#i am days behind again...the boulder is back down the hill

[mythgendered]

Created with the purpose of imitating and framing Proto Man, the whole Dark Man Scheme was trashed when Dr. Wily instead opted to jump into the future. But it was Quintet who elected to make use of the unit, assigning them to oversee one of her Chrono Outposts.

They found and adopted the Copy Robot into their ranks, admiring his attitude and mimic abilities. The five were a happy five-man band, up until the moment Proto Man and Quake Woman destroyed the Dark Men.

They weren't rebuilt, despite the Copy Robot's requests.

[silverstonesainz]

hello lovely !!

— 🪩 dance floor — with the prompt ❝ now you want me like i wanted you? ❞ for carlos sainz? thank you <3 !!

too late

and one day you'll grow tired and it'll be too late frat!carlos x reader 800-ish words warnings: n/a ?

d rambles. . . this took too long and for no good reason. i hope this was alright. thanks for requesting!! <333

anger had never come so easy. it flows, like waves rushing to kiss the shore. but the rage felt more like the riptide, like being pulled under angry currents and your lungs burning for air. 

you let carlos drag you through the tailgate, too furious to care about the curious stares and not-so-sublte whispers. you let him pull you along, allow him to lead the way until cold autumn air is blowing against your skin and the buzz of conversation dull behind you. carlos doesn’t turn right way, but he lets your go when he’s sure that you’re both out of earshot of the crowd of drunk college students. 

his hands are on his hips for a second before the right one is pushing his hair back aggressively. you clock the way he grips at the base of his locks, tugging before releasing and doing it all over again. his warm breath is smoke in the cold hair, comes out in quick clouds of aggression. you stand there, arms crossed across your chest, weight pushed onto one leg while the opposite foot taps impatiently.

“do you have something to say? because if not i’m gonna go back-“

“why are you here?”

your head jerks back, posture straightened and eyes squinted as you look him up and down. ��excuse me?”

he turns, head in his right hand as he shakes it left to right. “with him. why are you here, with him?” 

him. him? 

“max?” carlos picks up his head, brown eyes down turned to compliment the scowl embedded into his face. you scoff, brows knit closely together. “he invited me.” 

“you listen to everything max says?”

a shot to your chest, the anger turning to humiliation, before quickly turning to rage. “you don’t get to talk to me like that, to throw some bitch fit because im here hanging out with a friend. let me be perfectly clear, a friend. max invited me— in fact you want to know who else invited me?”

“shut up.” 

you don’t. “lando. oscar. daniel. charles—“

“enough!” his chest heaves, puffs of hot hair coming out quicker, accompanied by eyes no longer warm and welcoming. “bragging is not very becoming of you.” 

“and jealousy isn’t becoming of you.” 

the anger, the jealousy, it mixes in the quiet. it mixes with poorly mixed drinks and cheap canned liquor. with the time spent apart, with the impending realization for carlos that maybe this time it really is over. but the worry a comes later. instead panic manifests itself in an ill kept temper and words he’d soon regret. 

he smirks, hides the way his heart trembles. “so how long do you need with your friend? a week, two?” 

you scowl, lurching forward to press a shove into his chest. he only takes a step back, a half amused hah coughed from the back of his throat. “fuck you carlos.”

“its only a matter of time,” he taunts, “you know it’s true. you’re mine.” 

your hands are shaking by your side, breath rattling in your lungs. there are tears, there are always tears when it comes to carlos. he’d seen every version of them, the ones pulled by hurt, or triggered by sadness, even the one caused by rage. he’d seen everything because it’s who he is. what he does. all this anger, all this pain, it’s always because of him. 

“i was never yours. just because you say it to me over and over doesn’t make it true. i am not yours.” 

who were you convincing? god you were his. irrevocably, unforgivingly his. and you resent yourself for the way you know it’s only a matter of time before you’re back in his back, back under his spell, and not doing a damn thing to stop it. your affections for the spaniard is a boulder rolling down a hill— unstoppable and bound to ruin everything in its path. 

but the rage makes you brave, makes you believe that this time it’ll be different. 

carlos tucks his index finger beneath your chin, tilting your head up at him so that you can see the warmth in his eyes, the lies they tell you. “you’ll always be mine.” he whispers. 

“not always. one day, i’ll grow tired of you.” 

“tired. of me?” he hums, shaking his head as his finger traces along your jaw, up the side of your face and pushing your fringe behind your ear. 

you find it in you to push his hands away, to push away the touch your skin had been craving since you had called it quits weeks ago. 

“what do you want from me carlos?”

“i only want you. i always want you.” 

a humorless laugh escapes your lips, a miserable smile curved onto them. “now… now you want me? now you want me like i wanted you?” 

a bit of silence. a bit of worry. a bit of regret. 

“well maybe you’re too late.” 

[itspileofgoodthings]

Mending Wall

— Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

[blindrapture]

FRIDAY JULY 8TH, 2011 (The God Machine)

8:07 AM Early bird gets the worm, journal! Or in our case, the early, uh… Cockroach Jesus gets the.. Cipher! Yeah! ..wait a minute. I’m on the Exodus. And I'm alone.

8:10 AM “Attention, patrons. Captain America speaking. I hope you enjoyed your stay flying over the Cape Cod Expansion, thank you come again. “And will the owner of a white guitar controller please report to the bridges in the sky? Thank you. This has been Captain John Wilkes 'America' Booth, advising you to perish in fire. Booth out!” Hmm.. there's something not quite right about this. I guess I'm wanted on the bridge!

8:14 AM The windows all cackle. Through each, I see myself sleeping in one of many bedrooms I’ve slept in throughout my life. The ceiling’s a long tongue. It's gonna be one of those days today. Yeah, okay.

8:20 AM I turned a corner, and the hallway extends a long way forward, but the walls and floor and ceiling fade into a blue sky. The occasional tile of a floor or wall remains, floating in mid-air. In the far distance, I see a floating bridge in the sky. Magnificent. On the bridge, I can see a figure standing. How do I get there? ASJIF FALLING FALLING I’M FALLING INTO INFINITY THE PUN DOESN’T MAKE ME ANY LESS SCARED

8:23 AM I landed on a cloud. I’m okay! …WAIT OH GOD I FORGOT THESE WEREN’T CLOUDS, OH GOD OH GOD IT’S HAIRY WHY ARE THERE HEADCRABS THIS MAKES NO SENSE THE SPIDERCLOUD IS CRAWLING WITH HALF-LIFE HEADCRABS. Tiger Stripes, let’s GET THE FUCK OFF MY HEAD BAH good Let’s run!

8:29 AM Jumping off the edge of a gargantuan spider probably isn’t a good idea, but what the hell! GERONIMOOOOOO

8:30 AM I landed in a tree that was rather close to me. My surroundings are all trees. All red, for that matter. I can hear distant roars of jungle animals. Even if they weren't alien, that still wouldn't be a great thing to hear.

8:35 AM I climbed down the tree. I’m now in the middle of nowhere, no idea where I’m going from here. I’m.. gonna try south. We’ll call this direction south.

8:40 AM I hear the faint rustling of leaves. ..this is vaguely reminding me of something I once wrote.

8:41 AM Okay, now it’s uncannily similar. All sounds have now ceased entirely other than the faint rustling of leaves in one direction. I can’t even hear my footsteps, and I can clearly see my feet hitting the ground. I can’t hear my writing into the journal. The rustling of leaves is not loud at all, so it’s not drowning the noise out. No, what’s drowning the noise out is silence.

8:45 AM I’ve been led east and south so far. The sound of the leaves changes direction every few acres or so.

8:47 AM I can suddenly hear again. But I’m still smack-dab in the middle of the woods. Not sure if want. Okay. I see manmade paths on the ground. “Manmade” may not be accurate, but oh well. They’re dirt. They lead both south and west. I’m gonna try south first. Nothing beats south.

8:50 AM Except doors. There’s a locked door here, and it’s wedged between two large boulders, forming the edge of a hill, rock wall. Scenery. I can’t go around. Turning back.

8:53 AM Trying west now.

8:59 AM There’s a floating key here. ..grabbing.

9:00 AM As soon as I grabbed it, a door appeared out of thin air and slammed shut. The choice was either “grab key” or “go further this way,” I suppose. Going back to the locked door.

9:09 AM The key works. Soon as I walk through, the door slams shut, locked behind me. All sound ceased again, except for the faint rustling of distant leaves. To the south.

9:14 AM I walked for a little bit, then I blinked and I’m in a very rocky place. Green rocks. I see pairs of very long black legs all around, stretching into the sky. I think they're legs? They're solid rectangular black poles, in pairs of two. My gut sees these and thinks "legs."I’m not sure what’s on top. ..that was a thud. It shook the ground. That was another. We got footsteps comin’ our way. Oh goodie, that was a loud roar, hurting my ears, comes from all directions hello I hear drums Thud thud WOMP Where is it?!

9:17 AM Aaand I’m out. I’m now on a long sandy path. Regular sand, blue sky pulsing orange and purple, rocks of green, and lightning that spawns hamburgers on fine china. As odd as it is to say, it’s familiar ground. We saw this kind of landscape when we got here last night. Continuing south.

9:20 AM This is just a wasteland. Lots of huge rocks nearby. Towering over me! The huge ones range from all colours of the rainbow, and even some I’ve never seen before. That one over there looks like a reddish green.

9:25 AM I recognize this place, for sure. I see the cave we entered from over there. Doesn’t appear to be any way to get up there; it’s above-ground quite a bit. I'm still southbound.

9:55 AM Going ‘round some huge rocks here. The scale of everything here is gigantic. I imagine there are places on Earth that are as big as this? Untouched places, the majesty of nature.

10:03 AM I see change on the horizon. I see the landscape becoming.. not so flat. It looks like a mountain range.

10:06 AM Oh dear god, that’s twisted. Literally. The mountains.. well, none of them are shaped like typical mountains. Some are corkscrews, some are perfectly square, some are actually upside-down, and.. I see the tallest mountain. It’s hourglass shaped. The Twisty Mountain Range, I guess we’ll call it. The Twisties.

10:14 AM Separating the plains from the Twisties is a humongous cave. It’s not green, though; it’s grey. A rather.. monotonous grey. I’m goin’ in. ..well, I’m heading towards it. It's gonna. Take a bit of time to get there. Sigh.

11:03 AM Upon entry, my vision switched to 100% black-and-white. Greyscale! I’ve still yet to actually encounter fauna, and thank heavens for that.

11:15 AM The greyscale actually makes it easier to see where I’m going in the low visibility. There’s a very slight turn, and I can see what looks like an exit up ahead. Of course, I’m pretty sure it’s still a few miles away.

11:30 AM I wasn't sure at first, but my vision's getting filled with static. I even had to double-check, I'm not wearing my helmet. There's no interference. Just... static. Like I'm looking through an old television set.

11:35 AM what the A highway just appeared in my vision. A Guitar Hero highway. Oh shit, notes! ...Tiger Stripes. Does this work?

11:41 AM It was Megadeth’s “Sudden Death,” Guitar Hero 6. I saw the notes, and I tried playing Tiger Stripes. Despite not being plugged into anything, it worked perfectly. Every time I missed a note, the ground rumbled, so I tried not to let my crowd meter drop too far. I really didn’t want to find out what’d happen. Luckily, that wasn't that much of a worry. I spent a lot of time getting good at these games. ;D I shredded, journal. I shredded for the first time in months. Many months. .w. Tiger Stripes, you have done well. I kiss you firmly on the neck!

11:46 AM But why was it Guitar Hero...?

11:50 AM Welcome to the Twisties, journal. ..oh god, Moonside not bawesome. o_e Well, on the plus side, I can see colours again! All the better to see: The ground, under my feet, is also up there above me, in the sky, a perfect mirror image. The mountains do not touch their mirrors though; there is a clear gap for the purple-pulsing sky to bleed through. However, the tallest mountain, the hourglass, does not mirror. ..unless you count the top half of the hourglass. The point where the mountain reaches the very center, the thinnest part of the hourglass, is where reality mirrors. Maybe it was never an hourglass mountain at all. I’m still on sand, but I see the ground is littered with green rocks. I have a sneaking suspicion as to what’s going on here.

12:06 PM Yep, the ground is now fully green rocks. In the distance, I see the long legs. I'm really damn transfixed by these things? Picture a typical nature painting. Now picture pairs of thick black lines extending from the ground to as high as you can see scattering the landscape. Now picture some of the legs slowly walking in different directions. Shuffling, step by step, into wherever.

12:24 PM I’m going up a small mountain. It’s sorta spiral shaped. I’m kinda just heading south, towards the hourglass mountain. Call it a hunch.

12:32 PM Goin’ dow whoa up? I’m upside-down, I just know it. I crossed over to the other end of the mountain, but as soon as I stepped to the downward slope on the other side, I felt reality.. warp. And now I’m walking upwards to the ground.

12:56 PM Walking forward is hard when your hair is falling up. The leg creatures have also warped. They are now above me, on the mirror. I still can't see any heads.

1:21 PM I made it to the hourglass mountain. I begin my descent now. ..ascent. Descent. I don’t know. Above/below.

2:00 PM I can see all kinds of stuff from this height. This isn’t taking long to walk up, and yet I’m so high up already. I'm not far from the thinnest point, the midpoint of the hourglass.

2:24 PM Donnie! :DDDD "Jordan!" hug What are you doing up here? Did you wake up here? "The sensible thing to do when lost in an alien landscape and separated from your party is to look for landmarks and wait there." Have you seen anything like a way out, or a, I dunno, big grand temple saying "CIPHER HERE?" "Nothing like that, no. It's been a lot of this general kind of environment. But I did find this stuck in a tree." what You just pulled a grappling hook out of your pants! "I told you, it was in a tree! I've just been carrying it!" Well! I'm sure it'll come in handy. "I considered using it to swing around the trees and rocks. Okay, I mean I did use it to do that. I wanted to understand how to use it. But I can't—" hold on! When I woke up, I was on a big boat, and a voice told me I had to go to the bridge. And there was a bridge, out in the sky, but I couldn't reach it. "Okay! Sure! That's.. literally the kind of thing we need to know." If we're gonna reach it before nightfall, we'll have to start walking now.

3:32 PM Bottom of the mountain. I hear what the hell is that noise. Sounds like a WOMP WOMP. It’s dubstep. But where’s it coming from?

3:33 PM "Swag..." It’s the leg things. Now that the music is playing, their heads have appeared: they’re boomboxes, amps, speakers in general. Just a box playing music, out the bottom of which extend two long black legs. They strut as they play. "What do we call them?" Legsteps. Among the coolest creatures we've encountered yet.

4:02 PM Up the okay, down the mountain from before. "It's almost easier with music playing, isn't it? Easier to get moving."

4:35 PM Bottom of that mountain. Holy shit, this song kicks ass. I feel ready to dance my way back to wait a minute what’s that spidercloud doing so close OH GOD IT’S DROPPING HEADCRABS Of course. If the music intensifies, there’s gonna be battles. Should have expected that. Thank fuck I have a rifle!

4:42 PM Finished off that wave of headcrabs, but the worst possible thing has happened: I ran out of ammo. We ditched our storage box yesterday-- I think we just.. switched worlds at one point and it didn't come with us-- so we're not sure what to do with this empty gun. I tried using it to whack the headcrabs, but, uh, yeah I switched back to just using Tiger Stripes for that. Donnie's holding onto the rifle for now. I see another spidercloud coming this way. They won’t stop, so I guess we shouldn’t stop moving!

5:03 PM Made it to the cave.

5:45 PM The Legsteps have silenced their pumping. The highway has entered my eyesight. Rock Band this time. Tiger Stripes, let’s kick some fucking ass.

5:51 PM Oh god, it was Dream Theater’s “Constant Motion” this time. That song’s tricky as fuck; I could practically feel the cave threatening to fall apart by the time the solo ended. But of course, this is me we’re talking about here. Me and Tiger Stripes. We were made for this stuff.

6:20 PM Out of the cave. God, we’re almost sorta there. o_e; This is taking forever, though. "Wait." ? "...why don't we just use the fucking grappling hook?" ...oh. Oh yeah. "God, I'm a moron."

6:40 PM The two of us, grappling from rock to rock... we’re halfway through the wasteland now. I kissed her, yes. Because this is a lifesaver. She blushed. .w.

7:03 PM Okay, we’re actually out of the wasteland. We must have bypassed at least a dozen waves of headcrabs. Heading north through this path.

7:05 PM We walked, we blinked, now we’re on the bridge in the sky. Did we not even need the... whatever. Immaculate white surfaces, almost blinding here in the middle of the air with that sun hitting us. The sky is a beautiful blue, and I can see someone standing at the edge of the bridge. The sky’s rapidly turning a rich dark purple. "The God Machine…" That figure. Wearing a thick white cloak, long brown hair covering his head. donnie and I are apprehensive. this is the only person we've seen in this bizarre world. "Down there, can you see it?" Uh. silence peering over the edge. It looks like a... church? No roof, so I can see into it, looks more like an arena. "Do you see the cross on the ground?" Yeah… "That, my child, is the God Machine. Guardian of the fifth Cipher. It must be reckoned with." Wow… So, uh, who are you?

7:08 PM He turned and looked at me. He was Jesus Christ. His eyes were an empty gaze, staring at me, unblinking. His warm smile never faltered. Then he reached an arm out to touch my shoulder, and I saw under his robe and recognized him by his insect body. Donnie screamed at Cockroach Jesus, and then he pushed me off the bridge. Donnie dove after me, grabbed me tight, and grappled us onto the bridge to allow a safe rappel down to the jungle below. When we were safe, I threw up a little bit. All that happened quick. I, uh. I need a moment. That was almost death!

7:15 PM We have a job to do. I know roughly where that church is, I know the direction anyway. We just have to get through the forest of silence. The sky isn’t getting darker; it’s getting purpler. Which may or may not be a word. But anyway. The path that continues north is shut by that door. But all is silent again, except for the faint rustling of leaves to the west. Guess we just gotta follow the leaves!

7:19 PM Donnie seems a little confused by the silence, but she’s following me. Good. The sound continues this way.

7:22 PM FFFFFFFFF HEADCRABS Oh, I see how it is. A spidercloud was above us this whole time, but I couldn’t hear it or anything. Relying on just my sight sucks. DIE, HEADCRABS!

7:27 PM Leaves north! ..headcrabs, too!

7:32 PM Pause in the headcrabs, and the leaves are now east.

7:39 PM Ah-ha, I see that spidercloud!

7:41 PM ..fuck. Door here, locked, needs a key. Why do I get the feeling I know exactly where the key is? That spidercloud looks about ready to drop a massload of headcrabs. ..Donnie’s giving me the hook. Why. Go get the key, I’ll distract the crab things. ..that was her writing, by the way. In my journal. Communication. But! ..yes, ma'am. :c

7:43 PM Hooking through the jungle is surprisingly easy.

7:51 PM KEY, THERE SNAG KEY GET GOING

7:58 PM Oh my god Jordan hurry hurry hurry

8:02 PM DONNIE, oh god there’s a headcrab on your head I GOT IT I got it. Okay, let’s open this goddamn door.

8:07 PM Continued east. The leaves want us north now.

8:10 PM West!

8:13 PM North again.

8:15 PM I can hear again! We made it. But wait, fuck, where do we go from here?

8:16 PM Donnie says the next spidercloud looks even bigger than the last. She predicts way more headcrabs than ever. Fuck, so we have a time limit, too. Where the hell is the exit.

8:17 PM …what if our time limit is our exit? Donnie, hold on tight. This is a bit of an Indy Ploy, but here goes.

8:19 PM OH GOD we made it I grappled the spidercloud, but first it was too far, so I just grappled the tallest tree and then got the cloud. Now we’re on top of it. On the downside, there are literal waves of headcrabs up here. They have formed a freaking ocean. On the upside, I see the faux-Exodus in the distance coming our way. I need it closer. I need a clear shot.

8:20 PM Oh god, here comes the first wave of headcrabs. Deep breath, Jordan. There is no way this won’t knock you clear off the cloud. …unless.

8:21 PM Oh god, that was a risky idea but I can’t believe it worked. I hooked the top of the wave and now Donnie and I are surfing. fffff the headcrabs are toppling off the cloud HOOK HOOK HOOK HOOK HOOK

8:23 PM The ship is so close I can almost touch it But not close enough yet The headcrabs are getting restless, oh god They’re forming a giant wave, a tidal headcrab wave. …this might be the shot I needed. Donnie, grab on tight.

8:25 PM RIDING THE TALLEST WAVE EVER. WITH A GIRL CLINGING TO MY SIDE. ON TOP OF A GIANT FLYING SPIDER. THIS IS AWESOME.

8:26 PM But this isn’t gonna last long; we’re almost to the edge of the cloud. Leap of faith time.

8:27 PM NAILED IT. Oh, and apparently this ship is actually called the Eggs Opus. Because of course it is. But here we are, we’re clinging to a window on the floating ship. I’m gonna try to hook the deck of the ship, so we can at least be on top.

8:29 PM We’re on top now. I’m making a lot of lucky shots, I guess.

8:30 PM ..what now, another challenge? Not even any music? There seems to be a large shadow on the ground moving around. The shadow is morphing into different shapes. And the Eggs Opus is slowly turning around, about to head towards the bridge in the sky. So we have another game of survival. Except I’m not sure what this shadow does.

8:32 PM ..it’s now the shadow of a giant person. Standing still. Little life-sized shadows of humans are rising out of the ground. Just standing there.

8:34 PM Many more of them now. Donnie says they look almost like they’re deciding what move to make. Personally, I think they look more like they’re waiting for us to.

8:37 PM We’re about halfway to the bridge. The shadows are still just standing there. There’s no more shadow on the ground.

8:39 PM I’m stepping forward. ..and the shadows all multiply. o___o A second shadow person just… climbed out of each one. Now they have all doubled.

8:40 PM Donnie’s stepping forward too. ..the shadows all multiplied again. I’m afraid to do anything else.

8:44 PM The bridge is here. C’mon, Donnie. Grab me. …fuck, she had to take some steps to. Now there are way more shadows. HOOK, GET US OUT. Why am I scared. I DON’T KNOW, SHUT UP.

8:45 PM We’re on the bridge, we’re on the bridge! We’re on the bridge. Okay. …now what? We're back where we just were. Cockroach Jesus is gone, though. Good. Let's just.. catch our breath.

8:46 PM Okay. After catching our breaths, we figured there's only really one choice from here. We didn't do it before because Cockroach Jesus forced our hands, but, there is an obvious cathedral-arena thing visible from here. And inside it is the Cipher. There's still something weirding me out about it. There is a giant cross on the ground, that's what we're looking for I think, but it's.. writhing. It's a creature. It's sleeping.

8:49 PM It was a simple grapple away. The ground of this cathedral is a mix of purple, dark blue, and black, as are the walls. There’s the occasional Roman-y pillar. The cross-thing is still sleeping. This cathedral is absolutely enormous. It’s at least the size of ten football fields. And the cross-thing takes up at least half of it, in length, though it's also pretty thin. I’m going to take a look around.

8:50 PM FFFFFF just bumped right into a Legstep. Didn’t see it there. Sorry. …I can see an amp up there. I have a bad feeling about whoa actually this is a pretty cool intro. No bass, just a sinister-sounding harmony. Almost like it’s background music. …… fuck.

8:51 PM Yep. The thing’s waking up. ..eah. The writhing things on it are all hairs, tiny and big, all black. And it’s standing up. Like a colossus crucifix or something. No face, only movement. Its arms are pointing down. Two marble panels lay on the ground nearby. They both have inscriptions. One says Deus Ex Machina, the other The Fifth Cipher. This.. is a Cipher? O____O;; Fuuuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Deus Ex Machina. Latin for “God out of the machine,” I think. Because of theatre, they had a machine, a pulley system to lower and raise god-characters on and off the stage. It was the, uh. The. ...the God Machine. It's raising an arm, clearly telegraphing that it's about to

8:53 PM Avoided it oh god Wow, there’s a lot of Legsteps. Pumping one badass song. I gotta admit, if ever my life got a video game and it had epic boss battles, dubstep would not have been my first choice for background music. But maybe it would now.

8:55 PM This is easy so far. The God Machine’s just standing up and then slamming itself into the ground, trying to crush us. It’s slow.

8:57 PM ffffffuck? The Shadowclones have entered the cathedral! o_e The.. the ones that clone themselves! Great, of course, gotta put on the pressure, gotta give us a fight. Fucking boss fights. Okay, God Machine. You’re about to find out why you should never fight me when badass music is playing. ..as am I. Tiger Stripes, let’s use that strength of ours.

8:59 PM Random idea. Running around the fucker. Shadowclones following me, cloning themselves, manifesting towards me.

9:00 PM The God Machine tried to crush me, got a face full of shadow. …damn. o_o The shadow dudes are somehow pierced, pinned to the hairs on the Machine. They can’t move. They’re flailing about. …shit, crush time again. Running.

9:01 PM It got more Shadowclones. They’re starting to merge with each other.

9:03 PM New discovery: They’re slowing it down. Gotta keep running, though.

9:05 PM Shit! The Machine has been hindered enough that now it’s not even trying to crush me. It looks dazed and confused. And the dubstep’s come to a quiet part. I take it this is a cue of sorts. But for what, fuck fuck fuck.

9:06 PM ..what’s it doing nonononono c’mon It shook the Shadowclones off! They’re retreating into the ground. More are still heading my way, and in comes round two of the God Machine.

9:08 PM It’s getting shadows on it and slowing down, but what do I do when it’s dazed?!

9:12 PM Okay, it’s dazed. uh uh uh uh…fuck! Donnie went up to it and whacked it with the empty rifle! She knocked it over! o_o The music’s pumping up.

9:13 PM We climbed on top of its exposed underbelly. Time to hit the weak point for massive damage. SMASHSMASHSMASHSMASHSMASHSMASHSMASHSMASH SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!! Jumping off now. Machine’s flipping over, onto its.. 'stomach?'

9:15 PM fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck it’s speeding around the cathedral, hoo boy dive dive dive

9:16 PM The very top of it is opening up. …it’s charging something up, energy speeding towards the white gap in its head. WAIT MY SENSES ARE TINGLING THAT’S A WEAK POINT TOO GOTTA BE

9:17 PM SMASHSMASHSMASHSMASHSMASHSMASH DIVE TO THE SIDE fwaaaaaaaaaaaah that’s a huge laser It’s getting hurt. …and now it’s getting up. Back to square one!

9:20 PM It’s trying to crush us twice as fast now and getting less Shadowclones per crush than before. Mixing things up. I like that. Actually no I don’t. Never liked boss battles themselves. Always just loved the atmosphere.

9:25 PM dazed smash and down goes the goliath massive damage time

9:26 PM attacked with all we could. got off of it. now it's going to flip over and shoot around the room. rinse and repeat.

9:27 PM divedivedivedive divedivedive WOMP WOMP divedive

9:29 PM laser donnie's got it this time just whacking the fucker again and again Remember to dive!!! fwaaaaaaaaaaaah she's good

9:30 PM The Legsteps are starting to play the song differently. This boss has a phase two, doesn’t it? …the bastard can fly.

9:31 PM The fancy pillars around us are all tilting towards the center of the room. …and opening up at the top. o_o And shooting a light, a liquid light. It spirals out of each pillar and injects directly into its body. …I hear a whirring sound. Gonna dive.

9:32 PM SHIT, that was like some kind of sonic rainbow.. boom thing. Fired directly for my face. I’m glad I can dodge. And now the pillars fire back into it. Recharging. …FFFFFFF it recharges fast. "Okay, what can we do? What can we do?" DIVE We can try to.. fuck up the pillars!

9:35 PM Why must they be so far away from each other? OKAY WHACKING THIS ONE …DIVE Every time I whack, it changes the colour that it sends. Let’s tryyyyy yellow! kay kay kay running to next pillar oh god dive dive dive

9:36 PM It’s fiiiring in raaapidfiiiire

9:37 PM okay it’s back to normal firespeed

9:39 PM Next pillar! whackwhack YELLOW DIVEDIVEDIVEDIVEDIVEDIVE Two down, two to go!

9:45 PM WHACKWHACK DIVE WHACKWHACKWHACK YELLOW DIVEDIVEDIVEDIVEDIVEDIVEDIVE

9:47 PM NOT STOPPING STILL RAPID OH GODDDD

9:49 PM OH GOD

9:52 PM WHACK DIVE WHACK DIVE WHACK DIVE WHACK DIVE WHACK DIVE WHACK DIVE WHACK DIVE WHACK YELLOW …the whir is now a high-pitched whine. It’s pulsing a bright light my eyes It’s gonna blow. o_o COVERCOVERWHERE

9:54 PM hiding behind a pillar not the best of plans but still

9:55 PM BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM fucking blew the Legsteps right out of the cathedral I’m okay. Oh god, I’m okay. Hat’s on fire a little, but I’m okay.

9:56 PM The God Machine is gone. Donnie's behind a pillar at the other side of the arena. In the center are three floating figures. One is Gas Masky. The Archangel? The man in the gas mask. Arms crossed in tight latex. He is in between two black-suited... hatted... oh man, it's them. The men in black, the people we can't get a good look at. Are they the Musicians? Death is lowering down to the ground "Five down. Two left. I didn't even see that one go down." "He did it while your attention was elsewhere." voice without a source. I think it's the musicians. "The slimy bastard. He knows nothing about spectacle." men in black looking at me now death looking at me "Then again, he is also impeccable at surprises. You there, boy. What are you cowering for? You destroyed Deus Ex Machina. That was a feat!" Uh!!! "Come out here, and stand by your accomplishment!"

9:57 PM donnie's still hiding. it's just me walking out to these.. things. "What's your name?" I'm. hoo. breath. I'm Jordan Dooling. And you are? handshake, firm "The Grim Reaper." Are you going to kill me? "Kill you? Of course not!" leans in closer "You're entertainment." lets go of my hand "You're the X factor I've been hearing so much about. You're not meant to be here." Is that.. okay? "It's whatever you want it to be." "There is another one hiding behind us." "Oh?" gas masky turns around. they're all looking at donnie's pillar. "Two of you. That's getting less entertaining." Please don't hurt her. he looks at me "Her? Oh! A boy and a girl! Young love! A tight unit. I stand corrected; that is most entertaining. I can work with that. What's her name? Tell her she's safe to come out." Uh! Donnie! It's okay, Donnie! ...slowly, hesitantly, she peeks out and steps over to me, trying to look small holding my hand

9:59 PM We.. defeated the Cipher, right? gas masky "Probably. I have no idea how it works, kid. The Rapture's new to me too." Then what are you doing here? Right after it died… disembodied voice "We were summoned. We and the Ecclesiarchway." gas masky's frustrated "You didn't have to tell them my name!" "What does it matter? They mean nothing to you." "Does no one in this world understand anything about spectacle?" So. You were summoned. All three of you. "If one were to discern what must have been intended by the summoning force, one would suppose that we were summoned to dispose of you." Shit. "We have had our eyes on you for a while. This would be the perfect opportunity to do it. Grimaldi, stop it, we are going to do this a more patient way." Uh? ecclesiarch "No, I want these two alive. It looks like Rapture has a place for them, with big exciting fights! And as long as they don't get in the way, we could use something like this…" Uhhh??? "So! It's decided. Don't kill them. Just send them on their way." Yes! Yes, just send us on our way! ...where do we go from here "Into your minds."

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(Attached: “But I thought Ten Speed was a guy. Goddammit, this is more misdirection, isn’t it? I always fall for that. -Priestess in the Street”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

[cryptids-lobelia-garden]

I managed to pull this together in the middle of an Absolutely Horrible work day! Yay! (Writing this is probably part of what got me out of a stress and caffeine induced panic attack) Unfortunately I didn’t get it edited on time to post on time, but Hey! It Exists :D Anyway, people should write more characters having autism shutdowns. It’s very frustrating being barely able/unable to talk (I am autism btw)

Anyway, this one’s very environmental. I feel like the timespace distortions in PLA could have been a LOT more horrifying, and I’m here to deliver! Warnings: animal attack (again), uuuuhh what do you call this.. time and space are being bent and torn around him and it is some sort of cosmic horror or something idk what that term means exactly I just know it’s what comes to mind, but uuuh yeah this one’s kinda tame actually.

All of mine so far have been pretty tame, let’s be honest. I promise I can write other stuff we just haven’t gotten to the Good Stuff I Have Planned yet

Day 5: Reckless

Takes place some time after the battle atop Mount Coronet. (After day 4 of this event, far before day 3, which happened before days 1 and 2)

~~~~~

Volo should have known this would happen when a strange energy started to fill the air. He should’ve known this would happen when sparks started to fly.

He thought he had more time before it did, thought he could pick a few more berries from this tree and run.

He should’ve known better than to test his fate, especially in a distortion that he had indirectly caused. Arceus has a sense of humor, after all, and Volo is no stranger to the cruelty that fate seems to love to bring him.

Scents from past and future flow into the air, and he can hardly breathe, stumbling as the ground morphs and shifts under him. One moment, he’s standing on the grassy hill, and the next, a structure he doesn’t understand appears out of nowhere, trapping him inside.

He scrambles his way out a window and brings his fingers to his mouth, whistling as loud as he can.

But Toge doesn’t come. She can’t hear him in the storm.

I could die here.

The realization sends chills down his spine.

He’s been confronted by his own mortality plenty of times in his life. It’d be a surprise to hear someone hasn’t, really, in a world as dangerous, as cruel as this one. Wild Pokémon attacks that aren’t immediately deadly can still be incredibly dangerous later, after all, and there’s a myriad of other dangers in this world.

Volo happens to be particularly good at getting himself into bad situations, and fate has always seemed to be especially cruel to him. He’s faced death plenty of times.

But it’s never felt so close.

He could run from murderers and wild Pokémon. He managed to strike a deal with Giratina when they met, he learned everything he could forage so he would never starve, he had even escaped the wrath of a particularly powerful zoroark, which is an impressive feat, considering the fact that even the normal zoro put plenty of people on the death toll.

But he can’t run from this. Not when he can’t breathe and the ground itself doesn’t seem to work as it should, flickering in and out of existence at the drop of a hat.

He curses himself for his stupidity as a terrified steelix shrieks, a sound like boulders tumbling down a mountain. It’s moving too quickly to see where it’s going, barreling straight towards Volo.

He just manages to dodge out of the way, ducking and rolling behind a tree- but an electric attack hits him, and he shrieks as his whole body jolts from it, falling to his knees.

It’s hard to move, he’s shaking, his muscles are spasming.

He can’t run.

Paralyzed.

I’m going to die here.

Something falls into his hands, a strange device. Some sort of bracelet, with a thick, flat face.

It lights up as he touches it.

He frantically presses back against the tree as an alpha raichu steps forward, holding the strange device up.

He’s about to move to throw it in desperation-

And then something he touches on it creates a shield of pink and blue energy, surrounding him just as the raichu tries to hit him with a Thunder.

He can breathe.

Volo scrambles to his feet, catching his breath. “Is this- some sort of shield..?” It moves with him as he walks- no? It’s moving with the device.

He scoops it off the ground, shaking his limbs out to try to get the rest of the electric attack out of his system, and he sprints towards the outside of the distortion, carrying the device with him. The ground materializes beneath his feet, holding steady even as it breaks around him, and he thanks fate for finally giving him something good.

Some attack hits the shield, and he yelps as he’s thrown, but he isn’t hurt by anything except his own bad landing. Scrambling back to his feet, he runs the rest of the way out, jumping through to the outside of the bubble of distorted land just as the timespace storm starts to swirl.

Terrified pokemon shriek as they’re swept into it. Volo nearly throws up as he sees human remains inside, swirling with the rest.

And, in a flash, all of it is gone, leaving no sign of what just happened but specks of shimmering pink dust, floating softly to the ground.

He’s in a cold sweat, shaking as he stares at where he was almost swept away. The trio would RUN INTO these. For FUN, to collect the things inside.

What the HELL is wrong with them!?

He takes a few shaky breaths, collapsing to his hands and knees. The device makes a clicking sound as it wraps around his hand, but he pays it no mind for now.

Okay.

Okay, I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m okay.

..I have nobody to blame for that except myself. I shouldn’t have stayed when the storm started to gather. And for what, a few handfuls more of berries? That wasn’t worth the risk!

He stares at the strange device, which has moved to his wrist. There’s numbers on the front, though he’s not sure what they’re for.

It’s a miracle I made it out. And it’s because of this wondrous device..

It’s locked itself around his wrist somehow. He can’t see the locking mechanism- it looks like a clean band, aside from the face. The only sign as to its origin is some strange lettering on the side, though he doesn’t really recognize the characters. He knows he’s seen them somewhere before, though.

With some experimentation, he figures out he can move the device up and down his arm, but he can’t take it off. It’s comfortable no matter where it is, fitting perfectly to his skin, but it won’t go over his hand, despite obviously having the capability of doing so.

Fascinating..

Okay, he’ll deal with that later. He stands, making his way back to the little camp he’s set up.

He’s still feeling a little stiff with the after effects of a fairly mild electric attack paralysis, but he’s not too hurt- he must’ve not been hit too bad, thankfully.

Volo sits at camp, dumping out his bag and counting the supplies he’s managed to gather.

If he finds a way to preserve the food, what he has gathered today will be enough for a few days. So the progress towards what he and his Pokémon need to survive the winter is slow, but it is progressing.

The extra berries he grabbed are enough for two extra meals for Toge, so there’s that, at least.

Was it worth the risk? No, not in the slightest. Not when he can easily gather that safely.

But does it make him feel a little better about it?

Absolutely.

He looks up as a shadow falls over him, quickly moving to catch Toge as she flies into his chest. “Hey!”

She squeaks happily, shaking her bag- and that’s the sound of a bunch of apricorns. He can also see the leaves of a few different edible plants and medicinal herbs sticking out.

Volo smiles, cuddling her close. “Thank you, sweetheart,” he murmurs, burying his face in her feathers with a quiet sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

~~~

PARADOX DETECTED

A young woman leans over to look at the alert, brushing curly red hair out of her eyes. “Oh! Well, that explains where he got his watch.. That is a dangerous paradox, wow. Very lucky it didn’t break anything. Dialga must have helped..” She sighs, tapping a few buttons on her watch and sending a quick message to Management. “..Dragons. I need to figure out how Eclipse got it off so I can update the security systems.. What a bother.”

[willowwind78]

1 Annabel Chapter 10

˜ Chapter 10 - Alice in Wonderland  - Lewis Carroll ™

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." "I don't much care where –" "Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”

˜ ™

The 4-Wheeler slid to a stop, scattering sheep in every direction. “Son-of-a-biscuit-eating-barracuda, that blasted goat let all the animals out.” Jason hit the gas again, startling the sheep who “baaed” vehemently at him.  Around the back of the barn, lay the source of the problem. “She ate the corner post!” Jason flew off the ATV in one swift flawless movement to inspect the damage. “Demon goat!”

Annabel climbed down with her typical less-than-stellar grace nearly falling face-first into the dirt when her shoelace entangled itself on the gear shift. Her legs felt like jelly from holding on tight with her knees, causing her to stumble when her feet made contact with the ground. Wobbling for a few steps, she headed toward the sheep around front leaving Jason to his rantings. As she rounded the corner, the hollow sound of his boots kicking the half-eaten fence post resonated down the valley.

The sheep, as it turned out, were relatively easy to round up. They had not gone far. With the help of a shepherd’s crook found in the barn she had them locked back inside the barn in no time at all. The goats on the other hand, were another story. Two were spotted right away munching on a pile of Macintosh that had fallen to the ground beneath an apple tree. Two down… ten to go.

Into the underbrush she trekked and down the short length of hill to the creek. She would have noticed the unusually high water had she not been distracted by the absurdity of goats bouncing around on the large boulders dotting its banks. More goats frolicked in the mud while snacking on the lush green vegetation of the creek-side.

“Demon goats.” Jason said as he came up behind her.

“You’re only saying that because they don’t like you.”

“Exactly. What’s not to like about me?” Jason’s lips widened into a Cheshire cat smile. “See if you can find more. I’ll grab these five. Yell when you find them and I’ll come grab ‘em. You are much better at locating them than I am.”

“Who are you kidding? You just want me to find Jezzy before she finds you.”

“Maybe.” His lips spread once again into a wide toothy grin.

Annabel walked towards her next best guess as to where the goats would have gone losing herself in her thoughts. She had never really noticed Jason much before; tall, blonde, lean with eyes as blue as the sky on a cloudless day. She was over twenty now, never even dated. Up until today she could not say as she had even thought of a man that way before despite that she lived with two who were quite handsome. She reveled in her daydreaming world until something grasped hold of her ankle. Down she went like a felled tree, crashing into the dirt.

“Maaaa!” A small black and white pygmy goat bleated, turned, dropped a small pile of pellets in her general direction and wagged its tail before bouncing off.

“Demon goats may be right.” Her ankle ached as she removed her foot from the tree root which had grown in a loop above the ground with the apparent purpose of tripping hapless passersby. Glaring futilely at the tree, she swore it flapped its leaves at her in derision.

She limped a few steps before regaining her composure and dusting herself off. As her hands swept the leaves from her shirt, she noticed a smear of blood. She flipped her hand to reveal a nice gash across the palm. Typical, especially of her, she was pretty sure she could cause harm to herself in a rubber room. It did not help that she lived with two men who moved throughout life with all the grace and dignity of Russian ballet dancers.

Annabel continued onward, watching her feet this time as she went, randomly smacking her head against tree branches wondering which was worse, tripping and falling or the branches smacking her across the forehead. If the ground was not so dry, the little guys would probably be a lot easier to track. The ground was so hard it was like walking across a sheet of rock, not even her own feet left an imprint on the ground.

After some time, she heard the familiar “Maaa!” sound ahead to which she was so fervently searching. When the tree roots and vines beneath her feet gave way to soft lush green grass, she looked up to find herself in lovely clearing. She was not alone.

Sitting upon the trunk of a fallen tree was a man in a three piece charcoal gray pinstripe suit. He petted her four-legged demonic adversary while using his blood-red bowtie as a make-shift harness. Jezebel bleated happily wiggling her upright tail. Should she run? Annabel stood motionless staring as the stranger scratched Jezzy’s ears while she leaned into him lovingly.

Reality startled her when he spoke without looking up. “Hello child.”

“Hello.” The word escaped before her brain had time to process whether or not she should have spoken. Running, running is what you should be doing. And yet, there she stood starting a conversation as if he were just some nice young gentleman running a candy shop. Why am I not afraid? I should be afraid.  She let her thoughts run for a moment hoping something useful would spit out of them. This man is probably going to kill you. Perhaps you should consider running away or calling out to Jason for help. But, he’s sort of handsome, not sort of… definitely handsome. There is something so familiar about him…Who is he? “That’s my goat.” He nodded. Courtesy seemed highly over-rated at this point so she opted for a rudely articulated blunt question. “Who are you?”

It was then that he did something she truly wished he had not. He looked at her and smiled. If she had been a wiser woman, she would have run, as she was not, her legs turned to jelly, her heart beat into her throat and she sweated profusely until the hot slime pooled on her back and dripped down her rear end. All he had done was to look at her and smile. She melted. His dark auburn hair grew so thick and lush she wanted to run her fingers through it. His eyes were an emerald green sparkling like sunlight off the waters of the ocean. She tingled from head to toe.

Finally, he spoke. “My name is David.” His voice rumbled in a pleasing baritone. She watched awestruck as his fingertips ran up Jezzy’s ears gently pinching the tips. Jezebel snuggled up against his legs in pure bliss. “Whoooo are yooou?” his words elongated like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. She was a Alice, nothing but a child lost in Wonderland. Reality had obviously left this clearing. She was standing in a seemingly magical clearing, chatting with a murdering stranger as if they were talking over tea and crumpets. His previous words rung true when he had said hello, she was a child. She felt like a child.

“I am Annabel Lee.” She did her best to regain the composure that was long gone. Her attempts were futile. She could tell from the softness of his glittering eyes, he knew she was lost in him.

He wove a spell with his words into the air around him. “It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea,  that a maiden there lived whom you may know, By the name of Annabel Lee.” The poetry eased from his lips as if it came from somewhere deep inside him. “And this maiden, she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved…” his lips gently caressed her ear. “… by me.”

Her mind wondered for only a moment before deciding that she flat out did not care how she had come to be sitting next to him gently stroking the fur upon Jezebel’s back. The softness of his lips against her skin made her long that it were she he would touch rather than this silly goat.

If she was lost before, she had no clue where she was now. His words wooed her until she was beyond disoriented. She was watching her body from the outside, staring at herself from across the clearing as she sat next to him while he whispered in her ear “I was a child, and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea, but we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee- With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven coveted her and me.”

A chilled wind swept through the air when his lips grazed her neck and his voice sing-song and lovely asked “That Annabel Lee?”

Once again, she was standing where she had always stood watching from a safe distance. What the… she shook the cobwebs from her head. In this place, reality and dreams seemed to mesh in her head. “No… I mean yes, but not…” she was tongue-tied and flustered.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Was she agreeing or disagreeing? “She isn’t real. She is just a fairy-tale. Oh, and she’s dead.”

He chuckled, a sound like a babbling brook. Words chosen with great care and precision uttered clearly and delicately. “Are you certain you are not her?”

“Quite.” she walked closer now, this time certain that her feet were actually moving along with her mind. Trying to determine if she was moving forward, progressing to where she had been or walking in circles. Maybe she was standing still and only imagining that she was moving. It was extremely hard to tell in Wonderland.

“May I ask you a question Annabel Lee?”

Her nerves were gradually coming back as she cautiously approached. “You have already asked several and I have answered.”

“Have you died yet?”

She stopped. “I’m sorry?” Did he just threaten to kill her?

“I said “Have you died yet?”

“Do I look like I’m dead?”

The sound of an engine rang out behind her forcing her to turn to look. Jason pulled into the clearing on the Grizzly. “I see you’ve caught her, fantastic!”

She turned back and he was gone.

“Annie? Are you alright?”

Annabel blinked, then blinked a few more times. “I….” she looked down. Her fingertips clutched  a red silk bowtie, which had been wrapped around Jezzy’s face in a makeshift harness. “Jason…” she shook her head trying to clear it. “What the fuck?” Her fingers released the ribbon as if it were on fire.

Jason leapt from the ATV grasping the silk fabric before it even hit the ground, but not fast enough to avoid Jezebel getting a bite out of his hand. “Annabel, are you ok?” His eyes widened.

“I… don’t…. know.” Flabbergasted, she climbed onto the back of the ATV.

“What happened?” His concern was genuine. He eyed the bruises in the shape of goat teeth on his hand the glared at Jezebel.

Despite kicking and screaming, Jason scooped up Jezebel and placed her on Annabel’s lap where she immediately calmed down as her ears were scratched. “That goat hates me.” Jason muttered when Jezebel promptly kicked him in the back as he climbed onto the Grizzly.

[darkwingdaryl]

Mending Wall

BY ROBERT FROST

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors

[therealrpalmas]

Lost and Found

A silence followed. It seemed to last for hours. Then the reply from the computer: Flash message received.

Play.

"Mercutio? From yesterday? Where are you, what happened?"

Send reply. "Landslide. Near the border." Where? She tried to recall the map, but thinking was hard. "East-southeast, from where we met. Can't move."

"Fornication. Hold on, I'm coming."

The part of her mind which was only loosely connected to reality noted that the translation matrix had improved enough to understand the curses now.

"Not much choice," she flashed back and closed her eyes. Now all she had to do was to stay alive until help arrived.

Time became unhinged. Fluid. Sometimes she thought she heard voices, but it turned out to be the sound of wind and groaning rocks. Another tremor shook the ground. Pain flared up and she moaned again.

The belt pouches were crushed. She reached for them, hoping that she could find the mini-medkit. Her grabbing hand found the pouch. She noticed dimly it felt sticky and too flat. Still, she managed to open it and grab what was inside. Pulled it out. Looked at the sad remains of the miniature autodoc. Not that she figured it would be able to do much, but at least it could apply painkillers and tell her how bad it was.

She was thirsty again. Reached for a bottle which wasn't there. It was only then that she realised her backpack hadn't come with her when she translated herself. She looked around, insofar as possible, but couldn't find it. And the bottle had remained behind as well, and had probably rolled down after the last tremor. Or when she translated and the boulder fell and rolled away. Either way, the result was the same. No water.

The wind picked up, moaning through the hills, or were they actual voices this time? She realised, very belatedly, that she still had the camo field active. Or… was it still active? Probably crushed with the rest of her gear.

No, that wasn't the wind. Definitely voices, coming closer. She tried to call out for help, but couldn't manage more than a wheeze. The arm she wanted to raise to wave at them fell back almost right away.

"There! There she is!"

And now time clicked back. Footsteps, not running this time, but moving slowly over the unstable hill, slipping and sliding, muttered curses. She forced herself to open her eyes. In the early twilight she could see silhouettes, people struggling up the hill. When they came closer she recognised the three she had seen the day before, followed by a few others she hadn't seen yet.

Marelynah dropped down next to her and exclaimed: "Oh, fornication, what happened to you?" Someone else gave a startled, horrified scream.

Before she could answer, the older man said, in a tone of exasperation. "What, her again?"

Marelynah stil sounded shocked. "Excrement, Hyrall, I told you. She really needs our help now."

"What were you doing here anyway?"

It took her two tries to croak out: "Trying to leave."

"Where is your suit? Where are your friends?"

That's right, her sluggish mind informed her, they still thought she was a larper – whatever that was. Apparently larper (larping?) was something you did with friends.as

"Gone."

"What, they ran off and left you?" That was Marelynah.

Thinking, right now, was not her strong point. How to explain the fact she was alone? "We, ah…" Breathing was getting harder. Oh please, merciful stars, not another episode.

Marelynah made a curt gesture. "Never mind that, we need to get you out."

"I am not going to call the emergency services." That was the person called Hyrall.

"No, now, wait. What if we carry her out when it's dark and we call once we're on the other side?"

"Do you really want to lift her?"

She didn't want to ask just how bad it was. Bad enough from what she picked up. Facial expressions and gestures didn't mean much to her yet, they were not so universal as people seemed to think, but she could sense the shock of their minds.

"It's either that or calling them in, no?" Maralynah snapped.

"And how do you want to carry her? We don't have a stretcher or anything." That was Hyram again.

"Blanket. Spread it out, put her on it, each of us grab a corner. Lift her out that way. By the time we make it down it'll be dark."

"Excellent way to slip and fall down yourself," Hyram commented. "You know, figure it out yourself. I'm out of here."

"Sure, excement body opening, run off and leave us." That was someone she didn't know.

"Thank you, that's exactly what I'll do." And he turned around and walked away, further uphill.

"Anybody else who wants to leave?" Marelynah asked. Nobody else apparently took her up on the offer. She took a blanket out of her backpack and spread it out.

Seeing the backpack jolted her memories. "Have you… seen mine?" Again she had to repeat it a few times before they could make out the words.

"I'll go and look for it," someone she couldn't quite see said and moved away.

"Alright, Mercutio. We'll have to move you to get you on the blanket. It'll hurt. I'm sorry."

She sighed weakly. "Go."

Someone (Marelynah?) started to lift her. Blinding pain. More darkness.

And then there were minds, lots of minds, pressing against her feeble, failing shields, people moaning, people screaming, sick people, injured people, dying people. They pressed upon her, jolting her awake, no chance to escape back into the dark. Amplifying her own pain, stacking. What how where?

Open eyes, slowly, blinding light oh merciful stars. She blinked away tears. Through them she saw Marelynah sitting next to her. She tried to speak, but no sound came out at all.

Still, Marelynah seemed to understand her. "Emergency room. Yes, it's always this bad this close to the border. There's triage, they didn't even rate you as the highest priority. You'll have to wait. I'm sorry."

She tried to look around, but Marelynah stopped her. "Try not to move. There's no saying how much damage you've already sustained with us having to drag you here and all. If you're looking for the others, they're gone. Brought you out and left. I didn't want to leave you alone, though."

"T.. thanks." She couldn't even hear herself, but Marelynah seemed to understand her anyway.

"You're welcome."  

(To be continued)

[p-isforpoetry]

Read by the poet: "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Source: Robert Frost reading his own poems, 1951

[wakamotogarou]

Mending Wall

By Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

[sheriffof0]

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ ~ Robert Frost (at Colondannes) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpfwcJ9oOMM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[redtechnoanon]

Inspired by this post, the inherent allure of desert duo, and my desire to hear Scar read more books aloud.

-

Grian’s communicator has been a little on the fritz recently. Nothing serious, of course, like not receiving messages or dropping calls. Certainly nothing bad enough to bother Xisuma about, especially not as the admin spends his ninth hour staring dead-eyed at his own kelp farm. It’s nothing harmful, and only minimally annoying. It’s mostly just… odd.

Like on day one, when everyone was taking in the landscape, felling trees by hand, digging up their first clumps of iron, and, for some reason, raiding woodland mansions, if Grian held his communicator at the wrong angle he would swear that there were colors on each of the names. He had… “borrowed” Mumbo’s communicator midway through their expedition while they waited for Scar to tumble his way back to their cave system, and Mumbo’s didn’t seem to have the same issue. 

He almost messaged X about it, but then the buzzing of ideas clambered into his skull and the next thing he knew, he woke up half-draped over a living boulder, glitching communicator still buzzing merrily with a time-lapse song. By that point, Xisuma was busy making a starter home, out of starter materials, which meant a mansion out of imported sandstone and nether wood, which meant a lot of careful choices and no time to be bothered for something cosmetic.

After that, Grian had a few too many things to build and people to prank to worry about strangely colored names or items being added to build checklists that he never needed. His house didn’t use sandstone, and it certainly didn’t need any TNT minecarts for decor, but at the end of the day he stood proudly before his properly gradiented roof with both of those cluttering up a few inventory slots. He slipped the extra sandstone into Xisuma’s chests, used the TNT minecarts on the pile of diamonds he “gave” to Impulse, and scrubbed the extra items off of the checklist in his communicator notes.

But now, as he sits on top of his hill, hunched over the little silver device splattered with old gunpowder, stickers, and dye stains, he wishes he brought it up before now. His time lapse music, and, in fact, all of his media, is refusing to play and give him the nice background noise he needs to start in on his megabase. He has the chest monster, he has the stacks upon stacks of stone, he has all the moss he’d ever need, and he has the thrumming of the Entity and the Rift buzzing between his temples, but all of that means nothing if he doesn’t have something nice to build to.

His feathered ears flick backward in annoyance, pressed flat against his skull and the little Gregg balanced precariously atop his head. “Are you seeing this, Gregg,” Grian says, smacking his communicator with the palm of his hand again. “Utterly ridiculous. How am I supposed to work in these conditions?”

Gregg, being an egg, does not respond.

“Oh come on you stupid thing!” Grian shouts, banging it against his knee one last time before slumping back against the lumpy mountain behind him and throwing his communicator somewhere further up. He crosses his arms grumpily. “This wouldn’t happen if Mumbo was here,” he mutters. He thumps his legs out straight against the mountain in time with his huffs.

Then, from behind: “Do Creepers Have Toe Beans?: Chapter One!” Scar’s voice echoes cheerfully.

Grian flails upright in a flurry of feathers and nearly topples all the way down the hill. “Scar!” he yelps on instinct, clambering up to see-

Nobody. Nothing at all, except his communicator cheerily ringing out in Scar’s voice.

“Once, there was a creeper named Maverick, and he was friends with all of the land,” the communicator continues. “But, despite his charm, good looks, general charisma, and winning smile, he was so prone to disaster that he couldn’t go out of his house without tripping down a hole! His friends decided to make him some nice steel-toed boots, to avoid workplace accidents. Remember kids: OSHA is your friend, unless you’re a capitalist like Mumbo, then you need to defeat it.”

Grian snorts, and shakes his head. That’s Scar alright. The tense mantle of his wings relaxes and he walks up to the communicator, dusting the dirt and grass blades away from its screen. There’s a little piece of art bobbing merrily up and down on the screen, full of wide, colorful text and little creeper faces. It’s quite obviously a children’s book.

“But of course,” Scar’s voice continues, half-muffled with Grian’s thumb over the speaker, “Maverick was very upset that his friends had not watched Top Gun and wouldn’t tell them anything about how to make shoes for creepers, so all of Maverick’s friends-”

Grian pauses the audio. “Didn’t know Scar did audiobooks,” he tells Gregg, navigating back to his music. “But now that we know the speakers work, we can get started and-” His music library crashes. Grian stares at the black screen for a long time. So long, in fact, that it decides to be helpful and provide him his options for audio: a singular screen, with wide colorful text and little creeper faces.

Gregg does not scream in frustration, because Gregg is an egg. Grian is not an egg, so he definitely does.

“Fine!” he decides, pressing down onto the play button with a tad more aggression than is warranted. “It’s better than nothing!”

And… well. It’s a good book. What can he say?

Sue him if he actually enjoys it by the time he’s spread the last of the moss over his boulder stack. So what if he sniffles when Patra, Maverick’s zombie best friend, gives away her favorite sun hat for safe passage for her other friends and gets left behind. Maybe he does take a brief break from placing stone to stare at a wall when Welk, the tamed dog they met along the way, is made to attack the group of mobs by his owner. And maybe he does a little fist pump when Balrey, the parrot, manages to lead the blind creeper past the cactus in the ravine and get the secret they need to make Maverick’s shoes.

Whatever tears are shed or time wasted mid-build is solely between Grian and Gregg.

Grian finishes up the last touches and swoops off the top of his boulder pile, sitting down on the same hill and looking at what he’s done.

Scar says, ‘The End.”

Grian is left alone, with his stack of rocks and his communicator, and the idea that Scar’s voice saying goodbye is very, very bad. He can’t place his finger on why, though.

-

He skims the world border on his way back, brushing fingertips against the gentle constraints of code. It’s familiar, but also wrong. He doesn’t know why.

He stops by Stress’ place before he makes it back home. He has the sudden urge to take his axe and chop down every dark oak tree in the area and drag them back home. The one thing that stops him is the ravine he almost tumbles into while he wanders the forest, hands itching for a good deforestation. He stumbles back from the edge, harder than he usually does. He doesn’t know why.

He stops by GIGA Pies to snag some snowballs from Lady Giga’s trail, just in case he’s coming down with something. He feels the sudden urge to find Ren’s enchanting table and- and- well, he’s not really sure. Steal it? Burn it? Hide it? Use it? He has his own enchanting table. He’s got every enchanted book he could ever want waiting back at the trading hall. He doesn’t need it. He still wants it. He doesn’t know why.

He almost takes a tumble into the Hermissippi immediately after leaving, and narrowly avoids smacking his head against a rock by the edge. For some reason, while debating over whether or not to leave Ren’s poor enchanting table alone, he put his chestplate on, and, even more strangely, took his helmet off. He doesn’t know why.

He goes to bed in his own house, the one he didn’t use sandstone or TNT minecarts to build. He wakes up when Doc puts a hand on his shoulder to shake him awake from where he stands, motionless, before Doc’s sand storage. He doesn’t know why.

He goes back to bed. He wakes up in his front yard, surrounded by a ring of cactus. His heartbeat doesn’t calm down until all of it is taken down. He has to take out some stray needles that got stuck in his palms in his haste to take down the wall of spikes and green. His heartbeat feels like he’s just been in a game of Dodgebolt. He doesn’t know why.

And yet, the next day, everything is fine. The Rift and the Entity are as loud as ever. He goes to bed at home, and he wakes up at home. Nothing else of note happens. Everything is strangely, worryingly normal. He doesn’t know why.

He’s fairly certain he’ll find out, though. That worries him.

-

When he goes back for the next phase of his project, pockets full of diamonds and mind full of ideas, his music still won’t start up. Instead, Scar’s voice echoes out again.

“Landscaping Your Mind: Chapter One.”

Grian sighs and squints up at the boulder. This one sounds less like a fun story this time around. Scar has always been quite good at terraforming though, so maybe all the little anecdotes he slipped into the last story will make a reappearance here, and Grian can get some actually good advice.

“You are sitting in a field, surrounded by grass blades, ebbing and flowing through the gusts of your imagination. Each of those blades represent a past life. Memories, desires, dreams, and past loves.”

“This sounds pretentious,” Grian says out loud. Nevertheless, in the hopes that Scar’s wisdom will come through if he follows his advice, Grian flops forward to stare at a single blade of grass in the shadow of his base. It’s a blade of grass, alright. Green and stringy. If he squints, it looks like a malnourished cactus, or a green enderman in a boat, or a really skinny creeper, or- or any number of things, really.

“By plucking one, you shall reveal-”

Grian follows suit immediately, and yanks the blade of grass out from the turf.

His communicator cuts off the audio. Then, there is a deafening peal of static. Grian flattens his ears against his skull and whips the communicator out of his pocket to slam against the foot of his base.

It goes silent. The screen is black.

He stays frozen, pressed to the ground for almost a minute. “Great,” he says, finally, letting the blade of grass tumble from his hand. “I broke it. Guess I’ll just have to get a new-”

The screen flickers on. It has the perfect image of the Rift dancing across its pixelated surface. Grian watches as the purple mass within twitches and flickers - red, then yellow, then green, then purple again - and the communicator shuts off. Grian only sees his own wide eyes reflected back at him.

His time-lapse music stutters out of the communicator speakers.

“Ok,” Grian says, voice very small even to himself. “Alright then.”

[theskywaslookingback]

hands

“Somehow I thought the place would have been smaller,” Martin says, bag slung over his shoulder as he looks up at the cottage. “It’s nicer than I would have given Daisy credit for.”

Jon hums, pulling his bag out of the boot of the car they’d borrowed from Basira and letting the lid fall shut with a heavy thunk. The cottage sits nestled at the base of a large hill, surrounded by lush green grass and the last vestiges of summer flowers. Far off in the distance a couple of cows graze lazily, just small dark shapes in the dying sunlight. Bugs hum in the air around them. It’s small and quiet, just the kind of place Jon thinks Daisy might have liked, actually.

The cottage itself is stone painted a stark white, with dark blue, peeling shutters closed tight to the windows. One of the shutters lies broken on the ground, and the glass it had been protecting is spider-webbed with cracks. Two terra cotta flower pots sit on either side of the front door, both empty. There was no evidence that a welcome mat had ever been laid between them. To the left of the door was a box filled with what had once been firewood but was now damp with mist and rot. Jon shuddered to think about creatures they might find lurking in the bottom of that box.

“Charming,” Jon says, the corner of his mouth turned down in distaste. He finds the key in a false rock on the right side of the cottage, just where Basira had said it would be, and lets them inside.

It’s clear from the moment they step inside that Daisy had not visited this particular safe house in quite some time. The air inside the cottage is thick and unpleasantly cold, smelling of dust and age. Dust motes catch in the dim light of the bulb as Jon turns on the light, and he’s displeased to see cobwebs sitting stubbornly in the corners of the room. The wood floor looks old and worn, scratchy looking area rugs dotted along like haphazard patchwork quilt. Jon loathes to take his shoes off.

“Well,” Martin says from behind him, crowding in close, “at least the electric is working.”

Jon shoots a withering glare over his shoulder and steps inside, letting Martin close the door behind them. He drops his bag next to the uncomfortable mound of fabric that someone generous might have once called a settee and goes to check on the rest of the place.

Jon checks the taps in the kitchen and is relieved to find the water running. There’s an expired  box of Tetley’s in the pantry that will have to make do until they can make their way down to the village to do a proper bit of shopping, and a couple cans of peaches that might be passable as dinner or breakfast if he can convince Martin to eat them.

He can hear Martin moving about in the sitting room, the creak of the windows and shutters as Martin pushes them open to get the place aired out a bit. “Might be a bit chilly with the windows open,” Jon says.

“There’s a radiator,” Martin replies, “I’ll see about getting it on.”

“Right.”

The hall light flickers when he turns it on, but it gives him enough light to see by. The cottage itself has only four rooms - kitchen, sitting room, one bedroom, and one bath - and Jon can’t bring himself to be surprised that the only bed appears to be a full size. He checks the dresser drawers and finds them empty, thankfully, no nesting mice or other visitors.

The bed is a utilitarian thing. One pillow, though he’s frankly surprised it even has that, white sheets with tight tucked corners, and a navy blue duvet. Jon pulls it off the bed to shake off the dust and sneezes, his eyes watering. He opens the single window with a little difficulty, having to stand on his tip-toes to get it all the way open, and unlocks the shutters. Night has settled quickly over the little valley, but the moon is bright and nearly full, pouring silver light into the room.

When Jon makes his way back into the sitting room Martin is crouched in front of the radiator and frowning, the sleeves of his button down shirt rolled up to show the light brown skin of his forearm. He has a birthmark on his left arm, nestled next to the crease where his arm bends, a dark spot like a smudge of dirt that Jon wants to press his mouth to.

Jon clears his throat, the tips of his ears burning a little. “Any luck?”

Martin jerks a little, swinging his head up to look at him. Jon feels his mouth go a little dry at the sight if he’s honest. Martin’s dark hair sweeping over his forehead, those sleeves rolled back on those thick arms. He likes the look of Martin at work, those calm dark eyes fixed on a problem that Jon knows he’ll find a solution for. Martin sweeps his eyes over Jon, head to toe, before looking back at the radiator. “I don’t know what Daisy did to this thing, but I think it’s well and truly dead.”

“Did you try plugging it in?”

Martin gives Jon a glare worthy of one of his own and Jon feels his lips turn up into a grin without his permission. “It’s a gas radiator, Jon.” He sighs, “Hopefully the gas is just turned off and it’ll be an easy fix, but we’ll be stuck without it tonight.”

“That’s...not ideal.”

Martin hums in agreement.

Silence settles between them, a not unwelcome weight that Jon’s been getting used to the last few days. “Tea?” Jon asks after a moment for lack of anything more helpful to do.

“That would be lovely, actually. Did you find some?”

“Daisy had some in the pantry, it’s likely ancient, but--”

“Tea is tea.”

Jon wrinkles his nose but doesn’t outwardly disagree.

“I’ll just get some things put away then,” Martin says, picking his bag back up off the floor. “Do you want me to take yours?”

“Leave it. I’ll get it later.”

“Alright.”

Jon finds Daisy’s kettle under the sink and starts to wash it out when he hears Martin say something from down the hall. He turns off the water. “What?”

Martin appears in the entry, biting his lip. “There’s er, there’s only one bed.”

Jon furrows his eyebrows. “I’m aware. I saw the bedroom, Martin.”

“Yeah it’s just--“ Martin trails off, his cheeks flushing. “How are...how are we going to sleep?”

Jon remembers the two days they’d spent in his flat, sleeping in the same bed, their hands tangled together even when sleeping because the thought of being separated was too much to bear. But that had been right after Jon had walked Martin out of the Lonely, so he supposes those were extenuating circumstances, Martin needing an anchor to find himself again. It should be a relief that Martin feels safe enough to want a little distance again, but mostly it just sets off a dull ache in his chest.

Jon feels a sharp pain in his jaw and realizes he’s been clenching his teeth and makes an effort to relax, though his shoulders feel pinned next to his ears. Jon goes back to washing out the kettle, filling it with cool water to boil. He avoids Martin’s eyes and says, “I think there might be some spare linens in the closet. I can take the couch.”

Martin shifts, the old wood floor creaking under his foot. “Are you sure? It doesn’t look very comfortable.”

Jon shrugs. “I’ve slept on worse, when I do manage to sleep. It’ll be fine Martin.”

“Alright. If you’re sure.”

“I am.” Jon says with a finality he doesn’t feel.

He finds a couple of mugs in the cupboard that he rinses out before filling with water and letting the tea bags steep. He brings the mugs back into the sitting room and sets Martin’s down on the table. He takes a sip of his own and grimaces. It’s vile, but far from the worst tea he’s ever had so he makes himself drink it.

Martin appears a minute later from the bedroom  and takes his tea with a grateful little thanks before taking a sip and making a face.

“Tea is tea.” Jon mumbles.

“I’m not sure this still qualifies.” Martin says but drinks it anyway.

They drink the rest of their tea in silence. Martin volunteers to do the washing up while Jon gets his own things put away.

Martin has left him half the dresser for his clothes and made a space for him on the bathroom counter. It feels almost too intimate, their toothbrushes resting side by side, their clothes in the same drawer. Jon tries desperately not to think about it as he changes his clothes for bed and rifles through the little linen closet for a set of sheets.

He finds a set of dark gray sheets and a threadbare red throw blanket that he drags back out into the sitting room. The settee is as uncomfortable as it is ugly, hardly more than a couple of boulders masquerading as a sofa; Although, Jon has spent many a night sleeping on the floor or bent over his desk at the Archives, so maybe he has no real right to complain.

Martin turns off the kitchen light and waits awkwardly for him to finish, hovering around the edges like he wants to say something but doesn’t have the words. “Are you going to be warm enough?” He finally asks, eyes locked onto the throw blanket. The fabric is almost sheer in spots from wear and dotted with holes along one edge.

The chill is almost impossible to ignore, but Jon just shrugs, a jerky up and down motion of his shoulders. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, if you’re--“ Martin bites his lip, “Okay. Good night, Jon.”

“Good night, Martin.”

Martin disappears into the bedroom, turning the hall light off, and Jon lets out a shaky breath when he shuts the door behind him with an audible click.

*

Moonlight seeps in through the open windows, the chirp of crickets ringing along the countryside, a chill settling across the fields as if to prove winter will be along soon. Even in his long sleeve and trackie bottoms, two pairs of socks pulled up over his feet, Jon shivers. He keeps staring at the ceiling, tracing along crisscrossing cracks with his eyes. He kicks his feet and wraps the blanket further up his shoulder and tries to relax. The walls creak and shudder, old pipes groaning and settling inside the wall. Jon throws an arm over his eyes and tries not to think about it. He’s almost asleep when he hears the floorboards start to creak, the soft padding of footsteps coming from the hall.

“Jon?” Martin’s voice is soft, a little strained and raspy like he’s anxious, “Are you still awake?”

Jon sits up, rubbing a hand down the side of his face. “Yes, I’m still awake.”

“Oh,” Martin says. Jon can’t quite see him, can just make out the shape of him, long legs and broad shoulders. His arms wrapped around himself like he can’t keep warm. “It’s...it’s cold, isn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“Might--” Martin clears his throat, “Might be easier if we slept together, yeah? Until we get the heating back up.”

“Are you--” Jon pauses, picking at a loose thread on the blanket, “Would you be okay with that?”

“Would I?” Martin blurts, “I, uh, would you? Be okay with that?”

“Of course. We shared before.”

“Yeah we…” Martin takes a step further into the room. The edges of him blur just a bit, and what Jon can make out of his face looks exhausted. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“It doesn’t, it--” Jon chokes on his own honestly, the lump of it hard and solid in his throat, “It’s okay when it’s you.”

Martin’s mouth drops open into a little ‘o’, a shocked exhale of breath coming from him.

Jon immediately wants to take it back. It’s too much, Jon knows, he’s always been too much at exactly the wrong time. He curls his fists into the blanket pooled at his waist, fighting back the sharp wave of panic that ‘this is it, this time he’s ruined it for good’.

“Okay,” Martin says softly, his lips turning up into a small smile that’s both soft and a little sad, “come on then, maybe we can still get a few hours in before sunrise.”

Jon swallows hard. The panic sits there in his chest, silent and waiting. “Okay,” He chokes out, “alright, let me just--” He gets up and takes the blanket with him, just to have something to do with his hands and follows Martin into the bedroom.

It’s just as cold in here as the rest of the house, but the way Jon’s fingers are trembling has nothing to do with the cold. He picks the side closer to the window, if only so he has something to stare at when he can’t sleep. Martin curls up next to him. The bed is so much smaller than his own back in London. Martin has to draw his legs up just to fit on the mattress, too tall and wide for the little bed. Jon fits just fine, but he’s a little worried about rolling off the mattress during the night. They’re perched precariously, sharing the same pillow, Martin’s warm breath at the back of Jon’s neck.

Eventually Martin sighs. “Here,” He says, shuffling a little behind Jon, “Can I--?” He hovers his hand over Jon’s waist.

It doesn’t-- it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that the bed is too small for two grown men, despite one being below average height, and it’s cold besides. That doesn’t stop Jon’s heart from beating hard and loud in his chest though, as he slowly nods.

Martin’s hands are large and strong and lovely. Jon’s breath catches when Martin’s arm curls around his waist and he’s pulled back against Martin’s chest. He can feel Martin’s heart beating against his back, thudding almost as loud and hard as his own. Martin’s fingers settle over his stomach, splaying out. Jon thinks his hand could almost cover it completely and it sets off another round of shivering in him that has nothing at all to do with the cold.

“Alright?” Martin whispers.

“Yes.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m-- it’s cold, Martin.”

Martin hums thoughtfully and lets go of Jon for just a moment, long enough to pull the duvet up higher around them before settling his hand back against Jon’s stomach. Jon curls his own hands in front of his face and grabs the blanket so hard his knuckles ache.

“Night, Jon.”

“Good night, Martin.”

Jon is sure there’s no way he could fall asleep like that, pressed so close to Martin that he can feel the warmth of him all along his body, but eventually he does.

[READ THE REST ON AO3]

[spxllcxstxr]

Wouldn’t It Be Nice • R.L

(Gif not mine)

Request: maybe a blurb where the reader is dating Remus and one day, they randomly decide to miss classes and go on a date instead. maybe a walk, so it’s super simple but they talk about their life - their future and that makes it romantic. basically a fluff. lkshda I don’t know I just want him to hold my hand and kiss my forehead. Love your writing! — anon and hii, you asked for more remus requests and as a remus simp i just had to comply. i'd love to see more one shots that show both sides of remus: the softy, cuddly boy and the sassy, snarky comments king. so maybe have a moment where he's being cute with the reader and the immediate other they're sassing each other off and that's just how their relationship works :) — @moonysimpp

Summary: You skip a class and plan a wedding

Warnings: brief weed mention, skipping class, a little suggestiveness?, talks about marriage, no mention of Voldy/the war

Word Count: 1.4k

A.N: At first, I wasn’t going to combine these two requests...but I made Remus both snarky and soft so I thought why not? I hope that’s ok with the two of you, I feel like it just worked out well this way. As always, let me know what you think and love you all ❤️

Title: The Beach Boys - Wouldn’t it be Nice (I just got this vibe immediately after reading the request)

****

“Have I gone completely mental, or is the Remus John Lupin actually asking me to skive off History of Magic?”

Remus stands across from you, leaning his shoulder against a stone pillar, red and gold tie prim and proper, hands buried deep in the pockets of his slacks. His eyes lazily roll at your theatrical gasp.

“And in our N.E.W.T. year!” You continue, dramatically clutching your chest. “What a naughty boy you are, Lupin. Can’t believe Minnie ever made you a Prefect!”

He raises an eyebrow at you, the right one, with the white jagged scar cutting it in half like a bolt of lightning.

“Are you done yet, love?” He casually asks, amused by your antics.

“Am I done?” You repeat, shocked. “My bad influence of a boyfriend is trying to get me to play truant!”

He snorts at your claim knowing full well you and Sirius skipped Herbology yesterday to get high behind Hagrid’s hut. No one was a bad influence on you except yourself, and everybody knew it.

“C’mon, Lily’ll take notes for us.” Remus takes a hand out of his pocket and rubs the back of his neck. The very simple and casual action has your heart fluttering.

“Oh, yeah.” The red head beside you scoffs. “‘Lily’ll take notes for us.’” She mocks in a lower voice to imitate Remus’. “Y’know, as Head Girl, I should be taking points away from you, Remus.”

“That’s rich comin’ from you, Lily.” Remus chuckles, reluctantly dragging his body away from the wall and closer to the two of you. He brings his index finger to the bottom of his chin, pretending to be deep in thought. “Who was it again that let you off when you and James got caught in the Prefect’s bathroom—“

Your friend’s face gets drenched in deep red embarrassment. Her eyes grow as wide as dinner plates. “We agreed to never speak of that, Remus.” Lily’s voice is deadly serious as she interrupts his thought.

Everybody in the entire castle and their pets knew all about how Remus walked in on something happening between James and Lily in the Prefect’s bathroom in December, but nobody except the three of them knew the exact story. It was considered major drama in the castle and even after months, people are still whispering about it.

He smirks at her bright and flustered face before turning his triumphant gaze onto you.

“So, you joinin’ me, love?” Remus asks, his hand outstretched towards you.

You always had trouble saying no to Remus Lupin.

“Hm, spend time with my boyfriend or be put to sleep by Binns’ awful monotone lecture? What a hard choice.” You snark before immediately grabbing at his hand and interlacing your fingers.

“Thought so, love.” Remus cockily voices, still smirking.

Remus’ lips briefly connect to your hairline in a kiss before he starts pulling you outside.

You barely have enough time to call out a goodbye to your friend before you’re scampering to keep up with Remus and his extremely long legs.

The air is cool against your skin, when you first step out onto the grounds. It’s crisp and clear and it beats sticking around in the musty castle. Students with all different colored robes dart around you, trying to make it to their classes in time.

“So what do you have planned for us on this fine day, Rem?” You ask, sauntering down the green rolling hills, occasionally purposefully bumping into his shoulder.

“Ah, I don’t have anything planned exactly.” He admits, thumb stroking your hand as the two of you pass Hagrid’s hut. “Just wanted to be with you. And not go to class, of course.”

“Wanted to get me alone, hm?” You tease, swatting lightly at his shoulder.

You can practically hear his eyes roll around in his sockets, something he does frequently since he has to deal with both you and his four other best friends. You don’t think there’s been a day since first year when his eyes haven’t made their rounds.

“You’re positively obnoxious, y’know that?”

You’re stepping over the plants and underbrush making up the tree line of the Forbidden Forest, trying not to get your foot submerged in mud.

“Yeah, but you love me.” You tell him, trying to balance on a fallen tree branch.

“Eh...” Remus shrugs, watching you maneuver around a twisting vine.

You narrow your eyes and stick your tongue out at him as a response.

He takes you to the spot Kettleburn usually lets his Hippogriffs roam around between lessons, a large clearing with some boulders and tree stumps to sit on.

The Forbidden Forest is beautiful in the soft May sunlight.

The leaves are lush and green, alive with various creatures noisily chatting away with each other. You hear the faint trampling and pounding of hooves off in the distance. Sweet scents of spring flowers drift through the breeze, relaxing your tense muscles.

The Forbidden Forest is even more beautiful when you’re supposed to be listening to the ghostly form of Professor Binns drone on and on about the Gargoyle Strike of 1911 in a stuffy old classroom.

Your back leans up against the rough bark of the nearest tree. It digs into your back and probably dirties your robes but you find that you don’t mind at all.

Eyelids flutter shut and you inhale the cool air deeply to ease your mind. The rustle of leaves from the gentle breeze and the chirping of surrounding creatures fills you with a sense of comfort.

Slowly, you open your eyes to see Remus sitting on a large dark boulder, gazing at you intently.

“Do you think Dumbledore would let us get married here?” You ask dreamily, observing the pale yellow sunlight filtering through the leaves.

Even from this distance, you can tell Remus’ body goes rigid.

“M-married?” He sputters meekly. “Is this a proposal? Are you proposing to me right now?”

Remus jumps from his seat, robes billowing behind him as he anxiously strides towards your spot.

“Do you want it to be a proposal?” You cock your head to the side.

“No!” He shouts, eyes wide. “I mean—fuck!” Remus continues to sputter, ears glowing pink.

You laugh at his fluster. “Relax, Remus, I know what you meant.”

“Oh thank Godric.” Remus huffs out a laugh before pressing his own back to the tree next to yours. “Just give me a few years and I’ll buy you a ring, love.”

“Well now I’m just excited.” You giggle, admiring how he’s carefully turning his head to survey the clearing.

The pale jagged lines of his scars dully glimmer in the rays of sunshine that make their way through the treetops. It’s almost angelic.

“It would be nice to get married here, wouldn’t it?” You hear him murmur, more to himself, you suspect.

“Just how many wizards you reckon been married in the Forbidden Forest?” You chuckle. “Darling, I think we’re obligated to be the first.”

Remus shakes his head fondly at the notion. His head lulls back to face you, eyebrow raised.

“Oi, you don’t need to convince me. Dumbledore’s the one you ought to ask.”

“Ah, he’s a softy.” You wave away his thought. “We’ll be fine.”

Remus raises his arms like he was presenting the wild and untamed forest behind him. “I don’t know love, it is called the Forbidden Forest.”

You shrug. “Well maybe they’ll rename it.”

“Oh yeah? To what?” Remus snorts, running a hand through his sandy curls.

You smile, making a grand gesture with your arms. “The Forbidden Unless You’re Remus and (Y/n) Lupin Forest.”

“Y’know what?” Remus smirks, kicking off of the tree. “I like the name change.”

“Oh yeah?” You raise an eyebrow as he ambled closer to your position.

“I particularly enjoy the (Y/n) Lupin part.” He places his hands on either side of your head, foreheads almost touching.

You hum in response, eyes gazing into his own honey brown ones. His eyes flick down to your lips before pressing his own to the top of your forehead.

Warmth spreads from where his lips connect with your skin, a smile instinctively growing across your face.

“Remus and (Y/n) Lupin.” He muses as he pulls away.

“Now that I think about it...” Your index finger taps against your lips in thought. “(Y/n) and Remus Lupin rolls off the tongue a bit better.”

“Whatever you say, love.” He happily sighs.

•

All Character Taglist: @aspiringsloth20 @amourtentiaa @cherie-draco

Remus Lupin Taglist: @lunalovecroft

[frombeyondtheblackhole]

Hermit DSMP Swap AU: Part 4

... Skeppies- not in his house... he was in his mansion. Now he is in a mine. That’s not normal, or shouldn't be normal. Who knows what’s normal really. “I reject normal,” He muttered to himself before turning and yelling down the mineshaft “Baaaaaad... Very funny Bad!” He started back down the mine shaft, Bad had to be hiding around a corner up here somewhere. “How did you do it?... Bad?” No response “Bad! Stop hiding already, I know you’re there.” 

Wait, what was this. Skeppy stopped and squinted at the mineshaft walls. He’s a literal diamond, Skeppy knows a thing or two about rocks, and this was a rock he had never seen before. The whole wall was made up of large patches of this dark scaly stone. He knocked his knuckles against it, his diamond skin barely scratching it. “What the hell?” He said and was disappointed when Bad didn't interrupt with his typical ‘language.’ This gave him an idea. He cursed louder. Still silence. Skeppy frowned. Maybe Bad really wasn’t there. 

“Well, I'm leaving now. Last chance.” Still nothing. There was a sinking feeling in Skeppy’s chest. Bad wasn’t there. If this wasn’t a prank then what was this. Skeppy hurried down the mineshaft wasting no time in finding the ladder and climbing out into the sunlight. He exited the little house at the top only glancing back down the mine shaft once through the glass floor. He came out on the edge of a bay, mountains and trees behind him. There was some dirt scaffolding laid out in a massive square across the water, and a nether portal and some chests could be seen on a tiny island in the distance.  

He blinked at it for a minute and then Skeppy did what he always did when he didn’t know what to do. He started yelling.

“Hey yooo! Anyone, there!? Anyone out there?! Hellooooo, I’m talking to you!?” His voice echoed back to him and the water lapped softly against the beach. Skeppy scowled “Well, if you don’t want to be friendly then I’ll just leave. How about that? You hear me? I’m leaving, never returning. Not coming back.” He shouted for the benefit of any hypothetical hiding onlookers as he marched into the forest and started climbing the hill. 

The forest quickly thinned and the hill became more of a cliff, and soon he was climbing over rocky boulders and through flat patches of blue-green grass with the occasional grazing sheep. He came over the next hill and stopped short. The mountain dropped off in front of him and in the plain below looked to be some kind of a village. He squinted; a collective of houses built around what looked to be some kind of pole. 

He heard a bleating sound behind him and turned just as something white with horns rammed into him, knocking him off the cliff and sending him tumbling down the rocky slope, head over heels, till he slid to a stop at the bottom. He looked up at the blue sky and groaned. If he wasn’t a literal rock, he would have been covered in bruises. As it was he still felt like shit.    

“Well look at what the goat dropped in.” Someone laughed. Skeppy tilted his head back to look behind him, everything upside down. A man in a red sweater cast his shadow over him. 

He smiled and the corners of his eyes creased, his shadow growing as a pair of wings spread slightly behind him “Hey there, you seem new, welcome to Boatem town.” 

“Uuuuu... hey there?” 

“You just gonna to lie there, buddy?” He laughed again, reaching out a hand. 

Skeppy blinked and shook his head rolling over and taking the offered hand as the man helped him up. 

“By the way, I’m Grian, whatcha doing out here?” 

“Skeppy, and I, with my excellent sense of direction, was exploring and definitely not lost in any way. I know exactly where I am. And I’m definitely not the victim of some unnamed prankster” He said, starting to walk towards the village and looking around. They were behind a big mossy house.

“Oooh, a prank you say, I’ve got to hear this.” Grian said, following. They walked around the house into the village center, a tower of boats hovered in the middle over an ominous pit. 

“Naaah it’s boring really,” Skeppy waved his hand dismissively as he stopped near the edge of the Boatem hole and peered over. It went all the way down to bedrock, like L’manburg. “Huh... interesting...”

“Ah, yes. That is the Boatem hole, we're planning on opening it up to the void at some point.” Grian explained.

“The void? Wait, you can do that? That sounds awesome. Imagine the pranks you could pull with that” Skeppy said his curiosity getting the better of his caution.

“I know right, Scar’s already fallen down there several times,”

“Hey Grian, who’s your friend there?” A man with in a maroon coat and a tinny hat said coming over. When he came closer Skeppy noticed a long scar running diagonally across his nose and face. 

“Hey Scar! Speak of the devil,” Grian called out to the aptly named man. “This is Skeppy, he’s absolutely not lost.” Grian quipped, smiling, his voice full of sarcasm. 

“You’re lost you say,” Scar said his voice full of all the honey of a car salesman. Skeppy would know, he used the same honeyed tone when trying to talk Bad or Techno into something that probably wasn’t going to end all that well for them but would be absolutely hilarious to watch. 

“Not lost,” Skeppy quickly corrected. 

“Well even those who aren’t lost are trying to get somewhere. I’m sure you wouldn’t object to us sharing a shortcut or too.”

This man was good. Skeppy didn’t want to look too desperate though. Just add a bit of hesitation sprinkled with some skepticism, that should do it “Well... I suppose a shortcut sounds like a good idea. I am heading for the Badlands, know a faster way to get there?”

Skeppy was met with vacant looks, the car salesman gone. “Actually I have no idea where that is,” Scar shrugged sheepishly “How about you Grian,” 

Grian shook his head “Nope... now that I think about it, how did you get on the server anyway,”

“Um... I... I think, I think I just spawned... It’s hard to remember honestly, it’s been so long.” Skeppy frowned at the strange question. 

Grian and Scare glanced at each other in shock. New players weren't born, they were spawned, but it was very rare for players to spawn for the first time in a community server. Usually they spawned in a private server and then moved into a community when they found one that worked for them. 

“Oh!” Skeppies eyes went wide with realization then horror. If a diamond could blanch, Skeppy was the closest thing to that. “...This isn’t the Dream SMP, is it?” 

“Oh dear...” Grian Muttered, “That’s not good.”

---

TFC had been mining. Now he was standing in the middle of a quartz building. That wasn’t normal. His connection to the server had always been a bit glitchy. Maybe this was just another instance of server glitch. He had been frozen in place for days, lagged out, and even defended. Teleportation could just be added to that list. And it wasn’t all that bad, it’s not like it dumped him in the middle of the ocean or lava. As it was, it seemed like he was in someone's starter base. 

He walked down the stairs and out the glass front doors. There were pools of water to either side of a walkway and the yard was cluttered with large colorful statues. A muffin, a duck. Goodness the hermits were already at it with the pranks this season. 

He walked around the statues and came to the front gate of the grounds. A long wooden path lead off in one direction, and wrapped around behind the mansion in the other. A large red multi story building loomed in the distance. The hermits really had gotten busy. 

It was always nice to see what other people were making but he needed to get back to his mine. He took the path following it around the back of the mansion. The path dropped off suddenly. He jumped down and landed with a grunt before taking some bread out of his pocket and munching on it as he rounded the corner of the quartz building's foundation. 

He faltered as his eyes fell on a massive blackstone building looming out of the sea, two imposing lava infused towers book ending the walls at either side... And he had thought the Red build had been big for early game. This was definitely too big for early game... even by hermit standards. 

He slowly walked closer. Beyond the Quartz house was mostly just an open field until it reached the water. As he got closer he noticed his pickaxe suddenly become unnaturally heavy. It felt strangely like Mining Fatigue. What would a Guardian be doing out here? He returned his pick to his inventory. TFC had seen a lot of things in his time, and this thing felt off. 

“Pst..” 

TFC jumped and looked around for the source of the noise. 

“Over here,” 

Now he noticed the footprints in the ground and a floating potion bottle. That sounded like Etho. 

“Etho?” TFC queried.

“Yeah, it’s me. Here drink this, I can explain later,” Etho said, shoving the potion into TFC’s work calloused hands. 

TFC looked down at the bottle of bubbling silver liquid for a moment before uncorking it and downing the liquid. He trusted the young man with his life. 

--- 

Sam started up from his chair in the dark room where he had been flipping through the prison's security camera feeds, lit only by the glow of the computer screens. He expanded the outside front camera feed to full screen and rewound the feed. A strange old man he had never seen before slowly approached the beach by the prison then just disappeared. Who the hell was that and why did he take an invis potion. 

Sam scowled. “Not on my watch,” he muttered, summoning his trident from his inventory and marching for the exit.

[combat-wombatus]

Crimson Snow

Pairing: Hawks (Takami Keigo) x Fem!Reader

Genre: angst :’) (a lil bit of fluff thrown in here and there)

Warnings: mentions of blood, character death. 

WC: 7.8k. am i sorry? no.

Summary: Childhood friends doesn’t always equal lovers in the future. You wished that was the case, but ever since Keigo disappeared, you found it hard to believe in love again. 

(A/N): this was. i had to write this. it wasn’t up for debate. finishing this at 4am in the morning aldksjfhajshd. spent a grant total of 2 days brainstorming & writing this fic. not proofread at all. heavily inspired by the song 小幸运 by Hebe Tien. i strongly suggest you give it a try and listen to it as you read this :p (for all my chinese speakers out there...let’s see how you deal with this heartbreak :’) so yeah. i’m actually...really really proud of this fic. i tried a new format with this, and i think i kinda like it. also i left the ending up to interpretation if you don’t read the epilogue. enjoy! 

credit for this au goes to @wafflesandkruge​

here’s the link to the music :)

The one constant in your life.

The boy who’d always been there for you, through the dark days and the cold nights, holding your hand through it all.

The one who’d held you when you broke down.

The one who’d tucked you under his wings as the skies crackled with energy, rain pouring from the heavens, and told you that no matter where you went, he’d stay with you. He’d keep you nice and dry, snuggled close to his body as he shielded you from the storm.

The one constant in your life.

He’d left quietly in the night, not stopping by to say farewell.

In his place, he’d left a lonesome letter, tucked away beneath a boulder on your special hill.

“I’ll come back for you. Wait for me, okay?”

And from within that plain white envelope, a single red feather floated out, carried on the autumn winds, drifting aimlessly.

Almost as if it were lost.

And in that moment, you felt as if you’d lost a part of yourself, a little piece of your soul.

You weren’t sure you were ever going to get it back.

Years passed. You waited. There was no sign of him

Not in the skies, not on the land, and even though you’d sometimes see him in the reflection of the water, sitting next to you as you told him about your day, he wasn’t really there either.

I won’t give up on him.

I’ll stay strong.

He told me he’d come back for me.

Against the test of time, your resolve never withered. It only grew, strong as steel, taking over the crevices in your heart where he’d left his mark.

I’ll wait for you, Kei.

But please…come back to me.

“Hey, (Y/N)!” Your friend called out enthusiastically from her position on the couch. “Come look!”

“What?” You stepped out of the kitchen, only to be greeted by a familiar face, smirking on the TV screen.

“Look at him! He’s this new hero, and he’s only 18! (Y/N)! He’s our age! Isn’t he hot?” She pointed at his flickering image. “His hero name is Hawks!” Squealing, she turned to you. “Isn’t that so cool?”

You stood in shock, the glass of water that you had been holding slipped from your fingers and shattered onto the floor. Liquid pooled around your feet, soaking your slippers, but you made no move to step aside.

“Woah! (Y/N), are you okay?” She jumped off the couch, rushing towards you. “Hey, (Y/N)? He’s cute and all but…this is a little bit much, isn’t it?” She looked at you with concern, eyebrows drawing tighter when you didn’t respond.

“(Y/N) …what’s wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Shaking yourself from your daze, you averted your eyes. “Ahh, I’m sorry. Uh…I just, I never thought I’d see him again.”

“Wait, you know him?” Your friend looked at you, surprised. “(Y/N) …did he do something to you?” She asked softly. “If he did, I don’t care how cute he is, I’m gonna kick his ass to high heaven if need be. Someone like that shouldn’t be a hero.”

You shook your head, chuckling a little. “No…no, there’s no need to do that. It’s just…it’s been a long time, and I just didn’t expect to see him.”

“Ahh. Well, step out of that puddle! Come on, let’s grab you some paper towels.”

Hey!

It’s me, (Y/N). I…I saw you on TV today. You look…different. In a good way, I suppose. You’ve bulked up a bit.

You never used to smile like that though. Not like…like you were smiling for others. Seeing you smile for the camera, well…it made me sad.

But I’m happy that you’re ok. I think it would probably be hard for you to find me, since obviously I’m not on the news. So I’ll come find you instead, yeah? What do you say we catch up sometime?

I miss you. I’m in college now. I’m doing pretty good. You’re an overachiever, aren’t you? 18 years old and you already have your own agency.

Not that I’m complaining. Thanks for making it so easy for me to find you :)

So…let’s meet up sometime, when you have time? Maybe for some coffee? I know a quaint little place. It’s not too far away from your agency, three blocks to the right, turn left, and walk to the next intersection. It’s the corner shop. You can’t miss it.

I’ll wait for you there this Saturday, okay? I’ll do my work there. You can walk in whenever you have the time.

Your chicken, (Y/N)

Saturday came faster than you could prepare yourself. You checked your reflection repeatedly in the mirror, double-guessing your outfit decisions.

What if he doesn’t like it?

Is this too formal for a coffee date?

“Hey, (Y/N)!” Your friend barged into the bathroom. “I saw all the clothes on your bed! Are you going on a date?”

“Uh…just a meeting with an old friend. To catch up,” you explained.

She looked at you suspiciously. “Old friend…is it that guy on TV? Hawks?”

You grew flustered. “Err…yeah. If he got my letter.”

She looked you up and down, then dragged you into her closet. “Good thing I just went on a shopping spree last weekend then!” She pumped a fist excitedly in the air. “I’m giving you a makeover!”

Two hours later, you stood in front of the bathroom mirror once more. Your friend had put you through every single possible combination of outfits using both your closet and hers, and you had to agree that she had impeccable taste.

“Come on, you’re going to be late!” She shoved you out of the bathroom.

“I didn’t set a time!” You protested, laughing.

“Well, get your ass out of here! My boyfriend’s coming over!”

“So that’s the real reason you want me gone, hmm?” You teased her.

“Shush! Get out!”

Hawks was on patrol. You had been on his mind the entire week. Ever since your letter had reached his desk, he couldn’t stop thinking about you.

Thinking about you brought back happier times, and he wasn’t masochistic enough to give himself false hope.

No, it would be better for you to forget about him, and vice versa.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself. His body flew of its own accord, ignoring the sensibilities of his mind that screamed at it to stop.

Go back! The reasonable voice inside his head yelled.

Fly back!

His body refused to listen.

He found himself gently landing on a rooftop, right across the little café you told him to meet you at.

He even debated going inside. Just for a second. Just for a cup of coffee, to warm myself up in the chilly late-afternoon breeze, he told himself.

Then, he scoffed. Who was he kidding? If he went inside, he wouldn’t have the resolve to step back out before he saw you.

Shaking his head, he flew away as quickly as he could.

If he’d stayed a moment longer, he would’ve seen you walk down the street, humming a little tune to yourself.

Maybe then his resolve would’ve cracked.

Too bad he’ll never know.

Sitting alone at a table for two was an unpleasant feeling. Especially when you’re on your third drink, the waitress keeps eyeing you with pity, and you couldn’t concentrate on your work.

“Miss?” The waitress stopped by your table again. “Sorry to bother you, but we’re closing in 15 minutes.”

You checked the time on your laptop. Crap. It was already 5:15.

“Oh yeah, uhh, sorry to bother you!” You chuckle awkwardly. You quickly packed your books and laptop, dropped a $20 bill on the table, and hurried out the door. Walking home in silence, you tried your best not to feel too disappointed.

Maybe he just didn’t have time?

It’s ok. You’ll just ask him again, another time.

Another time.

You sent him countless letters. For the first year, at least. When he ignores all of them, you visit his agency in person.

As you walk through the glass doors, there’s a man sitting behind the reception desk.

“Hello, miss. How can I help you today?” He asks in the customary polite tone.

“I’m looking for Keigo. Hawks,” you answer, trying to hide your nervousness.

He looks at you suspiciously. “How do you know his first name?”

“We…we were childhood friends,” you tried to explain. “I…well, I haven’t seen him in a while.”

He took a closer look at you. “Can I ask for your name, miss?”

“(Y/N). (Y/N) (Y/L/N).”

He sighed. “I’m afraid that you’ll have to leave the premises, Miss (Y/L/N). You’re not allowed to be here.”

What?

He hadn’t kicked you out before you told him your name.

“Why-” you started, but he cut you off.

“Miss (Y/L/N). I’m afraid that I have to ask you to leave, and don’t come back. Should I call security to escort you out?”

Holding back tears, you clutched your purse close to your chest and hurried out the glass doors, wishing nothing more than to shatter them into pieces.

You didn’t send any more letters after that.

Years pass. Every year on your birthday, Keigo gave you a feather.

“So I’ll always be with you,” he joked.

His feathers are extra durable, but time can wear down even the strongest things.

The last feather you got from him was ten years ago.

It can barely be considered a feather at this point, and you keep it in a special glass case so it can’t get any more worn down.

Ten years.

You’re turning 25 tomorrow.

Ten years of waiting around for him turned into ten years of watching him date other women. Ten years of hiding your pain every time another picture of him kissing a new girl graced the covers of the tabloids.

The first time, you cried yourself to sleep.

It wasn’t the last time.

Again and again, he breaks your heart.

By the third year, you convinced yourself to stop looking at the tabloids and the gossip sites.

By the fifth year, you scold yourself. You vow to stop crying over a stupid childhood crush.

By the seventh, you told yourself that you needed to forget about him. Step back into the dating ring, make out with someone else, and remove his presence entirely from your mind.

That didn’t work out.

Ten years.

It killed you to finally harden your resolve, but you told yourself that you couldn’t spend your whole life waiting for someone who was never going to love you back.

You’re turning 25 tomorrow, and you’re going to go on a date.

He’s watching you. He always is.

It makes him feel like a creepy stalker, but he can’t help it.

He watches you as you step into the restaurant, decked out in formal wear that looked amazing on you.

Going on a date. With someone who wasn’t him.

He stays on the rooftop, watching you through a window as you ate and laughed.

He wishes that he was the one making you laugh, that he was the one helping you order food from the menu, that he was the one sharing a dessert with you.

He’s selfish like that. It never does him any good.

He’s scared, really. Scared of commitment, tarnished by his time spent in the work program.

He sees you as the one thing in life that they can’t take away from him. You have this innocence, this purity that you always carry around with you, because you’re a part of a time when his life wasn’t so complicated.

He doesn’t want to shatter that illusion.

He never reached out to you because he’s scared.

He’s scared that he’ll break you.

He stopped sending you feathers, heart splintering every time your birthday comes around, hoping you’ll eventually forget him.

You don’t.

It’s not that you didn’t try.

No one else really interested you.

That is, until Masaki came along. He was bright, happy, always upbeat. He could find the words to cheer you up, to make a bad day that much better. He was attentive, caring, sweet.

He was everything that most people would look for in a partner.

And slowly, you began to open up to him too.

You fell into his embrace easier. You got a little happier when he came over for dinner.

You felt just a little safer when you were wrapped in his arms, a luxury you never thought you’d have.

Two years later, during a picnic date, he proposed.

You always had a love for picnic dates. Maybe because your first date, with Keigo, was a messy picnic affair during the spring, on top of a little hill where wildflowers bloomed and birds pecked at your leftovers.

“Stop!” You giggled, whipped cream smeared all over your cheeks. “You’re going to get it on my clothes!”

Keigo laughed, then popped another strawberry in your mouth. “You can wash that off later, silly! Just have fun!”

“It’s not fun when my clothes are all sticky,” you whined. “You try it! It feels gross!”

He smirked. “Oh really?”

Taking a strawberry, he dipped it in the container of cream you had brought, then stuck it down his shirt.

“Ha! Take that!” He gloated.

You stared at him in shock. “Did you just–”

“Yes I did! And it’s not gross at all, see?” He plucked the strawberry back out and shoved it in his mouth.

“Eww! Kei, that’s disgusting!”

“No it’s not, it still tastes like a strawberry! Mphm!” He chewed, licking his fingers.

He regretted that decision later, when bees swarmed the front of his shirt.

“Eek!” He shrieked, hopping backwards.

“Kei, take off your shirt!”

“It’s so sticky!” He yelped, trying to peel the front of his shirt away from his chest.

“I told you!”

“Hey, now is NOT the time for the ‘I told you so’ speech, okay?” He finally ripped his shirt off.

You couldn’t help it. You cackled.

“What now?” He looked at the bees feasting on his ruined tee.

“I told you so,” you teased him.

Taking one look at the devious glint in his eyes, you scooped up the picnic supplies and raced down the hill.

He followed, wings beating, taking off into the air. He reached you within seconds, tacking you to the ground.

“Hey, that’s not fair!” You struggled against him. “You know you’re fast when you fly!”

He looked at you mischievously. “And what about it?”

“You can’t race me like that when I’m on foot!”

“Who said we were racing?” His eyes locked on your lips. “I was just trying to catch up to you.”

You blushed, suddenly realizing how close his face was to yours.

“Kei–” you started.

“Can I kiss you?” He interrupted you, then quickly blushed. “I mean, only if you want to-”

You wrapped your hands in his hair, interrupting him with a kiss.

He tasted like the remnants of strawberries and cream, sweet honey on a beautiful spring day.

And it was a beautiful spring day.

Perhaps the last beautiful spring day you’d ever have, for the next spring, he was gone.

Beautiful spring days were few and far between. You’d learned that the hard way.

But today…you were inclined to think that it might be another one of those days.

Your boyfriend of two years had proposed on a beautiful spring day reminiscent of one long ago.

You supposed that this marked a series of firsts.

First date. First kiss. And now…a proposal.

You accept his proposal, tears in your eyes. He thinks that they’re tears of happiness, and in part, they are.

You don’t tell him that this was the one thing that you never thought you’d do. You feel like you’re betraying Keigo.

You have to remind yourself that he betrayed you first.

Half a year later, you have a wedding. It’s a small wedding, with only your families and close friends. You considered reaching out to Hawks’s hero agency, but decided to spare yourself the pain.

He’d moved on. So would you.

Unbeknownst to you, when the ceremony rolled around, Keigo was standing on a nearby rooftop, the wind blowing away his tears.

He couldn’t believe how beautiful you were.

He knew that he couldn’t have you, but didn’t you know that he was a sucker for pain? Watching you repeat the vows was like getting punched full-force in the gut, but the wind never returned to his lungs.

He felt empty inside. Something essential was missing, and he knew what it was, but he also knew that he couldn’t ever have it. Not if he wanted you to stay alive.

As the ceremony finished, he flew away into the sunset, and you caught a glimpse of his crimson wings, purely on accident. You shook your head in disbelief.

“Now I’m hallucinating too,” you muttered to yourself.

But no matter how hard you tried to convince yourself you imagined the whole thing, that final view made it so much harder for you to forget him.

Another year passed, and the seasons changed as they did. Spring flowing into summer, summer fading into autumn, autumn slowly drifting into winter.

Gradually, your new life engulfed you, the comfort of it all slowly draining away your doubts. Your husband was a good man. A faithful man. A caring man.

He held doors open for you and snuggled you on the couch. He played with your hair and made you breakfast in bed. He made it difficult for you not to love him.

You weren’t entirely sure you wanted to resist, anyways.

One night, you woke up in your shared bed, screaming in pain. Your lower back burned, almost as if you were getting branded.

Your husband woke up to the commotion. The bedsheets were stained with blood. Fresh, crimson, blood, all of it coming from you.

Whimpering, you laid limp as Masaki set you on your belly, trying to figure out the source of the injury. Taking a clean paper towel, he gingerly wiped the blood off of your raw skin, showing a tattoo emblazoned in gold ink.

Written in elegant cursive were three simple words.

Three words, but they hurt to look at.

(Y/N) …I’m sorry.

Your husband stared in shock. This didn’t happen. This couldn’t happen, could it? The only way someone got a tattoo like this was if their soulmate died, and, well…he was still very much alive.

He wasn’t your soulmate.

In this world, quirks weren’t the only strange thing.

Soulmates existed. But most never found out until it was too late.

When your soulmate died, their last words would be tattooed permanently on their other half’s skin in a bloody and painful process.

Their last moments would flash before the other’s eyes.

Nothing you could do. Nothing you could be sure of, until it was too late.

Fires blazed everywhere.

Building after building, it ate away at the crumbling city, tearing down everything in its path.

“Help!” A voice choked out, raspy from smoke intake. “There’s a beam—ugh—on my leg. I can’t get it off!”

A winged figure crouched on a burning rooftop, out of breath and utterly exhausted.

Backup wasn’t coming.

The whole city was burning.

Standing shakily, he sent the last of his feathers off to help the trapped woman.

“That’s it for me then, I suppose,” his smile wobbled slightly. “My work here is done.”

He couldn’t risk jumping off of the roof. His wings were stubs on his back, and only a single feather remained.

“That’s not enough for me to fly off, now is it?” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Oh, if only you could see me right now, (Y/N). You’d be proud. Saved more than 500 people today, you know that?” He sighed, sitting down on the roof. “Lost count somewhere around there. You were always proud of me, weren’t you? The only one that believed in me when I told myself I couldn’t fly.

You’re the one that taught me to fly, remember, chicken? Those were the good times.

Look at me now. Talking to myself. Don’t even have the strength to fly down anymore.” He coughed into his hand, blood staining his palm. He grasped tightly onto a keychain around his neck, smearing the metal with crimson.

“I never did thank you. Guess it’s too late now.” He stared up at the sky, hues of orange and gold dancing across the horizon.

“Never did treat you right.” He plucked his last feather off of his back, twirling it around in his fingers.

“You were always too good for me. Too good for anyone, really.” He laid down on the roof, back no longer sensitive to the burning heat.

“I lost the right to love you a long time ago. I’ve got no business crying over you.” He chuckled bitterly. “But is that going to stop me?”

Letting go of the keychain and his feather, his hands went limp.

“(Y/N),” he sighed, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

The roof collapsed, the hungry flames licking at the bottom finally swallowing him whole. His comms fell out of his ear, the plastic melting in the heat.

A single red feather floated down to the ground, charred and blackened.

The only remains of his body they’ll ever find.

You were sobbing uncontrollably. Keigo.

He was your soulmate.

The boy you loved.

The one who’d abandoned you.

The one who you tried to forget.

He was your soulmate.

Your soulmate, who was dead.

“Turn…turn on the TV,” you whispered weakly. “Turn it on. I need to see.”

Masaki reached for the remote, flipping it on to the news channel.

“Earlier tonight, a bomb was detonated in Nagoya prefecture. Top heroes were on the scene, including Endeavor and Hawks, but their quirks are ill-suited to fight the conflagration. Endeavor has resorted to using brute strength to rescue people from the rubble, while Hawks hasn’t been seen since the beginning of the night. We are now reporting his status as MIA, and will continue to look for the Winged Hero, along with updating our reports on the status of missing civilians–”

You shut the TV off. You’d heard all you needed to.

Throwing on a mishmash of clothing, you sprinted out the door. Hailing a taxi, you hopped in before it had even screeched to a full stop.

“Hawks Hero Agency.” You told the driver, not bothering to mince your words. You hadn’t bothered to wipe all the blood off of your back either, so it was gradually staining your coat a deep crimson, a mocking parody of the way that Keigo’s feathers used to lay against his back.

His feathers that were burnt, charred, turned to ashes, no longer able to bring you the comfort they once had when they wrapped you in a warm embrace.

The driver looked concerned. “Miss, do you know what happened today? Hawks isn’t–”

“Yes, I know. Drive.”

You pressed your forehead against the window, breath steaming up the glass. It reminded you of one winter, when the two of you had been building snowmen, and your mother called you in for dinner.

“Kei, I have to go,” you tugged at his hand.

“Aww, (Y/N),” he kicked at an unfortunate stone with the scuffed toe of his boot. “Why can’t you stay a little longer? We haven’t finished his head yet.” He pouted.

“I can’t, Kei,” you tried to make him release his iron grip on your hand. “Mama’s gonna get mad.”

“Then I’ll make you stay!” He boldly declared, wrapping his little arms around your frame, tackling you to the snow-covered ground.

The two of you giggled, engaged in a tickle war, your mom’s voice fading into the distance.

“(Y/N) (Y/L/N)!” Your mom yelled, marching over to where the two of you lay, tangled in a heap. “Do you want to get a cold?”

“No, Mama,” you said, slowly getting up and dusting the snow off of your parka. “I’m coming.” You turned around and poked your tongue out at your friend, letting your mom drag you back into your house.

Keigo sat in the snow for a while longer, not exactly excited to go back to his house.

Suddenly, an idea popped into his head.

He beat his little wings as fast as he could, half flying, half stumbling to your kitchen window.

Sneaking a peek inside, he saw you staring questioningly back at him. Not bothering to hide his mischievous grin, he puffed out a breath, steaming the window, took his little glove off, and started writing.

“D O  Y O U  W A N T  T O  F L Y  W I T H  M E ?” He painstakingly wrote out.

You shook your head, and his grin quickly dropped from his face. Looking down, he almost missed the words you mouthed out.

“I can’t read it!” You tried your best to sign. “It’s backwards!”

“Oh!” He tried his best to write the mirror image of what he had just written, making sure that you could read it from your point of view this time. You read his little message, a grin taking over your face.

“Y E S!” You mouthed. “YES, YES, YES!”

Quickly scarfing down your dinner, you waved a hasty goodbye to your mom, racing out the back door, only to get tackled into the snow.

“Come on, let’s go!” He took ahold of your hand. “Race you!”

“You can’t race me if you’re holding my hand!” You shrieked in delight. “Stop it!”

He paused, turning around. “Hmm. Well, maybe I don’t want to race you then,” he looked at you with a small smile on his face. “I wanna try something new!”

“Oh?” You asked, seeing the way his eyes lit up with delight. “What is it?”

“I wanna fly! With you!”

Giggling, he turned you around so that your back was facing him. He circled his arms below your armpits.

“Hang on!” He flapped his wings as fast as he could, kicking up a storm of snow around you. To his surprise, he actually managed to lift the two of you off the ground for around 3 feet or so. He wasn’t expecting it to work on his first try, but the two of you really were flying!

Sighing, you turned away from the window.

Happier times, you chuckled mirthlessly.

Isn’t it sad that I’m only remembering them now?

The car screeched to a stop at the front door to the Hawks Hero Agency.

You stepped into the lobby, the fluorescent lights blinding.

It’s the middle of the night, but they don’t seem to mind, you thought. Everyone was bustling around the place like it was normal.

The receptionist had changed since you’d last been here.

She spotted you and hurried over, most likely because of the blood staining your clothes.

“Miss, are you hurt?” She gave you a once-over. “Can I help you?”

You stared at her in shock for a moment. What were you here for again?

“Oh…uh,” you wrung your hands nervously. “I’m here for Hawks.”

Her expression of concern melted away into one of annoyance. “Another fangirl. This one appears to be married too,” she scoffed at the band adorning your left ring finger. “People these days…” she muttered underneath her breath, already hurrying back to her desk, where the phone rang incessantly.

“No. I’m not a fangirl.” You lifted your head. You might be in pain, but damned if you were going to let a stranger strip you of the remaining shreds of your dignity.

“I’m his soulmate.”

The way you said that phrase with such conviction made the lady pause.

“Soulmate?” She questioned. Girls had tried this trick on her before, but…when asked to prove themselves, they merely responded with “oh, it’s just a feeling,” or “I just know it.”

Never once had anyone said this phrase with such confidence.

“Yes.” You shut your eyes, defiantly holding back tears. “You have comms, right? What did he say before the comms died?”

The lady stared back at you, a pang of sorrow shooting its way into her heart. You weren’t joking around, were you?

“I…yes, yes we do. What’s your name, miss?”

You sucked in a deep breath. “(Y/N). (Y/N) (Y/L/N).”

She stared at you for another moment, then quietly pulled out her comms.

“He said…” she choked a little. “He said, ‘(Y/N) …I’m sorry.’ We weren’t sure who he was talking about. We assumed it was a civilian he wasn’t able to save,” she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. “Oh God…”

Quietly, she choked out another question. “Was it…was he talking about…you?”

You didn’t want to reply. You’d heard enough.

The lady didn’t try to stop you as you ran to the elevator, your fingertip pressing the “up” button so hard it bruised.

Quickly looking at the directory, you found his office.

“420.” You choked out a pained laugh. “He always did like messing around with people.”

Collapsing against the corner of the elevator, you wrapped your arms around your knees and lowered your head. You felt so goddamn tired.

Why did it have to be you?

Why couldn’t he break someone else’s heart?

Someone who was stronger?

Someone who could take this in stride and move on?

Why did the universe choose you?

The elevator bell dinged, rousing you from your thoughts. You stood up slowly, a trail of blood staining the place where you once sat.

Crimson, like the trail of feathers he’d (perhaps intentionally) shed during that game of hide and seek.

You buried your face into your hands.

Goddamnit, Keigo! Why does everything have to remind me of you?

You made your way into his office, most likely the messiest of all the top pro-hero offices. Paperwork was scattered everywhere, jackets strewn across the floor. You even saw a shoelace string laying on the carpet next to his desk.

It’s almost as if he’d always expected to come back.

Stepping cautiously over the objects that littered the ground, you came face-to-face with a cabinet next to his desk.

Snowglobes. So many snowglobes.

Snowglobes occupied every shelf of the cabinet, and the glass doors made it easy to examine the contents.

You squinted closely at them. They were all…different angles of the same scene, you realized.

The snow park above your houses.

He’d had snowglobes made.

They immortalized the place where the two of you played all day in the snow.

The place where he first learned how to fly, gliding off the hills like a paraglider.

The place where he’d picked you up and learned how to fly with another person’s life in his hands, hugging you close to his chest, reveling in your warmth.

In the spring, it was the place where he took you on your first picnic date.

The place where the two of you shared your first kiss.

The place where he left you his goodbye note, tucked away under the grounding weight of a boulder you used to lay on, basking in the sun’s warmth.

He’d had 12 snowglobes made. Your lucky number.

12 different angles that showcased the same scenery.

Suddenly, your legs wouldn’t carry your weight anymore. You leaned back into his chair, still smelling faintly of his scent.

How can someone’s scent not change over 13 years?

You closed your eyes, and quickly opened them again when you saw a pile of letters on the corner of the desk.

You weren’t sure why they caught your eye. They weren’t anything special, really. Plain white envelopes addressed in plain black print.

You took a closer look.

That was your name on the envelopes.

You leaned closer, quickly shuffling through them all.

Each and every single one of them was addressed to you.

Each and every single one of them was dated a year apart.

Each and every single one of them was marked for your various addresses over the years, his handwriting steadily improving.

You couldn’t resist your curiosity. Taking a paper cutter, you tore through the seal of the earliest envelope.

A single red feather, beautifully preserved, floated out.

You stared in shock. He…he didn’t forget.

He never forgot.

He just chose not to send it.

Hurriedly opening the remaining envelopes, you acquired more feathers, each fresher than the last.

By the end, you had a pile of 13 crimson feathers, right next to 13 shredded envelopes.

You looked around, confused. Why hadn’t he left a note? Any note?

Did he…did he never write letters?

You knew that you had sent him letters.

Maybe they did throw them out as spam.

Your curiosity piqued, you pulled open drawer after drawer, but none of them held anything of personal importance.

Finally, you came upon the bottom right drawer.

It was locked, you realized.

You carefully place the feathers back in their respective envelopes. Sealing them up once again, you carry them in a stack, making your way downstairs.

The agency workers saw you with the letters in your arms, not sure if they should stop you or not. When you looked to the receptionist and murmured a quiet “thank you”, they stood their ground. If she was okay with you walking away like this, then there shouldn’t be a reason that they wouldn’t be.

The taxi driver who took you here was still waiting outside. Seeing you arrive, he stomped out his cigarette butt and opened the backseat door for you.

“Rough night, miss?” He looked at your back, pity obvious in his expression. “Do you want me to take you to a hospital with that?”

You shook your head. “They can’t fix that. Do you remember the way we came?”

“Aye, yes I do,” he stepped into his own seat. “I’ll take you there right quick, miss. Don’t you worry.”

As you rode back home in silence, you couldn’t stop thinking about the cabinet in Keigo’s office.

The feathers, folded away safely in the envelopes you were holding.

If he never forgot, why did he never reach out?

The car door slamming shook you from your daze. “Miss, you’re back home.”

You stared at the man, realizing that you didn’t have your wallet on you.

“Do you mind waiting a second? I’ll go get my wallet now–”

He shook his head. “I know where that blood came from. See here?” He rolled up his sleeve.

“Got mine when I was 22,” a melancholy smile framed his face. “Rare, right? I never did find out who she was.

But the hospital staff helped me that day. Looked for deaths around my age, and then when I tried to pay ‘em, they refused. Said ‘twas only the right thing to do. Now I finally get to repay the favor. Don’t you go tryna pay me now. Won’t ‘ccept it.”

He leaned back against the hood of his car. When you opened your mouth to object, he merely saluted you, hopped back into the driver’s seat, and drove off into the night.

You turned to your house. The lights were still on inside, meaning your husband was still up. He probably couldn’t sleep, not after what had just happened. You couldn’t blame him.

Stepping inside, you heard muffled sobs coming from the kitchen.

“Masaki?” You leaned on the doorframe. He looked up at your voice.

“(Y/N)?” He rose from the table. “You’re…you’re okay,” he wrapped you in a hug.

You cleared your throat. “…yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” you hugged him back.

I’m okay, you tried to convince yourself.

“Where did you go?” He looked at you curiously. Finally seeing the envelopes in your arms, he paused.

“Babe?” He asked softly. “Did you…did you know him?”

You buried your face into his chest. “Yeah…yeah, I did.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked softly.

“Not really…not now…” you replied.

He patted your back lightly. “That’s ok. I understand.”

The rest of the night went by in a blur. The letters were scattered on your nightstand, your husband helping you into the shower. He’s changed the bloody sheets already, but the stains on the mattress were stubborn and refused to come out.

Crimson stains, in the shape of wings.

Days later, some people from the agency stopped by your house.

“Is there a (Y/N) (Y/L/N) at this address?” The receptionist from your earlier encounter knocked on the door.

“Uh, hi. Yeah, that’s me,” you answered, not bothering to change out of your bathrobe. Your complexion had grown waxen, face shallow. Your hair formed an unkempt nest, spiraling around your face.

She gave you a smile, pity etched in her face. It disgusted you, really.

All anyone ever gave you nowadays was pity. Pity cards from your coworkers, although you weren’t sure how the information leaked out. Pitiful glances from your husband, who insisted on doing all the chores around the house.

Pity, pity, pity.

“What is it?” You asked her.

“We have some…documents for you.” She waved over two guys, each lugging a large crate of…paper?

“Wait…all that? For me?” You were confused. There was no way that that bottom drawer, even if all it contained were letters, had that much paper in it.

“Yes, (Y/L/N)-san. It’s all for you.” The men dropped off their crates at your door.

“What’s going on?”

“These were stored in the records house. Hawks filed them. They were all addressed to you, so we felt that this was the proper treatment.”

“We’ll leave you to go through these in your own time.” She started down the steps. Then, as if remembering something suddenly, she paused.

“You know…he was a good man,” she smiled gently. “We all knew he had a secret someone. We just didn’t know who they were. I’m glad he found you. Hero work is dangerous, especially for top heroes like him.

I hope that you find joy in those letters.” She turned back and finished her journey down the steps.

You turned around and looked at the crates.

Found me?

You smiled bitterly, a brittle coldness taking over your heart.

He never really did find me, did he?

Sighing, you sorted through the crates, looking for the ones that were dated the earliest. You carried the oldest set of letters into the bedroom and tore open the first envelope.

Hey, (Y/N). It’s me, Kei.

I hope you haven’t forgotten about me. I mean, I’m not an easy person to forget, I suppose, but it has been a while. Three years, to be exact.

Three years can do a lot to a person.

I should know.

How are you doing? I hope you managed to keep Timothy alive. You were always prone to overwatering him.

I’m not sure how long cacti live, but…if you nurture something, anything can happen, right?

I’m a hero now. I’m sure you know. My debut was broadcasted all over national television. They just can’t resist making themselves look good, can they?

At least now I’m allowed to write. I hope you understand why I haven’t written to you in so long.

I didn’t forget about you. How could I? Even though we were only 15, how could I forget someone like you?

I missed you. I don’t think you understand how much. It felt so empty, living without you by my side. Like…like I wasn’t ever warm enough, even bundled in the tightest blankets. I was always missing you.

Sounds like a curse, eh?

But don’t worry. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I just wanted you to know that.

Yours, Kei.

Ripping open letter after letter, you realized that you held his entire life story in your hands.

Hey chicken. It’s Kei again.

Realized I’ve been treating these letters as a kind of diary. I guess it’s…therapeutic? Even though I know I’ll never send these. I don’t want to put you in danger, you know?

Do you remember when we were kids?

We had all the time in the world to do whatever we wanted.

I miss that time.

Not as much as I miss you though.

I check in on you every so often, but I make sure you never see.

False hope is a dangerous thing. It shatters your soul into pieces, and when you try and piece them back together, it cuts your heart so badly you wish you’d never started.

But, you see, you’re like a drug for me.

I can’t seem to stop myself. No matter how bad it hurts, I…I still come back.

You wouldn’t know, of course.

I suppose there’s a reason it hurts when you stare into the sun.

I’m already broken, yeah? I don’t want you to break with me.

The thing is, I know you’d want to. I know we promised we’d always come back for each other. We promised we’d always be here for each other.

But some promises were meant to be broken.

You can’t be here for me, birdie. You’ll get hurt.

That would hurt me more than anything else, (Y/N).

So for my own safety, and yours…

This is the last time I’ll write to you.

I have to move on, or else those pieces of my soul?

They’re already in splinters, but if I keep going like this, they’ll be nothing more than powder, and I don’t think I could go on like that, yeah?

I love you, forever and always.

Kei.

Ha. Guess what.

What I said in the last letter?

A fucking lie.

I physically. Can’t stop.

The thought of not writing to you breaks me more than the thought of never being with you, and that’s a milestone I never thought I’d be able to pass.

So here I am again.

You’ve already heard my entire life story.

I wish I could be there to hear yours.

I saw you tonight, standing on your balcony. You know, the stars were so bright tonight. Reminded me of your eyes the first time I flew with you around the whole field, yeah?

Sparkling. You never stop sparkling, do you?

You know…do you ever wonder who your soulmate is?

I know that the world is cruel. I know that we don’t know exactly who our soulmates are until one of us dies.

But…do you ever think about it?

Who’s out there, just waiting for you?

Because I do.

And sometimes, when I’m at rock bottom, I’ll imagine that we’re soulmates.

I’ll create scenarios in my head. We’d be happily married. I’d spoon-feed you ice cream.

We’d play tickle wars with my feathers, have pillow fights, binge TV shows.

We’d watch horror movies, and you’d hide your face in my chest the whole time.

But…those scenarios always make me feel worse after I wake up. Because they’re not real.

And I…I so desperately want them to be real.

But you can’t always get what you wish for, yeah?

Going on a big mission soon. Undercover. Cool, right?

You’d be proud of me, I think, if you saw me.

I have to go now. But I’ll come back safe for you, yeah?

I know you won’t wait for me. I want you to wait for me, but…I know it’s not in your best interests. Probably not in mine either.

Sometimes I try and convince myself that it’s okay to be selfish. I want what I want, and you only live once, right?

But then I realize that you’re the one I’d be putting in danger.

And that’s when I realize you can’t ever stay with me.

It’s okay. I’ll watch from afar.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop loving you.

Yours,

Kei.

You put the letter down and rummaged through the second crate, desperately trying to find the last letter that he wrote.

Hey birdie. Long time no see. Ha.

13 years and I still can’t forget about you. Doesn’t seem normal, does it?

I’m convinced that we’re soulmates, but then again, I may have convinced myself. You know…I used to hate the idea of soulmates. Sharing your life with another person, seen as incomplete without them?

Sharing my soul?

Bunch of crap, right? I like making my own decisions. Wasn’t ever much of a rule-stickler. But…you know…I’m starting to warm up to that idea.

But only with you.

And that’s why I’m convinced that we are, in fact, soulmates.

You don’t know how my heart breaks every time I see you. Manual is a good guy. I know he’s treating you well.

That’s the only reason I’m letting you stay married to him, really. If it was anyone else, I would’ve busted their ass.

But…you deserve someone like him. Someone who can give you their all.

Someone who, if you date them…they won’t lead you into danger.

Soulmates are a finicky concept, yeah?

So…I guess we’ll never know ‘till one of us dies.

Yours,

Kei.

Epilogue

Rainy winter days were the saddest days of the year.

Especially today.

Strolling through the park, you held a black umbrella in one hand and clutched a glass case tightly in the other.

You stopped in front of a marble headstone.

“Hey there,” your voice cracked.

“Miss me?”

A whistling wind, scattering powdered snow and frozen rain across the landscape, was your only answer.

“Kei, I–” You collapsed onto your knees, uncaring of whether or not the cold would seep in. It couldn’t get colder than your soul now, anyways.

“I…I didn’t go to your funeral.” Tears rolled down your cheeks, leaving a silvery sheen in their wake. “There were too many people and I…I couldn’t handle it.”

“But…Kei…” You choked out an ugly sob. “Why didn’t you send me the fucking letters?”

“I don’t care how dangerous your work was. You can’t get anywhere without taking risks in life, Kei!” You screamed at the marble façade, willing it to crumble.

“You can’t–”

“You can’t make my decisions for me!”

“I should be the one who gets to choose who I love!”

Your screams attracted the attention of several bystanders, who quickly averted their eyes and walked away when they saw your distraught state.

“You shouldn’t have tried to choose for me!”

“And now–”

“You’re dead, Kei! What am I supposed to do now?” Your tears pooled on the frozen ground, marking little dents in the snow.

You slammed your fists into the ground, the glass case in your hand cracking.

Another ugly sob made its way out.

“Kei–” you whimpered.

The glass shattered, splintering into thousands of tiny pieces, each fragment glittering like diamonds.

Slivers found their way into your palm.

Crimson blood, the color of the worn-out feather freed from its enclosure, splattered the snow-white ground.

“Kei,” you whispered, carefully placing the feather on top of the chiseled marble.

“Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy.”

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