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sif-the-tsunami · 4 years ago

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Sometime the best present is presence.

Hey y’all. Happy holidays guys, this is my participation in @toomanystoriessolittletime Christmas story challenge. I am not a super happy happy joy joy kind of a holiday person, so I hope maybe some of my fellow “I can’t handle forced holiday cheer” people can relate to this a little bit.

The prompt is with Henry Cavill and last Christmas by Wham.

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC Ellie

Word count: 2600

Content warning, language, adult situation, the least smutty smut I could manage, talks of infertility treatment, pregnancy, depression, I’m sorry if I missed anything.

Picture found on google

There were two things that Henry knew for certain to expect from his lover once the Holiday season rolled around, the first was that he knew that their shared kitchen would almost always smell like sage and cinnamon, and that her depression would take a nose dive. This was going to be their fourth Christmas together and he was prepared. Every year since she moved over to the UK to be with him, Christmas Eve, they would go out and grab a pizza, come back to the house, and spend the evening watching Christmas movies in new pajamas. Henry would keep the hot cocoa flowing and the snacks supplied. Christmas morning, Ellie would make the most amazing breakfast, things from his childhood and hers, the three of them (including Kal) would open presents and the afternoon would be spent in Middle Earth with take out for dinner. Boxing Day was spent with his mom and dad. The break would be carefully planned for as few social obligations as possible.

Life was running full tilt in its normal chaos, Henry was filming for the next few weeks and Ellie went back to working on her novel. One of the techs on set told him about a game that he and his friends were planning on playing this holiday season. Henry looked up from his phone and asked about the rules. It seems simple enough. The game will be just enough of a distraction to keep her mind off the doctor’s appointment pending that he knew she was concerned about. And maybe his mum would come up for a couple of days to help keep her occupied. The matriarch was nothing, if not considerate of his partners mental health.

When he came home that night, the smell of her cooking hits him like a ton of bricks. The warm earthy scents of caramelizing onions, roasting garlic and he knows some kind of bird… it wouldn’t be duck. Is it Cornish game hens? But there are definitely potatoes involved as well. He swears that he can get some kind of hint of apple pie.

“Baby, I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” He asks as he comes into the warm kitchen. Out from the oven, she pulls out Brussel sprouts with thick batons of pork belly, seasoned with roasted garlic, and another serving dish of crispy potatoes was sitting on the counter. On the stove top, was a concoction of apples and onions, browning together in butter and fennel. On the table, making Kal ignore Henry all together, was a beautifully roasted chicken, spatchcocked on her favorite wooden cutting board, the skin was a deep golden brown. Had anyone else made that array of of food, he would have thought they were crazy, however he had thought that Ellie had the Force or something like it when it came to cooking. She could pull a bizarre array of foodstuffs together and create a hero’s feast. She had managed to turn instant noodles into a meal fit for a king before his eyes in their early dating months. Amazing meals were her super power.

Her face lit up as he walked into the kitchen. “Well, it was a good brain day.”

“I’m glad, my darling,” Dinner was set a few minutes later. Sitting together at the table, they dug into their feast.

“I will never understand how you can get the skin so crisp, but this meat is so juicy. What kind of witchcraft is this?” He asks after half the chicken has been picked clean by him alone. “And you have absolutely ruined me for other peoples sprouts, you know that right?”

Ellie leaned back in her chair, smiling like the cat who caught the canary. “I’m glad you like that, it was the last of my smoked pork belly though. Some time in January, I want to make some more again. Maybe cure my own bacon again.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” Knowing that if she was planning on smoking other meats that he could probably talk her into smoking some ribs for him. “So speaking of good ideas. I want to challenge you to a game.”

“A game, you say? What kind of game?” She raised her eyebrow in curiosity.

“A survival game, the best kind of survival game in fact, because we can challenge our friends to it and this will go on in perpetuity.”

“Go on.” Looking at him like he’s going mad, but loving watching him get animated like this.

“It is called, wait for it… Whamagedon.” He says with the biggest smile.

“Whamagedon?”

“Yes, Whamagedon. Do you remember Rick Rolling? It is like that, but with the song “Last Christmas,” by Wham.”

“What are the rules?”

“I want to set a group text up, me, you, my brothers, fuck it we can even add Ben to it. Maybe even your sister. When we go out and about, the idea is if we hear the song we are out of the game. And the best part is after you are out of the game it is called Whamhalla and we can try to sabotage the others. And it can only be the Wham version.”

“It would get us in and out of the stores faster, probably.”

“I view that as a bonus.” He said leaning back, satiated by dinner and the idea he had been brewing all evening. “What do you say?”

“Sounds good to me, but we can not sabotage each other.”

“Absolutely not. Although I might make an Instagram post if I’m out of the game before Christmas Eve.”

“You are a chaotic goblin, you know that right?”

He just nods, his face is lit up like a child in on a secret. “Now what do you say if we go run ourselves a nice hot bath before bed. I feel like this cold is seeping into my old man bones.”

***

It was the beginning of December when Henry came home from the grocery store that afternoon, he heard the sobbing as soon as he dropped off the bags in kitchen. He rushed through the house to find her in the bathtub, Ellie was cradling her head in her hands. Kal whined, nudging her with his cold wet nose and slowly wagged his tail as she whispered, “I know bud, I love you too. Mommy is just sad today baby, it’s okay.”

Kal looked at his daddy in the doorway, he looked like he was trying to say ‘Dad, fix her.’ Ellie soon looked up too. The face he adored more than any others was puffy from crying. “I’m sorry hun, I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Elle, what happened?” he asked, sitting down on the floor next to her. Henry smiled a little at her, he planted kisses on the back of the hand that he held.

Ellie tilted her head down, and the tears started again. She said it so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her. “Miranda just found out she’s pregnant.”

“Your friend from back home?” Without looking at him, she nodded once. “Do you know how long they were trying?”

“They weren’t. She called me this morning and told me the news. She’s so happy, its all she’s ever wanted. And I really am so happy for her.” Her voice cracked again. Henry rubbed her back as she struggled to take a deep breath. “About two minutes after she hung up I started cramping like I’m about to start my period. I… I feel like I’m failing you. My body is failing you. I even do the fucking thing that I was made to be able to do.”

She started to sob, curling herself into a ball, and wrapped her arms around her knees. His heart ached for the woman he loved.

“My darling, my sweetling, you have not failed me. Your body has not failed me.” He lifted himself up off the floor, “I’m going to go put the things that need to stay cold away, and I will be right back.”

Moments later he was back and stripping off his clothes from the day. Elle gazed upon him in love and awe. “Get that water nice and hot again, I’m coming in.”

She started draining the currently tepid bathwater right away. Henry handed her cold bottle of her favorite beer, and had one for himself. She then stayed in the middle of the tub as he climbed in behind her. He dropped a lavender, chamomile and vanilla scented bath bomb between her legs as he settled in. She leaned back against his body, as her ran his fingers against her soft skin.

“What if I can’t give you a baby, Hen?”

“We could steal one. We will find a mummy with more kids than she can keep track of, and I’ll drive the car by really slow and we will lure one of them in with the promise of sweeties and puppies.” He teased her. The resulting giggle was worth the dark humor occasionally.

“I’m being serious, ya dick.” Her laugh was always magical to him. She took a long swing of her beer.

“Who said I wasn’t being serious. Would I love to have a mess of children, yes. However, I love you more than whatever hypothetical situation I’ve had before we met. You make me so incredibly happy.”

“Even on the bad days like this...”

“Yes, even on the bad days. Are you worried about going back to the clinic?” He kissed the back of her head. This would be the fourth round of IUI treatments. The shuddering breath she let out let Henry know he was correct. “We don’t have to do it again if you don’t want to.”

“If we are not successful this next time, I think I want to take a break from trying. At least for a while. I need to do something to help myself. I don’t think I can handle it on my own.”

“Okay, my love. We will get you the help you need.”

“I hope so. But in the mean time, I want to just spend the night being bummed out. Is that okay?”

Henry lathered up her wash cloth with her favorite smelling soap, getting the silk smooth suds down her back, tracing her shoulders and down her chest. “Does that mean we are having Chinese for dinner?”

“You know me so well.” She sighed, resting her head on him as he ran his hands up and down her body. She had stopped shaking but the tears still ran down her face. She nuzzled her face into his neck so he decided to rest his cheek on her head. He lovingly washed her body and while the water was still steaming she rolled over to face him. Straddled on his hips, she ran her hands over his body, leaning into giving him hungry kisses.

The love he poured into her was always returned to him. His body asked hers to show him how much she needed him, the tears on her cheeks this time were from pleasure as she came. He followed her into bliss shortly after.

“I need more of you,” he whispered between kisses. They drained the tub, and dried each other off with soft fluffy towels. He picked her up from her hips and carried her to the bed, placing her down on their bed. If the first session was strengthening their connection, this time was carnal pleasure. Throaty I love yous whispered to one another, sealed with passionate kisses.

Afterwards, still a tangle of legs and sheets, they placed an order for their favorite take out. The two cocooned themselves from the world until their dinner arrived. Ellie, although absentmindedly pushed her food around with her chopsticks, seemed alright for now.

My love, please don’t go where I can’t follow. He thought. Please, don’t push us all away while you suffer by yourself again.

***

Since the beginning of December, his plan worked. She would tease him about close calls. They would go in and out of stores as quickly as they could. The group chat they had going would go off sporadically and half the family was out within the first week. When he wasn’t working, he noticed that Ellie was sleeping more than normal, but he didn’t want to say anything to her. She sometimes wouldn’t text him back for hours if she took a nap in the middle of the day. Her publisher however seemed happy with the revisions they were making towards the high fantasy novel. Her second book would be published that coming spring. His mom had come up and visited, helping Ellie get some of the house ready for them to go back to Jersey until after the new year. They ran errands together, she helped Ellie with her annual purge for donations around the house, and generally just tried to keep her busy.

Their last day in London was also their appointment with the fertility doctor. Getting all set up in the exam room, Henry held her hand. A nurse came in to take a blood sample and made small talk. Very faintly in the back they could here Christmas music coming from the reception area. Henry could already tell that the next half an hour was going to drag, and Ellie’s hands were starting to shake harder from the anticipation. It was maybe ten minutes in when suddenly his lover groans in disgust.

“Well fuck...” She mutters. And then the lyrics of some of the music starts registering to him.

With a note saying, "I love you, " I meant it Now, I know what a fool I've been But if you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart But the very next day you gave it away This year, to save me from tears I'll give it to someone special

“oh, of fucking course it plays now.” He chuckles at her. Henry starts to giggle a little bit. Seeing him lose composure, Ellie starts to as well. The giggle morphs into laugh then into hysterics. The two of them were cackling like hyenas when the nurse popped by in, wiping tears from their eyes and he knows one of them snorted.

“The doctor is running a little late, she wants you to get into this paper gown, she’s going to have to do a pelvic exam.” The nurse tells them quickly, dropping the items off, clearly not impressed by the two of them.

“I don’t I have had an exam for one of these before.” Ellie thinks out loud still laughing. She undressed quickly, throws on the gown and sits on the exam table. “We needed that laugh, though. I feel a little better.”

“Oh yeah, this has been stressful.” he nodded.

The doctor came in and did her formal greetings. “So I have a sinking suspicion but I want to take a look at you first.”

Henry politely averts his eyes while the doctor performs the exam, until she started talking again. “Well it looks like we aren’t going to be giving you the injection to stimulate your ovaries today, Ellie. The blood test showed that you are pregnant, I want to feel your uterus and yeah, you have a fetus in there. You are about three weeks pregnant. Congrats guys, you beat the odds.”

Ellie and Henry sat in the exam room in shocked silence until the doctor left.

#henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #rpf #rpf fanfic #happy holidays you filthy animals #writing prompt

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doc-pickles · 4 years ago

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i saw mommy kissin’ santa claus

Hello! And welcome to “Festive Fridays with Two Dumb Bitches So Dumb They Can’t Stick to the Schedule They Make for Themselves” featuring me and @odd-birds-and-booksellers We wanted to find a day of the week for December to post our Christmas fics on and decided on Thursdays (this was originally titled ‘Two Dumb Bitches Thursday’ but we are both terrible procrastinators so now we have that fancy new title up there)

Will you get posts on Thursdays? Fridays? Who knows! But we’ve both committed to posting once a week every week of December with a fun festive fic! (Please don’t come to our inboxes and hound us about them, we yell at each other enough as it is and Lay is mean.....)

Anyways this is my first fluffy fic entry of the month and it’s definitely not inspired by real life events. Hope you enjoy! :)

(also this is not my best work because i’m sleep deprived and also my pregnancy brain is not letting me write how i normally do soooo cut me some slack please and thanks)

“Karev!”

Both Jo and Alex turned at the sound of Bailey’s voice behind them, the woman looking expectantly at Alex. Now that he wasn’t a young resident, Bailey rarely evoked a feeling of fear in him but today her stern voice had him racking his brain for anything he’d done wrong recently.

“What can I do for you, Chief?”

“Doctor Peterson retired earlier this year,” Bailey waited for either Jo or Alex to make a connection from her words, but both stared blankly at her instead. “Doctor Peterson used to dress up as Santa every year for the Peds Ward Christmas party. Since he’s no longer available, I need a replacement.”

Jo’s eyes lit up in delight as she turned to Alex who wore an unamused expression, “Absolutely not, I am not putting on that ridiculous costume.”

“Oh c’mon! It’s for sick kids Alex,” Jo settled a hand onto her husband's arm as she batted her eyelashes at him. “It’ll be fun! You should do it!”

Alex looked between his wife and his boss, Jo smiling excitedly at him while Bailey fixed him with a glare. A groan left him as he realized he didn’t have a say in the matter, “Fine I'll do it. But I’m not happy about it.”

Jo let out an excited squeal as Bailey thanked him, walking away with a satisfied smirk. Turning to his giddy wife, Alex wrapped his arm around her waist and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “You better make this worth my damn while.”

“What, do you want me to come and sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what I want for Christmas,” Jo rolled her eyes, but Alex kept his gaze fixed on her. “You’re serious? You really are a pervy old man sometimes I swear.” Alex swatted at Jo’s ass playfully as she walked away from him. If she hadn’t happened to be standing next to him when Bailey asked he wouldn’t have caved so easily. His eyes narrowed at the thought, knowing that at least one of the women had planned that out.

“Stupid freakin’ Santa costume…”

There was a reason that he’d avoided the Christmas party for the Peds ward all these years and he finally realized why. Alex was surrounded by dozens of sugar high children who hadn’t seen outside of the hospital walls in weeks. He loved his job and working with kids, but he rarely had to deal with them when they were running around and screaming at the top of their lungs.

“Well you look like you’re having a great time,” Meredith sidled up to Alex, chuckling as she pulled on his fake beard. “The white doesn’t look so bad on you, maybe by next Christmas you won’t even need the fake beard.” “Oh shut up, I’m only here because Jo made me come. And she hasn’t even bothered to show up and make things around here more enjoyable,” Alex grumbled as he swatted away Meredith’s hand. He’d been sitting with kids on his lap for almost an hour and a half now, asking them what they wanted for Christmas and listening to their lists. “I’ve got fifteen minutes left before I can go home and drink beer and I can’t wait.”

“I’ve gotta go find my kids in this madness, but it looks like you have another visitor,” Meredith gestured to the little girl patiently waiting to meet Santa, bright blue eyes staring up at Alex in awe. “Have fun Santa!”

As soon as she was gone, the little girl bounded up to Alex and settled herself onto his lap, a gap toothed grin appearing on her face. Alex recognized her as one of his own patients, five year old Lauren who had a gastrointestinal problem that kept her in the hospital for weeks at a time, “Hi Santa!”

“Hi Lauren,” Alex almost chuckled at Lauren’s wide eyed expression when she realized that ‘Santa’ knew her name. “What do you want for Christmas?”

“I want a Barbie dream house and a pink glitter ballerina Barbie too,” Lauren was full of giggles as she relayed her wish list to Alex. Her expression softened however and she leaned in close to him, whispering her next words. “And I want my tummy to feel all better so I can go home and have a real Christmas. Christmas in the hospital is no fun.” Alex’s heart broke at the little girls words, realizing just how much of a toll being here was taking on such a young girl, “You know what, I think your doctors will do their very best to get you home for Christmas so you can play with all your new Barbies. How does that sound?” Lauren’s face lit up at Alex’s words, her arms wrapping around his neck as she giggled in delight. A string of thank yous left her as she hopped off Alex’s lap and reunited with her mother, who sent an appreciative wave in his direction.

“Well aren’t you the best Santa in the world,” Alex turned at the sound of Jo’s voice, holding back an eye roll as she lifted her camera to snap a photo of him. “See, I told you it wouldn’t be that bad! Your mom is going to love that photo, I hope she puts it on the mantle.” “Did you come here for any reason besides to mock me,” Alex grumbled. “I’m almost done with this and then I’m never doing it again no matter how much you beg.” Alex couldn’t help but smirk at Jo’s amused expression. She looked so happy that he was doing this, like it had made her whole year. If nothing else, Jo’s excitement made the stupid gig worth it.

“Well I came here to tell Santa what I want for Christmas but if he’s too grumpy…,” Alex reached for Jo’s hand, pulling her into his lap as she laughed at his antics.

“Now what do you want for Christmas,” Alex pressed his face into Jo’s neck, more laughter coming from her at the feel of the fake beard against her skin. “I’m sure Santa would be more than happy to oblige.”

“You realize you’re trying to talk dirty to me at a children’s party right,” Alex pinched Jo’s leg at her remark, a squeal leaving her as she jumped. “Okay okay, what I want for Christmas is… a baby.”

“A baby?”

“Yes a baby,” Jo grinned widely, leaning in close to Alex with a twinkle in her eyes. “I want you to knock me up. Preferably not wearing the Santa costume.”

Alex stared dumbly up at his wife for a moment, her grin never fading as she watched him process what she’d said. A baby… Jo wanted to have kids. Kids with him.

“You know there’s easier ways to say that you want to try for a baby,” Alex chuckled as he leaned up to kiss Jo, his fake beard getting in the way of his attempt. “C’mon let’s go home, I finished my duty for the day. Maybe if you’ve make it on the nice list I’ll put in a good word for you with Santa.” A string of giggles left Jo as she watched Alex try and sneak out of the room, instead getting ambushed by almost all of the kids that were running around. After a quick goodbye and a promise to work hard on their wishes, the pair finally made it out of the room, Alex turning to Jo with a grin, “You want one of those? You sure?”

“More than anything. Now kiss me,” Jo pointed upwards to the doorway where a sprig of mistletoe hung. “It’s tradition.”

“I can’t believe you volunteered to do this this year,” Meredith stared dumbfoundedly at Alex, who sat in his chair with a smirk peeking through his fake beard. “Seriously, are you feeling okay? You couldn’t stop complaining last year.” “Would you pipe down, it’s different this year,” Alex shrugged, waving at one of the kids that ran by. “I wanted to spread some Christmas cheer to sick kids, is that so wrong?” “Don’t listen to him, he didn’t want some ‘germy mall Santa’ to hold Peyton for photos,” Meredith turned at the sound of Jo’s voice, a grin lighting up her face as she took in the sight of the small baby cradled in the baby sling across Jo’s chest. “Although the peds ward of a hospital can’t be much better.”

“Stop whining and come over here,” Alex held his arms out, expecting Jo to hand the baby to him but instead having her sit across his lap. “Really? You’re gonna sit on my lap again?”

Jo shrugged, pressing a kiss against his cheek as Alex reached up to uncover the baby’s face, “I figured my Christmas wish came true last year, might as well go again.” “Listen I love you but this one barely sleeps through the night as it is,” Alex gestured to Meredith, who was smiling at the happy family with her phone in hand. “Now would you smile so we can have a semi decent first Christmas photo for our daughter.” Jo and Alex both wore bright smiles as they looked at Meredith, the two month old between them not even batting an eyelash as she slept soundly on her mom’s chest. The warm feeling in Jo’s chest almost made her tear up, thinking to just the year before when her husband had begrudgingly put on a Santa costume to please her. This year he had eagerly gone through the motions, excited to create memories with their daughter without a care about all of the patients that came with the deal.

“What’s on your mind? You have that blissed out look on your face,” Alex’s fingers on her cheek snapped Jo out of her daze, her lips coming down to press against his briefly.

“Nothing, just thinking about how lucky I am and how much I love you.” “I love you too, but you can’t just kiss me like that,” Jo’s brows furrowed as she took in Alex’s serious expression. “The kids are watching! What are they gonna think when they see you kissing Santa like that? I’ll get a bunch of angry letters.” “You’re the worst, Karev.”

#alex karev #jo karev #jo wilson #jolex fic #jolex fanfic #jo x alex #jolex #greys anatomy #greys anatomy fanfic #christmas #TDBT #nina writes

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marvel-lucy · 5 years ago

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Tony’s heart

So I have lost the multi-chapter fic I was partway through :( In looking for it, I found this, post-Endgame (wow I’m late!) fic that I started writing to stop my heart breaking :) I still miss that other fic though!

If you need proof that Tony Stark had a heart, you never knew him at all. He had too much heart. That’s why I came into existence; that’s why he could be so hurt by the people he loved; why he could be so damaged by his past. And that’s why I did what I did. And I don’t regret a bit of it. Tony Stark had a heart all right, one big enough for the whole world, but he liked to hide it behind that veneer of shallow ego, and behind the Iron Man. If you’ve got a heart as big and soft as Tony’s, you need to protect it.

So you’ll remember the whole business around Ultron. How Bruce and Tony made the shield around the world that, as it turned out, decided humanity was self-destructive and should be wiped out? How Ultron was made using the power of the Mind Stone, and had to be defeated, but that shifted everyone’s opinion of the Avengers, led to Civil War… all that. You remember? I don’t. I don’t remember because I wasn’t around then. I was made, after. After Ultron had been born and then killed by the Mind Stone wielded by his own… son? Brother? Vision, Tony didn’t give up on his idea of protecting the world after that though. If anything, he wanted it more. He never told anyone about the panic attacks, or the PTSD he suffered from, but with every attack that the Avengers dealt with, they got worse, until it felt as if the whole world was a threat, and there was no safety left.

He didn’t give up on his plan. He made me. Unlike Vision, I’m not purple, and I can’t fly. I don’t have a stone embedded in my head, and I seem… normal. But I’m not. I’m not human for a start. Thanks to the Cradle, I can pass for a person, but my flesh was created through science, not love. I’m imbued with the power of the stones though. The Mind Stone was used, through Vision, who knew what Tony was up to, but was reassured that Tony was creating something less chaotic. Vision took his time, weighing it up, but decided on balance that he could trust Tony. The maths for my existence added up, the equations came out in favour of a second try, learning from the success of Vision and the failure of Ultron.

I had to be kept secret though. No telling the team, not Bruce, not even Pepper. I officially joined up through a scholarship, one of Tony’s. My presence in the Tower and the Compound was explained away as an internship, an assistant, a coffee-fetching gofer, until I was too familiar to need explanations. Nobody knew I knew Tony before that. I was simply the latest in a line of fresh faced new bodies to be trained in all things saving-the-world. There were a fair few of us then, before the Avengers fell apart and suddenly nobody had the heart to recruit new cannon fodder.

Tony didn’t acknowledge me in public, or private. He’d made me, but now he was afraid. I could feel him watching me, not able to trust that I wouldn’t go the way of Ultron. I was just another weight on his chest, breaking his soft heart into pieces. He was afraid to tell anyone about me, afraid to try and destroy me, afraid to let me live a life in peace. Eventually it seemed kinder to remove myself from the Compound, absence not making the heart grow fonder, but at least making it less anxious. So I just left one day, moving out and moving on, although I couldn’t break the ties that bound me to them, particularly him, my creator. I monitored channels, followed news report, kept my logins current so that I could at least have that one last connection.

Then Thanos came, and the world’s heart broke. News coverage was limited, because half the reporters had gone, and those that remained were left reaching for loved ones who weren’t there, too busy breaking down to share the news with a world that was too bereft to watch. The Avengers’ comms channels were mostly silent, there was little to report and at first they were all together, clinging on to the ones that had remained.

I hadn’t been snapped, of course, because I wasn’t, technically, alive, so I’d watched everyone I cared for suffer for five years as the world grieved, and tried to move on. But it couldn’t. There was too much loss, it was impossible to comprehend. People stopped speaking, afraid to ask their friends about their husbands, wives, children, because they didn’t know who was left. Friendships broke down, when survivor’s guilt hit those who were here, and angry jealousy hit those who had lost everything. Babies and children, left alone when their parents had vanished, cried in empty houses until they went quiet. Time passed, and it should have eased, but the weight was too much for people to keep moving. Gradually people returned to work and school, but it was as if they were moving through shadows, and there was very little joy to be found.

So when the channels I monitored showed what was happening, I knew I had to be there, at the last. I saw the schematics for the time device on Tony’s computer, and understood what he’d made before he did. The power in me from the infinity stones registered the arrival of each stone into our time, and I could feel myself become stronger as each stone appeared. I knew that meant Thanos would be aware of them too. I felt Natasha’s death on Vormir as if I’d seen her fall myself, knew when Clint held the Soul Stone in his hands, and felt it cry out with the weight of her soul. And I knew, when someone put the stones together, and snapped their fingers. I didn’t know then it was Bruce. Gentle, quiet Bruce, whose only aim was to bring peace, but who was always destined to share his life with a force of chaos. I felt the snap, and the power of the stones washed over me so that I staggered, then I ran to the window and looked out and saw them return.

You were there, you saw it, whether you were one of the returned or one of the ones who’d stayed. The pandemonium and confusion as people who had felt only a blink of time, suddenly stood in demolished buildings and in front of people who’d aged as if before their eyes. Cars screeched and crashed as the vanished reappeared. Parents, who’d last seen their children as babies, blinked and saw them suddenly as children, crying in fear at these forgotten parents. It wasn’t something I could concern myself with. Let them explain to each other, I had no time to waste in wondering how humanity would explain itself, how families would rebuild and the universe would breath out to accommodate all this unexpected life.

I felt it when Thanos arrived. Like a punch to the stomach, it left me winded. I was close by already, I’d never gone far from Tony’s side even when he didn’t want me around, and although the streets were filled with crying and laughter and madness, my car made quick work of the route through to the Avengers Compound. Or to where it had been. It was a wasteland by the time I got there. Thanos’s army had destroyed buildings and land as far as I could see. What had been a green paradise was blackened by fire and salted with the Titan’s hatred.

I saw the battle play out in my mind, even as my eyes tried to take it in. I could feel the stones as they moved around, and could sense the battle shifting back and forth. Captain America’s stand against Thanos for a moment seemed as if it would win, but it wasn’t enough, not until portals started opening and I saw hordes arrive, hordes from Earth, Asgard, everywhere, to defeat Thanos for once and for all.

That was my cue. I could feel the stones moving, carried by heroes further and further across the battlefield and it seemed the tides were turning in our favour, until that final moment. Thanos seized the gauntlet and was faced by only Tony. Tony, the man they said had no heart. The billionaire philanthropist playboy, the man who let himself be a joke because to show his heart was to risk it being broken. He’d let Pepper in, and Morgan had opened him up further, but when he thought Cap had betrayed him, he’d felt that wound deeply. And here he was, nanotech stealing the stones before Thanos knew. I knew, of course, I could tell the moment they changed hands. The stones sparkled in my soul as they sent out their tendrils to seek out the mind of their new owner. I was running faster than I ever had now, to reach him. I wanted to take the gauntlet from him, would rip his hand off if I had to, just to save him, but I didn’t make it. I felt the power surge as he snapped, and all I managed to do was to grab hold of his other hand, as tightly as I could. His head turned towards mine, and I wondered if he would remember how the Guardians had survived the force of the Power Stone by standing together, but his mind was being torn open by the force he’d unleashed, and I don’t even know if he recognised me.

I channelled the power as much as I could, through me, even as I saw the first of Thanos’s soldiers start to fade to dust and blow away. I opened my mind and my heart and my cells and my soul to the stones and sang to them until they were diverted from their destruction of Tony and sent their power towards me. I felt them dance in my atoms as they broke me apart and revelled in their own potency.

I didn’t know much more than that, afterwards. Not as myself. My consciousness vanished back into the stones that had created it so that I am no longer me, but a part of everything and nothing at once. But there is still a cord that binds me to Tony Stark, even as I straddle the universe in the stones.

I saw Tony hold on to me on the battlefield, as the armies faded away and the birds began to sing again in the sudden silence. His right arm was burnt and broken, and would never heal again, but his heart kept beating, as he held me in his left arm. I saw him whisper to me, apologies that were unneeded and promises that he couldn’t keep. I saw Pepper hold him, and tell him it was OK, and that he could rest now, the world was saved. I saw Peter tell him that they’d won, and Tony looked up at that, as if he’d forgotten that there was a fight at all. He cried when he saw Steve, who knelt next to him, and held on as if he wouldn’t let go.

So don’t tell me Tony Stark didn’t have a heart. I am the power at the heart of the universe, and the soul of every living thing. I could tear apart your mind and turn time inside out, I can move reality as easily as I can move through space, and wherever and whenever and whoever I am, I will burn into the universe that Tony Stark has a heart. His heart made me, and saved the world. And now although his heart hurts, that I died, so many died, I watch through time and space and souls that his heart has a long journey still to make. I see him teaching Morgan, I see him growing old with Pepper, I see him holding his grandchildren. And when his heart does end, I’ll be there waiting.

@melconnor2007 @avengerscompound @kittyslove @badassbaker @phoenix21love @lbouvet @bellenuit45 @prplprincez @gingerrootknits @pineapplebooboo @feelmyroarrrr @avengerofyourheart @eyeofdionysus@hellomissmabel @learisa @mitra-k-w @imhereforbvcky @shaddixlife @supernatural-girl97 @iwillbeinmynest @amrita31199 @algud @whatsbetterthanfantasy @pixierox101 @madcheshire89 @chipilerendi @mckorni32843 @amandarosemire @nyxveracity @sea040561 @mrsalh32611 @ruinerofcheese @callmebucky-doll @vintagepigeon @sassycanoodler @natcad @thisismysecrethappyplace @geeksareunique @mywinterwolf @moderapoppins @rinthehufflepuff @holyfuckloueh @onebatch–twobatch @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory@patzammit @procrastinatingart1st @princess76179 @marvelouspottering @fangirlanotherjust @notyourtypicalrose@princess-rene@miraclesoflove @scarletluvscas @inlovewithjamesbarnes @mizzzpink @creepylittlemarvelgirl @rand0mfangurlstuff @occasionalwritingsofmia @tony-stank3

#marvel fic #endgame fic #tony stark fic

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unfunny-quips · 5 years ago

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Summary: Later, Din would wander down to find the Armorer and Kuiil testing the offensive and defensive abilities of their creation. Paz and his son watched on from a safe distance behind some blast proof barricades that had been brought as a tithe to the Tribe ages ago. The little one sat perched on one of Paz’s knees, eating the bang-corn Paz fed him happily and giggling whenever there was a particularly flashy explosion that the hovering cradle deflected or - often enough - caused.

Scenes from my Parables of Promise series that didn't quite make it into the stories they were written for, but I was still hopeful people would enjoy anyway. Will be updated whenever a random scene I like that's complete doesn't make it in to the main storyline.

Kuiil stood in the entrance of the Foundry, feeling shorter than usual besides the looming figure of Paz Vizla, as he waited to be granted entrance from the Mandalorian Armorer.

When he’d told Din that he would need additional parts for creating a new cradle for the little one, he’d expected the Mandalorian to either take a list and get them from the market or tag along with him and IG to pay for parts. He had not been anticipating the lad to direct him to the tunnels beneath Nevarro, nor was he expecting Din to further assure him that the Armorer would be both able and willing to give whatever supplies he might need for the project.

He’d gone anyway though, taking the indicated entrance to the tunnels and leaving Din and IG to barter for parts for the Crest in the market above. He took the little one with him, largely to ensure that - should Paz not be present to vouch for him - the Armorer would not think him an outsider and do to him what he’d heard done to the Storm Troopers. Even with Din’s assurances, he’d been in doubt at the wisdom of sending him down without a Mandalorian escort, only reassured he wouldn’t find his end in the tunnels when the imposing figure of Paz appeared from the gloom and greeted him cordially.

The Child in Kuiil’s arms wriggled and cooed, ears perked as the little one caught sight of a shiny bauble on a nearby work bench. Kuiil bobbed the little one gently, redirecting the toddlers attention to the Mythosaur necklace the little one wore instead with a practiced ease. It had been a long time since he’d cared for a child, let alone one so young, but some things stuck with a person and fatherhood was one of them.

“You’re quite good with him.” A cool, modulated voice said from across the room. Kuiil lifted his gaze to find that the Armorer had turned her attention away from her forge and on to him. After a moment considering his small frame in the door of her Foundry she nodded towards what appeared to be a set of low stools and a table. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

He adjusted the child in his arms and took the proffered seat, only partially surprised when Paz came to stand over him rather than sitting himself. His interactions with the Mandalorian in blue armor had been limited to the first day or so of being in the hospital, buzzing on pain medication. He’d learned more second hand from Cara and Din, the former teasing the latter mercilessly over the obvious affection Din had for the other Mando. He knew that Paz was gentle to the child and had saved Din’s life, which was enough for the Ugnaught to make an initial, favorable assessment.

“Has he eaten?” Paz asked, leaning his massive frame downward to brush a gloved finger over the child’s wrinkled forehead. The Child cooed, reaching out with the hand not preoccupied with keeping the mythosaur pendant in his mouth to hold onto Paz’s hand. Paz crooked his finger, bobbing the little one’s hand and electing a smile from the child.

Kuill felt a smile pull at his face and gently shifted the little one as the child moved to reach for Paz. “He ate before we came to the market.” He answered, allowing Paz to scoop the toddler up in much larger arms. “I imagine he’d be happy if you give him more though. His appetite has increased over the past few days.”

The mythosaur pendant dropped from the child’s mouth as two green hands reached to pat happily against Paz’s helmet. Large ears flicked excitedly as Paz bumped his forehead lightly against the little one’s, the child babbling cheerfully. “Are you finally going to grow ad’ika? If you eat well you might be as big as your Buir one day.” Paz told the child, gently tapping his fingers along the toddler’s ribs, pulling a delighted giggle from the child. Kuiil smiled as the massive Mandalorian tucked the little one against his chest and turned his attention back down to where Kuiil sat. “Just made some stew with some good flavor to it, I’ll get him some.”

Kuiil nodded, allowing Paz to wander off with the little one in his arms. He watched them disappear down the hall before turning back to the Forge, letting the hum of the Foundry settle over him. The Armorer set her tools down, quiet as she moved to take the seat across from him.

“You are Kuiil.” She said, golden helm tilting as if she was considering him. “I have heard of what you have done for the Foundling. On behalf of the Tribe, please know that we are in your debt.”

He shook his head, waving her words away with a hand the way he had so many months ago when Din had offered him funds in exchange for his aid. “I want no debt from you or your people.” He told her honestly. He’d spent a lifetime paying for debts, he’d not see them settled on anyone else if he could help it. “The only repayment I can ask is that the child is well and cared for.”

The Armorer made a soft, endeared sound beneath her helm. “Din Djarin said you would say as much.” She offered, and he thought he could hear a smile in her modulated voice. “You are an interesting one Kuiil.”

Warmth filled his chest at those words, a small smile touching his lips. “That is entirely untrue.” He told her, honestly. He was only an old Ugnaught, far past his prime with only lonely days of freedom ahead of him. Interesting was not a word to describe one such as himself. “Is this the reason he sent me down here then? I thought it odd he’d direct me to you to get parts for the baby’s cradle.”

The Armorer tilted her head, a low noise he realized to be a soft chuckle coming from beneath her helm, “Not at all. I am an Armorer, but that does not mean that armor is the extent of my craft.” She nodded towards a workbench a little ways away from where she had been working at the forge. Kuiil saw familiar tools laid out along its surface, along with several crates of parts set nearby. “If you would permit, I can aid in making this one a bit more sturdy than the last.” At his glance she added, “Beskar is usually reserved for Helms and the armor of warriors, but something tells me Din Djarin’s foundling will require a bit more than the standard durasteal for a buycika.”

Kuiil felt a smile pull his face wide at the idea. He’d never worked with beskar before. Too rare, to precious a resource, not meant to be used on the kinds of things Kuiil worked on. His fingers itched at the thought of getting to craft with it, see what the legendary iron could do. “Indeed.” He agreed, then paused as his eyes landing on some of Paz’s weaponry the other Mandalorian had set aside in the Foundry. “Perhaps something a bit more than just extra armor?”

The Armorer tilted her head, Helm shifting in such a way he could tell she was following his gaze. “Ah.” She said, and Kuiil heard the moment she understood what he was suggesting. “Yes. I rather think some additional security protocols would be rather beneficial. Shall we?”

Kuiil nodded, getting to his feet as she rose and following her lead eagerly as they began going over his initial plans and making the changes they deemed necessary. Adjustments would need to be made to account for the additions they were making, but between his own experience and the skill of the Armorer he was rather certain they could make something suitable for a child so often in trouble. As the Armorer began gathering equipment, Kuiil glanced over his notes, considering how feasible it would be to rig up a tracking jammer with the spare parts he could see laying about.

He would need to remember to thank Din later when he saw him next. He hadn’t had so much fun working on a new creation in centuries.

Later, Din would wander down to the hours later to find the Armorer and Kuiil testing the offensive and defensive abilities of their creation. Paz and his son watched on from a safe distance behind some blast proof barricades that had been brought as a tithe to the Tribe ages ago. The little one sat perched on one of Paz’s knees, eating the bang-corn Paz fed him happily and giggling whenever there was a particularly flashy explosion that the hovering cradle deflected or - often enough - caused.

Perhaps the the addition of the Whistling Birds was a tad overkill - even by Din’s standards - but Kuiil and the Armorer looked so pleased when their creation all but disintegrated the mock Storm Trooper they’d fashioned with scavenged gear that he hadn’t the heart to say anything. Besides, he was too enamored with the Mudhorn signet emblazoned on the side of the cradle too much to ever give them any kind of feedback that wasn’t overwhelmingly positive.

#the mandalorian #din djarin #Baby Yoda #The Armorer #Kuiil #Paz Vizla #everybody lives #fic #my writing #mandalorian fic #some paz/din #more to be included later #kuiil and the armorer are bros #parables of promise

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sinsbymanka · 5 years ago

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Update: Girl with the Arrow Tattoo Chapter 34!

Chapter 34: The Rebirth

Full Story at AO3

(Remarkably little angst. Mostly fluff and existential crisis. You’ve all earned it after the last few chapters.)

Finding her had been a miracle. Maria’s small, crumpled form had barely been visible underneath the snow clinging to her hair, her clothes. When Varric spotted crimson in the beam of his phone’s weak flashlight, he raced toward it without thought, wishing, hoping, wanting… praying they weren’t too late. Her form felt stiff as ice beneath his fingers, worse, she didn’t respond to her name in his mouth, didn’t move until he tightened his hold on her.

The instant his fingers curled into her shoulder, she made a small, broken sound. Not quite a whimper, but not a scream either. She shuddered under his hands and bucked against his grip weakly. Her eyes gazed ahead, unseeing, into the darkness while she struggled helplessly against him like a bird beating her wings against a cage. His stomach dropped, his fingers gently circling her delicate wrists while she tried to push him away. A quiet sob escaped Maria’s lips and…

It broke him. Just a little. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

“Maria, stop.” He pleaded into her freezing ear. She shivered, but some of the fight seemed to bleed out of her. “It’s just me. It’s just me, we’re gonna take care of you, baby.”

Her faint struggles began to cease so he released her wrists and gently wrapped his arms around her waist, cradled her to his chest. “I won’t hurt you.” He promised to the shivering, half-conscious miracle in his arms. “I won’t ever hurt you, Maria.”

Somewhere above them, Nyx cawed loudly, repetitively, sounding the alarm for the entire rescue party. Maria collapsed against his chest with a broken, weary sigh that could have been his name, but he couldn’t tell. There were other voices calling to each other in the darkness, growing awareness that someone had found something, although who or what was still unknown. They could only hope.

But hope had gotten them this far.

“Varric!” Dorian’s voice cried out from the slope somewhere above him. “Varric, where in the blighted hell are you?”

“Here!” He pulled his face away from Maria’s chilled skin to yell up over his shoulder. “I’ve got her!”

He pressed his lips against her temple, one hand gently pushing back the stiff, frozen hair framing her face. He could taste the iron of blood on his lips, her skin frigid underneath his mouth. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He whispered softly.

Cassandra sent up a prayer of weary gratitude. Dorian appeared beside him like he’d emerged from the shadows themselves, his gleaming dark eyes exhausted and panic stricken while he examined the shuddering woman in Varric’s arms.

“Venhedis.” Dorian cursed. “Where is Blackwall?”

“I can carry her.” Bull rumbled.

“Perhaps. However, we did remove five bullets from your body. I am uncertain if you should even have joined us.” Solas reached past Varric and laid a gentle hand over Maria’s shoulder. The elf’s frown said everything Varric didn’t want to know. “We need to get her back. I cannot treat these injuries, I lack the skill…”

“Don’t die, you.” Sera blurted, half command, half plea. “Fix her up, right? Elfy shite magic can…”

“Here.” Blackwall leaned down low, arms extended.

“Wait.” Solas ordered. His eyes were glowing, a soft green light flickering. “I can dull the pain, put her to sleep, and remove the blood from her lungs so she doesn’t drown in it. It will make travel easier, the rest…”

Varric could feel the magic working, Maria’s form melting against his, boneless, finally giving into exhaustion and unconsciousness. Solas pulled his hand back and nodded briskly to Blackwall. “Now.”

Varric didn’t want to let her go. The last time he let her go she… he bit back the recrimination, reminded himself that the snow was only up to Blackwall’s knees instead of his ass, and the most important thing was to get Maria back to camp before she finished dying on them. He shifted and she slipped out of his arms like water until the human lifted her, gentle as a sleeping child, into the air. Bull peered down into her face, rumbled something Varric couldn’t quite make out.

“She will be fine.” Cassandra stated firmly. “Andraste is with her.”

Nobody could ignore the triumphant certainty in the Seeker’s voice. Varric almost bemoaned that Cassandra could come through this with renewed faith in her Maker, in some sort of crazy plan. But Maria Cadash survived the vortex, time travel, a demon, a dragon, and an avalanche. Varric… wasn’t quite sure what to even chalk that up to beyond divine intervention.

“What would be more helpful than Andraste at this moment would be modern medicine, a healer, and removing these clothes before she succumbs to frostbite.” Solas remarked dryly.

“Cold. Bitter. Biting.” Cole murmured. “Endless. Alone at the edge of the abyss. Falling. Frightened.”

“We’ve got her now, kid.” Varric reassured him as their search party began the perilous trek back. “We’ve got her.”

“Yes.” Cole agreed fervently. “They tried to burn her. Bury her. But the ashes were warm and the stone belongs to her family’s hearth. He didn’t know she’d rise.”

“Get her down.” The doctor ordered tersely. “This damn woman. If she’s not falling out of the bleeding sky, she’s stumbling back with hypothermia and Maker knows how many broken ribs.”

Blackwall lowered Maria onto the cot with great, tender care. For a perfect moment of stillness, it was just Maria alone on the thin bed like a sacrifice left unattended on an altar. Then both the doctor and healer swarmed over her, checking her pulse, listening to her labored breathing.

“You’re not going to believe this.” Bea trembled beside Varric, his hand on her arm the only thing restraining her from elbowing both healer and doctor out of the way. She had one fist at her lips, white knuckles pressed to paler lips. “This isn’t her idea of a good time either.”

“Coulda fooled me.” The doctor huffed, pulling the zipper on the sodden, blood spattered jacket. “I’m gonna need a knife to get these clothes off her. They’re soaking wet.”

Maria’s head lolled to the side and Cole produced his switchblade nearly immediately. The Elven healer snatched it with a reproachful, wary gaze in the kid’s direction before she began sawing through the thin cotton t-shirt.

“I do not believe we need an audience for this.” The Seeker said sternly. Varric deigned to ignore her even though he knew the statement was meant for him. “A few of us should stay, but surely…”

“Ria isn’t modest. Or shy.” Bea muttered, eyes fixed on the pale skin slowly exposed under the tattered shirt, more blue and purple than cream. Varric’s stomach rolled at the mess of bruises and scrapes.

“Varric.” Cassandra snapped impatiently. “I will not risk your…”

If she accused him of leering one more time he’d…

“But he’s seen her bare.” Cole interrupted, confused. “Warm. Wanting. Willing and wicked and…”

Well, he could always count on Cole. Bea rolled her eyes and shot Varric a rather reproachful glare, but honestly it was almost worth it to hear the sharp click of Cassandra’s jaw slamming shut.

“Do hold that thought. I’ll be rather interested in it if she doesn’t choke to death on her own blood.” Dorian shoved past, holding a sturdy pile of fleece blankets.

“She’s not… she can’t...” Bea’s voice cracked on the words, swinging helplessly around the triage scene unspooling in front of them.

“Not on my watch at any rate. Not after getting us out of that Tevinter shitstorm.” The elf muttered, peeling away the stiff fabric. Her hand glowed as she pressed it to Maria’s skin and paused, seeming to listen to her injuries. “Five fractured ribs of varying severity. At least one punctured her lung.”

“Sparkler is being unnecessarily dramatic.” Varric soothed with a stern, warning glance leveled at the Tevinter witch’s back. “She’s going to wake up spitting fire, you watch.”

He didn’t know if he was trying to convince Bea or himself. Maria looked just as small as she had the first time he saw her, unconscious again, although at least she didn’t appear to be flickering in and out of reality itself this time. Back then, he’d felt bad for the poor woman who had been pulled off the mountain and he certainly hadn’t wanted anything to happen to her, but now…

Varric couldn’t bear watching her lay so still as the doctor shouted about lacerations on her head, the healer’s hands glowing blue to stitch up bone and lung. His stomach twisted into anxious knots, thoughts spiraling, conjuring scenarios where she never woke. Where he never held her again, never…

“Lacerations are minor. Burn on her palm.” The doctor rattled off to the healer. “If you can fix her ribs, it’ll be the hypothermia to worry about next.”

“Can’t help there.” The Healer muttered as she worked. “Not trained to do anything about that. I could try raising her blood temperature but I’m as likely to cook her…”

Bea shuddered and the doctor took the switchblade, hacking at the waistband of Maria’s jeans. “I need a warm compress. One of you bleedin’ witches need to heat up some water and shove it in a damn bottle.”

“No need to be rude.” Dorian huffed. “Vivienne…”

“I will search for a container, since you are full of hot air darling. See if you can heat those blankets up a bit, hm?”

“All these clothes need to come off. They’re soaked through.” The doctor pulled the ruined denim away from Maria’s hips, a cruel parody of the way Varric once peeled them off. He shut his eyes for a steadying moment and swallowed against the rising tide of complex, terrifying emotions.

“There.” The healer said gently. “She’ll be sore for a few days, at least, but she’ll live. Come here, feel.”

Bea tugged against his iron grip and Varric relaxed his hold enough to let her slip through his fingers. He opened bleary eyes and watched Bea press her palm over her sister’s gently rising and falling abdomen. The terrible rattle had ceased, vanished into the ether. Bea’s shook her head, voice small. “She’s so cold.”

“Not for long.” The doctor muttered, pulling one of the gently steaming blankets from Dorian’s arms and pinning Varric with his piercing, slightly insane gaze. “You’ll do. Come here.”

Varric hesitated. Just long enough for a rather large, he’d bet solid money Qunari, arm to shove him forward. Varric scowled back at Bull, but the doctor kept talking, “Body heat to insulate. You’re rather sturdy and you’re not too tall for the cot. Up you get.”

Oh. Oh shit. “What?” He asked, the question semi-strangled, the thought of curling up next to Maria’s solid, albeit frozen, form enough to render him temporarily, and possibly for the first time, speechless.

“Absolutely not.” Cassandra scowled, flushing pink to the very roots of her hair. “It is inappropriate and scandalous. The Herald…”

“Right then. She’ll just freeze solid while we argue about propriety.” The doctor declared waspishly. “We can hope holy Andraste thaws her out.”

“I certainly don’t want to end up on the wrong side of Cassandra’s ire…” Dorian looked entirely too smug for Varric’s comfort level. “But this seems like an excellent idea. Finish unbuttoning that shirt, Varric. Better shuck the pants too, you’ve got snow all over them.”

“Ugh.” Sera sniffed, turning her face pointedly away. “Not watchin’ this show.”

“I cannot…” Cassandra’s voice raised, the start of a rather fine shouting match nobody had time for.

“I’m sorry.” Bea’s voice didn’t rise at all. It stayed perfectly, completely level. The hair on Varric’s neck stood up regardless and he spared a glance for the woman staring Cassandra down with abject fury. “I thought my mother was dead. Please. Continue arguing about the fucking scandal while my sister loses her toes.”

Cassandra’s mouth moved, but nothing intelligible came out. Satisfied, Bea turned her sharp as knives gaze to him. “Pants off.”

She’d given a steely command, one that left no room for negotiation. When Varric didn’t quite move fast enough, Bea’s voice dropped even further, to what he suspected was an even more dangerous octave. “I’m not asking again.”

Varric wasn’t certain she’d actually asked the first time. “Andraste’s ass.” He grumbled, reaching up to begin unbuttoning his shirt, hastily discarding it on a stack of crates. “Can I keep my damn boxers on or are we…”

Bea promptly made up her mind to ignore him. “Roll her onto her side.” The doctor advised the healer. “Gently. No use jarring that head.”

“Varric.” Vivienne’s voice trilled from behind him and Varric swore under his breath. “I take it since you’re undressing that means you’ve finally come to your senses about this outfit.”

“Everyone’s a damn comedian as soon as the dwarf gets naked.” Varric huffed, unbuttoning his pants. “Let me know if any ladies see something they like.”

In front of him, they shifted Maria’s nearly nude form onto her side, covering her with the first steaming blanket, lifting the barest corner for him to slither in beside her. Somehow, this seemed far more intimate than the fact that his mouth had been slanted over hers, their tongues twisted together, his face between her legs and his hands cupping her gorgeous breasts. Perhaps it was simply the aching vulnerability, the mottled fresh bruises covering all the skin he’d traced and kissed.

Maybe it was the blissfully empty expression on her face making her look so much younger, the fresh faced girl in her old photos. The one whose life still may have worked out the way she wanted in a better world, a kinder one.

If she was brave enough to face down a fucking dragon, he could lay beside her, keep her warm. That had to be the easier job. He definitely shouldn’t be envying her the heroic showdown with the demon that nearly snatched her away.

As calmly and smoothly as he could, with false confidence born of years hiding inner turmoil, he slipped onto the stiff cot and curled against her while they draped a blanket over them. She was icy, freezing to the touch against his skin. His hissed at the initial contact, but he ignored the discomfort and gently, careful of the newly mended ribs and all the terrifying bruises lining her skin, draped his arm over the dip of her waist. He shifted his hips until they fit snug against hers and slipped one arm slowly under her neck.

The sharp bite of something ever colder than her skin sent him swearing. He shifted, gingerly withdrawing a tarnished silver chain from the space between them, the glimmering pendants nothing more than bits of ice against his fingers.

His eyes focused on them with a start, at first in stunned disbelief, then in bewilderment. They weren’t pendants or charms, they were rings, a full damn set of wedding rings. There was a diamond large enough to make any debutante swoon and two plain, serviceable bands, a man’s and a woman’s.

Bea made a choked gasp, hands freezing in the motion of smoothing the blanket over Maria’s shoulder. “Sodding Ancestors. I thought they’d be gone for sure, I thought…”

Varric gently slid his fingers along the chain, trying to ignore the sharp burst of curiosity. There was zero chance that Fynn Dunhark legally married Maria Cadash, that information would have been in the court records and media coverage for sure. But… he could see how legalities didn’t matter. Not when you were young, not when the woman you loved agreed to take off from everything she knew and make a new life somewhere else.

Fynn Dunhark may only have had Maria Cadash for a short period of time before his untimely demise. But, he’d fully had his woman, no half-baked life full of lies and secrets. Varric would have sacrificed a lot for that same certainty.

He’d have taken a bullet too.

Varric unclasped the necklace with a deft twist of his fingers and deposited the cold chain in Bea’s extended palm. She closed her fingers over them and brought her tight fist to her lips. “I didn’t realize she was wearing them. She’d have been… she’d have been fucking devastated to lose them.”

The tremor in Bea’s usually nonchalant voice told him that Maria wouldn’t have been the only one distraught.

“It’s alright Mittens.” Varric angled his form around Maria’s, tipped his forehead against her hair, and closed his eyes. The scent of smoke and iron clung to her, a heady perfume of desperation and sheer, impossible survival. He fought the urge to press his palm more tightly over her abdomen, to drop his lips to her freckled shoulder and kiss each spot with silent, worshipful gratitude.

To drop even lower and gently press his lips to the interlocking triangles of the carta branded on her shoulder. To make a silent, desperate promise that this time, that part of her life was over. There’d be no going back, no matter the cost. Not after…

But this wasn’t the time, this wasn’t the place. Dorian balanced his warm bottle of water on the opposite side of Maria’s neck and very gently brushed his tanned fingers over her cheek. Varric smoothed away the scowl that twisted his features and the matching possessive lurch in his thoughts. Hopefully before anyone noticed.

Instead, he splayed his fingers gently over the soft curve of her stomach. He focused on the gentle rise and fall, the ease of her breathing, so unlike the way she’d labored and gasped in his arms. Without much thought, and certainly without attempting to examine his motives, Varric brushed his thumb lightly, repetitively, in a small arc over her cold skin.

Solas layered another blanket over top of them and looked to the doctor. “You said there was a burn in her palm?”

“Odd one. Don’t see how she could've done it, but I guess I’ve got to get used to her doing weird shit, don’t I?”

Bea snorted in abbreviated, but clear, agreement.

“May I?” Solas asked cautiously.

“Be my guest.” The doctor muttered. “Not much I can do for it with our general lack of supplies and I’d rather the damn healer deal with her brain than burns.”

“Just swelling.” The Elven healer’s fingers lingered over Maria’s head, eyes continuing to monitor Bea’s barely concealed anxiety. “Nasty bump, that’s all. She’ll be right as rain, you’ll see.”

With a mumbled apology, Solas’s hand lifted the blanket. Varric stilled his thumb, watching as Solas gently turned Maria’s palm in his. Varric could see the burn even through the halo of Maria’s hair, perfect and pristine, a spiraling pattern like a rising sun.

Varric fought back his own shudder. “Chuckles, that’s not an accident.”

Nothing so beautiful ever was. Solas ran his own fingers over it and frowned tightly. “Unfortunately,” He confessed, “I suspect you are correct.”

“What is it?” Cassandra asked, peering suspiciously over Solas’s shoulder.

“The mark of the magic she survived in the vortex.” Solas ran his own thumb over her palm. The second he did, the burn illuminated with a dull, gentle flicker. Varric swore he saw flakes of golden light dancing under Maria’s skin through her veins. “That demon pulled it to the surface, perhaps in an attempt to wrench it from her.”

“It looks almost like the symbol of the Chantry.” Cassandra supplied with a rather firm amount of conviction lacing her voice.

She was right, to a point. It was certainly a sun, Varric would give her that, but beyond that Maria's brand bore little resemblance to the great glowing suns of the Chantry. Her’s had delicate, intricate knots laced within it. A pattern within a pattern, looking more like something Daisy would doodle than anything else.

“A coincidence, nothing more.” Solas curled Maria’s small fingers over the mark like she clasped something precious within it. “It must have caused her great pain to have it brought to the surface like this.”

He knew. He’d heard her screaming. Unable to help himself, he brushed his thumb over her skin again, an unsaid apology for leaving her at a monster’s mercy.

“She’s tough.” Bea tightened her grip on the rings on her hand and lifted burning eyes to Solas. “Ria is tougher than anyone I know.”

Solas smiled, both kind and sad. “Of that, I have little doubt. We would not be here otherwise.”

She awoke in pieces, not all at once. The first thing she noticed was the searing heat surrounding her, warmth bleeding through every inch of skin except the tip of her nose, which felt frozen solid. The blankets covering her were heavy weights keeping the sweltering heat in.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so warm, so cozy. She considered opening her eyes, but that seemed… too hard. Her head throbbed in warning so she kept them shut, shifting slightly off an aching hip to…

It was that tiny movement that revealed the second, more important thing. Maria Cadash was not alone in this horribly uncomfortable bed. Someone’s heavy arm rested over her bare skin, her wiggling pressed her firmly against a broad, immovable chest, rough hair prickling her skin. She froze, keeping her eyes shut resolutely, trying to make sense of what had happened.

Her first thought, one that nearly had her leaping from the bed, was that she’d fallen asleep in Dwyka’s bed, fallen into this pantomime of intimacy while she’d been asleep. It happened before, and somehow that was always worse than laying perfectly still until dawn, waiting for the sun to rise to make her escape.

But the hand on her stomach was different than Dwyka’s. Undoubtedly Dwarven given the size, but less weather roughened, the callouses in the wrong place, and draped gently over her waist. There was nothing possessive about it, only warm reassurance.

Fynn, her gut clenched as his name rattled in her head, but that wasn’t right either. Fynn’s hands had been strong, ages practicing the piano at his mother’s insistence after all, but they’d never grown rough with any kind of manual labor or…

Writing.

Those were callouses from pen and pencil, she’d developed some of her own during her school days, before she’d decided that fighting and crime left better paying marks instead.

With that thought, bits and pieces began to drift back. Their desperate kiss in the kitchen. His broad arms effortlessly lifting her off her feet, his mouth…

His amazingly talented mouth. The very thought sent a spike of heat right through her in spite of her aching head and stiff limbs. Somebody must have spiked her drink, because clearly she’d been drunk, she couldn’t even remember the main event. Out of all the terrible things that happened to her, that seemed most unfair. If she’d made the critical error of falling into this horribly uncomfortable bed with Varric Tethras, she wanted to at least have the good bits to cling to.

Why was her bed so uncomfortable? Sodding hell, she felt like she was sleeping on a prison cot. She shifted again, as gingerly as she could, brain trying to fire off what exactly to do next. She needed to open her eyes, needed to break this spell, send him packing, and yet…

And yet.

She was so tired. Her eyelids felt heavy, her limbs leaden. His breath was warm on her shoulder, his forehead tucked against her hair. She was pressed tightly against him and he felt solid against her, a bulwark against the darkness nibbling at the edges of her mind. She’d been so afraid, so alone, and he…

Emotions she didn’t quite understand bubbled to the surface, fear squeezing her throat. It had been so dark and it hurt. She was so confused, her addled mind trying to keep up, and she didn’t…

“I’ve got you.” Varric whispered against her temple. “I’ve got you.”

Everything else returned like a punch in the gut. Haven. The templars, the dragon, Corypheus. Her march through the snow to her doom. Her eyes flew open, startled, taking in the cold dark night surrounding them. In her line of sight, Bea curled up in a tiny ball, her head resting against Bull’s solid chest. He slept too, leaning on the pole holding this makeshift shelter up, eye closed. One arm wrapped around Bea’s shoulders, the other around Sera’s while she snored lightly.

Alive. Alive, they were alive and so was she. She closed her eyes again, dizzy with relief. If they were alive, then it would be okay. It had to be.

She could go back to sleep. It would be so damn easy to.

Behind her, Varric shifted near imperceptibly and Maria’s breath hitched. Sweet Ancestors, his bare legs were tangled up against hers too and…

Maker. He couldn’t be completely naked, could he? Her mind struggled to process the feel of him, but she was still wearing her damn underwear, the underwire of the bra poking against her uncomfortably to remind her of that fact. He had to be wearing his.

How in the void had this even happened? How had Bea allowed this to happen? Her little sister could hardly be called part of the Varric Tethras fan club.

Boxers or briefs? Maria’s inner voice questioned, off on it’s own little tangent while she struggled to make sense of the crazy series of events that ended up with her snuggled up quite cozily to Varric fucking Tethras.

She shifted again, pressing back gently. Boxer briefs, she thought. Had to be. She twisted her hips again, just to be sure…

“Princess.” Varric huffed gently in her ear, voice sleep roughened and deliciously husky. He pressed gently on her stomach and stifled a low laugh in her shoulder. “You keep moving like that, I can’t be held liable for what happens next.”

She fought back a delighted shiver without much success. She felt Varric’s response in the loose sweep of his fingers up her abdomen and the slight pull of his hips away from hers. She felt more loss at that than she wanted to admit. And a brief, electric jolt that was only barely smothered by fatigue.

“Are we safe?” Her own voice came out hoarse.

“Seems that way. Been a whole twenty four hours since we ran out of Haven, beautiful. No sign of anything chasing our ass. They probably figured we’d starve or freeze to death without them having to lift a finger.”

Maybe everyone should have to sleep next to Varric, then, because the man was a furnace. She twisted to sit up and winced immediately, every muscle protesting the sudden movement. Her chest ached, her stomach ached, her arms and legs and…

The world tilted, spun, fuzzed a bit at the edges.

Varric sat up far more successfully than she had, but she still managed to curl to face him. His amber eyes were dark in the weak light flickering around them in the darkness, lanterns and firelight, his glorious chest completely bare.

Touch. A part of her commanded greedily. Her hand responded without her permission, lifting into the fraught, tense space between them. This all felt so surreal, part of a dream, and perhaps she hadn’t quite woken…

“Careful with that one.” Varric’s eyes flicked to the palm of her hand and back to her eyes. “You’ve got some magic stuck in it.”

Her fingers curled closed, protectively, and she pulled back. Yes. She remembered the sun caught in her palm, her flashlight in the darkness. With her fingers against it, she could feel it there, one more ache among all the others.

He’d burned it into her skin. Seared it to her flesh. Her heartbeat spiked, fear prickled through the exhaustion. “He put it there, he did something to me, he was...”

There weren't any words. Varric could probably find them, but they escaped her. He’d been like a solid black hole in the universe, like a wound oozing pus and infection, like every nightmare she’d ever had all rolled into one.

“I know.” Varric whispered, gently placing one of his hands on her shoulder and lightly guiding her back down. “We know. We know who it was. What he is.”

“What?” She rasped. Varric sighed and made to tuck her smoothly back under the blankets. He was going to get up, going to leave her in the darkness and the cold with nothing but her thoughts and fears, oblivion circling the edges of her vision. The next word fell from her lips before she considered it fully. “Stay.”

For a split second her words landed into the silence with all the elegance of a ticking time bomb. He stared at her, taken aback by the request she assumed. Certainly unsure how to handle a sick, broken creature clinging to him so selfishly. But she swallowed the tension, quirked her lips into the best smle she could manage. “Keep me warm and tell me a story.”

Please. The unsaid word echoed in her chest.

“It’s a shitty story, Princess.” Varric sighed, but he slipped back beneath the blanket, careful to leave a scant inch of sizzling air between their skin. “But I’ll try. It started with Hawke…”

Varric spun Reyna Hawke into being as smoothly as if he’d done it a thousand times, conjuring the witch out of the freezing night air so vividly, Maria could see her the way he did. This wasn’t a woman lighting her own pyre in the ashes of Redcliffe, crazed and wounded with a manic gleam in her eye. This was a heroine. A champion. Varric’s champion.

He told the story from where he’d entered it. Pulled out of bed by a panicked three in the morning phone call, shambling up to the ritziest areas of Kirkwall. The shattered glass from the broken window, the light from the silent alarm still blinking steadily. The first Hawke sister, bruised and shaken but otherwise unharmed, the second smelling of smoke and charred dwarf while an elf calmly stitched up his own wound.

Following the Carta to, of all places, an ancient temple hidden in the Vinmarks. A temple that locked them inside and forced them into the Deep Roads before they could escape. Their desperate fight through the things of nightmares, and Hawke’s blood being the only thing that could open the door.

It unlocked more than that. Much more.

And in spite of herself, as he spun the tale, she ended up closing that distance between their bodies. She wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, it seemed to be a magic of it’s own, magnetism or perhaps gravity. She didn’t press against him, not like she desperately wanted to, but she couldn’t ignore the soft heat leaching from him to her.

Couldn’t ignore the way his voice lulled her back to sleep.

“I swear.” Varric murmured softly into her hair. “We killed him, Princess.”

No they didn’t. But she was too tired to argue.

“I’m sorry.” She thought he whispered. But it could have been a dream, one she slipped back into effortlessly.

The next time she woke up, it was to bitter shouts. There was a weight at the end of the cot, but nobody under the blankets beside her. She was completely, utterly, alone. Clearly, she’d hallucinated Varric Tethras’s gentle arms curling around her, his searing warmth, his muscles and…

She raised her hand to her head, rubbing her face briskly.

“Ria?” Bea’s voice asked cautiously, breathless with hope.

“Bea.” She answered groggily, opening her eyes. It wasn’t Bea’s face she met with, but the lined and weary one of Mother Gisele. She swallowed, swinging her eyes down to the bottom of the cot where Bea sat, still as a statue, looking more a mess than she’d ever seen her. Eyeliner smudged, hair askew, lips pale.

“Are you awake this time?” Bea asked, frozen in place. “Really awake? Varric said you were before but you were out of it still and…”

“Varric?” Her tongue nearly tripped on the word, a surge of heat rising up her face. “He was here?”

“They all were.” Gisele soothed. “You are dear to many people, Herald. You’ve had a steady stream of them wishing you well.”

“What would you have me tell them?!” Cullen’s voice roared. Maria fought back the flinch and pushed herself up, trying to stare into the darkness past Bea.

“We must find a way!” Cassandra snapped back, a pale figure in the dim firelight.

“Please!” Jospehine cried out. “We must use reason!”

“Don’t mind them.” Bea dismissed the humans with a wave over her shoulder. “They’ve been at it for hours. How are you feeling? How’s your head? Still remarkably thick?”

“Shut up.” Maria replied automatically, the banter familiar even as her throat scratched out the words like she hadn’t spoken in ages. “Where are my clothes?”

“Ruined.” Bea supplied unhelpfully. “But Harding said she had a spare outfit of her own in her camera bag. It’s probably the closest we’ll get to anything fitting you. Hold on, I’ll go find them.”

As if she’d simply been waiting for something, anything, to do, Bea jumped into motion. She fled into the darkness before Maria had time to ask where exactly her little sister had gotten the coat she was wearing. The thick, buttery leather was far more familiar than Maria wanted to admit.

“You need to rest.” Giselle said gently. “There is no need to get up quite yet. After all…”

Giselle tipped her head almost playfully to the heated argument happening just outside between Cassandra, Josephine, Leliana, and Cullen. “It does not appear we’re going anywhere quickly.”

“We have time to waste?” Maria asked, pushing herself impatiently into a fully seated position despite Gisele’s tutting disapproval. She clutched the blankets tightly around her shoulders and breathed through the ache in her muscles. Bad, yes, but not the worst she’d ever pushed through.

“Thanks to you, they have the luxury of arguing. You prevented our enemies from following, but with time to doubt… well, it is easy to blame.”

Bea reappeared, tossing a bundle of clothes on the cot. “Right. So, I’m gonna warn you that you look like a bannana someone’s kicked around, that’s how fucking bruised up you are.”

“I’m sure I’ve looked worse.” Maria muttered, dropping the blanket and reaching for the sweater. Even in the flickering lantern light, she could see the marks covering her pale flesh. Deep bits of purple and blue, shadows deepening them into black in places.

“I’m not.” Bea admitted, folding her arms around herself and watching Maria as she struggled to manage the fabric with her stiff limbs. Finally, impatiently, Bea stepped forward and grabbed it, thrusting it over Maria’s head. “Here, before you strangle yourself.”

“We don’t have that!” Cullen yelled.

“She is not saying we do!” Leliana snarled back.

“In-fighting may be as great a danger to us as Corypheus.” Giselle sighed.

“I don’t know.” Bea sniped under her breath while she gently tugged the sweater over Maria’s battered torso, taking extra care to straighten it and meeting her eyes with a weak grin. “To my knowledge, our humans have zero dragons and the demon has one.”

“Where is it?” Panic clawed at Maria’s throat again. “The dragon and Corypheus, the red templars, where…”

“Nobody has figured out where the fuck we are.” Bea answered. “Varric can’t get his network up and running for more than ten minutes at a time, although to be fair he’s been snuggling you and trying to work for most of the night. For as good as he claims to be at multitasking…”

There was his name again. And her chance to ask. She plucked the material over Bea’s shoulders pointedly. “What’s this?”

“It’s mine now.” Bea declared, wicked eyes dancing with relief and mirth. “Jealous, Ria?”

Gisele cut in with practiced diplomacy. “There has been no sign of Corypheus, his dragon, or the templars. Perhaps he believes you are dead, and thus is satisfied. Or he believes we are helpless and lost.”

Gisele sighed. “It could even be that he plans another attack as we speak. We do not know the demon’s mind, only our own fears.”

Maria swung her feet off the cot and pulled the leggings on over her aching limbs as quickly as she could. Jumping from the cot to finish the job was a mistake, the rush of blood to her head making her stumble into Bea. Her sister’s arm wrapped around her waist. “Easy.” Bea whispered. “This was… this was bad, Ria. You really should lay back down.”

“I’m not gonna sodding sit here and listen to them arguing.” Maria spat between her gritted teeth, fighting the dizziness back where it came from and finishing the job of putting her damn pants on. “This isn’t helping anything.”

“Another heated voice won’t help.” Gisele advised, a gentle voice laced with steel. “Even yours. Perhaps especially yours.”

“I agree. The last thing we need is one of your infamous tantrums, Ria.”

She was going to kill Bea. She glared into her sister’s face, holding onto her and pulling on one of her soggy boots, the only clothing left from her misadventure, it seemed. Gisele picked up where Bea left off. “They are struggling to lead because of what we survivors witnessed.”

“Well, it can’t be worse than what I saw.” Maria snapped, pulling on the last boot.

“Don’t you dare.” Bea shoved Maria, hard, back onto the cot. Caught off guard, Maria stumbled back onto the thing. It creaked precariously, but before she could turn her temper on Bea, Maria realized her sister’s face was flushed and splotchy, tears threatening in her eyes. “Don’t you dare.” Bea hissed, diving into Varric’s coat pocket and pulling out something glimmering, shining in the dull light. Instead of handing it to her, Bea threw it. The necklace and her rings landed in Maria’s lap.

Maria blocked out the human’s arguing and focused on Bea, preparing to argue with her instead. She opened her mouth, but Bea stopped her cold. “I saw you die, Ria. I thought I buried you just like I buried Nanna, Dad, and Fynn.”

The well of grief under those two sentences stretched endlessly. Bea ripped her eyes away from Maria’s and stared up at the tarp above them, blinking rapidly. Guilt thudded hollowly in Maria’s chest and she curled her fist around the necklace.

“Bea…”

“Shut up.” Bea seethed. “Shut up. I thought I lost you, I thought… fuck.”

Bea whirled away and Maria stood, intent on following her. “I need a fucking minute.” Bea shouted back, voice thick with unshed tears. “Stay fucking put for once in your damn life and give me a second to breathe.”

Wretched, Maria watched Bea stumble back out into the night. Gisele sighed, watching the slender form vanish. “It is difficult. For all of us, although for her I fear it was far worse. We left our defender behind to save us all… and we lost her.”

Maria hadn’t been defending anyone. She’d just been trying to survive, blindly acting on gut and instinct. It had been a desperate last stand, nothing more, nothing heroic or courageous. “I wasn’t…”

Gisele overrode her voice patiently. “And after all hope had fled… she returns. This is miraculous by any standard, and your actions appear more divine intervention than standard heroics. The longer we examine the darkness behind us, the more our trials seem ordained.”

“That’s crazy.” Maria folded her arms around her aching torso, trying not to shiver. “Nothing about this has anything to do with faith or…”

“It does seem insane, yes?” Gisele asked sweetly, piercing Maria with her dark eyes. “What ‘we’ have been called to ensure? What ‘we’, perhaps, must come to believe?”

That ‘we’ of Gisele’s was very pointed and Maria wanted nothing to do with it. She didn’t believe in their Maker, their Andraste, their Herald. Maria never heard the Stone sing or heard whispered guidance from her Ancestors' tombs. The Elven creators apparently abandoned the world long ago, and Maria wouldn’t be surprised if everyone else hadn’t followed suit. They were alone, carving out their destinies with nothing but switchblades and shaking fingers.

“What ‘we’ believe doesn’t matter.” Maria glared, standing from the cot and steadying herself for just a moment. “What we’re about to do is freeze to death if someone can’t get their head out of their ass. I’m not waiting for the Maker to intervene.”

She turned her back on the infuriating woman and took careful, measured steps to the edge of the tent. Outside her meager shelter, she saw the Inquisition’s leaders surrounding a campfire, all wearing various expressions of distress, their silence simmering with resentment.

Fuck. Fuck. What the fuck were they supposed to…

“Shadows fall…” Gisele’s throaty voice carried from somewhere behind her, loud and clear as a chantry bell on Sunday as she moved to stand beside Maria. “And hope has fled. Steel your heart, the dawn will come…”

“What are you doing?” Maria hissed under her breath, piercing Gisele with a reproving glare, flinching as the four humans turned to stare. Gisele smiled, mysterious and sly, sailing past Maria without a word of explanation. She continued to sing an old song, a song Maria swore she’d heard in bits and pieces, a Chantry hymn floating out of pretty wooden chapels in Ostwick. “The night is long, and the path is dark… Look to the sky, for one day soon… the dawn will come.”

Maria gambled semi-professionally and knew she was rather good at it. Still, she’d have never placed money on what happened next in a million years.

It started with Leliana’s clear, bright soprano joining the chorus. Then, Maker’s balls, Cullen. Soldiers. Refugees. Chantry sisters. Children and witches and templars, all of them. The sound roared louder than the ocean, enough to drown the dragon’s screech still echoing in her head, and they were staring at her like she had an answer, like she could do something, anything.

Some of them dropped to their knees like she really was an idol carved of stone, an altar to worship at. Her panicked thoughts insisted she should have fled after Bea, but when she looked behind her to see if that escape route was still open, she saw her sister had returned in silence. The slouched form in the darkness, arms crossed, looked torn between amusement and grave concern.

She could almost hear Bea scoffing about humans being outrageous. Maria tightened her grip helplessly on the rings in her fist, wishing for all the world she was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

The song ended, the night sky hanging onto the last piercing note. Gisele turned her dark eyes back down towards Maria, triumph sparking in them as people cheered. “An army needs more than an enemy.” She declared softly. “It needs a cause.”

Gisele lifted her hands, prepared to preach a sermon to the masses. “My fellow children of the Maker…” She began fervently. “We have survived the trials put in front of us, endured the terror of…”

She stared, agog, until she felt the light press of a hand against the small of her back. She looked up to pin Solas with her bewildered gaze.

“A word?” He asked politely.

“Only if it has four letters.” She protested weakly, staring back out in stunned disbelief at the crowd.

“Come.” Solas said gently, guiding her into the shadows. “We have much to discuss.”

“She’s a wise woman. Worth heeding, at the very least. Her kind understand the moments that unify a cause… or fracture it.” Solas muttered, almost to himself, although Maria understood he was attempting to instruct her.

Maria shivered, although if it was from the cold or existential dread, she couldn’t tell. Solas noticed and extended his palm. A smooth, elegant flick of his wrist summoned a ball of flames, blue and beautiful, in the space between them. Maria stepped closer to the warmth, grateful for it.

“Can you help me escape her?” Maria asked, only semi-joking. Solas’s fond smile was the only answer before he shook his head.

“The magic Corypheus used against you. The spell that embedded that mark in your hand… It is Elven.”

Maria lifted her right palm up, still clutching the rings within it. She unfolded her fingers and stared down at the intricate, beautiful sun burned into it. “It looks Elven, I guess.” She muttered, shifting the sparkling rings to reveal the elegant loops. “Not that I’m an expert.”

“It is the magic that has been inside you since the start, pulled to the surface.” Solas explained clinically. “I assume it is also the magic that created the vortex, the same spell that caused the explosion that destroyed the conclave.”

And now… now it was inside her. “Fantastic.” She muttered.

“Do not begrudge it so much.” Solas advised. “I suspect without that magic in your veins, you would have perished then as well. As to how Corypheus survived… that is a mystery.”

Solas sighed and hunched his shoulders, staring down at the snow consideringly. “The only thing that is not a mystery is how people will react when they discover the origin of this magic. Perhaps people will not look past the fact that it is the symbol of the chantry, but there must have been a tool, one he used to harness it, and if it is found…”

“Riots.” Maria sighed. “The elves have it shit enough in all the cities of Thedas.”

Nanna used to say it could always be worse when they complained about not having enough money to buy nice clothes or go to the movies. They, at least, could afford food and their bills even if they had to work to the bone to do it. The elves… well, there was a reason they were shoved into the alienage projects. Nobody wanted to look at starving children.

“This is a fucking mess and elves are an easy target.” Maria murmured.

“I agree.” Solas’s voice was laced with approval. He placed a gentle hand on her aching shoulder. “But we can control this narrative. We can tell the story we wish to tell.”

“Solas.” Maria jerked her chin over her shoulder. “There’s a woman back there preaching a sermon about a dwarven criminal with elven magic in her hand at the head of a human religious movement. I can’t control any of my own story.”

She hadn’t been able to in years.

“Corypheus attacking the Inquisition changed it. Changed you.” Solas insisted. Maria shivered again, but this time it certainly wasn’t from the cold. “You are their guide. You are their savior.”

“I’m not.” Maria protested, wrenching away. “I’m not, don’t you dare go human on me, Solas, or I swear…”

“There is a place in the North. I have seen it in the fade, a place hidden by magic that waits for a force to hold it…”

“Is there anything useful in the fade?” Maria asked skeptically. “Maybe a way to get the network up and running so we can call for help?”

“Varric Tethras will never get our communications up and running without additional technology.” Solas insisted smoothly. “The witches alone, our power, interfered too much. Perhaps, if we had not found you he could have rigged something together, but the stronger you become, the more you recover…”

Solas reached for her palm, covered it with his own. “The technology we have with us cannot override your magic. Not any longer. I suspect he is beginning to identify the problem as well. If anyone could fix it, I suspect it is Varric, but he cannot do so here.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Maria blurted out. It would have been better, apparently, if she froze to death or simply died in the avalanche.

“But your magic is, perhaps, the only key to finding our path. Go north, lead them forward. Your magic can unlock our safety, I know it.” Solas pressed. “Only you can do this.”

“I can’t.” Maria’s voice broke and she shook her head. “Solas, I can’t.”

“You must.” Solas’s lips pressed into a thin line. “But you will not do it alone. We are by your side.”

“They won’t listen to me.”

“On the contrary.” Solas smiled, soft and proud. “I believe you are the only one they will listen to.”

Three days. They followed Maria through the mountains for three fucking days. Varric thought he’d never forgive her for their forced march through miles of snow, directly into the bitter, biting wind of the north. There was, after all, only so much a man would do for a pair of beguiling eyes no matter how sensuous her curves. Varric Tethras had nearly reached his damn limit.

In fact, he’d had it with Maker damned everything. The network that wouldn’t connect them to the satellite, no matter what he tried. He couldn’t feel his toes. And he was simply sick of the endless, bleak, whiteness of it all.

One more day, he thought darkly, trudging after Maria’s crimson hair. One more blighted day, then he was refusing to go one more step.

Which, of course, was exactly what he’d said to himself yesterday.

“Can you all honestly not feel that?” Maria asked over her shoulder, perplexed.

“There are lots of things I can’t feel, Princess.” Varric growled. “Would you like an enumerated list?”

She sent him a withering look. Varric glared back, unimpressed.

“Darling, all I can feel is that energy coming out of your hand. It’s like standing in the middle of an orchestra.” Vivienne, somehow, still looked elegant in her snug fitted peacoat. The splashes of red templar blood almost formed a chic pattern. She’d be a perfect villain for one of his stories. If he didn’t freeze to death first.

Maria cautiously approached a cliff. Varric watched, warily, as she danced rather too close to the edge for his taste. If she fell to her death one more time, he wasn’t rescuing her, right hand to Andraste.

“Please do not fall off that precipice.” Dorian snapped, in tune with his thoughts. “I, for one, do not wish to be the person informing Cullen we allowed you to plummet to your doom.”

Maria ignored him, reaching out to brush snow from a large stone pillar overlooking the abyss. A matching one, almost like they were man made instead of natural, sat some distance away. Her ineffective swiping revealed something carved into the surface.

“Runes.” Solas smiled down at her, proud as only an old teacher could be. “Well done.”

But Maria seemed to be entranced by the shapes in the rock. She tipped her head to the side, examining them curiously. She brought her gloved right hand to her mouth and used her teeth to rip off the fleece fabric. Varric caught the slightest flicker of light in her palm before she pressed it to the stone.

The runes lit up gold, glowing gently, flickering with power. A gust of wind surged past them all, so fierce he temporarily grew concerned it would topple Maria right into the yawning abyss. Instead, it lifted her hair around her face, whipped past them into the chasm, bright lights dancing within it.

Varric’s breath caught in his throat. The lights seemed to sketch out a bridge, one that turned corporeal before their very eyes. It was made of stone and marble, hanging above the abyss implausibly. The magic picked up speed, circling in clouds in the air, puffs of glitter exploding to reveal walls, towers, trees, gates, all pulled from nothing but thin air.

“Andraste’s blushing buttcheeks.” Dorian whispered. “Who hid this?”

Who wouldn’t? It was something from another age, from a fairy tale, a fortress fit for a queen, pristine and intact, waiting for someone to unveil it, someone to call it back to life.

Not a queen, a part of him supplied. A princess. His princess.

“Skyhold.” Solas supplied quietly. “Welcome home, Herald.”

#girl with the arrow tattoo #maria cadash #varric tethras #varric romance #cadash x varric #inquisitor x varric #dwarf inquisitor #inquisitor cadash #dragon age inquisition #modern!thedas #modern magic #bea cadash needs a fucking hug guys #solas dragon age #dorian pavus #vivienne dragon age #mother gisele drives me crazy

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pepperjackwriting · 5 years ago

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Make it All Ok (Steve Rogers)

Chapters: [Steve Rogers] [???]

Summary: Set before Age of Ultron. After a grueling mission, [Y/N] returns home with the group exhausted and emotionally downtrodden after feeling as if the mission had not only gone bad but their 2 year anniversary was forgotten. However, the special occasion is not so forgotten.

Pairing: Steve Rogers X Reader

Warnings: Fluff

Word Count: 1472

Group Perspective

The mission had been difficult for everyone sitting in the ‘family room’ of the Stark Tower. They’d returned to this room almost an hour ago after changing out of their uniforms, but nobody had moved from the spot they’d plopped down onto. It just seemed too difficult to get up and move about after all they’d seen. They’d been making small talk, not saying much of substance for a little while now. Stark was loud as ever but everyone could tell he was saying less than he usually does. Steve was leaned back, deep in thought. Banner was uncomfortably looking for the right moment to leave but never finding just the right second, thus continuing the cycle of awkward small talk. Thor was eyeing Mjolnir on the table silently. [Y/N] was first to rise after a long while of sitting in the room.”I’m going to go take a shower and probably just...watch a movie in my room or something.” [Y/N] says, moving towards the elevator. As the doors slid shut, a majority of the eyes moves to Steve Rogers.

“Well? Did you put anything up there for them?” Rhodes asks him, his eyebrows raising as to say ‘you better have’. “I agree, this is kind of an important thing. Don’t want them to feel like you forgot your two year anniversary, would you?.” Natasha comments, half joking and half warning Steve. “Come on guys, I have this handled.” Steve says with a chuckle as Tony gets up and moves to go make some coffee. “I think Capsicle is right! He’s got this super handled. And you know what else? I think whatever antique little token of love he left up there will make their whole evening.” he said sarcastically. Steve gets the smallest hint of worry on his face and Sam steps in. “Come on, Tony, cut the man a break. He’s been doing good for himself, let’s give him some peace of mind.” Sam says, smiling over at Steve.

Suddenly, Jarvis pipes up from overhead speakers. “Mr.Rogers, as requested I am here to tell you that they are opening their gift. All other arrangements are already prepared.” There was a hush that fell over the room, everyone glancing over to Steve who got to his feet hurriedly. “I’m sure it’s good news!” Sam calls after him, trying to ease his nerves. “Go get em, tiger!” Stark yells over him, saluting sarcastically. Everyone else simply watched him go towards the elevator, board, and then disappear as the doors closed.

[Y/N] Perspective

The last thing [Y/N] wanted to do this evening was sit around after a disaster of a mission and make small talk with the other Avengers. They adored their company but something about this evening just felt so off. Maybe it was the bruise on their side they’d received dropping out the window onto some rocks.Perhaps it was the fact that despite all their training their boyfriend of two years had to swoop in and save her, shield in hand and worry in his eyes. Or maybe…just maybe...it was the fact that it seemed that beyond a shadow of a doubt their two year anniversary was completely forgotten. Regardless, they took the initiative and stood up. “I’m going to go take a shower and probably just...watch a movie in my room or something.” [Y/N] says, sighing and heading for the elevator. They could have sworn just as the elevator doors were closing the rest of the way that everyone looked at Steve…

The doors opening and [Y/N] walks down the hall a ways to their little home in the tower. It was a cozy little two bedroom style space Tony had set them up with after they’d joined and Tony has seen their living space at the time. They open the door and go in, their surroundings a haze as they walk to the bathroom and go to take a shower. They hoped they’d all go off to their rooms soon. Missions that required everyone always took a toll on everyone’s heart. And it seemed they were no different...They let the hot water clean off the grime of battle, making sure to avoid the bruised spot, and gets out after a while clean and feeling fresh.

Putting on the [F/C] robe and using a towel to dry their [H/C], and walked out into their bedroom, a massive sprawling sleeping area that was almost too big for them. They were stopped in their tracks by what they saw. Laying on the foot of the bed was the biggest bouquet of scarlet roses that they had ever seen next to a sizable box of what could only be assumed was chocolates, the company being one from Brooklyn. There was a little cream colored envelope with [Y/N]’s name written on it in the prettiest cursive they’d ever seen laying atop the box. [Y/N] picked it up and turned it over, revealing a wax seal decorated with a small rose. Using a finger, [Y/N] pops the seal and pulls out the letter within.

“Hello my dearest [Y/N]

It’s probably odd for someone to be sending letter nowadays with all the new ways to communicate in this day in age. I have to say though, writing letters truly is the romantic option. I know you like this sort of thing and I promise I had no intention of forgetting our anniversary. Time does sometimes get away from me but you can’t blame me for being a little forgetful after I spent so long trapped without a sense of anything. But I knew the second I saw your [E/C] eyes and the way you took control on the battlefield that I had to at the very least have coffee with you. You were the one who finally broke me of my bad habits.

You’ve only become more beautiful as we’ve been together, [Y/N]. You’re edges have softened a little and you’ve helped me worry a little less than I usually do. Trust me when I say Sam has very much appreciated that. You were the bird that roosted in my heart, making it feel warmer than it has in a long time. We’ve made so many memories. I want to make a million more with you, [Y/N]. I want to take you dancing sometime. I’m sure you’d be very good at it.

With Love,

Steve Grant Rogers”

[Y/N] felt their eyes get misty as they set the letter down onto the box and they smiled under their breath. “Now don’t go crying on me.” says a warm voice from behind them. Jump and giving a light gasp, they spun around and were met with the ocean blue eyes of Steve Rogers leaning in the doorway. He’s dressed in the most sharp looking navy suit and vest, so dark it was almost black. His tie was the same color as the suit, juxtaposed by the crisp white shirt underneath the suit and vest. His brown shoes clicked on the floor as he came in all the way. He looked dressed to impress

His smile was tender and soft, his hand coming up under [Y/N]’s chin. He turns his hand, the thumb wiping the single tear from the corner of [Y/N]’s eye. “Hey there, sweetheart.” he says, his deep voice resonating in the air and making [Y/N]’s heart quiver in their chest. “H-hi.” they reply back, gazing deep into his baby blues. “I wanted to write more...but I decided just to tell you in person. I’ve got us some dinner plans if you’re not too tired.” he says with that smile that drive’s [Y/N] wild. He steps forward, [Y/N] stepping back and sitting down on the foot of the bed. His hand cradles their head still, so kind and compassionate.

He leans in bit by bit, eyes shut as he pressed his lips tenderly to [Y/N]’s. He smells even more handsome than usual, the kiss sending shivers up their back three times over. He leaned back only a bit, resting his forehead on theirs with a smile and a chuckle, eyes still shut. He was close enough to where [Y/N] could feel his breath as he spoke. “All these years and you still get goosebumps when we kiss.” he breathed. “How could I not?” [Y/N] replies somehow, their chest alight like a drum line. As much as he’d try to hide it, his cheeks get the lightest dusting of pink as he blushes. He gives their head another kiss and stands back up straight. “Let’s get you dressed and ready for our romantic evening.” he says, holding out a strong hand to help them stand.

#steve x reader #steve rogers x reader #reader #ship #fanfiction #fanfic #marvel fanfic #marvel x reader

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wingsofanillyrian · 7 years ago

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Would you Take an Arrow for Me? (Feysand)

Anonymous asked: “ Can you please write one where in the middle of Feyre and Rhysand angst fighting, Feyre sees an attacker from the corner of her and quickly pushes Rhysand out of the way so she takes the full blunt pain of the ash arrow? And Rhysand loses it”

Full Fic Masterlist

Send me a request!

Feyre’s POV

Rhys had been on my nerves all day.

He’d agreed to take me with him to visit Devlon’s camp, but had neglected to inform me that he didn’t plan to let me out of his sight. I had intended to gain some hand to hand training experience from some of the battle hardened Illyrians, but hadn’t been able to focus with Rhys’ burning gaze tracking my every move.

I doubled over as my opponent’s staff landed a jab at my stomach for the third time. The lead trainer clucked at me, shaking his head.

“Your thoughts are elsewhere,” he said, eyes flicking above us to the edge of the pit. Frustrated, I growled and threw my staff to the sand.

“I’m done for now. Thank you for your time.” Without another word, I turned on my heel and exited the pit. Rhys said something as I stalked past, but the blood roaring in my ears drowned it out. He caught my elbow, forcing me to face him.

“Feyre, what is it-“

I whirled on him. “Do I need to be babysat?”

Rhys blinked once before releasing my elbow. “What? I’m not babysitting you. I’m just making sure you’re safe.”

“Damn it Rhys, I can protect myself!” He opened his mouth to either argue or agree, but I cut him off. “You know what, I’m not fighting with you about this here. If you really want to discuss, I’ll be waiting outside the camp’s border.”

I tromped past the gathered warriors, unflinching under the weight of their stares. Not every day that you witness a High Lord and Lady duking it out. The wards zinged against my skin as I crossed the camp’s barrier, instantly feeling more at ease.

I breathed the crisp autumn air deep into my lungs, letting the scent of dry leaves cool the anger in my veins. A twig snapped behind me, and I knew it was more for by benefit than an accident.

“I’m sorry you felt that I was babysitting you.” Rhys’ inky, thoughtful presence enveloped me as he came to a stop a few feet behind me.

“Felt like?” I forced my voice to remain calm and steady. “Rhys, what kind of image does it present to those men if I can’t do anything without you hovering over me?” I shook my head as I faced him.

“You can do things without me, you’ve proven that-“

“But they haven’t seen any of those things first hand. I want them to be able to see me as their equal, and I can’t do that with you breathing down my neck!”

“Feyre, please, look at this through my eyes-“

“What do you see? Do you see a pitiful being that needs your protection? I can take care of myself! What are you so afraid of?“

“What am I so-“ He chuckled, the sound low and unnerving as he raked a hand through his hair. “Do you even know what they do to females in those camps? The horrible things the males do when they think no one’s watching?” I stiffened at the words.

“They wouldn’t dare touch me.”

“You’d be surprised!”

“Even still, that’s no reason for you to-“ I sucked in a breath, my focus narrowing to a glint of light over Rhys’s shoulder.

In an instant, time thickened to the consistency of syrup; everything flowing at a snail’s pace.

I saw the ash arrow whiz through the trees, tracked it’s path through the brush. It was going to impale Rhys, a clean shot right through his heart. He’d be dead in seconds.

I had barely a moment to decide, but then again, there wasn’t a decision to make.

I threw my entire body weight at him, knocking him out of the arrow’s trajectory. Birds cawed as they fled from the disturbance. I didn’t register the hit, but I knew immediately that something was wrong.

My mind was fuzzy. Spots blinked in my vision. As if outside my own body, I touched my bicep, fingers coming away wet. Distantly, I recognized the scarlet color as blood. My blood. I felt the shaft of the ashwood arrow protruding from the flesh.

And then the pain hit.

Searing, bone-deep pain lanced through my left arm, coating my veins in pure, liquid fire. Someone was screaming, probably Rhysand. Maybe it was me.

I remember crumpling to the ground and Rhys kneeling over me. Tears streaked down his cheeks as he shouted something, but the ringing in my ears was too loud for me to hear anything.

Black tinged my vison as a fresh wave of white-hot fire licked through my body. My fingers clawed at the dirt, my mouth open in a silent scream.

End this, I begged through the bond, the only thing tethering me to consciousness. Kill me, kill me, kill me-

Stop it, he growled back, suddenly fierce as he lifted me into his arms. The movement jostled the arrow, twisting it and exposing me to more of the splintering ash, bringing more agony. I was bleeding too quickly, I could feel the liquid dripping from my dangling fingers.

I was going to die. But I couldn’t leave him without saying goodbye. I fought against the black tinting my vision long enough to choke out three words down our bond.

I love you.

I plunged into the black abyss, never expecting to return.

***************

Rhys’ POV

I replayed the moment over and over in my mind. I’d been screaming at her, more upset and annoyed in that moment than I had ever been before. One second, she was flinging more poisonous words back in my face, and the next I was on the ground.

It had taken me a few precious moments to realize what happened.

And then I saw the blood.

There was so much blood.

It poured from around the ash arrow that had punctured straight through her arm. She’d touched it then, activating the detrimental effects of the wood.

For as long as I live, I will never forget her scream.

It tore from her throat, a blood-curdling, ear-piercing scream that rattled my bones. With half a thought, I misted every foreign body within the dark forest as I scrambled to her side.

“Feyre, darling, stay with me baby,” I pled, cradling her face in my shaking hands. Her breathing was labored- not a good sign. The ash must’ve pierced an artery, the poison coursing through her veins already reaching her vital organs.

And she was losing more blood with each increasingly weak beat of her heart.

My tears splashed onto her cheeks as her eyelids slid shut. I pulled her into my lap, the arrow twisting. Her face contorted, mouth open in a silent scream as she convulsed.

“Feyre, it’ll be alright, I love you, I love you, I love you-“

End this. Feyre’s strained, broken voice filtered through our bond. The words clanged through my entire being.

Kill me, kill me, kill me-

Stop it. I hefted her fully into my arms, phantom pains pulsing through my own arm. I knew they were but shadows of what she was enduring.

She was slipping away, our bond dimming with each moment. It guttered and flickered, like a candle in the wind.

I winnowed us to the nearest camp, directly to the healer’s tent. I remember screaming for someone, anyone, as she told me she loved me one last time. And then she was asleep.

***************

She’d been asleep for three days.

Over the course of those three days, healers came and went, Cassian and Azriel cried- actually cried- at their High Lady’s bedside, and Mor had taken one look at her, at the pus leaking through the bandages, and hurled her guts up.

I paced. I sat at her side, holding her hand, begging her to wake up. It was a futile effort though; she couldn’t hear me.

Her mind was shielded by a wall of solid onyx stone, not a single crack for me to slip through. I didn’t know if she was going to pull through. I became a rubber band stretched taut; one tiny incident away from snapping.

The healers had told me that the arrow had nicked her brachial artery, and that she was lucky to be alive. Most people bled out within the space of a few minutes. They said it was the strength of our mating bond that had kept her alive.

They told me it was good that she was asleep. Because that meant her body was healing. Because she couldn’t feel any pain. I tried to accept their reasoning, but I just wanted to look in her beautiful blue eyes one more time.

But she didn’t wake up.

I didn’t stop pacing.

Two more days passed the same as the others.

But then she tugged at our clouded bond.

A tiny crack in her mental shield appeared, allowing me into her consciousness. Where there had once been blindingly bright light, I found only a dim spark. But it was something at least, and I sobbed with relief.

Tenatively, carefully, I called out to her.

Feyre?

The spark flickered, dimming further. My heart lurched, and I clung to her hand like a lifeline.

Feyre, come back to me. I love you, Feyre darling.

Nothing happened. The light stayed as it was, a barely-there pinprick of her consciousness. Fresh tears spilled from my red, puffy eyes, dripping to the sterile sheets. So this was it, then. Her shield was cracking because she was dying, slipping further and further away with each passing breath.

This was her goodbye.

“Feyre, I want you to know that I will always love you.” I smoothed a hand over her golden hair, committing the feeling to memory. “I will look back on the love we shared every day for the rest of my life. And I promise-“

Sobs wracked my body as I struggled to find my voice again. It was too hard- too hard to imagine going home without her.

“I promise our daughter will know how brave, strong, and courageous her mother was. She will know that you loved her, and are watching over her.”

I kissed her hand, lips wet with salty tears. “I love you.”

Her conscious flared. Wild, senseless hope flared in my chest. My heart pounded as I tried to rationalize the momentary flash. Maybe I’d imagined it in my grief, or it was just her way of pushing my buttons one last time. But I had to make sure.

Feyre?

A pause, long and heart-wrenching. And then a single syllable from her.

Rhys.

#feysand #feysand fanfiction #feyre archeron #rhysand #acotar #acomaf #acowar #a court of thorns and roses #a court of wings and ruin #a court of mist and fury #a court of thorns and roses fanfiction #my writing

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avalindin · 7 years ago

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The Free Bird

Coriolanus fic

Chapter 7: Around here

________

Previous Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

_______

He wished to close his eyes and take in the dying summer’s breeze. His eyes surveyed the starting change of colors of the valley of wheat alongside him. His role as General came with more responsibility than he could have imagined. Through the death of Volumnia, he was able to look forward on the future of his child coming into the world. There were changes he failed to realize were there. The more Raina grew with the child, so did the smile to his face and the fear to his heart that something would take the happiness away.

His legs were sore with riding so many days but he felt it to be the best thing for Raina. She had the servants and the tutors and the support of the other maters she’d sought advice from but she needed more. He looked over his shoulder to the rolling cart to the midwife in all of her years of life’s experiences. Another change, a welcome transition to bring back to the villa.

“I see some fear in you, Sir Caius.”

“There is much under his Roman steel.”

“She has cared for herself properly? I feel like it has been so long.”

“She has made many proud and I am glad to call her my wife. She is the same but has grown.”

The old woman smiled and looked south to the start of the mountains in their path.

“Until nightfall we should be close.”

“I agree. I expected the journey to be longer.”

“The longest will be back up those, I believe. Please, tell me everything, Caius.”

He could not argue with her. He gripped his reins tighter and dared not hide his smile for what was ahead. He thought back to the first night, careful with his words to the night he asked Raina to be his. It seemed only right…

Raina felt the chill of the early morning at her back. Her body was used to the emptiness now and she felt like she no longer needed to cry for her love. She turned and saw Caius was still gone. He had left days ago with promise to return with a special mid-wife, confusing her to why he would not choose one that would give life to deliver a General’s child. The excitement was enough for her but Caius had other plans. Raina looked down to her heavily pregnant belly. The little one was to come any day now. The stretch marks to her skin reminded her of the life moving inside of her, the fruit to grow into her new world. She wiped a hair from her brow and sighed to that approaching dawn.

She stood looking around the chambers and searched for a dress. In her later days of carrying, she was ordered to stay in bed until the baby was born and when she disobeyed him before he left, he simply tossed her dress into the fire and smiled. She smiled as well as she left the room naked, much to the surprise of her husband.

She giggled as she found a dress to fit over her belly, tying the closures together. She stopped and admired herself in the mirror as she stroked her belly.

"Soon, little one, soon. We should get you fed."

Raina took her time on the stone steps as she made her way down to the kitchen. The women were busy with breakfast as she walked in like a plump chicken for the roast. She closed her eyes and smelled the mixture of sweet fragrances. The sickness was not as bad as they all said. A single kitchen maid stopped her task and rushed to Raina.

"My Lady, you should not be here. The master said..."

"The master is not here and I enjoy defying my husband. I will gladly accept his heavy words. Gods, it smells wonderful in here." She took the hand of the kitchen maiden. "Let's make some rolls before he gets back."

Caius grabbed the belongings of the midwife and led her into the house. He held her hand as he led her to the room she would stay to help with the babe in the months after it was born. Her aged eyes looked around to the fresh crib near her bed and a view of the city to take her breath away

"Rest now and a meal will be brought to you."

"Thank you, Master Caius. I wish to check her and the child when I wake, if it pleases you."

"I know it will please her the most. She has been waiting for far too long and please, I wish for you to no longer call me master."

“It’s been so long. This change will pass.”

Caius left the woman to herself as he left for the kitchen. He knew that's where she was. He marched as he heard her giggles from the kitchen. The smell of fresh bread filled the house as he stood in the doorway. The kitchen maiden gasped when she saw him.

"Master, I am sorry! I tried to tell her!"

He held his hand up to her as he watched Raina pulled rolls from the pit. She turned, wiping her brow as she saw her husband with a scowl on his face.

"Welcome back, Caius."

“I understand your daily task to defy my word but the one of a physician’s is not to be jested.”

He ignored her smiling face as he reached out for her.

"Wait, wait!"

She turned and grabbed a cloth to wrap her hot piece of bread with. She wrapped her fingers around his arm and pulled him from the kitchen. He pushed her gently into the bedchambers as he slammed the door. She was already seated at the table out of his reach. Raina brought the roll to her nose and sighed. Of all the rumored cravings of her pregnancy to be changed, she was glad that her love for her food had not. Caius rolled his eyes as she ate her roll. There were no words to how much he loved her, more in that moment

He knelt beside her silently and rubbed her stomach. His seed was strong growing in her womb. She offered him the rest of her bread as he accepted it, sucking boldly on her thumb. Raina stirred in her seat to hinder the returning heat between her legs. Caius smiled as he helped her stand and untied her dress.

“Defiance or not, I would gladly burn all fabric to make sure you are always bare to me.”

"Please don't toss that one. It's the only one that fits. You can burn the rest of my clothes, just not this one."

She rubbed his leg as he moaned.

“As you wish.”

"I'll be more than glad to earn it back."

He smiled as he stripped himself and sat on the edge of the bed. Raina eased herself between his legs and took him into her mouth, sucking sharply at his cock. His head fell back as he knew how her cravings were intensified, now more than ever. Her appetite was his dream come true. She consumed as much as he did and in their bed, she was a lovely feral beast, never wanting to stop feeling her around his cock.

She took most of him, moaning in pleasure as he fisted his hand into her hair and thrust into her mouth, not that he needed to. She gladly took everything and in an instant, he felt his seed slide down her throat. Her lips stayed on him too long as he was straining again while he put her in the bed. More months of practice were carnally making him unravel.

Caius watched Raina as she winced. She grabbed his hand and placed at the side of her stomach. Caius felt the kick against her skin. he let out a chuckle. The child would make a great warrior. He stripped himself and joined her in the bed, cradling her as his fingers played with the sweat on her skin.

He was told to go gentle on her during her time with child but she wouldn't have it.

How do you think the seed got there in the first place, she told them.

Her skin was beautiful in a glow as he planned to always keep her with child. Her breasts grew firmer with milk as she whined at the soreness. He couldn't help but give her breast a squeeze for old times’ sake. His fingers closed around her. She moaned as he lapped at her skin to taste it. A shame that it was all for their child. He would have consumed her gladly while she moaned his name like a whore. His beautiful whore. She gripped his hair and shot her head up.

"That is not for you. You should not take what is not yours."

He smiled as he pulled the sheets over her naked chest.

"Is there anything you require?"

She bit her lip as she stared below his waist.

"Just you. I want to try again."

"No," ordered sternly.

She grabbed his wrist and guided it past her belly as she stroked her sex with his fingers. She moaned lightly and growled.

"Please?"

Who was he to deny his beautiful wife? He drew the sheets away from her body and pulled her close. He entered her slowly, not to harm the child inside of her. Her head fell into the mattress as she moaned his name. His thrusts were slowly torturing her but his size made up for the matter. Her nails dug into his arms.

"Faster," she whined in pleasure.

He lost control as his hips took over. Her moans filled the room and her body was frail to his touch. He grunted wildly as he pistoned into her wetness. Caius only kept his hand to her hips. Raina felt her waves take over her with her legs drifting around Caius. He let her walls milk him, the strength to help him empty his seed into her. Raina could feel wetness from her thighs, utterly ravaged by him.

Caius lifted her body from the bed as he picked up a cloth from the table to wipe her off. So clean and pure, no matter how hard or roughly he took her. So much beauty, the remained spirit from her eyes as she pulled him up and claimed the lips of her husband. Her hands ran over the scars of his chest, the damaged, strong flesh of his arms.

“Am I to assume you returned with the midwife?”

“I have and she is resting now. The journey was dull but longer than I thought.”

“What if she is here longer than our child is to get here.”

“Perhaps you would wish to connect with her?”

She sighed and pulled the sheet to her chin.

“What if she misjudges me? What if I’m not meant to be a mater?”

“I am sure of many things. Your loving soul is enough to calm a horrid, feral thing such as me.”

She felt a fire in her belly, wanting to be taken again as she cringed from a strange feeling at her hips.

"What is wrong? Tell me."

Her nails dug into his arms as he held her. She gasped as it felt like river water rushed down her legs to the floor. Her voice was gone as he pulled her to the bed. Pain engulfed her as Caius set her away from the wetness. He only pulled on his trousers and turned for the hall.

"Someone fetch the midwife!"

Within minutes, she arrived at his bedchambers, nervous as she smiled to the bed. Caius held Raina's hand as she looked in shock at the door.

"M-Mother?"

The pain subsided for a moment as Raina saw her mother with fresh linens tucked to her arm. Mao felt her heart could give out as she saw her daughter’s face. She rounded the bed and the servants pulling away the sheets to replace hers.

"My Dear, not to be modest but I delivered you both myself. I had worked my life long before that kitchen. Now, let us prepare..."

Hours went by as Raina's cries slowly filled the house. She had tried her best not to scream until she needed to. The men and women were stunned at the tongue of the wife as she carried on in labor. Servants and soldiers gathered around the outside door to the kitchen, placing wagers on the child. Caius excepted a dwindling crowd from one of the back streets behind his house with few to spread news by nightfall.

Mao struggled with her daughter as she eased her the best she could manage. The last child she had delivered was one belong to a fellow servant that both mother and child did not survive. Raina thought of the night her mother left, wishing that pain was there instead of what ran through her. She had never known sweet pain like it before. Nerves and worry swam through her as she did not dare look down to her mother between her legs. Caius sat behind his wife on the bed, holding both of her hands through the pain. Her mother looked up as she readied a towel.

"Raina. It is time, push for me, child."

She pushed and screamed in pain. Caius watched as Mao focused on her daughter, coaching her as she would have anyone else. She took a breath and pushed again as hard as she could. Caius watched the muscles on his wife's body fight to birth the child. Tears mixed with the sweat that ran from her brow.

“I-I can’t breathe…”

"Do not cry, he is almost here."

Raina tightened her grip on Caius' hand enough to hear his knuckles pop. Her beet red face turned to him, seeing a wondrous rage as he had never seen before.

"TO HELL WITH YOU, CAIUS! YOU PUT ME IN THIS WAY!"

Volumnia was correct, she was indeed Juno. He laughed as he whispered into her hair.

"With rage like this, I should have you fight in battle beside me."

Raina laughed with Caius through her tears as she pushed on.

"One more, Raina. Just one more push. I promise you."

The moment seemed to drag like a mule. Raina adjusted her hands and squeezed them to Caius’. She eased her body one last time. She took a deep breath and let out a mighty roar that sent a chill down her husband's spine. Raina's voice carried to the Heavens as a small but strong wail filled the room. Raina felt relaxed as she closed her eyes for a moment.

"It is a boy."

Mao cut the cord and wiped the baby clean, handing him to Raina. They looked at their son as he latched onto Raina and fed from her.

"You did well, my free bird. What is his name?"

She controlled her wild emotions to cease, looking to her perfect boy.

"You choose. Should you shame me with a daughter, then I shall name her," she grinned.

Caius smoothed the hair from his wife's as she smiled.

"He will be Lucius Martius."

"A strong name like his father's."

"Congratulations, Mater," smiled Mao as she kissed her daughter's forehead.

The stained sheets were pulled from the bed with new ones to take their place. She bowed to Caius as she took her things and headed for the kitchen to clean and spread the news. She gave a final glance to the bed as she saw her daughter's necklace, each half tied tightly to the bedposts.

Cheers roared from the kitchen and the street outside the bedchamber window into the night as Caius sat proud. He took hold of his son as Raina feel into sleep, exhausted from the birth. One hand stayed on Raina’s skin to remind her that he was there to comfort her through her pain. The other held his boy up.

He fussed, opening his eyes to his father. Caius thanked the Gods for the gift of a healthy boy.

His wondrous little eyes. Brown on the edges, dark like his mothers and piercing blue as his. The bit of hair at his delicate crown was dark as his own and Raina’s. His tiny fingers wrapped around Caius’ long finger as he closed his gums around it, chewing for sport. His little voice was clear as he heavily squirmed in his father's strong arms. He could sense a bold free spirit in his son to match his mother’s. He would make a proper Roman soldier when he came of age.

"Savage little thing aren't you, Lucius?"

Caius knew soon he would have to ride away again for the return to battle with his soldiers at his side. Now at his side was his fierce woman and his son as he fell asleep on his chest. He moved into his bed as he pulled Raina's head to his lap and rested victoriously.

Mao was silent as she placed Lucius into Raina’s arms. She nearly chuckled at the nervous sight of her daughter.

“Be sure to mind his head. Hold at the neck to support him.”

Days after the birth, Raina was still learning much about her child. All with the proper care, the continuous feeding of her starved baby. Lucius had an appetite to match one like his father’s. Raina shifted Lucius on her arm and rested back to the wall in the bed. She listened to her mother’s words to stay put for her own sake if she wished for children again.

“Like this?”

“Not so stiff,” she smiled, “You must relax yourself. I will confess I nearly dropped you a few good times when I brought you into this world and you turned out perfect as him. A little roughage never truly hurt the soul. If you don’t believe me, marble must be chipped to find the structure underneath.”

She fixed Raina’s arms, helping her posture greatly. With the tension slowly vanishing, she held Lucius feed yet again. The bleeding was a normal thing, soon to clear and was to be expected along with the shape of her post birth body. Caius would have adored it none the less. Lucius’ skin was soft against her arm as he nearly spilled with life over his bundle. Raina lifted him up to her nose, enjoying the scent of him. His hands touched her face to play with her features. She wasn’t sure what she would do with her mother. The great reward of life and no one else to truly share it with besides Caius.

“Are you going to leave again, mother? I never liked our traditions and I can’t understand why you left.”

Mao stroked her daughter’s hair back to show her beautiful face.

“I may stay now that you are a mater. Please forgive my decision, child. I did not mean to hurt you. Think back, Raina, because if I had not left that night, you would not be in this bed now with a proper husband and child to hold while you give me the scolding I deserve in this moment. There are so many things to teach him that your own tutor may lack. We have so many years of life between us and this little one will know the world. Am I to assume that Caius will want more children.”

The radiant smile to her mother hurt her face and filled her with joy. She was right. She would not have been as she was and her life would not have been complete as she hoped it to be. Raina looked to Caius, exhausted as he snored in his chair near the fireplace. He would need his own rest for his ride.

“That all depends on him.”

Lucius stopped feeding and yawned. Both women softly admired the baby as he smiled and reached out for them.

“The Gods have blessed you, indeed.”

Raina smiled to a waking Caius and met his pleasingly restful stare. She stroked Lucius’ soft cheek as his eyes closed.

“I have indeed…”

Tagged: @808-anon @angelus80 @angryschnauzer @atinyfangirl @audasia25 @cerys1212 @clairelovexo @damageditem @echantedbytwh @eve1978 @hallotom @itsjustelen @jennphoenix @justahopeless-dreamer @lokilockedcougar @lovehiddles4everme @marvelousmissfit @mazda098 @missdibley @mrshiddelston @mypreciousmind1 @nicole-stewart-loves-cookies @osb1anon @ourladybinxthings @peskipixi @prplprincez @quoting-shakespeare-to-ducks @ririsutty @roamingbadger @sarabeth72 @servent-alearika @shamvictoria11 @siyoteodiara @starrynight35 @startingtoenjoylife @the-lady-mischief @tinaferraldo @tomkurbikston @vdcster @wolfsmom1

#Caius Martius #Coriolanus #feels #Smut #fanfic

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sunshinykittens-blog · 7 years ago

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October 5 - Acme Employment Agency

Penelope Fleming hung up the phone with a heavy sigh. She dreaded having to call the client to let them know they would be 2 people short on the janitorial staff tonight. Those employees had just called out sick with bird flu or something at 3 pm, a mere 4 hours before they should be at the client’s office. A wave of panic rose in her chest, and she reached for the paper bag she kept in her top right hand drawer for just such an occasion. Acme was a small company, but it was her baby. And she worried about it, fretted over it, did her best to coax it along when times were hard.

Miss Fleming had grown up in Poughkeepsie, and moved to New York right after college, thinking she would find a job within days of arriving. Alas, her art history degree did not land her a coveted job in the Guggenheim or at MOMA like she had dreamed. But Mr. Capanelli had given her a job bussing tables in his homestyle Italian restaurant to help her make ends meet that first summer. By fall she’d sold most of her valuables, and by Thanksgiving had lost her apartment. Mr. Capanelli had seen her crying after she’d pawned her grandmother’s locket to buy one more week in the sleazy hotel, and he’d taken her up to the third floor of the building, one above the offices. He said he was considering turning it into a studio apartment, perhaps for his son Joey for when he went to college. He asked if she thought she could clean the place up and make it livable; he would pay her for the work, of course. She looked around at the piles of boxes and trash everywhere, seeing just a wee bit of what the floor plan could look like. She’d agreed, of course, and had set about that moment to turn it into a tiny gem. A month later, he’d presented her with the key to it, saying his son had decided that UCLA was more to his liking for college. And, he had a bonus for her. He’d handed her a small box that contained her grandmother’s locket, which she had been unable to redeem for lack of funds.

Miss Fleming had continued working for Mr. Capanelli while she looked for a job in her field. In the meantime, she’d moved up to waiting tables, acting as hostess, and eventually managing the restaurant. Over the years, she’d seen him take in other lost sheep who had no other hope of finding work. And he had even discovered that with her easy conversations with the customers, she had a knack for finding out where better employment was open and which of their current staff might be suitable for which job. She didn’t even realize when she’d given up looking for an art historian position, because she’d become like family to the Capanellis. But when Mr. Capanelli died suddenly 5 years ago, she wasn’t sure what would become of her or the restaurant. After a month, Mrs. Capanelli had decided she wanted to move to California to be close to her only son. The restaurant was going to close in 2 weeks. That gave her 2 weeks to find a new place to live and a new job. She was back to square one. Joey had flown in to help his mom take care of the arrangements for her move, their apartment, and the restaurant. And it was Joey who had sat down with Miss Fleming and offered her a proposition. He’d offered her the chance to buy the building. After much discussion about whether or not she could afford to buy the building, and whether or not she wanted to continue running a restaurant, Mrs. Capanelli and Joey had reached an agreement with her. The building would not remain a restaurant. It could be turned into an office building. For a year, Miss Fleming would rent the building to see if she could make her dream of an employment placement company fly. During that time, she would continue to live in her studio on the third floor, and the Capanellis would take on the cost of renovations as landlords. Joey assured her that the sale of the restaurant equipment would be more than enough to cover 3 months’ expenses, so she still had a cushion. At the end of the year, they would meet again and see if she wanted to arrange to buy the building from them. It was an ideal plan.

Because of the Capanellis, Miss Fleming loved her neighborhood and her neighbors. She vowed to help them when times were hard. So she tried to find each of them a job, every person who walked through her door. Some folks were easy to find work for – the ones who had good resumes and solid reputations. Others were not so easily employed. A few had stolen from or damaged property at their assignments, so she’d had to let them go. And occasionally, there had been the accident-prone ones. But through her years helping her co-workers at the restaurant find placement for free, she’d built a reputation of someone who was good for clients as well as job seekers. And gradually, she had built up a clientele of bigger companies.

Now she was sitting on a trial contract with one of the largest tech companies in the state, two of her employees had called out, and she had no replacements available. Her fingers found the paper bag; she hesitated, then moved her hand over to retrieve the bottle of headache medicine. Chasing two pills down with water, she began to thumb through her rolodex (yes she still used the archaic thing for her most reliable employees). An hour later, she still had no replacements. Conceding defeat, she reached to telephone the client. Glancing up as she punched in the last number, was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. Dropping the receiver back into the cradle, ignoring the voice that had just picked up on the other end, she moved quickly around the desk (bumping her hip on the corner), and yanked open her door. The people in front turned at the noise.

“Miss Murphey!” she exclaimed. “Why don’t you step into my office for a moment. I‘d like to hear how your latest assignment went.”

Miss Fleming smiled as the woman came around the counter and approached the office. Kate Murphey was one of her newest employees, and rapidly becoming one of the most reliable. She was a recent arrival to the city, came from down south. There was a hint of an accent to her voice, which was pleasant when on the phone. Miss Fleming had been able to place her in a couple of office settings and the clients had found her to be sufficiently qualified. Two of the clients had expressed the desire that Miss Murphey be sent to them any time they needed help. As far as Miss Fleming was concerned, that was the highest compliment a client could give a temp, aside from the willingness to pay the exorbitant fee to buy out the contract to hire the temp permanently before the standard 13 weeks were up.

Miss Murphey entered the office and sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk. She looked a bit mussed from her day, no doubt the subway ride had taken its toll on her clothes. They talked for a few minutes about her latest assignment, which had only lasted a few days. Everything seemed to have gone well. Miss Fleming was concerned that perhaps the woman was too tired to do another job that evening. There was only one way to find out.

“Miss Murphey, I have to say, you are becoming a client favorite. Everyone I have sent you to has complimented your work ethic and eagerness to please on the job. I’m very pleased with your work. You’ve made the clients happy, and that makes me happy.” She hesitated a moment. “But I was wondering, is office work your goal? Or would you be open to other types of work? I can probably keep you in reception or filing jobs if that is your preference.”

Tired as she looked, Miss Murphey replied quickly. “Oh I don’t have a problem with other kinds of work. My last job was in a warehouse, I’ve done a couple of jobs like that in the past. I have also worked in restaurants, and on cleaning crews. What did you have in mind?”

Trying not to look to eager, Miss Fleming smiled. “How would you like to make $200 for 4 hours of work?”

Miss Murphey frowned and looked askance. “Do I get to keep my clothes on?”

Miss Fleming laughed. “Yes, of course! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply… I have a client, a very big and important client, who employs janitorial staff through Acme. It’s an office in Manhattan, and the job requires basic light housekeeping type duties – vacuuming, emptying trash, stocking and cleaning restrooms and breakrooms, that sort of thing. Our people work in pairs and handle 3 floors each.”

“Why does it pay so much, do they sell diamonds and strip search everyone when they leave?”

“No, not diamonds. It’s a tech company, no bags are allowed in. They don’t do strip searches, so don’t worry about that. You’ll have to carry a badge issued by the guard at the door, it has a chip in it that keeps your location on a screen at all times. As to why so much… can I be straightforward with you?” At the woman’s nod, Miss Fleming continued. “Acme is on a trial contract with this client. They are currently paying us very well to supply the janitorial staff. Two of my regular employees called out an hour ago. The assignment has to be completed by midnight, and there wouldn’t be enough time for the others to do their floors and these three. I need two warm bodies I can trust to go in and work these two days for me. I’m willing to pay for those warm bodies. Are you interested?”

Miss Murphey hesitated for only a few seconds before answering. “Yes, I am definitely interested. Who am I working with?”

The relief on Miss Fleming’s face gave way to worry again. “I don’t know, I haven’t been able to find anyone else.”

“What about my friend, Sunny Campbell? She’s available, and honestly, we could both use the money.”

Miss Fleming’s hand creeped towards the upper right hand drawer of her desk. “I don’t know. She’s a bit…”

“Klutzy? Yeah she can be. But what if I promise to keep her away from anything breakable? She’s good with a mop, and a vacuum.” Miss Murphey’s face was so hopeful, there was no way that Miss Fleming could say no. Besides, it was only for two nights, right?

“Alright, give her a call. I’ll fill out the forms.”

A few minutes later, Miss Fleming handed over the placement introduction card with the client’s address and a couple of Metro Fare Cards. “Dress comfortably, I’ll get Sarah to give you a couple of t-shirts to wear. Just be sure you arrive by 7 pm and sign in with the security guard at the front desk. He will tell you which floors you will be cleaning tonight. Come by Saturday morning before noon, and I will pay you for the next two nights.”

Watching Miss Murphey leave with the Acme Employment shirts a short while later, Miss Fleming caught the faint aroma of spaghetti sauce in the air, just like she did every time something worked out ideally. Good old Mr. Capanelli. She smiled and picked up the phone to call the client to inform them of the change of staff for the rest of the week, and fought the little ball of uncertainty in her stomach. Hopefully Miss Campbell wouldn’t wreck anything….

#Sunshine + Kittens #temp service #cleaners #$200 for 4 hours of work #day of no prostitution #no Lucy in the chocolate factory #good feels

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roraewrites · 8 years ago

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four - bare

Glass Heart Rating: M And he was in the darkness, so darkness he became.

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The sun spots speckle his face through the leaves, leaving warm patches against his skin. Once the wave of nausea washes over, he rolls his head to the side, his dark, mysterious eyes finding violet eyes looking into his, the question still hanging in the air between the two boys.

"We're traveling to another hide out," he says, plain and simple. Suigetsu's face shows confusion, as though he wants to ask something else but he's too afraid. He does it anyways.

"Why?"

"I don't need to give you a reason, you don't have to follow me," Sasuke states plainly, his eyes still looking to amethyst orbs, gazing through those windows and looking into the shinobi's soul.

If that's one thing he hates about himself, it was the ability to see everything, know everything about an individual. He didn't care how other people felt, or what they felt on the inside, yet he was able to see and understand. Sasuke simply understood things from his trained interpretation from over the years. It also gave him an advantage when it came to fighting enemies as well, though. He finally broke the contact when a slight rustle against his chest caught his attention.

A lone leave caught in the slit of his shirt, blowing lightly due to the breeze.

It was colored in vivid greens, fresh lines running through the inner layers, bringing out every detail that this simple leaf had to offer. The light yellow splotch towards the center, outlined in a lighter green, fading to the deep green that colored it as a whole. Sasuke plucked the leaf from his shirt before crushing it in his palm, envisioning it as the Leaf, his previous home.

The Uchiha finally sat up, his eyes already on Sakura. She was still lying on the ground, her body coughing while in her unconscious form. He wasn't sure when she would wake up, and he sure as hell wasn't sure what he'd do when she woke up. Sasuke didn't need anything from her, yet he wanted her there to take on this task, travel with him and whoever else he would find, take down Itachi.

He wanted her there, yet he didn't want her to shoulder his pain or misery.

"What's the plan with her?" Suigetsu's hestitant voice ripped Sasuke from his thoughts. He didn't turn his head to meet eyes with Suigetsu this time though, instead he stared at Sakura's form on the ground.

"She's a medical nin, she'll come in handy."

He tells himself this, lying to himself and lying to Suigetsu. This isn't the reason he wants her there, but Suigetsu clicks his tongue in response before standing and casting a shadow upon the girl's body. Sasuke finds his face pulling into a scowl, remembering that the white haired man is still naked after all.

"Go put some clothes on," he snaps, his voice low and harsh.

"Where am I going to find clothes, exactly?" The tone in Suigetsu's voice is sarcastic yet hard, but Sasuke matches it.

"Figure it out," he growls back. "And bring something back for Sakura."

Suigetsu throws his hands in the air before slapping them back down against his hip bones, making a sharp noise that pierced through the secluded forest, sending birds flying from the branches in the trees. Sasuke could only pinch the bridge of his nose and relish in the idea of sitting here, waiting for the idiot to return before they started their journey across the land.

Suigetsu smiles a malicious smile before melting to his liquid form, becoming clear and colored in pastel azures and sapphires, his smile still visible through the transparent water.

"I'll be back, no funny business," he jokes silently before washing away.

Sasuke rolls his eyes once more. Suigetsu reminds him of the dobe back home, how idiotic his friend was, his childish antics and loud mouth ways. The memories of Naruto were bittersweet, causing his mouth to dry up and his throat to constrict. His eyes found Sakura once more before he exhaled sharply, stood to his feet and walked his body to her.

He cradled her once more before stalking off into the cover of the greenery, hiding their bodies and presence from any wandering travelers, shinobi, or trackers. They were rogue nin, and he knew what would happen if anyone crossed paths with them; the trackers would be dead and Sasuke would be taking off with Sakura's body.

He snickered at the thought, his smirk appearing on a porcelain face with obsidian eyes sparkling in the sunlight.

Sakura weighed close to nothing as he continued through the brush, stepping over roots, climbing rocks and sidling through trees. When she snuggled her face towards his chest, resting her head against his pectoral, he felt his body stiffen.

She had only ever been this close to him when he knocked her out, leaving her body to soak up the cold weather as she was laid to rest on the bench overnight. The same night that he evaded Konoha, promising to never return. Ever since his time away, he had become stronger, wiser, grown more as a human since he was able to roam freely and take on stronger enemies. It was much better than picking up garbage around the village, or finding some poor lady's lost cat. The memories angered him, causing his eye brows to furrow.

The sound of rushing water became more apparent as he pressed through the trees and bushes. The sound of lapping water against rocks calmed his mind. The closer he got, the more the air smelled of soaked moss and fresh fish and the second he arrived, he noticed how peaceful the sight was.

Rushing water, running rapidly over jagged rocks, while other parts were calm, floating along with gravity pulling at it. The water was clear, making the smooth rocks from below the surface clear as day, the different colors of tans and browns popping with intense colors.

When he finally arrived by the water's edge, he began to work his sandal off his foot. His toes pressed heavily against the heel of his left, slipping the sandal off carefully before repeating with the other foot. The wet soil and sand against his calloused feet felt relaxing, the sound of flowing water exciting his senses. He laid Sakura down gently, his mind running through the easiest way of addressing this 'issue'.

His mind washed over with thoughts similar to those of any man his age. Sasuke wanted to peal her clothes off of her body, lavish in the curves that formed her hips. The bumps of her chest that were obviously wrapped tightly with bindings, and the illustrious muscles that toned her smooth looking legs. The dirt and sweat that painted her skin hid the inviting color of her skin, frustrating Sasuke further as he began to unzip the front of her shirt, careful to not touch her inappropriately.

She stirred at his slight touches, making his mind panic and his hands tremble.

He wanted so badly to take her, take her in the calm of this secluded forest. On the side of the river, their limbs and skin rubbing in the soft dirt and sand that lined the river while their lips crashed against one another, pressing harshly and feeding upon one another's lust and hormones.

Sakura stirred once more, causing Sasuke to frown, his dark eyes narrowing in on her revealed chest, the sarashi covered in blood, sweat and dirt. His eyes began to widen the further he unzipped her blouse, revealing taut, defined abs and the small navel that was placed right in the center of her stomach. He noticed every scar, cut, bruise that lined her body, painting her skin in battle wounds and lining her like a damn tiger.

Sakura is fierce now, stronger than ever, her strength becoming well known across all the land as she rises with the title as Tsunade's pupil. She's also becoming a well known medic, one of the best in the Land of Fire, excelling at everything that's been passed down to her, and it's all because of her excellent chakra control.

Another bittersweet memory tainting his mind as he continues to unzip the shirt that isn't quite covering her body anymore. He finishes his job before sliding her arms through the holes and discarding the fabric to the left of them. It smells of smoke and blood, soaked from the sweat of her body and covered in muck. He grasps her boots, releasing the buttons of each hook and slides them from her legs and feet; a clear line of grime resting against her shin where the top of her boot came to rest.

Sasuke swallowed heavily as he began to remove the wrapping from her leg, the one that her kunai holster rest firmly against. The more his hand brushes against her skin, the more aroused he becomes at how soft her skin is against his leg. She's filthy as fuck, but he's so into the light brushes and soft stirring of her body that he begins to find himself light headed as he discards the wrapping and pulls at the buckle of her skirt.

He notices now how long her legs are, how much she's grown since he's last seen her and really looked at her. The thing that really pisses him off is that he feels his Sharingan activate and before he can stop himself, he's already engraving the view of Sakura and her taut, defined and battle ready body into his mind. Matured in every way possible, proving that she's now a woman capable of mass destruction and not a whimsy cry baby anymore.

Sasuke scoffs at the thought, seeing small, timid Sakura cowering behind him as he stands before her with a kunai poised, Sharingan activated and death shimmering in his blood red eyes.

He was her protector after all, the boy that took pride in caring for such a small girl. He knew now though that she didn't need saving, or help. She would kick the shit out of someone, and he just knew it.

Her body presents itself in front of maroon eyes, her chest rising and falling with the small breaths that she takes and as Sasuke falls back to his rear, he pulls his hands to interlock under his chin, considering if he should put her in the water as she is, or remove the rest of her clothes.

All that's left are those skin tight spandex and wrappings that cover her breasts, and Sasuke finds his mind is troubled by stripping her clean of everything, or leaving the dirty clothing on her. He snarls in protest before pushing up from the soft ground and grabbing hold of the wrapping in the front, square in the center. He pulls roughly, ripping the bindings in half, the ripping of cloth making a horrendous sound as he's greeted with the sight of her rounded breasts, fair skinned like the rest of her body and her nipples small and pleasant, colored in a light pink.

Sasuke finds himself dumbfounded now as he's face to face with Sakura's breasts, taking in the sight and how she has truly grown up in the past three years. His fingers tremble as he's still holding onto the torn wrapping, while Sakura's eyelids begin to open slightly.

She looks confused at first, still asleep the more he thinks about it, but the scene that's about to play out between the two causes his mind to run through the possible outcomes and what he should do.

Fuck, he tells himself as she coughs once, twice, three times. She rolls her head in the sands, cherry blossom tresses picking up the separate grains of sand and carrying them with her motions.

Sasuke now notices the soft expression in her eyes, the shimmering of yellow and lime green flecks catching the different rays of sun as she focuses in on him. He can still tell that everything is still hazy for her by the way she looks at him. He knows it's from the smoke and fumes that she inhaled from the room that she had passed out in, too.

He doesn't say a word though, only looks at her with a scowl on his face while she lies topless in front of. He notices how she begins to move her fingers around in the sand the more she comes through to her senses.

It's when her eyes drop from his and trace down his body, and to the object in his hand that her eyes focus in, narrowing, her lips parting, that he sees the panic course through her body, her face, flashing in her eyes.

Those perfect eyes widen, vivid green and lively as ever that she realizes exactly what he has in his hands. And it's when she screams and begins to scramble that he slams both his hands over his ears and his teeth are clenching together that he remembers exactly how annoying Sakura Haruno can be.

Sakura can't feel the courage in her chest, her bare chest that is presented to the boy she's spilled her heart out to and has always had feelings for, and now she's presented in front of him, half naked. She doesn't know what to think, or do, but she wraps her arms around herself, concealing her breasts from his hungry eyes.

"What the hell!" She chokes out, coughing lightly as her brows knit themselves together.

She knows damn well she shouldn't yell at him, knowing that Sasuke is a criminal, but she also knows that he wouldn't do anything too rash to hurt her. Or would he? He mirrors her look, brows pressed tightly against one another as he brings his hands away from his ears. Her shriek probably would've attracted enough attention, and she knew that he'd reprimand her for that.

"Shut up, Sakura."

He begins their day by ordering and bossing her around, great.

Then it all begins to come back to her. She's sitting outside, in one of the most beautiful places she's ever seen and she's covered in filth, while Sasuke Uchiha stands in front of her with his sandals removed and they're outside. Not in the hideout. Where everything was on fire and quickly filling up with smoke.

"What happened?" She asks, her eyes scanning the trees as he fingers brush lightly against her light skin.

"Nothing that concerns you. Get washed up, you're filthy," his face doesn't change, but his tone does. It's light, soft as a feather and Sakura can hardly hear it over the running of water. She swallows the saliva from her mouth, moistening the dryness of her throat.

"Then go away," Sakura commands, filling her voice with a hardness much like Tsunade does.

"No."

His refusal baffles her, frustrates her, yet she knows she can't argue with him. He's too stubborn, too stuck in his ways.

Sakura feels her skin crawl from under his eyes, knowing that his Sharingan will remember exactly what she looked like and the thought spreads a furious blush across her cheeks. The heat scorches her skin, sending a wave of fire through her veins and angering her that she would let herself get knocked out so easily. It's at that thought that the quick pulse of pain rides of her spine and ends in the nape of her neck.

Her back colliding with the wall and knocking the breath from her lungs.

Sakura purses her lips before clicking her tongue loudly. Not only would Sasuke give her the privacy that she needed, but she also wanted to heal her back and rid the pain. She couldn't do that if she didn't have her hands available. Instead of arguing further, Sakura stood from her spot and faced away from Sasuke before letting her hands fall from her chest.

The kunoichi inhaled deeply, ridding her mind of the embarrassment and the uncomfortable feeling of Sasuke's eyes on her body as she grabbed the elastic of her spandex and began to peel them from her hips, down her thighs, and kicked them off to the side with a quick flip of her foot. Sakura continued her breathing, focusing solely on the pain in her back, the cool liquid against her toes as she entered the water, and soon, the comforting embrace of the water as she wades to one of the deeper spots of the river.

Once she was in, she could already feel the dirt pulling away from her skin, the water entering each cut and scrape as it cleans each of them out. When she dips her head back, Sakura feels her breasts escape the clutches of the water as her scalp submerges into the cooling embrace, soaking in the relaxation of the calm. When Sakura feels her ears disappear under the surface, she finally feels calm, transparent in a world of hate and constant fighting, she feels free.

Free of her body, free of the hungry eyes that are locked onto her naked body, free of the worry of returning to Konoha.

She could breath.

Once she finished wetting her hair in the river, she finally pulled her hair back from the water, whipping the rose quartz hair forward and creating a bridge of water drops from the body of water, to the sky, creating a glistening and shimmering show made of water.

It was when her hair came to rest over her left eye that she was looking into dark eyes, shimmering with fascination as he watched Sakura with a content look on his face, his hands clenched on either side of his body.

"Look away," she calls from her spot in the water, her arms crossing over her chest once more to conceal the view from Sasuke. The look on his face washed away and was instantly replaced with his usual scowl, but he did as she said and focused his eyes on the birds that jumped against the rocks, plucking and picking at the small bugs that scurried across the rough surfaces.

Sakura went back to scrubbing her body, ridding herself of the sweat and dirt, scrubbing at her scalp and washing the sand, blood and whatever else resided within her thick locks of hair. The matte red that colored the water startled her at first, but she found peace in the way her fingers brushed through her hair, massaging the tension from her body and ridding the filth.

Once the knots of dried blood finally released, Sakura turned her back to Sasuke and began to focus chakra to her hands. It was there that she felt at home, pressing her sore hands to the base of her spine and heating it with chakra, soothing the pain that transpired and reverberated throughout her body as a whole.

The calming and warm sensation created a smile on her face as she continued to concentrate her chakra in her spine, kneading and threading through sore and tired muscles, all while she stood bare in front of Sasuke.

It took Sakura all of five minutes before the chakra flowed freely from her hands and entered her body that she felt the pain lift. She knew it was much harder to heal herself, rather than heal someone else, but once she was finished, she turned to Sasuke who was now watching her with brooding eyes.

She could only smirk, knowing that he watched her the entire time she bathed herself in the clear river.

"Are you done?" He snapped before inching towards her.

"Yeah... What am I going to wear?" The question startles her, panics her mind.

Sasuke's lips pull into a firm line before he pulls the bottom of his shirt from his pants and slides it over his body, revealing washboard abs alongside well defined pectorals. Sakura feels her body tense up at the view of his amazing physique. Evergreen eyes scan the lines, the contours of each muscle, how his biceps move when he pulls the remaining cloth from his head and holds it out, a smirk painted on his gorgeous face.

"Here," he offers with a sarcastic tone.

She glares now, knowing damn well that she's not playing this perverted game of his.

"You're joking," Sakura says flatly, not amused one bit.

"I'm not," he reassures her, a dangerous flash behind his obsidian eyes.

Sakura grunts, a harsh shade of red filling her face but she refuses to play this dangerous game, refuses to show him more of what he wants. He left her after all, after she promised him a life filled with happiness. She feels her heart flutter in her chest as she replays the memory in her head, pain filling the hole that Sasuke had created when he left her that night.

"I need to talk to you, anyways. Come here," his voice pulled her from her thoughts and created a new tinge of panic within her chest. Her heart pounded against her rib cage, pulsing and sending worry through each vein in her body. He sounded pissed, his voice deep and covered in darkness.

Sakura began to wade through the water, her legs pushing through the current until she had the water resting against her hips, only feet away from Sasuke.

"Closer, Sakura," he warns, and at those words she swallows her pride and builds up her dignity before inching closer to him.

She can see the small smears of dirt on his face now as she stands only inches away. She gathers the soft cloth of his shirt in her arms and pressing it against her chest firmly, letting it snake to cover her hips and conceal her pelvic region. Sasuke's hand stays in the air between the two of them, nearly touching the skin of her arm and when she looks back up to his face, she sees the softness in his eyes.

"I need your help, Sakura."

The confusion in her raw and uncut emerald eyes hurts, hurts the iced over heart - or so called heart - in his chest. She says something, but he doesn't hear through the blood rushing to his head and cutting out all the sounds around them; chirping birds, leaves rustling against one another, the calm rush of water nearby.

"Sasuke?"

The shrill tone in her voice brings him back, reminding him of her previous scream not long ago, when she was pure and exposed in front of him.

"You're coming with me," he feels the words leave his lips, filling the space between them. Sakura scrunches his shirt between her fingers as she clenches it tighter within her fist. He can see her knuckles turn white, reminding him of his own bruised knuckles that pulsate with a bit of pain when he thinks about them.

"No," she clicks her tongue with a smug look.

And it's in that moment, that one second, that the world turns from happy go lucky, to fucked.

He has the two of them on the ground, his body on top of hers and pressing her into the sand and water.

And it's in that moment that fear overtakes her expressions, turning that vivid green of her eyes to a matte emerald, glossy with fear and frustration.

Her skin feels amazing against her own, the way her round breasts press against him beneath his shirt, and how her hip bones press against his own. The feeling is exhilarating, enticing, inviting. But the voice within him presents itself once more that day, darkening his mood and reminding him just why he had asked Sakura for her help.

"I'm not asking," Sasuke's voice is hoarse, his breath running across Sakura's skin, causing her to break out in goosebumps. "I'm telling you."

The uneven stutter in her throat entertains Sasuke, making him all too aware that she's still a pawn, still under his spell, still his Sakura. Her looks might've changed, but there's that one thing about her that never changed; her love for the Uchiha.

Sasuke trails a finger up her arm, tracing the goosebumps and leaving more in his wake until he reaches her collarbone, tracing the gorgeous and stunning shape with his dirty finger nail.

She's so fucking beautiful, he yells to himself, but warns that she's not worth it, he's only using her.

Her startled jade eyes are still looking into his, revealing the fear that lies within them, yet he sees a certain softness that she's always had there and it pisses him off. She can do so much better, yet she's still head over heels for a guy that knocked her out and left her behind. When he finishes running his hand across her clavicle, he finds her neck, the pulsing vein there and it's there that he feels the nervous beat.

She's terrified; he's excited.

She deserves the best; he deserves nothing of the sort.

When she swallows, he presses his palm firmly around her slender neck, wrapping strong fingers against the skin there and lavishing in the terrified look that lies within her eyes. He feels guilty, oh so guilty that he finds pleasure in her parted lips and short exhales.

"Sasuke," she forces out as his grip tightens on her throat, promising an unspoken promise.

"Come with me."

For a second, he's lost to the darkness in his heart, trapped in the ice and for a second, it's not him talking. It's that fucking demon that's taken over his body, and now he's comfortable with scaring Sakura, making her feel terrified; forcing her to agree to something she doesn't want. "If you don't, I'll just have to kill you," he whispers quietly, his onyx eyes melting to a deep red.

Their noses are mere inches apart now, and when she nods softly, he releases that capturing smirk of his. Sasuke can only swallow hard, swallow down the guilt of knowing Sakura is still his and no one else's, but it pleasures him, knowing that she's waited for him and she always will wait.

"Good," he whispers, matching the tone of her last words, loving the way she spoke his name last.

He feels the twisting in his stomach when she readjusts, one leg coming up to rest on the side of his thigh while his finger traces up her neck, lining her jaw and coming to rest on her chin. Sasuke notices that Sakura no longer looks scared. Her evergreen eyes shimmer with promise, shimmer with hope, a lightness that he's only seen come from her eyes.

He moves his index from her chin to the outer corner of her lips, lining the bottom with the padding of his thumb now. He presses his forehead against hers, looking deeper into her orbs, through her outer layer and really looking at her.

She's scared, lost in her own mind, yet she's so fascinated with how close he is that she's put her fears and worries aside, and she's consumed with how he's looking at her that she's lost. Lost in this make believe world that he's seen before, been invited to join before, and it upsets him. Upsets him deeply.

"Hey!"

The sudden voice startles him, makes Sasuke jump to his hands, yet his pelvis is still pressed against Sakura's, shielding her from their trespasser.

"I was gone for a hour and you're trying to take a nap?!" It's Suigetsu, fully clothed unlike Sasuke or Sakura now. Sasuke's thankful that Sakura is hidden, rocks and bundles of grass blocking his view of Sakura.

Along with his clothes, is a rather large sword, one that Sasuke's seen before. And in the water user's hands, more clothing.

"Shut the fuck up," Sasuke snarls from his position above Sakura. She's now pulled his shirt to conceal her body, hiding it from the strange human that broke the moment between the pair. Sasuke looks back to her before running a smooth hand through her damp, wavy curls of pink tresses, and leaving his current position on Sakura and hoisting his body up. He grabs his sandals from the shore and walks towards Suigetsu, the white haired shinobi throwing the clothing to Sasuke.

He glances at the particles in his hand, noting that there's a black tank top made for a man, a black, rather tattered obi from a kimono, and a pair of black leggings. He shrugs before sliding the tank on over his head and tucking it into his pants and fastening his rope around his waist.

"I also got these, just in case," Suigetsu pulls the sarashi from his pouch, something else he had found while terrorizing a nearby farm house. Sasuke nods before taking the cloth from his hands and turning his back to slide the sandals on over his sand covered feet.

"Where did the lady go? What's her name? Sak-"

"She's bathing, go wait by the road."

The soft groan from Suigetsu irritates Sasuke, drives him to a darkening mood. "Whatever you say, boss."

Once he feels Suigetsu far enough away, Sasuke returns to Sakura and finds that she's hunched over in the water, ridding her back and hair of sand. Her curves appear through the water's surface, emphasizing the way her slender yet toned body that she now possessed. Sasuke stood on the shore, his dark eyes watching with interest as she would cup the water and pour it lightly down her raised arm.

Sakura moved with such graceful, fluid movements, like she was dancing, yet she was just casually moving. She moved in silence, much like a shinobi should, and Sasuke couldn't help but smirk, clearing his mind and finally seeing that she may just compare and be equal to him some day.

He didn't feel like sticking around, instead he gave her the privacy she yearned. He set the clothing down softly against his shirt - which was laid out on a rock nearby - and rest them there before turning on his heel and heading in Suigetsu's direction.

Sakura's scent still lingered on his skin, invading his nostrils and reminding him just how dangerous this game can be. It was nostalgic, how she smelled. Her scent wasn't as strong as it used to be, more so from their adventure earlier that day, but she still smelled fresh, like fruit, like the flowing water from the water.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, trying to focus less on Sakura and more at his goal on hand. He found himself growing frustrated, much like he was when he was a genin in Konoha. Frustrated that he was letting Sakura get in his way of his revenge, his goals, frustrated with how pretty she is, how beautiful she is, much like a blooming flower.

Frustrated with the smirk that Suigetsu was giving him now.

"You've totally got the hots for her."

"What did I tell you earlier?"

"Umm-"

"Shut the fuck up," this man reminds Sasuke so much of Naruto that it hurts. Hurts what's left of his heart, stings the back of his mind, and he just knows how stressful the next few weeks, months will be with the endearing Sakura and annoying Suigetsu.

And it pisses him off so much to be reminded of a past that he cut loose, released from his grip, forever to be forgotten.

She can feel her fingers tremble as she runs them through her hair, plucking the last pieces of sand from wet, wavy locks and it makes her upset. Upset to know that Sasuke still has that much power over her mind, her heart. Still upsets her that after all the training she had endured, that she was still the little girl that was infatuated with the youngest Uchiha.

Sakura swallows hard, swallows the tears that threaten to prick at the corners of her eyes, swallows the built up emotions, the fear, the love. All of it, she swallows it down to the pit of her stomach where it can rot and be forgotten about for the remainder of the day.

What does he even want with me, she thinks to herself, frustrated with the fact that he's never wanted anything to do with her before. But now, now he wanted her help, wanted her to come along.

Or else he would kill her.

The dark look in his eyes frightened her, the way his pupil clouded over with an eerie yellow, his lower water line rimmed with a red, until she could see the rubber band snap within him. Something awoke from behind those precious, deep, dark obsidian eyes, and it frightened her.

This wasn't Sasuke.

This was that fucking curse mark that Orochimaru had placed on him three years ago; the demon within.

Sakura cupped one last ounce of water in her hands before splashing it against her face, ridding any tears that might've escaped from the corners of her eyes. Washing away the misery that lined her eyes, the sadness that formed her frowning lips.

When she finally finished wading through the water and saw that there were more clothes than just Sasuke's long sleeve shirt, she felt at ease. She made quick work of the outfit, knowing exactly what would go where.

Sakura slid the sarashi on first, adjusting it to a comfortable place and then sliding the long sleeve over her head. It smelled of smoke, alongside the deep scent of Sasuke. She consumed the smell, becoming intoxicated on a how a damn human being can smell so inviting and comforting, yet be one of the most scariest and dangerous humans in the world. Her body swam in the shirt, her shoulder hanging out a bit, while most of her body was revealed in the front. She shook it off though, knowing this was better than her torn and useless clothes from earlier.

Next came the leggings, and finally the obi. She found it odd that Sasuke would give her this of all things, but she figured it would be better than traveling around naked with not only Sasuke, but whoever he was talking to before he pushed away from her body. Once she placed the obi in it's position, she readjusted Sasuke's shirt a bit, having it hang lightly over the tied obi, yet still bringing out the curves and round of her body.

She felt that she looked all right.

Finally, her boots slipped on and everything felt right. Everything except...

"My fucking headband!"

Frustration swept through her body, alongside it, disappointment. She searched the area around her, finding her old set of clothing and found that the corners were frayed, burnt, stained from blood and soaked with sweat. The stench made her nose crinkle, and she was thankful that Sasuke made her bathe now. A slight wave of embarrassment took over, but she shrugged it off. Sakura tied her kunai holster firmly around her thigh, knowing that she would find a weapon to place in it soon enough.

The last thing she needed was a medical pouch, the familiar bag that wrapped around her waist, carrying the supplies that she was familiar with.

"Let's go," the sudden voice of Sasuke startled her, causing her to turn around.

He now had a black tank top, a large slit running down the middle, much like the long sleeve she now had on. His onyx eyes scanned her new look, an approving smirk presenting itself against his lips. Sakura couldn't help but meet his smirk with a glare.

She hated him for giving her an ultimatum, hated him for asking for her help - telling her that she'll help him - but most importantly, she hated him for acting so casual and so into her, when before he never wanted anything to do with her.

"Right," she mumbled softly to herself, trying to reassure her mind that she would escape.

Escape and return to Konoha, even if it killed her.

Even if she did love Sasuke, this wasn't the kind of help that she wanted to give him. He wanted help with something dark and the only help that she wanted to provide, was the help to return him back to the light, return his mind back to being pure and innocent.

He was lost in the darkness, lost to a demon; Sakura could be the light, could be his guidance from the Hell that he'd placed himself in.

As if, the thought doesn't even lift her mood, only drags her down further as she follows him from the greenery and face to face with the individual from earlier.

"Nice to see you're alive and not dead," he says with a sly smile and nod of the head.

Sakura smiles her fake smile known by many, but recognized by none. She can only nod, the depression from within eating away at the core of her body, reminding her just how upset, just how low she had become the past years, and this was something she never would've expected.

And as if she never would've thought she'd be following a shark like man, alongside Sasuke, through a beautiful forest, colored in vivid greens, dark blues, soft yellows and welcoming oranges.

As if.

#sasusaku #ss fanfiction #sasusaku fanfiction #sasuke uchiha #writing #glass heart #ronan rae

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