his hand. They scuffle, briefly, and that helpless, ebullient laugh blows past him like candy bubbles.

“Your—face—“

“You’re so immature—“

“Easy, cowboy, don’t you remember what team bonding looks like?” He pinches Keith’s cheek teasingly, and Keith grabs his wrist.

A pulse flutters under his fingertips.

He scrambles backwards, clothes dragging against the sand, a stray sandal popping off. The heat and grit is so real. If he focuses hard enough on the smell of meat coming off the boardwalk, his mouth waters. Lance looks at him incredulously.

“What? That’s too far for you? I barely touched you!”

“You touched me,” Keith repeats. He can still feel that pulse, like a second heart in his own body. He stands up, shedding sand, and Lance looks up at him, mild expression tinted with hurt. Keith sways, sidelined by a wave of vertigo. He can’t be here right now. “End—“

“You’re being so weird. Like Kuron all over again.”

He stops. “You think I’m a clone?”

“Obviously not really,” Lance says, getting up on his knees. “But that is the level of weird we’re dealing with here. You’re looking at me like you’re about to cry.”

“It’s just—home.” He gestures awkwardly. “Tandem bikes. Coconut sunscreen. Seagulls eating fries out of the trash. The ocean. Earth reminds me of you.”

"Birds eating garbage reminds you of me?" Lance quirks a skeptical expression at him. “Maybe you are working through some shit.”

He reaches for his abandoned sandal, dusting sticky sand from the straps. “You can’t even imagine.”

“Try me.”

Keith looks across at Lance’s calm, determined face, and the words rise up in him like a groundswell.

“I know I haven’t earned it, and I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but I miss how things used to be. And the worse everything gets the more I keep wondering what you would say, or do, and I hate that—god,” he breaks off, and presses his palms briefly to his eyes. “I mean, you would’ve had no way of knowing how I felt. I didn’t even know. But I should’ve—I just thought we would have more time after the war, or I would die and it wouldn’t matter. And I guess I assumed you were always going to be there, because you always were, even when I didn’t want you to be, and now—I don’t know, Lance, I don't know how I’m supposed to go to the castle, or pilot Red, or look at the planet I grew up on without remembering how much you loved it, and how much I love you—“

“Keith, what?” Lance says, alarmed. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Where are you?” he frets.

“I’m here.” He crawls closer, but Keith can't look at him. He watches the fussy waves coming in off the shore instead. “I’m right here.” He rests his hands on Keith’s ankles, and he has to steady himself on Lance’s shoulders when his knees go loose. “Man, I shouldn’t have joked about PTSD. I mean, I feel like this sometimes too.”

Keith looks down into his face. “What?”

“You know, like I’m back there. Like—time doesn’t even exist. Being off-planet was such a bitch sometimes. You feel like you can disappear in all that open space. And sometimes you want to.”

“Lance,” Keith whispers. “You wanted to disappear?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Lance says, serene. “Just for a while. Let someone else defend the universe for a bit, preferably an adult. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do it!”

“You would have told us,” Keith says, through bloodless lips.

“Sure,” Lance offers.

“No. No. You would’ve said something.”

Lance takes his hands away uncertainly.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” he says flatly. “I’m just telling you that I understand being pissed off, and I understand wanting to—hit pause.”

“What about hitting stop?” Keith asks. “What about disappearing so thoroughly that whole galaxies full of alien technology can’t find you?”

Lance’s face is a spinning wheel; he cycles through all manner of confusion, impatience, and worry before settling on defensiveness. “What the fuck are you talking about? Are you out of your mind?”

“If I am, it’s your fault,” Keith snaps. “How could you leave us?”

“How could I leave?” There’s no question now, that this is data from his Lance. His tetchy, self-conscious anger is unmistakeable. “You’re the one who ditched us for the Blades right when we were at a tipping point. You’re the one who wadded two years up and threw them in the trash. You didn’t have to care about us but you absolutely should’ve talked to us. We were a team.”

“You think I don’t care about you?” Keith laughs. “That’s fucking hilarious.”

“I’m really laughing,” Lance says sarcastically. “I don’t know what sort of crazy pills you took that made you think that I’m the deserter out of the two of us. I wish I could be that delusional. I may have wanted out once or twice, but I would never, ever leave the people who need me.” He’s fuming, and the wind is blowing through his curls like it’s trying to placate him.

Keith’s anger wobbles. It hurts, to hear Lance talking this way after so long. It’s not the reunion they deserve.

“I know. I know that.”

Lance sits back on Keith’s towel, frowning. He brushes the drained cooler away, and the remnant dribbles out and darkens the sand. “I don’t know why you always have to ruin everything.”

Keith’s throat aches, and he crosses his arms protectively over his chest.

“Me neither.”

Lance glances up, surprised. And then his gaze slides purposefully beyond Keith, considering. After a moment something comes over him, and his whole demeanour changes. “Keith,” he says softly. “Did you say you loved me?”

Keith screws his eyes shut. After a moment he hears Lance moving closer, reaching out, fingertips barely grazing the back of his hand—

“End simulation. Please.”

He crouches in the dark. “Please.”

______

“Oh, fuck you,” Lance crows. He ducks out from under Keith’s staff, and then grabs the end of it, using the momentum to slide through Keith’s wide stance.

He spins around, and Lance is five feet away, holding his own staff up to his eye like a sniper rifle.

“Bang,” he says.

“This is close combat,” Keith reminds him. He throws his weapon like a spear at Lance’s ankle, and he yelps when it makes contact.

“How is that close combat? You javelin wielding motherfucker. You should be disqualified, and jailed for your crimes.”

He watches Lance shake out his foot like it really hurts, testing his weight and pretending to stumble, falling forward—and then whirling around in time to clash staffs with Keith.

“Shit,” Lance laughs, up close, hot with exertion, putting the pressure of his body weight on the cross they’ve made between them. “Thought I had you.”

“Do you want to surrender?”

“Do you want to kiss my ass?” Lance retorts.

Keith steps out of the way, and Lance’s momentum sends him tumbling head-first to the floor.

“Sure,” he says coolly. “Turn over.”

“What the hell,” Lance says, rolling onto his knees, flustered.

“You lost.”

“Yeah, whatever, like six to five.”

“Six to four,” Keith corrects, and offers him his hand. Lance pretends to spit into it, then flops back onto his hands instead.

“If we were duelling with pistols, I would humiliate you. You would have to drop out of Voltron.”

“By that logic, you should be packing your bags right now.”

Lance throws his head back and laughs. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Kogane.”

“Try me.”

Lance shrugs, but just as Keith starts to look away, he throws himself at him. It’s so unexpected that Keith actually goes down, wrists slammed to the mat on either side of his body, wind knocked out of him.

Lance laughs breathlessly, looming messy and sweaty above him. “Wow, that was embarrassing for you. Your arrogance is your downfall.”

“You’re my downfall,” Keith says, a little too flat and sincere across the top, and Lance purses his lips.

“You’re taking this too seriously, dude.” He lets go easily, and rolls out on his back next to him instead. He flexes his wrist in the air above them both, and Keith watches his fingers work. “Why does it feel like it’s been forever since we sparred?”

“It has,” Keith says simply.

“I guess,” Lance yawns. “I can’t even remember the last time.”

His heart is still pounding from the first serious, sustained training he's done in months. When Lance goes to sit up, Keith puts a staying hand on his chest.

“Hey, Lance," he says. Lance hums. "If you got separated from your lion for any reason, would you—what would you do?”

He frowns. “I dunno. Alert you guys. Rescue mish.”

“What if you couldn’t contact us?”

Lance looks sideways at him. “Not loving this thought experiment. Why are you being so weird?”

“Please,” Keith says, taking Lance’s sore wrist, feeling for the artificial thud of his pulse. “Just—answer.”

“Uh. I don’t know, am I captured? Or planet-side?”

Keith swallows. “Planet-side.”

Lance nods, considering. “If the locals are part of the alliance, I would get their intel, and find a way to reach you. If not, I guess I would lie low. Wait for a friendly ship and signal them.”

“That could take years. It might never happen, depending on where you ended up. Like—alien vessels aren’t cruising over Earth very often.”

“Says you,” Lance jokes. “The truth is out there.”

“You could die waiting,” Keith insists, dropping his hand. “What if the atmosphere wasn’t compatible? The flora and fauna? What if your suit was compromised?”

“I would heroically overcome all obstacles, whistle for my trusty lion, and ride off into the cosmos,” he replies sardonically, “what do you want from me?”

“I just think we should have more rescue protocols in place in case something goes south.”

“Right,” Lance says slowly. “Well, I mean—and I’m going to try and get through this without gagging—I have your back, man. And if we get separated, I’m pretty sure you can take care of yourself.” He gestures at their discarded staffs. “Not as well as me, of course,” he sniffs, glancing sidelong at Keith to see if he’s cheered him up.

Keith feels the phantom weight of Lance’s body crushing him to the mat, a window of weakness pried open, broken and entered. He breathes out. “Yeah. You’re too good for that.”

______

He asks Pidge for more scenarios, and more user profiles. For fleshing things out, he tells her. For recreating the circumstances under which Lance was lost, testing his reactions to different situations, and introducing as many variables as possible.

Slowly, inevitably, he starts to lose control of it all.

He’s still a correspondent to the Blade of Marmora, and he’s on call as a paladin, but they haven’t been able to form Voltron in years. He’s perpetually out of sync with the rest of the universe, living more and more like a washed-up casino-goer, existing only for the market stall where he can plug his friends in and relive the past.

He pays off the owner not to ask questions, and gets an apartment on Seachmall, barely the size of a lion cockpit, just a sparse kitchenette and a twin cot. He spends hours in the simulator and crashes on his bare mattress, bathed in the constant, spectacular glow from the street lights.

Every time he staggers away from the market he has to remember that the real Lance is rotting somewhere, and he’s here playing dress up with shadows.

It’s all easier, in the holodeck.

He loads the original paladin line-up into battle, relives their victories and rights their wrongs. He finds himself in the kitchen of the castle of lions, in a ballroom overlooking a fathoms-deep canyon, curled in Lance’s bed so he can finally sleep. He takes his friends to Earth a hundred different ways.

There’s always a fog, a strangeness about them when they think too hard about where they are, but he knows it’s a mercy. He ends each simulation on the verge of spinning out, functionally pulling the trigger on his dearest friends.

Reality sags out of his grip. Pidge and Hunk call sometimes, and often Kolivan or Allura will give him status reports, scattered missions, and lectures that walk the line between morally superior and deeply, uncomfortably worried. When Shiro starts up daily check-ins, he understands that they all know what he’s been doing, lost on Seachmall for so long.

“You’re taking care of yourself, right?” Shiro asks.

“Yes,” Keith tells him. He’s staring at the empty wall across from his bed, absently sharpening his knife. “I’m just killing time.”

“We really miss you around here. It’s too quiet.”

He tests his blade, rolling his shoulder. “I’m not exactly bringing the party when I’m out there.”

Shiro hums. “I don’t know, you certainly keep things interesting.”

Keith snorts.

“I’m serious!” He can hear the smile in his voice. “There’s only so much quantum mechanics and ancient magic I can take before I want to hit something. I want my sparring partner back.”

They lapse into silence, and Keith traces patterns in the air, enjoying the fine metallic sound of a weapon without a target.

“You know we’re still looking, right?” Shiro asks. Keith stops cutting the air, and puts his knife down on the bed beside him.

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Shiro says. “Of course we are. Allura and I are visiting every contact she has, and Hunk and Pidge are working—overtime. We’re picking up a lot of slack here.”

The back of his neck prickles with guilt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shiro sighs. “I’m telling you this because you’re my brother.” But he has his diplomat voice on, which Keith has always hated. “And I don’t know if you’re thinking about what it’s going to do to the rest of us if you don’t come back from this.”

“From a simulator?” he asks, incredulous.

“From grieving,” Shiro corrects. “I would never tell you to stop looking, but I think you know you’re not going to find him in those projections.”

“I could,” he says stiffly. “He tells me things—every day he gives me clues and he doesn’t even know it.”

“He doesn’t tell you anything,” Shiro says gently. “Because it’s not him. Do you remember when Allura had to let go of her father? It was so easy for her precious memories to be corrupted, and even easier to get swept away in the illusion. Everything in a simulator is finite, Keith, but you can’t be. You have to grow, and change, and move on.”

He thinks of every different shade of Lance he’s seen, every secret door that gives and leads to another wing. “You don’t get it.”

“Of course I get it. If Adam—“ he cuts himself off, and his breath shudders over the line. “You’re not the only one to be feeling this loss, or to be struggling.”

“But I never even got to love him," Keith argues. “I never got close enough to put any of these feelings anywhere, and now they’re everywhere. No one ever gives me the chance to love them before they—“ he swallows, and when he goes to speak again he finds there’s nothing else to say.

“I know how hard it’s been for you,” Shiro says sadly. “But Keith, understand—we all love you. No matter where we are or what we’re doing. We don’t have to verbalize it to feel it.”

“Okay,” he says, numb.

“We love you,” he reiterates. “Lance did too.”

“Thanks for checking on me Shiro,” he says, and hangs up.

______

“No way, no way, no way,” Lance crows. “This is slander.”

“It can’t be slander if all of us were there to see it,” Hunk says, but he can’t look at Lance without cracking up.

“You’re remembering wrong,” he says. “She asked me to give a speech.”

“She asked you not to,” Pidge says, rolling her eyes. “Begged you, even.”

“Boo,” Lance laughs. “I was just trying to have a good time at alliance banquet number five zillion.”

They’re clustered on blankets between the yellow lion’s hulking paws, in the soft local vegetation of one of the last planets they liberated as a team. They were buzzed, when this conversation actually happened, but Keith hasn’t been able to replicate that particular feeling through the simulator.

“I don’t know why you always have to lie to these people,” Keith says, just as he did on the actual occasion.

“Embellish,” Lance protests. “I live by the principle that everyone wants to hear the best possible version of the story, and you owe it to them to tell it.”

“But the best version is almost never the real version,” Hunk says, exasperated.

“I dunno man, what’s real anyway?” Pidge says, easing back into the blankets. “Our lives are such a clusterfuck as it is. The line of what’s actually impossible gets farther away every day.”

“Yeah,” Lance says. “What squidge said. Lying is cool.”

“Ugh, don’t call me that,” Pidge complains.

“What, I’m agreeing with you,” Lance says, grinning. He leans over to give her a big-brotherly hair-pull that she intercepts with a karate chop.

“People deserve to know the truth,” Keith says mechanically, following the script, but then feeling flushed and hypocritical all at once.

“Okay, here’s a truth, universally acknowledged: Keith sucks,” Lance says.

“Hm. Sounds like another lie to me,” Hunk says, and Lance reaches up to steal his headband in retaliation. Hunk rolls his eyes and lets him have it, like he’s appeasing an overactive puppy.

Something skitters in the dark, beyond the dunes of Yellow’s paws.

“Don’t you have a rebuttal, Keith?” Pidge asks, sitting up on her hands.

“Why are you encouraging them?” Hunk groans.

Keith shrugs and stays silent; Lance’s gaze narrows shrewdly.

“You aren’t one of those weepy drunks, are you?”

Keith picks at a loose thread in their shared blanket. “No, I just changed my mind,” he says, veering off-book. “I don’t know why I was acting like it was ridiculous that you like telling stories, when it obviously makes people feel better to believe them.”

“Oh. Well. Glad you came to your senses,” Lance interrupts, overly loud. He always seems to hate it when Keith gets sincere like this. He begs for attention but recoils when he gets too much.

“Most of these alliance parties happen after a long period of unrest. So… what, you helped grieving people by acting like a superhero? To them, you are a superhero. God, I couldn’t stand that you took so much credit for our victories, but I should’ve given you more.”

Lance blinks at him.

He remembers with fire-bright clarity how this scene actually played out, the way Keith kept needling at Lance’s hero complex, accusing him of making things up so he could pretend he’d been helpful. Lance had dialled his bravado to a screaming pitch so he could hide the soft, spoiled look in his eyes where Keith had lodged a cruel sword that he couldn’t pull out.

Now, Lance purses his lips so he doesn’t have to figure out what to do with his expression.

“Huh,” Pidge says, chewing on a pseudo-protein bar from their rations. “That’s some unexpected character growth.”

“Are you… feeling okay?” Hunk asks.

Keith looks miserably down at his own crossed legs until Lance says, “not that I don’t appreciate it, but you did just do kind of an impressive one-eighty.”

He looks up. “Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

Lance smiles a little, relieved. He waggles the flask they’ve been sharing in his direction. “You just need to drink more.”

“No,” Keith disagrees, shaking his head. “I want to remember this.”

______

He opens his eyes to the world on its side, gritty endless flatlands sprayed out against a hazy auburn sky.

He rolls, putting his arm over his face, a visor against radiant twin suns.

He doesn’t have to look to remember the architecture at his back, a cubist explosion of edges and colours, each shape squared off and set into the hills. When the paladins liberated Imedemaa, they were offered accommodation in homes that corresponded to their lions: terracotta red, cobalt blue, mustard yellow, foliage green, and a brown so dark it could pass as black.

It’s his favourite place to visit: brilliant views, kind people, warm bed, privacy and proximity bumping shoulders comfortably.

Keith rolls again, sitting up. He feels heat-sick, and if it were real, he knows he would be bruised tan in the coast-to-coast sunshine. He’s spread out on the same outdoor palette where he fell asleep nearly three years ago. His apartment is warm, dull red, nearly orange. The shimmering public baths sparkle with activity just below his balcony.

“Yoo-hoo, neighbour.”

Keith squints over the waist-high wall and finds Lance clambering from his own balcony onto Keith’s.

“You’re going to fall to your death.”

“Nah,” Lance says, swinging a leg down over the railing and sitting contemplatively with one foot dangling over empty space and the other brushing the floor. “There’s a pool down there. Worst case scenario I perform an exceptional and history-making canon-ball.”

Keith watches him climb the rest of the way over, staggering and sitting heavily on Keith’s palette next to him.

“Oof,” he says. Lance's skin is dazzling in this climate, dark and freckled like granite. The simulation reminds him that he smelled like lotus, this day, fresh from the baths, warm shoulder and drizzling wet hair. “Are you ready to absolutely blow this popsicle stand?”

“And do what?” Keith asks, a little breathless from proximity.

“Did you seriously forget? It’s racing day!”

“Oh,” Keith says faintly. “Right.” They used to rent speeders for fun sometimes; the whole team participating at first, and then Keith and Lance alone when they surpassed friendly competition into bet-making and sabotage.

They would sneak back whenever they could swing the time off, careening around dusty corners and ramming one another’s speeders into hysterical tailspins. They would sob with laughter and then spritz their canteens all over each other, tussling in the dirt, so coordinated that it was almost an embrace.

The thought of it had driven him out of bed this morning, but he felt sick and shaky as he typed Pidge’s code into the simulator, setting the modified location of Imedemaa and rolling into a memory so fine and warm that it reminded him of death itself.

“Woah. easy, Red,” Lance says, his voice sharp with concern. Keith comes back to himself to realize that he’s angling into a panic attack, holding his own head in his hands. He can’t spoil this memory. Not this one.

“I—I—“ He can’t speak. Lance makes a dismayed noise, his entire demeanour turning inside out.

“Can I hug you, man?”

Keith jerks his head ‘no’. “I—can’t—you—“

Lance gets to his feet, and Keith grabs at him, hooking fingers in a belt loop, a fistful of shirt, whatever his hands find first.

“Hey, shh, it’s cool, I’m just getting you some water.”

Keith shakes his head again. “Don’t leave me.”

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Lance asks softly, sitting back down. “We don’t have to go racing today.”

Keith huffs this weird cartwheel of a laugh, and scrubs a hand over his eyes and nose.

“I think I dreamed you were dead,” he tells him. He doesn’t look up into his face, but Lance’s chest is steady in front of him, rising and falling evenly with each breath.

“Who, me? I’m fine, Keith, look at me.”

“It felt real.”

“Pretty sure it wasn’t,” Lance says, laughter tucked into his worry like a concealed weapon. Keith looks up at him, and Lance beams under his full attention. He wipes the tears from Keith’s cheeks with his thumbs.

Abruptly, he can’t stand it.

“You’re a hologram,” Keith whispers. Lance’s smile falters.

“What?”

“Do you remember how Pidge took our mental blueprints?”

Lance nods quickly. He’s not brushing Keith off, he’s not slow with disbelief. He’s clear and sharp and his face is increasingly overcast with fear.

“I’m using your data in a simulation. This holiday on Imedemaa, it was years ago. You’re not the real Lance.” It hurts, to admit it, but it’s clear that it hurts Lance much, much more.

“No,” he chokes. “No, I feel real.”

“I know you do,” Keith says, reaching for his hand.

But Lance jerks away, standing and reeling backwards, hands splayed out on red paint, which could be gore, really, bleeding out from Lance’s palms like that. “I was so fucking scared of this.“

“I’m sorry,” Keith says, watching this shade of Lance shaking through self-awareness, and feeling the weight of the words that could end it in his mouth.

“Why—where—“

“He’s gone,” Keith whispers.

“Gone as in gone?”

“Gone as in I can’t find him.”

“So why the fuck are you wasting time on this Black Mirror shit, and not out there looking for me?” he demands.

“I’ve looked everywhere.” The agony of his failure slides home all over again. “The search party is a million strong by now. I’ve talked to a hundred versions of you looking for an answer.”

“A hundred,” Lance says. “So what, when I tell you what you want to hear, you delete me?”

“I’m not wiping the data or anything, I—I don’t know how it works,” he admits.

“Jesus. Jesus Keith, this is fucked up.”

Tears start to well up, and he wipes them away furiously. He never used to cry like this. He never used to feel so constantly ravaged by guilt and fear. It used to live in his gut and press at his throat, but he could keep it wrapped and sealed inside his body.

“I miss you,” Keith tries, and Lance’s face twists with despair.

“I really wish it didn’t take this horror show to make you say that.”

Somewhere, something splashes and someone shrieks with laughter. Lance looks at him miserably, hunched in the shade from the terrace, brow damp with terrified perspiration. He absolutely shouldn’t have told him. He remembers Pidge laughing darkly, I’m not that cruel.

“What do you want me to do,” Keith asks quietly.

“What choice do I have?” Lance asks. “I’m a fucking video game character. I’m a dead man walking.”

“Do you want to do anything? Before I end this session.”

Lance swallows, considering. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I do, actually.”

______

They race.

What feels like all day, ripping in circles under arching rocks and through clinging, dragging sand, until the suns are setting, twin flames set into the desert like jewels.

Lance is extra reckless, gorgeous, perched high on his speeder and arched forward to reach the controls. His face, below the goggles, is streaked with mud, and he keeps crying out when he tips over too far or pulls triumphantly ahead of Keith, cathartic, unfiltered.

“One more lap,” he shouts, over the thrum of noise from the speeder.

“I’ll beat your ass,” Keith calls, trying for normalcy, but they’ve both kind of been crying on and off all day, and this is the last thing this Lance will ever do, and really, he’s not that cruel.

“Fucking try,” Lance says, pulling his bandana up over his mouth and taking off.

“Hey!” Keith laughs. “No countdown?”

“I think I deserve a head start,” he calls over his shoulder, but most of his voice is whipped away by the wind.

The speeder rips sideways, sliding over a natural boulder ridge that drops off into nothingness. Strange gravity keeps him on the right side of the cliff, and he hoots with joy, galloping metres and metres ahead as Keith eases through the same turn.

“You’re gonna—“ get yourself killed. He bites his tongue. Lance can’t hear him anyway. He zigzags through natural obstacles, glancing back in disbelief when Keith pulls up behind him. His face is red with the effort of staying upright.

“Can’t you let me win for once,” Lance cries, slamming on the thrusters and stirring up a fog of dust behind him. Keith coughs and dodges, feeling on the very edge of an awareness too big to name, like being able to feel one stage of grief ending and another beginning.

Sometime during Lance’s luxurious lead he’s taken off his helmet, and now the desert wind is whipping his hair straight.

He takes the next corner much too fast, and Keith’s heart is in his throat as he inevitably spins out, in smooth little frictionless circles at first, weightless as a bumper car—and then the rear of the speeder catches on a jutting rock and he’s ejected altogether. He topples out into the sifting dunes, rolling half a dozen times and stopping himself so abruptly that Keith can hear something snap.

He pulls up hard, tumbling off the speeder and throwing his helmet out into the sand, running as best he can to where Lance landed.

When he reaches him he’s cradling a severely broken arm to his chest, and the bone is piercing through the skin. There’s blood everywhere, weeping through his fingers, streaked high on his hairline, staining his shirt and the tawny sand beneath him.

“Would’ve been great if you could have programmed me not to hurt,” Lance wobbles. Stiff upper lip, terribly pale.

“Didn’t know you were going to throw yourself off a speeder.”

“Yeah, well. Me neither.” He hisses as Keith takes his wrist in his hand, unfathomably gentle, turning it this way and that.

“This looks terrible.”

Lance snorts. “Thank you doctor Keith.”

“I don’t think we brought any first aid,” he mutters, frowning, digging through the pack at his hip.

“I don’t need it.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re—“

“Keith.” He looks up at him, smudgy and sweaty and splashed with five kinds of red in the fading light. “I don’t need it.”

Keith trembles, still searching for a bandage or a stopper or an answer of any kind. “No. I hate this.”

Lance smiles grimly. “I don’t love it that much either. But hey, maybe there’s a way to bring me back. This exact version of me. From the ether somewhere. Doesn’t feel quite as permanent as capital D Death.” His eyes narrow. “As long as you don’t lose me, Red.”

“I won’t,” he whispers, parched and grief-torn. “Never again.”

“Okay. Okay.” He makes himself comfortable, stretched out on the sand, arm folded over his chest. “Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you not—raise me from the dead again? I don’t think—I mean. A hundred versions of me and you haven’t found what you’re looking for.”

“But I have,” Keith says fiercely. “I always find what I’m looking for, because I’m looking for you.”

Lance laughs, coughs, squeezes his eyes shut. “That’s real romantic.”

Keith’s mouth twitches. “I’m glad you think so.”

Lance cracks an eye open. “Just find me the old fashioned way, will you? No more beautiful Lance casualties.”

“I—don’t know if I can promise that,” he says. “I miss you,” he reiterates.

“Yeah. More, I bet, when you’re looking right at me. Ever wonder why that is?”

Keith shakes his head fast.

“Dumbass,” Lance says fondly. “It’s literally always gonna hurt, trying to live in the past. Makes you feel like you don’t have a future.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“That’s a pretty insensitive thing to say to a dying guy.”

Keith laughs wetly. “You’re being melodramatic.”

“When can you be melodramatic if not on your deathbed?”

Keith brushes the sticky hair from Lance’s forehead. He turns his face and Keith’s hand softens and cups his cheek comfortably.

“Pidge can do anything,” Keith tells him. “All your ones and zeroes will be safe somewhere until she can figure out somewhere for you to go.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lance says, like he barely heard him. He’s determined, heroic. Fucking heartbreaking. “I hope the real me gives you hell.”

Keith nods jerkily. “He always does.”

“I hope he—I hope he’s good to you, too.”

Keith’s face crumples, and he puts his forehead to Lance’s, feeling him wince when his chest grazes his broken arm.

“Sorry, sorry,” he sniffs, holding his face, wiping the blood and muck and tears back.

“It’s okay,” Lance says, starting to slur. “It’s okay, Red, just end it, quick.”

“You’re the last one,” Keith promises.

“Good,” Lance says, “because you’re not gonna do better than me.”

Keith laughs, putting their foreheads together again, and then kissing the place where a tear has rolled down into his hairline.

“See you soon,” he whispers. Lance leans up, golden, bloody.

Keith shudders, and says “end simulation” into his mouth.

Imedemaa winks out, and his whole world narrows instantly to a pinhead. He’s huddled on the floor over nothing at all, caught in the throws of fantasy, like a sleepwalker. When he licks his lips though, he swears he can still taste salt.

______

He leaves the simulator into the whiz and pop of another Seachmall night. The owner nods at him, looking vaguely troubled, possibly by the amount of time that Keith has been locked in his simulator today, and by the look on his face now, which he can only imagine is ripped in half by loss.

The market is busier than usual, stranger, overfull with alien tourists, so much so that the paladin simulator has accumulated a long line-up.

He sidesteps their stares, slipping soundlessly into the alley, already dialling Pidge on his communicator. She said the system would automatically wipe after each use, but he’s certain she can retrieve whatever information would be inaccessible to the public. She said herself that she doesn’t burn data.

He waits through the suck of the empty line, feeling antsy and keyed up, aching from a day of racing but incongruously clean and dry.

“Come on, Pidge,” he mutters.

Somewhere in the market, there’s a great clamour of voices. Something clatters to the ground, and someone apologizes profusely in common. Keith chews his lip distractedly, waiting for a thief to run by, a sheepish tourist, or scuffling rival business owners.

The line connects and disconnects in quick succession, and Keith kicks a trash disposal chute so hard that it dents.

He frets, thinking of Lance’s final moments, the wilting fear on his face, his mouth split open like fruit.

A hoverbike rounds the corner, and Keith only steps barely out of the way, nearly clipped by a wide fender. It crashes to a stop, making a thin, rumbling sound, and then its rider has whipped all the way around to stare at Keith. Achingly humanoid. Cobalt blue Motorcycle helmet. Rippling with motion even while sitting still.

They swing a leg over the seat of the bike, staggering closer, and Keith knows. He knows when a slender, gloved hand reaches for the visor, and when twin pistols clink and gleam from their holsters. The helmet falls, rolling into the dirt.

“Keith,” Lance breathes.

[camillemontespan]

a week at aunt olivia and uncle leo’s [part one]

So, @sirbeepsalot messaged me saying she would like to see a fic where Leo and Olivia have to look after Lily for a week, since they’re not exactly the most.. kid friendly of couples. So I wrote it. 

This is a one shot that will be split into two parts! So a two shot? All the fluff! 

@jovialyouthmusic @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore @pug-bitch @sirbeepsalot @moonlightgem7 @emceesynonymroll @burnsoslow @i-bloody-love-drake-walker @katedrakeohd @of-course-i-went-to-hartfeld @emichelle @notoriouscs @be-still-my-aching-heart @carabeth @drakesensworld 

          **************************************************************************

Day 1

'Okay, so here's her books and her teddy bear,' Camille said, handing items over. 'Make sure she eats her vegetables, she'll lie and say she has but don't believe her, bath time is at 6.30, her hair gets tangled easily so here's the shampoo we use to help with knots and breakfast is her favourite Unicorn Wish cereal. She has playgroup tomorrow morning at 9am, it finishes at 12. Got it?'

Olivia was leaning against the kitchen counter biting her fingernails while Leo opened a beer.

'Camille, relax,' Olivia sighed. 'Lily will be fine with us.'

Camille winced. 'It's just you've never looked after her for longer than an afternoon..'

Leo chuckled. 'Don't worry yourself, hun. How hard can it be?'

'Ha!' Drake scoffed. He was helping Lily take off her coat. 'Spoken like someone who's never had a kid. Oh Leo, good luck, man.'

Leo gave him a happy shrug. Camille sighed. 'Any issues, call us.'

'Babe, you're going on holiday!' Olivia scolded. 'Relax! Just be Drake and Camille pre-babies. Get your groove back. Have you packed the vaseline I lent you?'

Camille blushed. 'And the clingfilm..'

Leo clapped Drake on the back. 'Go get her, buddy.'

Drake and Camille crouched down to say goodbye to their four year old daughter. They were going away to the south coast for a week to soak up sunshine, swim, hike and have lots of sex. Lots and lots of sex. It was their anniversary holiday after all.

'Okay so we'll see you at the end of the week, baby! I'll miss you!' Camille cooed, bringing Lily in for a cuddle. Drake then reached out and pressed a kiss on her head.

Lily was bouncing up and down with excitement. She was so ready to spend seven days with her Aunt Olivia and Uncle Leo.

'Thank you so much for doing this,' Camille said, giving Olivia a hug next. 'You're the best.'

Olivia and Leo waved them off before coming back into the kitchen where Lily was unpacking her books. 'So, let's show you your room!' Leo said cheerily.

He took her upstairs. Their house was very modern and minimal, white walls with floor to ceiling windows, a glass staircase and expensive artwork decorating the walls. It was, to put it bluntly, not a child friendly home. The sharp edges and glass was enough to give Camille a panic attack but she trusted her friends to look after her daughter.

The guest bedroom was white and minimal but with flashes of red. Red cushions, a red rug and red silk curtains. Lily jumped onto the bed and lay like a starfish. 'Comfy,' she said. It had her seal of approval.

Leo put Lily's rucksack on the chair. 'Okay, so it's nearly dinner time, I was thinking spaghetti with ALL OF THE MEATBALLS?!'

Lily squealed. 'And cheese!'

'A dinner for champions!' Leo hollered. He took Lily downstairs to start getting dinner ready. Drake had told him that she loved helping with mealtimes, though she couldn't do much, she still felt felt pleased when she was allowed to stir the bowl or taste test.

Olivia was helping herself to a glass of wine and jumped when Lily bounded in. She wasn't used to kids in her own space. It felt weird.

'We're having spaghetti and meatballs,' Leo told her. Olivia wrinkled her nose. 'Ugh, carbs.'

'Have spaghetti with us!' Lily cried. 'Pleaaaaase!'

Leo gave Olivia an amused look. Olivia sighed. 'Fine. But only a small portion for me.'

She sat down at the kitchen island with her wine and magazine, occasionally looking up to watch her boyfriend make meatballs with her god daughter. She felt a twinge in her heart. Oh god, sentiment.

'Now we're gonna sprinkle some oregano on the meatballs to give them a good flavour,' Leo instructed. Lily watched him carefully and copied him. She was sitting on the tall chair of the kitchen island with an apron over her body to protect her wooly white jumper and her blue leggings with silver embroidered stars. On her feet, she was wearing furry UGG boots. Olivia had to admit that Lily looked adorable. 

‘Hey, let’s play some music while we cook,’ Leo suggested. He turned to the Alexa pod. ‘Alexa! Play.. Wake Me Up Before You Go Go!’

‘Playing Wake Me Up Before You Go Go by Wham,’ Alexa said in her monotone voice. The song began to fill the room. 

‘Jitterbug!’ Leo sang, twirling around. Lily clapped her hands and giggled as she watched him. It was like Leo had turned into her Uncle Maxwell, who was the best dancer she knew. 

Olivia stared at Leo with a look of bewilderment on her face. Who was this guy? What had he done with her usually cool and sexy boyfriend? Since when did he like Wham?

She asked him that very question. Leo shot her a lazy smile and gestured to Lily. ‘Look at her.’

Olivia looked at Lily and saw that she was swinging her feet along to the music while sprinkling oregano on the meatballs.  She was in her element.

          *************************************************************

After dinner, Olivia took Lily upstairs for her bath. She studied the shampoo that Camille had given her for Lily’s hair. It smelled like lavender. 

‘Right, arms up,’ Olivia instructed. Lily raised her arms and Olivia gently pulled Lily’s jumper off. Soon, the little girl was in the bath, sloshing around in the water. 

Olivia poured some shampoo into the palm of her hand and proceeded to rub it into Lily’s hair. 

‘Aunt Olivia...’ Lily said, her voice questioning.

‘Yeah babe?’

Lily looked at her shyly. ‘Will you take me to playgroup tomorrow? I want everyone to see you.’

Olivia smirked. ‘Of course I will. What are the kids at playgroup like?’

‘Nice,’ Lily said. ‘Milo's my favourite.'

'Who's Milo?'

Lily blushed. 'A boy.'

Olivia stopped washing her hair and fixed her with a steady stare. 'Lily.. Do you have a boyfriend?'

Lily burst out laughing and ducked her head under the water. When she emerged, she wrinkled her nose. 'Ewww.'

'Lily?' Olivia's voice was lilting. 'Are you k-i-s-s-i-n-g?'

'Nooooooooo!' Lily shrieked. Olivia laughed and began to comb conditioner through Lily's hair. She wondered in amusement what Drake would say if he knew. She had a feeling that Drake would be the stereotypical overprotective father who vetted boyfriends or girlfriends with a shotgun in his lap.

'Babe, it's okay to like boys.'

Lily turned red. 'He's nice. My friend Violet likes Harry but he pushes her over which makes her cry. Katie says it's because Harry likes Violet.'

Olivia rolled her eyes. 'Ugh, boys. By the way, if Milo starts pushing you in the playground or tugging your hair, that's not because he likes you, it's because he's a d bag.'

'D bag?'

Olivia smiled conspiratorially. 'You'll understand when you're older.'

                           *************************************************

Day 2

Olivia got out the car and took Lily's hand to cross the road. Lily was fizzing with excitement - aunt Olivia was taking her to playgroup! Her friends would see her! She could show Olivia her classroom!

Olivia studied the playgroup mothers who were kissing and hugging their four year olds goodbye.

Ugh, if I ever wear pyjamas to a school run or whatever, kill me.

Olivia was not dressed in pyjamas. She was wearing black leather trousers, ankle boots with a spindly heel, red sweater and black leather jacket. She looked, if she said so herself, hot. 

They reached the school gates. The mothers turned to gawp at Olivia - for one thing, she was the Duchess of Lythikos, she was famous. They had met Camille and Drake many times but they always exuded an air of normality.. Olivia didn’t. Olivia looked intimidating, she looked regal, she looked powerful. 

One mother cleared her throat and went over to say hello. ‘Hi there. I’m Stacey, Milo’s mom.’

Olivia gave her a smirk. ‘Milo, huh?’

Stacey blinked. ‘Yes, my son, that’s him over there.’ She pointed to a small boy with dark hair down to his shoulders. Olivia felt he would become a surfer boy type when he grew up; not a Duke, no, but still good for Lily. 

Lily jumped up and down. ‘This is my aunt Olivia!’ 

Olivia extended a hand and shook Stacey’s. Stacey grinned. ‘Olivia, the Duchess of Lythikos! So nice to meet you at last.’

‘Charmed,’ Olivia said shortly. 

‘So where is Camille?’ Stacey asked. 

‘She and Drake are having a sexcation,’ Olivia replied. ‘They need it.’ 

Stacey blinked. ‘Oh, okay. Good for them, huh?!’ 

Lily had left the women to drag over Milo and another little girl with glasses and plaits. ‘Aunt Olivia, this is Milo and this is Violet!’

Olivia looked down at the children; they stared up at her in terror. ‘She’s my favourite!’ Lily whispered. 

Olivia smiled. ‘Okay, babe, let’s get you into class.’ 

She took Lily’s hand but was stopped by Stacey. ‘Oh, sorry, just a moment.’ Stacey said. ‘I was wondering if you wanted to join our book club?’

Olivia stared at her. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Well, we keep asking Camille to join but she’s so busy that she always says she can’t. We meet up every Wednesday night at mine for  a cup of tea and to discuss our Book of the Month, it’s just nice to get together without the kids, you know?’

‘But I’m not a parent..’

‘No, but you are now at our gates!’ Stacey said excitedly. ‘You can be an honourary member. Plus, it would really boost our membership if we had a Duchess join.’ 

‘Has it occurred to you that maybe I’m too busy to talk about books?’ Olivia asked bluntly.  Stacey went pink. ‘Oh. I didn’t mean to cause offence..’

Olivia smirked. ‘You didn’t, I don’t get offended easily. Tell you what; if the tea is replaced with wine, then I’ll consider it.’ 

Stacey clapped her hands in delight. ‘Perfect! I’ll suggest that to Jennifer!’ 

Olivia took Lily and guided her into the building, keen to get away. Why had she said that? She hated all that kind of crap. Well done, Nevrakis. You’re now part of the mommy set. Good effort seeing as you’re not a mom and you hate kids. 

Lily looked up at Olivia as they walked to her classroom, giving her a wide beaming smile.

Okay, I like one kid. 

      ********************************************************************************

‘Hey Liv, how’s it going with Lily?’ Camille asked down the phone. 

Olivia was reclining on the chaise lounge with her feet up on the table, drying her toenails that were now painted red. A glass of red wine sat on the table beside her, despite the fact it was 11am. 

Well, it was five o’clock somewhere, right?

‘Great,’ Olivia said. ‘Dropped her at playgroup earlier. I’m now part of their book club, kill me now.’

‘How the hell did they get you to join that?’ 

‘No idea. I suggested they replace the tea with wine, Stacey said she would suggest it, now I’m a member. How have you managed to avoid it?’

Camille laughed. ‘I just keep acting like I’m an important person with very important things to do. They’re lovely women, honestly, I just don’t want to join the book club.. I’d rather stay home with Drake and Lily, you know?’

‘Speaking of Drake, how’s the fucking?’ Olivia asked. ‘Vaseline and clingfilm going down a treat?’

‘It’s... interesting..’ Camille replied. 

Olivia smirked and had a sip of wine. ‘You’ll thank me at the end of the week.’ 

‘I gotta go, actually,’ Camille said. ‘I just wanted to check in and see that you’re surviving.’

Olivia rolled her eyes. ‘We’re fine. You got a good kid, Camille.’ 

The two friends hung up. Olivia stretched out and wiggled her toes which were now dry and looking beautifully red. 

‘Hey, gorgeous.’ 

Leo came into the room fresh from his shower with his towel wrapped around his waist. ‘Ooh, nice nails,’ he commented, before leaning down to kiss her on the mouth. Olivia’s hand roamed down his chest to under the towel area, until she found what she wanted. 

‘Hey, big boy.’

Leo gave her a wolfish grin and took the towel off. He was all golden; golden skin, golden hair. His abs were chiselled and his shoulders were broad. He was a golden God. 

‘Come here and fuck me,’ Olivia said. Leo’s eyes darkened. 

‘I was going to.’ 

          ***************************************************************************

Lily was excited to finish playgroup so she could see Olivia and Leo. They were all she had talked about all morning. Olivia picked her up, and they talked about her day in the car as Olivia drove them home.  She then spent the afternoon building a fort with Leo. 

That evening, Olivia got her ready for bath time before bundling her up in a wooly dressing gown. Olivia then wrapped her own silk red dressing gown around her body. 

In the kitchen, Olivia poured herself a glass of wine, aware that Lily was studying her in fascination.

'What are you drinking?' she asked.

Olivia smirked. 'Grape juice.'

'Can I have some?'

Olivia laughed. This child was so funny. 'Sorry, it's adult grape juice, babe. But hey, wait a second.'

Olivia found a carton of cranberry juice and poured it into a wine glass for Lily. Lily's eyes lit up. She felt so fancy with her own wine glass. Much more fun than the plastic cups she had at home. 

The two of them settled down in the living room dressed in their dressing gowns and wine glasses in hand.

'Can we watch Peppa Pig?' Lily asked. Olivia shrugged. 'Sure thing, babe. One episode then bedtime, okay?'

Lily snuggled up into Olivia and they watched Peppa Pig, cosy together. Olivia looked down at Lily who was entranced with the TV show. This wasn’t hard. Why were Drake and Camille always acting like they were exhausted? Having a kid was a walk in the park. She’d have to give them pointers. 

After the episode finished, Olivia took Lily up to bed. She kissed her softly on the forehead and tucked her in, a rare display of love. When Olivia went to leave the room, Lily cried out, ‘Wait!’

Olivia turned. ‘What’s up hun?’

Lily wrung the duvet in her hands, her eyes wide. ‘Can you leave the door open?’ she asked quietly. 

‘Why?’

‘I’m scared of the monsters.’

Olivia sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Lily, there’s no such thing as monsters.’ 

Lily nodded quickly. ‘There is. They live under the bed.’ 

Olivia looked down below the bed; there were just storage boxes underneath. ‘Babe, monsters aren’t in here.’

‘Because you’re here, they hide, but when you go, they will be under the bed,’ Lily replied, her voice becoming high pitched with panic. 

‘Shh babe..’ Olivia whispered. She thought to herself. Sure, she could leave the door open but Olivia had been taught from a young age that to feel fear was a silly emotion and by keeping the door open, Lily was letting that fear control her. Of course, Olivia had a shit upbringing but she could use some of the stuff she had been taught as a springboard. 

‘Okay, wait a second,’ she said. She rushed out and came back in a moment later holding a teddy bear. 

‘So, this is my old teddy bear,’ Olivia said. ‘His name is Ernest..’

‘Ernest..’

‘Yup. Now, Ernest protected me from monsters all the time. He taught me how to be brave. He kept me safe. Here, take him. He will keep you safe. Now, monsters don’t exist but if they ever did, Ernest will sound the alarm! He will tell me and I will come through and protect you too.’ 

‘You will?’

‘Yup. Ernest watches over you all night. If he sees anything, he will tell me so fast that the monsters won’t stand a chance.’ 

Lily smiled and hugged Ernest to her body. ‘Okay.’

‘Now, I’m going to shut the door, okay?’ Olivia said gently. ‘I promise, there’s nothing in here. But you’ve got Ernest. Ernest is a good bear.’ 

Lily nodded bravely and settled down under the duvet, holding Ernest close. Olivia kissed her again and left the room. 

In the dark, Lily clenched hold of Ernest tightly. She then quickly moved so she was hanging over the side of the bed and she hissed, ‘If you get me, my aunt Olivia will kill you!’

She snuggled back under the duvet, feeling much better now. 

                          **********************************************

Day 3

Olivia had her kickboxing class at 8.30am which meant Leo was in charge of taking Lily to playgroup. Lily had insisted on wearing her pink ballerina outfit and furry UGG boots and Leo wasn't going to argue with that. Each to their own. 

He shrugged on his leather jacket and put on his aviator sunglasses. He carried her Tangled rucksack which was emblazoned with images of Pascal, Flynn Rider and Rapunzel as they wandered to his Cadillac, which was his second favourite thing in the world, after Olivia. 

Leo blasted the radio for them and they sang along to the songs as Leo drove through Cordonia to get to playgroup.

When they arrived, Leo escorted Lily into the building where the mothers were standing outside the classroom talking. They stopped when they saw Leo.

'Oh my god, it's the Prince..' one of them breathed.

‘He looks like a model...’

‘Do we have to curtsey?’

Leo crouched down to say goodbye to Lily. 'Right kiddo, I'll pick you up at 12.'

Lily hugged him tightly.

'Make good choices!' Leo told her. 'Don't do anything I would do!'

Lily skipped into the classroom with her tutu billowing around her. Leo stood back up, watching her go, until he became aware of the five women staring at him with their mouths hanging open. He gave them his lopsided smile and raised his hand in greeting. 

‘Hey there.’ 

He turned and walked away, shaking his head in amusement as he heard the women squeal. 

Maybe he should go to playgroup more. 

[imasallstars]

SR/SR+ 【D-ark L-ily’s Grin】Kanade Hayami

FOCUS STAT 　　　 6183 VISUAL at max Level, Max Bond, 0 Potential TOTAL APPEAL 　　　 13 441 Skill:「This Song Blooms In Splendor」 　　　 (Flick Act) For every 11 seconds, there is a 40~60% chance that PERFECT notes will receive a 8% score bonus for 6~9 seconds. The bonus will be increased to 24% if ever you hit a PERFECT for a FLICK NOTE in the same time frame.   Center Skill:「Cool Makeup」 　　All COOL-type cards gain a 60% boost in their VISUAL stat.

※ this card is available through ranking in the Top 200000 in the D-ark L-ily’s Grin LIVE GROOVE event. You are able to get multiple copies of this card, by ranking in higher tiers of the event

※ you are also able to obtain this card by reaching 15k, 25k, 35k, and 45k points in the D-ark L-ily’s Grin LIVE GROOVE event.

※ the card’s Japanese skill name “可憐に咲く歌” features the name of the other half of the unit, 可憐 (Karen)

[moonysfrexckles]

“I lost a sister.”

September 1977

She was staring again.

She knew because the rest of the world appeared rather abruptly around his head, and the din of the Great Hall assaulted her ears the moment she blinked. Lily cleared her throat, shaking her head to try and dispel whatever had been running through her mind and straightened up in her seat.

Honestly, she couldn’t quite pinpoint why she was staring at James Potter. Sure, he was pretty, with his dark hair, strong jaw, and hazel eyes that sparked every time the grin was lit at his lips. But he was also a bully. An arrogant, self-righteous bully-

“I can be better for you.”

Only Lily wasn’t sure that was true anymore.

After the incident at the end of their fifth year, when he’d chased her through the school and promised with sincerity ringed eyes to be better, he hadn’t accosted Snape once. Nor any other poor unsuspecting child as it was. For a year, Lily had been privy to a boy she had only seen snatches and glimmers of, and it surprised her.

Lily Evans had known James Potter for nearly seven years now. She had known he was in love with her for almost four. It wasn’t very difficult to figure out- for all his strengths, he was terribly obvious, and she’d had to get used to the lingering stares, the bashful smiles, the sudden comments and vies for her attention. At first, Lily had actually found it quite flattering. She’d blushed and laughed and gossiped, and then she stumbled upon him tormenting Snape, the latter stripped to his underwear in front of corridors full of people, and her stomach had felt heavy and light at the same time and she’d wondered how she could hope to fall in love with anyone so vile.

Regardless of any shows of civility they had attempted over the years, their relationship had always been a rocky one. She clashed with his arrogance, his foolhardiness, his ignorance, his easy-going earnestness that always seemed to get him off the hook, even with McGonagall. He clashed with her righteousness, her morals, her religion, her inexcusable belief that everybody deserved a chance, despite how they treated others. He found her increasingly irritating and loved her for it. She found him ever the bully and hated him for the fact that he didn’t seem to care.

Except that wasn’t true.

Her recent piqued interest in him wasn’t anything more than that. Lily was simply surprised that James Potter was human, after all. But she had to stop staring-

“That’s not fair, and you know it,” Dorcas was saying when Lily next blinked. She was spreading strawberry jam on her toast, surveying a flippant Marlene with arched eyebrows.

“What’s not fair?”

Marlene looked at her in surprise. “Well, it’s nice of you to join us! How was your trip? Did you get all the pining done you wanted?”

“I-” spluttered Lily. She closed her mouth and narrowed her eyes. “I was not pining.”

“You were. And drooling,” said Dorcas, taking a bite of her toast when the scowl was redirected to her.

Lily frowned. Absently, her eyes drifted back down the table.

“And we’ve lost her again-”

“What’s not fair?” Lily repeated, switching her attention to the two of them. They shared an amused glance but didn’t comment, allowing her abrupt change of topic.

“Nothing important,” shrugged Marlene.

“It sounded important.”

“It wasn’t,” Dorcas smiled.

Lily picked up her spoon and waggled it between them. She said warningly, “I know you’re both lying to me.”

“That makes three of us,” said Marlene sweetly.

“You’re infuriating,” Lily told her. She wasn’t particularly hungry and her cereal had gone soggy, so she pushed back the bench and climbed out. “I need to go to the Owlery anyway. I’ll see you in Potions.”

“No, you won’t. I’m in Herbology,” said Dorcas.

Marlene pulled a face. “And I might not turn up just to prove a point.”

Lily was already half way down the table, but they managed to make a small smile curl her lips. She didn’t stop but twirled round to face them, holding her arms out and singing, “Wankers!”

Marlene’s laugh carried around the hall, following her until the doors had shut behind her.

She didn’t stop as she crossed the entrance hall, jogging up the stairs in the direction of the West Tower. Her bag felt heavy on her back, and regardless of all of her books and quills and spare quills and ink, Lily thought the letter placed carefully on top of everything else was the weightiest.

Her eyes stung. She’d woken up earlier than usual that morning, before the sun had even touched the skies. Lily had sat up, leaning against the headboard, heart fluttering dangerously in her chest, and waited for the light to break through the slit in the curtains before she’d folded back her sheets, made her bed and slipped into the Common Room. She had sat on the crimson settee, staring into the fire. And then when her feet grew cold, she collected some parchment from her trunk and her quill and returned to kneel on the floor by the ash fire.

The paper had remained blank for some while. Every time she reached for her quill, her fingers would shake so violently that she gave up and traced the grooves of the table instead.

Every year, on this day, Lily would wake up early, having not been able to sleep, and stare at the blank bit of paper, wondering what acceptable thing you could write to a stranger on their birthday. Although, Petunia wasn’t a stranger-

Her sister was the first thing she remembered. Memories that were saturated and hazy, bleached with light and faded by time. She was her first friend, her first playmate, the first person to make her laugh. Lily knew that Tuney liked running around because the flimsy pain in her side always made her feel victorious. She knew that her favourite colour was peach because it was the colour of the dahlia flowers that grew by the stream in summer back home in Nottingham, and she liked liquorice tea when she was ill.

She wasn’t a stranger.

Lily just didn’t know her anymore.

She sighed into the warm palm of her hand, eyeing the blank paper with a frown. Forcing her hand to grip her quill, she sighed again and proceeded to write.

The letter was now tucked into her bag, sealed with the red wax and stamped with the Hogwarts crest Marlene had bought her for Christmas in her Second Year. Lily walked quickly. The Owlery was located in the highest corner of Hogwarts, the West Tower, separated from the rest of the school by a heavy wooden door, and set at the top of fifty three stone steps (she and Mary had counted them on their first trip there). The pillars stretched to the sky, holding up the roof, with nests and perches lining the walls. There must have been a hundred, maybe two hundred, owls, swooping in and out as they pleased, preening and plucking themselves, watching her with disinterested eyes.

Her mother hadn’t let her buy an owl, despite Lily’s sincerest efforts to convince her that they were a necessity in the Wizarding World, because she’d said it would eat her budgie. In the summer, she’d had to rely on her friends’ owls to be able to reply to their letters. Now, she’d have to use a school one.

It was cold up here. October was right around the corner, in the crisp wintry air, in the late dying of the night, and Lily made quick work of undoing her bag, offering the letter to the friendliest looking owl she could find along with a treat as thanks. She watched it as it took off, spreading its large wings and taking to the skies. She didn’t look away until it had disappeared into the clouds, feeling as though it was taking a crucial part of her heart with it, and even then, when the tiny black speck of undulating wings had faded away, she waited a few moments more.

Then, she tore her eyes away. The owls squawked above her head, cooing and nipping each other when they encroached on their nests. Lily swallowed and found that although her throat felt dry and rough, she could breathe a lot easier, like the air had cleared. She fastened back up her bag, swinging it onto her shoulders and checked her watch-

She froze. She was going to be late.

Lily swore, bolting down the stone steps, and bursting through the wooden door at the bottom. She quickened her pace, and noticed faintly that her heart felt significantly lighter as she rushed down the corridors to her Potions lesson, falling through the door and onto her stool just as Slughorn emerged from his office.

Marlene glanced at her, smirking at the pinkness of her cheeks and raggedness of her breath. She murmured, “Did you send it?”

Lily froze. She played for nonchalance. “Send what?”

“Whatever it is you send every year,” she explained simply, ignoring Slughorn as their professor set them their coursework task and let them get on with it.

She didn’t elaborate past that, and Lily was secretly relieved that her friend was never nosy when it mattered. She set her station up, laying out her notes and checking them once over to make sure everything was correct.

“What assignment have you chosen?” asked Marlene, sitting back in her chair and watching her friend tie up her flaming hair and bustle around their desks.  She’d already collected her ingredients, although she made no move to do anything of particular importance.

“I decided to merge the Draught of Living Dead with Altheda’s Potion,” replied Lily.

Marlene’s eyes narrowed and a small frown creased her forehead. “From Beedle the Bard? I didn’t realise that was a real potion. I always thought it was just a fairy-tale.”

Lily paused. A wry smile curled her lips and she said whimsically, “After finding out about magic, I learnt very quickly that fairy-tales are more often than not based on some semblance of truth.”

She smiled, squeezing Marlene’s fingers before she said, “I’m going to get my ingredients. Are you planning on starting any time soon?”

“Not particularly,” retorted Marlene, wrinkling her nose. “Though then again, I don’t tend to plan ahead. After six years, you should know that.”

Lily laughed, and she headed towards Slughorn’s cupboard. She made a mental checklist of everything she needed, beginning with the leftmost bottom shelf and working her way round like that, perusing each jar and vial with squinted eyes, chastising herself for not bringing her glasses and above all, cursing her Professor for the chaos of his disorganisation. She’d offered once before to put his cupboard in order for him, but Slughorn had laughed it off and said that he knew where everything was and that was all that mattered. Short-sighted and with the dim light of her wand, it took her longer than usually to find all of the ingredients bar one she needed, but she did so, pooling them into a bag she had transfigured from a pencil. She stood up from where she had been crouched on the floor, extinguishing her wand. Resolutely, Lily reached for the handle but before she could, the door swung open and a hard, tall body collided with hers, sending her grappling to press her bag firm against her leg lest she lose any of her ingredients.

“You haven’t seen any Chizpurfle fangs lying about, have you- oh, Lily. Evans, hi.”

James cut himself off, neck flushed, and Lily smiled a little at his flustered state. This particular cupboard, separated from the more general one due to the increasing rarity and expense of its assets, was perhaps a metre and a half squared in area, and Lily could feel every one of his breaths against her skin.

“Chizpurfle,” she repeated suddenly, eyes raking the shelves, chewing on her lip. “No, I can’t see it. Maybe Slughorn’s used the jar and didn’t put it back?”

He nodded, and she realised that in the few moments she’d been searching for the ingredient, his eyes hadn’t moved from her face. James coughed and said, “Thanks, yeah. I’ll check.”

Arms full of various sized vials with various coloured liquids, James turned and headed for the door. Lily swallowed and queried, “Are you making a Befuddlement Draught?”

He spun around, eyebrows raised. “A Wiggenweld Potion.”

Lily wasn’t quick enough to conceal her surprise and if the quirk of James’ lip was anything to go by, he noticed. She picked off the last sloth brain on the shelf and said lightly, “It’s a difficult potion, is all. Are you feeling up to the challenge, Potter?”

The hint of a smile that had threatened to spill across his face gave way to a grin. “You’ve known me for nearly seven years, Evans. You should already know the answer to that.” He paused, as if gauging how far he could push it, before James added, “Why? Are you impressed?”

“Maybe I just didn’t have that much faith in your ability,” retorted Lily, feigning her features to stop herself from smiling. She gave him a dainty shrug.

James’ mouth dropped open. Wounded, he cried, “How very dare you! The audacity! If my hands weren’t full, I’d challenge you to a duel.”

“You’d lose,” she warned him.

“Oh, Evans,” he said in a low voice and the smile dropped from her face. “I’m not the same foolish, skinny boy I used to be.”

“No,” she conceded softly, and James’ eyes changed too. She cleared her throat. “But you still have his legs.”

With James’ rich laugh echoing through the jars and making the spider webs shake in her wake, she edged past him and walked back to her table, beaming at Remus as she passed, who offered her a gentle smile in return. Lily laid out all of her ingredients, skim-reading her instructions to double check that she had them all before she began her prep work.

“So,” began Marlene, finally unloading her equipment from her bag. “You and Potter, huh?”

Lily’s head whipped around so that she could stare incredulously first at her friend, and then at the rest of the class, just to make sure nobody had heard. “No. Never. Not in a million years. Not if we were the last two people on the planet-”

“Okay, I get it!” exclaimed Marlene, holding her hands up in mock surrender. Lily relaxed a little. “You dig him.”

She jumped at the insinuation and nipped her arm. “Don’t freak out over dust, Marls,” she told her, lighting her cauldron. “We’re just friends.”

Marlene scoffed. “’Just friends.’ Chick, this is the same boy that’s been in love with you for seven years.”

“Four,” Lily corrected automatically. She blushed.

“Four that you know of- my point being why are you ruling something out that you’ve never even tried?”

Lily’s eyes drifted across the room almost instinctively, finding him out so easily you’d have thought she was drenched in coldness and he was the only morsel of warmth left in the world. She always found it bizarre how easy James was, easy to talk to, easy-going, easy to spot in a crowd full of people (although that last one was usually because he was the reason for the accumulation of an audience so she didn’t know if it counted).

“I’m not ruling anything out, Marls,” said Lily. “I just- it’s different now. Last year, he was different. And now we’re working together with all the Heads business that I can’t avoid him like I used to.” She swallowed, softening. “He treats me like a normal person. Not like a schoolboy crush, or an object, or an outsider. I respect that.”

Marlene didn’t reply, and when Lily glanced at her to check if her friend was still there, the other girl nodded slightly. She let out a whistle. “Must have been some apology.”

“I can be better for you.”

“I guess it was,” replied Lily vaguely, eyes straying to the boy on the other side of the classroom. He had his head ducked low over his work station, elbow tucked in as he added the ground up Chizpurfle fangs to his potion.

“What were you and Dorcas talking about this morning, anyway?” asked Lily curiously, pouring the infusion of wormwood into her cauldron and flicking her wand to increase the heat.

Marlene’s face tightened ever so slightly. To anyone else, the act would have been imperceptible, but Marlene was a character of grand gestures and melodrama, so every small motion seemed out of place on her, almost wasted. Maybe Lily had just known her for too long.

But she played it off, nonchalantly starting her potion. “Dorky has a date.”

The knife in Lily’s hand slipped and she looked at her. “A date?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Lily pressed her lips together. “What did you say?”

“I said she shouldn’t be stringing him along if she didn’t like him,” said Marlene, flicking her blonde curls over her shoulder and fixing Lily with a look.

“What did she say?”

“She said it wasn’t fair to assume she didn’t like him.”

Lily turned back to her potion and said lightly, “Well, at least she took your advice. She’s not ruling anything out until she’s tried it.”

There was a clatter of silver as a knife was abruptly dropped on the table. Marlene regarded her shrewdly. “Get back to your bloody potion, Evans.”

The two girls stared at one another, and Lily felt the smile tug at her lips. She tried biting it back, but they both gave way to laughter at the same time, sharing a grin before they got back on with their assignments.

Lily had always liked Potions. She liked the precision, the right and wrong of it all. You couldn’t argue with a set of instructions and if you went wrong somewhere along the way, you only had yourself to blame. She preferred subjects like that, where success relied on you and nobody could argue against it.

Slughorn made his rounds half way into the lesson. He made a beeline for her, beaming fondly, and asked which potion she had picked and why.

“I’ll say it again, Miss Evans,” boomed Slughorn once she’d told him and shown him her instructions, jovial voice alight with merriment. He ducked his head low as though he were letting her in on a secret nobody else could hear. “It’s a pity you weren’t sorted into my house.”

Lily smiled despite herself. She shook her head, scooping the pieces of the Sopophorous beans into her hand and then squeezing them into her cauldron. The juice hissed and spat when it reacted with the wormwood. “Professor, you and I both know a lion’s roar cannot be confined to a dungeon.”

Slughorn chuckled. “Perhaps not, but your ambition would thrive spectacularly.”

“My ambition is not your common ambition, Professor,” she replied, pausing to count in her head the seven counter clockwise stirs she needed, adding one clockwise stir for good luck. They both followed the motion with their eyes and when the potion shimmered and had turned the right shade of pink, Lily dipped her vial into it and held it between them. It glinted in the light.

“My, I never,” he mumbled in marvel, and the light cast glistening reflections to dance across his walrus-like cheeks. “Miss Evans, you’re the first student I’ve ever taught to brew this draught so successfully in under an hour! And to complicate it too! It’s a masterpiece!”

Beaming, Slughorn moved to take her assignment off her but she moved before he could, holding it out of his reach and ignoring the blush that hurried to her face..

“My ambition is my biggest act of bravery, sir,” said Lily solemnly. “I’m clever enough to know it, and foolish enough, it seems, to continue even when this world tells me I shouldn’t.”

She flicked her wrist back and held the vial out for him to collect. Slughorn stared at her for a few moments before his lips split into a smile beneath his bulbous moustache and he burst into that booming laughter that echoed around the room, bouncing off the stone walls and eliciting more than a few surprised glances. Lily smiled at him, before she vanished her draught and cleared her work station.

“Clever indeed, Miss Evans,” agreed Slughorn, and she felt a rush of pride fill her gut.

Lily spent the rest of the lesson finishing her Transfiguration essay, which transpired as spending all her time trying to move it out of the way quick enough before Marlene spilled something on it, or her potion bubbled over because she’d done something terribly wrong. They were dismissed when the lesson ended by a harried looking Slughorn who had had to put out a total of three fires and send Frank Longbottom to the Hospital Wing for minor burns when he added moonseed (which is highly poisonous and volatile) instead of moonstone.

“You were finished before everyone else had even collected their ingredients!” laughed Marlene, linking their arms when they eventually left the classroom. “You’re a wonder, woman, you know that? The least you could do is cushion our egos by showing us you’re human and get an A like the rest of us.”

“I’ve never gotten less than an E on any of my Potions, like the rest of you,” teased Lily, biting back a smile.

“Honestly,” said Marlene, throwing her hands up with all the melodrama she could summon. “I don’t know how you do it. It’s like Slughorn is in love with you.”

Lily pulled a face, prodding her friend in the ribs. “Marls, you’re disgusting.”

Marlene just grinned, unlooping their arms so she could throw hers around Lily’s shoulders to pull her close. She planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek.

“You know, I was just saying the exact same thing.”

The two girls paused. They spun around and their smiles dropped at the sight of Evan Rosier sauntering towards them. He was a sly boy, tall and slim, with immaculate dark hair that was always combed a certain way, and lips so shrewd it looked as though he was perpetually dissatisfied with general conversation, or perhaps it was life in general that tasted so sour to him. The green tie gleamed from his chest.

Lily’s eyes drifted just past him and her heart tightened in her chest. Snape skulked far enough away to be inconspicuous but close enough to remain affiliated. He loitered in the shadows. She quickly looked back at Rosier.

“Not the bit about McKinnon, though I do admit my stomach heaves at the sight of her,” Rosier continued. A muscle twitched in Marlene’s jaw. Her eyes rolled back into her head. If Lily hadn’t felt her entire body tense up then she would’ve laughed. His dark eyes flicked to her. “I meant the bit about Slughorn. You’re always been a bit of a teacher’s pet, Evans.”

“I’m flattered you’ve been paying such keen attention to me, Rosier,” retorted Lily. Marlene snorted. “Is there a point to all this or were you simply expressing your infatuation with me, because if that’s the case, I’m afraid I have to put you out of your misery when I tell you you’re not my type.”

Rosier let out a harsh, derisive laugh. He stalked closer. “Believe me, Evans, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole. Not even if my life depended on it.” He tiled his head in mock-consideration. “But I does beg the question. If you’re so willing to offer your services to me, who else have you offered them to?”

Any amusement or fleeting sense of victory died in her. Lily willed her tongue to say something but she could only stare at him, feeling a sickening heavy dread settle. The smirk that curled Rosier’s thin lips suggested he could feel it too.

“I always did wonder why Snape was friends with you,” he said. Lily’s nose twitched. “And now Slughorn. What, are you fucking him for extra credit? Spreading your legs like the freak you are-”

Something hot dribbled through her, something familiar and seething, and she stormed towards him, stopping only when their noses were inches apart, and she could feel every one of his rancid breaths fan against her cheek. Rosier’s eyes widened fractionally.

“What, Rosier? Threatened because a Mudblood is showing you up, again-”

“Rosier! What a pleasant surprise to see you here!”

Lily stumbled backwards at the abrupt arrival of James Potter. He strode towards them with all the time in the world on his side, like it was his castle and they were all entreating upon it. Sure enough, his usual companions were fast in his wake: Black, sauntering with his shoulders back, chin tipped daintily (or arrogantly) to the sky; Lupin, slouching, hands shoved deep in the pockets of a robe that was fraying at the edges and brushing the higher end of his calf; Pettigrew rounded the four off, scurrying along with a slight skip in his step to keep up.

“And Snivellus!” Sirius announced. “My, this is a party.”

A look as black as the greasy hair on his head crossed over Snape’s face, and he sunk deeper into the shadows, eyes trained on Sirius.

James took no notice. He smiled cordially. “What are you doing, Rosier?”

Rosier’s eyes flicked to him and back. “That is none of your business, Potter,” he drawled.

“On the contrary,” replied Sirius. He made an over-elaborate display of pointing at James’ chest. “He’s Head Boy. That makes everything his business.”

“He’s right,” said Remus genially. “In case you weren’t aware, ‘everything,’ quite literally, refers to everything. What colour your socks are-”

“What you do after hours,” added Sirius, counting them off on his fingers.

“When you’re accosting people in the hallway,” finished Peter. He raised his eyebrows knowingly.

Rosier narrowed his eyes at him, then he looked back at Lily. “It’s not an ambush. It’s a chat between a concerned student and his Head Girl, right Evans?”

His stare turned expectant. Lily didn’t break eye contact with James. “Right.”

A small frown appeared between James’ eyebrows but the space smoothed over quickly after and he smiled at the pair of them. “Well, I’m glad, but as your Head Boy, I must profess my concern over your truancy for your next lesson, Rosier. I’m sure Evans can give you a note.”

“No need,” Rosier replied. He smiled tightly. “I’ll explain the situation to Binns myself.”

“Perfect.”

Rosier gave her one last glance, and Lily met his gaze head-on, before he flicked back his cloak from his legs and turned on his heel. He jerked his head at Snape, who glared at them a final time before he followed.

“How obedient,” commented Sirius. James looked at him. His friend’s black eyes didn’t leave the two retreating figures until a few moments after they had disappeared around the corner.

Lily watched them both walk away. Her heart was beating horribly fast in her chest and she knew there was heat in her cheeks and neck because her skin felt to be burning. She wasn’t scared. She’d endured this for seven years, and whilst it was always an unfortunate occurrence, she was used to it. No. Lily was angry. In fact, she was furious.

Freak.

That word had also shattered some part of her, and she could feel the shards digging into her flesh, sending out darts of twisting pain. She didn’t know how to stop that, how to block out that word, that memory, and of all days-

Anger, she could control. She whirled on her heel and marched straight up to James Potter, prodding him in his tall, solid chest.

“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,” she fumed. She didn’t know why but the ire was hot and writhing within her, and she couldn’t bite her tongue. Adrenaline coursed through her veins.

A genuine flash of surprise crossed James’ face and he shook his head quickly. “No, Lily. I was just-”

“Just what?” she demanded. Marlene touched her wrist, muttered her name, but Lily ignored her. “I’m not some little girl. I can handle myself! I have proved for seven years that I can handle myself!”

“I never said you couldn’t,” he murmured gently.

Sirius’ eyes flicked between them both, before he said in a low and quiet voice, “Why don’t we leave our Head Boy and Head Girl in private.”

“Good idea,” agreed Peter, and his transparency meant the concern and bewilderment was streaked across his face. “I’m sure they have lots of… Head business to do.”

Marlene closed her eyes in exasperation. Remus sighed. Nevertheless, the four of them left for Transfiguration, but not before Marlene squeezed Lily’s fingers.

Lily didn’t even glance at them. She kept her eyes fixed on Potter, because she thought that if she moved, she would cry.

“I’m fed up of people acting like I shouldn’t be here, like I can’t survive in this world. I can get the grades. I can do the magic. I belong here. I have proved that I deserve to be here-”

“Evans,” he said, a bit more forcefully, though the hurt still managed to seep into his voice and eyes. “I don’t see why you’re biting my head off.”

Lily swallowed hard. It scraped her throat. She traced the cracks in the stone floor and the curve of her shoes and then the frills at the hem of her socks and all the while, her heart grounded itself in her chest.

“Do you even know what it feels like to be an outsider?” she asked in a strangled voice. “To not belong? You’ve always had everything, Potter. You’ve always had friends and a place in this world, and I have to fight for that! Every day of my life, I will have to fight for that and you just have it handed to you on a golden platter, just like Black, just like Rosier-!”

She noticed the way he winced a little, and her shoulders slumped, heart dropping in her chest. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, imagined stirring counter clockwise and once clockwise for good luck until all the haze had disappeared from her mind. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean-”

James got closer, reaching out hesitantly to touch her arm. When Lily didn’t move away, he held both of her shoulders, rubbing her arms.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s wrong? You hardly ate anything this morning.”

Lily sighed, reaching up to press her fingers into her eyes so her vision would go fuzzy before everything would clear up sharper. She peered at him. “You watch me eat?”

James’ eyes nearly popped out of his head. He dropped his hands and stumbled, “No. I mean, yes. That sounds weird. Not every day- I just-”

Lily looked away and laughed weakly. She prodded his chest. “I was messing with you.”

He visibly relaxed, a relieved grin slipping into place. He said, “I noticed you were quiet at the Head’s meeting last night too. Do you want to talk about it?”

She swallowed thickly, eyes darting to her feet. James stared at her, before he glanced down the corridor, licking his lips nervously. Then, he took her hand and started walking.

“Where are we going?” Lily asked, walking quickly to keep up with him.

“We are going for a walk,” he told her. “To clear our heads.”

“We can’t skip class!” she stressed, digging her heals into the floor so he couldn’t drag her along. “We’re Heads! It sets a bad example!”

“It’s McGonagall,” James replied in the same tone of voice. “Minnie is a real cool cat, you know? I’ll just tell her we had Head business. She’ll understand.”

Lily frowned, slowing down a little. “She’ll know we’re lying.”

James nodded, and he adjusted his grip on her so that he could keep them moving out of the dungeons and onto the grounds. “Sometimes, Evans, it’s not about the words themselves, but the implications behind those words, you know? Yeah, she’ll know we’re lying, but she’ll also know that we wouldn’t be using such an obvious lie if it wasn’t serious.”

“It’s not serious,” protested Lily.

James relaxed his arm around her once the October air had swallowed them and they were far enough away from the castle that she couldn’t change her mind and run back. It hung loose around her shoulders so there were still fair inches of open air between them.

He sighed. “Lily,” he began. “You’re beautiful.” Her breath hitched in her throat and she really hoped he hadn’t heard it. “You know I know that. I know you know I know that… But you are quite the ugly crier. Honestly, I think maybe the Giant Squid would be a prettier crier-”

Her mouth dropped open and she gaped at him for a second, before slapping his arm repeatedly. “Why, you chump-”

But she couldn’t stop the laughter from pouring from her, as James attempted to twist his body out of the way of her hits, mewling and complaining when her fists landed, catching her hand and laughing with her.

“See!” he said, waving her hand. “You have a beautiful smile.”

Lily pulled her fingers from his, shaking her head and unsuccessfully trying to bite back the smile tilting her lips. It broke out, however, blossoming like a meadow in spring, thriving in the light and heat of James Potter.

She followed him without another word as he led her further into the crisp, chilly grounds, skirting the lake and past Hagrid’s hut until they got to the Quidditch Pitch. Nobody was out here. They were all inside, basking in the warmth of log fires or working furiously in the classrooms. They skirted under the stands, the ghost of a million cheers falling deaf on their ears, steeping them in the peaceful silence of the day.

James didn’t stop. He walked away from her and laid down in the middle of the field, ignoring the way the cold seeped into his skin and made his uniform damp and freezing. He peered up at her, and patted the space next to him.

“Come on,” he said.

Lily didn’t have to be told twice. She laid down beside him, feeling acutely each blade of grass and drop of winter dew against her cheek, gazing up at the sky.

James’ finger pointed upwards suddenly. “That cloud looks like a dragon.”

A faint smile curled her lips. Sure enough, when she followed his finger, she could see the body, the curve of the wing, the stumps of the feet, the tail that dissipated into nothing.

“I suppose it does,” she agreed.

“And that one looks like a octopus riding a centaur.”

“Now, you’re just pulling them out of your arse.”

“No, no. Look,” assured James. He traced the clouds. “There’s tentacle one, tentacle two, tentacle three, tentacle-”

“It’s my sister’s birthday today.”

He fell silent immediately. Lily kept her eyes trained on the sky, trailing the tail of the dragon and wondering what the fire it breathed would look like, whether it would be the same fading white of the clouds that form its wings or if it would be the faded pink, still scattering from the break of that morning. James looked at her in surprise.

After a moment, he said, “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“No,” said Lily. “I don’t talk about her very much.”

Before James could say anything else, she continued hurriedly, “We used to play Pooh Sticks when we were younger. Oh- I don’t suppose you know what that is.” She laughed a little, tilting her head towards him and smiling brilliantly. “There is a stream at the bottom of my garden, and on a summer’s day, my sister and I used to go down the little bridge and drop sticks into the water and see which one would cross under the bridge first. I was… seven. Tuney was nine. We went to play.

“You get to pick your sticks, you see. You want to go for long ones- they cross the line first, thin enough to travel quickly but thick enough not to stray too far from the current. We were very competitive. We stood on the bridge and we dropped our sticks, shouting and screaming. I could see through the wooden cracks beneath our feet that Tuney’s stick was winning, so I tried to… make mine go faster. I acted as though I could push it along with my hand if I waved it frantically enough, screaming and yelling like a child-”

Lily broke off. James was staring at her. “I froze the entire stream, apart from my stick which skidded along the ice… First bit of magic I ever did was to win Pooh Sticks.”

She laughed and James smiled lopsidedly at her, though maybe that’s just because she was looking at him sideways.

“Naturally, my parents didn’t believe Tuney when she told them. So we kept it to ourselves- our little magical secret. I used to bloom flowers for her, Dahlias because they were her favourite, and make it snow in spring.”

“That’s advanced magic for a seven year old,” James told her.

Lily smiled at him. “Charms has always been my strong point.”

Her face hardened, became almost wistful, when she said, “I was nine when I first met Severus Snape. He held out his hand and created the same flowers I had always made for Tuney. They never got along. She would make jibes at his hair and clothes, and he would use magic to rip her new dresses. I always thought she was lying, you know. I thought she was jealous because I had a new friend and our magical secret was no longer just ours. It was only when I came to Hogwarts that I realised how cruel he could be, how malicious. My sister and I fell out a lot. We wouldn’t talk for days at a time.

“It got worse when I finally got my Hogwarts letter,” continued Lily. The story became difficult to tell, memory making her choke. Her face screwed up and she said in a small, wounded voice, “She called me a freak…”

James didn’t say anything. Lily knew he was still listening though. His body was warm and present next to hers, and every now and then, she would hear a breath escape gently from his lips. She closed her eyes and tried to inhale quietly, so he wouldn’t hear the way the air shuddered.

“Petunia moved out when she was 18. Now, she’s engaged to some hotshot in drills. I haven’t spoken to her since fifth year.”

There was a quiet between them. It settled over them like snow does in the fledgling days of winter, peacefully and comfortably, and neither one of them looked to indent it for a few moments.

Finally, James said, “Drills sounds like something that could kill you.”

Lily laughed loudly. Of all replies she had anticipated, she couldn’t say that was on the list. She looked at him. “I mean, if it has the grit and dedication, a duck could kill you, so I can’t exactly refute that.”

He looked at her, soaking in the amused smile still fading into her skin. James drew a line from each freckle to each hair in her eyebrows to every eyelash and fleck of gold in her eyes.

“We should be dancing,” he said suddenly.

Lily let out a short, surprised laugh. She tilted her head to look at him. “What?”

“Well, if it was my birthday, I’d want everyone to be dancing. It’s not a party if you’re not jiving.”

“James,” she was still smiling, looking at him with something shining in those wide eyes. James didn’t think he’d ever seen her look like that. He wanted to spin her around and make her laugh and immortalise that light in her forever.

James nimbly hopped to his feet, holding out a hand to pull her up. Lily eyed him oddly, but she took it nevertheless. She couldn’t have found him too weird, or maybe she did and it liberated her to realise she really wanted to dance with him in the middle of the Quidditch Pitch, when they were both bunking off school, on her estranged sister’s birthday.

There was no music playing, but James spun her anyway, and Lily laughed. It spilled from her lips, flying off into the air around them. He kept twirling her until her hair whipped his arm with the winter wind, and her laugh was one continuous squeal.

“James!” she gasped.

He pulled her into his chest then. The world danced for her, pirouetting and spinning, and James remained the one constant thing in her vision. She clutched onto his shoulders tightly, lest she lose her balance.

Lily didn’t think about the owl carrying her sister’s letter once that day. She didn’t think about the way Petunia would see it flying towards her bedroom window and freeze, breath trapped in her throat. She didn’t think about the inevitable tower of scrunched up paper balls in her sister’s bin that his year’s unwanted letter would add to.

And she most certainly didn’t imagine Tuney opening her window with trembling hands to let the bird in, stroking its head and staring at the nickname she hadn’t been called in five year, written in thick, black strokes on the envelope. She didn’t see Petunia smoothing out the creases in the parchment, running her thumb over the seal wax, soaking up the words as she read it, then read it again, closing her eyes for a few moments, before she crossed her room and kneeled on the floor beside her bed, where she would slide out an old musical box.

The music played as soon as she opened it, but Lily wouldn’t play that song in her mind or close her eyes and see the way the ballerina danced. She would therefore miss the hundreds of other letters all written in the same hand, with the same red wax seal on the envelope, wishing her happy birthday and telling her about everything: the boys; the magic; her new friend Marlene who wore a leather jacket instead of her cloak and got detention for it. And she wouldn’t see the way Petunia caressed the letter a final time before she locked it safely in her box and carried on with her life as though she didn’t have a sister, when she did and she always would.

[aria-i-adagio]

Hear the Birds on the Summer Breeze

Masterpost.  Chapter 1. Chapter 2.

Fandom: The Arcana

Chapter Rating: T

Eight years ago.

“Where are we going?”  I scrambled over a fallen log.  My foot feel through a rotten portion, and I cursed as the rough bark of nearby muscadine vine scraped my hands when I grabbed it in another failed attempt to steady myself.  I tried my best to follow Asra’s meandering path through the forest, his body lithe over the unruly ground - a sprite or a fae - his unruly white hair glowing in the dappled light.  “At this point we’ll never make it back into town before dark.”

Asra paused and turned back to me, that easy, enigmatic smile on his lips.  “Were you planning on sleeping tonight?”

“Well, I mean, maybe.”  I would love to sleep tonight, but it was only midway through the afternoon, and I could already tell that the gods of sleep would once again fail to cooperate with me.  Or maybe I was the one would fail - yet again -  to cooperate with them.  My mind whirled and flew along a new tangent each moment.  I should keep my eye out for some of shade loving herbs while we were out here.  The supplies of skullcap and betony were running low.  My fault.  I had drunk through most of those stocks trying to calm myself.  But the herbs hadn't helped.  Even if they should have.

Last night had been whittled away in a bar, and then, when they finally showed me the door to close up, reorganizing the herb stores in my aunt’s shop.  Anna, my aunt, wasn’t very happy with my reorganizing, but she had acknowledged that I had gotten a couple years worth of dust cleaned off the upper shelves.  So that was something, at least.  The wakefulness hadn’t been entirely wasted.  Versus, say, the prior night - day - that I had spent passed out after being awake for three days in a row.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves, falling around us, and falling to rest on the ground.  And maybe, maybe I could become the rays of light, to drown in them.  If I was good enough, meek enough, they'd console me, consume me.  Or maybe I didn't want to be the light dappling the ground folding in on itself, soft and cool and warm and all the same time.  Folds, depressions in the ground.  Fold in on myself until I can rest falling warm in the sunlight -

“Dema.”  Asra folded his hands around mine, and Faust stretched herself toward me, tonguing at my cheek.  “Come back to me.” 

I took a deep breath, trying - and mostly failing - to pay attention to the sensation of the air passing through my mouth and sinuses, then shook my head and rock back and forth on my feet.  “Sorry.  I got lost."

“It’s okay.”  He let go of one hand and touched my jaw, my face, one thumb brushing along my cheekbone.  "Where did you go this time?"

"The sunlight, then the ground.  No, not the ground.  The places where it ripples like waves breaking against the light."

His eyes were solemn, but there was no judgment, no discomfort in them.  I heard the words in my head, leaving my mouth, so uncomfortably pausing on my tongue.  I don't blame people who take a step back, not when I start making so precious little sense.  But Asra doesn't draw back from the thoughts, from the words, from me.  He doesn't abandon me to the swirl of odd, inconsistent thoughts that have bedeviled me for days.  He turned my hand so that our palms were touching and wove his fingers through mine.

He was going to teach me to read palms at some point, he promised, but somehow we had always been too busy.  If anyone would teach me, it had to be him.  Anna didn’t dabble in fortunes; said she had no knack for it.  He tugged me forward; his fingers around mine were comforting, grounding.  “Come on.  You’ll like where we're going.  I promise.”

I would have asked him how he knew, but then, Asra has a knack for fortunes.

Asra followed the path of small stream back to its source in a hollow between two steeply sloping wall of limestone, jagged from where the water had been nibbling away at them for years, creating stone formations that cut into the air.  Asra extends his arm, allowing Faust to wind herself around a low hanging branch and pushed aside some overhanging vines, revealing a cave opening out from the side of hill.  I smiled.  I do like caves.  The air is always perfectly cool inside.  I don’t even have to duck down to enter; Asra, does - at least a bit.

Inside the air was cool and moist.  The quartz rich granite walls glimmered in the limited sunlight.  I tapped my fingertips together and took my time to weave my will into an orb of iridescent light - the dazzling reflections of sparks on the tiny crystals were delightful to watch as they danced in the air like fairies carrying fragments of memories.  Beyond the humidity, I felt a sort of thrumming in the cave itself, one that complemented - canceled - the buzzing of my own mind.  For a moment I felt like the cave was waiting for me - somehow meant for me.

“I do like this, Asra.”

He laughed and summoned his own ball of light.  “We haven’t even gotten to the best part.  Take my hand again.  I don’t want to lose you in here.”

I didn’t think I’d mind losing myself in here, or rather, getting lost among the flecks of light and cool, still, so very, very still air.  But I also didn’t mind curling my fingers into his warm hand. 

The chambers he led me through twist and turn, high ceilings and low.  As we get deeper into the cave, patterns are marked on the walls.  Some scar the stone in smooth, deliberate grooves, others are nothing more than a faint trace of magic.  In some of the taller chambers, faint rays of light cut through the darkness, falling down from vents into the cave system.  The thrumming, humming, not quite singing, of the magic that I felt grew stronger as we proceed, but it soothed instead of overwhelming me.  If I could have sunk myself entirely into stone, into the humid air itself, I would have happily done so.

Eventually, the cave opened up into a massive chamber lit from overhead by a shaft of sunlight.  Enough that plants grew in and around the pool of water at the middle.  Ferns and mosses crept up the rocky walls softening their jagged edges.  The water pulsed along with the vibrations of the magic - a rapid and steady heartbeat for the cave itself.    

“Oh!”  I dropped Asra’s hand and knelt beside the pool, fingertips hovering over the surface.  “Can I touch it?”

“You can.  You can swim in it if you like.  Sometimes the water does strange things, but it’s safe enough as long as you don’t panic.”

I dipped my hand in.  The water was surprisingly warm around my fingers.  And soothing.  I laughed, dragging my fingers along the bottom.  The sand spiraled around my fingertips and drifted softly back down, golden in the light.  Then, I stripped out of my shirt and trousers, tossing them aside before wading into the pool.  Within three steps, the water is past my waist.

“Careful - it gets deep quickly.”

“I see that.”  I dug my toes into the sandy bottom.  The gritty texture felt absolutely divine against the bottom of my feet.  Turning back, I waved to Asra.  He seemed further away than I would have expected, but my sense of time and space had been getting a bit confused over the past few days.  Asra’s grinning and had already pulled off his shoes.  “Come with me.”  Asra shrugged off his shirt and the complicatedly pleated skirt he was wearing today, while I sank into the water, letting it take most of weight and watching the sunlight filter down.  Silent in the water, he managed to sneak beside me and surprise me with a splash.  When I turn to retaliate, he’s out of range, swimming toward the middle of the pool and then disappearing below the surface with a kick of feet.

The bottom of the pond fell away almost immediately.  I ducked my head below the water.  The sand sparkled in the dappled sunlight, and tiny plants competed for control of the patches of light left by the giant lily pads overhead.  In the shaded spots, something else grew - pale, glowing, and lavender.  I dove beneath the surface, kicking down toward the strange plant.  Reaching it took longer than I expected; depth was hard to gauge in the clear water.  But, as I got closer to the plant - its leaves are plump and curved like a succulent - I didn’t feel pressure building in my ears or the burning feeling of lungs demanding a fresh breath of air.  I spun and caught sight of Asra, hovering nearby.  He gestured to his chest and mouth, and I remembered what he said about the water doing strange things.  Apparently negating the need to breath was one of those things.

If one or the other of us moved, I didn’t notice it, but Asra was close enough to take my hand.  I wrapped my fingers around his and let him pull me deeper into this curious, weightless place.  The sunlight wavers, competing with glowing patterns from the rock formations in the water; it was unclear whether they are drawn by a hand or part of the natural magic of the place.  Whichever, both, or something else entirely, it’s gorgeous.

The thrum of the cave’s magic remained constant, fading from the top of my awareness into a steady hum.  As I spun and tumbled in the water, savoring the sensation of neutral buoyancy, another pitch takes over, lower, stuttering and uneven.  I twisted around, trying to find the source of the drone.  A crevice opened in the side of the stone walls.  Unlike the rest of the pool, which was caught in an interplay of filtered sunlight and the glow of magic, the absence of light defined this crevice.  I spin toward slow in the water.  The drone from it was a dissonant, but familiar, polyphony, drawing me - dragging me - toward it.  I pulled away from Asra’s hand and kicked toward the crevice eager to know what created such an immersive, secondary sensation.  Something that I could maybe, just maybe I could lose myself in.

Something wrapped tightly around my waist, and I struggled for a moment before realizing that Asra had thrown his arms around me.  He pulled me back, and we’re suddenly back in the shallows, standing in water that barely reaches my waist and breathing the cool cave air.

“Are you okay?”

“What?  Yes.  I was only curious.”

Asra shook his head.  “I’ve never seen that crevice before.  It’s dangerous.  Or at least, could be dangerous.  I don’t think you would drown, but there are a lot of convoluted passages.  You could get lost.”

“Yeah, okay.”  I thought about the ominous drone and wonder just how deep my curiosity would have pulled me.  It was gone now.  All I could hear is the cave humming that same comfortable pitch as before.  “Thanks.”

He pulls me tight against him, cheek pressed to mine.  “I don’t want to lose you.”    

Well above us, the light had darkened leaving the cavern lit by the soft glow of the luminescent plants and the ensorcelled marks on the wall.  Asra stood, dripping wet, and offers me a hand up.  I took it.  When he pulled me up, I overbalanced and fell forward, catching myself against his shoulders.  He laughed as I straighten up. 

“I know a good trick.”  I gestured between us with my hands and a wave of warmth passed over us, pulling the water from our hair and turning what little clothing we had left on - skin tight and translucent with water a moment before - opaque and dry again.  

Asra turned and picked his skirt up from the pile of clothes we had left on the bank and wrapped it back around his waist.  “You’ll have to teach me that one.  Where’d you learn it?” “Figured it myself after a few too many times walking home drenched and cold in the dark post skinny dipping.”  I pulled my trousers back on and shrug into my shirt, wrapping my arms around my chest.  The cave air seemed chillier than before, even it I knew that the temperature should remain constant.

“Cold?”

“A bit.”

Asra dug in his bag and retrieved a blanket that he had somehow managed to pack in a bag half its size.  He shook it out and wrapped it around my shoulders, bending down to kiss my nose playfully.  We were both still for a moment, foreheads pressed together.  I could feel his breath, inhale and exhale, passing across my face. 

“Aren’t you chilly too?”

“Maybe a little.”

I sat down on the sandy bank and stretched one arm out.  Asra settled down next to me and smiled when I tuck half of the blanket around his shoulders.  He waited for a minute, arms folded across his knees, then he looked at me and slid one arm around my waist.  

“Is this okay?”

“Very much so.”

He pulled me closer to him and ran his fingers through my hair.  “I’ve wanted to bring you here for awhile.  The magic here is mostly benevolent.  And peaceful.”

“I like it.”  I curled into his embrace, leaning my head against his shoulder.  “This is the quietest I’ve felt in . . .”  My voice trailed off as I can’t narrow down a timeframe.

“I’m glad.”  Pulling me with him, he laid back on the sand.  He tucked one arm behind his head, leaving the other one tight around my shoulders.  I rested my head on his chest and pulled the blanket as far around us as I can manage.  Closing my eyes, I listen to his heart beat beneath my ear.  His hand slid into my hair, twirling the locks around his fingers.  “I don’t want to lose you too.”

I shifted, lifting my head enough to see his face.  There’s just enough light left to make out his eyes, soft and violet.  “Lose me?”

“Sometimes I worry that you won’t actually come back.  That you’ll get lost in the tangle of your own thoughts, chasing some alluring apparition.”  His hand trailed down my back to my waist.  “I don’t like that there’s nothing much I can do.”

“You don’t run away from me.  That’s what matters.”

He head turned slightly to the side, looking away from me.  “Is that enough?”

I pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.  “It’s enough.”

He was silent for a moment, then turned his face back to me, returning my kiss slowly, lips over mine, other arm unfolding from behind his head and wrapping around me.  It’s sweet and slow kiss, sufficient in itself, heading nowhere in particular.  I tucked my head back under his chin, warm and quiet and content to be pressed against him, and closed my eyes  

When I opened my eyes again, the full moon had risen in the sky, casting its cool light down to the pool.  Asra’s breathing was deep and steady.  One hand is gripping my arm, the other is tangled in my hair.  I touched my fingers to his lips, and he smiles without waking.  He can somehow sleep anywhere.  I envy him that.  Settling back against him, I closed my eyes, falling asleep without a battle against myself for the first time in weeks.

Chapter Four

AN: Chapter title from Lana Del Rey, “Ride”

[keeroo92]

Savior, Bloodstain, Hellfire, Shadow Ch37 (V x Reader)

Alternate ending epilogue and final chapter of this fic. Sequel is in prgress and will follow the events of the true ending.

Nero

Nero covers you with a blanket, carefully concealing your frozen features in a sign of respect and mourning. He sits across from your body at the red table with a heavy sigh, swallowing harshly to restrain his tears. Nico sits across from him, a mug of coffee in her hand. She’s been almost inconsolable, utterly shattered by the loss of both you and the poet. Lady is in the driver’s seat, Trish beside her as she starts the van and begins the long journey to Fortuna.

How the hell am I gonna tell Kyrie about all this? It’s all so fucked up…

The young warrior grits his teeth, almost snarling in rage at the way events had unfolded. That blow had been meant for him; he should’ve been the one to fall. And what the hell had you meant about balancing the scales?

It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone.

A loud sniffle from Nico draws his attention as she stares forlornly into her mug. Nero reaches out, resting a hand on her wrist and giving her a sympathetic smile. She sniffles again, her eyes rising to meet his.

“Do you… y’know, wanna talk?” he asks her awkwardly.

“I guess… it’s just a lot, y’know? Feels like we lost even though Urizen is gone. Sort of,” she starts solemnly, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Yeah, I hear ya. Doesn’t really feel like a win,” he replies thoughtfully. Nico hums her agreement, her eyes drifting to rest on your covered body sadly.

“Dante said the thing that got her was aiming for you, right? What happened, exactly?” the mechanic inquires softly. Nero cringes at the reminder, bracing himself to tell her the whole story.

“After Vergil came back, things got weird. He kept shifting back into V, like he was still in there fighting. But Vergil wouldn’t let him out, kept trying to fight Dante. He was aiming for me when he stabbed her. She… she jumped in the path, did it on purpose. She saved me,” he explains sorrowfully. He bites his lip, the pain helping keep the sadness at bay.

“Did she suffer?”

Nero sighs, unsure how to answer. He rubs the back of his neck in discomfort as he gathers his thoughts.

“Not for long. There was enough time for us to try to save her. It was weird, one second Vergil’s trying to kill Dante and the next he’s trying to save Y/N. He completely lost it when she… when she died. She had time to tell me it was worth it,” he recalls morosely. He would never forget the look on your face as you touched him for the last time, the spark of life going dark in your eyes as he watched, helpless.

 Worth it…

 Am I? Am I really worth her life?

Nico stands, stepping closer to him to wrap him in a firm hug as his face crumples, unable to keep the sorrow at bay any longer.

_____________________________________

By the time the van pulls up to the home he shares with Kyrie, the sun is low in the sky. Long shadows extend from the trees lining the road, skeletal shades reaching for him as he approaches the door. Before he can reach its familiar white paneling, it flies open with a crash as Kyrie runs out to meet him with an ecstatic grin.

He knows the second she registers his blood-soaked clothing; her smile vanishes, her steps faltering in concern as she reaches him.

“Nero! What happened? Whose blood is that?” she prods instantly. He glances back at the van as Trish, Nico and Lady all carry your covered body forward. None of them had any clue what to do with your remains but still knew better than to leave you in the vehicle overnight. Kyrie’s expression goes from concern to dread as she follows his gaze, still unsure what’s going on.

“Kyrie… It’s Y/N’s blood. She died to save me. We lost V and Dante, too,” he begins in a strained tone. Her arms wrap him in a hug, ignoring the patches of slightly damp blood as she comforts him.

 I missed you so much, missed this…

He inhales deeply, reveling in the scent of the woman he loves so dearly. An ocean of gratitude rises within him, not knowing if he would have made it back to her without your sacrifice. Her thoughts seem to mirror his as she speaks.

“Then I owe her a debt that can’t be repaid,” Kyrie murmurs softly. Nero holds her close, her presence soothing his grief to a point where he can bear it. She is an island amidst the chaos, a refuge from the pain as she always has been.

“I’ll call a mortician. I suppose the garage will have to do for now, can you show them where to put her?” Kyrie asks calmly. Nero releases her and nods tightly, not trusting himself to speak as she smiles sadly at him and retreats inside to make the terrible phone call. Nero sets his shoulders, turning to face the three women carrying you to him.

“In the garage, I’ll make a spot for her,” he mumbles, already walking toward the massive rolling door. With a simple keycode, it rolls away to reveal the familiar grey concrete floor and brick walls. He stomps over to the folding table to the right, quickly moving all the tools and various bottles of fluids to leave a space for you to rest. His throat tightens uncomfortably as the three women lug you inside, carefully arranging you on the cold plastic. The four of them stand in silence for a moment, staring at the body beneath the throw blanket in anguish.

The echoing patter of Kyrie’s approaching footsteps breaks the silence as she enters the garage, phone held up to her ear as she approaches him.

“Did she have any family, Nero?” she asks gently. He frowns, looking at the floor as he realizes none of them had bothered to try and contact your mom yet.

“Yeah, her mom is in the next town over from Red Grave. Last name is Newman,” he replies. Kyrie nods and returns inside with the phone to finalize the arrangements, leaving him and the three other women alone once more.

“I’ll see if I can get her number from the phone,” Nico mumbles, heading back to the van outside with slumped shoulders. Lady sighs and looks at Trish.

“We should head back, to wait for Dante,” she reminds the blonde quietly. Trish nods and gives a strained smile to Nero.

“We’re going to keep Devil May Cry going until he gets back. You’ll tell us when there’s a service for her?”

He nods tightly, eyes still locked on your covered body. Trish lies a hand on his arm in sympathy before she turns away to leave, Lady coming over to give him a warm hug. Nero grips her tightly, trying to return her support in kind.

_____________________________________

The morning of the service dawns bright and cold, a chilly wind blowing in from the sea. Robins and sparrows flit happily around the graveyard, a startling contrast to the group of mourners assembled around your casket. It’s a beautiful dark oak, silver handles decorating the sides and white lilies arranged on the lid.

It makes Nico want to vomit.

 How can everything seem so nice and pretty when she’s gone? It ain’t right!

She wants to rip the flowers away and carve deep grooves into the wood, marring the smooth surface with her pain. She wants to scream and cry, to punch someone, anyone.

Instead she takes a seat near the front, holding her offering in silence as the minister drones on. It had been your mother’s decision to have the boring man speak, talking about heaven and hell as if he knew what either of them looked like.

Nico knows better.

She pretends to listen as the preacher rambles for what feels like hours, her thoughts hidden behind a careful mask of blank attention. At long last the man falls silent and the mourners step forward to leave their small tokens for you. Nico waits until everyone else has had their turn before she steps forward, grasping her item tightly as she approaches.

She can hear several quiet murmurs behind her as she unsheathes your sword and holds it high, a few gasps of surprise as she plunges the blade straight into the wood, embedding it there for all time. It feels right, feels like the perfect way to remember you to force those here to admire the sword you had wielded to prevent your home from being overrun by demons.

She returns to her seat as the tears fall at last, memories of you flooding her mind. Beside her, Nero wraps an arm around her shoulders awkwardly, doing his best to support her even as his nose turns red and he sniffles.

The creaking sound of the casket being lowered makes goosebumps erupt on Nico’s arms. She hates that sound; it reminds her painfully of those she’s lost. Now she has you to add to that list. She stares at the too-green grass under her feet as the echoes fade, your casket now at rest at the bottom of the earthen pit. The minister leaves, several of the mourners who hadn’t known you well following soon after.

Then it’s just her, your fellow devil hunters and your mother. The unfamiliar woman glares at the group angrily, clearly still blaming them for your demise.  Kyrie alone approaches the distraught woman, her kind personality giving her the ability to find the right words to ease the woman’s suffering. Nico watches from far as the two women embrace sadly.

She looks away as the sensation of intruding on a private moment overwhelms her, standing and gazing at the plain tombstone that decorates your final resting place.

 May she walk with angels.

 Seriously? That’s it?

Nico snorts, wondering who was the dumbass that chose the words. If it’d been up to her, it would’ve said something about being a badass who never gave up. Nero joins her with a sad smile, his nose still quite red as his gaze follows hers to rest on the granite stone.

“Damn, that’s it? Doesn’t seem like enough,” he murmurs quietly. She chokes out a laugh, leaning against him as he wraps an arm over her shoulders in comfort.

“No words ever are,” she comments sadly.

_____________________________________

Two Years Later

A warm breeze rustles through the trees dotting the area, a few leaves breaking free and fluttering free in the wind. His steps echo on the stone pathway as he approaches the simple granite marking. He sighs heavily, crouching to leave the bouquet of irises in the waiting opening.

 May she walk with angels.

 Pathetically inadequate.

He brushes his white hair out of his eyes distractedly, more focused on your grave as his brother follows a few steps behind him. Dante keeps a respectful distance, for which he’s very grateful. It’s been a long two years; their time in the underworld had helped them to understand each other but it wasn’t until they’d made it back that they had truly become brothers again.

That was two months ago.

Dante had been here a few times since their return, but this was Vergil’s first visit.

He sits on the green grass, crossing his long legs and staring at the carved words marking your resting place. Dante backs away even further, leaving hearing distance to peruse other markings until Vergil is ready to leave. He sighs again, gathering his thoughts.

“I’m sorry its taken me so long, Y/N. I’m sorry for many things, actually,” he begins regretfully. The familiar ache settles over his heart as he addresses you, his longing to see you again forever left unsatiated. It still baffles him how much he cares for you, how much he misses you.

 There will be no one else.

“I want you to know that things are different now. I no longer wish to kill Dante,, though sometimes he makes it difficult. Nero’s coming around, though he’s understandably cautious. There’s much work to be done,” he explains hesitantly. It still makes him uncomfortable to show any amount of weakness, but there’s no one else here.

“I miss you,” he concludes, gritting his teeth as he forces the words out. Silence greets his words, not even the hush of wind responding to him. He stays still for a long time, not speaking a word but content to reflect on the past, on his short time with you while you were alive.

By the time Dante returns, the sun is setting behind him, his shadow being cast over your tombstone and draping you in darkness. Vergil recognizes the sound of his brothers footsteps and stands to meet him.

“I’ll return soon,” he whispers as he turns to leave with his twin.

And he does.

[fanfickittycat]

Sugar on my Tongue

TITLE: Sugar on my Tongue CHAPTER NUMBER/ONE SHOT: One Shot AUTHOR: fanfickittycat CHARACTERS/PAIRING: 80′s AU!Bill Skarsgard x OFC  GENRE: Romance, Fluff FIC SUMMARY:  Lily sneaks out of her house to go indulge her love of music but finds someone equally wonderful to love  RATING: T AUTHORS NOTES/WARNINGS: I’m the patron saint of niche AU’s and when I came across 80′s Bill (I believe @biskarsgards created a really cool graphic about it) I just couldn’t help myself. Someone please talk to me about 80′s Bill he’s consumed my life.

It had been easier to sneak out of her house than she had anticipated. Her parents were asleep come 10:30, and their snores provided a loud enough cover for her to click open the door and shut it without arousing any suspicion. The outside at night was foreign to her, and she had to actively remind herself to not look too wide eyed as she crept into the venue. It was loud. Lily swore she could feel the vibrations of the guitars in her bones, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, just a strange one. The lights were bright and dizzying, and Lily concentrated on walking just to get to the bar.

Her palms felt sweaty and she wiped them on the mini skirt she bought three towns over.

“Can I have a pint?” She asked bravely, trying to act like the characters in movies and tv shows that her parents disapproved of.

“What’re you in the mood for?” The bartender asked. Lily wondered if he thought it odd to see a small, Indian girl trying to order a drink but she pushed the thoughts to the side and instead focused on trying to exude confidence.

“Surprise me” she had to shout because a band had started playing and the lead singer’s singing came out in shouts. It took a few minutes to get used to the sound, and Lily distracted herself with sipping the drink she had purchased. It was disgusting. Sour, and strong, and bitter all in one. It was nothing like the way television adverts had made it out to be. Still, she nursed the drink slowly, trying to understand why so many people were drinking it. She eventually conceded defeat when she had drunk half of it, and discreetly abandon it in a forgotten corner where she stood.

Lily was surprised at the turnout. There were so many bodies that she wondered if that was why it had gotten so hot. She tugged off the comically oversized leather jacket that she had borrowed from her friend Lizzie, instead draping it on her shoulders as she looked curiously at the other’s outfits. There was so much leather that she idly pondered over whether anyone suffered heat exhaustion. Everyone’s hair was coloured some wonderful, unnatural shade which made Lily envious. The only consolation she had were the way the coloured lights changed, temporarily tinging her hair blue, green, and red in rotation. Spiked jackets and even shoes caught the light, glinting in a way that was halfway between being menacing and mesmerising. The atmosphere was charged with an electricity that Lily felt tingle through her.

‘Is this what everyone feels like?’

Another band started up and Lily almost jumped in surprise when she heard the familiar chords playing. She wished she could lose herself in the throng of people but she was worried. How many times had her mother warned her of the dangers of men and dark places? She stayed in the corner instead, watching amused at the dancing that was akin to being electrocuted in Lily’s mind. She mouthed along to the lyrics, swimming her hips in time to the beat. Dancing was different in her household; her mother engaged often in her guilty pleasure of Bollywood movies, and Lily had been to enough weddings to know how to move and groove with the best of them.

“Do you like Talking Heads?” A voice asked, and Lily flinched, whipping her head around to see a guy with an apologetic face standing by her. He mouthed a sorry at her and she smiled, tucking a strand of her long hair behind her ear.

“No, I love them” she said “and sugar on my tongue is my favourite song.” She was scared about speaking to this attractive stranger, but excited too. She didn’t get to talk about music with many other people, save for Lizzie and a few other co workers. He grinned, and Lily was surprised at what a nice smile he had. He ran a hand through his hair, it was brown and gelled in different directions.

“I love them too” he said. His jacket was leather like hers, except it fit him perfectly and it was covered in different pins.

“Wow” she leaned in closer to examine the pins “you have so many” she blurted out much to her embarrassment. A lot of them were to do with bands, she read ‘the smiths’ and ‘echo and the bunnymen’, and ‘joy division’ all of which she recognised. There were a lot of political ones to do with equality, and Margaret thatcher, and socialism.

“I collect them” he said proudly “but I’m running out of space I think.”

Lily was about to express her sympathies but a particular badge caught her eye “is that... thundercats?”

The boy laughed and fingered the exact pin “oh yeah, it’s the best show on tv” he joked.

“I like it too” She admitted, though she had only seen a handful of episodes after babysitting her cousins for the night. Still, she thought that the cartoon was pretty funny and despite it being marketed to children she found herself enraptured by the bright animation. It was a silly conversation to have but it was funny, and he told her about how he’d tape episodes for his siblings.

“It helps them learn English” he explained, and to answer her questioning glance he added “I’m from Sweden.”

“Wow” her mind conjured up brochure images of snow and forests “I love ABBA.”

He laughed “yeah, they’re pretty cool.” It was only when they had been talking for a solid fifteen minutes that they realised they didn’t know each other’s names.

“Bill” he stuck his hand out.

“Lily” she accepted his hand in hers and was surprised by how soft it was.

They talked for a little longer before Bill asked if she wanted to dance to The Clash with him. They were another band pinned onto his jacket, and though her mother’s words echoed in her head, she took his hand once more. His dancing was similar to those around them, jerky and rough. It made Lily laugh.

“Copy me” she said, her hips undulating whilst her arms crossed and uncrossed above her head like she had seen Padmini Kolhapure do in so many films. It was an odd way of moving to ‘Should I stay or should I go’ but Bill was captivated. His attempts to mimic Lily’s dancing were poor however, and it made her laugh endlessly to see his tall frame try to master the movements.

“I think I’ve embarrassed myself.”

“No, no. Show me how you dance and I’ll embarrass myself too.”

Lily too, couldn’t quite knock her head back and forth like bill could without bumping into him several times. In the end they just held hands and twisted from side to side. The lights had changed to pink, bathing them both in a flushed fuchsia tone. The change made Lily really look at Bill; this strange boy who watched cartoons, and had good music taste even if he couldn’t dance. This Swedish giant who wore eyeliner and had nice hands, and a warm laugh. Lily felt light headed and was glad when Bill asked if she’d accompany him outside while he smoked. He offered her a cigarette but she declined, instead feeling the heat of her body meet the cold air outside. It was a relief.

“Do you feel hot with hair that long?”

Lily touched her waist length hair subconsciously “sometimes.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl with hair like yours.”

“Its old fashioned. I should cut it but I’ve always had it long.”

“I like it” Bill said, breathing out smoke “I think it’s pretty.”

Lily swallowed and tucked a strand behind her ear “thank you. Your hair is pretty too.” Maybe pretty was the wrong word to use but the artful styling of his lock made Lily want to reach out and touch it on several occasions, though she never indulged her desire. He seemed grateful nevertheless.

“Can I see you again?” He asked at the end of the night.

She blinked, unsure of how to answer “I don’t know” his face fell and it made her heart sink “I’m sorry. It’s complicated.”

He nodded and swallowed, looking down into the puddle which reflected the neon lights of the venue. He fumbled with the lapel of his jacket, trying several times to do something that eluded Lily.

“What’re you doing?”

“Here” she held out her palm and he dropped something small and metallic into it. “To remember tonight” he said. It was the thundercats badge.

“Thank you” she closed her hand over it and then forced the nerves down her throat. Her arms encircled Bill’s lanky body, pulling him in for a hug which he didn’t expect but was more than happy to receive. The leather of his jacket was tough but his body underneath was soft and hot, and his shirt smelt of detergent, and smoke, and cologne. She leaned up on the tips of her toes, her fingers digging into the material of his clothes, all to kiss him softly on the cheek.

The look of surprise, and the blush on his cheeks was an image that she remembered for the days that followed. She hadn’t been able to get Bill out of her head. It had been difficult to concentrate on much else except for the night, and in an effort to force herself to move on, Lily treated herself with a trip to the second hand bookshop in town. It was a small place but it was lined ceiling to carpet with books of all genres, and it had become a favourite haunt of hers in recent months. She was sure that her hair was a mess by now, even though every morning her mother would help comb and pin her hair up. Lily tried to ignore it in favour of the books that lined the shelves. It was nice to take several minutes to be quiet after a hectic day, and Lily absentmindedly played with the badge that she had pinned on the inside of her sensible overcoat. She bent down to search the bottom shelf, and picked out a few titles that interested her. She turned one over to analyse the description when she heard someone step near her. She glanced over to see a pair of heavy dr martens, and when the person moved the rolled up ends of their jeans did so and she spotted a pair of thundercats socks.

“Bill?” She stood up and was met with the boy that had been on her mind for the past week. He looked much the same as that night except he was wearing a different shirt; it was dark green, Lily’s favourite colour. He grinned an infectious smile and Lily knew she wouldn’t be able to keep away from him anymore.

[callmeakumatized]

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend - Ch. 5

((Imma tired so I’ll put in links to Ao3, FF.net, and the previous chapter later. :) ))

Chat Noir was late for the "patrol" that he had invited Ladybug to that night. When he arrived at the meeting place at the banks of the Seine (there was a specific bench there that held a special memory), he wasn't even able to wipe the smile off his face long enough to look remotely guilty about his lack of punctuality. Instead, as soon as Ladybug laid eyes on his bounding form, he literally pounced on her in happiness.

"Cha – !"

Ladybug's cry was smothered by a certain superhero who was equal parts loving, over-eager, and over-zealous to prove himself the alpha male to his counterpart. Counterpart, here, meaning his own alter-ego. This girl had kissed Adrien Agreste, and Chat Noir was determined to make her forget all about him.

When their lips touched, Chat didn't even bother being soft with her. One hand firmly but gently held her at the base of her neck, one hand wrapped securely around her waist. He pulled her close, trying to maintain his composure when he was trying so hard not to melt into the aggressive atmosphere he had created between them. The contact was vital. He needed this reassurance. He needed to be able to know that she was his, as much as she would let him. He only pulled away when he felt her fingers lace into his hair; he wouldn't recover from that, and he still needed to take her to their little surprise.

Leaning his forehead on hers, he breathed out a laugh.

"Geez, kitty…" Ladybug panted lightly. "It hadn't been that long, has it?"

"Long enough," Chat answered her, equally cryptic in his reply as she had been in her question.

"You didn't call me to our secret spot just for this, though, did you?"

"If I did, would you really mind?"

Ladybug only offered a coy smile, eyebrow raised. Chat grinned in return.

"C'mon, M'lady," Chat said, whipping from his spot and pulling her along with him. "I have a surprise." She yelped when he swung her in close to him and vaulted up with his baton in one fluid motion.

The city lights blazed in whirring swirls and patterns around them. For all the stars they were missing due to the Parisian air, Chat really couldn't be disappointed. Paris legendarily held a certain charm; through the ages that charm hadn't left. Instead, it had only evolved, and Chat loved more and more each day he had with his own Lady Luck in the City of Love.

The minutes lengthened – the right spot hadn't been easy to fight – but the trip ended when Chat's baton hit the top of a large, triangular-shaped apartment complex. The landing with his lady was gentler than how they had traveled, Chat gingerly pawing the ground with his boots first before staring into Ladybug's eyes as he gently lowered her the rest of the way. She exhaled loudly, and the fact that she had been holding her breath made Chat a little giddy inside. He watched her for a moment more, the yellowy lights of the Palais Garnier Opera House glistening behind her, lighting up her face just enough that his night vision was not needed.

He had wanted to be on the roof of the Opera House itself, but the sharp edges across the surface made it nearly impossible to execute his plan to one-up, well, himself.

"What?" Ladybug said at last, a hand reaching up to her face in a gesture that was both bashful and adorable.

"Do you know how tempting it is to kiss you just, well, all the time?"

Ladybug giggled. "I may have some sort of idea, chaton, but I literally cannot say that I completely understand the desire."

Chat palmed the sides of her face and pulled her forehead to his own as before, chuckling.

"It's a shame, really," he whispered back playfully. "You're missing out. Maybe I'll have to don some spots one day so you can see how attractive you are."

"So, it's the spots, then?" Ladybug replied, pushing his hands from her face, an arch look crossing her features. "And here I thought you just liked me for my body."

"A plus, to be sure, but really…it's the spots that do me in."

Ladybug shook her head, entirely bemused. The expression on her face was one he had seen earlier that day in the darkness of a movie theater, and he felt his lips twitch in an almost irritated manner. He turned before she could notice his own feelings his face was surely betraying at that moment. Clawed fingers fiddled with his little DIY project. He pulled up the lock screen features on his phone, wishing that he had prepped a little more of this with his actual fingers and not the super claws.

While in his kitty crouch, his cat ears twitched at the sound of Ladybug padding her way over to him.

"And did you just say 'don some spots'?" she said in a teasing tone. "Wait…are you secretly an 80-year-old man that just morphs into a hot young cat with the powers of the Miraculous!?"

Though her tone was playful, and Chat laughed aloud at the supposition, the joking question gave him pause. He was reminded, again, of his girlfriend's boyfriend, and the little interlude they had had earlier that day.

Boyfriend? What was Adrien to Marinette? He'd have to ask that later.

…Without the cat ears, of course.

"Chaton?" Ladybug's questioning voice pulled him out of his temporary daze.

"'Hot young cat', huh?" Chat answered hurriedly, trying to get back into his smooth groove. He stood abruptly, causing Ladybug's eyes to shoot straight up to look into his face. He loved doing this to her, catching her off guard. Every minute of every day, she held him tied to her little finger, and he absolutely loved it; but he also loved to throw her off balance every once in a while. Call it a guilty pleasure, but seeing Ladybug not know exactly what to do in every situation, specifically where he was concerned, made him nothing short of happy.

Not in a Marinette to Adrien way, though. Not yet at least…he hadn't really had time to process that.

"Y-Yeah," Ladybug stammered, and Chat grinned at the blush crossing her cheeks on his behalf. Evidence was good that this would play out similarly in their civilian forms then as well. She took a step back from him then, eyeing him from his head to his toes. "Good gall, Chat…you've definitely been eating your Wheaties lately, haven't you?"

Chat merely put one hand on his hip and ghosted his fingers under her chin. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Ladybug scoffed at this.

"Like cheese you don't. Are you going to tell me why you brought me here? Or are you just going to stand in front of your little box there all night like a creeper?"

"Ooo, such the flatterer, M'Lady." Chat grabbed Ladybug by the shoulders suddenly and whipped her around. With a very Chat-like flourish, he pulled a black blanket off a pile he was sure Ladybug had missed before. Under the cover were a few plush pillows atop a fluffy-looking, open sleeping bag.

"What…?" Ladybug started. Chat finally moved from in front of the small box he had been fiddling with. A light blasted through the darkness. Ladybug blinked a few times before she seemed to adjust to the light. When it seemed to click what was happening, Chat turned on the Bluetooth speaker he had brought along.

"Which pet's address in the finest in Paris? Which pets possess the finest pedigree…"

Playful sketches of kittens danced on the wall of the apartment building where the light was shining, playing along to the classic song. Ladybug gaped for a moment before turning back to him.

"Oh, Chat…"

With a hand on his shoulder for support, Ladybug pushed herself up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek. Though he had literally just made-out with her fifteen minutes prior, the brushed contact made the heat come up to his cheeks. He watched Ladybug as she giddily planted herself onto the pile of pillows and pulled the blanket up around her. Chat put down the small speaker and raked a clawed hand through the back of his hair.

There was still more to say, but he wasn't sure how to say it.

Does this blow the date earlier today out of the water?

Agreste wouldn't know how to make his own phone projector screen, would he?

You prefer me to him, right?

Ladybug looked up at him again, he tried to smile as broadly in return.

He settled on a safer question.

"Better than a movie theater, huh?"

Ladybug squinted questioningly at him before giggling and shaking her head.

"Like there was any competition?"

Chat felt a yank on his arm before he was pulled down next to his Lady.

It wasn't exactly the answer he was looking for. In his mind, he replied, Yes, actually, and I want to know that I won big time. But the words still wouldn't come. It was ridiculous, really. He needed to just ask, to just say something. Why couldn't he just say something!?

Ladybug started singing along with the French words and Chat felt himself fall for her a little more.

That was why. She was why.

He loved this girl. And she loved him. But what if…what if she didn't want them to be the same person? The thought seemed crazy as she obviously liked both sides of him…but for as well as Chat knew Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng was still something of a mystery to him.

(Apparently, part of the reason for this was a big fat crush on him she had harbored for who knows how long.)

And while Chat was constantly able to talk with Ladybug, one can only get so far in conversations when you're trying to maintain secret identities.

Chat could tell anyone that Ladybug had a weak left block but a mean right hook. He could recite her favorite one-liners and playful quips. He knew how many spots were on her costume (87, including the mask) and where they all were located. But he hadn't been able to know her favorite color, or if she prefers lilies to daffodils, or how she likes to eat her croissants in the morning (does she even eat croissants in the morning!? She lives in a bakery…Chat knew he would eat croissants every morning….)

At these thoughts, a deflated sigh passed through Chat's lips. The sound drew the attention of Ladybug.

"What's wrong, minou?"

Chat shook his head and smiled down at her before pulling her closer to him.

"Nothing you can't fix, M'Lady." To dispel any more questions from his girlfriend, Chat nuzzled into Ladybug's cheek until she was laughing and trying to push him away. The resulting wrestling match ended with Chat lying completely on top of Ladybug as she laid on her side, her small frame completely squished under his own wider one. The contact was comfortable, at least for him. While he was mentally continuing to sweep his current problems under the rug, having Ladybug there with him now, being able to touch her in this moment, was bliss.

Without warning, he started to purr.

"Nooooo, Chaaaaat!" Ladybug whined from under him. Chat smiled to himself while she tried to wiggle out from under him again (she really had tried to escape earlier, but it was simply not happening). "Chaaaat, you're like a giant purr generator! I can't even hear the show anymore! Get o – NO STOP LAUGHING YOU'RE MAKING MY FACE SMACK INTO THE GROUND!"

Bliss. However temporary it might prove to be…this was bliss.

[imasallstars]

SR/SR+ 【D-ark L-ily's Grin】Karen Hojo

FOCUS STAT 　　　 6187 VISUAL at max Level, Max Bond, 0 Potential TOTAL APPEAL 　　　 13 439 Skill:「The Lilies Play A Sweet Melody」 　　　(Cool Focus) When only COOL-type idols are in your unit, for every 6 seconds, there is a 35~52.5% chance that PERFECT notes will receive a 14% SCORE BONUS, and you will gain an extra 11% COMBO BONUS for 3~4.5 seconds Center Skill:「Cool Princess」 　　　When only COOL-type idols are in your unit, all cards gain a 35% boost in their appeal.

※ this card is available through ranking in the Top 200000 in the D-ark L-ily's Grin LIVE GROOVE event. You are able to get multiple copies of this card, by ranking in higher tiers of the event

※ you are also able to obtain this card by reaching 10k, 20k, 30k, and 40k points in the D-ark L-ily's Grin LIVE GROOVE event.

※ the card's Japanese skill name "甘美に奏でる百合" features the name of the other half of the unit, 奏で (Kanade)