#hundreds of years later and there are survivors!

[helimir]

getting emotional over devexian waking up as many aeormatoms as he can and giving them a chance to discover a new identity. THIS is what healing from the destruction of aeor looks like

[rel124c41]

BACK TO CHEST (SOUL TO SOUL). jade leech

Saprophytic organisms obtain their nutrients by breaking down dead organic matter.

tags: main character death (permanently tho?), dark magic, family dynamics, survivor guilt, established relationship, malleus’s unrequited crush on reader, & happy halloween

a/n: jade & floyd's mother's name siphon from @mochinomnoms

word count: 12, 802

When Malleus Draconia, prince of Briar Valley, overblotted, you were beheaded. 

Jade has been rolling that sentence in his head for the entire month. He has been trying to make sense of it. Like a student retyping a sentence, he changes it up every so often; when housewarden Malleus Draconia overblotted, you were beheaded; when Malleus Draconia, born January 18th, 202 centimeters tall, green eyes, a hundred or so years old, overblotted, you were beheaded; when Malleus Draconia, nicknamed Tsunotaro, overblotted, you were beheaded; when Malleus Draconia overblotted, Jade had to watch you be beheaded from Diasoma’s dormitory barbican. The facts do not seem real no matter how much he edits them.

Part of him deducts that it might be because beheaded is the wrong word. Beheaded implies decapitation: the head fully cut off from the body. You did not resemble a cleanly-made dullahan. The slashing, void magic Malleus Draconia sent out cut from your frontal bone diagonally down to your occipital bone. 

Jade hopes more fiercely than a child wishing on a star that it felt like a painful flick to your forehead than nothing else. He does not want to entertain the thought you might have been conscious, wondering when your hair caught fire as you suffered through incomprehensible pain. Visible brain matter stuttering with a few painful last thoughts as you were cut apart.

So, with that said, it has not really registered in Jade Leech’s own brain that you are really dead. He can find the words perfectly fine. He cannot find the meaning of that mysterious poetry, no matter how embellished or how nudely plain.

Which is why his brother has to say certain words to him real slowly. Make sure the meaning sticks. Elongating them, sometimes repeating, “Today’s (Name)’s funeral, Jade. You have to get up.” Which comes out as fuuuh-neeer-al, yooo-u, and uuuh-puh. 

Floyd has to repeat ‘get up’ four times because Jade refuses to. As he has been for the last month, he rots in bed. Luckily, Jade has always been an exemplary student so he will still be able to graduate his second year with all his high marks. Thank the Seven for small miracles.

“Cooome on, Jade. Jade, please, get up. Jadeee.”

Roughly, and then softly and sorrily, Floyd tries to shake Jade out of his pretend sleep. His brother has been doing that a lot – sleeping and then, not sleeping, but still laying in bed with his eyes closed. Who knows what is so alluring about the ebon made from flesh-shuttered windows. A week ago, Floyd had a thought that turned his stomach rotten. What if Jade has been sleeping so much so he can pretend he is still under Sea Slug’s spell, before anything happened?

He does not like to think about it. To be frank, he has been hating thinking this entire month. It makes bile poke its tiny fingers on the muscles in his throat, watching his mirror reflection lie somnolent in bed, looking halfway dead. Which is why Floyd shifts back to shaking Jade at a harsher pace – which he will eventually slow down again, feeling regret for being rough. 

“Jaaadiooo, waaake uuup. Jade. Jade Jade Jade!” 

Floyd wonders if he has to get Azul to assist him in picking up Jade. It is not that Jade puts up a struggle when getting dragged out of bed; it is just that his weight feels like dead weight and that makes Floyd queasy. He likes having Azul there. Azul dresses Jade; Floyd brushes Jade’s teeth. They both take turns taking cups of water and rinsing shampoo out of his hair.

However, Azul is not needed because Jade voluntarily opens his eyes a moment later. Dull, rusted gold and olive peers through black eyelashes. Lifeless eyes flicker, registering what the waking world is showing him.

Shoes that are worth a king's ransom crease because Floyd decides to crouch rather than kneel by Jade’s bed. His hair is neatly slicked back, gel fixating his black strand behind his piercing. Dressed in a simple black suit, Floyd gives a shy smile and whispers, “Hey.” Jade notices something that makes him close his eyes.

Floyd did his tie correctly this time.

“Hey, no goin’ back to sleep. Ya gotta get up today, Jade, c’mon. I’ll eat one of your mushrooms if ya get up. You can decide which one, whatever works for me. Hehehe, how does that sound? … Jade, please. Get up.”

“What’s the point?”

“Because you’re gonna be pissed at yourself if ya don’t. Ya gonna hate yourself more if you don’t get up.”

“Not possible.” Jade’s nose wrinkles when Floyd starts to run his fingers through his hair, combing back black hair.

“You have to get up today. If you do, next week, Azul and I’ll leave ya alone.”

“Leave me alone now.”

“Ya have to get up to say goodbye. Come on, (Name) deserves you there. You have to get up for (Name).”

Jade does the only thing that allows Floyd to know his brother is not a corpse - he sheds a tear. Dried-up, pruning corpses cannot shed tears. It comes with a double edged sword of relief and pain; Floyd watches the tear escape from Jade’s left eye, descending down over the bridge of his nose, and onto his pillow. 

Emptied of one of a thousand tears, Jade whispers back, tormented, “I can’t.”

In your absence, Floyd’s verbose brother has turned into a man of little words. As if the action of talking is just as strenuous as getting up. It is unnerving for Floyd who is so used to his brother talking so much. 

Grief shackles a body like an anchor. So used to swimming through life with dexterity, grief has tangled itself upon Jade like cutting, tangling fishing gear or stabbing, soda-can-holding plastic. Each limb is ten times heavier than it has ever been. His tongue is an iron paperweight.

And, Floyd knows. That weight has been crushing him too.

Floyd still looks towards your designated seat in Mostro Lounge by mistake. Waits with a heavy heart to see you sitting there, ordering one of their chocolate-or-caramel themed drinks. Waits for your voice to just suddenly be in his ears talking, asking about basketball practice or new menu items.

But, he has been brave for his brother’s sake. Which is why he requests, touching their foreheads together, “Then, get up for me. Get up for me.”

For the first time in the month, Jade brushes his teeth without help. He cannot manage to do his hair but Floyd gives no complaints, slicking his own hands up with opaque green gel.

Only one month after death, a body fully liquifies. Life deflating, the soft tissue starts to decay. Oval holes in the skin appear with the ease of stretched dough. Flesh’s solidity fails and melts like candle wax. In a month’s time, a cadaver is expected to expose its vulnerable skeleton. 

Against all physical laws, you have not rotted away like an apple attacked by fungi and bacteria. In fact, it would be appropriate to say you look alive. It is inappropriate though because of the downward, diagonal scar across your forehead. Magic keeps your body fresh but your grave-ushering wound remains.

They stitched you back up? Jade wonders which friend of yours had picked the top part of your cranium off the rain-soaked ground. 

Even though Ace and Deuce were the closest to you – both physically, you had thrown them out of the way of that slashing attack and emotionally, you had thrown them out of the way of that slashing attack –he cannot picture them picking it up. Neither Grim; paws are too small. Perhaps, aspiring not-yet-doctor Riddle Rosehearts had the guts in his tiny stature to scoop up the top half of your brain. Holding a hand under like one does with a napkin full of broken eggs, making sure nothing drips onto the floor. Jade grows too sick to think of the hypothetical of who stitches you back up. 

Jade only remembers shaking, cold due to the rain and the sight. A hand reaching up to his breast pocket to grab his magic pen. Then, Floyd grabbing his shoulders to stop him from making the awful mistake of firing a spell at THE Malleus Draconia. Jade forgets the rest.

Apparently, he screamed himself hoarse. Apparently, Floyd got a broken wrist from their tussle. Apparently, Azul knocked him out with a powerful sedative spell. Apparently apparently apparently. 

The following memory goes like this: waking up in bed the next morning, throat sore, thinking about what tea you might generously brew for him to fight off his evident illness. Usually in good health, Jade is a bit surprised that morning to wake up with a flu. Then, his world is torn apart. Then, Azul and Floyd explain to him slowly – they are always talking to him slowly now – why his throat burns. Not from bacteria-made illness, from screaming, from losing you.

Sometimes, just for a span of a few moments, Jade wishes another thing with childish ferocity — prays to a shooting star. 

He wishes he could have stayed in that peaceful dream — “There is no need to shed tears nor are farewells necessary! … A new world in which none shall ever experience the pain of loss!” he had said — that Malleus was bestowing upon them. I wish Malleus had succeeded in his overblot. With a similar vehemence, he wishes Malleus Draconia died. 

There is no graveyard on the northside of Sage’s Island. No one expects to bury a student. So, someone, perhaps Dire Crowley or your trio, has chosen to bury you just a bit off the hiking trails you and Jade use to venture on. A glade chosen by someone to put a coffin smack in the middle of, still on land owned by Night Raven College.

Your dead body rests ahead, laid in a virgin’s coffin. A tree line formed by an expanding corpse of trees marks a clean circle. Him, Floyd, and Azul come upon the funeral last. Right at the start of the column and rows of seats, Jade’s feet suddenly grow roots into the ground, on par with a neem tree which has the strongest taproot system. He is paralyzed by the sight: you, arms resting on your abdomen, laying in a fairytale’s glass coffin.

The casket is elegant beyond elegance. Silica sand dug from Al-Asim’s numerous deposits was smelted for the glass. Inscribed with gold, your name playfully stretches its arms across the coffin, bordering angels and swans kneeling before it. 

Your head rests on a pillow-bouquet. Speckles of white daisy, ivory white carnations, and eggshell white spider mums kiss your hair. The centerpiece flower is Easter lilies, though. Trumpet-shaped, with shooting stars of pollen branching out from the center of them, Easter lilies crowd the bouquet like purple prose in a literary work. They crowd around your resting, stitched head with delicateness. Another bouquet of identical pattern rests too in your hands.  

The fairytale ensemble makes you look like a martyr. 

You are not a martyr. Jade hates the very thought that that could become your legacy. Wrongly transcribed and reprinted, a publisher who does not know you writes you as martyr. It makes his stomach rot. Neither hero or villain, you are not to be idolized. Bread should not be broken in honor of you and wine should not be drunk in honor of you.

You were wonderfully simple, with flaws and strengths. Now, you are gone. 

“Jade, come. There is a spot up at the front for us,” Azul says softly and slowly. 

A gentle hand pushes on Jade’s back — Floyd’s hand. “They’re not goin’ to start without us.”

That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried that —! Jade, not really thinking well, rips himself away from his brother too fast. 

“Woah,” Floyd shouts like a cowboy whose horse has started acting erratic. His gold and olive-brown eyes flicker with concern. Once more, Floyd goes to put his hand on the back of Jade’s suit, only to feel more like he is touching stone rather than flesh. Hm?

Out of Floyd’s knowledge, students, close friends of yours, have started to turn around, and one of them happens to be Malleus Draconia — who makes direct eye contact with Jade Leech.

I can’t breathe. 

Eyes that shimmer like Sheecle’s green take their poisonous green hands, stealing oxygen from the eel-mer’s body.

Jade finds himself breathless. In his chest, his heart grows in weight tremendously. All of the hurt in his bones is pulled towards his center, acceleration like fire. Heavy as osmium. Heavy as tungsten. He feels like something is crushing him with a sleep paralysis-esque weight. Out of his nose, his last breath slithers away; out of his brain, all his thoughts file out of the building in fire-drill-fashion. Buh-bye, Jade! his thoughts wave as they go. His breath walks out like a scorned lover, never to be heard from again.

I can’t breathe. 

Suddenly, Jade’s motionless chest is grabbed by a wayward arm. His spine collides into a breathing, functioning chest. Over his shoulder, Floyd whispers to his brother, lazy drawl slithering in Jade’s ear:

“Follow along to my breathin’ pattern. Try-a match your breath to mine.”

The words are spoken carelessly, with a lazy drawl, but the intent is vigilant. Seeing his brother needing help, Floyd reacts. He holds him close enough to feel the bones of his ribcage. 

On Jade’s back, he can feel the rise and fall of Floyd’s chest — Floyd elongating his breaths to gather deep oxygen in the very bottom of his lungs. They come in slow, constant waves. An inhale causes his chest to expand. An exhale causes his chest to flatten. Each slow rotation hits Jade’s spine in measured breaths — that I’m supposed to follow along to. Match the tempo of. 

Jade closes his eyes so he can focus upon the rise and fall of Floyd’s living lungs. It proves difficult to hear the sound of breathing over the ringing in his ears, like detecting a single scent in a saturated perfume store. Earth makes itself into a curlicue of sensations. Amongst the raging riptide, Jade tries to grab his brother’s hand. Grab onto it and share the same breath. 

It takes a few moments, a continuous rise and fall. Deeper lungfuls of oxygen push at his spine; heavier exhales stir through his three-piece earring. In. Out. Jade is trying. In. Out. In. Out. 

He breathes in through his nose and out his mouth until he can complete the cycle of in and out with a skip between the steps. When he takes his first complete breath, eyelids fluttering open, he sees only the back of Malleus’s haircut and curling horns that hook up like antlers. As he studies ebony locks cascading into layers, Floyd whispers in his ear, “We don’t gotta go up. I’ll stay back with ya.”

A coward down to the bone, Jade nods his head. Well, not always a coward; he is quite a capable eel-mer. In this particular setting, he finds himself to be as cowardly as the lion in The Wizard of Oz. For this month, he has felt that only the worst traits of his personality have survived the aftermath of a torrential blot-storm. 

He lets Floyd push him down to sit at the last row on the right. Your friends in Savanaclaw and Pomefiore are in the back rows as you are not too close to either. Diasomnia and Heartslabyul are gathered close to the front. The remaining dorms are in the middle. 

Ebony locks styled into a jellyfish cut sit in the second row, left side. If Jade looks straight, he can completely dispel Malleus Draconia from his eyesight. Azul moves up to the front, perhaps to tell Dire Crowley or your friends that everyone in attendance, time to start. Jade is beyond grateful for the hand rubbing circles into his spine, as if the touch keeps his breath circulation working.

There are a few moments of talking. Deuce Spade shuffles a bit closer to hear what Dire Crowley is saying; Azul gestures with his hands and when passed a paper, passes it back in rejection; Grim, who now attends in Heartslabyul, starts to grow louder in volume but so far Jade cannot catch a word. Eventually, it is Riddle Rosehearts who stands up. In his hand, the paper that Azul recently rejected.

Even though it is given an introduction, explaining the contents, Jade would have known it without prelude. Off Riddle’s tongue, your poetry falls like a meteor shower, silver fish-tails stretching with warm tenor. The title and author already given, Riddle reads:

“In a sea of nightmares, I spy a rock

Smooth, with a thousand freckles of fresh rain

The maelstrom brings inky monsters and villains

When I place myself upon your shore, I stop drowning

Across the water, you and I are on a rock, braving the storm.”

You wrote a lot of poetry. You were never good friends with Rook Hunt though; you clashed a lot with Pomefoire, unable to make friends with them. Perhaps because your poetry and beauty is different. Not very often did you string words together amorously, rather the words were desolate. 

Your persona – the cultivated, embellished image of the artist you were – was always sort of tortured and damaged. That worst of you created poetry with the rigorousness of an inventory. This one Jade knows well – you wrote it for him. You were embarrassed about it but brave enough to tell him: “I wrote something. I feel … I feel it describes us.” 

He misses those nocturnally active times in the botanical gardens. Transcendent music playing between the spaces of silence, filling you with his feelings, sharing feelings like they were heat and you too were cold-blooded. Under a gazebo of stars on the edge of the universe, you once said. A pocket of paradise stolen was found in the moments creating and cultivating with him, you once said. It feels like a dream, you once said.

Jade stands up from his seat, not able to withstand hearing another word. This gross, wrong interpretation of your work feels like dirt and maggots grinding his mouth. It is not a poem meant for a funeral. Between Floyd’s knees and a chair, he squeezes himself tight to escape. 

Bystanders expect him to do just that: escape. Floyd anticipates it too. He takes those expectations and breaks them. In a domino effect, row by row, people notice Jade drawing closer. Murmurs start to rouse awake the sleepy, forlorn crowd. 

Undeterred, Jade walks closer and closer. When he briefly passes the second row, he lets his gaze flicker over to his left. Eyes pinched together in small slices, gold and brown irises catch just the briefest glimpse of rotating horns and a sharp nose. The curious quirk of Malleus’s lip has his heart electric with lightning bolts of hate. 

Across the water, across the wave, Jade approaches you on that lone rock. He is going to save you from the grave and help you weather this maelstrom. The divide between you and him in life and death is a thin, easily breakable glass barrier. 

“Jade,” Riddle questions.

Back to him, Jade responds, “You should sit, Riddle. Your words were very courteous but I have a few of my own to say. Can I ask you to forgive my gross impoliteness?”

“No,” Riddle fumbles with his words, “no, no it is quite alright. Go ahead … I’m - I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Your sympathy is much appreciated.”

The crowd watches on with gross intrigue, wondering what your boyfriend could possibly be thinking of or what his next move might be. Is it not obvious from your poetry – he is going to outstretch his shore towards you. He does this through violent action. 

Jade brings up a fist. Jade brings down a fist. 

Though it does not give easily, the glass still breaks in fractures. Triangles and rhombuses branch out from underneath Jade’s fist. Jagged, uneven connect-the-dots shapes make up a circular pattern that splinters from the point of contact. A little less than ten pieces fall into the tomb, landing on your ebony dress and bouquet. 

Steeling himself, Jade turns his attention to your face. Gloss from the glass makes you look angelic, like a shimmer of makeup glitter. Someone has painted your lips in a dark, blood red – (“I can’t stand bright lipstick! It makes you look like a clown. Jade, you’ll catch me dead before you catch me in dark lipstick”) – which boils up Jade’s month long, hidden away anger. 

His second punch causes glass to land on your dress like snow knocked off a branch, heavy with volume. The plummeting glass is also followed by a trickle of blood. Jade pulls back his bleeding hand, hooks it underneath a section of glass, and pulls it up like one might do with rotten floorboards. Glass pierces through the material of his glove, hitting bone. He grabs another part of the coffin, snaps it off like it is a mere graham cracker, and forms a fist with shrapnel of glass embedded in fingers. Fragile glass hovering over your face breaks and showers down like freckles. Steadily, he keeps punching and breaking off glass until none remains.

When he pulls back his right hand, the leather is thoroughly drenched in a red flood. Instead of spraying bloody water in thin sheets, it flows off his fingers like a spilled milkshake. Black and red combined, Jade adds the last color to the Snow White triptych. 

Avenging, he takes the bouquet of white flowers from your hands. The stems crunch in his harsh grip; the flowers sway in their downward descent. He brandishes them down by his thigh like one might hold a sword in the midst of battle. Nitroglycerin sweat bubbles and propane sweat pops on his palm. His black gloved hand catches fire, enveloping the bouquet in a blaze that rises vindictively up to his shoulders.

As the last bits of a fire spell, done without the conductor of his magic pen, start to shimmer away in ash and smoke, Jade lets the incinerated, curled inward, black flowers fall to the ground. He takes his dominant hand and slowly places it upon your cheek.

Soft. You are so soft. I should have taken off my gloves. His bleeding hand infects your skin with a new paint. Jade puts his thumb over your lips where someone has put clown lipstick on you. When your lips part slightly under his ministrations, no breath hits his thumb. 

His precious pearl, breathless. He wishes nothing more for you to open up your eyes and dispel his worries. 

“Jade!” Ah, it seems people are starting to come out of their stupor at the display Jade is presenting. He looks vexatious over his shoulder, briefly catching eye contact with Azul. “What are you possibly doing!” Jade also manages to catch his brother breaking comatose to stand up.

“There is no need to fret about me overblotting. I have a secure lid placed on my emotions. Unlike others.”

Hurt flashes in Azul’s eyes. Jade cannot stomach to check if his insult hurt who he intended it to hurt. Instead, he gingerly lifts you in his arms. Limp, you tumble into his embrace with gravity-obeying limbs. Your neck tilts back and your toes point down in Jade’s careful hold.

“Jade!”

This will prove difficult with both my hands holding them and no magic pen as a conductor. It is the only thought in Jade’s head as his brother shouts his name. Worry rarely crosses his twin’s face with such an intensity; most would judge it as anger. Ah, I am really being so impolite today. Sorry Floyd. The starting sparks of a teleportation spell start to pop around his shoulders and torso like fireflies. 

With a deep breath, Jade disappears in a supernova. 

More or less, Jade Leech has returned to being himself. Verbosely polite and formal; eager to lend a helping, subservient hand; jumping right back into the schedule he has: classes, duties for Azul, Mountain Lovers club activities, etcetera. He is a different picture of the man laying in bed, stricken with your absence; now, he has returned to the man he was in your presence. 

Is it because you two are reunited in presence? That old tale of Hercules and Meg, interlocked souls, finally touching again? Are you reunited? Azul cannot be certain that is true. Nobody has been able to locate your body since that day. 

Behind his glasses, Octavinelle’s housewarden traces the motions of his vice. He cannot see Jade’s expression, only scrutinizing over his back as he pens the order of a customer. It is a week after your uncompleted funeral. Azul’s stomach turns sick, watching Jade work effortlessly in Mostro Lounge, not knowing where Jade keeps your corpse. 

Corpse … All his limbs shudder at the word. It could be hidden under his own bedroom’s floorboards or locked away in Ramshackle with your three ghost companions. You could be anywhere.

Every thought Azul has on the situation makes it feel like salt and ice are colliding in his abdomen in a hissing burn. So, he decides to stop thinking about it. Which is why he is almost grateful when Jade comes up to him, distracting his mind from slipping into darker speculation.

Hand on his heart, Jade says, “Table Fifteen is requesting your presence. They have a question about one of our discontinued menu items – the salmon and lemon-ricotta pasta. I already divulged about the excess supply getting thrown out because of low demand. However, your presence was requested nonetheless.”

“Ah, thank you, Jade,” Azul says. It is just the distraction he needs before he thinks about anything more ghastly. Stock issues and dining will not haunt him with goosebumps and night terrors. He starts towards Table Fifteen.  

“Though … I can return and take care of it, if need be.” 

It is that odious sentence that gives Azul pause. Because that is exactly what the old Jade would offer, using a bit of rough, predatory treatment to de-escalate an issue. Same old Jade Leech, hiding a corpse somewhere on campus … who even knows if your body is on campus. 

“No … No, you are dismissed from the issue. Do whatever you please for the rest of your shift.”

“Very well. If you’ll excuse me.”

I have to go make preparations, Azul thinks as he goes to greet Table Fifteen. I don’t see it as necessary but, Azul glances one last time at Jade as the distance between them grows, Jade’s spine once again all he sees, I should prepare for the event of him overblotting.

Saprophytic organisms obtain their nutrients by breaking down dead organic matter. Fungi, bacteria, and water molds all have an exclusive diet of nature’s cadavers. In the simplest of terms, they eat death to sustain their own life. 

Not all mushrooms are saprotrophs. After all, mycorrhizal and parasitic and endophytic mushrooms have a different diet; it is just that a majority of the mushrooms one finds, one will find them living among them dead. As active decomposers, they refuse to let death be finite. As Jade opens his terrarium, chip-esque mushrooms that mimic the look of a body’s heat signals, he recalls fondly how saprotrophs are the easiest to cultivate. 

He takes out the turkey tail mushrooms, ripping them from their roots. Well, mushrooms have no roots but the image is still true. Turkey tail mushrooms are fascinating – they look so much like thermal heat vision, little branching waves of red, yellow, and white, thus making them look alive. And, they have a history of being used as medicine.

So vigorous with life yet bloated after a meal of death. 

Jade opens the book on his desk in the botanical gardens. People always chastised him for his love of mushrooms. If he had an affection towards flowers or perhaps even pretty yellow weeds, he supposes it would not be as frowned upon. He has always been this way, preferring the ugly duckling over the swan. You were of a similar disposition. 

Around his work station, an incense holder burns wisps of Worm’s Wort – which can dull the odor of anything. He flips through pages at a languid pace. From the window panes, moonlight slithers down a thousand maggots and makes their congealing home on Jade’s desk. Interlocking light lies down to rest as Jade stays awake into the night.

I’m so tired. The thought seeps in like a maggot in the ear of a cadaver. Numerous times, Jade changes his pair of nitrile gloves to rub at his eyes, warding off sleep. Moonlight maggots crawl over his skin.

It is only after his sixteenth failed potion (eighty-first if you count the others he has made in the past six nights after your funeral) with the wrong color, wrong texture, or wrong smell, does Jade’s head start to slip off his neck. On the verge of burning out, eyes blinking close, the desk rushes towards him like ground to a meteor, about to kiss his nose and face with pain, and – you catch him in your hand despite the smoldering sting of touching a meteor.

“You make and pick the strangest beds to fall asleep in. I can’t take my eyes off my Jade for a second, can I?” 

Jade blinks to see you resting next to him, forehead on your forearm which lies on the table. His cheek is warmed by your right hand which acts as a bridge between his flesh and the desk. Even though some of your hair is in the way and the left side of your face is shielded in the cradle of your arm, Jade can see it clear as day. There is no scar threading itself across your forehead. 

You give him a warm smile and Jade, who is a cold-blooded creature, replicates that warmth. The last exhausted fuses of energy left in him lift up his lovestruck lips. “Tired, baby,” you ask him.

“Mmmmh, just a bit. I have been at this for quite some time.”

“We should head back to Octavinelle then. Can’t have you knocking over a potion in your sleep.”

“No, no. Let’s stay here a little longer.” To bask in your presence, Jade needs that to a higher degree than he needs water or air. “Don’t go so soon.”

You are dressed in your school uniform. It has all of your soul’s idiosyncrasy in each article. Not really enrolled in Night Raven College, therefore lacking a uniform, you wear a leather jacket without pockets and a grid pattern collared shirt. The sleeves of your button-up gently pull away from being sandwiched by his cheek and desk. You busy yourself with brushing strands of black hair into its correct placement.

“Okay, okay. We can stay here for a while, but you’re definitely going to have a sore neck and sore shoulders in the morning.”

“Pamper me tomorrow?”

You hum, considering it. By now, most of the mismatched, colored tresses have been tucked gingerly behind his ear. You follow the diamond outline of a single sturgeon scale with your finger as you say, “If the price is right.”

Jade's smile grows stupid at that, showing just a sliver of his teeth. You always did like poking fun at his Octavinelle habits. Allowing himself to melt under your ministrations, he murmurs, “Anything for you.”

“Happy to do business with you then, Mr. Leech.”

You move the nail of your index along diamond scales’ edges, content to do as he says. Stay here a little longer under a gazebo of stars. Sevens, it might have been cheesily poetic what you said in the past, yet Jade agrees in totality with your poesy. The universe has collapsed, burnt away worries and responsibilities, and all that remains of creation is you and him. 

Jade lifts his face so the hand playing with his earring falls over his mouth. With pouting lips, he plants a field of kisses on your palm. Such a warm palm. Your hand smells of raspberries and whipped vanilla from a foam soap you were particularly fond of. Jade can even smell it over the Worm’s Wort. And, Worm’s Wort – that is meant to keep his potion-making a secret – is an overwhelming, astringent scent that blankets other smells with high efficiency. 

Everything, even his nose, narrows down to you. It is not an unpredictable feat. Azul once said your voice drags him out of any task with the ease of a siren working to drown a sailor. Which is why he hears you clearly even as you mumble, “Oh, I have this poem I want to workshop with you.” 

Jade mourns the loss of your hand when you move energized. Leaning back in your stool, both hands fall behind you to grip under the seat. You throw back your head, conjuring all the verses up in your head. When you tilt your eyes to look at Jade, you have this grin on your face that balances on the fence of being sleazy with gross intent or being liberative with genius intent. Like you will either tell him you found a dead animal or you found the cure to cancer. He is all ears for whatever you throw. 

He is only thrown for a bit of a loop as you swing your feet to the side and leap off the stool. Not perturbed over your body but rather an article of clothes. The noose around your neck is a blood-red tie with a stark white pattern of skulls upon it, mimicking the look of cut-out paper snowflakes. Patterned by two distinct rows: skulls connecting forehead to forehead then skulls facing the viewer. It vanishes from his sight as your back faces him. 

Out of your mouth, poetry diffuses in the heavy, wet air of the botanical gardens. 

“Wake up. (your feet carry you out towards the stretch of cobblestone, then playfully, you turn and disappear behind large, flowing leaves and unusual flowers)

Door Death, I knock upon thee (“(name)?” jade springs up, a deep fear swimming through him because you are out of his sight)

I ask the eternal question (when he pushes back the large leaves and peculiar flowers, you are no longer in that same spot; his head moves on a swivel, looking for you)

Has my life all been a dream? (your voice carries on the eastern air)

Has all my life been a dream? (your voice carries on the western air)

The eternal question unanswered (pressure falls over his eyes and heart, where are you!)

Door Death, I knock upon thee (a finger taps his shoulder-blade)

Wake up.”

When Jade turns, your embrace retreating slowly, you are holding out a solitary Easter lily out towards him. The gesture plainly tells him to take it. A white trumpet-shaped mouth yawns at him, five or so tongues of yellow pollen sticking out. It looks so correct in your hold that Jade almost doesn’t want to accept it.

Heart knocking with lingering desperation, he takes the Easter lily in hand all the same. In replacement to his palm, he rests his knuckles to his avalanching chest, careful of the flower in his caress. Before he can comment on the verses, you beat him to the punch. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret; my Jade isn’t stupid.” 

He chuckles at that, eyes squinting with mirth.“Don’t I always say you should set your expectations upon higher platforms when with me?” 

“My expectation towards your stupidity or your intellect?” 

“Oya? I’d prefer the latter.” A teasing eyebrow is raised.  

However, you grow grim like this is a matter of life or death. You twine arms around his neck and ensnare him to lean down to your height. In your eyes, a maelstrom of mental unease rages and causes your hues to appear milky-gray with worry. Under the concern of your bruised eyes, Jade responds, “You think I’m making a rash decision? Or perhaps, one that is not fully educated. I assure you that I have rigorously studied this.”

Your mouth quirks. “I think you are choosing the wrong method.”

“Then, enlighten me please.”

You lean close to him, nose to nose. Unlike the sweetness of raspberries and vanilla, your breath is something foul. Cadaverine and putrescine scent that he can only compare to the smell of his mushrooms at peak rot. Jade cannot focus on the scent because your voice hypnotizes him. 

Slowly, you recite a song like it is poetry. “A dream is a wish your heart makes; when you’re fast asleep; in dreams you will lose your heartaches; whatever you wish for, you keep.”

Whatever dust of happiness is holding Jade’s lips blows away. The frown cuts his features. It takes a great deal for him to respond over the commotion of rain and lightning storming around in his ribcage; he only manages one word, perfumed in hurt and hate. “Him?”

Your next breath smells like mint.  He imagines it would be something lovely to taste in a kiss. “I trust him. He is dear to me.”

Hate and hurt dull Jade’s casual loquacity. “But he hurt you.”

“So have you.” Now only hurt remains on Jade’s tongue. You do not let him refute, listing off, “So has Riddle, so has Leona and Azul, so has Jamil, so has Rook, so has Vil and Idia, so has Sebek, so has everyone that has known me. What is one more scar?”

It is the harsh truth, Jade knows. Magicless and fragile, you have been in the infirmary as often as an alcohol back to the liquor cabinet. Nothing worse than scratches and one broken wrist, nothing like this, Jade wants to desperately argue but your eyes silence him.

“So please,” you continue. “Please, give him a chance … You know, I’m still so sad that I never got to arrange that joint club meeting – Mountain Lovers and Gargoyle Research Studies. I think it would have been a peaceful walk at night, looking out for mushrooms and gargoyles. 

“You two are so alike. It amuses me.” This truth takes its knife and thunders itself into Jade’s gut. Maneuvering with incredible dexterity, truth stabs into the eight tic-tac-toe regions of his abdomen, cutting deep red mouths into pallid flesh that tell him: yes, this is a truth. We love the same person. Jade does not voice this growing pain. 

“I assure you, it is beneficial to have full faith in me. Have I ever made a split -choice decision? Do I not map out everything ahead of time? Besides, failing to my weaknesses in magical areas is not something I’m inclined to do, my dear.”

“Consider it. Anything for me, right?” 

Ah, how villainous you are. To use his own words against him like that is a quality he both adores and loathes. Jade maneuvers the Easter lily so it sits in his hand like a cigarette. A loving hand raises up to one of the arms entwined around his neck, rubbing along the sleeve, as he slyly objects, “Surely you can understand my hesitation. After his -”

“I almost died –” Jade’s heart stops beating, fear is a powerful clog to all his heart’s arteries. You continue softly, “ during Azul’s overblot. What happened –”

“Let’s not talk about it. Just trust me.”

“Jade.”

“(Name).”

“No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream you wish will come true … Please, consider it for my sake.”

“... I will play around with it in my head … No promises that I won’t crush it like it’s a bug.”

The tone of the conversation turns light. “I hope the sound of it buzzing annoys you.”

“How cruel of you.”

“Ah, NRC has really rubbed off on me. I’m just too wicked.” A laugh breaks your lips.

“The worst. Worse than the worst. Vile.” Smiling with a mouthful of glass, shark-like teeth, Jade finally closes the gap between the two of you. The scent of mint too enticing and the sight of you too dopamine-inducing, he has to kiss your lips until you cry or moan. It is in his biological nature. 

The gazebo of stars rebuilds itself. Each cedar wood paneling falls back into perfect placement. Yours and Jade’s lip find all the old familiar spots of pleasure; first just lip fat smooshing together until you both in perfect sync open your mouths to each other. It might be seen as tedious already knowing the moves but Jade thinks it is a testament to how truly made for one another each of you are.

And, of course, he never allows it to get boring. Tongues like magma flowing in combining rivulets, Jade takes to moving his hands down past the curve of your shoulders to the side of your cheeks. He tilts your head in the opposite direction of how he moves his, deepening the kiss. 

You grip the back of teal strands and real pain ignites on his skin. Pain made by your physical grip. Jade follows along to mimic that harshly loving gesture. However, when he rests his fingers to cup the back of your head, he stumbles upon a scar line. A few inches above your nape. It lies like a jagged river cutting apart two pieces of land.

A warning bell blares in Jade’s mind. The sound causes him to break away. It is not buzzing though, like you were predicting. 

Night Raven College’s clock chimes twice, deep in the bowels of dark, interlocking hallways. It knocks on Jade’s skull and pulls him away. When he lifts his head off the desk, blinking at the sight of potions, his shoulders and neck are incredibly sore. 2 A.M. Two chimes after all mean 2 A.M.  The air is so thick with Worm’s Wort that he almost chokes on it. 

He does end up choking. Not on something as flowy as Worm’s Wort smoke. Rather, he chokes on something rather salty and dangerously watery. 

At 2:47 A.M, Jade Leech walks into the Diasomnia dorm.

At 3:08 A.M, Jade Leech walks out of the Diasomnia dorm, a deal made.

Floyd wakes up facing an empty bed. This is not entirely odd; Jade has a scheduled A period while Floyd opts to keep his first period free. With thick fog still lingering in his brain, it does seem a bit odd not to see Jade because for the past month he has remained in bed. But – Jade is doing better. What gives Floyd pauses is the lingering thought: did I hear Jade come in at all last night? 

Floyd is a light sleeper, always has been, so he should have been able to hear him at least enter the dorm last night or exit the dorm this morning. He doesn’t even think he heard a ladybug on the creaking floor; all of Octavinelle was unnaturally still last night like a graveyard. Before he can ponder longer on dead silence, his phone rings. 

What Azul hisses over the phone has Floyd kicking his covers like they have caught fire. “Tell me you know where Jade is. Tell me right now; where is your brother?”

From point A to point B, Floyd and Jade Leech’s dormitory to Mostro Lounge’s VIP Room, the distance is about eight minutes for a normal person. Due to their longer strides, Floyd and Jade can cut this measurement by two minutes while Azul takes the full eight. It takes Floyd three minutes to point B, as while Azul curses his ear and Floyd curses under his breath. 

Floyd knows it bad when dogmatic Azul does not scold him for walking through numerous hallways and his precious Lounge without a pair of socks, and it gets worse when Azul does not scold him for still being in his pajamas – an XL shirt with poetry in a downward pattern saying: “®, 40S & SHORTIES, BAD DECISIONS. GOOD TIMES., WORLDVIEW” with a pair of white striped, blue cotton pants – at nine on a Tuesday morning. Two Azuls speak in unison, one on the telephone receiver and one in front of him, “I think he has sealed it up with magic.”

It is a book. Just as Floyd’s hand had fallen on Mostro Lounge’s  VIP door, he had inquired why Azul Ashengrotto of all people was having such a hard time getting a single book open. A book is easy to open; a book sealed with magic should be easy too, for a mage of Azul’s talents. 

“Well, can’t ya just break it? It can’t be anything stronger than what we learned in Practical Magic?” Floyd disconnects the call as he talks; he does not need two Azuls in his ear. 

“If the charm was something from that course then of course. This is more on par with the third year Conjuration course … or Ancient Curses.”

Though only seventeen, one would think with the maturity etched in Azul’s features that he was nearing twenty-seven instead. He has a hand depressed on his face and his eyes drawn into a sharp squint. Behind the shield of his glasses, a dozen speculations and calculations dance like sparks of lightning. Floyd hates it as much as he is glad to see that incisive prowess.  

“But … it’s just a book about mushrooms.” Which is entirely true. The book that Azul’s stare is burning a hole through has written plainly on it: Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares. 

When considering current events, the title causes Floyd’s stomach to turn inside out. However, it is something Floyd has seen Jade read before Malleus’s overblot. It is just a boring book. A boring book that for some reason won’t open.

Azul verbalizes Floyd’s inner doubt, “A book that Jade left behind. A book that is not opening no matter what elementary magic I throw at it.” 

Left in the botanical gardens. Left there overnight when Jade said he was going to be right back after tending to his terrariums. Getting back into hobbies was a sign of healing from trauma, right? Floyd feels like the skin of stomach is not only inside out but being torched by fire.

“I‘ll open it. I’m on the same level as Jade. Can’t be too hard.” Just as Floyd starts walking up to Azul’s desk, he is stopped. 

“No! No … we shouldn’t risk your health if this takes something more to open.”

Vexation falls on Floyd’s face. His teeth displayed and brow crinkled, “Huuuh?” He stomps over to the desk. “It’s Jade magic. It ain’t gonna kill us.”

“No, but it might drain one of us. And,” Azul hesitates. But when Floyd slams his hands down on the VIP desk, determinate coals burn in his sky-blue eyes. He stares down Floyd without a single flinch. “And you run the fastest out of the two of us, so we cannot risk your energy.”

It takes a moment for him to back down. Reading the map of the plan on Azul’s expression, it comes to Floyd’s attention what exactly Azul is hinting at. “Fiiine.” Floyd’s dominant hand still crosses up to rest on his right shoulder. “Doesn’t mean I’ma be happy about it though.”

“Trust me, neither am I.” And he really isn’t. This entire situation leaves a bad taste in his mouth. 

On the ledge of Azul’s desk rests his staff. The octopus’s bulbous head keeps it steady on the surface. Authentic silver shines elegantly under the expensive lighting. Between the nest of curling tentacles, Azul’s gray gemstone sits, ready to be utilized. White gloves wrap around the sleek black handle.

When Azul holds his staff above the book, Floyd interrupts, “Ma called me two nights ago and said – (Floyd sits in his bed, stricken by the sound of his grown, emotionally shielded mother crying. The sound of her sobs feel so artificial in his left ear, like hearing a creature trying to mimic human speech patterns. Something so visceral wrong laced in the vocal cords of it. 

“Mama, Mama, what’s wrong,” Floyd pleads, about one breath away from grabbing a transformation potion and rushing to the Mirror Chamber. 

“Tell – Tell Jade to pick up his phone please – I just! I – auh – Floooyd,” his mother sobs. 

“Mama, he’s in class. He can’t pick up his phone right now. He’s in class. What’s wrong? Ma?”

That seems to soothe something in Narissa Leech. There is a slick sound of her wiping away tears, probably bringing talons under her eyelids and probably bringing her forearm across her nose. After a few tearful breath, she whispers, “He’s not sleepin’?”

“No, he went to his A period class. Mama, what’s wrong?”

“I,” she sniffles, “I had this awful dream. You and Jade were tiny and still sharing your bedrooms. I went to wake up both of you for breakfast but Jade wouldn’t wake up. I kept shaking and shakin’ him. It was like he was in a coma and just wouldn’t get up. He looked like a tiny corpse. 

“I kept calling for you and Dad, but neither of you would come help. My little baby. I kept trying to wake him up. I just tried and tried. Then, I pried his left eye open and ah!” His mother cries once more. “He looked so dead in his sleep!”). – and I haven’t been able to stop thinkin’ ‘bout it,” Floyd finishes.

It is very rare for either of the twins to show their fears. Fear is a delicious seasoning that gets you devoured in the Coral Sea. Though it wears a mask on Floyd’s face, fear is still evident in his voice despite the steadiness of each syllable. Sometimes friends can just measure how much fear the other has, even when it is not shown.

Azul frowns sympathetically. He has only really had his mother and step-father; worrying about a sibling is uncharted territory for Azul. However, if he had friends with a bond as close as a sibling relationship, it might be Floyd and Jade. It just might. 

It probably is not though. Probably.

“Since we were little, your brother has always been capable. Both in his magic and in his wit. Even … even in this instance, I doubt Jade will ever make a decision hazardously.” Which is exactly what worries them; Jade is brilliant, who knows what an odious mixture of intellect and grief could end up making.

Azul touches the octopus’s forehead to the cover of Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares. In reaction, the room explodes with the power of a violet tornado.

“Fuck,” Floyd shouts as wind body-checks him like a obese linebacker. 

Azul’s hat flies off his head. His glasses would risk being magnetized into the same wind-polarity if he tilted his face away from the shimmering violet. However, Azul does not wither even once at the tremendously powerful locking spell. The violet that stains his face like grape only hones him into the irrefutable fact that this is Jade’s magic. Despite being on the verge of being knocked over by it, the realization fills Azul with relief. 

Floyd’s violet nails scrap lines into Azul’s desk but Azul does not twitch out of his resolve. Papers lying on his desk go airborne. The housewarden grits his violet teeth so hard that he risks breaking his jaw, his mole stretching down with the shape of his grimace. 

C’mon, c’mon! Slowly, the tentacles on Azul’s staff start to unfurl from their comatose state. His gem stone and the octopus head remain fixed to the handle unlike the squirming appendages. Silver metal moves fluidly and wraps itself around the cover of the book like a starfish. 

Then, with a burst of brighter violet that fades away to nothing, chanterelle dreams and amanita nightmares reveal their faces to the two of them. Well, not to Floyd. Temporarily blind due to the atomic explosion, he is wiping his eyes with his knuckles, blinking away little spots of endless black and blinding white. Which is why for a vital moment, Floyd misses the look of absolute horror that paints Azul’s face.

“Th-This –.” As the tentacles of his magic staff congeal back into their normal state, Azul sets the handle’s end down on the ground. Uncoordinated, it tumbles to the ground just as Azul picks up the book, holding it close to his chest.

“Wha? What’s in it? Shit, this kills,” Floyd hisses, hunched over. A stray tear falls down Floyd’s left eye as he slowly straightens out. “Stupid Jade.”

With each page flip, Azul’s face turns a lighter shade of white. When a hand reaches out to grab the book, Azul slaps it with so much force that Floyd groans in pain. 

“C’mon, let me see,” Floyd whines. It is not a childish whine but more of a warning, he is going to get violent if Azul does not hand over the stupid book now. Floyd grabs the desk and leans over the top, trying to get a glimpse of whatever Azul is hiding. All he sees is paragraphs of text and a block where an image is drawn.

He does not get to know what the image is because Azul slams the book shut and demands with urgency, “Where is your brother, Floyd?”

A dragon’s treasure is guarded and hoarded with a shield-and-sword-heart acting as its knights. Malleus has found his treasure to have become his memories of you. If each recollection was a shiny ruby or bright diamond, Malleus puts them all in an isolated, inaccessible cache. In times where comfort is needed, he returns to roll a precious gem in his talons, moments of just you and him unshared with others playing in his mind. Right now, Malleus rotates a rose quartz.

This particular rose quartz was formed by magma crystallization as all are. The time period it was formed in was before you knew his true identity. 

You two are perched miles above the ground, on one of the eastern turrets of Night Raven College. You curl into your notepad as Malleus takes in the scenery. 

He took you up here by teleportation. You have improved in leaps and bounds from your first time being maneuvered about the earth by a teleportation spell. Unlike your first time, you only gag now rather than puke. After a spell (not performed by his hands) of dizziness, you two took your seats upon the roof. Meters in front of you lies a single gargoyle. Wingspan extended out and the spine facing you. 

He has already explained it to you in great detail, and you listened. Really listened. So used to be stared through, Malleus has recently been finding his ears turn pink at how you look at him. Tonight, he has cut off his presentation earlier than normal. Bashfully empty of words burnt out from your smoldering eyes.

Malleus welcomes the reprieve with gratitude. Chirping crickets and grinding graphite is the only music playing in his ears – though he can sometimes hear the jazz notes of you going no, no, that line does work, no, what’s another word for … no, too pretentious and has to keep himself from chuckling fondly.

Soon, the crickets find themselves without any further accompaniment; you have stopped writing. Curious, Malleus looks away from the stone he has been studying. His neck rolls. Rejuvenated, his pulse pounds in the taut muscles found in his throat at the sight of you. What a sight you truly are, unafraid to be here with him. 

You catch onto his unshakable staring. Tongue in cheek, pencil clenched in hand, you announce “I.” The pencil weeps under your strength. “I think I got it now.”

Malleus raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

You tap your pencil on the edge of your notepad anxiously. Then, taking a deep breath, you read your haiku:

“Apathy on stone

My prince, do not reveal tears

Gargoyle, keep your face.”

The look you give him is uneasy. He imagines you are anticipating harsh criticism, writing a poem on a subject matter he is so endowed in. Rather than criticism, the only thing in Malleus’s heart is a quick skipping beat.

You have such a way with words that it leaves his spellbound despite the unequivocal fact that you are very magicless. The words seem so knitted together for his especial heart. His own face of stone. However, knowing you do not know he is a prince, he considers the five-seven-five syllable poem and covers up his growing blush with one inquiry , “tears?”

“Because gargoyles are waterspouts. So, I wanted to layer an emotion to the functionality, the rigid job.” For a moment, you consider the poem in your hand then your mouth moves a mile a second. “Ugh! Truthfully, I wanted to say ‘a prince must never cry’ so it can keep the chain of commands like ‘keep your face’ but then the line would only be six syllables! Ugh, I hate haikus! I can’t write a single good one.” 

You look about ready to crumple up and toss the note away with hatred. It would not be surprising, you do this a lot. Enough to the point where Malleus has a collection of crinkled up poems — “If you want them, you can have them. They fucking stink though,” you had first bemoaned when Malleus first asked to keep your workshopping words. This one though, Malleus wants you to be proud of it.

“I happen to think it is quite beautiful, spellbinding almost.”

The way your eyes shimmer when looking at him leaves Malleus choking on the night air. He continues despite his temperature rising in his gut and nape.

“The first and third lines feel impersonal, but the middle line is soft. It is the gentleness sandwiched and withered away by the stone. Despite the cold exterior, there is a heart in there.”

The way you look at him — all the ways you look at him, but even more so now — has him falling helplessly in love with you. Stars blaze in your eyes like he has opened up the jaws of the universe and plucked your favorite part of the cosmo down for you. He would do so for you. He would do so much for you – divide the ocean down the middle, change the phrase of the moon, or tear the sky in two. Wounded so tightly across your finger that it surely cuts off circulation. You look at him so sweetly, bathed by the night’s glow. Malleus bites his tongue bloody to keep from telling you that you have the prettiest eyes. 

“That’s — That’s actually really a revolutionary way to look at it. I —,” you glance down at your work, “I really didn’t have the optimism to see it that way.”

“You should be more prideful of what you create. Your work too has a heart despite its cold exterior, even at its most tortured.”

“Stooop, I’ll blush.” You raise a hand over your eyes but a sleazy grin is underneath your fingers. You enjoy praise a lot.

“I am just being honest with you, Child of Man. You always asked me to be.” He pauses then asks, “however, may I inquire why use the word prince?”

“I don’t know. Don’t they seem regal to you at times?”

“Hm, there seems to be a resemblance.” 

“They remind me of you a lot. Regal. Ah, not that you’re a prince though … What’s that grin for? Don’t tell me I inflated your ego.”

“Nothing of the sorts, Child of Man.”

“Ah, whatever.” Despite your grumbled tone, you flip to the next notebook page. It is the first one he has seen you save rather than tear up. 

Rain pitters on the building, starting out soft like the languid pop of popcorn in a microwave. No, not on Night Raven College’s roof. Rainfall taps like fingertips on Diasomnia’s dormitory, and Malleus realizes it is time for him to put this rose quartz back in his treasure hoard. When his and Jade’s eyes meet across the room, his breath grows thorn in his lungs. Now is not the time to reflect.

From the towering polygon windows, the icy clouds heavy with rain are just barely visible through the shower sticking to the panes. Worser weather is certain to come like an expected guest. Malleus, tongue heavy, announces, “All that is left now is to retrieve their body.”

Diasomnia’s lounge has been cleared of all its furniture and rugs. Tables teleport away and rugs roll themselves up. Black leather couches and chairs are depressed tightly on the southern wall behind Jade and Malleus, blocking the entrance. Not that they are necessary barricades when the bombay blackwood doors are locked firmly with ancient magic. 

It is set in motion to take place in the lounge’s heart. The nook bordered by two grand staircases and twenty feet below where Diasomnia’s throne resides. Upon the cement ground, illuminated by no light, lies a circle of complex patterns and symbols made of thorns. In the middle of linking sigils, Octavinelle’s vice-housewarden stands with an apathetic, stone face. The same expression he had worn when he and Malleus made their contractual deal. 

He keeps his cards so close to his chest, you once bemoaned on your nightly ventures. Malleus remembers it well; you were reaching tear-out-your-hair hysteria due to cooking a meal for Jade Leech and not receiving a clear glimpse into his opinion. He’s impossible to read!  Your teeth flashed with frustration. 

It is an appropriate analogy. Like an experienced gambler, Jade knows not to leave his hands vulnerable to any ill-intent strikes. At first, he was incredibly suspicious of your kindness until evolution changed your kindness to a craving. With Malleus, Jade hides his cards behind his back and then shields them with an illusion spell to change the faces of the playing cards.

Making this shrewd deal was one of Jade’s finer moments. Like an experienced brain surgeon, he knows where to pull with roughness or push with softness in the intricate webbing of nerve-endings. Using survivor’s guilt as keen forceps and using his own signature spell as hooks, Jade performed a deal Azul would have been praiseful of. 

Which is why he will comply with the terms, because he has already prematurely agreed to them. Green eyes watch him pull black gloves carefully from his hands. He folds them once, pockets them, then unclips his magic pen from his breast pocket. A collision of two stars bursts in bright colors on the surface of Jade’s pen.

From out of thin air, you appear. You fall into Jade’s arm with all the grace of a dead body. Jade catches you in a dancer’s standard dip. Limp, your neck stretches as far as it can while dangling strands of hair point down at the ground like a thousand knives. 

He plants a gentle kiss on your cheek. Mourning and love mix in his heterochromic eyes. Jade takes to silently brushing away the pieces that cover up your forehead’s scar as if to almost say to Malleus who watches Jade lift you bridal style: look at what you did to them, look. 

Malleus’s otherwise imperative stare moves to a window. The rain is starting to get gradually heavier. When Malleus looks back, Jade is kneeled in the middle of the circle of thorns, as was pre-planned. The stone-faced prince of Briar Valley interlocks his gloves underneath the gem’s handle base instead of just holding it in one hand.

“No matter what you see or hear, your focus must never flicker from the Child of Man. A single interruption is a breakage in a dam of irreversible consequence. I ask you to heed these words carefully … Jade.”

“Of course.” Curt and clip, Jade’s confirmation is nothing more than contractual obligation. 

The vines from the head base to gemstone bring to shift. Two interlocked vines rotate in a downward spiral, dancing around one another. 

“Then, let us not waste another second.”

The spindle’s wheel starts to spin. Slowly at first, it moves at a pace where one can keep track of the mismatched sized spokes. Gradually, the spindle picks up pace. Inner spokes start to move in a heartbeat-esque pattern, up and down from long to short to long to short. Bombay blackwood twirls; the natural grain melts together into one smooth surface. It keeps picking up pace, twirling faster and faster. It is now impossible to distinguish where the spokes lie as they all melt into nebulous black. Accumulating to its peak, Malleus’s spindle moves so swiftly that it appears to slow down, moving counterclockwise. 

Wind picks up in Diasomnia as if a tornado is tearing through the stone ribcage. Malleus’s hair flies around him like ebon seaweed caught along a boat’s racing hook. The obsidian markings on his forehead stay relenting to the fierce winds, tight upon his increasingly crinkling brow. Behind his pointed ears, ebon strands whip back and forth with a vengeance. 

Jade’s and your hair move in tandem, blown in the same direction. Despite the discord around, despite when Malleus starts to chant, nothing tears his gaze from you. His eyes are intent on you like a mere blink would cause you to dissolve into seafoam. Despite the lighting hitting the ground, he keeps his stare. 

A breath later, the lounge is plunged into green. 

On the tongue of a stone bridge, Floyd and Azul appear out of thin air. Not entirely out of thin air though; around their shoulders, the shimmer of the transportation mirror into Diasomnia fades over their bodies. Rain smacks them in the face with a grievous scorn. Azul loses his footing temporarily but Floyd catches him by the elbow.

He pushes up his glasses, rain falls so hard and fast that they become more of an obstacle than a helper for sight. Getting drenched by the second, Azul stops with Floyd to watch the show of dancing lightning. “By Sevens, do you really think Draconia is overblotting again?”

Diasomnia staff and students in Mostro Lounge had started checking their phones as Floyd and Azul stepped out from the VIP room. Apparently, there was a storm brewing in the Diasomnia dormitory. Apparently, the main foyer was closed off and the vice-housewarden was evacuating students. Apparently, Malleus Draconia is overblotting a second time. Who knows if the information is reliable. All that is important is Jade was seen days ago, walking on this very stone bridge past midnight.

“I don’t care. I know Sea Slug knows where Jade is.” Floyd’s lips pull into a beastly snarl. “C’mon.” 

A cold sweat breaks on Malleus’s forehead. From the two connecting diamonds imprinted on his forehead, sweat drops. It trails down over his nose to his lips which are harshly breathing air in and out. 

Malleus Draconia has to minutely remind himself how breathing works as the tornado rips through Diasomnia like a savage bear. Pressure stomps on his chest with an iron boot. Through all his wild chase to keep oxygen in his lungs, he recognizes it not as pain but rather a deserved punishment. I’m sorry, Child of Man. It is an unheard sentiment; even if said, it would be torn from his lips and thrown yards away by the wind. 

There are many unheard sentiments chopped by the furious air. Most of them come from Silver, Sebek, and Lilia, behindthe barracked door, drowned out by turbulent winds. Harsh air chops up the syllables like a knife, turning them into incomprehensible poetry. The sentiments matter little until among them a single voice shouts, “JADE!”

Stricken, Jade tears his hell-bent gaze away from you. He does not answer loud enough to be heard over the maelstrom but the sentiment is still sincere. “Floyd?”

“Ignore it! Focus on them!!” Under Malleus’s instructions, Jade fixes the nucleus of his sight back onto you. A resurrection can only be completed with the kiss of true love. Without that passionate embrace, the body will lose the returning soul it momentarily holds. A true love’s kiss seals it back in the body. He waits for the predestined moment where he can connect your lips together with unwavering focus. 

“Just a little longer now, my love.” Jade’s lips pull into a lovestruck grin. “Soon.”

Among the wind, voices converse:

“Pry open the door!”

“We have been trying to!”

“Your hands are not broken or bloodied! You obviously have not!!”

“Malleus, this could kill you! This could kill you both!”

“ Malleus!!”

“Jade, you fuck!”

Azul shouts with all his remaining strength, “Jade, don’t do this!!”

A black star forms silently over Jade’s head. 

All of his life, he has been unapproachable. All of his life, people have found his teeth nightmarish and his eyes ghoulish. All of his life, he has waited for someone like you. You mean the universe to him; driven to the point where he would do something as forbidden as this. Malleus grips his staff tighter and Jade grips you tighter.

The black star is an abomination. Quantum processes work in rotation, lapping over each other like yin-and-yang. Ebony water shimmer in the middle of the black star while the outer ring strangles the air atoms with thorns. Atomic particles split into twos, going smaller than scientists thought possible, with the strength of the semiclassical, gravitational abomination. 

It thumps like a grotesque, wet heart and churns with the sound of visceral tearing. From the black thorns, the atmosphere collapses into blue-gray dust, destroying the atoms in its way. The black star gives a pained groan before it expels what it has taken.

From the inky depths of a black star, wisps of smoke start to seep down like water from overhead greenhouse hoses. The plumes of cloud hiss with head-splitting volume. Slowly, those misty clouds spiral back into a congealing mass. A split tornado swirling back into its original shape. Smoke tightens and arrows down before erupting into a cloud over your face. You swallow it; from your eyes, to your nose, to your ears, to your mouth, you swallow all the mist until there is nothing left in the collapsing air. 

Perhaps you are not swallowing; perhaps it is entering.

Jade watches intent each centimeter square of your face with glassy eyes. He waits until each wisps of vapor diffuses into the very pores of your skin. When the air is clear of the smoke, he brings up his right hand to move hair that has fallen over your features.

Onto the skies of your lips, Jade Leech whispers his heart. “I love you. I cannot live this life without my heart and soul. Come back to me; where you belong, my love, is with me.” Under a gruesome black star, he kisses you. 

It is an unreciprocated kiss. When kissing a corpse, one should never expect to be greeted with tender amorous sensations. This is why Jade does not despair when he feels nothing, suctioning your lifeless lips in two kisses before pecking harshly for the third and final kiss. It is alright – he can have his real kiss soon – because the black star is killing itself. 

Collapsing air closes in a snap. Leftover blue-gray powder hangs in the air like dust particles seen from the sunlight’s rays. Slowly, green light starts to slither away, dimming in quanta measures. All is so tranquil; even the tornado winds bottled in the lounge start to dim away. Then, like your heart is trying to jump from your chest, you start to hyperventilate in Jade’s arms.

“(Na-Name) … (Name),” love washes over Jade’s tongue. You twist violently in his arms, throat and chest pounding up and down with irregular breaths. Like a cornered prey, your eyes are wild with confusion. “It’s okay … I got you. You’re safe … Oh, you’re so beautiful. My love.” 

Neck rolling back, seizure-like eyes go white and you cough out a mushroom-shaped cloud of blue-gray dust. Black blood drips down your left nostril and trails like a tear off your cheek. Exhaustively, your chest continues to punch in and out with air that misses their connection in your lungs by centimeters. If you do not find a way to breathe, you will surely die a second time. 

Not that Jade would let that happen after just getting you back. Jade maneuvers you with ease. He moves your back so it lies on his chest and whispers,  “I know it will be difficult but follow along to my breath. Feel it go in … out … in … out … in … out … there, there … out … in … good, so good.”

Your chest beats wildly like the tempo of a metal song while Jade’s chest beats with the measured drum of rhythm and blues. Ungloved skin rests, fingers spread wide, on your chest. Each groove of each other’s bones are felt. Past the layers of muscle, skin, and clothes, your lungs touch together in a kiss. Jade depresses his chest on your back, bending you into a hunch. His words are almost delirious.

“I love you. I love you so much. I love you, please see it and believe it. I would do anything for you, (Name).”

Slowly, the tempo of your lungs start to dim like the lightning, green lights, and wind do. Jade moves his hand from your chest to your left shoulder. He depresses his lips on your neck, holding onto you painfully tight. 

�� … Right where I want you to be again. Be here with me. Be awake with me. I love you.”

You capture your first real breath as the door to the lounge bursts open.

You turn, eyes wide as saucers. Behind you, Jade’s timid smiling face greets you from your eternal sleep. Another string of black blood drips down your face, this one coming from your right nostril. Your brows creases then flattens out, recognizing the face after a moment of hesitation..

“Jade?”

In response, Jade smiles with all his teeth.

Separate from you two, Malleus lies on the floor. His own heart and lungs beating erratically, panting like a dog on a smoldering summer’s day. Lilia may put his hand on his shoulder to try and vanquish the tidal wave of breathlessness but Malleus shrugs it off. His staff is knocked by his side from the explosion of the black star collapsing. Malleus uses it to push himself up on his knees. 

His heart floods with relief and love at seeing the sight of you breathing in Jade’s arms. Besotted beyond belief, he whispers lovestruck, “Child of Man.” Then, the calm expression melts off his face and reveals panic. Because that is not –!

“Jade!”

Floyd breaks into the room like a storm; shoulder-checks Sebek who is trying to reach Malleus; jumps over the furniture that prove to be useless barracks. “Jade,” he shouts again when he notices his brother has yet to turn away from you. 

Their eyes find each other across the room easily. It is incredibly hard to see in the Coral Sea, biological and environmental factors working double-time together to ensure they stayed in the middle of the food chain. Their shared beacon of gold keeps them tethered together in the sea and on the land. No one else, not even their parents have an eye similar to theirs. That’s my brother is what that single ring of gold means.

Floyd can recognize Jade as such even now at the worst of times. However, a marginal note is stapled onto the thought. That’s my brother and, right now, I’m terrified of him. It is an odious thought. Sevens, Floyd can feel the tap-dancers of bile make their merry way up his throat at this very moment. What keeps them tethered together feels more like a chain than a security line to use.

“Bad decisions, good times,” Jade reads off his t-shirt. “Hm, Floyd?”

How can he speak so calmly with that in his arms? Perhaps, that too is part of why Floyd feels goosebumps on the back of his thighs. A prey or lower predator has signals receptors to recognize danger. A cat shows its fear in a twitching tail; Floyd wonders how he must be showing his own fear. Call it animal insight but a part of Floyd knows deep down, that is not you in his brother’s arms. 

“Ja-Jaido.”

“Florido.”

Do this for me, Jade’s eyes seem to implore. Ah, you asshole, Floyd’s eyes respond. 

He walks forward through a graveyard of thorns. “They probably can’t walk that well. Gotta be winded.” Floyd outstretches his left hand; Jade’s eyes squint in gaiety and your own gape wide in curiosity. The grip Jade has around you is protective.  “C’mon, get up.”

“Thank you, Floyd,” Jade says, placing his hand on his brother’s. 

[spockandawe]

Guys for real though I simply HAVE to scream about 'the hunter's gonna lay low,' because the hunter genre is giving me all the emotionally rich superhero content the western pop culture sphere has been gradually sapped of in favor of commercialized multiverse, but it is ALSO giving me all the emotionally rich gay yearning that is a crucial part of my diet, AND it's hurting my heart with burnout and trauma and the way people change in the face of the inevitable passage of time, and--

Let me back up. This is actually the first korean webnovel I've read so thoroughly! It's not finished yet, because the original novel isn't finished yet, but there's a solid 450k of text and I'm pretty sure the ending is imminent. Technically, i started orv before this (but paused/stalled about a hundred chapters in) and also started the novel for 'the guild member next door' (and then lost my internet tab lmao). So i really did intend to try to stick to first-in-first-out reading, but oh man. This story GOT to me, i was incapable of putting it down.

Technically, i started with the manhwa, just something casual to check out while I was bored on my business trip. But the comic is brand new, there were only fourteen chapters at the time, and I finished and didn't even pump the brakes before powering on to the novel. No regrets at all, i even used my in-flight wifi to keep reading as i came home.

I can only give you a sprinkling of the plot without wandering into plot points I don't think should be spoiled, but i REALLY want to encourage people to check it out, I'm also in the middle of 'i became a god in a horror game' and 'evil as humans,' both of which are EXTREMELY good, and this one effortlessly shouldered them out of the way

The genre! If you're not familiar with the hunter genre, the oversimplified explanation is that some people awaken as 'hunters,' who have super powers of various strengths and rarity, typically administered by a system of some kind. They usually use these to fight monsters, sometimes in dungeon-esque settings, often with magical tools and weapons either dropping in these dungeons or being made from monster materials.

The story! In THIS hunter setting, eleven years ago, a magical rift of some kind opened, and monsters came out and started wreaking havoc on the world. However, gradually, among the survivors, some of them began to awaken with new powers that gave them the ability to fight back. Our hero, cha eui-jae, was the first S-class hunter to awaken in south korea, in the aftermath of one of these early attacks where his parents were killed and he (age 17) narrowly survived.

As an S-class hero, and one with combat-oriented abilities, he had immeasurable value, as a weapon, as a figurehead, as a symbol for the people to rally around. By a significant margin, he was the most capable fighter in the country, and he worked hard to live up to those needs and expectations as the hunter "J". Again, he was seventeen. The one saving grace was that he had an adoptive aunt who helped shield him as much as she could, and a mask that hid his face and changed his voice.

This lasted three years. At the end of that period, among all the other dungeons and rifts popping up, there was a strange new rift, one that was expanding, and would start eating into the country eventually. Cha eui-jae led dozens of hunters in, and eventually the rift closed, but none of those hunters ever came out.

Until! Eight years later! Cha eui-jae wakes up outside the rift, back in seoul, lying in a pile of garbage, with NO idea how he got there or what happened in those intervening years.

In some ways things are.... good. Authorities have the ability to predict rifts now, and push alerts to people's phones to warn them to seek shelter. Kids ignore the warnings to stick around and film videos of cool fights to upload online. All the monster- and human-driven chaos of the early days is gone. And that's good, right? That's all cha eui-jae dreamed of all this time.

Cool! Things are under control! They don't need him. When he woke up, he was starving, and stumbled into a nearby hangover soup restaurant (a classic korean comfort food) to ask for something to eat. Now, he's helping out the elderly owner and helping look after her granddaughter and basically running the whole restaurant to let the old lady rest. The place is a major hunter hangout spot, but whatever, it's not like anyone ever knew his face, and most of these people awakened long after he left the scene. He's just a normal! regular! guy!

Yeah, when is that ever allowed to last 😂

Eventually, he ends up showing that he has SOME kind of powers in front of the wrong person, another rare s-rank, the number one ranked hunter in south korea, lee sa-young. If you look up this series and see an edgy try-hard hot topic guy with purple eyes and a purple gas mask, that's him. He's perfect. I would DIE for him.

He's also a mouthy motherfucker with a bad attitude! And he is also, non-metaphorically, extremely poisonous. And venomous, I assume. Restaurants have to throw out the utensils after he uses them, so it's safe to assume it's bad news either way! And folks... i didn't think the bratty little brother archetype was ever going to be my thing, but i was so very wrong. He's perfect, he's fascinating, he's engaging as HELL. Cha eui-jae is a WONDERFUL protagonist, i was happy to read whatever he was up to, but lee sa-young is an amazing foil, and the chemistry is great. I love the manhwa, but their dynamic in the book... chefkiss. And also the manhwa currently cuts off while they're still getting to know each other.

But for now! Lee sa-young actually needs someone like cha eui-jae. It's illegal to be an unregistered awakened person, but lee sa-young is trying to hunt down a drug ring right now, but he's a big-name celebrity and needs someone totally off the radar to work with him. Also, even if cha eui-jae is living quietly, the system knows that J is back. And besides, nobody ever figured out what the deal was with that expanding rift. Sure, it closed, but what CAUSED it? Annnnd I'm going to stop there.

This story is very much its own thing, but to me, it hits emotionally like the love child of svsss and madoka and no I won't elaborate. Cha eui-jae's backstory is one of burnout and trauma, and he himself struggles to recognize that, but he emerges into a world with a MUCH more nuanced understanding of trauma than when he went missing, and none of the chaos that made everyone who was asking him to step up to the plate over and over look the other way. He's in a world where he's a celebrity and a formative aspirational figure to many modern hunters, but also feels adrift in a world where he was left behind! He's still the same person he was before, but time has inevitably changed everything and everyone he knew.

This story is also about loneliness and community. Lee sa-young is made of poison and is hazardous to even the most powerful of his peers. Despite that, and despite his personality, he's a little brother to the third power, and has founded a guild of hunters who care for him and look out for him. He also looks out for the people around him, despite how rarely he chooses to get close. Korea has recently had its fifth all-time S-ranked hunter awaken - but her identity is under wraps because she's still seventeen and in high school, so she's going to graduate before they even THINK of giving her work, and cha eui-jae has a lot of complicated feelings he doesn't want to examine about that.

(there is also an artisan character whose abilities are adhd (positive) and adhd (negative) and I've never seen such a personal callout for me specifically i love him so much dhjgjhjh)

I started reading this book for fun, but it genuinely has themes I'm still chewing on as i start reading the translation again. I'm not done thinking about this, I'm not NEARLY done. And i promise that my summary stops before most of the plot even starts spinning up. The flow of how the worldbuilding and story and characters are gradually revealed it's absolutely wonderful, and I can't rec this book strongly enough

Belatedly, here's a link to the translator's site!

[mariacallous]

Cantor Jennifer Bern-Vogel was used to hearing her mother tell the story.

On the evening of Nov. 9, 1938, her mother, then Marianne Katzenstein, who was 16 at the time, was in her family’s synagogue in Bielefeld, Germany, practicing the organ. She finished up, used a key to lock the building and returned home. Later that night, the synagogue was burned to the ground by the Nazis in the Kristallnacht pogrom.

Only two items survived the fire: a Torah scroll and Katzenstein’s key.

“I just remember her talking about it, her voice would change and she was just kind of slower and softer and very nostalgic when she talked about the whole story,” Bern-Vogel, 67, said in an interview. “Whenever she told the story and then held up the key, people always — and I experienced it myself — there was always this kind of gasp.”

Bern-Vogel, who has been the cantor at Congregation Emanu El in Redlands, Calif., since 2009, said the story of the key was “legendary” in her family.

And on Saturday, 86 years after Kristallnacht, the key returned home.

Bern-Vogel spent the past week in Germany, where she had lived for more than a decade when she was younger, reconnecting with friends, family and the Jewish community of Bielefeld, where the synagogue was reestablished shortly after the Holocaust. It was her first trip to Bielefeld with her husband and daughter, and her brother and niece, as well as a cousin from Denmark, also flew in for the occasion.

On Friday night, Bern-Vogel and the cantor of the Bielefeld synagogue led Shabbat services together. Bern-Vogel sang a song that was adapted from a poem written by her grandfather, with music composed by a longtime friend from Germany.

And following Havdalah on Saturday, the town held a ceremony that began at the site of the destroyed synagogue before moving to City Hall, where the official hand-off was made. The key was added to the collection of the town’s history museum and will be on display at the current synagogue building.

According to Irith Michelsohn, the president of the town’s Jewish community and of Germany’s Progressive Jewish movement, Bielefeld���s Jewish community has 450 members. The synagogue the community uses now was renovated from an old Protestant church and was inaugurated in 2008.

Prior to the Holocaust, Bielefeld was home to almost 1,000 Jews, Michelsohn said. The community has been revitalized since Michelsohn took the helm on Jan. 1, 2000, at which point she said there were only 35 members.

Michelsohn said the key’s return is immensely meaningful to the community.

“I was so excited, because we only have one Torah scroll, and now the key, that’s all we have from our old synagogue,” Michelsohn said. “And now the key is back. That’s so great, you can’t imagine.”

Michelsohn said the key is especially important as a vehicle to educate the current community about its past. She explained that like many German Jewish communities, Bielefeld’s Jews are almost all originally from the former Soviet Union.

“You don’t have many people who are originally from Germany,” she said. “Some of them converted to Judaism, some immigrated from Israel or other countries or are working in Bielefeld with a university, but most of the members in all of our 120 Jewish communities in Germany are from the former Soviet Union.”

The key, Michelsohn said, represents an opportunity to “teach them something about history, about the past, what we lost.”

It also returns a physical reminder of the old synagogue building, which had been built in 1905 and was commissioned by the Katzenstein family. Bern-Vogel’s maternal grandfather had been the head of the Jewish community, and helped hundreds of families escape Germany.

“It symbolizes a connection to the old and very, very nice building which we had,” Michelsohn said, adding that the destroyed synagogue was “such a marvelous building.”

Like the key she kept, the remarkable story of Bern-Vogel’s mother did not end in 1938. The following year, she and her younger sister escaped to England on the Kindertransport. Years later, she was at a Shabbat dinner in Israel when she met Julian Bernstein (later shortened to Bern), Bern-Vogel’s father, who also survived the Holocaust.

Julian was one of six children from a Lithuanian family, but only he and one brother survived the Holocaust. That brother, Leon Bernstein, and Bern-Vogel’s mother were both working for the World Jewish Congress; Leon hosted the Shabbat dinner where Julian and Marianne met.

The two were engaged within a week, and eventually settled in Iowa, where Bern-Vogel and her brother were raised.

In the later years of her mother’s life, Bern-Vogel said there had been efforts to bring the key to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. But a contact her mother had at the museum passed away, and in 2017, so did she, at 94 years old.

“It just held a very deep connection,” Bern-Vogel said, referring to the key, a copy of which she still has. “I don’t think I thought about, when we were growing up, that the key would be anywhere else but with us. It kind of belonged to us.”

But as her mother aged, Bern-Vogel said her family wanted to determine where the key should go to be best taken care of and hold the most meaning. After a couple recent trips to Germany, Bern-Vogel said the answer crystallized.

“It just became clearer over the last couple of years, and especially after I went there last summer to meet with them at the synagogue and the museum, that it would really mean the most for everyone and future generations for it to be there,” she said.

Bern-Vogel said that even though her mother had a fraught relationship with Germany because of how her family’s time there ended, Bielefeld will always be their home. And she knows her mother would appreciate knowing that the key has made it back.

“I think that she would be incredibly moved by the reception that the key is going to have, and the people that are involved in the city,” Bern-Vogel said. “I think she would be very honored and happy, and I think grateful.”

[notthecutesttrash]

From One To Another

Soulmate AU

Content: Chrollo Lucilfer is your soulmate. However, you know that he is a criminal and you reject him. You have a boyfriend to still prove love can be real outside the birthed bonds, but he’s just as bad.

Trigger warnings: 18+ Dark, lots of mentions of graphic abuse, slight smut towards the end, little nipple-play, language

Word count: 8.06k

As a child, it always meant the world to you that one day you would be fated to meet someone. Someone who was meant for you in every possible way. Maybe you’d argue, sure, that was apparent by being with your mother and father. Still, that person would be your all, your soul, your everything. 

You saved yourself for years, refusing any possible relationship even if you desperately wanted to be held, to be kissed, to be loved. You knew it would be worth it when you met him.

A man named Chrollo Lucilfer. 

And your heart shattered when one day you turned on the news and found his name printed on a bounty sheet for no small amount of Jenny. 

At first, you tried to believe with everything in your heart that it wasn't true. Your soulmate wouldn't be a criminal, not yours. Especially when it was claimed he was part of a group called the Phantom troupe that killed not only dozens but hundreds. It just made you sick thinking of it. 

Maybe he hadn’t killed anyone, it was only his group members. Maybe he was forced to be with them and they threatened him when he sought to escape. Maybe they only steal because they’re in desperate need of Jenny. Maybe.. just maybe he wasn’t evil. 

Tears poured out of you weeks after you found the news, just thinking of all that you had dreamed of as a child withering to dust. You would have no sweet and shy interaction, no beautiful story you would tell the table. No happy marriage, no children, no.. love. 

There were stories of people who have gone through similar experiences, survivors of terrible soulmates. Even if fate meant it to be, all weren't perfect, many were far from, some pure evil. There would be no balance without it. But why did it have to be yours? Why did you have to have the evil one? Because someone had to, right? But.. why? 

For all that you had avoided, you ended up in the same situation you had sworn not to be a part of, soulmate or not. Simply put, your boyfriend is a piece of shit. Why were you with him in the first place? You didn’t know. You believed it was to prove yourself and others wrong, that pure love between two fatefully unmatched people can work just the same. You were hopeless. 

You would never find love within someone else, and you would never with your soulmate. Even if he was the nicest person alive- you stopped yourself there and scoffed. So nice that he murders or even sits idly by as a bystander. Fat chance he was nice, one way or another they're all the same. 

You sit on the couch attempting to watch a movie, while your boyfriend ushers around all drunk and stupid. His hand grabs the handle of the fridge and slings it open, reaching for another beer. “Don’t you think that’s enough?” You catch his attention and he lifts himself to look at you, raising a brow. 

“What’d you say?” He has an edge to his voice, but you repeat as you narrow your eyes at him. 

“I said. Don’t you think, that’s enough?” 

“And who are you to say? Fucking bitch.” He hiccups and slurs, “You’ll gladly have a glass or two with your friends, but I can’t have a few beers?” Arguing with him is useless. A glass or two does not equate to being outright drunk on a “few” beers that lay around the kitchen floor. Of course, all for you to clean up later. You shake your head to yourself, making sure he didn’t see. It’s been happening on repeat, and every night as you lay beside him, his hands all over you as he spoons your forcefully into him, you think, is this worth it? Maybe being with a criminal is better. Or really.. no one at all. 

But you couldn’t leave, he still loved you. Did you love him..? Or was this all a show to just have someone’s arms around you at night? He slumps on the couch, his arm pulling your shoulders so you can scoot even closer to him. Complying, your knee touches his own as you get close. He takes a swig of his beer and rests his feet on the coffee table. His socks alone smell like something died, and you say nothing as his breath full of beer comes into your space. His tongue licks up your neck and you wince. 

“Can you stop… I’m trying to watch this.” In reality, you weren’t watching, it was hard to. You were so focused on your surroundings, flinching at any little loud sound he made before he sat. 

“Ah come on, you know you love it.” You hated that cocky attitude, god you hated him, but he was right, it did cause a tingle in between your legs. He licks up to your ear again, even biting your earlobe. It was too hard and you yelp, pushing away instinctively. 

“Stop… I’m serious, please. I just want to watch this.” You gesture to the movie screen and turn to it completely. He hates being ignored. His hand grabs your chin harshly and he forces you to look at him, a glare zoning in on his eyes. 

“I want it.” He growls as if that was supposed to make you bow down to him. You wished you had the courage inside of you to shout, I don’t, but there was a clench in your throat. Before you knew it, you were on your back with him over you. His hand lifts your shirt to show your breasts, and his hand grabs you too hard again, and you hiss. 

“Stop-“ his hand covers your mouth, and he dives down to your neck, his lips attaching to your skin. You kick him in the groin, and he groans out, clutching himself. You take this moment to rush to put on your coat and shoes. 

Your voice begins shouting as it does almost every night, and every night you do the same thing, you grab your coat and shoes, and you threaten to leave, sometimes you even do, but it was rare he’d let you out the door. Then in the morning, you’d be all cozy together again, he’d grab your waist while you make him coffee, kissing your ear and giggling sweet nothings. 

“I’m done with this, I’m fucking out of here, I can’t take this anymore.“ You make sure to be as fast as possible, and you sling your bag around your shoulder and rush to leave. He’s on you in an instant, pulling your arm away from the doorknob forcefully. Suddenly you’re choked and slammed against the wall. 

“You’re not going anywhere, you got that?” His grip becomes tighter, and you raise your leg to do the same kick, but even in his drunken state, he’s able to grab it with his other hand. Still, he was weaker in this position and you push him off you with all your might. Again you turn to leave but you are swiftly pulled back by your hair. His fist was clenched tight around your strands, even ripping a few out as you screamed. 

A blow is landed at your stomach and you nearly hurl on the floor. He punches the side of your face, and your eyes are forced shut at the impact. It began twitching and you were sure that would leave a black eye. You’re shoved to the floor and his hands grab your arms, his body over you again. “Get away from me!” You screamed at the top of your lungs, flailing around. You were sure the neighbors heard, but they never did anything about it.  

“Don’t touch me!!” 

His fingers began toying with you, slurring mumbles as he tiredly kissed your neck. Again you manage to jab your knee into his stomach and as he recoils you run to the bathroom, slamming it shut and locking the door. Tears fell from your face as you held your throbbing head, ears ringing at the blow. The door shook as he pounded on it, screaming your name and shouting at you to open up or else. “Open the fucking door (Y/n), open it! Open the fucking door!” 

“I swear to god if you don’t open up right now-“ You cradled yourself in the bathtub, closing your ears from it all until it became nothing but mumbles. Flinching at every time he pounded, you continued crying. You were terrified the hinges would fly off, the door would be broken down, and you would have no protection whatsoever. ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this anymore.’ 

Eventually, it would pass, as it always did. He’d pass out somewhere, whether it be the floor, the couch, the bed, wherever, and you’d be scared to remove yourself from the safety of the bathroom, for fear he would wake up and kill you.

You slept in the bathtub and woke up with a pain in your head, eyes dizzy to the flickering light that stayed on. Groggily you grabbed onto the rim of the tub and attempted to pull your shaky sore legs out. When you saw yourself in the mirror, you assumed right. There was a big purplish black bruise around your eye, even a red hand mark around your neck. You pulled your pants down to find a few bruises on your legs. Probably from falling, or maybe these were from the other days, you don’t remember.  

You couldn’t take this anymore. 

But you couldn’t leave. You had your life here, but most of all, you hated to restart, to find someone all over again, you wouldn’t be able to do it. So you felt hopeless as you splashed water on your face and cleaned yourself. You pulled out your makeup palette used only for covering bruises. When you opened it the area surrounding the center was sunken in, and metal showed up as holes in your foundation. You were running out, you needed to get a new one soon.

Grabbing your sponge, you pressed it gently into your eye, wincing at the pain. You needed to get ready for work because someone had to pay the bills around here. Next was your neck, and after that, you looked normal again, perfectly robust and healthy. Opening the door, a weight slid off and thudded onto the ground, your boyfriend’s head. He was passed out, snoring, hands sprawled out on the floor. You simply sidestepped in the gaps of his body to walk around him. You couldn’t care to brush out your messy hair, and you were sure most of the shedding was a fault of him yanking it too hard. Better not to let anyone see your scalp anyway. 

You slung your bag over your shoulder as your stomach rumbled. Was there enough time to get some breakfast before you headed to work? You checked your phone. You were a bit on the early side so that was a yes. Besides, it’d be nice to eat alone and get a new atmosphere besides beer cans that littered the ground. And at least the coffee shop wouldn’t smell like barf. 

You shut your door to see the woman at the apartment next to you, grabbing her keys to lock her door behind her. She gave you a look, and you walked passed her to the stairs. “(Y/n) right?” She suddenly spoke, and you turned to her. A nervous expression was on her face, and she pursed her lips, staring down. “Listen… I’m sorry- my husband told me to not get involved.. but.. are you okay?” A spike of defensive anger got to you, but for the most part, it was mixed with shame, a pathetic embarrassment filled you. Was this really what you chose? A life that your neighbors have to feel scared for you and ask if you're okay?

“Yes, I’m perfectly fine, don’t worry.” You fake smiled and waved. “I hope you have a good day.” When you walked down the stairs it fell. Attributes of working in customer service. A sigh left you as the brisk air hit you, and you walked to your destination. You couldn’t afford a car, but it was fine, everything was close anyway. 

At work today you were in charge of helping the new trainee. A nice guy it looked like, someone who was awkward and didn’t want to make anyone go through a hassle for him. You wished you at least had a guy like that. “Press this if you want to open the register. The system here will tell you how much to give them, fairly simple right?” He nodded, and you assorted through all the cash. It wasn’t a hard job, and you didn’t really care or not if someone was over your shoulder watching. Anything was better than home. 

The door dinged as someone entered. An enthusiastic woman greeted you. 

“Good morning! How can I help you today?” 

“Hi, can I just have a small black coffee and um.. hm.. a grilled cheese I suppose.” She smiled and you nodded, politely returning the gesture. She handed you the jenny and you looked over your shoulder to show the trainee what exactly to do. How to ring up a specific or basic order. You had him bring up the option so he could show her the amount due. The woman waited patiently, smiling, and he was nervous, cheeks flushed as he struggled to find the grilled cheese. You eventually pointed it out to him, tapping above it as if to give him a gentle hint. 

“Sorry about that,” he spoke politely once he finally rang it up. 

“Don’t worry, I’m in no rush.” She smiled prettily and removed her wallet from her purse. After handing in the exact amount, you placed it in the register and closed it. Easy enough. 

“You’re all set, it should be out in about 5 minutes.” She nodded and waited on the side where the finished orders were placed. 

You begin speaking to your coworker again, explaining all the sorts of foods or combinations you can order, and how they have to be specifically rung up to be recognized in the system. “Let’s say if someone wants a salad, but no tomatoes, simple, you just go here, then here, press customizations, and remove the option. Either press on the picture or the word “TMTS” you following?” The man nods, even though confused, he is determined, and so you let him take the reins. 

“Whenever you need any assistance just let me know, i’ll be helping out with the food while Marley does the drinks, okay?” 

“O-okay,” he stutters as he tries to adjust. 

“Have a nice day!” The woman calls out, walking off with her items. You smile and respond in kind, inwardly sighing. 

The door rings, and you’re too busy prepping the table to see who walks in. You just hoped they would go easy on the trainee. 

“Is this really necessary?” One had a deep voice, and he was very tall and muscular, you could see that from just your peripheral vision alone. 

“I feel like I’m gonna pass out, are you kidding me? We were running extra rounds until 3 am.” You couldn’t see how the others looked as they were directly behind you, but it didn’t matter anyway. 

“Hello, how can I help you guys today?” The trainee spoke, nervous but outwardly confident, face masked with a smile. You hummed in approval, that’s a good step.

“Let me get a- hm… what is that, a BLT?” One of the men asked, pointing to the menu, eyes squinting. 

The trainee turned and nodded. “Yes.” 

“Alright, lemme have one of those, you want anything?” Assumedly he makes a gesture to the others around him, however many they were. The price rings up after a few moments of him slowly looking up the name. 

“Sheesh that’s a bit of Jenny for just a sandwich don’t you think?” You sighed, this time a little more audibly, but not enough for anyone to hear. You already knew how this was going to go.

“Got any beers here?”  

“Um…” The trainee panics a little, looking for the name on the screen. He doesn’t see it, but before making a definite answer, he looks at the menu himself. But before he can say “no” the other man scoffs. 

“What, you don’t know if you got it or not? Dont’cha work here?” 

Glancing at the register, he gives you a nervous expression as if hoping you’d save him. You pull away from the prepping area and gesture over your shoulder, signaling for him to swap places. You’ll deal with it for now.  

“Don’t worry about it,” You say to him more than anything as he walks away a little defeated. 

“Okay, what can I help you guys with?” You speak a little more firmly this time, but your fake smile remains. It was a group of 3, one large buff fuzzy man, one blondie with a furrowed expression, and a monotone man with slicked-back hair and grey eyes. It was a strange group you admitted, but you tried not to be rude and stare. The tall guy spoke his specifically long order which was more than a few sandwiches, while the other had a combo, and the one in the coat only wanted a tea. You were glad you took on this group, no doubt they would be shouting slurs at the second mess-up and making the poor guy sputter apologies only half a minute in.

“Is that all I can do for you guys today?” They answered no, and you smiled as you stated their total. They pulled out their wallets and when the one with black hair angled his wrist towards you, money in hand, your fingers instinctively reached over to grab it. That was until you saw the name on his wrist, and you stopped dead in your tracks. Your breath caught in your throat and your eyes went wide. (Y/n) (L/n). No, this couldn’t be. It wasn’t real. 

“Is something wrong?” He tilted his head after a long pause, and you inhaled sharply, swiftly grabbing the jenny. The other two gave each other a sort of look, brows raised as they handed you the rest. The one in front of you, the one who was supposed to be your soulmate didn’t say anything, nor did he have a reaction, his face remained the same, and you were sure because of that he didn’t notice anything wrong. 

Besides, even if you knew it was him, he wouldn’t know it was you. You tried to reassure yourself. Your wrist was covered in wraps. They’d never know, so you can’t seem suspicious, not now.

“No, I’m so sorry about that.” Clearing your throat, you quickly arranged the register and handed the change off. “Your orders will be ready in 10-15 minutes or so, okay?” The tall man grumbled, and you gestured faster than ever for the trainee to switch back with you while you nearly hyperventilated making stupid fucking sandwiches. All the while you could feel their stare burning in your back. 

“Are you okay?” Marley then asks and you nod. All you had to do was relax. You’re used to having to lie about this, so it’s no big deal.

But why does this time seem ten times harder than usual? 

“Yeah, of course.” He looks at you in a way as if he knows you’re lying but shrugs it off. You place the order on the counter for them to pick it up, attempting to make zero eye contact as they come close. You meet his gaze, those grey orbs that fixate on you calmly. You almost stare a little too long, before you clear your throat again and push forward the food for them to take. Once they did, that was it, they would walk out just like that and you wouldn’t see them ever again. Your soulmate is officially gone. 

But what if that wasn't the case?

Quelling the anxiety, you nervously trail their steps as they start to walk out of the shop. And when they finally do, you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding. 

When you clocked out, exhaustion burned into your temples. Thinking of going home to speak to your boyfriend already set you in a horrible mood. There was a chance he was in a good one, but still, you’d have to deal with the fact that you just met your soulmate after all these years of being with your boyfriend. Whether he was a murderer, a criminal, or not.. that man was fatefully supposed to be with you instead.. and truthfully it hurt a little in your chest. But maybe it was for good, again, he was not a good guy, and if you did get together, it probably wouldn’t be all that different from your current situation. Try to be realistic, you told yourself. Just because the word soulmate is slapped onto someone, it doesn’t mean it’s all fairytale love. 

You just needed time to breathe, just a little. Maybe you’d regret it, but right now, you needed it. You made sure to take your time walking home, even getting yourself a little snack from the bakery and eating there while you contemplated. Forty minutes passed, and then you made it home. You paused at the doorway, your hands lingering above the doorknob a little too long. Inhaling, you rotated it and entered. 

Your boyfriend’s voice rang out, not at all happy. “Where were you?” Good news at least, he wasn’t drunk, but did that really matter? There was a time when you thought it did, but not anymore. 

“I just went to get something at the bakery. Look.” You pulled out a cute little pink-wrapped box that revealed a muffin inside. You didn’t want to buy it. But you knew you would need to show proof. Still, even then it would amount to nothing. 

“Bakery hm? With your new boyfriend huh?” With the stress you had today of meeting someone you never thought to, this struck a nerve more than it had ever. You were not at all in the mood. 

“I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay?” Your tone was firm, and you removed your jacket, stomping off into your room. Unfortunately, it was his too, and you could get no privacy as he didn’t even let the door close to follow you in. 

“Why huh? Cause it’s true? I knew you would fucking cheat, you’re a dirty whore.” He continued on a bout of slurs, gesturing to you angrily and even poking you in your chest. All you wanted to just do was lie down and calm the overstimulation in your mind. Why was it so fucking hard.. to just relax? Breathing becoming heavy, you were struggling more and more to calm down. The anger was getting to you. You were so sick of this you could scream. 

Your hands shook from the adrenaline as you set your bag down, removing your scarf, and other work accessories. Your headache was pounding the more he raised his voice. Suddenly his hand touched your shoulder with a hard grip, and every bit of restraint you had exploded. 

 “I JUST DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH THIS RIGHT NOW OKAY?! JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!” You rushed off into another room, slamming the door behind you. He followed, shouting threats and slurs, and you picked up the nearest object you could, a beer can, a shoe, whatever it was, and repeatedly threw. It wasn’t with much force, but you just hoped the amount of items could deter him. A fury only doubled in his eyes as he ran after you. 

He was screaming, threatening to kill you, harm you, do whatever if you did not make your way back that instant. You wouldn’t, you couldn’t do it anymore. “I HATE YOU! LEAVE ME ALONE!” You shouted at the top of your lungs. 

It was only so big of an apartment, and eventually, he made his way to you. With not much force, you kicked him in the stomach. He recoiled by punching your cheek hard, but not enough to make you collapse. You screamed as he threatened to kill you again, “GET AWAY FROM ME!” You kicked him and threw just about anything that you had, and shoved him in his chest hard when he tried to get near you as you attempted to run to the bathroom. 

“I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!” He shouted. This time you were sure he was serious. He grabbed a kitchen knife from the block and held it threateningly towards you. 

Gasping in fear, your tone changed to barely above a whisper, shaky but with a hard attempt to be firm. “Get the fuck away from me… I’m serious, don’t.. don’t fucking touch me, get away, or I’m calling the police.”  

“Yeah, and how are you going to do that?” He taunted, knowing well that your phone was in the bedroom, just where he was blocking. Swallowing harshly, you remained still, unsure of your next move, scared if you ran he might just swiftly catch up and pierce you. 

“I wasn’t cheating, I just needed a moment to myself, all I did was go to the bakery, okay?” You tried to patiently reason, even if you secretly knew it wouldn’t do anything. He scoffed. 

“Yeah? Tell that to all your other fucking boyfriends, piece of shit.” He gestured to you with the knife in hand, and suddenly dove. You ran for the bathroom as quickly as you could, but this time he knew what you were planning. Suddenly you met with the floor, your head slamming and bouncing against the hard tiles. Scramming to your feet, he kicked your leg hard and shoved your head down so you would meet the tiles again. This time you heard a crack and felt warm liquid rushing down the back of your head. 

You began thrashing and screaming at the top of your lungs when he neared. “SOMEBODY HELP ME! HELP ME!” Disoriented, he choked you hard enough to stop all cries, so hard you had no doubt he would truly kill you this time. Your mouth opened to get a breath, but nothing would come. Your hands were struggling to get him off of you. 

 “You useless bitch- what are you good for? Nothing-“ 

“I think I heard enough.” A sudden voice interrupted, lessening the hold of the man atop of you. It being enough to make you breathe, you gulped the air instantly. It was silent for a moment before your boyfriend cussed out. 

“What the fuck?” 

“Who the fuck are you? And how did you get in my goddamn apartment?” 

The weight over you vanished, and you didn’t care what happened, who, when, or where, you ran. Slamming the bathroom door shut and locking the door, you cradled yourself in the tub, the lights off as you shuddered silently. It was quiet at first, so quiet, something you weren’t used to save for the ringing in your ears. Blood droplets fell at the back of your neck and when you touched it, tears formed. Why would you do this? Why would this happen? 

You heard your boyfriend screaming violently, a scream you never ever heard him make. It was as if his life depended on it. Something in you felt horrified, guilty, and scared, but you didn’t want to go out, you couldn’t. You didn’t want to die. You didn’t know what was happening if he was just making an act, or if he was coming towards you. But you wouldn’t open the door, not until he fell asleep. Then you could leave, this time forever. You didn’t care anymore. Tears fell in silent streams for a few seconds, then they became so strong you sobbed violently. 

“What the hell- what the hell is that?!” Your boyfriend shouted nonsense at whatever it was. He’s delusional, he’s gone insane, it’s over for you. 

Eventually, all stilled, it became quiet again. You were whimpering in your hands, hiccuping, body shaking uncontrollably. You heard the lock click as it shifted, and a slow creak as the door opened. He had found a way in, he was going to kill you, and you were cornered. You kept your eyes covered, terrified, sobs shifting into screams as you heard the footsteps. They were slow, step by step. You didn’t want to die, you didn’t want to die. Step. He was in front of you now, if you opened your eyes, he would be there just above you, a knife in his hands, a horrible glint in his eye as he stabbed you lifeless. 

But what you did not expect was the man to coo at you, to ease your cries.

“Sh…” you flinch as a hand rubs at your head, patting kindly away at your gnawing migraine. Your boyfriend wasn’t usually this sweet, you were sure any second now he’d be pulling at your hair and gesturing the knife to your throat. But it didn’t come. 

When your body finally stops rampantly shaking, and your sobs are almost quelled, you lift your head only slightly, enough to peek through your fingers. Although it was dark, and your eyes took a bit to adjust, you noticed that wasn’t what your boyfriend would wear. But the clothing.. did somehow look familiar. 

Your hand slowly fell to look at the figure above you. When your eyes meet, a different type of ice-cold fear strikes you. Grey emotionless eyes that even you could see in the darkness. Or well, you couldn’t say emotionless, they did look.. a bit… dark actually.. and scary. He didn’t furrow his brows like a normal person, nor did his eyes widen, but you couldn’t explain the terrifying look he had in them. They softened instantly to a neutral state and you gawked confusedly.  

What could you say? 

What are you doing here? Who are you? (even if you knew the answer to that). How did you find me? Hello. 

Your bottom lip trailed into your teeth, tears still streaming. You looked pathetic. Surely all your cries washed away the makeup, allowing him to see the bruises that littered your face. Who could ever love you like this? Not even a criminal. 

“I’m going to take care of you now.” Your soulmate spoke, and as much as it maybe should’ve calmed you, (maybe if your soulmate was anyone else), it only caused further crying. Then you paused, remembering. 

“Wh-What did y-you do to him?” 

He tilts his head. “You worry for him?” 

You nod slowly. 

He hums and walks over to the light switch, flicking it on. Recoiling, you rush to hide yourself, squinting at the light that now buzzes above you. “Perhaps you should look at yourself more clearly.” 

Your legs were still covered in bruises, blood was dripping down your neck slowly, falling beneath your shirt, and your eyes were wincing in pain. But yet you still worried for him. 

You gazed at his wrist, feint black words that you couldn’t see because of your dizzy eyesight. You just wanted someone so bad you would settle for anything. He was right. Still, how could your conscience take someone’s death or pain on your behalf? 

You shook your head, shaking the disposition of your thoughts. Your breath hitched when he reached his palm out to you, and there you could see it again. Your name across his wrist in fine black ink. “How.. how did you know it was me? I-I had it covered.” 

“Your reaction was obvious. Plus, your name.” You were confused, your name? No one had- oh. Just before they walked out the door the trainee called out your name, requesting further help on the machine. 

But you guessed it didn’t matter anymore. You whispered pathetically, your eyes meeting his again. “Are you going to kill me?” 

“No. You’re my soulmate. We belong together, I will give you all you want from here on.” You couldn’t help but scoff. He was a murderer, a criminal. His hand touched your cheek to turn you towards him. You recoiled fearfully, pushing away from his touch. Upon looking closer at your black eye you felt his tone shift, even if his demeanor didn’t show it. 

“I wouldn’t let anyone touch you like this again, you can have my word.” 

You don't even know why you tried to reason with a murderer. But you were desperate. 

“Promise?” Your weak voice muttered out. 

“I do.”

You nod and take his hand. He pulls you to your feet effortlessly, even if your legs wobble and ring out in pain. You hissed quietly as you stepped out of the tub. Your legs were sore and stiff, and your head throbbed. You were beginning to get dizzy and you could feel the nausea coming to your throat quickly. Covering your mouth, you rushed to your knees at the front of the toilet and vomited to your heart’s content. Everything you had this day went down the dump. Tears streamed down your cheeks again. You bit your lip, your hands still bracing the sides of the toilet, your heart pacing wildly. You looked to your soulmate.. to Chrollo Lucilfer, and you bit your lip.

“You won’t hurt me?” He took a moment to respond which worried you. 

“Intentionally, no. I will not.” That didn’t really help, but I guess if that meant he wouldn’t try to stab you in the middle of the night, it would suffice. You did believe his words, but still, something seemed amiss. Maybe it meant, no, unless you try to escape and tell on me to the cops. 

“Come.” He took his hand out to you again.

“Where are we going?”

“Your new home. You’re going to live with me, and you won’t have to work from now on.” Those words made you fearful until he kept going. “I’ll provide for you.” A flutter warmed your heart. Someone who would provide for you… someone who would finally take care of you instead. That made you happy. 

You lifted yourself, and he stepped to the side so you could wash yourself at the sink. It was an even more pathetic sight than last night. Blood was dripping down the side of your head, and it hurt to the touch. Still, you washed it away and began getting out your palette so you could cover up the wounds. 

“What are you doing?” Chrollo asked, and you turned to him, confused. 

“Well.." Pausing for a few seconds, you continued. "I have to look presentable. If people saw me walking with you... with a bruised eye, they’ll assume you hurt me.. and.. well..” you didn't continue that, but you assumed he knew where that was going. 

A swirl of darkness rushed to his eyes as his lips curled slightly into a smile, albeit it was horrifying. “I wouldn’t worry. If anyone dares take you from me then-“

“Stop. Please. Just stop.. I don’t want you to hurt anyone.. please… Just.. let me cover myself up.. just for today.. then when I go with you, I will rest up and heal.. okay? Please..” he let out a small exhale and you hold your breath.  

Criminal, abusive, or not, would he ditch you? Toss you to the side when he sees how much you could not stand needless murder or crime? Would you be alone again, with no soulmate, not even a boyfriend now? 

His tone was calm, “I understand. Clean up, I’ll be waiting.” It drew you out of your fixation, and you nervously nodded as he walked out of the bathroom and closed the door after him. As much as you’d love to take a peaceful shower once and for all, you knew he would be waiting, probably upset if you took too long. You ran warm water over your neck and pulled the bloody-stained shirt over your head. Luckily you had enough spare clothes in the bathroom drawers, considering it was like your separate room. 

You repeated the same action from this morning, pressing the makeup to your bruised eye, your neck, the back of your neck, and your throat. 

You would be happy now, right? Was this the last time you’d do this? 

Exhaling a sigh, you put on a clean shirt and left. “I’m ready..” you held your breath, eyes glued to the floor. You expected to be hit, or even see your bloody boyfriend beat up on the floor, passed out. But he wasn’t there in the living room. Weird, you thought. 

Chrollo had his elbows against his knees, and he lifted his head to look at you. “Any last valuables you need to take?” 

Your clothes maybe, but the thought made you uncomfortable. Maybe you should just start over new, remove anything from the present .. but you would have to buy back everything, and with what money? You definitely weren’t using his. You just met him. And now that you think of it, he still kind of broke into your place. 

“Um..” you awkwardly stood, staring at him. You opened your mouth to speak but shut it. “N-No.. it’s okay.. we can go now.” 

“Don't worry about small items, I will let you buy everything you need." 

He walked to your front door, and you stilled. You couldn’t believe you were doing this. Walking off with a man you just met, soulmate or not, away from the place you lived for years with your boyfriend who was probably beaten to a pulp.. somewhere.. maybe in the bedroom.  

When your foot stepped on the line between the hallway and your apartment, you turned back, worrying. But what if he was okay? You should go back and at least say you’re fine, and that it was going to be okay and apologize.  

“You won’t miss it much longer,” Chrollo stated, and you turned to him, frowning. 

“Can I at least say bye to him?” Chrollo tilts his head at your request, a sudden glimmer in his eye. 

“No. I’m afraid that’s not an option.” You pouted, head lowering at his tone. Maybe it was for the best, he surely only had your best interest at heart. Maybe if you had said bye it would only make you feel guiltier. 

“Okay.. let’s go.” 

He still had that dangerous gleam in him as you walked out of the complex. Though you admitted you felt safer with him than you had with anyone else so far. You didn’t know how he did it, you didn’t know how he broke into your room, how he fended off your abuser, or how he looked perfectly fine. But he rescued you. 

“Is.. is all that really true?” Chrollo turned to you, grey piercing eyes fixating on yours. “That you’re with a group… called the phantom troupe.. that you have killed people… and stolen things?“ 

“Yes, it is.” Your head lowered at the confirmation. Something in you was just hoping it wasn’t, just that little twinge of hope.  

“Do you plan on turning me in?” He asked, unworried. You’d assume someone who had such a big bounty on them would be terrified of getting caught any second. Yet he was surprisingly easygoing. He didn’t believe for a second you could take him on alone and bring him in for a prize, and he was right. 

“No… you’ll probably just kill me if I try..” 

“You misunderstand. You are my soulmate, we are meant to be together. I will not kill you, nor will I ever try. Only if you attempt to run, or act irrationally then I will have no choice but to punish you or anyone else involved. And just be aware, I will not give mercy to others.” 

A sigh leaves you. You guessed that was fair. “What will you do to them?” You secretly knew the result, but you gulped nervously, afraid he would confirm it.

He side-eyes you as he continues walking, and you’re staring, impatiently waiting for him to answer. “Do I need to say something you already know?” 

You shake your head with a frown. It became quiet.

You had lived in a busy city-like area. However, the further you walked, the less that people were now nearby. Lights were flickering, if there were any at all. These new crowds of people looked different, dirty, rude, and suspiciously quiet. 

You couldn’t lie and say you weren’t scared when the alleyways looked like where someone would get murdered and not found for days. For all you knew, you just walked into another killer’s arms, and these were your last moments. 

It was cold, and tears were pricking your eyes from the wind. The one time you forget your jacket. You hadn’t forgotten any other time you stormed out in a fuss, but the one time you had a moment to think, you would forget it. 

Chrollo’s hand touches your shoulder and pulls you into him. “It’s good not to get hypothermia out here.” He smiles, and you blush. You were sure it was just an excuse to get you closer, but you supposed that was what the smile was for. It was genuine at least.. yet the more and more he leads you on, you are certain he might just kill you. Buildings around you were becoming more and more absent, and less and less stable. 

He was quite warm.. for someone with no shirt underneath a coat. Somehow you faintly relaxed into his arm. That was until Chrollo stopped in front of a building, and turned to you. This was it, your time came. 

“I’m not going to kill you.” He spoke as if reading your thoughts. You nodded nervously. 

You wondered if maybe you just had a normal relationship from the beginning you would never continuously fear death in this way. 

It was nice in actuality, his place, even if the outside was disguised as a piece of junk. You supposed this might’ve been the sort of man to not care about looks. But the moment you stepped into the room, he had all sorts of trinkets around that made you nervous. Red eyes floating in a jar, paintings, weapons on display, and whatnot. What if you became one of his collections? The thought made a chill run down your spine. 

It was a bit unsettling here, yet admittedly… something about him felt safe. You should know more than anyone how you cannot trust anyone with a sweet facade. But you had a feeling deep down, that this would be okay. The bedroom was nice, perfect actually, it even had a bathroom connected to it, and it was hard for you not to be happy at the change of scenery. Maybe this wouldn’t be your forever home, but you could enjoy it for now. 

“Wipe the makeup off your face.” There was a certain demand in his tone, and your heart swiftly picked up in pace. 

“You need rest,” Chrollo gently reasoned after, cutting the awkward silence. 

Your heart quickly calmed in relief.  "O-Okay.." 

The only sound in the area was the warm water pouring from the faucet. All this silence was nice, you could get used to this sort of peace. 

Circling slowly, the makeup ran down your face in streams, revealing that purplish color around your eye. Next was your neck which showed red handprints. This was never fun doing.

Flicking the light off, you strolled back to the room when you were done. Finding only Chrollo’s coat that was lying on the edge of the bed, until you then found him at the corner, sitting. His elbows were against his knees, hands intertwined with one another.. completely shirtless. You spun instantaneously, squeaking at the sight. 

“Wh-What are you doing?” 

“I hope I don’t need to remind you again that we are soulmates. They do sleep together, do they not?” Even with his neverending patience, you feel you could strike a nerve at any moment. Maybe it was sudden, sure. But he was right, you two were fated, there was no shame in looking at just his bare chest. 

you muttered shyly. “They do..”

Chrollo steps behind you, rubbing his palm at your neck. Somehow you didn’t flinch, or feel pain, instead, it felt.. nice. A warm pair of lips kissed at your side, and your stomach fluttered, “And they have sex with one another, don’t they?” He nearly whispered in your ear. You nodded, whimpering at his touch. Your shirt lifted above your chest, bra expertly unclasped so he could squeeze your nipple with his fingers. His tongue trailed up your neck, and he squeezed around your breast again. This felt better than what your past boyfriend could’ve ever done. 

“Hm?” Chrollo mused, waiting for you to answer as he squeezed your nipple again. You moan at the tug.

“Y-Yes..” 

“As I thought.” He pulls away, and you whimper. He almost smirks, pulling the sheets to the side. 

Cheeks flushed, you let out a shaky exhale as you turn your head over your shoulder to look at him. Your hands were lingering at your shirt as if caught between a decision to take it off or not. 

“I wouldn’t think so hard. Eventually I’ll get to know every little crevice of your body, every little part that makes you scream, tick, or cry. Nothing will be kept from me.” Chrollo speaks calmly, yet possessively, with a certain knowing edge in his voice. 

“They’re not..” You pause, breathing out. You throw your shirt over your head and take off your bra so that it falls at your feet. You undo your pants slowly, feeling his eyes on your bruised body. You left your panties on.. because you at least needed that little bit of dignity before you revealed yourself fully to a man you just met.

“They’re not.. covered..” You rotate to him, arms covering your bare chest, eyes to the ground, ashamed. 

Again, there was that glint in his eye. Something malicious, something dreadful.

It was pathetic, but seeing this look in him, made it feel real. You were protected now, he would kill anyone in your wake, and maybe it was awful, but it comforted you.

He moved closer to you and you instinctively tilted your head in a way so that he could not easily see. There was no makeup or shirt to protect you anymore. His two fingers lifted your jaw so he could study the marked skin. Handprints that only should’ve been imprinted on you by his own. 

“Look at me.” 

You timidly blinked up at him, a warm flow of shame spilling in you as you whispered, “I’m sorry." Tears threatened your lids, and you pursed your lips. 

Why were you apologizing? What for? Were you afraid he didn’t like you? Or that maybe he was ashamed of you? He was quiet for a moment before he spoke. 

“Everything will be handled. Do you understand that?” 

Although you were fearful at that sentence and unsure what that could mean for all the other poor unfortunate souls out there, you nodded. You were safe. He would protect you now.. everything was going to be okay.. everything was going to be just how you wanted it to be. You could finally be happy now. 

His lips captured yours in a deep kiss. It took only a moment before it became a pleasant exchange between two tongues. His tongue captured yours easily, and you moaned into the kiss as his hands caught your breast again. 

You were shoved onto your back against the mattress, but it was soft, softer than you’d ever felt. Chrollo pulled away leaving you a breathless mess. The scattering bruises came to his attention again, and he nearly ripped your underwear in two. He dove down to lick at your fragile skin, suckling high at your neck. You whimpered, legs surrounding his waist as you felt him poke at your entrance. 

He would show everyone who your body belonged to, whether you liked it or not. 

[thera-daydreams]

SCARLET & SHADOW

ᱬ The Darkling x Scarlet Witch!Reader ᱬ

[aleksander morozova x wanda maximoff!reader]

series masterlist & synopsis • thera's masterlist

chapter one.

▪︎ once upon a dream ▪︎

Aleksander had dreams of you long before he even knew you. Maybe it was the stress of this neverending war. Either way, you weren't real anyway... were you?

warnings: the darkling himself is a warning lol, mentions of experimentation, violence, and wallowing in self-regret, no beta we die like wanda

word count: 3.9k

(author's note: yay! finally, after weeks of debating if i should write this, i did. and i can finally sleep in peace.)

Dreams.

He's been having some immensely strange dreams lately. There was always a... woman whose face he could never see. Aleksander had started seeing her in his dreams about a year ago.

It had all been so blurry at first, but he could recall a woman in what seemed to be like a cage encased in clear glass. Her back was turned to where he was, but her hands were covered in unworldly, crimson... vapor... or whatever it was. It was unlike anything he's ever seen before. The woman had been using the red mist to lift wooden blocks into the air. Vaguely, he also heard whispers of men with foreign accents speaking, as if he were beside them but not.

"The dead will be buried so deep their ghosts won't be able to find them."

"And the survivors?"

"The twins." The voice sounded gleeful. Proud. "Sooner or later they will meet the twins."

"It's not a world of spies anymore. Not even a world of heroes. This is the age of miracles, doctor."

Aleksander did not understand the context of these dreams at all. However, he listened, watching the faceless woman make the wooden blocks hover in the air.

"And there is nothing more horrifying... than a miracle."

Snap!

That was his first dream about her. He woke up with a start after that, not feeling like himself the whole day. As if he were in some sort of daze.

The next dream came again weeks later. The Darkling could never see the woman's face. This time, he heard screaming in his dreams. Crying. Devastation. All he saw that night was a burst of crimson energy which had obliterated metal. Moving metal.

The woman was kneeling at the center of some sort of dilapidated chapel, clutching her heart as she sobbed. Then, he woke up again. This time, he felt a bottomless emptiness within him that lasted until the next evening.

"Strange dreams," Aleksander thinks, but still, thinks nothing of it. Perhaps it was his imagination running wild lately due to the stress of the war. The dreams would come and go. Sometimes, there was nothing. Other times, it was the usual nightmares of his... eventful past. Occasionally, the faceless woman would be there in his dreams.

On the first day snow fell that year, the Shadow Summoner sees her in his dreams again. Sitting in a bedroom, silent and pondering. One moment later, she was sitting in what seemed like a metal cell, straitjacketed, unmoving. The more he had these dreams of her, the more curious Aleksander grew about what the woman looked like. These were supposed to be only dreams, yet, it was always her.

Were these truly just dreams?

Eventually, the dreams become nightmares. Not his typical nightmares, either.

He was starting to hear whispers of what nearly seemed like Old Ravkan, but not. He saw the woman surrounded by mirrors and sharp glass, with more blood, death, and gore. Screams of a hundred souls. Fire burning. The smell of ash. The cracking and snapping of bones.

The last that he saw of her at night was in what seemed like a strange, old tomb atop a mountain.

Aleksander saw a stone statue of a woman—a goddess, maybe—with a pointed crown. Seconds later, he saw that very tomb crushed into a landslide. A blizzard. So much snow.

That night, the Black Heretic woke up cold and freezing despite the fireplace burning strong.

After that, the dreams and nightmares of the unknown woman stopped completely. And he'd nearly forgotten about it all. Tired from reading another list of his newly-deceased soldiers up in Ulensk, the man decided to take a stroll in the gardens of his Little Palace.

ᱬᗢᱬ

"No more magic." That was what you had sworn to yourself after the millennia you had spent searching for and destroying every copy of the Darkhold in the Multiverse. It was an incredibly wearisome task to track them all down, but you despised yourself for falling for the temptations of the Book of the Damned.

What have you done?

Not a day passes when you don't ask yourself the question, plagued by the guilt of your sins to the Multiverse. Ultimately, you accepted the fact that as the Scarlet Witch, you were maybe meant to be alone. Fated for eternal solitude until Death finally decides it is time to end your life again.

"I should have stayed dead in the Snap," you chuckle humorlessly. Maybe you would have been happier. But from experience, being snapped was no afterlife. You did not see them. Your parents, Pietro, Vision, Billy, and Tommy. You could only remember the fresh, hot rage you felt at Vision's murder just for the Snap. There was no peace.

Not for you, maybe.

The last world that had a Darkhold was... quite interesting, to say the least. It was not as advanced as your world, Earth-616, but not too primitive, either. It could be likened to the 19th to the 20th century in your original planet, with all its horses, carriages, wooden ships, and steam trains. Very... Industrial Era, you described when you initially arrived. Good enough to survive for, hopefully, the few remaining years of your life.

What was interesting, however, was the specific land you found yourself in. Ravka.

It was something literally out of Czarist Russia, long before the Soviet Union was formed. It led you to thoughts of your late best friend and mentor, Natasha Romanoff... then the World Wars... then Steve Rogers... SHIELD... which led you to spiral into quite unpleasant memories of experiments with HYDRA and consequently, Ultron and Sokovia. Lagos. Westview. Kamar-Taj. Earth-838 and the Illuminati—

You stopped that sickening train of thought quickly.

Still, you found it half-amusing and half-disappointing that even universes away, war and politics were unavoidable. Ravka appeared to not be on very good terms with its northern and southern neighbors, Fjerda and Shu Han, respectively. (The Shu reminded you of China and Mongolia. You wondered if they had Khans there, too. Fjerda, on the other hand, reminded you of Thor, Valkyrie, and a certain God of Mischief.)

Now, one of the biggest reasons why Ravka was at war with Fjerda and Shu Han? People called Grisha, you quickly learned. Kind of like the Enhanced or the Mutants, in your world and other worlds. It was just that they could mainly be divided into different orders and classifications and were usually found serving the Second Army.

Either way, it did not make much of a difference to you. You had met a living tree and a talking raccoon in the fight against Thanos so... yes, not the strangest thing you'd seen in the universe. You didn't really care, but you did feel some empathy for the Grisha oppressed by the otkazat'sya. Ordinary humans.

You knew all too well what it felt like to be different in a world full of regular people.

Unfortunately, Ravka itself was also at civil war between its East and West because of a border practically made of darkness. The Shadow Fold, supposedly created four hundred years ago by a crazy Shadow Summoner titled the Black Heretic. Many prayed for a mythical Sun Summoner to come save them from their plights.

You internally scoffed. You yourself were a myth, the presaged Harbinger of Chaos. The Scarlet Witch, destined to rule or annihilate the cosmos. Maybe you already ruined it. You just hoped that if the Sun Summoner were real, they would be a true saint and do their "destined" good deed.

And a small part of you hoped that they, too, would either escape or fulfill their prophecy. Maybe live a happy life, unlike you did. No one ever thinks that myths and legends could be living, breathing, feeling people, too.

ᱬᗢᱬ

Cut off from your thoughts by two young boys bumping into you, the basket of apples you were holding tumbles to the ground. You were about to scold them when you saw the state they were in.

One of the boys was holding a toddler. A freaking toddler.

All three of them dressed in rags, covered in soot and dirt. Thin and malnourished, nearly shivering from the autumn cold. Your heart almost broke when you saw the small, blonde girl in their arms try to reach out for the fallen apples on the ground.

"Sorry, lady!" The boys shout, turning on their heels to keep running.

"Wait!" You yell after them. "Do you want an apple?!"

That made the boys stop in their tracks. You pick up the apples and carefully place them back in the woven basket you were carrying. They seemed apprehensive on trusting you, so it was you who decided to make the first move.

"Here. Have the entire basket. You kids need it more than I do."

One of the boys, a pale boy with bright blue eyes and curly black hair past his shoulders, hesitantly reaches out to take the basket you were offering. "Thank you... lady..." he mumbles. The other boy holding the girl—looking nearly the opposite of his friend—reassured the fussy toddler in his arms. This boy was tanner, looking as if his hair were kissed by fire itself; eyes the shade of a vibrant forest.

"What are your names?" you gently asked. They share a look, silently communicating, then nod.

"... Henrik," the blue-eyed boy answers quietly, inspecting the basket of apples, still torn on thinking if this was a trick or a rare act of kindness. He seemed more conservative than his friend, who answered in a louder voice.

"I'm Dmitri, lady!" He was more eager to talk after realizing you were no threat to them. He gestures to the tiny girl in his arms, no older than three. "And this is baby Katyusha."

Your heart nearly broke seeing the sleepy toddler carried around by her... brother? You look around. It was getting dark. "Where are your homes? Your parents? It's late for children like you to be out in the evening."

"It's just us, lady," Henrik answers, as if it were normal to not have an adult accompanying them.

You frowned deeper. "Why were you guys running?"

At my question, the boys grow concerned. "Because..." Dmitri begins, before Henrik shushes him. You shake your head.

"No, it's okay. What is it?" You try to encourage.

"The three of us... we are Grisha..." Dmitri whispers the last word, green eyes filled with guilt and fear. Your eyes widened. Including the toddler they were holding? "The townspeople aren't exactly welcoming to our kind, lady. Except you. Weirdly enough."

Henrik, the quiet one with blue eyes, sighs. "I'm a Tidemaker. I think. Dmitri here can control some fire, so Inferni, if I'm right. Maybe that's why his hair is that red..."

Dmitri snorts. "Whatever."

You almost stammer as you ask, "And Katyusha there?"

"... We think she's a Heartrender. When... she gets angry or hungry or fussy... sometimes, we feel like we can't breathe, whenever she holds us," Henrik explains, gazing at the tiny little girl, who looked ever innocent and adorable.

"Where are your parents?" you ask carefully. You prayed to the gods, the saints, and the fates that these children had grown-ups to look after them. Unlikely, though, based on how they looked.

Dmitri shook his head, "My mom worked at a brothel but died from tuberculosis. I then lived on the streets after that. Henrik was left on somebody's doorstep. And Katyusha... we found her in a garbage can. The three of us used to live together in a hut east of the chapel but... um, the storm last week..." He trailed off.

Three young Grisha orphans.

No family. No shelter. No food. You stared at the three of them, voices inside you urging you to be on your way and avoid getting attached to these orphans. To avoid getting attached to people ever again.

But it was too late. You already saw yourself in them.

It was like you and Pietro, once upon a time, long ago.

Sighing, you hold out your arms. You knew you might regret this in the future.

"Give me the little girl. And you boys, follow me," you instruct. They give you questioning looks.

"Huh?"

"You're all coming home with me. To bathe and eat and sleep without fear of being hunted down," you disclose, waiting for Dmitri to hand over Katyusha. The boy was too thin to be carrying around the toddler. "I live in the forest."

"We don't know you, lady," Henrik protests warily, but grips the basket of apples you'd given even tighter. "What if you trick us? Or hurt us?"

"... My name is Wanda. Wanda Maximoff." You hum, smiling genuinely at them. "Now you know me. And from now on, I promise to protect you. You can eat the apples while we walk."

"..."

"It's not poisoned, don't worry." You took a bite out of one, then tossed it to Dmitri. "See?"

ᱬᗢᱬ

Not long after, you had, in fact, confirmed with your very eyes that the three orphans you'd taken in were Grisha. Undeniably so. Dmitri, the eight-year-old redhead, was an Inferni—true to his appearance and loud personality. Henrik, the introverted seven-year-old with jet black curls and icy blue eyes, was a Tidemaker—as he mentioned before.

You wondered what age their abilities began to manifest.

Lastly, two-year-old Katyusha was indeed a... well, baby Heartrender. You learned that the hard way when you tried to leave her alone for a minute to get her some warm milk in the kitchen. The air was knocked out of your lungs for a few brief seconds as she wailed from separation anxiety, gripping your arm like a lifeline.

It nearly shocked you that at such an age, she could do such feats just by touching you.

A year into sheltering and caring for these children as if they were your own, you came to the decision that it would be best if they were not with you—AKA former multiversal threat and retired but still dangerous witch living as a hermit in the woods of Tsibeya.

Which was near Chernast.

And also the Fjerdan border.

That meant a significantly high possibility of drüskelle sighting or finding the kids, even if you did last use your magic to make sure your little cabin would be safe and sound and completely undetectable to any intruders.

The children deserved a better future than staying with someone like you—a Darkhold-reading creature of evil who nearly stole a teenage girl's multiverse-traveling powers and also possessed her alternate self's body to replace her as a mom to her kids.

Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Were you even ever a hero in the first place?

Plus, you had no idea how Grisha powers really worked.

And as much as you wanted to just fly the kids off to their best chance at a good future in Ravka... or maybe use a teleportation spell, you'd strictly sworn off your Chaos Magic for a good while now. You also didn't want to have to manipulate the memories of the three kids—especially little Katyusha—into making them believe in a fake journey or forgetting you entirely.

So, a good old-fashioned trip to the Little Palace it was.

ᱬᗢᱬ

The trip went well. Sort of. After a few days of painstakingly traveling on foot, you'd finally arrived in Os Alta in one piece.

And so did Dmitri, Henrik, and Katyusha. But there was a slight issue.

"I still can't believe you knocked out that drüskelle by yourself, Aunt Wanda!" Dmitri continues to gush excitedly—as he had for days now ever since the encounter with a lone drüskelle who tried to attack all of you. And yes, the boys had taken to referring to you as Aunt Wanda.

Which was better, somehow. You don't think you'd be able to handle being referred to as... well... that word after what happened with Billy and Tommy.

The problem was little Katyusha who practically imprinted on you as her mother. Her first words—quite late at the age of two—were mama. Directed to you. No one knew that you cried that night in your room.

"You did not even see me do anything, Dmitri. Didn't I tell you to close your eyes?" you sighed, adjusting the sleeping Katyusha in your arms.

"I swear I closed them! But one moment, he was coming towards us then the next, thud! When I open my eyes, he's on the ground in front of you? How'd you do it, Aunty?!" he excitedly squeals.

"Just a very well-timed punch," you reply carefully. A well-timed punch that may or may not have been enhanced with your psionic energy. It still irked you that you had to use your... abilities again. Even if it was not your Chaos Magic.

Still, you would never hesitate to protect this trio. Not after the year you'd grown to love them.

This time, it was soft-spoken Henrik who asked, "What about those two Grisha slavers who tried taking us away in the middle of the night?"

Okay. Perhaps the trip didn't go that smoothly. And that did not pair well with young children who were at the age of being extremely curious about everything in the world.

"Bribed them with some money," you lied. More like using your telepathic powers to manipulate their minds into leaving your traveling group alone.

"... You didn't need to give them your gold and silver for us, Aunt Wanda," Henrik murmurs guiltily. Your steps stopped. Frowning as you crouch down to the boys' level, you ensured Katyusha's head was still supported while you spoke.

"Hey. Boys, listen to me." You wait until they make eye contact. "When I first took you in, I promised that I would protect you. And I would do everything in my power to do that, okay?"

"Aunty, I'm not sure I want to go to the Little Palace," Henrik shares regretfully. Behind him, Dmitri goes quiet, too, having second thoughts as well.

Your brows furrowed as you smile sadly. "But you must. You will be with your kin. The Grisha there can teach you to grow and hone your powers. I cannot as I am only otkazat'sya. Your future lies in the Little Palace." You gaze fondly at the sleeping child in your arms. "Your sister's future lies there, too."

Henrik and Dmitri share a look as you urge them to continue walking. Just a couple more minutes and you would arrive at the gates of the Little Palace. When you were near, that's when you stop.

"Remember what we talked about during the trip? What you have to do when you get to the gates?" You remind them.

The boys nod. You slowly unwrap the cloth on your torso which was carrying tiny, two-year-old Katyusha. Henrik takes her. She momentarily fusses in her sleep, making all of you freeze, but her breathing steadies.

"Tell the oprichniki at the gates that we are Grisha seeking refuge in the Little Palace. Orphans from a small town in Tsibeya," Dmitri repeats the script you guys practiced while traveling.

"And say that we went along with a traveling hunting group until we got to Os Alta, before we journeyed to the Little Palace alone," Henrik adds.

You smile at them, embracing them tightly. "Good. Good. Now off you go. Before it gets dark."

"Will you visit us?" Dmitri asks eagerly. You hum in thought.

"Perhaps. I'll try, you two. But it could be years until I see you all again. You might be all grown up the next time we see each other," you answer him honestly. You weren't sure if the Little Palace allowed visitors to the Grisha kids like it was a daycare.

They nod, disappointed, but slowly go. You stand up from where you were crouched, a familiar feeling of these children slipping through your fingers, too. The same way your twin sons did, once.

Then, Henrik paused, turning around. "Aunty?" he calls.

"Yes, Henrik?" You tilt your head curiously.

"Thank you for being our mom!" the usually quiet boy shouts, warming your heart. It has only been a year since you took them off the streets and adopted them, but you were already attached.

Too attached.

Which never ended well for you or the other person, based on experience.

You watch them as they run to the path leading to the gates of the Little Palace. Then, you lurk for a few more minutes to ensure that they really do manage to enter the Little Palace.

When the oprichniki allow them in, a Grisha appearing and escorting Henrik, Dmitri, and little Katyusha, you breathe a sigh of relief. You were about to leave when—

"What do you mean he quit to become a gardener at the Grand Palace?!" a voice yells from a nearby corner.

"The Queen adored his flower arrangements and offered a larger pay!" another countered defensively. "Hell, I'd take up the offer, too!"

You pause, head turning to listen in more on the conversation.

"He's one of the only gardeners at the Little Palace who could do his job right, dammit!"

Looks like an interesting job opening.

It was a bad idea. A terrible idea, even. You should just go back to your cabin in the woods, living the remainder of your life in solitude. The children would be fine in the Little Palace, amongst their other fellow Grisha.

That was what the rational side of you said. But you always did have a tendency to be swept away by your emotions.

Survival rates also weren't that pleasant when Grisha children would be obligated to serve in the Second Army.

Listening to the arguing men, perhaps this is where your green thumb could step in.

You really should have listened to your instincts.

Just three months later, you start to feel a set of curious eyes watching you as you crouched and plucked stubborn, overgrown weeds from the dirt.

Your insides were on overdrive, sending off alarm bells. You worked in the secluded portions of the Little Palace garden, the ones harder to maintain daily, so no one usually came where you were stationed. Pausing, you slowly turn around to see obsidian eyes—so, so dark you couldn't distinguish the pupil from the iris, akin to a bottomless pit of starless night.

And you freeze.

The Black General of Ravka was right behind you.

Snapping out of your stupor, you hastily stand and bow.

"Moi soverenyi," you address him politely, avoiding his eyes. Of all people—of all Grisha to notice you—it was the infamous Shadow Summoner himself.

General Kirigan of the Second Army.

You've only heard stories about him since you arrived in this world. Ruthless. Powerful. A Shadow Summoner. The strongest Grisha currently alive. Descendant of the Black Heretic. And you never even thought you'd be speaking to him face-to-face ever.

Why would you? You weren't even from this world.

"Huh. I was not made aware we had a new gardener," he muses out loud, examining you from head-to-toe, dressed in light garbs similar to the other servants, only modified for greater mobility.

You seemed awfully familiar to him. He just couldn't place his finger on it.

Meanwhile, you tried your best to seem like any other unassuming otkazat'sya servant. It was tempting to just read his thoughts given how he was scrutinizing you but no, you resisted.

"What's your name, girl?" General Kirigan asks. And you inwardly cuss—so much for a low profile—yet your face was perfectly neutral.

"Wanda, sir."

"Surname?" He raises one fine brow.

"... Maximoff, sir."

"Wanda Maximoff." He combines the two names. The dark-haired man stares longer. It took all your willpower not to squirm and be suspicious. Then, he nods and continues on his way.

The moment he was out of sight, you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. You were the all-powerful Scarlet Witch. Or, rather, formerly the Scarlet Witch.

So why did this man unnerve you the way he did just now?

next chapter

Hearts, reblogs, comments, interactions, and constructive criticism are very much appreciated! If you wanna be tagged in the upcoming chapters, comment here or on the series masterlist post.

Thanks! ♡

[justiceamberheard]

''Who Trolled Amber'' podcast

The highlights of each episode from the podcast. You can listen to it on Spotify, Youtube etc. EPISODE 1.

The outcome of the trial definitely damaged #METOO movement;

There were 80k of anti Amber Heard tweets, more than anti JD tweets even though AH was the one who accused him of abuse;

There's no way it was all organic, they either bought bots or those were real people pretending to be JD's supporters;

According to Jennifer Robinson, one of AH lawyers from the UK trial, Amber'd never wanted to relieve what had happened to her during the relationship;

Jennifer thought it'd be easier to win the US than in the UK;

The information about bots were thrown out way before the trial hence Ron Shnell couldn't talk about in the courtroom; EPISODE 2.

According to Ron Shnell there was a bot campaign against AH but he wasn't 100% sure because the judge struck out that research;

Kathryn Arnold shared that AH wasn't allowed to be a part of Aquaman 2 promotion tour and was banned from posting anything Aquaman related;

KA also said that AH couldn't audition, no one would hire her and that the agents were told not to touch her[AH]; EPISODE 3

The podcast creators asked experts(Kai-Cheng Yang) to check the date that was given by Ron Shnell;

According to the data: many accounts with no followers had tweets with more than 5k retweets/likes; hundreds of identical tweets were posted in one day; many accounts liked 400k tweets; 10k of identical comments were left under AH youtube videos; many accounts change their tune(from right wing Chile politics) and out of nowhere started to post pro JD tweets; half oh the data/accounts/tweets were generated by inauthentic accounts and then the real accounts started to engage with those tweets etc. it all started in November 2020 when JD lost the UK case and was fired from Fantastic Beasts; EPISODE 4

Cameron Herrin case was mentioned, more specifically the sudden interest and pro CH posts on TikTok asking to reduce his sentence and that he is innocent. Most of the accounts that were spreading those posts were from Middle East; EPISODE 5

Some Arabic twitter accounts suddenly started to tweet Pro JD tweets in English during and after the US trial;

The friendship betweet Johnny Depp and prince Mohammed was mentioned(him financing JD directorial movie Modi); EPISODE 6

Adam Waldman worked for Lavrov as a consultant for years(2010-2017);

During the deposition Adam Waldman refused to answer more than 70 questions;

Alexi Mostrous tried contacting ''the internet journalists'' aka TUG and ThatBrianFella but they didn't answer; he also pointed out that the audios that were posted by ThatBrianFella were clearly edited(we know);

Mostrous also tried to call Adam Waldman but he didn't pick up the phone and 25 minutes later posted a tweet:

“He[Adam Waldman] attacked witnesses, he attacked us (legal team)..unlike anything I have ever seen from a lawyer” said Jennifer Robinson. ''Amber Heard wrote an Op-ed for Washington Post which is a very respected publication and Johnny Depp's name isn't in it. It told to survivors if this can be done to a woman whose actually well-known and well-established person in the industry, it's gonna be even worse for you.'' All-in-All, it's clear as day that Waldman was behind the bot campaign against Amber. We've known that but it's good that a popular podcast researched about it and shed a light on it. Plus it's always great to see JD fans being nervous and panicky.

[useless-catalanfacts]

I remember exactly what my thoughts were when I first learned what had happened to my great-grandfathers. I used to talk to one of them —the survivor, who lived in Venezuela— on the phone when I was a kid, so I had always known he had had to "leave after the war" (Spanish Civil War), in a very vague sense. When I was in primary school, another class of the last year was studying the Second World War and my mother volunteered to share the letters we still keep that my (other) great-grandfather had sent from the refugee camp and from the front. So I guess it's just normal that at that point they also shared the "secret" with me. Like hundreds of thousands more, and like at least one person in most families in Catalonia, they fought during the war but feared what came after even more than the suffering of war itself. When the fascists won the war in 1939, they crossed the Pyrenee mountains by foot to cross the border with France (they cross into Northern Catalonia, the little bit of Catalonia that was annexed by France centuries ago) and escape the persecution that was mass-murdering antifascists. But when they crossed the border with France, the French authorities locked them in the refugee camps on the beach (my great-grandfathers were in Argelers beach camp), where they had barely any food or drink, no houses besides little tents they made themselves out of reels they could find on the beach, and very little clothes for the winter. Many people died of cold and hunger, particularly the children. When children were born, the mothers buried them under the sand because it was the only way they could think to keep them a bit warm. The humid sand of the beach.

And as I was hearing all of this, my only thought was: how did people let this happen? Why did the French government lock them to make them suffer like this? Why did the guards steal from them and mistreat them the way they did? Why did the people who lived near not give them food or jackets?

And to be fair, many people helped in some way. That's why the Swiss nurse Elizabeth Eidenbenz is a national hero for us Catalans. One of my great-grandfathers managed to escape the camp by being given work by a local man. However, a new war started in Europe (WW2) and the Nazis seemed to be coming near, and Franco (the fascist dictator of Spain) had given orders to the Nazis that any person who had gone on exile from Spain was stateless and could be killed (stateless: the blue triangle in concentration camp prisoners' clothes). My great-grandfather found a way to get to a ship to Venezuela and Mexico —thanks to the open borders of these two countries, thousands of people were saved and started a new life in safety. My other great-grandfather, however, used the only other way to escape the camps: when WW2 came, he enlisted in the foreign legion of the French army to continue the work of fighting fascism. His legion was eventually captured, his friend he had enlisted with was taken to a castle where the Nazis used him for experimenting, and my great-grandfather was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp and later killed in a gas chamber in Gusen camp at the very end of the war. And still, growing up I always heard that we are a lucky family, because at least we know what happened to him. Hundreds of thousands of people are still missing, buried in mass graves. The state of Spain (including Catalonia) is the 2nd country in the world with the highest amount of unfound people, after Cambodia, because of all the massacres of the fascists and the bodies under roadside ditches.

And for all these years I have always had in my mind: how could people do that? And how could people see it and allow it?

Now, we are all like the people of France with a choice of helping or letting it happen. The internet connects the world and we are all witnessing how Israel is committing genocide on the Palestinian people. After having turned Gaza in an open-air concentration camp for decades, now they have decided to completely wipe out its people, homes, cultural heritage, schools, hospitals, universities, shops, streets, sewage system— everything. And just like the people back then, we have the opportunity to help Palestinian people survive.

We cannot save our relatives, but we can do what we wished someone had done for them. If you would have wanted help for your family, if you would have helped mine, please if you can make a donation for Palestinian people.

Here's a list of Palestinian people who are raising funds to escape. Israel has made it impossible for Palestinians to leave the heavily-bombed Gaza strip except for the Rafah crossing (to Egypt); and then Israel went and destroyed the Rafah crossing, too. But the Rafah crossing opens every so often and the people with an Egyptian travel agency permission can cross. To get the permission, they must pay 5000$ each person over 16 years old and 2500$ each child under 16, and this doesn't cover transport nor living expenses. You can collaborate to saving a family by donating to their GoFundMe campaigns. Every donation can make a difference. Click each person's name to go to their GFM page, where you'll find more details of their story.

Yahya Ahmad: 20-year-old Pharmacy student from Gaza wants to evacuate his family including his sick father and young brother, after their house was destroyed and they lost everything. (Verification link) @yahyaahmed5

Mahmoud Khalaf: a PhD student from Gaza in Ireland asks our help to raise funds to get his family out of Gaza. (Verification link: number 151) @mahmoudkhalafff

Muhammad Shehab: Israeli bombs destroyed their home and killed relatives and friends, his family has already been displaced 9 times. They want to escape Gaza and apply to become asylum seekers anywhere possible. (Verification link) @mohammedshehab2

Mahmoud AlBalawi: this family needs help to evacuate for the safety of all and particularly the children who suffer of malnutrition. (Verification link) @elbalawi

Palestine Jad Al-Haq: Palestine gave birth during the war but there aren't medicines nor needed materials to raise a healthy child, her mother is also ill and everyone risks illness as a result of the situation created by Israel (destroying the sewage system, not allowing food and medicine, bombing the hospitals, etc). The whole family wants to escape. (Verification link) @falestine-yousef

Fadi Ayyad: 18-year-old whose family's home has been destroyed, he's taking care of his family including younger relatives. They are very close to reaching their goal!! (Verification link) @aymanayyad82

Abdelrahman: 22-year-old Abdelrahman and his mother. They lost their home and Abdelrahman lost his school where he was studying. They are also quite close to reaching their goal. (Verification link) @anqar

Aziz Zaqout: Heba is a pregnant mother of five, faced a health crisis that took her to seek treatment outside Gaza right before the war started. She was separated from her 1-year-old baby and the rest of her children, leaving them in the care of their father, your donation can help them reunite and save the children and father. (Verification link) @azizzaqout

Abd Alhadi Aburass: the war destroyed his home and advocacy bureau, needs money to save his family and provide healthcare for his children. (Verification link) @abdalhadiaburas

Aya Alanqar: for Aya, her husband and their three children (2, 5 and 7 years old), displaced 13 times after their home was destroyed. (Verification link) @ayaanqarsblog

The children Kareem and Carmen: Yousef Hussein is raising money for his nephews Kareem and Carmen after their family of 8, including their mother, were killed when their house was bombed. They are displaced in a refugee camp with other relatives, they want to evacuate and join their uncle Yousef in the USA. (Verification link) @adham-89

Samer Aburass: Samer, his wife and their 3 children lost their home and businesses, and their children (particularly the youngest one, 1 and a half year old) suffer malnutrition. They want to evacuate for a safe future. (Verification link: number 196) @samerpal

Also consider donating to the Municipality of Gaza's fundraiser to fix the water and sewage system: Gaza Water Project.

These are only a few people, who had contacted me on this blog or on my main blog (with less followers, so it's better to post here), but there are many more. You can also check this spreadsheet of verified fundraisers like this one, follow the Palestinian blogger @90-ghost who verifies fundraisers, or use the site gazafunds.com (every visit shows a different verified fundraiser).

Visca els pobles i visca Palestina lliure 🇵🇸🕊️

[dmmchn]

Gottlieb Xinger now has a GUN.

…Gottlieb is a survivor of Drow House Wars. As a child, he was smuggled to the surface by the members of Bregan D’aerthe and was placed in an orphanage in Luskan. He then became their minion, performing small crimes, burglaries and thefts as a repay for his survival. Members of Bregan D’aerthe were known pirates and always carried gunpowdered pistols with them, which were madly expensive for an orphan like Gottlieb. This deadly and ornamented weapon couldn’t be compared to any knife or sword.

A hundred years later, in Barovia, he stole a musket from a trap in House of Lament. Now, he would rather die than be separated from his gun, as it represents him overcoming from his past and taking back the control over his life. Even if he chooses to separate from civilisation and live in a forest alone, that’s still his own choice.

[mingtinys]

how flowers bloom and wither

pairing : lee chan x gn!reader , platonic! boo seungkwan x reader

apocalypse!au , exes to lovers , angst , hurt / minimal comfort

warnings : language , death , apocalyptic themes , depictions of wounds and blood , suicidal ideation , this is not a happy ending or story

word count : 6.3 k

requested ? no

a/n : heavily inspired by this juyeon fic that made my cry in my car (p.s. there is a jeonghan ver as well).

Your voice is the first to call his name in months. It's been so long that the cadence of it sounds foreign to his ears. Almost like another language entirely. A cry from the distance, barely audible in a way he easily dismisses it as a hallucination. Perhaps he was finally going mad.

He knows other survivors exist, he'd seen them in nearly every town he scavenged. Though in no reality had he ever assumed any of them knew his name. The world had not been kind enough to spare anyone who knew and loved Lee Chan. They'd all been swept away in the initial outbreak. And with no one tethering him to his own existence, he was no more than a living ghost amongst the ruins.

But then the voice calls again, this time closer. Behind him. Louder.

"Chan? Lee Chan!"

And even stranger, he knows this voice. Better than he knows the sound of his own name. Could pick it out of a crowd, blindfolded and all.

Though he still can't bring himself to believe it. Not even as he turns and your silhouette comes into view against the setting sun, your elongated shadow reaching out for him. Tattered shoes well beyond their usable years slap against the pavement as you sprint.

"Oh my God, Chan!"

It has to be a mirage. You'll pass straight through him like an apparition and the universe will laugh at him for believing another one of its cruel jokes.

Yet still, his arms open, and seconds later your full weight crashes into him. Like a tide breaking the shore, stirring up memories like loose sand in its wake.

It's the first time in months he's been held. Felt the warm touch of anything living, much less the safety of something familiar. Tears fill his eyes instantly as Chan clings to the one thing from his past he could never seem to bury. To what he can only assume is a pity gift from the universe making up for all the times it fucked him over. To you.

Your chest heaves against his as you ask, "Is it you? Is this real?"

Chan himself doesn't know the answer to that.

"I can't believe I found you," you breathe out once the air surrounding you two settles. You haven't let go yet and Chan doesn't want you to. Worried that when you finally do, he'll wake up back in the crumbling shed he'd used for shelter the night before. With his back against a cold, moldy mattress instead of being held by the warmth of a thousand suns. Alone again.

"Please say something," you nervously laugh. Despite the chill in the air, Chan's cheeks are burning up. He's at a loss, far too overwhelmed to produce anything remotely coherent. Though as you peel away to examine him, concern knitting your brows, one word does come to mind.

Wow.

You're still as radiant as he remembered. A diamond amongst the ruins of the world. It looks, for the most part, the universe has been kind to you. Good, he thinks.

"You're not..." Your expression falls. "You're not sick, are you?"

It's the fear in your eyes that finally prompts Chan to push down the lump in his throat. "No!" He rasps, then clears his throat. "No, I'm not sick. Promise."

"Are you hungry?"

Chan looks back at the reason he'd left his shelter in the first place, the rundown mini-mart about a hundred feet away. The stabbing pain in his stomach brings him back down to reality.

"There's nothing worthwhile in there, we already checked."

We?

Your arm extends to point past the mini-mart. Towards a small abandoned town that pokes out just beyond the darkening horizon. "Our shelter is just about a mile that way. Would you–"

He agrees before you've even finished your sentence.

Chan cannot fathom the hope you hold in your heart in a world like this. Not until he meets Seungkwan. The vibrant boy you've been traveling with thus far.

"You can't go around picking up strays."

"He's not a stray, Kwan, he's an old friend. Besides, you were a stray at one point too." You disappear into another room before the boy can argue any further. Leaving him to glower at his new guest.

"If you start acting strange, I'll kill you." Seungkwan points at Chan, though he's not the least bit threatening. His shiny eyes and round face are far too friendly to ever be perceived as intimidating.

Yet Chan humors the boy anyway. "Virus-free, I promise." He raises his hands in surrender.

"And don't touch anything." He motions around the living room, which is surprisingly homey.

When you mentioned you had a shelter nearby, Chan was expecting something a little less... comfortable. Something like the random sheds or raided stores he'd crouch into for just a few hours of shut-eye, never any longer. Or perhaps even a poorly constructed tent made up of various scrap parts. But when you climbed the stairs to a tiny townhouse, one of the better-looking ones amongst the multiple shells of former homes in the neighborhood, Chan almost couldn't believe his eyes. Perhaps this really was all just a dream.

The outside, for the most part, looked pretty decent. There had been some obvious repairs done; trash cleaned from the yard, wooden boards haphazardly nailed over broken windows, a tattered blue tarp covering a large section of the roof, and Chan could just barely make out remnants of graffiti that couldn't be scrubbed away. But the blue paint was hardly peeling and the stone steps had only a few cracks.

When it came to the inside, one word came to mind. Charming. None of the furniture matches, meaning either the previous owner hadn't cared for aesthetics or you and Seungkwan had at some point scavenged the surrounding houses in search of the least fucked up looking decor. Even then, it was really just the bare essentials. A surprisingly comfortable couch, two rocking chairs that look as though the wood had been chewed by squirrels, a metal center table, and a couple bookshelves filled with various novels, picture frames of strangers, and knickknacks.

Down the short hallway to the left are two closed doors. Of which he assumes is a single bedroom and bath respectively. Behind him, where you had disappeared to, is a door he'd quickly caught a glimpse of the kitchen through.

Most notably, however, against the back wall of the living room is a stone fireplace. Ablaze with such life it fully illuminates the space, providing a much-needed warmth as the brisk night rolls in. Chan watches it dance over the mound of logs, completely entranced until that same lovely voice from before calls his name once more.

"All we really have left from our last supply run is tuna, I hope that's okay." In your hands is a bowl with a small portion of rice and half a can of tuna, along with a glass of water. It's no five-star meal, but Chan's mouth still waters at the sight. And better yet, it's warm. He can't remember the last time he had a meal that wasn't a can of cold mystery mush or a granola bar.

He half expects Seungkwan to gripe about him taking something as precious in this world as food. But the boy snorts and a teasing smile creeps its way onto his lips. "Poor kid looks like he'll start drooling any second, I think tuna is more than okay."

He's right, tuna and rice is more than okay. In fact, it's the best damn thing he's ever had in his life. Even as he shovels spoonful after spoonful into his mouth, it only gets better. It isn't until every morsel of food has vanished from the bowl that Chan finally acknowledges his drink. Gulping the clear, luke-warm, liquid down in a matter of seconds.

"Thank you," he breaths out.

"So what are your plans? Are you leaving in the morning?" Seungkwan promptly asks.

Oh.

A chasm opens in Chan's stomach. Right, he thinks, How could he be so naive? Sure, the two of you knew each other. But it's been what, three years? Three years of the two of you living your own lives, growing, becoming new people. Almost a full one of those years spent fighting to survive. You didn't even owe him a meal to begin with, much less a place to stay. And, not to mention, Seungkwan doesn't know him from a hole in the wall.

He isn't sure why he assumed you'd stick by his side. But he'd sure hoped you would.

You have an equally solemn look on your face. "Right, you probably have people you need to get back to. They'll be worried if you stay too long."

"No, actually, it's just me."

Please. Chan silently pleads. Please don't leave me alone again.

You lock eyes with Seungkwan. A silent conversation between the two of you has Chan's heart pounding against his ribs.

"Can I talk to you?" Seungkwan motions you to follow him down the hall and into the solo bedroom.

Minutes feel like hours; and no matter how hard he tries, Chan can't decipher anything from the muffled whispers. It's just a flurry of back and forth until it stops with Seungkwan letting out a long sigh.

When Chan sees your nervous, fidgeting, figure appear with Seungkwan in tow, he starts mentally preparing for a no.

"There's only one bedroom," Seungkwan states, arms crossed. "So we'll have to rearrange the sleeping arrangements—"

"I'll sleep anywhere," Chan immediately bargains. "I can take the couch—"

"Absolutely not." The older boy jabs a finger at him, his stare menacing. "That couch is the nicest thing we have, if anything it's mine."

That is perfectly fine with Chan. In fact, he'd take the termite-chewed wooden floor if that's what it would take. "Does this mean..?"

"Yes," the boy exaggeratedly rolls his eyes, but the action doesn't feel malicious. More like a brother teasing his younger siblings. "You're lucky, you had a very reliable source vouch for you."

It feels like Chan can breathe for the first time since this whole shit-storm began. The weight that lifts from his chest makes him feel as though he's floating. And as your soft gaze catches him, he sees it. That indomitable glimmer of hope humanity has to offer. A light at the end of a dark tunnel. Security wrapped up in a warm, fluffy blanket.

A second chance to be alive.

Seungkwan, as Chan quickly learns, had dreams of being a singer back before. There's rarely been a quiet moment in the week since you found Chan. If he's doing repairs, he's humming. If he's taking inventory, he's softly mumbling along to some tune. If he's sat by the fire at night, his voice carries beyond the walls and into the night.

It's strange. Chan hadn't realized just how quiet being alone was until now. But you enjoy Seungkwan's voice, and it eases you to sleep on Chan's shoulder. So he enjoys it as well.

"Are they asleep?" He asks, letting his song teeter off, voice just barely audible above the crackling logs.

Chan looks down at the slow rise and fall of your chest. He smiles fondly, dropping his shoulder a tad lower to not strain your neck. By now, he's finally gotten over the disbelief of his luck in finding you— well, more so you finding him. Deciding to no longer question the probability of it all and simply cherish the feeling you bring him.

"Yeah, I think so."

Similarly, Chan has also learned that as much of a tough guy act as Seungkwan puts on, he's got an incredibly soft heart. It's pertinent in his gaze and the discreet ways he dotes on anyone around him. Bickering with Chan to wear something warmer even though Spring is around the corner or fussing at you to take an extra portion of rations.

In an alternate life, Chan likes to think he and the boy could've been life-long friends.

"How long were you out there alone?" He muses, a curious look on his face.

"Since the first outbreak," Chan answers casually. Though, Seungkwan's eyes go wide in horror.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, why? How long were you?"

"Three weeks, maybe." He shrugs. "Give or take a few days. We ran into each other pretty early on and we've stuck together ever since. Found this place about four months ago and tried to make it feel somewhat normal."

"Oh, that's nice." Chan forgets that for some, life kept moving. Even as society crumbled, humanity persisted. Some in vain, some succeeding, and others, like himself, not at all.

"Can I ask something else?" Seungkwan pulls him from his thoughts. There's a prying curiosity that's scribbled all over his face. Grinning like a schoolgirl with fresh gossip to tell her friends. Chan decides to entertain his curious mind, nodding.

"How do you two know each other?" He gestures at the two of you curled up on the couch. "Like, what's the story there?"

Chan's heart drops straight into his ass and like a reflex, he glances down to ensure you're really asleep. The two of you haven't exactly gotten the chance to talk about everything quite yet. So as of now, he isn't sure where you stand. He decides the more vague the better.

"We met in our third year of university. Their roommate was friends with my roommate."

Seungkwan squints his eyes, visibly displeased with that answer. "And?"

"And..." Chan toys with the material of his pants. "We dated. Two years. Just... didn't work out in the end."

Chan seriously wishes Seungkwan's facial expressions weren't so telling. That way he'd be able to at least pretend he was getting out of this conversation any time soon. But still, the boy persists, nagging him about the who's, what's, when's, where's, and why's until Chan caves. Explaining everything from the stolen glances that started it all, to the teary-eyed bittersweet end.

He vividly remembers the way regret pooled in his chest the moment your front door shut. Making his chest feel cold and empty, a feeling that stuck around nearly every day after. Reminding him of what he let go of for the past three years. The conversation plays on in a loop in his head, and since then, he's thought up about a thousand ways he would've done differently.

"Are you saying you want to break up?" Your voice was so small it ripped Chan's heart in two. 

"No! I just— I mean, but... shouldn't we?"

"Our lives started growing in different directions faster than we could keep up." He explains to Seungkwan, who's been uncharacteristically quiet. Not once stopping to interject his opinion or pop in another question. "They were offered a really good internship a few cities away. I was given the opportunity to be mentored by a renowned choreographer. We'd both be so busy. It didn't seem fair to hold each other back from our dreams. There wasn't much of a choice."

But that's not true. Chan ripped the bandaid off long before it could prove to stand the test of time because he was scared. He assumed the love you felt for him would slowly wither and die with the distance. Drawn out in a slow and painful process he couldn't bear the burden of. So he ran, like a coward, and left you to deal with the fallout by yourself.

It's funny, how the universe deals out karma.

"Probably the dumbest decision I've ever made."

Seungkwan hums, relaxing back into his wooden rocking chair, seemingly deep in thought. A silence settles over the room, only the sound of dying embers softly crackling fills the air.

You stir next to him, nose cutely scrunched up as you search for a more comfortable position. Chan hooks his arm around your waist, pulling you to fully lean against him, being extra cautious not to accidentally jostle you awake. You finally settle, and he can't help but notice your body still fits against his perfectly. Just like to used to.

And when Chan lifts his head back to meet Seungkwan's eyes, he catches the tail end of a fond smile. He rises from the chair, making his way around behind the sofa.

"You made it back, that's all that matters." He whispers, hand on Chan's shoulder. "You don't get a lot of second chances in life— much less in the middle of the apocalypse. Maybe it's time you stop just trying to survive and start letting yourself live. Whatever that looks like for you."

Spring rounds the corner like an old friend. Marking officially one year since the world went to shit and bringing with it much-needed rain in the form of rolling storms. One brews on the horizon, dark clouds gradually closing in on the afternoon sun. The cool breeze feels refreshing against Chan's damp skin. A pleasant contrast to the heavy bag slung over his shoulder, filled with scavenged treasures from the latest scout.

"You know, I offered to carry it halfway," you tease, significantly less out of breath than Chan on your trek back home. The exterior of the townhouse hadn't fared well with the harsh storms, yet it's a welcomed sight nonetheless.

"Yeah, but that would require him relinquishing about this much pride," Seungkwan laughs while pinching his fingers together, squinting through the narrow gap between them.

"It's not even that heavy," Chan scoffs, and if you clock his lie, you don't make it known.

"Whatever you say, golden boy," Seungkwan snickers, the corner of his lip quirked up in a smirk before veering off to the small plot just to the left of the entrance steps.

Seungkwan, arguably the most excited for Spring to arrive, had taken up gardening. Plowing up the soil with a water-logged wooden shovel and planting various packs of seeds he'd once found on a scout. They were mostly just flowers, anything useful like fruits and veggies having already been snatched up by other scavengers. However, he'd been lucky enough to find one packet of tomato seeds, one of green onion seeds, and another of squash seeds. The boy has a surprisingly green thumb, having created a flourishing garden in just a month.

"It's looking beautiful, Seungkwan. Another few weeks and we may actually have something to eat that isn't out of a can." You praise, admiring the colorful arrangement as well.

Sure, the fruits and veggies are nice, but Chan much prefers the cluster of voluminous purple hyacinths. Their vibrant color reminds him of the rich sunsets he'd use as a child to gauge when to return home for dinner.

He swiftly plucks a single bloom from the arrangement and places it behind your ear. You smile at the gesture, and it somehow shines brighter than the flower itself. A sight he believes is capable of parting the gray clouds stretching across the sky.

"Stop killing my babies, Lee Chan." Seungkwan chastises, annoyance evident in his tone.

"Sorry," he sheepishly grins, remembering Seungkwan's no-touching rule he had applied to the garden.

In the distance, there's a low rumbling that draws your attention to the sky. "We should go in before it starts pouring." You take Chan's hand, tugging him inside while his heart beats out of his chest. You call out for Seungkwan as well, urging him that his babies will be fine in the rapidly approaching storm.

Rain slowly begins to patter against the rafters the second the front door squeaks shut. Crescendoing to a downpour within a matter of minutes. Sounds like the three of you are in for a long one tonight.

It was hard to notice at first. The occasional slip-ups here and there. Easy enough to blame the rising Summer heat on Seungkwan's mood swings. Even if the boy had been more readily agitated lately, his bubbly moments stuck around in an abundance that excused the outbursts.

Though Chan can't quite get over that look on your face the first time Seungkwan snapped at you. Something about his bush of hydrangeas being disturbed despite you insisting you hadn't laid so much as a finger on his garden. But the moment tears slipped from your irises, Seungkwan crumbled. His eyes blown wide in horror as the realization hit. He uttered endless apologies, begging for forgiveness until you assured him everything was okay.

And to his credit, he hadn't had an outburst that big since. But still, you made sure to be extra cautious around his garden from then on out.

The red patches painting his arms are harder to ignore, though. Especially with the incessant noise of nails obsessively itching at dry skin.

"Are you okay?" Chan asks, finally voicing his concerns after watching the boy go at his skin with an inhuman determination for the past half hour. The sight reminding him of a rabid dog infested with fleas. With little care for its own health, left only with the insatiable urge to make the itching stop.

Seungkwan's head snaps up with feral eyes, though they dissolve into cheery crescents quick enough to fool Chan into believing he was just imagining things. Perhaps he'd been a little too on guard around his friend. The sweltering heat surely didn't help his nerves.

"Yeah," he chuckles. "I must've gotten into some poison ivy, it's been driving me mad."

It only got worse.

The scratching.

It keeps Chan awake in the late night hours. That dry sound echoing in his head over and over and over and over. And during the day, despite it being the peak of Summer, Seungkwan wears long sleeves. They do well in muffling the sound and hiding whatever visuals resulted from the night before. Yet, he forgets to scrub the dried blood from under his nails.

There's an unease that settles in Chan's chest and makes a nest there. A feeling that comes in waves, yet never fully leaves him. It consumes his thoughts and taints the air in his lungs until he feels like he may choke on it. Unable to breathe a single word about his worries without accidentally manifesting them into fruition. Because perhaps nothing is awry. Perhaps Chan is the one slowly losing his mind.

After all, you've yet to mention anything. Content with humoring Seungkwan's better moments in spite of his worst.

Perhaps, Chan is still stuck in his mirage.

It happened again.

Seungkwan snapped and this time Chan had to intervene.

Over his garden again.

The once glorious flowers were sad and wilting, through no fault of anyone's, but the elements. The heat was harsh on them and there hadn't been enough rain in a while to revive them. Not to mention, Seungkwan simply hadn't been tending to them as much as he thought he had. He spent most of his days now obsessing over illusions instead.

Swore he saw spiders in the rations. Heard scratching in the walls. Had caught shadows of looters pacing outside at night.

You called it dehydration.

But he'd somehow gotten it into his head you'd been poisoning the soil when he wasn't looking. He swung the front door open so hard it nearly flew off its hinges, yelling obscenities about how you betrayed him. How rotten and horrid you were for killing the one thing that'd given him any semblance of joy. Chan swears he's never seen someone so unhinged as Seungkwan in that moment.

All it took was three large steps in your direction for Chan to brace himself in front of you. However, all it really took to freeze Seungkwan in his steps was his name. Loud and firm. Lighting a clarity in his eyes that's been missing for a few days now. He ushers the boy outside with haste. Too afraid to look back at your crumbling face.

Seungkwan collapses down on the stone steps. He pulls his knees to his chest and digs his palms into his eyes, hard. "I fucked up, didn't I?" He whimpers.

Chan doesn't know what to say. He did. But confirming it when he's in such a state seems cruel. And he doesn't care to twist the knife any further. He just takes a seat next to what's left of his friend and lays a comforting hand on his back.

"I'm scared." Seungkwan's head tips back to the sky. Chan had always been under the assumption that Seungkwan was oblivious to his deteriorating state. But the steady stream of tears down the boy's cheeks says otherwise.

"I can feel my mind slowly becoming not my own."

"Maybe it's not—"

"I already tried telling myself that." Chan's heart sinks as the boy hikes up his sleeves. Revealing the angry red tracks and rust-colored scabs covering a majority of his forearms. Some wounds still look fresh, and painfully deep.

"That's the first symptom, right? Feeling like there's ants under your skin. Being easily irritated. Foggy memories, whole days missing..." He looks ahead at the setting sun. "I'm already seeing things. Was it one or two months the broadcast said the infected have once those start?"

Chan tries to remember back to when his radio crackled to life for the first time. He's pretty sure it's one.

"I can't remember."

Seungkwan pushes a bitter laugh through his nostrils. "Me either."

Chan glances at the sad plot of greenery beside him. He frowns at the way the tulips droop and their petals hang limp. At least those who are still trying to hold on. Desperate to escape the same fate as their counterparts that have already begun decaying into the soil.

He looks back to Seungkwan and wonders what it's like. To have the tulips weep for you. For them to bow their heads and shed their petals like tears. He also wonders if you'll grieve for Seungkwan as gracefully as they do.

"Promise me one thing?" Seungkwan whispers. His eyes already look like they're glazing over again.

"Anything."

He speaks your name with longing. "Take care of them, yeah? I know it seems like they have their shit together, but that's not how it always was."

"What do you mean?" Chan asks, skin crawling. But Seungkwan continues to stare ahead, eyes focused on who knows what in the distance. He blinks slowly, "It's not my story to tell. Just... promise."

"I promise. Don't worry, it's not something you even have to ask."

"The garden, too." His lips lift at the corners. Chan thinks it's a smile, but it's too uncanny to recognize. "If you're taking requests."

He agrees, partly to provide Seungkwan with what little peace of mind he can offer him, but also because he already has been. Chan tries on occasion to care for the sad little plants. Wetting the soil with what little water he can spare.

Part of him naively hoped that maybe somehow, some way, if the garden could be nursed back to its former glory, so could Seungkwan. But deep down, Chan has learned to tell the difference between a dream and reality by now.

And the reality is, Seungkwan reeks of borrowed time.

The world stole your smile when it stole Seungkwan. It ripped his soul from your grasp as Chan held you in his. Kicking and screaming.

Endless tears streaming down his cheeks as he fought to hold you back. Your pleas grew more desperate and wrangled. Mixing with the garbled, wretched, shrieks of your friend. Fingers clawing at his eyes. The virus embedded so deep in his brain he was no longer Seungkwan.

Just another host.

Your voice was the last to call Seungkwan's name that day. Raspy and hollow as you begged for his life. Begged the universe to not take the last ray of sunshine the world had to offer. Begged Seungkwan to fight just one more day. Begged Chan to let you save him despite all hope having set when the sun did. The scratches you'd left on his forearms remained a week after. But the hole Seungkwan's presence left has yet to fade.

Neither of you spoke of the boy in that time. He still doesn't know if that's for better or worse. Chan's terrified you'll shatter if he so much as whispers the boy's name. But to act like he never existed in the wake of it... well, that just doesn't feel right either.

But Chan knows there's no proper way to grieve. He figured that out at the beginning. He'd had damn near a year to mourn everyone he ever loved, you've only had a week. He knows with time, acceptance will come. But it kills him not knowing how to help.

So instead, Chan does the hard stuff.

He buries Seungkwan. Next to his garden, so that next Spring he can watch it grow. He stacks rocks as a makeshift headstone and plucks dried, stiff asphodel from the garden to make it look neat. He rearranges the bookshelf into a tiny shrine of Seungkwan's things. His favorite books he'd read over and over. A silver ring, with some date Chan doesn't know the meaning of carved into it. A liquor bottle that he used as a makeshift vase with the last flowers he picked still in it. Long dead, but the petals somehow still holding on. Replaces one of the bronze picture frames of strangers with a photo he found tucked away in Seungkwan's bag. One of him and two other people he assumes are his parents.

And when he's done, he lights a candle, the flame drawing you out like a moth.

"What is this?" you croak. It's the first you've spoken to Chan since it happened.

"Something to honor him," Chan whispers, keeping his gaze locked on the flickering light. He's too scared to see your reaction. Afraid you'll break down again. Afraid you'll hate it and scream that he has no right to mourn someone you loved for longer. Afraid that if he sees your tears flowing, he won't be able to stop his own.

Because he also knows part of you still resents him for that night. For grabbing your waist and stopping your momentum from hurtling towards Seungkwan. Robbing you of the chance to hold and comfort your friend one last time. Your screams echo in his head as a reminder whenever your gaze refuses to meet his or you shrug away from his touch.

But then your head falls to his shoulder like an olive branch stretching across a battlefield. Your sniffles break through the silence. Chan hesitantly pulls you closer, and when you don't flinch away, he does even more so until your full weight is against him.

When Seungkwan was here, there was rarely a moment of silence. But now, the house, and you, are quiet. And all Chan can hear are the sounds of heartbreak. Never before had he thought it could be so incredibly loud.

The cold air sneaks in sometime around mid-November. Bringing with it longer nights and temperatures low enough to warrant nightly fires again.

You haven't talked much since the night you cried your heart out on Chan's shoulder. Operating more like a zombie replicating past routines from life before. Wake up. Scavenge. Eat. Sleep. So when you offer up the first ounce of interest in something other than your daily routine, Chan nearly jumps out of his skin.

"I miss the ocean," you mumble, solemn eyes looking down at the crackling fire. The tip of your nose red from the chill.

"We can go if you want... If it would make you happy." He says though he'd settle for content. To bring you back, he'd do anything.

You nod. "Yeah, I'd like that."

And Chan makes it happen.

Maps out the closest beach. Rigs up two rusty old bikes he found in a shed. Packs enough provisions just in case. All for the sake of maybe returning with a sliver of the person you used to be.

The two of you easily find the rocky formation looking over the dark sea, waves raging below. It's here, that Chan truly realizes just how much of a shell you've become of your former self. The way you inch closer and closer to the sharp edge is lifeless. Like a magnet being pulled at with no will of your own. It lodges a dagger of dread through the center of his chest.

"Don't go so close, you could slip." Chan doesn't know if you can't hear him over the crashing waves below or if you simply choose not to. But your feet keep moving and Chan's feel cemented to the ground.

"That's close enough!" He calls.

Again, nothing.

Your toes hang over the edge now, hands in your jacket pockets. Raging waves slam against the cliff, reaching up for you. You close your eyes and point your nose to the sky.

Wind rushes around Chan. His shoes slip on the slick rocks below as instinct takes charge of his momentum while his brain remains frozen in panic. His lungs refuse to work until his arm can hook around your torso. Yanking you back with such a force it throws the both of you off balance. It isn't until his back meets solid rock that he finally gasps in a sputtering breath. The dull throbbing is instant, but the full weight of you atop his chest is comforting.

Chan desperately scrambles to collect you in his arms. Pulling your back against his chest so that he can curl around you like a protective barrier from the world.

"I wasn't going to jump." You whisper. But he feels no comfort from your empty words.

"Please don't make me lose you twice." He pleads like a child, rocking you in his grasp. The salty spray from the ocean mixes with his tears until he can't tell what is what. Right now, the only thing he's certain of is the one in his grasp. The feeling of you in his arms, safe, and he doesn't want to ever lose that. Call it selfish if you must. Lee Chan will wear that title proudly.

There's a rush of déjà vu as you crumble, muttering Seungkwan's name between wretched sobs, nails deep in his forearms. Sobbing about how you miss him, how unfair it is, everything you've been holding in since. Chan holds you tighter. Scared you'll slip away like the tide. Like Seungkwan did. Plunged into cold, thrashing darkness.

He prays to whatever merciful forces have forsaken him to please not do the same to you.

It's a silent trip back to the townhouse and you all but collapse from exhaustion the second you're through the door. Dragging yourself over to the couch and immediately curling into a ball. Chan takes the liberty of lighting the fire before sitting down beside you. He opens his arms, and to his surprise, you accept, letting your head fall into his lap. His arm securely drapes over your torso, though you're quick to cradle his hand. Hugging it to your chest so that his palm can feel the rhythmic thumping of your heart.

Chan lets out a long-held sigh, counting each beat like a lullaby. Then focuses on the rise and fall of your chest. Letting the steady swells ease the adrenaline from his system.

For a second, life is okay. Happy, even. Like how it was back before the world ended. Before he broke your heart. When he didn't care about anything except you and passing chemistry.

"I'm scared to lose you." When you say it, it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. "I always thought maybe, because we'd made it this far, that meant we were somehow immune. That the worst was over for us."

You pause to take a deep breath. But Chan doesn't push, simply thankful you've finally decided to let him shoulder the weight you carry.

"But if Seungkwan can die, that means you can too. Then who do I have?"

"I'd never leave–"

"You can't promise that," you drop to a whisper. Compensating for the waver in your voice. And you're right, he can't. Not in a world as cruel as this.

But he wants to.

"I don't believe in this world anymore. Not after what it did to him."

"Can you believe in me?"

Your answer doesn't come in the verbal form. Nor does it come quickly, which makes Chan think he's officially lost you. But then your fingers thread with his, squeezing in a way that he can only describe as feeling like pure hope.

Chan can't remember when the turning point was. All he knows is that today, months after the ocean, life feels peaceful once more. The Spring breeze is gentle against his skin as he lays in the soft grass with your head on his stomach. Surrounded by the aroma of the newly bloomed tulips that far outshine the rest of the garden.

He doesn't have as nearly green of a thumb as Seungkwan did, but he's proud. The garden is lush, green, and full of life. A little chaotic, but beautiful nonetheless.

Chan had even managed to revive the hydrangeas Seungkwan was so fond of.

You point to clouds with upturned lips, remarking on their resemblance to various animals. It's not the first time he's been lucky enough to catch you smiling in the subsequent months. But he knows to cherish each one more than he once did.

There's still a chill to the spring air and Chan tugs at his sleeves. Ignoring the incessant urge to animalistically claw at his arm. At the itch so deep under his skin, it feels like it's in the bone.

[waterdeeping]

STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR • THE FALL OF DAGAN GERA When the Jedi Council ordered Tanalorr and Koboh abandoned, Dagan Gera could not accept it ... Two hundred years later, his hatred of the Order reached its conclusion as he bled his lightsaber and swore himself an enemy of the Jedi.

[semuji]

₩arning: Yan? HSR × You?, grammar mistakes, out of character.

Let's say you are a Kaslana in the HSR verse, being the "knight" of Humanity is no joke, even more so that you can't even protect your home.

Your homeland got attacked by the Swarms Disaster hundreds of years ago, and you are the only survivor, eventhough not exactly. The price of that is being trapped inside a doll body, you can feel, can touch and can speak, ... like a normal human. But you have no heart inside your body, just an artificial gem that deemed as your source of living. And with that body, you also often got shrink into a size of a grown man palm. Maybe something can change it, but you don't know how.

Oh, and did I mention that you also have amnesia, you have forgotten completely everything before you got transferred into a doll body. That's why you are on a journey to find it back, but on the way, you accidentally lost into a small box. However, you got saved by a tall and muscular man in the name of Veritas Ratio. He is curious about your origin and how your body shrink, therefore allowing you to follow him around as you vow to repay him for helping you out.

In the process, you met Aventurine, a man with a sinister smile and peculiar eyes, who your savior was talking to when they met at the front of the Dewlight Pavilion, The Oak's base of operation. Aventurine sure does notice you, and did ask about you to Ratio, and he replied with just a saying: "research partner", which made the blonde snickers.

However, later when Aventurine got sent out by the Head of the Oak's family, Sunday, Ratio secretly sent you with him, that the professor said it's for you to keep an eye on him, which you do. Aventurine quickly warmed up to you, eventhough he is in an illusion, he still recognizes you as a real person and allows you to follow him on his shoulder.

Maybe in his way, he encountered some drunken men who purposely causing a problem with him, which makes you angered. And with that, you and him discovered that lips to lips touches can make you grow back in some times. After that, you sure did beat up those people and give them to the Bloodhound.

When the time comes, you turned back to Ratio, but got lost along the way 'cause of your size, which makes you meet the Nameless. Surely they are friendly, and helped you out finding Ratio. When you got back on the professors shoulder, you show him the new discovery you founded without a word (or maybe you just can't talk in that form), which makes Ratio mad. But looking at your dumb smile of happiness of finally being helpful to him, Ratio stopped his lectures that was about to spill out and forgive you.

Maybe in the future, you will learned how to protect humanity again, and learned how to love again with the artificial heart inside you. But to vowed to be the shield of humanity is not a good thing at all. Because the people around you will surely never let you go get a single scratch on your face, let alone that you will sacrifice yourself for a person that you don't even know.

But do they know that you are the strongest Emanator in the whole universe, that can rivals even Aeons?

Or....

It's just my new oc lore that I want to share. I might expand it in the future if I got a chance.

Part 2

(unfinished art, credit belongs to me, please don't take it anywhere)

[transsexualhamlet]

insanely specific tolkien thought of the day: linguistic shift in Quenya

or: Aragorn's no-good very-bad five dialect Quenya soup

I have often found the concept of how language changes over time when its speakers are immortal quite ridiculously interesting (for example, if Finwe and Thingol were brought together during the years of the trees, would it be the absurd equivalent of watching ur grandpa reunite with his childhood buddy and all of a sudden start speaking incomprehensible old english, what it would be like to spend hundreds of years writing with a system that your cousin/brother/child came up with when he was a teenager, things like this).

It's clear that despite the undying nature of its speakers during the years of the trees, there was still enough of a linguistic shift between Sindarin and Quenya during the Years of the Trees that they became completely different languages, so I was sent on somewhat of a thought experiment of how the language was changed over time and how ridiculously comedic that change can be when dealing with immortal beings.

So my thought is that following the return of the Noldor to Beleriand, Quenya began to be split into a few different dialects, which over time because of the immortal nature of Only Elves, created some strange occurrences. These were the three types of Quenya which arose:

Mainland Quenya in Aman. Although there are probably some dialectical differences between for example, the Vanyar and the Teleri on Tol Eressea, but in general it seems to act as a whole due to the ease of travel between places. As this is the only language spoken on Aman other than Valarin, and it has basically zero contact with the outside world, all its interior changes are probably sort of strange and incomprehensible tumblr speak to outsiders.

Noldor Quenya in Middle Earth. It would start out the same as Mainland Quenya, but obviously as soon as it is cut off the changes become different. It firstly took all Feanorian influence with it, which I imagine due to his insanity was basically its own dialect already. Then, there came the changes due to its being outlawed by Thingol and very rarely spoken for like. 400 years. In this case, even those survivors that managed to escape unscathed from the war of the jewels probably lost some of the original way they spoke the language, and most children born during or even after the ban were probably not taught to be fluent in Quenya, or even taught at all. After Thingol's death, Quenya could be spoken again, but those who learned it afterwards from old texts would have little context as native Sindarin speakers basically never learned Quenya, and by the beginning of the second age, most of the Quenya spoken in Middle Earth is likely a sort of pigdin between Sindarin and a now-antiquated half-remembered version of Quenya with a heavy Feanorian bias.

Numenorean / Dunedain Quenya. The Numenoreans actually have a much more recent connection with Mainland Quenya, as for much of the second age there was good communication between at least the Tol Eressea dialect of Mainland Quenya, as well as the Vanyar's dialect (equivalent I imagine of the Queen's English) as they were also visited by Eonwe. This dialect was then cut off by the later line of Numenorean kings, and the Numenorean's knowledge of that version of Quenya was then reliquated to a few families and texts that were destroyed in the fall of Numenor. This knowledge was then passed down through the lines of the Dunedain, though I imagine over time became corrupted with influence from Gondorian and Westron as the Dunedain were not immortal. At the same time though, it may not have changed as much, as it was treated like the equivalent of Latin where it was used only for naming and ceremonial purposes and not surviving as anyone's first language.

This to me is extremely humorous, because as immortal holdouts of various versions of the language continue to exist, you imagine several things:

Aragorn, being raised in Rivendell by Elrond, speaking Elrond's bastardized Feanorian Quenya, being baffled by his own Dunedain line's Quenya texts, as well as jumpscaring Galadriel and being vaguely unintelligible to the average Noldo born after the first age

Moriquendi who studied up on Quenya before sailing to Valinor realizing that they cannot understand anyone at all upon arriving there, and Galadriel cannot help them

The Istari by the third age remembering a different version of Quenya than literally anyone else on Arda

[odder-oddish]

Anyone else ever think about how weird it would be for the DBD survivors to like, miss out on years of pop culture? Like, we know that Vittorio, Gabriel and some of the killers come from different time periods, but assuming that like the original characters were taken from their lives on their "release date" in the game, then that means that Dwight and Meg have been gone from the world for 8 years.

And that's like, elections, political tension, music and movies, all sorts of stuff.

Like World Cups, Super Bowls, etc. Anyone who has a favorite team they follow would probably be wondering if they took home the title. Ace wonders if the last couple bets he made would have won him a couple hundred dollars or put him into debt even more. Musically inclined survivors are probably curious about their favorite star's newest albums, and newer survivors all have the latest hits stuck in their head.

And for the younger survivors... MEMES. Like remember how different those were in 2016? Newer survivors are coming in with the worst sort of brain rot; some try to explain it to the others but some don't bother.

And then one day, Zarina, who was released in early 2020, is like, yeah there's a bad virus going around. Everyone's staying inside and isolating, but we think it'll be over by Fall. And then, Felix shows up, like, yeah no there's still a plague. And then Elodie and later Yun-Jin and Mikaela are like, yep we still have COVID

And then, Thalita or Renato makes a joke about the Queen dying...

And David just loses his shit.

And then Nick Cage shows up???

I think about that a lot.

[themultiverseheroines]

Open Halloween Fandom RP (to all fandoms)

Europe has survived many conflicts in the world. From plagues, war, and even Dracula's wrath. Ever since his death, the remaining vampires have been fighting to gain power. A few hundred years later, France is on the verge of a revolution and a new vampire is trying to gain power, with the promise of bringing the world to eternal darkness.

Unfortunately, their plan has been thrown out thanks to a new threat that has risen. Not a virus, but rather a fungus. It was founded by one of the followers of the vampire who came to bring their mistress as a gift. The cordyceps mutated and began infecting the vampires, including the self-proclaimed vampire messiah. Before long, it began to spread to humans across Europe, leaving the remaining survivors to hide out.

While some survivors began working together with other vampires. In order to try to find a way to beat the fungus. While hoping to return the world to normal. Or avoid extinction.

Tera Renard, a Speaker magician has been working with a small cell or survivors in order to find other survivors. She wasn't alone though. Your muse has joined her on this mission, while she left her daughter in the care of Richter Belmont, who she found after his mother was killed by a vampire.

"Let's be careful. Edouard told us there are are a few infected around here. But if we can sneak past these buildings, then we'll be able to get the supplies," said Tera as she spoke to your muse quietly while wearing a cloak to help them hide in the shadows.

((cordyceps horror RP))

[fishermanshook]

FALLING FOR YOU. (prospector x gn!reader)

# day 1 of @philomena-propellente ‘s valentines event ! , grammar and spelling warning , you guys I’m turning into a Norton simp help me

INTRO

The longer you stay in the Oletus Manor, the more your Jo memory’s start to wilt away like a flower. This isn’t a personal issue though, as you’ve heard the hundreds of complaints from both Survivors and Hunters on their ever fading memory. After realizing this was a shared problem was when the panic started to arise.

The residents of the manor feared that one day they might lose their memory’s completely. Left only with the knowledge of the manor games and nothing else. Only now did people start to write in their forgotten journals that have been left to collect dust in their drawers. Nowadays, your forced to tread carefully around the manor in fear of stepping in a pool of ink or on one of the many broken quills that scatter the ground.

Unfortunately, the Prospector started later then the others. Therefore, he struggles to remember exactly when he started to fall for you.

Maybe he started to fall for you when you shared your first match together. It’d been roughly a month since you sealed your fate by entering the manor, and by now you had grasped the rules of the game. Norton didn’t pay you any special attention, just that you were the newest Survivor and that was that. There was no need to be so easily captivated by the your presence, by the confidence that radiated off of you, by your smile.

He brushed it off as interest. Had he not just mentioned that you were new? This aura of yours would fade over time, and he would watch as your light dimmed by your one (1) year anniversary.

Once the match had started, Norton was spotted first by Sangria and was forced to kite until his legs would give out underneath him. He tried to buy enough time for his teammates to decode, but all it took was an ounce of cockiness and a terror shock for him to be knocked down. He was quickly thrown into a rocket chair before Sangria left to patrol the area.

Little did either of them know, you were hiding near his chair and quickly got him out. As Sangria came back to his chair, she was surprised to see you and him running away at full speed and taking on the task of kiting for the remainder of the match.

It was a four man victory.

Or maybe he started falling for you when he got REALLY injured. Like, bed-bound type of shit. An attempt to climb over Lakeside Villages boat ended with both his legs broken. His pain was so bad Ithqua surrendered on the spot and actually apologized after, that was just how bad his condition really was.

You learned from Naib, who directed you to go to Norton’s room if you wanted to see him. You arrived and to Norton you seemed like an Angel to him. Emily has been stuck in a match all day and he’s been dying of starvation, but thanks to you he’s feeling full again after some warm soup.

Emily didn’t even know you were doing this until he mentioned you the other day.

“Thank god. They’re amazing, aren’t they?” Emily asked him, not directly looking for a response.

All she got back was his red face and silence.

Maybe he finally realized he fell for you when you took it upon yourself to sub in for his matches when he was still sick. (Again…) Or maybe it was when you went back for him when the Hunter had detention, or maybe-

Or maybe he’s just been in love with you this entire time, and was just too foolish to realize it.

These thoughts and more occupy Norton’s head as he makes his way to your dorm room. He hopes that you’ll accept him and the flowers he’s brought along with him.

note: very dissatisfied in this fic 😞 happy valentines yall!

(2024)©️fishermanshook — do not steal, translate, plagiarize, or repost my work on any other platform