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sageinacage · 3 years ago

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Why I am leaving this blog

This is the truth as of why I'm abandoning my tumblr, @/sageinacage.

CW: swearing/harsher language; mentions of breaking boundaries, sexualization, bondage, non-con/tickle torture, kinks, toxicity, overall rly uncomfortable topics

TLDR at the bottom.

Before I start, I want to say that I’m not talking about everyone in this community. Not everyone is like this, but still a lot of people are, and unfortunately the negatives are louder than the positives.

Having this blog was quite an adventure. It definitely had its ups and downs, but I was quick to notice that it had a majority of downs instead of ups. As of now, I'm dreading being on this page.

I don't feel comfortable here anymore and it's incredibly hard for me to feel any sense of safety in this community, and I honestly feel personally ashamed to be in the MCYT tickle community with the bullshit me and others have seen and experienced.

People go around on anonymous and practically harass creators, I've seen so many rude anons get sent to myself, my friends, and people on my dash. People are also breaking CC's boundaries left and right, and no one will listen to anyone when it's spoken up about. I remember making a post stating that if you send anon hate then DNI, and I lost 4 followers. So disappointing. Actually after I took a screenshot of my boundary/trigger list and posted it, someone sent me an ask and did EXACTLY what was listed in my triggers. It went fully against my boundaries, and it caused me to feel scared whenever I get a notification in my inbox, because I’m scared that somebody is trying to purposely trigger me again; and I shouldn’t have to be on Tumblr with such paranoia as I’m experiencing.

Going onto the topic of the more weird and uncomfortable side of the community, I also remember I made a post a while ago saying "if you support putting minors in heavy bondage, then unfollow," and I lost 5+ followers. To put it bluntly, that’s fucking disgusting. For those people to admit for putting minors in a borderline NSFW situation, since heavy bondage is quite literally something that only happens in the kink world and there’s nothing wholesome or cute about it, and for them to admit to doing it, is fucking weird. Though, I’m thankful those people got off my blog.

I have literally seen someone post art of c!Ranboo in heavy restraints and it didn’t even look remotely fun or consensual. It was pictured, or at least my friends and I interpreted it, that he was being tickle tortured and it was non-con. Though, it’s to be expected when the art is a dark-lit room with an intense tickle machine with heavy bondage, with a blindfold and what looks he is genuinely struggling. What made me even more uncomfortable is that an adult drew it. Another person wrote a fic of c!Ranboo in a lot of bondage with the sign “tickle toy” attached to him. That’s fucking weird. That’s practically something that never gets condoned in a strictly SFW sense. The sad part is that others and I have seen a lot of this happening around.

I was actually informed that an artist the other day on another MCYT tickle server drew literal non-con tickle art of Technoblade (/srs). I was revolted. The worst part is, some people didn't even have an issue with it and reacted to the image with heart emojis. For someone to draw non-con in a completely SFW server filled with a bunch of minors is creepy and weird. Non-con isn't a fun thing, and so many people, including me, have horrible experiences related to it; and for someone to turn it into a "heehee fun tickle" situation is fucked up. For someone to even fantasize non-con as a tickle fantasy just makes me feel sick. There are a few fics like this I've seen as well, unfortunately.

Related to non-con things, I've actually gotten a request before asking me to write Schlatt literally tickle torturing Tubbo, and multiple asks that are similar to that; even when on my request rules it stated not to ask for things related to that. Anything with the word "torture" in it is not consensual, especially in the context it was in. I’ve probably had to delete around 5–8 asks in total from my inbox that were related to non-con or torturous things, even after I already stated in my rules I do not write that stuff.

Another thing I've seen is romantic-esque things written with CCs and then the creator slaps a "/p" onto it, and all of a sudden it's okay? Ranboo has even stated in a stream that he is uncomfortable with his IRL self being written/drawn cuddling his friends, and I see so many fics and concepts of IRL Ranboo cuddling in some way (which I've spoken out about before, but again, no one listened).

Moving on, I've probably met the most toxic people in this community than any others I've been apart of- and I've been apart of a lot, I've been on Tumblr on different blogs since I was 11. For some reason, so many people love to guilt trip here (both my friends and I have noticed and experienced a bunch of people doing it in this community), and the people who get called out for it avoid apologizing like the plague. A person in this community made me and a few others literally scared to say no and scared to advocate for our boundaries, because of how much we got guilt tripped. And no, no one received an apology. But still, people DEFENDED this person, even though me and other people spoke out and explained how this person hurt us. That’s so fucking upsetting. I automatically don’t feel safe in a community where people willingly associate with a literal manipulator and someone who hurt probably over 10 people in total (/srs).

Another thing I've noticed is that so many people seem entitled to something. For example, when I got practically harassed by anons for my discomforts/triggers, basically trying to squeeze out reasoning. No one needs to explain their boundaries/discomforts to you, and this community doesn't understand that from what I've experienced; after being harassed by multiple people on anonymous multiple times, all of which were because of personal reasons I was not obligated to share. No one should be able to say that they got harassed by people on anon for their OWN BOUNDARIES. ON 3 DIFFERENT OCCASIONS AS WELL.

Long story short, I can’t help my triggers. Each of my triggers has developed from trauma I’ve gone through or a bad experience, and I shouldn’t even have to defend myself for my triggers/discomforts if people were respectful and weren’t so fucking entitled for an explanation. So many people in this community can’t mind their own business, and I unfortunately had to learn that the hard way.

I've also seen people project onto IRL CCs. Those are real and breathing people. I understand doing it for comfort, but, the CCs have a literal character that people can project onto, but for some reason, people have to push their things onto real life people. I’ve seen someone headcannon IRL Tommy as trans. That's like the same as your friend "headcannoning" you, a real person, as a different sexuality that isn't what you identify with, and one you may not even be OK with being seen as, and without knowing if you're comfortable with it or not. It's weird.

There are more points I could bring up and more specific things I could state, but I think you got the gist of why I'm leaving. I don't feel comfortable being a member in a community which a lot of its members condone in this stuff.

This is the reason why I'm only active in the MCYT tickle community on Discord, because my server, "Mcytickles," actually respects CCs boundaries and is truly an SFW server, and people are respectful towards each other. It's the only safe space I have in this community anymore, so please do not join it if you exhibit any of these things on this post.

No, I will not be coming back, so please do not try to convince me to stay. I’ve been wanting to leave for about a month now, so this isn’t some impulsive decision. I’ve been in the MCYT tickle community since April, and these problems have always existed but have just gotten worse and more extreme, so I’m leaving for my own mental health and to protect myself from further harm than what I’ve already received.

TLDR: I am leaving this blog and the MCYT tickle community on Tumblr due to the many boundary breaking and unacceptable behaviors I've seen be exhibited, and it makes me not feel safe and comfortable to be here anymore.

I want to thank my mutuals, though. You were all awesome and such kind and loving people, and I’m happy to be your guys’ mutual. I want to thank those who were always so nice to me and hyping up my work, and those who were respectful to everyone and advocated for boundaries. Thank you so much for everything, moots <3 (/gen)

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cannebady · 4 years ago

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An obligatory Good Omens New Year’s Eve ficlet. Enjoy!

Here on AO3!

I realized that I need you, and I wondered if I could come home

It ended up bring a surprise visit. With the lockdowns continuing through most of the year, Aziraphale had been stubbornly dedicated to leading by example and had refused Crowley on several occasions when he’d offered to keep him company. It was the right decision, Crowley supposed. While neither angel nor demon could get sick or transmit it to others, humans were always looking for a loophole to skirt the rules and, although Crowley would usually go out of his way to encourage them, this was starting to remind him all too much of his least favorite centuries so he didn’t push too hard.

The other benefit, was that the distance pushed Aziraphale to actually use the mobile Crowley had bought him months before all hell (side eye heavily implied) broke loose, which allowed them to communicate almost constantly. As it turns out, alcohol and texting really can be revealing and they’d continued to move, albeit at a glacial pace, towards something more.

This is all, however, a moot point because Crowley woke up on the 31st of December and immediately thought, “Ah, fuck it.” He donned his mask (not that he needs it, but it sets a good example and is a solid Look™) and drove on over to Soho to surprise an angel.

When he knocked at the bookshop door, he could already feel the air of displeasure coming from inside. He smirked, only visible by the crinkling at the corner of one eye. Lockdowns had allowed Aziraphale’s already shoddy business hours to become almost nonexistent, something the angel had nearly unbridled joy for.

When the door opened, he had to rein in actual tears of relief. He knew he missed Aziraphale something fierce, but actually seeing him made the wreck of Crowley’s heart swell and squeeze in a way he wasn’t used to.

Donning a pearlescent white mask that was very likely not of this world in origin, storm blue eyes connected with his and Crowley was warmed through to see the same, lovely, overwhelmed feeling mirrored back to him.

“My dear,” Aziraphale had whispered, looking Crowley over, “what are you doing here? It isn’t safe!”

Crowley, tired of waiting on the step while they goggled at each other, pushed inside while Aziraphale closed the door, locking it for good measure. “Well hello to you too, angel. Long time, no see.”

He snapped his fingers to place his mask in a pocket universe (he’s a bit embarrassed to admit that his earthly pockets wouldn’t exactly hold much more than his fingertips) and took care of Aziraphale’s as well.

“Crowley, we discussed this! I miss you terribly, of course I do, but we can’t just go breaking the rules willy-nilly!”

A year ago Crowley would’ve rolled his eyes at “willy-nilly”, but right now? Well, right now he’s so entranced he can’t breathe, never mind scoff.

“Angel-” He breaks off because there’s so much he wants to say, but Aziraphale is beautiful. He’s known it since Eden, but this is the longest they’ve gone without seeing each other in quite some time and he’s obsessing over the few extra inches of white blonde curls, not to mention the couple of extra inches on well-fed hips (courtesy of quarantine baking and fewer walks in parks, and for that Crowley would just like to say thank you), that are both likely to send Crowley into hysterics if he thinks about them too long.

“M’sorry angel, I just-” he sighs, “I know it’s wrong I just couldn’t wait longer. I can go, if you’d like.” He looks down, he’s not as sure that Aziraphale will kick him out as he once had been, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to watch it happen.

What he misses, is the very obvious once-over Aziraphale gives to his messy, much longer, curls and the longing look that speaks to ages of desire to cross those last few feet between them.

“Nonsense, my dear. You’re right, we cannot make this worse and you took precautions.” Crowley lifts his eyes to meet Aziraphale’s and is met with a brilliant smile. “And, of course, I am so happy to see you dearest.”

Dearest. Aziraphale called him that sometimes via text but this is the first time he’d heard it out loud. He was more attached to it than he’d like to examine.

“Well, in that case, I believe the humans have a tradition on this day that involves both day drinking and regular drinking.” He miracles a few choice vintages and a lovely bottle of Whispering Angel, because he’s still an arsehole sometimes, onto the table in the back room.

“If it’s tradition I suppose we must.” Aziraphale says with a smirk that’s not angelic at all.

Perhaps, Crowley thinks as Aziraphale leads him back to the squashy, infernally comfortable couch in the back room, this year may just end better than it started.

It’s been hours. They made it through Crowley’s initial bottles and have moved on decidedly to Aziraphale’s own, not inconsiderable, reserves. They’re encroaching on drunken territory they haven’t traversed since Armageddon first fell on their radar but this time, it’s so much better.

They’re laughing wildly while Aziraphale recounts, with requisite demonstrations, how he learned the gavotte and Crowley’s laughing so hard that his stomach hurts. He’s warm, and they’re safe together, and Aziraphale has a lovely blush high on his cheeks and Crowley’s sure he has the same, and he can’t remember being this happy for a long, long time.

“And, and-,” the angel trails off for a moment, “I couldn’t quite remember which way to turn,” he pantomimes turning in a graceless circle, “so I just, well, I rather tumbled directly into a bookshelf and realized I’d imbibed a bit too much.”

He looks at Crowley pointedly while he tries to smother a cackle. “You know, it’s not entirely dissimilar to now. I fear I’m quite completely rat-arsed.”

Crowley’s control breaks and he laughs loud and long while Aziraphale blushes more and then joins him, because they’re both completely arseholed and they have been during every century since the Beginning.

A glance at the clock shows it’s only a short time until the clock ticks over into the next year and a pit forms in Crowley’s stomach. He doesn’t want to lose this easy camaraderie and the soft love he’s feeling (it is love, he’s known it for a long time, and has accepted it for long enough) and he isn’t sure if he’ll be permitted to stay. There’s also a part of him that, for several decades now, has dreamed about employing another human tradition surrounding New Year’s Eve, but he’s even less sure of its welcome.

Aziraphale catches his eyeline and looks towards the old grandfather clock, obviously seeing the change is Crowley’s bright disposition.

“Not long now, it would seem.” He says quietly.

“Not long at all and we’ll be singing Auld Lang Syne and bidd-”, Crowley stops, his throat choking up.

“And what, dear?” Aziraphale thinks he knows where this was headed. Thinks he knows that the complicated string of emotions is on Crowley’s beloved face. He thinks he might just see everything he wants in arms reach of taking.

Crowley’s eyes are fully yellow, goldenrod and gorgeous, dark with drink or something more when he looks up to meet Aziraphale’s own. “I-, angel. Would I, ngk, what would you say if I stayed for a bit? Kept you company?”

He drops his head down again. Aziraphale hates that he looks like he’s bracing for bad news. Perhaps he has not done as well as he thought in letting Crowley know that the door was wide open now. Frankly off its hinges. Perhaps it’s time for extraordinary measures.He closes the distance between them, sitting next to the demon on the couch.

“Dearest, I think I’d like nothing more.” He reaches out and cups Crowley’s sharp jaw, tilting his head so that he can look into those stunning eyes again. He runs his thumb along his cheekbone and hears the sharp inhale.

This is the most skin-to-skin contact they’ve had since the Roman baths (there was an awkward side hug at one point that Crowley thought may actually discorporate him). But now, the simple contact of those soft, plump fingers on his jaw and his cheek are about to send him to his maker.

“Angel,” he reaches up and lays his hand over Aziraphale’s. Little to their knowledge, they’ve begun a countdown all their own. “are you sure?”

“I’m positive darling. Let me show you.” Aziraphale responds, allowing his thump to dip and run along Crowley’s luscious bottom lip. “Can I show you?”

“Please, angel”, Crowley nearly sobs and kind, giving, gracious Aziraphale takes a brief inhale of his own before laying his lips against the demon’s.

Crowley’s never really done this before. Sure there were humans here and there that thought to lay one on him, but he’s never taken the time to think about it. Why are lips so bloody sensitive? He thinks before he stops possessing higher order functioning and has only a mind to get Aziraphale closer, right the fuck now.

He reaches out and drags his hands down Aziraphale’s arms (both angelic hands now buried in his hair), delighting at the honest to God whimper he gets in response, and lets one hand tangle in ice blonde curls longer than he’s ever seen them, and lets the other drift from shoulder to waist, and finally to land on an ample hip that fits so perfectly into his hand that he thinks he might cry.

Their lips refuse to part and before long it’s gone from gently exploratory, to open and hot, tongues running along lips, tangling together, allowing them to taste each other for the first time.

They break apart briefly, speaking so close that each word is a sweet caress on the other’s lips; a placeholder while they work out their thoughts.

Aziraphale takes it upon himself to take the plunge here too, “I love you. I have loved you for so long that I don’t know what it is not to love you. I fear I was quiet for too long, but I will no longer abide. I will tell you I love you each time I think about how much I love you, until you’re sick to death of hearing it.”

While breathing is an option for both, Crowley is nearly hyperventilating. He thought, perhaps, Aziraphale may think of trying something with him. May even want to try out some more, erm, intimate, acts with him as the angel is always in such a rage for pleasure. But he never guessed that the haunting, creation-long devotion he felt would be reciprocated in the same way.

“Oh angel, I love you. I met you on the wall of Eden and thought ‘Oh, what’s that in my chest?’ and realized they didn’t take my heart when I Fell. I’m yours, if you’ll have me, if you’ll be mine as well.”

“Dearest, I’ve been yours for some time now.” And then words really aren’t important any more as Crowley lunges, pushing Aziraphale back into the squashy couch and running his hands over his coveted softness while angelic hands map his neck and his back and, Christ, his arse.

While the world nervously looks to a new year for peace and solice, two celestial beings have found it, at long last, right at home.

#Good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #ineffable husbands fic #good omens ficlet #crowley #aziraphale #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #new year's eve fic #sayonara 2020

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years ago

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Three Gates - on ao3 (for content warnings check Ao3) - on tumblr: pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, pt 5, pt 6, pt 7, pt 8, pt 9, pt 10, pt 11

- Chapter 12 -

The Nightless City was grand and glorious, as luxurious as Koi Tower and as tasteful as the Cloud Recesses, and Meng Yao would burn it all down in a heartbeat for the chance to return to the familiar sparse stone and metal of the Unclean Realm.

Wen Ruohan had forgiven him for murdering Wu Bixian and blowing his cover once Meng Yao had explained the circumstances, although he’d been displeased; Meng Yao had had to work his way back into his inner circle the hard way, inventing monstrous machines for him to use in his Fire Palace, where he played at treating torture the way other people viewed sport.

Meng Yao had once dreamed of torturing his enemies – initially defined as anyone who insulted his mother, but later expanded to include anyone who made a serious effort to harm Nie Mingjue and recently he had been considering an additional expansion to loop in the same for Lan Xichen – but now he realized that torture was boring and burdensome and messy, and a quick execution was clearly much more effective.

There was a lot less upkeep, for one.

A lot fewer tormented doctors as well – that poor Wen Qing would probably have never picked up her needles if she’d known this was where she was going to end up using them, that was for sure – and anyway, neither of his lovers would have approved so it was all a moot point anyway.

Possibly former lovers.

Not that they’d ever actually made it to the stage of being lovers, what with Lan Xichen’s sect rules and parental trauma, Meng Yao’s nightmares of the brothel, and Nie Mingjue’s experiences with Wen Ruohan…

Probably for the best, actually, given what Meng Yao now knew about Nie Mingjue – something that he was almost certain that Nie Mingjue did not know about himself.

A few months at Wen Ruohan’s side had certainly been enlightening on that front. As Meng Yao might’ve suspected, he treated even the people in his clan about the same as wooden furniture, useful to varying degrees but all ultimately disposable, and someone like Meng Yao, a talented retainer he’d stolen from another sect and who had no way out, made for amusing company.

Wen Ruohan had in fact heard the rumor of someone in the Nie sect being born as a yang furnace, very likely from Wu Bixian himself in an attempt to get rid of what he perceived to be a stain on the sect’s reputation, and he’d investigated, ultimately figuring out that the person in question was Nie Mingjue. A yang furnace, Meng Yao learned, was considerably rarer than a yin furnace, requiring the right horoscope and lucky (or unlucky) parentage, and was considered far more precious – people with that constitution would have an incredible talent for cultivation themselves, but would also be able to magnify, many times over, the cultivation or even cultivation potential of those with whom they engaged in dual cultivation.

The furnace’s consent in the matter was not required.

After discovering the truth, Wen Ruohan had apparently gone back and forth for some time in deciding whether to snatch him up immediately, training him up as a concubine reserved for the use of the Wen clan, but one of his more esoteric specialists had told him that the sort of intense cultivation techniques he had in mind would likely kill a child and, more importantly, that the positive effect on his own cultivation would be magnified if Nie Mingjue’s cultivation were higher when he began.

“Sect Leader Wen’s patience is admirable,” Meng Yao said with the sort of smile he’d worn when talking to the brothel owner that used to beat his mother on a regular basis just so she’d ‘remember her place’. “If only I had known..! I am not so certain I could resist such a temptation for years on end.”

Wen Ruohan laughed. “Well, I must admit I gave it a half-hearted effort a few times. The doctors did say that a few times early on wouldn’t hurt.”

By hurt he meant damage to Nie Mingjue’s ability to cultivate, or to cultivate with others, not to the lifetime of nightmares and terror that Nie Mingjue suffered as a result of his unrelenting pursuit.

“Though on that subject,” Wen Ruohan continued, a faint smile on his face, “perhaps you’d like to take a look at the room I’ve prepared for him, and let me know if you have any suggestions – anything you think he’d enjoy for the times when he’s not – in service.”

“Of course, Sect Leader Wen.”

“Naturally, if you also have any proposals regarding any of your marvelous machines…”

“Naturally, Sect Leader Wen.”

“Good,” Wen Ruohan praised. “If you please me well enough, perhaps I’ll let you take a turn once I’m done with him.”

He had other requests, too, which were even less savory – mostly storytelling, Meng Yao casting his mind back to his days at the brothel and even in desperation some of the artwork Nie Huaisang insisted on collecting to describe all sorts of scenarios for Wen Ruohan’s evident enjoyment.

Meng Yao took a bath as often as he could plausibly manage it, and still felt unclean.

(Chiwen, hidden away as best as he could in the room he’d been assigned because a Nie saber did not voluntarily enter Wen hands, screamed in his head. He hated everything about what they were doing.)

It was amazing, Meng Yao thought, how far self-deception could go: he had thought, once, that he would be able to distract and dissuade Wen Ruohan without losing anything along the way, that he could sell himself without counting the cost, and at the last he realized that his mother had been right about warning him not to get used to making deals with bad men.

Wu Bixian, too. He had thought that Wen Ruohan’s goal was domination of the cultivation world, his pursuit of Nie Mingjue only a means to get there or at best a distraction, when in fact Wen Ruohan wanted to be a god, to break through the barrier of cultivation and rise up to the heavens, and he believed that Nie Mingjue could get him there.

And yet Wen Ruohan, too, was deceived – he thought that everything in the world was meaningless grist to that great ambition’s mill, thought that everything he did was for power and power only. And yet there was the great care and attention with which he had filled the prison room in the Nightless City with all the things Nie Mingjue liked, things that he’d figured out from casual mentions in discussion conferences, the fascination in his eyes when Meng Yao told him stories that were sometimes so very boring and mundane, the casual way he dismissed even his own heir’s death at Nie Mingjue’s hands…

Perhaps the interest had been merely practical once, but it certainly was no longer.

At least the war was going well.

Not much else was.

His letters with Wen Ruohan had been belatedly discovered and publicized, his betrayal becoming widely known – Wen Ruohan deliberately cutting off Meng Yao’s route of return, no doubt. The fact that it was a good move, and one Meng Yao would have done if he were in his place, did not make it any easier to swallow.

He had always assumed he would be there to explain the letters to Nie Mingjue.

He’d said so many cruel things in those letters over the years, hurtful things, things he didn’t believe but thought that Wen Ruohan would like to hear – things about Lao Nie, about Nie Mingjue, about Baxia, about Nie Huaisang…disdainful, wretched things, lies that had flowed so easily out of his brush when he’d thought it was all a game.

He didn’t want to think about Nie Mingjue hearing them – seeing them – reading them –

He didn’t want Nie Mingjue to think that was how he really felt.

Some days, in the middle of the night in the too-brightly-lit core of the Nightless City, Meng Yao put his head in his hands and felt the prickle of tears in his eyes. He should have known better, he thought. He shouldn’t have tried to take it all on his own shoulders; he shouldn’t have assumed he’d be able to explain, that he could swear on Chiwen that his motives were pure and that all would be easily forgiven; he should have told Nie Mingjue what he was doing early on so that it would not come to him as a surprise –

He should not have repeated his mother’s mistake from all those years ago.

(“They don’t trust us!” Lao Nie had shouted, his voice still audible behind those stone walls, and Nie Mingjue had gone silent, the words hitting their mark and leaving a wound, before he’d started arguing once again.)

Meng Yao had originally planned on having both Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen act as his contacts during the war, but instead for his sins he got stone-faced Lan Wangji and, eventually, red-eyed Wei Wuxian, who was clearly still deeply shaken by the near-destruction of the Lotus Pier and how close he had come to losing everyone he loved.

(Meng Yao killed time in between boring torture, nauseating dinners with Wen Ruohan, and interacting with his two contacts in trying to figure out how to get said contacts to confess their obvious attraction to each other without ever actually telling them to their face that they were being idiots.

How anyone had ever compared him to Wei Wuxian – citing their status as fatherless children being raised by sect leaders alongside their heirs – he honestly did not know; the boy had a genius for cultivating and the arrogance to go with it, but simply no common sense whatsoever. Meng Yao was his exact opposite.)

They had both briefly been guests of the Wen sect, brought in by the same invitation that had been forcefully extended to Nie Huaisang; once they were there, they were given to Wen Chao to lead and reshape. Obviously that went about as badly as anyone could imagine, Wen Chao being what he was.

Nie Huaisang had been there too, of course, and Meng Yao hadn’t dared go anywhere near him. It wasn’t that he doubted his own acting abilities, or Nie Huaisang’s for that matter, but rather his own perception. Nie Huaisang was a very good liar, and if Meng Yao got it into his head that his own blood brother didn’t believe him, he might very well fall apart.

So he didn’t go.

That turned out to be a mistake.

Apparently, not showing up was seen as some sort – admission of guilt, perhaps, because the second Nie Huaisang returned to the Unclean Realm, things started going very badly indeed. Many of his old contacts stopped talking to him or even disappeared, even the ones he would have sworn Nie Huaisang had no knowledge of, and he didn’t even want to think about how many of his plans ran into obstacles that had nothing to do with luck and had everything to do with Nie Huaisang’s Nie temper.

Meng Yao only hoped that the cause of the temper tantrum was his failure to apologize for not letting Nie Huaisang properly into his schemes, and not that Nie Huaisang thought –

Surely Nie Huaisang would have said something to Wei Wuxian or Lan Wangji if he didn’t believe Meng Yao to be trustworthy? They were peers, had been schoolmates, and a few months together was more than enough time for Nie Huaisang to get the measure of them – he had to know what they were doing on his behalf, surely, and he hadn’t stopped them, so…

Sometimes Meng Yao thought that his circular rationalizations would drive him mad, long before anything else about this horrible life of his did.

(He also thought, sometimes, about how his mother would feel – how she did feel – about what he was doing, and whether she approved or not. He usually tried to stop thinking about it as soon as possible.)

At any rate, the sect heirs had all escaped after some unfortunate encounter with a corrupted Xuanwu that made Meng Yao twitch in fear when he belatedly learned about it, and soon after that the war began in earnest.

The Nie sect took Heijian, as had always been the plan; the Wen sect’s cultivators threw themselves against their iron wall without any success and even some heavy losses, especially whenever Nie Mingjue himself there to lead battles. The Lan sect was scattered after the burning of the Cloud Recesses, but Lan Wangji’s early warning had preserved more of their lives than might have otherwise been accounted for – the attack on the Lotus Pier had been similarly blunted through timely advice, although Jiang Fengmian’s stubborn refusal to take immediate action had resulted in injuries, some rather serious.

Two major attacks, in under a year – the rest of the cultivation world was alarmed. A sizeable number chosen to give in at once, while others opted to join the opposing forces, and war was everywhere.

Meng Yao had hoped that his information would be enough to tip the balance, that he could play the same role he’d played against Wen Ruohan in the past – acting as an interruption, but never quite tipping his hand. Never pushing for the real reward, taking the big risk…

The war dragged on.

There were some close calls – some difficult battles. People were dying on both sides. Several times there were reports of terrible injury to key people; the death of someone he loved was only a matter of time.

It seemed that he didn’t have a choice but to take more dramatic action.

Evil, Chiwen screamed in his mind, just as he had every day since Meng Yao had arrived at this horrible place. Kill it!

Meng Yao wished it was so easy.

“Do you mind if I borrow your brother?” he asked Wen Qing, who glared at him but accepted the jar of wine he offered her. “Just for a while.”

“None of your machines,” she said at once. He couldn’t blame her.

“No machines,” he agreed. “I need a courier.”

She paused, then put the wine down. “Out of the Nightless City? Safely?”

He smiled.

Wen Ning was delighted to see Wei Wuxian, and the feeling was decidedly mutual – Meng Yao had picked Wen Ning in part because of the extraordinary initiative he had taken at the Lotus Pier, initiative that made the entire Jiang clan quite fond of him – and Wei Wuxian happily agreed to smuggle Wen Ning out of Qishan to deliver a private message.

“Make sure he gets to Lan Xichen,” Meng Yao instructed. “A message can be compromised or lost – a person, not so easily.”

“I’ll do my best,” Wei Wuxian said, and almost looked approving, like he thought that Meng Yao was doing this to save Wen Ning from the worst of the war.

He had no idea what Meng Yao was doing.

“Wei Wuxian,” Meng Yao said when they were about to leave. “What does Lan Xichen say about me?”

A blink, there and gone. “He fears for your safety, and hopes you are well.”

“And – Nie Mingjue?”

He didn’t bother asking about Nie Huaisang. If his brother didn’t want someone to know how he felt, no one would ever have the slightest clue.

Wei Wuxian hesitated, and Meng Yao waited, and in the end Wei Wuxian finally said, “I don’t think I’ve heard him say anything about you at all.”

Meng Yao nodded. It was no less than he’d expected, for all that it felt as if his heart were shattering. “Thank you. Please go.”

Wei Wuxian would take Wen Ning to Lan Xichen, and Lan Xichen would believe the words of a person more than he believed a letter – it was his nature to do so, especially when that person was as serious and earnest as Wen Ning, who seemed so trustworthy and who would never knowingly tell a lie.

But a person who would never knowingly tell a lie could still be made to carry one, and so Lan Xichen would listen to Wen Ning, and he would take what Wen Ning told him to Nie Mingjue, and Nie Mingjue – who might have questioned information brought by Wen Ning but who would never question Lan Xichen, the way he had previously never questioned Meng Yao – Nie Mingjue would listen, and believe, and act on that belief.

He would go to Yangquang –

And Wen Ruohan would be waiting for him.

Sometimes Meng Yao hated himself.

#mdzs #meng yao #jin guangyao #wen ruohan #wei wuxian #wen qing #wen ning #my fic #my fics #three gates

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gemlinz · 4 years ago

Text

Fulcrum ch. 3 - Baby Steps (Levi x f!Reader)

Summary: It was a cruel world, she knew. She also knew better than to ask for more than her lot: being a full time barmaid and a part time thief. She helped where she could, bitterly accepted where she could not. Feared the monsters lurking outside the walls. But still - being near him, taking in his strength, his resolve - she couldn't help but hope for more. For herself. For him. For humanity.

Warnings: Swearing, Violence | CH 1 | CH 2 | CH 3 | CH 4 |

Read on A03

As soon as the door shut on the last customer, F/N locked it. She threw her head back onto the wooden frame hard with a groan, eyes falling shut. This was the first time tonight she had to stand still.

“Rough night?” Levi asked from behind his mug. He was sitting in his normal corner, eyeing her exhausted form.

She only grunted in response.

Rough night was an understatement - it was Saturday, and while that always meant a night long rush, the merchants were also throwing a festival. Even when it was standing room only, customers forced themselves into the pub to demand whatever their drink of choice was, throwing money at her before making their way back out into the busy street. On top of that, Louis was still out, so she was entirely alone to deal with it.

The barmaid hadn’t had a second to breathe, let alone dedicate attention to her partner in crime, as it were. Their close encounter with the Military Police had been just over a week ago, though she had seen him a few days prior when he delivered her new assignment.

Levi watched her for a beat longer before saying, “You’re not going to leave this shithole looking like this, are you?”

She cracked one E/C eye open at him before directing her gaze to the rest of the bar. She bit back a curse when she took it in.

As busy as she was, she hadn’t noticed the state it was in. Glasses and alcohol littered the floor, some of it coagulated and starting to become sticky. She counted two tables turned over, and a broken chair leg - it was unclear where the rest of the chair was.

Even the walls had a layer of gunk on them. F/N felt like she was about to cry.

He scoffed when she cast pleading eyes at him.

“Not a chance, brat.” He shot her down, setting his cup down. His table and the area around it remained miraculously spotless, as if his aura just emanated cleanliness.

More likely, she guessed, his aura promised deadly retribution should anyone come too close.

“Please, Levi?” She begged, pushing off the wall to come sit in front of him. “This is totally your thing!” When he looked only nonplussed, she continued “There's no way I’ll get it all done before I pass out….just think of all the spots I’ll miss…”

He rolled his eyes, “Sounds like a you problem - why would I give a shit about what your pub looks like?”

She sighed heavily, giving up on him. The woman buried her head in her arms on the table, groaning.

“Fine, whatever.” She mumbled through her arms, “I’ll do it myself...just need to rest my eyes for a minute. Feel free to see yourself out.”

He shook his head in disgust, kicking the leg of her chair.

“Oi, we’re not done yet - I still need your report.”

“I didn’t have time to write it with Louis being out,” She whined.

“And where the fuck might Louis be? Kinda shitty to leave your dumbass stuck with this crowd alone.”

F/N glanced up just enough to glare at him, “It’s not his fault, I had to fight him to stay home. He’s in no state to be working.”

“What do you mean “in no state”?” He demanded. She looked away.

“It doesn’t matter. Just - don't think lowly of him, ok? He’d be here if he could.”

Levi grunted, shooting the last of his tea before noisily placing the mug back on the saucer. Of course the idiot would defend the man who had sold her out less than a year ago. He studied her for a minute before continuing.

“Fine. I’ll help you.” When her head shot up in surprised glee, he continued, “If you tell me what happened to your face.”

F/N's brows drew together in confusion, but the action pulled on the cut above her cheek and she was quickly reminded. Her hand flew up to the swollen side of her face, flushing. With the busyness of her night, she had totally forgotten.

It looked worse than it was - her cheekbone and right eye were slightly swollen, a shallow scabbed over cut just above the apple of her cheek. The bruising didn’t look as bad as it had a couple days ago thankfully, but still showed as a faded ugly green.

Levi had spotted it the second he walked in, and he had been itching for answers ever since. His irritation only grew when she was too busy to even spare him a greeting, throwing his typical order down in front of him with an apologetic frown before moving onto her next customer.

When she looked like she wouldn’t answer, he prompted, “Is that from the other night? When I-” He looked away, “When we had to shake the MPs?”

“No.” She said, surprised he even cared, "Though you could have been nicer about it.”

He rolled his eyes at her petulant tone.

“I’ll remember that next time we’re about to be caught, interrogated and then executed.”

When the woman wasn’t forthcoming with any more information, he leaned over the table to better inspect her injury.

F/N moved away when he got closer in alarm, but he stopped her with a firm hand on her chin, angling her face for a better view.

“Did someone hit you?” He demanded, gently prodding at her cheekbone. She hissed.

“Not on purpose. I don't think.” She yanked out of his grasp, pushing her chair back so as to be out of range.

“You don’t think.” He deadpanned. “No it was - well, he was aiming for Louis, probably.” When he still didn’t seem satisfied with her answer, she continued giving in. “It was some drunk, ok? He had had too much, and Louis cut him off which only pissed him off. He got belligerent, and we had to kick him out. Louis took the brunt of it, but I got hit trying to tear the guy off of him.”

A beat while he processed

“So what I’m getting here,” Levi drawled, drawing it out like she was a child, “Is that you let some drunk asshole sucker punch you?”

She felt her face heat in indignation. Why was he saying it like it was her fault? "I didn't let him do anything."

He scoffed.

“Tell me you at least broke the fuckers arm.” He said, frustrated.

“What?” She asked, alarmed, “No, of course not - other customers stepped in after that and dragged him out. He was twice the size of me.”

That gave him pause.

“So? Why should that matter? I kick the shit out of people twice my size all the time.”

“Yeah, but you’re you.” She argued, and he felt warning bells begin to go off, “And I can’t do stuff like that.”

He stared at her for a minute, trying to see through a lie. When he didn’t find one, he felt anger start to bubble up, mixed with alarm.

“Can’t do stuff like what?” He asked, voice low.

She shifted uncomfortably, able to sense his mood change but not sure what had caused it. She chose her next words carefully.

“Fighting stuff.” When his gaze only got darker, she rushed to clarify, thinking that her lack of explanation was the problem, “I never needed to so I never learned, and I don’t think I’d even know how to start. I mean, you had to have known this, you had me pinned in seco-” She stopped abruptly when he held up one hand, the other pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. There was a moment of silence as he processed what she was saying.

“Are you telling me,” He began threateningly, his tone setting her on edge, “That we’ve been sending you, for months, into enemy territory... and you can’t even defend yourself?”

F/N would have been insulted if she wasn’t so terrified.

“I-” her voice cracked a bit, so she cleared her throat, “I mean...yes?”

His hand slammed down on the table and she jumped.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He growled at her, though she didn’t think the question was necessarily directed at her.

“Look - it's not like I’ll ever need to know.” She defended, adrenaline pumping and pride a little bruised, “No ones ever been able to catch me.”

He looked at her like she was stupid.

“I caught you, you idiot.” His voice was exasperated. Then, more to himself, “How the hell did I not realize...you went down so easy, I just thought I surprised you.”

“You only caught me because you cheated.” She bristled, sitting up straighter. “If not for Louis, the last you’d have seen of me was on that rooftop.”

“And you think our enemies will play by your rules?” He countered, directing his fury back towards her.

“Well - no, but-”

“So what happens next time you're cornered, huh? Next time someone sells your dumbass out and you get hit when your guard’s down?”

“It won’t happen, Levi, you’re not listening to me-”

“Shut the fuck up before I shut you up.” He leaned forward menacingly, and she immediately shrunk back. At her fearful compliance, he sat back. In a calmer but no less cold tone, “You should know how to at least defend yourself. It’s a fucking miracle you’ve made it this far.”

She wouldn’t meet his gaze, staring at her hands as she picked at her nails.

“It’s a moot point, anyway,” She started quietly, “I don’t have anyone to teach me.”

At his silence, icy fear clawed up her spine.

“You’re um-” She began, voice shaking, “You’re not going to tell Erwin, right?”

Tiredly, Levi sized her up. Despite this new development, she was honestly the best thief he had met. Given his history that wasn’t an easy feat - her ability to slip in and out of otherwise off access sites undetected was beyond even his own talents, and had been hugely beneficial to the Corps. But if he told Erwin that she was practically defenseless when they sent her to these places, that if she was ever caught she wouldn’t stand a chance against capture....

A captured spy was a liability, and not one the Survey Corp could afford.

The Commander would cut her out. And then, to tie up loose ends, he’d arrest her - maybe have his strongest soldier eliminate her so she couldn’t talk.

Levi could tell from the stiff way she held herself she realized what was at stake with her question.

He sighed, drumming his fingers on the table with one hand and leaning his head against the other.

“You’re not giving me much choice,” He started, letting her hang for a beat when her eyes shot up to meet his in panic, “I’ll have to teach you.”

The thief’s fear melted into confusion and then into shock. His lips quirked as he saw the emotions play out on her face.

“Wait, really?”

He gave her a blank look, bored. “Just enough to keep you alive.”

She nodded, “Ok, yeah. Ok.” Her brain was still catching up, “Like...right now?”

He shook his head, exasperated.

“No, dumbass. You’re dead on your feet and this pub’s still filthy. I’ll meet you here tomorrow night, after close. ”

F/N groaned as she remembered the state of their surroundings, dragging herself to her feet.

“I almost forgot,” She sighed wistfully, imagining her warm bed. Moving to go get the cleaning supplies, she waved at him over her shoulder. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow then. I’ll have the report, too.”

“Tch.” He said, standing up and moving behind where she stood in front of the supplies closet, snatching a towel from her hand. “Give me a rag, brat. I’ll start on the walls.”

He ignored her surprised stare as he made good on his promise.

The next night, Levi found himself standing outside the door to Louis’ pub. From the windowed entrance, he could see F/N with her back facing him; she was pushing the bar’s tables to the sides of the room, muscles straining with the effort.

She had changed out of her regular day-job attire and was wearing the clothes he had first seen her in - black head to toe and easy to move around in. Perfect for a spy, and perfect for what he had planned.

As he watched her flit back and forth to clear the room, Levi once again wondered why he was doing this. Reporting her shortcomings to Erwin would be disastrous for her life expectancy, sure, but he wouldn’t ever have to sit in this shitty bar again. He could get on with his life; the Commanders pet project failing didn’t do anything but expose him to significantly less shitty tea.

But even as he tried to convince himself to turn home and right into Erwin’s office, he could only sigh. He knew he wouldn’t do it, just like he knew the countless other times he had this argument with himself on the way over here.

It wasn’t out of compassion for the young thief. If anything, her weakness grated on him, had him itching to just put her out of her own goddamn misery and end this charade. She was barely tolerable and the less time spent in her presence, the better.

No, he had agreed to train her because he saw the potential.

It was a skill he developed at a young age - to see a seemingly harmless object and know that in his hands, it could become deadly.

The way she evaded him that night six months ago was like nothing he had encountered before - she hadn’t been wrong, only Louis tipping him and Erwin off got her caught. Never before had he seen someone know the empty, quiet spaces in the world and melt into them as if she was nothing.

It was impressive, he would begrudgingly admit. But more importantly, if honed, it would be dangerous.

Already was. The information she had stolen for Erwin had brought the Corp back from monetary extinction. He had her to thank for his shiny new 3DMG, traded up from his hand me down last generation model. The person she could become is someone they wanted on their side.

But he also wasn’t an idiot - he wouldn’t teach her enough to kill him, or Erwin. But just enough to give her a leg up should anyone try and fuck with her.

The Captain’s sigh was self deprecating as he watched her trip herself with a chair she was carrying, still not noticing him. His and Erwin's safety probably wasn’t something he would have to worry about.

Levi rapped his knuckles on the glass, the door already locked to keep out any last minute bar flies. She whipped around, waving when she saw him.

“Hi!” She chirped, opening the door and stepping aside, “I wasn’t sure if you’d actually come, but I got ready anyway.”

He grunted in response, throwing his jacket onto the bar counter. She was bouncing lightly on her heels with nervous energy. “You need to calm down.”

She flinched, but stopped bouncing. He narrowed his eyes. If this was going to work, he needed her focused - and right now she was practically quaking.

“If I wanted you dead brat, it would have already happened.”

“Of course,” She stuttered, “I know that. Obviously.” E/C eyes darted above his head, where there was still a bullet lodged.

Levi exhaled loudly in frustration. Fine, he’d just have to show her what distraction would cost her.

“Get over here, stand in the middle of the room.” She did obediently, “Good, now square up. I’m going to come at you and your one job is to not get hit, understand?”

F/N paused with her fists halfway raised, staring at him wide-eyed, “H-huh? Wait, I’m not rea-”

He charged at her. She dodged wildly to the right as he faked a swing with his left fist, only to be met with a kick to her side.

She was knocked over, crashing into the side of the bar hard.

Wincing, she sat up angrily.

“Ow - what the hell was that!?” She yelled, fuming. She recoiled back into the bar as he stalked towards her.

“That,” He answered, crouching down to be eye level, “was pathetic. I knew it was bad, but shit. There's not much to work with. Your focus is abysmal,” he began listing, “You show your hand too easily and you fall like you want to break something.”

F/N did her best to hold her glare, but each new fault he listed broke her down a bit more.

“At least we know where to start,” He sighed, standing up, “from the bottom. Get up, stand in the middle and square up again.”

She hesitated again, fearful at him attacking her. It only took a raised eyebrow before she compiled.

He studied her, before circling around to stand behind her.

“Your biggest advantage is that you’re light on your feet and fast, when you’re not being a klutz. I've seen you do it to dodge the handsy drunks. Use it - don’t stop moving. Widen your stance,” He kicked at her calf until satisfied her feet were in the right spot. Then he turned her with a grip on her hips, “And turn so that your side faces your opponent - you want to take up the least amount of space as possible while still allowing for the greatest range of movement.”

He stepped back, before humming. Coming around to face her again, he nodded once.

“Good. Now, the tough part. You need to learn how to read what your opponent’s doing before they do it.” He rolled his sleeves up, cuffing them at the elbow.

“And how do I learn to do that?” She asked, awkwardly shifting around in her new stance.

His eyes were feral, and she instinctively took a step back when she caught sight of them.

“Experience.”

If she thought the first knockdown was bad, the next thirty or so were much worse.

Levi didn’t let up until just before dawn, when she finally managed to dodge one of his blows, turning to him in glee only to be met with him sweeping her legs out from under her.

She fell hard on her back, winded and glaring up at him.

“Don’t get cocky,” He said, looming over her, “Overconfidence will get you killed.”

He offered her a hand. F/N rolled her eyes, but took it and he hauled her to her feet.

“Better, anyway.” He decided, and she figured it was as much validation she was going to get, “We’ll call it a night.”

The thief nodded, finally letting herself feel the exhaustion rolling over her now that the immediate danger had passed.

Walking towards the pub’s cash drawer, she opened it, sliding out her report hidden under the bills and handing it to him.

He took it, nodding once in thanks.

“So,” She began casually, “now that I can defend myself, you won’t tell Erwin?”

Levi paused in putting on his jacket.

“You think you’re set after one lesson?” He asked, incredulous, “Are you an idiot? I wasn't even going at you with even a fraction of power - even the shittiest MPs would still fuck you up.”

F/N stared at him, mouth agape.

“Then what am I sup-”

“I’ll see you next week, brat. You better not be distracted next time.” He stated as if they had already agreed. Not waiting to hear her arguments, he used the front door to leave.

She could only stare at where he was before moving to lock the door. She stuck her tongue out at his back as she watched him turn the corner.

Making her way up to her apartment, she tenderly prodded one of her many bruises, groaning loudly at the thought of having to do it all over again.

#levi x reader #levi ackerman #levi aot #levi #reader insert #fanfiction #gem writes

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iesnoth · 5 years ago

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Four Times Artemis Tries to Convince Holly to go with him to Mars and the One Time he Didn’t

The First Time | The Third Time

The Second Time

The second time was during Artemis’s bimonthly check-up. This month they met on Fowl estate, now the Sunny Times Farming Community. Artemis was the only Fowl left living in the ancestral home: his parents thought he stayed behind to make sure their new tenants adhered to their eco-friendly mission statement, his friends thought he had too much history in the house to leave. Now Holly suspected his attachment had less to do with the manor, and more to do with the rocket ship in the barn.

To be fair, he didn’t live in the manor all the time: his laboratory had long since been moved, and he wasn’t one for community living. When he wasn’t sleeping on the makeshift bunk in the barn (pre-clone Artemis would never, Holly thought), he spent the night at Butler’s seaside cottage. Today she flew into the aforementioned barn, not unshielding until the strangely pneumatic doors closed behind her.

“Commodore!” Artemis’s greeting was muffled by wherever he was inside the ship. Though the design was distinctly Artemis, a dark grey color palette highlighted with gold, she saw elements of fairy engineering in the spacecraft. She wasn’t sure Artemis could invent anything without the People’s influence anymore; he was a part of them now.

And he’s leaving, she thought.

He slid out from some secret place under the craft. He wore a bespoke suit, though divested of his jacket, and the sleeves on the black button down were rolled up to the elbow. She wondered if the genius considered this “work clothes.”

“You know the drill,” she said, pretending she somehow hadn’t seen the spaceship and focusing on retrieving a swab and vial from her hip satchel.

“Right on to business then,” he said with an air of teasing.

She propelled herself up with her wings so they were at eye level. “Open up.”

He obliged, and she swabbed the inside of his cheek, then stoppered the swab in the vial. She pocketed it and withdrew an electronic syringe the size and length of her pinkie. She held out a hand, and Artemis placed his hand in her open palm.

“Any problems since our last meeting?” she asked.

“Do you mean the Netherlands?” He was prying.

She pretended not to notice. “I mean two months ago. Have there been any changes?”

He raised one eyebrow. “No.” She pushed the button on the end of the syringe and a needle popped out, stole a few drops of blood from his hand, then retreated, sealing the tube shut behind it.

“No sudden loss of energy, or insomnia?” Blue sparks danced over the tiny pinprick. She didn’t have to heal such a small wound, but she always did.

“My energy levels are fine, and I have no more insomnia than I’ve ever had.” He held up his newly healed hand. “And before you ask, my appetite has been consistent with no strange cravings, no mood swings, no phantom pains, and no growth spurts or increased aging. But you’d know all that if you’d learn to read the diagnostics on the side of that syringe.”

She rolled her eyes, making a great show of putting the syringe away without looking at it before dropping to the ground.

He caught her gaze and smiled like he was letting her in on a secret. “Come, Commodore. Let me give you a tour.”

Holly huffed. She shouldn’t encourage him— after all, didn’t she know what her answer had to be? But she was curious, and at the very least she could trade any information she gleaned about the ship to Foaly for upgrades in her tech.

Artemis waited for her at the threshold, his expression guarded. Taking a steadying breath, she jogged over to catch up.

The interior of the ship matched the exterior: sleek and utilitarian, though the colors inside were a cool, calming blue. Artemis had probably done research on what colors put people at ease, an asset for space travel.

“This is the galley,” he said, “and the central hub of the ship. The bridge is here,” he opened a door in the nose of the craft. There were few buttons, but the dash was a span of black plasma screens which Holly recognized from the holo-displays in Foaly’s center of operations. There were four ergonomic chairs in the bridge: the captain’s and co-captain’s chairs, each with their own steering column, and two on either side of these chairs, so all four were arranged in an arc. She noticed each seat was large enough to house Butler’s bulk, but had adjustable height and seatbelt for a fairy passenger.

“I assume you see the influences I took from the People,” he said, running his hands over the dormant dash. “I also took some inspiration from the sci-fi films Myles has become smitten with. He actually helped design this room, and the laboratory.”

“You’ve told your family about this?” Holly asked as they moved on.

Artemis pursed his lips before he spoke. “I’ve told Butler.”

“And he’s OK with this?”

He shrugged. “He’s coming with me. And he’s very excited about this:” he opened a pneumatic sliding door to an exercise room. It housed an elliptical and other resistance-based equipment, since anything relying on weight would be moot in the zero gravity of space. “It will be imperative for all the crew to exercise daily in order to prevent muscle atrophy in the vacuum of space,” he explained. “Butler greatly anticipates me having to use a gym for once.”

“Crew?” Holly repeated, passing up the chance to take a jab at the young man’s less than impressive physique. “Who else is coming besides you and Butler?”

He actually looked hurt, and she wondered if she’d pushed her avoidance of his invitation too far. “If you’re going to continue to ignore the obvious,” he said, his voice clipped, “I’ve invited No.1 to come along. After his exploits on the moon, I thought this to be a natural expansion of his studies. He’s conferring with Qwan about whether they could do without him for so long. I also plan on inviting Juliet, if she ever comes home from the mystery assignment Butler won’t tell me about.”

Each of the four living compartments had an upright bed attached to the wall, a porthole, and a tiny, adjustable desk which could be accessed from the bed. If it could be called a bed. Soft, cream-colored, and puffy, they looked like cocoons. Under the zipper and layers of down were straps on the inside to keep the sleeper in place, as well as a control panel to adjust the firmness of the mattress and tightness of the straps. These space explorers would travel in comfort.

“Why only four cubicles, if you’re anticipating five?”

He smiled down at her. “I’m not anticipating five. I assumed someone would say no, and I haven’t invited everyone at once.”

Based on the series of events as he’d told them to her, he’d asked her first (excluding Butler). She wanted to be flattered, but her heart hurt.

“Artemis, I can’t go.”

His carefully maintained smile shrank. “Because of your career?”

“Don’t say it like I prioritize climbing some corporate ladder,” she said, turning away from the cubicles and back toward the galley. “And yes, it is my career. It’s my life, Artemis. I couldn’t live in space! Where would I perform the Ritual?”

“We could bring a store of acorns,” he suggested. “You could plant them on an asteroid: maybe burying them on a foreign planet would grant you different powers.”

“This isn’t one of Myles’s sci-fi movies, Artemis.”

“No, it’s better,” he argued. He crouched down to her level. She hated when he did that. It made her feel condescended to, and she hated looking him in the eyes when they fought. “Anything is possible out there,” he waved to the ceiling with one hand. “We could discover new worlds, meet new species, challenge the very fundamentals of science! We could change the universe for the better.”

She placed a hand on his left cheek, her thumb tracing under his left eye. It was blue now, forever reminding her of the friend she’d lost, then regained.

“I’d like to think I’m doing that now,” she countered. “In Haven, protecting others.”

Artemis stared into her eyes for a moment, searching for answers or perhaps for a chink in her resolve. Finally, he stood, breaking her contact. “We still have the physical tests to complete before you have to return home,” he said.

Holly followed him out, eyes on his feet as he tiptoed through the thin walkway that was a comfortable width for her. She paused at the entrance of the ship as he strode the distance of the barn, walking away from her with a long gait she’d struggle to keep up with on foot. Was she losing him again?

#artemis fowl #holly short #the fowl twins #mild spoilers #fanfic #text post

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syntaxeme · 5 years ago

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Needs Met ch. 1 [Moicy]

[Read on AO3] [Next Chapter (coming soon)] Rating: M Notes: This story involves Ph*rmercy elements. It also involves cheating. If you’re bothered by one or both of those things, please just ignore the story! I’m not here to engage in any kind of ship war or to encourage it among others.

Summary: By some cruel twist of fate, Angela finds herself once again working with Moira O’Deorain, an ex with whom she had a particularly complicated (D/s) relationship. Unfortunately for Angela, her thoughts and feelings about Moira refuse to stay in the past. Realizing that the stability and control Moira offers are things she still craves, she finds her pride bending to her own desires. No, not desires. Needs.

— — –

Throughout the entire mission, Angela kept her eyes to herself. She went to the side of anyone who needed her, was mindful of her companions and her surroundings—but no more than “mindful.” She didn’t look closely. She didn’t listen for a particular voice. To be plain, she wasn’t all there. Not to say that anyone suffered for it, but she was very aware of her own condition. Maybe if she had been informed of these unusual circumstances ahead of time, it wouldn’t have affected her so much. Maybe not.

“I much appreciated your aid, Angela. I doubt we would have succeeded without it.” That voice. That was the one she had been trying to ignore all day. Not the words spoken, as they were more than competent, inventive, helpful (as expected) to the mission. The sound itself was what affected her.

“You’re exaggerating,” she answered coolly. “I was only doing my part, Doctor O’Deorain.” Of course, she had known that she wouldn’t escape Moira’s presence altogether. Now that they’d boarded the transport that would deliver them from the field to their accommodations for the night, her fears had been realized.

“‘Doctor,’ is it?” Moira laughed, eyes lingering on Angela’s tense shoulders. “And I thought you and I were better-acquainted than that.”

“Maybe we were at one point.” Why was she carrying on this conversation? Why did she answer when Moira spoke? A conditioned response, she supposed, from years ago, one the sound of that voice had brought back with an intensity she’d never expected. They stood in one corner of the ship, and none of the others present seemed to notice how heavy the air was between them.

“I suppose some time has passed since then. The years show in your eyes, Doctor Ziegler,” Moira pointed out, hands remaining folded at her back despite the wandering of her gaze. “Your charming optimism has faded.”

Angela gripped her staff more tightly with both hands. “The absolute last thing I’m here to do,” she said quietly, “is ‘charm’ you.” Moira laughed openly at that, and blue eyes stayed fixed in a glare at the floor below.

“Yes, I’m certain you don’t do it intentionally.” Inquisitively inspecting Angela’s armor, she changed the subject: “Your Valkyrie suit has greatly improved since last I saw it. The staff’s function is much more elegant…and I see you carry a sidearm now.”

“It’s purely for self-defense.”

“Primum non nocere. How appropriate. I do wonder what else has changed over the years,” Moira observed. Taking a slow step closer, she went on, “Since we’ll be spending the evening in close quarters, this seems a fine opportunity for a closer look. At the suit, that is. Given your permission.”

Angela’s eyes fell closed as she tried to decide how to answer. She had expected the suggestion—she’d been expecting it since she’d found out they were working together that morning. That it came this late in the day was the only surprise. And of course, she knew it wasn’t really her armor that Moira was interested in. Suffice it to say they’d had a very complicated relationship during her time with Blackwatch; her ‘closer look’ would inevitably become something much more involved. If only Fareeha had come with her, Angela was certain this conversation wouldn’t be taking place at all.

She had been seeing Fareeha outside of work for nearly a year by that point, and they’d been sleeping together for months. Had she been there, her jealousy would have picked up on Moira’s intentions immediately and prevented her from coming anywhere near Angela outside the mission. But she was busy elsewhere at the time, and of course they were both certain that the brief separation wouldn’t be an issue in any way.

“No,” Angela said in what she hoped was a firm tone. “I prefer not to share my inventions with untrustworthy individuals.”

“Untrustworthy?” Moira repeated, though she sounded more amused than offended. “You have changed, aingeal.” Still, she didn’t press further. She inclined her head in a semblance of a bow and left to speak with one of their other associates instead. Angela remained silent for the rest of their trip, trying her best not to dwell on the interaction.

She was no psychologist, but she was certain that her response to Moira’s voice was nothing more than Pavlovian conditioning. Not a sign of lingering feelings for her, not a reflection on her mental state. Nothing but a learned reaction that her body had somehow held onto all these years. It was nothing short of a biological betrayal that she should be forced to recall, in vivid detail, the moments that had enforced this affliction.

Moments during the period when they were on the same side. More or less. Moments in her darkened office, after everyone else had gone home for the day. Moments in her apartment or Moira’s, when that voice had given orders for her to obey. With pleasure. She recalled the chuckle that came when she begged, the encouraging purr when she was doing well. The shape of Moira’s lips as she spoke. The feeling of those lips on her skin. And her tongue…

Angela groaned, more in irritation with herself than anything, as she tried to push every one of those moot points out of her head. None of it mattered. It was all in the past, and no matter how much she had wanted it—needed it—at the time, it wasn’t going to happen again. Her guilt over even thinking about it only increased when they got back to their hotel and she finally checked her phone to find a missed call from Fareeha. Of course, between their separate time zones and both of them working, it was difficult to find a moment wherein they were both free to talk. But she had left a sweet voicemail, promising to make up for the lost time once they were both home, confessing that her current bed was cold without her ‘dove’ there to share it. Angela listened to the message and felt surprisingly little—little but guilt and disappointment in herself.

She cared about Fareeha. She wouldn’t have been with her if she didn’t. She enjoyed their time together, felt safe and comfortable in her arms, appreciated all the emotional support she provided. Yes, she very selfishly loved every aspect of their relationship. But did she love Fareeha? That, she had yet to answer. Or maybe she had answered it but pretended otherwise, hoped her heart and mind might change with time. Love was such a complicated, messy subject, one she hadn’t had much luck with in the past.

Rather than calling and leaving a voicemail of her own, she answered with a text message, explaining how exhausted she was, hoping that it came off as sincere. The last thing she wanted was to hurt or discourage Fareeha somehow. She didn’t deserve to suffer for Angela’s weakness. More than anything, she wanted to sleep, to be free of the burden of thinking, just for a few hours. But sleep didn’t come easily these days, meaning she had to weigh the costs and benefits of taking medication.

Too many choices, too many decisions, too much responsibility. Just tell me what to do. She was so tired. After shedding the many pieces of her armor, wings and all, she put out the lights, crawled into her bed, and pulled the covers up to hide beneath them. Still her mind wouldn’t stop racing—or trudging, at least, as drained as she was.

There was a way to fix it. Something she couldn’t do on her own. From experience, she knew exactly what she needed. Guidance. Stability. She needed to put herself in hands more reliably steady than her own.

Discipline.

Subjugation. She wet her lips at the thought.

For years, she’d been trying to put the thought out of her head, telling herself it wasn’t healthy, that she should find some other way to cope. But what point was there when she already knew the solution?

She had brought the idea up to Fareeha before, but only once or twice. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable with it, with the notion of controlling or, heaven forbid, harming Angela. Too concerned for her comfort. Nevertheless, Fareeha had agreed to try, out of a desire to please her. Already, the motivation was wrong, and a Dom without the confidence to give orders simply couldn’t provide the firm hand Angela needed. So she tried instead to forget that feeling and be satisfied with everything else Fareeha could give. And she gave no small amount.

Then came this mission, and she was forced to confront Moira again. Moira, who had never hesitated to control her. Moira, who had been the one to show her how sweet it could be to submit. Moira, whose voice still set her blood on fire and practically made her mouth water.

She recalled their earlier conversation, her own cold and insulting words, and some stupid, desperate part of her wished Moira had slapped them out of her mouth. Wished she could feel those long fingers close around her throat and tighten when she tried to argue. Wished for nails on her back and teeth on her throat and that voice, that damned, delicious voice filling her ears. She hated herself for it. She hated Moira for it, too, for so permanently etching these thoughts and feelings and desires into her psyche.

The room was pitch dark, even darker under her sheets. She let her eyes fall closed and tried to push past mistakes out of her mind, reminding herself where she was at this point in her life and why it was better. Groping blindly in the dark, she reached for her nightstand and grabbed her earpiece to replace it. Trying to chase Moira’s voice out of her mind, she replayed Fareeha’s voicemail and focused on every syllable, imagining the shape of Fareeha’s lips as she spoke them.

If she tried, now and again, she could more or less fabricate a scenario in which Fareeha was willing to be the Dom she needed. Perhaps she came home from a mission frustrated and needed to take her anger out physically. Perhaps she grew tired of Angela’s asking and decided to give her what she wanted as roughly as possible. It was invariably some exception to her usual character, but Angela wanted it regardless.

Yet this time, her imagination couldn’t seem to muster the image. She couldn’t take the sound of Fareeha’s voice and turn it into a growl, a demand, an order. “Verdammt,” she breathed, pausing the recording. Several moments passed in silence, and, with her digital library still open, Angela noticed a folder in Shared Media that hadn’t been there before. It was labelled with that day’s date and their location. She hadn’t considered this but knew what it must be. The communications from her mission earlier that day would’ve been recorded, and they were now available for her to review. Immediately, her mind deduced that if she wanted to—if she chose to—she could hear Moira’s voice instead.

No. She wouldn’t. Even if Fareeha’s trust weren’t part of the equation, the shame it would evoke would be too much for her to bear. After all these years, giving in to those old desires, being pathetic enough to use Moira’s voice as a catalyst for her pleasure? She wouldn’t do it.

Although. It would be so very easy. Or…perhaps it would be helpful to her future combat maneuvers. Yes, that was very possible. It could have merit of a different sort. Biting her lip hard, still fighting with her conscience, she opened the folder before she could stop herself. And, of course, the comms were separated into those of each individual squad member. Another moment of hesitation. Then she played the file labeled O’Deorain – support 2 and waited.

“I do hope that you’re quite certain about this,” Moira said, as she had in response to their team leader’s plan of charging in without much effort at regrouping the team. Hearing it sent a chill down Angela’s spine. The cold, judgmental tone in Moira’s voice was maddening, as it always had been.

Please, she might have begged, all those years ago. How many times can I say it? I want this. I need it.

“Do you truly believe that’s wise?” Moira’s voice in her ear, and Angela slid one hand slowly along her collarbone, down to her chest. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

Mein Gott. Angela bit her lower lip hard, her bare hand sliding underneath her form-fitting shirt to trail up her stomach and tease her breasts. Her hands were neither as long nor as inexplicably cold as Moira’s, but her imagination could supply the missing details.

“Come back here, in ainm Dé!” Moira growled, exasperated, and Angela began to remember such phrases she’d used in their dark, heated moments together. An-mhaith and ná stad and féin a iompar. Starting to lose track of her breathing, Angela let her shaking free hand wander slowly downward, down her stomach toward her hips.

“Do you want this or not?” Moira demanded cooly. “Yes? Then listen to me.” Angela paused, the last vestiges of her pride still desperate to remain unbroken. Every word weakened her will further, and she could so easily imagine—no, recall—Moira holding her down, guiding her every move. “This is dangerous.”

“Oh, it is,” Angela chuckled under her breath. If she allowed herself this much, where would she draw the line? If she touched herself, imagined Moira touching her, if she orgasmed to the sound of her ex-lover’s voice, how would she still pretend that Moira had no power over her? She should stop. She should pause the audio and focus on trying to sleep.

“Ah-ah-ah. Come back to me now.”

She never was willing to disobey a direct command.

“Stop fighting,” Moira snapped. That tone of irritation, of impatience, got to Angela even more. “Do as I say and I will keep you safe.”

Despite herself, she slid her hand lower to edge into her tights. God, she’d missed this. Tell me what to do, she begged silently. What do you want? What am I allowed? What was that pet name she had always used?

“Mo chuisle.” Angela could imagine the words as if they were spoken directly into her ear, Moira’s breath falling hot against her skin.

“Yes,” she breathed out loud, sliding her hand lower still, letting her fingers slip between her legs and find how wet she was already. Of course. Moira’s voice had always had that effect on her. “Tell me. Please.” By this point, she was so thoroughly entrenched in her memories that she hardly needed the recording; she could simply imagine what Moira might tell her.

“Not yet, mo chuisle. Have patience,” she chided. And Angela pulled her hand back, no matter how much she wanted it. It was her own body. This was just a fantasy. But the fantasy had power over her, and she wanted it to. “Good girl. You have been neglected of late, haven’t you, pet? And how patient you’ve been for me, how faithful.”

Again: “Yes.” Her fingertips continued to trail very lightly along the hem of her tights, her other hand still groping and teasing her chest. Slowly, almost lazily.

“Such sweetness deserves a reward, does it not?” She could imagine Moira’s tongue on her neck, and she begged for a mark—a bite, a bruise, a hickey, something. Something to mark her. Property. A possession. An object. So much easier that way. No agency meant no accountability. “That’s it, aingeal. Let me take care of everything.” She could have sobbed for how desperately she wanted it. No one asking her for help. No one looking to her for answers. No one criticizing her performance.

“I’ll be good,” she whispered. She could feel Moira’s hands on her shoulders, trailing down her arms, forcing her shirt up, her tights down, so she was exposed beneath the sheets. She lacked the presence of mind to be embarrassed. Fingertips traced her lips, and she obediently let them part, allowing Moira’s fingers to slide wetly over her tongue.

“Of course you will. You always are. I discipline you because I know you enjoy it, not because you misbehave.”

“I—”

“Hush.” Her voice was sharp, fingers sliding deeper, almost far enough to make Angela gag. “Manners, my pet. We mustn’t speak with our mouth full.”

Angela forced herself into silence, doing all she could to obey. Wet fingers slid past her lips, allowing her only a moment to catch her breath before sliding down between her legs. She was already so wet, so hot, and she could hear Moira purr, “Deny it all you like, but your body knows you want this.” One finger pressed inside her, slowly, drawing a shuddering breath from her lips. Then a second, faster, to steal her breath altogether. Still, she tried so hard to be quiet and still, to be whatever Moira wanted of her.

Friction between her legs, and her heart raced, her cheeks flushed with desire. Yes, she wanted it, and God, she’d wanted it for so long. Yet she managed to keep her hips still, to not buck them upward and beg for more. No. She’d been patient. She could continue to be patient.

“Such discipline, mo chuisle. It seems I made quite a lasting impression on you.” Laughter, and she recognized the feeling of being teased and praised simultaneously. She recognized it and found she had missed it. “But it’s not my intention to leave you wanting.” Those fingers moved faster, and Angela let out a low moan of desire, biting her lip hard to stifle her voice.

There was no answer for a moment, not because Angela became conscious of the fact that she was lying alone in bed and essentially talking to herself, but as a test, perhaps even a punishment; Moira withholding her voice because she knew Angela wanted it so badly. Those fingers drew out of her and slipped across her clit instead, slick and hot from being inside, sending a delicious chill through her body. Moira’s next order was simple but stern: “Beg.”

“Please,” Angela panted without a moment’s hesitation, fingertips moving steadily but not fast or hard enough to give her what she needed. Her voice was strained, breathless. “Please, let me cum. Make me cum. I’ll be good. I’ll be whatever you want.” These weren’t promises made in desperation; they were her own desires as well.

“You always are, mo chuisle. Now cum for me and prove it.”

Her fingers moved, pressed, circled, rubbed, fast enough that she lost her breath, lost her voice, all but lost her mind. Trembling, tense all over, she gave herself over to a powerful orgasm, clamping her free hand over her mouth so Moira’s name couldn’t pass her lips in her ecstasy. The pleasure hit her in waves, even stronger than she’d remembered, until everything melted into hot, tingling contentment. As she was coming down, she realized the audio file was still playing.

“And it could have been this simple to begin with if only you hadn’t been so stubborn.”

The laugh she let slip was light, soft, for once not laced with bitterness and irony. Everything felt much lighter now, in fact.

After forcing herself up for a hot shower and a change of clothes, Angela went back to bed feeling more lucid, more calm than she had in some time. This pretend scene with Moira was just a fantasy, it was true, but the wonders it had done her mind were undeniable. The sexual gratification was wholly secondary to the psychological release it had given her. It was like taking a full breath for the first time after a half-decade of slowly suffocating. Like being honest about who she was and what she needed after so long trying to change. And if just the thought of surrendering could help so much, she could only imagine what it would feel like in reality. To actually be with Moira again.

Just once. Just one more time, and it’ll be enough. To get it out of my system once and for all… To get her out of my head…

She slept better that night than she had in years.

#Moicy #Moira x Mercy #it would be really super chill if people could not do the whole ship war thing here because #I'm very not interested in that whole mess #my writing #fanfiction

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riddleredcoats · 5 years ago

Note

Prompt: Voldemort returns to his body after 13 years and finds out that Bellatrix died in Azkaban.

So, I didn’t write the scene where he finds her, because it always came out too melodramatic, but I did write the scene where he finds out. So here, have Voldemort full of feels. (Side appearances of Black Sisters, except Bella cause she’s dead. And a special guest.)

Hope you like it, @knightessofwalpurgis

A phantom pain

The darkened room that had served as his hideout for the past… Only the Gods know how many months… was dirty, filthy and in utter disarray. The blinds which hadn’t been opened since he had moved in, the desk had long since run out of space for his papers, the sofa had the light imprint of his body – less for his actual weight but more for his continued use – for when he slept, and the pile of clothes that were intermittently changed were all lying on the floor resting alongside the books and papers that had made the bulk of his research months ago; the only part of the room that wasn’t grimy was the sheets. He hadn’t used the bed for anything but put more papers and books when the desk ran out of space.

With a hushed rage the book in his hands takes a perfect arch of a flight as another dead end is all he has to content himself with.

It is the same as every other day.

His days are spent in research. Books upon books, papers upon papers, rumour upon rumour are checked, verified, rejected and annotated, and the cycle repeats. So engrossed in study that rare are the days he remembers to eat, much less sleep.

The cause of his research doesn’t help matters. Overcoming death? That is easy a task compared to overturning death. Once a deed is done, undoing it is a arduous task of near heroic exercise. And he had searched for such deeds, of people who had overturned death, no matter how fanciful the tale was.

He still remembers the day when the news of her death – he could never truly say her name anymore, thinking it even could be likened to craving his fangs on the neck of a unicorn; life-giving, yes, if only because the pain and revolt made it known that no hell could compare to the agony of living moment – had capitulated this whole, dull exercise his life seemed to revolve around.

He remembers the confusion of not seeing her with the rescued soldiers, the surprise in his face must have been evident but it hadn’t been Lucius – cowardly as he may be, he fancied himself useful – who had given him the news.

Her sister, tears in cloudy blue eyes had gently – why, why, why was she being so with him? – led him from the hall, and had apparated with him to a familiar site – he remembers her, quietly sobbing in her sister’s arms, as her father’s coffin went to ground, the image of her set against the background he found himself seeing again – and he must have stumbled because her sister, now alone with tears unabashedly running down her eyes, had grabbed his arm to steady him and lead him to a grandiose tomb – how, how how had this happened?

He had knelt before it and heard his companion gasp at the venerable act but paid it no mind, reading, instead, the inscription on the black marbled stone lined with golden veins. He traced the carved epitaph and date with a long, white finger. Arrived too late by a year. A mere year.

“She got the kiss,” broken-sobbed sister interrupted quietly, “Some guard tried to grab her, she fought back and killed him. There was nothing I could-…” he was sure that sobs racked her body, if the sound was anything to go by.

He remembers saying nothing, remembers watching it with muted eyes. He thought himself being able to rarely truly feel anymore but there was a dull pang in his chest that penetrated through his often-desensitized senses that seemed to reverberate through every part of his being.

He also remembers kneeling there for a long time; even after her sister was long gone, he remembers staying. He remembers coming back to Malfoy Manor and being surprised to see the pitying looks, the knowing looks, the sympathetic looks. As if everyone had known how he would react except himself.

If there had been rumours before, after that – after spending what turned out to be three days at her tomb stone –, it became inevitable to avoid them.

He had always known the rumours about them, would have to be blind, deaf and a squib to have never heard them, but that was all that there was to them… Rumours. A fact that would surprise enough people to make it a noteworthy gossip.

Of course that every rumour has a sliver of truth and this time was no different, while there was no interaction between them that hadn’t passed in front of the eyes of someone – anyone would do, at some point they had wordlessly decided – else, a precaution for both of them and a way to keep up the appearances… While that was an ignorable truth, it didn’t mean that sentiment wasn’t there. That need, lust, care, devotion, admiration, respect, loyalty, friendship, love… didn’t penetrate the air between them, infusing tension into every single of their interactions even with a bloody chaperone.

After learning of her death, first the pain had been dull, rarely striking at him even as he prepared his comeback. Then, as if his wall slowly crumbled, the pain began to harass at the back of his mind interrupting meetings, strategies, and sleep. The image of her, a thought that she might have, her voice…Oh, those were always breathtakingly painful when her voice echoed in his cold, unfeeling mind, and yet, it was only in those moments that he stopped feeling half-way real, when he heard her voice.

And then, as was his wont, as was his nature and character… He became fixated with the idea of her, possessed by the idea of truly listening to her voice one last time.

He knows, bitterly and with unbridled – yet still muted, as everything is these days – anger, that had they acted, had they indulged, and succumbed and allowed themselves to partake in adulterous and desired act – the consequences be thrice damned to hell – had they allowed themselves that reprieve from their stations, then he would not be so obsessed, so infatuated, so crippled by his need to listen to her again. To have her say the words they both knew to be true but had never put to lips, to hear her berate him, even, for having neglected his – their – cause in search of her, anything to hear her voice, her sentiment, her fondness and love for him in her quiet, even gentle if she so wished to make it so, voice.

And he had.

Neglected his cause, he meant. Almost bitter, but not entirely. A part of him glad to be rid of the of the conflict he had initiated when he had been too young to truly understand how tiring it was to be at the forefront of war faction, how war could tear at his brain until nothing remained but the ignorable need to survive. A war that he had never truly believed, not when the traditions the war had meant to preserve only resulted in leaving him and her utterly devastated and alone with their desires.

As his search for her became more and more time consuming, the war that had weighted on him for more years than he was comfortable with admitting, fell to the back burner to be abandoned to whoever wanted to take the mantle from him. Although, unsurprisingly, no one did. War, prison, and loss had ravaged the whole country, no one wanted to be at the vanguard of a war anymore.

And so, along the way, the many meetings became few and then scarce, and finally, no one dared to enter his room; all having deserted him, most having left the continent all together to avoid capture, he knew from meetings with Lucius who had eventually also stopped coming into the wing of his own manor he had reserved for him. And he had, eventually, lost track of time, unknowing how many months – years, perhaps – had passed since his focus shifted from blood conflict to bloody sentimental search.

And so the days repeated, books upon books, papers upon papers, rumour upon rumour. Again and again. Round and round it goes.

Cycle as his life might have become, there are days, though, that his brain – bursting with information, brimming with immoral and immortal reasonings – begs for different setting, of which, in his current near-completely-shut-in state left the gardens where the sun’s bright light affected his eyes, or the solarium which presents the same problem only with no solace to the heat from the outside wind, or finally, the library with dark, dusty tomes that would help in his research.

To act as if there is a decision to be made is always a moot point, really for that is where he always finds himself, at any rate, the library of the house of one of his – former – subordinates. Always with a hungry eye on the prize, the Malfoy ancestry would not allow Lucius to squander the possibility that he might return to his former glory. To say to the man that he might be hoping for an impossible result was hopeless and counterproductive, he is not that far gone to unrecognize the advantage of the luxury he finds himself at.

This day is no different as he leaves his bedroom and walks with scarcely used legs the few paces to the library, immersing himself in the smells of old books. Combing through severely lacking old spines of tomes older than the very building, and passing a section he rarely seeks, and something calls his eyes to it.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees it. A faded picture hidden between rarely called upon tomes of three young women, heads thrown back in laughter in the setting of a seedy bar that they must have ran off to in spite of cherished parents advise.

Three Sisters Black.

The oldest, strong, powerful, and warrior-like, none like her was he ever likely to find; having drawn her last breath, she was the one he was searching for despite wasteful death. The middle-one, princess, boulder-bound, saved from terrible fate by a boy’s clumsy hands; the one he always forgot no matter how much pain she wrought. The youngest, delicate, golden, prideful, family’s path did she follow; the one who shared his need and urged him to succeed.

The Three Black Sisters.

Sisters three.

Lightning, painful and mottled, courses through veins as idea materialized in brain.

Sisters three.

Brothers three.

The Deathly Hallows. Master of Death, the one to hold them all would be. Still, for a quick talk, the stone would do, all he had to do was find the one who had it. Plan cocked and ready to execute, he makes to leave the room when sound strikes him still, he had thought himself alone in the library.

Fate is a curious thing, or perhaps, it merely enjoys making a mockery of him, for the sound he hears is intricately linked to the wonderous epiphany reached.

He hears a snort, the rotten sister, he knows the voice well, so like hers, “Who would have thought… When we heard he came back everyone sprint to a frenzy, after ousting Fudge, naturally. But then… Nothing. For three-years. We thought that the Potter boy had lost his mind.”

“If only.” The golden sister, now. He knows that voice too, much less like hers but still known to him. Though, barely, anymore.

“Yeah, I know. And then Draco, last year, spills the beans and says he’s here. We call Lucius in to the Ministry and then he says the words…” a laugh now, loud and like hers too, but less vivid, less enticing, just less, “’He’s looking for a way to bring Bellatrix back’, all snide and everything as Lucius inclines to do. We thought to bring him in but decided against it when we realized that he was better off in his own desperate search of her. Gods, the shock that rippled through the Wizardry World.”

“I know. I have the newspaper articles,” the other argues coldly, out of patience, now too sounding like her a bit, “Why are you telling me this? Did you come to mock? Did you come to tarnish the memory of our sister just that little bit more?”

“Did you know,” the traitor continues as if she hadn’t been interrupted, but indeed ridiculing, “The Ministry almost wanted to give our sister a medal. For ending a war before it started. Only our illustrious sister could do that, long after she’s dead, too. And all that with her cunt. Incredible, really.”

Before he can move, before he can even decipher the words, his addled brain too used to written texts and less to human interaction, before he can react to the obscene, immoral, lewd insult, before he can do any of that… It is the youngest’s voice, harsh and cold and insulted beyond measure, that rises in the room.

“How dare you?!”

“How dare I, what?” Bound Princess Andromeda may be, but of wit sharp as the family and stone she was born and bound to, “We all know that this desperation could only come from one place. That this particular devotion that not even her husband shared is from some rotten place inside of him. That he wants her back, is indication enough that they-…”

Before another foul insult can make its way past Black raised mouth, he speaks, finally loud enough to attract their attention.

“We didn’t.”

Tea-filled porcelain shatters on the floor, the sisters startled by his utterance. Startled gasps fill the silence of his wake and arrogance feigned he walks to them with the intent of walking by altogether.

But when the Princess-named sister looks at him, the urge to advert his eyes almost overwhelms him; family-bound she and her sister were, but it is unfairly unkind for her to look so much like the one he seeks, and although the colouring is all wrong – all far too dull, not vibrant black hair or grey iris – it hurt to look at the look-a-like. No, the golden-haired, blue-eyed sister was much safer bet.

“Come, sit.”

Fear as taken place to gentleness in the youngest of the sisters, either by shared misery or by nature of motherhood. He should care about lost station, but she does not pass any imaginary boundaries that may have existed what feels like centuries ago. He obeys, more out of need to organize his thoughts on his new idea than real obedience or want of small talk.

“So you never…”

Whatever plans he had to remain quiet are quickly broken by noisy-look-a-like-sister looking at him, suspiciously. As if he would lie. He might, to be frank, but not about this – not about her – and certainly not now, now that she’s… not here.

“No.” He admits, unsure as to why he is compelled to do so, “We never. She was married, and even if it did not matter, which it did… She didn’t-…” the phrase hangs in the air, and he cannot unstick the words from his throat.

“She didn’t…?” Prods the look-a-like, glutton for information. Either as gossip or as genuine care for her estranged sister, he does not know.

“The risk for her was high, no denying that. But the risk for me,” He says still unbelieving that it is true, that the pain they bore was born out of mutual feeling and not one-sided apathy, “the risk was too high. It would make me seem even more hypocritical than my lineage already did. She did not want to risk it.”

“Are you even sure she wanted..?” Meddling in the wound she had opened up. The cruelty of her sister would make Bell- her – proud.

“Yes!” Word he breathes forcefully. Too forcefully, perhaps, as the bookcase behind him trembles in tune with his magic, “She did want.”

“How do you know?” Prodding further, Black brutality rearing its head again.

“He knows.” Golden sister answers the question, iron in her voice, shield against brittle princess, unbending with the same certainty he feels, “He knows because she couldn’t hide it. Because looking at her as she looked at him was a masterclass in pain, deep and true and undoubtful. She loved him madly. Fervently. Gloriously … As was our sister’s wont.”

“What a load of bullshit.” Mumbles in response of poetry invoked, but suspicious mist in eyes couldn’t hide the truth of affected sentiment, “Bellatrix would let everyone, and everything, go to hell if it suited her. She doesn’t… I mean, she never…”

“She loves you.” Again comforting for some alien reason that he cannot bear – and does not want – to identify, “I saw her mind, over and over again. Letting you leave was unthinkable, unbearable, even. Not going after you… That was a kindness she seldom affords anyone.”

The blood-bound duo quietens, and he with nothing more to say retreats to his space, his sanctuary, leaving behind two opposing sisters instead of the three harmonious ones it should have always been.

////////////////////////

It takes him longer still to come by the stone he so feverishly searched. This time, he counted. Almost five-years to the day since he found her, dead and broken as she should never have been. He takes a moment, for he must, his heart beating far too fast to be trustworthy at the sight of her.

Taking a deep breath, a complicated sigh of both anticipation and nerve, he grasps the cold black stone in his elegant, white hand. He closes his eyes, thinks of her, and for a second does not understand how some people’s image of their loved ones blur with time when he can see her so clearly, so quickly and so vividly that it must mean love; her black hair shiny and wavy swaying mid-battle, eyes grey and wide lusting after the next breathless moment, nose high strung and proud, neck long and elegant, and lips red and luscious and, deplorably, unkissed by him.

He sees her in his mind’s eyes. And calls to her. And he opens his eyes, heart thundering at the image he expects. Yet when eyelids lift and eyes acclimate to light, the image he expects is not the one he encounters.

Black hair does appear before him, not shiny or wavy but messy and dishevelled of bed-ridden quality as if of never brushed it spoke of. Eyes, not of a faded grey he had come to know better than his own, but of matte black that made a simile of his before blood-red iris replaced it. Nose brash and crooked spoke of no noble quality although known was that most pure ancestry ran in this person’s veins; same could be said of short and stocky neck burdened by inbreed defect. And lips, not red or luscious, but that had never shown him affection either.

A most undesirable picture does the woman in front of him paint.

He speaks first. Not because he must, the ritual says nothing of the sort, but because the other seems to be enthralled by his every image, as if he was the dead one and not she. When he speaks, he does not address her, does not care to address her. He only wishes for the one he called.

“You are not who I called.”

“Hello, Tom.”

The voice he had imagined a thousand times before as being gentle and quiet, sounded nothing like his imaginary folly. Coarse and broken, far too high and enough to grate on his brain. Another thing about this absent figure of his life that fell well below his standards.

“Hello, Mother.”

Title addressed not out of respect or affection, but of needling quality; poking at the wound that he could see in her black eyes.

“My boy-…”

Her sentiment does not interest him. She, does not interest him. The one he wants, the one he was certain he had been about to meet. That is what – who – interest him. So, manners out of the window and mother or not, he asks the question he hungers the answer for, all others having been lost in the wake of his search for her.

“Where is she?” He says, interrupting wounded party, “Where is…Bellatrix?” If his mouth stammers out her name, the name he hadn’t spoken or heard in years it was merely out of rare habit, a lie he would tell anyone but himself. He knows now that the pain he feels precludes strong sentiment – love, even – no matter how wrapped it may be.

The figure he had dreamed of in his childhood resigns to his demands, hurt and longing in her gaze. But mother, as loosely as the term can be applied, hungers to rid child of questions she knows the answers to. He listens, intently, son to her for the first time since their world began.

“The soul sucking monsters, they took her soul. There is nothing to call over.” Gently, she illuminates the dark implications of her presence, “Tom, she is gone. There is no way for you to talk to her.”

No.

He refuses to believe so.

When he was fifteen, he refused to let time expire on him. He found a way around death itself and had done it seven times. He lifted himself out of hellish existence, out of poverty, out of banality. He fought and struggled until his very name became so synonymous with power that eventually fear demanded no one utter it. This stumbling block of meandering quality was the challenge he had been working towards his whole life, he forged himself anew for this. He died and came back. He fought the inevitable and won.

He would do so again.

“Then the beast, who sucked the soul of her… It should have the answers.”

“Child,” Mother, as mothers’ wont, ignores child’s angry scowl at never used term, “do not travel this road. You cannot find what you seek, you are bound to be disappointed.”

“I must try,” Explanations fall on flat ears he knows, “She must be there, in the stomach of a monster who sucked the life of her, who used and abused of her, who does not know the precious cargo it carries. I must relieve her of it. I must end it. She would have done so for me.”

Silence is the answer to his harangue, but not solitude, no. The image of his mother – hideous, broken, black of hair – was still there, looking at him longingly. Expectantly. He ignored her. What he was about to do would require time, it was fresh and impossible – things he excelled at – and he needed to start now. He turns to black board of his room, his ever-faithful companion until he can succeed in findingher,

But when ignored form coughs loudly, he turns from black board to look at her.

“You have nothing more to say to me?” Asks the ghostly figure of his mother, deathly pale and transparent in her image and need.

“No. I have everything I’ve ever needed from you.” He says realizing it to be so, the phantom pain of his mother’s abandonment had simply dissipated somewhere along the way as another took its place, “You can go. I have work to do.”

“She does not deserve you.”

“You don’t know that. Don’t know her.” Quiet rage fills the soul, of which he has an indisputable lack, yet not enough to refrain from his need, “And even if it was true, I merely wish to speak.”

“Have you not spoken all you need? Is there no other act that you should perform?”

Motherly ghost or not, she should not know of the details of his need of her.

“Begone.” He says but this close to throwing the stone away from his grasp, “I have work to be done.”

“And after you’ve spoken,” sly nature runs in blood, and he chafes at the purest part of him chastising him now, “What will you do?”

Quiet permeates the sounds in the room, making the desolate space even more so. The stillness accentuates the icy walls and chaos ridden room, muted sounds barely seep in from the rich fauna and warm sun outside, silence dominates the room and the space in his head.

He knows not. He knows not what he would do.

“I do not know.” He admits, unabashed, confusion settling in his brow, “But it matters not. I have a need, and a way to seize it. After…” he frowns, “When it comes, I will know.”

“Very well, boy.” Motherly figure starts to fade, as she always has, but not before parting goodbyes, “Immortal you may be, but the task you have you will not succeed. So, be shrewd, or you will never be free. And there will be no one at the end for you to greet.”

Prophecy bound he seems to be, as his mother spun words with the knowledge from the beyond. He cares not, as he should not have before with the boy with thrice-defying parents that he could trace back as having put to motion this desolate exercise. There is work to be done and pain to correct, a lifetime meant nothing to him, not when he has tons to spare.

END

///

Note; Not to be a self-promoting whore looking for views, but if you want a slightly better ending I have another fanfic in which he does end up talking to Bellatrix…(x)

#Bellamort #fanfic #mine #sad noises #The Black Sisters

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xellandria · 5 years ago

Text

tw: death

My father died sometime last night. My mom woke me up at around 4:20 (blaze it?), after she found him, ran around in a panic for a bit (her words), and called 911. I’d only gone to sleep a couple hours earlier, and neither of us had checked on him until then (he went to bed much earlier than the two of us ever do) so it’s hard to say when it would have happened; we might learn more later, or we might not. I’m not actually sure how much more information we’ll get—or want, really—when whatever examination happens happens, or if there will be an examination/autopsy/whatever. All I know about that kind of thing comes from media, and it’s always convenient for media to have an autopsy.

About nine months ago, he was out on a hike and slid down some scree and hurt his back in some way. Prior to the whole pandemic, he’d been going through all sorts of various treatments and tests to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it, but he’d been in pain for a while. Supposedly it was at least getting a little better with time—mom says he hadn’t taken his pain meds for the last fifteen days or so—but it was definitely there, and he hadn’t been exercising much (if at all) as a result, and gained a lot of weight from the inactivity.

About a week ago, he started coughing and having trouble breathing, and apparently was having issues sleeping as well. He called his doctor about it yesterday, and they had him go get tested for Covid. The results for that won’t be back til Mondayish, but it’s sort of a moot point now, I suppose. Well, partly moot—if he tested positive, mom and I definitely have to be a lot more nitpicky about our own health. We’ve not been going out except as absolutely necessary, but I can’t help thinking that we did go to Walmart and Costco on the 16th and while he was wearing a mask of some sort on that trip, his mask procedure was not the best and that was about a week ago. That’d be a little fast for Covid symptoms I think, but maybe?

I don’t know. I wasn’t hearing much about it (we’ve been on different tracks for the past week so I haven’t seen much of him) but when we were talking to various relatives about an hour ago, mom seemed to imply that it was a lot of trouble breathing—which makes me ask why he didn’t do something about it if it was really that bad, but that’s not something I can or should ask at this point; I can’t ask him and giving her more to agonize about or regret is absolutely pointless (I still beat myself up on bad days for not being sterner about getting Emmett to a vet when I knew he wasn’t fully right, and he died like five or six years ago at this point; I absolutely do not want to inflict that kind of thing on my mother about her husband, for god’s sake, and I didn’t push harder for my own health and safety when I was having heart issues last year until I finally caved and went to the ER; I could have made that trip a lot sooner too instead of fucking around with my doctor half-ignoring me and limply running tests for six months).

Because it’s just me and mom out here on this coast, we’re probably not going to have a funeral. Things would probably be different if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic (his sisters might want something, I don’t think we thought to ask), but they can’t come out here and we can’t go over there and neither of us really want to deal with it. She knew his preferences (at least for disposal—he wanted to be cremated) so we’ve got that under control, at least.

I’m sure it’s partly shock, but I definitely feel guilty as hell that I’m glad that the pandemic is giving us a good excuse to not have a funeral. Maybe he would have wanted one? I don’t know. I know my own preferences (only if my survivors need it for themselves; I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but the idea of death and corpses and such spooks me something awful and funerals and burials and such are obviously the worst for that) and mom was the one who said no when I asked her if she wanted one (though maybe I should ask again when we’re both less shocky). If the dead do exist beyond death in some capacity, I hope he understands that it’s not that we don’t love him... but that’s a lot of money and time and mental energy for a lot of pomp and circumstance that doesn’t make... well, I was going to say “doesn’t make anybody feel better” but someone must get comfort from that kind of thing, even if I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who has.

There’s a lot of unknowns right now. Dad was the one who handled all the household finances and I know he never went over it all with me, and I got the impression that he and mom never got around to it either (though we both mentioned that it was something we’d been thinking about, it’s obviously too late now). Mom’s worried about the taxes, and what bills are on auto-pay and all that, and it’s going to be a nightmare to go through his computer and phone and make sure all that stuff is handled... but that’s not today’s worry. I mean, I almost wish it was—it’d give me something to do now that we’re done talking to the EMTs and the police and the people from the funeral home and calling the relatives (and before I work up the nerve to call his old work friend, who is the only other person I can think of that deserves to know), but it’s also not something to walk into with two hours of sleep and a broad-but-vague understanding of how to access the data, but not what to do with it.

I haven’t cried yet, and I feel guilty about that too (though again, I’m putting it down to shock). Cat death/injury is so triggering to me that I burst into tears nearly at the mention/thought of it, but my own father is gone and I’m just sitting at my computer, typing out a lengthy essay about how I want to consider myself a piece of shit for it, but I know it’s all part of the process, etc. etc. I remember when my parents woke me up to tell me my maternal grandmother had died, I definitely cried then (and was angry) so I know it’s possible for me to feel things, or was at one point. I’m sure the depression isn’t helping (and the fact that I think my med dosage may not be good enough anymore).

I’m sort of glad for the pandemic too, for the social distancing and masks that all the strangers that came to our home at 4-6am were wearing because I haven’t taken a shower in a couple days and I am disgusting and unshaved, but hopefully they didn’t notice. At least they didn’t comment on it in my hearing, so I can maybe hopefully pretend.

Anyway. I’m currently distracting myself by writing this out, but there’s not much more I want to say at this point. I’ve posted out of my guild’s raids indefinitely for the moment (it was the first thing I did after I got out of bed while we were waiting for the EMT, and the second was tweet about it; my priorities are so fucked, y’all). I don’t really know whether I’ll be able to stay on top of D&D—it’s only once a week, it’s a much smaller group of people who are much less likely to make some sort of unthinking or triggering remark (frankly, the idea of listening to my guild leader and some of the non-raiders talk about their jobs as doctors/upcoming medical practitioners is absolutely not what I need in my life right now, and I can’t tell 19+ other people to watch every word that comes out of their mouths or from their fingers above and beyond the guild rules because it might make the baby cry (or tilt her off the face of the earth)... but I can probably get away with asking only four other people to do that) and it’s not like we’re doing much where there might be schedule conflicts. I’m gonna have to tell them for sure (well, Naha knows cos he follows me on twitter, and Kattii might cos she also follows me but I’m not sure if she keeps up with her timeline, but I don’t think the others do). I should definitely not isolate myself entirely—I don’t know a lot right now, but I know that’s a real bad idea no matter how depressed I was before this happened—so I may keep the D&D up.

I’m not sure if I should go to the Sunday Jaina runs or not, since I won’t really be part of the prog team and shouldn’t take mounts out of the mouths of people who will actually be around. I already felt kinda guilty about going to last week’s when I’d posted out of raid for mental health reasons (and had missed the week before’s entirely for same). I dunno. I’ve got a day and change to think about that one, and what I want to do with myself.

Oh, and M+ is a thing too isn’t it, fuck me. I dunno. If I do Jaina and I do D&D, I should probably at least do the M+ too; it’s only one or two runs a week even if it has been stressful because we’ve been scrambling for a filler every week for a few months now (Intol’s been wrapped up in the whole pandemic thing on his side of life, and none of us have had the time or energy to find a consistent/reliable filler until he’s ready to come back). At least I have a good excuse to not be the one scrambling for that weekly filler anymore, eh? lol :T That’s also a small group size so that should be all right. Jaina will be touchy for the larger group size reason too actually, now that I think about it (although I can probably get away with not being on discord for most of the run).

I dunno. I’m rambling now, and now I’m also rambling at Naha in DMs so maybe I should stop rambling in at least one location.

#xellafail #tw: death #just in case you needed a second trigger warning #god today's a day and it's only been five hours #actually five hours is a lot more than I thought it was gonna be #so there's that I guess lol

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cooliogirl101 · 5 years ago

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Since I've seen no one else doing it for this one, Hisana/Gin romantic

Gin falls for her, both through a series of sudden realizations and so gradually he doesn’t notice it until loving her is as much a part of him as Shinsou is.

1. Chemistry

Talking to Yukimura Hisana is easy.

It’s little more than a passing thought, easily dismissed, and yet he keeps coming back to it. The way she never falters under his gaze like so many others do. The way she always has a retort ready, matching him word for word. It feels like they’ve known each other for years despite only knowing each other for a few short months.

He knows it can’t last, of course. Sooner or later they’ll be enemies; she’ll do everything she can to stop him (because she’s Hisana) and when she does, he’ll show her no mercy. Their relationship is already complicated by a million lies, by opposing morals and Aizen Sousuke and her knowing exactly what kind of person he is.

And yet despite all that, being with her feels like the simplest thing in the world when it should have been anything but.

2. Similarity

She understands.

He once told her that they were more similar than they were different and it startles even him at times how true that statement rings. He has never hidden what he is from her and when they’re alone together– when she’s away from her precious sister and boyfriend, when she doesn’t feel the need to hide her fangs– he can see the same single-minded intensity he feels (to crush those who would dare take away what’s his) mirrored in her eyes.

Then there’s the fact that she’s guessed far more about him than he should be comfortable with. She may not know about his relationship with Rangiku and all that he would do for her, but she’s intuited that there’s someone he cares about and that alone should have him viewing her as a threat, an enemy.

He doesn’t and that, more than her ability to see through him, is what truly unnerves him.

3. Loss

Gin doesn’t regret his part in Hisana’s death. It was necessary, he’s long since made his peace with that, and it would have happened even without his involvement. Yukimura Hisana’s fate had been sealed the moment she raised her voice in favor of those already condemned.

He doesn’t grieve for her. But he can’t help but think that a world without Yukimura Hisana is far lesser for it.

4. Trust

She came back.

Upon discovering Khimaira’s true identity, even Gin isn’t sure how to explain his decision to propose a partnership with her instead of killing her. He’d made the decision decades ago that killing Aizen would be his duty, and his alone. Confiding in another person was out of the question; people, shinigami especially, were stupid, careless, weak. They were a liability, even those you cared for. Especially those you cared for– he’d learned that long ago.

And yet, with Hisana…he’d personally witnessed her come back from the dead, from having her soul ripped apart and her mind shattered, just so she could hand-deliver a giant, heartfelt ‘fuck you’ to the person responsible. How could he not begin to believe in her?

(He’d had her pinned against a wall, Shinsou to her throat and ready to kill…and then he’d released her.

“Why?” She’d asked. Why not turn me in, why let me go?

He hadn’t been sure how to explain that in the event that things went wrong and he failed, she was the only person he trusted to finish his job for him.)

5. The future

A fool’s dream.

He’d long since accepted that he could have no future with Rangiku. One didn’t simply betray Aizen Sousuke and survive. And even if he did, then what? If he returned to Soul Society, he’d be branded a traitor, executed for his betrayal and the murders he had committed on Aizen’s orders. And Rangiku…he knows her well enough to know she’d never accept that. By defending him though, she’d be forever stained, disgraced by her association with him. He loves her far too much to do that to her.

And yet–

“Ya ever consider what you’ll do after we win?” Gin leans back casually, resting his weight on the palms of his hands. Hisana (and he’ll always think of her as Hisana, no matter what name she uses or face she wears) glances at him, amused.

“A bit premature to say that, don’t you think?” She asks wryly. “There’s no guarantee either one of us will survive winning.”

“Indulge me,” he says, watching her closely. “Would ya go back to being Hisana?”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” she answers finally, when the silence stretches on too long. “I don’t know if I can ever go back to being Hisana, if it’s even possible at this point. I just…I hate the thought of being his legacy. Of owing everything that I am to him. This body…” She motioned at herself with a disgusted expression on her face. “Sometimes I wish I could just erase myself. Start over, with a clean slate. I deserve that much, don’t I? A new beginning, unburdened by old memories.” Her words trail off towards the end, soften to the point that he has to struggle to hear them. “Then again, I don’t really want to forget. Too much I’d miss, I think.”

He wonders if he’s imagining the way her gaze drifts towards him as she says that last sentence.

“I suppose the two don’t need to be completely mutually exclusive. I can reinvent myself and keep a piece of my past with me at the same time– I have before. I can do it again,” she muses.

“Would ya let me be there when that happens?” He asks quietly. He knows it’s too soon, far too soon– premature, as she called it– to be thinking thoughts of the future, but he already knows he wants to be a part of hers. “Be there as you…start again.” Hisana looks at him for a moment, speculative.

“You’re such a large part of my present, my past, it’s difficult to imagine you not being a part of any future I have as well,” she says slowly. “You should know though that I won’t chase you. I’m not in the habit of begging people to stay.”

“I wouldn’t expect ya to,” he says, before falling silent.

Chances are, the whole topic was a moot point anyway, an interesting thought experiment between two people who knew full well the subject matter they were discussing was purely hypothetical. He knows he doesn’t expect to survive this war and he knows Hisana feels the same way.

And yet despite knowing that his fate is set, despite having resigned himself to dying for the sake of his revenge over a century ago, despite knowing it’s the height of stupidity to wish for anything else at this point…something about Yukimura Hisana makes him hope for an after.

(Is this too fluffy? It feels too fluffy considering that it’s from Gin’s POV– it feels weird writing him from a softer point of view. I do think that the process of him falling in love with her would go something like this though-- also the first 3 steps are already WTL-canon, take that as you will.

Probably wrote a bit too much for this– technically the prompt was ‘come up with one headcanon’ and I came up with five– but I couldn’t help it, it combines several of my favorite tropes: ‘enemies to friends to (implied future) lovers’ and ‘two deeply damaged people find comfort in each other/us against the world’

#Anonymous #walk two lifetimes

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seeaddywrite · 6 years ago

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“Everything you think I need isn’t what I need. What I need is you.” take your pic I'll be stoked with anything you write

for you, @ubiestcaelum! i hope you like it :) [also, y’all, just in case: warnings for non-graphic panic attack & references to child abuse & PTSD.]

EDIT: Now with a companion fic from Alex’s POV.

want to send a prompt?

Michael has no idea how to help Alex on bad days. The airman had been right, when he came to the trailer and pointed out that they don’t really know each other – they’ve never spent a lot of time talking. As teenagers, they had to sneak around to spend time together, and there were far more interesting things to do. And then, well – after that, there was never enough time. They’ve been better about it lately, while trying to learn how to be friends, but Michael still doesn’t know how Alex lost his leg, or what to do when the other man turns pale and withdrawn in the middle of the Wild Pony during a particularly raucous bar fight.

The crowd is thick and loud around them, talking and laughing as Max’s coworkers haul the two combatants out the front door. Everyone else sitting around their table returns to their conversations; Liz is leaning against Max’s shoulder, laughing at something he murmured in her ear, while Isobel and Kyle Valenti toss verbal barbs back and forth across their beers. And all the while, Alex seems to get smaller and smaller, pulling into himself and

It blows his mind that no one else seems to notice how Alex has pulled away from the conversation and looks like he’s about to puke. He smiles and nods along when he’s forced, but Michael can see the facade, and the way it seems to slip lower with each passing second. He glances at Liz, hiding it with a long drag from his beer bottle. She’s one of Alex’s best friends; surely, she’d notice Alex’s tension? The way none of his smiles reach his eyes, or the slight trembling in his fingers when he forgets to grip the bottle in his hands tightly enough to hide it?

But even if Liz knows Alex well enough to pick up on the signs that he’s so good at hiding, she’s too lost in Max to notice tonight. He almost wishes he could be that oblivious … but for the past two months of friendship with Alex, he’s made a study of the man’s tells and nonverbal cues. He has an intimate knowledge of the slope of his shoulders and the lines in his face, and can close his eyes and picture exactly the way Alex looks when he’s relaxed and smiling. It’s a little pathetic, he supposes, his inability to look away from Alex. It’s been made clear, time and time again, that Alex doesn’t want Michael as anything more than a friend, and friends definitely don’t do that sort of thing. But there’s no switch to flip, no way to force himself to let go of the feelings he’s had since the day he stole Alex’s guitar from the music room, and Michael doesn’t think he’d do it, even if he could.

“Alex?” No one else is going to do anything, and Michael is physically incapable of watching Alex struggle alone right in front of him. “Hey, you good, man?” He keeps his voice quiet, and leans forward so that only the intended recipient of his whisper will hear. Michael knows enough of who Alex is to know that he wouldn’t want attention brought to the faraway look in his eyes, and he certainly wouldn’t want anyone fussing over him. So, uncertain as he is, Michael shoves his own chair between the others and Alex, shielding him from view with the bulk of his body, and tentatively reaches out to brush his fingertips against the back of Alex’s hand in an effort to get his attention.

A full-body flinch is the response, and Michael yanks his hand back as Alex finally turns his head to look at him, the motion jerky. Awkward silence falls between them, even as someone turns the music back up on the jukebox in the corner, and Michael rubs at the back of his neck uncertainly. “You want to get out of here?” he asks finally, after another minute of staring, wherein it seems like Alex is trying to say something without opening his mouth, and all Michael can worry about it overstepping one of the many lines that have been drawn between them.

The responding nod is immediate, if a little uncoordinated. They didn’t come together, but Michael doesn’t think he can just walk Alex to his car and watch him drive off like this. What if he’s too distracted to drive safely? What if there’s something really wrong, and he shouldn’t be left alone? There are too many questions and Michael’s too chicken-shit to ask for the answers. He’s been shoved out of Alex’s life so many times that he’s still recovering from the whiplash, and Michael doesn’t know if he can take another round. But Alex is looking at him with something bordering desperation in his familiar, dark gaze, and Michael isn’t soulless enough to let that look go unanswered.

“Guys, I’m gonna call it a night,” Michael announces to their assembled friends, standing up from his chair and shoving it back into place beneath the table.

“Michael Guerin, calling it a night after one drink?” Isobel teases, lifting her lined eyes to his. “No way! Stay here and drink with us!” She’s already pretty drunk, judging by the way her speech slurs and she doesn’t make a single disparaging remark about the bar. Max is going to have a hell of a time getting her home, but he’s got Liz and Valenti for backup, and it’s not like she doesn’t deserve to try to drink her sorrows away after everything she’s been through in the past few months.

“I’ll see you for dinner at your place tomorrow,” he promises her, leaning forward to brush his lips to the top of her hair. Michael glances at Max while she can’t see him, and his brother nods once, a resigned quirk of his lips obvious only to those who knew him well. He’s as worried about Isobel as Michael is, but nothing but time is going to heal the wounds that Noah left in their sister, and for now, Alex is a more pressing concern.

He turns back to the other man after he finishes his goodbyes. He’s still pale, but seems to have pulled himself together enough to wave at the others. Then, Alex gestures down at his leg with a small sigh, glancing at Michael and then away, like he’s ashamed of something. “Think you could give me a hand?” The question is quiet and a little strained, but hearing Alex’s voice relaxes Michael a little. At least if he’s still talking, things can’t be that bad. Can they?

Without a word, Michael holds out his hands. Months ago, he would’ve just grabbed him by the waist and pulled him up, relishing in the proximity of their bodies. But things are different now, and the only way he touches Alex now is if the other man makes the first overture. He doesn’t have to wait long; Alex’s shaking fingers wrap around Michael’s steady hands, and he pulls him up out of the chair, automatically taking his weight when he stumbles. Vaguely, Michael hears Max and Liz asking if they need help, but he just waves them off and makes sure Alex is steady before starting toward the entrance of the bar. They’ll have plenty of questions to answer when they face their friends again, and most of them will probably be annoying and nosy, but that’s a problem for later.

The moment they’re outside, Alex stops pretending that he’s supporting himself and slumps against Michael’s chest in a rare show of vulnerability. His cheek rests against the top of Michael’s shoulder, Alex’s rapid breath making the side of his neck feel humid and sending a ticklish thrill down his spine. “Hey,” Michael murmurs, wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do with his hands, now. He can’t let go without worrying that Alex will fall, but part of him is afraid that the longer he holds on, the harder it will be when he has to let go. “You okay?”

Alex’s responding chuckle is mirthless. “You already know the answer to that,” he says, the strain of holding casual conversation obvious in his voice.

Michael doesn’t bother to deny it. “You checked out on us during that fight. You faked it pretty well for a while, but I – I could tell something was wrong.” It’s as close to asking what’s going on in Alex’s head as he’s going to get. “You want me to take you home? Maria won’t let anyone tow your SUV.” Talking so nonchalantly is harder than it should be with Alex’s warmth seeping into him. This is the closest they’ve been since they had sex before that night at the drive-in, and Michael wants to bury his head in the sand and pretend that the proximity isn’t just because Alex is looking for any port in a storm.

“I can –”

“If you’re about to try to tell me you can drive home, save it. I know you’re a badass, okay? I know you can take care of yourself, and you don’t want me around when you feel like shit because we’re just friends, or whatever your problem is this time. But your hands are shaking, and I’m not letting you drive until I’m sure you’re going to make it the whole way out to that cabin safely.” God, why is it so fucking hard for Alex to let Michael help, just a little? He’s not asking to spend the night! He just wants to make sure he’s safe. Are they really on such bad terms now that he can’t care at all?

There’s a beat of silence. “I was just going to say that I can send her a text tomorrow and ask her to have someone drive it to the cabin,” Alex says, so quietly that Michael can barely hear it. His entire body has gone rigid, and before Michael can figure out what the problem is, he’s pulling away to stand on his own. “I’d appreciate the ride. If you don’t mind.”

The formality makes Michael want to rip his hair out of his head, but he bites back a snappish reply and just nods to his truck, parked almost directly in front of them. He wants to ask if Alex can get in on his own; he seems awfully unsteady on his feet, still, and Michael assumes that something has gone wrong with his bad leg, but again, the questions just turn into a lump in his throat. Alex manages on his own, though, rendering that a moot point, so Michael walks around and climbs into the driver’s side silently.

Neither of them speak for the first ten minutes. Alex spends the time with his hands curled into fists on his thighs, his face pale and drawn in the moonlight that shines through the windshield. He doesn’t seem to be any better now that they’ve left the bar, which Michael had hoped would be enough. But it isn’t, and he’s not able to just leave things this way. “What happened?” he asks finally, the question shattering the tense silence.

“The guy Hank punched fell on me,” Alex answers abruptly, the words short and terse. “Just for a minute. But my damn leg has been aching all day, and he jolted the prosthetic. It hurts, and I don’t – I can’t –” His breath is coming so rapidly that it sounds like he’s panting, and Michael looks toward him, ready to pull over as soon as Alex gives him a reason. “I panic, sometimes. When it hurts. It’s stupid, and there’s no fucking reason for it, but -”

Michael thinks he gets it. Sometimes, when his hand spasms in the middle of the night, he wakes up sure that Jesse Manes is in the trailer with him. It always takes some time for his heart to stop racing, after that, and he never quite manages to fall back to sleep. Alex’s trauma is so much worse; it doesn’t surprise him that the same thing might happen in his case without the added disorientation of sleep. “Panic doesn’t usually need a reason,” he says evenly. “Anything I can do to help?”

They’re pulling into Alex’s driveway now, and Michael can practically see his chance to be with Alex and actually do something to help slipping away. Alex will go inside to lick his wounds privately, and Michael will be left on the other side of the door, waiting and wondering and wishing, until he’s forced to give up and leave.

As soon as the engine turns off, Michael finds himself locked in a staring contest with Alex, who’s eyes have that same desperate and expectant look in them from back at the bar. Michael returns the look helplessly, wordlessly conveying that he doesn’t know what Alex wants or needs from him. “Alex –”

There’s no time to finish the thought before the other man has his hands in a death grip, clutching so tightly that Michael can feel his fingernails break skin. It makes his bad hand ache a little, but that’s not nearly a good enough reason to pull away from Alex. In fact, Michael could have been bleeding out, and he would’ve still held Alex’s hand. “Don’t make me ask, Guerin.” The whisper catches him by surprise, and Michael’s mouth closes with a surprised snap. “Please?”

“Isobel’s the mind reader, Alex,” he retorts, a hint of defensiveness running through the words despite his best efforts. “I can’t just look in your head to figure out if you need space, or a ride, or hand to hold, or whatever it is you’re angling for right now. You’ve gotta actually say it.”

Alex sighs, and shakes his head. “Everything you think I need isn’t what I need,” he says, and for the first time in the last hour, his gaze is steady. “I mean, maybe the handholding thing would be nice, but I’ve had so much space lately that I can’t stand it. This isn’t going to get any better, Michael.” His fingers tremble around Michael’s hands, and wordlessly, Michael reverses them, so that he’s holding Alex’s clasped palms between both of his, keeping them still. Alex stares down at their entwined hands for a long moment, biting at his lower lip, as if he can’t decide how to finish, or how much he should say.

“I’ve been trying to stay away from you until I get my head together, because I don’t know that I can be what you need, right now. And it’s not fair for me to keep running away every time you help me keep it together. I’m a fucking mess, and I don’t – Jesus, Michael, some days I can’t even get out of bed. What kind of man does that? What kind of boyfriend could I be? But – I think, maybe – what I need is you. If there’s even still a chance of that.”

Michael just stares at Alex for a long moment, trying to put that speech and its ramifications into the boundaries and lines drawn between him and Alex. It doesn’t fit, it doesn’t make sense – but it does, at the same time. Because of course Alex thinks he’s a mess. Of course Alex has been struggling since he lost his leg. It’s so ingrained in Alex to think that’s he’s the problem, that his issues are an inconvenience thanks to his fucked-up, psychopathic father – and Michael should have known that. He should have been here a long time ago, rather than sulking about his broken heart.

But he’s here now, and he can’t change the past.

“Ask me,” he says, bringing Alex’s hands up to press his lips to shaking fingers. “Just ask, Alex.”

Uncertainty wars with hope in Alex’s eyes, and Michael wants to reassure him, to tell him to forget the words, and just take him inside and wrap him up in his arms, if that’s what Alex wants. But there’s a chasm between them, put there by years of mistakes and harsh words on both sides, and Michael needs to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what Alex’s expectations are. What he wants. Because if he fucks this up now, Michael doesn’t know if he’ll be able to come back from it.

“Stay,” Alex says finally, his voice cracking. “Just – stay.” His hands break free of Michael’s and scrabble at his shoulders in an attempt to pull him closer, or maybe hold him there, like he’s afraid the word will send him running. And Michael doesn’t hesitate; he leans awkwardly over the center console and hugs Alex tightly, ignoring the damn thing as it pushes into his side.

“You’re okay,” he promises, one hand cradling the back of Alex’s head while the man burrows into the space between his shoulder and neck, his entire body trembling. “Just breathe, Alex. I’m not going anywhere.”

There’s more to be said, he knows, but Michael isn’t cruel enough to make Alex spell it all out tonight. He got what he needed; for now, he’s going to give Alex what he asked for. And maybe, when all’s said and done, they can keep each other from falling apart.

#malex fic #michael guerin/alex manes #my fic #this feels a little off #but i like the overall feel #so i'm posting it anyway

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