#how to you bury another daughter less than forty years later

[catalina-kachie]

Every single adult in the world has a story from their life that would break your heart and leave you sobbing and we all just have to keep living our lives as if life isn’t the most bizarro-ass shit. What the fuck

[olivemac]

heartbeat | chapter two | b.b.

Summary | When Steve Rogers asks Kate Stark to find the Winter Soldier, she gets too involved.

Notes | Captain America: Civil War re-write, essentially. Starts just after the events of CA: Winter Soldier.

Pairing | Bucky Barnes x fem!oc, Bucky Barnes x Stark!oc

Genre | romance

Rating | explicit

Story Warnings | angst, fluff, romance tropes, so many romance tropes, coarse language, alcohol use, canon-typical violence , smut (m/f), oral sex (f&m receiving), 18+ ONLY

Chapter Warnings | coarse language

master list | AO3 link

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prev chapter

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Kate is on the next commercial flight to Bucharest. She's worried Bucky will move on before she can get to him, but she knows Tony would never approve of the use of one of his jets to chase down an ex-assassin in hiding. The less he knows, the better. Which is why she told him she was escaping to Europe for a long respite after feeling oh so overwhelmed with her work at Stark Industries.

Tony barely bats an eye when she told him. There were some advantages to being Tony Starks' baby sister. The first being he feels guilty about his ineptness at raising her after their parents' death and would literally let her get away with murder. The second is an almost unlimited bank account left to her by her father and supplemented by Tony's previously mentioned guilt.

Kate Stark was her mother’s mid-life crisis. Maria, three decades younger than her husband, had – at forty-two years old – decided she wanted another baby. Tony, who was eighteen at the time, had balked at the idea. But Howard relented and called in the best team of fertility doctors money could buy, and Kate was born.

She doesn't remember her parents, not really. She was only three when they died, and she doesn't remember that event either. Though she was there, in the car, when it crashed on Long Island.

Tony's only ever spoken to her about it once, after she accused him of hating her for surviving when their parents died. Really, he hated that he survived.

When rescue workers arrived at the scene of the wreck, they found her parents dead in the front seat and her tucked safely into her car seat in the back, bundled up against the December cold. She was an orphan, and Tony, at twenty-one, was suddenly responsible for a toddler.

So, he did the only thing he could think of. He hired a series of nannies to raise her, then sent her off to boarding school as soon as she was old enough, all the while playing genius, billionaire playboy.

He wasn’t surprised when it turned out she was just as smart as him or their father. And it surprised him less when she followed in his footsteps and attended MIT. What did surprise him was when she started hacking government databases for fun. She only agreed to work for him at Stark Industries in exchange for him not sticking Rhodey on her after she released documents regarding the US Air Force‘s involvement in some less that savory overseas dealings.

On the plane, she starts an email to Steve telling him where she was headed and what she had found. Then she deletes it and starts over. Then deletes that. She chews her thumbnail and thinks. If she tells Steve where Bucky is, he'll come blazing in, shield at the ready, and Bucky will.... She doesn’t know what Bucky will do, but she has a feeling the encounter would end with a fight and Bucky running. Which will kill Steve. Again. So, she decides she doesn't need to tell Steve – not right away. She'll see if she can figure out what Bucky remembers – if anything – before telling Steve where he is.

_____

A little over forty-eight hours after her software found Bucky, Kate is assembling IKEA furniture in her new studio apartment in Romania. Getting the landlord to lease her the empty flat next to Bucky's was easy enough when Kate offered him double what he was asking in rent. He was discreet enough to not ask any questions. Most of the people in the building were hiding from something so a young American woman who paid cash upfront wasn't the most unusual thing he'd dealt with.

She makes her bed, unpacks her suitcase, and re-reads the Winter Soldier file. That night she dreams of her parents and the wreck that killed them. In the dream there's always a man outside of the car, but she can never see his face. Her father begs for help: "Help my wife, my daughter. Please. Help."

She wakes up sweating, a scream caught in her throat.

_____

The apartment next to his is no longer empty. Bucky can hear music and soft footsteps through the paper-thin walls. If he focuses his hearing, he can hear a heartbeat other than his own, but he's working to turn off the super soldier reflexes, so he tries to ignore it. He's enjoyed the silence that the empty apartment afforded him, and he hopes the new tenant isn’t as nosy as his neighbor in Kiev who had asked so many questions. He hadn't stayed long after that meeting.

Around two in the morning, he wakes to the sound of a strangled cry from his new neighbor. Bucky sits up straight, suddenly on alert. He listens closely, focusing for the sounds of a struggle, but he only hears the unfamiliar heartbeat. His neighbor was having a nightmare, he imagines. He had plenty of those himself.

Sometimes he was staring down the barrel of a gun, his only intent to kill. Other nightmares took him back to the HYDRA base and their machine that scrambled his thoughts over and over again. And others found him falling from a train, the blonde man from the Triskelion reaching out toward him. He always wakes up just before he hits the icy river he knows awaits him.

Bucky knows now that the blonde man is Steve Rogers. Without HYDRA's influence, he's started to remember more: flashes of Steve and a group called the Howling Commandos during the war, but also flashes of Steve before the war, smaller, shorter. And flashes of a family – his family – a father, a mother, a sister. Rebecca. The name comes to him one afternoon while he's browsing the used bookstore near his flat.

He's started eating plums and jogging to improve his memory. He isn't sure if it's helping, but the memories are becoming longer and more frequent. He sees himself with Steve at Coney Island, riding the Cyclone until Steve lost his lunch and Bucky laughed so hard tears were streaming down his face, and he sees himself flirting with an auburn-haired combat nurse in Italy, following her back to her tent and undressing her slowly.

He wakes the next morning feeling restless. He had slept in fits and starts, listening for any more disturbances from next door. None came.

He dresses and goes for a run, and when he returns, he catches his first glimpse of his new neighbor. She's coming out of her apartment, her face turned downward toward her phone. When he reaches the top of the stairs, she lifts her head and smiles. Bucky is struck by how pretty she is, a thought he hasn't let himself have since leaving HYDRA. He turns away quickly and slams the door to his own apartment. He doesn't need pink lips and dark curls reminding him of what he can never have again. He's too broken for her, or anyone else for that matter.

_____

Bucky has seen his new neighbor more times in five days than he's seen anyone else in the building over the past two months. They always seem to be coming or going at the same time.

The first time he actually speaks to her, she's dropping groceries up the stairs from a rip in her canvas bag.

"Fuck," she mutters as an apple rolls beneath the railing and falls to the landing below.

Bucky has a brief vision of her uttering that same word while his head is buried between her legs, but he shakes if off quickly.

"Let me," he says in English, scooping up some rogue potatoes and taking the bag from her.

"Thanks," she says before unlocking her door and holding it open for him.

Her apartment is the same layout as his – one room, with a tiny bathroom at the front and a small kitchen along the back wall. He sets the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and steps back.

"I should—"

"Thank you—"

They both speak at the same time. Bucky bows his head and motions for her to continue.

"Thank you for your help." She pauses. "And it's nice to speak English for a change. My Romanian is atrocious," she laughs. "How’d you guess?"

"All the music you listen to is in English," he replies brusquely.

She cringes. "Sorry. I'll turn it down."

"No," he says, "It's fine. Really."

There's an awkward pause as they both stare at each other.

Bucky breaks the silence first. "I should go."

"Right." She leads him to the door. "Thanks."

Bucky nods.

When his own apartment door closes behind him, he sighs and scrubs his right hand over his face. He needs to avoid her. He doesn't need anything to distract him from regaining his memories, and he certainly doesn't need to get close to someone he'll inevitably hurt. He doesn’t even begin let himself entertain the thought that she could be a HYDRA agent waiting to turn him in.

_____

Later that evening, he's startled by a knock at his door. When he peers into the hallway, there's a plate of food on the floor, covered with a cloth and a note. He picks it up.

Thanks for saving my groceries.

- Kate

Bucky considers the possibilities that she is a HYDRA agent and the food is poisoned, but he decides it's unlikely HYDRA would take that approach. If anything, they would want their soldier back, and if they didn't, they wouldn't kill him quickly. Also, he can't remember the last time he had a home-cooked meal – definitely before the war – and he’s starving. Protein bars aren’t really cutting it anymore.

He studies the note as he eats. He runs his fingers over the name written in curling handwriting: Kate, and debates what his next move should be. He needs to ignore her – for her own safety – but his mother raised a gentleman so he should at least thank her for dinner, right?

_____

Kate nearly steps on the plate when she leaves her flat the next morning for a run. It’s sitting right at her doorway, clean, the dish towel she had with it folded with a note peeking out.

Kate,

You’re welcome. Thank you for dinner.

- Bucky

If she knew how long Bucky had agonized over whether to write back, she probably would have cried. Kate definitely would have cried if she knew he had debated whether or not to sign the note “Bucky” or “James.” He’s been using James at any off-the-books odd jobs he can get, but with his memories returning, he’s been feeling more like the Bucky Steve referred to in DC.

_____

Kate makes a potato soup that night and leaves it outside his door sans note. She brings him dinner for a week straight before she asks him to dine with her.

"Come over,” she says the next time they pass in the hall.

"What?" Bucky freezes.

"Come over tonight,” Kate repeats, “for dinner.”

"Why?" He sounds rude. He should really work on that, but she’s caught him in one of his broodier moods after another sleepless night.

"Why not?” she shrugs. “I have wine."

He’s staring at her. He realizes he needs to stop staring at her and answer.

“Okay.”

“Seven thirty?” she suggests.

"Okay," he replies.

"Okay," she laughs.

For a second, Bucky wonders if she's laughing at him, but there's a softness in her eyes that makes him think not. Talking to women used to be easy, he thinks. It took him hours to come up with the simplest response to her note the other night, and now he can't even form a sentence in front of her. He spends the rest of the day worrying he's made a huge mistake in accepting her invitation.

He's not the only one. Kate has half a mind to call it all off, phone Steve, and get on the next plane back to New York. What if he doesn't remember anything? What if he's still the Winter Soldier? She has a brief vision of Bucky snapping and wrapping that metal hand he's been hiding around her throat – and not in a fun way. But when he knocks on her door at seven thirty, she thinks she might actually die from how sweet he looks.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi," he responds, running his tongue over his lips nervously.

They're caught in another awkward moment of just staring at each other when she finally invites him.

The old Bucky would have bought flowers and then made some quip about how the flowers aren't nearly as beautiful as she is, but this Bucky – post-HYDRA Bucky – feels like he's forgotten how to interact with women at all and his tongue has suddenly turned to lead.

Kate's debated how much to reveal about herself. Finally, she decides she'll tell him everything. Well, mostly everything. He doesn't need to know that she's a Stark or friends with Steve Rogers or here on some crazy rescue mission to save the Winter Soldier because maybe, just maybe, she read his file one too many times and got caught up in the look in Steve's eyes when he talked about Bucky. No, he doesn't need to know that.

Kate's also considered how much to ask him about himself. She wants to know what – if anything – he remembers, but she also doesn't want to give herself away by revealing she knows who he really is. And she doubts he’ll tell her outright. The fact that he signed the note Bucky seems like a good indication that his memories are returning, though.

"How long have you been in Bucharest, Bucky?" she asks, plating their dinner.

"Almost two months," he says.

"Here for work?" she asks casually.

"Uh...it's complicated," he says, scratching at the back of his neck. "You?"

She looks up at him. "It's complicated."

They're staring at each other again, and Bucky has to force himself to look away.

"Family?" she asks.

"Also complicated," he says. God, he thinks, he sounds like a jackass. But it's not like he can tell her he's a ninety-eight-year-old ex-assassin in hiding so his family is probably long dead.

She motions for him to sit at her small kitchen table and sets a plate in front of him.

"You're not hiding a wedding ring under those gloves, are you?" she asks, a smirk on her lips. She knows about his arm; she just wants to see what he’ll give away.

He blushes and looks at his hands. Then he realizes he's taking too long to answer, and she probably thinks he's an idiot. "No... uh...no. No," he finally says without elaborating.

Kate can sense he's nervous so she does what Tony would do in a situation like this and just keeps talking. She tells him about Tony – minus the Stark detail. She talks about MIT and New York and the last book she read. He listens closely, laughing softly when she makes jokes and asking questions where appropriate. He likes the way her lips look when they form his name and the way her eyes light up at her own humor.

When they finish eating, Bucky helps her wash dishes. She considers asking him to stay, watch a movie or something, but then she thinks maybe she should take this slowly, not overwhelm him, so she bids him goodnight and closes the door behind him.

Bucky thinks Kate might be the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. Then he thinks that might be because she’s the first woman he’s interacted with in so long. Either way, he tries not to think of her that night when his body remembers what it's like to be a man.

He decides that staying away from her would be too hard.

On the other side of the wall, she’s thinking of him, too. She hadn't expected his eyes to be so impossibly blue. She had stared at the black and white military photo for hours, but seeing him in person, she was caught in the Arctic waters that made up his eyes.

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next chapter

[hernxcarlos]

oscar isaac & he/him/male ‷ watch out , carlos hernandez has crash-landed into roswell !! they look forty-two years old and celebrate their birthday on april thirteenth . they are from providence, rhode island, reside in aurora apartments and are currently working as a librarian. one thing you should know about them is he is secretly a great chef‷

hello ! as i said in the ooc blog, my name is mel and i am super happy to be here ! 

i am not great at writing intros so please bare with me. 

carlos was born to cuban and guatemalan parents but he was raised in providence, rhode island where his father worked as a doctor while his mother ran a shop where she’d make candles, bath bombs, etc. he is the middle child with an older sister and a younger brother. family time was important in his household growing up. his parents were all about planning trips as a family, going together to baseball games, and eating meals together. they wanted their children to develop close connections with one another. 

eventually, of course, they all started growing up and his sister was the first to leave the family when she went off to college in new york. at first she would visit often but as her life started heading in a different direction, she began to come around less and less. carlos himself attended school in virginia where he received his masters in library science, something he’d sought after as he was always the child with his nose buried in a book and had even worked as a library aid throughout high school and some of his undergraduate career. his parents had never been the type of people to push their children in a specific direction and they were all more than able to explore their own hobbies. carlos tried to visit home as much as possible while in college because he wanted to see both his parents and his brother. 

after he received his masters, he ended up moving back to rhode island to begin working in his career there. he met a woman that he ended up falling love with and everything in his life seemed to be going exactly as he had hoped that it would. the two of them dated for two years before deciding that it was time to make something more of their relationship. carlos proposed to her at the spot where they first met and when he was thirty, his wife gave birth to a beautiful little girl. the two of them became the center of his universe, he adored them. as time passed, it seemed that everything was only getting more and more perfect in his world but as is often the case with that, it began to come to a stop. his wife would spend longer and longer at work or going on weekend trips with her friends, things that carlos didn’t mind because he knew that she needed her alone time as much as the time they spent together, though perhaps he should’ve worried a little bit more. 

the plea for a divorce took him entirely by surprise. he thought that everything had been going well. his daughter had started elementary school and was doing great. his job was better than ever. for his wife, however, things had not been going as smoothly as he imagined and all he could do was respect that she wanted to part ways. there was of course the obvious giant question mark: their daughter, june. for this reason, they ended up going to court, and his wife won custody of their daughter for most of the year. carlos would only get to see her during the summertime. to make matters worse, his wife ended up moving back to her own hometown: roswell. 

which is how, seven years later, carlos has ended up at roswell. with his daughter now being twelve years old, he’s beginning to feel the way that she’s pulling away from him, the strain of only being able to be together for three months of the year putting a pressure on the two of them that is simply unbearable. so, he’s come here to feel closer to his daughter. he is working at the library and hoping to some capacity be able to explore his other hobby which is cooking. carlos is fairly new in town so any connections related to that would be good! he is trying to find his footing and see where he fits in around the town, still unsure of how to navigate being so close to his ex-wife but grateful to be here for his daughter. 

[dead-inside-mcgee]

Beyond that Door Chapter 4

A ladder

Yes I do write stuffs

Summary: On one hand, free clothing sounded great. On the other hand, Chase’s growing romantic feelings did not muffle his paranoia at all. On the third hand, this sounded kind of like charity, and Chase didn’t need or want any of that, nor did he really feel like he deserved it. And on the fourth hand, which at this point there are far too many hands, if this man could just offer to do something like that, without a hint of anxiety, then that probably meant he was fairly financially stable. And financial stability was on Chase’s top ten for most attractive traits.

Warnings: implied sexual content, mentions of murder

Taglist: @rabbitsartcorner @caori-azarath @murder-schmurder

Chase blinked his eyes open, trying to remember where he was. He was watching a movie, the parents were looking over old pictures and discovered that their daughter's ghost was actually in some of the pictures, other than the ones the son photoshopped her in.

  Chase smiled to himself. He’d have to watch that movie again when he wasn’t on a not-date with a criminal. What happened after that? 

  The credits rolled. He was about to make some excuse to leave. Anti was talking about something. He started pouring a glass of wine....

  The bathroom door opened, flooding the room with light and steam as Anti stepped out in just a towel. 

  ”Oh!” he said with a bright smile. “I was wondering if you were ever going to wake up. I suppose I can’t blame you considering the work out you gave me.” He chuckles lightheartedly.

  Chase blushed, suddenly aware of the fact that he didn’t have a shirt on. Last night came flashing back to him in a series of images, like someone made a shitty PowerPoint presentation about it. He covers his face in the blanket in embarrassment, earning another light chuckle from Anti. 

  Chase couldn’t help but peak out while Anti was dressing. Despite all the paranoia and suspension he had surrounding the man, he did find him quite attractive. And if last night was anything to go off of, the feeling was mutual. 

  Maybe Anti wasn’t the weird supervillain in Chase’s mind. Maybe the strange man he saw at the building was someone else, he only really got a glimpse...

  Chase’s wandering thoughts of possible romance were torn from him by the malicious hands of capitalism. 

  “Oh fuck I’m late for work!” 

  “Actually-” Anti started, grabbing Chase’s arm before he could bolt out the door in just his slipping pants “-a pipe burst, flooding a large part of the first few floors in sewage. Work is closed for a few days for repairs.” He led him over to his laptop, showing him the email explaining that in forty times the word count. 

  Chase sighed in relief. “Oh, thank god.” 

  “So. Since we have a couple of days free, how would you like to go shopping with me? I will pay for everything, and not to be rude, but you really need more clothing. I’ve noticed you’ve worn the same grey shirt ten times in a row.” 

  “Actually, I bought a pack of twelve grey shirts.” He said, putting grey shirt number eleven back on. “It was on sale.” 

  “I honestly feel like that makes it worse.” 

  On one hand, free clothing sounded great. On the other hand, Chase’s growing romantic feelings did not muffle his paranoia at all. On the third hand, this sounded kind of like charity, and Chase didn’t need or want any of that, nor did he really feel like he deserved it. And on the fourth hand, which at this point there are far too many hands, if this man could just offer to do something like that, without a hint of anxiety, then that probably meant he was fairly financially stable. And financial stability was on Chase’s top ten for most attractive traits. 

  He whimpered, talking a step back. It felt like he was between a rock and a hard place, and Chase’s claustrophobia made him want to panic. And then a fifth hand popped up to ask a question. What about Marvin?

  In the pure anxiety of last night and the confusing morning, Marvin had completely slipped his mind. The poor witch was probably worried sick.

  “I’m sorry!” He made his way for the front door. “I promised a friend I would hang out with them last night and they’re probably worried sick that I never showed up.” He didn’t wait for a response from Anti, simply running out.

  Panic set in. He should turn around. No, keep running. He didn’t think he could even face Marvin in this state. 

  He ran into his apartment, not even wondering why his front door was unlocked. 

***

Under every town there are tunnels. Whether they are made by animals like worms, moles, or crawfish. Or they’re made by time, like undiscovered caves. Or they’re made by secret organizations that use them to get around fast and to watch our every move. There are tunnels.

  Marvin discovered his own set of tunnels when he first came to this town, and later sealed off a certain part of it later to act as his base. 

  He used to enjoy wandering through the tunnels, drawing graffiti on the walls, and listening in to private conversations. He felt free in the tunnels. But tonight the tunnels felt suffocating. 

  “Where are we going?” Henrik asked timidly. He stumbled every few steps.

  “If they’ve captured Chase, then they probably know we’re looking into this conspiracy, which means my home isn’t safe.”

  “That does not quite answer my question.”

  Marvin didn’t have a good answer. 

  After an hour of walking and quietly swearing from Henrik, Marvin stopped and squeezed him through a small space that opened up into a large, musty room. It looked like a church. There were rows of pews, and the walls were lined with stained glass, which was odd because behind the stained glass windows was layers upon layers of dirt and rock. Like someone built a church in a giant pit, buried it, and forgot about it. 

  Neither of them could quite tell what the windows were depicting, and there were no recognizable religious symbols.

  “This place feels less safe.” Henrik squeaked. 

  “Don’t worry. I’ve never seen or heard anyone here. I’m not sure what this place is, but it’s abandoned.” Marvin laid down on a pew and curled up. 

  “How long do you plan on staying here?” 

  “A week at least. If they check my home, that might see I’m not there and it’ll be safe to return.” 

  There were holes in that plan, but Henrik wasn’t in the right headspace to nitpick it. He did not like it here. He really didn’t like it here. This place felt familiar, and that scared him more than anything.

  Exhaustion hit him hard. He curled up on the ground, which was only slightly more uncomfortable than the pews, and slept. 

  He had a dream. No not a dream. He remembered something.

 ***

It was Tuesday. He remembered that fact cearly. Tuesday the sixteenth, in September. Yesterday was his birthday. He was twenty-four now. 

  He was going shopping. He bought a new lab coat for work. He was a doctor, both of medical and of science. He also still struggled with English despite living in America for several years by now. 

  He meets a man with bright green hair and a smile that felt like the sun on earth. He introduces himself as Sèan, but tells him he goes by Jack.

  “How do you get Jack from Sèan?” he remembers asking. 

  “You don’t!” Jack said, patting him on the back. 

  Then it was evening, they were snuggled up on Jack’s couch, both wasted.

  “I wanna be someone someday!” Jack said loudly. “I want to be the person whose face appears on a billboard, and people can point at my face and say, “‘Hey, I know that guy!’”

  “You could be a model. You’ve got the face for it.” 

  “There’s no honor in being a model, though. I want to save people, not kill their self esteem.”

  “A cop then.”

  “No one likes cops, Henrik.” Jack said firmly, sounding sober for a moment. 

  “True…” He yawned, starting to feel tired. 

  “I want to be something bigger than that. Like a superhero. Maybe I could get into witchcraft.” 

  “You know witchcraft is illegal right?” 

  “Being a vigilante is illegal too, and people love vigilantes. Hey, maybe if I’m big enough and loud enough, I can get rid of the ban on witchcraft!” 

  Henrik giggled, nuzzling his hand. “I believe in you.”

  Jack nodded happily. Suddenly he jolted upright and almost knocked Henrik onto the floor. “Hey! Want to see something cool!”

  Jack led him to a manhole cover that had a thick numerical padlock on it. Jack put in the code 1010 and it popped off. 

  “Not a very secure code.” Henrik commented as Jack dragged him into the sewer. 

  “It’s so dumb that no one would guess it.” 

  “It smells like shit down here.” Henrik groaned. 

  “Yeah, that’d be the shit.” 

  Jack led him to an area where part of the wall seemed to be slightly broken. 

  “Look through the crack in the wall.” 

  Henik did so and he could faintly see a ladder going down. 

  Jack pulled on the wall slightly, making enough space for someone to squeeze in if they really tried. “I’ve never been brave enough to go see where it leads.” 

  Henrik was amazed. This was super cool. It may have been the alcohol clouding his judgement, but he squeezed past the wall and looked down. “Want to find out?” 

  Climbing a ladder drunk is not a smart thing to do, especially if you had no idea where said ladder leads. 

  After a few minutes of climbing, somehow Henrik and Jack made it to the ground without dying. The ladder led to a pair of large doors that looked like the entrance to a church. 

  The two glanced at each other before working together to push open the doors. Inside was eerily like a church. 

  “I don’t like it here.” Jack said, but continued walking into the church anyway. 

  Henrik stepped in and a wave of nausea washed over him. He fell forward, blacking out. That was the last thing Henrik remembered, but the dream continued. 

  Jack spun around, running to go check on him, but some invisible wall seemed to block him from getting any closer. 

  A voice cackled. It was raspy and sounded broken almost. A man appeared. He looked exactly like Jack but wrong. Like someone tried to draw him from memory. There was also a giant cut on this person’s neck. 

  Jack stumbled back and leaned on the invisible wall. “Don't come any closer!” 

  “I won’t, I won’t.” The demon, Jack decided it was a demon, said calmly. “I want to help you friend.” 

  “Help me!? What could you possibly do to help me?” 

  “You want to be a hero, am I correct? I seem to remember that.” 

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Well who doesn’t want to be a hero!? I can help you, for a small price.” 

  “What price?”

  “It’s only something small. I wish the feast on the blood of the wicked. That shouldn’t be much trouble. What’s the lives of millions of good people compared to a few assholes?” 

  Jack thought it over. “How much blood?” 

  “A body every two weeks. If you choose the right people, no one will miss them anyway.” 

  The worst part is that, that sounded like an amazing deal. He glanced back at Henrik. There was a little pool of blood by his face from where he hit his head on the floor. 

  “Is there any other catch to this thing you’re offering me?” 

  “Yes.” The demon waved his hand up and Henrik stood, except it wasn’t Henrik exactly. Something about his eyes was off. 

  “Every superhero needs a villain to defeat, and your boyfriend here will do the trick nicely.”

  Jack grimaced, backing away from “Henrik.” 

  “That doesn’t even have to be a catch. I can erase any memories and feelings you have connected to him. Just shake my hand.” He held a hand out with a big, toothy smile. 

  Jack glanced at the demon, and then at Henrik, and he decided to take his hand. There was a bright flash of light and Henrik woke up. 

  He was about to get up to tell Marvin what he had remembered, but he found himself and Marvin tied up. 

***

Chase fidgeted with part of his robotic arm. It made a nice clicking noise when he twisted one of the fingers in the right way. 

  The mask was starting to wear off, he had enough of the potion left to last him a while, but it still made him kind of sad. 

  There was a knock at the door. Chase groaned and hid under the blanket. It was probably Mrs. Wood, asking if Chase had seen her missing cat.  

  The knocking continued for a few more minutes and then Chase heard a soft creak like someone opened his front door. His stomach dropped. 

  He grabbed a large flashlight, prepared to whack someone. He slowly walked out of his room only to see Anti in his living room. 

  Anti held up his hands. “Hey. You left your keys at my place.” He dropped the keys on the counter. “I know I shouldn’t have busted in, but I assumed you weren’t here.” 

  Chase sighed, putting the flashlight down. Anything Chase wanted to say got caught in his throat. He sat down and covered his face. “Just go away please.” 

  “I also wanted to say I’m sorry. I came on too strongly and I should’ve checked to see if I was crossing any boundaries. I just want this to work.” 

   Anti’s heart shattered. He stepped out into the hallway and got a phone call. 

  “What is it?” He growled. 

  “Fresh blood is here.” Jackie said on the other end.

[darkspellmaster]

In defense of Princess Jasmine

Apologies for this being late.

So where do I start with this one? I guess after seeing the reactions about the Aladdin movie, and then seeing how people changed their tune, and it got to me, a bit more. See Aladdin has a special place in my heart, being the Disney Animated movie that I connected to the most. It’s my favorite followed by Robin Hood and the Black Cauldron, and when I was reading the reaction to Jasmine, I was rather surprised by some of the hostility, since the whole place is an amalgam of different cultures and the original story itself seems to be a mixed story as well.

I have to say this though, Jasmine, in Aladdin, isn’t the lead. Her role is important, and clearly a huge part of the overall story for Aladdin, but she’s not the main lead. This story wasn’t about her learning and changing, although she does, but about Aladdin learning to be himself. So it’s weird when people lambast Jasmine about the movie, but ignore her more prominent role in the animated show, which is part of the cannon. It’s also strange to me that she gets hit with a lot of comments that you would fling at a lead character, but her role is more akin to the roles of the Princes in the Disney Movies. Jasmine is, for the most part, like Jane from Tarzan, and a character that aids Aladdin in maturing and becoming the person that he needs to be, rather than the lead herself. This drastically changed in the new movie, as she’s become a sort of a co-protagonist in the story.

So where to start here I guess on one of the bigger things I hear about Jasmine:

1.       Jasmine is too sexy for a teenager.

Here’s the thing, Jasmine isn’t a teen, or at least that’s not what was in the movie. Her father specifically says “You must be married, to a prince, by your next birthday.” Leaving it open to guess what her birthday is. In recent years the Princesses Line gave her the age of 16, so while it’s official it’s not official (I know weird), whereas it’s hinted that Aladdin himself is 18 at oldest. The thing is that her outfit, while not traditional or historically accurate, is based more on the older idea of Arabian style costumes associated with Hollywood. Look at any of the movies from the late 1930s and into the 1970s and you’ll see that the designs for Jasmine’s outfit seem to be very much in line from the old swashbuckling epics of that period.

Jasmine, for the most part, doesn’t act sexual at all in the movie. Rather most of the time she’s actively trying to learn more about her people and the world outside of the palace. Allowing for her tiger to tear off the pants of the young prince, sneaking out against the rules of her father, and easily following Aladdin around the city, “I’m a fast learner.” Showing that she has a great deal of wit and intelligence for someone raised in a “gilded cage.”

The only time she uses her sexuality is as a distraction for Aladdin and the reaction to her kissing him is one of utter disgust from other members of the hero’s band, Genie with the Jaw drop, Abu with an “eww” sound, and Aladdin himself in some state of shock. Showing that this was not something that could be seen as a sexualized thing, more of something that would be seen as “gross” to those that were seeing it and clearly not the most appetizing thing for Jasmine to do herself. Moments later we see her actively trying to pull the snake scepter away from Jafar, indicating that she’s willing to put herself in harm's way to save her friends, and it’s only when he knocks her back and traps her in a sand hourglass, that Jasmine isn’t willingly trying to find ways to get out of her situation. She’s constantly, prior to Aladdin and the others coming in, making faces that show she’s utterly disgusted with Jafar, and it’s clear that the outfit he has her it is for his own amusement to humiliate her. The look is actually one that matches the outfits worn by the girls in, what appears to be, a brothel of sorts, that we meet early on in the movie during the ‘One Jump song’.

Therefore, at no time does Jasmine willingly flaunt herself, or act overtly sexual in the movie, outside of the one distraction scene.

Jumping over to the TV show, we see her actively fight alongside her friends, and the only time she’s wearing an outfit that’s similar to the look for what she wears in Jafar’s throne scene is the black outfit that she starts to wear during the time she’s being controlled by Mozenrath and believes she’s a bad guy. Then later that’s used for sneaking around on covert missions where black would be the look that would work best during night.

2.       Jasmine is always in danger and needs saving.

The only times this at all happens in the movie is really when she is threatened to have her hand cut off, and later when she’s trapped inside a sand hourglass and is going to die from suffocation.

Never once, in the show, or the movie, does Jasmine gives up and not try to fight for herself. In the movie, outside of those two instances, Jasmine is always ready to stand up for herself and others. Even if it means getting into trouble. For example, in the moment when the vender is threatening her before Aladdin comes in, she tries to explain why she did what she did, and even after she’s grabbed she tries to pull away from him. Later in the Hourglass she’s banging on the glass and looking for ways to get out, up until she’s completely buried in the sand. When she and Aladdin are being chased, she actively pulls off her disguise in order to save him, and later goes to confront Jafar chastising him for his actions and reminding him that once she’s the queen she’s getting rid of him, and he knows it, “Or worse beheaded.”

 Jasmine doesn’t screw around, in the show she actively fights with a sword, got into a full-on tussle with Sadira (a fellow enemy turned friend). Worked insanely hard to try to undo a curse on herself as she’s turning into a Snake and was willing to let Aladdin go to allow him to not have to deal with the pain she was dealing with turning into a snake. She’s fought with not only Mozenrath but saved Aladdin a number of times in the show, along with her father.

Jasmine, I would say, is the most adventure driven of the Princesses, outside of say, Kida, and possibly Moana, and Mulan. So the idea that she needs to be saved seems out of place to me.

The thing about Aladdin is that a good part of the movie seems to be focusing on movie musicals from the 1950s in regard to the story structure and aspects about it. Modern viewers tend to ask why a lot of the movie doesn’t seem to focus on the traditions of the location where it’s supposedly taking place from. One of the reasons, I think, is because it’s supposed to invoke that sort of movie from that period of time. It’s not supposed to be a classic piece based on tradition, rather it’s designed to be an ode to the Hollywood epics of yore with, at the time, a more modern twist in regard to how American and western audiences at the time viewed roles for boys and girls in various ways. By the end of the movie, the Sultan has learned that some traditions need to be bucked and changed to bring his kingdom forward into a modern age where his daughter can have some control over her destiny. In the newest movie, along with the musical, that’s been pushed even farther by outright saying that Jasmine will be ruler and Aladdin is Prince Consort, making her very much like the Queen of England and her husband.

What’s interesting to me is that not enough people look to the animated series to see the growth of the characters from the movies. Jasmine advances more in her development here, learning about her people and the kingdoms around her. She’s shown to be far more willing to listen to things, and be less stubborn than her father, and can actually explain things to him. As per the episode where she was taken by a “god” like being who the Sultan took a rose from, and, upon his defeat, after Jasmine had spent time with him, she expressed grief over his loss and that her father’s actions were really in the wrong, and that he should learn from others rather than assuming that they were monsters, to begin with.  It’s a story that has a lot going on with it and a strong message for kids.

Jasmine, by the time the Forty thieves movie has come about, is older and wiser, and she’s able to fully understand Aladdin’s desires to find out about his father and bring him to their wedding. This is not the same girl that snuck out of the palace from the first movie, this is a young woman who’s matured enough to understand how family is an important part of her husband’s life and his need to know where he comes from. This is something I don’t think enough people actually look into when they start writing about how Jasmine is not a good role model.

Another thing about Jasmine is that like Philip before her, she rejects the notion of how the world is working right now. She wants to connect to her people and even falls in love with a boy who is poor and below her station. While yes Aurora is a princess, this is not something he knew about when he fell for her, and the same is for Aladdin. Jasmine falls for him even though she actively knows he’s beneath her station and the reaction from her in regard to all this is “I want to marry for love,” which would mirror Phillips “Father it’s the 14th century,” showing that both view the idea of being in love and married for love over an arranged union as a stronger and better thing in their version of the modern world.

It’s something that makes Jasmine unique among all the other princess, excepting Kida, in that she is not the main character in the story. Or rather she, like Philip, plays a significant role, but her story is on the side and is important, but the changes the viewpoint we mostly go through is Aladdin’s. As with Atlantis, Milo is the main POV, and Kida is the character that comes in to explain what we’re seeing. The only character I can think of that follows this idea is Esmeralda, who, again, plays a huge role in the story but isn’t the main POV of the story of the Hunchback. It’s something that Jasmine has that makes her aspect in the following animated show more interesting as a number of episodes are from her POV and show her as The protagonist in the Animated series. We see her grow alongside Aladdin, wherein the movie, she does grow some in her character, in that she learns about trusting in some ways, it’s more about him and his story.

[lost-n-stereo]

A/N: Happy Father’s Day! Here’s a fun little ask box meme (X) that I did to celebrate Modern AU Dad!Bellamy. These do go in order but you can skip around and read them individually as well. Enjoy 4k words of Bellamy being a great dad!

everything will bring a chain of love

Who in your OTP carries them from the couch/car to the bed?

They spend the day at the beach, toes sandy and noses red by the time they make it back to the car. Hope is fast asleep in her car seat, dark curls falling across her eyes as she snores peacefully.

“She had so much fun today,” Clarke says, her eyes dropping closed themselves. Bellamy reaches for her hand and kisses her knuckles.

“Sleep, baby. We’ll be home soon.”

When he finally pulls into their driveway almost an hour later both of his girls are knocked out. Clarke is curled up in her seat as far as the sea tbelt will allow and Bellamy chuckles, reaches over to unbuckle her and kisses her cheek to wake her up.

“Are we home?” She asks, her voice thick with sleep.

“Yeah, go ahead and go inside. I’ll get the monster.”

He hands the keys to Clarke so she can open the front door and goes around the car to get their daughter from the backseat. It’s hard unbuckling her and pulling her out without waking her up but he tries his best.

“Daddy?”

Her little toddler voice never fails to fill his heart with warmth and he gathers her in his arms and drops a kiss to her forehead.

“We’re home, baby. Go back to sleep.”

She nods against his chest, twirling one dark curl around her finger, and he loves his daughter like this. She’s two, all wild hair and spirit, but she’s her most cuddly when she’s just woken up.

Clarke has turned down her bed already so he gets her changed into pajamas as quickly as he can without waking her too much and tucks her into bed. He kisses her cheek with a whispered goodnight and is almost out the door when her little voice calls him back.

“Lola?”

She’s reaching out her arms and he smiles, grabs her favorite stuffed penguin from the bookshelf and brings it to her. Hope smiles and gives Lola a kiss before snuggling down into her bed with her penguin gripped tight.

Clarke is already in bed by the time he makes it back to their room. “Did she fall asleep alright?”

Bellamy pulls off his shirt and bends down to kiss her. “Yeah, out like a light.” He tells her that he’s going to take a shower and when he comes back out she’s already asleep, her hands tucked under her cheek as she lays on her side.

He crawls into bed behind her and wonders how he got so lucky to have these girls in his life.

And who soothes the kids after a nightmare?

A loud wail wakes him up from a dead sleep.

Clarke jerks beside him, their bodies finely tuned to all of Hope’s cries, and her eyes are wide as she moves to get out of bed. They reach their daughter’s room and see her sitting up in bed, cheeks red and tears streaming down her face.

“What’s wrong, love?” Clarke reaches her first and Hope is sniffling, her little hands reaching out for both of her parents. Bellamy sits down next to her and his daughter crawls into his lap and buries her head into his shoulder.

“Did you have a bad dream?” Her tiny head nods against his neck.

“Big and scary,” she whispers in his ear and he rubs a hand up and down her back to sooth her.

“It’s okay, it wasn’t real.” Clarke motions to their bedroom and he nods, stands up with Hope in his arms and tucks her into their bed. Hope curls up next to Clarke and Bellamy gets in beside her and puts his arm around both of them.

Hope falls asleep with one hand on Bellamy and one hand on Clarke, and he presses a kiss to her curls before closing his eyes and drifting back to sleep.

Who wants to throw out the car seat because the stupid thing won’t strap in?

“This booster seat is kicking my ass.”

Clarke laughs as Bellamy huffs and struggles with installing Hope’s new car seat. “You just have to pull the belt through this section here.”

“You two are hopeless,” comes a voice from behind them and Bellamy laughs. They are fostering a ten year old girl named Madi and she’s full of sass, much to Bellamy’s delight. She reminds him of his sister Octavia at that age.

“You wanna try?” He asks her and she shrugs. “Be my guest.”

Madi installs it in less than a minute and she shoots him a smirk. Hope comes running out of the house and straight into Madi’s arms, already attached to her, and Bellamy can’t wait to tell them both that they just got approved to formally adopt Madi into their family.

Hope is going to love having a big sister and he is going to love having two beautiful daughters to call his own.

Who cries on the first day of school?  

The day he’s been dreading is here and to say he’s not handling it well would be an understatement.

In his mind his youngest daughter isn’t old enough to be starting school. She’s just barely five, the youngest in her class, and she looks so tiny compared to all of the other kids milling around in the courtyard of the private school Clarke spent two years applying for.

“Can’t we just home school her?” Bellamy asks his wife, who rolls her eyes but still smiles sadly. Both of them have tears in their eyes as Hope waves her little hand and tells them she’ll see them after school.

“You guys are such saps,” Madi says but when he looks at her she’s discreetly wiping a tear from her own eye.

“And you’re totally above all of that, right?” She shoots him a dirty look, twelve year olds are great at that, and he ruffles her hair.

“Come on, kid. It’s time for your mom and I to embarrass you at your school now.”

Gets the kids into the local sports team?

Jordan Green is the next child they adopt. A sixteen year old boy who’s parents died the year before.

Older children are harder to adopt out and when they decided they were ready to foster or adopt another child he was the only one they spoke to. He’s a great kid, smart and kind, unlike other sixteen year old boys Bellamy has known in his lifetime. Jordan is always eager to learn and grow as a person and he reminds Bellamy every single day that there are good people in this world no matter how bleak things can get.

“What do you think about joining a sports team at school?” Bellamy asks one day while they are eating breakfast. “Miller is the football coach at the high school. I’m sure he’d be able to get you a late tryout.”

Clarke frowns. “Isn’t football dangerous?”

“Everything is a little dangerous,” Bellamy says with a shrug. “You’d let him drive? Isn’t that dangerous?”

He laughs at her pout. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Jordan, what do you think?”

Jordan is all smiles, which is nothing new. Bellamy doesn’t know if he’s ever seen this kid have a bad day. “It sounds great! Would you guys come to my games?”

Bellamy grins. “Of course we would.”

And who’s the parent that gets way too aggressive at these games?

“Oh, come on, ref!”

Hope jumps up and down on the bleaches next to Bellamy. “Aw…come on, ref!”

Bellamy’s anger fades as he laughs and tickles his daughter until she’s giggling and falling into Madi’s lap. “Don’t copy daddy,” he says. “Sometimes I say things you shouldn’t.”

Clarke elbows him in the ribs. “Just remember that when you stand up and shout,” she whispers. “You don’t want to say any words that little ears shouldn’t be hearing.”

He rolls his eyes. “Then that ref shouldn’t be a dumb ass.”

Hope giggles. “Dumb ass, dumb ass.”

“Hope!” Bellamy, Clarke and Madi all scold her at once but his sassy daughter just laughs and kicks her feet.

An asshole kid on the other team tackles Jordan way too hard and Bellamy jumps up to scream something at him but sees Hope staring at him, like she’s just waiting for the chance to parrot more bad language, so he growls instead and sits back down.

Who in your OTP lets the kids stay up and watch movies and who sends them to bed?

“Dad, Night of the Living Dead is on tonight. Can I watch it?”

Bellamy looks over at Madi, who’s got both of her hands pressed together in a prayer. It’s a Thursday night, which means her bedtime is in thirty minutes.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to watch a horror movie before you go to sleep?”

Madi rolls her eyes. “It’s from like, the sixties. How scary can it really be? Plus, I’m thirteen. I’m not a baby.”

“Fine, but I’m watching it with you.”

Clarke comes downstairs forty minutes into the movie, and Bellamy and Madi both jump when her voice cuts through the darkness of their living room.

“Madi, what are you doing up so late?”

His daughter immediately throws him under the bus. “Dad said I could!”

“Damn,” he laughs. “Absolutely no loyalty in this family.”

“You should be in bed, you have school in the morning.”

Bellamy reaches for his wife and pulls her so she’s sitting in between him and Madi. “It’s almost over, baby. Watch it with us?”

Clarke rolls her eyes but leans back into his arms. “You’re both going to have nightmares.”

Who sneaks candy to the kids before school, whilst the other pretends not to notice?

Clarke has always been in charge of the girls’ lunches.

She’s one of those great moms that fill their kid’s lunches with hearty sandwiches, fresh fruits and veggies and organic apple juice. Jordan eats lunch at his high school, which is one of the top rated in the country and therefore has an insane lunch buffet that frankly Bellamy is a little jealous of.

Madi says all the time that she can’t wait for her freshman year just so she can try the food.

It’s a week before summer vacation and the girls are restless at breakfast. They are both headed to summer camp after school lets out and Bellamy knows that every single day feels like a lifetime to them.

Clarke is bustling around the kitchen, chopping fresh broccoli and both girls grimace when she fills little cups with ranch dressing.

“Here,” he says, reaching into his gym bag for a couple of pieces of candy. He tosses two pieces to each of them and they grin, shoving the chocolate into their mouths before Clarke can see.

Of course he knows that Clarke can see everything, she’s a mom after all, but he likes the little smile she has on her face as she slices a turkey sandwich in half.

Who is the parent that yells at the kid for being called to the principal’s office and who is the parent who yells at the principal?

Just as he expected, Madi as a teen is a handful.

It’s the second day of her freshman year and they have already been called into the principal’s office.

“Madi has been disruptive in two of her classes already,” the principal is saying and Bellamy scowls.

“Disruptive how?”

Principal Morgan sighs like his time is worth more than this conversation and that pisses Bellamy off. “She argued with two of her teachers about the curriculum being wrong.”

Bellamy snorts. “So you’re mad that my daughter is smarter than your teachers?” Clarke puts a hand on his arm to calm him but he knows without looking at her that she’s just as angry as he is. This is a good school, and they pay a lot of money for Madi and Jordan to attend, and the last thing they want is to have to enroll her somewhere else.

“Mr. Blake, all I’m asking is that you have a talk with your daughter.”

Bellamy and Clarke stand at the same time and Clarke gives him a smirk. “Oh, we will.”

That night at dinner Madi is quiet and he’s guessing that she’s preparing to be yelled at.

“Madi, do you want to tell us what happened today?” Clarke asks, passing a bowl of potato salad to Jordan, who spoons some onto Hope’s plate.

Madi tells them everything, from correcting her history teacher about false facts and telling her math teacher that it isn’t fair to assume everyone knows basic algebra going into the 9th grade. “I’m sorry for being a brat but they were wrong.”

Clarke reaches over and holds her hand. “We’re not mad at you, love. We are proud of you for sticking up for what you know is right.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah,” Bellamy tells her, earning a scolding look from his wife that he ignores. “You are always more important to us than some stupid school. You are a warrior, kid. Don’t you ever forget it.”

Who teaches their son to tie a tie

“Are you nervous?”

Bellamy hands Jordan the navy blue tie and watches fondly as he tucks it under his collar.

“Not about the date,” Jordan says, his hands struggling to knot the tie. “Delilah is great. But yeah, the whole senior prom thing is a little scary.”

Bellamy chuckles and reaches for the tie. “Here,” he says, showing Jordan how to loop it. “You’re going to be fine. Luckily for you, you’re adopted and don’t have my bad dancing gene.”

Jordan grins. “Lucky for me I ended up with you as a dad anyway.”

Bellamy slaps his son on the shoulder, trying not to show in his eyes how emotional that statement made him. He prides himself in being a cool dad, since he’s really not that much older than Jordan to begin with, but he’s not above shedding a tear when one of his kids says something nice like that.

“There, you’re all set. Have fun tonight and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

And who explains periods to their daughter?

It figures that Clarke and Madi are out of town the week Hope gets her first visit from Aunt Flo.

“Dad!!”

His eleven year old daughter is screaming from the bathroom but when he gets there the door is locked.

“Hope, what’s wrong?”

“Can you call mom?”

His heart drops, because he immediately knows what’s going on and of course he’s the last person she wants to talk to about this.

“Did you, um…did you start your…”

“Yes!” She yells through the door. “What do I do?”

He tells her that there are some pads under the sink and says that they are pretty easy to use. He had to deal with this with Octavia too, when his mom was on a two week bender and couldn’t be bothered to teach her own daughter about her body.

Twenty minutes later Hope emerges from the bathroom, skin pale and eyes red.

“Want me to buy you some chocolate ice cream?” He offers and she nods, tucks herself into his arms so he can give a hug only a dad can give.

Who cries at graduation?

He’s a mess.

It seems like just yesterday Madi was a ten year old little firecracker, with her big brown eyes and wild hair down to her back. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost eight years since the day they adopted her, and now she’s graduating

“Bellamy, are you okay?” Clarke asks, her knuckles white as she grips his hand. He can see how hard she’s trying to hold it together but they both know they only have two and a half more months before Madi is almost 600 miles away at school.

“Not even in the slightest,” he says and they both cry when they watch their daughter walk across the stage and accept her diploma.

“I’m so proud of you, kid,” Bellamy says when Madi joins them after the ceremony. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with only one kid running around the house.”

Madi looks at Clarke and furrows her brow. “Didn’t you tell him?”

Bellamy’s eyes shoot to Clarke. “Tell me what?”

Her hand falls to her stomach and his eyes widen in shock. “Um…surprise?”

Who reads the book in silly voices?

Tobias starts talking much earlier than his older sister and every day Bellamy is shocked at his son’s vocabulary. By the time he’s nearing three he’s already speaking in complete sentences, which is both amusing and terrifying to his parents.

“Daddy, can you read me this please?”

Toby brings a fairy tale book to Bellamy, who grabs his glasses from the table next to him and slides them on just as his son climbs into his lap.

“Once upon a time there was a princess,” Bellamy starts and Toby giggles and claps his hands.

“With voices, Dad!”

Bellamy chuckles and reads the story, making his voice high for the princess and dark and scary for the villain. He hears a content sigh and he looks up to see Clarke standing in the doorway, her hands folded across her chest and her head resting on the door jam. She once told him that she finds him sexiest when he’s being a good dad.

Toby is drifting to sleep when Bellamy reaches the last page.

“And they lived happily ever after.”

Who’s the one against sweets before dinner and who lets it slide?

Toby is four when he discovers his love for caramel.

“Hope, how was school?” Clarke asks from beside him. She’s sitting on the kitchen counter with a full glass of wine in her hand as he stirs the spaghetti sauce on the stove. Every couple of minutes she’ll poke him with her finger so he’ll dip a spoon in to give her a taste.

Hope tells them a story about her English teacher and Toby comes up to him and tugs on the bottom of his shirt.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“Can I have a candy?” He asks and Bellamy frowns.

“Dinner is going to be done soon. How about we wait until after, okay?”

Toby pouts. “But mama always lets me.”

Clarke almost chokes on her wine and Bellamy looks at her with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, does she now?”

“Please,” his wife retorts. “Don’t think I forgot how you gave Madi and Hope pieces of chocolate before school all those years.”

Hope laughs from where she’s doing her homework on the kitchen table. “She’s got you there, pops.”

Who gets rid of the monster in the closet and under the bed?

Toby goes through a phase three months before his fifth birthday where he’s convinced a monster lives in his room.

“Buddy,” Bellamy tells him every night. “There is nothing here, I promise.” Then he proceeds to open the door to the closet, turning on the light to show him that it’s empty. He gets on the floor with a flashlight and checks under the bed to show Toby that nothing is there to scare him.

“Then why do I hear scratching every night?” Toby asks seriously. “It always comes from over there.”

He points to his window and Bellamy’s eyes narrow. “Here?” He asks and his son nods. Bellamy trusts his kids and if Toby says he hears scratching then maybe there is something to that.

It only takes a minute of looking out of Toby’s window for him to see the source of the scratching. He grins and tells his son he’ll be right back. When he walks back into the room, he tells Toby to close his eyes and says that he found someone to help him combat the monsters at night.

And that’s the story of how Toby got his first kitten.

Which parent sneaks veggies into the kids’ dinner and who doesn’t like veggies themselves?

“This is gross.” Toby leans over and nudges Bellamy is the side. “Why does mom make us eat this?”

Bellamy snorts, because if he’s being honest he’s not the biggest fan of vegetable casserole either.

“Mom wants us to go meatless on Mondays, remember? Be nice.”

Jordan and Madi are both home for the week because it’s spring break and they both are picking at their plates like they’d rather be eating anything else.

Clarke is just watching them all with an annoyed look on her face.

“Fine, who wants to order pizza?” They all cheer and she laughs. “Okay, but no pepperoni!”

Who in your OTP does the “hurt my baby and I’ll kill you” speech when their kid brings someone over?

Hope is seventeen when she brings home her first boyfriend.

“I don’t like this,” Bellamy tells Clarke, who rolls her eyes and tells him to calm down. “She’s too young to be dating.”

“Are you kidding me?” Clarke asks. “I was seventeen when we started dating.”

Bellamy snorts. “Yeah, and do you remember how many times we snuck off to have sex?” Clarke pales and he nods. “See?”

“Hope is smart,” she says. “It’s going to be fine.”

The kid’s name is Decker, which is just about the dumbest name he’s ever heard, and he pulls him aside before they have a chance to leave on their first date.

“Listen, kid. I’ve been you, okay? I know how teenage boys think. You hurt my daughter and there will be consequences. Understand?”

Decker is practically shaking in fear, which makes Bellamy feel just a little bad for the kid. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” he says and practically pushes the kid towards Hope. “Now, have a great time at the movies.”

Who goes on all the rides with the kids because their partner gets queasy on rides?

“I can’t believe you guys are having another baby,” Hope says as they get in line for the roller coaster. “Do you two ever just keep it in your pants.”

“Hey!” Bellamy says, reaching down to cover Toby’s ears. “Can you not in front of your little brother, please?”

Hope shrugs. “What? It’s not my fault our parents are bunnies.”

“Dad, can we get a rabbit?” Toby asks, his voice loud because he’s trying to hear himself talk. Bellamy rolls his eyes and lets go of his ears.

“Sorry, little man. I think Obi Wan would eat it.” That’s a lie because they have the laziest fat cat in the world. “And we’re having another baby because we’re still young and we like our kids.”

“Yeah,” Toby says.”I don’t wanna be the only kid when you go off to college.”

Clarke is watching them from the sidelines, her four month along belly just barely on display in a yellow sundress and she waves as they board the ride. She wasn’t feeling great this morning but since they’d had this theme park trip planned for months she’d decided that she would just sit out on rides that might make her sick.

“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to stop having kids,” Hope says as she helps Toby buckle his seat belt.

“Maybe one day,” Bellamy agrees and he throws a wink to his wife. “But not today.”

[doomedandstoned]

Meeting Dead Sisters

~By Shawn Gibson~

Two years ago, a mysterious trio called DEAD SISTERS emerged upon the New England scene, capturing our attention forthwith. A year later, they were playing Maryland Doom Festival. It was high time that Doomed & Stoned followed the trail of holy hell to meet them.

☩

Let's do introductions! Who's who in the band and what do you play?

C: Sister Catherine, I play guitar and whatever else is needed.

M: Sister Meredeth, I worship with my voice and percussion instruments.

K: Sister Kerr, I play guitar and sing.

What is the inspiration and origin of Dead Sisters?

C: We are like-minded in that we wish to guide vibrations to their fullest potential of beauty with the utmost of patience.

M: The inspiration for DS is the beginning of time itself. The origin is the collision of time, place, judgement and reckoning.

K: We are longtime sisters and collaborators; we started by writing and recording our first piece (Sermon) using markers and poster paper. We wanted to react to a prominent and powerful death cult by plugging in as many amplifiers as possible.

How would you describe your music?

C: The pieces are reflections of every path we choose to take under the oppression of a strangling society with temporal experiences of the confusion and excitement that comes with commitment.

M: Our music is pure and divine and moving. It is wholly dedicated to our worshipers.

K: Meditative and cathartic. Wrathful, violent, and fun.

What drives your music?

C: Sorrow and Joy.

M: Our music is driven by ignorance, inequality and hate of today’s society. Hail Hartley.

K: Our connection to one another (we live in different states) and our commitment to spreading the truth.

Please explain the artwork for 'Dead Sisters' (2018) and 'All Your Eyes' (2019).

C: I am very pleased with the depiction.

M: The artwork for our first releases come from a family heirloom. To be preserved before its eminent decay.

K: Animal flesh is often arranged in pleasing shapes so children find it more palatable to eat. Bibles are often presented with illustrations for the same purpose.

Will there be Dead Sisters patches in the future?

C: Patches are the stepping stones to tapestries. Very soon.

M: Soon we will have patches and treasures beyond any dream.

K: We have many ideas for more effective and eye-catching paraphernalia in the future. Remain alert.

What music has influenced your own? Bands like Buried At Sea?

C: La Monte Young, Meth Drinker.

M: Musical influences include Pentagram, Grief, Electric Wizard, Wayne Shorter, Noothgrush, Ahab, Toadliquor, Daughters, Miles Davis, Anal Cunt, Dopethrone, Bongripper, Bill Evans, Pig Destroyer, Napalm Death, Coffinworm, Elvin Jones, John Luther Adams and many others.

K: The Body, Khanate, Lingua Ignota, Morton Feldman, Swans, and the wrongful deaths of innumerable women and children at the hands of pious men.

I ordered a Dead Sisters shirt and cassette from your Bandcamp page. Do the cassettes come with lyrics? I am curious to know the lyrics to your songs!

K: Our lyrics are available to read on our Bandcamp page. We include them with every song. The cassette does not have lyrics.

On your Bandcamp page, one of your tags for your music says anti-Christian? Could you talk about that a little bit?

C: Christianity is an illusion that has been shoved upon the residents of our society as a way to keep Feudalism alive. We choose not to turn a blind eye to true sin by addressing hypocrisy instigated by the bourgeoisie. If there is any confusion, I will clear it up now: Nazism has NO place in any world.

M: Anti-Christian tags are for clarity, yet occasionally remain unnoticed. Society is an illusion.

K: Child-threatening death cults have no place in a healthy society. Abuse apologists and master manipulators should not hold power. Is a book which promotes violence and othering an appropriate rulebook? Much so-called Christian art is very beautiful. People and life are beautiful. Some ideas are not.

What is a fantastic book that has blown your mind?

C: Wisconsin Death Trip is my favorite picture book.

M: No comment.

K: I enjoy reading utopian science fiction. I just finished The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin (more of an anarchist perspective and very moving, LeGuin’s short stories are wonderful too). My favorite book of this type is Island by Aldous Huxley.

What makes the Sisters laugh?

M: My sisters bring me much humor.

ALL YOUR EYES by Dead Sisters

What bands are Dead Sisters listening to these days?

C: Iggy Pop, Curtis Mayfield, The Body.

M: dim, Angel Morgue, Greylock, The Cult, Spectral Voice, Blood Incantation, Thou, cttboto, Thin Lizzy, Fistula and Churchburn.

K: Kali Malone, Blackwater Holylight, Body Void, Dreamcrusher, Low, Malevich.

I saw a flyer on your Instagram that you played with Chained To The Bottom Of The Ocean! I love them! I'm glad to have seen them at New Brookland Tavern in Columbia, South Carolina. How was that show? I wish I could have been at that show seeing both of you live!

C: We did great. I made one new friend.

M: Our inaugural ceremony was a cataclysm of divine tools and true worshipers. DUSK-Providence, RI is a genuine temple.

K: Playing with Chained was a great experience, and extremely loud. We hope to gather our amps with them again soon. They are touring in November to support their new album; everyone should endeavor to see them. We share a mutual love of Thou’s music.

I was just four minutes and forty seconds into 'All Your Eyes' (2019) and holy fuck! I was almost knocked out when it got heavier.

M: A holy fuck indeed.

K: Thank you. One of our goals is to reward the patient and attentive listener with a powerful experience.

'All Your Eyes' (2019), which inspires me to get a tattoo of that song somehow, is twenty-one minutes and fifty seconds long. 'Dead Sisters' (2018) has "Call To Worship" which is fifteen minutes and fifty seconds. "Sermon" is thirty-seven and fourteen seconds long. "Benediction" twenty-one minutes and thirty-six seconds long. Very heavy slabs to consume!

C: The TABs are rather light.

M: Temporal matters of our recorded worships are required for true enlightenment.

K: Getting the tattoo may likely take less time than listening to our cassette. You might try doing both simultaneously. Why would you mark up your beautiful body like that? You should be ashamed.

What has been an awkward situation for Dead Sisters?

C: Every time a worship musician gives us a misinformed shoutout.

M: An awkward moment for my sisters and I occurs when places of worship cannot support our holy current.

Do you play in other bands? Would you tell us if you did?

C: I would never.

M: Other projects include choir, our badminton team and heavy seasonal gardening.

What is in the future for Dead Sisters?

C: Many drink tickets and blown fuses.

M: The future of DS is terrifying and certain.

K: Stay with us. Without you we are nothing. Several releases are imminent, one of which will be very substantial.

Dead Sisters by Dead Sisters

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day One Hundred Forty-Eight: A Cat Walks Past ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Hyūga Hiashi ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: River Runs Deep ] [ AO3 Link ]

For as long as she can remember, Hinata has...seen things. Things...that other people can’t.

When she was young, her father simply assumed it was make-believe - creatures and beings from her imagination that she would play with and talk to.

...but her mother knew better.

Hanako had seen them too.

Out in the garden behind their home, hidden away from the rest of the village and their superstitions, she had shown her daughter the world of kami and yōkai. For on her mother’s side, and her mother’s mother, pale eyes - all seeing, as each would call them - could peer behind the veil of the mortal plane, and into that of the gods, and spirits.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” Hanako had explained when Hinata first clung to her yukata in fright at the sight of a little kami. “The spirits are powerful, yes...but they are to be respected. So long as you give them what is due, you will have nothing to fear.”

At least...so she’d first claimed. Slowly, she introduced Hinata to the idea of yōkai. Of those spirits more in tune with darkness than light.

“For all good things, so too must there be bad. Yes, some spirits may try to hurt you if they know you can see them...so you must be careful, Hinata. Be open to the gift you carry...but use it wisely. Do not be afraid...but be wary. And remember: such a gift will be coveted by some, and feared by many. Only tell those you trust. People with narrow minds and fearful hearts will harm what they do not understand.”

Hanako was a good and patient teacher. But like so many wells of knowledge...she was lost before she could be fully explored. In the weeks that followed the birth of her second child, her health declined...and Hyūga Hanako was no more.

And so many of Hinata’s questions were left unanswered.

She had nowhere else to turn.

At first, she attempted to ask her father. But he denounced such claims: told her that her mother had been delusional and sick. “Do not follow in her footsteps, Hinata,” he told her, gaze stern and earning a flinch. “There are no such things as spirits. Or, if there were...they abandoned us long ago.”

While many of Japan held such teachings in high regard, the true belief was slowly dying. Humans, in their greed and ingenuity, were slowly forgetting their gods and myths. Miko were being stripped of their power, and temples were dwindling in visitors. Only the old seemed to cling to the supernatural of their land.

And those who could see, as rare as they were.

Both warned by her mother and chastised by her father, Hinata resolved herself to bury her gift - ignore its visions and pretend the veil could no longer be pierced. Her head was kept bowed, her eyes on the ground. To her studies she kept, awaiting the day she, like her mother, would be assigned a husband, and start the cycle all over again.

The Spring of her seventeenth year, Hinata awaits outside a shop where her father has gone to do business. Dressed in a lilac kimono, she idly holds her bag at her front with both hands, staring out without seeing. Every time they go out - which is often - Hiashi has her dressed like a doll, hoping to catch a young man’s eye. He’d prefer to have her married soon, hence taking her into the village at every opportunity.

So far...it hasn’t worked as planned.

...Hinata hates going into the village. It’s crowded, carrying a myriad of smells...some of which are unpleasant. And unlike their rural estate, it feels so...dead.

Only a few tengu sit on a nearby roof, hawking and smoking as the humans pass beneath them, completely unaware. Hinata avoids looking at them directly, eyes held to a neutral place on the building across the street.

She might do her best to ignore what she sees...but a small part of her still finds a kind of relief when she sees them. A reminder that the spirits do still exist. She isn’t crazy. Nor was her mother. And humans haven’t yet completely rooted them out.

While yōkai aren’t always a pleasant thing to behold, Hinata still can’t help small smiles when she sees little spirits toddling about. Arguing tanuki ambling along, kitsune fanning their faces as they gossip. She even once saw an oni come down to their well to take a drink before making his way further down the mountain.

She’d refused to go outside for three days after that, just to be sure he was gone.

Her favorites are the little kodama that linger in the trees around their home. Such curious little things, and the only ones she interacts with directly anymore.

The thought brings a small smile to her face, lost in her daydreams as Hiashi’s voice barely carries out to her. They’re only broken when something unusual passes by in the road before her.

It takes a moment to realize why the cat catches her eye. Sleek, with black fur that stands on end around the scruff of his neck, he paces by before hopping up onto a half wall across the street. Beginning to bathe, he washes at his face, tail flicking idly.

But, wait...no…

...tails. He has two.

Hinata stiffens. Is...is that…?

As though sensing her staring, the feline looks up mid-stroke, paw raised as ruddy eyes stare right back.

...it feels like he can see her very soul.

Unable to look away, Hinata remains even as Hiashi comes back, muttering something about the shopkeep she doesn’t hear. Then on he goes about her still standing here without a single beau approaching and giving a hint of interest. Something something look more appealing, something something flutter your eyes and give a coy smile.

She doesn’t listen. She’s still staring at the nekomata, who still stares back. His eyes narrow.

“...Hinata!”

Startling as her father raises his voice, she breaks her gaze to look at him. “I...I’m sorry.” Whatever he said, it’s sure an apology is necessary. There’s always something to be blamed on her.

“Come, we’re going home. I’ll not find what I need today.”

Still a bit dazed, she simply falls into step.

Behind her, unseen, the cat follows.

Back home, Hiashi simply takes his leave, not having any further tasks for her. Yet unsettled, she moves into the back garden, sitting on a stone bench and watching mushi flutter about the flowers her mother planted before she died.

“Are you really without a husband?”

Gasping, Hinata looks over to see a man leaning on the corner of the house nearby. Arms folded, he hooks an ankle over the other, posture utterly lax and expression aloof. Dressed in black hakama and a matching haori, he looks rather unremarkable...save for the velvety ears atop his head, and the twin tails that twitch behind his knees. At his hip is a sheathed blade.

It...it’s the nekomata? Did he follow her?!

Too flabbergasted to have an answer, she just...gapes at him.

“...and that confirms you can see more than your typical human,” he goes on, tone drawling. “Funny...you don’t look like a miko…”

“I...I-I’m not…”

“But you can see like one.”

“...yes?” In truth, Hinata knows little of miko beyond the vague rumors of what they’re said to do...or, have done.

“...guess that explains it.”

“E...explains what?”

“Why you’re not married.”

A blink.

Seeing she’s confused, he sighs. “If anyone finds out about your sight...they’ll call you a witch. While powers like that would have seen you revered in years past...times are changing. Humans are losing sight of what true power and enlightenment is. You know how hard it is for someone like you to find a mate?”

Hinata’s cheeks go pink at the word ‘mate’ rather than ‘husband’.

“...but I was also unsure because miko often marry gods.”

“I...w-what?!”

“Didn’t know that particular tidbit, did you?” At that, the nekomata grins, revealing sharp teeth. “It’s true...miko are said to be the bridges between the mortal and the divine. Many take kami as mates. So when that fool you have for a father said you were still looking...it made me...curious.”

In a blink, he’s at her front, a long nail under her chin and lifting her face. Stiff in surprise, Hinata doesn’t dare move. Up close, she can see his red eyes, squinted as he examines her more closely, pupils shrunk to slits. Thick black paint lines his eyes, accented with red. Like most spirits, he’s completely without flaw - there’s not a single blemish in his skin. His hair - though untamed in the back - seems otherwise settled perfectly. Just as it should be. And he smells like incense smoke.

And blood.

After a long pause, he gives her another grin. “You’re pretty for a human,” he notes.

“T...thank you…?”

“Not sure one should accept compliments from a yōkai. Though...you aren’t exactly typical, are you?” He taps a finger to his chin, looking her over again.

Hinata can’t help the feeling she’s being appraised.

“So...what do you say, little veil-cutter?”

“Say? Say about - about what?”

“Your father wants you to find a husband. And what better husband for a miko than someone from the spirit world…?”

Slowly, pale eyes go wide. She -? But -? He -?

Still grinning like a cheshire, he amends, “I might not be a proper kami, but...better a yōkai than a human that would hate you for what you really are...right?” A hand waves. “I suppose for your sake I can go through the typical courtships your kind favor. I’ll pay your father a visit a little later. In a human guise, of course. But I think there might be some advantages to having a miko around.”

“B-but I’m not a -?”

“Maybe not trained, but you’ve clearly got the talents.” Red eyes flash. “...and those talents can be...useful.”

At a loss, Hinata can only watch as he leaps with feline grace to the wall.

“Before I go, I’ll give you my name: Uchiha Sasuke. And you will see me again.” With a wink, he disappears.

Heart pounding in her chest, Hinata tries to rationalize what just happened. A yōkai - a nekomata, no less - has decided to...to...marry her? Why?!

She can’t help but wonder what her mother would think.

...and yet…

He has a point. Her father has always insisted her talent is a sign of derangement. In this day and age, miko and those like them are condemned as witches where they were once called upon to convey the spirits’ messages. Maybe...she really would be better off with a husband not human.

Nibbling her thumbnail worriedly, Hinata glances back to the house. He said he would come calling later...should she warn her father? Tell him the man is a fraud? A yōkai? Knowing Hiashi, he’d only dismiss her. There’s little point.

...but does she really want to marry a spirit?!

     Gah, this isn't as fleshed out as I wanted Dx I didn't have time to research as much as I wanted to, so...sorry if this is a little bare-bones. I LOVE Japanese mythology, but I wasn't fully prepared to pull this off as...detailedly as I wanted.      Anywho, have a back-in-time verse mixed with myth to get a villager!Hinata and nekomata!Sasuke! Nekomata, from what little I could speed-read this late, are...not very nice. Which, to be fair...some things canon!Sasuke does aren't very nice, so...it's hopefully a believable parallel.      I might do more of this if a prompt allows, and hopefully have more time to look into the time period I want and the myth behind the yōkai more properly. For now...this is all I got lol      Anywho, time for bed! Thanks for reading~

[bee-kathony]

I’ll Never Love Again: Part 3/4 - “Commitment” 

written by @julesbeauchamp & @curlsgetdemgurls

a/n: thank you so much for your love on the previous chapters! we hope you’ll enjoy seeing their commitment to each other... several decades later 

Part I / Part II 

May 2005

She opened her eyes slowly to the early morning sun, and looked over at her still sleeping husband -- laying on his back with his hands folded across his stomach. Claire had been hoping he wouldn’t wake at the crack of dawn like he always did, because she had a special birthday plan to wake him up.

Pushing her side of the covers away, Claire moved to her knees and carefully pulled back the sheet covering her husband’s waist. Even in middle age, Jamie had a fit body, always at the gym, taking care of himself -- not that Claire minded in the slightest.

She didn’t want to straddle him, because that would surely wake him, so instead she turned her body to face him and placed one hand lightly on his bare thigh. Jamie started sleeping naked again when their kids had grown too old to barge into their room at all hours of the day, and for this Claire was thankful.

As she moved his hand gently on his thigh, she looked down between his legs, and saw his semi-erect cock twitch slightly. Claire’s heart started to race, nervous that Jamie would wake up before she wanted him to.

Leaning over his body, careful to keep her curls from tickling his skin, Claire touched his cock with one finger, from base to tip. Seeing that he only squirmed, but didn’t stir, made her aroused and so Claire took hold of his cock in her hand and placed her lips around the tip. He tasted salty and warm, she smiled to herself and opened her mouth for more of him. As her tongue swirled on his head, tasting the pre-cum that had started to ooze, all of a sudden, Claire felt a large hand on her shoulder.

She turned her face to look at him, and saw two squinty, sleep filled blue eyes peering down at her, with a smirk on the owner’s face.

“Happy 45th Birthday, Jamie.” Claire smiled, and then dipped her head to place a kiss on his cock.

“Are ye tryin’ to give me a heart attack, Sassenach?” Jamie grunted.

“Something like that,” Claire smirked and continued to suck on his length. Jamie groaned, arching his back off the bed and moving his hand to tangle in her curls, which had streaks of grey in them.

“Claire…” Jamie sighed, “I canna --”

She looked up just in time to see Jamie shut his eyes tightly, his other hand twisting the sheets and then she felt him spill himself into her mouth. Claire nearly gagged -- it had been awhile since she’d done this to him, but swallowed, and pulled back, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“I’m dead, Sassenach.” Jamie said softly, reaching out his hand for her. Claire climbed on top of him, laying her body flat over his, nuzzling her face into his neck -- she was thankful that she too, was naked… but that might have more to do with their extracurricular activities the night before.

“Would you like me to sing?” Claire smiled against his chest, placing a soft kiss there.

“Oh aye, I would.” Jamie grinned, sliding his hands over the small of her back and finally resting on her round arse. Even as they got older, Claire’s arse was still firm -- a bit more plump, which Jamie liked, but firm nonetheless.

“But first,” Jamie grabbed both her hips to lift her slightly off of him, and understanding his meaning, Claire reached in between their bodies and took hold of his cock, guiding it to her center.

“Happy Birthday… to you,” Claire started to sing, as she rose off his chest and placed a hand on his belly, sinking down on his hard cock.

She rolled her hips, her breasts bouncing slightly as Jamie pushed himself off of the bed. “Happy birthday to you,” she sang.

Jamie thrust upwards, squeezing her hips, and moved one calloused hand over her breast, kneading and flicking her nipple. Claire’s breath was becoming heavy and quick, making it harder for her to sing.

“Happy,” she moaned and rested her hand on one of Jamie’s knees behind her. “Birthday dear,” Jamie cried out, “Jamie.” Claire sighed, rolling her hips in a figure eight movement and finally moaned as her orgasm took over her body and she fell against his chest.

A moment later after they had taken a breath, Claire lifted up to look at him, brushing a finger across his lips. “Happy birthday to you,” she pressed her lips against his, kissing him deeply.

“Thank ye for making my birthday so good every year for the last seventeen years, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered against her lips, his hand brushing a few curls away from her face.

“You do age like a good wine,” Claire remarked with a smile.  Since the day she had met him, his gorgeous face didn’t change a lot, it simply got better -- a few lines were gracing the sides of his eyes and a new one on his forehead because he worried about the children so much. His fiery curls were starting to fade into a lighter auburn colour and he discovered his first white hair the other morning.

“Thank ye for the compliment,” Jamie chuckled softly, kissing her nose, “So do ye, Sassenach. I like the grey,” Jamie’s finger touched the grey streak in her hair.

“That’s what happens when you marry someone older than you by three years,” Claire smirked.

“It’s beautiful,” Jamie lifted her chin, “Ye’re beautiful, Sorcha.”

Claire sealed their lips once more, “Smooth talk like that can get you everything you want, Fraser.”

“I already have everything I want, Fraser,” Jamie admitted with a broad smile, his index finger stroking her upper lip. “I never thought at forty five I would be so happy, so fulfilled, so peaceful but I am and tis’ all thanks to ye, Claire.”

Jamie hadn’t touched a glass of alcohol after the night of Claire’s graduation and their argument. It had not been easy, neither for him and for her -- who lived in the constant fear of seeing a relapse but they had trusted one another completely and together, took small steps towards his recovery. “I’m so proud of you,” Claire could barely hide the emotion in her voice and her eyes were shiny with tears about to spill but they were not sad tears -- they were happy ones. “And thank you for allowing me to see not only your good side but also the less appealing one and most importantly, thank you for trusting me enough to let me help you.”

“We built a good life together, I canna wait to see what lays ahead for us for the many years to come.”

“I can see lots of love,” Claire winked, kissing his cheek, “And graduations, birthdays, weddings, grandchildren…”

“Och, we have many more years before grandchildren,” Jamie chuckled, “I ken it will happen one day but there’s still time.”

Their oldest daughter Flora was sixteen, Skye turned fourteen in the fall and their latest, Henry was eight. They did have plenty of time to think about grandchildren but they also knew how fast life passed by and they were determined to enjoy every moment.

“Yes, we’ve got all the time in the world,” Claire pulled him close and kissed him tenderly, her legs tangled with his. They kissed thoroughly for a long time, being in their own bubble, in their own world -- together and not a care in the world.

******

After reluctantly getting up, Jamie and Claire took a shower together -- that took longer than planned once Claire ended up pinned against the wall while Jamie kneeled down and had what he referred as his “english breakfast.” 

They got dressed and went downstairs to find the kids at the kitchen table having breakfast together. After a few kisses and hugs for Jamie by the children and real breakfast consumed, everyone left for their respective activities. Claire left for the hospital and the kids left with Jamie for school before he went to his studio to start some work.

In the early afternoon, Claire left the hospital and made her way to Carfax’s Close to surprise him. She walked up the familiar stairs, remembering the thousands of times she had come here. Once, Jamie didn’t allow anyone to visit him at his studio, but after their argument that night about the car crash and his fiancée, he had welcomed Claire’s presence and even sometimes preferred when she was there to keep him company when she could.

With a light knock to warn him that she was entering, Claire walked through the door and immediately stopped in her tracks.

Jamie was sitting on his stool, not painting, not drawing. Simply sitting on his stool and staring at an unopened bottle of whisky that was sitting on the table nearby.

“I’m no goin’ to drink it, Sassenach.” Jamie said without looking at her.

She pulled off her jacket, walked into the studio and draped it over the couch. “I didn’t think you were.”

“Tis a gift…” He finally met her eye, “From my friend Charlie from University, I suppose he doesna ken about my wee addiction.” Jamie half laughed and then sighed, looking back at the bottle. Claire came to stand beside him, sliding her arm around his shoulder, and he leaned his head against her chest.

“A long time ago, I woulda craved this, mo nighean donn.” Jamie moved his arm around her waist to pull her closer. “Even after that horrible night, I woulda been tempted to drink it and forget what I’d done to ye.”

“But now?”

“But now,” Jamie turned his face to look up at his beautiful wife that had stood by him for so long, “All I crave is ye.” He turned her body so that she was facing him and she straddled him, wrapping both legs around his waist as he put his hands on her back. “Ye are a great surgeon, Claire. Yer a great mother, a wonderful wife. There isna much that ye canna do.”

Claire blushed and buried her face into his neck, breathing in the scent of him, acrylics and his own personal musk. “There’s plenty that I can’t do, Jamie.”

“Ye canna cook, that’s for sure.” Jamie laughed, squeezing her arse gently, making her squirm on his lap. “Ye canna… well. As I said,” He pressed his lips against hers, “Ye can do anythin’ ye put yer mind to.”

“Well yes, that I do, but it’s stubbornness,” she pinched the tip of his nose.

“I still dinna know what ye decide to spend yer life wi’ a loser like me but I’m thankful,” He tried to bite at her finger, but she was too quick.

“Oh stop it, you’re stuck with me forever and nothing you can say will make me change my mind at this point,” Claire kissed him.

“I’ll take that bottle outside, put it on the stairs and I’m sure someone will grab it!” Claire laughed, and untangled herself from Jamie’s lap. When she reached for the bottle, however, she couldn’t control her hand as it started to shake and before her or Jamie could stop it, the bottle went crashing to the floor. Glass and whisky covered the ground, and Claire stood still, staring down at her hand with a subtle tremor.

“It’s okay, Sassenach. Dinna move,” Jamie said quietly and tip toed his way to the small kitchen in his studio to grab towels and something to collect the glass in.

“It’s gotten worse, hasn’t it?” He said when he returned, and bent down to mop up the spilled liquid.

“Only slightly more so than the last time I noticed.” Claire said and feeling defeated, she plopped down on the stool, careful to not let her feet touch the broken glass. “I thought…”

“The doctor said that Parkinson’s can be a slowly developing disease, mo ghraidh,” Jamie did his best to collect the glass into a small pile but left it to attend to his wife. “Claire, look at me,” He tilted her chin up with his hand.

“Yer hand might shake a wee bit from time to time, and ye have that new medication to help with some of the anxiety.” Jamie brushed his thumb across her cheek.

“I know that. But if the shakin gets worse, I’ll have to stop working at the hospital and I don’t want to do that Jamie!” Claire started to cry, and leaned into his body, feeling his arms wrap around her.

“I used to ken a man who had the disease -- I was just a lad, but he managed alright. He had good days when the shaking wasna so much.” Jamie stroked her hair, softly whispering things in gaelic she couldn’t understand but eased her nonetheless. “And the man had bad days, when his whole body wouldn’t do what he wanted it to, and he couldna stop the moving.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Claire looked up at him, and he wiped her tears away.

“Because, Sassenach, ye will have good days and bad days, that’s just how life works. But that old man also had a wife that loved him and she took care of him everyday. I saw how his life was better because of her in it.” Jamie kissed her softly, “I vow to ye now, Sassenach -- that when ye can no longer hold yer own spoon or write a letter, that I’ll be there to help ye every step of the way… just as ye have been there for me.”

“Oh, Jamie.” Claire sighed and pulled his face to hers once again, kissing him with all her strength.

Jamie kissed her back and leaned to the side to grab a paintbrush before presenting it to her, “Let’s paint.”

“I can’t paint and you know that,” Claire looked at him amused.

“We can paint, together,” Jamie took her hand, “Come on.”

“And what do you want to paint?” Claire raised her eyebrow, looking at him amused while he set up a blank canvas and prepared some colours.

“I dinna ken, whatever ye feel like painting,” Jamie smiled at her, making his way to the record player and put on a Stevie Nicks record on.

Claire looked at him, her mouth curling into a smirk as the first notes of “Blue Denim” went off, “Now that takes me back.”

Jamie dipped his brush into the blue paint, “Ye hypnotized me that night, mo nighean.” He began to paint big strokes over the canvas and Claire watched, always fascinated.

Claire dipped her own brush into some of the red paint, but she had something else that she wanted to paint instead of the canvas. She brushed the paint quickly on Jamie’s forearm, smearing the red and he gasped, looking up at her with an open mouth.

“Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp…” he smirked, “Ye take my good paints and ye dinna use them on the art.”

Claire bit her bottom lip, looking up at her husband, “Oh… but you are a work of art.”

Jamie squinted his eyes at her, and then decided two could play at this game. He reloaded his brush with blue paint and swiped it across her chest. “Fair’s fair.”

“My dress!” Claire laughed and looked down at herself, smudged with blue paint. “You’ll pay for this, Fraser.” She swiped at him again but he dodged her, running behind the canvas. With the music blasting and her heart racing, Claire chased him around the studio with her paintbrush in hand.

Jamie was trapped in a corner with nowhere to turn, so Claire walked up to him, pressing herself against his body so that the blue smudge on his shirt. “Let’s make purple,” she sighed and kissed him.

“See,” he growled, lifting her legs and wrapping them around his waist. “Ye do know how to paint.” Jamie laughed, kissing her neck and carried her over to a tarp near the easel, laying her down on her back.

Claire quickly removed her dress and panties, while Jamie made an effort to rid himself of his clothes. He stood above her, naked, his cock throbbing and she licked her lips. “Jamie,” she sighed and held up her hands. He laughed, turning to the side and placing both of his hands into the paint before climbing on top of her body.

“It’ll be cold, Sassenach.” Jamie grinned and then placed both of his paint covered hands over her breasts, squeezing and kneading until her chest and stomach was covered in paint.

She shivered slightly, and moaned as the cool paint covered her skin. She arched her back, smearing the paint over Jamie and placed both her hands on his back to press him against her. Jamie slid home, rolling his hips and chest, gliding over her. Together they rolled around in the paint, laughing and giggling like teenagers, lost in their love.

[averagemarvelbitch]

The Billionaire and The Mechanic / STONY

Summary: Steve is a billionaire who worked hard to get where he is. He meets Tony, the mechanic, and falls in love faster than he ever thought possible. But Tony has some issues to work through, and some secrets he’s clearly not ready to share, and Steve’s friends, ever so overprotective, are not really trusting of this strange mechanic who seems to have the billionaire wrapped around his little finger.

They soon find out that loving someone isn’t always easy, but it might be worth it in the end.

Chapters: 5/?

Tagging: @huntersociopathavenger @inmyownweirdworld

Read it on AO3

—

Tony knew the whole interrogation debacle hadn’t been Steve’s fault. The blonde had spent an entire week trying to convince the mechanic that they shouldn’t go. At first, Tony had been sad, thinking maybe Steve was embarrassed of introducing a nobody covered in grease to his rich friends, but the thought had been quickly dismissed after his lover spent forty minutes explaining how his friends were too overprotective and how he was absolutely terrified that they would somehow manage to scare the mechanic away. At the time, Tony had reassured Steve time and again that there was no way in hell anyone would be able to scare him away. And he had firmly believed that because nothing in this world could be worse than the life he’d led before coming to NY. So, when the day arrived, Tony put on his rich boy mask, the one he hadn’t used since his last encounter with Ty a good year ago, and got ready to face wherever Steve’s friends could throw at him. The thing is… He was expecting something else entirely.

Tony was used to a very particular kind of rich people, the kind that would laugh obnoxiously while talking about their trips to Europe and then discuss the newest scandal involving some politician’s daughter and another clueless millionaire between flutes of expensive champagne. And so, the mechanic was expecting to meet someone like Tiberion, who threw money around in order to show everyone just how rich and powerful he was, or maybe someone like Justin, who monopolized every conversation, always talking about how great he was (spoiler alert, he really wasn’t). He was most certainly not expecting to meet a bunch of very down to Earth people in a karaoke bar, drinking and eating onion rings and, basically, just having fun. They looked so normal, so chill, that Tony didn’t even notice his mask slipping, dropping his guard a little bit more with every word exchanged. And, of course, that had been his doom.

He liked to think that he would have handled the situation a lot better if he’d been prepared for it, or at least expecting it. He thought maybe they would give him the shovel talk, the you better not be after his money talk, or something along these lines, so the sudden accusation that he was an imposter felt like a punch to the stomach. Because it was true. He was, technically, an imposter. He was lying about his name and hiding a whole lot of other things from Steve. And, at that moment, it was like his brain lit up. I could be putting Steve in danger. I could be putting all of them in danger. He kept repeating it again and again and again inside his mind, in an endless, horrible loop. He couldn’t tell them the truth, not the real truth, but Steve was right there and he was looking at Tony with such a confused and hurt look. So he spilled the story. He told the truth where he could, carefully omitting the things he knew would get him into trouble. And when he was done, he felt awful. It was like reliving all of it again… Finding the evidence, the phone call, DUM-E trying to protect him, running away… He needed to leave. He needed to be alone, away from everything and everyone. And so he left in a hurry, leaving behind a very distraught Steve.

The calls came during the night and then again the next morning. Every time his phone rang, Tony would take it and stare at it, fighting the urge to answer it just to hear Steve’s soothing voice again. But he couldn’t. He had to be strong. So every time, with tears in his eyes, he would press the decline button, hoping that maybe the blonde would take a hint. He had just ignored yet another call from Steve when he heard the unmistakable noise of a motorcycle outside his shop. He looked up just in time to see Bucky taking off his helmet. The man looked sheepishly at Tony.

“Hey”.

“I got the message. No need for a repeat performance”, Tony said, turning back to the engine he was supposed to fix.

“I deserve that. But come on, just give me a chance to explain myself?”

“Explain? You asked an FBI agent to do a background check on me. I’m pretty sure that’s a crime”.

“Yeah, well, so is creating a new identity, so I guess we’re even”, Bucky replied and immediately shook his head, regretting his words, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just defensive. I really am sorry about the whole FBI thing. But I had to make sure you weren’t just trying to hurt Stevie”.

“You know what’s insane?”, Tony suddenly said, raising his head to look at Bucky, “The fact that you don’t seem to realize how insane it is that you ran a background check on someone your friend has been seeing for less than two weeks! It was a complete invasion of privacy and, honestly? It’s creepy as fuck.”

“I know. Sam chewed me out for that. So did Coulson. They want to apologize to you as well, by the way. They were pretty pissed at me after what happened”.

“Well, good, at least some of you have common sense”.

“Look, I am really sorry, I truly am, but after what happened with Ophelia I just couldn’t take the chance, alright?”

Tony threw him a confused look. “Who’s Ophelia?”

“Shit. Okay. Please, don’t tell Stevie I’m telling you this because this is something you two should talk about yourselves later, but I’m gonna give you the short version”, he said with a sigh, sitting down on a stool nearby, “Stevie started the company after we came back. We started small and then suddenly we were the biggest thing in the security business. That’s when he met Ophelia. She was beautiful, charismatic and supposedly super in love with Stevie. She was the perfect woman. She fooled all of us. Turns out she was a spy for HYDRA Corp. Stevie spent months giving her everything she wanted, clothes, perfumes, even a goddamn car, and she was tricking him the entire time. Nearly broke him when he found out. So yeah, you could say I’m a little overprotective”.

“Just so you know”, Tony started, getting closer to him, “I dropped some oil on that stool right before you got here”.

“Yeah, I know, I can feel it”.

“Look, what you did was shitty as hell”, the mechanic replied, sitting down next to him on the clean stool, “I understand your reasons, but it was still fucking shitty. I had to take a lot of shit from a lot of people before and that’s not gonna fly anymore. I really like Steve, but I’m not going to let people treat me like crap. Got that?”

Bucky nodded, biting his lip, apprehensive.

“So I accept your apology”.

At that moment, Tony’s phone rang again, a photo of Steve making faces flashing on the screen.

“So, you’re going to take that?”

The mechanic looked down at his phone and shook his head. “No, I don’t think I will”.

“Look, I know I screwed up…”, Bucky started to say, suddenly looking desperate.

“It’s not that. It’s just… my old life, the one I ran from. It’s too complicated and I don’t want to drag Steve into it”.

“I get that. And, to be honest, I’d much rather if you didn’t, but that dumbass is head over heels in love with you. You’re going to break his heart”.

“It’s breaking my heart too”, Tony whispered to himself, checking the missed call on his cell phone.

Bucky got up, a very noticeable stain of oil on his ass. “Look, I can’t make you call him, but… just think about it before you make any decisions, okay? Also, I promise we’ll behave from now on”.

And with a last nod, he got on his motorcycle and drove away.

---

There was nothing on his fridge except for an expired carton of milk and a very old apple. Steve closed its door, sighing loudly. Of course there wasn’t any food; after all, he’d been spending all of his time at Tony’s lately. God, he missed the mechanic. He missed coming home to a smiling face. He missed cooking dinner between loving touches and stolen kisses. And he missed falling asleep next to his mechanic, nose buried on his hair, smelling that scent that was so naturally Tony. Steve had always fallen hard and fast for people, ever since he was a boy. But this… this was ridiculous. He’d known Tony for less than two weeks, for God’s sake, and he couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop picturing their life together. He couldn’t help but imagine what their future would be like. And now he wasn’t even sure they would have a future. Feeling utterly depressed, the blonde decided he wasn’t that hungry after all and left the kitchen with slumped shoulders and a lost look in his eyes.

It was almost eight when the doorbell rang. He thought about ignoring it, almost sure it was Bucky coming to apologize yet again after Steve ignored his calls, but then he remembered that his friend had a key and had never once been shy on using it. When the doorbell rang again, he sighed and decided to get up and answer it.

“Yes?” He asked grumpily in the intercom.

“Uh, it’s Tony. Mind if I come up?”

He stared at the intercom for a moment, as if his brain was trying to make sense of what his ears had just heard.

“Steve? I can… I can leave if you want, it’s ok…”

“NO”, he shouted, grabbing the corners of the intercom like he could grab Tony through it and pull him into the apartment, “Please, come up!”

He buzzed Tony in and then looked around and then at himself frantically. He was wearing a pair of old sweatpants that had definitely seen better days and a colorful t-shirt that said born to be bi, which Sam had given him last Christmas as a gag gift for their Secret Santa. He thought about changing quickly, but the soft knock on the door told him there wasn’t enough time. Resigned, he opened the door with a sheepish look on his face.

As predicted, Tony burst out laughing at the sight of him, “Nice shirt”.

“Thanks. What are you doing here?”

The mechanic bit his lip, looking down at the box of pizza he was holding and then back at Steve.

“I brought food. I thought maybe we could eat? So, can I come in or…?”

Steve quickly stepped to the side, opening the door wider for Tony to go through, which he did. He looked around the apartment, whistling.

“I can’t believe we hung out on my dumpster of an apartment when we could’ve been hanging out here”, he put the pizza on the table nearby and walked to the nearest couch, touching it, “You know, I love how you’re the perfect mixture between fancy rich and Brooklyn broke”.

Steve huffed out a laugh, putting his hands on his pockets as he walked towards Tony, stopping a few feet from him.

“I’m sorry about what happened that night”.

“It wasn’t your fault. And Bucky and I talked so we’ll be fine eventually”, the mechanic replied, shrugging, and then sighed, “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls. Or your texts”.

“I get it. You wanted to be alone”.

“I did. I’m going to be honest, I thought about ghosting you. Not because of what happened exactly, but because… There’s a lot about me that you don’t know, Steve, a lot that I’m not willing to tell yet. I’m dangerous to be around. People I love tend to be hurt”.

“I can take a hit”, Steve replied full of conviction and a determined look.

“You might take a lot more than just one hit”.

“For you?”, he asked, stepping closer to Tony and touching his cheek softly, making the mechanic close his eyes with a sigh, “I can do this all day”.

The brunette laughed. “What? You can touch my face all day?”

One step closer, their noses touching, “I can fight for you all day. I can fight for you all my life if that’s what it takes. Because you’re worth it”.

Tony quickly put his hands on Steve’s neck, pulling him into a passionate kiss.

“The pizza is gonna get cold”, Tony complained between kisses, “I brought your favorite”.

Steve smiled, kissing his mouth and then, gently, his nose. “Pizza first, then. And dessert after. Also, how did you know where I lived?”

“Okay, another piece of information about me: I’m an amazing hacker. I once hacked the Pentagon on a dare. Let me tell you, the agents what showed up at my door were not amused”, he said, smiling when he heard Steve laugh. The blonde pulled him closer and they both walked to the kitchen, taking plates and glasses and bringing them to the living room.

Later that night, Tony watched Steve snore softly, the movie completely forgotten.  He smiled and wiggled himself closer to the bigger man, feeling Steve’s arm tightening around him, not letting him go. He closed his eyes and for the first time in a very long time, he thought to himself… I’m home.

---

Meanwhile, a very well dressed man was standing in front of Tony’s auto shop, staring at it as he smoked his cigar. He stayed there, watching the windows above the shop for a long time. He threw the expensive cigar on the floor, stepping on it with his very shiny shoes before taking a cell phone from the inner pocket of his jacket.

“Stane? I have some information that might interest you”.

---

Leave a comment and/or ask to be tagged // Feed my caffeine addiction

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[blackash-hq]

ALEXIUS BARINOV is FORTY years old. He looks a lot like JOSEPH MORGAN and is known as the THE WILD CARD. ALEXIUS is an OC, played by COURTNEY.

ʙᴇғᴏʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴜᴛʙʀᴇᴀᴋ 

One drunkard, dick of a father, that never failed to win the ‘ neglect your child and otherwise let money do the raising ’ award. His wicked mother who, when she was actually around, treated him just as badly if not worse, any attentions given to him simply a way for her to explore her own disturbed mind and twisted sexual ways. This is what he would always remember of the people who were his biological family; albeit, there was one thing that would stick with him more than the rest. 

The way that his mother’s body looked,  

After she was blown to bits in that fatal car accident.

Even though he had only seen the aftermath at the open casket funeral his father held a few days later, he could pick up on all the details      the rigid bumps from where her neck had snapped at impact, how she was all burnt up, some of her limbs barely hanging on by the threads they’d used to put her back together with.

But where in the hell was all the blood???

Unable to bury what had been awoken in that moment, he became utterly obsessed. Whenever he would see blood…. it would mesmerize him. he would need to see more, he would want to see more.

Thus at the age of eight Alexius experienced his first human kill. All it took was a push and down the stairs his nanny went. which. Of course, what with having a father who happened to be the president of some trillion dollar company in Moscow, the incident was covered up and deemed an accident. Including the second time it happened. only this time there were no stairs involved and his new nanny instead received a knife to the neck. but. it was just another accident as far as his father was concerned.

So as the years would go past and he grew old enough those lucky few he stumbled across that reminded him of the nanny would share her fate. Murdered, in the nice little shack Alexius bought himself and primped solely for his killings; eventually cutting them up in parts, to be hidden in its underground cellar.

By the time he hit seventeen his father remarried and the woman who he was now expected to call mother was surprisingly….. likable. That and the fact that Alexius was enamored with her daughter; his now to be called ’ little sister ’.  But a few months later when news eventually broke of his mother’s pregnancy? Everything changed. And that’s when he discovered his sister was just like him.

❝Their mother, their father? they were theirs, ❞  She had said.  ❝ And that thing growing in her dared tried to change that? Replace them, even? ❞

After a few delicate words from his sister, Alexius snuck into his parent’s room and attempted to drown his mother while she was in the tub; not before shoving a utility knife in her stomach. Unfortunately, his father heard all the ruckus, and got there just in time. Before any repercussions of his actions could form, he took a bunch of cash and other such valuables and his step sister and then proceeded to flee from Russia. Boarding a plane to the USA, in the grand Los Angeles; where they were set to live for the rest of their lives.

But all that time just loafing around, living off of what he had taken? Owning a pastry shop as a front to look for potential victims? After years of killings? It really was no surprise when the police, and later the FBI, began sniffing around and forced him to move yet again. And again. and, finally, one more time.

To the quaint little city of Houston, Texas.

Which was all fine and dandy and then the ash fell from the sky.

ᴀғᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴜᴛʙʀᴇᴀᴋ

But everything only got even better.  

With all the death and the entire shit storm that came with the end of times, his need, the fixation, that urged him to kill those similar to the nanny, for the most part vanished. Sure, his reaction whenever he saw blood was still the same; but the recipient of his innate wickedness changed and became those poor saps who were already dead: the infected. which was pretty great considering Alexius could kill and maim and bask in the bloody glory as much as he wanted without having to worry about constantly looking over his shoulder for what he did. just pass the time away with his beloved sister. and, you know, survive.

Something that sure did become a whole lot easier to do once he found himself accompanied by a group of thirteen people      more than half of said people having been acquired upon his saving them from becoming zombie chow.

Accidental as each instance was ( he’d simply been out having fun, just like how he did every night, killing as many infected as he could find ) the fact remained that he had saved them from certain death. And sure, he was the farthest thing from being a hero, but, even still, they stuck around and followed him. Listened to him. so. He wasn’t about to start complaining. because nothing was more useful than a couple of willing followers to use as fodder if need be.

Not even five months later, though, they all began to venture away from Houston and started to head out towards Minnesota in search for a facility of survivors. A place he wouldn’t have even known about if it wasn’t for that dying soldier who had told him about the secure location before succumbing to his wounds. At least, that was what everyone was led to believe. In reality there was never any soldier. Alexius made the entire thing up in order to fulfill what his dear sweet step sister had wished for: to have their living arrangement to be less cramped and preferably relocated to somewhere with more open spaces. They lost a few people and also picked up a few more who joined them along the way but as they got farther away from the city Alexius noticed that people were less trusting and tended to steer clear of other survivors.

Which actually made a whole lot of sense.

Especially when winter came crashing down upon them.

Between the erratic snow storms and the numbing cold no one even noticed how hungry they were. The hunger crept its way in, slowly, barely even there at first. After two weeks of living out of a gas station due to the unbearable weather, with him searching through nearby stores for remnants of food only to find crackers and chips, though….. that pang was unbearable. Anything he did find for himself he would take a mere bite of and proceed to give the rest to his sister and whatever his second in command found was divided out for the rest of the bunch. But it wasn’t ever enough. Everyone, including himself, quickly became too exhausted to even think about continuing on with the journey. Then weeks turned into a month and then the hunger was all consuming. Fortunately, one night while he and his second in command were out looking for any edible thing they could scavenge, they spotted a campfire. and came across another small group of people. or rather, a nice set of meat bags. because that’s what they essentially were right? Why else would the infected scarf people down like they did? Questions that swiftly had their answers. Alexius slaughtered all those people like cattle. Gutted and skinned them, served them up like cattle, too. When they returned he said that they had come across some deer and everyone couldn’t stop smiling. Crying. Giving their thanks and telling him how the “ deer meat ” reminded them of a huge juicy steak. which? It kind of did taste like steak. And that was pretty fucking funny, considering. But at least his step sister would finally fill her belly. Thus he and his second in command would routinely go out and search for smoke or anything else that could possibly signal life and continue to kill each and every person who they managed to come in contact with for the remaining winter months in order to keep his sister thoroughly fed. Being able to also feed everyone else, well, was just a beneficial bonus.

When the weather started warming up, things went back to normal, and he got everyone to continue on the decided path. for about a year, nothing major happened. the search for that secure place to settle aka somewhere spacious, an ongoing endeavor that led them to travel further north in to the woody depths of Nebraska.  

 Of course, that ’ nothing major ’ would only last, for so long.

Eventually, a hoard of the infected happened to be passing by the same run down building as they were. One minute they were all outside, and the next, Alexius was being ushered inside the building with the undead quickly following suit.

He watched as those who had chosen to follow him stood their ground      for themselves, for each other. Some began to get ripped apart while others were attempting and failing to fight against the undead to keep the creatures from ripping anyone apart. All the blood. Each shrilly scream. It was so very exciting. The exact kind of shit that he lived for. He didn’t get to properly appreciate what was happening, though, because in that marvelous moment of mayhem, he remembered that his precious little sister was there with him.

 And they were outnumbered seven to one.

So, without a word, he grabbed his step sisters hand, ran towards the back of the room, pushed her through the half broken window leading towards the woods, and then squeezed himself through it as well; abandoning his handy dandy human shields to their chosen grisly demises to make a sure fire escape.

It wasn’t like Alexius and his sister were roaming around alone for long. Maybe about two weeks, tops.

Before they knew it, two women had stumbled across them, asked them a few questions, and then just skipped right to it and invited them to come and rest up in the safety of their group. and he thought: why the hell not? The decision to stay, that he was going to join this new group with his sister, didn’t require any sort of thinking on his part.

Because he was dead set on sticking by his end of the world motto.

There was no better way to ensure his sister’s safety, than in numbers.

[dearophelia]

anthem (2/3)

There’s a crack in everything. Olivia’s never asked Zaeed what he means by that, but she wants there to be a hopeful second half to the phrase. Eight months is a long time without Garrus. 

(they’re stuck, all of them; it’s hard to move forward when you can do nothing)

Previously on: Part 1

PG, this part ~7k; Olivia/Garrus, Hannah/Zaeed, Olivia+Liara friendship, Liara+Garrus friendship, Olivia+Zaeed friendship. Vague references to PTSD.

Garrus sits down in the mess opposite Ashley, datapad in hand.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she grumbles. She looks at him, deep hollows under her eyes, and sips at her coffee. After a moment, she sighs, pushes her hair out of her face, and gestures for him to go ahead.

“Long-range communication, FTL drive, stealth drive, and the main guns are all offline. They’re not…” he grasps for the colorful phrase James used, and comes up empty, “completely destroyed, but they took significant damage.”

Ashley frowns. “And we have negative repair supplies.” She sighs heavily. “What else?”

Garrus scrolls through his list. “Daniels and Donnelly have been working nonstop on EDI, but they said it’s like her program is just gone. There are also multiple severe hull breaches.” At her raised eyebrow, he explains, “From crashing into a pile of rocks.”

Ashley nods and covers a yawn. “Oh, right.”

“Slightly less destroyed:” he continues onto the next section. “Sublight engines are offline, but Tali and Adams think they’re salvageable with enough time and effort. Liara thinks navigation would probably work if we could figure out where we are,” and we sure could use Shepard for that, he adds silently. “Short-range communication is twitchy at best, and Traynor’s exact words were ‘my toothbrush has more reliable reception.’ She had a similar opinion about our long- and short-range scanners.”

She stares at him over her coffee cup. “What is working?”

“Life support.” That’s it. Ten days of diagnostics and emergency triage repairs, and the only thing they’ve managed to get working is life support. And they crashed on a planet with breathable air and drinkable water.

“Well, at least there’s that.” She takes another sip of coffee.

“And other minor systems with varying degrees of functionality.” He may not be a very good turian, and he may technically be nowhere near her chain of command, but Garrus knows how to give a complete report to his ship’s CO.

Ashley exhales slowly and closes her eyes for a moment. “How are you?” she asks quietly.

Garrus stills. They’re all feeling Shepard’s absence, and he doesn’t want to claim more grief than anyone else. But since he kept her name off the memorial board, refusing to consider her another casualty, he’s noticed most of the crew going to great lengths to avoid speaking even her name around him. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate it.

He suspects Ashley put him in charge of overseeing repairs for more than just his ability to give a report. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate that, too. For most of the day, he can throw his focus and efforts into other problems, tangible problems. Problems that are largely - ah, shattered to shit, that’s the phrase, but problems that can be solved.

It’s only the few hours before sleep, when he’s alone in their quarters with nothing to distract him, that despair tugs at the edges of his mind. He tried simply going to bed earlier, but that was worse - lying awake in their bed alone, as her scent on her pillow disappears a little more each day.

He’s taken to working his way through her extensive media library. And sleeping on the couch.

“The fish didn’t survive the impact,” Garrus says, instead of voicing just how much it hurts to not have her here. “But her hamster’s still alive.” The little guy has even started coming out of his box to sniff at his fingers when he feeds him.

Ashley nods, and takes his words as a valid answer. She reaches over the table and plucks the datapad from his hand, and scrolls through it for herself. “Let’s talk repair schedule.”

***

Thunder booms overhead and Hannah freezes. She hasn’t heard real thunder in, god, twenty years. She’s been rained on since, sure, but never with thunder and -

Lightning. She closes her eyes.

Good air in, bad air out. You’re in London. Gripping the edge of the sink until her hands hurt and her knuckles are stark white, she takes slow, even breaths to bring herself back from a cornfield twenty years ago.

Zaeed rests his hand on her hip and she opens her eyes. She stares at their reflection in the kitchen window and tries not to see ships and slavers in the clouds outside. She leans back against him as thunder crashes again, loud enough that she feels it in her chest.

“You alright?”

Her reflected self nods, but her real self answers, “No.” It’s a good answer, an honest answer. They’re both too old and been through too much crap to lie when memories creep up from where they’ve buried them deep.

He shifts, settling his arms around her waist, and brushes a kiss to her cheek. “Anything I can do?”

Find my daughter, she wants to say. Go outside in the storm and dig and dig and don’t stop until you find her. But Zaeed’s spent every day digging, alongside Wrex and Grunt and the others. She shakes her head, and links her fingers with Zaeed’s. “No,” she says again.

Zaeed gently tugs her away from the window and the storm, and toward the living room. She curls into the corner of the couch, hugging a throw pillow to her chest, as Zaeed messes with the entertainment system. They at least have power tonight, and the former residents of the apartment they’re squatting in have no shortage of television and vids they can watch.

He picks something innocuous, an old Earth black and white comedy that hasn’t aged particularly well but is decent background noise, and joins her on the couch. Hannah leans into him as the storm rages on outside and a 1950s nuclear family with sparkling wide smiles appears on the screen. Zaeed is warm and solid, and she’s felt unstable for nearly three weeks - like a sheet of paper in the storm outside, tossed around and battered, blown from one feeling to the next.

She’s alive and Zaeed’s alive and the reapers are dead. Dead and gone, save for the hulking, looming shells of their destroyers and capital ships casting long dark shadows when the sun chooses to come out.

But Olivia is missing. Hannah knows the Alliance has listed missing in action; presumed dead in her daughter’s record. And though she isn’t quite so quick to believe the worst, Hannah finds herself unwillingly moving just a little bit closer to the same conclusion with each passing day.

Zaeed presses a kiss to her temple, and Hannah sighs, trying to focus on the show. She can’t, the storm is too loud and her daughter is too missing, and so instead she curls into Zaeed and rests her head on his chest. She lets her eyes drift shut as he gently strokes his fingers across her back.

Five days later, in a rare rain-less day, Zaeed and Wrex lift a broken piece of wall in the Citadel cleanup site. They heave it into the omnigel conversion unit beside them, and bend down to lift the next piece.

Both men freeze when they see a piece of armor, with a bright purple stripe smudged with dirt and blood and oil. Zaeed kneels and wipes away a smear of mud with his thumb.

N7.

Zaeed’s stomach drops.

He looks up at Wrex, and sees his worry reflected back in the krogan’s beady red eyes. “Dig,” Zaeed orders, and radios for more krogan and a biotic assist squad.

Hannah makes three wrong turns in the hospital before finally finding the correct ward. Zaeed’s sitting on the floor halfway down the hall, opposite Wrex, who’s leaning against the wall beside Jack and Grunt. Zaeed stands as Hannah stills, unable to walk any further for what the news might be.

Nodding, Zaeed walks toward her. Hannah wraps her arms around herself and bites the inside of her cheek as Zaeed and the others blur through sudden tears.

Everything stops, except for Hannah’s loud, pounding heartbeat, and Zaeed in front of her in his muddy armor. It probably only takes him three seconds to reach her, but it feels like an excruciating eternity.

“She’s alive, Hannah,” he says.

The universe crashes into motion again so fast that Hannah loses her balance. Zaeed wraps his arms around her, holding her up as Miranda sprints past them.

***

Liara opens the battery door to a bang and a clatter, and an audible growl from somewhere deep in the gun’s inner workings. Filed under: things that don’t bode well, she hears in Olivia’s voice. She wishes Olivia would stop that. They’re all going a bit mad stuck on this planet, and she’d prefer that her insanity look a little more like Sam’s, working forty-eight straight hours on a quirky subroutine, or Ashley’s, trying to glare a hull breach into submission.

Instead, Liara has her best friend in her head. At least she hasn’t started seeing her. Or having conversations. Could be worse! Liara rolls her eyes.

Sighing, Liara takes a tentative step into the battery. “Garrus?” The doors close behind her.

Another angry growl, this time accompanied by the distinctive sound of someone punching the uncooperative technology and putting their whole weight behind it.

“Did you lose the coin toss?” he says tersely, subharmonics still growling.

Technically, she volunteered because the others were too scared to toss a coin in case they lost, but Liara suspects he knows that. Garrus has always been fairly self-aware; he can’t be oblivious to the way he’s retreated into the battery (and himself) and stopped talking to everyone over the past two weeks. He also can’t be oblivious to how unhealthy that is.

Then again, Liara surmises, he responded to Olivia dying by quitting his job, leaving his life and friends behind without so much as an email, and running off to Omega to become a vigilante for two years. And that was before he fell in love with her.

Not like you’re one to talk, Miss Spent Her Life Savings Excavating My Dead Body From A Glacier.

Liara huffs. “Something like that,” she says. “You missed dinner.” She steps around a column and finds him tucked uncomfortably into a corner, arm threaded through an access panel as he blindly tries to fix something out of sight.

“I’m not hungry,” he says. There’s a shower of sparks, a low rising hum of something trying to activate, and then a falling hum as it fails. “Damn.” He pulls his arm back and shakes out his hand.

Liara huffs. “I don’t care,” she snaps. “Eat something.”

Garrus swings his attention around, and locks his piercing stare onto her. “Interesting pep talk,” he says, though he takes the offered ration bar.

Crossing her arms, Liara leans against the bulkhead. “I’m not here to give you a pep talk,” she says. “I am trying to make sure my best friend’s boyfriend doesn’t die out of sheer stupidity.”

I appreciate that.

Her words seem to deflate him a little bit, and he slowly nibbles at his dinner. He finishes the bar in silence while Liara fidgets nervously. She didn’t come here to yell at him about eating - she actually came in to bring him dinner and tell him the good news about navigation. The whole crew is on edge, growing slightly more restless and irritable with each day they spend trapped on this planet. She thought she’d been doing a good job of not joining them.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly as he crumples up the wrapper and tosses it into a bin beside scrap metal and wire. “I did not mean to yell.”

Garrus nods and rubs the back of his neck. “Thanks for the food,” he says, in a gentler tone than Liara’s heard from him in a week.

“I discovered where we are,” she says. A terrible pop song from ten years ago provided the key, oddly enough; Olivia listened to it nearly nonstop the semester she wrote a paper on the nearby supernova, and it triggered something in Liara’s memory. “As soon as the FTL drive is back online, we can start back to Earth.” They don’t have a navigator on board - yet another reason to miss Olivia - and by her estimations, it will take five months. Provided they don’t run into trouble.

Always expect trouble.

Six months, then.

“Good,” he says tightly, and turns back to his panel.

Liara takes a deep breath, and reminds herself that he’s grieving, just like she is. Their grief just looks different. She nods. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Fiancée,” he says quietly as she turns away.

Liara pauses and turns back. She tilts her head, curious.

Garrus sighs and looks down for a moment. “I asked her to marry me. We, uh, we weren’t going to tell anyone until…after.”

“Garrus!” Liara gasps quietly, part in surprise, but mostly in excitement. Genuine joy rises in her for the first time in months. It feels a little strange, unfamiliar, like a friend she hasn’t spoken to in a long time.

His mandibles flutter in an approximation of a smile. “I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

Whether that’s a reference to being the Shadow Broker, or her friendship with Olivia, Liara isn’t sure. She presses her lips together. “I do sometimes keep my nose to myself.” When she doesn’t see quite the same joy in his face she would expect, she sighs. “You know she will fight like hell to get back to you.”

He takes a slightly shaky breath, and his mandibles tighten. “Yeah.”

Liara knows that they’re both remembering Olivia’s voice at the Crucible, and how broken and hurt she sounded. Whether Olivia is able to fight or not - Liara slams down that thought. “She will, Garrus.”

***

The Normandy lifts off the day Olivia gets discharged from the hospital.

***

The skycar pulls up in front of their newly-built prefab, one of many slowly starting to replace the refugee camps, and Hannah peers out the window. They were tailed by a newscar almost the whole way here, but they lost them two turns ago. Their street has been surprisingly - and thankfully - empty. Either the media has more respect than she thought, or Wrex and his krogan set up a perimeter. She’d bet not an insignificant amount of money on the latter, especially when she sees Jack and Kasumi sitting outside the prefab next door, trying to look like they’re lounging casually on the porch.

Hannah doesn’t think Domestic Casual suits either one of them, but she appreciates their presence, and not just because she’s sure Jack’s hiding a shotgun somewhere. Miranda moved in with the two women once Olivia was stable enough to not need her immediately nearby. A Major Kirrahe lives across the street; Hannah doesn’t know what role he played in her daughter’s life, but he seems quiet and nice, if also about as likely to kill you as he is to feed you. Their whole block is filled with Olivia’s friends and crew, the ones who were stranded here, and Hannah thinks it’s kind of nice. Insular. Let Olivia start to navigate her life again amongst friends.

That Olivia has hardly spoken at all since she woke up is a problem for tomorrow.

“You ready?”

Olivia nods, but she doesn’t look sure of herself at all. Three weeks under a pile of rubble, kept alive only by the remains of her hardsuit, and then a month and a half in the hospital - the hollows under her eyes haven’t gotten any lighter. Hannah sets her hand on Olivia’s shoulder and offers her a soft smile, then tilts her head in the direction of the prefab. They’ve put a piece of metal over the front stair to make it easier for her.

Gathering up Olivia’s bag, Hannah opens the door. She stands up, and then takes Olivia’s crutches, holding them out for her.

Olivia slides to the edge of the seat. Grimacing, she takes the crutches and braces them under her arms. With a deep breath, she checks that her balance is right, and stands. Hannah shuts the door and follows Olivia down the small path to the prefab.

Keeping her stare forward, Olivia walks uncertainly on crutches and one leg. Her jaw clenches as Kasumi calls after her - hey Shep! - and she pauses, offering her friend a forced, tight smile and a wave of her fingers.

The skycar powers up with a loud whine, and Olivia flinches as it drives away. It’s only a tightening of her eyes, but to Hannah the flinch shines like a beacon on her normally-unflappable daughter. Olivia’s breath grows shallower and speeds up. She closes her eyes, and visibly forces herself to count to ten. Her arms, and the crutches, start to shake.

“Let’s get you inside,” Hannah says softly.

Nodding, Olivia opens her eyes and continues on, making her way up the impromptu ramp.

Zaeed’s leaning nonchalantly against the open door, but Hannah knows better - he has at least three guns on him, and could draw and shoot to kill before his target even blinked. He smiles warmly at Olivia as she passes, and Olivia manages a weak, but genuine, smile in return.

“How is she?” he asks quietly, shutting the door behind them.

Hannah exhales and watches Olivia make her slow way to the couch, and carefully, awkwardly, sit down. “I have no idea,” she says, just as quiet.

***

She sits in therapy, silent.

Her therapist is nice enough, and comes with a stack of degrees and the highest Alliance security clearance.

But she seems intent on making Olivia talk. And in lieu of her volunteering anything, the therapist spends their sessions reaching for topics.

Mostly, she asks about the leg.

The prosthetic has been fitted and connected and attached now, but it’s still adjusting. Olivia refuses to call it “calibrating,” though that’s really what it is; too many memories about that word. She still needs the crutches.

Olivia isn’t defiant toward the idea of therapy - she knows she needs a heavy dose of it, and probably for at least the next three years. But speaking is too much, too loud. There’s too much to say, and it’s all too big to let out in little pieces. And while her therapist is nice enough and qualified enough and has enough security clearance, Olivia isn’t about to open the dam and let everything flood out to a relative stranger.

So she sits silently in her therapist’s office with its fake-cheery paintings and fake potted plants not doing much at all to disguise that the office itself is a sectioned-off corner of a bombed-out parking garage. Olivia lets her ask about her missing leg, and gives one-word answers, sometimes two if she’s feeling charitable.

At least I got to say goodbye, she thinks, as the calendar changes from August to September to October, with still no word from the Normandy. She likes to think of herself as an optimist, but optimism is in short supply when she can’t sleep, can barely walk, is missing her fiancée and best friend so much it physically hurts some days, and has nothing to do except think about all of it.

She gives up on therapy entirely in November. November is also when Miranda gives her the okay to stop using crutches full-time. There’s no metaphor in that, Olivia says from the door as she tells her therapist she’s quitting for now. Just coincidence.

It’s the most words she’s said in a single session.

Two nights later, Zaeed gets up for a glass of water and finds her on the couch, head buried in her hands. He silently sits beside her, and she tells him everything.

From the Illusive Man and Anderson, to her mom and Garrus and Liara, to that stupid hologram and its choices, to destroying the reapers (to laughing around a collapsed lung and broken ribs at the thought that she would choose any other solution), to knowing it meant the geth and EDI and the mass relays too, to accepting the idea that she was going to die.

To waking up and finding that she hadn’t, but that she was missing a few parts. Literally and figuratively.

Olivia tells him everything in a hushed whisper by cloudy moonlight, and lets him pull her in for a hug.

I think I’m going to cry, she warns him after a while.

He rubs a hand across her back. You’ve earned it, he says, and holds her as she quietly cries herself to sleep.

***

Garrus finds Tali in the tiny corner of engineering she claimed as her own, the same corner Jack slept in. She’s packing. She doesn’t have much to pack, but it’s clear she’s taking as long as she can with the bag.

“You sure about leaving?” he asks, leaning against the wall. They rendezvous with the quarian ship in twelve hours. It’s a miracle they even found each other, passing through a nebula with malfunctioning scanners on both ships.

Tali sits back on her heels. “Yes, I should be with the Fleet. Besides, the engines are stable now. All I’m doing is eating your food, Garrus.”

He sighs and sits down on the stripped bedframe. The quarians have an extra box of rations they’re willing to part with in exchange for some spare power coils, and Tali leaving doubles the length his food will last. But she’s the only other person who’s been here for it all - for Saren, for the Collectors, for the reapers. Tali’s who he went to for advice when he realized he had feelings for Olivia, the one who smartly told him to either tell her how he felt, or stop sleeping with her.

She’s also the only one who can successfully yell at him into leaving his quarters these days. Not even Liara can drag him out, but Tali has a tone.

The gun’s been online for a month, he doesn’t know anything about the Normandy’s long-range communication systems (and he suspects Traynor would kick him out within five minutes of trying to help anyway), and everything else is working. Garrus has nothing to do. It’s hard not to isolate himself and succumb to grief. The quarians aren’t the first ship they’ve come across, and no one has any news from Earth.

“I don’t mind sharing,” he offers lightly.

Tali turns to him and tilts her head. He still can’t see through her mask, but he knows that tilt. It’s the you’re being an idiot tilt. He’s seen it a lot over the past five years.

“Yeah,” he sighs and looks up at the crossbeams and wire grating above them.

She closes her bag and then sits beside him.

For one horrible moment, he thinks she’s going to say something comforting. That she’s going to tell him not to worry, that Shepard’s alive, that if anyone could beat death a second time, it’s Shepard.

“I’m transferring my Monopoly property to you,” Tali says instead. “If you let Vega beat you, I will take it as a personal insult.”

Garrus laughs. It sounds a little desperate, a little unhinged, but still - it’s a laugh. That game has continued for three weeks, and showed no signs of coming to an end when he last checked. “You got it,” he promises.

***

“I’m worried about her,” Hannah says, a few days after Christmas. She rolls over onto her back and stares up at the ceiling in the dark. She’s been worried about Olivia for months now, but she thought it would subside, thought  Olivia would get better, like she always does. Mindoir, her N4 mission, even dying - Olivia’s always gotten better.

But she’s just been silent for six months. She hasn’t been rude or cold. She’s still been Olivia, only a quiet, reserved version of herself. Almost like she’ll break if she speaks too loudly.

Haunted.

Zaeed turns onto his side and trails his fingers down her arm. He looks across the room. Hannah looks over her shoulder and follows his gaze to the window and the snow falling softly outside. She smiles - been a long time since she’s had snow. Her smile is short-lived, however, and she sighs, turning back to him.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admits softly.

“Give her time,” he says. “She’s been through a lot.”

“I know,” Hannah huffs out a breath of air. She doesn’t know what that a lot entails, though she has a suspicion Zaeed does. She’s trying not to let that upset her, and remind herself that Zaeed’s a soldier who’s been through his own share of shit and is the better person for Olivia to talk to. But it hurts a little anyway; Olivia’s always told her everything. “I’m her mother,” she says. “I ought to be able to do something.”

It hasn’t been for lack of trying. From silent support to warm hugs, to promising an ear if she wants to talk, to chocolate chip cookies, she’s done everything she can think of. It hardly seems to have any effect. Hannah exhales sharply. She doesn’t know what else she can do for Olivia. Though it may be her only option, time is a frustrating outlook.

Zaeed reaches out and gently tugs her toward him. She comes willingly and tucks herself up against him, digging a little deeper under the warm covers as she rests her forehead against his shoulder. Zaeed presses a kiss to the top of her head and lightly brushes a hand down her spine.

“Thanks for taking care of her,” she says after a while. Zaeed’s spent the past few nights up with Olivia, calming her after paralyzing nightmares. Hannah tried to help, but Olivia wouldn’t let her. That had hurt, and it took a midnight walk around the block to calm herself down, and remind herself that this is about Olivia, not her.

“Of course,” he says, holding her a little tighter.

Hannah buries her head in the crook of his shoulder. Zaeed’s rough as sandpaper around the edges, but there’s a warmth inside of him, a kindness, though he tries so hard to hide it from the world. She counts herself lucky he’s chosen her to show that warmth to. She counts Olivia lucky, too.

“There’s a crack in everything,” he whispers, long after she thinks he’s fallen asleep.

She makes a small, curious noise in the back of her throat.

“That’s how the light gets in.”

Hannah blinks. It’s a strangely-optimistic phrase coming from Zaeed, even poetic. Then again, a man who was shot point blank in the eye would know a few things about hope, not just revenge.

December ends, and the new year rings in with fireworks that start soon after dark. Olivia puts in earplugs, takes a sleeping pill, and quietly goes to bed early.

But the next morning, Hannah wakes to the smell of coffee and baking bread. She slides out of bed, whispering for Zaeed to go back to sleep when he protests her leaving, and gets dressed by the dull grey dawnlight.

She stands in the kitchen doorway for a few minutes, silently watching Olivia knead another loaf as the sun brightens in the window. Olivia actually looks calm as she works the dough, lifting up on her toes to really put her strength into it. Hannah walks in, careful to make enough noise that she doesn’t surprise her.

“Morning,” she says, stepping up beside her.

“Morning,” Olivia responds quietly, scattering some flour over the counter. Her voice sounds stronger than it has recently, even for just one simple word.

Hannah sets her palm between Olivia’s shoulders, gently rubbing her back. Her daughter’s ghosts aren’t banished forever, just blissfully absent for now. “I love you,” she whispers, and presses a kiss to Olivia’s cheek.

Olivia pauses in her work and leans into Hannah’s embrace. Her breath shakes a little, but she manages a smile. “I love you, too.”

***

Liara grimaces as Dr. Chakwas rotates her arm. “There,” she says, as the rotation hits just the right spot, and something inside of her shoulder twinges painfully.

Chakwas sighs and lowers Liara’s arm back to her side. “Is there a reason you waited five months to tell me about this?” She steps over to her cabinet, and prepares an injection spray.

The charging brute seems half a lifetime ago, not just five months. The pain of missing Olivia, though it isn’t a physical one, eclipses everything else. She feels her best friend’s absence when she’s working, when she’s eating, when she’s watching the Monopoly game spiral out of control as Ashley raises the rent on all of her properties and James acquires the last railroad. The Olivia-shaped hole in her life has become such a constant dull ache that she sometimes doesn’t even notice it. It’s part of her now.

But her shoulder has started hurting in her sleep. Sleep is rare enough without waking in the middle of the night unable to move for the burning pain. The doctor’s question is a rhetorical one, and so Liara doesn’t answer, merely removes the Serrice University sweatshirt of Olivia’s she stole during the hunt for Saren; she sits in a tank top, offering her shoulder. The needle goes in sharp but smooth.

“This will help with the pain for now,” Chakwas says, “and hopefully relax your tendons. Give it three days, and if it doesn’t improve, tell me.” The disapproval in her voice in the last two words is nearly palpable.

Liara nods and pulls the sweatshirt back on. “Thank you,” she says, and hops off the exam table.

She holds her breath as she passes the crowded mess - Risk tonight, and a showdown between Traynor and Daniels that’s bound to win someone a lot of money - but no one calls to her. As much as she scolds Garrus for isolating himself, she knows she’s doing the same thing. It’s hard to be excited, even for a few hours about a board game.

There was at least something to do last time. She had a goal, a singular focus, a way to fix it. Now she’s just stuck waiting out the journey.

Not sure going on a crusade to find my dead body really counts as a healthy reaction.

“I never claimed it was healthy,” Liara says out loud, once the doors are shut behind her and the chatter from the game blissfully silences. “And she who considers ‘more coffee’ to be a valid solution to every problem should not judge.”

Name one time that has failed.

Liara thinks back on the fifteen years of their friendship and tries to remember even a single scenario where that plan has not succeeded. She finds none. “Fine,” she grumbles. “You win.” She sits on the edge of her bed and rests her elbows on her knees, burying her head in her hands. The silence and solitude are overwhelming, but so is the idea of leaving her quarters to watch Traynor and Daniels roll dice in battle over long-redrawn territory.

Super healthy, T’Soni.

“What do you want me to do, Olivia?”

I’m not really here, you know. You’re holding both sides of this conversation. With yourself.

With a heavy sigh, she flops backward onto the bed. “I know.” She closes her eyes and throws an arm over her face. “I miss you,” she says quietly.

Is this where I get to give you the “get up off the floor” speech? Out of bed. Whatever.

Liara drops her arm and opens her eyes. She’s being yelled at by herself in her best friend’s voice. This must be what going properly insane feels like. “Fine,” she grumbles again. She sits up carefully, accustomed to her shoulder twitching painfully, but this time it doesn’t.

Should’ve gone to the doctor a while ago.

Liara simply stares directly into the empty space in front of her, as if Olivia were standing there. “I am not even going to acknowledge that,” she says, and stands up.

Long-range communications are still down, and even if they weren’t, there is no chance the Normandy is within range of an Alliance comm buoy yet. Opening their private channel seems prematurely optimistic, but Liara does it anyway. Even if she can’t broadcast, and even if no one is there to receive, it’s open and ready.

“No comment on that?” she asks the empty room.

Liara doesn’t expect a response, but she’s a little disappointed anyway when one doesn’t come.  

***

January passes with a promotion. It’s ceremonial: her active days are over.

There are plenty of active soldiers with prosthetics, but she’s done. She’s paid back her degree, the galaxy is saved a couple times over, and she’s done.

Hackett knows this, but he puts captain’s bars on her shoulders in front of a crowd anyway. She isn’t even too upset that he’s using her for one last media stunt, though she officially resigns three days later.

“We could still use you, Shepard,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “There’s a government to rebuild.”

She lets out a harsh breath; in another life, it might have been a laugh. “If you’re thinking about naming me Ambassador or Councilor,” she shakes her head. “Admiral -”

She’s ready to tell him, point blank, that she’s done. Out. Finished. Wants to live out the rest of her life so far away from the spotlight she’s sitting in the dark. Doesn’t want anything to do with the rebuilding - she wants a break. To be left alone.

But she doesn’t.

Seven months, and there’s still no word from the Normandy. She’s tired of standing still. Of doing nothing. Of lying awake at night, staring at the wall, trying to make a pile of pillows feel remotely like Garrus. Of pretending the next morning that she hadn’t heard through paper-thin walls her mother whispering to Zaeed about how worried she is. Of muffling her cries in a pillow, so those same paper-thin walls don’t give her away.

She wasn’t made to stand still. She wasn’t built for doing nothing.

“Why don’t you get some use out of that degree you paid for?” Olivia says instead.

Hackett tilts his head.

“Someone needs to get those relays back online,” she says. “The galaxy’s going to stay a mess until we get transport moving again.”

“There’s a team on it,” he says, though his tone is factual, rather than dismissive. “Though they haven’t been able to make heads or tails of the relay wreckage, or the schematics we found in the Archives.”

A smile tugs at her lips. “I suddenly seem to find myself with an abundance of free time,” she says. “And I do have a doctorate in astrophysics and stellar cartography you people haven’t let me use yet.”

“And a remarkable ability for making things happen.”

“That too.” The smile grows. It feels weird. She’s out of practice.

Hackett sighs and stares out his window at the grey sky. “Are you sure I can’t offer you a political position?”

Olivia snorts. “Not on your life.”

Her first act doesn’t have anything to do with relays. Instead, she wrangles a small fleet of FTL shuttles, and begs every ration officer for every extra box they can spare. She orders all the motley N7 teams she can find - humans joined by asari and volus and krogan, turian and quarian and drell, even a few batarians - to pack up the shuttles and fly out.

“We have a lot of stranded people trying to find their way back home,” she says. Home to Palaven, Earth, Thessia, just home. “Let’s make sure they don’t starve on the journey.”

Her second act doesn’t have anything to do with relays, either. She records a message - Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond - codes it for their private frequency, and sends it out through the few intact Alliance subspace comm relays.

***

Garrus rubs a hand over his forehead. “Yeah,” he murmurs to himself. It was a long shot. “Thank you,” he tells the turian commander. “Safe journey.”

The turian nods. “You as well, sir,” she says, and salutes him before signing off.

He sighs heavily and leans on the railing, closing his eyes. He didn’t expect a turian ship way out here, halfway across the galaxy, to have news from Palaven at all, and certainly not news of his family.

But still. Garrus would like some word about someone.

***

“Breathe,” Zaeed tells her as she struggles to do just that.

Olivia rests her elbows on her bent knees and presses the heels of her palms into her forehead. She’s not sure which is worse - the splitting headache, or the nightmare.

Or that she evidently woke Zaeed up across the hall and through two closed doors. Again.

“I’m trying,” she whispers.  

***

He’s starving.

He’s starving and he’s angry and he’s sad and their bed has long stopped smelling like her. There’s nothing he can do about any of it, and he’s furious. Too much pent up energy and nowhere for it to go, no way to get it out. He’s too weak to spar with Vega, too jittery to tinker with anything, too irritable to even think about joining a game. Staying up here alone isn’t doing him any favors, he knows, but being around others sets his teeth on edge.

Writing to her hasn’t helped. Garrus has watched his handwriting get steadily worse over the past weeks as constant hunger set in and his hands started to shake. But he keeps writing letters, every day. He’s not sure it kept him quite sane last time, but it certainly kept him from catapulting over the edge.

He feeds Hipparchus - at least the little guy will make it back to Earth alive, at least he can manage to keep one promise to her - and sits down to enjoy the last quarter of his ration bar. He even licks the wrapper. There are two left. Eight days, and he’s completely out of food. Even with Tali gone, even with cutting down so much it hardly seems worth eating at all, he’s still running out. He adores Tali, but he’s glad she left - he can’t imagine how bad it would be if they were still sharing. At least this way, they’ll be a few thousand light years closer to Earth before he’s running completely on empty.

Olivia, he writes, after eating that quarter of a bar as slowly as he possibly could.

Garrus stares at the blank rest of the page. Though the human pen is weird in his hand, he’s long learned how to write with it. But his hand won’t stop shaking long enough to write anything more than her name.

He snaps.

With an angry roar, he flips the table, expending energy he knows he doesn’t have. He hurls the chair into the wall and watches as it splinters.

He blinks at it, and the destruction suddenly feels devastating. They bought the little table and chairs so they could eat dinner and feel like normal people for a few hours, even if dinner was a just-add-water microwaved tasteless ration packet. They had to collapse everything afterward and stick it in the closet so they’d have enough room to move, but for those few hours they were just Olivia and Garrus, girlfriend and boyfriend sharing a meal.

Gingerly, he rights the table. One of the legs is bent now, and the table wobbles. He sighs, blinking away his rising emotions, and picks up the pieces of the chair, placing them out of the way under the desk. He’ll recycle them into omnigel later, maybe someone can turn them into a power coil or plasma conduit.

He bends over and picks up the notebook, but the pen is nowhere to be found. Garrus crawls on his hands and knees, searching the floor for the pen - her pen. It’s probably only two minutes, but it feels like he searches for an hour. He can’t find it, it’s like it disappeared into thin air, and he’s nearly about to just give in and let himself finally fall apart completely, all over a missing pen.

But he catches sight of something underneath the couch.

Garrus lies as flat as he can and blindly reaches under the couch. His hand clasps around the pen, but his fingers also catch on something soft, something fuzzy. Frowning, his triumph over finding the pen is short-lived and replaced by confusion; he grabs the soft thing along with the pen and sits up.

It’s Olivia’s teddy bear. Saved from Mindoir, kept safe in her bedroom at Hannah’s for most of her military career, brought to the Normandy only after the reapers attacked Earth. The teddy bear mostly stayed on the couch, but there were nights when she slid out of bed to retrieve it, and crawled back into bed beside him, holding it nearly as tight as he was holding her.

Garrus carefully brushes some dust off of its nose; he moves to set it back on the couch, when he takes a breath and gasps. The bear still somehow smells like her; it smells like the warm, fruity lotion she ran out of just before they assaulted Cronos Station. He crushes the bear to his chest, mindful of its soft fabric and his sharp edges, buries his nose between its ears and just breathes.

Several minutes pass, and he slowly feels himself step back from the edge and calm down. He stands up off the floor, fighting a wave of starvation-induced vertigo that is only going to get worse, collects the pen and notebook, and sits down on the bed. He sets the bear beside him, right in the middle against one of her pillows, and opens back up to his letter.

I didn’t stand in front of a reaper just to die of starvation on the way back to you, he writes.

***

Olivia stares out the window of her office - a repurposed single-occupancy room on the first floor of the hotel the Alliance took over for headquarters. The February rain and fog obscure her view, transforming everything into grey and blue smears, occasionally broken by a moving accent of bright color as someone with a cheery umbrella walks down the street.

Her team has mostly moved past their starstruck initial reaction at being led by Captain Shepard, and moved into vague resentment: she’s forcing them to actually do things instead of sit around and talk about the science all day. Talking about the science and the theory is all well and good, when you don’t have a whole galaxy depending upon you to get everyone home.

Funny how they got the Charon Relay up and running within four weeks of that meeting. Unfortunately, one active relay doesn’t do anyone any good - it needs a connection point.

Palaven was the logical choice, though for a while she had a revolving door of asari and salarians arguing that their relays were more important. But communication with Palaven has been unreliable at best; short of sending a scout shuttle, decent intelligence on the Trebia relay is nigh impossible to find. She’s about to give up and switch her efforts to the Aralakh relay. The only reason she hasn’t already is that same revolving door of asari and salarians - though Victus has said he’d support her decision, she’s sure she can add turians to the metaphorical line outside her office.

So much for not taking a political position.

February also marks a return to therapy.  

“I hear reapers,” Olivia says abruptly in the middle of a paragraph-long tirade about politicians, during their third session.

Her therapist tilts her head, and takes a moment to catch up. “How often?”

She holds the woman’s gaze long enough and hard enough that it becomes a stare. “Always.” Inhaling sharply, she continues. “Also geth. And sometimes Cerberus.” She shudders; the Collectors have their moments as well, though usually because there’s a fly in the house.

The woman nods. “That’s normal in veterans,” she says, “to hear your enemies even though you’re safe.”

Olivia blinks at her. “You’re telling me it’s normal for me to think every heavy truck that passes my house is a brute. That my mother’s omnitool beep is a cloaked geth hunter, that my own growling stomach is a husk. It’s normal for me to hear a bunch of kids playing and hear a banshee instead. It’s totally normal that in utter dead silence before I fall asleep I hear get to cover and drone deployed. That’s normal.” It certainly doesn’t sound normal.

“Yes. It’s very common in individuals with combat PTSD.”

Olivia quirks an eyebrow.

She smiles kindly. “I read your file. I diagnosed you in our first session, in August.”

Olivia returns the smile, but just a little bit fake. “I diagnosed myself during the war,” she says. “You have some catching up to do.” It comes out harsher than she intended, and Olivia holds an apology at the tip of her tongue.

“I imagine I do,” she says. “Do you want to talk about hearing reapers, or do you want to talk about Garrus?”

Olivia goes still. She wants to lash out and scream at the woman for even bringing him up - Olivia well knows the implication behind her words: it’s probably time to face that he may not be coming back. But some rational part deep inside of her takes over, and convinces her to take a deep breath, and to focus on the real problem. Hearing reapers and missing Garrus are real problems, but she can tolerate the former and can’t do a damn thing about the latter.

“The night terrors have started breaking through my sleeping pills,” she whispers. Zaeed’s okay enough at walking her back from them, and she’s getting an enormous amount of work done in the hours before sunrise. But it’s the same one she had during the war; only this time, she isn’t chasing a child.

She’s chasing Liara. And when she finally catches up with her, Liara isn’t Liara anymore. She’s twisted and stretched and torn, emaciated. Her mouth curls over sharp teeth and she turns, stalking Olivia like prey.

And Liara screams.

Small wonder she’s been able to sleep at all.

When Olivia gets home that night, exhausted and raw from reliving that particular nightmare for the better part of two hours, she makes polite conversation over dinner and then retreats into her bedroom. She kicks off her shoes and changes into comfy pajama pants and a t-shirt, turns off all the lights save for the strands of fairy lights Kasumi found for her, and sits in the middle of her bed.

Her omnitool glows faint orange as she pulls up her active comm channels. Her message to Liara is still going strong, still repeating. It’s even managed to travel a little further over the past month, as teams slowly repair the comm buoys.

“Please be out there,” she whispers. “Both of you.”

***

[link to part 3]

[xyliane]

sugarhighs and chaperones

summary: just because people ship gon and killua, doesn’t mean they realize gon and killua are already together. killua’s daughter and a motley crew of his students take it upon themselves to correct this issue. leorio does not understand how he keeps getting roped into these things.

notes: a very special thanks to @sunfloweranimator whose comment on a previous headcanon post lead to...this mess. gen, fluff featuring inedal zoldyck, fourteen year old troll, leorio paladiknight who is too old for this shit but it’s not his problem if the kids are sugarhigh, a collection of well-meaning but ridiculous students, and killugon in their thirties. 1800 words.

notes the second: I’m so sorry for the delay, but next chapter of “all roads” is going up in the next few days! I was computer-less for most of the weekend still need to edit and this was half-phone-words

---

“Hey oldest geezer, I’ve got a question.”

“Inedal, you’re my favorite fourteen year old, but you know you can call me Leorio. Or Uncle Orio, like your siblings. Or Dr. Paladiknight if you feel polite for once.”

“But if Dad is the geezer, then you’re the oldest geezer.”

Leorio is immediately and viscerally reminded that Inedal is Killua’s daughter to an almost terrifying degree, her voice over the phone matter of fact like she’s stating the obvious for an idiot. He carefully turns away from the chart he’d been staring at to press fingers against his already pulsing forehead. He’s almost used to Killua’s oldest calling him at odd hours about topics ranging from wrapping sprains (so Killua won’t know) to how to unbreak a broken lockpick (so Killua will know). But usually, she just barges in with whatever it is she needs, knowing Leorio will have what she needs. That she’s hedging means either she’s growing up or wants something she’s not comfortable with. “So what’s your question?” he says.

She hums tunelessly, probably flipping a coin or a knife across her knuckles. Leorio almost starts to ask again, before she blurts out, “How do you go on a date?”

Aaahhh. Leorio leans back in his chair, a smug grin growing on his face. She’s a little younger than her dad had been before he’d started asking about this sort of thing, but it’s about time. Although why she’s asking Leorio and not Gon is another question entirely. Maybe she doesn’t want Killua to know. “So who’s the lucky kid?” Leorio asks. “Is it one of Killua’s students? Or someone from school?”

“Ew, gross!” Inedal half-screams, her voice echoing like she’s pulled the phone away from her ear. “No, this isn’t me! This is setting up Dad and Gon!”

“But...” Leorio crunches his eyebrows together. “They’ve been together for years. Hell, you know they’re together.”

“I know. But Gon only just got back, and some of Dad’s students don’t know, and they’re trying to set them up with each other to try to get my old man to relax a little.” She blows out a puff of air. “They don’t appreciate that he is relaxed, especially now that Gon’s back. He’d be training them over minefields, not the cliffs outside of your city, if he wasn’t relaxed. It’s obvious.”

And there’s the headache. “Have you been stealing their things again?”

“Only when the old man doesn’t notice. And I’m training my hatsu!”

Leorio is understandably terrified when she finally figures that out. Killua had to adopt the prodigy thief girl. “Inedal. Dating. Your dads.”

“Killua’s my dad, Gon’s Gon.”

“Right, right.”

“So? You gonna help me get them on a stupid date so the idiot teenagers my dad teaches can get their heads out of their asses?” Leorio waits, hoping that Gon’s influence holds out a little bit. She finally relents. “Please?”

“Anything for my favorite fourteen year old.”

----

Leorio regrets the anything almost immediately. She’s Killua’s kid, raised by Killua and Gon themselves. She will never fight fair, and uses every skill at her fingers to get what she wants. Which is how Leorio ends up chaperoning a mess of young adults, plus Killua’s kids Inedal and Fen, into a cafe in the bushes outside of Naclabore’s fifth most famous outdoor fish restaurant. It’s not the most expensive, and definitely not the most attractive, but it’s a place Leorio ends up going when he’s taking favored patients once they’ve healed after a particularly risky procedure, or the occasional friend blowing in from out of town. That the cafe next door has such convenient bushes for observation is completely a coincidence.

“How many of you have mastered zetsu?” Leorio asks.

About half of the teenagers thrust their hands in the air, cocky grins on their faces belying their overconfidence. Killua would eat his students alive if he knew they were overplaying their hands. The ones that have mastered it, two or three of the students as well as Fen and Inedal, have been in it since they got within sight of the restaurant. Leorio too, but he’s been a doctor for more than a decade and friends with some of the most reckless idiots in the world for two. It’s self-preservation. Not that Gon or Killua has been very good at that either.

Well. Leorio’s a doctor, not a teacher. Not his job. And Gon and Killua seem to be having a good time, wide grins on both their faces and only occasionally reaching over the table to toy with each other’s hands. At one point, Gon brushes something off of Killua’s cheek, and two of Killua’s students turn to each other and make a noise like tires squealing against pavement. “Okay, so. Those who know zetsu, can stay. Those who don’t, get going.” He turns to Inedal, who’s opening cameras on four different phones with a sly cat-like grin on her face. “Can I leave now? I have work tomorrow.”

“Oldest geezer, we both know you’re sticking around.”

“Yeah, Uncle Orio!” Fen adds, his grin wide and guileless. “We’ll pay for your lunch, too.”

Leorio eyes the ten year old boy and the fourteen year old girl, and looks right at the oldest of Killua’s students. Razin stares right back at him. While not Killua’s longest-taught student, Razin’s in their early twenties and seems to have accepted that Inedal is too stubborn for her own good. Much like her dad and Gon.  “You're here,” they say, shrugging, and settle back into their salad.

“You’re talkative,” Leorio mutters, and they smirk and shrug again. “Fine, I’ll stay til they leave. But this is your fault.”

----

A list of things Killua’s students think they know about Gon, as per them not shutting up the entire time Leorio’s eating his lunch. (Inedal, thankfully, follows through on Fen’s promise. She also looks like a cat that ate a dozen canaries, so Leorio gives up bothering to stay in zetsu. If he’s getting a paid-for day off, he’s going to enjoy it.)

1. Gon is Killua’s best friend. 2. Gon is a two-star lost hunter best known for tracking down Ging Freecss multiple times, getting gem hunter Iundara Gola to finally accept payment on almost forty years of work, and how he helped end a war with Killua. 3. Gon is able to vanish into the woods and return weeks later having saved three endangered species and a giant hawk. 4. Gon can turn his whole right arm into a sword that he uses to carve trees into boats. 5. Gon once swam from the Yorubian continent all the way to the Bergerose Nations to find the right swarm of shrimp for a dinner for his mom. (Leorio nearly chokes on his drink at this one, because he knows exactly what they’re talking about, and...no. No. But yes. But no.)

A list of things Killua’s students think will happen with Gon and Killua, kept PG more likely due to Leorio’s adultly presence than Inedal and Fen’s youthful egging on.

1. Kissing. How many dates before it happens is a debate that lasts all lunch. 2. Easier training sessions while Killua daydreams over his best friend, an idea that a few of the more intelligent students shoot down immediately, but such voices of reason are drowned out. 3. More dates, which means less time spent being zapped for inadequate form.

That Inedal isn’t telling them most of these lists is complete and total bullshit of one form or another, says more about her ability to keep her mouth shut for the sake of the game than any inconsistencies in narrative. Fen is practically vibrating, spinning increasingly ridiculous tall tales about things Gon and Killua have done, until his ice cream arrives and he buries himself up to his elbows in the frozen dessert.

Absolutely none of this is Leorio’s fault. He’s just the chaperone.

----

The only warning most of the not at all covert gathering of students has that Gon and Killua have finished their lunch is how Inedal mysteriously vanishes from sight midway into a conversation with one of the students about how she does her hair. The student looks briefly puzzled before Killua appears all but out of nowhere right behind her. “We’re doing zetsu training for the next two weeks,” he says with the sort of gleeful menace usually reserved for melodramatic laughter by movie villains.

Almost the entire table scrambles to their feet, dishes scattering across the stone. Leorio narrowly rescues the last of his wine, sipping it as casually as he can with Killua’s grin widening to something horrible. “Sup, old man. It’s been a while.”

“Leorio!” Gon calls, and Leorio is half-choked by Gon leaning in for a hug. He’s not as tall as Killua or Leorio, but he’s built as solid as ever, and his hug is strong and tight.

“Welcome back to civilization, buddy” Leorio says.

Killua exchanges a look with Gon, and he sighs. “What are you even doing here. With my students. And...” He tilts his head to the side, lightning flickering through his thick ponytail. There’s a yelp from overhead, and Inedal bounces out of the tree, glaring and embarrassed at being found. “Two of my kids.”

“You need to stop teaching Inedal how to wrap people around her fingers.”

“You need to stop letting her.” But he ruffles his daughter’s hair affectionately nonetheless, leaving her pigtails a staticky mess. She huffs and plops into the seat next to Leorio.

Fen all but vibrates his way up Gon’s arms, tugging at the shorter-than-usual spikes on Gon’s head. Leorio guesses he got it trimmed before meeting up with Killua and the kids. “You got a date with Pa!” Fen says, smile wide.

“I did,” Gon says, and smiles warmly. Killua’s cheeks turn a little pink.

“You gonna go on another?”

Gon’s smile stays the same, but his eyes dance. “I dunno, Fen. That’s all up to Killua.”

“What do you mean it’s up to me,” Killua grumbles. “You’re the one who--”

“You have to take him out again!” one of the students says, hopes higher than Yorknew Tower.

“Yeah! Killua’s a great guy, and a great teacher!’”

“He’s kind of an asshole about his chocolate, but I’m sure you’re already used to it!”

“And he talks about you a lot, even if the stories seem weird.”

“Did you really catch stars in your fists?”

Killua holds up a hand, and everyone shuts up almost instantly. Leorio is more than a little impressed. Until Killua opens his mouth and says, “Wait, are you dumbasses trying to hook me up with Gon?”

“That is why all the students set you up,” Inedal says, and picks at her nails to avoid Killua’s boggled stare. “They even paid for Uncle Leorio’s help.”

“I wasn’t paid!”

“You got lunch. And dessert.”

“Which Fen ate.”

“Which you let Fen eat. He eats too much ice cream. Aren’t you a doctor? Shouldn’t you tell him to balance it with carrots or something?”

Killua and Gon both choke back laughter. Or more accurately, Killua started groaning about Fen and sugarhighs, while Gon asks, giggles tickling out of the back of his throat, “I don’t know, Killua. Dating sounds fun.”

“Gon, we’ve been together for fifteen years.”

“But we never officially dated, Killua. Boyfriend and boyfriend. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Killua opens his mouth to say something absolutely ear-meltingly awful and not at all safe for Leorio’s mind, but holds off at the last minute. Maybe he thinks better of it and has actually grown up at some point in the last twenty-plus years. Maybe he catches sight of his kids. Instead he says to Gon, “More dates this time. You’re buying.”

“Half.”

“Two-thirds. And as for you all...” Killua glances at his best friend and smirks. “Before we start in on retraining your zetsu, we’re going to go back to camp straight through the mountains. Inedal, I think you could use a refresher too. Gon, you mind grabbing what we need?”

A chorus of terrified groans echoes around Leorio, who simply leans back and enjoys the chaos.

[auds-art]

Elysian Dream: Ch 2. The Seeds of Spring

It was late, that much she knew. Deshanna would be expecting her, would have been expecting her hours ago. She could see the Keeper, her old hands time-worn but strong, brown fingers wrapped tightly around her staff as she sat by the fire, probably going between annoyance and worry, not allowing any of the clan to begin the spring celebration until she returned. Yet here she was—napping in a field.

Elandrine sat up slowly, sighing. She ran her hands over her face, and then looked up at the sky through a half-squinted eye. Growing close to dusk. She should have been back shortly after noon, returning with the batch of Arbor Blessing needed, and yet… she had seen the field filled so high with soft grass, swaying gently in the soft breeze, and had been overcome. If her exploration and journey with magic had taught her anything these last three decades, it was to listen to her intuition. Lately, she had been sleeping so much. She had been Fade-treading what must have been two-thirds of the day.

She couldn’t explain it. The Fade—well—it wasn’t exactly calling to her, per se, but it had been…coming closer. The walls of the Veil were slipping; she could feel it with every breath, with the wind in the trees, and the pollen in the air. She felt it as she did her daily ablutions in the wild river beside their current encampment. It made her drowsy, as if the Fade itself were beckoning.

The young elvhen woman shook her head to clear it. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if the fog was in her mind or surrounding her. She turned to her left, where she had laid her bundle of Arbor Blessing, but it was nowhere to be found. Frowning, she felt her spine prick with the first inkling that something was not as it should be. The air was cold, colder than it should have been. Yes, it was only the first day of spring—well, tonight would be—but it was positively frosty. Elandrine stood, really looking at the trees that loomed overhead, and loom they did. These were not her trees. These were not the woods she had roamed and loved these past three months since her clan had arrived near the Exalted Plains. They had come to bury an elder who had passed quietly in his sleep, but had stayed for trade and love of the land. These were not the trees she knew.

A low, rumbling growl made her turn sharply. A wolf, and not the faithful guardian that had adopted her clan, so to speak. Their guardian was a large black wolf, lavender eyes clear and bright and intelligent. Deshanna had known that wolf was a guardian the moment he had appeared. Her wise eyes, so deep and sagacious, had glimpsed the large quadruped one night outside camp, and had drawn Elandrine aside.

‘That is a Guardian,’ the Keeper had whispered, a knobby knuckle gesturing deep into the woods of the north. To Elandrine, he had looked simply like the largest wolf she had ever seen. It wasn’t until her elder and teacher had placed her wizened hands over her eyes, made her seek with her magic, that she had felt the difference. Power. Indescribable power. Elandrine had shaken her head, unable to believe.

‘But Keeper…they have not walked this plane for eons. Not since the Emerald Knights.’

Deashanna had winked then, never revealing all, the knowledge she held within. ‘That is the tale that is told. If our enemies do not know of our most trusted allies, if they are secret, are they not a stronger ally?’

And so she had learned, when she was very young, that myth was not always true, and that her people were kept in ignorance for their own safety. And the knowledge had troubled her, as it had Deshanna. She could see it weigh upon her Keeper, knowledge and secret and heartache. It was the price, Deshanna had said, the price a Keeper paid.

This was most decidedly not their Guardian. This wolf was slender, white and…not alone. Elandrine searched the grass around her for her staff, but it, too, was gone. Fenedhis. She jumped to her feet and stumbled. She was no longer wearing her wrappings and tough leather armor. She was dressed in, what appeared to be, a gauze dress that hung in loose, transparent drapes about herself.

Panic later, she thought as she spun, her arm arcing behind her and casting a blinding flash of light. Flowers sprung up around her, and the grass grew lush, gleaming in the coming twilight.

“Panic now!” she exclaimed, moving with blinding speed for the nearest tree. Though swift, she knew she could not outrun a pack of wolves. She could sense the hostility from them, could feel their anger. Something was not right; they were bespelled.

Elandrine lunged for the lowest branch, grabbed it, and hoisted herself up, trying to keep her skirts from getting in the way of her ascent. If pressed, a wolf could scale low branches of a tree. So, up she went, climbing higher and higher with trembling hands. Her stomach was clenched, making her feel ill—or was that magic she felt pouring all around her, soaking up the atmosphere like wine soaking a cloth until it overflowed, rivulets running and spilling everywhere. The Veil—she could not feel the Veil. It was as if magic were air. Suddenly, she was very aware that this was not her world. She was not meant to be here.

Holding in a sob, more of shock and fear than sorrow, Elandrine clutched to the smooth bark of the tree, watching the wolves prowl below. They growled, snarled, snapped at one another. They were very much cursed; Elandrine could feel it. There was madness upon them.

“—ersa!”

Elandrine grew still, hearing the woman’s deep voice. It sounded…it sounded so similar. “Careful!” she called back, her eyes bright in the growing darkness. “There are enchanted wolves!”

“Persa?” she heard the voice cry again. She could feel the magic approaching long before she could see the cloaked figure. Such magic! The cloak, for that was all she could see, was a deep green but seemed to emanate a golden glow. The figure thrust their hand forward, palm first, and a shock of energy shot outwards. The wolves howled, staggered, bayed once, and suddenly crumpled into dry wheat.

Elandrine felt relief wash over her. Another mage! Perhaps another Dalish—someone who could tell her what was going on.

Below, the figure looked up, their face cloaked in shadow. Upon seeing Elandrine, they sighed in relief, and threw back the hood of their cloak.

“Deshanna!” Elandrine cried, only to stop herself. No. This woman looked like Deshanna, but Deshanna from forty or fifty years prior—a Deshanna full of motherly youth.

“‘Deshanna?’” The woman queried, holding out a hand, indicating that Elandrine should come down. “You have never called me such. Is this a new way of speaking ‘mother?’”

“Mother…?” Elandrine said softly, climbing down with ease, her drapings no longer a hindrance.

“Demeter to some,” the lithe figure replied, standing taller than Deshanna had in decades. Elandrine accepted her proffered hand, helping her down. The elf shook her head, retracting her hand slowly.

“I don’t know a Demeter, but you look like my Deshanna.”

Demeter tilted her head, regarding Elandrine with a puzzled expression. “Persa, what are you on about? You don’t know your own mother?” The older woman reached out and, the way mothers do, put her hand against Elandrine’s forehead, determining her temperature. She shook her head once, and ran her fingers through her ‘daughter’s’ hair. “You are under some strange magic; I can feel it. A difference. It has been an uncommon day, Daughter. Come. Let us return home, and I shall endeavor to determine our little conundrum.”

Elandrine hesitated. She was alone in a strange world, without friend or weapon, and this woman looked like Deshanna and felt…well, trustworthy, she supposed. There was an aura of calm about her. Elandrine took a breath and took the hand that was being held out to her. Together, they walked through the growing twilight.

“What did you mean—”

“Hush, girl,” Demeter said gently. “I feel my brother is close, and I would rather avoid him, if possible.”

A bellowing laugh trumpeted from their left, some feet away. Demeter sighed, her shoulders visibly sagging, and she glanced over at a figure emerging from the shadows. He was tall, thick in the chest and arm, wearing similar robes to Elandrine, but shorter, stopping mid-thigh and crossing only over one portion of his chest. He had a beard that curled about his chin, with curls to match at his temples. His face, though clearly aged, was oddly youthful, save for the smile lines crinkling about his eyes.

“Zeus,” Demeter said blandly, not batting an eye.

“Demeter,” he rejoined merrily, his smile blindingly white in the coming dark. “And Persephone! How you’ve grown. Last I saw, you were barely able to meet my knee!”

Elandrine quietly stepped closer to Demeter, who in turn wrapped her arm around her shoulder.

“What do you want, brother-mine?”

Zeus, still smiling, somehow seemed less jovial. “Surely you felt it, sister-consort.”

Demeter heaved a sigh. “Do not call me your consort.” He held up his hands in apology, and she continued. “Yes, I felt it. That is why we are here and not home on Olympus. Persephone disappeared, and I had to find her.”

“My, my,” Zeus said, his eyes, at once the color of a storm and a cloudless sky, turning to bore into Elandrine. “And what was my daughter up to, I wonder?”

Demeter squeezing her hand was not the only sign to remain silent on the matter. The elf cleared her throat, and tried to seem as docile as possible. “I was…casting flowers for spring,” she said, remembering the flowers that had appeared behind her when she tried to cast magic.

“Ah!” Zeus said, slapping his hard stomach. “Yes, in the commotion, I almost forgot. Spring! No wonder you had slipped away.”

Demeter smiled at Elandrine, and she felt the knot in her stomach lessen slightly. What was she going to say to Demeter when they were alone? What was there to say? Hello, I’m from another world, I think, where I am an elf and you are an elf, and we live in a clan called Lavellan of the Dalish?

Yet, the more she wondered what to say, the harder it was to draw on her past. Demeter…Demeter had been important in the clan. Had she always been called Demeter, or was that new? And she was…who was she? First? What did that mean, again?

The ball that had formed in her stomach turned cold. It was slipping away, as if it had been a dream, yet she could—for the life of her—not remember anything from this world either. She felt…empty.

As if sensing her distress, Demeter cut Zeus off mid-sentence about the ever-sweet scent of flowers. “Brother, we are weary for our beds. Can we discuss this, and what it was that happened, tomorrow?”

Zeus let out his boom of a laugh, head thrown back, completely abandoned to the guffaw. “Yes! That is what I meant to say. I am meeting tomorrow with our other siblings to discuss that burst of magic I felt.”

“Like a wave,” Demeter said softly, “crashing over all and sundry.”

Zeus nodded, rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Yes, exactly what Poseidon said.” He paused, frowning slightly. “Have you seen Hades? I can’t find the bugger hiding any which way, neither in Hell nor Heaven.” When Demeter shook her head, he sighed. “Ah, tomorrow. We shall meet in our clearing—you remember the one, I trust,” he said, with a cheeky grin. Demeter colored slightly in the cheek and inclined her head once, not giving rise to his allusion to their past.

With another cackle, he was gone in a flash of violent light, leaving nothing but a scorched patch of earth where he stood. Demeter clucked her tongue in chastisement, and waved her hand. The grass grew where it had been scorched. Elandrine waved her own fingers at the spot, and a few flowers grew—daffodils, hyacinth and gladiolus. Demeter smiled at her daughter, and drew her under the shelter of her cloak.  

When the older woman removed it, they were suddenly standing in a marble room, cheerfully lit by a roaring fire beneath a large mantle. There were two beds in the room, and between them was a window, curtained with sheer swathes of fabric, letting stars peek through as they billowed in the soft breeze, carrying with it the scent of honey and milk. Exhaustion hit Elandrine like a slap to the face. She almost didn’t notice Demeter leading her to one of the beds and helping her down.

“We’ll speak tomorrow,” Demeter said softly as she wrapped her tenderly in the silken sheets of the bed. Elandrine nodded, her eyelids so heavy she couldn’t keep them up. With a soft sigh, she drifted off immediately. Here, her dreams were hazy, a mix of fantasy and memory, swathed in cotton. A figure stood off to the side, always hidden, unseen, but there, in the corner of her eye. If she hadn’t known better, she might have said he was calling her. Just before she woke, she saw a pair of lavender eyes, deep set, heavy with years and years, yet youthful.

Her mother’s hand woke her, sweeping softly through her hair. They were no longer in the room with the fireplace, but in the clearing where she had awoken the day before, surrounded now by flowers of all varieties, sun warm on her skin. Her head was in Demeter’s lap, and her mother was gazing upon her fondly.

“Tell me Persa,” she said, her voice a murmur of warmth. “Tell me what happened yesterday and what you remember.”

“Less and less,” Elandrine said, not wanting to get up. She was safe here. She was comfortable. The scent of fresh bread surrounded her, reminding her of home. She trusted the woman who held her, knew she loved her dearly. “It’s all a blur now. But I know I am not from…here.”

“Olympus?”

“Yes,” Elandrine continued, “if that is where we are now. I remember…you were the head of our family, but you were older.”

“I grow older as the year turns, my love,” Demeter said, gentle still, her fingers still running through Elandrine’s hair so tenderly.

“Yes, but you were always older. I…I do not think I was your daughter, though you very much acted like a mother to me.”

“But here, you are my daughter.”

Elandrine nodded, gazing up at the woman with kind eyes, the face of a mother. “Here, I am. I can feel that. It has something to do with the magic that spilled.”

Demeter sighed, her expression becoming cloudy. “I thought as much. I wonder if it is a curse upon us. Yet, the air hums like magic as it never did before. Never have I felt this power, this raw energy. Not since…” She shook her head, not completing the thought.

“Not since when, Mother?”

Perhaps because of the moniker, or the innocence in her voice, Demeter was obliged to elaborate. “Not since the Titans. Not since Cronus walked the land, and Chaos was the rule, not Order as your father has created.”

“Chaos,” Elandrine said softly. The word was…familiar. Cronus. A figure flashed through her mind, looming and dreadful. Her grandfather, here anyway. A beautiful beast who ate his children and filled creation, his wife, Rhea, with dread.

The knowledge was unbidden and somewhat shocking. Elandrine gazed up at Demeter and shook her head. “This bodes ill.”

“Hush, child,” Demeter said, not unkindly. She was gazing ahead, alert. She motioned for the young woman to sit up, and so Elandrine did. The air fizzled with electricity, and like a shot of blinding light, there suddenly stood Zeus, smoke seeming to curl up from beneath his feet as if he had, yet again, scorched the earth. His figure was larger than life—he filled up the whole clearing with his energy, laughing, male, volatile, yet with a sense of order. He was not necessarily good, but he certainly wasn’t wicked or evil.

“Demeter! I see you have brought our lovely daughter.” He said it with a smile, but Elandrine could sense the warning—Demeter had not asked to bring her, and that was a disrespect.

“If you like, she may return home. We were simply waiting for you and the others to arrive, brother.”

Appeased at being asked, he shook his head. “Nay, let the girl stay. She is old enough, is she not?”

Before another word could be said, the earth began to tremble. There was a noise unlike any Elandrine had heard before, and the earth split tumultuously. A man emerged, looking very much like his brother, Zeus, yet…wilder. His beard was not as kempt. His eyes did not convey a sense of order and justice, but…there was a touch of beast there. Otherwise, he might have been Zeus’ twin. That was how she knew he was Zeus’ brother, Elandrine justified to herself.

“Poseidon!” Zeus clapped his brother’s forearm in a tight brace. “Right on time.”

“Where are the others?” he asked gruffly, his eyes flicking only briefly to Demeter and Elandrine.

“Coming; Hera is fetching Hestia.”

“Has fetched,” a calm, feminine voice corrected. Out stepped a woman more elegant that Elandrine thought a woman had a right to be. She was tall, statuesque, with silver hair and golden eyes that gleamed. Her robes were crimson and gold, and the diadem on her head was so familiar. With her was another, just as statuesque, but softer somehow. Quieter. The same energy did not radiate from Hestia as fiercely as it did from Hera.

“Wife!” Zeus cried, grinning. “Prompt as ever.”

“Husband,” Hera said, inclining her head. Was there warmth in the tone, or was that anger? Elandrine could not tell.

“Where is Hades?” Poseidon demanded, folding thick forearms across his chest impatiently.

“I’m here,” a voice said, and it shook Elandrine. It was deep, smooth, like music. She finally understood what others meant when they said a voice could be silk—for his was.

“And where have you been? I could not find you yesterday,” Poseidon complained.

The figure emerged from where he had been reclining, unseen, against a tree. He wore deep grey robes, and they seemed to whisper as he moved. His skin pale, but with a golden tone to it. His face was chiseled, handsome yet detached. He was gazing over at his brothers, and unlike those two, had no beard, no curls atop his head. There was something very otherworldly about him—and so familiar. She had seen those eyes before.

“I…was not myself yesterday. Forgive me, Dirtha—Poseidon.”

“Yes, about that,” Zeus said, gazing at the newest addition to the group. “You and your niece were both missing yesterday.”

“Persephone was just preparing for spring,” Demeter cut in, defending her daughter. Elandrine remained silent, somewhat stunned by the presence of whom she could only assume was Hades.

A shiver ran up Elandrine’s back, and she turned her gaze slowly back to Hades. He was staring at her now, fixated, his gaze boring and intense. She swallowed, her heart fluttering. This was…new.

“—the magic was sudden.”

“Was it the Titans?” Poseidon asked, his voice gruff.

Hera shook her head, gazing over at her husband. “Zeus and I both checked on their restraints yesterday. They were untouched.”

“Stronger, if anything,” Zeus added, rubbing his chin through his beard. “I thought it might have originated in the Underworld, but Hades can remember nothing.”

“Like me,” Elandrine said, frowning. She looked again to Hades, and he was still staring at her. She swallowed whatever words she had been about to say. How could she speak under such a penetrating gaze?

“And the animals,” Demeter said. “I found Persa surrounded by enchanted wolves. If they could not get to her soon, I believe they would have begun to tear themselves to pieces.”

“Wolves?” Hera asked, frowning. “Has Artemis mentioned anything else about more woodland creatures?”

Zeus shook his head. “No, but I could not call her back from her hunt. We shall ask her upon her return this eve.”

Hades shrunk back slightly, frowning. Elandrine noticed, but tried not to stare. He was intimidating. She did was almost afraid to draw his attention, even if she craved it.

“I have sent Apollo and Ersa out to seek its epicenter. Dionysus is meditating on the answer.”

“What of Hecate, brother?” Hestia asked softly, her voice gentle and kind.

“Hermes is seeking her,” Zeus supplied. “I could not summon her. It worries me.”

“We will find the answer, husband,” Hera said. Zeus looked to his consort and nodded, his gaze serious.

“Until then, I recommend none leave Olympus without my leave.” He paused, then smiled. “Except, of course, Hades. You have a job to do, brother. We mustn’t forget that.”

“As you always seek to remind me,” Hades said, though his voice was patient, unperturbed.

“What of Spring?” Demeter demanded, touching her daughter’s shoulder. Zeus sighed and threw his hands into the air.

“Spring must come, of course.” He snorted. “Return by dusk each day, daughter.”

Elandrine, realizing they were speaking of her, nodded. “I shall.”

The gods were disappearing one by one. Her mother stood, looking up to the sky, judging the time. Elandrine felt a prickle again, and glanced back at Hades. He was the last to leave, and even as he faded into the shadow that surrounded them, his eyes lingered on her. It made her…uncomfortable, but she wasn’t sure if it was such a bad feeling.

“Come,” Demeter said, extending her hand to her daughter. “We have a few hours for you to work, and much to do.”

Elandrine took her mother’s hand and stood, yet still, she could feel his eyes, watching.

[vanillatwilight17]

A New Beginning (Chapter 5)

A/N: Sorry for the wait! I'm a teacher and we are entering our last week of school so things are getting hectic! But that does mean that once school is out I will have more time to devote to this story! I have lots of plans for it so I hope you guys are enjoying it!

Here are links to previous chapters:

Chapter 1: http://vanillatwilight17.tumblr.com/post/161335347638/a-new-beginning

Chapter 2: http://vanillatwilight17.tumblr.com/post/161365679723/a-new-beginning-chapter-2

Chapter 3: http://vanillatwilight17.tumblr.com/post/161412904808/a-new-beginning-chapter-3

Chapter 4: http://vanillatwilight17.tumblr.com/post/161625416503/a-new-beginning-chapter-4

Disclaimer: I own nothing, please do not sue me!

Chapter 5: Operation Firework

"If we pull this plan of yours off kid it's going to be a miracle!" Emma said as she walked with her husband and son to Granny's early Monday morning.

"It's going to be epic! Seriously this is going to be the Fourth of July celebration that goes down in town history!" Henry said getting excited.

"I still feel like someone is going to figure it out before the big reveal." Emma said.

"That's why we changed the name of the operation! To make it less obvious." Henry said.

Over the course of the weekend the three of them had finalized plans for Operation Grand Reveal to tell their family and friends about the baby. Since they had decided they were going to do it during the Fourth of July party they were hosting they had renamed it to Operation Firework, allowing them to talk more openly in public about it and not risk anyone catching on. To set the final part of the plan in action they needed to enlist the help of Granny. They walked into the diner and found her behind the counter serving coffee to her early morning guests.

"Good! Just the people I needed to talk to! I need you to get me a final head count for Saturday by the end of tomorrow so I can make sure I have enough ingredients!"

"We got you covered Granny! We actually came here to ask if you could make one more thing for the party." Emma asked trying to put on her best puppy dog eyes.

"I'm already catering the entire party! What more could you possibly need?" Granny asked throwing her hands up. Emma, Killian, and Henry all exchanged looks as one another and nodded and Henry ran behind the counter and whispered in Granny's ear. Emma didn't hear exactly what he said to her but she saw the old woman's face turn from hard and stubborn to soft and filled with excitement in over the course of thirty seconds followed by a loud "Ahhhh!" as Granny dropped the coffee pot and ran around the counter and pulled Emma and Killian in together for a hug.

"Granny you have to quiet down or people are gonna start to ask questions! The whole point of this is it being a giant reveal! You have to keep it secret! Nobody knows except us four and Ashley. Not even my parents know yet!"

"Alright, alright! I'm just so happy for you guys! You deserve this!"

"So you'll help us with the big announcement?" Killian asked.

"Of course! What do you need me to do?" The three of them sat down at a nearby table and discussed what they wanted Granny to do.

"We'll have you bring it over early, Mom will work some magic on it to make and viola!" Henry said excitedly.

"I can't wait! I just have one favor in return to ask."

"Anything Granny." Emma said as the old woman reached out to grab her hands.

"Many years ago, when it was announced to the entire kingdom that you would be making your grand appearance into the world, I made you something. Your mom even came to me in private and told me your name so I could embroider in on there for you." Granny said.

"My baby blanket." Emma said. She had never realized Granny had been the one who made it for her.

"You still have it?"

"It may still take up residence in my bed from time to time."

"Time to time? More like every night." Killian said, poking fun at his wife.

"Hey, it's all I had to give me any sort of clue as to who I was! It's special to me."

"I know love," Killian said wrapping his arm around his wife. "I was only giving you a hard time."

"Well, I was hoping you would give me the honor of making your baby's blanket." Granny said.

"Granny the honor would be all ours." Emma said hugging the old woman again.

"What honor would be all yours?" Emma jumped as the sound of her mother's voice snuck up behind her. She turned around coming face to face with both her parents.

"Mom….Dad…uhh…" Her eyes moved towards Killian but he looked just as caught of guard as she was.

"I'm trying out a new lasagna recipe and I have asked them to be the first to try it out." Granny said.

"But I love your lasagna! Why would you change it? I demand that this should go to vote at city council!" David said going on a rant to Granny but Snow eyed her daughter suspiciously.

"I didn't know you guys were going to be here this morning, why don't you guys come eat with us." Snow said them. They all turned to go to their usual table and Granny winked at Emma who mouthed thank you back. All throughout breakfast Emma caught her mother giving her side glances. It didn't help matters that when their food arrived Killian's bacon smelled a little too strongly and she had to push him off the bench seat and run to the bathroom.

"What was the doctor's diagnosis again?" Snow asked Emma as they were walking out of the diner to go their separate ways.

"Huh?" Emma asked her mother.

"You know a few weeks back when you went to the doctor because you weren't feeling well. What did he say it was? I'm assuming that's why you ran to the bathroom like a sprinter earlier. The…bug, is still bothering you." Snow said a little more suggestively than Emma would have liked.

"Oh, uh…yea it's still bothering me a bit. He said that it would take a few weeks to get out of my system though." Emma tried to be cool and play it off but she wasn't so certain she hadn't inherited her super power from her mother.

Forty five minutes later, after dropping Henry off at school Emma and Killian sat in the bug doing their morning patrol duties.

"She knows." Emma said.

"Who knows what?" Killian asked.

"My mother. She knows I'm pregnant."

"She doesn't know love."

"Did you see the way she looked at me? And what was with the third degree outside Granny's? She totally knows Killian!"

"Aye she probably suspects that Granny's whole lasagna story was total bullshit but I don't think she heard it and went oh my God you're pregnant!" Killian couldn't help but laugh.

"It's not funny! You don't understand that woman knows all and sees all. I'm surprised we have been able to keep it from her this long. She is catching on that a stomach bug shouldn't last for weeks on end."

"I just can't wait for Saturday. I hate keeping secrets, especially from your parents! Not to mention as fun as they are all these big reveals are extremely tiring. I just want to focus on us and this one." Killian said placing his hand on Emma's stomach. She turned to face him and leaned in for a kiss. They lost track of reality, becoming completely lost in each other when they heard a banging on the outside of the car causing Emma and Killian to jump.

"Hey! The townspeople don't pay you two to sit out here and suck face all day!" David said crossing his arms and giving his best disapproving dad face.

"Dad!" Emma said throwing her head back against the seat. Once they were in the station they went to their separate desks and started working on long over due paperwork. Emma wasn't at her desk thirty minutes when a wave of morning sickness hit her. She sprung from her chair and sprinted for the bathroom.

"Bloody hell. I sure hope this doesn't go on the entire time." Killian said getting up to go comfort her.

"Last the whole time of what? I thought she went to the doctor and he said everything was ok and it was just a bug?"

Fuck. Killian thought to himself. This was the second time today the cat had almost been let out of the bag.

"He said everything was ok but it might take a while to get out of her system. I only meant that I hoped she didn't throw up until it was…out of her system that is." Killian was careful in how he worded his statement so that he wouldn't technically be lying to her father in law. This seemed to appease David and he walked out into the lobby and into the restroom where he found his wife hugging the toilet. He began rubbing her back until she was done.

"It can't be February soon enough! It was never like this with Henry." Emma said reaching up to flush away her breakfast.

"All the books say every pregnancy is different love. I'm sure it will pass soon. If it helps I almost just let it slip to your father why you have seemingly moved your office to the restroom."

"What did you say?"

"Basically what you just said but don't worry I played it off. He seems a bit less suspicious than your mother." Emma threw her arms around her husband and buried her face in his neck.

"Ugh fuck it, want to just post the sonogram picture on Facebook or something?" She asked.

"I was all for that weeks ago!" Killian said kissing her forehead.

"Yea yea I know. It's only a few more days. Let's just hide out like hermits and not talk to anyone until Saturday and everything will be great!"

"I could get behind the idea of being locked up with you until Saturday." Killian said wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"Of could you now?" Emma said running her hands down his torso to tease him.

"What do you say we volunteer for afternoon patrol duty and sneak home for some alone time before Henry gets home?" Killian asked.

"I thought you didn't like lying to my parents?" Emma asked still teasing him with her hands.

"This isn't lying. We can take the long way home and make sure everything is in proper working order. Technically patrolling!" Killian said winking at her.

"Believe me mister, you won't want to take the long way home by this afternoon." Emma said.

When Saturday rolled around Emma felt like a chicken with her head cut off. Between getting everything set up and running in the house every half an hour to throw up she was already exhausted and the party didn't start for another three hours. When Killian and Henry returned from Granny's with the catered food, she was scolded by Killian for doing too much.

"You are to go in the house and relax. It's ninety degrees out here! You need to take it easy!"

"I'm pregnant Killian not broken." Emma argued with him but she could tell the heat was getting to her.

"Inside. Now. The lad and I got this covered. Granny said she would have the cake for the reveal here in an hour so go get the spell ready because we won't have much time before everyone gets here after that." Killian said kissing her cheek. Emma wanted to fight him and prove that pregnancy wasn't a handicap but this time between the heat and the anxiety of what was happening later she couldn't find it within herself to argue.

When Granny showed up with the cake, it took all four of them to get it into the backyard.

"How did you even get this thing in the truck Granny?" Henry asked her.

"I bribed the dwarfs with free lunch."

"You got the spell ready love?" Killian asked.

"I think so. I would have really liked to have had Regina to consult with for something this intricate." She said.

"Why? Do you think you messed it up?"

"I don't think so. I went through it about four times. I got most of the kinks worked out. It's either going to reveal the pregnancy or give everyone duck beaks and raccoon tails." Emma said, raising her hands to perform the spell.

"That's…. encouraging." Hook said.

"If this goes badly, the blame does not get placed on my food!" Granny said.

"Quack, Quack." Henry said as Emma performed the spell.

"Did it work?" Killian asked.

"It won't be set into motion until I perform the last bit of the spell later so I guess we will have to wait and see." Emma said.

"I have faith in you Mom!" Henry said.

"Glad he's got some confidence." Granny said.

Around three in the afternoon guests started showing up and the party was in full swing. It brought a smile to Emma's face to see everyone she cared about in one place, it reminded her of their wedding. Everyone was having a great time, there was music, a slip and slide and sprinkler for the kids, and as usual Granny's food was amazing. The plan was right before dark Operation Firework would be set into motion. It was a challenge to keep some people out of the cake, Leroy namely but so far everything had gone perfectly. Right as the sun was setting Henry called everyone together.

"Hey everyone! It's almost time for cake and fireworks! Come get a good spot!" Once everyone was standing around the cake Emma and Killian walked to the head of the table it was sitting on.

"We wanted to thank everyone for coming! We hope you had a great time and that you will all enjoy the fireworks that should be starting in half an hour or so…" Emma said checking her watch, getting more and more nervous as the moment drew closer.

"Before that though, we have one more treat for you guys!" Killian said wrapping his arm around his wife. Emma waved her hand under the table and the cake came to life. The cake itself was in the shape of a tree and as the spell worked different members from the family started to appear on the branches. Names of everyone in their family tree started to form on the branches in icing. It had taken some research in the library but they had been able to go back several generations. As the names got down to their own everyone started to get excited.

"Look! Even I'm on there!" Zelena yelled seeing her name appear.

"Of course you are! You're my step great aunt?" Emma said causing Killian to laugh at the outrageous connections they all shared. While everyone stood memorized by the enchanted cake Emma reached over and squeezed Killian's hand as the second to last branch was added. It was a branch that added Killian's name to the tree signifying his marriage to Emma. They gave each other sideways glances waiting to moment of truth. Everyone started to clap assuming this meant the show was over and they could dig in but just then one last branch started to form. It came down directly from Emma and Killian's names and the words Baby Jones appeared underneath. Just as everyone started to process the meaning of this the last phase of the spell went into place and on the trunk of the tree the picture they had taken a few weeks back with Ashley appeared, showing the parents to be announcing to Henry that he would be a big brother in February. Once the show was over Emma and Killian looked up at their guests.

"Surprise!" They said together anxiously awaiting everyone's reactions.

"Ahhh!"

"Congrats!"

"YES!"

Were some of the cheers that could be heard as everyone erupted into excitement at the announcement of the newest member of the family.

"I knew it!" Snow said running over to throw her arms around her daughter and pull her in close.

"Why didn't you say anything if you knew?"

"I wasn't one hundred percent but I had my suspicions. I wanted you to come to me in your own time and I'm glad I did this was a great idea! I also want copies of those photos you guys took!"

"Most definitely! We have a whole bunch I'll bring them over and let you show me which ones you want. Dad are you…crying?" Emma asked noticing her father wiping tears from his eyes.

"My baby is having a baby forgive me if I'm a little emotional about it." He said pulling his daughter into his arms and kissing the top of her head. "Congratulations sweetheart!" He said.

"Thanks Dad." Emma said resting her head against his shoulder.

They had barely served everyone a piece of family tree cake when fireworks started shooting off over the bay.

"OOOOOOOs" and "AHHHHHHs" could be heard throughout the crowd. Emma sat down next to her husband on their lawn, surrounded by their family and friends. He wrapped his arm around her and she leaned into him.

"So…Operation Firework a success?" He asked her.

"I would put this down as another successful operation and now everyone knows!" Emma replied.

"Thank the Gods! I can dote on you and touch your belly whenever I want!" Killian said rubbing her still flat stomach.

"Oh those are my favorites!" Emma said excitedly pointing up at a firework that looked like a willow tree as it exploded. Soon her parents, brother, Henry, Regina, Zelena and Robin came to join them and they all watched a spectacular firework show together, talking excitedly of the months to come.

A/N: Please Review/Comment and let me know what you guys think!

[y02mustang-the-bard]

a look at kal / kara

After all the upset floating around today, I dove into fanfic and took this from a three paragraph idea to the 10 pages it is (finished) in a few hours.

Apparently anger is motivating?

I’ll put this up on AO3 in a few days, this is the non-beta’d version. I don’t know if this is really canon divergent since we don’t know much about the pre-Kara Supergirl universe, but it doesn’t exactly follow the Smallville timeline.

Summary: A short fic about before and shortly after Kara arrived on Earth. First chapter is Kal-El’s perspective, second chapter is Kara’s.

Chapter Two is here.

CHAPTER ONE

“What… Kelex, what do you mean? There was another pod?”

“Master Kal, the information in your pod indicates that your cousin, Kara Zor-El, was to follow you to Earth. Her pod would have been interlocked with the same coordinates as your own.”

Clark stared at the robot. “But… where is she? There was no other ship, the Kents would have told me. Kelex, can you scan for the signature from her ship?”

“Yes, Master Kal. I can trace the flightpath of your pod.”

“Do it.”

“It will take some time.”

Clark clenched his hands into fists and stared up into the crystalline faces of his birth parents. He had no memory of them but they were family, and so was this Kara. Another survivor from Krypton’s destruction. He wasn’t the last.

“Find her.”

“Scanning.”

Clark stormed out of the Fortress and took to the skies.

He landed in a field outside of Smallville and walked a few paces, cape folding as he crouched down, placing his hand against the earth, against the dirt where, twenty-two years earlier, his pod had crash-landed. His first taste of Earth had come right here, when Jon pried the front shield from the pod. His human strength normally wouldn’t have been able to remove any piece of the ship, but the rough landing, bouncing off at least one mountain, had cracked the metal near the hinges of the canopy.

Jon liked to tell the story of how Clark had blinked up at him, twice, and then simply started screaming. Jon reached into the ship, moving slowly in case there was some sort of defense mechanism, and collected Clark into his arms, baby blanket and all. If the pod from outer space hadn’t been a large enough clue, the strange material of the blanket and clothes he was wearing would have given his alien heritage away.

Jon walked slowly back to the truck where Martha waited, calling her husband’s name, and he just cooed to the baby, trying to soothe him. He had no idea that the nine-month-old was overwhelmed by radiation from the yellow sun and the child had no idea what to make of the feeling permeating every cell in his little body.

Clark grabbed a handful of the dirt and let it run through his fingers.

There were times growing up that he knew something was off, as his powers began to develop, and he knew it had been hard on the Kents. He had strength within a few days, Martha recalled, and at fourteen months, when he should have been beginning to feed himself with utensils, Martha had kept him on finger foods (which ended up being mostly smashed fruits and crumbs of anything else that he shoved into his mouth) and kept him distracted when trying to feed him with a spoon so he wouldn’t bite down and try to chew the utensil. It took him until two years old to be able to hold a spoon without crushing it.

Jeremiah and Eliza had been a godsend, a phrase Martha repeated anytime Clark asked questions about his upbringing. They couldn’t take him to a regular doctor, obviously, so Jon had carefully reached out to his friend Jeremiah in California and after a few vaguely “hypothetical” questions, brought the Danvers into their secret. Within a month, Jeremiah created a few baby toys that would withstand an alien toddler and the Kents offered the toys extensively anytime they interacted with Clark in order to redirect him from accidentally breaking human bones.

He winced. Apparently he’d broken Jon’s fingers the first time he grabbed them.

When the x-ray vision and super hearing became apparent, it was Jeremiah to the rescue, again, with a pair of lead-lined glasses to dampen the input. Well, several pairs, because teenage alien boys are just as forgetful and careless as other children their age, but the fifth pair had been the charm and was the set that Clark still wore when he was in his human persona.

Recalling the sensory overload that he suffered those few days while Jeremiah and Eliza tried to work out options, before they came up with the glasses, he exhaled slowly, feeling a little sick at the memory.

He’d had to manage all of this without any help from a Kryptonian, without having any idea what was going on with his body.

He wanted better for Kara. He’d take care of her when she landed. He’d find her, he’d watch out for her, he’d help her as she gained her powers. Super speed and flying had been fun - they could enjoy that together.

He imagined them bursting through clouds together and smiled.

He had a cousin.

He had family.

*****

Clark returned to the Fortress a few weeks later.

“Kelex, any update?”

“Still searching, Master Kal. No sign of the other pod.”

He sighed. “Keep looking.”

He studied the letters on the main panel in front of him, hesitantly choosing a few letters, pulling up his family tree. He wanted to learn more about his cousin.

Daughter of Alura In-Ze and Zor El. Zor-El was a scientist, like his brother, Jor-El, and Alura was also a scientist, but she focused more on botany.

Clark tried to pronounce a few of the names of the plants but moved on quickly. Kryptonian was still difficult, though he’d been trying to learn for the past several months. Maybe he and Kara could speak it together.

The records indicated she was just shy of her thirteenth birthday when Krypton exploded. He put his hands on his hips and considered that. She’d actually remember Krypton, she’d speak Kryptonian fluently… and she was probably expecting him to be a baby. Alura and Zor El probably sent her along to care for him on this new planet.

Well. He’d just have to take care of her instead.

*****

Clark continued checking on Kelex’s progress but when it became clear that it was indeed going to take a while, his returns to the Fortress became less frequent.

Forty-seven weeks after he’d first made the request, Clark landed in the Fortress and strode into the main chamber. It had been almost four months since his last visit and he sighed as he asked Kelex for an update, expecting the same “Still searching, Master Kal” he’d heard every time before.

“I have located Kara Zor-El’s pod, Master Kal.”

“Where?! What happened to her?”

“It appears the shock wave from Krypton’s destruction knocked her pod off course. There is a faint trail that indicates her ship has been lost in the Phantom Zone.”

“... what is that?”

“An area of space in which time does not pass.”

Clark felt the breath leave his lungs for a moment and he rocked back on his heels. “How do we get her out of there?”

“I am not aware of any manner in which to extract anything from the Phantom Zone.”

He growled. “Find one. We have to do something. Search the databases.”

“Yes, Master Kal. It may take some time.”

“It doesn’t matter. We can’t leave her there.”

He let out a slow breath and slammed his hand on the control panel, bringing up the entry on the Phantom Zone. There had to be something they could do.

*****

Seven months later, Kelex reported, “Master Kal, there is a development on Kara Zor-El’s pod.”

“What is it?”

“There is a new reading. The ship is exiting the Phantom Zone.”

“How? I thought you couldn’t pull it free.”

“I cannot, Master Kal. I do not know the source of the movement, but the pod’s engines are online and the ship is resuming its trajectory to Earth.”

Clark swallowed. “She’s on her way?”

“Yes.”

“How long until she arrives?”

“Approximately twenty-seven days, eighteen hours, and fifty-three minutes.”

He nodded. “Okay, that’s good. That’s great. I… I need to get ready.”

*****

When Clark landed outside his childhood home, quickly changing into Clark Kent’s normal wear of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, grinning and wanting to tell his parents that they’d finally managed to find his cousin, Martha met him out front. That she’d been crying was obvious and Clark’s smile fell at the rapid beat of her heart.

“Mom?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head and he wrapped his arms around her, looking up at the house. She took a shuddering breath and just buried her face into his chest. He frowned and cast his hearing out around the farm. Besides Martha’s, the only other heartbeats he found were Shelby’s and other animals.

“... where’s Dad?”

She cried harder and it was only when he focused his hearing on her directly that he heard the whisper that he was gone.

*****

Clark reached out to the Danvers two weeks later. They’d attended Jonathan’s funeral and offered Martha and Clark sincere condolences and warm hugs but Clark hadn’t wanted to approach them about his Earth-bound cousin. It was only a week later when he realized that he was in no position to care for a twelve-year-old, blood or not, and that it was better that she grow up with a normal human childhood, like he did. Better than a struggling junior reporter living on his own in a small apartment in Metropolis.

He missed Jonathan and he wanted her to have a shot at knowing an Earth dad, too. Martha insisted she’d be able to help but Clark didn’t want to put that stress on her. She wasn’t sleeping and tried to hide it and he just couldn’t drop a Kryptonian pre-teen in her lap.

Eliza responded quickly, assuring him that they would be glad to help, that Kara would grow up safe and loved and they would help her understand her powers, that he would always be welcome to visit and give her that important family connection.

Clark thanked them and began planning for the day his cousin would land.

*****

It was mid-day and Clark found himself back at the spot where his pod had landed nearly twenty-four years earlier. The sun was high and he soaked up the radiation, wiping his hands on his cape idly, more nervous than he expected he would be.

He picked up the sound of the pod as it began to enter the atmosphere, the rumble and hiss as it broke into the stratosphere and, finally, the troposphere. It was just a minute longer before it came into view, rocketing through the sky, bouncing off the same mountain Clark imagined he’d ricocheted off as well, diving toward the ground. It rocked and skid to a stop some two hundred meters away.

Clark took a single leap and landed near the pod, grasping the shield and ripping it away, revealing the young girl within.