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no-droids · 4 years ago

Text

Ask Me Again Tomorrow

gif credit @pedros-pascal

Part Sixteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 16.3K

Warnings: SMUTTTTT, following/stalking, some fluffy moments but mostly just a lil action and interaction, I don’t think there’s any other warning besides language and the smut (comm sex WITH A TWIST YALLLLL) but if you happen to find something else that warrants a tag, please let me know and I will do so accordingly!

A/N: The response to this story has grown beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined and I genuinely thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the privilege of writing for you. Hope this one ends up being okay and I’ll get to work on the next chapter soon!

***

Headstart—12:17pm:

The sky is so pretty. There isn’t much to look at on the surface—rolling hills and plains, grassy but with dry bare spots breaking up the green stretches, but the sky. It’s an oil painting above you, pastel swishes of yellows and pinks and purples with an enormous ringed planet taking up half the horizon and another sizable moon hanging high.

You should probably be running. Like, for real sprinting, but you can’t push yourself to go faster than a brisk walk. It’s so… free out here, more hills springing up every time you get to the top of the next, warm air filling your lungs. Even though you know realistically that the beginning will likely be the hardest—where you need to focus most on running and putting distance between you instead of hiding—truth be told, you’re not foreseeing making it more than a full day. You’re going to try, obviously, but in the grand scheme, you wouldn’t be surprised in the least if he finds you tomorrow. So, instead of wasting all your energy going as fast as you physically can right out of the gate, you just decide to stroll and think for a little bit.

You know what your goal is. Obviously, to last as long as you can, but more specifically… well, if Din is going to chase after you, then he’s going to try to think like you. Anticipate your movements, if he can’t already see the tracks you leave plain as day. Very soon, he’ll be walking this same exact pathing, following the footprints you’re leaving behind, but if you’re ever able to shake him or throw him off course, he doesn’t have a tracking fob. He doesn’t have any mechanical device that points him in your direction—if you can lose him with the footprints, then he’ll have to rely solely on predicting you. Which means you need to think… exactly the opposite of yourself if you want to outsmart him.

That’s harder than it sounds though, because… is he going to predict you predicting him? At what point does it stop? You somehow have trouble seeing this as an advantage the way he said it would be—you almost wish you had someone else chasing you, someone you didn’t know and someone who didn’t know you if only so this paradox could end before it begins.

You’re walking for about ten minutes before spotting a dirt road in the distance. There’s a person following it in the direction of the sun—you don’t know this planet’s magnetic field but you do know it’s after noon and the sun would set on Arvala-7 in the west, so that’s what you’ll call it for now. You call out to them as soon as you’re in range, and the stranger turns to you.

“Excuse me!” It’s a woman, you see it as you get closer. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where this road leads?”

She removes a sheer yellow shawl covering her dark hair and gives you a friendly smile. “Hello,” the lady greets, before spinning around and pointing back the way she came. “Osiruu is a few hours that way. There’s not much there, but it will take you to G’ila, a transport hub with many opportunities for drifters, or Nariss, the capital. I’m on my way to Shabeth,” she points in the other direction. “It’s far—a day’s walk, but it’s a holy place and offers quite the view. I would be glad for the company, but I understand its lack of practical appeal.”

So this place is safe enough to be inviting strangers along on your travels, noted. You’re going to have to make the decision right now, then. Which path should you take?

Something deep inside you tells you that you want to see this holy place, and just from a few sentences, you already like this woman and feel safe with her. But then all of a sudden, you remember something.

Last known locations tell you a lot about a quarry, Din’s voice drifts back to you, sounding soft and distant from the dark forests of Naboo. Smart ones go to populated planets, planets like Coruscant, planets that make it nearly impossible to find people. Brave ones go to dangerous planets, suicidal ones try their luck in the Unknown Regions, idiots continue to go about their business on their homeworld without caring. But planets like this—like Naboo… those are the pacifists. The ones that don’t ever put up a fight.

You suppose you should decide what kind of quarry you want to be. Friendly company and a view is something you normally crave—it’s something your soul speaks to after going without it for so long during your previous life. You never pictured yourself as the fighting type. When Din first asked you, you told him you wouldn’t run from him if he was chasing you, and choosing to accompany this kind stranger to her destination is essentially just that. Sacrificing a chase for a pretty view.

“Does Shabeth have a sizable population?” You ask her, and she shakes her head.

“It’s the sight of an annual pilgrimage that happens in a few months, but it’s beautiful there and I like to go whenever I can,” she tells you with a soft smile. “But there’s nothing for miles outside it, I’m afraid.”

Your footprints will lead directly there. He’ll find you easily.

“It sounds very nice, but I need to find somewhere with a lot of people,” you give her an apologetic smile. Truly, you think she would’ve made for a nice friend. “Thank you for your help, though, and good luck with your journey! I hope we meet again.”

“Do you need any food or supplies?” She asks you, and you stop short of passing her by. “I don’t have much with me, but know what it’s like to be a newcomer to Sanctuary II. I’d be glad to help.”

Good Maker, is this how everybody is here or did you just hit the jackpot with this lady? She seems like… you, almost. Her voice is gentle, she looks like she’d give nice hugs. You’re about to politely turn her down, but then you realize the brilliant opportunity that’s presented itself in her image.

“Actually, this might sound like a really strange question, but…” you tell her, before looking down at her feet. “Wanna trade shoes with me?”

***

Headstart—6:12pm:

You don’t think it’ll work, but as you walk into a small settlement a few hours later in a unfamiliar and worn pair of sandals, you decide that you’ll need to do this as often as possible. You can’t come up with anything else that’ll throw him off your physical trail besides constantly switching shoes—is that bad? Are you just an idiot with no hope? You’ve had—you check your watch—like, five hours to think of a game plan, and all you’ve come up with is shoes? You’re screwed.

At least there’s food here. Plenty. There’s vendors stationed along the street, multiple people passing by and going about their business. Osiruu, that nice woman said—not much here, but you think she was wrong. There’s children giggling and jumping rope on the corner, a shopkeeper sweeping her storefront, a graying man with an empty cup plucking an unfamiliar melody on an unfamiliar instrument—and while your tummy growls and you know you should quickly buy supplies and be on your way, you still stop for just a few minutes to listen.

It’s a lovely tune. You drop a few credits in his cup after he finishes and find yourself humming it as you look at the plethora of goods being offered by the vendors. Water, food—you buy enough of everything to sustain you for at least a couple days, not wanting to go hungry but also feeling realistic over optimistic. The cuisine is foreign and you just point to things that look appetizing since you’re not sure about the name or pronunciation, but after paying and taking a bite into a rather large piece of purple fruit, your eyes nearly cross at how sweet and tasty it is. Holy Maker, that might just be the best thing you’ve ever tasted. You ask for two more after you finish the first, tucking one in your backpack next to your blaster and munching on the other as you keep browsing.

Suddenly you see shoes—yes. Fucking shoes, your salvation. You take a good look at all your options, of which, there aren’t many. Generic men's, women's, and children's, all in the same color and design. It’s good in a way—you see most people walking around in the same type of clothing here and you pray there’s not a way for him to track your gait or the whole thing is a bust, but truthfully, what you’re most worried about is the fact that you’ll create a brand new set of footprints wherever your old ones disappear. Unless you trade with someone else, you won’t ever have a back pathing, you know that Din will probably be able to easily spot it.

“Three pairs of these, please,” you point to the correct shoes and tell him your size, but then—“Oh wait, actually, can I actually have one of them that’s the next size up? And another that’s the same but in men's?”

The man behind the counter gives you an odd look but acquiesces, measuring the size of your preferred pair to multiple men’s shoes to find one that looks roughly the same—you doubt he’s ever had a request like this, but you’re also a generous tipper. His smile is grateful when you tell him to keep the change and then you’re stuffing the new shoes into your backpack and moving onward.

Would there be some kind of map here, you wonder? One that shows distance so you won’t waste time trying to reach a place you won’t be able to walk to? That lady said a transport hub and the capital are through this settlement, but she didn’t provide much information beyond that. You don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere when he finally catches up to you, you’ll need some place to hide.

When you stop to ask an elderly gentleman as he passes by, he freely provides you a basic gist. There’s a large forest beyond Osiruu—after it will be a road that passes through a few notable places, with a town called Sijua to the west that leads north to G’ila, and Devain to the east that leads northeast to Nariss. Both are within walking distance, though it may take a couple days to reach your destination.

Alright then. Through the forest, you suppose. You probably should’ve asked which way is east, but he’s already leaving and you don’t have the nerve to ask him to stop again. You have a finger point, that’s all you need. Making sure to use one of the small restrooms near the square before heading out, you eventually decide to make your way towards the direction he said this forest would be.

***

Headstart—6:58pm:

A bus.

You’re not going to take it, of course, but it’s the perfect solution to the problem you’ve been mulling over. It’s at the very edge of the small settlement, and you quickly speed up into a half-jog as soon as you hear its engine running.

“Last call for the seven o’clock!” A large man stationed near the doors yells as you approach. “Last bus to G’ila until tomorrow!”

The sun is setting and you have to extend your hand out in front of you to not be blinded by it. “Hello,” you give him a smile, before grabbing one of the handles on the side and stepping up onto the metal platform.

“Ah!” The man quickly stops you, moving to stand in front of the open doors. He’s as wide as he is tall, big enough that he blocks the entire exit. “That’ll be ten credits, miss.”

“Oh,” you say, patting your empty pockets and pulling your eyebrows inwards, trying not to move too much in case the sizable amount of credits you have stashed in your backpack happen to rattle. “Oh, no. I think I lost my wallet.”

He sighs. “Off the bus then please, miss. Come back tomorrow if you find it.”

You nod, leaning your forearm against the paneling and beginning to take your shoes off. “Will it be parked in the same place exactly?”

The driver looks curiously at you, clearly confused at both the strange question and your strange actions. “I’m sorry? Please—off the bus.”

“One second,” you tell him, now barefoot on the platform and digging into your backpack for the slightly larger sized shoes you bought earlier. The sound of credits clink against your blaster, but you hope he takes your lead in purposefully ignoring them. “Does the bus to G’ila park in this spot every single day?”

“Yes,” the man tells you impatiently, eyeing the way you’re stepping into the new pair with a subtle look of distaste. Everyone is polite here, it seems. “It will arrive back at seven am sharp with passengers from G’ila, in the same exact place. Please get off the bus.”

“Thank you, sir,” you tell him with a smile, watching him step to the side to allow you to drop down into the dirt again and continue on your way.

Brilliant, if you do say so your fucking self. Eliminate the need for a back pathing. All footprints facing this direction are going to be the first footprints, and all of them facing the opposite way are going to be the last; if Din manages to figure out you didn’t take the bus, then he won’t be able to tell which new set are yours and which belong to the other passengers. You pray the helmet can’t track gaits, but while you’re still paying enough attention, you make sure to keep your steps just slightly longer and even try placing more weight on the edges of your feet to make it look like you have a slightly higher arch than you actually do. You’d put a pebble inside of them or something, but you know you’re going to be walking through the night and you don’t want to commit to having your feet hurt more than you already know they’re going to.

Eventually the quaint shops and small houses disappear behind you, and the sun setting over the horizon turns the clouds above turn more dusty green and brown than yellow and pink. You hope Din opened up the ramp after you left. You want him to see the sky.

***

Headstart—9:34pm

The forest here is different from Naboo, too.

Maybe it was because you only saw it while you were in crisis-mode, but that forest seemed much scarier and darker than this one. The vegetation there was thick and overgrowing, but these trees look like they’ve never had leaves on them at all. No twigs or small branches that sprout from the trunks—the branches are all thick and gnarly, criss-crossing with each other with how close they’ve grown together. You bet their roots are practically one at this point, stretching for miles and miles but all sharing the same system.

Because there aren’t any leaves, there's nothing to block the moonlight shining clear and crystalline through the twisting maze of branches. Sanctuary II appears to have a sister moon—Sanctuary I, perhaps?—that’s likely a similar size, because it’s the same one you've seen all day and it’s barely moved a few degrees that you can tell. It must orbit incredibly close and be tidal-locked with this one then. Two massive satellites swinging around each other as they circle a ringed gas giant, but it makes a stunning view and reflects more than enough light to see.

The sky is deep blue and maroon and you’ve been walking in a straight line for hours, using the stationary moon overhead as your guide. The only issue with this plan that you’ve been able to come up with is that there’s no widely traveled path through the trees—even you can see your footprints and the clear trail you’re leaving behind. You’ve been trying for a while to figure out another clever evasion tactic, but it’s harder than it sounds. Can’t just change shoes again, that’ll be a dead giveaway. How do you lose him?

You stop for a second, reaching into your bag to grab some water and stay hydrated. Looking up once more at the beauty of the swirling colors peeking through the branches above you, you find yourself pausing after returning the bottle to your pack. There are… an atrocious number of branches up there, and all of them are long and tangled and thick. Sturdy.

You’ve… never climbed a tree before.

Without thinking much beyond that, you decide to bend your knees and jump, grabbing hold of one of the strong wooden tubes over your head and then swinging your legs up. Ouch—the bark scrapes against your palms and you have to hold on tight with your thighs while you shimmy yourself upwards, but at least the wood is solid as fuck. It takes you a minute or two, but you’re eventually able to shuffle yourself around so you’re straddling the thick branch, and then you look out to see the large collection of them criss-crossing in every direction around you.

Oof, this is dangerous. You know it even before you start. The gaps leading to the ground are bigger and more numerous than your potential pathing forward, but the only thing that gives you reassurance is how thick the wood is—you’re almost certain the branches aren’t going to break as long as you’re careful.

Okay. Shoes, these are too big for the kind of dexterity you’re going to need. You take them off slowly, being extra careful not to drop them, and then exchange them with the better-fitting pair you bought earlier, making a mental note that the sandals and the larger shoes are the two you’ve already worn. If your pursuer manages to catch on to the multiple footprint changes, your most recent ones should ideally just… disappear right there, shouldn’t they?

You grin, before struggling into a low crouch and looking around your wooden cage for a safe way forwards.

***

Headstart—11:37pm:

Water.

A blessing, and not because you’re thirsty. You have clean water in your bag and decades of habits formed in the desert to ensure you’re taking breaks and drinking enough—what you need is a way to disguise your footprints once you get back on the ground again. This was good; scuttling your way along thick and twisting branches for as long as you have was time-consuming and exhausting, but it allowed you to avoid touching the ground for at least a mile or so, which means he’ll have to comb that entire radius to look for your drop.

And it was fun.

You even found yourself giggling as you ducked and scooted, ignoring the bark scraping your skin and your panting breaths, the way your face got sweaty and hot. You had to do some brave maneuvers at tricky spots—jumping, balancing, hugging—but it almost just felt like an exciting little obstacle course for you and you’re honestly having a fucking blast right now.

Water, though. Water is an unexpected beauty, even more than you’ve always considered it to be. Water is an eroder. Not only powerful enough to smooth down the rough edges of strong elements over time, but it will hide your footprints as soon as you create them and leave no indication that you were ever there.

Eventually you see it—a babbling stream cutting a considerably wide line through the trees. You creep forward and hang tight to a branch above you to make sure you won’t fall, wiping the sweat on your brow with your other hand as you study the terrain. The water is… a considerable distance below you, maybe about ten or so feet, and there’s quite a few branches on either side that extend and hang out over it. You could probably find your way to the other side somehow, but something tells you to avoid the road beyond the forest if you can. It leads to multiple places, it would be better to follow the stream until you can eventually merge with it later.

That means you’re… fuck. You’re going to have to jump, aren’t you?

It’s the only way—you can’t leave footprints which means you’re going to need to land in the water. The trees clear too far from the shoreline, so you can’t shimmy down the trunk of one for a shorter fall. You’re going to have to climb out on one of those long branches until you’re suspended over the stream, and then you’re going to have to lower yourself as far as you can and then let go. With your height already accounting for at least half the distance plus the length of your arms as you hang, you should only have to drop two or three feet before reaching water, and then maybe another two feet to the floor under it. It looks forgiving enough—the moonlight shines and the stream is clear and you can mainly just see sand at the bottom, no sharp rocks or other potential dangers to be found. This… this is doable.

Okay. If you pull this off, you’re a badass. If you don’t break any bones or seriously injure yourself in any way, you deserve some kind of commendation. This is probably kiddie shit to Din, who keeps literal rockets strapped to his back and jumps out of ships flying thousands of feet above the ground, but this is a challenge for you and you’re feeling just excited enough to be up to it.

You’re eventually able to climb onto the thickest, sturdiest branch you can see that happens to hang over the water, straddling it and beginning to scoot. Your thighs are killing you at this point but you’re holding deathly tight to the wood, your movements becoming more and more cautious the further away from the trunk you get.

You’re directly above the water now, but you need to go out a little further. Aim for right in the middle so you don’t accidentally leave any tracks or prints on the shoreline if you need to catch yourself. The unfamiliar wood in this forest is admittedly sturdy, but the branch begins to subtly sag with your weight as you keep slowly scooting forward, and you’re just about to the correct spot when—

Day 1–12:00am:

“Sweet girl.”

—You nearly fucking fall.

“Maker,” you gasp, suddenly scrambling to catch yourself on the branch before you can plummet. It creaks and groans under your weight but supports you nonetheless, and when you’re one hundred percent certain it isn’t going to break, you jerk your head down to the communicator and see that it’s midnight, on the dot.

Shit.

Your heart slams against your ribs and your arms shake with adrenaline while you study it for just a moment longer, trying to calm the fuck down.

“Hey,” Din’s voice comes sharply from your wrist, crackling and tinny through the comm, nearly scaring you again. “Answer me.”

You don’t want to sacrifice your grip right now, but you have no doubt he’ll fly the Crest out to you if you don’t respond. So you quickly let go to press a button on the front face and then latch onto the branch tight once more, raising your voice because you can’t risk bringing your wrist up to your mouth to speak. You hope he’ll be able to hear without the microphone picking up the sound of the stream below. “Uh. Ahem. Hello. Yes?”

“You’re too quiet,” Din’s disembodied voice immediately informs you. “Or something on your side is too loud. There’s an earpiece built into the side of the communicator, take it out and use it instead.”

You study the wrist brace without moving, until you finally see what he’s talking about. It’s a small, wireless piece of machinery hidden on the left side of the electronic display, and you quickly pop it out and stuff it into your ear just in time to hear the sound of hydraulics clanging through the speaker as you clutch the branch again. You’d know that sound anywhere, it’s the ramp of the hull closing.

“Are you already on the move?” You ask him incredulously, your thighs starting to go numb with how deathly tight you’ve been squeezing this tree.

“Can’t sleep,” Din murmurs, sounding so much closer and deeper than before. Does he have his earpiece on under the helmet or something? Stars, is that why his voice sounds that good? It’s like it’s coming from inside your own head, bassy and rough. “Ready or not.”

You huff, your tummy going warm. Of course he can’t sleep, of course he’s going to look for you as soon as he’s allowed to. If he waited until morning, you’d probably be slightly offended. You try to slow your heart rate into something acceptable, but being this far above water and hearing his baritone murmur directly in your ear make it difficult. “But I’m… sleepy.”

“You’re always sleepy,” he tells you, and though you can’t actually hear him walking, the sound of his footsteps shake through his voice just slightly as he speaks.

“Hang on,” you huff, ducking your head to drag it against your shoulder, keeping the sweat from your eyes without using your hands, “you’re gonna make me stay up all night just because you do? This isn’t fair—”

“Fair wasn’t part of the rules.”

Well. Fair.

Stars, you can’t stay here. You don’t know how long he wants to check-in for, but you’re also not confident with this branch’s ability to hold you for an extended time when you’re this far out from the trunk. You need to get in that stream one way or another, but now that he’s here, you have an extra problem. Din is going to hear you no matter what.

“Um. Can you give me a second?” You ask him, glancing around to make sure there’s no better way of doing this. Nope, you realize very quickly—this is the best idea you’ve got, and you don’t really know what that says about the quality of all your other ideas.

“What?” Din grunts shortly, but you just clear your throat.

“I need to… mute myself. Give me like… five minutes.”

“What are you talking abou—”

“You of all people cannot be upset about asking for five minutes of quiet,” you return testily, looking down at the distance to the stream once more. That’s a long way. You… you can’t swim obviously, but again, the water doesn’t look too deep. Just a couple feet likely, shouldn’t go past your knees.

It’s fitting that he doesn’t say anything, which you eventually take as disgruntled acceptance, so you quickly press the proper button on your wrist to silence the mic and then take a few deep breaths. You have a time limit now, you have to do this.

With incredible patience and precision, you eventually slide until you’re clutching the branch upside down like an only slightly quicker and less coordinated sloth, before slowly dropping your legs and hanging over the water.

It’s… admittedly a bit further down than you anticipated, or maybe that’s just you making things worse than they actually are, but you’re committed at this point and there’s no going back.

You close your eyes, count to three, and then you let go.

The sandy floor meets your feet with considerable force and you make a hell of a splash doing it, nearly falling but just barely managing to keep yourself balanced and upright at the last second. The water is cool and comes up just over your knees, your backpack miraculously didn’t get wet and all your limbs remain shaky but unbroken.

Okay. Okay, fucking success. It feels… thrilling, accomplishing a dangerous feat, and you quickly let out a loud whoop before clearing your throat, trying to sound normal as you press a button on the communicator’s face once more.

“Mando?” You ask, slightly out of breath. “Sorry about that, I’m back.”

Okay, now which way do you go? Downstream seems like the easier path after getting in so much unexpected exercise, so that’s the one you go with. As soon as you lift your foot from the sand bed, you watch your footprint almost immediately disappear through the moonlit water, and you bite your lip at just how well everything turned out for you.

After a moment though, you realize he hasn’t answered you. You look down at the communicator again to make sure you pressed the right thing. “Hello? Shiny?”

“Did you trade shoes with someone?” Din’s voice suddenly comes through the earpiece, sounding absolutely incredulous.

“Shit,” you tell him, trying not to smile. “Hoped that was gonna buy me more time.”

“It… might’ve, if you kept walking in the same direction as they were,” he informs you after a moment. “Your shoes went south, but this other pair got all the way out here just to turn back around again? Good idea, but the execution needs work.”

Maker, he’s smart. It was the first attempt at a footprint change so you weren’t thinking much beyond tricking the tracking mechanism in his helmet, you ignored his logic completely. Essentially, the exact opposite of what he told you to do. You like to think you’re getting better at it by this point, thinking beyond just the original exchange, and you’re hoping you’ll be able to trick him with at least one of the other fifty times you changed shoes today. You’ll have to see tomorrow night, if you can make it that long.

Also, the road you were on apparently goes north-south, that’s important information you make sure to take note of. The man in Osiruu said Devain and Nariss are to the east, and that Sijua and G’ila are westward, right? Remembering that you thought south was west earlier, you do some quick calculating and immediately come to a stop in the moving water as soon as you figure out your positioning, turning around and walking upstream instead.

You want to go to Nariss. The capital, and the biggest city in walking distance. Smart quarry go to populated places, places that make it nearly impossible to find people.

“Alright. Mando: one, Me: zero,” you finally acknowledge, swinging your backpack around and unzipping it to dig inside for another piece of fruit. You’ve been hungry for hours but had to use both hands to stay safe and far above the ground, it’s the perfect time to eat. “How’s the baby? Behaving himself?”

“He kept trying to follow you after you left,” comes Din’s response, and you stop with just your teeth piercing the flesh, wondering if you heard him right. You actually open your jaw and pull the fruit away with just a bite mark in it.

“You’re joking.” No fucking way, not that little demon.

“Wish I was,” he tells you solemnly. “Made a fuss, tried to open the ramp a few times. Didn’t cause any trouble after, just… pouted.”

That’s… that’s exactly how he responded the very first time Din left the kid on the ship with you instead of bringing him along. He threw a fit, tried to ditch you for his dad multiple times, and then ultimately just looked cute and mopey with his limp ears until Din came back. Do you think it’s just him rebelling against change? That has to be it, right?

“He better not be giving you any hints about where I am,” you warn his father. “I’d tell you to put him on but I don’t want the earpiece getting lost forever.”

You hear it. The softest laugh—barely a breath, coming after years of learning to make it just quiet enough not to be registered by the helmet. It gets picked up by the communicator in all its understated beauty when normally it’d be silent, and it’s just jarring enough to make you careless.

On your next step, you accidentally lift your foot too high and make a splash, and you already know you fucked up before he can say a single word.

“What’s that sound?”

You immediately stop moving, allowing the cool water to move as silently as possible past your stationary knees. Shit. “Uh. What sound?”

You think he purposefully doesn’t say anything. Probably because it feels a little like cheating, doesn’t it? It’s to your disadvantage, having him be able to catch hints from your environment when he’s the one who made check-ins mandatory, but then again… how smart do you think he is? Something tells you that he might not need to track you at all—what are the chances he stumbles upon this little stream and just naturally assumes you were clever enough to use it to hide your trail? Did you waste time trying to engineer a vanishing act when it’s not going to matter regardless?

Oh well, too late now. You quickly decide to change the subject.

“You should try the big purple fruit that one vendor sells when you get into Osiruu, by the way,” you tell him pleasantly, taking a big chomp out of it and then letting out an extended hum of delight that only really fucking good food or sex causes a person to make. “I’m eating one right now, it’s so good. Be the best thing you’ve ever tasted.”

“Mm. Doubt it,” immediately comes his low response. Fucking immediately.

“Mando,” you gasp, scandalized and giddy enough that juice dribbles down your chin a bit.

“Are you having fun?” Din asks, instead of pushing the conversation any further in that direction. You don’t know if you’re thankful or disappointed with how quickly he decided to abort, but you take a moment to consider his question while swallowing and wiping your mouth. Not the answer, you know the answer—but why he bothered to ask. Did he know you were going to enjoy yourself as much as you have? Your only possible lament is how you’re talking to him through a communicator instead of having him next to you.

“I am,” you say warmly. “Be… be better if you were here, though.”

“Give me your coordinates,” Din proposes, and his voice is just low and rumbly enough to make you pause.

You’re really, really proud of yourself for only considering it for a few seconds before scoffing. “Psh. Nice try.”

“Was worth a shot,” he sighs through the earpiece, and you smile, taking another bite of fruit.

“Ask me again tomorrow,” you offer, grinning at the implication.

“We’ll see,” you hear him return, and though his tone doesn’t really change, you know he’s probably rolling his eyes. He won’t have to ask for your coordinates because he’ll already be there, but it’s nice to pretend for a while longer.

And then you both walk all through the night, sharing casual banter with each other for hours. He never once implies he wants to disconnect, even when you hit him with more nonsensical questions—

“What’s your favorite food?” (“I don’t have one.”)

“Okay, well what about just a food that you like?” (“I don’t like food that much.”)

“What do you mean? Everyone loves food.” (“Not me.”)

“Alright, well um. What’s your favorite color, then?” (“I don’t have one, either.”)

“Come on, you must have some kind of color you like.” (“What’s your favorite color?”)

“…Brown.” (“Then that’s my favorite, too.”)

—until the sun rises and you both say your goodbyes.

***

Day 1–6:15am:

You resolve to waiting until you see another person to allow your feet to touch dry land, figuring the longer you stay untraceable, the better off you’ll be. Your toes are wrinkly and your pantlegs and shoes have been drenched for hours, but then you finally spot a few fishermen standing upstream with their backs to you, speaking to each other in the dawning light. Two look to be full-grown, but there’s a smaller one in the middle, maybe a teenage boy, and you pause for a second, looking at the riverbank next to them. All their valuables—water, food, bait, extra rods, but also… their shoes.

Quietly, you reach into your backpack and remove the pair of men’s shoes you bought earlier. The ones closest to you on the shore seem to be the smallest, so you sneak over as silent as possible and rapidly make an exchange, fitting the new ones on your wet feet before allowing yourself to touch dry land and then speed walking away.

The ones you left him are newer and roughly the same size anyways—yikes, maybe slightly smaller now that you’re thinking about it—but at least you have a back pathing. If that kid decides to take your offering and the shoes fit, Din will follow him, and if he decides to go barefoot instead, he should still follow him, right? You’re not really aiming to trick him outright, mostly you just want him to waste more and more time. This likely wouldn’t work if there wasn’t a time limit attached to this hunt, but you’re going to do everything you can to disappear while he’s still far enough behind you.

***

Day 1–7:06am:

You get to Devain remarkably quickly after finding the correct road. The pit stop is much bigger than Osiruu, big enough to call an actual town instead of just a settlement, but still not large enough to feel concealed. You want a city. This place at least has cars and ships moving about and overhead respectively, but you’re looking for somewhere with lines. Somewhere that feels as cramped and busy as possible.

Still, you find a restroom to use and then decide to grab some more food for your trip, happily spotting your new favorite purple fruit in one of the shop windows. As you’re reaching out to hand the storekeeper the appropriate amount of credits, Din’s gruff voice comes through the earpiece so suddenly that you jump, nearly dropping them all on the counter. “Hey.”

“Holy shit, what?” You gasp, earning a confused look from the lady in front of you. You quickly shake your head at her and mouth an apology while Din grumbles in vexation.

“You were supposed to stay on foot.”

Ah. So he got to the bus, then. Okay.

“Oh,” you answer ambiguously, exchanging the money for your bag of food and giving her a polite smile. Din stays completely mute while you grab your snack, stuffing the rest of the goods in your backpack and then turning to leave—mute for so long that you have to double check you didn’t accidentally do it yourself.

“…Smart girl,” you finally hear him say. Quietly muttered under his breath, half proud of you and half frustrated for making his job more difficult. “Which one of these is yours then?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you announce, before taking a large bite as you leave the establishment and talking with your mouth full. “You really gotta try the purple fruit, it’s great.”

The communicator abruptly clicks to silence on his end without anything else and you laugh so unexpectedly that a few pieces of it fly out of your mouth.

***

Day 1–1:32pm:

Somewhere miles away from you, Din jerks to a halt in the middle of a forest.

He looks around the dirt floor, walks a few paces and hears the kid coo gently from his cradle. Behind the visor, the red footprints he’s circling are the last ones around for hundreds of meters, as far as his display can read.

His helmet slowly tilts upwards, and follows the endless maze of thick branches overhead.

With the beskar hiding his face, no one can see the way he slowly breaks into a beautiful grin.

***

Day 1–9:51pm:

Oh. Oh stars, you’re tired.

You’ve been walking all day without really seeing anything, not having any place to disguise your tracks in the wide open plains. You could’ve stuck to the road, but you started to feel the exhaustion creep in during the early afternoon and you wanted to be far away from other travelers and potential danger if you needed to rest. You knew this would be a long journey when you left Devain earlier—over a day’s walk, a group of children told you—you even tried skipping or jogging a bit to see if that would inspire more energy in you, but it didn’t help much.

The large cup of caf you bought while in town was drained hours ago and it didn’t help much either, probably because your exhaustion is more physical and not necessarily mental. It just felt like a sweet warm drink to sip before you go to sleep, that’s how much the caf helped. Still, you kept walking, kept moving forward even as you squinted in the setting sun, your feet aching from traveling for this long wearing unfamiliar shoes. The last time you changed them was hours ago, pulling another bus maneuver but with an air shuttle instead. Still, you don’t think it’ll be enough. You don’t even know where Din is but you already feel like you’re losing ground just knowing that he’s the one in pursuit.

You feel it—the hair standing up on your neck, the tingles in your hands, the stirring of your tummy—whatever the incessant gogogo that your instincts happen to scream when you’re in first place but you know the person behind you is quickly closing in. It’s day fucking one, it’s day one and you feel him in the wind as it brushes through your hair, you can’t even pause to rest because nobody knows better than you that he’s an absolute fucking machine when he wants to be. The kid may have powers beyond that which can be explained by the laws of nature, but Din is a force all his own. He drives you forward when everything inside you is telling you to stop. He keeps you awake and determined when you just desperately need to rest.

But that only goes so far. You’re bordering on two full days without sleep, and though you’d normally be able to suffer through, the constant movement is just brutal after being confined to a stationary ship for so long.

There’s a lone tree in the distance, you think. It’s hard to see. Not because it’s dark—well it is, just a bit darker tonight compared to last, but mostly because your eyelids have grown heavier and more burdensome than the bag around your shoulders. That looks like a good place to just sit for a second, right? Maybe eat some more food, try and wake yourself up? Yeah, that’s a good idea, you’ll head towards the tree and just… sit…

***

Day 2–12:00am:

Completely dead to the galaxy and sitting on your ass with your back against rough bark, the comm clicks and Din’s voice comes through the earpiece.

“Wake up.”

It startles you enough to make you lurch forward and jerk your head around in a panic, looking for any flash of beskar so you can instantly break opposite to it. You scramble on all fours to look around but you don’t see anything, not even behind the trunk when you crawl, and then you take a deep breath and use the bone of your wrists to rub your eyes vigorously after a moment, knowing your hands are filthy. “Fuck, how’d you—”

“You’re always sleepy,” Din repeats, and you collapse back into the tree with an exhausted groan, not entertained but not even having the energy to get mad about it.

“I… I gotta sleep,” you tell him, already feeling your body let go of its tension and search for the darkness of unconsciousness once more. “Shit. How d’you… mm. Stay awake all the time…”

“Sleep,” Din encourages, you can still hear him walking. “You need rest. I’ll see you soon.”

No—

“No,” you whine like a child, moaning and shoving yourself upright. Maker, you’re trying to focus, but asking that of yourself is almost impossible right now. Everything swims—you were dreaming, you think, but you can’t remember and it’s not important other than to emphasize how woozy you are. Things still feel like a dream, somehow.

You think he can hear your struggling through the comm, because the sound of his footsteps pause. “Go to sleep.”

“You go to sleep,” you tell him bluntly, giving your head a violent shake to try and wake you up. You want to slap your own cheek but you don’t want him to hear it. “I can’t sleep if you don’t.”

“I’ve have at least a couple more days in me before that happens,” Din murmurs, and you bet he knows exactly what the fuck he’s doing to you. You start to slouch, hearing the voice he uses when he’s curled around your body in the darkness of the hull. So warm, so gentle. If you use your imagination, you can feel his fingers drawing slow circles on your back, the vibration of his low voice rumbling against your ear as you lay your head on his chest. “If I hunt you the way I’d hunt a quarry, I’m going to find you before you wake up.”

“Then I’ll jus’ have to… not let tha’ happen,” you slur. Even this close to unconsciousness, you try your best to throw in a misdirect. “Already… paid for the bed an’ everything.”

“Sure you did. You in another tree?”

You immediately frown even as your eyes drop closed, too tired to fight but still managing to sound upset. “You makin’ fun of me?” You ask him with a harumph. Genuinely, you’re not smart enough to figure it out right now.

“Not hardly,” Din sighs, sounding… you don’t know. Is that displeasure or not? It’s not immediately clear. Does it sound that way because you’re just dumb stupid right now? Or because Din can’t actually decide how he feels about it? “Lucky I heard water over the comm last night, I would’ve wasted hours in that forest.”

“Noooo,” you whine in response, trying to push yourself off the tree but tipping sideways in the process, “that’s not fair—”

“Fair wasn’t part of the rules,” he repeats himself again and… nope, you don’t even have the energy to snark something back. You just grumble your best imitation of him while you do everything you can to heave yourself upright. It’s pitiful, you lose your balance not even halfway through and just plop on the grass for a second and groan.

“Stop,” Din eventually orders through the earpiece, tired of it. “What’s sixteen times itself?”

You’re loopy to the point where you don’t even question why he decided to ask you that. You just furrow your brows for a second and try to think about it, before suddenly realizing you… don’t know, you can’t remember. Multiplication tables and squares up to twenty are elementary to you, you know them by heart. Sixteen times sixteen. One forty-four. No… no that doesn’t sound right, is that twelv—

You take way too long answering what would’ve been an immediate response two days ago.

“I’ll stop here for tonight,” Din tells you with a resolved sigh. “I won’t move until you wake up. Go to sleep. You’re putting yourself in danger, you can’t even do the basics.”

Later, this moment will come back to you. That problem isn’t basic, not many adults would be able to tell you very quickly that the answer is two fifty-six. You don’t even think Din would. You would, though. On Naboo, you used rapidly applied trigonometry in your head to find his location, and that was barely two minutes after waking up. You should know this. And he knows you.

But for right now, you don’t pay it a single lick of attention.

“You promise?” You ask quietly, voice incredibly small as your head tilts back towards the sky, already feeling yourself beginning to fall back into the darkness again.

“I promise,” he vows in return, gentle but a promise nonetheless. He doesn’t have to do this. You wouldn’t be able to keep going even if he didn’t offer up this temporary truce, but knowing he isn’t currently gaining ground on you makes the idea of sleep so much more welcoming, something you want to seek out instead of fight.

“Will you, um…” your expression furrows. How do you say this? You sigh, giving up before even trying to figure it out. “I’m… not in a bed. I’m outside.”

Din doesn’t say anything when you pause, and even through the haze wanting to take over, you know it’s going to sound needy. You want him to stay. Even in the midst of an adventure, you want him to stay, you want to hear him breathe as you rest, but there’s not really an integrous way to ask.

You don’t need to ask.

“I’ll keep the comm open and wake you when the sun rises,” comes his lulling baritone before you can elaborate anymore, enveloping you in comfort in this dreadfully uncomfortable bed of grass and dirt. “Sleep, sweet girl. I’m right here.”

***

Day 2–5:34am:

The sun shines over the hills and you lift your head up to squint your eyes at it, confused as fuck. Looking down at your wrist to check the time in the warm rays, hands and clothes dirty from laying on the ground that long—you stay groggy and clueless for just a moment longer, before your heart lurches when you remember Din’s promise to you.

You open your mouth to address him but then catch yourself just in time. Wait. Don’t panic. Listen.

Breathing. Slow and relaxed through the earpiece, a rhythm now branded into your memory from months of nights spent in pitch black. He’s… asleep.

Din is asleep? Seriously?

You can count like… twice that this has happened, and one of those was because he got you to touch him just right after closing up a wound on his back, and his body couldn’t handle the strain and passed out. You’re never awake when he’s asleep—you’re just not, it doesn’t happen. Din… sleeps like it’s just a choice for him, he doesn’t ever really need it. Almost like how he used to eat before he started sharing meals with you, he said he doesn’t even like food that much. You think he just severed all of those things long ago, things that are basic fundamentals of survival and operated like a bounty droid that lost its voice box. It’s… nice, feeling like you’re somehow giving back some of the things he lost. Unintentionally encouraging him to find sleep again. Making sure he eats more, listening to him speak.

You struggle to your feet as quietly as possible, hearing him continue to breathe slow and relaxed through the communicator. This isn’t purposeful, you don’t think he actually allowed it. He promised you, and Din doesn’t take shit back. If he tells you he’ll do something and he doesn’t follow through, it’s either out of his control or a mistake, it’s never been purposeful. He didn’t mean to fall asleep.

And, in other circumstances, you most definitely would not find some way to take advantage of this. You’d let him sleep and do other things in the meantime—make some food for you and the kid, find something on the Crest that isn’t spotless and clean until it is, or just… lay there next to him until he woke up. But… these circumstances are their own. You have to capitalize now, this is your chance. You passed out last night around… ten pm, you think it was, and then he promised to stop at midnight. That means you have to walk at least two hours before he wakes up if you want to prevent any loss of ground—you don’t know where he stopped, he could be a few miles back even.

You have to find Nariss—you have to. It’s your only option, if you keep trying to run, it’s just going to make it so much easier for him. Now is the time to hide. You know it hasn’t been long, it’s barely been two days since you first left the Crest but it feels like you’re already in endgame, already making moves in self-defense instead of actually planning your maneuvers ahead of time.

The capital should be half a day’s walk from here, then. As long as you get there, you think you’ll be okay.

***

Day 2–8:28am:

Din’s groan suddenly comes through your ear.

You immediately stop, seeing a busy road in the distance and glad you haven’t quite made it there yet, before trying to disguise your voice as drowsy. “Mm?”

“Shit,” he breathes, and you hear him get up, the sound of beskar moving as he grunts.

“Mpph,” you groan back, squinting your eyes to see if that’ll help sell the act. “I thought you… Mando, fuck, y’said you’d wake me when the sun came up.”

“I… fell asleep,” he admits, voice rough with it, sounding just as confused as you felt earlier.

“You said you had days in you before that happened,” you murmur, taking a deep breath and stretching your arms up above your head. Stars, your back hurts, how does he possibly manage to carry a fucking jet pack around all the time?

“Yeah, I…” He pauses for a moment and you bite your lip, not liking the quiet as soon as you hear it. “How long have you been up?”

Op. Not good. “Wha?”

He’s not falling for it. “How long?”

How in Maker’s name? This is impossible. How can you hope to hide from him when you can’t even manage to hide the smallest fucking truth from him? Can you salvage this somehow? “…Like ten minutes.”

“Least a few hours, then,” he sighs, and you get ready to hit him with the same line he used when you complained about his leg-up, opening your mouth as soon as you hear him speak. “That was smar—”

“Fair wasn’t part of—”

Oh. Well. Apparently you didn’t have a reason to feel shitty about deciding to haul ass while he was passed out even though you kind of ended up doing so anyways. There was no agreement besides that he wouldn’t move until you woke up. Reason is on your side, but it still feels a bit like you fucked him over. Is that valid or are you just so used to being nice that putting yourself first feels like a wrong you’ve committed?

“Don’t feel bad,” Din tells you, and you hear a soft coo in the background. It makes you smile the smallest bit, your shoulders relaxing even as they ache from carrying your pack around. “You should feel bad about stealing that poor kid’s shoes, though. He walked home barefoot.”

You smack your forehead. “It was just….”

“Yeah,” he scoffs when you don’t finish your sentence, and you can’t keep back a giggle. “Alright, I’m up now. See you when you get here.”

And then the communicator clicks, and you’re…

Uh. What the fuck was that?

No. Nope, you’re not going to get played. That was a brilliant attempt at fucking with you, but you’re not falling for it this time. You’ve grown since that night on Canto Bight, you know him, he can’t just say shit to fuck with your head and then smile at your flailing response from under the helmet anymore. You normally would stew in that last comment until it got to you, made you make a mistake most likely, but the more you think about it, the more certain you are that he has nothing. He was just trying to see if you’ll abandon your entire plan just by implying he already knows it. That’s beginner shit, you’re not falling for it. Din wanted to leave the conversation with the upper-hand since you gained at least an hour of extra ground while he slept. You’re certain of it.

***

Day 2–12:35pm:

Nariss is big. Nowhere near the size of Coruscanti sectors of course, where billions of people are packed from surface to exosphere and require oxygen recirculation towers to breathe at the very top, but just slightly bigger than you expected. It’s bustling and you haven’t even made it through the city gates yet—you’re approaching them and the large number of people waiting in line, seeing buildings stretch out for miles in front of you and grinning. Yes, this will work nicely.

As you peek over shoulders in the sizable crowd, you see only two or three people allowing people to enter one at a time… is that a biometric scanner?

Oh. That looks good and it also doesn’t look good at the same time. If Din’s safety meant nothing to you, you’d have no trouble whatsoever getting in line and waiting to do a retinal scan, but you immediately pause and consider the potential consequences.

Your dumb ass almost weighs the option of clicking the communicator on and asking his opinion. You’d give away your location in a heartbeat (if he doesn’t know it already) just because you’re worried he’d… what, exactly? Stand in line for an hour, take his helmet off in front of a crowd of people, have the system ping his scan, and then hang out and wait for New Republic reinforcements to show? You have to stop worrying about him. He’s not a baby, he can handle himself and you need to stop considering the possibility of taking a loss just so he doesn’t have to, even if the self-destructive sentiment feels ingrained in your nature to do so.

So you wait in line, moving at a slow pace but at least moving. While you’re standing there quietly, a man in front of you decides to strike up a conversation. You don’t come from a place with an excess of people, but the ones in your sector were friendly and did this kind of thing often, so perhaps for that reason, you decide to chat.

“Do you have some place to stay?” He asks at one point. So far the conversation has revolved around him—every time he asks about you, you deflect. He doesn’t need to know. “Nariss isn’t kind to drifters.”

This catches your attention, though. This is relevant. “What does that mean?”

“It’s expensive?” He scratches his blonde hair, giving you a soft smile. “Food, housing, all of it is way out of my price-range. I stay with my uncle and work overnights at the eastern docks. It’s not much, but it’s enough to keep a roof over our heads. We used to live in Gibrath, but then we moved to the city because he’s a good architect and they’re always expanding. It’s nice, of course, but really expensive.”

He’s handsome, you think… in kind of a boyish, charming way. Blonde hair, sparkly blue eyes. He doesn’t look much older than you, and maybe in another lifetime you would’ve found him appealing, but… you like darker features, you think. Someone a little less expressive. This guy… talks a lot.

“I thought this moon was a safe world for people displaced by the Empire,” you offer, taking a step forward as the entire crowd shifts.

“Sanctuary II is,” he comments. “The capital is safe, too—what, with all the orangies walking around,” he tilts his head to two jumpsuited guards trying to organize the glob of people so the line can move faster, rolling his eyes as if they’re some kind of joke. “But not… welcoming, not if you’re looking for a place to settle. You would’ve been better off in G’ila.”

“Is there anywhere you know that would take me for free?” You ask. You have quite a few credits left, but you don’t think it’s a good idea to stay in an inn. It’ll be the first place Din checks.

“Are you a virgin?” He returns, and you immediately pull back at the unexpected question, your heart thudding at the possibility of danger. The man’s sandy eyebrows shoot up at your response and he quickly apologizes—“Heavens, I’m so sorry to ask like that! It’s just… the only place I know is the Holy Keja Orphanage on the northern outskirts. Their signs say they only house children and teenagers, but I’ve heard from other girls your age that they’ll accept any woman as long as they’ve stayed pure in the eyes of the Maker.”

“Oh,” you say after a moment, leaning sideways to see just a few people standing in front of him. Good, this is almost over. “Um. Yep. That’s me.”

He smiles at you once more, giving you a nod. “When you get to the city, just go straight through. It’s about a mile outside of the gates, no more than a day’s walk from this side of town.”

Okay, that’s… interesting. You think about it while you thank him and begin to exchange polite goodbyes, moving up another step until he’s next in line. That might actually be a good move. Din could spend a long time in the city without ever finding you. Smart quarry go to populated places, but… smarter quarry defy the expectations placed upon them, right? He knows you’re smart, and even though you’re confident his “See you when you get here” was purely psychological fuckery, that also implies… at the very least, that he’s assuming there is a here to get to. Meaning, he knows you’re not going into the wilderness to evade him. He’s not going to comb the outskirts when there are so many places to hide within the city gates, with an entire perimeter of New Republic guards stationed around it. Even if he does, the signs will say only children and teenagers—categories you do not fall into.

The unnamed man is soon ushered forward but you stop him quickly. “Oh, by the way. I doubt this will happen, but if a man in a big metal suit with a tiny green baby happen to ask you the same thing, please don’t tell him what you just told me.”

He furrows his eyebrows at you and cocks his head, but smiles and agrees nonetheless.

***

Day 2–5:43pm:

You have an idea.

You’ve been working on it all afternoon, but you were hit with it the second you were looking for another pair of shoes to buy and find a clever way of putting on.

The cheapest ones were ridiculously overpriced, blonde dude was right. You blinked down at the tag and asked the salesman where the cheapest shoes in this part of town were, and then he just wrinkled his nose at you and shooed you out of the store. Granted, you slept in dirt and spent two days walking—you bet you reek, but he didn’t have to be like that.

Though, the man’s displeasure with you had an upside. You were holding a possible pair of pants and a shirt to buy when he threw you out, not yet having checked the atrocious pricetag on them, but it appeared as if he’d rather let you have them for free than rip them from your… admittedly, pretty filthy arms. Oh well, you weren’t complaining. Fancy clothes for free, score.

But now you’re here, and you have the best idea. You don’t need to change shoes, not yet. Why? Because you’ve figured out how to turn your incessant detriment into an advantage.

You’re in the middle of downtown, you think, maybe just some random crowded square, and there’s an inn in front of you. It’s fucking enormous, and you already know it’s gotta be incredibly expensive just looking at the sheer number of stories. It’s an eyesore, it sticks out. But that’s okay, because you’re only planning on staying for a night.

It’s also… right next to New Republic headquarters. Or fuck, at least a station of some sort, because they’re swarming in and out of the constant crowd, passing by the valet doors.

At first you naturally wanted to steer away from the jumpsuits, since you know they’re bad news for Din, but then you remember what he said before you left. I’m only telling you so that you’ll know your advantage and find a way to exploit it. I can’t be seen by any officers, or they might arrest me.

It’s to your advantage, he said so himself. Everything lines up perfectly—the street is bustling, the inn is well protected, it’s nice—it’s everything you’re looking for.

And there’s another upside, see. An omnipresent, omniscient ghost in the form of a communicator clipped to your wrist right now. If Din is always going to be able to predict you, he’s always going to know when you’re lying, always be able to read you… then you’ll just have to let him.

Let him know. Let him know exactly where you are. Right in the middle of the most populated street you’ve seen thus far, a constant barrage of people walking by and New Republic officers patrolling. If you were planning on staying in the city, this would probably be your best option to hide. He could waste days here if you’re smart about it.

The concierge doesn’t appear too pleased with your lack of cleanliness and neither do you, honestly, but at least he allows you to book a suite for the night. It’s… not as bad as you were originally assuming, credits-wise, but it’s worth more than half your stash and you’re going to have to conserve from this point on. It shouldn’t be too bad—your destination is a holy orphanage, you’re sure they’ll have some extra food and a bed for you even if it won’t be ideal. Still, you think you’re going to enjoy some lavish experiences for once in your life before you go.

***

Day 2–11:54pm:

Alright, so this was the best idea ever. This is the shit.

You’re leaning back against a fluffy stack of pillows, squeaky clean from an absolutely glorious bath and watching the flickering drama on the large holonet display in front of you. You don’t have any idea what’s going on, as it’s being broadcast in Rodian, but you haven’t been able to change the frequency because it’s so fucking intense—somebody’s sister is their mother, you think? No, that must be a mistranslation, right?

You’re also in a robe. Yes, there is a motherfucking robe in here. And… and slippers, it’s like a dream. Do people normally wear slippers in bed? You do. Hell, maybe you should stay here, screw the credits and the chase. This mattress is even better than the one on Naboo and you’re basking in the luxury after being outdoors for so long.

The lights are off other than that and you’ve opened the drapes wide, knowing you’re on something like the fifteenth floor and nobody would be able to see you anyways. You just like being able to turn your head and look out at the sky. Violent and periwinkle tonight. You wonder if he’s looking, too.

Luckily, you snap yourself back out of it and glance down at the time on your communicator, quickly pressing a button on the remote to mute the Rodian show and then opening the line the moment the hour changes.

Day 3–12:00am:

“Hiya, Shiny,” you say before anything else, laying back and running a few fingers through your damp hair. Your eyes close against the flickering light, taking a slow, relaxed breath. Maker, this feels nice.

“You sound happy,” Din comments. Astute, you feel happy. Well… you’d obviously feel happier if he was here. Your eyes flick over to the open bathroom door, still steamy from your bubble bath earlier, imagining him walking through it completely naked and then climbing over you on the covers. You can only really picture it from the neck down—no, hang on… you can see his shaggy brown curls, that one spot on his forehead you know, how his facial hair would be dark and frame his mouth. No face, though. Missing just one fraction of him from your imagination, feeling incomplete but also somehow… complete in a way.

“I feel better after sleeping last night,” you tell him, purposefully leaving out the softness of the sheets underneath you, the sheer comfort of all this extravagance. You don’t need it, you’ll never need it, but it feels nice to have for once.

“I do, too,” he replies quietly, and your eyes flutter closed. You… miss him. This mattress would feel softer with him next to you. He’d probably be able to translate this show for you, even though you already know he’d fucking hate it. You can imagine it—you with your eyes closed, him propped up on an elbow next to you and grumbling vague descriptions of the nonsense happening on screen just to hear your chuckles. Adventures are great, but maybe they aren’t as great by yourself, you think.

“You should sleep tonight, too,” you encourage, but he scoffs.

“Not a chance,” Din mutters. “Oh, before I forget, we need to charge the communicators today.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” You ask him, glancing at all the multiple wireless charging outlets stationed around you. “I’m in the middle of nowhere.”

He doesn’t even take a fucking second before responding. “Good one.”

You grin up at the ceiling, warmth flooding you. You love him. Literally every single time, he just knows. Your curiosity is too overwhelming after this happening so often. Your plan to distract him relies on him being able to read you, but that doesn’t prevent you from wondering how he does it so accurately, time and time again. “How do you know?”

“You slept outside last night,” he immediately tells you, like that should mean anything to you.

Does he… does he truly know you well enough to know how much your back and shoulders hurt today? How much you were aching for a shower and clean clothes? A bed to sleep on that isn’t dirt or metal? You give into the accurate prediction with shameless honesty, not caring if he knows it’s the truth.

“This bed is soft,” you murmur gently, dragging your hand across the mattress next to you. “You should be here. I’d make you feel good.”

Admittedly, your comfort is making you a bit drowsy and you said it in the easiest way possible, but you didn’t necessarily mean it sexually. Well… you sort of did—you’d make him feel so good in this bed—but what you meant was more… comforting. He could take a bath, or a shower, and get all the grime off him. He could feel clean and unburdened, take a break instead of constantly moving around. The baby could have a whole bed to himself if he wanted, though you know he’d probably want to be on this one instead. You could all look at the sky together.

Din is quiet for a little bit, before his voice comes back through the earpiece. “Are you in an inn?”

“No,” you say, a little too quickly. Perfect, that sounded just right for a lie. You are lying, you absolutely are in an inn, the only difference is that you want him to catch on that it’s a lie, so… why does he take way too long before responding?

“Hm.”

What the fuck—why… how is it even physically possible? He read you that deeply from one single word? You’re not sure if he’s somehow psychic and figured the whole fucking thing out or if he just knows there’s something off, but it’s still enough to blow you away.

“Are you doing this on purpose?” You blurt without thinking.

“Doing what?” He grunts, sounding like he’s stepping over something, his breath changing intensity as he walks.

“If I look out this window right now, am I gonna see you standing out there just messing with me?” You don’t even know what to believe anymore. How do you beat this? If you don’t want him to know the truth, he’ll figure it out, and if you do want him to know the truth, he’ll still figure it out. His perception is unbelievable.

After a moment of silence, he murmurs gently through the comm. “I thought you said you were in the middle of nowhere.” It sounds like he’s smiling.

“I…” your eyes shift around awkwardly, “am…”

Din lets out a deep sigh. He’s right, that was bad, even for you. “I found your bed a few hours ago,” he admits. You close your eyes as you listen to him make his way closer to you, step by step. “I’m nowhere near the city yet. You have time to sleep.”

Your expression furrows and you frown. “Why are you helping me?”

“Why do you want me to think you’re in an inn?” He tosses back, and you huff.

“Because I’m trying to outsmart you but you make it really fucking difficult,” you grumble, not happy about him catching on so quick.

“You’ve also gained about four hours on me since we started.” His voice is gruff. You don’t know if he thinks it’s a good thing or a bad thing. “You should give yourself more credit. I thought I would’ve found you by now, never expected you to get all the way to Nariss. It’s… not good for me.”

The honesty creeping in makes you go soft. It makes you want to reciprocate, even if it’s dumb and you haven’t thought it all the way through. “Wanna know a secret?”

“Tell me.” His voice is a bed all its own, deep and gentle and safe.

You say it before you lose the nerve. “I might just turn around and walk back.”

His footsteps stop and you hear a small sound in the background, a quiet little baby noise that suddenly makes your heart ache. You’re comfortable but incredibly aware of how alone you are. People pass by on the streets below, cars and hoverbikes honk in the distance and you’re by yourself. For the first time in over a year, like you have been for years, you’re by yourself.

“Sweet girl,” Din sighs, and all of a sudden… you can feel his arms around you with it. You feel so… known, somehow. Every sentiment you could’ve possibly given in your last sentence, he relays his understanding back with his. He makes you feel loved with it. “Never wants to run.”

You don’t say anything, because you suddenly realize you’re totally fucking whipped, up down and sideways for his metal ass and the little floating grimlin that follows him around, and you would throw away the fifth quarry, adventure, the sky—literally everything if you could be with the both of them right now.

But again. You don’t have to say anything, he already knows. “Give me your coordinates.”

Your eyes pop open and you bite your lip. Oh, stars. You hate that you do genuinely consider it. He could be here, and very soon. With the jet pack, both of them could be here in less than an hour, probably. He could take a shower. Watch these stupid shows with you all night without needing to be on the move, help you build a bed of pillows for the kid on top of this one. You could be with both of them again, even if it’s only for a little while.

“Ask me again tomorrow,” you finally whisper, looking down at the soft white fabric of your robe, the way one of your slippers is falling off your foot as the holonet program continues to play on mute.

Din’s footsteps eventually start up again, and you both relax in silence together. You, squinting at the screen because your eyes are getting heavy; him, continuing to travel step by step and gain ground on you. Let him come. You’ll be long gone by the time he even makes it to the gates.

It’s been about ten minutes of shared, quiet existence before you hear him bite into something and chew, and your face suddenly lights up.

“Are you eating the purple fruit?” You ask, your slipper falling off with excitement. You don’t know why, but it’s like… you’re stoked for him. Just as proud of him for doing normal things as he does when you step out of your own comfort zone. You like to think you’re both better that way. Balanced.

“Mm,” Din replies with his mouth full, and you grin down at your bare legs peeking through the robe while he swallows.

“Is it not the best thing you’ve ever tasted?” Your voice goes a little breathless with it, and you hear his footsteps stop once more.

“Close,” Din murmurs lowly, sending a small shudder through you. It suddenly feels a bit warm in here, doesn’t it? This morning was one of the rare times you were awake while he was asleep… it’s almost always the other way around, and just from the implication in his tone, you’re reminded of the thing he likes doing most when you’re resting. Maybe he’ll let you do it to him, next time around. The thought gets you hot enough to warrant the other slipper falling to the floor.

“You’re alone, right?” You whisper, knowing he must’ve pulled the helmet up to take a bite of the fruit. He must still be following your path through the hillside, then, not yet reaching the road.

“The kid is awake,” Din tells you, sounding like he’s trying to stop everything before anything starts. His words are short and clear in their meaning, but…

This has a very small chance of success, you already know. “…Do you want to—”

“No,” he responds quickly, already way ahead of you. “We can’t.”

Something in his voice… you don’t know, there’s just something there that makes you feel just a little reckless. Should you push it? You’re by yourself in this suite, what can go wrong?

“You can’t,” you correct him quietly, shifting around on the bed just a bit and biting your lip. It’s a thrill—being able to tease him without having him in front of you, drive him crazy knowing you’re just out of his reach. “But I can do whatever I want, can’t I?”

There’s a pause, a tense and knowing silence suspended between you before he eventually speaks.

“I’d be real careful,” Din mutters low in warning, but what is he gonna do?

“What are you gonna do?” You whisper to him devilishly. Quiet and breathy, beginning to snake your hand down. Stars, your heart is already pounding. You’d only likely mouth off like this in person just to see how hard he’d fuck you, but this feels extra dangerous for some reason. He’s stuck, he can’t do anything about it right now, and you know it’s playing with fire. “You could hang up if you don’t want to hear me. Or you could find me before I’m finished. Come make me stop.”

Din doesn’t say anything but he very much does not hang up, nor does he come busting into your room like you imagine he’d like to. The sheer fact that your door is still closed and locked tells you for sure that he isn’t just hanging out in the hallway, just letting you have your fun.

You start pressing your fingers against your robe at the apex of your thighs, humming at how nice the pressure feels. You don’t even spread your legs or push the fabric away, you just sigh into it and wiggle your hips a bit, pressing hard against your clit and listening to him breathe.

“Do you want to listen?” You ask quietly after a moment, and Din still doesn’t respond. Likely because there’s not a real answer, both yes and no would imply the wrong thing. “I’ll talk.”

Still, nothing from him. Dead silence through the comm. You’re starting to understand. For two days, you’ve felt like he could read your every thought just by the cadence of your voice. He’s staying quiet so you can’t even attempt to do the same to him—if he doesn’t talk, you can’t find a weakness and pounce on it, you can’t feel any more confident or reassured about your own ability to read him.

You’ll just have to push a little harder, then.

“Hm. If only this fancy communicator could…” you pause to look down at your wrist for a second, studying the menu. You don’t think you’ve ever really looked at it, you never had the time.

Din’s growl is sudden and sharp through the earpiece. “No, don’t even think—”

“Ah,” you smile, tapping the face and immediately finding the correct screen. “Take pictures.”

He’s deadly quiet for a moment, and you bite your lip with excitement. When he does speak, his voice is a pure threat, chilling you to the bone as much as it burns deep in your tummy. “…You wouldn’t.”

Ignoring him, you suddenly locate a menu option that sounds phenomenal right now. “Oh shit, does this holocall? Or is it a video option?”

“Holo,” he says very seriously while you study the lack of complexity of the built-in camera in skepticism, “and the kid is awake, so you can’t—”

“Oh, it’s definitely a video,” you unclip it from your wrist and he curses as you sit up, and then you press a button and wait impatiently for him. “Pick up.”

Din takes forever before responding, and you hear the continuous beeps as it attempts to connect, before his quiet baritone rumbles in your ear. “What if I don’t?”

You feel your mouth pull down at the corners, not so much frowning as you are dubious. He’s going to turn down the opportunity to see you and your surroundings when his whole goal is locating you? Really?

“You sure?” You ask softly, raising an eyebrow. “You’d get to see me, where I am. What I’m…” your eyes dip down to the loose robe riding your curves, your skin glowing against the white fabric, “…wearing.”

The beeps continue on for a few more seconds, until they finally stop. You frown down at the black screen of the communicator, not seeing anything at all. Did he decline the transmission request? No… there’s a little red light next to the small lens that wasn’t there before. Why can’t you see him?

“Why can’t I see you?” You ask. You want to look at him looking at you, you don’t want to always be stuck on the other side of a one-way mirror.

“I… have it linked to my helmet, but it only has a front-facing camera,” Din tells you after a moment, and he sounds… slightly out of breath. “Easier to see, the watch is useless now besides the controls.”

Wait, does that mean you’re… being shown on the inner-display of his helmet instead of his wrist? Right in front of his eyes, as if he were actually here with you?

“Nobody can see me but you?” You clarify, and when he doesn’t respond, you bite your lip and lean back into the pillows. You lift the watch up slightly, extending your arm out until you can get the angle as wide as possible. “Can you see… this?” You ask softly, before hooking your fingers in the collar of your white robe and slowly pulling it open for him.

“Where are you?” Din asks instead, and you hear his footsteps through the earpiece, as if he’s walking away from something very quickly.

You don’t answer him, parting the soft fabric until your breasts are completely exposed and you sigh, closing your eyes and snuggling back into the pillows once more. “I’ll tell you where I am if you keep watching me.”

“Why?” Din grits in frustration, coming back around to the same dangerous question he had earlier. “Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know.” You slowly tilt the camera down until you can spread your legs and the robe falls open with the movement, letting him see your pussy peeking through in the flickering light of the muted screen in front of your bed. “Can you see that?”

“Yeah,” he says shakily on the end of a breath, and you feel yourself get wet. Fuck, he sounds so fucking tempted, the sight making his voice come without any of the self-assuredness as it usually has, but… he could also just be saying that. How do you know he’s telling you the truth?

“What am I doing?” You test him, lifting your knee just the slightest bit so you really give him something to look at.

“Spreading your legs for a camera,” Din responds without hesitation, voice scraping against your ear, making you shiver and your nipples harden. Fuck, the way he says it, like it’s wrong and bad even though he’s the only one who can see or hear you do it… it makes you feel even more naughty and emboldened.

You bite your lip and reach your hand down to spread your lips for him, too, hearing his breath immediately catch on the other end. Already your pussy makes your fingers slick against your soft skin, the sash of your robe still holding the fabric together on your body but also loose enough to allow it to part in the right places and reveal everything you want him to see.

“I am in an inn,” you whisper teasingly, letting your finger drop to brush against your clit and then sighing in soft delight. Oh stars, that feels nice, it feels so good to treat yourself after being completely nomadic for two days, getting to be clean and soft and comfortable while you feel this pleasure, and Din’s voice growls through your communicator like you’re doing something painful to him.

“Fuck,” his breathing picks up while you begin circling your clit. “Where?”

“Nariss,” comes your quiet moan, turning your head on the pillow to blink slowly at the camera. Wanting him to see your eyes as well as your finger slowly dip into where you’re the hottest, caressing the sensitive skin there knowing he’s watching.

“Where in Nariss?” Din’s voice is as pleading as it is sharp, desperately trying to keep either you or himself on track.

“I don’t know,” you say again. Truthfully, you don’t—you don’t know the cross streets, you don’t know the part of town, you don’t know much of anything at all besides physical descriptors. You quickly move the camera to the side as far as you can hold it and let him see you from a different angle with the window as a backdrop. “But the window is open. And there are lots of people outside.”

“Can they see you?” Din immediately challenges. Of course they can’t, you’re fifteen stories up and the room is darker than it is outside with all the city lights and swirling colors of the sky, but you suppose he doesn’t know that. You think he just needs to relax—if this is what he’s always like during hunts, you now know exactly why he comes back to you all riled up and tense.

“I don’t know,” you murmur back, starting to rub your clit a little faster, trying to make it feel like him. It doesn’t—your fingers aren’t large or strong enough to give you those perfect circles; you just feel like you’re meandering yourself towards ecstasy instead of picking you up and hauling your ass there like he does, but it’s okay. Hearing Din’s rough breathing come through the earpiece, knowing his hands are probably clenched tight into fists, wondering if he’s hard yet… all of it culminates into a power trip unlike any you’ve experienced recently. It makes you bold, tells you to open your mouth. “Does it matter? I’d still let you fuck me against it if you were here.”

“Stop it,” comes his growl, but what is he gonna do?

Your leg lifts a little wider so you can slowly slide your fingers down and push two of them inside yourself, and Din swears as you moan, “Come find me.”

“Give me your coordinates—”

“Are you giving up?” You offer breathlessly, lifting your eyebrows and your hips up slightly at the question, but you’re… not expecting the extended silence following. You assumed a growled no would immediately come next, or just another empty threat said with enough force to make you tremble with excitement, but not… nothing.

The response makes you pause just for a second, easing your fingers out and dragging them across your thigh to clean some of the wetness off before extending your arm out towards the communicator. Din stays quiet while you navigate through the menu with trembling fingers, eventually finding your coordinates and hovering over the unchecked share location box.

You wait with your lip bit, confident he knows what you’re doing and you don’t have to narrate or repeat yourself. Fuck, you knew you were considering abandoning this entire adventure just to be next to him again, but you had no idea. No fucking idea that it could ever be a thought in his own mind as well. You… assumed he likes this, hunting is what he does for a living and he’s the one who conceived of the idea in the first place. Is he just that aroused by you? Or is there something more?

“No,” Din eventually murmurs, and you immediately navigate out of the menu so you don’t accidentally press anything catastrophic, before pulling your hand away from the communicator with a resolved hum and settling back into the pillows again. Making sure to look directly into the lens even if your eyelids are heavy with heat and desire, you slowly lick your fingers and then reach down once more.

His deep, shaky breath is so telling. Exhausted after all this, but still not hanging up, still doing his hardest to tough it out when he’s only miles away from you and has jets attached to his back. You don’t want to drag it out but you also do, you want to be kind but something about Din makes you also want to be as formidable as possible. You’ll never be able to threaten like he does, you’ll never have anyone cower just because you walked into the room, you’ll never be as powerful or strong as he is, but you can still put up a fucking fight against him in your own way.

You whimper softly, your breathing beginning to find a quicker pace as surely as your fingers do. It begins to spark and build, a red hot flame being kindled by the knowledge that he’s as close as possible without actually being close, right here with you when he always seems so far away.

“Mando,” you whisper, though your expression pulls inwards just slightly because it… in a scenario as sensual and intimate as this, it almost doesn’t sound righ—

“Din,” he whispers back, so quiet you almost don’t hear it, like he almost doesn’t want to but has to anyways, and then you just start to fucking burn.

“D-Din,” you whisper instead, trying to keep your voice as quiet as possible through the rising swell. He’ll be able to see it, you think. The way your tummy and chest start to heave, how your body begins to brace for it—and yeah, Maker, he sees it, because his voice suddenly changes.

“Stop,” Din growls roughly, knowing exactly how you cum—knowing exactly what it looks like, the way it sounds in your breathing, what it tastes like, how it feels on the inside. It’s been so long since you’ve touched bliss without him, months and months since you brought yourself to completion on the floor of the Crest by yourself, and though he’s rarely ever denied you, your own high on newfound control causes it to slip. He barks your name and tells you to stop once more, but it’s too late.

“I’m gonna cum, Din,” you breathe out—

“Don’t—”

It tears through you, rapid and surging, and he snarls a curse, something loud snapping and thudding and… did he just punch something? You can’t think, it’s delicious and hard as fuck and everything you needed after two days of near constant movement and thought with little rest, and you bite your lip to keep quiet but a pained whimper still shoves its way out of your tense vocal cords regardless. It sounds like it hurts because it does hurt; the orgasm shatters your body into pieces and you’re left trembling by yourself on this soft bed, wishing he was with you on a metal one.

You sink into the mattress in the moments following, sluggish and exhausted and just conscious enough to keep the watch facing you. You bet the camerawork was terrible, shaky at best, but you can’t find it in yourself to care right now. You just lay there and listen to his harsh breathing while you work to slow your heart rate, reveling in the filthy little show you just gave him and wanting to finish it out properly.

“Come find me,” you breathe out once more, lazing soft and naked for him, blinking dazedly at the watch as you pan it over you. Your thighs are still twitching and there’s a thin sheen of sweat clinging to you, but you drag a finger through your swollen lips and carefully wipe the wetness across one of your nipples. “Clean me up.”

“Fuck,” Din suddenly spits through the earpiece, furious. “You think—y-you think—”

“What?” You hum, basking in the afterglow and so, so curious. Truly, you’re dumb as fuck, you have no clue what you’re thinking, but if anybody would be able to tell you, it’s him.

There’s a moment where his breathing stops. It’s completely silent on the line, before you hear another few heavy footsteps on his end pick up and then halt just as quickly.

“You think you can taunt me?” He murmurs, dangerous and deadly quiet. “Show me exactly where you are, disappear and then make me waste forever trying to get there? You think that’s gonna work?”

Your eyebrow lifts, considering. He… may or may not have predicted your strategy perfectly, but his insight has stopped surprising you by now. “Maybe…”

“Maybe you shouldn’t fall asleep tonight.”

Ooh. That one sends goosebumps down your arms, but you’ve gained four hours on top of a twelve hour headstart. He can’t scare you with that tone, not when you’re still woozy with pleasure and he isn’t right in front of you. Instead of wilting beneath the hard threat, you just blink gently at the communicator, finding strength in being the only one to get him this mad when he’s always so composed, this talkative when he barely says a word. “Maybe I’ll just stay here then?”

“Maybe you wanted me to know you’re in an inn because you already found someplace to hide that isn’t one,” Din reasons very, very adeptly. Stars, your heart subtly begins to pick up, your legs continuing to tremble as the small red light next to the lens stares you down. “Can’t be planning to stay with someone you just met because you’d already be there, can’t be going to a hostel because you found the one city on this moon built for commerce and not aid. Not staying in another inn, you can’t afford it—the view looks high up, that robe is expensive, and you already bought food and at least five pairs of shoes in two days. I don’t think the place you found is even in Nariss. You think you can outsmart me, sweet girl?”

The chill down your spine doesn’t reach your eyes, you won’t let it. You just feel yourself smile, tilting your head at him and licking your lips while your finger brushes one of your nipples, but Din doesn’t accept your silence the way you’ve always accepted his. He wants an answer from you, right now, and it’s clear in the dark rumble of his voice, the danger slowly brewing beyond what you originally planned for.

“Tell me,” he orders, unamused and leaving no room to disobey. “How long do you think you can keep running?”

Your eyelashes flutter, suddenly deciding… why not? What have you got to lose? Nothing that you didn’t already go into this situation completely expecting to lose anyways. What’s the worst he can do? Find you?

You close your eyes, pinching one of your nipples and wondering if you might just go for another one since he’s still here. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

But then, instead of immediately responding, you just hear Din’s footsteps suddenly pick up, faster than any pace you’ve been able to keep over the past few days. You don’t think it sounds like a run necessarily, but you know that his legs and strides are far longer than yours and it’s probably pretty much equivalent to a run for you. You hear the rhythm of your demise speeding up, coming closer and closer, and everything in you both fears it and welcomes it.

“We’ll see,” he tells you, and then the red light vanishes and your earpiece clicks to silence.

***

Day 3—2:23am:

Even though it takes you much longer to do so than it normally would on a bed so large and comfortable, after such an exciting interaction and not being used to flickering light when you try to sleep but wanting to experience the rarity anyways, you’re eventually able to pass out.

But, not even a few minutes into a restless dream, you turn over and accidentally knock your communicator off the wireless charging station on the side table. It blinks with four percent battery life.

***

To be continued!!

#the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #mando x reader #mando x you #the mandalorian #smut #reader insert #fanfic #rough day #no-droids #tw: stalking

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mandoinevarro · 5 years ago

Text

Cara’s Restless Week

Words: 4k

Rating: E

Warnings: Smut, vaginal intercourse, masturbation, voyeurism, choking, cuckolding? Not sure :/

a/n: I’m once again ignoring baby yoda. He’s at a sleepover at Omera’s, also he and all children go deaf at night, don’t worry about them.

Cara Dune can’t sleep.

The night is still and warm, and the steady rhythm of drizzle batting against the roof of her shelter would’ve been enough to lull her to sleep under any other circumstances. Even the crickets outside seem to have fallen into a uniform, soothing symphony.

And yet, Cara can’t sleep.

She’s no stranger to restless nights—Maker, she’s no stranger to restless weeks, but she never thought she’d have bedtime troubles inside a comfortable bungalow in Sorgan, days after they’ve driven away the threats to the peaceful community. She tosses and turns on her cot, presses a straw pillow against her face, tries counting blurgs, but it’s no use. No matter what Cara does, she can’t stop hearing the choked moans coming from the cabin next to hers. She kicks the covers away and stumps around in circles inside her cramped hut.

It’s not like it came as a surprise to her.

She suspected something was brewing under the surface from the first day she met the Mandalorian. Settling things with him was easy enough after they learnt that no, he didn’t have a fob on her, and no she wasn’t after a green baby growing wings out of his head. She smiled when the pretty woman feeding broth to said kid giggled at her description.

Cara’s first impression of you was pleasant enough; you smiled easily and contributed every now and then with your own sharp observations, not to mention how much the shock trooper liked the feeling between her legs every time your breasts bounced with each hearty laugh. She even thought of making a move, but stopped the lewd come-on from tumbling past her teeth once she noticed the way your gaze followed your Mandalorian’s every move. Inside some buried corner in the back of her mind, Cara recognized the look. If not something deeper (because softer passions are hard to nurture in this harsh galaxy), it was—at the very least—a look of profound longing. And, although those gentle sentiments had abandoned Cara somewhere in the blur of her past, she’d lived enough to know that glimpse in your pupils whenever he’d get too close to you was there to stay.

The drizzle turns into rain. Instead of drowning them, the loud pebbling clatter of fat droplets only gives the mewls a vibration and solidity that they lacked before. She steps out of the lodge, hoping the pouring water will clear her mind and send her back to bed. But—like if you were purposefully working to lengthen her insomnia— as soon as her head pokes out, the whimpers that hit her are noisier and clearer, and she immediately goes back inside. She sits on a stool, impatiently grabs at her trimmed hair, searches her warrior’s brain for a solution.

She kept her distance that afternoon and thought she’d never see either of you again, and hadn’t at all expected the leather hand that dropped a pouch of credits at her feet in the dark Sorgan woods.

A little action and some pocket money were a good bargain, so Cara took the job. She promised herself, though, to keep her cravings for you at bay. It wasn’t very hard at first. Everyone in the community spent weeks doing little but prepare for the impending attack of the raiders. Cara and the Mandalorian trained the villagers, planned the defense strategy, went over the plan over and over again, helped dig ditches, and neither of them had much time to think about you.

It wasn’t until after their victory—after the Imperial AT-ST was destroyed and, with it, the invaders’ oppressive grip on the fishing village—that they both allowed themselves to occupy their heads on something—or rather, someone—a lot more pleasant.

By that point, Cara had gotten pretty good at reading Mando’s body language. Gestures that she’d once thought were signs of indifference or trained stoicism picked up completely different meanings. She remarked how his spine would relax and he’d lose a few inches whenever he’d see his son playing with the village’s children. She took note of the way his helmet would tilt to the side and his modulated voice would drag a little at the end on the rare occasion he made a joke. She was next to him on the afternoon his dark visor fixated on you when, in front of a particularly orange sunset, the last beams of light melted over your glowing figure, painting your skin and hair with changing colors. She definitely didn’t miss the sore sigh that fractured at the sight before it even left the helmet.

Cara cements her legs on the ground for stability and cracks her knuckles once, twice, until the joints go mushy and they stop clicking.

She can tell you’re trying to hush your sounds as best as you can. She can tell because every time a notably loud whine defies your restraint, it is instantly muffled by a hand or some other utensil you’ve learned you need after your long nights of pleasure.

It’s been going on for a couple of days now, and Cara is starting to find it fucking insufferable. She honestly doesn’t know what’s worse: the sleepless nights or the mornings that follow. For the uninitiated, your morning greetings and seemingly innocent small talk would be polite, but unremarkable. Cara, though, knows better. She’s there for every conspiring smile, every brush of his gloves against your hips. She even catches some of the furtive whispers and caresses you exchange sometimes, when you think nobody’s looking. How you blush when he crowds you with his superior stature; how he sneaks out of your tent at dawn.

And, it’s not like Cara is jealous of Mando. Although you’re nice and easy to talk to, she knows that her feelings for you are purely physical, and she’s spent enough time around you both to know that whatever is going on between you two had been ballooning for a pretty long time until it inevitably burst. If anything, she’s relieved that, after such a torturous period of mutual pining, you’ve finally found an outlet for your affection. She’s happy for her friends. But she can’t fucking sleep.

The relentless moaning starts bending the humid air into clearer shapes. You’re talking to each other. Against all her instincts, Cara drops to the floor in all fours and crawls closer to barrier of her lodging. She presses her ear to the scratchy wall. The sounds are swallowed, and she only makes out an attuned voice that says, “…wanted…from…first day…”

What she can hear loud and clear is a wet, squelching noise that goes to the beat of the dropping rain. The warrior feels like an anvil drops on her chest and slumps on the floor.

If she’s being honest, it’s not even the lack of rest that’s really bothering her—although it does contribute to her daily grumpiness. The reason she finds it unbearable to sit through the rich sounds of your consummated lust night after night is that she knows exactly what she’s missing.

Because she’s been to almost every system and fought every fight. She’s witnessed the destruction of planets and their birth. She’s slept on empty deserts, under the watchful eye of their celestial vault. She’s cheated death. But there’s nothing, absolutely nothing she’s found on her long voyages across the galaxy that compares to the electric current that shocks her nerve endings when someone’s flesh presses against hers. Nothing like having someone strip down bare and let her learn them, inside and out.

So, Cara sits and listens, sits and listens, sits and listens…, until—stubborn, willful woman that she is—she decides that enough is enough.

She stands and struts outside with heavy steps like she’s battlebound, lets the rain—now a storm—drench her skin and underclothes, lets her boots sink in mud. She stops at the entrance of your tent, where the cries are loudest and barely concealed by the rainfall. Her plan is to come in quickly, averting her gaze, and sternly tell you two to keep it down or find another place to fuck. She pushes the flap of the entrance open.

Neither of you see her. How could you, when your nude back is facing her, and Mando, on his underarmor and beneath you, has his helmet thrown back against the floor, probably staring directly at the way your breasts bob gently with your leisurely up-and-down movements.

Cara stays at the entrance, partially hidden by the shadows that the oil lamp beside you can’t reach. She really does try to move. She wills her legs to step forward and make her presence known, but a wave of heat hits her hard when she sees the low, orange light embrace your lower back and drop to your ass with your languid movements. She tells her head to turn around, but her limbs have rebelled against her and remain frozen in front of the show.

Defeated, she stands in the gloom. The mythic warrior Carasynthia Dune helplessly stares at the lovers, pathetically wet and overcome with the desire to simply witness.

A part of her doesn’t care about the morality of it. Not when she sees your trembling thighs rock particularly hard over the Mandalorian, which draws a strangled sob from you and a low grumble from him, both of which can probably be heard three huts over. He quickly lifts one of the gloved hands holding your hips and presses it against your gaping mouth, like he wasn’t the one who moaned the loudest. Still, his grip does nothing to hide the obscene sound of your cunt taking his veins and ridges inside, your juices blending with his.

She’s entranced by the way your fists are clamped on his undershirt and whines seem to knot in your throat as he brings a hand to your back drawing soothing circles. You’re both so laughably bad at keeping quiet.

I could stay here, she thinks after a moment, here in the dark, where they won’t see me.

The hair on the nape of the neck stands up.

You look so elated, doing your best to pleasure each other. Neither of you speak, but you seem to be communicating through grunts, erotic movements, and caresses that carry more meaning than Cara could decipher. It looks like you’re confessing something unspeakable to each other.

Cara whimpers. It’s only a tiny syllable, but it apparently draws the Mandalorian’s attention, because the helmet rolls to side and focuses on the spot where shadows camouflage her. She freezes.

He grabs your thighs tightly and groans, “Fuck—C-cara?”

You immediately stop moving and remove your hands from his chest in indignation. “What?”

“N-no, no. I mean…” He points towards the general area where she’s hiding. Your upper body follows his finger.

Cara hasn’t blushed from embarrassment in years, so she’s confused when she feels blood stab at her cheeks. For a fleeting moment, she thinks that if she’s just very quiet and stays very still, you’ll go back to your motions and wave off the feeling that someone’s watching. It’s stupid and Cara knows it. Cursing herself, she steps out of the shadows, slickness sticking to her inner thighs with the shifting of her legs.

Her voice is dusty when she speaks, looking down at the floor like a child caught awake after bedtime. “I…I’m sorry I just—” The rain outside rings in her ears. She cracks her knuckles nervously and shifts her weight from leg to leg, thinking of a way to get out of it. “You were being too fucking loud. Stars, I’m sure they can hear you in Nevarro. You’ll have bounty hunters find you in no time if you keep this shit up.” Her words and tone are aggressive, but her eyes tell a different story, as they remain fixated on your heaving chest.

Neither of you move. Between the partial darkness and the helmet, she can’t really bring herself to try to read what Mando’s thinking. You, on the other hand, just look confused…and then, when you draw a line from the woman’s gaze to your naked chest, something else crosses your features. Not anger, not shame—something soft. Compassion, maybe?

Cara doesn’t stay to find out. She drags her feet across the floor to see herself out, as you turn to Mando and seem to tell him something in that secret, silent language of yours. He squeezes your thighs. Her name on your airy voice makes her stop.

“Cara,” you start, “w-would you—um—would you like to stay?”

The mercenary is sure she’s starting to hallucinate shit in an attempt to keep some of her dignity, until she indulges in one final look back and sees you with your arm extended, inviting her to join you.

She doesn’t notice when her legs come to life and drag her towards the couple, nor when her joints bend and sink to your level, kneeling and petrified. It’s only when your fingers brush her inner wrist and she pulls it back instinctively that she comes back to her senses.

Mando’s thumbs are drawing circles below your breasts. “Give her time.”

“You can touch me,” you tell the statue in front of you, but quickly add, “if you want. Or you can—” the bounty hunter must be cramping under your weight, because he repositions his hips, which makes him grunt and cuts you off, “—or you can only watch if you prefer. It’s okay.”

With a smile, you turn your attention back to the man trapped between your legs and resume your grinding. Whether you do it to put up a show for your guest, she’s not sure, but your rocking is stronger this time around, making sure you sink to the hilt and then pull almost completely out, before falling back down. Cara’s holding her breath. Maker, why is she acting like a fucking virgin? Her hands roll into fists when you throw your head back and pull a lustful wail from your insides.

Mando isn’t doing any better when he locks his fingers firmly on the curve of your ass and pants out, “You—you really enjoy the extra attention, don’t—don’t you?”

You exhale through your mouth with a smile and turn to stare straight into Cara’s eyes. “Maybe I d-do.”

It’s the playful glint your eyes and the way you sigh out the last word that make Cara think that a challenge was masked behind the simple statement. It snaps her back into reality.

Okay, then.

While your hunter caresses your backside, two strong hands grab your ribs and lift you a few inches, before bringing you down hard on the girthy phallus that splits you open. You and Mando both cry out at the suddenness of the satisfaction that burns a hole in your insides.

“Maybe Mando stands for your attitude,” Cara tells you as she pinches your right nipple and her face gets close to the other one, “but I don’t.” She traps your left breast in her hot mouth and nibbles at the peak. The Mandalorian—still trapped under—tries thrusting harder, and you grind down faster, short, high whimpers leaving your reddened lips. In the back of Cara’s mind, she feels bad for their generous Sorgan hosts, because there’s no way the whole village hasn’t woken up for the noise. The storm rages more violently, but—somehow—the thunder outside serves as a vessel for your frenzied moans and amplifies them.

Mando grabs two handfuls of your lower cheeks and pushes you further towards his chest, which forces Cara to lean back on her elbows. In the new position, your tits slap around her face and, even though she tries to pull them to her mouth, your whole body is being manhandled too swiftly by the Mandalorian for her to get a hold of you.

Annoyed, Cara places a heavy open palm on your sternum and pushes you back. “Fuck, keep still.” You lean back with no resistance, too limp with pleasure to put up a fight. She climbs back on you and sucks bruises on your collarbone, until her gaze falls on the union where the base of Mando’s sex ends and yours begins. She sees the creamy cum piling down there and—although she can’t tell which one of you is responsible for it—she scoops some with her fingers and uses it to massage it up and down your tense clit.

The muscles of your face cramp and your usual lovely expression contorts into a desperate frown. Her fingers collect more moisture and move faster against your bud, earning her a low purr, but it’s Mando’s head that turns to face her.

“Don’t s-stop,” he forces out, “y-you—th-that…’s m-making her t-tight.” He lets a shaky gasp out through the modulator. “You’re making her s-so fuck-fucking tight.” His member pushes against the snugness of your cunt as he tries to bury himself as deeply as your swollen walls will let him.

Cara complies and pulls the hood of your clit up. The direct pressure makes you jump and lose your balance, but the man below you catches your arms and holds you steady over him. You’re a mess, trembling and sobbing at the ceiling, so the Mandalorian lets go of one of your arms and brings his gloved palm to the back of your neck, working it so that you’re looking down at him. His hips are shaking with anticipation, but he still slows down and his thumb circles the soft skin of your neck. Cara lifts her attention from your soaked folds when she notices you’ve both stopped moving.

If her sleepless nights are any indication, you’ve only been having sex for about a week, but the way he holds you and calms you down tugs at something uncomfortable in Cara. It’s like he has you memorized already. He knows exactly how to touch you and how much you can take. He knows—much to his own detriment—when to stop.

Your breathing falls back to its normal pace and you’re starting to move again when she removes her fingers. You both groan in protest, but Cara just leans back out of the reach of the lamp’s flame and watches your bodies bathe in warm light. Panting, she sees you hold on to each other and comes to terms with the fact that she doesn’t belong wedged between your bodies, where you share something unknown to her. The realization isn’t as devastating as she thought it would be, and she figures it’s better to leave your carnal diversions between you two.

A helmet and a face stare expectantly, much like Rebel troops once focused on her awaiting orders.

Still, she muses with a light grin, that doesn’t mean I can’t teach them anything.

She scoots closer to your cot, and stops where only half of her body is covered in light. Surprisingly, Mando doesn’t pull away when she grabs his hand and guides it towards your upper body.

“You two really have a volume problem,” she quips as she beckons you closer and wraps his hand around your delicate neck. She signals the hunter to squeeze, but he turns to you first in a wordless question. You nod, and Cara’s fingers leave his when he clasps them on the sides of your neck. You sigh.

She then takes your hand and guides it to the base of your lover’s manhood. You mimic the squeeze on your neck. Mando gasps.

The former Rebel leader pulls back to admire her work and—once she’s satisfies with it—leans back on her elbows and slithers a hand inside her pants. The couple is still fixed in position, waiting for an instruction.

“Go ahead,” Cara allows, as she pushes her underwear to the side and mixes the leftover cum on her fingers with her own.

She can tell you’re already exhausted, but you still make an effort to lift your dripping pussy and bear down until your lips hit your palm. She sees your knuckles go white as they clutch harder around Mando’s base. He does the same to your neck, still testing and careful. It’s not until a potentially loud whine threatens to leave you that he intuitively squeezes harder to stop it from touching the damp air. The stronger hold on you makes your eyes roll to the back of your head. It doesn’t take either of you very long to fall into a frantic and vulgar pace, much different from the leisurely one you were working with at the start of the night.

Cara knows you’re teased and tired of waiting and doesn’t expect you to last much longer, so she skips any foreplay with herself and goes straight for her own sensitive button, swiping it with a roughness that she didn’t dare apply on yours. The sensation makes her her legs shake. She goes harder. Within seconds, she’s breathless, just as desperate as you two to reach her release.

“Fuck—fuck her harder,” she orders the Mandalorian when a calloused finger draws quick circles around her clit.

You’re basically bouncing on him now, but the disciplined man still manages to obey. His grip on your neck turns to steel, as he clasps his free fingers on the fat of your backside and slams you down to meet his thrusts. Your mouth gapes open and, if not for the gloved fingers around you, Cara’s sure your screams would make the walls tremble. The lamp—almost out of oil—shines on the plump tears of satisfaction that slide down your cheeks and fall on your partner’s shirt.

Finally, an invisible force seems to shove you forwards into Mando’s chest. You’re still convulsing on top of him when he brings both hands to your lower back to fuck himself into you with all the stamina left in his system. Unfortunately, there’s nobody to grasp his throat when it spits out a long groan. Cara sees his arousal seep out of you.

She gives you a moment to breathe, then stands and rounds the collapsed bodies, kneeling in front of your legs. She taps your thigh, hoping you haven’t passed out yet.

“Open your legs for me, sweetheart. Let me see.” But you don’t respond, so Mando uses his remaining energy to push your legs apart for Cara’s enjoyment. His hands drop with a stump on your back, and she’s startled by the raucous snores that leave the helmet.

She shakes her head and mumbles to herself, “Maker, they can’t even sleep quietly.”

Her digits go back inside her underwear while she absorbs the way your pussy flutters and twitches around nothing, dripping with your cum and your beau’s seed. The sight and her fingers are enough to summon a strong but quiet orgasm from her. Her walls are still clenching and she’s trying to control her breathing when the oil lamp finally dies out.

Once again, Cara Dune is engulfed in darkness. This time around, though, her eyes have learned to adjust to it; she can make out the outline of your conjoined bodies. Tasting her fingers, she stands and walks to the exit.

Her arm is lifting the cloth that acts as a door when she glances back over her shoulder. You’re sleeping noisily, but peacefully, lost in each other. She wonders if she could ever allow herself to be that vulnerable with someone else.

Someday, she reflects, someday.

Outside the tent, Cara’s surprised she’s not met with a monsoon. She didn’t even notice when the rain stopped. She shrugs and continues on her short way to her hut, hoping to catch a few hours of sleep.

The sun is coming up on the horizon.

#the mandolarian #the mandolorian x reader #the mandalorian smut #the mandalorian x you #cara dune #cara dune x reader #cara dune x you #smut #pedro pascal #gina carano #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin smut #din djarin x you

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secondhand-trash · 5 years ago

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Yule Shoot Your Eyes Out

Ficmas day 6 aka Christmas Eve!!!!

A/N: everything after that one use of “fuck” was written while I was drunk so if my grammar flew out of the window, I’m so sorry but I had no idea what I was doing.

Pairing: Bakugou Katsuki x reader

Description: You had no idea how you were supposed to face your once best friend who you grew apart from after growing up.

Word count: 3193

FOB! FOB! FOB!

‘Don’t come home for Christmas.’

You could feel the dread pending up as you stood outside the large house. You had been staring at the building by the pavement for at least 15 minutes yet you kept finding more excuses for you to do anything but walk up.

You did not want to be here. You did not want to be here at all.

You had protested when your mother asked you to take the stuff she had bought for Mitsuki to her house, saying that it could be a good chance for you to catch up with the woman who watched you grew into who you were.

“Perhaps Katsuki would be there too! You two could hang out, it’s been a while.” Your mother said with a wide smile as she shooed you out of the front door and slammed it in your face despite your whines and groans. She thought that she found a good reason to convince you that the task was not as bad as you painted it out to be, completely unaware that what she thought was a selling point was exactly why you were so hell bent on refusing in the first place.

You had no idea what you would do if you see him. You sighed, feeling the torment in your heart boiling up as you remembered how there was a time when you would have felt the exact opposite to reluctance when your mother told you that you would be going to your childhood friend’s house.

Considering how your respective mothers were best friends since high school, it was only natural that you would grow up around Bakugou Katsuki starting from a young age that you could barely remember exactly when. He was, for a long while, your best friend and you were certain that you were his as well. Back then when there was nothing more to the world than the tiny neighbourhood you lived in, the few hours per week that you got to spend with him was the happiest times your young self could experience.

He was never an easy child to be around, always so quick to act on whatever he deemed as appropriate and getting you into trouble as he dragged you along with his plans. You were always yelled at for being slow or not being strong enough to completely follow his lead during the games of pretend you would play together but despite the harsh tone of the child, he had never left you behind even once, always waiting on you with a sneer while you ran to his side with a grin. Although there really wasn’t much things of importance that went through your mind at that age, you had always seen Katsuki as someone you could rely on.

There was this time when you were both five and your parents decided that it would be cute to go out and have dinner together during Christmas break. After the meal, you took a stroll on the busy streets. It had been a while since your mom last meet up with her friend and she was overjoyed to be reunited with Mitsuki again. Your mother was happy talking to her friend, unaware as you were trailing behind her. But you didn’t mind, you were ecstatic that you got to spend time with your friend as well.

“Oh Katsuki look!” You pointed to the side of the road excitedly. There was a street performer setting up right by the street. “Look at that!”

He let out a soft “Tch” as you tugged at his sleeve to go closer. He was not like you, he had no interest in theses stupid performances. At least that was what he said as he “unwillingly” stayed with you so you could watch the magic tricks by the street performer. He felt like there was something the both of you had forgotten about, but he could not exactly pinpoint what it was.

“That was so cool! Right, Katsuki?” You said to your friend but he didn’t seem to hear what you said as he looked around with slight worry in his eyes. You tilted your head, confused as to what got him like this. Did he not enjoy the performance?

You followed his gaze around and froze in place when you realised that all of the tall figures that blocked your view were of people you did not know, your mom nowhere to be seen. As people come and go on the bustling street that was starting to dim, the darkness only added to the panic you were feeling.

You shouldn’t have been distracted, now you couldn’t find your mom anywhere. What if she didn’t notice? What if you never find your way home? What if you never see your parents again?

As your young feasible mind travelled down and down the worst possible scenarios there could be, you felt a burning at the back of your throat. Katsuki immediately snapped his head towards you when the first choked back sniffle got to his ears. “Don’t... don’t cry you idiot!”

He was never the comforting type, and the sight of his best friend tearing up only messed up his best attempt at being logical even more. Was he not scared? Of course he was, the many people walking past where the two of you were standing made him feel a bit dizzy almost. But you were already on the verge of crying, and as the strong one in this friendship, it was his responsibility to protect you at a time like this.

The sob came out as a hiccup when you felt Katsuki gripping tightly onto your hand and started walking. Getting pulled to go along, you had forgotten about the discomfort at the tip of your nose that made you want to tear up as you were too shocked by his tight hold on your hand.

If you had been a little bit more observant, you would know that he was just as nervous and unsure of the whole situation as you were. He was holding onto your hand just a bit too tightly and sweat was starting to form on his palm. You took his action as a way to comfort you but little did you know that it was his clumsy way of trying to be braver himself. He had to look brave in front of you, he took on the role to look after you even when he could practically feel his own hand shaking.

You did not say a word, only trying to keep up with your friend who was marching forward, the small figure of the blond leading the way through the crowd of people forever engraved into your mind even years after that.

Bakugou Katsuki did not say anything as his mother fumed, yelling at him for not staying close to the adults. You watched as he bit on his lips, trying to stay silent as he took all the blame for what was necessarily your fault.

You had decided that he was the most heroic person you would ever know right then and there, even though you were merely a child who had no idea what a hero was.

And you grew up.

You should have known better than to think that nothing would change. He changed, you changed.

For you, the turning point was when his quirk started to manifest. When he got the first grasp of his own explosion, you were the first person he rushed to. “I’m showing this to you before I show anyone else!” He had proudly said to you when you watched in awe of his powerful quirk. Yours was nowhere near as flashy as his and although it was hidden under his usual facade of mean words and rude tone, he had guaranteed you that you would always be a part of his team no matter what you quirk was.

Imagine the hurt and betrayal you felt when you went up to him like usual that day, excitedly wanting to show him a new trick you had discovered you could do with your quirk only to have him tell you that he did not have time. With the wolf whistles of his new group of friends from afar that made you unease, he raised his voice at you for the first time ever and told you to leave him alone. When he walked away without doing so much as sparing one glance your way, the dull ache in your chest as simply too much to bare.

You did not see your friend stopping in his tracks as he heard a familiar sob passing through his ears. You did not see his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fists, biting the inside of his cheeks so hard that he could almost taste a metallic tang.

You only knew that he had left you behind. All you could hold onto was the faint memory of him gripping your hand tightly in the crowd. And like that, the boy who you once trusted with all your heart was gone forever.

He apologized to you the next day, his head dropping low and his eyes avoiding yours. The void in your heart was still there, tearing it open by the seams. But still you smiled at him and said that you didn’t mind, hoping that you could latch onto whatever false hope that you could find for yourself that he was still the same person you grew up with. The same person who was grumpy, impulsive, and even offensive sometimes but you had come to love even when there was only so much you know about that feeling at that age.

But you knew that no matter how hard you tried to pretend that it didn’t bother you, that thorn that was stabbed onto your heart would never truly be removed. Not while the two of you pretended that nothing happened.

No words could be used to explain that odd mix of emotions in your mind as you noticed that you now had to look up to meet the eyes of your friend. You watched as the softness of his cheeks faded, replaced by the rounded edges that would soon turn into the sharp angles of a young man. You watched as he got more and more powerful each day. You watched as he slowly stopped coming over to your place with his mom. You watched as Mitsuki apologetically say to you that her son was out with some friends whenever you swung by in hopes of catching up with him. You watched as the image you had of Katsuki in your head slowly started to mismatch the boy in reality.

You watched as the distance between you and your once best friend grew further and further apart, until that was all you could do, watch. Until the day finally comes when you stopped missing the warmth of his hand on yours.

That was what hurt you the most to think of. There was no fight, no big moment that made you stopped talking to him. Only time, time and the painful truth of knowing that nothing stayed the same forever.

It had been years since you last talked to Katsuki, you realised as you remained still in front of the gates of his house. You had been here multiple times even after he moved into the dorms of his school, so why were you so nervous this time round?

It was winter break, you smacked your own face as you remembered, he might be there, that’s why.

You would never admit it out loud, but you always paid extra attention to the news whenever the famous academy that you knew you friend were at was mentioned.

You should go in. You had to at some point, why not get it done and over with? You thought to yourself as you lifted a finger to press onto the doorbell only to have it froze in place midair as all the worries in your head rushed through once more.

Please don’t be at home, please don’t be at home, please don’t be-

‘You’re the last thing I want to see underneath the tree.’

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Fuck.

“Oh, Ka-” You paused as the name that was once so familiar to you stopped at the tip of your tongue. That name was not yours to call anymore. “Bakugou.”

His eyebrows twitched at how stiff you sounded. It did not sound right, but he let it slide. “Are you gonna go in or what?”

Gingerly following him in, you stood behind him as he twisted the key and flicked the lights on. The house was the same as how you remembered it to be, it was nice to see that at least something didn’t change. “It’s just me, the stupid parents are out.”

You nodded, trying to hide the drop in your stomach as you heard that it was just him. You were here for a reason, just put down whatever you mom wanted you to get to Mitsuki and leave. “I’m just gonna-”

“Do you want anything?” Bakugou asked as he motioned to the kitchen at the other end of the hallway. Why couldn’t you act all formal and find a proper respond like normal humans do when you were with him? Perhaps it was because you would always remember how there was a time when formalities were non-existent between the two of you and now you felt like you were talking to a stranger, a stranger that you knew so so well.

“Water would be fine.” You forced out a polite smile as he huffed and the blonde’s figure disappeared into the kitchen. With a deep sigh, you sat down onto the couch and wondered what you were supposed to do under this worst case scenario you had thought of.

It was awkward. It was really awkward.

Taking a huge gulp of the cold water, you tried to distract yourself from the sheer torture that was sitting next to Bakugou while neither of you say a word. In all honesty, there were many things that you would like to say to him but you were not brave enough to say any of them out loud. Instead, you watched him in the most discrete way you could manage.

Yes, you watched. It seemed like you spent most of your time with him watching his every move while he enjoyed being watched.

He had grown a lot since you last saw him, that was a given. You had been shocked when you watched the live stream of the UA sports festival and saw the way your friend fought. It was still the same cut throat, ruthless way you had known but only more skillful. The arms that were once lanky now adorned with muscles that came from pure hard work. The line of his jaw now so sharp that the last hint of boyishness in his features were threatening to slowly fade away.

Bakugou got hot. Was that inappropriate to say about your childhood friend?

“What are you staring at?”

“What?” You tensed up when you were suddenly met with the direct glare of those crimson eyes.

“You’re staring at me.” You immediately backed away when he stood up and looked right at you, only there was nowhere to hide as your back hit the couch.

You held your breath as he just stayed there, standing right in front of you with his hand at the side of head, his legs trapping you in between them. What the fuck was this? Your eyes widened at the realisation of how close he was to you. You went so long without even talking to him and all of a sudden you were faced with this?

He sighed, slightly backing away at your startled expression. “You’ve always been like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like you had no sense of danger towards anyone.” He hissed, “Like you would just be nice to anyone. Like you would not say anything if someone pick on you. Like you would cry, but not fight back if something goes wrong. Like anyone could get close to you and you would accept them. Like if it was someone else, you would still not back away when they trap you in between their arms like I do now.”

“Oh no,” you whispered, “only you.”

He bit his lips, lowering his head as his eyebrows knotted together. That was all he wanted to say to you, all the things that he did not have the guts to say when you were still somewhere within his reach. Only him, that was all he wanted to hear for so long and he had no clue that you could still tug at his heart strings with those words he had only heard in his wildest fantasies even after so long.

You had changed so much, and he could not hold it back after seeing you like this.

“Then what about this? Would you let other people do this to you?” He growled before dipping down, capturing you in a sudden kiss that sent your entire body into a frenzy. It was not pretty, he barely moved at all as his mind was overwhelmed by the fact that you were actually there, letting him kiss you without even protesting a bit. Closing his eyes shut, he almost started to think that you might be enjoying it as well.

When he pulled away, your brain was still foggy from what just happened. That was the boy you were in love with, with his eyes closed and his face just mere breaths away from yours. The same person who torn you apart. Bakugou Katsuki. That Bakugou Katsuki, and he just kissed you.

“I missed you.” The Katsuki you knew had never been a soft person but at least for now, he sounded almost tender, like he was afraid of what you were going to say next.

“You fucking leave me behind.” You said, and the way you clenched your jaw made his heart ache.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbled and looked away, the way he lowered his head reminded you an awful lot of the time when he shielded you from the blame that you should have took.

You sighed and reached out to touch his face, he immediately snapped up to look at you at the tender touch. You could never truly stay mad at him. “If you do that to me again, I swear to god I’ll cry right in front of you.”

He did not let you go on as he placed another chaste kiss on your lips. Never, he would never make that same mistake again. He had went through way too many nights wondering what you were doing, cursing himself for pushing you away to hurt you like that all over again.

Never, he was not letting go again. After all, he had failed his role as the one who was supposed to protect you for far too long.

‘Merry Christmas, I could care less.’

#bnha imagines #bnha imagine #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki #bakugou imagine #bnha x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki imagine #bnha #boku no hero academia #mha imagines #mha x reader #mha imagine

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dammitadolfnomorecake · 4 years ago

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Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt.16

Keith was sitting on the front steps when Lance pulled into his driveway. Their meeting for a moment, before Pidge was leaning past him

“Get in, loser! We’re going out!”

Rubbing his ear, Lance didn’t appreciate Pidge’s loud voice abusing his eardrum

“I’m fine right here!”

“Don’t be like that. We’re going ghost hunting, get in the back!”

“Lance was going to drop me in town...”

“Why? Everything’s shut now apart from the bars. Stop being antisocial and come look for ghosts with us!”

That was how Keith ended up in the boot of Lance’s bronco. Lance could feel the tension from the driver’s seat, Pidge having climbed over into the back so she and Hunk could talk with Keith, who’d barely gotten two words in thanks to the pair of them trying their best to make him feel involved. Lance had seen it on Keith’s face when he’d pulled up. Keith looking up at him like he’d kicked him to the curb without good reason. If he stopped to think about it, Keith would fill that hole in the group that his eventual leaving with bring. Plus, Keith would be there to help Matt reconnect with his family whenever that eventually happened... A whole lot of roads seemed to be leading back to Keith, and Lance couldn’t put up stop signs fast enough.

Swinging by Pidge’s so she could collect her beloved camera, Lance stared up at the visitors centre before them. He’d had enough trouble last time they were here, and though there wouldn’t be any drunks this time, he was sure his friends would find a way to make trouble all over again

“‘Sup, Losers?! This is the Garrison Trio, coming at ya with a new video. Today we’re talking another look at arguably Garrison’s most haunted address! Yep, that’s right, your favourite visitors centre, and mine, it’s the old Garrison Hospital!”

Stuck in a silent “staring but not staring” battle with Keith watching Lance out the corner of his eye, he’d missed Pidge passing her camera off to Hunk so she could film her introduction

“Tonight we have our usual favourites, Me, Hunk, and Lance, but we also have a guest tagging along to see the work we do! Pan to Keith”

Hunk moved the camera, Keith not even noticing he’d been recorded. Lance had the feeling Keith wasn’t supposed to be being recorded. Anyone who saw his face online wouldn’t be able to forget him

“Yep! Our little trio has become a foursome! The awesome foursome. Now, if you click the link below this video you’ll be able to read up on the chilling history and the role the hospital played during world war three! Let’s just say, a lot of people died in a lot of not so lovely ways. Let’s head in!”

As Pidge took the camera from Hunk, Lance took her by the arm

“You can’t film Keith”

“What?”

“You can’t film him. It’s something to do with Shiro’s work. He works on things for the government, for like big bad multimillion dollar corporations that are up to dodgy things. I totally blanked on it, but Shiro will get in trouble”

Pidge raised an eyebrow

“I didn’t know you and Shiro were that tight”

“I was taking selfies and he caught me”

The lies hurt, but Keith’s face getting out their in there videos could bring trouble on all of them, not just Keith... Any vampires with a grudge would see their faces with his and they already knew where to come...

“Oh shit...”

Lance nodded, hoping his facial features portrayed the right emotions. Hunk was the one stole the role of genius from under Pidge’s nose

“I think you’ve got a dusk mask in the glove box from that colour run we didn’t end up doing... he could wear that?”

“Perfect. You two go ahead and I’ll get it. Don’t bring it up though, he’s super socially stunted”

Pidge fluttered her eyelashes

“Is someone getting protective of their “not boyfriend, boyfriend?””

“No, but you’ll have to get protective of that camera if you don’t stop bringing that up”

Pidge’s look turned to betrayal, then acceptance

“Fiiiiine. Do what you have to do. Hunk and I will go ahead. Come on, Hunk”

Rifling through his glovebox, Lance found the branded face mask. The colour run had two components to it, first you did a 5km walk/run, then in some weird kind of sales seasonal thing, there was a kind of sideshow at the end with live music, games, and seeing it was around Halloween, a corn maze and a haunted house. They’d paid, skipped the run, covertly let themselves into the corn maze, beaten that, then hit up the haunted house. Pidge deciding they all needed souvenirs, the mask being one of them... not that it was overly spooky. It was a simple black face mask with splatters of neon paint across the front, a few “teeth” on the right side and the fun run logo underneath. It was actually kind of “Keith”. Not that he was going there.

Keith had hung back as Pidge and Hunk unlocked the visitor centre and dealt with security. Forced to do the talking thing, Lance held the mask out to Keith who eyed it

“What’s that?”

“Pidge films these things”

“And?”

“And she puts them online. I didn’t think you’d want your face out there. If anyone saw the videos then you’d have your cover blown in further missions, making it harder for you to help the people who need help. I told Pidge that Shiro did covert work for the government so you needed to keep a low profile. I’m not sure she got it, but with Matt and Shiro being tight I think she was willing to let it slide. It hasn’t been worn, and it should cover most of your face. You can use my jacket too if you want, just keep the hood up”

Keith took the mask, staring down at as he tilted his neck. Lance automatically finding his eyes trying to find where he’d bitten the man. He’d never bitten anyone before so he didn’t know the trick of healing a bite to nothing. His own marks from turning were still there for the most part. Keith’s neck was smooth, Lance unable to see any blemishes. God! What was he doing...?! Nope... Fucking Keith

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you got dragged along by my friends deciding they’re also your friends”

“I thought you said I was a useless hunter”

“No. I said you had anger issues, like right now you’re getting angry at me. Do you want my jacket or not?”

“No. This’ll be fine. She really believes, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah. That’s probably why Matt has kept his distance. She wants to be part of this world, and I’m not about to let that happen”

“So you sabotage her?”

“No. Most of what humans collect isn’t real or it’s reflections. I come along not only to show I support her and Hunk, but so nothing happens to either of them. There’s death in that place and I don’t want something bad to happen. I also don’t plan on telling her about Matt, you, or Shiro. It’s not fun lying, but it does keep them safe. If she ever finds out the truth, I know she’s going to be angry, and I’m prepared for that. You better come along, both my friends seem pretty keen on you, meaning if you hurt them, I will hunt you down myself”

“I’m not going to harm a human”

“Good. Keep it that way”

Pidge was already explaining various exhibits in the visitor centre when Lance and Keith slipped through the front door. A shudder rolled up Lance’s spine, earning him a jab in the side from Keith. What was Keith getting annoyed about? People shuddered all the time for no good reason

“What?”

“You shuddered”

“It happens”

“Don’t fob me off like that. There’s something here, isn’t there? Where is it?”

“Oh great, so vampires and werewolves aren’t enough for you now? You want to hunt ghosts to?”

What was Keith going to do? Stab it? The mental image of Keith stabbing a ghost was too funny, a snort of laughter escaping

“Look... if there’s something...”

“Relax. Yeah, there’s death here but I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to acknowledge it’s presence”

“But you can see it?”

Lance shook his head. That’s what he had his trust glasses for

“Nope”

“You’re lying to me”

“I’m not lying. And keep your voice down, do you really want Pidge and Hunk to know about us?

Keith shot him an unimpressed look. Lance could have worded that better

“This isn’t over”

It could be, if Keith dropped the subject and kicked away like a bottle cap under the fridge that you couldn’t be bothered picking up, so it laid there undiscovered for another 6 months, when it and another dozen finally popped up to remind you how lazy you were about cleaning

“Oh, goody”

“Lance, come over here, you’re better at this side of things”

Lance rolled his eyes at Pidge. She was doing a bang up job making the visitors centre sound like the must visit spot as it was. Walking over to her, he eyed the shackles in the display case with disgust. He couldn’t really justify the shackling of mine broken soldiers, though some had to be chained down to prevent them from taking their own lives. He’d gone through a stage like that, not that anyone other than Coran knew. He’d had a mental breakdown with the stress of final exams the first time around. He knew too many answers and didn’t want to score a perfect score, that would have made him stand out too much. He aimed for above average on all his tests and exams, but sometimes he slipped up and got too perfect a score that drew everyone’s attention to him when all he wanted to do was blend in. He’d been beaten by a bunch of jealous classmates for his trouble, then broken down, taking himself to Coran who helped piece him back together again. Yeah, Coran would always be his go to guy

“Shackles...”

Letting the narrative of fear roll of his tongue, he talked about the deteriorated mental condition of the soldiers and how things worked when it came to getting them help and the legal issues faced by their families. Lance was kind of sure no one wanted to sit through this, because he was pretty sure he was the only one who nerded out over the law these days. Keith had moved to stand behind Hunk, who was filming, his arms were crossed, feet shoulder width apart, with an amused look on his face that Lance felt like punching.

“And thank you for that Lance, somehow you made all the legal stuff seem that much more boring than last time. Alrighty then, why don’t we go see if we can find us a ghost?”

Hunk was already skittering, letting out a squeak as Pidge motioned for him to follow her, leaving Lance to fall into step beside Keith. Great. He couldn’t just leave Keith in town once everything was over. Not with Hunk and Pidge on a mission to make the man their friend

“Are you usually like that?”

Lance had no idea what Keith meant. Sure, he might get a little technical, but it wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last

“Like what?”

“All technical? Doesn’t it turn viewers away? I mean, I don’t think they needed to know about the bylaws of Garrison”

“Oh, shut up. We don’t get many views as it is”

“You’ll get even less if you spend the whole time ranting”

“I wasn’t ranting, I was explaining. A soldiers mentality doesn’t end on the battlefield. Most of them never wanted to die. Most of them never wanted to wrapped up in war to begin with. They fought for us and for what they believed in, and as a whole, we failed them. If we don’t educated people on the past then there’s not much hope for the future”

“You, like, really believe in this, don’t you?”

“I believe in the belief people hold. If that’s what you mean?”

“I mean this legal thing... isn’t there anything else you’d rather be doing?”

“Like ripping families apart so I can feast on their children?”

Keith groaned at him, Lance internally smirking. Yeah, he remembered and wasn’t going to forget any time soon

“In my defence, your lot are mostly scum”

“And what about me? You listened in this morning”

“I... don’t want to talk about that”

“Why? Does it make me all that much harder to kill knowing I actually care about my clients?”

“As you rob them in fees”

Keith’s comment rubbed him the wrong way, Lance spitting in an angry whisper

“Yep. I’m so horrible that I charged a family a whole $50 for hours of my time. You on the other hand, if I charged at douche prices, would be paying me something like $10,000 for taking up so much of my damn time. I know I’m a monster, you can lay off with the damn mocking”

Starting to jog to catch up with Hunk and Pidge, Lance wanted to go home to bed. His arm was aching, as was his ankle. He hadn’t had the chance to drink since jumping out the window and his lack of routine was really getting to him. Catching up to him again, Keith decided he still wanted to talk

“Why law?”

“Why law, what?”

“You could have been anything”

“I could have, but I don’t think you’d understand”

“Try me”

“Well, I don’t want kids out there to suffer. I don’t want to see them caught up in fights that should stay between parents. I want to stand up for them. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. I’m lame and I know it”

“So your own childhood trauma pushed you down this path. What would you have done if you’d never made it into law?”

Lance didn’t miss the way his words had thrown been back at him. Shrugging it off, he wasn’t letting Keith under his skin

“I could have been a dancer. I did entertain the idea of being a hairdresser, but a vampire with scissors means risking a cut and an accidental turning. I like my job. Can’t say I don’t like the idea of yours, but it wouldn’t be my first choice of career choice”

“Will you two shut up? You’re scaring the ghosts away”

Lance’s eyes accidentally met Keith’s, both of them snorting and looking away from each other. If only they were, then they could all head home early

“Sorry, Pidge. Keith was telling me how scared he was”

“I did not!”

“Shhhh... didn’t you hear Pidge? Your big mouth is scaring the ghosts away”

“Mine? You won’t shut up”

“Both of you shut up, or you’re being sent outside to wait”

Hunk raised his hand

“Uh, can I go wait outside?”

“You’re the camera man, grow a back bone!”

Hunk gave Pidge a mock salute at her snap, which she flipped him off over. Lance made the motion of zipping of his mouth and throwing away the key. Keith gave a shrug. Apparently he didn’t hold a healthy fear of Pidge... well, that wouldn’t remain for long.

No. Keith barely lasted half an hour before he incurred Pidge’s wrath. Like a misbehaving school child, Keith was sent to sit at the top of the stairs, all because he accidentally tripped over the lip of the door frame. Pidge was sure she’d seen some kind of ghostly orb, sent fleeing by Keith’s stupidity. Making the mistake of snorting over Keith being taken down a peg, Lance was sent to sit beside Keith... both of them not looking at each other, to avoid bursting into laughter because being in a time out was ridiculous. There wasn’t anything there. The orb was a reflection of light from the camera, and that’s all that’d been to it. When Hunk moved, the reflected light disappeared, Keith didn’t deserve being yelled at... but fuck it hadn’t been funny.

#once bitten twice stupid #ashrathe rose #klance #a/b/o #vampire Lance #idiot keith #bottom Lance in future

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rohad93 · 5 years ago

Text

Authority Online : ch 11

“What do you think about camping?” Celeste asked while they had dinner in a restaurant two weeks after she had spent the night at Jaune’s place.

This was the first time they had seen each other since that Sunday morning because Celeste had an influx of graduation cake orders for all the upcoming graduation parties that required her and both her assistants to work nearly nonstop the previous weekend.

Jaune had been disappointed by not being able to see her but she understood and had used the weekend to get ahead in her own work, and it wasn’t as though they didn’t talk on the phone whenever they had a free moment, texting during their lunches or whenever they took breaks.

Finally, it was the end of May and all the orders had been picked up for the parties going on this weekend, and Celeste had invited her out to dinner, which Jaune quickly accepted; more than a little eager to see her.

The two weeks gave Celeste time to think of ways she could get her girlfriend to interact with her family so Rose wouldn’t be so suspicious and untrusting of Jaune.

“Camping, like outside in a tent?” She looked up from her dinner and asked.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Next weekend my sister, brother in law and I are taking Steven camping for the long weekend, I was wondering if you’d want to come with us…”

“It sounds like a family trip to me…” Jaune was looking back down at her food.

“Yes, but, Rose… she was not at all happy with me for not telling her that I hadn’t planned to come back from your place till later Sunday, she was afraid you’d murdered me,” she snorted.

“What?” Jaune looked up at that, eyes wide.

“Not seriously… probably,” she mumbled the last part under her breath. “It’s just that they don’t know you at all yet, so I think spending so much time with you makes my sister a little nervous," she explained.

Jaune hummed, picking at her food. She understood what Celeste was talking about, she and her sister and her family were very close and she was going to have to get to know them if she intended to hang around, but she had never really been an outdoor person. In fact, she normally actively avoided that kind of thing. She sunburned horribly and was an attractant to mosquitoes. Were it anything else there wouldn’t have been a once of hesitation.

“I’m not sure, Celeste, I...,” she started and could see the ever so slightly disappointed look that began to creep onto her girlfriends face that she was trying to hide and immediately felt guilt creep up on her that that beautiful face should ever be anything but happy.

“I don’t really know how to camp, I’ve never been,” she said instead of what she wanted to say, which was that she didn’t now nor ever, had any interest in camping.

Celeste seemed to perk up at that.

“It’s really not hard,” she promised. “We used to go all the time as kids, I can teach you. It’s really a lot of fun, this will be the first time we’ve ever taken Steven.,” she excitedly rambled off and Jaune knew, one way or another, she was going to end up camping.

~ ~ ~

It was still pitch black out when she pulled up in front of the bakery the following Saturday. The street was devoid of cars, the only light coming from the streetlamps. The neon green light from her radio clock glowed in the darkness, showing the time.

4:55 AM

She yawned and turned off the ignition and grabbed her to-go cup of coffee and climbed out of her car. She pulled her duffle bag out of the backseat and closed the door before hitting the lock on the key fob.

The shop’s front door was open as promised, and she quietly made her way through the dark shop into the kitchen. Everything was dark and still in here as well. She climbed the dark stairwell up to the third floor. Bypassing the second-floor apartment, only glancing at it as she moved up the stairs to the top floor and knocked on the door.

It was only a few seconds before the door swung open, revealing her broadly grinning girlfriend.

“You’re right on time.” She stepped forward and Jaune smiled to herself as she stood on her toes to peck the lawyer’s lips. “Did you get everything you needed?

“I think so.” she gave her duffle bag a shake, drawing the baker’s gaze downward.

“Great, we should be leaving in just a few minutes. You can come in, I’m just finishing up a few things…” She moved to let the blonde come in as she disappeared down a hall.

Jaune sat her bag on the floor by the door as she walked in. This was the first time she had ever been inside Celeste’s apartment and somehow it was exactly as she figured it would be.

The living room was painted in a pale blue like the bakery lobby downstairs and the furniture was a light pine colored wood with white accents, giving the place a light airy feeling.

She spotted the kitchen and remembering all of the baker’s comments about her own kitchen let curiosity get the better of her as she walked over to inspect the area.

It was clean, with everything seemingly put away in its proper place, but it was a bit… cramped. The fridge was pushed up against the side of the stove on one side, the only bits of counter space held a block of knives and a couple of cutting boards. The spice rack was hung up by magnets on the side of the fridge, facing the stove.

On the other side was the sink and equal parts, small squares of counter space as the other side.

Jaune glanced at the fridge door, covered in various photos and slips of paper with cute little magnets.

A family photo of Steven and his parents, one of the boy and Celeste at the park it looked like, and another, much older one nestled between a grocery list and some bills.

It looked like it was taken in the woods, around a firepit.

A couple, maybe in their later twenties, with two young girls standing in front of them, both dressed in winter pants and jackets, The smaller girl had a head of thick curly hair and the other had long silver-white hair falling over her shoulders and in front of her cobalt eyes. All four were smiling brightly at the camera.

“Recognize them?” A voice whispered in her ear making her jump, whipping around to find Celeste smiling at her.

“I’m sorry…,” Jaune started, but Celeste just laughed.

“I wouldn’t have let you come in and left you alone if I didn’t expect you to look around, Jaune. It’s fine,” she assured her with an easy smile.

“Your family?” Jaune asked though it wasn’t really a question.

“Mhmm” Was the affirmative. “They didn’t really like taking photos, so there aren’t many.” She looked at the faded photo with its stains and tiny tears on the edges fondly. “It was from one of our camping trips.”

"So I see…"

"Rose is especially excited to start taking Steven. It was one of the few things our parents ever did with us. They worked a lot the rest of the time. Those trips were some of the few times we got to spend with them when they weren’t exhausted from work," she explained.

“I can relate,” Jaune said, still studying the photo but Celeste was now studying her.

“Oh?”

“My father had just started his own practice after I was born, he worked constantly, even on most weekends he had other things he needed to be doing, but some of my fondest memories of him are of the two of us sitting in the living room playing chess all day when I was a kid.” She said this while starring at the photo but it was apparent by the hooded look in her eyes that she was far away.

“Is that a touchy subject for you?” Celeste asked bringing the lawyer back and making her turn to look at the baker.

“What, my father?” she asked looking confused. Celeste nodded.

“You very rarely talk about him…” She had noticed this over the month and a half they had been seeing each other.

“Ah, no. It’s just… I guess that there’s no one to talk about him with is all. My mother has mentioned him maybe all of three times since he died.” She shrugged and Celeste frowned.

“Does…” she paused, unsure how or even if to phrase her question. “Does she not miss him?” she finally said. Jaune blinked, wide-eyed at the question, as though she couldn’t fathom a more ridiculous question.

“I understand why you might think that. I know how my mother seems to come off,” she admitted. “She misses him very much, I imagine talking about him just hurts her. My parents loved each other madly, though I doubt I’ll ever understand it, they were…. very different.” She chuckled. “A lawyer and a cabaret dancer.” She grinned.

“How did they meet?” Celeste looked at the grinning face and couldn’t help but smile herself.

“Ah, from what I’ve always been told, when my mother was about twenty she was doing a show one night and some guy got grabby and yanked her off stage, she landed in the orchestra pit and cracked her head open on some equipment.” She pointed to her own forehead where her mother now had a broad, but faded scar in the center of her forehead, one usually covered with makeup.

Celeste grimaced at that.

“The next thing she knew she was being picked up and carried off by man to the parking lot to go to the hospital, dripping blood all over his car. He stayed with her until someone else came. That was my father.”

“Oh, wow. That certainly would make an impression wouldn't it?"

"Apparently." Jaune crossed her arms. "They were inseparable ever after..." Her thoughts turned to her mother, no doubt asleep at home, alone in that gigantic house. Celeste’s voice drew her attention back to the present.

"So you got your dashing charm from him it seems " She smiled toothily as the blonde flushed and cleared her throat.

“Maybe so…,” she managed to quickly pull herself together and smirk, despite the hint of color still dusting her face.

They were to busy flirting to notice the front door open or the footsteps quickly approaching.

“It’s kind of early in the morning for that isn’t it?”

Both jolted as Rose made herself known, standing at the edge of the kitchen with her arms folded over her chest and giving them both a look.

“I was just getting the last of my things together,” Celeste said, giving her sister an annoyed look that left little to interpretation. The kindergarten teacher didn’t seem affected at all.

“Greg is loading the van downstairs, we’re just waiting for you two.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the front door.

“We’ll be down in a moment,” the tone of Celeste’s voice left no room for argument.

”Don’t be long.” Were her parting words as she turned and left the apartment as quickly as she had come. Celeste rolled her eyes.

Ever since their brief argument two weeks ago she had been rather touchy whenever the topic of Jaune came up and she understood why, really. As far as Rose was concerned Jaune was a stranger she had never even properly been introduced to that she was spending all her free time with.

She desperately hoped that this trip might help alleviate some of that and if nothing else put Rose at ease when she was with the blonde for any extended periods of time.

Like overnight.

“She doesn’t like me,” Jaune stated plainly.

“It’s not that she doesn’t like you, darling, she just doesn’t know you yet. I’m confident though that by the end of this trip if you’re your usual, charming self, she won’t be near as suspicious of you.” She reached out and took hold of one of Jaune’s hands.

“I know we haven’t been seeing each other very long, but it should be obvious that I care for you very much, Jaune.” She squeezed the blonde’s fingers. “I really need the two of you to get along.”

“I’ll try.” She squeezed back.

“That’s all I ask.” she smiled. “We better get going now.”

Celeste locked the door and the quickly walked downstairs to the front of the shop.

“What is that?” Jaune asked as they stepped out onto the cement outside the shop.

A large, 70’s style van with a space mural painted on the side along with the words ‘Mr. Universe’ in large blocky font sat out front with the headlights on and the back doors open.

A man popped his out from behind the doors and smiled at the two of them before walking over.

“Hey, Celeste, and you must be Jaune.” He held out his hand which Jaune reached out to shake on instinct if nothing else.

“Jaune, this is my sister’s husband, Greg.” Celeste introduced the slightly rotund man with a mullet.

“Nice to meet you,” she offered.

“Ditto, hopefully, we all have a good time this weekend.” He glanced a little nervously at his wife, strapping their young son into his car seat and Jaune realized that this man must be well aware of his wife’s animosity to her, though he seemed far more friendly.

“Let me take your bags.” He reached out and Celeste handed over her, so Jaune gave it to him.

He tossed them in the back and held his arm out to the open doors of the back of the van

“After you, ladies and we can get this show on the road.

“What?”

#bellow diamond #yellow diamond #blue diamond #pink diamond #greg universe #Steven universe #superhero #fic #AU

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iximaz · 5 years ago

Text

Blood-Forged

Summary: Din takes his young charge to a new planet with a new plan to hide. It quickly goes sideways after he meets another Mandalorian who has never seen her own kind.

Characters: The Mandalorian (Din Djarin), Baby Yoda, enby!fem!OC

Pairings: Slow burn Din Djarin/OC because it turns out I’m a thirsty hoe

Warnings: Eh, right now it’s just in light PG-13 territory. Mentions of family death, some blood/violence/bodily harm. Will probably end up becoming smut later.

Word Count: 2428 (indefinite chapter count coming)

Part 1 (you’re here!) Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

The Outer Rim had been a bust. The solitude never seemed to work; in fact, it just seemed to make things worse. Word traveled fast, as he liked to say, and a Mandalorian traveling with a strange alien child stood out in the small communities they’d visited like a pair of sore thumbs.

Maybe it was time to go back to the Core Worlds. More eyes was a risky prospect, but bounty hunters didn’t tend to operate in New Republic territory since criminals preferred to hide out in places nobody else wanted to go. And the more populated an area, the less people tended to pay attention to strangers.

Din sighed as he closed down the galaxy map, turning to the kid sitting in his makeshift basket seat. “What do you think, then?” he said, and the kid’s ears perked up at the sound of his voice. “Coruscant?”

The child cooed, tiny green hands wrapping around the rim of the basket.

“Great,” Din said, and pushed the throttle forward to jump into hyperspace. “Glad we agree.”

He would put the kid down for a nap when they landed. Find somewhere to put the Razorcrest up at a storage hangar, rent a flat somewhere nobody’d look twice at him, and then find a way to smuggle the kid in. He’d already gone through plans A, B, C, D, and E. Plan F couldn’t go much worse than the others, at any rate.

He didn’t like the idea of needing to confine the kid to an apartment. Sorgan would have been perfect—open space, other children to play with—but he was never going to be able to stop running. Not until everyone with a tracking fob was dead.

Coruscant would be a temporary stop, but it would give them both a chance to catch their breath while he planned their next move.

He’d have to track down where the clan had gone to set up their new home, too. It had been too long since he’d touched base with them.

The baby cooed again and clapped his hands when they jumped out of hyperspace to see the glittering lights of the great city-planet before them.

“Yeah,” Din said, glad that his smile was hidden behind his helmet. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

The kid nodded and crawled out of his seat, little legs wiggling before he dropped to the floor to toddle over to Din. He held his arms out and whined.

Din sighed and picked the kid up, setting him down on his lap and gently knuckling the top of his head before refocusing his attention on the landing.

He got confirmation to land at a shuttleport just on the border where the wealthy part of the city met poorer, and he piloted the Razorcrest down, pausing only to lightly swat the kid’s grasping hand away from a lever. “Not now,” he said, and the child’s ears drooped.

As soon as they landed, though, he unscrewed the top of the lever and handed it over. The baby giggled, turning it over in his three-fingered hands as Din picked him up and carried him down to the cabin.

“Alright, stay here. I mean it this time,” Din said, setting the kid down on the bunk. “You can play with that until I get back. It’s a big city out there—if you follow me, you’ll get lost. Understand?”

The baby stared up at him, eyes wide and ears wiggling curiously.

Din sighed and rolled his eyes. “Don’t know why I still try,” he muttered, and shut the door before that innocent face made him change his mind.

The pulse rifle would attract too much attention in the city, sadly, so he left it on the ship and headed out armed with his blaster and a few explosives for good measure. He tossed a full credit chip at the hangar attendant, followed with a stern order to not let anyone near his ship, and left the hangar.

The smell of rubbish, piss, frying food, and burning fuel hit his nose as soon as he stepped outside, strong despite the filters in his helmet. He breathed in appreciatively; it had been a while since he’d been in a big city, even longer since he’d last visited Coruscant.

He’d checked and double-checked before settling on the planet that he wasn’t on the New Republic’s most wanted list, just in case he hadn’t properly wiped the cameras from the prison ship. He wasn’t one to make mistakes (not like that, at least), but he was still paranoid of what might happen the one time he’d finally slip up.

People gave him sidelong glances as he pressed through the crowd, a few going out of their way to give him a wide berth when they noticed the distinctive Mandalorian armor. But nobody commented—or stopped him—and unless they were very, very good, he was sure nobody was following him, either. So far, so good.

A distinctive silhouette caught his eye and he froze, the crowd continuing to flow around him as he stood on tiptoe to try and get a better look. The figure wasn’t much shorter than him from what he could tell at this distance, and was clad in an ill-fitting suit of green-painted Mandalorian light armor.

Din felt rage pool in his stomach, and he forced himself to move. Suits were made to fit to the wearer—one that didn’t was a guaranteed sign it had been stolen.

Easy, Din, he told himself. Use that anger for something productive, but don’t do anything stupid.

He set off after the figure, maneuvering through the crowd until he was almost parallel to them, trailing just behind so he wouldn’t be spotted. A boy, he guessed, maybe a young teenager judging by his stature and the way the breastplate (forged for a woman) gapped on his chest. Which just raised some more questions as to how a kid could have stolen a Mandalorian’s armor.

Then again, might not be a kid. Could be another alien. Or could’ve just looted it off a corpse he’d come across. It wasn’t much better of a prospect, not paying the dead their respects. Judging by the scorch marks on the edge of the bottom back plates, he would guess the latter; it looked like the fatal shot had struck the suit’s last owner just below the covered area, directly in the spine.

Din followed the boy into a bar, face contorting behind the visor when the boy sat at a table and pulled his helmet off. Messy brown hair, brilliant green eyes, a heavy burn scar covering part of his young face. Human, or at least near enough. He was engrossed with something on the datapad built into his armguard, which looked uncomfortably tight on him.

No Mandalorian would ever willingly remove their helmet.

Din stopped by the table. “Nice suit.” He kept his voice level despite the building anger.

The boy looked up and his face broke into a delighted smile a split second before Din’s fist connected with his nose with a loud CRACK.

The yell of pain that followed was definitely feminine, and the woman lashed out, foot slamming into Din’s knee. He grunted and dived on her, driving into the unarmored parts of her body.

She was pinned under his weight, but managed to get a hand into the gaiter on her calf, where she grasped the hilt of a vibro-knife and slashed at the gap between his helmet and shoulderpad. He twisted and the blade skidded off the beskar, throwing up a shower of sparks. She readjusted her grip and brought it back in a reverse swing, the pommel slamming into his helmet. The CLANG resonated over the bar conversation.

Several patrons looked up briefly out of curiosity. Most went back to their drinks. The ones that didn’t looked like they were watching little more than a mildly interesting street performance.

“How dare you?” Din said in Mando’a, swatting the knife out of her hand. “That armor belongs to Mandalore!”

“W-wait!” she cried in the same language, and he managed to stop his next blow, visibly startled. “Please, I am from the Mandalore—parents of mine am from planet and I am from planet too!”

Her Mando’a was broken and halting, but recognizable. Painfully familiar. And certainly not anything he’d expected to hear from anyone outside his tribe.

“Please, I get up now?” she asked, stuttering as she felt his piercing gaze despite the visor. Her lip was split, blood trickling down her face from her nose and the corner of her mouth.

Din closed his eyes briefly before he stood up, picking up her knife with one hand and holding the other out to her. “You speak Basic?”

She nodded as he pulled her to her feet; her gloves were fingerless, and she used a thumb to wipe the blood off her face before sticking it in her mouth. “Doesn’t everyone?” she said, wiping the thumb off on her flight suit. “What the hell was that about?”

Din hesitated, then glanced at the bar. “Buy you a drink?”

“Least you can do after that,” she muttered.

They ended up at a booth near the back; Din, of course, ordered nothing for himself, but his new acquaintance now had her hands wrapped around a flagon of darkoma.

“Where did you get that armor?” Din asked after she’d had a sip.

She grimaced at the sting of alcohol on her cut lip. “It belonged to my mother,” she finally said.

“You said your parents were Mandalorians?”

She nodded. Her fingers curled on the flagon, knuckles going white. “They were killed when I was small,” she said. “Along with the rest of my tribe.”

Din tilted his head. “You survived.”

“Nearly didn’t.” She looked away. “I’m Aysa,” she said after a moment, looking back at him. “From… what used to be Clan Kelborn. You?”

He blinked at her, not that she could see it. “Everyone calls me Mandalorian.” Odd, that she felt comfortable sharing that readily.

“Well, that’s not going to work, there’s two of us now,” Aysa said. “I can’t just call you Punchy, either.”

His grimace was hidden, but at least his voice was apologetic to match. “I’m sorry. I jumped to conclusions.”

“Why?” Aysa leaned forward, eyes narrowed.

His head turned so he could look pointedly at her helmet, sitting on the table beside her.

“Oh, come off it,” Aysa said, following his gaze. “You hit me because you didn’t like my helmet?”

“You took it off,” Din said. “That is not the Way.”

Aysa’s frown deepened. “The hell do you mean?”

“No Mandalorian can show his face,” Din said. “To take the helmet off in front of others—you can never put it back on again.”

Aysa stared at him for a long minute before she laughed, and took a large gulp from her tankard. “Okay, but seriously. You nearly broke my nose, least you can do is give me a straight answer—“

“How old were you when they died?” Din asked suddenly. He noticed her flinch at the question and he grimaced again.

“Old enough to remember their faces.”

Din’s eyebrows flew up at that. He leaned forward. “Your tribe sounds like it was very different from mine.”

Aysa looked back up at him. “You really mean you never take that off?”

“Of course.” Din paused; he was having maybe a little too much fun messing with her, now that she was established as aliit. Aliit from a strange tribe, but aliit nonetheless. He gave her a few seconds to look incredulous before he grinned, smile audible in his voice. “I take it off in private.”

“Must make eating a pain,” Aysa remarked.

“This is the Way,” Din said, and shrugged.

Aysa shook her head and took another drink. “Not the Way I remember,” she said. “That was just… clan and family, and family and clan. Honor in battle and justice.” Her face hardened. “There was no honor in how their killers fought. No justice for the dead.”

“Are you really the last one?”

Aysa nodded; Din was glad his mask hid his disappointment. More Mandalorians would have been wonderful to bring into the fold.

“I thought… well, for a while, I thought I was the last one left at all,” Aysa admitted. She drained her drink and set the flagon down, chewing her lip as she spun the empty flagon between her hands on the tabletop. “It’s not… not just you, is it?”

Din glanced around; though nobody seemed to be paying attention, he didn’t want to give too much away. “There are others,” he finally said, and Aysa pressed her hands to her mouth, eyes shining.

“What happened to the rest?” she whispered through her fingers. “Everyone I’ve met has thought Mandalore was wiped out.”

Din stood and scooped up her helmet, lightly tossing it to her. She caught it and hurried to follow him as he strode to the door. “I’ll explain on my ship,” he said. “I have bacta pads if you need them. It’s private there.”

Aysa jammed the helmet onto her head—it was barely large enough to fit, Din noted when he glanced behind him. She was nearly as tall as he was; her mother must have been a small woman. That armor couldn’t be comfortable for her to wear.

“You’ve got your own ship?” Aysa asked eagerly as she followed.

Din nodded.

“Never owned my own ship before,” Aysa said, a hint of awe in her voice. “I’ve just been getting around hitchhiking. Or I get hired to act as a guard for people—they give transport well enough.”

She was very chatty, Din decided as he led her back to the hangar. She rambled as they walked, going on a tangent that started on a job she’d once done for a wealthy merchant, that meandered into an anecdote about the time she’d first tried eating Fodu, to a side note about how an underground trade war was driving the prices up, which launched her into musing aloud about whether or not literal underground cartels existed— “Cartels with their bases actually dug out of tunnels and things, you know? Oh, hell—” She broke off, and Din could just picture her face reddening under her helmet. “I’m sorry, I’ve never met another Mandalorian before. I’m a bit excited. And nervous.”

“I can tell.”

“I’m just going to shut up now.”

Finally, Din wanted to say, but settled for a quiet sigh instead.

#mandalorian #the mandalorian #fanfic #the mandalorian fanfiction #dyn jarren #OC #baby yoda #star wars #din djarin

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a-dorin · 5 years ago

Text

the rise of phoenix: yo-988

word count: 4,186

warnings: death, cursing, battling with grief, some gore, murder, angst

a/n: this is the backstory of phoenix, one of the trained guards for the reader in my kylo ren miniseries i have been working on! this is actually one of my favorite pieces i’ve written!

summary: aiden daar is a resident of the planet dandoran, where he helps manage his family’s krill farm. after a terrible accident on a stormy night, aiden must abandon his home completely. fueled by rage, he enlists in the first order, where he is determined to eliminate any rebel that stands in his way.

******************************** three years before **********************************

born a krill farmer, die a krill farmer.

those were the words that rang in my head as i approached the endless rows of pools, my materials in a bag strapped to my back. the mantra was one spoken for generations within my family. it was our motto. our way of life.

this morning would be the same as any other morning. this morning routine was ingrained in my mind, as it was my duty to collect the eggs floating at the surface of the water. here was the catch, though. i had to collect the eggs for every pool. that was approximately twenty-seven pools of water, full of newly spawned krill eggs. our farm spanned about over an acre of land, so the work was tedious.

however, if i didn’t collect these eggs, then we would have thousands of hatch-lings swimming around in every pool. this would ruin the ecosystem of the waters, thus harming our product. if our krill weren’t up to standard, then no one would buy from us. then we would lose profit, going into debt, as it was extremely costly to run a krill farm. it was a very unfortunate series of events. and i was the one who was gifted with this special task.

i sat at the edge of my first pool, skimming the water with a specialized net. i didn’t have to harvest all of the eggs, but i had to ensure i got about two-thirds of the eggs the females laid.

in was mid summer, the heat thickening as the sun rose. the trees surrounding the farm were lush, their emerald leaves swaying as a slight breeze rolled through the hills. it was almost eight in the morning, the sun past the horizon, ascending towards the azure colored sky. two moons were still visible, almost transparent.

my home planet was dandoran, a lush planet full of forests and water. it was the main home to a variety of farmers, as the conditions for growing plants were perfect. the abundance of water provided us with good soil conditions, along with the perfect resource for raising and harvesting krill.

this planet was the only planet i knew. approximately two hundred and fifty years ago, my ancestors discovered it, becoming the first settlers of dandoran. our family, the daars, were extremely well-known and praised by those who inhabited it. we were celebrated as the pioneers of dandaron.

“how’s it going?” a voice rang out from behind me.

i turned, standing up to stretch my legs, “it’s not too bad, grandpa.”

my grandfather daar, the current owner of our farm, shuffled towards me, “i hope all is going well. this heat is dreadful. do you need a swig from my canteen?”

gratefully, i reached for the canteen, cocking my head back as the cool water rushed down my throat. i wiped my lips with my hand, handing the canteen back to my grandfather, “thank you.”

“you’re a hard-working boy aiden,” he chuckled, setting a hand on my shoulder, “although you have that older brother of yours, i think i am going to have a conversation with your father. you deserve the inheritance more than colyn does.”

i widened my eyes, my jaw almost dropping, “oh grandpa. colyn is the oldest out of all us daars. if anyone deserves the inheritance after dad, it’s him.”

“yet colyn is a pilot at heart,” he scoffed, scorn in his voice, “he dreams of becoming a pilot for those rebels. do you know how selfish that is? he’s known all his life how much we value our skills as krill farmers. it’s in our blood, aiden.”

my heart dropped as grandfather daar spoke so lowly of the resistance. colyn was fascinated by their persistence in the fight against the evils of the galaxy. it was colyn’s dream to become a pilot, and he was forced to hide it from not only my grandfather, but my entire family.

as soon as he was eighteen, he had plans on running away, fleeing to the resistance base. the location of the base, i wasn’t sure. i figured it was far from here, far enough to run away and start over.

“you’re sixteen aiden,” my grandfather cleared his throat, “you have lots to learn, but i entrust that you will make our ancestors proud once the farm is in your hands.”

“thank you,” i dipped my head, “it would be an honor to carry our tradition.”

as much as i hated the daily chores and duties, i respected my grandfather. even in his old age, he was out working, ensuring that our family was fed and living well. he was a respected man throughout our valley, well-known for his kindness. i admired that about him. i wished one day i could live up to his image, and continue to make my family proud.

“i’ll let you get back to work,” he rumbled, pointing at my net, “once you’re halfway done, come inside. it’s too humid for you to be outside too long. heatstroke is deadlier than you know, my boy.”

“i will,” i chirped, gripping my net in my hand.

my grandfather shuffled away in the direction of our home. the house stood in the distance, almost a white beacon in the sunlight. from the outside, it was nothing special, a white wooden shack on a crumbling foundation. however, once you entered the shack, you knew it was a home.

the house had been tied to my family for generations. it wasn’t the very first home that my ancestors built, but it was important to us nonetheless. my great-grandfather’s birth place was located there, along with my own grandfather, and so on. it was where my siblings and i were born. the home was sacred to all of us. without it, we might not have built our strong family.

as i fished the eggs out from the water’s surface, i glanced at my reflection rippling in the water. i felt as if i was betraying my grandfather, along with my family.

the reflection staring back at me was a curious teenager, exhausted from the boredom of his life. his green eyes longed for adventure, aching for one spark of adrenaline. he wanted that adrenaline coursing through his veins, exciting him. he didn’t want to be a krill farmer. he didn’t want to be molded in the person his father was, or his grandfather. he ached to be different. to have some shred of joy that brought his life meaning.

was this reflection staring back at me the person i was, or the person who i wanted to be?

******************************* two nights later **************************************

“there’s going to be rain tonight,” my grandfather murmured, concern across his face as he glanced out the window.

“i hope not,” my father grumbled, picking at some fish, “the last thing we need is the pools to flood.”

“i don’t want to clean up krill in the morning,” colyn muttered, his eyes focused the wood of the table.

“if you don’t want to do it, i’ll just have aiden to it,” grandfather daar snapped, “it’s not like you’re much of a contribution to this family anyways.”

colyn’s froze, my father giving my mother a worried look. i swallowed, praying there would be no bickering tonight among my grandfather and colyn. the last thing i wanted was another fight. it left our house tense and restless. i loathed it.

“listen, grandpa,” colyn attempted to keep his cool, “like i said, i can contribute to this family. i’ll make you proud when i become a pilot for the resistance, i promise.”

“no son of mine is going to-” my father began, but the blast of a bomb shook the house, our ceiling crumbling into our dinner. it was far, but a little too close.

“what’s going on?” my mother cried, her tone pure panic.

“i don’t know,” my father grimaced, “colyn, come with me. willow, stay here with aiden and dad.”

colyn trembled, but got out of his seat, following my father outside.

it all happened at once, as if it was in slow motion. we heard a commotion outside, the voices of colyn and my father exchanging angry words with men outside. i could tell they were demanding something, but i wasn’t quite sure.

the next sound were sounds of blasters, piercing the night air. thunder rumbled outside, a crack of lightning flashing through the window. my mother shrieked, sobs escaping her lips. fear washed over me, as i knew what occurred, but i knew i had to go outside the house.

rain cascaded down as i stepped foot on the porch. hot tears cascaded down my cheeks, mixing with the rain. on the porch were the bodies of my brother and father, their clothes singed from the blaster.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” i howled over the pounding of the rain.

in front of me stood two men, donned in white and orange uniforms. they were startled by my presence, as if they weren’t expecting another person to be in the home. i could hear the wails of my mother from the open door behind me.

“we’re from the resistance sir,” one of the men flashed me their medallion.

“the resistance?” i choked out, in disbelief.

from the stories i was told from colyn, the resistance was all about peace and light. they were resisting death, war, and bloodshed from the forces of the first order. now, two men from the resistance had shot my brother and father in cold blood, without warning.

“yes,” the other man nodded, “listen, kid, we’re extremely sorry. this was purely an accident.”

“an accident?” i snarled, rage consuming my body, “you killed my brother and father on accident? this was in no way an accident.”

“but we were given the wrong tracking fobs,” one of them stammered, “we were led to believe that you all were spies, betraying us in favor of the first order. kid, listen, we didn’t mean to-”

thunder rumbled in the distance, another flash of lightning painting the dark grey sky. with no warning, i lunged at the soldier, tackling him to the ground. i ripped his blaster out of his hands, blacking out as i swung my arms back, hitting his temple at full force. repeatedly, i bashed his head in with the butt of the gun, ignoring his yells and arms pummeling my body. blood splattered against the ground, painting my hands scarlet. the other soldier was stricken with fear, dropping his blaster to the ground.

“you’re next,” i sneered, aiming the barrel at his chest.

pulling the trigger, the man slumped to the ground, dead. i dropped the gun, glancing down at my hands. to me, it was quite clear that it was meant to happen. it was a fair trade. an eye for an eye. a soul for a soul.

a gleaming beacon caught my eyes, blinking red. i walked over to it, kicking it with my boot. once i realized what it was, i let out a sigh. before his death, one of the soldiers clicked a distress signal on a fob. the signal was now being transmitted to any rebel ship that was in close range, calling out for help. i stomped on the fob, crushing it.

the rain began to wash away the blood staining my hands, and i wiped them against my pants. i rushed back into the house adrenaline pumping through my veins. my grandfather and mother cowered in fear under the table, crawling out when they realized who it was.

“momma we need to go,” i stated, “we need to leave, now.”

“my baby,” she whispered, her eyes traveling down to my blood stained hands.

“we have to leave,” i repeated.

“we must listen to him,” my grandfather was solemn, his eyes dark, “we cannot bury their bodies properly, willow. we cannot stay here.”

shock filled my body as i realized that my grandfather, the man who was connected to our home the most, was telling my mother that it was imperative we left. i knew in his heart he was too attached to our farm our family traditions, our sacred house. he was sacrificing everything for our own safety. there would be more rebels on their way, coming within the next few hours or so. if we didn’t leave now, we would be executed, just as my father and brother were.

“okay,” my mother nodded, “okay.”

“how do you propose we leave?” my grandfather turned to me, looking to me for instructions.

“we have to take their ship,” i sucked in a breath, “i don’t even know how to fly.”

“leave it to me,” my grandfather placed a hand on my shoulder, “i used to be a pilot back in the day, before my calling as a farmer. i was young once, like you. let’s get out of here at once.”

******************************** one month later **************************************

“so tell me,” the recruiter shuffled through paperwork, “why do you wish to enlist in the first order?”

“a variety of reasons, sir,” i coughed.

“please elaborate,” he glanced at me, our eyes locking, “i need to know why you want to enlist, son. typically we do not take soldiers at your age. we usually train you when you’re young, as early as ten.”

“i want to avenge the death of my father and brother,” the words tumbled out of mouth.

the recruiter raised a questioning brow, and i continued, “about a month ago, my father and brother were shot dead by two rebels, in cold blood. they were provided false information about my family from the resistance. i saw their bodies sir, laying in front of me. my desire is to kill as many of them as i can in my family’s honor. i don’t want the death of my family members to be in vain, sir.”

“what happened to the rebels?” the recruiter was intrigued.

“i killed them, sir,” admitting the truth was difficult, but it needed to be said. it would help my cause.

“ah,” he nodded, a small frown on his face, “your story is truly heartbreaking, and i am sorry that two members of your family were slain by those scum. i will send in your paperwork to the supremacy. your first day with our military begins tomorrow morning.”

“tomorrow?” i choked.

“tomorrow,” he affirmed, setting the papers on his desk, “say your goodbyes tonight, aiden daar. your new life as a soldier of the first order will provide you with many challenges, but it is also rewarding. you will be a part of the best military in the galaxy. a trooper will be at your door tomorrow morning. is the location of your current home listed here correct?”

“yes sir,” i replied, standing from the chair.

“excellent,” the recruiter seemed pleased, “the trooper will be there at seven in the morning. you will be an important asset to us.”

walking out of the recruiting station, i let out a long sigh. my grandfather and mother supported my desire to enlist with the first order, as we all shared a mutual hatred towards the resistance. since the death of my father and colyn, we were recovering but at a slow rate.

grief hit us all differently. my grandfather, once hearty and strong, was now frail and bedridden, his age catching up to him at a rapid pace. my mother, a woman full of laughter and love was struck by depression. she rarely laughed or smiled, if at all.

the hatred inside of me from that night was only growing, and i knew it needed to be relinquished. i needed to find an outlet for my anger, quickly. the target practice near my new cabin was not enough. i wanted to kill someone in order to relieve my hate.

every day since, i utilized the woods around our temporary home for training. since i stole a blaster from one of the rebels, i utilized it for training purposes. my shot was only getting more precise by the day, as i could now fire the blaster with ease. it didn’t shake me to the core like it used to.

“you’re home,” my mother gave me a half-smile, wrapping me in her embrace, “how did the meeting go?”

“it went well,” i murmured, “i start tomorrow morning.”

she gasped, her eyes filling with sadness, “that’s too early.”

“ma,” my voice faltered, “i have to. you know it’s the only route for me.”

her lips pressed to the top of my head, “i know, my boy.”

“where’s grandpa?”

“in bed,” she sighed, “are you going to say your goodbyes?”

“of course,” i kissed her cheek.

“you’re so young,” my mother’s lip trembled, “sixteen is far too young to be joining the military.”

“you know it’s my destiny now,” my tone was firm, “it’s the only way i feel whole, ma.”

“don’t forget about us,” she whispered.

“i could never,” i shook my head, pulling her in for another hug, “i love you mama, i always will.”

“i love you more,” her voice was soft, “will we ever see you again?”

“i promise that you will.”

my mother’s eyes met mine once again. sadness was apparent in her gaze, yet there were glimmers of hope swimming in their depths, “go see your grandfather, possibly for one last time.”

i only nodded, walking to the room where my grandfather laid in bed, struggling to breathe. once he noticed i entered the room, a small smile formed on his face, “how did the meeting go?”

sitting on the edge of the bed, i sucked in a breath, “it went well, grandpa. i leave tomorrow morning at seven.”

“good,” he chuckled, “i can’t wait to see what your future has in store for you.”

tears welled up in my eyes, “ma isn’t sure when i’m going to see you again.”

he laid a hand on top of mine, squeezing it gently, “my boy, i got to be your grandfather for sixteen years. it’s not your fault that my time is coming. yet, you need to have hope, as you have an endless future full of possibilities ahead of you. i always knew you would choose the military path. you have the determination for it.”

the tears spilled over onto my cheeks, “am i going to make you proud?”

“the greatest joy that i ever received from you was the honor of being your grandfather,” he grinned, “i have a great amount of love for you, my boy. the same goes for your father and colyn too. anything you do now will make me proud. pursue your dreams, and keep a level head.”

“i love you too,” i could barely muster the words out, “i promise i’ll keep making you proud grandpa.”

“i know you’ll keep that promise,” he dipped his head, “never forget our family name, aiden daar. it is an important aspect of who you are.”

“i promise, grandpa,” i reassured him, “i promise.”

********************************** one year later ************************************

“fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” the sounds of blasters and bombs filled my ears, the noise deafening.

“you can’t run from us, yo-988,” a voice jeered, “we’ll just flush you out in these woods.”

“i fucking hate twi’leks,” i sighed, exasperated, “they’re so fucking arrogant.”

“come out, come out, wherever you are,” one sang, approaching even closer to my location.

“you’ll have to find me first you arrogant fucks,” i shouted, peeking out from behind a tree.

“you’re a dead man!” came a shout, and i rolled my eyes.

fiddling around in my pocket, i fished out a small grenade. i tossed it out from my hiding place, the beeping noise growing more rapid as it soared through the woods. within seconds, a blast shook the tree trunk, cries filling the forest.

“what fucking idiots,” i sighed, coming out from behind the massive trunk.

“yo-988,” captain phasma’s voice rang in my helmet, radioing me, “did you complete your mission?”

“yes ma’am,” i nodded, inspecting my surroundings, “the fugitives have been taken out.”

“excellent,” she praised, “we have an offer to discuss with you when you arrive back on board. we will see you in approximately ten minutes.”

stretching out my limbs, i made my way back to my speeder. once i was settled in, i punched in the coordinates of the supremacy, which was stationed in the atmosphere above me. it was yet another successful mission, as two more rebels were taken out.

once in space, i approached the supremacy, the loading dock gates opening. i landed swiftly, hopping out of the small craft. my armor was singed from a couple of blasts, but i was still intact, without a scratch on me.

since enlisting in the first order, i was given a new name, well more so a new identity. on this ship, i was known as yo-988, a random combination of letters and numbers. i was the same as any other trooper involved with the first order. however, i was a little different from the rest of the standard soldiers.

i knew how to shoot any type of blaster or gun effortlessly and without fail. since my training started, i was known as a sharp-shooter, as i could hit every single target thrown my way. the days of training in anger aided in my rise through the ranks.

starting out as a soldier, i was promoted to a specialized unit for assassins and bounty hunters. this happened three months into my training with the first order. however, i had yet to receive any special medals or decorum for my work. i figured that would come in time, as i only grew more and more skilled at my job.

a general met me at the loading dock, leading me to the control center. there stood captain phasma, general hux at her side. beneath my helmet, i was slightly anxious, sweat beading at my forehead. did i not fulfill my assignment? did something go awry?

“yo-988,” captain phasma purred, “what an honor.”

“good evening captain,” i dipped my head respectfully, “good evening general.”

“come,” phasma set a hand on my shoulder, “we have much to discuss.”

i was lead to a small meeting room in the control center, surrounded by glass planes. as i sat down, i could still witness the first order engineers and technicians going about their work in the control center, their features focused as they talked among one another.

“we have good news, yo-988,” phasma began, her tone curt, “it has come to our attention that you are an excellent soldier. especially when it comes to weaponry. how would you like a promotion?”

“a promotion?”

“indeed,” hux affirmed, “we would like to upgrade your status in your unit. how does becoming a full-time bounty hunter sound?”

“i would accept that position with honor,” i responded, notes of gratitude in my voice, “that is a very high position with the first order.”

“we were cautious when we learned your age,” phasma added, “however, you have shown excellent marksmanship.”

“commander kylo ren is impressed with your skills,” hux informed, “he has a special assignment for you.”

“for me?” i choked.

“yes. he wishes to meet with you tomorrow,” hux explained, “however, we have to upgrade your armor first, along with provide you with your partner, who has also been promoted.”

“a partner?” this was news to me. i had no recollection of any soldier training beside me.

phasma placed her arms on the table, her hands clasped together, “yes, a trooper from the other flagship. his identity is yw-382. he is another marksman.”

“i can’t wait to meet him,” i shrugged.

the meeting was adjourned shortly after, captain phasma ordering me to the armory. i met with the blacksmith, who unveiled my new armor. when i saw it, my breath left my throat, filling me with awe.

i was no longer forced to wear the standard white storm trooper uniform. now, i was provided with shiny, metallic armor. i would now resemble captain phasma, my armor a reflection of my powerful rank. after collecting my new goods, and weapons, i was dismissed back to my quarters.

as i wore my new gear, i felt a flash of pride run through my veins as i gazed at my reflection. the shy, sixteen year old boy who joined the first order was no more. i was now a determined young man, with a year of fighting under my belt.

the person i was staring at in the reflection left me satisfied with who i was. there was no more battling over my destiny. this was my destiny. everything happening was for a reason.

from the death of my father and brother that shattered me, to the year of training that left me scarred, exhausted, and bruised, i was a phoenix who rose from the ashes. my old life of a krill farmer was now permanently erased. i was now a bounty hunter, my mind trained to kill.

i was a phoenix, ready to spread my fiery wings. ready to spread hellfire to anyone who stood in my way.

tagged: @bqbyl0n @lonesome-loser @lookinsidemyhead

#star wars fanfiction #kylo ren #general hux #captain phasma #the rise of skywalker #the last jedi #the force awakens #stormtrooper #original character #star wars #storm trooper #the first order #the dark side

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ohimtherebabey · 5 years ago

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! all of the numbers of questions

first of all, i respect you so much. thank you. second of all, i have already answered 1, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 27 so i’m going to skip those here.

2. Favourite band? my chemical fucking romance!!!!

3. Any New Year's resolutions? ive been really trying to be like. outwardly emo and not be embarrassed by it. also, to go to more shows! which ive already achieved and its only march!

4. Favourite music video? helena or desolation row. king for a day is a contender.

6. Panic! At The Disco or Fall Out Boy? thats difficult. i would say fall out boy but they’re really close

8. Do you own a pair of fingerless gloves or skeleton gloves (or the combination)? no :(((( but i want some

9. Do you own any band merch? If so, from what bands? oh yea. ive got a metric fuckton of mcr merch. also concert shirts from panic! at the disco, bastille, the killers, and poppy

10. Got a jacket with pins? yes!!!

12. Any hair dying or haircut plans for 2020? i’m shaving my head tomorrow!!!

14. Killjoy name? i dont have one. i don’t really like danger days and the whole universe kind of intimidates me

15. Are you into The Used? yes!!! bert mccracken has done more for me than the armed forces

16. Do you want any tattoos? Of what? YES!!!!! i have a lot of mcr designs (as of right now, i’ve got designs for our lady of sorrows, vampires will never hurt you, bullets in general, helena, mama, early sunsets, and welcome to the black parade). also i want a haunted house and some bats and a really stupid t-bone steak that says “tell your boyfriend” to commemorate DONTTRUSTME by 3OH!3

17. Can you play any instruments? Which? yes! but none of them are instruments that i want to play. i have 15 years of classical piano training and 6 years of saxophone from high school band/marching band

18. Favourite My Chemical Romance song? demolition lovers

19. Do you think Twenty One Pilots are emo? i dont think im educated enough to pass judgement. i dont listen to twenty one pilots and i havent heard a song of theirs in honestly 5 years. just from first impression, i would say theyre more generic alternative than specifically emo.

20. Are you into Taking Back Sunday? not really. i’ll listen if its on, but i won’t seek them out

21. Do you wear any make up? only the shittiest smudged eyeliner in the world

22. Do you have black painted nails? yes! i just painted them 2 hours ago (im not allowed to have painted nails at work but im on spring break this week so theres no work)

23. Have you got any band posters? Of what bands? i have a few mcr posters, a panic! at the disco poster, a fall out boy poster, and a pierce the veil poster

24. Do you want any piercings? yes!!!!!! i already have my septum and several ear piercings, but i want at least one lip piercing, a nostril piercing, more ear piercings, maybe an eyebrow, my nipples. i want to stretch my lobes, too.

25. What's your opinion on All Time Low? Sleeping With Sirens? Pierce The Veil? i FUCK with pierce the veil. my second favorite band of all time (im listening to a flair for the dramatic as i answer these questions). i dont like sleeping with sirens but i thank kellen quinn for his services on king for a day. i fuck with all time low (predictably my favorite atl song is a love like war because vic features)

26. Do you think it's just a phase or that you'll be emo/punk\scene forever? i take being emo too seriously for it not to be permanent.

28. Are you into Black Veil Brides? not really, but i respect the fuck out of knives and pens

29. Do you like any newer emo/scene/punk bands? Which? i love love love destroy boys. also: currents.

30. What's your favourite music genre besides emo/punk\scene? either like. folksy alternative (hozier, florence + the machine) or old school country (johnny cash, dolly parton, marty robbins)

31. Are you into Mindless Self Indulgence? not really

32. Favourite Fall Out Boy song? golden

33. Are you mostly into the so-called "emo trinity" or "emo quartet" or do you listen to a lot of other bands too? most of my listening history is my chem + bands outside of the emo trinity/quartet. i dont really make a habit of listening to panic or fob, and never twenty one pilots. mostly its pierce the veil and bring me the horizon. a lot of evanescence, too.

34. What's your opinion on Waterparks? Palaye Royale? I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME? i only know one song by waterparks, so i dont really have an opinion on their music, but awsten annoys me so much. ive dont know anything by palaye royale, so i cant pass judgement. idkhow is pretty good. i dont know too much by them but i liked what i did know. i think dallon did a great job at bringing back the weird stuff that made panic! so good

35. Are you into Bring Me The Horizon? YES. ive been nonstop listening to count your blessings for two weeks now.

36. Favourite solo project by a emo/scene\punk band member? i love all of frank’s solo projects (i go apeshit for leathermouth and death spells in particular). i love hesitant alien. also i’m really digging hayley william’s solo stuff so far

37. Are any of your friends IRL emo/scene\punk? no. and it makes me sad.

38. Are you into drawing? If so, show some of your art! only kind of and none of it is good. this is something i did based on a fragment of sappho last summer.

and here’s a quick thing i did for its not a fashion statement, it’s a deathwish

39. Favourite colours and colour schemes? im too much of a revenge fucker to not say black/gray/dark red

40. What are some of your favourite lyrics? a LOT of them are from selfish machines, just a warning. “i’m wanna hold your hand so tight, im gonna break my wrist” “i’d steal you flowers from the cemetery” “there’s no room in this hell, there’s no room in the next” “another knife in my hands, another stain that wont come off the sheets, clean me off, im so dirty babe” “decapitate her and bring her head to athena, unlike her sisters she aint no deathless God” “holding on to cold hands and sunken eyes hasnt held the same charm as it once did”

41. The Black Parade or Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge? this is such a difficult question for me. the demo lovers are everything to me, but, as i have said in the past: the black parade is the best album ever written. that doesnt mean its my chemical romance’s best album though. i’m going to say three cheers (that answer will change a thousand times).

42. What's your opinion on Paramore? Green Day? Blink-182? LOVE paramore. the riot! cd is a permanent fixture in my car. i fuck with older green day. like american idiot and dookie green day. i dont really care for blink-182

thank you again for the questions

#answered #sav speaks #my art #long post

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awkwardtaco056 · 5 years ago

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so now that i’m no longer in the Hell that was school and after finding the lovely blog @endcringe i’ve decided to talk about my own experiences with cringe culture, bullying, and why it’s Really Bad to not let people enjoy inherently harmless things, especially neurodivergent people (read more because this is gonna get long and triggering at times, TW for mentions of bullying, suicide, child abuse, a brief mention of incest shipping. I won’t be naming any of the peers that I discuss my experiences with, because my point with this post is Not to “cancel” anyone, I just want to speak out on my experiences)

I’m neurodivergent; I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 8 years old. I didn’t know a lot about it, and a family member even painted it as “oh it’s nothing blah blah blah just apply yourself more. Because of this, I had no idea about the concept of hyperfixations until I was in my late teens. Due to that, I would obsess over random things and my family would shame me relentlessly for it. My mother said I had an “addictive personality” and that she feared I’d end up a drug addict or alcoholic because of it.

I look younger than what I am, I’m short, and small. AKA, the perfect candidate for being picked on by people bigger and stronger than me. People made fun of my art when I was around 13, but fortunately that was an instance where spite fueled me to improve drastically. However, just because I happened to take the shitty comments and have it fuel me then does NOT mean bullying people will have that effect all the time. At some point someone put my old South Park fan art on a cringe blog. I was temporarily hurt, and a little angry, but I realized that if someone was making fun of a 15 year old’s art, they probably didn’t have much going for them in life, so I moved on.

Fast forward to high school. Everything was horrible and I’m not exaggerating when I say I barely made it out alive. I was living in an abusive household up until January 2018 and I found comfort in many different interests. I’ve always found great comfort in music and the arts in general. In 2016, I drew a picture of a mermaid. I was inspired by the chocolate opal gemstone, and I thought it’d be fun to draw a gay chubby mermaid with dark skin and a rainbow tail and freckles. Junior year was lousy and I wanted something that sparked Joy. I was immediately told that “scientifically, mermaids wouldn’t look like that. Mind you, my take looked like this:

Obviously I wasn’t going for realism, I just wanted to draw a cute mermaid. However, they continued to tell me that they wouldn’t look like that, going as far as writing so on the back of said drawing. When I got angry at her for taking it too far (as I’d established before that I didn’t like it when people wrote on my art without permission), they got angry back, accusing me of being unable to take criticism. Heated by the accusation, I went as far as asking my art teacher if it was fair for them to say that, and she said no, stating that constructive criticism would be talking about how I could improve my lineart and coloring in the digital version. I took her actual helpful criticism and since then have improved Drastically in digital art. Even with that being said, I found myself hesitant to participate in things such as MerMay because I was leery of hearing that peer berate me for having cartoony mermaids.

During high school I grew to love many musicians, a lot of emo/alternative stuff, a couple being Twenty One Pilots and Melanie Martinez. I love how unique TOP’s style is, their open discussion of mental illness, and as someone who had a rough childhood, I connected with every single song on Cry Baby. It was like nothing I’d ever heard. I started listening to mashups featuring all these different artists I love, adoring how they could change the tone and sound so drastically. A peer Bully of mine in junior year condemned these two artists, declaring that they made “Bad Music” simply because it didn’t fit their tastes. They’d throw my drawings on the ground, write over them in pen, steal my headphones so I couldn’t listen to music, push me around, complain that mashups sucked and gave them a headache, and in general shit all over conetnt that was actively preventing me from committing suicide.

Some family members were no better. Once high school hit, I began listening to Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and My Chemical Romance. Their deep complex lyrics stuck with me. I would write down quotes from my favorite songs and thanks to hyperfixating, I remember each studio album in order My mother resented when I fell in love with the “Emo Trinity” because “the Columbine shooters were emo and that event traumatized me” Despite that, not only did the Columbine tragedy occur in 1999 and none of the bands got together until the early 2000s, but I have a pretty good feeling those groups aren’t For gun violence. The other side constantly criticized the fact that I love FOB, P!ATD, and MCR because I’m black and “why must you listen to that white people music.”

I grew fond of Dan and Phil in high school (and I’m still a fan to this day!), I loved Phil’s kindness and positive aura and I deeply connect with Dan’s sense of humor and personality. Their content made me happy during some very dark times in my life. It’s November 2017, I’m over a close peer’s house at the time, and notice PINOF is upon us. I drew the PINOF whiskers on my face, my plan being to quietly watch them in the corner of peer’s bedroom on my phone through headphones, the others were doing their own thing and I knew they didn’t like them, so I thought they’d respect it if I silently indulged in it. Unfortunately, the complete opposite happened. I was immediately shunned and locked out of the bedroom, told that I’d only be let back in if I washed the whiskers off because “absolutely not”. Me, being stubborn, washed them off temporarily but drew them back on in the room. Life during then was especially bad for me, as the abusive household I was in was getting worse. They noticed, of course, and even though all I wanted was to enjoy this small tradition in a time during a deep depression, I was immediately shoved out the room and locked out, only to have said peer’s family members notice. I’m a relatively shy person, so this was honesty a really harrowing experience that had a lasting effect on me.

I grew to adore Sanders Sides as well, but the moment I found out most of my peers didn’t like Thomas, I was terrified. I stopped watching Dan and Phil’s content for months and shied away from other fandoms too, only occasionally indulging in times of complete solitude. One time when said peers were due to visit my house for the first time, I saw the Phandom and Fander stuff I’d hung up on my wall in my little sanctuary that was my bedroom (it was the first time in years I’d had my own room), and I was filled with panic and fear. I took them down and hid them away, genuinely terrified of what they’d do to me if they saw. It’s still incites so much anger in me to this day because they turned around and ended up shipping incest, but somehow liking D&P and Sanders Sides was So. Much. Worse.

They were baffled by my actions, despite having humiliated me Twice by going on a private blog of mine separate from everything so that I could fully indulge and laughing at everything on there, once at a peer’s house, once right in school. I don’t think they realized how traumatizing it was to have a large group of people in public laughing at something I was deeply self conscious about for all of my life. I put on a brave face at the time, but ended up crying in the bathroom after first period began. I continued to be treated as lesser until things came to an ugly head August 2018 when I ended up in the hospital because I nearly attempted suicide. Years of child abuse, bullying, and being deemed “cringy” made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be alive, that everyone would be happier if I were gone.

After arguably one of the lowest points in my life, I cut them off and slowly began to embrace the Real Me. I started letting myself enjoy the things again, made true friends and even found love, my first boyfriend ever at 18. I still get choked up retelling it, but when PINOF 10 dropped, after he found out how much I’d been hurt over the incident in 2017, I was greeted with a photo of him with the whiskers on his face. I cried for a while, blown away at such a pure act of kindness. He listens to me ramble about my interests, he compliments my taste in music, he watched K-12 with me.

This got incredibly long, but my point is this: Cringe Culture hurts people. You might think it’s whatever if the Thing doesn’t apply to your interests, but content you’re denouncing as cringy could be something that’s keeping them alive, that one flicker of light in a void of darkness. When I was contemplating suicide, I listened to The Black Parade, repeating Gee’s words to myself over and over, that nothing in the world was worth hurting yourself over. Some friendly joshing here and there is okay, but actively ripping someone to shreds constantly to the point where they have a mental breakdown in front of you and later on plan their own demise is disgusting. Nobody should abuse anyone for having harmless interests, no one. Unless you’re participating in p*dophilic/inc*st/s*xual assault/inherently abusive ships/content and pretending it’s not bad because “Fiction doesn’t impact reality!”, you have every right to like what you like and be happy. Read homestuck. Play Undertale. Draw up the Wildest OCs you can imagine. And stay away from people who try to rob you of innocent fun, life is too short and in this cruel, unforgiving world, you deserve to be happy, whether you’re a 13 year old who draws cute furries, a 16 year old cosplayer on TikTok, a VSCO girl, a 30 year old who writes/draws self insert art or a 20 year old who adores Invader Zim.

Cringe Culture is just bullying under a different name, and it can lead to many instances of people, especially fellow neurodivergent folk to feel isolated and ostracized. Attempting to bully someone out of an interest they have isn’t going to fix them; it’s more often than not going to cause more damage. I suffer from diagnosed C-PTSD, anxiety, and depression, and sometimes I still find myself trying to over-justify my interests. To all who are roped up in bad homes and lousy “friends” who berate you for your innocent passions, I’m sorry you’re suffering, things will one day get better even if it doesn’t feel like it, and fuck those people. I’d also like to note that sometimes even if it seems more terrifying, it’s better to have one or two close friends you can truly trust than a whole group that walks all over you. You have every right to call them out for treating you poorly, and if things don’t improve, you also have every right to leave.

You have a right to live your True Self.

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thebutt6969 · 5 years ago

Text

Panic! Lyrics & Flowers

About a year ago I finished an art project where I took a lyric from every Fall Out Boy album and paired those with flowers that have a similar meaning (link to post below), and around the same time I started the same type of project but with Panic! at the Disco. Each piece is done with ink on a 2.5x2.5 inch canvas.

First, let’s talk about what I did differently. With the FOB pieces and filled in a lot of the petals, or at least added some detail, but with these pieces I decided against that and kept the flowers as simple as possible. Doing this made the text much easier to focus on and read.

“Stop‌ ‌stalling,‌ ‌make‌ ‌a‌ ‌name‌ ‌for‌ ‌yourself‌”, ‌London‌ ‌Beckoned‌ ‌Songs‌ ‌About‌ ‌Money‌ ‌Written‌ ‌by‌ ‌Machines, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Paired with laurel which represents accomplishment, glory, and success.

While I am happy with how this piece turned out I wish I had left more negative space around the text so it wasn’t so symmetrical.

“I wasn't born to be a skeleton”, She's a Handsome Woman, Pretty. Odd. Paired with lilacs which represent confidence.

As much as I love lilacs, I really am not fond of painting them. Especially at this size. I have the same problem with this piece as the last one, I wish I had left a bit more negative space around the text. I find it to be a bit too symmetrical and I probably could have put a bit more planning into the placement of the flowers.

“Show them all you're not the ordinary type”, Let's Kill Tonight, Vices and Virtues. Paired with borage which represents speaking your mind, and courage.

This one I would for sure redo. I was using a different brush for this piece and I had a lot of trouble getting used to it which resulted in inconsistent line size, and a majority of the lines just being too thick in general.

“I won't give up without a fight”, This is Gospel, Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! Paired with columbine which represent the resolve to win.

This one I actually had to redo! A few months after completing all of these pieces I noticed I had painted the wrong flower for this lyric. Having to redo this one made me quite sad because I was really happy with how the original turned out. Because I redid this one several months later, I had already started some other pieces and changed my composition method regarding the flowers, so this one doesn’t quite fit in with the other Panic! Pieces. Despite that I’m still really happy with how this one came out.

“All the memories that we make will never change”, Golden Days, Death of a Bachelor. Paired with forget-me-not to represent memories.

While I’m not super happy with how the text turned out on this piece I am really happy with the flowers. There are some petals where the lines could be cleaner but overall I’m really proud of this one.

“Some only live to die, I'm alive to fly higher”, King of the Clouds, Pray for the Wicked. Paired with scarlet lilies which represent high souled aspirations.

This piece suffers from the same problem as the final FOB piece, I got too impatient and wanted to finally finish the project so I’m not super proud of the flowers on this one. I think I could have done better. Though the text on this piece is probably the one I’m most proud of out of all of them.

_________________

In my post with the FOB pieces I mentioned that I was also working on the same project but with TOP and MCR albums as well, and I’ve completed the TOP pieces and just need to post them. The MCR pieces have not been started yet as I need to give my back a break and will be starting on them next week.

If you want to see the FOB pieces I did you can check it out here

If you want to see the TOP and MCR pieces when I post them but don’t want to follow me here I have an instagram you can check out here

Finally, when I posted the FOB pieces @another-emo-blog (hopefully it’s the same emo blog) sent me an ask requesting I tag them the next time I post a project like this. Well I didn’t forget, I just took forever to finish them because life.

#my art #panic! lyrics #panic! at the disco #flower #traditional art

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smallblueandloud · 5 years ago

Note

For the AU ask meme: Thirteen x Rose, Role Reversal AU ✿

thank you so much for being patient with me - i hope this makes up for the wait! (under a cut, because this one got long. turns out i’ve missed doctor who writing, lol.) send me an au and i’ll send you 5+ headcanons about it (eventually!)

jane smith is thirty five years old and she lives in cardiff.

she lives with her granddad, graham, and her step-second-cousin (yeah, it sounds rather awkward) ryan, who’s the grandson of her granddad’s second wife grace. ryan’s got a best friend named yaz, who’s training to be a police officer, and who stops by more days than not after she gets out of work.

ryan’s working as a mechanic, and jane goes with him sometimes to help him out - she loves using her hands and working to take things apart and put them back together.

she herself has a job as a primary school science teacher. she loves working with kids - has for her entire life - and she loves teaching them to look at the universe with just a little more wonder. she’s never really thought about having kids, though. she’s never really dated anyone very seriously, is the thing, and anyways she doesn’t want them. she used to, she knows, but something changed at some point, and now she knows that’s never going to happen.

it’s just her and her granddad, these days, and of course ryan and yaz, since her parents died in an accident while she was in uni.

but she’s happy! she loves her students, she loves what she teaches, and she loves getting up in the morning. she’s working on a novel in her free time, about an adventurer of some kind who travels through time and space - she’s thinking it should be some kind of kids’ series, to teach them history and science in an interesting way - but she’s rather bad at writing, so it’s not very good. she loves writing it, though!

one day, she’s out to the store with her granddad when she bumps into a blonde woman, completely knocking her foodstuffs out of her hands. after a hasty apology (or seven) later, and lots of blushing, jane and her granddad go on their way.

graham teases her about it, a little, but jane still has to work on her lesson plan for the coming week, so she rushes him home and tries not to think about the woman’s (rose, she’d said, my name is rose) smile and hands and-

jane is thirty five years old and has only ever had three boyfriends. she’s starting to think it might be because of a bigger issue than her chronic absent-mindedness.

a few weeks later, she’s out to the movies with ryan and yaz, when they run into rose again. this time, she’s with a friend of hers, who winks suggestively at her when he introduces himself but seems nice enough.

jane’s… reasonably sure that rose and her friend jack aren’t dating, but something about jack still puts her on edge. she shrugs and tries to wave it off, though, because the movie is rather good and afterwards they go out for ice cream.

surprise, surprise! rose and jack are there too. it’s a genuine mistake on everyone’s part, but the two groups sit together to discuss the movie, and by the end, ryan has gotten rose’s number to ask her a question about the engine that rose mentioned she’s building in her garage.

ryan makes plans to go over to rose’s house to look over the engine, and he asks if he can take jane along (she’s a big fan of mechanics, too!). rose agrees immediately, and so off jane goes, and tries not to act too embarrassingly.

at some point, ryan is engrossed in the engine, and rose sidles over to jane. they begin a conversation, mostly about engines, that devolves into their greater life circumstances, and eventually about jane’s job.

jane is halfway through a long, impassioned rant about the utter beauty of the voyager probe and the things that humanity decided represented itself when rose kisses her.

jane is thirty five years old and she is definitely not straight.

they break apart to ryan grinning at them. nice one, jane! he says to her. she’s had a crush on you since the beginning, he says to rose.

rose smiles at her. that’s good. i have too.

and so begins the tale of rose and jane. they’re suddenly in the middle of each other’s lives, and it’s wonderful.

rose is over at their house almost once a week for movie night (they cuddle on the couch - it’s the highlight of her week). jane goes over to the house that rose shares with jack every friday, and they work on rose’s engine together.

jane can’t draw, and she can’t really write, and she can’t paint. but she can make things. she gets into the habit of making little mechanisms for rose - sort of half sculpture, half tool things that will, for example, fix a squeaky hinge, or walk after being wound up, or just look pretty. rose collects things that remind her of jane and give them to her the next time she sees her - things like lines of poetry, pictures of beautiful places, or flowers. jane gets a lot of flowers.

sometimes she catches rose looking at her sadly. she always says it’s nothing when jane asks, but one day, at jane’s house, she confesses that jane sometimes reminds her of an old, old boyfriend, who rose still misses. i guess i have a thing for adorable science nerds, says rose, grinning. i love you, though. you know that, right?

(jane is floating on air for days after that conversation.)

rose’s job is dangerous. jane doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but she knows it’s under jack somehow and that it’s important work. sometimes she gets to dinner looking exhausted and worried, and sometimes she’s injured - she never tells jane exactly what it is, though, just smiles at her and asks about her students.

one day, though, jane is out with everyone - rose, her granddad, ryan, yaz - for dinner. the waitress is being very rude, asking all sorts of personal questions, and downright ignoring yaz. she even leans over their food - to “see how good it smells”, apparently - in a bid that seems like a convoluted way to spit in their food as they watch. jane is, therefore, in a bad mood.

rose seems nervous, too. they don’t even get through their appetizers before she’s completely ignoring any attempts at conversation in favor at craning her neck to watch the waitress, who’s standing at the door of the kitchen with three other people who do not look like they belong in their restaurant. in fact, if jane squints, the shortest one looks a lot like a little boy in the class next door to hers.

several things happen in quick succession:

the four at the kitchen turn and begin to walk towards their table as one. rose opens her phone and yells NOW into it. jack - of all people, what the heck is going on, thinks jane - bursts in carrying something that jane belatedly recognizes as a huge gun-looking thing. it seems like it wouldn’t be out of place in her terrible novel, in fact.

jane rips her attention away from rose, who is grabbing the gun from jack and yelling EVERYONE GET UNDER THE TABLES, because ryan is tugging on her sleeve and looking panicky.

we need to go, he says, and behind him yaz and jane’s granddad nod in frantic agreement. we have to go, jane!

i’m not leaving rose here! says jane, before everyone’s attention is drawn back to rose, who’s locked in some sort of... stalemate with their rude waitress, who has also produced a sci-fi looking gun.

jane, says rose, very quietly, turning back to her. she looks like she’s in pain, but she also looks very certain of how this is going to go. please. you need to go.

jane doesn’t go.

rose sighs and turns back to the waitress. you’re here for me, i expect, she says. fine. as long as you don’t hurt the others.

jane, says yaz, but jane ignores her. jane, we really HAVE to go. now.

the waitress laughs. you think we’re here for you, silly girl? get out of our way.

rose blinks, surprised. you’re-

she turns to look at jack, who looks just as surprised. you’re here for me? he says. i’m not going to be able to help you. you can’t steal anything from me.

the waitress laughs again. oh, humans. so arrogant. step aside. she looks across the restaurant and makes eye contact with- with jane, of all people. she and the other three begin to move towards her. jane suddenly understands, with devastating clarity, what the phrase “a deer in headlights” feels like.

no! shouts rose, and shifts in between them. her voice has changed, somehow. it sounds different. it sounds powerful.

you will NOT harm them, she says, but something is wavering, like her students’ voices do when they haven’t practiced something enough yet. they are under my protection. SHE IS UNDER MY PROTECTION.

and again, the waitress scoffs, and brushes rose aside as if she’s nothing.

i’ll give you anything you want!, says rose, sounding desperate now. the power has left her voice, or maybe run out - and now she just seems scared. i love her! i can’t- you can’t- my husband warned me of you. i know who you are! the Family. your kind nearly killed my husband. you will NOT kill my girlfriend!

finally, the waitress stops to look rose in the eye. she shakes her head. foolish girl, she says. you may be powerful, but you are still young, and your ship is far away. who are you to claim to protect a time lord?

NO, shouts ryan and yaz, in unison. jane falls to her feet with a splitting headache that she’s only just noticing she has, and graham runs to her side. doctor, he says, we need you! come back, doctor! look- and he pulls an old fashioned fob watch out of his pocket. doctor, come back!

jane has just enough time to think it’s just like my novel, when-

he opens it, and everything goes white.

the doctor is several thousand years old and lives in her tardis.

she lives with her friends: graham, his grandson ryan, and yaz. she also lives with rose tyler, the love of her life, who returned to her after a lifetime spent in another universe with another version of her.

when the doctor thinks about how they reunited, she can’t stop herself from laughing. “you must’ve thought i was so foolish,” she says to rose, one day, as they’re sitting in the kitchen together. “here i was talking about saturn and the mysteries of its rings, and you’d been all over the universe, both with me and on your own.”

rose smiles at her and winds their fingers together. “i dunno,” she says, and looks at the way that their matching rings glint in the light. “i thought you were magical.”

#a-s-u-n-flower #a s u n flower #doctor who #thirteen x rose #wlw #sb and l answers #sb and l rambles #sb and l writes #IT'S DOOOOOONE #i am AWARE that this is more than five but this idea has been germinating for like a year now so #here you go #i'm gonna try to work on the god complex rewrite this weekend too!#.....i really love this ship and this show and ugh i've missed it #(just for the record this is a WHOLE 1760 words and i wrote it all today! fear me!)

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galaxa-13 · 4 years ago

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Fun RP with @thezombieholic.

It had been hours now since she arrived. She was feeling restless. How she hated waiting. Sia had been examining the gemstones she had received when she felt it. The light flicker of flames and magic. She glanced up just in time to watch the crowded crypt vanish and the familiar sight of her room return. With a gasp she dropped the stone she had been holding back into the bone jewelry box and slammed the thing on her vanity before rushing out the door.

“Erol!” she called out as she rushed down the hall. “Erol!”

She needed to check in with him first. Her faithful butler just had to hear EVERYTHING that had happened! He would also be the one to tell her if anything had transpired here while she was gone.

The butler had been pacing, irritated, around the abode. Snapping at anyone who got in his way, including Fob. But no. He needed to remain civil.

Even that sorry excuse of a sorcerer wouldn't have the ability to simply make Sia disappear. Even if he did, he wasn't clever enough to pull one over on him. And finally, Erol had to admit that even a bumbling fool like Fob would know that his survival was ensured because Sia adored him.

He was in the gardens now, having ordered Fob to get out of his sights-to which the younger dark elf did with haste-The deserts and tea had been brought out when it was clear Sia was not joining them, and had likely gone off somewhere on business, perhaps something urgent.

If that were the case, Erol would understand, but the fact he was not told and left behind left him slightly bitter, refusing to believe she wouldn't bring him.

Suddenly he heard her voice calling out from inside the home. He nearly knocked a garden chair over in his panic to run back inside.

"Mistress Sia?" He called, "Is everything alright?"

"Erol!" Sia's face broke out into a grin when she heard him and rushed in the direction of his voice. When she saw him she immediately crashed into him with a hug.

"Oh Erol you would not believe the time I've had!" she said with a heavy sigh. All the tension left her body. She was home and here was Erol, everything was as it should be. When she finally pulled away she said, "I was in Avernus, can you believe it? It was just awful! I got attacked by undead and I saw Baphomet and there were these adventurers and the whole city of Elturel and and and..."

Sia realized she was rambling and put a hand to her cheek, trying to compose herself.

"Where is Fob?"

As soon as Erol saw she was rushing him, he stood fast and prepared to not get bowled over on impact. He returned the hug gently, and listened to all she had to say. The smile he had on from seeing she was alright was slowly replaced by ...anger. Seething anger.

Who would DARE.

Then he snapped out of it. Fob? Oh.

"He should be in his chambers. I sent him back when it was apparent you must have been busy with something urgent."

He cleared his throat, leaving out the part where he slapped the boy across the cheek and cussed him to leave his sights.

"Oh. Well as long as things are fine here." she sighed and began to rub her temples.

"I still have no idea why I was whisked away as I was. Those I met had no answers for me either. Apparently people are known to appear and disappear in the hells? I don't even know what triggered my return! I was sitting there waiting for some other form of rescue and suddenly I found myself back!" Sia said as she waved her hands around.

"I am just so glad to be out of there. I could really use some tea after that whole ordeal."

Erol took all of this information in and stored it for later. Clearly he would need to discuss the matters with Lady Nerie at her earliest convenience...she may know more about the happenings, or the hells. Erol detested fiends after what he had gone through in that infernal fortress...but he certainly wanted to ensure Sia was not going to suffer such a kidnapping again.

He nodded. "It is getting rather late...If I might suggest, perhaps some tea and a light snack? I can have it ready for you in a few minutes, and while you rest I can begin preparing dinner?"

Concerning circumstances...he didn't want demons or devils or whatever it was bothering Lady Sia...

"If you'd like, I can call on Fob to join you." Though he wasted no time in adding, "Though if you would rather without his company, I would not fault you."

"That sounds wonderful." she said with a pleased sigh as she smiled at her faithful butler. What would she ever do without him? She recalled Devereau's question about having others close to her heart. Of course Erol had been at the forefront of her mind.

"Please do get Fob," she said. "I can only imagine how upset he was when I didn't show up. I want to tell him all about what happened."

Really, despite how upsetting the experience had been she was rather looking forward to telling the whole tale. Being the center of attention suited her just fine and a thrilling story of magic and fiends was a marvelous way to secure attention. Not that she was ever want for attention, of course, but that didn't make talking about herself any less appealing.

Erol nodded, and offered a short bow before excusing himself with a smile and a "At once, Mistress."

He made his way out of the room, down the hall, and glared at Fob's chamber doors as hard as he could before knocking on it far too hard.

He heard scrambling from inside, a muffled 'ow' as a knee likely connected with a table leg, before the door opened. Erol fixed the taller, young man with a look and he gulped nervously.

"Lady Sia is back, and has called you to join her for refreshments." He didn't move out of the way as his glare gained in intensity.

"Well, boy? What are you waiting for?"

Fob whimpered pathetically, nearly sobbing as he slid awkwardly past him to get out into the hall, and hurried off in the direction of the parlor. Erol rolled his eyes, whatever Sia saw in that bumbling idiot was beyond him.

He worked quickly, summoning an unseen servant to help with menial tasks about the kitchen as he prepared the tray of perfectly cut small cakes. The water was boiled at the perfect temperature before the tea was added to steep, and after a good few minutes, he nodded to himself before picking up the tray and making his way out.

The unseen servant toiled away at some other ingredients for later.

Erol made his way down the hall evenly, the tray so perfectly balanced that the tea in the pot nearly budged.

Sia sat, perfectly poised, in the parlor awaiting both her tea and her partner. How funny a couple hours in hell would make her so utterly satisfied with this little room. This was exactly how things should be. Everything was exactly where she wanted them to be and to her aesthetics. It was good to be home.

When she saw Fob she immediately rose from her seat, his name on her lips, and rushed to him. Crushing him in a similar fashion as she had done with Erol earlier she said, "Oh Fob, I am so sorry I'm late! It was of no fault of my own, I assure you!"

Pulling away from him she grabbed his hand and dragged him over to the seating. "Something felt fit to interrupt our plans and whisk me off to another plane entirely!"

Fob's earlier anxiety washed away as soon as he saw Sia smiling and running over to embrace him. If his skin weren't so dark, he likely would have had a powerful blush painting his whole face red. He let the woman drag him over to the table and chairs and quickly sat down.

At her explanation about being whisked off by something into another plane, his eyes widened.

"What? Where did you go? What happened? Are you alright?" The panic sounded a bit more fierce than he'd meant, but the thought of Sia being brought somewhere under mysterious circumstances filled him with rage.

"Avernus, if you'll believe it," Sia said with a roll of her eyes and contempt lacing her voice. "I am perfectly fine. I managed to dispatch with anything that even tried to hurt me." A small flicker of flame momentarily danced over her fingers resting on the table.

"I have no idea what sent me there, or what brought me back for that matter, but I discovered that the whole of Elturel is currently there. There were a thousand townsfolk all crowded in a crypt awaiting rescue. Apparently some thieves guild was slowly getting people back to the material plane, but it was utterly miserable."

Resting her chin in her hand she gazed at Fob. "The whole time I was thinking of how much you must be missing me and how I needed to get home as soon as possible."

Fob's face softened from the anxious and concerned grimace he was giving, at the sound of her worrying about him worrying about her. "I was pretty worried-" He exaggerated. In reality he was more panicked about Erol killing him, he had assumed Sia was just not feeling well or maybe wanted time alone? Now he mentally kicked himself for not actually being more concerned.

"I'm happy you're okay now though." He smiled, sitting opposite to her at the small tea table.

Almost on cue, Erol cleared his throat from the doorway and brought in a tray of small delicate looking cakes and mini sandwiches, nothing heavy to ruin supper. He began methodically laying everything down on the table, his balance of the large platter was impeccable as nothing budged...He set the utensils and saucers and tea cups, napkins folded into brilliant shapes, before he began pouring tea for each of them.

Fob noticed the glance in his direction-a powerful glare-and he quickly avoided the butler's eyes.

She smiled at Erol as he laid everything out. "Thank you, Erol." she said once her tea had been poured and she reached for the cup. Holding it between both hands she brought it to her face and breathed in the scent before sighing in contentment.

After taking a sip she said, "So there I was, getting ready, when suddenly I found myself in a graveyard! There were disgusting undead crawling all over the place and there were a group of adventurers begging for my help. I, of course, dealt with the undead problem quickly and got the others to explain what was going on. They had no answers for why I was there, but they explained that we were all in Elturel in Avernus.

“One of them, a yuan-ti, scraped his belly across the ground and offered me a gemstone. A talking cat followed suit, and then an illithid! It was quite the assortment in this group. They even had a warforged who tried to touch me with its disgusting blood-soaked hands!"

She made a disgusted noise as she reached for one of the cakes and continued, "The cat was not adorable. It had no fur! Covered in tattoos too. Anyway, I followed them in hopes they would find some way to immediately return me home, but all that lead to was finding some portal that Baphomet, of all things, came through! I quickly gathered up all that I could and whisked us out of danger. I was not going to allow myself to get squashed or to be alone in that dreadful place.

"They then lead me to the place where all of Elturel's survivors were waiting and as I joined them in the waiting I talked more to that yuan-ti. He was actually quite agreeable. Lovely scales! I invited him to visit should he survive Avernus. Then after a few hours I appeared back in my room!"

Erol nodded, "Of course" as he finished up and stood nearby, dutifully.

Fob became more and more concerned as Sia relayed the series of events, meanwhile Erol looked more and more angry. Angry at the nerve of someone whisking Sia off and expecting her to save such lowly creatures. Ugh. Absolutely abhorrent. The yuan-ti he might tolerate, since-as she explained-she was rather fond of it....but the others. He would kill them all, even that disgusting baphomet-whatever that was. Ugh.

He calmed himself. No. His place was with Sia and keeping his lady happy, entertained, fed, groomed. Etc. Unless she was called back to the wretched place, he had no intention of getting mixed up in that.

Fob piped up eventually, obviously careful with treading water around Erol, not to invoke his ire for when the two found themselves out of Sia's presence. He took a sip of his tea-which was FAR too hot. He could feel it burn his tongue. Erol always did this...he knew Sia couldn't be harmed by the slight increase, but anyone without an affinity to fire would surely suffer the hot water. Still, he forced himself to swallow it all, wincing as it burned all the way down. Feeling tears form in the corner of his eyes.

"I'm so glad you're ok...It could have gotten really bad. Is this something you...could ask Nerie about? Maybe she knows why you were called away?"

"Talking to her might be good, yes." Sia mused before popping a bit of cake in her mouth. "I'll check in with her tomorrow. For now I just wish to unwind with this lovely tea and then enjoy dinner when it is ready."

"It's quite... worrying that I keep getting pulled into unfavorable situations. I thought I was done with that when I left the Underdark." she sighed after taking another sip of tea. "At least this time I felt more comfortable in myself and didn't require the help of others."

Fob nods, secretly grateful for the events that allowed him to meet Sia...and also bring his family to the surface rather than remain in a Dwarven city for the rest of his life.He rather liked the surface. Everything was brighter, and sometimes that really could be awful for his eyes, but there were so many more types of plants and fungi and just...life.

Of course he didn't dare voice his opinion out loud. Erol would likely yell at him later for suggesting that Sia was better off going into the underdark. Even if it was true for him as well...Ah...He zoned out again.

"If anything, it seems like the others you were with were just lucky that you arrived to save them." As he felt Erol's glare burning into the side of his head, he quickly added "Not that that they deserved it. Still I'm so glad you're alright. T-the tea is quite good isn't it?"

"Aw, you're so sweet, Fob," she said, smiling at him. "Yes! The tea is delicious, as always. Just what I needed."

She enjoyed her tea and the cake happily. Yes, this was all she could have wanted after that experience. Home, surrounded by loved ones, enjoying delicious refreshments.

"As much as I would rather not have gone through it all," she suddenly said, "I am rather glad I got to meet Devereau, the yuan-ti I mentioned. He's a craftsman and he offered to make me some hair adornments when his business in Avernus was done. I saw what he made and they were quite lovely. I'll have to write to him.”

Fob nodded, encouragingly.

Meanwhile Erol was inwardly fuming, thinking of how he'd need to study up on this Baphomet in particular. If he opened a portal then he was likely the reason why Sia was whisked away into hell. He would find out more about this reprehensible creature and make sure he got what was coming to him.

He excused himself quietly to return to the kitchen to check on the unseen servant, and to oversee the prep for dinner. Perhaps mistress Sia would like a nice, clean wine with her meal. Hm. He could look through the vintages....

#gal arts

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amuseoffyre · 5 years ago

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Crossing Paths - 1868 - 1941 - The Estrangement

Welp, this was kind of inevitable. I kept seeing the Crowley-slept-through-the-19th-century thing and decided to roll with it ;) This is also the biggest chapter for this story, unsurprisingly. (Feel free to poke me with any queries re. history mentioned herein)

1868 – St. James’s Park, London

The fob watch was cold and heavy.

Aziraphale glanced anxiously at it again, then looked around the park. There was no sign of Crowley anywhere. Even the ducks were peering at the angel suspiciously, as if wondering why someone would be trying conspire alone.

It was dreadfully rare for Crowley to miss a meeting at their appointed rendezvous. The demon was occasionally late, which he claimed was a default state for him and his kind. That or obsessively punctual with no middle-ground. But this was the third time in as many years.

Aziraphale pocketed his watch, then resumed feeding handfuls of seed to the ducks, but it felt automatic, rather than a pleasure today.

He could remember the last words they had exchanged and now, thinking back on them, he wondered if he – they had both been too harsh. He had panicked. What else had Crowley expected of him, asking such a ridiculous thing?

Such a demand could only have one end and Crowley was not a demon to kill, which meant there was only one use he might have for the… the requested substance. He had not seemed suicidal, but sometimes with Crowley, it was very difficult to tell what he was thinking or planning.

No. No! He couldn’t let his mind wander down those roads again. Crowley was alive. He would have known if anything had happened to him. He would have. So it followed that Crowley was either very late or simply ignoring him.

I don’t need you.

Aziraphale pressed his lips together. Strange how much words could hurt as much as a blow.

Rain started pattering down and he groped for the watch again. Almost an hour late now.

There was no point lingering in the rain. He dusted the seed off his gloves, then turned and made his way along the winding path by the pond towards the gates by Horseguards.

“Oh, I do hope he’s all right,” he murmured.

1868 – Whitechapel, London

A sliver of daylight broke in between the curtains, cutting across the vast four-poster bed. It was the only item of furniture in the bare room apart from a small table, upon which there was a small pile of unopened letters, each one sealed with gold wax and stamped with an A. The floor was littered with bottles, some empty, some full, and the walls bare and blank except for a single drawing of an enigmatically-smiling woman.

“Gnah,” someone muttered from beneath a pile of blankets on the bed. A pale hand poke out and snapped its fingers. The curtains shifted and the daylight vanished.

A few seconds later, the pile of blankets resumed snoring.

1871 – Holborn, London

The solitary man painted a forlorn portrait near the bar. The chair on the opposite side of the table had remained empty for much of the evening and by degrees, the man’s expression drifted from amiable to melancholic.

Theodore tapped his own glass against his lip. This was not a bar that gentlemen came to in order to sit alone. He smiled slightly, then made his way between the tables and chairs to sit down opposite the fair-haired man.

The man’s face lit up. “Crow–” He broke off, his expression giving way to misery once more. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

“I could not help but notice you seemed terribly mournful,” Theodore said with his best and most winsome smile. “Can I be the one to cheer you?”

The man stared at him blankly for a moment. He was a charming-looking fellow, pleasantly plump with round cherubic cheeks and unruly blond curls in a halo about his head. “I– I’m afraid I’m waiting for someone.”

Theodore leaned forward. “You seem to have been waiting for a devilish long time.”

The man dropped his eyes to the cup between his hands, looking even more forlorn than before. “Yes,” he agreed unhappily. “Devilish long.”

Theodore leaned back in his chair, raising a hand to catch the barkeeper’s eye. “Then I shall keep you company until your friend arrives.” He adjusted his smile to a softer one that the more sentimental and discerning gentleman usually appreciated. “I’m sure he shan’t be long.”

The man’s expression brightened a little. “That’s awfully kind of you…” He hesitated. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”

That, Theodore thought triumphantly, was always a promising sign. “Theodore Lockhart,” he said, extending his hand across the table to the man.

“Az… Um… Alexander Fell.” He reached out and politely shook Theodore’s hand. “Thank you.”

Theodore laughed warmly as the barkeeper approached with a bottle of Theodore’s favourite wine. “Oh, it’s purely self-indulgence, Alexander,” he said, surprised when the man didn’t protest the use of his Christian name. “You see, I was rather lonely too.”

“Oh?” The man gave Theodore his full attention for the first time and for a moment, Theodore felt his usual manners falter. Alexander’s eyes were intense and clear as if they could see right through him. Oh, he was lovely.

Perhaps it was terribly hasty, but he reached over and covered Alexander’s hand with one of his own. “Perhaps… we can be friends?”

Alexander’s gaze dropped to their hands. His own was motionless under Theodore’s and for a moment, Theodore wondered if he had made a terrible misjudgement. Then those remarkable eyes returned to his face. “Perhaps. For now, company will be enough.”

1871 – Whitechapel, London

The room was still dark. The frame of the painting was a little dustier. So were the blankets on the bed. A single foot poked out from beneath the covers, scalier and darker than a foot had any right to be.

1876 – Oxford

“I knew it would impress you!”

Aziraphale smiled indulgently at his human companion. He had had several of them in the past few years, though inevitably they all drifted away. Each of them seemed to expect something of him – some ineffable thing they dared not speak of – which he lacked to means to understand or to give.

If he was to be entirely honest with himself, some small part of him was relieved.

They were sweet-natured young men, charming and enthusiastic, but they lacked something, and if they chose to withdraw from him, then he didn’t have to worry about it. It was far worse to be left behind by someone you believed had cared.

I have plenty of other people to fraternise with.

As much as he hated to admit it, he still missed the damned demon, no matter how many lovely young men he crossed paths with.

Still, Crowley was the one who had stopped responding to his messages, so eventually, Aziraphale had reached out to find every letter he had sent since that awful day in the park and turned them to ash where they lay. If Crowley was going to ignore him, then he would… just do the same thing.

So far, he had managed to go almost five years without sending any messages. That wasn’t to say he hadn’t written them. There was an embarrassingly large stack that he tried to ignore every time he sat down at his desk. But they hadn’t been sent. That was the important thing.

“The architecture has always been quite splendid,” he said as Nicodemus slipped his arm through Aziraphale’s.

Nicodemus – son of an upstanding merchant – had bumped into him when the angel had given a reading in the British Museum. It been a peculiar whim after one too many nights alone in his shop, an empty glass sitting on the table.

And so, he had done a reading of Mediaeval literature and his latest companion had attended.

He was a student at the university, in town to visit the museum, and had been appalled to hear that Aziraphale had not visited Oxford for at least twenty years. It was really closer to one-hundred and fifty, but the young man didn’t need to know that. Another peculiar whim.

Call it what it is, angel, he chided himself. A distraction.

“That’s not all I brought you here for,” Nicodemus confided, his dark eyes shining. “I have someone who is dying to meet you.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale tried to maintain his smile. More often than not, his companions’ friends had proved less than stimulating company. “And who might that be?”

For once, it was someone who proved entirely worth meeting.

The long-limbed young man unfolded from his couch as Aziraphale and Nicodemus entered. He was tall, with compelling features that were not quite handsome. His hair dark hair was tumbling about his shoulders, his clothes exquisite and far more extravagant than the average human’s.

“Oscar,” Nicodemus sounded beside himself with giddiness. “This is my… friend, Mr. Fell. Mr. Fell, this is my good chum, Oscar Wilde.”

Aziraphale offered his hand to the young man, fascinated. One could always spot an artist. They had a particular energy about them and this one… oh, he positively glowed. “A delight to make your acquaintance, Mr. Wilde.”

A flash of a smile crossed the young man’s face. “My friends,” he said, his mellifluous voice rich as honey, “call me Oscar.”

1876 – Whitechapel, London

A spider scuttled across the pillow, scrambling over a motionless hand.

There was a quiet grumble from the depths of the bedding, then the hand moved, twitching the spider away. The same hand reached down, leaving the covers as little as possible, groping around on the floor.

It made two journeys.

One for one of the few full bottles that remained and the other for the chamber pot.

Twenty minutes later, the pile of blankets started snoring again.

1882 – Portland Place, London

“If you’re absolutely sure I won’t be imposing?”

Lord Arthur Somerset grinned at the man sitting opposite him in the carriage. “Entering at my side? You’ll be welcomed like a Prince, Master Fell.”

The fair-haired man smiled bashfully. “Well, there’s no need for that.”

Somerset regarded him with fond amusement. The man was not a gentleman by the commonly accepted standards, but they had crossed paths at one salon or another and had fallen in together quite nicely. Fell was a little older than Somerset himself, well-spoken, eloquent and well-educated. Not the type that usually caught his eye at all.

However, he had a particular naïve charm which had fascinated the aristocrat far more than it ought to have and which vexed him even more when Fell seemed utterly oblivious to his more pressing advances.

“Ah!” Somerset declared as the carriage drew up outside the building. “Here we are.” He gave Fell a wicked smile. “You still can change your mind. I’m not here to tempt you, after all.”

Fell smiled back at him, although for a moment, it almost looked forced. “Well, I’m here now and I would quite like to see what all the fuss is about.”

Somerset stepped down from the carriage first, then offered Fell his hand to assist him down. Most other men would have recoiled or puffed up in indignation, but Fell only took his hand, smiled that charming smile of his and said “thank you” as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Somerset darted a tongue along his lower lip.

Once the man saw the inside of the club, surely he would grasp Arthur’s intentions towards him. After all, the Hundred Guineas Club had a particular kind of reputation and even someone as refreshingly innocent as Fell couldn’t fail to notice that.

He offered Fell his arm. “Will you join me, then?”

Fell’s smile creased lines into the softness of his face. “I would be delighted.”

1882 – Whitechapel, London

One of the pillows had ended up on the floor. A foot was resting on the other. The owner of the foot was buried back under the wine-stained blankets. His head hadn’t emerged for almost six months.

1900 – Paris

“Oh, my dear…”

Oscar forced his eyes open, though it took what little strength he had left. The door had not opened, nor had he heard the ascent of anyone upon the creaking staircase, but a man was seated by him on the very lip of the bed, his ageless face stricken with grief.

“Mr. Fell,” he breathed, every word a throbbing blade through his skull. “A pleasure.”

The man leaned closer, gathering up Oscar’s hand to his breast as if to keep him from slipping from the mortal coil. “I ought to have come sooner,” he said, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “It has all been so dreadful and then I heard you were ill…”

Oscar closed his eyes, drawing a slow and aching breath. “Nonsense,” he murmured. “I could not ask that of you.”

Fell laid his hand, light as featherdown, on Oscar’s chest and for a moment, the pain in his head receded like a wave ebbing from the shore. “All the same,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

It was if the chill of the damp little room had been swept away. There was comfort and warmth of a sort that Oscar had only ever written, thrumming through his weary body down to his bones, brushing aside all shame and bitterness and anger.

He opened his eyes to look at Fell.

Even though the room was dark, the windows shuttered against the winter’s bitter cold, Fell shone as bright as a sun.

“Who are you?” Oscar breathed, unable to tear his eyes away. “What are you?”

Fell – if that was even his name – smiled his heart-breakingly beautiful smile. “I’m your friend,” he whispered.

And behind him, wings of purest divine light unfurled and, for the last moments of his life, Oscar could swear he looked upon the face of Heaven.

1900 – Whitechapel, London

Someone had decided that the property must be empty after so many years. Made sense. No one had come or gone in almost half a century. Who wouldn’t try and break into a place like that and see if they couldn’t steal a bit more space for themselves and their family.

The bold – and stupid – intruder went in bravely enough.

When he came out, he was grey-faced, his hair turned white as snow, and for seventh months, he didn’t say a word.

And when he finally spoke, he only had two words.

“Stay away.”

1916 – Verdun-sur-Meuse

It would have been a lovely summer’s afternoon, if not for the bombardment.

Aziraphale had always hated battlefields, but with every leap forward in the weapons of war, they became more bloody and terrible. The best he could do was offer flickers of hope and once in a while, a whisper of a miracle. They were becoming fewer and further between as hope faltered and the mud churned up, scarlet and black and rotting.

He had broken his promise to himself.

He had tried his utmost to be resolved, to show Crowley that he was neither needed nor wanted, but Lord, he was so very tired.

He had written. Once in 1914, when he felt the tremors through Europe of the coming war, then again after Ypres. And then, every battle, he had sat among the soldiers on either side, scratching letters, sending them with a prayer that they would reach him.

A dozen letters, maybe more, and not a single response.

He had hoped that Crowley would remember all the battlefields they had walked before. There had been so many. It felt strange to face a battle without the demon there, picking at him, teasing him and making faces at him from the opposite side.

Aziraphale turned his face towards the sun, where it was peeping over the edge of the trench.

Was it too much to hope that their friendship counted for something? He was so sure it had. Surely… surely, such a little argument couldn’t undo all those centuries and millennia? Yes, Crowley could be stubborn, but surely not that stubborn.

He rubbed at his eyes, sunspots dancing behind his lids, then sighed and miracled up another piece of paper.

It’s lovely here today. It reminds me of Noricum in the summer. Do you remember that siege? Those damned boars? Less Celts, although it smells about the same. If you have a little time–

He gazed down at the paper, then crushed it in his hand.

So many letters and no response. Why expect one now?

Further down the trench, there was a shout and the soldiers started mobilising. Aziraphale got back to his feet, aching with fatigue. It was going to be a long year.

1917 – Whitechapel

The blankets had disintegrated and been replaced with newer, bigger ones. There were more crates of wine on the floor. Possibly miracled. He wasn’t sure. Didn’t really care, as long as the world stayed nice and fuzzy and quiet and with no stupid thoughts about any stupid angels and their stupid stupid moral high grounds.

Crowley shoved his head deeper under the pillows.

He didn’t hear the whisper of the neglected, dusty pile of letters slipping over on the table and spilling onto the floor.

1941 – Soho, London

Aziraphale straightened his tie and smoothed the lines of his coat.

As much as he hated to admitted, there was something invigorating about playing against type.

It was – he was absolutely certain – nothing to do with almost a millennia of performing both temptations and blessings. No. Certainly not. But who wouldn’t like to outwit the latest evil to rise from the mind of humanity?

It was a gloomy night, the moon a thin crescent. The perfect night for villainy and mischief.

He smiled as he picked up the bundle of books. Or for thwarting it.

1941 – Whitechapel

Two years was a hell of a long time to try and shake a hangover.

‘Parently, there was in fact a threshold for the amount of booze a single demon could imbibe without being physically capable of willing himself sober. That had been a long bugger of a lesson to live through.

Still, it’d given him a bit of time to catch up on things he’d missed while he was having a nap.

There’d been a few wars. One bloody big one from the sound of it. ‘Great’. Humans always did like to use weird words to describe awful things. Not that he felt guilty about leaving the angel in the deep end. Nope. Not at all. Wasn’t like they’d done a mess of wars together.

Weren’t even any messages from the bastard. Not one.

Okay, yeah, there were some suspiciously papery-looking piles of ash on his table and his floor, but Az– the angel would never destroy the written word. S’like an allergic reaction. He’d probably come out in hives over it.

Crowley rubbed at his eyes again. They felt like they’d been replaced with two dusty snooker balls, grating against the inside of his eyelids.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” He focussed all his wobbly power inwards, around the still thumping headache, and almost cried – in a very cool and manly way – when he felt the alcohol finally seeping out of his system. The pain in his head vanished and the world stopped spinning just enough for him to sag with relief. “Thank G– er… me.”

It took another couple of hours before his brain felt like it wasn’t about to dribble out of his ear.

It was another three before – just out of morbid curiosity – he let his awareness stretch out. Not because he wanted to check on him or anything, but just to see where the stupid angel was.

Huh.

In the city. North bank of the Thames. In a bloody church of all places.

Crowley paused, frowning.

Carefully, he let his power do a rerun through his sodden corporation, because he couldn’t be sensing what his still-kind-of-pickled brain was telling him was there. Then he focussed on the church and the other people inside it. Their souls had a very, very familiar flavour and he risked a taste of their intentions.

“Oh holy fuck!”

1941 – Soho, London

Aziraphale had been quiet for the whole drive back to his shop.

Crowley wasn’t sure what he could say.

The minute he saw his bloody stupid angel standing in the church – even though he was surrounded by Nazis and had a gun pointed at him – all the anger he’d been trying to drown out with far, far, far too much alcohol evaporated like it had never been there.

Even if Aziraphale had seemed annoyed to see him, even if he’d been forced to dance about like an idiot to avoid getting his feet burned, even if they’d parted on bad terms, all he could think about was the fact that Aziraphale would be all right.

And his books, of course. He would have been useless if he’d lost his books. Probably even done something as stupid as get infinitely drunk and unconscious for a few decades.

Still, eighty years was a long time. They hadn’t been apart for that long, not for millennia, and finding the words to fill in the gap seemed impossible.

“Here we are then,” he finally broke the silence as he pulled up outside the shop. He’d even driven a bit slower than usual, but that was mostly because of bombs. Almost mostly. Partly.

Aziraphale didn’t immediately move to get out. “Crowley,” he said quietly, looking down at his hands, which were wrapped around the handle of the stolen Nazi case which he had on his lap.

“Yeah?”

“Where… where were you?”

Crowley fiddled with the steering wheel of the Bentley. “Um.”

Aziraphale took a small, quiet breath. “It– I was worried.”

“Ohhhh…” Crowley winced, trying his best to sound casual. “You know me. I keep out of trouble.”

“Yes.” He heard the rustle of fabric and turned his head to find Aziraphale gazing at him. God, he’d missed that stupid bloody angel. “I remember.” Aziraphale looked like he was trying not to cry, a weak smile crossing his lips. “Did you have a good time?”

Enough alcohol to resink the Titanic. Miserably hiding away from everything and everyone. Avoiding the only person who had ever given a shit about him.

For once, he didn’t want to bluff and act like everything was fine. “No.” He tried to force a smile. “It was rubbish.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale looked back down at the case. “Would– I have a bottle of Chateau-neuf–”

The thought of any more drinks made Crowley’s stomach twist. “No.”

The angel’s face fell. “Oh.”

God, he hated seeing him like that, especially when they were finally finding their way back to some kind of truce.

“I had a rough couple of… decades…” He winced again. “No wine, yeah? Maybe – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – a cup of tea?”

It was as if he’d switched a light on behind Aziraphale’s eyes. “Oh, that would be lovely. I may even have some biscuits.”

Crowley couldn’t help laughing at that. “Of course you do.” He pushed his door open. “C’mon then, angel.”

When Aziraphale beamed at him, he couldn’t keep from smiling in response.

#fic: crossing paths #good omens #good omens fic #aziraphale #crowley

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